Tag Archives: Britain

Stereotyping the English

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In response to “An update on search terms,” Drewdog 2060 wrote, “I am finding it difficult to comment as my collar, freshly starched by my butler this morning, is restricting my air supply. Too many good dinners at the gentleman’s club in Pal Mal. I do not, of course subscribe to stereotypes.”

Which got me thinking about stereotypes a bit more—okay, I’m not going to say seriously, since I try not to take my seriousness too seriously here, but a bit more than I had been. Even though I was the one to raise the topic.

When I was a kid, my father would sometimes give voice to a character he called the Constipated Englishman. The CE was a kind of Colonel Blimp figure (more about him in a minute) who never managed any real words but harrumphed a lot and made my brother and me giggle.

Irrelevant photo: Field patterns, late winter

Irrelevant photo: Field patterns, late winter

Ah for those innocent days when you could insult an entire nationality and not have to wonder if it was a good idea. I offer you a verbal wince on my father’s behalf, because wasn’t a person to go in for stereotypes. He never made racist jokes and, with this exception, didn’t make jokes about entire nationalities either. But the English had been winners in the global poker game for so long, even though by then they were losing their chips, that they must’ve struck him as fair game. Besides, he had two giggling kids begging him to do the voice again, on top of which he probably saw the CE not as representative of the entire country but of a particular type of person it had given rise to.

I was too young to understand anything that subtle, so for years I more or less believed the entire English nation was male and upper class and constipated. And yes, if I’d stopped to think about that I’d have known it defied the laws of physics or probability or something else scientific, but that’s the thing with stereotypes—most of the time you don’t stop and think about them. They just drift around in your head like wisps of fog, obscuring one thing and leaving the rest clear. You can stop noticing that they’re there at all.

And here we should get back to Colonel Blimp, who was a cartoon character created by David Low as a result of overhearing two military men in a Turkish bath arguing that cavalry officers should be allowed to wear their spurs inside their tanks.

Um, yes indeed they should. Not to mention their swords. We can discuss the horses another time. I want measure the tanks they used back then before I give a definitive opinion.

Unlike the CE, who never even had a name, Colonel Blimp encapsulated the officers Low overheard so well that the entire type is now named after him. He was a character—particular and individual, even when he stood in for a group. You might want to argue that he was a stereotype, but it would be a harder argument to make.

All this is on my mind because when you write about the differences between cultures—and especially when you try to be funny about it—it’s easy to slide into using stereotypes and being, basically, a shithead. So if I cross the line here, I invite you to throw a rock. Or a cavalry officer’s spurs or a tank—whatever’s handy. Or better yet, a comment. It’ll annoy the hell out of me, and I’ll be grateful.

And in case you’re interested, the profound sociological, nonjudgmental reason that stereotypes are wrong is because they make the person who broadcasts them into a shithead.

Aren’t you glad I’m around to present these things dispassionately?

What people want to know about Americans in Britain

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Like so many other bloggers, I’ve become obsessed with my Stats Page. To the point where I have to remind myself that yesterday’s stats won’t change, no matter how many times I check them. And having told myself that, I check them again anyway. (I use the old Stats Page, because it has yesterday’s stats. And because I hate the new one.)

But the most interesting bit of the Stats Page is what I find under Search Engine Terms. This is where I see what people really want to know about Britain. Or about Americans in Britain. Or about life, poor dears, and then they get shunted in my direction and who knows what happens to them next. Nothing good, I’m sure.

Irrelevant photo: Where cats hide on gray days

Irrelevant photo: Where cats hide on gray days

Before we get to the list, I should admit that I’ve edited out the most sensible entries. This isn’t sociology, kids. We’re trying to have fun here, so settle down in the back row. Pay attention.

I’ve left the spelling and capitalization as I found them. When they think no one’s watching, most people are as lazy about capitalization as I am. Of course, it’s possible that either search engines or WordPress turns everything into lower case and the handful of capital letters are only there because I imported them without noticing. Either way, we’re becoming nations of illiterates.

Sad, isn’t it?

Enough. Here’s the list.

