Engerland?

So it was St George’s Day yesterday and the whole occasion hit me as a bit of a paradox.

Firstly – unless I went around in a zombiefied state yesterday (perfectly possible) – I seem to have totally missed any notification that it was St George’s day from the news media. This seems to me to be entirely wrong. I think a little bit of national pride can be a good thing and we should justly celebrate our Englishness one day a year just as the Irish quite rightly enjoy a good rave up on St Patrick’s Day. It’s about time the English stopped mooching around in their hoodies and behaving like the cross of St George is some kind of criminal brand.

OK. Soapbox dispensed with.

And then on the way home from work last night I came across a huge bunch of people obviously doing the above with unrestrained gusto outside a town centre pub. And I promptly went back to wishing my fellow countrymen would spend the entire day mooching around in their hoodies and trying not to be picked up on the local CCTV cameras.

It was ugly. It was bullish. And it made me feel ashamed.

Can we English not exhibit national pride without making it look xenophobic, aggressive and something akin to football thuggery?

And what or where is this “Eng-er-land” of which they so raucously chant?

I don’t want to live in Eng-er-land!

It sounds, well to be honest, unappetizingly Neanderthal. A bit backwards and inbred. A land of beer gutted, ruddy faced pie eating brutes who discordantly sing “God Save The Queen” while at the same time giving anyone with a home counties accent a good kicking for being “a bit of a sneering toff”.

I know, I know. I’m being a snob.

Why shouldn’t the common people (of which I am one) celebrate St George’s Day the common way (10 pints of ale and a gristle pie)? After all England isn’t just about Ascot, the Boat Race and Vaughan Williams, is it? It’s also about football and darts and fish & chips. And chavs. And underage pregnancy. And Big Brother. And men who walk around shirtless at the first sign of sunshine in April in a desperate attempt to get a fast-track tan only to succeed in making themselves look like pigeon-toed irradiated sides of beef.

But for Lord’s sake, where is the sense of pride in our pride? Where is the sense of self respect? Where is the noble aspect, the aspiration? The inspiration?

Surely celebrating our national identity should be a chance to hold our heads up high – not merely to lift our beer bellies up out of the gutter while we spew several cans of Special Brew and a hastily masticated kebab down the drain?

When on earth did St George become synonymous with Bacchus? Or worse still, the BNP?

Feline Fine

A “shock” ending to The F Word last night (though not that shocking really given the nature of the industry that Gordon Ramsay works in): one of Gordon’s young lambs was killed and half eaten.

So just an ordinary day at Chez Ramsay then...

Actually to be fair – and because I do actually like Mr Ramsay – poor Gordy was quite cut up about the ad hoc butchery that had befallen his beloved Charlotte (the Welsh bred lambs were named rather fittingly after Charlotte Church and Gavin Whatever-his-name-is-who-got-her-up-the-duff).

And to make matters worse Gordy’s sheep had been paddocked in the extensive and expensive grounds of Beckhingham Palace, the nouveau riche pseudo ancestral home of David Beckham and his clothes-hanger wifelet, Posh (formerly known as Spice).

Geez. If you can’t be safe in the grounds of Posh Towers where can you be?

The carcass (like Posh) was not a pretty sight – everything below the exposed ribcage (like Posh) seemed to have been stripped clean. It was odd to see someone who must be so used to chopping up cuts of meat turn almost green at the spectacle of a freshly eviscerated lamb. I guess context played a big part in it. Maybe if Charlotte had been shoved onto a sparkly white plate and garnished with a bit of parsley and mint Gordon would have been waxing lyrical about the "juicy freshness" and the "moist bloodiness" of the meat.

But maybe not so happy about the teeth marks that were plastered all over it...

Anyway, veterinary investigation didn’t rule out the possibility that Charlotte had been mauled by a “big cat”. Indeed this view was backed up by a big cat expert who just happened to be lying around Hertfordshire waiting for Gordon to call him.

Further investigation (i.e. talking to local people at the nearest watering hole) garnered loads of anecdotal evidence regarding Panther-like beasts slinking over the neighbouring fields and carrying off young bullocks and occupied people carriers in their slavering jaws... never to be seen again.

Ooh! Spooky!

Personally, given the location of Gordy’s lambs, I can think of only one big cat malnourished enough to gobble up half a live sheep and then leave its carcass totally fleeced in the middle of a Hertfordshire field...

And that’s Posh herself.

Miaow!

Care For A Dickie Biscuit?

No Life On Mars lat night! No Life On Mars! Instead the Beeb slung on some boring football match! How dare they!

I have never liked football. I find the whole ethos of the game overblown, pompous and ineffably down-at-heel (ho ho). But I guess it gives those poor kids at school who are only good at woodwork and smoking behind the bike sheds some sort of career opportunity when they leave. God I’m such a snob.

My distaste actually has its source in a childhood where Saturdays were forever locked into a good morning / bad afternoon dichotomy. Basically Saturday mornings were a joyous occasion for me and my sisters: Tiswas and Swap Shop kept us happily occupied for hours and took us right up to lunchtime. And then at 12.30 the televisual circus closed up its big top and was replaced with the dreaded World Of Sport.

Oh how I hated Dickie Davies and his weird badger striped quiff. And I can remember Dickie before his hair even developed that white streak. Ah the horror of advancing old age!

Anyway, my dad would just lock the TV solidly onto World Of Sport for the entire afternoon. Football, rugby, swimming, golf, more football, boxing, wrestling, more football, tobogganing, skiing, motor cross and even more football. And then we’d have to suffer that interminable half hour of the football results being read out at the very end by a bloke who sounded like he had a red hot poker shoved up his backside.

"Wimbledon nil. Queens Park Rangers one. Plymouth Argyll 3. Accrington Stanley 2. West Bromwich Albion and Tottenham Hotspur late result."

On and on forever. And even after World Of Sport had finished there was worse to come. The Grumbleweeds. Russ Abbot’s Madhouse. And then the spawn of Beelzebub: 3-2-1 with Ted bleedin’ Rogers. Aaaargh! God TV was crap in the late seventies and early eighties.

Anyway the whole point of this blog is to ask the salient question: what the hell happened to Dickie Davies? It’s a question that’s been preying on my mind for oooh at least 2 minutes.

The last Dickie Davies media reference that I can recall was by Half Man Half Biscuit in the mid eighties with their glorious musical paean to the sporting maestro - Dickie Davies Eyes (she’s got).

Is he dead? Is he chained up in a madhouse somewhere (with or without Russ Abbot)? Or is he lurking in the wings waiting for the first opportunity to eff up all my Saturday afternoons once more?