It's not me, it's them! Random musings of an elderly bookseller.

Break a Leg!

2012-02-07T06:10:00.000-08:00

Let me start with a riddle:

What goes bump bump curse crash clatter scream curse screech? Only with about ten times more Anglo-Saxon, and considerably louder.

No? OK - I’ll tell you. It’s a Susie falling downstairs carrying a tray full of crockery, that’s what.

Which might have been funny, at least in hindsight, especially taking into account Susie’s robust banana-skin sense of humour. Some years ago she saw a blind man walk straight into a lamp-post, and has been laughing at the poor sod ever since.

That’ll teach ‘er.

Except that this time it wasn’t even vaguely amusing. My poor Susie had broken her right leg in two places, and was in considerable pain. But we didn’t know all that at the time. I picked her up from the stairwell, sat her down in the kitchen, and one of the Granddaughters, hastily summoned from the next street, bound up her leg. “It’s only a sprain” said Suse, when urged to let us phone for an ambulance. “It’ll be fine in the morning. And I can’t fancy sitting in Casualty for four hours.”

But it was far from fine in the morning. And even further from fine the following morning. So after her spending two days in agony, we finally managed to persuade her that A&E was the only way to go.

In fact, it didn’t take anything like the four hours advertised. We were swept along the conveyor belt (read ‘wheelchair’- motive power yours truly - and why are hospital wheelchairs even more bloody-minded than supermarket trolleys?) from Triage Nurse to Doctor to X-Ray to Doctor again, to Plaster Room, and back to Doctor, with a short wait in between each, except for an hour when the entire NHS buggered off for lunch at the same time.

The X-rays were spectacular. An ankle bone cracked and displaced, and an impressive greenstick fracture of the fibula. Pins and plates and screws were mooted, so they put the errant limb in a temporary plaster cast, made us an appointment with the Fracture Clinic for the next morning, doled out the standard NHS crutches,and sent us home. Getting Suse (or rather her plastered leg) into the car was an interesting challenge, but we made it, just. And It took two of us to lift her up the three steps to the front door, which everybody but her thought was a hoot. Especially when her skirt descended round her ankles, much to the amusement of the two youngest Grandchildren, who were standing in the hallway watching.

To cut a long story short, we were at the hospital most of the next day, a lot of it spent doing the statutory paperwork, and being processed by, and by definition, waiting at, just about every department in the placeexcept for ENT, Infectious Diseases, and Gynaecology. Finally, her operation was scheduled for the following Friday morning. So back to the car and front stairs routine, except that this time the clothing behaved itself.

Susie’s now home and (hopefully) recuperating.

But what a couple of days! We got up at 5am on the Friday so as to arrive at the Hospital at 6-45 (they said 7-30 for a morning op, but I wanted to be able to find a space in the woefully inadequate car park before the ravening hordes tipped up) and we went up to the ward. More paperwork. And then we sat and waited. And waited. And waited. Suse wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything, which didn’t improve her temper any, but by about 10 o’clock her long-suffering husband was starving.

Of course, this being a brand new state-of-the-art NHS hospital, there isn’t even a coffee machine at ward level, let alone somewhere selling edibles – I had to go down five floors to the ground floor, where there’s a Costa. Which is very aptly named, I reckon. I lashed out the equivalent of a banker’s bonus on a double espresso the size of a large thimble – thank heavens I hadn’t ordered a single – I’d left my microscope in my other trousers - and a couple of underweight and slightly undercooked pecan Danish.

Then I went back up the five floors to Suse. And we waited, And waited. And – well no doubt you have the picture by now.

Finally @ about 3-30 they took her down to Theatre for what they said would be about an hour’s op. So I sat and waited. And waited. And………

………..by about 6-30 I was going a bit frantic. She hadn’t arrived back from Theatre, and nobody knew where she was – they said that due to a bed shortage she probably wouldn’t be going back to the ward we started off in, and in whose aptly named Waiting Room I still was, but somebody would eventually let me know where she’d ended up. If I didn’t mind – er - waiting. “ Mind?” I said. “Why should I mind?“ I am to waiting what Michelangelo was to painting ceilings.”

Anyway – we were finally re-united at about 7-30pm (visiting time finishes at 8, of course, but I stretched the envelope a bit, ) and at about 9pm I went down to ground level, took out a mortgage to pay the car park charge, and drove home. To a supper of mixed leftovers – I just couldn’t be arsed to cook anything.

And so to bed.

On the Saturday, visiting was from 2pm, and prior to that they had told Suse she could go home that afternoon, so I watched the Man U – Liverpool match, (one has to get one’s priorities right, after all) and got there about 3. They told us that they’d ordered her various drugs from the Pharmacy, and as soon as they arrived we could go. So we waited………………………..etcetera. And finally left for home at about 6.

All in all she’s going to be fine, thank heavens. A bit sore, of course, given a leg full of freshly implanted ironmongery, and a bit woozy, given a bloodstream full of anaesthetic and industrial strength Paracetamol. But she (and by extension I) had a good night’s sleep, for a change. However she’ll be out of action for 6 weeks at least, and at the moment isn’t allowed to put any weight on the injured leg, which makes even a trip to the loo a major expedition.

I must say – other than that one sometimes gets the impression that the left hand knoweth not what the right hand doth, all the hospital personnel were brilliant. From the most junior student nurse (thanks, Emma) to the Great Panjandrum, Mr Senior Consultant himself, they were kind, caring, professional and competent.

Nevertheless – I might suggest a new motto for Coventry University Hospital:

“They also serve who only sit and wait!”

(Which, no doubt, is why we’re called “patients”)

I got mail

2012-01-15T06:15:00.000-08:00

My Inbox is a source of never-ending wonder and delight. I get dozens of emails every day, offering meall sorts of weird and wonderful nostrums guaranteed to cure any disease I might fall foul of; massively advantageous financial deals involving no effort on my part other than clicking on a link, and mentioning figures with lots of noughts and commas; tax refunds from an uncharacteristically generous HMRC. (plus one yesterday from the Australian Tax Office, which is odd – as far as I know I’ve never paid any tax in Oz, or had reason to) ; urgent security warnings from banks I don’t have an account with; plaintive begging letters from most of the population of Africa, half of them yukkingly obsequious, and the other half trying to lay a guilt trip on me, Godwise; means and methods of increasing the length and girth of my membrum virile( If I partook of all of them and they worked like they say they do, it would grow enough to stretch from here to Wolverhampton, although why it should want to escapes me;) etcetera, etcetera and so on.

I rarely bother to read the entire missives– the headers alone can keep me amused all day. Although why some of these folks should assume that I’m fluent in both Hebrew and Japanese is another mystery. I can’t help wondering what I’m missing, due to my shameful lack of language skills.

I did once receive a stray email, offering me a chance to win laser surgery on my eye. This I did read, because it interested me - I find I’m never wearing the right glasses for whatever I’m trying to do (or if I’m wearing the right specs I’m probably doing the wrong thing.) This communication arrived some time ago, and I’ve been waiting ever since for another so as to cover the other eye as well, but thus far, in vain. So it looks like I’m either going to have to pass, and carry on with the spectacles, or wear a monocle. Life can be a tiresome, sometimes.

And then there’s some I simply just don’t understand. For instance, I received one this morning, intriguingly entitled ”Ramp Up Your Mojo – Now!!!!”. But I have no idea what a Mojo is; I can only suppose that it’s some kind of motor vehicle – a sort of four wheeled moped, perhaps, and for some reason unspecified they want me to drive it up onto a ramp, presumably to inspect the underneath. This does present a few logistic and engineering challenges, in that (a) I ‘m not as yet the proud owner of one of the conveyances aforesaid, and thus might fail them in the Now!!! department, (b) I don’t have a ramp – I’d have to take the damned thing down to the garage and wait for bloody hours until they had one free, and (c) in any case I don’t have the slightest idea of what it is I’m supposed to be looking for.

Regardless, their solution to whatever problem arises appears to be the purchase ( at considerable expense, I might add) of some of their special pills. But they don’t tell me what I’m
supposed to do with these – should I add one to the petrol tank, perhaps, every time I fill up, like that stuff – what was it called? – Redex, that’s it – that my father used to put in the Bentley’s tank with the petrol. He said it prolonged engine life. Although why he bothered, I’ll never know – the average Bentley engine, even sans benefit of Redex, would have outlasted him, me, my children and grandchildren, and yea, even unto the next generation or three. But I digress. Maybe they want me to bung one of their pills into the radiator occasionally, like antifreeze. It’s about the same colour – a fetching shade of blue.

(………..later) I’ve Googled and Froogled, Yahooed and Yelled, tried every search engine, business directory and vehicle listing service I can think of, but I can’t find a Mojo dealership anywhere. I can’t even find a secondhand example - even those folks with the annoying advert boasting that They Buy Any Car don’t have a Mojo in stock. I’m sorry, folks, I’ve tried my best for you, but I’m afraid that in this instance, on me you shouldn’t rely.

Another new arrival – headed “are you the victim of an accident? “ Bloody cheek! While it’s really none of their business, I feel like pointing out that my mother was a Nice Girl, and in those far distant days Nice Girls didn’t have ‘accidents’. I was both planned and born in wedlock, if you please. (I love that phrase. Wedlock always sounds to me like it ought to be a small market town in Shropshire, or maybe Derbyshire.)

Just lately, I’ve been getting some interesting stuff, mainly from Russia and China, offering me all kinds of heavy industrial products and processes. I had one this morning, trying to flog me naval vessels and tugboats (the design, construction and project management thereof.) Why they think these should interest a dealer in secondhand books I have no idea. “I’d like to order two destroyers, a frigate, a small nuclear sub, and an aircraft carrier, if you please. If you could throw in a couple of tugboats and a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (the unexpurgated Paris edition, naturlich) as a trade discount, we can do a deal” I suppose at a pinch I could list them on Amazon or E-bay, but I’d have thought that the postage costs from China would be prohibitive. And Amazon only allow their sellers £2.80 for postage, which I doubt would cover delivery to the customer if I sold them. Besides, they’d be buggers to wrap. I doubt Jiffy do a big enough bag, for starters.

And so it goes on. Today’s batch so far contains an offer for me to join a “Futures Trading Seminar”, a catalogue of wooden houses, an “Administrative Job Offer in Australia” (hence, presumably, the email from the Oz Tax Office), a Chinese one headed “Printing of the Secret Weapon Here” ( being mightier than the sword, perhaps) and one trying to sell fake diplomas and degrees “that you don’t have to work four” (sic). I get plenty of these, but this one stood out, somehow. Firstly because whoever wrote it had probably heard of English Spelling and Grammar, but had obviously never seen it used in practice, but more specifically for the name of the sender, (and I promise I’m not making this up ) a Mr Terrence Ponce”

Nuff said……….!!

Sutton’s Law - not*

2011-07-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

We’d gone down to our little place in the country for the weekend, as we usually do during the summer. On the Saturday morning I motored the five miles or so into Bromyard to do some shopping. I needed to visit the ironmongers, and whilst there reckoned to extract some readies from the hole-in-the-wall at the local HSBC next door but one.

Bromyard, for a small country town, is well provided with ironmongers, having a pair of them, (or would a brace be more apt? ) both very much of the old-fashioned persuasion, that sell – no, they don’t – they purvey - just about everything you ‘d pay far more for at B&Q, let alone hundreds of useful things that that bean-counter run emporium can’t be bothered to stock any more. (Think “Fork ‘andles” but far more chaotic.) Their inventory management must be a nightmare, especially as the stub of a pencil and the back of an envelope is about as high-tech as they get.

Instead of tramping wearily around thousands of square feet of prime selling space, you merely ask the bloke in the grey overall behind the counter for whatever it is you might want, he metaphorically scratches his head in thought for a moment, goes squirreling down the back of the shop somewhere, and comes back clutching the necessary. During the course of the last year we’ve bought from him such varied items as Terry clips, wicker wastebaskets, a sledgehammer, some silk flowers, a gate latch and a stuffed Golliwog. (A few years ago they had a skirmish with the PC Thought Police for stocking these, but they employed the traditional two-fingered argument, which seems to have won the day, because they are still selling ‘em.)

In fact, the whole “shopping experience” (ugh!) in Bromyard is a bit like driving into a 1950s time warp. There are several superb butchers, a couple of greengrocers, (one of which, if you go through an archway at the back of the shop) morphs into quaint old ironmonger number two. Unorthodox, or what?

There’s a proper bakery, complete with olfactory stimuli, one of the best pie shops I’ve ever plundered, a pet shop, the statutory newsagents, a few pleasant pubs, (or at least, as pleasant as they get these days now that a puritan government has barred me from enjoying a pipe with my pint) a nice little continental style café, in fact dozens of small individual retailers selling just about anything one might want, short of a combine harvester (although I wouldn’t put it past one of the ironmongers to dig one of those out from the back of the shop somewhere, should the need arise.) And, thank heavens, a bare minimum of those High Street ambiance killers, Estate Agents and Charity Shops. Moreover, walking down the High Street from end to end, popping into whatever shop takes your fancy, takes far less time than trolleying around Tesco’s and facing the interminable queue at the checkout.

You can even park easily and conveniently, ninety-nine times out of a hundred. (There are a minimum of yellow lines, of which nobody takes the slightest bit of notice, and I’ve never yet seen a Traffic Warden or a policeman.)

If we lived there full time I’d do an online job for all the boring or heavy stuff, and drive into town daily for all the goodies and perishables.

Anyway – so it was that, having finished my business with old Fork’Andles, I wandered next door to the bank. There were a couple of people waiting at the cash machine, standing the regulation four feet apart (it always gratifies me to see how well-mannered and patient the real English folk (particularly the rural English folk) are. And Bromyard is about as far from the urban multicultured nastinesses as you can get, not only in distance, but in attitude. I’d guess that most of them think that Muslim is a kind of trendy breakfast cereal.

I join the end of the queue.

Suddenly, just as it’s my turn at the ATM, I realise that I’m getting some very odd sort of wary looks, both from the queuers and various passers-by. Ignore it, Phil – they probably look at all non-locals like that. So I trousered the cash, and went to walk back to the car. The universal sigh of relief was palpable. Curiouser and curiouser.

It wasn’t until half way home that I puzzled out what it was about me that seemed to disturb the good citizens of Bromyard so.

I reckon that if I saw a bloke standing at a cash machine hefting a 3ft long iron crowbar, I’d be a bit concerned, too. Maybe, in retrospect, I should have gone to the bank first and the ironmongers afterwards. And thank heavens the local police presence is a bit sporadic, or else I’d probably have had my collar felt, to boot.

*Named after American bandit Willie Sutton, who when asked why he robbed banks, pointed out that “that’s where the money is.”

money money money

2010-08-13T02:06:00.000-07:00

We went out to buy some fish and chips the other evening. It’s not something we do often – a large wodge of cholesterol-wrapped calories, no matter how yummy, doesn’t exactly get much of a menton in my cardiologist’s “Hints for a Long and Healthy” leaflet. Except filed under “Don’t even think about it, Fatty”.

But we’d had a gruelling day, I didn’t feel in the least like cooking supper, and suddenly, unbidden, the Chippie sprang to mind. And as you know, when a fancy for fish and chips comes upon you, absolutely nothing else will do. “Aw – go on then” said Susie “ It can’t hurt us just occasionally”.

So off we trotted to our local fryery. I was a bit badly parked, so I gave Suse my last £20 note, and sent her to do the necessary while I sat in the car in case a traffic-gollum slithered over our horizon.

Eventually, back she comes, carrying a tantalisingly miasmic parcel, gets in the car, and hands me a crumpled fiver, three pound coins, and some small change.

“How much”? I squeaked. “ The best part of twelve quid for two portions of fish and chips? Talk about the Piece of Cod That Passeth All Understanding!”

Because when I was young, you could buy the same delicacy for about half-a-crown (12.5p for you under-fifties) a go. Two bob for the fish, and sixpence for the chips. .And you’d get some interesting (if somewhat greasy ) reading matter thrown in as wrapping, flavouring the contents with a subtle hint of printer’s ink. Of course, the Brussels elf-‘n’-safety Gestapo soon put a stop to this early attempt at re-cycling as unhygienic, with scant regard to the fact that it hadn’t hurt a soul in a century or so. And fish ‘n’ chips without its newspaper packaging never tasted the same thereafter.

But it set me to thinking. Not about the seismic inflation rate since decimalisation, (well not after a time, anyhow) but about how much I miss the old money itself. There was the half-a-crown, a big, chunky coin, the earlier examples of which were made of real silver, as was the shilling, and the 2 shilling piece, or florin. The twelve-sided bronze threepenny bit, and its little silver forbear, much beloved of Christmas Pudding makers and Tooth Fairies. The old copper penny, much bigger than any coin we have today, and with more real purchasing power than most of ‘em. The farthing, or quarter-penny, which in my boyhood days still had some value, in my case for confections such as bullseyes, toffees or gobstoppers. The old white fiver, about the size of two paperbacks laid side to side, and printed in serious no-nonsense black on crackly crisp white watermarked paper. Serious money, in more senses than one.

And the lovely slang names we had. The half crown was a tosheroon or half-a-dollar, the sixpence a tanner or zack, the shilling known to all as a bob, the two bob bit, the ten bob note or half-a-bar, the oncer or (slightly earlier) the Brad (named after a Mr Bradbury, Chief Cashier of the Bank of England, whose signature was on the pre-war £1 Note.)

There were also some solid gold coins that were technically legal tender, albeit nobody in their right mind would proffer one – the gold content was worth far, far more than the face value. The Sovereign (Eastenders still talk of ‘Sovs’ , meaning pounds,) and that most elegant, useful and less-understood unit of currency, the Guinea.

