Big England No.10: by Norm

Norman Geras of normblog fame is, of course, one of the UK's most popular and influential bloggers and a leading light of the Euston Manifesto. He is also a big cricket and music fan and Professor Emeritus of Government at the University of Manchester, an activity he presumably fits in in his spare time. I mean, what can I tell you that you don't already know?

OK, so Dave's asking what I like about England, and I'm going to answer his question with a 'twelve things I like' list, throwing in one other thing for good measure that I don't especially like.

1. To begin with what for many people will seem improbable, I like the climate. Yup, that's including the grey skies and sometimes persistent rain of Manchester. I like it: it's cool; it's comfortable. And when it gets cold, there are ways of staying warm. You don't often have to confront extremes of weather. Although I grew up in a very hot place and enjoyed the sun and the heat, never much noticing this as oppressive - perhaps just because I was young - some time during my thirties on family holidays, I came to be much less tolerant of intense heat and humidity. An English summer's day, where the sun is warm and there's a light breeze... that's the ideal.

2. I like the people of Lancashire and the people of Manchester. This isn't something I can really explain by detailing regionally specific characteristics. It's just something I feel. It's being 'at home' in the place I've now lived for nearly 40 years. One sometimes hears it said that people round here are more friendly than they are down south. Maybe, maybe not. But it's an impression I share.

3. And I like the English generally. That doesn't include everything about the English, naturally - not the rowdyism, not the yobbism. But a certain phlegmatic quality (even if combined with occasional mild grumbling) and the tendency to understatement; the fact that twice within the last while when I sought permission from two different people to raise a slightly problematic question, they signalled their assent by saying simply, without irony, 'My dear Norman...'

4. I like English humour, the irony and the absurdity in it.

5. I like English acting. Gielgud and Olivier, Alec Guinness. Edith Evans, Vanessa Redgrave, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith. Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay. Edward Fox, Michael Caine, Ralph Fiennes, Emma Thompson. I love and admire the whole tradition of it, the control and the subtlety, the Englishness.

6. I like being at cricket in England. This is not any longer an unmixed pleasure. Recently developed practices of being noisy in order to be noticed have not improved conditions for watching the game. Still, the slowness, the stretched-outness and the intricacy of what is on display remain, and the being there with others and sharing of impressions and analysis and previous history. Though these things are part of cricket spectatorship everywhere, they are lodged within the English landscape through a long history.

7. And I love going to football in England. In fact, football is something I only got to know in this country. I never played or watched it as a boy, my attentions and energies being focused then on cricket and, to a lesser extent, rugby. But I enjoy the buzz and expectancy of the gathering crowd as I approach the ground along Sir Matt Busby Way. And I like being inside the stadium here (scroll down), and listening to what my friend Morris knows - which is pretty much everything - about the history of Manchester United, and I like the singing and the chanting and the football itself.

8. Whenever I return to England from anywhere else I've been, I like the quiet and the orderliness of the place.

9. I like English second-hand bookshops. Not that other countries don't have them. But at least from my limited comparative experience, I don't know of anywhere else that has them as many and as good. For a long period I would make a habit of doing a tour of the second-hand bookshops in any town or city I visited. I'd do research on them in advance. When you walk into the shop, it's a place of wonderful promise - of the books you might find! Sometimes you don't find a thing of interest, but you've had that moment of hope all the same.

10. I like the eccentricity of the English. To extend the previous item, if you go about collecting any kind of book, in England you will come across collectors of every kind book: Victorian novels, golf, travel, Biggles, the lot. And there are collectors, in England, of every other kind of thing besides. It's a harmless form of lunacy. Maybe it happens everywhere, but to me it has an English feel about it.

11. I like the fact that in this country people form and respect queues. It's an obviously rational way of conducting certain social affairs. You'd think it would be universal.

12. I like the tradition of tolerance and the associated political virtues of an old parliamentary democracy.

And finally the one thing that doesn't especially grab me - the greenness of the English countryside. Not that I dislike it. First time someone drove me along an English country road, I was enormously struck by how green everything was, being used to landscapes more brown and yellowish and rust. But when it comes to that - landscapes, the look of the land - green and small-scale doesn't do it for me. Deserts, canyons, great open spaces, big skies and the road stretching ahead to the far horizon… that sort of thing.

Comments

[James]

Norm, interesting post, in particular the bit about attending cricket, which I've blogged about quite a few times myself. I've noticed even a few heretics stirring up trouble at Lords recently, though they're a tiny minority, not in the same league as other cricketing grounds let alone the football oiks. God save us from the ICC, who use them as an excuse to stop the rest of us taking our own alcohol into the ground. What a false idea - the oiks will still get drunk, they'll just get into a bad mood about it from having to queue for hours to buy overpriced ale. Meanwhile the rest of us will get our fingers burned in the champagne tent. A curse on their Dubai-based ivory tower, say I. Besides, if they have it their way we'll have nothing but 20/20, and there won't even be enough time to sniff the wine let alone consume it.

[Oshawa]

Fantastic. I totally agree with you on most of the things here, apart from that I am in Bristol and find people in the south very kind and gentle and don't care much about any ball games. And I like open space and higher sky. That makes me feel the world is bigger.

[Littlebear]

Best one yet. True to place and yet universal.

[Europe Golf Travel]

England is a great place to travel to. Their wonderful hospitality and personal charm makes all travelers feel welcome. Their unwavering passion for sports like golf, cricket and football make any discussions on subjects interesting and insightful.