What does it mean to be English...

Cleat Eastwood

It is St Georges Day after all - quick first thing that popped into your head.

Mine was chips on drizzly day at the beach.

Davdandy

Who`s St George?

Lagrange

Being born in Kawran Bazaar - Dhaka and not being able to speak English.

pinno

I have no idea. I was born in Kenya and I live in Scotland.

You lot are all nutters.

nevman

Greatest selection of food and wine from around the world-have you ever tried to buy New Zealand wine in Super U?
And hmm,varied weather conditions.

graeme_s-2

Some colleagues of mine had worked with an intern from Thailand before I started my job. On his last day they asked him to sum up his time in the UK in a sentence and his response was "grey skies and sandwiches" - hard to argue with that!

pinno

nevman wrote:

wine from around the world-have you ever tried to buy New Zealand wine in Super U?...

Wines of the New World are over-rated. Super U and Mammoth beat Tesco and Sainsbury's any day. Since when did Tesco sponsor a Cycling Squad ? Okay the Super U Kit was utterly shite but thats beside the point. If it was better, L Fignon may not have had a boil on the bum and won the TdF in '89 - the proof in my statement.

nevman wrote:

Greatest selection of food

Oh yeah, fine if you are a merchant banker and live in the big smokes.
Been to rural Spain ? see how cheap and very cheerful things are, unlike here?

nevman wrote:

And hmm,varied weather conditions.

Thats wots wrong with this country.

TBH Nevman, I don't know where Cleat is going with this one. With him, one minute it's munters, Anne Widdicombe and CB and the next all cream fancies and Tea: I'd rather he sticks to the former. I've been worried about him for a long time.

dynamicbrick

Englishness:
A life initially so full of safety and ambition gradually giving way to an overriding sense of collective national disappointment at sporting events and the dawning realisation that attempting to eke out anything but the merest whiff of existence in your miserable life is utterly futile under the neo-feudalist yoke largely unchanged since the early Middle Ages. Casual violence, poor light, and the overcrowding arising from 90% of the population living on 8% of the available land gives you the overwhelming urge to migrate to anywhere else on the planet. To your endless amusement, furriners still marvel at how the British Empire covered a 1/4 of the globe - of course it did, have you ever actually been to Britain? The curry is okay though.

pinno

dynamicbrick wrote:

Englishness:
A life initially so full of safety and ambition gradually giving way to an overriding sense of collective national disappointment at sporting events and the dawning realisation that attempting to eke out anything but the merest whiff of existence in your miserable life is utterly futile under the neo-feudalist yoke largely unchanged since the early Middle Ages. Casual violence, poor light, and the overcrowding arising from 90% of the population living on 8% of the available land gives you the overwhelming urge to migrate to anywhere else on the planet. To your endless amusement, furriners still marvel at how the British Empire covered a 1/4 of the globe - of course it did, have you ever actually been to Britain? The curry is okay though.

+

You are on a roll here dynamickbrick. Are you standing for election?

on the road

Being English means moaning about the weather.

nevman

Right back at yer Pina-I luurve malts and haggis as well,especially as I dont have to travel to a cold foreign country to get it.
Cleat isnt actually English though-he is Scouser.

crumbschief

I hope this doesn't dragon on,being English though hmm well that can go back a bit but as for here and the present day i shall go with,Tea and Humour,although we might moan about it i find the ability to get through anything that is thrown at us and still have a laugh somewhere along the line is a fine trait we often hold.

dynamicbrick

pinarello001 wrote:

dynamicbrick wrote:

Englishness:
A life initially so full of safety and ambition gradually giving way to an overriding sense of collective national disappointment at sporting events and the dawning realisation that attempting to eke out anything but the merest whiff of existence in your miserable life is utterly futile under the neo-feudalist yoke largely unchanged since the early Middle Ages. Casual violence, poor light, and the overcrowding arising from 90% of the population living on 8% of the available land gives you the overwhelming urge to migrate to anywhere else on the planet. To your endless amusement, furriners still marvel at how the British Empire covered a 1/4 of the globe - of course it did, have you ever actually been to Britain? The curry is okay though.

+

You are on a roll here dynamickbrick. Are you standing for election?

Regrettably, and despite somehow managing to cadge a First in Politics, I'm not ever intending on standing for any election. Y'see, I'm also a keen student of military history, and Blackadder.

Therefore, should I ever come to power, my main policies would be;
1) War with France*
2) An inordinately large invoice presented to Germany for all the sheer sodding inconvenience they caused us in the 20th Century, plus compound interest
3) A note to the US explaining that since we conquered France, and now technically own all of Germany, they may wish to stop arsing about with this 4th of July thing, and quietly rejoin the fold, what? Along with another inordinately large invoice to them for monies owed for using this green and pleasant land as a bloody aircraft carrier for the last 70 years. And speaking of aircraft carriers, as the expression is wont to go; "all your base are belong to us" - especially the nuclear powered floaty base.

With these three policies Gentleman, I propose to restore the now fully flagged fortunes of this sceptred isle and rebuild the Empire in all its glory! Huzzah!

Once we rule the waves again, I will of course honour our very own Cleat by declaring Stoke a World Heritage Site and using our newly acquired carriers to force the dastardly Spanish into moving all the really nice buildings in Madrid to the inside of the Stoke ring-road. Then I'd blow the lot to kingdom come.

*This would need to be carefully co-ordinated to ensure it's on one of the weeks we've got the aircraft carrier

Cleat Eastwood

You've got my vote

dynamicbrick

There are a few laws I'd enact, but they mainly involve making Bettany Hughes do things to me as Act Of Parliament.

andyb78

Is there a difference between being English and being a Yorkshireman?

capt_slog

Cleat Eastwood wrote:

You've got my vote

He got mine when he said he like Blackadder.

team47b

Tiresome vaingloriousness.

finchy

Being English means that at least you get something decent to watch on TV a few times a week.

dmclite-3.0

Englishness,

1. Tucking your vest into your pants.
2. Going "ooh I know"
3. Calling ginger "pop"
4. House prices are prominent in conversation.
5. Old school ties and Eton.
6. Soft Judges.

Positive,

Hot sunshine, Whitstable, Old town in Hastings and Rye. Good attitudes.

Pituophis

Knowing that you will be bottom of the priority list for anything, especially in England :?