Without Portfolio

Last night I found myself finally getting around to watching Rob Brydon’s Identity Crisis. Any amongst you who have both watched it yourselves and read more than one post of this blog will be aware of two factors which I am sure make you wonder just how I have avoided watching it thus far.

These being:

1. The presence throughout the show of the delicious Chris Corcoran
2. The fact that I actually quite like a bit of Mr C and would make the hugest effort to have him all HD and beautiful in the corner of my living room

Regardless, I have felt mostly indifferent each time it has cropped up on the TV listings until now.

It was bothering me slightly that to see it was on I just had that “Meh” feeling and got on with something else instead - not just because of the Corcoran-apathy, but because I genuinely love Rob Brydon's work too! I realise now though that the timing needed to be right.

The show was fabulous… but this is not going to be a review, mostly since it's a really old programme so my opinion is fairly irrelevant, but also because it seems to have gone deeper than purely entertainment having led me on something of a personal journey of introspection regarding my own lack of national identity.

The issue of timing comes of the fact that it coincides with the Rugby Six Nations.

Major sporting events tend to highlight the national pride (or lack thereof!) in everyone; in fact, it often feels that I personally am the only individual void of any kind of pride in ‘my’ team.

In a previous job, my colleagues were all very heavily into football. I have no interest myself, so just held back from their conversation. When international tournaments were happening, they somehow expected me to suddenly care about the game, making me out to be strange for having no opinion on how last night’s match went or often not even knowing whether there was one on. I had a heated debate with a very dear friend during the most recent [maybe World, maybe European] Cup over the fact that she had watched an England match and was gutted that we had lost: “I thought you didn’t like football?” “I don’t, but it is England isn’t it!” I don’t understand this. It makes no sense to my mind to endure *half-guessing* 90 minutes (?) of anything unpleasant just to show support for your country; but that’s just me, it seems…

It works the other way too… you may remember (or may not, here’s the page just in case!) my references to the rugby world cup back in the autumn; I do quite enjoy watching rugby. What baffled me, though, was the outpouring at the time from my footie-loving, ‘egg-chase’-hating friends giving their opinion of the plays and outcomes; challenged on their sudden interest, they expressed the same opinion; of course they are interested, their team are playing after all!

So why do I not feel the same? As much as I like to watch rugby, I still cannot muster that national pride to cheer on my team. In fact during the World Cup itself, I noted that occasionally there might have been a choice of matches and I would opt to watch the ‘other’ one, missing the England match. A Welsh friend tried taunting me after a particular match (probably the last one, although I do not remember at what stage or to whom we left the tournament) and was a little down-hearted that his goading invoked such little reaction. His final word on the matter was something along the lines of admiring me for being the bigger person; I never did tell him I just did not care! Especially given that he thought even more highly of me when I sent messages of sympathy over the theft of his Welsh team’s semi-final and afterwards the loss of their third place play-off match against Australia.

And now we are in the midst of the six nations tournament, I find myself headed down the same pathway; being mostly indifferent when ‘my’ team are playing; caring more for other teams than England; feeling I do not quite belong to this nation that supposedly owns me.

So what is the point to all this rambling?

Well, believe it or not it does bother me that I have no affiliation to my country.
Nationality matters. Even with the current pull northwards to Wales, I will still be an English person and am fully aware that moving will not change who I am. Yet if I do not know who I am, how can I teach my children to discover their own identities? There is a heavily ingrained Englishness within me somewhere, believe me; I have studied my family tree and taken at least three separate lines back to the early part of the eighteenth century (the earliest being a 1703 baptism entry) and at no point does anyone move farther than thirty miles from where I now live – that inherent heritage will not go away simply because I move fifty miles north.

So why the calling? Why do I feel such a one-ness whenever I visit Wales, even when I think back on childhood visits? Why the initial round of recurrent dreams which instigated my current need to move away? The desperate need to learn the language and the frantic house-hunting? Why do I feel such a longing, almost becoming of home-sickness when standing at the edge of the county gazing forlornly at the Welsh coastline?

I have no answers, but at least thanks to Rob Brydon (and of course the gorgeous Mr Corcoran!) I do at least have an inkling as to the right questions to ask…




And I am aware of the gleaming irony of using an image representing Cornwall whilst talking of my own heritage, but it kind of illustrates my point to say I really don't much care!