Oddworld
[The Commuter Chronicles — Part 12]
Today I had one of the oddest experiences of my life.
On my way to Work, I saw a woman (of eastern European origin, as it transpired) struggling to maneuvre a pushchair with one hand and, with the other, a hospital wheelchair (a heavy, metal one that was a cross between a wheelchair and a bed), in which sat a gentleman with a broken leg.
Good Samaritan that I am, since I was headed in the direction of the nearby hospital myself, as I drew abreast, I enquired where they were headed and if I might offer any assistance.
Her immediate reply was “I have no idea where he’s going,” whereupon she relinquished her grip upon the wheelchair and promptly traversed the road with the pushchair.
Somewhat nonplussed, I enquired of the wheelchair’s occupant what his destination might be and learned that it was indeed the aforementioned hospital.
And that, dear reader, is the point at which an already odd situation took a turn for the even odder.
For the entire distance, said occupant effed and blinded about “f*ckin’ Pakkies” this and “Pakkie c*unts” that, “f*ckin’ Islam”, “the f*ckin’ Q’ran”, how England kept order in India before its independence, how India was now “overrun with Pakkies”, how India would show them and fight to the last f*ckin’ man …
On and on and on he raved and ranted with neither pause nor, seemingly, the need for breath, gesticulating with his walking crutch, nearly striking several passers-by and people waiting at pelican crossings …
About how England should be for the English and the “f*ckin’ Pakkies should be kicked out”, how Tommy Robinson was a victim of the Establishment, how … wait … what?
I mean, sure, he was clearly a Londoner born and bred ¹.
But he was dark skinned as you can be without being of African descent … and surely old enough to remember the 1970s — when anyone who wasn’t a ‘Wop’, ‘Dago’, ‘Spic’ or ‘nignog’ was a ‘Pakkie’ by default.
Surely he must remember the days when English nationalism and brutal racism were synonymous? If they weren’t ranting on about “the coloured b*stards”, they were sticking it to the ‘Micks’, ‘Jocks’, ‘Taffies’, ‘Frogs’, ‘Krauts’, ‘Nips’, ‘Chinks’ and just about everyone else who wasn’t white and English.
Who does he think Robinson and his ilk will turn their ire upon, once they’ve got their way and kicked the obvious immigrants out? No doubt, when at their rallies, he feels accepted by their need for useful idiots to swell their number but, once they get more confident and even more of the white supremacists crawl out from under their rocks, it won’t be long before he isn’t ‘one of us’ any more but a ‘Pakkie’ himself — they’re not even keen on other whites, if they aren’t English, so what chance does he think he’ll have?
So, having deposited him at his destination without having uttered a single other word myself, I made my way to Work in stunned befuddlement at the cognitive dissonance — it was so surreal it was almost amusing!
