Diary of a Nobody

June 21^st 2014: Today was a busy day for the firm and we needed all hands on deck. Or on the train, in this case. I made a comment to one of the interns about the tardiness of his twitters. He said “All right old man, keep your hair on!” I had to remind him that as party leader I was due more-respect than that. Later in the day, as I was passing the interns’ carriage a scrunched up page of A4 hit me on the back of the head. I turned round but they all had their noses to their smart-phones. I think I know which one it was though. I will bide my time; this is a strategy that has served me well with my policies.

It was an exhausting day, not helped by being given a bacon sandwich first thing. I was in a quandary and really wanted to refuse it. I mean, I want to be the first second Jewish Prime Minister, so how would that look? But I was with the working classes and I know that a bacon sandwich represents about 50% of their daily disposable income so I had to grin and bite it. I hoped it might taste like a croissant, but it was horrible and the grease ran down my chin. Luckily my PR team prevented any of this getting out via the media, otherwise I would have looked like I was out of touch.

Now, I don’t usually like to make jokes but in a witty aside I rhymed Farage with garage and I think everybody was suitably impressed. When I tried it out on Justine last night the two of us laughed like drains for a full ten minutes. Then she said it was even funnier because, unless you live in the north, Farage does rhyme with garage. I believe they call this irony, which makes it doubly funny. We laughed so much we had to hug each other to control our mirth. Who says I’m not a man of the people?

I was reminded though, of how not everybody shares my intellectual self-confidence and subtle sense of humour when the joke I played on BBC Radio Wiltshire didn’t go so well. I wittily pretended not to know who Jim Grant was but, provincial outfit that they are, they took me seriously. Well of course I know who John Grant is, he’s the leader of Labour-run Swindon Borough Council; a fine man is our Joe. I wish we had many more mayors like Jason Brant to run our squeezed middle, one-nation cities.

Note to self: I must find out who this ‘Beaker’ is. I keep hearing it in whispers and I think it might be a nickname for David Axelrod, but until I’m sure I don’t want to use it and look foolish. I get the impression the poor fellow is the butt of much joshing among the ranks but for what we’re paying him to make me look good, I should think he can put up with our jolly British ways.

When I got home Justine cooked me a lovely meal – Ocado delivered this afternoon and she had prepared some good peasant food: eight-year old Italian Bitto cheese and sun-dried tomatoes on focaccia, drizzled with some good Tuscan olive oil and accompanied by some lovely artisan sausage flown in from Portugal that morning. All washed down with a rather nice Pouilly-Fuissé from our private cellar. Quite how she manages on £70 a week is beyond me.

22^nd May 2014: It’s Polling Day today and I planned to have a good early night last night, but Ed Balls and Chuka Umunna turned up so we played a few hands of whist to aid our spirits. In a happy coincidence they had brought spirits with them. Chuka produced a bottle of whisky and I joked that I heard he preferred Um-Bongo - everybody went strangely quite at that and Justine had to dig me in the ribs. Well Chuka is such a charmer, I’d completely forgotten he’s black. Not that black men can’t be charming, I mean, they are super-good dancers, aren’t they and um... I put on some rap music to ease the mood but I’m not entirely sure if that did the trick.

So, I tried out the new little joke I had been working on for today. I said we all needed to focus on winning but if we didn’t win there would be a good reason. I adopted my ‘Look natural, Ed.’ pose and said “We can always blame it on Beaker.” Well, that was it, what a winner! Ed and Chuka couldn’t help themselves, guffawing and slapping their sides as Justine clung helplessly to the doorframe. The laughter went on and on; I was almost embarrassed for poor David, although I still didn’t really get it.

Look natural, Ed

We really shouldn’t have carried on drinking as I have, unusually, a bit of a thick head today and my throat is a little tense. Practising my speech for tonight I detected a slight hint of a nasal whine but I’m sure that will pass. But this is what I say, I say ‘up and at them’ and I believe that; it’s the right thing to believe. I sense a great victory is afoot.

Is that you, Gene?

