LJ Idol - Week Six.
Not Of Your World
You know, I have never felt more English than when I travel abroad. It’s as if all of my unique Britishness, my defining Anglocentricity is distilled down into one little bubble of BBC-centric tea-obsessed, Victorian-related English that just rolls out of me as though I spend my entire life in a top hat and corset.
Most of this, unsurprisingly, happens when I am in the company of Americans, our little colonial cousin that flew the coop but just can’t resist a look back to the nest occasionally. It’s an odd feeling; as a whole, we are not that patriotic over here, and yet whenever I go abroad it’s as if I need to be the best Englishwoman that I can be. I’ve packed little flags of St George to hang in my room when I worked at a Pennsylvania camp, tucked little boxes of Twinings tea into my luggage to give me a taste of home when I lived onboard a cruise ship. My nationality is a defining attribute that seperates me from my co-workers. They are American. I am English. Occasionally they are Canadian. We are our countries, no matter whether we like it or not.
Explaining unique British traditions are actually my favourite part of travelling and meeting new people. I like to know lots of little stories about what we have and others don’t - I know that Christmas crackers do not exist in America, and have taught thirteen year olds Pass The Parcel, a game that every British child has been playing since they were out of the womb. I’ve taught the same thirteen year olds how we eat jelly (Or Jell-O) and ice cream at birthday parties, and attempted to explain the intricacies that go into Pantomime, a theatre event that is compulsory in Britain at Christmas and yet is hardly known elsewhere in the world. I have explained many, many times how to make an acceptable cup of tea, and sat in overly dramatic shock several times when presented with a cup of lukewarm water, a teabag and a jug of cream at an American restaurant. I will admit that Americans make a superior cup of coffee, but your tea is awful.
Our pancakes are different, too; did you know that ours are not the thick American maple-syrup drenched stacks, but more along the lines of the French crepes, eaten with lemon and sugar at Easter time. My mother is in the process of creating another traditionally British Christmas treat; the Christmas cake, topped with marzipan and thick white icing, and my father makes his own version of the very British mince pie, filled not with beef but with sweet mincemeat and drowned in sugar, served in little foil cups to all of your Christmas guests. We have an extra day of holiday after Christmas Day, called Boxing Day, and treated as another bank holiday with more shocking Christmas TV and Christmas dinner leftovers treated as brand new meals within themselves as all of the shops will be shut.
The best part of being English, of course, is our language. Thanks to the popularity of Harry Potter and Doctor Who, Britglish has never been more in vogue, whilst at the same time going through a huge vocabulary shift due in part to the prominence of the Internet and the American influence on our culture. Teenagers are more likely now to refer to their end-of-school celebration as a ‘prom’, whereas only five years ago I just went to a ‘Leavers Ball’, or simply a rather rubbish ‘school disco’. We never graduate from school, only university, but we do start off as ‘first years’, and go up to being ‘sixth formers’. I wear ‘trousers’, not ‘pants’, own two ‘waistcoats’ instead of ‘vests’, and laugh whenever I hear Americans refer to a man’s ‘braces’ as ‘suspenders’ - ours after all, are the items ladies wear on their legs to hold up stockings. Did you know that when we are in a building, we always enter on the Ground floor, never the First floor (which is always the first level when you go up the stairs), or that we take the ‘lift’ and never the ‘elevator’?
Other British ways of life are perhaps more obscure - we have to pay an annual license fee of around £120 to the BBC if we own a television, and that is compulsory since the BBC is advertisement-free, the choice of newspaper that you buy dictates your political leanings, and even the choice of supermarket you buy your weekly shop at shows exactly what class you fall into. Pub culture has its own ways and measures too; you always order from the bar and waiters do not exist, you almost never tip a bartender (other than to buy them a drink), and we tend to buy drinks in rounds, not leaving a friend with an empty glass if we can possibly help it.
I also love to learn the same in return about other traditions and cultures. No country that I have found holds a party like the Swiss at Fasnacht, no other country calls flip-flops ‘jangles’ like the Kiwis, and no other country sells sweet bread on the beach like the French. Other traditions fascinate me; the style in which Greeks eat made me want to gather up the entire restaurant and transport it back home in a whole box of dolmades, keftethakia and tyropitakia. I never thought I would like Turkey until I went to Kusadasi with the ship and was taken to a little restaurant that was a crew favourite. I ate one course of a four course meal and was instantly hooked. I never understood the fuss over Italian ice cream until I had a tub of gelato, and now I simply can’t look back. The unexpected pleasure that comes with an unexpected favourite is the best feeling in the world.
I love to explore, and to discover all of these new traditions whilst sharing my own. Perhaps I add on an extra aura of ‘Englishness’ whilst abroad, simply so I give people what they expect, but I don’t mind being set apart; that’s okay. I have a little Union Jack imprinted on my heart, and lots of traditions tucked into my pocket. If anybody asks, I love to tell - I’m a guest in their world, after all.
