What have I done now?

It’s an odd emotion, guilt.  People refrain from committing many misdemeanours for fear of either getting caught or that their own conscience will betray them.  Stealing a few sweets from a shop is no different to pinching a box of pens from your work place and they can both hang on your conscience.  This is truer when you are young, although parents had strange methods of dealing with misbehaviour.

My particular favourite parent-ism was when they’d threaten to do to you what you were planning to do to someone or something.  For example, you’d say something like, “I’m going to cook my tea” and they’d reply, “I’ll cook you in a minute” or “I’m going out” and they’d yell back, “I’ll going out you in a minute.” Apart from making no grammatical sense, you can only assume they are trying to mess with your head enough to confuse you into rethinking your intentions.  You could play this to your advantage if the offending parent was in a bad mood by saying something like, “I’m just going to make tea for”, to which the response would be, “I’ll make tea for you in a minute!”

Another favourite threat was, “I’ll knock you into the middle of next week”.  I was particularly keen for this to happen as I would have gotten my pocket money early and repeated beatings would have resulted in me being extremely well-off and a few years nearer my 18th birthday.  Turning up for school a wealthy twenty-four year old while all of my friends were still eight, would have been weird.

I’m 14 and I’ve got £45!!

Of course, parents shouldn't hit their children, which is wholly positive and therefore means alternative punishments have to be meted out to children for their misdemeanours.  Sending a child to its room no longer has the effect it did when I was young.  Invariably, every child has a DVD player, computer, games console and an exotic pet in their bedrooms these days.  Surely it makes more sense to send them to a different room in the house for a few hours - the bathroom for example.  Not a lot of entertainment in there apart from perhaps using a towel as a Toga and re-enacting the last days of Rome in a role play with themselves in the bathroom mirror.

They say if it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it.  In Dads’ cases it should be if it is broken, don’t try to fix it.  If something was broken, any child in the household would invariably get the blame for ‘fiddling’ with it.  It’s ok though because all Dads are trained electricians and carpenters; they all have sheds with tools in that they have no idea how to use and a tool box full of things that just go rusty through lack of use and a hole in the shed roof.  They take the cover off the broken electrical item, stare into it for a few moments then start jabbing around at the circuitry with a screwdriver and no agenda.  They then make noises that lead you to think they’ve found the problem, poke around for a bit longer, perhaps even remove something then put it back in, replacing the cover with a satisfied nod.  They plug it in, switch it on, wait - then say, ‘It’s broken’.      

Haven't I seen you somewhere before?

It’s always awkward when you see someone you haven’t seen for years.  It’s normally someone from school or somewhere you used to work and you see them sitting on the bus or shopping in town.  It’s a situation you can’t escape – you've seen them and you realise that they've seen you too.  You could be brave and acknowledge them, hoping to recount tales of yore. Stories such as the time the chemistry teacher left the teaching lab for five minutes, returning to find the room stinking of gas and a first year on fire in the corner or the time your boss fell down the stairs and both her shoes flew off.

            The conversation invariably starts with a nervous, ‘So, what have you been up to?’, answered with either an indifferent, ‘Nothing much’ or an in depth account of the three divorces, five kids and eight jobs they've had in the 2 years since they last saw you.  Even more uncomfortable however, is the meeting in the shopping centre.  You’re power-walking to your favourite fast food outlet when out of the corner of your eye you see an ex-‘colleague’.  You have to stop, raise your eyebrows and look genuinely pleased to see them, though you made no effort to stay in touch after they were made redundant and you kept your job.  “Where are you working now?”, the conversation starts, “I’m not”, comes the inevitable reply followed by the tale of depravity.  The conversation also includes lots of fake smiling and nods of false surprise at the current situation they find themselves in.

"Who is he again? Oh, it's that boring idiot that used to... Hey! Lovely to see you again!"

            The worst of these meetings comes in the supermarket.  You’re sauntering up the poultry and game aisle, checking the sell-by dates and that ‘corn-fed’ actually means that the animal in question has been fed on cereal and not on bits that fell off the farmer’s feet, when the ghost from your past floats up the aisle towards you.  Much as you’d love to chat, you make the excuse that there are other trolleys trying to get past and you must move on, but it was wonderful to see them anyway.  You reach the end of the aisle and turn into the Oriental and Mediterranean sauces aisle, forgetting that the person you just exchanged pleasantries with would also be turning into this aisle from the other end. You stoop to study the Ragu until they pass, hoping they wouldn't try and speak to you again.  You then formulate a plan; you must either miss an aisle to ensure your respective journeys are out of kilter and so avoid another uncomfortable moment or hang back and hope people think you are health conscious, studying the nutritional value of the jar of Dolmio you've been staring at for the last five minutes.

"You're buying a Baguette, ey? Well, see you later!"

