Real England

where is it and what does it look like

Raymond Williams says somewhere that most people who live in it live in quite small towns, but there is next to no significant literature about same.

Of course he was writing before Midsomer Murders aired.

http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/64476/dscf1947scrsfr.jpg

^^^wiltshire apparently (i'm not sure i know where wiltshire actually is) < /the lex >

i don't know how the demographics break down now but i wd say that a significant majority at least want to live in quite small towns. also i suspect quite small towns are increasingly really dissipated cities.

Anyone bothered with Paul Kingsnorth's book on this very subject?

but y'knaa this whole problematic word "Real" - is this intended sarcastically, like is this thread about "what are the sort of people who use the phrase 'Real England' talking about?" or are we positing a defining core of Englishness that has history and still survives however tenuous?

i think it would be facetious to pretend the issue can be approached entirely unfacetiously

i was not aware of paul kingsnorth but now i see he has written a book called real england colon something else, i would guess it isn't the only book/treatise/pamphlet with similar title

work filter has thoughtfully blocked access to my first google search result, some blog with the delightfully making-me-want-to-stab-the-author subtitle "The Battle Against the Bland". i assure you guys if there is a Real England it is not battling against The Bland and that is an excellent virtue in itself.

oh right, that is the subtitle of Kingsnorth's book. okay then i will probably never read it since i infer from the book's post-colonage that the guy is a big douche.

the usual English attention to the wrong details

and some sadness for stuff passing that has not passed or was not what he claims it was before it passed

is john terry 'real england' dyou suppose

i infer from the book's post-colonage that the guy is a big douche.

― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:24 (1 minute ago)

h but f, nv, h but f

basically i was looking at the squad list for peterbrough town and noticed ryan tunnicliffe and lee frecklington and thought maybe those names were shibboleths that uttered in a certain way might usher you into the innermost real england

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01185/arts-graphics-2008_1185572a.jpg

the city hobgoblin as a good place to start! (of course he said british not english, right, re the wrong detail)

"... heir to an immense fortune, gifted by nature with a mind susceptible of noble cultivation, and a body endowed with admirable physical powers with the wretched drunkard who died in a gaol at the age of thirty-eight, a worn-out debauchee and drivelling sot... " <-- i am this very second ensconced in the village that surnamed this regency rake, tho he mainly lived on the other side of shrewsbury

nigel farage isn't real btw, he speaks for only his own constituency, which is seldom more than symbolic

is there a real england that is incapable of any sort of assimilation into colonned literature? a planar england that resists signification or commodification by interlopers from other englands

south dublin iirc

leatherhead is a promotory over a large and brackish inland sea that is never spoken of

beneath the leylines, the true underground

"Winter, 1981: the headless, skinned bodies of two bears are found by the River Lea."

real england is all mates and and blood sausage and big bottomed birds reading thew newsie-wewsies

nah it's hedgerows and birds and complete lack of public services

Oh it's all about the public services nowadays; a bus to take you into town so you can spend all night trawling the happy hour bars, a streetcleaner to mop up your vomit from the pavement, a policeman to give you a place to spend the night. No-one needed public services when an evening's entertainment consisted of watching the sun set over a russet autumnal hedgerow, lulled into a reverie by the carefree birdsong.

http://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/UckFrisbyPiltdown03.jpg

"Searching for the Putdown Man"

is there a real england that is incapable of any sort of assimilation into colonned literature? a planar england that resists signification or commodification by interlopers from other englands

Interesting question which I wish I could answer.

I don't know if I would like that England even.

is there a culture that can't be commodified? and i have to be v. v. careful not to paint my cultures, or the cultures i've drifted along the fringes of, as the only real England. the problem is that the word is usually only spoken out loud by a certain kind of cultural capitalist, whose vision of it is just as tangential as mine. bullshit about fair play and honest toil and love of the land that i'd counter with a nation of sneak thiefs, factionalists and urban wastrels. the contestedness is always part of the Reality of the nation, any nation really.

for every sleepy Sunday C of E-attending agnostic Tory there's an apocalypse-welcoming hair-splitting anabaptist

Everywhere north of Enfield is basically a wasteland isn't it? Brrrr... Nothing there. Just a man collecting lumps of mud and putting them into a cloth bag.

