I should like to apologise for my apparent flagrant breaking of the rules when we had ten people in the garden at the same time during lockdown in 2020. I honestly didn’t know they were coming and when I saw them out there with bottles of wine that they had obviously brought themselves, I immediately went outside to ask them what on earth they thought they were doing. After twenty five minutes of in-depth (but socially distanced) discussion, I realised that Alison had invited them to come and do some work in the garden as it was a beautiful day and she wanted to thank them for all the hard work that they had put in, helping her to run the Girls’ House. As the garden is part of Alison’s workplace, (as well as being our private garden) I had no problem in deducing that they really were there for work purposes and therefore they were well within the Covid rules, as laid down at the time. With the benefit of hindsight and following innumerable recent complaints from offended neighbours (who’ve just remembered what happened two years ago) and passers by who must have heard something, I now realise I was naive in accepting things at face value and I really should have asked them to leave. The fact that I didn’t, doesn’t make me a bad person; does it? I concede I did omit to mention it on numerous occasions in the past when quizzed by the fun police, but that’s just my ageing forgetfulness. It certainly wasn’t an attempt to deliberately obfuscate.
If you believe that hogwash you probably believe BoJo. What a pretty pass we have reached when countless Tory MPs appear on our screens and radios vehemently denying that BoJo has done anything wrong and begging us to await the outcome of the ‘Inquiry’. The man has patently misled the House, which should mean a quick trip down the Thames to Traitors’ Gate and incarceration in the White Tower until the axe man has had time to sharpen his blade. It will take me a few minutes to complete this edition and it’s quite possible that he will already have resigned by the time I publish this. On the other hand, he is “Slippery Sid” who typically has been able to talk his way out of a corner surrounded by three crocodiles, two hippos and a black mamba in a thorn tree. However, the disarmingly named 1922 Committee have been in session this evening and you can bet your bottom dollar that the names of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were on most peoples’ minds, if not their lips.
Meanwhile, I should like to congratulate Eastbourne Town Council on an absolute masterstroke of planning. Most of the pavements around town are in a shoddy state (rather like the roads) so when confronted by private ventures that wanted to lay hyper-speedy broadband cables they must have rubbed their hands and thought “here is our opportunity to carry out some much needed repair work, underwritten by private enterprise”. Well you would wouldn’t you if you were the Council Chief Exec? I was quite impressed when Lightning Fibre passed our way achieving the desired result in minimal time and slavishly returning the walkways to EXACTLY the state that they found them in. If this meant re-creating cracks and potholes, they did. It was inconvenient, but not terribly so and the thought did cross one’s mind that we might end up with unimaginable download speeds in a few months time; quite exciting really. But then came City Fibre. Where Lightning were fencing off their work with yellow plastic barriers, City use a delicate shade of light blue. Stupidly I had assumed that they must have reached an agreement whereby the Town was divided up so that they would have roughly equal shares. My naivety is again on full display. In fact, City are now coming round to dig up all the pavements again so that they can lay their cables ALONGSIDE Lightning’s. The nice foreman from City explained that Lightning had refused to agree to sharing the ducts and the Council weren’t interested in repairing the pavements (no money!). In fact, there is a clause in their contracts saying that if any of their work is found to be sub-standard they will be fined by the cash-strapped Council. So they too are slavishly putting everything back exactly as they found it. The really good news is that apparently Virgin now also want to get in on the act, although it’s possible they might reach an agreement with either Lightning or City to use their cables; or they might just come and dig it all up again. I well remember how my parents used to laugh at how the Electricity Board would lay some cables, followed a few weeks later by the Gas Board digging up the road again to insert some pipes, closely followed by the GPO (General Post Office and forerunner to BT for those too young to know) again digging holes to upgrade their wiring. How come the Romans were so efficient, yet 1,800 years later we still can’t organise the proverbial party in a brewery. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so pathetically mis-managed. Welcome to Global Britain.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 