The Big Hedge Society

As it happens, we have gained responsibility for a large Afro-style hedge in a nice London square.  This hedge is a beast.  It is large and bushy and if you so much as ignore it for a second it sprouts like a crazy Amazonian patch.  "Yee-haa", it goes, wildly flinging out stiff leafsome tentacles in all directions, a green firework frozen in time. 

So every so often the ball and chain and I go down to trim the bush.  It's one of those jobs that is a bit - how do we put this - better in the abstract than in practice.  For starters, we do not really have the correct tools for the job.  Old slightly rusty shears that spring open with alarming enthusiasm, slightly wonky clippers, a long handled slicy thing that neither of us can operate with any degree of precision.  We are the Incapability Browns.

Still, we go at it patiently, armed with bins bags and brooms to clear up the rubbish. 

It's the comments that get you.

One elderly gentleman thinks we do not tend it enough.  He'll drag his scrawny carcass by, muttering vitriolically all the while.  "About time, too" he'll grunt, "That thing is an eyesore!"  An eyesore?  Dear boy, what do you call a shanty town?  I've taken him to task: "If in any way it bothers you, please feel free to trim it yourself".  He backs down.  Never trust a person wielding pointy shears.  Another lady was slightly too interested in proceedings.  She watched us with her child for just a little bit too long.  I mean, we're not doing a show here.  Finally, she said to her young one: "I wonder if she's going to make it into a shape?"  I look away to roll my eyes.  Make it into a shape?  I can barely get it even.  The child skips up: "Hello!" it breathes.  "Are you going to make it into a shape?"  I look down, teetering on my ladder: "Oh yes!" I say brightly, "I'm planning on it being a large nude lady!"  This moves mother and child along.

We don't have to make it look especially nice - but we do our very best.  If anyone out there sees people doing their very best whose best is manifestly not good enough, where possible, provided that they are not surgeons operating, just be kind, be silent and let them be.  Silence can be as golden as autumn hedge leaves.

With love from the pink thumbed,

M&T x                    

Superinjunctions!

Given that there is as much flak flying around about superinjunctions as there is dust in the Sahara, the time may have come for another post with a legal tone.  Superinjunctions were never meant to be permanent tools (unlike most of those who invoke their protection).  They are supposed to be temporary relief measures.  The aim is to secure information for short periods of time, with that confidentiality being carefully balanced against the need to have an open and public system of justice.

Judges are not infallible.  Perhaps they have been too quick to grant protection to the undeserving.  But it's not all about footballers playing away. 

We're back to free speech - a vexed question.  So obviously a good thing, and yet freedom of speech must be exercised responsibly.  Actions have consequences.  Peddling plain untruths - as we see happening in the States, with the Obama birth certificate nonsense a prime example - should be actively discouraged.  We saw some of that over 'ere during the AV campaign, too.

However, exposing a sexual dalliance is not always OK - why should it be?  It may however be OK sometimes - especially if hypocrisy is exposed by the disclosure.  How can anyone seek to impose rules of behaviour on others - moral or social - if such rules manifestly cannot be complied with by those seeking to impose or uphold them?         

Privacy and freedom of speech are not necessarily compatible.  This makes for a good Venn diagram argument.  How large is your overlap?  Does freedom of speech trump privacy every time?  Should it? 

Good Lord.  We are almost being deep.  We now wade back into the shallows, with a pina colada safely in hand, watching a long stream of our handsome lovers doing the conga on the beach. 

Love, M&Tx               

Reading, reading, and bookshop!

Tonight we proudly read at the Ritzy in Brixton - and on 15 June 2011 we are reading at the Albion pub in Barnsbury, Islington, at 7 pm.  Come on over!  You can also pick up Big Ben the book at Prowler, a fabulous and fun store in deepest Soho.  The summer is coming and it's definitely time to pick up a read for the beach.  "If not now, when?" as we always exclaim when passing a cake shop.

Love, M&T x      

Police in action

Don't you love a police horse?  Chosen for size - so huge, lustrous beasts, with velvety noses the size of Dawn French.  Anyway they do clip clop around and not just at football matches - but I'd never seen them do anything.  Until yesterday.

Two big beasts appear and plod along the street, straddled by creatures in high visibility jackets.  Lovely chestnut coats surmounted by neon yellow - eeek.  Like a bad trip.  A pink cyclist is tootling down the other way.  The horses both stop.  One of the riders extends a languid arm.  "Stop" he says. 

The cyclist looks up in complete surprise. 

"One way street", says the policemna, finally, as if wakening from a long sleep. 

The cyclist giggles - incredulity blended with nerves.  We the passerbys boil with righteous indignation at the heinousness of her crime.  Pray note that that's not altogether sarcastic.  Cyclists that ignore the highway code are, simply, arseholes.  But that's a pedestrian perspective.

"I'll dismount and walk" she offers, finally.  Which she does, in haste and very quickly, head down. 

That's right, Pinkie.  Walk of shame.

So much to be said for zero tolerance. 

Love, M&T xx           

The Royal Wedding weekend is over...

... but the net chatter continues. One of my favourites is the Facebook fan page for "Princess Beatrice's ridiculous Royal Wedding hat" with over 127,000 fans so far. Of all the musings, catty comments and plain pointless blether, one Gregory Earls did make me laugh mightily as he managed to combine two of the unlikeliest structures known to man that have not featured on Discovery's "Megastructures" show.

In a surprising turn of events, it was announced today that a joint military British and US exercise is under way to secure Princess Beatrice's hat and breed it in captivity with Donald Trump's hair. Raytheon Researchers surmise that the resulting offspring not only serve as protective combat head gear, but would also serve as an extremely virulent weaponized coiffure capable of confusing and killing enemies from great distances..


Lots of love
M&T x

Wise men say

Some will remember this charming scene, which happened in a committee meeting.  It does not matter which committtee.  All committees, I sense, are largely the same, in their sweet inefficiency.  Playgrounds for the elderly, often - men and women who can't let go, yet who don't know what they are holding onto.

I was sitting there munching biscuits when the first older person appeared. 

Hello, he said.

Hello, I replied.

A companiable silence fell, as we awaited others. 

Shall I put my hearing aid in?, he suddenly asked.

I stared at him in bemusement. 

I don't usually wear it when I referee at hockey, he said pensively.  His brow furrowed, and his face tightened.

Why should I, he asked, with passion.  Why should I wear it, so I can hear them call me blind?

Love, M&T x   

A cheeky China crisis

I don't know what made me think of this today but here's an 'orrible story about relative wealth.  A few years ago, a friend's friend (urban myth alert - but we do trust the friend) was travelling in a remote part of China where the local villagers were poor.  He was suffering, as one can do on travels, with a bit of a dicky stomach.

He found himself in need of the facilities and they took him to a toilet.  It consisted of four waist high walls surrounding a succession of holes in the ground (these I have seen and used myself.  It's not a treat.)  He was desperate to go - so go he did.  Then - no toilet paper.  And - how do we put this - he really needed toilet paper.  None anywhere.  In desperation he scrabbled around in his pockets to finally alight on some currency.  The notes had a value equivalent to around 10 English pence each.  He thought about it briefly - but needs must.  He set about cleaning himself.

A hair on his neck must have prickled.  He suddenly turned around.  There, on the hillside next to the toilet, what looked like the entire village had gathered.  They had in fact not seen a Caucasian before, and their curiosity had got the better of them.  They had watched him.  They had watched him throughout.  They had watched him wiping his bum -several times - with the equivalent of a day's salary.

He left on the next bus. 

Love,

M&T xxx