MATCH UP DIALOGUE PARTS
PART 1 (first sentence)
| What restaurant would you single out to go to? | Randomly select any card you like. Now I’ll snap my fingers and guess which card it was. | If you want to close the lid, turn it clockwise. But careful with the decanter, it’s pretty pricey! | The child hurt himself with fork prongs! |
| She just can’t grasp the fact that I’d eat out rather than set the table at home. | We started working straight off the ship. Are you gonna pitch in? | Their obscene and sinful cohabitation has lasted for too long! They are not even married! | The Johnsons are coming to dinner. Do I need to add napkin rings? |
| Her excellent fishcakes have been much remarked upon. | Her actions at work cast certain doubts upon her qualifications. And all her references are rather oblique. | She’s such a busybody. And the same goes for her husband. | Why can’t you let Jenny watch this film? |
| I like tinned fruit as long as it’s bought at an up-market store. | He’s a well-brought-up boy. Look how he eats his peas, one at a time. | What really set me off was her loud mastication and yelling at the poor publican that she doesn’t like to be kept waiting. | How do I make fire with a lens against the sun? |
PART 2 (reply, reaction)
| It’s too sensual. | It’s convex side down. | You haven’t tried her sweetcorn or fried prawn yet! | We need to summon a doctor! |
| Yes, one would not call her humble or timid, would they? | Relax. They are light-hearted and relaxed people. | Come on, don’t work yourself into a frenzy over your dainty kitchenware! | Wow! You did it as though you were a wizard or whatever! |
| You are much too self-important. Canned goods on average are the same wherever you go. | And then he dabs his lip with a napkin that he didn’t tuck into his collar like everybody else! | Sorry, I am an uncommitted restaurant-goer. I am not an adherent of any cuisine and neither am I a foodie. | True. Stopping them from interfering in other people’s lives is hard if at all possible. |
| Oh, Aunt Julia, you certainly have a mean streak! Who cares as long as they are happy! | Then you should fire her! Maybe she’s just a nobody disguised as a college graduate! | But hasn’t she painstakingly made you dinner specifically to eat in? You shouldn’t grumble about it. | I see the situation does not lend itself for much spare time. I am coming! |
FOOD RULES
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THE AMBIVALENCE RULE
‘Loveless marriage’ is not an entirely unfair description of the English relationship with food, although marriage is perhaps too strong a word: our relationship with food and cooking is more like a sort of uneasy, uncommitted cohabitation.
In most other cultures, people who care about food, and enjoy cooking and talking about it, are not singled out, either sneeringly or admiringly, as ‘foodies’. Keen interest in food is the norm, not the exception: what the English call a ‘foodie’ would just be a normal person, exhibiting a standard, healthy, appropriate degree of focus on food. What we see as foodie obsession is in other cultures the default mode, not something unusual or even noticeable.
In a man, foodie tendencies may be seen as unmanly, effeminate, possibly even casting doubt upon his sexual orientation.
Foodieness is somewhat more acceptable among females, but it is still noticeable, still remarked upon – and in some circles regarded as pretentious. No-one wishes to be seen as too deeply fascinated by or passionate about food.
ANTI-EARNESTNESS AND OBSCENITY RULES
It has been said that the English have a puritanical streak, but I’m not sure this is quite accurate. Sex, for example, is not regarded as sinful, but as private and personal and therefore a bit embarrassing. Jokes about sex, even quite explicit ones, are acceptable; earnest or fervent talk about the same intimate physical details is obscene. The sensual pleasures of eating, it seems to me, are in the same category – not exactly a taboo subject, but one that should only be talked about in a light-hearted, unserious, jokey manner.
TV-DINNER RULES
Although the idea that we are becoming a nation of discerning gastronomes is, I’m afraid, over-optimistic foodie propaganda – well, a gross exaggeration, anyway – interest in food and cooking has certainly increased in recent years. There is usually at least one food-related programme on every television channel, every day.
Whether this actually translates into much real cooking in English homes is a matter for some debate.
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There are still very few households in England where fresh ingredients, pricey or otherwise, are painstakingly prepared and carefully cooked on a daily basis. The shelves of the more up-market supermarkets may be full of exotic vegetables, herbs and spices, but the majority of shoppers still have no idea what these ingredients are or how to cook them. I spent some time hanging around the fruit and veg sections in supermarkets, staring at things like pak choi, wild mushrooms and lemongrass, and randomly asking fellow shoppers if they knew what one was supposed to do with them. Most did not, and neither, for that matter, did the supermarket staff.
MOANING AND COMPLAINING RULES
In restaurants, as elsewhere, the English may moan and grumble to each other about poor service or bad food, but our inhibitions, our social dis-ease, make it difficult for us to complain directly to the staff. We have three very different ways of dealing with such situations, all more or less equally ineffective and unsatisfying.
The Silent Complaint
Most English people, faced with unappetizing or even inedible food, are too embarrassed to complain at all. Complaining would be ‘making a scene’, ‘making a fuss’ or ‘drawing attention to oneself’ in public – all forbidden by the unwritten rules. It would involve a confrontation, an emotional engagement with another human being, which is unpleasant and uncomfortable and to be avoided if at all possible.
