And nestling comfortably amid all that garden splendour, in a quiet and unobserved corner, the humble shed. Where else is a person going to keep the lawn mower, the strimmer and all the shearing tools required to prune privet hedges into exciting shapes? One cannot expect to leave deck chairs and fair-weather garden furniture outside all year round—where else could it go? How should one store a half-empty tin of creosote if not in a wooden hut that was once coated with the contents of the other half of the tin?
But the appeal of the shed isn’t restricted solely to gardeners, and this bit isn’t really about gardening. It’s about men, and in particular men who feel the need to potter. It doesn’t really matter what form the pottering takes; it can be making model aircraft or laying out train sets or painstakingly painting model soldiers or varnishing an old guitar until you can see your too-old-to-rock, too-young-to-die face in it. It could even be pottery or potting plants or smoking pot. Or—if you have a moment for some gratuitous wordplay—playing snooker on a miniature table (potting), putting shrimp in a ramekin (also potting), making baby toilets (pottying) or just sinking into a state of decrepitude (going to pot).
Where was I? Oh, yes, so in order to enact all of these hobbies, or simply to garner some apparently essential time away from the bosom of the family without actually going out, British men retreat to the shed.* There they can keep pigeons or read history textbooks or brew, drink and recover from homemade ale without undue interference from anyone else. And being essentially just a wooden building in a garden, the shed is perfect for just such a purpose. Roald Dahl wrote books in his shed, Nick Drake wrote a song about a man in a shed, and Dylan Thomas wrote all of Under Milk Wood in a shed, although his overlooked the sea, so it is hardly typical.
Some men deck theirs out like a pub, with optics on the wall, a little radio hanging from a nail, and enough seating for a couple of mates. Others install recording equipment and egg-box sound insulation, as if their shed is an only marginally more modest Abbey Road. There may be an easel and some oil paints, or a latex goblin mask for a weekend’s LARPing. Radio hams love a shed. So do actual hams, if the home meat-smokers are to be believed. Jon Earl, from Clevedon in Somerset, used his shed as an acoustic gig venue, racking up hundreds of very, very cramped performances from visiting folk acts. It’s a space in which anything that can be conceived can be achieved. But mostly just conceived, because the dream is always more enticing than the reality. To that end, some sheds have simply one comfortable chair and a little fridge, or just the chair and no fridge. And some crazy fools just use the shed to keep their garden tools in.
If the Brits like to think of themselves as lionhearted—and they do—it’s partly the bravery thing, but also because the males have a need to wander away from the rest of the pride and have a quiet sit-down somewhere shady from time to time.
WHAT TO SAY: “My shed is also a fully working dental surgery.”
WHAT NOT TO SAY: “And where does your wife put her hobbies?”
Cricket
Sport, as any cultural critic will happily confirm, is a metaphor. Most commonly it’s a metaphor for a conflict of some sort and a useful way to lance the boil of tension between rival communities. But while football is a metaphor for a great big punch-up in a pub car park, and rugby is a metaphor for a great big punch-up in a pub car park while holding an ostrich egg, cricket is a metaphor for a more medieval, chivalrous kind of battle entirely.
It starts with two participants wearing protective armour on either side of a short stretch of field, each facing the other and holding a stick. Once a particular signal is given, the men charge at each other, as if about to start a joust like knights of old, except without the horses. But here’s the twist: they’re actually on the same team, so they just run to where the other player was just standing and, if conditions are agreeable, they run back again, scoring points as they go. That’s one bit.
Then there’s the attack from the opposing team. They surround the two knights, as if preparing for a guerrilla attack on their respective castles, which in the game are represented by three wooden stakes in the ground (the stumps) with two little wooden spindles resting on top (the bails). Collectively this tiny structure is called the wicket, and the players have to protect theirs at all costs, or they will be thrown from the ramparts (invited to leave the field of battle and partake in a fine tea).
