I’ve done nothing to deserve my own blue plaque

NOTHING happened yesterday, again. Nowt. Zilch. Nada.

I thought I’d cracked the business of writing something about nothing, or not very much, having done so much of it in the last 18 months.

But it seems I’m just a novice in the nothing stakes.

There’s a house not far from me that celebrates nothing happening with a blue plaque on the wall.

It states: “On this site, Sept 5, 1782, Nothing Happened.” Beat that, Routers! You’re only nothing in print. They commemorate nought on a natty little sign.

It’s fixed to the wall of a traditional stone cottage, named The Hidey Hole, down a lane in Sutton Fields.

I had to meet the owner, and rang the bell. Nikki Barrett, a goldsmith, who appears on the TV show Bling! with Gok Wan, kindly explained.

She told me: “It’s just my sense of humour. I bought it at Harrogate Flower Show. It made me laugh out loud, and I put it there to give people walking by something to smile about.

“There’s a lot of misery in the country, and I know it’s a bit of silliness, but we hear people laughing when they read it.”

Bravo, Ms Barrett! Something to cheer us all up, like Denry Machin in Arnold Bennett’s novel The Card.

This set me thinking. What would be an appropriate plaque for my wall? I’ll never qualify for an official one, but how about: “From 2008, millions of words were written here, some sensible, some daft, some funny, and all in the Daily Mirror.”

Not much of a commemoration, maybe, but it sure beats miserable old King Lear, who told his daughter Cordelia: “Nothing will get you nothing.” I proved him wrong.