At Where Nelson’s Dead Body First Arrived Back Home. By Uncle Monty.

At Where Nelson’s Dead Body
First Arrived Back Home.
Story By Uncle Monty.
Photos By Alex Albion.

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I stand silently at where the heroic, fatally-

wounded, lifeless and British Navy-decorated

corpse of Vice-Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson

(1758 – 1805) first arrived back home to what

was then Rule Britannia after his patriotic and

resounding victory at the Battle of Trafalgar.

In my English mind’s eye, I can now see what

a deeply sad moment his arrival must have been

for the British people at the Port of Sheerness on

the Isle of Sheppey almost 205 years ago. Nelson’s

own grim death came moments after his lips had

immortally-pleaded “Kiss me, Hardy.” So Nelson

left alive and then came back home dead. And,

he then died his own death and was forever

silenced like we all shall be one day ourselves.

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The Isle of Sheppey.

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And, in order to preserve his body has his

downhearted crew sailed back to England with

their national and naval hero, they put him in a

huge barrel of red rum that was then henceforth

always called “Nelson’s Rum” in The British Royal

Navy. Neither at the port of his arrival nor on the

Isle itself, did I see, however, any statue to Nelson

himself. Except, I am told, there's a commemorative

plaque at the village of Queenborough marking

Nelson’s stay there with his Lady Hamilton. Other-

wise, I saw no mention of Nelson’s name anywhere

during my three-day stay at the Isle Of Sheppey.

Pity, for historically there should be a statue of sorts

or a visible symbol of England's naval giant that

was undoubtedly Horatio, First Earl of Nelson.
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At Where Presumably Nelson's Body Passed By.

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Sheppey Swan Off The Medway River.
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Mouth of the Port of Sheerness.

Some 15 miles just down the road from where
Nelson’s dead body first arrived, stands the mentioned
Doomsday Book’s Leysdown-on-Sea facing the open
sea and not far from the other Isle called Harty.
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It is here then that I have now spent the first new
days of the New Year, 2oo9. I have celebrated such
by also just being here as if I’m so far away from
London from where I came. Yet, it is but a couple
of hours drive away at most from there and here is
a world all of its own and yet seemingly so far away
from where I came when in fact it is not. Sheerness
and Leysdown, along with nearby Elmley Island, are
entirely new English places for me to now see coupled
with viewing The Swale and River Medway.
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This year of 2009, also, marks the centenary of
British Aviation on the Isle of Sheppey at where the
world’s first factory to manufacture aircrafts was built
and opened in 1909 by the Short Brothers. Leysdown’s
Muswell Manor is considered the cradle of today’s
now global aviation along with its historic links to
America’s pioneer aviators like the Wright Brothers
and Britain’s own aviator Claude More-Brabazon,
who flew the first ever circular mile. And yes it is

also here at where "Icarus II" became the first

pig in the world to fly. He must have then been
sold later as “Air Bacon.”
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The UNROYAL Hotel of Sheerness.

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I call it “The UNROYAL Hotel” of Sheerness (shown
above) on the Isle of Sheppey after seeing the awful bad
attitude of its staff there and after being treated to a
dinner that would make most chefs sick at the atrocious
quality of the food it served. It was the late evening of
the 2nd day of the New Year, 2oo9. The place at first
was virtuely empty when I arrived from the close by
Shirley’s Guest House at where I was happily staying.
The two 20’ish unroyal bar-maids-cum-waitresses
spoke no New Year’s welcome to me nor offered the
slightiest interest in serving me. Instead, they were
more interested in playing yet another DVD on the
huge plasma screen and chatting and giggling away
between themselves until I beckoned one of them
to order my dinner of roast beef from the al carte
menu.
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“What vegetables come with the dinner?,” I asked
the almost surly barmaid. “Don’t know,” she curtly
answered me with her stone eyes still looking down
at the bar counter and not at me. “Well, could you
find out from the cook, please?,” I broached her.
“I’m not the cook,” came her flat four-word reply.
“Well, could you ask whoever is the cook?,” I pondered
out loud. “I suppose so …,” was her mechanical response
has she then wondered off all blaise like blancmange to
see whoever was the cook. The cook then came to me
about 15 or 20 minutes later with all smiles on her
uncharming face as she proudly brought her cooked
dinner and placed it down next to my laptop on the
table in front of me. It looked good did the meal, un-

