Flying their flag… and shamelessly, too

WE’VE just returned from a trip to Turkey. Every day was an adventure, but the highlight of the holiday was undoubtedly a music night held at a restaurant in Turunc, a delightful coastal town in the south of the country.

Now as many of you will know, I never go anywhere without being tooled up with a harmonica or two, so when the proprietor suggested that I might like to do a spot during the interval when the band took a break, I almost bit his hand off. Well, I hadn’t yet eaten.

The band for the night started with a few pop standards, but soon got stuck into traditional Turkish music, which was delivered with the occasional surprise.

Ever heard a Jimi Hendrix-style lead break on a bouzouki complete with sustain effect? No, neither had I. But once I became used to it, and the evening gradually unfolded, I started looking forward to plenty more similar explosions in the frets department.

And that’s because once I’d got over the shock, it seemed to work. East meets West… and I thought, in my quaint 1960s way, if only we all played an instrument, then there would be no more wars. Well, there wouldn’t be, would there? It would be more a case of open mic rather than open fire.

Towards the end of the night, the young son of the proprietor did a little routine that featured the Turkish flag. To accompany his act, the band played a song that seemed to be a national anthem of some sort.

The Turkish people in the restaurant joined in with great enthusiasm, downed a whole load more shots of raki – yes, it’s a predominantly Muslim country, but never mind, get it down you mate, while the imam’s not looking – and raised the roof with the choruses.

For me, and no doubt for the numerous Brits in the audience, this must have seemed quite incredible. The very notion that the national flag could be part of a non-political celebration, with no instant rent-a-mob condemnations, knee-jerk sloganising, and shrieking activists demanding that the whole thing should be shut down and covered in orange paint.

Britain now is a culturally constipated country, an increasingly soulless wasteland in which a tiny minority have become the new Establishment, and where one wrong move in the world of entertainment is calculated to bring the whole house down. And not in the usual sense of the phrase, either.

Even former punk rocker Johnny Rotten – not exactly an intellectual heavyweight, I'm sure you'll agree – recently observed that it was the right-wingers who were now the true rebels, something unimaginable only a short while ago.

Who needs David Olusoga when you’ve got Johnny Rotten? And how come the generation from the Age of Aquarius so easily and readily mutated into the Age of the New Tyrants?

Most countries – and I’ve visited quite a few – have no problem with nationalism. For example, the French and the Spanish are incredibly proud and protective of their homelands, yet here in Britain the sight of a St George’s flag or Union Jack hanging on a lamppost triggers apoplectic fits among people who don’t seem to have progressed much beyond the nursery, starter pants and scribbling with crayons on walls.

And why does there seem to be no problem with expressions of strident Welsh, Irish and Scottish nationalism, yet the very mention of the English variety prompts howls of anguish and cries of ‘fascist ‘and the other cliches that bore the rest of us rigid day after tedious day?

Of course, some national emblems are encouraged and happily permitted. Palestine flags appear most weekends in London, flown by antisemites who pretend their problem is Zionism rather than Jewish people themselves. A cynical lie – and hopefully, most people are not fooled. Jews certainly aren't, that's for sure.

Attacks on Jews have doubled in the last year or so and only this weekend the Greens debated a motion that 'Zionism was racist'. Hmmm, a brilliant move, Zack Polanski – that’s the way to stop every single Jew in Britain voting for your party.

So. Let’s talk about the strong feelings many of us have for birthplace, country and identity. It was the Coventry poet Philip Larkin who put forward a concept he called ‘sense of place’.

Think about that for a moment. I was intrigued when I first heard about this, mainly because it seemed such a highly unfashionable idea in a modern Britain where anything suggesting even the vaguest hint of national pride is promptly labelled ‘right-wing’ - and the merest whiff of a more localised sense of loyalty runs the risk of being dismissed as being sentimental tribalism and therefore equally undesirable.

Clearly, Larkin’s thoughts were worthy of further investigation. So, I did what we all do these days, and consulted that great oracle of the present age, the internet. And this is what Google says: “Larkin avoided exotic or glamorous settings. His places are suburban streets, train stations, industrial edges, and damp seaside towns.”

Although Coventry claims him as its own, Larkin actually spent a lot of his life in the northern coastal town of Hull, which I would say perfectly fits his definitions. What he was basically saying was go ahead folks, it’s fine to feel good about one’s origins.

Anyway, if Larkin were alive today – or, come to think of it someone like George Orwell, too – I think they would both have a lot to say about the polarisation of British society, the incessant attempts by biased, agenda-obsessed historians to instil a sense of national loathing among the indigenous population, and so further ramp up the generally joyless and miserable society we have so obviously become.

But hey-ho, never mind. I shall continue to see as much of the world that I can in the time that’s left, strapping on those gob irons, and ready at a moment’s notice to deliver a Western-style fast draw should the opportunity arise and a welcoming restaurant owner issue an invite. And if anyone wants to fly their national flag at the same time, then go ahead and be my guest. No problem.

One more thing. My harmonica interlude at the Turkish music night seemed to go down well, with the band’s guitarist pumping out the chords by way of backing… a case of two nations and two different races playing together, a few square feet of peace in a troubled planet. And in my own small way, it seemed that I was metaphorically flying my country’s flag, too. Proudly.