Back2sq1: February 2004
You have probably been wondering what connection there is
between great crested newts and the ever-growing threat to the
British way of life. How have coypu infiltrated every level of
government, and what is the real reason that speed cameras are
breeding at such an alarming rate? Is global warming really
caused by breathing? Can the answer to life, the universe and
everything be found in children's stories, and does poetry
have a role to play? Who is Henry (Fred) "Shrimp"
Houseago, and does it matter? The answers to almost all of
these vital questions will occasionally be found here.
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on 16 February 2004 at 13:51
Alien encounter on suburban road
No-one really knows what happened in North Park Avenue,
Norwich, but it has been described as a close encounter of
the tenth kind – infinitely stranger and more alien than
anything that has yet been filmed. On one fairly
straightforward level of reality, it was decided to resurface
the road and put in new kerbs.
Then, on another level of reality, when that work was partly
completed, a Liberal Democrat city councillor who is rumoured
to have a strong dislike of cars decided unilaterally that it
was time to enter a new dimension.
This is common in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, where
advanced forms of democracy jostle with time-space
distortions – but not in North Park Avenue.
Without going through the normal procedures, she waved her
magic wand and decided that the central section of the road
should be made politically correct. I use this phrase because
nothing else seems to fit the bill, and not because it means
anything.
Overnight, simple resurfacing became a wholesale
transformation of the road. It grew wider, and the
pavement-and-verge area narrowed, so that parked cars which
would formerly fit nicely on to the hard standings between
roadway and pavement stuck out into the road or into the
pavement – in some cases both. This was clearly dangerous.
The only solution for residents and visitors was to park on
the road, which made the effective carriageway narrower than
it was before, and more hazardous for drivers to negotiate.
This was described, I am told, as traffic calming. You may
think that not much thought was given to this. I could not
possibly comment, except to say that the kerb now has to jut
out into the road at one point to go round a post. It does
not look neat.
You may think that such an operation might cost up to ten
times as much as was allotted to the original work. Again I
could not possibly comment.
More mysteries surround this strange series of events. Why
has the councillor who “authorised” it become invisible? Why
did another councillor lose her temper when it was raised in
a council meeting? Why have various council members and
officers done their best to ignore the whole thing?
Why have reasonable inquiries been described as complaints
and shuffled into a procedure which might look to a normal
person as if it were designed to dig a large black hole and
bury it? Why was a discussion on a grass verge described by
the council as a public meeting?
Why did a councillor, on receiving a perfectly civil letter
on the subject, reply curtly: “I acknowledge receipt of your
letter of 28 November, which I have passed to the city
council’s legal department.”
Why did the council’s chief executive send a city-born
resident a leaflet on how to refer to the matter to the local
government ombudsman – in Bengali?
Has the council gone boldly where no-one has gone before? Is
it a lost in a completely different galaxy? Will it ever beam
down? The signs are not promising.
Bag of salt a crispy solution
A bit late, maybe, but intrepid Norfolk explorer Richard
“Volcano” Meek has come up with a method of ensuring that
Norwich city centre is never gridlocked by snow and ice
again.
He suggests: “If everyone carried a 50kg bag of salt in the
boot and allowed it to trickle onto the road – possibly
through a series of holes drilled strategically through the
floor of the car boot – they should have no trouble in town.
“As for the rural areas, I have consulted Easton College and
ascertained that most combine harvesters see little or no use
at all during January and February. They could be adapted to
bale the snow in neat blocks and eject it onto the roadside.
It is perfectly possible that this could be sold subsequently
to fishmongers and the like.”
Mr Meek is submitting his ideas to the School of Penguins,
Chess and Road Surfacing at the UEA, who he hopes will launch
a feasibility study. Prof Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, who heads the
school, said last night he would see what he could do, but he
was pretty busy producing letters to the editor on behalf of
the Green Party at the moment.
They canter here, they canter there
Mysterious notice number 5684, spotted between sexy
Saxlingham Nethergate and shimmery Shotesham in South
Norfolk, at the entrance to a muddy field path: “Strictly no
horses. Please keep dogs on leads. Horses cantering.” Can
horses canter if they don’t exist? Let’s hope someone is
shutting the stable door.
Indefinite offer
As I was walking past a hair and beauty shop in the
small-card area of Norwich the other day, a small card was
placed in my hand.
I was delighted to see that it contained a special
introductory offer involving express massage. (Presumably
this is different from implied massage.) I was even more
delighted to see that it was valid until “February 30th
2004”. This must mean it is valid indefinitely, so I shall
take my time.
Quick response to brick
Many more astute observers than myself have noted the
phenomenon of the disappearing policeman. So few of them are
now visible on our streets and in the countryside that a kind
of selective alien abduction has been mooted.
But I must be fair. A couple of weeks ago a brick came
through our back door – presumably thrown by someone who was
too angry even to write abusive letters to the editor.
