What Brits really think of American tourists

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Ellen Hawley

Gunta asked, “I often wonder what Brits or folks from other cultures think of us Americans at the tourist spots. It can’t be good.”

So I asked around. Most of the answers come from a village Facebook page. Yes, that’s an ancient custom in Cornish villages, having a Facebook page. We do things quaint around here. (If I were Cornish, I believe I’d say, “We do things proper.” But I’m not, so I won’t risk it. When you’re not 600% sure of what you’d be saying, implying, not saying, and vaguely hinting at, I’d advise playing it safe and sounding like yourself. In my case, that’s risk enough.)

Nearly relevant photo: Part of the Roman wall in Exeter. Hey, what tourist wouldn’t want to see that? This bit is right beside a parking ramp–or car park, which sounds like a place cars go to play in their time off. The bit of modern fencing looks kind of puny beside it.

A lot of the comments were positive, although I as I’m writing this I seem to notice a tinge of not-so-positive underlying them. I’m not sure if people were being polite (ah, yes, people around here are polite; except when they’re not, of course, but that happens waaay less often than in the U.S., and it has a lot more impact because it’s so unexpected) or if I’m just a sour old bat who’s importing her own view of the world into places it doesn’t belong. Take it all with the usual half cup of salt.

Several people mentioned Americans’ enthusiasm for how old Britain is. V. wrote that anything over 250 years old excites them. Which reminds me to mention that 250 years isn’t all that old around here. I mean, if we’re talking about stone circles, we’ll have to count in thousands of years, not hundreds. So 250 years? Nyeh.

S. wrote that she enjoys Americans’ love of castles, even when they don’t understand what they’re looking at.

What don’t they understand? Well, when N. “worked in Windsor years ago, I heard two American tourists looking up at the castle while a jet flew over out of nearby Heathrow. One said, ‘Gee, you’d think they’d have built it further from the airport.’ ”

If you can top that, you have to leave a comment.

M. wrote that “my dear sister-in-law is American, and when she was dating my brother she was still a tourist (she’s a hard-nut Londoner now, innit?) and we had some fun with her, like the time we (almost) convinced her that Stonehenge is moved around each solstice so it’s never in the same place twice.”

So, enthusiastic, appreciative, and, um, not necessarily well informed—either by their own (lack of) research or by their loving hosts.

And then there are the ones who are well informed but—well, H. wrote about a couple she met when she ran a B & B: “His knowledge of British history was incredible but he did admit it was easy to be an expert when surrounded by idiots. He requested clotted cream with his porridge!! She had a BRAG book containing photos of her grandchildren and proudly bored us for rather a long time.”

I should add that H. liked them. In fact, she called them fabulous.

What else?

Tourists bring their preconceptions with them, and look for ways to reinforce them. A. told a story about running past a group of American tourists (she was late, and stressed, and I’m guessing not in the best of moods) and hearing one call out, “I told you there would be rosy cheeks.” At the time she was annoyed. In retrospect, she thinks it was sweet.

She has a more tolerant nature than I do.

I hadn’t thought of rosy cheeks as something Americans expect of the British, but they do figure in a lot of English novels. So yes, I guess as least some people will come looking for them.

Another distinctive factor is that American tourists tip. And the British, in most situations, don’t. Still talking about her sister-in-law, M. wrote, “One thing I remember about going out with her in London as a tourist is that she never had an umbrella (she certainly does now), and that bar staff loved her, as she had no idea that you’re not supposed to tip them.

“Well, you aren’t, are you?”

Americans, you are not to take that as an instruction not to tip, because A.2 wrote, “And that’s why Americans will always get served before a tight, non-tipping Englishman!!”

Besides, it’s the right thing to do and you know it.

The most negative comments weren’t about Americans as Americans but about the sheer tourist-ness of tourists. T. wrote, “I think it’s just tourists not American tourists. There are a lot of people who simply forget they are travelling to someone’s home / work / life and have a responsibility to allow that to continue. Perhaps it’s just that in recent years there have been more of them and they are often …. easy to spot.”

