Hello and welcome to Christmas Day Prayers, with me, Huw Welshman
You know, viewers, at this time of the year, we often pray for the baby Jesus and food for the hungry and peace on Earth, all that type of thing, and very worthy it is too, look you, isn't it. But there are more important things than that. I mean them, isn't it, more important things than them. Or is it those, fucked if I know, I'm just a journalist, woddooIknow about English?. And here, at the PBC News, with me, Huw Welshman, we would invite you to pray for some very special people, who should be uppermost in your minds at this very special time in our lives.
Let us bow our heads, here in the studio, and yes, in homes up and down the land. And let us pray for Tim. Tim is far away from home. It is true, Oh, Heavenly Father, that Tim has been desperate, for decades, to be very far from home, among strangers, but there have been times, recently, when, despite his best efforts, he has not been on television constantly, especially currently, now that many are preoccupied with thoughts of thine only begotten son and coujldn't give a fuck about Tim, and he is sore afraid, Lord, that people will tire of his grinning, imbecile narcissism, his Stepford wife, his brainwashed children and that they will realise that Tim is actually quite a boring, irritating, self-obsessed prat. Yes, if you will, like Andy Murray with a smiley face glued-on, look you, boyo.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for Tim, now and at the time of his re-entry and in the Eternity of nobodiness and anonymity which awaits him, thereafter.
And serve him fucking right, too, horrid, smirking git.
In the name of Sputnik One, Yuri Gagarin and the holy Apollo Eleven. Amen.
Look, children, it's Daddy Tim.
Yes, you're very own TellyDaddy.
Oh, what's that? I'm just being told, viewers, in my earpiece, that this evening Tim can be seen, up there, orbiting us, weightless and grinning, yes,there will be other people there, too, helping, but Tim, being English, he's the important one, look you, in the space station, I mean, the Russian Space Programme'd just fall to bits, drop out of the fucking sky, were it not for Tim, grinning and waving, and since he's passing, Tim would like everybody in the South of England to jump up and down and wave at him. No, not the people in the North, who are perhaps too busy to pray, unless it's for dry weather, or for that prat Rory Stewart to fuck off and leave them alone, to fill-up their sandbags, again, and try and clear the shit and the sanitary towels out of their dishwashers, again. But everyone in the South, they should pray for Tim. And wave, Tim will hear your prayers. And maybe sign autographs for you. That's the kinda man he is.
And serve him fucking right, too, horrid, smirking git.
In the name of Sputnik One, Yuri Gagarin and the holy Apollo Eleven. Amen.
Look, children, it's Daddy Tim.
Yes, you're very own TellyDaddy.
Oh, what's that? I'm just being told, viewers, in my earpiece, that this evening Tim can be seen, up there, orbiting us, weightless and grinning, yes,there will be other people there, too, helping, but Tim, being English, he's the important one, look you, in the space station, I mean, the Russian Space Programme'd just fall to bits, drop out of the fucking sky, were it not for Tim, grinning and waving, and since he's passing, Tim would like everybody in the South of England to jump up and down and wave at him. No, not the people in the North, who are perhaps too busy to pray, unless it's for dry weather, or for that prat Rory Stewart to fuck off and leave them alone, to fill-up their sandbags, again, and try and clear the shit and the sanitary towels out of their dishwashers, again. But everyone in the South, they should pray for Tim. And wave, Tim will hear your prayers. And maybe sign autographs for you. That's the kinda man he is.
We pray, now, heavenly Father for the stranger in our midst, a traveller, come to us from a foreign land and now cruelly mistreated by the Philistine.
We beseech thee, Lord, that thy servant, Jose, find employment swiftly, for, verily, Lord, he is down to his last few tens of millions of pounds. We pray that soon the nation will see his snarling or morose or contorted psychopathic face, hear his full, bullying horridness and enjoy his ridiculously poor spoken English with which he persuades millions of morons that he is enigmatic and inscrutable, when he is, in fact,
just a thick cunt.
