Ne'er cast a clout 'til.........

Like all good residents of this ‘sceptred isle,’ I have to own that I’ve been known to make reference to a topic of conversation that much vexes our nation.......

The weather!

As the years roll by, I’m starting to realise the frame that’s carried me thus far, is not quite what it was.  Gone are the days when a shirt was sufficient top wear for most temperatures.  Now, I believe, I can count on the fingers and some toes, the number of days each year, when I revert to that earlier attire. (I hasten to add, I’ve not included the annual sojourn in the Var.)  No, it’s this particular land on which I spend the greater part of the year, and it’s here that the elements do their best to dominate my casual conversation!

May is moving inevitably towards June, and yet the weather, for the most part, chooses to be more sub-arctic and not subtropical.  It’s rumoured that the planet is warming up…I assume we will be told in the near future that there'll be a short sharp ice age (merely two to three hundred years long) before finally the sales of sun screen etc., in the U.K. skyrocket!  Swipe me, just our luck, eh?

Naturally in the land of Bing, no such worries exist. Years of breeding have bestowed upon the lad a pretty impervious fur rug in winter, which receives a short back and sides for the ‘summer’ months. There appears to be no such thing as a chill in the air, or a draft whistling under the door. No, he just gets on with it and wonders why the aged poop, wears many layers, on day's that are, to him, positively balmy.

‘How’s it going guv?’

I’m attempting to gouge the weeds out from between some paving stones, all part of a general effort to tidy the back garden.

‘It’s slow progress.'

I noticed a refuse sack full of twigs and such, has been inspected by the lad, and various ones have been carefully tugged out, and are now strewn across the lawn.

There is a hint of sarcasm as I ask.

‘Have you managed to select some particularly toothsome twigs Bing?’

‘Well, one or two are tip-top, and taste delightfully…um….’

‘Woody Bing?’

‘Exactly old poop. Very, very woody indeed!’

‘I don’t suppose you will be popping them back when you’ve finished savouring them?’

‘Well, now let me see……..probably……………………not.’

‘Any particular reason why not?’

‘Guv, I just don’t know when I’ll be finished with them. There again if they get cleared away before then, I shall have to continue my quest for the perfect branch.’

‘Quest?’

‘Certainly guv, certainly. It’s yet another mighty quest that resides within the enquiring mind of the hound.’

‘Like Parsifal?’

‘Is that the pesky cat from over the road?’

‘No Parsifal was a………..’

Ah, but the lad has been distracted, and the quivering hooter is off in search of whatever it is, with the rest of the boy Bing behind it.

To paraphrase a line from the opera Pagliacci….

"On with the Muttley!!"

(sorry.)