"You are boring like your
nation, a place which makes love without pleasure,conversation without
grace and jokes without laughing". So spake the mistress of Simon Bolivar of her English husband.
Does
this really describe us. Is love making a formality, part an expectancy
because we have been prescribed by our Presbyterian upbringing which
dictates responsibility over spontaneity.
The relationship between
men and women in this country has always seemed to our Mediterranean
neighbours, to lack the passion which they seem to exhibit. A sort of
hang over from our Victorian great great grandparents. Sex was a dirty
word and the ignorance of matters pertaining to sex was due in large
part to the inability to talk about it.
"Making love without pleasure" articulates the immaturity of a society which finds 'form' more important than reality.
"Making
conversation without grace" reflects the high pitched, alcohol induced
banter often mistaken for conversation when the English gather in
numbers. A sort of competition to be the most bawdy and outrageous takes
place especially amongst the women who feel liberated to excess and
express their most private and intimate experiences.
"Jokes
without laughing" were another rendition of 'form' where polite society
preferred, innuendo rather than direct confrontation. Today, the joke
has to be explicit which then opens a Pandora's box of competitive up
man-ship, each joke trying to be more outrageous than the next.
The
English were taught to hide their feelings and became used to thriving
within an emotional closed circuit , reluctant to let others in. Is it a
lack of confidence which comes from being made to know "ones place",
from being largely separated by schooling, money and the opportunities
which flow to some and not others.
An
Englishman's home is his castle and one is invited in on a very strict
proviso that the stay is limited and the clock is ticking.
The open door, stay as long as you like, the a
bed made up in the back, which I have experienced in other countries,
is an anathema to an Englishman who are at root very conservative and
find the concept of opening their castle to others virtually impossible.
This is not to knock my fellow countryman, just to acknowledge what others observe.