A throwback to Georgian times, the guinea was worth 21 shillings (£1.05). Gentlemen, the Upper Classes, the professional middle class, and some auctioneers with delusions of grandeur dealt in guineas (as Gentlemen of the Turf still do. )

I say ‘useful and less-understood’, because as I saw it the first attribute was a direct result of the second. The main advantage was in adding to the confusion of Johnny Foreigner, whose mental decimal-based calculator was already having a nervous breakdown with the “twelve pence in a shillng, twenty shillings in a pound” concept. I used to work in a shop in Central London, and the sight of a vacationing citizen of Deepshit Arkansas running out of fingers to count with was one of the minor pleasures of life.

But for me, the guinea had some domestic advantage, as well.

When I had my Antique Dealer’s hat on I used to spend much of my time buying at auction – albeit very much at the the other end of the spectrum to the Christeby’s mob.

The bidding would rise, usually in one pound increments, which the auctioneer would call, as usual. But every so often, just as the hammer was about to fall, I’d call out “Guineas, Sir!” which in effect is a 5% increase on the previous ‘pounds’ bid – easy to work out for a round number, but not so for - say - £23 or £57. So by the time the any potential underbidders had done the maths, the hammer had fallen and I’d bought yet another lot.

Today’s cash is far less satisfying, somehow. But then it’s only a stopgap. Within a decade or so everybody will have to flash the plastic or set up an online payment on their voice-activated mobile computer (by then only periphally a phone) for every purchase. Inflation will make the coinage effectively worthless, and cash money will disappear altogether, with the result that every single transaction we make, no matter how insignificant, will be recorded somewhere, and open to inspection by any licensed snooper, corporate busybody or Credit Agency that takes a fancy to do so.

But why should I care? By then I'll have well and truly cashed in my chips.

Toil and Trouble

2010-07-22T05:40:00.000-07:00

“Exercise!” quoth the Doc.

“Nevermore!” quoth the bookseller, but only to himself - it would have almost certainly been wasted on the good medic, who hails from Whereveristan and who had probably never even heard of Poe, let alone read him.

“Exercise – that’s what you are needing, Mr James – regular exercise. Two or three times a day. Nothing too strenuous to start with – stop if you start to feel breathless.

I forbore from telling him that I feel breathless just getting out of bed of a morning. I need half-an-hours rest before I can climb into the shower.

I omitted to remind him that my eroded lower lumbar is unravelling, almost on a daily basis, and that serious exercise in any form is a non-starter.

I thought it imprudent to mention that I can barely walk up to the shops without an oxygen pack. And as for running for a bus (whatever that is) – dream on!

I didn’t bother to inform him that I am an alumnus, graduate summa cum laude, of the “IfGodHadMeantUsToWalkHeWouldn’tHaveGivenUsTaxis” School of Locomotion.

“But OK, ” I reasoned. “The man may have a point. Indulge him. Let’s give it a go. “

My mind harked back sixty-odd years to when I was a spindly lad, untimely ripped from the family bosom and thrust unwilling into the harsh surrealism that is an English prep school of the boarding variety. Whose headmaster had the notion that since the young Prince Philip had done fairly well for himself, what was good for him had to be good for us, so the whole place was modelled on HRH’s alma mater, Gordonstoun School, an establishment whose Spartan ethos made HMP Dartmoor resemble a sissy version of Butlins. And as far as I know, none of us got to wed a Windsor.

We had to start off each morning (after the statutory plunge into a cold bath, that is) with a ten minute PT (that’s PE in old money – or as my dad would have said ‘physical jerks’) session (followed by a 3 mile run, but let’s not go into shudder mode.) Held in the school car park, perched half way up the Malvern Hills, it consisted of running-on-the-spot, stretching and bending ,jumping up and down into and out of a simulacrum of Leonardo’s “The Man” with legs apart and arms raised, and similar such pointless exercises. And woe betide any slackers. Slacking was a crime punishable by being named and shamed in front of the whole school, and losing house points, which made one seriously unpopular with the large lads in the Sixth Form, usually to one’s physical discomfort. Worse, the weekly chocolate fix (we were allowed a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk apiece - price sixpence) went out of the window.

In our Aertex shirts and shorts (standard garb, all year round , although they did issue us a thin sweater apiece during blizzards) we must have looked like one of those old Leni Riefenstahl films of the Hitlerjugend doing its calisthenics. Except that Leni only ever filmed in bright sunlight, but in early-morning Malvern it was usually misty or raining, when it wasn’t snowing. Or, as it was half the year, dark. Or most of these at once.

In retrospect, I did inherit a dual legacy from this worthy regime. I ended up impervious to cold; and with a tendency to run a (metaphorical) mile in the opposite direction to any suggestion of unnecessary exercise. Or indeed, and by extension, anything else that was deemed to be ‘good for me’.

Anyway - I knew the drill. It had been drilled into me every morning for six cold, wet, hungry (breakfast was still an hour away) years.

So the following morning I creaked out of bed, took on a strong intravenous coffee to prime the pump, and set to.

I thought I’d start with a bit of stretching and bending. The stretching part I’m good at.. It’s all those years pulling books from tops of bookcases as does it. I can reach a fresh bottle of Laphraoig down from the highest shelf in the kitchen, no probs. So far so good.

The next bit is supposed to consist of standing on tiptoe, putting the hands on the hips, and slowly bending the knees until the posterior touches the heels

The descent was OK, if a bit wobbly; at which point the idea is to slowly straighten up again, back into stretch mode. But my sense of balance isn’t as good as it used to be. And the joints aren’t as supple as they once were, either. With the result that just as my left knee gave out, with an audible crack, I lost my balance and fell over, hitting my head on the corner of the bedside table on my way down.

So that was that, for a week or so. If at first you don’t succeed, give up, and pour yourself a stiff brandy.

Nevertheless, I had a stab at various exercises over the next few weeks, with, frankly, limited success, although the attempts didn’t involve any further painful contact with either the floor or the furniture. And I only put my back out twice.

But we’ll keep trying. Things are looking up. I managed to do most of a press-up this morning.

Moaning at the Bar

2010-05-20T00:33:00.000-07:00

In my inbox this morning I found an email, offering to sell me a list of "150,000 criminal lawyers in the USA." Although why they shold think I have a requirement for a rogues gallery of such magnitude escapes me.

Had I thought about it, I might just have realised that the Legal Profession, even the American Legal Profession, would almost certainly harbour a few rotten apples, but 150,000 of 'em? And presumably that's just the confirmed criminal element - they don't mention those that are merely a bit iffy, or for that matter those that haven't been caught yet.

I think I'll write to Barak Obama personally and beseech him to do something about this scandal. We in this country tend to import American culture by default, and I'd hate to see a dramatic increase in the number of bent briefs here - we have more than enough already.

To continue briefly on a legal motif, I was in the foyer of the local Ploddery the other day – not because I’d done anything that might have necessitated the aid of one of the 150K mouthpieces as noted above, but because I’d had my mobile purloined, and I had to go in and make a statement. It’s a nice new shiny Nick, our local, with a smart light oak hotel-style foyer far bigger than our front room, and with various doors leading off it, to interview rooms, cells, torture chambers and such. One of these doors had a smart sign, in brushed aluminium, saying “Disabled Toilet”. What I don’t understand is instead of some expensive and permanent-looking signage pointing out that the loo’s broke, why they don’t just fix it and have done.

de minimis non curat lex, if it's alright with you.

2010-01-23T02:54:00.000-08:00

The British Labour Party has been dreaming up 33 new crimes a month

Daily Mail 22/01/10

As I get older, there’s one thing I’m more and more sure of
It’s that legislation is what we need less of, and not, as we’re getting, far more of.

Spawned by the aptly named Balls, or that femino-fascist Miz Harperson.
(Whose reforming zeal is rapidly turning her into a mad-eyed take-it-too-far Person.)

We’ve a surfeit of statutes. A glut of rules, jurisprudence in superabundance
And bye-laws keep falling on my head like raindrops on Cassidy (or was it Sundance?)

But legislating for ev’ry misfortune of which anybody’s ever dreamt
Serves only to make us all treat the Law with contempt.

For if there’s one law the Bully State never learns
It’s the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Besides, if we deserve so much protection from ourselves
Then they might as well put us in cages, number us, and stack us in shelves.

We’re sufferning from teminal legislative overkill
So let’s suggest to the Mother of Parliaments that it’s time she went on the pill?

2009-12-19T01:50:00.000-08:00

From today’s BBC website:

Whisky hangover 'worse than vodka', study suggests.

Drinking whisky will result in a worse hangover than vodka, according to research by US scientists.

No shit, Sherlock! I could have told them that, and for half the price. And during a controlled (-ish) experiment lasting decades I betcha I’ve done more practical research, than they have.

For another large wodge of greenbacks I’ll happily affirm that vintage Port gives you a far worse head than either of them.. And if (because it might seem a good idea at the time) you get stuck in to the Taylor’s 1960 on top of half-a-bottle of Bells, you’re topping the Premier League, hangover-wise. That’ll be loadsamoney, please, Brown University. Cash in a Brown Envelope will do nicely.

I can’t help wondering how many zillions of dollars this ‘research’ actually cost. And more to the point, why it was carried out in the first place. After all, it won’t make any difference to anybody’s drinking habits. Thems that have been hacking into into the Famous Grouse since it was an Unknown Egg will keep doing just that, while the Smirnov Brigade, having no doubt noted the pseudo-research, will neck an extra couple of large ones with a sigh of relief, a feeling of moral superiority, and a mixer to mask the taste.

As my Grandmother Pearl used to say (in Yiddish) – “Only in America!”.

2009-12-16T08:12:00.000-08:00

A Well-spent Age.

What is it with doctors?

I went to see mine the other day, – I say ‘mine’, but round here we don’t have personal medics these days – the Surgery - sorry – Health Centre - consists of two Principal Doctors, with a consulting room each, (but to see either of them you need to book an appointment a month before you fall ill,) plus several part-time registrars box-and-coxing it in the third consulting room, with the result that you never know which one you’re going to get, until you’re told by the touch screen computer they’ve just installed just inside the door in order to book you in. This is presumably to save the Receptionists having to put their conversation on hold in order to talk to you, although this isn’t a bad thing, in practice – the computer has far more warmth and personality then the Receptionists ever managed to muster, and doesn’t look down on you like you were something it had just stepped in.

After the usual 25 minute delay, sat on what must be the most uncomfortable seats this side of Death Row, the computer paged me to go into the consulting room. Today’s incumbent was young, female, and pleasantly ethnic. I’d not seen her before.

I was there not because there’s anything particularly amiss – I’m in rude health, other than the usual list of minor ailments and annoyances that septuagenarian flesh is heir to, but because they’d asked me to come in for what they call ‘a medication check’. I don’t know why they couldn’t just look at their own notes, and read the list (unchanged for the last ten years at least) of pills they prescribe me. These must be working – I’m still here.

Anyway – the consultation consisted of a blood pressure check (passed with flying colours) and a two minute conversation to establish that the prescription needed no re-adjustment , and as far as I’m concerned was a complete waste of time, both mine and hers. But I suppose it keeps the paperwork straight and the NHS computer up to date. So that’s alright then. Admin, having stolen an hour or so out of my day to no purpose, can breathe easy.

But, seeing as how doctor’s appointments are supposed to last the full ten minutes, regardless of how many people are kicking their heels in the waiting room outside, I then had to be treated to the statutory inquisitorial lecture to fill the time in.

“Do you smoke, Mr James? “

“Omigod – here we go again”, I thought, and pointed out that her colleagues had asked me that question every time they’d clapped eyes on me over the last twenty years, and by now it must be engraved ineradicably on just about every page of my notes. Unclean! Unclean!

“Yes”, I said. “not cigarettes any more, though. I smoke a pipe.”

“You really should think of cutting down an bit,” she said, in her best headmistress to recalcitrant schoolboy voice (and of course without taking the trouble to enquire as to the level I was expected to cut down from, or for that matter to inform me as to how much I should cut down to. The theory presumably being that no matter how little I smoke, the Nanny State still requires a decrease.)

I pointed out that over the last decade or so I had voluntarily “cut down” dramatically, from the 4 packs of Benson and Hedges a day which was my norm for about 40 years, to about an ounce-and-a-half of pipe tobacco a week. That’s what I’d call fairly serious pruning, but somehow she seemed less than impressed. “Sniffy” comes to mind. “Did I want a leaflet?”

No – I Bloody Didn’t! Why is it that everybody in a position of little brief authority these days thinks that every problem can be solved by stating the obvious in a turgid multilingual folded a4 pamphlet?

“And I really do think you should start losing some weight”, she went on, waving a diet sheet under my nose. A diet sheet, let me tell you, describing meals of such an awful grey, puritan bland institutional dullness that I wouldn’t impose them on my worst enemy. Not even on the local VAT inspector. Not even on Wee Gordy McBroon, although he’d probably think them irresponsibly hedonistic. No fats, no sugar, no starch, no alcohol, no red meat, no dairy products except the abomination known as skimmed milk, no chocolate, no biccies, no salt, no nothing. No nothing, indeed, in several languages, including Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic, Polish, and various scripts I didn’t recognise. I thought of asking for one in Hebrew, but bottled out.

“I want you to stick rigidly to this for a month, and then come and see me again”.

It was at this point that all diplomatic niceties deserted me.

“For God’s sake, woman! I’ve been fighting my weight since I was fifteen. I’ve tried more diets than you’ve had hot dinners. I’ve variously starved myself, purged myself, bored myself titless, and stressed myself out. And my weight hasn’t altered a jot.

Just answer me one question. To quote the Good Book, the days of my age are threescore years and ten. So at what point will the National Health Service say to me “Phil – you’ve reached a ripe old age – now eat what you like, smoke when you want to, have a few drinks if the mood takes you, sprinkle a bit of salt on your veggies, in fact stop trying to give up, or feeling guilty about not giving up, all the things you enjoy.” Against all the odds, I’ve reached seventy, for God’s sake. What age will I have to achieve to be allowed to do as I please, without having somebody haranguing me on the supposed evils of all the minor pleasures of my life? ? Eighty? Ninety? A hundred? “

And do you know – she had no answer to that.

2009-11-25T10:03:00.000-08:00

By any other name……..

We were in Sainsco’s – not our local bandits as it happens, although I guess they’re probably all much of a muchness, but another example further afield. We only wanted a couple of bits and pieces rather than the customary over-indulgent truckload, and it happened to be on the way back from where we’d been to pick up a load of books.

The store was quite busy – it was after all Saturday lunchtime - but we weren’t that fussed – grab a basket - nip round – pick up the few odds and sods, and straight to the quick checkout..

Except.

Except why is it that supermarkets – they all do it, no matter which flavour – why is it they always station the slowest dimmest, most gormless checkout girl, or the one who speaks the least English, on the quick checkout line?

And why is it that there’s always some female (they’re always female – it’s obviously a Girl Thing.) in front of you with about forty money-off vouchers to be fed one by one through the system, whereafter she’ll check her bill, item by item, with Ms Dimbo Snailspace al Raschid at the till, and then, and only then, she’ll spend ten minutes going through all her various pockets, handbags and shopping bags trying to find her purse, thereafter counting out the cash, more often than not in large quantities of coin. Grrrrr!

So I’m standing at the checkout behind her, with thoughts of slow torture and bloody homicide running through my head, and the Tannoy erupts into life.

“This is a Colleague Announcement. Would all checkout colleagues please assemble at their checkout points. “

“A Colleague Announcement” ?

A What????

Why, for God’s sake?

Is plain English really no longer good enough? OK – “workers” is probably pushing the Trades Descriptions Act envelope a bit, but why is the word “Staff” suddenly unacceptable? And why do they have to “Assemble”? A simple “All staff to the checkouts, please” would be so much easier to understand, and so much less intrusive to pedantic Linguaphiles like wot I am. Besides, who do they think they’re trying to impress? The place is almost entirely staffed by ethnic minorities, most of whom wouldn’t know a colleague from a cauliflower. And as far as the customers are concerned, providing there’s somebody they can ask where the Orange Squash lives, or if they sell paper plates, couldn’t give a toss whether they’re speaking to staff, colleagues, workers, esteemed employees, the Board of Management, the Archangel Gabriel, or the Great Panjandrum Himself.

Anyway - eventually, we manage to dump some of our hard-earned on an undeserving Sainsco, and head for the exit. I’m surprised they don’t call it an egress – it sounds so much more superior. Except that the customers (how long will it be before we’re “clients”, I wonder) probably wouldn’t recognise it, and they’d spend all afternoon asking some ‘colleague’ or another for the Way Out.

On the wall above the door to the Car Park I noticed the following rubric:

“Sorry you have to go. Come again – see you very soon. Drive safely.”

So not only have I spent half-an-hour buying such comestibles as would have taken me five minutes in an old-fashioned grocer’s shop, but now I find I’m being commiserated at for leaving their premises, being ordered when to report back, and by implication having my driving criticised.

By a Wall, no less.

Sorry, Sainsco, I shan’t be coming again. Soon or otherwise. On me, you shouldn’t rely, if you aren’t prepared to eschew all this fake posh and verbose rubbish and tell it like it is.

Or in the case of the Wall, preferably not at all.

Babes and Sucklings………..

2009-09-01T01:34:00.000-07:00

This morning, I find myself at a loss. I don’t know whether to be amused, amazed, embarrassed, or just plain touched. All of them at once, probably.

We have, included in the eight lovely grandchildren Susie and I share between us, a little lad called Rhys. Second son of Sharon, Susie’s younger daughter, and her husband, Mark.

Rhys is about 18 months old, and at that fascinating stage where he’s beginning to turn from a mere blob, noisy at one end and insanitary at the other, into an individual person in his own right. He’s quite articulate for his young age, but he obviously tends to think in generics, rather than specifics; for instance to him all dogs are called “Gemma”, after our younger rough collie, with whom Rhys has an ongoing love affair. Which is mutual - they adore each other.

Now, as anybody who knows me will attest, I’m not exactly noted for a slim trim figure. Lithe, I’m not. I have an extensive (and expensive, come to think) tum-tum. “Stout” will cut it. Or “Corpulent”. Or any other euphemism for “fat” you can think of. I don’t mind. I like me as I am.

But why am I telling you all this?

