Politeness and the British Way

I just came across this article the other day, which came as quite a surprise actually. I didn't really think that Americans, much less New Yorkers, would think British English is either cool, or good to use to try to sound, 'posh'. Most of the time, it just sounds poncey to use such unfamiliar language. But then again, if you travel back and forth between the UK and US it could seep in and start to get all mixed up. I have had compliments lately from a couple of Americans that my British accent is lovely to listen to, but mostly because they were exposed to other kinds of regional British accents that they had found incomprehensible. I suppose the standard RP accent (what most people consider 'BBC English') is the preferred kind of British accent but it makes you wonder how others are perceived if they can't even be fully understood. I read in the Guardian, that had a whole round up of 'comedy news' yesterday (whatever that is) that the actor/comedian Rob Brydon will play a Welshman living in LA. How ever will Americans understand him? Will he purposely have to talk more slowly?

As an interesting follow-on discovery from this NYTimes article, I came across the blog 'Separated by a Common Language' where one of the latest articles deals with the issue of politeness. I'm quite interested in this because the word 'politeness' brings up all sorts of connotations for me. It reminds me of my childhood and having it drummed into me as though the world would collapse under a sea of despicable, immoral conduct if not used, that 'please' and 'thank you' were the most vital elements of any conversation at the dinner table. Quite rightly, my Mum wanted us to be grateful children, who always respected the people around them and would be polite at all times in either requesting or receiving something. On the other hand, this stretched to asking permission for all manner of things that perhaps went a bit too far. Was it really necessary to ask, "please could I leave the table now, as I've got homework to do?"  And worse still, was it necessary to decline kind offers from neighbours or family friends, when you really wanted to accept, just because it was the polite thing to do, not to take 'too much'?

This last point leads into the idea of self-worth. Too much politeness or an overly self-deprecating manner can cause its own problems. Perhaps these are not readily recognised in the UK, but I've noticed the differences I've experienced in both the US and here in the Czech Republic, not to mention comments from Russian and German friends. Elizabeth Gilbert in her book, 'Committed', (that I've been avidly reading and have just finished) explains the uncomfortableness of finding herself caught in a 'permission-seeking' situation with her own partner. She knew what she wanted to do, (go to Cambodia on her own without her partner) and she wanted to check that her partner would be ok with the idea, but she didn't want to put herself in the position of making her partner some kind of authority figure from whom she had to seek permission. As she puts it:

"When it came time to discuss with Felipe my idea of going off to Cambodia without him for a spell, I broached the topic with a degree of skittishness that surprised me. For a few days, I could not seem to find the right approach. I didn't want to feel as though I were asking his permission to go, since that placed him in the role of a master or a parent - and that wouldn't be fair to me. Nor, though, could I imagine sitting down with this nice, considerate man and bluntly informing him that I was heading off alone whether he liked it or not. This would place me in the role of wilful tyrant, which was obviously unfair to him."   

I recently struggled with learning the protocol of polite language usage here with some friends of friends who were Czech. First of all, there's the question of whether to use the 'Ty' or 'Vy' form, i.e a friendly form of 'you' or the polite, respectful one. And then, there's the question of how often to use the more polite conditional forms, such as 'could I help with something?' instead of a straightforward, 'can I help?' and you can forget about adding 'please' to any simple request to pass something over or ask where the loo is. That would just seem a typically apologetically British approach that has no place in this country. 

So it's something I'm still battling to learn. Having been accused of being too polite by ex-partner, who often said, "you don't need to apologise for breathing, you know!" about my tendency to say sorry too much, and yet at the same time being brought up to avoid asking for too much because that was rude, I'm in a bit of a pickle really. Maybe I just need to be British-ly polite in the UK and assume a certain sense of 'everything's ok' in places like the US and here in the Czech Republic and try very hard NEVER to get confused and mix them up.

The world and universe

I feel like I've been walking through a tunnel that's lit with strangely orange lighting and I've forgotten what time of day it is outside.  I have not been sleeping at all well and the weirdness of this current point in my life is very disconcerting.  I have flashbacks of times in London in my room in a dark and gloomy West London house, watching ER on Monday nights with a glass of red wine in a shapely green wine glass I got from a charity shop somewhere.  I used to watch ER for the stories that unfolded about the character who started out as a nurse and then became a doctor.  I don't know why I was drawn to that character so much.  She just had a sort of inner strength but also total inability to open up to people that I related to at the time and I found myself routing for her as her stories developed.

