As I have said for over 40 years now, the English are a quite logical, yet very shy people, which makes them kind of slightly hilarious. It’s basically why classic shows of the 80s were such a hit, like Blackadder and Mr. Bean.
So, take my wife for example, she is, in certain social situations, too shy to complain. In situation that no Latina or even East block woman would hesitate to react like a venomous snake that’s just been stepped on, she gets too shy, out of some misplaced politeness, to react appropriately. For example, when we were still in London, she’d go shopping at one of the local supermarkets, with a couple or more kids in tow by the way, and she only admitted to me after some time that the African security guard posted at the entrance had taken to greeting her regularly, which is fine, but then it had progressed to him having a quick word with her, about inconsequentials, which, being English, she of course felt duty bound to respond to, as the English do if they don’t duck their head in shyness and run off pretending not to have seen/heard you. Eventually that led to the security guard taking hold of her hand and speaking to her in more dulcet tones. Now, apparently this happened more than once, before she told me about it. Perhaps a different man would have assumed she somehow found the attention flattering, but this is certainly not her case, and when I asked why she didn’t tell me sooner, I realised yet another layer of this same timidity overlay the whole situation. Having allowed the African security guard to hold her hand as he complimented her and asked about her day, she then felt shy to tell me for fear of looking ridiculous (which she is really) and/or me being upset at her (I laughed incredulously). When she saw I was not at all concerned (at HER behaviour, I mean it’s not ideal, but not for the reasons SHE worried about), and when I asked her why she had allowed it to get to that point, but again, not accusing her of anything, she then told me in clear distress, that she doesn’t know how to deal with it, and that actually the roughly 350 lbs dustbin man, also African, and also someone she saw regularly and politely and happily greeted daily innocently, had ALSO taken to stopping her and having a “chat” while he complimented her on her looks, and making subtle but rather obvious innuendos, and she had taken to just waving frantically and then saying she had to run because of the kids, school, lunch, whatever. Again, I was sort of flabbergasted. Surely, given how she looks even today at 44, and how she looked when I first saw her at 26 and everything in between, she had learnt to fend off advances from undesirables, men in general? Squirrels? To which she admitted that while she had avoided situations that could have become dangerous (despite this little narrative she is very streetsmart normally) she still froze when in a social setting a man took the liberty of hugging her goodbye or hello or whatever a bit too invasively for her liking. Not as if they tried to touch her up or anything obvious, but just that level of fake familiarity that breeds a certain level of breach of proper boundaries. I tried to explain to her (while laughing) that it was probably not a good idea to be known in the neighbourhood as the woman with lots of kids that was friendly with all the menial workmen of African descent in the four block radius of home. Especially since a few of our kids tan really easily. Might reflect a little badly on me too. I think she may have blushed. 1
I being Venetian, have mastered the art of stopping even feral human beings from approaching within three metres without even glancing at them, and I am not a touchy-feely type with anyone other than someone that is either family, or a really good friend, and even then mostly probably if we are doing martial arts. So to me the idea you let anyone invade your personal space against your wishes is just completely alien. 2
Then yesterday, one of the girls had a birthday present, which was to go with some friends to an Aquapark, where the queues for the various water-slides can be long, and on the popular side they had been on there for a half-hour when some apparently South American woman tried to skip ahead in front of her and the girls she was chaperoning. Despite her lack of Italian, she just went off. Basically said to the woman “No!” she said the other one, in typically “crazy-eyed” Sudaca gave her that white-eyed, “I’m about to assault you” look, and the wife’s reaction was an unblinking, unwavering, “Bitch, you are gonna fucking DIE!” response of a direct, firm, steady as a rock “NO.”
At which point the South American was deflated and her gypsy/I’m a scary brown crazy person act deflated and she said, oh ok then you go ahead, to which the wife simply stepped ahead with the girls AND added a couple of other quiet English girls that had nothing to do with her or our girls, but just as a “fuck you” to the Latina.
I found the whole thing absolutely, hilariously, English.
Random African holds your hand while trying to politely flirt with you, and you keep demurely quiet, stressed out, smile nervously, and can’t disentangle yourself. Bin man tries the same, and sort of ditto. But let some woman JUMP A QUEUE?? Fuck NO! That’s duel to the death stuff!
