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.