We're British, Innit

by Iain Aitch

  ANTS

  These tiny insects are very much a part of any British summer, be they invading your picnic, running through your food cupboards or being victims of childhood experiments in the garden. Brits see the appearance of more than three ants in one place as some kind of declaration of war (as we know that ants are the only creatures other than humans that wage wars and this brings out the combatant in us). Chemical weapons are purchased from a hardware shop, with the lightly dusted doorstep being doused with boiling water should any enemy ants be subsequently spotted. Children become the SS concentration camp doctors of the summer-long campaign against ants, melting them with magnifying glasses, trying to teach them to swim and seeing what happens when you introduce red ants to a black ants’ nest. The hottest day of the British summer is always that which is known as Flying Ant Day. This is the day (usually in mid-July) when all flying ants hatch and the skies become black with the confused creatures. Ice pops are always free on this day. Just ask at your local newsagent.

  APOLOGISING

  I am sorry to bring this up and I know it seems a little rude, but we Brits are apologetic to the point of irritation. We are the only nation that offers an apology when someone stands on our toes, barges in front of us in a queue or when we have to send back food in a restaurant (after we have had a five-minute argument with our dining partner about whether it would be too impolite to do so) (see poor service). This character trait has lead to us slipping behind in the field of commerce and innovation in recent years, with inventors often not wanting to seem boastful by telling all and sundry about their cure for cancer or knowing how to start their pitch for investment in their product that will cure world hunger without saying, ‘I’m really sorry, but …’.

  THE ARCHERS

  Rumty-tumti-tumti-tum, rumty-tum-tralala. These are the opening sounds of the show that keeps Britain in touch with our rural communities and Radio 4 listeners convinced that they would be able to deliver a piglet if the need were to ever arise in some kind of unlikely porcine life-or-death emergency. It is really good fun to refer to it as Britain’s oldest soap opera when you encounter an avid listener. Many Radio 4 listeners see themselves as above soaps, thinking of them (probably rightly) as full of planes crashing into bisexual threesomes at the top of an already flaming boozer run by small-time crooks with improper diction and a confusing family back story that involves siblings appearing and then reappearing with someone else’s face (see eastenders). The best bit about The Archers is spotting when some snippet of farming news or politics is slipped in, sounding like the kind of clanging, clumsy insert you may expect on North Korean radio. All farmhands speak in a subhuman grunt language, which is both scary and sexually arousing for regular listeners.

  ARCHITECTURE

  Britain is littered with glorious examples of historical architecture, from the spectacular St Paul’s dome by Christopher Wren to the innovation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh as well as a historical array that stretches from Tudor houses to spectacular statement buildings by Norman Foster or Richard Rogers. When it comes to our homes, things are a little less exciting. The fact that we call anything designed after 1900 ‘modern’ could explain our attitude, as does the realisation that most new houses are some kind of Tudor-Georgian-Victorian cocktail, with windows about the size of the defensive arrow slits in old castles. Ask most Britons what they think ‘contemporary home design’ is and they will probably tell you it is a house that comes with the satellite dish already installed.

  ARGOS

  The rich have Harrods and Harvey Nichols, the middle class have Habitat and John Lewis and the poor have Argos, which combines low prices, high security and tacky jewellery under one enormous roof. You can buy your Reebok Classics, Nike tracksuit, sovereign ring (see sovereign rings) and pay-as-you- go mobile at Argos, as well as picking up a plasma screen and a PlayStation 3. In fact, if the store were to branch out into booze, fags and a bit of weed then there really would be no need for Britain’s underclass to shop anywhere else. In fact, if we just built an Argos into the middle of every new estate, put high fences around the perimeter…sorry, where was I? Oh yes, they have a strange system of shopping, whereby you have to select your item from an in-store catalogue, pay at a till and then collect your goods elsewhere in the store. A bit like internet shopping without the internet and with more people in Burberry baseball caps (see burberry) smoking on your way in.

  ARISTOCRACY

  This thoroughbred strand of our society is born to lead, rule and have no chin. The chin was deliberately bred out of the class when it was found to inhibit correct soup eating, shouting ‘yah’ really loudly and certain secret aristocratic sex rituals, the likes of which we can only imagine. The chin also stops the nose being able to get quite so close to the cocaine, for a clean, mess-free snort. Previously entitled to rule via hereditary seats in the House of Lords, the old aristocracy is giving way to a new financial aristocracy who buy their seats in the new ‘more democratic’ upper house. This leaves the old aristocracy more time to murder nannies, shoot stuff and drive around their land wearing tweed (see harris tweed).

  ASBOS

  The Antisocial Behaviour Order is not, as some think, a court order that means you must behave in an antisocial manner, like some magistrate-lead game of Simon Says. Instead, it is an order of merit awarded to those who have proven great skill in the pursuit of being an absolute twat. As sought after as a place on the New Year’s Honours list or a military decoration, the ASBO is a sign you have arrived and done great works among your community, whether it be playing the same Kylie record over and over at ear-splitting volume or punching out anyone who looks at you slightly askance. Winners of ASBOs are given special privileges, which means that they do not have to work ever again. Employers are instructed to not take them on, even if they beg, as their place in society is beyond mere employment.

