The English

I meet Steve near the station in the Wiltshire town of Bradford-on-Avon, from where we’re taking a nine-mile countryside walk to Bath Spa station.

That’s, actually, a cracking, cracking, walk. Recommend it to anyone.

They’ve done it a bit weirdly. You can just follow the canal (Kennet and Avon) and go around the hill (Combe and Claverton Downs) and come into Bath through Sydney Buildings and Sydney Gardens. Or you can go canal, then the old Somerset and Dorset line – they’re reopened the twin tunnels which take you under Combe Down and bring you out some 100 yards from where both Simon Gardiner and I grew up (SG is also Bloke in Bilbao, one of life’s oddities is that while we don’t in fact know each other, being of sufficiently different ages that we wouldn’t, we grew up in the houses next door to each other – we’ve met purely through this site). But they’ve gone along the canal and then up over Combe Down to then come down through the National Trust land above Widcombe-ish, below Rainbow Woods, round by Prior Park etc. A grand view down into Bath that way, but getting up Combe Down is a slog – yes, I have done it.

We pass through pretty limestone villages with old-world names – Avoncliff, Limpley Stoke, Monkton Combe

Avoncliff has stopping station – you put your hand out to get the Weymouth (??) to Bath train to stop for you. Conveniently there’s a pub with a garden with a long enough view down the valley that you can sink the last of the pint and get to the platform when you see the train acomin’. That’s for if the walk is getting a bit too much for you. Or, that route through the tunnel takes you by Midford and a small jaunt from there to Combe Hay – that little stretch being, in my view, one of the truly gorgeous little encapsulations of what we all dream the English countryside should be like.

There’s also a little spot along there. Where you can, just about and with a tad of squinting, see the transport history of humanity. Way over there’s Solsbury Hill and the motorway link road – very modern that. Closers is the GWR line to London. Below you in the little valley the Weymouth line. The local roads are very rural, definitely cart tracks now paved. And there’s the KandA canal, going all the way to London. And the Avon, of course. But also that much more local Somerset Coal Canal, rounding out pretty much that entire history of transport. All visible from that one spot. Even, just by there, the aqueduct taking the canal over the river valley, which is itself crosed by the viaduct taking the old S&D line over the canal…..if I’m not inventing things by now….

Oxford University college scraps St George’s Day event but will host Eid dinner
Banquet to mark end of Ramadan replaces formal celebration of England’s patron saint which ‘stretched back decades’

We English haven’t made much of St George’s Day for centuries. No need to, we’re top dog and that’s that. Also, we’re polite – famously so – meaning that we’ll not pressure lesser unfortunates by rubbing their noses in it in a celebratory manner.

Which entirely leaves time and space free for those less secure in their beliefs and identity to bolster their sorry lot.

He has an excuse. In an interview with Elle in 2009, Grant told his interviewer: “I’m grumpy. My mother had a theory about Englishmen: They are permanently all two gin and tonics under par. They need two gin and tonics to become human.”

Only two?

Gareth Southgate on England kit row: Flag cannot be called St George’s Cross

If it’s not red on whiite, centrered, then it’s not St George. There are all sorts of other colours one can have for a flag, all sorts of other colours for a cross on a flag. But they do all tend to be the cross of sumeone else rather than St George.

Radical pay-what-you-can restaurant faces eviction from mill it refurbished
The Long Table says it took thousands of hours of work to turn derelict site into a community space, but landlord has now sold it

Erm?

Tom Herbert, the co-founder of The Long Table, said the community had ploughed in thousands of hours of work and as much as £300,000 in cash over three years in order to transform Brimscombe Mill from a derelict site into a bustling social centre.

“It had been derelict for 30 years, roof falling in, no services, no electricity, no water,” Herbert said.

“It had been used as a place for local kids to hang out and play their music. There were people sleeping rough in it, it had human excrement in it. The place was a shithole basically, that no one else wanted.”

OK:

Faced with security problems that made the site a liability, the landlord gave The Long Table and its partner businesses a five-year lease, with a break clause at years three and four, at a near peppercorn rent of £15,000 a year. “The community rolled up their sleeves, people put in cash … it was just amazing,” said Herbert.

“We spent several hundred thousand [pounds] on making the building habitable, fixing up the roof, fixing up the flooring, which had big puddles in it and great big holes, painting the whole thing white so it looks clean, and then a lot of electrics and putting in a kitchen and things like that.”

The work was done in good faith, said Herbert, and on the hope that there would be the opportunity to extend the lease, or to be given the option to buy it if the landlord chose to sell.

Ah, yes, abject stupidity then. Capital investment on hte hope, not the nailed down contract.

There’s a reason us Bathonians think the Stroud people aren’t all that birght. Over and above their being too close to Slad.

Jacinda Ardern’s wedding night video.

Brings a whole new meaning to “Give a dog a bone”.

John Galt

A small note for non-English/British readers. We make jokes about, take the piss out of, insult, absolutely everything. It’s the defining feature of our culture. It may indeed be that this specific individual is not greatly enamoured of the fragrant Ms. Ardern’s looks. It’s even possible that you are or are not.

But that’s not the point. It’s a witty, if insulting, joke. At which point it’s a good joke to be shared because it’s witty, however insulting.

It’s also, to be honest, nothing about the fragrant Ms. Ardern. Hmm, OK, very little.

