The Post-Wednesday Post.

Yesterday was Wednesday, so what happened to the blog post? I regret there was no post because Wednesday is Ashbourne day and Ashbourne offered about as much inspiration as an old rich tea biscuit floating down the gutter on a wet Tuesday afternoon in February. This was largely due to the fact that there wasn’t a present or past resident of Mill Lane to be seen anywhere, although I have to admit that I didn’t spend a great deal of effort looking for one. I tend to rely on Macbeth’s philosophy in the matter of meeting people from Mill Lane: If fate would have me king, why fate may crown me without my stir.

So today I went to Derby. Was that any better? Well, I would usually restrict myself to one adjective when describing Derby: nondescript. Today it was promoted to two adjectives: cold and nondescript. I suppose it might be mildly interesting to mention that I was feeling adventurous and did something I’ve never done before: I had a latte in Costa Coffee instead of my usual Americano with cream. I took careful note of the flavour and then had a cup of my washing up water later when I washed the dinner dishes. Finding the two beverages to be remarkably similar, I made the bold decision to re-establish my usual practice henceforth.

In other news…

Yesterday the British House of Commons (seat of government in the Mother of Parliaments) obliterated what little credibility it had left following the growing number of sexual abuse scandals by voting on the animal rights issue. According to the members of that august institution, animals do not feel pain and have no emotional response faculty, thus paving the way for the promotion of unrestricted acts of torture in future times when political and commercial exigencies deem them desirable.

This vindicated a long-held view of mine – that the House of Commons is a chamber largely populated by poor specimens of humanity to whom qualities like low intellect, rank opportunism, abusive behaviour, and high psychopathic tendencies are the norm rather than the exception. It emphasised my opinion that it is now surely time for the relocation of most MPs from that place to temporary re-assignment in a giant wheelie bin, and then for the human detritus thus accumulated to be deposited in a modern high security oubliette on the island of St Helena. And then I recommend that we should spend a little money to good effect by offering gainful employment to a team of stonemasons to etch a giant plaque of apology to Napoleon Bonaparte in the surrounding landscape.