I suppose I should say something about the farce that played out last night on the BBC Question Time discussion panel, where the leader of the British National Party (BNP) was invited to take part and then ripped to shreds by the other panellists and by a carefully chosen hostile audience. He did not acquit himself well. Maggots seldom do. In fairness, if maggots can be held to be worthy of fairness, I can’t see any politician, of any persuasion or degree of skill and experience would have done better in a similar situation.
To try for a little clarity in my argument I must state that I’m referring to human maggots here. The real creatures perform a useful function and deserve their place in the natural world. The human kind may expect nothing of me but a shudder of revulsion and a barely contained urge to stamp on them and squidge them firmly into the mud from which they rise.
Enough.
Today we made a side trip to Swansea town centre so that I could visit the bank where I made my first acquaintance with the automatic credit machine. I paid in two cheques faultlessly and without suffering the usual disdain of the human teller. As with automatic check-out machines in some supermarkets, I’m delighted to find yet another way of avoiding human contact. Germy things in the main, humans, even if they are not politicians.
Graham wanted to go to Starbucks, just along the road a few steps, to replenish our stock of roasted but un-ground coffee beans–we both of us really enjoy their house blend when it’s made at home. We’d sort of thought that we’d stop there for coffee and a nibble but my inbuilt sense of geography and economy came to our rescue.
“Tell you what,” I said, brightly. ”Let’s have lunch at the Kardomah and get the coffee beans on our way back. It’s only a little way further.”
He was a little doubtful at first but soon buckled down to the challenge when we walked in through the door, and increasingly gave in to an enthusiastic enjoyment of the place, the owners, the staff, and the food. We both of us had steak and kidney pie with chips and garden peas. In such situations we almost always have exactly the same thing, to avoid regret at a wrong choice, not to mention the surreptitious stealing of chips when the other isn’t watching.
“This place makes me feel young all over again,” he said, his eyes sparkling just as they ought to do. Like me, he’s a Kardomah Boy at heart.
“I can see that. Doesn’t happen in Starbucks. In Starbucks you put on a worldly-weary air and sit in a cloud of defensive metro-languor. I greatly prefer the enthusiastic youthful you to that twat.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You better had, because it was one.”
“Ok, then. I shall. But I’ll beat you up when we get home just to be sure.”
“Fair enough.”