 

british english obsessed with the letter U

tea in motion

slang used today

beech loses sand

lemon drizzle cake american measurements

guy with a camera

lemon drizzle cake notes

why does cnn anchors talk with accent

musical quavers and crotchets

manners American

musical notes in British

uk.com sex (this showed up two days in a row; don’t ask; don’t even think about it)

american chocolate chip cookies uk

what should we do to show good manners in public places in britain (twice in one day, once without the S in manners)

show good maner in public place in britain

 

What do we learn here?

  1. That what Americans most want to learn about Britain involves lemon drizzle cake, which, sadly, they won’t learn here since we pretty solidly established that the recipe I posted wasn’t a true lemon drizzle cake but some other kind of lemon cake in disguise. In its defense, it was measured in cups.
  2. That what people who could be from anywhere most want to know about Britain has to do with good manners and musical notation. In the case of manners, they sound a bit desperate. I feel bad about that, because I can’t think I’ve been much use on the subject. I’m not sure what subject I have been much use on. I’m nervous about being made an Authority, even if it’s by something as arbitrary as a search engine.
  3. That somebody wants to know about American manners and assumes we have some.
  4. That a lot of strange stuff gets typed into Google and that some of it gets shunted here for no apparent reason. Guy with a camera? Have the words guy and camera even showed up in my posts?

And what could we teach, if anyone who asked was listening? That CNN anchors talk with an accent because if human beings stop talking with accents they don’t talk at all. It’s like breath: no breath, no speech; no accent, no words.

And the uk.com sex query? That sounds a bit desperate, and it makes me want to know what have you lot up to when I wasn’t looking.

American baking in Cornwall: baking powder biscuits

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I’ve been browsing through too many blogs lately, so I don’t remember where I found the question “what do Americans mean when they say ‘biscuit’?” (I’m paraphrasing. If I didn’t remember to make a note of where I was, raise your hand, please, if you think I had the foresight to copy the actual words. No hands? I didn’t think so.) I left an answer, then thought that in the interest of intercultural mayhem, which I do so much want to promote, I should answer it here as well. So for anyone who (a) isn’t American or (b) is American but is somehow unaware that biscuits are bliss, I’m going to print a recipe. Just as soon as I manage to shut up.

Which may not before a while. Feel free to scroll down if you’re bored. I’ll never know.

Irrelevant photo: It's spring! Crocuses by our back door.

Irrelevant photo: It’s spring! Crocuses by our back door.

Since I moved to Cornwall and began my campaign to mess with the purity of English cooking, I’ve learned to call biscuits baking powder biscuits to distinguish them from cookies, because that’s what anyone British would think I meant otherwise. Although they also say “biscuits” to mean crackers. While we’re at it, crackers are also something non-edible that show up on the table at Christmas. Are you confused yet? That tells you you’re not British. In case you weren’t sure.

Don’t you just love the English language?

In the U.S., I was more likely to call baking powder biscuits either just plain biscuits or buttermilk biscuits. But let’s stick to the phrase I’m currently using: Baking powder biscuits are a cousin of the scone, but they’re not as sweet. Or if you’re comparing them to savory scones they’re not as—oh, you know, scone-y. Sadly, they’re also not as good cold. The leftovers tend to taste kind of salty. But that only means you have to eat more while they’re warm, because they’re light and glorious then.

I didn’t grow up in the American biscuit zone, which is made up of (a) the South and (b) the African-American community in any part of the country. Those are generalizations, I know, but they’re accurate for the present purpose, which is to say that in spite of my geographical and ethnic limitations, I’ve been around both parts of the zone enough to know good food when I see it, and since Wild Thing’s originally from Texas, learning to make biscuits seemed like a good idea. I mean, if she can not only eat but pronounce both challah and knishes, I can surely make biscuits. She swears mine are better than her mother’s, but I only dare say that in public because her mother’s dead. The difference, I suspect, is that I use butter. You can use margarine if you like, or (probably, but what do I know? I’m a Jewish atheist New Yorker and a distinctly amateur cook, which makes me no expert on the subject) lard or pretty much any other hard fat.

The trick is to use as little liquid as possible—just enough to get the dough to form a ball. Too much liquid and the biscuits will be tough. That much I do know.

