In the wake of the disturbing news from Pyongyang about Kim Jong-un’s being iffy about meeting with our acting president, many Americans have cashed in their airplane tickets to Singapore and now intend instead to attend the forthcoming wedding of King Harry to the bisexual German-American actress Meghan Merkel, Angela’s niece, if not ashes, I shall here offer some pointers on getting along with the Brits, among whom I have lived and loved for most of the present century, and this is the longest sentence you will read today.
The Brits pride themselves on their sense of humour, here spelled (or spelt, as they’d prefer) with an extraneous u, which is very much drier, more cynical, and more hyperbolic than Americans’. If you think a Brit may be mocking you, he or she almost certainly is. The good news is that, in most cases, you may invite your antagonist to fuck off without fear of being headbutted, “fuck off” being approximately equivalent to the American “get outta here” or “gimme a break!”
Favourite British recreations include moaning — that is, complaining — about everything under the sun, though the sun is only infrequently glimpsed here, queuing, and cottaging. Queuing involves forming a tidy line for such things as buses and ration coupons, whereas cottaging, popularised by the late singer George Michael, involves loitering furtively in public parks at night in hope of meeting a member of the same sex with whom to copulate.
Not so long ago, the Brits introduced plastic £5 and £10 notes, which are thought to be more durable than the old-fashioned paper kind, but which, to the immense displeasure of animal rights extremists, contain miniscule traces of tallow. One feels sleazy and disreputable handling the strangely slimy-feeling new currency, and is urged instead to pay for everything with a credit or “debit” card — but only after prolonged haggling, which the locals enjoy nearly as much as queuing, cottaging, and moaning. Many shopkeepers will actually feel insulted if one pays the stated price for something without first offering a much lower one, and mischaracterising it as his or her final offer.
Many British “blokes” (that is, non-females) enjoy talking about sport, without an s, and nearly all “support” a particular “football club”, though said clubs, like American professional sports teams, are made up of arrogant foreign mercenaries who know nothing of the cities they purportedly represent, and whose obscene salaries are paid either by right-wing oligarchs who often don’t even live in the United Kingdom, or multinational corporations principally in the business of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. Many young British women have ludicrous eyebrows, won’t leave the house without multiple pairs of huge false eyelashes, and enjoy binge-drinking, though the immoderate consumption of alcohol has been shown to involve significant health risks.
The British own few guns, but on the country’s increasingly indistinguishable high (that is, main) streets, machete, scalpel, sickle, skewer, sword, cutlass, lance, sabre, scimitar, scythe, shank, stiletto, and shiv shops have largely supplanted the tattoo salons of the earlier years of the century. If there’s one thing young British men enjoy even more than queuing, breaking each other’s noses with their foreheads, loudly debating the relative merits of various football clubs, and “pulling” (that is, “picking up”) drunken young women in huge false eyelashes, it’s stabbing each other. For once, President Trump was actually understating the case when he told the NRA recently that surgeons in National Health Service emergency rooms are commonly ankle-deep in blood while they surge. All but the tallest are actually calf-deep.
Politically, the left and right here are hardly less antagonistic than in the USA. Half the country hates Teresa May and the European Union, while the other half hates Jeremy Corbyn and the idea of leaving the EU, but nearly everyone likes London’s Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan, in large part because the monthly public stonings-to-death he’s introduced in accordance with sharia law provide free diversion to a populace that often can’t afford £15 for a fucking cinema ticket. There is only one television channel in the United Kingdom, and most days it just replays ancient episodes of an acquired-taste sitcom called Only Fools and Horses over and over again. You may wish to buy a John Grisham legal thriller at the airport before flying over, but only if your taste in literature is utter rubbish.
I urge you to watch the Manny Finkelman’s Britain video series.
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