English eccentrics - Car Pets

There’s a certain sort of person who keeps soft toys on their bed.  These people are called children.

Anyone else with a stuffed toy on their bed is to be approached with caution for a number of reasons.  In ascending order of things you have to worry about; least sinister is that the soft toy is a container for something, such as a sex aid or recreational drugs, and is owned by a person unfamiliar with the concept of draws, or the socially acceptable receptacle for contraband, a hollowed-out book (why else do they issue Clarkson in hardback?).  Or it could be some sort of surveillance device, which is OK if it’s owned by the adult who will shortly be using it to keep an eye on the nanny, the cleaner or her cheating dirtbag husband, or by somebody who has their own website, less OK if it was a gift from somebody.  Worst case scenario, it’s a soft toy purchased and owned by an adult, who has given it a name.

The exception to the soft toy prohibition is if the soft toy was a gift from a boyfriend either purchased as a token of affection ‘to keep you company when I am not here’ (Translation: ‘I don’t trust you, you skank’, or won at a fun fair through a game of skill although, frankly, if you can win a soft toy at a fun fair, the thing deserves to go in the trophy cabinet in the chap’s front room, not sit on a pillow.

The sort of person who keeps a soft toy in their car is a different class of nutter entirely.

Again, the only acceptable owner of a soft toy resident in a car is a child.  Such soft toys are not only useful for playing games with and sleeping with or resting one’s head on, but are jolly useful for striking a sibling.  Warning: such toys quickly achieve character which, if not offset by frequent laundering, can develop into personality.

Adults keep soft toys in cars because…fuck knows.  If they are a bloke and don’t have children, it’s probably because they are a peado.  If they are a woman, it’s probably because they have run out of space on their bed.  Again, acceptable uses include a bear-cam to keep an eye on the chauffeur, or as a head rest on a long journey, or a short journey back from the pub, but otherwise you have to wonder.

Having said all that, the sight of car pets makes me smile, and I have been known when travelling in a car with car pets to put on an impromptu puppet show.

Top tip: always remember that the driver, who has the power to screech to a halt and order you out of the car, will have great affection for her car pets and is unlikely to find any one-act play that concludes in frenzied furry sexual congress accompanied by hoots and grunts nearly as amusing as you do.

English eccentricity

If there’s a standard scale for sanity, and there probably is but who wants a search history that can be used against them in court as a result of their looking up ‘am I normal?’ on Google so I’m not going to attempt to find out, then, like metric and imperial, there will be one scale for the rich and another for the rest of them…I mean us.

Let’s call the scale of sanity for the ordinary man in the street, or indeed Jasper Carrott’s nutter on the bus, the Metric scale.  A reading of zero means that you can pass for ordinary, you don’t twitch or drool and you don’t feel the need to perform a cleansing ritual after meeting a gypsy.  At the top end of the scale, 100, are people who are so insane they occupy positions of power, or kill people, or indeed both.  It’s around the 60 to 70 range that things get interesting, that’s where your, let’s face it, more amusing mental health issues are pitched, like believing what you read in the Daily Mail.  Tracking back towards zero we pass through the superstitious range, which encompasses everything from paying actual money for a palm reading ‘you are very gullible’, to wearing your lucky shirt on match day.  Oh, and by the way, one day you will realise that because you always clean and iron your lucky pulling shirt, those actions make it your lucky pulling shirt.

For the rich, the Imperial scale covers three main ranges.  Firstly, there is fucked up, which is what happens to an eighteen year old when they come into a trust fund.  They spend the fund initially on drugs and booze, and thereafter on trying to quit drugs and booze, possible solutions including therapy, The Priory, or a cult.  Secondly, there is inbred.  If you can inherit the family chin, stands to reason you can also inherit the family kinks in the cognitive reasoning, including the firm belief that it is still acceptable to use the term ‘darkie’ if you lower your voice while doing so.

Then at the top of the scale we have eccentricity.

Madness plus money equals eccentricity.  If you wanted to marry a goat you would be, depending on the community you lived in, laughed out of town or stoned to death.  Regrettably, there are also some corners of geography inhabited by people that would probably apportion some of the blame to the goat.  These are the same sort of people who, in conversations about women’s rights, make the sort of comments that give you the distinct sensation that your arse is clenching into your hat.  If you have a title, an estate and, and this is the important bit, some say over who gets to be vicar in the parish you own, the one with a charming Norman church, a rather lovely rectory and no knife crime at all, then it’s pretty likely that the bans will shortly be posted for the forthcoming nuptials of the Earl of Kinkey and Miss Willamina Goat.

Let’s be clear, being eccentric is fabulous, as long as you don’t hurt anyone in, for instance, your scientific experiments largely involving melons, you’re beloved.

Ever had a day, a whole day, when you have not got out of your pyjamas?  You have moved from bed to sofa to fridge to sofa to bed in one glorious relaxed manner, and you’re not even ill?  Fabulous, isn’t it.  Now imagine not getting out of bed for a week because you can’t be arsed.  That’s eccentric.

