Retrospective sorries

Tis the season to apologise for the sins of our forefathers. But how far back do we go? And for what shall we apologise? For spoiling the global ambitions of Napoleon and so causing the French to hate 'les rotbifs'. For giving Bluthner insufficient recognition for his contribution at Waterloo in getting Wellington out of a pickle - or was it sauerkraut. For sending our undesirables to Australia making them so angry that they always beat us at certain sports. For sending nicer guys to New Zealand and being beaten by them too half the time. For Anglicans and Catholics duffing each others' adherents up in the name of Jesus who told us to love everybody, including our enemies. For the medieval kings whose idea of a continental holiday was a visit to Agincourt and Crecy. For the Normans who came and spoilt our Viking cum Anglo-Saxon heritage, although the Normans were actually Vikings two centuries earlier. For the Angles and the Saxons who came and duffed up the Britons so they had to run away to Wales. to be followed 1500 years later by the retired and second-homing descendants of the Anglo-Saxon-Viking-Norman-French, so no escape there. For the Romans who came and left, leaving lots of straight roads and ruined villas messing up the countryside. For the Britons who came from , so we are told by-those-who-know-these-things, Eastern Europe, so predating by circa three or four thousand years the current Influx of Eastern Europeans, so nothing new there either (what goes round comes round as ever), and thereby spoiling England's 'green and pleasant land'.

But the biggest apology must surely go to inflicting the United States and English on the world which everybody loves to hate even as everybody loves to wear jeans, go to Starbucks and watch Hollywood, for had we left well alone we could have had a French Etats-Unis or even a Spanish -though current language trends in that imposing country suggest that may not be too far away anyway-all of which sets the imagination a-wandering...My sincere apologies for all those who feel they should have been included, but maybe this list is enough for starters.

The next list should be about returning relics and artefacts back to the countries of their origin, and my vote for the leader would be the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum which look so hopelessly lost and out of context when like a Dowager they should be gloriously and triumphantly decaying in the brilliant Greek sunshine.