Published 24 years ago, as I write this review, I recognised a lot of the England and Wales Bryson describes but some bits (some of the good bits, it has to be said) are now long gone. Early on, while not particularly enjoying Dover, Bryson mentions that English towns are indistinguishable since they all “have a Boots and W H Smith and Marks & Spencer” - I wonder what he’d make of town centres these days, when the list would read “a Boots, charity shops and mobile phone shops”? In several places he talks about the loss of things - green fields, old buildings, community - and reading about them now, you kind of wish we were back in the 90s, when the losses were nowhere near as huge as they are now. Some places I know, like Ffestiniog and Porthmadog, are brighter in his books than I encountered them and as a time-capsule experience, it’s both heartening and a little depressing but having said that, it’s well written and occasionally very funny. I enjoyed it, though I do wish I’d read it nearer to the time it was published and if you like the UK, Bryson or travelogues in general, there’s plenty to enjoy here.

I've always loved reading Bill Bryson mostly for his humor, and also for his entertaining and informative way of writing about his travels. Reading about him hiking the Appalachian Trails (several times over) never propelled me to go hike the same trek; but having just moved to the UK, I have to say I did feel pressure at times to pay extra close attention to this Bill Bryson book about him traveling the exact same ground that our family is. I love it when he makes fun of stuff that we both dislike, like Paul Theroux being so in love with himself, or getting nickel and dimed by the National Trust.

Bryson, true to spirit, makes you laugh at everything about the place and fall in love with the place at the same time. No wonder for years the Brits have considered this the most representative travel book about themselves. Full review to follow.

I have to say, first of all, I've been a big fan of Bill Bryson for some time now. I enjoyed his "A Walk in the Woods" and "A Short History of Nearly Everything"--and the story of his Iowa childhood, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid." I want to read his latest, "The Road to Little Dribbling" but I understand it's the sequel to this book published in 1995. So I had to read this first! Bryson writes about his farewell tour of Britain, in 1994 I think it was, 20 years after first coming to the UK. He writes with his usual wit-and I found myself laughing a number of times, causing my wife to ask what I was reading. He has some real insights into British society and underlying it all is a genuine affection for the British.
It was especially interesting for me as a fellow Midwesterner (from Illinois) who is about the same age and who also lived in Britain (2 years in the 70s). I can agree with him about a lot of things. There is no better city in the world than London, especially if you enjoy walking, as I do and Bryson does. I once wandered about the North of London and went onto Hampstead Heath, a completely wonderful place, feeling so far away from the city. Wonder if he ever made it there? I stayed there too long and had to find my way out in the dark... Like Bryson, I appreciate the dry wit of the British and their politeness and understatement.
It was very interesting to compare where we've been and NOT been--according to the book. He did a fantastic hike along the Dorset coast. I didn't go there but did go to the "English Riviera" at Torquay, in Devonshire. Memorable for me as it was not only my first time on the British seashore but the first time I went swimming in the Atlantic (the English Channel being an extension of it). One of my best walks was along Hadrian's Wall, which he may have had no interest in as he didn't seem to have much interest in pre-modern British history. He did go to Glasgow, a place I didn't go to as my guidebook said to give it a miss (this was in the 70s). But he says that the Burrell Collection in Glasgow is "incomparable"-- and I had never even heard of it until I read this book. If I'm ever back in Scotland...
What keeps me from giving the book 5 stars is that I cringed several times when he insulted people and behaved in a manner that could have gotten him a punch in the nose in America (or shot). Among the polite Brits, he could get away with it. Anyway, I now look forward to reading the sequel.

A very funny account of Bryson's farewell tour of Britain before moving back to the US. His observations of British customs and pastimes and even mannerisms is charming and very witty. As usual I have added more places to my "to visit" list based on Bryson's descriptions. Looking forward to The Road to Little Dribbling.

(3.5) [This is a dual review of rereading the book and going to see a stage production of it.] Bill Bryson, an American author of humorous travel and popular history or science books, is considered a national treasure in his adopted Great Britain. He is a particular favourite of my husband and in-laws, who got me into his work back in the early to mid-2000s. As I, too, was falling in love with the country, I found much to relate to in his travel-based memoirs of expatriate life and temporary returns to the USA. Sometimes it takes an outsider’s perspective to see things clearly.