The Apologetic Complaint
Some slightly braver souls will use method number two: the apologetic complaint, an English speciality. ‘Excuse me, I’m terribly sorry, um, but, er, this soup seems to be rather, well, not very hot – a bit cold, really . . .’
Sometimes these complaints are so hesitant and timid, so oblique, and so carefully disguised as apologies, that the staff could be forgiven for failing to grasp the fact that the customers are dissatisfied.
The Loud, Aggressive, Obnoxious Complaint
Finally, there is, as usual, the other side of the social dis-ease coin – English complaint-technique number three: the loud, aggressive, obnoxious complaint. The red-faced, blustering, rude, self-important customer who has worked himself into a state of indignation over some minor mistake – or, occasionally, the patient customer who eventually explodes in genuine frustration at being kept waiting hours for disgusting food.
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CULINARY CLASS CODES
English people of all classes love bacon sandwiches (…), although some more pretentious members of the lower- and middle-middle classes pretend to have daintier, more refined tastes, and some affectedly health-conscious upper-middles make disapproving noises about fat, salt, cholesterol and heart disease.
Other foods that come with invisible labels warning of lower-class associations include:
- prawn cocktail
- egg and chips (both ingredients are relatively classless on their own, but working class if eaten together)
- pasta salad (nothing wrong with pasta per se, but it’s ‘common’ if you serve it cold and mixed with mayonnaise)
- rice salad (lower class in any shape or form, but particularly with sweetcorn in it)
- tinned fruit (in syrup it’s working class, in fruit juice it’s still only about lower-middle)
- sliced hard-boiled eggs and/or sliced tomato in a green salad (whole cherry tomatoes are just about OK, but the class-anxious would be advised generally to keep tomatoes, eggs and lettuce away from each other)
- tinned fish (all right as an ingredient in something else, such as fishcakes, but very working class if served on its own)
- chip butties.
The Health-correctness Indicator
Food, we are told, is the new sex. It is certainly true that food has taken over from sex as the principal concern of what I call the ‘interfering classes’ – the nannyish, middle-class busybodies who have appointed themselves guardians of the nation’s culinary morals, and who are currently obsessed with making the working class eat up its vegetables.
The upper-middle chattering classes are the most receptive and suggestible adherents of the health-correctness cults. Among the females of this class in particular, food taboos have become the primary means of defining one’s social identity. You are what you do not eat. No chattering-class dinner party can take place without a careful advance survey of all the guests’ fashionable food allergies, intolerances and ideological positions.
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Timing and Linguistic Indicators
Dinner/Tea/Supper Rules
What do you call your evening meal? And at what time do you eat it?
- If you call it ‘tea’, and eat it at around half past six, you are almost certainly working class or of working-class origin.
- If you call the evening meal ‘dinner’, and eat it at around seven o’clock, you are probably lower-middle or middle-middle.
- If you normally only use the term ‘dinner’ for rather more formal evening meals, and call your informal, family evening meal ‘supper’ (pronounced ‘suppah’), you are probably upper-middle or upper class.
Lunch/Dinner Rules
The timing of lunch is not a class indicator, as almost everyone has lunch at around one o’clock. The only class indicator is what you call this meal: if you call it ‘dinner’, you are working class; everyone else, from the lower-middles upwards, calls it ‘lunch’. People who say ‘d’lunch’ (…) are trying to conceal their working-class origins, remembering at the last second not to call it ‘dinner’. Whatever their class, and whatever they may call it, the English do not take the middle-of-the-day meal at all seriously: most make do with a sandwich or some other quick, easy, single-dish meal.
Breakfast Rules – and Tea Beliefs
The traditional English breakfast – tea, toast, marmalade, eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc. – is both good and filling, and breakfast is the only aspect of English cooking that is frequently and enthusiastically praised by foreigners. Few of us eat this ‘full English breakfast’ regularly, however: foreign tourists staying in hotels get far more traditional breakfasts than we natives ever enjoy at home.
The tradition is maintained more at the top and bottom of the social scale than among the middle ranks. Some members of the upper class and aristocracy still have proper English breakfasts in their country houses, and some working-class people (mostly males) still believe in starting the day with a ‘cooked breakfast’ of bacon, eggs, sausages, baked beans, fried bread, toast and so on.
Table Manners and ‘Material Culture’ Indicators
Table Manners
English table manners, across all classes, have deteriorated somewhat but are still (…) fairly decent.
Although proper ‘family meals’ may nowadays occur on average only once a week, rather than every day, most English children of all classes are still brought up to say please and thank you when asking for food and being given food, and most adults are also reasonably polite. We all know that we should ask for things rather than just grabbing them; not serve ourselves huge helpings leaving insufficient food for the others; wait until everyone has been served before starting to eat, unless urged to ‘please start, or it will go cold’; not take the last piece of anything without asking if anyone else wants it; not talk with our mouths full; not cram vast, unsightly amounts of food into our mouths or masticate noisily; take part in the conversation without monopolizing or dominating it; and so on.
