A drop o' Scotch...

The Scottish press are having a field day around the prospect, or not, of holding a second referendum, so soon after the last one revealed the lengths the Scottish National Party will go to in order to alienate their fellow Jockanese. Theresa May has told Tsar Nicola to forget about petty politics and get on with managing her country’s public services which, by some accounts, fall well short of the milk and honey of the promised land of Caledonia. Having spat back the obligatory Braveheart-inspired soundbites, Nicola has decided she will not be found wanting, to which end she embarked on a tour of Scottish NHS hospitals.

At the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary she notices a sign on the outpatients’ clinic ‘The Great Escape’ and when she enquires is told “Ach, just a bit o’ fun. We name the departments after films. It brightens the place up and gives us a chuckle... and it helps to forget how underfunded we are, compared to the Sassenachs, ma’am.” Nicola is glad to hear a hint of animus towards their southern neighbours, Scotland, she informs the assembly of hangers-on, is tired of being the poor relation to England.

Next up, the Burns Unit (What Scottish hospital could be without one?) wittily named ‘Return of the Mummy’ where they tour the rows of heavily bandaged victims. It seems unusually crowded and Nicola asks why. “See, in England, where all the money is, they can afford central heating.” explains the nurse in charge. “Here, in poor wee Scotland, we have to rely more on open fires, so...” Further explanation is unnecessary; if Scotland only had the funding available to the English, went the argument, these dangerous practices could be avoided.

The tour continues: ‘Point Break’ where an elderly man is having a plaster cast applied to his arm. ‘True Grit’ where a young BMX rider is having his grazed leg carefully cleaned and dressed. ‘Gone with the Wind’, where gastric conditions are treated and the unsympathetically named ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’, the psychiatric unit. The doctor leading the entourage hurries on past the next ward without comment, but Nicola takes a peep inside. She is shocked; a male patient is masturbating furiously. "Oh my GOD!" she screams, “That's disgraceful! Why is he doing that?”

The doctor calmly explains: “I'm sorry you had to see that, but that man has a serious condition where his testicles rapidly fill with semen. If he doesn't do that at least five times a day, he would be in extreme pain and his testicles could easily rupture.” Mollified, she asks if there is any other, more seemly, way the condition could be treated. “Ah,” says the doctor, “if only we were in England, where they have all the money...” Nicola, purses her lips and allows the tour to continue.

Nurse!

As they pass quickly by the next room, they see a male patient lying back in bed while a nurse performs oral sex on him. Nicola gasps “Oh, my, GOD! D’y’see that?” she exclaims, “How in God’s name can THAT be justified?” The doctor, a little flustered, explains: “It’s the same condition as the last man you saw.” Nicola is undeterred and presses the point, “But how come he is getting.... THAT treatment?” The doctor points, sadly, to the sign above the door. ‘The English Patient’.

Legal Eagles

The watchword of these days is ‘uncertainty’, as if the absolute certainty of all those dire economic forecasts that were to befall the post-referendum nation had been realised and now the only thing that can save us is to believe the same doom-mongers and overturn the will of the people. In the seventies they warned about global cooling. By the nineties it had become global warming and now it is referred to as climate change. Why not call it what it is – climate uncertainty, because it’s uncertainty that is the real evil here?

But that is a bogus claim, as uncertainty is the normal state of affairs in human society, so it is a clever trick that has been performed, to demonise that normal state, blame it for everything and then imply that somehow threatening to ignore the outcome of a vote will restore us to certainty. In fact, people already voted for more certainty; they want the certainty of their wages not being undercut by outsiders with no stake in Britain. They want the certainty that criminals will be deterred from their actions. Most of all, they want the certainty that when the government seeks a mandate and gets it, the government will act on it.

There are few real certainties, other than death and taxes... and Tony Blair seeking a return to public life. But there is one cast iron certainty - to paraphrase the pledge that put us in our current state of turmoil – and that is, whatever happens whatever it costs, somebody, somewhere will be making money from it. Financial gurus, stoking the fears and making the markets, rent-seeking, professional ‘advisors’ attaining positions of influence and altering the circumstances of many without ever having to atone for their mistakes. And of course, the legal profession.

