Black Country wisdom

Last week - being the half-term break - saw us returning home to the Dudley area for a brief holiday. While there, we took Guthlac to the slightly shabby but nonetheless enjoyable Dudley Zoo, one of his favourite places.

While trekking round the reptile and creepy-crawlies house, we overheard the following dialogue:

Small girl (standing nervously in front of the tarantulas): Mummay! Iss freakin' me owt!
Mother (from round corner): Well doe look arrit then.

Sound common sense, as so often found in this so down-to-earth part of the country.

And widely applicable, I believe. Make someone called Aynuk UN secretary-general, and many of the sources of global angst would disappear.

"We are deeply offended by the blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)!"
"Well doe look at them then."

"We deeply oppose the idea of building a mosque in our beautiful, Christian city."
"Well doe look arrit then."

"This celebrity magazine has Katie Price on the cover."
"Doe look arrit then. In fact, bairn it. Bairn all celebrity magazines."

I'd vote for it.

Dungeons, Dragons and Ballpits

When I was a geeky teenager with bad hair, I and some similarly afflicted chums found solace from our socially disadvantaged state by retreating into the imaginary world of Dungeons and Dragons, where all fights could be sorted out by rolling several 20-sided dice and doing an immense amount of looking stuff up in tables, and all women were well-muscled, clad in skintight leather and entirely imaginary.

One of my pals in this undertaking - in fact the one who had introduced the rest of us to the pastime - was a particularly sadistic plump boy named Lucas. Lucas had a vicious streak and often acted as Dungeonmaster - nothing to do with naughty goings on in leather underwear (fortunately, as you'd agree if you'd seen him) - but rather the person who designed the virtual dungeon which the rest of us would explore in our alter-egos as Halfkutt the Barbarian Warrior, Thruthelthrolth the Wizard and Gimni the Dwarf or some such.

"There is a door on the right. What do you want to do?" Lucas would ask neutrally.
"We'll open it!"
[Consult tables, look at graph-paper, roll dice]
"A huge spiked steel ball on a chain has swung down out of the darkness."
[We throw dice against our dexterity scores]
"Your head has been smashed to pulp, splattering your brains 20 feet down the passageway and qualifying you for a job teaching classics at Wellington!" he would announce with an evil grin.

I often wonder what happened to him. Last Friday I found out - he's designing softplay areas for small kids. It was pouring with rain, so the usual Friday session at the park that Guthlac and I enjoy was off. A quick internet search revealed an appealing-looking softplay venue not too far away, so off we went.

For those without small kids, let me briefly outline what a softplay area is - it's basically a large industrial building (usually a converted warehouse) containing a few tables, a snackbar and a massive construction made of scaffolding covered in brightly coloured vinyl padding and containing a labyrinth of walkways, slides, rope ladders, tunnels and ball-pits. The basic idea is that parents take their kids along, post them into the labyrinth and then sit down for a cup of tea until the kids escape.

Except that Guthlac - a kindly and generous boy - wanted his hapless father to share the fun experience, having failed to register that all the tunnels, passageways etc were designed to small kid scale rather than overweight middle-aged man scale.

Worming my way uncomfortably after him, I suddenly heard in my mind's ear the sepulchral voice of Lucas saying "You have attempted to squeeze between two rollers and have become trapped halfway into the Death Ballpit of Nagoth-Rha. A bevy of evil goblins disguised as small children will now pelt your bald head with brightly-coloured plastic balls while you squeal like a pig, enhancing their enjoyment considerably."

I hope he goes bankrupt.

Surrealism at home

Scene: My home, this morning.
Dramatic personae: Gyppo Byard, Guthlac (aged two and a half), Djangolina (Aged 12)

Guthlac: Daddy?
GB: Yes?
G: A'am Spar'kus.
GB (blankly): You are sparkers?
G: No, a'am Spaaa'rkus.
GB: You are starkers?
G: No, a'am Spaaaaaaaaa'arkus"
GB: You are Spartacus?
G: Yes. I am Spartacus.
Djangolina: No, I am Spartacus!
G: No, I am Spartacus (launches spirited attack on sister's midriff)

I have to go through this every day. So do they...

An open letter to Pastor Terry Jones

"Gosh" both my readers must be thinking at this point "Just what the world needs - more comment on International Koran-burning Day!"

My initial response was to call for 12 September to be designated "INTERNATIONAL BURN ALL THE POINTLESS AND COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE MEDIA COVERAGE OF SOME OBSCURE FUNDAMENTALIST PILLOCK'S BURN A KORAN DAY DAY", but having thought again realised I could squeeze out a blog posting on the matter while it is fresh in everyone's minds.

So here goes:
------------------------------------
To Pastor The Rev Terry Jones, Dove World Outreach Center, Gainsville.

OI! TERRY!

You daft git.

What the hell were you thinking? Are you just trying to stir up trouble for perverse sadistic pleasure?

