Will the upstanding member….

 “You know what you women are like?”

This is something the Long Suffering Husband says every time we pass a man with his top off.

It came from something he overheard someone say on a Zoom meeting during lockdown that made him laugh. It had been a complete surprise to him that women found it hard to control themselves around men with their shirts off but as I pointed out a man wouldn’t be expected to concentrate if he passed a bare chested woman.

Angela Rayner’s knees have been having a similar effect on the Prime Minister, with the Daily Mail reporting that his appalling performance at the dispatch box is her fault for crossing and uncrossing her legs like Sharon Stone in basic instinct. They tried to imply that she was using her secret feminine power because she hadn’t been to Oxford to learn about ‘mass debating in public’.

Everyone got cross and said it was misogynistic and it was reported that 56 MPs are currently being investigated for sexual misconduct. No one seemed surprised.

We have reached the black dwarf phase of this government. We all know it’s a dead star but it could take a few billion years for it to finally disappear. They are having meetings to try to come up with new ideas but they’ve already used all the good ones, so we are getting suggestions like unstaffed nursery schools and removing barriers from sharp bends to save money. 

They are out of control, like year 6 children at the end of the year who think they can do what they like, raising a surly’what you gonna do bout it’ eyebrow. There’s nothing they can’t do. There are no consequences. Or none that they care about.

When they realised how badly briefing the Mail on Sunday about Boris’ leg fetish went down they tried to call the journalist in to answer questions. The journalist refused because it’s a slippery slope to allow governments to tell the press off when they’ve only written what they e been told. Then the Daily Mail printed a very weird headline.

I’m not sure what a night Angela Rayner is but because she joked that she could put Boris off by showing him her knees then the whole article was fine and really does nothing to damage the reputation of the Prime Minister. 

I was t going to write about any of this because it’s all too depressing but today we heard that a front bench conservative MP has been watching porn on his phone at work. That’s taking the public mass debate too far. It’s televised!

We don’t know which upstanding member it is because unlike any other job it doesn’t seem to be a ‘clear your desk immediately’ kind of sacking offence.

Human Rights

 “Brexit won’t be done until all human rights have been abolished.”

Nigel Farage was on the radio again. For some reason World at One felt it important to get his view on whether the idea of sending asylum seekers who enter the country illegally to Rwanda was a good idea.

Funnily enough, he didn’t, which surprised me because it seemed like just the kind of weird ill thought out policy that he could get behind. Unfortunately, for Nige it just didn’t go far enough. According to this wannabe slave owner, what the country voted for when they voted Brexit (GET BREXIT DONE) was to remove ourselves from the European Convention of Human Rights. 

This obviously means that Brexit will never be done because this agreement has nothing to do with membership of the EU. It was a document drawn up by mainly British lawyers and backed by Winston Churchill. Then in 1996 we drew up our own Human Rights Act. 

I’m just wondering who these people are who don’t want human rights? Are they not human? Are the rumours true? Is Nigel Farage a lizard?

It’s not that, is it? It’s about giving some humans the right to abuse other humans for profit. Human rights laws are there just to remind some people that people are more important than money.

Personally, I’d like more human rights, not less. 

Normal rules of behaviour

 I was sitting on my friend’s bedroom floor, stretching to touch my toes, that were clad in   incredibly uncomfortable but suddenly trendy multicoloured toe socks. Two other friends (one whose name I can’t remember) sat on the bed. Marion was lying on her stomach on the rug next to me, kicking her legs over her head and sucking the end of a pen.

“What shall we ask for?”

“It’s got to be something good.”

“Yeah, otherwise we won’t get on.”

“What about driving with James Hunt.”

My friend was obsessed.

“No. They did Graeme Hill last series.”

“How about asking to experience weightlessness,” I said.

“Don’t be silly. That’s impossible. What are they going to do? Fly us to the moon.”

“A black ski run,” said Marion, “That would be exciting.”

The others agreed but I wasn’t sure. Skiing has never been something I’m interested in and the idea of skiing on black snow sounded even worse but being a people pleaser I agreed to write the letter ready for everyone to sign next time we had a play date.

The next week Marion’s mum showed me up to her room and I took the letter out of the pocket of my poncho.

“Oh, bad news, I’m afraid girls,” said the girl whose name I can’t remember, “Mum says I can’t go.”

We were disappointed but prepared to dump her like a shot if it meant we would get on the telly.

“She doesn’t think any of us should go. She has a friend who is a secretary at the BBC and she says it’s not safe for girls to be near him.”

“They say that about all famous men, don’t they?”

“Girls throw themselves at them.”