  AUTUMNWATCH/SPRINGWATCH

  An orgy of frolicking, foraging and fornication, this hidden camera television show lets us see what our wonderful wildlife is getting up to when we are off at work or tucked up in bed. This is fairly passable if you catch it once while eating your dinner from a tray on your knees, but watch it more than once and you may find yourself caring more about a family of ducks than is actually healthy for a sane adult. The topic is interesting though, so what may liven things up is having former Goodie Bill Oddie trade jobs with investigative blowhard Donal McIntyre. That way McIntyre can report on the problems of violence among gangs of blackbirds while Oddie can hole up in a caravan on a Leeds housing estate, commentating on feral youth and the disintegration of society. ‘Aw, look. Here comes one of our crackheads, I think…yes, it’s Dean and is that Tracy with him? Yes it is, and she is carrying their new crack baby. Now over to Kate, who has just caught a lovely happy slapping in Aberdeen.’

  B

  BADGERS

  Depending upon your point of view, these are either evil tuberculosis-spreading vermin that would eat a baby given half a chance or they are just bizarrely prehistoric-looking creatures that snuffle around woodlands at night eating worms. Some say that they could be as intelligent as dolphins, but as scientists traditionally like to have an early night no one has yet been able to put these claims to the test. Badger-baiting is a popular pursuit among inbred rural folk, who gather around badger setts shouting insults like ‘Come on then, stripey!’ before fleeing into the night.

  BAKED BEANS

  An essential part of the fried breakfast (be it the English, Scots, Welsh or Northern Irish variation), baked beans are very much a national favourite, so much so that supermarkets are often willing to sell them at a loss just to get customers in to their stores. They know that we cannot resist a can of beans for 7p, even if we know they are the ones scraped from the remains of truckers’ breakfasts at transport cafés on the M6. Also eaten on toast, jacket potatoes or with chips, baked beans are worth £300 million in sales per year in the UK. The cost in environmental terms of our taste for the saucy h
aricot beans is still to be measured, with invisible methane clouds said to hang over many greasy spoon cafés (see greasy spoons) and most building sites.

  BANDSTANDS

  The discarded condoms, the crushed cans of lager and the remains of a joint on the floor: nothing says relic of an age gone by like a bandstand. These ornate structures were built in our town parks and on cliff tops, mostly during the Edwardian and Victorian era, to provide a focal point for musical appreciation by the masses. Sadly, though, the masses discovered Radio 1, record players and, eventually, MP3 players, all of which left the bandstand to the winos, hoodies (see hoodies) and skateboarders. Some bandstands have enjoyed a revival of late, thanks mostly to local historical organisations.

  BANGERS AND MASH

  Like it’s cousin, pie and mash, this traditional dish of sausages and mashed potato ensures that every Briton gets the necessary combination of protein and carbohydrate without too much excess of chewing or worry about what kind of organs lie within the meaty part of the meal. Often served with onion gravy and a side serving of English mustard, bangers and mash is a staple dish in many pubs. If the pub you are in is a gastropub then you will be told all about the provenance of the sausages as well as the name of the farmer who grew the spuds. You will then be charged £12.95. Bangers are so called because they are fat sausages that are likely to split open with a bang as they are cooked. You can always tell a good banger chef by his terrible complexion, which should be marked by hundreds of splashes of scalding hot fat emanating from exploding sausages.

  BATHS

  One thing that we took from the Roman invasion was the enjoyment of baths, so much so that a home is now considered incomplete without one. Showers are all very well to use on a holiday abroad, but our economy relies upon the vast range of products we use to spice up the time we spend wallowing in our own filth and dead skin, from bath salts and bubble bath to scented candles and portable radios. Many Brits feel so at home in the bath they choose to end their life in it, often committing suicide upon hearing their football team’s result on the radio or after calculating how much in debt they are due to all the money they have spent on scented candles and bath oils.

  BEACH HUTS

  While our Mediterranean cousins simply take a G-string and some Factor 30 to the beach, we Brits have all manner of stuff we need to carry with us, from lilos to gas stoves and kettles. To save carrying this on every trip, and to provide somewhere to shelter from the inevitable rain, we have the beach hut, which is nothing more than a simple promenade-based shed. But in recent years these have become prime slices of real estate, with a beach hut in Southwold, Suffolk costing about the same as a commuter- belt terrace. Artist Tracey Emin famously sold her Whitstable beach hut to art collector Charles Saatchi for £75,000, though he didn’t even get a spot on the promenade or a two-man dinghy included in the price.

  THE BEATLES

  Possibly our finest export product of all time, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr put British culture at the top of the tree when they took the world by storm in the 1960s with their Liverpudlian accents and mop-like hair. Lennon outraged Americans by proclaiming the band to be bigger than Jesus, a statement that, ironically, lead to huge record sales as everyone rushed out to buy Beatles albums to burn. God got his own back on the band, though, by having Lennon gunned down in New York, morphing Harrison into a hippie bore and making Starr best remembered as the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine. Saving most of his ire for McCartney, God created the Frog Chorus and Heather Mills, knowing that Paul could not weather the embarrassment of both.

