Monday, December 1, 2008

Obsessions

I was back in Paris the other night and I met my German friend Bongo and his better half for 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 drinks in a cosy pub of the Latin Quarter. We were discussing many things as we've always done since we met in Kettering last year, but every twenty minutes we found ourselves talking about England again.
His girlfriend spotted it and asked us to stop this madness. "You two are like writing a song when you talk. Your verses are really good but your chorus is boring." The chorus was when we talked about England of course.

She may have been right, for what was left to say about it?

I suggested to bomb it as usual and he came with a better option: "If all the migrants go to the UK, then the island would be overcrowded and eventually sink." That would be the end of the white trash and Ken Loach could continue his filming of the drinking class under water.
But we both felt it was unfair for the Indians and the Pakistani who live there.
Bongo's offer was to give the land to them once the British are expelled by the United Nations. But then he thought twice and came with this conclusion: "The situation will be problematic. What you'll get is a million off-licence shops and curry restaurants with no customers." Bongo's sense of logic was sharp as ever.
It was very sad indeed to imagine these poor Indians standing behind their till, staring at eachother from their shop windows on both sides of an empty street.

We let go these deplorable comments for a while and came back to the verses. We debated about politics, history, books and baby-making but I couldn't help going back to the chorus: "Did you know that in London they put loads of signs in the tube calling for responsible drinking? One of these campaign ads warns about the risk of falling from the platform when drunk in the Underground."

Bongo's girlfriend asked for the permisson to slap me. I gave my permission, she slapped me and then she said: "Now that you have two verses and two choruses, I expect you two to work on the bridge."

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