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English: A Story of Marmite, Queuing and Weather
Ben Fogle
What makes the English English? Is it their eccentricity, their passionate love (or, indeed, hatred) of Marmite – or is it something less easily defined?Beginning at the top of a muddy Gloucestershire slope at the Coopers Hill cheese-rolling contest and traversing a landscape of lawns and queues, coastlines and sporting arenas, Ben Fogle takes us on a journey through the peculiarly English: a country of wax jackets, cricket, boat races and jellied eels, by way of national treasures such as the shipping forecast, fish and chips and the Wellington boot. Not to mention the Dunkirk spirit of relentless optimism in the face of adversity, be it the heroic failure of Captain Scott’s doomed Antarctic expedition, or simply the perennial hope for better weather.The archetypal Englishman – lover of labradors and Land Rovers yet holder of two passports – Ben applauds all things quintessentially English while also paying tribute to the history, culture and ideas adopted with such gusto that they have become part of the fabric of the country. Written with Ben’s trademark warmth and wit, this is a light-hearted yet touching tribute to all things English.
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COPYRIGHT (#uc160ba66-cd37-5080-8e25-3dc7c00fd947)
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017
Text copyright © Ben Fogle 2017
Photographs © Individual copyright holders
Cover photograph © Simon Warren
Ben Fogle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008222284
Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008222260
Version: 2018-02-21
CONTENTS
COVER (#uced949c8-d306-57ae-87ff-73dc5649bac3)
TITLE PAGE (#u4f7e0814-65c0-5bff-97f0-12f99f2a172e)
COPYRIGHT (#u14c58cd9-37f4-53e9-bbdc-79a378b8c310)
PROLOGUE (#u6af7cc78-cffd-5c06-a71b-dfd81277db08)
INTRODUCTION: LIVING ENGLISHLY (#uf8a8644f-5b99-545e-9c33-d66080cac023)
Chapter One: WHATEVER THE WEATHER (#u3ab76df2-536b-5d22-9ac9-d6d85cc4afab)
Chapter Two: THE SHIPPING FORECAST (#udf5bbc17-7454-56df-a1d7-616034df0d26)
Chapter Three: HEROIC FAILURES (#u2da6fd3f-7111-59e9-9ec8-820c4b831c0e)
Chapter Four: STRAWBERRIES AND CREAM (#u6f5aa7b6-8a94-519d-8ac9-b2771c73a76b)
Chapter Five: MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN (#ucc075875-dccd-51d3-825d-c869549bd33d)
Chapter Six: WELLIES, WAX, BARBOURS AND BOWLERS (#u8c01eef2-517b-5604-b5b2-c5f2c70bc806)
Chapter Seven: THE SILLY SEASON (#u4565c217-13fc-50ac-9373-e786c9c72a7e)
Chapter Eight: OO-ER, MISSUS, IT’S LORD BUCKETHEAD (#udb3ce127-07a8-52fe-8b5c-e993e5feb0a6)
Chapter Nine: RAINING CATS AND DOGS (#ucb5b1983-805a-583e-80ab-9b3e6228cdf5)
Chapter Ten: THE QUEEN’S SANDMAN AND SWANMAN (#u6e8c278f-39a9-5b9b-bf2e-512a5e26bcca)
Chapter Eleven: I’M SORRY, I HAVEN’T A QUEUE (#udccd1fd7-e463-57cc-b712-1f085a1a0a0f)
Chapter Twelve: GRUB (#u6f4195ce-a35f-5f88-a624-82d81f704ba3)
Chapter Thirteen: ENGLAND’S GREEN AND PLEASANT LANDS (#u6aae0b24-2230-52e8-b54a-e1978b23ad27)
Chapter Fourteen: THE WORD (#uee2ee55b-191d-5e4a-b968-12b4d0ba48f7)
Chapter Fifteen: TEA AND SYMPATHY (#u12d45e81-cee1-50c5-ad85-48e7e1d9b2be)
CONCLUSION (#ub38531c7-b666-54f1-b309-d0bd8d907d20)
PICTURE SECTION (#u0ea93b14-8dd5-5f6c-86d7-da061accd593)
INDEX (#ua009c3f6-1725-544c-b3e8-d431a241aa8d)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#uc74e4dbf-e643-5dfa-9b43-e66d7da8932c)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#u81eab9cb-9795-5dec-b0e7-ac3c11a43137)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#u3ddf48ea-9cf7-5f36-95c6-7bcc8250d747)
PROLOGUE (#uc160ba66-cd37-5080-8e25-3dc7c00fd947)
There was a hubbub of excited chatter as, clutching steaming cups of tea, the women gathered around a series of small tables to admire the spoils of war. The Great Yorkshire Show had just finished and the crochet, patchwork, flower arranging and cakes had all ‘come home’. There was a general chatter of approval. The room was decorated with bunting and it had the air of a village fete. This was Jam and Jerusalem.