In thy name, Oh, Lord, we ask that he be put in charge of the Manchester United Marketing Corporation, instead of that equally repellent Dutchman, wotsisname, van Dyke, is it?
We so beseech Thee, Oh, Lord, in the name of Sir Alec PigFace, the late Sir George Best and the holy, deranged football fan.
Amen
And we're just reading a mr ishmael, on Twitter, saying that somebody should kick this monkeybastard hard in his spoiled fag face and send him back to DagoLand, where he should manage a bull-fighting team, the hurling from roofs of harmless donkeys or some other filthy Dago sport. Well, not exactly the Christtmas siprit, there, but it takes all sorts, isn't it.
Your thoughts and prayers are now sought for a disturbed elderly gentleman in the beautiful Cotswold village of Chipping Sodom. Gerry's feeling pretty fed-up with life, Lord. He is feeling cramped in his home
and since he started, many years ago, to have violent utbursts when he didn't get his own way, poor Jerry has been all but ostracised from decent society. It is true, Heavenly Father, that old Jerry is still popular with riff-raff like David Cameron and Rebekka Witch and has found part-time employment on a shopping channel, but no decent person would be seen dead with the old boy. Indeed, Lord, he has even been banned from here, thy PBC, and fuck knows, we let any old filth work here, isn't it, look you. We pray, Lord, that peace and more prosperity shall visit Thy servant, Jerry, and remain with him, even unto his heart attack, which, given the life he leads, cannot be too far away, if it please Thee, Lord, who knowest our goings-out, our comings-in and our fascistic, rabble-rousing redneckery.
In the name of the Bugatti, the McLaren and the holy Ferrari.
Amen.
We ask you not to omit from your prayers, young parents, Gerry and Cilla, who, this year, have not been so prominent on our screens and in our celebrity magazines, although they continue their good works, namely striving for the improvement of the nation's parenting skills, upon which, Hear us, Oh, Lord, Gerry'n'Cilla, have much to say.
In the name of Lord Leveson, the Metropolitan Police and the holy, government-funded PR bully, Clarence Shit, Amen.
And finally, in this prayer section of the show, we turn to the elderly. And your prayers and thoughts are requested for an elderly Norfolk lady and her rather large family. None of them go to work, and they keep having babies, expecting everyone else to keep them. They just breed and breed, like fucking rats, then they get divorced, go on the piss, take drugs, demand endless holidays, regiments of arse-wiping servants, fly around the world mixing with torturers and child molesters and keep trying to interfere with the govament of the country.
Let us bow our heads in prayer for Mrs Brenda Battenberg and her official husband, Phil Papadopoulus.
I need to stand-up for this one. And so do you.
All rise.
Oh Lord, we beseech Thee, on behalf of thy servant, Brenda, and her pestilential spawn, worse, Lord, we suggest, than the plague of fucking locusts which Thou didst send upon the Egyptian in the Book of Exodus.
Let, Lord, thy servant, Brenda, live an nine-hundred years span, like unto thy servant, Methusela, and we pray, Lord, that she outlive even unto the seventh generation of the accursed tribe of Ruritania, for whist thy servant, Brenda, herself, is an hateful sight in the eye of most of those she calleth subject, she is nowhere near, Lord, as fucking bad as any of her likely successors.
We so beseech thee, Lord, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, aka Yourself. E'en 4 thine own name's sake, as it were.
Is it Yourself, talking to God? Or Yourselves?
Fucked if I know. I'm not a fucking theologist.
I read autocues for a living.
And, now that we have prayed together,
as a special Christmas treat I am going to be joined by my fellow entertainer, world renowned bluesman, roots musician and vocal coach, yes, it's my old neighbour from the Valleys, Sir Tom Jones, and we're gonna do a number together.
Sir Tom, whaddarewegonna do?
Well, thanks, Huw, and as you said, I'm a bluesman to my soul. And as you know better than anybody, Pontypridd is the beating heart, look you, of the Mississippi Delta.
