“Wotchoo tawkin funny for?!”
I would like to recount to you a tale imparted to me by a dear chum. Don’t worry, it’s not nearly as faecal as that of Poo Finger Sue. The following is a story about a benefit scrounger and an immigrant; both figures equally reviled by The Daily Mail and yet, would you believe, also by each other.
The day was a day like any other in London, full of grey and bustle. Daylight had descended upon the masses and so all converged upon train stations to celebrate the unity of mutual hatred and to offer up the gift of sharpened elbows to the deity of public discomfort – which is where we meet our protagonist. Our protagonist in this case, happens to be The Immigrant – a handsome fellow from a far off land in the southern hemisphere of the Americas, blessed with fabulous fashion sense and a wit as sharp as his cheekbones.
Our protagonist had been in the country some time – time enough to find a job, a husband and a house, all legally and in perfect taste. His life was rich with all that London had to offer and he was delighted when some friends from his motherland graced him with a visit. He was proud to take a break from the job he loved to show these tourists about the merciless grimy metropolis that is now home, but it just so happened that at that particular hour, he would encounter The Benefit Scrounger.
Our immigrated hero strolled through the buzzing train station, clashing elbow-to-elbow with the natives and chatting gaily with his Hispanic hombres in the Latin tongue of their land, when from the crowd a great gargoyle did lumber past. A beast clad in ill-fitting sportswear, her sagging bosom besmirched with burger grease and stains of untold bodily wrong-doing. Her hair scraped back to reveal a face prematurely aged with nicotine and ignorance, a mouth crammed with decay and conflict. To her, this babbling happy group was an affront to her very being – their noise made no sense, their language was alien and as such, offensive.
She opened wide her British-born slackened jaw, allowing rogue consonants to drop to the floor and spewed forth a slur of indignant territorial claim, safe in the assumption that these “foreigns” could not understand. Our protagonist whirled round on a stylishly clad foot and with the perfectly clipped English words of an educated man asked the troglodyte to repeat herself. Gladly she did, spitting the words into his face, “you cahm a vis kanrry, you speak vis langwij.”
The Immigrant looked her up and down, his cool gaze assessing every undulation of her slovenly form, not one inch hanging in the right direction and entirely without purpose, and having surmised his opponent, coolly reposted “Darling, I live, work and pay taxes in this country. As long as I pay for your benefits, I’ll speak whatever language I damn well please.”
With that, he turned on his elegant suede heel and left the indignant xenophobe to catch flies and elbows with her dropped jaw. Game, set, immigrant match.
Pretty Feet, Pop Toe 