Postman Pat

Postman Pat. Postman Pat.
Postman Pat and his black and white cat.
Early in the morning, just as day is dawning,
He wakes up and remembers that the post-office has been dismantled, and he doesn’t have a job there anymore, and today will be a blur of episodes of Come Dine With Me and trying to work up the courage to leave the house, but then remembering that he only owns the one set of clothes (the postman’s uniform) and he can’t bring himself to put that on again, and he knows that if he wants to wear something different he’ll have to go to the shops, but that’d involve putting on the uniform to get there so he just sits, slumped in a pair of off-white boxers, listening to Dave Lamb mock a bricklayer called Darren from Surrey as he tries to fry an egg.

How many lightbulbs does it take to change a man?

A: Knock Knock

B: Who’s there?

A: An Englishman, and Irishman, and a Scotsman

B: An Englishman, and Irishman and a Scotsman who?

A: An Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman who walk into a bar

B: What did they call the man with the spade on his head?

A: To get to the other side.

B: Well, pull yourself together, then

One Nation

It was 2014, the year when Tesco’s started offering the elderly and terminally ill discounts on ‘bags for life’.

It was also the year when Ed Miliband ceased to say anything but the phrase ‘One nation’. He woke up one morning, as usual, and descended the stairs in red pyjamas, slippers, and no particular hurry. When he walked into the kitchen, his wife, Justine, was balancing a slice of toast against her ear, and spreading a thin layer of marmite over her iPhone (it was early morning, and she hadn’t yet found her glasses)*. “We’ve run out of jam”, she said in exasperation, and his general direction. “One nation,” Ed replied.

“Very funny,” she said. “Can you pass the paper?”
“One nation,” Ed replied.
After about two minutes, and fifty nations, Justine started to think something might be wrong.

Justine phoned the Labour Whip, who came round immediately, and in a car. Together, they worked out a crude method of communicating with the leader of the opposition; ‘one for yes, two for no’.
“Can you understand us, Ed?”
“One nation,” Ed replied.

They drove him to a doctor, but there was nothing physiologically wrong. It was psychological. (Or possibly ‘divine retribution’, as one nurse had so helpfully suggested). Back in the car, the Whip sighed and scanned her diary. There were three speeches to cancel. She got out her Blackberry**, and began to scroll through the contacts, when Miliband placed a hand on her shoulder. He gave her a deep, meaningful look across the leather seats of the chauffeured department car, like a Labrador, giving her a deep, meaningful look across the leather seats of the chauffeured department. “You want to do the speech?” she asked, eyebrows making a bid to join her hairline.
“One nation,” Ed replied.

The speech went well. Frighteningly well. Not only had the minister not been bottled off the stage - as was customary - but there had been applause. Actual applause! Back in the chauffeured car, the Chief Whip turned to Ed. “How would you feel about another speech?”
“One nation,” Ed replied.

---

* Texturally, this is not an easy mistake to make; Ed, however, had bought her a toast-textured novelty iPhone case. Unfortunately, this made the mistake far more likely to occur. Fortunately, the makers of the novelty iPhone case had had the foresight to predict this eventuality, so the case was marmite-proof.
**In a novelty crumpet-case. A cheap one, bought off a market stall in Camden, so not actually butter-proof, as the Whip would cruelly discover in three days’ time.

Tape

Before the age of computers, before the era of MP3s, and FLACs, and pirates who don’t own boats, audio was edited on tape. Quarter-inch, magnetised tape. If you wanted to mix and master a track, you’d take a razor to the tape. Can you picture that? Good.

If you listen to music, you might be aware that certain songs have censored lyrics, versions where the expletives are replaced with awkward beats of silence. Before the age of computers, this was achieved by taking a razor to the vocal track The razor goes in, the swearing comes out, a couple of millimetres of silence are sutured into the void. Can you picture that? Good.

This process has a waste product. About a centimetre long, a quarter of an inch thick. A shiny, black rectangle, no larger than your fingernail. An expletive. Can you picture that? Good.

A major studio, under contract to a major record label, edits about two hundred tracks a year. Depending on the genre, in a month a single studio generates between twelve and sixteen thousand pieces of obscene confetti.
Each studio stores them in a small, wooden box.
Can you picture that?
Good.

Paranoia

They say that ‘there’s nothing to fear but fear itself’. You shouldn’t believe that; there are lots of things to fear. The people that tell you that ‘there’s nothing to fear but fear itself’, for example. They’re trying to lull you into a false sense of security. Perhaps you should fear paranoia.

The Owl and the Pussycat

The owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat
The owl took his iPhone, and when they crossed timezone
He opened up facebook and wrote;
“Kitty and I’m having such a great time, #Sea-trip 2k13”
Then he finished the post with a snap of the coast - retro-filtered, so it looked more green.

Past the Cape of Kaliakra, and twelve photos later,
The updates began to up-grate. It wasn’t so much that
The pair were in touch, but they seemed to be doing so great.
The ox and racoon, and the fox and baboon, and the wren and the hen and the tit,
With the frog and bat, yes they all had a chat - it was making them feel rather shit.

By the Bay of Biscay, they just wanted to say
“Stop your mix of in-sipid and –trepid!
Comparing to you, which we patently do, our lives seem so numbingly tepid”
Stop telling us of your whimsical love, and your Bong-trees and runcible spoons,
You’re making us feel, and this anguish is real - like we’ve wasted our Augusts and Junes.”

But the mink and the whale, and the skink and the quail
Did not say one thing to the pair
Nor the fawn nor the goose, nor the prawn nor the moose, nor the normally vocal brown bear.
Although they resented the smugly contented, no-one stepped forwards to strike.
They were all (I’d have guessed) too polite (or repressed) - so instead, they just gave them a ‘like’.

SockSoc (Winned twith Spoonerism Soc)

Preparing to join university? Well, if you want to make friends, you’re going to have to start thinking about joining some clubs and societies, or cultivating some sort of personality. Do you have time to cultivate a personality? No, I didn’t think so. You’re weird and awkward and silently accept the judgement of strangers. So why not join SockSoc? After the horrific incident in which half of our members went missing inside a washing machine, we have plenty of space, membership cards, and personalised clothing*, available – SockSoc, the university’s biggest, and only, sock appreciation society.


In meetings, we exchange sock-based anecdotes, watch famous films, looking for sections in which socks appear, and discuss recent sock-related news stories. The sock-related question for our first meeting of term will be: “Are socks responsible for global warming?” As well as ‘social’ events (see above), we also have a number of speakers give guest lectures: in the past, we’ve written to request talks from such famous sock-wearers as J.K. Rowling, The Queen, Steve McQueen, Queen, Queen Latifah, and Steve Buscemi. None of them have agreed to speak, yet, but it’s the thought that counts. And the thought of receiving another couple of hundred emails from me should persuade them to come and talk.


Talking of talks, you may have heard about the controversy at this year’s Freshers’ Fair. I was manning the SockSoc stall at the time, so you can take my word for it, everything that you’ve heard about it is true; an argument between members of the Debating Club, over whether they should use a biro or pencil to sign people up, got increasingly vocal, until the club’s treasurer rugby-tackled the secretary, and, because they’re used to British Parliamentary style, the first proposition was joined by a second, third, and fourth. There was a brief pause, as the second opposition struggled to think of a case extension, but punching resumed as the proposition reminded them that they ‘had points of information, and weren’t afraid to use them’. It was such a shame to see them descending into violence like that. I mean, the first rule of talk club is that you do not fight about talk club.


So, erm, where was I? Right, yes, join SockSoc.


* If you want the personalised clothing to be specific to your name, you may have to change your name.