“One of the ladies my Dad works with warned me about that man who came to Town to do the It’s a Knockout show but I wouldn’t have been interested in him. He’s really old.”

“So is Jim. I don’t know why these girls do this.”

“It’s for the fame.”

The nameless girl listened to our chat, silently.

“No. I don’t think it’s like like. Mum thinks he’s really dangerous.”

“Yeah but we’d be safe wouldn’t we? Our parents would be with us.

Luckily, our letter wasn’t chosen so we never learnt the hard way that some abusers don’t follow the normal rules of behaviour.

I only learnt about how Saville operated when I watched the latest Netflix documentary. Until then I still thought that, although he hid in plain sight his abuse happened behind closed doors and this new knowledge has really upset me. Not least because it means hundreds of children could be suffering like this and we would never know. I mean, you can’t go round imagining that every man is sticking his hands in passing girls’ knickers. It’s just too horrific. You have to assume that most people follow normal rules of behaviour.

Except they don’t, do they?

You’d assume that a Prime Minister, caught lying would resign but that doesn’t happen. You’d assume that if there’s a public will to take refugees from Ukraine that would happen, rather than shipping them to a country with a similar flag but with a terrible reputation for being embroiled in a war with terrible human rights.

You would also assume that you’d be able to stop and take a photo of your favourite shop and the cherry blossom without a random woman jumping in front of the camera but that doesn’t happen either.

Honestly, it was weird. She laughed and her boyfriend said, “Not as pretty as the flowers.”

“Definitely not,” I told her, “but you photobombed.”

“I did,” she giggled again, clearly proud of herself.

It’s probably against the normal rules of behaviour to use the photo in a blog about Jimmy Saville, so that her face appears whenever anyone searches, ‘Saville abuse photo,’ but what can you do?

He’s not that bad

 A few days ago the voice from the radio said, “Residents from the East of Ukraine have been advised to evacuate as Boris Johnson arrives for talks with President Zelenski.”

“Oh dear,” I thought to myself, “He’s not that bad.”

It turns out that he said all the right things to the President of Ukraine and the two statements were not necessarily connected. To be fair, that’s his strength. He’s great at saying what people want to hear. Just not so great at actually doing what he says but we forgive him again and again because he’s a cute blue eyed tousle-haired toddler. 

Yesterday, the Met Police finally decided enough was enough. In the morning the radio announcer said that they had been advised that Boris and Rishi were not in receipt of a fixed notice penalty. An account that had probably been briefed to them because they STILL don’t think they did anything wrong. By the evening, the Met had released a statement saying that they had, in fact, been fined for Boris’ birthday party. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor issued non-apology apologies in language that left is in no doubt that they still think we are stupid. The Prime Minister’s wife’s taxpayer funded spokesperson issued a similar explanation on her behalf. The interior designer is yet to comment but I expect she will be forced to resign.

The news at 10 was broadcast from Downing Street, where protesters were having a party of their own, playing , “You’ve got to fight for your right to paaaartaaaay,” at top volume. They flicked between there and Ukraine and it was like an unbelievable scene from a dystopian novel.

This morning we are being told that, although he lied to parliament that was fine because he didn’t know he was doing anything wrong at the time, which is definitely a defence all criminals should try. He couldn’t tell that he was at his own birthday party. He was ambushed by cake, although the Marks and Spencer’s offering remained in it's Tupperware box (!) It was only 10 minutes (or longer according to other reports).  So, he is definitely not going to resign.

This, apparently, isn’t the time to change Prime Ministers. It would be foolish and reckless to even consider such a move during a war. It has been done before (Gulf and WW2) but let’s pretend those facts don’t exist. Don’t you know there’s a war on? The headlines shout. There’s always a war on, somewhere and we are not actually fighting this one, yet. Let’s hope we are not dragged into it just to save the skin of a Prime Minister’s ego.

But we shouldn’t panic. There’s a job to do and we should just forget everything that has gone before and let them do it.

I mean, he’s not that bad, is he?

Actually, he’s not. There are worse. Like the MP who, this week was found guilty of the sexual abuse of a  15 year old boy and thinks it’s ok to carry on being an MP. Like the MP who defended him and said that what he did was ok because he’s gay. Like Liz Truss who is going for the full Mr Benn photo op album. Like Putin (who I think might have ad a stroke from his latest pictures)

It’s true. He’s not that bad. 

However, I think we have a right to expect better. 

The news keeps saying that partygate is important because we have never, as a nation, been asked to take such life limiting measures, outside of war time and they couldn’t obey their own rules. Well, if we are heading into a full war (which it seems as though we are) then I would like a government who is trustworthy. A government who will lead by example. A government that will ask us to do only what is necessary and not be laughing at us for sticking to the rules they have set, while they do whatever they like. 

