Читать книгу We’re British, Innit: An Irreverent A to Z of All Things British - Iain Aitch - Страница 4
ОглавлениеAlthough originally an Australian import, the alcopop became very much a part of the British way of life during the youth alcohol crisis of the 1990s. Teenagers were simply not consuming enough booze, which alcoboffins put down to them not wanting to acquire a taste through beer, cider or Buckfast as their parents had done. The instant gratification generation was in danger of being lost to sobriety, thoughtfulness and good deeds, so the booze manufacturers simply added a 5 per cent alcohol content to the teens’ favourite soft drinks. This allowed them to get hammered on familiar flavours and had the added advantage of allowing them to get their friends unwittingly drunk as well. The side effect of this increase in teen drinking was a correlating rise in teen pregnancy, ensuring that the pensions crisis may yet be averted. Plans to reintroduce milk to primary schools as a 3 per cent alcohol ‘alcomilk’ are merely rumours at the time of going to press.
If someone comes into your local pub (see pubs) asking the landlord if his beer is alive, they are probably not some kind of extreme animal-rights type who only eats wind-fallen apples and keeps yeast as a pet. They are most likely a real ale enthusiast. An unkempt beard and enormous gut may be other clues to look out for, but nowadays more presentable human beings are enjoying the taste of our country’s ales. There have even been unconfirmed reports that a woman ordered some in the Midlands last year. It is very easy to laugh at hardcore real ale fans. So let’s stop for a moment to do that. Okay, that’s enough. Ale is one thing we do fantastically well in Britain, but it has been largely usurped by the search for the ever-colder pint of lager, with drinkers in the south preferring something approaching a lager Slush Puppy over a beer they can taste. Real ale brewers don’t help themselves by calling their brews Old Dogge Bollocke or giving it some name and back story that you need to have a PhD in naval history to appreciate.
Like a kind of poor man’s golf club, the allotment has traditionally been seen as a place for a man to be out in the open air, away from his wife and amongst specialist equipment. The knitwear tends to be more downbeat, but there is the added advantage of a shed in which to store pornographic magazines, pipe tobacco and a bottle of something warming. Of course, allotments are also places that can be used to grow vegetables and they are becoming popular once again with city dwellers as the trend for organic and local food grows. Allotments have been around since the eighteenth century, but they really came into their own with the advent of World War II and the Dig For Victory campaign, which encouraged Britons to grow their own food. Allotments are generally owned by local councils or by allotment associations, with the annual rent being fairly cheap. In big cities there are waiting lists for allotments, which also enjoyed a 1970s boom in popularity when The Good Life showed us that self-sufficiency might lead to the ability to make our own cut-price wine or the possibility of sleeping with Felicity Kendall.
Sport in Britain was initially divided upon class lines, with superior sporting character bestowed upon those who could afford to compete for the love of the game and those who took a wage being seen as belonging to the lower orders. This distinction can be seen in the naming of the famous Gentlemen versus Players cricket matches of the nineteenth century (see cricket). The Gentlemen were the amateurs and the Players were the professionals, which cast those good enough to play for a living as less-than-noble money-grubbing savages. This belief in the idea of amateurism being a more tasteful and morally superior pursuit has pervaded British society ever since, resulting in our propensity to have a go at any number of things rather than commit ourselves to becoming proficient enough to excel in one. This spirit can be seen in our bank holiday rush to the DIY superstores, our love of gardening and our desire to visit Ann Summers of a weekend. The utensils from all three pastimes may be interchangeable, but some of these things really are best left to a professional.
These tiny insects are very much a part of any British summer, be they invading your picnic, running through your food cupboards or being victims of childhood experiments in the garden. Brits see the appearance of more than three ants in one place as some kind of declaration of war (as we know that ants are the only creatures other than humans that wage wars and this brings out the combatant in us). Chemical weapons are purchased from a hardware shop, with the lightly dusted doorstep being doused with boiling water should any enemy ants be subsequently spotted. Children become the SS concentration camp doctors of the summer-long campaign against ants, melting them with magnifying glasses, trying to teach them to swim and seeing what happens when you introduce red ants to a black ants’ nest. The hottest day of the British summer is always that which is known as Flying Ant Day. This is the day (usually in mid-July) when all flying ants hatch and the skies become black with the confused creatures. Ice pops are always free on this day. Just ask at your local newsagent.
I am sorry to bring this up and I know it seems a little rude, but we Brits are apologetic to the point of irritation. We are the only nation that offers an apology when someone stands on our toes, barges in front of us in a queue or when we have to send back food in a restaurant (after we have had a five-minute argument with our dining partner about whether it would be too impolite to do so) (see poor service). This character trait has lead to us slipping behind in the field of commerce and innovation in recent years, with inventors often not wanting to seem boastful by telling all and sundry about their cure for cancer or knowing how to start their pitch for investment in their product that will cure world hunger without saying, ‘I’m really sorry, but …’.
