Wonderfully weird weekend

Mannequins, leopard print dressing-gowns (and slippers), chocolates in every room, pink radiators, purple carpets, flouncy dresses, stuffed animal heads, genuine Biba fabric, space invaders, shells, old violins and a tiger skin rug....

What more could you want from a weekend away?

I went, two weekends ago, for a few days with friends from university, to Priory House in Long Bennington.

You know, Long Bennington.   Yes, well, it's just off the A1 in Nottinghamshire, between Newark (surprisingly nice) and Grantham (never got there, but Trish can recommend it highly I'm sure) and was chosen on the basis that it was equally inconvenient for everyone (including the one who came, unannounced, from Vancouver.  There were tears), and that it looked, from the pictures on the Oliver's Travels website, brilliantly, extraordinary, surreally, decadently weird.  With added sequins.

We weren't wrong. 

It was all of those things (except the sequins) and more.  The pictures, taken on my phone, don't do it justice at all, but round every corner there was something else unusual, or scary, or interesting, or quirky or, yes, beautiful.

It's a Georgian house so the bones of it are beautiful too and the rooms spacious and very comfy, with ensuite bathrooms (more chocs and oddities) and the aforementioned dressing gowns (we failed to take a team photo, foolishly (though my co-conspirators are probably relieved)).  It is also, quite astonishingly given the sheer amount of stuff, clean.  We also had the run of the medieval brewhouse, with timbered ceiling, small but well-equipped kitchen (I was required to ring up in advance and check there was a cafetiere. There was), and big living room where we could blether into the wee smalls undisturbed.

It's owned by Roger and Carol, equally unusual and welcoming.  She's the blue-haired designer of the dresses (no pictures, because they (the pictures) simply weren't good enough, but think frills and furbelows; taffeta and lace; pink and green and purple and the sort of thing L would design as her wedding dress if I told her money were no object and she could have anything she liked), and wears clothes (even to the supermarket, she told me) to match.  She made one of our number (nameless, to protect the not-so-innocent) scream when she walked out from behind a mannequin unexpectedly.  We ran away in giggles, like a bunch of teenagers, and  had to come back to apologise later.


They were lovely though, kind and friendly: chatty almost to a fault, full of information about the village (two good pubs and a coffee shop which we didn't try) and equally good at leaving us alone to get on with our drinking, eating and catching up.  They even found several spare mattresses so we didn't have to share double beds if we didn't want to (there are four big double bedrooms, some of which they let on a B&B basis too).

I can't say much about what there is to do locally because we didn't do much of it. It's amazing how much talking eight women who haven't all been in the same room since the last one of us got married can do in the space of a weekend.  But we did have a drink and a meal in the pub and a potter round Newark, and those of us that weren't watching the Gherkin run the marathon (he did it in 3:24:36, raised over £12,000 and made the 10 o'clock news!) went for a walk on the Sunday morning.

There are plenty of people who would hate Priory House.  It's cluttered and crazy and has antlers and curios and bits of old toys on every surface, and what look like shrunken heads (I didn't inspect too closely) and a real tiger skin on the piano.  The screamer among us (who is also, as an aside, afraid of peas), refused to go into the main house because she couldn't walk past the mannequins.  We, however, with eight good friends, years to catch up on, the best possible online supermarket delivery, sunshine, no children and something interesting and quirky round every corner, loved it.  C is already planning to take her mum...

Disclosure - Friend L and I found the house online, booked it through Oliver's Travels and paid for it with our own money (and that of the other six people who came with us, we're not that nice).  While there I found a piece of paper saying that Oliver's Travels would pay me for a blog post about our stay there.  So I'm blogging about it, because you would, wouldn't you. But the pictures (taken in advance of realising I'd be using them on the blog - they'd be a bit better if I had) and the words are all mine and are all honestly what I think.  Although really there aren't words to describe it....

Five miles South (4)

Five miles south of here the ice cream has vanilla in it and the cheddar is yellow.

After nearly three years the ice cream has stopped surprising me.

The cheese, however, may take a little longer.

