God save the English!
Memory conjures up something unspringlike–
a storm in a teacup, rain,
sunshine, sugar, aprilness,
cloudy climate and cricket.
I love the British. Especially the English. I love, too, the Scots and the bagpipers, the Celts and their songs, the Angles and the Stuarts and their feuds, and all of them all, with all their freemasonry and their divine and unchaste kingdom conquests, and their gloriously imperial stories and their passionately trivial games, their love for complicated laws and arbitrary rules and neat little traditions. I love their brave saints and their greedy dragons, their majestic quests and their holy grails, their kindness for beautiful flowers and their affection for faithful pets. The taste for tea and buns and biscuits in the sunny but soaked, brown and breezy morning when the ball swings like the lead-motive of a Mark Knopfler solo, and the bat beats its breast at its sweet spot…
…and, most of all, I love the English language, and all that which can be done with it.
