First up we'd like to say thanks very much regarding your kind thoughts and words regarding Misty and her recent diabetic problems. She's well on the way to recovery, in fact the worry now is to keep her calmed down enough so that she doesn't hurt herself in her rediscovered enthusiasm.

So, I thought that I'd better let you know what's been going on. With Saturday out of the way - we had cancelled our trip to Manchester to see Australian Pink Floyd to look after madam following her op, we decided on Sunday to go ahead and travel up to see Musical Box - a Genesis tribute band covering the days before the music died and Peter Gabriel still played with them.

Janet & Roy agreed to look after the rapidly improving invalid - thanks neighbours - and so we dashed off to the station.

Little brother Steve and sister in law Sue were already there as the weekend had been planned as a celebration of her mmpty mmph birthday. Yes, they did get to see the Aussie's show the night before. I'm not jealous!

Also as a wedding present to me and the bride they'd booked us in to the 5 star Lowry Hotel, you know the sort of thing, Lamborghini's in the car park, Jose Morhinio camped out upstairs somewhere and drinks so expensive that any water you add to them comes from your eyes!

Anyhow, as we set off to see the concert, just as we're leaving the hotel - bro & sis are waiting for us outside as we make our way down the steps - I was vaguely aware of some bloke coming up in the opposite direction with his mobile stuck to his ear.

Bro is waving frantically.
I turn.
Bloke passes me.
I get an excellent view of his back.

'What?' I ask when I complete my descent.
'Did you see him?' was the answer.
'Who?'
'Jimmy Carr!'
'Jimmy who?'
'Jimmy Carr - the comedian!'
'What, him out of 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown?'
'Yes!'
'No. Where is he?'
Exasperation is now setting in. 'You just passed him on the steps!'
As I looked round Jimmy Carr's back disappeared through the door.
​
'Are you sure?'

They were pretty much definitely sure that it may have been Jimmy Carr.

Perhaps.

The concert was very good. Here's a picture of the bloke sat in front of Steve. He also liked to nod his head in time to the music.

Deep joy!

Glad I only got the woman with the massive ponytail!

Incidentally - how do you know you're at a Genesis tribute concert?
Answer, when the queue for the gents is longer than the one for the ladies and you all seem to have the same prostate problem.
​
But I digress - am I disappointed not to have stopped and spoken to the bloke who may or may not have been Jimmy Carr?
To be honest, not really - after all, imagine my embarrassment if he hadn't actually wanted my autograph!

Methinks I doth protest too much.
But quite honestly it has to be done.
In the 37 years (is it really so long!?) since I moved to this little slice of heaven we have had to campaign against the Western Orbital Route, a quarry and an extension to our local airport.
Yes you can call me a NIMBY but I ain’t been on the losing side yet and if you’re so concerned you are quite welcome to put any of them in your backyard and see how you like it.

So bring on the next.
Yes it’s another quarry.

Except it’s not really.

Confused?
Let me explain.

Once upon a time someone wanted to build houses on a strip of land on the edge the village, between the canal and the brook.
But it was designated green belt.
Bugger!
So that’s the end of that then.
All’s well that ends well.
Happy villagers and happy grazing sheep.

Everything’s back to normal.
But! Hold on a mo!
Here comes a developer with a cunning plan.
‘We’ll build a marina instead.‘
Perhaps a bit more aesthetically pleasing, row upon row of canal barges instead of row upon row of little boxes made of ticky tacky.

Well that splits the vote.
Some think it’s a good idea.
Some don’t.
Each to their own.
A bit like Brexit in minature.
And then there’s the punchline. ‘Of course we could always turn it into a travellers site or a quarry.‘

Suddenly a marina looks very attractive indeed.
‘No of course we won’t remove anything from the site. The sand we don’t want will be piled up as a barrier to stop the canal and the brook getting too jiggy jiggy with each other.‘
Come to think of it, isn’t that how they made Wales? The ancient Brits got forced ever westward by various European invaders taking their land with them until they came to the coast and had to pile it up into mountains. Back to Brexit again.

Anyway, I digress.
O.k. then – a marina – we’re not entirely chuffed but we’ll go with that.
Job’s a good ‘un.
Not everyone’s happy, but hey, you can’t please all of the people…

And then – nothing!
Well, not quite.
The sheep are evicted for a start.
Whenever a deadline approaches where something has to be seen to be done there’s a sudden spurt of activity. A perimeter fence appears. Someone digs a trench and then refills it again. That sort of thing.

​And then…
…out of the blue…
…except it’s been in the planning stages for ages…
…’Let’s turn it into a quarry!‘
What!!!
But you said you wouldn’t remove anything…
‘We know, but we were only kidding. Besides it’ll make us some money ‘cos we can’t actually afford to build a marina.‘
What!!!
Oh, hang on though, you can’t – it’s green belt see, protected. So stick that up your…
‘No it’s not. That status was lost when you said you wanted a marina.‘
But we only said we wanted a marina because you said…
‘Tough titty!‘
Shafted or what?
So, we are now mobilising the troops again.

