It's a generation thing...

It took Margaret Thatcher several years to disenfranchise an entire generation - the current coalition has achieved it in just a few months.

First we had students protesting the rise in tuition fees. Today schoolchildren are up in arms about the proposed cuts for funding school sports.

Every week the group railing against the Con-Dems gets younger. What next? Toddlers objecting to the loss of nursery school vouchers?

Or maybe embryos protesting the planned closures of birthing units such as the one at my local hospital in Petersfield?

I'm 47, so it will be some time before the protests go full circle and the Government upsets my generation. But rest assured, once they start putting up car-parking charges at National Trust properties and increasing the tax on Horlicks I shall be out there manning the barricades.

Only up until about 9pm you understand. I can't stay out too late.

Comedy's breath of fresh air

Miranda Hart - such fun!

If you know me well – and I can only assume you must do if you’re prepared to read this tripe – then you will know I love my comedy.

Whether it’s the slapstick antics of Laurel and Hardy, the unforgettable vintage radio half-hours of Hancock, The Goons and Round the Horne, the stand-up of Max Miller or Mark Watson, or the TV comedy from Dad’s Army through to Scrubs, I have a passion for the stuff that makes us laugh.

So last night it was with childish glee that my beloved and I queued up in freezing temperatures outside BBC TV Centre in Wood Lane, to be members of the audience for the Christmas episode of the wonderful Miranda.

Wonderful? Yes, wonderful. It might not be the critics’ favourite but that’s because it’s a throwback to more gentle times. The eponymous Ms Hart is a breath of fresh air in the current comedic climate.

Unpretentious, self-deprecating and a master – or should that be mistress? – of the slapstick turn, she exudes a feel-good factor which evidently rubs off on fellow cast members who appear to enjoy making the show as much as we enjoy watching it.

No bad language, few sexual references, just a rich panoply of embarrassing scenarios, misfortunes and neuroses to which many of us – male or female – can relate.

It is what I call very funny. Such fun…

■ If you’ve yet to discover the joy of Miranda, watch BBC2 8.30pm today. You won’t regret it. Oh, and she's from Petersfield. Hurrah!

■ Check out a recent interview with Miranda Hart here.

Go west young man - and freeze to death

For the benefit of Mr Kite and others who don't take the Petersfield Post, here's my feature on the recent trip west with Petersfield Town Juniors under-15s...

It would not come as too much of a surprise to learn that scientists gather annually in a holiday park in Aberystwyth to unearth the reasons behind why it is unique on earth in having caravans colder on the inside than the atmosphere outside.

It may be of course that the caravan we stayed in over the Bank Holiday weekend contains an anomaly in the space-time continuum and that it contains, in some small parts, pieces of the planet Jupiter. Certainly, its use as a time-travelling vehicle would not come as a surprise to the seven of us forced to endure it. It dated from the 80s and probably hadn’t been cleaned since just after.

When Howard Carter broke through into Tutankhamun’s tomb there was less dust than there was in our toilet. And there were homeless winos in Aberystwyth shop doorways who could dribble with more velocity than our shower provided.

I wouldn’t blame you if you shrugged and said “Well it’s your fault for going to Aberystwyth…”

But we had little choice. That was where the Welsh International Football Festival was being played and Petersfield Town Juniors under-15s were flying the flag for England. Or so we thought. When we de-camped to the bar on the opening night we found that Purbrook Youth under-16s were also taking part. But the English were not there in force other than a few stragglers.

I believe we drew the short straw with the caravan. And not just because we had to share with Nurse Gladys (Andy, the team physio). To be fair to Gladys, he did superbly as chef, earning himself the nickname of Hiroshima, after the condition of the kitchen when he’d finished every day.

He even managed to work out how to light the gas fire, which entailed taking it apart and rebuilding it from scratch every time you wanted some heat.

Others, however, seemed reasonably happy with their accommodation.

Ours was more damp than an otter’s pocket. My brand new paperback had curled and crumpled after only a day in the bedroom. At least it was called a twin bedroom. What it actually contained was a set of parallel bars with some padding on them. Beds aren’t naturally that narrow. And neither am I. I’m sure in a previous occupancy they may have doubled as bookshelves.

The discomfort of my first night balancing precariously on this ‘bed’ - though I prefer to think of it as a razor blade - was exacerbated by having a sleeping bag that was a) broken; and b) a child’s version.

