Damozel: Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

God is an Englishman. He Lives Upstairs and He’s Never Mentioned.

XXX (Of a Sort) from the Mother Country: Mr. Rumcove & the Very Cruel Poll

(I Know All There is To Know) About the Glaring Game

Drawn by Tenniel; painted by Damozel!

Update on the Cirencester Problem

Sat, 29 Jul 2006 09:09:26 GMT

Hi, I've changed addresses. Please jump to the updated version of this posting by clicking here.

An update on the Cirencester Problem.

Hmph. If the Cirencester town council thinks they can shut down the debate over the correct pronunciation of their town name with this, they have another think coming. I will never give in.

I get far more hits from queries as to "Cirencester pronunciation" than I do my other topics. Almost every day some poor soul ends up at my site trying to find out the right way to pronounce the name of this beautiful and historic city. Doesn't that tell you something, people of Cirencester?

I think all foreigners would agree that it is a bit much to expect tourists to accept the correct pronunication of Leicestershire, Worcestershire, Bicester, Leominster, and Towcester, only to be tripped up by having Cirencester turn out to be pronounced exactly as spelled. I note that Cirencester is listed in Wikipedia as one of the English placenames with a nonintuitive pronunciation. While I'm guessing that the writer was assuming that it was the older pronunciation (Sisseter) that is nonintuive, I maintain that pronouncing the name of this -cester town exactly as it looks is completely counter to the average tourist's hard-won understanding of the whole -cester/running-syllables-together Leicester/Worcestershire/Bicester/Leominster/Towcester school of misleading innocent tourists. It is therefore unfair.

I'm sorry, but the English simply cannot be allowed to have it both ways.. Since it would not be fair to make the people in those five towns change the pronunciation when there are five of them and only one, Siren-sester, Cirencester should gracefully concede the point and start calling itself Cirnster. If they will not see reason then the rest of the population must intervene.

I will accept the pronunciation "Sissester" only if they go back to spelling the name Cisetur or Sisator. Otherwise, Cirnster is the only pronunciation that makes any sense.

I have a lot of patience with English placenames because of their historical and cultural associations and long history, but for the people of Cirencester to insist, against all other precedent, on pronouncing the name of the city exactly as it is spelled is going too far and it is time that someone called them on it. Though Rumcove and my husband Nick, Englishmen both, have flatly and treachorously (as ill befits gallant Britons) refused to support me in this campaign, I have made a decision to "step up," as we say over here, and am taking my stand. Though I've no one at my back, I intend to lead the charge in favor of keeping the pronunciation of English placenames inconsistent with their spelling. If they are going to be inconsistent, they need to be consistent about it.

I hope English people from other towns and tourists everywhere will support me in this too long deferred drive for consistent inconsistency in the pronunciation of English placenames!

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XXX (Of a Sort) from the Mother Country: Mr. Rumcove & the Very Cruel Poll

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Toxic Love 101---The Perils of Present-Giving

Drawn by Tenniel; painted by Damozel!

Wandering Scribe?

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:09:18 GMT

Hi! I've changed addresses. Please jump to the updated version of this posting by clicking here.

Wandering Scribe?

In a posting on 15 July, I talked a bit about homeless bloggers who had used blogging as a means to re-connect with the world.

One of the bloggers I discussed was "Wandering Scribe," an Englishwoman whose account of her life on the street has led to the sort of success story that an American loves. I found her blog particularly painful to read poignant reading because of its gentility, restraint, and quiet despair. You know: stiff upper lip, "hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way," and so forth. But the real appeal of the blog to me was the writing. "Wandering Scribe," whoever she is, is clearly an educated person with a gift for encapsulating an immense span of experience in a few words.

So my first response, when I read this entry in "Grumpy Old Bookman", was to be embarrassed by my American naivety. Grumpy Old Bookman is a literary blog that I have only recently begun reading. Listed by The Guardian as one of England's top ten literary blogs, the blog is authored by publisher Michael Allen. I was interested in the site because Nick has written a novel that has been well received in certain circles and I wanted to know more about the publishing industry in Great Britain; but I continued reading the blog because, frankly, it's good reading even for a non-writer and non-publisher like me.

I hadn't actually taken any note of the entry concerning "Wandering Scribe" because it was posted on June 27, and I haven't started working my way backward yet. I actually found the posting when I was looking at the results of someone else's google search for 'Wandering Scribe." In it, and in an earlier posting, Michael Allen speculates that WS might, just possibly, be a ploy by an aspiring writer looking for a hook with which to reel in a prestigious publisher.

I suppose that the story is something that should make you go "hmmm," if not "huh." So when I read the two postings (not to mention the comments) at Grumpy Old Bookman, I most definitely felt the blush of the gullible mantling my cheek. Maybe it's an American thing. I have noticed that the Brits I know don't share my willingness to believe in miraculous escapes or fairy tale endings.

Case in point: Rumcove. Rumcove ought to have been a writer. Back in the days when I thought I could talk people into doing things for their own good, I used to try to persuade Rumcove to write. He's an amazingly funny writer, I think; and he has a good friend who has achieved literary success in GB by being exactly the same level of funny, mordant, trenchant, and the rest of the things that Brits do so well.

But Rumcove couldn't bring himself to believe that success as a professional writer was possible to him, or at least not sufficiently to make the pain of actually going through the loathsome task of writing and marketing a work. "But why won't you just try?" I used to moan. It took me a long time to realize that he and I were coming at the whole issue of "achieving success" from completely different angles.

While---being the opposite of "sucessful" as the word is defined here---I tend to turn up my nose at what I choose to believe is the American concept of success, I clearly still harbor a vague belief that success is within everyone's grasp, provided the person has some talent, sufficient perseverance/stubbornness, and the will to achieve it.

Rumcove was coming at it from an entirely different angle. He definitely doesn't have the 'everyone can do anything' mind-set; to him, success is an arbitrary and capricious entity that has little to do with qualities such as perseverance and even less with talent. He has a sort of chaos theory of success, involving complicated vectors between various unchartable events and criteria that can't be controlled or predicted. For him, it's not something you can decide to be or work at being. His idea of success resembles the 'happiness' that according to a stupid poster from back in the seventies eludes you if you chase it down, but that 'lights like a butterfly on your shoulder' if you ignore it (and don't inadvertently squash it on arrival, thinking it's a mosquito.)

I don't think he'd be particularly surprised by the Wandering Scribe story, but it occurs to me that he'd probably react very much like the author of The Grumpy Old Bookman: with skepticism. His first thought might well be that it's probably a ruse.

The English, eh? Wonderkillers, every one.

My own reaction was different. It was an American reaction. My first thought when I came across a note at Blogger Buzz about homeless blogger was, "Okay, that'll end up on the Oprah booklist." There is nothing an American likes better than a rags-to-riches struggle against great odds. I didn't so much think, "Hey, good ploy" as "somebody is going to want to exploit this story." So the idea of an authentically homeless writer ending up with a book deal with a major British publisher doesn't really strain my American credulity.

Furthermore, as is the case for many Americans, I feel personally threatened and anxious when I consider the general issue of homelessness. I'm not kidding myself; if I or Nick ever get really sick, the costs of health care could sink us. I don't own my house. I have family, but I'd rather die (I think) than ask them for help. If I can't work, I could end up out on the streets myself. To keep a roof over my head and to maintain even my present fairly modest standard of living, I pretty much need to work right up till I die. To cover health care for my spouse and me, I have to keep working till we're old enough to qualify for health care benefits.

I really believe that a lot of people are in the same position as I am---i.e., the feckless types who went into jobs such as teaching or running small community foundations that do critical work but aren't as well remunerated as others. There are a lot of risks involved in choosing a vocation rather than a profession, and one of them is that you won't ever accumulate enough back-up resources to allow you to stop working. I think a lot of people my age and younger are in the same boat: one that they can keep afloat just fine as long as they are able to keep paddling.

The idea of someone talented, even very talented, ending up sleeping in her car just doesn't strike me as particularly far-fetched. One of my friends is very involved in working with the local homeless (and Florida has a LOT of them; people come here during the winter because of the milder climate). He and some other people operate a van which drives out to little colonies of them that are set up out in the woods.

While a lot of them are deranged or alcoholic or otherwise impaired, a few of them are just like you and me, except for being homeless. As Michael Brown's blog View from the Sidewalk shows, many people who are doing all right can end up out on the street if they get fired or laid off. And a LOT of people have insufficient connections in their community to shore them up if they go down. I have talked to a lot of people in that position.

I just sent $200 to a young friend of mine who is $200 away from getting evicted from her apartment with her two children. She has money due to her, but unfortunately she's involved in a dispute with the other party, and if she gets evicted in the meantime, she'll lose a sizable chunk of the money she put down on her rental house. And it's very hard to find work or a place to live if you're homeless; it's hard to find a place to live if your credit isn't good.

I don't know if it's different in GB. I know that the social welfare net is knitted a good bit tighter there; for example, people don't get bills for $25,000 (after insurance) for their spouse's week in the Intensive Care Unit the way one woman I encountered during my volunteer work did. There seem to be provisions for finding housing for people who lose their jobs and for making sure they have access to resources to see them through.

