ThisGreatWorld™, The English National Day of Celebration

Should we award ourselves a National Day to celebrate this ‘Englishness’ and when should it be?

Definitely we should have “ThisGreatWorld” (or some other such name) Day to celebrate ‘English.’

Politically I don’t think we can get a day which would be near Easter and the May Bank holiday. We can probably find a reason for celebrating for any day of the year, equally well for we know that for whatever date we do chose we will upset someone (We have upset an awful lot of people over the centuries.)

I suggest we could think about a Monday around the middle of October, the weather sometimes will be reasonable (though preferably raining), it could be near the Autumn half-term holiday, it would break up the longest period of work, it will reflect a change in the seasons.

Next we need to create some ‘English’ celebrations including every idiosyncrasy we can find whether it be Morris Dancing, Conker Competitions, Tiddley Winks, roast chestnuts and roast potatoes, apple bobbing, clog dancing, and why not the Floral Dance. Plus of course the Bulldog Show, and a celebration of English Cuisine – Black Pudding, Stilton, Curry, and what a wonderful time of year for English apples, plus a Real Ale festival. Nowadays we could probably have a Wine Festival or at least a Garlic competition.

Are there any religious festivals we can resuscitate, Harvest Festival, ‘beating the bounds’ or even something Druidic (then we could add an Eistedfodd, well, the Welsh are the original English and they sing almost as well as they play Rugby, see.)

We probably need some County Championships, bowls, croquet, skittles, fishing, sailing, football or A1 Motor Race culminating with the National Finals on this day. It will all be organised into the new English Regions so that we can get some grants from the EU.