‘N’ if you don’t like that then you can fuck off ‘n’ all, right?

Madsen Pirie, OBE.

Shirley Bassey CH, which is pretty tip top

Bill Beaumont GBE, which is about as high as a non-political knighthood is going to go (for non-Brits, there are some 21 different types of knighthood it is possible to get and yes, they’re ranked).

Michael Eavis KB – Glastonbury is now obviously entirely establishment.

Tim Martin KB, which we already knew about.

Gerald Ronson KB. Clearly, that little difficulty (what was it with? Guinness?) is now past tense.

Anyone seen anything else interesting?

Liz Truss has rewarded Brexiteers and those personally loyal to her with peerages and other awards in her long-awaited resignation honours list.

That’s what a resignation honours list is for. To reward personal loyalty.

Shrug.

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has been crowned the most popular Conservative backbencher in an annual survey by a leading Tory publication.

The former business secretary pipped Miriam Cates, a rising star from the 2019 intake, and Suella Braverman in the contest.

He won the most votes from readers of Conservative Home, which is often described as the Tory grassroots bible.

The fun thing is that Jacob’s not really a toff. Plays one very well indeed of course, but it is rather a play. Pops was a very bright lad on the make and did very well indeed at it. But it takes a few generations to create a proper toff in the English class system.

London violence ‘direct result’ of Braverman’s words, says Khan

Just think if it’s true though (it ain’t, but….). We’ve now a Home Secretary willing to call out the English mob. Which is going to be interesting as that English mob has been enough to turn matters more than once in the past.

A British woman who murdered her husband while on holiday in India had plotted to get hold of his £1 million fortune and life insurance, it is claimed.

Ramandeep Kaur Mann faces death by hanging after being found guilty of the love-triangle murder of her husband, Sukhjit Singh, in 2016.

The 38-year-old, from Derby, now faces the death penalty with Gurpreet Singh, her lover and accomplice.

Interesting how British the crime was really. If only one of the three had been a vicar as well it would have been a perfect pre-war News of the Worlder.

One in three of the richest people identify as working-class, a survey has revealed.

The latest British Social Attitudes survey by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) revealed that in 2022, 32 per cent of Britons in the top quarter of household incomes – those earning more than £40,000 – identified as working-class.

However, 48 per cent of those from the poorest households – those earning less than £19,000 – said they felt middle-class or had no class identity.

As anyone with even a passing knowledge of Britain – or perhaps even England – knows class is not a matter of money in this country. Aristocrats can be penniless and still upper class, others rich as muck and still working class.

A recent Earl Nelosn (I think it was) was a detective sergeant in the police, another recent hereditary was a bus conductor. Aristos the both of them by English standards. Alan Sugar, rich as Croesus, life peer, is not an aristo. Never will be either. Partly that having been in trade thing. His grandchildren probably will be, his great grandchildren almost certainly. Money and class simply are not directly related in this country.

Linked, correlated, sure, but not the same thing at all.

Melvyn Bragg says his Northern accent was beaten out of him at grammar school in order that he “talk proper.”

What did he sound like before?

The television presenter, who has celebrated the richness and diversity of the English language in a series of books, said he grew up in the 1950s effectively speaking two languages – standard English and his local Cumbrian dialect.

“When you went to grammar school, they were determined to beat that out of you. So you didn’t talk like that anymore; you talked proper,” Bragg told the BBC’s This Cultural Life.

“We kept it subversive between ourselves,” he added.

Oh. So standard code switching then. Sigh.

What meal should be called “dinner” is a British debate as old as time and one that staunchly divides the nation.

But now, the argument may have been settled once and for all by one of the greatest Englishmen of all time: William Shakespeare.

The 17th-century bard and linguistic renegade used “dinner” when talking about the middle-of-the-day meal, agreeing with much of the North of England.

Yes, we knew that. The question becomes what did later people call it all?

What did the Victorians say?

Shakespeare puts an end to ‘dinner or supper’ debate
The name for the evening meal has long divided the nation but it would appear that the bard agreed with north England

And that’s the headline, which is even worse. Because supper is an entirely different meal anyway. That’s the light snack before bed, not the blowout three plater which could be dinner or lunch or tea.

Sigh.

The King and Queen to visit France in September

Ascend the throne, tour the lands you rightfully rule over?

Being colonised by Britain was the best thing to ever happen to Australia
Britain’s former colony is a prosperous, stable, modern country – something that cannot be said of many places settled by France

But then being impolite about France is the national sport, no?

Why adders could disappear from the British countryside within 10 years

Now all we need to do is wake Arthur up and we could really get the damn place sorted.

His parents largely lived apart, his father hunting in the country and his tastes not running to music. When he did go to a recital, he shouted at the pianist during the pause between a sonata’s movements: “Oh, do get on with it, man!”

Family abandons £2,000 Greek holiday as heatwave turns hotel into ‘giant oven’
Sally Urwin and her two teenage sons relieved to be back in rainy UK after being trapped in ‘suffocating’ heat

They thought Greece was cool at this time of year did they?

Why does Starmer want to add yet more peers instead of abolishing the lot of them?
Catherine Bennett
Published:7:02 AM

Hmm:

From 1985 to 1992, Bennett was married to Robert Sackville-West, who inherited the title of Baron Sackville on the death of his uncle in 2004