Taking their cues from siege warfare, the fielding team members just wait nearby, in spots that have all been given significant (but silly) names—gully, point, fine leg, mid-wicket, square leg and so on—while one of their number bombards the castle of one of the knights with a little red leather ball. This can arrive at great speed or more slowly, spinning around with uncanny accuracy, and it is up to the knight to swat it away using his weapon of choice. Let’s call it a bat, and let us therefore call the brave knight waving it around Sir Batsman.
There are six possible things that can happen to our hero while facing an incoming ball. He can swipe and miss; he can swipe and miss and the ball can hit his stumps, destroying his castle; he can swipe and miss and the ball can hit the padding on his leg, and if it is deemed to have prevented contact with the stumps, his castle is said to have been destroyed, even if it is still standing; he can hit the ball over the boundary line at the edge of the field without it touching the floor, which means he is so great he gets six points; he can hit the ball over the boundary line with a bounce or two, which means he gets four points; or he can hit the ball somewhere within the boundary line.
If the latter happens, he and his teammate face a choice: either make a run for the sanctuary of the other person’s castle—just like they did in the Crusades—or stay put and hope for the best, risking nothing and gaining nothing. If they run and leave the ramparts undefended, there’s a chance there won’t be a castle to come home to (depending on how close the ball is). Should that happen, the exposed batsman is out, and a new knight is brought on to take his place, bringing with him a whole new castle.
So those are the basic rules of cricket. But that’s not where the chivalry and courtly customs end. Cricket is a social event. It’s just a far more refined affair than certain other sports, with their beer and burgers and shouting. Certainly a village green cricket match—the most often eulogized vision of English pastoral life—is closer to a formal garden party than a rowdy gathering in a sports bar. And to be really eloquent in the ways of cricket, one must have studied Wisden, the cricketer’s almanack (their spelling). Wikipedia is no alternative.
And this respect for the customs of the sport, as well as the sport itself, is also reflected in the way cricket is presented on TV. While football and rugby commentators talk about passion and commitment and fire and skill, cricket commentators famously talk about anything agreeable that enters their heads. While still well versed in the statistics and significance of every key event in a match, they will happily discuss the weather and the cake someone sent in, in a manner that is entirely innocent and free of manufactured enthusiasm. And there’s a really good reason for this: cricket matches go on for ages, because they’re a metaphor for siege warfare. Even the short ones are long, and the long ones are practically infinite. So TV commentators are not there to make the event seem more exciting; they’re there to keep you company, to raise morale, and to prevent you from worrying unduly about dwindling supplies.
I have argued with ardent cricket fans about whether the sport they love so well, with its arcane wisdoms, long-standing traditions, and infinite subtleties, should be considered less a sport and more an art form. To which the only sensible answer is no, stop being silly, it’s a sport. Granted, it’s a hugely ritualized sport in which all the participants wear theatrical costumes, so there is some crossover with interpretive dance. But while interpretive dance can represent any human emotion imaginable, cricket is really only good for two: the thing about fighting, and the thing about being a touchstone for a mythical vision of England’s green and pleasant land.
&n
bsp; WHAT TO SAY: “I see the captain has taken his position at silly mid-off. Would you like another sandwich?”
WHAT NOT TO SAY (WHILE BOWLING): “Dunna-nunna-nunna-nunna, dunna-nunna-nunna-nunna, Batsman!”
The Underdog
Winning is boring. Triumph is an airless plateau, a vertiginous and windy peak upon which the winner feels a momentary blast of hot elation and then a freezing stab of ice to the heart when the realization hits that, once you have hit the pinnacle, there is nowhere else to go but down.
That’s pretty much what people who are used to not winning would say, at any rate. They might also add that winning isn’t everything, that it’s the taking part that counts, and that beating other people is a recipe for a polarized society and anyway you can’t build character unless you’ve been kicked around the block a few times. People who are used to not winning have a lot of comforting rationalizations like that. Non-winners are more interesting, after all.
