How to be a Brit

border. It
was vinegary, indeed undrinkable, and we were all embarrassed — except for him.
‘I admit,’ he said generously, ‘that fine though this wine is, it doesn’t
travel very well.’
    In the mid-sixties I wrote
a book on snobbery with the Duke of Bedford. Once, after dinner, I asked him
what his own, worst snobbery was.
    ‘What exactly do you mean?’
he asked.
    ‘Something you know is
snobbish and silly, still you stick to it.’
    He did not have to think
long: ‘I’d rather bite my tongue off than say “cheers”.’
    ‘What do you say? Skål?’
    ‘Nothing, of course. That’s
the point. A man likes to drink in peace and does not want attention drawn to
himself whenever he lifts his glass to his lips. Just drink and keep silent.’
    For a while this rule was
followed in U circles. But today people do not want to be U any more. Besides,
the one strong measure the Chancellor has taken to solve the economic crisis,
is to raise the price of drinks higher and higher. That is supposed to save the
country. Like taking in one another’s washing. So the drinkers of Britain are
really saving us all. Drinking another double whisky is an act of patriotism.
Even pink gin. And vodka, too. England expects every man to do his duty.

SHOPPING
     
     
    When you, Distinguished
Visitor, want to do some shopping in England, you are — as you will find out
soon — at the mercy of the shop-assistants, now called sales ladies or sales
gentlemen, soon to be called Knights and Dames of the Barter. Shopping here is
different from shopping elsewhere.
    1. When you enter the shop,
as likely as not, the Knights and Dames of the Barter will be engaged in lively
and witty conversation with one another. You must wait until they turn their
attention to you and that may take quite a while. Under no circumstances are
you to interrupt their conversation; you are not to speak until you are spoken to.
    2. If there are other
people waiting in the shop — be the shop the local butcher’s where you intend
to buy a quarter of a pound of minced meat or Cartier’s, where you mean to
spend a quarter of a million on a ring for your girl-friend — you wait for your
turn. If the death penalty is ever to be restored in Britain, it will not be
for murder — an art the English admire and appreciate as connoisseurs — but for
queue-jumping, the most heinous of all crimes.
    3. While — say — the
butcher serves a lady who is shopping for five days for her family of fourteen,
you must not take advantage of a momentary pause (as you would in France) to
butt in and ask if he has any calf’s liver — not because you want to be served
out of turn, of course, just to find out whether it is worth waiting. You will
get no reply. This is not discourtesy: it is simply due to the fact that you do
not exist. You may not be aware of this; you may live in the mistaken belief
that you do exist, but you do not. Before your turn comes you are less than a
dog. A dog would be noticed and urged to leave the shop. But you definitely do
not exist before your turn comes, you are a non-person, you are thin air, a
nonentity, a body non-incarnate, waiting to be materialised when the butcher
turns his smiling attention to you.

    4. Few British people go
shopping because they need something, still less because they can afford it.
Shopping is a social occasion — an opportunity for a chat, an opportunity to
display your charm, to show the world that you are on Christian-name terms with
the butcher’s second assistant and not just a casual who has dropped in from
the street. When your turn comes, the butcher’s full attention will be yours.
No one exists but you. You are the centre of his universe and that’s quite
something. You may wax a trifle impatient when — having already waited
fifty-seven minutes in the queue, ankle-deep in sawdust — the lady with the
large family starts explaining to the butcher which of her children loves liver
and which prefers kidney, or when she enquires if the butcher’s younger
daughter has already had her second baby. You should suppress this impatience.
When your turn comes, the butcher will be yours and only yours. You can
then discuss with him last night’s rain, your digestion, your children’s
progress in arithmetic, the topless lady’s photo in today’s Sun (but not
politics or indeed anything that a reasonably intelligent adult would like to
discuss with his favourite butcher). In France they would interrupt you