Tell me about the cultural touchstones that have shaped your sense of Englishness

[BornAtTheEndofBrightonPier]

Or Scottishness, Welshness or Northern Irishness, if you're from one of the other nations of the UK (I'd love to steal Under Milk Wood from the Welsh MNs, but I can't do that!)

I have a few:

• Squeezing myself headfirst through the hole in the Mên-an-Tol in Cornwall, while the woman whose garden it stood in assured me I’d be blessed with good health for the rest of my life. I think it was 1991, when I was five.
• Exploring Bronze Age tumuli (burial mounds)
• Turner paintings that capture movement and light
• Thomas Hardy's heroines, like Tess Durbeyfield and Bathsheba Everdene
• The excitement of being a child at the back of the car and driving through a ford
• Organ music in church (particularly when it's Bach)
• Georgian architecture of Bath
• David Hockney
• The novels of Graham Greene
• The 1948 film of Brighton Rock starring Richard Attenborough (I'm from Brighton, so this is an extra special one for me)
• The novels of Evelyn Waugh
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• Watching the 1946 version of Great Expectations on Christmas Eve
• M. R. James's ghost stories
• Hadrian's Wall and Sycamore Gap (RIP 😢)
• Glastonbury Tor
• Noggin the Nog (the cartoon Viking, repeated on TV in the early 90s)
• Maid Marian (the kids' TV show)
• Narnia
• Swimming around the arch of Durdle Door
• The League of Gentlemen
• Alan Partridge (even though I can't stand SC)
• Folk rock like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span
• The Beatles
• Roxy Music
• David Bowie
• "All the Young Dudes"
• All pubs with character, both town and country
• Just William stories
• Powell and Pressburger films
• Walking through Kemp Town in Brighton just as a sea fret rolls in
• The illustrations and stories of Beatrix Potter
• Beatrix Potter's house in Cumbria
• Brighton Museum and Art Gallery
• White horses carved into hillsides
• Wuthering Heights
• Lewes Bonfire Night
• The Burning of the Clocks in Brighton for the winter solstice
• The film Lawrence of Arabia

I couldn't sleep last night, and these came to mind. I'd love to hear other people's lists.

Swallows and Amazons.

Local football game on a Saturday, with family and mates cheering players on. Pint in hand. Kids running in and out of the club house with pop or squash and a bag of crisps. Friendly ribbing. Kebabs on the BBQ for a quid.

Seeing people piling out of the clubs on a Saturday night, everyone loud and happy. Bit wobbly. Women in strappy tops and no coat even though it's freezing. Heading to the kebab shop or a curry house. (Used to be me doing this, but I'm too old for it now, makes me smile when I see it, though)

Street festivals. Music blaring. All sorts of stalls. All sorts of music. Most people in jeans and T shirt or trackies. But some in loud and colourful costume, or with religious trappings. People smiling and calling out to friends. Eating something wrapped in paper. Stopping to dance. Sat on walls just watching the world go by.

I grew up in the Peak district, so I also have a particular affinity for dry stone walls and rugged granite landscapes. Blackberries trailing along a path. Hiking to a pub with mates and treating ourselves to a massive yorkshire pud with gravy and a pint of beer as a just reward...

Knowing what Spotted Dick is, without thinking that it is related to porn (as my horrified Canadian friend did)

Rushbearing (a festival banned by the Victorians for encouraging drunken lewd behaviour, so it was revived, complete with Morris dancers, clog dancers, brass bands and Vikings)

Garibaldi biscuits (eternally known as “Old lady biscuits”), which my grandmother’s friends all seemed to serve up when I visited them as a child

Being in the Scouts, often in a tent or on a homemade raft that usually disintegrated in the middle of a pond!

Watching sheepdog trials as a child, and having a sheepdog when I grew up!

Motorways. We don’t have them here in Wales.

Marks and Spencer sandwiches

What’s the issue with the maypole dancing? I thought it was a pagan celebration to herald the spring (wasn’t it banned for a short stint of time under Cromwell?)

All of this.

Plus a Sunday roast that has apple sauce for pork, mint sauce for lamb and horseradish sauce for beef. I particularly like that all 3 sauces are very different versions of a "sauce".

Why does identifying cultural touchstones mean you don't accept diversity though?

If every country was the same and homogeneous there would be no diversity. Are you saying that's better?