 

Baking Powder Biscuits

(makes 8 or 9)

2 cups flour

1 scant tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. sugar

2 ½ oz. (5 tbsp.) butter

¾ cups (approximately) buttermilk or milk with vinegar * (see note below)

Sift the dry ingredients together—or if you’re as lazy as I am, dump them all in a bowl and take a whisk to them. I swear it works just as well. Cut in the butter  or crumble it in with your fingers. Your fingers will warm the butter, so cutting it is better. If you can find a pastry blender, that’s ideal. Don’t lose sleep over how small the bits of butter are; as long as you don’t leave it looking like gravel, it’ll be fine. Stir in just enough buttermilk to form the dough into a ball. Knead if very briefly—no more than 30 seconds—just to bring the dough together fully .

Dust your counter with flour and roll the dough out so it’s about ¾ inch thick. Understand that I’m making up the thickness. Mine vary all over the lot. Cut into rounds with a biscuit cutter or a glass. (My biscuit cutter had a diameter of 2 ¾ inches. Just so’s you know.) Set them on a greased baking sheet, which in the U.S. I called a cookie sheet. It doesn’t matter if they touch.

Bake in a 450 F. / 220 c. oven for 10 to 12 minutes.

Since the thickness of my biscuits varies from batch to batch, I pry one open to make sure they’re done in the center. You’ll want to split them when you eat them anyway, so it doesn’t show.

Eat warm with any combination butter and/or honey, jam, or gravy.

 

* If you don’t have buttermilk (and it’s not as widely available in the U.K. as it is in the U.S.), you can add some vinegar to the milk—roughly one teaspoon to a cup seems to do it. I sometimes add more. It doesn’t seem to be finicky. Just don’t use a flavored vinegar, or a red one unless you want pink biscuits. White or cider work well.

An American gives directions in Cornwall

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Something notable happened the other day: A guy in a landscaping van stopped while I was walking the dog and asked for directions, and even though he heard my accent (yeah, well, how could he not hear it?), he drove in the direction I suggested.

I should mark the date on my calendar so I can celebrate it next year.

 

The Cornish relay delivery system

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Not long ago, someone asked if I could return a handful of leaflets to someone in Truro. Or to someone else in St. Austell. The problem was that I live about an hour from Truro and, oh, 40 minutes or more from St. Austell. I didn’t want to make either drive just to hand over some leaflets, then turn around and drive home.

An aside here: P. told me long ago that time’s an American way of measuring distance, but I swear it’s the only way that makes sense here. Speed depends on the road, and Cornwall’s full of back roads, so distance is only going to tell you just so much.

The solution was to employ the Cornish relay delivery system. Wild Thing and I were meeting with someone relatively nearby (around here, nothing’s truly close) the next morning, and he was meeting with someone else in the afternoon—in Truro. So I gave him the leaflets and asked him to pass them on to the next person, who I’d emailed and who had agreed to either drop them off where they needed to be or let someone pick them up.

Irrelevant photo: Spot the direction of the prevailing wind.

Irrelevant photo: Spot the direction of the prevailing wind.

The same system delivered a leg of lamb to our house a few years ago. Wild Thing—the household meat eater—had bought a leg of lamb from A., who raises lamb, but when she went to pick it up, it had already left. J. had stopped by and was on her way to see a neighbor of ours (let’s call the neighbor J.2 for the sake of either clarity or confusion, take your pick). As far as A. was concerned, it had been delivered. Only we didn’t have the meat.

We went home and Wild Thing called J., who’d stopped by our house, she said, but we were out, so she left it with J.2, who stuck it in her refrigerator.

Are you still with me?

Wild Thing went to J.2’s house, collected her leg of lamb, and stuck the meat in the oven.

We thought it was all very villagey and—here we go again—quaint until we used the same system ourselves. Then we thought it made perfect sense.

Avoiding quaintness in Cornwall

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“I can see how easy it is to think of us as quaint,” J. said, having read I can’t remember which of my blog posts.

I admitted that I was stretching the quaintness and she admitted that she understood that and we’re still speaking, for which I’m grateful because I like J. But the comment stays with me. I’m not sure if she was amused, hurt, critical, or some mix of them all, and I didn’t think to ask.

