Dave Hill's Big Britain

The Train To Holyhead

Heading for Dublin, my wife and our kids caught an evening train from Euston to Holyhead yesterday, avoiding the weekend closures and delays. They phoned this morning to tell the tale of their journey. It seems the carriages were packed and there was all sorts of confusion over reserved seats. For a while, Sheila and one of the children had to stand. But then a quiet, suited businessman insisted that one of them take his seat, and soon afterwards a young man with a nose stud and coloured hair said he'd be happy to stand in the bar for an hour. So that was all four of my family sitting down. At intervals, Sheila checked that the young man didn't want his seat returned, but he was happy in the bar: he'd met a woman there. Sheila bought them both a drink. Indeed, the crowding and disorder seems to have broken social ice all round. By the time the train reached Crewe, two teenage girls were having a fine time flirting with a teenage boy and my wife had made the acquaintance of a woman who'd been a midwife in Peckham for 13 years. Seems there can be an upside to British public transport hell. "Epic," was how Sheila put it.

Santiago De Compostela

I'm in Spain for half term with my wife and younger kids, visiting my grown-up daughter who's working in the town of Santiago De Compostela. At the airport the directions for arriving passengers were in three languages: English and what we later worked out to be Castillian and Galician. I'd expected the English, as we Britons do: I wonder which came first, the correct assumption by others that we can't cope with "talking foreign" or the growing acceptance of English as the nearest thing there is to a global common lingo. But I hadn't expected two of the languages of Spain. Yes, I know the country contains proudly, often fiercely, independent regions where the offical national language - Castillian - often takes second place. I hadn't known this was so of Galicia to the extent that it was recognised in formal signage, or indeed by restaurant menus. We don't know nuffink, innit?

Other discoveries of note: where we eat breakfast the waitresses provide butter for the English and olive oil for the locals to put on their toast as a matter of course; the cockerel on the Kelloggs cornflakes packets here is almost disturbingly cheerful compared with the one we have at home; the proprietor of our guest house is determined to correct the impression created by Manuel of Fawlty Towers that Spaniards and high standards in the hospitality industry don't go together. Nothing is too much trouble for him. The other night as we sat in the garden he brought each of us a blanket and even instructed the barman to pick us fresh oranges from one of his trees. Don't get too sick with envy, though. It's rained every day so far.

Teaching Patriotism

I was reading a report on the teaching of patriotism in schools when my nine year-old walked in. The report, by Dr Michael Hand and Joanne Pearce of the Institute of Education, came to the notice of the media last week and generated a lengthy thread at Cif. Its conclusion is that "philosophically...the most defensible policy on patriotism in schools is to teach it as a controversial issue and, empirically, that this policy is a viable one." It adds that, "Recent calls by political leaders for the promotion of patriotism in schools lack a sound philosophical justification and run counter to the views of most teachers and pupils."

I asked my nine year-old, he being a school pupil, what he thought about patriotism. Did he, in fact, know what it was?

"No"

"Patriotism," I explained, "is the love you feel for your country. You know, the country you live in. Or, actually, it could be the one you were born in, which isn't always the same one. I suppose it's the country you feel you belong to. Complicated, eh?" More complicated to explain, indeed, that I'd anticipated when starting the conversation. "Which country do you think is your country?" I asked.

"England," he replied. "And Ireland."

"Why Ireland?"

"Because I go there a lot and because Mummy comes from Ireland."

"That's an interesting answer," I said. "Though, funnily enough, Mummy isn't exactly from Ireland. She was born in England. But she feels Irish because her mum and dad came from Ireland, so she was part of an Irish family. She's never actually lived there, either"

"Oh," replied my son, thinking this over. "But is Laura from Italy and Spain as well as from England?" Laura is his grown-up half-sister. She's lived in both those countries.

"Well, no," I explained. "Like I said, it's complicated."

He left the room. I went upstairs. There, I repeated the conversation to my wife. "Very interesting," she said. "But I suppose the Ireland I relate to is the old Ireland of my childhood in the Seventies; a place that was quite poor and I was always having to defend because of the bombing campaigns and everything. Now that's in the past, I suppose I have more of an affinity with this country."

Like I said, complicated. And a great subject for a classroom debate.

