How to be a Brit

they regard it as a crying shame and personal insult that people should
talk English in this country. They go on speaking Hungarian everywhere and to
everybody and if others fail to understand, that is their worry. The population
of London, I must say, has made remarkable progress in the Hungarian language.
There is a small café — frequented by Hungarians — where a young Yorkshire girl
greeted me the other day with ‘Kezetcsokolom, aranyas!’, which means, ‘I
kiss your hand, darling!‘ I know of a grandmother — recently arrived from
Budapest — who in the course of two years has managed to teach her two
British-born grandchildren, an Irish maid and a Spanish governess, reasonably
fluent Hungarian without herself learning a single word of English, Irish or
Spanish. The prize for good educational work, however, must go to another Hungarian
matron who was travelling on a No. 2 bus from Baker Street, meaning to get off
at Platts Lane. She missed her stop, however. Reaching Cricklewood Lane and
finding the surroundings unfamiliar, she jumped up, walked to the conductor — a
fine and honest cockney, born and bred — and said:
    ‘Platts Lane? Err el (pointing one way) Arra?’ (pointing the other way).
    In case it is only your
grandmother who was Hungarian and you yourself are not, I ought to add that erre means this way, and arra means that way.
    The conductor was a little
taken aback by this pantomime and asked her:
    ‘Platts Lane, lady? If you
want Platts Lane…’
    The lady shook her head.
English was not a language to which she could listen with patience. She
interrupted the conductor with some irritation:
    ‘Platts Lane? Erre?
Arra?’
    The conductor raised his
voice and tried again: ‘Look, lady, I’m just trying to tell you that…’
    The lady interrupted again,
this time quite peremptorily:
    ‘Platts Lane: erre?
arra?’
    The conductor sighed and
pointed backwards: ‘Platts Lane? Arra!’

HOW TO BE AN
DECADENT

    To my dear old friend, Emeric
Pressburger –
    The only man I know who is not
decadent.
    But – I hope – he can learn.



FOR SOME TIME THERE’LL BE AN ENGLAND
     
    These are great
years for the British. The nation has not been so gloriously united since the
days of Churchill, but a blind and unappreciative world fails to see the light.
    Some time ago a businessman
friend of mine remarked about a Trotskyist Trade Union faction which was
holding up the settlement of a damaging strike by insisting on some ludicrous
and impossible demands: ‘They are incredibly stupid. Don’t they see that they
are rui n ing the country?’ But as their aim was to ruin the
country they were not stupid, whatever else they may have been.
    Similarly, the world fails
to understand the British and appreciate what they are doing. The British — as
the whole world, particularly the British themselves, keep saying — are the
most fair-minded people in the world. After the Second World War they declared:
‘Let’s be fair. We have been Top Nation for centuries. We have done splendidly
well once again. Now we must give others a chance. Let’s decline.’
    But it is not so easy to
decline as the uninitiated imagine. After a few centuries other nations just
will not believe that you are as inefficient and couldn’t-care-less as you are.
They will insist on thinking of you as successful, reliable and rich, however
unsuccessful, unreliable and poor you may have become. Declining needs the
effort of a united nation — not just one class, one layer; not just the
politicians. It needs the unfailing effort of rich and poor, old and young,
intellectual and illiterate, skilled and unskilled, shop floor and management.
It is an arduous, almost herculean task but nothing will deter the British,
once they have made up their minds. They played a great part in destroying Nazi
Germany; the destruction of democratic Britain seems child’s play compared with
that.
    The general strategy was
grandiose: let us give away our Empire as fast as possible or a little faster;
let us ruin the pound sterling by pretending that we did not give away our Empire
and can still be a reserve currency; let us ruin the City and then rely on it
as our main source of strength; let us distribute overseas aid in a grand
manner, at the same time, let us go around begging, cap in hand; Made in
Britain used to be synonymous with superlative quality, so let us not rest
until it means ‘shoddy goods, delivered late’; and let us divide the