Couldn’t agree more!

The views from Westminster Bridge and Greenwich Park.

Parks. I've never been anywhere with as much green urban space as England. I like that they're in constant use by families, dog walkers, casual football teams, people just chilling out.

History. Sure, all of the 'old world' lives amongst its past but you could recognise a centuries-old street, town square or ruined monastery as English at first glance.

Rolling green farmland with hedges and copses.

Ordnance Survey maps!

Fish and chips in paper.

Pub culture.

British drunks (sorry!) For all the rows, fights and mess, we're also affable, sociable and very funny when pissed.

Our clever, self-deprecating, sarcastic humour - which seems to have been killed by the 21st century, but I hope it's just waiting for a chance: Monty Python, the Young Ones, Harry Enfield, the Muppets, even Mr Bean and so many more!

Despite appearances, we're a very tolerant, laid-back, multicultural society. This is what I end up missing when I live elsewhere.

The incredible variety of landscapes in one smallish island.

And queues 😁

Merchant Ivory films, especially Room with a View
Judy Dench, Maggie Smith and Emma Thompson
Have I Got News For You?
Brambly Hedge, Gruffalo and Lord of the Rings
Public Footpaths and Ordnance Survey maps

Sunday roasts,
Tea in china cups with saucers,
The Clangers
John Betjeman poems particualrly Christmas
Seeing poppy wreaths on Village memorials
Buying fruit and vegetables from the farm rather than the supermarket
Heinz tomato soup when you have a cold.
Johnsons wood polish and the smell of old linens when they are freshly washed.
Newbury fruits at Christmas
Elgar's Nimrod
Brass bands in park bandstands.
Hot water bottles.

Tedious and done to death. (The jam/cream first.) I can't believe people still think it's funny. I could scream every time I hear it. NOBODY CARES. Eat it however you prefer.

The annual rotation of Scottish country dancing into the P.E. curriculum in the run up to Christmas.
The Broons & Oor Wullie annuals at Christmas.
The Sunday Post (see also The Broons & Oor Wullie, above).
Castles - my part of Scotland is awash with them and we regularly visited National Trust ones.
Rowies/butteries/rolls/cookies and knowing that what you call them probably places you in a very specific geographic area.
Scotland the What? on the radio at my grandparents' house.
Silver birch and rowan tree woodlands. It's a mixture that I strongly associate with home.
Hitting the sweet-spot of Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations when I was in my early twenties - when it was an excellent night out with pals, that didn't require tickets/the bank balance of a small oil-rich nation to attend.
International rugby weekends in Edinburgh and especially the nights out after a Scotland/Ireland game.

The Greasy Chip Butty Song and other footy classics
The Archers
Beatles songs
Wimbledon Tennis
ice cream vans
Dads Army
People still quoting Allo Allo
Hendersons Relish
Yorkshire Pudding served as a starter with gravy
Male voice choirs ( make me cry)
pretty much anywhere in York

The "nausea, heartburn, indigestion" song from Pepto Bismol.

Walking through the dew laden fields to primary school (or sledging to school occasionally).
A big village festival whenever the valley flooded.
Learning country dancing, maypole dancing and (wooden) sword dancing at primary school.

The clink of the milkman delivering milk in the early hours of the morning.
Scraping patterns into the ice on the inside of my bedroom window.
Running from the bathroom back to my bed to get changed under my blankets because it was too cold.

Hot slow cooked stews sitting in the Aga all day for supper.
Dettol baths after coming home drenched from doing sport on the rain.
Counting the stones in our stewed plums to see who we would marry.

Being woken by the dawn chorus in spring.
The heating system in my local church that blew hot air up through patterned iron grills from the cavernous darkness below. We stood on them to make our dresses into crinolines.

Music. A lot of music. Hymns at the start of every school day and on Sundays at Sunday school and church. My parents’ friend getting everyone to gather around the piano and sing. Village variety shows. Singing Verdi, Mozart and Vaughan Williams in a multi school church choir in the cathedral.
Long weekend walks with my best friend and our dogs.

Reading endlessly. Especially Jane Austen.

Open fires.

Bell ringing and the sound of English church bells welcoming you in and giving you glad tidings. They always make me feel happy.
Family Sunday lunches in the dining room with the silver and porcelain.
Putting holly over all the pictures at Christmas and hanging the mistletoe.

