“You must come round for coffee”: Part ll

I’ve just watched the film Made in Dagenham, and – perhaps I’ve been away from England too long – I was struck by just how often the people offer each other a cup of tea (except the Secretary of State for Employment, who offers sherry – I expect the film-makers were trying to make a point, though I can’t think what it is). Great film, by the way. Well worth going to see.

Here is Part ll of my attempt to make sense of this phenomenon for Americans.

When we Brits make conversation, there are some subtle differences to the way you Americans do it. You pick these up as signs of us being reserved, or unfriendly, but I don’t believe they are. Not usually, and almost certainly not, if someone has invited you into their home. You make so much more eye contact than we do when you talk. In my early days in the US, I felt mildly uncomfortable all the time in conversation, because people were holding my eyes far too much. I probably came across to them as very shifty – always moving my eyes to left or right, or dropping them. Often I still find conversation with a new person a bit intense. It feels to me not so much like a chat, as an interrogation. We British women need to let our eyes wander, and you see, if we have a cup of tea in our hands, it makes it easier. We can lose eye contact regularly, when we take a sip. Even if we’re not sipping, the cup we’re holding provides us with an easy place to divert our gaze. It just makes it more comfortable for us. Saves us having to wander our eyes round the room.

What about those embarrassing silences? We need a distraction for those. When there’s a silence, we take a sip, or we give the drink a stir, or we warm our hands round the mug, maybe clinking our wedding ring against it. It turns the awkwardness of the silence into a companionable moment.

Another reason we need a prop is this. It’s because we don’t know what to do with our hands, if they’re not holding a cup (and thank you to Michelloui for pointing this one out to me). Knowing what to do with idle hands is something you do well. We don’t. If I’m sitting talking without something to hold, I invariably fidget with my hair, or my clothes, or the chair. In a formal situation like an interview, I have to make a conscious effort to keep my hands still in my lap. You don’t seem to have this problem. I’ve observed this in your children. They are comfortable standing with their hands by their sides when they’re on stage singing, reciting, or just watching and listening. That was always something that felt so awkward to me as a child. I always wanted to clasp my hands in front of me, or behind, or put them in pockets. I’ve observed it in your teenagers too. They don’t fold their arms in that classic defensive posture that ours adopt. How do you manage to feel so at ease with your manual appendages? Have mercy on us, when we need a simple mug to occupy our awkward hands.

American ladies, I hope I’ve helped you understand the whole complicated deal behind the hot drink compulsion. It’s our equivalent of the toddler’s comfort blanket. We just feel lost without it. No doubt you could wean us off it, with a sticker chart on the fridge door, or by telling our friends and neighbours in front of us what big girls we are now. But it would be kinder just to let us continue. There are worse habits. Think of it this way: at least if a hot drink is on offer, there’ll usually be a biscuit for you too.

For more on this subject, please go to Michelloui's blog, The American Resident, where she has posted an answer to my reflections. And then for a pithy one-liner which will make you laugh, try this link here.

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“You must come round for coffee”: Part l

I recently enjoyed this post by Michelloui, who blogs at The American Resident. She says “when I came to Britain where hot drinks are so common they’ve invented a quick source for boiling water (the electric kettle, woo hoo!), I gradually came to understand that when people offered you a cup of tea they would be uncomfortable if you didn’t accept”.

It has spurred me on to write a post that I’ve been meaning to write for ages. Since I read quite a few blogs written by Americans in Britain, I know that the practice of being offered a hot drink when you arrive at someone’s house seems an oddity, so I thought I’d try and explain.

If you meet another mother at a toddler or school event in America, and you want to get to know her (let’s just suppose you’ve moved to the area from another continent and you don’t know a soul and you’re going absolutely bonkers in your isolation… for example…), the key phrase is “let’s get the kids together”. In Britain, the same invitation would be “you must come round for coffee some time”. If you take the British woman up on her offer, you will find that you are offered coffee or tea, but no-one says “you must come round for tea some time”. I’m guessing this is because tea is both a drink, and a meal. It’s too confusing to invite someone for tea, because they won’t know whether you mean them to arrive at 10.30 in the morning, for an hour and a half of chat while the children play, or to pitch up in the evening with an empty stomach. (To further complicate it, the Brits can’t even agree on what the meal ‘tea’ is. To some, it’s a post-school snack; to others it’s a full evening meal.) So to avoid confusion, we just stick to “come round for coffee”. Either way, the clue is in the phrase. The event will involve a hot drink.

A word of warning. If when you get there, you say you’d like coffee, this will most likely be what you call Nescafe. Don’t expect anything with a taste that you recognise as real coffee. At this point, I’d like to apologise, on behalf of the British nation, for instant coffee. It is, I now see, an abomination, and should have been outlawed by the Geneva Convention. So, assuming you want to avoid the coffee, you’ll go for tea. This will be what you know as ‘black tea’ (we don’t really do green tea in Britain), and unless you ask otherwise, it will be served with a small amount of milk in it.

So much for the beverage details. Now on to the more important issues. It will help you if you know you are not really being offered a drink. When your hostess asks if you’d prefer tea or coffee, please don’t say you won’t have either. You have to understand that she’s not worried about your hydration levels. She’s not offering you an opportunity to quench your thirst; she’s offering you her hospitality. Making you a cup of tea is code for making you welcome. She’s not really saying “would you like a drink?” She’s saying “this is my home, and I’ve invited you into it, and I want to make you feel comfortable here”. So just say yes. Then she’ll be in a familiar pattern of what to do next. If you say no, the ritual goes awry. What to do? It doesn’t feel quite right to go and make herself a drink if you’re not having one, but it feels even worse to sit down and converse without a drink. More about that in my next post.

I’ve been trying to think what a comparable situation would be for an American woman. It’s not a direct equivalent, but the best I can come up with is this. When you are invited round to someone’s house for dinner, you always take a dish with you. If it’s a potluck dinner, you do. If it’s not a potluck dinner, you still do. Imagine a scenario in which you turn up to dinner with your side dish, and take it into the kitchen, and your hostess says “oh, we don’t need an extra side. I’ve made a bunch of food for everyone. You can just leave it here on the counter top, and take it home with you when you go” (and yes, oh British readers, an American hostess might well talk about “a bunch of food”). See what I mean? There’s no logic to these things. You didn’t really think that you and the other guests would go hungry if you didn’t take a side dish with you. It’s just what you do. It’s a cultural norm. Just as you would feel that it was odd of your hostess not to accept your food, so we feel it’s peculiar for a guest not to accept a hot drink. Does that help explain?