Going Green...grocer!

That'll be £37 and 93 pence please.

When I were a lad way back before t'days of hypermarkets, convenience stores, online shopping and t'like, a trip to the greengrocers was an almost daily ordeal and one to be feared. And since it was in norh east London,  not Yorkshire, I'll drop the Monty Python northern hardship nostalgia accent.

   "Just nip up the road and get twelve pound of potatoes, two of cooking apples, three big onions, a head of cabbage and some carrots from Charlie's," Mum would look up from her endless washing, ironing, cleaning to ask."Ooh and tell him to put it on the slate." The words struck fear into a young heart.

      Charlie was a blubbery man mountain who  ran the greengrocers on the next block. With a checked flat cap permanently attached to his head and a greasy stained apron of inderminate dark, colour : a sort of blue-grey-brown-black, girding his rather-more-than-ample loins, he was a formidable figure. A hand rolled cigarette was often seen hanging from the corner of his mouth, allowing him still to talk in a low gravelly, rasping voice that attested the power of tar and nictoine on the human frame.

    Charlie had never been caught smiling and the sight of children seemed to stoke his habitual gruffness further. We might have feared him more if we didn't know how slowly he moved and how easily we could get away if necessary.

 "Wort you want boy?!" He'd snarl ,"Come on, I ain't gort all day!"

   That was plainly untrue.  He had nothing else to do with his time but sell vegetables, but baiting children seemed to provide a bit of a variety from conversing with sprouts, runner beans and greying cauliflowers. The shop was dark and exuded an air of miserable menace, rather like its owner.  There was no self-service in Charlie's shop, not for kids anyway.

  "Cookers?" He'd turn over a few decent apples at the top of the crate and delve down for some suitably bruised and beaten specimens.
   "Lovely collie that is" he'd say  daring you with his eyes to tell him you wanted one of the fresher ones as he thrust it into the big rapidly filling shopping bag.
"Have you ever seen better bananas?" he offered, knowing the answer was an affirmative which dare not speak its name.
  
    His big, red, gurning face loosely resembled the potatoes he threw roughly onto the weighing scales, except he wasn't covered in mud. Mum said he sold them like that so you had to pay for the soil too. He was generally believed to overcharge and to give short measure when he could get away with it. Nobody had a good word for Charlie, not even mum who saw the best in everyone. She couldn't buy the veg herself, not until dad's pay packet had made a dent in the debt we owed him.

   Charlie saved his best for last. At the expected mention of the word "tick"," slate" or "credit" his big, bulky frame would rock backwards his eyes would roll to heaven and a series of  rumbling, almost incoherent noises would rise up like a slow, pained earthquake gatheirng pace.

  "Bloody cheek...what's the world coming too...honest man can't make a living...got bills to pay y'know...
can't  give  the stuff away free...people today...repsonsibilities...somefink for nuffink... "
It always ended with his own particular amen: " Go orn, geddout of 'ere 'fore you feel my boot!" No bill was ever discussed and Charlie presumably took the liberty of deciding for himself how much the transaction was worth, adding the number he first thought of and then increasing the amount owed accordingly.
   
      I thought of Charlie the other day.  I was standing outside the organic greengrocer's which opened in our locale a while ago and has been expanding ever since. It's  now a coffee shop and a cafe and a deli and it 'll shortly be a kindergarten, Steiner  school and a yoghurt-knitting factory.  It's a great  success.

      The last time the coop was short of  veg I popped in and bought  a single bruised tomato for 97p. Of  course it has to cost that much because each tomato is hand reared by a buddhist monk who gives it a name, nurtures and educates it and teaches it the wisdom of accepting its lot and of being the most perfect and flavoursome  tomato it can possibly be.  Oddly enough, I couldn't tell the difference from his lowly coop cousins, but then I am one of the truly unenlightened. My wife once won a £50 voucher for  this shop  in the local school raffle: it didn't fill a single recycled carrier bag, but the Nicaraguan 90% fair trade dark chocolate was surprisingly... like other chocolate only more expensive.

