England celebrates 4th of July

England was engaged in a national holiday yesterday, to celebrate the anniversary of the country's independence from the minor colonial establishment now known as the United States of America.

Fireworks were released across the land, and revellers spent much of the day in a jubilant stupor, as is traditional on this day (as well as on 40-50 other days, or more in certain local areas) each year. This year marked the 234th such festival, since King George III finally managed to shake off those pesky trans-atlantic freeloaders in 1776.

As is also customary among the English on the 4th of July, nobody saw any need to be bitter or resentful about the fact that these colonies have gone on to do sort of alright without us, I suppose.

There was also a complete absence of sarcasm or irony directed at the so-called United States, in accordance with the well-known British character.

News from across the ocean has been scarce for the past couple of centuries, as the colonies very rarely write to let us know how we're doing, particularly since we asked them not to. But it seems as though they're struggling a bit at the moment financially, the poor things, and judging by how many fights they seem to keep getting into lately I think they could have fallen in with a bad crowd.

Nevertheless, as was evinced yesterday, the prevailing attitude among most of Europe is that we're doing quite well without them, thank you very much. The fact that we're fine and didn't need that stupid continent anyway was celebrated with a record 6,158 pyrotechnic-related injuries over the weekend, including 223 fatal accidents.