Experiment IV - Pushing the envelope of Twerlie transport

An "bus" or "omnibus". Generally a motorcar for the masses. The Mean Lean OAP Machine.

There now follows a Public Information Service broadcast on behalf of the Twerlie Party. Today in the name of science, I went Rural OAP (as well as my usual Rural Commando).

I am a firm believer in the social and political benefits arising from experiencing first hand just how the little people live when they're not working in my mills and mines. This is a practise that has been encouraged over the years by Nanny. I present this account in the hope that it will add a little to the totality of civilised human knowledge, and mayhap spare you from similar, prolonged experiments. After today I feel that I ought to offer a short talk to The Royal Society on the matter too.

If you want to know (a decade and a half ahead of time) what it feels like to be an OAP in rural Engerlund, said Nanny over breakfast this morning, if you really, really want to know then you must live as they do, experience life from their total perspective, immerse yourself in their world, at least until first lunch or early tiffin. She added that there was sod all else to do since Cheltenham had finished and Messrs Ladbrokes now held her salary in distraint until 2013.

Damn it, Nanny, I said - for I can be very forceful before I've had my first decent gin in the mornings - damn it Nanny, you're quite correct. I shall live as the masses do and damn the dangers, have this kedgeree removed immediately and let the smelly peasant experience commence. I rang the bell and we waited for a moment. Jeeves, I said, Jeeves - send word to belay the Bentley and re-garage the Rolls, today I shall travel ... by Public Transport.

[Unearthly screams echoed at this point from the wing that we keep Mummy and Daddy locked in and someone in the kitchens dropped some crockery.]

Well, Nanny passed out (as she usually does during second brekkers) and Jeeves resigned on the spot. No, I said, no, my mind is quite made up, today I shall travel as the ordinary folk do; ask James to arrange it all and then have me dressed me in my informal town-tweeds I said. Have my bus made ready, I added, as though I knew what I was talking about.

It was quite moving really, for just as I was leaving the house a little maid ran up and pressed something called "money" into my hands. 'Ere Sir, she said, 'ere - you'll be needin' this - tis coin of the realm Sir, and will grease many palms.' She was crying, actually crying tears bless her (mind you, I understand that it was something called her "life savings", whatever they are, and quite valued by some below stairs).

The gardeners swung open the main wrought iron gates for me and that was that, the outside world beckoned (and I motioned for them to carry my houdah forth and set me down next to the public roadside in the manner of some casual labourer or indigent peasant). I stood (all by myself, Nanny taught me how, just in case), looked to the horizon and lashed my cane against my thigh, as I'm told one does while "waiting" for one's "bus". If America really went to the moon I thought, I can get to the next town by bus. All alone. One small step for man, one giant poke up the arse with a "get on with it" stick from Nanny.

England, they tell me, has trillions of items of public transportational hardware and dozens of ways and places to use them - so long as you are in a city or a town, or travelling between a city and a town. Here in the Lincolnshire tundra where the wild badger herds run free and the Ghibli, Scirocco, Khamsin and Bora winds roll down from the Wolds onto the plains, apparently we have the "on-demand minibus" ... Inteconnected CallConnect Lincolnshire or some such ruddy name.

It's purple and orange. There's a "website" that takes registration details and then a little membership card arrives in the post (how quaint). A chap can then "log on" (tally ho) and request a time to be picked up from the village and a time to be returned to somewhere in the village. Some nebulous electronical system then books your seat on the bus as close as they can make it, given that one bus covers half of North Lincolnshire and serves all of the smelly OAPs and TWERLIES in it.

Granted, it suffers from all of the nasties of public travel in that it is public, public, not private, public and public, but damn it - it got the job done. However, only because I could give it the ruddy hours to do so.

The problem with public transport is that, unlike the Bentleys or Daddy's private train, it doesn't run exactly when you want it to. I just needed to scoot to the hole in the wall, visit the Post Office to prop up the Treasury yet again (Vehicle Excise Duty Division, NI Conts), sashay around the Co-op to find my favoured hashish dealer and then scurry back to Owl Wood Towers. Trouble is, how does one guess at exactly when to request the return when there are no clues as to how long the trip there will take, no prior experience to draw on? It's not as though you can hop on the next one that arrives - the one you book is all that there is, and it only calls once! Miss it and one would be doomed forever to wander the streets and alleys of Alford.

Well, I guessed at please to pick me up at noon and take me home again at two of the o'clock. They booked me on twelve o'forty-five and a return for two o'forty-five, GMT, instead. Fair enough, I figure that with diversions to pick up multitudes of twerlies from elsewhere en route that might give me an hour in the local town for my jobbies.

Hmm. The actual travel took some fifteen minutes in total, to Alford (five miles away) and back. [NB I ordinarily walk about five "lane" miles each day just in order to blow the cobwebs away, but I draw the line at ten miles on main roads.] Not only was I the only passenger on the bus both ways, I was also the only person in the Post Office, second in the queue at the Hole in The Wall and was seen immediately at the Co-op checkout... I ended up with over an hour and half to wait for my return bus! How dreary! Is this really how the poor live each day? Waiting, waiting, waiting?

I called in at the local charity shop and bought a couple of books and some CDs (50p a punt, all proceeds to alcoholic greyhounds or something), found a "bench" to sit on outside Alford church and lashed myself down in the freezing breeze to wait for either the bloody bus, obviously, or for my blood to freeze and obviate the need for the ruddy bus.

One major downside, a show-stopper in fact, was the rather impertinent driver asking for my OAP Bus Pass as I got on - I must look a touch more rough than I thought (note to self - more sleep tonight, easy on the breakfast gin). I tried to explain that I am a decade and a half away from being eligible but it seemed like a lost cause. Mind you, I did qualify for an indoor seat, so there's lovely for you.

Can I recommend it as a mode of travel?

Did it feel great to be offsetting my carbon flipflop-print with mass-transit fumes?

Would I do it again, given the choice?

Will it ever replace the old powder-blue Maserati Kyalami?

Good gods no.

Kittens will play with snowflakes in Hell before I voluntarily do it again.

Just sayin' ...

Going to Hell in a hand-cart.

Oh, now this I have got to see.

Her Majesty's Motoring Public. Average IQ 3 or maybe 3½ if one of them has been licking the windows of the pet shop again. Possibly 4 allowing for the squashed flies on the trolley.

Sometimes you can pootle through the Britisher Broadcarsting Corporation Thingy website without raising so much as a nostril-hair in amusement. At other times one single item of news causes day-long belly-laughs because you can just picture what is likely to happen. One such is this item what is ere or ereabouts.

There was a bit of a land slide on the A890 in Scotland this past December and it has been a trifle de-convenient, to say the McLeast, for the locals - a 140 mile (225 kilometre) diversion has been in place. Well, some spark of human brilliance has decided to open up the railway tracks to private car traffic.

Yes, you read that quite correctly. Railway tracks that will continue to be in use for railway engines, carriages and carriages pulled by railway engines. Him heap big iron horse, has great trouble stopping for level crossings and occasionally for stations. Him heap big iron horses that weigh seventy or eighty tons apiece and are used to having the railway tracks, quite reasonably, all to themselves. Mixing it with Fiat Pandas and Ford Transits full of cockle pickers and Iveco vans loaded with Tesco groceries. Together. Presumably HGVs will not be allowed and there might even be some sort of one-way system in place?

Rubber matting, proprietory name "Oh Good Grief" or "They can't be Serious" or "HoldFast" or something is being laid between and for a couple of feet either side of the (4' 8½") railway tracks so that "... when there are no trains passing through..." traffic will be allowed on.

