In which I examine my patriotic pride for bugs, and cheer on the great British riders

The Dear Readers take a stand against patriotism, and in a way they are quite right. It is, after all, the last refuge of the scoundrel. It is such a random thing, which country you are born in; really, we are all citizens of the world.

In some ways, though, I think patriotism gets a bad name. It need not be a narrow, competitive thing. One can feel fondness for one’s country without thinking it is the best. There is a great difference between narrow chauvinism and generous national pride.

I feel about my country the same way I feel about my family. One may feel pride in one’s mother’s or father’s achievements, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with one, and the people to whom one is born is just as random as is one’s home city.

I feel insanely proud that I had a dad who rode in the Grand National, even though he did it before I ever existed. When I think of him and miss him, I look at a picture of him booting some dear old steeplechaser over a fence, his teeth gritted, a look of manic determination and wild joy in his eyes, and I feel happy again. I do not think my family or my country is the finest that ever existed; quite the opposite. I love them because of their flaws, not in spite of them. (Someone, I think it may have been Balzac, said that is the truest kind of love.)

My fondness for Britons stems not from the hope that they might be world-beaters, but because of the family connection: the shared references, the in-jokes, the cultural shorthands. It is familiarity, as much as anything. It is understanding about Marmite and Monty Python and Mrs Slocombe’s pussy and Pride and Prejudice and Dad’s Army and Dr Who and we few, we happy few. (Even these shorthands may fracture; many of my cultural markers will be strange to those of my compatriots under forty.)

In these games, it shall be lovely to see fine competitors of whatever nationality fulfil their potential, be rewarded for all that work and striving. But if Rebecca Adlington or Mary King or Ben Ainslie or William Fox-Pitt win something, there shall be an extra frisson of delight, because we are related by all the national icons, stitched together by the NHS, and the weather, and self-deprecation, and Shakespeare, and all those other things of which Britain's identity is made.

It is a bit nuts to love one country more than another, but human emotions are not always neatly explicable. Danny Boyle’s great and glorious opening ceremony reminded a lot of Britons what it is that makes us fond and proud: the eccentric, the historic, the exuberant, the very slightly odd. I doubt that any other country on earth would have put dancing nurses into a sporting extravaganza. Or suffragettes and shire horses and Chelsea Pensioners and sheep, for that matter. It had nothing to do with me, yet I did feel proud. I even quite liked the very British fact that, beside all the delight and amazement and applause, there was the statutory curmudgeonly grumbling. We do curmudgeonly better than anyone.

I think you can wave your own flag without wanting to lower anyone else’s. Poor old Blighty is a bit battered and bashed at the moment, what with the crappy economy and industrial decline and the embarrassment of the football. It would cheer one up to win something.

But if we don’t, the crowds will still cheer for those of other nations who do. They will cheer effort as much as victory. This generous spirit was on display on the water this morning, when a capacity crowd saved its biggest roar of the day for a rower from Niger, who was so far behind the rest that he was practically in another county. Hamadou Djibo Issaka has, I very much doubt, a drop of British blood, but he showed the glorious underdog spirit which Britons love the most, and was taken instantly to the spectators’ hearts. I don’t think anyone on the water got more sincere applause.

My Team GB cockles were warmed today by the lovely performances from Zara Phillips and William Fox-Pitt in the dressage stage of the three-day-event. Most of all, I was thrilled by the extraordinary composure of Tina Cook, who had to ride the most delicate of equestrian disciplines in a torrential rain storm. She and her lovely horse, Miners Frolic, rose mightily to the occasion, and, despite thunder and lightning, made a brilliant score of 42.00. Cook’s father, Josh Gifford was a racing compadre of my father’s. He most famously trained Aldaniti to win the Grand National, and, even more memorably, refused to jock off the cancer-stricken Bob Champion when some of his owners complained. So he was a great gentleman, and he died in February, and I thought of that as I watched Cook. I wondered if she were remembering her dad and wishing he were there to see her. He would have been fiercely proud.

Taking my Blighty hat off, I was incredibly happy to see the majestic horseman Mark Todd of New Zealand, still at the top of the world at the age of 56, ride a perfect, balletic test on his delightful Campino. The knowledgeable crowd also took their own nationalist hats off to give the tremendous Kiwi a rousing cheer, recognising true excellence when they saw it. The commentators were beside themselves. ‘Toddy,’ they said, with joy and admiration, ‘very, very good.’

Tomorrow, I shall be shouting for the British riders as they face the daunting cross country fences. Team GB lies in third place, just behind Germany and Australia. In a way, none of this matters. It is just a sporting competition; national glory is only a human construct, and a fairly peculiar one. But for all that, I do feel proud, and I do feel hopeful, and I shall be waving my metaphorical flag. They are all such great competitors, and the horses are so brave and fine. Let them go for gold.

