Englishocity

How's that for a neologism? Several things turned up on G-Reader pertaining to Dear Old England recently, so I decided to collect them here into one handy post.

There's nothing more English than "a proper cup of steeped tea" to start the proceedings off. Paul tackles an important issue over on husk.org, on the science of tea cosies. I seem to remember someone on my LJ friends-list (I forget who it was, but it was one of the Americans, ironically) recently got given a tea-cosy which she's been delighted with because she noticed that it has indeed kept her tea hotter for longer. I have no idea how that has affected the flavour, though. I assume that it gets stronger, and therefore more bitter because tea does taste bitter when it's been steeped too long (or is that just me?), just the same as it does when the tea is steeped in a pot that doesn't have a cosy.

Kate at My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe (a blog which takes its name from a song by those wonderfully eccentric Englishmen, the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band), takes a look at the strangely prudish prurience that the English do so well: "The English must be the only people in the world to remove sin and voluptuary from the Garden of Eden and then adopt the erotic stylings of centuries past as an ornament only."

One of my Favourite Living Englishmen (even though he's been living in France for most of my life) is the wonderful Ronald Searle. I've said this before, but if you ever get a chance to see the BBC documentary on Searle, Searle's Progress, you should. In the meantime, no less than three posts popped up on my G-Reader relating to Searle in some way this week:

First, Todd Klein reviewed Down With Skool!. It's interesting to read an American's perspective on something that is very English, but is also pretty anachronistic to England these days. Although the books are still in print, if you want to read them, which you should because they are brilliant, as any fule kno. Immediately above that in my G-Reader was an interesting post on the public balls that used to be held at the Albert Hall, with a photograph of a 50-foot mermaid designed by Searle. (I was also intrigued to learn that the Albert Hall was outside the Metropolitan Police's operational sphere. Is that still the case, I wonder? Probably not, as it's not the case for Ely Place anymore. At least, I'm sure I read somewhere recently that Ely Place is no longer a Cambridgeshire sanctuary, and now comes under Met jurisdiction, but I can't find any links to back this up.) Thirdly, a few choice quotes from the Uxbridge English Dictionary, complete with a picture of one of my other favourite Englishmen, Alistair Sim dressed as Millicent Fritton from the original St Trinian's films.

A couple of England-centric blogs you should check out: Unmitigated England tends to explore hidden corners of the countryside and the culture, usually from a historical bent. English Buildings does much the same kind of thing, but focussing on architecture, most often buildings in small market towns that get overlooked because they're not anywhere famous enough to be special.

I've never been to Bletchley Park, but it was on my list of places to visit this year even before the Save Bletchley Park campaign started. A bunch of folk I know are there today, you can follow their conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #BPark The people at Bletchley seem to have started a brand new Twitter account today as well.

Daniel's post on the Straw Bear Festival over at Dig Your Fins, and the recent (inaccurate) news about the decline of Morris dancing reminded me of some amazing photos that did the rounds in some photography magazines last year, taken by the artist Faye Claridge.

Only A Stranger Can Bring Good Luck, Only A Known Man Can Hang

The interesting thing about these photos (and I recommend clicking the above link to see the others) — aside from the way Claridge has given them a lush, almost jungle-like backdrop and lit from the front to give the images those great Stygian edges — is that in several of them, the men are blacked-up. When I was a kid, I saw my share of Morris dancers because we spent some summers exploring bits of the UK on holiday and there was always some sort of traditional thing going on for the tourists — I hated the Morris dancing then; I found it boring, but I'm actually fond of it now. I must be getting middle-aged.

I don't remember ever seeing the dancers blacked-up, though, until about eight years ago, visiting a friend in Nottingham. We saw a Morris dancer in black face for the first time, and it shocked us both, because we only associated black-face with dubiously racist material. The surreal experience of going for a quiet Sunday afternoon drink and discovering the pub we'd chosen had also been chosen by a troupe of Morris dancers for a local folk festival probably had something to do with it, as well. It was only later that I learnt this wasn't a bizarre anomaly on the part of the troupe, but that the black face was once a part of the form, allegedly started by Cornish miners who put soot on their faces to imitate some visiting Moors, though that's been disputed. Yep, Moorish dancers. Once again, something believed to be so very quaintly English turns out to have been appropriated from something invented by them nasty furriners. Just like fish and chips (deep frying food is apparently attributable to the Portuguese, and no one is really sure where chips originated, but it wasn't Britain). According to this article on wikipedia, the black-face tradition in Morris dancing doesn't go back as far as first suggested, and only dates back to the nineteenth century. I wonder where/when it did originate from, then?

And finally, something wonderfully silly: the Great British Smell Map. Just what the interwubs was made for!