You've all seen the scenes in the best and most original St Trinian's film, the one about the Great Train Robbery where they end up zipping back and forth on hand trolleys, shouting at each other with megaphones... May name is Esme von Trollop and I claim the reward...

A. How the hell are any of yer actual average civilian drivers going to keep their Honda 4x4 GTi School-Run Special with roofboxes and LED sill-lights on a track just nine or ten feet wide - with six inch drop towards cliff on one side and a loch on the other - when they can't keep it in a disabled parking bay at walking pace?

B. You just know that the little (quite important) bit about "while no trains are passing through" is going to cause the occasional hiccough... cue the Ford Ka in reverse at 140mph closely pursued by the 08:18 Express to Glasgow via Ullapool, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Galashiels. It's going to happen.

C. How long before some MP decides that this is the way to cut queues on the M4 and similarly opens up the rest of the UK rail network "to ease congestion"? Using the Channel Tunnel (do we still call it the Chunnel?) could be quite fun if you time it right and not so much fun if you choose the wrong tunnel. To pop onto the higher-speed railway lines it will be advisable to own a Porsche, Aston Martin or Ferrari... The Jaguar XKS now calling at Platform Three is the seven-seventeen to Docklands calling at Threadneedle Street and the news-stand on the corner of Pall Mall followed by a Starbucks and then the Executive Car Park ...

D. Disaster. Recipe for. Obviously: scheduling and humans are involved. Established patterns of behaviour have been disrupted. Novelty has been introduced. Rights of way belong - at least in their minds - to BOTH parties involved. This is my road! This is my railtrack. No, no, this is my road... bang!

Whoo-hoo boing boing boing ying tong piddle high po Nanny, the Highways Agency has lost its marbles.

Actually, this one is quite cute, I want one of these...

 E. How long before someone decides that it is their gods-given "right" to continue their journey to wherever on the railtracks, in spite of the constant bumping hints from the sleepers and trouble with the points at Berwick upon Tweed?  Dash it all, Parker, you might blow the horn as we pass through stations... yes, M'Lady, the 'orn it is, very good M'Lady ...

Just in case you were too overcome with lunacy to note the earlier link, here is the BBC report.

Watch this space...

p.s., much though I and you may have wondered, this is not April 1st, this is not an All Fools Day prank.

Nailing the little people to the wall for a dollar.

An ironic title for the post, considering the subject matter...

And so it begins. Many, many moons ago a gentleman called J.R.R. R.D.R.R. (geddit?) Tolkien borrowed the pre-EXISTING name "Hobbit" and wrote a splendid book. When he croaked it, shook a double-six, shuffled off this mortal coil and curled up his hairy toes, his loving family sold all of the rights to The Hobbit and Lard of The Rings and a few others no chav has ever heard of, to a Hollywood corporation. As you do. The corporation is the mildly egotistically-named "Saul Zaentz Company". Some time this year, after decades of hard work by the pool at home and in the filthy bars and restaurants workplaces of Los Angeles, near Hollywood, the film is being released. The OFFICIAL hobbit-blog is OFFICIALLY here and ONLY here, apparently.

Well, the U-BEND You-Tube trailers have been released and posters are up and interviews on television channels have been bought spontaneously commissioned but we have also, in Engerlund been moved into the next phase of the publicity. This is the phase where lawyers and "publicity types" sit around in darkened rooms with their feet up on unpaid interns and wonder about how to make "The Hobbit" go fashionably "viral".

Awoogah! Awoogah! Kerching! Boss! Boss! I've got an idea! Let's sue the bejavers and the tiddleywotsits off all of the little people linking themselves in any way to things that - in Hollywood law at least - we own, like hobbits and Gandalfs and round houses and houses with round doors and rounded-off Gandalfs and hobbits and elves and fairies and ... anything!

For the money-grubbing diseased-ridden conscience-free amoral scum apparently running companies such as "The Saul Zaentz Company" this is marketing heaven. They unclip the leads on their lawyers, given them a few million for expenses from petty cash and put them on a 'plane bound for Engerlund. There, they set about shutting down pubs that have been called "The Hobbit" for some twenty odd years, force small family business such as Microlodge UK to change all of their terminology and their website on pain of, probably, our dear and sadly not yet departed Primed Minister and his pet The Home Secretary agreeing to their extradition to the USA. (Be careful folks, even though you may not be American or even living in America, you are apparently subject to the rule of commercial American law and, somehow, their commercial-cases courts have global jurisdiction...)

BINGO!

At the cost of just half a dozen lawyer's letters-o'threat to cease and desist (surely no more than a few million, I'd guess) the little people are running around publicising Saul's latest little "blockbuster" for him.

FaceBook, that last bastion of informed consumerism, is now awash with Save The Hobbit, Southampton pages and The Campaign to save The Hungry Hobbit Cafe pages. The BBC, always ripe for a con and never slow to kiss the arse that feeds them, is similarly awash with stories (not Hobbit stories of course): Change your name or you shall not pass and iPetitions is banging the drum with an online petition to hang Saul Zaentz by his testicle stop this travesty of modern justice. As the King of Siam once said, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

It has, as planned by the weasels in Hawaiian shirts, gone "viral". 'Undreds of thousands of scummy punters customers are now more than well aware of the impending release of the film. All it cost was the lives, livelihoods, well-being and peace of mind of a few small, family businesses here in England - far less than mainstream advertising would have cost to reach the same demographic.

The $CUMBAG$ in Hollywood - and this one in particular - don't care that they have trampled on a few little people, they couldn't give a gnat's flatulence that anyone had a café called "The Hobbit" or was serving a cocktail called the "Gandalf" - they just want the publicity and if it takes a jackboot in the faces of a few small people to get it, well, they have lawyers to do that for them.

Thought for the day - this is a curiously modern tactic. Once upon a time if you tried to pick on the little guy in England the majority would have ripped you limb from limb. The underdog used to rule, even in law. Hollywood films would have been boycotted, Hollywood Navy vessels would have been fired upon as soon as they were in sight of the coast. Your throat would have been cut the moment you stepped onto the red carpet on your opening night. Now? I doubt that most of the cinema-going public can still spell "throat", let alone rip one out. Now we'll run your advertising campaigns for you and go and see the film anyway, cuz uthrwse we wud av 0 to iTweet abowt wiv da mates innit. The "commercially active demographic" will click on those petitions and like the FaceBook protest pages and the film, on the strength of their money, will be a flaming success and Saul will get himself a bigger pool. The public will have been manipulated all over again, like dribbling fools with money in their pockets.

Does Hollywood embarrass America and Americans as much as it embarrasses me? I'm sure that it must. Isn't America fed up with being mis-represented like this? Could you not just, oh I don't know, maybe pave paradise, put up a parking lot (all over Hollywood)? Re-run the Manhattan Project in downtown LA with the safety catches off? I know for a fact that you're not all body-obsessed love-sick clichéd gun-toting rednecks working for the CIA and flailing your arms and legs in front of LPG-powered rigged explosions, despite what Hollywood is telling the world!

Harrumph.

p.s. Before you rip my it's spelled "frote", innit? out, I am a writer and a photographer - I wholly support copyright, if anyone copies my work (hah! fat chance!) or uses it without paying then yes, I am miffed. If someone were to open a Café called "The Owl Wood Publications" or "Vintage Photographer Tribute Towers" though, I'd be rather chuffed to the point of proferring a very un-English hug and a cup of strong & hot tea. The little people being sued and stamped on here are not in any way detracting from the commerical value of the Hobbit/Tolkien franchise, they are not exactly making rival films, and it was only the squelch of Saul's hairy legal buttocks landing on top of them that alerted the world to their existence.

