Celebrate Britishness...

"A new bank holiday should be created to celebrate Britishness, help build a national identity and thank community heroes, a "think tank" is urging Prime Minister Gordon Brown."

So spaketh The News today.

Notice how every time that Gordon Brown is mentioned in the media the words "Prime Minister" have to be prefixed to him just in case we forget ?

The Institute For Public Policy Research are the people responsible and they recommend the Monday after Rememberance Sunday as the day when we should all not go to work and instead sit at home and think about being British and roam the streets looking for community heroes to thank, presumably the community heroes could stand at their garden gates with a "comunity hero" sign hanging around their neck, shaking hands and accepting thanks as the nieghbourhood troop past in single file, doffing their caps.

I think it would work.

I can see the queue stretching down the street now, its pissing it down because of course this "British Day" bank holiday is in November, but still undaunted the crowds come to pay homage to Doris Wainwright, the lady who lives at number 42, for Doris is a community hero.

For Doris it is who guides their children across the busy main road to their school every morning and then again in the opposite direction every evening, not one day in thirty years has Doris missed, even on the day of her replacement hip operation she insisted on doing the Lollipop duty first thing in the morning with an ambulance waiting to rush her to the waiting surgeons, and then at 3.30pm she was there again, still groggy from the anesthetic, wrapped in a blanket with her nephew to push her and her lollipop in the wheelchair back and forth across the busy main road to ensure that the kinder of the community did nnot end up squished under a bus.

Today, on British Day, the community queue in the rain to honour Doris, their hero.

Even the knuckleheads in the community have left the daily comfort of their pub bench for they too, once upon a time, were small children guided to safety by Doris and now they stand, huge as a barn door, awkwardly fumbling with baseball cap in hand while they mumble under their breath "Doris Wainwright, I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your Brit...British Day... on the day of your British Day celebration. And I hope your first child be a masculine child. I pledge my ever-ending loyalty."

Thats exactly how it will be in my local community, no-one will spend all day in the pub or watch Derek Acorah on a Living Channel "Most Haunted" 24 hour bank holiday special, oh no, it won't be like that at all.