I’m not sure how I feel about the conversation, either. Is quaint even the right word? I do look for things to laugh about. Does that end up painting a picture of quaintness? I’m not sure, but I hereby officially admit that I’m exaggerating when I write about Britain. Or as a karate teacher I used to study with liked to say, over-exaggerating. Not by making anything up, but by ignoring the counterbalance: both the oddities of the U.S.—my home country—and the ordinariness of Britain.

Irrelevant photo: Early flowers. Damned if I remember what they're called.

Irrelevant photo: early flowers. Damned if I remember what they’re called.

But foreigners are always tempted to do that. The mailboxes are a different shape? How quaint! How charming! Or, if you’re looking for something to disapprove of, as some people are the minute they’re out of their comfort zone, How backwards! How ignorant! Mailboxes should be square, with a rounded top.

Besides, it’s harder to see the oddities of the culture you’re used to. That’s one of the gifts that being an outsider brings. Drop me back in the U.S. after almost nine years in the U.K. and I expect things I took for granted would look odd. But I’m not there. I work with what’s in front of me, always trying to remember my own absurdity as well, and if possible put more stress on that than on anyone else’s.

So for the sake of balance, here’s a list five of non-quaint things that happened recently.

  • The sun rose this morning. It has no accent, respects no borders, and is not impressed by anyone’s nationalism. Thank you, sun. We all need to be reminded.
  • My car’s oil pressure is low and I left it with the mechanic. [This actually happened a few days ago, but I’ll leave it in the present tense for the illusion of immediacy it creates—and out of laziness.] Probably my fault (bad car owner, wicked car owner). I’d let the oil get low, but I don’t think it was low enough to account for idiot light flashing on. This is distinctly un-quaint, and I feel distinctly idiotic.
  • The mechanic just called. On Wild Thing’s phone, which is the number we gave him. That seemed to make sense at the time—never mind why—only Wild Thing’s not home right now and she couldn’t give me the number to call him back because it’s on her phone and she was using the phone to talk to me and yes, she could have hung up and written it down and called back but she doesn’t have a pen with her. Or paper. And the phone numbers here have a shitload of digits; they’re hard to remember. I’d look the number up but it doesn’t belong to a shop. The mechanic’s a local guy working out of his garage and using his cell phone. Besides, I don’t actually know his last name. Everyone around here swears by him and the garage I’ve used up to now just screwed something up for me. So Wild Thing called the mechanic to give him our home number, but he was on the phone too (it happens that way sometimes), so he couldn’t enter the number. All of that could happen anywhere. I’m not playing quaint with this, although I could. It’s just what happened.
  • A couple in the village are coming up on their golden wedding anniversary. Yay them!
  • I’m trying to remember how many years a golden anniversary marks. If I have to bet, I’m putting my money on fifty. Google could find someone who’d be happy to let me know, but I’d rather be amused by my ignorance.
  • I am, not uncharacteristically, cheating on this list since points two and three are related and four and five are are too. Which is why I’ve added this as a bonus point—six items in a list of five. You can’t say you don’t get your money’s worth out of this blog. Which is a double negative, giving you even more bang for your buck.

Too good to leave in the comments box

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In response to “British parliamentary traditions,” Pottsy at Fear of the reaper commented, “I used to work at the U.K. Parliament and sometimes gave tours of the building and would explain the State Opening and all the traditions that go with it, including checking the non-existent cellars (by banging on the floor) for gunpowder.”

Non-existent cellars? I asked. “The cellars they check don’t actually exist and haven’t for at least 150 years,” she wrote back.

So there you have it: They’re not only checking for an impractical and antiquated explosive, they’re checking for it in a place that no longer exists.

British parliamentary traditions

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I know, I just wrote a post about red phone boxes and came down on the side of tradition, but really, folks, there’s a limit, and I believe a recent BBC TV series on Parliament has helped me locate it.

The series looks at everything from the building itself (which is falling apart) and the people who keep it running to the MPs and what they do and how they do it. How they do it is often in very arcane ways. How does one MP hand over some papers for a particular category of bill he’s introducing? He walks five steps, bows, walks five more steps, bows again, then walks the rest of the distance and hands over the papers. Makes me wonder what would happen if he didn’t bother bowing, or walked six steps. We played a game like that when I was a kid, Captain, May I? It involved giant steps and banana steps and going back to the starting line if you got it wrong.