Globalization and Corporate Cultcha? This is it. Sod "women and children first", put the cash into the lifeboats!

A Police Warrant to Search the Owl Wood, another Police raid in the village & some Oxford Archaeologists

Sometimes a quiet walk just isn't destined to be quiet...

A certain location in the village what doth lie yon side of the Owl Wood was raided visited (again) by gentlemen and ladies of or from around abouts and including the Wildlife and Rural Crime Unit of the Lincolnshire Police. These are the chaps who deal with, for example, folk who may be dealing in eggs or examples of  protected species of birds and other wildlife [dead, stuffed and mounted or otherwise]. They had a Search Warrant to search the Owl Wood (in connection with their raid on another address entirely, not because we were the "focus"!) and politely asked first, mentioning the warrant that they had anyway sort of en passant, presumably just in case we'd been reluctant! The Policepersons looked very smart in their black outfits but declined to frisk the (remaining) two hens or search the owl box.

Two unmarked vans, a WRCU LandRover, a couple of cars and the paddy wagon in the photos above and below - which was very considerately parked just up the lane near the railway bridge, away from our address and the separate address that was being ... enthusiastically visited (OK - raided). It all happens in Aby. Oft times not long after dawn. NB I have deliberately refrained from posting any photographs of aforesaid raid enthusiastic visit or the address in question, since that would be neither polite nor sporting. Hardly cricket, even if the alleged activities under investigation do seem to be impinging upon and besmirching the character of the Owl Wood and its caretakers, what with search warrants being issued and all... To the alleged perpetrator or perpetrators, cease and desist your alleged activities I say, cease and ruddy desist.

We assume that the "usual suspect" is being investigated again regarding the "usual criminal activity" but we have no detail, no names and no packdrill. It was all very tastefully done without sirens or stampedes of riot police behind shields and as far as this reporter can ascertain, no cups of tea were harmed during the raid. There was, after the dust had settled and searches been completed, a very dignified convoy out of the village on the single-track lane in the time-honoured convoy order of: police van; police van; civilian who seemed to be the centre of a lot of the attention driving him or her self in their own car; police car; police car. So that's ticketty boo again then. As far as we are aware nowt was found or removed from the Owl Wood.

Paddy Wagon. With slide-down windscreen riot shield. Not a blue & white Austin 1100.

The rest of this little corner of Lincolnshire is cool, damp, grey and misty this morning. It's also very full of traffic - I suspect that word has got around and anyone with anything on wheels that will move is "incidentally driving by", just to see what's what, where and why, with whom. Tractors, trailers, oil tankers, front loaders and Ford Transit vans full of sightseers. OK, no vans full of sightseers, but more of them later.

Work on the Liquid Gold (a.k.a. Water) pipeline continues - the current phase in this section is the investigation by archaeologists to make sure that the diggers and diggerers JCBs aren't slicing through the remains of Atlantis or Roman Ruins or something. The survey is being carried out by Oxford Archaeology. Oxford Archaeology are, yup, archaeologists from Oxford but they seem to do a lot of large-scale work, including pre-construction work such as this.

Wild vehicles and a portable generator behind containment fencing.

Archaeologists in the mist.

Tame and friendly archaeologist making his escape from the compound.

If the archaeologists turn up the remains of the Titanic, anything to do with Atlantis or the real Ark of the Covenant - hey, this is Aby, you never know - we'll let you have the details asap or sooner.

If we have any more police raids or anything later today we'll also post an update but for now I'm going t'foot of our stairs wi' feather duster and then for a quick lie down on a patch of cold lino until my blood pressure goes away.

Actually, that was probably the wrong thing to say, what with so many feathered creatures allegedly being involved and all. Forget the feather duster.

Daffydollops, creepy kids, milk floats and heavy plants crossing.

The Sunday Stroll. It's not entirely rural from start to finish. This variety is probably a good thing because it is up and down these lanes that I stroll, thinking of plots and plotlings for my Owl Woodyesque books such as The Attenborough Alternative and NGLND XPX. Anyhoo, variety (as in a multitude of choices, not a seaside pier stage act) is the sea-salt and malt vinegar of ambulant peasant life...

Daffydollops.

The Sunday stroll (other weekdays are available, mention of Sunday does not imply endorsement or recommendation) currently begins with a nice flower shower. The snowdrops on whiskers and bogies on kittens, the favourite things of Austrian nuns, are giving way to daffydollops (full Latin name: "Yellow Flowers of some sort"). These always remind me of the sunflowers in  Larry Niven's "Ringworld" - at any moment I expect them all to turn to face me, focus the sun's rays and burn me to a crisp. Fortunately, in England, there is rarely enough sunshine...

Ernie's ghostly milk float or a hand-held double exposure? I remember a County Court Judge asking me a similar question once, but he wasn't convinced by my answer even though I was under oath.

 One surprise regular item on the "walkies" agenda is a genuine good old-fashioned electric milk float plying his trade along the lanes. I assume that he has his long-distance route planned out and a fresh set of batteries tucked away. Still, terribly English, if a little non-rural and surprising. Unlike 99.78% of the lunatic "drivers" who use the lane, this chap didn't need to slow down (any more), he kindly pulled over to the far side of the narrow lane and gave me a cheery wave as he passed. Human. Polite. Old-fashioned. A rare thing.

Amazingly thus, he didn't try to kill me the way the car drivers do and, as a quick aside, Mr midnight-blue Series 1 Renault Laguna saloon from the village, I shall be carrying a half-brick in my pocket from now on and the next time I see you, I shall introduce you to each other. It's not as though I shall have far to lob the brick, I could just hold it out sideways and let you drive into it at 50mph+...

[The milkman (Ernie) and I will then bury you and your car in an unmarked grave. Further, I shall arrange your body and that of a sheep on the back seat in a compromising position so that when you are the subject of a televised Time Team archaeological dig in a few hundred years time your descendants, if any, will have a few hints as to your true character and overwhelming human loveliness.]

Still, onwards and back out of the ditch, somewhat bruised, as we pedestrians hereabouts often say.

A playground attraction for children... (The old woman who lived in a Nike or a Reebok mayhap)

These little loves are called Carrie, Rosemary and Christine... they are part of Claythorpe Watermill's children's play area and are about a yard away from the roadside, peeping out from the shrubbery and the inside of Old Mother Hubbard's Wellington or whatever it's called - a ten foot tall fibreglass shoe with children living in it. I hope they are plastic children. If not then they're even more creepy than they look. The one to the right has eyes that look at an observer directly and seem to follow. I bet all of them have kitchen carving knives clutched behind their backs... I am convinced that if I were to walk after dusk then these "children" would be creeping up behind me in the lane. Chills and shudders abounding.

Quite the least rural or farm-like farm hereabouts.

One of the "farms" I regularly walk past is more of a factory than a farm. I'm sure that it is very profitable and productive, but it is horrible. This is one of the main farmyards and what a rural scene it presents with its nine vast green tanks of goodness knows what and its fourteen or so upright tanks (visible to the rearground above) of what I think is a crop dryer (and is incredibly noisy when running). Unbelievably, there is a herd of cows somewhere in there. I've only ever heard them, and never so much as seen them outdoors in the yard - there's no field near nor by that isn't cultivated, so I can only assume that the poor bovine buggers never see the light of day. Vile. Shame on you Mr &/or Ms Farmer.

