We have a problem. It is, in general one of etiquette, but it has stemmed from some, shall we say, impropriety on behalf of the entire bloody village. Poor Mr B hardly knows who it is safe to drink with these days, and the Major has developed rather a disturbing twitch in one eye that has resulted in complaints from a number of happily married matrons. Now it has cropped up on Radio 4!


 I blame myself. I am quite distraught. Ever since I bought this computer I have stopped taking The Mail and relied upon Google for my news, so when I decided that it might be nice to get one of those pampas grasses for the front, it was only natural that I should look it up for tips on care and maintenance etc.


It is rightly called Cortaderia selloana you know. It likes a light sandy soil but will thrive in most conditions.


I shall not be purchasing a pampas grass this weekend. I shall not be purchasing one on any weekend….ever! I am even dubious of any member of the grass families.


Pampas grass in ones front garden denotes that the  occupier of the house is what is politely termed a swinger. Initially I thought that the term 'swinger' referred to someone who was modish and fashionable. In truth, this had doubled my resolve to purchase the plant, but I looked up the term to be sure.

I required a second bottle of gin to deal with the shock of finding out that such immoral and unwholesome activities existed. It is undeniably true, otherwise it wouldn't be allowed to be posted on the internet would it?

Now a trip to church, or to the Spar shop had become a fraught journey through what I now know to be a veritable gommorah. Evidence of sinful misdeeds are all around me. It is particularly distressing to see that Mrs Davis was engaged in such things particularly given her recent hip replacement and the fact she is eighty seven.

 It is all very well to be possessed of the sure and certain facts of this wrong doing, but in doing so, does it place an obligation for a person to do something about it? This is a question I wrestle with internally and, indeed, had been unable to sleep until long after midnight because of it.

I have purchased a pair of binoculars and an A4 spiral bound notebook with which I fully intend to expose the evil doers with the evidence of their crimes, in a letter to the clueless courier and perhaps even on the village website. This sort of behaviour is not be countenanced in any way by a god fearing rural haven. I had not realised the sheer scope of the problem until that momentous day, and almost fainted when, on passing the rectory, I spied some offensive plumes.

 On my return home, I carefully transferred my notes into my spreadsheet program and drafted a strongly worded letter to the Bishop on the subject of the waning morality of the clergy.

Tell me....I am being eminently reasonable am I not?

real tower blocks for mps

I hear that the barbican was supposed to be.


Maybe I am a sad freak, but I watch one soap opera ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ I watched a promising mp get his indissgression  covered up.

Over the years we have had so many affairs and sleaze thrown at us courtesy of the House of Commons that we have become somewhat immune.

Who cares if you like to be spanked at lunchtime and treated like a caged dog on your weekends? If you don’t claim it then we are nice people who say it is none of our business.

We don’t care if you have an affair, hardly torn if you jack off to porn….just do it on your own budget like the rest of us.

We accept that you may need a base in London, and so how about three bedroom  flats provided at our expense that feature a television with broadband and cable service, bed (mattress renewed every four years) and a cleaning service? And all basic furniture that could be used for years? You could view your tv like schools do pencils…show me the one that is worn out and you get a new one. Why do you get money for a house you bought as an investment when others invest in a doorstep?

Tell me why that doesn’t work?

The Wall

I’m generally a person of good hygiene, sufficient education and moderate habits. I don’t play music loudly; I keep my house in good condition, keep myself to myself and always pick up after my dog when walking. Come to think of it, I am actually a fucking boring old fart, but hardly the sort of person to inspire totally irrational hatred from others (on the net doesn’t count by the way, that is merely a perk).

It appears that dear sweet little old me became somewhat of a magnet to psychotic chavs. Let me elaborate slightly; very large, ugly, and frighteningly stupid female psychotic chavs who scared the living shit out of me just by staring glassily through their overly blue eyeshadowed poppy out eyes.

