I thought I'd enjoy Watching the English by Kate Fox as a good easy new year read but I've ended up just skimming it, this time around. Perhaps because I preceded it by reading Simon Armitage's excellent All Points North - a work of poetically insightful Northern observation where Fox can only offer semi-witty Southern social science. Perhaps because it states the obvious a bit too obviously. Like the section on our 'Default Religion', the C of E, which we hardly need reminding is the 'least religious church on earth ... notoriously wooly-minded, tolerant to a fault and amiably non-prescriptive'. Actually, on second thoughts, I think it's good to be reminded of that. It's worth celebrating that such a random religion enables God (whoever that is) to remain accessible to whoever thinks they may need a deity, no questions asked. And it's a lovely thing that such a shiftless institution permits its leaders to continue in roles gloriously and liberatingly undefined...
john davies
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