The Burning Blog

IT’S AN MP’S CASE

Regular readers may recall a recent blog when I complained about shaving in the mountains, apropos, the tiles had come off around the washbasin; hence I was able to admire the stunning chunks of brick while um, doing the said shaving.  Now I must confess that taking one’s toilette is always a bit of chore, especially when bits of shaving foam and toothpaste get stuck to the aforementioned…it was the hassle of trying to clean the stuff off you know.

I eventually pressed the repair button on my housing association’s website containing a message, the bare essentials of which said: “Listen Reggie, I’m sick of the mountains I want something else, mate.” The kindly caring housing people responded by sending out Reggie who sent me off to the Sahara; in plain lingo, he put soothing plaster over the exposed brickwork and said he’d be back in 24 hours or so.  He never came but the plaster really did resemble the Sahara in springtime, with greenish bits everywhere.

I eventually contacted Reggie again using the some old repair button and asked him to come back and finish the job by putting up the tiles in the traditional manner.  About a couple of weeks later I received a call from Reggie saying he’d come and put up the tiles on such and such a date and I said “super” and that I’d leave the front door unlocked.  After work, I turned on my mobile and Reggie said “Sorry me old fruit cake – or words to that effect – but I had to do another job, can we make another appointment me old cock”. 

After the fifth time Reggie said “Can we make another appointment” well actually he didn’t say that, he didn’t really say anything constructive at all although I do recall something about the traffic maybe.

Ah the traffic and immediately I kind of knew that the whole business would be sorted in about five weeks or so, perhaps with a little something for me too.  Normally letters to the House of Commons are acted upon by MP’s assistants after about three weeks.  You get to hear something within four weeks but I added an additional week for postal delays

The letter to my MP said: “Eventually appointments were made for the 24^th August, 7^th September, 11th September, 16^th September and the 17^th September, none of them have been kept and this work has still not been finished.” 

Let’s digress for a moment and consider housing associations.  Started by that great Anglo-Catholic priest Father Jellico in St. Pancras between the wars, one way or another these days, their funding comes from central Government so naturally they get a bit jumpy if members of parliament,  who actually vote the money through, start snooping and asking awkward questions in  letters. They are positively leaping, if the said MP in question takes a keen interest in social housing which in fact is the bulk of the properties in my constituency.  Having said all that, I just sat back and waited for the inevitable.

I was leaving work and the supermarket bleep, sorry, the phone went bleep indicating that yours truly had an answer phone message that began with: “I want to sincerely apologize…”; they don’t teach the conditional anymore in modern education I thought.  I had another 'sincerely apologize message' before a very nice woman rang and fixed up a time for the work to be completed and this very, very, very nice woman offered compensation of £15 for each missed appointment, that’s cool 75 quid.  Ah yes I thought, that’s the little something – all for the price of a 2^nd class stamp.

There have been tedious phone calls from the Housing Association to find out if the work had been completed on time and to my satisfaction.  The last guy said he was checking up because: “It’s an MP’s case you know.”  “Everything is spiffing” I said but held back from saying “Where’s my dosh Reggie”.

I recently returned home to find the caretaker; the area manager and some other bigwigs all huddled in a corner in reception and quietly watching me.  They’ll be doing a lot more that that if I don’t get that compensation.  I’ll give them time of course but I have a feeling that it may come down to me quoting the 1968 Housing Act and the duty of care imposed by that legislation, well not me personally of course, it’ll be the Rt Hon Member for… surely not, they’ll pay, won’t they?

Cheers.

Andrew

A Funeral Right [sic]

The media recently covered a story about a CofE priest who was ranting on about the ghastliness of modern funerals.  I did have some sympathy with his reverence, but lets up the ante a bit, my bet noir is the number of humanist ones I’ve been obliged to attend over the years.  On the other hand, they can be funny, especially if the deceased is a bit of a cunt.  Let me explain some more my dear, lovable, cuddly - not easily shocked by the C word - reader.

