Wednesday, 23 April 2008

Being English

"There'll always be an England" goes the song which must really tick off the French who have had more than there fair share of attempts to rid the World of the despicable Rosbifs.
So two fingers to France because here we are waving our Flag of St. George until we get tired and then we will probably sit down and have a nice cup of tea.
Today is St George's Day so we put aside all our negative comments about this country and the fools who run it and concentrating on the things that define the inhabitants of this little island off the coast of Northern France and to the left of Holland.
There are a few things that make us English unique among the rest of the planets population with the most obvious being our weird sense of humour.
Other nations have a time and a place for humour but with us, it's the default setting. Whatever the situation, we are there with with a joke like when the Queen Mother died and in the book of remembrance someone wrote "I remember one time she visited my school and I asked her if she would like to visit the bathroom before she left. 'No' she replied, 'I didn't give in to the Nazis and I won't give in to the bladder'. That's how she was, a fighter, who refused to be beaten by anything. She pissed herself later though, it was sickening".
That's how we are, making everything into a joke with the possible exception of any script Hugh Grant gets his hands on.
Our island status has saved us from multiple invasions while encouraging our men to go out and inflict them on others, leaving those who stayed at home to brew an irrational fear of all things more than 3 miles from our coast. If we do venture outside of our own orbit we insist that whatever country we visit, they speak English and if they don't understand us, we just speak English slower and louder while tutting and rolling our eyes at their ignorance.
Nobody is as self-deprecating as us Englanders and nobody is as afraid of standing out from the crowd. The English people would rather cut out their own eyes than brag about themselves and we can expect to be thrown off a tall building to shouts of "Nobody likes a showoff" if we tried it.
Closely linked is the good old fashioned 'Stiff Upper Lip' so God forbid anyone go see a therapist because you will be mocked, handed a cup of tea and told to pull yourself together.
Yes, making fun of dead Royalty, berating Johnny foreigner and being emotionally stunted is what makes us what we are. Here's to St George (just don't tell anyone here that he was probably Turkish).

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another thing about the English - queues - you people don't mind standing in queues for hours!

I really do think that is an English trait.

Dismal Soyanz said...

Hugh Grant is quite possibly the nastiest UK export of the late 20th century.

"Watney's bleedin' Red Barrel!" a la John Cleese et al make up for it though.

Oh alright, I suppose cricket and rugby did ok too....

Cody Bones said...

As a "supposed" descendant of Oliver Cromwell, I will raise a Bass (I'm out of Fullers), and offer this toast to you and yours Lucy. Thanks for the Music.

Cheezy said...

At my work yesterday we decided that the best way to honour St George and 'Englishness' generally was by being particularly (i.e. even more than usual) sarcastic and unprofessional to our workmates.

Moreover, lunchtime was spent in the pub, where we casually took an extra half an hour to mark this special occasion... We all had an uber-english lunch of 'sausage egg & chips and four pints of bitter'.

By the end of the day we were bursting with pride. Or was that just heartburn?

Anonymous said...

Lucy,

It is good to remove the rose colored glasses. But, I'd say you are a little harsh. Nobody and no nation is without fault.

It makes for better press and stirs more blog comments to focus on the mistakes and faults...

Q

Cheezy said...

Q - I didn't think Lucy was being harsh really. It's a curiosity of England that you're never being more patriotic or loving the place so much, as when you're taking the piss out of its flaws. It's just what we do.

Falling on a bruise said...

We do like to queue Ruth and moaning about having to queue for everything as we queue.

You are welcome to the music Cody. Really, you can have it.

I didn't think i was being harsh or critical either, maybe to the Queen Mother but that remembrance book comment is just so damn funny i was determined to shoehorn it in somehow.
I may have tried to make light of things but everything there is true for many of the English and i confidently put it that anyone from England would agree with some, if not all, of it.

Anne said...

my english family ancestral name is blodget. originally bloodgate! yikes. it's safe to say that my predecessors may have been a bit aggressive.

Patricia said...

I meant to get here yesterday to say Happy St. George's Day (if that's the correct greeting) but I never did. Busy at work and then fell asleep in my chair at home.

Anyway, I was 14 in 1964. England sent us everything. Music, slang, fashion, sense of humor - everything but food. Although you did oblige us with some kind of version of fish and chips via Arthur Treacher a few years later. And the music was complicated. We sent you stuff we didn't properly appreciate and you sent it back with some music education for us.

Anyway, thanks from the Yanks! It was all a hell of a lot of fun.

(Er...sorry about Bush ruining Blair for you all. Wasn't very nice on our part.)

Nog said...

I hope England is there for another 10,000 years just to stare down those French on the south side of the Channel.

And I thought y'alls holiday was the Queen's birthday.

Dismal Soyanz said...

Another 10,000 years?

I don't believe England existed as a country until some time AD (I hate that new term, what is it "CE"?).

Falling on a bruise said...

I have no idea when 'England' was actually founded but my guess would be around the time of the Angles & Saxons taking over. Couldn't put a date on it though but if i recall my history lessons, they pushed out the Romans.