"Gotta Pick A Suitcase Or Two...

...We'll have noted the not unusual tale of hordes of Eastern European folk being recently nicked for offences of theft in London town. Quite Fagin-esque sending young children out to pick the odd pocket or, more in the modern mode, mug some poor punter who has just squeezed his last fifty out of a cash machine.

Not terribly tasteful all round, but as one says not entirely without precedent.

But a tale of thieving from Sweden that you may not have spotted has me in giggles.

The plot is thus. Buy a ticket for a long-haul bus trip. Queue with the other passengers to load your unassuming looking suitcase into the hold. Enjoy the journey then walk off with same suitcase, but one now full of stolen goodies.

How then is it done, this almost magic trick? Simple. Inside your own suitcase you hide a dwarf - a thieving dwarf not just any sort of small fellow. Once bus in under way, your chap emerges from hiding, rifles through the other bags and baggage for any valuables he can find, then zips himself back up inside your own suitcase near journey's end with the loot.

Presumably there must some risk that the poor thieving dwarf will be stuck at the bottom of a whole heap of cases, not be able to move or hardly to breathe. Perhaps one legs it into the bus station at the very last minute to avoid just such a tragedy.

Clever, darn clever all round. Except clearly they've now been rumbled. Not sure how, the report did not tell. Perhaps as ever sin will out. Bit like thieving dwarfs then.

Gawd Bless Yer Ma'am...

A royalist by ardent persuasion and very nearly a Cockney by accident of birth, you'll not find me among any lining up - and there are such sad souls - to cast aspersions on Her Majesty the Queen, whom God preserve long enough to save us all from the machinations of her eldest son as monarch!

It is, of course, respect for the post than for the person that drives one primarily. If Churchill averred that a democracy was the worst of all possible political options apart from all the rest, what he really meant was a democracy under a constitutional monarch being so far the better than presidential rule as per France or America or anywhere.

One does though have enormous personal affection for the person of the Queen. The years of duty and so forth. But also for the very occasionally revealed wit of the woman. Not too many bon mots have escaped the inner sanctum over time, but one came up the other night on the television that had me purring.

Some programme or other about - I forget precisely - the arts or culture or somesuch, had a smartish looking chappy moaning about the lack of public taste in modern England. Well, you and me both ordinarily I would agree. But in his case one could tell that by 'taste' he meant something terribly fashionable, a la mode, and accessible only to those of desperately refined minds. (If one says, at this point, that he came over as terribly 'precious', one does not by that mean in any way valuable!)

So, it seems this chap had once nerved himself to ask of Her Majesty at some 'cultural event' what were her views on taste qua taste? A rather impolite question on the whole and one clearly intended to land her in it.

But rising triumphant to the occasion as ever she might, it appears that Her Majesty merely - wisely and softly - replied "I am not sure it really helps."

Marvellous, simply bloody marvellous! Gawd Bless Yer Ma'am!

Rosemary Macdonald - A Tribute...

...You will have noticed, no doubt, that in response to H's modest proposal the other day for a 'Fat Tax' to cure the nation of its habitual obesity, the Government has rushed out its own silly idea instead to reward lardies who lose weight.

A ridiculous and a preposterous notion you'll agree. Why on earth should good money be spent to reward people for failing to maintain dietary control in the first place?

What? Fifty quid to shed a stone, then a further fifty when you put it back on and lose it once more! I think not!

But, they argue, companies will benefit from a fitter workforce; conveniently overlooking the fact that most fatties are not workers. (There aren't indeed many office couches on which potatoes can lounge, you'll have spotted. Apart that is from in the Directors' suite, but that's a different matter altogether!)

And who would pay for such a nonsensical scheme? Need we ask!

You can imagine the ire and sharp gritting of teeth that greeted this latest Government nonsense in the Palladas household as we munched on a dry biscuit for tea!

Pens were firmly grasped to send off a cannon of rebuke to the appropriate national organ, when sadly one was deflected from the purpose by a different Canon altogether. Canon Derek no less a personage - though no more - of the Cathedral 'phoning to ask if we were interested in hosting an ecumenical choir from Bulgaria the week following.

