‘Tractor on Fire at Relubbus’.

A Russian fighter jet engaged a US drone over the Black Sea risking an escalation of the war. Australia, the UK and the US agreed to base nuclear submarines in the South Pacific, threatening an escalation of China’s continued, perceived and historical, humiliation at the hands of Western powers. Boris Johnson forgets to take his trousers at a Premier Inn in Cleethorpes while fleeing the scene, having been caught yet again with his ‘johnson’ enjoying freedom of movement with a young female Conservative’s naivety.  

One of the previous stories is not true. 

Meanwhile, in West Cornwall, the St Ives Times and Echo informs us that a tractor caught fire in the village of Relubbus. The paper added further detail; you will be pleased to know it was on the B3280. This is a small country road linking ‘nowhere’ to ‘where’s that?’. At this time of year it is liberally sprayed with a mixture of mud, dung, and rotting cabbage, making it all but impassable to vehicles other than a Russian tank on its way to Redruth on a mission to regenerate the town centre with some well aimed shells.

We are told by the ‘T and E’ that the Fire and Rescue Service sent two pumping appliances, one from Penzance and one from Tolvaddon (twinned with the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, but not as nice). In a classic of the genre entitled ‘No Shit.’ a ‘spokesman’ (sic) tells us that ‘firefighters wore breathing apparatus and used two hose-reels to extinguish the fire’. The ‘Fire Brigade’ did not turn up, being a non existent relic of the past, and so deemed unfit for purpose as its name implies. But the ‘Fire and Rescue Service’ did. It is not enough to put out fires; ‘ rescue’ is also required, hence the name change. I presume in the old days once a bucket of water was chucked over the chip pan fire, a fireman would say, “sorry mate, not my job…call a friend” to the chap on fire as ‘rescue’ was not in the job description?

It is good to see old-fashioned journalism sticking to everyday English. The writer of the paragraph (on page 3) preferred the word ‘spokesman’ to an increasingly fashionable spokeshim/her/them/they/hermaphrodite for the sake of clarity. No doubt the old grizzled Fire Officer, being of the boomer generation, appreciated the use of his gender assigned at birth, having had a fire to put out rather than engaging in a verbal to and fro with the journalist about appropriate pronouns.

Don’t worry, you can still refer to someone as a c*nt because in normal use it is gender non specific.

Upon being informed that a tractor was on fire in a village in West Cornwall, our trusted news sleuth turned up sharpish in the dung spoiled country lane somewhere, and accurately summed up the situation succinctly. They later added the necessary detail to avoid disappointing the reader. I’m assuming he or she turned up at the scene, but it could be that she (or he…or they) heard the story while necking pints of Doom Bar in the King’s Arms in Marazion. They (or he…or them) could have stayed boozing, and so took a wild guess at the bar to embellish the story with tales of the use of a breathing apparatus and hoses. It’s the sort of wild stab in the dark that wins Pulitzer prizes if you are lucky, or charges of lying through one’s overused ringpiece if not. Mind, it is a pretty safe bet that firefighters did use hoses, given that fires are very often reluctant to be put out using out-of-date candy floss and prayer.  

I would have liked to have known the make of the tractor, its age, the name of the driver, and wtf he was doing in Relubbus at that time of day, and another thing, whether there were any animals hurt in the extinguishing of the fire. There is potentially so much more to this, and I think we should be told. Was it caused by an old but over-excitable spark plug, a dropped cigarette or Brexit? Did the police turn up, and is the farmer now on a plane to Rwanda?

This tale of rural conflagration is the quality of story regularly published in my local paper. It’s probably also in yours, unless you live in London. Given that the rest of the world’s news is a complete and utter rusty bucket of leaky shit, underpinned by a sense of doomed foreboding last felt by everyone on the planet, except Noah’s family, as a mass of dark thunderclouds rolled in overhead. It is perhaps comforting to know that agricultural machinery is prone to self immolating pyrotechnics from time to time. 

Relubbus is not as exciting or as dangerous as South Central Los Angeles. The only ‘hood’ you will find there is the Young Farmer’s club, and ‘hoes’ refers to actual farm implements, not female performers of sexual exotica skilled in the darker arts of unlubricated fornication. Relubbus has a village dog called Trevor, a chapel now used for reflexology, reiki and wishful thinking, and now a burned-out tractor. 

