It was my birthday yesterday. 53! I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who sent me a birthday card or their bestest kind wishes on the happy day. I would like to – but since nobody did, I won’t.
But I did get one birthday present. My solicitor called to tell me that my wife has upped sticks and gone to live with her Jan in Stowmarket. It seems he has a better house than the one she has been squatting in – i.e. ours. And I’m also told that, after becoming the most unpopular Parish Clerk in village history, probably on account of her bossy personality, she has resigned her post, ostensibly on the grounds of no longer being a parish resident. I wonder if there was a street party to celebrate . . . This means that – yes! – I have moved back to the house that I looked after, decorated, tended and generally kept afloat for years while my wife used it to host coffee mornings and garden parties and clutter up the rooms with unnecessary indoor furnishings and knick-knacks from John Lewis with money we didn’t have. The divorce should go ahead now without too much problem – at least that’s what my legal chap says, but we still have to come to some kind of financial agreement. He says he can fix that easily enough, but he obviously doesn’t know my wife.
I am not sorry to have left my temporary accommodation with Geoff and Jeanette Johnstone. They were very kind to put me up, and I will be forever grateful, but lately Jeanette has started to behave in rather disturbing ways, including leaving the bathroom door ajar when she takes a bath, and wandering around in her nightwear when Geoff is out playing darts with his darts team, which was quite often. As nightwear goes, there wasn’t much of it. Jeanette is a very nice lady, and not unattractive, but I have my rules and regulations.
Anyhoo, here I am back in MY house. I’m pleased to see my that my record collection has been left untouched, and that my wife appears not to have meddled with any of my precious vinyl. Indeed, the shelves in my “listening room” upon which my collection is stored in alphabetical order were rather overlain (is that a word?) with cobwebs, and I think she has not been in there for months. She never had any musical taste. Michael Bolton, for goodness sake! You should have heard what she said about Neu! and Throbbing Gristle, stupid woman. There are things to do, though. I need to get the garden sorted out, and the place needs a good clean from top to bottom. That woman never did understand housework.
But enough of my domestic trivialities. There is much afoot, locally speaking. Everyone is re-energised about the whole illegal foreigners thing. You will not need me to remind you how the then Tory government had been eyeing our village hall as somewhere they could house otherwise homeless wandering aliens, and how the village established a group – GASSE (“Go Away! Stay Somewhere Else!”) – to prevent having the village turned into a suburb of somewhere we could not pronounce, and how I played a vital role for the group as the Advanced Round-the-clock Security Executive (ARSE). Happy days! Anyhoo, no sooner am I back but now the current Labour government is facing a boatload (excuse the pun!) of trouble about sticking their unwanted foreigners in hotels, and it seems that governmental eyes are once again on the village hall as a comfortable place for people to stay while civil servants lose their asylum applications.
Long story short, GASSE has been hastily re-convened, and I have been asked if I would like to be the ARSE again. Of course, I accepted. I cannot help but feel I was made for the role. On the basis that the government seems to have come unstuck because of planning regulations about one hotel somewhere or other, we have checked out, quietly and surreptitiously via a friend of Bernie Shepherdson who works for the local authority, how the village hall stands as regards planning permissions. It turns out it doesn’t have any. It does not even have permission to be a village hall. We are going to have to think about this, and think about it quite hard.
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James Henderson
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