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FOR CHRIST'S SAKE STOP POURING HONEY OVER ME

  • Writer: Barry Passmore
    Barry Passmore
  • Jan 10
  • 2 min read

Updated: Jun 18

The pouring honey phrase, which I’m particularly fond of, came from my lovely wife Shirley’s lips when (or rather just after) we found ourselves being attended to by the most outrageously helpful volunteer at a National Trust venue some years back.  When I see something like this piece below then (taken from The Knowledge which is a strongly recommended read by the way) it gives me at least a glimmer of hope to know that there are others out there who are ready to slit their own throats when they witness what is happening in this modern world.

 

I remember the moment I first realised the British had a “national character”, says Gareth Roberts in The Spectator. It was the mid-1970s, and ITV were showing, “for a giggle”, clips of an American TV show celebrating the love between mothers and daughters. A hyper-glamorous “mom” and her young daughter descended a pair of marble stairways, meeting below at a “gently tinkling plastic fountain” where they took turns to “stare gooily” into each other’s eyes. “You are my guiding light, Mommy,” lisped the daughter. “You are the light of my life,” replied the mother, “and I bless each day.” I must have been seven or eight, but I joined my parents – and the entire British audience – in hoots of derisive laughter. “Why are Americans like that?” I asked. “We’re just different to them,” my mum replied. Well, not any more.

 

Today, there is “slush and syrup and cutesiness” all around. Take the mural of Paddington Bear on the South Bank. “Mrs Brown says that in London everyone is different,” reads the painfully anodyne quote, “and that means anyone can fit in.” In October, the BBC announced that Paddington had “finally been issued with a passport, 66 years after he was first said to have arrived in London”. It’s enough to make even the most reserved Brit want to spray “ENOCH WAS RIGHT” over the made-up marmalade muncher’s face. On the Tube, “sickbags should be supplied” for those nauseated by the endless, cloying “Be Kind” cartoons. The ads are worse: everything from orange juice to assisted dying is advertised with a cheeky “You ok, hun?” vibe. British culture used to be calibrated to give a “satirical edge to any sentiment”.  I miss it terribly.

Source The Knowledge 06/12/2024 or thereabouts

 

As do many of us I’m sure.  Bravo!

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