Let’s take the glories of the Anglican Communion and Pol Pot.  Supposing I was invited to atone, sorry, attend the late Pol Pot’s funeral in Cambodia. The guy murdered millions in the pursuit of a dream hatched in a Parisian bed-sit to establish Treblinka style farming methods circa 1350.  Version 1, the Anglican funeral rite and the Book of Common Prayer revised 1662 edition.  The sheer poetry of the words in the setting of a wonderful Cambodian Gothic cathedral – sorry that’s silly - full choir naturally, a bit of incense maybe, would quickly take my mind of the guy lying in the coffin.  Version 2, a right on humanist shindig at Kensal Rise Cemetery with a lot of “let us celebrate the life today of Pol Pot by contemplating his achievements to bring about a just and more equal society…”, listen Reggie, it aint gonna work?

I went to my first humanist funeral over 30 years ago in Brighton for someone who’d topped himself because his Misses went off with another fella. This poor guy had actually spent the last years of his life planning to do himself in; we’re talking over 10 years.  When we were asked to ‘celebrate’ his life I looked at the coffin and wondered if we had to exclude the final bit.  The thing is, his suicidal thoughts were so much part of his life latterly, that I had to go though mental contortions to keep these thoughts, um, out.  I had to try to forget his failed suicide attempts with pills and the final manner of his exit, live wires in the bath tub – it’s absolutely horrible; he should have been sectioned years ago. A religious service really would have been more preferable.

Another was for a cool cat mate who’d overdosed on heroine.  This poor guy’s service was totally bizarre.  We were told to think of a party, I just thought of a party with a corpse!  Since this guy was handsome and all the girlies loved him, there was a kind of sexual edge to this ‘party’ with picces placed around the chapel – of him - it was disgusting.  I couldn’t face going back to one of his chic’s flats for nibbles and got the first train out of there.

Finally, a relation popped his clogs who wasn’t very nice.  This made some of the eulogies a tad awkward but no matter, the situation might have been retrieved but it was the service.  Somebody played a recorder but they couldn’t, accompanied by someone on a drum who could.  Two perforated ear drums later, lots of silences interrupted by bongs and, and we hadn’t even left the chapel/ house of remembrance before his wife kicked off on a tirade against religion.  Being a militant atheist like her deceased hubby is her business, being totally pissed and making her views known to the people outside cueing for the next slot was somewhat tasteless I thought.  When she said that death is final and that she’d never see her husband again I thought phew, what a relief.  Now, I would never have thought that in Chichester Cathedral, would I?

Cheers. 

Hey Fellow-Fablers:

SCI-FI STORY CONTEST

The Universe’s Fabulousest Writing Group Strikes Again!

*************

There’s half month left to spell check S.F. short stories/ cartoons/ poems for the Special Autumn Sci-Fi PRIZE COMPETITION* Issue of Sauce  (sic, as Andrew “Blogger” Jones would write. He’s got an Exhibition of his blogs and the Medway housing Association’s offered him a house for a prize!!! Big up Andy…) …I got mine, a short story, finished last fortnight so I can breathe again.

       Now I’ve had a chill summertime celebrating MY BIRTHDAY + Barak Obama’s victory;) and for those who recall Jerzy Polakov from Baddaboom N.J.,U.S.A.(the man for whom the proof of America’s superior democracy was auntie Maria’s pasta and the fed’s arresting the Illinois state guvna for selling Barak’s still warm chair… “You limey bastard’s”, he sez cheerfully.”Woulda let your lords auction the Buckingham place and sweep it under the carpet, that old Limey red carpet yours got… ha! I got you…” he sways dangerously close to Vic’s telly. Vic glowers warningly at the massive New Jerzyan. “We arrest fuckers for dat,” sez Jerzy proudly, and asked Andrew the way to the nearest detox.

Anyway I’m back, looking for a six million pound fee for adjusting the world which President Shrub put askew ;) Sofar Barak has shown perfect character judgement for British would be p/m Cameron (“lightweight”) and the financial realism his Americans can support grudgingly while pulling their horns out of the near eastern shrubbery. So to speak. He seems the first POTUS since Kennedy whose worldview exceeds war and who understands money. After thirty years being sidelined while the Cold War froze relations, Africa and Trade are America’s chief agendas ;)…. How fresh air helps. A million Kmsquared for solar power and another for hydroponics, and Saharan outputs balance global warming (solar panel shading cools sands; electricity without carbon gassing dodges greenhouses; and 250 million acres of clean irrigated sands feeds all the human bellies you’ve got… ;) Yesterday’s dream becomes reality today and after USA frees herself from the shrubbery given her love of deserts and challenge she may out-rival Libya whose great manmade river project plods along a few kilo hectare strips greener per annum using rolls Royce naval jet engines and north sea oil pumps. After all you could use Illinois University’s STAR reactor/fuel cells and get a half/million horsepower STEAM-DRIVEN shaft; and MHD options. And it’s intrinsically non-weaponisable. While gas turbine MT30’s deliver but 50,000shp. It’s good Yankee technology. Share it! Restore the world’s confidence in America!

