This Is This

It was St. George’s Day yesterday, my national day, and like most Englishmen, I forgot until about a few days before that it was coming up.

I was reminded by subtle alterations put in place by people who put things in place out of a need to attach themes to their changes. Television programmers, pub menus, carpet salesrooms. I didn’t notice the changes at first. I would have noticed that Radio Three was playing more Elgar and Vaughan Williams if someone had asked, but I wouldn’t have spotted that it had anything to do with national identity.

In fact it was only yesterday morning that I knew for sure it was actually that day, when St. George balloons flew above scones and cream in the café at work.

If I was supposed to feel stirrings of national pride, I didn’t notice above the low rumblings of my stomach brought on by the prospect of baked goods and dairy produce.

What did I write about instead?  Having a poo.

Hmmm. Maybe previous looking at previous posts from this time last year will prove to be more patriotic.

2005 – Shoes Life, the one where the guy confidently buys shoes
2006 – BREASTS!, the one where I smile back at a woman on the beach but find out its wrong when she discovers I am English and and I realise she is too
2007 – Overheard In New York, the one where I hear something over in New York

Nope. In fact, two of them happened overseas, amid Jonny P. Foreigner.

And 2008 – You Do Not Talk About Book Club, the one where I worry if people think I done a poo.

The French even have their own word for it. National pride that is, not doing a poo, although I’m sure they have many. In fact, there’s a great mild insult in France which is “Tu me fais chier”, or literally “you are making me shit”, although not literally literally – that would seem more like a cry for help than an insult, and one unlikely to result in any assistance anyway.

No, they have a word for national pride, which is “cocorico”, which is an onomatopoeic word after the cry of a cockerel, France’s national symbol. To demonstrate “le cocorico” is to display a sense of unity and allegiance with one’s French countrymen. There’s no equivalent among the English, but you get the idea.

One obvious example of this in France would be to unleash a live cockerel onto the pitch at a sporting event. This always provides a respite to proceedings and one tolerated by both sides as a patriotic if slightly disruptive interlude to proceedings.

Again, the English have no such gesture. This could be because our national symbol is a lion, and we all remember what happened in Rome - we’re short enough of Christians as it is. Instead we have people dressed up as knights with chain mail, although it’s normally ring pulls stuck on to a grey hoody with an apron over it and they look like nobs, although this says as much about our national pride as anything you’d learn here.

So I hope your St. George’s Day was everything you hoped it would be, the chances being that it was because you weren’t hoping for anything and that’s probably what you got.

Also on This Is This
I’m reading one of those airplane safety leaflets, trying to get my bearings while I tread water, keeping morale of my fellow ill-fated passengers high by playing the intro to Maggie May while whistling loudly to attract the attention of any nearby ships.
Read this post...

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 8:50 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.