In other news reported by the Times and Echo, the paper revealed that the number 16 bus was 3 minutes late at Crowlas, but it made up time at Penzance due to the driver staying awake while driving the bus. In addition, the St Erth to St Ives branch line train ran on rails, uneventfully, last week (as usual), helped in no small measure by the staff employed on various duties to do so. Mrs Flange of Back Road West, St Ives, fed her cat with a tin of ‘Salmon flavour Whiskers’ without mishap. “Mind, the tin was a bugger to open”, she later clarified, “what with my arthritis and me knees”. As part of medical confidentiality, the condition of her knees was not divulged to the paper and is known only to Mrs Flange, her GP and Back Road West residents (not the up-country second homeowners, obviously). The Public Interest defence was not used on this occasion to break Mrs Flange’s confidence as the Public could not give a flying fid about her “sodding knees she’s always banging on about”, said a neighbour.

Other stories included the fact that St Ives Rugby club scored a few tries, the St Ives cricket team is waiting for spring to play their first match, and St Ives FC scored no goals (again). The weather forecast predictably predicted rain. The local advertisements included nothing more exciting than the sale of a bicycle, a typewriter and a pine dining table with three chairs. The fourth being unavailable due to woodworm and poverty, as it ended up on the fire. Mind, that’s close to being an interesting story.

The obituaries reported that no one under 78 had died, or had died in exciting circumstances such as touching power lines with a kite, being trampled by a pig or asphyxiating on the billiard ball while wearing a gimp mask.

The paper has a regular column called “What’s On?” and invites the local community to share tidbits of exciting news and events such as whist drives, bible readings and the goings on of the local pizza-loving paedophile ring who secretly control Cornwall Council’s Parks and Gardens committee. Most of the time, the column is blank as nothing much happens, so the answer to the question ‘What’s On?’ is “Bugger all, and you?”

One local wag in the snug bar of the Sloop has suggested that the Times and Echo staff rehash stories from 1958 to 1975. They merely change names and dates to make it look like things are happening today when we all know nothing has happened locally since about 1975. Looking around the bar at the haircuts, clothes (and body odour) indicates that it could still be 1975. Gulls stole chips and pasties back then, and they still do. The locals still burn witches, eat turnips and talk about the ‘common market’ as a communist plot to steal the pilchards from off the plates of local urchins fresh from their 12 hour shift down the mine shovelling pony dung from underwater shafts.

There is no other news. Tractors may continue to burn, attracting commentary, while the ice caps melting, the rain forest burning, and Putin invading Poland are kept off the Times and Echo’s front page by the Council’s refusal of Planning Permission for the siting of a Pop Up Pizza van on Wharf Road, Mrs Flange’s cat has gone missing

https://www.podbean.com/ep/pb-37vmk-13b671b

When is a dividend not a dividend? 

Perhaps when it is smashing your nose into a bloody pulp with a cast iron frying pan in an orgy of rhinoplastic destruction and then convincing yourself that you are more handsome because the prominent pustule sitting on your nostril, threatening to burst into a volcanic eruption of infectious ejaculate, is now gone? You have taken sovereignty over your nose and exercised control of your battered visage, and lo and behold, one less pustule stares back at you in the bathroom mirror. It no longer mocks your very existence or belittles the over self confident rating of your beauty. 

That has to be a good thing. 

I was reminded of dividends recently upon return from Spain. 

The shop assistant in the small ‘pueblo blanca’ that is Mijas in Andalusia, was keen to point out that leaving the EU customs union and single market was a blessing for us British shoppers in Spain. You might be scratching your head at this point and wondering in what way this could be true? 

Now for the boring bit, but stay awake…this might affect you the next time if and when you go across the channel. Many goods and services in Spain attract an extra charge which I think is called ‘IVA’ or ‘Impuesto sobre el Valor Añadido’ for short. It is an additional 20% of the price for some items, and the blow is softened by including it in the ticket price. So, you will see €100 on the ticket, but the IVA is the hidden €20 within it. I’m not fooled by this sleight of hand, except after a few lunchtime vinos in the afternoon when my defences are down due to the rosy hue the world has taken on. Please don’t leave me in charge of my wallet, especially in a shop selling whisky, watches, women or motorbikes. I have been known to waste cash on fripperies in distant and exotic places such as Dubai, Amsterdam and Bodmin.

So, you pay IVA for your tapas, Rioja and bullfight tickets. It might not escape your attention that these three items are not usually taken back with you on the flight home to the UK. It is customary to consume them at the point of sale unless you are some weirdo who takes pleasure in packing cold dishes of ‘boquerones al la plancha’ with your underwear. Therefore you will not be bothered with import duty or VAT.

