This brings us to our final unfriendly assault, the places that aren’t pronounced the way they are spelled. You’d think, given the size of the world and the number of dialects and languages within it, that the Brits would be a little bit forgiving of any traveller into their community who has clearly only just read the name of the village they’ve never been in before. But no; never mind that most Brits think that the United States has two different states, one called Arkansas and one called Arkinsaw; never mind that the English rampaged across the world asking what things were called, not listening properly to the answers, and then making up words that seemed to fit the bill—Bombay, Kingussie, Carnarvon—if you wander into Bicester and call it “bichester” (it’s “bister”), if you enter Cholmondeley without knowing it’s pronounced “chumley”, if you call Fowey “fowey” and not “foy”, or you wander about in Barugh and fail to call it “barf”, there will be tutting. You may not hear the tutting, you may not even see it happen, but rest assured it will occur.
And there are some crackers out there, words that have no business claiming to be related, let alone pretending that the word on the page is the same as the one in the ear: Godmanchester claims to be called “gumster”, for heaven’s sake! Woolfardisworthy wants you to consider referring to it as “woolsery”, while Oswaldtwistle has given up all claims to its own sharp consonants and reclined into the buzz of “ozzlethizzle”.
Mousehole, made up of two very familiar words indeed, is pronounced “mousle”, like “tousle”, while Stiffkey claims to be called “stewkey” and Tintwistle is “tinsel”. Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?
Reversing this trend, Towcester is “toaster”, which might just be the best fact about the entire British Isles, apart from all those rude place-names above.
WHAT TO SAY: “Seriously? Spell Albuquerque and then we’ll talk about your arcane local knowledge.”
WHAT NOT TO SAY: “So why is Manchester not pronounced ‘manster’?”
Metal
It’s not as often discussed or celebrated as other musical innovations, but the Brits invented a significant proportion of the brutish rites and appalling (in the best sense of the word) sonic architecture of heavy metal—starting with the power chords of the Kinks and taking in the guitar hero antics of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, before being given unholy form within the satanic rites of Black Sabbath. They also built the amplifier that powers heavy metal—the forbidding, monolithic Marshall stack—and they are among the world’s most fervent supporters and creators of metal, in all of its labyrinthine permutations and preposterosity.
Not the Hugh Grant Brits, obviously. That lot wouldn’t know their Bullet for My Valentine from a valet for their brilliantine. Faced with the awesome feral power of true metal in all of its raw glory, they’d be calling the servants to fetch the shotguns before you can say “cool riff, bro”. And for the people who are fully immersed in the world of leather, volume, solos and howling, that’s just the way they like it.
There’s a huge inferiority complex among metal fans, one that is almost entirely matched by their defiant certainty that this is superior music in every way to whatever is going on elsewhere in popular culture. The outsider myth is huge in British metal and hard rock, fuelled principally by the fact that the music is just too unfriendly to feature heavily in mainstream media. Pop songs will appear in adverts, behind chatty news reports, on national radio stations and in coffee shops and cafés all over the country.
Metal songs, unless they’re one of the classic established classics of classically classic rock, won’t. And this despite Iron Maiden being the biggest rock band in the world, despite junior metal bands singlehand-edly keeping provincial guitar shops open while record shops are closing left and right, and despite there being more metal and hard rock magazines on the shelves than for any other form of music.
This creates the idea that metal is being treated unjustly, and is therefore something that constantly needs to be fought for, to be supported. There’s a them-and-us mentality to metal fans that will sometimes overlook the genre’s extreme popularity in the rush to claim this as the ultimate outsider’s music. It’s partly because metal remains the music of disaffected youth. Kids from unglamorous towns bond and form exclusive societies over rare Avenged Sevenfold bootlegs and strange spiky guitars, and once that schism opens up between a young man or woman and the adult world, metal is a safe(ish) haven to put those anti-social feelings into. By which I mean it is extreme enough to match the inner monologue of teenage angst, and the mosh pits are no place for the majority of parents.
In fact, everything about metal says it’s not for the faint-hearted. Never mind the lyrical content, the obsession with (depending on who you listen to) Satan, decaying flesh, sexy girls and war, you’ve also got to contend with musicians who have worked incredibly hard to attain terrific dexterity on their instruments, and they’re only too keen to show anyone who is prepared to listen. In metal, as in drilling for oil, more is more. And if you don’t like it, James Blunt is over there in the corner, sobbing.
But the degree to which metal is sonically unwelcoming is as naught (proper metal word, that) to the forbidding amount of research and sifting new fans must embark on if they wish to navigate its dank corridors effectively. Tempting as it is to assume all anyone needs is a functioning set of ears and an AC/DC T-shirt, the reality is far more complicated than that, and the price of failure is social death.
To the untrained outsider, the entirety of metal resembles a fractal world where whole genres depart from one another in endless tiny spirals created by invisibly small differences in tone or pace. Picture a would-be Indiana Jones crossing a crazy-paved floor littered with the names of metal sub-genres. All it takes is a momentary misstep—a confusion between grindcore, mathcore and metalcore—and our fearless adventurer will wind up riddled with more holes than a rusty colander.
