With the difficult ones it's not always because the subject matter is tough. Sometimes it takes a lot of thinking along the lines of "how can I write about that?"
At this point you are all expecting a terribly serious column. But sorry to disappoint you - this is a fun column about some old farts I spent yesterday lunchtime with. The difficulty is trying to explain these characters to you. Just look upon it as a kind of Pickwick Club for Hethersett. If you have read Dickens' Pickwick Papers you will know a little about what I mean. And I don't mean a load of fat characters prancing about the countryside (or maybe I do).
We call ourselves the old Farts Club for no other reason than the fact that we are old farts or should we say gentlemen of a certain age and vintage.
They all know about my blog. Actually most of them subscribe and send me regular rude comments. So maybe it's time to get my own back, particularly as they will be reading this. But of course I wouldn't dream of doing that. You see everyone needs to be a member of an old farts club (or a young farts club). It's just an excuse to get together, eat, drink and be merry. And let's face it at the moment we need to eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow the restrictions kick in (possibly). It's a way of enjoying each other's company and relaxing from the stresses and strains of everyday life.
So there we were in Janey's Village Cafe. I made a late entrance due to the late arrival of Boiler Man. This is the man who comes every year to service our boiler. Every year he shows amazement that it is actually up in our loft. Thankfully we do have a loft ladder and light. One year we had a different Boiler Man who got up there to find a hornets' nest. He was stung into action!!!!
This year's Boiler Man was late, hence my late arrival for my Janey's pig out. He expressed surprise that he had to go into the loft and asked how I knew it was him who came last year. I won't be personal on this point. Let's just say he had a certain look that you wouldn't mistake for somebody else. Janey's pig out is a three course meal with mince pies that nobody can eat because they are stuffed (that's the diners and not the mince pies). It's like a racing car driver who plans a one stop strategy. That means just one stop to change tyres. A visit to Janey's is a one stop strategy. You don't need to eat anything for the remainder of the day.
I had a nail taken out of my car's tyre earlier this week. It took the mechanic about 10 seconds to get the wheel off. Formula One mechanics get wheels off and put new ones on in about two seconds which I always think is remarkable. At an estimate it would take me an hour or so to get a wheel off and another hour to get a new one on with 30 minutes of cursing and numerous bruises and cuts.
The banter at the cafe flowed almost as much as the wine (bring your own, glasses provided). Richard got on his soapbox and held court. We are threatening to set up a stage in Oak Square in the village so that he can wax lyrical on any number of subjects. Apparently he reckons he is the world's foremost authority on brown linoleum!
Chris is very entertaining on all the stars that he has met during his working life in the music business. Today, following my recent comments about Ralph McTell, he admitted that the aforementioned troubadour was a grumpy man but not as bad as Al Stewart who he reckons is up his own dust pipe (my words not his).
Mike brings a modicum of sensibility to proceedings but comes form up north up north and so is fair game for some fun. Laurie is our oldest member and has a memory for the old days like few others. He was once a copper in the Met and may well have arrested Richard during one of his rants in Hyde Park Corner.
Rob is the gentleman of the crew, quietly efficient but with a huge sense of fun and myself and Richard go back forever, so I'm going to be pretty kind about him and just say that when it comes to saving people from falling off pavements he's the boy (will explain that one at a later date).
That just leaves my mate John who really won't expect me to be nice about him. The life and soul of every gathering he really does fire off ideas for my blogs (some of which are even printable).
So we all need old farts and let's see how many of them leave a message on the bottom of this blog.
Every meeting needs to toast something or somebody. Today we toasted each other's health, we toasted a better 2022 and we toasted the Nidderdale WI in Yorkshire for being my group of the year for their lovely comments about my blogs.
Incidentally a very dull story about mince pies. When I was a sub editor on a series of newspapers, the chief sub editor insisted that mince pies was one word. So we always had to write mincepies. After that we always referred to them as mincepees. That's something you really wanted to know. More blitherings tomorrow.