Imagine my excitement when I read on my neighbourhood website that the council were sponsoring an anti-idling day.  There is far too much of it, even in leafy Richmond and it is an all too common error to mistake a higher state of stillness for mere physical inactivity.  Way too many people have jumped on the bandwagon of doing nothing which true devotees like my friend Raymond and myself have spent a lifetime perfecting.  Let’s get out there and get them doing something useful.  (See last week for some very suitable suggestions for idle hands).

However, yet again I fell prey to my own boundless enthusiasm.  It transpires that what the council actually had in mind was engine idling, which for the non-technical is having a vehicle’s engine running when stationary for more than a minute.  What kind of double think is this in a borough where the speed limit is about to be dropped to 20mph?  Cars will hardly be moving at the best of times; during rush hours the average driver will commit about 200 crimes a mile. (It need hardly be said that an entirely unintended side effect of this is that it will generate buckets of money with the poor motorist being charged £40 for each offence).

The day started at a local school which had been built in the middle of a large, busy car park.  Not, I venture, the most obvious commitment to breathing clean air.  There was, it need hardly be said, a health and safety briefing – don’t inhale as you cross the playground – and the donning of hi-viz tunics.  My spirits rose briefly as it seemed like an ideal opportunity to show my sons that I had been part of the gilet jaune movement but sadly they were blue and, worn over my padded coat, made me look like a fat, trainee Hobby Bobby.

There were actually a couple of genuinely interesting facts.  Apparently an idling engine produces enough noxious gases to fill 140 balloons a minute!  Am I the only one who spots a re-cycling opportunity?  And in 2017 one particular street in London, probably somewhere Godless south of the river, exceeded its annual quota of emitting poison in just five days!  Worrying statistics people  although one feels honour bound to mention that at one time 70% of all pollutants came from buses rather than cars.  London air is the filthiest in Europe and that’s another good reason to leave it.  Have your fumes back, Brussels.

We then spent thirty minutes being photographed with the children and some local Councillors.  We waved black balloons about despite a little concern that they were plastic and helium filled and therefore not as green as a zealot might have wished.  (There was muttering in the ranks).  We then ventured forth and preached to the unconverted, all six of whom turned out to be van drivers as they are the only people who would even dare to stop in the red route world that is Richmond town centre.  They were touchingly remorseful and by coincidence, none of them had ever done it before.  What are the chances?

One little thing did occur to me.  How do the emissions of six vans compare to the jumbo jets which fly low over the town every thirty second and whose number will rise when Heathrow is expanded?  I did ask and was reassured that for what didn’t seem entirely convincing  reasons,  they cause no pollution at all for the man in the street struggling to draw breath.  So that’s all right then.  World saved and home for tea.

 

My plan was to have uploaded the video of the event I attended last night as a way of explaining why I might be a little tiny bit below par today.  (I should, should, have resisted going out for the fourth night in a row but Old School that I am, I never fail to turn up when I’ve accepted an invitation).

In case I haven’t managed that marathon technical task, it featured about 50 ladies from one of my choirs, at least 49 of them the worse for drink, singing and dancing along to an ABBA song in a restaurant, a belated Christmas celebration held sensibly when we all needed cheering up in January.  Talk about the hen night from heaven.  Luckily we knew all the words and could go on for hours.  I expect the owners will be begging us to go back next weekend …

So a quiet day today while I get my voice back and an opportunity to catch up on Netflix’s latest offering – ‘Tidying Up’, a subject which rivals list making (See last week’s blog) as my definition of a Good Time which can be had by all.  It stars the lovely Marie Kondo, a tiny, exquisite Japanese girl who looks as though she has just been taken out of a very beautifully wrapped box.  Nothing is permitted within a mile of her unless it ‘sparks joy’, a rule I should have incorporated into my life many years ago.  There is apparently something on You Tube where you can watch towels being folded.  Each to their own but Ms Kondo takes it to another level. Step aside ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Bake Off’ – this is without doubt the hit of 2019.  Get ahead of the hordes and watch it now.

I am also very busy watching all the BAFTA nominations and let me say that if you are pushed for time or feeling fragile don’t bother to watch ‘The Favourite’.  Very fine acting but not much of a plot unless you like watching people walk up and down long rooms.  Nice costumes.

As I left the restaurant yesterday and stepped/staggered into the cold night air the dulcet tones of ladies singing Leonard Cohen’s  ‘Hallelujah’ floated down the street. And that did spark joy.

I was consulting the page in my diary containing details of the 500 things to be done before Christmas, this being Christmas Eve, when a colleague leaned across and asked in a conspiratorial whisper, if I was a list maker.  A whisper, sir?  This is a habit to be shouted from the rooftops; your list maker is a person to be praised above all men/women/etc.

We then had a very pleasant conversation exchanging list making tips and habits.  Do you carry over uncompleted tasks to the next list? Yes.  Sometimes for days or weeks on end.  Do you add on things you have done that were not on the list in the first place?  Obviously. Then tick them off?  Of course!

Sadly the rest of the room was listening in a manner that suggested that immediate sectioning under the Mental Health Act should be the very next item on the agenda. Oh, foolish doubters.  There must somewhere be a list of the most brilliant people in the history of the universe who have all been passionate list makers because it is the way to success, order, tranquillity, satisfaction.  (Must make a definitive  of good things about list making …)

Some of you may be familiar with the device used by television presenters where the words they are about to say unroll before them, projected onto the front of the camera.  TelePrompt, Autocue, other brands are available.  Cue endless scope for larks to amuse bored crew by inserting the odd completely random word or operating it at an ever increasing/decreasing pace.  The latter once memorably happened when the girl winding the machine became transfixed by the sight of a cameraman, who had unwisely partaken of a rather liquid supper, urinating into a waste paper bin held by a  Scene-hand.   Could the snowflake generation have handled this situation with such creative aplomb?  I think not.  Even the newscaster was a little discombobulated by it, despite years of exposure to high jinx on air.

This leads us onto Eddie Stobart, a man clearly after my own heart, who has produced a hefty booklet containing the names, Home Depots and registration numbers of all his lorries, which booklet to be kept in the car at all times for ticking off sightings.  What bliss, with the added bonus that it provides a way to occupy Sluice Nurse on long journeys when her lemming-like directional abilities are not required.  Which is always and heartfelt thanks to Staff Nurse for coming up with the idea.

And now onwards with a happy heart to commence work on the 500 tasks to be done after Christmas, which starts with untangling the five lengths of fairy lights ripped off the tree with somewhat reckless haste by Elder Son and left on the sitting room floor in a Gordian knot.  At least two hours of mind-numbing work required –  I think that deserves a double tick.  Possibly three.  What a perfect start to 2019.  Happy New Year, reader.