How to be a Brit

ignorant lout. I should
mention here that while you are studying the wine list, your lady-friend may
come up with a helpful suggestion. She may say:
    ‘Oh, we had a wonderful
Herriko-Amoa in the Basque country. Please, Jack, order Herriko-Amoa.’ The
answer in such cases is this:
    ‘Herriko-Arnoa is indeed a
magnificent wine. But I am afraid it does not travel well .’

    A man who knows how various
wines travel is simply irresistible. But to return to your homework: you must
practise at home, putting a little wine in your mouth and making it travel
around inside your mouth while you adopt a meditative, pensive expression.
Without this expression the whole show is worthless; any answer thrown out
without gargling or looking thoughtful, gives you away as a dilettante. And
after gargling, you may say one of four things:
    1. In the case of white
wine you may always say — very thoughtfully — that it is not cold enough. This
is not too witty or too original but it is better than nothing. Incomparably
better than nodding feebly and not criticizing at all.
    2. In the case of red wine,
you say: ‘It is not chambré enough.’ With a little bit of luck your lady-friend
will not know what chambre means. But even if she does, the phrase is still
magnificent.
    3. A brand new device — a
variation on the theme: you click your tongue with irritation and send back a
bottle of white wine because it is too cold, red because it is too chambré. (It
is amazing how long it took to think up that one.)
    4. This version is the pièce
de résistance ; it is to be used only on rare occasions when the impression
you wish to make is of decisive importance. You gargle with the wine, go into a
species of coma and then declare — more to yourself than to the lady:
    ‘This comes from the sunny
side of the hill... ‘
    The remark is known to have
turned the heads of the haughtiest and least impressionable of women.
     
    Wine snobbery, by the way,
is unknown on the Continent. There you find whisky, gin, and dry Martini
snobberies, in turn, or — this is the latest — beer snobbery in Italy. A friend
of mine — a Frenchman with a considerable reputation as a lady-killer — told me
once that nowadays he offers a little wine and plenty of cognac to his
lady-friends. He sighed and remarked: ‘I used to say it with flowers... More
gallant, no doubt... But with cognac it is so much quicker.’

ON SHOPPING
     
    My greatest difficulty in
turning myself into a true Britisher was the Art of Shopping. In my silly and
primitive Continental way, I believed that the aim of shopping was to buy things; to buy things, moreover, you needed or fancied. Today I know that (a) shopping is a social — as opposed to a commercial — activity and ( b ) its
aim is to help the shopkeeper to get rid of all that junk.
    Shopping begins with
queueing. If you want to become a true Briton, you must still be fond of
queueing. An erstwhile war-time necessity has become a national entertainment.
Just as the Latins need an opportunity of going berserk every now and then in
order to let off steam, so the British are in need of certain excesses, certain
wild bouts of self-discipline. A man in a queue is a fair man; he is minding
his own business; he lives and lets live; he gives the other fellow a chance;
he practises a duty while waiting to practise his own rights; he does almost
everything an Englishman believes in doing. A man in a queue is as much the
image of a true Briton as a man in a bull-ring is the image of a Spaniard or a
man with a two-foot cigar of an American.
    When your turn comes at
last in the shop, disregard the queue behind you. They would feel let down if
you deprived them of their right to wait and be virtuous. Do not utter a word
about the goods you wish to buy. Ask the shopkeeper about his health, his wife,
his children, his dogs, cats, goldfish, and budgerigars; his holiday plans, his
discarded holiday plans and about his last two or three holidays; his views on
the weather, the test match; discuss the topical and more entertaining murder
cases, etc., etc., and, naturally answer all his questions.
    A few further rules for
true Britons:
    1. Never criticize
anybody’s wares, still less return anything to the shop if it turns out to be
faulty, rotten or falling to bits. Not only might this embarrass the shopkeeper
but it might also infringe one of the fundamental civil rights of all
Englishmen, secured in Magna Carta: to sell rubbish to the public.