MODERN LIFE
Gwyneth Paltrow has been in the news this week, promoting her new Goop store in London and reminiscing about all the British habits she picked up when she lived here. “I’m a seven days a week drinker,” she says, “I learnt that in London.” She also developed a taste for curry. Oddly, this has left us feeling miffed. Of all the things Britain has to offer the world, can we not do better than bottomless drinking and chicken tikka?
Well, yes, of course we can. For example…
Swearing
Public swearing is still very much our national sport – only the other day Claire Foy and Thandie Newton were f------ this and bloody hell-ing that when accepting their awards at the Emmys. No one is suggesting that the Brits are admired abroad for their bad language. But it is catching. We bet Gillian Anderson has got pretty sweary since living here.
We know Gwyneth has, because of the way she once described her grandmother using the c-word. Brits are generally the best at swearing without shocking. And we are inventive. Of all the reasons Killing Eve is taking off, the creative swearing is up there.
The right sort of scruffy
We like to think that we still lead the world in the right sort of scruffy, which is to say Kate Moss at the weekend in a leopard coat, satin dress and wellies.
Certainly, we can pull off polished (see Victoria Beckham) and we’re very good at it too, but what we excel at is the sort of style that trumps “grooming”. In practice, we sometimes use this reputation as an excuse not to wash. We think if we wear insane shoes and a hat indoors we will automatically qualify as glamorously English; that ruse died out with the advent of teeth whitening, but some of us don’t care. We’re still better at “just got out of bed, bordering on just got out of jail”, than the French.
Being mostly interested in your dog
We are not alone in having become dog fixated – probably there are more emotional assist dogs in Beverly Hills than there are in the whole of the UK – but we are still the best at communicating via canines. Fancy someone in the room? Stroke your dog a lot, stroke theirs even more if they have one. Want to talk to someone? Talk to their dog!
Want to express an opinion that is difficult – make the dog say it! Feeling left out, sad, about to be angry, stressed? Pick up dog and bury face in dog. Other nations are catching on, but none have perfected the skill of living through dog the way we have.
Obsessing about the weather
Has the long hot summer followed by the Indian summer, dampened our enthusiasm for grumbling about it? No. As ever, in our opinion, the weather has behaved badly and made it hard to know what to wear, or how to behave, and we have been magnificent. Together we have toughed it out, taken it in our stride and come through. People should learn from us.
Silly men
Every so often it is noted that some hot foreigners (Taylor Swift, Malia Obama) are dating Englishmen and everyone rushes to explain this phenomenon. Two words: Silly Men. British men are, relative to other men, exceptionally daft, not in a pranky “look at me embarrassing Her” way (very American), but in an “I am happy looking absurd” way. They all have an impersonation up their sleeves, be it a dancing lemur (nine times out of 10) or a one-legged Cossack dancer.
There we go, Gwyneth. Some material for your next PR push.
British habits All the things that we Brits can teach the world