  BED AND BREAKFAST

  Where you see these words outside a hotel you know that you are guaranteed two things. These things are a bed and a breakfast. What they will be like is anyone’s guess, but by law you will be obliged to say ‘Lovely, thanks’ when asked by the proprietor how you found either. Many B&Bs have modernised in recent years, with most installing indoor toilet facilities and ceasing the morning ceremony of slopping out. Others are said to have done some light dusting. Breakfast food will have carefully been selected from a vast array of local suppliers, though this is mostly because the eggs are cheapest at Asda, the bacon at Lidl and the sausages at Iceland (see iceland). Tinned plum tomatoes are a compulsory part of the breakfast, even though no one has used them in this way at home since 1974.

  BEEFEATERS

  These distinctively attired guards at the Tower of London (see tower of london) have the official name of Yeomen Warders, but they are much better known as Beefeaters by the tourists who photograph them. The Yeomen live in the Tower grounds with their families and some are responsible for the welfare of the Tower’s ravens which, legend tells us, protect the landmark. The name Beefeater is thought to have come from the fact that their duties afforded them a generous amount of meat from the king’s table back in the fifteenth century, when they would have first been guarding the Tower. This link with meat lead to the name and likeness of a Beefeater to be used by a chain of grill restaurants, which serve steaks and fried chicken but are forbidden from serving raven.

  BINGE DRINKING

  What government ministers call ‘a binge-drinking crisis’ many of us simply call ‘Friday night’. For generations the British have lived with licensing laws that were designed to make sure World War I munitions workers didn’t roll up drunk each morning, which meant that we all drank steadily until about 10.30 pm and then tried to cram in another three pints before closing time at 11 pm. This bred a nation of drinkers who saw drunkenness as a guilty pleasure and downing pint after pint as two fingers up to the ruling classes. With the introduction of longer licensing hours, stronger beer, alcopops (see alcopops) and the chance to be on TV shows like Pissed People Throwing Up 2, the problem of binge drinking has become more visible. Back in the day, six pints of mild would make you want a nice sit down and possibly a pickled egg. But modern industrial-strength chemical lagers and energy drinks mean that those coming out of the pubs are wide awake and have energy to burn, which leads to fights. The artificial colours used in curry house favourites and kebab shop chilli sauce just add to drunken hyperactivity. The patron saint of binge drinkers is Kerry Katona. Legend says that if you see her face in the bottom of your glass then you will make it safely home and not be sick on your shoes.

  BISTO

  There is no British food, from kippers to haggis (see haggis), which cannot be improved immeasurably by the addition of gravy. The basis of good gravy is Bisto gravy browning, though some lazy types do prefer the instant gravy mixes offered by the same manufacturer. Bisto did swear by its slogan ‘Aah, Bisto’ for some years, which was supposed to signify the olfactory joy of catching the scent of its gravy. This was later abandoned, however, when it became clear that the slogan was what school children were saying to one another when they had produced a particularly pleasing and pungent fart.

  BLANKET

  No picnic, car journey or bed and breakfast stay is truly complete without the blanket. This sometimes itchy sign of our defiance of all things European is our woollen riposte to that foreign invader the continental quilt, the very name of which implies a deep distrust. What other piece of knitwear could serve as lunch table, be used to warm a grandmother’s knees and provide your bedding? We certainly didn’t build an empire toting around something stuffed with goose feathers, and which required a ‘tog rating’, whatever that is.

  BLITZ SPIRIT

  Signifying our ability to simply get on with things under the most trying of circumstances, this term comes from our stoicism during the bombing raids of World War II, especially those in 1940/41. As a nation on and under fire we pulled together, watched each other’s back and, most importantly, made sure that everyone had a cup of tea on the go at all times. Filmmaker Humphrey Jennings directed a short film at the time called London Can Take It, encouraging unity and a general ‘Is that the best you’ve got/you call those bombs?’ attitude from the populace (see stiff upper lip). The call for the
Blitz Spirit is often made in times of crisis, such as the July 2005 London bombing campaign, though some believe that this community ideal cannot be properly attained without the mass ingestion of powdered egg.

  BLUE PETER

  Very much the official BBC view of how children should be seen, Blue Peter has been an institution of British broadcasting since 1958. The show has always represented an idealised middle-class view of childhood, with its repertoire of craft activities, good works, animal husbandry and nature study. This all went along jolly nicely until the ITV network started to show Magpie in 1968, a programme that, if some middle-class parents were to be believed (see class), was tantamount to Satanism. Magpie presenters just lolled around in a stupor, urging viewers to attack the Blue Peter garden, plant Sherbet Dib-Dabs on the BBC show’s presenters and make them senselessly rig competitions to decide the names of pets. But it was Blue Peter’s optimistic altruism that dealt the show’s ethics one of its greatest blows when in 1981 it broadcast a short film about cerebral-palsy sufferer Joey Deacon. Within days, Joey mania had spread across the country, with children imitating Deacon’s guttural attempts at speech and labelling anyone weak or different as a ‘Joey’. The slang term persists to this day.