Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse (27 page)

I suppose I have, in various ways. It’s stubborn of me not to comply. But, if Visit England is honest, it should admit that the first thing it’s advocating we all do before going abroad is join Facebook. Why? Because there’s no point in resisting – you can’t even find out the opening hours of a castle without it. Because its
power and reach are vast and terrifying. Because, as Wallace and Gromit might put it, it’s awesome.

Americans inclined to mock the British habit of unnecessarily saying sorry may soon be called upon to apologise as a result of research undertaken by their countrymen. A study conducted by Harvard Business School concluded that people who offer apologies for things that aren’t their fault appear more trustworthy and tend to be welcomed more warmly by strangers than those who don’t.

Maybe that was how our empire was won? A vanguard of diffident apologisers popped up all over the world, sweatily begging pardon for the infernal heat/malaria/monsoon/tigers, and the locals were so charmed that, before their oh-it-really-isn’t-your-faults had been translated into the lovable invader’s language, their raw materials had been lugged on to a gunboat which was already breasting the horizon.

The tests used by these Harvard researchers were less geopolitical and largely involved people asking to use strangers’ mobile phones. For example, one was conducted at a rainswept railway station with a male actor asking to borrow people’s phones, but prefacing the request with the phrase “I’m sorry about the rain!” half the time. When he didn’t apologise for the weather, only 9% lent him their phone but, when he did, it rose to nearly 50%.

I am as delighted by the conclusions drawn as I am unimpressed by the anecdotal nature of the evidence. But the findings stand to reason – particularly as it’s weird to ask to borrow someone’s mobile without any preamble. If the control group were being asked for their phones after no more than an introductory “hello”, then that alone could explain the standoffish response.
The apology is a bit of humanising chat to make it clear to the phone-owners that they’re not being mugged.

Still, in picking the phrase “I’m sorry about the rain!”, I think the Americans reveal that they don’t really understand the superfluous apology. No one, not even someone British, could possibly be so consumed by self-loathing that they think the weather is their fault (except, I suppose, a penitent CEO of a fossil fuel conglomerate), so this apology is not credible but jokey, maybe even flirty. I wonder if the male actor was attractive? That might have elevated his post-weather-apology strike-rate.

If I wanted to borrow someone’s phone in the rain, I’d apologise for bothering them or for not having a functioning phone myself, or I’d simply say sorry without attaching a reason – just a general old-world post-imperial apology for existing. That, in my view, is the necessary preface to any conversation with a stranger if one doesn’t wish to come across as a horrendous egotist.

But I’m glad that this research suggests that “sorry” is a persuasive word. Because the sort of person who sets great store by studies like this is also the sort who might think saying sorry is a sign of weakness – that we should be openly brash and unashamed in order to come across as alpha-predators in the business jungle; people who think there is a key to success and that it might be firm handshakes or loud, confident socks or using as many consonants as possible in job interviews. If these people start training themselves to say “sorry”, instead of “stakeholders” or “going forward”, then the world can only be improved.

Life goes much more smoothly when everyone’s saying sorry. It’s the second most important social lubricant and, unlike the first, it doesn’t damage your liver. Particularly in large conurbations, saying sorry is the best verbal accompaniment to thousands of situations: when you bump into someone, when someone bumps into you, when you walk through a door at more or less the same time as another person, when asking for something in a shop,
when taking anything to the till in a shop, when telling someone they’ve dropped something, when someone’s holding a door open for you and you’re a few yards away, when you’re holding a door open for someone who’s a few yards away.

Basically, if any remark you make doesn’t already contain a “please” or a “thank you”, shove a “sorry” in for good measure. In my ideal world, whenever two people met they would both say sorry. Just to clear the air.

And I’m not just an advocate of sorry as a conversational grace note – I also believe in the rhetorical power of the apology. When I was a bad student, this was one of the few things I learned. If I could apologise in the most abject terms for failing to hand in work or not turning up to something, there was very little the nice, well-meaning academic I was serially disappointing could say other than “All right – don’t do it again.” If I could express exactly what was most annoying, ungrateful and unreasonable about my own behaviour before the person I’d angered, then the situation would be defused. You can’t have an argument with someone who’s saying exactly what you’re thinking.