Like all the other ellipses here, that “…” is his, not mine, so try to hear a pause there while he searches for a polite phrase.

Picking up on his comment, V. wrote, “Much like surfers, small groups of tourists always better.”

As if to prove that it’s tourists, not necessarily American tourists, G. wrote that “most English folk can’t differentiate between an American accent and a Canadian accent.”

I can testify to that. Periodically, I get asked if I’m Canadian. Since Canadian tourists are scarcer than the American variety, I’ve assumed they thought a Canadian would be offended at being taken for an American but that the reverse wouldn’t be true. And, in fact, I’ve never been offended by it. Baffled at first, but not offended. I admit, I’ve never checked my assumption about their assumption against anything as deflating as reality, so don’t take it too seriously. Especially since S. wrote to say that she gets asked the same thing “and I’m German!”

I can’t find any way to account for that.

J.’s American and does know her U.S. accent from her Canadian. She wrote, “I tend to hear [American tourists] before seeing them.” Ah, yes, the national volume control knob. Wild Thing—whose personal volume control knob is set pretty close to High—said simply that American tourists are loud. And our English friends D. and D., who visited us once in Minnesota, told us they’d always thought Wild Thing was loud until they changed planes in Chicago. So I think we’ve got a small consensus here.

Then there’s the question of looks: M.2 said American tourists “do often hit the stereotype, with the cameras, the bum bags, and the baseball caps, but I think that’s quite sweet.”

M.3 thinks they look “jolly, with their shorts and trainers [those are running shoes if you’re American] and baggy T-shirts, whether they’re male or female. They look really happy to be in England. They can’t wait to find out about it all.”

No discussion of Americans would be complete without World War II coming into it, and J. wrote that the “young Americans were very welcome in 1944, and Britain could have not have managed without the Marshall Plan in 1945.” To which V. answered, “Whilst their help in ’44 was invaluable, I didn’t think the UK got that much comparatively from the Marshall Plan … and what we did get took until this millennium to pay back … no economic miracle here (unlike Germany).”

Americans, is that a bit of history you ever heard about?

Finally, to put all this in perspective, V. told a story about her mother, who “stood at the top of the Empire State Building, looked down at the road system and said, ‘I think they could have done that a bit better.’ My sister’s response was to apologise to nearest American, saying, ’I’m so sorry, she still thinks we have an empire …’ “

I’d encourage you all to chip in with a comment, but I figure you know that already. Let’s hear what you can add.

The Palace Guard, the hat, the bears

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Ellen Hawley

Cat9984 asked, “Any chance you learned whether they have to kill a fresh bear when someone joins the Palace Guards?”

Great question, and it led me to an exhaustive ten-minute search. Or maybe that was half an hour.

I’ll start my answer with a Mirror Online article about the Ministry of Defense searching for a fake fur replacement for the hats. The article looked like it had been published just that day, but when I checked it again the next day it looked like it had just been published again. In other words, I haven’t a clue how old it is. It’s either breaking news or old—oh, hell, I can’t help myself—hat.

Irrelevant photo: wallflowers, which aren’t people who don’t get asked to dance, but real spring flowers. That grow happily in field walls.

But forget the timing; let’s talk about the substance. Apparently animal rights activists have made an impact, even on the bastion of tradition that is the Ministry of Defense. I think it was Margaret Sanger who said something along the lines of “Never think that a small, determined band of people cannot change the world. Indeed, throughout history it is the only thing that ever has.” Or something like that. I’m working from (a screamingly imperfect) memory, so that may turn out to be a quote from Groucho Marx, and the quote may have been something along the lines of “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” What I can say for certain is that there’s a quote out there somewhere. From someone. And it’s great. It might even be relevant, depending on whether it’s the one about changing the world or the one about the dog.

But I’ve wandered, haven’t I?

The bearskin hats were adopted by the grenadiers in the 18^th century, because the brimmed hats they’d been wearing blocked their view when they hurled grenades. (We’re in the land of Wikipedia now, having left the Mirror for the moment. I’m providing a link, although by now the article may have been changed so much that it claims the hats were designed by aliens who misunderstood the shape of the human head.)