Maybe it's just very unlikely that someone there would end up having to live in her car and take showers and iron her clothes at hospitals (wouldn't work here) and so forth. It could definitely happen here.

So I don't know: I suppose it could be a ploy. I guess there is a part of me that needs to believe that someone who can tell the story can not only find the way out, but discover the keys to the kingdom, as it were. I want to believe that talent and perseverance can help someone climb back out of Hell; perhaps I just need to tell myself that one should never abandon hope no matter how low the fall.

So I'll be attentively watching Wandering Scribe's progress. In the meantime, I am choosing to believe that she is the genuine article. I have certainly chosen to believe much more improbable things.

In some ways, Michael Brown's story as presented in View from the Sidewalk gives a clearer picture of the slow grind that results when a professional loses his or her livelihood. As I commented in my earlier note, Brown is an engaging writer with solid skills and a feel for the telling anecdote, but his prose doesn't have the poetry of Wandering Scribe's; he's all about the day to day reality of trying to get a foothold back in the world.

Brown is both more fortunate than Wandering Scribe and less fortunate. When the rug got yanked out from under his feet, he had his family and his friends in the community to help him fall all the way through, but he hasn't (yet) received the sort of attention that WS has received.

I suppose I want to believe in the sudden transformation from homeless poet to published writer. Brown's tale is less desperate, but his struggle is ongoing, mundane, painful, a matter of making do, doing without, keeping on. It's the real thing, the raw American story, but that's not the one we want to believe. Even---or especially---in these times, we go on hoping for the rags-to-riches exception to the 'this-is-your-lot-mate-now-live-with-it' sort of story that most of us are living out.

So, Wandering Scribe, wherever you are, and to Michael Brown in Greensboro, here's to you both!

Estuary Englishman

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 22:48:45 GMT

Hi! I've changed addresses. To jump to the updated version of this posting, click on this link.

Estuary Englishman

For Rumcove's amendment, click here.

1. The Estuary Beat

As I have mentioned elsewhere, Mr. Rumcove and I met over the internet in 1997. We didn't talk on the phone till after we'd been exchanging daily emails for a few months. When we did speak, I was totally unprepared for the trouble I had understanding him. "I have an estuary accent," he'd said in an email. As he is very interested in accents, he went on to explain some of the characteristics of estuary English: the glottal stops, the use of "w" in place of "r" for some words and "f" in place of "th" (e.g., "Orwite" = "All right"), and a highly arbitrary tendency to drop H's. [For details, see the delightful Gary's Estuary Homepage by another native speaker].

He DIDN'T explain, because I imagine he and other English people don't notice, that another characteristic is talking at high speed and often lowering rather than raising the voice for emphasis. Though maybe that is just Mr R.

At any rate, one of the first things I had to do when I met Mr. Rumcove is learn to understand his accent. As it turns out, my training has been very useful to me; I don't think I'd have been able to make much of quite a lot of English comedy if I hadn't spent quite a lot of hours listening to his high-speed mumbling over the telephone lines.

2. Which is better: 'Street' or 'Right'?

But I don't mean to denigrate his accent. I really like it. I'd say it's my favorite British accent. It's also an accent that seems to turn up with increasing frequency on BBC America and in British films and so forth. According to this page at the Department of Phonetics at UCL ("London's Global University"), the Rumcove accent is presently quite trendy though still considered infra dig by those from England's upper echelons.

Young English people prefer the estuary sound to the "received pronunciation" or "ruling class" accent of Oxford, the royal family, and people such as, for example, my husband Nick and his family. Young English people (including my stepdaughter Emma) would rather sound 'street' than refined (or as Nick puts it, "correct"). [He keeps quiet about her accent most of the time with the odd occasional outburst over a glottal stop. "Could you pass me that bottle (BAH-al), Dad?" she said the last time she was visiting. "BOT-TLE!" Nick shouted wildly. "BOTT-ULL!]

I'm with Emma. I do really appreciate the way Nick talks and am quite happy to be married to someone who sounds like that, since I have a milltown Carolina accent I have failed to outlive. (I grew up in a place where "All right" is pronounced "Ah ite.") It helps that Nick has a British public school accent. When people meet us together, they assume that I can't be as Republican as I sound.

But while recognizing the posh effect of a public school accent and some of the social benefits, I personally like the sound of estuary English or cockney best (which is similar but different, as explained here). Maybe it's because so many of my favorite English TV characters have that accent or reconstructed versions of it. Or maybe, given my own accent, I have built up a certain amount of resistance to the notion that there is a particular pronunciation that is more correct, better, more educated, more refined, etc. After all, if Nick's way of talking is the right way of pronouncing English, where does that leave me and mine?

Also I am just plain interested in accents. As kids growing up in South Carolina (the no account northern part called 'the up country') we used to make cruel fun of my mom's low country brogue, but I was secretly intrigued by and deeply attracted to the very different sounds produced by people from the Low Country: "air" for 'ear," "bear" for "beer," "steeyet" for "state," "winda" for "window," and "hoese" or "hoose" for house. I wanted to talk that way too, even though we used to mock it (ironic since her accent is considered the more refined).

Nick, originally from London, can do a very credible cockney accent. He has learned that when he puts on a cockney accent much younger women (who are otherwise inclined to treat him with respectful deference) suddenly become giggly and flirtatious.

When I mentioned this to Rumcove, he remarked sadly that HE hadn't noticed anything of the kind when he was visiting here, but I think he probably failed to factor in his tendency to glower at strangers, or at best to stare at them expressionlessly, including young and pretty women. That's an English thing, or maybe just an English-tourist-in-America thing.

To me, a characteristic of both estuary and cockney is, as noted above, a tendency to mumble words and to talk at top speed. There's a sort of ACK-ACK-ACK gunfire effect: words just keep coming at you. When Rumcove and I first started talking on the phone, he had to slow down to a crawl for me to understand him at all and there are still times when---as Alan Partridge said to his Geordie mate---it's just a noise.

The emphasis also turns up in funny places (at least to an American) ear. "This...is...RUMcove," my answering machine announces slowly. Then: "IjustGOTyourremailcouldyouGIVEmeacallBACKpleaseIwasWONDERINGwhetheryoudseenmumblemeumblemumble. I'lltalktoyoulaterbye."

But though I am frequently puzzled by the noises Rumcove produces, I always like listening to them.

3. Deadpan all the Time

I'd maintain that much of the appeal of estuary English is in its intonation and cadence.

quote from the Estuary English page begins]

There also appears to be a narrower pitch of intonation patterns in Estuary English than in RP. This is especially true where rises do not reach as high a pitch as they would in R[eceived] P[ronunciation], Rosewarne sees the overall effect as being interpreted as one of "deliberateness" and possibly an "apparent lack of enthusiasm." (Rosewarne 1994)

[quote from the Estuary English page ends]

I know what the person who wrote this means, but I'd characterize it a little differently. Whether or not the speaker is enthusiastic, depressed, elated, grief-stricken, bored, furious, or out of his (or her) head, an estuary accent sounds pretty much the same. It's got an in-your-face wryness. It sounds the way deadpan looks.

I once attended an event where a guy---not Rumcove---was doing a presentation concerning a certain aspect of, let's say, English literature. The guy in question had a faint cockney (RUMCOVE: They're completely DIFFERENT and you KNOW it") accent that his Oxbridge education had suppressed; but his cockney intonation was still very firmly in place. I attended the event with a guy I was dating who was a British comedy fanatic. Throughout this whole PERFECTLY DAMN SERIOUS presentation, he laughed and laughed.

"This poem elaborates on the same theme of frustration and impotence. Though generally considered greatly inferior to its predecessor, it uses a similar---though not identical---metre and rhyme scheme. The poet even employs the same overwrought imagery."

My friend: "HAHAHA"

"Though it is not generally known, the [first poem], universally considered one of the great poems of the English language, was written almost five years after [the second]. In 1895, [Prominent Critic], seemingly unaware that [second poem] had actually antedated [the first], remarked that "[second poem] is but a feeble emulation of [first poem], to which it stands in the same relation as a leaking tap to Niagara."

My friend: "HAHAHAHAHA"

"[Literary Maven] in 1901 summed up the general critical opinion of [second poem] thus: "Fevered or febrile--- yet feeble."

My friend: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"Given the similarity of the two poems, we can only ask ourselves: Why? Why is one work considered to be a great poetic achievement and the other a watered-down imitation?"

My friend: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

This went on the whole time. All around us, other people---people who (as was quite possible in those days) had never heard of Monty Python---were looking puzzled and also worried. The circumstances were such that everyone wanted the presenter to feel welcomed and appreciated. They assumed that my friend was laughing because the presenter was trying to be funny. And though they didn't see the humor themselves, they evidently decided it that politeness required them to join in the laughter. As the lecture continued, more and more people began laughing along with my friend.

Naturally, the presenter was surprised and dismayed. Discomfited by the unexpected reaction, he would pause at the end of each sentence and look with consternation at the audience---who must have thought he was pausing to allow time for the expected laugh. The tittering increased; people began to feel that they were 'getting' it after all. Oh, those comical English and their deadpan delivery! There was even some sporadic applause.

