Sunday 22 April 2012

England as it ought to be


There isn't any new poetry in this entry (sorry!) . . .  Rather, I've been thinking about the wonderful way in which England is portrayed in the Japanese Manga and Anime which I love . . . Kuroshitsuji aka  Black Butler (picture above), Hellsing, God Child, Death Note (where else would L get his extraordinary education?) . . . In all these, England is a weird, bizarre and romantic place - eccentric aristocrats in gothic mansions, London as a strange dark Victorian city, a country full of extreme and outrageous characters, scholars and scientists, a ghostly place where fairytale and folklore are always alive . . .It's gorgeous and beautiful - oh, how I wish I lived there !. . . This certainly isn't the dismal austerity England we see all around us and hear about on the news. This isn't the world in which "Just cal me Dave" says "We're all in it together" . . . No queues at the Poundshop, no summer riots, no over4flowing rubbish bins,  none of the everyday dreariness . . .This is how romantic England is perceived - as a glorious eccentric paradise full of wild strange history and idiosyncratic people! It isn't really like that . . .  And then I remember - here I am, living in a medieval city, in a disused church; I'm a gothic poet with a day-job in a Victorian museum . . . Maybe that wonderful image of England isn't so unreal after all . . .