Now that the smoke has cleared and my ears have stopped ringing, I have to say I have mixed feelings about Independence Day.

That’s the formal name here in America for the Fourth of July; in Britain, of course, it’s called National Look the Other Way and Pretend It Never Happened Day. And elsewhere it’s just, you know, the fourth day of the month of July. In short: No big deal.

It is, however, a very big deal on the street where I live. This is because our house is surrounded by the summer homes of the extended families of not one but two former governors of the State of Washington.

These, apparently, are very patriotic people who, as near as I can tell, have invested heavily in the fireworks industry and are intent on blowing their entire fortune, if you’ll pardon the phrase, all in one night. But not before they’ve redecorated the entire neighborhood in red, white and blue balcony buntings, picnic table cloths, cardboard Uncle Sam hats, shirts and, of course, flags.

My wife is from England, but we always do our part on the Fourth. We don’t wear powdered wigs or anything, but we do lower the British Union Jack flag we normally fly to half mast. In mourning. A neighbor once asked if we’d “lost” one of our dogs. I said: No, just a colony.

I must confess a certain soft spot for the Brits on the Fourth, and not just because of my wife. I mean, look, have you ever thought about it from their point of view? Some hooligans decide to dump an entire shipment of tea into Boston Harbor because of a modest tax — levied in “pence” which, as everyone knows, isn’t even real money. What’s more, if my reading of history is correct, as a result of a bit of legislative tomfoolery in the British Parliament at that time, the colonists were actually paying less for tea than the English! So what’s their complaint?

Then, after ruining a perfectly good load of tea — they didn’t even warm the pot first! — they go and declare “independence.” What a bunch of ingrates!

“Americans” they called themselves. The colonies shall henceforth be known as the “United States of America,” they said. Well, that’s a fine how-do-you-do!

Here’s the English Crown (which is to say the English taxpayers) underwriting the development of this upstart colony thousands of miles across the Atlantic and the wretches go and name the place after an Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed for the Portuguese (what, the Italians didn’t trust him?) and, as near as anyone can tell, actually discovered Brazil, not “America,” in the early 1500s.

Of course, he was way behind Christopher Columbus, another Italian, who discovered the Bahamas and, like everyone else who’s been there, did some snorkeling, had a few rum punches and really liked them.

Not that even Columbus was first, of course. Oh no. Long before that there was Leif Erikson, who discovered Newfoundland and had the good sense to abandon it.

But back to our story: So here’s poor King George III trying to get some paperwork done at Windsor Castle one summer morning in 1776 when the postman comes by on his daily rounds and drops America’s dismissive missive in his lap. The letter, having come by ship, is weeks late to begin with, so the monarch is already cranky.

Does he fling it aside in a fit of pique? No, he reads it because, well, he’s the King and that’s his job. And I can imagine his response, can’t you?

Here’s this rambling, windy tract dressed up in high-minded Enlightenment Age lingo — like, you know: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…” (but not women, not slaves and certainly not native Americans — or, as the Declaration so winningly calls them, “merciless Indian savages”). Very enlightened sentiments, I’m sure.

And what comes next? Some more blah, blah, blah and then old George discovers an entire laundry list of “grievances,” more than two dozen of them, for goodness sakes. Like it wasn’t a bad enough day already, what with the squirrely stuff the French were getting up to next door.

He makes a face and tosses the parchment to his prime minister, Lord North (no relation to this columnist, I’m pretty sure), and says, “Look at this! What a bunch of sissy whiners! Complain about this, complain about that. Are these things in order of priority? Reverse order? What? How is one to make sense of it?! Honestly, this takes all the fun out of colonialism!”

Lord North gets all puffed up and says, “I’ll show them!” and the king says, “Fine. Lemme know what happens.”

So we have the “Revolution.” And everyone who isn’t a “Loyalist” vilifies the poor king. And what happens next? What happens next is that a few years after the war ends one of its firebrands, John Adams, is made minister to Britain, of all things. Can you imagine? But is the king rude to him? Does he bar the chubby little fellow from court? Of course not; he’s royalty, he has manners. Does the king say to Adams, “What are you doing here, you ungracious guttersnipe?!”

Of course not. Instead, he says (and this is a fact): “I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power.”

I mean really: What a guy…

— Will North is a Vashon novelist. His next novel is set on the

Island.