In the middle of the last century, when Massey Harris tractors got into bed with the Ferguson Company, they merged their complementary ingredients to become the best and in 1958 adopted the new name, Massey Ferguson. From the earliest beginnings a hundred years earlier the history of tractors has been one of continual improvement, exploiting new technology, discarding outmoded models and moving forward in a form of man-driven evolution; tractorgenics.

The continual improvement of farm machinery, as in any type of business, is driven by competition. Bigger, better, faster, more: prairie bestriding beasts with giant wheels driving sharper blades through more soil than ever before, trundling off the productions lines to turn wild earth into shelves of cornflakes and bread. Improvement is good, improvement is necessary because without it businesses fail.

Well, that was always the story in the formerly capitalist west. Meanwhile, through the iron curtain, a different model of progress was being adopted. Using the same old production methods and employing the same old, tired-out labour, the same old tractors were churned out, year after year. But progress there was – in the use of words. Tell a person something often enough and he will come to believe it, especially in the absence of contradictory information. Keep that curtain tight shut and block out the truth and almost anything can be promulgated as real.

Today we have the equivalent of the Eastern Bloc’s anything-but-casual approach to the truth about annual production statistics. Chocolate rations increased, comrades, tractor output at an all-time high and yes, everybody is equal! Except, of course they’re not. While some elements of human society strive forward with good matches and a healthy merging of those complementary ingredients, others languish behind the mythical curtain of equality, churning out the same tired old shit year after year while telling themselves that somehow, this is progress.

So, with the West afraid of politically unwelcome truths, now it’s the Chinese who are the new Massey Ferguson of genetic research, forging ahead exploring relationships that are verboten under the new consciousness of multicultural pretend-harmony and finding links that tell us what we always suspected but never dare voice. People. Are. Different. Not equal; different. And the great big modern-day bogeyman is that, whouda-thunk-it, race plays a part.

Stand by for an orchestrated front of denial as once again the life sciences bête noire of eugenics makes its latest bid for respectability. Observe as western governments shield your delicate eyes and ears from the horrors of inconvenient findings and protect your feelings from the nasty men. But the truth does hurt – progress necessarily means leaving some things behind. Look around at Britain’s shrunken, dried up, isolated gene puddles and forget about delicate sensibilities for a moment. Don’t tell me you don’t see people who in a truly functioning progressive society would probably never have been born.

The Nazis are coming! Oh, it's just the postman...

Right you wise-old-gents, you personable-and-kind-individuals, you daft-and-glorious-operators*, let’s sort out this racism business once and for all; a lot of you seem confused. For a start, given that we refer collectively to the entire population of homo sapiens as ‘the human race’, we’re not talking about antipathy between actual races. We are all of the same species, a fact regularly demonstrated by the remarkable ease with which you lot keep interbreeding. Once upon a time, racism meant actual harmful discrimination against differently hued people, but apparently that’s no longer the case, racism now merging with simple unease to become indistinguishable in the woolly minds of junior thinkers everywhere; the New Racism is ubiquitous and all-pervasive.

I blame Coca Cola – I want to teach the world to sing, all standing hand in hand, my arse! When I was growing up a distrust of foreigners was commonplace, with their funny ways and strange accents. Of course it was – our parents had been warned throughout their lives that walls had ears and loose lips sank ships. Xenophobia was a survival instinct after two world wars in thirty years. But enter the Seventies and the newly-ageing hippy generation were becoming opinion shapers; since then and up to the end of the twentieth century, Britain absorbed the fruits of globalisation and took multiculturalism in its stride. We were becoming quite diverse enough without the ‘help’ of New Labour’s nose-rubbing designs.

To those raised in the poly-lingual streets of inner London – no longer just the British capital but a ‘world city’, whatever that means – the sudden arrival of Eastern Europe may not have been a big deal, but go to rural towns like Boston and see how former cohesive communities have developed a siege mentality, having been (in their not unreasonable estimation) invaded by people they have been unable to easily accommodate and assimilate. Is it any wonder that a weekend poll in that region predicts only one outcome for Thursday’s Euro-elections? Here is a sizeable population of people who feel they are voting for their continued existence, having had no say whatsoever in the socio-political engineering of the last decade.