Working class and in Tesco in your jim jams?  Out, you fucking scum!  Titled and in Fortnum and Mason in a dressing gown?  Of course you are, you don’t need a wallet, you’ve got an account at the place.

The English tolerate eccentricity because, by and large, it’s more entertaining than harmful.  An aristocrat with a thing for trains may indulge his obsession by building his own railway, miniature or, my preference, full sized, on his estate.

Eccentricity is not madness, it is more refined.  It is the state of mind that causes one to be entertaining and harmless, and leads to one being fondly admired.

Dear Sir...

Britain is, by and large, a charitable nation.  Certainly charity is the only possible explanation for the continued enthusiastic support of some of the nation’s national football teams, who can be relied upon to put in a truly tragic performance in any tournament more challenging than the one down the rec using anoraks for goalposts.

Charity takes many forms.  For instance, many older men, even married ones, help to support young women by putting them up in a small flat in Mayfair and ensuring they have enough money for their education, gym memberships, discreet visits to Harley Street and, if necessary, impromptu foreign travel one step ahead of the press.

There are national charity days for broadcasters, when the BBC tests to destruction the patience of an audience who have only tuned in to see the special seven minute long ‘Doctor Who’ episode and who have to sit through musical number after musical number for fear of missing it and not Tweeting something snarky in the moment.

There are charity days that take the form of brave volunteers who, armed only with regulation anorak and a thermos containing a cocktail of gin and paraffin, stand on the high street for hours rattling a tin, in aid of funds for Lifeboats, or the fight against some vile disease, or the welfare of any animal from the donkey to the, well, it’s usually donkeys.

The English in particular love their animal charities.  Ironically this is a result of knowing fuck all about animal welfare and thinking meat comes from the supermarket rather than a Disney character voiced by a beloved recovering alcoholic.  This affection and affectation has given rise to the myth that the English give more to animal charities than they do charities that look after humans.

Why does this myth persist?

The thing is, charities have started sending gifts to those who contribute, like calendars and stickers and, frankly, people are much more likely to use, and display, their bookmark of a grinning donkey in a hat than they are the sort of image usually sent out by a charity that looks after children in some war torn hell hole, which is usually, how shall we put this, authentic, and not the sort of thing you want fellow commuters thinking you consider appropriate to mark your place in ‘What Ho Jeeves’.

Whilst charities may send you gifts to prompt you to donate (‘please find enclosed a free biro, now use it to fill out the enclosed standing order form you middle class biro stealing bastard’), that’s a lot better than the menace that risks turning us from a nation with our hand in our pocket to a nation with our hands round the throat of the gurning tosser obstructing our path on the pavement.

I speak of the ‘chugger’.  And if you thought the BBC News team doing a ‘Kids from Fame’ medley in aid of ‘Children in Need’ was irritating, that’s nothing compared to some twat in a cagoule with a smile and a clipboard trying to get your bank details off of you without even the common courtesy of pretending to be a Nigerian prince.  Or giving you a coaster.  These are young people who are employed to cheerfully try and slow your progress to the cake shop or pub by asking you if you have ever thought about the problems of the lack of availability of drinking water in the world.

BTW the correct answer is not, as I found out, ‘absolutely, Waitrose is out of Highland Spring again, it’s a fucking disgrace’.

I think people find chuggers irritating because British people are genuinely generous to charities but like it that by giving they can be both anonymous and altruistic.  That’s why those (now considered to be a little bit offensive and, actually, when you think of it, somewhat creepy) collection boxes in the shape of life-sized replicas of children that used to stand outside shops could do so safely and unchained, no one would dream of nicking one.

Actually, it was because they were full of coppers so they weren’t worth nicking, and, because they were full of coppers, nobody could lift the fucking things anyway!

For chutney's sake

This post is about profanity.  Naturally, I have no wish to cause offence unintentionally and so have decided on a simple substitution system to keep things just the right side of filthy.

So, for the ‘F’ word, I shall be using the term ‘chutney’.  For the ‘C’ word, the term ‘pillow’ will be employed.

For the milder profanities, I have come up with something I think is quite ingenious.  ‘Bugger’ will be used for ‘bloody’, ‘bloody’ will be used for ‘bastard’ and ‘bastard’ will be used for ‘wanker’.  Hence, using the term ‘bloody bastarding wanker’ makes it a grammatical nonsense, robs it of its potency and rather neatly defuses the chance of somebody taking offence once the whole profanity substitution thing has been properly explained, probably in court.

The development of profanity has, by and large, been stagnant since the Middle Ages when a short life of miserable toil interspersed by war and plague provided all the inspiration one needed when one needed to find expression through expletive.  Today, an office drone may reach for the swear box when their database crashes, but the word they use was probably coined by some Anglo Saxon type who had just dropped a newly completed cathedral on their toe, or been careless with their scythe.  The latest addition to the lewd lexicon, the ‘M’ word (we’ll use, let’s see…’pantomime horse’), was coined in Viet Nam, I think.  At least, it was certainly used in a lot of films about the Viet Nam war, and as war movies are like documentaries for lazy people, that’s all the authority I require. 

