Asylum Seekers Pissing on Dickens’ Grave

For obvious reasons I never read Richard Littlejohn’s novel: To Hell In A Handcart, but I did read several reviews of it; each seeking to outdo the other in the vitriol aimed jointly at its bigotry and lack of literary merits. While doubtless much of the criticism was warranted, the result was that I ended up with the idea of this impossibly overblown rant. So this is not necessarily how I suggest Littlejohn would write the story, but how the monstrous caricature that the reviews depicted, en masse, might write it. And all the bad writing that follows is as much in character  as the bigotry.

Chapter 1

It was the best of times if you were a foreigner, a criminal, a layabout, or a black lesbian. It was the worst of times if you were a good honest Briton. It was 2017 and with Labour having been in power for 16 of the last 20 years, political correctness had gone so insane that it could have been locked in an asylum with a team of therapists and regularly subjected to ECT, and it would still have been mad.

Dave sat at the back of the train as it dragged itself from London towards the coast, making endless stops. Some of these were actually scheduled, most that were enforced by another mechanical failure. Dave hated trains.  Unfortunately given the ridiculous level of taxation extorted from him every year to pay for juvenile delinquents to be taught about Bangladeshi culture while getting a free tattoo on the NHS, he needed the money. And with punitive road tolls having driven freight off the roads and back on to the railways, the trains now needed armed guards to deal with a new generation of train robbers. Not that these new gangsters were anything like Ronnie Biggs and his mates, Dave mused, genial cockneys who’d give half of what they stole to their mum, and only hurt someone if they really had to. No, nowadays it’d be some Eastern European greaseball who’d knife you just for kicks.

The train chugged on towards Shooter Hill. Most of the passengers were probably idly wondering whether the feeble engine would manage the steep incline. Past experience indicated the chances at about 50/50. For Dave it represented a more pressing concern. Shooter Hill was a popular location for train robbers, and his senses were on red alert. Sure enough, as the train gradually slowed to a crawl, Dave saw a car accelerating towards it. He pulled his rifle up to his shoulder and took aim.

The driver of the car turned towards him, blanched and yelled “I’ve got an urgent message for a passenger on the train; for Mr Lorry.”

Mr Lorry? What a fucking ridiculous name, Dave thought. Might as well have picked Mr First Class Return if you were going to invent something.

“Why can’t you just phone him?”

“Too dangerous, it might be intercepted.”

Not as dangerous as trying to rob my fucking train, Dave thought as he blew out the car’s tyres with ruthless accuracy.

The car skidded into a tree at the precise moment as the struggle to ascend the hill became too much for the train and it ground to a halt. Dave walked over to the car, reassured by the lack of movement from the driver, who was slumped over the steering wheel. He searched quickly for weapons and was surprised not to find any. He was even more surprised to find an envelope addressed to a Jarvis Lorry. Quickly he opened it and read the message inside. It made no sense at all. Returning to business, he checked the drivers pulse as he left the car. Nothing. “Recalled to life” was the message.

“Best of luck with that, you poor sod.”

 Chapter 2

There was an inevitable delay as the police arrived, were told that there had been an attempted robbery on the train, talked to a few people and departed, seemingly satisfied. Still, the train still wasn’t much later than usual when it restarted its journey.

Dave was in two minds. His instinct for self-preservation told him that the best course was to forget the message and its messenger entirely, but he was curious as to what it might mean. Plus he’d obviously been within his rights to shoot at a potential robber, but he did feel some sense of responsibility that the message wasn’t lost. It was too risky to try and find Mr Lorry on the train, but another look at the envelope revealed that the message had come from Tilson’s bank. Dave resolved to go there the next day.

At 10 am, Dave arrived at the bank. It wasn’t your average high street bank; Tilson’s was one of the exclusive establishments that handled the complicated financial affairs of a handful of extremely rich clients. He was well aware that he didn’t fit that profile and he felt several eyes and a couple of cameras follow him as he entered the room. Still, it took a lot to make Dave self-conscious and he stated loudly and confidently to reception that he was there on behalf of Jarvis Lorry, who couldn’t be there himself.

With sufficient ease as to make Dave wary of investing his own money at the bank, he was able to gain an audience with a manager who proceeded to explain the meaning of the message. The full story didn’t live up to Dave’s hopes, apparently some French bloke was getting released from prison and Mr Lorry was to arrange a reunion with his daughter in London.

The prospect of helping some foreign criminal didn’t exactly appeal to Dave. The government did enough favours for them without needing him to stick his neck out. On the other hand the bank had hinted, in a manner that suggested actually discussing payment was beneath them, that there might be a significant reward involved. If it was going to get him away from working on trains, he was willing to do almost anything.