The bearskin replacements are 18 inches tall. You might think a hat that tall would draw unwelcome attention on the battlefield, but 18^th-century British troops weren’t known for their guerrilla tactics, and maybe once you convince yourself that a bright red jacket is a good idea, a foot-and-a-half-high hat doesn’t strike you as a problem.

The hats, according to the Mirror article, are made from the skins of Canadian black bears, and 100 new hats are needed each year. Why 100? It doesn’t say. Do they have 100 new recruits each year? Do they only have 3, but 97 of the existing soldiers leave their hats in pubs when they stop off after work and never find them again? Do the moths eat holes in them? I just don’t know.

What I can tell you is that each hat requires the skin of an entire bear. Now I lived in Minnesota long enough to know that bears are bigger than hats. Much bigger than hats. Even foot-and-a-half high hats. Even the relatively small black bear.

Ah, but are the hats really are made from the skins of black bears? The Royal Hats website (yes, my friends, there is either a website or a blog out there about everything; every single thing) claims they’re made from the skins of brown bears, which have thicker pelts than black bears. Then they’re dyed. Who’s right? I don’t know. I haven’t found an official government website that covers the topic, important though it is. Good thing it wasn’t a question in the Life in the U.K. Test or I’d have been kicked out of the country.

Where does the rest of the bear go? Dunno again. I do know that each hat ends up weighing 1.5 pounds.

The army argues that the bears—whether black or brown—are culled anyway to keep the populations in check, so no bears are killed specifically to make the hats and therefore it’s okay. They add that the hats are a symbol of Britain recognized around the world. If they have anything to say about whether the world, having recognized the hats, takes them seriously, I failed to find it.

The Independent does date its articles, and in 2008 wrote that the hats were “likely” to be replaced, and that Stella McCartney or Vivienne Westwood might be designing the replacements. No, it’s not dated on April Fool’s day; it was posted in August. Apparently, the Ministry of Defense would be meeting with “leading designers” on the question. Now that’s a meeting I’d love to have reported on. Forget the hats—I’ll never be a fashion blogger—what I’d have been listening for was how the two groups communicated. If at all.

Since the only thing I know about Westwood is how to spell her name, I punched her into Google. She offers a nice little swimsuit with a strategically printed fig leaf for £220 pounds. The male equivalent is a steal at £125. The models, I have to say, do not look happy in them, and I don’t blame them. The suits are—as folks in Minnesota say when they disapprove of something—interesting.

And Stella McCartney? She’s offering a fizzy little black dress for £1,795. Sorry: No male equivalent seems to be available.

Neither the swimsuit or the dress strikes me as an obvious choice for the Place Guard, but the times they are a-changin’ and who am I to close off possibilities?

It must’ve been an interesting meeting, but I can’t find any reports on it and they seem not to have agreed on a replacement hat, because the bearskins are still in use.

And what, you might want to know, goes on underneath the hat? Well, one guy got really and truly bored under his and started cutting up in front of Buckingham Palace. My only question is why don’t they all? The Ministry of Defense assured the press that he wasn’t likely to be jailed for it.

Jailed? I know there are things about tradition that I don’t understand, but aren’t they over-reacting a bit by even considering it?

In the meantime, anti-fur activists continue to put pressure on the Ministry of Defense, and I’m going to take advantage of that and set up a meeting to discuss replacing the bearskin with a tasteful little flowered sunhat. The Palace Guard doesn’t throw grenades anymore, so the brims shouldn’t be a problem.

I’m sure they’ll be interested.

The Cornish Saints

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Ellen Hawley

Cornwall was Christianized by a raft (and I’m using that word metaphorically, but you’ll see why it comes to mind) of saints that most people outside of Cornwall never heard of. I’m guessing the best known is St. Piran—Cornwall’s patron saint and a favorite saint of Cornish tin miners. He sailed over from Ireland on a millstone. (“As you do,” as people here say in just that kind of situation.) He’s said to have liked his drink, and to have died of it. Memory insists that he got drunk and fell down a well, but memory—or the version of it that lives in my head—isn’t reliable and may be making that up. So don’t trust me on that. None of the web sites I’ve checked mention it, although they do mention a lot of drinking on St. Piran’s Day.

