It’s Saint George’s Day! Our patron saint, adopted from the Turks, I think, by Richard I when he was out crusading. I seem to remember Good King Richard spent more time crusading than actually at home ruling but maybe that’s just an impression I got from watching Robin Hood on television as a child. Be that as it may, lots of people get very patriotic about a chap who probably never saw England. And did we have a lot of dragons for him to fight anyway?
He’s also the patron Saint of Mallorca and of one or two other bits of Spain. And here’s a photo I took of him being paraded around Ragusa Ibla in Sicily - he’s their saint as well - for his festa, confusingly at the end of May rather than the 23rd of April. Those carrying the statue jiggle him up and down from time to time to make it look as though he is breaking into a gallop.
Anyway, there it is - St George’s Day! Wave a flag if you must!
On BBC Radio 4 at the moment, just after The World at One news programme, Neil MacGregor has a series of programme about museums, visiting museums in various part of the UK. Incidentally, Wales has a national museum, Scotland has a national museum. England does not! Interesting! Be that as it may, Neil MacGregor visits various cities’ museums and talks about an exhibit, explaining why that particular object has been selected by the museums curator.
One such place was Belfast, a much troubled city over the years, where the exhibit chosen was a blackboard on which Catholic and Protestant school students had written the things they felt they had in common and the ways in which they differed. I think this was in connection with a TV programme made about the divided city. One thing that emerged was the lack of contact between the two groups back in the 1990s. Protestant schoolchildren and Catholic schoolchildren simply did not meet. And I thought back to my 1950s - 1960s childhood when I too spent my time only with Protestant friends. I simply did not know any Catholic children. They went to different schools. It was not until sixth form that girls from the Convent, the local Roman Catholic girls’ school came to join us for A-level studies. Indeed I can remember my mother being seriously mistrustful of Catholics, especially the Liverpudlian Catholic (suspect on two counts!) my older sister eventually married and is still married to! Moving on in time I can remember sixth form students in tutor group discussions asking, “But are Catholics christians?”. This was in the first decade of this century!
We still need to talk about such things. There is still violence going on in Jerusalem, where Israelis and Palestinians - Jews and Moslems - dispute territorial rites to holy places in the city. It can’t have been helped this year by Passover and Ramadan coinciding almost exactly. Throw Easter into the mix and we have three religions, all worshipping basically the same god and disagreeing with each other, often over who can worship where! And then in Afghanistan there have been terrorist attacks on mosques, during Friday prayers! A terrorist group attacking people of their own religion! The world is crazy.
Getting back to Neil MacGregor, I find it interesting that I enjoy listening to the clipped tones of his rather precious English, despite it’s occasional similarity to the equally precious but supremely annoying and condescending-sounded tones of Mr Rees-Mogg! Odd!
Ninety years ago tomorrow, 24th April 1932 an event took place not far from here. Hundreds of people trespassed on Kinder Scout, Derbyshires highest point. They were attempting to establish the principle of open access to the countryside. The plan was to “take action to open up the fine country at present denied us”. Six people were arrested but the point was made. Kinder mass trespass gave us all rights to ramble and laid the foundations for the UK’s first national park, the Peak District.
Tomorrow at noon a group of wild swimmers are sort of re-enacting the mass trespass. They plan to swim in Kinder reservoir in “an act of defiance against widespread lack of undisputed access to inland open water in England and Wales, and the disconnect this causes between people, water, and each other”.
All are welcome to join in, apparently, but we are warned that the water will be cold. I’m not going. I like to swim in the sea in warmer places but even then I get a little nervous. Really I prefer to swim in a nice safe swimming pool, ideally a sea-water but you can’t have everything. However, I wish the wild swimmers luck. It may not be my cup of tea but, hey, each to their own!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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