I’ve already mentioned I’m off to England tomorrow (shall I say it some more? I am so looking forward to this…), so it’s amazingly useful that Kottke puts up an exercise in England-speak. I shall have to listen to it a few more times to practice comprehending them furriners.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Is it your first time visiting my homeland PZ? Enjoy the warm beer if nothing else :)
That was filmed for fake interviews for newscasts when “Dr. Strangelove” came out. The newscasters would have a script of questions to ask and then they would show Peter Sellers’ pre-recorded answers. George C. Scott did several as well.
Sellers was great at different voices. He must have had twenty different characters for the radio show “The Goon Show.” On to of that he occassionally did some of Spike Milligan’s characters.
I thought you were going to London, Ontario…
“warm beer” ????? Surely, beer at the correct temperature for the subtle expression of the hops – and not flash frozen to disguise the vile taste of processed rice !
From a beer drinking Brit.
Patient Pendant-
As a reformed “cold” beer drinker, I agree wholeheartedly. It amazed how much better good beer tastes at the right temperature.
of course, it has to be the right temperature for that particular beer. Although the beer around here in the Pacific northwest is very good indeed, there just isn’t anything that is ideal anywhere in the “cellar temperature” range.
I need to get some of my friends back home to ship me out a case of Flowers IPA, I guess…
The practice of drinking beer cold, as far as I can tell, is the natural consequence of living in a land where Budweiser is “the king of beers”.
(If anyone in the UK wonders why our Constitution explicitly prohibits the granting of patents or titles of nobility… this is why. It’s bad enough what we will enthrone when it isn’t official.)
In some instances, I would argue that beer temperature is a personal preference issue assuming that the person in question has honestly tried higher quality beers at different temperatures. I have tried beer at a variety of temperatures and still prefer beer cold, regardless of the beer.
I have a pair of Thomas Hardys tucked away for the right moment, and when that moment comes, they will not be any colder than cellar cool. The right beer does deserve some respect after all.
There are plenty of good beers available down London way: London Pride, ESB, you might find some Brakespeare’s. Do not, under any account, try Boddington’s – a once-fine Manchester brew now sadly ruined by corporate stupidity.
Ohh… PZ, if you do make it to London, Ontario, I’ll buy you a drink. :)
Yup, England, the land of warm beer and cold soup.
How can Bud be the “King of Beers”, when it is a lager? Always found that a puzzler.
Ah, he sneaked a quick Bluebottle in there!
PZ – just to worry you, he only did a small fraction of the accents: nowt from up north. Sellars did a recording of Hard Day’s Night, as recited by Laurence Olivier’s Richard III. The b-side was a scouser (i.e. from Liverpool, basically one of the Beetles) reciting “Now is the winter of our discontent”.
Get a Goon show whilst you’re over there, and experience real comedy.
Bob
PZ – Mind the gap!
And go eat Greek in Camdentown if you get up that way.
Oh, Zwirko, how can Bud be the “King of Beers” when other beers are available at all? Like making love in a canoe…
Martin
Only go to pubs where you can drink real ale. Lager is for lager louts.
Real ale is about the best beer you can find anywhere. It is not consumed cold, but a bit less than room temperature.
You will probably be well received by the people who are welcoming you, but more generally, the English do not like Americans, especially the bourgeoisie. The English are insular and if you are not into their parochial interests, it is as if you didn’t exist.
I don’t know what this ‘warm beer’ fuss is all about. I spent eight weeks traveling throughout the UK and never came across any beer I would consider ‘warm’. Maybe it’s because if I’m drinking American I’m drinking ‘imported’ or ‘microbrews’ like goose island or widmers, or even more obscure stuff. If I have to drink ‘domestic'(ie, mass-produced crap that people think is beer), I go PBR just for the kitsch.
My standard piece of advice to all Americans visiting Britain is this:
Dont use England and Britain interchangeably. Its guaranteed to annoy any Briton who is not English.
England + Scotland + Wales = Great Britain.
Great Britain + Northern Ireland = United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
So while I’m English, I’m a citizen of the UK.
PS. Fullers ESB roolz.
PZ,
Are you going to be at particular place at a particular time during this visit as I am sure I am not the only one of your UK readers who would love a chance to meet you in person?
If you *are* a fan of real beer, you should invest in CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAMRA
http://www.camra.org.uk/
Enjoy your trip!
What you beer drinkers are forgetting is that American beer is based on German beer making and that it is quite different from what he will get in London if he tries the local stuff. That’s why the Canadians are always complaining about our beer and are smug about theirs and vice versa-it’s not the same and people in each country tend to prefer the ones that they are familiar with first.
