A bit of a flash - The Good Old Days

I realised that I'd not written a story for a while, so here's some flash that I knocked up in my lunch-hour.

The Good Old Days

We’d only been in the house for three days when my son stopped eating breakfast.

“Eat up,” I’d say, “it’s marmalade, your favourite.”

He’d yawn and look at me with bleary eyes. “I’m too tired to eat.”

My wife said that it was the new house, the change of surroundings, the quiet country air after the bustle of the city – That he’d be fine after he’d settled.  I wasn’t so sure. 

He shook his head when I asked his why he couldn’t sleep, he seemed almost embarrassed.  I wondered if puberty had hit him early and he was ‘keeping himself awake’ into the small hours.

Over the next weeks things got worse, we had a call from his teacher to say that he’d been behaving oddly.  I immediately assumed that she was going to tell me that he’d been falling asleep – but it seemed that he was using words that you wouldn’t expect such a young child to know and that he had developed some strong opinions on subjects that he probably shouldn’t have encountered. I asked her for examples, she talked uncomfortably about things like population control.

I mulled it over for the whole afternoon until he got home and demanded a ‘sammidge’ from his mother.

Once he’d been fed, I called him over and got him to sit down on the sofa next to me. “I had a call from your teacher today.”

He stopped eating and looked up at me.

“She said that you’re very clever, you have some very adult ideas.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, looking past me for the TV remote.

“She wonders where you get them from.” I tried to sound as matter of fact as I could, not wanting him to think he was doing anything wrong.

“You know, from the guys.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes.

“At school?”

“No… in my room. They wake me up talking to each other every night – But sometimes they ask what I think.  I don’t always understand what they mean. They say the world used to be different, fewer people.  They call it the good old days.”

“Are they outside your window?”

“They sit on my rug.”

“Are you scared?”

“I can’t really see them clearly, they’re kinda fuzzy.”

My mother had been ‘sensitive’, she could see things that other people couldn’t. I wondered if her gift had skipped a generation. “Maybe you should ask them to leave you alone?”

He shrugged and started watching cartoons.

I awoke with a start, according to the clock on my bedside table it was 03:47.  My wife’s gentle snores were the only sound, until the bedroom door slowly opened.  My son’s pale face stared at me from the darkened landing and he slowly entered the room; his eyes never leaving mine.  He crept along the side of the bed, quietly so as not to wake his mother, and leaned down to whisper in my ear.

“Why did he tell us to go away?”

Alright Darlin?

If you’ve heard the news over the past couple of days, you’ve probably heard about the case of Poppy Smart.

You might not have heard her name, a couple of things I heard on the way into work this morning just referred to her as ‘A Young Woman’ who complained to the Police about being wolf-whistled at by some builders.

A couple of the radio stations I was listening to even went as far as doing a bit of a Vox-pop to see whether their listeners were of the opinion that it was ‘all in fun’ and ‘a bit of a tradition’ rather than misogynistic, hurtful and abusive.  In amongst all the little old ladies saying how much they wished that cheeky chappies were still whistling at them like they used to when they were pottering about town wearing the seamed nylons that they got off that nice American Airman in 1943, and the middle-aged men saying how it was just how people (men) showed their appreciation towards a woman that they found attractive, there was this one chap from Lichfield I think, that said it was completely unacceptable, he was an ex-builder, and when the reporter heard that, he tried to make him into the villain for not actively doing anything about it.

In fact, one particularly well-read sounding listener had the opinion that it must be acceptable because women wolf-whistle and leer at male strippers... Cleverly forgetting the fact that this only happens during the times when they were earning vast sums of money waving their bodies at unfulfilled women, rather than just walking down the road on their way to work.

So, not mad at all then, that's lucky.

The main thing that shocked me was that both Poppy and the Police were vilified for taking it seriously.

Let’s just go back over that again… A young woman has been accused of wasting Police time because she felt that she was the victim of sexual harassment.

And the Police are being accused of wasting time and money because they had the audacity to investigate a potential sex-crime.  One of the people who complained about the Police trying to ensure the continued safety of a young girl was the potential Conservative MP for Shipley, West Yorks, Philip Davies… Nice call there Phil, Big clap from all of us here at ‘The Dandy’ – Seriously, read the guy’s Wikipedia page HERE – He truly is a Prince among men, or do I mean evil, divisive scrote? I always get them mixed up – And for some reason he’s divorced, I honestly can’t imagine why. But it certainly won't be because he's currently living with another female MP.

