Talk to the paw

What I didn’t mention about seeing the play the other night was that it was exceedingly chilly. Which is to be expected given that the sun was on its gentle way downwards (landed in Swansea from what I can tell, someone should check whether the place is still there) – only I wasn’t expecting to be out that late on my little holiday to Devon and of course I had not brought anything suitable to wear.

Neither had Laura of course, so we found the only charity shop in Lynton and ransacked the clothing section in search of smart casual attire that was cosy but suitable for the theatre. Disaster. The men’s section is meagre. Some shirts, plenty of suits, some t-shirts. Nothing that I could make use of.

But a plentiful women’s section, so many clothes that they extended upstairs. Some rummaging later and Laura has a tasteful cardigan with chunky buttons and I have a hot pink sweater with a cartoonish image of a dog and the phrase ‘Talk to the paw’ emblazoned on the front. I think I love it, and I don’t buy many things from the charity shops. I can cope with getting books from them, but not the casual wear of the recently deceased, which I’m fairly convinced makes up the bulk of the clothing donations. I do have a couple of jackets, I must admit, but those were both bought in a fancy posh charity shop in Alcester. I sick in my mouth at the thought of getting shoes from one of them, even the posh ones.

Still, my jumper kept me snug (it’s a little short in the sleeves) and I think it’s funny. Don’t like it? Talk to the paw, because the snout ain’t listening.

What the Dickens

We have come to Devon for the weekend. If I’m honest I prefer Cornwall for the pasties, but I understand you can buy them elsewhere these days, which is a reassuring development. We’re in the north of Devon, which has a prime view of south Wales. It’s very much like booking into a nice hotel and the view from your room is into a neighbouring apartment.

I enjoy the rugged landscape and proximity to nature round here, though it’s a shame there isn’t a greater proximity to the major road network. It took hours to get down the motorway for the weekend as it was, then another three days to make the last 30 miles on foot while trying to coax along the mule that was laden with our baggage.

The telegraph has made it though, and the incandescent light bulb, so it’s not as though you feel too far away from home. The other preservation of the olden days is the bed and breakfast, where you slumber in a drastically overdecorated room and are somehow watched by the proprietor every single time you leave the house.

A particular delight of the weekend has been our visit to see a play by the Pleasure Dome theatre company (nothing to do with Amsterdam, it’s apparently a reference to a Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem) by some rocks outside. They performed The Signalman, a play by Charles Dickens but also starring his great-great-grandson. Something something nepo grandbaby.

It was a real treat though, and I speak as an uncultured swine. The feral goats stage right, the audience members trying to keep their dogs quiet. It was lovely how the sun setting behind the actors added to the eerie disquiet of the spooky train track based chiller. More theatre ought to be enjoyed from a picnic blanket with a little tub of hummus in front of you.

Without a shadow of a drought

I am essentially rather cold-blooded – I’m always fairly chilly and need a constant application of heat, like an exotic lizard or a Greggs sausage roll. In fact lolling under a bright lamp with assorted pastries sounds like a lovely way to pass the time.

Which is to say that I’m enjoying the current weather – the sunshine and the balmy temperatures are a treat. And also a doom-laden sigh of the impending collapse of the natural world, but I don’t think there’s too much tension is recognising that the two things can be true at once.

I’d quite like a spot of rain though – if it’s not too much trouble – for not much other reason than I’m sick of going round the vegetable patches with a watering can. Filling the thing up from the outside tap is playing havoc with my lower back and I keep getting bits of the outside stuck in my feet. Unfortunately every time I look at the weather forecast the damp conditions get further and further away. We may already be in a dessicated state, which is a troublesome fall for a country that wields its inclement weather as a core personality trait.

Not that I understand the weather. It might say 30% chance of rain for the day, but then 60% chance of rain within a given hour. This time it feels like there is a significant amount of tension in considering the two things to be simultaneously true.

I fundamentally can’t maths, if you have four hours with a 30% chance of rain that’s 120% chance of rain is it not? Impossible to stay dry and no point leaving the house. But even if there was only 10% chance of rain in the day and it actually does rain, in retrospect you would have to say that it was a 100% chance of rain. For a fundamentally binary choice – it’s either raining or it isn’t – you’d be as well just flipping a coin. You’d have to be right some time, wouldn’t you? What would be the chances…

The ruthless elimination of accumulation

My grandma is 90 today – happy birthday to her, what a thing. Not that she’ll see this, because how will I explain the fact that I have a website or even what a blog is, a repository for digitally vomited thoughts. She is fairly tech savvy, I shall give her that. She operates an iPad with aplomb and messages from her iPhone. She joined WhatsApp recently too, which I precisely the sort of thing that I would rely on my 80s to be able to say absolutely not to.