Aaaaab-so-lutely, Sir Tom
All my hits've been great blues songs, What's New Pussycat, I mean, they don't get much bluesier than that, Les Reed wrote that one, and lessfaceit, Huw, Les Reed is what we call in the industry the BluesMeister, he wrote for all the blues greats. As well as myself there was, well, there was Cleo Laine, Engelbert, Petula Clark, Lulu, Engelbert, Herman and the Hermits, The Fortunes, Engelbert, The New Vaudeville Band, he even wrote for the Dave Clark Five, and they were like the premier British Blues Band, them and Herman and the Hermits, I mean, No Milk Today and Something Tells Me I'm into Something Good, blues gold, they are, them Hermits records.
So what's it gonna be, Sir Tom Jones, OBE; what song are we gonna do together?
Well, Huw,since we're both Welshmen - you, yourself, are even named after one, isn't it, boyo, and since, like, espio....espian.....since spying, like, an' killin', an fast cars an' the Secret Service, MI5 an' that lot, an' right sexy women, too, like, who can read and write, always turns me on, that, women that can do that sort of thing, as well as the other, since spyin' and such like 'ave such deep roots, like, look you, in the Welsh valleys, and since Sir Sean Connery and I are such good friends, wosssat....? No, no...... least I don't think he still beats his wife.... an' anyway, I think he only ever did that with Diane, 'is first missus, like, an' only when she needed it, like. A proper gentleman, Sir Sean, a knight, Huw, like myself. Oh, I know he's a Scotchman, but we're realy good mates, like. Both Celts, we are, me an' my fellow Sir, Sir Sean. I love that Celtic music, I do, 'swhere my roots are, see, there and in the Delta Blues. But those Celtic songs, Val Doonican, he used to belt them out, Delaney's Donkey, Paddy McGinty's Goat, can't beat them old traditional Celtic numbers, not in my opinion. Yeah, Cilla Black, lovedher2bits, I did. Yes, I was at her funeral.
No, no, they didn't let me sing, which was why I'd come all the way from my 'ome in America, like, which is where I live, to belt-out a great blues number or two, have the mourners throwing their panties at me, down the aisle, the wimmin, anyway. But no, never was gonna happen. There was some homo-sexualist there, hogging the limelight, like they do, an' he never fucking shut-up, Huw, you know what they're like.
Dearly bebuggered, I mean beloved.
Worramylike, yer 'oliness?
Never think I were an RC choirboy, back in the day.
Well, mebbe you would. There's still many a good tune to be played on an old boy soprano.
Ooh, get her, get the Bishop.
But no, look.
We are gathered together here to remember our Cilla, and to mock all them heterosexuals, like she did on her fabulous shows.
He's not even a bluesman, he's a fucking drag queen, or an animal trainer, or something. Oh, don't get me wrong, all perfectly honourable branches of this great entertainment industry of ours, Huw. And it's not that I got anything against poofs, my dresser's a poof, an' my wig man.
Not that they'd make me look like an old queen or anything.
You don't think I look like a sad old queen, do you, Huw?
Us being welshmen, together, like, you'd tell me if I looked ridiculous, wouldn't you? I mean, 75, it's the new 18, isn't it, look you?
And not that they'd try anything on with me, norrifthey know what's good for 'em, anyway, but that bloke, that Lily Savage, I dunno, frankly, Huw, what Cilla saw in him. Fag-hagging, we call that, in LA. But no, I often see him in LA, where I live, Sir Sean. The valleys? Live in the valleys? Pontypridd? You must be fucking joking. But no, I though that with my connections to the world of cloak and dagger we might do
that old R'n'B number, the best ever James Bond theme, Thunderball.
Thunderball it is, then.
Lay-deez-angenullmen, lets' hear it for the legend that is Sir Tom Jones.
And me, Mr Huw Welshman
.