Normally you would have found me charitably disposed to take on his off-casts - clearly the Cathedral didn't want them, so send them out to the hapless parishes to smile and sing was the note of the call - but being in such pestilential mood I could only respond to his reasonable, if devious, request, by enquiring if any of the choir weighed more than ten stone as my chancel steps were a bit wonky at present.

From the ensuing brief silence at the other end of the telephone it was clear that dear - and he is - Derek was wrestling with the startling possibility that a diocesan cleric of his keeping had gone suddenly, barkingly and irrecoverably mad. A difficult thought for a quiet Thursday of course.

Resisting clearly the challenge of questioning my sanity, Derek merely soothingly replied that he would take that for a 'no' and would see if the Rev. 'Simple' Simon down the road fancied some folk hymns in a language none would comprehend.

That done and dusted though, my attention had been sufficiently deflected not to sound off to the Telegraph on the subject of pain and not gain for fatties.

Well, hence today my tribute and thanks to Rosemary Macdonald, a simply splendid woman of Suffolk, who wrote on behalf of myself and millions of rational like-minded coves the very point that I would have made had I made it to make it. Viz., fat people should not be rewarded but should be punished instead.

Blessed female. Even used the very phrase 'Fat Tax' that we had but coined, H and I, the other evening.

Clearly then a groundswell here, a mood and a tide to catch: "What do we want?" "More fat tax!" "When do we want it?" "Now!"

Fat Tax - A Modest Proposal...

...you may have heard one of Brown's hirelings on the wireless today ranting about the Government's intention to pass yet more new legislation, this time to force food producers to adopt a single system of coding their goods for fat and sugar content etc. (All cheese will necessarily have to be 'red' coded it seems.)

This, we are told, is necessary in order to tackle the rampant 'obesity crisis' that, again we are told, is threatening to overwhelm us as a nation.

I, of course, will have none of that. People know good food when they see it and if they have not the sense or will to choose to buy and consume reasonable portions of said goodly, God-given, food then let them grow 'til they burst. (Much as that wretched toad Henry VIIIth did.)

Also I - as we all are - am wretchedly fed-up with a Government that thinks the answer to any social ill is more 'command and control' legislation. (We have, thank you, the Ten Commandments of 'Thou shalt not' and that is enough for any man or nation, had we but the wit to live by them.)

It is but an oppressive, dull, lazy and ineffective way to go, and I am dismayed - if I can be bothered to be so cross - that yet again this is the best they can come up with.

H and I were discussing the matter just now. I in usual Jeremiad mode of gloom and doom, she more alert to positive alternatives.

"A fat tax," she said. "That is what we need. A tax on fat people. That would stop them eating."

And how right and logical she is. Being fat is but a personal matter of choice and taste - or rather perhaps lack of the latter. But if there is a social cost to their bulk because we must have more fuel in our aeroplanes, larger beds in our hospitals, oodles more cash to be spent on diabetic clinics, etc., etc., then let the lardies pay the price.

Need a wider, stronger seat on the 'bus because your belly hangs over your feet? Then stick your fat paw into your bulging trouser pocket and bring forth the means to pay for it. Need more nursing care because you're too bulky to wipe your own arse when in hospital, then stump up the readies for the purpose.

If you add to that fine argument the clear correlation between being fat and not being green - you require more precious energy to feed your ferocious bodily appetites - then you can see just how right this wonderful idea is in principle and purpose.

We begin a campaign tomorrow. Early ideas on the kitchen table tonight include a compulsory 'speak your weight' device in every household in the land. Citizens will be required to own up to their bulk each morning and anyone over their appointed BMI target (see how we have built the beloved target into the idea, not to mention mass compulsion - how can the Government resist?!) will be fined an incremental penalty. The charge to be debited automatically from their bank or benefit - more like - balance.

There will also be proper congestion charging called 'Fat Free Zones'. Any fatty wanting to enter a town or city centre, to the inconvenience of properly slim and svelte people, will be required to pay a fixed sum in advance. Foot patrols will look out for fatties - not in itself a terribly tricky task - and escort them out of town if they fail to show the proper 'licence to pollute'.

