Keep calm...and muddle through

By Eric Prideaux

pLondon, UK

		Stiff upper lip This 1939 poster has touched a uniquely English nerve

he English language is brutal. Especially in the mouths of the people who created it.

Why exactly should the British "more haste, less speed" be a warning to slow down? (Americans' "haste makes waste" is more logical.) Then there's "All talk and no trousers." Cute, but as sensible as pants on a dog. And consider "as the actress said to the vicar," which is usually uttered with a mischievous grin. The vicar must be as puzzled as I am. As puzzled as we both are at "pull your finger out" and "suck it and see."

But the first Britishism to throw me, a native New Yorker, was "muddling through," a catch-all used to explain how one handles life in the gray old UK. "How are you?" I recall asking a former editor whose lilt reminded me of John Lennon. "Oh, muddling through," he sighed. It was my first clue that in the English cosmos, life is a swamp through which one muddles.

No sooner had I gotten used to muddling when I had my first encounter with Uncle Bob and Aunt Fannie. These two English relations come to celebrate any time the English have managed to muddle through something all the way to completion. Let's say two Englishmen finally get around to emptying that swamp. When one man has tossed the last bucket of slime onto the shore he announces that "Bob's your uncle!" His comrade must respond, "And Fannie's your aunt!" Then they head to the pub.

All of this may make some kind of dreamlike, intuitive sense even if you've never actually met Bob or Fannie or understand why their names should be invoked. But my confusion over another English peculiarity, namely "bums on the seat," almost resulted in violence. 

While apartment hunting in London, I asked an "estate agent" why the monthly rent for a certain "flat" he was showing me was so low. I had already come to dislike this guy when he threatened to give the apartment to a young couple if I didn't pay an immediate deposit. Things got worse when I asked him if the apartment was so cheap due to barrels of chemical waste in the basement or maybe a poltergeist in the bedroom or something.

"Bums on the seats, mate. Bums on the seat," he muttered, annoyed by my line of questioning. Was he calling me a bum? It was only my sheer desire for the apartment that stopped me from tearing him a new one. Just as well that I didn't: I later realized that he was only explaining that the landlord wanted bums (British for "butts") to occupy the seats--in other words, for somebody to move in so he could stop paying maintenance fees out of pocket. When I told the agent I'd take the apartment, he ruffled my feathers again by answering, "Then show me the color of your money."

ow that I've come to comprehend such vivid turns of phrase, I'm less frightened of the British language and have even learned to love it. Nowadays, I'm particularly charmed by the English approach to "getting on with it." Of course, all speakers of English around the world get on with it every now and then. But the British do it with astonishing zeal. For these heroically pragmatic people, it is what to do when muddling through some chore--say, performing a root canal or drafting the national budget--is taking too long. When this happens, they flout whatever rules apply and simply get on with it--recriminations, law suits, wars and other consequences be damned! Slam, bam, wrap it up...and it's off to the pub again.

I've adopted another favorite expression from my host nationals. No slaves to custom, the English like to test boundaries by "trying it on." For example, a housewife attempts to haggle a butcher down to an unconscionably low price. Is the merchant insulted? He is not. "Oh, she was jess tryin' it on," he chuckles after the woman has paid full price and "pissed off" (gone) home. English people apparently try on attitudes like Americans try on baseball caps.

And while the English are famous for their "stiff upper lip," less known is their ability to also "Keep Calm and Carry On." This slogan originally appeared on a 1939 wartime poster that the British government planned to distribute should the Germans occupy the UK. In recent days, the bright red poster, embellished with a crown, has resurfaced across the country on coffee cups and t-shirts everywhere. A reliable source informs me that an iPhone case is emblazoned with the motif.

The slogan is so popular because it strikes an essentially English nerve. After all, the people of this land know full well that there are times when muddling through, and even getting on with it, will fail. Times when Uncle Bob and Aunt Fannie have pissed off to the pub. On such chilly and overcast days--and there are many--there is obviously nothing else to do but keep calm, and carry on.