Perhaps one of the more (if not most) obvious characteristics of Britain is that it is small. Much smaller than the USA. Just a mere fraction of the size, actually. Growing up here, I never really noticed it. But now that I live in a world of wide three lane boulevards, cars the size of small cruise ships, shopping malls that require local guides and an iron lung to traverse, and stretches of land so flat and so vast that you could sit on your porch and watch your dog run away for three days, it becomes an in-my-face fact when I suddenly immerse myself back in to the culture and topography of the place I grew up. Britain is small. Fact.
It’s not much larger than the state of California, actually, and when it comes to population, that could potentially be a cause of alarm. We have about 80 million people squeezed in to an island that spans just a bit more area than a state that struggles to hold 60 million. What’s even more amazing is that even with those numbers, England itself still manages to protect vast open spaces of undeveloped countryside. And one of the ways this is achieved is by building the cities like sardine tins.
London, for example, is an amazingly cramped city that, in reality, doesn’t cover all that much real estate, but feels like the biggest city on earth. Whereas Los Angeles has more freeways consisting of 7 or 8 lanes in each direction than I could count on all fingers and toes, London has just a handful of motorways that have 3 or, occasionally, 4 lanes in each direction. Single lane one-way streets take the place of those wide three lane boulevards. Intersections are replaced by the wonder that is the mini-roundabout, allowing a plethora of roads to all converge in the same place and keep traffic moving. And it’s not just roads; buildings are smaller, shops are smaller, the sidewalks are smaller, the buses are smaller (except for the British icon of the genial Double-Decker bus), and, to some degree, personal space is smaller. (As a side note, I’m beginning to see why the awkward silences exist when the British public face are forced to face each other on the London Underground).
So with all this size restriction, it amazes me how multicultural Britain is. One of the charms of California, for me, is the multiculturalism that exists, with strong representation from Central and South America and many Asian and Oriental countries. In fact I read somewhere that the white caucasian is now in the ethnic minority in California. But I’ve not noticed before how more multicultural England is, particularly London. It’s really quite fascinating.
I took the train down to London on Tuesday to have lunch with some friends, and afterwards I just wandered the streets of London for a while, admiring what is one of the most historic and beautiful cities on the planet, slowly being de-beautified by the building of large, obnoxious modern glass skyscrapers around another obnoxious modern glass skyscraper in the shape of a phallic symbol. During the wandering, I began to notice that all of Europe had apparently converged upon London in my absence, and I never got the memo.
Personally, I find that some country’s contrivances are so clever and so singular that everyone associates them with just that country. For example, Britain has it’s Double-Decker buses. Holland has it’s windmills. Paris has it’s sidewalk cafes. Completely identifiable attributes, you see. Yet the other side of this coin is that there are certain things that most countries can do without difficulty that others just can not.
For instance, the French can’t quite get the hang of queueing. They try very hard, but they just don’t quite manage it. If you’re ever in Paris, you’ll see single-file, well-ordered queues of people waiting at the bus stop, but as soon as the bus pulls up, the queue will disintegrate in to something that resembles a fire drill in a lunatic asylum, as everyone scrambles to be the first person to get on the bus, quite unaware that this completely defeats the entire purpose of queueing.
Us British, as another example, don’t understand the fundamentals of eating. This is evidenced by the instinct, for example, to eat a hamburger with a knife and fork, feeling rude and awkward and impolite eating with our hands, or turning the fork upside down and gingerly attempting to balance foodstuffs on the back of it. I lived in the UK for the first 24 years of my life, and having been somewhat Americanized over the last 6 years, I now must quench the instinct to approach strangers in restaurants and offer a tip that might prevent all those sprouts rolling around on the table like marbles.
These kind of national idiosyncrasies are found all around Europe. The Germans are confused by humour. The Swiss don’t know what it means to have fun. The Spanish see nothing at all ludicrous about eating dinner at midnight. The Italians should have never been let in on the invention of the automobile. These phenomenon are evident for all and sundry to witness in London.
I say this all with tongue firmly in cheek, of course, but its an effective illustration of how multicultural London and indeed much of Britain has become. There are some that welcome this and some that say it destroys the very thing that makes Britain British. I stand on the middle ground; there are some things that are so unmistakably British I would not want to see them destroyed; the British pound, the awkward silence on the Underground, the Union Jack, the stiff upper lip. But I also see that part of the beauty of humankind is found in our diversity. And that is something I think should be embraced and enjoyed.
Unless, of course, you’re a Scottish football (” fitbae’ “) fan. In that case, you celebrate anything that is Scottish, Irish, Welsh, German, or Argentinean, and maintain that “ye ken 1966 wis a flook if eva there wis yun”.
Scotland, I love you too.
Until next time…
July 5th, 2008 by 
James 
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