Speed Awareness

This weekend just gone, I went on a speed awareness course.

The first irony of many to be encountered across this post is that I was aware of precisely how fast I was going when I got nicked, back at the end of July – ie 37 mph.

What I was not aware of was that Truvelo Combi (pictured) cameras take pictures of you from the front if you pass them at a speed above the limit. I had always thought they were the ones that took your number going in to a “measured mile” type of speed trap and then got you on the way out if you’re too quick. 

Naturally, I had intended to slow down sharply right before passing the second camera.

So I had already learned something valuable a long time before going on the course.

I shall spare you any further details of my lawbreaking. Suffice to say I was eventually faced with the following options:

• A £60 fine and 3 points on my licence
• Go on a 4.5-hour speed awareness course, which costs £75

Considering the price of car insurance these days – and the risk of recidivism on my part (to which we will return later) – it was a no brainer.

Not only that, I thought it would give me something funny to write about here for you, my beloved readers. I was hoping for:

• A “scared straight” police lecture to take the piss out of;
• A local government health and safety boreathon to take the piss out of; or
• At least one or more foul-tempered 50+ Yorkshire arseholes who think that arguing with the poor schmuck giving the presentation will lead to the law being immediately changed in their favour and their course fee returned, with an apology for wasting their valuable time. To take the piss out of.

My hopes in these regards were to be dashed, although there was (inevitably) a little dash of each. Just not enough to really get stuck into.

Potentially ironic photograph

It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife, innit? That is to say, debatably ironic but primarily just a little bit disappointing and wearing.

To give them their due, the pair who ran the session were very entertaining – given the subject matter and the fact that most people there were being forcibly detained under pain of punishment for the first time since school. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, no less.

I did also learn a couple of things:

• Unless there’s a sign to say otherwise (or you’re on a motorway or dual carriageway) the presence of street lighting = 30 mph speed limit. “Built up area” means nothing in this regard.
• A multi-lane road is only a dual carriageway if there’s a central reservation – and this is important because there is a different national speed limit for single carriageways and dual carriageways (ie for cars, 60 mph and 70 mph, respectively).

I expect you knew all of that, right?

As you would expect, we also heard some harrowing stories about how cars going too fast had killed people, saw some harrowing videos of cars going too fast killing people, collectively imagined what it would be like be driving a car too fast that had killed some people etc.

For me however the problem was this. Even after 4.5 hours of listening, nodding along and generally taking it all in, I didn’t really feel as though I had done anything wrong.

I got done driving past a speed camera around 7pm in the evening. There was nobody around.

On one side of the road beyond the pavement, there was a brick wall with woods on the other side of it. The wall is approximately 6 feet high on the other side of it. So nobody is about to dive into the road from that side.

On the other side is a grass verge, a pavement, a small wall, a big open lawn and finally a block of flats.

The view is very good; there are no junctions or other hazards. There are streetlights. I’m checking all this on Google StreetView as I write, so this is not just how I remember it.  

I am not saying that I shouldn’t have been done because of all these things. I’m saying I can’t understand why there is a speed camera there, unless it is just an instrument of revenue-raising or tyrannising drivers with the threat of constant surveillance.

I just cannot see a real safety reason for that camera to be there - or for a lot of other cameras to be where they are. Which makes one think: "Yes, I understand and agree with everything you've said. But what has it got to do with the situation I found myself in, which was completely unlike everything you've talked about?"

Honestly, I wanted to come out of that course a changed man. For £75 you expect an epiphany, not just a couple of cups of coffee and a free pencil. I’m not sure I was even supposed to take the pencil.

But I didn’t.

I’m not an habitual speeder – on a scooter one rarely has the opportunity to break the limit. But I still believe in my stomach that the risk of getting caught or having an accident is sometimes outweighed by my need to be somewhere, fast. I can’t help it. It’s pre-rational.

I’ll probably still believe that right up until something awful happens.

Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?

You can wear what you like

When I see politicians calling for debate about banning burqas, I have to agree with this bloke – there’s nothing to debate, because this is Britain and people can wear what the hell they like.

The ostensible reason that this tiresome old chestnut has been hauled out of the fire once again is that some judge has said a Muslim woman can’t enter a plea in court wearing a veil on the grounds that her identity could not be verified without seeing her face.

As usual, the accompanying media hoo-ha is not actually about the legal arguments involved. Though not a lawyer myself, I am not aware of any legal precedent saying that people in court have to be identified facially. We have such marvels of the 19^th century as “finger-prints”, for example, which I am told many judges are these days inclined to accept as real evidence when imprisoning people, let alone confirming who they are.

I live in West Yorkshire so most days I see at least one fully-veiled person. I can say with some confidence that it is a rare day on which they are the most remarkably-attired person I will see. It bothers me no more than when I see a Sikh man wearing a turban, a Jewish man with ringlets or a student dressing like a ridiculous clown.

That’s nothing to do with being PC or “culturally sensitive”. I believe that it is a matter of being true to “proper British values” (whatever they are) to not give a toss what anyone else wears, thinks or does unless or until it impinges on others.

