The Sound of Silence and Clashing Simbels

Pschaw! You either rant too much … and people complain; or you don’t rant enough … and people complain!

There is, however, a certain je ne sais quoi about silence. What is Prince William expected to say to the BBC when asked “What do you think about your father’s forthcoming marriage?”, or better, what is Phil Mickelson expected to say when questioned by journalists about Colin Montgomerie’s likely omission from the Augusta Masters?

The Ranting Nappa has (courageously) been stifling his natural inclination to touch upon the great debate surrounding the forthcoming election (you think I’ve nothing to say about the blessed H. Flight, and school dinners, and the blessed Gordon Brown, and Ruth Kelly, and spin doctors, and the fragility/buoyancy of the economy?), and has instead been concentrating on some of the marginal issues raised by the Easter holiday.

The first has to be the incredible ten mile stretch of the the M20 which was “coned off” for the holiday between Ashford and Maidstone. No sign of road works, no heavy machinery, no broken tarmac, just ten miles of speed cameras and an inviting “Prescott” lane formed by the 200,000 cones. Ashford is presumably a marginal constituency.

Then there are Easter cards. As at Christmas I found that M&S were keeping the greetings in check with a silly multi-ethnic message – “Greetings at this Time of Joy” or similar nonsense.

And then there is the “Simnel Cake” thing. Everyone knows that Simnels are the early berries garnered from young elderflower bushes. No they’re not, Simnels are very small fishes supposedly miracled up by Jesus alongside the loaves. Rubbish, Hermann Simnel was Germany’s goalkeeper in the 1976 Olympics; or was “Bart Simnel” the comic strip Ranting Nappa sound-alike when translated into Croatian? Have you never visited the tomb of Abu Simnel? Wrong, wrong, wrong. “Simnel” has the same fine flour derivation as “semolina”, and I cannot have being paying proper attention when my Mother (bless her) explained (as I am sure she did) that a true Simnel Cake is dotted with exactly eleven dollops of marzipan - the disciples less Judas. That is unless you purchased your Simnel Cake from our Village Stores where they just smudged marzipan all over. The wife (bless her) has a surgeon friend who purchases Simnel Cakes every year from Betty’s of Harrogate, and she claims that apart from being very expensive, Betty’s will give you the proper eleven dollops.

Old Hats and London Pride

Coleridge gave us The Ancient Mariner, P.G.Wodehouse created the golf club’s Eldest Member, and the White Hart has “Charlie” – gnarled and grey haired, an unkempt grey beard, roll-your-own with liquorice paper, bobble hat with leather trim (pretty much a permanent fixture in my brief experience of Charlie and the village) and a fund of information about how the village was when he was a child – the blacksmith, the garage, the sweet-shop and greengrocer now all gone.

Being a warm and unseasonably sunny Thursday afternoon I had came back home from work earlier than normal and, as the church bell struck six, I decided to down a quick pint at the village local. But I chanced on the bar stool next to Charlie and the quick pint extended to three and, more worryingly, the evening became uncannily like an omnibus edition of “The Archers”.

For a start Charlie is the postman’s brother but they haven’t spoken for ten years. You see the postman is going to marry a young African girl who is only 23 and Charlie doesn’t like that sort of thing. Rather sad really with the postman sat at the other end of the bar. And then Charlie is epileptic and likely to have a fit at any time, more so since his wife died in December (and the cost of the coffin, you know), and then there are the herons (shoot the buggers, we say), and of course there used to be more pubs in the village, and there were more buses (double-deckers to Chichester on the half-hour, and to Petersfield) and of course when the village flooded …

In the middle of all this a well-dressed, middle-aged (but rather wild-eyed) man entered the pub and, spotting Charlie in deep conversation with your narrator, interrupted with the unforgettable words “Give me back my bloody hat. You know that hat is mine”. The pub went quiet for a moment while Charlie considered this question. “You can have the bloody hat” he answered removing it to reveal some rather untidy bald patches, “but it’s not yours, I got it in Petersfield”. The man took the hat and stormed out of the pub. “Twenty five pence that hat cost me, but I don’t care. They’ve got four more in the shop”.