When we heard that Notes from a Small Island (1995), his account of a valedictory tour around Britain before returning to live in the States for the first time in 20 years, had been adapted into a play by Tim Whitnall and would be performed at our local theatre, the Watermill, we thought, huh, it never would have occurred to us to put this particular book on stage. Would it work? we wondered. The answer is yes and no, but it was entertaining and we were glad that we went. We presented tickets as my in-laws’ Christmas present and accompanied them to a mid-February matinee before supper at ours.

A few members of my book club decided to see the show later in the run and suggested we read – or reread, as was the case for several of us – the book in March. I started my reread before attending the play and had gotten through the first 50 pages, which is mostly about his first visit to England in 1973 (including a stay in a Dover boarding-house presided over by the infamously officious “Mrs Smegma”). This was ideal as the first bit contains the funniest stuff and, with the addition of some autobiographical material from later in the book plus his 2006 memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, made up the entirety of the first act.

Bryson traveled almost exclusively by public transport, so the set had the brick and steel walls of a generic terminal, and a bus shelter and benches were brought into service as the furnishing for most scenes. The problem with frontloading the play with hilarious scenes is that the second act, like the book itself on this reread, became rather a slog of random stops, acerbic observations, finding somewhere to stay and something to eat (often curry), and then doing it all over again.

Mark Hadfield, in the starring role, had the unenviable role of carrying the action and remembering great swathes of text lifted directly from the book. That’s all well and good as a strategy for giving a flavour of the writing style, but the language needed to be simplified; the poor man couldn’t cope and kept fluffing his lines. There were attempts to ease the burden: sections were read out by other characters in the form of announcements, letters or postcards; some reflections were played as if from Bryson’s Dictaphone. It was best, though, when there were scenes rather than monologues against a projected map, because there was an excellent ensemble cast of six who took on the various bit parts and these were often key occasions for humour: hotel-keepers, train-spotters, unintelligible accents in a Glasgow pub.

The trajectory was vaguely southeast to northwest – as far as John O’Groats, then back home to the Yorkshire Dales – but the actual route was erratic, based on whimsy as much as the availability of trains and buses. Bryson sings the praises of places like Salisbury and Durham and the pinnacles of coastal walks, and slates others, including some cities, seaside resorts and tourist traps. Places of personal significance make it onto his itinerary, such as the former mental asylum at Virginia Water, Surrey where he worked and met his wife in the 1970s. (My husband and I lived across the street from it for a year and a half.) He’s grumpy about having to pay admission fees that in today’s money sound minimal – £2.80 for Stonehenge!

The main interest for me in both book and play was the layers of recent history: the nostalgia for the old-fashioned country he discovered at a pivotal time in his own young life in the 1970s; the disappointments but still overall optimism of the 1990s; and the hindsight the reader or viewer brings to the material today. At a time when workers of every type seem to be on strike, it was poignant to read about the protests against Margaret Thatcher and the protracted printers’ strike of the 1980s.

The central message of the book, that Britain has an amazing heritage that it doesn’t adequately appreciate and is rapidly losing to homogenization, still holds. Yet I’m not sure the points about the at-heart goodness and politeness of the happy-with-their-lot British remain true. Is it just me or have general entitlement, frustration, rage and nastiness taken over? Not as notable as in the USA, but social divisions and the polarization of opinions are getting worse here, too. One can’t help but wonder what the picture would have been post-Brexit as well. Bryson wrote a sort-of sequel in 2015, The Road to Little Dribbling, in which the sarcasm and curmudgeonly persona override the warmth and affection of the earlier book.

Indeed, my book club noted that a lot of the jokes were things he couldn’t get away with saying today, and the theatre issued a content warning: “This production includes the use of very strong language, language reflective of historical attitudes around Mental Health, reference to drug use, sexual references, mention of suicide, flashing lights, pyrotechnics, loud sound effect explosions, and haze. This production is most suitable for those aged 12+.”

So, yes, an amusing journey, but a bittersweet one to revisit, and an odd choice for the stage.

A favourite line I’ll leave you with: “To this day, I remain impressed by the ability of Britons of all ages and social backgrounds to get genuinely excited by the prospect of a hot beverage.”