Okay folks y’all heard it here first… Last year Booker-prize long-listed best-selling thriller writer Tom Rob Smith (Child 44) visited our fabulous group and spoke about writing. Get his novel, it’s a brilliant stark detective story set in Stalin’s USSR. The hero’s a MVD investigator hunting a serial killer who, the Party has decreed, cannot exist in the perfect socialist State… I found the plot’s twist reminding me of Iain M. Banks’s ‘Use of Weapons’. Which you must read, too. `Child 44’ is in paperback and hardcover; ISBN/978/1/84739/373/9 the paperback’s 6.99 in the Pocket Books edition.

Sayonara

*FOR COMPETITION DETAILS CONTACT: Simon at the Bridge / Martyn at where you can find me (get a job ;-) and if you didn’t get Alison’s phone nos./email URLs update see you Fridays @ the FCWG (bring exotic snack foods! Hot chilli crisps and thing!)

“HASTA LAVISTA, BABEE”

Martyn

Well my little apartment in the fashionable suburbs of Hackney which is the new Inner City Green Belt (between Victoria Park and London Fields) has a microwave oven and a little fridge in the corner. Nothing wrong with that. And as it's only 5 minutes from the Regents Canal I might entertain a mermaid there. A shower stall, showers beat baths; they overflow less and you can wash your socks in showers.
And there are green organic signs all over the place so I may take a leaf out of your book and sell my bottled wee-wee to the hoi polloi and become a proper capitalist pisstaker.

Since reading of the lawsuit against a German merchants banking house in the City by sacked staff who claim their ex-employers owe them bonuses for, I presume, unproductively (those fat arses got fired after losing loads of money); and 6 Haringey social workers who got fired (or ‘de-hired’ in the jargon of the would-be upper class of beauraucrats in today’s classless society) for letting a baby get beaten to death by two neo-Nazi nonce’s from the National Front are suing for six-figure compensation I get a feeling I ought to start being greedy too, and my rationale follows:

If our society rewards greed and laziness then those are our new virtues. Now an ancient Greek philosopher I think Plato wrote that a virtuous man obeys and upholds the law and follows the example of the City Fathers; I think he was trying to justify the death sentence the Athenian state imposed on Socrates for disputing the wisdom of said City Fathers. I.e. ‘The government is always right’, so I must bow to the great wisdom of the Establishment and practise greed. After all, getting rich beats drinking hemlock and the Eurocrats are debating legal euthanasia.

Sayonara, gentle reader; catch you later (I’m just off to eat my friend’s noodle salad),

Martyn the Mad Scientist

Le Mermaid

Did you know that David Beckham is transgendered, no; well it’s true ‘cos I saw it in a newspaper that one of my colleagues at work was reading. I must add that it wasn’t MY newspaper; I’m much too toffee-nosed and stuck-up to read one of THOSE newspapers. It was a picture of him topless and my dears, the guy’s torso is covered in tattoos, and it’s positively revolting, his skin now resembles that of a fish; hence my thoughts of how he looked like a mermaid.  Sticking with fishy things, I think there’s something fishy why women find him so attractive, I mean, he never shaves properly, has little squinty eyes and that voice, oh my god.  It must be the $ signs in his eyes but no matter.

