Daub yourself like the above and bathe clean in lager; for the World Cup is here.
The eve of the 2010 World Cup is upon us. In England a cacophony of media coverage and tabloid pull-outs are set to conjure excitement bordering on delirium; all time high lager sales, an unprecedented amount of sick days, patriotism spilling over into xenophobia, and flags. Endless flags.
It struck me last week just how much English people like to remind other English people that they are more proud to be English than them, or remind their foreign neighbours whose country this is, right? Perhaps this is just a cynical account of what is really an admirable pride, but their is something about English flags flapping in the English wind that I don’t quite understand. More specifically, flags on the cars and porches of suburban English dwellings. It is fair to say that the average English home is not an English embassy; and likewise the average car is not a English chariot (or similar military vehicle that invokes images of Englands ‘glory years’.) People of England, with this in mind: don’t dress them so.
Until recently I would pass the chariot of a UKIP member on my daily walk to work (I imagine this person envisaged their Renault Espace as an essential publicity behemoth in the campaign to free the UK from the tyrannical grip of Europe.) I resisted the temptation to leave a flyer for a Polish restaurant under the wiperblade and wait furtively nearby to gauge the reaction by the driver upon discovery. Or better still, to ask an Eastern European car washer from the local Tesco car park to loiter around the car at 17:00 and ask the driver if he would like his car cleaned. Cleaned of its filthy associations that is.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m in the USA for the duration of the World Cup I would be reluctant to adorn my car with an English flag because of the inevitable presumption that would follow me, namely that I am a xenophobic, bigotted twat. The same applies to porches and second story windows; ‘An Englishmen’s home is his castle’ is a metaphor lost on some of the Sun reading, Carling guzzling trogladites of this nation. Taken to its grim, literal conclusion it becomes a house decoration second only in bad taste to Christmas lights. It’s a shame, but perhaps it is just my housekeeping snobbery rather than a widely held sentiment that is inducing this association between zenophobic stereotypes and ‘flag users’.*
Having said all this, come June I will be in a bar in California, with my England shirt on, repeatedly chanting ‘Rooney’, and pumping my fist every time England put a goal past the USA (this latter comment is an example of a presumptuousness only exhibited to such a degree by English sport fans.) Throughout the tournament I will undoubtedly border on unreasonable feelings of patriotism to the point of hatred of whoever Englands opponents are. I will leave every game I’ve watched (or more likely endured), with my heart filled with pride, with visions of English fields, flag adorned Vauxhall Astras and Pukka Pies. I will have in my head a perfect tabloid front page image, and I will love it.
*A good friend of mine, who is in no way the afore mentioned stereotype, recently stood atop Mount Snowdown with his English flag; this being an entirely acceptable context for a flag to make an appearance.
whatsnotontv 