(Photo: Alamy)
From the beginning, Frenchy was totally convinced they would win the battle, so instead of having a good kip after haying the horses, admiring themselves in mirrors and polishing their much too heavy armour, they partied til dawn; celebrating with a goodly vintage and with such capers and mirth, taunting the English army... who were but a quarter of Frenchy's number...as to the whereabouts this eve, of their true and betrothed wenches.
The Day of Battle: Now...it must have been pissing down for it resembled Glastonbury on the third day and Frenchy was already complaining to the referee about how muddy their feathers and finery would get; and there was still that nagging doubt about the wisdom of togging up in obligatory heavy metal gear. Still, the English playing away from home gave Frenchy ground advantage, so potentially a couple of easy points to them. Plan A: a quick knightly charge down to the scruffy Anglo Saxon lines, do the messy piercing and chopping stuff, then gallop back in time to get their kit into the dry cleaners: sorted. But not so quick my garlic ones. The scruff bag English may smell like goat entrails after two days in the sun, but they are long of bow, strong of arm and the sound of T-W-A-N-G as 10,000 Saxon ale swiggers release their arrows, will pucker the sphincter of even the dumbest, charging noble-birthed bloke. And this it most certainly did! So an early bath and nae points for Frenchy by days end.
Their defeat at Agincourt should have been an early lesson in chicken counting...but no. So in WW2 when Jerry came through the Ardennes Forest via the Low Country and around the side of Frenchy's really big wall (aka the Maginot Line) their report card read: too complacent, too cocky, bowled out in six weeks. Yeah, I know 'twas real sneaky of Fritz to do that, but that's Attila's boys for you.
Note the bluish spikes? That shows when they were caught out sailing near to the truth. Depending from which country the perpetrator of truth beamed from, outcomes for that individual could be rather different: e.g. the BBC: a slap on the wrist and tea/coffee duty for a month. The Peoples Democratic Republic of somewhere you'd not want be living: e.g. any country whose flag is flying here: Who knows... 
Major Disappointment For Mr Six Pack! After 20 years of quaffing the golden nectar at 4.8% proof, there's scant pride in having cultivated that big extended belly; for on the Russian Richter it's really just the equivalent of having downed 6,523 Milkybars.
Well, well, well...as a character in Dad's Army used to say: 'they don't like it up 'em, Mr Mannering'. Now, I might just be a mite prejudiced about the chief executive: Without a jot of information then or ever, the flight cancelled 5 mins before an expected lift-off while standing in the queue at that quaint little out-of-Paris, we close at midnight shed. Any Ryanair staff around to ascertain the whys and wherefores? Now don't be silly. Or perhaps it was the surprise three day 'I'm a nobody, get me out of here' experience in that exclusive industrial estate hotel which I was assigned to by some unknown French partisans that made my hols complete. Or could it be, all receipts submitted to the above airline's head office, never an acknowledgement and certainly nae a penny o' compo that tipped the balance against the big chief.
