Non, je ne regrette rien

So not only was I right about the painful probing examination England received from Dr. Congo, but I got the score right as well. Monday will be a much harder watch because I simply don’t believe there is any hope. End of. Sorry. All together now -

We’re coming Home, we’re coming home….

It gets worse, however. For I am so dismayed by my surroundings, the news flow, the stupidity that passes for progress, and the cringing inability of anyone to actually take responsibility and thus make a decision, that I am considering how to stop being English - or as 24yo Guardian readers prefer to call us, White middle-class, Islamophobic, homo-trans-phobe, fascist wrinklies.

I am perfidious Albion. I want to be on the winning side and, after England’s dismal World Cup display, becoming French is the nearest thing to a certainty there is. I am also struck by and admire how seriously France takes anyone giving the nation the gentlest tap on the shins.

This week’s headlines in Le Maine Libre and Le Parisien enthused me with their rigorous, visible anger at the story reporting to an aghast nation that nine people were arrested in the Var and Gironde regions on Tuesday, June 30, 2026.

Are you sitting down? Is your Flabber in an anti-ghastly position?…. because these people aren’t just your ordinary street smugglers, French peasants avoiding tax, or bakers buying in frozen Polish dough…. this is a national scandal that suggests that the national game, which is Pétanque, not football, has been corrupted!

The evil deed occurred on September 4, 2025, during the seventh and final stage of the prestigious Masters de Pétanque in Levallois-Perret, near Paris. (No, I was busy as well, so missed it.)