I am re-reading some of G K Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries. His writings bring back childish memories and emotions about the English. Until I went to England, I thought the English were composed of three groups. First there were the aristocrats who rode horses and did good deeds. Then there was the middle class–doctors, accountants, shopkeepers and so on, who worked hard Monday to Friday, played village cricket on Saturday and loved the Queen. The lower classes were dirty and smelly, tipped their hats smartly to their betters, knew their place and died for England with a smile on their lips and a hand on their heart.
There were also people called Welsh, who gladly worked in mines and sang songs. Some of their doctors gladly accepted no payment for treating children, with strange diseases that nobody could do anything about and which caused them to cough "until their little shrivelled bodies, half hidden under a flimsy blanket, shuddered into convulsions" and wasted away. All the doctor could do was to look impressive and pose for a picture of him contemplating the child. But everyone loved him. He had a beard.
There were also some people who lived north of the English, spoke funny and whose accents had to be translated by kind English people. (English people were always kind and generous and tossed farthings to beggars, who never worked even though the English people had lots and lots of mines in sunny places like Rhodesia and Chile where the natives were lazy). The people up north never bathed and could not wear underpants because they were so filthy.
Forget the Irish, said the English. Nobody was interested in alcoholics. Although, grudgingly, some said they were "not bad" in a fight against the nignogs, as long as they had our guns and the savages didn't. Many savages died but that was probably good because if they confessed before they died they went to heaven which was a place in the sky where a large white man with blue eyes and a lovely blond beard sat. I always mistook him for a picture in one of my book of a Greek god called Zeus.
The rest of the world was composed of loud, large Americans with money or greasy, dark-skinned Portuguese or Italians who you could not trust with your money or as Chesterton put it in the Innocence of Father Brown, looked somewhat like this, "yellow faces, at once sunken and swollen, with a hawk-like nose and heavy lids, a face of a wicked Roman emperor with perhaps, a distant touch of a Chinese emperor." A Chinese Jew, perhaps. Not the sort you would trust with your money, either.
The climate in England was always lovely, blue skies, gentle breezes (you could see the banners on Ivanhoe's castle fluttering over the castle walls). Yes, it was cold at times but it was a bracing cold, the type that made a man of you.
None of that whimpering soppiness of the tropics where half naked men and women lolled about all day and had explosive sex as night fell and the rum and "drums," that hated word, came out. English men who fell into the tropical trap were said to have gone "native" and were sent to "Coventry" which was a dreaded place and meant the Governor would not invite you to his annual tea party. Heavens!
The weather in London was divine. As night fell, the mists rolled in from the Thames, which was the busiest river in the world, bringing all sorts of produce from the native lands and taking back brightly coloured beads and mirrors for the native children to develop their minds with and to see how ugly they were. Lamplights glowed mysteriously through the fog and everyone hurried home to "Mother" and tea and crumpets.
Imagine my shock, not surprise, but shock, when I arrived for the first time in jolly, old England and walked out into the damp, bleak cold of a London morning. From inside the airport the sky was so blue! Blue skies meant good weather. Not here! And why did nobody ever tell me about the amount of security in English airports? At every other corner of the airport there were heavily armed guards! People criticised the "short soldiers with huge guns" at the airport in Maiquieta. No one ever told me that security was so heavy in the "Mother country." It's the Irish I was told then. Now it's the Muslims or Arabs. Same thing say most Westerners.
Where were the real English, the aristocrats? Well, you either had to pay to see them, to go into their mansions and see where the wealth of the Indies went or you had to line up outside some big gates and you might catch a glimpse of some tired old lady in a Rolls Royce. This was considered high, real high. Especially if she waved her wrist. Sometimes you saw one of the aristocrats on the telly falling down steps on her way home from a social function.
Once you got over the initial shock though, it turned out that the English, the ordinary English, were really nice. The doctors were friendly and professional and welcomed you into their homes (even if we once arrived unannounced at someone's home and the teenager had to be sent posthaste to the local grocer's to buy tea and buns).
People everywhere were polite and cheery especially the "lower classes," who spoke funny but were invariably helpful especially after a couple of pints of their excellent beer. Being a lifelong supporter of Arsenal also helped. Amazingly some of the English actually married northern types and seemed content and the mining folk from the Welsh valleys, had gorgeous accents which at times sounded like Trinidadianese.
Then there were the "black Irish" who were not black but introduced me to black guinness and to the bullet holes in the walls of the Post Office in Dublin. Someone muttered Ireland was the first colonial country liberated from the English but in the light of an Irish dawn, at 3 am, I wasn't sure I had heard correctly. Besides we had not had that problem, the English helped us to our Independence, even though someone called Capildeo tried to prevent Dr Williams, the "father of the nation," well at least he was called that until another "father of the nation" came along and now we have a "mother of the nation," quite a family place, T&T. "We All Live in a Yellow Submarine!" type of thing.
Then of course, we had was to fight the Americans, to regain our capital in Chaguaramas. That was when we all walked in the rain, real heavy rain not this drizzly stuff they have in the mother country. We were so brave.