1. W.I.H.E. Festival - Carol Downie - Plumpton, England

A vexatious title to the First Literary  Festival at Stable Cottage is – Sorry Theo – really just too challenging for me.

‘Why I Hate England’ does not inspire words except to contradict, deny and distance myself – all so very negative.  Who came here with trepidation or with anger and pent-up rage?  Hate is such a strong word – a destructive emotion don’t you think?  Make a list of your ‘hates’ and mostly they will be actually gripes, annoyances, irritations, grievances.

Frustrating but the English are a race of mutterers and gentle complainers – patiently freezing or baking waiting for delayed trains, sitting in traffic jams, shuffling in queues, baulking at bumbling  belligerent bureaucracy, obeying ‘Keep Off the Grass’ and ‘No Ball Games’, ‘Children not Allowed’, ‘Dogs not Allowed’, ‘Keep to the Left’ signs to control our latent barbarism – woad ready and waiting for Boadicea.  

The instant indignation of the French, the florid fulminations of the Spanish are seen as over-reactions.  We mutter and write letters to newspapers – we have been a quiet race.  With exceptions.

Crowds – competing for sales bargains, partisan – political or football.  En masse we are wild, riotous, joyous and frightening.  Controls shed – ‘it’s not my fault!’ pack mentality.

Yes I love England and embrace its idiosyncratic ways.  The English empathy for the underdog, the puzzled, perturbed people ready to share their worries that the weather, dogs, children, buses, the weather, television, transport, the weather, the weather is not as it should be or once was.  Our multi-cultural England trying to define itself with layers of history to obscure roots and alliances, movements and static populations.  Our borders are politically precise – water or mountain or moor geographically fluid.  Two nations bordering us and Europe and the Green Isle over the water.  Our history intertwined  – not an island and with less identity than our neighbours – Scots and Welsh – we have difficulty defining ourselves.  Picts, Celts, Phoenicians, Romans, Vikings, Saxons, Angles, Normans – a mixture with other spices thrown in.  And then the Royal Family – Sax Coburg ‘The House of Wettin’ – I like that since a child I have wondered what these Isles would be like if Guy Fawkes had been successful.

The land is of human scale varied and mostly accessible but our natural borderlands were enough to stop the Romans and protect the Picts and Celts.  Wales and Scotland are wild, glorious countries but England seems to have all landscapes and many accents to define its counties.

There are stone outcrops punctuating peat moors, ancient forest, wild, gentle, meandering, vanishing, tidal rivers; heathland; black, white, red brown and stony  soils; chalk downland as rises to the South of Plumpton – the soft folds catching the westering sun.  Dew ponds, estuaries, marshes, lakes, village ponds (for testing witches) waterfalls, rivers, canals and locks, coves, bays, beaches of pebble, sand, shells, rocks, fossils, granite boulders, shale, chalk cliffs and sandstone, basalt and all the fun of the fair.

All this has been worked, walked and pastured for millennia it throws up treasures and harbours dialects and styles of building, rich oddities and customs and local foods.

Puddings are a very English dish.  Dock, Sussex Pond, Spotted Dick, Black, White, Summer, Christmas, Steak and Kidney, steamed sponge, treacle – all solid, some regional, all still made.  Pride in our produce waned – two world wars and rationing had a detrimental effect on food.  The enthusiasm for Rare Breeds (?) and meat reared naturally, many cheese varieties, real ales, wines, vegetables respected and not  “conquered only carrots allowed to retain their colour” – John Steinbeck ‘Once there was a War old apples, quinces and medlars being prized is a leap forward out of the greyness of meat and two veg and limited choice.

Admittedly there is a tendency to show our love of four footed and feathered creatures rather than our children – although this too may be changing ... one can only hope.

There are the museums, the libraries, parks, National Trust, Morris Men, Lewes fireworks, Trains – yes a glorious way to travel and the Settle-Carlisle, West Highland and Exeter-Plymouth lines are fabulous.  Double deck buses (upstairs at the front) fires of all sorts in and out Summer and Winter, purging and warming.

So much I love and nothing I hate of this England.  It is part of this Earth after all.