As we all know, fish like water but did you know that water likes me.  Over the years, I’ve lived in flats where there has always been a bit of a problem with the wet stuff.  Let me explain some more my dear, cuddly, loveable reader.  In my current abode, which incidentally, is mermaid friendly because it’s literally by the Thames, the flat is a bit of a tip.  Apparently, so I’m told, the previous occupant – a News of the Screws journalist – was so embarrassed by its state that when he, I’m sorry about this but it's true, when he wanted to screw himself – with a her not the cheap solo substitute - he used to take the young lady off to a hotel for the night. I’m told by the same source that the current occupant i.e. me, is much tidier.  Come to think of it, like the previous tenant, I too have never…

The problem with my present apartment is the kitchen and bathroom.  The kitchen hasn’t any space for a fridge AND an oven. I make do with a microwave and, and the bathroom has been challenging.  Basically, the tiles and plaster have come off exposing the brickwork around the wash basin so it’s like shaving in the Rocky Mountains; very unfriendly to Mermaids too.  Round the bath, the tiles started falling off like rose petals leaving the most horrible black gungy fungus on the walls. This fungus even started seeping from under the bath as well and smearing the floor and whatnot.  I did contact my housing association by using their website button called ‘repairs’ but that too was in need of repair because they never got back to me.  That must have been a year ago and I’d kind of got used to the problem by adjusting, as they say.

A couple of weeks ago the caretaker knocked on my door while I was shaving in the mountains, with him were a couple of David Beckham look-alikes and asked if they could inspect my bathroom. Not right know I said but I promised I'd give them the spare key to check when I was out. To cut a long story short, the bath and tiles problem has been sorted out but not the washbasin bit yet.  The care taker said that next time I’d be charged for the work. This sudden adjustment to the English common law whereby tenants pay rent, a service charge AND pay for repairs too left me a tad perplexed. 

Below my flat is a common room and bar which is frequently used for meetings and parties; come to think of it, there haven’ t been any lately. My neighbough told me that there’d been ‘a bit of a problem' there caused by my bath.  I rather nonchalantly strolled down there and oh my stars, the black stuff was back and the ceiling, just avoid dancing in the south east corner my darling.

We’re holding an art exhibition in the common room soon where some of the writing from this blog is to be exhibited – plus piccies, arty farty stuff and all that malarkey; in fact a lot of money is at stake. .  It's being rigorously promoted by the housing association, which owns my block, is advertised in the local rag and has become something of an ‘event’ amongst the local Rotherhithe set.  The problem is that we’d need an ambulance standing by in case a chunk of plaster falls on someone’s head.  I’m keeping a low profile just now in case the exhibition has to be um, postponed or worse.  Having just peeped at the common room again, it really does look dreadful, I can see ‘Notice to Quit written all over it.

Many years ago I had a flat where the bath emptied itself fully into the bedroom below and brought the ceiling down.  A little while later I came home from work to find very official looking men wanting to get into my flat; ‘it’s ‘im’ cried the neirghbour below.  Apparently, water was poring into her flat like a waterfall.  It turned out that it was my neighbour upstairs who’d got stoned and left the bath taps running – two ceilings down and her downstairs weren’t happy -  ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha and three more ha- ha[s].

Cheers.

Andrew

Feast of the Assumption of the BVM

16^th August 2009 (once removed)

The Grotto {sic] Shop

William Shakespeare in ‘As you Like It’ has a character who says “All the World’s a Stage”.  Indeed it is and Reggie Perrin from that famous TV series quite clearly had taken this on board when he plays different roles from farm hand to successful entrepreneur by establishing a chain of shops selling grot or absolute rubbish; the stuff sold like hot cakes.  I thought of Reggie when looking at a copy of a newspaper recently in which the founder of an organic chain of shops admitted that most of the things he had been selling were in fact, um, crap.  Well OF COURSE it was all crap, I mean...

I recall once being in one of the organic crap shops in Bayswater and thinking of the marvels of an economic system whereby people with a considerable  amount of disposable income will part with his or her hard earned cash to buy fresh vegetables costing about four times more than those found in Sainsbury’s or Tesco’s.   Apparently, organic stuff is more natural and good for you, what a load of crap [sic].  The way to save the planet is to go for genetically modified veggie as a first stage and then genetically modified human beings too, so that they don’t spend an eternity trying to bump each other off.  Personally, I’d have genetically modified Adolph Hitler and turned him/her into a lesbian and the first ever inclusive Archbishop of Canterbury who couldn’t speak English, hmm, sounds quite funny. I digress, sorry.

