Caesar came, he saw... he took Umbrage
The day before yesterday, I wrote about the first leg of my walking trip around the town of Umbrage, which is, as I may have mentioned before, twinned with Pique, the mountain village in the Alps perhaps best known for its Festival of Sour Grapes.
I’m happy to report that I received a fair amount of feedback from the townsfolk of Umbrage.
The town’s head of Public Relations, Frank Lee- Cross, tweeted: ‘ Thanks for nothing, mate! I suppose you think we’ve got nothing better to do than smile at toffee-nosed visitors? Political correctness gone mad!’
Umbrage’s Lady Mayoress, Sue Bickering, echoed his view in a specially convened council meeting. ‘Talk about a thorough-going creep! This vile individual clearly thinks he’s better than the ordinary, decent folk of Umbrage! What a loser!’
And so to the rest of my journey. After leaving the Umbrage Tourist Information Centre, I made my way to Umbrage University (Vice-Chancellor: Lord Prescott).
A branch of UCL, this institution (motto: Invidiam Meam Superba Portabo or ‘I Shall Bear My Grudge With Pride’) is renowned for its four-year course in SRIS (Self-Righteous Indignation Studies). This course is curated by Ann Widdecombe, and numbers Lady heather Mills McCartney and Dr David Starkey among its senior lecturers.
Luckily, I arrived just in time for a debate in their new John Bercow Centre. The motion was: ‘This house believes enough is enough.’ Proposing it were Jeremy Corbyn, Yasmin AlibhaiBrown and Prince edward.
everything went swimmingly for at least two minutes, when one speaker accused another of looking at him in a funny way, and the other speaker replied ‘Well, frankly, look who’s talking!’, and a third speaker got up and screamed: ‘Typical!’
Before long, most of the Umbrage students were screaming ‘ Take that back!’ at one another.
I took the opportunity to ask a local historian how the town of Umbrage had come by its name. ‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with you!’ he replied, before bursting into tears and blaming his outburst on the way his parents brought him up. ‘They were Umbrage born and bred,’ he explained. he then told me the history of the town.
It turns out that when the Romans attempted to capture what was then a small hilltop village in 50BC, the villagers mounted the ramparts and started casting aspersions on the commander. Aspersions, as you probably know, were originally a species of stinging nettle grown locally.
Soon the commander could bear it no longer, and fled. A deeply touchy character, he then sent a message back to headquarters: ‘I came, I saw, I took umbrage.’
Misunderstanding him, a messenger at headquarters rushed to Caesar with the news that Umbrage had at last been taken.
Once the university debate was over — it ended with everyone refusing to apologise — I put my head around the door of the Umbrage Museum and politely told the curator that if it wasn’t open, I’d be happy to come back.
‘Did I hear you say this is just a load of old bric- a- brac?’ he snapped.
‘Not at all,’ I explained. ‘I was just wondering if you are open.’
‘how dare you!’ he said. ‘Why shouldn’t we be open, if we want to be?’
eventually, he let me in. I must say there were some fascinating exhibits on display. I particularly liked the fragments of ancient jug discovered by local archaeologists at nearby Chipping Sourpuss.
‘Needless to say, that jug was all in one piece when it arrived here,’ the curator confided. ‘But I didn’t like the way it looked at me, so eventually I had it out with it.
‘I’m very sorry, but I will not be looked at in that condescending way by a common little jug!’
MY WALK around Umbrage was nearing its end. Out on the street, one man was remonstrating with another that he had parked his car without due consideration for others (‘And don’t you dare tell me to calm down!’) and a woman was complaining that her husband had just had a heart attack. ‘Why is it always me?’ she said.
Inside the butcher’s shop, one customer was accusing another of jumping the queue.
Further along, I passed a man reading the local newspaper, The Umbrage Post, which sported the headline: ‘ They’re out to get us!’ Apparently, it has the same headline every week.
Unfortunately, when I returned to my car, I found it had been clamped and had several parking tickets attached.
I jumped up and down in a fury, threatening to take my complaints to the highest authority.
‘Don’t you know who I am?!’ I screamed, shaking my fist at the sky. And at that moment I realised that Umbrage had taken me to its heart.