My Mess Is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety

by Georgia Pritchett

In Britain, we don’t like winning. It’s vulgar and embarrassing. And we don’t like other people winning either. (This is why most of our sports are designed to end in a polite draw, often after five days of play.) So award shows in this country are pretty excruciating. Plus, if you are a woman you spend the evening being at best extremely uncomfortable and at worst in considerable pain due to the utterly medieval dress regulations. In America, people love winning and people love winners. They will go on playing a sport until one team has won and the other is dead.