There was a sort of a review of someone’s new book in one of the papers recently.
Sorry. I know that sounds like “Vaguest News” but this week’s gone by in a flash and I only remember the general thrust of the piece which is “What Makes Britain Really Great?” (I’ve since found it was the Indie and it’s here)
There were some odd things and some expected things like the Tunnock’s Tea Cake and the wholly unjustified Bacardi Breezer representing alcopops – alcopops being one of those things that contributes hugely to Britain not being as great any more.
As usual, they missed out the aspects of life on this island that actually do make Britain great. I’m looking forward to hearing your views but in the meantime, here are a few of mine…..
Remembrance Sunday: Not just the gathering of thousands of people to pay their respects all around the country but the way it’s organised with incredible precision and attention to detail which makes me feel proud that we, in this country, have always known how to accomplish the ceremonies that matter with immense dignity and respect.
The Classical Picnic: You would think that in this country, with its unpredictable weather and summer constantly dodging about all over the place, the notion of gathering an orchestra, singers and several hundred people together in a field would never get further than the drawing board. But these events are proliferating. You can take a flask and some sandwiches or you can go the whole hog with a couple of bottles of fizz, glasses, candelabra or storm lantern, smoked salmon, twiglets, picnic chairs and tables, full evening dress plus a tartan wool rug, Peter Storm cagoule, a golf umbrella or better still, fisherman’s tent. A couple of bearers come in handy.
Glastonbury Festival: Bit like the classical picnic but with wellingtons instead of the candelabrae (sic) you stay over in a mud-spattered tent and gather with thousands of others to watch bands on a teeny stage about a mile away. I’m told the atmosphere is fantastic and there are tears of joy.
The Horticultural Society Show: Annual event in country villages. You may never seen marrows like these; enormous, firm and bulging with health and you can bet your bottom dollar that there’s a bloke – could be the Society treasurer – who’s been putting his heart and soul plus several pints of his own urine, into growing these babies.
The Village Fete: The great and good all turn up; Squire, Vicar, Parish Council Chairman, even the local councillor if you’re really unlucky. Splatting the rat and lobbing wet sponges at the vicar are always good fund-raisers. And who doesn’t want to buy someone else’s slab fruitcake from the bring and buy cake stall?
Model Railways Enthusiasts: Special sorts of blokes unashamedly indulge their hobby, which is littered with engineering technicalities even though these trains are actually too small to carry anything but teeny model people. Oh and never call them train sets. The penalty is stoning – with thousands of teeny stones.
Volunteers: Britain is full of them. Hospital volunteers, litter wardens, conservation volunteers, you name it, we got ’em – nice, caring people who give their spare time freely to attempt to make things better for all of us.
The Womens’ Institute: Unquestionably the best cake makers in the land. Competitive, nurturing, intelligent, enquiring. Don’t mention the ‘garden on a plate’ competitions.
Ramblers: Millions of them including remarkably fit older people who are living breathing adverts for getting exercise in the open air – even if they are addicted to woolly socks. You find them in the most unexpected places and it’s always a little disheartening to get overtaken on a Lakeland Fell by a couple of hearty septagenarians following in the footsteps of Wainwright.
Marmite: You love it or hate it. A by-product of the brewing industry. Marvellous source of B12. Spread it too thickly and it goes up the nerves in your teeth. No idea why. Maybe the saltiness of it? Answers below if you have any.
The Shipping Forecast: II probably heard my first shipping forecast before I read my first Blyton. Very early memories of the classic BBC announcer intoning gravely “There are warnings of gales in Dogger, Tyne, Fisher, Forth and German Bight…” It was impenetrable, mysterious, fascinating. And my first Atlas of Great Britain had all the areas marked in pastel colours around the British Isles like a patchwork blanket. So at last I knew where they all were. These days, probably best to avoid the whole subject of Dogger.
Heinz salad cream: Tomato and salad cream sandwiches used to be so yummy. I doubt if Heinz salad cream is acceptable fare anywhere else in the world and actually it is no longer acceptable once you discover the more fattening joys of garlic mayo.