My step-son Ben was apparently aware of both these facts when he helped me pack it into the car but didn’t deem it worth passing on the information.

And the bar didn’t sell pear cider. So I was not in the best of moods when the football started on Saturday. It was cold and windy. Naturally, it was Wales. But at least it wasn’t raining - no wonder the principality’s residents aren’t too concerned about global warming.

“Poor old Dave,” said trip organiser Maria. “You don’t look very pleased to be here.” A very shrewd woman is Maria.

On the plus side, my third and final night in our temporary gulag could be spent on a double bed as the previous night’s occupants planned to travel home a day early, on Sunday evening, after the cessation of footballing hostilities.

But wouldn’t you know it - never trust teenage boys - they only went and won the thing. Everybody was so delighted that we planned to spend the evening celebrating, so the early departure plans were scrapped.

It meant Ben and I had to return to the parallel bars for one more night. Belatedly I discovered that a night celebrating - albeit without pear cider - is a panacea for bed problems.

Not such good news for Ben though, who complained next morning that I snored like a burglar alarm in a fog-horn factory and that he’d got very little sleep.

Serves him right. If he hadn’t scored in the final I might have been spread out on a double bed.

An extra topping of menu please...

Tucked in among the office post this morning were three envelopes marked for ‘The Pizza Connoisseur’ The Azalea Group, etc, etc.

Not surprisingly they landed on my desk. I can’t argue for, in the past, I have been known to order a delivery pizza for my lunch when I have been feeling extremely stressed.

What was more surprising, however, was that each of the envelopes – which all carried a second-class stamp – contained an identical Papa John’s menu.

Three of them. On the same day.

Papa John’s menus are the commonest form of junk mail in Petersfield. On average each household receives 1.4 metric tonnes of Papa John’s menus per annum. To counteract this, the local council has upped its recycling collection while allowing Domino’s Pizza to open nearby and set about doubling the tally.

But previously, they were just shoved through the letterbox by kids who were already delivering free papers – thus there was an automatic QA traceable route from letterbox straight to recycling bin.

But now they’re posting them to us, three at a time, teasingly addressed to the Pizza Connoisseur. It’s a subtle marketing ploy. And it may just work.

Ooooh!! Buy one get one free… Mmmmm!

Whatever happened to frivolous youngsters?

Every day, my life is brightened up slightly when the email from Petersfield Newswire arrives with that day's 'story'.

I know the guys involved and we share the same sense of humour, so we all appreciate the same things about our little market town of Petersfield.

However, it would appear not everybody thinks the same. When I had a look at the site a few minutes ago I was amazed by the reaction - and subsequent comment - of a reader to yesterday's post about mephedrone.

Teenagers are accused of many things but I certainly didn't think being humourless would be one of them.

One off the wrist

I have written before about the travails of my walk to work every morning but it took on a new, sinister turn this morning ... well it's all relative.

If you are not au fait with my walk to work, let me elucidate: the last 600 or so yards are on a road with no pavement which is busy with people travelling to work at the offices of East Hants District Council.

I'm no string bean, therefore if I'm walking on the road, facing incoming traffic, cars often have to slow down to allow traffic coming from the other direction to pass before pulling out to overtake me.

Quite often they don't look too happy about it. And understandably so: the extra five or six seconds it takes probably means they have to park one space further away from the main entrance.

But this morning one man decided he wasn't prepared to wait. With a look of grim determination on his face he actually accelerated towards me in an attempt to get through before the opposing vehicle. He did not veer out at all and clipped my wrist with his wing mirror.

I was so shocked I didn't have the nous to take down his registration number. I almost forgot to mouth the word 'tosser' after him as well, but somehow regained my demeanour in order so to do.

This shaven-headed moron - you know the type: probably keeps a Staffordshire bull terrier in order to make up for the fact he has the intellectual capacity of a tub of cottage cheese - has made a rod for his own back.

If I see him coming again in the next few weeks I will ensure he hits me square on - at 20-plus stone I'll do some damage to his car plus I have the number for Ambulance Chasers Direct programmed into my mobile.

Your days are numbered muppet!

Anybody got a chopper?

If you've seen any tv news or listened to the radio this morning, you can't help but notice that my home town of Petersfield is currently the centre of the snowbound universe.