I went over to see her at the weekend, to check if there were any little jobs I could help with. A decent list of them, it turns out, but she was on good form. My grandad died a few months ago, and our recent wedding anniversary was on the same day as theirs – it was 65 years this July since they got married. A mind boggling passage of time, and obviously you accumulate a lot of stuff during that. Especially if you’ve lived in the same house since 1963 when it was newly built and you really can remember when it was all fields.

Grandma has been dumping things with impressively ruthless efficiency (though full disclosure, she’s German), though in some ways I’m surprised grandad was even allowed to accumulate it all. We found all of his wage slips from 1981 through to the end of 1984. Gone. Though I did keep the one from just after when I was born as a sort of memento. Someone else will have to chuck that out in a few years. An old pair of glasses, gone. Bundles of correspondence from when he was church secretary in 1979. Gone.

It really struck me as we were leafing through much of these things – grandad was a draughtsman by trade, and all of his notes for correspondence and various other things were on the backs of technical drawings he must have kept for scrap – it struck me that all of this stuff was highly meaningful to him. There were some stones in a box full of things from the late 1950s that must have come from somewhere special, but there’s no one left alive to verify.

So much of my life is going to be a simple case of moving to the recycle bin when I go, there won’t even be the impetus of wanting to get the shelf space back so sift through the potted highlights of whatever I’ve been up to. I should say here that this isn’t me being morose, I’m actually thinking how much lighter I should be travelling anyway. There’s so much nonsense I keep stuffed around me that I somehow feel is important, not enough to even pull out and look at on a regular basis. My brain curdles at the thought of having to move house at a point in the reasonably near future, but much of what is in my eye line I probably don’t need. I should go all Marie Kondo, but I’m far too lazy.

Sorry we missed you

I’m very lazy – I don’t know whether I’ve covered this before on here and frankly I can’t be bothered to check, but I should at some point. It extends to include (and indeed vastly eclipses) my emotions – I enjoy a studied ambivalence about most things, a sort of resting bitch soul, and very rarely hate anything.

So it should say a lot to you when I express my intense dislike for the we’ll-get-around-to-it-when-we-feel-like-it parcel delivery company Evri. It used to be called Hermes, but presumably the Greek government took out some kind of superinjunction, or it hoped if it changed the colour on the side of its vans we just wouldn’t notice it was the same thing. Sure, Hermes was the messenger of the gods, but he was also the protector of travellers, thieves and merchants.

I can’t tell you how many parcels over the years have arrived damaged, torn, sat on, wrecked, chucked, boiled, mashed or dropped in a stew. I would believe you if you told me that Evri warehouses had a lucrative side hustle where hen parties would come to the place as a rage room. I would believe you if you told me that the sole question on the Evri job application form was ‘Do you hate the entire world?’ I would believe you if you told me that there was a sponsorship deal in place where the England football team could pop into their local facility any time and use it for penalty practice. I would believe you if you told me that US trainee cops were brought over and used the places as part of their customer care training. I would believe you.

I also have an endless succession of images that Evri has emailed me over the years, subtle variations on a crotch shot half covered by a door, with a plaintive outstretched hand that says can you just give me the box already. I consider those messages a form of hate mail, which I thought would have been covered by the Communications Act 2003. Yet another of Evri’s egregious misdemeanours. It’s the sort of company where the ‘Sorry we missed you’ card has an unspoken rest of the sentence that goes something like ‘…we’ll work on our aim for next time’.

There are also a variety of ethical issues associated with the company, which it strenuously denies (obviously) but I’m too lazy to look into those. Oh well.

Running through my options

I really hate running – I exercise so that I can eat chips and don’t have to buy new trousers. Unfortunately my formal wear was all purchased when I was much younger and far slimmer, so with wedding season coming up I’m having to put a little more effort in than normal.

In fact I’m trying to psych myself up for a run right now, but successfully reasoning that I really ought to put something on here for fear of neglecting my global audience. I really wouldn’t want that.

What usually happens is that I resolve to head out nice and early (mostly so no one sees me) before spending the next hour or two trying to talk myself out of it. I know that from the very first step I’ll be miserable and wish that I was doing anything else in the universe right now. What keeps me going is that I don’t want to waste a good pair of contact lenses on sitting around. If I had a decent pair of glasses that didn’t fly off my face if I so much as turn my head too quickly I’d be even less fit than I currently am.