How to keep your children entertained for the whole* of the holidays

I had a shock on Tuesday.

It was the end of term.

Yes, readers South of the Border, you did read that right.  The END OF TERM.  On TUESDAY.  It's not even the last week in June and I have all of my children all of the time.

Until, even more weirdly to someone raised on English terms, the 12th of August.

As I said.  Weird. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but nonetheless, and I say this as someone whose children are still only in school/nursery half days, it has caught me unprepared.

Still, we have survived the first two days, unscathed, thanks mostly to the Toucan Box.

I was sent the Toucan Box about a month ago, and I foolishly started it then, but it is, genuinely, not only one of those "ideas I wish I'd had" but also one of the very few freebie/testy/bloggy things I've been sent that I will, honestly, be spending my hard earned cash on again.

It's a box which arrives at your door with no fewer than four (yes, four... if you eke them out, that's one a week, so 2/3 of the holidays done) crafty activities, a story book (Dazzle Duckling - I thought it was quite annoying, but that might just be because I have read it approximately fifty times in the last three weeks), colouring pictures, instructions, inspiration, and, and here's the impressive bit, all the stuff you need:  all the glue, the glitter, the paper, the funny little matchsticky things, the card, the sequins, even the bird seed. The whole bang lot.  All you provide is scissors.  For the distinctly craftily challenged, this is priceless.

Here's a little gallery of us making our stuff over the past four weeks.  Stupidly, as I've said, we started it pre-holidays, so now we've finished it and are going to have to get another one.  You, if you are five miles South of me, have three weeks to prepare. You have been warned....

How it arrived....

 We started with the peacock collage... (each of them had a different colour)

 

We did the colouring in, too

 Next up, the bird feeder.

Quite a lot of audience participation required here

In situ. Although if the truth be told, it didn't survive the combined onslaught of heavy rain and even heavier pigeons.  RIP bird feeder.

Next up, the toucan family.  This was our favourite.  I liked the very gloopy paint that didn't go everywhere when knocked over

and they liked the toucans (actually I'm quite proud of these too, although they are a little fragile for the amount of loving they've been getting):

And last but not least, we had the bird glider.

It doesn't glide:

But we enjoyed colouring it in:

The Toucan Box isn't cheap (if you sign up for one a month for a year it's £16.95 a month, and it's more expensive than that if you sign up for a shorter period of time), but it is absolutely, totally, from the bottom of my heart, worth it.   If you know me and have small children, these are your presents...

************************************

Full disclosure alert - they sent it to me for free.  But I honestly will be buying them in future.

*ish... but you could definitely call it 2/3...

Five miles south (2)

Here's another thing I'd understand if I lived on the other side of that Border...

When the holidays are.

No-one tells you this when you move to Scotland.  No-one says to you:

Yeah, well, it's pretty much the same: most of the people are lovely, but some are not. Most of the food is great, but some isn't.  Most of the weather is the same: iffy, but then you'll randomly get the most utterly gorgeous week when you're not expecting it.  They drive on the same side, they speak the same language but their holidays are utterly different.

Here's a thing.  Easter Monday's not a bank holiday here.

That has totally and utterly flummoxed and confused me.  B told me and I didn't believe him. I googled it, but of course everyone knows you can get the internet to prove any point you want, so that wasn't nearly reliable enough. But there it is, in black and white, on the calendar. Bank holiday (UK except Scotland).

Ah, and I was rather relying on him having that day off.  Whoops.

There's no August bank holiday here either.  Or there is, but it's at the other end of the month. 

I'm not complaining about this - we actually get an extra bank holiday compared with England and Wales (nine, compared to your paltry eight, should you care) - but I am finding it very hard to get my head around.

You don't realise how much you take certain things for granted.  The school year, for instance. Starts in September, as any ful kno.

Except when it doesn't.  Mid-August here.  Totally scuppered our holiday plans this year that has.  Won't be making that mistake again.   Turns out that if you want to go on holiday with English friends there's a pretty small window when you're all on holiday together and you need to book those weeks pronto.

