Empire Vernacular

I received a wonderful little book this Christmas in the form of a collection of unpublished letters to The Daily Telegraph newspaper in the UK. One letter struck me as so hilarious (though it may just be me) and rather on point for the festive season that I have to share the comments. I can only hope some of the suggestions will stick; I know I’m going to work hard at it. Aptly encapsulating my own years trying to fit into the American workplace with all the right jargon, the complication was in not coming across as too Americanised by the time I’d get on the horn with British brethren back home. As my American colleagues will surely agree, once you drink the Kool-Aid it’s hard to shift gears.

“Sir – I currently work for a wonderful company run by Americans. However, many of my British colleagues are beginning to find their business vernacular rather annoying: Step up to the plate; came in from left field; ball-park figure; circle the wagons; drink the Kool-Aid.
We have taken a different approach to combat its pervasiveness: we have invented our own “Empire vernacular”, which our American “co-workers” will believe is quaint old English idiom.
Here are some examples we use regularly: It’s like trying to find the corner on a bowler hat; we can all sip sherry over this one; to hit the driven grouse (would mean swinging across the line); and I’ll stuff the partridge and get back to you.
Our ultimate hope is that on global conference calls we will one day hear these phrases spoken with an American accent.”

Beyond the roundly hysterical plot to counter the influx of American lexicon, I sympathise with the author’s concerns. Not pain, just low-grade angst at the Borg-like absorption of American phrasiology. You can’t call it linguistic integration since it’s a one-way street with the buck stopping over there. (You can earn a brownie point if you find the three illustrative Americanisms in the last two sentences.) Of course with no formal studies to cite, I’ll apply a decidedly unscientific hunch that the assimilation of casual American phrases went into over-drive (an American automotive term since nary a soul in Europe drives an automatic) over the past five years.

I blame Simon Cowell. As the epitome of trans-Atlantic reality television show flogging, there is barely a variety show shown in the UK that’s not the diabolical twin of a show stateside, if not the American version itself. Surely it’s no coincidence that every movie villain intent on world domination first commandeers the television stations. Propagandists unite! Now, every game show host and overly-tanned Essex-girl is yammering on with a pickle train of American vernacular in spectacular regional dialect.

A week ago, my father, in his early seventies I might add, declared they were “all set” for Christmas. And though I may be partly to blame for his downfall, I nearly fell off the telephone at such an utterance. Through video Skype, I have witnessed my older brother casually trotting out phrases like “I guess so” in place of the British, “I suppose so”. Considering these were the very phrases for which I was ragged on mercilessly after moving to the states -- ones I’d attempt to curb on visits home -- I’m now gobsmacked to hear them peppering far more acute British accents than my long-ago tempered own.

The topic came up at a Christmas cocktail party where a couple of Anglophiles asked me earnestly whether it wasn’t terribly, terribly, hard raising the fruits of my loin in a foreign culture. I may have described my Henry Higgin-style elocution plans with a little too much wine-infused gusto but they no doubt quickly caught the gist. Imparting urgency to any four year old in the matter of letter pronunciation, especially double tees, is hard, but consistently teaching British and American versions for commonly used words requires the same diligence as raising a bilingual child. Now with my countrymen muddying the water with hybrid Anglo-American turns of phrase, I don’t know whether to accept the merger or throw up my hands in despair. If you have thoughts on exercising the newly minted ‘Empire vernacular’, please consider stuffing the partridge and getting back to me.

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>> “I Could Go On…Unpublished Letters to the Daily Telegraph” was edited by Iain Hollingshead and published by Aurum Press Ltd., UK (2010).

Santa, Baby

‘Tis the season to be jolly and some people take the business of festive decorating rather seriously. In any American neighbourhood there are always two or three houses vying with one another for the title of Greatest Nightly Drain on the National Grid, their exteriors glittering with a storm of light bulbs to rival the illuminations of the Eiffel Tower and Harrods. Unquestionably, craftsmanship and diligence go into these creations, no doubt with great satisfaction at the end. Perhaps that explains the recent success of a viral hoax about a fired department store Father Christmas who found a way to express his feelings to Harrods’ top brass. Ostensibly, he barricaded himself in the control room and rearranged the store’s exterior lights to spell out an enormous expletive. Who can't relate?

On any given morning, I am struck by the strange sight of dozens of deflated Santas and snowmen collapsed on lawns. It lends a curious sort of ‘morning after’ feel to the drive as though you are witnessing the aftermath of some debauchery. Even when someone flicks the switch to re-inflate them, it takes a few minutes during which time they prop themselves up rubbing sore limbs and achy heads.

