For a while, on flights back across the Atlantic from America to Euroland, we are under the spell of America. Instead of plonking ourselves down next to someone without a word we say, “Hi.” Maybe even indulge in a little conversation, though this American readiness to chat is counterbalanced by the fear that once we’ve got into a conversation we might not be able to extricate ourselves from it. By the time we’re mid-ocean a kind of preparatory freeze has set in. As the flight stacks up in the inevitable holding pattern over Heathrow we begin to revert to our muttering and moaning national selves. But, for a week or so after landing, a form of what might be called Ameristalgia makes us conscious of a rudeness in British life - a coarsening in the texture of daily life - that had hitherto seemed quite normal.
Geoff Dyer is author of several novels including the recently published collection of essays ‘Working the Room’ and the wonderfully titled: ‘Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It’. http://geoffdyer.com/
Join us for the first of our autumn sermons on Sunday 18 September that will challenge our engrained ‘British’ ways of approaching life. For further details about this and the rest of the autumn series, click here.
Image: Ryan Bartaby at YCN
this really irritates me. I'm glad to be English. I like the way we are. Why doesn't Geoff Dyer take a look at Michael Landy's current Acts of Kindness project and shut up. http://art.tfl.gov.uk/actsofkindness
Posted by: emma | September 08, 2011 at 09:22 AM