I was back in my beloved England for a week last month. As I wandered around the endearingly narrow, cobbled streets of Lincoln’s old quarter it was reassuring to know that most of the people I passed were probably as awkward, unsure and generally inept in social situations as I am.
It is, after all, the English way.
It’s funny that you often don’t even notice the things that make your own countrymen unique until you leave for a while. I never found it odd that the English have trouble being altogether serious and tend to joke with a completely straight face. I’m never puzzled by the frequency with which we return to the weather as a topic of conversation. Faced with poor service and bad food at a restaurant, a typical English person will tell the waiter that everything is fine – then never go back again. We say things like “mustn’t grumble” and then proceed to do exactly that – about the weather, if nothing else offers. We are amazing at forming lines and consider queue-jumping to be one of the worst of all social sins. All of this seems perfectly natural to me.
None of it is even remotely comprehensible to the Dutch. Our habit of finding something nice to say instead of being critical may be prompted by a desire to avoid wounding people, but to the Dutch – noted for their forthright honesty in all things, even if it’s the verbal equivalent of a slap in the face – it is hypocrisy. I’m sure other people are tremendously bored by the weather as a constant topic of conversation; in fact, so are we. What isn’t apparent is that it’s not about the weather, it’s a universal social facilitator. You hear “goodness, haven’t we had a lot of rain?” I hear: “I’m making an awkward attempt at conversation here and I am beginning with something innocuous so it isn’t too personal if I am rebuffed.”
How odd the customs of others appear, and how perfectly sensible are our own.
In case any of you ever travel to England and wonder how to interpret these strange behaviours, here’s a miniature guide to the English:
Talking About the Weather
No one’s really any more interested in the weather conditions than you are. The truth is that many English people are… unsure in company and not exactly smooth talkers. If somebody comments on how unexpected the sunshine’s been and how it’s bound to disappear before long though and the forecast says it’ll rain by tomorrow, for god’s sake don’t say “Why the hell should I care?”. By saying something friendly and inoffensive back, you’re signalling that you’re a perfectly approachable human being and quite safe to talk to. Find a way to be funny about it and you’ll even manage to suggest that the poor English chap or chapette might even enjoy the conversation.
Which brings me on to…
Humour
This habit is deeply ingrained in me and the majority of my family and friends. It often consists of saying the exact opposite of what you really mean, and doing so with a straight face. Or saying something perfectly absurd in the same style, knowing all the while that the people around you will correctly decipher what you said (or in fact didn’t say). I can understand why this is confusing. When I speak to people who aren’t used to it it’s often a gamble as to whether I’m interpreted as amusing or just deranged.
We probably aren’t deranged. Honestly. It’s just something we do. Why? Well… no idea actually.
Being Polite
Over the course of my several months in the Netherlands I’ve become aware that even my nearest friends are sometimes unsure whether I’m telling the truth. This can be painful on occasion. I think it comes from a combination of factors:
- English reserve is a strong trait in me so I’m never very demonstrative. I may mildly approve of something or I may LOVE IT TO DEATH; either way I’ll react in much the same, rather muted way.
- That humour thing. Did she mean what she just said or was she joking? Straight face… can’t tell.
- Politeness. I touched on this one above. Many English people have a raging fear of two things in particular: embarrassment and “making a scene”. We so much hate to be embarrassed ourselves that we’d never say anything that might embarrass someone else – and really many of us would rather fall on our swords than be the centre of a huge “fuss”. So I may hate that giant purple feathered hat you’re wearing but I probably won’t say so. It’s not that I’ll go to the opposite extreme and profess to worship it when I don’t, though – I’ll just stew in embarrassment for several long seconds while I try to think up something inoffensive to say that doesn’t express either a favourable or a negative opinion.
Yes, all these things lead to my being a rather difficult person to engage in consistent conversation sometimes.
Socialising… or not
I’ve sometimes wondered why the English have such conflicting reputations abroad. On the one hand we’re known to be somewhat reserved but unfailingly polite and generally pretty civilised, right? On the other hand there’s that whole issue of football hooligans smashing things overseas in their raging drunkenness and making total tits of themselves. The fact is, socialising is such hard work for many of us that alcohol is practically required in order to do away with all those crippling fears of embarrassing ourselves, or someone else.
Unless you’re like me and prefer to wash your hands of the whole issue and be a total hermit, in which case it doesn’t matter anyway. Go away, world.
That Thing About Class
Okay. It’s probably true that the English still have an ingrained class system but what many people don’t realise is that it has nothing to do with wealth. It doesn’t even have much to do with birth, these days. It’s far, far more complicated than that. I won’t go into an exhaustive attempt to explain it but suffice to say that it’s your manners, appearance, habits and preferences that tell people what your class background is. You can be penniless and upper class… or absurdly wealthy and lower class.
This also is something I was so familiar with that I didn’t even notice it happening. I’ve learned in recent years that my family background is, for the most part, lower-middle to middle-middle but due to certain influences and experiences I act more like upper-middle, a lot of the time. These things influence my likes and dislikes in ways that are even a bit disturbing.
It’s odd but in some ways I’ve never felt more English than in the past year, living in a foreign country and repeatedly made aware of the things about my personality that aren’t so much me as just English. It’s funny that whenever I bump into a fellow Englishman-or-woman over here, the same topics of conversation come up right away – like how rigidly neat these Dutch towns are and how we miss our rambling hedgerows and how wretchedly interfering and rude they can be when they think you haven’t washed your windows recently enough. Nobody needs to explain why these things are peculiar to us; we just smile ruefully and laugh and then go home for another cup of tea.
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This post came about because of that visit I paid in April, but also because there’s a certain book I like that’s come up in conversation a few times recently. It’s called “Watching the English” by anthropologist Kate Fox. It’s a very amusing look at why the English are as weird as we are. It’s very readable, so if you fancy laughing at the English some more it’s well worth picking up a copy.
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