Because Sharon has just texted, to tell us that young Rhys has taken to pointing at a statue of the Buddha that she has on her shelf, and proudly declaring “Grandad”.

Just wait till I see the little sod. I’ll give him “Grandad”.

Missing the point.

2009-07-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

I was speed-reading the headlines on the BBC website over coffee the other morning, and had almost reached the end when I realised that I’d glossed over something interesting.

“ASDA sees total eclipse” impinged on my early morning half-consciousness.

Bloody recession!” I thought. “Bloody Gordon Brown……..!. ”

And clicked on the link.

Then realised that it wasn’t about my favourite( ie nearest) supermarket going down the tubes, but an astronomical phenomenon in the Far East.

I really should get a life.

Why did the Chicken Cross the Road

2009-06-29T02:15:00.000-07:00

I have been giving some thought to this age-old question, aided and abetted by (and with apologies to) the following:

John Wayne
A bird’s gadda do whadda bird’s gadda do

Inspector Morse
Don’t be silly, Lewis. Get another pint in and stop worrying about chickens. This is a murder enquiry.

Dylan Thomas
Morning. On the side of the tar-black, car-black road Dai Dungheap dreamed of his wives; feather-arsed, feather-brained, clucking and pecking their way through mindless, worm-important lives. Blind Captain Cat, sitting at the window of his snug cottage with his early morning tea-and-rum, bible-dark, treacle-thick, half-heard the ‘Cockadoodledoo’ as the fowl fluffed out his sleek, green-necked, sheen-necked plumage, self-important and shiny as an admiral’s hat, and crowing loud as a travelling preacher, began to cross…………..

William Shakespeare
Thus do I cross here, as the plot doth thicken:
In sleep an eagle; waking, a mere chicken

Jane Austen
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a chicken in possession of a good road must be in want of a reason to cross it.

Rudyard Kipling
If you can cross each unforgiving highway
With sixty seconds-worth of distance run
You’ll earn the right to crow “I did it my way”-
And what is more, you’ll be a chook, my son.

Tony Blair
I must tell you - New Labour – new chicken – new road. That’s what we mean by a caring society, a society where a chicken doesn’t need to give a reason for crossing a road, a society where we the Government have earmarked billions of pounds over the next five years to provide a new road system for our chickens – yes – our chickens - to cross………….

Voltaire
Dans ce pays ci c’est necessaire qu’une poule traversait la rue de temps en temps, pour encourager les autres.

Genesis, 1
In the beginning God created the Road. And the Road was without form, and void.
And God said ‘Let there be chooks: and there were chooks.
Male and female made he them. And God saw that it was good
And God spake to the chooks: Thus spake the Lord God:
O chooks – eat not of the Tree of Knowledge which groweth on the other side. Cross thee not the road, for the wrath of the Lord thy God is mighty
But the chooks did cross the road: And the chooks did eat of the Tree of Knowledge
And The Lord God spake thus unto the chooks, saying:
What is this that thou hast done?
In sorrow shall thou bring forth eggs, and the extra large ones thereof shall make thine eyes water, yea verily.
And thou shalt peck about in the ground for evermore, and feast on worms, thee and thy children and thy children’s children, yea even unto the lands of Colonel Sanders………………….

John Betjeman
Mrs Partlet crossed the High Road,
Back to comfy flat in Sheen;
Frozen chicken in her basket,
Safely wrapped in polythene.

G.K. Chesterton
Before the Romans came to Rye or out to Severn strode
The rolling English chicken crossed the rolling English Road.

Cole Porter
Hens do it; Cocks do it;
Even Orpingtons or Wyandottes do it
Let’s do it;
Let’s cross that road

Each batt’ry hen, now and then, does it
If let out from its bed
A bantam cock, if in shock does it
And a Rhode Island Red

You’ll find a point-of lay pullet does it,
Even Chanticleer like a bullet does it
Let’s do it!
Let’s cross that road!

Robbie Burns
Wee cluckin’, feathert cacklin’ Beastie
O what a panic’ s in thy breastie
Thou need tae start awa sae hastie
Tae cross yon street.
Aye, me, I’ll gang tae rin and chase thee,
Thee for tae eat!.

Geoffrey Chaucer (from the Cackleberry Tales)
And smale foweles maken melodye
That slepeth all the nyghte wyth open ye
So makyth them nature yn hir corages.
Thann longen hennes to goe on pilgrimage,

Winston Churchill
Some chicken! some road!

Anne Robinson
You are the weakest chook. Goodbye.

Margaret Thatcher
This chicken’s not for turning!

Ogden Nash
I am often asked for a reason as to why the chicken crossed the road.
I wish I knowed.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
WATSON “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention.”
HOLMES “To the curious incident of the chicken.”
WATSON “But Holmes - the chicken wasn’t there. It was across the road”
HOLMES “That, my dear Watson, was the curious incident.”

Albert Einstein
e-mc2
Where e = the energy used in crossing the road, m = the width of the road in metres and c = the circumference of the chicken.

The EU Agriculture Commission – Directive EU/7/1995/D24T99XK/EL56 Part 67SD3 Section 21
A summary of rules concerning the crossing of roads by chickens. For the full directive see Publication EU/12/2000/495720937/fr/645/ay (HMSO 6 languages 1854 pp price £1450 inc VAT)

A chicken (henceforth known as the appellant) shall be defined as any live fowl of the genus cluckus domesticus indigenous to any sovereign member state or colony protectorate commonwealth dependancy or satrapy thereof(for non-indigenous fowls and other feathered livestock see Section 37) over the age of six weeks and either male or female (for capons see section 132 clause 544a) whether in the food chain or no subject to its meeting all requirements contained in Directive 272/ SDFVW723/RVWEKJ4W3RWJ section 27 clause 533a and regardless of whether or not the appellant aforesaid has an egg-laying capability within the meaning of Directive 164A235M 2E43/2HH/128 part3 but excluding in all cases domestic fowls other than ducks geese swans larks orioles and other edible avia imported to or exported from the United Kingdom and its colonies dependencies and protectorates due to the veto imposed by the government of Her Britannic Majesty and any emergency directives currently in force under the Salmonella Protection (eggs) Scheme and also pigeons whether wild or domesticated but it should be especially noted that a parrot is not a chicken within the meaning of this Directive

A road shall be defined as any Motorway Autostrada Autobahn Route Nationale class A road class B road lane track public footpath or other highway river canal stream or other waterway situated wholly or in part in one or more member states and used for the transport of persons goods livestock cattle and other commodities always excepting substances prohibited under EU or national law but not excepting the transportation of cannabis within the national borders of Holland

Permitted reasons include any lawful desire on the part of any such appellant(s) as defined above to traverse any road to reach the other side of said road always assuming that any such journey is not commenced during the hours of darkness as laid down by the governments of each member state and that any such journey does not involve or include the crossing of national boundaries within the Union and does not involve any fowls as defined above crossing any boundaries into or out of non-member countries states commonwealths (see Directive 1 – exports section 7 livestock and Directive 2 –imports section 7 livestock and section 23 clauses 678-932 quarantine regulations for non EU fowls) and that any such traverse is conducted in a proper manner by the appellants aforesaid subject to or within local or national traffic rules regulations bylaws and emergency strictures as may then in force and providing always that any licences permits visas permissions passports and other documentation as may be required as laid down by the Commission in Directive 11/2000/549/VFRWEV8ASCQ6567C have been obtained at least six calendar months before the commencement of any proposed journey ……………………..

J.K. Rowling - from Harry Potter and the Chicken Soup of Mama Mephistofiles
The chicken crossed the road to where Harry, Ron and Hermione were standing outside the moonlit gates of Hogwart’s Academy. Harry could clearly see that there was something strangely different about this chicken, but couldn’t for the life of him think what it was. It wasn’t until the bird produced a crumpled cigarette from under its wing, stuck it in its beak, and gruffly demanded a light, that Harry realised who it was. “Cockamamie!” he cried joyfully………………………..

W.S. Gilbert from “The Chikado”
The chicken that crosses the road, tra-la
Has nothing to do with the case.
I refuse to take under my wing, tra-la
A horrible feathery thing, tra-la
With a satisfied smile on its face,
(chorus) With a satisfied smile on its face

And that’s what I mean when I say or repeat
To Hell with the chicken that crosses the street
(chorus) The chicken that crosses, the chicken that crosses
The chicken that crosses the street.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
By the side of Emmi- Leven
By the oil-spattered hard shoulder
Stood a chicken, feathers draggled
Daughter of the far Rhode Island
Far from home was this poor chicken
Far from lovely clean Rhode Island
O’er the shining Big-Sea water.
Standing by the Emmi-leven
Past her roared the mighty diesels
Past her screamed the Ford Fiestas
Middle-management Fiestas
Talking ever on their mobiles
Never seeing a poor chicken
Tired and hungry, heading homeward
Frightened by the Emmi-leven
Frightened by the fox behind her
In the dark and gloomy pine trees
Coming nearer, ever nearer
Looking for a chicken breakfast.
So the chook in desperation
Steps out on the Emmi-leven
On the busy Emmi-leven
Splat! The noise she made when dying.
Swallowed up by roaring traffic.
Chicken flattened by the traffic
On the fearful Emmi-leven
Never more to see Rhode Island ( and so on, interminably)

Samuel Pepys
To Charing Cross to see the new fowl lately arrived from the Indies. These were being driven across the strand and into pens the further side thereof, and looked as cheerful as any fowl could do in that condition. And so to bed.

Another fine mess......................?

2009-06-01T00:24:00.000-07:00

Just a couple of amusing little things, but they’ve left me unsure whether to be worried for the future my country, or smug in that my opinions of those running it have been confirmed.

Item: We sold a book this morning. Called “ The Best of Laurel and Hardy” . Nothing unusual in that.

But:

The buyer? HM Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Item: – I must confess to having a giggle at the headline in yesterday’s Sunday Times, which read “ Gordon Brown wants Balls for Chancellor”.

And Arse for Foreign Secretary, Dick for Minister of Education, and Armpits for Minister of Health, no doubt. Is the man so arrogant that he thinks he can run the whole country on his own?

The Hair of the Dog

2009-05-18T06:44:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned before Susie’s fascination with vacuum cleaners. [v. “Taking the Mickey”]

I think we currently own about eight – one for upstairs, one for downstairs (OK - this is not unreasonable – it saves lumping the bloody thing up and down the stairs every day ) one Vax in case one of the dogs does a whoopsie on the carpet, a small portable job for the car, and a few dead ones, which I’d be happy to take to the tip, but which she insists we hang on to ‘just in case’. Just in case of what, escapes me – as far as I know they don’t do a Doctor Who and miraculously regenerate all on their own, and being older models than our current crop, they’re not even worth keeping to cannibalise for parts.

I, on the other hand, detest the infernal machines with a passion. Apart from anything else, the noise they make disturbs my concentration, sours my mood, and engenders that squeaky-chalk effect which penetrates deep into my soul. The Professor of Physics who thinks sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum hasn’t heard ours. I’ve been through quieter and less stressful air raids, in my time. Goering doing his damnedest didn’t annoy me as much as the daily vacuuming does. Mind you – I was only a toddler at the time, and probably didn’t realise he meant it.

But her love affair with assorted floor-cleaning devices has just reached new heights. Or do I mean depths.

But, as they say in Llarregub, to begin at the beginning. You don’t have to be Welsh to be a poet, but it helps.

We have two dogs, Gemma and Amie, Rough Collies both, who as is customary with the breed, have long, long coats. And so when they moult, which at this time of year they do, they moult bigtime. Thus, a certain amount of vacuuming is (admittedly) necessary, if we don’t want to be permanently wading through an inch-thick layer of discarded Collie.

A few days ago Gemma began scratching herself rather a lot. So Susie had a careful look through her (Gemma’s) coat and found (shock, horror!) a flea. It wasn’t a particularly big flea, as fleas go – maybe it had been ill. It was certainly somewhat dead. But Suse, having won (for the moment at least) the Second Mouse War, has no problem recognising a new foe when she sees one.

Red alert! Action Stations! Mobilise forces. Call out the Cavalry! (in this case her elder daughter Melinda, her usual second-in-command and co-conspirator when it comes to the armed conflict against household pests. I must tell you of the Great Ant Wars, sometime.)

The first exercise involved their stripping-out both dogs, which took a couple of stressful hours and resulted in enough spare fur to cover another one, most of which came from Amie, who since she’s been interfered with by the vet had grown her coat to over a foot long, in places. And another insectine cadaver. But no live ones, and no fleashit. Problem solved, or so we thought.

But then Gemma promptly sat down, had an exploratory sniff at both her own and Amie’s now pristine rear ends, and then started scratching again.

Deep sighs all round. A light sprinkling of Anglo-Saxon from the Mrs James aforesaid. Never mind. Re-group. Initiate Plan B. Bathtime.

Amie’s very good, when it comes to baths. You’ll lift her in, and she’ll just stand there resignedly, looking down her long aristocratic nose with all the innate disapproval of a Dowager Duchess in a bus queue. But she won’t make a fuss – that she would consider beneath her.

Gemma is a dog of a different colour. (Literally, as it happens, as well as figuratively.) Gemma doesn’t do baths, and throughout the process will do her utmost to leap out and leg it. This engenders a slight logistical problem, involving all hands, with the aim of getting all of the dog into the bath at once, and keeping her there, which unless you want the bathroom floor a foot deep in water, is a bit necessary. And in all fairness to the poor beast I suppose that if I had two people holding me down and one directing hot water all over my head or up my jacksie I’d be somewhat miffed and inclined to try and do a runner, too.

But the canine ablutions completed, and the bathroom vaguely cured of having had two wet dogs shaking themselves all over it (and the rest of the Dramatis Personae), it was everybody downstairs, and one-at-a-time (the dogs, not us) onto the grooming table. (no – we’re not really that doggy, or that posh, the kitchen table with an old blanket slung over it has to suffice.)

Roll of Drums. Flurry of Trumpets. Sound the Advance. Let Operation Dry Dog commence.

This last consists of two grown women spending several hours with a hair-dryer and a curry comb apiece doing Vidal Sassoon impressions on dumb animals, thereby transferring considerable quantities of surplus-to-requirement fur from dog to kitchen floor, assiduously checking, comb-ful by comb-ful, for any unwanted fauna with high-jumping talents. To not much avail, frankly. One more defunct example of Ctenocephalides canis, and that’s yer lot.

Amie went first, and was, as usual, no trouble. Gemma, on the other hand……..well. let’s just say I had to leave off watching Man U winning the Premier League again, and come and hold her down. You’ll get the idea.

Anyway – finally she allows herself to be lifted down from the improvised grooming table, has a pro-forma shake, wanders into the front room, and begins another reciprocal arse-sniffing contest with Amie.

And then sits down and starts scratching again.

“O – what a pity” quoth Mrs J. (and if you’ll believe that,……………..)

So - finally, we come to plan C, which brings us neatly back to Susie’s vacuum cleaner fixation.

Because I’ve just spent the last fifteen minutes watching my darling wife actually hoovering the dogs.

Honestly! I promise!

And then sifting through the dust and detritus with all the studied care of an archaeologist going through a spoil heap. I told her – if she finds any Iron Age pottery shards in there we’ll have to call Time Team in.

But, I suppose, why not? The dogs seemed to enjoy the sensation, and if anything’ll get rid of the little nasties it’s Susie’s industrial strength juggernaut vacuum cleaner.

So when I stop laughing, I’ll probably,,,,,,,,,hang on a moment…….GEMMA WILL YOU STOP BLOODY SCRATCHING!!!

Chacun a son Gout.

2009-05-07T06:55:00.000-07:00

On this lovely sunny spring day, I have all the calm serenity of an open-air antique fair in a cloudburst, all the joie-de-vivre of a lovelorn amoeba, and all the affection for my fellow-man of Tomás de Torquemada on a bad day in Sevilla when the Inquisition ran out of firelighters. I’m not happy! Bunnywise, I’m positively myxamatotic.

I’ve suddenly morphed from a respectable upright clean-living serious bookseller into a standing joke. While I love, even expect, to be laughed with, I do not, repeat not, like being laughed at! Especially when it’s not my fault, and even more especially when I’m in bloody agony.

So what brought this on?

I woke up yesterday morning with an attack of gout.

Go on, then, all you wannabee comedians – get it out of the way – have a good belly laugh. Call up regiments of red-faced ex-colonels. Do all the Grouse and Vintage Port jokes. However, the only grouse I’ve had lately are not of the edible persuasion, but entirely verbal, and invariably politically inspired. (McBroon and his New Muddle Army, Stasi Britain, Jackboot Jacqui, the wholesale abandonment of our traditions and culture, and all the other festering boils on the bum of a true Englishman) and I’ve barely been near a decanter of Taylor’s 1960 since it was at the “not a drop is sold till it’s almost cold” stage. I love good port, but sad to relate, it’s a love not reciprocated. And besides, if I do occasionally indulge, it’s not so much my foot that rebels, but my head.

So, apart from a chronic heart condition, type 2 diabetes, a small macular hole in my right retina, serious back problems caused by many years of heaving sodding great lumps of elderly furniture in and out of houses and vans , rheumatic knees, elbows and ankles, and all the other heartaches and natural shocks that septuagenarian flesh is heir to, I’ve now got bloody gout. Sod me - I only need piles, toothache and athlete’s foot for the full set!

Although in general, I feel quite good, for my age, in spite of the deliberately non-PC lifestyle I’ve followed avidly for the last 50-odd riotous years, smoking too much, drinking far too much (and far too often) , dining to an extent that would make Lucullus Lucius Lioinius look like Mahatma Gandhi, and indulging in as much similar bodily abuse I could think of wherever and whenever the opportunity arose. Which I made damn sure was as often as possible.

According to the Nazional-Health-Polizei, I have a life-expectancy of about minus thirty years. But what do they know? As they said about Churchill, when he died at 92 or whatever, “It was the cigars and the brandy that killed him, you know”.

