The Diary of a Country Bumpkin

I was watching the latest Green Flag breakdown advertisement where it portrays various actors playing the part of local garage employees taking part in the Green Flag breakdown championship and are seen vying for a coveted place in the Green Flag network.

It starts with a collection of males and females lined up on an athletics track and at the start of the race they all run off through a collection of hazards, a herd of sheep being one, some fall and some keep going until finally at the end of the race one of them reaches the car and is declared the winner.

I was rather surprised that the winner was a black female as I felt this did not represent the true nature of those employed in this industry and on doing some research the nearest category I could find was vehicle technicians and electricians which must be fairly representative of those employed by the sort of garages vying for work within the Green Flag network.

Rather unsurprisingly I found a total of 1,600 females (0.81%) were employed, whereas some 195,672 (99.19%) employed were male and I have to admit although I have been lucky in not breaking down frequently but I have never been rescued by a woman since taking up driving in 1968.

This being the case, one has to wonder if this is yet another politically correct ‘woke’ style advertisement where the principal character is a BAME female and is just there as yet another example of box ticking as it quite clearly is not representative of what one might experience in the real world.

I’m not a great betting man but I have to think that if this race were to be run in reality, with the proper percentages of males and females taking part, I would have to say I would be wagering heavily on the winner being a male of the species.

Can one ask for an advertisement to be removed because it is misleading I wonder?

Answers on a postcard …………………………..!!

I noticed the children who had recently received their exam results were delighted with how well they had done especially as they had to deal with the restrictions which were forced upon them due to the Covid pandemic.

They particularly thanked their teachers who had assisted with advance information and extra exam information, now call me a sceptical old so and so but I have to think that reading between the lines, the phrases advance and extra information are actually euphemisms for giving the students the answers, I could be wrong of course!

I have a feeling I am not the only person who finds the latest advertisement from Birds Eye Green Cuisine extremely annoying and not just because it’s yet another advertisement playing the politically correct box ticking game by using BAME cartoon characters.

No, it’s not the box ticking exercise although that is annoying enough in its own right but it is the dialogue between the mother and her young daughter which is giving me high blood pressure.

Daughter. We had Green Cuisine chicken free dippers at Lucy’s house for lunch, they’re made from plants not chickens and they’re really nice. Why don’t we have them sometimes?

Mother. I’m not sure.

Daughter. Is it because you fear change and you’re scared to try something new?

It carries on extolling the virtues of plant-based foods, yet another box to be ticked, but I always hear another version in my head when I watch this advertisement.

Father. How dare you speak to your mother in such a disrespectful manor young lady, now I suggest you take yourself upstairs to your bedroom without any dinner, either chicken or plant based and spend some quality time thinking about the correct way to speak respectfully to your mother.

Now, that seems a lot better to me and we have ticked another politically correct box by showing an example to young folk of an alternative family unit together with a lesson in respect and good manners.

I have to say I am getting a little bored with the ongoing Conservative Party leadership elections, especially as it is a foregone conclusion as to who the winner will be, there is after all only one candidate worth voting for.

Who, I ask you could possibly vote for Rishi Sunak, a man who allegedly spends thousands of pounds having his suits made in Savile Row and yet manages to come away looking no better than a spotty adolescent fresh from a shopping trip to Primark.

The jacket is too short and is in the style of what was once called a bum freezer, the sleeves are too short and the trousers are too tight and too short, once again in the old style once called ankle swingers.

I know fashion and style always repeats itself which is why this is the modern style for trousers, jackets and suits but I still don’t see that that gives anyone the excuse to waste the talents of an extremely expensive Savile Row tailor to produce such an awful garment, when a trip to Primark would have sufficed.

I’m a little lost for words having just seen the list for the best jokes at the Edinburgh Fringe, sadly number one on the list has been chosen as the finniest, a joke told by Masai Graham who has apparently won the award before.

All I can say is, if these were the best jokes, I hate to think how awful the worst ones must been.

1. Masai Graham: I tried to steal spaghetti from the shop, but the female guard saw me and I couldn’t get pasta.

2. Mark Simmons: Did you know, if you get pregnant in the Amazon, it’s next-day delivery.

3. Olaf Falafel: My attempts to combine nitrous oxide and Oxo cubes made me a laughing stock.

4. Hannah Fairweather: By my age, my parents had a house and a family, and to be fair to me, so do I – but it is the same house and it is the same family.

5. Will Mars: I hate funerals – I’m not a mourning person.

6. Olaf Falafel: I spent the whole morning building a time machine, so that’s four hours of my life that I’m definitely getting back.