Surprisingly relevant picture: a Yoeman of the Guard. Picture by Snapshots of the Past.

Surprisingly relevant picture: a Yoeman of the Guard. Picture by Snapshots of the Past.

The series is alternately fascinating, boring, and horrifying, and it wouldn’t be complete without a few Parliamentary traditions that predate the ox cart. And possibly the ox itself. I will, therefore, ignore the serious stuff and dive directly into the silly (in case I haven’t already done that with the MP and his banana steps). Because we all have enough serious stuff in our lives.

Before the Queen’s Speech (which gets capital letters, implying that it’s her only speech; for all I know, she maintains a regal silence the rest of the year), the Yeomen of the Guard walk through the basement pounding the corridor floors with fancy staffs, checking for barrels of gunpowder. It’s quite a sight, since these are the guys—and these days, I’m happy to say, at least one woman—who wear those memorable red uniforms.

But excuse me? Gunpowder? Barrels? Has anyone heard of drones? Or, I don’t know, intercontinental ballistic missiles? Semtex? There are so many ways to blow things up these days. And explosives aren’t the only danger a monarch faces. She could trip on the hem of her cape. She could fall victim to some prankster substituting one of my posts for the approved speech and there she’d be, with the wrong sheaf of papers in her hands and nothing to do but stop, doggedly read on, or ad lib. And ad libbing doesn’t look to me like one of the skills she’s practiced much.

She reads, by the way, from real paper. Yes, folks, paper. Talk about traditional! And while I’m interrupting myself, I can tell you that I just googled Semtex to make sure I wasn’t mistaking an explosive for a dishwashing liquid. That probably put me on somebody’s watch list. If I wasn’t there already.

But never mind all that. They tap the floors for gunpowder, not semtex and not rogue blog posts. It all dates back to Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot.

I want to be clear about this. I’m not recommending you blow up Parliament. Regardless of how you feel about monarchy or the British government or anything else, it would not help the political situation in any way. But there are certain ideas that shouldn’t be planted in people’s heads, and this is one of them. They made it all so picturesque. And I can’t help playing with scenarios. I’m a fiction writer, your honor. And a vegetarian.

No, I’m not sure that’s relevant either, but I mention it just in case—

[A late insertion here: When I first posted this, the paragraph above read, “I’m recommending” instead of “I’m not recommending.” Thanks to K.B., who wrote to say I really would end up on someone’s watch list. This is what happens when you recast a sentence too many times. Bits and pieces of the earlier versions get left in until it becomes meaningless, or means the opposite of what you meant it to mean, your honor.]

Let’s move on before they pass sentence. The Queen’s Speech also involves Black Rod. This is a guy dressed in clothes from another century—possibly another planet, but then who am I to judge?—and he runs around with, yes, a black rod. At the State Opening of Parliament, he’s “sent from the Lords Chamber to the Commons Chamber to summon MPs to hear the Queen’s Speech. Traditionally the door of the Commons is slammed in Black Rod’s face to symbolise the Commons independence.

“He then bangs three times on the door with the rod. The door to the Commons Chamber is then opened and all MPs—talking loudly—follow Black Rod back to the Lords to hear the Queen’s Speech.”

That, by the way, is from Parliament’s own web site. You can tell it’s not mine by the British spelling of symbolise. Not to mention the quotation marks and the straight-faced tone.

This bit of symbolism dates back to the 1600s, when Charles I tried and failed to arrest five MPs, which Parliament considers to mark the autonomy of the Commons from the crown. Slamming the door in Black Rod’s face is like checking for gunpowder. It meant something once and they’ve been re-enacting it ever since.

So as far as I’m concerned, that’s where the far edge of tradition lies. I am, honestly, fascinated that the more, ummm, picturesque traditions continue on. I imagine that with each century they take on a more ceremonial and less meaningful tone, but no one can get rid of them. Maybe no one wants to. Maybe it’s only rude outsiders who see it all as a touch—shall we say bizarre and unnecessary? I don’t want to sound like I think the U.S. has it all figured out. We’re at least as crazy as the next country. But in other and (to me, at least) less picturesque ways.