Fish and Chips: Coming home from anywhere overseas has to involve a fish and chip supper within the first five days. Although I only have fish and chips about half a dozen times a year – you have to keep “special” things special – this would be the single thing foodie about Britain that I’d miss if I lived abroad. Proper fish and chips involves plate and cutlery, slices of thin white bread and butter, mushy peas, plenty of salt and vinegar and a pot of tea. But probably the best way to eat fish and chips is to get it straight from that shop on the quay at Whitby and sit overlooking the harbour picking soft, fresh flakes of North Sea cod from the gentle embrace of abrosially-crispy golden batter with a little wooden fork.
Elgar and Vaughan Williams: Everything they ever wrote.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Best bitter served at cellar temperature so that you can savour the taste properly. (pilsener beer served the same way is nearly as good.)
A proper Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire, with the meat medium to rare, the vegetables not boiled to buggery and spuds roasted in goose fat, preceded by a couple of pints as mentioned above.
Nice one, Bravo. I can’t comment on beer. Tasting it always makes me pull a face and go “eeurgh” although I am partial to half a shandy. 🙂
Oh FEEG my taste buds are all twanging. Flipping heck. Good call.
Jan, are you old enough to remember ‘Pint o’ best for me and a Babycham for the lady?’ 😀
I defy anyone to conjour up a much better vision than the welcoming lights of a village pub on a shapr winter’s evening, followed by the blast of warmth and light – and the inevitable joker gaily yelling, ‘Watch yer pockets, XXX’s here! – as you open the door.
Rupert Brooke knew.
…
God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England’s the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
The shire for Men who Understand;
And of THAT district I prefer
The lovely hamlet Grantchester.
For Cambridge people rarely smile,
Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;
And Royston men in the far South
Are black and fierce and strange of mouth;
At Over they fling oaths at one,
And worse than oaths at Trumpington,
And Ditton girls are mean and dirty,
And there’s none in Harston under thirty,
And folks in Shelford and those parts
Have twisted lips and twisted hearts,
And Barton men make Cockney rhymes,
And Coton’s full of nameless crimes,
And things are done you’d not believe
At Madingley on Christmas Eve.
Strong men have run for miles and miles,
When one from Cherry Hinton smiles;
Strong men have blanched, and shot their wives,
Rather than send them to St. Ives;
Strong men have cried like babes, bydam,
To hear what happened at Babraham.
But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!
There’s peace and holy quiet there,
Great clouds along pacific skies,
And men and women with straight eyes,
Lithe children lovelier than a dream,
A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,
And little kindly winds that creep
Round twilight corners, half asleep.
In Grantchester their skins are white;
They bathe by day, they bathe by night;
The women there do all they ought;
The men observe the Rules of Thought.
They love the Good; they worship Truth;
They laugh uproariously in youth;
(And when they get to feeling old,
They up and shoot themselves, I’m told)…
“Ooooh, I’d love a babycham” 🙂 I think they still make it. Preferable to hideous alcopops any day!
Bravo, there’s a pub just like that at May Hill. The Glasshouse. Mine host is one hell of a character. He loves rugby but – and I find this very odd – hates the Welsh so there’s plenty of scope for merrie banter. 😀
Marvellous poem! Says it all so beautifully.
“Lithe children lovelier than a dream,
A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,
And little kindly winds that creep
Round twilight corners, half asleep.”
Descending in an aircraft at night and seeing the lights of London appear. it’s been nice, but it’s good to home.
Cows grazing in a field, warms the heart, as does the combines gathering the feed.
Just getting on with it, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and bending the back and shrugging the shoulders, accepting the fact that the whingers, mountebanks, bums and gangsters will always get a better press than the vast majority of good people in this country who keep it going and shrug off the insults and attempted watering down of what it is to be British as if it was something to be ashamed of instead to be proud of.
Standing by while others insult our country, our flag, our way of life and our feelings, all in the name of integration but above all our sense of fair play and stoicism and the grit and determination to see it through, while that is to the fore Britain will always be what it has always been, Great.
OMG
Well said.
3 cheers for Oldmovieguy…perfectly put OMG.
OMG, OMG you said it.
Interesting article on Babycham
http://www.waitrose.com/drink/wine/winearticles/0306090.aspx
Fascinating, Pseu.