I thought about a bike ride, but I’ve really nowhere to go and there’s nothing more depressing than meandering about on a bicycle. A brisk walk was another option, but it would take twice as long as a run and I’d rather be sitting down again as soon as I can. I’m extremely lazy, though I do spend a significant amount of brain power calculating what the easiest set of scenarios are that get me sitting down again as soon as possible.

I’m often running late, though not very quickly. I love running a bath, but that’s useless for cardio. I ran for office once or twice, but that was back in my student days. None of this would normally slip past my internal quality control, incidentally, but I’m desperately trying to put off the inevitable.

Eurgh.

Ice cream with delight

I should be wary of describing anything as the happiest day of my life, especially when today is my wedding anniversary, but I did go to Sainsbury’s earlier and the mint choc chip Jude’s is back on offer.

I went in literally the day after I wrote this post and it was back up to full price. I was prepared for it to happen, but still the grief hit me like waves of cold air in the face. Then I closed the freezer door and carried on with my shopping..

Perhaps someone high up at the company read my blog and realised the error of their ways, or perhaps it’s more that there’s s keen understanding of the fact that there are certain generously valued items that people are never going to buy unless there’s a discount on the price.

Certainly the people behind Kettle Chips (could you actually make them in a kettle? I’ve heard of people boiling eggs in them before) are aware of the phenomenon, and I can only hope that everyone involved is able to make a living on the wafer thin margins involved. As concerned as I am for the welfare of everyone who works at Jude’s, I might just go and get a couple more tubs just to be on the safe side.

The norther regions

I saw today that our prime minister in waiting (and oh gosh the poor man’s been waiting) has announced that he will set up a Number 10 ‘nerve centre’ in the north of the country. Nice that politicians will be able to get on our nerves from more regional locations.

It’ll specifically be in Manchester, which is sort of where he’s from. He was actually born in Aintree on the outskirts of Liverpool and grew up just over the border of Cheshire. He’s co-opted Manchester as a sort of personality for himself, which I wouldn’t begrudge him.

Does the regional Number 10 (I really thought that’s what Chequers was for) mean that the prime minister will have a place up in Manchester and rent Downing Street out? Presumably to a shady oligarch or an assemblement of OnlyFans creators.

And just think, within 25 or 30 years the two Downing Street locations could be linked by a high speed rail line that would render the distance immaterial. What the least likely scenario, that Britain rejoins the European Union in our lifetimes, or has a working north/south high-speed railway? If Burnham does need a lift up to the office from London I’m sure the Brexit bus is still idling away somewhere.

Late for a film – but not enough

I went to the cinema yesterday to watch a film – a useful respite from the bloviating heat, though I was worried I should have brought a jumper when I first walked in through the reception, where it appears they’d changed the thermostat so that they could keep ice lollies out on the counter. The screening room itself was a touch soupy, but at least more comfortable than staring at the wall in my house while a single droplet of sweat rolls down the side of my face. I’m only joking, I don’t sweat, just like the former prince Andrew.

I always arrive very late when I go to the cinema. It’s partly because I’m often unable to leave the house to go somewhere until the time that I said I would be there, which is an admittedly hateful trait, and partly because I can’t beat sitting through all those awful adverts. Endless lifestyle pitches at people who like to sit in darkened rooms and not talk to each other. Adverts for mobile phone companies shortly before more adverts telling you not to use them. Mixed messages, people. It seems very optimistic to me, expecting you to remember any product you’ve seen 90 seconds off after you’ve had the back of your brain stem visually sandblasted for nigh-on three hours.

At yesterday’s showing I arrived 10 minutes after the advertised film start and they were barely getting going. Another 20 minutes later and they were still in full stride – it was 35 minutes after the film was supposed to start that it actually did. That’s me levels of lateness, I think they didn’t start making the film until it was supposed to start playing.

What I really object to with the cinema adverts is that I’ve already paid a ridiculous amount for a ticket, but they’ve got me there like a hostage. I refuse to sit through a YouTube advert if it’s longer than five seconds, I’ll refresh that page for half an hour until I get something I can skip or ignore. I’ve refused to watch Formula 1 on the telly since it went behind a paywall – can you believe the nerve of it, a sport built entirely on sponsorship wants me to pay extra to see it.

But the cinema? The film company is bragging about how it’s made $500m around the world, with a chunk of that from all the cheeky things they’ve hidden around the sets, and the multiplex full of screaming children must be coining it in with the overpriced popcorn. It’s actually outrageous. I tell you what I would pay extra for though – I’ll give you another pound if you let me know when the film is actually starting. Still might be late though.

