How to be a Brit

in the street and someone pours two gallons
of boiling water over your best bowler through his bathroom overflow, the pipe
of which is aimed at the street (see: ancient
liberties) you should proceed without uttering a word — however short —
because it is obviously the other fellow’s business when he has his bath and
how hot he likes it.
    In the late
nineteen-fifties, a man committed a murder in the Midlands, splashing himself
with blood in the process. Afterwards, near the scene of the crime a man
covered with blood was seen to board a bus with about fifty people on it. Yet
when he got off, leaving a pool of blood on the floor, not one single passenger
bothered to ask him what he had been doing lately. They were true Britons,
minding their own business.
    If another man had been
carrying some victim’s decapitated head under his arm, that would not make the
slightest difference. The parcel you carry is your own business.
    I remember an old story
from my childhood which ought to be one of the basic ideological parables of
English life.
    A man bends down in a
London street to tie his shoelace. While he’s at it, someone kicks him in the
behind with such force that he falls on his nose. He gets up somewhat
bewildered and looks at his assailant questioningly. The latter explains:
    ‘I am sorry. I seem
to have made a mistake. I thought you were my friend, Harry Higgins. I meant
this as a joke.’
    The man (presumably of
foreign origin) is not altogether satisfied with this explanation and remarks plaintively:
    ‘But even if I had been
Harry Higgins... must you kick him quite so hard?’
    The other man replies
coolly and pointedly:
    ‘What has it got to do with
you how hard I choose to kick my friend, Harry Higgins?’

SEX
     
    This seemingly most
immutable of all social habits changes too — and changes fast. In an earlier
volume of mine — a treatise on the English character 6 — I wrote a very brief chapter on this subject. It ran: ‘Continental people
have sex life: the English have hot-water bottles.’ That was all. It has now
become hopelessly out-of-date. How right was the kind (and to me unknown) lady
who wrote to me in a letter:
    ‘You are really behind the
times. In this field, too, things have changed and — this is the most important
— techniques have advanced. We are using electric blankets nowadays.’
    And, no doubt, things will
go on changing. I do not know for certain but I feel sure that A.I.D. —
Artificial Insemination by Donor — was invented by Englishmen as a
labour-saving device. Knowing the English character, and its marked lack of
enthusiasm in this particular field, I am convinced that A.I.D. will grow
immensely popular in no time and that soon it will be the rule rather than the
exception.
    I foresee the time — not in
the too distant future, either — when a shy young man will be asked at a party:
    ‘How are you, old man? And
how’s your wife? Have you A.I.D.-ed any more family lately? What’s it going to
be this time: a boy or a girl?’
    And the bashful young man
will blush and reply:
    ‘I can’t be sure... You
see, we don’t A.I.D. our children. I’ve got a “Do It Yourself” kit.’
     
     

HOW TO AVOID WORK
     
    Many may wonder how the English
acquired their reputation of not working as hard as most Continentals. I am able
to solve this mystery. They acquired this reputation by not working as hard.
    It is, by the way, all due
to their lack of rhythm and nothing else. Let me explain what I mean.
    In my young days there used
to be a joke about a silly aristocrat — the type of hero the Austrians called
Count Bobby. Count Bobby comes home from shooting and his friend, Aristide,
asks him how he got on. ‘Badly. I got nothing,’ Bobby informs him.
    ‘But how’s that possible?
It’s so easy to shoot rabbits. They always run in zig-zags.’
    ‘That’s true,’ Bobby nods
sadly, ‘but I was out of luck. Whenever I shot at zig, he was in zag; when I
shot at zag, he was in zig.’
    The same is true of
Englishmen in general, When they work (or are in zig) they rest (zag); when
they rest (zag), they work hard (zig).
    On the rare occasions when
two groups of Englishmen are vying with one another as to who should perform a
certain job, the result is most surprising. You would naively assume that both
groups are keen to do the job. Not at all. Whenever the Boilermakers’ Union
starts a quarrel with the Shipwrights’ as to who should drive wooden nails