    As I stood in the queue I heard the following exchange coming from a couple of organic skinnylatte fatties in garish peasant garb of the labelled variety.
    "Never go anywhere else now"
    "Marvellous"
     "Costs a little more but you get what you pay for"
     "Fabulous"
     "Everyone comes here now: Jocasta, Jessica, Jambalaya, Hugo, Mego, Wego, simply everyone!"
     "Super"
     "People drive miles out of their way to come here. You have to don't you?"
This last struck me as a trifle environmentally questionable but hey, live and let rot I always say.
      
     The reason Charlie came to my mind was that the vegetables looked familiar, possibly the great great great great grand progeny of Charlie's mud covered potatoes, bent carrots, black bananas, collapsing mushrooms and grey cauliflowers; nothing like the nice, clean, cheaper  produce on offer fifty yards away. But where Charlie nickeled and dimed his customers this lot were fiver and tennering them. This was vegetative larceny on a scale of which  poor old Charlie had never even contemplated and the customers loved it!  How on earth could they get away with it? Simple, instead of Charlie, they employed a series of fresh faced, lissom, young women with flowing hair and vowels, all tall enough, even in flat court shoes, to join the constabulary; each one with a smile and a figure that could be a preview of heaven and a voice like soothing music.

  These succcubi weave their spell on the comfortably self important, those with too much time and money on their hands. The gilrs willingly sympathise with the difficulty of getting good nannies, scullery maids and chimney boys; they explain, in great details, the fascinating intricacies of  the trade route which brought these specific mung beans right here to this very shop, just for you; they will agree that your child/children is/are a musical/scientific/literary/artistic/mathmatical prodigy or all of the above. They will fulfil your every wish, except those of a lewd and personal nature.  By the time they have finished, you (not me) will happily hand over the Coutts card (says so much more than cash ever can!) and you'll know you've had a bargain, whatever the price!

     It's not the sort of place for people who might ever need to ask for credit: that comes on cards; or tick, that goes in a box; or slate, that's the latest must-have for kitchen surfaces and  fire hearths.

Poor old Charlie. Come back all is forgiven...well almost!
  

Poppy-dom

What does it mean to wear the poppy?

This morning I stood in silence in the blustery rain by the city's gleaming new war memorial. I do not usually attend such events but felt something of a compulsion today despite the cold, the wind and  the rain. Perhaps it's because there has been quite a hooha locally over the memorial. The old Memorials Gardens had become a haven frequented mainly by winos and skateboarders, and there had been much muttering about the disgrace it cast upon a  fine city, but perhaps I was also influenced at some level by the regular stream of images on the TV of the young servicemen and women caught in a permanent frozen, uniformed smile who return home in solemn cortege processions. 

Old journo's habit dying hard, I edged up to the Council Leader and asked why, at such a time, he thought it right to spend public money on such an edifice.
     "Because we should never forget the terirble cost of war," he said, and I find it hard to believe that anybody could disagree with such a sentiment. It was the closest
I got to any sense of uplift. The overwhelming tone of the event was one of quiet, respectful sadness. 
    
I was one of several hundred residents, ex and current servicemen, city officials and at least one clergymen present. Just in front of me was an elderly lady wearing a hat the shape and colour of a Flanders poppy, a bright, almost cheerful display on a sombre occasion. The plaintive falling notes of The Last Post were the only sounds for a while as collectively and individually we remembered.

I confess my feelings over the poppy have changed over the years. As youngsters we were given pennies to buy them at school and wore them happily, thoughtlessly, until the stalks broke or they dropped out in a game of football or fell apart during an inappropriate playground battle. But back then I was promiscuous in my badge wearing, St Patrick's  shamrocks, birthday numbers, good causes and comic book freebies were all equally likely to adorn  my grey school jumper in those bygone monochrome days. Any splash of colour seemed like a good idea.