Dave went straight down to Clapham where the daughter, a Lucie Manette, was living. Dave had known the area well when he was young, though that was before its first language had become Polish and its food staple goulash. Still at least they were Christians. In the streets where Dave had grown up there were more mosques than churches and the only women not wearing burkhas were the pensioners who’d lived in the same house for 60 years and weren’t going to move now, despite the area had morphing into a suburb of Karachi.

True, the situation hadn’t deteriorated as much as France where the Muslims had become so powerful that they seemed about to take total control – it was only a matter of time before the frogs rolled over and surrendered completely to the latest bunch of fanatics to threaten them. He didn’t think that could happen in England, however many bloody liberals bleated about the need to respect immigrant cultures and how much we could learn from them. Bollocks, if their cultures weren’t so shit, they wouldn’t all be fleeing them like rats from the Belgrano towards a proper civilisation.

With these thoughts fresh in his mind, Dave reached his destination and knocked on the door.  While he’d occasionally thought about the father who’d apparently spent 15 years rotting in a French jail, he’d not given a thought up until then about the daughter. He certainly hadn’t thought that she’d be as lovely, as stunning, as heart-stoppingly fucking gorgeous as the girl who opened the door to him. Say what you like about the French, they produce some beautiful women, if you don’t mind a little underarm hair. It was probably only a couple of seconds, but it felt like an hour before Dave could vocalise the most basic of questions.

“Are you Lucie Manette?”

“Yes, I am, how can I help you?”

She spoke with hardly any foreign accent, which just made her more attractive to Dave. She had lived in London nearly all her life, so it wasn’t altogether surprising, though there seemed to be plenty of women who’d lived in London since birth who couldn’t string together a sentence in English.

“It’s an important personal matter, may I come in?”

She indicated her acquiescence and he walked in, trying to admire the room rather than just her. He wasn’t entirely successful, not least because there wasn’t much to admire in the basic interior. It was furnished with the bare essentials in terms of tables and chairs, but there wasn’t nearly enough expensive electronic equipment to impress Dave. They sat down and he passed on the message, obtaining his reward from her hanging on to him for support as the tears flowed down her cheeks. Dave had never expected to fall in love with the daughter of some dodgy foreign geezer, but it was undeniable that he had done so.

Chapter 3

For a while, things progressed smoothly. Lucie and her father were reunited, although he did seem seriously traumatised from having been imprisoned for so long. Dave doubted that spending 15 years in a “Sunshine Home For Those Temporarily Deprived Of Their Liberty” (as UK prisons had now become) could severely traumatise anyone, except for the unpleasant shock of the clang of the prison gates shutting behind them as they were released.

For some reason, which Dave did nothing to discourage, Lucie and her father both credited him personally with engineering the release and he was always welcome at their house. However, he didn’t seem able to progress beyond friendship with Lucie. This was something of a new experience for Dave who had never previously struggled to charm women long enough to get them into bed. They didn’t tend to hang around long afterwards, but he lost no sleep after that – indeed he lost even less sleep if they fucked off straight afterwards.

He wondered if the problem was that he might want a rather more permanent relationship with Lucie than he had with the slappers who’d preceded her. But he knew that while he didn’t entirely rule out marrying her, it was primarily lust that drew him towards her. Not that he accepted the idea that lust was somehow less important, less noble than love. Love was just when you got scared there wouldn’t be someone else coming along next. So life carried on, Lucie wanting him around because her sense of obligation made her like him; him wanting to be around in case she had a moment of weakness.

Elsewhere in the world, things were more dramatic. In the USA, they’d had the sense to take firm measures against the Islamist threat, expelling all Muslims who wouldn’t swear loyalty to the state and the American way, while smearing pork fat over the Koran. Sure this had led to some reprisals from jihadis in the Middle East and North Africa but some (reasonably) judicious air strikes had kept those under control.

In France however, they had been too stupid to deal with the threat directly, they’d let Muslims by the million flood across the border, organise and proselytise. And now the chickens were about to lose their roost.

The Islamic revolution in Paris began in the suburbs with rioting, attacks on the police and looting. In other words, just another day in the banlieues. Until it was spotted that the looting was of firearms and other weaponry and the police weren’t just being bombarded, police stations were being seized.

The government still hesitated though, and the insurrection gathered pace, moving towards the centre of the city. Tourists fled, the chic Parisian bourgeoisie left their jewels and poodles and ran away faster than their great-grandparents had in 1940. Skirmishes between revolutionaries and the authorities became pitched battles, but the muslims kept winning. After two weeks control of Paris had passed from the bald, decadent French elite to the bearded, deranged Muslim rabble, and rivers of blood flowed down the boulevards.

Back in London, Lucie and her father discussed the situation daily, growing more despairing with each update from across the channel. Lucie seemed to become still more indifferent to Dave’s attentions as she got more pre-occupied with events in her homeland. One day she said to him, “Oh Dave, I’m so grateful to you for rescuing my father, but isn’t there anything you can do to rescue my country?”

