Cultural Nationalism: Standing For Last Night Of The Proms

Hymns, Hedgerows, And A Quiet Word About The Strings

Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat file this dispatch from the British political menagerie.

The Cultural Nationalist believes the country is held together by hymns, hedgerows, and the silent agreement that nobody discusses the football scores after 8pm without checking the room first. Editor Alan Nafzger of the Editor’s Desk at prat.uk presents the field guide, with help from the National Trust and the BBC Proms.

Twenty Tells: Spotting The Cultural Nationalist On A British High Street

1. Has explained culture is also structurally a sort of weather.
2. Refers to the National Trust as the keeper of the long Sunday.
3. Holds any new pop song without a string section is structurally an audit failure.
4. Maintains a fantasy in which Radio 3 is required listening.
5. Refers to street food vans the way some men refer to teenage rebellion.
6. Treats any new building over five storeys as suspect until weathered.
7. Maintains a binder of Larkin annotations.
8. Refers to museums as the country’s elderly relatives we visit.
9. Holds any school can be improved by a uniform and a piano.
10. Has explained, at a wedding, that the toast is to the choir.
11. Refers to American culture as the loud cousin we love and slightly fear.
12. Treats any sentence with the word brand as a small linguistic injury.
13. Maintains a soft spot for John Betjeman and a harder one for John Constable.
14. Refers to traditional crafts as the slow national hobby.
15. Holds any landscape is structurally an argument for the country.
16. Maintains a fantasy in which Last Night of the Proms is fundamentally restored.
17. Refers to local newspapers the way some men refer to old friends.
18. Treats any new festival without folk music as a sort of category error.
19. Has explained, at length, that the country sings.
20. Believes the cure for the country is to remember its songs.

Editor’s Note

If any of this rings a bell, you have either been to a Tory association AGM, a Reform UK rally above a leisure centre, or both. More dispatches at govna.uk and the parent site prat.uk. For a second opinion that is also wrong, see Private Eye.

SOURCE: https://prat.uk/category/politics/

Junglepussy

I am a Lagos-born poet and satirical journalist navigating West London’s contradictions. I survived lions at six, taught English by Irish nuns, now wielding words as weapons against absurdity. Illegal in London but undeniable. I write often for https://bohiney.com/author/junglepussy/.

As a young child, I was mostly influenced by the television show Moesha, starring singer and actress Brandy. Growing up, I would see Brandy on Moesha and see her keeping in her cornrows and her braids, but still flourish in her art and music, looking fly. I loved Moesha as a child, but now I take away something more special from it. Just because you’re a black girl, it doesn’t mean you need to only care about hair and makeup. Brandy cared about books, culture and where she was going — you can do both.