Viet Nam was the right place for a whole new profanity to be coined, because the draft ensured that people who did not want to be there, often from rural communities so having a rich heritage of swearing around cheeky threshing machines, were put into an extreme situation, involving shooting.

If you have even played Medal of Honour on your console with the ‘team talk’ option enabled, you will know that nothing gets young men more excited in a sweary way than combat, and that’s just sofa combat, where the worst thing that will happen to you is picking up a DVT from all the sitting your backside is doing.  Still, it allows people from all over the world to scream obscenities at one another and indulge in the sort of homophobic abuse rarely seen outside the Premiership.

Why do people swear?  Chutney knows.  English is the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Churchill. There are, and I went on Wikipedia so I’m fairly sure about this, well over a thousand words in the English language, so why is it that when reacting to pressure we reach not for the magnificent cathedral of expression to express our emotions, but simply reach into the shed of profanity for something juicy kept on a metaphorical high shelf out of the reach of children?

Possibly it’s because of the importance of the right tool for the right job and sometimes that tool is a blunt, simple one.  Want to stir paint before decorating?  You don’t reach for your blender, you reach for a stick.  If you are a bloke, this will be a stick you have kept, in your shed, for this specific purpose.  It is simple, it is blunt and it does the job, a bit like an F bomb.

I have recently graduated from swearing at the television whenever the news or ‘Antiques Roadshow’ (chutnying how much?’) is on to swearing at the radio.  In my defence, I was being sorely provoked, as the Jeremy Vine show was on.  This is a show that somehow manages to contrive to be more offensive than me, even though I am the one screaming ‘you chutnying pantomimehorse’ at an innocent little box with sound coming out of it.

F Bombing is called F Bombing for a reason.  Profanities, like munitions, should only be used by a responsible adult who knows what they are doing and who has had training, or an over-excited X Box wielding teen, crazed on Red Bull, Haribo, or occasionally by over-excited X Box wielding adults.

The Field

Right!  This is it!  I’m serious this time.  I am absolutely not going to buy any more new books until I have read the ones I have bought but not read yet.  

That includes the ones that I purchased because I was going to read them on holiday.  In 2011.  Not only do I have a variety of books lying unopened and unread that I am looking forward to reading, I have also received books for Christmas from generous family.  I need to institute a strict reading programme and not get distracted by going into bookshops, coming over a bit giddy at the smell of the print, and exiting with an armful of new paperbacks.  Nor will I get pissed and go on Amazon.  These are distractions.

But that doesn’t apply to buying magazines, does it? 

No? 

Great!

That’s why it was quite legitimate to buy a copy of ‘The Field’.

‘The Field’ is an absolutely astonishing magazine.  It is all about hunting, shooting and fishing but, and this is the astonishing bit, it is unironic and unapologetic in its coverage of these matters.

I’ve long believed that because of a combination of desktop publishing and the cheap costs of printing, there is pretty much a magazine about every subject. 

Back in the day, there used to be things called ‘fanzines’, small circulation magazines produced by enthusiasts about various subjects (most famously music but also genre literature) printed on hand-operated presses using chemicals that, if used today, would get you onto some sort of watch list and, as I recall, used to result in an experience that made reading a fanzine one step away from glue sniffing. 

The advent of the internet allowed many people to move their interests on-line while the advent of computer composition for magazines enabled there to be more than one magazine published about, for instance, quilting, when one might reasonably assume that the natural number of magazines about quilting required in the world is one.  If that.

Depending on the social circle you move in, hunting shooting and fishing are either cruel, a bloody good weekend, or an excuse to wear a lot of tweed and drive a 4x4.  ‘The Field’ is for people who like their lives uncomplicated by moral choices about killing things.  This is because the people who read ‘The Field’ probably live in the country, and realise that in the county, things are red in tooth and claw to say the least and everything is out to get you.  When faced with an angry badger, shoot first, or the little bastard will savage you long before he manages to cough on you, infecting you with bovine TB and condemning you to life as a poet.

It is a little odd to read tales of slaughter told with such relish, and yet somehow attractive too.  It might be something of an exaggeration to describe a brisk bout with a trout as a ‘battle’, but it does readily convey the image of three hours in the blazing sunshine flogging yourself up and down a river with several pounds of angry fish on the other end of the line and nothing but upper body strength and, if all else fails, something your mate brought back from Afgan for you to fall back on, but it paints a picture.

My favourite article, even better than the pictures of naked posh birds taken from the type of charity calendars that young farmers like to crack one out to, is the reviews of the guns.  Guns are reviewed in ‘The Field’ the same way that cars are reviewed in other magazines, and cost about the same.

Reading about something written by an enthusiast is always a joy, and there’s a neat counterpoint when it’s written by people who think (rightly) that their way of life is under threat and yet shows, at the same time, that huntin’ shootin’ and fishin’ are as alive and well today as they always have been, at least between the pages of the magazine.  One gets the feeling that people who own guns are rarely ambivalent in their opinion.  When you’re facing down a charging boar, it’s deeds, not thoughts, that count.