I couldn't take it; I eventually got up and left. The paper was a raging success, but I am sure the presenter was scarred forever. I doubt he worked out that it was his DELIVERY that had them rolling in the aisles. I knew from having talked to him a couple of times that it was just the way he talked.

Cockney English AND estuary English lend themselves particularly well to the comic device the Brits treasure above all others (and say we Yanks don't understand): irony. The above-cited 'absence of enthusiasm' reads as the auditory equivalent of sarcastic, trenchant, wry, self-deprecating, or ironic depending on context. It's a comic effect that the English particularly prize (as well as anyone with an appreciation of English comedy), though obviously---as in the case of the unfortunate presenter--- there are drawbacks.

I imagine that the extent to which estuary English and the 'absence of enthusiasm' and "impression of deliberateness" suggested by estuary intonation lends itself to deadpan statements has something to do with its trendiness. It also has a hard edge that creates (at minimal outlay) a 'hard man' impression. Mildly funny statements come across as aggressive, in-your-face, mordant. Cf. the film "Essex Boys," starring Tom Wilkinson, Alex Kingston, and Sean Bean.

4. Accent-Related Stress Disorder.

My stepdaughter is a lovely girl but her way of talking makes her sound tough and street-wise beyond her years. I wouldn't want to go one on one with her that's for certain. And that's probably a good thing for a young girl living on her own.

I have sometimes managed that my life might be very different if I could talk with an estuary or cockney accent. [RUMCOVE: "They're COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and YOU KNOW IT."] It's not an accent that an American can easily imitate. God knows both Rumcove and Nick have tried. I might have managed to get a bit further if both didn't practice the 'teaching by ridicule' method, but I think the problem is less one of pronunciation than of things that are harder to control consciously. When Rumcove speaks, or when Nick speaks with a cockney accent, both of them move their mouths around much more than the average American and their jaws a lot less. There's also a speaking-out-of-one-side-of-the-mouth-sort-of component that I can't quite describe, even to myself. Plus there is a nasal aspect....

A few Americans can do and---much more difficult---sustain credible English accents (Renee Zellweger and Gwynneth Paltrow come to mind) but I've never heard an American do credible cockney or estuary. An ordinary English accent really just requires heightened attention to diction, awareness of when and when not to use the broad A, and projection of the voice forward instead of upward. An estuary or cockney accent requires a reconfiguration of your entire speaking/vocalization apparatus and a completely different conception of the relationship between consonants and vowels. I had to take aspirin after my attempts and then cry myself to sleep afterwards, confirmed in the knowledge that that I don't have what it takes to talk like Guy Ritchie, Madonna.

Rumcove doesn't write with an estuary accent, but something of that deadpan character infuses his work. I suppose that talking like that makes it easier to be funny if you want to be. On the other hand, it makes it harder NOT to be funny when you don't want to be. I am thinking in particular a certain expression Rumcove uses that we don't have here: "I'm not being funny!"---meaning something like "saying this for the purpose of getting at you." It's a disclaimer I'd never have to issue. I usually am not funny even when I'm trying my best to be.

For those reasons, I imagine the estuary mystique might be hard to maintain. I've noticed that with all the weight and value that the British assign to humor, and the claim of the English that they don't take themselves too seriously, many INDIVIDUAL Brits tend to take themselves very seriously indeed and to be (relative to Americans) thin-skinned, emotional (though inexpressive), and rather easily embarrassed. To be dry, deadpan, ironic, trenchant, mordant, and hard-edged would take it out of you. I think of my favorite performer in life, Ian Dury. A true poet, I think, but not for a great deal of his life a happy man.

I said as much to Rumcove, who is often morose and prone to suffer from the effects of Sunlight Affective Disorder. Despite his actual personality, he is frequently mistaken for a hard guy. Twice when he was visiting the US, the immigration officer asked him if he was a cop. He was never a cop, but he does give off a sort of hard guy vibe. How does it feel to be to be taken for a hard guy when you're just tired and hung-over?

"Living up to an estuary accent takes a strong constitution," he wrote. "Sometimes it is hard to cope with all the pressure. But those of us who live in Essex know that Essex is God's country and that when God said, "Let there be light," he said it with an estuary accent. So there you are. The answer is: we manage."

RELATED POSTINGS:

God is an Englishman. He Lives Upstairs and He’s Never Mentioned. [English manners; English culture]

English Placenames: The Cirencester Problem. [English culture]

XXX (Of a Sort) from the Mother Country: Mr. Rumcove & the Very Cruel Poll [English culture]

Estuary Englishman [English culture]

No Ordinary Profile: The Talented Mr. Rumcove [English culture; English viewpoint]

Communities & Their Souls: The Two Floridas [English viewpoint]

The Dialing Dream

A Note from Mr. Rumcove

XXX (Of a Sort) from the Mother Country: Mr. Rumcove & the Very Cruel Poll [English culture]

Mr Rumcove's 4th of July

Tue, 04 Jul 2006 15:43:55 GMT

Hi! I've moved to a new address! To jump to the updated version of this posting, please click on this link.

The Very Cruel Poll & Mr. Rumcove's 4th of July

Actually the title of the Yahoo.com article from which I am preparing to quote says it all: "Britons Tire of Cruel, Vulgar US: poll." The results of the poll, published in the Daily Telegraph, include (but are not limited to) the following:

[quote begins here]:

As Americans prepared to celebrate the 230th anniversary of their independence on Tuesday, the poll found that only 12 percent of Britons trust them to act wisely on the global stage. This is half the number who had faith in the Vietnam-scarred White House of 1975.

A massive 83 percent of those questioned said that the United States doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks.

With much of the worst criticism aimed at the US adminstration, the poll showed that 70 percent of Britons like Americans a lot or a little.

President George W. Bush [link in the original] fared significantly worse, with just one percent rating him a "great leader" against 77 percent who deemed him a "pretty poor" or "terrible" leader.

More than two-thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests.

US policy in Iraq was similarly derided, with only 24 percent saying they felt that the US military action there was helping to bring democracy to the country.

[quote ends]

Jesus. When this is what your main (and possibly only) ally is saying about you, you got trouble, my friend.

But in case you think the Brits are ONLY pissed off with the Bush administration, think again:

[quote begins]

In answer to other questions, a majority of the Britons questions described Americans as uncaring, divided by class, awash in violent crime, vulgar, preoccupied with money, ignorant of the outside world, racially divided, uncultured and in the most overwhelming result (90 percent of respondents) dominated by big business.

Huh? Hey! Damn! HEY! Uh---

"HEY! I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT ARE WE?"

What else can I say, but "say it ain't so." Okay, I know that we Yanks are pretty harsh on ourselves but---but---it's different when we do it!!

I mean, some of this didn't surprise me, since I have a lot of British friends and family members---"awash in violent crime; ignorant of the outside world"; those are standard criticisms.

However: vulgar? divided by class? uncultured? This from the land of Millwall fans, soccer hooligans, and skinheads? (We are 'divided by class'?)

<<<Sniff>>>> That is COLD, man.

I am not really consoled by the remarks of a 'spokesman for the US embassy' implying that the Brits are actually mistaken about what they think; the embassy's surveys show otherwise. Furthermore---according to this same spokesman---they wouldn't think they think what they said they think if the embassy hadn't failed at "successfully communicating America's extraordinary dynamism." Finally, it is also the fault of the British press for not communicating America's extraordinary dynamism.

Who in the what now? If there is one thing the Brits didn't criticize us for in that poll, it is for lack of 'dynamism.' It seems to me that they find us dynamic to a fault.

This reminds me of my conversation last year with my friend Rumcove of Southend-on-Sea, Essex. I remember it quite clearly. "I suppose tomorrow you will be celebrating American independence," he remarked.

"Yes," I said. Having described my plans (St Augustine to see the fireworks and so on), I asked him what he was up to.

"Celebrating American Independence, of course," he said.

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Image drawn by Mr. Tenniel; painted by Damozel!

English Place Names: The Cirencester Problem

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 02:08:23 GMT

Hi! I've changed addresses. To jump to the updated version of this post, please click on this link.

English Place Names: the Cirencester Problem.

Don't kid yourself; they were laughing in their sleeves. Or if you were me, in your face. Is it time for hapless tourists to take a stand? Yes. Yes, it is. My bold and innovative campaign to impose logic where the English have simply let their love of confusing tourists go too far.

While visiting here recently, an English friend remarked on the difficulty of some of our Florida place names. E.g., Octahatchee, Appalachicola, Lake Okeechobee, Withalocoochee State Forest, Alachua County, Lochloosa, Chinsegut National Wildlife Refuge, Itchetucknee Springs, Weeki Wachee Springs, Istachatta, Chassahowitzka Wildlife Refuge, Useppa Island, Osceola County, Immokalee, Kissimmee, Spongeorama. (He didn’t think the last was difficult to pronounce, he just didn't on general principles think there should be a place anywhere called ‘Spongeorama’).

Please. This from an Englishman?

