SEX RULES AND ENGLISHNESS
What does all this tell us about Englishness? The characteristics revealed here are mostly the 'usual suspects' - humour, social dis-ease, hypocrisy, fair play, class-consciousness, courtesy, modesty, and so on. But what is becoming increasingly clear to me is that these defining characteristics of Englishness cannot be seen (pace Orwell, Priestley, Betjeman, Bryson, Paxman and all the other list-makers) just as a list of discrete, unconnected qualities or principles: they must be understood as a system of some sort.
Looking closely at the rules and behaviour patterns in this chapter, I see that most of them are products of a combination or interaction of at least two 'defining characteristics'. The knee-jerk humour rule is an example of the use of humour (a defining characteristic in its own right) to alleviate the symptoms of our social dis-ease (another defining characteristic).
Many of the flirting zones identified by the SAS Test also reveal interactions between defining characteristics. Our problems with singles' events and dating agencies - our need to pretend that we are gathering for some non-social purpose, and our squeamishness about the concept of 'dating' - seem to involve a combination of social dis-ease (again), hypocrisy and anti-earnestness (a subset of humour).
The clubbers' 'no sex please, we're too cool' rule is mainly just about hypocrisy, but worth mentioning here as it seems to confirm something I have been suspecting for a while, which is that English hypocrisy really is a special kind of hypocrisy, involving collusion in a sort of unspoken agreement to delude ourselves, rather than any deliberate deception of others.
The courtesy-flirting rule combines hypocrisy with another defining characteristic, courtesy. These two seem to go together a lot - 'polite egalitarianism' is another product of hypocrisy and courtesy, combined with class-consciousness.
The uncertainty principle is not a sign of repressed homosexuality, but an interaction of three defining characteristics of Englishness: social dis-ease + courtesy + fair play. The rules of banter are a product of social dis-ease + humour; the girlwatching rules involve both of these, with the addition of our special collective-delusion brand of hypocrisy. The marrying-up rule combines class-consciousness and hypocrisy; the sex-talk rules are social dis-ease symptoms treated with humour again, as is the funny-bottoms rule.
This is all rather crude at the moment - I'm sure the equations involved are more complex than these simple additions - but at least we're moving towards something that looks more like a diagram than a list. I haven't figured it all out yet, but I'm still hoping that by the end of the book I will have found some graphic way of illustrating the connections and interactions between the elements that make up our national character.
Finally, the 'punography' of page three, where the silly wordplay (which seems to be contagious, sorry) somehow cancels out the sexiness of the pictures, is another example of the English use of humour to neutralize potential embarrassment or offence - a 'social dis-ease + humour + courtesy' combo. Some cultures celebrate sex and the erotic; others (religious ones, mainly) neutralize sex by censorship; others (the US, parts of Scandinavia) neutralize it with po-faced, earnest political correctness. The English do it with humour.
60. B.L. de Muralt in Lettres sur les Anglais.
61. Some observers have puzzled over the fact that English males have nonetheless managed to produce some of the finest love poetry in the world. I see no contradiction: fine love poetry tends to be written when the object of one's affections is at a safe distance; also, it often reflects a love of words more than a love of women, and the Englishman's love of words has never been in question.
62. I hope it is clear that I mean no disrespect to Jeremy Paxman with these quibbles. Quite the opposite: it is because his book is so good that it is worth quibbling with.
RITES OF PASSAGE
I've called this chapter Rites of Passage, rather than Religion, because religion as such is largely irrelevant to the lives of most English people nowadays, but the rituals to which Church of England vicars irreverently refer as 'hatchings, matchings and dispatchings', and other less momentous transitions, are still important. Most honest Anglican clerics will readily admit that the rites de passage of marriage, death, and to a lesser extent birth, are now their only point of contact with the majority of their parishioners. Some of us might attend a service at Christmas, and an even smaller number at Easter, but for most, church attendance is limited to weddings, funerals, and perhaps christenings.
The Elizabethan courtier John Lyly claimed that the English were God's 'chosen and peculiar people'. Well, if we are, this was certainly a rather peculiar choice on the Almighty's part, as we are probably the least religious people on Earth. In surveys, up to 88 per cent of English people tick the box saying that they 'belong' to one or another of the Christian denominations - usually the Church of England - but in practice only about 15 per cent of these 'Christians' actually go to church on a regular basis. The majority only attend for the aforementioned 'rites of passage', and for many of us, our only contact with religion is at the last of these rites - at funerals. Most of us are not christened nowadays, and only about half get married in church, but almost all of us have a Christian funeral of some sort. This is not because death suddenly inspires the English to become religious, but because it is the automatic 'default' option: not having a Christian funeral requires a determined effort, a clear notion of exactly what one wants to do instead, and a lot of embarrassing fuss and bother.
In any case, the Church of England is the least religious church on Earth. It is notoriously woolly-minded, tolerant to a fault and amiably non-prescriptive. To put yourself down as 'C of E' (we prefer to use this abbreviation whenever possible, in speech as well as on forms, as the word 'church' sounds a bit religious, and 'England' might seem a bit patriotic) on a census or application form, as is customary, does not imply any religious observance or beliefs whatsoever - not even a belief in the existence of God. Alan Bennett once observed, in a speech to the Prayer Book Society, that in the Anglican Church 'whether or not one believes in God tends to be sidestepped. It's not quite in good taste. Someone said that the Church of England is so constituted that its members can really believe anything at all, but of course almost none of them do'.
I remember eavesdropping on a conversation in my GP's waiting room. A schoolgirl of about 12 or 13 was filling in some medical form or other, with intermittent help from her mother. The daughter asked 'Religion? What religion am I? We're not any religion, are we?' 'No, we're not,' replied her mother, 'Just put C of E.' 'What's C of E?' asked the daughter. 'Church of England.' 'Is that a religion?' 'Yes, sort of. Well, no, not really - it's just what you put.' Like the automatic Christian funeral, 'C of E' is a sort of default option. A bit like the 'neither agree nor disagree' box on questionnaires - a kind of apathetic, fence-sitting, middling sort of religion for the spiritually 'neutral'.
It is hard to find anyone who takes the Church of England seriously - even among its own ranks. In 1991, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, said: 'I see it as an elderly lady, who mutters away to herself in a corner, ignored most of the time'. And this typically Eeyorish comment was in an interview immediately following his appointment to the most exalted position in this Church. If the Archbishop of Canterbury himself likens his church to an irrelevant senile old biddy, it is hardly surprising that the rest of us feel free to ignore it. Sure enough, in a sermon almost a decade later, he bemoaned the fact that 'A tacit atheism prevails'. Well, really - what did he expect?