We haven't had this much attention since the plane crash, our last murder or the time a young woman's body was found by the side of the A3. Hopefully this won't have the same consequences as any of those.

One of the parents from our youngest's football team has been stuck on the A3 at the Ham Barn roundabout for nearly six hours and has featured on both radio and tv. What a media whore!

I spoke to him just now and, not surprisingly, he sounds really tired. He finished work at Heathrow at 1am and should really be in a deep slumber by now.

His only request was that if somebody could airlift him a bacon sarnie it would be very much appreciated. Good luck Andy.

Where's me Horlicks?

I'm tired. It's been nearly a week since I last blogged. I'm sorry.

I'm all out of inspiration because, not to put too fine a point on it, I'm shagged out. Our current workload is very heavy and, consequently, I could sleep for England.

Admittedly I've never been the most energetic of individuals - or the fittest; indeed, only last week I got out of breath chewing a toffee - but better men than I would wilt under such circumstances.

Sure there have been some things worth blogging about. Tiger Woods' car crashes for example. The one where he hit the fire hydrant and the extended one involving his 'PR advisors' - and I use the term loosely.

But everybody's done that. I could moan about yesterday's trip to Brighton from Petersfield, which instead of taking around an hour and a quarter, took nearly three hours because of some neanderthal in Worthing rubbing two sticks together to discover fire.

Instead of changing at Havant and then tootling into Brighton on a comfortable Southern train, I changed at Havant. Then Barnham. Then Littlehampton. Then caught a replacement bus to Worthing, where I was joined by a nutter straight out of a Jasper Carrott routine who intermittently shrugged his shoulders with a jerk while shouting "DURRINGTON!" or some other conurbation highlighted by a road sign. And from Worthing I caught my final train into Brighton.

I could moan about the fact that if I see that Mexican git eulogising about Southern trains on tv again I will throw our youngest child at the set. I could do that, but I won't because it's the kind of inconvenience I imagine commuters put up with on a daily basis.

Nor will I comment on the farce that is Portsmouth Football Club which is in danger of being the longest-running comedy since Leslie Phillips starred in Oops I've Fallen Over and Planted My Head Between the Breasts of the Vicar's Wife, which enjoyed several strong seasons at the Dewsbury Empire. 

I'm too tired for all that. And maybe too old. And maybe even too forgetful.

Nor will I comment on the farce that is Portsmouth Football Club which is in danger of being the longest-running comedy since Leslie Phillips starred in Oops I've Fallen Over and Planted My Head Between the Breasts of the Vicar's Wife, which enjoyed several strong seasons at the Dewsbury Empire.

(Did you see what I did there..?)

And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint...

I went down to Portsmouth on Friday to meet up with a few old mates who I hadn’t seen in some time.

I don’t go down to Pompey much now, except to pick up and drop off my son at weekends – and he doesn’t live anywhere near the centre.

But when I do go it all looks so different – it’s hard to believe I lived there for the first 35 years of my life. Very few of my teenage haunts remain, and if they do they tend to have been renamed after a colour and either a fruit or animal of indeterminable origin.

Portsmouth has always been a ‘hard’ city, built as it was on the navy and the sore thumbs of thousands of dockies.

By the way, the phrase ‘chip on the shoulder’ is believed to have originated in Pompey dockyard was back in the 17th century. I’m sure there is a website confirming this etymology somewhere, but I really can’t be arsed to find it.

Anyway I digress. Portsmouth has always been a ‘hard’ city, but I didn’t realise, after living away from it for 11 years just how much of a big Jessie I had become.

This was brought home to me in the early hours of Saturday morning when, after a distinctly average curry, I lost a filling on an After Eight mint. Even soft mints are hard enough to take out a filling in Portsmouth when you’ve spent 11 years living in the semi-rural confines of fluffy Petersfield.

So it was, that this morning I found myself registering with a dentist in fluffy Petersfield – not having bothered in the previous 11 years in protest at the dearth of NHS options.

Those particular chickens came home to roost when I realised what bad condition my molars were in. As the lady dentist leaned over what felt like a chasm in my tooth, she asked her hygienist to prepare some cement.

“How much?” asked the hygienist, presumably of the opinion that I could do with having my entire mouth filled.

“Not a bucketful,” replied the dentist.

