How to be a Brit

air of expectancy. I
resist becoming the useful domestic animal of more and more cats but I know I
am fighting a losing battle. The stray cats of Fulham have got my name and
address.
    Some friends believe that I
am overdoing things with Tsi-Tsa. Not quite so much as Dezsö Szomory, a
brilliant but eccentric and misanthropic Hungarian writer of an earlier
generation. He hated human beings but loved and respected his cat. He promised
an article for Christmas to a newspaper but failed to deliver it on time. A
frantic editor rang him up several times. In the end he put a sheet of paper on
his desk but before he could start writing his cat lay down on the paper, as
cats are wont to do. To move the cat was out of the question but the article
was really urgent by now. So he wrote the article around the cat. (The
manuscript, I am told, is still preserved in Budapest.)

    I have not done that as yet
but I see the point. Whenever Tsi-Tsa sits on my chair — at the desk or at the
table when I want to eat — I move her chair gently and get another chair for
myself. I have been late for appointments, failed to go shopping and missed
planes because Tsi-Tsa was sitting on my lap. ‘But why don’t you throw her
down?’, quite a few astonished people have asked me. But I am equally
astonished by such questions. You don’t throw a fellow being down. You don’t
treat her that way just because she happens to be a cat. That would be real
racial discrimination: the human race discriminating against the feline race.

ON HOW NOT TO BE RESERVED
     
     
    ‘ The trouble with the English,’ a Cypriot restaurant owner in
Islington told me, ‘is that they are not reserved enough.’
    ‘You mean that they are
much too reserved,’ I corrected him.
    ‘That’s what I thought for
a long time, too. I concentrated all my energies on making them less reserved,
less stiff. On making them relaxed; at least on one single occasion; at least
in my own restaurant.’
    ‘But you never succeeded,’
said I.
    ‘Alas, I did. On New Year’s
Eve this restaurant was chock full, I had to send clients away. The atmosphere,
the ambiance was marvellous. People started talking to one another across the
tables, even flirting with one another. At midnight glasses were raised, strange
people drank champagne together, they embraced and kissed. They sang Auld Lang
Syne in chorus and started dancing — everybody in the restaurant, not a single
soul stayed at the tables. I never thought this was possible in this country. I
was really happy. And even that was not all. They marched round and round the
tables, then it became much too hot and someone had the bright idea of leading
the lot of them out and they danced round and round the square. I have never
seen a happier and more hilarious crowd even in Nicosia than those dancers in
the square.’
    ‘Then what are you
complaining about?’
    ‘Only half of them came
back.’

ON THE NATIONAL PASSION
     
    Quite a few people
told me that I was mistaken when I made fun of the English queueing habit. It
was simply a war-time expediency, it was explained to me, and it would
disappear in no time.
    It is still with us and
will remain with us forever because it corresponds to an inner need, it is a
way of self-expression. Other nations need occasional outbursts of madness and
violence; the English need occasional excesses of self-discipline. Other
nations, under unbearable stress, shout, howl, get into brawls, run amok; the
English queue up for a cup of tea.
    Demonstrations in other
countries are violent affairs, with baton charges and mass arrests. Such things
have occurred here, too, in the past. Today, if you are bored, you arrange a
demo. It may be about the fraternal visit of some objectionable eastern
potentate, or it may just as likely be a protest against the late delivery of
the morning mail, or the exclusion of dachshunds from comprehensive education.
It may be a demo by coloured citizens because too few of their relatives are
allowed in to the country, or a demo by Enoch Powell’s supporters against
letting in too many. It may be a demo by bread delivery men against the low
price of bread or by housewives against the high price of bread. Whether it is
a demo by stamp-collectors for more special issues or by pacifists for the
abolition of nuclear weapons, it does not matter, the picture will always be
the same: a peaceful, smiling crowd marching, carrying boards with slogans and
accompanied by a large number of