Everyone taking turns to stir the Christmas pudding.
Family stories going back centuries etched into the landscape and buildings around us.

The faint baking smells that sometimes wafted from the kitchen when no one was cooking, which we said must be the house ghost.
My friend’s orphaned lamb trying to bark because it thought it was a puppy and forever after lived in the kitchen / utility room.

The smell of the bluebell woods where we had our camps.
Village fetes with all the usual games, home made cakes and strong tea served in Beryl Woods Ware cups and saucers.

Guy Fawkes night as a child: the darkness, the cold, the burning hot soup served in paper cups, the hunger parking and treacle toffee, the crackling of the bonfire, the sparklers.

Armistice Day at school: the whole school standing silently to attention in the cold until the last post sounded.
Ditto Remembrance Sunday at home: a great procession of veterans, scouts, guides and the vicar and servers walking from the church to the war memorial. The stillness of the silence.

Maypole dancing as a kid (born in Sussex, into a village that was in the domesday book, ancestry goes back centuries from my mums side)

spending summers in the Ashdown Forest, and roaming the local fields with my friends

Holidaying all over the uk but particularly Cornwall, birdwatching, caravanning , crabbing, holidays by the sea

Castles

playimg cricket for my local primary school (girls were allowed)

baked beans, marmite on toast, egg and chips, haven holidays,

morris dancing
Our village fair. (My mum got drunk at one and had to wheeled home in my pushchair)

cream teas

cups of tea.

Enid Blyton

I was born and lived in England until I was 16 and then moved to Wales. I married a Welshman and had Welsh kids so I have a very strong pull to wales but sometimes it’s nice to feel I can be proud of being English (without all the racist associations)

During Eurovision when it’s the UK’s turn to read their votes: ‘London calling!’

When you arrive back in the country and the pilot tells you the weather & the local time

Gently rolling Cheshire countryside with low white fences and clusters of red brick and old stone villages.

The landscape of Yorkshire and its evocative coastline but also the stamp of industry on its cities shaped by the mills and their need for workers.

The RSC and our theatres across the UK in all their glory whether modernist and multi stage, the Red velvet and moulding sorts and everything in between.

Fish and chips at the seaside and a pier promenade.

Home baked cakes and the BeRo book!

Northern Irishness: the hot press.

Saying thank-you to the driver when he lets you off the bus.
Complaining about the price of Freddos.
Coming into a house with all the lights on and saying, “it’s like Blackpool illuminations in here”.
David Attenborough, Danny Dyer, the Gallagher brothers, Alison Hammond, Dame Judi Dench quoting Shakespeare on a Saturday night chat show.
Hot Vimto.
Circling the things you want for Christmas in the Argos catalogue.
Hearing the antiques roadshow theme tune and knowing it’s school the next day.
The Royle Family, the two Ronnies, the ‘going for an English’ sketch on Goodness Gracious Me.
Arguing about whether it’s said ‘scone’ or ‘scone’.
York Minster, St Paul’s Cathedral.
Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, Zadie Smith, Jane Austen, the Remains of the Day by Sir Kazuo Ishiguro.
Pub quizzes.
Sparklers on bonfire night.
Knowing all the words to Wonderwall.
Shouting “wahey” when a waiter drops a plate.

YES. And traybakes/buns. Honorable mention for Joeys and fifteens.

I’m an NI exile in England and I love the institutions here. Our village church is about 800 years old. I work for an organisation of a similar age. The sense of history is wonderful.

Also pubs and curries.

Lovely thread. I agree with everything - apart from the inevitable mealy-mouthed posts and… Newberry Fruits - just nooooo! Saw them in Home Bargains recently and I was taken right back to skinflint Uncle Jack visiting after Christmas bearing battered box of the yucky squidgy things. I think those Newberry Fruits had been passed around all year.

Winnie The Pooh. Mum reading all the stories and poems to us - the pre Disney version
Tomato soup and a baked potato on firework night.
Pit heads (now gone)
Stone buildings, rugged mill buildings
Dry stone walls
Fish and chips from a chip shop eaten outside
British Humour. Self deprecating, or a great witty response to something and everyone just gets it.
The Royal Band playing 9 to 5 for Dolly Parton outside Buckingham Palace
Proper pork pie / Cornish pasty