Ticking off English tics!
Elena Campus; Mar 21, 2009
As English as it can get. Photo: Baya Agarwal
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There are countless stereotypes about the English, but which ones are facts and which ones are fiction?
I decided to take a tongue-in-cheek look at the most popular ones.
Queuing
For the Catholic Church there are seven deadly sins.
In London there’s only one - jumping the queue.
Have you ever noticed that whenever there’s a crowd in London, in just a couple of minutes a long and orderly queue is formed?
The English not only consider jumping the queue the most outrageous act conceivable to the human mind, but in fact, they love queuing.
As long ago as 1946, the Hungarian-born British author George Mikes ironically wrote, “Queuing is the national passion of an otherwise dispassionate race. The English are rather shy about it, and deny that they adore it.”
Now that you're here, you'd better toe the line as well.
The Weather
Ok, the weather in London is awful.
Just as women’s fickleness has inspired hundreds of poets, the weather’s unpredictability seems to inspire a lot of Londoners.
How many times a day do you hear questions such as, “Lovely day, isn’t it?” or, “Oh, it’s so nice and warm today!” or “What awful weather today!”
If this topic doesn’t appear very interesting to an outsider, what we don't realise is that these conversations about the weather are actually not conversations about the weather, at all.
The weather is probably the most effective icebreaker for the British to overcome their proverbial shyness and discretion.
The basic rules of thumb about English-weather speak are:
- Always agree with the observation that somebody makes about the weather.
- Foreigners are not allowed to criticise the weather, as it is a national institution.
Oh, to be English!
When I was studying English I asked my teacher what “making a fuss” meant.
He told me (in a very serious voice, mind you!), “Fuss is what YOU Italians make. For instance, we English don’t like waiting for hours in the rain for the bus to come. We English don’t like it when a waiter accidentally spills a glass of wine on our brand new coat. But, even if we are burning with rage from within, we never ever show it."
This bewildering and infuriating trait not to make a fuss, is easy to see during the umpteenth delay on the tube. Now a true Londoner wouldn't be driven mad at the delay, you can easily spot the Englishman/woman on the platform, peacefully reading their beloved newspaper without showing the slightest sign of bother.
Serious matters can be spoken of seriously, but one must never take oneself too seriously.
As the anthropologist Kate Fox explains in her amusing book about English behaviour, entitled Watching the English, "If you are not able to grasp the subtle but vital differences between ‘serious’ and ‘solemn’, ‘sincerity’ and ‘earnestness’ you will never understand the English, and even if your English may be impeccable, you will never feel entirely at home with the English."