You know, I have never felt more English than when I travel abroad. It’s as if all of my unique Britishness, my defining Anglocentricity is distilled down into one little bubble of BBC-centric tea-obsessed, Victorian-related English that just rolls out of me as though I spend my entire life in a top hat and corset.
Most of this, unsurprisingly, happens when I am in the company of Americans, our little colonial cousin that flew the coop but just can’t resist a look back to the nest occasionally. It’s an odd feeling; as a whole, we are not that patriotic over here, and yet whenever I go abroad it’s as if I need to be the best Englishwoman that I can be. I’ve packed little flags of St George to hang in my room when I worked at a Pennsylvania camp, tucked little boxes of Twinings tea into my luggage to give me a taste of home when I lived onboard a cruise ship. My nationality is a defining attribute that seperates me from my co-workers. They are American. I am English. Occasionally they are Canadian. We are our countries, no matter whether we like it or not.
Explaining unique British traditions are actually my favourite part of travelling and meeting new people. I like to know lots of little stories about what we have and others don’t - I know that Christmas crackers do not exist in America, and have taught thirteen year olds Pass The Parcel, a game that every British child has been playing since they were out of the womb. I’ve taught the same thirteen year olds how we eat jelly (Or Jell-O) and ice cream at birthday parties, and attempted to explain the intricacies that go into Pantomime, a theatre event that is compulsory in Britain at Christmas and yet is hardly known elsewhere in the world. I have explained many, many times how to make an acceptable cup of tea, and sat in overly dramatic shock several times when presented with a cup of lukewarm water, a teabag and a jug of cream at an American restaurant. I will admit that Americans make a superior cup of coffee, but your tea is awful.
Our pancakes are different, too; did you know that ours are not the thick American maple-syrup drenched stacks, but more along the lines of the French crepes, eaten with lemon and sugar at Easter time. My mother is in the process of creating another traditionally British Christmas treat; the Christmas cake, topped with marzipan and thick white icing, and my father makes his own version of the very British mince pie, filled not with beef but with sweet mincemeat and drowned in sugar, served in little foil cups to all of your Christmas guests. We have an extra day of holiday after Christmas Day, called Boxing Day, and treated as another bank holiday with more shocking Christmas TV and Christmas dinner leftovers treated as brand new meals within themselves as all of the shops will be shut.
The best part of being English, of course, is our language. Thanks to the popularity of Harry Potter and Doctor Who, Britglish has never been more in vogue, whilst at the same time going through a huge vocabulary shift due in part to the prominence of the Internet and the American influence on our culture. Teenagers are more likely now to refer to their end-of-school celebration as a ‘prom’, whereas only five years ago I just went to a ‘Leavers Ball’, or simply a rather rubbish ‘school disco’. We never graduate from school, only university, but we do start off as ‘first years’, and go up to being ‘sixth formers’. I wear ‘trousers’, not ‘pants’, own two ‘waistcoats’ instead of ‘vests’, and laugh whenever I hear Americans refer to a man’s ‘braces’ as ‘suspenders’ - ours after all, are the items ladies wear on their legs to hold up stockings. Did you know that when we are in a building, we always enter on the Ground floor, never the First floor (which is always the first level when you go up the stairs), or that we take the ‘lift’ and never the ‘elevator’?
Other British ways of life are perhaps more obscure - we have to pay an annual license fee of around £120 to the BBC if we own a television, and that is compulsory since the BBC is advertisement-free, the choice of newspaper that you buy dictates your political leanings, and even the choice of supermarket you buy your weekly shop at shows exactly what class you fall into. Pub culture has its own ways and measures too; you always order from the bar and waiters do not exist, you almost never tip a bartender (other than to buy them a drink), and we tend to buy drinks in rounds, not leaving a friend with an empty glass if we can possibly help it.
I also love to learn the same in return about other traditions and cultures. No country that I have found holds a party like the Swiss at Fasnacht, no other country calls flip-flops ‘jangles’ like the Kiwis, and no other country sells sweet bread on the beach like the French. Other traditions fascinate me; the style in which Greeks eat made me want to gather up the entire restaurant and transport it back home in a whole box of dolmades, keftethakia and tyropitakia. I never thought I would like Turkey until I went to Kusadasi with the ship and was taken to a little restaurant that was a crew favourite. I ate one course of a four course meal and was instantly hooked. I never understood the fuss over Italian ice cream until I had a tub of gelato, and now I simply can’t look back. The unexpected pleasure that comes with an unexpected favourite is the best feeling in the world.
I love to explore, and to discover all of these new traditions whilst sharing my own. Perhaps I add on an extra aura of ‘Englishness’ whilst abroad, simply so I give people what they expect, but I don’t mind being set apart; that’s okay. I have a little Union Jack imprinted on my heart, and lots of traditions tucked into my pocket. If anybody asks, I love to tell - I’m a guest in their world, after all.