Well, the car in question had a sign in the back window saying Holland and Holland – I assumed they were car dealers of the same name. Two seconds with the indispensible Google tells me that it is the name of a new Range Rover model. HERE

But you were quite right about Abigail’s party – it was her Mother, Beverley’s accent they were sniggering at – apologies.

John Ward: A great response. How I well remember the red weals around my brothers’ legs, caused by wellingtons rubbing against the naked flesh of their calves and the short trousers worn winter and summer until attaining the age of 15 when they were presented with their first pair of long trousers. Happy memories? Perhaps not all of them.

I am for the independence of Scotland and my simple argument to y English friends is that nationalism in Scotland is not about anti-Englishness although, many a London based newspaper and yahoo posters would want it to be so, but it is about reasserting our national identity.

I think the English need to be able to do that also.

Brown and his cohorts, also English, are about destroying that and melding a socially engineered new multi ethnic “Britain.”

It isn’t going to work, not in Scotland, as we have more than personal symbols, we have a collective and shared memory of what we are, were and want, albeit sometimes a bit tacky but it is ours.

You are Labour’s enemy and you must be destroyed for the greater good.

Happy Hogmanay, from Le Gers, when it comes.

Please keep on writing the likes of what you have.

Bugger (The Panda)

As you say, it is the backbone of England that have moved away but they are still English deep down. Maybe, just maybe, such days will return to the mother land of our childhood.

For what it’s worth, it’s not all gone. We’ll be having bubble and squeak from the Christmas Day leftovers today: albeit for ‘brunch’ and using vegetarian bangers and the leftovers from a nut roast.
So much of what you miss is there, in small geographical pockets but also in the hearts and actions of millions. I think that I saw more acts of self-effacing English-style Christian charity and kindness to friends and strangers alike in the last week of Advent this year than I recall in my adult life, for example… and not one of them was done by a believer.
The chips are still there, and though they are distant (thanks to health and safety) from those forbidden or often delivered-free local papers which these days have Page Free Stunnas or ‘men who seek men’ lonely hearts small ads, yet, and yet…You can still hear the English heartbeat within their zany, pompous, earnest Letters To The Editor, wanting to make it all better without recourse to too much bile and antagonism.
It’s still here amidst the takeaway kebab wrappers and hot hatchbacks. England is down, but it is not out.
I won’t say come home; you are in France for good reasons, but please be aware that it’s still here in ghettos and snippets of countryside and suburbs and neat terraced houses where the music goes off at eleven and the children are asleep by eight.

Thank you again for your kind Christmas Day link to my post . It seems like a good Christmas, in part, was had on both side of La Manche.