Whether or not he was a heavy drinker, the saints in those days weren’t prissy. St. Brychan came from Wales with three wives, twelve sons, and twelve daughters, many of whom became saints themselves. I’ve never heard how they got here—probably a VW beetle—but transportation seems to have been a big thing among them: St. Ia floated over on a leaf and St. Budoc floated over in a barrel.

Summing up English culture

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Ellen Hawley

T. writes,”I was on a bus with about 15 other people and it broke down. Everyone politely got off the bus and onto the replacement and then sat in EXACTLY THE SAME SEATS as they were in before. I’ve never felt so English. The thing is, as we were walking between the buses I knew it was going to happen, and that I would play my own part in it. There is some peer pressure you simply cannot escape.”

So what I said about it being futile to sum up a culture? Wrong again, apparently. But joyously so. Thanks, T.

Irrelevant photo: You can look at almost any tree around here and see which way the prevailing winds blow.

The British legal profession and its wigs

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Ellen Hawley

Retirementally Challenged wants to know why British lawyers wear wigs in court. Her exact question involved the words “stupid white-haired wigs.”

Since I am (a) not a lawyer, (b) not, at least at the moment, a defendant, and (c) a galvanized rather than born-and-raised Brit, I’m the obvious person to answer this question.

In case you’ve never been in a British court and haven’t watched the right mix of TV shows, I should stop to tell you that in at least some courts British lawyers and judges both wear the most bizarre white wigs you’re likely to find outside (or inside, now that I stop to think about it) of a costume shop. They stand up in court looking as if some evil-haired little white critter had curled up on their heads and died there, and not one of them gets the giggles. You’d think one look at each other and they’d go to pieces.

Vaguely related photo: A neighbor’s holly makes a break for freedom.

My first-hand experience with the wigs is limited. When Wild Thing and I had to were told to leave Britain and had to appeal, the hearing was what our barrister called informal, which meant wigless. Informal or not, it was still pretty intimidating.

The only other brush I had with wigs was when we were buying our house. Our solicitor (that’s the wigless half of the legal profession, which comes in two flavors in the U.K.) was tolerant enough to keep working with us even though Wild Thing regularly announced that as long as we were doing legal business she wanted to see the wig. (When he told us about stamp tax on the house, she reminded him that we’d fought a revolution over that. We still had to pay, but I was tempted to throw a teabag in the Bude harbor as a sort of memorial protest.

According to the humorless government web site on the subject of legal wigs (yes, folks, someone felt it necessary to create one), what a High Court judge wears was established by the time of Edward III (1327-1377). King Eddie gave the judges the material for their robes, and the style was based on what was worn in the king’s (as opposed to the judges’) court at the time.

In 1635, what judges wore wasn’t changed but it was codified, because—be serious, can’t you?—it was painfully important to get it all right. After that, the standard uniform changed in various and boring ways at various and unimportant times.

How interesting, you say, suppressing a yawn, but what about the wigs?

They were introduced during the reign of Charles II (1660-1685), who wasn’t called Charles the Vain but could have been. The judges took some convincing before they all agreed to wear them, but eventually they caved. I mean challenging the king of a topic of that much importance? That’s risky.

By the reign of George III (1760-1820), wigs were going out of style but still had to be worn by bishops, coachmen, and the legal profession. Now that, friends, is a bizarre combination of professions, and I can’t tell you who enforced the rule, but I do wonder.

Bishops eventually got permission (from who? I dunno) to stop wearing them. Then coaches met the internal combustion engine, and if coachmen hadn’t already gotten permission to burn their wigs it all became irrelevant because the profession disappeared. I’ve been a cab driver, which is close enough to a coachman, and you can trust me on this: You won’t find many cab drivers wearing white wigs.