Their aggressive posture, foul language and (this cannot be stressed enough) vast size was terrifying enough, but they all seemed to cart about little versions of themselves, fat, stupid and ugly kids of about seven who were for some unfathomable reason still in a bloody pushchair. I kept waiting for the director to shout cut and them all to remove their horror suits, put down the cheap lager cans and go to the canteen for a nice cuppa.

Sadly, no matter how much I rubbed my eyes in disbelief, this was not the case, and all that resulted was a mild case of conjunctivitis and some very disturbing dreams.

Seeing these horrors in the street is traumatising enough, but just imagine looking out of your back window to see four of these brides of chucky attempting to overturn the 5’ high double skinned brick wall at the end of your garden, and what’s more showing an application to the task that their former teachers and juvenile detention officers would be amazed by.

Did they succeed? Hell yeah! They are human ****ing bulldozers fuelled by Harp lager and pure vitriol. JC Bamford would go out of business supplying heavy machinery if people were more willing to harness this sort of power.

A couple of tons of falling Victorian brickwork makes a rumbling sound, similar to that of a wheelie bin being moved, which is, now I consider it, slightly disappointing. No big crashing noises or rising dust. No shouts of hooray or rampaging hoards of these harpies. They simply waddled off into the night, a couple of them raising what initially looked like a pork sausage (but I have now concluded was a middle digit) in my direction.

Now whatever heroics you may think you may perform upon witnessing such wanton destruction and animal behaviour, it simply isn’t the case.

I was left there looking at my new pile of bricks with an ‘O’ shape slowly forming on my lips and feeling slightly bemused that they would be waving pork derivatives at me.

I picked up the telephone and dialled the police who responded enthusiastically two days after the call, tutting and taking sharp intakes of breath like I had just asked them for an estimate to re-build the pissing thing.

That night I came home from work to find those in the house hysterical and the Zombie faction were back. Now here it gets slightly surreal in places, but bear with me…it is true.

They had been hurling abuse and threats around in my absence, causing my mother (who is living with me at the moment) great distress. I looked out my back window once more, to see three humongously fat chavs, one with her teenage daughter, performing the YMCA next to my fence at the side of the property in full voice and action. They did go on to destroy the fence and steal all my hanging baskets etc, but nothing will remain with me as long or fill me with as much dread as the quivering turkey flesh under the arms of three underdressed, overweight hideous monsters as they lifted their lump hammer arms to make the ‘Y’. I live in a village and I now have a vastly different mental picture when someone mentions the ‘village people’ than you do.

Once again our fine constabulary were called, but this time they arrived somewhat flustered that very night…only two hours after the urgent call! Who says British Law enforcement isn’t improving?

One week later they started making arrests. Finally having had breakfast products waved at me, threats of personal harm screamed at myself and my family, boundaries decimated and being subjected to the worst dance troop since that gay chap with a perm Richard somebody or other started making fitness videos, I will come to the point of this rant. I bet you thought there wasn’t going to be one didn’t you?

PC Thompson (who I swear only responded with such commendable speed due to the fact he had fallen in love with my dog) finished taking my statement and asked me if I have any questions. He had rung into the station to get a crime number and in the course of listening in to the call, I learnt that all three women have been arrested for violence.

A badly shaken uncon who still had visions of wobbling lard hills asked ‘Am I going to get my head kicked in?’
He shook his head sadly ‘I’m sorry love,I can’t do anything about that until it happens, but I will say to you, don’t fight back’

Huh? What the fuck? This fine upholder of truth and justice just told me to take my severe beating and possible death at the hands of the ugly sisters in the hope that if I survive at least they wont sue me for breaking one of their fingernails in my feeble efforts to escape!

The deal is that as a boring fart who obeys the law and ensures that life around her is not complicated by her actions is fair game, but if you are a known violent criminal, the law should protect you from law abiding citizens defending themselves.

Oh and the reason I was subject to all this?

Chav 1:
“Yoo think yoo are soo fookin better van me yoo slag”.

Well duh!

The importance of why.

