The other thing that happened in the pub yesterday was that I went into the gents' and a man standing at a urinal announced in a strong Welsh accent: "I love a good piss, I do".
Out of friendliness, and to gloss over the fact that I hadn't had enough to drink to be discussing urine with a stranger, I asked him where abouts in Wales he was from. He replied that he was from Swansea. Tentatively I said, "Oh I'm from Cardiff".
He spat at the floor.
"You Jack bastard" I called after him, descending to his level. I remember from my days at PC World that this is the best insult for Swansea people.
This little exchange was relatively good-natured but underlines a sad truth.
A while ago I wrote about my belief that nationalism within the British Isles is a nonsense, and I still find it detestable, be it Scots, English or Welsh nationalism. But it's easy to forget that people seem to hate those closest to them geographically, and it makes little sense. It's a classic form of definition in antagonism to 'otherness' so loved by cultural anthropologists. I guess people must construct some kind of ranking system in their heads along the lines of:
Being from Swansea > Being from Cardiff > Being from Scotland > Being from England.
Dumb, isn't it.
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2 comments:
"people seem to hate those closest to them geographically"...
It's also interesting (well I think so) that people from bordering countries seem to hate each other... but it isn't in fact that surprising. After all, at some point in history there must have been enough of a rivalry to establish the borders in the first place.
Yeah, that's very true in the case of borders.
I suppose it's slightly different in the case of the town or city though, in that you don't need any sort of permission to migrate from one conurbation to another, and there's no real reason for one town or city to rival another, since it's hard to tell what the yardstick for success for a city would be, other than low crime, or large population, but those things tend to be mutually exclusive.
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