An Atlantic Bridge

England is an interesting place to be on the Fourth of July.

Considering that it was England against whom the Colonies rebelled and from whom they ultimately declared their independence, being a Yank in England on July 4th certainly offers a unique perspective. 

TigerBlog asked a few of the people he ran into what the Fourth of July means to them. The responses were pretty universal: a shoulder shrug and that's about it. A few said that these days it just seems like a chance to have a party in "the States," complete with hot dogs and hamburgers.

TB also met one friendly bloke who said that he likes to play a game with Americans he meets. He likes to guess where they are from.

And where did he suppose TB was from? How about Cincinnati, Ohio. 

TB told him he must have him confused with his daughter, who lives not far from there. Then the bloke asked TB where he was from, and so TB offered his best aggressive "Sopranos" voice, to which the bloke and his buddy both laughed and both said "New York."

Close enough.

Another one of the people to whom TB spoke said this: "Fourth of July? Tough loss for the Empire."

That was funny.

To celebrate the holiday, TigerBlog saw a concert in Cambridge entitled "An Atlantic Bridge" that was a mix of British and American choirs. TB thought it would have been appropriate to end with "This Land Is Your Land" — you know, "This land was your land. Now it is our land." Just kidding. Just kidding.

In fact it was a very nice event. It didn't exactly have a patriotic flair, though, for either country.

After his experience at Henley, TigerBlog wanted to go to Wimbledon for the early rounds this week. What he learned is that getting tickets to the All English Lawn Tennis Association grounds is slightly harder than getting invited to Buckingham Palace for cream tea with Charles and Camilla. 

The only way to get in is by standing in the queue and hoping to get one of the same-day tickets available. The queue each day actually starts the night before, as you can camp out — as long as you follow some very strict rules for behavior. Sleeping in a tent outside the Wimbledon gate isn't really TB's thing.

During his time in England, TigerBlog has assumed that he'll run into at least one person who is wearing something that says "Princeton Athletics" on it. He's not sure why, of course, since it's a huge country and there are only a handful of U.K athletes at Princeton.

One of them, of course, is probably Princeton's most well-known from this past academic year. TB was on a train at one point and he started talking to three 20-somethings, one of whom said he was from near Newcastle. TB said that Princeton's best basketball player, Tosan Evbuomwan, was from Newcastle. Had he heard of him? No, was the response, with a qualifying "They have good basketball up there."

Princeton's current rosters are dotted with athletes from the U.K. Of Princeton's 38 teams, there are 12, in fact, with a Brit on the most recent roster on the webpage.

The team with the most? This shouldn't be a surprise after what TB watched last week. It's women's open rowing, with 11. 

Next up? That's field hockey, with seven. Percentage wise, field hockey has the highest total of U.K. athletes on its roster, as seven of the 23 players on the team this coming season, early one-third, are from Great Britain. 

On the men's side, the team with the most is the men's heavyweight rowing team, with five. Men's track and field was next, with three.

Queen Elizabeth, in a 1976 address in Scotland on the occasion of the American Bicentennial, mentioned three Americans in her speech. One was Alexander Graham Bell. The other two were John Witherspoon and James McCosh, which sparked this in a Daily Princetonian story:

Richard Funkhouser '39, retired from the Foreign Service and now living in Scotland, noted that 'out of the rich history of Scottish-American relations, the Queen chooses two Princetonians out of three famous names to illustrate her point.' Could there be an alumnus speech writer in Buckingham Palace?

Around that time, TB remembers an ad campaign by British Airways that featured the great English actor Robert Morley, who at the end famously said, in his thick accent, "Do come home. All is forgiven."

The Fourth of July will always link the U.S. and the U.K. As Morley said, all is forgiven.

TB hopes you had a great Fourth of July. God Bless America — and Save The King.