Sumptuary laws were one of the first things to be dumped in the move from feudalism here in the West, so it is staggering to me that anyone would think of bringing them back today.

As a motorcyclist, I cover my face in public places a lot. This should not lead anyone to regard me as a security risk or a source of suspicion.

I accept that when I go into private places – like petrol stations – the “terms of use” of that place often require me to take my crash helmet off. If I don’t like it I can buy petrol somewhere else where they have different rules.

I do not accept, however, that when I am in a public place I should have to prove anything to anyone by verifying my identity by means of showing my face, presenting my papers or scanning a barcode tattooed onto my forehead.

I am a citizen and the source of law and political authority in a democracy is the citizenry. The state is there for our convenience and protection, not the other way round. The law is there to protect citizens from each other AND FROM THE STATE, not the other way round. A woman with a bit of cloth over her nose and mouth poses no threat to me or you by virtue of having a bit of cloth over her nose and mouth. If she thinks it’s important, that trumps your aesthetic preferences or what is easier for you to deal with. End of.

Only one of these is a burqa

There is, of course, the argument that women are being coerced into wearing veils by the actions of men, supported by cultural norms within the relevant communities.

But banning veils doesn’t tackle that problem. It’s the equivalent of treating pneumonia with cough medicine – addressing an outward symptom only.

If you think that someone else’s culture is “wrong” about something like the treatment of women, then confront that point directly – not through some ridiculous sublimated proxy like banning items of clothing.

I suspect, indeed, that forcing women to remove their veils in public is unlikely to do much to promote the cause of feminism amongst outraged men who impose it on their wives and daughters because they think it is sacrilegious. It will just alienate them from the law and convince them that it regards Islam as an enemy.

And I suppose that the idea that “Islam is our enemy” is really what is at the bottom of a lot of this; that burqa-banning is a way for Islamophobes to indulge their prejudices while pretending that they are promoting some sort of liberal values.

What people wear is none of the state’s business and none of the law’s business, no matter what their religion, their gender or their race. 

Bring Back the Battle of the River Plate

A pocket battleship - HA HA HA

I was shocked and dismayed to discover that the naval battle recreated in Scarborough’s Peasholm Park in the “Scarborough Naval Warfare” event is now presented as fictional.

Because ever since I heard that a park in Scarborough staged a re-enactment of the Battle of the River Plate, I have been yearning with a passion to go and see what must have rated as one of the most randomly bonkers events going.

What does the very name “Scarborough” evoke, more than the 1939 South Atlantic encounter between the German commerce raider Admiral Graf Spee and Commodore Harwood’s Force-G? Nothing, obviously.

Tancred and I recently pitched up in Peasholm Park. Roger Jr had fallen off his scooter and was being examined in Scarborough hospital within an hour of our arriving in the North Yorks Moors on holiday. Elvira was in attendance, and the youngest and I were attempting to salvage some sort of pleasant leisure out of the whole accursed experience.

Roger Jr was fine, by the way – and that hospital’s bad reputation was, as far as we could see, entirely undeserved.

The Naval Warfare event wasn’t on that day, but the ships were out in the lake. Apparently, they are operated by council employees. People’s council tax is being spent training miniature sailors, for god’s sake.

I know that most people today would probably have no idea what the Battle of the River Plate was, or would give a toss if they did know. And that's probably why it was changed.

SCUTTLE! goes the real Graf Spee

But it seems a terrible shame that they – whoever “they” are – have just turned this event into a demonstration of little boats pretending to fight in a lake, rather than a lunatic commemoration of real history. 

More Lost Soles

Has it really been a month? Well, yes.

What have I been doing all that time? From what is about to follow, you would draw the conclusion that I had been lurking around woodlands inspecting litter.

That is not untrue, but it is a rather one-sided picture. I have been doing other things as well, many of them connected with my secret “real world” identity.

Apologies, then, if (i) you missed me or (ii) you thought I really was the 12th Century Norman king of Sicily.

And with that preamble still ringing in our ears, let us return to the mysterious world of abandoned clothing.

“Do we have to?” I hear you cry. 

To which I reply, "shut up".

OK, here we go - every parent's minor irritation: the lost single glove. No story here. Kids do it all the time. That's why some (insane) parents attach their offspring's gloves together on a piece of elastic. Clearly, getting beaten up every day of winter is a price worth paying to avoid having to buy a new pair. 

I don't know what this is and so I can't even begin to speculate about its story. 

Naturally, I don't touch any of this stuff. I might be strange enough to photograph stuff I find lying in the woods and in the gutters, but I do draw the line at physical contact. 

Is it a shirt? Is it some pants? Is it a onesie? No, I don't think it's a onesie. 

I suppose I will never know. 

This is a good one. A hoodie up a tree. Who left it there? Was it too hot? Why up a tree? I hypothesise that someone was playing football (or possibly kabbadi - why isn't that on TV any more?), took their top off and forgot all about it. 