To an extent though, if I were to really give a crap about seeming to be unbiased, I could say that I kind of understand that being wolf-whistled at isn’t being raped, it isn’t being stabbed or having your kids set fire to by a terrorist… And I can sympathise with the people (both men and women) who’ve said that she should just accept it as a compliment, or part of modern life, or that if she didn’t like it she should walk a different way.

But, I really don’t… I couldn’t care less what the ill-informed, knee-jerk, reactionary masses think.  I didn’t start this blog because I’m shy of sharing my opinion with the world in general.

Firstly, Poppy (I hope she doesn’t mind me calling her Poppy… Perhaps Ms. Smart would be more polite…) wasn’t just wolf-whistled at on a couple of occasions, it was systematic, day in, day out, over an extended period of time.  When she made it clear to the main perpetrator that she wasn’t interested and asked him to stop, he descended the scaffolding and confronted her face to face, stopping her from leaving.

If that’s not harassment, I don’t know what is.

I’ve worked on building sites all over the country for a fairly large proportion of my life and I know that wolf-whistling (and cat-calling, and general abuse towards women, obviously effeminate men, fat people, schoolgirls, Asian people and, in fact, pretty much anyone who’s not a builder) goes on all the time.  It’s all abusive, none of it is good natured – It’s a power thing, these men (because it’s still 99.9% men on most building sites) think that they are more powerful, they’re in a gang, they’re physically higher up on the scaffold, they’re ‘hard’ from doing manual labour all day every day.  They also don’t register the target of their abuse as people… They’re ‘things’, they’re ‘a cracking arse’ or ‘a f*cking queer’ or ‘a filthy p*ki’.

I remember that I once worked for a company that was involved with the government’s ‘Building Schools for the Future’ project… We’d be on secondary schools’ premises pretty much all of the time, either putting in an entirely new building, or upgrading an existing one. In amongst all the standard signage telling you that entering the site required you to have PPE (Hat, boots, hi-viz), and that if you didn’t sign in you wouldn’t get paid, there was a really big one that said that if there were any complaints from the staff about you, if you were found to be ‘looking’ at the children or engaging them in any conversation other than that required for you to do your job (So you could happily ask them to move out of the way if you were carrying some plasterboard) – You would be removed from the site, never to return – And rightly so.

Of course, you also get those people who give it the old ‘You can’t even pay a woman a compliment any more without her thinking that you’re trying to have sex with her.’  Well, I’m sorry, but you can.  If you think someone’s pretty on the street and you just can’t keep it to yourself for some reason, smile at them – Don’t leer at them, make the two-handed groping gesture and shout “Lovely jugs – Give us a go on them!” at the top of your voice.  If you know someone well enough to talk to, and you think that they look nice, tell them... But say “Have you had your hair done, it suits you.” Not, “Is that lipstick new, it makes you look like a filthy strumpet.” And offer them a place on your lap.

It’s not rocket science, you just think about what you’re about to say… You ask yourself “How would I feel if someone said that to my wife/sister/daughter/mother?” – If your first reaction is “Well, obviously I would punch them to death” – Then maybe that’s the clue that tells you that it’s inappropriate.  Maybe you shouldn’t say it.

I’m no angel, by any means… I’ll say that at some time during our acquaintance, I have called 90% of the women that I know, ‘love’ or ‘darlin’ or ‘sweetie’ or ‘girlie’.  I’ll even go as far as the occasional ‘wench’ or ‘Tuppeny Who-er’, but only to those who know me insanely well, to those who I know, for sure, will not be offended by it, (Actually, if I've got it wrong, and you are offended by it, please tell me… I could be sat here thinking how wonderfully deconstructed I am – What all the time I’m coming across as a right git)

So, when it boils down to it, if what you’re doing is making someone feel uncomfortable, it’s wrong, don’t do it.  If they are made to feel uncomfortable by your objectification, if you are treating them as an attractive object (and in the case of another human being, you’d be petulant to think that the attractiveness was anything but sexual, you can’t tell if someone has an attractive personality from halfway up a set of scaffolding) then it’s sexual harassment, which makes you a micro-phallused deviant, and not in a good way.

