what makes it so british is the intensely focussed, but totally misplaced passive aggressive rage, pursued to its suicidally stupid goal of, as you inferred, reducing the wonder and beauty of life to a dull nothing, and then spunkily celebrating that stupidity as somehow kewl.

taking willful, stubbornly anal obtuseness to arcane levels of inversion!

my (english) dad used to tell me of a tradition in english carpentry concerning the verticality of the slit in a screw. it seems that even after a wooden plug is used to cover the screw head, leaving it completely unseen, (by whom, the queen?), it wasn't a proper job unless the slit was vertical anyway.

there was a reverence in his voice as he told me this, as if it were some ancient pearl of englishness he badly wanted to transmit.

squirrel rulz... it might even make the construction weaker if perfect tightness left it at 20°, and someone left the screw loose, just to be vertical.

(perfect metaphor alert!)

like the cosmic equilibrium of the galaxy depended on it!

the word 'proper' always brings up images of john cleese, bless 'im.

~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~