The Angry Russian on chavs and the Chap Olympiad

The Chap Olympiad, a return to the UK's elegant past? Photo credit: Maja Kucova

We Russians, angry or not, have a rather funny perception of England and its dwellers. It’s largely formed of 19th and early 20th century novels – Dickens, PG Wodehouse, Agatha Christie etc, all widely available in the USSR in superbly done translations by some of the best Soviet writers and poets – and the classic screen version of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series.The latter is so great that Her Majesty herself bestowed an OBE on the leading actor, Vassily Livanov. And all the while the Soviet-British relations were neutral at best.

But we somehow insisted on thinking of England as of some retro-themed fantasy land stuck in the times when everybody was buttoned up and mannered and calmly humorous whatever the circumstances. This notion is, of course, centennially away from the current state of affairs.

I’m running a Russian-language blog about Britain and London as a separate country within her and it’s moderately popular (about fifteen hundred subscribers at the time of writing). But what really pushed my blog upward in the ratings was the translation of an old article from The eXile, undoubtedly the best and sincerest newspaper in Moscow which owed its glorious existence to the sole fact that no one at the Russian Minitruth at the time could read a word of English (for a story of The eXile as concise as practically possible see this article from Vanity Fair. It was about chavs, the English counterpart of Russian gopniks, the kind of proletarian youth that wears tracksuits with massive junk jewellery, binges on cheap liquor and pollutes the gene pool by means of rapid and almost instinctual procreation.

So the chav story became an instant hit on the Russian internet, having been reposted at least two hundred times so far. Almost everybody’s image of Britain seemed to have been hopelessly shattered. Could it really be Sherlock Holmes’s grandkids or the Hugh Grants of the world who are pissing on walls after downing six super strong lagers at a children’s playground? I almost felt a collective sigh of relief. We (Russians, internationals, whatever) aren’t that different from the rest of the “civilised world” after all. Others (mostly those who have never been in England or at all abroad) were utterly disappointed and really angry at me for ruining their dream.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR. Photo credit: Maja Kucova

Rekindling a Chap’s dream

But alas, not too much is lost, apparently, thanks to a wonderful thing called The Chap Olympiad. It’s run by a magazine appropriately titled The Chap which is all about fancy retro dressing, fabulous moustaches, shaving with razor blades and smoking pipes. So the Chap Olympiad at Bedford Square on Saturday was like being in a park full of Bertie Woosters and Pauline Stokers. In fact, I looked quite out of place in my dull plain clothes and not in an impeccably stylish tweed suit.

It’s funny because there’s no aristocracy in modern Britain to speak of, and most of these people are common office clerks in their normal, non-retro mode, but it still all looked incredibly organic. It’s probably some kind of a genetic memory, because when a Russian holds a Victorian-themed party, everybody ends up looking like a constipated Dracula. And if it weren’t for party spoilers like me and a couple of other journalists in crumpled jeans, you could really forget that you were indeed in 2010.

Anyway, the Olympiad part consisted of silly but quite fun “competitions” like bicycle jousting with umbrellas for lances or moustache tug war, but most people seemed to be more interested in a beautiful weather and a good opportunity for a picnic. The only things that were sort of disappointing were the low turnout of the barbeque stall and one lady who knocked over my gin and tonic and didn’t even offer to buy me a new one. I mean, that happens all the time, but probably wouldn’t in the fancy era they all pretended to live in. I will definitely go again, but not without proper preparation this time.