Book:
Original rating (c. 2004): 4 stars
My rating now: 3.5 stars

Play: 3.5 stars

Originally published, with images, on my blog, Bookish Beck.

I rescued this one recently, and in light of the gloomy books I've been reading recently(or more likely in light of the recent health scare in my life), I decided to go for some Bryson-style humor, which leans heavily to the sarcastic side of things. He starts out in 1973, a momentous year in modern British history. I was there seven years later and didn't find myself quite as mystified with all things British as did young Bill. Still ... I do remember being called "luv" quite a lot!

Through pouring rain and gorgeous, sunlit scenery along England's SW coast, BB trudges onward with plenty to say. He mentions Appalachian Trail pal-to-be Katz at one point. Fun stuff ...

- BB goes on about a family of "fat people" eating in a hotel dining room. He's not exactly a slim-Jim is he? Smoker too, I believe.

Finally finished ONE of the books I've been trying to read during this last month of fairly intense medical issues. Hard to concentrate ... As for this early entry in the Bryson canon, I think I can fairly say that it was OK. For me I got tired of all the drinking references. Has BB got a problem there(or did he at the time)? The book became repetitive after a while. BB visits a LOT of places along the way. His overall conclusion on the Britain of 20+ years ago is pretty positive, though he doesn't shrink from noting the negative stuff as well. His rendering of Glaswegian-speak is pretty funny.

- And furthermore ... Great Britain is the 8th largest island on planet Earth and therefore, not THAT small. Just sayin ...

Bill Bryson, originally from Iowa, had lived in England for the last twenty years. When he and his wife decided to move their family back to the States, he took a last trip around Britain. Except for a few days, he took only public transportation and hiked for seven weeks. Bryson traveled to Dover, London, the southern coast, then headed north through England, Wales, and Scotland, then back to his home in North Yorkshire.

I especially enjoyed the beginning and the end of the book, but thought the middle bogged down a bit as he hit some unremarkable villages off-season in the rain. Although he carried rain gear, he never mentioned an umbrella. The poor guy was constantly getting caught in downpours walking unfamiliar streets in search of a hotel or a cafe. Bryson is one of those men that almost never asked townspeople or the hotel receptionist for directions or recommendations for a restaurant. Then he complained when he had to eat Indian or Chinese food again after wandering around for hours looking for a restaurant.

Bryson's writing was humorous, poking a bit of fun at the British while also exhibiting very warm feelings for them. Like Prince Charles, he rants when beautiful old buildings are replaced with modern concrete cubes that don't blend in. The book was originally published in 1995 for a British audience, then published in the States a year later. He used lots of British expressions I hadn't heard before, but I just went with the flow instead of looking them up. Although this book wasn't quite as funny as A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, it still had plenty of humor. Bryson also had moments when he enjoyed the simple things in life--a beautiful view, a warm cup of tea on a chilly day, and reuniting with his wife and four children in his beloved Yorkshire.

I have never been more shocked by a book and author! I had heard older family members in my life mention this guy and really love him. I thought I was going to love it! This book was boring with only occasional bursts of laughter. Two stars for my occasional bursts.

Bryson is a baby boomer - 70 now, I think. Yet I can't believe he was only 45 when he wrote this because he sounded like a frumpy, dorky, grumpy, curmudgeon throughout the whole travelogue. And not one of those cute curmudgeons, actually...kind of mean.

I just read a ton of reviews and "Liked" a few. The GR reviewers did a better job than I will here in trying to describe it.

The first 10 pages were excellent and I was so excited! Maybe because it's one of the only times PEOPLE are described or involved in this story (because it was a brief prologue of him arriving in England in 1973 at age 22). After that prologue, it's this weird trip. He keeps acting like a hiker, yet is in terrible shape, but not really self-effacing about it. It's more like "why is this damn ground so uneven!" He complains constantly about modern buildings, and other things he doesn't like, but then says, I like this place. You do? I've been on tour groups before with people like this - awful. I read someone say that it was like he didn't really want to take this trip, but his publisher said he needed to do it.

Of course, at the end is the famous "McDonald's scene". Literally turned my stomach. Again, there was NOTHING funny about berating a retail clerk who is just trying to do their job. There were also several close-to-racist remarks and lots of issues with "fat people" - um, you're fat, Bill.

