The Importance of Being English.

[By the way, I have a backlog of posts I’ve been meaning to publish, and I’m a freak who can’t do things out of chronological order, so pardon me while I fill cyberspace with new cathyjunk. I’ll catch up with myself in about 5 hours...]


The first two days of 2006 I spent in a completely different country. Everything was very fast; completely un-English. No tea shops. No time for tea. Everyone speaks a different language; every other shop is of a different nationale. You get on a bus, and find you are one white person in a crowd of off-whites and nowhere-near-whites. All the food places are foreign. There's no time for meeting up with someone for a cup of coffee and a chat. Everything moves too fast. Could well be Tokyo, but there are too many Africans about.

And yet... there's something indefinably, undeniably… British about this place, underneath the drowning wave of foreign-ness. You see it in the organisation of public transport, in the statues, the heritage buildings, the parks, the roads. Unmistakable, but almost invisible to the untrained eye.

Where did I go? London. Country within a country. Country where the people who feel most foreign are the English.

Yeap, at 8:45am on the very first day of this year I road-tripped to our schizophrenic capital with a couple friends of mine from high school, which, we realised to our amazement and slight horror, we started 10 years ago this September! High school, this is. How time flies when you’re having fun…

It was a fabulous couple days. I do like my friends. And I do like London. Couldn’t live there, but love visiting. But it struck me for the fiftieth time how absurdly misleading it is as a “representative” of England. I have many non-Brit friends, and you can really tell by their comments whether their experience of England comprises of London alone, or whether they have been a little more thorough in their research.

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You see there are differences between Britishness and Englishness. I am still enjoying discussing this with fellow-Brits/Englishmen, but here are my thoughts so far.

A good Englishman is best pictured sitting outside under the shade drinking tea with friends. I am peaceable and kind, and keep myself to myself. I might like to live in a big house in the country (lol, Oasis memories, or was it Blur?) where there is grass aplenty for my children and me to roam in at our leisure. I like walking alongside rivers and the like, and the cities I am most at home in would have to be Cambridge, Worcester, Chester and many more cities and towns like it. Think Shropshire, Hertfordshire, Derbyshire, Warwickshire, and all the other green and civilised counties. I read good literature and poetry, but tend to keep out of politics if at all possible. I like my comfort, wouldn’t dream of going anywhere hot and dusty; and spiders, I just call my butler to deal with those. I don’t trust foreigners much, I’m fairly opinionated and “ethnocentricity” is my middle name; as long as I’m comfortable and my well-behaved children are clothed and clean, the world is right. On the other hand, I’m quite sociable - I love to chat with the neighbours and have all the time in the world for hospitality. I’m polite, dignified and peaceable – a hobbit, I guess. Think cricket, crochet (both types), embroidery, did I mention tea? The perfect Austen world.

(Those who know me now realise why I don’t make a very good Englishman in some respects, but am undeniably, quintessentially English in others!)

But a Brit is best pictured at wartime, or when the underground is bombed. I cannot absent myself from world politics and global affairs. I have a responsibility to the rest of the world and I take it seriously. I will go to uncomfortable places, and I will endure discomforts. Think rations, darning socks for soldiers; think stiff upper lip and gritting one’s teeth for the fight. I will pull together with fellow Brits, and with anyone else on my side, and make an organised team effort. Remembrance Day is close to my heart, and I love to see the statues, plaques and medals that pay tribute to our heroes of old. London is undeniable British in its statues and heritage museums, and even in its much-maligned but organised public transport. I am resilient, resolved, indefatigable and a good team worker. I am polite and I know my place in society, readily giving up my seat for someone of higher rank or lower physical capability.

I love being English – I love the comfort of my moderate country and would infinitely rather sit peacefully, be familial and sociable and enjoy God’s good gifts, but there is a world outside our window, and I am proud to be British, endure hardship and pull together to serve where there are needs.

I guess you could say that there is a childlike faith and gratitude in Englishness, but Britishness is where the rubber hits the road, as it were, and nationally we used to go forth in this faith to do God’s will.

Hmm, that was an interesting ethnosociospiritual thought there, but this blog is too long already so I’ll stop. Either way both cultural trends have changed somewhat now, and as we move further and further away from our spiritual heritage, Englishness becomes more self-centred and ungrateful, and Britishness subsequently becomes a disliked duty, relegated to fighting for or against the police after football matches.

Interesting. Either way we have the best chocolate.