On my mind With

“WHAT a jolly spiffing deal,” said an old Etonian acquaintance, referring to Bojo’s Brexit Big Day Out.

“It’s one for the nationalists and the plebs. Shame about the beastly selling our fishing chaps down the river, but the gunboats should sort it.”

He continued: “The clotted creams (thick and rich Etonians) are asking how we are going to be better off as a fully sovereign nation, and erm… I can’t really think of anything offhand, but we won’t have so many of those Continentals and their foreign food in homebill (evening meal)”

“As Dame (Matron) used to say: ‘There’s nothing like a good British meal such as tikka masala and plenty of eccer (exercise) to prepare you for the First XV rugger team’. After all, what young chap would want to toddle off and freely move around those foreign countries, meet new friends, study in a university or find an excellent job in somewhere like Barcelona, Paris or Milan?

“As Nigel Fromage said, we’re going to have our caviar and eat it with a new empire of free trade. No tariffs and quotas, erm…. I don’t think we had those before did we? Lots of checks at the borders, erm … well we have lovely lorry parks. And could you believe it – that Ursula von Trapp quotes the Beatles, Shakespeare and TS Eliot in perfect English.”

My Etonian friend was referring to Eliot’s: “... And to make an end is to make a beginning” in the enigmatic poem ‘Little Gidding’.

But a pity he missed the later lines: “And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started”.

No doubt after the French and the Germans have laughed all their way to the bank, we’ll be back knocking at the door.