London Calling to the Faraway Towns...

[steepholm]

This is the kind of thing that makes one realise that British identity is only skin deep. It's just one example among many but, coming from a travel programme, and indeed from the lips of a man who (though English himself) has a name suggestive of goidelic ancestry and who, having been chained to a Beirut radiator for five years, might be expected to have a more cosmopolitan outlook, it grates the more. This is how John McCarthy introduced today's Excess Baggage:

New Year's Eve is of course seen first and foremost to be a Scottish affair, with Hogmanay being the main night of the year north of the border. However, rather than exploring Scotland's culture, today we're staying south of the border to celebrate England's heritage. The country's full of quintessentially English attractions, from castles to cottages, but do we appreciate what is on our doorstep?

English heritage (actually, why not English culture, like what the Scots have?) is fascinating, and well worth a programme; but if I were a Scot I'd be throwing porridge at the radio around now. This is meant to be the British Broadcasting Corporation, isn't it? Not the EBC? So what's all this about "staying south of the border"? And who are "we" exactly? And since when were castles and cottages more English than Scottish? (The fact that very few of the population of either country live in either a castle or a cottage is a rant for another time entirely.)

Of course, by "doorstep" he actually means London, not England as a whole - and of that I have ranted on other occasions. But I wish the BBC would try a bit harder to sound a bit less like the Clash.

Also, on a personal note (because that day is my birthday), I'd like to put in a plea for Burns night as the main night of the year in Scotland.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Well, speaking as an Englishwoman of remarkably mixed aneestry married to a Scot of English ancestry, who am I to comment? :o)

English is ethnic too!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Indeed it is, and (as I said) well worth a programme - indeed, many programmes.

Fwiw, ethnically I'm a very British mongrel. Depending how many generations back you want to go, I'm English (me), English/Welsh (my parents), English/Welsh/Scots (great grandparents). I'm not aware of any overseas ancestors until my great*6 grandparents, two of whom were Huguenot refugees. Somewhere way back, going by surname, there must have been Irish, and thence Normans, but when you get to that kind of date who knows?

For all that, I don't feel I have a strong British identity as such, so much as a jumble of complicatedly interlocking consituent parts.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I'm a grand mix of English, Italian, Breton, Scottish, Roma and Latvian Jewish plus any I haven't disovered yet (I think there may also be Welsh via the Williams branch).

I'm not sure there is a 'British' identity much as the political right would like there to be one. I'm English, he's a Scot, end of, really. We celebrate Hogmanay because we like the social aspect of it. :o)

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Some of my ancestors even came from the south of England, though we try to keep quiet about that.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

No family cupboard without its skeletons...

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I live and was brung up in the south of England and originate from one of the working class bits as my grandads were both colliers (yes folks, there WERE actually pits in Kent until Thatcher's advent!)

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

It could have been a feeble attempt at being "original" by avoiding the usual clichés of New Year, Hogmanay, pipes, haggis and Auld Lang Syne. However, it just means more of the same South-East England and more specifically, London bias.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Is that a splendid non-English castle in your icon?

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Well, it's in Wales, but built by the English. :) More specifically, it's Harlech.

I ought to do an icon with a native Welsh castle too.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

I feel like that a lot with the BBC, and I'm only Welsh by conversion. ;)

Your birthday is the same as Burns? AKA the day before mine? Awesome. :) One year (because we are talking of birthdays and Scotland) I am determined to go to Up Helly Aa for my birthday--you should come. :)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Converts often shine with the burningest zeal, as we know!

I'd love to go to Up Helly Aa, but I don't see how I'll get the time off work (thoughtless Vikings, holding it midweek). It may have to wait for retirement or redundancy, whichever comes first.

On the other hand, this year I'm determined to see the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance - not so many miles east of Aber...

[sheenaghpugh]

We were at Up Helly Aa last year and probably will be again. It's immense fun, though the smell of smoke from the burning torches in the streets is unbelievable (not to mention when the galley goes up).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

You'll be able to tell me, but I suspect the Shetlanders don't really think of themselves as Scottish. (I'm sure the Orcadians don't, and they're only a skimming stone from Thurso.)

[sheenaghpugh]

No, I don't think they do. Lerwick is full of King Harald Streets and King Eirik Streets and certainly on Up Helly-Aa night they sing an awful lot about their forefathers being Vikings (which there's some justification for, given what the Shetland Mitochondrial DNA Project has shown) and usually their attitude to the govt in Embro is what you'd expect from a peripheral community that feels ignored and slighted by the mainland. But they can be fairly anti-English - I once got called f-ing English, years ago, by some kids, and protested that I was in fact f-ing Welsh. They were fine with that.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It always tickles me that in Orkney, when they talk about the mainland, they mean not Scotland but the biggest of the Orkney islands.

[sheenaghpugh]

Same here - ours is called Mainland

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Indeed they do- and they celebrate the Tog (Norwegian national day) big time so go figure :o)

Scotland and everything else not Orkney or Shetland is termed 'Sooth' :o)

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

This is completely and totally off the subject, but I recently stumbled on The Erotic Space and was made so very happy that someone had written it! I have long since come to loathe the sociological/cultural 'why those troublesome women like to write about gay men' articles, and been frustrated that nobody seemed to write about the stories as stories. And then discovered someone had, so thank you for that. :)

[sheenaghpugh]

Oh, that was one of the 3 talks I did for Slash Study Day at the Cultural Exchanges conference, courtesy of dr_porn. I loved doing those. T'other 2 are The Colonel's Lady and Judy O'Grady and Man Bits and Woman Bits. Enjoy...

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Well, it won't be this year, that's for sure! But eventually.

Abbots Bromley looks pretty far from Aber to me! Alas I can't make any plans for September other than being in a wedding and submitting (hopefully), but it looks very cool. :)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It's more than a morning stroll, but still nearer than Lerwick!

Good luck with 2012 and the submitting!

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Well yes, that is true! A short train ride, as opposed to a Fellowship-like trek across imposing terrain. *g*

Thank you!

[calimac.livejournal.com]

As a foreigner, my response to "New Year's Eve is of course seen first and foremost to be a Scottish affair" is, "it is?" I've never read anything about particular and specific New Year's customs anywhere in Britain.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The Scots traditionally make more of a big deal of it, what with Auld Lang Syne and all, to the extent that they get a holiday not only on New Year's Day but also on 2nd Jan, such is the mightiness of their hangovers.

There are New Year's customs all over (first footing, etc), but I don't know much about their geographical distribution or origins.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

England has it's new year customs such as apple wassailing and hoodening amongst many others!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Btw, do you know the English Acoustic Collective's 'Mari Lwyd', from their Ghosts album? Words by Hugh Lupton, and one of my favourites. Thanks for putting me in mind of it.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Y're welcome :o)

Mari Lwyd as a custom is related to Kentish hoodening- horse spirits and all that.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I suppose castles should be more an English phenomenon than Scots, since Robert the Bruce tried to get so many of ours razed and replaced with the much more compact and bijou tower-house.

But taking that into account, I'd then associate castles with Wales... Tudor manor-houses, though... That's English. The Scots were still quite partial to burning out their neighbours in the late 16th century...