            Lastly you have that chance meeting with a person you only ever had one thing in common with, like the love of a sitcom which finished years ago but fails to go away due to the 'Gold' channel on Sky.  I knew such a person and the only thing we had in common was an English teacher at school with a strange accent.  Whenever we saw each other we’d go ‘You’re not allowed to do that’ in a Cornish-cum-Scottish accent and then giggle like twelve-year-olds; only because we were actually 12 at the time.  Six years later I saw him approaching from the opposite end of a corridor in a library.  Horrifically, we made eye contact at twenty metres.  We couldn’t maintain that eye contact for the full fifteen seconds until we met in the middle.  I had to feign interest in passing posters and missives pinned to the wall, my shoes, the ceiling tiles, the exquisite view of a brick wall out of the window, my shoes and the posters once more until we meet, grin, raise our eyebrows and say, “So, what have you been up to?”.     

Trolley rescue - the sixth emergency service

The police have a hard job; making the streets a safer place to walk, making sure cars aren’t parked in places where pushchairs can’t get past and seeming not to care when you have a crime committed against you.  The people of the Fire Service also have difficult jobs, as do Paramedics, the coast guard and the AA.  The sixth emergency service however, has things a little easier.  Whilst shopping in a local supermarket recently I noticed a telephone number on the handle of my trolley.  It instructed me to call should I witness a trolley that is 'lost'.  I assume it meant 'away from where it's supposed to be' rather than struggling with it's emotional identity.

On my jaunts to the surrounding countryside to where I live, I invariably see supermarket trolleys, wheels up in a small brook or on their side in a bush by the side of a disused railway track.  My mind doesn’t immediately wander to the pointless hooliganism that is the theft of these trolleys to be abandoned in such places but the sheer admiration of the guile and determination of these people to get the trolley so far away from its starting point without being seen.  I also find myself awestruck by the places these people can put the trolleys when they abandon them.  Up trees, down ravines – I once saw one over a give way sign.  It gave me an idea; just how far will Trolley Rescue go to recover a trolley? 

 

If this was a TV documentary, I’d place a trolley somewhere, ring the number and wait.  Throughout the programme, I’d place trolleys in increasingly precarious locations and situations.  The first I’d place just outside one of the trolley bays in the supermarket car park – just to see if they treat it as a crank call or a genuine cry for help.  The second I’d place on the pavement just outside the car park to see if they send their special ‘recovery vehicle’ or just the guy in the yellow reflect-o-coat.  (You can buy those coats on the high street.  All you need to do is print the logo of your choice on the back, ‘Security’, ‘Attendant’ or even ‘Whisperer of Destiny’ and you can just stand around telling people to do stuff; and they don’t question you – they just nod and do it, even if you’re just in a random street).

Trolley Resuce Motto - "We are ready to retrieve you"

 



The third I’d place in a quiet suburban road, the fourth would be placed on the grass in the middle of a busy motorway roundabout, the fifth in the lion enclosure at the zoo and the sixth up Mount Snowdon.  Surely there will be a point where the cost of recovering the trolley will outweigh the value – we just have to find that line.

I also wonder if they do get crank calls.  Trolley rescue, “My trousers are in next doors garden and they have a big dog!”

Button Moon - a bad example to Fathers everywhere

Is it a record?

Hats have to come off to people who are better at something than anybody else in the entire world, especially that bloke who can wear 247 hats at once. 

It'll catch on, probably

Running faster, jumping higher, throwing pointy things further than any other human on the planet has to earn respect on some level. Some people however, are so desperate to be world record holders, they start doing things no one has thought of doing before. This can be the only explanation for the man who holds the record for the most number of clothes pegs on his face. He can’t have been that bored. You can picture the scene; he’s been out for a daytime stroll in the park with his dog, Gert, and comes home to make a nice ham and cheese sandwich to eat while he gets stuck into his book, ‘The Brogues of Bournemouth’. 

I never forget a face - especially one with peg marks all over it

He starts to get a bit bored and so decides to go and hang the washing out. While pinning a pair of pants to the line he uses two of the three pegs in his hand. He pauses, stares at the peg, his eyes widen and then he decides to take the whole peg bag in the house with him. The only thing that could have planted the seed in his head that trying to get all the pegs from the bag on his face is the rousing desire to rise above and be championed as the king of all peg-faces. Getting his name into the book of world records for at least one year until everyone else in the world with a bigger face cottons on to the fact they accepted this ludicrous pass-time as a record and manages one more peg than the first bloke to do it. There must also be an independent body who got involved to set the minimum size that the peg can be in such a record attempt. This is to stop people putting microscopic pegs on their face.

As soon as impressionable kids see this man on television with pegs all over his face (something for which he will never be famous, as no one will recognise him without them), their inner desire to be the best and impress their friends will seize them. They’ll rush into the kitchen and start putting pegs on their faces, realising that their face isn’t springy or large enough and instead try prawns, corkscrews and grains of rice. They’ll then start searching the house for random items they can either attach to their body or place in orifices. All of a sudden you’ll hear little Timmy shout, “I’m going to see how many duvets I can get on my face”. This will be followed by the thunder of feet up the stairs and the careful tramping back down a few minutes later while saying (muffled), “One, and a rather snazzy Halloween costume it makes too!”.