As a young man of determinedly anti-militarist feeling (the news and pictures fromVietnam were seldom edifying and made a big impression), I spurned the poppy for some years. Finally, belatedly, I came to realise that the poppy was not , as some might wish, a glorification of war, but a tribute to the fallen and a means of supporting the injured and relatives left bereaved. It was about looking after the living and respecting the dead,  not praising the glory of battle. I like to think that change came over me before my young brother-in-law was sunk in the Falklands and pulled alive from the Arctic water, on a day when several of his shipmates were less  fortunate. He overcame his ordeal and years later marched through London with hundreds of thousands of others to tell his government not to go war in Iraq in his name. If I can't mark the exact year of my conversion to adult poppy-dom, I do know  I have been a loyal wearer ever since. 

My brother,a former councillor, had an interesting take on the issue. He wore both the red poppy in respect of the dead and support of needy veterans, but he also wore on his other lapel, the less well-known white poppy of the Peace Pledge Union which works to promote peace and defuse international conflicts. That seemed to me a perfectly decent and principled approach but it did not stop him being criticised and accused of disrespect for wearing both to a Remembrance Day service in a small town full of small minds.
 
Curiously I was unable to buy a poppy at any of the four shops where I stopped enroute this morning. Nor was there a poppy seller anywhere within the vicinity of the open air service. Usually thepaper blooms are abundant and readily available at this season. Why such reticence this year? Perhaps media brouhaha has made people uncomfortable : we've had stories about TV personalities jumping the gun or competing with ever more elaborate specimen: too soon, too large too me-me-me. All such talk seems trivial. Those in the public eye would do well to take the example of the quietly respectful rememberers at thousands of  Remembrance Day observances across the  country who understand  it is not about the wearer but those for whom the flower is worn.

This makes it the first time for many years I have not worn a poppy, but I have made my donation and I feel I have paid my small tribute to  those who have fallen defending freedoms which should never be taken lightly or for granted. I will look for one a little earlier next year.

So-so so...

So let me begin. So have you noticed the recent requirement by some people to start every sentence with the word "so" followed by a short pause before launching into the sentence proper. So this is done whether it adds to meaning or not. So where did it come form and why? So what should we do about it?

So I first noted it about 18  months ago. At  the time I was involved in quite a few meetings with academics who all seemed to have acquired this irritating linguistic tic. They seemed unable to offer a thought without the Superfluous Initial So (SIS) as we'll call it: it's always good to have a name for your enemy. Perhaps it was the result of a virus which escaped from a test tube in a lab and spread among their close-knit community. Academics are known to live and breed together and to colonise small areas on the edge of normal towns and cities. In such circumstances high and rapid infection rates would not be surprising.

My encounters at the time went something like this:
"Good morning and how are you?" I'd say.
"So... I'm fine, thank you." They'd reply as though this momentary hesitation added some gravitas and significance to their paltry answer.
"And would you like a cup of tea or coffee?" I'd continue, hospitable as ever.
"So...yes I would please, coffee." They'd respond.
"Milk? Sugar?" I'd offer through the forced smile of my gritted teeth.
"So...milk, no sugar" they'd  venture and I would have to reply by hurling the semi-made libation into their so-irritating face before beating them around the head with the cup. It's a good thing the coffee is always served lukewarm in polystyrene containers in academic institutions.

I thought my selfless personal crusade was slowly succeeding as I soon noticed that several academics with stained shirts were no longer using the dreaded Superfluous Initial So, and looked around warily before even uttering the word  in a proper context such as "there are only so many linguistic and social pretensions a man can take before resorting to..." I'm sure you get the picture.

However, my attempts to defend humanity and the English Language did not succeed. The wretched thing had taken hold and spread. Soon the Superfluous Intial So was sissing from my radio on every morning talk show and in every news bulletin. It was worse and more galling even than the insistence of meteorological staff on referring to the topmost part of the Irish land mass as "Northen Island", instead of Ireland (a matter of which the Director General has been duly informed and for which he thanked me for the first three of my seventeen letters).
   
The PR world became the next victim of the infestation. Spokesmen (and spokeswomen, or spokespersons, if you prerer, or just plain spokes is perhaps best and simplest all round) from a variety of organisations selling animal welfare, miracle drugs, dodgy statistics and the outpourings of  a plethora of thinktanks were suddenly soing all over the place.

" So... the  country's going down the tubes."
" So... the economy's never been better"
" So...we're all in this together."
" So...the reason we should all eat more bilgeberries..."

