“Loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous combination”.  Words of such profound wisdom that I am tempted to claim them as my own but the quote actually comes from ‘The Simpsons’, source of much of my philosophy.  Not half as risky, however, as any national holiday and my quiz team.

Welcome to this week’s cause for celebration – St Patrick’s Day.  Today’s Readers Challenge: In not less than 500 words compare and contrast that statement with the mischief offered by a mixture of St Patrick’s Day, an England/Ireland Grand Slam rugby final and eight heavy drinkers. Thesaruses may be consulted to avoid the overuse of madness, mayhem and anarchy.

As always on these occasions we have a mini quiz and I was sorely tempted to take along the recently issued minutes of The Committee (Only the first 500 pages) and in the spirit of ‘Where’s Wally’ offer a prize to anyone who could spot anything interesting, or remotely interesting to give more demanding players a chance.

In an entrepreneurial mood I wondered about translating them into Russian and selling them as a long lost Dostoyevsky novel, one of his less cheerful offerings.  The possibilities are endless, a bit like the meeting.

It was a marvellous lunch, there was even hot food, and I was an early returner to the subs bench when I left at 8.30pm.

Apparently the Remainers ( A far more cheery band than the Europhiles of the ilk) carried on until 3.30 am, allegedly playing Mah Jong.  An unlikely scenario given that by the time I retired hurt they were incapable of even saying ‘Snap’, never mind playing something foreign.

Next day saw the time honoured tradition of flowers and a heart-felt, remorse-filled thank you card.  And that’s FROM the hostess. I myself apologised but with the caveat that I think the neighbours reaction to the unfortunate, and wholely unplanned, incident involving their hanging baskets was a complete over-reaction.  You’d think they’d be pleased at the de-escalation of damage, given what happened last year.

Still, in vino veritas, as the French say, it was a pleasant surprise to discover that the dress I ordered online shortly after lunch  (Monday? Tuesday?) arrived and was lovely. And my size.  And cost less than £5000.   Why, oh why, don’t they fit iPads with a breathalyser?

As to the title of this week’s offering it comes from a memorable moment at a previous lunch when a guest referred to the use of margarine in cooking and stated with great, if somewhat slurred conviction “That would be by Protestants.”  Bet you didn’t know that cows were Catholics?

 

 

What a dreadful, dreadful week, dear readers but with the upside of two exquisite spring days. Or summer, as we call it in England. The lowest and by a distance, longest hours were spent sitting on a new committee.

Now I may have used this quote before (I spend a significant amount of time on committees) but the best ones are made up of an odd number, preferably less than three. New committee had no less than twenty one members, about 15 of whom had no Off Switch. The chairman had the herding skills of an ant and within minutes it was clear that we were in for the long haul.  I made a couple of abortive stabs at moving things along – “I think we’ve heard from everyone.  Shall we put this to a vote?” but it wasn’t even going to be a finger in the dyke. As I did through years of maths lessons, I abandoned hope and looked around for light relief. Luckily, and I always like a straw to clutch at, I was sitting next to an extremely amusing gay colleague and in the finest schoolroom tradition we spent  the rest of the meeting passing each other silly notes, a flickering candle of evidence of intelligent human life in a very dark world.

Me: Have you booked somewhere nice for lunch? Later  corrected to dinner.

Him:  Not yet, I’m actually searching Airbnb for a room for the night. Correction Week

With time of my hands and very little mischief to be had, I turned as a last resort to thinking.  That way lies madness but hey, ho, I was well past caring.  The previous day I had descaled the iron – oh, do be quiet at the back, didn’t I say it had been a dreadful week? – and I fell to thinking about all the things that people living in jungles are spared.  No electricity ergo no irons, kettles or coffee machines to maintain.  No fridges or freezers to defrost.  I doubt that a lot of waiting in for gas men or deliveries goes on.  Lawn mowing is probably not high on their to-do lists, or having to run out for dishwasher tablets.

The more I thought, and available time appeared to be infinite, the more I wondered what they actually do all day.  Grow food is an obvious answer but I myself produce enough on my allotment to keep the whole of west London in runner beans and beetroot and it’s hardly a full time job.  I make as much jam as Bonne Mamma and my own creme de cassis which I’d put money on doesn’t happen in the Third World.  I may take pity on them, a very new line, and  export the concept of committees,supplying them with a dozen or so “seed potato” people to start them off. I have some candidates in mind ….

What I need now is a brilliant excuse to get me out of ever having to attend another meeting , a reason which is bathed in the golden glow of sincere and deep regret.  This will not be the work of a moment.  My usual source of evil inspiration is Useless the Younger who is unfortunately currently onboard a ‘plane to Hong Kong.

