A higher than is usual incidence of “characters” in the area

Nutters. Congenital genitals. Tripled numbers of boats stuffed with hodilay-makers who would not ordinarily be seen dead anywhere without first undertaking a short flight or a drive through the Chunnel to ‘Abroad, yah’. Some just look as though the local “institutions” are failing in the matter of security; TB sanatoriums, asylums, prisons for the criminally insane… even cemeteries in some cases. Grr. Argh. Brains. Perhaps some were on a coach tour from Rudloe Manor and wandered off, although I have yet to spot chaps in white “Noddy suits” and brandishing alien-catching nets running up and down with purpose. I am quite glad that the Cardinal is on his wheels; it puts me 14″ farther away from the towpath.

We have, as has become customary, lots of neighbours. That’s us, the centrepiece in a display-line of five. I love them all, and have invited many of them in for cold sherry and warm fig biscuits.

Not.

A chap from the Canal MisTrust Company Ltd wandered past, I think that he was composing an email or some such, on his iPiddle, or perhaps taking a quick sketch of the Cardinal. Whatever he was doing, he was too distracted to remember to shout ‘Ihre Papiere bitte… bastard boater!’

It’s good that he forgot, I am sure that they are becoming bored with my intoned response of

I believe in one Canal & River Trust Ltd,
the Only Begotten Son of British Waterways,
born of the Quango before all ages.
Canal Company from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Establishment;
through them all things were made.
Forgive me, Holy Rozzer, my papers have been The Bradford Pioneer,
The Clarion, and Sometimes The New Socialist-Worker Pictorial,
if such be blessedly on the papershop shelves for mine allowance of twoppence ha’penny.

He also forgot to absolve with my sins with the correct response;

Moor in peace my son, but be thou gonst far from hence by the fourteenth holy day, and receive this swift kick in the nuts as a sign of our Corporate Love. Pay thy dues to the Private Sector even though thou beest on Property Held In Trust For the Nation, and complain not.

My medication’s off again, isn’t it?

We’re in that weird season too, when it’s bikini weather in the late morning and afternoon (don’t ask, and anyway – who are you to judge?), but most definitely hat, gloves, scarf and Parka jacket with the furry hood in the late evening, night and early morning. Each day has dawned with a half-hearted mist. One day dawned with heavy dew on four of the five of the Cardinal’s solar panels and thick ice on the other. This is England; there’s nothing odd about just one solar panel being in a completely separate weather-system to the others.

It’s also the day when the Establishment, in all of its shining sanity, orders that time be advanced by one Earth hour while we’re all asleep in our fleapits. Does anyone else sigh with disappointment each occasion when winding the hands of the analogue clocks forward and the world outside doesn’t suddenly speed up into a blur? It really ought to. I am beginning to wonder if perhaps the Gubbermunt is telling us a porky-pie and we’re not altering actual time at all, merely changing the clocks and giving ourselves mild jet-lag for the week (and the distinct spike in road accidents that always follows on the first Monday after).

I want a mantelpiece clock that shows only days and months on the face, not minutes and hours. Can’t help but wonder if there’s a market for a mantelpiece clock that is marked only in periods of Childhood – Teenage Years – Youth – Adult(ery)hood – Middle-Age – Retirement – Old-Age – Dotage – Death. Trouble is, I doubt that such could be manufactured these days with the necessary product life-span. Such a clock would doubtless be “Made in China” and would conk out halfway through childhood (as did my joie de vivre).

Whatever.

So, the neighbourhoodie.

Applying basic logic to the matter, there must a a serious problem with rogue trawlers and fish-factory vessels in this area, swooping in and netting trillions of tonnes of fresh-water sardines. The local “Miserable Gits Angling Club” has taken some serious security measures in re the two local worm-drowning ponds.

…and yet still the small alien vessels from the planet Wermdangla defy them.

Seriously, while it’s probably illegal and pew-nish-able by a “Fixed Penalty Charge Ticket” issued by some Jobsworth from a private “security” company to even look at the view, the worm-drowning ponds do look much better much earlier in the day, generally…

Who am I kidding? Most things look better from under a duvet (except the outlook, and we ought never to listen to even our own thoughts at 03:00 hundred hours o’clock in the morning, even when the clocks have been advanced).

Diesel has in the past couple of weeks increased in quality price by sixty percent, coal by some twenty percent. A basic supermarket shop that used to be sixty pounds or so now rates nearer the high eighties. Fortunately, my pension is to increase next month by 3.1%, so there’s an equitable lovely for you, yes indeed, Myffanwy. At least the politicians are getting things right at last.

For themselves.

My campaign to have the inappropriate word ‘inflation’ replaced by the more truthful phrase ‘global corporate profiteering’ is not going well. It seems that no-one gives a shi*te; all seem too busy working how to pay more into the coffers of the global corporations.

I used to think that the Human species ought to retreat back up into the trees but now I realise that this is just not possible. For one thing the Health & Safety studies indicate that tree-dwelling is accompanied by an uninsurably high level of risk, and for another – nobody remembers how to actually climb trees these days.

I think that it may be time to pack up and move on from this neighbourhood.

A short cruise or three on the canals first though.

That ought to give me time to remember where the bloody hell I left my own spacecraft…

Chin-chin, chaps and chapesses.

IGH.