How to be a Brit

roundabouts.
    He decreed: there are no
rules of priority on the roundabouts. It is as simple as that. It is a
strict rule that there is no rule. Having made this clear to everyone once and
for all, he abolished the ‘overtake me’ signal, adding in a statement that he
hoped motorists would go on using it.
    4. The Police are
responsible for inventing that sublime doctrine: cars should move but never
stop. The Police are perfectly right, of course. You do not need an
expensive motor vehicle down in the street if you are up in an office. In fact,
if you want to stay somewhere, you do not need a car at all. The most
heinous offence known to the Police is officially called ‘obstructing the
Queen’s Highway’. The Queen is brought into it to underline the close
connection between a parking offence and high treason.
    The Police insist-as full
members of the R.S.P.M.T. should — that taxis should always pick up and put
down passengers in the middle of the streets and stop there without signals.
And they dote on their main henchmen, the refuse-lorries, and work out
complicated patterns for them to ensure that these Refuse Collecting Vehicles
(as they are fondly called) and their happy crews should block the largest
number of streets for the longest possible time. They encourage double parking,
dangerous parking, careless parking everywhere but they may tow away your car
from a peaceful suburban street just to show that they have the Public Good at
heart.
    5. Parking rules — whether
in the temporary Pink Zone or outside — is one of those mysterious English ways
a foreigner will never understand.
    a. There are streets (in
Soho, for example) where parking is absolutely and totally prohibited during
the daytime. These streets are chock-full of cars all down one side. If the other
side fills up too, that is all right. The ‘total prohibition’ was only a joke.
    b. Most High Streets all over
the country are filled with the cars of the shopkeepers and their assistants
from 9 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. If delivery vans or customers want to park, they must
— and indeed do — double park. The streets become first dangerous, then
impassable. The police wink a benevolent eye at this. After all, it is only
fair that the British shopkeeper should try to keep customers away from his
shop by barricading his entrance with his own car; and it is equally fair that
the customer should not take such an attitude lying down.
    c. Secrets, generally
speaking, are not very well kept nowadays. With reporters and television
cameras all round us, the secrets of conference chambers, however well guarded,
become public knowledge in no time. There can be no doubt that the best kept
secret in England is: where one can park a car and where not. Not even the Lord
Chief Justice of England can be sure about that. The law is this: parking is
allowed, really, everywhere; ‘causing obstruction’ is strictly prohibited
everywhere. But parking is defined as causing obstruction; consequently it is
allowed and prohibited at the same time, everywhere. Just another triumph of
that clear English way of thinking which — I believe — they are fond of calling
empirical.
     

    Many people believe that
the motorization of the land has greatly changed the British character. A
member of the Government has recently declared that as soon as an ordinary
Briton touches the steering wheel he reverts to a savage cave-man. This, I
feel, is an empty boast on the Minister’s part. I have driven cars in New York,
Paris, Rome and Tokyo as well as in London and I am certain that while the
British, no doubt, have their fair share of road-hogs, neurotics and
incompetent asses among their drivers, on the whole they are the most courteous
and civilized of all motoring nations. Personally, I am used to French driving
and like it; but most Britons regard an English Bank Holiday jam as a sheer
joy-ride compared with a normal, week-day drive round the Arc de Triomphe. But
the French, in turn, are still the incarnation of tact, old-world chivalry and
timidity compared with the Japanese. Why then do ministers boast of our
rudeness on the roads? Why do drivers regard their fellow-drivers (commonly
referred to as ‘the other idiot’) as cave-men and barbarians? Simply because, deep
in the English soul, there is a deep-seated desire and a passionate longing to
be rude. Rudeness is one of the admired and coveted vices of virility. I know
that whenever I call an Englishman rude he takes it