Thursday 13 October 2011

That England

Lying in bed recovering from the op, then the complications and now the keloid, a growth of bleeding mushrooms up my middle, bits of bad news drift towards me. Some stand out like sudden cramp; the plan to put 2,000 new homes on the hallowed village of East Coker, the number of African children arriving at Heathrow where they are then sold into slavery or given to “witchdoctors” who for some reason live in the UK but make a living selling human blood.
I grew up in a small country whose saints were Enid Blyton, Johnny Morris and Sir Kenneth Clark. Where has all that smallness and distinct cosiness gone?
Perhaps I have just turned into a little Englander. As people get older they always think their country has gone to the dogs and a feeling of nostalgia is deep in Anglo-Saxon culture.
Wouldn’t I be feeling the same sense of threat and despondency about the country if I was living in 1939? I don’t think so because in the past we were allowed to name an evil when we saw it. We could name it and get up and at ‘em. This new culture of equivocation and cultural relativism has castrated us more successfully than a Turk with a scimitar.

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