England Away Read online

  – Alright bud? he asked.

  – Not bad, Harry replied, feeling brilliant inside.

  This was what it was all about. Going walkabout and seeing the world. Sitting in Holland with the sun shining through the window, stuffing cheese and ham inside his bread roll, eyeing up the croissant. He took a bite and had to admit it wasn’t bad.

  – That Hank who runs this place, Kevin said, once Mrs Hank had been and gone. He’s a bit of a perv that one. You look behind the counter and he’s got the wank mags piled right up for the nightshift. We probably interrupted him when we came in this morning. That’s his on-duty reading by the looks of things. Big motorbike mamas with huge tits covered in tattoos, the dirty bastard.

  – They’re all like that over here, Harry reasoned. They don’t care, do they? Anything goes in Amsterdam.

  – You wouldn’t want those women out on show if there were kids about, Kevin observed, looking at the thin ham and cheese with a worried expression. Not much chance of putting on any weight with this, is there?

  – The coffee’s alright.

  – You take a young boy and he sees those monsters with fifty-inch tits and tattooed nipples, and it’ll put him off birds for life. Could even turn him funny. I’m going to need a bit more than this to eat.

  Harry had to agree with the northerner. He had a hole in his gut and the food was already gone. He polished off his drink and left Kev to eat his breakfast, asking Hank which way he should turn when he got outside. He tried to sneak a look and see the owner’s magazines, but there was only a couple of phone books and the register they’d signed last night. Hank was thinking hard and asked Harry what he was looking for, suggesting left, right, left for the busier areas.

  Outside Harry was reborn. The ferry crossing hadn’t been as bad as he’d predicted. He laughed thinking about the schoolkids and how he’d covered them in sick. It was all in the past now, a story to tell the rest of the boys over a few pints, and something the girls would learn to laugh about. It might take a few years, but they’d get there in the end. He was in Holland and determined to make the most of his time away from England. He wasn’t thinking back any more. Looking at the buildings and the canal and the bikes on the railings, a clean sky above and happy people passing, Harry couldn’t be bothered with the arguments against Europe. If this was Europe then he couldn’t wait till England was fully signed up. All he got the whole time was propaganda shoved down his throat, but from now on he was going with what he saw. Imagine thinking of baked beans when there was a stall selling chips and mayonnaise. He went over and ordered his cone. He was served by a man with an Ajax badge on his shirt. The chips tasted good, the mayonnaise even better. This was the life. He’d crossed the Channel and left his sickness on the lower deck, in the curled hair of some Home Counties teenyboppers. It had done Harry the world of good. At night he was sticking with the sex machine on his hunting trips, but during the day he was off on his own.

  The hotel was on a canal and Harry did as Hank suggested, turning left and strolling next to the slow-moving water, passing painted houseboats moored along tree-lined streets, cobbles clicking on the heels of pedestrians. He didn’t fancy the dog shit he almost stepped in, but there was always someone acting the cunt. On the corners there were stacks of bikes locked together, the big windows at the top of the buildings beaming back leaves and clouds. The air was fresh for a city, the canal-side streets free from traffic. There weren’t a lot of people around and that suited him fine, because it gave you space to breathe. It was a lot different to London, where everyone was packed in tight and the car fumes and traffic grinding along the high street stuck in your head.

  Harry followed Hank’s directions and after passing through a small square he ended up in a market stacked with flowers. It seemed right and he wandered along, turning back towards Centraal. He spent the next three hours walking, looking at canals and dodging trams. His feet had started to ache, he needed a piss and he fancied a rest. He also fancied a drink and Rudi’s Bar looked okay, so he went inside. There were twenty or so people scattered around, talking among themselves, a couple of birds at the bar, the barman fucking about with some glasses. He looked at the names chalked on a big blackboard and chose a Belgian beer made from wheat. He paid his guilders and shot off to the bog.

  He stood over the toilet and the piss blew out of him. He was pissing for England and stopped to read the graffiti, a mixture of Ajax and Feyenoord football and drug-happy nursery rhymes. Something in his head made him think about adding his signature to the wall, but why bother? He was too old for graffiti. He could hear someone shitting in the cubicle and didn’t hang around once he’d finished.

