An Englishman in Strasbourg

Here’s a tip if you want to walk across central London without getting stopped by a clipboard weilding survey-taking hawker, charity worker, Hare Krishna or drunken Scotsman:

Wear an ‘Equipe de France’ rugby shirt.

Trust me - it works.

Gimps hired by Mencap, MORI et al were all fooled into thinking that I was French when I strode through Covent Garden wearing the colours of ‘Les Bleus’. Obviously the thought of having to explain their intentions to a foreigner was far too daunting to contemplate.

The mad thing is the beggars also seemed to think the same ….

“Spare any change please? Spare any change please? Spare any change please? Spare any change please? Oh. Er. Bonjour! Spare any change please? Spare any change please?”

If you ever needed pointers on what it might be like to be an irritating juvenile cliquey I’m-too-cool-to-be-seen-with-you sort in 2006; (i.e. someone more concerned with listening to the RIGHT music, hanging out with the RIGHT people, wearing the RIGHT clothes, and having OPPOSITE opinion to everyone - about everything, than - say - their own personal hygiene) then you’d be well advised to take a butchers at the results of this year’s NME awards.

Not only does the country’s biggest selling newcomer (artist James Blunt) get voted for worst album (of course); but crack-head Pete Doherty is voted ’sexiest male’ (yes the ’stoned out of my brains’ look is considered sexy) and the Kaiser Chiefs are alleged to be the ‘Best Dressed’ musicians of the year. (If that’s true - I should withdraw the comments I about my father recently. Clearly the scruffy-polyester-seventies-pillock look is undergoing a renaissance.)

There’s a crack house on my doorstep
There’s a hooker on my street
I’ve had my car radio nicked
By kids with tattooed feet

I’ve been burgled by a father and son
Who knew no right from wrong
They knew how much my camera was worth
But not my balinese sarong

I’ve been ripped off by some builders
Who thought that I was rich
They trashed my house and bank account
Like i was just their bitch

The twat who owns my freehold
Comes from foreign lands
He doesn’t give a toss about me
As long as my cash is in his hands

My neighbours are just lazy chavs
Who drink and watch sky TV
A trained monkey could do that
While studying for a degree

There’s a garage at the end of the row
That dumps filth on the floor
It ends up on my windscreen though
Whenever there’s a downpour

I’ve had my fill of binge drinkers
Whacked out upon Pernod
I’ve had my fill of this neighbourhood
It sucks more than you know

It’s time to move to France my friends
To fresh air and good food
To the land of ‘La belle vie’
And where Kronenbourg is brewed

Following yesterday’s decision by the government, to ban smoking in all indoor public places, it is expected that almost every smoker in the country will begin whinging as much as 30 times a day once the smoking ban takes affect in 2007.

“I’d given up whinging” says Stuart Chainwhiner (39), “but this ban puts me back to square one. What makes matters worse of course, is that from next summer I’ll have to whinge outdoors, rain or shine.”

Now I was of the belief that dumb nicknames were the exclusive preserve of the public school twit. Not so. A gentleman from the West Country appears to have retained a moniker he was given by ’some girl’ at school who thought his head portrayed a remarkable resemblance to a golf-ball.

Does that mean it’s full of cork?

It was probably on a matter of seconds from the moment of opening the boot of our car - to there being a swarm of ‘customers’ scavenging amongst our unwanted posessions hunting for, well god only knows what.
These were junk junkies, looking for their next fix, leaping around like castrated badgers in a tandoori oven. “How much for this?”; “What else have you got?”; “I’ll give you a pound for this.”
It was like watching a group of spoiled children on an easter egg hunt, except with grown adults. I must admit even though I had been warned it would be like this, I wasn’t quite prepared, and having gotten up at 5am no amount of coffee seemed to aid my composure.
I had naively expected to be able to set up a nice attractive display of our wares before selling anything, but as it was - they were practically in the back of the car pawing through our stuff before you could say “where’s the thermos?”.

But who are these people? Who gets up at 4am to rummage through the boot of some strangers car in the hope of finding a bargain purchase? Nuns? Not my mother-in-law certainly.

The word ‘metrification’ is regarded by some sectors of British society as worse than cussing using the ‘c’ word. These people, with their irrational fondness for inches, feet, pints, fluid-ounces, stones, dozens, shillings, miles etcetera, appear to equate the possible loss of the most confusing and perhaps most stupid weights and measures system ever invented - with a botched vasectomy operation.

The discussion today is ‘will EUROPE take away our pint?’, not ‘why are we still using pints’?

If you agree and think metrification is a bad thing you’ve either never had the builders in, are very old, or most likely - retarded.