How to be a Brit

Indiar-and-Pakistan and of Lawr-and-order, only to find that he used up his r-ration,
frittered it away, and now he has to save madly where he can. So he will speak
of a Labouh M.P. and of the Fah East.
    Do we really have a serious r -problem? Or are we just in an illiteracy situation?

FOOD
     
     
    ‘ On the Continent people have good food; in England they have
good table manners,’ I wrote in How to be an Alien. Since then, food in
England has improved, table manners have deteriorated. In those days food was
hardly ever discussed, it was taboo, like sex. Today newspapers and magazines
all have their good food guides and many so-called experts send you off to eat
uneatable meals. Then it was possible for a much-travelled businessman, even a
diplomat, to have no idea what an avacado pear was; today any docker may
quarrel with his wife: ‘What’s that Doris, paella? Paella again? All right, I
know I like paella but paella every day — bloody paella and nothing
else? What about a decent, honest-to-goodness ratatouille for a change?’
    There is no denying that
the post-war travelling mania has improved British eating habits beyond
recognition. Before the war, the French loved eating and were proud of it; the
puritanical British loved eating just as much but were ashamed of their
passion. After the war, millions of people got acquainted with good food abroad
and refused the staple diet of stale boiled cabbage floating in tepid, salt
water. You could eat very well in London in the sixties and seventies. Even
Michelin published a guide to British restaurants, partly to pay tribute to
this improvement, partly to emphasise that in spite of all improvements not one
single British establishment deserved three rosettes.
    That much-boasted
improvement, however, is not quite so universal as we should like to believe.
In 1976 the police noticed that a large number of foreign lorry-drivers were
committing speeding offences. They were driving their enormous articulated
lorries as if they were racing cars or as if they were being pursued.
Investigation established that they were, in fact, pursued: by English food.
They were doing their level best — risking their licences and even their lives
— to get away from English meals. They wanted to deliver their goods and return
to the Continent on the same day. As they had to eat something while in
Britain, most of them — according to the UICR, the Union Internationale des
Chauffeurs Routiers — brought decent continental sandwiches with them.
    There is another remarkable
development. In those early days one could not find one single English restaurant
on the Continent and very few in London. Soho was full of Italian, Greek,
Chinese, Spanish and Hungarian restaurants. Yugoslav and Portuguese places came
later, to be joined before long by beefburger and Kentucky fried chicken
establishments, Wimpy bars and other glories of American civilisation; but
proper English restaurants were few and far between even in London. Today,
almost everything that is bad in the English kitchen is becoming popular on the
Continent while everything that is good is going out of fashion even in
Britain.
    Take the English breakfast,
for example, the true glory of English culinary art which puts the pale and
insipid café complet to shame. Is it gaining ground in Oslo or
Luxembourg? On the contrary — and it has almost completely disappeared from
English homes and is fast disappearing even from English hotels. You can make
your own breakfast in some hotels from instant coffee or tea supplied in little
bags, or you may be served scrambled eggs made of top-quality plastic mixed with
outstandingly tasty cotton wool.
    But other things English
are gaining ground. Fish and chip shops (this is an exception to the rule: fish
and chips is one of the glories of Britain) are being opened all over Europe
and British cod is being wrapped in the Daily Mirror — after all, you
cannot wrap up fish and chips in the Dagens Nyheter and still less in
the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. So far so good. Fish and chip shops
are great institutions, but the true horrors and monstrosities of the English
kitchen are becoming even more popular.

    English grocer-shops are
being opened in Brussels and other places where true Britons congregate in
large numbers. They sell canned steak and kidney pud, English sausages,
porridge, cans of oxtail and mulligatawny soups, baked beans, tomato ketchup
and other outrages on the human