Planning application from the Water Company, details freely available for £200 while stocks last.

Further up the lane are A4-sized planning application notices relating to the 61km water pipeline (with pumping stations, vehicle yards and attendant wotnot) that is slicing across the countryside. Has to be done I'm sure and I have every confidence that most of the countryside will look a little bit like it used to once they have a half-hearted attempt at re-landscaping after they've buried the giant hosepipe. As much as whatever's left in the budget after profit will cover, anyway. The amazing thing about the planning process is not the almost totall lack of active, real, genuine consultation (they just nail up these notices and that's that, you have to spot them) but that the environmental study costs £200 to get hold of, while stocks last! England is following America down the lane towards the finest modern democracy that money can buy.

The beginnings of a 61km water pipeline streaking across the countryside like the impact trail of a thoroughly impolite meteorite.

 Ooh look - the pretty little pipeline is beginning to take shape in what used to be just an ugly field of green that was hitherto doing so very little to improve the lives of (stands up respectfully and salutes) townfolk (other than grow their food) ...

Constant disappointment, even as a putative "adult" - where's my Triffid lumbering across the tarmac?

Signs are sprouting on the verges of all of the lanes that the pipeline will cut across.

I confess to a constant disappointment with these roadsigns that warn of the lumbering rights of way of industrial and construction traffic (soley by virtue of size and weight, not law or manners). Please, please, please, even just the once, can I be treated to a large terracotta pot with a giant tomato plant in it rolling across the cat's eyes, or a 60' tub of vast daisies being towed from here to there by a caterpilar tractor? Please?

Meantime I will keep closing my mind to these little distractions and only open it when passing the woodlands and fields!

I've won the Euromillions lotter-eeee lotter-aaah lotter ha ha ha ha ha ...

Apparently.

Which is amazing, because I haven't bought a ticket for something like four years and don't even live in any one of the "luckiest" towns as detailed in this scientifical report by the Scientifical People of that well-known peer-reviewed journal, The Mirror. Nor do I have much faith in the "random draw" system, having worked at Lytham St. Annes during a very quickly hushed-up scandal over ERNIE. ERNIE is the "random number generator" (hah!) "who" picks the winners for the Government Premium Bonds draw. He used to be run by some chaps in D Block, I worked in B Block. Some newspaper briefly (very, very briefly) suggested that ERNIE was being used to make slush and hush money payments (what a wonderful idea when you think about it - the ideal system). All I know is that ERNIE and his keepers suddenly moved from St. Annes to Washington, Tyne & Wear, very quietly, no questions asked, no reasons given, all offices and equipment moved overnight and not by the usual in-house movers, never to be spoken of again on site.

Anyway.

The email about my latest win is from one Dr Lorenzo Alonso Martinez of the European Organizing Committee [with an American "z" where a European "s" would be]. 'Attn Email Onwer [sic]' it begins and asks for me to verify my name, address, age, occupation, sex, telephone number before they can release my prize via their "paying bank in my area" (I've always wondered why the Lottery didn't use the usual international banks...). To add veracity the originating email address is offer@nittsett.es and the return address quoted is seguros.direct@contactoffice.es - both well known for their involvement in the many national lottery draws of the Empire of Charles the Great, the Emirat of Cordova, the Slavic Tribes, the Swedes & Goths, the Northmen. the Kingdom of Asturia, the Duchy of Beneventum, and of Lincolnshire.

This one (of many, many, many) tells me that I have won 500,000.00 "Euros" (the "Euro" is a foreign currency popular with those stranded across the English Channel and the Sea of The Irish). Odd thing is, there's no virus or worm-laden attachment, no hidden web addresses and all of the information asked for is already in Her Majesty's public domain. This brand of spam isn't even amusing (but I've framed it anyway).

What is amusing though are the day-dreams of what might be, should my biorythms and the whims of the universe ever converge (at some point when I can again actually buy the odd ticket) and should they collectively decide to send an articulated tanker full of money around to my account at Coutts...

Why, gosh, I'd shower the big commercial charities with money and buy a tastefully gold-plated Audi A8-stretch and a yacht and a space station and a new iGooseberry phone and a and a and a... new-build house like Beckingham Palace and, and, and...

Beckingham Palace, home of Mr David Beckham.

Well, actually... no, I wouldn't. So what would I do with, for example, a hundred million fresh and tender young Poundlings in the bank? The first photo in this post is a clue. A manky old Land-Rover and what looks to be a very non-built up area indeed. Lots and lots of nothing for miles around. The day-dreams change from nap to snooze but there's a constant theme running through them - I'd run and I'd hide.

What that says about my psyche and state of mind I shudder to think! Professional answers on a prescription pad please...

They run something like this ('scuse the "I" "I" "I", this is my lottery win/ERNIE-payoff we're discussing and it's hard to avoid over-working the "i" key a bit here):

1. I'd give the rellies very big cheques (two cheques each, one for their very own and another the same size to cover England's green and pleasant 50% rate of income tax, so that the initial hopefully nice surprise of seeing the first figure isn't tainted by thoughts of the latter). One-off, no strings, please to never feel the need to allude to them ever again and to have fun, be as happy as you can and enjoy.
2. I'd look for a patch of land as big as I could get (possibly Greece - all of it, the whole country, once the Official Receivers auction it off), maybe a small island that nobody else wants - modern facilities not an issue - and I'd spend a bit of money on making the access roads almost impassable, on turning away the National Grid and Anglian Water et al. No ancient rights of way, no big house needed, no neighbours essential.
3. I'd give a very generous and continuing modicum of dosh to local charities that I care about, the sort who can't spend OXFAMesque budgets on television advertising. Not the ones trying to cure world-class problems, just the ones making a difference locally. You can't make a hint of a scratch on world-class problems with a hundred million, but you can make a lot of local difference. Much though I'd like to cure cancer and find a treatment for Terminal Stupidity, it's not going to happen on one lottery win, that's the province of big-money global commercialism, not one lottery cheque.
4. I would allow some company to install a trillion-terabyte internet connection and a telephone. The telephone would be in a cupboard near the front door, and I would dust it once in a while. There would be just the one handset, and it would be Bakelite, wired and heavy and its cupboard would be next to a hard seat in a strong draught.
5. I'd collect neat stuff like solar panels and generators and ground-source heat pumps and de-salination and water purification machinery in nice outhouses, right next to the greenhouses that I could play in without being overlooked, watched or bothered in. I'd add hydroponics and aeroponics experiments. I'd have food stockpiled in larders and pantries until I felt secure again.
6. Fortnum and Masons (and Sainsburials and Tescoids mayhap) would be allowed to make frequent deliveries of these luxury comestibles either to the helipad or the (locked) gatehouse. Builders and big deliveries would need to send vehicles that could cope with less than the smooth and the tarmac-only - my driveway would be allowed to grass itself over.
7. I'd buy books - real, live, cuddly, beautiful books for my library. Cameras - ancient and modern. Cars - maybe a small Jensen Interceptor Series III, if I could find one in magnificent condition, and a Series I original Range Rover. I'd buy CDs before HIGH hi-fi goes out of fashion and we're all reduced to LOW lo-fi MP3 files that make more money for the record labels and are easier to control. I'd sneak out every once in a while and bid at local auctions for vast impractical items of art and furniture that needed new homes and fresh lives. I'd have a stereo powerful enough to cover three time zones (those zones being modern, pre-war and medieval). I'd have a darkroom that looked like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
8. I'd have a dozen dogs - the oldest, scruffiest, most unloved and over-looked ones I could find at the local rescue centres (centres which would be enjoying their cheques, hopefully). Vets would be flown in as necessary.
9. Every once in a while I'd pick a random provincial town, watch the entrance to the NAZI HQ (the unemployment office) and select someone signing on, a selection based purely on biased personal assessment and assumptions and judgement - and give them an unwrapped wad of cash (before running off). I'd think of other, similar games to play. Then I'd drive my Jensen back home, persuade it over the potholes of the driveway and through the locked - multiple - gates, and hide again until the need to venture out like a darting spider reared its head again. Inbetween times I'd post off random small amounts of cash to charities run by local people constantly working uphill and largely forgotten.
10. I'd have my mate Jenny sent several tons of bagged up fresh doggy poop. Then I'd pay so that she could hover in a helicopter over the management carpark at her place of work and drop little messages of love onto aforesaid management as they came out of the office. The pilot would be instructed to chase certain cars down the road so that they could be pooped, and re-pooped on the move.

