The Irish have St. Patrick’s Day, the Scots have St. Andrew’s Day … and on April 23rd, the English have St. George’s Day.
But St. George doesn’t seem to have caught on in quite the same way.
With no official festivities planned locally, I decided to gather the handful of fellow Englanders I’ve met in Mansfield for our own little celebration.
Chris Clarke (Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire) and Clare Boggs (Bournemouth, Dorset) met with myself (Hextable, Kent) at the Laxton Hollow pub in Lexington, an obvious choice as it serves some of the finest English-style ales available in the U.S.
Our host for the evening was Laxton Hollow’s brewer Ken Dudley, a local whose beer is so good I’ve appointed him an honorary Englishman.
My first question was to find out if any of us even cared about St. George.
“Who was he?” laughed Ken. “Did he even set foot in England?”
“Well, St. Patrick wasn’t Irish, either,” countered Clare.
“George did slay a dragon,” admitted Ken. “Which don’t exist.”
To quickly sum up: George was a 3rd century Roman soldier martyred for his Christianity. Along the way he slayed a dragon to stop it from eating a princess. Some details of this story are questionable.
Still, for better or worse, he’s the patron saint of England, although I have no recollection of celebrating the day growing up.
“Neither do I,” said Chris. “I was born in 1946 and I don’t remember celebrating any of the saints’ days. I don’t remember the Irish celebrating St. Patrick’s Day either, and we lived near a sizeable Irish population.”
None of us remembered much flag-waving back home, a distinct difference from the U.S. where the Stars & Stripes are ever-present.
“We only flew the flag on the Queen’s birthday,” said Chris.
“It was always more about the monarchy,” agreed Clare. “Or football.”
Ken asked Chris if he remembered the Queen’s coronation in 1953.
“I do,” said Chris. “I remember seeing a lot of bonfires. Not many people had television so we saw the ceremony later on at the cinema.”
So aside from the monarchy, what do the English celebrate about themselves?
I suggested that we had no clear idea of a national dress, or music, or dance, in the same way that, say, the Scots or the Irish do.
“Tweed!” replied Clare. “That’s our national dress. And plus-fours (long knickerbockers).”
“And you have Morris Dancing,” said Ken. “Which is absolutely ridiculous.”
He’s got a point. Morris dancing is fairly ridiculous. It involves grown men skipping about with jingle bells on their knees as they bang sticks together.
Somewhere there exists a photograph of me performing a Morris dance, although thankfully it’s not in general circulation.
As an ex-pat identity, English-American is a weird one. Irish-American, absolutely. Italian-American? Of course. But English-American? It doesn’t even sound right.
And just to clear something up: the terms “British” and “English” are not interchangeable. Britain consists of four constituent countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
“Because England was the most populous and the richest country in Britain, English culture became British culture,” said Chris. “So it’s easy to forget that England has a distinct history and culture of its own. I recommend you read ‘The English and Their History’ by Robert Tombs, it’s fascinating.”
What the three of us have in common is that we left all that behind. Chris arrived in Milwaukee in 1977. I came to Ohio in 2000. Clare is a more recent arrival who emigrated in 2011.
“I worked for an American company and they sent me over,” she told me. “I thought I’ll do a year, If I don’t like it I’ll go home.
“When I first got here I deliberately didn’t listen to American news because it would scare me. Nothing seemed real. I felt very isolated for the first six months.
“Even now I still listen to all my old radio stations online,” she continued, “all the local news, the weather. Because I do get a little bit homesick.”
I told her I remembered that initial feeling of unreality. Coming to America from another country feels like stepping inside a movie; it’s familiar and strange at the same time.
I don’t get homesick, but I do listen to BBC radio in the mornings. I suggested to Chris that the move must have been especially hard for him, arriving a generation earlier without the internet as a link back home.
“Yes,” said Chris, “that’s right, it was total bloody isolation back then. In Milwaukee there was a restaurant, Marc’s Big Boy. They served fish ‘n’ chips wrapped in newspaper. Actually it was a facsimile of the (English) Sunday Times. You’d order the fish ‘n’ chips just to read the newspaper because you were so cut off!
“You missed out on all the TV shows you were accustomed to,” he continued. “I realized that the U.S. is very different from the rest of the English-speaking world, which sees and hears a lot about England. Here we’re in our own bubble and you don’t get any of that.”
I asked the pair what else they missed.
“Walking everywhere,” said Clare. “I mean, you can do it a bit here but then the pavement (sidewalk) runs out.”
“You do need a car,” said Ken.
“And this is the really big difference,” said Chris. “There’s just so much space here.”
I asked Chris when he moved to Mansfield.
“My wife and I came here in ‘88. I got a great job, we bought a house here and our son was born. It was in Mansfield that my life in America really took off.
“I remember thinking at the time,” Chris continued, “all the things that said ‘Made in America,’ they were made in small towns like Mansfield.”
“None of us seem to have lost our English accents, have we?” said Clare.
“But do you ever have trouble being understood?” I asked.
“I have trouble with ‘water,’” Clare admitted.
“Oh God, yes,” I agreed, “that is the worst word. ‘Bottle of water’ is just impossible. I try to say it as ‘boddle of warder’ but I still have trouble.
“And once, in Atlanta, I asked for a bottle of tonic water and the clerk turned to her assistant and said ‘what language is he speaking?’”
“I know!” laughed Clare. “They say ‘hey, she speaks funny’ and I think hang on, I’m still standing here!”
These are minor trials, of course. Mansfield has been very welcoming to us all, and I’ve met so many wonderful, friendly people here I can hardly keep track.
We raised a glass to the folks back home, and to St. George, who may not have set foot on English soil but has nevertheless kept England dragon-free for 1700 years.
A quick shout-out to another Englishman in Mansfield, Derek “Del” Holloway, who planned to be with us but was unavoidably detained in St. Louis.
One last thing: Laxton Hollow releases a new beer this week, an English-style IPA called The Inventor, which will become part of the permanent line-up. The public unveiling takes place at 6 p.m. on Friday April 28 at Laxton Hollow (inside the Happy Grape), 300 E. Main St., Lexington.
Come along and try a pint.