Unlike most of my "captures" this looks pretty clean. Can't have been out in the elements for long. Perhaps someone came back for it shortly after this picture was taken. 

Now this is quite a haul. One boot, one sock and a pair of waterproof trousers. The other boot I found a few feet away, in case you were wondering. 

Oh, you weren't? Well, that's where it was anyway. 

I cannot begin to imagine the circumstances that would lead someone to take off their overtrousers, their boots and one or both socks while in a Yorkshire woodland. 

Well, I can imagine them. But I can't imagine them not needing to put them all back on again after finishing in order to get home without being caught. 

There comes a point I suppose where the most perturbing fact about all this becomes, not the never-to-be-told stories of the lost garments - but with what appears to be an unhealthy obsession on my part. 

It was funny to begin with. Especially when it was pants. Look, here are some more! Left in the middle of a footpath! 

But it's starting to look peculiar now. I think I had better stop. 

Post-Industrial Yorkshire

Walking my dog this weekend, I ended up in the ruins of an old mill.

It was called Buck Mill and it was on the banks of the River Aire. Seemingly, a mill of some sort had been there since the 17th century, but it fell into disuse in the late 1800s and was demolished in the 1930s.

Now, it is a half buried pile of stones, overgrown with moss and vegetation at the side of a footpath where nobody would even take a second glance.

For hundreds of years, this was where the people of the local area brought their wheat for grinding into flour. So it was the economic heart of this little corner of West Yorkshire.

By the time of the industrial revolution, it looked much like UNESCO World Heritage Site Salt's Mill a couple of miles up the waterway - but in what turned out to be a really crappy location.

The late Victorians built a bridge but it was too late for the mill. The bridge is in excellent condition for something of its age.

This is what Buck Mill looks like from the pathway to the bridge. You would not know it was there unless you took the trouble to look at the sign situated a strangely long way away from the actual site.



Buck Wood is full of huge chunks of rock (millstone grits, as it happens) and old bits of drystone wall. Apparently, there was a neolithic settlement in there thousands of years ago - although the evidence thereof today is pretty much restricted to the sort of post-holes and thoroughly mundane-looking bits of stone that archaeologists seem to get so excited about.

So it would be easy just to imagine that this ruined mill was nothing more than a natural phenomenon or yet another wall people stopped giving a toss about at some point in the past.

And yet it isn't. This is what happens to industrial heritage that stops being useful before people become nostalgic.

Working in the supremely ephemeral field of online marketing as I do, it was quite eerie walking around the practically invisible aftermath of a former phase of the UK's economy. Will we even leave this much of a trace a hundred years from now?

More to the point, what is down this mysterious hole? I didn't get any closer than this, but there is clearly a subterranean structure down there...

It was at this point that I was cursing my iPhone.

Sure, it takes good pictures, but why no zoom? Jesus, phones I had three or four years ago had zooms on their cameras!

Which is itself quite ironic, in terms of how quickly we come to take things that are quite miraculous in their own way for granted, and how unimaginable a different way of life really is.

Look at the state of the river if you want a lesson in taking things for granted.

This is a little side channel off the main Aire. When it's high, the water flows through. When it's low - as you can see - it's just a depository for all the crap that has fallen in or been thrown in upsteam.

Plastic bags look like being our generation's main legacy to future archaeologists.

And there are people living down here too. This was not actually at the mill, but a few hundred yards away.

We like to sneer at the Victorians and their class snobbery, their disregard for the poor, the squalor hidden away from respectable people. We are much more civilised, aren't we?

And yet here is a duvet in a reedbed.

Here are some burned cans of beer. This is within walking distance of my house (obviously).

I don't really know where I'm going with all this.

It was pouring with rain. It was freezing cold. That might have heightened the overall melancholy of the experience.

I just found the whole thing extremely sad. We like to think that society progresses, and yet here was evidence of it going backwards. Of traces of civilisation just being left to rot.

The only evidence that anyone is remotely concerned about what goes on down there once the joggers, dog walkers and cyclists are safely tucked up in bed was this. A fitting metaphor, I thought.

The White Caterpillar – Part 3

In which Roger of Sicily completes his daring journey home. Oh, hold on – that’s given away the ending. CONTAINS SPOILERS. Too late.

Part 4 – The Ramp

Five minutes before we got back onto the correct route for a 671 bus, I had texted Elvira saying that if the bus didn’t speed up, I was going to get off and walk.

Oh! The folly of impetuous youth, dear reader!

Turns out, we were stuck behind two cars that had collided in the middle of the road.

Why is it that by the time you get to the scene of an accident, they’ve always just managed to clear it out of the road?

Obviously, I’m not addressing that rhetorical question to any emergency rescue personnel who may be reading. It’s more directed at the casual sitter-and-waiter in traffic jams.

Into Rodley we headed, and I expected the worst. The road up to the notorious Rodley roundabout (the precise analogue of the Traverse of the Gods on the Eiger’s Nordwand) is almost always jammed up. The road from Calverley to Greengates is always jammed too, so I expected gridlock from this point onwards to the end of my bus journey.