What's the logic behind all this?  I rather thought the religious holidays would be universal, especially as Scotland has a reputation (which I'm not sure it deserves) of being more godly than England.  Clearly not though.  As for the others, I understand why we get St Andrews Day, but I don't understand why we get an extra day off on 2 January.  Are they really codifying the fact that Hogmanay's a bigger party?

And why the beginning of August and not the end? Or indeed the end and not the beginning?   My understanding on the school year point was that it started in September because that was after the harvest and when farming families didn't need their children so much any more.  Is that not true? Or is it true but not true in Scotland that isn't so predominantly arable?

And how doubly confusing is it to get my head around the fact that bank holidays are not only different (they are, in fact devolved, interestingly) but that they are also discretionary.  Your employer gets to choose.  So when the rest of the country, both North and South, is enjoying its extra Tuesday off for the Jubilee, spare a thought for the employees of the Scottish Borders Council, who aren't getting it.  Suspect there'll be a lot of empty schools round here that day...

Five miles south (1)

If I stepped out of my front door, strolled through next door's garden, (and the one beyond that), swam across the river (not recommended) and kept walking for about five miles, I'd be in England.

If I got in the car and went by a recommended route, it'd take about eight.  Or ten, if I went the long way round.

But either way,  it's not very far.  It doesn't have to be a very clear day for me to see it, either.

It's nearly two years (21 months actually) since we moved here.  And most days, living in Scotland, or at least this particular part of it, feels pretty much like living anywhere else in the UK (or at least those bits of it I have lived in).  And on those days I wonder what all the fuss is about Scotland and England being different (don't worry, that's as political as this particular post is going to get).

And then every now and then, something happens and I think:

Weird.

And up until now, I've sat on those thoughts, because I've felt as though I haven't lived here long enough to comment, or that maybe it's not here, it's me.

But, you know what, I think it's ok.  I've come to the conclusion that I can point out the stuff that's different without people thinking it's patronising, or getting snippy (not that anyone has, of course, but that doesn't stop me worrying), or that I don't love those differences.  Because I do, they just surprise me.

Like today.  Because L came back from nursery full of the story of Jack and the Beanstalk*. And we all know what the Giant says, don't we?

That's right:

Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.

Only apparently he doesn't. Of course he doesn't.  Why would he, here?  That's not very scary if you're not English is it?

Apparently, he says

Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of a boy.

Which, doesn't, to me, at least, have quite the same ring. Not to mention that it won't scan at all with the next line:

Be he alive, or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread.

but that apparently didn't feature either.

I didn't tell L that wasn't the version I knew, but it got me thinking. Is this just a sanitised version for the under 5's (that we'd also have got in Hammersmith) and do older Scots get the gruesome (but nationally inappropriate) version?  Or is this the one that's been handed down north of the Border since giants really did walk the earth?

And are there other fairy stories out there that are going to surprise me?  I've just about got used to calling Father Christmas Santa. Is there anything else I should know about?

*******************************************************************

*Actually it turns out that Jack and the Beanstalk is, according to Wikipedia (from which I've also taken the Arthur Rackham image) an English folk tale. Which explains the version I remember. But then if that's the case, why not just stick with that?

And a ps.  Apparently (thank you Wikipedia) there is a French rock musical called Jack et le haricot magique.  Unaccountably it hasn't yet had its British premiere, but click the link to find out what we're missing.

Politics. This time it's personal.

So, apparently, after lots of hot air on both sides of the Border, we're going to get a vote.

Scottish Independence. Here we come.  Or not, clearly, depending on what happens in 2014.

And, somehow, it feels personal.

Because I'm English.  Born there. Bred there.  But Scotland is my home.  And the home of my husband (Scottish) and my children (well, what are they?).  It's where I live and where I hope to die.  I belong here now.

But if Scotland, and the Scots (does that include me?  Do I get a vote? Will they be breathalysing voters for evidence of Irn Bru before they let them enter the polling stations?  And what about the many, many Scots living in London, or Luton, or Lusaka?) vote to end the Union, for right or wrong that will feel like a rejection.