In Dickens’ Bleak House, the law firm Jarndyce and Jarndyce which is, ‘of course’, acting only in the best interest of their clients, emerge the only winners, having spent the entirety of a considerable fortune to pay their fees and thus solved the knotty problem of how that fortune was to be distributed. Recourse to law has been the refuge of both victims and their villains throughout social history and its verdicts have been the source of much anger and frustration. So it is unusual to see the passing of lawyers as the reason for national morning.

But, on one recent occasion there was an enormous turnout to witness the laying to rest of not one, but two prominent local legal eagles. The funeral procession included two horse-drawn hearses behind which walked a man leading a large Rottweiler. A few paces behind, several hundred more people followed the man and his dog. Curious, I approached the man and asked what was going on. “The first hearse carries my ex-wife's lawyer," he said. "My dog bit him and he died two days later. The second hearse is for the lawyer who opposed me in some business litigation. My dog bit him and he also died.”

I pondered for a moment what he had told me and walked a few paces alongside the pair. Like many of us, I have harboured my share of animus with the legal profession. I asked him, with a wry smile as I did, “Could I borrow your dog?” He barely glanced up, but I could see a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Of course, you can. That’s fine by me” he said, and gestured at the procession behind, “but you're going to have to wait your turn, like all the others.”

You'd better believe it!

I sometimes think that Polly Toynbee exists purely to give taxpayers somebody to belly laugh about. The other day she went into a full on, straitjacket-required, anti-Tory rant about obesity. It seems that fat is a socialist issue. Odd, though, that in her diatribe she recommends that we should “offer a diet of self-esteem, good jobs and social status, and the pounds will fall away”, because this has been the Tory solution since forever, whereas the ragged-trousered remnants of the Labour Party would legislate people thin by passing laws which always end up punishing 'the most vulnerable in society'.

Meanwhile, Theresa May’s government are going on about tax and taking a leaf out of Labour’s good book to soak the rich, or more particularly those who manage to avoid giving more than a few million to the Exchequer. Thus do political movements symbiotically survive by each feeding off the other’s ideas until they come to resemble one another, or else spawn new offshoots such as the Social Democrats and New Labour. One step forwards, two steps backwards, like an evolutionary gavotte, spinning and wheeling and never leaving the spot. We can send man to the moon in a single generation of effort, yet after millennia we still don’t have answers to questions posed by Plato.

In some less well evolved parts of the world there appears to be a determination to reverse the process entirely and consign all of man’s achievements to the dusty archive of archaeology; will a newly-excavated ancient London be sacked like Palmyra in a few thousand years’ time? People in the enlightened west have been talking about atheism for centuries but there must be something hidden deep in the genetic code of mankind’s monkey brain that reflexively clings on to fable, rather than fact.

The responsibility lies with everybody to educate their children that life is theirs to make the most of and they should not blindly follow faiths without challenge nor accept explanation without question. So when young Jamie asked his father “Dad, how did we get here?” his father replied “Well, first there were Adam and Eve and one day they made a baby. Then their babies grew up and made more babies and so on and so forth until there were millions of humans, all making babies and well, here we are! But don’t just take my word for it, ask your mum.”

Jamie duly sought out his mother and asked her the same question. Mum, having a doctorate in evolutionary biology – for this is one of those modern stories where the women get the life affirming role while the man merely plays the part of a dullard father – said “Well, first there were inorganic compounds that became organic and began to replicate. Then there were bacteria and later more complex animals. Millions of years later, fish evolved that could leave the sea. From there we got small shrew-like animals and eventually the great apes arrived.”

“Great apes?” asked Jamie, eyes wide. “Yes” continued mum “our ancestors were primates, the same as those of the chimpanzees and the orangutans we see today. The fossil records prove that we all belong to the same ancestral line.” Jamie wasn’t sure how to reconcile these two very different answers so after some thought he returned to his father. “You lied!” he stated, “I asked mum and she told me we came from monkeys!” His father calmly replied “She was talking about her side of the family.”

Good Heavens!

A week was once thought to be a long time in politics. But these past few weeks have made normal political time look positively glacial. The British people’s decision to leave the EU – not yet sunk in, or even accepted, for some – has caused rumblings across the world and more fracture lines are showing in EU unity as Germany imposes border checks in response to the Nice attack; the Schengen area of free movement may soon be  thing of the past. Meanwhile an attempted military coup in Turkey throws their entire relationship with the west into sharp focus. Every day’s events seem to make yesterday’s decisions into mere historical relics.