“Hold on”, called the driver as we rounded the corner on the approach to the roundabout. I think he meant it in a jaunty, team-spirity way rather than in a literal, alarming way. But I did, just in case.

Well, the roundabout was indeed jammed – but NOT IN THE WAY WE WERE GOING!

I cannot tell you of the joy that went around the bus as we realised that traffic was coming out of Calverley, but none was going in. If the other passengers or myself had spoken to or looked at each other, I’m sure we would all have shared a very special moment of camaraderie. Still, it was implicit.

And on we sped, unimpeded by further traffic. Now that we were back on route, we started picking up passengers – loudmouthed secondary school gobshites mostly.

What is it about being in a school uniform and in a group that makes young people feel an obligation to shout?

And to shout complete bollocks at that?

We crossed the border into Bradford. Friendly territory at last. The bus pulled up and I barged past the teenage guttersnipes. “Well done”, I said to the bus driver as I disembarked.

Part 5 – The Second Ice Field

I had rested for about two hours by this time, and my clothing – while hardly dry – was at least warm.

I must here take the opportunity to pay tribute to my shoes.

The standard, black leather lace-up, brogue-style ankle boot may not be the most fashionable piece of footwear in the men’s department right now. Especially when it has a rounded toe and a rubber sole with “Clarks” embossed on it.

But by god they kept my feet warm and dry, no matter what I was walking through. And as we all know, wet feet are objectively the single worst thing in the whole universe.

Those shoes are the unsung heroes to whom I must pay tribute.

I hopped off the bus and immediately noticed a change in the road conditions since I had boarded.

The snow was now much wetter and rain-like. The road was covered in slush.

Oh brown slush! Child of snow and mud and sly dog poo - how I had missed you!

The thaw had truly begun.

Thus heartened, I began the final yomp back to Casa Sicily.

Walking on snow is really quite uncomfortable. As I had discovered while trying to haul my bike to a suitable berth, brogues afford relatively little purchase. You are therefore forced to walk with flat feet, splayed outward, rolling your shoulders to maintain balance and forward momentum – in a manner reminiscent of the young Liam Gallagher.

[Facebook friends – notice anything familiar? Yes, I am reusing status updates from last month! ODHSNM used to be so much better...]

Back to the plot.

Are we all familiar with the thoracolumbar fascia? Also known as the thoracolumbar aponeurosis?

Good.

Long-term readers will know that this is an area of my back with which I have – if not outright trouble – then nagging doubts.

It turns out that this bit of muscle – which, I must say, feels a little bit too deep to be called a “fascia” – does a hell of a lot of the work when you’re walking uphill in snowy conditions with your feet turned out. And waterlogged, falling-down overtrousers etc.

15 minutes after arriving home, I was unable to bend at the waist. Two days later, the tops of my thighs and the backs of my calves joined in.

Strange, isn’t it, how one’s muscles will often wait a day or so before complaining about over extertion? It makes me think of that terrible silence between the crash and the child starting to cry. The longer that silence is, the more serious you know the screaming is going to be.

Onward and upward, upward and onward I went. By now, the snow was pretty much just rain. I was steaming like a Grand National winner. I kept telling myself “just get to that point then you can stop for a rest”.

I soon realised that “stopping for a rest” would result in my entire body ceasing to function properly – which would necessitate what the mountaineers call a “bivouac” (ie sleeping in a ditch until someone rescued me). In the words of Gaston Rebuffat:

“The human animal in me was unhappy”.

So I didn’t stop and on and on I went. I measured the distance covered the next day. Two miles.

I know it doesn’t sound very impressive. But then the Eiger is only about 13000 feet high, which is about two and a half miles. And I walked further than that. Yes, with a bus journey in the middle, and yes, on a slightly shallower gradient. But a GREATER DISTANCE nonetheless.

Eventually I made it home. My children rejoiced at my return: Roger Jr by carrying on watching TV in the living room; and Tancred by attempting to bring me in on his side in his ongoing, screamed demand for crisps.

Always Tancred with the crisps. Oddly, after he was bought off with chocolate buttons, he proclaimed “I’m not crying any more Daddy” – as if he had only just noticed. However, he started again soon after the buttons were gone.

Part 6 – Epilogue

That evening, I took one final leaf out of the book of Heinrich Harrer – and indeed of the many other 19^th and early 20^th century explorers whose books I have been reading in recent years.

They often treat brandy as a medicine for fortifying people. In general, we no longer use strong alcohol as a means of bringing people to their senses – but I thought, why not? If it was good enough to get Andreas Heckmair down the mountain, it should be good enough for me.

However, by mistake I drank the best part of half a bottle of whisky and instead of being fortified and revived, I became even more tired – and had a hangover on top of the manifold aches and pains the next day. Clearly, my constitution differs from theirs in more ways than one.

Nevertheless, I did manage to get my bike back the next day. All the snow melted overnight, as if it had never been there. Had it all been a dream?

Architecture and Morality

I have been wandering around Leeds city centre at lunchtimes since the start of the year.

