How to be a Brit

further list of the
most expressive military terms which would make any new film surprisingly
realistic.
    3. Nothing should be good
enough for a British film producer. I have heard of a gentleman (I don’t know
whether the story is true, or only characteristic) who made a film about Egypt
and had a sphinx built in the studio. When he and his company sailed to Egypt
to make some exterior shots, he took his own sphinx with him to the desert. He
was quite right, because first of all the original sphinx is very old and film
people should not use second-hand stuff; secondly, the old sphinx might have
been good enough for Egyptians (who are all foreigners, after all) but not for
a British film company.
    4. As I have seen political
events successfully filmed as detective-stories, and historical personages
appear as ‘great lovers’ (and nothing else), I have come to the conclusion that
this slight change in the character of a person is highly recommendable, and I
advise the filming of Peter Pan as a thriller, and the Concise Oxford
Dictionary as a comic opera.

DRIVING CARS
     
    It
is about the
same to drive a car in England as anywhere else. To change a punctured tyre in
the wind and rain gives about the same pleasure outside London as outside Rio
de Janeiro; it is not more fun to try to start up a cold motor with the handle
in Moscow than in Manchester, the roughly 50-50 proportion between driving an average car and pushing it is the same in Sydney and Edinburgh.
    There are, however, a few
characteristics which distinguish the English motorist from the continental,
and some points which the English motorist has to remember.

     
    1. In English towns there
is a thirty miles an hour speed-limit and the police keep a watchful eye on
law-breakers. The fight against reckless driving is directed extremely
skilfully and carefully according to the very best English
detective-traditions. It is practically impossible to find out whether you are
being followed by a police car or not. There are, however, a few indications
which may help people of extraordinary intelligence and with very keen powers
of observation:
     
    (a) The police always use a
13 h.p., blue Wolseley car;
    (b) three uniformed policemen
sit in it; and
    (c) on these cars you can read
the word police written in large letters in front and rear, all in capitals —
lit up during the hours of darkness.
    2. I think England is the
only country in the world where you have to leave your lights on even if you
park in a brilliantly lit-up street. The advantage being that your battery gets
exhausted, you cannot start up again and consequently the number of road
accidents are greatly reduced. Safety first!
    3. Only motorists can
answer this puzzling question: What are taxis for? A simple pedestrian knows
that they are certainly not there to carry passengers.
    Taxis, in fact, are a
Christian institution. They are here to teach drivers modesty and humility.
They teach us never to be over-confident; they remind us that we never can tell
what the next moment will bring for us, whether we shall be able to drive on or
a taxi will bump into us from the back or the side. \ .. and thou shalt fear
day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life’ (Deut., chapter 28,
verse 66).
    4. There is a huge
ideological warfare going on behind the scenes of the motorist world.
     
    Whenever you stop your car
in the City, the West End or many other places, two or three policemen rush at
you and tell you that you must not park there. Where may you park? They shrug
their shoulders. There are a couple of spots on the South Coast and in a
village called Minchinhampton. Three cars may park there for half an hour every
other Sunday morning between 7 and 8 a.m.

    The police are perfectly
right. After all, cars have been built to run, and run fast, so they should not
stop.
    This healthy philosophy of
the police has been seriously challenged by a certain group of motorists who
maintain that cars have been built to park and not to move. These people drive out
to Hampstead Heath or Richmond on beautiful, sunny days, pull up all their
windows and go to sleep. They do not get a spot of air; they are miserably
uncomfortable; they have nightmares, and the whole procedure is called
‘spending a lovely afternoon in the open.’

THREE GAMES FOR BUS DRIVERS
     
    If
you become a
bus driver there are three lovely and very popular games you must learn to
play.
     
    1. Blind man’s buff. When you turn right