Friday, December 10, 2010

Brit Spotting...

So, my present employer started life as a Canadian Company but relatively quickly moved to a London Based Company. Even after the merger / purchase, it is a pretty British Company. Although technically headquartered in New York now.

The upshot of all this is we have quite a large contingent of rotating and semi-permanent citizens of ol’ Blighty here. And, much as in train spotting of yore or plane spotting of Frankfurt, one here may do a fair amount of Brit Spotting.

Of course, there are common species:

The flirtatious Twiggy does well here, albeit a bit supplanted by the more current “Twiggy with Enhancements”. Nearly always blond, they come in both the toothy and non-toothy varieties.

There is the Pub Lads. Nearly always boys they look like the bought suits from Marks and Spencers and the cufflinks from Next.

One step up are the Successful Pub Boys, who purchased the suit from Next and the cufflinks from Links.

Then there are the faux Transatlantics – both men and women. You can tell because their British style is aggressively hip and they are always discussing what the latest hip thing to do and see is in London and New York. And they are almost always obvious and 5 minutes unhip.

Then there are quite a few Real Transatlantics – both men and women. Their accents have naturally evolved into a nice meld, they are too sloppy to every really fit in back home. They are totally comfortable in both New York and London. A surprisingly large number of these are mixed parentage with ¼ to ½ Asian (which means Indian or Pakistani to a Brit), and of those about 90% are very very good looking.

Then today I spotted that rare bird, so common on the distant shore, but rarely seen this far away from Paddington Station – the frumpled, old flustered man who seems to shuffle, but moves remarkably fast without watching where he is going. When he says, what must assume is excuse me, it comes out, “ARMphry, tut-tut, old bah, mah coffee.”

And he continues his wanderings down the hallway

And yes, I know Ed Wynn is really American but Cor Blim'y Mar'E Pop'inz you get the idea.