tartan bunker

It’s Mothering Sunday and my friend went to call on her mother. And her dad. No longer round the corner but several hours’ journey away, her mother has recently joined her dad in a plot of earth in a quiet country cemetery. No flowers. Mother was allergic for years. Most likely to the chemicals sprayed on many blooms grown abroad (which, if you’ve forgotten, can be deeply injurious to the foreign growers and their unborn children).

Mother was always ahead of the game, with a good nose, eyes and head: Foreseeing years ago a credit crunch, a recession worse than the 1930s, tanks on the streets (ok, but you wait) and no one to man them (ok, ok, hang around some more). If she could foresee our current mess - on a diet of the Daily Express, LBC (especially Nick Ferrari), oh, and that crazy little thing called life - why couldn’t those in charge? At the least, these myopics should change opticians. As should myopic voters.   

A friend spent three days trying to get a sign of life from Thames Water, using two phones and email. Like to imagine TW were out mending leaks. Who’s kidding who? Perhaps someone got the spelling wrong and they’d decamped to allotments in Wales. On the third day, a call came from someone promoting himself as Tim’s Water. Oh hum, my friend hadn’t heard of this takeover but lives in hope Tim can do a better job.

Don’t get me started on BT - on their call centres, bucketloads of meaningless or misleading paperwork, their lengthy answering process which require you give a large proportion of your time, patience and life blood. There are remarkably nice people when you get through but alas, they’re restricted in their ability to effect change in what’s been established by those out-of-touch managers on the 98^th floor who should be forced to spend reality time ringing in to BT, TW and just about most any other ‘service’ to experience how the rest of us suffer at their hands.

I know a great hairdresser. Trouble is, he keeps getting bookings for big, long jobs on a Saturday - cut, full head of colour, blow dry, tea etc – and then the blighter doesn’t turn up, which, over time, loses ma friend, the hairdresser, a lot of money. Who are these dirty-headed scruffy amnesiacs, I ask? Other salons, is the reply. I’m aghast. That people can stoop so low. 

Let’s forget Sir Fred for a moment, ok a lifetime. Let’s focus instead on Myners man and Harman woman. Why wasn’t Myners on the case, or at least getting a minion to check out young Fred’s pension contract? And is Harman intent on running Gulag UK? To paraphrase her words: (Fred’s) ‘contract might be enforceable in a court of law . . . but not in the court of public opinion . . .’ You remember public opinion, don’t you? That irksome beast governments prefer to ignore? The beast opposed to the invasion of Iraq. The beast which continues to believe that Dr Kelly was murdered. Which wants post offices to remain open. Which is appalled at the idea of a retrospective law. Yet now the beast is being courted. Or its body used in vain. Things must be desperate.