What we think is strange

Foreigners do funny things, or don’t do everything that we do.

The North Koreans have their silent football matches. Spectators are not just silent, though. They’re motionless, as if their photograph is being taken.  Perhaps it is.  In the UK, crowds are monitored every week at every football ground.  Looking for hooligans.  But the BBC thought we’d find silent football strange, so they gave us a report about it on their website at the end of July, the heart of the football season in Panmunjom. 

I’m trying to guess the atmosphere inside a North Korean stadium.  Something like an art gallery or museum over here.  One lustreless nanny state will resemble another.  We just venerate our icons in different ways.  Men in shorts, I mean.  I’m not suggesting that visitors to art galleries in Pyongyang throw toilet rolls at the paintings or scream abuse at officials.  That would be fun to watch, of course.

Englishmen do funny things too.  When we listen to the news, we entertain ourselves by holding other people up to ridicule.  Some people make this pretty easy for us. Like the fellow in the Midlands who picked up a prostitute once too often.  Not the same one, mind.  Caught by police withdrawing £20 from a cash machine, he said that the colourful lady in the back of his car was showing him where to buy tomatoes.  He had to say something.  He was embarrassed.  But he just made it worse.  Woman on back seat.  £20 for tomatoes.  It didn’t add up. 

£20 for a woman doesn’t add up either. 

When we see the news, we want some colour.  The cash/car/coquette report included a generic photograph of boxed tomatoes.  This is strange.  We all know what these plump, red-faced little things look like.   Most of us have had the pleasure.  If we needed an illustration, why not show a tubful of prostitutes? 

There was more, juicy tattle a few days ago.  The police were at the centre of this mess, too.  Revellers dressed as comic-book heroes nailed a fugitive.  Happy tweets emerged from local police stations about the incident, which had ended up in a supermarket.

"Thank you to Batman, Robin, Robin's Dad, a Smurf, and the Hoff for helping us on Friday night.  Sorry about the toilet roll aisle."

"Robin assaulted, police called, collective assisted our foot chase, minor upset to shelving during arrest.  You couldn't script it!"

Is a new craze sweeping the precincts?  It’s not all film noir, obviously. 

Robin was the victim, not Batman, or one of the others, not even the Smurf.  That’s not strange, really.  He does get a bad press.  It’s always ‘Batman and Robin,’ never ‘Robin and Batman.’  The lad is a pinch precious.  A pedestrian probably thought he was asking for it.

It was all very entertaining.  A few punches, a pursuit, men in tights.  The cops may giggle at the irony, but if no one had dressed up in the first place, there would probably have been no crime.