Real England

so here i sit in a real England on a sunny Friday morning, but trapped inside the gloom of the institutional looking out at the sun, of course.

is our realness a sense that authenticity lies outside? what kind of culture will we leave for the archaeologists that isn't a bastard-Norman legacy of tea-cups and arcane manners? fate of an island to be the sticking point for a lot of flotsam and jetsam maybe, a 5 mile high mountain of tide-stranded rubber ducks and fashions.

maybe real england is that real desire to never belong, to always get back to sea.

got a familiar soul-crushing view of our education "system" this morning, that impossible mixture of stolid, meaningless tradition frantically being stirred by idiots with no plan beyond the conviction that stirring in itself is the most important thing in the world, as long as you can do it on the cheap.

the most beautiful building in the panorama in front of me is a corn silo.

tbf that educational system perfectly prepares people for 95% of careers

that doesn't help :(

gramnivorous quadruped ftw

maybe real England is something to do with the grey, measured chunks of work as tedium shot thru with escaping to booze each night.

yeah you'd almost long for a good steepling in catholic guilt tbh

some fear of vengeance plus some contempt for order wd be a huge improvement i must say.

as a newly invested minor underling of the boss class i've got to say i'd like to stab the boss class in the throat

have to embrace the cunt to get that close, is the problem

http://old-town.co.uk/piccadilly/

??

Ugh, found those Red Lion photos sinister and unpleasant. but it's five in the morning, tired hungover and dyspeptic, so a good time to catalogue some real England fragments.

I went to the countryside around Folkestone a year or so ago, to find the house a favourite author of mine had lived in (Jocelyn Brooke, himself a subtle unsentimental explorer of sentimental Englishness). But it prompted a lot of thoughts about Real England at the time. I'd got lost cycling out of Folkestone, and ended up a dead end, at an army base, with nissen huts and bored patrolling soldiers, on the other side was a light industrial warehouse/office building, the LoveWorld Conference Centre. Outside that there was a coach idling, with a bored looking coach driver (this image felt very English) and a couple of elderly people standing on a bit of scrub by the road, looking a bit blank. This was all behind an empty outpost of the massive Channel Tunnel complex that sits just behind Folkestone. The skies were very grey and there was a little light spitting rain and a slightly too cold for comfort breeze. That's one imagine of Real England for me - the slightly out-of-town light industrial 'parks', small offices with three or four parking spaces. And that untennanted feeling of places that don't get a lot of people passing through, from one place to another. Office labour with no places to go for lunch, so tesco sandwiches at your desk, while overcoming that wash of beery hangover, brought about by post work drinks and not eating properly.

When I cycled up onto the North Downs to find this village, I passed a field with a rotting caravan painted in UKIP colours in it. That rotting caravan by itself would have been enough to symbolise something about England, but the UKIP colours added an extra obviousness and curiosity to the symbol - THAT'S what you're fighting for? Tiny caravans stuck in a traffic jam on the way to Cornwall?

Then when I got to the village there was a village fete going on, an archetype of Englishness. But I couldn't shake the bad taste in my mouth (I had been arguing with my g/f it's true). The very fact it was an archetype of Englishness worried me. I talked to a few people to see if they knew where the house was, but most of them hadn't lived there a long time, not long enough to know about a very very minor 20th Century writer who might have lived there. And I got the impression that they were city types who had bought in to the English village thing. This isn't new of course (nor is it reprehensible, depending on yr capacity for 'city types') ! But the takeover - the buying into it - seemed complete, as if revived or maintained to keep up the fiction that had been bought into. I get the same feeling from farmer's markets. I like markets! I don't like expensive markets so much - why are these vegetables, and these eggs and this milk so expensive?

So yeah, what's this? The complete appropriation of village culture by the wealthy, as a sort of open gated community? I buy this to a certain extent, although I also know people who make a living from working in the countryside, itself not a romantic or sentimental activity obviously, and also clearly not totally redundant.

And of the rest - well NV's corn silo feels appropriate as an image. + boss class as a consciously boorish casual psychological bullies. A sort of frightened belligerence to them - male and female, although in different ways, and it still feels male driven. The whole lexicon that goes with that - the 'mate' and the 'footy', and the 'what you need to understand is' the mixed up with the dated, ford-sierra sleek meaningless facility of management speak.

Some fragments:

A roads (how you get to those offices, but also walking down them in the middle of the night because it's the only way to get home, drink wearing off, just the humming and clicking of the amber lights).

