It happens sometimes that a singular occurrence, or a passage in something one reads, can open your mind to something that passed unnoticed before and you suddenly recognize multiple examples replicating that first light coming on. This week I ran across a comment from Borapork, a frequently interesting local blogger, in which he was lamenting the “topless nakedness” display of the West Indies cricket team after their recent stunning T20 victory over England. Bora ended his criticism with the plea, “Return decorum to the sport.” The relative merits of Bora’s position aside, his emphasis on “decorum” caused an instant recognition in me of how much that quality is valued in the Guyanese culture, and it led me to then further reflect on the different shades or influences of England that still remain with us half a century after the English departed.
I know from my youth in British Guiana that “decorum” was high on the behaviour list then, and here we have a blogger in 2016, stressing its importance. Indeed in the same week, another blogger came across as “veddy English actually” in responding to a picture of officials in the press showing one official without a tie. He wrote: “I think the shirt jack does look respectable in the presence of guys in suits, but to be slumping around in a jacket without a tie, that’s unacceptable. Let’s have some decorum around here.” Just picture that assessment being delivered by a guy in a bowler hat standing in front of 10 Downing Street, and you’ll see the connection. I don’t know that the word “decorum” was applied, but I know I grew up in Guyana where “proper behaviour” was the order of the day, whether at home at Vreed-en-Hoop, or travelling to town on the ferryboat, or playing sports at Thomas Lands in the afternoons, and it’s clear to me that aspects of decorum, although slightly less rigid, are still part of us today.
Another example of the English influence is the practice of saying “good morning” and “good afternoon” to strangers in public that we grew up with. It is a common behaviour here that is generally missing in North America, and you recognize the difference immediately when you go there, walk into a doctor’s waiting-room, say “good morning”, and nobody responds. Many times you will see a man from Guyana in those countries get in an elevator and remove his hat; the other persons stare at him with that “What’s up with this dude?” look.
In my early years here, good manners were recognized as part of your social requirement, whether at home or outside; there was particular emphasis on “what’s proper” in public, and constant reference to “the law” as still exhibited by my attorney friend Leon Rockcliffe. Leon reminds me of a Jamaican living in Cayman who was my occasional tennis partner there. If you shut your eyes and listen to his chat you would think you’re hitting ground strokes with a bloke from Manchester.
He had been long gone from Jamaica when I met him in Cayman talking that way, and he was still talking that way when I left Cayman 25 years later; the influence remained.
The more I ponder, the more examples of it I see in the region: our mania for cricket and for soccer in the English Premier League (Caribbean callers to the Sportsmax programme on TV routinely speak of such teams as Chelsea and Liverpool and Manchester United with unwavering devotion); the interest in English royalty (not the Dutch or the Saudis, but the English); the pervasive “sweet tooth”; the love of small shelves in the house with ugly-looking little knick knacks; the dinner bell (not common now but still with us very avidly in some homes).
It is also comical to see some of our senior cricketers still following the English disposition for bulky sweaters even when temperatures don’t seem to warrant them; Caribbean folks may not mention it openly, but they have to be privately saying, “What de bumba clat ah rang wid dem chaps?”
The more you look, the more you see. It is manifestly there in our independence structures with the frequent appearance of the Westminster model in our politics, and in the allegiance among our legal brethren to appeals being directed to the Privy Council in Britain while our Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) languishes with just four members.
Go down the priority list and one will see shades of England still in play in the various dress codes one encounters in Georgetown at government ministries and even at the Cultural Centre where the entire panoply of Guyana regularly presents itself. I am not entering the “for and against” debate of the practice; I am simply citing its existence here, and its absence in other places I have lived, as evidence of an English position that we have voluntarily adopted. It is there even in our footwear among the males who still consider the English Clarks shoe as the epitome when it comes to that category, and I notice that the tie-clip we grew up using to hold the neck-tie properly in place is back in vogue after a long hiatus; even the brothers in North America, so influential in fashion, are using them very visibly keeping things in proper English line.
Mind you, it has not been a blanket acceptance. The things from the Mother Country we’ve rejected include warm beer, lawn bowling, Guy Fawkes Day, and traditional English fish and chips. Also, other culinary variations such as cucumber sandwiches and haggis have simply not caught on here.
But in my calmer moments, as I look around these Caribbean societies, it’s obvious that so many decades after the English have departed many aspects of England are still strongly with us.
Also, despite the occasional anti-British vitriol we get from certain public speakers, it is worth noting that by and large we seem quite at home with most of the influences that remain.
