Nigel and his red white and blue tinted lenses

Nigel and his red white and blue tinted lenses

Nigel the nationalist, bought one day,

Fantastical specs in an antique sale;

He put them on eagerly, straight away,

And thus begins this unusual tale,

Of a patriotic, very proud male,

Visiting many a glorious place,

And the glasses that never leave his face.

Nigel’s glasses have magic properties;

Keeping all cold reality at bay,

And only the glory in things he sees;

Never a hint of despair or dismay.

Like propaganda, or a children’s play,

They embellish the facts selectively,

And their wearer sees things subjectively.

For instance: he witnessed, Agincourt, France,

Where Henry the fifth, with eight thousand men,

Contested the throne, with longbow and lance,

And slaughtered the French again and again;

Each British knight being worthy of ten;

Yes, he was there, and he heard Henry roar:

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!”

In eighteen o five, Nigel was at sea;

At Trafalgar, he watched, as Nelson’s fleet,

Gave cause to the French and Spanish to flee,

As had been expected, easily beat,

Though Nelson died, in that great battle’s heat;

“Thank God I have done my duty”, he said,

With repetition, and then he was dead.

Oft through those lenses of red white and blue,

Nigel fancied he regularly saw,

Napoleon’s army at Waterloo;

Veterans of twenty three years of war,

Routed by the Duke of Wellington’s core,

Sweeping the field as the French fought and died,

And Napoleon fled with wounded pride.

At other times, shades of Rorke’s Drift appeared:

A hundred and fifty soldiers in red,

By four thousand Zulus, should have been speared,

Mutilated and surely left for dead, 

If not for the fact they were British-bred.

Hence many a Zulu met their maker,

As in the film, starring Stanley Baker.

His spectacles took him over the top,

Of a muddy trench in nineteen sixteen;

He saw wave upon wave of Tommy’s drop,

In a spectacle of slaughter obscene,

And he asked himself, what does this all mean?

But even the glasses changed nothing here,

So he turned away, and ran to the rear.

In the nineteen forties, from a spitfire,

The glasses gave him an aerial view:

He saw the Battle of Britain, entire,

And the bravery of the heroic few,

As into the Nazi bombers they flew.

They were proud British bulldogs, through and through,

And that’s why he chose to leave the EU.

Nigel saw Monty send Rommel to hell;

The bulldog spirit was in him for sure,

On Juno beach, he had it as well,

Being there, on D-Day, in ‘forty four,

And a year later, with a lion’s roar,

When victory came, he hovered in praise,

Over Churchill, on that finest of days. 

He was on the spot when the Junta tried

To take back the Falklands, staking their claim

On The Malvinas and, “Gotcha!” he cried,

When the Belgrano sank, in Thatcher’s name,

As the British armed forces, upped their game.

With Stanley then taken, he reflected,

And cheered when Thatcher was re-elected.

The above and more does Nigel perceive,

With red, white, and blue, distorting it all,

In many things he is led to believe;

The specs play the pipe; he follows their call,

To a promised land; a glorious ball,

Where the sun lights up his every desire,

And never sets on the British Empire.

Those glasses, make things seem rosy indeed,

And, presently, they’re being put to use,

As Britain, once more in an hour of need,

Faces a different type of abuse:

A Corona virus is now on the loose,

Going by the name of, COVID 19,

And Nigel’s vision is sweeping it clean:

“Britain is proud to be standing alone,

We had a vote and we’ve made our point clear:

We’ve set ourselves free from the Eurozone;

There’ll be no EU ventilators here

Boris will save us, we’ve nothing to fear”.

So says Nigel, as battle commences,

Seeing the world through those tinted lenses.

And as this history’s yet to unfold,

I’ll end Nigel’s story, or at least pause;

No one knows the outcome, and, truth be told,

Do I have good reason to mock his cause?

If he’s right, I’ll even offer applause.

Till then dear reader, I’ll leave it now,

As our Nigel awaits his finest hour.