All These Teapot and Sultana Days

Of course, you may have spent the recent Bank Holiday Monday making sure that you’ve placed your sultana as close to your teapot as you dare, especially in this Royal Wedding year, but – maybe, just maybe – you are beginning to wonder if there is more to life than that.

When we were young – so much younger than today – of course we had dreams of the revolutionary ways we would arrange our dried fruit, especially in relation to the various items of kitchenware we would, one day – in the fullness of time – be the proud possessors of. What we did not, could not, realise at the time when we dismissed the cautious way our parents, and their parents before them, had placed their currants next the their rolling pins, or had an artful arrangement of three raisings placed carefully next to their bread bin, just what compromises growing up into maturity entails.

Of course, we had read of all sorts of exotica in the Colour Supplements of our endless young Sundays, of how in the Mediterranean region it was not unusual to arrange dried apricots in a semi-circle around the pasta jar, or, in Asian countries, place dried figs almost touching the wok, and how we longed for such sophistication.

As we grew older, though, we realised it was never to be, and that we – like our parents – would look at the TV shows showing dried dates in exotic locations and merely sigh wistfully as we made our way back to the kitchens of our own lives. There to stare at the sultana placed so carefully by the teapot as we waited for the kettle to boil, looking forward to that eternally reassuring and satisfying nice cup of tea.

My Beautiful Goat

Is that a chip shop in your pocket, or are you moderately pleased to see me?

My chin is not that green, Ursula, and these are the freshest stoats in the shop. My banana will be your friend and we will go down to the seashore to see how we can eat fresh haddock whilst standing on one leg.

I have seen all the things that need to be seen. I have done all the things that need to be done.

Oooh, look! String!

This is a shiny thing. This is a bright thing. We will stand enraptured by the bright and shiny until something brighter and shinier comes along.

Now, we go home. The way back is not easy, especially when wearing new underpants.

I know of the car park. I know of the shopping centre. I have eaten of the noodles at midnight.

This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful goat. But I do have all the string you could possibly need.

Here is the chin.

Here is the hand.

I have real legs, y'know. Not bad at my age, is it? You can't beat real legs, no matter what they say.

Oooh! Look at that!

….Oh, it's gone now.

Sandwiches of Ill-Repute

So, anyway, there I was residing in exactly the same pair of trousers you see me wearing now, armed only with an A-Z of Droitwich, a hatstand and a cheese salad baguette that had - frankly – seen better days. Just when those days were it was hard to tell, cheese baguettes are noticeably reticent about the days of their misspent youth spent hanging around in the sandwich shops with other sandwiches of ill-repute and getting up to all sorts of mischief with the condiments. However, that is a tale for another day, and – hopefully – a more snack-based anecdote compatible pair of trousers.

Anyway, there I was and yes in these very trousers. I had my hatstand ready, but few of the natives seemed wiling to approach me. They could see I had my A-Z open and they could tell from the look in my eyes that I was not afraid to consult it.

Of course, this was back in the days before smartphones, satnavs and all the other gizmotronic wizardry of the modern age – hence the hatstand, I suppose. Therefore all I had to rely on was the A-Z and my native wit and cunning. Of course, being Droitwich, the natives were very wary of approaching someone with a Cheese Baguette; they had no doubt heard of the strange magic of the five-a-day co-ordinators and their mystical worship of the powers of the salad and were mighty afeared.

Consequently, I was able to wield my hatstand with impunity as I made my way down the High Street, but, even then, I knew the Cheese baguette would not hold back the natives for long. Therefore, I soon found the car park where I had cunningly hidden my getaway vehicle, and so I made good my escape.

Luckily I got away with only the slight loss of some lettuce, a slice of cucumber and a slight gnawing to the base of the hatstand where I had rather incautiously let one of the natives get to close to me while I was perusing my A-Z. Still, as they say you ‘live and learn’ and I knew next time I returned to that town I would be far more careful, both with my cheese salad baguette and with my hatstand.

Franking Machine

Across the incalculable car parks of this great and noble land there lie the very pomegranates of our mutual awareness of the state of everyone’s individual wainscoting. I - for one – have tarried many a sun-filled afternoon, standing naked with my left knee painted blue in your vestibule as we re-arranged our mail order catalogues in a way we both found aesthetically-pleasing and sexually arousing. At least until you began backcombing your parakeets and I had to make my excuses and leave.

