A British National Day

If you have been stultified by the abject tedium of the recent debate about the nature of Britishness then you will, no doubt have heard all you want to hear about the need for a 'National Day'. However, if it does mean a chance for another day off work where we can all join together in one long national traffic jam along the routes to all our out-of-town-shopping-centres, then maybe, just maybe, there is some merit to the idea. After all, we could all do with another day off, couldn't we?

The question therefore arises as to which day that day off should be. 'Why not today?' is as good an answer as any. For today is - as you well know - the anniversary of that significant day in British history when Sir Hedgerow Sausageincline first offered a spatula to Queen Elizabeth I as she waited for news of the Spanish Amanda..

The Spanish Amanda - as every schoolchild knows - had launched a thousand ships; by head-butting them down the slipway, in an act of revenge against England for the day King Harold the Confessor had poked her in the eye with an arrowroot biscuit at the battle of Birmingham New Street. So, consequently Queen Elizabeth I needed the spatula to use as a cricket bat in her infamous game of ten-pin bowling (the rules of this game have long since changed, of course) against W.C. Graciefields, who - as everyone knows - played naked except for a muddy cape, and his team of Plymouth whores.

The rest of the story is etched on the national consciousness. The two armies the British 'Mods' or Cavaliers against the Spanish 'Rockers', or Puritans stood face to face on the Brighton beach as the traditional British Bank Holiday rain lashed down upon them. Not waiting for her army, Queen Elizabeth strode up to Spanish Amanda as soon as she stepped on the beach.

Crying 'we will fight them on the beaches!' Elizabeth slapped Amanda hard around the head with her spatula, severely lacerating Amanda's paella, before Amanda could even begin to set up her deckchair.

Disentangling herself from her deckchair the humbled, and slightly-bruised, Amanda turned and ran across the beach, followed by her shame-faced army of Rockers. To the loud jeers of the British Mods, the Rockers headed back to sea in their pedalos, and peddled off towards the horizon, never daring to return to these noble shores again.

Although, there are many proudly patriotic British people who make it their sacred duty to commemorate this day by going to Spain each summer to spend a whole fortnight throwing up over as much of it as they can, this day is not really marked on the British calendar or celebrated in the way it should be.

Maybe we should change that.