Being Inconveniently Un-British.

The TV at lunchtime, at least on the main BBC channel, was utterly swamped with the Queen’s Jubilee. There must have been hundreds of cameras, technicians and presenters in every corner of the land, covering pageants, street parties and a whole range of other events. They interviewed countless members of the public, and that was what I found interesting.

There they all were, out in the cold, murky, wet streets of an unusually cold, murky and wet June day here in Britain. Thousands upon thousands of them, all wearing union flag hats, union flags shirts, union flag trousers - and waving union flags, of course. And they all looked so happy and involved. Why?

I decided it must be an identity thing. These people were clearly connecting at quite a deep level with a national and cultural identity, and I suppose they were connecting on some level with each other in the process. That’s what I can’t do. That’s my failing (well, one of them.)

I can see myself as being British at a fairly shallow level – if I’m watching an international sports event, for example, or pointing out to damn Yankees how superior we Brits are. But that’s just kidding, a bit of lightweight fun, nothing to take seriously. These people were being serious.

I can identify with being me, I can identify with being a committed member of a partnership, and I can identify with being a compassionate and concerned member of the range of sentient beings that inhabit planet earth. But I find it irrational to connect closely with an identity that depends on a leader I didn’t choose and a land boundary established over a thousand years ago by people I didn’t know.

So there you have it. That’s my failing, the guilt that hangs heavily off my shoulders. And maybe it’s why I’m an example of that fairly rare animal, the extrovert loner.