Sparky

Ho Ho Ho

Well, has been the coldest winter ever, ever, ever. The Daily Express said it would get down to minus fifteen degrees, but then blamed immigrants, Tony Blair and the French, so shouldn't be taken too seriously. The map on the BBC News had quite a lot of blue on it, and that wasn't just the sea. Minus four. But I don't remember waking to find Scotland has floated away, torn by icebergs from Albion's frozen earth. And it snowed again today. I bought some new spark plugs to ensure my horribly unreliable car would stand a chance of starting when I require it, only to find that I have one odd spark plug. French cars, man. Luckily I have a big coat.

I was once in Scotland on the night it hit -18. We were spending New Year in a cottage in Banchory and the lights had gone out. Whilst we waited for the man from Scottish Hydroelectricity, we ate a week's worth of cheeseboard and drank all the port. In the resulting orgy of nausea (alleviated only by some vigorous Cealidh dancing) we forgot we had put some cans of lager in a snowdrift to cool, and so woke to find they had all burst. Similarly, I was eight when a huge blizzard hit South-East England in January 1987. It didn't get about -13 all day and dumped four feet of snow on Sheppey. I promptly went out, got my thumb stuck in the front door until it bled and so spent the rest of the fortnight the Island was snowed in, indoors, doped to the gills on junior asprin.

It's strange how where you are from exercises a kind of hold. Sheerness is a right dump, and most of Kent's towns now stagger under the weight of lagery twats and violent teenage mums. I suppose it always was - Sheerness was a naval town, and as Gibraltar and Plymouth prove, they are never especially shiny places - but I don't remember it like that. I remember endless summers, Richmond County Primary and hurting myself on all manner of trees, bikes and stinging nettles. I went back last year for my Nan's birthday, and driving round was amazed at how narrow and salt-blown it all is. I'm sure it used to be bigger, but then I always say that, especially about Cadbury's Creme Eggs. The gang who stole £53 million last weekend were holed up on Sheppey, I know it. The Great Train Robbers hid there, too. It has two maximum security prisons. It has, in the lingo, form. It does seem that they haven't managed to even leave the county, let alone the country, so where's more out-of-the-way? Plus the police found two abandoned cars on the northbound side of the A249 at Detling. Suspicous.

Sorry, I'm being parochial. I try to be international in my writings, but it can get hard to keep it up, and sometimes I can get provoked. I got an email from someone on Myspace slagging me off. Apparently he couldn't understand some references. "dude, yr blog sux! whos paul coplinwood?" it began. He then impugned my use of British spelling and references to Jackanory. A quick look at his page (terrible HTML and pictures that haven't been resized) showed me he was a 17 year-old high school student from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, whose interests were listed as "football n titties!" and whose favourite music was the music of Puddle Of Mudd. This is my reply;

Dear Jonester

Thanks for your message yesterday. I am glad you read my blog, but was upset to see that you didn't enjoy it. I endeavour to meet high editorial standards whilst retaining a readlable and light style. Also, in answer to your issues with my choice of references and spelling I will say the following: I know who Jay Leno, Jon Stewart and The Chicago Bears are. I know what a whiffle ball is. I know the rules of American Football and baseball. I know how you spell colour, favour, honour, centre, aluminium and axe. I know where Baton Rouge is. I know all of these things despite living some 4000 miles away from you. You struggle with a reference to the British Prime Minister.

Make the fucking effort, bub.

Love
Doug

Grr. An American friend on Myspace said that this was just the attitude to take as most of her countrymen and -women are thoroughgoing morons. She's in a better position to say, but I don't like to badmouth anyone, and out of 300,000,000 Americans I have met about twenty. I met a lot of them in youth hostels. People travelling on their own were unfailingly lovely, such as Mindy, a girl from Kansas who revolutionised my life by telling me how to pack a backpack properly. There was Tim, the bloke from Minnesota in Berlin who shook Bill Clinton's hand at a bookshop on Unter den Linden, and a sweet and generous woman from San Bernardino called Mariah who was made even more so in a bar in Dresden by her being unable to work out quite how many dollars there were to the Euro. Then again, the groups of recent high school graduates who had come to Amsterdam solely to buy drugs and look at prostitutes were not so welcome. "USA, USA, USA," they shouted at three am, full of sexual frustration, skunk and Oranjeboom. "We know," shouted everyone else, and called the police. I imagine The Jonester would fit in well. There was also the girl from California at my German university who was without doubt the rudest person I have ever met. But I think she was actually a bit mental, so I reserved judgement.

Well, as ever, I have lost track of what it was I meant to talk about. I was going to talk about posh pesople today (the horsey woman I saw at Harborough station with a huge dog, the utter buffoon with a deep voice and lantern jaw I saw on a news report about the male-female pay gap who saw fit to compare a woman having 9 months maternity leave with a man going backpacking, get this, in front of his girlfriend) but look, I got distracted. Also, I keep looking to see if The Jonester has replied. Nothing yet, but given a following wind and a good result for the Republicans in the midterms, I may be in real trouble.

Good night, and good luck
Dougal