yeah but the determination of that which is essential need not be a question of mere majorities

everybody shd read The Uses of Literacy to see how you can constructively get this wrong in a way that doesn't just mourn real heritage centres. obv Williams and E.P. Thompson and Stuart Hall too

the determination of that which is essential need not be a question of mere majorities

quite so, how about the British Isles then as a dumping ground/refugee camp/Wild West for Europe and parts south-east, over millenia, fuelling endless negotiation and conflict over territory, and that is the quicksand underneath Real England that we think of as bedrock?

look mate there's no need to get fucking personal, alright

btw if i was gonna put forward one Real England it wd be old photographs of works sports teams or outings or other ceremonial jollies

it would be the commie permawheezing mustachioed drunk one in tinker tailor, tho no doubt they'd have you b'leev it's smiley or haydon

wait haydon was the commie?

SPOILERS

nah think he was the aesthete on a protest against the yanks more than anything else, wasn't the dude ciaran hinds played proper lefty in stated methods tho

the sparking point of Real England is where the plummy port-swilling foxhunter runs up against the chippy millenarian work-dodger and we drink each others' health and promise ourselves deep down that one day our kind will crush theirs

the phoenicians sailed up round to albion to trade tin for spice before the romans had even got out of bed, and if they weren't trading with aboriginal pre-celt and pre-pict inhabitants, then it was certainly aboriginal+1: an island of proto-druid shopkeepers since time immaterial

stonehenge is actually a kind of cashpoint machine

xp

oh, Roy Bland. yeah Bland is the angry Puritan I've been talking about, defending his country so's his people can crush the effete Squire class one day

but mark, who's to say the aborigines hadn't hopped off the boat from Boulogne just ahead of the celts themselves and so on and so forth??

irish close to turks dna-wise iirc

i think that's exactly what mark is saying, tbf

Of all the Tribe of Tegumai
Who cut that figure, none remain
On Merrow Down the cuckoos cry
The silence and the sun remain

xp he's called smiley, he has to be of outlander extraction

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2007/07/17/chalkhomer460.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8Xw7LplzFws/TpDJGHBmFGI/AAAAAAAAArE/CCJlpL9TMeU/s1600/yeo+valley.jpg

^ I wasn't at that FAP

clun forest all-mercian jug band champions, tractor runs on wattle and daub

never get away with haircuts like that up in the Danelaw

haha glad to see the ILX DUMPLINGS! shortcut is alive and well

yeah as if america doesn't have as much gross chinese food as the uk. prob even worse in the form of chains etc.

even growing up there was always some regional stuff on the menu at whatever the local takeaway was, depending on where the chef was from or whatever. also it's not like there's no relationship whatsoever between idk, 'beef black bean', on the menu at every euro/irish/english chinese restaurant for decades, and some of the more newly prominent regional chinese food you can get here. half the time it's just as surprising how much that has in common with some of the cantonese stuff of days past as how different it is. that plus like loads of the specifically regional chinese places in london also do a few canto classic things, and not just in the 'here is a bit of the menu for brits' way. like the biang biang places will do salt and pepper squid presumably cos people like it and they have a short menu of starters and mains. just a lot of change happening.

Why does it always hit the gourmands? :( fwiw the low fodmap diet has helped me a lot - the elimination phase is very tough but after that at least you get a better sense of what foods are your triggers. but obv your other health issues might influence.

haha - i actually have been sort of experimenting with fodmap diet stuff by looking online at it, and i reckon i've identified some problem foods. but i prob need a specialist to guide me through the elimination bit. my feeling is it'd be good to at least know the stuff i should avoid even if i don't always succeed in avoiding it, rather than flying blind as i am now.

I didn't click through to those tik tok links, so don't know what the negative online reaction was to, exactly, lol. Too much fried food, too much beige/no veggies? Chips and curry in the Chinese mix? Tbh, that's not totally off from my reaction to a lot of UK comfort food, heh. Or American! I do find that a lot of restaurants everywhere adapt (corrupt?) their traditional cuisine to suit local tastes, which is why "inauthentic" glop persists across the globe.

i just as often see people trying to do 'i am a food leftist' talking up the joyous alchemy of irish chips and chinese spices, immigrants adapting and creating new things, or whatever as bemoaning the lack of authenticity. i think it's become more fashionable to criticise people who demand authenticity in food but who knows when this could all change again.