And if that sexual harassment is directed towards a schoolgirl… That implies that you find a child sexually attractive…

And there’s a special word for people like that you know.

And you thought I was famous before!

Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by.

I know it’s Monday and everything, and the weather guy says that it’s the last bit of decent weather we’re going to get until Judgement Day (That’s the religious one, not the Terminator one – Although saying that…) due to some Arctic ‘Ice Plume’ or something that’s going to cause widespread ice-ages and polar bears wandering around the beaches of Southern Florida wearing Macklemore style overcoats and asking people to turn the A/C off.  But I’m in an OK mood.

Don’t get me wrong, things aren’t perfect... I mean, I only won £3 on the lottery this weekend and payday’s still almost a week away.  I had a pretty good weekend, it was the MicroDandy’s birthday weekend in fact.  We played mini-golf and ate sushi – We also saw The Avengers: Age of Ultron (Which is a great film, if you’re a nine-year-old, like I am)

But the best thing that happened to me, personally, apart from enjoying the adorable sound of my youngest child enjoying himself (Which I am in no way contractually obliged to say… *cough*) was receiving an IM which said, and I quote:

‘Did you check the blog yet today?’

It was from a Twitter friend of mine – One of those people whom I’ve never met, but talk to/about regularly, called, @tattooed_mummy – You should follow her, in fact, treat this as a #FridayFollow – But… uh… on, like… a Monday.  She’s the sort of person that comes to mind when you hear someone say the word ‘Blogger’ on the news.  She does product testing for real companies and ‘Mum stuff’ and she’s an official live-blogger for Camp Bestival and she wins iPads from popular retailers by saying clever things to their advertising departments.  Also she seems to have gone all ‘afroth’ about Poldark and her Twitter feed is full of pictures of Aiden Turner with no shirt on at the moment – Make of that what you will.

Another thing she does, is run, via her Blog ‘Tattooed Mummy’s Randoms’ (www.tattooedmummy.co.uk) The ‘Alternative Blog Awards’ This year, I was honoured enough to be nominated (by real, live, members of the public, probably) in not one, but two categories: ‘Wordy Blogger’ – An award for bloggers who use fifteen words in any situation where three would normally do, and ‘The Slacker Award’ – for bloggers who have recently lapsed in their previous output volume… Which I guess I can’t really disagree with.

And see if you can guess what happened?

I WON! – And also lost, but more of that later… I won the award for ‘Wordy Blogger’ – I was voted, possibly by one or many of you wonderful people, as the alternative blogger most likely to drown you in sheer volume of words… Which was nice… It made me very happy indeed… And I made my entire family preface every reference to me with ‘The Award Winning…’ for the entire weekend.  So, instead of my wife asking me if I’d like a cup of tea, I would force her to ask “Would the Award Winning Chimping Dandy like a cup of tea?” – Which seemingly got real old, real fast...

You normal people are hard to work out sometimes.

Anywho, I’m sure Tattooed Mummy won’t mind if I shared all the other worthy winners with you scabrous lot…

Under 16 category
The winner is https://spacebunker.wordpress.com A 15 year old with a dream of becoming an astronautical engineer.

Blogger you'd most like to take home 
Well of course there were lots of great bloggers suggested but this one stole your hearts, yes, it’s the friendly MotherScuffer at http://motherhoodjourneys.com/ (We like MotherScuffer, her life could so easily be transformed into a 70's sitcom, or gritty Alan Bennett/Bleasdale style play - She was also mentioned at the end of THIS BLOG POST which was quite popular)

Funniest 
Based on urine output of readers goes to http://www.bigfashionista.co.uk who has mostly been ranting lately but still managing to keep it witty.

Slacker 
Goes to http://claraunravelled.co.uk who needs to up her game by the sound of it, have a read, comment, nag her. (This is a total swiz, I should have won this one easily, I've not blogged for months!)

Wordy Blogger
The well-deserved http://thechimpingdandy.blogspot.com who does indeed waffle a bit <-- This is me, in case you hadn’t noticed, because I am mostly very excellent.

