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On St David’s Day exploring Welsh identity is a simple affair for anyone under 11.

You can even buy your instant Cymru-fication kit in Asda these days. Leeks and daffodils, stove pipe hats and shawls, rugby jerseys and football shirts, miners and medieval princes.

For the grown-ups, a sense of nationhood can’t be purchased quite so easily off the shelf. And our annual patron saint’s day is often given over to a spot of navel-gazing on the subject of who we were, who we are and who we want to be.

I spent last weekend in Scotland, an experience which always throws my feelings on Welsh identity into relief. From the moment Edinburgh’s grand skyline hoves into view, there is a sense of separation.

You feel the respect the rest of the UK affords this Caledonian distinctiveness everywhere.

London papers such as The Times and The Daily Mail have Scottish editions; the BBC gives Wales an extra £8m but Scotland gets £30m and a new channel; and while the average network newsreader can barely pronounce Plaid Cymru, Tracey Ullman devotes a third of her show to satirising Nicola Sturgeon.

The people of Scotland, meanwhile, appear so secure about their national identity. There’s a contentment and a confidence that’s tangible.

Not that Welsh pride was in short supply among the thousands of fans who headed north to support their team, of course. Icons of Welsh identity were everywhere as the red army marched to Murrayfield with its colourful cavalcade of daffodil heads and dragon flags.

Few countries are represented so visually by their travelling support as Wales. Yet be it home or away, match days remain the most fervent expression of nationhood we have. If an alien arrived mid-anthem on the turf of the Principality Stadium it would imagine Wales was the most self-assured nation on the planet.

Rugby makes 80-minute patriots of as all. But we’ve been through sufficient rollercoaster moments across the decades to appreciate the dangers of attaching our entire sense of Welsh identity to sport. When the team’s on the slide, our national pride plummets too.

If we put half as much passion into caring about other aspects of Welsh life – the arts and media; education; health; how we are governed; our economic development; our future in the union – as we do into expressing our identity through rugby, our heads could be lifted from our navels to gaze further ahead.

(Removing the burden of carrying the hopes of a country from 15 pairs of shoulders so that a loss is not perceived as the greatest Welsh tragedy since the death of Owain Glyndwr might also improve our attacking play.)

That’s not to say sport doesn’t have an important role to play in projecting our distinctive identity to the wider world. We saw how our footballers’ inspirational journey through the Euros captured the imagination of a global audience.

From full-page spreads in the New York Times to Adidas tweeting in Welsh, football brought Wales the most precious PR imaginable. It sparked interest from people in other parts of the globe who didn’t even realise Wales was an individual country.

But to take advantage of the platforms globalised media provides, we need to know exactly what “Brand Wales” is ourselves. And there lies the rub. Because there is no single simple answer.

The Brexit vote, for example, uncovered uncomfortable truths, shaking up perceptions of Welsh identity. It showed significant swathes of the Welsh population identified with England’s Leavers rather than our Remainer Celtic Cousins in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

A lot of the insecurity some feel about their Welsh identity comes from pompous people being prescriptive about what Welshness is. No-one has the right to judge another person’s Welshness.

We are a more diverse, nuanced and intriguing nation than we realise. Cymric identity is a spectrum that can cover everyone from a first language Welsh speaker in Bangor to a second generation Somalian in Butetown. As Professor Dai Smith once said, Wales is a singular noun and a plural experience.

The younger generation have fewer identity hang-ups. Cymru definitely wasn’t cool when I left Wales for an English university and saw for the first time how my homeland was perceived beyond its borders.

They laughed at my accent, our failing rugby team, made jokes about the absence of coal-dust on my face and sneered at our sole contribution to ’80s music – Shakin’ Stevens.

While the yuppies and Sloanes headed to London to enjoy the Thatcherite boom I returned home to Wales to see communities where confidence was shattered and hearts had been broken by the decline of the industries that once defined them.

(Image: David Hurst)

Yet when my niece went to college 10 years after me her generation hit the Cool Cymru phenomenon head-on. It was uplifting to see them revel in the distinct Welsh youth culture of the late ’90s – with its great music, a rugby renaissance and the optimism engendered by that narrow Yes vote for devolution.

Part of the legacy of Cool Cymru, however, was to make the branding of Wales more corporate than organic as bright young things brainstormed the reinvention of the image we should project to the world.

On occasions, it has made us angst unnecessarily about how others see us and led to the sidelining of some of the traditional signifiers of Welsh identity. But do we really have to be so po-faced about such matters? Look at how Scotland and Ireland have embraced their clichés and reaped the tourist rewards as well as underlining their distinct identities.

Exporting the Irish Pub has ensured Ireland has an unofficial PR office in almost every major city in the world. Indeed there are more Irish-themed pubs in the Welsh capital than Welsh-themed pubs.

Scotland has pipers wailing on every corner, tartan is omnipresent and whisky and golf are the calling cards of Caledonia. Wales, meanwhile, is embarrassed by its stereotypes of coal and choirs. But why should we be ashamed of this incredible heritage of being the engine room of the industrial revolution and the Land of Song?

Big Pit won the best museum in Europe prize a few years ago, with chair of the judges Joan Bakewell saying she was astounded by the story it told. But we think miners and male voice choirs are naff Taff rather than a fascinating and crucial part of the historical narrative of Wales.

Yet it’s the ongoing story of Wales that should concern us most. We need a strong media and an engaged people to sustain a national conversation about who we are and who we want to be. There is a duty to inform and inspire a public who often take their cue from English newspapers and are so disillusioned by politics that fewer than half realise who

runs the Welsh NHS and name a fictional character as Wales’ second most recognisable MEP.

When it comes to Welsh identity, we need to consider how we celebrate, nurture and explore it. Are we selective in its application? Or do we express it across the full spectrum of Welsh life?

We will never lack hwyl on the second Gwlad of an international day anthem but we need to be as passionate about the implications of the Wales Bill on Welsh law-making powers as the impact of kicking for the corner has on the outcome of a Six Nations match.