It seems to have worked. Or maybe that's a bit presumptuous. What I mean is that this approach has certainly given me a better understanding of the 'grammar' - or 'mindset' or 'ethos' or 'gemeingeist' or 'cultural genome' or whatever you want to call it - of Englishness. Now, when I witness some apparently bizarre or ludicrous English behaviour (as I write this, we are in the middle of the Christmas-party season) I can say to myself, for example, 'Ah, yes: typical case of social dis-ease, medicated with alcohol and festive liminality, + humour + moderation'. (I don't usually say it out loud, because people would think I was bonkers.)
But the point of this Englishness project was not to allow me to feel quietly smug and omniscient. The idea was that other people might find it helpful too. As you know, I've been puzzling all this out as we went along, chapter by chapter, so the book has been a bit like one of those maths tests where the teacher says you have to 'show the workings-out' rather than just putting down the final answer. This means that if you think I've got the final answer to the 'what is Englishness?' question wrong, at least you can see exactly where I made my mistakes. It also means that, at this point, you know at least as much as I do about the defining characteristics of Englishness we've been trying to identify. I don't have anything up my sleeve to pull out for a grand finale. You could write this final chapter yourself if you felt like it.
THE LIST
But I promised, at the very least, a definitive list of our defining characteristics, and at best some sort of model or diagram or recipe showing how they fit together. So let's start with The List. During all the 'workings out', I seem to have developed a kind of shorthand way of referring to these characteristics, using a single word for each ('social dis-ease', 'moderation', 'Eeyorishness', etc.) without spelling out its entire meaning every time, and indeed often expanding, revising and refining my definitions of these terms in the light of new evidence. Much as I love making up new words and playing with old ones, I do realize that there's a danger here of us ending up with enough home-made woolly jargon to knit ourselves a whole pointless new discipline (Englishness Studies or something equally inane), with its own impenetrable dialect. To avoid this, and to save you the trouble of going back to check exactly what I meant by 'empiricism' or 'fair play' or whatever, I'll try this time to give definitive definitions of each of the defining characteristics. There are ten of these: a central 'core' and then three 'clusters' which I have labelled reflexes, outlooks and values.
The Core: Social Dis-ease
The central 'core' of Englishness. Social dis-ease is a shorthand term for all our chronic social inhibitions and handicaps. The English social dis-ease is a congenital disorder, bordering on a sort of sub-clinical combination of autism and agoraphobia (the politically correct euphemism would be 'socially challenged'). It is our lack of ease, discomfort and incompetence in the field (minefield) of social interaction; our embarrassment, insularity, awkwardness, perverse obliqueness, emotional constipation, fear of intimacy and general inability to engage in a normal and straightforward fashion with other human beings. When we feel uncomfortable in social situations (that is, most of the time) we either become over-polite, buttoned up and awkwardly restrained or loud, loutish, crude, violent and generally obnoxious. Both our famous 'English reserve' and our infamous 'English hooliganism' are symptoms of this social dis-ease, as is our obsession with privacy. Some of us are more severely afflicted than others. The dis-ease is treatable (temporary alleviation/remission can be achieved using props and facilitators - games, pubs, clubs, weather-speak, cyberspace, pets, etc. - and/or ritual, alcohol, magic words and other medications), and we enjoy periods of 'natural' remission in private and among intimates, but it is never entirely curable. Most peculiarities of English behaviour are traceable, either directly or indirectly, to this unfortunate affliction. Key phrases include: 'An Englishman's home is his castle'; 'Nice day, isn't it?'; 'Oi -what you looking at?'; 'Mind your own business'; 'I don't like to pry, but...'; 'Don't make a fuss/scene'; 'Don't draw attention to yourself'; 'Keep yourself to yourself'; ''Ere we go, 'ere we go'; 'Enger-land! Enger-land! Enger-land!'.
Reflexes
Our deeply ingrained impulses. Our automatic, unthinking ways of being/ways of doing things. Our knee-jerk responses. Our 'default modes'. Cultural equivalents of laws of gravity.
Humour
Probably the most important of our three basic reflexes. Humour is our most effective built-in antidote to our social dis-ease. When God (or Something) cursed us with The English Social Dis-ease, He/She/It softened the blow by also giving us The English Sense of Humour. The English do not have any sort of global monopoly on humour, but what is distinctive is the sheer pervasiveness and supreme importance of humour in English everyday life and culture. In other cultures, there is 'a time and a place' for humour: among the English it is a constant, a given - there is always an undercurrent of humour. Virtually all English conversations and social interactions involve at least some degree of banter, teasing, irony, wit, mockery, wordplay, satire, understatement, humorous self-deprecation, sarcasm, pomposity-pricking or just silliness. Humour is not a special, separate kind of talk: it is our 'default mode'; it is like breathing; we cannot function without it. English humour is a reflex, a knee-jerk response, particularly when we are feeling uncomfortable or awkward: when in doubt, joke. The taboo on earnestness is deeply embedded in the English psyche. Our response to earnestness is a distinctively English blend of armchair cynicism, ironic detachment, a squeamish distaste for sentimentality, a stubborn refusal to be duped or taken in by fine rhetoric, and a mischievous delight in pricking the balloons of pomposity and self-importance. (English humour is not to be confused with 'good humour' or cheerfulness - it is often quite the opposite; we have satire instead of revolutions and uprisings.) Key phrases include: 'Oh, come off it!' (Our national catchphrase, along with 'Typical!') Others impossible to list - English humour is all in the context, e.g. understatement: 'Not bad' (meaning outstandingly brilliant); 'A bit of a nuisance' (meaning disastrous, traumatic, horrible); 'Not very friendly' (meaning abominably cruel); 'I may be some time' (meaning 'I'm going to die' - although, come to think of it, that one was possibly not intended to be funny).
Moderation
Another deep-seated, unconscious reflex or 'default mode'. I'm using the term 'moderation' as shorthand for a whole set of related qualities. Our avoidance of extremes, excess and intensity of any kind. Our fear of change. Our fear of fuss. Our disapproval of and need to limit indulgence. Our cautiousness and our focus on domesticity and security. Our ambivalence, apathy, woolliness, middlingness, fence-sitting and conservatism - and to some extent our tolerance, which tends to be at least partly a matter of benign indifference. Our moderate industriousness and moderate hedonism (the 'work moderately, play moderately' principle we really live by, rather than the 'work hard, play hard' one we like to quote). Our penchant for order and our special brand of 'orderly disorder'. Our tendency to compromise. Our sheer ordinariness. With some notable exceptions, even our alleged eccentricities are mostly 'collective' and conformist. We do everything in moderation, except moderation, which we take to ludicrous extremes. Far from being wild and reckless, the English 'youth of today' are even more moderate, cautious and unadventurous than their parents' generation. (Only about 14 per cent do not suffer from this moderation-abuse - we must rely on these rare risk-seekers for future innovation and progress.) Key phrases include: 'Don't rock the boat'; 'Don't go overboard'; 'Don't overdo it'; 'For the sake of peace and quiet'; 'Can't be bothered'; 'All very well, in moderation'; 'Safe and sound'; 'Order! Order!'; 'A nice cup of tea'; 'If it was like this all the time, we wouldn't appreciate it'; 'Over-egging the pudding'; 'Too much of a good thing'; 'Happy medium'; 'What do we want? GRADUAL CHANGE! When do we want it? IN DUE COURSE!'