The Most Inoffensive People In the World.

I didn't write the following. Its a meme I've seen banging around on the internet for a while. Its amusing. I have no idea who originally wrote it but as I say it is full of nice observation. 

What it's like to be British

• Worrying you’ve accidentally packed 3 kilos of cocaine and a dead goat as you stroll through “Nothing to declare”

• Being unable to stand and leave without first saying “right”

• Not hearing someone for the third time, so just laughing and hoping for the best

• Saying “anywhere here’s fine” when the taxi’s directly outside your front door

• Being sure to start touching your bag 15 minutes before your station, so the person in the aisle seat is fully prepared for your exit

• Repeatedly pressing the door button on the train before it’s illuminated, to assure your fellow commuters you have the situation in hand

• Having someone sit next to you on the train, meaning you’ll have to eat your crisps at home
• The huge sense of relief after your perfectly valid train ticket is accepted by the inspector

• The horror of someone you only half know saying: “Oh I’m getting that train too”

• “Sorry, is anyone sitting here?” – Translation: Unless this is a person who looks remarkably like a bag, I suggest you move it

• Loudly tapping your fingers at the cashpoint, to assure the queue that you’ve asked for money and the wait is out of your hands

• Looking away so violently as someone nearby enters their PIN that you accidentally dislocate your neck

• Waiting for permission to leave after paying for something with the exact change

• Saying hello to a friend in the supermarket, then creeping around like a burglar to avoid seeing them again

• Watching with quiet sorrow as you receive a different haircut to the one you requested

• Being unable to pay for something with the exact change without saying “I think that’s right”

• Overtaking someone on foot and having to keep up the uncomfortably fast pace until safely over the horizon

• Being unable to turn and walk in the opposite direction without first taking out your phone and frowning at it

• Deeming it necessary to do a little jog over zebra crossings, while throwing in an apologetic mini wave

• Punishing people who don’t say thank you by saying “you’re welcome” as quietly as possible

• The overwhelming sorrow of finding a cup of tea you forgot about

• Turning down a cup of tea for no reason and instantly knowing you’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake

• Suddenly remembering your tea and necking it like a massive, lukewarm shot

• Realising you’ve got about fifty grand’s worth of plastic bags under your kitchen sink

• “You’ll have to excuse the mess” – Translation: I’ve spent seven hours tidying in preparation for your visit

• Indicating that you want the last roast potato by trying to force everyone else to take it

• “I’m off to bed” – Translation: “I’m off to stare at my phone in another part of the house”

• Mishearing somebody’s name on the second time of asking, meaning you must now avoid them forever

• Leaving it too late to correct someone, meaning you must live with your new name forever

• Running out of ways to say thanks when a succession of doors are held for you, having already deployed ‘cheers’, ‘ta’ and ‘nice one’

• Changing from ‘kind regards’ to just ‘regards’, to indicate that you’re rapidly reaching the end of your tether

• Staring at your phone in silent horror until the unknown number stops ringing

• Hearing a recording of your own voice and deciding it’s perhaps best never to speak again

• The relief when someone doesn’t answer their phone within three rings and you can hang up

• Filming an entire fireworks display on your phone, knowing full well you’ll never, ever watch it again

Charming aren't we? We "British" ( it means English in this context - we don't really think of the Scots, the Welsh or the Northern Irish in these terms). We fall over ourselves to be polite. We never say what we mean, tying ourselves in knots, desperate not to let the side down, to keep up appearances. Our pained expressions and our clammy hands, our stomachs  tight balls of anxiety as we struggle with yet another uncalled for social interaction - another name to remember, another face to smile at. The meekest, most inoffensive people on earth, bound forever in tight corsets of the horror of ever upsetting anyone. 

The English. 

Wait a minute? The English? The people that brought you Brexit and "Up Yours, Delors"? The nation that gave the world football hooligans and the Bullingdon Club? An entire country of people who still can't hold their drink and spend Friday nights vomiting and pissing on one another mid-fight. A nation of belligerent and pugnacious Empire builders who destroyed and displaced whole peoples, nicked all their stuff and stuck it on a Portland Stone plinth in a room guarded by an old man with bad feet? A nation of chippy queue jumpers, shouty mums, braying pub bores and people who know their rights without knowing their rights. A nation that gave 48 million pounds to Wetherspoons (who subsequently put their prices up) but not a single penny to the arts. 

This characterisation of timid, convention-strangled English people: tongue-tied, decent and practically asexual, is a hangover from some unspecified late Victorian/ mid-twentieth Century archetype. We aren't like this. We are neither Bertie Wooster (he has a finer character than we do) or Arthur Dent (he has enviable tolerance and open mindedness). Watch "Naked Attraction", "Love Island" or that show where people cook each other dinners and everybody slags everyone else off behind their backs. That's what we're like now. The English are performative now. We can appear on camera. We have good teeth. We're "up for it". 

I love watching the contestants on quiz shows from as little as thirty years ago. Back then we were a meek, grey people, in fawn slacks and bad perms. We might have had a moustache. And we mumbled. We couldn't make eye-contact with the camera. The gulf between TV presenter (smooth, affable, oily and loud) and punter (drip-dry, nervous, itching for a fag) is enormous. During David Bowie's legendary performance of Starman on Top of the Pops there is a moon-faced lad in a tank top staring at himself in the monitor and bopping crappily from side to side. That is old England. Not the outlandish, keening sex-alien but the pudding faced wally who can't believe he's on telly. 

That gap wouldn't exist today. The artist and the audience would be interchangeable. Which seems democratic but lends itself to rather bland art. Though no one would seriously be interested in being a pop star anyway. Being famous is the main thing - doing something to become famous looks a bit Twentieth Century. 

So, the English, then. Possibly not straight-jacketed with repression any more. From not wanting to cause offence to being mad about causing offence ("you can't say anything anymore - its PC gone mad"). From being stiff and socially awkward to treating every Friday night like it was Spring Break on the Keys. From floppy fringed stutterer Hugh Grant, charming the knickers off the world with mordant wit and self-deprecation to Simon Cowell, wearing a mask of his own face, and existing just to insult people in a tired sarcastic manner and wear boot-cut jeans with black shoes. That is who we are now. Simon Cowell is 60. Old enough to still be shit on telly.