Complexes of artificial fishing ponds always strike me as bleak, but then I don't fish.

Middle-aged corporate car obsessed men who talk about women drivers. (A subset of the Top Gear world). Is there a part of Real England that they come out of? I mean surely you get the male superiority type in many many countries. But what's their flavour? I guess you get a strong sense of Imperialism from them. That dessicated 'common sense' that is in fact the hangover of a thousand and one fictions about Britain being morally great, right, and no need to reassess. There's the obsession with maps and how best to get places - surely an offshoot of Britain's tangled road system (see A Roads - a favourite topic of these men, with their bottlenecks, cut throughs, traffic lights and speed cameras).

Mark E Smith singing on live versions of Repetition in 1978/79 - (doing that seagull screech he does) ENGLAND! ENGLAND! (goes into bored dreary tones) Look over England, what do you see? LUST and DRUDGERY. (this seems more apposite than his definition of England as 'white bread and cynicism' which feels positively optimistic really).

a+

Wetherspoon News. Editorial. First sentence:

As we all know, a strong current of tribalism flows through the veins of humanity

― Fizzles, Saturday, April 7, 2012 5:30 PM (4 minutes ago)

it does in Wetherspoon's pubs tbf

http://i.imgur.com/cd07j.jpg

A simple solution to a taxing problem by Tim Martin: Successive governments’ misguided belief that increasing excise duties solves all ills within the pub trade actually threatens this vital British industry and the jobs and community benefits which it brings. As we know, a strong current of tribalism flows through the veins of humanity. Even in apparently orderly and well-behaved democracies, the vitriol of political differences is astounding, as witnessed now between democrats and republicans, in America, or perhaps even more vehemently among republican candidates themselves.

http://www.propelinfonews.com/pi-Newsletter.php?datetime=2012-03-30%2008:00:00

tim martin singlehandedly undermines the rationale behind your 'public intellectuals' thread

The Tim Martin pages of Wetherspoon News are incredible. The only writing which comes close to matching it is Ken Bates' programme notes.

Oh yeah, I actually read this article the other night.

In the last edition of our customer magazine Wetherspoon News, I discussed “euro tribalism”, whereby the highly educated elite of Britain and the continent sought to subvert the democratic control of the masses they distrust by diverting democratic powers to remote institutions, such as the European Central Bank and the European Commission. Another great tribal divide, more significant perhaps that Liverpool and Everton or City and United, is that between pub-goers and dinner-party-goers – and rarely do the twain meet. The last Labour government members were dinner-party-goers to a man or to a gal. Tony Blair was no lounge bar lizard, and none of his ministers resembled a pub regular that I’ve ever seen. Gordon Brown wasn’t a pub-goer, but, then again, he wasn’t a dinner-party-goer either, but that’s another story.

Made me spit out my pint of 'Veto Ale' I can tell you.

i've seen (and been) the guys who frequent Wetherspoons at 9 in the morning, you wouldn't accuse us of being a highly educated elite that's for sure

oppet otm. I read the rest of the editorial and wanted to take the rest of it with me, but a v v pissed Glaswegian sat opposite me and asked me to speak to his mum to let her know he was fine because he was too pissed. He then asked me what I was reading and I said Wetherspoon News and he started laughing so hard he began to cry. When he asked me what it was like I was still incredulous from the first article and told him it was like some weird Tory UKIP agitprop rag whereupon he became extremely angry and took it off me and ripped it up. Then he shook my hand and buggered off.

I had had a chance to read the letters page tho - and Tim certainly takes his letter answering duties seriously, with more soap-boxing. Thing is, I vaguely remember however many years ago the wetherspoons magazine being a half decent trade-ish magazine. It's totally fucking nuts now. I'm going to find a 'spoons first thing tomorrow to read the rest of it.

http://i1063.photobucket.com/albums/t516/diasyrmus/Photo1.jpg

Fuck. That didn't come out very clearly. The New England pub, dilapidated, boarded up, with a front yard full of rubbish and weeds, greenery crawling up and from within the pub itself.

so many dead pubs with hopeful "To Let" notices on them now

Some kids found a rotted corpse hanging in the New England a year or two ago.