I mean Italians don’t even understand the CONCEPT of queues. The stress levels on that score for her must be constant.
Another instance that comes to mind was actual Gypsies at the local Luna Park that tried to rip her off of —I swear— 1 euro on the cost of a ride she had a coupon for. Despite basically no Italian she was ready to go to the mat with samurai-sword levels of violent excess. She actually got the Gypsy to relent and give her the 1 euro back. I would not have bothered, not because I am a shy wallflower type, but because, it’s a fucking Gypsy, and honestly the 5 minutes of arguing to me is simply not worth it, and yes, I am 100% cognisant that that is precisely why the Gypsy does it, but in my regular mood I probably would just accept it as part of the cost of the ride being run by… a Gypsy. Of course, I am also liable to react far more extremely if you get me on an off day, but for my wife this is not a one-off. For some reason, that one euro attempt at a rip-off is SIMPLY INTOLERABLE! While other faux-pas that if they happened in my presence would probably necessitate grievous bodily harm to merely break even in my concept of basic human dignity, she excuses as “oh well…”
They really are a funny people.
The situation was permanently resolved by me going with her to the supermarket on a weekend and when we left looking directly at the security guard, smiling, and saying hello as she stood next to me and pretended not to see the man. He looked nervous, and I clocked him as essentially harmless (not that that is ever a guarantee of anything), and it never happened again. Ditto when we saw the bin-man. This time she smiled at him and introduced me as her husband. He looked deflated. Neither of these was a case that was ever likely to escalate, but the point is that you simply never know. Humans, like all animals, are unpredictable creatures and can become vicious for reasons no one can rationally explain. And a healthy dose of “I am the opposite of a victim type” natural body-language is always the best initial defence before anything even develops, as various studies have since proven, even if it was always obvious to some of us. The fact is in most settings the wife is FAR from a victim type, but she has that “I must be polite” Englishness, that they seem to have ingrained from birth. A good English friend who now lives in the East block of Europe put it as “When I first moved here I was a bit fragile you know, I think I was permanently offended for about two years before I realised they are not actually rude, just direct and quite honest.” It made me laugh, because my experience with Russians and the other denizens of that side of the planet is the opposite. I find the directness very relaxing and refreshing. You’re having REAL communication instead of the fake veneer of it.
I think it happened a grand total of twice that I recall that anyone, in my decades of working on building sites, even dared try it. Once was just verbal, I was giving some guy hell for having screwed something up, but still politely and professionally, when some boomer type spoke up with a hint of sarcasm, thinking he would use that plausible deniability and his being older as a kind of “managing the situation” type of thing, which is ALSO a very English way of doing things, a sort of avoiding direct conflict by doing some passive aggressive, plausibly deniable (it never is for people like me) snarky comment. My response was a tad more direct than he, or anyone else in the open plan office expected: “Shut the fuck up, I’m not talking to you, and this Doesn’t concern you.” We already had HR in the UK back then, but on that site the Project Manager was AWESOME, and he had actually told the director of the firm he didn’t want “the silly bitch” that had come to site procedurally for HR reasons to darken his site again. This man was the exception hat proves the rule, full on English man, the most direct, aggressive aggressive guy I ever met on any job, and we worked like a well-oiled team and made that firm a lot of money. The other time was again, some guy on site that thought he would “assert his Alphaness, or whatever” and as he walked past behind me he put his hand on my bald head and said, “oh that’s a perfect slapped!” in a “joking manner” this was a few years later for the same firm but on a site with HR more present, and the response was proportional. I told him to keep his hands to himself if he didn’t want me to throw him out of the nearest window, and since we were only one or two floors up he would go through it without opening it either. Except I didn’t tell him that nicely or with such nice words. I did not get up nor turn around to look at him. He immediately apologised profusely and said he was very sorry and didn’t mean anything by it etc. the rest of the room with several people in it went that deathly still you get when fear hangs in the air. I really am NOT a touchy-feely type, especially with strangers. But I digress (eh, it’s what I do).
This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here