PERFECTION. Utter ruddy perfection. Icelandic setting included (I can't stand the tropics).

I'd almost certainly end up unwashed, clinically insane and prone to twitching nervously as I raised the flag of the Hutson Empire on the flagpole on the roof of Sod-Off Towers - but what fun until then, eh?

Actually, the more I daydream about it, the more I'm going to reply to Dr Lorenzo Alonso Martinez of the European Organizing Committee, just in case it's for real!

Tomorrow's daydreams or next week's will no doubt differ in a lot of the details, but there will always be a corner set aside for running and hiding.There are details and important things left out of these ten green bottles of course, but that's the nature of casual daydreams.

What would you do with a stupendous Lottery win?

NGLND XPX

My forthcoming book [plug, plug, plug], NGLND XPX, re-tells the stories of some of the key points of recent English history - the truth about what really went on, as seen from the close personal perspective of a mildly deranged idiot who was actually, er... actually there (that would be me). For example, the Industrial Revolution was not the happy-go-lucky, sunlit, healthy picnic for one and all depicted in history textbooks, oh no, it was a gruelling and cruel week in which Richard Branson and Queen Victoria only got to play strip-poker the once. The competition run between Manchester and Liverpool to decide who would be awarded the contract to own the new-fangled steamed railways was a pivotal moment in the process, but it was only the beginning. The real industrial revolution began when the Queen Victorian hitched up her skirts, personally shot the last no-win no-fee lawyer, played a mean electric air-guitar and paraphrased songs by The Beatles on her way to the pub.

We join the action with this excerpt, just as some railway-orientated children meet the very first locomotives, with apologies to Jenny Agutter ...

... Far out in the countryside events were about to turn very ugly, very ugly indeed. A lovely family, torn apart by false allegations of spying and selling state secrets to the dastardly “The Russians”, was busy drinking its way to a new life in a rented house on the wrong side of the tracks – the new railway tracks. The three young children, Roberta-Jo, Peter-Billybub and Phyllis-Jo were playing on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway line, as directed by their inebriated “I want to be a paperback writer” mother. The very line out of the two in existence that, tragically, and unbeknownst to the children, was so soon to be tested by the speeding new "locomotive" designs.

‘What will it be like when trains start to run do you think?’ asked Roberta-Jo innocently, swinging the hem of her smock among the daisies and the dandelions and the long but decorative embankment grasses.

‘Scary!’ replied short-tongued Phyllis-Jo in the manner of a young Joyce Grenfell before she found her feminine poise.

‘Fun!’ was the opinion of Peter-Billybub who had once had his head inflated to the size of a watermelon by a very annoyed and preternaturally muscular toad on the business end of a playful plastic straw and a bet gone seriously wrong for the human being involved.

‘I know you’ve told me this before Peter-Billybub but I always forget – to be safe does one stand outside the two little tracks or inside?’

‘Inside, silly! The train runs on the tracks. If a train is coming then the only safe place for sure is between the two tracks. You girls will just never understand mechanical things, will you?’

‘Oh. OK. I’ll tie a knot in my handkerchief so that I remember. Of course, the trains won’t run all the way into Liverpool, will they? Even Daddy wouldn’t be brave enough for that.’

‘Of course not, silly! They’ll stop a safe distance away – nobody wants to have their wheels stolen and I imagine locomotive wheels would be in high demand as tribal bling for gang gentlemen’s necklaces now that VW badges and Mercedes-Benz emblems have become passé before their time.’

‘What’s that rumbling noise?’ asked Roberta-Jo, looking for storm clouds but finding none.

‘A stampede perhaps?’ said Phyllis-Jo, looking hopefully at the old cow in the next field. The old cow shook a fist and carried on walking back to the OAP home with her firewood.

‘An earthquake maybe?’ said Peter-Billybub imagining Los Nottingham, city of the one-way tramway no-parking average-speed camera town planning angels, splitting in two or three and burning a bit.

‘Oh goodness me – it’s a train!’ said Roberta-Jo, horrified and excited at the same time in much the same way as she had been when one of daddy’s Russian friends had stayed over and she’d been sleepwalking again but he said he didn’t mind and had explained how Russians keep warm in the long, cold, Siberian winters with nothing but shared body-heat and some strange foreign exercises.

‘Can’t be – no-one’s seriously expecting trains to start running for another ten years or more.’

‘Well something’s coming!’

‘Run!’

‘It’s too late! Get between the tracks!’

‘I know - I’ll take my bright red underknickerbockers off and wave them over my head, just so they know we’re here’ said Roberta-Jo. She was very limber and could even take them off in her sleep, and it had made the Russian laugh so.

‘You always take your knickers off and wave them over your head at any excuse!’

‘Do not!’

‘Do so!’

‘Phyllis-Jo’s right, Roberta-Jo – do you remember yesterday when we walked past that building site? I’m sure that the builders knew we were on the pavement nearby even before you stripped off and waved at them.’

‘There were cranes and shovels and pickaxes! It was dangerous. I had to do something!’ protested Roberta-Jo in her own defence.

‘What about the day before when the greengrocer was putting boxes of apples out in front of his shop? You waved your knickers then too.’

‘They were heavy boxes! He might have dropped one on us.’

‘We were on the other side of the road! What about the farm workers in the field at the back of Mummy’s new house? Why did you wave at them? We were indoors!’

‘They had scythes! Do you know how dangerous scythes can be?’

‘No but you should know, you were in the old barn for hours afterwards talking about it with all of those casual harvest labourers lured from swarthy Mediterranean regions by promises of fine wages and dalliances with milk-skinned English virgins’ said Peter-Billybub, demonstrating either an understanding beyond his years or something he’d overheard while emptying ashtrays and collecting glasses down at the village pub while waiting for Mummy to collect her take-away bottles.

‘Was not!’

‘Was so!’

‘OK then cleverclogs Peter-Billybub – you wave yours this time.’

‘No point.’

‘Why?’

‘Mine blend in like desert camouflage against most backgrounds and, anyway, you know I have to soak them off whenever Mummy says I need to change them, otherwise my skin comes off too.’

‘Phyllis-Jo – you get yours off and wave them over your head at the driver.’

‘Can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Not wearing any. Can’t be bothered. I’ve seen the trouble yours cause you. The Vicar says I’m going to make a fortune when I’m older. I assume he means the money I’ll save on laundry costs. If you only wear top-clothes you can do away with the boil wash altogether apparently.’

