The non-PC chap
Major Hazzard is outraged. He may be on air miles but he did not expect to have to sit next to a shortswearing, hairy-legged lout in the BA lounge. Reading The Sun with sunglasses. No one knows how to dress these days but the major practically goes to bed in a Guards tie. One has standards. The irregularities of modern life never fail to irritate. Able-bodied people who press the button at traffic lights, thus holding him up. He does not fly much now because people who don’t take their belts off pre-security are morons and it is so tiresome taking a shotgun. All those pen-pusher forms. Major Hazzard is going shooting in Scotland; the hairy lout is on his hols to Lanzarote.
What Major Hazzard likes is a pretty air hostess with red lipstick seeing to his G&T. Also what he calls manners and fat feminists call patronising. He was deeply hurt the other day when, going to lunch with his broker, he held the lift door open for two delightful young ladies and they dismissed his gesture as condescending. His daughter, Olivia, has tried to explain the concept of “woke” to him but to Reggie Hazzard wide awoke is what happens when the bloody foxes bark in his copse at 3am.
Dietary requirements, allergies, John Bercow, the BBC (“Where is Humphrys when we need him most?”), preferential parking for mothers with children, Christmas decorations before December, anything other than the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, gender-swapped performances of Shakespeare and Extinction Rebellion – “Haven’t these people got jobs? And where are they going to the lavatory in Trafalgar Square?” – are all red rags to the major’s bull. Ditto anyone saying “I’m good.” Vegetarians are pusillanimous whitefeather merchants; the police are racing up on the inside of his teeth-grinding mill. Lord Bramall a paedophile? Give Major Hazzard strength. More likely that Beryl on the PCC would be doing something vulgar with the church flowers. For the beleaguered, Major Hazzard is a Real Chap.
‘Woke’ is what happens when the bloody foxes bark in his copse at 3am
There’ll Always Be An England: Social Stereotypes by Victoria Mather and Sue Macartney-Snape (Constable, £12.99). Facebook/Instagram: @social_stereotypes