Sunday, October 14, 2007

For God, Queen Lizzy and St. George!

Well, what about the Rugby tonight, eh? I'm not one normally to be racist but the emnity between us and France is hundreds of years old, so it's always an emotive pairing.
Anyway, 2 things struck me as I watched the match tonight. Firstly it amused me how we british (to be said with the same indian accept of the guy from "it ain't half hot mum") always like to be the underdogs. With the score at England 8 and France 9 I had a conplete stranger comment "doesn't look good, does it?" on the way past to the loo, and Shelley sitting next to me saying, "It'd be great to win, but I can't see it happening". Now I know the line of wisdom from Hobson's Choice goes "It's always best to look on the worst side of things first. Then whatever chances can't be worse than you've looked for", but do we take this feeling in England just a little bit too far? We seem to always assume we'll be crap at something just so we won't get disapointed when we do fail. The problem with this approach is that, a) we are just as disapointed as ever when we lose anyway, and b) if we go into things assuming the worst, have the time that apathetic approach puts us on a bad footing to start with.
The second thing that stuck me was oneof the newspapers that headlined with a picture of the Bayeux Tapestry and commented about the Norman Conquest that it depicts that, "this was the last time that the French beat us at anything important. Although in my best pub landlord spirit I have to agree with the sentiment, may I just stop everyone to point out that really speaking they didn't even beat us then. The invasion was by the Normans, or as they were originally called the Norse Men. These were Nordic people who had already invaded the North of France and settled there. The original Gauls that were displaced never had anything to do with the invasion. So next time any frenchman tries to remind you about Hastings, just remind him that those same Normans probably raped and pillaged his ancestors a few hundred years earlier!

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