Four best places to go on holiday.

Audio to follow

“Where’s that bastard that wrote this?”

Jake looked around from his TV screen at the five angry men standing in the doorway. He stopped typing. The live football updates could wait.

“Was it you?” The man at the front of the mob yelled. It was an obvious conclusion to draw as Jake was the only person in the room.

Jake couldn’t quite see what the man was holding, but it looked like a page from the travel section of this morning’s paper. He noticed the bloke behind the leader was tapping a baseball bat into a calloused hand.

“That’s the travel section mate,” Jake said, “they only do weekends. They're not in until Thursday now.”  Jake was hoping that on hearing this news the men would turn around and walk away quietly, but that was wishful thinking. Instead the gang moved towards him, he could smell beer and tobacco, the very essence of fear.  

The baseball player hit an imaginary home run from just above Jake’s head.

“When will you bloody leftie bastards stop peddling this shit?”  

Jake could see now that the bloke was referring to an article about four great places for weekend breaks. It hardly seemed offensive stuff, but Jake was in no mood to disagree.

“It’s a fucking disgrace. We voted to get out of Europe and we will get out of Europe, we don’t need leftie scum like you telling the world how quaint or pretty Europe is.”

“It’s only suggesting a visit,” Jake wished he could recall the words as soon as they’d left his lips. He heard the swoosh of the bat inches from his head again.

“You listen to me pipsqueak,” the man said grabbing Jake’s hair. “You could have easily run a piece on Barnstable, or Whitely Bay, Bournemouth or Skegness. All good British places. We voted Leave so British people could go on holiday to British places to spend their British pounds in the British economy. But no, Britain’s not good enough for you lot, you go pissing off to bongo euro land and wasting our money on foreign shit.”

Jake longed to wipe the man’s spittle from his face, but didn’t dare move.
“You think you're so much better than us don’t you? With your hipster beards and fancy coffee. Just you wait, just you wait!  You traitorous bastards will be the first ones up against the wall come Brexit. We won’t stand for your internationalist bullshit. It’s Great Britain mate, not great Europe.”

This time Jake did wipe his face.

“Now, how do we take this off the internet and replace it with something better?”

“I can’t do that; you need a code to edit the paper’s site.” Jake hoped that the mob wouldn’t realise he was updating the live football scores on the website as they spoke.

‘Ronnie,”

The man with the baseball bat stepped forward.

“If you’re so British, shouldn’t that be a cricket…” But Jake didn’t have time to finish his sentence, as this time the swing connected with skull.