Skip to main content

Small cringe

So much to mention recently, but circumstances have kept me away from the computer, have in fact kept me from doing anything other than working like a madman (apart from a brief pastoral interlude about which I must of necessity stay sctum except for this: never order drinks in the South). So much, I should offer my heartfelt and delirious congratualtions to people who know who and why they are offered. So, so pleased. I should dissect the letters page of this weeks Champion (the highlight of which is a cry of outrage against overweight NHS staff, featuring the immortal line "it's disgusting that so many of these porkers are allowed to work in our hospitals" - bravo!). I could expound upon my new theory that the Police are simply coming up with new initiatives to deliberately take the piss out of the Mail ("Free heroin for addicts!" "It's OK to fuck fourteen year old girls!" "Asylum seekers given licence to kill and a free twee cottage in darkest Bucks!" [NB last may not actually be true]) because they feel like it, I suppose I could even rant a little about the catering industry (Christmas is nearly upon us again). I could, and indeed should, do all of these things. But in dipping ym toe back in the electronic waters I'll just give you a small anecdote to illustrate how preoccupied I've been of late.

As I was crossing the road a couple of days back I was in a world of my own, mulling over various things, when I was confronted by a face I vaguely recognised as a restaurant regular. She greeted me and I responded with the usual platitudes along the linesof "alright? how are you? how you doing?"

It wasn't until I was twenty yards down the road that it occured to me that she wasn't normally in a wheelchair, nor did she normally have one leg in plaster. My faux-cheery "alright?" might, under the circumstances, have seemed something like taking the piss.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A whole new world.

I appear to have moved into the pub. Now, I don't wish to give the impression that this has come as a complete surprise to me, we'be been planning to do so since shortly after I bought it, but still, it's sort of snuck up on me and now I'm waking up and thinking what happened? How come I'm here? The reason for this discombobulation is that this move was initially a temporary measure. Mrs Coastalblog had some relatives coming to stay, and it made sense to put them up in our house while we decamped to the flat. It's still a work in progress, but a mad week of cleaning and carting stuff around made it habitable. I had a suspicion that once we were in we'd be back and forth for a few weeks. As with many of my hunches, I was completely and utterly wrong. As it turned out, once we were here, we were here. Things moved at pace and, now our kitchen appliances have been installed, there's no going back, the old house is unusable. It's left me with slightly mi

Genius loci

 At the back end of last week, I heard a sound which told me Autumn had truly arrived. It seemed out of place, as we sweltered in unseasonable warmth, but it is as reliable an indicator if the seasons turning as leaves browning. A slightly comical, slightly mournful honking, early in the morning then again at the turn of the day The pink-footed geese are back. It is one of those sounds which is part of the fabric of this place, the siren being tested at Ashworth Hospital means it's Monday, Bringing practice means it's Tuesday, and the migration of the Pinks to their wintering grounds at Martin Mere means it's time to dig the jumpers out. It is one thing I do think I'd miss if I moved away. The arrival of these faintly ludicrous birds, strung out loosely against the sky in their rough v formations is something which seems to have burrowed its way deep into my consciousness, a sign that yes, things are definitely not all they could be, but some things are still working. T

Mad Dogs and Immigration Ministers

It is with no small degree of distress that I'm afraid to say I've been thinking about Robert Jenrick. I know, I know, in this beautiful world with its myriad of wonders, thetre are many other things about which I could think, the play of sunlight upon dappled water, the laughter of my children, the song thrush calling from the sycamore tree a few yards away from where I type this. Yet the shiny, faintly porcine features of the Minister for Immigration keep bubbling up into my consciousness. It's a pain in the arse, I tell you. A few years ago on here I wrote a piece entitled The cruelty is the point in which I argued that some policies are cruelty simply for the sake of it, pour decourager les autres . I was reminded of that recently when I listened to Jenrick defending his unpleasant, petty decision to order murals at a migrant children's centre to be painted over. You've probably heard the story already; deeming pictures of cartoon characters "too welcoming&