Our jokes are more international but our tone of voice is agreeably unchanged. We mock ourselves and our leaders, the way Scots do. We are not easily fooled. Our sport-religion has bloomed into a kind of patriotic mania. We go to art galleries, orchestral concerts, operas in the park, in numbers unthinkable in 1900.
Television dominates our night life and much of our thinking.
We play chess on the Internet at midnight. We play back on video the footy we have missed. We rejoice when our team wins, but feel for our adversaries. We vent ourselves on talkback radio. We strive to know more of the world.