I'm in a state of shock I just googled the Chinese restaurant where I grew up and found it's "permanently closed". It must have been there for 50+ years, with the same sign outside and everything. It's now a barbers.

I didn't click through to those tik tok links, so don't know what the negative online reaction was to, exactly, lol. Too much fried food, too much beige/no veggies? Chips and curry in the Chinese mix?

What I learned from Angela Hui's memoir (she gives a few quotes in that article) is that for her family the fried takeaway food is seen as "restaurant food" - something you might indulge in once a month or so, but which for health reasons you wouldn't make a staple. So while they were cooking this for the clientele their home cooking revolved much more around aromatic soups and plain white rice, much to Angela and her sibling's chagrin.

Curry of course is a complicated topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L16xxxVDGGo

Saw some stuff online saying Chinese curry comes from Hong Kong ppl working in India during the empire, but who knows.

think it's become more fashionable to criticise people who demand authenticity in food but who knows when this could all change again.

I agree, think it goes beyond food tho, general cultural shift where authenticity is now generally seen as both an illusion and ideologically suspect - random example that comes to mind is how study of old blues records has moved from "this was a total local folk phenomenon" to "actually these guys were super influenced by contemporary pop music and cannot be tucked away from that context".

Authenticity still very important to parts of the right but since those ppl are also tending towards white supremacy I doubt they'll find much purchase in food writing, lol.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b04sxr8s

this does a good job on the history of chinese / indian food, Paul Sinha's 'History Revision'

The only time I've seen a truly negative impact from so-called inauthentic food is when people think they don't like a cuisine or dish or drink or whatever because it turns out they've been consuming a bad version of it all along. Like, "ugh, I hate Chinese food, all that curry and chips!"

Curry and chips is good tho, let's make that clear

Was a real gamechanger when I discovered I didn't HAVE to have ketchup on my fish n chips, other options were available, including yes the divine curry sauce.

I didn't HAVE to have ketchup on my fish n chips

just introduced my gf's 13 year old son to malt vinegar this weekend, he was slightly dazzled

big fan of a sprinkle of vinegar on curry and chips

Salt and vinegar surely the seasoning you add before choosing a sauce?

Unless you’re in Edinburgh where you can go for the delightful salt and sauce on your fish supper. #RealScotlsnd.

depends, if you get curry and chips from a Chinese takeaway they've usually put the curry sauce on before you have a choice

That's the USA BBQ axiom: always ask for sauce on the side!!

This got me to thinking about Curry and Chips, the late-60s Spike Milligan sitcom. I often wonder if Spike Milligan spent his entire latter-day career trying to make things that would be shown on television only once.

Only six episodes were broadcast, in November-December 1969, after which it was cancelled for being racist. The Black and White Minstrel Show lasted until 1978, so Curry must have been concentrated, liquid offensiveness. I'm actually curious to see what it was like. But not enough to watch any of it. The last episode was broadcast on Boxing Day, 1969. Imagine the people of Britain sitting down on Boxing Day, 1969, to watch Spike Milligan being unfunny on the television once more. Truly it was a different country, a different world, different people.

It hasn't been wiped, which is ironic because it's never going to be repeated. Meanwhile all those precious, precious TVS linking elements from Fraggle Rock are gone forever. It does raise the question of when curry was first added to chips. The show's title implies that in 1969 it was slightly unusual but not mind-boggling so.

If Britain wants to be great again it needs to use the resources of the British state to retitle Wikipedia's article on "french fries" into "chips". If Nigel Farage can achieve this - I don't care if it involves nuclear weapons and withdrawal from all international human rights treaties - he has my vote. I would gladly unbutton my shirt and present my naked breast to his opponents. That's a firm offer. Unbutton. Naked shirt.

your wish is my command

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQTAMnRtyHo

oh wait it IS racist, I should not have posted

The show's title implies that in 1969 it was slightly unusual but not mind-boggling so.

Or else the title was referring to a clash of cultures.

... and nothing else.

lol

Six years later, Milligan once again blacked up in the BBC series The Melting Pot. Only one episode was shown, and the other five were pulled.[8]

That's the thing. I grew up with the media telling me that Spike Milligan was a comedy god, but seemingly nothing he ever did on television - The Telegoons, Q, There's a Lot of it About, The World of Beachcomber etc - was ever repeated. So as a kid I'm thinking "who is this man" and "why is milk delivered by electric vehicles and nothing else" and "why not newspapers or the post" and "could you use an milk-powered vehicle to deliver electricity".

