I shit you not, I saw this exact design on a t-shirt a few weeks ago. For the sake of my sanity I desperately hope the guy wearing it knew what was going on. Since then I've noticed two or three other people with union jacks on their tops, three (!) people with union jacks on their wallets, and one person with the flag even on their shoes. Lets face it people, we are fucking cool. You don't see people here wandering around wrapped in an Albanian flag, or decorating themselves with a French or German flag. Culturally we are the most respected of the nations here, especially in the worlds of music and comedy. The British wave arrived in the 60s and never left, and it makes me very happy to be a part of it.The accent is of course a bonus, but only when people actually recognise it. A lot of people just know that you're foreign but can't really place where. And when they try and do an English accent they always always do a bad cockney accent (not that I'm having any luck impersonating the american accent; brash as it is there are a lot of subtleties that are hard to master). Once you start talking with Scottish or Welsh accents they literally have no idea what you're talking about. The rest of my house went to watch a screening of trainspotting (I didn't go, too much work in the run up to the end of the semester) and my flatmates girlfriend had to constantly lean over and ask him what was being said.
After a couple of weeks here, way back in September, one of the guys in international house said to me that my accent was 'unfair' when it came to the ladies and it was like being the only kid at school with a car. I told him that any girl worth her salt can see through an accent and from what I've found that is true. Dressing up as Bond a couple of times certainly helps the British image, but if anything its too much, it does more to separate you from people than gain their respect.
I rarely think about stuff like this, but occasionally I am very, very glad that a few generations back my family decided to come to England and not go to America. I wouldn't want to be from anywhere else. I'd miss out national sport, irony. Perhaps the guy wearing the Greece/UK t-shirt was trying to join in?
Keep trucks indoors x
