It’s one of those things you don’t notice until you travel: our national obsession with flicking things off. At the socket, I mean.
British plug sockets – nearly all of them – come with little red switches. We flip them on. We flip them off. It’s as reflexive as tutting in a queue or saying “sorry” when someone walks into you. But to outsiders, it’s utterly baffling.
Because here’s the thing – almost nowhere else does this.
Pop over to France, Germany or the Netherlands and their sockets just sit there. No switches. No reassuring clunk. Power is always live. You unplug the hairdryer with an air of mild peril. The Continentals live dangerously – or, more accurately, trust their circuits.
The Americans? Even wilder. They’ll wire an entire room so the wall switch controls a socket, usually one with a lamp plugged in. And then forget to tell you. You stand there flicking the kettle and wondering if democracy really was worth it.
But here in Blighty, we’ve got ring mains, 13-amp fused plugs, and a collective neurosis about electricity dating back to when the toaster first killed the budgie. So we invented the switched socket – and made it a fixture of domestic life. Not a legal requirement, mind you, but so strongly recommended that builders now install them by the dozen without thinking.
Australia and New Zealand followed suit. Singapore, too. Places the Empire left behind with a plug and a prayer.
There’s logic, of course. The switch lets you kill power without unplugging – good for safety, handy for lazy types, and potentially lifesaving if you’ve got one of those 1980s electric fires that hisses like a Bond villain.
But more than that, it’s a habit. A ritual. The British approach to risk management: don’t just pull the plug – make damned sure the little light is off first.
It’s also deeply classless. From council flats to Georgian townhouses, that same click. One nation, under 240 volts, divided by taste but united by paranoia.
So the next time you flick a socket off before unplugging the iron, remember: you’re not being fussy. You’re being British.
And somewhere in Stuttgart, someone’s just pulled a live plug out of the wall without a second thought – and lived to tell the tale.
Savages.
2 comments:
Yes, there’s nothing like finishing the ironing, pulling the plug from the socket, and seeing the blue sparks fly between the plug and the socket! I immediately went out and bought an iron that you could turn on and off with its dial. And, we always buy a kettle that you switch on and off at the kettle (even when we lived in England).
Much easier to flick a switch than fiddle with a 'space challenged' plug - especially as Brit plugs are the size of a half brick...
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