​Say No To The Quarry.

Look it up, it’s the name of our Facebook page.
And we certainly ought to fight that battle and win, so perhaps I ought to leave it there.

Except!

‘Oh, oh,‘ I can hear you mumbling, ‘he’s off again.‘

Yes I am, so bear with me.
There’s more sand in the pit at the local primary school than there is underneath that field.
Honestly, any self respecting quarry man wouldn’t even start his digger – it would cost too much in fuel. It’s on a flood plain for Gawd’s sake, they’d be pumping water out all day & all night!

So – you don’t think for one minute that after a few halfhearted scrapings in the ground they may give up and say,’hey, you know what – this isn’t green belt anymore, how about we build up the ground to the level of the canal and build some houses!?‘
Surely not.
Nobody could be that conniving surely, telling porkies to get their own way. See how the Brexit theme runs through this plot, or is that just the state of politics today?

Just a thought.

SAY NO TO THE QUARRY!

Now you probably know this, but I'll tell you again anyway. Two years ago -  two years next month in fact - I had a bit of a brush with the grim reaper. Not wishing to shuffle off this mortal coil as Kate and I had only just met, I politely declined his offer to join him on some other journey. He was a bit miffed. Apparently his mate had already started stoking the fire especially for my arrival, but hey, we can't always get what we want. I hope he hadn't sharpened his scythe specially!
Anyway that's enough of that nonsense.
Except.
I changed my phone some time back. The the descendant of the mobile I swore that I would never own all those years ago was discarded in favour of an iPhone.
Yes, I sold my soul for an Apple.
No more android crap for me, mate!
And somewhere I read that you could get an app upon which you could place any relevant medical information.
In case of an emergency.
'Damn useful that,' I thought, having had a couple of late night trips to the local emergency department in the intervening period, 'I'll get that!'
So I did.
Get it, that is.
After all, what better thing to have if you keel over unconscious in the street - who said, 'Again!' There's no need, really! The beer was off! I keep telling you!
So. My reasoning was that up would roll the paramedics, scoop me up, shovel me into the back of their garishly painted meat wagon and rifle though my pockets, where perchance they might stumble upon the aforementioned tiny instrument.
Sorry? You what?
Mobile phone, madam, mobile phone!
‘Ahh!' they would exclaim in wonder, 'This fine chap has had a 4XCABG!'
and then...
What? No I haven't been attacked by a quartet of angry vegetables, madam, it is merely a summary of my condition.

My still beating heart was plucked from my chest, re-plumbed and thrust back in again. Quadruple Coronary Artery Bypass Graft. They'd know that see, them paramedics and I'd be sorted in no time. Job's a good 'un.
And that's how I left it.
Until.
One day I got a bit bored and fiddled with it.
The phone, I mean!
And I opened the health app to see what else it would do.
It measures how far you walked today.
Impressive.
How many flights of stairs you have climbed.
Just in case you ever wanted to know.
It counts calories in your food. If of course you could be arsed to enter the relevant information.
Oh hold on, what's this?

Sexual activity.
WTF!!!?
How the hell does that work then?
I don't know about you but when I'm engaging in 'sexual activities,' there are unlikely to be pockets involved!
Was that you again, madam? ‘Pink fluffy handcuffs’ indeed! Tsk!
So where's the bloody phone during these shenanigans?
What do you do with the damn thing!?
What could you possibly strap it to?
Careful now!
I’m broadminded enough to know that there are some knobbly battery operated devices on the market these days, but surely that's a little excessive!
And what if it rang!?
Mid stroke!
That's going to be an interesting conversation - from one end of the line anyway!
And what the bloody hell is it measuring!?
Ins?
Outs?
Gallons? (Sorry, litres - we're not out of the EU yet!) Oh, all right then, micro litres - have it your way!
Can it somehow count the number of little swimmers?
Is the internal microphone listening for the crucial moment?
And can it tell the real thing from a faked moan?
In all honesty I don't know.
Frankly I don't want to know!
Reassuringly the screen reported that my phone had 'NO DATA.'
Thank the Lord for small mercies.

Hang on though!
If I don't know how it collects the data, how do I know that it's not actually working?
Perhaps it knows all of our boudoir secrets.
Perhaps we're not doing 'it' enough.
Perhaps it thinks that I'm not very good at 'it.'
Well you have to wonder!
That's probably why one night I was heard to shout, as I rattled through the oddments drawer -
'Kate, Kate, what happened to that ball of string and that bungee rope I had the other day? And are you any good at knots - if I put my finger on it?'

So.

Where are we now then?
In a bit of a state, I’d say.

Not the great big federalist state we were in before admittedly, but a state nonetheless.

And can you believe that there are people wondering how the hell it happened?
Calling for a second referendum because, ‘it was a bit close, wasn’t it? After all there was only just over one million votes in it.‘
Well I guess you could say that, but the last time I looked one million was perceived to be quite a large number. If you gave me that amount in one pence pieces I would be a bit chuffed to be honest.