Sad, pathetic and rather stupid old-aged pensioner thrusts pelvis at camera and shouts:
We beseech thee, Lord, that thy servant, Jose, find employment swiftly, for, verily, Lord, he is down to his last few tens of millions of pounds. We pray that soon the nation will see his snarling or morose or contorted psychopathic face, hear his full, bullying horridness and enjoy his ridiculously poor spoken English with which he persuades millions of morons that he is enigmatic and inscrutable, when he is, in fact,
just a thick cunt.
In thy name, Oh, Lord, we ask that he be put in charge of the Manchester United Marketing Corporation, instead of that equally repellent Dutchman, wotsisname, van Dyke, is it?
We so beseech Thee, Oh, Lord, in the name of Sir Alec PigFace, the late Sir George Best and the holy, deranged football fan.
Amen
And we're just reading a mr ishmael, on Twitter, saying that somebody should kick this monkeybastard hard in his spoiled fag face and send him back to DagoLand, where he should manage a bull-fighting team, the hurling from roofs of harmless donkeys or some other filthy Dago sport. Well, not exactly the Christtmas siprit, there, but it takes all sorts, isn't it.
Your thoughts and prayers are now sought for a disturbed elderly gentleman in the beautiful Cotswold village of Chipping Sodom. Gerry's feeling pretty fed-up with life, Lord. He is feeling cramped in his home
and since he started, many years ago, to have violent utbursts when he didn't get his own way, poor Jerry has been all but ostracised from decent society. It is true, Heavenly Father, that old Jerry is still popular with riff-raff like David Cameron and Rebekka Witch and has found part-time employment on a shopping channel, but no decent person would be seen dead with the old boy. Indeed, Lord, he has even been banned from here, thy PBC, and fuck knows, we let any old filth work here, isn't it, look you. We pray, Lord, that peace and more prosperity shall visit Thy servant, Jerry, and remain with him, even unto his heart attack, which, given the life he leads, cannot be too far away, if it please Thee, Lord, who knowest our goings-out, our comings-in and our fascistic, rabble-rousing redneckery.
In the name of the Bugatti, the McLaren and the holy Ferrari.
Amen.
We ask you not to omit from your prayers, young parents, Gerry and Cilla, who, this year, have not been so prominent on our screens and in our celebrity magazines, although they continue their good works, namely striving for the improvement of the nation's parenting skills, upon which, Hear us, Oh, Lord, Gerry'n'Cilla, have much to say.
In the name of Lord Leveson, the Metropolitan Police and the holy, government-funded PR bully, Clarence Shit, Amen.
And finally, in this prayer section of the show, we turn to the elderly. And your prayers and thoughts are requested for an elderly Norfolk lady and her rather large family. None of them go to work, and they keep having babies, expecting everyone else to keep them. They just breed and breed, like fucking rats, then they get divorced, go on the piss, take drugs, demand endless holidays, regiments of arse-wiping servants, fly around the world mixing with torturers and child molesters and keep trying to interfere with the govament of the country.
Let us bow our heads in prayer for Mrs Brenda Battenberg and her official husband, Phil Papadopoulus.
I need to stand-up for this one. And so do you.
All rise.
Oh Lord, we beseech Thee, on behalf of thy servant, Brenda, and her pestilential spawn, worse, Lord, we suggest, than the plague of fucking locusts which Thou didst send upon the Egyptian in the Book of Exodus.
Let, Lord, thy servant, Brenda, live an nine-hundred years span, like unto thy servant, Methusela, and we pray, Lord, that she outlive even unto the seventh generation of the accursed tribe of Ruritania, for whist thy servant, Brenda, herself, is an hateful sight in the eye of most of those she calleth subject, she is nowhere near, Lord, as fucking bad as any of her likely successors.
We so beseech thee, Lord, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, aka Yourself. E'en 4 thine own name's sake, as it were.
Is it Yourself, talking to God? Or Yourselves?
Fucked if I know. I'm not a fucking theologist.
I read autocues for a living.