World record holder and malevolent manifestation of evil on earth

Then there are those who feel they must demonstrate their powers of human endurance, resilience and in some cases supernatural power. I once saw a man rest his neck on a samurai sword while someone hit him over the head with a big flat hammer. How do you find out you can do this? How do you schedule such a thing into your day? Do martial artists wake in the morning thinking “I need to pay my credit card bill, do the washing up, vacuum, buy milk, put my neck on a sword and get my neighbour to hit me with large hammer, wrap my sister’s birthday present (if I’m still alive), skyplus Eastenders, leave my shoe on a village green and a glove on a railing, scream out of car window at someone at bus stop then cook my tea” . Also, it was cool(ish) when David Blaine hung in a glass box for several days, only because it was David Blaine who did it. If it was say, Ali Bongo, the record attempt would have had slightly less credibility.

I am in a glass box of emotion

There are obviously some records that you can’t break just by trying hard, such as being Japan’s biggest horse or world’s tallest man. Others are just a matter of opinion such as Crufts and the music charts. Wet Wet Wet were at number one in the UK singles chart for 15 weeks with “Love is all around” , which doesn’t mean it’s the best song ever written. Although it’s probably better financially to be number one for fifteen weeks than to be the record holder for the world’s biggest eye-lids.

Graffiti and the voice of one

The course of history has been shaped by that one voice that is louder and generally higher-pitched than the rest. That voice, brave enough to call its own tune, to spread an alternative view on the way things are and how they should be.

It was with disappointment though that I heard such a voice waste its opportunity to say something that may just have altered the direction of so many lives or even a country on the brink of a quadruple-dip recession. I was driving along a busy road and glanced up at a passing road sign to determine which exit I should take at the encroaching roundabout when I noticed some graffiti sprayed in the corner. An opportunity had been recognised and snatched with both hands, I thought. Thousands of people must pass this sign every day and a large percentage of them must glance up and read it.   All of those people would read the graffiti and if poignant or philosophical enough, could change the ways of those who are changeable. Someone with something to say had an opportunity to spread a message of solidarity, peace, love or even a way to get your jeans clean after a jam related accident.

A sign of the times

The bringer of this message decided however not to risk their life, spraying a message 8 feet from the ground near a busy road to try and change lives though they did interrupt their daily schedule and make a special effort to bring a can of spray paint and a small step ladder with them to present the passing public with their message which in fact was the word “poo” in red lower-case letters.

Either this person got up there and forgot what they were going to write and sprayed the first thing that came into their head in a “many people in cars watching me” induced panic or they actually planned it and that “poo” is indeed what is going on in their head, preventing them from sleeping at night and driving them to buy red spray paint in order to let the world know of their personal torment.

It is conceivable that the ‘artist’ was sitting in the house one night and Eastenders finished leaving an empty to-do list. It was a toss up between learning Spanish using the CD they got free with the Sunday paper or going out and spraying ‘poo’ on a road sign; the ‘poo’ clearly being the most worthwhile of the two.

I also came across some graffiti which said ‘I. Woultham is a nonce’ written in red paint on a bridge. A few yards down the road from the bridge I noticed exactly the same message written in black marker pen on a fence. It got me wondering whether there were a group of artists each armed with a different method of writing on public property or if someone was working alone carrying a rucksack full of differing stationery.

I was at a bus stop one night; a car passed with the passenger window wound down and a teenager leaning out screaming what sounded like ‘Wooyah’ in a troubled tone. Again, I wonder if once Eastenders had finished, they glanced at their to-do list which included ‘leave a random item of clothing on a public bridle-way’ , ‘put a glove on a park railing’ , ‘spray the word ‘poo’ on a road sign, and  ‘scream at people standing at bus stops’.

There must also be another group of people who fall into the ‘extreme graffiti artists’ category. Not content with extreme ironing, which involves leaping out of aeroplanes with an iron, a board and some particularly crinkled clothing or extreme gardening which involves jumping out of an aeroplane with a trowel in one hand, a fork in the other and your mate with a window box fixed to the top of his helmet, these people attempt to graffiti in the most dangerous places known to man.

People of the valley, I must be heard

I’ve often looked up at railway bridges with graffiti on the sides and wondered how they got up there to do it. You must have something particularly weighty on your mind to contemplate hiring some scaffolding, a crane and an array of cans of neon-bright spray paint. Invariably though, they always end up spraying something like ‘Bazza was ‘ere 97’ , which definitely goes a long way towards bringing about harmony in the modern world.

The ‘poo’ sprayed by this wise academic could well have been a comment on the state of public transport under the coalition government, or perhaps an indictment on the quality of road signs.