I know it’s not exactly original for an American to complain about the wide gap between English spelling and English pronunciation for place names. And I’m not including the Welsh ones. And I am not complaining about all of them. I only have a problem with one: Cirencester. Which is pronounced exactly the way it looks. Which makes it a trap for the unwary, leading to the free-floating generalized sense of being quietly pitied/despised by the locals and the red, discomfited grin of the tourist caught out in being a tourist.

I knew before I went over there because I read Bill Bryson and watch much British television that Cholmondely is pronounced ‘Chumley;’ ‘Beauchamp’, ‘Beecham,’ and ‘Grosvenor’, ‘Grovenor.’ I knew that Magdalene College is pronounced ‘Maudlin College’ and that Gaius is ‘Keys.’ I knew that ‘Derby’ is “Darby.’ I knew that the ‘shire’ termination is pronounced ‘shur’ and that the ‘-bury’ termination isn’t ‘bury’ but a very truncated ‘bree.’ And I could handle ‘Billericay’, one of my favorite place names from anywhere ever, because of Ian Dury.

But I was very timid about pronouncing the name of any city, town, or village until I’d heard someone else do it. For some reason, it’s terribly hilarious to English people when an American does that, unless it’s only terribly hilarious to the English people I know when I do it. I got burned anyway on Warwick and Norwich because I forgot that the ‘w’ is silent (good rule, that one).

And I had a problems with a few place names that aren’t particularly difficult but that I’d been pronouncing wrong in my head for years and years and had never had occasion to pronounce myself: ‘Evesham,’ which I thought should be ‘Ev-a-shum,’ and ‘Bath’ which I could never pronounce in the English fashion because it looks like the word ‘bath’ and I feel silly pronouncing the word ‘bath’ any way but the American way, as if I were trying to sound like Madonna.

And then there are the place names that are pronounced exactly the way they look, but if you’re American you wait till you make sure, because they look like they might be traps for the unwary. E.g., ‘Weston-super-mare’, which I was concerned might turn out to be ‘Ware’ or ‘Leighton Buzzard,’ ‘Layzzard.’ After all, my apprenhensiveness about pronouncing ‘Mousehole’ turned out to be well-founded. Thankfully, something told me it wasn’t actually going to be ‘Mousehole.'

But whatever uncertainties I may have experienced, I was confident that I knew what I was doing with the –cester names: Leicester (‘Lester’), Towcester (‘Toaster’), Worcester (‘Wooster’), Bicester (‘Bister’) and Leominster (‘Lemster’). I was confident I had mastered the art of eliding syllables in words that end in –cester.

But then we visited Cirencester. ‘Siren-sester’ to any of my fellow yanks who’ve never been. You know, just the way it looks.

And so I ask you: why? Why isn’t it ‘Cirnster’? It’s so obviously supposed to be. You can’t blame me for thinking that it was. I am still quite furious about the embarrassment that ensued when I repeatedly pronounced it the way I trusted was right and nobody said anything the whole time I was doing it, perhaps because they had no idea what place I was talking about (a thought that I cling to in my optimistic moments) but more likely, as Rumcove remarked, because they were slowly suffocating from suppressed laughter (which is what I believe when I’m tossing and turning over that recollection).

A different friend comforted me a little by telling me that there is an alternative pronunciation---‘Sissester’---but, frankly, I’ve been led astray too many times to have any faith in him. I think it’s quite possible that this was a mere vile attempt to lead me into embarrassing myself further because ‘Sissester’ as an alternative makes no sense. Lester, Toaster, Bister, Lemster and Sissester don’t make sense. It has to be, it must be ‘Cirnster.’

In fact, I insist. I am drawing a line in the sand: me against the people of Cirencester until they realize that they’ve got it wrong and that they need to bring the pronunciation of their town’s name into line with the rest of the –cesters in England. For them to insist on pronouncing it phonetically when that’s not right for any of the others is very self-centered. It's not the right English way. If they are allowed to carry on like this forever, Camberley will soon be calling itself Cambridgetown again. That would be wrong.

And don’t tell me, as one friend tried to do, that English place name pronunciation and spelling are supposed to be arbitrary and capricious since they have evolved locally over centuries. Enough is enough. I am willing to yield and keep quiet about the many examples previously cited and you can’t say fairer than that. If you are going to pronounce everything wrong, at least be consistent about it.

I am in the process of composing a strongly-worded letter of protest to the Cirencester Town Council. ‘Cirnster,’ people. ‘Cirnster.’ Learn it. Embrace it. I would be willing to compromise on ‘Cister’, if necessary---I am a reasonable woman--- though I think it would be a mistake.

“They’re going to think you are….a looney,” said Rumcove, with great force and solemn emphasis. “They’ll hang it on the bulletin board at the Council’s office and everyone will laugh at the stupid, delusional Yank. It will get posted at websites where people compete over who has had the stupidest encounter with a tourist. It will get circulated on the internet. You will be remembered for the next several centuries as the most idiotic, presumptuous tourist in the history of Cirencester.”

“Cirnster,” I said sharply. “Cister if you absolutely must. And I am willing to throw in a stipulation that no person from Cirnster will ever be required when visiting Florida to say 'Weeki Wachee' or 'Itchetucknee' out loud.”

“Everyone will think you’re mental,” he said. "They will think you are a berk." He paused. “I will think so,” he added.

So be it. I am acting not out of personal vanity or a wish for notoriety, but because I feel it’s the right thing to do. And I am not going to be frightened off by the vision of the fine people who serve the town of Cirencester snickering at the water cooler over a proposal so obviously valid. Yes, English people are intimidating when they look at you coldly and say, “Quite,” but even “Quite” cannot silence me on a point about which I feel so strongly.

Nevertheless, Rumcove was right about my demand seeming perhaps a touch presumptuous coming from a yank. To avoid giving offense, I have signed his name to the letter.

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No Ordinary Profile

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 14:59:08 GMT

To jump to the current version of this note (at my new address), please click on this link.

No Ordinary Profile: The Talented Mr. R.

In The Rumcove Papers, I introduce the talented Mr. Rumcove, my personal guru for all things currently English. Many links to trenchant/mordant English comedies and to information about Sarfend-on-Sea!

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Tea. How it Happened to an American

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 06:20:46 GMT

To jump to the current version of this note (at my new site), click on this link.

Tea. How it Happened to an American.

When I was growing up, ‘hot tea’---so-called to distinguish it from ‘iced tea,’ which is what everyone had at every meal every day---was a drink that you had when you were ill or (if you were a girl) suffering from menstrual cramps. Seriously, that’s all it was: the cure for menstrual cramps.

My mom kept some elderly teabags in a canister for this purpose and for certain types of emotional crises.

At restaurants, you could usually order it. If you did, you got hot (but not boiling hot) water in a little tin pot, a cup with a teabag in it (usually Lipton) and a thin slice of lemon. (Americans don’t put dairy products in tea, hot or iced.) This produced a thin amber-tinted liquid, mainly lemon flavored. It was very good when you had a cold or a cough; it worked for cramps too; maybe the heat produced some sort of muscle relaxation or maybe it was completely psychological. Who knows? Not me.

I didn’t know any English people. I’d read a lot of English literature, including everything of Barbara Pym’s, so I know about ‘the endless cups of tea’ and afternoon tea and ‘tea’ meaning what in my part of the world we called ‘supper.’ But I didn’t really understand about tea.

In Barbara Pym novels---delicate little tales with a 1950’s sensibility even when attempting to grapple with 1970’s style issues---the characters talked a lot about it. China or Indian? Weak or strong? Who will ‘be mother’? ‘Oh, the benison of it,’ says one character to herself, on finally obtaining a ‘proper’ cup of tea in the strange and exotic land of Italy. Even in the anti-Pym universe of Kingsley Amis, a character who has been dehydrated by a night of too much carousing finds relief in letting tea ‘sink into his tissues.’ Ew.

In college, my friends and I considered what we called ‘Russian tea’ a great treat. You could order it at the Mayberry’s down the street, I think. I am not sure how they made theirs, but it was flavored with orange rather than lemon and very mildly with spices as well (nutmeg? cloves?) In our rooms, we used our ‘hot pots’ to make our own version out of powdered Lipton’s and Tang. (Remember Tang---the drink of choice for Astronauts? It was a strange orange-juice substitute that we all quite liked; I wonder if they still even make it). Anyway, we definitely relished that tea and tang concoction. Even the Australian friend who had gone to school in England didn’t dislike it.

And that was the only tea I really enjoyed it. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the radio show, the TV show and the book, not the ridiculous travesty from last summer in which an excellent cast was wasted) Arthur Dent nearly gets everyone killed in his desperate struggle to get the ship’s computer to understand how to emulate satisfactorily the flavor of leaves boiled in water. ‘Dying for a cup of tea, eh?” Zaphod---the real, snarky, cool Zaphod from the radio show, TV show, and book, not the shambling idiot of the recent film---says to Dent in an unfriendly tone when the computer turns out to be unable to deal with an oncoming missile because it is trying to make tea.

I laughed a lot, but I never felt the slightest desire to understand the mystique or the basis of Dent’s lifelong obsession.

