I once read somewhere that to be British; was to drive a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then on your way home, buy an Indian curry, or a Turkish kebab, then sit down on Swedish furniture and watch American TV shows on a Japanese television. And still have a healthy suspicion and dislike for all things foreign.
Here's a quick list of British attributes for better, or worse;
Self discipline, the ability to laugh at yourself and to not take life too seriously, to have a peculiar and extraordinary sense of humour, to be crap at sports, but still have the insane belief that we'll win the next world cup, arrogance, appalling drunken behaviour (especially while abroad), impeccable manners when sober, mindless violence, sexual repression, an indescribable hatred of our nearest neighbours the French, of which we know absolutely nothing about, our patience for queueing, how we never complain when we really should (you could serve an Englishman a pile of steaming dog shit, charge him a small fortune and he'd eat it without complaint), tolerance, moaning about everything that doesn't matter, the way everything is OK again (ranging from a nasty fall to your entire family being wiped out) after a sit down and a nice cup of tea etc. etc.
As I've said before, there's more than one ingredient to being British. Britishness is in many ways, as difficult to define as the American Dream is to an American.
It can mean many things to many different people.
To generalise wouldn't do the essence of what it is to be British any justice, because to do so would be to ignore the class differences, regionalism, religion and entire countries even.
We are an island race. A race of people brought together over centuries of turmoil and inter-fighting, with no quarter given and non asked.
Ask an Englishman what he thinks of the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish and you'll find there's not much love.
Try any permutation of the same question to the other above nationals and you'd very probably get the same answer.
To me, what it really means to be British is what happens when all that is British is challenged, or threatened.
Down come the class divides, the provincial tribalism and national borders. Away go the differences of over a thousand years of conflict and distrust.
And what's left is a brotherhood. A union unlike any other in the world, where an Englishman will stand shoulder to shoulder with an Irishman. A Scotsman with a Welshman and willingly die for a common cause. And after the dust is settled...get right back to hating each other again, like nothing ever happened.
Unstoppable and unbeatable.
RULE BRITANNIA!
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