How to be a Brit

palate. You might have thought that the British
leave this country in order to get away from all this. Not at all. They queue
up for them all over Europe. I am happy to report that these imports have not
made any impact yet on the Continentals. As soon as the French start queuing up
for baked beans, I shall commit harakiri, simply by leaning slowly on my
favourite carving knife. Yes: the day the French start eating canned steak and
kidney pie with a little tomato ketchup on top will mark the end of a great
civilisation, the end of European supremacy and the suicide of a Continent.
     
    * * *
     
    And a final warning to
continental visitors. Many have come to grief, not knowing an important British
custom.
    At dinner parties — on the
Continent as well as in Britain — you will be offered a second helping. On the
Continent — particularly in Austria but also in other Central European lands —
you say ‘No thank you’ upon which the hostess will shriek, moan, sob and
beseech you to eat a little more. She will accuse you of not liking her food,
of spoiling her evening, of making her unhappy, of being unappreciative and
ungrateful, a bad guest and a bad man. So you protest your appreciation, assure
her that the food is magnificent, one of the memorable meals of your life, take
a lot more of everything, force it down, get indigestion, and speed on to an
early demise.
    All Continentals, brought
up in Monchengladbach, Attnang-Pucheim, Hódmezövásárhely or Subotica, start off
in Britain, too, with an innocent ‘No thank you’ as their mothers taught them.
And that is the end of the affair. To their horror, the hostess does not fall
on her knees and does not threaten suicide if her guest does not make a pig of
himself. With rueful eyes the poor guest sees the dishes disappear, and the
subject is closed.
    So when offered a second
helping, grab it. Or simply nod. No one will think the worse of you. And no one
will regard you as a gentleman for not taking a second helping. No one will
regard you as a gentleman whatever you may do — so you might as well take that
second helping.

     

DRINKS
     
     
    Drinks have gone in
or out of fashion, like clothes. When I first came here, gin and lime was the
most popular drink. Ask for a gin and lime today and people will look at you as
if thinking you must have fought with the Duke of Wellington’s army. Then came
the pink gin era. Apart from a few fossils, who drinks pink gin today? Whisky,
of course, has remained a favourite and vodka has become popular. (Justly so.
Vodka today is 2.7 per cent stronger than in Czarist times. Some sceptics doubt
that this one single achievement of the Soviet State justifies sixty years of
upheaval, misery, Stalin, purges and the Gulag Archipelago — where, by the way,
not much vodka is consumed by the prisoners.)
    During the post-war years
the English have learnt a great deal about wine and Britain is now par
excellence, the land of wine snobbery, beaten only by the United States.
The British love sweet wine but all deny this with a vehemence worthy of a
better cause because they know (or believe) that drinking sweet wine is non-U.
Excellent and expensive dry continental wines are being shipped here, then a
little glucose is added to them, in secret. As a French wine expert once
remarked to me: ‘The English like their wine dry as long as it’s sweet.’
    British drinking habits are
also gaining ground abroad. Whisky, and gin and tonic, have long been
favourites among knowledgeable Continentals but nowadays British-style pubs are
being opened all over Europe and ale is on draft at many places. Serious
Belgians — Flemings and Walloons alike — sip Guinness and nod approval. But if
the expansion of British ale is a little surprising, the conquering march —
well, the few conquering steps — of British wine is downright flabbergasting.
    More and more people
maintain that Britain is a vine-growing country. If it could be done under
Elizabeth I why not under Elizabeth II? What’s wrong with our Elizabeth?
A friend of mine, in a high and responsible job and otherwise quite normal,
keeps reassuring me in all seriousness that his own wine, grown in Fulham,
beats any French and German wine hands down. As he produces only twenty-eight
bottles per annum of his Chateau Parsons Green, Pouilly Fume and
Niersteiner need not tremble yet. But they’d better watch Fulham. I tried his
wine in Chelsea, in a house some five hundred yards from the Fulham