What's in a jumper?

On the St George's cross

I bought a jumper recently in a charity shop with a St George’s cross on it. Not from any particularly patriotic feeling, which I’ve never had, but more because the jumper is a hundred percent cotton, thickly woven, very oversized, and was the exact kind of jumper that I had been looking for. I tried it on in the shop and grimaced slightly at the cross, but blurred my eyes in the mirror and the colours were beautiful. Dark claret, off white, deep navy. My dad took the piss out of me because it turned out the jumper was originally from Hackett London, an apparently very Sloaney brand for rah girls and boys who play polo. Not for the likes of me. 

I wore the jumper a lot around the Euros, again not from any particularly patriotic feeling, but because the weather turned bad and the jumper was the perfect layer, breathable and heavyweight. I forgot the Euros were on when I put it on. A man in the street looked me dead in the eyes and pumped a fist at me; I was prepared for confrontation and steeled myself, but he opened his mouth and smiled as he said, ‘come on England!’ and I found myself smiling back and making football noises along with him.

Watching the Olympics is the only time I feel properly patriotic, but only because country is an easy indicator for who to cheer for. I am really cheering for their sweat, their muscles stretching, the years behind the final race. I cried watching the men’s long jump final at the Tokyo Olympics because you get several gos, so everyone is just doing their best trying to beat their own last jump. I cried because of this display of doing-their-best-ness, because that’s such a recognisable feeling, even if this particular example of it happens to be on a world stage with athletes whose every waking second is dedicated to perfecting this very moment.

Once, not long after first buying it, I wore the jumper to work with a knee-length wool kilt that I had also bought recently. I was pleased with how the colours looked together and joked to colleagues that I was accidentally taking a sartorial stance on the issue of Scottish independence. A coworker walked past me in the corridor, in conversation with her boss, but she paused her conversation to look me up and down, in my St George’s cross jumper and kilt, and said: ‘that’s very typical.’ She then resumed her conversation as if nothing had been said. It wasn’t said maliciously, more observant, noting a phenomenon. Typical of me? Of our workplace? It rattled me and I wondered how she saw me.

A man started talking to me outside my building the other day as I was waiting for a pizza delivery guy. He was chatting enthusiastically, calling me an ‘English rose’. I have been called this before, but certainly don’t think it applies to me. An English rose is feminine, plush, rosy cheeked and smiling, a bit vulnerable and submissive to a male presence. I’m long and gangly, not particularly feminine in my outward appearance, tall and often towering over most of the men that have called me an English rose in my life. I don’t much identify with it, and wish they wouldn’t. I think about who is allowed to be called an English rose: me, because I am white, probably. But what about other girls, other people, who aren’t white but who embody as much if not more of a rose, its Englishness, its delicacy, its thorniness, its dance, its outright beauty?

Maybe I just looked vulnerable in my hunger and air of expectancy waiting for my pizza. There’s nothing English rose-like about me when I’m sat in front of a steaming pizza, salivating from both corners of my mouth.

I have been thinking a lot about my jumper and what it says. Who do I look like wearing it? To the man in the street during the Euros, a football fan. A quick scan of my physical appearance: tall, lanky, white, long (dyed) red hair with a fringe, a smattering of tattoos on my arms and one leg which aren’t necessarily always on show if the jumper is on. How do I come across in the street? Often with my earphones in, my face might look stormy or disapproving, but really I’m distracted, listening to some podcast or other about the state of the world. I walk quickly, my natural pace is lightning. I tread heavily when I walk; my school shoes were always having to be resoled as a kid as I wore them out within months. That adds up to: vaguely intimidating, but moderated because I look like a woman. Would someone be scared of me if they saw me in the street wearing that jumper? Someone who doesn’t look like me, who might be an immigrant, someone who might be racialised as black or brown, who has experienced racist violence first-hand or whose parents have?

I currently have my ‘Free Palestine’ badge pinned on the front of my jumper, in the middle of one of the white quadrants that make up the cross. It’s joined by a pin with my dear friends’ band logo on it that screams ‘I BROUGHT THE BRINE’ around a squirming sea creature. I hope this mixture of absurdity and solidarity softens the connotations of a St George’s cross. I recently found out that this patron saint of England was in fact Palestinian. That warms my heart, that the flag that racists march beneath isn’t English as they would like it to be. It’s English in the way that I recognise: English because it says it is, no further questioning needed.

I’m planning to ask a friend who’s a dab hand at embroidery to embroider the jumper for me, to further desecrate its purist imagery. Something punk, maybe, something Sex Pistols. Something that doesn’t reclaim it, but brings it out of the mouths and fists of baying racist mobs, closer to the England that I know. Because I barely feel I know this England of recent weeks. That terrifies me.