Land of Dope and Tory

The Communists and my mother have a lot of strange little rituals. Grumbling their way through The Last Night of the Proms is one of them.

Of course, The Communist is now living in a nursing home so I expect he did his Furious Grumbling on his own.

Every year they watch it. Every year they complain like mad.

This year's conductor was Sir Roger Norrington, who was an amiable, frightfully-British, uncle-like figure. If his life is ever filmed, he'll be played by Jim Broadbent, I can tell you now.

Now you know the kind of thing that's going to happen in The Last Night of the Proms. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

You get a big crowd of people feeling that, for one day of the year, they're allowed to be patriotic and the audience is a mass of waving Union Jacks. (They're probably not called Union Jacks. They're probably called Union Flags. I never know what to call them. My Dad's a Communist.)

I went over to their house and found my mother watching the bit with Vaughan Williams' Sea Shanties, which I like. So far so good.

But then we were on to the traditional finale and the complaints started.

On came Bryn Terfel and sang Rule, Britannia, to the accompaniment of madly waving flags.

My mother loves Bryn Terfel but didn't think he should be singing this. "Imperialist nonsense," she said, as she says every year. I could hear my father thinking it from his nursing home a mile away.

Oh yes, on to the Pomp and Circumstance with the crowd joining in enthusiastically.

Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the free, How shall we extol thee, Who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider, Shall thy bounds be set, God, who made thee mighty, Make thee mightier yet - -

"So hollow," said my mother in tones of contempt. Me? I just like the tune and wanted to sing along and wave a flag, even though "extol thee" is a really rubbish rhyme for "glory". My father would be singing along in his nursing home, with his alternative version beginning Land of Dope and Tory.

And then Jerusalem! And did those feet in ancient times - -

You'd think my mother might like this, since William Blake wrote the lyrics and she heartily approves of him, but no! It reminds her of the Women's Institute as they always sing it, and she doesn't like them - she thinks they're a bunch of stick-in-the-mud old ladies, and she's never going to be one of those, even though she's eighty-four.

Finally, on to the British National Anthem, God Save the Queen.

Here are the words, as sung by millions of Brits throughout the country.

God save our gracious Queen, long live our noble Queen, God save the Queen.
Send her victorious, happy and glorious, long to reign o'er us, God save the Queen.

So far so good, even though "o'er us" is a rubbish rhyme for "glorious".

But then we go on to the second verse, which goes like this:

Ba ba ba ba baba, Aab aab aab aab aba
Ba ba ba ba. Aab aab aab aab baba, ba ba ba ba baba, aab aaby aaby aab ba ba, Baba aab ba ba.

You look in any gathering and you'll see that this is exactly what's being sung. For nobody has a clue about the second verse except we know it has some vague idea about doing away with Johnny Foreigner. In fact, very probably the only person in the whole country who knows the words is Amy, visiting from Barrow, who was taught it as a child and can sing every verse. Mum and I marvelled at this, though Mum of course managed to throw in a cry of "Dreadful, dreadful lyrics" on the way. (Mind you, she's right of course).

The thing about my parents is they take their political beliefs very seriously, and they really disapprove of all this show of what they'd call "warmongering patriotism": though, of course, they like the music! I find their constant complaints all rather exhausting. Sometimes, over the years, I've thought oh! it would be so much fun, just for once, to join in, sing my head off and not think too much.