  Harry went back to the bar and picked up his drink. It was a strange taste, a lot different to the lager he was used to drinking. You had to give these things a go, so he wasn’t complaining. The two women next to him stopped to look when he made a face and he gave them his best smile. They nodded back and did what the Dutch do best, acting nice and friendly, asking him if he was English. Harry nodded and sat down on the bar stool. They were eating something that smelt of peanut sauce and looked like kebabs on skewers. He was hungry. The girls said they were satays and came from Indonesia. They said Indonesia had been a Dutch colony and this surprised Harry because he didn’t know that the old clogs were into empires same as the English and Spanish. It was like the Indian food at home. The satays smelt good and Harry ordered some for himself, chatting with the girls as the Rolling Stones played quietly in the background and the barman boiled a plastic bag behind the counter.

  This was living, finding a hideaway and chatting with a couple of nice-looking locals, a bit hippyish but more biker than smelly crusties, in their thirties with long hair and red and green trousers, but he wouldn’t say no if they offered him a blow job, and their tits were a lot tighter than fifty inches. He could smell dope in the air, everyone in their own worlds.

  – So why are you in Amsterdam? Hairy 1 asked.

  – I’m just here for a couple of days, having a holiday, Harry said. I’m on my way to Berlin with a few friends.

  – Have you been there before? Hairy 2 asked. Do you know people in Berlin?

  Harry felt like he was on Mastermind, but without any light in his eyes. Either that or he’d been lined up by two undercover coppers sniffing for titbits. He was going to say he was off to a football match, but thought better of it, because the papers were the same wherever you went and they’d get the wrong idea. Long-hairs didn’t understand these things. He didn’t want to put them off, though he wasn’t really looking to get his leg over right now. There was a time and place for everything. Maybe later.

  – Not yet, but I think we’re going to meet a lot of Germans when we get there.

  A couple of greasers wandered in and sat down with the girls. They were big fuckers. Must’ve weighed twenty stone each. They weren’t greasers either. More like Hell’s Angels. Harry waited for the smell to hit him. He’d heard the Angels wore originals covered in the shit and piss of their mates. It was supposed to be some kind of initiation ceremony. It wasn’t nice, but what did you expect from hairies? Maybe he was wrong about the shit and piss, because it sounded like something a bunch of queers would get up to, and the Angels definitely weren’t bum bandits, no fucking way would he accuse these two of crimes against nature. He’d heard they were into gang-bangs as well, which he didn’t fancy at all. He didn’t know much about the Hell’s Angels, just stories, and he knew from his time going to football that the way these things were written up was usually a load of bollocks. But they were big cunts, covered with tattoos and must’ve been forty if they were a day, and they even bought him a drink when they saw he was friendly with the girls.

  Harry settled in for a couple of lagers and one of the Angels skinned up and passed him some blow. This was the life, but he had to laugh, because you wouldn’t get this at home. If a couple of nutters walked in and found some bloke chatting with their girlfriends he’d get more than a
drink and a smoke. The Dutch were classy people and Harry reckoned he could get used to this. Stroll on Europe.