I don't know quite how my story is developing at the moment, but I'm having strange incidences of not recognising myself in a situation.  I used to be super-cynical and razor-sharp at throwing out the worst of my frustrations in crystal clear prose or rebellious ranting, but I seem to be being drawn away from all that now.  (Bloody hell, you go to California once, and look what happens..!)  I have found myself listening to Marianne Williamson and Tony Robbins, trying to learn and re-train my brain to stop criticising myself and to try to be more focussed about the things I love and want to have more time for.

I made two videos at the beginning of this week, in order to enter two similar competitions for business training.  I wonder if either will yield anything?  I at least learnt a fair amount about filming and editing on iMovie, which I'm quite pleased about, as that's a useful little string to my bow.  I need to tackle Wordpress.org tomorrow.  I also have to go on a Treasure Hunt tomorrow, can you believe it?!

There's a firm that make these treasure hunt trails for 'team-building' projects for companies, and I'm getting paid tomorrow to go and check that all the things on the list of clues are intact and still visible and so on.  Weird, right?  If only I had enough cash to actually enjoy wandering around Prague for three hours by stopping for coffee and cake at Kavárna Slavia for example.  Unfortunately, as things stand right now, I'm down to 300Kč for food for next week and that might have to include travel for this work tomorrow, until I get paid for it.  But I will at least make the rent that way.

In the meantime, I'm really stressed about a publishing contract that's come my way as part of a (now geographically distant) pool of musicians I know and is subject to a 4-branch 'tree' of collectors/publishers that makes things so complicated and so divided up that I can't even see how much money I would get from it in theory.  I had the reply from the MU solicitor today with my free hour's worth of suggested amendments and advice and the whole thing was brilliant work but totally filled my head with stress and questioning and fear and irreconcilable confusion.  

I had to laugh though, because the solicitor brilliantly and simply crossed out all the bits of language where the contract-writer had sought to appear 'clever' by adding in unnecessary and confusing terms.  I love it when people do this.  Or when people try to use a saying that they think will make them sound grander, but then they screw it up and look like a total prat.  Such as, "it always ceases to amaze me when.." when they meant "never ceases" or a casual misuse of 'literally' for emphasis that just isn't possible.  Or an overzealous attempt at pomp and circumstance that fails when they get to the end of their sentence and can't finish on a flourish for want of a perfect synonym for something they said right before.  (Boris Johnson does this a lot and he allegedly received the best education money can buy, so he's got no excuse!) 

Maybe I've just become impatient with Britishness.  Or I'm finding it irritating unless demonstrated in the finest form of years of tireless, self-motivated education.  Or maybe I'm just wound-up that a company like Sony are trying to rip people off by getting them to sign 20 year deals that can't be negotiated down to less than 10 with no obligation on their part to guarantee any payment during that period whatsoever (and you can forget about an advance..!) while retaining the right to the copyrighted material whether they make any money out of it for you or not.  By god, they put some weird nonsense in those contracts.  I notice the MU appointed solicitor has crossed out the definition of the 'territory' of the jurisdiction of the contract from "the world and universe" to just "the world".  Seriously, who writes these contracts?  Would they like to outline the exact boundaries of the universe, just to clarify?  Perhaps I should ask for that. 

I feel so tired from all these rapid thoughts and corrections of those thoughts.  I can't take the constant sleepless nights.  You'd think I were on drugs or something.  (I'm not.  More's the pity...)  The last two nights I've been ready for bed and about to go to sleep when I burst into tears uncontrollably.  And then that's me occupied for the next hour until I can pull myself together to make a milky drink and try to go to sleep again.  It's been torturous actually.  My head is full of flashbacks and visions of myself as being alone and small and almost invisible forever.  All that utterly calamitous stuff.  It feels like there's some kind of monster within me being exorcised.  And I don't even know when it'll end, or what the world will look like when I come out of all this.  And the really hilarious thing is, I don't even have enough money to buy a bottle of wine to have a glass before bed as some kind of last ditch attempt at a sedative.  But I guess that's probably a good thing.