Cry God for Donald, England and Saint George

I love loads of things about St George’s Day but the best of all has to be the reception it gets from Donald Pleasence, our unhinged South African funbus driver. He approaches it with the same level of enthusiasm a four year old shows for Christmas Day, or for that matter Gareth Gates showed towards Jordan all those years ago. But sadly I had it on good authority that Donald was doing the 8am and 9am buses this morning and I was on the 8.30. So I put on a red tie in his honour and headed for Bus Stop Sierra Quebec with a heavy heart.

Then I checked my Blackberry. There was a mail from Phil, sent at 8am. From the funbus.

“Donald has pulled out all of the stops today.”

When I got in Phil told me everything. The funbus had been transformed into some kind of nationalist grotto. The whole bus was decked out in flags. There was a giant one draped across the rear windscreen and tiny flags hanging from the front windscreen like jingoistic bunting. Donald had fashioned two giant flags into a makeshift tabard which he was wearing. He also had a flag of St George baseball cap (which I can't help but feel is somewhat of a contradiction in terms). There were a couple of plastic hats – again with the red and white cross – sitting on the dashboard. Donald greeted every single passenger with “Happy St George’s Day” and once they were seated he handed the hats to the passengers at the front of the funbus. Then he drove off, presumably whistling the theme tune to “The Archers”.

I couldn’t believe my ears. How could I have missed this? I was gutted. Then my Blackberry pinged again. It was Mikey, on the 9am funbus. Donald was at the helm and, best of all, Mikey had taken photos:

Another thing I love about this day is people’s feeble attempts to do St George related promotions. One of our canteens at work sent out an email advising that they would be offering “a themed menu based around traditional English fayre”. “Fayre” is another word which comes out at times like this because of its associations with Merrie Englande – and roughly speaking it translates as “crap food”.

From the start of the menu warning bells were ringing loud and clear. English Spring Soup. What’s that? A bowl of stagnant water and a Slinkie? And what makes it English apart from adding the word “English” to the front? But it got worse. Lancashire Lamb and Veg Pie was clearly meant to be a way of describing Lancashire hot pot without making any promises as to it actually being hot. But then came the piece de resistance – Durham style vegetable sausage. I kid you not.

Because of course vegetarian options have always been a massive part of our traditional English diet, haven't they? Not that this is a “vegetarian sausage” mind you, it's a “vegetable sausage” no less. And I’m sure this dish would have tasted just like the vegetable sausages of bygone days. If Durham Council ever find out they may sue the canteen for defamation or just march up and down outside with placards saying NOT IN MY NAME. A more traditional offering might have been “funny looking turnip stew”. Or a nice chicken tikka and some kind of pizza perhaps.

St George’s Day is always a funny day in England. Half of our media beats the drum about it and claims that it’s a disgrace that it’s not a national holiday. The implication is that if you don’t want to celebrate Englishness you’re some kind of bleeding heart liberal who’s ashamed of being a proud son or daughter of the great nation that invented bingo, pork pies and queuing (in fact, the ideal English night out probably involves queuing outside the bingo for half an hour, tutting at some people trying to jump said queue, getting in and having a pork pie during the interval). Not only that, but if you don't approve of celebrating it your hobbies probably include foreign films, kiddy porn and pissing on pictures of the Queen.

The other half of our media either doesn’t mention it or does so apologetically. The suggestion being that if you want to celebrate that sort of thing they by no means approve but are far too laissez faire to stand in your way. You know, if you really must.

One of my favourite things about this day is that every year a section of English society wraps itself in the flag of St George and starts foaming at the mouth about how important it is to protect our national identity and customs from Johnny Foreigner. The flag of St George - that of course would be St George who, by all accounts, was in fact Turkish. So as they rant on about immigrants coming over here and stealing our jobs they seem completely unaware of the fact that our patron saint is a prime example. Mental. I don’t see them campaigning for him to be removed and replaced with someone like Richard Littlejohn, although that’s probably because they haven’t twigged yet.

It gets better. St George is also the patron saint of (among others) Catalonia, Georgia, Greece, Portugal and Russia. So either he is the slag of all saints or an early advocate of closer European integration, neither of which is going to endear him to our lunatic fringe of bulldog-wielding nutjobs.

Can you see why I normally don’t talk about politics?

Anyway, I got caught up on a conference call so ended up catching a later funbus home than I anticipated and as it pulled up I couldn't believe my luck. There, at the helm, was Donald. But it wasn't the Donald I was expecting. He seemed deflated, his St George tabard sitting unused on the seat across the aisle. Plastic hats were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they'd had complaints, I wondered.

Suddenly, unexpectedly even, I felt a wistful twinge of kinship with this funny little man who ferried me to work every day. He'd gone to all this trouble and probably nobody had even thanked him. And he'd finish his shift and fold up his (admittedly a bit disturbing) paraphernalia for another year and go home to what?

"I thought you should know that I wore this red tie especially for you."

"Really, for me? Thank you sir."

There were no emergency stops on the way home but as I got off the bus I still reckon I caught him smiling.