Let’s pretend that I was running this organic shop in the said Bayswater.  There’s a lot of rich media types there with ‘loads of money’ so I’d first sell ‘em real crap as a starter, mine in fact. Say I go once a day - if we include the Misses, I’ve already doubled the output - easy money my dears.  I’ll just call it ‘Chinese-herble-wong-cheung-yeti manure’ and say it contains special nutrients that help slow the growth of cancer cells.  I could make up posh looking instructions about how to spread it in on a vegetable patch etc, the problem I suppose is that there would be a certain perfume.  This odeur [sic] could well become a stench in time, especially if I also sold bottled Japanese anti-winkle cologne – basically my piss.  I could of course go to Sainsbury’s and buy their basic bottled water which only costs 11 pence.  I could label it and sell it for 11 quid as ‘Nepalese holy water from the monastery of Ding-Doing province which makes you sexy and desirable’, phew.

The best surely would be to run a dating agency in the upper-east-side, New York City.  First, I adore NYC and second, Americans are so gullible.  Ideally, I’d sign up really ugly men and promise them beautiful dates.  The girls would be recruited from ‘those’ places and told to give the guys a good time.  I’d pay the hostesses handsomely but the guys would be taken to the cleaners by me. The guys would keep coming back for more, paying a fortune for the ever elusive wife, ha, ha, ha, ha ha ha.  Think I’m being silly dear reader, each week millions of Brits buy a Lotto ticket; they’ve actually got more chance of being hit by an asteroid than scooping the jackpot ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha and err, ha.

See yer.

Andrew.

NVQ Land

Yours truly is doing an NVQ in NVQing.  I’m very sorry; I know I’m being silly. I’ve atoned for my sins now and it’s…err…thinking…still thinking but I’ve only attended three sessions, honest guv.  Yes, I’ve got it; it is an NVQ in Assisted Suicide Level 2.  No, that can’t be right, surely.  Let’s start again by actually spelling out what NVQ stands for.  It is the National Vertical Queen; that sounds a bit rude, the Queen Mother was never vertical, oh well; it must be the Nautical Variant Queen or how about one with the queen bit taken out, the Nautical Variant Qualification, got it at last, phew!

During the first session, the dear lady from Burgess Hill, or was it Bexhill, that can’t be right because she comes into King’s Cross, anyway, the sweet dear lady was a little shocked when I produced a rather large case containing various implements to do down the riff-raff.  The electric chair didn’t work, in fact it caused a black out in Sauf East London [sic].  That meant I couldn’t try out the nice mahogany electric guillotine, made in Germany, circa 1941.  Just as well really since I couldn’t understand the instructions. I was about to bring in the firing squad when Dartford Jean said, stop!, this is supposed to be about social care and all you’re doing is trying to kill people; that’s funny, I could have sworn she was Walton-on-Thames Brenda but no matter.

The lads from the hostel weren’t half mad at not getting their £25 Tesco voucher which was a pity really, especially since I’d spent a good hour or so explaining the pecuniary advantages of being executed i.e. zero cost of living expenses and all that.  Moving from being an executioner to a social care worker in a few minutes is less difficult than you’d expect.  For instance, both roles probably come under the auspices of the Third Sector.  Both arguably are jobs that aren’t done to make a profit and both use the recovery model.  In the case of the latter, let’s take an alcoholic for example.  I could aid him or her by assisting with a detox/rehap.  Using the recovery model sensibly, a client at some point will hopefully be able to get a flat and a job.  On the other hand, with my German guillotine they’ll recover from being a heavy drinker in about one and half seconds, not bad eh?

Once I’d convinced Staines Deirdre that I was serious about my NVQ in care thingamabob, she agreed that I could carry on.  In the past, I’ve usually known the title of the course I’m taking, how the assessment will be conducted and when the bloody thing will actually finish.  This time in church parlance, it’s all a great mystery but I’m hopeful all will become clear and now, dam, Northampton Lil wants to come to my hostel and assess me.  Oh god, why can’t she just stay in NVQ land and leave me be.

