A Chip off the old British block

 

Sometimes I think I belong in England. “Cheerio, old chap.” “Stiff upper lip, mate”. No hugging. No smiles.

 

Since I was a child, I have felt at a disadvantage in the free-wheeling, back-slapping U.S., where I was born.

 

British understatement works wonderfully in an old man’s column, but not on the school yard, where kids know no limits. Or in the work-a-day American business world, where it’s dog eat dog, no holds barred.

 

 

I’ll blame (or credit) my grandfather, Fred W. Gee, who was born in the West Yorkshire section of England in 1875. Fred arrived here at age 17 without telling his mother he was leaving. No tearful farewells for him.

 

He settled in the Sierra foothills of California, opening a tailor shop, for which he had been well trained. In later years, suffering from dizzy spells after his wife died, he lived with my parents and our family in San Francisco’s East Bay.

 

I was definitely the best dressed kid in school, with custom tailored British tweed coats he made for me.

 

My mother, his daughter, was as Tory as they come in this country. “We never should have broken off from England,” she said repeatedly, almost 200 years too late. She idolized the British monarchy and followed the Queen’s every move. She was saddened by Prince Charles’ dalliances away from Lady Diana.

 

As a reporter, I wondered how I would have done in Fleet Street’s news madness, so contrary to the genteel way of life I had envisioned as British. It came as a shock to me when English journalists were so rowdy as they questioned our Treasury secretary and their Chancellor of the Exchequer at a news conference I attended with them in Washington. And did British journalists really bug Prince William’s phone? My mother would not be amused!

 

I have enjoyed a number of BBC television shows but need subtitles. I worry about being the grumpy Doc Martin myself.

 

I visited cousins in England several times. My uncle took me to a British soccer game in Newcastle, where the final score was 0-0. Sorry, I didn’t become a convert. And our baseball is speedy compared to their cricket. On a street in Edinburgh, I had a sudden flashback that I had been there in a previous incarnation. Ridiculous, or was it?

 

Would I have been a Scottish street urchin or a wealthy gentleman at the club, holding a gin & tonic and toasting Queen Victoria. I do think I might have fit better in the 19th century, even if they didn’t have the internet.

 

 

 As my grandfather grew older and frailer, we took him out of his nursing home at age 93 to visit us at Christmas in 1968. One of the gifts for me under the tree was a Beatles’ album. “They were from Liverpool,” my mother said. He was utterly fascinated.

That was the last I ever saw of my grandfather other than at his funeral. A true Brit. And so am I, I guess.