I remember, at some point in my childhood, my father berating my mother for saying sorry to a stranger during the insurance-details-exchanging epilogue to some minor prang she was involved in. He took the received view that saying sorry in that context was admitting liability and could have a detrimental effect on his no-claims bonus. If that’s true, it’s very uncivilised. In Britain, of all cultures, we surely cannot take the apology to mean anything more than a general wish that awkward moments should be avoided. Apologies should be encouraged and, in order to do so, we must divest them as far as possible of any long-term meaning.

The one thing that most discourages an apology, and is a growing phenomenon in the modern world, is calling for one. Once someone has publicly called for an apology, then it is robbed
of all the disarming eloquence it has if given voluntarily. The apologiser gets no credit but instead undergoes the humiliation of being forced to submit. But that, of course, is what the people calling for such apologies very often want.

So I offer this advice to any children with irritating siblings: if you get accidentally hit by a ball, or tripped up, or otherwise injured by your brother or sister, don’t say “Ow!” and leave room for a quick “sorry!” Instead, immediately shout “I demand an apology!” as a reflex. Do that, and you can be sure that, if a sorry is ever forthcoming, it’ll be the sort that hurts, not the sort that makes things better.

As I write this, I can see the sun shining on the Mediterranean. Live. I’m not just looking at hotel websites, clicking from a seashell with an azure backdrop to one of those extreme close-ups of a wine glass and a napkin which all hoteliers’ web designers seem inexplicably convinced will clinch custom. No, I can actually see the sea and it is a very sunny day. In short, the place where I am currently sitting is extremely nice.

Yet I am not cheerful. And you’re reading the reason why: this article. I have to write this article. I have to work. I can’t do holiday things. If I sit in the sun, I can’t read the screen of my laptop. If I’m looking at the view, I can’t be typing. I can enjoy the fact that it’s pleasantly warm but – shameful fat-cat admission coming up – I’m accustomed to working in an environment maintained at a comfortable temperature whatever the prevailing weather. My working conditions are basically unaltered by the proximity of the glittering sea – and that realisation has poisoned my mood.

So when I read that a University of Leicester survey has found that those who emigrate to southern European climes tend to
be less happy than those who don’t, I was as unsurprised as a Mancunian seeing there’s rain forecast for tomorrow. Unless he’s relocated to Ibiza and opened a bar. Dr David Bartram, who led the research, found that those who’d made the sunseeking move rated their happiness, on average, at 7.3 out of 10, compared to 7.5 for those who stuck it out in drizzlier latitudes.

This makes perfect sense to me as I stare across sun-dappled olive trees and then wrench my eyes back to Microsoft Word. It was easier to concentrate when my screen was only competing with the wallpaper for my attention. Working here is more annoying than working at work, and I imagine that’s what most sunseeking British emigrants immediately find. Added to which, these were already people discontented enough with their lot to change countries in the first place. And, in rich areas like western Europe at least, discontent has as much to do with who you are as what’s happening to you.

People who relocate to sunnier places than Britain, who aspire to live the poolside dream, remind me of that guy who has Christmas every day. Have you heard of him? There may be more than one such person, but I remember seeing a particular bloke profiled on the local news. I think he was a dustman – his daily work was certainly over by lunchtime – so he could return home to his festively decorated house by 1pm sharp and eat a full Christmas dinner to the accompaniment of carols and Cliff Richard No 1s. Every afternoon he had a snooze in a cracker hat.

This lifestyle seemed to make him happy – but then he was, to put the most positive spin on it, an extremely odd man. Most people would know that, however much fun Christmas can be, that sort of jollity can’t be sustained and any attempt to do so would drive you mad.

A more seductive illusion is that, if you enjoy spending time in the pub, you might also enjoy owning and running one. It is remarkable the number of people who believe that drinking
alcohol involves skills which are transferable to selling it – that, if a crossword or a quiz makes a few pints even more fun, then doing the books of a marginal business and changing the fuse on a glass washer must be an absolute scream.

This is the mindset of the sunseeking emigrant – they’ve realised that they derive immense pleasure from their annual fortnight of basking and so have reasoned that, by living where that happened, they’ll multiply their joy 26-fold. Just like me this morning when I smugly set up my laptop on the balcony, they’ve massively overestimated the importance of where they are, and ignored that of what they’re doing. The main joy of a holiday – certainly the sunseeker’s holiday – is relaxing, snoozing, eating and drinking somewhere comfortable. You don’t need a passport to access those activities – just ask Mr Seven-Christmases-a-Week.

