Call me a romantic or a fuddy duddy or both, but I love it when places are the way they're supposed to be. I'm all for embracing change and all that crap, mind you, but I also like it when, say, I come across a rude French waiter or a Texan who says "yee-haw" unironically and spouts homey aphorisms like Dr Phil. I guess you could say that I enjoy it when people live up to their stereotypes - I dunno, I guess I find it reassuring.With that prejudice in mind, I've been collecting things that I have overheard or come across here in London that seem to me to be quintessentially English things to say - things that you will almost never hear anywhere else, unless you're somewhere else with a bunch of English people. Some things are too ubiquitous to even be worth noting - e.g., "mind the gap" for "don't fall in the hole" or "ta" for "thanks" (the latter drives me a little bit bonkers, actually, but never mind) - and some things are so cartoonish that you'll never actually hear any English person saying them, e.g., "Oh, I say, jolly good, old boy!" or "Fetch the car, Jeeves." Although I should most dearly love to hear one or the other in real life before I die.
Thus far, my collection amounts to the following:
1) "Wank! Wank! Wankers!! Wank! Wank! Wankers!!" - shouted by a crazy man walking through Piccadilly Circus.
2) "Are you being a cheeky monkey?" - said by a father to his misbehaving child in Kew Gardens.
3) "He's a lean and hungry snooker machine!" - uttered by an announcer during a snooker tournament on TV (I quite like the Shakespeare reference here).
4) "I'll have the mushy peas, please." - overheard at the table next to me while eating fish and chips.
5) And this, which appears in the back of a paperback copy of Carry On, Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse, that I bought this evening:
The P. G. Wodehouse Society (UK)
The P. G. Wodehouse Society (UK) was formed in 1997 to promote the enjoyment of the writings of the twentieth century's greatest humorist [sic]. The Society publishes a quarterly magazine, Wooster Sauce, which includes articles, features, reviews, and current Society news. Occasional special papers are also published. Society events include regular meetings in central London, cricket matches and a formal biennial dinner, along with other activities. The Society actively supports the preservation of the Berkshire pig, a rare breed, in honour of the incomparable Empress of Blandings.
[There follows information on how to join the Society]
If I moved to London, I believe the first thing I would do, even before finding an apartment, would be to join the P. G. Wodehouse Society (UK). I expect you all to hold me to that.
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Instead of a traditional "work ethic," I believe I have what is best described as a crushing sense of guilt that kicks in anytime I'm not doing something academicky. There's always another book I need to be reading, another paper I need to be grading, a lecture I need to be working on, an article that needs revising. My fellow academics will know what I'm talking about - and they will also know that this academic guilt doesn't necessarily mean that I spend all my time working, it just means that I'm unable to goof off without a nagging feeling that I really need to be doing something more important. Well, the nice thing about travelling somewhere specifically to do archival research is that your working hours are more-or-less dictated by the opening hours of the libraries you're working in, and, if you happen to be working in the UK or Ireland, that means that most days you're only able to work from about 9am to 5-6pm, with maybe a late night on Thursdays, and nothing at all on Sunday. You can always do stuff outside the library, of course, but the early closing hours give you an alibi, enabling you to feel slightly less degenerate if you take evenings and Sundays off.
So that's what I've been doing. Last Sunday I went to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (just down the road from where I'm staying) and was delighted to find that, even though it's the middle of winter, there wwere still plenty of beautiful things to look at, especially in the glass houses. I am, however, less into botany than I am into colonialism, and so I was doubly excited to learn just how central Kew had been to the colonial economy that developed in the 18th and 19th centuries. For instance, did you know that the gardeners at Kew were responsible for transplanting rubber cultivation from South America to places like Malaysia and Sri Lanka? No, I bet you did not. To stroll through Kew is to stroll through a living museum of the British Empire - like the artifacts on display at the British Museum or the colonial subjects whose "traditional" societies were recreated at all those old imperial exhibitions, the plants at Kew show British imperialism at its giddy, acquisitive best. In fact, once it was opened to the public in the 1840s it became one of the most popular ways through which ordinary people could experience and appreciate the fruits of empire - pun intended.
Anyways, I took me some photos of the purty plants. They're here.
The other thing I've been doing in my off hours is going to a new neighborhood every night for dinner, with a bit of London rambling built into the agenda. Luckily, I've already seen a whole lot of London during the daytime, so it's kind of exciting to see these places in their eveningwear. I've also taken a few photos on these excursions. They're here.
The nighttime photos will probably be updated several times over the next two weeks, so check back often! (I'd hate for y'all to miss anything.)
The P. G. Wodehouse Society (UK) was formed in 1997 to promote the enjoyment of the writings of the twentieth century's greatest humorist [sic]. The Society publishes a quarterly magazine, Wooster Sauce, which includes articles, features, reviews, and current Society news. Occasional special papers are also published. Society events include regular meetings in central London, cricket matches and a formal biennial dinner, along with other activities. The Society actively supports the preservation of the Berkshire pig, a rare breed, in honour of the incomparable Empress of Blandings.
[There follows information on how to join the Society]
If I moved to London, I believe the first thing I would do, even before finding an apartment, would be to join the P. G. Wodehouse Society (UK). I expect you all to hold me to that.
---
Instead of a traditional "work ethic," I believe I have what is best described as a crushing sense of guilt that kicks in anytime I'm not doing something academicky. There's always another book I need to be reading, another paper I need to be grading, a lecture I need to be working on, an article that needs revising. My fellow academics will know what I'm talking about - and they will also know that this academic guilt doesn't necessarily mean that I spend all my time working, it just means that I'm unable to goof off without a nagging feeling that I really need to be doing something more important. Well, the nice thing about travelling somewhere specifically to do archival research is that your working hours are more-or-less dictated by the opening hours of the libraries you're working in, and, if you happen to be working in the UK or Ireland, that means that most days you're only able to work from about 9am to 5-6pm, with maybe a late night on Thursdays, and nothing at all on Sunday. You can always do stuff outside the library, of course, but the early closing hours give you an alibi, enabling you to feel slightly less degenerate if you take evenings and Sundays off.
So that's what I've been doing. Last Sunday I went to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (just down the road from where I'm staying) and was delighted to find that, even though it's the middle of winter, there wwere still plenty of beautiful things to look at, especially in the glass houses. I am, however, less into botany than I am into colonialism, and so I was doubly excited to learn just how central Kew had been to the colonial economy that developed in the 18th and 19th centuries. For instance, did you know that the gardeners at Kew were responsible for transplanting rubber cultivation from South America to places like Malaysia and Sri Lanka? No, I bet you did not. To stroll through Kew is to stroll through a living museum of the British Empire - like the artifacts on display at the British Museum or the colonial subjects whose "traditional" societies were recreated at all those old imperial exhibitions, the plants at Kew show British imperialism at its giddy, acquisitive best. In fact, once it was opened to the public in the 1840s it became one of the most popular ways through which ordinary people could experience and appreciate the fruits of empire - pun intended.
Anyways, I took me some photos of the purty plants. They're here.
The other thing I've been doing in my off hours is going to a new neighborhood every night for dinner, with a bit of London rambling built into the agenda. Luckily, I've already seen a whole lot of London during the daytime, so it's kind of exciting to see these places in their eveningwear. I've also taken a few photos on these excursions. They're here.
The nighttime photos will probably be updated several times over the next two weeks, so check back often! (I'd hate for y'all to miss anything.)
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