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

[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...