MATCH UP DIALOGUE PARTS
PART 1 (first sentence)
| Did you convey my message to her? | Give me a rough idea of how people play pool here. | Which team are you cheering for with such fervour and elation? | His stiff-upper-lipped comportment makes people take against his at first. |
| They never seem to be exalted or effusive. | Mary is very smart and perceptive, isn’t she? | What was her reaction to the news that her son was not accepted into college yet all his friends with lower grades were? | What did she say in answer to you enquiry? |
| At the beginning of party talks are always stilted. People do not easily strike up conversation with one another. | There was an uproar in the media when they learned about what later came to be known “the Queen scandal”. | What did they say when John asked the players to go easy on his son on the field? | Let’s leave our mutual dislike aside for a moment and take turns while rowing this boat. |
PART 2 (reply, reaction)
| Well, when I came she was sprawled on a sofa hogging all the space there. She said she knew nothing and appeared absolutely unconcerned. | Yes, I remember reading about her wanting to spend more quality time with her dogs than with her children. | Everybody cringed with embarrassment and bewilderment. Their fair-play personality was offended. | True, but it doesn’t last long when they find out that he’s practically blind and has to be accompanied by a canine chaperone everywhere he goes. |
| OK, I guess we might as well be manly out here in the ocean. | Well, they are pretty hedged about with social constraints. | Yes, she’s a shrewd person, I can credit her with that. | I am rooting for the underdog here, the London United! |
| But when they’ve had a couple of drinks, they usually become amicable enough. | I did. She seemed pissed off when she learned that you wouldn’t be coming. | What do you think? She seethed with righteous indignation at such an outrage. | It’s winner stays on. And careful, they are wary of newcomers. |
RULES OF PLAY PART IV
Pet Rules and ‘Petiquette’
Keeping pets, for the English, is not so much a leisure activity as an entire way of life. In fact, ‘keeping pets’ is an inaccurate and inadequate expression – it does not begin to convey the exalted status of our animals. An Englishman’s home may be his castle, but his dog is the real king.
The unwritten rules allow our dogs and cats to sprawl all over our sofas and chairs, always hogging the best places in front of the fire or television. They get far more attention, affection, appreciation, encouragement and ‘quality time’ than our children, and often better food. Imagine the most over-indulged, fêted, adored bambino in Italy, and you will get a rough idea of the status of the average English pet.
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The average Englishman will assiduously avoid social interaction with his fellow humans, and will generally become either awkward or aggressive when obliged to communicate with them, unless certain props and facilitators are available to help the process along. He will have no difficulty at all, however, in engaging in lively, amicable conversation with a dog. Even a strange dog, to whom he has not been introduced. Bypassing all the usual stilted embarrassments, his greeting will be effusive: ‘Hello there!’ he will exclaim, ‘What’s your name? And where have you come from, then? D’you want some of my sandwich, mate? Mmm, yes, it’s not bad, is it? Here, come up and share my seat! Plenty of room!’
The unspoken law states that our animal alter egos/inner brats can do no wrong. If an English person’s dog bites you, you must have provoked it; and even if the attack was clearly unprovoked – if the animal just took a sudden irrational dislike to you – the owners will assume that there must be something suspect about you. The English firmly believe that our dogs (and cats, guinea pigs, ponies, parrots, etc.) are shrewd judges of character. If our pet takes against someone, even if we have no reason at all to dislike the person, we trust the animal’s superior insight and become wary and suspicious.
We can even manage to strike up a conversation with a stranger if one of us is accompanied by a dog, although it must be said that both parties are sometimes inclined to talk to the canine chaperone rather than address each other directly.
And pets can act as mediators or facilitators even in more established relationships: English couples who have trouble expressing their feelings to each other often tend to communicate through their pets. ‘Mummy’s looking really pissed off, isn’t she, Patch? Yes she is. Yes she is. Do you think she’s annoyed with us?’ ‘Well, Patchy-poo, Mummy’s vewy, vewy tired and she would appreciate it if your lazy old Daddy gave her a bit of help round here instead of sitting on his arse reading the paper all day.’
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PROPS AND FACILITATORS – PUBLIC, SOCIAL ACTIVITIES
Rules of the Game
It is no accident that almost all of the most popular sports and games played around the world today originated in England. Football, baseball, rugby and tennis were all invented here, and even when we did not actually invent a sport or game, the English were usually the first to lay down a proper, official set of rules for it (hockey, horseracing, polo, swimming, rowing, boxing – and even skiing, for heaven’s sake). And that’s not counting all the rather less athletic games and pastimes such as darts, pool, billiards, cards, cribbage and skittles. And let’s not forget hunting, shooting and fishing. We didn’t create or codify all of these, of course, but sports and games are widely recognized as an essential part of our culture, our heritage and our legacy – one cannot talk about Englishness without talking about sports and games.
The ‘Props and Facilitators’ Method
It was during my study on pub etiquette that I began to understand the importance of games. In conversations with tourists, I found that to foreign visitors, many English pubs seem more like children’s playgrounds than adult drinking-places. One American tourist I interviewed expressed his bewilderment at the number and variety of games in a local pub: ‘Look at this place! You’ve got a dart board, a bar-billiards table, four different board games, and card games and dominoes and some weird thing with a box and a bunch of little sticks – and then you tell me this pub has a football team and a cricket team and quiz nights . . . You call this a bar? At home we’d call it a kindergarten!’
