THE BRITISH THREAD II

I beg your pardon Madame.

I didn't quite catch what you so graciously said.

My ear trumpet has been on the blink recently, through no fault of my own I hasten to say, and this dreary music is much too loud.

Would you mind repeating it more slowly.

You wot, Spendy? You are a vexatious and obscure fellow, to be sure.

Today folks, I'm going to chip mortar off a pile of bricks I've been saving.
I've been putting this off because I think the mortar whiil be hard and well-adhered.
I may end up just throwing the bricks away, but that's not very environmentally friendly, it it.

no it ittnt

Damn, I must sack that proofreader.

Now I've finished a long letter, and it's raining again, (sorry dadpad) so I can't go out on the chaingang as I had planned. Perhaps I'll write the Great British Novel instead, or drive down to Tesco's for an all-day breakfast.

I went for a bike ride yesterday on National Cycle route 1, ended up at the White Horse here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moreton%2C_Essex

Cycled past High Laver church where I was startled to learn that John Locke is buried.

When I got back I found I'd cut my ankle somehow.

However this did not stop me from thoroughly enjoying Newcastle Utd holding Chelsea to a draw

Well thats one way to spend monday...eating breakfast I suppose. Do they do all day lunch tomorrow?

Ha ha very good...yes, that's the way it is here in Calorieville, and we're all back to breakfast by Thursday.

Mac wrote-



I prefer it to be a boring old fart who knows what the US should do about guns, how the sewage should be disposed of and what to do about threats to our oil supply and all from a bloody armchair and a quick glance at the morning shitepaper over the crucial ceremony of breakfast and with narry a bead of sweat to ooze from a fevered brow apart from when chipping mortar off old bricks to save the earth.

If I'm going to be labelled "vexatious" I might as well be vexatious. I seem to have nothing to lose.

Spendi

What an obnoxious weary conglomerate specimen of chemicals you are becoming!

What on earths the matter, hasn't the postman delivered your Zimmerman Welcome Mat, Visa Card, Key ring, or the fancy bog paper?

Your meanderings have as much to do with the concept of decency or even lack lustre crack as Freeman Hardy & Willis, Marks and Spencers or a Thornton Chocolate Franchise.

Are the Yanks on the ID thread getting to you, they have most certainly been taking pot shots at you from the water tower?

You need to praise the children Spendi and make love to the mothers.

Praise the children my arse. That's the softest of soft options. A bit of mealy-mouth praise (See DH Lawrence) and off you zoom ruining their actual future.



They are in disarray. They can't even answer simple questions now. All they can do is blow raspberries like you. You didn't ought to blurt out assertions about a thread you know nothing about.

If you have nothing to say, and you haven't, why don't you do something else with your itchy fingers.

I was called "vexatious". Am I not allowed to be vexatious once I have been called that. I would look silly if I have a reputation for being vexatious and I wasn't.

vexatious. A word I haven't used recently. Except just then.

btw Spendy if you think its presumptious to tell the Americans where to stick their guns, you're right. But then sometimes they need telling.

Steve-

I gave the reason earlier that I have heard many Americans give. If they don't trust their government to have a monopoly on firearms that is their affair not ours.

They seem pretty adamant about it. Some people have been killed by the crash barriers on motorways but that is no reason to dismantle them. Every choice of such a nature has its benefits and costs. Guns don't kill fellow students. Crazed psychologies do that.

Did you see that statistic about how many murders Americans have seen depicted on TV and in movies. Media might well be in the frame far more than the gun lobby.

It is a very complex issue and sound bites are irrelevant.

The gun is just an extreme form of assertion.

Habituation to assertion as an acceptable method of discourse is obviously going to produce tragedies when psychological breakdowns occur.

I'm not so deferential as you. Aren't we all part of the Greater United States these days? Legally, of course gun control in the US is for Americans to decide upon. But that wont stop me making a case. And dont you think sometimes its time to stop the polite discourse and make an assertion? Do you have a discussion with a child about his right to play on a busy highway?

I suppose you are right though. Why should I care about 30 dead college kids when thousands are dying in Iraq.

Let the Yanks sort their own problems out Steve, we have enough of our own to contend with.

Its good you care about thousands dying in Iraq, I trust you care about thousands dying in Africa and other third world countries especially through lack of nutrition, disease AIDS etc. There are thousands dying on this planet every hour of every day, the people who could make a difference, don't really give a toss. Don't you understand its all a load of bollocks and we will keep on going till the wheels fall off!
(Zimmerman)

On the back of an envelope and assuming a 10 billion earth population with a 50 year life expectancy then 500,000 people die every day. Most of these deaths, I'm afraid, are unsuitable for careers in media to take advantage of.

And somewhere in the distance there must be 500,000 new people born.

Which seems pretty conclusive proof that media is institutionally racist and weeps crocodile tears in between the adverts for the shite the government says is going to kill off everything.

Oh to have a non-scientific mind. It must be very comforting.

What better use of an armchair is there than to sit in it and sort out the problems of the world. And by the bye, if the Americans had listened more closely to my sage advices over the last few years they would be a lot better off now. And better loved, it has to be said.

Jeffrey Sachs this years Reith lecturer made the point that it would cost about one day's spending by the Pentagon, to supply every African sleeping place for children with anti mosquito nets for 5 YEARS. And before you cynical buggers say the earth cant support even more Africans breeding like....well he goes on to point out that the single most significant factor in reducing explosive population growth is child mortality, that is the MORE CONFIDENT PARENTS ARE THAT A CHILD WILL SURVIVE TO ADULTHOOD, THE LESS THEY HAVE.

That sounds like the more hopeless your condition is the less point there is in not doing what feels good when you get the chance and a pair of nylons or a tin of Marvel gets you anything.



People who think like that really shouldn't be giving Reith Lectures. They would be better suited to putting the squiggles on the Marzipan Delight in the authorised chocolate factory.

Lord Reith must be whirring like a geared up egg-whisk wherever he is.

He might say, with occult hindsight, what Mac said about the Americans listening to his sage advices.

What exactly was the advice Mac?

Was it 1961 or 2 when Dylan sang

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
Don't criticise what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out the new one if you can't lend a hand
For the times they are a changin'.

Crikey- that's 45 years ago.

Just imagine Mac a programme with serious voices and great footage and music and written by professors showing the earth completely feewkered with cities in flames in 40 or 50 years, who's to a decade eh?, and you'rea bright little lad of 13.

I wonder what that does to their little heads and there you were at 13 looking forward to scoring the winning runs in a Test Match at Lord's with a sparkling drive which was too good for the cover fielders and which crashed into a lady's handbag sending her new fangled vibrator spinning across the grass with the spring glinting in the summer sun and Reithian members (stuffed shirts) looking on in stern disapproval as you are carried shoulder high back to the handshakes.....I could make a night of it if you wish.

Think on that Mac. I have to. I'm a realist.

Spendy is a realist, and I'm to be Queen of the May, mother.