2.
- TEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE YOU MARRY AN ENGLISHMAN
I know something about this
subject, in fact, you might say I’m an expert. I’ve been married to the most
English-y of Englishmen for more than 25 years. Many of my friends are
Englishmen. Many of my friends are Americans married to Englishmen. Yes, I’ve
done my fieldwork; I’ve earned my degree.
Heed the
message!
Through the years, so many people
have said to me, “Oh, it must be so much fun being married to an Englishman.”
Since Downton Abbey fever swept the States, that refrain
has reached a crescendo. Yes, it is “fun”, but a marriage divided by a common
language is a lot of other things, too. In the interest of smoothing the
transition for anyone who dreams of their own Lord Grantham, I offer these
cautions and suggestions for your consideration.
While I’m focusing on ENGLISHmen,
you American men looking to find your own Keira Knightly will find this a
helpful primer as well. While it’s been my observation that Englishwomen are
more flexible than the men (as all women are compared to men), you still may
face some of these issues. Don’t call these warnings. I wouldn’t want to warn
anyone off the English. They’re hilarious (often when they least mean to be)
and I think their Englishness is a perfect complement to Americanness. Think
oil and vinegar. Sweet and sour. Different as can be, but together, they work.
1. You will pick up his accent. He will
never lose his. Not all of you will go full on Madonna — who had a fakey
English accent within a month of marrying Guy Ritchie. Sometimes, it’s not even
the accent. I’m not aware that any Surrey has rubbed off on me. But I still
find myself, at least once a month, standing in the middle of the grocery store
realizing that I can’t remember the American words for courgettes, aubergines
and Swedes. (Zucchini, eggplant and rutabaga.) To whatever degree, you
assimilate, remember that he won’t. And the accent will get thicker when he
talks to his mother on the phone or when he’s watching BBC America.
2. He had a deprived childhood. I’m not
talking about his family life. I’m talking about his family life. I’m talking
about his television. No matter how quaint you find the old Mickey Mouse Club,
how low tech the original Star Trek Enterprise’s control panel was, or how
hokey it was that the Brady Bunch had an astro-turf back yard, you haven’t seen
low-budget until you’ve seen British children’s programming. We are talking
budgets so low the props could have come out of that play you and your second
grade friends once put on in the back yard.
Take the Daleks of Dr. Who. Does
anyone else think that they were made out of trashcans or am I the only one
saying that the robot has no clothes? Because there was no money for sets or
special effects, it was written in that the Daleks couldn’t climb stairs. Hey
presto! Insidious space invasion foiled by running up to the second floor of a council
flat. The absolute bottom of the barrel for Englishmen of a certain age is
Captain Pugwash, which reduced animation to cardboard cutouts that apparently
jerked around on thin strings of dental floss. I discuss this further in this post. But just be aware before you diss Captain Pugwash —
seeing an Englishman of 50+ cry is not a pretty sight.
3. He will like pigs. It
doesn’t matter if he is a lifelong city boy, give an Englishman a little bit of
farmland and the first thing he thinks about aren’t horses or chickens, but
pigs. I don’t know why this is. I theorize it has to to with the
Englishman’s innate fondness for bacon and sausages. But I suspect it’s deeper
than that. When I pressed my husband to tell me why the pig seems to be the
Englishman’s favored farm animal, he said, “Winston Churchill liked pigs.” I
don’t think you’ll get a better answer than that.
I went on
a trip with my mother once and came home to find new pictures of farm animals
and little ceramic pigs decorating our living room.
4. His shoes will be perfect. I
remember years before I encountered Englishmen, reading an Agatha Christie
mystery where the murder was solved because the alleged English Duchess was
revealed as an impostor. How? Because her shoes were run down at the heels and
Hercule Poirot explained that “an Englishwoman might be dressed in rags, but
she will always be well shod”. This goes double for Englishmen. Start
allocating a huge amount of closet space for all his shoes.
And expect to run late to most
events as he carefully polishes both the tops and the soles of his footwear.
Okay, much younger Englishmen may wear shoes that aren’t polished, but they
will be the height of hipster fashion. And the polishing time will be
reallocated to the perfect ties tied perfectly. Don’t believe me? Look at the
footwear of any of the top English bands today. I rest my case.
Be ready
to surrender loads of closet space to his vast shoe collection.
5. Vegetables will be an issue. Englishmen hate vegetables. Sometimes, they will tolerate
peas and carrots. But don’t try to tempt them with all the wonderful vegetables
we have in America, especially any orange vegetable. For some reason my
Thanksgivings are dominated by English friends. They always gripe about “the
obligatory orange vegetable”. They absolutely draw the line at pumpkin. As my
English friend, Vickie, says, “Pumpkin is a silly vegetable.” Don’t even think
about beets. Every English schoolboy has been subjected to beets that are
boiled to a pink slimy mass.