My first actual real-life tea drinker was an Irishman to whom I was engaged for about five minutes. He drank Irish breakfast. He didn’t make that big a deal of it, but he made sure he got it when he ‘needed’ it. He must have offered me cups from time to time, but I’m pretty sure I declined. I don’t actually recall, though. I am sure I jeered at him for being so fussy about it. If it wasn’t him, it would have been one of the English guys I dated afterward (and I seem to have dated quite a few of them.) Hot! It must be boiling hot! Microwaving the water will not do! You must have a kettle! If you use a teabag, it must steep for the requisite period! And you must have it!

When I was in college (I think it was during that period), Celestial Seasonings came along with its many varieties of hibiscus tea and herbal tea. If we didn’t have Celestial Seasonings quite then, we certainly had Bigelow teas with different flavorings. I always found flavored tea a disappointment. When you took out the teabags, they smelled delicious but the taste never quite lived up to the scent. (I do rather like ‘Rapsberry Zinger”, “Orange Zinger,” “Cranberry Cove,” and “Orange Mandarin Spice.”) In the college dining hall, there was a rack of different-flavored teas to choose from. Some of them were pretty good. At breakfast one morning, a very charming girl whose name I can’t recall said to me, “I love this ‘Constant Comment.’ I comment on it constantly.” I had some and it was okay; I drank it for quite awhile. I lost interest in tea of any sort while I was still in college and became addicted to caffeine-infused Diet sodas (especially Diet Mountain Dew) instead.

“I don’t really care for tea,” I told one of my English boyfriends, Ivor, “but I have plenty of it here if you would like it.”

“This is not tea,” he said, inspecting the contents of the cupboard. We had to get in the car and go to the all-night grocery to get some.

“Floral muck,” said Rumcove, many years later in my life, “is not tea. Some of the women at my school drink it. It must be like drinking perfume. That’s what it smells like. It’s not tea.” Rumcove drinks tea in the morning. He craves it on waking the way my mom craves coffee. While he was visiting here, he would quite cheerfully and uncomplainingly make his own or accept what the restaurant gave him. The water was never quite hot enough, but he wasn’t too fussy about it, as long as he got it.

Nicholas, my husband, is extremely fussy about it. One of his first purchases when he moved here was an electric kettle. They’re relatively cheap now, and you can get them at Wal-Mart, but at the time, we had to buy a pretty pricey one from Bed, Bath, & Beyond.

“Fruit soup,” was his name for my sort of tea---Celestial Seasonings, Bigelow's, and the pricey stuff from Starbuck’s. I still like it and I still drink it sometimes. “Herbal muck,” he says, grimacing.

Nobody makes tea for Nicholas. His mother, a first rate cook and an expert in French cuisine, can’t make tea for him. “There’s a right way and a wrong way,” he said, “and the right way is the way that I make it.” Unlike the more tolerant Rumcove (who kindly sends care packages of English tea from time to time), he won’t order it when we go out. He uses teabags, so I don’t know what the deal is. But he makes his own. If he’s sick, he gets out of bed to make his own tea. If he were dying, he’d do it.

The water must be boiling. It must steep a certain amount of time. Okay, no, I don’t get it. How hard can it be?

“I think I’ll try some,” I said one day a few months ago. “With lemon though. I’m not going to have milk or milk-substitute in tea. Ew.”

He was surprised, but he brought me a cup. I was exhausted; I’d been up all night reading papers. I thought about what I’d read about tea ‘sinking into the tissues’ and willed it to sink into mine. It was very strong tea; he'd tried various teas that he could procure around here and decided that the storebrand for Publix supermarket is the strongest and the best. It tasted strongly of the lemon he'd put in and was very sweet. I liked it.

Later when he made tea after dinner I said I thought I’d like a cup. “Really,” he said, surprised. But he made one for me.

And so it began. I have given up coffee, soft drinks, iced tea, and everything else. Tea with lemon, provided that Nick makes it. Because I don’t understand how it can be so, but he’s right---mine just isn’t the same. I still love my Celestial Seasonings and I drink a few herbal cups a week but it doesn’t have the same effect. It’s not a craving like the tea craving.

We go through several lemons a week. My teeth are becoming tea-stained. I don’t care. I’ll use white strips. I don’t understand it; I haven’t even completely accepted it, but I am now completedly addicted. As Grayson and Mr. Cholmondely-Warner demonstrated, “Four hours without tea kills."

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Image drawn by Mr Tenniel; painted by Damozel.

God is an Englishman

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:37:58 GMT

To jump to the current version of this note, click this link.

God is an Englishman.

["He lives upstairs---but we never mention him."]

“Why not?” I asked.

“I just can’t,” said my husband. “I don't. I’m not comfortable talking about these things. I find it tasteless.”

“Tasteless or distasteful?” I asked sullenly.

“Both, actually, now that you mention it,” he said. “When people bring up God in the middle of a conversation, I’m embarrassed for them. I don't know where to look.”

“As if they were dropping names,” I said, thinking of a line from one of Salinger’s novels (Franny and Zooey? Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters? One of those two.)

“In a way,” said Nicholas. “But more as if the name they were dropping was ‘Father Christmas’ and they were doing it sort as if they’d have you know that he was a close personal acquaintance. As if they are hoping to impress you---and over here, especially, you can see that they're watching to see if it will. It seems quite looney to an English person.”

We’ve been having this discussion at fairly long intervals throughout our marriage. At a certain point in my life, I had a sudden injection of God-consciousness under circumstances I won’t go into now. The injection ‘took’ and now I’m stuck with it. I’d rather I weren’t, but there it is. It’s not something you can just ignore after it’s happened. While the experience was entirely subjective, as my husband has pointed out, it was subjective in the way falling in or out of love is subjective: it happens, it changes you, and you can’t make things go back to the way they were before, however inconvenient the feeling may be and however much you may long to do so.

I was never not religious, but it was a sort of centerless, all-embracing, passive religion derived from Lao Tsu and the Tao te Ching. It wasn’t personal, in other words. It didn’t ask anything of me. When things changed for me, they really changed. It was a big thing for me, it is a big thing, certainly the most absorbing thing in my life. I’m conscious of it all the time.

But my husband doesn’t want to know. Neither does Rumcove.

“Only 6% of English people attend church,” my husband said.

“Elderly people might go and people with nothing else in their lives,” said Rumcove. “People who live alone. Sad gits,” He thought for a moment, then laughed sourly. “Perhaps I’ll take it up.” After thinking about it further, he added, "It might be different in the country, more of a social thing."

Nicholas’s parents regularly attend Evensong in their little Cotswold village. “My father goes, but he doesn’t exactly believe,” he said to me. “It’s a social thing in the village. I think my mother may believe something, but I’ve no idea what---we don't discuss it. She used to make my sister and me go with her---until we were old enough to decide that we didn’t want to.”

Both Rumcove and Nicholas attended (in different years) midnight mass at a church I used to attend. It was an Episcopal Church---the American version of C of E---but like many (though by no means all) Episcopal Churches its tendencies are very ‘high.’ Rumcove was mildly interested; Nicholas, slightly affronted.

"Nothing like the C of E,’ said Nicholas, who has never read Barchester Towers, Adam Bede, or Barbara Pym. “I’m not calling that vicar ‘Father.’ He’s younger than I am. And what was all that business halfway through about ‘passing the peace’ and stopping everything so people could shake hands? I didn’t like that at all. It was embarrassing. What was the point of it?”

Later, when I tried to get him to go with me to church, he as usual conceded, but sat there looking so long-suffering that I gave it up. It wasn’t just the Episcopal Church. He was equally uninspired by the Unitarian Church or the extremely intelligent congregation at the United Church of Christ, which seems to be all University profs. “I’m not interested,” he said. “It’s a waste of a Sunday. I want to sleep in and go out for brunch.”

When he was younger, his mother made him go to church. At Westminster he had to attend morning prayers. He also had courses in Bible study. “I’ve had enough of it,” he said. “I had to do it then, I don’t have to now, and please, I’d really rather not.”

No one ever made Rumcove go to church. But he is a teacher and in the course of his teaching has had (for reasons he probably explained but that I've now forgotten) to teach religion to some of the troubled teenagers under his tutelage. His only religious story involves a lesson he gave one day in class. At the end of it, one of the boys remarked, “That Jesus was a nice bloke, wasn’t he?” So apparently Rumcove did a fairly good job of transmitting something of the message or at least the message as I understand it. Christ was a nice bloke, after all.

“But it’s never going to happen for me,” he said, when I was discussing my own religious experience with him. He’s not embarrassed by it, but he finds it baffling.

When I was visiting his parents in the Cotswolds just before Christmas a couple of years back, we went to a fete---what I’d call a ‘bazaar’---at the charming village church in Hempton. It was a tiny place and there were wall-to-wall people. “At Christmas, people go,” Nick said. “In a small village they go to fetes. It’s what you do.” I’d have liked to go to Evensong with his parents, but was too shy to go without him.

