Middle class at last

I think that I must have truly qualified for the middle classes.

When I looked at the Telegraph online this morning I discovered that I knew the writer of the first Letter To The Editor.

In my youth we used to parody these letters because they were written by a social group whom we had almost completely never encountered. “Dear Sir,” we used to say, “I am Affronted. Love from Gussett,” or something similar.

This morning I discovered that my actual, real life acquaintance, are sufficiently middle-class for their views to be registered in print in the august pages of the Daily Telegraph, albeit the online version.

I was very impressed indeed.

Actually you know the writer a little as well, he is the uncle of Actual Head Boy, which makes us all a bit middle class by association, I suppose.

I have tried many times to have my letters acknowledged by the Daily Telegraph, with no success whatsoever, including the furiously angry one I wrote to them when they included details in an article of the best way to attack a taxi driver. They suggested that recalcitrant taxi drivers could be brought to heel by a passenger deliberately sitting behind them and pulling their seatbelt tightly around them, thus imprisoning them in their seat.

Obviously this is nonsense, we are exempt from wearing seatbelts, for precisely that reason. One or two foreign or otherwise inexperienced drivers wear seatbelts, and in my opinion they will find out soon enough why they should not. I never, ever do, because so far I have never had an accident, and I have had any number of horrible abusive passengers attempt to imprison me, a la the shocking advice in the Daily Telegraph, at which activity they have been entirely unsuccessful.

I suppose that I should not be surprised at my acquaintance’s views being put into print, when mine were so resoundingly ignored,  because he is not a taxi driver but a vicar. Also when I scrolled down the page it looked as though half of Cumbria had written on the same theme. This is the new laws about burning wet wood. I can’t see why everybody is getting so upset about it. Burning wet green wood is a pointless depressing activity unless you are trying to smoke a side of ham, in which case nobody cares what the law says, because the resulting product is so astonishingly delicious.

Mark cut a lot more firewood today. The garden is emptying nicely, and on top of that he mixed some more concrete and filled in the last bit of the conservatory floor.

I think this left him feeling tired and grumpy, because he was very cross indeed when the dogs ran through it in an excess of enthusiasm some time afterwards. Certainly the poor dogs were upset. There was something that looked like a floor but turned out, in the event, to be a plunge into a dreadful liquid mire of disaster. Not only that but Mark was shouting and swearing and waving his hands about, it was a terrible moment.

The dogs were so upset that they rushed into the house and hid under the kitchen table, which did not help. They would not even come out when  Mark tried to summon them to the bathroom for some restorative ablutions, and had to be dragged out, without dignity, backwards.

I was not sorry that they were being obliged to shower, because the ghastly weather has not abated, and they have become permanently encrusted with mud. I was actually run over by a dustbin yesterday, somewhat to my surprise. It beetled out from somebody’s driveway with a sudden gust of wind and leapt on me. It was like having an unexpected encounter with an undressed Dalek. I put it in its place firmly and continued on my way, but it just shows that you can’t be too careful.

Have a picture of a new conservatory floor, still at the Ingredients stage.