Whether it’s because of a strong sentimental streak, a need for things to be seen to be fair, or because the historical narrative of Britain is that she is always a great nation and a world leader—while the actual narrative of modern politics, sport and culture suggests a less glorious truth—nothing is guaranteed to ensnare British attention like an underdog.
Let me give you an example. In the 1988 Winter Olympic games, the United Kingdom entered the ski-jumping competition for the first time, sending over a man called Eddie Edwards. By no means a bad skier, Eddie narrowly failed to qualify for the British team in other disciplines, so he took himself to Lake Placid to train as a jumper. Unfortunately he was slightly held back by several facts: he weighed nearly ten kilograms more than any of his rivals; he had no money for equipment and had to borrow some boots that were so big he wore six pairs of socks to get them to stay on; he had to wear thick glasses, even while jumping, and these were prone to fogging up.
Guess what? Eddie Edwards did not win a medal. In fact, he finished last in both the seventy-metre and the ninety-metre events. What he did do was create a one-man media hurricane around himself that, in the final tally, ended with a nickname (“the Eagle”), a book (On the Piste), daily tabloid stories on his struggle, TV interviews all over the world and even a pop song (“Fly Eddie Fly”).
Meanwhile, the Olympic Committee changed the rules of entry after 1988 specifically so that rank outsiders like Eddie could not compete, thus sealing his underdog status forever, and their reputation as big mean meanies. Kicking an underdog? For shame.
Susan Boyle has a similar tale. It’s a combination of looking entirely unheroic while doing something quite remarkable—either through natural talent or sheer naïveté—that drives all the attention. The Brits love humility, and they are vaguely suspicious of beauty, so if someone comes along who is less than conventionally attractive (and let’s be clear, this simply means less than conventionally attractive for television) and is having a go at something genuinely scary or even slightly nerve-wracking (again, for television), the nation will be united behind him or her. So all it took for Susan Boyle to be an instant hit was to look as if she could not possibly be talented and then to be actually, genuinely talented. That’s it. Put that voice in Katherine Jenkins’s mouth and there’s no shock, no great reveal; the eyebrows stay down. In a sense the greatest emotive pull in Susan Boyle’s perfect moment was the pantomime of surprise on the faces of the Britain’s Got Talent judges. It felt as if everything was turning downside-left.
This is a common factor (no pun intended) in all TV talent shows. Every year the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing fields a celebrity contestant who has to learn how to paso doble despite having spent far too many years ordering pasta, doubly. And every year the public continues to vote them back in week after week, happily getting rid of far better dancers, because it annoys the judges. It’s like the story of David and Goliath, except there are four Goliaths (one with comically pursed lips) and David is an overweight former politician or TV presenter (see: Reality TV).
Speaking of politics, nothing fires political debate in the TV age like the plucky outsider who has come along to give the two main political parties a symbolic bloody nose. It doesn’t matter what the issues are or which portion of the political spectrum the party hails from—although the far right does seem to be very good at playing the underdog card—give yourself the status of political underdog, pose the comment “Yes, but you would say that. What if we did things my way for a change?” and you’re guaranteed an interview slot on news TV, talking about the needs of ordinary hardworking people.
Of course, once power has shifted from underdog to overdog, the drive to continue support ebbs away. The big winners in music, for example, are routinely castigated for deliberately crafting their work so that it will appeal to the broadest audience possible—that’s just cheating—whereas artists that do not sell well are clearly doing it for the art, and again, need the support and encouragement of their fans. When the band Elbow won the Mercury Music Prize in 2008 it signified a huge shift in their national image. Overnight they went from lost gems, rough diamonds with a lot to offer, to national treasures, fully polished and set in a big crown. And as soon as the fans had finished saying that justice had finally been done, other people started to say they were boring and, worse, boring on purpose.
