Not England
Iain Dale calls for an English Parliament, and in this bit of text says how much he loves England. He says:John Major was right to talk about warm beer and old maids cycling down country lanes.
Oh lord, here we go again. The Major speech referred to was made in 1993, in a desperate attempt to reassure the euro-sceptics. He said:
50 years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on country grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pool fillers and - as George Orwell said - 'old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist'.
It was based on this piece from George Orwell.
The old maids hiking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning – all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene.
As a characteristic fragment of the English scene this was pretty idiotic in 1943, let alone 1993, and will probably be barely understood in 2043. When you return from a foreign trip, say to Heathrow, you don't look out of the window and think 'Look, there's an old maid dodging the juggernauts as she cycles to Holy Communion on the M4 - we must be back in England', or similarly at Dover, 'Look, there's an old maid cycling to Holy Communion - we must be back in England' and if by some freak you did, you'd soon be administering the last rites as the tail-to-tail juggernauts or the really steep Dover hill got the poor old dear.
Of course as a prediction of what makes England England forever, it's not as loopy as Stanley Baldwin's:
"the sounds of England, the tinkle of the hammer on the anvil in the country smithy, … the sound of a scythe against a whetstone, and the sight of a plough team coming over the brow of a hill, the sight that has been seen in England since England was a land, and may be seen in England long after the Empire has perished and every works in England has ceased to function
The only possible sense in which this was true would be if you say the Empire perished in 1947, and even then I doubt it was a particularly common sight then either. But at least Conservative Politicians use this an example of what England is not, rather than what it is.
Anyway at least it gives us a new game to pass the time on long car journeys. Forget Pub Cricket - we now have Baldwin V Major (or Orwell, if you prefer Orwell's Decency to Major's moral quietism). One half of the passengers have to look out for Old Maids cycling to Holy Communion in the morning Autumn mist, and the other half have to keep their ears pricked for the sound of a scythe against a whetstone, and their eyes open for the sight of a plough team coming over the brow of a hill. First to one wins.
posted by Matthew @ 11/02/2006 10:14:00 AM
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