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NAKED WILLY JULY / AUGUST

I apologise for missing July, but, honestly, it was such a boring month that I thought that I would just carry it on into August and hope that something worth writing about might happen then. About the only thing that happened in July was that I went to see a specialist in London about my ‘little plumbing problem’. Please don’t worry – this diary is not turning medical – there is nothing more boring than other people’s insides. It is dreadful when you say to someone ‘How are you?’ and instead of replying – ‘Oh quite canny, ye knaw,’ they think that they have been given license to tell you about their latest operation / illness / or the fact that the wife has a sore throat from drinking out of wet glasses – as if we didn’t know. I remember going into a pub in Warkworth for a sandwich. There was a huddle of people at the bar and they were all telling each other – loud and long - about their latest medical experiences. These were all variations on the theme of:

“ And the surgeon said to me ‘Mr Smith’ he said (such a nice man) ‘Mr Smith in all my years of medical practice, I have never seen a hernia / twisted pot / peptic ulcer / (oh - any bloody awful thing you like) like yours and the nurse said…’ this is where the chorus came in, supplied by an Old Man, who looked as though he had had all his spare parts removed. Everyone time he heard the word ‘Nurse’ he switched on and chanted – ‘Angels! That’s what they are – angels’. It was small wonder there was no one else in the pub but me and I didn’t stay to finish my plastic sandwich.

So where was I? Ah yes, in London. In fact I had seen the man a year before and he told me that he would do me, but I had to lose 3 stone. It took me a year, but I am now a shadow of what I was, so I telephoned him:

“Ah!” He said – “but now you’ve got to see my anaesthetist and see what he says.” So I did. He was very jolly, but he said I should lose more weight. It seemed that he had once been both jolly and fat, but he has shed 6 stone and therefore has all the reforming zeal of those who have given up something. He recommended ‘speed walking’. Well, sod that for a game of soldiers – 1) people look complete prats doing it and 2) if you tried that on the Cheviots, you’d break your stupid neck. However I did spend most of July Cheviot walking and it has been good for body and soul. I am thinner and have come up with the idea for a new book, which I have just started. So, I have put July and August to good use and everybody thinks that Herself is starving me, which is true, but she is doing it in the best possible taste and I do feel better for getting off my arse, of which there is very little left anyway.

Oh yes, and the nice gasman wants me to teach him to tie a bow tie properly. Can it be that he has been wearing clip-ons? Not the sort of question a chap can ask – I mean you might as well ask him if he is a ‘kiddie – fiddler’.

August is always busy with shows. Northumberland seems to be the last resort of the traditional village show with sheep, sheepdogs, garden produce, cakes and just about everything. And of course there is a bar and in the bar there is always my old friend Jock and he is always pallatic. In his working life he is a much-respected Herd, but at the shows he tends to hook it on, hang it out and turn it loose. It is not that he does any harm – he does not quarrel or fight – he is a lovely happy drunk. It is just that, if the show is near any main road, at some stage of the evening someone has to go and scrape Jock off the road before a passing artic smears him all over it. But there you go – it is all part of life’s rich pattern.

An email from a long time reader – it seems that he rang the Editor of the Daily Telegraph to complain about his (the Ed’s) failure to comprehend Rural Issues and about my defenestration. He describes the Editor as ‘thin skinned’ – it seems that the poor man rather lost it with the reader. I have never met the Editor and he has made it very plain that he has no wish to meet me. You can’t blame the poor chap really. This fact is made plain by the increasingly wimpish tone of the paper. Mind you the reader probably did not help things by asking for the address of the Barclay Bros and by asking the poor creature if he knew who his successor was likely to be – another thread in the rich pattern of life.

Go well with God

Willy Poole