On balance, I think not. Were you attempting that, I'm sure you could have done better. Were I seeking to offend the Muslim Ummah, I would announce that I would shortly be hosting "International Bar-B-Q Some Pork Chops Over A Pile Of Burning Koran Briquettes And Then Force-Feed Them To Ms Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Day". But I'm not going to, because I'm not a nasty person by nature. Not that sort of nasty anyway. And even then not against Muslims, who despite having a tiny lunatic fringe are in my wide experience of having lived in a Muslim country for six years charming and lovely people.

No - this isn't about offence. Really. I find myself drawn to two key facts about your "church" - it has 50 worshippers and it doubles as a furniture factory. Those hardly propel it into the ranks of influential global spiritual centres no, do they?

There you are, doubtless with ideas well above your station, grinding your teeth about the insufferable injustice of feeling yourself a world-class religious figure and being confined to the rigours of preaching to (and more to the point receiving tithes from) some 50 people, a significant proportion of whom doubtless arrive for divine service in pickup trucks containing arsenals of illegally-held banjoes.

The tithes from such a flock are not even enough to afford crystal meth and gay masseurs like a real preacher, are they?

O for a truly major publicity stunt, eh? Preferably one that would bring in money from and influence over the South's extreme right. Even better, you don't actually have to risk setting fire to your cuffs by igniting anything. Make the threat, get the damn-fool media to splash it all over the world and then back out.

And you know what? You've succeeded. Gimp.

The BBC - it's the new C of E

A thought long fermenting in what I am pleased to call my brain makes an interesting historical link between the curates of the Victorian era and the linen-suited denizens of Broadcasting House's corridors today.

Under the Great White Mother and Kaiser-i-Hind, Oxford and Cambridge produced a surfeit of vaguely posh and vaguely but pointlessly educated young chaps who lacked the drive and physical fitness to go off and join the army or indeed any discernable professional skills, but who nonetheless thought of themselves as part of a God-chosen elite destined to order others about. The only appropriate career thus open to them was the Church, in which they could stand in pulpits and lecture the population at large about the moral, aesthetic and intellectual deficiencies of their hard-labouring, poverty-haunted lives.

Oxford and Cambridge - never institutions to go charging ahead with radical reform - still manage to produce a worrying surfeit of vaguely posh and vaguely but pointlessly educated young chaps and similar young gels who share the desires, ambitions and lack of appropriate talents of their Victorian forebears. But nowadays, alas, the C of E provides very little in the way of full pews to harangue.

And in any case, the church today provides very little for anyone in the way of career benefits besides camping about in fancy tat and drinking free wine, qualities which have led the priesthood to become colonised by inverts to a degree that makes it impossible for the weak-kneed Silurian buffoon occupying the throne of St Augustine to avoid giving them pointy hats and crooks.

Where was I?

Oh yes - the decline of the church has led to ever decreasing cushy job opportunities for vaguely posh and vaguely but pointlessly educated young chaps to lecture the rest of us, which is where the BBC comes in - as an employer of first resort for vaguely posh and vaguely but pointlessly educated young chaps and a bully pulpit for telling everyone else how to live their lives in a patronising but uncomprehending manner. I rest m'case.

Things that occur to me at 3am

If - in furtherance of its attempt to join the EU - Istanbul offers to harmonise it national holidays to include those celebrated by current EU members, could we get away with using the headline "TURKEY VOTES FOR CHRISTMAS"?

World Cup games as they *should* be played: England vs Spain

Pre-kickoff: Spanish manager Philip II orders Italian designer boots for his team, unfortunately failing to realize that Italian boot sizes are different from Spanish ones and thus creating a problem that will get worse the longer the match continues.

English striker F. Drake - widely tipped by the English press as the man to watch - surprises everyone by making a sudden dash down the wing during the singing of the Spanish national anthem, which ends dramatically with him setting fire to the Spanish goal and stealing the goalkeeper's water bottle, gloves, shorts and head; and then disappearing into the dressing room.

Though somewhat caught off balance by this, the Spanish start strongly, moving into the English half in a crescent formation against which the English defence can do little. Comfort for the home fans comes in the form of English defender Frobisher luring the Spanish striker Galleas onto rocks. Queen Elizabeth leads Tilbury supporters' club in a rousing chant of "You're not rowing any more!"

Half-time: With the still score at nil-nil, Drake reappears to suggest setting fire to several of the more expendable English players and shoving them into the Spanish dressing-room, a plan enthusiastically adopted and carried out.

Second half: Disconcerted Spanish try to mount further attack at which a thunderstorm interrupts game, affecting the taller and more metallic Spanish disproportionately.

85th minute: A late run up the wing for Spain ends in disaster when captain Medina Sidonia is caught by an unexpected Gulf Stream and wrecked on the Irish Coast. If you can imagine such a thing. Queen Elizabeth leads Tilbury supporters' club in a rousing chant of "You only whinge when you're sinking!"

In the absence of the Spanish team the English claim victory by default, while Drake takes possession of the Spanish goalmouth and quickly bangs in a hat-trick, before stealing the man of the match trophy and leaving for Portugal.