RUE, BRITANNIA

A recent spate of news stories has led me to ask the unthinkable question: will there always be an England?

First there was the news that Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow was disappointed in the men of the British Isles. Paltrow observed to the British magazine Now that while she was in London starring in some play called Proof, she only went on two dates. "British people don't seem to ask each other out on dates," grumped the star of Shakespeare in Love. According to the winsome (not to mention lissome) Gwyneth, in the U.S. "Someone will come up to you and ask you for dinner, and you'll say, 'Sure,’ because it's only dinner for God's sake." In the U.K., though, "If someone asks you out they're really going out on a limb."

Well, I for one was relieved to know that if I walk up to Gwyneth Paltrow on the street and ask her to dinner, she’ll be likely to accept. The British press, however, was less than pleased. You’d have thought she had dissed the Queen or suggested invading Iraq or something. "Sorry, Gwyn, but you nasal, gum-chewing U.S. girls are frighteningly sexless and just plain dull," snarled the Daily Mail. The Independent asked the rhetorical question "Who wants to spend the night with Gwyneth?" (Y’all put your hands down, guys, I said it was a rhetorical question.)

Then there’s the decline of the music industry in the land that gave us the Beatles, the Who and the Spice Girls. In May, British music industry executives met to discuss why, for the first time in over 40 years, America's Billboard top 100 music chart contained not a single British artist. And out of all of the finalists in a British heavy-metal music poll, only one band was actually British.

So with American girls trashing the menfolk, and their music industry in the loo (that’s Brit-speak for the toilet), is it any wonder that many of them want to just leave? According to a poll commissioned by and published in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, a full fifty-four percent of people in Britain would prefer not to live there at all. It’s not the food—only 25 percent said they wanted to leave because of the widely disrespected English cuisine, which was surprising to me. I mean, these people boil beef. They have a dish called "Bubble and Squeak." That’s enough to make anyone flee screaming, but the main reason Brits want to leave is the price of living, followed by the notoriously wet weather.

And where do these would-be émigrés want to go? The number one choice for these huddled masses yearning to breathe free (or at least have dry shoes) is the good old U.S. of A., followed by Australia. Take language barriers out of the equation, however, and we drop to third, behind Spain and France.

But take heart, all you sons (and daughters) of Albion. There’s still much to be proud of in the U.K. For example, your sceptered isle boasts the presence of the World Bog Snorkeling Champion.

What’s Bog Snorkeling, you may ask? It’s snorkeling through a bog. A peat bog, to be exact. I’m not sure what peat is, either, but they apparently have a few bogloads of it in Wales, which is part of the U.K., though it’s not England. I’m not sure about how it relates to Great Britain. People from there have tried to explain it to me, but it makes my head hurt.

Anyway, dig a sixty-foot trench down the middle of a peat bog and you get something that’s apparently a real challenge to get through, even with a snorkel. Be that as it may, 89 people came from as far away as the U.S. and south Korea to try their skills at it in the little bog town of Llanwrtyd in Wales. (peat they have. Vowels, they’ve apparently rationed.) The winner was a plucky young Welshman named Phillip John, who swam the course through icy water, reeds and gluey mud in a minute and 45 seconds to claim the title.

If that’s not enough to warm the cockles of your heart, consider the case of Ross Good of Seattle, Washington. Ross was with his soccer team on a tour in North Somerset when he was mugged and thrown off a seawall, suffering a fractured skull. There was some doubt as to whether he’d survive, but he pulled through in a hospital in Bristol.

Now, most folks after being roughed up and darn near killed in a foreign land would shake the dust of that land off their feet as soon as they could leave under their own power. Not Ross. After undergoing not only mugging, but Socialized Medicine, Ross vowed that "As soon as I graduate I am going to come back to England because I love this place and the British."

So keep those stiff upper lips, people of Britain. So what if your guys are too shy to ask Gwyneth Paltrow out and more than half your people want to leave? You still have people willing to snorkel through peat bogs for fun. That’s why we Americans still love you.

COPYRIGHT 2002 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.