Inactivity

11/19/2006

I have made my way home from Yorkshire via Renfrewshire, delivering several evening talks to the WRI. This leg of my tour has been a little more relaxed with the evenings taking the form of conversations on loyalty and sisterhood, always an easy topic to develop at this time of year following Remembrance Sunday and with the trauma of family Christmas looming. I have been struck by the strong anti President Blair sympathies expressed by my otherwise douce audiences. There seems to be a feeling of betrayal and that perhaps finally after losing a few hundred brave troops and a war or two, these stoic matrons are praying that the Met will overcome the cabinet’s bullyboy tactics and stick one onto Blair over the honours for cash scandal. Next week when I move away from judging the best decorated tissue box competition in rural backwaters and attend the London Conference, perhaps I will get a better impression of Middle British thinking. I have often heard it said that President Blair wishes to leave office on a wave of popularism and to be remembered as a great statesman-like leader by genuflecting peasants, unfortunately he has left it three years too late. The greater joy is that the English will despise his successor, the Beastly Brown as a Scot, and the whole contemptible house of cards will collapse in record time. Three cheers say I, before all my rights to live as a free man have disappeared in order to placate a few vociferous lefties in the Liberty versus Law debate.

What organisation has hundreds of thousands of outstanding complaints and claims against it and is about to make 19,000 employees redundant? Many will know the answer, the newly rebranded department of “Revenue and Customs”. It is a comfort to know that in the midst of crisis upon crisis, the loony management of this disaster are sending the storm troopers around its offices to check that desktops are only supporting “active” work related items, including an abacus or two, one would imagine. All inactive items such as family photos, religious statuary and bananas must be swept aside. This news story set me thinking about my own desk where I operate the “pile” system, by which documents slowly sink down the pile and if unattended for long enough will eventually be used as firelighters. For although my desk may lack a Blessed Virgin Mary or two, it is well covered with photos, post-its, scissors, coasters, old cigarette lighters and a good layer of dust, I rather like it that way. We Trollaighs generally lean towards portraits rather than family snaps, however I have a pile of press photos clipped from the squeaks when they catch my eye. I love the truth and action of these. Favourite of the moment, is an attractive young girl turning to wave to unseen friends as she is evacuated from the Lebanon before the Israelis bomb the balls out of Beirut once more. Ah, a well remembered city, time spent with Andy Black and Arrack, my first sip of Châteaux Musar, lovely laughing girls, where are they all now? Gone to hell in a handcart I should think. May my desk always be covered in inactive material that stir many a vivid memory as I gaze at a stark, snow covered Glen Trollaigh, and yet in the distance, I can hear dearest Dottie preparing my togs for next Tuesday’s departure for London. Yours aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.

seems the Baron is getting a bit lazy - your public are clamouring for new material. If you have writer’s block try some magic mushrooms.