Ah, they weren't kids, they were unemployed residents of Brentford looking for scrap metal. This story has all the decayed England tropes you could wish for.

http://www.hounslowchronicle.co.uk/west-london-news/local-hounslow-news/2010/01/29/pals-discover-man-hanging-in-brentford-pub-109642-25717583/

No wonder my dad seems to be spending all his time in Wetherspoons now he's retired, Telegraph obviously too tame for him these days.

oppet bringing realness

Unemployed Luke from Hornbeam Crescent, Brentford, said: "We climbed through a hole in the roof and it was really dark and hard to see.

"We made our way down the stairs and saw a light shining at the back behind the bar, it looked like candle light, we made our way towards it as we thought it was maybe someone living there, and then we saw the guy hanging from the ceiling.

"At first I couldn't take in what I was seeing, I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me. We got out of there pretty fast and phoned the police."

why does this 27 year-old man read like one of the Goonies?

A prestigious gated community development of 14 cutting edge 1 & 3 bedroom apartments, set within the conservation area of Barnes Common.

prestige vs haters of prestige = very Real England, still maintain the reality is the dialectic, no coincidence Marx worked it out fully here.

or maybe Real England is the glazed crust of the ruling order bobbing on the seething lava of the underclass whilst the surface dwellers insist that the world is stable and eternal

i like that one, but i mean i've only been over for the football tbh

hmmn i was going to a thread about the numbing mediocrity of current british domestic architecture once upon a time. you can find some really grotty stuff by gising 'prestigious development'. the insertion of 'community' into the usual PGD scheme is the worst.

rugby league is pretty real

theres a lot of confusion abt realness and representation, as if something being a sectional or communitarian interest means it says nothing about the rest of the population

rugby league speaks for an england beyond its own narrow constituency

Tories eh, not a fucking clue. Detached. That's a big part of this. The detachment. What a grim subject. I've slept on a few London pavements 205 years ago, I remember the 80's, the Strand and Waterloo, everywhere in the centre of London really, just overflowing with then Irish, ex-squaddies, ex-cons, junkies, and the mentally ill that Thatcher evicted. Senile 70yr old rent-'boys' with no shoelaces. Bullrink shanty town, nothing but piss and misery and death looming. I thought I'd really never see that depravation again in London. Yesterday I heard about Serbian people eating rats camped out in a Vauxhall park. Rat poison immune sewer rats, spit roasted.

some real fuckin realness courtesy of a guardian commenter.....

A Google User reviewed 2 years ago
Overall Very good
cheap booze. mid stop on a night. the toilets are scarey very small space with sex toy machine digging you in back.

swan-dived off the wagon

love this joint

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/40/69/2406959_c761ded9.jpg

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/45/16/2451616_aeeffffe.jpg

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6108/6339847459_63f11493fb_m.jpg

am frightened of death and responsibility, think that might be what england really is

Where is that please?

on Beverley Road in Hull, two old rail carriages living in an arch under a rail bridge, it's v. rough and ready but the booze is cheap, the drinkers are lovely and the music is 60s/70s joy

it's v. ull and therefore v. england, albeit the mad seafaring slightly vikingy exclave of england

got a horrible feeling i'm going back there in a bit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9pRBL1oYHA

A pattie is a fried mashed potato dish, originating in the north-east of England. It is thought to have been invented in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire where patties are readily available. The original pattie is a mix of mashed potato and sage blended together and made into a disc or square shape, then covered in batter and fried, much like a fish cake.

Never had an urge to visit Hull before, but that does look cool.

everybody shd visit Hull, i'm available for guided tours on request

Is the Adelphi still there?

somehow, against all odds, yes

wd tour hull with nv.

work drinks last night at a pub that does v good indian food. got gloomy and down on myself so left early. apparently someone's curry never came. i walked for miles down this stretch of road. took shit photos. felt like real england all of it rly.

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2012-10-16211843.jpg

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2012-10-16212102.jpg

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2012-10-16212547.jpg

those huge semis are v. real england

is that like perivale or somewhere

it always seems strange seeing those identikit 30s sleepy suburban semis next to a dual carriageway

both otm - tho it's hounslow/heathrow/a4 rather than perivale, tho i was in perivale the other day. 50m pool for some reason. A wall comes up after the morning 50m swim and makes it into two 25m pools. weird.

walked past one of those semis earlier in the day (they often have sketchy cracked driveways rather than a front garden) and the front room curtains were open and inside it was empty apart from a large tarpaulin covered motorbike or m'bike plus sidecar or something.