A friend, Emma Grant, is joining us for lunch. She popped in for tea, but we lost track of the time, so lunch it has become. I don’t mind at all, or at least not much, and Noah likes her well enough.
Actually, a little too well, but that is his fault, not hers. She is single, pretty, vivacious and intelligent. In addition, she is voluptuous, but she does her best to tuck the weighty protuberances away. Good friend that she is, she has no desire to titillate the men who belong to the women she visits. She recognises that possession is nine points of the lore.
Not that I can’t compete, you understand. I am kind, not unattractive, and have a good sense of humour. My wrinkles respond to cosmetics, and I still have all my teeth. Finally, I am a nice person.
But I am – I cannot deny it – super-structurally ordinary. The most I can say is that my breasts are pert. They present with pin-point accuracy, but ample they ain’t.
Enough of this.
Emma, as I have said, will be sharing our lunch. Unsurprisingly, so will Noah. He has loads of work to get through, but he likes to keep abreast of events. Also, a man must eat.
Malawians are the topic du jour.
“They are terrifying the life out of poor Jim and Sally,” says Emma. Jim and Sally work for her. They are punctual, work hard, are cheerful and don’t drink. They are, in short, model domestics. But they are Malawians. In these troubled times, this a big BUT.
“Are they legal?” Noah asks. In putting the question, he makes an admirable effort to raise his eyes to meet hers. Previously, they had been transfixed.
“I don’t know,” she says. “My policy is ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’. If it was good enough for the US military, it’s good enough for me.”
The merits of the analogy escape me, but I prefer not to go down this rabbit hole. “If you were in the UK,” I say “would you be as cavalier? I mean, would you hire two Arabs without asking for their papers?”
“No, I am not crazy about Arabs. I really dislike them. They think we are scum, and they do nasty things to children. Look what happened in Rotherham.”
“Forget them”
“Hmm,” says Noah. His firm expects him to be sensitive on Arabs. “Forget them,” he says, “take Poles. Suppose you were living in the UK, would you hire them without checking to see if they were legal?”
“No, I still wouldn’t. Foreigners are flooding into the country and swamping the locals. Oxford Street is so full of women in yaks, it might as well be an Easter bazaar.”
“Yashmaks”, says Noah. “A yak is a big – Tibetan – pack animal with smelly breath.”
“Whatever, they might as well be yaks, the shopping bags they carry. But, back to the point. They are invading and colonising Britain. You can’t deny that, whatever your yakking.”
“Does it matter?” asks Noah, quietly. He has something new to concentrate on, it seems.
“Of course it does! The immigrants will destroy a culture we hold so dear. They will desecrate the cathedrals, despoil the language, and enslave the locals. If I had anything to do with it, I’d send them all back to where they came from.”
“Are the Malawians not doing just the same here? And the Zimbabweans, and everyone else from up north? They seem to be invading our country in droves, but you don’t mind them.”
“I don’t. They work hard, don’t steal, and can’t take you to the CCMA.”
“Won’t they swamp our culture if we let them?” asks Noah.
“Not a nation”
“We have no culture to swamp. We are not a nation, but a bunch of tribes that spend their lives attacking each other. We cannot speak one another’s languages, and our architecture is faux-Tuscan and tin-shacks. Mandela may have discovered a rainbow nation, but I see only the storm clouds.”
There is no doubting it, our Em can expatiate when she wishes. Still, she does have a point. Noah is of the same mind. He looks non-plussed, an unhappy state of mind for someone who likes to be plus-one up.
After lunch, a delicious repast in the colonial style, I blurt out “What about rugby? And boerewors? And pap and vleis? Are these not cultural artefacts that deserve to be protected, hallowed, even enshrined. The Voortrekker Monument, too?”
Noah and Em look at me balefully. They are plainly unimpressed.
“Ok, if you don’t buy that, what about Table Mountain, the Garden Route and the Kruger Park?”
“That is God’s culture, not ours,” says Em. Ouch and touche!
“Let me get this clear.” I say. I am elucidating. “You’re saying the Brits have every reason to resent immigration as they have a culture to protect. You’re saying we have no reason for resentment of this sort, as we have no culture to protect.”
“Bravo!” Noah exclaims.
I think he is suggesting it takes a long time for me to twig. If so, he is being very rude. From where, I wonder, does his impudence come? If he does not curb it, we will have inter-personal conflict that will require Paris Peace Talks to resolve. Or a treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
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