The coatpeg coalition

I've been a bit busy the last week turning 50 and celebrating my half century while at the same time watching the Mother of Democracies (their words, not mine) twist and turn. It seems the dust is beginning to settle, but for how long? I was pondering this while walking the dog through the early morning mist on Saturday and, somewhat bizarrely, it brought to mind woodwork lessons I had at school.

Being judged too dim for Latin lessons, I was assigned to woodwork instead. Big mistake, but never mind, it's all in the past. Anyway, one of the projects in woodwork was to design and make a coatpeg. This I did and then our long-suffering teacher, a real gent called Mr Jackson, mounted all the coatpegs on a long piece of wood so that we could compare them side by side. Mine looked as if it ought to be a coatpeg, it was on a plaque with a piece sticking out on which, in theory, you could hang a jacket. Mr Jackson then tested the capabilities of our hooks by the simple method of taking his own jacket and hanging it on each peg. I suspect you can see where this is leading. Sure enough, most coatpegs were more than adequate for the task, indeed some had so much bracing on them you could have hung a suit of armour on them. Then Mr Jackson reached mine, put the loop of his jacket over the little peg thingy on my coatpeg and let it take the weight. Or rather, watched his jacket fall to the floor as my coatpeg disintegrated.

What does this have to do with the Lib-Con Con-Dem whatever it's called coalition? Well my coatpeg was bodged up. Being an idle feckless type (Mr Jackson never complained, but I must have tested his patience) I just used nails to assemble the various bits of wood until they resembled a coatpeg. Clearly such a method was entirely unsuitable for the task and the whole thing fell apart. I know it's obvious where this coatpeg metaphor is going, but I have to admit that I'm wondering whether the coalition might just as easily fall apart. Are the Tories and Lib-Dems suitable materials for bonding into one thing which will be strong enough to lead the country back to less stormy waters?

I suppose putting aside my own prejudices, which suggest that, broadly speaking, all politicians are twats, I ought to be hoping that the coalition will deliver us from evil and yet I feel uneasy. I suspect that neither side will ever really trust the other and that if things get tough it will always be someone else's fault. Even so it's early days and they ought to be given a modest period of grace to try to stop Great Britain plunging into the abyss. In greater North Devon we can now say that both our MPs are on the Government side. Will that make any difference? Well, what do you think? I know, I know, cynicism is unhealthy, but then so are repeatedly dashed hopes.

I’ll never forget old wotsisname

Does dullness slump its way into every corner of your life? Is it all a bit too grey? Are you fed up to the back teeth? (No, I don’t know why it's back teeth). Are you, as I am, nursing a micro-hangover, which is just taking the edge off your keen enjoyment of existence?

If so, I’ve got a great wheeze – well, I think it’s great – and it’s all down to a bloke I used to know who died umpteen years ago. I can’t be bothered to look it up, hence the umpteen. This wheeze is based on the thing that some Christians do called What Would Jesus Do? Now, no disrespect intended to such Christians, but I have unashamedly hijacked the principle for my own purposes and the result is: What Would Buck Do? I have read that some people have also come up with What Would Obama Do? but such a lofty approach is not what I’m aiming at.

What Would Buck Do? considers the approach to life of former Barnstaple councillor, printer and general irritant Buck Taylor. I was fortunate enough, and I do consider it good fortune, to have known Buck for a fair few years and it’s only in light of today’s rather dreary approach to life that I realise what a truly mischievous old bugger he was. Who else would have come up with the idea of celebrating Luxembourg Day so we could get round the rather strict licensing laws that were in force in North Devon in those days? This even involved making an application (successfully) to magistrates for an extension to a pub licence. He and I also kicked around the idea of a campaign of writing bogus letters to newspapers so we could get snigger-inducing references in them. We never went ahead with it, but even just considering the idea cheered us up.

WWBD? aims to achieve a general level of personal satisfaction by minor acts of foolishness that will often only please me. Let the naughtiness begin. In fact, I already did one thing this morning which resulted in a sub-Viz-ian reference to a solitary vice appearing on a website. Tee hee! Fnaar fnaar! It might be a bit sad, but I suspect that Buck would find it quite jolly.