til I took the first bite and it was like dried rubber

in my chewy mouth. The new potatoes were over-
cooked and tasteless and the green new peas seemed
happiest in the tin from whence they came rather

than on the cold dinner plate that soon made

the half-warm meal almost cold, too.
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If the food was bad enough at The Royal Hotel of
Sheerness, then those sheer ill-mannered barmaids
made it seem even worse as they proceeded to turn-
up the DVD sound of beating drums that almost drove
me up the wall as I tried to digest the third-rate food
with those blasting speakers right under my old ears.
They didn’t care a hoot and they had no sense of cus-
tomer care whatsoever. And, they didn’t give a damn
as they ignored my attempts to otherwise engage

them in small talk and to lower the grating drum beat.

All they wanted was their chitchat and to gyrate

with their loud music and to feed their frenzy of

DVD addiction. They didn’t want to be bothered

by old folkz like me even though I was there to

give The Royal Hotel my business.
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I wish I’d never gone inside the place in the first place.
But it was about 9:30 in the evening and I couldn’t find
any other places open to get my late dinner, except at
The UNROYAL Hotel of Sheerness that was still then
open. The place at first seemed so inviting and warm.
It was something like that old saying - "You cannot tell
a book by its cover." Whatever, when at last it came
to getting out of the place as fast as I could and paying
my bill, I finally got the same surly barmaid to bring me
the bill after trying to get her attention for the umpteenth
time. She standoffishly came with the bill and then she
never came back to my table to collect my payment.
Then I, by chance, saw the cook go by and I called her
to take my money which she did. She never asked me,
however, if I liked the meal she’d cooked, which was
good in a way since I would have bluntly told her
it was no good.
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The Royal Hotel bar was now beginning to fill
up with young, white working class, guyz in their
20’s and 30’s as I was about ready to leave and to
never return to such a cold bunch of unroyal staff
and truly poor food. I left almost half of the meal
behind me since it was that bad to eat. So if you’re
ever on the Isle of Sheppey, avoid The Royal Hotel
at Sheerness like Doomsday that it is and despite
its unbefitting accolade, in my opinion, of being
also named the Isle of Sheppey Pub of the Year
2008/2009. Although I don't drink, its booze may

be good to its own home grown boozers. But other-

wise for me, the staff and food was plainly shitty

thru and thru. Excuse my honest,

if vulgar, expression.
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Sailors and Seamens 1918 Memorial.

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Not a particularly friendly kind of people, the folks of
the Isle of Sheppey live basically at an inward place
that cold-shoulders outsiders. It’s less expensive, too,
to live here than in other parts of rip-off England for
overnight accommodation is cheap at 25 quid per night
for a single room or a twin room at 35 quid per night at
least at Shirley’s old-fashioned and comfy Guest House
on Alma St. I would perhaps best call Sheppey a
“Poorman’s Seaside Destination.” Here, also, the few
good thing that I could find was to discover the existence
of hardly any of those god damn Third World immigrants
and those lousey foreigners that now flood and plague
most of England so unrelentingly because of the ilk
of such “Mass Immigrationists” like Blair and Brown
of Britain’s mindless New Labour party. As for Sheer-
ness itself – the “capital," if you will, of Sheppey – it is
hard to say much positive about it other than it’s a very
ordinary, lower class, English community that does noth-
ing to excite my active imagination nor my fondness to
want to re-visit the rather dull and plain place at any
time very soon. It seemed, moreover, such a broken
little place to me, much like most of today’s more
than ever destroyed and Broken Little Britain.
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In fact, the only reason that first beckoned me to the Isle of Sheppey’s Port of Sheerness was simply knowing that it was the exact same place at where Nelson’s dead body first arrived back home to England that was then truly Rule Britannia. Along with the old story of the somewhat ignoble means of putting dead Nelson inside a barrel of red rum after his victorious victory at The Battle of Trafgalar. And so, Rule Britanna it was then indeed. But, no more now from what I saw of the Isle of Sheppey. Nelson must now turn in his own grave almost every day at the sheer death of today's England. Oddly enough, Sheppey is a barometer of such modern brokeness that I see every single day in what is my own country that has now been blatantly stolen from me in the name of New Labour's "New Britain." "Go to hell," I say. Along with that awful staff and bad chow at the UNROYAL Hotel of Sheerness, too.
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Panoramic View of The Isle of Sheppey.

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Truly your's, Uncle Monty.

+Eve of The Epiphany, 2oo9.

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