Bring on the Brits

September 7 2025

I admit it. I’m conflicted.

I have a love/hate relationship with the British.  

Look at the tea I drink. Yes, it is English breakfast, but not Bigelows.  Not Twinings. No, I drink “America’s Favorite Tea.” It says so right on the label.

Why, you ask?

Well two reasons actually. First, it was originated by Sir  Thomas Lipton, a Scotsman of Irish parentage, who had the singular distinction of losing to America in five consecutive America’s Cup races. Second, and more importantly, it is generally reviled by the British as more suiting the less sophisticated palates of uncultured Yanks than British wanks, I mean swanks.

Kinda says it all, don’t you think?

To be honest, the love part of my love/hate relationship with the Brits probably started in 1964 when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I gave it some thought and decided, based on all the empirical vocational data available, that a career as a chimneysweep would be the most rewarding. 

I mean, think about it. Have you ever witnessed, in any movie, a man as content with his job as Bert in Mary Poppins? 

Now as the ladder of life as been strung
You may think a sweep’s on the bottommost rung
Though I spends me time in the ashes and smoke
In this ‘ole wide world there’s no ‘appier bloke

Given my circumstances at the time…I was an eight-year-old…it was particularly important to me that, if I were to job shadow some stranger, he be kind to children. I defy you to show me, in all of cinema, a man kinder to children than Dick Van Dyke’s Bert. 

Okay, maybe Robert Donat in the 1939 original Goodbye, Mr. Chips. 

Or possibly Peter O’Toole in the 1969 remake. They were both Brits. (Okay, O’Toole was an Irishman, but he was playing a Brit.)

         The remake of course, serves as a nifty segue to the second reason I came, as a boy, to love the Brits. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the one, the only…Miss Petula Clark.

I mean, come on. Downtown? Don’t Sleep in the Subway? I Know a Place? My Love? 

Nuff said.

Hell, by the time I was ten, I was so enamored of the British that I sported a mock dicky turtleneck and shoulder holster, and paraded  around the house like I was  Ilya Kuryakin on The Man from Uncle. (David McCallum was a Scotsman)

Toss in a little Emma Peel 

And Julie Christie

and I was ready to sing God Save the Queen and call the family vacations “on holiday.”

So that was the start. 

The dark side, you ask?

Well, there’s the obvious. We Jacksons (and Lears) being of Irish descent, possess a genetic disposition to detest the British. It’s hard wired into our DNA. We can’t help it. Not since Cromwell.

So, there’s that. 

But I suppose if I had to pinpoint when my young Anglo infatuation began to unravel, it was as a young English major at U.C. Davis when I was required to read some, thankfully not all, of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

If you’ve never had the pleasure, let me try to explain. 

Imagine reading Shakespeare. Think about your struggle with Romeo & Juliet in high school. What torture it was. How incomprehensible it seemed.

With me? Good.

Now, imagine you have to read Shakespeare in pig Latin. You remember your pig Latin rules.  If a word ends in a consonant, move it to the end of the word and add “ay.” If a word begins with a vowel, add “way”, “yay” or “ay” to the end. 

So, let’s practice. Take a sentence. Any sentence that comes to mind. Oh, I don’t know…how about:

King Chuck is a twit.

In pig Latin, it reads

Ingkay ukchay is a ittway.

Now, imagine that, in addition to pig Latin, you must adhere to the rules of The Name Game.

You remember The Name Game. It hit the charts in 1964, about the time Bert the Chimneysweep started popping out of chimneys, Petula Clark went Downtown and  Julie Christie and Diana Rigg jump started your MGB. 

Billy, Billy, bo-gil-ly
Bo-na-na fanna, fo-fil-ly
Fee-fi-mo-mil-ly
Billy!

Think Shakespeare, pig Latin and a few bonana-fanna-fo-filly-fee-fi-mo-millies and now you’re talkin.

In Middle English.

You see ol’ Chaucer’s wrote The Canterbury Tales from 1387 to 1400. They didn’t speak English in the 14^th century. Not the English we know. Shakespeare wouldn’t arrive for another 200 years and think of all the “forsooths” he wrote.

Let me give you an example of Middle English. Here are the four opening lines of The Canterbury Tales.

When that Aprille with his shoures soote,

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licóur

Of which vertú engendred is the flour;

I know. Right? Here is the translation.

When April with his showers sweet with fruit

The drought of March has pierced unto the root

And bathed each vein with liquor that has power

To generate therein and sire the flower;

See what I mean. Even the translation is a mess.

I didn’t understand a word. I was so lost in the weeds I needed an inhaler. Blood oxygen levels in the class were plummeting toward unconsciousness.  Boredom was morphing toward sedition. 

Sensing rebellion, the professor assigned  The Wives Tale which he promised was not only more “accessible”, but ” included some “naughty stuff.”

“Alrighty then,” I thought. “Why didn’t you say so?” 

So, I read. And read. And read. I was so focused searching for the promised soft porn, I’m sure I looked like this guy.

“And every night and day was his custume,

Whan he had leyser and vacacioun

From other worldly occupacioun

To reden on this book of wikked wyves.”

But, that was it. No Julie Christie. No Diana Rigg. No Petula Clark. Not even  a little Julie Andrews. Turns out the “wyve” was “wikked” because…(whispering)… she ran the house. Talk about a let down. If the “good stuff” was there, I never saw it. 

So, we’ll see.  You never know about the Brits.

All I know is I am at my “leyser” , on “vacacioun from worldly occupacioun” with a woman that would put Julie Andrews, Petula Clark, Julie Christie and Diana Rigg to shame, and we’re about to leave Sonoma County Airport “on holiday.”

Time to take this Brit show on the road and find out where life takes us.