And those short, curled wiglets that judges and barristers wear today—the ones that don’t cover all their hair? (A barrister, by the way, is the other half of the legal profession—the half that appears in court.) They were adopted around the 1780s “for civil trials” and probably felt like a liberation from the full-scale wigs that came before them. Today, the full wig is only used on ceremonial occasions, of which—this being Britain—there are probably many.

Barrister Harry Mount reports that the wigs are “Itchy, ludicrously expensive and dirty—barristers hold on to the same one for their whole career—they’re also extremely hot.”

But eliminating them entirely? Not going to happen. Civilization in the questionable form in which we know it would come to a crashing end.

So there you have it: the history of the legal wig. What else would you like to know, either about Britain or the U.S.? I’ll answer any question that tickles my fancy, regardless of how unqualified I am.

Easter candy in the U.S. and U.K.: Special late edition

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Ellen Hawley

Our friend J., having read my post about Easter candy, sent us some from the U.S. Her cover note said to read the back of the Peeps package because it might inspire me.

“What’s a Peep?” you ask if you’re not from the U.S. It’s sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, yellow #5 (tartrazine), potassium sorbate (a preservative), natural [unspecified and I’d say hard to detect] flavors, and carnauba wax. Yum. They’re gluten free and fat free and shaped (if you have a bit of imagination) like a chick that came into existence by being spat from a spout. Each chick contains 28 calories. That’s 140 calories per serving, because, as an essential part of a balanced diet, serving size has been scientifically determined.

Irrelevant photo: Thatched cottage with gorse and may in bloom.

The text on the cover claims they’re marshmallow, but they taste like nothing that originated on planet Earth.

No, I’m going to backtrack on that, because I think carnauba wax is used on cars. On planet Earth. So if you’ve ever used your tongue to wax the car, the taste will be familiar. That means, all you Peep Corporation lawyers out there, that I retract my statement about planet Earth. Don’t sue. Please.

The text on the back of the package says that opening it “opens a world of possibilities! [Oh, the thrill implied by that exclamation mark. I’m so carried away I’ll add one of my own: !] From creative crafting and imaginative artwork, to delicious recipes and more, let the fun begin!” And I feel compelled to tell you that the repetitious use of open is theirs. They were aiming for one of those rhythmic poetic thingies. Isn’t it wondrous, the uses writing techniques can be put to?

So basically, what they’re saying here is that these things last forever and therefore can be used in any form of artwork. The Mona Lisa in Peeps? Why not? A Peep perched Thinker-like on the toilet? Sure! More exclamation marks? You got ‘em!

When I worked for a writers organization in Minnesota, one (or possibly two) of my illustrious co-workers impaled a Peep on the bathroom ceiling, where it remained for months without changing in any noticeable way. I’m not sure whether that was craft or art (it gets tricky sometimes, that art/craft question), but I do know the Peep didn’t rot or stretch or draw ants or roaches or anything else that would normally be drawn to food. Those insects? They know stuff. We could learn from them.

I have a bit more trouble with the delicious recipes the text promises. Peep pie? I don’t know what happens to them in the presence of heat. I’m not sure what happens to them, in fact, when they’re eaten. They appear to be indestructible. Do they pass through us whole or does the digestive system work its magic, even on Peeps?

Dedicated as I am to this blog, and to exploring every last aspect of the cultures of the U.S. and Britain, I draw the line at offering myself as a test subject. But I do, once again, wish those of you who celebrate it a happy Easter and those of you who don’t a happy non-Easter. To those of you who love Peeps, I offer my apologies. Our package has been promised to an American Peep-lover in the village, and she’s thrilled by the prospect of all those exclamation marks landing in her house.

And finally, to J. I send my profound thanks. For both the candy and the suggestion. I wouldn’t have thought to turn the package over and read it if you hadn’t told me to.

