Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [4]
Tadek, Jarek and Marik have shown that first-class road repairs are possible in Britain. Yet, for some reason, we don't seem to think it matters beyond the main thoroughfares. The people around here studiously mend their window frames, grow brightly coloured shrubs and flowers in their front gardens and paint their front doors in amusing colours. Yet this model of English urban splendour faces a road that appears to have been imported from 1990s Bosnia.
The side roads of England are a disgrace. Can somebody please explain why?
MY CUP RUNNETH OVER AND INTO THE CENTRE CONSOLE
Some time ago, the national press published the findings of a report in which continental Europeans denounced the British as 'a nation of coffee philistines'.
An important point was missed in all this. We are not coffee philistines at all; we have become philistines because of coffee. There is now barely a corner of a British high street that hasn't been commandeered by a bean-bashing multinational of some kind, and within them can be found people talking in a strange and subversive code. You'd be forgiven for wondering how the nation had survived until now without a regular double skinny latte mocha choca top before work.
For confirmation of this, look no further than our obsession with in-car cup holders. Over its brief history, the cup holder as found in European and Japanese cars has evolved from a token fixture intended to persuade Americans to buy the car (US sales of the Jaguar XJ once suffered for the car's want of one) to a device of such cunning and complexity that it can embody more engineering and design expertise than once went into a whole vehicle. And yet the only thing that will fit safely into a cup holder is a cardboard cup from a coffee-shop chain.
Meanwhile, tea – the drink that made Britain great – has been virtually forgotten. Tea is the sustainer of honest toil and remains the second most important commodity of the British building trade after sugar. Some historians believe that the mildly medicinal quality of tea actually encouraged industrialisation, because it allowed our manufacturing centres to proliferate quicker than the bowel disorders that would otherwise have destroyed their populations. Apart from anything else, a Frenchman or Italian, fuelled by espresso that could be used to build roads, would have been far too jittery to sit down patiently and invent the steam engine or the flying shuttle.
Of course, a nominal cup of tea can be bought from Cafe Nation or Buckstars or whatever these left-wing chattering houses are called, but it is a dismal offering in which bag, tepid water and milk have all been introduced to the vessel simultaneously. Furthermore, tea cannot really be enjoyed out of cardboard. It should be served in a chipped ceramic mug (if engaged in something manly, such as roofing or restoring an old sports car) or a bone china cup and saucer (if there is any risk, however slight, of a visit from your mother). Curiously, neither of these things will fit in a car's cup holder.
The cup holder, then, can be regarded at best as the perpetrator of a dangerous fad; at worst as the cradle of the enemies of Britishness.
The problem becomes even more acute if you fancy a proper drink. The instant I joined Salim Khoury at the Telegraph Motor Show, I sensed that he would go home a disappointed man. We had come to test the versatility of cup holders.
Khoury is manager of the American Bar at The Savoy, where he has worked since 1969. He came to Britain from his native Beirut, where he learned the subtleties of cocktail making in response to the demands of a then enormous American hotel clientele. Yet despite the predominantly American image of drinks such as the Manhattan and the Cosmopolitan, he maintains that 'Britain really comes top of the world in cocktails; in making them and in creating them.' His most recent invention is the Telesuite,