The Brit Abroad...

Socks and sandals.

Yes its a cliche, but its a cliche that is alive and well, unashamably alive and well in the psyche of the Brit abroad.

I've seen so many of these abominations in the last two weeks that I've given up staring the culprits in the face and tutting and shaking my head in despair at them, now I just point and laugh.

The ones in the picture are only the mildest of the genre though, I've actually seen knee length white socks walking the streets with impunity, and worse, white socks with coloured bands on the top, simply awful - I even spotted someone trying to wear socks and sandals with a pair of sandals that had one of those bars that you're supposed to slip between your big toe and the one next to it - the poor idiot was limping badly down the street as his white socks prevented him from using his chosen footwear in the manner which the designer had intended.

It never ceases to amaze me that with all the publicity on how moronic you look when wearing socks and sandals, it is so easy to find a prime example in holiday resorts all over the world, and that when you spot that prime example, usually within ten seconds of stepping out of your hotel room, the wearer will be a Brit abroad.

Do these men have no wives ?

Do their wives not physically prevent their menfolk from leaving their rooms with said apparel gaff as mine would ?

Obviously not, probably because their wives are too busy trying to find a bar in their choice of foreign holiday resort that will allow them to view their fix of three British TV soaps and two "reality programmes" per day.

Which brings us to "British Bars".

You have to seriously question the sanity of a person who is prepared to spend a couple, possibly several thousands of pounds on an annual family holiday in Europe and beyond, but who insists that on arrival in their foreign clime they only eat "British" food with HP Sauce on it, they only drink "British" beer and that they can surround themselves with lots of other like minded British people in a bar that is managed and run by British people who have a satellite dish of sufficient and impressive dimensions so that they can illegally pick up transmissions of British TV programmes to drip feed their British clients with 24 hours a day.

These people then spend the whole of their expensive two weeks abroad leaning on said bar with a pint of British beer in their hand, ordering their British bacon sandwiches, "we have the bacon flown over specially" (ie someone brings it into the foreign country illegally in their suitcase), watching their horrendous offspring destroying the pool table in the foreign owned bar next door, while all the time complaining to each other about how bad it is back home in Britain what with all the immigration and taxes and the cost of living and how you can't get a decent pint anywhere now and the country is going to the dogs and no-one cares because we're all too busy paying benefits to dole scroungers and illegal immigrants and letting career criminals out of prison after serving just three days of their eight year sentences and they are glad they've come away for a holiday because they've had enough of illegal immigrants and what they really want to do is open a bar in the sun just like this one and do you still get your dole money sent out here John ?

Fortunately our chosen holiday destination only had one example of the aforementioned "British Bar", but it was a prime example, an example that could be placed proudly in the museum of British culture abroad as a perfact example of the genre of which I complain.

Owned by a Londoner called John (are all Londoners called John ?) serving a selection of British beers, British bacon and sausages with British sauce, speaking only the English language even to the Spanish suppliers who turned up at his bar with deliveries of, shock, horror, Spanish fruit to put in the British cocktails that he made "for the ladies", a Kareoke night every third night and a quiz night with questions such as "what was Ethels dogs name" (pre-supposing of course that you automatically know that the Ethel that they relate to is a character of TV's "Eastenders" fame), and the ubiquitous eight foot diametre satellite dish illegally sucking in the broadcasts of Emmerdale, Coronation St, Eastenders, whateversoapthatchannel4shownow, Big Brother, The Bill, Casualty, I'm-a-celebrity-get-me-on-TV, I'm-a-talentless-cretin-get-me-on-a-TV-talent-show, and of course, football.

The sock and sandal men sit at the bar with John and moan about illegal immigrants while their obese foul mouthed lycra clad wives shout at their obese foul mouthed football kit clad offspring who are now vandalising the Flintstones kiddies ride in the bar next door, while they stuff their faces with British crisps, "we have them flown in specially" (ie someone brings them in illegally in their suitcase) and gaze open mouthed (as the crisp crumbs fall out) at todays episode of Emmerdale and they ask for the two hundreth time "is this on live then from back home or is it last weeks episode".

We almost caused a riot last Friday in this British bar.

The previous Sunday we had managed to persuade John-at-the-bar to show the rugby league challenge cup game between Leeds and Huddersfield and had ended up cheering on Huddersfield with perhaps the only Huddersfield fan who was abroad that day, and after it had finished we'd thanked John-at-the-bar and asked if he'd show the rugby game between Leeds and Hull on the following friday, he assured us that there would be no problem.

Turned up the following friday to find John-at-the-bar with the usual crowd of white sock and sandal men complaining about illegal immigration while their wives gazed in awe at the TV - a small crowd of similar rugby league fans had gathered as John-at-the-bar had promised them too but as we took our places they shook their heads at us and pointing to the screen and the women mentioned that we'd have to wait until these fat bitches had finished watching Eastenders.

So we waited.

And after ten minutes Eastenders finished, we'd missed some of the game but hey, we weren't going to argue with the fat bitches, we were in their territory now and you have to comply with their rules, you don't want to be on the end of their verbosity when you're supposed to be on holiday.

As the duff-duff Eastenders signature tune started John-at-the-bar changed channels to Sky Sports where we caught ten seconds of the Leeds-Hull game.

And then the riot started.

As one body the fat lycra bitches all stood up and turned on John-at-the-bar and spitting crisps (we have them brought in specially you know) out of their wide gobs they berated him using some of the finest profanity known to man as apparently he should have known that Big Brother was on Channel 4 and it was an eviction night and if John-at-the-bar didn't put Channel 4 on right now instead of the effing rugby then they'd be over there to do it for him.

John-at-the-bar was in a hopeless situation, he depended on these British trailor trash refugees for his livelihood every night, indeed every day too for the fat lycra bitches spent all day and all of their holiday dole money in his bar, he meekly hung his head and apologised to bullying bitches and changed to Channel 4.

One of the blokes that had gathered for the rugby did raise a half-hearted query but was told to "fook off to another bar" by one of the fat lycra bitches, a comment echoed by her two year old offspring who was strapped into a pushchair next to her, John-at-the-bar couldn't look us in the face as, head bowed he whispered, "sorry lads".

We went to another, Spanish owned, bar next door and asked the owner if he could show the game there. He couldn't do enough for us and broadcast it on all of his twelve plasma screens, brought us large cushioned chairs to sit in and made a small fortune in Valencia's finest Amstell beer sales.


The fat lycra bitches were still glued to Big Brother three hours later as we passed and their menfolk still in earnest conversation with John-at-the-bar on how you could "work out here and still draw the dole" while not declaring your presence in Spain to the Spanish government - of course they wouldn't understand the irony of their plan, but still.