Power stations will be run not by coal, gas or nuclear fuel, but by fatties in treadmills as punishment for their crime. (Obesity, per se, will be the new criminal offence, not fart-arsing around with labels on packages!)

Naturally there will be Fat Reality TV too in which overweight contestants will be subject to more social opprobrium and disdain than even your most ardent indoor smoker.

All in all a thoroughly modest proposal you'll agree, and a darn fine solution to a beastly problem. Well done H!

P-K4...

...Great Uncle Cuthbert is in mourning this evening having heard of, and taken badly to, the news of the death of the American chess legend and all-round basket case (to judge from his later rants against Jews - of which great race he was in part, if not in full even, one) Bobby Fischer.

GUC is not a chess maestro himself - though he can do a baffling Sicilian on occasions - and is not, I trust, regretting the silencing of the ridiculous rants per se.

He is though of the generation that sat absorbed nightly as Fischer and Spassky slugged out a world of conflict over the board. Two Cold War warrior champions in Reykjavik way back when the Cold War was pretty warm at least in 1972.

The chess was brilliant and the battle bruising. Fischer aimed to crush Spassky's spirit and did so. He lost the first game, forfeited the second and looked gone before it had begun. Then dazzling power-play games of compelling force from the American pushed Spassky to and finally over the edge.

Fischer was King for a moment - then promptly found his very own edge of darkness and took a complete header.

Very strange stuff all round.

GUC, it must be owned, did not come out of the experience untouched either. On the contrary, as it were, many others were 'touched' by him. For it seems he layed some pretty generous odds on Spassky to win after game two. The local lads, one is told, promptly weighed in with the wonga, fully expecting to take 'poor' GUC to the cleaners. Only of course to find themselves bereft of shirt and tail in the end.

But it was not memory of vast pecuniary gain that GUC has cherished down the years of the match. For he tells the fine tale of the night - one of many - when he and the lads were not merely following the game on the television, but were also having a crack themselves. Some would sit with the pieces as Fischer and Spassky had them, trying - valiantly if generally vainly - to anticipate what the next master move would be.

Others would hunker down over their very own combat in deep thought, aided - or not perhaps - by heroic ingestion of the soft drug of choice of the day. (Gold Lebanese with the Government duty stamp still on it was favourite it seems, though I know it not of course.)

This one night then, two lads were sat in the middle of the room - on the floor of course in the spirit of the times - playing away in rapt silence. As the Reykjavik game was not heading anywhere apace, concentration in the whole room began to resolve itself upon young Jan and younger Eddie.

Theirs was a complex middle-game, ripe for careful analysis and considered decision making. Clearly both sides had possibilities and both certain exposed weaknesses. But who could attack without loss of position? Who could bend the will of the other into making a mistake? There were traps to be sprung and there were pitfalls to be avoided. The game was indeed afoot!

Neither combatant moved - it seems - not a piece nor even a muscle for some two hours or more. (The kind of stoned stillness you have to experience to comprehend.) The tension in the room was rising to fever pitch. Something had to give. Someone had to dare strike for victory!

But who should that be? That, it turned out, was the moot and telling point. For finally, weary utterly spaced out Eddie said to wonderfully wired Jan "Err, Jan it is your move isn't it?" To which of course the other replied "Ahh, actually man [the self-same Eddie of course], wow actually I think it's your move. Far out."

A slow at first - minds were not of course at their sharpest at the time - rumbling then rolling, finally irresistible tide of mirth and joy swept the room as both the cause and the effect of the confusion and delay became apparent to all.

That night's notation reads something like '17: QKt to KB whatever - Game abandoned in hysterics', and this night GUC is in mourning for the remembrance and the passing of that special, silly, happy and so very youthful moment.

Portents and Signs....

...remember 'gazumping'? That rather nasty habit some greedy people had of bumping up the sale price of their house at the last minute, in the often realised hope that the buyer would pay more?

Particularly effective tactic if two or more buyers were chasing the same property - robbing Peter or robbing Paul.

Well, now we are back to its fell opposite. Two folk I know have just been 'gazundered' - the purchaser turning up at the solicitor to exchange contracts, then suddenly announcing that they are not prepared, willing or able to pay the full and agreed asking price and would the vendor kindly consider taking a significantly lower sum?

