I once tried to explain to someone ( A Polish builder with minimal English which didn’t help) why in this country we have to eat pancakes, give up stuff for Lent, although obviously not alcohol as we did that in January or tried to, consume thirty hot cross buns each and buy ourselves industrial quantities of Easter eggs not withstanding the fact that only a minute percentage of us still believe in Baby Jesus.  Someone had to swear an oath in front of me this week and looked like an Easter bunny caught in the headlights when asked if he had a religion. He thought for a moment and then said ‘Christian’.  It would have been cruel to ask for something a little more specific – Evangelical? Catholic?- and in the interest of getting home before dark I resisted.

The church’s barrel has finally been scrapped when even, even the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks it would be more convenient if we just settled on a date and stopped basing it on Passover and new moons.  Has all this chopping and changing being upsetting your routine vicar?  Why not have Christmas permanently moved to Sunday while your at it? Would that ease your workload pet?

In confessional mood I must admit to hating Easter with a vengeance.  Even the names are stupid.  Good Friday?  Not for the main players it wasn’t. Nor as it happens for people enjoying our island climate.  In my lifetime there have been more snowy Easters than White Christmases.  A fact.  You probably can’t get a bet on it being warm and/or dry.  For the greater part of my childhood it meant four days out of the school holidays which were even duller than being in class.  Nothing was open, nothing happened.  You couldn’t even have thrown yourself under a train because there weren’t any.  A mountain size pile of chocolate only started to address the balance. Just.  And it was a mountain because my parents could remember rationing and it gave them the most enormous pleasure to be able to bury us in a landslide of confectionery.  That’s what we were fighting for!  Let’s hope that it wasn’t something else imported by Prince Albert…

 

 

Dry your eyes gentle readers and cease with the rending of the garments.  I know you have been adrift on an ocean on anxiety since Saturday but the delay is due only to an especially demanding week, both socially and professionally and by Saturday morning I couldn’t have written a shopping list, much less a few hundreds words to amuse you.

As you should know by now there are no lengths to which I will not go to excite your (and more importantly my) world weary palate. Step forward my account of a two day lock-in, unfortunately not of the licensed premises variety with which we are all too familiar but with policemen in a car, gilding the lilies that are my driving skills.  A terrifying prospect?  Only for them.

Fortunately the car had darkened windows, the better apparently  to deter stalkers which lowered the risk of me being seen by anyone I knew, primarily other traffic police.  It must be said at the outset that the instructors were sweet – kind, patient and gentle – although with hindsight they may well have been utilising their hostage handling skills as the days wore on.

it quickly became obvious that they needed to spend more time with people other than the criminal classes. By any criteria you care to name a gulf the size of Wales separated us.  When they asked what car I normally drove I replied”Whichever one I won’t have to reverse out of the drive” and they thought I was joking.  It began to dawn on them that this was going to be a long voyage of discovery when they opened the bonnet.  My delight to discover previously overlooked carrier bag space was clearly not the expected response.  Their disappointment in my mechanical prowess was matched by my own when I found that the car’s make-up mirror wasn’t illuminated although I was impressed by the cunning way it could be tilted so that you could observe the car behind.  I may adapt my own vehicles.

Bless them, they thought it was magical that anyone could navigate solely by reference to shops and restaurants- they seemed to find they way round Central London using police stations and pubs, or vice versa.

They were literally staggered when I pulled in at the Savoy just to use the loo.  Like they have good hand cream at MacDonalds now?  As we swung past Harvey Nicks for the third time – not lost, officer, just trying to clock all the window displays – they asked me where one could park nearby?  Doh!  On those handy yellow parking guidelines obviously.

Their iron self control only came near to cracking as we drove past the Priory, the lunatic asylum to the stars. “Ever been there?” asked PC Jolly nervously, clearly expecting the answer to be in the affirmative. “Dozens of times” I replied before adding in a rare moment of compassion “But only visiting friends”.

We popped into Scotland Yard, probably so that they could collect tranquilliser darts but I wouldn’t recommend a visit.  There’s not even a gift shop.

 

 

 

Ola, as they say in Spain, and I am a little late today (which I can’t say in Spanish) because it has been an exhausting week, even by my standards. I also have a blocked nose and a headache, the latter it must be admitted being brought on by being tired and emotional rather than overwork or bacteria.

