Walking Ugly

IF David Beckham is to end it in the United States of America he will need to learn the language.

Britain and the States are countries divided by a common language. And to help Day-vid make the transition, the Mirror produces a “Beckham-American phrasebook”.

This is a twist on the Beckham-English phrasebook that has been a long time in the making. And while the Mirror finds the American equivalent for “Hi I’m David” (“Yo. I’d like y’all to meet my gal [ho?] Victoria”), we look at cultural differences.

Take Ashley Jenson, the British actress who from playing a watery character in Ricky Gervais’s Extras is now starring in the hit US sitcom Ugly Betty.

In Los Angeles, Ashley feels like a “fish out of water”, the Mirror notes. “I do find it quite isolating,” says Ashley. “I’m not stumbling across people because people never walk anywhere.”

Ashley does walk. “I got picked up because people thought I was a hooker ‘cos I was walking.”

Ashley calls herself a “British person who likes walking, getting on public transport, speaking to people on the Tube and hailing a taxi on the street”.

The joys of standing on an overpriced train, being frotted on the Tube as it idles in the fifth layer of Hell (aka the Northern Line) and conversing with a cabbie cannot be overstated.

We’d also like to remind our American audience that passengers who talk to strangers on the Tube are either: a) drunk; b) extracting money and valuables with menaces; or c) American’s looking for Harrod’s. With Ashley overseas, the Tube may be a better place.

But the clear message is that the British should take car when walking in America.

It is Anorak’s belief that people should be equipped with a licence to walk. Walking has too long been taken as a right. Waling crimes include: emerging from a shop without looking; walking more than two abreast; being in a party of pubescent French schoolchildren.

And while Ashley says Americans do not walk, we note that when they do they are liable to walk slowly and block the pavement. Better they take the car. Experience shapes the nation’s habits.

Posted: 11th, January 2007 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink