It’s been just over a month, and I am still acclimatising back to life in the UK. Obviously, I’m all a bit Rip Van Winkle. Everything is the same, everything is different. The Marmite Scandal was the straw that did for the back of the camel and provoked the writing, but it could have been any number of things really.
The amount of rubbish and dog shit on the pavements and
gardens, and along walkways and in parks still astonishes me. It is embarrassing we have an adjective in
one of the names of these isles contradicted by the way in which we are happy
for them to look. T’was ever thus, I
suppose, but it has been highlighted after having lived in another country that
now makes this an obvious point of difference.
It is more embarrassing, of course, due to the incapable leadership in the
country – couldn’t organise a piss-up… how about, couldn’t organise to keep our
streets clean?
Television in the UK is incredible. I know Stephen Fry has quasi-quoted a person
who said something along the lines of “a book is like a mirror, if a fool looks
in you can’t expect a genius to look out” – a corruption of a Georg Lichtenberg
quotation, (but what we would he know he managed to leave the “e” off the end
of his name!). Mr Fry appropriated this
quotation to TV and he is as ever correct.
The number of channels and the idiocy of much is papered over with the
genius of other…it is the sheer quantity and relentlessness of the TV in the UK
that is quite overwhelming. Again, t’was
thusly before I left, it is merely much more so now I’ve returned, and more
truculent, seemingly.
I have just had the pleasure of driving in Germany and The
Netherlands. I am still far too nervous
at the thought of driving in the UK. Too
many potholes, too narrow roads, too many cars, too much speed. It is a bizarre spectacle watching British
people clog up streets with their four wheeled carriages; households with two,
three or more cars. Pavements with
slightly more vehicles on them that dog shit…actually, getting back to the dog
shit for a moment: it’s the fact that often parents will have pushchairs so
can’t see the shit and then it’s in the tread of the wheel and of their shoes
before they even know it. You can see
the indentation and the shitty brown trace marks along the sides of the road. It’s the fact that the children walking
alongside these pushchairs are often distracted speaking with their parents or
looking out for badgers or witches and don’t see the shit and then it’s in
their footwear and on their hands and wiped god knows where and then the parent
is unaware of exactly where the shit has gone and …anyway… in fact, do you
think it was ever thus?
As a kid of the 70s, when dogs were often out wandering on
their own, there was shit around but I can’t remember half the quantity you encounter
on the pavements now. Perhaps dog
dignity meant they would rather not shit where others could see them? I don’t know…now, of course, dog dignity is
absent and they can only shit where their owners take them. Anyway, I digress.
The UK is a curious country.
I haven’t quite woken up to it properly yet and can’t get the sleep out
of my eyes. It is reassuring to know
that there is a ubiquity of Costas in the world, likewise Greggs, and that
Soccer Saturday is still an engrossing spectacle, even though all it is is four
ex-football players watching four games of football and shrieking and yelling
about a national pastime. I’m looking
forward to one other pastime, this coming weekend: The 6 Nations. I shall, as ever, don something red with
feathers on it and shriek and yell at a screen and hope that Wales do the right
thing and score more points than the other team.
For the first time in over a decade, though, I shall be
doing it at a civilised time and not at stupid o’clock in the morning.
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