Irony

I accidentally burned myself with the iron last night. I was trying to multitask; iron all my freshly washed bedding for hotel-like smoothness, and to watch The televisual Period Drama.

Most Britons love a good period drama. It's in our culture. In our bones.

I've been trying to think about what's in my culture lately. Britain is getting more xenophobic by the day, or at least it seems if you consider the red tops to be a good barometer of how racist one can be in public.

The thing is, that whenever I say to myself 'In my culture...' the more I am convinced of the arbitrariness of culture. Which is not to say that I think it's all bollocks. Culture itself is very important to people, but the ins and outs of it are generally secondary. If for some reason half a millenium ago the fabric and techniques of skort making rather than kilt making had been advantageous and available to the Celts then you'd see lots of Americans who have never been to Scotchland wearing skorts at their weddings. It would probably be called a skilt. And get this - nobody would care any different, although you'd have to go to more extreme lengths to see what a Scotsman wears under his skilt.

Humans love ritual. If you or I and someone to breed with were parachuted on to an island with a pair of oven gloves and a jar of Marmite I suspect within a hundred years there would be a correct protocol for the donning of the oven gloves and ceremonial consumption of yeast extract. Then - because humans are secretly scientists, there would come some humans who would challenge the way things are always done. Probably they'd get persecuted, maybe to death, but eventually my or your descendants would come to accept it. Unless - and this is a big one - people have got it in for us. Irreverance is fine so long as there's no widespread and co-ordinated attack upon your very existence.

This article from the BBC is very interesting. I forget that until relatively recently Britain was a very unsafe place for nobles and serfs alike.

This week I'll be blogging about my culture and rituals living in multicultural London as a feminist Sassenach in 2010. I'm sure it will educational (for me).