Although I still feel about 18 in my head, I have to admit that the old bod is beginning to slow down a bit. I’ve had to give up on any ambition of playing up front for England alongside Wayne Rooney, running the London Marathon dressed as a penguin, or rowing across the Atlantic in a coracle. Especially all at the same time. But as somebody (Maurice Chevalier, I think - I can’t be arsed to look it up) once said when asked what it was like to get old – the alternative is worse.

So I shall grow old disgracefully, with a bit of luck.

Meanwhile I have this nasty tootsie-come-lately on the end of my right foot where my big toe used to be, about the size and shape (and colour, come to think) of a small haggis. And throbbing, visibly. I can’t get a shoe on, (I rarely wear socks, unless I’m going somewhere special, like a Buck House Garden Party or Bow Street Magistrates Court) and even the duvet weighing on my foot is unbearable. This littlepiggy went to pot.

And everybody, notably my nearest-and-not-so-dearest-all-of-a-sudden, is laughing at me.

Oh well – I’ve had the effect, I might as well enjoy the cause. Pass the Port, somebody.

2009-02-06T08:58:00.000-08:00

Remembrance of things past.

It wasn’t always like this. Sitting in a nice warm office, tapping away at a PC, insouciantly dispatching books all over the civilised world and Milton Keynes. Once upon a time, before the Web was spun, I had to really earn my living. The hard way.

So let’s wind back ten years or so. Please find to follow: A Day in the Life of an Itinerant Bookseller.

Typically, it’s 8-30 on a damp Saturday morning, and I’m behind my regular pitch in Horsham Market Square outside the Old(e) Town Hall, trying to recover from both a five-o’clock start and the physical effort of heaving the worst part of a ton of assorted literature out of the van and lumping it onto a 70 foot run of stall space; then unpacking and arranging the lot into an attractive display. At least the pitches there are covered, which helps.

I must be a masochist. Books are uncompromisingly heavy. I usually carry about 30 banana boxes full plus some magazines, ephemera, prints, and sheet music, And not forgetting the kit – collapsible shelves, a trolley, lights, point-of-sale display stuff, wet weather protection, and so on. It’s a toss-up as to which will collapse first, my back or the van springs. Sadly, only one of these resources is renewable.

From an itinerant trader’s point of view, in addition to the Olympic Qualifying Standard weightlifting requirement, the main drawback with books as stock-in-trade is that to optimise sales they need displaying by subject, but in order to optimise precious van space they need to travel by size. This means that they all have to be re-sorted and re-arranged at each end of every day. It can take me the best part of two hours to unload and to set out the stall, although funnily enough I can usually whistle through the reverse process in half that time. Maybe I sell more than I think I do.

So I’m soaking up a coffee and a bacon butty, bent on getting what’s left of my breath back and waiting till the pump stops banging away like a steam hammer on Viagra and settles back into its normal comfortable fibrillating apology for a beat.

A few early birds cluster round the stall. I concentrate on fortifying the inner dealer and leave them to browse at their leisure and to approach me only when and if they want to. One can’t hard-sell books – the gung-ho “Have I gotta volume here for you Guvnor” approach will send the average browser scurrying off like a frightened meerkat. And my early birds buy a lot of worms, dropping in on me every week as they do, grubby fivers at the ready. I can usually reckon to have taken the exes and to be into profit after the first three or four customers.

A disembodied ‘Excuse me’ materialises, seemingly out of nowhere. I glance up, and manage to work out that it’s emanating from a plastic mac and rain hood about twenty feet to my right, lurking in front of the Bargain Basement end of the display. And it’s a plastic mac and rain hood sort of a voice. The sort that wears old-fashioned National Health specs with one side bit Sellotaped on, and keeps its ready cash in one of those squeeze-open leather pouch thingies.

“I’m looking for a book”.

Now – there are several possible snappy ripostes to this exposition of the overwhelmingly obvious, ranging from “When and where did you last see it?” through “A particular example perchance, or will any one do?” to “Sorry, this is a fruit and veg stall – we don’t do books.”

But he gave every appearance of having had a sense of humour bypass, so I swallowed all of these and raised an enquiring eyebrow. He sidled along the front of the stall and muttered, almost whispered, into my face. Gottim in one, specs-wise.

“It’s called ‘Journeys by Foot and on Horseback to Deserted Lepers in Siberia.’“ [Honest – I’m not making this up!]

By Katherine somebody, I think he said – by the time he’d got to the end of the title I was so mesmerised that I failed to take proper note of the author’s name.

I resisted an almost overwhelming temptation to enquire as to whether he'd like the hardback or paperback version. and shook my head, weakly.

"Catchy title. Can't say as I've ever had a copy, though. Not that I’ve noticed." And I’d have noticed. But I kept my professional smile pasted on, without letting it disintegrate into the fit of the giggles that I could feel gestating.

"Published in about 1880. It's out of print." He volunteered, disappointed, but helpful to a fault.

No! It never is! Fancy that! Stroll on! This tome must have been out of print for almost as long as a First Folio or a Gutenberg Bible. And probably sold almost as many copies.

"Yerss - well, it would be, I s'pose. The interesting ones always are."

He informed me that he’d been searching for the book for years, which snippet of autobiographical passementerie left me less than surprised, and insisted on my taking his phone number in case I found a copy. I probably still have it somewhere, in the unlikely event that this esoteric literary chef d’oeuvre should turn up. Details on a postcard, please, but don’t all rush.

He then went back to browsing through the morning’s offerings, culled a couple of cheap paperbacks from the Bargain Basement, handed over his 75p in coppers and 5p coin, (notch up another one, for the purse,) and continued on his way.

Meanwhile, there are by now more than a dozen potential nice little earners, heads down along the length of the stall. Time to play Spot the Customer. A fascinating game, this. Size up the browsers, and mark down, before talking to them, which ones will actually part with money. After years of practice, I can reckon to score in the high nineties, although just occasionally I do get it spectacularly wrong.

Four or five beards. For some reason they nearly always buy, do beards. Possibly both books and beards are a comfort thing. Or maybe chaps who don’t spend time shaving have more for reading. (The other dead cert customer, and easily the most productive, is your middle-aged, middle-class woman. But it’s a bit early for them – you rarely sight one before about 10-30. )

There’s a cheap suit, aluminium briefcase and rimless glasses. He’s meticulously conning every page of every book on the stall. He’ll be there for an hour or more, but won’t buy a thing – his type never do. So why bother? If he just wants a good read he’d be much more comfortable in the Library, especially on a miserable morning like this. Another one of Life’s Minor Mysteries, like (for instance) why does Tooting Bec Tube Station always have a freezing gale blowing through it, even if outdoors it’s 75 in the shade and dead calm, or why don’t banks and credit card companies put a wider signature strip on the backs of their cards, for all us flash Leos with bold handwriting .

But he helps keep the stall looking busy, so I leave him carry on undisturbed.

Omigod. Here’s my favourite anorak. Mid to late sixties – thin face – sharp red nose - graying sandy hair – clothes by Millet’s out of Oxfam – and almost certainly a retired pedagogue of the Grammar or Minor Public School calibre. Classics, at a guess. He tips up every week, and not only does he part with money, but he often brings me a couple of carriers full of his surplus-to-requirements, often including some rare out-of-print stuff which he sells me for sod-all and change. I must ask him about the Deserted Lepers – it’s just the sort of thing he’s likely to have.

Anyway - he’s a nice bloke, a good customer, and up for a considerable slice of my attention. The downside is that [a] he automatically assumes that I’ve read and can discuss every book on the stall, no matter how abstruse, and [b] given a smidgin of a chance, he can and will bore for England.

I wave him a cheery Good Morning and edge down to the other end of the stall, leaving him to browse undisturbed. I don’t feel up to a half-hour debate on the relative merits or otherwise of the Oxfordian and Baconian Heresies, or on whose translation of the Iliad is truer to the original.

Although we’d done that one the previous week, as it happens, and believe me, ploughing up my ‘O’ Level Greek after 45 fallow years had proved a strain. Then we’d conversed for a while on the subject of whether Alvin Toffler’s ‘Future Shock’ still stood up given 30-odd years of hindsight.

(For the record, we ended up awarding Alexander Pope an alpha, and Alvin a beta-minus.)

A couple of old dears, complete with shopping trolleys and Daily Mirror opinions, are rummaging through my sole box of fiction. You’ll only get money out of them in the unlikely event that you’ve got a Catherine Cookson, a Barbara Taylor Bradford, or something else of that genre they haven’t read. As long as it’s in paperback, nice and thick, and under a quid. And as long as you can tell them what it’s about – God forbid they should take any risks.

No luck today, anyway. They drift off, chattering noisily.

I notice another regular approaching. And I almost wish she wasn’t. Regular or approaching. New Woman. Mid thirties, power dressed, Attitude. She prowls up and down the length of the stall, barking into her mobile, shoving all obstacles, human or otherwise, out of her way, grabbing book after hapless book, invariably the newest, shiniest or best condition examples, from my carefully organised display or even out of her fellow-reader’s hands, cracking them open, scanning a page, sniffing, and tossing each rejected volume higgledy-piggledy back onto the stall.

She does buy, and isn’t fazed by price –she’ll happily lash out £15 - £20 on a book if it interests her, (or, and more likely, if it goes with her décor or her self-image) but whereas the transaction, indeed the relationship, between reader and bookseller is normally a gentle one, this Rottweiler bitch will attempt to make a confrontation out of anything. Worse, she invades the noiseless tenor of my ways and sours my mood, wrecks my display and endangers my crunchiest stock.

A few minutes later, having pillaged along the entire length of the stall, leaving chaos reigning in her wake, she reaches me, several glossy coffee table books wedged under her mobile-wielding arm. I brace myself for the inevitable haggling session, to which I have no particular objection as a rule, but today her timing isn’t that good. There are several customers within earshot, and unlike predatory antiques hunters, most book-buyers don’t expect to beat you down, and stump up the marked price like lambs, bless ‘em. The last thing I want is her giving them ideas.

She slings a capacious briefcase-stroke-handbag onto the stall, hoicks a book out of it with her unencumbered hand, and waves it under my nose, temporarily breaking the flow of her mobile diatribe.

“You sold me this last week.” No I didn’t – she chose it and bought it entirely without my aid and assistance.

“I paid you £14.50 for it….” No she didn’t – it was priced @ £14.50, but she beat me down to about a tenner on a Byzantine deal involving several volumes, some unframed prints she wanted for her new office, the picture framing bloke on the pitch opposite, and something belonging to Steph, the girl on the up-market repro stall behind mine. I took her money and we divvied it out later.

“…. and it’s absolute bloody rubbish” . No it isn’t – it’s a universally recognised benchmark work on the subject, if a tad technical, which can be a drawback if one only buys books because one thinks the pretty graphics on the covers might impress one’s friends or clients, and one has to have absorbed enough of the contents to ginger up the small talk or fend off questions.

“It’s total crap. Easily the worst book I’ve ever read. And so what are you going to do about it?” And without waiting for a reply, continues giving the poor bugger on the other end of her phone a hard time.

“I’m not going to do anything about it, sweetheart.” (I always do the term of endearment number on her type – it really pisses them off.) “I’m sorry you didn’t like it, but I only flog ‘em, I don’t write ‘em.”

She sniffs the scent of battle, which demands her undivided attention, so she snarls “I’ll Speak to You Later, and I Bloody Well Want Answers!!” into the phone, hangs up, and eyeballs me.

“That’s not damn well good enough. I have rights here. I want my money back.”

This calls for some quick thinking. As far as rights go, she hasn’t got any. After 40 years dealing with the General Public, God Bless ‘em, I know all about rights, theirs and mine. And she’s a pain in the butt. But OK, a pain in the butt that has been known to drop next week’s Tesco’s tribute into my lap. So while she has no right to a refund, and no chance of getting one even if she had, in truth I’ve no particular objection to taking the book back and giving her a credit against future purchases, even though the handsome dust jacket is by now on the missing list, the spine’s cracked, and by the state of the wretched thing she’s been reading it in the bath.

Beckoning to her to follow. I walk along to the end of the stall, out of earshot of other potential and more innocent sources of income. “Let’s have a look at what you’ve picked out, and I’ll see if I can do anything.”

We go through her selection. Adds up to £65. On a straight haggle she’d reckon to get the lot for a level £50, and I’d be more than happy with that, so she wouldn’t get much more than a pro-forma argument. But let’s try it on a bit, for the hell of it. I can always submit gracefully, and blush all the way to the bank. I fire the opening shot.

“ I never allow more than half price on returns, but seeing as how it’s you, I’ll take that one back and knock a tenner off this lot in exchange. Deal?“

Fortune sometimes favours chutzpah. At that moment, her mobile rang, and she recognised the imperative to impose her will on some other poor sod. “OK – done deal” she said quickly, fiddling in her purse and counting me out five new tenners and a fiver. I trousered the cash, stuffed her purchases into one of Tesco’s finest, and smiled sweetly at her as she marched off in the direction of the Carfax, firing off a further quiverful of expletives-deleted into the tender care of One-2-One. Then I re-priced the battered prodigal at £7, and put it back on the stall. With a bit of luck somebody’ll buy it, but even if they don’t, the worst way I’m three quid light on one side of the balance sheet, and the best way I’m fifteen ahead on the other. I can live with that.

A few minutes repairing the damage to the display and filling the gaps, and then it’s back to Spot-the-Punter. A couple of couples; one pair browsing the books, the other going through the sheet music.

Couples are difficult to assess – whether they buy seems to depend on which is the dominant partner – if it’s the man they’ll quite likely jolly each other into buying everything that catches their attention, but if it’s the woman they’ll talk each other out of buying anything at all except the one slim volume she might happen to want.

Don’t ask me why – I’m still reading through the History section, and haven’t got round to Psychology yet.

The first couple have kept hold of 2 or 3 fairly serious books, which is a good sign, they’re still looking, which is another, and they’re laughing, which is probably the clincher. But no – all at once they look at each other, dump their selection back onto the stall, and saunter off, arm in arm, without catching my eye. Funny – I could have sworn………

No matter. Suddenly I have a line of people clutching books and waving money, so I go into cash-and-wrap mode for a few minutes. Last in line is the sheet music couple. He’s doing the carrying, she’s doing the talking. A cultured, nicely modulated, sexy voice like blued steel dipped in honey.

“You’re asking a lot for your music – does it really fetch that much?” Uh-oh – here we go again.

“Well - yes it does – but don’t worry - I can do you a fairly good quantity discount on that lot. Let’s have a look.”

He dumps a 6 inch high pile of Classic FM’s raw material in front of me, and I riffle through it and start to work out a total. She pipes up again, interrupting the flow of my mental arithmetic.

“We’ve got boxes and boxes of music at home that we no longer need – might you be interested in buying it? “ You can see her visualising three weeks in Tuscany on what she thinks will be the proceeds.

A tricky one, this. While I do achieve good prices for old sheet music, possibly because I’m one of the few people to stock it, there are two considerations. First of all it comes in for nothing, as a bonus included with the parcels of books that I buy anyway, and secondly, I end up with far more than I can possibly sell. Even if I were to reduce the prices, I couldn’t shift any more, or worse, I’d have to carry twice as much to achieve the same turnover. So the residuum builds up in the garage, and every so often a space crisis threatens. At which point I ring one of our local schools, who are only too delighted to come and collect the surplus. Phil as travelling philanthropist. This lets me bask in the warm glow of a self-nominated Good Citizenship Award, and saves me time and money running a vanload to the tip. These two benefits not necessarily in order of significance.

So the last thing I need is to pay out hard cash, especially as they will expect some relationship between a buying and a selling price. But I can’t tell them that, because any music I manage to sell them will be clear profit, and less tonnage to carry home, so I don’t want to upset them. Fudge it, Uncle Phil.

“Well yes, in theory, but not at the moment. I bought a vanful last week from the estate of an old lady who used to play second violin for the LSO, and until I’ve shifted some of that I’ve no need for any more. But I’m here every week, so keep asking. And I’ll tell you what – I haven’t even sorted through it all yet, so tell me what you’re looking for, and I’ll try and bring you a fresh selection next week”

This seems to mollify her, for the moment. She nods, understandingly. Back to the maths. What they’ve selected comes to nearly £75, so I offer them a generous 30% discount, unasked. Stuffing bundles of notes into the back pocket is less strain on the lower lumbar than lumping boxes of notes into the back of the van, I find.

He writes me out a cheque, I start stuffing carrier bags, we get to chatting in general terms about their musical requirements, and I promise to do my best to fill them the following week. Then to let myself off the hook, purchase-wise, I suggest the school idea.. They think this a brilliant wheeze. Positive re-cycling, like a musical bottle-bank. Local Benefactors. Even more kudos than Tuscany. So everybody’s happy, except possibly Robinson Minor in Form IVa of the local Grammar, who’ll be forced to plough for hours through their largesse on whichever musical instrument his upwardly mobile parents have inflicted on him, when he’d rather be out playing footie with his mates. But he doesn’t know that yet.

Time for me to re-jig the display again.

It’s notable how rarely people bother to replace books exactly where they found them. Half end up back to front, another third upside down, half of the rest manage both, five per cent get slung back any old how, and the remaining few end up where they started. Maybe. So by now the stall looks like a tip.

The tidying up takes longer than expected, because I get cornered by the schoolmaster, who’s dug out one of Laurens van der Post’s turgid tomes. This leads us into a fascinating if somewhat one-sided discussion as to whether the theories of Madam Blavatsky can be reconciled with Rudolf Steiner’s Theosophy of the Rosicrucians, this knotty problem served with a side order of Sir James Frazer and a dollop of Radakrishnan’s Indian Philosophy. And yes – I have actually ploughed through all these, but not lately, and never again please God, so that after five minutes of this intellectual stodge my eyes are glazing over and my recall module is in overload. I’m sure the guy on the fruit and veg stall doesn’t have these problems. Although knowing Mr Chips here, he probably gets inveigled into debates on the implications of EC regulations for the straightness or otherwise of cucumbers, the social dilemmas caused by recent advances on the hybrid tomato front, and whether avocados have souls.

