This is another one of "Naq's observations" which, I have no doubt, will be taken as prejudiced by many. It is not, it is merely an observation of our present society in this area.

Waking as I did with the old Sol burning my eyeballs out I decided to sally forth and fritter my ill gotten gains in places various and mendacious.

The places where lines like "Honest Guv, of course it works" and "It's brand new and never been used" and "It worked last time I tried it" spill from the lips of the merchants like so many silvery bells of untruths.

Yes I was going boot fairing.

And so I ended up dragging my aching frame around the Hayes Farm boot fair where I would have sworn that I had been transported to some far off land where no one spoke English

Other than the guy on the gate I swear on my Readers Digest Do-it-yourself bible that I never heard anyone speaking a word of understandable English for a good 15 minutes.

It was as if the entire league of nations had been transported lock, stock and wobbly things into the borough of Bromley to sell and be sold to.

On a couple of occasions the rolls of wodge that I saw being bandied about would seem to indicate that George Bush and Co are in the wrong business. Give up being being a banker (yes I said BANKER) and being leader of the free world, instead sell stuff off the back of a lorry, sorry, off a pasting table at a boot fair.
Definitely no recession apparent in that particular industry.

However it did amaze me to see that, at a conservative estimate, 50% of the three million (well it seemed that many walking round the place) assorted stalls were peopled by those not of English extraction or, possibly, origin or by those to who English was apparently totally alien.

I know the newcomers to our shores have adapted incredibly quickly to our fiscally oriented lifestyle but what I don't understand is where they get this stuff from that they're selling.On one particular stall I gave up trying to buy some electronics stuff as nobody manning the thing seemed to have more than the barest grasp of piecing together a sentence. And this stall was full to overflowing with second hand radio and electronics goods that defied belief. One observation in particular I have to make is this.
Perhaps our indigenous, white, UK population could do well to observe how well behaved the younger members of the UK newcomers population are by comparison to the predominantly loud, screaming, squalling, demanding, objectionable, slope-fore-headed brats that speak English as a first language.

I also noticed that if one of the children from one of the newcomers did step out of line they were quickly and quietly brought back under parental control. Not so Mr and Mrs Chav and their assorted chavettes who, while wingeing and being snotty about something or other were only ever addressed with and in terms of abuse, most of which consisted of 4 letters, beginning with F and being remarkably similar to the brand name abbreviation for French Connection UK.

So, other than a few people, mostly of the older white generation, I found myself surrounded by a plethora of different languages. Many from probably every country in the world and a lot which, although ostensibly spoken by English people, were as far removed from this countries Mother tongue as it could possibly be.

Excuse me but does anyone here speak english?