Fortescue Towers

Random ramblings from the life and times of Col. Fortescue Featherstonehaugh Fortescue.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Churchillian Spirit

One reads in the broadsheets that some Irish fellah, part of a popular beat combo has called for a bunch of that lot over the jolly old channel to bring their boats over to blighty in support of some shindig he is organizing north of the border. Well, one can say it is just jolly well not on! Can't have boatloads of Johnny Foreigner invading our green and pleasant shores. Look what happened last time they turned up at Hastings. Completely ruined afternoon tea and left us with damn great castles and the whiff of garlic for years afterwards. Honestly, before a chap knows it there will be a bunch of bloody Jerries on the throne and Greeks wandering around Windsor castle.

It's bad enough having to put up with tourists wandering around the place as it is, poking their noses in where they are not wanted and demanding to have photographs taken with 'his lordship' without having fifty thousand of the blighters descend upon our beaches all in one go.

Well, one is just not going to take it lying down. One has already called an emergency meeting of the village council and has set Blenkinsop to clearing the weeds from the old pill boxes at the entrance to the estate where it is our intention to set up the 25 pounder and two Vickers guns that until earlier formed the village war memorial. Blighters are going to get a bit of a shock when they get this far. Clackthorpe has been spotted honing his commando knife to razor sharpness and has taken to hiding in the ornamental shrubbery with RSM McNulty so that "if they get this far I can leap out and give 'em a taste of cold British steel before they reach the house, sah!". One does wonder about the wisdom of sowing mines in the rockery though, several of the gardeners have already been hospitalized.

Even Utterthwaite has been mobilized and is currently acting as reconnaissance. One would suggest that anyone meeting him in the winding lanes stands well aside. He really is not too steady on a bicycle at the best of times and the rifle and tin helmet do somewhat handicap him in his perambulations. Would hate to think of him spearing some stout English yeoman with his bayonet as he rounds the corner all askance.

So, in the spirit of Churchill, we will fight them on the beaches, in the fields, in the hedgrows and if they get past those then the mem' will give 'em both barrels from the East wing when they reach the herbaceous borders. If that does not finish them then the sight of McNulty emerging from the shrubbery in a kilt with a number of Gladioli tied about his person will surely send them fleeing back across the channel with their tails between their legs.