I escape, because somebody down the other end of the stall needs my attention, and on the way I gather up the books left on the stall by the couple who’d disappeared earlier. I don’t know why, but I didn’t re-display them, I put them round the back of the stall out of sight.

Then I bribe Steph to nip down to the caff for refills all round. This costs me a cuppa, a Danish and five minutes looking after her stall, but I don’t mind. We do it turn and turn about. Market folk are great like that – we all babysit for each other when the occasion demands it.

So I’m standing with my back to my stall, watching hers - her stock poses more of a security risk than mine, when out of the corner of my eye I notice the male half of the couple who’d done a runner. He was almost frantically searching along the length of my stall, and it wasn’t difficult to guess what he was looking for. I turned round and held up the hidden books.

“Looking for these, by any chance”.?

The relief on his face was palpable. “Thank God for that.” He grinned at me. “I thought you’d sold them, and She-Who-Must-Be-Indulged has finally made up her mind she wants ‘em. It’d have been Cold Tongue Pie at home for a week, if you had.”

Funny – she hadn’t looked that fierce. I lied a little, but only a little.

“I knew you’d be back, somehow, so I put them aside. All part of the service. That’ll be fourteen pounds fifty.” He paid up like a lamb, grinned conspiratorially at me again, and went merrily on his daily round, a happy bunny.

Oops – Bore Alert! I see my schoolmaster approaching. Evasive action needed. Quick! Where’s my mobile? I grab it, and fake what is going to be a long drawn out call, interjecting “really”s and “I see”s and suchlike into the dead instrument. He shows me a couple of books, including the van der Post, I raise 4 fingers, he gives me £4 in coin, I hand him a carrier bag, he packs his purchases into it, we wave at each other – I break off my imaginary conversation long enough to mouth “ thanks - see you next week” at him, and that’s that. Another crisis averted.

And so it goes on. By the end of the day I’ll have taken a fair bit, three-quarters of which is profit. But this is hardly Easy Street – if I take into account expenses, and the time spent buying, loading, sorting, pricing, driving to the market and back, and so on, I’m probably on less than a fiver an hour. Or looking it another way, something like a couple of quid per box per journey into and out of the van.

These days, thanks to the Internet, life is easier, especially on my elderly back, but somehow it’s nothing like as much fun. It was a tough old life, selling books in the market, but I miss it, in a funny sort of way.

2009-01-06T03:36:00.000-08:00

Alternative Medicine. Is there a doctor on the phone?

One has to take one’s fun where one can find it, these days, amidst all the doom and gloom.

As that rightly celebrated (and much missed) columnist Cassandra of the Daily Mirror noted, telling of the time when he enjoyed (literally) a telephone number differing by one digit from the local railway goods yard, and how he answered the inevitable wrong numbers and directed everything from bales of wire netting to crates of pigeons hither and yon across the Metropolis. Hilarious. Especially the pipe organ dispatched to Hackney Gasworks.

[“Camden Goods” – September 24th 1956, quoted in his book “Cassandra At His Finest and Funniest” – please, please, pleas,e if you can find a copy, do yourself a favour and read it !]

We have a similar scenario – I hesitate to call it a problem – in that our telephone number differs only by the last digit (a 9 instead of an 8) from our neighbourhood Doctor’s Surgery. Consequently we are subjected to a steady trickle of people banging on about their insanitary and embarrassing complaints, plus the statutory few with attitude, who steadfastly refuse to believe that they have a wrong number.

“Are you sure you’re not the Surgery?”

“Certain. We’re a booksellers/”

“So why did you answer the phone, then?”

It would of course be easy to give people the right number and suggest they dial again, but there are three arguments against this simple remedy.

Firstly, they’d never get through to the surgery. You could die waiting for them to answer the phone, especially if you’re a bit under the weather to start with.

Secondly, eight out of ten callers have minimal English. Judging by my ad hoc telephone survey, the Children of Allah must be a fairly unhealthy lot, compared to the indigenous population. Or maybe there’s just more of them than there are of us.

Thirdly, where’s the fun in putting them right? Or, for that matter, where’s the point? Doctor will in any event be far too busy to see them for at least ten days, and all he’ll do when they do finally get past the receptionist and enter the hallowed halls is to prescribe a few pills. Doctors don’t do doctoring any more, they are merely overpaid sales reps for the international drug companies, when they’re not being pushers of Nanny-State propaganda for our Stasi-inspired Government. I know this, because I went in recently with a touch of tennis elbow, and after waiting the best part of an hour got given a diet sheet and a ten minute lecture on the evils of smoking. I tore up the first, stuck a metaphorical two fingers up to the second, and bought some Deep Heat from the Chemist, which sorted me out in no time.

Anything more serious than a boil on the bum and you’’ have to go to the Walk-in Centre, so-called because it’s located bang in the centre of the traffic gridlock known as Coventry, and is invariably a two mile walk from the nearest available extortion racket masquerading as a council car park. Once you get there you’ll be kept waiting, sitting on a extra hard chair, for five or six hours, before being given a cursory examination by a twelve year old doctor who has been on duty without a break since a week ago last Thursday, and an appointment to see a consultant in about six months time. If you haven’t died in the meanwhile from the Bubonic Plague you caught in the waiting room.

So I decided that the best course for all concerned would be for me to diagnose and treat the various ailments of my callers myself. Dr Phil, the telephone medic, that’s me. “What seems to be the trouble?” is the watchword.

I work on the assumption that for real emergencies folk will know enough to dial 999 without my help. So if they’re talking to me they’re not exactly at death’s door. For anything that sounds as if it might be complicated I cut out the various middlemedics and give them an appointment at the hospital at some point in the distant future. With instructions to telephone the hospital and confirm a couple of weeks beforehand, because they might be busy that day.

Other than that, I find that the bulk of the supplicants can, like Caesar’s Gaul, be divided into three parts.

A large percentage of callers turn out to be the indigent and indolent parasites and shirkers amongst us, trying to pull a sickie.. I’ve no time for them. I simply say “Sorry – we don’t issue sick notes any more – we gave out so many that the Benefit Office won’t accept them any longer. Suggest you go back to work.”

For anything girly, such as morning sickness, period pains, or of an obstetric or gynaecological nature generally, I prescribe Friars Balsam, to be diluted in a large bowl of boiling water and the fragrant steam so generated inhaled. I have good medical precedent for this; when I was first married in about 1962 our local GP prescribed this to my wife, who went to him because she thought she might be pregnant. He habitually prescribed Friars Balsam for everything from a fractured skull to Athlete’s Foot, however, so we weren’t really surprised. However, she gave birth to a perfectly heathy son, so presumably it’s effective.

Most of the rest can be assuaged with a sharp intake of breath and “There’s a lot of it about – take two soluble aspirins twice a day and telephone again in a week to confirm that you’re still alive, so that we can keep our computer records up to date.” “Antibiotics? We don’t prescribe antibiotics any more, I’m afraid . Not since the Credit Crunch. That skinflint Gordon Brown put a stop to it. “ You owe me bigtime, Cameron!

Otherwise, I tend towards the Revenge Option, and prescribe medicaments that I had inflicted on me as a child; Witch Hazel or Arnica for aches and pains, Iodine (ouch!), half-a-pint of Cod Liver Oil for anybody that phones when I’m in the shower or is otherwise mildly annoying, a double dose of Dr Collis Brown’s Chlorodyne for anybody that really pisses me off, and so on. Does anybody remember Dr Potter’s Pink Pills for Pale People? I bet my local Chemist does, by now. I wish I could recall the name of that purple ointment they used to use for such things as Impetigo.

The odd thing is, that in spite of sending monthly invoices to the Health Minister, I don’t seem to have received any payment for my services to date. Which seeing as how I must have saved the NHS a small fortune, is a damned bad show, I reckon. No wonder the country is in such a mess.

One final thought. The phone number situation presumably works both ways, so be careful; if they’re as fed up of taking my calls as I am of taking theirs, you’ll ring ‘em up to order some nineteenth century French erotica, and receive a 16 page booklet on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and a ten minute lecture on contraception.

.....for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

2008-12-14T05:43:00.000-08:00

I wrote this little Christmas story some years ago - but it still bears telling again.

I awarded myself a rare (albeit well-deserved) half-day off, last Thursday. I’d been to Towcester - there’s a monthly drive-in antique fair at the racecourse there, where usually I do very well. However on this occasion the December weather was against any form of serious commercial intercourse, the venue was awash and ankle-deep in mud; and The Trade (except for the few early birds who’d squelched around, snacked on such worms as were going cheap, and gone home to roost) had mostly given up buying for the tag-end of the year; so that effectively by about ten o’clock the fair had tailed off to a miserable miry nothing, and I’d taken all I was going to take. Which was more than enough to pay exes and my wages for the day, so I wasn’t bothered.

Usually under such circumstances, so as not to waste the day or the petrol, I’d probably go buying, but I too was infected with ‘end-of-term-itis’. I’d only one more fair before the New Year, and more than enough stock to cover it. So I thought soddit, packed and loaded the worldly goods, and drove the 30-odd miles south down the A5 to Dunstable with a view to spending some quality time with the most important people in my life, Robbie and Kirsty, my grandchildren. And of course Sara, my daughter and their mother.

As it happens, I got lucky. I’d no sooner breezed in the door than Sara informed me that I couldn’t have picked a better day - it was to be Robbie’s School Play that afternoon.
“And it’s been a long time since you’ve been to one of those” she reminded me archly. And rightly - it must have been a good 25 years since I’d proudly watched her doing an impression of a rather coy angel (as inapt a casting job as one could hope to find, believe me!) at her own Primary School’s annual thespian bash.

“Great!” I said, and meant it. “What sort of a play is it? The statutory Nativity job? So what’s Robbie playing? Joseph? A Wise Man? The Innkeeper?”

“Nah” said Sara, deadpan. “A burglar. He’s dead chuffed because it’s not a speaking part, and so he doesn’t have to learn any lines.”

I couldn’t decide whether to be concerned at Robbie’s apparent lack of ambition (uncharacteristic, in our family) or delighted at his innate distaste for honest toil. (That’sa Ma Boy!) But then it occurred to me that in any account of the Nativity that I’d ever read, including those of Ss Matthew, Mark, Luke and the other bloke, the burgling classes didn’t exactly figure in the dramatis personae. What was he going to do? Grab the Gold? Filch the Frankincense? Mug the Magi for the Myrrh? Weird. This was obviously going to be one of those avante garde productions. Committee of trendy primary school pedagogues rewrites the Gospels ‘to make them more accessible to underprivileged minorities’ - you know the sort of thing.
What I couldn’t know was that this was to turn out (whether by design or default I’m not sure, but it makes little difference) to be The Nativity Story as Low Comedy. Carry On and Follow That Star. Wise Men Behaving Badly. Have it Away In A Manger.

But we’ll come to that in a bit. First things first. In The Beginning, there was The Cake.

And it came to pass that Phil the junkdealer journeyeth a days journey to the Land of Beds (which ain’t anything like as interesting as it sounds, O ye Scribes and Pharisees, perverts) and findeth himself even unto the firmament of a crowded School Hall, overheated like as to the domain of Lucifer the Prince of Darkness himself. Yea, I say unto you, even unto the front stalls did he journey, where he plonketh him on a chair several sizes too small, and which accommodateth not both of his capacious buttocks at once. And Phil the Junkdealer did cry unto the Lord, saying thus: O Lord God of junkdealers help this thy servant to bear this pain with which in thy wisdom thou hast scourged him due to this pathetic little chair, and more to the point help thy servant to get the fuck up again when the time cometh, so that his poor old back seizeth not up. And then Phil the Junkdealer did wax philosophical, as is the manner of his kind, and did think unto himself, “Do we not these days pamper something rotten the children of our loins that we have begatted - we never had central heating at school when I was a lad, and in the winter, O ye children of Israel, we froze our very cods off, for we were arrayed only in T shirts and short trousers, I kid ye not! And Brethren, verily I say unto you - heed the words of Phil the junkdealer - it did us no bloody harm! But it surpriseth me not in hindsight that our schoolmasters did look oft upon the wine when it was red. Thus keepeth they the cold out of their ancient bones.”

Here endeth the first lesson.

So I’m sitting there, minding my own business, chatting to Sara and to Claire, her young baby-sitter, waiting for the off. Suddenly I’m aware of this strident faux-gentille Lynda Snell kind of voice, coming from behind me, getting gradually closer, slicing through the crowd’s conversational white-noise like a surgeon’s knife parting compliant flesh.

“Do you want to guess the weight of the cake? Would anybody like to guess the weight of the cake? Are you going to have a go at guessing.............” and so on, approaching ever nearer. Eventually she reaches us. “Would you like to guess the weight of this cake?”

I should confess at this point that I’d had a couple of large liquid Winter Warmers when I got to Sara’s, and was by now feeling no pain. And bossy wannabee-county-set women with loud voices get right up my nose, even stone cold sober. So. Let’s have a laugh, I thought, and (with some difficulty) stood up. In my experience the only way to deal with that type of person is from a great height. Sitting in a kid-size chair with her towering over me would have been a fatal handicap in the witty repartee stakes.

“Surely by now you must have a fair idea of the weight of that cake. “ Coming the innocent.

“Of course we know the weight of the cake.” Tetchy. Suddenly wary. She scents danger. Reacts like an alarmed Meerkat. And looks a bit like one, come to think, but without all that built-in cutesy stuff.

“So why are you going around asking everybody, then?" Butter wouldn’t melt.

Her face freezes into a mask. She’s fairly sure I’m taking the piss something rotten, but has this vague niggle at the back of her mind that I might just be mentally retarded, and thus to be heavily indulged as a matter of trendy political correctness. Besides, all her peers are watching. Not the time or place to take chances. She decides to play it straight. And patronise, patronise, patronise.

“It’s a competition, dear. You have to guess the weight of this lovely cake, you see.”

Metaphorically patting me on the head.

“Oh goody! I Love competitions.” Thinking ‘ Ooops, James! You’ve picked the only person in the whole of Bedfordshire who’s had a humourectomy.’ Never mind. n too deep now. Carry on. “How do you tell who wins?”

“ThePersonWhoGuessesTheCorrectWeightOfTheCakeWins!!” Teeth clenched. Words gabbled. Expletives deleted. Eyes desperately hunting around the hall for a quick escape route. Voice rising in pitch. “ItsFiftyPeeAGuess!!!”

I unsheath my secret weapon; my trusty Gateau-blaster; and let her have it, right between the eyes.

“So what’s the prize, then, luv? What do I win?”

Panic. You can see it in her eyes. Omigod, I’ve got a weirdo. (She’s the one shoving unsolicited patisserie under the noses of innocent strangers, demanding that they deduce the avoirdupois thereof, and she reckons that I’m a weirdo.)

Cool was rapidly going out of the window. “YOU WIN THE CAKE !!!” Pejoratives (fool! idiot! arsehole! dickhead!) while physically left unexpressed, couldn’t have been clearer if she’d shouted them.

By this time, we had quite an audience. The parents in the seats around us were agog. Sara was studiously looking the other way, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably. She’s been out with her Dad before, and knows what I’m like. Young Claire, who I learned later indulges in a touch of babysitting for the Cake-Peddler’s kids as well as for Sara’s two, was shrinking into her seat and trying to hide under her own right armpit. Nothing to do with me, missus, honest. Never seen ‘im before. True. Prior to that day, she hadn’t.

What neither of them know is that things could have gotten a lot worse. But at this point it occurred to me that Lady Cake was only trying to do her bit towards raising money, presumably for the children, and that perhaps I was being a little unkind. Besides, I’d only meant to have a joke with her, not to start WW3. I decided to let the silly humourless cow off the hook. Had I realised then what I learned from Sara later, that she was the local Gauleiter/busybody/do-gooder/into-everything/takes herself veddy veddy seriously/control freak, I wouldn’t have. It was a damned close-run thing, regardless. What I came within a micron of saying was:
“But I don’t actually eat cake! Tellyerwhat - I don’t s’pose you’ve got a leg of lamb about your person that I could guess the weight of instead? Or a chicken or two? Some Stilton maybe? A couple of pounds of mince? Nah - silly me -there wouldn’t be a lot of point your going around saying ‘can you guess the weight of this two pounds of mince?’ It’d be like Alice’s caucus race - everybody would win a prize except the Irish couple in the back row, and we’d end up with one small meatball each. Oh - and by the way - where do all the fifty pees go? To pay for the cake, or what.................?”

.........But all this merry badinage died still-born. I relented, confirmed with her that the requisite weight specifications included the box and the cakestand, (necessary information for proper evaluation of the project, I’d have thought, but delivered to me in a gravel-voiced venomous monosyllable as if I had no right to ask) hefted the confection, dropped the half-a-quid into her outstretched hand, refrained from thanking her for a lovely weekend (coward), told her the weight, and to deliver the cake to Sara when I won it, (I haven’t heard anything yet - I must get my secretary to ring her secretary) and let her go on her way, mightily relieved, and with her amour propre only slightly shattered into a mere million pieces. She’ll never know how lucky she was.

By this time the main event was due, and the players were under starters orders. The Chorus, assorted pre-pubescents of either gender, filed in wearing their best uniforms and sat down on benches beside the empty stage. The music-teacher started to give the piano some wellie. The lights dimmed. The Headmistress, (at least I presume it was she) entered centre stage in the guise (or so I thought until she started to speak) of Prologue. But no - her role was that of Apologia, Muse of Cockup. She coyly pointed out that they’d had a lot of problems lately, half the kids had been ill, some of the teachers likewise, most of them had had no time to learn their lines in between their normal schoolwork, and that the Prompter would thus be running red-hot. And so on, etcetera, blahdiblah. But that she was sure that we’d enjoy the play anyway, although would we kindly not get carried away, and please to hold back on the clapping until the end. This edict presumably aimed at specific parents who might go noisily bananas at the first sight of their own little treasures in Thespian mode, thus interfering with the overall artistic flow.