  We don’t have to look far to find Harris because there he is at the end of the bar sitting on a stool, the wall behind him acting as a screen. There’s a blonde bird worked into the lining of the plaster, flickering light showing off a nice pair of medium-sized tits and a cropped cunt. You can tell she’s a good-looking girl and deserves better than the skinny ginger cock shooting spunk over her face. Ginger pumps a couple of gallons of mutant seed over an appreciative Blondie, somehow managing it in slow-motion. Talk about self-control. Blondie throws her head back and licks her lips as Ginger follows through with another better-placed spurt. I’m half expecting Andy Gray to start spouting a commentary, except this isn’t something you’d get on satellite. There’s no sound and the film drifts into shades of grey before bouncing back full-frontal. It’s an early afternoon matinee with ten or so English sitting at the tables watching the show, Amstel and Heineken bottles in their right hands. One bloke isn’t bothered. Head down on the table sleeping. Blondie’s smearing spunk into her cheeks and taking it down to her tits. The camera moves closer so the whole bar can see her working the congealed mess into upright nipples. Ginger has disappeared and this other bird arrives with a massive black dildo strapped to her cunt. Apart from this and a pair of red stilettoes, she’s naked. The dildo has a gold tip and is greased in a glistening cream. Blondie assumes the position. The camera moves in again and gives the punters a close-up of her fanny and then backs out so we can get a good look at this Black Dick Dyke moving in for the kill. The new girl doesn’t hang about and we get to see Blondie’s ecstasy as the creases of her moaning face crack the fast-hardening spunk. Mark’s going fucking hell, you wouldn’t get this down The Unity, looking at Carter in particular who’s been poking Denise the barmaid and could well have been doing something similar in the cellar. Can’t see any pub at home showing this sort of stuff, but now it seems the girl getting serviced by Black Dick isn’t getting off so easy. Ginger’s back for a second helping and this time he means business. He’s back with a vengeance. The production crew’s been busy behind the camera, sticking a needle in his knob and injecting some muscle. Ginger’s frothing at the mouth and doing the stallion routine. Blondie opens her mouth and gets a genuine length rammed down her throat. The film settles and the cameraman moves back out for a long-shot of the happy threesome, probably having a wank himself. But the bird on the receiving is well nice and you have to wonder how much she’s getting paid. It takes all of twenty seconds for Ginger to get bored with this oral pleasure, pull out and move aside for some Arab who’s appeared out of thin air. A couple of the boys aren’t too pleased about this, seeing a white slave girl getting abused by a camel-shagger. Ginger goes up behind Black Dick, moves her aside, greases Blondie’s arse, and slips in, buried to the hilt. We get a close look at her face and she winces as Ginger enters. Now she shows her acting ability. The kind of talent that would go down a treat in Hollywood. Showing the boys in the bar she loves nothing more than a good six inches of ginger cock up the dirt box. The Dirty Arab is wide-eyed at the other end as he gets his first blow-job off a bird. A blonde as well. Can’t believe his luck. Years spent in the desert humping young boys and geriatric camels and now he’s getting stuck into the opposite sex.

  – Move over Ginger, Carter laughs. It’s my turn next.

  There’s an old grey-blonde woman sitting at a table with a glass of red wine. She’s watching the film with a funny look on her face. Probably Blondie’s mum. I wonder how she feels seeing her daughter on the silver screen, the wall of a bar.

  – That bird’s going to have trouble sitting down when Ginger’s finished, Mark says, as we finally get to the bar. You wouldn’t want to go in after Ginger. I reckon old Ginger’s a bit ginger himself.

  – He’s not a shirt-lifter. He wouldn’t be able to get it up, would he?

  Harris turns round and has a look. Turns back.

  – They had that one on last night, he says. There’s worse to come.

  Carter leans in and orders from the barman.

  – This is Johan, Harris says, introducing the skinhead serving the drink. He lives in Amsterdam but supports Feyenoord.

  Johan nods and pours the drinks. Says they’re on the house.

  – Did you read this? Harris asks, handing over an English paper. This should stir up a few people.

  We have a look and run through the front-page story. The basic line is that the Germans have organised a truce between rival firms for what the paper is touting as the Hooligan Battle Of The Century. The Germans are supposed to be warning the English not to turn up because they’re going to send us home in coffins. The paper doesn’t know who to slag off, the Germans or the English, so goes for both sides. On the one hand they’re warning of neo-Nazi English hooligans wrecking Berlin and terrorising innocent Germans, and on the other of neo-Nazi German hooligans killing innocent English football supporters. Don’t know what they’re talking about, basically, but in typical journalist tradition they’re going to blame everything on Nazis. You have to laugh. They’ve been getting away with this for years. The word Nazi sells. Doesn’t matter what kind of paper or magazine it is, Left or Right they all love the mysterious Nazi threat arriving from the shadows then vanishing again. To add some extra spice they’ve got a photo of a skinhead snarling at the camera. Except he’s got a bonehead crop and isn’t a skinhead. But they don’t know the difference. Don’t have a fucking clue. Surprised they haven’t drawn a swastika on his forehead for good luck. It’s mental the way they stick to stereotypes all the time. The tabloids set the agenda and everyone else in the media follows.