A rejection of England and the English.  And, given that I am English, a rejection of me, by a country in which I have never felt anything but welcome.

I'm sure, in the years to come, we will hear plenty of arguments about how it's not England that subsidises Scotland, but the South East that subsidises the rest of the country (ies), or about how Scotland's in an arc of prosperity that includes Ireland and Iceland (bet Alex Salmond's wishing he'd never come up with that one), or economic this and social that, and what would happen with the pound, or the NHS, or defence, and how we do or don't need each other (and whether we ever have), and I suspect that I will have an opinion (ill-founded or otherwise) on many of these.

But for now, this isn't an opinion, it's an emotion.  And it feels personal.  And I don't like it.

Where are your children from? (Tick all that apply)

We've just filled in our census.

I know that technically we're not supposed to do it until Sunday, but there was an internet option, and that version didn't seem to care when we did it, so we've done it.

And we've struggled with the bits about how many rooms we've got (if there are builders in them and they only have half a wall and a bit of steel do they count?) and what our job titles are (am I a consultant or a lawyer? Or both?) and grumbled at the fact that caring for small children doesn't count as caring, and avoided any discussion about religion by not commenting on each other's answers to that question.

But then they ask about nationality.

And ethnicity.

And those are easy.  Right?  Because I'm white and British.  My passport says so. Which makes me, most times I'm asked, "White British". And I quite like that because it's a great catch-all for the fact that while I was born and brought up in England, my heritage is part English, and part Scottish and a bit Jewish and a bit French and a bit German and a bit, probably, if you go back far enough, Gothic or Pictish or Danish.   And when I tick that "British" box, for me it covers all those and more; a one word answer for the fantastic melting pot that the last two thousand or so years of immigration has made this country.  And "White"? Well, I am. Specially this time of year...

But that's not, or at least not here in Scotland (and I don't know if the English and Welsh census is different) what the census wants to know.  Instead I get:

14. What do you feel is your national identity?


Scottish
English
Welsh
Northern Irish
British
Other


and


15.  What is your ethnic group*?


A. White:


Scottish
Other British
Irish
Gypsy/Traveller
Polish
Other white ethnic group

And for question 14, I can tick all that apply, but for question 15, I get one shot only.

And in a way, that's fine for me.  Because I can, and do, feel both English and British so on the nationality question I can tick both.  Out of the list of "ethnicities" I guess I'm "Other British".

But what about the girls?  What about the baby I'm carrying?  Because three out of the four of them have to be on this census too. They're all under four.  They have no understanding of any of these concepts.  How on earth can we say what nationality they "feel"?

We asked L:


Where are you from? London or here?
Here.  And London.
So that's clear.  Not.  And where that question is nebulous, and personal, the next one deals, apparently, in facts.  What is their ethnic group?  Well?  They're white, that much is obvious.  But what about the rest? Their mother is a hotchpotch of European immigration and their father is half-Scottish and half-English and, despite a recognisably Scottish name, if anyone traced his ancestry, is probably just as much a muddle of different things as I am.  They were all born in England and now live in Scotland where we expect them to remain. Their passports just say "British".  At the moment they all talk like me, but the Scottish lilt is creeping in.

So what are they?  They're not Scottish, but then nor are they notScottish  and the census effectively asks them (or us on their behalf) to choose.  Bearing in mind that in years to come, the genealogical investigations of my grandchildren's grandchildren will rely on this census, this feels like it matters.  In addition, what B and I pick makes a statement to the governments, both in Edinburgh and Westminster, about more than just our children. It makes, or at least it feels like it makes,  a statement, and this is presumably why they ask the question, about our attitudes to the Union as a whole.

So we've bent the rules, for the children and for B.  We've ticked, if not quite "all of the above" on nationality, half the available options: Scottish and English and British, and on ethnicity we've gone for option B:

B: Mixed or multiple ethnic groups (please write in)

So we wrote: Mixed British (Scottish/English).  

