Notes from a Small Island

The soldiers sang a charming little refrain that went

This fucking town's a fucking cuss No fucking trams, no fucking bus, Nobody cares for fucking us In fucking Halkirk

It's an odd thing about mothers generally, I believe. As soon as you leave home they merrily throw away everything that you cherished through childhood and adolescence your valuable collection of baseball cards, a complete set of Playboys from 196675, your highschool yearbooks but give them half a peach or a spoonful of leftover peas and they will put it in a Tupperware container at the back of the fridge and treasure it more or less for ever.

For the benefit of foreign readers, I should explain that as a rule in Britain no matter how many windows there are in a bank, post office or rail station, only two of them will be open, except at very busy times, when just one will be open.

Almost any encounter with a stranger begins with the words 'I'm terribly sorry but' followed by a request of some sort ' could you tell me the way to Brighton,' 'help me find a shirt my size,' 'get your steamer trunk off my foot.'

we owe the Scots are whisky, raincoats, rubber wellies, the bicycle pedal, the telephone, tarmac, penicillin and an understanding of the active principles of cannabis, and think how insupportable life would be without those.

Woodhorn's was in 1916 when thirty men died in an explosion caused by criminally lax supervision; the mine's owners were sternly told not to let it happen again or next time they would really get told off.

They have the most extraordinary attitude to food.'

'What, because they like it tasty?'

Their wives, lavishly rouged and powdered, looked as if they had just come from a coffin fitting.

I recently read that more than half of Britons surveyed couldn't think of a single thing about their country to be proud of. Well, be proud of that.

I stood and watched him awhile and finally asked him why he was standing out in a cold rain rebuilding the wall. He looked at me with that special pained look Yorkshire farmers save for onlookers and other morons and said: 'Because it's fallen down, of course.'