HOME RULES

You may have the adress, but you will have great difficulty in finding the house you are looking for. The
streets are never straight and every time a street bends it is given a different name. Even if you manage to
find the correct street, the numbering of the house will be hopelessly inconsistent, further complicated by
many people choosing to give their houses names rather than numbers. This may indicate an obsession
with privacy. This brings to the English mania for ‘’home improvements’’ or ‘’DIY’’. The most common
motive for DIYing was that of putting a personal stamp on the place often including the destruction of any
evidence of the previous owner’s territorial marking. This can be a problem for those who move into new
houses, where it would be ludicrous to start ripping out virgin bathrooms. Your home is not just your
territory, it’s your primary expression of your identity. The way in which English people arrange or decorate
their homes is largely determined by social class. Upper-class and upper-middle class tend to be shabby in a
way no middle-middle or lower-middle would tolerate. In the homes of the middle-middles and below, the
‘’lounge’’ is more likely to have a fitted carpet. The higher castes prefer bare floorboards, often part-
covered with old Persian carpets or rugs. Among the older generations, may also boast carefully displayed
collections of small objects. Coasters or drink mats are a useful class-indicator: you are less likely to find
these in upper-middle or upper-class houses. They are mainly the preserve of the middle-middle and lower-
middle classes. Lower-middle and working-class lavatories (called toilets), used to have matching coloured
loos and basins and even matching coloured loo paper. Those of the upper-middles and above have always
been plain white. Coloured bathroom suites have been so mocked by the upper-middle-class interior
designers that people of all classes now regard them as dated and in poor taste. Another helpful class-
indicator is the ‘’brag wall’’. In which room of your house do you display prestigious awards or
photographs? If you are middle-middle or below, these items might be proudly on show in the sitting room
or entrance hall. For the upper-middle and above the only acceptable place is the downstairs loo. This trick
is smart because visitors will use the downstairs loo at some point and thus cannot be accused of either
boasting or taking yourself too seriously. You can also make a quick broad-brush class assessment based on
the presence (lower class) or absence (higher class) of a satellite dish. Anyway this is not an infallible
indicator. Of course they can be exceptions of this rules, but it is safer to chose your ‘’eccentricity from a
class at the opposite of the scale, rather than from the one immediately adjacent to your own. There are
also rules on how you have to talk about your house. When talking about your house- move, for example, it
must always be described as traumatic, with difficulty , even if the process was completed without
noticeable stress. To describe them in any more natural terms would be regarded as odd, possibly even as
arrogant. It is absolutely forbidden to ask directly what someone paid for their house, this is unforgivably
rude. You can mention the price for example if you bought it many years ago, for what now seems a
ludicrously low sum. It is customary to disparage the taste of the prevoius occupant. Talking about your
home-improvements you must play up your most embarassing mistakes and blunders. Unless you have
recently moved in, it is considered rather lower-class to give visitors guided tours. However, the English
tend to be terribly touchy about their homes, and if you are too precise, there is always the danger of
praising the wrong aspect of their latest improvement, or praising it in the wrong terms. There is a clear
unwritten rule to the effect estate agents must be costantly mocked, censured and abused. Everything that
estate agents do involves passing judgements not on some neutral piece of property but on us, our social
position and sticking a price tag on it. If estate agents are agreed to be stupid, their opinions and
judgements become less meaningful.

Garden Rules: The English simply will not live in flats or share courtyards like urban dwellers in other
countries: they must have their private boxes and green bits. Each house will usually have a minuscule
patch of garden at the front and a larger green bit at the back. In slightly more affluent areas, the patch at
the front will be a little bigger. All of the little patches will have walls or fences around them. The wall
around the front garden will be low, so that everyone can see into the garden, while the one enclosing the
back garden will be high, so they can’t. English people never sit in their front gardens. Even when there is
plenty of room in a front garden for a garden seat, you will never see one. You will be considered odd if you
even stand there for a very long without squatting to pull up a weed. If you do spend time squatting, you
may find out that this is one of the occasions on which your neighbours will speak to you. There is only one
exception considered as a deliberate disobedience by hippies which have a flaccid sofa in their front-
garden. English back gardens may not be particulary beautiful, but almost all show evidence of interest,
attention and effort. Gardening is probably the most popular hobby in the country. There is a sort of
unofficial National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Gardens. To gauge the social class of a garden
owner, it is better to look at the general style, rather than becoming too obsessed with the class- semiotic
of individual plants. While the lower-classes see gnomes as intrinsically amusing, for upper-classes it is
amusing only because of its incongruous appearance in a smart garden. English people have an obession
with their ‘’home’’ . Home is what the English have instead of a Fatherland. It seems to be related with their
pathological need for privacy which is bound up with their problems of social inhibition and embarassment
and their lack in social interaction.