Fish 'n' chips
TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN
Washington—Driving to a party at the British Embassy, I found an intelligent and chatty taxi- driver. (On the whole, Washington has the best conversationalist taxi-drivers in the free world, if you want conversationalist taxi-drivers: I have found only one sulky and incompetent taxi-driver here and he was Chinese.) The men- tion of the British Embassy evoked reminis- cences. 'I've often seen Churchill outside it; once I saw him with Eden. That was a snappy dresser.' I thought that the Earl of Avon had given up his role as the glass of fashion long before his last visit to Washington, but I may be wrong. Then the driver went on 'What we need here is a Churchill.' I agreed, but sug- gested that no Churchill was in sight. 'Maybe, but I'm for Nixon and Reagan.' This descent into the absurd diverted or annoyed people at the embassy and I reflected on the difficulty of replacing a figure like Churchill. I recollected that when Louis XIV got news of the death in battle of the Marechal-General le Vicomte de Turenne, he nominated twelve new /vTarshals of France. The Americans might try a universal promotion of this kind.
Coming back to Washington from the Rocky Mountains, I found myself back in a city where :Britain was- news,,if bad news. In the great West, Britain was remote and ineffectual, like Chesterton's don. I only, discovered that the weather at home was bad by reading a story of the dire-straits of a bank at Great Missen- den which had to borrow money from a pub because of the snowstorms. 'Britain. is netnews; it is at best merely another depressant for a people which has enough troubles of its own.
The drastic measures of the Wilson govern- ment produced some very quick work in a country where the press is not so quick off the mark as it is at home. The Washington Post had an unkind -but not unjust Herblock car- toon of the Prime Minister selling off, at knock-down prices, the whole British business like a fire-sale shop. The leading article, written in a hurry, was so distressed that 'were,' an irrelevant subjunctive, was used for `was'—an error unlike the habits of a highly literate news- paper. This suggested to me the need to stop all attempts to preserve any tenses but the indicative and any remnants of Anglo-Saxon inflections. Years ago, I was asked by some American reporter what ethical instruction I gave my children. I said they had had only two injunctions from me; not to pick their noses and not to say 'like' for 'as.' They have been pretty good about these two command- ments, but the cause of 'as' is lost Another cause that should be lost is the use of 'whom' (and 'whomsoever'). Fewer and fewer understand when 'whom' is to be used, so, when in doubt, they stick it in. The same fate is befalling 'shall.' It is used when 'will' is the proper word and, if one takes the shall-will difference seriously, the result is confusion. (The old anti-Scottish joke about the drowning Scot who cries out, 'I shall drown, nobody will save me,' is totally implausible, since no Scot who has not been corrupted by an English (or Anglified) education ever uses 'shall?) Let us settle for 'will' with underlining or vocal em- phasis when necessary. Between You and I, these refinements are now merely a nuisance.
While I was in the West, there was a cause cell_bre of a kind being fought in Denver. A municipal ordinance banned 'topless' wait- resses. But a local judge has thrown out the ordinance on constitutional grounds; it is too vague: for example, it bans 'transparent tops' without defining transparent. The case may, and I hope will, go up to the Supreme Court. The American passion for toplessness is surely odd. On the one hand, this is in many ways still a puritan and prudish coun- try: it is only a few years since the hostesses on an airline operating out of Denver were instructed to tell passengers that the 'Grand Teton Mountains' were the 'Sweater Girl Mountains.' Yet toplessness is pow one of the chief sales gimmicks of restaurants.
' But American restaurant advertising is going through some painful evolutionary process today. I have been examining a trade maga- zine called Guestguide. Two points struck me. One was the refusal to write 'and' when you
• can write 'n.' -Years ago, the New Yorker ad- vised its readers to buy nothing advertised by this distressing piece of bogus demotic. In Colo- rado restaurants and shops, nearly everything is sold-'n' wise. Thus I was invited to eat 'Fish 'n' Chips.' I did. The dish was not a great sue-
• eess. American soldiers brought' back a taste for 'fish and chips' from Britain, but nobody has mastered the secret-of this great proletarian dish. No hake; no dogfish; not enough fat; not enough deep frying; not enough salt, vinegar and pepper. I am told that fish fryers at home complain of a falling-off in business.
: :I have not patronised fish and chip shops for a good many years. The last identifiable client - of one that I can recall is an old friend who is now the only Old Wykehamist Cabinet minis- ter. Before he entered the Government, I encountered him one night walking down Whitehall on his way to the House of Com- mons, placidly eating chips (but not fish), not indeed out of the traditional newspaper, but out of what we call in Scotland a 'poke.' He was not embarrassed. 'Manners makyth man.' 'And in the flood of tourist publicity for British goods and services, it is distressing to read in the Guestguide of a Denver restaurant calling itself 'The Piccadilly' which sells itself as being 'like Simpson's in the Strand'—`if you were to clean, brighten up and bring Simpson's in the Strand up to date, that's the Piccadilly.' I don't remember any time in the past forty years that Simpson's needed such treatment and the description of 'The Piccadilly' suggests that it is far more Olde Worlde than Simpson's (I am glad to say) has ever been. However, we need dollars badly and such insults to great national institutions have to be put up with. Perhaps when we are solvent we can tear down Piccadilly Circus and produce something less like Times Square?
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