Bastille day

I've been in France for the last days, staying with my parents in their lovely house in Pornic. I've put the photos up here.

Interestingly, we were in town for the 14th July celebrations (hence the fireworks). Now, although I obviously don't approve of the 14th July - I am no republican - I've been to a few now and it's hard to dislike such an exuberant celebration of national identity that manages to avoid lapsing into tweeness and parochialism that, for example, American celebrations 10 days earlier often fail to do. Not that France is perfect, and peacniks may dislike the rather glorious parade in Paris: this year it had the UN.

What did strike me that night is that we don't have anything similar to either. It's long been observed - and is now controversial - that there is a patriotic deficit in England, despite this admirable attempt. However, this isn't the point. What we lack is a national day. We have time off for a variety of reasons, but our major commemorative days aren't holidays (11 Nov) and our holidays are increasingly meaningless to most people (Whit anyone?). Not of course, that this stops people taking them off - how I wish that non-Christians would put their money where the mouth is and work through Easter.

And I think we'd embarrassed if we did. All that parading and bombast isn't very British. It's great fun to watch, but we wouldn't want to do it. And while this in some ways is sad, the alternative is worse - we might take it seriously, and that would be much much worse.