Worst of all, as I was reading I kept thinking, damn, this guy is really impressed with himself. He came across as quite arrogant. He only seems to like book stores and is always looking for his own books - what the hell? He never talks to anyone. We never get the viewpoint of a native Brit or locals that he meets along the trip. He doesn't meet anyone! He's very detached. He keeps saying he loves a nice pub, but he never joins in any conversation. I love pubs, dive bars, taverns - all because I love PEOPLE and hearing their stories. This was just Bryson saying, "and next I went here, and next I went here, and the stupid train was late"....it just got worse and worse.

I guess folks say that his other books are really great, including A Walk in the Woods so it sounds like I started with the wrong book! I'll stay open to future reads, but for now I prefer to remember England the way I discovered it in 1987 and hope I never run into Bryson on one of my travels!

★★★★☆ (4/5)

And it occurred to me, not for the first time, what a remarkably, cherishably small world Britain is. That is its glory, you see - that it manages at once to be intimate and small-scale and at the same time packed to bursting with incident and interest. I am constantly filled with admiration at this.

With this delightful travelogue I've had a circumstantial stroll through much of Britain, albeit without any maps or pictorial evidence I'm still drawing a blank as to my own whereabouts. Bill Bryson does well in portraying Britain's splendors and regress as a resident and a traveler. As a reader, I too have settled for "certain idiosyncratic notions that you quietly come to accept when you live for a long time in Britain."

From the prowess of giving unasked directions in all its exhaustive and indecipherable forms to apologizing so frequently within a sentence that one forgets the real inquiry, from quaint villages with their cozy cottages to insipid and alienated building structures, from mild weather in which one decides to embark upon a casual promenade around the hotel to getting caught in an icy storm cutting through the skin with rage on the way back to the same hotel - this book indeed embodies most, if not all, aspects of British life a visitor might get to experience.

A blizzard, I explained, is when you can't get your front door open. Drifts are things that make you lose your car till spring. Cold weather is when you leave part of your flesh on doorknobs, mailbox handles and other metal objects.

And with much unbound pleasure I can assuredly say that the claims made by this book don't stray from what I've imagined so vividly in regards to life in Britain for a wayfarer. Coupled with humor, satire and sharp wit Bill Bryson revels in the excessive natural beauty of Britain, but also doesn't shy away from citing the reasons as to why many cities have fallen from grace, why buildings and monuments are in a state of odd disrepair and meals are often quite different from what you expected.

Mostly what differentiated the North from the South, however, was the exceptional sense of economic loss, of greatness passed, when you drove through places like Preston or Blackburn or stood on a hillside

It's a charming read, one which I might refer to in the future if I ever find myself stepping on the little island, with plenty of time to spare and preferably in an idyllic countryside. I just hope the paperback version comes with a map and a few photographs so I don’t get lost as often as the author did.

All I can say is that the Dales seized me like a helpless infatuation when I first saw them and will not let me go. Partly, I suppose, it is the exhilarating contrast between the high fells, with their endless views, and the relative lushness of the valley floors, with their clustered villages and green farms. To drive almost anywhere in the Dales is to make a constant transition between these two hypnotic zones. It is wonderful beyond words. And partly it is the snug air of self-containment that the enclosing hills give, a sense that the rest of the world is far away and unnecessary, which is something you come to appreciate very much when you live there.

