The modesty rule seems to be yet another consistently recurring theme - and, as with humour, the workplace provides a useful and revealing 'test' of the strength of this rule. We found that when the requirements of advertising and marketing are at odds with the English modesty rule, the rule wins, and advertising must be re-invented to comply with the prohibition on boasting.
The polite-procrastination rule highlights another familiar trait, the one I have taken to calling the English 'social dis-ease', as a shorthand way of referring to our chronic inhibitions, our perverse obliqueness, our congenital inability to engage in a direct and straightforward fashion with other human beings. The money-talk taboo, a symptom of this dis-ease, brings us back to the usual-suspect themes of class-consciousness, modesty and hypocrisy - all increasingly strong candidates for defining-characteristic status, along with our penchant for excessive moderation.
I have a hunch that fair play will also turn out to be a fundamental law of Englishness. Like humour and 'social dis-ease', the fair-play ideal seems to pervade and influence much of our behaviour, although it is often manifested as polite egalitarianism, suggesting that hypocrisy is an equally powerful element.
More familiar themes recur in the workplace moaning rules, but with some new twists. We find that even our constant Eeyorish moaning is subject to the ubiquitous humour rules, particularly the injunction against earnestness. And the 'Typical!' rule reveals what may be a modern variant of the 'stiff upper lip' - a distinctively English quality, which for the moment I am calling 'grumpy stoicism'.
Finally, the after-work-drinks and office-party rules bring us back again to the theme of English social dis-ease, in particular to our need for 'props' and facilitators - such as alcohol and special settings with special rules - to help us overcome our many social inhibitions. More of these in the next chapter.
41. A salty, dark brown spread made from the yeast by-products of the beer-brewing process.
42. For those who do not speak Yorkshire: 'Owt?' means 'Anything?' and 'Nowt' means 'Nothing'.
43. Although I've always wondered: how do we know that no two snowflakes are identical? I mean, has someone actually checked them all?
44. This is not universally the case: in many cultures, specifically those with a more healthy, 'integrated' attitude to drinking, alcohol is equally used to mark the transition from home/play to work. In France and Spain, for example, working men will often stop at a bar or cafe on their way to work for a 'fortifying' glass of wine, calvados or brandy.
RULES OF PLAY
I am using the term 'play' here in a very broad sense, to mean any leisure activity: pastimes, hobbies, holidays, sport - anything that is not work, anything that we do in our spare time (with the exception of the specific things covered in later chapters on food, sex and rites of passage).
The English have three different approaches to leisure, relating to our three main methods of dealing with our social dis-ease, our incompetence in the field - minefield might be a better term - of social interaction:
* First, there are private and domestic pursuits, such as DIY, gardening and hobbies (the 'go home, shut the door, pull up the drawbridge' method).
* Second, we have public, social activities such as pubs, clubs, sports and games (the 'ingenious use of props and facilitators' method).
* Third, we have anti-social pursuits and pastimes, such as getting very drunk and fighting (our least attractive way of dealing with social dis-ease, the 'become loud and aggressive and obnoxious' method).
PRIVACY RULES - PRIVATE AND DOMESTIC PURSUITS
Like 'humour rules', this heading can be read as meaning 'rules of privacy' but also in the graffiti sense of 'Privacy rules, OK!' - conveying the way in which the English obsession with privacy dominates our thinking and governs our behaviour. The easiest way for the English to cope with our social dis-ease is to avoid social interaction altogether, by choosing either leisure activities that can be performed in the privacy of one's own home, or outdoor pursuits that require no significant contact with anyone other than one's immediate family, such as going for a walk, or to the cinema, or shopping - anything that takes place in environments governed by the 'denial rule', which covers almost all public places.
In recent surveys, over half of all the leisure activities mentioned by respondents were of this private/domestic type, and of the top ten pastimes, only two (having friends round for a meal or drinks, and going to the pub) could be unequivocally described as 'sociable'. The most domestic pursuits are the most popular: watching television, listening to the radio, reading, DIY and gardening. Even when the English are being sociable, the survey findings show that most of us would much rather entertain a few close friends or relatives in the safety of our own homes than venture out among strangers.
Homes and Gardens
I have already discussed at some length (in the Home Rules chapter) the English home-fixation and privacy-obsession, but it is worth repeating here my theory that 'home is what the English have instead of social skills'. Our love-affair with our homes and gardens is, I believe, directly related to our obsession with privacy, which in turn is due to our social dis-ease.
Watching television is a universal pastime - nothing uniquely English about this. Nor is there anything peculiarly English about the other main domestic leisure pursuits mentioned here, such as reading, gardening and DIY, or at least not per se. There is, however, something distinctive about the phenomenal extent of their popularity, particularly in the case of DIY and gardening. On any given evening or weekend, in at least half of all English households, someone will be 'improving' the home, with bits of wood or tins of paint, or the garden, by digging or just 'pottering'. In my SIRC colleagues' studies on English DIY habits, only 12 per cent of women and 2 per cent of men said that they never did any DIY. In the latest national census survey, over half of the entire adult male population had been DIYing in the four weeks before the census date. Nearly a third of the female population had also been busily improving their homes, and our obsession with our gardens was equally evident: 52 per cent of all English males and 45 per cent of females had been out there pruning and weeding.
Compare these figures with those for church attendance, and you will find the real national religion. Even among people claiming to belong to a particular religion, only 12 per cent attend religious services every week. The rest of the population can be found every Sunday at their local garden centre or DIY superstore. And when we want a break from obsessing about our own homes and gardens, we go on mini-pilgrimages to gawp at bigger and better houses and gardens, such as the stately homes and gardens opened to the public by the National Trust and the Royal Horticultural Society. Visiting grand country houses consistently ranks as one of the most popular national pastimes. This is not at all surprising, as these places have everything an English person could wish for in a Sunday outing: not just inspiration for home and garden improvements ('Oooh, look, that's just the sort of pinky-beige colour I was thinking of for our lounge!') and indulgence in class-obsession and general nosiness, but also reassuring queues, refreshing cups of tea, and a sense that the whole thing must be virtuously educational - or at least a lot more so than going to the DIY store or garden centre - because it is, after all, 'historic'.45 This little puritanical streak, this need to show that one's leisure activities are more than just mindless consumerist pleasure-seeking, is most evident among the middle classes; the working classes and upper classes are generally more open and honest in their consumption of pleasure, being less fussily concerned about what others might think of them.