: 23 April 2004 :

“Somehow,” Amar said, “a story about a Middle Eastern bloke stamping on an iguana has become one of this country’s central myths.”

I’d been at work for four hours before I remembered it was St George’s Day. Nobody else in the office seemed to care about it, particularly. There was some brief discussion about how George wasn’t even English, and then we got back to work. Amar said he wouldn’t mind being a saint. “I could kill the cat that hangs around the office,” he said, “and people would talk about how I slew the two-headed lion.”

St Amar? Hmmm.

“Nah, I’d be St Arnold.” He pulled a Schwarzenegger pose.

I laughed. “I wouldn’t let you kill the cat, anyway. And you can’t be a saint. You’re a Muslim.”

“So? St George was a Muslim...”

I didn’t know whether he was right or not. He probably was, though I was fairly sure George converted to Christianity. I couldn’t be arsed arguing.

Later, as I walked to an art supplies warehouse on Whitechapel High Street to buy an easel as a co-worker’s leaving present, I went past a couple of pubs on Brick Lane with people inside celebrating St George’s Day. Sitting at the bar wearing plastic English-flag bowler hats. Probably all it means to most people, an excuse to go down the pub early, especially since it’s Friday, and put a daft hat on.

I was thinking about the story of the Lambton Worm, a story my dad told me when I was small. A Geordie myth – the “Worm” rhymes with “storm” – about a dragon that encircled some monument outside Newcastle until a local man wrassled it into a hole in the ground. There was a poem about it, but the only line I can remember is about how the hero “hoyed it down the well”. I’ve always liked “hoyed” as a word.

Also when I was a kid and I was in the Scouts there used to be a St George’s Day Parade through Cirencester on the nearest Sunday to April 23rd. Meet at the cattle market in the morning, tramp through the town holding an assortment of flags, with a marching band playing. (I still remember the distant tinkly noise of the Majorettes practicing with their portable glockenspiels in the park near my house). Sit in the parish church for an hour, numb-arsed and bored. Various Scouts did Bible readings, and yeah, I had to do it a few times. There was a Scout leader with us for a while who was excused the church service ‘for religious reasons’. He was asian – don’t remember his name, I’m afraid – but I never knew whether he was genuinely affiliated to a different faith or whether he was just exploiting people’s cultural sensibilities to get out of sitting through the church service. I do remember that most Scouts’ annual protestations of atheism fell on deaf ears, and the ones that complained had to go like everyone else.

‘Kinell, it’s all coming out now. And the other day at work I told Michelle about the youth orchestra I used to be in as a spotty 13-year-old percussionist. I have to stop telling people about what I did when I was younger and even less cool. My rock ’n’ roll mystique lies in tatters as it is. Well, I might as well also tell you, while I’m on a confessional one, that I used to be an altar boy. Up until the age of about 16 or 17, in fact, when I finally decided the Catholic Church and I weren’t a perfect match.

Anyhow, I don’t think St Geordie’s Day matters much. Most of the people drinking on the pavement as I walked home would have been there anyway, on account of the good weather. Saw a few flags hanging from builders’ scaffolding or from the windows of the flats on my estate, not much else.

In other (I suppose vaguely related) news:

Ron Atkinson, a former football manager and TV pundit, is in trouble after calling a Chelsea defender a “fucking lazy thick nigger” in a live broadcast when he thought his microphone was switched off...

Richard Desmond, a porn baron and proprietor of the Daily Express, is in trouble after claiming that all Germans are Nazis and goose-stepping around the room during a meeting with the owners of the Daily Telegraph...