Had I not, at that moment, had a young lady poking around in my oral cavity, I would have assuaged my natural curiosity by asking if there were only two quantities of cement which could be prepared: a bucketful, and not…

However, as the aforementioned young lady was, at that very moment, poking around inside my cavity with a sharp implement I’m sure I last saw in a tableau on board HMS Victory, I decided against imparting a remark which might have been interpreted as sarcastic.

Having not visited a dentist for more than a dozen years, it was amazing how familiar the sights, smells, and sensations felt. It might well have been yesterday that I last had weapons of mandible destruction wielded in my mouth. The scrapings, the sound … it was all so familiar.

What was hugely different was the fact that as I departed my new chamber of horrors of choice I was clutching a bill which amounted to a three-figure sum. And to get full value from it I have to return next Monday for more of the same.

Folks, as the great Pam Ayres once opined, I wish I’d looked after me teeth…

Is it me?

When I was a youngster programmes like Dr Who, Star Trek and Lost in Space convinced impressionable youngsters that we would be invaded by an army of alien machines who would colonise earth by use of mind-control devices.

Forty years later, and travelling to London on a commuter special - the 7.45am Petersfield to London Waterloo - yesterday I realised that day had come to pass.

Everybody, other than your correspondent, was being fed mind-control instructions from a hand-held device called a Blackberry. It really was like a scene out of a cheap 60s' sci-fi drama.

It appeared to me that nobody in the carriage was resorting to the traditional commuter-travel standby of a national newspaper, or the latest pot-boiler from Jackie Collins. Admittedly I had on my MP3 player, listening to Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent - after all it wouldn't do to engage in conversation with other species - but at least I was aware there were other people around.

For everybody else the entire world was contained in a small metallic box only slightly larger than the average wallet and subsequently the panacea for all ills was displayed on a LCD screen smaller than a credit card.

Thousands of years of evolution - all for this. What are these people doing? Twittering? Blogging even? Are they labouring under the illusion there are people out there who really give a toss about what they think? Who'd be stupid enough to believe that...?

My incredulity was only heightened when I alighted at Waterloo and took the Northern Line to Leicester Square and then the Picadilly Line to King's Cross St Pancras - I'm nothing if not thorough when it comes to setting a scene.

On the Underground there was every living cliche you could think of:

• the broad-shouldered rugby-playing ex-public schoolboy, now city trader, in his £600 suit and £300 shoes with his hair slicked back completely using enough oil to provide the annual gross domestic product for a small third world country;
• the overweight teenage mum resplendent with huge hoop earrings and complete with pushchair and small child, still stuffing her face with a family-size bag of Doritos despite the fact her leggings were screaming "enough already!" (she may have been Jewish as well...);
• the poor Asian student for whom carrying his textbooks in a rucksack automatically marked him out as a terrorist suspect to almost everybody in the carriage;
• the power-hungry, 40-something single-woman, dressed to kill and with a tongue to match - after all being rude to people is the only way to get on in a male-dominated society;
• the 'trendy young guys' who dress to give the impression they're at the cutting edge of fashion and may even be a rock star you haven't heard of, and who think they look really cool in their retro gear, whereas anybody over the age of 30 will tell you they look a 'knob!';
• the commuting banker, in three-piece Savile Row suit, with a rolled-up copy of the FT under one arm and a brolly in his other hand, despite the fact it's the warmest October day since the dinosaurs keeled over;
• the fat, long-haired, unshaven Motorhead t-shirt-wearing 30-year-old on his way to a Dungeons & Dragons convention in a dark room in Soho - this was not me by the way: I do not possess a Motorhead t-shirt;
• the knuckle-dragging, tattooed skinhead sporting a BNP badge and making snide comments about anybody "who shouldn't be in this country";
• the impeccably dressed gay, with his designer glasses and £500 man bag;
• the painter and decorator in paint-splashed overalls who takes great delight in brushing up against anybody in an expensive suit or anybody with impressive breasts;
• a middle-aged Japanese tourist who sees nothing wrong in wearing a 3/4-length denim jacket, with tracksuit trousers and a Van Heusen shirt...

I could go on, but suffice to say that's the last time I attend a public transport users action group meeting...

Getting to work is an adrenaline rush

I walk into work these days. And so I should, it's only just over a mile as the crow flies or a little bit more than that the way a lardarse ambles.