And while we realise that "mixed" is really asking about skin colour, and that none of them is, by any normal criteria, "mixed race", that seems the only way of saying, as clearly as we can, that they (and we) are a muddle. And we're proud of it.



*Incidentally wikipedia defines "ethnicity" as:

a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture (often including a shared religion) and an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy., "...in general it is a highly biologically self-perpetuating group sharing an interest in a homeland connected with a specific geographical area, a common language and traditions, including food preferences, and a common religious faith".

How much you think all of that can and should be applied to the English, the Welsh, the Scottish or any other group I suppose is going to be personal.  I'm definitely not convinced by the "highly biologically self-perpetuating" bit though.  Or the "food preferences".  If the latter is true, I'm not sure my children share an ethnicity....

2010 in pictures

Some significant years in my life:

1976, 1989, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2008...

And now 2010:  It started somewhere over the mid-Atlantic, and ended with an Upstairs Downstairs marathon and a Thai meal.  I started as a Londoner, an employee, a mum of three and ended as a rural-dweller, a Scot (by adoption anyway), a consultant, and with the weeks until I have four ticking away a lot quicker than I expected.  

We passed through a third birthday, two second birthdays, Tunisia, Spain, the North of England (several times) and a great deal of weather.  We said a lot of sad goodbyes, and just as many happy hellos (and hello agains).

And here we are, ten days in, 2011 definitely underway, and I'm looking back at the year that was.  In pictures.  Sian at Mummytips has set up a competition, which I absolutely want to win (the prize is a ticket to CyberMummy, and the predicted arrival of number 4 some three weeks earlier means I'm reluctant to go out and spend the money now, but am nonetheless twitching in case it does all work out, I can go, and then then there aren't any tickets left. (I was sceptical last year, couldn't go anyway, and then saw how much fun everyone else had....)).

So here goes.  This was 2010.

 

Here's to 2011...... 

You can take the girl out of the South...

We’ve been here for six months now.  Six months which have flown by, and which have seen the girls settle happily into nursery, us embark on some epic building plans (no permission yet, we wait in hope), the whole family make some new, and hopefully to be good, friends, me start a new working life as a consultant, and baby number four make its very early, very nauseating, “appearance”.

So anyway, to mark six months in Scotland, we spent a week with my parents in Essex (yes, that’s my guilty secret) and I realised something.

I realised that the arable fields, thatched cottages and gentle lack of hills feel familiar, even when I'm in a part of the country I've never visited before.  That I can go into a shop in Cambridge, or Tonbridge, or Barnes (we did our usual flit around the South East), and not feel self-conscious.  That I can open my mouth and let the words come out without wondering what assumptions are being made about me.   I just feel at home, like that is where I belong.

Which is odd.  Odd on all sorts of fronts.  I have been made to feel nothing but welcome here.  We had friends staying last week, including, as it happens, another Essex girl, and she spent one morning wandering round town and came back saying; “People here are so friendly and welcoming”.  And they are.   Everyone smiles and chats.  They stop to smile at the girls, and ask about them.  People in shops pass the time of day, and chat about the weather (not as unremittingly bad as I feared, either).  Nor have I experienced so much as a minute of the much-vaunted (in certain areas of the press) “anti-English feeling”, perhaps because the English, and the Border, are only five miles away...

It’s not even an accent thing:  B, after being brought up in Edinburgh by one Scottish and one English parent, followed by eighteen years in the South, sounds (other than when very drunk, or very nervous) pretty much exactly like me.  I’ve met just as many people who have “English” (aka Posh Scots) accents as I have those who are identifiably “Scottish”  from their speech.   Even at the girls’ nursery there’s a range of accents from Scottish to English to Irish.  So however much it might feel like it, I don’t actually stand out because of that.

I think, loath though I am to admit it, that I am, in my bones, a Southerner. I suspect, that had we moved to Manchester, or Newcastle , or Birmingham, I’d be feeling exactly the same.    And I’ve never thought that before.  Other than a year in Moscow, I’ve lived my whole life, including the four years at University, within a hundred miles of London, and I suspect, from that vantage point, that I’ve poo-pooed the idea of a North/South divide, the idea that there is a difference.   

