It's well-known that the English suffer from an identity crisis.  Jeremy Paxman wrote a very good book about it - (Jeremy Paxman's The English)

If you're a certain type of English person, living in London, there are at least three ways you might identify where you come from: London, England or Britain for starters, but some would add the UK, or even Europe.  It depends who's asking the question.  If you're Scottish or Welsh, it's more straightforward.  Are some people afraid to call themselves English because "Englishness" as symbolized by the flag of St George has from time to time been misappropriated by football hooligans, the far right, Christian crusaders, and other unsavoury elements? 

Does this make it uncool for liberally minded people to call themselves English or wear the colours of St George?   Woolly-minded liberals!  Get over yourselves!  Being proud to be English doesn't make you a signed-up member of the Barmy Army. 

Be proud to be English.  Or British.  It's OK.  Really it is.

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Around the corner from where I grew up in Dunedin, New Zealand, there was a fantastic chippy run by a Chinese family.  Fish and chips were a regular Friday night fixture in my childhood - along with the Mr Whippy ice-cream van and Planet of the Apes (the TV series).  I thought that in all my life I would never come across fish and chips as perfect as those.  In my late teens, a sliver of doubt crept into my mind because I was headed for Britain - the home of fish and chips.  Surely my eyes would be opened to a whole new world of perfectly cooked, fresh fish and beautiful golden chips - a fish and chip nirvana.  How wrong I was.  After 18 years living in the UK, I have sampled precisely two fish and chip meals that come remotely close to the standards set by the Chinese family in NZ.  And would you believe, one of those was prepared by a Chinese run chip shop in Hertfordshire. 

Britain, oh Britain - don't tease me.  Fulfil your fish and chips promise or desist from your infernal bragging!    

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I'm currently reading Neil Oliver's book called 'Amazing Tales for Making Men out of Boys'.  Neil is the long-haired Scottish guy in Coast. Find out about him and his other publications here: 

His premise is that men aren't what they used to be (in a manly sense) and that heroism (or guts) in the style of Scott of the Antarctic is to be admired for its old-fashioned stoicism under extraordinary pressure.  I've added 'heroism' to my growing list of qualities that the British take for granted.  While you don't have a monopoly on it, you've had more than your fair share of heroes over the years.  Though the word 'hero' has been hijacked by sport, where it is mostly over-used, 'heroism' in its true sense is a rare thing indeed - but the Brits, from Ranulph Fiennes to the rescue workers on 7/7 seem to have them in abundance.   

One caveat - guts goes well with modesty, but too often turns to dust with arrogance.  I can think of one or two English rugby internationals who this applies to…

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No other country in the world, I'm told, has as many national daily newspapers as the UK.

Now, whatever you think of them all - asinine, mainstream, celebrity and sex-obsessed, you can't say there's not enough of them. The sheer volume of columnists and journalists required to sustain the industry must be doing something for cigarettes and alcohol sales. There's a lot of pages to fill, but the public seem insatiable. For better or worse, it's a vibrant industry with a ton of choices. And that's before you even get to TV, radio and online.
 
Should we be grateful? Well, have you ever read USA Today?

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British people are never happy unless they're talking about the weather.  It's the social glue that binds neighbours, colleagues, friends and strangers. 

I've lived here 17 years and I can't remember a better Spring or early Summer than we've had this year.  Apart from the heatwave in the last week of Wimbledon, on balance, it's been great.  But does this stop the complaints?  Oh no.  It's either too warm, unsettled, 'looks like rain', or 'bound to turn'. 

Why can't you just be happy with great weather?  I have heard people saying that it's a beautiful day, but it's admitted only begrudgingly.  I think there's a gene found in the British DNA to moan about the weather. 

What else would people talk about otherwise - their feelings?

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Oh Britain.  I love you. 

A lot of talk about Andy Murray last week that goes right to the heart of the whole English identity crisis.  The English begrudgingly love him since Henman's retirement as they expect him to be more forelock-tuggingly charming. This ambivalence says more about the English than it does about Murray himself.  I think he's brilliant because he’s a surly Scot who doesn't pay as much attention to PR as the public want.  Truth is, he's a winner - of Queens - if not Wimbledon and will at least give us (the British) something to cheer about for years to come.   

No one, except the Scots, particularly thinks of Sir Chris Hoy as a Scot - he's a British triple gold-medal-winning Olympian.  Britons of every hue should be rightly proud of him. 

Will the English only extend the same courtesy to Andy Murray when he wins Wimbledon?  I ask you!

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