No making plans for Nigel

Having been banging on quite a lot about words recently, I now find it necessary to give my attention to “prorogue”, currently tripping off the tongues of all and sundry in the great race to turn the clock back to the days of old when Charles I invoked the divine right of kings and democracy didn’t exist. Not that different from today, then…

Some of us with low minds may, of course, assume that the current PM, beset as he is by pesky legal niceties, is the man who put the rogue into prorogue. Boris of course, in spite of being comprehensively upstaged in that vein by Leo Varadker, fancies himself as a classicist, so will no doubt be well aware that this word actually derives from the Latin prorogare, which (according to the dictionary I looked up) means to extend or defer. So much for dying in a ditch before he asks for an extension to the highly apt Halloween deadline for our latest potential exit from the EU. It’s just he’s looking to extend or defer something else. Go figure.

Then, of course, we have that other shining example of British political tradition, the honours system.

For a woman whose worst excesses to date appeared to include running through a wheat field, Theresa May has certainly come up trumps (if I can put it like that) on raising eyebrows, temperatures and more than a little bit of Cain with her choice of worthy recipients of what are laughably called, in our current rickety system of rewards, honours. Failed advisers and negotiators abound. And then there’s Geoffrey Boycott, a little too likely to hit things for six that he shouldn’t have. Perhaps he should be boycotted.

Or May prorogued.

Now, after this latest list of shame, even Nigel Farage, of all people, is calling for the abolition of the Lords and its interesting supply of inhabitants. Of course, plain Mr F (for the moment) might have other reasons for wishing to get rid of unelected people with influence, chiefly because someone might at some juncture feel it necessary to point out that he has so far failed to be elected to anything other than the European Parliament. And they say politicians don’t do irony…

Milk deliveries

Two things took me back down Memory Lane this week. We’ve just started getting milk delivered again.

On to the doorstep of a morning. In glass bottles, forsooth. Takes me back to the days of curdling third-ofa-pint measures in school classrooms, crashing crates in the wee small hours and having to rescue Ernie’s ghostly goldtops (thank you, Benny Hill) from the depredations of wee birds with a penchant for top of the milk.

And it isn’t far from there to dreamy remembrances of ice cream vans playing Greensleeves and The Merry Widow Waltz, staffed by people intent on flogging you everything from tuppenny cones with raspberry to the thick chocolate wafer known in deeply politically incorrect Edinburgh in the late 1960s as a “black man.” Not to mention the Bon Accord man who kept us supplied, in those days before sugarfree options and a liking for boozy fizz, with American cream soda, red Kola and dandelion and burdock.

Ironic that what appears like a step back in time is actually regarded by many as a step forward in the saving of our planet and the jettisoning of at least one element of plastic-based packaging from our array of recycling bins.

And in other old news, I saw a sign on the side of a van this week extolling the virtues of “explorer” shoes. Obviously the kind of footwear that aspiring Bear Grylls and Ant Middleton types sport when trying to make the trek to Lidl more exciting. Having recently discovered that the husband has been buying what are ambitiously called “adventure” trousers from an otherwise reputable mail order catalogue, I can only wait with baited breath for these “explorer” styles to make an appearance chez Broon.

That reminded me of those stout brogues made by Clarks in the 1960s that had a compass in the heel and animal tracks on the soles. The sort of style you had to be measured for by putting your feet into a kind of X-ray machine that probably gave off more radiation than Chernobyl.

Wayfinders, I think they were called. Perhaps we ought to see if Clarks have an old last hanging about somewhere from which they can reconstitute these things. There’s certainly a man currently residing in number 10 Downing Street who could do with a bit of help in finding the right direction. Or any direction at all.

After all, if previous generations survived unpasteurised milk, sugarladen pop and feet that glowed in the dark, Brexit’s going to be a doddle. Isn’t it?

A liking for boozy fizz, with American cream soda, red Kola and dandelion and burdock

Nigel Farage has failed to be elected to anything other than the European Parliament.