This pheasant is totally plucked

If there is a motorist in North Devon who has never hit a pheasant while driving I’d like to know whether they ever actually take to the road more than once in a blue moon. Poor old pheasants, bred to be gunned down or doomed to be run over. I don’t suppose they have a view on the preferred option – I’d guess that if they could articulate their wishes they may opt for poncing around and looking quite ornamental on top of gateposts and so on until they just keeled over.

Be that as it may, I fear that was not to be the end for a hen pheasant I encountered yesterday. I was making my way along the narrow lanes near Lovacott and Horwood at a sedate pace - I am always conscious of the propensity for people who know such roads to treat them as their personal racetrack – when said hen pheasant popped out of the hedge.

I believe the Highway Code says you shouldn’t swerve to avoid such encounters if it will endanger other road users, but to be honest it all happened so quickly there was little I could do in any case. I heard a bump, but when I looked in my rear-view mirror I couldn’t see anything and when I got out of the car to look there were no grisly remains to be seen so I told my fellow passengers that “it must have just been a glancing blow” and the bird had hopped back into the hedge, probably having had a bit of a shock. Not very convincing, I know, but the best I could come up with, particularly for one passenger who claimed our close encounter of the bird kind had cast a pall over the whole day. I didn’t like to suggest it had been considerably worse for the pheasant’s Sunday.

On reflection, I don’t often see pheasant corpses on the road – especially when compared to animals such as badgers and foxes - so maybe my “glancing blow” theory was correct. Anyway, Mrs Pheasant, sorry if I spoiled your Sunday.

I'm back, I'm back as a matter of fact, I'm back (with a point of view to put)

Or something along those lines. Actually, the first part of that is Gary Glitter so probably best not to quote too freely from him, given his illegal predilections. Anyway, for some unknown reason, I stopped blogging, and now, for some equally unknown reason, I decided to do some more.

I suspect part of it is to do with a story currently doing the rounds in North Devon about a piercing parlour that has opened up in Barnstaple. This is an issue that has got some people very hot under the collar arguing for an against. The other reason to re-enter the blogosphere (silly word) is another blog I read by a journalist called Keith Topping. He urges everyone in Britain to exercise their right of free speech (for so long as we still have it).

So, back to piercing. The argument going on among commentators on the North Devon Journal website seemed to split into two camps. Most of the anti-piercing people seemed to think 'the pierced' were weirdoes who were unemployed and who would never get a job. Meanwhile, the pro-piercers seemed to take the - not unreasonable - view that it was their choice to do to their bodies whatever they liked. They also pointed out that piercing and other body modifications were increasingly fashionable, and that many of them had a range of responsible jobs. Where their approach tended to fail slightly was when they suggested that those opposed to them should shut the f*ck up. Erm, wasn't all this about freedom of choice and so on?

On the basis that I've got an opinion (they are, after all, like arseholes - we all have one) I just wanted to give my two penn'orth and whether anyone is interested or not I really don't care - it's my blog. As far as I can see on this, if you want to have metal bits sticking out of your head, neck, back or genitals (if you so choose), or have lumps cut out of your flesh, or get branded, well. . .that's up to you. Whatever turns you on, baby, if indeed it does turn you on. Having said that, I do find the impression created by some piercings to be, quite frankly, rather threatening. Little metal horns poking out of someone's forehead are somewhat redolent of classic depictions of the devil - literally, the horned one.

The pierced persuasion argue that people should have an open mind about their appearance. Let's face it, if you were about to get jiggy with a man or a woman wearing a very sober business suit who, when they were in their birthday suit, suddenly revealed some spectacular genital piercing what effect would that have on your frame of mind? Would you suddenly decide you'd gone off the whole idea? Or would you go 'right on, let's do the wild thing'? Personally speaking I certainly wouldn't say 'Let's call the whole thing off'. But then on the quiet I am very broad-minded.