Even if you patiently explain
that, in America, we roast our beets so the sugars caramelize, they will not
eat them. Allow me to let you in on a dirty little secret of the English: even
Englishmen who profess to eat vegetables don’t really. How often have you heard
Jamie Oliver banging on about fresh produce. Well, if he really ate all the
vegetables he claims to would his skin be as pasty and blotchy as it is?
Believe me, the only vegetables he probably encounters are in Branston Pickle.
Same with most Englishmen.
This is my
Englishman on veg. Swiss Chard in this case.
6. He will be a slave to fashion. You thought it all stopped with the footwear? The British
are actually more fashionable than the French, just in a more subdued and
ultimately confusing way. You will never figure out what is in fashion or out
of fashion to a Brit. It’s not often in the magazines. In fact, by the time the
magazines pick it up, it’s old hat to the Brits. The nearest I’ve been able to
figure out, true fashion to a Brit involves vintage and new pieces, some
designer and all mixed up in unexpected ways and worn in unexpected venues.
I remember reading an article
about the Duchess of Windsor who marveled that the Duke could mix five
different plaids and make it work. Even more amazing, the accompanying picture
showed him in those plaids among his roses with gardening shears. I would have
dismissed it as a photo op, until I saw my father-in-law head out to “dig his
marrows” in his gardening tweeds and tie. His son is carrying on this sartorial
tradition by only venturing out to my garden in immaculately pressed cords,
tweed waistcoat, Barbour jacket and matching cap. The shoes, of course, are
polished.
7. There is a little Lord Grantham in all
of them, especially in the country.You might
want to reread the paragraph above. There is a reason an Englishman dresses so
elegantly to garden. That’s because, like Lord Grantham, they seldom actually
do any of the work. The English style of gardening is decidedly
Grathamian. An Englishman will survey his land, perfectly dressed and direct
his staff. He will imagine that he has the armies of gardeners, workers and
laborers that Grantham had. He will probably have only you. You will do the
work. He will look perfect. Later over a cup of tea, he will remark how
rewarding gardening can be.
8. You will never make tea exactly right. Yes, that
cup of tea. Don’t even try to make it. Here is where you will sit back and
plead being an American. Because you will never brew a proper cup. You will
receive detailed instructions on the tea to use, the way to warm the pot, the
amount of time to steep the tea, etc. etc. It will never be right. But why
bother? Do you really like tea anyway? Let the English brew it while you make a
nice cup of coffee.
You don’t
want to read the ingredients on this favorite Englishman’s food. Trust me, you
don’t want to know.
9. His comfort foods will horrify you. America has a legacy of some truly misguided foods. Jello
mold salad, Captain Crunch cereal, tuna salad. It gets worse as you move back
toward the Sixties and Fifties. But it never reaches the absolute food nadir of
the foods Englishmen will fondly recall from their childhoods.
I’m not talking Toad in the Hole,
Bubble and Squeak or Rumbledythumps which are all unavailable except as
homemade treats and are actually quite good. I’m talking about the packaged
foods of Britain that seem to contain twice the chemicals, three times the food
coloring and five times the sugar of any comparable American junk food. Bird’s
Custard has got to be the epitome of this trend — a pus yellow, chemically
tainted, powdered version of the noble Créme Anglais which even the French
revered.
Don’t bother trying to make a
homemade version with organic eggs and fresh cream. Englishmen will always
prefer the neon yellow Bird’s version. Branston Pickle is another mystery. I
think it actually starts with vegetables, but it’s processed with what must be
gallons of vinegar, pounds of sugar and a few weeks of boiling. I once reverse
engineered the Branston Pickle recipe and made it with fresh vegetables out of
my organic garden. The verdict from my English husband and friends: “Okay, but
it’s not soft enough. And are there vegetables in here?”
10. He will continue to be unintentionally
hilarious. Even after nearly 25
years of marriage, I’m still laughing at my British husband. I mean with him.
With love. They are hilarious. Especially when they don’t mean to be. Eccentric
doesn’t even begin to cover it. As I worked on this article, I thought it would
be only fair to involve Andy, if just for full disclosure.
“So I’m writing about all the
eccentric things that English husbands do? What is the funniest thing that you
do?”
“I’m not eccentric at all. We don’t
do anything funny or odd.”
As he said this, he was waving two
pieces of toast over his head to cool them off. Then once they were stone cold,
he began to scrape cold butter over them until large clumps of unmelted spread
were embedded in the now ripped bread. Think this is one man’s eccentricity?
Ponder the fact that the English invented the toast rack for just this purpose.
About the Author: Lisa Paul
An Anglophile from
an early age, Lisa Paul was indelibly changed by a college year abroad
studying English Literature and Art History in London. She came home and,
within three years of graduation, nabbed a recent English immigrant right off
the boat. After more than 25 years of marriage, they are finding new ways that
Americans and the English are divided by a common language and culture.
Currently, Lisa is managing a vineyard and organic garden in Sonoma, part
of her husband’s Lord Granthamian dream of farming.