The deluge only subsided when I hurled John Humphreys and co against the kitchen wall  smashing the faithful old family wireless, believed to be an original Georgian model, into several pieces of silver plate, brass and ivory.

Don't get me wrong I'm not a fanatic or a Philistine. I've nothing against words in their rightful place. I would happily sew together the lips of  any SISser, I would sow poisonous berries with which to feed them, I would describe their attempts at public communications as only so-so but I would not ever...ever, introduce an unnecessary opening monosyllable purely for the grandiose effect...that would be bad manners and a betrayal of all that is good, noble and oaken-hearted in the English language.

I felt sure the accursed SIS must be of some devilish foreign derivation. My spies soon brought me word of a possible link to the German "Also", pronounced Al-Zo and usually translated as "thus" and thus also likely to be used quite properly at the beginning of  a sentence ,especially when constructing an argument...exactly as an academic might! Could it be that the plague began overseas, picked  up by innocent visitor to the International Symposium On Something Or Other (ISOSOO)?   Or worse , was it the latest dastardly invasion plan of the dreaded Teuton? An insidious scheme to slowly and surely infiltrate the English language slipping in first, the odd, apparently innocent, monosyllable and then moving on until finally our mouths and minds would be stuffed with phlegm-inducing polysyllabics stretching out further and further in highly-regulated ranks which would make it impossible for an Englishman (or woman, or spokes)  to speak their mind simply and clearly ever again! 

So what can we do to rid the language of this irritating and pompous affectation which serves no useful purpose (except maybe to expose its proponents to the ridicule and contempt they deserve from  those wise and sensitive souls who know better)?

As ye so so shall ye reap, I thought and I promptly began exporting English words surreptitiously into German usage. Weekend, Shopping, Sandwich; all were launched under cover of the night and quickly found their mark. Caravan and Shepherd's Pie have admittedly, met with less success but the struggle continues apace, I now have a band of faithful  followers who are going even further and seeking to spread English words and even foodstuffs into Germany. I tell you now, our dictionary shall not rest in our hand till we have Bill and Gerald's Ham in Merkel's Green Unpleasant Land.
So... there!

It's Going Mad Gone Mad!

What is the world coming to these days! Is there no end to the insanity of it? Actually there soon will be  whether you like it or not. New rules proposed by the European Union, endorsed by the United Nations and backed by a conspiracy of multi-national corporations, trade unions and assorted radical loonies, would require anybody wishing to go mad to apply to Brussels in triplicate three months in advance, with a doctor's certificate showing suitable grounds for intended insanity, likely duration of madness and economic impact of requested episode. Permission is unlikely to be granted for most decent law-abiding Brits!

And even if it is, you'll have to pay for the privilege! A so called Insanity Compensatrory Premium or Mad Tax will be levied to cover the cost of any anticpated treamtent (chalk placebo pills, padded wall hangings and/or strait jacket,) damage to walls (from head butting) and carpet (from chewing) in official buildings, hospitals etc.

Whatever happened to a citizen's inalienable right to be stark, staring bonkers, when and wherever it suited them? Surely this was what the British Empire was built on - generations of mentally unbalanced, socially inadequate public school boys of the officer class and their demented underlings deluding themselves that they knew better  than anybody else how to run the world. Why change all that?

Time was when even infants were free to "throw their toys out of the pram",  shoppers could go "off their trolley" and even vegetarians could be "nuts" without asking anyone's permission. Under these proposals not even driving instrructors can be "driven crazy" any more-- unless they've got permission from a faceless, overpaid, pcpusher  with a gold-plated pension who probably reserves himself the right to to go howling at the moon in his thickly-carpeted, wood panelled, public-paid office whenever he feels like it! Is that fair?!! No!!!

In this age of unbridled bureaucratic meddling our good old-fashioned traditonal approach to madness is under serious threat. No longer will we be allowed to just shuffle over to another seat on the bus or smile weakly and make our excuses while agreeing that the Daily Mail has got it right. It never bothered us before that half the country was doolally, why should it now?  I'll tell you why. Because those evil, lying, parasitic, good for nothing Eurocrats are on an international job-creation scheme for themselves and their cronies, "measuring" everything, developing "policies",  drawing  up "regulations" that are, in fact, no more than a huge scam to take  money from our pockets to put into their vast salaries and even vaster pension pots, and that's not even mentioning their even vaster expenses!   

