Advent colander

Arguments full of holes from somewhere between Heaven and Hell just before Christmas.

The restaurant was perfect for a pre-Christmas dinner with the in-laws.

The food was plentiful: hot, perfectly cooked and served by cheerful waiters who asked with professional concern when we left some of it on our plates. Too much, too much. The drinks were crisp and cold and delicious. Johnny Mathis and Dean Martin, Bing Crosby and Perry Como lifted us not-too spiritually into the Advent mood. Beautifully tasteful and cheerful Christmas decorations with that thick, expensive-looking tinsel and festoons of holly and ivy swag made the place cosy and festive, and atop the lovingly-dressed tree was a golden, perfect Star of Bethlehem. On our way out our ever-delightful host and proprietor wished us all the sincerest of Merry Christmases and wished us well for the new year.

He looked a little uncomfortable in his brand new close-cropped beard and moustache combo (think of Kenneth Branagh in Wild Wild West), and I couldn’t help hoping that he thought it stylish; rather than pious.

Mrs. Northwester’s parents had told us earlier that in some parts of their town, Mine Host’s less businesslike coreligionists have the habit of driving up to ‘outsiders’ on the street and beating up individuals and couples for fun. Apparently, others like to tell white residents and shoppers that they aren’t wanted here. She didn’t mention any prosecutions or convictions, though. What a country.

Or two countries.

***

On my birthday, Mrs. Northwester and I walked along the canal path to work a little later than usual for me. Two dog-owners stood fluttering by whilst their leashed dogs; (soppy-looking house pooches: we’re not talking Rottweilers here), barked and bounced up at each other. After a while, the human beings who owned those dogs decided it might be a good idea to walk off in different directions to end the barking. We passed them as they separated, and as a third dog owner walked on unconcerned as his pet dropped one on the pavement. ‘Don’t pick it up then!’ snapped Mrs. Northwester to his disappearing back, which, unless he was deaf, contained no spine.

Early next day, I walked to work alone. Mrs. Northwester is not a morning person. A Plastic PC was having a go at a track suited dog owner whose two animals were aimlessly sniffing through the weeds and Walkers packets by the tow path. This officer of the bye-law was stoutly repeating to the outraged dog owner (full poop bag in his hand) that dogs should be kept on the leash. There had been complaints, he said, about dogs fighting the previous day. These dogs weren’t leashed – unlike the barking mad (or barking friendly) ones the previous day. The PCSO kept on repeating ‘Dogs should be on leashes,’ whilst the owner kept on repeating ‘What am I supposed to do?’ and waggling the poop bag helplessly. Apparently it’s impossible to leash dogs and clear their mess up at the same time. There are handy trees and shrubs to tether them to nearby, however. Squeezing between the participants of this Socratic dialogue, I walked on nursing post-birthday queasiness. A few hundred yards on, a fashionably dressed and coiffured woman approached; her husky-expensive dog pattering along obediently at her feet. As part of my Advent campaign to reduce the hurt in the world, I advised her that there was a PCSO further along the path insisting that dogs be put on leashes. She thanked me for intercepting an early morning confrontation with The State, and raised her eyes to a Heaven that allows the uneducated to tell middle class dog owners what to do.

That evening I went home and discovered that Wing-Mirror Vandalism Number Twelve had occurred either on my birthday or on dog-bothering day. I suppose the PCSOs were elsewhere when the cheeky-but-lovable local ‘lads’ added to their score.

I’m not quite sure what any of this says about politics and society in Third Millennium Castle City, but I suspect that Authority (lack of, and respect for: lack of) might be involved somewhere. Oh, and also that people who want to live with in-bred wolves are as diverse and as crazy as the rest of us.

But if it wasn’t for early morning dog-walkers, who would be the first to find the next in the never-ending series of grimly broadcast announcements that the body thought to be ‘Missing school girl, Michelle X…’ has been found?

***

The otherwise adorable and utterly irreproachable Mrs. Northwester has recently acquired an irritating habit.

When we’re watching a DVD at home after a long day’s work she’ll wait until I close my eyes to rest them for a minute or two and then fast-forward the film by an hour and a half’s playing time. She also complains of auditory hallucinations in which - get this - I snore during moments of such trickery.

Perhaps she’s going senile.

But what else can you expect from someone who argues that remote controls, (which are after all intended to operate at a distance from the television and DVD player), should be stored on top of the TV set; instead of being kept conveniently at hand on my sofa?

I think she might need help.

A taste of Paradise

Last Wednesday night a police car stopped beside me as I parked outside my home. I could get out but his passenger window was open and the officer inside told me to

‘Get into your car and put the headlights on,’ which I did. ‘And now walk to the front of the car.’

I obeyed, and one of the headlights was broken. News to me. Well, I never.

‘Oh,’ I said, all citizenly.

‘Get it sorted,’ came the voice from a now disappearing patrol car.

Well, they can’t say Mind how you go, sir, anymore, can they?

Thursday evening after work (I walk to work, so no driving for me between then and now) I picked up a replacement bulb from Halfords and, after a mere twenty minutes of staring upside down at my oil-stained Haynes through fog-obscured spectacles and with a spelunking lamp strapped to my skull, plus acquiring some sore knuckles, and the artistic deployment of three distinctive and ever-popular Anglo-Saxon verbs later, my offside headlight was as good as, well,… as good as that on any car that was made in Britain in the past twenty years and is affordable by the likes of me can be.

Then it was back into the house for dinner and a DVD with Mrs. NW, ignoring the fireworks and the piteous howling of the dog from next door.

Next day, I drove back from the gym and parked the car and my next-door neighbour asked me if I’ve had a bump.

‘No,’ I said, ‘Why?’