At St. Mary’s Church in Banbury we went to hear a beautiful rendition of Mendelsohn’s Elijah. While the soloists were apparently students imported from London (?), I believe that the chorus were mainly local people (they seem to have an impressive Arts program). For me, it was a magnificent experience---I mean the experience of sitting in a beautiful church that was ‘erected in the last decade of the 18^th Century and consecrated in September 1797.’ There are older buildings than that in the U.S., but not many, and certainly not in Florida (unless you count the old Spanish fort in St. Augustine). Most churches I’ve ever attended, here or at home, were built in my lifetime; the oldest goes back a century or so. I somehow locked myself in the lavatory during the intermission and Nicholas had to use his police training to open the lock and release me while a long line---sorry, ‘queue’---of baffled English people waited patiently. I think they knew I wasn’t from around.

Anyway, the church was old and very beautiful to my eyes. It was very chilly but in a way I found exhilarating. The acoustics were magnificant and the music richly inspiring. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life---not in the religious sense; I have little use for the Old Testament as I've said before---but in making me understand how the atmosphere of a church might enhance one's private religious experience. Is it all wasted nowadays?

The great English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote in Religion in the Making:

The great religious conceptions which haunt the imaginations of civilized mankind are scenes of solitariness: Prometheus chained to his rock, Mahomet brooding in the desert, the meditations of the Buddha, the solitary Man on the Cross. It belongs to the depth of the religious spirit to have felt forsaken, even by God. Whitehead, Religion in the Making at 19 (Meridian 1960).

With one or two exceptions, all of the English people I’ve personally encountered seem to regard God as if he were a slightly senile Uncle who lives in the attic and whom you must keep around out of common decency until he’s gone but whom you never to mention, also out of common decency. Perhaps they are more fortunate than we are----perhaps they have somehow lost that sense of solitariness that Whitehead refers to and no longer need the feeling that there is someone there to reach out to.

Does that make the English more fortunate or less fortunate than Americans who still cry out to God or to whatever they hope is there to hear them, hoping to be heard? I truly don't know the answer.

"Most English people wouldn't be caught dead in church," Nicholas concluded. Then he laughed. "Well---actually they would. But that's the only time they'd be caught in church."

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The Glaring Game 2

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 05:36:20 GMT

To jump to the current version of this note, click this link.

The Glaring Game (Part 2)--Nature or Nurture?

The author of Dick Jones' Patteran Pages  has very kindly commented in response to my previous rant to set me straight about a couple of points of distinction between Yanks and Brits. I had complained at surprising length (I mean that the length was surprising to me personally) of the English deployment of the glare as a weapon of social chastisement. I was actually on my way to building up--as a separate issue---to a further complaint about the British preference for addressing solecisms by what an English friend refers to as 'polite and tactful indirectness' and I was planning to refer to as 'passive-aggressiveness.' This note anticipated the issue and sorted it all right out.

As an Englishman I might be able to help you with the glaring issue. There is an inbuilt assumption amongst the English ....that all sentient beings beyond a certain age (10, 11, 12?) should know, through a combination of race memory & nurture, what is acceptable & what isn't. Amongst their own, when the glare alone fails to communicate (& only deep sleep, advanced drunkenness or, of course, blindness could account for this), a sotto voce murmur of "Not appropriate, old chap/m'dear" would be used. A friend of mine of noble blood said that her Great Aunt employed - with merciful rarity - the word 'unsuitable'. When my friend was on the receiving end of this deadly word (an unequivocal glare gaving failed to register), the mortification was extreme.

I'm afraid that the kind of directeness & candour that you represent as admirable in your fellow Americans would be simply inappropriate in decent society.

'Very accurate,' said my husband, when I read it to him.

Nicholas is not only past master of the glare but when truly annoyed, actually emits highly toxic rays---blame rays. If he is truly exasperated, he stands in front of me with a particular English face that no American can do---we simply don't carry our eyebrows high enough and we never develop the necessary musculature.  The expression---except for the eyebrows---actually requires a complete lack of expression, as if shock and disapproval had turned the features to stone (except for the eyebrows).   No American can really do this properly; we don't have the same control over our faces.

He also has the deadly word down to a fine art. As I've said before, I don't suppose he has raised his voice to me in anger more than four times in four years of marriage.  When wishing to silence what he calls 'ranting' and I call discussion, he can typically derail it in an instant with a single curt, "Quite." I know of no more effective word or phrase for inducing the sense that one has been talking too freely, too loudly, and for too long, but unfortunately it is not a phrase that an American can use to effective purpose.

I am working on learning to use the drawled, drawn out, "Mmmmyes," which Nicholas uses as a shorthand phrase for 'I am getting very bored with this discussion and would now like for it to end' or 'I completely disagree with what you're saying but I can't be bothered to argue the point.' I've found through cautious experimentation that this phrase really does work on Americans. (My husband tells me that a female colleague he used it on when she was being boring about Bush still brings it up every time she sees him).

So really I am against the glare, but I am very much for being able to quell others by a well-placed word or phrase uttered in the right tone.

I imagine everyone knows since the increasing (extremely welcome) infusion during the last few years of British television that the English have many more words and phrases for laconically insulting one another. My friend Rumcove, much more given to laconic insults than to the raised eyebrow and cold stare, taught me a number of them early in our association. Wanker, pillock, wally, prat, berk--and of course 'the T word' and 'the C word' that most Americans dare not utter. The English use those words, if not exactly freely, of their own free and without fear being shot (Rumcove's friend used one of the forbidden words in jest in Texas and nearly ended up getting shot). They also call one another 'bastards' quite cheerfully and quite frequently. That's still a fighting word here (though not as 'horrifying' as the others I mentioned and can't---sorry, I just can't---bring myself to type).

We have a dearth of useful insults in this country, so some of the English words that have migrated over here via television seem to be taking hold. The problem is that people don't really understand the connotations or have a standard for deciding when a word such as 'wanker' would be suitable and when it is not. I heard a very dignified man use the word 'wanker' in circumstances in which I imagine he would certainly not have used the phrase 'jerk- off.'

I do appreciate Mr Jones' response, but I wonder if it is really true that the English have an innate sense of what is or is not suitable, or whether they just have an innate sense of how to create in others the sense of being unsuitable.   That's a point on which I must further reflect.

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The Office UK—Accept No Substitutes [television review]

A Proper Gallows Laugh Requires A Stiff Upper Lip (British Comedy)

Tea. How It Happened to an American.

No Ordinary Profile: The Talented Mr. Rumcove

The Two Floridas

Images © 2006 Jupiterimages Corporation. Used pursuant to license from Animation Factory.com.

The Glaring Game

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 02:52:41 GMT

To jump to the current version of this note (at my new address!), click this link!

(I Know All There is to Know About) The Glaring Game

I adore the English. My late husband Don was English and my husband Nick is as well. My best friend is English. I’m as literal an Anglophile as it’s possible to be. But there are some drawbacks.

The English tend to be more diffident than Americans, to apologize more often, and to be much less assertive about their wants. On the other hand….

On the other hand, they still mind when they are unhappy. Of course they do. It’s just that if you’re the cause, you’re less likely to hear about it. Which means that you don’t have the chance to do anything about it.

It took me a long time for me to realize that part of the English idea of politeness is---I’m quite serious----not to complain even when they are unhappy with things. They don’t in general seem to have a program for complaining politely or tactfully. If they complain, they are likely to be extremely blunt and ungracious. In general, though, they register dissatisfaction through indirect/ambiguous signals that it’s quite possible to overlook or misinterpret, even for other English people.

I love the English, but I can’t stand it when people won’t just say what they want from me. I also can’t stand it when they actually do that, but do it tactlessly or outright insultingly. As a result, my encounters with English people---have I mentioned that I love the English?---haven’t been uniformly pleasant. I sometimes have managed to offend them. I have occasionally—horror of horrors---been the recipient of the silent or veiled reproach.

I hate it when they do that.

English people often deploy the glare when annoyed or outraged. As wielded by an English person experienced in its use, it’s a mightily effective weapon if you are easily cowed and if you happen to care about being glared at. My husband has raised his voice to me during our four year marriage only three or four times. When he is annoyed, he uses blame rays to convey his anger. If someone stands in your vicinity, silently emanating blame, it’s very difficult to ignore it. But there are limitations to the effectiveness of the glare as a means of getting people to stop doing what they want and do what you want.

The glare is not a precision weapon, particularly not when deployed against complete strangers. It doesn’t work at all if the person who has offended you isn’t actually looking at you. It doesn’t work, for example, if she has her back to you or if she is completely unaware of having done anything offensive. In the second case, even if you get right up in her face and glare, she is not going to put two and two together: she is going to assume that you are trying to suppress a belch or a fart or a sneeze or---if the glare is extreme and alarming---that you are on the point of dropping dead of a stroke.

While visiting among the substantial British community in Florida, I once went with some friends to a British pub (or ‘British’ ‘pub’). It was wall-to-wall Brits, packed much more closely together than the average American from my particular region---we literally need our space---can endure. I looked round for a seat and sat down. After a few minutes, my husband muttered, “I think you’ve taken someone’s seat.’ He nodded toward a disgruntled looking man standing a few feet away, glaring at me. When I looked up, he caught my eye, moved forward into my direct line of sight, and intensified the glare. I said, “Oh my God, excuse me I didn’t mean to take your chair I’m so sorry!” and got up instantly.

So the first lesson I’d like my British friends to learn is that glaring doesn’t work if the person being glared at doesn’t know THAT you’re glaring or WHY you’re glaring.

