Real England

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

post pictures of men who look like offa's dyke

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

― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:41 (58 minutes ago)

there is definitely a book to be written about those south-midlands dissenter sects, maybe in a sort of gently sardonic louis theroux tone, 'britain's very own wild east and its fire and brimstone pastors '

so a good effort, but not really real

What nationality do we think the parents are? Russian?

kind of amazed they're advertising in public rather than going via an agency (there are certainly a good few agencies who'd be all over this), presumably they've tried a few agencies and been thoroughly disappointed by the quality of victorian governor available. or they don't want to pay agency fees. but then again this is such an extraordinary salary...

my guess is saudi/emirati

apologies for my ignorance, but what is 'Received Pronunciation'?
Probably posh?

Think anyone on the BBC in the 60's (so yes, posh).

my guess is saudi/emirati

― imago, Wednesday, 22 October 2025 bookmarkflaglink

You applying?

lol I knew you'd ask. christ no

Oh go on.

all other horror aside, this is so obviously a Bishop's Avenue assignment and I am very done with that part of the world

Does anyone actually speak Received Pronunciation these days? I always think of Brian Sewell. Maybe the meaning of RP has changed since I took sociolinguistics 30 yrs ago.

I always thought it was that accentless newsreader style of speaking?

Listen to Mary Greenwell’s Desert Island Discs from Sunday for absolute nosebleed posh RP.

There's also a Princess Margaret Desert Island Discs, don't know if that's also RP or something different. I once saw someone transcribe her pronunciation of "yes" as "ears"

Tutoring opportunity should inspire Tootsie sequel, where Dustin Hoffman character has been scraping by as accent/dialect youtuber, poses as relic of English Gentleman, successfully enough to be hired, must keep one step ahead of family learning cricket rules, tea, keeping hoop rolling while wearing pinafore etc. Heartfelt epiphany that English reserve is hard for both extrovert American and toddler scion. Lead character ultimately dies of polonium poisoning for his ruse.

In Preston apparently

https://bsky.app/profile/samwhyte.bsky.social/post/3m42d7npzic2h

this guy goes above and beyond in remembrancing, and he gets punished for it???
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgy42yjn1xo

Remembranoncing

Real Wales

should have definitely wore an eye-patch and mounted a stuffed parrot on his shoulder. This is quite amusing and got me thinking of that funny episode of Bottom where they are plotting to steal the wooden leg from a Falklands War veteran and Rik Mayall was claiming to have been at Goose Green.

xp yes sorry, good odds on the fake Rear Admiral being English though

i'll allow it

The Ministry of Defence said it was taking the matter very seriously, adding that impersonating a naval officer can be considered a criminal offence.

https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-1500w,f_auto,q_auto:best/newscms/2020_09/3243386/200225-village-people-cs-1112a.jpg

irl lol

lool

the British military establishment have got no sense of humour. They didn't even laugh when Joe Orton was defacing public library books and changed one of the play titles to Fucked By Monty

I once saw someone transcribe her pronunciation of "yes" as "ears"

this is hilarious

I'm suddenly confused - did The Village People have two sailors? I'm struggling to remember their roles. There was the construction worker, the biker, the cowboy, the Native American, and now I'm doubly confused, because what's specifically masculine about Native Americans?

I mean, they're all parodies of male stereotypes, but why a Native American? I'm going to do some research. I'm going to learn about The Village People. I've never really thought about them, but today, tonight, I'm going to scratch that itch. I'm going to metaphorically fill my testicles with knowledge about The Village People. And then I'm going to metaphorically drain my testicles so that I don't get blue balls, and also because I am a river to my people (e.g. you, you are my people).

So, right. Okay. I've done it. I skimmed a few bits of Wikipedia and did a Google Image Search for "cher turn back time". The guy on the right is Alex Briley, who originally didn't have a role. He was just a generic man. Then he was a generic military guy. He was a soldier in the video for "YMCA", and for "In the Navy" he was a sailor. Presumably if the band had made a USAF-themed video he would have dressed up as James Earl Jones' character in Dr Strangelove. The Native American Village Person, Felipe Rose, apparently actually is of Native American descent. He had a whole separate act that was folded into The Village People, which is why he feels slightly out of place.

So he was like Jetfire from The Transformers. He came from a separate toy range that meshed with the main brand. The chap at the front is of course Victor Willis, who was technically the only genuine member of the band. The others were hired to perform live around him. He also co-wrote most of the songs and is presumably very well-off nowadays unless he had bad financial advice. He either played a biker cop or a naval officer. Presumably he switched from biker cop to naval officer when they brought in Mr Leather, because you can't have two people in leather.

Imagine having two people in leather. So, today, live and in real time, you have watched me learn about The Village People. I climbed the tree of knowledge while you watched me. Then I came back down again and shared with you the fruits of knowledge. You ate them, and in doing so you ate me. If I can do it, if I can learn, then there is hope for all of us in this sick, sad world.