In England you can offer to “knock someone up in the morning”‘ and they wont be offended. You might also be asked to help “lay the table”.
Are you ready for this….
Oooh, they’re such a friendly bunch over there!
Have fun, and don’t worry about how to speak.
Re the beer talk – I understand that American beers have poor volatiles and therefore don’t taste good unless cold. British ale on the other hand has good volatiles and therefore taste good warm.
I wish I was going home to visit soon. After about a week there I want to get away again though. I’ll be there in December.
Don’t listen to them with their ‘real ale’ nonsense – only smelly, lonely & old men and pretentious, lonely young men drink that shite any more. ESB; a case of the Emperors’ New Clothes if ever there was one!
In any case, the Belgians and Germans and even Eastern Europeans make far better ‘beer’ than us English – it’s the pub atmosphere and being able to walk there (and meander back) that’s the really enjoyable part of going down the boozer in the UK.
American bars are generally sterile, fake environments by contrast, with the ones claiming to be ‘authentic’ English or Irish pubs being especially noteworthy in this regard. Of course, having terrible stuff like Bud, Miller & Coors only compounds the problem..
Then again, as I’m sure you know, that characterization is highly regional. I think it’s fair to say that there isn’t such a thing as a “typical American” bar or pub. For sure, the British pub experience of walking to your local 200 yards away (and walking past four other pubs on the way) seems to be more or less universally absent, unless you live in a major city, but the atmosphere isn’t by any means universally fake and sterile (and the same goes for the beer…).
There are some very nice places around here in Oregon, at least, and I’ve found similarly good places in Dallas and downtown DC, to name a couple (although I’m sure there are many who will argue). When in New Mexico, though, don’t drink the beer or eat the shellfish ;-).
Mr Gibson- I’m a non pretentious young man, with lots of friends. I also drink real ale. I know plenty of other people who prefer a pint of real ale, some of them female. I also prefer our beer to other countries, though there is some good stuff out there.
When and where in London PZ?
I’m free some of Wednesday, and during the weekend.
GO TO KEW GARDENS.
Go to the Nat. Hist Mus.
Go to Downe, if you can …..
Try the Old Mitre in Ely Place (If you can find it) -runner-up as best pub in London this year (the best is out in Hampton Wick) – and yes, there is such a place name.
You probably won’t go anywhere near Lesser Piddle, Steeple Bumpstead, or Shellow Bowells – and yes, they are real places as well.
Oh, and apart from the “Heathrow Express” train-service (fast but expensive) in London, get yourself a “Travelcard” for a week, or however long you are here.
ALL of London’s trains and buses (both UndergrounD and surface rail) on one ticket.
‘Knock someone up in the morning’ is also highly regional: it sounds Northern to me. I was born and bred just outside London, and, well, it sounds kinky to me, sorry. I can’t see anything wrong with ‘lay the table’; it’s a synonym of ‘set the table’ and I can’t think of any other way to parse it.
(I’ve fled London, a whole fifty miles to Bedfordshire. Still have to come in every day to work though. I wish the UK wasn’t so damned centralized on one big city…)
‘Knock someone up in the morning’ is Nothern and derives from the practice in factory towns (in the days before ordinary people had their own alarm clocks) of employing (usually children) people to go around knocking on employees’ doors to make sure they got up on time in the morning,
If you post an itinerary, you’ll probably find you never have to buy a pint while you’re here.
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I take offense at the sterile, fake American bar. My local fake English Pub only has english beer on tap, and my local fake German pub only has german and belgian beer on tap. Oh, sure, you can get the American piss-water if you really want, but only by the bottle, and I rarely see it ordered.
Ahem. The English serve beer at *English* room temperature — which cannot at any time be construed as “warm”.
As Englishisms, what about my mother’s lovely “Spotted Dick”, a steamed dessert with blackcurrants or raisins, which name is often mistaken, in North America, for a remark on venereal disease.
Enjoy the visit. Too bad you missed the long summer days. Autumn (not fall!) is closing in and the weather has already taken a turn for the worse.
Have a pint or two of London Pride or, if you’re daring, Young’s Special or Old Peculiar. (And if the barman tries to give you less than a full pint – i.e. any head actually within the confines of the glass – hand if back with a “can you top that up mate?”!)
Poor Ian, “Don’t listen to them with their ‘real ale’ nonsense – only smelly, lonely & old men and pretentious, lonely young men drink that shite any more.”
Spoken exactly like the lager louts one hopes to avoid.
The only reason the louts aren’t lonely is that they hang out in thuggish gangs which have approximately one brain among them all.
Neil Gaiman mentions a pub in Innsmouth that serves Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar, although you’d probably find it a bit squamous.