And, now that we have prayed together,
as a special Christmas treat I am going to be joined by my fellow entertainer, world renowned bluesman, roots musician and vocal coach, yes, it's my old neighbour from the Valleys, Sir Tom Jones, and we're gonna do a number together.
Sir Tom, whaddarewegonna do?
Well, thanks, Huw, and as you said, I'm a bluesman to my soul. And as you know better than anybody, Pontypridd is the beating heart, look you, of the Mississippi Delta.
Aaaaab-so-lutely, Sir Tom
All my hits've been great blues songs, What's New Pussycat, I mean, they don't get much bluesier than that, Les Reed wrote that one, and lessfaceit, Huw, Les Reed is what we call in the industry the BluesMeister, he wrote for all the blues greats. As well as myself there was, well, there was Cleo Laine, Engelbert, Petula Clark, Lulu, Engelbert, Herman and the Hermits, The Fortunes, Engelbert, The New Vaudeville Band, he even wrote for the Dave Clark Five, and they were like the premier British Blues Band, them and Herman and the Hermits, I mean, No Milk Today and Something Tells Me I'm into Something Good, blues gold, they are, them Hermits records.
So what's it gonna be, Sir Tom Jones, OBE; what song are we gonna do together?
Well, Huw,since we're both Welshmen - you, yourself, are even named after one, isn't it, boyo, and since, like, espio....espian.....since spying, like, an' killin', an fast cars an' the Secret Service, MI5 an' that lot, an' right sexy women, too, like, who can read and write, always turns me on, that, women that can do that sort of thing, as well as the other, since spyin' and such like 'ave such deep roots, like, look you, in the Welsh valleys, and since Sir Sean Connery and I are such good friends, wosssat....? No, no...... least I don't think he still beats his wife.... an' anyway, I think he only ever did that with Diane, 'is first missus, like, an' only when she needed it, like. A proper gentleman, Sir Sean, a knight, Huw, like myself. Oh, I know he's a Scotchman, but we're realy good mates, like. Both Celts, we are, me an' my fellow Sir, Sir Sean. I love that Celtic music, I do, 'swhere my roots are, see, there and in the Delta Blues. But those Celtic songs, Val Doonican, he used to belt them out, Delaney's Donkey, Paddy McGinty's Goat, can't beat them old traditional Celtic numbers, not in my opinion. Yeah, Cilla Black, lovedher2bits, I did. Yes, I was at her funeral.
No, no, they didn't let me sing, which was why I'd come all the way from my 'ome in America, like, which is where I live, to belt-out a great blues number or two, have the mourners throwing their panties at me, down the aisle, the wimmin, anyway. But no, never was gonna happen. There was some homo-sexualist there, hogging the limelight, like they do, an' he never fucking shut-up, Huw, you know what they're like.
Dearly bebuggered, I mean beloved.
Worramylike, yer 'oliness?
Never think I were an RC choirboy, back in the day.
Well, mebbe you would. There's still many a good tune to be played on an old boy soprano.
Ooh, get her, get the Bishop.
But no, look.
We are gathered together here to remember our Cilla, and to mock all them heterosexuals, like she did on her fabulous shows.
He's not even a bluesman, he's a fucking drag queen, or an animal trainer, or something. Oh, don't get me wrong, all perfectly honourable branches of this great entertainment industry of ours, Huw. And it's not that I got anything against poofs, my dresser's a poof, an' my wig man.
Not that they'd make me look like an old queen or anything.
You don't think I look like a sad old queen, do you, Huw?
Us being welshmen, together, like, you'd tell me if I looked ridiculous, wouldn't you? I mean, 75, it's the new 18, isn't it, look you?
And not that they'd try anything on with me, norrifthey know what's good for 'em, anyway, but that bloke, that Lily Savage, I dunno, frankly, Huw, what Cilla saw in him. Fag-hagging, we call that, in LA. But no, I often see him in LA, where I live, Sir Sean. The valleys? Live in the valleys? Pontypridd? You must be fucking joking. But no, I though that with my connections to the world of cloak and dagger we might do
that old R'n'B number, the best ever James Bond theme, Thunderball.