Given that one can only get so far and still have enough time to get back to the office, as you can probably imagine, the novelty soon wore off.

However, seeing as I am doing it for exercise – having cancelled my gym membership at the end of the year – I have been persevering with it, while trying to find new ways of making it interesting.

First off, I am listening to my Michel Thomas German language course a lot. All I need to take this to the next level (as we say whilst inwardly dying in management meetings) is find someone else who wants to speak German and start speaking to them. In German.

Right now, all I’m doing is walking about whispering to myself – which is, of course, the international language of the mental patient.

Secondly, I am looking up.

Most of the people shuffling around the city streets rarely raise they eyes above the level of the shop-fronts. I, however, have been looking at the uppermost parts of Leeds’ buildings and I’ve reached two conclusions:

1. There is a hell of a lot of vacant commercial property in the city centre - so if you need business premises, you should be able to get a very good deal.

2. If you flooded or buried Leeds to a depth of about 15 feet, you'd actually be left with quite a beautiful place.

There are some really fascinating buildings around which you would never give a second glance to because of the staggeringly banal contents of their ground floors. The most extreme example of former "oooh" and present "meh" surely has to be the one-time Jubilee Hotel on The Headrow – now the "Red Leopard" lapdancing establishment.

My personal favourite is St Paul’s House in Park Square (right). It looks like the Doge’s Palace, only with an “office space to let” sign pinned to the outside.

The Leeds City Markets building (at the top) would not look out of place in Paris or Vienna, despite being inhabited primarily by people offering to unlock stolen mobile phones. And the Town Hall is also a thing of beauty.

THEN, you look at what’s in between these brilliant examples of Victorian ambition and craftsmanship and you realise that if the Victorians were wrong about one thing, it was that history moves forwards towards a better future. 

Pretty much every building from the 20^th century onwards looks horrendous, cheap and nasty.  The court buildings look like they’ve been made out of Lego, for example. And they probably have. 

“Ah, here he goes again, imagining the past was SO MUCH BETTER than the present”, I hear you say. “The reason why old buildings look better than modern ones is that the crap old buildings fell down or were knocked down years ago.”

Please excuse any Prince Charles tendencies here. Some modern buildings are indeed impressive and beautiful in their own way. The Gherkin in London is quite something.

But – to me - they are things you look at and say “that’s a clever statement” rather than “that is a work of art”. Same as the difference between Tracey Emin’s bed and a Caravaggio.

 So, present-day architects: more stone-work please. More domes. More intricacy, less concept please. OK?

Tetley Brewery - or what's left of it

Another thing you notice about Leeds’ buildings is how many of them are completely derelict. I’m not talking about boarded up shops – I mean entire city blocks of buildings going to ruin. The whole area just north of the bus station, for example, around Templar Street and Lady Lane.

Clearly, no one is going to buy them or rent them in their present condition. So why not demolish them?

In fact, here’s an early policy for my future dictatorship. If a building is left unoccupied for more than a year, it has to be EITHER opened up to homeless people OR blown up and returned to nature until someone can think of something worthwhile to put there instead. 

Horsforth and my balls are drenched

Yesterday, I got completely soaked on the way home from work. When I set off in the morning on my trusty scooter, it was a beautiful sunny day.

When I say “beautiful sunny day” you will of course interpret this relatively.  

By the time I arrived at work, it had started to rain and it pretty much didn’t stop from then on. In fact, I don’t think it has stopped yet.

That morning, I did not put my waterproofs on. For some reason, I have developed a bizarre aversion to putting my heavily-armoured and waterproof overtrousers on. It has just become another one of those things I avoid doing even though I almost always feel better after having done so – like shaving or touching ham.

So I just had on normal work trousers and a leather jacket – of a style one might refer to as a “blouson”. Plus helmet and gloves, OBVS.

A brief aside to follow up on and qualify the rave review I gave the Nolan N103 crash helmet back in February 2011.  

1. If you put the helmet on and your hair or face are already a bit wet, the whole “won’t steam up” pinlock magic doesn’t work.
2. The pinlock insert itself has, over the course of a year, wriggled itself a bit loose from the visor being put up and down – and where it has ground against the windscreen, both have scratched at the top and bottom, leaving me with two regions I can’t now see properly out of.

I don’t suppose you get too many reviews of wear and tear on crash helmets, but that, dear friends, you can have for free.

Anyway, back to yesterday morning when I was deciding what to wear. The sun was shining (see disclaimer above) and it is June. How bad could getting a bit wet be?

As the day wore on and the rain came down more and more heavily, but instead of becoming gloomy at the prospect of a soaking my inner Stoic took charge.

“You’re going to get very wet going home, but there’s no way you can avoid getting wet;  you can only get so wet; and as soon as you get home, you can take the wet stuff off. C’mon it’ll be fun,” Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius was whispering into my ear.

Knowing that it was an unavoidable certainty rather than something I had to worry might happen, off I went home rather more cheerful than pathetic fallacy might have suggested.  

