How To Be An Alien

1. First of all, never build a street straight. The English love privacy and do not want to see one end of the street from the other end. Make sudden curves in the street and build them S-shaped too; the letters L, T, V, Y, W and O are also becoming increasingly popular. It would be a fine tribute to the Greeks to build a few φ and ϑ-shaped streets; it would be an ingenious compliment to the Russians to favour the shape of Я, and I am sure the Chinese would be more than flattered to see some [chinese-character]-shaped thoroughfares.

2. Never build the houses of the same street in a straight line. The British have always been a freedom-loving race and the “freedom to build a muddle” is one of their most ancient civic rights.

3. Now there are further camouflage possibilities in the numbering of houses. Primitive continental races put even numbers on one side, odd numbers on the other, and you always know that small numbers start from the north or west. In England you have this system, too; but you may start numbering your houses at one end, go up to a certain number on the same side, then continue on the other side, going back in the opposite direction.

You may leave out some numbers if you are superstitious; and you may continue the numbering in a side-street; you may also give the same number to two or three houses.

But this is far from the end. Many people refuse to have numbers altogether, and they choose house names. It is very pleasant, for instance, to find a street with three hundred and fifty totally similar bungalows and look for “The Bungalow.” Or to arrive in a street where all the houses have a charming view of a hill and try to find “Hill View.” Or search for “Seven Oaks” and find a house with three apple-trees.

4. Give a different name to the street whenever it bends; but if the curve is so sharp that it really makes two different streets, you may keep the same name. On the other hand, if owing to neglect, a street has been built in a straight line it must be called by many different names (High Holborn, Notting Hill Gate, Oxford Street, Bayswater Road, Notting Hill Gate, Holland Park, and so on).

5. As some cute foreigners would be able to learn their way about even under such circumstances, some further precautions are necessary. Call streets by various names: street, road, place, mews, crescent, avenue, rise, lane, way, grove, park, gardens, alley, arch, path, walk, broadway, promenade, gate, terrace, vale, view, hill, etc. 3

Now two further possibilities arise:

(a) Gather all sorts of streets and squares of the same name in one neighbourhood: Belsize Park, Belsize Street, Belsize Road, Belsize Gardens, Belsize Green, Belsize Circus, Belsize Yard, Belsize Viaduct, Belsize Arcade, Belsize Heath, etc.

(b) Place a number of streets of exactly the same name in different districts. If you have about twenty Princes Squares and Warwick Avenues in the town, the muddle — you may claim without immodesty — will be complete.

6. Street names should be painted clearly and distinctly on large boards. Then hide these boards carefully. Place them too high or too low, in shadow and darkness, upside down and inside out, or, even better, lock them up in a safe place in your bank, otherwise they may give people some indication about the names of the streets.

7. In order to break down the foreigners' last vestige of resistance and shatter their morale, one further trick is advisable: introduce the system of squares — real squares, I mean — which run into fours streets like this:

With this simple device it is possible to build a street of which the two sides have different names.

P.S. — I have been told that my above-described theory is all wrong and is only due to my Central European conceit, because the English do not care for the opinions of foreigners. In every other country, it has been explained, people just build streets and towns following their own common sense. England is the only country where there is a Ministry of Town and Country Planning. That is the real reason for the muddle.

Civil Servant

There is a world of difference between the English Civil Servant and the continental.