Thunderball it is, then.
Lay-deez-angenullmen, lets' hear it for the legend that is Sir Tom Jones.
And me, Mr Huw Welshman
.
Sad, pathetic and rather stupid old-aged pensioner thrusts pelvis at camera and shouts:
Why, why, why
Dee-li-lah?
Why, why, why
Dee-li-lah?
Da da da da da da da da da.
Well, sorry about that, viewers. Sir Tom seems to be having a technical problem. With remembering who he is. And what he's supposed to be doing. Probably thinks he's at Glastonbury again.
Best thing is we go over to the weather, now, with Jayne Tits, who is with the floods minister, in Cumbria.
Been nice praying with you.
We must do it again, sometime.
Only not with the old nutter.
21 comments:
Merry Christmas to you and yours Mr Smith.
Ah, mr swiss bob, how nice, often think of you and hope you're well. Best wishes.
Merry Christmas to you and your family, Its true about chimney sweeps we had our chimney swept in the early eighties and two weeks later my wife was pregnant!
Well, the Macallan all went and I've given a bottle of 12 y.o. Chivas Regal a bit of a seeing-to this evening, reading a bit of Wodehouse while the Memsahib watches Strictly Midwives or something. "How pleasant, after strife, is rest" as Psmith remarked to his young chum ...
I trust your festivities my liege were, at the very least, the equal of mine.
Not a drop, yet, your majesty, although my day has been pleasant. The longer I abstain, the more of it I possess, the harder it becomes, the more unpalatable it all seems. I saw some £1500 Scotch, recently, in the Aberdeen Airport duty-free shop and lolled out loud. I'll maybe have a brandy before bed. I envy your enjoyment of the malt, nevertheless. Maybe my possession of narcotics, which I never use, but which are almost infinitely more mind-altering than alcohol, makes me cling to sobriety more than I used to. It is a strange self-denial that I practice, and not something I would promote, believeing, for a long time, that if he didn't want us to alter it, the Creator wouldn't have given us consciousness in the first place.
I've been playing with the new handwriting recognition doohickey I found in the software.
There once way an ugly decking with fear them all Stubby and brain
It amused me but then I have just gone through half a box of chocolate cherries in brandy so I'd laugh to see a pudden roll. I am safe and in no danger but the rivers are rising alarmingly and the fields are turning to silver. The ducks are being swept along on it - swept faster than you can run - and quack like they are surfing.
Since you mentioned York Minster, you might like to put the Mystery Plays on your calendar.
http://yorkminster.org/mysteryplays2016/behind-the-scenes/box-office-details-announced.html
Mrs Raft, Yorkshire.
Thanks, we may well do that, looks wonderful.
I used to see them in the old, gutted St Michael's Cathedral, in Coventry, and they just drained all the newness out of me, made me ancient and guilty and grave-ready, in my early twenties.
I have seen the rivers risen there, in the city, and it is a fearful sight, but it is a fearful place, York, the Jew tower, the walls and the Shambles of the pressed and blessed Margaret Clitheroe, make your hair stand on end; casts the Minster in a colder light, too, a darkly wondrous place.
Dunno if you've come across the CJ Sansom books - although I sometimes think you might be him - he writes of a Master Shardlake, a Tudor barrister, an ally of Queen Boleyn, caught-up in the Court turbulence of the Reformation; one of the books imcludes Cruel Henry's Royal Progress to York, a York still there, today. Worth a look, should you get any book tokens.
I am reminded that we will be in Gretna Greem, shortly after that date and therefore in the area. I have subscribed, like a proper consumer, to the Minster's ticket alert gizmo.
I hate to admit it but my wife, who is normally sensible, has just maxed out the credit card for her and her 5 mates (female) to see Tom in Sydney in the New Year. He certainly can turn on the ladies of a certain age. They will spend days beforehand getting themselves ready.
I've offered to wrap a pair of her knickers around a brick.
