I’ve been to Europe loads of times and it has a lot to offer.

I’ve been to Venice and Paris, been skiing once but it hurt and was expensive.

I’ve been down the Algarve, classier than the Spanish resorts.

There’s a lot in Europe to recommend; food, especially in Italy.

 

Only a liar would claim pizza hasn’t become a teatime staple,

And I know it’s giant cheese on toast with ketchup, but it’s better than that makes it sound.

I eat a plate of pasta most weeks, sauce out the jar, on the hob ten minutes, easy.

The Italians do food well, but it’s sad most of the world thinks they do it better than us.

Is a pizza or a pie and mash better on a wet winter’s night? 

I’d hit anyone who tried to give me salad instead of stew in the lake district, our North.


 

 

The rumours are true about Europe’s North, too: all Swedes are good-looking, even the men and I’m not that way inclined. 

Go back to bloody Sweden, I said to a Swede I met at a works do,

My wife’s staring and it’s not bloody fair! 

He laughed and I didn’t hit him, but it’s not fair these Swedes come here and distract our women or their women come here and ignore us when we tell them to smile which is polite in England.

 

We had a German manager at work. 

(English must be easier to learn than euro languages, they’re all good at it)

Expected us to follow every order – like we know they did – and never laughed when we joked don’t mention the war even though they started it, they invaded Poland.

 

But then the Poles invaded us, but instead of taking women they took tough jobs.

You get Poles in factories, abattoirs, brickies, plumbers, electricians;

Lads, I always say, you’ve got great skills and top work ethic, have you come here just to make us look bad? 

Plumbing’s lucrative, so it must be in Poland too where they’ve probably still got half the country needing sewers.

Why don’t our lads work like Poles? They don’t because they see these Russians – and Poles are basically Russians – working too hard

And they give up the apprenticeships and take up the drugs.

 

It’s not just us our kids who give up, the Greeks are the gods of giving up,

Default on their debts and get away with it, skip taxes and live on islands.

And you know which ones annoy me

Is the Spanish

The most

With their little plates of food that aren’t a full meal

Drinking and nightclubs and beaches

They’ve got all this sunshine and they waste the afternoon sleeping or shagging.

Actually a lot of Europeans are into sex. 

Pervs

Not for us, these affairs, like the French.

Cigarettes and infidelity,

No thank you – I’m happy with just the wife, like a decent bloke

My wife had an affair once and it would’ve made me cry if I was a hairy Latino.

If I was Italian I’d’ve killed her

If I was French I’d’ve shagged her sister.

If I was Greek I’d’ve shagged her brother.

That last one’s a joke but I didn’t do anything, I had a few beers every night for a few months, held it together and forgave her, like a Christian.

I kept calm and you know the rest.

 

Where was I? 

Romanians, coming now, 

Their country’s crap, that’s why they leave,

But why come here

And then work shit jobs?

I don’t understand. You literally get Romanian ambulance drivers moving here to wash the dishes in Pizza Hut.

Imagine me moving to Romania to stack shelves in Romanian Asda.

You’d think I was insane.

 

They’re not like us, Europeans.

They do things that don’t make sense to normal people. 

 

Like the Portuguese. We – the British – own most port companies. 

Port, the thing the country’s named after

Have some self-respect and get your own country in charge of products with your fucking name in – imagine if British Airways wasn’t British?

 

And I tell you who I really have a problem with. 

The Irish. 

Anti-abortion terrorist Catholics,

Too much religion and it turns you mad, there’s the proof.

Paedo priests and black fucking beer and tax free musicians.

At least the French don’t have musicians, 

But we’re not a fan of them either

For good reason: history.

Napoleon, Les Miserables – have you seen it? shit – and all the other wars.

 

The Belgians are a shambles 

Not one Englishman’s heard of a Belgian that isn’t fictional. 

Tintin, Poirot – and him written by a woman.

And this is the Belgians’ fault, we’ve heard of Germans and Greeks and they’re further away (Merkel, Hitler; Hercules, Zeus).

 

We don’t like the Cypriots because they need us

To keep the peace on their shitty warm island and we don’t need anyone

To keep the peace on ours which isn’t cold like the tourists say:

If you’re cold put a coat on, sweetheart.

 

We hate Malta because I think we used to own it.

We hate the Czechs because your country must be shit if you have to pimp your capital to stag parties. 

 

We hate the Dutch because we’re English and all those prostitutes and drugs are not our cup of thing,

So what if it’s only Brits on holiday spewing on your streets, 

It’s your fault for selling it to us, 

Ignorant pothead dicks.

 

And all the other euro countries are full of alcoholics and perverts and they’ve got stupid names like Slovankia and Crogaria and they should be parts of Russia anyway.

 

They can all fuck off, because now we’re doing brexit.

All the people that think brexit’s bad can fuck off too with their white cheese and fancy wine and fucking euro-viagra bondage.

It’s time for real ale, real cider, real football and real, silent, sex in the backs of parked American cars: none of that French bloody moaning.

 

It’s time for fish and chips on the white cliffs of England, time for fish and chips on the streets of Wales and Scotland and Belfast, and if they don’t want fish and chips, they can fuck off too (haggis smells european).

It’s time for Britain to unite in hatred of all those fucking foreigners with their star-covered flags and garlic-covered food.

 

And

Once the Europeans are gone 

We can start sending the you-know-whats back to the colonies


———-


Scott Manley Hadley (@Scott_Hadley) is Satire Editor at Queen Mob’s Teahouse. His publications include My Father, From A Distance (Selcouth Station Press, 2019) and Bad Boy Poet (Open Pen, 2018). He blogs at TriumphoftheNow.com.


Banner image by James Knight.