Unmissable 
The very worthy winner (again) is the super MotherScuffer at http://motherhoodjourneys.com - a perfectly lovely blog, full of the ups and downs of life.

Blogger who should know better 
This award won by http://fudgecrumpet.com though I doubt he will learn from this.

-oOo-

Yes, I agree that I should have pretty much swept the board (except, perhaps the under sixteen category – There’s only so much Oil of Olay will do for you) – But one’s better than none, as they say.

You should definitely take a look at all of these blogs, they’re funny, strange, informative, maudlin and thought provoking in equal measure.

They say you can gauge your success by the quality of your peers… So, all in all, I must be pretty bloody splendid to be surrounded by that lot – But you all already knew that, right?

-oOo-

What? Sorry? You want to know if I won anything?   Well, to be honest it’s more the general cachet of winning an award, it’s not about the actual statue, or the certificate, or the VIP ticket to the clothing-optional massage emporium, it’s the…

Erm… OK...

I won (I assume a year’s) membership of ‘The Tripe Club’ – The Tripe Marketing Board’s membership organisation. I’ll wear my badge proudly.

(They follow me on Twitter now, you know)

You know how the smallest thing can trigger a memory?

I was driving to work this morning, thinking how lucky I was that it only takes an hour and a half and that it’s payday tomorrow. When Status Quo came on Radio 2 (I listen to Radio 2 because I am old, and bald, and fat – and because one day, Chris Evans might make reference to the two books that I sent for him and the team to have a read of – But I shan’t be holding my breath, because: implied advertising / BBC / not in this day and age / Oh blimey no, more than my job’s worth.)

And it certainly wouldn’t happen this week (or next week) as he’s currently off and Sara Cox is filling in for him – And it’s his Birthday today (1/4/15 – April Fool’s day… Figures)– Happy Birthday Chap

So, got hit a bit with the tangent-bat there didn’t we?  Back to The Quo.  Now, I can’t actually remember which track it was that they played.  It wasn’t Caroline, or Rocking all over the World and in fairness it doesn’t matter as my vision did the whole ‘biddle-biddle-biddle’ thing and I was transported back to 1985 and a sticky-floored nightclub in Derby called…

The Rockhouse…

Now, I’ve spoken about The Rockhouse before, if you remember it’s where those nice, friendly ladies, Rockbitch, played and my gibbon-armed colleague managed to investigate their anatomy quite closely a few times. In the late 80’s – early 90’s. It was pretty much my second home.  I had a lot of ‘experiences' there, but the one that came to mind in this particular instance was one that happened most weekends (if a particular instance can happen repeatedly that is)

You know a particular song that has a dance routine?  I’m thinking of things like The Macarena and suchlike.  Or how in any given Hollywood film that features a dance-number there’s a bit where all the ‘normal’ extras clear off and are replaced by ‘super-pretty’ extras who launch into a spectacularly choreographed routine featuring a song that the leading man has only just written?

There’d be a time when the DJ would play Status Quo… Any Status Quo track would do*, and two lines of greasy biker/rocker/grebo types would line up facing each other like the chorus line of Mad-Max the musical and ‘spread’ – Now you’ve probably seen this dance even if you’ve not known what it is, it happens a lot at birthday discos for 40 & 50 somethings and wedding receptions where the just-pre-elderly enjoy embarrassing the youngsters. It consists of a number of people (Well, I suppose one person can spread, but it’s probably the saddest sight in the world) standing, facing each other and then sort of moving the top half of their bodies, forcefully, left and right with the beat whilst leaving their bottom halves immobile.

I’m not describing this hugely well am I?

But you know what I mean right?  Believe it or not, there was a hierarchy of ‘spreaders’…

Right at the bottom were the ‘swayers’ – The people who really didn’t know what was going on and just wanted to be part of something larger than themselves. They would look, nervously, along the spreading line whilst flopping about whilst repeatedly falling out of time with everyone else.  They were often felled by impromptu accidental head-butts.  I guess that you’d call them n00bs nowadays.

Then you had the ‘loopers’ – The ones who put their thumbs in the belt-loops of their jeans as they had seen on Top of the Pops the week before… This was a common misunderstanding by ‘trendies’ and this was a dance more associated with the bands The Bay City Rollers & Mudd in the previous decade.  This is the style you’d mostly see at parties.

