Dave Hill's Big Britain

Garden Centre, North Somerset

George Orwell:

"Here it is worth noting a minor English trait which is extremely well marked though not often commented on, and that is a love of flowers. This is one of the first things that one notices when one reaches England from abroad, especially if one is coming from southern Europe. Does it not contradict the English indifference to the arts? Not really, because it is found in people who have no aesthetic feelings whatever. What it does link up with, however, is another English characteristic which is so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the privateness of English life."

From England, Your England.

Asset Management

Waiting room of a west country IFA.

The Great British Nancy

My entire family is now gripped by I'd Do Anything, the latest Saturday night telly talent show looking to cast for a West End part. The search is for a leading lady for Lionel Bart's Oliver!, the film version and soundtrack of which I remember vividly from childhood. Nancy, who protects young Twist and pays for it with her life - thanks to that horrid Oliver Reed - was played by Tottenham-born Shani Wallis, who never secured another major role, despite making a big impact.

Wallis very cockney and, as the photo shows, of no more than medium build. That's why it's so interesting that accent and physical stature have featured prominently in the debates among the judges. Of the four remaining contestants two are Irish, as was the one removed last night. Was an Emerald brogue a problem? It might have been, had not boss judge Andrew Lloyd-Webber declared that many of the poorer residents of mid-nineteenth century Saffron Hill would have been Irish. Thank goodness his lordship had done his research.

Presumably it is thought less of a problem that neither of the - in my book - most likely winners, the graceful and charismatic 17 year-old Samantha from the Isle of Man or the hearty and emotional 28 year-old Jodie from Blackpool don't have London accents either. Viewers will make the final decision and I've a feeling that if Jodie prevails, it will be partly due to a kind of folk memory wrapped up in an English stereotype about big, brassy barmaids. Gripping.

Easter Bunny

She left this lot on Sunday. How many are left, do you think?

Pass The Pinta

A friend told me a lovely tale the other day. Her mother was a farmer's daughter for whom maintaining some mainstream social appearances was not a priority. Her father was from the respectable working-class. They used to bicker about milk. When the family took tea or sat to breakfast my friend's mother would plonk the milk bottle on the table. Her father always poured it into a jug first. Their differences over this generated a metaphor for other points of tension. When she thought him inhibited or prim, she would upbraid him for his milk-in-a-jug mentality. When he thought her slobbish he bemoaned her milk-in-a-bottle attitudes. Ah, the English! I wonder where that couple stood on toast racks and butter dishes?

Timeless Confection

These are the sweets my five year-old daughter chose as her treat for doing well in her swimming lesson on Saturday. The shop is in Deepest Hackney, the shopkeeper a Muslim man with a considerable beard. Most of these items weren't available when I was my daughter's age and, like her, was allowed a selection of cheap goodies as my reward for good behaviour, in my case at the barbershop in the west country coalfield town where I grew up. Love Hearts were, though; and mini-chews and lollipops and sherbet. True, the Fashion Candy Necklace had yet to be invented. But it still seems the case that while Britain changes, its confectionary remains much the same.

Modern Manners

A few weeks back my 12 year-old daughter and I arrived at the reception of a local leisure facility. We walked up to the desk. The young woman behind it failed to acknowledge me. This was because a colleague of hers, another young woman, was reading aloud from a newspaper. It was a tale of domestic violence, possibly involving a celebrity. As I stood waiting, attempting to establish eye contact with Young Woman 1, Young Woman 2 broke off to exclaim:

"He beat her up, he did! Just for that!"

"Hello," I said, to YW1 and held up our membership cards pointedly. At last I had her attention, but my competitor remained in the game. YW2 resumed reading her tabloid tale. YW1 was clearly interested. The details became more graphic.

"Oi," I said, annoyed. "I don't want to hear all that, if you don't mind." This was true, but there was more to it than that. "There's kid here," I said, nodding at my daughter. She, have arrived at an embarrassable age, looked embarrassed. But I was seeking to protect her. She is blessed with one of those imaginations that sometimes gets the better of her. Sometimes, she asks me to switch off the news.