A selection of my favourite passages from the book

'Idiosyncratic Notions' of the British People
t• The fact is that the British have a totally private sense of distance. This is most visibly seen in the shared pretense that Britain is a lonely island in the middle of an empty green sea.
t• All those things that are necessary to the successful implementation of a rigorous socialist system are, after all, second nature to the British. For a start, they like going without. They are great at pulling together, particularly in the face of adversity, for a perceived common good. They will queue patiently for indefinite periods and accept with rare fortitude the imposition of rationing, bland diets and sudden inconvenient shortages of staple goods,
t• One of the charms of the British is that they have so little idea of their own virtues, and nowhere is this more true than with their happiness. You will laugh to hear me say it, but they are the happiest people on earth.
t• For the benefit of foreign readers, I should explain that there is a certain ritual involved in this. Even though you have heard the conductor tell the person ahead of you that this is the Barnstaple train, you still have to say, 'Excuse me, is this the Barnstaple train?' When he acknowledges that the large linear object three feet to your right is indeed the Barnstaple train, you have to point to it and say, 'This one?' Then when you board the train you must additionally ask the carriage generally, 'Excuse me, is this the Barnstaple train?' to which most people will say that they think it is, except for one man with a lot of parcels who will get a panicked look and hurriedly gather up his things and get off.
t• I took a train to Liverpool. They were having a festival of litter when I arrived. Citizens had taken time off from their busy activities to add crisp packets, empty cigarette boxes and carrier-bags to the otherwise bland and neglected landscape. They fluttered gaily in the bushes and brought colour and texture to pavements and gutters. And to think that elsewhere we stick these objects in rubbish bags.
t• One of the primary reasons so much of the British landscape is so unutterably lovely and timeless is that most farmers, for whatever reason, take the trouble to keep it that way.
t• Deference and a quiet consideration for others are such a fundamental part of British life, in fact, that few conversations could even start without them. Almost any encounter with a stranger begins with the words 'I'm terribly sorry but' followed by a request of some sort
t
Bryson's Portrayal of the Small Island
t• I do like the Underground. There's something surreal about plunging into the bowels of the earth to catch a train. It's a little world of its own down there, with its own strange winds and weather systems, its own eerie noises and oily smells.
t• I have never bought into that quaint conceit about London being essentially a cluster of villages - where else have you seen villages with flyovers, gasometers, reeling derelicts and a view of the Post Office Tower?
t• This business of corporate sponsorship is something that seems to have crept into British life generally in recent years without being much remarked upon.
t• There are villages without number whose very names summon forth an image of lazy summer afternoons and butterflies darting in meadows: Winterbourne Abbas, Weston Lullingfields, Theddle-thorpe All Saints, Little Missenden. There are villages that seem to hide some ancient and possibly dark secret: Husbands Bosworth, Rime Intrinseca, Whiteladies Aston. There are villages that sound like toilet cleansers (Potto, Sanahole, Durno) and villages that sound like skin complaints (Scabcleuch, Whiterashes, Scurlage, Sockburn). In a brief trawl through any gazetteer you can find fertilizers (Hastigrow), shoe deodorizers (Powfoot), breath fresheners (Minto), dog food (Whelpo) and even a Scottish spot remover (Sootywells). You can find villages that have an attitude problem (Seething, Mockbeggar, Wrangle) and villages of strange phenomena (Meathop, Wigtwizzle, Blubberhouses). And there are villages almost without number that are just endearingly inane - Prittlewell, Little Rollright, Chew Magna, Titsey, Woodstock Slop, Lickey End, Stragglethorpe, Yonder Bognie, Nether Wallop and the unbeatable Thornton-le-Beans. (Bury me there!) You have only to cast a glance across a map or lose yourself in an index to see that you are in a place of infinite possibility.
t• I couldn't say where I went exactly because Manchester's streets always seem curiously indistinguishable to me. I never felt as if I were getting nearer to or farther from anything in particular but just wandering around in a kind of urban limbo.
t• It is remarkable to me how these matters have become so thoroughly inverted in the past twenty years. There used to be a kind of unspoken nobility about living in Britain. Just by existing, by going to work and paying your taxes, catching the occasional bus and being a generally decent if unexceptional soul, you felt as if you were contributing in some small way to the maintenance of a noble enterprise - a generally compassionate and well-meaning society with health care for all, decent public transport, intelligent television, universal social welfare and all the rest of it.
t• And so I went to Edinburgh. Can there anywhere be a more beautiful and beguiling city to arrive at by train early on a crisp, dark Novembery evening? To emerge from the bustling, subterranean bowels of Waverley Station and find yourself in the very heart of such a glorious city is a happy experience indeed.

