The Beautiful Game

I have been resident in the UK for just over 4 years. I exhibit most of the classic behavioural tendencies of immigrants: I am hardworking, ambitious, hate other immigrants and run a small corner-shop. Well, I did run a small corner-shop until the recession hit and people didn’t want to buy corners any more, so I had to close up. The financial crisis has also meant that I’ve had to cut back on being hardworking and ambitious, so I basically just hate other immigrants full-time now.

Another thing I’ve started doing that immigrants are really into is attending public meetings. This week, for instance, I went to my area’s public election hustings. I was told that was where people got to grill the election candidates, so I brought along a pair of barbecue tongs and a six-pack of Fosters. I came home hungry and disappointed.

This week I also had a run-in with about 60 of my old colonial masters, in another public meeting. I was asked to sit on a panel to address members of the England Football Supporters Association about the upcoming World Cup in South Africa. Turns out the famously shy-and-retiring wickle flowers who follow the England team around the world yelling ‘Oggy Oggy Oggy’ and bashing other fans’ heads in with beer bottles were feeling a wickle scared about braving the dark continent. Bless ‘em.

I had assumed that the event would be held in some kind of hall, but I discovered upon arrival that they’d hired out a pub. In retrospect, duhhh. Research has shown that if England football fans are removed from their natural environment of bacon-flavoured crisps and kegs of lager, they will wither and die within ten minutes. The organisers weren’t taking any chances. The audience was already set up with foaming beer-glasses, and entry-rights had been restricted to individuals wearing St George’s flags emblazoned on their ample midriffs. Some of the women sported St George’s crosses in a diamante-studded effect, which Vogue informs me is the dernier cri in forward-looking fashion for this season’s sartorially-minded football yob.

The meeting’s setting also ensured that the pearls of reassuring wisdom dropping from our chiselled South African lips were regularly interrupted by the emergence of the pub’s cook, bearing steaming plates of deep-fried dinner, shrieking “SAUSAGES AND CHIPS? WHO ORDERED SAUSAGES AND CHIPS?” I bet Mandela never had to put up with that at the UN.

There were four of us on the panel, and 60 of them, so I instantly calculated that in hand-to-hand combat we’d be outnumbered 15 to 1. And, of course, they’d have St George on their side. Despite my apprehensions, however, things started off perfectly amicably. We painted the picture of a dreamy utopian society where the sun always shines, the three-quid wine flows like water, and the friendly natives are standing by to take stranded English fans into their homes in time of accommodation need, and ferry them by piggyback from Bloemfontein to Rustenburg if they miss their flight connections.

Then things suddenly took a turn for the worse. A large gentleman lumbered to his feet and announced: “Your national airways, Souf African Airways, has just released a report predicting that seventy fousand pieces of luggage will be stolen, not lost, stolen, by baggage-handlers during the World Cup. What d’you ‘ave to say about that?"

I choked back what I actually ‘ad to say about that, which was that he would be pleased to hear that the freebase cocaine he so clearly indulges in is also cheaply available in South Africa. A secondary preferred response might have been ‘You do the legacy of St George a disservice when you lie like that,’ and yet a third could have been ‘Well, that figure should set your minds at ease, since a report in December last year showed that 2.1 million pieces of baggage go missing at English airports every year’.

(Unfortunately I didn’t have that latter factoid to hand at the time – it’s the fruits of my post-event rage-fuelled googling. Which also failed to bring up any trace, unsurprisingly, of this alleged own-goal PR masterstroke on SAA’s part – the “report” promising to steal fliers’ luggage.)

We spoke instead of South Africa’s new space-age airports, of the Orwellian surveillance systems, of baggage-handlers who were so congenitally honest that they wouldn’t even be able to bring themselves to pull a sickie when they were less than terminally ill…but to no avail. The ubuntu spell had been broken. Low-level mutterings of disapproval began to hum and build. Lager was downed with renewed ferocity.

Then things kicked off in earnest: the AWB menace was apparently keeping them up at night. Would they be hacked to bits by machetes in the race war?

"Machetes?" said my co-panellist Audrey. "No. Criminals in South Africa use guns."

How we laughed! When I say ‘we’, I mean the four of us on the panel. No-one else laughed.

"Also, with regards to the AWB threat," Audrey continued (in for a penny, in for a pound), "It’s my understanding that white supremacists don’t tend to kill white people."

How I clutched my aching sides! How they didn’t.

I tried to appeal to our shared common-man status, to convince them I wasn’t a government apparatchik feeding them lies.

“As an ordinary South African,” I began, “I can tell you that the AWB is a laughably insignificant political force in South Africa.” (I had been planning to draw a parallel between the position occupied by the AWB in the South African popular imagination and that of the BNP in the UK. Then I looked around at the sea of St George’s flags and rapidly thought better of it.)

"That’s not true!" they shouted, brandishing their pint-glasses. "We read about them all the time in the newspapers here!"

"Well, certainly up until Eugene Terreblanche’s murder, they hadn’t received any media coverage in South Africa for years," I said. ["MASH AND BEANS, ANYONE? WHO ORDERED MASH AND BEANS?"]

"South Africa doesn’t have any newspapers!" someone yelled in a sudden stroke of inspiration.

"Yes they do!" I shouted back fretfully.

"Well, no-one reads newspapers in South Africa!" the same genius cried, practically orgasming at his own cleverness.

["SAUTEED IMMIGRANT? I HAVE ONE PORTION OF SAUTEED IMMIGRANT?"]

"Anyway, what about that Julius Malema?" someone else shouted. "That bloke who goes around saying he wants to kill all the white people!"

Audrey again fearlessly stepped up to the challenge. "Technically he only wants to kill farmers," she kindly explained. Again, this went down like a… like a confident black woman making a joke at the expense of a bunch of white football fans. (Personally, I think we could have done more with this comedic opportunity by exploiting the homophone of ‘boer’ vs ‘boor’, but, y’know, je ne regrette rien.)

"Start treating us with some integrity!" someone cried.

The High Commission’s representative attempted to pour some diplomatic oil. "Look, I’ll be interested to hear what you guys say about this all when you get back from South Africa," he said.

"IF we come back from South Africa!" came the response, which may or may not have been accompanied by some high-fiving.

The fun just carried right on. "The UK is playing the USA in Rustenburg. This is the perfect opportunity for a terrorist attack. What guarantees can you give us that such a terror attack won't take place?"

Answer: none, other than the certainty that a million virgins waiting for suicide bombers in the Islamic afterlife are not sufficient recompense for losing your life in Rustenburg.

And on, and on, until the panel’s convenor drew things to a merciful close. "I think we’ve all really learned a lot tonight," he said brightly. "Now I’m sure you’d all like to buy our panellists a drink."

I didn’t see a lot of people enthusiastically assenting to this proposition, but I may have missed them in my frenzied sprint for the door. If there’s one thing we immigrants know, it’s when you’ve overstayed your welcome.