No. 24 A Sporting Fellow’s Jollies

Putting aside any differences that may have arisen following his inaugural address upon these pages, Lord Thackery Fotheringay-Fanshawe has kindly agreed to surrender some more of his valuable time to once again tell us what is wrong in his world.

By Jove! The Sun newspaper has a bally lot to answer for. A bally lot!

It would seem that a chap can no longer spend a week or four holidaying in one of Her Majesty’s fine seaside towns, without finding himself in the unfortunate position of having to rub shoulders with the manner of fellow he would normally only retain for building work, maintaining the grounds, or a spot of shooting practice.

The sterling role that Rupert Murdoch and the News International Group played in the eradication of socialism within our borders was undone in one fell swoop when one of those journalist Johnnies over there at Fleet Street, or wherever the deuce they fetch up nowadays for whatever it is they call work, took complete leave of his collected senses and came up with the idea of the so-called ‘Sun Holiday’.

Henley Regatta! My flabber was indeed gasted, old bean, when I chose to take one of my rare holidays at a little caravan site I know in one of the more tranquil parts of God’s fair land, and found it to be overrun with the type of tattooed oik I usually have no hesitation in giving both barrels.

Primarily my thoughts were that I’d taken a wrong turning and inadvertently driven my Cushman Truckster into a gypsy encampment, Heavens forbid. There were toothless crones aplenty with hair scraped back and golden hoops adorning their ears, the size of which I had never seen before. But the absence of any burning tyres and the obligatory bear-pit drew me to conclude that this was something far worse.

This was indeed my beloved caravan park, home to many a jolly good wheeze and close-to-the-knuckle escapade, reduced to a playground of the lower orders and their packs of wild dogs and even wilder offspring.

There I was, engaging in a spot of Dance Dance Revolution that the clubhouse games-room so generously provided, when I suddenly found myself surrounded by half a dozen or so of the feral beasts, or as I believe the popular press have christened them, chaffs [sic]. Without my shotgun at hand to ward the foul creatures off, I suffered what can only be described as a momentary break in concentration. This endeavoured to put me on the wrong foot and before I could say “Floreat Etona” my hand-weaved smart/ casual Topper had fallen from my crest and landed at the feet of the most hideous ginger child my poor peepers had ever had the misfortune of setting themselves upon.

I can only assume that the trollish chap had endured an hour or so of being beaten about the face with a brick bat of some construction by his inebriated parents, before they chose to release the degenerate into the wild to terrorise upstanding fellows such as myself.

Gads, man! What the deuce is going on for such a thing to be allowed? It’s bad form, bad form indeed!

Are they not content with their free housing; their free healthcare; their free school dinners; their free bread and water; subsidised by sporting fellows such as my venerable self and the rest of the chaps down at the DodgyKnees Gentleman’s Club? Are they not content with all this that they now expect holidays too? Reducing to royal buggery the leisure time of those that are infinitely better than them?

Dash it all! What is this world coming to? Is it any wonder the buggers refuse to work? When they are allowed to get away Scott-free with picking the Queen’s own good pocket? Bad eggs to a man, I say. My idyllic holiday retreat no more than a modern Sodom and Gomorrah.

Dear Mater would have turned in her grave had Pater not walled her up in the East wing, two days after I was born.

You’d do well to find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy as I did within the clubhouse once the sun had bid good day upon the horizon. I can only imagine it as being like one of those Public Houses – or speakeasies as I believe the lower classes call them – which Pater so often warned me about. They were downfall of my Great Uncle Fortescue, and they are sure to be the downfall of the swarthy ne-er-do-wells I encountered during this whole ‘Sun Holiday’ debacle.

The birch is what’s needed, by buggery. Never did me any harm.

Needless to say, I shall be awaiting a handwritten apology from Mister Murdoch himself, for my inconvenience. And I trust that Her Majesty has already initiated the motions in having him transported back to his felonious homeland of criminal forebears.

There. That is that! I refuse to substantiate any of this nonsense further by issuing a warning, as I am led to believe is the trend.

I shall leave that for the bounder and oik that is in charge around here.

Good day to you, sir!

The views expressed by the author of this article are solely theirs and theirs alone, and should not be seen as an indictment on Not What it Used to Be or in any way reflective of the views of that solid fellow, Jeffman.

If you are interested in more of his Lordship’s horse-sense then clap your eyes on this:

No. 16 The Working Classes and their Like

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