.

      A real dodgy backstreet boozer. Guys in football shirts and littles ’taches, red faces, little slit eyes. A tall old man at the bar looked different. In a suit. Heard us talking.

      ‘Where are you from?’

      ‘I was born in Louth.’ I think I’m so clever. It’s true and makes some people think I might be Irish.

      ‘I presume that’s Louth in Lincolnshire.’

      A smart one. It turned out he had been stationed in Lincolnshire in the RAF. He started asking me questions and knew more about Lincolnshire than I did. I went to the bog. A fat bloke in a Man United second strip (the blue and white one – by the time this comes out that will probably be ten second strips ago) came in and said I’m lovely and would I like his limited edition plate then he says I’m not really lovely I’m a daft bastard. Back out in the pub he confronted the RAF lad in a mock fight and they put on English accents.

      My head was going, but me and the RAF lad (who by now could hardly stand) then got into a mad conversation which went something like this:

      RAF lad: Ah, you English fucker.

      Me: I’m not surprised by your reaction. Any conversation I have with certain friends in pubs about Irishness and Englishness eventually leads someone to expressing their distaste at eight hundred years of English rule in Ireland. In some ways it’s a tricky conversation for me, because I still haven’t really got a handle on what it means to be English. I mean, who are the English? What do they stand for? Some would say that’s obvious. The English are the British.

      RAF lad: You daft bastard.

      Me: Right – the English may have created the idea of Britishness for their own ends. After all, it suits the English power base if an Ulsterman, a Welshman and a Scot all claim allegiance to the British crown. This doesn’t mean that the English don’t exist, but they are perhaps more likely to admit to being British than anyone else in the ‘British’ Isles.

      RAF lad: British? Ha!

      Me: And there’s another thing. It really pisses off some of my friends when people say the ‘British’ Isles. Ireland isn’t in the British Isles. It’s a geographical term which has become a geopolitical term. And an outdated one at that. I read somewhere a suggestion that they be called the Celtic Isles. After all, as well as Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Cornwall, a large proportion of the people in England must be descended in some way from the Celts, or even further back is more likely.

      RAF lad: Ah you.

      Me: Yes, although I look like a mangy German or Scandinavian, my mother’s family are all short, dark-haired and sallow-skinned. Anyway, the culture of the so-called British countries is obviously non-Anglo-Saxon. But all this stuff about ancient races. What on earth is ‘Anglo-Saxon’ culture? In the context and history of Ireland, Anglo-Saxon culture represents a centralised blanding out of traditional folk culture as a way of damping down Celtic nationalism. Exactly the same thing happened in England. Over the centuries we seem to have lost so many of the things which make a culture rich – like music, dress, language, food. Much of the local traditions have been lost because of centralisation. In Ireland, Anglo-Saxon culture has generally meant Protestant culture. It wasn’t always like that. When Henry II invaded Ireland he wasn’t introducing Protestantism. But he wasn’t an Anglo-Saxon, he was a Norman.

      RAF lad (to Manchester United bloke): Hear this fellah.

      Me: So when did the Anglo-Saxons take over in Ireland? I mean, they invaded England in about the fifth and sixth centuries. Can it be true that it wasn’t until a thousand years later that Anglo-Saxon culture came to the fore. I’ve always felt that this Anglo-Saxon thing is a bit of a problem. The English are as much to blame as anyone because we like to see ourselves as Anglo-Saxon. But in reality when people talk about the Anglo-Saxon race they are referring to a total mix of Anglo-Saxon, Jute, Norman, Dane, Norwegian and Celtic, plus ‘Wessex’ Culture and the Beaker People. And now add some Afro-Caribbean, Asian, Turkish, Jewish. Englishness must always have threatened to take on multifarious forms. But up until now, Englishness has been confined to what the ruling elite choose to portray it as. Is there a general malaise afflicting people in their thirties? Maybe we are the new lost generation like Kerouac and his mates, not knowing what the hell our core values are or where we want to go (for instance, like the two-headed god Janus we straddle the cultural divide of punk and dance music, but we sit in neither camp, with our balls being tickled by the new romantics). Politically we are the last of the passionate left wingers, left high and dry by the New Labour experiment, left to thrash about in a muddy sea of irony.

      I’d describe myself as English, but not in some pastoral, village-green sort of way. There are many forms of Englishness. You can take your pick. Mine is an expressive, multi-racial socialist humanist hedonism. Manifested by something like Glastonbury, Ken Livingstone, William Morris, John Cooper-Clarke. I’m a fucking hippy do-gooder.

      RAF lad: Well, yer a cunt at any rate.

      Dana