When eating at a restaurant, we know that in addition to the above we should be polite to the waiters and, in particular, never, ever try to summon a waiter by snapping our fingers or bellowing across the room. The correct procedure is to lean back in your chair with an expectant look, endeavour to make eye contact, then perform a quick eyebrow-lift/chin-lift.
We know that orders should be phrased as requests, with the usual full complement of pleases and thank-yous.
Forks and the Pea-eating Rules
The same goes for the prongs of your fork. When the fork is being held in your left hand and used in conjunction with a knife or spoon, the prongs of the fork should always point downwards, not upwards. ‘Well-brought-up’ English people must therefore eat peas by spearing two or three peas with the downturned prongs of their fork, using their knife to hold the peas still while spearing, then pushing a few more peas on to the convex back of the fork with their knife, using the speared peas on the prongs as a sort of little ledge to help stop the slightly squashed, pushed peas on the back of the fork from sliding straight off.
The ‘Small/Slow Is Beautiful’ Principle
When using both knife and fork, only the lower classes adopt the American system of first cutting up all or most of the food, then putting down the knife and shovelling up the food with the fork alone. The ‘correct’ – or rather, socially superior – approach is to cut up and eat your meat and other foods one small piece at a time, each time spearing and squashing a little selection of food on to the prongs and the back of your fork.
The correct (‘posh’) way to eat anything involving bread (…) is to break off (not cut off) a bite-sized piece of the bread or toast, spread butter/pâté/marmalade onto just that small piece, eat it in one small bite, then repeat the procedure with another small piece. It is considered vulgar to spread butter or whatever across the whole slice of toast or half-roll, as though you were making a batch of sandwiches for a picnic, and then bite into it. Biscuits or crackers served with cheese must be eaten in the same way as bread or toast, breaking off and spreading one small, bite-sized piece at a time.
Napkin Rings and Other Horrors
Napkins are useful and versatile objects – as class indicators (…):
- setting the table with napkins folded into over-elaborate, origami-like shapes (‘smart’ people just fold them simply);
- standing folded napkins upright in glasses (they should be placed either on or next to the plates);
- tucking one’s napkin into waistband or collar (it should be left loose on the lap);
- using one’s napkin to scrub or wipe vigorously at one’s mouth (gentle dabbing is correct);
- folding one’s napkin up carefully at the end of the meal (it should be left carelessly crumpled on the table);
- or, even worse, putting rolled-up napkins into napkin rings (only people who say ‘serviette’ use napkin rings).
Port-passing Rules
Another way you can set off English class-radar bleepers is to pass the port the wrong way. Port is served at the end of a dinner – sometimes, among the upper classes, to men only, as the women follow the old-fashioned practice of ‘withdrawing’ to another room to drink coffee and talk girl-talk, leaving the men to their male bonding. Port must always travel round the table clockwise (if it were to go anti-clockwise, the world would end), so you must always pass the bottle or decanter to your left.
Even if you somehow miss your turn, you must never ask for the port to be passed back to you, as this would mean port travelling in the wrong direction, which would be a disaster. Either wait for it come all the way round again, or pass your glass along to the left to catch up with the port and be filled for you. Your glass can then be passed back to you without danger, as port can travel anti-clockwise if it is in a glass: the taboo on passing to the right only applies to port in bottles and decanters.
THE MEANING OF CHIPS
Chips, Patriotism and English Empiricism
Although chips were invented in Belgium, and are popular (as French-fries, frites, patate frite, patatas fritas, etc.) in many other parts of the world, we found that English people tend to think of them as British or, rather more specifically, English. ‘Fish and chips’ is still regarded as the English national dish. The English are not normally inclined to be either patriotic or passionate about food but we found that they could be surprisingly patriotic and enthusiastic about the humble chip.
Chip-sharing Rules and Sociability
Chips are also an important social facilitator. This is the only English food that actually lends itself to sharing, and that the unwritten rules allow us to share. When we are eating chips, you will often see the English behaving in a very sociable, intimate, un-English manner: all pitching in messily to eat with our fingers off the same plate or out of the same bag, pinching chips off each other’s plates – and even feeding chips to each other.
WRITE A DIALOGUE WITH THE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS BELOW. TOPIC: YOU AND YOUR FRIEND ARE TWO STUDENTS WHO’VE JUST BEEN ADMITTED TO A UNIVERSITY
obscene
sensual
cast doubt upon
pricey
cohabitation
single out
remarked upon
have a streak
sinful
painstakingly
randomly
worked himself into
timid
disguised as
grasp the fact that
WRITE A COMPOSITION WITH THE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS BELOW.
TOPIC: HOW THE EDUCATION SYSTEM CAN BE IMPROVED
adherents of
being kept waiting
tinned
if at all possible
as though
rather than
one at a time
or whatever
masticate
on average
well-brought-up
straight off
summon
snap one’s fingers
the same goes for
CHAPTER 13
RULES OF SEX
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