Well, You Don’t Sound Foreign

There’s a particular breed of person in this country – let’s call her Gammonia Muddleensis – who combines the intellectual curiosity of a boiled egg with the cultural sensitivity of a wheelie bin. I had the pleasure of encountering one such specimen this week, during what should’ve been a simple act of decency.

Picture the scene: I’m waiting on a parcel from Amazon – a roll of self-amalgamating tape, no less, which in my case is pond-saving gold dust. A critical part of the pond filtration system had sprung a leak, and this humble tape was to be my aquatic saviour.

Parcel arrives. Except it’s not mine. Nor is it even addressed to anyone within spitting distance. It’s for someone about a mile away. Still, being the decent, reasonably socialised sort – and having been raised in a time when people didn’t see “neighbourliness” as suspiciously woke – I thought I’d deliver it myself.

So off I trot, parcel in hand, up the road, across the lane, past a pheasant who looked like he’d seen things, and eventually to the front door of the rightful recipient – a woman of retirement age, face like a bulldog chewing a wasp, and the air of someone who reads the Daily Mail not for the news, but for the fury.

“Parcel for you, it was delivered to my address by mistake,” I said cheerily. “Oh, thank you,” she replied, before eyeing the label. “Amazon, eh? Well, no wonder they got it wrong – they’re mainly foreigners these days. Don’t know their arse from their elbow.”

Now, I could’ve let it pass. I could’ve mumbled a noncommittal noise and scuttled off into the hedgerow. But the mood took me.

“I’m a foreigner,” I said.

Silence. A shift. Her face – already a study in weather-beaten prejudice – took on the subtle texture of wet cement setting under a hairdryer.

“You don’t sound foreign,” she said, as if this somehow let her off the hook.

“Well, I’ve been here quite a long time,” I replied. “But I was born in the Netherlands.”

You could see the squirm begin. A sort of moral indigestion. That awkward shuffle when the nationalism you’ve proudly weaponised suddenly pokes you in the eye with the wrong end of the Union Jack.

And I tell you, for a split second, I had half a mind to tuck that parcel back under my arm, walk it home, and hand it back to Amazon with a note: “Delivery failed due to bigotry. Recommend resending via drone to avoid future contact.”

The sheer gall of these people. Wrapped in bunting, draped in self-righteousness, and incapable of grasping that the person who just did them a kindness might have a more complex backstory than "born on the right bit of soil".

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? For some, “Britishness” has nothing to do with values like decency, fairness, or – heaven forbid – irony. No, it’s a postcode lottery of entitlement. As if being born within the sound of Big Ben automatically makes you a better Amazon delivery recipient.

So here’s to the foreigners – the tape-wielding, pond-fixing, parcel-delivering do-gooders who don’t need a flag tattoo to behave like civilised human beings. And as for Gammonia Muddleensis? Perhaps next time she’ll think twice before airing her prejudice to a kindly Dutchman with a working moral compass and a keen ear.

Though, knowing her sort, I wouldn’t bet on it.