That phrase, "the customer is always right". YW2 hasn't heard it. "No good hiding her away from it," she told me, with a sincerity whose vehemence surprised me. "Things like that happen in real life. This is the 21st Century."

"Don't be cheeky," I advised her, warningly.

We passed through the turnstile. For the next hour I turned the incident over in my head. I was afraid I'd sounded prim, but not very. YW1 hadn't exactly covered herself in glory, but she'd been under a degree of social pressure. YW2, though, had clearly been rude. I was right to take issue over that.

But what's stayed with me was that remark about the 21st Century. It had been neither the time nor place for her to make it, but it was plain that YW2 believed she had an important point. And at a different time, in a different place and with a different kind of story being told, I might have agreed with her.

Us & Us

Tom Freeman has been reading a Demos pamphlet:

"People across the EU were asked whether they expected their personal situation to improve or get worse in the course of the next five years. In the UK, the figure of those expecting improvement minus those expecting worsening was +43%. People were also asked whether they thought things were going in the right or wrong direction in their country; the UK net figure was –7%. This gives the UK an ‘optimism gap’ of 50% – Brits are, on average, much more positive about their own prospects than those of the country as a whole."

Fascinating. I blame the media.

Liberally Devolving

Hey! Guess what!

"The Victorian notion of marriage as the 'socially accepted and religiously sanctified means of having sex' has vanished, says the [latest British Social Attitudes] study: 70% of people think there is nothing wrong with sex before marriage, compared with fewer than half (48%) in 1984. Cohabitation and marriage have become effective equivalents in the minds of most: two-thirds of people believe there is little difference between being married and living together, and only just over one in four (28%) think married couples make better parents than unmarried ones...three in 10 people think it should be harder for couples with children under 16 to get divorced, though four in 10 disagree. Four in 10 people believe one parent can bring up a child as well as two, and a similar proportion think two are better than one. Nevertheless, support for divorce is strong: almost two-thirds think it can be a positive step towards a new life, and over three-quarters think it is not divorce that harms children but conflict between their parents."

And another thing...

"The past two decades have seen a revolution in attitudes towards gay and lesbian partnerships, the survey shows. Fewer than one in five now believe homosexual relationships are always wrong, while half regard them as rarely or never wrong."

And another...

"Gordon Brown's choice of Britishness as one of the defining themes of his government may be out of tune with the popular mood, the report suggests. It found that people in England are substantially less likely to define themselves as British and more likely to assert an English identity than 15 years ago. In Scotland, the proportion of people claiming to be British rather than Scottish is now only 14%. The study found that "only" or "mainly" British has fallen to 13% in England and 3% in Scotland."

If real, living British people have rejected the Victorian model of marriage, family and sexual morality, why is David Cameron in favour of it? And if fewer and fewer real, living British people identify themselves principally as British, why does Gordon Brown keep banging on about it? Makes you wonder, doesn't it? More here.

Get Fat With Delia Smith

I do the cooking in my home, but on Saturday my wife decided she would make dinner for a change and that it would be pasta with carbonara sauce. We were out at the time, devouring egg and chips in Deepest Hackney's peerless Amhurst Cafe, and couldn't remember all the ingredients. Sheila produced her infernal BlackBerry and scoured the net for recipes. She found the sacred Delia Smith's . This calls for two large eggs plus two extra yolks, a tablespoon and a half of extra virgin olive oil and a whacking four tablespoons of double cream. On getting home we consulted my 1992 edition of her indispensible Complete Cookery Course. In there - on page 331 - the recipe for spaghetti alla carbonara requires only one extra yolk and only basic olive oil, while double cream is mentioned as a mere afterthought - a "nice addition." The older Delia gets, the more decadent she becomes. Just one reason why she's Britain's best.