By the time I got to my bike, I was pretty soggy. By the time I had cleared Westgate, my trousers were wet through.

Well, I thought, if this is what I’ve been fretting about – if this is as bad as it gets – getting wet really is something only IDIOTS are afraid of.

O reader, knew I then what I now know of the extent and hideous process by which one can become even wetter I would have balked at my overconfidence.

I trundled merrily along, zipping in and out of traffic and laughing maniacally (in my head) at the poor benighted car-drivers who would have to sit in their queues for an hour or more – just because they were scared of a little bit of rain!

Soon, though, a cold discomfort spread to my inner thighs...

At this point, I suppose I should warn you that if the thought of my inner thighs is upsetting to you, it would be advisable to stop reading now – as further, more graphic reference will continue to be made to those regions which, if I were an aircraft, would be generically titled “undercarriage”.

That is rather unpleasant, I thought. It’s not unlike that feeling you get after you’ve been swimming and then sat around in your trunks for a while – you think you’re dry, you stand up, and you realise that certain areas are in fact still very wet. Unpleasant, but tolerable.

But shortly afterwards, as I drove through Horsforth (I had decided to go home a slightly different way! I know! Mi vida loca!) I felt what can only be described as a clenching sensation – reminiscent of a prodded snail retreating into its shell.

I don’t know if anyone here has ever dipped their testicles into cold water, but it is not something I can recommend. Gradually, the rain seeped through my undergarments and dug its icy talons into my beleaguered nutbag.

At the same time, let me add, I was grappling with the fact that I had put my helmet on AFTER getting wet – and so my visor was steaming up from the inside, as well as covered with droplets of rain on the outside. Seeing the road and traffic ahead was already pretty difficult, without the added distraction of intense scrotal chilling.

But, man’s capacity for enduring suffering is great. And soon I got used to it. I won’t say that I liked it – but, hey, adversity breeds strength of character, doesn’t it?

Plus, water goes down. Once it’s there, it’s got nowhere else to go.

OR HAS IT?

I shall spare you too detailed a description of what happened next, suffice to say that under certain, possibly very specific circumstances, water can move upwards. How?

CAPILLARY ACTION!

My face froze as I felt the rainwater creeping up my bumcrack. Slowly but inexorably – like a glacier – it made its cold passage.

-------

Epilogue:

In the intensely frustrating manner of HP Lovecraft, I dare not – must not – say any more. You would all go mad from reading it.

But, I for one will never NEVER leave my waterproofs at home again, and when I look into the cloudy sky forever more will I struggle to suppress a shudder. 

Top Ten English Place Names

The roast cream of old England

Having spent some 15 hours or so as a passenger in a car on English roads this weekend (including two hours at Markham Moor (northbound) services on the A1 awaiting recovery by the AA), I have had more time than usual to reflect on the wonderful variety and velvety richness of our English place names.

Rejoice, sons and daughters of merrie Englande, in the inventive dexterity of your mother tongue.

Rejoice also, for no matter how much modernity - or post-modernity or whatever shit era it is we currently live in – would iron out every crease and rumple of history into a smooth, shiny, ECHR-compliant, sensitivity-trained monotony, the powers that be ain’t never going to be able to change these names for something more reflective of the way we live today.

If they try, however, I am going take out a trademark on “Diversity Good Community” – which is surely some people’s dream future name for London.  

Before I begin to sound too much like the comments section on a Telegraph blog page and make reference to “ZaNU-Labour”, let me explain the methodology.

1. While I like smut as much as the next man, I am ruling out places like Bell End, Cocking and the many places that begin with “Gay” on grounds of being clichéd. You will see innuendo below, but I hope it will at least be relatively virgin innuendo.
2. This is not intended to be a complete or fair list. It’s pretty obviously focused in certain areas. If you have better suggestions, put them in the Comments section below like a good boy/girl.
3. In no way do I vouch for any of these places being actually funny, interesting or unusual. I don’t think I’ve actually been to any of them – I have just seen their names on road signs or on maps. I have no doubt that if I went to any of them and saw a Nisa Local alongside a prestigious new development of David Wilson Homes, or a high street with a Primark, a JD Sports and a load of charity shops, I would find them just as dreary and depressing as almost everywhere else in this country. If you want villages that are actually weird in the sense of interesting as opposed to weird in the sense of creepy, I refer you to the fiction section.

So, without further ado, let the listing commence!

Tydd Gote, Lincolnshire

As previously discussed, I love goats and so a village named after them AND spelled wrong has got to be on the list. Tydd Gote is deep in the Fens, where Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire not so much collide as seep into one another.

There are a whole host of Tydd-prefixed villages around there. Most of them are named after boring saints (not even good ones, like Botolph or Guthlac) – but you’ve got to love the Gote.

Barnoldswick and Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire

I can’t even say these words without pulling a Wallace and Gromit face. I would like also to give an honourable mention to Birtwistle Standroyd Bungalows in Colne, as delivering the ultimate Lancashire hit.

Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire

Roll that one around your palate, savour the earthy taste of Yorkshire phonemes and contrast with the above. That is the difference between chewing a white red and a red rose for you.

Lumbertubs, Northamptonshire

This whole area looks like a dreary modern suburb, but that name reaches straight out of the Middle Ages and grabs you in its hairy, calloused grip.

Donkey Town, Surrey

We used to live just a few miles from Donkey Town and yet we never went there. How amazing would a town of donkeys be? Probably about as amazing as Dewsbury.

Blubberhouses, North Yorkshire

That is a name that speaks for itself in all its Anglo-Saxon glory.

Lickfold, West Sussex

I promised you smut. Lickfold is very near to the almost as ridiculously-named Lurgashall, in what can only have been intended as an early public health warning.

Burton Coggles, Lincolnshire

Or, to give it its full name, Byrton-en-les-Coggles. Don’t let the sun go down on you here unless you know the secret of man’s red fire.

Hampole, South Yorkshire

Just off the A1, near to the city of Donk. Never fails to raise a smile.

Clenchwarton, Norfolk

Not far from Tydd Gote lies my favourite-named place in the whole country. Regular readers of the Comments section will know my fascination with the word “clench”, and here it is seared into the very land.

Say it out loud and you can taste the piece of grass in your mouth, feel the clay hat dribbling down your head and the rough canvas smock tickling you on the clenchwarton. If there is a more English place - nay WORD - out there than this, I have yet to hear it.

Bradford: Symbol vs Reality

Here in Yorkshire, there are two Bradfords. There are two places co-terminous in space but miles apart in other respects (or Respects, if you prefer) going by that name.

The first, which has been flung back into the public imagination in recent weeks, is “Bradford the Symbol” – Bradford, the illustration of whatever lesson the (inevitably London-based voice) you are listening to wishes to preach.

As long as that lesson revolves around (i) decline and stagnation or (ii) ethnic segregation, I should add.

So, we have the Bradford that proves David Cameron is out of touch – not something that requires a great deal of proving. We have the Bradford that proves Labour is finished in the north of England. And of course now we have Bradford the symbol of George Galloway’s spectacular victory/opportunism/ego (delete as your prejudices dictate).

We have the Bradford that proves that white working class people are awful. The Bradford that proves that poor people are all racists, and the Bradford that proves that they aren’t as well. British Bradford and not-British Bradford – take your pick, but just don’t come so close that you get your hands dirty with context!

I have particularly enjoyed the colourful depictions of “Bradree” or clan politics as if Bradford were in another world entirely.

I must confess to never having come across this myself, but hey I live in Bradford East not Bradford West and we have a nice, cost Lib Dem for an MP where we are. I’ve even heard we’re going to be made part of Leeds in the Boundary Review, so how’s about that for moving up in the world? Bradford won’t be my problem soon...

In contrast to symbolic Bradford, we have Bradford the reality. The reality of the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people, persistently made out to be victims or manipulated pawns with their individuality subsumed into their “group”.

It's supposed to look like this. 

Of course, Bradford has its problems and the pictures recently painted of symbolic Bradford are not false as such.

But they all just use Bradford to make another point, because nobody really wants to think about Bradford the reality for too long.  

Bradford may have the national attention for the moment, but if all we can’t rise above being just a sad example of what went wrong with (i) the cotton industry, (ii) Thatcherism, (iii) immigration, (iv) local politics or (v) methods of rhubarb cultivation, then it will be long forgotten before the public has finished picking the remnants of that pasty out of its teeth.

Westfield is not the only gaping hole in the centre of Bradford. The city can’t sit around waiting for London to rescue it. It’s not going to happen, with Galloway or without. While Bradford is a symbol of victimhood and a byword for awfulness it’s going to remain the way it is. 

Only if some dynamic local energy and motive force comes from within this city – or any city that isn’t London – can we hope to stop the relentless decline.

And that’s why, if you live in Bradford, you should REGISTER TO VOTE and then VOTE FOR an elected mayor on May 3^rd! Stop waiting for handouts and let’s start solving the problems ourselves!

The Second Seal is Opened

T-343: Isn’t it warm for January? Usually, West Yorkshire is frozen under an inch-thick carapace of ice at this time of year. COINCIDENCE? I don’t think so.

Well, if this is the end of the world, I must say it’s preferable to another winter of (i) being unable to drive up or down our road and (ii) having to walk everywhere very carefully, looking like I’ve bobbed meself.

I've not spotted any other portents of the end times, bar the unusually mild weather. 

I did see a seven-headed beast rise from out of the sea the other day. But when I thought about it later I realised it was a seagull trying to lift a plastic bag out of the canal. 

Dooooooh!!!

Kids say the funniest things

Yesterday morning, Roger Jr burst into our bedroom declaring that he had done a "rumpy wee". On further inspection this turned out to be his own peculiar expression for "explosive diarrhoea".

I've been struggling since then to work out the thinking that led him to this description. Rest assured, I have never used the words "rump" or "rumpy" around him – with the exception of reference to the fruitily-named Humpy Rumpy the hippopotamus from "The Enormous Crocodile".