Poor Nick the News has thus become the news. We all knew some time back he was slipping away. Stock reduced to its bare essentials, if that, and a grim look on the fellow's face most the time. Little directly would or could be said, though where he chose to confide the confidant would hear of slashed margins and ever-increasing debt.

Then came the inevitable 'For Sale' sign. A positive move in itself for the man: tried that, hasn't worked, cut losses and move on. We all sympathised and also wondered and worried what would take its place. Another curry house we fretted? Not that a curry house or two in a small country village is in any way a bad thing.

But when three, four or more such emporia are taking over from butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers and the like, one is rightly concerned for the overall balance of the place, not to mention the local availability of ordinary wares and produce other than masala and chips!

The deal was due to be struck this week. But now has not been. Purchasers duly announced they were some £40k shy of the asking price and was that any good? Well, no it wasn't of course. Being shafted that way rarely is.

Popped in today for daily paper and regular chat about the world and its woes. "All the fight's gone out of me Reverend," he said. "I'm just empty inside now."

I really fear he does not know how - or much worse whether - to carry on. Grown men aren't supposed to cry, this we know. But I have shed a tear or several for him tonight. A form of prayer. "De profundis clamavi ad te...." the Psalmist cried. And the Lord answered. In this is our hope.

Outward Bound...

Colin the Chemist - I know it sounds Welsh but that's pure chance - used to be something of a yomper in his day. A seriously good one at that. By that we mean he was, in his youth and much thereafter, a soldier boy.

More though for he was not a mere infantryman hoofing it about the place as per Part Twos, but belonging to the elite of them all the SAS no less.

I can't really tell you that of course, as indeed I couldn't really be told it by she who did tell it me. You might find MI5 spooks more or less wearing name badges these days, but not these uber hush-hush military types who carry their anonymity to the grave, or in our case to The Wolds where we all naturally know but would not tell of course.

Quite how Colin the fearsome attack hound, master of disguise and slaughterer of the foe morphed into Colin the healer, dispenser of potions and lotions to the sick and poorly I simply cannot say, as I have utterly no idea. A fellow must do something one supposes on quitting Her Majesty's most heroic armed forces, but you'd have to say - and I'd not dispute - that a quiet, decent posting to a pharmacy deep in the country would not be the most obvious of alternative career choices for such a man of action.

There are those who aver that Colin is merely 'in deep cover' awaiting the command to strike whensoever it may come. But to strike at what or at whom around here? Handy to know of course that should any such striking be needed then we have one in our midst who could sort the entire matter while we stayed safe in our beds, but that's not quite the same as sensing that there is any active threat to our well-being we could point to in any vague manner. Which is rather more reassuring than not really.

So there he is - Colin the Chemist - dispensing away, probably hardly wondering that he is also regarded as The Wolds' one-man-army should the call to arms come. It has been though Bro. Charles who has put me in mind of the fellow's prior occupation of hardy yomper with a missive he has sent this very evening.

For said Bro., as ever he does, has been ranting away at the wretched and damnable decadence of public services. "Pathetic perversity" and "bathetic banality" are two of his most common asides when describing the rank world of public affairs he attempts to assist in his way.

And I have to say, having listened to much of the highly partial evidence he gives to back his case, he most probably has a more than fair point. No sooner it seems than one cock-up has been successfully completed through some half-baked grand scheme than there's a headlong rush to impose chaos on anything left that is still tolerably ordered.

There is of course only so much a fellow can take of this without going utterly loopy - as indeed some would argue is already the Bro.'s fate - and, somewhat as Colin, the Bro. will from time to time be found contemplating an alternative option for turning a decent coin or two.

The latest wheeze, I am tonight told, is to open a guest house deep in the wilds of the North Pennines. Sounds pretty rough to me, as it would to you no doubt. Imagine the desperate horror of of having to give shelter, night upon night, to a horde of the jolliest of hikers, campers and other overly bright and breezy spirits. Relentlessly cheery happy-clappy ramblers yarning away as they gently steam their damp selves by the fire, calling out "More ale, mine host!" in far less than manly and thickly accented alto voices. That sort of thing. Ghastly, utterly ghastly!

