Freedom of screech…

It’s funny (depending, of course, on your definition of that word): but I thought I saw Jim Davidson in Bart’s, the other day; in the queue just in front of Jethro, and Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown – all proudly wearing their four-inch-diameter “I heart Bernard Manning” badges on their chests: featuring a portrait of the man once described as “a comedic dinosaur” (although I would debate the use of that word “comedic”). What I didn’t know, though, was that Davidson was Scottish; or had “Alasdair McAlasdair” as a non-de-fume.

I’m not quite sure either what the point is (simply put, of course, there isn’t one…) of giving over two pages of February’s Tysoe & District Record to the misogynistic, almost-racist, nonsensical rantings of a self-important, self-deluded worshipper of Onan; what it achieves; or who – apart from its author – finds its puerile, snide scribblings entertaining, or remotely (as in the distance from here to Betelgeuse) amusing. Perhaps he will accuse me of having a sense-of-humour bypass (not true: I find Jeremy Hardy, for instance, intensely side-splitting – although deeply intelligent…); but I found this month’s Letter from abroad both insulting (particularly to all other Scots – excluding Frankie Boyle, perhaps) and demeaning; and wholly appalling and insulting as a portrayal of Tysoe being equivalent to an eighteenth-century, overly-privileged (meaning sneering down your gout-ridden nose at people who aren’t like you; don’t have your health or wealth; or your nasty, patriarchal, patronizing attitude to people not of your ilk, sex, colour or brainlessness) Royston Vasey.

What worries me even more is that such awful garbage really does appeal to villagers: and that I am therefore in a decent (probably classed as a limp-wristed, liberal, left-wing, lesbian-hugging, Guardian-reading, heart-on-sleeve-wearing, fox-loving – all of which I am proud to be…) but tiny minority: which has suddenly woken up in the insensitive nightmare of a place that is a village in a real-life Little Britain.

Perhaps Nadhim Zahawi – as our most famous resident – should also be worried: not just that he’s also “from abroad”; and not that we’re all going to vote sensibly for the Green Party (or perhaps even Labour: in a tactical attempt to emerge from austerity); but that we’re slithering, as a representative part of his constituency, quickly even more down to the right: and will, as a result, be backing a member of Nigel Farage’s ragtag bunch of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly” as M(C)P in the upcoming General Election?

I sincerely hope not. Otherwise, as someone who is disabled, I might find myself banned from driving. Not a good position to be in, in such rural isolation.

¶

No doubt, as a result of this post, I shall be the subject (not that I care) of cliché-bound derision and yet more ignorant, dribbling prejudice in next month’s column – perhaps labelled as a “scrounger”; perhaps even described as a “cripple” (a word, of course, which I am allowed to use: but you are not – unless, of course, you are also one: in which case I will be happy to spend my underserved benefit on buying you more fags and booze, so we can kill ourselves slowly together slobbing in front of your ninety-two-inch plasma behind closed curtains; only, though, of course, after standing in the queue in poor Bart’s again, behind a string of other obnoxious twerps who think their every bigoted utterance worthy of sharing, and even being committed to print)?

Feel free to publish: but don’t be surprised to be damned instantly, and laughed at – rather than with – for being both utterly despicable and inane, and demonstrably absurd and ridiculous. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Policier. Je suis Bard. Je suis Disgusted of Upper Tysoe.