Other things of the past include cabinet ministers as Theresa May sweeps away the not so old and brings in the shiny new faces for the electorate to irrationally hate any time soon. The world of politics is a bruising one with many perfectly decent, effective and honourable people vilified for a single action, a careless word or simply not being photogenic enough for the public palate. And what awaits them after office? Some high-flyers will be endowed with riches, but others just slide off into the simple oblivion of a modest retirement far away from the glare of publicity.

Retirement these days can last a long time and one long-time retired, long forgotten and now very elderly couple’s flame flickered on some decades after their public fire ceased to roar. Although they were not poor, their Westminster pension from the old days made them far from rich. They managed to get by comfortably by skimping and watching their pennies and were in pretty good health for their age, mainly because of the wife's insistence on healthy foods and exercise since their sixties.

But fate is a fickle master and despite their careful regime they tragically met their demise in a plane crash returning from holiday. Being good people at heart they found themselves at Heaven’s gate with St Peter himself as their heavenly concierge. He welcomed them and showed them around their new home. It was a replica of their old home but with everything as they would have dreamed. Everything was bigger and everything was new and everything worked perfectly. In addition a maid tended to their daily needs, a cook busied himself in the kitchen and a gardener hummed happily away outside, making perfect stripes in a bowling green lawn.

The couple enquired about the cost of upkeep, to which St Peter relied. “How much? Nothing. You have earned this by being good during your lives and this is your reward. Heaven with all its blessings and luxuries.” The old man looked out the window to see a championship golf course, finer and greener than any on Earth. “I used to love golf” said the man, “but I couldn't afford to play much more than a few times a year on Earth. And with my back...” St Peter held up a hand. “Remember, this is Heaven. Your back is already better and the greens are free. Play as often as you wish. On the house.”

In the club house they walked through the dining room where tables groaned under the weight of a lavish buffet. Seafood, steaks, exotic desserts and free flowing wine. All limitless and free of charge. The old man glanced at his wife and asked, “Well, where are the low fat and low cholesterol foods, and the decaffeinated tea?” Saint Peter just laughed. “You are in heaven now. You can eat and drink as much as you like, whatever you like, and you will never get fat, sick, or too drunk to function.”

“We don’t have to work out to stay trim?” asked the man, to which St Peter just laughed and said “Not unless you want to exercise for the fun of it.” He went on, “No medical checks, no pills, no diet regimes. All you have to do here is enjoy yourself.” The man turned to his wife a tear in his eyes and said “You and your rice cakes, steamed veg, sugarless tea and all those bloody pills you’ve had me on... We could have been here fifteen years ago!”

Tooled Up

Typical, isn’t it? I take a week’s annual leave and because I have no holiday plans I take it when it’s convenient for the company, not for me. Time to relax, I thought, kick back and chill and release that old pressure valve. How naïve can you get? A couple of long-overdue follow up visits to the doctor. Car in for a service and bad, clutch-related, news and of course the never-ending list of ‘when you get a minute...’ jobs around the house. By the time you factor in the frequent and extensive showers throughout the week, all of a sudden it’s back to work and little achieved.

The biggest project was the making of a new back door. Simple enough, you would think. But, as always, for every job you do you eventually need to use every tool you possess and not being the proud owner of a workshop, everything had to be done outside. Sawing and planning and sanding and gluing and filling and more sanding and painting and on and on it dragged as, every couple of hours, everything had to be rescued from the lowering skies. In all it was really a couple of days work but what with everything getting in the way an entire week slipped through my fingers which, since you asked, are down to the bone.

Anyway, as I watched my time slip away and my list of chores barely reduce I was grateful to receive help from an unexpected source. A knock on the front door had me downing tools and investigating the interruption. It was a neighbour’s son – none too bright, but pleasant enough, asking if he could earn some holiday money by helping out. I’ve always been supportive of the self-starter so I invited him in and ran down a list of outstanding works. He pointed to one high up on the prioritised schedule: ‘paint porch’. I nodded in approval and set about equipping him with the tools.

