Will you be displaying your flag on Monday?

[mo]

I wonder how many English people will proudly display their flag on Monday.

[widget]

Had a St George's Day card from my son today,

[dejavou]

I'll be putting mine up on my desk at work

[Monika]

I've got a flag, Mo .......... I haven't got anything to hang it from.

However, I've signed the petition:

http://www.stgeorgesday.com/home/vote

[mo]

All done and signed Monika

[vannin]

That was what I was mentioning in my long-winded way on the St Georges thread. About a two-storey house near us, with its whole frontage painted as a flag of St George. Also adorned with flags and banners. It struck me that many people look and say 'Where's the footie international being played then?'

[mo]

This happened to my son in law last year when he had the St Georges flag displayed on the areal of his car.

When getting out of the car, a chap asked the same question Viv.

[megra]

I'm British, not one of those johnny come lately Germanic lot, the English and I don't own a flag.

The English are really a very strange lot. They bang on about some mythical Anatolian dragon slayer who had nothing whatsoever to do with England when far more significant is the fact that it is the the 443rd birthday of William Shakespeare, arguably the greatest poet and playwright in history, certainly the greatest working in the English language, a man whose work is revered throughout the world, but apparently not by the English.



This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.


How depressingly true.

[Mgzy]

No

[maggiesaes]

Won't be at home tomorrow but I shall be in England.

[Victors Mate]

John Betjeman far more English than St George.

The Town Clerk's Views

Yes, the Town Clerk will see you. In I went.
He was, like all Town Clerks, from north of Trent;
A man with bye-laws busy in his head
Whose Mayor and Council followed where he led.
His most capacious brain will make us cower,
His only weakness is a lust for power
And that is not a weakness, people think,
When unaccompanied by bribes or drink.
So let us hear this cool careerist tell
His plans to turn our country into hell.
I cannot say how shock'd I am to see
The variations in our scenery.
Just take for instance, at a casual glance,
Our muddled coastline opposite to France
Dickensian houses by the Channel tides
With old hipp'd roofs and weather-boarded sides.
I blush to think one corner of our isle
Lacks concrete villas in the modern style.
Straight lines of hops in pale brown earth of Kent,
Yeomen's square houses once, no doubt, content
With willow-bordered horse-pond, oast-house, shed,
Wide orchard, garden walls of browny-red
All useless now, but what fine sites they'ld be
For workers' flats and some light industry.
Those lumpy church towers, unadorned with spires,
And wavy roofs that burn like smouldering fires
In sharp spring sunlight over ashen flint

Are out of date as some old aquatint.
Then glance below the line of Sussex downs
To stucco terraces of seaside towns
Turn'd into flats and residential clubs
Above the wind-slashed Corporation shrubs.
Such Georgian relics should by now, I feel,
Be all rebuilt in glass and polished steel.
Bournemouth is looking up. I'm glad to say
That modernistic there has come to stay.
I walk the asphalt paths of Branksome Chine
In resin-scented air like strong Greek wine
And dream of cliffs of flats along those heights,
Floodlit at night with green electric lights.
But as for Dorset's flint and Purbeck stone,
Its old thatched farms in dips of down alone
It should be merged with Hants and made to be
A self-contained and plann'd community.
Like Flint and Rutland, it is much too small
And has no reason to exist at all.
Of Devon one can hardly say the same,
But South-West Area One's a better name
For those red sandstone cliffs that stain the sea
By mid-Victoria's Italy Torquay.
And South-West Area Two could well include
The whole of Cornwall from Land's End to Bude.
Need I retrace my steps through other shires?
Pinnacled Somerset? Northampton's spires?
Burford's broad High Street is descending still
Stone-roofed and golden-walled her elmy hill
To meet the river Windrush. What a shame
Her houses are not brick and all the same.

Oxford is growing up to date at last.
Cambridge, I fear, is living in the past.
She needs more factories, not useless things
Like that great chapel which they keep at King's.
As for remote East Anglia, he who searches
Finds only thatch and vast, redundant churches.
But that's the dark side. I can safely say
A beauteous England's really on the way.
Already our hotels are pretty good
For those who're fond of very simple food
Cod and two veg., free pepper, salt and mustard,
Followed by nice hard plums and lumpy custard,
A pint of bitter beer for one-and-four,
Then coffee in the lounge a shilling more.
In a few years this country will be looking
As uniform and tasty as its cooking.
Hamlets which fail to pass the planners' test
Will be demolished. We'll rebuild the rest
To look like Welwyn mixed with Middle West.
All fields we'll turn to sports grounds, lit at night
From concrete standards by fluorescent light
And over all the land, instead of trees,
Clean poles and wire will whisper in the breeze.
We'll keep one ancient village just to show
What England once was when the times were slow
Broadway for me. But here I know I must
Ask the opinion of our National Trust.
And ev'ry old cathedral that you enter
By then will be an Area Culture Centre.
Instead of nonsense about Death and Heaven
Lectures on civic duty will be given;

Eurhythmic classes dancing round the spire,
And economics courses in the choir.
So don't encourage tourists. Stay your hand
Until we've really got the country plann'd.

[megra]

No

That's what we like to see: a considered, carefully thought out approach and detailed answer to an argument. Trouble is we cannot know to what the respondent is saying no - that I'm British, that the English are Germanic, that I am difficient in the flag ownership area, that Shakespeare is a far more significant figure of Englishness than St. George, or that he was the greatest poet working in the English language or perhaps with John of Gaunt's argument on the state of the nation...

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/book ... 472353.ece

[vannin]

William Blake was another most English of Englishmen, today I robustly joined in his Jerusalem. After all, hubby spent 3 years in the RAF.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

-- William Blake
(That was after singing 'Leader Now on Earth no longer (Great St George our patron, Help Us')

[Victors Mate]

Then there is:-


Oh, to be in England

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England - now!




And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows

Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops - at the bent spray's edge

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!




And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children's dower, -

Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!




Robert Browning (1812-1889)

[dejavou]

That was an English NO, rather than a Scottish NO Miggsy?