I potter over to Short Tony’s.

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His truck is parked in the drive; I am keen to enquire about the eggs in the flower pot.

“Wha…?” I begin, as I push open the gate.

Short Tony is stood at the washing line, hanging up underwear. He turns sharply at the squeak of iron.

“Don’t say anything,” he snarls.

I retreat a couple of paces. It is very odd and unsettling seeing him with clothes pegs in his hand. It is like inadvertantly witnessing Brian Cant with a whore.

Muttering something apologetic, I return to the Cottage to put the shopping away. The gender-reverse thing is getting ridiculous, especially since the LTLP has been working abroad and Mrs Short Tony has got her job. I blame the permissiveness of the sixties that culminated with free availability of the contraceptive pill, the wider availability of university education and the subsequent heightened political awareness of working class women, or the advent of BBC TV’s ‘The Vicar of Dibley’.

Later on, I pass Eddie, who is taking some mail to the Post Office in a properly feminine way. Later, I pop in to see her, and interrupt her cleaning the bathroom. This makes me feel a bit better, but I can’t help that she is a one-woman Village Queen Canute.

I scuttle over to Short Tony’s.

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I follow his truck up the drive, keen to tell him the exciting news about the chicken bark.

He disembarks from the cab and throws open the tailgate. Several badly-packed supermarket bags are revealed.

“What?” I begin. “Have you been…”

“Don’t say anything,” he warns, wearily lifting down the shopping.

I convey my message and slope back to the Cottage pensively. How was it that we all became so oppressed? If even Short Tony is being sent out to do menial household tasks then that is just about the end for mankind, and we may as well just be living in ‘The Worm that Turned’ by The Two Ronnies.

I hang out the washing to dry in the fierce heat of the Norfolk weather. I do not use the new pegs that I got for Christmas as there is a slight breeze and they are not overly sturdy. By the time I have put the rubbish out and placed some cups in the dishwasher I am exhausted, and only just have time for a couple of games of ‘Scramble’ on the Facebook before the antiques programme starts on the telly.

There must be a solution to drudgery like this. When I was a small boy it was generally accepted that by the time we reached the twenty-first century all households would have a robot that would do all the boring stuff for you whilst you went and leisured at the astropark with Jenny Agutter. But that has not happened yet. At the time when I actually WAS a small boy, my mum did all that stuff anyway. It is just my luck to be born in the wilderness zone gap between fully functioning housewives and robots.

A new lot of washing goes in the machine; I rearrange the shoe rack so that the shoes are in order of colour (lightest first). If I get the place nicely straight for the LTLP when she returns home then she will not mind finishing up by doing the washing up and wiping all the surfaces and clearing out the sink. Sometimes I suspect the lack of robot development is some sort of plot to keep people in their place. Either way, I am fed up with having to do more than my fair share.

I go on a day trip.

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Oxford!!!

Famous for being in the Inspector Morse shows, Oxford is actually quite nice in its own right and has several impressive park and ride schemes. The LTLP is giving an Important Talk there, and I decide to cadge along for the ride.

“Have you been to Oxford before?” asks the pleasant Oxfordian lady brightly, by way of introduction.

I pause. I do not particularly want to mention the debacle that followed the Oxford Union invitation and have already had several nightmares about people pointing me out in the street, waving their papers and crying ‘shame!’. I had previously assumed that nobody in Britain had waved their papers and cried ‘shame’ since about 1758, and thus my experience with the Oxford Union has always made me a bit wary of the city’s inhabitants.

“Not recently,” I evade.

In the event it is true that everybody in Oxford looks a bit peculiar. They look a bit peculiar because they are either a) from overseas and standing in the street and looking up; b) extremely clever, and let’s face it extremely clever people always look a bit peculiar; or c) extremely clever people who are also from overseas and standing in the street and looking up. My eyes scour the pavements of Catte Street, looking for signs of normality.

The city seems very pleasant in terms of architecture, as would any place you have to pass through Northampton to get to. I buy a nice pork and leek pie from a butcher in the covered market, and use the toilet twice in Debenhams. As I relax on the comfortable white seat, with the toilet paper positioned at the correct height on the wall beside me, I reflect that travel writing might just be my thing.

I fire up my set-top box.

Posted on by JonnyB

Things that have kept me away from the computer – #3 in a series of 945722572.

I feel that this is some sort of watershed in my life. Once, when I was little and ‘the kids’ was not spelt with a ‘z’, I was abreast of all the new technologies that humanity was embracing.

Now, I am hopelessly out of touch. I think it was when the QL took over from the ZX Spectrum. Gradually, I lost touch with technology and the zeitgeist an’ stuff and discovered beer and music and chickens and girls, or at least pictures of them, on the internet.

But I have Sky TV!!! Sky TV!!! Who says that I am not down with ze kids now???

I settle down to watch the bowls.

Barry Hearn, legendary snooker and boxing promoter, has discovered bowls, and has put it on Sky TV. He is astute, and knows that it will be the next big thing – he has even got sponsorship from a racy poker website. I lean forward on my sofa as the chap draws gently in on the backhand. The bowls is indoors, in an arena, but is otherwise proper bowls, with extra commentary.

Suddenly the lights go out in the auditorium. ‘Power play!!!’ booms a pre-recorded voice over the tannoy. ‘Power play!!!’. Immense spotlights machine-gun crazy zig-zag patterns on the mat.

There is a momentary pause, before a spontaneous ‘oooooh!!!’ erupts from the audience. I have never heard such an ‘oooooh’ before. It is voluminous, and laced with irony, but is somehow not unkind – as if a particularly shiny and high-wattage jug kettle had been revealed as top prize on a remake of ‘Sale of the Century’ presented by Jonathan Ross as a prelude to the categories being announced at the Magazine Display Media Sales Awards 2008.

“He’s taking his power play!” announces the commentator, excitedly.

I am strangely happy about all this. It is reassuring that such a quintessentially English tinkering to such a quintessentially English sport gets such a quintessentially English reaction. I hope the organisers are happy too. You can love something and still take the piss out of it, in fact that sometimes means that you actually really really DO love it, or that is what I tell the LTLP anyway.

I watch the rest of the bowls. It is gripping. We are playing tonight, and I will suggest to the club captain, who has a beard, that we should get some strobe lighting.