I may have to leave the country when this happens.
No reason for you to leave, mr mike, just drive them into the Outback and leave them there. It may not happen, though, the silly old fucker, I saw him inteviewed a few days back, by Larry King on RT. and it was hard to tell which of them more urgently needed to be in a care home, Jones, I suppose, fifty years of huge wealth and he didn't know his arse from a hole in the ground, painfully, embarrassingly stupid and ignorant, knew nothing of anything, other than himself, wretchedly conceited, it really was hideous to behold, like a lobotomised Max Bygraves, only not as talented.
That news presenter's face could not radiate more idiocy were it syndromic. I know intelligence is not a critical criterion for these positions but ambition has no better fuel, and you would have thought he would have been eliminated in the early heats.
But he is the new Ruchard Dimbleby, Huw, slated to usher us through the death and burial of Old Queen Brenda, should they ever happen.
A more judicious audience might wonder why a prominent journalist would accompany any entertainer, much less one as vulgar and stupid as Jones,
Weather update. Still perfectly safe here but the police have run out of 'flood' signs and are wondering whether to scribble over some others instead. They have asked everyone who does not have to travel to stay home. Suits us. We are reverting to the winters of the olden days and are making models, driving each other mad with pop-up theatres made out of the empty cracker box and wondering whether to nip down to the Co-op for extra glue sticks and drinking straws to make the puppets.
The cinema we were in only last week was metres above the river. They have announced that they have to shut. The river has got in to their utility room and they don't want to risk a cinema full of people suddenly finding they are in a dark swimming mpool. The moat around the castle has refilled itself and twats all along the A64 have been pulling up to observe the flooded plain in Spain mainly full of rain.
Various theories are being put forward. Yes, the rain is objectively heavier than expected by the water glass records but the question is the management of the water or lack thereof. It was barely a month ago in Leeds that I was asking why the modern dockside development seemed to be up steps in these days of wheelchair access. Look how close the river is, said a friend, it may be prudent to build higher than the old tow path. The surprising thing was that overnight, with only local drizzle, the river filled up and over-flowed the tow path. The council came down and barred the gates to it. But that area is lined with 19th century warehouses, offices and even some cottages recognizably of the sort lived in by lock-keepers. Goodness knows how deep the water is now.
Mrs Raft
Mrs Raft: at least when the rivers overflow you don't get crocs and snakes swimming down the high street, like we do. That's why Aussies are such good swimmers.
The Independent:
Riccardo Roversi had spent the day trying to clear water from the cellar at Ciao Bella restaurant after the river seeped in through the walls. He had just had a visit from Leeds Central MP Hilary Benn...
Triffic. Just what you need to see; the man who conveniently got the sea defences extended to cover his own and his dear old dad's family seat on the Essex coast. And the difference between him and a croc would be?
Roversi is lucky as this is one of the places which were built above the dock area. That explains the architectural sense of the restaurants surrounding an empty swimming pool. I bet it is full now. The cellar should have been tanked better but it reads as if the restaurant has avoided damage.
Silver lining - they are questioning the HS2 vanity project and asking why this money is not being spent on sensible water engineering.
Mrs Raft
One would think that a child could frame that question. One would think that all this tootling that they do, about the government's responsibility to keep the people safe might include doing so at home. I heard Benn and I nearly smashed the radio, him talking about his neighbours, like he lived there, and not in some Westminster swamp of filthy hedonism, some Yorkist should fucking drown his ass, hold his gobby head under the floodwater. And the idea of Rory of Iraq, wading around Cumbria, wittering empty reassurance like a part-time community nurse, well, the nerve of some people. Worse, though, is the complicity of MefiaMinster in all this TopHattery, why does no/one say, Oi, how come we can loose-off half a million pound Cruise missiles at schools and weddings, when we haven't got enough fucking sandbags?
