How Americans See the British (and its many subcultures) case study one
Northern Virginia suburbs, 2011, catching up with an old football mate who escaped Glasgow and wanted to introduce his latest partner. She was a ditz, sort of innocent type, fine looking though no mistake and when we went out for a munch started picking my brain about what she was getting into lightly, as a haha-jokey aside. The type of gambit where you know they genuinely want an insight. So I told her about away days with The Green Brigade
He started shaking his head out of sight, verboten, gesturing sssshhhh don’t go there ya cunt, yet I managed to steer it onto clothes, rivalries, rites of passage, music and passing phases of a misspent youth, except she wanted to know more. We went back to his for a smoke, where I got “not the football” spiel in hushed tones out on a balcony but it was too funny to omit. Meanwhile this lass had googled casual culture and, knowing the pecker from LOTR, picked out Green Street insisting on watching it there and then
War crime film with every cliche, wooden, made Rise of the Footsoldier look the work of a savant but you could see her absorbing the loose strands of myth and masculinity, then slowly exclaiming “gross”, “why?”, “hobbits aren’t... like...this?”. She dumped him the morning after, which he admits now was for the better