  I’ve never been into politics because all the wankers in charge are the same. A bunch of cunts. None of them gives a toss about the ordinary man and woman struggling along. They’ll all sell you down the drain. Berlin’s the wannabe leader of the new Europe and this is going to add extra friction. It’s got nothing to do with Nazis. Thing is, we’ve all done it, standing there singing No Surrender with a Union Jack behind us, right hand in the air, taking the piss. Or like that Dublin riot. They say it was just politics, but the situation in Ulster added an edge. Obviously nobody following England overseas is going to support the IRA, and naturally their sympathies are going to be with the Loyalists in Northern Ireland, and of course there was going to be some C18 doing the business, but it was more of a football mob making a point. To say it was one or two blokes stirring things up is nonsense, because it was a riot waiting to happen. England having their say.

  I’m thinking about all this because there’s enough old soldiers who say we fought on the wrong side during the war. That the Germans are just like us, brave fighters, and they’re right. I mean, not that I want Hitler in Buckingham Palace instead of the Queen, but the Germans are okay. So are the Dutch come to think of it, because we’re all Saxon blood. The Dutch and Germans are well into the English way of life. Look at Johan behind the bar with his Fred Perry and number one crop. He’s got his Feyenoord pendant next to pictures of Judge Dread and Prince Buster. There’s a big stack of CDs. The Cockney Rejects, 4-Skins, Business, Last Resort and various Oi! compilations. And then there’s the ska of Madness and Bad Manners. Now that’s the real skinhead there, plus some original Jamaican ska. They love our football and music and pubs and gear. The Dutch and Germans have their football mobs and they’re going to have a go at us when we come over and take the piss. That’s natural enough. Under the surface, though, we’re similar. They have a lot of respect for the English. For our hooligan element.

  It’s the fucking spics and dagos most Englishmen really hate. Slimy cunts with their flick knives and expensive clothes. Always up for it when the odds are stacked in their favour, then run like shit when they’re faced by an equal numbers mob of English. I’ve seen it enough times. Heard the stories. We hate them because they’re cowards and flash. You watch a football game on the telly nowdays and every time th
e cameras look at the crowd they pin-point well-dressed women and kids. Or crying Newcastle fans in spanking new club shirts who never went near St James’ Park when the club was struggling. The media ignores the real culture surrounding football because the cameras are part of the system that’s squeezed the atmosphere from our grounds. When they show the Spanish and Italians it’s all this Latin culture routine, dropping libero terms and playing opera, zooming in on their so-called ultras for some flavour. The media laps it up because these ultras are a nice little oddity, but look into our own crowds and they don’t want to know. It’s too near home and something they’re not part of, so they pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s not just football. This comes across in everything. The media is controlled by class. They want everything to reflect themselves and forget the rest of us. Go to Italy and the England boys walk through the piazza with their underpants on their heads taking the piss while the locals stand around all confused.

  Mind you, when I was at Wembley and Di Matteo went piling through the middle and smacked that ball past Roberts he was the greatest man on the planet. For a few seconds greater than Zola and Vialli, so there you go. What can you say? Zola’s the best player I’ve ever seen in a Chelsea shirt and Vialli’s the business with his shaved bonce, strolling along the touchline looking like Mussolini. Every Chelsea boy in the country, whether they were in the ground or down the pub in front of the telly, loved that Italian. So what does that say? Thing is, you have to have an enemy. There’s no point spending good money and taking time off work just to go over to Europe and stand around shaking hands with the locals. What’s the point of that? Where’s the excitement? Playing happy families like a bunch of wankers. You have to have an edge. It makes things more fun. Football’s a game so you need some opposition.