who says the british are polite and stuffy?

in all the novels about british people, all the characters seem stuffy and unbearably polite, balancing their tea cups whilst entering into polite conversation.

no one here that i've met however is stuffy at all, although they are polite. well... most of the time.

the other day, we were having dinner, and i was helping clay eat. he got a bit of something he decided he didn't like and spat it back out on his plate. of course, i'm mortified that he's done this in front of my m.i.l, and wonder what she thinks about my parenting (as we all do). trying not to think about it, i concentrate on the issue at hand and tell him he musn't do that, and that its not polite. we go back to eating. he doesn't do it again. however, not two minutes later, out of the corner of my eye, i notice my husband spitting a peice of fat onto his plate with out batting an eyelash.

he sees me glaring at him. "what!" he says, innocently. "it was fat!" as if that explained it all.

i can tell that teaching clay table manners might get a bit interesting.