And what's wrong now? I'll tell you what: old people are dying, that's what. Which they tend to do anyway, eventually, but now they're dying because of our government! It's true! I know this because I was told so by an old yet still very much alive woman I met in a shop. She was trying to buy food, like you do in a food shop, and she was finding it hard to interpret the sell-by date because it was written in an obscure location in miniscule print and she couldn't tell, she said, once she'd found it, what the *@$*± it said. Those weren't her actual words but it was what she meant.
And then she said, Do you know what the government want to do? I think I probably shrugged at this point, because I just wanted my tahini and away to the pub, but she wasn't going to be thrown off that easily.
What the government are planning to do, she said, is abolish sell-by dates and old people are already dying because they can't read the damn things in the first place because they're too small (see above) and they're also horribly skint what with their pensions now being worth absolutely nothing and they're eating gone off food from the back of their fridges and poisoning themselves. And this is all going to get worse, with even more deaths, because of government policy. How will anyone be able to tell any more if it's fine or fatal?
I shrugged again, I think, but I was being drawn in and then …
Euthanasia by soft cheese
Ha! I'm assailed by the familiar odour of yet another mouldering conspiracy from our worthless elected members. The economy is trashed. We all know that (thanks, Maggie). The whole eco thing is looking decidedly wobbly. Pensions are worth a pittance, the people are reaching critical mass and the population is age-heavy … quick, quick, think of something. Brilliant. Euthanasia by soft cheese! Or vegetarian slice! Even more brilliant: regional euthanasia! They'll never suspect if we pretend we're freeing up the economy and being dead green about waste and how shocking it is that we throw so much food away and they'll suspect even less if it's just old people stupidly eating out-of-date pasties or Lancashire hotpots or black pudding or haggis (always on offer after Burns' night. They ship them down from Scotland in poorly refrigerated mega-trucks) or whatever else it is that they all eat in their stinky hovels. And then we'll be free, free to govern a relieved populace because they'll be completely blinkered by gratitude that the immediate crisis has been diverted by our wonderful, skillful governance: fewer people, more to go round. And then we'll all get re-elected! Or something.
I'm not essentially revolutionary. I'm too lazy. But I like old people. They run committees and have clean-up days and do all the things I can't be arsed to do. I might be one myself, one day.
Although initially shocked by the idea of a cull of old people via a soft cheese vector, it did get me musing. I realised that my experience of the old people round here, suggests the ones that have most to offer, generally like a bit of rough cider with their cheese, and it’s generally a fairly hard cheese , tasting better unrefrigerated. Thus, any harmful microbe, capable of withstanding the dessication factor of a nice larder, is rapidly overwhelmed, outcompeted and devoured, by the beneficial flora of the living organism that is cider. So, if evolution were to be given a little pump prime with a spate of out of date soft cheeses, wouldn’t the inevitable results be: an increase in the amount of cider being made by lovely old people who would regain the well-deserved respect of the younger generations; and a welcome decrease in the population of sour-faced, old gits, who don’t say thank you. Even when you reverse down a lane; because they can’t / won’t go back a few yards to the passing place they drove past while you clearly coming towards them in a big van ?… Just to flag up a random one of the evolutionarily aberrant behaviors, of the soft-cheese eating, cider-spurning, influx. It wold also be interesting to note the effect that a glut of desirable properties, arriving on a depressed housing market, would have, if such an unfortunate event were actually to occur. God forbid anyone was to start a “”Snacks on Wheels”” business with a readily available grantof £5,000 from Awards for All. “”Would you like another Ritz Cracker before you go for a drive Stanley?”” This response was inspired by Arthur Smith’s joke on radio 4 tonight: Man walks into a Doctors: Doctor: It’s bad news I’m afraid. Man: Tell me. Doctor: Alzheimers and Cancer. Man: Oh well… at least it’s not Alzheimers Or Cancer. x voldemort
wel andy head… long old post, but one the subject of sour faces ( which you recalled albiet when in your motor i suppose?) How was your face composed at that point? a smile? A little tip for you here, try smiling first… then sometimes the sun comes out from behind the clouds, and our in difference evaporates and we find … yet again we are not so different from the young the old and the foolish?
As the drive to my workshop is along a life affirming little backroad I am invariably smiling and take great joy in giving the sour-faced, slow-witted, bloated muppets a lovely big friendly grin whilst informing their them quite inaudibly, but I like to think colourfully, of their shortcomings as a person and then thanking them with a full handed “”thanks”” as they tremble with fear and rage at the possibility that their shiny paintwork is within 2 ft of a hedge. It’s only polite after all.
i do understand andy head… i have not been without incidents on the road…. many both perplexing to me and the police who swiftly told me of my part in the crime (there had to be one, or the police would not have been there?) charm and blather does not work with the police i have found. My personal favorite memory is of people who, whilst thier car is well and truly secured, they mouth what seems to be very rude words… B.. F.. C ..and A too. lovely stuff, but like poor old mastiffs locked in a car, they growl but they cannot bite.. you see them later in town and they seem to have forgotten the words they used.. dismal stuff, ah but with a bit of glass twixt us we are all brave?
Tuzo I can’t believe you are still spilling forth with your own indecipherable brand of absolute tosh. I would have thought, by any stretch of the imagination, that your supplies of utter nonsense would have run dry. But ALAS! Perhaps someone has swapped your bottle of Listerine with slurry… Old people are killing Bridport, and really it should be the other way around. Old people are the majority offenders in the following areas: – backing new supermarkets – backing new pedestrian crossings – closing/limiting entertainment venues – driving so far under the speed limit it is actually dangerous – driving in the middle of country lanes – failing to be reverse their cars – dangerously failing to indicate on roundabouts and junctions – demonising young people – influencing councils – clogging up pavements – holding up queues in shops and post offices – abusing Disabled Badge ownership (there must come a time when an old person feels that their age is enough of a disability to be allowed a disabled badge. In my view AGE and AGE-RELATED-AILMENTS are NOT disabilities. They are natures way of telling you to either stay put and starve or catch a BUS.) – Finding public breastfeeding abhorrent. – Actually, finding many things that they used to do when they were younger abhorrent. Don’t get me wrong, I am aware that I have generalised, and there are many good elderly people in this town that actually contribute to the town, rather than SAP IT, but the majority are a bunch of bored and bitter hangers-on that should either let go live in Eastbourne.
and you dear carlito, sound very much like one of the “”old”” people you are describing… or actually like someone fiercely trying to avoid getting old… good luck with that one, and let us know how you get on.? But leave aside the old part, and think of the people part, there are grumpy two year olds, there are selfish eleven year olds, there are tedious 25 year olds trying to spoil everyone elses fun, have you never noticed this? Too easy to blame one section of our glorious humanity, look closer… will be good for you, you will feel much more relaxed