I was in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, for the weekly gathering of the Spa Sweethearts Women’s Institute. The WI, as it is known, was formed in 1915 to revitalize communities and encourage women to produce food in the absence of their menfolk during the First World War. Since then it has grown to become the largest voluntary women’s organization in the UK, with more than six thousand groups and nearly a quarter of a million members.
The Queen herself is a member, and the WI, in my humble opinion, understands better than any other organization how the country works. Always polite, it has a reputation for no-nonsense, straight talking. The chairwoman of the WI’s public affairs committee, Marylyn Haines-Evans, recently said, ‘If the WI were a political party, we would be the party for common sense.’ If anyone understands the quixotic essence of Englishness, it is the ladies who attend these regional WI gatherings.
I chose the location carefully too. Popular with the English elite during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, during the Second World War, government offices were relocated from London to the North Yorkshire town and it was designated the stand-in capital should London fall during the war. It frequently wins the Britain in Bloom competition and has been voted one of the best places to live in the UK. It is what I would call a solid Yorkshire town. The combination of Harrogate and the WI is, I think, the perfect English ‘brew’.
I had come along to one of the WI’s evening gatherings to find out what Englishness means to them. Rather uncharacteristically, I was a little nervous as I walked to the stage in the small hall. I had brought my labrador, Storm along as an icebreaker and for some moral support, and together we made our way to the centre of the stage.
It was a relatively small gathering, perhaps fifty strong, but these women have solid values and in my mind they are the voice of England. Ignoring the jingoistic reverence that a national sporting event or royal occasion generates, I asked them what Englishness means.
‘The weather.’
‘Queuing.’ A lot of nodding heads.
‘Apologizing. We are always apologizing,’ stated another woman to a chorus of agreement.
‘Roses and gardens.’
‘Tea.’ This got the loudest endorsement.
‘Baking and cakes.’
‘The Queen.’
I asked them whether they would ever fly the St George’s Cross from their homes. There was an audible gasp, accompanied by a collective shaking of heads.
‘Why not?’ I wondered.
‘Because it has been hijacked by the extreme right,’ answered one woman.
‘It represents racism and xenophobia,’ added another.
‘We aren’t allowed to be English, we are British.’
I asked whether we should celebrate our national identity more like the Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish. To which the whole room nodded in approval, not in a jingoistic, nationalist kind of way, but in an understated, English kind of way. It was a genteel, considered discussion of the virtues of Englishness and the erosion of our national patriotism.
‘The Last Night of the Proms is as patriotic as we get,’ explained another member of the group, ‘but that patriotism is about the Union.’
Here England was speaking. We have a solid idea of what it is to be English, we have a grasp of some of the character traits of living Englishly, but we no longer celebrate that Englishness.
I asked if it was time to reclaim our national identity and take pride in being English. There was a round of applause.
‘Reclaim the celebration of Englishness for us, Ben.’
And that is what this book is about.
INTRODUCTION (#uc160ba66-cd37-5080-8e25-3dc7c00fd947)
LIVING ENGLISHLY
I am standing at the top of a vertiginous hill. When I say vertiginous, I mean the gradient is 1:1 in places, so steep you can’t stand up. A damp mizzle has descended on the valley, coating the grass in a greasy layer of moisture that has in turn soaked into the soil, turning it into an oily runway of mud.
It is the kind of mizzle that soaks you unknowingly. It has a stealthy ability to drench clothes, hair and skin before you have even noticed. Large drips of rain begin to fall from the peak of my flat cap, worn in a hopeless attempt to keep a low profile. My heart leaps and my stomach lurches as I take in the contours of the steep hill.
