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

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.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/18/sam-allardyce-mystery-mural-dudley-former-england-managers

Should've been drinking a pint of wine instead of eating orange chips

A local worker, who asked not to be named and admitted he did not know who Big Sam was, described it as “the random-est thing I’ve ever seen”.

He added: “Who is it? It’s just weird, it doesn’t make sense and it needs to go.”

art is just wasted on some people

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c39zel9ny94o.amp

"Jai says it's not wrong to take a lamb on a train"

real england

He said NJ would now have to stay at the farm after people have complained about his train journeys but he will still be feeding her so she does not feel abandoned.

... in Scotland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz-QN8Xrb4Y

“No talking video Sainbury’s Superstore Shopping Sunday 3/8/25” - 54:01

Not tempted to watch it, but good archival thing to keep I guess.

Needs an ASMR voiceover

Xxp You watched this while you were stoned, didn’t you?

The person that filmed it probably was.

Plymouth man has good reason to avoid package holidays:

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/man-left-broken-arm-because-10421316?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawMJhUVleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFRa2pEa016bW96ZDVxUzNWAR5xeizoJgFTyIW0JeoI41FV1-XpVs3UsNE6iRGimKykSFb3NEriCKQU_whhDg_aem_QU8p1HFZGowg5ofoCxk2ZQ#Echobox=1755077974

Real England stupid crimes

https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/comments/1moxhk8/i_need_urgent_help_my_wife_has_rented_out_her/

Now how did that story end up in a newspaper I wonder? I think I can guess.

(xp)

The top (and bottom) photo in that Plymouth man story 😳

That’s not his bottom line

-line- Oh my god the stupid phone

omg was just reading about him in Fortean Times... he says it's not all it's cracked up to be. The photo looked the same, a sort of blank, world-weary thousand yard stare

is he talking about autofellatio?

Well that’ll give you thousand yard stare.

i think maybe he does think it's all it's cracked up to be or maybe he wouldn't keep pushing his feeb stories to the press

As I was rushing to get ready for work, I didn’t see the excess shower gel in the tub because my penis was the only thing in my eye line.

Either his knob is 14.5" when flaccid OR he was wanking in the shower, despite being supposedly in a hurry.

It's 14.5" wide.

As we learned in the 90s, wanking in the bathroom will result in excess gel

"wanking in the bathroom"

Wasn't that a Brownsville Station song?

the article I read last night seems to imply it's 14" flaccid. He says he got thrown out of a yoga class and a hotel pool because they thought he had a woody.. he also claims he gave up scuba diving because the wet suit made him 'very self conscious' and he finds it impossible to ride a bike

imagine a Freaky Friday kinda movie where he swaps places with a tiny fellow, and hilarity ensues

There are other articles about him that cite different lengths -- including 12" erect.

File:Matt Barr, World's Largest Penis Cast on Display.jpg

maybe rather than a "grower" or a "shower" he's a "shrinker" and becoming sexually aroused is the only way he can bring his embarrassingly dangerous penis down to manageable size

i mean, if the press stop writing this stuff up that's an idea for him to use to get back in the headlines at least iow nv otm

how to speak hearing reading seeing about "Thomas Skinner"

*how to stop...

Known for his strong cockney accent and usage of the word "Bosh"

https://i.ibb.co/yj0BjLq/feawsfsdrg.png

Just read that Plymouth article - ha
Not sure he's actually from Plymouth though

"Real England stupid crimes
https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/comments/1moxhk8/i_need_urgent_help_my_wife_has_rented_out_her/"

I remember coming up with a similar scheme myself about twenty years ago. I had a plan to rent out my entire body so that it could earn money on my behalf. Meanwhile my mind would be elsewhere, having fun!

I asked my bank about the tax implications, but they pointed out that technically I was already doing this. And in fact my plan was the entire foundation of the labour market. So I would have to pay tax after all.

I then came up with a scheme to grow an entirely fresh body from scratch and gradually transfer a copy of my consciousness into it, and then eventually the "me-duplicate" would be able to earn money on my behalf, but the bank pointed out that although this was technically legal - within limits - it had already been thought of, and furthermore the training process was very risky and expensive.

So you just can't win.

'I found Sycamore Gap tree under my patio slab'

I see the explosion at Hiroshima