Quite why he would then associate the two, I can't imagine. He probably meant "lumpy" – which, on reflection, is rather too graphic and unpleasant an image with which to continue.

Even when he's using real words, Roger Jr can be a little hard to understand. That is because he is functionally bilingual, speaking conventional English at home and speaking the broadest of Bradford dialects when he is at nursery.

He will often tell me that something is "ray-ur-leh, ray-ur-leh big", for example. And when I ask him to repeat it, he'll say "really, really big". So he knows that there are two ways of saying the same thing (NB exposition of the size of things is one of Roger Jr's favourite conversational themes).  

Having moved around a lot when I was growing up, I don't really have an accent. Or rather, I have bits of various accents – and like Roger Jr and Tony Blair, I switch to the most appropriate one depending on the people to whom I am currently speaking.

My wife Elvira, by contrast, spent her entire childhood in Boston – but somehow managed to avoid developing an accent that makes her sound like a brain-damaged farmhand who has received in incomplete course of speech therapy.

That's a joke of course. The Boston accent is a splendid thing, a unique cross between Norfolk and East Yorkshire, between north and south. It's a gem, hidden in the depths of the Fens, overlooked by the outside world and thus allowed to carry its local heritage into the present.

And let's not forget, sometimes there are big advantages to be had in allowing people to think you are not as intelligent as you are.

I suppose it's pretty silly, imagining that some accents sound thicker than others. And by the time Roger Jr is an adult, god alone knows what "normal" English speech will sound like.

Anyway, here's a picture of Roger Jr on the potty – just to guarantee that however he sounds, he will definitely hate me when we do get there.

Fortunately, on this occasion there was no rumpiness. 

Rotten boroughs for everyone

Electoral reform may be dead, MPs' expenses may be buried, but a good old fashioned boundary change can still send our political class wee-wee-weeing all the way home.

Behold the astonishing words of "one senior Tory" who is perhaps unaware that the Guardian is something that gets published to the outside world:

"We are not happy about this...There are MPs who gave up a lot to come here and now it looks like they face real fights."

Hilarious innit? Absorb it - I'm coming back to it. 

Broadly, the plans would see the number of MPs cut from 650 to 600 – although the Sicilys' own region would see just four go. Disappointing, I'd been hoping to see more ex-MPs on the scrapheap.

With our house on the market, I am delighted that we're looking at being shifted from hopelessly down-market Bradford East to aspirational Guiseley and Yeadon. We'll be whacking up the price accordingly.

So we might be happy, but Conservatives are not – apparently because the sinecures that they "gave up a lot" for might not be quite as guaranteed a route to a fat lifetime at the public teat after all.What a thoroughly disgusting attitude. If you're happy to share your arse-witted opinion, "senior Tory", why don't you share your name with us as well?

Nor are Labour happy though. Before he considerately deigned to examine the plans in advance of responding formally, Ed Miliband said:

"We have serious concerns about the government's decision to change the boundaries, which we believe was an act of gerrymandering by the Conservative party."

Boo hoo. Life just isn't fair, is it?

While most 19th century cartoons are generally made even less funny by knowing what the words say, I'm going to help you out with the preposterously small text in the picture above. 

Fat man says: "Here they are all good votes - ready to vote for my coach horse if I order them. Give me the money and I'll secure you the seat."

Rich man: "Well here's the cash. As for the votes, I'll leave them to you."

HA HA HA. See those peasants in the background? Politicians think that's you, that is. 

Adopt a peasant

Have you ever fancied owning a poor person? Well, now you can – if you live in Hull, Blackpool or Westminster.

If this pilot scheme goes well, middle class people all over the country could adopt their own family of peasants or a clan of urban lumpenproles. I for one think it would be simply lovely!

The theory is that people with jobs "mentor" a jobless household to get them into work, according to the "social entrepreneur" behind it, Emma Harrison. I find it hard to imagine what a "social entrepreneur" does, unless it means making money out of social programmes – which, with £300 million of government contracts under her belt, Ms Harrison looks highly adept at doing.

I can't help but think this is ridiculously patronising in every way.

Is the grateful serf supposed to view his employed mentor with such admiration that the very force of the example set by seeing a real-life working person makes them stop being a feckless skiver on the spot?

Or is the middle class role model just supposed to fill in forms for their unemployed protégée, in nice, legible handwriting, using long words, spelled correctly – like a Job Centre Cyrano de Bergerac?

I'm intrigued to know what special understanding of "how to find and keep a job when you have no skills or experience" the middle classes of Hull, Bristol and Westminster are presumed to have.

I have a sneaking suspicion that someone like me coming into your home and telling you that - for example – you might find getting a job easier, oh I don't know, if you learn to read or stop drinking Special Brew in the morning is unlikely to go down any better than it does coming from the government.

Coming soon – "voluntary" workhouses funded by wealthy philanthropists and the all rest of the Victorian era! You won't be laughing at my moustache soon...