Polish myths about England

England, Great Britain and other confusions

Polish people generally know that the United Kingdom is made up of four countries; England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but they persist in calling everyone from the United Kingdom, English. If you ever find yourself in Wales or Scotland or Northern Ireland this can make you very unpopular. Calling a Scot, English is about the same as calling a Silesian Pole, German—in neither case is it likely to be dismissed with a smile.

While we’re on the subject a word needs to be said about the name ‘Great Britain.’ A lot of people think it’s pompous to call your own country ‘great’ and they are absolutely right; it would be just as silly to call your country Fantastic Holland or Awesome Nigeria. Fortunately ‘great’ in this case means something else: it’s an ancient geographical designation for the British islands that distinguishes them from the nearby part of France called Brittany; for large parts of our history both were part of the same kingdom. It’s exactly the same as Wielkopolska and Małopolska.

Tea

There are a whole string of Polish myths about English tea drinking. The most pervasive is the idea that the English are sophisticated tea drinkers—we are not, we are tea Neanderthals. The classic cup of British tea is not fine Earl Grey in a bone china teacup, it’s a Tesco’s teabag in a cheap stained mug. Tea is drunk in England habitually and without thought; we really don’t care what it tastes like and we can’t taste it anyway because it’s full of milk and sugar. English tea is the daytime beer of the masses. Those expensive tea shops you see in Poland with English names like Tea for Two are about as typically English as sushi. While it is true that ninety-nine percent of the tea drunk in England comes in a mug with a spoon sticking out of it, every English household also has a proper set of teacups and a tea pot hidden away in a cupboard in case the queen ever visits.

One of the strangest Polish ideas about English tea drinking is calling us fajfokloki. Five o’clock is one of the few times in the day when we are unlikely to drink tea. Most English people finish work at five o’clock, then go home and have their evening meal at about six. The last tea of the day is usually drunk around four o’clock in the afternoon. I insist on being called a forokloki. I suspect the confusion happened because, in many English households, the word ‘tea’ also means ‘evening meal.’ A lot of people, especially those in manual jobs who go to work early and come home early, have their ‘tea’ at five o’clock.

The weather

Polish people know two things about English weather: it’s foggy all the time, and it rains all the time—which is odd, because you almost never get rain and fog at the same time anywhere in the world. The fog myth is particularly persistent. Sometimes Polish people will beckon me over to a window and point to the other side of the street. “You’ve probably never seen that far before,” they boast, “what with England being covered in fog all the time.” “My god, you’re right” I exclaim, “but what is that huge blue thing over our heads!”

This one is easy to clear up. In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century London suffered from terrible smogs—a combination of natural fog and soot and ash from factories and coal fires used to heat houses. They were so thick they were known as pea-soupers. You could lean against the stuff. Today coal fires are illegal in British cities and the factories have all closed down or moved to China. There are no more London smogs. The reason classic British movies of the 1940s and 1950s show London full of fog, is because it was full of fog in the 1940s and 1950s. The reason Four Weddings and a Funeral doesn’t feature any fog is because there isn’t any now. This is a shame because London looks cool in fog, even if it is difficult to breathe.

Many Polish people claim they could never live in England because it rains all the time. Sometimes they claim this without a hint of irony while standing up to their necks in floodwater. The facts are these: on average it rains on 153 days each year in London, in Warsaw it rains on 158 days each year, in Paris it rains on 162 days each year: it rains less often in London than it does in Warsaw or Paris. What confuses people is that it rains in a different way in England. English weather is extremely changeable: you can have blazing hot sunshine in the morning, snow in the afternoon and a tornado after dinner, literally. In Poland you can predict what the weather is going to do, in England meteorologists gave up years ago and simply pick weather words at random from a hat.

Sophistication

Because Britain is rich and successful a lot of Polish people think it must be sophisticated and civilised: they imagine it’s what Poland would be like if it was richer and hadn’t been occupied for 50 years. It isn’t. The English mistrust sophistication and remain unconvinced about the benefits of civilisation. Poland draws its idea of sophistication and civilisation from a Central European ideal that was heavily influenced by Napoleonic France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. England regards this ideal as pompous and probably very tiring. Polish sophistication is intellectualism, fine food, fine clothes, education and concerts. The English have a horror of intellectualism and fall asleep at concerts.

The greatest mistake disparagers of England make is mocking it for being unsophisticated. This has no effect: we are proud of being unsophisticated. If you really want to make an Englishman angry, call him a philosopher. Napoleon once called Britain a “nation of shopkeepers,” which was supposed to be a devastating put down implying that the British were small minded, unsophisticated and incapable of resisting his heroic destiny. We took it as a compliment and have been repeating it ever since.

Jamie Stokes