can't be the weather, although i do like grey days. Is it the accents? Those velvety voices so cultured: fine-tuned by years of education in ancient, drafty halls; or perhaps those so dangerously seductive: a swaggeringly confusing but sexy London gangster rhyme, innit? Or maybe it's even a Northern dialect: one that baffles yet fascinates me.. The varieties of accent alone are endless, from one road to the next, not to mention the lexis. Perhaps it is the food? I do adore taking tea, sweet and savoury puddings and pies, ooh, and sausages, and Sunday roasts, and curries, and chips, I could go on for quite a awhile, so food is definitely up there. Most of all though, it's got to be the people themselves;they are, on the whole, totally bloody bonkers. I was prepared for the basic differences when I arrived here, after a lifetime of Anglophiliac prep work, but I am still quite confused (and intrigued) by some of the things I hear, see, and experience - even after four years of island habitation.
Creative and stylistically unique,the Albionic approach to la langue is as inspired as their approach to dress. Sartorially speaking, the inhabitants of this realm are truly in a world of their own. Perhaps it's a consequence of that grey weather: inconstant, frequently damp, and bone-chilling. Or maybe history plays a factor; the diverse influences of the past days of Empire, the impact of our current heteroglot culture, globetrotting, cuisine bending,
'England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomolies, hobbies, and humours' George Santayana
We just need to look to the amount of well known eccentrics';; the sense of individuality and zest for the new? English artists, musicians, designers, even scholars think outside the box.....
Some say it started with King George III, mad as a hatter, with his courtiers and aspirants eager to embrace lunacy as an upward mobility device. But as far back as medievel times,quirkiness and peculiarity of action by the unique people who have populated this island and forged its eccentricity mythos. Luckily for us, this trend continues, in fashion, art, literature, theatre, film, and just plain life- so many worth getting to know, past and present. In that vein, lets explore some of them, starting with Dame Edith Sitwell, poet and chronicler of English weirdness.
When Cold December
by Dame Edith Sitwell
by Dame Edith Sitwell
WHEN cold December
Froze to grisamber
The jangling bells on the sweet rose-trees--
Then fading slow
And furred is the snow
As the almond's sweet husk--
And smelling like musk.
The snow amygdaline
Under the eglantine
Where the bristling stars shine
Like a gilt porcupine--
The snow confesses
The little Princesses
On their small chioppines
Dance under the orpines.
See the casuistries
Of their slant fluttering eyes--
Gilt as the zodiac
(Dancing Herodiac).
Only the snow slides
Like gilded myrrh--
From the rose-branches--hides
Rose-roots that stir.
Froze to grisamber
The jangling bells on the sweet rose-trees--
Then fading slow
And furred is the snow
As the almond's sweet husk--
And smelling like musk.
The snow amygdaline
Under the eglantine
Where the bristling stars shine
Like a gilt porcupine--
The snow confesses
The little Princesses
On their small chioppines
Dance under the orpines.
See the casuistries
Of their slant fluttering eyes--
Gilt as the zodiac
(Dancing Herodiac).
Only the snow slides
Like gilded myrrh--
From the rose-branches--hides
Rose-roots that stir.
Edith Sitwell was a modernist contemporary of TS Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh and Dylan Thomas: a poet, critic, and style-bending aristsocrat who after being locked in an iron frame by her father to cure a supposed spinal deformtiy, continuted in breakout fashion to chronicle the world of English weirdness and contradict the prevailing, traditional poetic mood of the time. She was also a rule-breaker sartorially - turbans, brocades and velvets - baroque dressing up box.
Be like Edith - feed your own inner eccentric!
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Maya Hansen  |
