I don’t really know how far back I started thinking of this post, months at least, but I do know when the tipping point was.

A few weeks ago I was merrily travelling back to London from Edinburgh on the East Coast rail line when the English-accented train conductor checked my ticket. As I had been sure I was booked on the 3pm I wasn’t prepared for his response of: “This ticket is for the 2:30pm. You’ll have to buy another one. That’ll be £146.”

Now, I can put to one side as off-topic the ludicrously extortionate charge of £146 for getting on a half-empty train when you’d paid to be on the half-empty train 30minutes in front of you. I can incorporate that financial blow better than some but that works out as three full days of work on the minimum wage (on top of the £60 for the original ticket). I can also look past the factor that some people are just doing their job and, to an extent, following rules and guidelines can’t realistically be avoided.

What really scunnered me was the abject lack of compassion from the conductor; the stony faced passive patience while I absorbed the news, protested and then got my wallet; the lack of even a flicker of consideration to say, as he could so easily have done’ ‘look, don’t worry about it, but check your ticket next time’. I searched his eyes for any of the above. There was nothing, nothing at all.

The disappointment at that crushing soullessness was compounded the very next day as I sought to return a pair of £70 roller blades for store credit in as-new condition that had been bought a few days earlier but were the wrong size (and the correct size wasn’t available). I had to speak to three different members of staff, increasing in seniority, the third of which I had to go ten verbal rounds with before he’d grudgingly make good on my statutory rights. Staggering out of the store I thought to myself – ‘It shouldn’t be this hard to just get along. I shouldn’t be so constantly disappointed in other people?’.

At what point did so many of us decide that our allegiance, our duty of care, was to ‘the man’ rather than our fellow man? Why do so many of us in this country look like cracking a smile would actually break our faces in two?

I know it’s a cliche to say that London is a glum, joyless, armpit of the nation but living here I have increasingly lost the resistance to believe otherwise and I just wonder, not to mention worry, just how widespread this problem is. Is the UK stuck in a joyless rut? Is it, as I suspect, largely confined to England?

After all, who would choose to be English these days, given tbe choice? What is marking the nation out as being the place to be, the people to be, in this 21st century? It’s not its diet, its sporting prowess, its politics, its equality or its media surely. And it’s certainly not the pride in the badge, wrestling as Englanders are to reclaim their flag from the EDL.

There’s a reason why recent successful English TV is period drama, Jane Austen and Sherlock Holmes. Nothing has taken its place since, unless you want to include the gritty Shameless, skinhead-focussed This is England or the long line of tv comedies happy to snidily glorify how rotten everything is out there. Jimmy Carr and Al Murray are not standing at the end of England’s rainbow.

Culturally the warning signs are there too. PJ Harvey won the Mercury Music Prize the other week for her album ‘Let England Shake’, an album that The Guardian describes as ‘an opaque exploration of Englishness delivered in a high, keening voice’. I’ve listened to the CD and heard it live and, as a PJ Harvey fan, I was surprised that it won. I would wager that the delight that someone so talented was taking the first faltering steps at untangling what England is played a part.

It may be a similar story for the admittedly sublime West End show Jerusalem, returning for a second run after sweeping the board at the Tonys. The play is a no holds barred view of what England was and has now become. There is no conclusion as such (how could there be), unless you count the main character getting beaten to a pulp which, metaphorically, isn’t so far from where England currently resides.

This could all get put down as a xenophobic rant, former SNP member kicks out at the English, ‘cybernat on the loose, out of tne way!’ but I really do think there’s a deep existential crisis going on south of the border, more so than anywhere else although maybe I’ve just forgotten that Scotland’s in as just a perilous condition and I don’t know enough about anywhere else to make a fair comparison.

After all, is it fair to take one example of jobsworth twattery and gross that out across a nation? Possibly not but I really do think that there is a linkage at play here. A person not knowing why they are doing the job they are doing, how it fits into the wider context of their country and how that collective whole in turn is not providing the contentment and satisfaction of their dear and pleasant land. Well, from small problematic acorns grow mighty oaks of despair.  

I can only go by the generalisations of the people that I’ve met and worked with but my conclusions thus far are that the English are slightly yobbish, snobbish, rather selfish workaholics that don’t really know how to enjoy their leisure time without indulging in copious amounts of alcohol. Hopefully I have an unreflective sample size but I can only go by what’s before me.

Not that Scotland differs so much, less snobbish and less yobbish perhaps but we’re not even picking the low hanging fruit when it comes to defining our nation. One small example, I think it’s a terrible shame that with some of the best coast, landscape and mountains in our back garden, only a slither of Scots learn how to surf, golf or ski. Cost is not necessarily a barrier. The more people who did them, the cheaper they would be.   

That said, Scotland benefits from having a better grasp of who she was, who she is and what she could be in the future. England is a bit lost when it comes to all three, hence the English cultural scene embarking on a period of questioning introspection.  

In which direction is the collective heave of England going? I would like to know as I’ll be doing a little bit of the pushing for the next wee while. For me, England at its best is wild moors, picturesque villages, fine tailoring, hearty meals at gastropubs, the fading grandeur of beach destinations, the mutual respect for distinctive regions from Geordie to Kerbow, passionate support of a football team that’ll never make it out of non-league, the self-aware pomp of last of the Proms, Fry-esque eloquence, majestic behind-the-curtain diplomacy, fierce pride in the NHS and simply enjoying a cup of tea. 

That’s not a bad start. 

However, there must be an increasingly concerning reason why the English don’t have a word for joie de vivre, fair dinkum, craic or gie’n it laldie.

And, what admittedly may be underpinning all of this, by George I want my money back.