Without Tea – Without the British

An island where raining hardly ever stops, an island of old-fashioned manners, where cricket is played instead of football and meals are cooked that no foreigner would ever eat: This is England.

At least, this is what Europeans think of when there is talk of Britain. These might be prejudices, but I do agree that the British seem to be old-fashioned and out-of-time to a certain extend.

 

Firstly, the British are still devoted to the Queen of England and they will probably remain faithful to her in the years ahead. But it appears to the rest of the world that she is just a souvenir of old times, to remind the British of their glorious past. This might be the heritage of the British Empire when the small nation ruled about nearly a quarter of the world. These times are gone and will never return, but the British still keep the memorabilia.

 

Secondly, the appearance of those island inhabitants has to be mentioned. The most common clothing still is a suit and a walking stick just as an umbrella in black belongs fairly to our picture of an English Gentleman. “Typical british” is also our first thought at the sight of a black hat or a pipe. In Europe it used to be common ages ago, but we enhanced and changed, whereas the British stuck to the past and kept their accessories.

 

Finally and decisive is their behavior regarding their manners. On the one hand Europeans are so unfamiliar to their politeness that we feel confronted with far-off times whenever a man kisses the hand of a lady. When passengers queue up before entering a bus we feel amazed and on top of that, this feeling turns into amusement when they spout excuses and apologizes in every situation.

On the other hand they are not known as hearty people by permanently keeping their stiff upper lip except in holidays where drinking seems to be the main attraction. Do never expect a British to learn a foreign language before travelling to another country or accepting the foreign way of life. Anyone, no matter whom, has to adjust themselves to the British and never the other way round. And woe betide anyone who does glimpse into somebody else´s newspaper! You should rather buy your own London Times if you want them to stay polite.

 

To come to an end, lots of the well known prejudices about british people seem to be true and the problem is that they do not care about. On the contrary: They are proud of keeping their tradition! In my opinion, a little bit of adaptability to the fast-moving and fast-changing character of today’s times would do them a power of good.