THIS SUMMER we found ourselves in a large Spanish hotel. We were the only English family. Children pointed at us at breakfast but, overall, we invoked a general sense of disappointment. Part of the point of this hotel was that it did not cater for the English — and with good reason for it was the sort that allows you to pay a set fee and then eat and drink as much you like. The Spanish duly ordered lager at 10am and like all nationalities other than the English behaved exactly as if they had drunk peppermint tea. We were at pains to be well behaved.
I was embarrassed to be English. I have always been embarrassed to be English. As a child I supported Italy at football. When I was older I once set out as a backpacker to follow England in a European football competition and ended up supporting Denmark, not least because the Scandinavians would gather to watch English hooligans in their town squares the way we gather round the ape house at the zoo. I used to be jealous of everyone, bar Americans. I pestered my parents for evidence of some Irish ancestry. No? Not even a bit of Welsh blood? I would have settled for something Cornish, but it seems I am as English as they come.
There is just no romance to being English. We turn pink in the sun, shout at foreigners and fall over pissed after just a few pints. This would not matter so much if we were underdogs but we always seem to think we are right up there with the best, whether talking about sport or politics or the arts. The English are not the least bit endearing.
But on my return from Spain the Olympic Games began. For the past two weeks I have been able to bury my English roots. I am not English. I am from Great Britain. It has been too exotic for words. I can cheer cyclists from Scotland instead of watching jealously as Croatia beats Greece at handball. And we are, as Team GB, the underdogs, and joy of joys, we have been gallant and gutsy with it. When Kelly Holmes won the 800 metres my children stared at me in disbelief. Their mother, this reserved woman who claps occasionally when England scores a goal or wins a lineout or hits a six, was screaming in jingoistic fervour because she felt Kelly was representing her and she wanted her to win.
Honestly, I have drunk far less than usual this past fortnight. I am on a high, released from the tension of wishing I were from the Dominican Republic. Somehow by combining England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, everyone seems to think we are weakened. The pre-Olympic hype was muted by comparison, say, with that before Euro 2004. It is as if none of us on these islands really know how to be Great Britain or what it means to be British. Devolution is forcing us to retreat into our narrow stereotypes and in sport we only really come together once every four years having spent the intervening days laughing, fearing, teasing or hating each other.
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Maybe deep down I just want to be loved and the English are among the most difficult nationalities to warm to. But, for once, I am chuffed to be British. I have discovered the joys of patriotism.
In a spin cycle
BRITISH GAS should contact someone at Channel 4. I think they could provide the best reality TV show yet. I know because my washing machine is insured with British Gas. All the company’s customers should be supplied with hidden cameras and microphones and then monitored, as they are humiliated and tortured as they spend five weeks without a machine.
Classic moments would include those customers who fall for the friendly, “Hello you are dealing with Sandra, how can I help you?” routine. You are disconnected, call back and ask for Sandra. “Never heard of her, what’s your postcode?” Hilarious.
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Or how about the customer who says an appointment in two days’ time is unacceptable and asks to speak to a manager who never returns the call so your appointment is put back another 24 hours? Or if viewers become bored, send in the repair man who snips a few wires by accident after fitting a new bearing so that you have to start the complaints process all over again while in the background various family members can be heard wailing, “I’ve got no clean socks.”
Why not end the show with a woman banging her head on the floor as her finally mended machine goes into the spin cycle at such grotesque volume that the neighbours complain about the noise.
The whole episode has been so ridiculous. I really did wonder if my phone was bugged and I was being set up in an elaborate prank. And when the latest repairman returned to ask me to jump-start his car, I was sure I saw the curtains opposite twitching as the documentary-makers fell on the floor in laughter.
Wake me up for school
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MY TWO children go back to school next week. They seem pretty unconcerned about this, but it is bothering me. I have had six weeks off that most tiring of roles, namely being a responsible parent. I shall miss their company certainly and I am not looking forward to being asked about maths homework that will push the boundaries of my shaky grasp on fractions. Nor am I particularly eagerly anticipating remembering which child is at which afterschool club and which club I am supposed to be running.
I can do without the nights drawing in, having to buy new school uniform when all the shops ran out in June, and can certainly do without discovering tomorrow night that they were supposed to have completed a summer project.
But most of all I shall miss it being their job to wake me up, and themselves, in the morning. It has been their job to wonder if it might be breakfast time, their job to plan my day and their job to decide that they really ought to go to bed because they are tired after their mother made them race around the running track pretending to be in Athens. The school run is back. The bliss of the summer holiday is at an end.
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