Moleskine time again :)

[fleetfootmike]

I went out for a walk from work at lunchtime. There's a very.. London, very English thing that happens on the corner of Shaftesbury Ave and Charing Cross Road just about all day every day - someone is handing out free phonecards for some company or other.

And they're almost never English.

I was reminded of a Radio 5 feature on Polish students doing work on farms in England - someone asked the local unemployed teenagers if they'd do the jobs, and the answer was 'no way'.

I'm not xenophobic, or racist. This song is more me wondering aloud.
And it's bloody hard to remember chunks of lyrics when you're driving! :)

A Little Bit Of England
Words and Music: Mike Whitaker

I am Gaius Marcus, Centurion of Rome
In Britannia with the 20th, a thousand miles from home
My soldiers guard the border, all under my command
Romans and invaders, marching up and down the land

I'm a little bit of England, that's not English after all
Marching in the freezing cold, the length of Hadrian's Wall
We've kept Britannia from the Picts through thunder hail and rain
And when the Emperor calls us home
Our legacy remains

A band of Irish brothers, we set sail across the sea
All hoping for employment - Paddy, Fergus, Mick and me
You'll see me by the trackside, a hammer in me hand
Just a bloody navvy laying steel across the land.

I'm a little bit of England that's not English after all
Taking ship from Dublin to heed the work crew's call
We'll work here for a decade laying track for Brunel's trains
When we sail back to Ireland's shores
Our legacy remains

Now me and Jake and Randy came across in '44
A band of Air Force brothers flying bombers in the war
Chatting up the ladies, take them dancing with a band
Just a bloody Yankee flying high across the land

I'm a little bit of England that's not English after all
Flown in from America: beside you, standing tall
The skies of England darken with a thousand of our planes
And when we fly back Stateside, still
Our legacy remains

All the way from Poland, I've come over here for work
With Aleksy and Paulina, for the jobs the English shirk
You claim we're taking jobs away, but I don't understand
How come there's no-one English working with me on the land?

Just a litle bit of England that's not English after all
Across from Eastern Europe, far and wide we hear the call
Cheap labour, easy money, England's loss is our gain
Do you wonder when we leave here,
Just what legacy remains?

Comments

[aunty_marion]

Another good one! Very Rudyard-Kipling-esque in feel, that one.

Legacy? "Repeat, please?"

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

[megamole.livejournal.com]

Marvellous. Will link to this.

[wolfette]

as Marion says, very Kipling-esque - but it almost needs another verse, about the ones who *don't* leave. The Roman centurion who took his retirement acres in Britannia and built a villa, the Irish navvy who married the lass in Liverpool, the Polish airman who stayed in Britain to work the mines because his homeland, having been freed from German rule, was now under Russian rule, etc.

One thing these islands of ours are very good at is taking in wave after wave of "invaders" and absorbing them, *making* them "British" - and their legacy remains too.

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

I think that's a whole 'nother song :)

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

What strikes me as different about the current iterations of this old story is that we're having to import Hobdens

[bardling.livejournal.com]

Please write that one, too, then? ;)

[wolfette]

maybe an associated song?

[aunty_marion]

Well, Kipling *did* write the one about the Roman Centurion who stayed...

One of my uncles - and quite a favourite one, too - married my mother's sister just after the war. They were both working on the same farm, and he had to borrow the farmer's second-best suit to get married in. She was a Land Girl; he was a German prisoner-of-war.

[katyhh.livejournal.com]

I love this one!

[bardling.livejournal.com]

Yes, I like this version better, well done. Good song, too! :)

[batyatoon]

I like this a lot.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Nice one! Reminds me of John McCutcheon's "I Am An Immigrant" in theme.