The iconic British phone box goes literary

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BT (that’s British Telecom—a.k.a. the phone company) has been uninstalling the iconic red British telephone boxes all around the country in recent years.

Now, I understand that pay phones aren’t a money-making proposition anymore, but where cell phone coverage is spotty (and around here it has a bad case of the measles) they can be a lifeline. Besides, people like them. They’re iconic. They’re red. They’re shaped like Dr. Who’s police box.

In places, villages have fought to keep them, and as far as I know they’ve lost the battle, no matter how good their arguments. My village lost two—one by the beach, which could potentially have saved a life because it was in a measles spot, and another along the road, which was less important, although could have presented a better argument for keeping that one if somebody hadn’t set it on fire.

In a few places, though, villages lost the phones but kept the boxes and turned them into tiny red libraries, where people take books, leave books, and, judging by the number of images online, take pictures.

Relevant photo for a change: a phone box library at Wall, Staffordshire. Photo by Oosoom.

Relevant photo for a change: a phone box library at Wall, Staffordshire. Photo by Oosoom.

In Banbury, Oxfordshire, a (rare, and probably endangered) working phone shares its red box with a working library, and BT recently made enemies by threatening to remove the shelves because, they wrote, they’re “concerned the books and shelving could cause injury if they were to fall.”

No doubt. They’d cause an even worse injury if they exploded, but neither one is likely, and local residents launched a twitter campaign to save the library: #Saveourphoneboxlibrary.

I haven’t a clue what this has to do with the usual intercultural mayhem I write about. I’ve seen neighborhood-maintained libraries in the U.S. They looked like oversize birdhouses, not phone boxes. But then, I don’t think the U.S. has any phone boxes left in the wild–they’re all in zoos now, where they fall into despair and refuse to breed. Maybe that says something about our cultural differences. I leave it to you to figure out what.

Comparative swearing: U.S. vs. U.K.

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In a comment on “More about manners in the U.S. and U.K.,” Karen at Fill Your Own Glass [sorry, everybody; that’s almost the end of the links] wrote, “My impressions have been created solely by movies, but I have believed that people in the U.K. are less inhibited when it comes to cursing and talking about sex.” (She went on to say that it was an insightful post, but I wouldn’t want you to think I’m the kind of person who’d mention that.)

I haven’t a clue whether her impressions are true. What fascinates me about the comment is how you’d measure either.

late winter 002

Near Minions

Let’s say we want to compare how inhibited or uninhibited people are in talking about sex. I mean, I want to be scientific here. How do we compare passing references to serious what-I-did, what-I-didn’t-do, and how-I-feel-about-it conversations? Do we measure in frequency, in length, or in depth?

No puns, please. We’re being scientific here, so settle down in the back row.

If we’re talking about a serious cross-cultural comparison of swearing, how do we balance frequency against intensity? How do we measure the weight do various swear words carry?

People I know here (and it’s entirely possible that my friends swear more than the average Brit) say “bloody” fairly often. How often? Oh, you know, often enough. (You can see why I never became a scientist, right?) But how intense a swear word is bloody? I’d always heard that it’s religious—actually, sacrilegious—in origin and assumed that it packed quite a punch. But a Wikipedia entry raises several milder and way less interesting possibilities. My Dictionary of British Slang and Colloquial Expressions calls it simply “an intensifier,” which makes it sound mild to the point of insipidity. Of course, I once heard a linguist talk dispassionately about the way Americans use the word fucking as an insertion. In fact, he called it “the fucking insertion,” which both illustrated how it was used and cracked me up for weeks afterwards. From this I gather that linguists, like all scientists, whatever their passions, prefer to present a dispassionate surface.

I’ve heard bloody said often enough that it’s made itself a home in my head, and it’s trying to push its way into my speech. It wants to be said, and I want not to say it. Not because I don’t swear—I do, and without being immodest here, I do it well—but because I don’t have a sense of its proportion, its weight, its impact. I don’t like to throw things until I can gauge their impact.

Besides, with my accent it’ll sound very odd.

So there you are, folks. Comparative swearing. I look forward to hearing what you have to say on the subject.