Meh ( / mɛ /)

Ian Hutson

Pleasant enough, but wearily anodyne. The world at large, that is. There have been highlights, of course, and low-lights, but smothered under an all-pervading blanket of “meh”. You know that bone-heavy feeling you experience after a long, long gun-fight when all of the baddies are dead and there’s only you and the dog left standing, the ill-treated villagers having long-since fled? That sort of feeling. Worthy of an Olympic Gold-level shrug of the proverbial shoulders.

The moorings here are very pleasant, but also more than a little betwixt & between.

Yes, there’s no fewer than four bars of the The Four G hereabouts, and while the view’s not wild it’s not bad either. I am on the edge of the territory of a lapwing – catching the occasional call, but not more and not on a regular basis. There’s even the lovingly-stocked shelves of the grocery section of the Texaco garage for one or two of the basic basic comestibles, but the chief excitement of these moorings lies in the fact that I can walk back to Calveley Services with a bag of rubbish.

As I said; meh.

There’s always the reflections of the abandoned bridge over the pollution-control barrages around the drain from the aforementioned Texaco garage, that’s quite pretty in the right light.

The garage itself has been in the wars. A passing narrowboat has whacked the spinning-wheels display of the price board, and at no little speed by the looks of things.

Time of death – of the display – was something like 174.9/litre.

Cause of death – well, all we can say for sure certain is that it wasn’t caused by Severe Outrage of The Sheople, since everyone’s just coughing up and there’s been ne’ery a serious cry of objection let alone a cheery mob of fire-brand carrying pitch-fork brandishing peasants anywhere in the whole of this sad and sorry summer-weight puddle of a country.

Well, I did issue the full equivalent of a “trigger warning” in re my mood being meh.

On a businesslike note, the Cardinal is now in possession of a new twelve-month licence. I had expected ructions abounding after a recent tussle with “my” “bank” (used to be Yorkshire, but since purchased lock, stock and screaming souls by the Bas*tard Virgin) when, just before hanging up on me, “Customer Services” (!!!) there advised me of the transaction limit on my “Baby’s First Bank Account by Tomy” debit card.

Pension matters having gone in and ignoring the fact of yesterday being a “Friday the 13th” I gave things a go, and in spite of the latest above-inflation increases in prices by the Canal Company Ltd taking the price of a licence above aforestated debit card limit, the transation went through in two minutes flat. Not a drop of blood spilled, not a squirrel disembowelled on the Altar of High FInance.

Towards the end of the month I shall spend five minutes identifying as a Laser printer, seek out the green crayon and a couple of sheets of Izal, and produce the copies that they want displayed in the windows. I think I’ll identify as a small but perfectly-formed HP LaserJet Pro MFP M428fdn A4 Mono Multifunction with a coffee-ring stain on the paper-tray and a little bit of Duct Tape over the on/off switch.

Gone are the days when I could get away with identifying as a nice ratchet-fed dot-matrix.

The Canal Company Ltd likes to wax lyrical in re its (supposedly) “green” credentials. There are on the order of 36,000 boats dotted about the waterways and rivers. Each is, technically, required to use electrickery, carbon-black and two sheets of whatever just to display a hard-copy of a licence that nobody but the Canal Rozzers needs to know about. One in plain view to starboard and one to larboard. 72,000 sheets of Izal. 144 reams.

Plus, in most cases, plastic lamination.

Green my ar*se.

So, what’s good? Well, everything really, all things considered. Globally speaking Mr Nero still fiddles, but in immediate, local terms I have Peruvian coffee and the makings of toast & Marmite.

The sewing machine’s holding up well under the strain of my producing sufficient Union Jack bunting in preparation for Her Quagesty the Meen’s Platypus Jubbly next month.

Yeah, right.

The day that you see me pedalling furiously at the vintage Singer with three reels of red, white and blue cotton paying out from between my gritted teeth you may be certain that I am one of the Lizard People.

Seriously.

I shall be flying an item of bunting on the weekend when we’re all supposed to kiss the most venerated of Robber Baron arses, but following the rear-end theme my bunting will be the boxer shorts that I am wearing as I type this. I’ve had the same pair on since January 2019, I’ll remove them (a bath of Surgical Spirits will likely be involved) in June and fly them from the yardarm as a fitting celebration.

When intoning (we English don’t sing the anthem; we intone it) I find that it helps to imagine Alastair Sim playing a cinema organ rising from the pit, while Margaret Rutherford knocks seven shades of sh*te out of a couple of kettle drums. Nought else affords sufficient gravitas.

God save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen
God save the Queen
Send her victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to reign over us
God save the Queen

O Lord our God arise
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall
Confound their politics
Frustrate their knavish tricks
On Thee our hopes we fix
God save us all

Thy choicest gifts in store
On her be pleased to pour
Long may she reign
May she defend our laws
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice
God save the Queen

Not in this land alone
But be God’s mercies known
From shore to shore
Lord make the nations see
That men should brothers be
And form one family
The wide world over

From every latent foe
From the assassins blow
God save the Queen
O’er her thine arm extend
For Britain’s sake defend
Our mother, prince, and friend
God save the Queen

Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring
May he sedition hush
And like a torrent rush
Rebellious Scots to crush
God save the King.

