We went on a walking tour. Of Jaffa. Where they don’t got no oranges, cos its so small and compact and squashed together that there’s just no room to grow their most famous product. But Jaffa can trace its history back 4,500 years, which is a bit special, and is mentioned not once but twice in the Bible. Even Pele only gets one name check, and that’s only in the 1847 Dyslexic edition. There again Jerusalem’s mentioned 16 times on every page. The place, not Billy Jerusalem (played for Derby County in 1237).

We like walking tours. Even when its raining a bit, then sunny a bit, then raining some more… because they’re interesting and incredibly superficial. “There’s a magnificent building!!” They proclaim. It was built in 1263 by Ethelred the Unworthy, or Suleman the Impotent or some such noteworthy historical figure. “And it has a magnificent display of the finest Arabic/Slavic/Nordic/Bohemian/Mediaeval furniture known to mankind!!!! But we’re not going inside. This is a fucking walking tour, you wanna see beds go to furnitureland”. And that’s perfect for me. I like walking and I like seeing lovely churches, palaces, houses, markets. From the outside.

And the guide stopped and asked her assembled 25 people, ‘where are you from’. And it was quite remarkable. Aussies, Canadians, Italians, French, Germans, Serbs, Austrians… it went on and on. And as I waited I was thinking ‘where am I from?’ A good question. Not that my memory’s that bad or that I come from a planet far, far away. But everyone else stated their country. Americans always do that because they don’t think forrinners would know that Nashville or Fort Lauderdale were part of the United States, so they always have to tell you. Could be the other Nashville, up the M6 past Stoke, even though the guy’s wearing a cowboy hat and a gun.

I’m British. But don’t think much of most of Britain. I’m English. Yet have (thankfully) very little contact with most of my country. So whereas everyone else stated their nation, I just said London. Because that’s where I’m from. And it needs no further explanation. If you don’t know where it is then I have no interest in you nor will I mourn your tragic lack of worldliness. And I really don’t want some Moldovan thinking, even fleetingly, that I could come from Manchester or Grimsby. In fact I wanted to say ‘North London’ because I’d thought myself into a terrible state of Cockneyness by that point, but I let it be.

This had nothing whatsoever to do with Spurs winning yesterday. Well, not much to do with Spurs winning yesterday.

Happy Friday

A xxxx