As the prisoners in the American gulags, I sought within me the fortitude to withstand my harrowing situation. I remembered the agreeable year I spent working in Poitiers. A pleasant historical town situated on a hill. I recalled my daily drive across the Futuroscope, with, spectacular views of the morning sun reflected off the futuristic buildings. The oh so pleasant balmy evenings spent in that little town of Chasseneuil on the outskirts of Poitiers, the fief of Jean Pierre Raffarin. The delightful restaurant hotel where I had many a fine meal and briefly met that charming lady Edith Cresson. The French politician that was so unfairly maligned by the disgraceful British press. Yes you guessed it, however hard I tried, somewhere somehow that perfidious nation had perpetrated an injustice or worse which brought me back to the reality of my situation. No doubt the sterling trash had by now rubbished my beloved Poitiers.
The time passed and eventually bus number one arrived in front of the terminal. The gendarmes and CRS were amazingly efficient and contained the trouble makers well. By now the Brits were chanting “we’ll hang the frogs, we’ll hang ‘em all” No doubt believing their recent prowess in that field of endeavour would somehow compensate for their failings in many others. At least I appreciated their realism as to what they can and cannot do. Hanging is certainly in their field of competency. And as the history of India reminds us, not just hanging.
“Whole villages had been sacked by the British. Rape and pillage were encouraged by the British officers before old women and children were burnt alive in their villages. Officers boasted that ‘they had spared no one’, or that ‘peppering away at niggers’ was a pastime which they ‘enjoyed amazingly’. The troops who ‘relieved’ Delhi were drunk, killed hundreds quite indiscriminately, and sent thousands of homeless refugees into the surrounding countryside. Many Indians had the experience of being lashed, standing, to the mouth of a cannon and blown apart by grapeshot. ‘One gun’, recalled a clergyman’s wife, who had come out to watch the executions, ‘was overcharged and the poor wretch was literally blown to atoms, the lookers-on being covered with blood, and fragments of flesh: the head of one poor wretch fell on a bystander and hurt him’”
Lest we should ever forget the skeletons in our neighbours overburdened closet.
One bus, two bus, no sign of my visitors. My hopes rose, had there been an accident ? A serious breakdown? And then came three bus. I stared at the disembarking faces, as the condemned man searches for the face of his executioner. Searching in the hope of never finding. Then I saw it. Oh no! oh no! oh no!
The signs were superfluous. Just follow the smell.
They came, but they won't conquer.
1 commentaire:
Oooh, they look a sordid bunch of marauding English masses.... or do they look like a group of ordinary travel-weary folk? (Bound to be some Frogs in there too, Roo).
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