"God Dave, the Queen's looking well good these days"

I've been digging out some pieces I wrote about three years ago. This is both to ease myself into this blogging lark gently - much like lowering one's genitalia tentatively into freezing cold sea - and to finally have them appear under my name. When I was starting out, an absolute horror show of a woman took me for a bit of a ride and stuck her own twatty moniker on my work. I buried them in a folder in a folder in a folder Russian doll style so I didn't have to be reminded of my own stupidity, but I feel now is the time. Forgotten bylines everywhere, these are for you.

"God Dave, the Queen's looking well good these days"

Ah, one does love happy accidents. In particular, typing ‘D’ instead of ‘S’ can provide one with sheer minutes of hilarity. Attempting to write ‘God Save the Queen’ using a minuscule, rubbish laptop (the cutting edge in technology around the time Elizabeth II was the cutting edge in say, new royal babies) comes out as ‘God Dave the Queen’, which I’m sure you’ll agree is a fantastically amusing mistake.

Possible situations where this phrase could be employed include; admonishing your mate Dave saying something inappropriate near the Queen; introducing the Queen to the God of Daves; or you and your mate (not necessarily Dave, though it wouldn’t be a problem) exclaiming in wonder, approval or shock at a spectacular transvestite named Dave.

Anyway, I digress: I can’t say I agree with the Queen having God’s protection on top of the hundreds of security guards and secret service agents that accompany her on every trip. Especially since any terror threat on one of these hand-shaking jaunts could be immediately identified as the only people in the crowd under pensionable age, and not waving Union Jacks and commemorative plates.

Perhaps she needs saving from the angry hordes of single-birthday schmucks forced to survive on one mere birthday a year, while she luxuriates in a second fair-weather celebration in case the sun don’t shine in April.

It seems being Queen is about eliminating unpredictability, the possibility of accidents: one does not risk the chance of one’s birthday parade being rained upon and orders another. One does not risk unknown elements attempting to shake one’s hand, and one employs a hundred guys in dark suits to control the unruly retirement crowd. One does not risk unfamiliar genetics invading the family, thus one marries one’s cousin, Dave the Third.

So much of everything is an accident, and it is the unpredicted in life that gives it spark. In the gaping void where my double-birthday should be, I take comfort in the notion that the whole human race could be a happy evolutionary accident, and perhaps royalty a quick slip of God’s keyboard.

One Patron Saint Please, Hold the Fun

I would like to invoke some saintly power please: Saint Expeditus and Saint Francis de Sales will do. Saints of procrastination and writers respectively; together they are a force to reckon with. Stick our George up against saints like that, and he just don’t cut it. Fair enough, he does have a lot on his plate. St George also patronises twelve other countries, seven cities, the Scouts, freemasonry and sufferers of skin disease and syphilis. A broad range, I’m sure you’ll agree, and in and amongst he slays a dragon or two.

Still, as kind as he may be to twitching, itching casualties of eczema and the like, I’m still not on board. Perhaps it’s his name that doesn’t fill me with hearty patriotic pride. Was Saint Bob busy? Saint Ned washing his hair? George cannot compete with the alliterative might of St Francis of Assisi, say.

So, does lack of patriotism stop us celebrating St George's Day with abandon, or is it classic English reserve? The same English reserve that means I don’t just smile and pay the hairdresser who ruined my life with her scissors, I actually tip a tenner and say it’s the best haircut I’ve ever had (then burst into tears on the street outside).

I’ve felt the swell of patriotism, unusually while watching a Hindu festival dance and bang drums through a standard English town centre. The mix of cultures; the colours, music, food; that was what made me feel proud of the country I’m from.

And it’s not like we can’t get rowdy when we want to. We’re as good as the Irish at drinking to St Patrick from 10am, drowning in Guinness and singing through the streets of London. Perhaps then, this is where the patriotism is; it is English to celebrate other cultures, another country’s patron; it is English too to hold back on our own carnival, to not blow ones own trumpet come April 23^rd. And possibly, it is particularly English to borrow someone else’s saint and get inebriated on their time. Sully our own occasion? I don’t think so.