So it’s inevitable that, once permanently settled in holidayland and getting on with selling insurance, doing data entry, microwaving 50 frozen paellas, dealing with an oligarch’s septic tank or web-designing with a view of strangers guzzling ice cream, a certain glumness can set in. You’d start to think about the things you miss.

Top of the list, for this group, must be looking forward to a holiday. That was surely a favourite pastime before they permanently moved poolside and tried to get a phone contract. What’s going to replace that sanity-giving ray of hope? Are they to look forward to coming back to Britain to visit relatives? Or to joining the National Trust and joyously tramping round castles in low cloud? Or to going somewhere even hotter? Or on a refreshing polar expedition, away from the accursed smell of sun cream?

Suddenly, a nice day is no excuse to knock off early and go to the pub – this is when business is conducted. And it’s no cause for self-satisfiedly looking at the weather in Spain to see if it’s worse – you’re already in Spain, so you’d better hope it’s raining
in Cornwall or you won’t sell enough Carling this season to pay the lawyer who’s trying to retrospectively legalise the existence of your villa.

Excuse me if I sound like John Major, but what about drinkable tea, John Lewis, terrible Radio 4 plays, decent pavements, cats that don’t look like they’re at death’s door, sarcasm, immanent social awkwardness, seeing your breath in winter, that grey look leafless trees get at dusk, and frost? Maybe if you’re the type to be drawn permanently to the Med, most of that list was always lost on you – but then, if you were brought up in Britain and none of that strikes even a faint chord, you must find it hard to appreciate things for what they are. You’d probably hate pasta if you were Italian, long lunches if you were French and bovine victimisation if you were Spanish.

Some of us are fundamentally dissatisfied. If you move abroad to address that, you risk shattering the comforting illusion that you’d be happy if only you lived somewhere sunny.

This is the “Baby or bathwater?” section. The key thing in judging change is working out which is being thrown away. And I'm probably not the best judge. One of the first things I ever wrote in a newspaper – in the
Guardian
in the spring of 2006, long before I was given a regular column anywhere – included this:

I must admit I find it reassuring to note that, even when I was only 31, I was already a massive curmudgeon. But, if I was right and it is difficult to say “I don't like this change …”, then the following section is a feast of such difficulties overcome. I say it about the name of Staines, the consequences of the first world war, the use of language, fashion and snakes. Having said that, I'm not entirely reactionary when it comes to apostrophes, sharing weapons with the French, Christmas cards, sexism in football and nocturnal jogging. So I haven't quite dressed up a bucket of bathwater in a sailor suit and named it David Junior.

The key to conservatism is knowing what to conserve: what we're rightly treasuring and what's turning us into Gollum; what's an antique tapestry and what's a snot-streaked security blanket. Some would fight for the three-pin plug; others say that we lost everything that mattered when KitKats changed their wrappers. Some feel a tradition of public service broadcasting is worth hanging on to; others that being an attractive environment for rapacious financial practices is crucial to our way of life. Personally, I don't think things have been the same since Consignia changed its name to Royal Mail.

Many take pride in our martial traditions. We don't see ourselves as a violent people, going around the world kicking the crap out of everyone. So much so that, when we have, instead of pissing off gracefully like the Vikings with a tip of a horned helmet and a “Thank you for the rape, ma'am”, we've hung around, setting up schools and churches in which to teach people how much better off they are without all that crap we kicked out of them. Our self-image is of a strong but gentle people who, when violence regrettably breaks out, do what is necessary: contact the Americans.

Consequently, many conservatives, whether Tory or not, dislike our new military agreements with France. We're going to be sharing nuclear research, aircraft carriers and air-to-air refuelling. And this with a country which is famously – and I know I'll get some stick for saying this but, let's face it, it's a fact – riddled with clap. It's called “the French disease” – is that a coincidence? Are you going to tell me that “French bread” is a coincidence? Because I've been there and baguettes are EVERYWHERE. And they call it
la maladie anglaise
, which means they're insulting as well as syphilitic.

But David Cameron isn't that sort of conservative. He's delighted with the deal because, by sharing services with France, we can conserve both our military capability and more of our
money. Not all of his backbenchers agree: Bernard Jenkin MP said the Americans would “cut us off” from their technology if they felt we were sharing intelligence “too freely” with a country that has “a long track record of duplicity”.

