More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
in times of self-doubt and insecurity, the English take refuge in humour.
English weather-speak is a form of code, evolved to help us overcome our social inhibitions and actually talk to each other.
the English do not want to know your name, or tell you theirs, until a much greater degree of intimacy has been established
Formality is embarrassing. But, then, informality is embarrassing. Everything is embarrassing.
Unless you are the Queen, it is not considered entirely polite, for example, to ask someone directly, ‘What do you do?’,
that if you tell someone something about your own ‘private’ life, the other person will feel obliged, if only out of reflex politeness, to reciprocate with a comparably personal disclosure.
Contrary to popular belief, researchers27. have found that men gossip just as much as women.
Despite these findings, the myth is still widely believed, particularly among males, that men spend their conversations ‘solving the world’s problems’, while the womenfolk gossip in the kitchen.
