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.