7. Richard Pulsford: I sent a food parcel to my first wife. FedEx.

8. Tim Vine: I used to live hand to mouth. Do you know what changed my life? Cutlery.

9. Sophie Duker: Don’t knock threesomes. Having a threesome is like hiring an intern to do all the jobs you hate.

10. Will Duggan: I can’t even be bothered to be apathetic these days.

I have been busy recently transforming a fairly flimsy polytunnel into something a little more bomb proof for my wife who has taken up vegetable gardening in a big way and it is proving quite a challenge, as she keeps changing the required specification but that’s perfectly fine for we all know it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.

Today, was the requirement to add windows each end which will allow for a through draught when the weather gets a little too hot and hopefully a convenient breeze will come to cool down whatever she will be growing.

I’m not sure if she sent our daughter out shopping or if she went of her own accord but the end result was that there was lashings of jam and cream and plain scones. No-one should be allowed to eat a cream tea unless it is with plain scones and as you can see from the photograph I have indulged/made a pig of myself.

This is the result of my second time round and I have to report that I have survived without having a massive heart attack, although as you can see from the vast quantity of cream which I have eaten, I think it must have been a close run thing.

Yummy!!

Here is the last one from, ‘The Short of it.’

GINGER ROGERS, BACKWARDS AND IN HEELS

Hard dancing Fred Astaire,
with Ginger Rogers made a pair.
Her fancy footwork always appeals,
amazing, as it’s backwards and in heels.

Hard dancing Fred Astaire,
did tap with Ginger with such flair.
Moving fast as light with flashing feet,
man oh man dig that rhythm, dig that beat.

Hard dancing Fred Astaire,
rehearsed for hours with no care,
No thought for Ginger her feet so sore,
taking off her shoes and the blood would pour.

Hard dancing Fred Astaire,
hit the top in the floodlights glare.
Asked the secret of his success to explain,
he thought for a while then said, no pain no gain.

Hard dancing Fred Astaire,
then Ginger’s thoughts did share.
My feet bleeding until dances he perfects,
I am proving women really are the stronger sex.

Hard dancing Fred Astaire,
with Ginger Rogers made a pair.
Her fancy footwork always appeals,
amazing, as it’s backwards and in heels.

Here’s another from, ‘The Short of it,’ I think some of my readers may have some sympathy with the views expressed here.

WOKE IN THE UK

As an older fellow, I would like to reach out to the younger members of society in a vain attempt to retain my sanity going forward for there are certain expressions and phrases which are used by the youth of today which are causing me anxiety and are interfering with my mental health, some of which I have placed in bold type.

For example, starting a sentence with So punctuating it with Like talking with a Multicultural London accent emphasising any word ending with ility and now I find I’m having to contend with Woke.

I’m getting a little sick and tired of it all and would like to go back to English as a language and for modern Woke people to stop taking offence on behalf of others who are probably more capable of dealing with the situation themselves.

That’s the end of my minor rant for now but I am certain I have missed a multitude of things and will no doubt think of more going forward, sorry I mean in the future.

Here is another quick one from ‘The Short of it.’

JRR TOLKIEN AND THE NOBEL PRIZE

JRR Tolkien, author of great repute
was nominated for a Nobel Prize
by C S Lewis, a writer and his friend,
then suddenly came a surprise.

His Lord of the Rings books were rejected
the jury called them second rate,
poor storytelling was also cited
as the reason they met this fate.

I wonder if the author JRR Tolkien,
these comments cut him in half                                                          
but as a bestselling author,
he certainly had the last laugh.

Here is another piece I wrote which was selected for inclusion in ‘The Short of it,’ you can tell from the reference to Covid when this was written.

BACK BENCH MP’S

In Great Britain, we have numerous traditions and peculiar habits which I personally love, especially the ones that make no sense at all, an example being The House of Commons.

A person can stand for Parliament and when elected become a Minister of Parliament and assuming they continue their way up the greasy pole of Politics can become a Member of the Cabinet, an example of which is the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, or slightly stranger the post of Minister Without Portfolio, which is a post for a Cabinet Minister with no specific responsibilities.

I’m sure all this makes perfect sense to all those of you who may not live in our rather wonderful country but just to throw a spanner into the works, should one of these Ministers cause a bit of a hoo-ha by having an affair and groping his secretary and breaking the current Covid restrictions he or she will lose their Ministerial position and be banished to the back benches of Parliament, this is rather like becoming one of the naughty children on a school trip who sits at the back of the bus and causes a commotion, although smoking is not permitted in the Chamber.

There you are, the British Parliament in a nutshell, I hope it all makes sense to you!