My passport says I am British, but there my passport is wrong. My nationality may be British, but my soul is thoroughly English. I am one of the few remaining indigenous dinosaurs who still remember that April 23rd, besides being Shakespeare’s birthday (as if they remembered even that!), also happens to be Saint George’s Day. “Where be dragons now?” I sometimes muse, in my quaint old-fashioned English way, as the BBC six o’clock news passes, year after year, without a mention of it.
Part of this silence stems, I think, from the fact that there appears to be some kind of self-deprecating trait in the contemporary British collective psyche that precludes any avowal of Englishness, on the grounds that it might “upset someone.” I remember, some years ago, a very sensible proposal to create a new Public Holiday somewhere between the end of August and Christmas Day. Like all sensible proposals, it came to nothing, of course, once it had been passed to our Lords and Masters at Whitehall for consideration. That, however, is not the point. The intention was to find a halfway-house, ’twixt the two existing holidays; and 21st October—‘Trafalgar Day’—fitted that particular bill rather neatly. But it was rejected out of hand. Why? Because to celebrate a day on which Nelson & Co knocked seven bells out of Villeneuve & Co, even as way back as 1805, would be bound to “upset the French.” Now, I lived in France for some years, and I never noticed any wish on their part to rename the Paris station which commemorates the battle of Austerlitz, in case the Austrians might suddenly get miffed about having lost it. And, come to think of it, nor have I heard of any moves to rename London’s Waterloo station to something rather less entente cordiale offensive (though, should they ever wish to take this walking-on-eggs urge to extremes, “Malbrook [s’en va-t-en guerre]” springs to mind as a French-soothing alternative). But, as usual, I digress…
The main difficulty I find in trying to remain English these days, is that less and less of my countrypersons know how to speak the English language—at least to the minimal extent where I can understand what it is that they’re trying to say. I’d almost come to terms with every other sentence beginning with “Like...”, followed by a veritable fusillade of “actually”, “really” and “absolutely”, none of which mean anything in themselves or contribute to the overall sense of the statement. But now I’m faced with the serried ranks of the well-nigh ubiquitous “So...”, and my patience is wearing thin to the point of threadbare. It’s reached the stage where the perpetual recurrence of this mindless syllable has taken on the attributes of Chinese Water Torture: I find I’ve developed a nervous tic, uncontrollably jumping in my chair each time some moron indulges themselves in it, and being unable to relax in case it happens again within the next ten seconds (as it almost always does). The following dialogue has become commonplace:
“What do you do for a living, Mr Smith?” … “So, I’m a mole-strangler” … “And whereabouts do you strangle your little velvety friends?” … “So, I used to work in Manchester but now I live in Stockport” … “But still in the mole-strangling business, I presume?” … “So, like, it’s my trade, yeah?” … and so on, and so on, ad nauseam et ad infinitum.
‘So’ is a very useful little word. It can be an adverb: “I am so annoyed.” It can be a conjunction: “This annoys me, so I’m thinking of killing the next person who says it.” It can be a pronoun: “Do so if it makes you feel happier.” It would, indeed, be difficult to live entirely without it. But what is can not be is the first word you utter, regardless of sense, every time you open your mouth: “So I’m an engineer working in Littlehampton” seems to imply either that engineers find it difficult to ply their trade anywhere else, or that, at the very least, Littlehampton is The Guild of Engineers’ spiritual home. Neither, I suspect, comes anywhere near the truth. The even sadder part is that, as a listener, I have no earthly idea what the truth is supposed to be.
People will just say I’m a pedant, of course, for rambling on like this. So what!
Part of this silence stems, I think, from the fact that there appears to be some kind of self-deprecating trait in the contemporary British collective psyche that precludes any avowal of Englishness, on the grounds that it might “upset someone.” I remember, some years ago, a very sensible proposal to create a new Public Holiday somewhere between the end of August and Christmas Day. Like all sensible proposals, it came to nothing, of course, once it had been passed to our Lords and Masters at Whitehall for consideration. That, however, is not the point. The intention was to find a halfway-house, ’twixt the two existing holidays; and 21st October—‘Trafalgar Day’—fitted that particular bill rather neatly. But it was rejected out of hand. Why? Because to celebrate a day on which Nelson & Co knocked seven bells out of Villeneuve & Co, even as way back as 1805, would be bound to “upset the French.” Now, I lived in France for some years, and I never noticed any wish on their part to rename the Paris station which commemorates the battle of Austerlitz, in case the Austrians might suddenly get miffed about having lost it. And, come to think of it, nor have I heard of any moves to rename London’s Waterloo station to something rather less entente cordiale offensive (though, should they ever wish to take this walking-on-eggs urge to extremes, “Malbrook [s’en va-t-en guerre]” springs to mind as a French-soothing alternative). But, as usual, I digress…
The main difficulty I find in trying to remain English these days, is that less and less of my countrypersons know how to speak the English language—at least to the minimal extent where I can understand what it is that they’re trying to say. I’d almost come to terms with every other sentence beginning with “Like...”, followed by a veritable fusillade of “actually”, “really” and “absolutely”, none of which mean anything in themselves or contribute to the overall sense of the statement. But now I’m faced with the serried ranks of the well-nigh ubiquitous “So...”, and my patience is wearing thin to the point of threadbare. It’s reached the stage where the perpetual recurrence of this mindless syllable has taken on the attributes of Chinese Water Torture: I find I’ve developed a nervous tic, uncontrollably jumping in my chair each time some moron indulges themselves in it, and being unable to relax in case it happens again within the next ten seconds (as it almost always does). The following dialogue has become commonplace:
“What do you do for a living, Mr Smith?” … “So, I’m a mole-strangler” … “And whereabouts do you strangle your little velvety friends?” … “So, I used to work in Manchester but now I live in Stockport” … “But still in the mole-strangling business, I presume?” … “So, like, it’s my trade, yeah?” … and so on, and so on, ad nauseam et ad infinitum.
‘So’ is a very useful little word. It can be an adverb: “I am so annoyed.” It can be a conjunction: “This annoys me, so I’m thinking of killing the next person who says it.” It can be a pronoun: “Do so if it makes you feel happier.” It would, indeed, be difficult to live entirely without it. But what is can not be is the first word you utter, regardless of sense, every time you open your mouth: “So I’m an engineer working in Littlehampton” seems to imply either that engineers find it difficult to ply their trade anywhere else, or that, at the very least, Littlehampton is The Guild of Engineers’ spiritual home. Neither, I suspect, comes anywhere near the truth. The even sadder part is that, as a listener, I have no earthly idea what the truth is supposed to be.
People will just say I’m a pedant, of course, for rambling on like this. So what!
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