Big drama, especially as I felt that the evening was only just beginning to get started and that there would be further episodes to come in the matter of the “hat”. So I took my leave and walked slowly back to the wife and the (getting cold) toad-in-the-hole. As I walked past the churchyard I pondered on one chance remark from Charlie that worried me more than everything else I had learned about him – his age. You see Charlie was born in 1946 and is actually younger than the Ranting Nappa. Oh dear!

Ships of Thules and Thuribles

Sometimes concept is better than reality. When I read about the “Ship of Fools” website (http://www.shipoffools.com/) I thought it was a terrific idea. To have “mystery worshippers” leaving their calling cards in collection plates around the country and posting reviews of individual churches and their services had my mind racing. Sadly the site is rather dull and far too international and inter-denominational in scope.

Anyway a review of Peterborough Cathedral found me a word which I have been looking for (or nearly) - thurible. It is of course an incense pot and these are sometimes swung around in places of worship:

“…the way in which the thurible was swung was pretty eye-opening. The celebrant and thurifer must have been trained by baton-twirling majorettes, as they were of the school that likes to rotate the thurible through 360 degrees!”

Suddenly thuribles are everywhere. There are loads to them on eBay, mainly from China, but sadly it is not quite the word I am looking for. The thing I want a name for is the item with which each member of the congregation makes the sign of the cross in front of a coffin (in France). Maybe I should open the blog to comments and receive a steady stream of “censers” and other suggestions. Maybe not.

Talking about “th” words, the daughter (bless her) is back from another skiing holiday and looks like a panda (the big white rings around the eyes which, set against suntan, are the giveaway trademark of ski goggles). Anyway she went to an Italian resort called La Thuile (somewhere near Mont Blanc) and coincidentally I have been reading a review of a fascinating-sounding book about Thule -the land discovered by the ancient Greeks about six days sail north of Britain and believed to be the northernmost place in the world. So La Thuile is presumably the Northernmost part of Italy, and a Thule box on top of a Ford Mondeo estate is the northernmost part of a passenger car. Very droll, but the Thule Society (Thule-Gesellschaft) founded in 1918 by Rudolf von Sebottendorff will quickly wipe any smile off your faces, gentle readers, for here are the formative elements of Naziism and the Third Reich.

So much perceived knowledge, but it’s amazing what an aid the World Wide Web can be when one is in full rant, specially with sites like wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org to add to one’s armoury.

Ring Tones and Terrorists

I have done my bit for Comic Relief. There was the lady who ambushed me in the Petersfield branch of Barclays Bank and obliged me to buy a raffle ticket and then, unexpectedly, I purchased (for the benefit of Comic Relief) a ring tone for my mobile phone.

Now purchasing ring tones is not something I do every day. I had heard about the special offer on the Today programme while taking my Friday morning bath and the idea amused me. The ring tone is a replica of the BBCs “pips” which still mark the hour but, boy, what an uninspired purchase. After the initial excitement of receiving the “pips” by SMS message I soon realised that I had been sold a lemon. Who in their right mind wants such a boring (and to my deaf ears virtually inaudible) ring tone? I’ve already reverted to the Nokia standard “Polska”.

Now it’s about a week since my last blog and my silence must have something to do with my self-imposed ban on ranting about political issues until after the election. Or might recent sporting events have been occupying my mind - Manchester United out of the European Cup (hurrah!), Arsenal going out of the European Cup (to be expected), Liverpool and Chelsea moving to the Quarter Finals (well done, them), Britain winning at tennis without the aid of the “retired” Tim Henman, etc.?

Actually I have been pondering on whether or not writing about the Home Secretary Charles Clarke is “political”. I know that the National Lottery is not allowed by its charter to give money to the poor or needy, or hospitals, or computers for schools and things like that because such donations might be construed as “political”; but can I just make a tiny observation about the bearded one without breaching my “politics” embargo? You see the man (like several others on the government front bench) is basically a schoolmaster. When he speaks he does so with such assumed authority that you know better than to question him lest he might throw a blackboard duster at you, or give you detention. It doesn’t matter at all about the actual content of the information he imparts, he does so with such conviction that you know better than to doubt him. One is reminded of our friend Mrs C who diligently taught her boys multiplication tables by rote. Unfortunately her “nine times” table differed from the standard version and her boys have been “mathematically confused” ever since.