His stroke of genius before boarding was to come up with an outfit for me to wear to today’s St Patrick’s lunch which has an Irish themed dress code.

“Wear black with a white collar” he advised, “Say you’ve come as a pint of Guinness”

Clearly way too clever to get lumbered with meetings, lucky little leprechaun.  Let’s hope he reads this and thinks of an answer.  Pronto.

I promised you the fully Monty on my lost weekend, never realising that I would need to add the word Python.

One of our party ended up on the wrong side of the law.  Yes, yes, thank you hecklers.  We always knew it was a possibility but not before we’d actually started.  Impressive, even by our extremely demanding standards of misbehaviour.  Bugsy (Origin of name lost in the long jump sandpit – probably an incurable nit issue back in the day) was caught speeding in a manner that brings Jeremy Clarkson to mind, doing no less than 34 mph in a 30 mph zone.  The disgrace of it.  If you’re going to speed, at least do it properly, preferably something that would rate a headline in The Hastings and St Leonard’s Gazette. “Ninety mile per hour  madness of petrol-head pensioner” would surely have been less shaming?

That a gel from our school should have been caught have done something so ordinary!  But redemption was at hand.  Arriving back from her session at Naughty Drivers School she confessed that the whole experience had been so nerve-wracking that on the return journey she had driven into a street which was a dual carriageway travelling towards her.

Nothing else would suffice but an immediate outing to the most recent scene of her motoring misdemeanours.  We drove her round the route several times, pointing out the No Entry signs, the road markings, the cars all travelling in one direction only and most importantly, the cameras.  Valuable time, paper and ink were wasted whilst she tried to concoct a story about having been reversing down the street.  Sentencing guidelines were consulted and the remote possibility of inventing plausible mitigation considered and dismissed.

Further evidence for the prosecution came to light when we checked her workbook from the course and discovered that by page 2 she had started to make a shopping list. This, Madam, was precisely why you ended up doing O Level Cookery when we did Latin.

I was naturally in favour of her going straight to jail without collecting £200 (To pay the fine) but instead we retired to the pub to discuss the options and further impress upon her the depth of her criminality.  (Much) later we took a taxi home, again via the one way system and interrogated the driver on his knowledge of signage.  Further examination on speed limits compliance revealed that taxi driving was yet another in the seemingly unending list of careers from which she was debarred.

Readers, we drank to forget and with a vigour that had most certainly not been shown on the driving course.  I returned to London on Tuesday evening, a husk of the woman who had set off with such low hopes.

The good news was the Brothers Karamatzov were off to Athens for a week, giving me a much needed opportunity to recover.  The bad news was that they needed to be driven to the airport at 5.00am the next morning. And on the right side of the road.

It gives me no pleasure, dear reader, to disappoint you.  I picture all too vividly your eager eyes pinging open on Saturdays and doubtless your very first thought is my blog. So sweet if a little needy.

Today brings good news and bad.  The bad is there will be no blog, technically, much in the same way that there will be a wall in America.  Are you as crestfallen as you were at the Oscars?  Reasons to follow in section marked Good News, definitely not in a stupid envelope.

Incidentally in the five hours I was hanging about at my place of business yesterday, waiting for someone to commit a crime worthy of my attention, I explained to my colleagues my own brilliant (Aren’t  they all?) wall-related plan – to turn the M25 into a solid barrier between the United Kingdom and the Republic of London.  To keep everyone except us out, I hope I need hardly add.

One person hanging on my every word had first come to England at 18 to explore university options.  Doubtless in a fog of youthful ignorance she decided to start with Hull.  It would be cruel to laugh.  Arriving there by train, she opened the carriage door, took one deep lungful of fish gutting and went away again.  As always people, first impressions just so important.  Even twenty years later the memory lingered. She was totally in favour of work starting immediately.

But now onto the positive stuff.  I am too busy to write as I prepare to go away for the weekend, actually till Tuesday, at the newly fashionable Shoreditch on Sea that is Hastings, staying at the Zanzibar Hotel which is supposed to be amazing.  It had better be.  Details will be shared with my 68,000 TripAdvisor followers as soon as I sober up

I shall be spending time with the two  somewhat wayward ladies who were involved with the unfortunate kipper-flavoured doughnut incident at the Bar Italia.  (Scroll down to October, it’s still there) and catching up with a number of local ne’er-do-wells from my misspent youth.  Mayhem is anticipated.

And if you’re good and don’t moan about this week’s offering,  I’ll tell you all about it.