I am less worried about the safety of our children than I am about the sanity of their parents.

We have made our children the focus of everything and then wonder why they are so self-obsessed. There is a woman near me who takes her kids the two hundred yards to school in a car and then spends lord knows how much on Gym membership…WALK YOU STUPID BITCH…Your wallet and your brats will love you for it.

I was reported for letting my 8 year old walk to school on her own…this isn’t Harlem here, it is a small rural village. She has common sense, a knowledge of the green cross code and a friends house that she can run to pretty much along the entire route.

Children are not little angels waiting to be preyed upon by the imaginary paedophile who is obviously salivating at the end of the road if you let the kids walk, offering sweeties and puppies.

My kids are unformed future adults who can learn to hate or love, fear or hope. It is my job to teach my brats about ‘why‘.

 Every child goes through the ‘why’ stage (personally I think I am still stuck there). It’s the one when you answer a hundred questions before resorting finally beaten and weary to ‘Because it is’…”Why is grass green?’ ‘Why do dogs want to be with people?’ ‘Why does Mrs Macfarlane smell of wee?’

Now the funny thing is, that my son likes to ask a lot of whys to his sister , who is fifteen months older, and it gradually gets filtered through to me for the tricky stuff, but the other day I heard her sigh to him ‘Because it is’.

She got that off me…how proud I aint! (Don’t worry, the school agreed to deal with the literacy angle).

This meandering and pratting about is actually leading to a point…actually not a point as that hints at a resolution in my thinking that I have not reached, but I digress, again.

Imagine if you never got to ask a single why. If  you were met with ‘go away‘, tough is good, and saw and witnessed big people beating up on small people all the time. Food is whatever you snatched from a cupboard and could be hit for if it was discovered by a big person.

If you can learn from over attention to be completely self obsessed and selfish, then you can learn to take power by being a bigger person humiliating and hurting a smaller one just as easily. And that is the answer to ‘Why shouldn't I hit someone?’whis is a very different question than 'Why should I?'

People who show and nurture self confidence and respect by showing it get those kids. Those who show and nurture violence, arrogance, fear and lack of restraint get those kids.  You can hold the seed of the most beautiful flower in the world but if you don’t treat it properly you will just end up with weeds.

Jamie Bulger was murdered in the most horrific fashion, one that gives every parent nightmares.  Jon Venables and  Robert Thompson had no childhood and no guidance. They were pretty much feral and the lessons they learned from what they saw were just as hateful as the crime they committed. The way to get power was for bigger people to hurt smaller people and when there is two of you the egging on raises the stakes…ask any skinhead or gang member.

BUT they were still two ten year old boys and we stuck them out of sight and out of mind after we asked ‘Why did you do it?‘  They knew that no ‘why’  should get an answer from experience. We then released two men who had no childhood, adolescence or experience and expected them to be good men.

 They never met a good man! They were not properly equipped for the outside world and they never have been. Before we start screaming about evil, perhaps we should take a deeper look at ourselves. There were three victims in that crime, not one angel and two demons. So Why?

Pampering

I want to talk about Pampas. A couple of years ago I discovered that there was a belief that those who had a pampas grass in their front gardens were deemed to be ‘swingers’

Being of a timid nature I planted my pampas at the rear of the property. I'd liked to be wooed before I swing. The Pampas is the one with the big plumes in Autumn- some of them are pink and may or may not designate the nature of the swinging that I was too timid to advertise, although in fairness, having my mother live with me does put one at a disadvantage in swinging circles. There is little point in grabbing a car key and taking someone home to be greeted with 'What time do you call this then?'.

So the big boy was planted and fertilised and grew….and grew. I redesigned the area over winter and now have started to remove dead cordalines that were not sufficiently protected …and the Pampas.

I cannot describe adequately the epic battle that can exist between one woman and her pampas grass. I now resemble the victim of a rather exuberant s &m whipping session and have discovered that I am allergic to the leaves. Having been manured and sheltered a dozen other grasses from the worst of the winter snow (the pampas, not me), it naturally feels that its eviction is unfair. The pampas looks dejected in a trug and I am a spotty, lacerated shadow of what was.