As soon as December hits, my hopes for the festive season kick into overdrive. It’s my chance to indulge some inner magpie with all things shiny and glittery, not to mention Christmas parties where we are finally allowed to dress up. Moving house in the beginning of December put a significant crimp in my organization. The well-oiled Christmas card assembly line ground to a halt despite ordering cards weeks in advance; plans to purchase a Christmas tree hit the backburner; and tracking down Christmas presents barely entered the equation.

We moved house on a Saturday, partially unpacked on Sunday, and hit the ground running. School was still in session, meals needed to be cooked, clothes located. Unpacking the kitchen was priority number 1, as the nerve center for all home operations, and reassembling the children’s rooms was priority number 2. Since everything else was proportionately optional, we, the parents, have managed to appear spectacularly disheveled and I can’t help but wonder what people make of the new residents in their neighbourhood.

Given the never-ending stream of workmen and visitors a new move attracts, we decided in our infinite wisdom to tack on a trip to Ikea for rugs. Nearly two hours away, this sort of trip would, in the UK, be like going on vacation. Having packed up children, supplies, and a U-Haul tow, we took our lives in our hands and headed into New Jersey. To Ikea. On a weekend. Right before Christmas. In terms of bright ideas, this one ranks pretty low. If you’ve ever been on a quest for Christmas spirit, this is not where you’ll find it. From crazed parents to screaming children, we fitted the mold and joined forces with hordes of families who either thought Ikea was the perfect destination for Christmas gifts, had moved house like us, or just had a thing for Swedish meatballs. The place was heaving, shopping carts battling one another for space in cute little display areas. I actually thought the ground was moving in the marketplace and people routinely attempted to filch our flat shopping cart as we attempted to locate furniture boxes in the picked over stockroom. Our children departed from any sense of patience and understanding with our four year old alternating between tears and demands for food while our 18 month old screamed for most of the 4-hour ordeal.

Despite our disarray, we’ve been trying mightily to get festive. We adorned the Christmas tree with twinkly lights and piped Christmas tunes around the house. I burned up my laptop ordering gifts from Amazon.com and ragged on the post office to speed up our mail forwarding since we’d barely received a Christmas card. The array of visitors coming to see our house and chaos brought it’s own share of headaches. Several noticed our Elf on the Shelf (named ‘Small Paul’) and wanted to talk about where we had bought this year’s hot trend, when we all know that he is an envoy of Santa, like a secular mass-produced prophet, and certainly not cheap, commercial merchandise.

Since Mother Nature has been dumping most of our snowfall on Europe, I have been spared daily snow outings although we did squeeze in a snowball fight and a family walk through the woods. Of course, the children complained royally about the cold and we were back inside within fifteen minutes, but the effort was there. With just a couple of days to spare I am finally back at my desk attempting to churn out the Christmas cards and cover all gift-giving bases. I look tired, haggard, and haven’t shaved my legs in over a week. But, who cares about such things. We will be ready for Christmas, the gastronomic overload and the post-holiday clear up. I can only hope Santa will bring me some earplugs and a good night’s sleep.

Speed of Life

In recent weeks, almost every conversation has started or ended with a comment over how quickly 2010 zipped by. Arguably, with the year drawing to a close it might be inevitable that we’d share some collective John Lennon-style reflection on the arrival of Christmas and musing over what we actually did in the past year. Nonetheless, the frequency with which this conversation seems to crop up among my peers leads me to one conclusion: our disproportionate marveling is indisputable proof that we are turning into old biddies. You flat out never hear a twenty-something wondering where the year went. Yet here we are assuming a time honored elder tradition where entire conversations can be dedicated to time, traffic, or weather.

There is truth to that sense of life speeding up. Recent years have become less about me (altough I vaguely remember those balmy ones where I only had myself to worry about) and have evolved into some complex nerve center orchestration and integration of competing family member schedules, sending batches of weeks skittering to the curb. In hindsight, it appears to have induced a form of amnesia. No sooner than our pre-schooler was out for the summer holidays, I was throwing a turkey in the oven for Thanksgiving with barely a rustle of the calendar. I shouldn’t be surprised. Even when we retire to bed the ability to disconnect is hard. With smart phones and social media at our fingertips, we’re paying bills, responding to messages from school, and tapping goodnight to friends in one time zone or waking up to news from another, all without kicking off the covers.

In some ways, while we’ve all been avidly streamlining our possessions, reducing waste and saving the planet, we have inadvertently replaced physical clutter with mental clutter; millions of us rushing around like tiny headless Energizer bunnies on call or over-committed night and day. When you’re operationally hectic, a little more seems like adding spice to the mix, since we may be losing the ability to sense over-load. Consider this: On October 22nd 2010, two days before our daughter’s fourth birthday party I texted my husband about a house I had seen online. Not that we were looking, having spent the better part of two years working diligently on home improvement projects of our own. Within four days we had seen a different house and arranged a viewing. Within three weeks we had agreed on price, and last weekend we moved in. So what if there were Thanksgiving guests, an anniversary trip, and Christmas gigs for my husband’s band on top of the purging, packing, and Christmas rush? If you’re counting, which I am, that was seven weeks from start to finish. At least it explains why I feel a decade older than I did this summer and justifies the day-dreamy allure of making Christmas dinner a takeout this year.