Like all opponents of the deal, he's hedging round his real concern. He hates that it'll mean we won't be able to invade France any more. That's what our armed forces were basically set up to do, isn't it? True, we've found other uses for them – peacekeeping, colonial expansion, defending ourselves against Germany – but that's not what they're primarily for.

I don't really think lots of Eurosceptic Tories actually want to attack France, but they want to be able to. It gets them out of bed in the morning – the thought that, if all else fails, we could fling ourselves at the Normandy coast, get it out of our system, like a 48-year-old man screwing his secretary and joining a band. They'll miss that sense of possibility and, indeed, of mercy – of restraint demonstrated every day that, once again, this great nation chooses not to nuke France.

It's like Manchester United and Chelsea, in some dystopian future when they've become footballing irrelevancies, sharing a goalie. “Would Sir Alex Ferguson have stood for this?” their supporters will say, just as military conservatives now ask: “Would Sir Winston Churchill?”

The answer is: “Yes, he would.” In June 1940, Churchill proposed not just a military accord but a complete merger of the French and British states. The official offer from the British coalition government read as follows: “France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union. The constitution of the Union will provide for joint organs of defence, foreign, financial and economic policies.” There's a coalition that's thinking about a big society.

The French turned us down, though, with one minister saying that it's “better to be a Nazi province” than a British dominion.
I hope Canada and Australia don't feel like that. To me, the episode shows that Churchill, who was no radical, better prioritised what to conserve than the Petainist-dominated French cabinet, than appeasers like Baldwin and Halifax, than the
Daily Mail
at the time, than Spelthorne Business Forum today.

I should clarify that Spelthorne Business Forum aren't apologists for Hitler. They're the group who are proposing that Staines should change its name to Staines-on-Thames to distance itself from Ali G. You might question why they care. Well, Staines comes under the aegis of Spelthorne borough council – it's basically in Spelthorne, which makes me wonder whether a quicker solution to their problem might be to refer to their home as Spelthorne, not Staines.

There are several things wrong with this campaign. First, it's unnecessary. As a comic phenomenon, Ali G peaked several years ago. Staines is surely through the worst that those associations can bring.

Second, they've missed the joke that Sacha Baron Cohen was making by locating Ali G in Staines. He's not saying that it's “an urban wasteland off the end of the M25”, as Alex Tribick, chair of the forum, laments with apparent ignorance of the shape of the M25. Baron Cohen is saying it's precisely the unremarkable satellite town it is. Ali G's citing of “Da West Staines Massiv” perfectly encapsulates how his clumsy “gangsta” image belies his middle-class suburban background. He is making the character ridiculous, not the place.

Third, it smacks of snobbery. It reminds me of the petition by some residents to change the name of the tube station near me, Kilburn, to Mapesbury. They just wanted it to sound posher. That's not an admirable desire. By all means, aspire to a pleasant, safe, leafy area, but it's not going to become one by calling it Darlingford or stop being one because its name's Grottibotts.

Property prices form an unofficial tax on this vanity: if you want to live somewhere that sounds swanky, do so in the knowledge that you've been overcharged for your dwelling. And it should be an honour for Staines to be associated with a classic comic creation – it puts it up there with Neasden, Peckham and Torquay.

This is badly prioritised conservatism, a willingness to jeopardise a place's identity to conserve its reputation or a few locals' view of its reputation. Incidentally, Churchill had no truck with these experiments in civic cosmetics, impishly writing to the Foreign Office: “You should note, by the way, the bad luck which always pursues peoples who change the names of their cities. Fortune is rightly malignant to those who break with the traditions and customs of the past.”

I find myself in the unprecedented position of agreeing with a French designer. Philippe Starck, who invented that fancy juicer which looks like it's been regarding this earth with envious eyes only to discover on arrival that we're much bigger than it thought, has brought out a range of clothes that he insists are “not fashion”.

An anti-fashion French designer! “It produces energy, material, waste and gives birth to a system of consumption and over-consumption that has no future,” he says. Bravo! It's a strange thing to hear from a man who's made a fortune designing faddish and weird-looking furniture, but that's fine – I'd still welcome an anti-drugs quote from a junkie. Starck describes his new clothes as “non-photogenic” and has designed them to be long-lasting.