Cannot, therefore, for a moment think what the mad Bro. is up to giving this a possible whirl. There is, though, as ever an angle to this, for the cunning plan is to create one of those appalling Outward Bound places where middle-aged, middle-ranking executives are sent to discover their inner Iron John by hiking five miles across a pretty mild terrain before catching a fish or two by hand for their tea.

But to the twist there is a turn that actually makes the whole thing sound rather wonderful. Bro.'s intention is to sell this idea exclusively to senior public sector managers. He will gather them in, feed them some line about 'mean is lean' or lean mean, whichsoever the moment's management fad should be, then lead them out into the wilds of the North Pennines - and if you know them not then they are truly wild and threatening - where he will leave them utterly devoid of any direction or sense of it. (Which is where they are anyway, he would argue.)

The more traditional line of such ventures is that these poor chaps eventually do struggle back to safety having perhaps undergone some wonderful life-transforming experience, such as bonding over a pot of nettle stew as they attempt to stroke a knife blade into a fair representation of a compass needle. (One could go the whole hog - as it painfully were - and do a 'Deliverance'; but setting aside male rape, as indeed one would wish to, the essential point is to come through alive, well and completely renewed in the end.)

But that's not the resolving vision Bro. has. His notion is more simple if chilling: take these senior public sector managers out on to the mountains and moors and simply let them be lost never to be found alive again! Nothing really short of a cull indeed is the idea. Bit of a brutal solution to the nation's ills we'd have to say, and yet perhaps does he not have a point on the greater good aspect of the thing?

And this, of course, is where our Colin comes in. For Charles, for all his fine qualities, could never pass as a fell-running survivalist, someone people would trust to take out to their doom. Whereas Colin not only bears a passing resemblance to Burt Reynolds (see 'Deliverance' passim) but also has the entire CV necessary to convince feckless folk that their lives would be safe in his hands.

So my mission tonight - should, as they say, I choose to accept it - is to have a necessary word in Colin's shell-like and to persuade him to sign up to this deadly scheme.

All in all I am entirely not sure that this fits comfortably, if at all, into the parsonic role to inveigle a fellow Christian into a conspiracy of the multiple death of strangers. (Indeed, put that way, it clearly cannot be!)

But then when you hear what the Bro. has to set in the scales of justice against these types, it is hard to know what to balance in the scales of mercy that should save them.

A pretty thick malt or three is needed for this moral conundrum. 'Tis Colin's day off tomorrow - does a weekly triathlon just to keep his hand in as it were - so I have some extra hours with which to work before deciding the way best to go with this one.

Shivering In The Chapel...

'Cremation: no longer a burning question for Catholics'

...when was it I saw that wonderful headline in The Church Times? Must have been a decade or so ago that some editorial wag decided to slip that one in.

I am reminded of that sly dig at changing attitudes to cremation among the Romans by a gloriously difficult story today. For it seems that a crematorium near Manchester is proposing to recycle the heat from incinerations back into the Chapel heating, as so many mourners have been complaining about the cold!

Now I'm all for recycling - though I doubt it can really bear the weight of expectation placed upon it - but somehow I do doubt the taste or propriety of this latest wheeze.

There you are about to go in to say a decent yet low-key farewell to a hardly known Great Uncle Charles, or whoever, and out come sobbing mourners from the previous send-off. True sorrow streaming down their faces. A child lost perhaps.

And are you then to sit cosily inside, basking in the heat of that one's burning? Seems about as tasteless as a bunch of hypothetical Hindus gathered round a funeral pyre rubbing their hands at the flames to keep warm.

Not really the thing. Anyway, a bit of bodily discomfort at a funeral is not such a bad thing in itself to remind us all of the mortality we must all in the end face. ("As thou art now, so once were I. I am now, so shall ye be" - says the funerary statue to the living. That sort of thing.)

Let a good warming be kept for the wake preceding or the baked meats to follow, and let us all shiver a bit reflecting on the first of The Four Last Things we will in time be facing one and all.

"All Along The Bell Tower..."

My late - and I would call great - Abbot did not, on the whole, do humour. Being German may not have been the cause, but we all thought it was.