To the insider, that’s the musical manifestation of the kind of rarefied British palate that can tell a quail’s egg from a slightly older quail’s egg, but applied to something far less wholesome. The further into metal’s back-alleys you travel—from metal to black metal to doom metal to Viking metal and beyond—the farther from the mainstream you go and the more explaining and mapping there needs to be. And given just how many people wish to travel those forbidding alleys, mapping is precisely the right word to use. This is a journey into the heart of darkness; customs must be learned and traditions observed. Missionaries are not welcomed, but no one who truly wishes to devote a part of their soul to these native rituals shall be turned away.
Which is partly what makes metal such a British mind-set in the first place. All of the key attitudes within metal—with the possible exception of “a lack of modesty”—can be traced to the way the Brits like to think about themselves. They still go off around the world exploring and climbing mountains and crossing vast deserts in rather foolhardy expeditions, and this desire to explore new territories and bring back the spoils is very metal. So is that suspicion of popular culture and the huge adolescent chip on the shoulder about everyone else’s taste, or the lack of it. So is the idea that hard work is automatically superior to the temporary dazzle of instant gratification, and so is the master-craftsman’s need to hand their skills down—whether musical or in the form of a bitchin’ record collection—from generation to generation in an unbroken tradition.
Add to these lofty ideals a taste for properly brewed ales (see: Real Ale) and a mountain of songs that simply could not exist without medieval superstitions about the supernatural and the devil, and metal becomes an alternative social history of Britain itself . . . with guitar solos.
WHAT TO SAY: “There’s a WORLD of difference between black metal and death metal, it’s OBVIOUS.”
WHAT NOT TO SAY: “Can someone offer than singer a lozenge?”
Boot Fairs and Charity Shops
Getting rid of clutter is hard, even for the most unsentimental and meticulous householder.
You can’t just throw stuff away; some of it might be worth something. Some of it could have great sentimental value or become a family heirloom, with time, and some of it might even be of use in the future, assuming there’s a sudden and unexpected global crisis that can only be solved by a heroic act involving two types of unfashionable hat, a selection of tiny ceramic statues and a huge pile of dog-eared paperbacks.
So, leaving aside that last option for the moment, what’s a spring-cleaning Brit to do in order to get rid of all the old junk? There are three options and the first is to put the real rubbish aside for recycling.
For the things that could be of value to someone else, there are boot fairs (also known as car boot sales). A boot fair is a gatheration of cars on a patch of open land, from which people can sell their belongings for a small donation. It’s an incredibly popular pastime for buyers and sellers alike. The biggest boot fairs can take up several fields, and as there are very few restrictions on what you can buy or sell—although, clearly, cars are going to be problematic, and body parts are a definite no-no—it’s remarkable what turns up.
That’s not to say there aren’t common threads. It’s an unwritten rule that all sellers must set up a wallpaper pasting table in front of their car, to display their wares better without going to the trouble of investing in expensive shop fittings. People also bring clothing rails if they’re selling the kind of clothes you can’t display by laying them on the ground (almost all clothes, in other words), and they will spend a good portion of their allotted time rushing over and picking everything up after the rail has blown over for the twelveteenth time.
If you are selling, you’ll encounter two principal waves of interest: one pleasant and good-natured, the other feral and scary. Sadly, the second one comes first. This tends to happen most noticeably at the larger boot fairs, but when sellers arrive, they have a certain amount of time to get everything out of the car and displayed, and then some kind of signal—a klaxon or a siren—will sound, and that means the boot fair has started and the customers are on their way.
Now, at this point, just before the deluge hits, you’ll notice that some of the other sellers have started checking out what’s on sale nearby, and some of them may even start digging in their pockets for money. These are seasoned boot fair attendees, and they possibly even rely on innocent house-clearing folk for the bulk of their stock. A lot of deals are made in the first minute of selling.
The second minute, and most of the next ten, you will spend fending off the first wave of buyers—the boot fair zombies—people who are desperate for a bargain and do not wish to spend a lot of time thinking about what they are doing. That’s for later. They’ll poke at the delicately arranged collections of books and CDs; they’ll root through the “Everything for £1” bin with the frenzy born of total panic. It’s as if they know one of the stallholders has accidentally put a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory inside a tatty old teddy bear or has put out a valuable diamond ring that they believe to be cubic zirconium.
The first wave of buyers at a boot fair makes the January sales look like a particularly well stocked and generous soup kitchen. It’s like a plague of locusts wearing money belts and looking for tat. The only sensible way to process the carnage as a seller is to remember the aim of the game is to get rid of things you no longer want, not to become a junk magnate. Let the wave wash over you, sell what you want to sell, at prices you’re not going to regret later, and prepare for the calm after the storm.