Then, above the ‘loopers’ by quite a large amount, were the ‘punchers’. These were the first rank of ‘real’ spreaders.  The dance itself was very simple, you twisted to the right for two beats, looking down, then moved your head/hands to the upper left for a beat, then to the upper right for a beat, then down and left for two beats (Repeat ad nauseum – sometimes quite literally) – A ‘puncher’ is identified by a punching motion during the upper two beats, often with the opposite hand.  Occasionally, people stood next to punchers were rendered unconscious due to standing too close… More often than not, during a guitar solo.

Right at the top of the tree you have the ‘Ninjas’ or ‘Aces’ – These people are the elite.  They’ve been spreading to Status Quo songs since before Frank & Ricky were touring in Frank’s Dad’s Ice-Cream van singing about Matchstick men.  Their bodies move like heated quicksilver, they watch with impunity as the people next to them in line fall to the floor in exhaustion.  Where ‘punchers’ punched the air, the ‘ninjas’ would use an open hand in such graceful movements as ‘clearing away the mystic wind’ and the ever popular ‘if you only touch it gently, it’s not technically masturbation’.  There was no sweating from them, no heavy breathing, and no excuses.  And you could tell who they were even if they weren’t dancing for two easily spotted tell-tale features:

1. 1)      They wore crowns and ermine capes – A bit like Freddie Mercury’s
2. 2)      They had ‘trap’ muscles (the ones that join your head to your shoulders) like a steroid-addled cardassian weight-lifter from all of the forcefull bobbing about

I’m proud to say I was eventually one of their number, it took me years to work my way from being a humble ‘swayer’ through the ranks of myriad ‘punchers’ to the heady heights of ‘Ninja’dom. 

What did it earn me, other than the undying respect of my peers? you ask.

Well I'll tell you...

I could legally ask one of the lower ranked customers to give me a piggy-back across the 18” of flooded gents’ toilet.  And they told me who could turn off the security cameras whilst I became ‘better acquainted’ with various young ladies on the fire escape outside, rather than televising it in HD on the stage projector.

(OK, so technically that only happened once, but it was a very long time ago. And it wasn't to me, honest.)

'They' say you should dance like no-one's watching.  I beg to differ, I say you should dance like everyone's watching, but that might be 'cos I'm a massive show-off - Or a bit of a cock.

Rock-on kids

*and possibly ‘Spirit in the Sky’ by Doctor & the Medics but not all the time. 

Put on your adventuring pants Matron!

Would you like to help me on a quest?

A vision quest if you will, like the bloke off of ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ used to do every time there was an episode about him. (Did you know, that Robert Beltran, the guy who played the enigmatic Native American character Chakotay in the program was in fact, half Mexican? Which just goes to show that if an ‘ethnic’ character is needed, any minority will do at a pinch.)

Anyway, back to my vision quest. Don’t worry if you’re in two minds about the use of mind expanding herbs and the ceaseless native rhythms, I’m not going to ask you to listen to Radio 1 or anything unnatural like that. I’d just like some of you to read a couple of my Blog posts.

It’s not hugely important, I’m being selfish and mercenary and I’m just trying to cheer myself up about because things have all gone a bit crappy today and it’s taking a few more muscles to smile than it does normally (Even if I am wearing a brand-new Jeff Banks shirt that makes me look a bit like a Vicar.)

The thing is, I am just 23 page-views short of hitting my completely made up and arbitrary target of 44,000 by the end of the week.

I’m not suggesting that you just go to my Blog and start reading random stuff, for that way madness lies – And most of you are borderline mental now.

So, I thought I’d give you some suggestions of a few of my favourite post that you can take a look at to cheer yourself up – They’re not my most popular ones by any means, they’re just ones I particularly like.