As someone who hates fashion, and resents all the money, fun and attention people get out of it, I find this tremendously promising. Starck may just be the right man to make rejection
of fashion fashionable. I look forward to an eco-friendly future where everyone wears drab and similar clothes until they wear out, just like I do. Obviously I don't do it out of environmental conscience; it's laziness and the fear that, if I try to demonstrate taste, I'll be exposed as a twat.

But however puny my motives, I am basically right not to buy expensive yet flimsy new togs all the time. Replacing things that aren't broken causes a lot of environmental damage. I, for one, am keen to find a way of stopping the planet flooding, boiling, freezing, baking or imploding for some reason to do with leaving things on standby, without having to sacrifice electric light, TV or beer. If everything from London Fashion Week to Claire's Accessories has to go, I say it's a price worth paying.

It's easy for me to say, though. I'm not sacrificing anything. On the contrary, I'll make a net sartorial gain when everyone else is dragged down to my got-dressed-from-a-skip-in-the-dark level. I don't derive my sense of individualism from what I wear. Only if those who stand to lose financially or emotionally from a rejection of fashion altruistically adopt Starck's approach will his remarks amount to anything more than a zeitgeisty rejection of the zeitgeist.

Sacrificing our rights and freedoms, or the use of them, for the greater good is much called for these days. There's pressure to recycle, pay higher taxes, not travel on planes, avoid products manufactured by enslaved children, stop borrowing money we can't pay back, stop lending money to people who won't pay it back, and abstain from tuna. And psychologically we couldn't be worse prepared.

For decades our society has trumpeted liberty and its use, choice, self-expression, global travel and all forms of spending as inalienable rights. But only as the environment and economy teeter are we gradually becoming aware that with the power
such liberties give us comes the responsibility to deal with the consequences.

What a horrific realisation. I hate it. I was perfectly happy living in my London flat, talking to my friends and ignoring my neighbours, earning my money, spending it on my stuff, going on my holidays, telling my accountant to minimise my tax liability, writing my opinions in my newspaper. And then suddenly, in all sorts of frightening ways, it becomes clear I'm living in a society.

No wonder we kick against it. A national newspaper recently ran a campaign against wheelie bins called, without any irony that I can detect, “Not in My Front Yard”. Maybe, as a thin-lipped, judgmental liberal, I'm missing the self-knowing humour behind their selfish rage, but to me it seems that these NIMFYs are just railing against society's attempts to restrain the disastrous exercise of their liberties.

Councils issue wheelie bins to make collection and recycling more efficient and effective. They're better than normal bins – they've got wheels and can be emptied mechanically. Because they're bigger, they can be collected fortnightly. Because collections can be fortnightly, recycling collections can be slotted in without doubling the refuse budget. I'm sure the NIMFYs would hate me for saying this, which is why I'm doing it, but it's good, simple, common sense. The bins might not look lovely, but there are more important considerations in play here.

But any self-sacrifice feels to us westerners like tyranny. We're not ready for it. Our evolution into apex individualists has superbly attuned us to injustices against us while atrophying our awareness of the vastly greater number that work in our favour. It's not our fault, it's just how we were raised.

Our fear of being encroached upon has made us forget that there are few freedoms that can be fully exercised without impinging on someone else's. The freedom to stab has long since
been subordinated to the freedom not to be stabbed. But we still have the freedom not to recycle and to borrow or lend money recklessly, regardless of others' freedom to live on a habitable planet and in a functional economy. We've hugely prioritised our rights over our duties because it's only the former that tyrants try to take away.

But it can make us ridiculous. Explaining why mid-terrace residents had no option but to keep unsightly wheelie bins in front of their houses, a Chester resident said: “Otherwise they would have to walk three bins all the way down the street, round the corner and into the backyard. Imagine doing that with three bins? It's just crazy.”

I can almost hear the Oxfam advert: “This is Andrea. Every week she has to walk three bins all the way down the street, round the corner and into the backyard. It's either that or people will see her bins. It's crazy, but you can help.”

What's crazy is that, in the face of environmental disaster, when councils are at last prioritising recycling in a way most scientists would describe as “much, much, much, much, much too slowly”, people are moaning about ugly bins rather than grasping a fairly simple opportunity to do their bit. So you have to keep the bins in front of your house? Well, keep the bins in front of your house then, you moaning bastard.