Also, it would be good, right now, to have a government that can focus on the job in hand, rather than making up lies about M&S cake in Tupperware. 

But just remember. He’s not that bad. 

Confused again

 Politics is very confusing at the moment and now it looks like there’s enough to stop Rishi challenging Boris, who sounds sane when he talks about gender, which actually is quite a feat because the concept of gender is bonkers anyway. Do parties matter when Boris knows what a penis is?

The Chancellor has had a politically damaging week. First, there was a budget that left us in no doubt that poor people could starve and freeze as far as he was concerned. Then he put petrol in someone else’s car and didn’t pay for it before flying to one of his mansions in California. While he was there he donated £100,000 to his old private school, Winchester College and teachers everywhere thought, “Blimey, you can get a lot of glue sticks for that!”

Now, it’s his mega-rich, beautiful Indian born wife that’s causing the problems. Oh, come on, leave the man alone. What does it matter what a man’s wife does? This isn’t the 1950s. Don’t shame him for earning considerably less than her, although his own net worth of £200bn is probably not to be sniffed at. 

It’s just not ok is it, to ask any questions. It’s sexist. She should be free to make her own decisions. Even if your husband is the chancellor of the exchequer of the country you live in he shouldn’t be able to stop you making squillions and propping up the economy of a country that his government is at war with in everything but name. No, that would be wrong. Husbands can never suggest that their wives shouldn’t do something and governments shouldn’t interfere in the business dealings of MP’s spouses. 

It’s also racist. You should know better. Of course she doesn’t pay tax in the UK. She’s Indian. She has non-Dom status. The Indian government won’t let her live here. To suggest that she is actually living at 10 Downing Street with her husband and children would be racist. Do you not understand what it’s like to be an Indian in this country? The fact that her husband’s party were elected on the promise of making people pay tax on money made in the UK is irrelevant.

I understand all of that. What I didn’t understand , though, was no one has worried about it before. All the Indians that haven’t been allowed to pay tax in the UK. No Indian doctors, nurses or shopkeepers are allowed to pay tax and your Friday night curry doesn’t carry any tax implications for the takeaway owner. That’s bonkers surely? 

I’m not being racist or sexist, honestly. I’m just confused.

Groundforce

 Admit it. You saw the title and you are humming the tune.

 “Doo Doo de boo doop Doo Doo de boo doop Doo Doo dah.”

Everyone loves a gardening show and Groundforce was the first for lazy gardeners. It was the show for people who wanted a nice garden without the work. None of that watching Geoffrey Hamilton plant vegetables and flowers in the same bed, never really knowing which were weeds, or propagating your own Azalea from cuttings stolen from a National Trust garden. No. Groundforce was for people with a problem in their garden that they didn’t have the time or knowledge to fix. Alan Titchmarsh was the chief gardener, shouting at Tommy Walsh for getting builder’s sand on the beds, while Charlie Dimmock, who was, apparently, every man’s fantasy - a woman with hair and breasts - laid a patio and built a water feature in an afternoon. 

Last night I went to book club and the general opinion was that we read more gardening books than anything else, so naturally we chose Japanese dystopian fiction. That’s the way life goes sometimes.

The Long Suffering Husband and I had spent part of the day (after persuading our son to take over pooping landshark duties) being the Groundforce team. My daughter wanted to be able to leave her house, avoiding the crazy neighbour but unfortunately the back gate was broken and the path impossible to navigate.

We knocked on the door, tools in hand.

“We’ve come to clear your back passage,” I said.

No one wants a clogged back passage. It can lead to all sorts of problems.

One huge bag of brambles and some digging, raking and gate mending later and I am happy to report that the Groundforce team have once again fixed the problem.

Not the crazy neighbour, which might need a spell (anyone know a witch?) but there is now a strategy for avoiding the drama. 

As we were putting the things back in the car, the neighbour was skulking around her unmoving horse box. We smiled at the girl who pushed a leaflet through my daughters door and said, ‘Good afternoon.” The neighbour jumped out, hoping to have a baffling conversation with us, only to be confronted by a question from the girl that always seems to confuse her.

“Do you live here?” She beamed.

“No. No I don’t,” the neighbour replied, muttering under her breath something like, “Who told you that?”

“Oh, okay,” the girl said and went to the door.

“Can’t you read?” the neighbour shouted at her.

She shrank back, confused. 

“It’s just about the elections,” she said, turning on her heel and making a quick escape.

Now that the Groundforce team have been in, my daughter will always be able to make a quick and unseen escape. That’s what a clear back passage gives you.