‘Because you had a lot of coppers looking at it yesterday,’ he said, ‘They were all from a big van, and they were looking closely at your car.’ That would be Thursday the day after the first copper pointed my headlight problem out.

This Monday night I put the recycling out. Three oblong plastic boxes with flat lids: one for plastic; one for paper and metal; one for cardboard and glass.

This process involves picking up each box lid and pouring the rain off it onto the yard’s concrete (we keep the boxes outside because they’re too big and dirty to keep in the kitchen or the living room or to drag them up from the cellar, see?), then replacing it and carrying the box to the front door ready to take out and put on the pavement. Repeat twice, but remember to lock the back door on your way with Box Number Three in case the local welfare recipients decide to nip in while I’m at the front to pick up any unconsidered trifles, etc.

On the Tuesday afternoon I got home and the boxes were empty, except for the plastic-recycling one, in which a number of punnets for small tomatoes and a box for cheese spread still lies, all unwanted. I reversed the process with the added fun of lifting the plastic box to the top of the wheelie-bin into which non-recyclable waste is usually placed and collected fortnightly, alternating with the recycling collection, and tipping what the picky recyclers have left into that one.

This Tuesday morning I drove to a training course which was held in a well-known local government building situated a mere conventional Hamas rocket flight from Castle City. It’s a nice building: comfortable and well maintained, and in its lobby area were numerous leaflets on health and safety and anti-Racism and other services that local democracy provides. There’s also a wall covered with photo portraits of successive mayors and a display case containing awards and certificates: for recycling local waste; for Investors In People; for energy efficiency: and a scale model tank presented to its home council by the local regiment.

It was too cold to be comfortable all day. Throughout the day-long training course we all wore our fleeces and pullovers, and most of us kept our coats on, too. The toilets were gloomy because the lights were set to off unless you insistently pressed the on-switch with a bit of heft behind your shoulder. It was a relief to get back into my car, whack the heating on full, and drive back to Castle City and the unwanted tomato punnets and the lonely Dairylea container.

This is all political.

This is also utterly unnecessary.

There is no need for policemen to be rude, patronizing bullies who order people around without a ‘please or ‘thank you,’ - let alone the formerly universal ‘sir’ I’d have expected only ten years ago. How hard can it be to say ‘Your left headlight’s not working, sir, please fix it before you drive at night again’? I don’t know what they hoped to achieve sending a large van full of police in broad daylight to check my car, unless it was formerly owned by a gangster, or they were hoping to find something wrong that’s towable or finable. It’s not a pretty vehicle, but it goes and I maintain its safety systems as well as its going places systems – until a bulb goes, and then I replace it. The police are busy, it seems, throwing their weight around with harmless people in their sights. I’d love to know what they were all doing the 10 nights to date when my car has been vandalized in six years of parking on this street. In all that time I got one cop car suggesting we install cameras, two plastic PCs (of whom one though tit funny me replacing my wandering wing mirror in the rain) and one Saturday morning an actual SOCO who found nowt, bless her, but she did finger-print the thing. I no longer look forward to speaking to the police confident in the belief that I’ll be treated politely and listened to as I once did. Some officers certainly put their lives and health on the line – and I’m grateful for that – but rudeness and not being interested in ‘minor crimes’ at the same time? Not encouraging.

Parliament is in charge of the overall police system and there are political appointees on all the County constabularies’ Police Committees. I guess Parliament and the political appointees aren’t doing their jobs properly in letting this deterioration happen. I hope that they aren’t doing their jobs properly, that is.

Britain’s full of holes in the ground to put domestic rubbish in - old quarries and mines and modern incinerators now burn so hot that much waste can be rendered harmless by them. Instead, we have to recycle. I’m pretty fit and healthy for my age, what with the swimming and the dancing and all, but I have mild arthritis in my knees and fingers. Kneeling down and standing up to sort rubbish into different bins in cold or rain or hail or high winds or whatever is not a comfortable experience, and I pity seriously disabled or doddery old people who have to carry these stinking bins through their homes because the recycler lorry crews don’t come up the ginnels at the back of our terraces – unlike the wheelie-bin people. Do Greens ever wonder how nasty it is for the old and the infirm to have to go through these Gaian rituals weekly or more often? And who asked for this silly regime other than the politicians? Others agree, whilst some hold onto their communitarian dream of universal obedience to the gods of eco-religion – see the comments to this post.

Politicians have decreed that recycling is good and that its opposite should be criminalized, and so there goes privacy.

I got to spend an uncomfortable day in a poorly-heated council building because the council concerned wanted to ‘reduce carbon emission’ in order to protect ‘the planet’ from the global warming of a world that’s actually getting colder. The politicians and the politicians alone have the power to keep us deliberately uncomfortable. I’m all for thrift, and especially so in the public sector where I work, and I imagine that the idea of chilling or even freezing people who volunteer to work in the whacky world of benefits is actually alluring to some of my readers, but putting your employees and guests into rooms like old-style cold-slab pantries? Isn't that actually rather cruel, and what the trade unions are supposed to fight against?

Back in 1997 I dreaded the imminent arrival of the New Labour project; expecting it to represent every kind of foolishness made flesh as decades of Left-wing, State-worshipping grudges were transformed into policy to build their heaven on earth. I expected that they would, and was not disappointed that they did bankrupt the public finances and I expected that their reign would basically be like living in a student union all year round.

But if you’d told me that after twelve years of them being in power I’d find myself: nervous of the attentions of British policemen in the hours of darkness; forced to scrabble about in the dark and rain with my household garbage; and be physically chilled on purpose by their local satraps, I’d have laughed in your face.

Welcome to Paradise.

Let’s destroy it.