Postcards From Across the Pond

Dear Lord! My butt still hurts!

The one thing I can definitively say about the play Dear England is that you get your money’s worth. I saw it at the Olivier in the National Theatre, and it does go on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and then, when I thought it was over, my wife informed me it was the Intermission, after which it went on, and on, and on, and on, some more. Ticket prices ranged from £25 to £99 a seat, or about four pence a minute.

I went because my brother-in-law really likes football (that’s “soccer” for you playing the US version) and my wife had gone to a screening of it and, even though she is not a football fan, she said she had enjoyed it. So, I thought I’d give it a go.

Turns out being (or not being) a football fan is not the key ingredient. All you really need to enjoy this play is to have grown up in Britain, which I have not. Therefore, I sat in a theatre, the only one out of 1,200 people, who had no idea what was going on.

Apparently, it was about someone who used to manage the England team. Gareth Gates, or someone like that.

Uh, no. It turns out Gareth Gates is a British singer, the runner-up in the first series of Pop Idol in 2002, who has sold well over 3.5 million records. So, well done him, but no England trophy for you. I think I meant Garth Brooks.

Sorry! Garth Brooks (real first name “Troyal” – really, look it up) is an American country singer, the only artist in music history to have released nine albums that were certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America, surpassing The Beatles’ record of six (though as it was the RIA of America, they might have been biased).

His other claim to fame is father of Miley Cyrus aka Hannah Montana … wait, that’s Billy Ray Cyrus, of Achy Breaky Heart fame.

He’s Hannah Montana’s dad, and the guy behind Proud to Be an American, or was that Lee Greenwood? And isn’t the song actually called God Bless the USA? Either way, the lyrics “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free” haven’t aged well.

Anyway, Gareth Malone … no, he’s a choir master … Southgate! That’s it, Gareth Southgate. Apparently, he used to play, and years before I arrived in Britain, he missed a penalty shot and lost a really important game for his team. I have no idea what game, but it was really important. At this point, having no idea what was going on worked to my advantage. It was all new to me, but the other 1,199 theatre goers appeared to be re-living some sort of national trauma.

Incredibly, after fucking up so spectacularly, he was promoted to manager. When he took the England Team over, it had the worst track record for penalties in the world. But plucky Mr. Southgate (uh, that’d be SIR Southgate) has a six-year plan to bring the England Team back to glory.

Having no idea how this all turned out (the play was not a play in the usual sense, in that it unfolds before your eyes; instead, it was more of a theatrical documentary of well-worn events) I might have found it more interesting than the other 1,199 people if I was the least bit bothered about it, which I was not. However, being it was the England Team, and having been in Britain long enough to have absorbed the national psyche, I had the sinking feeling that it was not going to end well.

It didn’t.

They played. They lost. They played. They lost. They played. They lost. In the end, I think the moral of the story was, they were learning to lose better. And I suppose that’s as valid a lesson as any. In fact, it is very British.

Some time ago, my wife and I saw the movie Swimming With Men, a comedy about a British men’s synchronised swimming team, They are hopelessly inept, but they have a lot of pluck and end up at the Big Competition.

It’s similar to the American movie The Mighty Ducks, except for one important detail: at the end of The Mighty Ducks, the rag-tag group of misfits comes together and wins the Big Competition, whereas, in Swimming With Men, they lose. But, I hasten to add, those were the only ways to end those movies: Americans love a winner, but Brits love someone who gives it a shot.

If the swimming team had won, it would have sullied the ending. Strange as this must sound, that would have been disappointing, and we wouldn’t have left the cinema quite as uplifted had it ended that way.

And so, Sir Gareth—over the course of what must have been at least five and a half hours—led his team to loss after loss after loss. But in the end, they learned to lose better, and that’s a lesson I think we can all get behind.

Books sold