1. We’ll start with ‘Pandas, the Eastern Scourge’ – where I question the very nature of our ailuropodean planet-mates and try to discover if they’re just ‘Pulling a fast one.’
2. Then there’s ‘T-wit - who?’ – This describes the particular shortcomings of having a real, live, owl as a pet.  These are many and hugely unpleasant (Does contain a picture of the MiniDandy as a small child.)
3. Many of you know that I love ASDA, It’s mainly because of the people you can run into there, but I also performed the only recorded Melonicide in UK History (Also contains a small ladies chest reference, no, actually, it’s a small reference to a ladies chest) – ‘Boobs, Melons and Jumper Lumps’
4. In ‘Maybe they explained it badly?’ – I expose my complete lack of technical understanding to a waiting world… Mainly of how huge, metal aeroplanes can glide through the aether with an alacrity that would easily wound an armoured badger.
5. POWER! – It’s something we all yearn for, but do any of actually understand what it is? – I know I don’t, but I did have a go at explaining it to myself.  It didn’t go particularly well.  But judge for yourself in ‘Any way the wind blows’
6. I’m quite proud of the mixture of Terrorism and Time-Travel that I managed to ram into ‘We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity’ – Many people reposted this, but it’s not in the top-ten anymore.
7. Now, I’m cheating here, this one is actually in the Top-Ten, but it got favourited and re-tweeted by real famous people on Twitter. ‘Pogonophilia is for everyone, even the young.’ Contains my child-like wonder about why ‘a certain kind of lady’ finds Men with Manly beards very Manly. (Warning, contains a topless, Anne Geddes style photo of me)
8. I’m a great believer that you should wear clothes that make you happy… Wearing a kilt makes me happy (and freshens up my nethers like a man possessed) in ‘Let loose The Kraken Th'Noo’ I perform in what could be construed as a slightly racist fashion, purely so that I don’t have to wear any pants.
9. Some of you might know that on very rare occasions, I ride custom motorcycles. The thing about doing this is that you attract the attention of other people who do the same thing.  These people tend to have lives that are just as colourful as mine, here’s a few stories about my, now sadly demised, friend Jock, ‘No, chopper as in motorcycle - And Greeks.’
10. And the last post I’m going to recommend today also has a slightly Scots flavour.  Well, I could really do a list without including at least one ‘Scots Mick’ story, could I? ‘Then SMick said that Chap was a bad word’ talks about my first trip to the wonderful riverside town of Dumfries, where I nearly got my arms torn off and single-handedly chatted up a xenophobic bouncers girlfriend… Well, I say single-handedly…

Hope you enjoy this quick look at some of my favourite posts, there are a lot more if you’re interested.  Feel free to repost them, or spam links to people you think might be interested.

In fact, I think I’d quite like that.

Are you nice? Does it hurt?

They say there are are a lot of different kinds of people in this world.  You’ve got your movers, your shakers, your couch potatoes.  Douches, heroes, thinkers, doers, readers, writers, leavers, cutters, people who like the taste of tinfoil, rappers, mappers, toe-tappers and, of course, the universally reviled hipsters.

But when it comes down to it, there are really only two types of people.

People who adopt stray cats, and people who don’t.

Now, if you know the real me, you’ll know that recently I’ve become one of the former.  Here’s a picture of her.  Her name’s Pipe.

Raggedy, isn't she?

She’s tiny, probably about a year old or so, and has been either mistreated, or been feral for quite a while as she has the attitude of a grumpy wood-chipper with a hair trigger.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

She latched onto my kids, specifically my son, on their way home from school about a month ago.  She was scrawny and pathetic, her coat moved of its own accord due to sheer volume of fleas and she didn’t really have the strength to do proper cat stuff like jumping or meowing loudly.

My daughter, because she’s a realist, told him that they wouldn’t be able keep the cat, because we had a cat and a dog already and also because ‘Mum & Dad are both heartless ogres.’ (and she’s right, I actually spend a lot of my time hiding behind boulders up on the moors with a stone hammer, feasting on the bone marrow of unsuspecting ramblers and the mountain rescue teams sent to find them.  It’s where we met, my wife and I. I looked at the sunlight bouncing off her knotted unibrow across a pile of sucked-dry corpses clothed only in that nice, brightly coloured, fabric that’s waterproof, but totally wicks your sweat away and thought ‘Dyamn Beeyatch! You fine!’)