But being the underdog is a perilously hard thing to let go of, once it has let go of you. The music magazine Q once ran a feature in which Kate Moss interviewed David Bowie. At one point both international superstars congratulated themselves on their “outsider” status, which may have been true at the beginning of their careers, and may still appear true to them, but, my crikey, it isn’t true any more.
WHAT TO SAY: “Of course, I preferred Eddie the Eagle’s early work, before he became commercial.”
WHAT NOT TO SAY: “I am the champion, my friend. And I’ll keep on fighting till the end.”
Cheering the Bad Guy
Ask any British actor working in Hollywood today and he or she will tell you that the real fun in movies is playing the villain or, at a push, the antihero. True heroes have to be tough and principled and square jawed and capable and all those things, but do they really get to do anything interesting beyond saving the day? Nope. They have to play fair, they have to be sympathetic, they have to not die, and while they may get the big snog at the end, their experience is nowhere near as much fun as that of the people who get to put their lives in jeopardy in the first place.
Meanwhile, the baddy has preened and sneered and mocked and glared. He (or she) has had all the darkest lines, often delivered in the most threatening of voices with outrageous affectations of boredom or cold malice. Seeing as the movies are all about fantasy, what could be more fun for an actor from an etiquette-afflicted nation like Britain than to play so delightfully against the rules?
And rather than fretting over the public reaction to them pretending to be evil, British actors really don’t mind appearing to be utter sods, chiefly because they understand that their audience—especially a British audience—love an utter sod. It’s probably a hangover from pantomimes, where the evil character is openly booed and hissed from the audience whenever they appear, but the Brits particularly like a sod if he or she is clearly the sort to prize intellect over emotion, sharp wit over plain speaking, and dark mischief over do-goodery. Think Alan Rickman in Die Hard, or Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, or Alan Rickman in the Harry Potter movies. Any time you see Alan Rickman, or any British actor, playing a baddy and looking at the hero’s integrity, moral certainty and principles with piteous disdain—as Tom Hiddleston does when Loki confronts Black Widow in the first Avengers movie (complete with a beautifully delivered medieval insult)—you’ll have a sense of the mental terrain. Think Cruella de Vil gazing greedily at a puppy and you’re there.
It’s partly an accent thing too. Scottish accents are great for strong emotions and threats, Welsh accents are great for comedy and sudden nastiness, and the various America
n accents deliver heroism and anger beautifully, but for true chilled evil, marble slabbed and slippery with malice, you need a posh English accent with lots of sharp consonants. It’s custom-made for cracking snide and then purring “Kill them; kill them all” into a walkie-talkie, while smiling.
And the Brits have created more than their share of magnificent baddies in their time: think Iago in Othello; think Richard III or Lady Macbeth. Or how about grumpy old Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights? We may know what’s causing his ill temper and we may feel some sympathy, but he’s still a bad boy through and through. How about Sherlock Holmes’s nemesis Moriarty, as delivered in Sherlock with petulant black-eyed indifference by Andrew Scott? Delicious rotters all. And that’s before you count the genuinely demonic protagonists in Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula. Their names are in the title because they’re the best characters in the story, just as the best Star Wars movie is The Empire Strikes Back and the worst is one of the ones with no Darth Vader in them.
Small wonder that British audiences are so thrilled to see Benedict Cumberbatch hiss and bellow his way across the screen in Star Trek into Darkness; Tilda Swinton’s impassive frostiness as the White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; or Anthony Hopkins slurping at Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs. Ralph Fiennes excels at playing utterly diabolical swine, whether in Schindlers List or the Harry Potter movies. And Ian McKellen always seems to make antiheroes of his characters, whether they are supposed to be baddies or not.
Even in cartoons, whether it’s The Jungle Book or The Lion King, the actor with the plum job is always the one who gets to deliver slithering evil through the medium of his or her own dark (and yes, plummy) voice. Because even children know that being naughty is more fun than being nice.
Stuff Brits Like Page 10
