BLOG 234 - Stick to your GUNS!

"It was a terrible mistake," says one of the Princess's friends. "She was against it. But one of her faults is that she can't say no."

"However there was not a single courtier," another recalls, "who did think it was a mistake at the time."

- Palace sources to the Media following Royal It's A Knockout June 1987

It’s not just a woman’s right to change her mind. If we had ever bothered to write down our constitution we would have enshrined it in words that as a nation we can deride something one minute then the next say… HEY!!! Best thing like EVERRRRR!

Actually we are not even very consistent about that. We don’t just change our minds about what we hate… sometimes we do it the other way around too. We are British. To understand us means that you appreciate we have no absolutes and we can have a general consensus of accepted wisdom for at least some of the year, but as quick as a flash revise our opinions. If you want to understand the Brits… then you BETTER be able to keep up!

So here are my top 5 about turns that I recall for this year:

No. 5. Dom Jolly is a British comedian best known for doing a skit back in the early 1990’s where a gentleman makes calls on his mobile phone - in public. This is a very unBritish thing to do; we leave the public displaying of private lives and angst to our cousins over the pond. To illustrate the point Dom Jolly’s prop was a mobile phone, approximately the size of Belgium. It has been a very British point of view that mobile telephone calls and handsets should be discreet. Then along came Samsung who unveiled their huge Galaxy Note smartphone. Cue nation making as many rubbish jokes about Dom Jolly as a Christmas cracker factory on the pipe.

Check us now: we don’t like we love, love, love the Galaxy series handsets. It turns out that Brits are not put off by holding a large handset to their ears after all. These large screen phones are now EVERYWHERE . We can go into 2013 expecting to see larger screens on every new model from every manufacturer. Even erstwhile fridge manufacturer LG are boasting that they’ll give the market a six inch model. Yeah I know … it’s like a seaside postcard!

No. 4. The very idea that any self-respecting man would drag a pair of trews up his hairy twigs that were any other colour than beige, blue or black was as alien to British culture as swapping socks with a stranger on a train. Then for some bizarre and as yet still unexplained reason a craze for coloured chinos took off. Suddenly you could go nowhere without seeing a fully grown man wearing red trousers.

Thankfully sanity is being restored by the authors of the blog 'Look At My Fucking Red Trousers' which catalogues people wearing red trousers and pointing out the stupidity of wearing such garb. We are now in  late December and I am delighted to report that your average British male is once more covering his lower regions in the three colours beginning with B. (And I don’t mean burgundy).

No. 3. I never quite understood why it was that suddenly everyone I knew was posting vintage style masterpieces. Apparently we had Instagram to thank for turning my friends shoddy snaps to art with their clever filters.

Then Facebook bought Instagram and by the end of the year brought in some new T and Cs. These told us that we didn’t own the pics we took of Uncle Herbert and that Facebook could do anything what they wanted with them. The love affair was over. Suddenly we all hate Instagram - except for me…who never understood what it was in the first place.

No. 2. Every decade has its day – it’s more fun to love a decade when you are not actually in it. Personally I have always loved the 1920’s. (Though I don’t rate my chances living a decade where all the young men died in the previous decades World War and the Great Depression was just around the corner). However hip decades in recent years have been the 1950’s. 1960’s and 1970’s. In 2012 we just couldn’t get enough of the 1980’s. Suddenly, the decade when taste died, whiney indie songs ruled and double denim was a good idea, was In.

Then Facebook came to the rescue. People saw photos of themselves (not stylised by Instagram) and realised satellite dish earrings, chambray shirts, and poufy hair was a mistake. Quick as a flash the '80s were Out. Then The Guardian newspaper suddenly claimed Menswear (dreadful 90’s band where the lead singer was more famed for his blue eye shadow than his vocal ability) were actually rather good. This spawned endless articles about Brit pop. Now apparently the 1990’s are back. And we’d only just got rid of the Spice Girls (**sigh deeply**)

No.1. JANUARY: WE are British. We are broke. Our capital has a chaotic transport system that is destined to tank if one more person gets on the Hammersmith & City line on a Sunday afternoon. We are not a nation of jolly smile at strangers people: we rush about being terribly busy with a slightly sour look on our faces. We lost our empire and have never got over it. Our Queen hasn’t smiled since Royal It’s A Knockout in ‘87 . How insensitive to host the fooking Olympics in LONDON against this backdrop! Who the hell elected Sebastian Coe master of the capital’s fate and purse strings.

DECEMBER: WHO were all those naysayers who spent the weeks before the games moaning about transport/corporate sponsors/drugged up athletes? Certainly no one who has been published or spoken publically since London Twentytwelve: WE ARE BRITISH. We always rise to the occasion don’t ya know? London is the greatest city in the world and we gave the world the best ever Olympics. Of course the Queen signed up for the James Bond skit – we’re a nation with a wicked sense of humour…don’t you remember Royal It’s a Knockout? Why is anyone surprised? We’ve been saying this from the very start and OMG don’t you love Sebastian Coe?

Yup…. The year of change that was 2012 in Blighty.

We adapt, we change and we refuse to go the route of dinosaurs. We leave ‘sticking to your guns’ to those who wish to die by them! No one could accuse us of refusing to change our ideas in the face of evidence of a changing tide.

It also means of course…. That we are always right.

And don’tchya just love that about us!

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