The English---so Rumcove and my husband have told me--- don’t feel entitled to make demands on others and, according to my husband, they feel apologetic about asking other people to do anything for them. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want things done for them. So why don’t they ask? It’s easy enough to ask for your seat back tactfully. Adopt a warm tone of voice and a diffident smile and say, , “Sorry---I hate to bother you----but actually I believe that was my seat.” Who could possibly be offended by that?

The problem with hating to ask for what you want is that you often don’t get what you want even if the other person would be happy to give it to you.

Of course, the power of the glare can be used for punishing unintended social offenses as well as a way of making someone aware of a trespass on your rights. I have experienced the glare as a welcome of aggression as well as rebuke.

A few years later when I was dining out in London at an unpretentious Greek restaurant, my dinner companion---a conventionally burly police officer we’ll call Bazzer---said something to me while I was trying to swallow a mouthful of water that made me laugh, causing the water to go down the wrong path, and producing a violent fit of choking. When it had subsided, I looked up to see a manglaring at me with the same expression from two tables away---or maybe he just had really bad indigestion. “Bazzer,” I whispered, “I think that man is glaring at me. Should I say something? Apologize?” Americans really have no problem with apologizing; no one feels that they lose any face by doing so. The reverse, rather. On the other hand, I wasn't even sure he was glaring.

But Bazzer said, “Leave it with me, mate.” Half rising from his chair---did I mention that he is on the large side?---he locked eyes with the man and glared back at him, till he dropped his eyes. So I guess we won? But did the man even know why Bazzer was glaring at him?

It's all so ambiguous! Is it supposed to be so ambiguous? I don't get it.

Especially since there’s the whole question of politely complaining when you aren’t being attended to properly, when you’re not getting a thing or service you’ve paid for, or when someone is happily oblivious to your discomfort. It’s okay, English people! It’s okay to say that you need your check, need help, are uncomfortable and tired. It’s better to complain (politely) than to blame!

The facts in evidence:

1. While sitting at the bar in a restaurant in one of the touristy parts of the state, I once saw an English man try to ask for the check in the English manner---by catching the bartender’s eye and making scribbly motions in his hand. The bartender, a splendid and very friendly young man, smiled and nodded back at him, unaware of the significance of the scribbling. Instead of saying, “Excuse me, but could we have our check now?”, the man carried on with the eye-catching and scribbling motions, becoming progressively more furious as the affable bartender continued to ignore him. (Why do people—it’s not just the English---do that? Why when something doesn’t work do they go on doing the same thing?) My husband finally took pity on him and said, “Tod, that customer over there would like to have his check now.” Apologizing profusely, Tod gave him his check instantly.

2. When my husband first visited me here, I took him to a raucous neighborhood bar where they served ‘Buffalo chicken wings.’ I knew he liked chicken so I ordered a dozen for him. When the meal came, they looked really delicious, and I’d really have liked a couple, but it was a new experience for him and I didn’t want to deprive him, even though he offered. Later, when we’d left, he was very ill. “I can’t really tolerate hot food,” he admitted, “but I didn’t want to offend you.” Really? He didn’t want to offend me so much that he was willing to risk gastroenteritis? Because honestly---saying “I can’t really eat hot things” wouldn’t have offended me either before or after he’d ordered them, and certainly wouldn’t have been as upsetting as having a guest get sick after a meal I’d given him.

3. When another English guest was visiting, I took him on a trip to a really charming town on the Gulf called Cedar Key where some sort of arts or arts and craft festival was going on. I took him to a well-known restaurant and afterwards we strolled around looking at the exhibits. In the car on the way home he was very quiet, staring out at the landscape without giving much indication he was seeing it and answering in monosyllables. “What’s wrong?” I kept asking. He kept saying “Nothing,” because that’s another way of making the other person responsible when you finally break down and say what you really think. “That walk went on too long,” he said. “It’s really hot and I had a blister on my heel. I was limping along. It’s not really that enjoyable to walk for miles and miles in this heat with a blister on your heel.” Why would anyone do that---hobble around miserably in the hot sun without saying a word?

4. At a truly execrable all-you-can-eat breakfast establishment in one of the tourist towns where the food is plentiful and bad (don’t ask), I encountered an English man milling somewhat discontentedly around at the bar where the entrees were being served. “What’s wrong?” I asked him. “Well,” he said, “the eggs have run out and the rest of it’s cold.” “Have you spoken to the manager?” I asked. “Oh no,” he said, looking alarmed and backing away from me. “I’m sure they’ll bring more out eventually.” I marched right up to the nearest food service person---I mean it’s a restaurant where you pay to get food and service and subject to stringent state law about food temperature and handling---and said, “Listen, the eggs are all gone and everything’s cold. Could you do something about that, please? Thanks.” “Sorry,” said the lackadaisical, tourist-hating employee. “Now, please, if it’s not too much trouble,” I said, “and by the way, I’m local. And I bet this display is in violation of about 10 different code requirements for food handling.” She put out more eggs and replaced the cold dishes. Meanwhile, the man looked mortified, though he muttered 'thanks' sheepishly to me when it was done. Did he think I was being rude? Rude to a restaurant?

5. I was visiting a couple I know in Norwich who were planning some sort of function in her sister’s honor (I believe to celebrate their engagement). I knew, and they knew, that prior to the day, the house was going to need to be thoroughly cleaned because (though it was quite clean already) that’s what you do. I just assumed that I would pitch in because that’s also what you do when you’re visiting. So I was morally outraged when, the day before, my friends began to drop hints that they might need my help. “I don’t know how Jim and I will manage to get it done all by ourselves!” said Susan, wringing her hands. “Oh, I hope we can manage it in time,” said Jim sorrowfully. “We’ll need to sort out your room too so the guests can leave their coats there, so I hope you won’t mind if we turn you out tomorrow.” “What are you talking about? I’m going to be helping you!” I said indignantly. Both of them instantly relaxed and smiled with relief. But why didn’t they just ask? If you frame it so that you leave the person a choice, how is it bad manners or rude or presumptuous to say, “Damozel, just say no if you’ve made other plans, but I could use some help in the kitchen and in the upstairs bathrooms?” Or better yet, why didn’t they assume that someone they’ve known well enough and long enough to have her staying in their home would have the basic decency and manners to do the right thing without being asked? Why the hints? Why the indirection? Why?

So this is one arena---getting unmet needs met---in which I feel that American candor is superior to English reticence. Take responsibility for the treatment you receive in life, English people! It’s better to complain than to allocate blame!

RELATED POSTINGS:

RELATED POSTINGS

God is an Englishman. He Lives Upstairs and He’s Never Mentioned.

XXX (Of a Sort) from the Mother Country: Mr. Rumcove & the Very Cruel Poll

A Proper Gallows Laugh Requires A Stiff Upper Lip (British Comedy)

The Office UK—Accept No Substitutes [television review]

To jump to the current version of this note, click on this link.

Image drawn by Mr Tenniel; painted by Damozel.

A very British Response

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 20:03:58 GMT

To do a Proper Gallows Laugh Requires a Stiff Upper Lip.

Terror brings politics to comedy. The London bombings mean comedy at Edinburgh will be the most political since the 1970s, the Fringe boss says. [BBC News | Entertainment | UK Edition]

I remember reading a comment shortly after 9-11 by some pundit or maven (I truly don't remember who) that those tragic events had put the Nineties into proper perspective---specifically that it had overnight sucked out all the edgy, cynical humor that the Nineties had spawned. Seinfeld was mentioned, I remember. The pundit's/maven's position was that this was a good thing---he clearly thought it was time to put the brakes on all of that flippancy and irreverence towards God, the law, and our elected officials. Time for a return to basic values---and a nation capable of being amused by Everybody Loves Raymond! Time to put a stop on the smug, cold-hearted humor perpetrated by Seinfeld and its imitators!

I'm sorry, but Seinfeld? Seinfeld wasn't exactly what you'd call mordant. Curb Your Enthusiasm is, yes, but note that it's on HBO. You couldn't show CYE on any network. Americans basically just aren't fans of mordant wit (particularly at the expense of sacred cows) or of the gallows laugh.

For that we have to look to the Brits. And when we do, many people are shocked! shocked I tell you! to find out just how fundamentally cynical and mean-spirited British comedy can be. We might have been evolving in that direction---Curb Your Enthusiasm, the HBO series by Jerry Seinfeld's co-creator is definitely bitterly funny in the British mode and Arrested Development is also in the mode---but Arrested Development is apparently struggling in the ratings and the Larry David offering is on HBO.

There have been several aborted movements by American producers to imitate madly successful British comedies like Absolutely Fabulous, The Office, the various ‘Alan Partridge’ series, Green Wing, or (darkest of the dark) Nighty Night. It can't be done. You can't make---or be successful---with an American show that is that mean. You can't do it even if you try to imitate the British formula, because Americans who will laugh at Brits being cynical/ironic/bitterly funny/trenchant/mordant will (generally speaking) not laugh if the perpetrator of the bitterness is American.