But, that aside and ignoring the nasty name calling that’s going on I do feel that we have to ask ourselves the question, ‘what did we expect?‘

No, seriously, I mean it. Because in elections held previously we managed to elect to the European Parliament as our major party of choice a bunch of MEP’s whose sole raison d’etre was to get us out of the place as soon as possible.

There has been an episode of ‘Yes, Minister?‘ doing the rounds on Facebook where Sir Humphrey explains to the hapless Jim Hacker why we should be in Europe so that we can screw it up better from the inside. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up!

I have stated in a previous blog that we wouldn’t scrape UKIP off our shoes with a pointy stick over here, but found it perfectly acceptable for Farage’s mates to represent our interests in Brussels and the farce which was Strasbourg. What did we think they were doing? Did we somehow assume that they were working diligently with our European partners trying to make France and Germany – sorry I mean Europe – a better place?

Surely we weren’t that naive!

But then again, apparently we were. Perhaps those who are a bit narked and calling for a re-run now were a bit slow getting off their arses in 2014 to vote in our preferred Euro M.P.’s then. Just saying!

Let’s face it, whatever we’re whinging and blaming each other about now, we have never been too happy with Johnny Foreigner have we? Even De Gaulle didn’t want us to join as he reckoned we would only screw it up.

And as it turns out he may have been right. From Heath, through to Thatcher and not forgetting Dave we always tried to get our own way didn’t we? Invariably we got screwed and what we were told by our glorious leaders that what was a supposedly good deal turned out to be not exactly biased in our favour.
We were always seeking a veto, weren’t we?

Remember Maastricht? (Incidentally, the French ratified that with a majority of only 51% / 49%)

Remember the ERM?

Remember the French being so concerned about our little spat in the South Atlantic that they supplied Exocet missiles to the Argentinians? Good neighbours, huh! By the way, before we get too animated about our soon to be independent status, just remember that our hopefully new ‘bestest buddies‘ across the pond didn’t want to help us out with that one either!

And our leaders wanted us to believe them on Turkey!

Still it could have been worse – we could have ended up with the euro!

So what next?

Well I don’t pretend to have the answers but I would suggest that now we have voted ‘Nein,‘ we should skidaddle a.s.a.p.

By the way Cameron has bottled that one hasn’t he? Not going to tell our neighbours that we intend to leave as Article 50 demands.

No, he’ll pass that poison chalice to poor old Boris. Oh, don’t panic – it’ll be a bit like Sir Alex passing the mantle to David Moyes at Man U, you just know at the outset his time in the seat of power is already numbered. The poor sod won’t last two minutes. By the way ‘Call Me Dave,‘ I hate to break the bad news but I think our old Euro mates know the score already! They may have caught wind of the fact that we’re trying to sneak out of the back door.

And don’t expect Jessa’s mob to sort it out either. The poor chap does seem to get confused by long words anyway and now has the look of a very startled rabbit in the glare of some enormous headlights as his cabinet disintegrates before his eyes quicker than a self assembly sink unit from B & Q.

UKIP won’t help us. There is now nothing for it to be independent of (except the rest of Great Britain) and the noise you can hear is only the death rattle in Nigel’s throat. The body may twitch for a couple of years but it is now a busted flush.

Get out quick is my advice. And why do I say that? Well I foresee all manner of tabs run up by the profligate state will become due for payment if we do take the generally accepted two years to pack our bags. Yes, once the neighbours we have been propping up the bar with realise that we are about to stagger off home, taking our wallet with us and that they shall have to pay their own round for once, I predict that all hell will break loose. How will Europe fare once the cash cow it has been milking for so long wanders off into its own field?

And as for the Scots!

Well actually I mean the Scots and the Northern Irish, but listening to various commentaries on this situation it has struck me that the Irish situation has somehow been ignored and that the Scots have all our attention. But I digress.

Sturgeon has been rushing about trying to get all her little caviar eggs in one basket.

She wants out.

Paint her face blue and cry, ‘Freedom!’

Can’t knock her for that, she always has and always will – the thing with democracy is that you have to respect the other persons stance.

But I just hope that you north of the border have a lot of loose change rattling around in your sporrans.

The Greeks will no doubt need another bail out of their leaky ship. The Italian and the Irish economy are shaky to say the least. That’s going to add up to a lot of oil. Let’s hope the pump price goes up so you can pay for it.

Although I wouldn’t stress too much about that, Jimmy. The exclusive club you so dearly want to join may yet implode spectacularly.

It is all sadly a bit of a mess.

Better get our act together and sort it out then. We had that chance after the Second World War, but we dithered and fannyed about so much – even at one stage suggesting some sort of a European Alliance – that we left it to the French and Germans to come up with a plan.

That didn’t work out so well, we now find out.

On the other hand we may follow the example of our soon to be ex P.M. and bottle it too, but I doubt the rest of the club would let us.
​
I think they’re a little bit miffed, don’t you!?