We've uncovered some of the details of their evil  scheme. In order to minimise costs targets will be set and quotas applied to the number of people allowed to go mad at  any one time. Once the loony bins are full, earlier occupants will be forced out, off benefits and made to work for Con-Dem think tanks, since it's proved difficult to get sane people involved in this growth area for long. Unauthorised madness will be ignored and victims  will be expected to carry on working as before. There has been some concern raised about possible issues in relation to air-traffic control, trident submarines, nuclear power stations and the like but these have been swept under the carpet..along with what little COMMON SENSE these Eurodrones can muster.

Well it's not good enough! The fightback starts here!! This is a rallying call!!! We urge all good, honest decent, somewhat-batty-and-occasionally-barking Britons to oppose this going mad gone mad!!!! Stand up straight, put your finger in your ear and shout out loudly and proudly":
"I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO PAY FOR IT...OR FILL IN ANY FORMS, SO THERE. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! 

Songs for Chilean Miners!

Hurrah, the miners are safe! Those 33 plucky human moles have been rescued and brought to the surface in a  heart-warming saga we've all shared. Just for once, good news actually made the news around the world. We've watched the drama unfold, witnessed the happy ending, now perhaps we can afford ourselves a little humour by considering the soundtrack the miners might have enjoyed (or not) during their enforced sojourn in the underworld. What were they humming or singing to keep up their spirits? What well-known songs crept into their heads and refused  to go away?
    Obviously, Lee Dorsey's  "Working Down a Coalmine"  is a starting point we can't ignore. Descending half a mile below ground they probably had their daily sing along to "Down, Down (Deeper and Down) by Status Quo", or perhaps "Going Underground" by the Jam was a favourite with some.   
    After the rock fall and the terrifying realisation they were trapped, they must have gone straight for "Help" (Beatles) followed quickly by a frantic "We Gotta Get out of this Place" (Animals etc). But as hours rolled into days without contact from the surface their plaintive thoughts may have turned to "Don't Leave Me This Way" (Communards, Gloria Gaynor) with the growing sense that  there "Ain't no Sunshine" (Bill Withers, Michael Jackson) and "Black Night" (Deep Purple) was indeed a long way from home. One or two of the lads may even have been humming Aretha's "Rescue Me"as they began to appreciate they were truly "Stuck In the Middle  With You" (Stealer's Wheel).
    As they realised they were in for "A Hard Day's Night" (Beatles again) the phycial aspects of life in a cave must have become more and more pressing; the "Yellow River" (Christie) a constant problem! And the psychological pressure must have been intense,  to the point where denial set in and  one miner may have burst out "I Don't Wanna Talk About It." (Crazy Horse, Nils Lofgren, Rod Stewart).
    Once contact was made with the surface things improved immediately. Yazz and the Plastic People provided the new anthem "The Only Way Is Up".  From there on the rescue operation moved so quickly it was almost plain "Sailing" (Sutherland Brothers, Rod Stewart again). 
    When then Phoenix capsule arrived in the cave the first miner leapt in and sang  out "Start Me Up" (Rolling Stones). As he slowly ascended his thoughts turned to his wife and family and  the comfort and joy waiting for him above after all those days among his grim and gritty compadres.Yes, he was thinking about "Love in an Elevator" (Aerosmith). 
   Finally, He reached the surface, emerging to bellow "I'm Free" (Who, Daltrey) before he realised his wraparound shades were insufficient protection from the fierce sun.
"Doctor, My Eyes" (Jackson 5, Jackson Browne) he gasped, but then smiled as he saw his wife and realised that,finally,he could "Reach out and Touch Somebody's Hand"(Diana Ross).

   The miners' ordeal is bound to become a Hollywood movie before too long. I see it as a Baz Luhrman musical a la Moulin Rouge and I think we may have already given him a few ideas to get working on!