 

I did not have a moment to take out the camera today. What with working with the horses and watching the dressage and I don’t know what else, the day got away from me. Just time for my girls, in elegant black and white:

 

In which Lord Bragg leads me to ponder the national character

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I love Lord Bragg. There, I’ve said it. It’s out there.

I don’t know what he’s like in life. He might be an utter charlatan, for all I know. But I love him because every Thursday he gets three or four academics, the best in their field, round a table and lets them talk. I sometimes think no other country in the world would have a radio programme like In Our Time, and I bless the dear old Beeb weekly for it.

Today, he was talking about the revolutions of 1848. This made me highly excited. Apart from the First Reform Act and the Repeal of the Corn Laws, almost nothing interests me more. (You think I am joking. Tragically, I am deadly serious.) At the age of eighteen, when I was studying for my history degree, I found the 1848 ructions deliriously exciting. I liked to think I had a bit of a radical soul in those days; I think I rather identified with all that taking to the barricades.

So today was a lovely gallop down memory lane for me, and my love for His Braggship increased. But then he asked the interesting question: why did Britain not have one? The profs muttered and giggled. Constitutional monarchy, they mumbled; reform from within; the Chartists. Queen Victoria, said one of them, suddenly stalwart, was an awful lot better than those cretins on the European thrones. I was rather amazed. Are you even allowed to say cretin on Radio Four?

Of all my history essays, the one I remember as if it were yesterday was on this very question. From 1789 to 1815 to 1830 to 1848, as Europe roiled and erupted, as the paving stones in great cities were ripped up to make barricades, as monarchs trembled and high ministers resigned and new constitutions were hastily written, Britain just kept calm and carried on.

It’s not as if the British were not interested in revolt. The poets and the theorists and the socialites were initially thrilled by the French Revolution. The Duchess of Devonshire was always running off to Paris, as if the fall of the monarchy were a tourist attraction. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, wrote Wordsworth. People got very grumpy with Burke when he foresaw disaster. Then Robespierre went mad, and it wasn’t so romantic after all, and everyone cleared their throats and shuffled their feet and looked at their shoes and changed the subject.

But for all the reform movements and radical ideas, there was no late eighteenth century or nineteenth century revolution, despite the turmoil just over the English Channel. I remember having a very robust notion about this. I said it was because of the essentially conservative nature of the British character. The British did not like uproar and chaos; they liked routine and small certainties.

I vividly recall writing about the minor bread riots which would break out, like clockwork, on Monday mornings. The workers would get paid on a Friday. They would then spend all the cash on drink, wake up on Monday broke and hungover, have a little riot, and then everyone would go back to work. (Can this really have been true? I certainly used it as convincing evidence.) Anyway, according to me, that was how the British did revolt.

Of course my argument slightly falls down when one reflects that we did have a bloody revolution, and killed a king too. The Civil War set families against each other, fathers against sons, brother against brother, and led to rabid witch-hunts and crazed religious tests.

Perhaps it was the folk memory of that awful experiment which kept Britain calm in later centuries. Perhaps it was that the vested interests and the monarchy were very clever at giving away little bits of power and making them look like great concessions. (The First Reform Act was presented as revolutionary, but it only produced a very limited franchise.) Perhaps it was that there were occasional crusading prime ministers who really seemed to be on the side of the common people, like Peel in 1846.

My nutty theory, which I must have dreamed up to be cussed and to excite my tutor, does make me wonder now whether there is such a thing as national character. It’s something I think about a lot. Do all Americans really love winners, and believe in American exceptionalism, and still have the frontier spirit running through them? Are the Germans really that efficient? Do Ordinary Decent Britons truly believe in reticence, and stoicism, and queuing, and the underdog? Is every last French person entranced by good food and intellectual debate?

Despite this, I do wonder if there might not have been a minute grain of truth in my teenage argument. I think the British are historically conservative, with a very small c. All the politics here takes place in the centre ground. Unlike in Europe, extremes and ideologies have never taken hold. Moseley’s fascism was dark and dangerous, but he was mostly treated as a joke. On the other side, the Communist Party only ever had a minute membership. In contemporary times, Tony Blair made Labour electable again by dragging it to the centre ground; David Cameron did the same with the Tories, in an attempt to banish their nasty party image. Perhaps, if there is anything in the idea of Britishness, it is a default setting of the middling sort, a Goldilocks tendency: not too hot, not too cold, just right.

Well, it’s just a theory.

 

Some quick pictures. There was amazing light this morning:

Pigeon, elegant in black and white:

Carrying her tail like a flag:

With her slightly quizzical face and neat paws:

The hill:

Tomorrow I go to stay with my very old friend M in the Borders. There shall be no blog until Monday. I apologise for this shocking dereliction of duty. I'm afraid the Pigeon and I shall be living it up somewhere south of Peebles. It is very, very naughty of us.

Have a lovely weekend.