Such a resigned and contrite soft-sell rather set the tone for the afternoon, as far as I was concerned. What with her speech and the cake-saga, I was in no mood to take things seriously. There sprung to mind unbidden a picture of Terry Hands emerging onto the stage at the National before the first night of King Lear, apologising that the RSC hadn’t been able to learn its lines properly in between visits to the dole office to collect its Giros, that the scenery wasn’t finished because the stagehands had been on the piss all week, that the Assistant Director was out of it on illegal substances, that the actors who’d contracted to play Lear and Gloucester had fallen in lerve and had gorn orf to a villa in Tuscany holding hands, and that their understudies, having been given a mere ten minutes to learn their parts, could only be expected to do their best. Warning us, in effect, that the play would probably turn out to be unmitigated crap. But that he felt sure we’d love it regardless, because the writing was quite good, although would we kindly refrain from breaking up the theatre in our enthusiasm, at least until the Luvvies had had time to scarper at the end of the performance.

We gave Apologia the clap she so richly deserved, and the show got under way. I’m sure you know the story. Chippy meets girl/ Girl meets angel/ Girl pudding club/ Says angel’s fault/ Likely story/ King Herod skint, stamps foot/ All shekels to Inland Revenue PDQ/ Exeunt omnes Bethlehemwards where tax office/ Girl about to drop baby/ Chippy buys donkey for journey/ Hit Bethlehem/ Travelodge full/ No room at wossname/ Don’t care if she carrying sodding Messiah no rooms round here Christmas Week dickhead/ Pssst Wanna renta stable cheap?/ Only one cow sitting tenant/ Any port in storm/ Girl has baby boy/ 9lb 7oz inc. VAT, delivery, number plates and halo/ Dead ringer for 1950s Chad Valley dolly/ Name Jesus after nice waiter parents met Benidorm/ Three Wise men pitch up from points east/ Follow that star, cabbie/ Herod’s? Sorry guv, thought you said Harrods/ Where new King?/ Prezzies for same/ Herod no prezzies, right pissed off/ Shepherds watched their flocks/ Let’s start a religion, guys/ O Come All Ye Faithful/ Order Popemobile, sharpish.

Something like that.

The kids, let me tell you, were brilliant. But every single one of them was a comedian manque, from the ones who couldn’t wait to get their bit done, to gabble their allotted portion and so to escape back into safe obscurity, to the real stars of the show, the Innkeeper and the Camel, who were probably with hindsight meant to be funny. But consciously or subconsciously, they were all playing it for laughs. So that after about ten minutes I was in quiet hysterics. Which is when they had the marketplace scene, where Joseph buys the donkey. The transaction, according to the innocents of Lark Rise Junior School, Dunstable, went something like this:-

“I’d like to buy your donkey. How much is it?”

“A tenner, sir”

“Fine - here’s the money” (hands over some coin and leads beast of burden away)

Now you should know that in a real-life transaction of this importance between a Jewish Carpenter and an equally Jewish market trader and Donkey-Dealer, the commercial process wouldn’t have been quite so neat and tidy. For openers, Joseph would never have been allowed to buy the donkey on his own. This would have been Family Business, and his entire extended family would have gone with him. There’d have been his Bubbeh, his Grandmother, who saw donkeys not so much as transport as pot-roast - many a time in the old days had they had to sacrifice a donkey or two to feed the kids when things got a bit iffy in the Wilderness and they couldn’t face any more Manna. “Not Kosher, such a donkey, but in times of famine - feh! who cares!” She’d have spent hours poking the poor beast in the brisket, checking for quality, mumbling recipes and wondering if the Nazareth Tescos were giving extra loyalty points on carrots and onions. His mother would also have come along - in her younger unmarried days she’d been on a couple of dates with the donkey-salesman; she might even have married him if she thought he could have held down a proper job, but by now she knew him for what he was; she didn’t take any nonsense from him then, and wasn’t going to now. He stood no chance, poor sod.

There’d have been Poppa, tagging reluctantly along behind her, under orders. He was a shepherd by trade, and thus knew all there was to know about donkeys. “Neh, our lad - tha don’t want yon ass - clapped out, is yon ass - when tha’s been around beasts and sooch so long as I ‘ave tha knows a booggered ass when tha sees un!” His sister, Joseph’s Aunt Sadie, would be there as of right, to give him moral support, “so who’d vant a donkey thet colour already - it von’t go mit anytink” along with her husband Leonard, who had once seriously considered buying the Galilee Fatted Calf Ribs-U-Like franchise in partnership with his brother Morrie (before Morrie’s wife Miriam put the mockers on the deal by blowing the money on a new swimming pool) and was thus considered by all to be an expert both in matters of commerce and of livestock.

Mary’s family would also have expected to be consulted. All of ‘em. They’d have turned up in droves. Her mother, for starters, who didn’t for one moment fall for all that Angel-of-the-Lord folderol and reckoned that that schnorrer Joseph had been in pre-marital legover mode with her little girl; and while she was resigned to the realities, (after weeks of hysterics, meaningful silences, threatened suicides, and enough emotional blackmail to garner her a stock of prime scoring-points which would last her the rest of her days) she still felt that a mere carpenter and his family were beneath her. After all - her Uncle Solly may-his-dear-soul-rest-in-peace had been an Articled Scribe and a sidesman at the local synagogue, so they were Professional People, not In Trade like those common Carpenters. Consequently, she was going to contradict on principle every utterance, and countermand every decision, especially those of Joseph’s mother, who she both hated (for bringing her daughter’s seducer into the world) and was jealous of (because she’d had to shell out fortunes to some cowboy Lebanese builders for her new kitchen, whereas Joseph had built his mother a far more stylish one the following month for free.) She’d have also roped in her smartass brother, Uncle Hymie the fixer, who had a friend whose cousin knew a bloke whose wife’s uncle’s boss used to drink with a chap who was knocking off this girl who worked as a part time abacus operator for an outfit whose Sales Manager played golf with the Chief Executive of the firm that was the market leader, donkeywise, (then called Asses’R’Us but now known as Virgin Beasts of Burden, although it’s unclear whether or not this is in honour of the Madonna) and who could almost certainly “get wholesale if thet putz of a son-in-law of mine can vait a couple veeks....”

And so on. What with all this internecine interference, debate, argument, heated discussion and open warfare, allowing time for the asking price to have been chiselled down, sestercius by agonising sestercius, and allowing for time out during the negotiations to ‘let that momser of an ass-peddler sweat,’ it would have taken for ever to buy that beast! Before shekels and donkey changed hands the bloody animal would have died of old age, Mary would have been on HRT, and Jesus would have been shaving and going out with girls. But back to the play.

The story proceeded as per; King Herod was borne on, proudly ensconced on his throne, surrounded by his attendants (and carrying for some unexplained reason what looked like a dish of sprouts); the Nazareans were ordered to Bethlehem; the Three Kings were introduced; (and I betcha Robbie’s is the only primary school within 50 miles of the metropolis, who when faced with the need for a kid to play an African potentate, couldn’t find an ethnically suitable candidate and had to make do with a white one with a Bedfordshire accent. “Ay’m Melchier an’ Ay come from Afrik’er wiv gold ferder noo King” as opposed to “Ah’m Melchior, and Ah komm from Effreekah wid’ de Gold for de niew Kung”).

It was at this point that things started to get seeeriously surreal.

While I’m happy to accept the theory that the Welsh are the Lost Tribe of Israel, I’ve hunted through the King James Bible (the only one that I find readable; all the modern translations sound like they were cobbled together by the same linguistic hooligan who churned out the Customs & Excise guide to VAT) and can’t find, in the Nativity story or anywhere else, mention of a little Welsh girl called Megan. Or for that matter, her camel, known to his intimates (the staff and pupils of Lark Rise School) as Meredith. But maybe Lark Rise School is using a later interpretation of the Holy Scriptures than I have access to, so let’s not carp or cavil. Either way - these two voyagers from the Valleys seemed to have become a pivotal part of the Nativity Story.
Young Megan was a pretty child, sort of a cross between Shirley Temple and Alice in Wonderland, with a pleasant voice, and a good delivery. No gabbling here. And (her relevance to the storyline apart) no controversy, either - it was Meredith the Camel that was remarkable, not Megan.

Whoever made Meredith’s costume must have once heard someone describe a camel, but had patently never seen one. Or even a picture of one. Because, given acres of vaguely camel-coloured fabric and hours of painstaking stitchery, when the end product emerged, it didn’t turn out as a camel at all. It was a Brontosaurus. And as if this wasn’t hilarious enough, design dictated that it should be a two-seater Brontosaurus, in the manner of a pantomime horse; they’d cast a kid at each end, as it were. The trouble was that the drivers of this dun dinosaur had developed a major communications problem. Somehow the Back Legs didn’t seem to be interfacing with the Front Legs, and each end was acting independently of the other. So the hapless creature was staggering around the stage like it was pissed out of its pea-sized brain, audibly arguing with itself, and the puzzled audience was presented not with an indigenous and benignly stupid camel that the traditional story might reasonably have demanded, but with a ratarsed Welsh Brontosaurus with Attitude.

If this wasn’t bad enough, the beast’s head, due to a minor design fault, kept coming unput, falling forwards and closing up the small but vital spyhole in the creature’s neck; with the result that Front Legs couldn’t see where he was going; worse, his arms were hidden and restrained inside his costume and he had nothing to push his drooping bonce back up with; the bodily contortions he essayed in order to achieve some form of comfortable stasis headwise had to be seen to be believed. Meanwhile Back Legs, who was bent double, in the dark, and with such a view as he enjoyed limited by and to the bum belonging to Front Legs, not a vista normally reckoned to enhance one’s sense of direction, had by now no idea at all where he was at. His solution to this disorientation problem was to follow exactly what Front Legs was doing, or rather what he guessed Front Legs was doing; which would have been fine, except that his guesses weren’t always accurate, (unsurprisingly, considering Front Leg’s impromptu unrehearsed head-straightening convolutions) and his reactions weren’t exactly fast, so it was a bit like one of those satellite phone calls to New Zealand or wherever where there is both interference on the line and a time delay between transmission and reception; so that the Party of the First Part finds the Party of the Second Part answering the question before last, and vice versa, and if they’re going to make any sense at all out of the proceedings they both have to remember what happened ten minutes ago, assuming they heard it correctly in the first place what with the static. Tricky.

Anyway - Megan and Meredith did their statutory little song-and-dance number; I presume it was meant to be in unison, or at least in time, but what with one thing and another it came out as a sort of disharmonious trinity, with each participant employing a different beat and a different script. I’ve never seen anything quite so funny in my life. I hope it was intentional.

Anyhow - back to the story. Their dancing done, M and M were then firmly put in their place by the Reigning Classes when they mooted a joint Star-Following expedition, and so opted to Follow the aforesaid Heavenly Body off their own bats.

Who (the bats, I mean) bring us neatly to the next bit. Night. O celebrated and eponymous Night. Silent same; Holy same. That Night. The Night the Shepherds Washed Their Socks by. They (the shepherds) were All Seated On The Ground as the song and the script dictates; the Star had conveniently stopped zooming around the firmament so that everybody could stop Following it and get some much-needed kip in, the Angel of the Lord Came Down, pulled rank, and woke everybody up again, and Glory Shone Around for a bit. These things are traditional, they tell me. Which presumably means that by next year Lord Protector Blair and his New Meddle Army will have banned them outright. New Labour, New Liturgy. God rest ye merry, Mandelson.

Meanwhile Megan was sleeping with her camelosaurus, (funny people, the Welsh) the three kings were sleeping with each other, (Orientals - nuff said) Mary was sleeping with her baby, Joseph presumably got lucky with the donkey, and we were presented with A Tableau.

Which was obviously designed, or at least intended, to represent the aforementioned Night. But what I couldn’t work out, apart from the granting of some gainful employment to some of the kids that weren’t otherwise engaged in the drama, was why they needed it, for it had absolutely no relevance to the story. It was clearly aimed to represent a forest (the Judaean desert is after all renowned worldwide for its lush forestry) so a dozen or so kids came in dressed up as trees, which involved a certain amount of foliage draped round their persons, footwear like oversized wellies covered in bark, and outstretched arms. Once they’d got set up, there appeared divers others, kitted out as badgers, foxes, owls, rabbits, bats, deer, various assorted rodents, and other typically indigenous Levantine nocturnal fauna. It looked more like a wood somewhere vaguely Dorking way, or a traditionally-minded Shakespearean Director’s conception of the Forest of Arden, than an Eastern Mediterranean oasis. Maybe we’ve swopped plays in mid stream, I thought. Maybe Titania, Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, Bottom, Snout, Quince & Co. are going to come on any minute and do their thing. But no such luck. Or such Puck. This wasn’t Midsummer Night, but Silent Ditto.

So, moving right along, the next participants to appear were a trio of Burglars. I’d been rather waiting for them, because as I said earlier, one was played by my grandson Robbie, who was only on stage for ten seconds, but let me tell you - he was brilliant. Stole the show, he did. definitely deserves an Oscar, the lad..... [ continues interminably in Proud Grandfather mode until everybody’s eyes glaze over...........] How could one tell that they were burglars? They wore masks, that’s how. Although not the statutory striped jerseys and the sacks marked ‘SWAG’, unfortunately. Fire the director, say I, and blame this significant departure from tradition on the Government’s education cuts. Neither did they commit any noticeable burgling; they were just there, it seemed, as typical ‘creatures of the night,’ along with the badgers etcetera. For all the relevance they had to the proceedings, the scriptwriters might as well have slung a few rapists, serial killers and parkers on double yellow lines into the melting-pot (although as I’m not sure of the correct symbolic uniform for any of these offenders, for all I know they may well have done.) Anyway - they all stood there for a minute or so being a Night, and then called it a night and legged it into the wings. The lights came up, and Lo! Morning has Broken. Christmas Day in the Morning, even. Time for The Presents.

Cut to the Stable. Joseph’s busy grooming the donkey. (Another kid-each-end job this, but better behaved and better co-ordinated than the camel.) Mary’s busy giving the baby Jesus a gobful of - well, she should have been, but this particular BVM couldn’t be more than about nine years old, and hadn’t grown any yet, so use your imagination. Jesus looks singularly unconcerned at this lack of mammary nourishment, but then why should he care - he’s a plastic dolly.

The Three Kings tip up. Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh are formally transferred to their new owners. Mary thanks them profusely, but the look on her face says “This is all well and good, but I’d far rather have a couple of Baby-Gros and some Pampers.” Enter the shepherds, stage right. Their gifts consist of a carpet (secondhand), a coat (Oxfam) and a lamb (newborn). Which presumably will need bottle-feeding shortly, along with the baby. Let’s hope somebody pitches up soon with the bottle, some formula, some Milton, and a few spare teats.

Megan arrives, with Meredith staggering along amiably drunk in her wake. “What have I, a poor orphan, got that I can give the Newborn King” she asks, half to herself, half to us. Sure and what indeed? the Irish couple in the back row are thinking. The brontosaurus, who’s seen the script, desperately tries to look invisible. And fails, miserably. It’s the long trek back to Nazareth for you, boyo.

Megan, having finally got shot of her familiar, turns into Goody-Twoshoes. And turns to the audience.

“And what would You give the Baby Jesus”, she trills.

This is the cue for the rest of the school to file up onto the stage, each bearing his or her gift (or rather a pictorial representation of same - for practical reasons the real things might have been a tad awkward to handle.)

“I’ll give him my rabbits.”
“I’ll give him my hamster.
“I’ll give him some goldfish.”
“He’d love my pony.”
“I’ve got a white rat.”
“Here’s my dog?
“My cat’s just had kittens”
“How about a jerbil or nine..............”

and so on etcetera, through about thirty of the little dears, each with his own particular species. You’ll notice that none of them was parting with anything significant, like a Spice Girls poster or a Nintendo game.

You should remember, this is a fairly small stable. Ensconced in it by now are two new parents, one new baby, three kings, their attendants, a coachload of shepherds with (presumably) their flocks; thirty-odd schoolchildren from 2000 years in the future, a two-part donkey, a lamb, a litter of kittens, a prodigious quantity of other assorted household pets and farm animals of all shapes and sizes, a pony, the cow whose nice peaceful pad this was before it got hijacked and turned into a refugee camp; the Innkeeper, who’s popped in to see what all the noise is about, his family, who have no intention of missing out on anything, a few chickens, Megan the Cambrian Pollyanna, a brontosaurus from Tiger Bay with a drink problem, two turtle-doves, and a Partridge in a pear tree. It must have been quite a party.

That was about it, really. They all took their bows, we applauded vociferously, an ovation which they all truly deserved, and we went home. An entertainment that I wouldn’t have missed for the world. I haven’t laughed so much in years. And if this has sounded like I’m knocking what must have taken considerable dedication, time and planning, just to be clever-clever, I’m not. I loved every minute of it.

It was only later that I got to thinking (the Theatre does this to me - I get lost in the magic and start confusing it with reality) of what poor old Joe might have said to his wife when everybody had left. and he’d finished mucking out the stable and feeding the livestock.
“Listen, darlin. By you this little bugger may be a king, but that don’t mean we’ve won the Lottery an’ we’re made a’ money. ‘Erod’s already nicked the gold - sent ‘is enforcer round afore you can say knife, ‘e did. Name of Gordon. Weaselly little shit. Unearned income, ‘e said. Taxed at 100 pee in the Shekel, innit. Payin’ for a Carin’ Society or some such bollocks. Sumberdy, probly that foreign bird, ‘as ‘alf-inched yer noo perfume; the bloody donkey’s eaten the Myrrh, give itself a narsty case of the squits, we’ve got enough bleedin’ livestock to start a zoo, ‘cep we can’t afford to feed the buggers, let alone find the money for the soddin’ vet’s bills or to get ‘em all back ‘ome, and most of the sods ain’t even edible in emergencies. The goldfishes’ polythene bag’s leakin all over the poxy gerbils, the rabbits are at it already, the cow’s drivin’ itself mad cause it reckons it’s got BSE, and the camel’s got the ‘ump, got ‘imself pissed as a fart and is doin’ dinosaur impressions. An’ I’m fed up to the back teef wiv shovellin’ shit. So do us a favour, willya. Next time you run inter an angel, keep yer bleedin’ legs shut, there ‘s a good girl!
Mindjew - one bitter good news - that newspaper geezer. Murdoch? Maxwell? Summink like that. Matthew, thassit. Sed ‘e might call round termorrer. Might buy our story, ‘e sez. The Noo Testament, ‘e reckons ‘e works for. Neverrerdovit. Must be one of them arty-farty Sundy papers..................