They found the line

 MPs used to resign at the faint aroma of impropriety. Newspapers would send scantily clad women (or paperboys, in the case of my childhood MP) to the doorsteps of MPs they didn’t like in the hope of shaming them into a resignation. MPs felt they had to live their lives to the highest of moral standards. If they made a stupid mistake, they quit, Even David Cameron resigned after his ‘let’s ask the public what they think of all the benefits we get from the EU’ went spectacularly wrong.

These days, resignations only seem to happen as a matter of protest. When an MP disagrees with something, they resign, therefore securing themselves a seat at the top table when the next regime comes in that agreed with them. 

However, moral standards, seem to be a thing of the past. 

Recently, I have been wondering what they would have to do. Our current Prime Minister has almost certainly lied to parliament about the lockdown parties, that he claimed to know nothing about but was at. The last MP who lied to parliament was John Profumo and we all know what happened to him. Actually, you are more likely to know how the girl he lied about sleeping with’s life was destroyed than the fact that he was forced to stop being an MP but was perfectly fine. His wife stood by him, they lived off their inherited wealth and did voluntary work at Tonybee Hall until he was awarded a CBE and attending the Queen’s birthday dinners. It’s a tough life.

However, no one cares if you sleep with a 19 year old now there’s no need to lie. Even our local MP didn’t bother denying paying for sessions with Miss Whiplash because there was no need. It does make you wonder where the line is.

This weekend, though, they found the line. Several of them, in fact. Despite the witty remarks on Twitter the man hadn’t been collecting his dandruff but had, according to Sarah Vine, suffered a midlife crisis. Not quite the same a a female mid-life crisis, which involves dying hair an odd colour, doing a PhD and refusing to do the washing up. His crime wasn’t the sexual abuse of members of his staff or even taking the cocaine but having a photo with the lines.  

Lovely Jubly Treason

The envelope felt heavy in my hands. Lifting it to my nose and turning it over, the smell of woody parchment and sandalwood combined with the silky feel of good quality paper to cause my heart to beat a tiny bit faster. It was an invitation to go on a train journey.

The carriage had velvet curtains and in the place of usual seats, a long table, set with a confusing amount of silverware on a white linen tablecloth. Water had been served in heavy glasses. Odd table decorations in the shape of Prince Andrew blocked the view to then end of the table.

“Do we have to do this?” My colleague hissed at me.”It is the holidays. I’m starving.”

The train pulled into a station. 

“I’m going to see if I can get a KitKat from a vending machine,” she said and hopped off.

The next thing I knew the train was about to leave and I was standing on the platform. I couldn’t find my carriage but noticed the silver and purple livery said that it was the Queen’s train. I ran along, beside as it started to move and reached the carriage just in time, to open the door and fling myself inside, landing at the feet of the Queen, Prince Charles and Camilla.

A man with very white gloves helped me to my feet and led me back to my seat. The hush in the carriage was deafening. My shame was compounded by someone I knew saying, “You can’t take her anywhere! Do you think that’s treason?”

The dog cried and I woke up.

What an oddly specific dream.

This term, I have been working  with the 5-7 year olds in school to write a song for the Queen. They have worried , occasionally. 

“We’ve said her age in the song. Might she be upset?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“But my mum says you shouldn’t mention a lady’s age.”

“That can be true but I think when you get over a certain age people are proud of living to be old.”

“But she is VERY old.”

“Yes, I think it will be OK. I don’t think it’s treason.”

They learnt a new word.

Once our song was finished we decided to send it as a card and so they wrote messages and drew pictures. I love the emergent portraits that young children draw. Arms springing from heads, ears that are like dinner plates and grimaces that are supposed to be smiles all featured heavily. One portrait wouldn’t have been out of place in Tate Modern, entitled, ‘Queen as Penis’

One child handed me their drawing and said, “I’m a bit worried about treason”

Despite the words being on the board, most still wrote lovely jubly, or even tubly as they reversed their letters.

Yesterday, I finally put the card in the post, which contained a QR code to a video of the children singing their song.

I have the obligatory end of term cold (not Covid. Still one line) and so managed to go back to sleep after the Long Suffering Husband let the dog in the garden.

The man with the white gloves, who had shown me back to my seat on the train was standing in front of me.

“I don’t understand,” I said to him.

“It’s simple, Her Majesty would like the children to sing at the celebration.”

My mouth flapped open.

“I thought… Well, the train.”

His eyes sparkled. 

“They liked you. It made them laugh and Charles appreciated the KitKat you threw at him.”

“But what..No..I can’t. We were just hoping for a letter. We thought we’d committed treason.”

The dog whined again, saving me from not being able to breathe.