‘Right, so we’re back to me again. It’s always me that takes responsibility. I’ve got to stop them before they get robbed. The poor men! Think of the poor men! Won’t somebody think of the poor men! Look out – there’s danger down the line! Liverpudlians!’

With that Roberta-Jo began running down the track towards the on-coming train, careful to stay between the rails and waving her underwear in the time-honoured fashion. As the loco neared she stopped, shut her eyes and kept waving for all she was worth, picturing the usual outcome where she would end up nose to nose with the heroically heroine-halted engine and a thoroughly saved magnificent day, with maybe a quick snuggle from the chap who puts coal in the engine.

This would all have worked train-stopping wonders had Burstall and his fireman, Michael Palin, been looking up and forwards at the time. As it was, well...

‘What was that? The engine hiccoughed.’

‘It was almost like we hit something. Something soft on the outside and crunchy on the inside but with the sound deadened as though covered in layers of red cotton and extra-wide gusset elastic.’

‘Nonsense – the track’s clear all the way to Scouseville. Keep your foot down and keep stoking, Palin – we’re creating legends here.’

Roberta-Jo shook her head to clear it. ‘Ouch!’ Dragging herself to her feet again she watched Perseverance screaming towards its Merseybeat doom at seven or eight blistering miles an hour. Just as she was trying a last-ditch, dismal little wave of her oily underknickerbockers Sans Pareil came hurtling over the horizon and over Roberta-Jo. She regained consciousness face-down, this time on the clinker between the rails. ‘Ooh, gosh – that hurt. That really hurt. Those poor men!’ Novelty caught her just as she was bending down to pick up the remnants of her underwear and flattened her again into the sleepers. Being made of stern stuff though she soon regained her feet and stood firm and foursquare to try to save the final engine, Rocket, from ending up parked on bricks. That loco made a frightful clanging sound when her forehead accidentally hit it just above the delicate front-axle bogey.

She was beginning to suspect that between the rails was not the safe place after all, despite what her little brother had told her. Oh, she thought, if only she wasn’t a girl she’d have a chance of being able to work out these mechanical and scientific things herself.

Roberta-Jo’s voice was a touch weak and she could only wave with one hand, the other arm being limp at her side or “one big compound fracture” as a grown-up would later term it. ‘I’m not wearing any knickers’ she whispered forlornly to the receding carriage where a kindly old gentleman was reading a newspaper. He waved and then went back to the crossword in The Times. Seven letters, starts with “T” and rhymes with “dollop”. Aha! Trollop. ...

All of the secrets that they didn't want you, the public, to know will be between the pages. War-time time travel with the Walmington on Sea Home Guard; the plush buttoned-velvet invasion of the Martians in their dastardly monopods; first contact on the lawn at Buckingham Palace in "The day the Earth took tea" and how to survive a meteorite strike in "Disaster most foul". All based entirely on, er, well, on, um..."fact".

Not steampunk, not diesel-punk, more sort of diesel-electric semi sci-fi historical with Victorian & WWIIesque overtones of Absynthe and chips from the local English takeaway. Footloose? Let's re-set it in the land of dark, satanic mills and classical music.

Splendid. All I've got to do is finish re-re-writin' it. NANNY! FRESH TYPEWRITER RIBBON PLEASE!

A gratuitous photo of the Moon

A gratuitous picture of this evening's moon - 7th March 2012

Bit lost for words at the moment, so here's a totally irrelevant photo of this evening's moon.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as, um, well, yes quite possibly.

NB the moon is the big bright thing towards the middle of frame. The black bits are the um, the er, the not moon I suppose. That's a lot bigger than the moon which is why there's more of it.

Absolutely. Yes.

Chin-chin.

Patting-down an Englishman's "sensitive areas" in public.

Somewhere, out there, is a balance that has been well and truly lost, a national friendship that is being mortally injured and a lot of terroristas that are laughing their socks off at successfully disconveniencing and inpleasuring an awful lot of innocent travellers. We needs must raise a search party and take action to find them all and take appropriate and measured action. Borders have to find a better way to work than this or else we might as well simply stop travelling between certain countries - maybe that is the intended outcome? I don't know.

Arrive in a provincial airport in England and you are quite likely to be met with some pretty stern questions, I can tell you, yes indeedy.

'Did you pack this bag yourself Sir?' 'Er... yes.' 'Damned well done Sir, damned well done - you've separated folded items from rolled, your spare brogues are secured and, if I may say so, your washbag is immaculate. Do have a chalk cross and a cup of tea, the taxi rank is over there and complimentary umbrellas are available from the kiosk. Chin chin.' Well, not really, but Immigration do at least realise that they are not the Spanish Inquisition, even if they get everything - everything - else wrong!

It should be mentioned here that I have never traversed English Customs & Immigration as a non-English National, I'm guessing that a journey the reverse of mine would probably hold similar ticklish delights for "foreigners". At least, I hope in some respects that it does.

Getting into America - from a non-American's perspective and experience at least - is a little less... dignified ...and just a touch more invasive. Modern America, bless its little cotton socks, now has no respect for personal space, body taboos and the sanctity of a chap's underwear... About four years ago I went to San Diego and thence on a working cruise (with a lot of play thrown in) down to bits of Mexico and then back to San Diego. The entry and exit procedures involved between England, the U.S. and Mexico seemed to have reached hysterical fever pitch (everywhere except Mexico and England).

Like an innocent to the slaughter I hopped off the old DC3 as the props stopped turning, congratulated the flight crew on our near-perfect one-wheel landing, and then skipped towards America - 'Air hair lair!' said I. 'Just popped in to see how you're getting along - King George was a little worried, sends his best wishes and wants to know if you need anything?' That sort of thing, all designed to put a nervous country at its ease ... (well, it used to work in Keenyah, anyway, although in Poonah it's as well to immediately fire into the air as one alights).

Wallop. Massive queues - MASSIVE queues. Usual questions: purpose of visit (sedition, subversion says I); business or pleasure (is there a difference in the secret service of His Majesty? I offer, tapping out my pipe on the officer's podium); length of stay (gosh, might just mooch around and see what's what, might stay forever if I like the weather); got any drugs (Aspirin, Absinthe, Anti-Alopecia... look, do I really have to go through the whole list all of the way up to zed?); are you a criminal or do you intend to overthrow world order (not been caught yet and yes, of course, although we tend to view it restoring world order and getting the maps back to mostly pink).

Then the fun really began (and continued with each flight, I seemed to perpetually land at some notional "point of entry" port). Stand up, sit down, stand there, step into this machine to be blasted and sniffed, please to remain still in the neutronic-radiation scanner please Sir it's quite harmless, don't fuss the dog Sir - he's working and it will distract him, shoes off, shoes on, beep beep, beep, please remove your watch, belt, wallet, teeth and glass eye, hand over your passport, return flight ticket, credit card details, fingerprints and any fruits, nuts or other contraband... and the best of all, the little phrase to strike terror into the heart of an Englishman (trying to get) abroad: please remain still Sir I'm just going to pat down your sensitive areas now.

By that the U.S. Immigration Official meant "I will now grab your crotch in a most amateur and clumsy fashion and indulge in some nifty probing fingerwork. After that we will poke latex-gloved hands into your pockets Sir and furtle about. You have the right to remain silent. Try to not fart and yes, we have heard the one about are you pleased to see me Sir."

I almost had to refuse the attentions of U.S. Immigration and fly straight home again - my mother told me never to have sex with strangers. Besides, at this point the gentleman hadn't even offered me dinner.

