Thought for Food

Apr 23, 2008

To all my English mates

Did you know that St. George is your patron saint?

Well, he is! And he’s even got a whole day in his honour — and your honour, dare I add, as a proud nation with a rather impressive wang … er, I mean past.

However, the fine chaps at the English Heritage have verily tarnished the glory of the day, commissioning a poem from Liverpool poet Brian Patten.

I present you with this excerpt:

St George was out walking

He met a dragon on a hill,

It was wise and wonderful
Too glorious to kill
[…]

St George was in awe of it

It was a thing apart

He hid the sleeping dragon
Inside every English heart

This is lousy stuff coming from the land that brought us John Donne, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Ted Hughes.

Please, my dear Rob and friends, I deplore you, save the ruddy-cheeked face of your fine nation! Enter this BBC contest with a smashing St. George poem of your own.

Raise a pint, put pen to paper, and give this silly nationalist drivel the heave-ho!

(Even that notorious commie Billy Bragg wants you to be proud of England again.)

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