Horsey People

I am a very lucky person. I live in a rural area of the West Country in England. It is a lovely place to live, very peaceful and tranquil, and the vast majority of locals are kind, welcoming and friendly. And then there are the horsey people. You know the sort. All the women look like Camilla Parker Bowles on steroids and the men have faces so red they appear to have just been slapped on both cheeks with a pair of halibuts. You tend to encounter them driving along quiet country lanes, they generally travel in pairs. Now although this is a public highway and little more than a single car's width wide, they just HAVE to trot along on their horses side by side - two abreast. They will get over, but in their own time and when they feel like it. You can slow down to a speed so tiny that the only movement from your car is caused by the rotation of the Earth and move as far over into the over grown hedge and into the ditch as you dare to go without beaching your car, and they STILL glare at you as though you have just tried to murder them, their family, their families families and, worst of all, THEIR HORSES... Because, you see, to horsey people nothing, but nothing is more important on this planet than HORSES. Now I personally have absolutely nothing against horses. Lovely creatures most of the time. Far too much of the bloody things hurtling over fences on sports programmes for my liking, but live and let live. But these people WORSHIP them. Adore them. In the words of the Fast Show, horsey people rate creatures on this planet in this order: Horses - Dogs - People. And don't you forget it...
Some years ago, when I still lived in Essex, I was driving back to my flat in a lovely village between Chelmsford and Billericay. The road to my flat was extremely twisting and winding, and of a single track, just to make it that bit more buttock clenchingly exciting. On going along this road it was custom to sound your horn as you approached each blind bend, there being about four of them, as I recollect. I was doing just this, being a good little boy and attempting not to dish out harm, damage or destruction to any other human being, motor vehicle or horse and rider. As I rounded the final bend I was greeted to the site of a "HORSEY" lady standing in the middle of the road, holding the bridle of her horse. She glared and me and forced me to stop. I wound down my window.
"WAS THAT YOU SOUNDING THE CAR HORN?" She shrieked in a stridulating, posh home counties voice. I nodded dumbly. "WELL, DON'T! YOU COULD HAVE STARTLED THE HORSE!" I was gob smacked.
"OK" I replied. "Next time I'll just career round the bends with my lights off and mow you both down - but just as long as I don't startle the horse..." And I drove off.
Generally, as far as I can see, the majority of horsey people are frustrated middle-aged women, who love horses this much as it is their only chance of ever having something that exciting and wild between their legs these days. Personally, I am thinking about starting my own glue factory. No, I won't go that far. I shall simply condemn the horsey people (not the horses, you note) to my Room 101, and start issuing my own replies to their patronising "SLOW DOWN FOR HORSES!" car stickers. My stickers will be for the arses of horses and the back of horse boxes. It will say "FOR CHRIST SAKE EITHER MOVE OVER OR SPEED UP FOR CARS YOU SELFISH EQUINE OBSESSED PRICKS!"

Sadly...

Still no response from Giles Coren, so I guess lunch is off this weekend. Shame...

Giles Coren and the Evils of Nepotism!

I, like many people in the UK, love reading my newspaper at the weekend. There is something heart-warmingly lovely about simply sitting down with a nice cup of tea and wading your way through The Times on a Saturday. Heaven. But there are parts of the paper, or more particularly the magazine, that I sadly can no longer look at, as they cause me to froth at the mouth, tear at what is left of my hair and use language that would make a docker vomit. The worst part for me, aside from the asinine inane fashion crap (I'll save that for another Spleen...), is in the food section. Here, The Times employs as their restaurant critic, a certain Giles Coren. Who? Well, let’s look at his qualifications for this post. Can he cook? By his own admission on a TV interview, no he jolly well can't. What experience has he got of running a restaurant? Just this side of sod all. His journalistic experience? Slightly less than the previous answer. So just how does a young man, simply waltz into a national newspaper and pick up the rather enviable job of reviewing restaurants every week? It's a good question. Now just by lucky chance, Giles Coren has a rather famous Daddy who is well known throughout Fleet Street as a commentator, writer and former editor of Punch. His name is Alan Coren. So imagine when young Master Coren was scratching round for a job after his GCSE's, what do you think he did? Get jobs flipping burgers at McDonalds? Or as the tea boy at a local regional newspaper and work his way up in the world of journalism? Did he bollocks. He approaches a national newspaper, mentions Daddy to the Editor and Bob's your uncle, or as in this case, Alan is your Daddy. Let us change the set up. Imagine Giles is the wonderfully gifted son of Sid Knobend, a panel beater from Plumstead. Young Giles Knobend has decided to better himself, has worked hard at school, gained some great qualifications and shows tremendous promise as a writer. On leaving his College/University with a perfectly respectable degree, he approaches a well known national newspaper editor and demands the job of restaurant critic. The answer he would receive would probably rhyme with "puck cough you cheeky mustard". So, now Giles Coren has this lovely job, where does he go to review restaurants? The length and breadth of this great land of ours? No, sadly not. The poor little cherub can barely seem to stagger further than the west end of London these days, I mean is there life outside of central London? (SNORT BRAY SNORT!). And for Christ's sake don't get me started on his sister Victoria...
But nepotism is everywhere. You can't honestly tell me that Stella-sodding-McCartney could have flogged her tacked together abominations to other celebrity half-wits if she didn't just happen to be the daughter of everyone's favourite surviving mop top (unless of course you were always a Ringo fan)? And have you also noticed that one of the BBC's new political correspondents is very obviously a mini-me of John Sergeant, their old political correspondent? I wonder how HE got the job?? Peter and Dan Snow? Is it just a coincidence that when the BBC was putting their "Battlefield Britain" series together that the best two CV's they came across happened to come from the same family? Even Judith-bloody-Chalmers progeny, Mark Durden-Smith is getting in on the act, frequently appearing on third rate TV shows on various obscure digital channels. Give him his due, he didn't call himself Mark Chalmers, but I can't believe mumsy didn't have a teensy weensy word in someone's ear when Marky-Warky's career success looked about as real and long lasting as his Mother's orange tan.
Nepotism is everywhere in British media. So many very gifted and talented people miss out, simply because someone else happens to know someone in a position of power, or more likely, is related to that person. It is wrong, it should never happen and it HAS to go into Room 101. And so does Giles Coren, unless he wants to buy me lunch this week, somewhere other than the west end of London, mate!?