Dot dot dot not repeated either because it had Pakistani Daleks, or random toplessness, or it was offensive in some way. The fact of it never being repeated gives his entire television output a kind of dirty, seedy quality. Like The Goodies. There's a stereotype nowadays that The Goodies was casually racist, but having watched it when I was young I suspect that the reputation comes about simply because it hasn't been repeated - and that it hasn't been repeated, in a way that implies it was deliberately suppressed rather than just forgotten about.

Episode two of There's a Lot of It About has some rare Youtube toplessness (at 16:20) that presumably slipped past Youtube's filters. The studio audience aren't sure how to react. They really are quite fantastic though.

I mean, there's the books. My Part In His Downfall etc. But this is 2025! Books are stupid. The written word is obsolete. Words! I hate reading things, and also writing.

We haven’t come as far as we would like to think when it comes to racism or unfunniness

I don't think Milligan was ever really funny after the Goons.

they repeated one of the Q series in the 90s, may have been edited, some parts were genuinely hilarious for example Hitler as George Formby, but it was 30 years ago and dunno if I would appreciate it now. But "grovelling bastard" is still an all-time moment.

Flashes of funniness but a lot of self-indulgent messing about.

He was good in The Bed Sitting Room imo.

But yes his comic reputation built on radio, not tv.

The goons has some absolute comedy genius in it but there’s still a lot of racism in a lot of episodes. There’s a lot of spike and sellars doing the two Indians bits, portrayals of Asian people, punching down on ray ellington, getting ray ellington to do some characters that were tired old racists tropes even in the 50s.

I don’t think spike was actively anti-immigrant or anti-minority; he was a jazz musician and the goons had one of the few regular black voices on the radio in the 50s. He was just carelessly and callously leaning into some lazy tropes for cheap laughs and kept doing it long after he should have known better.

And that is a lot worse

He was very much a child of the Empire too, born in India and grew up there and in Burma.

has to be said that Curry and Chips was written by Johnny "No Look I'm Satirizing Racism" Speight

I could never stand the guy, because roughly from foggy late 70's/80's memory he was frequently given ott reverential interviews on chat shows and genius comedy god, national treasure status. And I thought he wasn't funny and it turned me off ever going back to The Goons material. And he was a royal brown-noser, as much as he tried to make a joke of it by calling Prince Charles a bastard.

The goons has some absolute comedy genius in it but there’s still a lot of racism in a lot of episodes. There’s a lot of spike and sellars doing the two Indians bits, portrayals of Asian people, punching down on ray ellington, getting ray ellington to do some characters that were tired old racists tropes even in the 50s.

Well sure, I wasn't implying his radio work was racism free! Just that it was often v funny when not being racist, and that is what separates it from his tv work.

He did have Peter Sellers to work with on radio, that helped! Harry Secombe was also great in the Goons.

True, but he did write most of it afaik, and those scripts are often pretty great!

Would love an Annotated Scripts explaining all the contemporary references since lost to time.

He wrote pretty much all of it and burned himself out in the process, frankly.

Raynor Winn. On the one hand I wouldn't believe a word The Observer publishes, on the other hand I'm a big fan of "middle class grifter gets caught grifting" stories.

Think the article has her bang to rights, would make a good documentary podcast series. I suspect it's even more of a fraud, that they didn't even do the walk as described for example.

Her rebuttal today has no stronger language than "misrepresentations" and "seeking legal advice" - that's as good as admitting it.

Heavy Captain Tom vibes.

the writer of the article (which seemed a good bit of reporting) does fairly shitty podcasts for tortoise, who own the observer. i listened to one recently, for my sins. surprised this wasn't a podcast to begin with as it is so podcasty. on the other hand, surprised the salt path didn't also have an associated podcast, also full of lies.

Raynor Winn and her husband moth

One day raynor Winn and her husband moth went on a massive walk and so he got better from his incurable rare disease

(Podcast voice) but something didn’t quite add up

did he ever get round to marrying his son to avoid his family being charged for inheritance tax?

argh wrong thread, but a legit question for the Winns

I dunno that sounded pretty Real England to me.