How to be a Brit

bored policemen. All they will achieve is a
gigantic traffic jam but that’s better than nothing. Indeed, judging by some
demonstrators’ looks at frustrated motorists, it must be quite satisfactory.
    In shops the English stand
in queues; in government offices they sit in queues; in churches they kneel in
queues; at sales time, they lie in queues all night in Oxford Street.
    I was queueing myself once
at the snack-bar of Hurl-ingham Club. The queue was long. In front of me there
was a patient and silent middle-aged English couple and in front of them three
crazy foreign women talking to one another in loud voices and with atrocious
German accents. They had forgotten to collect their cutlery when joining the
queue and they had forgotten to collect their salad from a side-table, so they
were rushing backward and forward, cackling ‘I am so sorry’ with what
they must have believed to be impeccable English manners. When they broke the
sacred order of the queue once again, the taciturn Englishman started losing
his temper and was obviously about to say something rather strong, when his
wife warned him: ‘Don’t, Giles, they’re not English.’

    That settled it. The man
calmed down and took no further notice of the three irritating females. As they
were not English one could not expect them to behave. Perhaps one could train hedgehogs, chimpanzees or foreigners to queue up in an orderly fashion,
but it is not worth the trouble.
    Yes, I do see the
tormenting need in the English for frequent bouts of self-discipline. So I used
to be puzzled by the behaviour of football fans. How did their nauseating
vandalism fit my theory? I had to investigate, and my findings are not at all
surprising: 97.2 per cent of all supporters of Manchester United are
foreigners, mostly Dutch and Albanians. Of the rest, 2.8 per cent are Irish and
Czechoslovakian, which leaves just a handful of English supporters. After the
defeats of their Club these two or three English people queue up for cigarettes,
then for sandwiches, then for beer, and having let off steam in true English
fashion, they go home to queue up for their supper. The rest? No, Giles, they
are not English.

ON NOT COMPLAINING
     
     
    You must never complain.
Complaining is very un-English. If you are kept waiting half an hour in a shop
by the Knights of the Barter; if a bus conductor or a Labour Exchange official
is rude to you; if a waiter brings your food ice-cold — you keep your mouth
shut. Sometimes in a shop, in offices or some other public place an offensive
or sarcastic remark may be made about you in the third person, but you just
don’t hear it. The stiff upper lip is the British way. Only the Dutch and the
Albanians (with a few odd Irish, Czechoslovaks and suchlike thrown in) will
make a row, protest loudly or call for the manager.
    Should you be so misguided
as to complain, or at least murmur, public opinion will instantly turn against
you: ‘Who does he think he is?’
    The waiter may pour tomato
juice down your collar and you exclaim ‘Ouch I’ Someone will be sure to remark
: ‘It’s difficult to please some people.’
    So do not complain. Never
complain. Whatever happens, remember the new national slogan: ‘It’s one of
those things’ When your brand-new toasting machine goes up in flames and
toasts you instead of your bread, you nod: ‘It’s one of those things,’ and the
matter is closed. Apart from being utterly un-English, un-Scottish and un-Welsh
to complain, there is another reason for not opening your mouth. They do not
even hear the complaints; their ears are not tuned to them.
    A friend of mine, a film
writer, was a regular client at a famous and expensive Soho restaurant. At 2 p.m. precisely (and at 9 p.m. at dinner time), the office door opened and an
elderly gentleman in morning coat came out (as he had been doing for the last
thirty-seven years), went from table to table, bowed slightly and asked: ‘Did
you enjoy your meal?’ For thirty-seven years hundreds of thousands of properly
brought up English people replied to him: ‘Very much indeed.’ The man bowed
once again, said ‘Thank you very much,’ and moved on to the next table.
    One day the lunch was so
abominable that my friend (Dutch mother, Albanian father, one Irish, one
Czechoslovakian grandmother) decided to tell him the naked truth. At 2 o’clock
the door opened and the antiquated manager came out as usual. When he reached
my friend’s table he bowed and asked yet