The Suez Syndrome
The symbols of Empire and the silver tipped, three pipped, furry lipped master race, that was the English Establishment. Top hatted Etonians, defenders of a class system, defeated over two World Wars. Poppies in Afghanistan and Flanders. For all the tea in China. Old colonial tobacco, rubber and sugar cane plantations lost in the turning tides of global capital. Churchill's after-dinner speeches in America. Breaking Blighty's chalky bones down into little pieces; rebranding those tattooed blue Britons as 'never will be slaves'.Single-skinned cardboard boxes stamped UK plc.
The symbols of Empire and the silver tipped, three pipped, furry lipped master race, that was the English Establishment. Top hatted Etonians, defenders of a class system, defeated over two World Wars. Poppies in Afghanistan and Flanders. For all the tea in China. Old colonial tobacco, rubber and sugar cane plantations lost in the turning tides of global capital. Churchill's after-dinner speeches in America. Breaking Blighty's chalky bones down into little pieces; rebranding those tattooed blue Britons as 'never will be slaves'.Single-skinned cardboard boxes stamped UK plc.
I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet
Reprocessed through the liberalising free-market razzamatazz churn of pop-music, fashion, football, newspaper scandals, celebrity, club-life and street-drugs: the post-war engine manufacturing working class identities for the consumption of the masses. Not for us the bespoke tailors of Saville Row and family physicians of Harley Street. Marks and Sparks and the National Health Service have arrived. The Messershmitts have been replaced by Vespas. The Volkswagens have become campervans. Cheap holidays abroad, Rioja red sunburn, with Fish and Chip vinegar, skinheads on the Costa del Sol. Mary Quant hemlines flirting with Paul McCartney baselines. Patent leather boots, plastic jewels and Prince Buster on the dance floor.
Flamingo Jazz
Post-war power devolving to the bourgeois middle-class; the Knightsbridge, Whitehall and Mayfair mafia. The reassuring critics of a Empire under blood red skies: spies, mobsters and civil servants clustering under the mosquito nets, plotting on vodka martinis, a khaki coloured politics. The white, navy and chrome grey aluminium of the BOAC VC-10, James Bond, and Rule Britannia. A starchy white linen suit daubbed with a saucy red liquid lipstick kiss in some far away field. Strawberries, cream and hot chilli sauce. The tingling heat of humid tropical fever cooling naked skin under the inky diamond studded night sky. Sweating guilty secrets in the evening breeze around the glowing gauze of the gas lamp. The insects swarm. Never forgotten, forever England. The world service, cricket commentaries, all night long. Ex-patriots: strangely boorish, rude and obnoxious; grandiose, narcisstic; pathetic, hilarious bully-buddies; making saints out of all us sinners; we all sit down to all their dinners; now not another a word about it; that will be all. [Amen].
Granny Takes a Trip
Love is all you need. The counter-culture, being and becoming permanent revolution, funded by rock and rollers in rose-gold Rolls Royses. The regimental bandsmen of the next generation, raising their festival flags for freedom, preaching to the converted, peacenik hippie capitalists, psychedelic warriors, fighting a war against fascism, with Hammond organs, American blues, and sexy sax solos sold in the back streets of Soho. Magazine men marching off to neverland. Marxist-Lenninist guerrillas invading distant Banana sands. All members of the same Gentlemen's club. Palm courts aplenty. The occasional desertion to Moscow. With no state pension and no name. But Her Majesty has asked that they should all still retain their seats in the House of Lords. God forgive us our sins.
