Jewel in the crown.......
Categories: just-life
Date: 30 November 2006 02:12:49
Anyone who has already been over to Legally Blonde will already have heard of the tragic death of Michael Blakey (a.k.a. MrG). I'm afraid that I have no new news for those looking, but I would like to share a couple of memories of mine.
If there's anything that you can say about MrG is that he truely was a proper English Gentleman. Good, kind, well mannered and just a tad grumpy. He had many varied interests and as can be seen was both an accomplished guitarist and pianist and a damned fine chess player (things that are important to me).
MrG was an incredibling positive influence for people. A strong sense of what was right and wrong in the world and was willing to try to do something about it. And it was this that made him so special to so many different people, both here and aboard. At this point I believe it's traditional to say something along the lines of, 'he never had a bad thing to say about anyone.' While this isn't actually true (as if it ever is) to earn his ire you really had to work for it.
Something that we used to do on a regular basis was to pretend that we were victorian toffs back in the age of The British Empire. With our brandy talking about the "savages" of Africa and what a good job our troops were doing..... very Zulu-esq. We both knew that if we had been living in the Naponian era there's no chance that we'd have been upper-class twits..... but that didn't mean that we couldn't pretend.
That is the one reason why this song from Fairport Convention (Jewel In The Crown) reminds me of those times. I suspect that the song is supposed to be ironic towards the whole Empire thingy, especially in later verses but I'm happy to totally ignore all that sort of thing. As I lean back in my wing-back chair with cigar in hand and raising my glass to a man who will be sorely missed.
We are a proud land, we stand for freedom,
We've got the franchise on how to lead them,
We've got the history and books to prove it,
Give us a mountain and we will move it,
We rule the waves and the seven seas,
We bring the mighty to their knees,
We offer hope and inspiration,
A fine example to lesser nations,
We are Britannia, the Jewel in the crown.
We brought a system to the masses,
Divide the nation into classes
It's in our breeding and on our faces
At least we're all born knowing our places
We stay inside our social borders
We only take what our class affords us,
It doesn't matter if it's not even,
The system nature of the daemon
We are Britannia, Jewel in the crown,
We are Britannia, We crown an empire
We came and conquered, we tore their borders down,
We need no conscious, God is on our side
We are Britannia, Jewel in the crown
Fairport Convention - Jewel In The Crown