I do (on occasion) wonder if Messrs The Queen is a queen or whether she simply identifies as a queen.

Anyway, enough of this blethering, sideways-blinking nonsense, I need to make more coffee.

Who knows where this will all end?

The End.

Almost.

😉

15 Comments

  1. To save the planet, our licence is lovingly drawn in pen and ink on 2 pieces of scrap paper. Looked quite convincing until the sun baked it. New one due next month at which point 2 more pieces of scrap paper will be sacrificed.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The Cardinal’s current licence is a work of art in neat biro on two halves of a sheet from a short-hand notebook. For the next (June onwards) I am either going to use the blank side of cardboard inserts from tissue boxes (Kleenex Man-Size) – or if I can find any, a couple of “sheets” of the old greaseproof Izal bog-roll. If the Canal Company Ltd objects to my green crayon and my identifying as a Laser printer for five minutes then I’ll see them in court for infringing my right to be whatever I want to be! 😉 Tomorrow I shall be a small, orange, three-speed nineteen-seventies bicycle. The day after I may enjoy an hour or two as a terracotta plant-pot (c/w pot plant). I know how to live!

      I suppose that if I possessed one of those old “Polaroid” cameras, the ones that produce self-developing square prints, I could always photograph the licence on-screen…

      Eckythump, now there’s an idea!

      Like

    1. A most excellent suggestion. I wonder if perhaps we might persuade some “boy band” – such as that nice SAGE outfit – to fire up their AutoTune™ apps, put fresh batteries into the old Stylophone and give the people a (pop-rap, edited for trigger words and imperialistic and/or non-inclusive language) version that they might rally behind? Old Lord Lloyd Wobbler could doubtless be pressed into service to organise the musical side of things, while Felicity Isabelle “Flick” Colby would do a wonderful job with the sexy dance routines…

      Patrick “Liberty” Vallance (white polyester flares, cuban heels) on lead vocals
      Chris (aren’t I just so) Whitty – leathers, I think, open to the waist; lead guitar
      Jonathan Van-Tam on the tam-tom-toms, “boy next door look” perhaps
      and
      Neil Ferguson and Donnymick Cummings fighting in a go-go dancer cage over bass.

      Since everyone loved the NHS tik-toks so I have no doubt that such a band would be a massive success on the Hit Parade, with childrens’ fingers poised over the “record” button on their cassette players each Sunday evening.

      😉

      Seriously, we DO need modern versions of Arise England, and other versions – Arise World. It may be too late, but we won’t know unless we keep trying!

      Liked by 1 person

          1. I remember mother mixing up a Mankad…running out the batsman at the non striker’s end when out of his crease…with a mankini….visions of the England test team so clad were hard to banish…

            Liked by 1 person

  3. I too shall be celebrating the Queen’s Jubilee, even if she is dead and the palace haven’t the heart to tell everyone that they’ve wasted billions of tax payers money on street parties and fly pasts. Well, when I say ‘celebrating’, I mean I’ll be locking the doors and closing the curtains and taking aim with my poison-tipped arrows at any passers by in humorous union-jack hats.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Holding these “celebrations” does feel to me a tad akin to ordering all of the prison inmates into the recreation hall to sing Happy Birthday (Mr President) to the Governor’s mother, a collection having been taken up from the inmates’ 40p a week wages in order to present Doris with a new car.

      Sadly, such is the psychological state of most sheople that the irony is lost on them.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. If that’s you on a ‘Meh’ day doldrum then I vote for you to be the next King! That made be laugh so hard! Excellent. I nearly fell over when standing for so long for the Anthem (yeh right!) It’s amazing what a bit of sunshine and a pint of meths can do. I was surprised to learn it wasn’t ‘glory arse’ though.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. I have long said our national anthem is meh! It isn’t a national anthem, anyway. It’s a hymn for God to protect the monarch. It’s dreary. No wonder we ‘intone’ it, rather than sing it. Listen to the French one, or the Italian, (which I admit goes on a bit, though) or almost any others. They certainly stir the blood.
        And as for ‘Jerusalem’, which the cricketing fraternity seem to have adopted, That’s unsuitable, too. For a start, it’s called JERUSALEM–a city in the middle east. Then it’s undeniably Christian, which does not cover most of the people in the country–atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists etc.
        I Vow to Thee My Country isn’t too bad, but the tune can be rendered in a dreary manner.
        Rule Britannia has too many overtones of colonialism. (Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set).
        We need a new one written. One with a good inspiring tune.
        I once saw Billy Connolly taking the mick out of it. He strode jauntily, singing the anthem of several other countries, then slumped and dragged his feet to ours.

        Liked by 1 person

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