George

St.George, the mystery saint. Even the BBC website advises caution, it offers a few tenuous details about some Turk who upset Diocletian and was then beheaded - there were far more unpleasant ways of being martyred - but then tells us we should treat it as myth. Ah, so the Harry Potter version then.

Nonetheless, I think that Saint George is a damn fine saint for the English to have. I mean dragon slaying is one of our specialities, always has been, although I can see that in the heydays of the celts, when things were as Simmi might say, a bit more herbal, the dragons may have appeared to be more ..well...dragony.

In the film Excalibur, Myrddin conjures up a mystical fog that will allow Uther Pendragon to shapeshift. Arthur's army fights under the banner of a dragon, the two armies red against white, both dragons. Pendragon - dragon's head. Our own mythical creature.

Not entirely our own of course, many cultures have their own dragons, not least of all the Chinese. But the significance of the Chinese dragon is quite opposite to our own. The Chinese are the dragon's race, and the creature symbolises wisdom and kindness to them. Those born under its sign are fortunate.

But we do still fight dragons, isn't that what Harry Potter does even though the dragons come in many guises? Isn't that what the Christian soldiers still do ? Is Satan not still depicted as having dragonlike qualities? Don't we all fight our own dragons, just that we call them demons now....

We used to sing the hymn, 'Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before....'
Saint George's flag, a red cross on a white background is just like the bloody cross on which Christ was put to death. And this summer you will see Englishmen, mostly men, wrapped in that flag. Like in the Greenday track, 'Holiday' 'there's a flag wrapped around a score of men'. While the World Cup is on, Englishmen will all own flags, in the backstreets of Portmouth, grubby St. George's flags will occupy upstairs windows, maybe they never left, and suddenly, whilst Tesco removes St George's flag from their products, everywhere else will be draped with them.

The dragon this summer will be the football teams of the rest of the world, here be dragons, but they can be slain on the pitch. Not since 1966 has England actually won the World Cup, but the important thing is the slaying and the playing and the running around town wearing the flag.

But I favour the dragons of Uther and Myrddin's time, the dark shape that you just catch out of the corner of your eye, that casts a shadow as it swoops above you. England's dragons are real and plentiful enough, you just have to know where to look, and you need to play with them a bit before you dispatch them, you learn more if you don't raise your sword until you can feel their fiery breath on your neck....we can all be St. George if we choose.