The First (and Last) Political Rant

I am more than a little concerned about the impending General Election. My concern is that I’ll get so angry about it that the Ranting Nappa site will implode. To soften the blow I might as well summarise the whole thing now - in rather less than the billion words that the British media will give to the event:

* Labour will of course win with a substantial majority.

* The overall turn-out by the electorate will be a record low. (“Who cares? It won’t make any difference, I’m off to the pub…”).

* The Conservatives will fare badly (probably badly enough for Michael Howard to resign). Liberals will fare not much better. UKIP, etc. won’t even figure.

* The only point of interest in the entire proceedings will be the “Gordon Brown” question. Will he remain Chancellor (no)? Will he become Foreign Secretary (possibly for a short while)? Will he be Prime Minister in five years time (almost certainly)?

The real issues will be ignored or swept aside. Why has the New Labour Government seen fit to add nearly 900,000 people to the State payroll over the last nine years? Seeing that these additional people are not doctors, nurses, military personnel, teachers or policemen, what are they doing? Why has the cost of “government” (MPs and associated costs) trebled in the period? Why are there still so many homeless on the streets, when Mr Blair (when he originally came to office) vowed that New Labour would sort out the problem for once and all? And, as for immigration…?

That’s it. I won’t say another word about the election or political matters until the end of May. There should be plenty of other things to rant about – Tim Henman, Manchester United, Jeep Dealerships, The good old Church of England, Charles and Camilla, Wheelie-Bins and Recycling, Family Matters (and there are enough of them), the French Connection, the strange incident of the shrinking steak (and other local restaurant issues), the Business Plan, Countryside Matters (no, they’re counted as political nowadays), Car Insurance, and the Swiss.

That lot will keep me busy!

Sportsmanship and Credit Control

Three cheers for Neil Warnock. Not only did his Sheffield United side play their hearts out for 210 minutes against Arsenal in their FA Cup tie (only to lose on penalties) but he had the heart to say after the match "All credit to Arsenal, they rolled their sleeves up and knew they were in a fight. I shouted to Ashley Cole with about 10 minutes to go 'I bet you're glad you don't come here every week' and he replied 'too right'. Nights like these make me love the Cup and I hope Arsenal win it now."

Such a change after the recent complaining tones of Messrs Mourinho, Wenger, Ferguson and, even, Andy Robinson for England’s Rugby XV. I agree that some of Jonathan Kaplan’s decisions last Saturday had me reaching for the brandy bottle, but you have to draw a line under it and look ahead to the next match rather than endlessly moan and complain. I really hope that Sheffield United prosper under Mr Warnock (they now have a closet (ranting) fan in deepest West Sussex).

On the subject of human endeavour today is the day when I solved my first Sodoku puzzle (see passim). It was published in the Telegraph and entitled “moderate”. Do they mean that the puzzle is “moderate, or the solver? Either way there is a glowing-with-satisfaction Nappa writing this blog (until he checks tomorrow’s solution and finds that he got it all wrong).

Talking of human endeavour I think that I’ve found a handy way to reduce my customer base. This week I took up the cudgels of credit controller for my small business. I tried two tacks – the forceful rant on the phone to one customer, and to another the fearsome “ranting” collection letter. I think that the score is two-less-customers and no cheques received. Oh my! Things were so much easier when the fearsome Mrs T from South Woodham Ferrers harassed the customers into paying up. Somehow they reacted positively to a seventy-year-old Essex woman with a voice like chalk on a blackboard. It’s what you expect from a credit controller and you reach obligingly for your cheque book. A ranting Nappa on the phone just doesn’t have the same effect. Anyway Nil Desperandum as the Prep School motto goes, you can always resort to gin, or as my old Dad once tried, the personal visit!