I’ve certainly been very sceptical of the idea that I had roots in the South – I remember saying as much to my mother when she questioned our move.  I said B felt strongly he belonged in Scotland, and I just didn’t feel like that about Essex, or London, or the South East.

I'm reading Map Addict at the moment, I'm not very far in, but the author, Mike Parker, mentions that he used to have a large map of the British Isles on his wall.  When people came to visit, he would give them a pin and say: "Put it in the place where you belong".  And it stopped me in my tracks, because, at the moment, I just don't know.

So I wonder.  I feel incredibly lucky to be here. The people are lovely, the house is beyond my wildest dreams (or will be when the Council and the builders have done their stuff) and the countryside is indescribably beautiful.  I don't want to be back in the South East. I don't wish we'd bought a house in Essex instead.  But Scotland itself is not, yet, home.  I wonder how long it will take before it is...

Remember, remember... oh, you forgot.

Remember, remember...

Remember drifting smoke, tasting of excitement. Remember toffee apples sticking your teeth together.  Remember ketchup oozing out of a hot dog onto your gloves.  Remember having one cheek blazing from the fire, and the other tingling with the cold.  Remember writing your name in a sparkler, and wishing you had a shorter one (name not sparkler).  Remember the crash as the guy falls into the heart of the flames, sending up a shower of sparks, more exciting than the coloured ones.  Remember ooh!  And aah!

Remember gunpowder, treason and plot.

Unless you live in the Scottish Borders apparently.

It's very odd.  We spent last week with my parents, and down there every second village is bedecked with posters for its bonfire party, each boasting different attractions; and vying with each other for the best, or wackiest, or most noisy (my personal favourite: the Battle-of-Britain-themed bonfire, which seems strangely inappropriate somehow).

Anyway, we have friends staying this week, and it being a Friday night, I thought it would be a nice thing to do with all our girls this evening: an hour or two of wrapping up warm, and eating too much sugar, squealing a lot, and generally exhausting them out:  followed hopefully by an extra hour in bed tomorrow.

But we can't.  Because there's nothing.  Not in our town, or the next, or the next.  In fact the only fireworks event I've heard of is a good twenty miles away and  even if we'd wanted to go that far it was last night.

Why?

I thought it was a Scottish thing.  It's notable that the one bonfire I have discovered was in England.  But then I realised Guy Fawkes tried to blow up a Scottish King (James was VI before he was I after all), so surely the Scots would be just as keen as the English to burn him in effigy.  Nonetheless, I wondered whether those north of the Border had a bit of sneaking sympathy for the incompetent chap's efforts to destroy the English parliament, but B assures me (as does everyone else I've asked) that the Scots normally go just as much of a bundle on the flames and bangs as the English do.  The image* above is from Edinburgh's 2009 celebrations, so they've clearly remembered....

So why not here? Or maybe it's: why not this year?  And, more importantly, how am I going to get my extra hour in bed now?



*Image from edinburgh-inspiringcapital.com.  Looks fab doesn't it?  Maybe that's one for next year....

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me

I wasn't going to write this post. Or not yet, anyway, but with the bloody World Cup coming up, I can't avoid it any longer.

Why don't the Scots like the English?  Why does Clinically fed up write this, and Dear Scotland write this?  Why is it acceptable to write off an entire nation, just because they're, well, English.

This isn't about football, or not really.  I appreciate that anyone has a right to support whomever they like, and actually I don't give a monkeys about the football.  In fact, there's a part of me that agrees with pretty much everything Mrs W and Billy Williamson say so well.  To be honest I don't really want England to win either. Can you imagine how unbearable it'd be to have to live with the knowledge of Sir Ashley Cole and Sir Wayne Rooney for the next thirty years?.

