Tuesday 6 September 2016

Blue remembered hills


Yesterday's post about N v S hit a note with some people which I hadn't expected, but maybe this is because our version of N v S is different than most other countries, and rooted deeply into the class system which most other countries do not have to the same extent.

The closest thing to our class structure must be India, which, as far as I can tell, takes it to an extreme degree whereby it becomes a matter of life and death, but I think that their system may have been grossly magnified by the British during the Empire days.

One thing we all seem to have in common is a deep affection and attachment to the place where we were brought up, assuming we did not suffer a troubled childhood, but usually even if we did. I think that you may have to move away from the place of your birth in order to fully appreciate it, or at least stay there until you are quite old to achieve the same result.

One of the saddest things about the refugees from places like Syria is the way they hang onto fond memories of their childhood environment as it was before it was torn apart through brutal war, and their longing to return, both to their childhood - lived through their own children who will never experience anything like it again - and their homeland.

My memories of 1950s and 60s Surrey are, I believe, quite accurate, and not just seen through rose-tinted spectacles.

I was fully aware of the worst aspects of the rural stockbroker-belt when I was a kid, and had many first-hand experiences of just how nasty some of its residents could be, but it was the land itself which I loved then and still do.

Surrey, like other parts of the Home Counties (why are the counties which border London called 'the Home Counties'?) has a strange and fascinating topography which lays each period of history side by side in plain sight, and the landscape has not been made unrecognisable through relentless agricultural development - mainly because housing has been used as an investment by the rich since the days of Gerard Winstanley. Winstanley lost the battle to save St George's Hill in Weybridge, but there are still hundreds of square miles of proper commonland left, only thirty miles from the capital.

Now you may have an inkling as to why 'A Canterbury Tale' is my all-time favourite film.

24 comments:

  1. Are most English people as versed in the history of their land as you; the cause and effect of social movements, the role the actual topography played? We're on the verge of repeating history here because we don't know it; perhaps you are, too. Never mind; I think it's all a bloody mess, to quote my Cambridge sister in law.

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    1. It is - as you say - a very small country here. The heath and commonland is all Bronze age, with some prehistoric signs of alteration. Any woodland which has survived, has survived the felling of timber to make ships for various wars against the Spanish, French and Dutch. Everything else is obvious. All other campaigns were on what is now foreeign soil, as yours became.

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  2. You made some very valid points there re:memories - I may never ever return for my memories are not good.

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  3. I agree about loving the place where one is born and brought up. I did contemplate going back there after retirement but found that friends I still had there had not moved on - I had outgrown them - sadly. Doesn't do to stay in one place all your life.

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    1. It doesn't do to go back either, even if it were possible. It's ok to visit though, even if you don't go there in person.

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  4. Having seen quite a lot of Surrey myself, I agree with you about the beauty of the land. I was lucky to have known someone who kindly shared his love of its beauty with me. These fond memories are now clouded for me by this gentleman's sudden death from a heart attack a few September's ago, while he was working in his garden.

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    1. Tom, that's certainly a moral, but another might have been stop smoking. Yet, M loved living in the village and restoring his tiny cottage, and gardening. It's difficult to know how long being able to live our dreams will last.

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    2. Tom, that's certainly a moral, but another might have been stop smoking. Yet, M loved living in the village and restoring his tiny cottage, and gardening. It's difficult to know how long being able to live our dreams will last.

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    3. Very true. This is another good reason never to retire.

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  5. That's a beautiful picture, Tom.

    Speaking of the British class system, I just read Snobs by Julian Fellows which is all about it. It's fascinating to me although people of the aristocracy over there would probably consider people like myself to be almost sub human. Crazy.

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    1. I count both arsitocrats and old-style as good friends and acquaintances. You have to if you want to survive unscathed in the class system. Most people do not know how to place me at parties, if I am dressed in certain ways. It's the only way of getting away with it.

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    2. I meant to say, 'old-style peasants', but H.I. came in and put me off my stroke. Probably innate guilt on my part.

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    3. More of a Freudian slip perhaps

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    4. No. I was right the first time.

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  6. There is a very real class system in the US, despite many claims to the contrary. It is true that you can buy your way into the upper crust, but that's been true since around 1900, when rich industrialists became the upper class. Some still hold to the idea that the longer ago your people arrived in North America, the more prestigious your family. But absent money, it is a self-referential sense of entitlement. My very rich in-laws don't care that my partner's family acquired their land from William Penn since they no longer have the money to maintain it. Similarly, the descendants of the early colonists look down on the super rich as arrivistes.

    Still, there is a clearly defined working class - though nowadays everyone calls themselves Middle Class - and certainly the poor have always been with us. The rest of us muddle along in the middle, classified according to education and the economic status of our parents. It's very simple really.

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    1. That's the way with any land of opportunity I think - even during a gold-rush.

      Most of our aristocrats are now penniless, so the arrivistes are taking over, but the Russians are on the decline.

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  7. I do speak to my cleaner if there's an r in the month

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    1. And leave notes at any other time?

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    2. I leave her notes the length of essays telling her what she can and can't do.

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  8. My native Surrey village (Lingfield) was a beautiful place. Now, however, it has been ruined by the noise of aircraft circling around Gatwick.

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    1. That sort of thing must have destroyed many film locations.

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