Arriving home an hour or so later, I notified the police on
their non-emergency number, and within ten minutes a suitably
laconic detective constable was there, taking notes and
interviewing neighbours. He was followed at almost breakneck
pace by a forensic gentleman, who spent some time examining
the scene of the crime.
As far as I know, no-one has yet been apprehended for the
attempted burglary (the intruder was frightened off by the
alarm), but the speed of response was undeniably impressive.
on 2 February 2004 at 16:09
Houseago Report clears councils
The Houseago Report has cleared all local and central
governments in East Anglia of any form of incompetence, it
was announced yesterday.
Lord Houseago blames journalists, and the EDP in particular,
for failing to praise Norwich City Council and Norfolk County
Council for everything they are doing, and for suggesting
that councils are less than perfect.
He cites an infinite number of instances of journalists being
totally unfair to both councils. Local councillors have
suggested that several journalists should resign, if not
more.
In paragraph 40768 of his report Lord Houseago of Pondhenge
says that it was quite reasonable of Norfolk County Council
not to expect that in the bad weather last week a lot of
people would want to access its emergency line for school
closures, which unfortunately became unavailable, and equally
reasonable for their bad weather website to have gone down
because people were trying to access it.
“It is not part of my remit to speculate on whether the snow
actually existed,” he said. “I was shocked that journalists
should criticise the council for totally unforeseeable
problems.”
He was equally scathing in paragraph 98723 about journalists
who attacked Norwich City Council for not suspecting that a
lot of people would be trying to get home at the end of the
day on January 28.
“The gridlock in the city was entirely the fault of people
using cars,” he said. “It would have been far worse if people
were turning right down Riverside Road, which the council has
wisely prevented.”
He said the claim that people were able to get home in 45
minutes at the height of the snowfall had been written by the
security men on the front desk and was totally justified. It
was not a late insertion by the council leader. Where people
started from and where they lived were irrelevant, he said.
Lord Houseago said he was especially shocked that journalists
should suggest that recycling boxes supplied to residents in
Thorpe Hamlet should be emptied as the council promised. The
fact that they had been left at the side of the road for over
a month was totally understandable, he said, and a splash of
plastic would probably benefit the environment.
In his conclusion, Lord Houseago said the world would
probably be a better place if the EDP building was burned to
the ground and the editor and his deputy hung, drawn and in
some cases quartered. Councils, like governments, should be
left to do what they liked without any form of criticism.
Little Nell wants to go further
Following my enthusiastic welcome of Mr Blunkett’s
ground-breaking idea to make motorists responsible for just
about everything except the BBC, a Dickens enthusiast who
wishes to be known only as Little Nell wrote in to say she
would like to go further still.
She said: “I think we may soon see a return of the Victorian
debtors’ prisons, but this time they will be motorists’
prisons.
A modern Charles Dickens will write empathically of being
clamped for months in a dingy prison courtyard while waiting
to atone for Every Crime Committed by Anybody at Any Time.
“His Oliver Twist will plead for 'more speed cameras'
and his Barnaby Rudge will narrowly cheat death in spite of
being implicated in a rebellion against speed humps. “In
Great Expectations, Pip will not so much be expecting a
mysterious fortune as expecting a speeding fine, and in David
Copperfield, Little Em'ly's disgrace will be going at
31 mph in a 30 limit.”
I think Little Nell has something.
Mistletoe clue to druid influx
An influx of druids in suspected at Saxlingham Nethergate
following the discovery by extreme walkers of several
outcrops of hard-to-find mistletoe on trees in the area.
Celtic druids are well known for cutting mistletoe from a
holy oak tree with a golden sickle, as well as other strange
practices. They believe it has protective qualities,
especially when hung over doorways.
Druids – as well as the Church of England – are known to have
connections in South Norfolk, and a broken horseshoe was
found on the nearby Boudicca’s Way.
“This is very exciting,” said Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam of the
UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing. “It could
be a link to the Iceni. The roads out there are very uneven.”
Plans to build a voluntary controlled druid school in the
village have been attacked by a local atheist, who fears the
appearance of mistletoe on school sweat shirts would amount
to “fundamentalist indoctrination” and too much love.
North American Indians also used mistletoe to cure toothache,
measles and dog bites, but it is felt unlikely that North
American Indians would move into Saxlingham Nethergate,
except on a very temporary basis.
Keep technology out of Poohsticks
Although Poohsticks has been banned temporarily from the
Olympics because of rumours of excessive water speed, a
search has been going on in a bid to bring world Poohsticks
back to Norfolk.
A site near Shotesham has been earmarked for a trial run, and
representatives of the Federation Poohstix d’Europe are
believed to be impressed. “C'est un rivulet pas trop
rapide avec un petit pont intéressant,” said one.
An insider said cameras might be introduced to measure the
speed of the water and to adjudicate on offside decisions,
but Len “Kissme” Hardy, a Norfolk Poohsticks aficionado, said
that technology should be kept out of the sport. He pointed
out that the site was almost on a bus route (itinéraire
d'autobus), which made it well-nigh irresistible, except
in bad weather.