Say Hi to Richard Dawkins for us, if you get the chance!
I was only in the UK once, at Christmas time, back in 1992. I had just spent the past 4 months in Germany as an exchange student (and would return to finish the academic year). British beer is ok, once you get used to it. Before I gave up drinking, I was particularly fond of Newcastle Brown Ale and Belhaven Scottish Ale and of course a well-poured Guinness on tap. I was visiting friends in Whitstable, Kent.
I did enjoy my stay, but it was a bit disconcerting the whole time. I was still an akward foreigner, even though I (ahem) ostensibly spoke the local language. I felt much more at ease upon returning to Germany, where I could pass off my gaffs and missteps as a problem of linguistic comprehension (even when it wasn’t). I just felt more at ease in Germany, speaking German, than I ever did visiting England as an American. I guess my exposure was too brief to get accustomed to it. British pub culture is unique, and, I think, superior to the American bar scene…my impression is the US bars that are able to measure up to the common neighborhood pub in the UK tend to be rather high-end, upscale places. The Baptists and other tight pants would go nuts if there were cozy pubs in residential suburbia in the USA, while no one really thinks much of it in the UK; UK pubs do close earlier than most Americans are used to…around 11pm; they also close in the late afternoon and don’t reopen until the evening. Americans are used to closing time being more like 2am.
On the whole, I was more a fan of German beers in those days, and we had a student pub in the basement of our Studentenwohnheim…but Brit beers are ok, certainly better than standard US fare, but there are perfectly good US microbrews for the refined American consumer, too. Again, my exposure was all too brief, but the Brits also seemed more willing to strike up pub conversations with total strangers than in the average American bar, where people are more taciturn and speak only to known friends or the bartender if they know them.
Anyway, have fun over there.
One of these days I’d like to visit my ancestral Scotland, but that won’t be anytime soon.
Aaah Belhaven! I grew up on that stuff you know. The seventy shilling is to die for. Lager sucks.
nc mr, fr gd msr:
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but more generally, the English do not like Americans, especially the bourgeoisie. The English are insular and if you are not into their parochial interests, it is as if you didn’t exist
I’m sorry, I don’t agree with any of that. I’ve been on extended trips to England five times and to say they “don’t like Americans” is absurd. They may dislike our government, but unlike some dreary Americans and the French, they generally don’t conflate the two. “The bourgeoisie”? Is it still 1968?
Yes, the English are insular, but once you break past that inital reserve, in general they are great fun to be around. They just don’t like all that bullshit “Hey, how ya doin’ [person I just met 30 seconds ago], how’s life treatin’ ya” fake friendliness that so many Americans traffic in. They also don’t like loudmouths (uh…), people who complain that “XXXX isn’t like I get it back in Dallas” (um….) and they especially hate it when Yanks state that Americans are the reason the Nazis lost.
And what on earth are “parochial interests”? I sincerely doubt that PZ is going to take in a Tottenham Hotspurs match or go mummer dancing, so what, having a meal, having a quiet drink, shopping, doing sight seeing and all that other stuff is “parochial”?
“Parochial Interests” I assume you’re talking about football and cricket.
How many countries play American Football? How many play Association Football? How many people play baseball? How many play Cricket? Cricket is pretty much restricted to ex-colonies, but as one of them is India, it ranks as one of the most popular games in the world.
I agree with JJR on this, “I just felt more at ease in Germany, speaking German, than I ever did visiting England as an American.”
That is my experience traveling and staying in many different European countries besides Germany. You go to a party or a dinner in Germany, or Italy, or Spain, or France, etc. and people try to make you feel comfortable and see if there is any common ground. Not so in England.
I have been invited to such events in England, usually by couples that are mixed, American-English, French-English, etc. and we foreigners all end up talking to each other.
When I said parochial interests, I didn’t mean football or other such mass events. I meant their immediate professional or cultural interests. If they find out you are not in their banking field, or advertizing field, or that you don’t know what is being talked about in pop culture or English televsion or other navel gazing topics, they dump you right away and look for someone they can network with.
Basically, they are rude. They even seem to revel in being rude. Of course, there are some exceptions, but only to prove the rule.
I think it also depends which part of the UK you are in. My impression, from talking to various americans, is that they have a good time in Scotland. And I know that many Londoners are unfriendly, it has a bad reputation that way.
Ah, it’s a good year when the summer comes on a weekend!
Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar is obviously the drink of choice for toasting the Squid Overlords.
I thght t ws gng t b sm brng ld pst, bt t rlly cmpnstd fr my tm. I wll pst lnk t ths pg n my blg. I m sr my vstrs wll fnd tht vry sfl.