What does this have to do with England? Nothing at all. But I'm going to scratch that itch as well. England, coming up. A few months back I bought an air fryer. England. And a fortnight or so ago I got to thinking about Fray Bentos pies. England. They're precisely the right size for my air fryer. So I bought a Fray Bentos Chicken Curry pie. I was expecting it to be awful, and it was! That's English, isn't it? Expecting something to be awful, and then finding out that it's awful. "It's not the despair, Laura. I can stand the despair. It's the hope."

If all goes well here is a Youtube thumbnail of a grown man's head floating above and to the side of a Fray Bentos Chicken Curry pie:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0YRodlGjwIM/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEhCK4FEIIDSFryq4qpAxMIARUAAAAAGAElAADIQj0AgKJD&rs=AOn4CLDDsztl9xbgfFh9H3XTuVeRjdMHCQ

That is "Mike Does Food Reviews". He is English. The previous time I tried a Fray Bentos pie was a couple of decades ago, when I went through a period of revisiting childhood food to see if they were as bad as I remembered. I concluded that corned beef is still vile. Spam is nice if you grill it. Macaroni and Cheese is great except for the canned stuff, which is horrible.

Apparently Mr Beast is going to open a theme park in Saudi Arabia. We did that. It's our fault. He has conclusively proved that the problem isn't other people. It's us. We deserve to live in hell. It's our fault. We deserve to live in hell.

We used to eat Fray Bentos Steak & Kidney pies a lot when I was growing up. A chicken curry pie seems a step to far though. Heinz Macaroni & Cheese is terrible, the sauce smells like PVA glue that's gone mouldy. Batchelors Pasta 'n' Sauce Macaroni 'n' Cheese - grammatical crimes aside - is much better, although I don't currently have a bowl large enough to do it in the microwave so I use a saucepan on the hob instead. Also it requires milk so some forward planning is required if you're not the kind of person who keeps two gallons of milk in their fridge.

perfect macaroni cheese requires about 600ml of milk, 40g of butter, 40g of flour, 180g of various cheeses, big fucking tablespoon dollop of mustard, cup of frozen peas, grated nutmeg, then sprinkled with grated toast breadcrumbs and more cheese, and finally splashed with hot sauce. On paper it sounds utterly vile. IRL - it's the fucking bees knees!

You’ve done it now, Calz!

My cheese sauce for M&C: 50g butter, two heaping tbsps flour, one tbsp Dijon mustard, 1 tsp sweet paprika, 1 tsp white pepper. 400 ml whole milk, 200g grated strong cheddar. The paprika adds colour to the sauce - American M&C is often orange to match our cheddar and I like to replicate the colour I grew up with.

Fray Bentos is
* In a tin which is a nightmare to open and a serious risk of cutting you open
* Then it takes an age to cook
* The pastry lid is always half-soggy, half-burned
* The gloop underneath is like warmed up dog food, about five pieces of meat, either dry and tough or just gristle
* Nearly £4 last time I checked
And yet it's still around, unlike so many favourites.

Fry a couple of leeks and a couple of finely chopped rashers smoked streaky bacon. Set aside. 50g butter, 50g cornflour, make a roux add 500 ml milk then couple of hundred grams of so of strong cheddar. Add cooked macaroni, bacon andleeks with a sprinkling of breadcrumbs on top. Bake till top is crispy.Off you go.

yeah butter sauteed leeks is good to add, I do a few different versions myself

going to add some hot paprika next time

problem I have with making macaroni cheese is judging amount of macaroni vs amount of sauce, it always seems like i'm putting loads of sauce in there are every time nope nowhere near enough

Bacon and leek in with the macaroni cheese FTW!

Calzino, I bow to you, peas are non- negotiable in mac and cheese.

damn right!

I go a bit mad sometimes and add spinach or kale. Not very real england or real america

woke and cheese morelike

next you'll be telling me Popeye was woke!

spinach-munching, olive oil loving

I made some woke sauce this morning (spinach/capers/broccoli) and feel I could climb Mount Woke and then run a woke-a-thon, it's good stuff

popeye was obvious wokewashing from Big Spinach, behold this non-woke icon: https://dmrqkbkq8el9i.cloudfront.net/Pictures/1024x536/1/0/5/37105_desperate-dan.jpg

Viz did a hilarious "Desperately Unfunny Dan" tribute, in which everyone hates Dan and find his show-off strongman tricks very predictable and tedious and they all just tell him to fuck off!

u have to admire his hoof-to-horns culinary ethic

iirc he had a proto-steampunk slaughterhouse train with a fully automated cowpie production line a few carriages long. It seemed very complex and lacking in credibility even by cartoon-world standards!

i knew user mark s wouldn't be able to resist the siren call of desperate dan