2008-11-21T01:48:00.000-08:00

Marketing Revisited

There is, out there, a whole Industry-full of Marketing Zombies who have programmed into their victims the assumption that the rest of the population (you and me, folks) are gibbering morons, totally incapable of thinking for themselves, and that everything and anything, if they are to stand any chance at all of flogging it to us. has to be served as a pre-digested pap. Add to this a succession of Governmental nannies who are determined to legislate all the risk out of everything for everybody, and the simplest transaction ends up wrapped in more verbiage than a VAT guide, and festooned with more caveats than a Trade Union policy document.

Take packaging. Brushing aside the more obvious annoyances in that (for instance) if you have something that needs a battery, you won’t be able to buy a pack of less than two, but if it takes two, or worse, four, you’ll find that in that size they only come in threes. There’s also the physical problem, in that if the movers and shakers in the packaging industry really had our interests at heart, they’d design their product so that we don’t need a JCB to force our way into it.

But why should they address these genuine annoyances, when they’re on a far more vital mission. The main function of packaging is not to protect the product, or even, as often appears, to drive the consumer doolally. It is to act as the carrier of a comprehensive Manufacturers Cover-Your-Arse document, usually including:

· A list of ingredients (often, and rightly, a legal requirement, but you’d need to be a Regius Professor of Chemistry to grasp the finer (and thus the more salient) points.) And why can’t they call water “water” rather than the bland faux-impressive “aqua”?

· A chart, in the case of comestibles, giving details of calories and stuff (ditto Professor – but Physics.)

· Various disclaimers covering recycled materials. ‘All our packaging is made from secondhand loo paper’ ‘This can was made from replenishable trees.’ ‘Our bottles are 100% biodegradable.’

· More disclaimers, mostly concerning animal testing, and touching on Whales, Dolphins and other denizens of the deep perceived to be either cute or intelligent. And Pandas, for some reason. But if Medical Research found a use for, say, cockroaches, you wouldn’t hear a peep out of the Animal Rights nutters. Maybe I ought to set up a Leech Liberation Fund. Bloodsuckers Anonymous.

· Genetic purity or the lack of same. But isn’t the familiar hybrid Tomato a genetically modified food?

· Peanuts. (I’ve forgotten – am I supposed to be for or against peanuts?)

· Disposal of the used product and/or packaging. If it’s any shape other than flat, and any part of it is made of metal, don’t sling it on the fire. If it’s shaped like a pineapple and made of metal, just pull the little pin out. That’ll dispose of it nicely. And of course eschewing the local Bottle Bank, or worse, putting the wrong colour bottles into the wrong compartment thereof, is a black cap long drop sharp jerk and into the quicklime job.

· A use-by date (understandable for perishable foods, but can somebody out there tell me why I need a use-by date on a bottle of blue-black ink or a packet of aspirin?)

· A hot line, in case you have a problem. And if you try to ring it, you sure will have a problem. It’ll take you three hours to get through while your call is held in a queue and some snotty voice reminds you of that fact every thirty seconds whilst begging you not to hang up because they value your custom; half-an-hour punching digits, star buttons and hashes into your handset at the behest of a disembodied vaguely female recording; and then you’ll then be kept hanging on at a premium rate quid-a-minute listening to the most expensive and least accomplished performance of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik you’ve ever heard, while the tracey on the other end of the phone files her nails and rabbits to her girlfriend, before informing you that she can’t possibly help you with your problem, no matter what it is, and that you should ring Head Office in Manchester (and thus go through the whole rigmarole again.) Enjoy.

· Pronouncements from Brussels on the subject of how bad for you the product you’re buying is. Does being admonished with every packet that Smoking Is A Short Cut To Hell really inhibit the sale of one single solitary fag? Of course it doesn’t!

· And last but not least, a List Of Instructions. In seven languages, more often than not.

I can understand anyone needing a manual to operate a computer, or a video, or a Hi-fi system – I occasionally need one myself, which is why I get so infuriated when I find that the aide-toi for the appliance in question has been written by a robot, and a Japanese robot, at that, and thus is totally incomprehensible. One knows what each individual word ought to mean, but they don’t seem to be strung together in any recognisable pattern.

But forget the techno-goodies for a moment. Let’s take the most simple household products. In fact, let’s do just that. I’ll go round the house and pick a few real examples at random. Bear with me.

Right. Aerosol can of Sainsbury’s Shaving Foam. Regular, if that makes any difference. ‘Directions’, it says on the back.

‘Wash face and leave skin wet.’ Believe it or not, girls, us blokes just don’t need to be told that a shave is more effective and more comfortable if one starts with a wet phizog.

‘Shake can before use’. Valid enough, except can you honestly say that you know anybody who doesn’t shake an aerosol before pressing the tit?

‘Hold container upright’. Puhleeeze!

‘Press button gently to release a small amount of foam onto fingertips’ They’re slipping up, here. They forgot to tell us to locate said fingertips (presumably those attached to the hand that isn’t grimly holding the container upright as per) within foam-squirting distance of the nozzle. You could be in trouble, here. So could the cat, if he’s anything like mine – rubbing himself around my ankles when I’m shaving of a morning.

‘Smooth evenly onto face’ (they obviously haven’t seen my face – evenly is impossible) ’and shave.’ I’m surprised that they don’t tell me at this point to be sure and use a blade rather than an electric razor.

Rinse with water. As I tend not to keep the gin in the bathroom, water is exactly what I normally use for rinsing purposes. Am I alone in this?

Example 2. The other extreme. A thing of Araldite Rapid. Here, and rightly, they give simple advice re children, skin, eyes, and other damageable and non-replaceable elements. So far, so good, although they don’t actually warn you against spreading the stuff on the loo seat.

But then they go into orbit.

WARNING. Reaction product. Bisphenol A (epichlorhydrin); epoxy resin (number average molecular weight s700. 1, 4-butanedial diglycidyl ether N(3-dimethylaminopropy)0-1, 3-propylenediamine. (The Author will not be held responsible for any errors or omissions in the above transcript.)

Warning? Who are they warning? And against what? Like the poor old judge on the wrong end of F.E. Smith’s celebrated witticism, I’m none the wiser. (….but far better informed, m’lud….) But it sounds all high-tech and impressive. And it’s a well-known fact that gloop with an average molecular weight of s700 is inclined to be a bit iffy. Add a dollop of that hooligan 3-propylenediamine to the stew, and you could be in deep doodoo.

Example 3: A box of cotton buds. “Never insert into inner ear or nose.” But what else does anyone buy the buggers for? They might as well put a warning on a Black and Decker – “Do not use for de-waxing lugholes.”

Example 4: A bar of NEW Mint Aero. (Question – is it still “NEW” when it’s past its sell-by date?) The usual parade of e-numbers, and a list of chemicals which sound exactly the same to me as those used in the Araldite. A note from the ever-caring Nestle Consumer Services Department to inform us that ‘they welcome comments or questions,’ and a PO box number to address same to. At least you don’t have to ring the sods up. And then, proudly emblazoned in a fancy border. “The light minty bubbles are part of Nestle’s proud Chocolate Heritage”.

Wot? Come again? Shall we dissect and discuss? The ‘light minty bubbles’ are, by and large, air. This tends to be the norm, with bubbles. The substance surrounding and thus containing said air is green, not chocolate. It sure is minty, though. The outer carapace of this confection is chocolate, but they don’t mention that component – so can we presume that it isn’t ‘part of Nestle’s proud Chocolate Heritage’?

So have I gotta question for you, Nestle Consumer Services! Is this chockie Grade 1 listed, or what ? May I eat (sorry – ‘consume’ – let’s get the jargon right) it without ending up with an English Heritage halberd up my backside? Should I throw it open to the public on alternate summer Saturday afternoons? Give us a clue. And give us a break – do you really think that anybody falls for such prolix bullshit?

Even the stalwart jar of Marmite is guilty. “Spread thinly on toast,” it says on the back. Surely – anybody who didn’t know that, (Americans, notably) wouldn’t be buying the stuff anyway. “Shucks, Mizz Ellie – Ah jest done gotten me dis heyah thanga Marmite. Muddah come all de way from LunnonEngerlayund. You de one wid de eddicashun an de glayusses – y’all look on de back dere and tellus what it foah.”

I also loved the example quoted in (I think) the Sunday Times, which concerned a chap who had bought a deodorant stick. The instructions thereon read:

“Remove lid, and holding container firmly, push up bottom”

To my mind, this raises several questions:

1 Are you supposed to (a) leave it in situ, or (b) will a momentary application suffice?

2 If (a) , how do you perform natural bodily functions (or for that matter, arcane sexual practices?)

3 Do you need to buy a new stick every day, or

4 Can you just take the old one out and wash it?

5 If (3) how do you tell when the deodorant has run out ? Or must you wait for your best friend to tell you?

6 Does it come in different sizes?

7 Does it work for household pets?

8 Should one buy a separate stick for armpits?

Stop Press: My TV is on in the background as I write, and I’ve just heard a woman, vaguely famous, from her accent transatlantic, but not unnattractive for all that, extolling the virtues of [trying to flog] some nostrum, no doubt expensive, which is, she tells us, shit-hot at de-wrinkling ladies of a certain age. Not that she put it quite like that. She described this cosmetic Philosopher’s Stone as being, and I quote, “A Fresh Sensation in Moisturising Power.”

Madam – please – I beg of you - learn to speak English. Because You’re Worth It.

2008-11-08T03:26:00.000-08:00

Back to basics

It’s Uncle Phil’s morning for a whinge. It’s my turn. I’ve earned it, I deserve it, and nobody ain’t going to stop me. So there.

It’s not going to be my usual grumpyoldbugger moan about control-freak politicans, council jobsworths, the growing feeling that we’re virtually being forced to live in a sort of open prison, anarchic amoral youth, or any of the other petty annoyances I tend to get my hair off about.

It’s not even really going to be about books, except as ballast.

The problem is, you see, that a couple of days ago I did my back in. It’s not a new phenomenon; I’ve done it before many times; after nearly 40 years in the antique trade, heaving bloody great lumps of furniture and pianos and such in and out of houses, vans and shops, it’s more of a chronic condition, which most of the time I can live with. But sometimes it seriously flares up, and when it does, it throws my life into tedious limbo. Not only that, it’s bloody painful, costs me a fortune in osteopaths and ibuprofen, and buggers up my love life.

A friend of mine, who's into these things, once told me that the Orientals have the best cure. Three little Japanese virgins tippy-toeing up and down my spine in their bare feet would sort the problem out nicely. They said.

And there’s the rub. Where do you find three young Japanese virgins in Coventry? (Or three young virgins of any nationality, come to that? )

Meanwhile, we’ve got about two dozen crates of books, all nicely catalogued and photographed, ready to go over to the warehouse to be shelved, and I can’t lift the buggers.

And we’re running out of space in our little house.

I’ve got a carload of fresh stock to unload ready for processing, and nowhere to put it even if I could lift it out of the car, which I cant, the garden’s a tip, it takes me half-an-hour to crawl up- or down- stairs, and Susie’s giving me grief bigtime because she can’t do the housework for boxes, heaps and piles of assorted literature.

Maybe I should blame my parents – if they’d had me later I’d have been younger, and better able to cope. But as Marvell put it:

At my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near……….

Maybe he had a bad back, too.

2008-11-08T03:07:00.000-08:00

Pressing the right buttons

I get worse, in my old age.

The phone rings, right – I’m packing up some books, and at the same time trying to watch the news out of the corner of my eye, so I need to turn the volume down before I answer it.

Point TV thingy at TV, press button. No result. Realise I’d picked up mobile phone instead of TV thingy. Think – Silly old Sod! Put down mobile. Pick up thingy. Press button as before. No result, as before. Realise I’m holding pocket calculator. Throw same at wall, with torrent of fluent Anglo-Saxon commentary.

Meanwhile, phone has stopped ringing.

Dial 1471. Get strange noise. Realise I’m holding mobile instead of landline phone.

Screw’em. I didn’t want to speak to ‘em anyway. Whoever it was.

Some days one just shouldn’t get outta bed.

2008-11-07T00:08:00.000-08:00

All That Glisters

While in my local charity shop some weeks ago, looking at such incunabula and 16th and 17th century works as they’d had in that week, I chanced upon a volume in a somewhat garish dust wrapper, emblazoned upon the front of which was a banner bearing the rubric “World’s Number One Best Seller.”

‘Well’, I reasoned – ‘This ought to be a good little earner’ – if it’s that good, everybody will want one’.

So I bought the volume, and then chased around all the other charity shops in the area, and a couple of car boots for good measure, thus managing to acquire another 27 copies. Fair enough, some of them were so-called “Book Club” editions, but for a World’s Number One Best Seller this shouldn’t matter too much, I’d have thought. People like clubs. It’s a security thing.

I duly prepared my new purchases for listing online, with my usual accurate and informative descriptions, pitching the prices fairly high to both create and control demand, and carefully photographed each one – no ‘stock’ photos for me, thank you – then uploaded both words and images, and waited for the orders to roll in.

But, do you know – I haven’t sold a single one. Something, somewhere is very wrong, as my so-called ‘best sellers’ have turned out in fact to be non-sellers.

Worse, I have since tried to read the book – I say ‘tried’ because I found it unreadable – a mere concatenation of scenes involving imaginative and potentially harmful sexual permutations, egregious violence, and shopping, with various plugs for overpriced branded products.

My question is – who can I sue?

The website for not doing their job properly and selling my books in the prescribed manner?
The publishers, for misleading point-of-sale advertising?
The charity shop, under the Trades Descriptions Act?
The author, for turning out such rubbish? or
The local Trading Standards department, for allowing such blatant chicanery?

[later]

All is not lost, my friends. I’ve just had an email from a very nice man in farthest Nigeria, offering to buy all my books, offering to pay me for express shipping, and happy to send me an international money order, even trusting me to send him any change after having worked out the shipping cost.

Herald of the morn.

2008-10-22T07:07:00.000-07:00

So it's the early bird that catches the worm, right?

So they try to tell us. But the logical projection of this pious taradiddle makes a complete nonsense, so any metaphorical inference drawn from it is quite valueless. It's not Holy Writ, just blatant anthropomorphism hard-sold as a basic truth by a dour Puritan minority as a step up to that moral high ground they seem to crave as their right. while denying it to the rest of us foolish virgins. But the control freaks have got it wrong. Logic module malfunction. Abort. Cancel. Retry.

After all, what about the early worm ? Leaping virtuously out of bed at the crack, full of rich nourishing compost and good intentions, didn't exactly do that poor creature any favours, did it. Had it stayed in its comfortable pit of a morning like a sensible worm oughter, idly dozing, making slithery love to its comely wormwife, or as is often the way with hermaphroditic wrigglies, itself, (hence, I suppose, the proliferation of blindworms,) hacking into the wormish equivalent of Earl Grey and Weetypops, and snuggling under its loamy duvet doing its lazy vermiform thing, instead of dancing shamelessly about on the lawn wiggling its bum in virtuoso linguine impressions and generally showing out to passing fowls, it wouldn't have ended up as a blackbird's brekkie.

If you're a worm, matitudinal misjudgment can seriously endanger your health. And blunt your sense of humus something permanent, I shouldn't wonder. Tardiness should be next to Godliness, in Wormworld. As the vermicular versifier, Williworm Wormsworth, has it:

Early to rise, and early to bed
makes a worm healthy and wealthy and dead.

So before you set the alarm tonight, undress, turn around, and take a good look at yourself in the mirror. Any evidence of feathers, bills or talons, and you're onto a hot date with Aurora. 4AM will do nicely. And don't activate the snooze button, Woody. Get up, get out there and get the vocals going full blast. It's all you're good for, let's face it.

But otherwise, my old son, if you're feather-free, downless as an egg rather than descended from one, not a beak to see you through the week, you ain't a Woodpecker, you're a Worm.

So sling the timepiece out of the window, take the phone off the hook, snuggle up, and allow yourself a nice long lie-in. You'll feel better for it, I promise. And when, overcome by exhaustion due to lack of sleep and all that singing on an empty stomach, the early bird falls off his perch slap bang onto your front doorstep, that's the time to rise and shine. Bye-bye Blackbird, hello Brunch. That's the watchword, wormwise. While birds have their set of laws, worms must live under a completely different code. And not one concocted for them "for their own good" by nest-featherers masquerading as do-gooders.

What say you to a piece of beef and mustard?.

2008-10-22T06:50:00.000-07:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a food manufacturer in possession of a hot new line must be in want of a fresh supply of marketing ideas.

Which is why, sooner or later, he’ll bring it out in Tandoori flavour.

If you don’t believe me, take a stroll round your local superstore. You’ll see Tandoori Pizza, Tandoori flavour Pasta sauce, Tandoori sausages, All-American Tandoori flavor [sic] potato skins, Tandoori style Peking duck, (honest – I’ve seen it, packaged with pancakes and ‘genuine’ spring onions,) Tandoori kebabs, complete with pitta bread doing nan impressions, racks of Tandoori ribs, a whole raft of Tandoori-flavoured nibbles, and so on etcetera.

Even the humble takeaway chicken sandwich can’t escape the statutory tandoorification. And more often than not it comes accompanied by the fashionable but markedly non-Indian ‘oven-roast’ (how else do you do it?) vegetables. With a dollop of fromage frais atop and wrapped in a tortilla. (Whatever happened to Hovis?) Ethnically confusing, but delicious.