Mexico on the other hand, had two test questions for entry. Hello Gringo - how much money have you brought with you and (the rhetorical) do you intend to spend it in Mexico? Answers I yes, I just grabbed a couple of fresh rolls of the stuff from the Purser and yes, I will be spending it here if you accept Americanski dollars. Customs then kissed me in that awkward foreign way, lent me a pistol, a couple of crossed bullet-belts, a very wide-brimmed hat and pointed the way to town. The official chaps with machine guns were all facing away from us - guarding us while we spent, as opposed to itching to shoot us.

Getting back on the ship was easy - flash the pass, drop a damp eyeball into the retinal scanner, roll up one trouser leg and do the 'tween the knees secret handshake and Bob's your Captain. Bar's open Sir and once you've had a couple of stiff gins then perhaps if you'd like to come up the the Bridge and take the wheel again you can show us the three-point turn we discussed and get us back out to sea without the cost of a local pilot ...

Of course, what I hadn't remembered was that, difficult though it might have been to get into America from England, even while wearing fresh pinstripe and a summer-weight bowler... it couldn't hold a candle to being a foreign chap trying to get back into America after visiting Mexico.

That was the only occasion (on holiday at least) on which I have been ordered to report to the main ballroom at 6am and queued for an hour before STANDING in front of SEATED Customs & Immigration to be grilled. SEVEN HOURS LATER we were back on shore...

It seemed to be almost as difficult to get out of America as it was to get in - same sniffing, frisking and questioning but no attempts at trouser-frottage.

By way of contrast, after flying back through Schiphol and thence to a provincial English airport my fellow passengers and I found our own luggage - and then all tentatively walked back through a Customs Hall that was not only deserted but was in darkness because the lights had been switched off. The sniffer-dog on duty was in his basket and simply wagged his tail at us.

Only Bahrain has been less... welcoming in terms of immigration than the U.S. When I landed there I must have fitted some "Most Wanted" profile because I ended up fingertips against a wall, while two blokes with machine guns stood at point and a third frisked me. This is of course what a chap expects these days in the Middle East, so it raised not an eyebrow or an iota of angst. I can't express my opinions of that area of the world because it is now illegal to do so, especially on social media networks, but suffice it to say that I expected no better from them.

The moral of the story, I suppose, has to be to be prepared for some mixed feelings next time a U.S. Customs Official has hold of your genitals, I mean, a chap wants to strike a gentlemanly balance between having to apologise for their being so little to actually search and possibly causing professional consternation or even some sort of "cricket cup size" envy.

Which approach do I prefer or feel most comfortable with? Well, in England I think we're too welcoming - mustn't offend religious sensibilities and all that by so much as poking under a veil (yeah, right...) and in the U.S., speaking as an outsider, the Immigration process alone makes me think twice about whether the trip is worth it. Sod the jet-lag, it takes me longer to get over the insult and indignity. Just another example I suppose of where we've all completely lost the balance and have thrown common sense into the dustbin.

Ignoring global and corporate conspiracy theories it just feels sometimes as though the "terrorists", putative or otherwise, have already achieved a lot of what they set out to do.

It's time we got common sense back out of the dustbin and started applying it intelligently, before we complete their job for them.

Great trip though nonetheless!

You may now go before the board.

Interview & Board tactics to put candidates at their ease.

...aah, what memories, what memories from nineteen hundred and sixty three, while later that same year this golden goodie blast from the past was introduced by the Crystals! I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still... oh, hang on - that's The Carpenter's album, Now and Then.

Still, this is Now - much to my great relief - and that was Then. Nineteen eighties, not sixties. Poetic Carpenter's licence endorsed.

Since being asked to leave the last of my schools ("get out Hutson, immediately, before the Constable arrives - your trunk and the goat will be sent on to you") I've been employed in Her Majesty's un-Civil dis-Service, employed in private industry, self-employed, sub-contracted, Ltd., then re-employed, then Ltd again and now self-employed all over again. Interviews for private industry jobs can be delightful (extracts tongue from cheek). When you are self-employed some customers can provide enough amusement for anyone. However, part of the special joy of the un-Civil dis-Service once you're past the filing clerk grades is that to advance anywhere you have to sit Promotion Boards. They are lovely.

Fnarr fnarr fnarr. Not. Bear in mind that I was also at the lower, provincial, scummy pond-life end of the Civil Service spectrum, not exactly Whitehall.

The usual way to get onto the list for a promotion board was to be recommended by your line command, ticketty-boo, splendid chap, super job, wink wink handshake letter of recommendation dashed splendid yes indeed. That's great if your line command like you. Mine - and you'd never have guessed this in a month of Sundays - didn't like me (with one exception*, ever, anywhere, anywhen)... Soooo the other way for a gobby "don't you take that tone with me just because on paper you're my boss" young chap to progress was to grab a few qualifications. Get a nice BA and you're automatically entitled to apply for some internal boards, pass a few technical exams and a fellow could apply direct to departments other than his own, get a Masters and the world's your oyster curly-edged dried-up potted shrimp sandwich. The incentive there is not the promotions but the mud-in-your-eye they give to the (ex)bosses who wouldn't recommend a chap in the first place, just because he wouldn't play up, play up and play the game.

The interview boards all follow roughly the same format: report freshly washed at the appointed hour; wait in an ante-room until the buzzer goes and then something in tweeds, heavy spectacles and two centuries of very, very dry dust says that "you may now go in" and there then follows an hour or two of grilling by three or four folk several grades above the one you were sitting for.

'Cept they have tricks. Little tricks and routines to put a chap at his ease and get the best out of him. It's the adult equivalent of being flicked with wet towels and having your pocket money stolen at pen-knife point.

Board Number One's trick was the secretary in the panelled ante-room outside the board. I sat there waiting patiently (they always used to keep you waiting), best bib and tucker, matching socks, a dash of eau de mothball under each armpit and pith helmet at ease under the arm - and the buzzer went. Some vast, nuclear-powered "fire-alarm" style buzzer designed to make candidates require immediate laundry and heart massage. Two milliseconds after the buzzer sounded I was involuntarily hanging from the chandelier, eyes wild and staring. 'You may now go in' said the harpie-in-tweeds-and-dust. I got up down and prepared to knock on the highly polished wood panelled door when she shrieked "WAIT!". I stopped, knuckles inches away from the door and she got up and walked around her desk (that took about twenty minutes and she had to stop for tea on her way because of the sheer distance involved). She then straightened my tie (already straight), adjusted the cuffs of my regulation white shirt (already had the approved half-inch showing beyond the suit cuffs) and then pretended to dust off my shoulders as though I had terminal dandruff or something. "NOW you may go in' she said, and knocked for me...

There's nothing like that to put a young chap at his ease. (I got the promotion just to spite her).

At my second board the set-up was similar but the tricks came once inside the interview room. It was a bare-looking room about forty feet square, green carpet, a plaster ceiling maybe twelve or fifteen feet overhead, bare walls, nothing at the windows. The three members of the board were all sitting behind impressive desks, one each in a corner of the room, with proper office chairs for their behinds. I was waved to something incredibly squidgy and modern, twelve inches off the ground and in the middle of the room - no matter how I sat I couln't see all three members of the board at the same time. They took turns firing questions at me and I was supposed to turn and squirm about to answer, all the time with my head two or three feet lower than theirs, no way to look even vaguely dignified or formal in the "thing" they'd given me to sit on. All it lacked was a whoopee cushion, and I'm sure that they considered one. (I got the promotion, just to spite them).

