Friday 24 February 2012

Tea, top hats, and Her Majesty

Stereotypes. That is the topic for today's post. But I'm sure you guessed that from the title, didn't you? If not, well, what can I say? Have you ever heard of Britain? Is my blog the basis of all your assumptions on our rather peculiar mannerisms and characteristics?

For the sake of the entire world and the future of mankind, I sincerely hope the latter is not true. Please do not take everything I say literally. I know this is a hard thing for you, because as I rediscovered only a few days ago, people will believe anything if it is said in a British accent. I mean, you believed that, didn't you? I would like to say that I am extremely responsible and do not abuse this new-found power of mine, but that would be a lie. I cannot help myself from time-to-time. Once in a while. Every other Wednesday. Ok, fine, that's a lie too. I do it all the time. But do not think of me as a deceitful person, dear reader, I mean, in the end I do correct them... occasionally. Actually, I still think that there might be somebody wandering around with the belief that at 11:00 every day in London, we all get up, face Westwards, put on the kettle, and begin to do a river dance whilst singing the national anthem. Whoops.

Before I begin to wallow in my grief and guilt (whilst secretly giggling), I will argue that there might be some truth in that. Well, not a lot really, but if we exclude the timings, the singing, and the river dancing - pretty much the entire content of the lie, we are left with one point. Tea. And we do like our tea. I'd like to imagine that at some stage in every Brit's life, that they and their family have sat back in front of the telly, each with a hot mug of PG Tips (with milk, obviously), and slowly vegetated in the silence. It's not a very exciting image, I must admit, but it's homely. Sorry to shatter your image of us formally sitting at a table, dressed in coat-tails, a top-hat, and a monocle, but it is important that you know the truth, because more often than not, we will either be in our pyjamas or tracksuits (that would be sweatpants for all you Americans out there).

Now, before you all rush off and get excited, there is a point that I must stress. We do not, I repeat (mainly for the benefit of any non-Brits reading), we do not have tea-time! There is no set time in our daily schedule when we will drop everything that we are doing, put on the kettle, and toast a couple of crumpets! I have no idea where this bizarre concept came from, and I have even less of an idea why it prompts people (generally of the prat-ish sort) to wander up to me and ask the following in a highly unconvincing British accent: "Is you have tea-time with the Queen? At the Bucklingham palace?" If you too have asked yourself the same question of us Britons, the answer is yes, yes we do. But not always at the palace. Sometimes we have it in our pyjamas in my living room at home. Tea-time. Honestly.

Seeing as none of you can hear me (unless, of course, you are extremely talented), I can only hope that you all imagined me along with millions of other Brits tutting in that past sentence. If not, I guess you have done so now. What an absurd idea tea-time is. Setting a time aside in the day to sit down, drink tea and consume vast amounts of biscuits, scones, crumpets, and other cake-like snacks, it sounds... well, bloody brilliant to be honest! Why aren't we doing more of this?! How did the world come up with this wonderful activity for us that we never took advantage of?! For a race which is supposedly meant to be (or a least sound) intelligent, I think we missed something there. How is it that America, stereotypically a silly nation, managed to think this up? Perhaps they aren't as stupid as they are made out to be. Although, they weren't exactly clever enough to adopt the practice themselves, so I guess our views don't need to be changed.

Hmm... After all this talk about tea, I quite fancy a cuppa now. And although it is 16:56 and nearly an hour past my supposed slot for tea, I think that is exactly what I'm going to have. I'm not sure the queen will be able to make it on such short notice though. Oh well, I guess I'll try tomorrow.

5 comments:

Srout said...

Odd, when I hear you in my head you have a Canadian accent, just like I do.

Fancy that.

Anonymous said...

what?!? no tea time i will call bs :)

Alon Nachshen said...

Well, maybe you should imagine a British one instead! Will enhance it slightly. But then again, I also hear everything in a British too. Ah well, what can we do...

Adam Lloyd said...

Great Blog, my fellow Brit! The next cup of tea I drink will be in honour of this delightful post, but the scone, that will be just for me.

Alon Nachshen said...

Thank you for the support old chap! Ah, I miss scones... And I missed them being pronounced in the proper way.

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