What is English Culture?

[tortoiseshell]

We stopped at a service station last week, and also in the car park was a busload of Indians going to a wedding. The ladies were all wearing beautiful saris, and the men had got some drums out and were doing some Indian dancing in the car park. This got me thinking - what is English culture (I've specified English because I think Scottish,Welsh and Irish culture is fairly clear). By culture I mean things that children grow up knowing because they're done in the family, clothes etc. Basically, if there was a 'FESTIVAL OF ENGLAND' what would be in it.

I couldn't really think of anything which I think is a real shame - the only things I eventually thought of were cricket and rowing/punting.

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I went to uni in Edinburgh and concur to some extent with the aggressive statements made about the English.
The Welsh (generally,and God I hate it when people tell me not to generalise-how the hell else can you make a point?)are by and large fairly mild mannered but any anger is due to centuries of being shat upon by the English for aeons.

You people know about the Welsh knot? A lump of wood hung around the neck of any child who dared to use Welsh in school. The onus was then on him to find somewhere else speaking Welsh and pass the knot on. On it went and whoever was wearing it at the end of the day got a good beating.

Of course things are said about the English one wouldn't dare say about other races. Not much chance of them being ground even further into the dust.

(I'm staying calm,I'm staying calm..)

[serene,imminently to adopt a soothing yoga pose and breathing deeply icon]

Err,don't concur with the aggressive statements. Rather,acknowledge that they are made.

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Quite Pruni.
(and let's not even start on Ireland!!)

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Fish and chips with strong tea and bread and butter.
Shepherds pie
Coronation Chicken
Watercress

As Pink Floyd put it: Hanging on in quiet desparation. . .

What would be in a festival of England? These things off the top of my head:
Cream teas
Cricket
lawn tennis
Fish and chips
Roast beef
School/church fetes
Morris dancing
animal shows
Shakespeare
Theatre
gardening
ice cream cones

Not sure if has already been mentioned, but MURDER! Noone does murder mystery like the English. And bodies under the patio!

Cucumber sandwiches
tea in bone china cups

Def dont want to get started on Ireland Have to say re the Paddys day/Georges day the Irish have a tradition of parades on Paddies day and most villages have one. Its a tradition that has been brought to every corner of the world by the Irish so cant see what the problem is really.

Had a parade on St Georges day in our area this year too.

Oh yes Fairymum. there is nothing like a good english whodunnit. Fantastic!!

I'm rather partial to you too moondog. I hadn't heard about the Welsh knot. It wasn't me though, honest.

You're right. 'Racism' is the wrong term and lazy of me. It a smilary sort of bigotry though.

I have heard all about the Highland clearances and Culloden as remeber sinking into my chair in history class several times for fear of being personally blamed. I was taught, along with my classmates, to hate the English.

I now have a fuller understanding.
It wasn't 'The English' behind this repression, it was the English landowning class. English peasants were forced off the land by the enclosure acts and ended up as wage slaves working up to sixteen hours a day in dangerous factories and mines. Many more millions of English peasants were beaten, disenfranchised, transported to the colonies, hanged and starved to death by their own upper class and used as cannon fodder for colonial wars.
This is something which I didn't learn in history in my Scottish school.

As for the Highland Clearances, two thirds of the landowners responsible were the existing Scottish landowners looking for a quick buck from the new farming methods and willing to sell out their own people for cash.

Culloden in the minds of the English redcoats fighting at the battle was the culmination of almost a century of continual Scottish invasion of England.

1648 - approx 60% of Charles' army was Scottish and 40% French mercenaries.
1715 - A full-scale invasion by Scottish Jacobites.
1745 - Same again. Result, Culloden.

I don't think anyone comes off smelling of roses but IME the English don't hate the Scots like the Scots hate the English.

Tarantula, my Dh is just annoyed that we have nothing to celebrate St Georges Day in our area yet everyone goes out to celebrate St Patricks Day...round here mainly to get drunk, have done so myself, was great fun! he's not anti-Irish, not with my Mom as a MIL!!!

lol Im sure hes not Lizzylou. My dp comees out with things like that too so I told him if he was desperate for a parade to get up off his arse and organise one .

I think the pubs (ceratinly here anyway) are begining to cotton on to St Georges day which can only be a good thing but to my mind the really SERIOUS campaign needs to be to get a DAY OFF on St Georges day that way we could celebrate it in style. Whos up for a campaign on that one then??????

I'm in tarantula.

Love the thread, and agree with Bill Bryson having the ultimate 'being English' list...

I'd say stamps (didn't the English invent the postage stamp?), The Queen and her speech, Coronation St, Eastenders, car boot sales, roses and rose gardens, tea, tea-parties and tea-time, clotted cream, humour and irony, boys wearing trousers, sandcastles, yorkshire pudding, spotted dick, yorkshire terriers

Me too tarantula!
And actually, so as not to offend anyone else, one day off each for St Davids/St Patricks and ST Andrews Days too!

Just had a really English moment - popped into the kitchen to stir some plum jam and the doorbell rang. Strange woman clutching large handful of runner beans. It's a friend of my neighbour (who is away on a Saga holiday to the fjords!) who has come round to water the garden and while there, picked some runner beans and 'would have them myself only my neighbour gives me his from his allotment', so she gave them to me. I thought of this thread at once. Runner beans, jam, neighbours dropping things off and watering gardens for friends....

I lived in glasgow for 5 years have to say I found it really tough being english there and indeed was a major factor in me moving. I have to say when somebody says refers to english as an insult - it mayn't be racist in the traditional sense but its certainly unpleasant to be on the recieving end! I read an interesting article about the need to move on from your history and live in the now the other day - very interesting!
Anyway

Typical english things;

garden parties
wimbledon
croquet
pimms
fish & Chips
Pies
Bangers and Mash
A[pologising even when you've done nothing wrong - but thats maybe more british!

Celebrating underdogs,
Fox hunting
Slapstick
Shakespeare
Hillocks
Meadows
Drunken young men abroad

What this thread dead too? Surely not. And it started with such promise.
I'm on a thread massacre lately.
I'm just picking them off as soon as they appear.

Pantomimes, Carry On films, The Office.
Hating your boss as a matter of principle.

A sense of humour
Women who know how to relax,have a good time and even (Heaven forbid!) laugh at themselves.
There are surprisingly few places where this is the case.

Gotta mention Dandelion and Burdock and of course Lashings of Gingerbeer.