Once upon a time, British travellers used to marvel at the lack of sophistication of their hosts. From the back of a lofty howdah they could declaim about the scurrying natives and their unclean ways as their elephant lumbered through the market, servants in tow. The whole planet was a never disappointing freak show to an adventurous, well-heeled chap about the world.
But is it me, or is that position now pretty much reversed? Known across the Earth as a nation of football hooligans, the standard British tourist does nothing to allay that tawdry and intimidating image. While smartly dressed, attentive locals serve and trade and make busy, the rampaging hordes of fat, idle, tattooed sloths waddle through areas thick with the eternal eastern promise of 'Full English Breakfast', loudly denouncing their far more civilised and long suffering hosts as somehow inferior.
From their wobbly, red, exposed bellies atop their Union Jack shorts; from their artless, thoughtless poorly-executed ink; from their Jimmy Savile jewellery to their Del-boy approach to haggling and their loud, foul-mouthed commentary on anything they see as 'not right', they are truly a horror to behold.
I hate the British abroad; I always have done. But these days I do my utmost to not be associated with them. Que?