Rumty-tumti-tumti-tum, rumty-tum-tralala. These are the opening sounds of the show that keeps Britain in touch with our rural communities and Radio 4 listeners convinced that they would be able to deliver a piglet if the need were to ever arise in some kind of unlikely porcine life-or-death emergency. It is really good fun to refer to it as Britain’s oldest soap opera when you encounter an avid listener. Many Radio 4 listeners see themselves as above soaps, thinking of them (probably rightly) as full of planes crashing into bisexual threesomes at the top of an already flaming boozer run by small-time crooks with improper diction and a confusing family back story that involves siblings appearing and then reappearing with someone else’s face (see eastenders). The best bit about The Archers is spotting when some snippet of farming news or politics is slipped in, sounding like the kind of clanging, clumsy insert you may expect on North Korean radio. All farmhands speak in a subhuman grunt language, which is both scary and sexually arousing for regular listeners.
Britain is littered with glorious examples of historical architecture, from the spectacular St Paul’s dome by Christopher Wren to the innovation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh as well as a historical array that stretches from Tudor houses to spectacular statement buildings by Norman Foster or Richard Rogers. When it comes to our homes, things are a little less exciting. The fact that we call anything designed after 1900 ‘modern’ could explain our attitude, as does the realisation that most new houses are some kind of Tudor-Georgian-Victorian cocktail, with windows about the size of the defensive arrow slits in old castles. Ask most Britons what they think ‘contemporary home design’ is and they will probably tell you it is a house that comes with the satellite dish already installed.
The rich have Harrods and Harvey Nichols, the middle class have Habitat and John Lewis and the poor have Argos, which combines low prices, high security and tacky jewellery under one enormous roof. You can buy your Reebok Classics, Nike tracksuit, sovereign ring (see sovereign rings) and pay-as-you- go mobile at Argos, as well as picking up a plasma screen and a PlayStation 3. In fact, if the store were to branch out into booze, fags and a bit of weed then there really would be no need for Britain’s underclass to shop anywhere else. In fact, if we just built an Argos into the middle of every new estate, put high fences around the perimeter…sorry, where was I? Oh yes, they have a strange system of shopping, whereby you have to select your item from an in-store catalogue, pay at a till and then collect your goods elsewhere in the store. A bit like internet shopping without the internet and with more people in Burberry baseball caps (see burberry) smoking on your way in.
This thoroughbred strand of our society is born to lead, rule and have no chin. The chin was deliberately bred out of the class when it was found to inhibit correct soup eating, shouting ‘yah’ really loudly and certain secret aristocratic sex rituals, the likes of which we can only imagine. The chin also stops the nose being able to get quite so close to the cocaine, for a clean, mess-free snort. Previously entitled to rule via hereditary seats in the House of Lords, the old aristocracy is giving way to a new financial aristocracy who buy their seats in the new ‘more democratic’ upper house. This leaves the old aristocracy more time to murder nannies, shoot stuff and drive around their land wearing tweed (see harris tweed).
The Antisocial Behaviour Order is not, as some think, a court order that means you must behave in an antisocial manner, like some magistrate-lead game of Simon Says. Instead, it is an order of merit awarded to those who have proven great skill in the pursuit of being an absolute twat. As sought after as a place on the New Year’s Honours list or a military decoration, the ASBO is a sign you have arrived and done great works among your community, whether it be playing the same Kylie record over and over at ear-splitting volume or punching out anyone who looks at you slightly askance. Winners of ASBOs are given special privileges, which means that they do not have to work ever again. Employers are instructed to not take them on, even if they beg, as their place in society is beyond mere employment.
An orgy of frolicking, foraging and fornication, this hidden camera television show lets us see what our wonderful wildlife is getting up to when we are off at work or tucked up in bed. This is fairly passable if you catch it once while eating your dinner from a tray on your knees, but watch it more than once and you may find yourself caring more about a family of ducks than is actually healthy for a sane adult. The topic is interesting though, so what may liven things up is having former Goodie Bill Oddie trade jobs with investigative blowhard Donal McIntyre. That way McIntyre can report on the problems of violence among gangs of blackbirds while Oddie can hole up in a caravan on a Leeds housing estate, commentating on feral youth and the disintegration of society. ‘Aw, look. Here comes one of our crackheads, I think…yes, it’s Dean and is that Tracy with him? Yes it is, and she is carrying their new crack baby. Now over to Kate, who has just caught a lovely happy slapping in Aberdeen.’
