Limps, gimps and a cockerel named dude

If this latest monologue takes on a slightly unusual tone, it may be something to do with the fact that today, as I type, I am not only in a good deal of pain but I am also entirely unable to turn my head to the left (without shrieking like a five-year-old girl anyway). I can’t look left, I can’t even turn left without shuffling around in the fashion of a brain-fetching horror film gimp in search of a mad scientist. Like the great Derek Zoolander, I am no longer an ambiturner...and I don’t even have Blue Steel or Le Tigre as consolation. Adding real insult to actual injury, I have no idea how this ludicrous affliction came to pass. I woke up, I breakfasted, I sat down to work and wallop! Something was French plaiting the muscles in my neck and shoulders.
Trying to get to the local quackery proved both pain-filled and embarrassing; embarrassing because the posture I was forced to adopt gave me more than a slightly eccentric air. With my head tilted over it was as if I were permanently poised to ask a question. With it turned ever-so-slightly to the right and downwards I appeared to be examining the contents of the gutter. Together the effect saw me catapulted into the ranks of our little town’s wandering nutters. Every village, town and city across the land has at least one: confused souls wending a seemingly endless, aimless path to nowhere in particular while murmuring a continual monologue. In our town that person was/is (haven’t seen him in a while) ‘Brucie’, a red-faced, boot-wearing fellow known to stomp the length and breadth of the burg like an angry farmer in search of a heifer gone AWOL. For one afternoon I was Brucie 2.
While I hadn’t actually started talking to myself, people were nonetheless crossing the street to avoid me, particularly if they had witnessed me attempting to look both ways before crossing the road which, as I pivoted my body in either direction, must have looked like a poorly executed manoeuvre by the world’s worst and slowest line dancer. Thus an otherwise sunny disposition had become cloudy with a hint of murderous.
It had been my intention to once again take to task those namby-pamby bandwagon jumpers intent on portraying Tesco as some kind of evil commercial virus. I have no issue if people are uncomfortable with the seemingly unstoppable growth of the UK’s largest retailer, particularly if they worry about the potential impact on smaller local stores. It isn’t a point of view I share but I understand it. What I do take issue with is that the same people writing headlines in local newspapers such as “How many more do we need?” (a front page story in our local rag last week) are happy to nip down to their local Tesco for a few low-priced necessities. If you are genuinely worried about the retailer’s saturation of our high streets, just shop somewhere else – no one is forcing you to go there. Sir Terry Leahy and company aren’t orbiting the planet in a Death Star making UK shoppers use Tesco under threat of planetary annihilation. So if you are among the vocal sanctimonious nay-sayers, just stop your hypocritical bloody whining.
Still for every time-wasting irritant of a story like that, you occasionally come across a true metaphor-busting gem such as that of the Essex hens and a cockerel called Dude that took on a fox and won. The young canine, having broken into a Basildon chicken coop, no doubt anticipating a slap-up dinner, became instead the victim of a murder most fowl as Dude, Izzy, Pongo and the aptly-named Pecky set about him in a flurry of wings, claws and beaks. It is even being suggested that the inventive Dude knocked over a table on to the unlucky fox’s head, rendering it possibly unconscious but certainly dazed and easy prey for the avian defenders.
But even the Dude’s exploits paled next to the perfect puerile fun that came from the reports of the renaming of a certain ‘Tickle Cock’ bridge in Castleford, Yorkshire. Admit it, you just smirked – I know I did. It gets better though. Tickle Cock bridge apparently gained its name because of the railway underpass’ popularity with local lovers seeking a secluded spot for an alfresco bunk up. Anyway, the local council, prudish bore-arses that they are, renamed it ‘Tittle Cott’ ahead of a Channel 4 documentary being shot in the area but the Castleford locals were having none of it and kicked up an almighty stink. One particularly vocal residents association, The Castleford Area Voice for the Elderly, declared that its members had been highly offended by the name change and demanded the phallo-centric name be restored. One can only hope their campaign never reached the demonstration stage – the idea that dozens of purple-rinsed locals might parade around with placards and t-shirts declaring “Castleford has a right to Tickle Cock” is a touch unsavoury. Ultimately the council relented and a new plaque was erected bearing the original name.
Naming local features or buildings after the activities practised there by the locals is an interesting idea though – wonder if our council would support renaming the pier ‘Sandy Crack’?

Workplace wind-ups? Rude or annoying customers? Irritating colleagues? Want to share? Email: jack@theappointment.co.uk

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