A load of bull

Mrs Burnett works on a micro dairy-slash-beef farm, milking the ladies a couple of times a week and making yoghurt and suchlike. Quick reminder that I’m allergic to milk and can no longer ride in my own car because it’s so stinky.

Part of the job is looking after the babies – Laura loves that part, bottle feeding the teeniest and making sure everyone else gets a good helping from the suckling bucket. There’s also a strong requirement to give the cows pastoral scritching should they require it.

A month or two back there was a sad occasion in the beef herd where a little baby bull calf was born but his mum died giving birth. I say little, this baby was an absolute unit, and perhaps as a result of his traumatic entry to the world, an absolute thicko. He ended up in with the milk herd babies as an orphan and massively struggled to learn how to drink from a bottle. I visited the farm one Saturday while Laura was milking and spent over an hour trying to coax a couple of litres of milk down his reluctant throat.

The baby bounced right back, and we gave him the nickname Chonky. I visited him a few times and got regular updates from the farm that he was getting stronger and jaipsing around with the others. Chonky was unusual in having an affinity toward people – especially unusual from the beef herd. A pure soul, always ready for a cuddle and a scratch beneath the chin, his lower teeth would jut out in a goofy half smile.

Today I had a message from Laura that she’d spotted the knacker man and his van in the yard taking a cow away – Chonky died in the night and was found this morning. No one’s quite sure why the little fellow died, but it’s hit our household particularly hard. Perhaps we’re not cut out for the harsh realities of country life – how many thousands of cows died just today? – but it was a privilege to know this sweet little guy if only for a few weeks.

Ain’t that the tooth

I do enjoy a good argument, and I have to say that I picked my spouse well when it came to enjoying a good argument together. I don’t know if she’s quite up to my level, but she’s definitely capable enough to land a solid punch to the jaw every now and then. If that’s even an accurate boxing metaphor – I realise as I type that I have not a clue.

I’ve realised today that her secret trump card is telling me I have something in my teeth, because I can’t immediately verify and I don’t quite know if she’s telling the truth or not. Easiest way to win any discussion, because play has to stop immediately while the team captain goes off in search of a mirror and a length of floss.

And it would be just as effective even if there wasn’t actually anything on my teeth, because it’s the threat of the thing that’s the thing. But would she lie? I don’t think so, she’s a very honourable woman, but I absolutely would and you can never be quite sure about people can you?

Just the possibility of a dental besmirching is enough to take the wind out of my sails, stop me in my tracks, and other tortured analogies. I probably shouldn’t give the secret away, but I’m not sure she reads this. And besides, I think I’ve got something in my teeth, my wife said so.

That's politics

I’m fascinated by this whole Andy Burnham psychodrama that’s playing out across the 24-hour news channel chirons, in the same way that I’m sure many other people throughout the country just aren’t.

An average voter somewhere in the West Midlands will wake up one day soon, realise there’s a new prime minister and not have a clue why. Not that anyone who has actually been following the news will have a clue why either, it just is what it is, the circle of public life. Knock knock, Keir who, that’s politics.

It’s all much like the old days, which is a cheery thought. If this was 400 years ago it would be painted in the history books as some sort of dreary middle class (except that dinner exist) civil war-slash-coup, Burnham marching on London with his team of admin support and someone shooting video for his socials, when in reality he’s going to jump on an early Avanti West Coast and claim it on expenses.

There’s a level of entitlement to Burnham’s putsch that I find mildly staggering (I try not to stagger as a rule), asking the actual prime minister of a country to hand in his notice while he waits to see what platform he’s supposed to be leaving from. He’s probably deciding his cabinet and a few headline policy announcements while deciding whether or not to get a sandwich from Upper Crust now or wait for later. Though if the current prime minister (at the time of writing) had invested a similar amount of time preparing for government we might not be in this mess.

But here comes our white knight on his trusty steed (an Addison Lee Volkswagen) to save us, having vanquished the racist foe up north. Part of the reason that Andy Burnham and Nigel Farage are able to be so popular is that they are frontline politicians who are untainted by any actual frontline political experience. Sure, Burnham was culture secretary, but back in the days when you just turned up at the Baftas and kept your head down the rest of the year.

Fair play to him on his regional polling win though, it’s exciting for him. First Wigan, then the world. I do get vastly irritated though by this notion of ‘tactical voting’ that people talking about at endless length on the news. As if we have to stay with whatever party the polling algorithms have allocated us. The whole point of an election is trying to persuade people to put an X next to your name, and the moment for doing that is in the polling booth – anything before or after is just nonsense.

Unless you’re the actual politician – as the (current) prime minister has learned, it’s one thing trying to persuade people, but it’s the next little bit that’s even harder.