And as for the EA wallahs. I havr never seen such a bunch of nincompoops, deranged, pink/haired lesbians and refugees from On The Buses or Dad's Army, stood there, drenched, in their yellow jackets, jaws set, burbling that they are in this (their jobs) for The Long Haul, ghastly fucking idiots, I wouldn't trust thrm to unblock the fucking sink. And as for Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Golightly-Jockstrap and his shovelling batallions, well, he's the icing on Satire's cake, sandbag-filling above his weight, the envy of the world. No wonder, with officers like him, that we so resoundingly brought Christian peace to the fuzzywuzzies in Helmand.
Thanks for your despatches, mrs woar, and I am sure that you, like me, are marvelling at your parents' foresightedness in christening you woman on a raft, now that you are about to become one.
It is interesting the difference in local attitudes. If this were dahn sarf we would have had heads on poles by now (or so I can dream). If this were in the East it would not happen so readily because that is a vast pumped managed landscape anyway, except for Canvey Island. Westminster does not really care about the Estuary and the mudlarks, of which my little webbed toes descend, have been too obedient and dull to kick 'em properly.
But Yorkshire, especially West Yorkshire, have been telling folks this for years. Now they have a day of grim triumph, aye, and are rather enjoying it. A pity that Hague will not get the bollocking he deserves but he sold out years ago. There once was an honest Yorkshireman inside him, but he was strangled for the money.
Maybe some good will come of this misery which, we should remember, has happened to property and not, so far as I know, caused any deaths so far. Although the pillocks on the roads and near the water show no sense of understanding how six inches of fast-running tide can sweep your feet from under you, and that's why we should not get in the fucking sea.
Mrs Raft
It was down South not a couple of years ago, Mrs Raft, when Somerset was flooded, and a year before that when the Thames here flooded too.
The TV prattles about the managed flooding of parts of York - and it is horrible if it is your part of wherever - but that happens to parts of Oxfordshire every fucking year - the top hats of Maidenhead being better connected than the flat-capped farmers upstream. They just try to keep those waters on the flood plain and not in the houses. One could say that every single house between me and the river was two years ago deliberately flooded by the Environment Agency in order to protect other homes downstream. (My cubit btw, Mr Ishmael, must be multiplied by several square miles thus arriving at the volume of water required to more deeply cover the flood plain before it comes in to Mongoose Towers to get my toes wet.)
And the quango placemen dicks on the TV would not know a flood defence from a fish in a bucket. This is FD from the rain and as we all know, keeping out the water already in the sea, when tide and wind are your enemies, is a different matter. When you hear them rattling on though, plenty seem to get mixed up. And BTW4 guess from where the directive comes to reduce downstream dredging to create/preserve wildlife wetland areas? This effectively extends the escape time of flood waters and increases the likelihood of flooding in times of high rainfall. And that's what did for Somerset last time we met here. It isn't as easy as saying the government are a bunch of prats. (Although, and of course, they are.)
NB... http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Operators/Other-operators/York-s-best-wet-led-pub
Great pub btw. For those in York with waders.
Yes, it is as easy as that and no amount of specialist knowledge insider pleading changes that. We carry-on, some more than others, mr mongoose, as though we were Medi-fucking-aevalists, quaking, powerless before a cruel God. This shit is only going to get worse. I forecast hundreds of drowned Hebden Bridge Lesbians, cascading down the Great North Road. Billion pound ditches, that's what we need, high earthworks made of Gore-Tex. We don't need a forest of Ah-buttingsm, we need swift, massive civil engineering projects, think of the jobs, think of the learning. Either that or we go back to Matins and Evensong and storing grain in the loft.
The rising sea levels, of course, are a different matter, probably insoluble, fatal to billions.
As to dasmage being limited to property, mrs woar, property is now Life, its acquisitional focus, its spiritual guide, its measure of success by both government and citizen-suspect; the knock-on of this weather shit is that many will become, like myself, uninsurable for weather events and thus maybe mendicant nomad, refugee in our own land. When you cannot insure agaisnt its loss then the acquisition of stuff - and thus the economy - seems as pointless as it has been forever.
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