On this Spring Bank Holiday Monday, hundreds of people are streaming across the fields below, yomping along the narrow footpaths that bisect the fields. Next to me a German from Hamburg is busy fitting a mouth guard to his teeth, while a New Zealand rugby player is shoving shin pads down his long socks.
Along the brow of the hill, flagged by a simple plastic fence, are a further dozen nervous-looking faces from across the globe who have descended on this damp Gloucestershire hill for arguably one of the most famous eccentric sporting events in the world, the annual Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling. To paraphrase one social commentator, it involves ‘twenty young men chasing a cheese off a cliff and tumbling 200 yards to the bottom, where they are scraped up by paramedics and packed off to hospital’.
Which is about right. The steepness of the hill, combined with the undulations and the enthusiastic adrenalin of young men being cheered on by a crowd of thousands of spectators, leads to broken legs, arms, necks, ribs and even backs as a handful of brave souls chase a 9lb Double Gloucester cheese downhill at 70mph.
Why they started doing it, nobody really knows, although there are theories. The most colourful is that it has pagan origins. The start of the new year (spring) was celebrated by rolling burning brushwood down hills to represent rebirth and to encourage a good harvest. To enhance this the Master of Ceremonies also scattered buns, biscuits and sweets at the top of the hill. Cheese rolling is said to have developed from these rituals, although the earliest record of it dates back only to 1826.
During rationing during and after the Second World War a wooden cheese was used, with a small triangle of actual cheese inserted into a notch in the wood. In 1993, fifteen people were injured, four seriously, and in 2011, a crisis hit when the cheese rolling was cancelled after the local council decided to try to impose some order on this typically ramshackle English event. The council stipulated that the organizers should provide security, perimeter fencing to allow crowd control and spectator areas that would charge an entrance fee. The official competition was cancelled and the event went underground … which meant it continued as normal, but without any official organization, and with no ambulances.
Since then, the event has continued to grow, courtesy of a clandestine group of anonymous ‘organizers’, their identities shrouded in secrecy to avoid prosecution. Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling continues to attract thousands of spectators and dozens of competitors from all over the world.
And now I find myself on the top of the famous hill next to an assortment of adrenalin junkies, waiting to take part myself.
‘You gonna do it?’ smiles a young lad holding a beer.
‘Maybe,’ I shrug. ‘You?’
‘No way mate, I’m not mad,’ he smiles.
A couple of local men with a semi-official air and wearing white coats are milling around.
‘Are you an organizer?’ I ask a man busy organizing.
‘Nah,’ he replies with a smile, ‘no organizers here.’
Another man in a white coat is busy with a bag of cheeses, a slight giveaway as to his official status. ‘Are you an organizer?’ I ask.
‘No, mate,’ he replies as he unpacks the cheese.
‘You’re not going to race the cheese, are you?’ asks an athletic-looking woman.
I shrug my shoulders.
‘Well, I’m the only medic here,’ she replies with a slight look of concern.
Hundreds and thousands of people continue to envelop the hill, which is now thronging with people of all ages, here to witness the unofficial official cheese-rolling championships. It seems incredible that the event has seemingly been so well organized when there are no official organizers. Without structure, money or a committee, the event has somehow managed to corral spectators, crowd control and competitors. It is perhaps a fine reflection of Englishness that the entire event is so beautifully managed.
Back to the top of the hill and my heart is pounding as I wait for the count to begin, images of broken bones racing through my mind.
‘I broke my neck racing the cheese last year,’ smiles a young girl. ‘I can’t decide whether to race it again this year,’ she adds.
‘I’ll count to four,’ instructs the official-looking unofficial. ‘We will release the cheese on three, you run on four.’
I look around at the nervous faces beside me as people dig their heels into the slippery slope. The hill is so steep and the mud so ice-like that it is difficult not to let gravity take its course even while sitting. Every so often one of the competitors slides a couple of metres down the slope, before struggling back up.
Next to me is Chris, the multi-winning champion who is also a serving soldier. ‘Any secrets or advice?’ I ask nervously.
‘Just go for it. Commit to the cheese,’ he smiles, ‘and keep the body loose.’