These people aren’t racists, at worst they are merely fearful and a little angry which, far from being a crime, is a universal instinct and just as with my parents and grandparents is a natural reaction to events. I haven’t heard of any violent protests, there have been no accounts of paint daubed on houses of foreigners and nobody to my knowledge has been driven out of town with burning brands and pitchforks, but to hear the united front of the mainstream media and the old-order political parties you could be forgiven for thinking we were seeing the resurgence of Nazism.

But of course, there HAS been violence. There HAS been bile and vilification. Mobs screaming hatred at the top of their voices have been seen around the land and property has been defaced and vandalised. Bricks have been thrown, banners have been burned and hate-convulsed faces have been thrust at those who campaign for change. And further calls have gone out on social media to mass against the supposed forces of darkness. What an irony then, that all this frightening violence has spewed from those who say they are AGAINST fascism and that they DON’T hate. Once again it is those who say they care that manage to spit out the most venom.

And with every nasty little jibe, every personal attack and every piece of shit despatched by free post suspicions rise in the minds of the politically unsophisticated. Far from the ‘no smoke without fire’ intentions of smear tactics, ordinary people are seeing a wholly different picture. “How is fear, racist?” they ask, and “Why are words being effectively banned? Why are people who voice my concerns being vilified?” Little wonder then, that the penny is belatedly dropping and all of a sudden senior politicians are popping up to claim that the racist charges are over the top... although they continue to use words like despicable and vile in condemning these neo non-racists.

I’ll be glad when Thursday is out of the way and the votes have been counted; when the people who haven’t been intimidated into staying at home make their opinions clear. Of course, it will make no difference, will it? The battleground for next year’s GE will still centre round borders we can’t control, laws we have little influence over, treaties and agreements we can’t veto, employment statistics conjured from thin air by febrile minds and a referendum, the outcome of which has already been decided. Expect a barrage of pro-EU politicking so thick and so fast that even talking of Brexit will become a racist act.

(*Aren't acronyms fun?)

On the Wires

Not so long ago the identification colours of fixed wiring in the UK changed to supposedly harmonise with the EU. Red and black became brown and blue respectively, much to the angst of practising electricians everywhere, not least because a whole new generation will never appreciate the advice: “Red to red, black to black... ‘blue’ to bits”. For three-phase wiring the phase colours which were red, yellow and blue are now brown, black and grey and the neutral which was black is now blue. Are you with me so far?

Amazingly there is yet to be a documented incidence of death directly attributable to colour blindness and this even in the face of accurate colour vision no longer being a requirement for apprentice electricians – political correctness gone kaboom. Much of that is due to a natural British caution, a distinct lack of which I have witnessed most of the world over. We have had wiring regulations for over 130 years and even if our electricians are not well-versed in their specifics our systems of circuit protection can be replicated by rote and are generally practised. At the heart of this protection is the recognition of the earth itself as a conductor.

I mention this fact merely to suggest that to a British electrician the lack of deliberate connection to earth is a show-stopper, whereas to a Bulgarian artisan earthing appears to be an exotic and unnecessary option. This probably explains why Andrew has been getting random small shocks from unexpected sources in his new Bulgarian home – the Old School. And this is why I’m here – quicker, we thought to get a British electrician to fly out and have a go, than to learn sufficient Bulgarian to accurately explain the cause of death.

Bulgaria has been in the EU for seven years now and I doubt that harmonisation with CENELEC is uppermost in their priorities, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a wide selection of the familiar and not so familiar on display in the local wholesaler’s shop. Via a combination of pointing, holding up fingers and a three-way translation between English, Bulgarian and Greek we assembled most of what we needed. Their wiring, by the way, is brown, blue and black; no confusion there.

So, the project started. I was expecting to be chasing cables into walls, sinking in boxes and bringing a small part of the building up to a UK standard of electrical safety and conformity but the sheer scale of the building makes this an enormous task without extra hands and equipment, so we opted for function before form. And as the installation is effectively temporary, all of the cabling is simply nailed to the walls. Once that decision was made it was but a small slide to cutting corners. Why waste pennies on expensive junction boxes when twisted and taped joints will do the job?

