A Black Lab, a Pint and a Pub
What does it mean to you?
I ask because I had always assumed it meant a dog, a drink and somewhere to have it.
Apparently, I may have been missing something.
According to recent commentary from Britain, that particular combination can apparently carry rather more political baggage than I had realised.
Which has left me wondering what other innocent things I have been getting wrong.
Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, now the minister responsible for rural life and MP for rural Suffolk, told a conference she lies awake fearing the next election will be fought on the countryside. The vision she described was “warm ale, a black Labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn’t exist”.
So far, I agree with her. That vision is fast becoming something that used to appear on chocolate boxes and is a far cry from the Britain that we read about everyday.
Then she went off field.
She called that picture a “far-Right” fantasy that “never really existed”. She described it as “a very far-Right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don’t want to have.” • She said Labour must set out its own “progressive vision for the countryside.”
It was all downhill from there. The internet did what the internet does.
People started posting photographs of themselves, their black Labs, country pubs and pints, essentially producing thousands of little pieces of evidence saying, “Well, I was there.”
But there's an even funnier twist:
Riddell-Carpenter's own old social-media posts appear to contain photographs of her with a black Labrador, in pubs, pulling pints and enjoying rural Suffolk life.
That's the sort of thing a political communications adviser must look at afterwards and quietly say:
“Oh dear.”
Well it was inevitable that things would turn into an historical defence of a rural idyll that so many still enjoy and many others still pine for.
And lots of memes...
This, of course, got my brain working overtime about the current trend to hate dogs, hate our country, hate our history and hate anything that remotely resembles life as we knew it.
As you know, I am a great lover of history. And it got me thinking.
About how everything decent and honourable is being tainted by so called " progressive ideology. "
Next thing you know, someone will be examining The Dam Busters for hidden meaning because there happens to be a dog in it.
A black Lab, no less. With a name that now has to be whispered, bleeped or chiselled off a headstone.
A walk in the countryside?
Dangerous territory, perhaps.
A Sunday roast?
We'd better check.
A village fête?
Someone will have to tell me what it represents before I turn up.
And that black Labrador sitting quietly beneath the table?
What if he has a mate sitting at the next table who looks a little more well versed in politics than the average lab that bounds along the beach chasing a stick...
Well, obviously we shall have to establish its political credentials.
I am beginning to worry about the white poodle.
If the black Lab has acquired an ideology, surely the poodle can't be far behind.
But here's the thing.
When I picture a black Labrador, a pint and a pub, I don't see a political movement.
I see ordinary people.
And that black Labrador sitting quietly beneath the table?
What if he has a friend at the next table who looks a little too interested in current affairs for a dog whose principal concern is usually a stick? The plot thickens...
I see a pint.
I see a pub.
I see people talking, laughing, arguing about football, complaining about the weather and knowing far more about their neighbours' business than their neighbours would probably like.
In other words, I see life.
And perhaps that is the curious thing about all this.
Sometimes an ordinary scene is just an ordinary scene.
Perhaps we don't need to attach a political label to everything people love.
Perhaps a black Lab is allowed to be a black Lab.
A pint is allowed to be a pint.
And a pub is allowed to be a pub.
Although I suppose we'd better keep an eye on the dog.
You never know what he's thinking.
John Major, 1993:
“Fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers, and, as George Orwell said. old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist”
33 years on and we’re denying it ever existed.
Apparently, somewhere along the way, the black Labrador acquired a political ideology.
Nobody thought to tell the dog.