I’ve been thinking of writing a play called, um,  NVQ Land.  Geographically challenging, the play is set in Swindon and then moves to the Windows of the World restaurant at the top of the World Trade Centre.  The time is 8.15pm, sorry am, and the date is 11^th September 2001.  The plot, a sort of Romeo and Juliet, is about two students from Swindon who are undertaking a stage 3 NVQ in catering at Swindon Technical College with an additional examination in…I do apologize, this is becoming tasteless but now I’ve started I ought to continue.  The two principal characters are Brian and Audrey.  They already have the much coveted NVQ Class 1 in ‘how to teach sales representatives the art of selling things to people  who believe in Santa’ i.e. pills which make us all look 25 again and actually stop the ageing process.  These pills were made by Brian’s Uncle Bob, in his garden shed in Frome, Somerset.  Uncle Bob has an NVQ Class 2 in ‘being nice to people you don’t like’ – the British Foreign Office were the invigilators in this instance.

The play is quite salacious in parts and starts with Audrey getting bonked by her tutor before achieving an A star in the practical part of the course.  In fact, Audrey’s grade was the highest ever achieved in this bit of an NVQ and it made the national headlines.  Pretty soon, the soaps caught the bug and the entire cast of EastEnders signed up for an NVQ at Barking College in acting. Even the players in Australian soaps signed up too, to do an NVQ in interpreting the shenanigans of the secularists in the French Third Republic - in French of course.

The exciting climax takes place in the aforementioned restaurant when Audrey and Brian have to serve a lightening breakfast in about 20 seconds – speed really is of the essence here so Uncle Bob helps too.  At this point Eastbourne Sheila steps forward and tries to present their certificates, just before Uncle Bob hands out the elixir of life pills.  Not too far way, another group is taking the practical in ‘the art of flying jet liners very close to skyscrapers’.  Unfortunately, the examiners on board were unable to complete their task.

Finally we return to Swindon, where in honour of Audrey and Brian, an NVQ is established entitled ‘The Art of Tasteful Bogs’ [sic].  The play closes to the theme tune of Neighbours.

G’day.

Andrew

London Bridge is falling…

I was leafing through The Sunday Times recently when a rather sad item caught my attention, namely, a young Cambridge graduate who killed himself by jumping off an office block near London Bridge.   He hailed from North East England, was brilliant etc; was working for a bank and then decided to end his life because of some sort of investigation into the way he was using his computer.  I then got to thinking about this some more.

I suppose many people have a sort of idealized vision of the Oxbridge set, a kind of Brideshead lot who apart from being very beautiful and clever, gently glide into well paid jobs anywhere on the planet and are very happy too.  With this poor guy, there were pictures of him at Cambridge with chics and whatnot and then he was dead.

There were little pen pictures of his friends with double firsts in this and that; one guy  - a brilliant mathematician – was living in NYC and was doing something on the web, other were doing similar web type jobs and I realized it was a load of old cobblers.  The key adjectives here are brilliant, awesome, wonderful, fantastic, in other words, meaningless twaddle.

This poor guy had a very strange C.V. On the face of it – at only 24 – he’d been a BBC journalist, worked abroad, publishing I seem to recall and none of it was really true.  I mean, these days you just do a bit of work experience such as 'researching' for an MP, let ‘em shag you silly and hey pesto, you’re a leading academic on constitutional history.

Delving further into the article, he seemed to have a lot of friends who lived around Borough High Street, all terrifically clever, awesome in his or her intellectual capabilities, holding parties and being very happy and, and then I remembered that I too have got friends in the same local.  Hey, his friends and mine may have even met, on more than just a few occasions, perhaps even at a party.  Let me explain some more, dear, dear reader.

Two of them used to live by the cash machines on the corner of Borough High Street and the road going to Waterloo, I think it’s called Southwark Street. Being very welcoming and friendly, they used to frequently share their living space with quite frankly, everybody.  Another lived across the road near another cash machine with fine views of Southwark Cathedral and very effective air conditioning indeed.  There was even another living close to the Post Office; he had air con too plus additional living space often frequented by the said Cambridge graduates. There was one mate who lived for a short time by, yes you’re guessed it, by a dodgy cash machine and had to share is bedroom with all and sundry; the air conditioning was still standard though.

My mates and Oxbridge all used to meet in the local Sainsbury’s for economic lessons. Lesson one was 'money as the medium of exchange in an advanced western capitalist economy’.  My friends never quite got the hang of it, leading to rather embarrassing incidents with security guards but no matter, they understood the basic concept of paying for something although the practical side had much to be desired – C+ for effort anyway.