Humor
t• Much as I admire sand's miraculous ability to be transformed into useful objects like glass and concrete, I am not a great fan of it in its natural state. To me, it is primarily a hostile barrier that stands between a car park and water. It blows in your face, gets in your sandwiches, swallows vital objects like car keys and coins.
t• There's nothing like having nothing to drink to bring on a towering thirst.
t• Standing as it does in the midst of flat fenlands, it has a kind of menacing, palpably ancient air, but also a feeling of monumental folly. It required an immense commitment of labour to construct, but it didn't take a whole lot of military genius to realize that all an invading army had to do was go around it, which is what all of them did, and within no time at all the Devil's Dyke had ceased to have any use at all except to show people in the fen country what it felt like to be sixty feet high. Still, it offers an agreeable, easy stroll along its grassy summit, and on this bleak morning I had it all to myself.
t• Bradford's role in life is to make every place else in the world look better in comparison, and it does this very well.
t• 'Have you been here long?' I asked. He exhaled thoughtfully and said: 'Put it this way. I was clean shaven when I got here.' I just love that.
t• When the man in the window passed them to me he said: 'The ticket's free . .. but it's eighteen-fifty for the receipt.'
t• And that is what I like so much about Liverpool. The factories may be gone, there may be no work, the city may be pathetically dependent on football for its sense of destiny, but the Liverpudlians still have character and initiative, and they don't bother you with preposterous ambitions to win the bid for the next Olympics.
t• There is almost nothing, apart perhaps from a touching faith in the reliability of weather forecasts and the universal fondness for jokes involving the word 'bottom', that makes me feel more like an outsider in Britain than the nation's attitude to animals. Did you know that the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was formed sixty years after the founding of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and as an offshoot of it? Did you know that in 1994 Britain voted for a European Union directive requiring statutory rest periods for transported animals, but against statutory rest periods for factory workers?
t• For the benefit of foreign readers, I should explain that as a rule in Britain no matter how many windows there are in a bank, post office or rail station, only two of them will be open, except at very busy times, when just one will be open.
t
Points to Contemplate
t• Now everyone drives everywhere for everything, which I don't understand because there isn't a single feature of driving in Britain that has even the tiniest measure of enjoyment in it.
t• To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much sensual pleasure as possible into one's mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright.
t• Second, you are alive. For the tiniest moment in the span of eternity you have the miraculous privilege to exist. For endless eons you were not. Soon you will cease to be once more.
t• When a nation's industrial prowess has plunged so low that it is reliant on Korean firms for its future economic security, then perhaps it is time to re-address one's educational priorities and maybe give a little thought to what's going to put some food on the table
t• But now, no matter what you do, you end up stung with guilt. Go for a ramble in the country and you are reminded that you are inexorably adding to congestion in the national parks and footpath erosion on fragile hills.
t• One thing I have learned over the years is that your impressions of a city are necessarily coloured by the route you take into it.
t• What other nation in the world could possibly have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardeners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course.

Beautifully Constructed Sentences
t• The world was bathed in that milky pre-dawn light that seems to come from nowhere. Gulls wheeled and cried over the water. Beyond them, past the stone breakwater, a ferry, vast and well lit, slid regally out to sea. I sat there for some time, a young man with more on his mind than in it.
t• For much of its length, the beach is reserved for naturists, which always adds a measure of interest to any walk along it, though today, in fact, there wasn't a soul to be seen along its three fetching miles; nothing before me but virgin sand and behind only my own footprints.
t• You have in this country the most comely, the most parklike, the most flawlessly composed countryside the world has ever known, a product of centuries of tireless, instinctive improvement, and you are half a generation from destroying most of it forever. We're not talking here about 'nostalgia for a non-existent golden age'. We're talking about something that is green and living and incomparably beautiful.
t• But the paintings provide a compelling record of life in a mining community over a period of fifty years. Nearly all depict local scenes - 'Saturday Night at the Club', 'Whippets' - or life down the pits, and seeing them in the context of a mining museum, rather than in some gallery in a metropolis, adds appreciably to their lustre. For the second time in a day I was impressed and captivated.
t• I spent a long, happy afternoon wandering through the many rooms, pretending, as I sometimes do in these circumstances, that I had been invited to take any one object home with me as a gift from the Scottish people in recognition of my fineness as a person.

Consummate Grouch Repetitively Dislikes Things: The Book

Bill Bryson spent many years living in Great Britain. Before moving back to the United States, he takes a tour to experience more of what has been his home. Bryson is usually smooth and funny, but this books is mean, arrogant and off the mark.