there does seem to be something distinctively English about the kind of whining involved in both weather-speak and racing-talk moaning rituals – a sort of grumpy and apathetic stoicism; complaining endlessly about unsatisfactory states of affairs, but in a resigned manner, without any real expectation that things could be improved, and certainly without any attempt to find means of improving them. I mentioned earlier that someone once said that the English have satire instead of revolutions (or something to that effect): we complain bitterly, and often wittily, but we do not actually do
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