Gosh, in America I’m the king of the castle
IHAVE a secret weapon: an incredibly charming husband. All he needs to do is open his mouth and his audience is lolling around on its back, begging to have its tummy tickled. He charms birds out of trees, blood out of stones, etc. But me? Not so much, and it’s not helped by the fact I’m inadvertently extremely tactless. Recently, I went into our local chocolatiers for a last-minute fix. “I’m giving up chocolate for Lent,” I declared.
“You said what?” demanded Justin. “You told a businessman you are putting him out of his livelihood?”
Well, it wasn’t meant to come out like that.
But go West, young woman, to the good old US of A as I have just done and everything changes totally.All I need to do is open my mouth and everyone is practically purring.
They may pretend to disdain us but that couldn’t be further from the truth. “I love your accent,” they say.
“What a cute accent. Will you say that again?” If they could bottle what I have, they’d be a rich man. On my recent trip, it came out in spades. “I love Brits,” said one very happy man; I told him I love Americans too, at which he looked slightly taken aback.
He’s an American, of course the world loves him. But then I added something like, “gosh, super,” and he was lapping it up. “You Brits! You’re so cute! Another was even more fulsome: after a day spent driving around the desert outside Santa Fe, he said, somewhat emotionally, “An afternoon spent with a Brit makes me feel more intelligent.” In actual fact he was Cuban, not American, but I’ll take what I can get.
And in a gallery, I bought a delightful little bottle of the oil of a cactus: “Now I’ll have a little bit of Arizona in west London,” I tinkled. He melted.
MATTERS get even better when they find out my surname, which is not what you see at the top of this page. I am actually Virginia Urquhart-Stewart and only use my maiden name for work purposes.
“Yourquwert...” they begin somewhat haplessly.
“It’s pronounced Urk-hart,” I say, beaming, charmingly. “Ma’am, that’s not so hard!” “Have you ever seen a picture of Loch Ness, you know, the famous Scottish lake with the monster?” I ask.
“Why yes!,” they say and they aren’t always lying.
“Do you know there’s a ruined castle on the banks of the loch? That’s Urquhart Castle.” “Why no!”
“Yes!”
“Can I come and stay in your castle?”