He put down the kitten and started to cry, which seemingly set the kitten off and she panicked and allowed it to follow them home, across several dual-carriageways, over a level-crossing and through a ford, twice… I should probably note that this wasn’t their normal way home; I think she was trying to dissuade it.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

The kitten took up residence in the north formal shrubbery, between the real tennis courts and the helipad, for a day or so until we could purchase enough chemicals, pills and pastes to ensure that it didn’t pass on any dreaded lurgeys to anyone else.  And after a good couple of hours of combing, the mehsahib had dislodged, quite literally, a bin-liner full of fleas (which is now roving around the garden of its own accord, ready to chase any of us that try to escape by running away down our private beach) The worming cycle was completed, causing one unsuspecting guest to exclaim ‘Why have you fed your new cat spaghet… Oh, never mind!’ and be violently sick in my prize hydrangeas.

But not to worry, because everything’s fine now.  She’s putting weight on, OK – that’s mainly because she won’t let anyone else in the house eat, including us.  She will, and this is no word of a lie, put both her front paws on your dinner-plate and have it away with your jumbo battered-sausage before you can say, ‘You little bleeder! I’ll gut you like a fish!’

She does love ‘cuddles’ though, and will sit there and let you happily stroke her until you touch that quarter-inch square of skin that causes all four of her legs to independently swivel around and latch onto your wrist whilst she bites chunks out of the fleshy party of your thumb. (Location of this small patch of fur changes hourly, some might even say very much more often)

She’s also getting used to Morty, our occularly challenged Staffy… He can now come nearer than three feet to her before she devolves into a velociraptor and tries to tear out his eyes, which would of course, leave him much more challenged than usual.

Our other cat, Pop, can take her or leave her.  I mean, they growl, and hiss, and takes swipes at each other, but that’s pretty much standard cat behaviour isn’t it… There’s not actually been blood.

Well, there’s been blood, obviously, it’s mostly dog-blood though.  And it’s not all bad, because he now has a permanent noughts and crosses board on his muzzle that he’ll happily let you use for a biscuit.

What I’m trying to say is, erm… Well, I’m not hugely sure what I’m trying to say… If you could make something up about stray animals and being able to find enough excess affection for something that might well actually be the death of you by sitting at the top of the stairs silently in the dark, feel free to attribute it to me and imagine that it’s today’s message, OK?

But it’s not a perfect world.

Before we go any further, let me just re-iterate that what follows is MY opinion.  You may disagree, in fact, I already know that a few of my readers hold views exactly opposite to mine and that is their right.

In fact, that’s everyone’s right.  You believe what you want to believe, it’s not my place to judge and that goes for all of us.  That is, you have an inalienable right to believe what you want to right up until the point where your beliefs start impact on me or mine in a tangible way, then we’d have a problem.

Obviously, I’m talking about yesterday’s shooting at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine.  At around 11:00 Paris time, men entered the office, armed with AK assault rifles and proceeded to kill eleven people and injure about the same again.  The reports are varied about the details and it’s way too early to figure out what actually happened and what is pure speculation. 

Some reports say that the gunmen asked for their targets by name and then executed them, others that they entered a meeting room during an editorial meeting and started indiscriminately shooting. (which is pretty much what the AK was designed for, they’re not known for their accuracy)  Upon leaving the building they were ‘challenged’ by two police officers in a car, one of whom, Ahmed Merabet (also a Muslim, not that it really matters in the grand scheme of things) was shot, then executed with a subsequent bullet to the head.  Remember his name and the fact that he leaves behind a wife, I’m going to refer to him again briefly in a minute.

Let’s get the knee-jerk stuff out of the way now shall we?

Are Said and Cherif Kouachi psychopaths? – Yes they are.

Did they believe what they were doing was a reply to Charlie Hebdo’s repeated attacks (as they saw them) against the Muslim way of life in general and Allah/the Prophet Mohammed in particular? – Yes

Has the institute of Charlie Hebdo (i.e. its buildings and staff) suffered from attacks and threats from Radical Islamists before yesterday? – Yes, the offices were firebombed in 2011 after listing the Prophet Mohammed as its Editor in Chief and using his image on the cover in a less than complimentary way.

Were any of the gunmen previously known to be radicals? – Yes, Cherif Kouachi has been on various watchlists for around ten years, after being arrested in 2005 and imprisoned for his part in a plot to send volunteers to Iraq to fight against the US forces.

