JOST A MON

2003, in several ways, was the year that the English regained their patriotism. Their rugby team won the World Cup, and the white flag with a red cross never fluttered higher. Two years later, they ¹ thumped the Ozzies at the Ashes, and the cup of joy never seemed fuller. Around that time, people started to speak of the English as a distinct people, not just as an amorphous British (which was anyway equated to England, the isles having been long dominated by them). While the Scots and the Northern Irish had clamoured for their own legislatures and won them, and even secession was talked of loudly, the English began to think of a parliament they could call theirs. While they were at it, they rediscovered St George.

It's been a sign of inclusion that, all this time, the English had ignored their patron saint and celebrated instead the days of St Patrick, main man of Ireland. The tub-thumping press, though, has started a new wave of enthusiasm for the slayer of the dragon. Tomorrow is St. George's Day, and even if he (as the Turks claim) is not really English, for the purposes of advertising and the consumption of large quantities of tipple, he has been reclaimed with gusto.

English Heritage has got into the act. With characteristic politeness, though, they would like you to take a stand: are you for the Saint or are you for the Dragon?

Interestingly, it's also William Shakespeare's birthday tomorrow. When I was little, I was assured by two bullies and one demagogue that Shakespeare was actually a Kashmiri emigre named Sheikh Pir; whatever the merits of that claim, I think it singularly appropriate that the man, the greatest of English playwrights, epitomises his Englishness so fundamentally. Aha-ha-ha. Take that, you two bullies, and you demagogue. Bet you Kashmiri upstarts can't top that.

[1] Well, okay, it was the England and Wales Cricket Board whose players thumped the Australians.

Not sure if anyone has heard of Brian Lara. His main claim to fame, of course, is that he was born on exactly the same day as I.

For some reason, on account of a somewhat exaggerated aptitude for clubbing a hard ball with a willow wand, he has been named "The Prince of Port-of-Spain".

With the same modesty that led me to name myself after the most peerless of the Eldar, I present below some of the other Laras who share a connection with me.

Lara Veronin is a minor talent in Taiwan. Her troupe is called 南拳媽媽, and they purvey a strange admixture of rap and R&B in the name of music. She was born exactly 19 years after my advent, which is the only reason, of course, that she has any raison d'être.

Lara Flynn Boyle, an anorexic bimbette, all angular shoulders and jaws, strutted her stuff as the villainous alien Serleena in the film Men in Black II, and somehow managed to ensnare that epitome of piety and good taste, Jack Nicholson. Thankfully, she doesn't share my birthday, but one can weave a set of associations from her to David Suchet, who in fact does.

Lara Croft, the aristocratic destroyer of priceless antiquities and arch-vandal of archaeology, hails from Wimbledon, where yours truly has his humble abode. A baboon-lipped serial adopter of unsuspecting infants, Angelina Jolie, and a wholesome ex-clothing-assistant-atTopshop, Karima Adebibe have variously role-played this woman, much to the frenzied onanism of millions of gamesters and movie-goers.

At this point I find I have lost all interest in this posting. Good night.