Then, I made my way along the ring road, clutching that special tin of corned beef you gave to me on the occasion on Napoleon Bonaparte’s birthday. Since that day I often have thought of the way you always apply sellotape to your chin before going out to meet the postman in order to enquire about the state of his gladioli. Then, after a pause to examine his franking machine before taking him deep into your potting shed to demonstrate your latest use of custard in an erotic context, you snigger at my paltry cheese-arrangements once again.

A Conspiracy of Penguins

You will, by now, be – like me – wondering about the rather curious silence about the penguins in the mainstream media. Of course, the most obvious conclusion is that there is some sort of conspiracy involved. Perhaps even that those cunning and beguiling penguins have infiltrated far deeper into human society then we, who take such matters seriously, have even realised.

However, it now seems fairly conclusive that the penguins themselves are far too subtle for mere conspiracy, especially as most conspiracy theories in the end tend to turn out to be combinations of cock-up, human stupidity, accident and co-incidence rather that the subtle manipulations of sinister cabals.

The penguins are far too subtle clever and manipulative to do anything like that. Just look, by way of example, how they have infiltrated the UK’s vital biscuit supply lines. Should it come to war, and we should not rule it out – even at this stage - they will already be in a position to disrupt our vital tea breaks, especially on the front line, and don’t forget how the penguins are already supremely adapted to hostile terrain. Flippers many be at somewhat of a disadvantage when dealing with modern battlefield automatic weapons, but then so are anti-frostbite mittens.

It should be – quite obviously – a matter of deep concern to us all, but there still reasons this deep mystery of why the complete silence about it all in the mainstream media. For that – for once – I have no answer…

The Size of Biscuits

Ping-pong ding-dong, I've got a thingy song, so Eurovision here I come.

I have a reindeer, she is called Nigel and we are very happy together. Well… as happy as two manic-depressives who have nothing in common and spend at least 18 hours a day together, sharing a small, cramped and barely furnished flat can be.

I have a large spanner. It is made of a grey dull metal and is very heavy indeed. I think it may be - slightly - in love with me. I call it Sheila, although that is - of course - not its real name. I would be giving far, far too much away if I were to reveal its real name.

Names are interesting things. I have a name for everything that I feel may need one. I even have names for those things that need a name only on special Mondays, and for those I like to tickle in that special way.

I shall wear a hat and drive too slowly. I shall wear a cardigan and take an interest in gardening and the size of biscuits. I shall grow old and I will go bald.

I shall.

I shall.

Let us go, you and I, to sit in the car park of destiny with our flasks of milky tea and neatly-packed sandwich boxes.

The British Weather – A Survivor’s Guide

Of course, if you are buttering your baguette in a force-nine gale or having to bale out your shoes with your teacup, in between having to fetch your book or newspaper back from across the other side of the garden, then you must have been tempted outside. However briefly you were tempted out by the appearance of that yellow thing in the sky for the first time in what seems like decades, you will have forgotten one of the basic rules of life in Britain.

The rule is: no matter how nice it looks outside – it isn’t.

It is either – on those few days when the drizzle stops long enough for the clouds to part – sunny but cold, or – unbelievably – sunny and hot. Such is the cunning nature of the British weather; neither of these conditions can be detected from indoors. Only when you get out there, do you realise those two things that you can see rolling towards the kitchen drain used to live – quite happily - in your underpants, or that rivulet of dampness also heading towards the kitchen drain is you… melting.

Occasionally, on about 3 days out of the 365 the temperature outside is just right – that is if the wind has temporarily dropped below gale force – for sitting outside. Unfortunately, if it is nice enough for you it will be nice enough for your neighbours to get out their power mower, their radio and their barbecue too… oh, and their drink. So they will be singing crazily at the tops of their voices to the latest Eurovision hits while one manically and drunkenly mows everything on a vaguely horizontal surface while the other sets fire to a wide variety of foodstuff. All right by the fence where you placed your garden chair to keep out of the gale… and the rain… or, if it is summer, the snow.

If you are British, if you grew up here – oddly enough during a childhood of eternal summers – then you will - by instinct – know not to trust the outside. It is a dangerous, insidious and mendacious con-trick perpetuated by a cruel alliance between the weather system and the insect population in order to make everyone’s life a misery.