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Chunnel vision

Jaspistos

IN COMPETITION NO. 1841 you were invited to write a poem giving a disturbing preview of the scene which will result from the opening of the Channel Tunnel.

For amusing virulence, none of you quite matched the poem written by a Tory MEP, one verse of which I give you:

There'll be carloads of Louises From Parisian stripteases Importing foul diseases Into Kent.

There'll be modern French Wells Fargoes Sending juggernauts with cargoes Of frogs' legs and escargots And men's scent.

The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus bottle of Isle of Jura Single Malt Scotch whisky goes to Martin Woodhead.

Oh, the Tunnel will be different, of that there is no doubt - What with mad cows strolling into it, and mad dogs ambling out, What with garlic-eating natives who refuse to speak our lingo

(Isn't English good enough for them? We think it is, by jingo!)

And hordes of strapping can-can girls, more folies than bageres,

Who pout and wave their embonpoints and advertise their wares,

And a Tour de France of onion-men in stripy vests and berets (We thought that things were bad when they came over on the ferries!).

The TGV that enters town will reek of pun- gent sauces

(To disguise their filthy bifteck, which is largely made of horses),

Its corridors all cluttered with the rinds of rancid cheese, And crusty loaves, and Gauloises, and Charles Aznavour CDs.

The men don't like their women, but they seem to fancy ours; They'll smirk and leer and pinch their bums and call them cauliflowers.

Ah! je m'en fiche! It's time to end this rueful monologue.

This 'European Union'? The atnplexus of a Frog? (Martin Woodhead) When Xerxes tried to bridge the Hellespont The scheme was wrecked by loud Olympian thunder - It's plain there is a curse on those who want To marry lands which God hath put asunder.

So when the tunnel opened, we were worried That God again might spoil the celebration By pouring through the conduit that we'd quarried Some awful Continental execration.

How frightfully myopic and how trite That all we thought to fear were rabid dogs! Oh Moses, how much worse in fact our plight When history spawned its second plague of frogs. From Folkestone in a blitzkrieg they fanned out (Their Renaults massacred the roads of Kent) And in a week outdid the warlike Kraut.

Oh England, copy Egypt and repent!

(Julian Kenny)

In sabots and saris,

From Naples to Paris, From Bonn and Sierra Nevada, They're coming, they're coming, But nobody's drumming To warn of a greater Armada.

With hubris and hassle They storm every castle, No walls have been built to withstand them, They've rules about greeting, They've laws about eating, And titbits we liked — they have banned them.

But worst are the wars in the cheap railway- cars, They're a positive danger to sit in, With thugs from Berlin breaking bottles to win A point in the battle for Britain.

(Frank McDonald) Cats with rabies, Smuggled babies, Fractured skiers, Justice-fleers, Welfare fiddlers, Seat-down piddlers, Stateless villains, Backpack Dylans, Senoritas, Helmuts, Dieters, Essex boozers, Euro-losers, Day-trip plonkers, Furtive bonkers, Come and spot some Human flotsam. (Tim Hopkins)