A few minutes later he was kitted out with shave-hook, scrapers, wire wool, sandpaper and a big pot of primer and brushes. If you have any questions, I told him, don’t hesitate to ask and with that last minute advice I left him to it. He carried the gear round to the front while I returned to my door project. For a couple of blessed hours the rain held off and I managed to crack on with completing the construction phase and beginning the preparation for painting. I completely forgot about the neighbour’s son until he reappeared at the back gate with a big grin on his face; mission accomplished.

A gratuitous picture of tool belts.

He was quite a sight. Spattered from head to foot in blots of white paint and the odd patch of blood where he had been overly enthusiastic with the scraper he was nevertheless pleased with himself. It’s good to see a youngster happy to engage in a bit of manual work and touching to see how pleased he seemed. I grabbed my wallet and we set off to inspect the job. Walking around the side of the house the lad turned to me and said “Just one point of detail” he offered. “Yes?” I queried. He looked at me as if I were a bit simple... “It’s not a porch, you know. It’s a Mercedes.”

Doctor, doctor...

It’s easy, you’d think, belonging to the order Lepidoptera, including as it does the wonderful variety of butterflies and moths; a carefree, if brief, existence of flitting from flower to flower, from tree to tree and laying a few eggs to perpetuate the species. But moths have consciences too and far from being mere casual passers-on of their genes, suffer many of the same anxieties we’d recognise as humans. It’s especially so during these dark winter months.

So, one evening a hummingbird hawk moth - Macroglossum stellatarum - buzzes into a holistic treatment centre and approaches one of the therapists, who asks the moth, "What seems to be the problem?" The moth says, "Doc, I don't know where to start. I feel like it’s all been a huge waste of time. I've been doing the same old job my entire life and I don't just hate it, I'm revolted by it. I can barely summon the strength to drag myself in every day but I have no choice but to keep working because I'm in debt up to my compound eyes.” He looked wretched, but the therapist merely blinked.

The moth continued: “The idea of doing this until I die just makes me sick. I've grown apart from my wife and I hardly see her because I stay late in the pub every night, hoping she’s asleep by the time I get home. She's no longer the woman I loved, and I can barely stand to be around her but I feel guilty for feeling that way about her. Doc, it just eats me up inside. She’s not a bad moth; it’s not her, it’s me…” The therapist continued to say nothing and the moth felt compelled to let the words tumble forth.

“And my daughter's shacked up with a guy I can't stand who's terrible for her and she dropped out of school, but she won't listen to reason and it breaks my heart. And my son; Doctor, I just don't know if I love my own son, because he reminds me of everything I hate about myself. I look into his eyes and see the same disgusting, snivelling cowardice I know everyone sees in mine. I can't even work up the courage to buy a gun and blow my own tiny brains out. I feel like my entire life is nothing more than a fragile web of lies just barely holding me back from the screaming abyss."

A long silence descended as the moth, his troubles shared, let his shoulder sag, inhaled a long breath, breathed out and slumped in his chair. After a pause filled with tension the therapist finally spoke. "You do seem to have a lot of problems, but I'm really just an acupuncturist, you need to see a proper counsellor, a psychiatrist even. What made you come to me?"

What do you mean, the doctor can't see me?

The moth looked up at him and then looked around the consulting room. He seemed aware of his surroundings for the first time and suddenly looked embarrassed. He shrugged and said, "The light was on."

Make a wish

Tarquin, Malcolm and Seamus were near to death. Their attempt on the Paris-Dakar record had ended in disaster and far from the intended route, their vehicle a mere burned-out wreck, they had set out on foot to find help. The signal fire had failed to bring rescue and no aircraft had been seen in three days in the clear blue skies above them. Out of food and near-delirious, they had decided that their only salvation lay in their own endeavours and ignoring all advice to stay with the dead and smouldering truck, set out on foot.

Twenty-fours later the water was gone and reduced to crawling, they dragged themselves across the hostile and unforgiving terrain, near to collapse and certain death. Suddenly, between his fingers, plunged deep in the sand, Tarquin felt something smooth and hard. He pulled out an ancient and sand-blasted oil lamp and held it out for the others to see. Malcolm grabbed hold of it and squinted against the harsh reflection of the sun on its burnished surface. He passed it to Seamus who rubbed it on his sleeve. In the sudden flash that occurred all three were blinded and clenched their eyelids shut.