So - you name it, and with the possible exceptions of sushi, which really would be a culinary paradox; jellied eels, which really would be revolting; and bagels, which might invoke the attentions of the Race Relations Board, some bright spark, with an insouciant disregard for theoretical ethnic pedigrees, will have smothered it in the spices of the Orient and flogged it to Tescos. Harry Ramsdens are probably road-testing Tandoori cod’n’chips as we speak, (and what are mushy peas, if not dhal with a Yorkshire accent,) I’m expecting Tandoori Yoghurt any minute, Tandoori Ripple is only a matter of time, and even that nice Mr Kipling has been spotted lurking around the Indian spice shops in Tooting High Street. And he ain’t about to make cinnamon buns.

Of course, it’s not just a Tandoori thing. Gastronomic cross-breeding has become part of our way of life. You can buy almost any ethnic foodstuff you like, and quite a few of our indigenous dishes, dressed up in the national colours of almost every other cuisine or discipline you can think of. Add to all this the considerable influence that fad, fashion, fancy and foodies have had on the range of comestibles on offer in our shops and restaurants, and almost anything becomes possible.

So – my highly-tuned nose having sniffed out a gap in the market, I feel a caff coming on. I’m going to call it “Uncle Phil’s Multicultural Cuisine-u-like” or something equally snappy. Here are some sample menus:

Breakfast:
Swiss muesli, with organic Greek goats milk and genuine Canadian Maple syrup. (Hoi-sin sauce optional).

Sweet ‘n’ sour Kipper blinis

Eggs various, served with piri-piri , garlic butter, satay sauce, or tiramisu

Lunch

Pizza Cosmopolitana, either Deep Pan or Thin ‘n’ Crispy ( sorry folks – I don’t know the Italian for either of these terms) from a build-it-yourself smorgasbord groaning with hundreds of delicious ‘morning-fresh’ fillings and flavourings, including deep-fried seaweed, rollmops, lemongrass, whelks, vintage Marmite, bacalhao, crystallised pineapple, ackee, gravad lax, sauerkraut, pemmican, smoked haddock (non-dyed, naturlich ), Mortadella (no, sorry – that’s Italian – we can’t allow that), Thai-style Cumberland sausage, California raisins marinaded in chilli and garlic, goose khorma, quails eggs in ginger & spring onion, aromatic crispy saltbeef, barbecued grapefruit segments, Cajun fricasseed whitebait, prune and pine nut tempura, strawberry raitha, anchovy and blackcurrant pesto, quenelles of goat’s thigh topped with feta cheese, sun-dried ostrich steaklets, squid and pistachio passata, kiwi fruit & wasabi coulis, shiitake mushrooms in balsamic vinegar, baby beetroot in brandy, and of course that old favourite, tandoori gefillte fish

Dinner
Sorry – somehow I don’t feel up to doing dinner. If you’re still hungry please avail yourselves of the leftovers from lunch. On the House.

Failing that, I suppose I could always take the battle to the enemy and open a Mexican takeaway in Beijing. “You likee tly unworthy tortirra ? Rotsa derricious orfentic firrings. Rancashire Hotpot, Gleek Kreftiko with flesh Coliander, Tandooli……………..?”

A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles

2008-10-22T01:18:00.000-07:00

I can’t begin to tell you tell you how relieved I am. It’s as if a lifetime’s burden has been lifted from my aching shoulders by an uncharacteristically benevolent angel. It’s as if several billion prime brain cells have been released from decades of worry duty and can be recycled into concerning themselves with things pleasant, like sex, or food, or Lesley Garrett; or can be sent as cannon fodder up to the front line next time I go on a bender. It’s as if my personal Road to Damascus has instantaneously sprouted high-tech twenty-first century halogen street-lighting.

But maybe I’d better explain.

For many years now, I’ve kept a Commonplace Book. Well – maybe ‘book’ is slightly too precise a term – what I have is a hotchpotch of ill-assorted bits of paper, scrawled with notes and filed all over the place; yellowing photcopies; articles excised from newspapers and mags; several scruffy notebooks that contain not only literary nuggets, but everything from recipes to out-of-date phone numbers for people I can’t remember ever having met, to details of the day’s take for an Antique Fair I did in Builth Wells in 1983; a library full of books with grubby, crumpled, fading Post-it notes doing duty as bookmarks; and a vague but rapidly deteriorating idea as to where I can lay my hands on some juicy morsel of literary merit that first tickled my fancy in 1954 or thereabouts.

So a couple of weeks ago I decided that the time had come for a major rationalisation programme. I’d enter the whole bang shoot onto my computer, neatly filed, referenced and cross-indexed. Tidiness is all.

A major task, this, but I’m getting there. Another six months should do it. No sweat, apart from a minor case of keyboard wrist and a strong possibility of terminal eyestrain. I’m even learning to read my own handwriting, a skill which has defeated me since I was five years old. And O the joy of re-discovering little gems that haven’t seen the light of day since I first read them in my teens, and have been misquoting from memory ever since.

But it wasn’t until I came across (after a good twenty years lying fallow at the bottom of a cardboard box) a parody of Pride and Prejudice written in the style of Dylan Thomas (by a comic genius called Stanley Sharpless), that it hit me. Bingo!

I’m never, ever, ever again going to have to force myself to attempt Jane Austen!

I have her Complete Works sitting on my bookshelf. Well, you do, don’t you. They’ve been there for years, glowering guilt at me from every virgin spine. And every so often, in a flush of misguided virtue, I’ve taken down P&P (I always start with P&P, for some reason) and tried to sneak into it. I can quote you the first sentence off by heart, but I don’t think I’ve ever got past the second page. Because frankly, the woman is plain bloody boring. It’s her prissy, decaffeinated, anaemic style that induces chronic ennui, not the stories per se, which aren’t bad - after all, they work beautifully on television or on film – but by God it’s dull stuff to read. And having managed without for sixty years, I suddenly realised that I don’t need to make the attempt any more. Yippeeee!

But it gets better, because of course the tedium quotient doesn’t only apply to St Jane. She’s just the tip of the wossname. For starters, I can dump dismal Dickens, piecemeal. Another example of the camera being mightier than the pen. If I feel a Dickens coming on I’ll rent a video of Oliver – at least the tunes are good. I can bin a busload of boring bloody Brontes. I can slap ‘Not Wanted on Voyage’ labels onto all twelve turgid volumes of Gibbon’s so-called masterpiece. I can consign Carlyle to deserved oblivion. I can trash great screeds of Milton – any good book of quotations will serve to supply a compilation album of the best bits – Milt’s Greatest Hits, as it were. I can leave Bunyan’s Pilgrim to Progress unaided and unread. I can forswear Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, Sir Walter-Scott-Fitzgerald, all those interminable Russian novels where everybody has at least three different sets of names and you have to draw up a genealogical flowchart as you go along so as to remember who’s doing what to whom, and why. I can quit trying to struggle through Garcia Lorca. Or Ibsen. Or Goethe. I can pare five centuries of French soi-disant literature down to Candide and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. And no – I’m not forgetting Proust. You can stuff Proust. Il pouvait ennuyer pour La France.

I can even (O Heresy ! O Blasphemy !) conveniently forget my self-imposed annual dose of The Faerie Queene.

It was Arnold Bennett who said something to the effect that “A list of the masterpieces I have never read would fill a volume.” Arnie-boy – I’m right in there with you. There are hundreds of worthy books that I’ve always felt I ought to read; some I’ve tried and failed miserably, some I’ve never got round to, and some I’ve never been able to face.

And I’ve just decided that I’m never going to bother. I’m only going to read what interests me, and the dickens take the rest.

Ain’t Freedom wonderful!

Sally Forth

2008-10-22T01:08:00.000-07:00

It’s bloody ridiculous! At my age, too! Silly old fool!

You’d think by now that I’d know better. After all, the once-rampant testosterone, while hardly quiescent, is at least under control, most of the time. And besides, I’m far too busy for these emotional fripperies.

But that was before she came along to disturb my comfortable equilibrium.

‘She’ being Sally. My lovely Sally. Even though I’ve never even met her, I have only to hear her voice, and all commonsense goes out of the window. I’ve fallen in love.

Sally. Darling Sally! O be still, my fibrillating heart!

She lives above me somwhere, and spends her entire time, bless her, telling me exactly and precisely where to go. Other women have tried this over the years, of course, but never to such devastating effect. The woman has me in thrall.

Sally Satnav is her full name. It sounds vaguely Slavic, but I don’t think she is. A perfect English Rose, to hear her sweet carefully modulated Cheltenham Ladies College tones. While I motor along the highways and byways, eagerly awaiting her next instruction, I dream of her, comfortably ensconced in her nice little bijou satellite, up there somewhere twixt atmosphere and cosmos , roses around the airlock, chintz-framed portholes and weightless Laura Ashley cushions.

I see her in her twinset and pearls, serene and at ease on an overstuffed sofa in front of a flickering fire, a brace of ginger cats snuggled up to her trim ankles. Tea - Darjeeling of course, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, or maybe Marmite soldiers, scones with jam and cream, Rich Tea biscuits, Woman’s Hour on the wireless, and a copy of Pride and Prejudice, or maybe some knitting, on her lap.

Her conversation is, admittedly, a bit limited, and consists mostly of instruction concerning exits on roundabouts, and left or right turns, but every perfect syllable brings a thrill to my trembling breast.

But it’s when I dare to disobey her that the real Sally emerges. Off comes the twinset to reveal clinging leather gear. Whips are brandished. Manacles are rattled. In an instant the voice turns from golden honey to blued steel. “Turn around as soon as you can”. “Go back the way you came” “You naughty, naughty boy!” Aaaaaaahhhhhhh.

And then finally she informs me, in a dreamy, post-orgasmic voice, that I have reached my destination, and I sink into anticlimax. The joy is in the journey, not the end of it.

Goodbye for now, dearest Sally. We’ll meet again on the way home, I hope. I’ll turn you on as usual, and you certainly will me.

Corporate Marketing Persons should be boiled in oil!

2008-10-20T07:59:00.000-07:00

Prime quality first pressing oil lovingly squeezed from plump ripe olives hand-picked on sun-drenched Italian hillsides by blushing virgins from gnarled antique arboreal masterpieces that were mere octogenarian saplings in Michelangelo’s time, naturally.

But boiled, long and hard, they should be. Regularly.

What does Uncle Phil have against marketing wonks? you may well ask. Siddown. Pour yourself a drink. Bend an ear.

I wanted some toothpicks. Not a great and ennobling ambition, you might think, but if a chap’s gnashers need picking, they need picking. It’s allowed.

We were in our local Tescos . A veritable über-Tescos this, so vast that I reckon it regards itself as the centre of the universe, and talks loftily of ‘our little local city’ You need a cab to get from one end to the other. I’ve never dared to venture further than Aisle127 for want of native bearers, and I hear tell that there’s a sign down the end somewhere saying ‘Here Be Dragons – Tescos will not be held responsible if customers get roasted’

So while Susie was stocking up on her weekly container-load of cleaning materials (as I may have mentioned before – we have a menage-a-trois, her, me, and Mr Muscle) I went on a toothpick hunt.

I wandered a couple of aisles down, to the section called (somewhat prissily, but no matter - it gets worse) “Oral Health”.

Toothbrushes, toothpaste and mouthwash, in other words. And in theory at least, toothpicks.

It should be noted that I had my driving glasses on, as opposed to the reading variety. (I tend to need about five pairs of specs, all with different focal lengths, which means that I invariably have the wrong ones on for whatever it is I’m doing. And if by any chance I have the correct pair on, I’m probably doing the wrong thing. ) But I digress, Revenons a nos cure-dents.

It should also be borne in mind that toothpicks by their very nature are not very big, and even bought by the hundred (when I was a lad you could buy them individually, like Woodbines, but that’s progress for you) they come in a very small box. With, by definiton, very small writing on.

So I went up and down the aisle for about twenty minutes, peering intently at lots of little white boxes, all of which seemed to contain dental floss. But toothpicks, I couldn’t find.

By which time Susie came looking for me, shoving a creaking trolley-full of curtain polish and such, and looking relieved to see me. I think she may have thought I’d ventured down to the dragons end, by mistake.

“Suse”, I said, “I can’t find any bloody toothpicks. Have a look for me, there’s a love – I can’t read a damned thing with these glasses”

She looked. For about ten seconds. And waved a little white box at me.

I took it from her. Took my glasses off so as to see better. Did it say “Toothpicks” on the front?

No – it bloody didn’t. Tescos don’t sell toothpicks any more. Their marketing people have, in their wisdom, renamed their product “Freshmint Flavour Interdental Woodsticks.”

It’s worth remembering that, in Coventry at least, half the population struggles with basic English, it not being their first language. “Toothpicks” they might just be able to work out. But “Interdental Woodsticks”? Do me a favour, Tescos – get real! And anyway – why “wood” sticks? Are there any other kind?

As I said – boiled in oil.

taking the Mickey

2008-10-20T07:52:00.000-07:00

Not a mouse
Shall disturb this hallowed house.
I am sent with broom before
To sweep the dust behind the door

Much Ado About Nothing, 5,2. The titleof the play is apt, as you shall see.

We’ve been blessed with an outbreak of mice again, after an absence of some time. Or, to be more accurate, an ourbreak of mouse – as far as I can tell there’s just the one. We’ve not so far clapped eyes on our unwelcome guest, but every so often we hear the patter of tiny murine feet running about in the space between the first floor boards and the ground floor ceiling.

Not exactly one of the Twelve Plagues of Egypt, you might think. The taps aren’t running with blood. Not a locust in sight noshing the rose bushes. The local cattle, or at least the bits of them on show at Tesco’s meat counter, look healthy enough, if a bit dead. A frog-free zone, except for the charming little Kermits that always live in our garden. No more thunder and lightning than is usual for England in late summer, even allowing for the Climate Change Chimera. Any firstborn that happen to be around can slumber safely in their cots.

But to hear Susie, you wouldn’t think so. A Mouse! Shock! Horror!. Armageddon Hits Coventry!

Before the first pitterpatter had died away Susie (The Verminator) James sprang into action, ripping up floorboards all over the house, poking around with a torch for hours playing spot the shit, and shoving enough Warfarin into the underfloor cavities to send every rodent between here and Moscow to his maker. Traps? She set ‘em wholesale. Cleaned and vacuumed and swept the whole house, from top to bottom. Three times. Scoured in places I didn’t even know we had places. Major upheaval time. Furniture and floorboards all over the place. “Dropping Crumbs On The Carpet Is Absolutely Forbidden On Pain Of Death!!!“ “Turn The Bloody Television Down - I Can’t Hear The Mouse!!!”

That sorta thing. On the nuisance value scale, give me the mice, any day.

Last time we had a visitation, it cost me about a hundred smackeroonies in B&Q. Poisonous substances by the hundredweight, a clattering of traps, enough torch batteries to run the Blackpool Illuminations, some kind of foam sealant which turns into impermeable orange candyfloss when you squirt it into any available point of entry (consenting adults only!) and little electronic doohickeys that you plug into the mains in each room. Apparently they order Mickey In fluent Mouse to piss off, or give him a shocking headache, or something. At twenty-five quid a pop they didn’t make me feel all that good, either.

However, up to now at least, this marriage of toxins, torture and technology had worked. Albeit it would have been cheaper to give each little nibbling nasty his own plane ticket to the Bahamas and enough holiday money to keep the little bugger in gorgonzola for the rest of his natural.

Not content with our stockpile of Weapons of Mouse Destruction left over from the Last Show, Suse felt compelled to look up ‘mice’ on the internet to see if there were any other poisons, potions, instruments of torture, spells, amulets, ultimate deterrents, or anything else she could buy (read “I could buy”) to halt the advance of Genghis Mouse and his ravening hordes. Bloody Google! Whatever happened to Blissful Ignorance?

It would appear, quoth (and quoted) she, that Mr Mouse doesn’t come as single spies, but in battalions. In every group (according to those nice people from Google, may they each and every one spend eternity trying to work on a Commodore Pet with dial-up) there’s a Dominant Male, a non-dominant male, and several females. Presumably the function of the non dominant male is to take the DM out for a beer in between rudies, or when he’s just plain fed up with the girls not squeaking to him.

Amidst all this domestic chaos, in walks Melinda, my Elder Stepdaughter. Another one, like her mother, with strong and forcefully expressed opinions, not always backed up with impeccable logic.

“Oh, ” she says. “ What you need is to borrow a cat.”

Let us leave aside for the moment the fact that Gemma, the younger and more excitable of our two Rough Collies, would immediately think “aha – Lunch.” (the elder, Amie, is far too much of a lady and far too laid back to let a mere cat disturb the even tenor of her ways. )

Let us leave aside for the moment that Melinda has five cats, and still has mice.

“Yeah. Right. “ I said. “You mean I should go through Yellow Pages until I find somebody that hires out cats”?

A chap could find himself in trouble, that way.

“Hello – is that Rent-a-Pussy?”

“Yes, duckie, that’s us. At your service. ”

Good-oh. I need to borrow a cat. Urgently. ”

“Oooh – I don’t know, dear. I’ve heard it called all sortsa things in my time, but never ‘borrowing a cat’. I can do you French, I can do you Greek, I can do S & M, or I can do you straight. It’s a hundred and fifty quid and I can be round in half an hour.”

“A ton and a half call-out? Even my Polish plumber doesn’t charge that kind of money!…….”

………..but I think I’ll leave it there. You get the drift. Back to the mice. Or rather, mouse.

The house, always spotless, is now gleaming, top to bottom, from bedroom ceilings (“they might climb the curtains”) to under the kitchen sink. Any food, including tins and bottles (“just to be on the safe side”) is in a tupperware box, inside another tupperware box, in the fridge. The vacuum cleaners (all six of ‘em – Suse feels about Hoovers like Imelda Marcos felt about shoes ) are lying around in corners with flaccid hoses and gasping for breath. The office, normally in the state of organised clutter I find comfortable, is so clean and tidy it’ll take me weeks to find anything.

And as for………….hang on – what’s that noise?

“Pitter-Patter-Pitter-Patter………………”

Oh! Soddit!