A very British form of protest

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Ellen Hawley

Someone was recently convicted of disrupting prime minister’s question time—called PMQ by those in the know—by throwing marbles in the general direction of the MPs. (“Marble-throwing PMQs protestor gets suspended prison sentence”)

No, that’s not the part that strikes me as particularly British. We’ll get to that. But before we do, I should explain that it takes an expert to tell when someone disrupts PMQ, because the MPs bray at and heckle and bully each other like a classroomful of twelve-year-old boys whose teacher stepped out for a smoke a month ago and still hasn’t come back. (My writers group, whose members are an invaluable and giddy guide to all things British, advises me that the MPs sound like public school boys, which if you’re American means private school boys, because public schools here are private, but that’s too much confusion for one post. Let’s thank them politely and not get into it here.) All that braying and harassing are politics as usual. The reason this guy stood out was because he was in the visitors’ area.

And, yeah, the marbles. I admit that.

Plus his language. The MPs are allowed (even expected) to be horrible to each other, but their language has to be pristine.

Blackthorn in bloom on the North Cornish coast

Irrelevant photo: Blackthorn in bloom.

What kind of language did the protester use? That’s in dispute. The prosecutor claimed he stood up and said, “I’m sorry about this, ladies and gentlemen. You fucking wankers, you’re just liars.” But the protester, who as far as I can figure out had already pled guilty, interrupted, shouting, “Can I just say, for the record, I didn’t call anyone fucking wankers. I called them dishonourable bastards.”

That “dishonourable”? That’s British. The next person who interrupts the American House or Senate will not, I guarantee, use the word dishonorable, even though I switched to the American spelling to make it a fraction of a percent of a probability more plausible.

The “I’m sorry about this, ladies and gentlemen”? That’s also British.

I’m still not sure what our protester was protesting. According to the article, he has (as the current phrase puts it) mental health problems and felt his life was wasting away. In response, I’m sure the government will make more speeches about putting mental health on a par with physical health and keep on underfunding both.

They’d outlaw marbles but Parliament’s dissolved until the election.

Department of Futile Exercises: Summing up the U.K. and the U.S.

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Ellen Hawley

Recently, a teachers’ conference objected to the government’s drive to teach British values in the schools, saying it was becoming “the source of wider conflict rather than a means of resolving it.” (“Teachers urged to ‘disengage’ from promotion of British values”)

I’ve been hearing about British values since I first came to this country, and I always wonder what they are. Standing in orderly lines? Forming brass bands? Not using sunscreen on the beach, even though you’re light-skinned and have already turned an alarming shade of pink? It’s a heavy responsibility, settling on a handful of characteristics to sum up an entire nation.

Irrelevant photo: The coast on the same hazy day as the last waves-in-the-haze picture I posted. The haze was caused by a sandstorm in the Sahara.

What did the Department for (not of, thank you very much*) Education decide were the ultimate British values when they pushed the nation’s protesting teachers under the wheels of this particular train? “Democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance for those of different faiths and beliefs.” (“Schools ‘must actively promote British values’ – DfE”)

Don’t you just love a politician who can say stuff like that with a straight face? Because, of course, no other country in this battered old world can lay claim to those ideals. If you’re startled awake some night and hear that set of values marching down the street behind a brass band, you’ll know right away what country you woke up in.

Any discussion of British values is complicated by a central reality of Britain, which is that the country’s a mash-up of four (or five, if you’re a Cornish nationalist) nations**, and the people most likely to call themselves British seem to be those of us who aren’t English, Scottish, Northern Irish, or Welsh. Or Cornish. In other words, those of us who came from someplace else. Those of us whose children the Department for Education is worried about Britishizing.

As far as I can tell, summing up either a country or its values is a messy business, whatever country you pick. When I still lived in the U.S., I taught briefly in a community college, and we’d read an essay by an immigrant that made a passing reference to, if I remember right, “being more like an American.”

“What,” I asked, on the spur of the moment, “does it mean when you say someone’s like an American?”