That’s when the ordinary folks arrive, people who enjoy a stroll in the fresh air and don’t mind looking for a few bits and bobs while they’re out and about. They won’t take anywhere near as much of your stuff as the first wave, but they will leave the skin on your hands as they walk away.
After a couple of hours of this sort of thing, it’s time to pack away the remaining 50 per cent of your original pile and go home to count your takings. This is the end of the part of the story that could turn you a profit. Enjoy it while it lasts but do not be tempted to buy more crap. Learn from your mistakes!
What you have left is a pile of stuff that no one wanted to buy from you, but that could still be worth something to someone. And the place to take that kind of stuff is a charity shop.
Brits adore thrifting. Apart from coffee shops, charity shops are the most common type of retail outlet on British high streets. Towns that have a particularly large number of charity shops are highly prized, and sometimes shoppers arrive by the coachload. They may be pensioners with not much else to do, or students looking for old clothes for a wacky fancy dress, and the shops’ individual pickings may be slim, but it’s all in the thrill of the chase.
Of course, if there’s anything left in your thrice-filtered pile after all that, the only place for it is the bin.
WHAT TO SAY: “How much for that first edition of Northanger Abbey?”
WHAT NOT TO SAY: “A pound? I’ll give you 20p if you throw in the car . . .”
Rugby
So, we’ve established that sport equals ritualized fighting, yes? But what happens when the ritual also contains a lot of what must, to inexperienced eyes, just look a lot like fighting anyway? Does it still count as a game if players routinely come away with a face like a knackered leather handbag, ears red and swollen up like toadstools, and their teeth having been left in parts of other players? What kind of ritualized war is rugby, with its rucks and mauls, if it is also still a war?
To step back from this a second, it’s important to start with the basics. Rugby (league or union) is the game American football likes to think it is. It’s a rough, knockabout brawl, with particular focus on territory and passing and carrying and running, and taking an oval ball to a place, while an opposing team tries to make you dead with their arms and shoulders and feet and pummelling ham fists.
Aside from the various rules and customs of the two games, two key differences separate American football and rugby, and on the surface, it’s the rugby players who come off looking the bravest.
The first and most obvious point is that rugby players wear no armour beyond a gum shield of the sort that boxers wear. Brits rather enjoy telling themselves that this means rugby is a real man’s game for real men, not an elegant pastime for precious little darlings that need wrapping in cotton wool before they will consent to even pick up a ball. That’s just payback for years of comments about whining limeys, and best ignored.
It’s also not true. As with modern boxing, where the gloves cause greater damage to fighter’s brains than bare knuckles would because the blows are far harder, the American football padding and helmet mean athletes can really do themselves a mischief (as the sports scientists would say) in ways that rugby players can only dream of. But hey, at least they don’t get cauliflower ears.
The second difference is that in rugby the principal scoring motion, once past all the grabby trollmen and their big hands, involves actually making contact between the ball and the grass, using a hand. Dropping the ball won’t count. And this is where sports language becomes stupid. The game that involves touching the ball down on the floor calls that action a try, when at the very least it should be called a do. The game that does not require players to touch the ball down anywhere calls their scoring moment a touchdown.
It should be reiterated at this point that these men risk brain damage on a match-by-match basis; confusing them with misleading words is just cruel. And that’s before we even consider the fact that both games have the nerve to call themselves football, when really they should consider carryegg as the proper alternative.
Rugby also holds a class conflict that really doesn’t exist in any other major British sport. It also plays out across nations in an interesting way. If you’re from Wales, your national sport is not football; it’s rugby union, which enjoys huge support from fans from every walk of life. There are over two hundred Welsh rugby clubs, all hoping to field players towards the national team to play in the annual Six Nations Championship and b
eat the English. Scotland, while being more football friendly, also fields a rugby union team in the Six Nations and hopes to beat the English. As do Ireland, France and Italy.
England itself has a slightly complicated relationship with the sport because of class. Football is the most prominent working-class game; cricket is the most prominent middle-class game; and anything above that probably involves horses. But the playing fields of English public schools ring with the shouts of games teachers enforcing rugby union matches upon freezing young bodies in the mud. In fact, the sport was invented and named by former pupils of the exclusive Rugby School in Warwickshire. So, in marked contrast to Wales and the other countries in the Six Nations, rugby union in England is very much a game for the sons of the ruling classes, who will be trained for a life in the civil service and possibly as officers in the army.
But that doesn’t mean the game has no working-class support, far from it. In fact, in the industrial north, players in the late 1800s, who were all amateurs at the time, were losing so much paid work in order to play they elected to go professional. The southern clubs, gentleman players with affluent backgrounds, declined to join them, causing a split between the two sets of teams and, ultimately, the formation of a new sporting body: rugby league, which developed in parallel with rugby union and has its own rules. So rugby has its own north-south divide, with the league teams in the north playing their own tournaments and developing their own customs, in parallel to the south.
Stuff Brits Like Page 20