Sorry janh, but this is anachronistic piffle from memory lane of 40 years ago.
It may be comforting to think up these things but they are very few and far apart these days.
Far more people live with the stench of dirty burkhas than the enticing odour of pollock and chips.
Cod is virtually wiped out with over fishing for starters.
People only have themselves to blame for allowing it to happen.
Hi, Janh1
A fine post. I followed the link to the Indie article and am of the belief that its author, Iain Aitch, had his tongue firmly in his post-ironic cheek when he wrote it. Can’t help wondering if some people now say his surname as ‘Haitch’ given the recent news about changes in the ways that English is being pronounced, particularly in Estuaryland.
Whatever, I prefer your list to his and can only agree that omg has the truth of it and that the pair of you have pretty well covered the whole thing.
I do feel, however, that you missed out our nation’s love of pedantry and of the enjoyment that can be found in correcting our fellow countrymen when they get it wrong. Constant practice at national level in this field has, in my opinion, made our nation a world leader in spotting the obvious and manifest flaws in the rest of humanity. Not that I do that sort of thing myself, of course.
Moving on, and with reference to picnics and the Glastonbury Festival I see that you do not seem to know that ‘candelabra’ is the plural form and that a single example thereof is a ‘candelabrum’. ‘Candelabrae (sic)’ is indeed sick.
John, “I do feel, however, that you missed out our nation’s love of pedantry and of the enjoyment that can be found in correcting our fellow countrymen when they get it wrong.” Ref: candelabrum. QED. 🙂
Sticky toffee pudding
indeed puddings in general.
Eve’s especially.
Yes, yes YES Pseu, to sticky toffee pudding! But it hasn’t been around that long, has it?
Ta for the interesting Babycham link, btw. I remember ordering perry thinking it must be something like Babycham – and had a rude awakening.
Tina, I’m tempted to say “Pollocks”. Apart from Glastonbury and Whitby fish and chips, all these things can be seen in glorious Glawstershire during any given year. Britain isn’t completely shit you know! If you lived here you would probably be one of the major competitors in the Tibberton Annual Show 🙂 See what I mean here
http://www.tibberton-gloucestershire.org.uk/ShowDoc.asp?DocNo=4336
Thank you John, for more of your lovely pedantry. It is essentially great and British and I appreciate it.
I should have known that “bra” was plural. S’obvious really. I still like candelabrae though. Surely in Scotland a very small silver candleholder would be known as a “wee candelabrae?” ( in the style of Cumbrae Island) I’m thinking outside the box, here.
Hi Jan.
Market towns and villages greens; thatched cottages and duck ponds.
Ducks crossing signs and glorious churches and cathedrals. It’s a bit random, I know, but love them all.
I spend a happy ten minutes following your link and found it most amusing.
Theakstons Old Peculiar
http://www.theakstons.co.uk/ales/
“And seriously, have you ever seen a country before that devotes an entire pathway in the supermarket to different kinds of cereals? I think this is, sociologically seen, quite an interesting phenomenon.” from http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/mhillebrandt/entry/british_peculiarities_ii/
And here’s another British virtue: on the footie pitch. Two old clubs never seduced by foreign funds or fancy continental names produce top-class performances against so-called glamour clubs and win magnificently. Stoke and Sunderland put Liverpool and Chelsea firmly in their places at the weekend with determination and style.
Morris Dancing
Absolutley. There’s no foreign equivalent. It gets close in the Hofbräuhaus and the American bar but not quite. Here it’s only the imported Irish pub that cuts it.
Absolutely
Absolutely, Janus 🙂 I like that sporting thingy. Important these days when so much of sport is dominated by highly-paid foreign players – rugby AND football.
Blimey Pseu, how could I miss Morris Dancing? Peculiarly British and slightly pervy prancing around wearing a horse’s head goosing the girls!
Duck crossing signs – yes! Araminta. And Cathedrals definitely but they have some pretty good ones abroad too. I’m thinking Notre Dame, Chartres. None more beautiful than Gloucester, though. 🙂
But you don’t have signs showing a cuddly Koala saying, “We live here too”, do you? 😕