The question that crops up with being open-minded is that presumably that extends to people who want to use their right to be small-minded. Or does it? Am I clever enough to have stumbled on the classic liberal dilemma while whittering on about piercing? Obviously, the answer to that is YES, but isn't it all about that 'I disagree with what you say, but would defend to the death your right to say it'. I'm not sure who said that (Voltaire, maybe?) but surely he would have extended that to piercing. I dunno. However, I am sure on one thing, no piercing for me, thank you.

Oh, by the way, the man in the red Renault Megane estate who was living in a lay-by on the A39 has gone. Who knows where? Maybe with the changing of the seasons he moves on.

Spiralling out of control in the rain

It's raining. It's gushing out of the sky to the point where you can't really be sure it's summer. But in North Devon at least we can say this is something we are not totally unfamiliar with. Ever since I have lived here, I have been forced to acknowledge the routine presence of rain in my life. Not long after I came to North Devon I muttered some comment about 'Sunny Devon' to a long-term resident as the rain poured down. 'Ha ha', he said. 'Now you know why North Devon is such a good dairy farming area'. Well that's all right then.

I like the sogginess and the greenness and the sponginess of living in a place where it rains so much. But having said that I also like the hot dryness of places in the summer, which is why I am heading to Greece soon. Only for a few weeks, but I hope it will give me some respite from the drenching that the elements are subjecting us to at the moment.

And while I wait to go on holiday - to a place that is many, many miles from North Devon - I am going slightly bonkers. At work I keep uttering the mantra 'I can't go on'. The truth is that I can go on, but only just. I haven't had a break from work - apart from at the time of my dad's death - since last autumn. I want to kick back, read poems, maybe even write poems, and stare at a point on the horizon. I want to hear the cicadas and worship the blue sky and the blue sea. Smell the pines and hear happiness in a foreign tongue.

I'm losing it here in North Devon and I need release. But how much will I miss here while I am there?

Having trouble getting things moving in North Devon

OK, I am a man married to a woman. I have helped in the conception and birth of some more females, now all young women. I sprang - many years ago - from the loins of a woman and I have one sibling, a sister. Also I know lots of women and work with women, in fact, the part of the office I work in is just me and six women. So what I am trying to say is that I have heard them talking. My wife, my daughters, my mum, my sister, my colleagues and female friends all like to talk to each other and I like to listen (no honestly, I do, I love listening to women talking, it's so much more revealing and embracing than men's uni-directional conversation).

So, very slowly, what I am getting round to saying is that not once, never, ever, have I heard the women I know talk about constipation. And the reason I mention this, is that ridiculous TV advert in which a group of women in a cafe/bar engage in conversation about how one of them is constipated. To use her words - more or less - 'It's all hard and foul' - I think that's what she said. Now I know this is only an advert and is the result of someone coming up with an idea to advertise a product - in this case, something called 'stool softener' - but dear God this is rooted in some hideous fantasy world in which poor little women grapple with utterly ridiculous problems.

Adverts in the same vein offer shower gel suitable for 'intimate use', unguents for making women less hairy and medication capable of dealing instantly with diarrhoea. This latter product is aimed specifically at women and shows a woman bounding out of the house, only to rush back in because the proverbial flock of starlings is about to emerge from her backside. However, she pops a couple of pills and within minutes is in the cinema with her girly friend chucking popcorn down her throat like there's no tomorrow and no gastro-intestinal problems either.

I'm not going to go off on some sort of feminist rant, although I suspect if I were a woman I would find men more than a little risible. However, it is a bit of a call for women (and, I suppose, men) to stand up and say: 'We're not going to put up with this crud any more'. It would be hard to conceive of more ridiculous scenarios than most adverts. Little boys wanting to take a dump in their friend's toilets because they smell better is but one example. From the sitting room, where the TV is on, I can hear an advert where a talking meerkat is advertising a comparison website. . . . I mean, where will it all end?

So get a grip people, watch the adverts by all means, but then, very politely, just say NO.