Socializing In British

You may sometimes get the impression that the British are an unfriendly lot, as your neighbours won’t always say hello and probably won’t drop by or invite you to their home for a cup of tea. (If they offer coffee, invent an urgent appointment!). As an outsider, it may be left to you to make the first move, although if you drop by uninvited, your neighbours may think that you’re being pushy and just trying to sneak a look at their home. Northerners are generally friendly and warm-hearted, particularly when compared with the detached and aloof southerners who won’t usually give you the time of day. If your southern neighbour does condescend to speak to you, he’s likely to greet you with the ritual “How are you?” This doesn’t, of course, mean “How are you feeling mentally, physically or spiritually?”, but simply “Hello”. The questioner usually couldn’t care less whether you’re fighting fit or on your death bed. The ritual answer is (even if you’ve just had a heart and lung transplant) “Fine, thank you – how are you?”

If you wish to start a conversation with your neighbour (or anyone), a remark such as “nice weather” usually elicits a response (particularly if it’s raining cats and dogs). The weather is a hallowed topic and it’s the duty of every upstanding citizen to make daily weather predictions because of the awful hash made of it by the meteorologists. The UK has rather a lot of weather and there’s often rain, gales, fog, snow and a heat wave in the same day (although the weather is always described as ‘nice’ or ‘not very nice’). When it snows, everyone and everything is paralysed and people start predicting the end of civilisation as we know it.

The British stick steadfastly to their Fahrenheit temperature measures and many people haven’t a clue whether 20?C is boiling hot, lukewarm or freezing. The seasons are a mite erratic, but, as a rough guide, winter lasts for around 11 months, with a break of a couple of weeks for spring and autumn, and (in a good year) a couple of days for summer. There is, however, no truth in the rumour that all the world’s bad weather originates in the British Isles (some of it must come from somewhere else!). The British will do anything to escape for a few weeks to sunnier climes (whatever do they find to talk about on holiday when the sky is boringly blue each day?), even going so far as to spend days in an airport lounge for the dubious pleasure of a few weeks in a half-built hotel, bathing in polluted seas and getting sick on foreign food. The fact that no people anywhere have shown such a consistent desire to emigrate as the British may have more than a little to do with the climate.