We are told, across comment pieces and social media, that we live in a newly puritanical age. Fun for fun’s sake, fun without weighty moral reasoning behind it is, supposedly, increasingly looked down upon. However, there are times when one gets a glimpse of why our last experiment with a Puritan regime was so short lived. Moments when the British let their hair down and take the business of having fun seriously. And when they do it right, when they really go for it: the British at play is a sight to behold.
This week is Royal Ascot. To some, that will mean very little; it’s just a horse race — or rather a succession of them — after all. If you don’t enjoy the odd flutter or looking at people in hats then you might well allow it to pass you by. However, to me and others, it is magnificent. And its magnificence is found in the fact that the incidentals of it — the races, the equestrianism, the pomp — though impressive in themselves, are not the sum total of Ascot. It is five days given over to the pursuit of enjoying yourself. Of course, the horses, the outfits, the gallons of Pimms and the glimpse of a royal help that along, but it is the primacy of fun, the sense of regimented misrule, that puts Ascot at the upper end of the pantheon of British social occasions.
