Hot but drunk off their asses.
Posted on 10/15/2011 10:04:59 PM PDT by Cronos
Hot but drunk off their asses.
Before living in England I was a complete Anglophile (my wife insists I still am) - but an Anglophile for a lost, Edwardian England. To me it is a tragedy that England has changed, and not for the better.
This piece by Dalrymple gives a reason why -- and mitch you are correct about increasing socialism
Too true, too true.
“That wasn’t too bad” = Absolutely amazing.
Anybody considering marrying someone of British extraction needs to read this guide.
Thanks for posting this, Cronos!
I found a very delightful friend comment on knowing me for several years, that she wondered if I found her pretty. I remarked that I had always thought she was quite so. She said she did not understand this at all. That I would have just sat there and worked with her and not comment on it ever for all that time!
Since that comment I’ve tried to be a bit more forthcoming, but it’s not my natural habit.
This has been discussed before. As I’ve said, I’ve been stepping over drunken kids in the West End for about 30 years now. This is not new. Someone posted a William Hogarth print showing drunken women in the 18th century. If women weren’t drinking in the streets of London, Jack the Ripper probably would never have gotten a start in the 19th century.
This article also paints the most rosy picture of Old England that I’ve ever read. The British may be restrained but they’ve never been polite. Fawlty Towers struck home with Brits and Americans alike because it showed - in exaggerated form - the lack of civility that can occur in that country.
I’m an anglophile myself, and an Edwardian, but for the time of Edward III, not VII. When England was Catholic and proudly so. Before the sadness of the wars between the Lancastrians and the Yorks, and the subsequent disasters of Tudor England, and the Jacobites. When England was ruled, by their own kin, not those from abroad.
It's still like that here in Canada (although, sometimes we utter “Excuuuse me”, like Steve Martin).
I think there is cross pollination going on. Why, when I go to read the UK newspapers, are there so many US celebrity culture articles (Desperate Housewives, Reality Stars, Kardashian sisters etc.) posted on a UK website? Is it just US visitors who get trash articles on trash US culture? They seem to be written in the UK style and not just hot links to US papers but I could be wrong.
I admit I still harbor a false impression of current Britain and didn’t realize the depth of it’s decline outside of it’s obvious struggles with alcohol and ‘ladism’.
The two World Wars took the best of British manhood, they never recovered.
I don’t think that’s true — if you read the author, he points out that the genteelness in British society continued until the 60s and 70s. I think the increase in socialism did them in.
oh, they have been polite — have you read any PG Wodehouses? :)
Poor Fawlty.
This article is crap....
there are all kinds of people in every land...
Moral ones, and rude Pricks...
Liberals and conservatives....
Patriots and Traitors...
Smart ones and Idiots....
In England the left have screwed it up...but the Voters put them in Power...so they are Gullible and stupid.
In France they have a flood of Muslims on welfare and the recent Riots where hundreds of Cars burned as the Frog Police watched...Gigantic Stupidity!!!
The French are so proud of their culture...what a Laugh...it wont be long and they will reap the storm of
foreign culture shock and adieu! stupid Frogs...
and so goes the Limey morons too....
Sadly, We here will soon follow these 2 idiot Nations down the toilet.
I adore PG Wodehouse; Jeeves, in particular.
I have never found the British to be polite despite Wodehouse. But then he was writing about the insulated upper class Brits of a certain era. I have never really gotten to know that crowd. My friends are either middle class to working class. They have the worst habit of making personal remarks of anybody I’ve ever met. They think it’s amusing to insult you. Sometimes they take it in good sport when you hit back, sometimes not. And let’s not even discuss their tipping habits, lol!
Well, that is highly inconsistent!
In 2000, I stayed at a country farmhouse belonging to a member of the landed gentry in Britain (the horsey set). I had rented a room there on short notice. A young man, approximately 20 years old greeted me with flawless civility (how adorable). He said his mother would handle my room arrangements and lamented that she was not present when she was supposed to have met me.
That woman soon arrived. They had one of the most polite arguments I’ve ever heard between mother and son with him protesting politely that she should consider his plans with his friends and how her careless delay would offset plans he’d put in motion a month ago. She was equally well spoken in her rebuff of his objection. All perfectly polite. As far as I could tell, they were keenly aware that someone of vastly lower social significance (that would be me) was present and they would not claw at each other publicly because their class (superior) was above such displays even if my opinion of them could not matter given my lower status. I don’t think I am imagining this - I caught a whiff of this when I read an interesting account written by an American who was describing how reading Jane Austen (my favorite author) affects his speech and thought processes for a short while afterward until he moves on to other material. His wife said of him something like “Reading Austen makes you much more polite and much less sincere.”
He went on to regretfully concede that she was right - in order to say just the right thing at just the right time to maximize consideration and discretion, he felt he had to be a bit insincere.
But still, I am a closet Anglophile. I can’t help myself.
This is very, very true.
I will now plug one of Broadway’s greatest shows currently packing them in at Lincoln Center: War Horse. It tells the story of WWI through the eyes of two horses. Never has a play shown the devastation of that insane war on the British nation and psyche as well as this simple play taken from a children’s novel. It is a production out of the National Theatre of Great Britain - possibly the greatest theatre company in the English-speaking world. The Brits may not do “polite” all that well, but they certain do great theatre.
I think the movie version of War Horse is now in the works - I’ve seen a trailer of it in the past few months.
Oh, what you imagined was there was there all right! You told that story amazingly well too, lol.
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