During the move I found a piece of paper folded and pinned to my office notice board. It was a detailed chart featuring the five-year plan my husband and I had created over beers at Chatham’s Peint o Gwrw pub in 2005. Now, as 2010 and the five year period come to a close, I couldn’t help but review the goals, (even though I’d neglected the plan), just to see how we’d fared. Created soon after our honeymoon, the plan naturally pre-dated much of our life today. Goals to have children, start businesses, support charities, and prioritize time at home were met, while intentions to exercise, get more sleep and generally slow down clearly were not. I was struck by a final goal, scheduled for Year Five, which proposed moving house with a string of question marks. I have no idea what underpinned that idea but clearly there was a fledgling thought germinating. And while we may not have accomplished all things at the speed of light, as this year ends I’m giving a knowing nod to the speed of life.

Bah Humbug

For today’s sacrificial act, I share my guilty pleasure of in-car Christmas radio. More efficient at procuring sneers and open disdain than a twenty year old’s public protestation of love for Oldies radio, it’s something I tend to keep under wraps. More damningly, this year I succumbed to intermittent radio blasts as early as November 4th when I stumbled upon a twenty-four hour festive station that could melt the stripes off a candy cane faster than a quick roast of Joan of Arc at the stake.

True, it has been more difficult to resist this festive urge than establishing limits for my daily chocolate intake or Pavlovian Facebook habit. More than a few of my friends will no doubt snort – Christmas radio! - and point to the higher power of academic NPR broadcasts or lament the commercialized lows of Christmas excess. But they should brace themselves. A few merry bursts of pre-Christmas jingle can be critical inoculation against the syrupy tide that will flow over the next few weeks as malls turn up the sticky sugar cookie and vanilla quotient for a Bon Jovi style final countdown.

Naturally, there are those who really do wish the Christmas spirit of year-end parties, and all the glitter, sparkle and industrious elves would just go away. I might venture these individuals should probably not be gainfully employed in large box superstores at this time of year, mostly for their own good. If the racks of fake garland don’t get them, the diligent Salvation Army bell ringers will.

I made a perilous visit into one such store - my most hated of them all - in a last ditch effort to ferret out a particular toy that had sold out in the Black Friday sales. I was also looking for an elf. You wouldn’t think elves would be so hard to come by at this time of year. Having corned the market, Pottery Barn has already sold out of Santa’s ‘Elf on the Shelf, a box set featuring a lanky little elf (also a bit of a snoop and a tattle-tale) who reports nightly to Santa on whatever he has seen. In my infinite wisdom I thought I’d just find a little elf and hide him around the house for the same effect, but locating the elf was the hard part.

Eccho, a reluctant sales associate and not a people person, works at this big box store. Almost concave, he appears to have had the Christmas stuffing knocked out of him, gliding like a sad ghost forced to forever tread the silver bauble and fairy light aisles. Still, restocking row upon glittery silver row, he looked like a man who might know his festive ware and so I stood myself before him with a simple question.

“I’m looking for an elf.”
“An elf…” he trailed off, gingerly fingering the hooks of some gingerbread trees. “An elf. Well, you see, I don’t know what that is.”

Considering the probability of meeting a shop assistant assigned to the Christmas section who has never heard of an elf, I decided to be helpful. “Yes, an elf. You know, they sort of help out by making toys for Santa. At Christmas.”

Eccho, it turned out, wasn’t particularly interested in the role of elves at secular Christmas or any other time. He looked up to the ceiling before wafting his arms around ethereally without the slightest hint of urgency before offering, “Why don’t you just, you know, look around.” Having waved me away, Eccho and his watery eyes simply went back to tranquil shelf stocking.

It’s well documented that I’m typically persistent in securing shopping satisfaction but Eccho appeared so successfully impervious to the piped Christmas music and the festive assault on his five senses so I left him alone. The next assistant was less fortunate as I insisted she find a computer to find out if they sold any sort of elf in any form in the entire store. Despite elves peering out from sale boards and roll-back value placards, the answer was no.

Leaving the store, I was now the antithesis of the Christmas spirit: aggravated, irked, and tired of the milling crowds. Just as the sliding doors were about to deliver freedom, a man in front started coughing uncontrollably, hacking away and finally bending over to spit out some terrible slop right at my feet. I fled, elf-less but clutching my boxed toy, hyperventilating with the conviction I had just been exposed to TB. As I started up my car, the dulcet tones of George Michael’s Last Christmas wafted over the airwaves, with Christmas radio at the ready to deliver me from evil and banish the Grinch.