It wasn’t a question I had an answer for, and as it turned out no one else did either. The class broke into small groups, and a couple of them set about finding some essential trait that would separate the Americans from the non-Americans, but pretty much everything people suggested fell apart. Being born in the country? Nope. You could still become a citizen, and a citizen was an American. Being a citizen, then? Well, legally, yes, but some non-citizens are as culturally American (whatever that means) as any citizen. One small group, pushed, I think, by a single enthusiast, decided that speaking English was a dividing line, but the other groups didn’t jump in to endorse that. Personally, I’m all for speaking the language of a country you live in (British and American expats in non-English-speaking countries, are you taking notes?), but not every immigrant can learn a new language. My great-grandmother never did, even though the price she paid was not being able to talk freely with her grandchildren. It wasn’t lack of motivation. She wasn’t young when she immigrated and she couldn’t make the adjustment. Maybe she wasn’t good with languages. Maybe she was terrified. I don’t know.

No one, including me, thought to mention that other countries speak English and it hasn’t made them particularly American. In fact, some countries—mentioning no names—think they speak it better than we do. And then there are the Puerto Ricans. They’re U.S. citizens by birth. If some of them speak only Spanish, either by choice or because it’s their only language, are they any less American?

I won’t go on. We couldn’t say what being American meant, although we all thought we knew.

So, British values? Sorry, folks, but I’m not hopeful. I will, however, have a hell of a good time listening to the debate as it staggers on.

—————–

*My spies tell me it used to be the Department of Education, but the name was changed at some point. I’m sure the education system is better because of it.

**I owe the insight about the U.K. being a country of four (or five) nations to my writers group. The United Kingdom looks a whole lot more united from the other side of the Atlantic. In fact, Scotland came very close to leaving in 2014. Somebody tell me: Did that get any coverage in the U.S.?

Class and power in rural Cornwall

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Ellen Hawley

I was listening to the radio a while ago (Radio 4, a BBC station, has some great shows, along with some deeply strange ones) and someone said in passing that in the U.S. class is all about money. And I stopped mid-stir (I listen to the radio either in the car or when I’m cooking) and thought, Well, what else would it be about?

Why, heritage, of course. Generations of titles and inbreeding and self-congratulatory silliness. The system’s antiquated and doesn’t match the realities of power anymore, but it’s still creaking around the room on its arthritic legs and interrupting the conversation with irrelevant and embarrassing observations every chance it gets. An aristocratic family may have given its grand house to the National Trust because it couldn’t afford the upkeep, it may have sold it to a celebrity or some foreign oligarch, or it may have kept the place and opened part of it for the riffraff to wander through and gawp at (or as much of the riffraff as can afford the entrance fees, which range from the predictable to the exorbitant), but by god it still has a name and thinks it matters. (We all have names, I remind myself, but they’ll be happy to tell you that they really have names. The rest of us just have a bunch of sounds for other people to call us by. And in my case, the family name has changed a few times, so that says something about how important we thought it was.)

Irrelevant photo: The cliffs on a hazy day.

But even in Britain, class isn’t all about heritage anymore. Pick any village and someone’s likely to think they’re the lord or lady of the manor. It’s possible that their ancestors once were, but it’s equally (or maybe even more) likely, at least in our part of the country, that they moved down from London a few years ago, bringing a pile of money made doing who knows what, and now that they’ve bought a big house in a small village it’s all gone straight to their head. They throw their weight around in village events and committees, half expecting to recreate the days when Lord Hooha’s word was law. But whether or not they actually are Lord Hooha, it’s not the nineteenth century, never mind the middle ages. Sometimes they get away with it but often they don’t. Either way, the rest of us are torn between annoyance and mockery.

British and American English: The Easter update

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Ellen Hawley

The Methodist Church in our village has its annual egg roll at this time of year, and you need to understand that this is an event, not something to eat. If it was something to eat and if we were speaking British, it would be an egg on a roll. If we were speaking American, it would be a deep-fried appetizer from a Chinese restaurant—what the British call a spring roll. But no, this is more along the lines of the Gloucester Cheese Roll, only without insanely steep hill and the ambulances. And the cheese. It’s a bunch of kids rolling eggs down a hill. The one who reaches the bottom first (or at all, since chickens never designed their eggs for racing) wins. I’m not sure what the prize is. A deep-fried appetizer from a Chinese restaurant? An egg sandwich? A chocolate bunny?