The third board I sat looked innocuous enough, it was for a change of role rather than a promotion. Similar sort of reception (which I was wise to). I used duct tape so that the secretary couldn't shout "wait!" at me (OK, I didn't, obviously, but I considered taking some just in case). Once in the interview room the set-up seemed sensible enough. Three wooden desks but this time in a row with their backs to the windows (so that I would have to face into the sun) and a similar heavy wooden standard issue desk and chair for me. I was waved to it with a smile - 'Do sit down, Mr Hutson, and please make yourself comfortable...'

I kid you not, the chair was nailed to the floor. It was a chair with arms and these were right up to the wooden desk; no room at all to squeeze inbetween. The board members were watching me like crusty old vultures waiting for me to flap about and die. Fortunately for me, unfortunately for them, I've always (since birth) been about 6' 1" or 6' 2" depending on moisture content, built like a small hairy dinosaur and physically as subtle as a small steam locomotive. I moved the desk. With one hand, I picked it up and gently shoved it back a foot towards the board members. Then I smiled at them and we began. State of the Middle East; function of Her Majesty's Government; fiscal indicators; role of the Civil Service in a democracy; any good at sports? (not the unspeakable, really sweaty ones of course, just those involving thwack of willow on leather or odd-shaped balls and scrums) etcetera etcetera. After about an hour of them sitting back, taking turns and swigging drinks while I talked like an MI5 parrot strapped to a KGB interrogation table they eased up, wanted to mutter amongst themselves and suggested that I take a drink, indicating the shiny cut-glass decanter on the nearby table and the nice sparkly upturned glass on top.

They almost caught me - the decanter was empty. Well, not strictly empty, on close inspection it looked like it had been used to take water samples from the Suez Canal (Port Said end) and there was even a dead spider in there for good measure...

No idea whether I was supposed to leave the room or not, but I waggled it at them and told them I'd be back in five minutes. The nice (hah!) lady on the other side of the heavy wooden door smiled, took the damned thing off me and gave me a glass (of potable water). I got the job but in this third case it was only to spite me (foul job as it turned out).

I had hotter blood in those days. Telling me time and again that the usual recommendations would not be forthcoming was akin to kicking a bull in the nuts and offering it a bright red handkerchief to cry into. The juiciest, most satisfying promotion of all was one where I took the "external" route, got the qualifications, sat the board against the wishes of my current line command - and was promptly assigned back to them on promotion. Yeeeeeeeeeeeee-hah! Put that in yer pipe and give me the menu for "Last Meals", subtlety and making friends.

After a few of those experiences there was nothing much that private industry or sub-contracting or running my own business could throw at me... or so I thought.

More of those another day. My nervous tic has started up again just relating these tales and I need a gin.

* The exception was a nice ex-Army chap who liked to shout at captive idiots too. We got on splendidly.

204 dogs 110 people 30 horses 1 me

Thigh canth getth thith tongueth backth inth myth mouthth.

Many of your Earth moons ago I covered a charity dog-walk - massed rescue ex-racing greyhounds and their new families, all stomping around Normanby Hall and grounds. It was... eventful.

Walkies.

  The dogs were magnificent creatures, I don't think that you could put so many of any other breed in such close proximity and for there to not be a single scuffle, raised hackle, woof or snarl. They behaved impeccably. A great many of the new "keepers" were less so, in photographic terms. The idea was to pose the whole army in front of the house for a group shot and then capture some images as they marched around the wooded grounds.

Mr DeMille never had these problems. I need a larger tin megaphone.

 I arrived early, as you do, and scoped the place out. Only about ninety percent of the walkers were late arriving, so there was lovely yes indeed. Hound after hound screeched into the car-park and then chivvied their keepers to hurry them up - 'Look, mate, if I miss my photo-call you're grounded for a week and I shall probably pee on the carpet...' and 'Well you should have gone before we came out, the loos are over there but be quick and don't forget to wash your hands...' You've probably never seen so many mature greyhounds slamming the doors of hastily-parked family cars, popping the locks and dragging indolent humans behind them like so many spotty and unwilling teenagers.

Man with three dogs. That's the pose by the way, not the gentleman's Native American Indian name. Although I suppose it might be.

 I tried my best to assemble the whole group. I did, I really did. With weddings it's easy, you just wave the Bride's leg in the air and everyone falls into their family groups and smiles at the birdie. With rescue-dog "owners" there's no such mechanism. I used to be a Colour Sergeant in the church choir at All Saints, Hartford. I called. I shouted. I bellowed. I flailed around with my swagger stick and put "you 'orrible little men" on fatigues. Every single dog in the area - including some not officially part of the walk - gave me their absolute attention and obedience. The humans utterly ignored me.

It was never like that in Poonah.

Anyway, the dogs fell into formation as best their leads would allow, they stood to attention, they presented arms, they dressed right, they dressed left, they stood at ease, they shouldered arms and they sloped arms and they all, all gave me toothy grins all of the time, in serried ranks and proper formation.

The "owners" stood like weeds on a bomb-site, they made phone calls, they ignored everything their dogs were frantically trying to tell them (such as "pay some attention, this is your photo too"), they chatted, they drank coffee and they were about as easy to organise as a box of fresh cockroaches released onto the floor of a light-bulb testing laboratory. And... wait for it you 'orrible little man, wait for it... and... SCATTER. Deeeeeeees-appear into those nooks and crannies. You would have thought that fresh air and daylight was poison.

You lookin' at me, kid? You gotta be lookin' at me.

 To get the full group in front of Normanby Hall, per the group's earlier request, I had to fire my pistol over their heads. The dogs were embarrassed.

Most of the dogs were relatively elderly. Like all dogs and especially greyhounds they were just happy to be somewhere, with people they knew, doing whatever came their way. If some twerp wanted to point a long lens at them then they were happy to pose until he got too close in which case they were happy to roll over and have their tummies tickled.

Am I just fabulous or what? Say fabulous please, not what, I'm feeling vulnerable.

 Linconshire Greyhound Trust, while oddly enough is run by humans and not greyhounds, has lots of these wee beasties needing homes. Or you could just skip the "must be greyhound" thing and go straight for plain old "elderly" at the Oldies Club. I mean elderly and needing re-homing in dog terms, they don't let humans move into the kennels and wait for new owners.

Good grief, I wish they did.

I can see myself sitting on an old tartan rug in a cage, waving hopefully at nice people walking by, all looking for something cheap to run to live on the hearthrug and use the garden as a bathroom. I'd be ideal. A bowl of water, a dish of biscuits (preferably Ginger Nuts or Rich Tea or Digestives please) and my tongue lolling, fleas a-leaping. It's not as though I don't already sniff dog's bottoms and chase cats.

Excuse me for a moment while I sigh wistfully and day-dream... aaaahhh.

The 30 horses I hear you cry? Well, Normanby Hall had an old-fashioned fair in the grounds on that day and the horses were all made of wood and going around in ever decreasing circles, a bit like me. I took a photo or two while I waited for the greyhounds to arrive, spit on handkerchiefs and wipe smudges off their owner's faces, neaten their hair and re-tie their shoe-laces. Freaky-looking things, merry-go-round horses. Four of them were particularly scary; one was white, one was black, one was red and the other was just sort of pale and kept shouting to me about "an apocalypse" as it whizzed past...

Creepy, creepy, creepy merry-go-round horses. The stuff of nightmares. Geddit? Night-mares. Mares... oh forget it.