Back to the poor young man from Cambridge who jumped to his death.  The whole thing about Mr. Waugh’s book on between-the-wars Oxbridge is that connections and money is often the key to success.  My mates with the air conditioned flats could have told him that.  Even David Cameron with an Oxbridge First had to ring up his uncle in Buckingham Palace to get his rejection letter to work for the Conservative Party overturned.  Winston Churchill failed to get into Sandhurst and he had to ask for help too. 

I have a horrible feeling that our friend from the North East was starting to release how the world really worked.  I think that Cambridge is a complete dump personally.  It’s a Fen town  - all chavs and yokels with a sprinkling of teckies- with some rather fine chapels and churches, OK, libraries too but it’s nothing compared to London.  I feel sure our friend would have picked this up.  Then moving into the world of banking I mean, how boring and dodgy, especially we’re now in the midst of a severe UK slump presided over by Gordon Brown as Chancellor - who was so clever that he went to university at 16  - and his special economic advisor Ed Balls; they say that Mr. Balls’ intellect is awesome., balls. 

Cheers.

Andrew

The Atlantic Coast Express

There used to be a train called The Atlantic Coast Express – ACE for short – that left Waterloo at 11am sharp for the West Country.  It traversed the old London & South Western route via Basingstoke, Salisbury and Exeter before some of the carriages were dropped off for places like Exmouth, Ilfacombe, Bude and far flung Padstow.  I think that when steam trains stopped running sometime in the summer of 1967, the poor old ACE went down the river, along with other named trains like the Bournemouth Belle, that so excited anoraks in those days.  I used to have a video of the ACE steaming down to Salisbury, circa 1962, but that too went down the river and when the bailiffs turned up, I dived in too, for a 10 year dip actually.

The last time I went out West without getting wet, was for a business meeting to Exeter, during the 90s.  After spending almost 300 smackers going first class and buying the ticket with five minutes to spare, I tucked into a good fry up in the dining car and then, and then I arrived at what can only be described as a complete dump.  The meeting was great fun – discussing tourist signs and whatnot – but oh my dear, the yokels.  My boss and I decided to adjourn to a local hostelry for another fry up with the Daily Mail brigade. Later, we both walked across a park - full of the kind of people I’d later become - and oh salvation, the station and hearing the word Paddington coming over the tannoy, oh bliss it was to climb aboard.

I must confess that I love travelling by train and this is what made the whole day so enjoyable, particularly, because I also knew that I’d be returning to London.  In fact, I remember once spending a horrendous four days up North and the absolute joy of hearing the announcer at Manchester’s Piccadilly station mention the such and such departing at 17.30 for London Euston and off I trotted.  Once I was not so lucky when I saw another 17.30 pulling out of Glasgow Central and then, and then I had to get out to the airport and I HATE flying too. 

I think what I’m trying to say is that these days; I don’t like spending time out - of a big capital city - in any country.  Here in Britain, I don’t mind too much, the odd day or so in a five star but then I get a bit itchy and want to go home.  I really love the built environment, the diversity, the sounds and music of the city, the smells, the sirens, traffic jams, pavement cafes, love it all.

The writing group is planning a week’s strip, sorry, trip to the country for a bit of creative thingy me bob. It’s actually learning how to be creative and write better like [sic], in the glorious Devon countryside near Exeter.  We’ll be driving down and I’ll be the em, driver.  Nothing wrong with that, I can drive anywhere, it’s just that I don’t fancy living in the green pastures for five days, I’ll be counting every second before we return. I don’t mind if I can return each night to London by train but sleeping in the provinces is just so passé and then there’s the sex problem too.  I suppose I’d go to Brighton for a week because (1) I like the sea (2) Brighton is not in the least provincial and (3) there’s plenty of the physical if you want it.  I’d even go celibate if the writing group went to Rome, Madrid or Paris but Devon, oh my god, all those cream teas, dumb locals, horrible smells, boy racers, hoodies…

I’ve always had trouble saying no to people I like and respect and this Devon trip is no exception but going would be absolute agony for me.  And then there’s the heat of September and all that Malarkey.  The only solution to this problem is if I drive the group down on Monday, drop em off and head back to the great smoke by train and repeat the exercise on the Friday.  Do we have a solution here; I await a response.

Cheers.

Andrew