I’ve never gone to the event, but I was specifically invited the year A. was a judge. Unfortunately, I got sick and stayed home, and that left me free to imagine it any way I want. What I imagine is that Easter in Britain is about rolling an egg down a hill.

Irrelevant photo: A tiny waterfall. Looking at this, you can almost believe the legends of fairies and little people.

In its more commercial form, Easter’s also about chocolate eggs, and these are massive things—not American football size, but moving in that direction. All your childhood dreams of greed, shaped like an egg. The Guardian (that’s a newspaper, in case you need to know) likes to compare the prices and qualities of different brands of food, and this year’s chocolate Easter egg comparison shows that some of them get into silly money territory. Hotel Chocolat? £27, and it’s filled with smaller chocolates.Harrods? £29.95. The paper recommends that one for Russian oligarchs, who aren’t known for their sense of humor so let’s assume the paper’s not making fun of them, and for safety’s sake neither am I. Marks & Spencer has one for £40 and that kind of money buys it its very own link. (FYI: Links here are not for sale unless I’m making fun of something at the other end, in which case no one’s likely to offer me money. I am so pure I’m almost invisible.) M & S’s egg is a “giant golden lattice egg with a delicate show-stopping small egg perched inside. . . . Because they’re so special, we’ve only made 7,500 eggs, each one numbered on the presentation box for an extra touch of luxury.” And then you eat the sucker and it’s gone, leaving you with nothing but that numbered presentation box and a bunch of adjectives. Spend enough money and you get a lot of adjectives. The original copy had even more, but I’m still an editor at heart and just had to cut some. And in case you’re worried, the gold is edible. Which is another adjective but an important one The Guardian doesn’t specifically recommend this particular egg for Russian oligarchs. I’m not sure why.

Back in the land of the sane, you can find chocolate eggs in supermarkets for £5, or for £2.99.

And we still haven’t gotten to chocolate bunnies. I’ve seen these in two sizes: nestle in your palm size and coffee mug size. I brought a small one home from a grocery shopping trip and Wild Thing reports that they’re good.

In the U.S., you can’t make your way through a store in the weeks before Easter without tripping over egg-dying kits. Or—well, I assume that’s still true. It’s been a long time since I’ve been around, never mind at Easter. In Britain, though, making Easter eggs from actual eggs don’t seem to be a big thing.

And this seems to be a leap, but it’s not: When I first started to write fiction, I wrote a transparently autobiographical story about my Jewish atheist family that included the sentence, “We celebrated Easter.”

My father read it.

“We never celebrated Easter,” he said.

I think that, in his quiet way he was scandalized. He was also, in my opinion, wrong.

It’s true that we didn’t celebrate it in a religious way. But we dyed eggs every year, and found people to give them to (who may have wondered about them but were kind enough not to ask). My brother and I woke up to Easter baskets—jellybeans, a chocolate rabbit (in my memory, they were huge), a panorama egg with a sugar shell and little cut-out figures inside, small chocolate eggs in foil wrappers, all of them nestled in fake grass.

Give a kid candy like that and she’ll think it’s a celebration. Add dyed eggs and, yes, you have a holiday. Sorry, Dad.

It didn’t turn me religious, but it did leave me with a fondness for chocolate bunnies, even though I don’t eat them anymore. I worked in a candy factory when I was in my twenties, and it left me immune to candy’s lures. The one exception is good, and very plain, dark chocolate. But I do like to see chocolate bunnies in their gorgeous foil wrappers.

I can even get sentimental about jellybeans. They never did taste good, but I ate them anyway. Like Everest, they were there. How could I not?

So if you celebrate Easter, happy Easter. And if you don’t, I can still recommend the chocolate bunnies. They don’t care what you believe.

Notes from the U.K.

Exploring the spidery corners of a culture and the weird stuff that tourist brochures ignore.

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