THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Well it's the USA's birthday again. How old are you now? 244, is it? Congrats to you all.

Now then. I watched the President give a speech from Mount Rushmore last night. He seems quite adamant that those pulling your statues down are not part of 'The American People' - which is interesting, don't you think? Because they certainly think they are. And if he doesn't, then what does he think they are? What does he think America is?

Meanwhile, he's also quite sure that:

'Mount Rushmore will stand forever as an eternal tribute to our forefathers and to our freedom'.

That is what he said. But you know, America, don't you, that in 1868, you signed a treaty that gave the Lakota Sioux ownership of that exact land - until you discovered it was rich with gold, and snatched it back from them in 1890. So 'forever' seems like an odd word to use for thousands-of-years-old sacred rocks and ripped up treaties.

I say snatched... what I mean is something more vulgar. You stripped the Lakota of their guns and then you massacred them, taking their land and their gold for yourselves. Within a few years, Charles Rushmore was eyeing the Six Grandfathers mountain, and sizing it up for the four fathers - Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln.

And there they are: presiding over an America that's just a short 244-year scintillation in the long history of your continent.

Well. Happy birthday.

Over here of course, we're celebrating a slightly different moment of history: an independence day all of our own, as, after four months, the restaurants, the cafes, and the pubs are now open.

I went on a wander through the village tonight. There was the Butcher's Arms, lights on, windows wide, beer garden singing. There was the Himalayan Hotspot, wafting Nepalese aroma across the junction with a full-house and an inviting glow. There was the crowd of hooded young people outside The Plough, and there were the slow-rolling police cars passing by. It was the most normal things have felt for a long time, even if, in their normalcy, those things now looked slightly surreal. The world has changed.

I used to say there'd be a WATIO point, When All This Is Over, but these days, I'm not sure; I'm not sure any of us believe there is a distinct moment to look out for. The virus is still out there, still infectious, still killing real people. Gradually, we're easing out of the lockdown, slowly phasing ourselves back into life - but now, in that life, we wear masks that hide our smiles; we're served by people behind perspex screens, our waiters and hairdressers are in plastic visors, and we're no longer tactile, connected, nor together. Things have changed and they may never be back to normal.

And that's why, in amongst the great English cheer for beer, there's a whole load of us who are just not quite bothered, or ready, or even willing to celebrate by cramming into our locals. It just doesn't feel like we're anywhere near letting off fireworks yet; we are not independent of the virus.

If 'The American People' are anyone, you've got to admit, they're probably the Lakota. They're the Cherokee, the Apache, the Sioux and the Navajo, the Pawnee, the Shawnee and the Iroquois - and countless others who were once spread across the continent from 'sea to shining sea'. And when they look at the land of their ancestors, and see the descendants of us sweaty Europeans, singing about a 'land of the free, and the home of the brave', I do wonder what they make of it.