That's not to say I don't arrive at the office a steaming, sweaty mess, like a jogger. I do. But it's not just down to the fact I'm fat, sweat a lot and my thighs chafe if I walk more than 100 yards without splaying them out sideways.

It's also nervous tension, because for a large part of the walk I'm on a road with no pavement - or sidewalk if you're one of our trans-Atlantic cousins.


The suggested policy for this is, of course, to walk on the side of the road facing incoming traffic. That in itself should not pose too much of a problem. But I have discovered that most of the incoming traffic using this route - I've included a dodgy map, above, for real anoraks or people who are familiar with Petersfield - appear to be heading to work at the East Hants District Council offices and are subsequently in quite a bad mood.

Hence they object to a fat bloke waddling down their side of the road and forcing them to brake if there's a vehicle coming in the other direction. Some of the looks they send in my direction could send a lesser man scurrying into the adjacent undergrowth.

They appear to be suggesting I should walk off the Tarmac and instead wend my way through the knee-high grass, nettles and soft-drink cans, like the squirrels and badgers do. I do keep to the side but draw the line at turning in David Attenborough merely to get to work.

And keeping to the side's not easy. There is a distinct camber on the road which means I walk as if I have a club foot, dragging it behind me, giving the uneasy impression of a psycho leaving the scene of a murder as quickly as my disability will allow.

The only way to keep my feet on the same level would be to face into the road and walk sideways as if I was keeping close to a wall, like a prisoner-of-war attempting to evade a camp searchlight. And that, quite simply, is just not worth the embarrassment.

No wonder some of the drivers mouth obscenities at me for having the audacity not to trust my journey to the internal combustion engine.

I'll think I'll get myself a Lambretta ... and maybe a fish-tail parka.

A step too far

I live in Petersfield, a wonderful little market town in east Hampshire.

I moved here 12 years ago from Portsmouth, where I’d lived for 34 years, man and boy, born and bred.

It is quite a contrast: every morning I walk to work and somebody who I’ve never seen before will pass me on the street and say ‘hello’. Yet in Pompey – the nickname of the old naval city of Portsmouth for those of you unfamiliar with the vernacular – I spent a year living in a house on my own and didn’t even get to know the names of my immediate neighbours.

In the excellent Tales of the Country, by the Independent newspaper columnist Brian Viner, he explains that when he moved out into the country his social circle changed considerably.

Whereas when he lived in London most of his circle were roughly the same age – a demographic driven by becoming parents – out in a small village, age was not a deciding factor in friendships. You made friendships purely because of things you had in common, hence he often had elderly couples round for dinner who had become very good friends with he and his wife.

On a smaller scale this is also what I have discovered since moving to Petersfield. I spent a spell on the local council and made friends there; I made friends with people involved with the local football club – both senior and the youth version; and I’ve chummed up with other people since joining a local pub quiz team (our age ranges from 26 to 49 depending on who’s available).

Life’s good here in Petersfield; I even write a little column for one of the town’s two weekly paid-for newspapers - how a town of this size can justify two weekly paid-fors, two freesheets and several free monthly magazines baffles me - on the travails of a parent of a 14-year-old playing youth football.

I’ve also been recruited by our local festival organisers to do a bit of compering in the town square – Petersfield has a food festival in May, the main ‘festivities’ on August bank holiday, and a Christmas version. All of the people involved are volunteers and do a great job.

However – and this is the point of me rambling on for nearly 400 words – the people behind the Petersfield Festivities have come up with a controversial plan. They wish to shut off the traffic at weekends and re-locate the statue of William III which has been there since 1812, to allow more events to take place in the square.

Now I’m all in favour of shutting the High Street and making more use of the square. I’d do it permanently if it was within my remit. It is a glorious little square which gives Petersfield the air of a French town.

I’ve passed many an hour sat outside Caffe Nero with a coffee watching the local great and good traversing the square. And we certainly don’t make the most of it.

Now I’m no fan of any member of the Royal Family – particularly a Dutchman who took the throne by force and had very little interest in the country or its citizenry – but I do like a bit of local heritage. And to move the statue would be a travesty.

Especially when we could simply move the ubiquitous Pimms stall to the High St side of the statue and do away with any ‘sight-line’ problems when a stage is erected.

The bottom line is: pedestrianised town centre good; loss of Dutch bloke’s statue bad. And I'm hoping people will agree with me on that . . . it would make a change.