Antiquis Scotia

Well, the hustings are over; the votes have been counted, and Scotland is still a part of the UK.  As I said before, I was happy to go with whatever the Scottish people decided.  It's not for an English-born Brit like me to stick my oar in in this debate.  

The English are the dominant power in this kingdom...yes, they are...so when it comes to judging how valid the union is, it's not for us to say.  All we can do is note the genuine concerns of the Celtic Brits, and try to address them.

However, all that said, it does feel a little disappointing that the status quo has been maintained.  I really hoped we could have rebuilt the UK.  I also think it would have been fantastic for England and the English too.

For those of you unfamiliar with this sceptred Isle, travelling around Wales and Scotland with an English accent can and will attract the ire of the locals.  There is a very real and visceral dislike of the offices and institutions of the union in those countries, and the English are held to be responsible for the creation and maintenance of these instruments.

I had hoped that if the union were recreated along fairer lines, we could live alongside each other as peaceful siblings.  No more would the union flag been spurned by some Welsh and Scots.  The English could have adopted Jerusalem as their anthem, as most of them want.

The Sun Has Got His Fez On

It appears that Spring has finally sprung in the old country this week.  The weather stunned us all by pulling its finger out.  In a massive about turn, it decided it had had enough of sh1tting down stairrods on the wretched inhabitants of the sodden island and would ease off for a bit.  And very welcome it is too, this wanton act of kindness.

The last six months has been bereft of seasons here.  It's just been a relentless one-act Kafkaesque production of warm-ish drizzle and low grey cloud.  The English are no strangers to sheight weather of course, but even they had had a gut full of this stuff by the end of February this year.  People would laugh ever so slightly too hysterically when the subject of the weather came up.  "Ooh, I expect the weekend will be awful" - cue shrill strained giggling and facial ticks.

But all that's behind us now.  One useful outcome of the battering we've all taken over the last few months is that expectations are at an all-time low.  If the weather broke now, and it didn't stop raining until November (think Gabriel Garcia Marquez meets Eastenders), people would probably settle for that.  "Remember that week in March," they'd reminisce "when it stopped raining for nearly 95 hours?  Great days..."

As Henry Hill observed in the opening monologue to Goodfellas "...everybody has to take a beating some time."  Well said, aitch.