Did the Editor, Stephane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier seriously think his life was at risk? – I don’t know if he did personally, but he was assigned a Police bodyguard because other people did.

Was his bodyguard killed? – One was, one was injured according to reports.

Was this an attack by the Muslim people on innocent Christians? – No, it really wasn’t. 

Let me explain… (Again, remember this is just my opinion)

Forget for a second about Paris, and Charlie Hebdo, and Muslims.  Instead, imagine… Oh, I don’t know… A crocodile, living in the mud, by the riverbank.  It’s not a hugely nice fairy-tale crocodile, it doesn’t ‘tick’, it’s real and it eats things alive.  But crocodiles do, don’t they? They’re known for it, it happens all the time.  In fact recently it happens more and more as global growth crushes us all together and we’re living in each other’s back yards.  So, one day, a group of kids hears about this crocodile and to prove to themselves how brave and clever and modern they are, (and in the back of their minds, how cowardly and stupid and prehistoric crocodiles are) decide to go and poke it with a stick. They poke it a few times, the poking gets harder over time and eventually, the crocodile snaps at them.  In fact it chases them back to the safety of their houses, where it sits, watching them all through the night.  In the morning it’s gone, but you can see that it had been walking around in their gardens and had lain outside their bedroom windows.

Shortly after that, the pokings start again.  In fact, the pokings become stabbings.  The old crocodile realises that chasing the kids and scaring them again is pointless, it doesn’t work.  So it waits until night-time and goes back to the children’s houses and eats them. But that’s not where it stops, it eats the other people asleep in the houses too, because they’re there and the crocodile is so caught up in the moment that it feels invincible and it’s convinced that this is the only way to cure the situation in the long-term.  But someone raises the alarm and people come to help, despite the fact that there’s nothing that can be done.  They get eaten too.

All that’s left is to hunt down the crocodile and kill it, because it’s got the ‘Maneater’ label, and everyone knows it’s much easier to eat someone once you’ve already done it once.

You get it right? – It’s an allegory.  It’s not meant to be flippant and I agree that there’s never any excuse for killing someone just because you think they deserve to die.  There’s the whole due process and not being a psychotic religious radical thing to consider first.

Actually, I should probably add another disclaimer: I DO NOT IN ANY WAY CONDONE ANY ACT OF TERRORISM / RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM, WHETHER OR NOT IT INVOLVES ILLEGAL ACTS.

But… would the people at Charlie Hebdo still be alive today if they hadn’t continued to ‘poke’ at Radical Islam?

Do you agree that we’re living in a radically different world than we were ten years ago?

Should you broadcast an opinion that you don’t temper with common sense? (Remembering that we come down pretty hard on people we consider to be fascists, fundamentalists and Nazis because of the offence they cause to 'our' way of life)

And lastly, should Ahmed Merabet’s wife have to live the rest of her life alone because some educated men drew some pictures that someone else didn't think were funny?

My thoughts are with the families of Charlie Hebdo employees and contributors who stood up for what they believed in until the end. Elsa Cayat, Bernard Maris, Jean Cabut, Stephane Charbonnier, Philippe Honoré, Bernard Verlhac, and Georges Wolinski.

I do not think I would have done the same.

Also with the families of Frédéric Boisseau - the office’s janitor, Franck Brinsolaro – Charb’s bodyguard, Michel Renauld – a visitor to the office, and Ahmed Merabet – a police officer executed in the street, in front of the world’s press whilst trying to do his job.

All of whom were murdered through no fault of their own.

-oOo-

• In a perfect world, you would be able to say what you wanted without fear of reprisal. (as long as you remembered that it works both ways)
• In a perfect world, religious intolerance would be a fairy story, something you added to a bedtime story to prove to your children that things like that really don’t happen.
• In a perfect world you wouldn’t have to tell yourself that you’re not afraid to leave the house because a fundamentalist of any religion might wander into your bus-queue and detonate himself just because he thinks that you’re an infidel or a heathen or an unbeliever.
• In a perfect world, you could wave goodbye to your kids in the morning and be 100% sure that you’ll see them again in the afternoon.
• In a perfect world, your blood wouldn’t run cold every time you heard a siren.

Now read the title of this post again.