Now, I clearly have no way of knowing what Mrs W and Billy Williamson think about the English, other than the eleven members of the football team. For all I know, they are absolute Anglophiles in all aspects of their lives other than their sporting allegiance and their loathing (which I share) of the tabloid press.  But my biggest worry when we made the choice to move North of the Border was that I might find that I was disliked, and in some cases hated, because of the geographical accident of my birth, and it concerns me that this attitude may in some cases be the acceptable face of an anti-English feeling that goes deeper than just football.

Because you don't choose who to support.  You feel it.  And a significant number of Scots feel that they can't and won't support England.  Anyone but England. 

But why? And does that say something about how they feel about England and the English in general? 

Because people don't do this with other countries do they?  If I said I hated all the Germans, I'd be told to get over myself and reminded that the war ended nearly seventy years ago. If I said I hated all the Ethiopians I'd be told I was racist.  But not the Scots and the English.

It seems particularly silly when you think how few of us are probably actually fully Scottish, or English or Welsh, or whatever. One of the great things about this collection of islands is, surely, how we're all just a bunch of mongrels, a mish-mash of different nationalities, races and tribes.  Take me:  My four grandparents were a mixture of German, French, Scottish and English. Oh, and two of them were Jewish, if you want to muddy the waters further.

So what does that make me?  Well, British.  But if pressed, I say I'm English, despite the fact that I'm no more English than I am German, by blood anyway. But my parents were born in England, I was born in England and I've lived in England for most of my life.  So I'm English.  For want, surely, only of any other obvious definition.  What about those Scots who hate the English?  How many of them can honestly say they haven't got a secret English Granny hiding skeletally in their closet? 

And what about living somewhere? I lived in Russia for a while.  I haven't been back since and I only have one Russian friend with whom I'm still in touch. But I feel a fondness for the country and the people, so if Russia were playing, say, Japan.  I'd support Russia.  In the same match, B, who briefly studied Japanese and had a good holiday there about seven years ago, would probably support Japan.  So why then, don't Scottish people living in England, or who have lived in England, support England?

Every now and then I get told "my best friend/granny/sister-in-law's auntie is English, and I like her, so it's not all the English, I just hate the rest of them"  and it's true to say I have not once since we moved here felt anything but welcome, and in all the years I've been with B, I've only once had someone throw my Englishness in my face.  But then all the more reason that that argument won't wash. If you hold one person up as an exemplar of things that are good about the English and you're capable of being pleasant to the English people you meet, then surely that should lead you to give the rest of the country the benefit of the doubt too. After all, if all the English people you know are nice, then surely we must all be nice?  I've only ever known one Norwegian. He was lovely.  I sort of expect all other Norwegians to be the same.  Tall, not-as blonde as you might think, speaking perfect English, and nice.  It's nonsense.  I know it's nonsense, but that's how the human mind works.  Except for the English.

To the untrained eye this could look like chippiness by the Scots, or jealousy.  Or a small and oppressed country sticking one up to its cruel neighbour.  But while that might have been necessary five hundred years ago, it just isn't now.   Scotland's not oppressed and it doesn't need to be jealous.  I'm not talking about funding, because yes, it is true that England funds Scotland, but only to the extent that Greater London funds the whole of the rest of the UK.  You might as well whinge because Kensington and Chelsea funds Devon.  It does, but no-one complains about it.  This isn't about money. This is about power and influence.  And the Scots have those in spades.  Scottish people are very proud of the fact that the Scots invented everything from the telephone to tarmac, but it's more than that. It's more than historical. The Scots are great now.  Scots make up less than 10% of the population of the UK, but they are everywhere in power: in government, in industry, in the arts. The Scots are amazing.  They don't need to be chippy. 

The thing is that neither of us is a great country any more.  Today, we're two little countries in a backwater of western Europe, struggling to make our voices heard on a large stage.  Isn't it time for a little bit of unity, three centuries after the Act that made us one? Aren't we better, more powerful, more influential, more civilised, artistic and fun when we're together?  And isn't supporting each other in our endeavours, and yes, that includes football, a good place to start?

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15th June.  I have edited this post to make it clear that I am in no way suggesting that either of the authors of the posts I mention holds any of these attitudes. I'm sure they're both perfectly lovely. They just made me think...