Two Chaps Talking

Mon vieux'

In the days of dear old Queen Vic there were chaps like myself who ventured far from home to teach people to drive on the left and perhaps earn a guinea or two in the process. Sometimes these chaps left Albion because their tailor’s bills had mounted beyond their interest in paying them, other times it was over a affair of the heart. Either way there would always come a time when these chaps would need to recharge their batteries and head home for a spell.

I know how they felt. Toiling as I do three thousands miles from home there are times when the call of a full English breakfast and a proper cup of tea is more than I can bear, and fly home I must. Our recent meeting was a result of that. Though the details are understandably hazy, and perhaps best left so, let me try and fill you in on the bits you weren’t personally involved in.

You’ll find this hard to believe old love, but there’ve been times when a chap’s been deep in conversation with his chums and one of them has the gall to call him ‘Yank’ simply for using a word or term that might have inadvertently gained popularity in the New World.

For their sake and others’ let me make something abundantly clear: I may live in the Colonies, but by God I don’t speak the lingo.

Now I know you, old thing, would never suggest I do. Though you’d be surprised how many have tried. And a fellow can’t spend his entire trip to the Seat sending out seconds and despatching scoundrels at dawn for slurring his vocab.

So it was with some relief that during my recent visit I wasn’t accused of having gone native even once. And as you know I mix with those who don’t hold back when it comes to going forward. Indeed it was I who had to give out the occasional correction when someone erred. I think it has to do with the popularity of crap American telly. All over the Old Country youngsters, and the not so young, are speaking as though every line ends with a question mark. Or saying ‘hu-llO’ with eyebrows raised, as though this was somehow amusing.

A pernicious heresy and something that needs to be stamped out at every turn. Not that I don’t embrace the various dialects that go to make up our beautiful mother tongue. God’s own language is all the richer for them. I just don’t speak ‘em. Enough said.

Anyway, with that off my chest, let me begin with my brief visit to our dear home town. It used to be the case that the gentleman coming from the tropics was the one to bring interesting diseases to the local populace. Imagine my chagrin when, upon arriving at the seaside town of our births, I was informed that one of my dear nieces had contracted a particularly obscure and virulent ailment that is about as safe as a cornered red-neck with an assault rifle and a problem with authority. Luckily for her it’d been caught early enough to give her nothing worse than a day or two off school and half a page in the local Echo. But I did feel she rather stole my thunder.

With my pride dented but my spirits undaunted I went north to the wilds of Wiltshire, there to feast heartily with local farmers and try not to sound like too much of a flaneur. Dressed correctly in a Barbour (pre-used naturally), thornproof Harris tweed, Cordings Tattersall, moleskins, brogues and a tweed cap from Lock I naturally expected to blend in perfectly.

‘Ere who’s that there townie then eh?’ was the cry, as the owner of a three hundred acre dairy farm opened a pint of Tesco’s milk and spread the Lurpac butter on his Mother’s Pride doorstep.

From the country I moved East to the grandest city in the Kingdom. There to eat, drink and be merry with you my old mucker. First thing I noticed in the Metrop was how much whining everyone’s doing. You expect Daily Mail readers to hate foreigners (and gay people, non-whites, the poor etc.) but it seems half the country is up in arms about asylum seekers. According to popular opinion, upon arrival at Dover these poor souls are given the keys to a Ferrari and a house in Hampstead. They then marry everyone’s virgin daughters and ‘take our jobs’ or something. A mystifyingly revolting phenomenon.

There was also something of a furore about the PM being caught telling lies. This too is mystifying. I mean, he’s a politician. It’s what they do. Expecting him not to is rather like going to church and expecting the vicar to keep off the subject of God.. The most we can expect from either of them is to have a bit of discretion about it. At least the PM hasn’t been caught selling babies and killing puppies, unlike the corporate whores, sorry politicians, over here.

On that subj. I expected a bit of a hard time about the despicable actions of the current junta of my country of domicile. Though with the PM’s nose so firmly wedged up the Idiot-in-Chief’s backside who can really cast the first stone?

On to weightier matters. What the hell was that intestine sandwich you force fed me? It went down all right, and didn’t come back up, so can’t have been all bad, but surely it was the stuff that burger bars mix with ash and fluff to make their Macdogburgers or whatever they are. Were it not for the brace of Bullshots, the Chateauneuf du Pape and the Margaux I might perhaps not have been quite so sanguine.

By the way, did you notice a very disturbing presence in the American Bar? Yes, that’s right, just as our correspondent mentioned in the Club Room (currently closed for deco), there was the definite taint of an American accent. Now I’m delighted that our Yankee pals choose to come to London and enjoy the sights, but can’t they stick to the beaten track. I mean, we have the aforementioned Macdogburer bars purely for them. Surely no one else would eat that muck? Or am I out of touch again? One does get rather cut off in the tropics.

Do you have any recollection of the end of the evening? I have pictorial evidence of our retreat to the local boozer to assuage our understandable thirsts for Calvados but after that it’s all a bit of a blur. Probably just as well.

Much of the rest of my shore leave was a cotton wool wrapped cocoon of haziness, not, I imagine, entirely unrelated to the aforementioned consumption. Funny how we can recommend Bullshots as hangover cures while at the same time using them for just the opposite.

The only other bout of depraved debauchery I can recall took place in somewhere called Kensington. I believe conservatives live there. My pals and I attended a public house with the express desire to sample each of their hand pulled cask ales (drawn to the country you see, just a matter of time). Something called Bombardier does funny things to you and I narrowly missed a richly deserved ragging from a beefy 6’4’’ rugger player who I felt bore a more than passing resemblance to Dale Winton. ‘Twas only his generous nature and my fleetness of foot that saved me.

And so I passed once more unscathed from the Old World to the New. As I write some poor innocent has asked me to read from my ramblings to an audience of drunks and vagrants, I mean literary types. Is there a difference I wonder?

Dum vivimus vivamus, as if there was ever any doubt,

S