Concentrated Englishness
Sunday, August 19th, 2001 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerSome places seem to exude a national culture. Today we visited Dudmaston House in my native Shropshire, and I said to my (Turkish) wife, "This is concentrated Englishness." Small, not-quite-stately homes do this much more than the mansions of the higher and mightier. The people who built, lived in, added to and eventually donated this house (to the National Trust) were, of course, richer than me by several orders of magnitude, but modest by the standards of the British aristocracy. Perhaps for that reason this is the only stately home I've seen that I'd actually like to live in - lots of small rooms, nice modern art and Chinese ceramics (good Song dynasty green glaze as well as the expected Ming and Qing), and a lovely garden with lake and lilies.
However, the thing that really made me feel at home was getting a Chinese take-away afterwards. Of course there's nothing English about Chinese food, but the Chinese take-away, like the Chicken Vindaloo (which bears only a passing resemblance to its Indian forebears), is a great British institution. There are a couple of Chinese restaurants in Ankara, but they insist on trying to serve traditional Chinese food. Delicious as this may be, it doesn't have that authentic British-Chinese je ne sais de vivre* of prawn balls in bright orange sweet-and-sour sauce with soggy mixed vegetables. Long live cultural cross-fertilisation.
* Before people rush in to correct my French, could they consider the possibility of this being a deliberate mistake?
However, the thing that really made me feel at home was getting a Chinese take-away afterwards. Of course there's nothing English about Chinese food, but the Chinese take-away, like the Chicken Vindaloo (which bears only a passing resemblance to its Indian forebears), is a great British institution. There are a couple of Chinese restaurants in Ankara, but they insist on trying to serve traditional Chinese food. Delicious as this may be, it doesn't have that authentic British-Chinese je ne sais de vivre* of prawn balls in bright orange sweet-and-sour sauce with soggy mixed vegetables. Long live cultural cross-fertilisation.
* Before people rush in to correct my French, could they consider the possibility of this being a deliberate mistake?
