14/03/2024
Great Britain, the United Kingdom, Merry England. My country has always it seems employed a qualifier as if to pre-empt some alternative adjective ...perfidious? "Great" of course alludes to the entire archipeligo off of the coast of North West Europe and not to a country ... it doesnt include the Falkland Islands, an agreed fraction of Antarcticao, Australia, Canada or the Cayman Islands nor any of those territories for whom our monarch is the head of State.
You would imagine that the qualifier "Great" would naturally include the larger far-flung dominions where our military has bases and from whom in times of war we draw support and troops as though by right. Head of State, lingua franca (as it were) and political system modelled upon our own with the 'mother of all Parliaments' but no, Great Britain is just for us, for all who hail from this windy corner of the Atlantic coast and including of course those pesky irish from Eire who for a century have preferred to go their own way.
I am from Great Britain but I am not Great British more's the pity. Britain is not a nation - it is a territory which apparently now includes Rockal a wind and spray whipped rock sticking up from the storm tossed seas of the North Atlantic - Britain is home to the Brits however the surly sons of Errin feel about it they can at least take solace and pride in being able to join in the chorus of Rule Britannia when it sets the rafters twitching at the Royal Albert Hall.
England of course is the natural and most recent fiefdom of the Angles who it seems were blonde haired blue eyed charmers from somewhere in Germany and who arrived at some point with their Saxon cousins to lay claim to parts of the mainland so for two obvious reasons that are suggestive of origin and ethnicity the designation "English" is not conclusive as an appelation redollent of diversity and inclusion and Scots, Oirish, Welsh notwithstanding one imagines shouts of dissent eminating from the tin men of Cernew, Scallies of Liverpool and the Hindoos of Hounslow not to mention Lascars of Limehouse. To be properly English proven parentage must be provided demonstrating an ancestry stretching back to Hereward the Wake with testamonials attributing active engagements in which Norman/French Norsemen Danes and Georgian Hanovarians are provable with eye-witness accounts along with blood-spattered halbards where appropriate.
There is one exception which demands posession of crazy paving, gnomes, a car-coat and a caravan out front of the house and if you possess these three attributes no-one will deny that you are English while tattered tweeds, a bankrupt Gloucestershire estate and an alcaholic bitch of a wife will win you a begrudging second place. This it must be noted is an ill-advised claim to make - remember, no-one likes the English.