And quite a few of us don’t find it funny when they do it either. A friend of mine recently wrote:

I just watched the first two episodes of “Green Wing.” Almost all of the characters are despicable -- and very strange as well as mean. It is as if one populated a hospital with a lot of clones of the lead female character from “Nighty Night.” I know that some of the critics love the show.....Maybe it will grow on me with time.... Maybe it's because I am a “Yank,” but I find Scrubs, although in some ways “sillier,” to be more good-natured and edifying, teaching, if one will, moral lessons.

I too am a Yank but seriously? Ugh. I like Scrubs fine and I do watch it, but I liked it a lot better in its early phases before it became ‘edifying.’ I suppose that once a program becomes really popular here the writers fall victim to the MASH syndrome or there is pressure in that direction and they start bringing the ‘edifying.’ I can get moral lessons from reading Time Magazine or---these days---The New York Times, thanks. For relief from the solemnity and fear that surrounds me in these dark times, I need someone to mock the darkness.

So I hope that the Brits hang on to their cynicism and that very British ability to laugh through their stiff upper lips. I hope that they won’t let the tragedies of the last two months turn them into a nation of solemn, canting, fearful post-Millenial Puritans.

Other Monty Python fans will remember the last scene in Life of Brian (which probably wouldn’t make it into American theaters nowadays). “Always look at the bright side of life—or death/Just before you draw your terminal breath.” It’s such a British attitude, but it’s one I’d commend to my fellow Americans (or to those who still retain a sense of humor).

When the darkness closes in and your knees are knocking together with fear, that gallows laugh is so liberating.

RELATED POSTINGS

(I Know All There is To Know) About the Glaring Game

God is an Englishman. He Lives Upstairs and He’s Never Mentioned.

XXX (Of a Sort) from the Mother Country: Mr. Rumcove & the Very Cruel Poll

A Proper Gallows Laugh Requires A Stiff Upper Lip (British Comedy)

The Office UK—Accept No Substitutes [television review]

To see the current version of part 1, click here (updated address)

Image drawn by Mr Tenniel; painted by Damozel.

Cirencester Problem

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 08:58:10 GMT

1. Britannia Rules

About the events last week: I am not going to discuss them. They hit too close to home for me---there was a niece who ought to have been on a school trip on the tube that morning but luckily was not, but we didn't know that for a good 24 hours because we couldn't get through. Far more eloquent people than I have said all that can be said.

Besides, to go on about it would not be a fitting tribute to the English spirit.

"We survived the Blitz. We're proud and hardy Britons, mate," said Rumcove, "and we've been through it all before. So don't you worry about us."

"It happened," said another friend. "We have to pay our respects to the people who died and then we have to carry on. You can't let fear drive how you live your life. You can't spend too much time brooding over it or worrying about what happens next. You have to get on with things." He thought. "Post-traumatic stress syndrome is more of an American thing, unless you've actually been right in the midst," he went on. "I'm not even very sure what it means, actually, unless it means brooding over what's already happened and worrying about what happens next. It might be a problem for people who were there, but it isn't going to be for most of us. We'll carry on---most of us will carry on."

And I feel certain that he's right.

So with that said, I am going to address an issue that has been troubling me for some time.

To see the current version of part 2, click here (new address).

2. English Placenames: the Cirencester Problem.

Please. This from an Englishman?

But then we visited Cirencester. ‘Siren-sester’ to any of my fellow yanks who’ve never been. You know, just the way it looks.

I am in the process of composing a strongly-worded letter of protest to the Cirencester Town Council. ‘Cirnster,’ people. ‘Cirnster.’ Learn it. Embrace it. I would be willing to compromise on ‘Cister’, if necessary---I am a reasonable woman--- though I think it would be a mistake.

“Everyone will think you’re mental,” he said. "They will think you are a berk." He paused. “I will think so,” he added.

Nevertheless, Rumcove was right about my demand seeming perhaps a touch presumptuous coming from a yank. To avoid giving offense, I have signed his name to the letter.

RELATED POSTINGS:

(I Know All There is To Know) About the Glaring Game

God is an Englishman. He Lives Upstairs and He’s Never Mentioned.

XXX (Of a Sort) from the Mother Country: Mr. Rumcove & the Very Cruel Poll

A Proper Gallows Laugh Requires A Stiff Upper Lip (British Comedy)

The Office UK—Accept No Substitutes [television review]

(I Know All There is To Know) About the Glaring Game

DRAWN BY MR TENNIEL; PAINTED BY DAMOZEL!

Always England 9-7-2005

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 15:24:30 GMT

There are no words...

...but there will always be an England. For which we are all thankful.

Global Warming: not so bad?

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 04:43:59 GMT

You Say 'Global Warming' Like it's a Bad Thing.

Wakeham sees warming upside. Ex-minister Lord Wakeham says Siberia and, on balance Europe, might benefit from global warming. [BBC News | Politics | UK Edition]

It's only fair to mention in this blog that Lord Wakeham is a former director of Enron, though as this article indicates, he is very free regardless of any bias.

On the whole the Brits are willing to face facts. British conservatives, unlike American conservatives, are pragmatists.

RELATED POSTINGS

God is an Englishman. He Lives Upstairs and He’s Never Mentioned.

XXX (Of a Sort) from the Mother Country: Mr. Rumcove & the Very Cruel Poll

A Proper Gallows Laugh Requires A Stiff Upper Lip (British Comedy)

The Office UK—Accept No Substitutes [television review]

To see the current version of this post, click here.

Image drawn by Mr Tenniel; painted by Damozel.

The Office (UK)

Wed, 06 Jul 2005 18:01:09 GMT

The Office (UK)---Accept No Substitutes.

Contemporary English comedy makes me believe the theory that laughter evolved as a response to an enemy's defeat and discomfiture. I saw the original (UK) version of The Office [link to bbc website] when I was visiting England in 2002. I watched it with my hands over my eyes, peeking through the fingers. It's so painful. So excruciating. So gut-wrenchingly funny. But not in the good-natured American sitcom way. No, not like that.

I own both 6-episode series plus the final episode (the 'Christmas special'); BBC America has also shown them. At my house, we watch them every 2-3 months. There are sections I still haven't seen because my hands are over my eyes.

If you haven't seen the British version, you haven't seen The Office. The American version wasn't the same show. Don't assume you’re up to The Office just because you saw and liked the American version. If I hadn't seen the original, I might have liked it, and I certainly didn't hate it. But I had seen the original and there is just no comparison. It's like the difference between English and American beer. Both will get you drunk, but the English version tastes better, kicks in faster, and knocks you back on your arse for much longer.

If you saw only the American version of The Office, you probably wondered what all the fuss was about. I like Steve Carrell a lot, but there is just no way that his portrayal of boss 'Michael Scott' compares to office co-creator Ricky Gervais's 'David Brent.' 'Scott' comes across as shallow, socially and professionally inept, willfully oblivious, and as obnoxious as only a coworker who believes he thinks he is funny, savvy, and universally liked and admired when he's not can be. His interactions with his employees are funny and embarrassing---but they are not devastatingly embarrassing. They don't make you flush all over with vicarious humiliation.

'Brent' has all of these qualities, but so much more (a lot of it emerges in the second series). His grandiose opinion of his own abilities (as 'a comedian first and a boss second') are coldly contrasted with the actual response of his employees. He is also fumbling, needy, desperate to be liked, desperately afraid of losing face, transparently envious, ineptly competitive, and so much more. He is also weirdly likable, so that while you look forward eagerly to his comeuppance, it's also with a sinking feeling that you aren't going to enjoy it when it arrives. (With NBC's "Michael Scott," you end up feeling that there wasn't nearly enough of it; there's a feeling of deflation and anticlimax at the conclusion of the 6-episode series).

A lot of fellow Americans I know who have seen the UK version on DVD or on BBC America find it too unbearably embarrassing to be enjoyable. Many of them can't get through the first episode. One person who watched it to the end without laughing once said that it was 'riveting, in the same way an impending train wreck is riveting.' I suppose it must be true that we are predisposed to like shows about people who are successful, as Ricky Gervais said in an interview I read.

The Office is brutally funny in good, cold-hearted, cringe-inducing British fashion. It's not like any sitcom. There's no laugh track to point out the jokes or to guide your reaction. There are some brilliant performances by the other members of the cast, including (but not limited to) MacKenzie Crook (who plays Brent's sycophantic sidekick, Gareth) and also Martin Freeman and Lucy Davies, star-crossed lovers who are as poignant in their way as any television lovers ever . Why is it so deeply riveting, so addictively funny? It's not what people usually mean by a "feel-good comedy". Yet it is.

The Office is not edifying and won't make you a better person. But if you are suffering from pangs of futility, impotence, despair, ennui, helplessness, and failure, I guarantee that it will make you feel better. Because as big a loser as you may be and as much as your life may suck in general, at least you're not David Brent.

RELATED POSTINGS

(I Know All There is To Know) About the Glaring Game

God is an Englishman. He Lives Upstairs and He’s Never Mentioned.

XXX (Of a Sort) from the Mother Country: Mr. Rumcove & the Very Cruel Poll

A Proper Gallows Laugh Requires A Stiff Upper Lip (British Comedy)

The Office UK—Accept No Substitutes [television review]