Even in the age of chivalry, where gallant knights thought nothing of slaying a dragon or two to win a damsel’s heart, they would probably have baulked at the idea of saving an entire country for the sake of a girl, particularly when that country was full of Frenchmen. But for Dave it wasn’t just for a girl, it was for the sake of his country, which could only be further weakened by having a bunch of terrorists running the country next door. It was bad enough having the bloody Welsh as neighbours. Plus, there was a battle for civilisation against barbarism. What would Churchill have done? What would Thatcher have done? Dave was going to fight.

Chapter 4

The first thing Dave had to do was to get into Paris, where there was now a blockade preventing non-Muslims from entering the city. The blatant hypocrisy of imposing such a measure after years of protesting against the mildest immigration restrictions imposed by European states made his blood boil. However, he was able to hide both his rage and his identity by the simple measure of wearing a burkha. It was hot and uncomfortable, and dramatically reduced his peripheral vision. Compelling women to wear them was clearly backward and unfair, but not nearly as unjust as denying him as a man his god-given right to admire the female body. That was the sort of human rights that was important to Dave, but obviously not to the bunch of poofters who made up the politically correct lobby.

The flight to Paris was fairly nerve-wracking as, surrounded by muslims muttering in a variety of strange languages, he feared exposure – and probably being stoned to death – if anyone spoke to him. But the burkha did its job in warding off attention, and the nearest he came to detection was when he absent mindedly began to take a ham sandwich from his bag. At the airport there was chaos as the new authorities sought to implement the changes in regulations. Dave was easily able to sneak through amidst the bedlam.

Now he had to think of a plan as to how to try and combat the Muslim reign of terror. Obviously as a proud free-born Englishman he was worth ten poxy foreigners, but the odds against him were much bigger than that. Even watching Zulu for inspiration hadn’t helped. He decided that the only plan was to try and take out as many of the leading imams as possible, and hope that without their hysterical preaching the rest of the insurrection would fall into dissension and chaos. The question was, how could he manage it. Some kind of bomb seemed the obvious tactic, but while Dave had some experience making Molotov cocktails and petrol bombs to chuck at local paedophiles and Labour councillors he didn’t have the sort of bomb-making material that this sort of operation required.

While there were doubtless plenty of explosives stores around the city, ready to supply the next generation of jihadist martyrs, he doubted he’d be able to get access to them. Perhaps, there was more chance of getting what he needed from the nascent resistance movement. Dave pretty much considered Allo Allo a factual, documentary account of the French resistance in World War 2, so he didn’t have high expectations of the frogs this time round. And he wasn’t surprised to find that the resistance had already splintered into multiple factions, a couple of Gaullist ones, and several Trotskyist ones. Given that the only French he spoke was “Bonjour, parlez-vous anglais?”, Dave managed to avoid getting drawn into the endless philosophical debates that appeared to be the stock in trade of these groups and managed to get a supply of enough munitions to take down the Hotel de Ville, which was where some conference of religious leaders was due to take place that weekend.

Now, all that was required was for him to set up the explosives around the hotel, set a timer and retire to a safe distance to set them off. Fortunately he had received a great deal of expert training for this job, obsessively watching James Bond films – that is to say, the old fashioned ones where Bond either shagged or killed everything that moved rather than the recent abominations where Bond (played by Daniel Radcliffe) sought to foil global terrorist plots by trying to empathise and compromise with the megalomaniac despots who sought to rule or destroy the world.

He crept gently through the vents, sewers and back corridors of the building, constantly alert for anyone approaching. But there didn’t seem to be anyone on guard. Perhaps they were convinced that Westerners only dispatch bombs from 1000 metres above. Nevertheless, the hour or so it took him to lay the bombs felt like a day. When he checked his watch though, it was still 40 minutes before the imams would enter for their conference. He smiled to himself. Everything was going to plan. He didn’t feel a momentary concern as to whether he was doing the right thing or for the potential suffering that his victims might feel. This was a war, casualties were inevitable. But suddenly an icy feeling of dread filled him. The timer wasn’t working properly. It would still be possible to trigger the explosives, but he wouldn’t be able to set it going and then get clear of the building. If he was to let loose this crucial blow against Islamic theocracy in Europe, then only way he’d be able to do it would be by sacrificing himself at the same time. He would have to follow their methods, and become a suicide bomber.

As he sat there, while the minutes ticked by until the guests arrived at the conference, took their seats, began fomenting, subverting and inciting, his mind did drift to Lucie, to England, to beer. There were many things he would miss out on. But his mind was clear. The only way to protect those things was to strike out at evil here and now. His watch told him now was the time to ignite the bombs. He hesitated for half a second, then did so. As the blasts began to echo round the building, combined with screams and tumbling masonry, he had only one thought in his mind: It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.