As I await yet more raised beds and the need to take up grass, and take in gravel and topsoil back breakingingly wheel barrow at a time….just sometimes I look longingly at the packs of carrots at the co-op where someone else battled the pests and the pampas as I contemplate the fact that my mother wants to move the bloody bamboo!

Silly mid off (an ill- considered opinion on the BNP)

In case anyone missed it...we, in England, are generally not big on racist parties. We are big on weather and public transport, schools, healthcare, the X factor (apparently), ballroom dancing featuring political commentators who can’t dance and we are really big on expenses right now.

The English have always tended to regard the far right as being ‘a bit silly’....and if there is one thing that the English both embody and love to laugh at; it is silly.

The sport of cricket is supposed to embody the English – we look for ‘fair play’ and a slap up tea midway through. It all sounds pretty damn sensible to me.

I like cricket – completely unintelligible to those who refuse to immerse themselves in it and actually has silly mid on and off as positions. How cool is that?

England is the size of Alabama and we have approximately 45 million more people ...Yes 45 MILLION MORE PEOPLE, occupying the same amount of space. Immigration is a problem when combined with a recession and 1 in 5 young people entering the job market unable to find work.

We can’t stick our fingers in our ears yelling la la la about this and we can’t ignore the obvious fact that we have to clothe, employ, pension and deal with the healthcare needs of our population from a position of previously unheard of debt.

We are generally a country of Christian values, but our altruism and desire to provide asylum is pretty stretched at the moment, particularly as class differences are higher than ever. I'm not seeing Goodwin building a housing estate here with his windfall.

Let’s not pussy about being politically correct – if You are Mr Smith who has been made redundant with two sons who both have degrees and none of you can get work, your home has been repossessed and your marriage has broken up under the strain. You are living in a bedsit and an asylum seeking family just got a five bedroom house paid for by the state on the taxes you paid for 35 years...how generous would you feel

Tell me you are not going to resent these foreigners who swan into your country and claim everything you can’t.

These are the people who are voting for the British National Party. They have happily lived in multiracial and cultural communities, sent their children to schools with a diverse ethnic mix and now feel that they are being neglected because of the influx...not because of nice Mr Patel down the road who was so reasonable when he caught young Johnny shoplifting and was always open when everyone else was closed, not because of Dr Singh who diagnosed his wife’s breast cancer early enough to get treatment, or because of Professor Chandra who taught Johnny modern History at Uni.

The BNP are an openly racist party and one that relies on fear to gain votes...fear of the terrorist attacks...fear that Muslim people are all violent and want to kill their families, rather than the peace loving gentle religion that we recognise drives our friends and neighbours.
This is a party that wants to ramp up Muslims as genocidal maniacs while they deny the Holocaust and identify with a certain bunch of genocidal maniacs.

Ask anyone who voted for the BNP, or are considering doing so for their reasons, and you will never hear ‘Because their economic policy will see us out of the recession’ or ‘because I feel comfortable with them in charge of the Army, the healthcare system or pensions’.

This is why I believe that the approach of Question Time was wrong. Nick Griffin, Chairman of the BNP underwent a personal attack from a majority – and to the English, that just isn’t cricket. We don’t like to see people being bullied even if they are sweaty racist fascist c**ts.

I think the approach should have been to demand what the BNP policies were on other subjects (and there is always the question as to who gets dealt with first in the Accident and Emergency Unit of a hospital, and would that be the broken leg of the middle class white rugby player or the knifed polish immigrant – after all they will both probably get treated by an Indian or Pakistani Doctor.) seriously though, how are they going to tackle the debt? the Ecological targets that we are commited to? (Yeah it is tempting to say burn jews and take their money...but surely these people have moved on?)

The BNP rides on one subject so gets them out of that zone and remember – They are silly, so laugh