When they opened them they beheld a shimmering, floating proto-Arabian apparition. "I am the Genie of the Lamp!" the vision proclaimed "And I grant you three wishes." Surveying the gibbering threesome, the genie added, "One each."

Tarquin was the first to speak. Through parched lips in a stiff Home Counties accent he said "Oh, what I wouldn't give to be at Henley Regatta right now, my darling Bathsheba on my arm, swinging her parasol and the pair of us skipping along, sipping cool, cool Pimms from a tall tumbler. Marvellous!" And before the others had time to react the genie clapped his hands twice, said "It is done" and - poof - Tarquin was gone, presumably to inhabit the very scene he had just described.

Malcolm was startled at first then impressed. He turned to the genie and declared, "See, me, Genie, y'ken. Whit I'd like is tae be on the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond with a pretty wee lassie by mah side and a bottle of good Islay malt tae go with a hearty meal of neeps and tatties and haggis, to the rousing skirl of the pipes. Can ye fix it, mon?" The genie gave him a wry smile, deciphered the request and clapped his hands. With a puff of smoke worthy of Ali Bongo at his best Malcolm was whisked away to fulfill his wish. The genie turned to Seamus.

Three wishes? 

"What?" said he "Is it my turn now?" The genie nodded and waited... and waited. Seamus screwed up his face, furrowed his brow with the effort of thought. Long minutes passed and the genie, despite having the patience to live in a buried bottle for thousands of years began to grow restless. He tapped his feet, examined his finger nails and in the end demanded Seamus give him an answer. Seamus looked up at the floating figure, looked around him and declared, "Well, you know, it is awfully lonely here without the other two..."

Kids' Stuff

So it’s late and the kids have been sent to bed but on these hot and airless summer nights getting to sleep is hard. On the top bunk Carl, the bigger brother, all of seven years old is whispering loudly to Martin. From downstairs, their mother’s bat-like ears have alerted her to the boys’ chatter “Don’t make me come up there!” she yells and the boys quieten down. But not for long.

“Pssst!” hisses Carl and Martin has no other option but to respond to his leader. Martin does everything Carl tells him, follows him anywhere. They start to whisper again and this time their chatter goes unheard as downstairs it is well past wine o’clock and the adults are winding down in the soothing arms of of Bacchus. Carl regales Martin with tales of the mysterious grown-up world of school. This is Martin’s last summer before school-proper and he is in thrall to Carl’s stories of playground derring-do.

Soon the talk turns to practical matters; the making of catapults, the curing of conkers and the best way to stir up a cow pat with a stick. Boy stuff. Martin, eager for a taste of the future, urges Carl to tell him more. Eventually Carl says, “Have you ever heard of swearing?” and responds to Martin’s bewilderment by explaining how, in that mysterious outside world the English language takes on an exciting, exotic flavour by the simple deployment of a few forbidden words. Starting with ‘bum’ and ‘shit’ and ‘crap’ and ‘bollocks’ Carl leads Martin down the path to profanity and indoctrinates him in the ancient ritual pre-martial art of Sweary Kid, also known as Ju-bitch-ju.

They agree that, from tomorrow, they will together embark on this wondrous lexicographical adventure and on that pact settle down to dream of the linguistic road less trodden. Before they know it they are being roused from slumber by their slightly hung-over mother and hurried out of their jim-jams and into day clothes. As they descend the stairs Martin nudges Carl, who giggles, recalling their plan. Carl, being the eldest, has to lead the way.

“What would you like for breakfast?” asks Mum, to which Carl, barely stifling a chuckle, draws himself up to his full four-foot three and loudly declares, “I think I’ll go for some cornflakes, motherfucker!” His grin is rapidly and literally wiped from his face by the thunderstruck face and unerringly accurate backhand of his unamused mother. As Carl puckers up and his lower lip starts to tremble she turns to the shocked figure of wee Carl. “And how about you?” she demands.

Martin thinks quickly and seeing the tears beginning to spring from Carl’s hot eyes, replies, “Well, it’s certainly not going to be fucking cornflakes!”