I have said I would stay away from the subject of the EU Referendum but it does seem a shame to leave when I consider how many hours I have spent mastering European languages.   Whilst you have been idling away the days trying to score a million on Candy Crush or holding on for computer help lines I have been wrestling with irregular verbs and past participles.  (Look those up if your under 40).  I remember a time when we had been lumbered with an extraordinarily useless newsreader at ITN who claimed to be fluent in no less than seven languages.  ‘Shames one of them isn’t English’ shouted a wag from the back of the studio.

I went to night school to learn Spanish and during the first lesson Miss (Señora) went round the class asking why we wanted to master the Iberian tongue, and not with a waiter this time for many of the pupils.  Everyone was planning to go back packing in South America, clearly oblivious to the fact that in Brazil they actually speak Portuguese. ‘To direct taxi drivers in New York’ I said and bless them, they thought I was joking.  Why, even as far north as Boston, English is as rarely spoken as Cornish.

I did French and German at school but, as was the habit in those days, was never required to speak the language out loud.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there was a compulsory Oral element in the O level exam but on the plus side there’s very little about foreign grammar that isn’t second nature to me.

Times have changed and within a couple of lessons we were chatting away in Espagnol which was just as well as the teacher’s grasp of English was roughly on a par with my Swahili. So, unfortunately, was the other pupils knowledge of basic things like declensions which is why I spent most of the time not mastering ‘Take me to the airport pronto Pedro’ but explaining the arcane concept of the third person singular to my baffled and incredulous classmates.  I think the expression ‘Comprehensive Education’ may well have lost something in translation.

Of course with the expansion of the EU the lingua most franca in leafy Richmond is now Polish and Ukranian and we’ve had to commit to memory the words Hoover and lawnmower in at least one Eastern European dialect just to run a house.

In about twenty years, unless we vote Out there will only be a handful of people who can still speak English properly and understand it’s somewhat intricate use and spelling.  We will be an important historical resource.  There will be grants and interviews by students doing PhDs, possibly even a series on Channel 4.

Once I recover I may give lessons.

Normally it gives me no pleasure to be, yet again, in the right as it generally means that the disaster that I have accurately predicted (Do no revision and you will definitely fail that exam) has come to pass.  With my Oscar predictions however, I am going to make an exception and relish the moment.

Revenant didn’t win its much predicted Best Film award because it clearly wasn’t which is far from saying that Spotlight was.  I suspect it triumphed because by Hollywood standards of morality Catholics are pretty much up there with Nazis as baddies.  You are on pretty safe ground disliking them, especially as they all live on the East a Coast.  Leonardo got his Best Actor Oscar weeks before he would have qualified for a Lifetimes Achievement booby prize and you’d have to be stony hearted to begrudge it.  It must give hope to Kate Winslet, the eternal bridesmaid, although not in real life with her bizarrely named husband number 3.

Mad Max: Fury Road, my own tip,  got no less than 6 Oscars.  How does that not make it the best film?  Do the maths.  And well done Brie Larson (The Room) and Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl)  and Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) who won as I said they should.

Given my success rate I should have put money on the results which is exactly what I have done with the American elections.  Normally, like any sane person, I steer well clear of politics and betting shops which both relentlessly attract the less salubrious elements of society, if that’s not being too harsh on bookmakers.

i have decided on the next President if the USA using that rarer than rhino horn ability – common sense – and here’s how my thinking works.  After two terms of a Democrat who himself had to remind voters that he was not actually born in a manger, America is ready for a change.  He proved to be as disappointing as Lucifer and Tony Blair which leads the desperate voter to Trump.  Yes, that desperate!  Even a nation who elected Nixon KNOWING that his nickname was Tricky Dickie for God’s sake, and Ronald Reagan ALTHOUGH it meant years of Nancy as First Lady (Almost as popular as Cherie) and 2, yes 2 members of the Bush family, even these people will not put Trump in the White House.  Backwoods and backwards as they are as a nation there must be enough people with the intelligence to see that they would become a global laughing stock, even if he doesn’t choose Sarah Palin as a running mate, and I wouldn’t put it past him.

Perhaps someone Scottish can explain how they managed to persuade their voters not to commit suicide, or Putin might take pity and let them have some left over plutonium.  Or not. Just try to imagine the grin on his face.

For me there remains only one possible contender.  Step forward Mr Rubio.  He was not that well known when I placed my bet – the young man at the bookies asked if he was a contestant on something called The Voice – but the odds were surprisingly short.  Possibly I am not the first person to work this out.  He has a lot in his favour: he’s not a Democrat, tick, he’s not a woman, tick, he’s young, tick and best of all he’s not The Donald.  Add to this his Hispanic connections in a country where 25% have Spanish as a first language and might not want a wall across Mexico and I think we have a winner.  You know you can trust me.