The Diamond Majority

Not a great Christmas on our high streets, apparently. Jeremy Seabrook puts it into perspective:

"If snobbery has virtually melted away in Britain, this is not so much because we have seen the folly and error of arbitrary distinctions between people. It is simply that the well-to-do, the middle class have now become dominant. There is no longer any great mass, no majority beneath us watching and waiting for our downfall. On the contrary, most people are now reasonably secure, and the poor are now a residuum, consigned to minority status. The social pyramid of early industrialism has been inverted; or rather, has become diamond-shaped. It is only natural that the poor should now be less feared. It is not, of course, that members of a criminal underclass might not conceivably rob or attack you in the dark street; but on the whole, with prudence, they can be avoided."

Which is why the seething classes make me spit.

Multi-Culti Consumption

A letter to the Telegraph.

"Sir - Last week, we bought two lovely woolly hats made in Nepal from a Polish stall holder running a German Christmas stall in Southampton."

From Susan Williams. I wonder if she's Welsh?

The Traditional Christmas: Not Much God

A Yuletide scene, 1836:

"As to the dinner, it’s perfectly delightful — nothing goes wrong, and everybody is in the very best of spirits, and disposed to please and be pleased. Grandpapa relates a circumstantial account of the purchase of the turkey, with a slight digression relative to the purchase of previous turkeys, on former Christmas–days, which grandmamma corroborates in the minutest particular. Uncle George tells stories, and carves poultry, and takes wine, and jokes with the children at the side–table, and winks at the cousins that are making love, or being made love to, and exhilarates everybody with his good humour and hospitality; and when, at last, a stout servant staggers in with a gigantic pudding, with a sprig of holly in the top, there is such a laughing, and shouting, and clapping of little chubby hands, and kicking up of fat dumpy legs, as can only be equalled by the applause with which the astonishing feat of pouring lighted brandy into mince–pies, is received by the younger visitors.

Then the dessert! — and the wine! — and the fun! Such beautiful speeches, and SUCH songs, from aunt Margaret’s husband, who turns out to be such a nice man, and SO attentive to grandmamma! Even grandpapa not only sings his annual song with unprecedented vigour, but on being honoured with an unanimous ENCORE, according to annual custom, actually comes out with a new one which nobody but grandmamma ever heard before; and a young scapegrace of a cousin, who has been in some disgrace with the old people, for certain heinous sins of omission and commission — neglecting to call, and persisting in drinking Burton Ale — astonishes everybody into convulsions of laughter by volunteering the most extraordinary comic songs that ever were heard. And thus the evening passes, in a strain of rational good–will and cheerfulness, doing more to awaken the sympathies of every member of the party in behalf of his neighbour, and to perpetuate their good feeling during the ensuing year, than half the homilies that have ever been written, by half the Divines that have ever lived."

By Charles Dickens from Sketches by Boz. An old OU course book on my shelves invites students to notice that trees, cards, carols, crackers and Father Christmas are not mentioned. It also points out that religion's only appearances are in passing near the beginning and, in the passage I've quoted, in a derogatory way at the end. In Dickens's view the secular goodwill generated by a family Christmas surpassed the homilies of churchmen ("the Divines"). Something for complaining Christians to bear in mind.

Seething Central

My recent Guardian Comment piece on Britons of a bitter and twisted variety. Nice.

Earlier this year, in a nearby foreign land, I met a fellow Englishman. He was on holiday with his children, having just gone through a divorce, and my wife and I admired him for that. His kids and mine had got to know each other on the beach, so one night we all went out for a meal. My first inkling that the evening was going to get tense came when our new acquaintance opted for pizza ("I stick to English food," he sagely declared). Then the conversation moved on to schools. I told him how happy my younger children were at theirs and how lucky we were to live near a nice one. He eyeballed me, white man to white man.

"You mean it's a school with no black children?"

"Er, no ..."

Failing To Integrate!

Daniel Hannan blogging for the Telegraph:

A couple of years ago, I spoke to a large lunch of expat Tories on the Costa Blanca. Many of them had lived there for years: their skin had turned leathery and dappled, their eyes were flecked with ochre, their polo shirts were faded. And there was one subject that they all wanted to raise with me: immigration. Did I know that there were second and even third generation boys growing up in Britain who spoke Urdu rather than English? Who watched cable television from Pakistan? Who had never been taught loyalty to our national symbols? “Out of interest”, I’d say, “how many Spaniards do you think might raise the same objections to you chaps?” For, although most of my interlocutors could make themselves understood in Spanish, few felt any loyalty to their adopted country. In their hearts, they were all one hundred per cent British. “But that’s completely different!” they’d protest.

There's a word for that kind of person. Too rude, I'm afraid, too rude....