I am though now reminded of an occasion when he conjured, as if from nothing, a wonderful and perfect witticism.

E has returned from the latest sales clutching in triumph and awe a disc of young Jimi Hendrix playing Isle of Wight 1970. Those who were there may remember - if age, decrepitude and the aftermath of heroic drug ingestion permit - that it was a fine yet also a fractious time.

'Desolation Row' - you remember the hill above the site where free and protesting youth sat, listened and generally made a thorough nuisance of themselves? ("Up Against The Wall Mother******s", a Jefferson Airplane inspired graffito, my favourite slogan.)

The Wall - separating the fee-paying from the free-loading - did indeed buckle and bend a little, but it never fell. It survives to be seen at Glastonbury each year. The same revolutionary spirit, though, I doubt still lasts. There is probably even a 'UATWMs' creche, where grandparents can be safely left for the day to re-enact their old battles against 'The Man' while the younger generations enjoy their safe and largely harmless music.

Anyway, back to E and the Abbot. Her purchase of the disc has reminded me of the tale fondly told that in the late summer of 1970, when the festival was upon the Island, a promoter chappie - interesting if cheeky cove - came over to the monastery to enquire whether the monks cared to have a slot one day to 'do their thing'; that is, to take to the stage and intone Gregorian Chant to the instoned masses.

I suspect that had it happened it would have become the stuff of legend, or perhaps even myth: "Hey Derek, remember those cool dudes in black who dug that Latin?" "Wow, far out man, I thought I was the only one seeing them. I presumed it must be the acid." (Nursing staff in care homes for the mentally frail around the country had better be prepared for this kind of banter coming their way soon.)

Being a serious sort of Germanic fellow - as above - the Abbot gave the offer serious thought then magnificently replying: "I am awfully sorry to have to disappoint you, but you see we cloistered monks don't do tour gigs. You're most welcome to suggest people may come to us, but we sadly can't come to them.

'Tour gigs'!? Where in the sacred, silent cloister did he learn that a la mode phrase? The promoter, according to witnesses present, sucked on his largish pipe - containing whatever herb it might - and replied "That's cool brother." (Very monastic term that 'brother' thing. Sharp fellow indeed the promoter.)

And believe it or not many festival folk did trek across the hills to spend a sensational half an hour in our monastic church being 'spaced out' (another expression of the day I am told) by the chant.

Whether or not Jimi himself came history does not record. He was to die but a month later. That sadly is in the history books.

Letting Sleeping Cats Lie....

...Quite why 'the cat sat upon the mat' I cannot fathom, though it does allow one to speak it in wonderful Edward Fox clipped tones. Try it, 'tis such fun.

Our cat - if one can use the possessive of such independent creatures - will sit anywhere she pleases of course, as they do, but to sleep it oft must be upon my pillow. Particularly in times of feline stress - a noisy firework-ridden New Year's Eve for example - she will wait for my retiring at the foot of the bed, but before my head has reached its target will have landed there first.

Not easy to rest when one has a loud-purring, oft-stirring fur hat of a cat to contend with clamped, more or less, to one's crown. Impossible even when she begins to lick said crown. A tribute no doubt and a sign of deep affection, but a hard, wet and continuous scraping of the skin is no soporific.

Nor indeed is one pillow quite enough room for a human's head plus cat. The design of the thing is entirely modelled on just the single occupant. We do not exactly contend for space, but she'll not be budged so I must find what corner I may to find purchase.

I could, perhaps should, be more masterful and chuck her off. Make her lie on my shoulder like normal cats. But she has my entire sympathy for needing comfort on such a tremendous night.

I have no great - nor indeed any little - love for New Year's Eve. We'll toast in the New of course with the champagne and watch the fireworks that light the entire sky. But I've no recall of such moments when one has sighed 'That last year was a total corker, can the new live up to that great precedent?' Oh no. It is always much more 'God, can it get any worse? I fear it can and will!'

No wonder then they call hope the 'Cinderella virtue', frequently left home alone and out of the feasting. I really must ask her to the ball more often.

But I didn't spot her there last night and neither clearly did the cat.