Is It Nearly May Already......?

Is it nearly May already ? Where does the time go ? I guess when you break it down, a year is little more than twelve paydays and a birthday, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise when they rush by as fast as they do.

However, I’m still a fan of this time of year. I like the lighter nights and the leaves appearing on the trees. I enjoy being able to hear the birds singing again and the general cheerfulness that people seem to feel. It’s a positive time when our minds turn to things like Summer holidays, getting out into the garden and generally shaking off the final remains of Winter.

There shouldn’t really be any dark clouds on such a beautiful horizon should there ? Well what with the credit crunch and general misery in the news daily, I think it is fair to say that our obsession with the weather won’t be the only topic of conversation at barbeques over the next few months.

I’ve written about this before and my general feeling has been that 2008 was going to be a tough one as far as getting through it in one piece was concerned and personally I feel very much on a knife edge cash wise. Even Gordon Brown’s recent interview in which he said that his first waking thought every morning is how he can help make the lives of people like me and you easier has done little to help.

In fact, all it has resulted in is a disturbing image of the PM in the Downing Street kitchen wearing baggy pants, a dressing gown with holes in, while feasting on burnt toast and porridge.
I do not need this playing on a continual loop through my mind during the darkest moments of working out what I could sell in order to pay the council tax! Thanks for the thought, Gordon, but you’re not helping!

While I’m pretty sure that PM GB is probably about to sign an EU ruling that says the leaves on British trees aren’t the right shade of green and need chopping down, a country walk and a bit of fresh air doesn’t cost anything. Just as well, as I’ve a feeling that the few pleasures that still (just about) come for free will be relied upon heavily this year.

As published in the 25th April 2008 edition of The Kemptown Rag.

Meanwhile Somewhere Else In Brighton.....

Meanwhile somewhere else in Brighton, there has been a whole lot of controversy going on over some crying babies. The basics seem to be that after about an hour of tea, cake and bawling at a cafe, half a dozen mothers and babies took their leave. As they made their exit, they were told that it might be best if they didn’t return, as the proprietor said some of his regulars had left as a result of the general din.

Who is in the right in such a situation? Without commenting on the specifics of this case, is it a case of the parent being allowed to take their child anywhere and everyone else accepting any noise that goes with it? Or should there be more sympathy for everyone else? Those who like to enjoy some quiet time without the moral dilemma of whether or not something should be yelled in the direction of the (hopefully) suitably embarrassed parent for instance? "Do me a favour and keep your so**ing child quiet!!" springs to mind !

I find myself quite regularly these days having peaceful moments shattered by babies and young children. Having seen babies in car seats on the tables in pubs, it could be said that some of these places are not appropriate for children anyway. While I appreciate that the average parent may need a drink more than most, this isn’t exactly fair on the rest of us trying to enjoy a relaxed pint.

I tend to be of the opinion these days that some see children as an expression of wealth and their contribution to society. The more children a person has, the "richer" they are and the more they have added to life in general. The fact that this really hampers a person’s social life doesn’t seem to come into it. It appears that if a parent wants to go out, then that’s just what they do and if they have to take the kiddiewinks along too, then that’s just the way it is.

I personally don’t see anything wrong in a pub landlord, restaurant proprietor, café owner or whatever it might be telling someone that they either need to control their child or leave. I think it’s about time that parents were made to take more responsibility for their offspring.

As published in the 4th April 2008 edition of The Kemptown Rag

It's the year 2084.....

It’s the year 2084 and the Labour party have been in Government for over 87 years. Their power became total in 2014, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown made voting illegal and declared himself "Leader For Life". By that stage, a lethal combination of voter apathy and obesity meant that no one cared. They were also unable to get up from the sofa to actually do anything much about it anyway.

In 2084 global warming continues to be denied as anything to worry too much about and this is despite Haywards Heath now being a coastal town. Very few even remember the time the floods came and engulfed the millennium city of Brighton and Hove right in the middle of the Festival, leaving its citizens sinking in the Spiegeltent. No amount of texting on mobile phones or sending emails from handheld blackberries with "OMG I’m drowning!" in the subject box was enough to do much that night. Even the huge, red "this message has been sent with high priority" exclamation marks included with the emails failed to get the urgently required attention. Instead, people had to make do with frantically updating their "My Face" web diaries as the water rose higher.

Bad memories were soon erased, however, by the opening of the all new M25 motorway, which was a huge sixteen lane extravaganza. "Gridlocked rush hours will be a thing of the past with this baby!" claimed a Government spokesman when it was opened to traffic to the tune of the Polish national anthem in January 2084. In that same month, the final remaining Post Office was closed and Heathrow marked the opening of Terminal 15 with a promise that it DID NOT mean more aircraft in the skies over London. They just had more room to spread out the planes they already had.

Britain celebrated further expansion to the EU by welcoming various previously unheard of countries, all with poor economies and downtrodden populations, to the club. There would be no change to the open door policy on immigration as this had served us perfectly well in the past claimed the Government. Any reports that certain sections of the British Isles were sinking under the weight of so many people were dismissed as xenophobic nonsense.

Our esteemed leader, Prime Minister Brown, aged 133 and still as "on our side" as ever!