Daft Old Duffer returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
Feeling at a bit of a loose end the other day so I went for a tour around. Caught the bus to Ryde, wandered about there for a bit, then caught the bus to Newport and did the same.
Then home via a different route. A circular tour of the Eastern Wight sort of thing. Two things stood out as different from the last time I did this, just a handful of weeks earlier.
Roadworks
One was the amount of temporary ‘road up’ signs. They were all over the place. That’s not too surprising of course. And it’s going to get worse. The present scatter of roadworks is mainly to checkout and overhaul all the sub-surface stuff – drains and cables and gas pipes etc. – before relaying the road itself.
The real work – and the real major traffic holdups- will come in a few weeks time when the roads themselves are rebuilt, often from the foundations up. Expect a lot of irate ‘Letters to the Editor’, road-side abuse and tail-end shunts by the unwary.
But at least the repair people have promised to cease work during the holiday months, thus granting a few weeks of respite.
We hope..
Empty shops
Far more alarming is the other change. For which there will be no respite. We’ve all become used to the sight of disused shops around the fringes of our shopping centres. But now the blight has penetrated right to the heart of Newport.
Once such gaps were snapped up by estate agents, bookies and cafes. But we seem to be past that phase now. The properties just sit there, forlorn ugliness where once flourished apparently solid business.
And, unlike the road-up signs, I think these gaps will become permanent.
More than ever I’m convinced the day will arrive when Grandma will say to her young visitors, “I can remember the time when all this lot was shops stretching all along where those houses are now, on both sides of the street.”
And the grandchildren will smirk to themselves, quite unable to imagine such a nonsense.
Horsing around
There are in my opinion two very good reasons for taking Princess Anne’s advice and making horse meat part of our diet.
The first is, there’s absolutely no reason not to. Horses feed on greenery exactly as do cows and sheep, so their flesh can be consumed in perfect safety, just as it is in many other countries. If you need convincing of this, bear in mind that, apparently, horse meat was included in our pre-prepared meals for an unknown length of time before someone spilled the beans. And there was never any hint of an epidemic of sickness or dying as a result.
Conditioned to think not possible
In fact I believe the only reason we nurse such a taboo over it is because our Norman masters, needing the animals for war, hunting and breeding purpose forbade us to. And because to our peasant forefathers they were rare and treasured plough and carting animals.
None of which applies today.
The second reason for slaughtering and consuming them lies in the countryside all around our comfortable suburbs.
Where you will find many of the lonely animals, once prized pets, abandoned in some remote field – often without shelter of any kind – simply because their girly owners have moved into boyfriend’s, gone to college, or embarked on a career.
Horses are herd animals, just like cows and sheep and goats. To abandon them to utter loneliness, as we so casually do, is far more cruel than actively whipping them on the race track. Far better to put them out of their misery by killing them. Whether we eat them or not.
I spent most of my early life in a north London suburb…
For me it was always a coldish, dampish, grey sort of place comprising in the main grim dark clouds and puddles and with not even a decent hill to look at.
In fact, I couldn’t wait to get shot of the place, first by joining the Merchant Marine, then after that, by finding a job further south and eventually, thankfully, on the Island where, highly impressed, I came across my first vine since leaving the Mediterranean.
It was a poor spindly thing, struggling to survive under the shelter of a verandah roof at the Chine Inn, in Shanklin.
It was even rumoured to produce a grape or two from time to time. And was a source of pride among the locals and of wonder from holidaymakers.
Now I read in the paper that the first crop of grapes have been grown in that dismal suburb of my youth, and that the proud owner hopes to begin producing a creditable wine.
I’m at last convinced the climate is warming up.