Hey, don’t knock it! Before I got here there was a solitary light in operation, dangling precariously from the ceiling of room 13; now he has ten lights on two-way switching* throughout the entrance and grand stairway. Three days ago there were three sockets and a mass of trailing leads; now he has a dozen, situated where they are needed. And while up until today everything was connected directly to the incoming supply cable without a circuit breaker in sight, he now has a fully protected consumer unit with half a dozen active circuits.

Breath easy - it's all safe now...

*Ahem, the 'two-way switching'business: In Bulgaria you nod for ‘no’ and shake your head for ‘yes’. This is my excuse for the fact that lacking a functioning continuity tester I wired up the two-way switches from top to bottom as you would throughout the known world whereas the Bulgarian switches are wired left to right. (For sparkies, the ‘common’ is where L1 would normally be.) Hey, my bad, it will be work of minutes to sort them out. One day. Soon. As for the colour coding, it’s all green and yellow now! 

Chicken Run

“In the wilds of Borneo. In the vineyards of Bordeaux...” So sang Ian Dury as he bade his listeners hit each other with their rhythm sticks. This nineteen-seventies classic invokes the mysteries of far-flung lands and exotic peoples and what better way to introduce this anecdote of the week so far in the land of dragons at the edge of the known world – not for nothing was St George the patron saint of Bulgaria.

An agrarian idyll, a landscape of mountains and forests, wide open vistas, tinkling streams and secret, bosky trails, Southern Bulgaria is a walker’s world and near heaven for a large and energetic dog. Rambo strained at his leash as we climbed the steep path out of the village, up to the ruins at the old dam. He gave a low growl as we passed his old adversary Hotie, the ancient donkey who had once strayed onto Rambo’s territory. He looked quizzically at the cows and sheep placidly grazing in the clover at the wayside and then, curiosity satisfied, he came to heel and continued up the slope.

High overhead an eagle soared, tracing overlapping circles in the afternoon sky as he followed the rising air, but on the ground another avian entirely caught Rambo’s attention. Chickens. Dozens of them. And before we could restrain him Rambo lurched toward the flock, his lead pulled from Andrew’s grasp and trailing along behind him. As the chickens scattered ahead of him, Rambo focused on one particularly plump specimen and pursued him round and round the little glade. He never quite managed to catch up, but after a few circuits, to our untrained eyes, it appeared that this unusually speedy chicken had three legs.

Suddenly it bolted out of the clearing and back down the track. Rambo followed, his muscular frame exerting every sinew as he struggled to make up ground. The chicken disappeared into the yard of the local Kmet (Mayor) and Rambo followed, while Andrew and I, far behind eventually caught up with the panting dog. For a few moments all three of us gasped for air, as the smiling Kmet sauntered over. “Kakvo praveesh?” he chuckled “What’s up?” We struggled for breath before finally managing to acknowledge the greeting. Andrew uttered a breathy “Peeleshko!” pointing the way the chicken had fled, before coughing up a lung.

The Kmet laughed as he asked, “What about it?” Eventually, between us, we managed to explain how we had ended up in his yard in such a state. He found it hilarious and we passed a few pleasantries before Andrew gathered up the courage to pose the question on both our minds. “Are we seeing things,” he asked, “or did that chicken have tri kraka (three legs)?” The Kmet laughed heartily, “Razbira se!” he guffawed, “Of course! We breed them like that!”

Where dat chicken?

In our halting Bulgarian and the Kmet’s rudimentary English we soon learned that he, his wife and his son all favoured the leg of a roast chicken. This way, he explained, through an entirely logical and practical feat of animal husbandry, none need be disappointed come Sunday lunch. I had just one more question, “Do they taste just the same as normal chickens?” The Kmet stroked his chin ruefully and admitted “We don’t know.” Andrew and I looked at each other and Rambo pricked up his ears as we waited for him to complete the admission, “We’ve never managed to catch one yet.”