Ingerlund

Following complaints that my last article was obscure, mildly offensive to Julia Roberts, Mick Jagger and the lippy masses and not completely entertaining, I have put my tail between my legs and agreed to post something else instead:

Sun is underrated everywhere but England. In England, people get into the sun on any excuse. It peeps through in the dead of winter and people shed their woolly longjohns and bare their flesh in sub-zero temperatures to drink in the meagre warmth. It’s both sweet and pathetic at once – these poor semi-deprived people who are so acutely-aware of their loss. I watched an Australian mocking their weather girl who was getting excited about temperatures above 20ºC… but the thing is that once he’d lived there long enough, he would get excited too. Apparently we might possibly have seen a ray of sunshine that day. I go to Spain or Italy and wear as little as I can because the heat seems so damned special. In Australia, some people look forward to winter and covet the shade. Vive la difference, I suppose. England has some good things: we speak English. On the whole, we celebrate diversity and do not judge difference. There are parts of London and even English countryside which are breathtakingly beautiful. The English are a proud people but more than any of these things, England is close to Europe and are awash with budget airlines.

So it doesn’t have sun very often? So it’s a bit cold, damp and dark for most of the year. So some of the urban sprawl (not Cricklewood) can be a bit ugly? Well, the thing is that the English know it already. And better than most, they appreciate what they do get when it comes. And so they travel. Even the closed-minded, unintelligent, erstwhile violent, beer-swilling hooligans – they travel. The thugs in France – they might not be as plentiful as England, but they have only to get on a bus to go to Italy, Germany or Spain. Do they? You betcha they don’t. England may not have much going for it – but at least its thugs travel.