Neil Clark’s wonderful piece three weeks ago, ‘Running out of sweeties’ (The Spectator, 16 February), has lingered in my mind. He pointed to a type of Englishness characterised by kindness, eccentricity and a complete absence of malice, which used to be known, he said, as ‘sweet’. Like rare and delicate flowers, our nation’s sweeties are facing extinction, he claimed, in the harsher economic and social climate. These holy innocents see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and are always the first to volunteer, yet today’s rigorously equal society allows them no room. Sad.
I’ve known sweeties from all walks of life. There used to be more in the country than the town. But Neil Clark is right: there are fewer around. I’ve been checking on it. Take last Saturday night, for example. I had a date with a woman I’d met just once before, back in July. She’d sent a text suggesting I take her out for the evening. She was getting desperate, she said, because that weekend in July was the last time she’d had a night out. If I wanted to, I could stay the night at hers, she said.
So we went out. At the first pub we went in, we sat and drank and chain-smoked in a freezing wooden shelter in an empty beer garden while she cross-examined me on a number of unrelated topics. She looked fantastic. But when I told her this through chattering teeth, she cruelly demolished me with sarcasm. I therefore concluded early on that under Neil Clark’s definition of the term she was no sweetie.
After that we went down the hill to the Bull to see Trev. It was one of those depressing Saturday nights when the Bull was empty.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in