What works in the microcosm of the pub also works in English society as a whole. More so, in fact. If we need games and sports even in the special social micro-climate of the pub, where the usual restraints are relaxed somewhat, and it is acceptable to strike up a conversation with a stranger, we clearly have an even greater need for such props and facilitators outside this sociable environment.
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The Self-delusion Rule
But sports and games do not only provide the props we need to initiate and sustain social contact, they also prescribe the nature of that contact. This is not ‘random’ sociability, but sociability hedged about with a lot of rules and regulations, ritual and etiquette, both official and unofficial. The English are capable of engaging socially with each other, but we need clear and precise guidelines on what to do, what to say, and exactly when and how to do and say it.
Games Etiquette
Every one of these games has its rules – not just the official rules of the game itself, which the English like to be as complex as possible, but an equally complex set of unofficial, unwritten rules governing the comportment and social interactions of the players and spectators. Again, pub games are a good example. Even in this sociable microclimate, our natural diffidence and reluctance to intrude on other people means that we are more comfortable when there are established ‘rules of introduction’ to follow. Knowing the etiquette, the correct form of address, gives us the courage to take the initiative.
For pool and bar-billiards players, the formula is straightforward. You simply approach a player and ask, ‘Is it winner stays on?’ This traditional opening is both an enquiry about the local rules on turn-taking, which may vary from region to region and even from pub to pub, and an invitation to play the winner of the current game. The reply may be ‘Yeah, coins down,’ or ‘That’s right – name on the board.’ This is both an acceptance of your invitation, and an instruction on the pub’s system for securing the table, which may be by placing your coins on the corner of the table, or writing your name on a nearby chalkboard.
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Sex Differences and the ‘Three-emotions Rule’
There are some sex differences in the codes of conduct governing pub games, and indeed many sports and games played in other contexts. As a rule of thumb, males are supposed to adopt a strong, stiff-upper-lipped, manly approach to the game, both as players and as spectators. It is not done to jump about and exclaim over one’s own or another player’s luck or skill.
The usual ‘three-emotions rule’ applies. English males are allowed to express three emotions: surprise, providing it is conveyed by shouting or swearing; anger, also communicated in expletives; and elation/triumph, displayed in the same manner.
The Fair-play Rule
The English concern with fair play is, as we have seen, an underlying theme in almost all aspects of our life and culture, and in the context of sports and games, fair play is still – despite the rantings of the doom-mongers – an ideal to which we cling, even if we do not always manage to live up to it.
At the top national and international level, sport has become, for the English as for all other nations, a rather more cut-throat business, and there seems to be more focus on winning and on the exploits of individual superstar ‘personalities’ (a misnomer if ever there was one), than on high-minded notions of team spirit and sportsmanship. Until, that is, there is some accusation of cheating, unfairness, loutishness or unsporting behaviour, whereupon we all seethe with righteous indignation – or cringe with shame and embarrassment, and tell each other that the country is going to the dogs. Both reactions suggest that the sporting ethic, which the English are often credited with inventing, is still very important to us.
The Underdog Rule
In 1990, the Tory MP Norman Tebbit caused much outrage and uproar when he complained that too many Asian immigrants in Britain failed what he called the ‘cricket test’ – by cheering for India or Pakistan when these countries played England at cricket, rather than cheering for England. His remarks were aimed primarily at second-generation Asian and Caribbean immigrants, whom he accused of having ‘split loyalties’, when they should be demonstrating their Britishness by supporting the England cricket team.
The racism, ignorance and arrogance of the ‘Tebbit Test’, as it came to be known, are quite breathtaking. Was Tebbit suggesting that Asian immigrants in Britain should follow the shining example we provided as uninvited residents in their countries? And for whom would he suggest that English settlers in Australia should cheer, when England plays Australia in their adopted home? And what about Scottish and Welsh people living in England – who should they support? Did he realize that the Scots always, on principle, cheer for whatever country is playing against England? As do many members of the cynical chattering-class English intelligentsia, among whom any display of patriotism, particularly over sport, is regarded as deeply unsophisticated. Not to mention all the other English people who just find patriotic fervour somewhat embarrassing, and would feel silly and self-conscious if obliged to cheer for England.
But even leaving all this aside, the ‘Tebbit Test’ would still not work as a test of Englishness. Those who are truly, culturally ‘English’ – whatever their race or country of origin – can be distinguished by their automatic, instinctive inclination to cheer for the underdog.
WRITE A DIALOGUE WITH THE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS BELOW. TOPIC: TWO PEOPLE WALKING DOGS STRIKE UP A CONVERSATION
bypass
stilted
to hog
quality time
a rough idea
to convey
exalted
to sprawl
amicable
effusive
Bewilderment
pissed off
hedged about with
wary
WRITE A COMPOSITION WITH THE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS BELOW.
TOPIC: THE BEST KIND OF PET
to strike up a conversation
comportment
winner stays on
cringe with
stiff-upper-lipped
seethe with
righteous
outrage
leave all this aside
cheer for
RULES OF PLAY PART V Club Rules
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