In Mijas, the Brexit dividend showed itself, and as the assistant was only too pleased to tell us, it was that we could claim back the 20% IVA we were paying for our goods. This could be done at Malaga airport after filling out the necessary paperwork and getting it stamped and checked at the customs desk. We were glad to partake of this bonanza by applying the logic of knowing that 20% of bugger all is the same as bugger all, but 20% of ‘a lot’ is still ‘a lot’. Mind, it means a little bit of bureaucracy at the shop and then again at the airport, and a claim form posted to the Madrid office…but 20% is a very nice reduction. 

Flushed with the feeling of a bit of a bargain, Ann and I decided it was time for lunch and some reflection on the day over a ‘vino tinto’. At that point, an ugly thought intruded. 

“Hang on a minute, we are not paying Spanish VAT…but we are bringing stuff into the UK; surely the UK will not let us get away with paying 20% less?” 

We have been lulled into a sense of security over the last few decades when crossing borders in the EU. ‘Nothing to Declare’ has always been the option because the obvious was true even if we did not consider it. Because we were in a ‘customs union’, paying IVA in Spain meant VAT was also paid for the UK. Unless you were importing guns, children or cocaine, customs was a doddle. It was the green lane all the way to Maplethorpe from Malaga, cases bulging with any goodies bought from the Andalusian markets. 

A quick google search made it clear that there might be an issue with claiming the IVA in Spain and then expecting to walk straight into London’s customs paying nothing. We are not used to being bag searched and vinyl fingered at the UK border, and we did not intend to start now. There is an allowance of about £360 worth of goods you can import; below that, you can walk through with a calm mind. Mind, this is £350 in total, not for an individual item. 

What to do? The Mijas shop had already registered the sale to Spanish tax authorities…do they talk to UK tax authorities? Would we be on a ‘watch list’ at Gatwick? Would we hear “please follow me, sir” from a burly border guard armed with a truncheon, vaseline, a shiny badge and the attitude of a Rottweiler whose black leathery testicles have been set on fire with a kitchen blowtorch? I did not want to find out. 

We decided to declare our goods at the UK border and see what happens. 

As many of you have experienced, getting back into the UK has been relatively easy once you go through passport control and pick up your baggage. You will know of two routes through customs, the Red lane and the Green lane. Almost without exception, everyone goes through Green, especially from EU destinations. We have been used to ‘having nothing to declare’, so the habit has formed that we do so without giving a second thought to import duties. EU customs regulations have meant that many Customs officers have forgotten where the vinyl gloves are, and their tubs of lubricant are so old there is moss growing on them. I am sure some officers secretly wish to catch a miscreant in the green lane to break up the monotony of watching hordes of sun-burned tourists return red-faced from the Costa Del Sol carrying nothing more valuable than a sombrero and straw donkey. But, and you might have noticed, we are not in the EU. The rules have changed. 

And so it was that a stream of returnees headed towards the green lane like salmon returning to spawn up a Scottish river. But we broke ranks at the last moment and headed towards Red. We were then on our own. Nobody else joined us from the throng. A brightly lit corridor led to a lonely customs desk. The silence at this point was conspicuous and tangible. The happy chatter of passengers on their way home? Gone in a wispy moment like the steam from a stream of penguin piss in the antarctic air. The desk had no member of staff standing ready to process us through. There was a simple sign reading ‘please ring for attention’. To read it, I had to wipe away the cobwebs gathered there following months of underuse.

After what seemed like an epoch, a UK Customs and Border Officer ambled towards the desk, eyeing us with curiosity. I could see the quizzical look in her eye as if she was thinking, “who are these two lunatics”? 

“Can I help you?” she said. 

Well, after ringing a bell with a sign saying that was the way to get attention, then yes, attention was required. This was clearly an unusual turn of events for her, but something that would have been covered in basic training. Still, much like an engine failure after take-off is covered in pilot training, she had rarely had to deal with it in reality. 

“We have something to declare.”

I would have thought this was an unproblematic phrase to use standing, as we were, in the ‘Something to Declare’ lane. To me, this was the most obvious and possibly the best and most appropriate phrase I could have used. 

“Sorry?” This was spoken as a verbal ‘step back in amazement’. 

“We have something to declare”.

“Oh!”  

This bit of information was something of a surprise to her despite our location. 

“We have just returned from Spain and bought some goods, having claimed back the tax from the Spanish Authorities in Malaga”. 

“Oh, right!”

“I think we have to declare it?”

“Oh, yes, of course…well, you’re honest! Most people go through the green lane with their goods.” 

Clearly, we were an oddity and a rare occurrence.  

“I’ll get my colleague and work out what we should do”. She then ambled back into the office to discuss the best course of action with her colleague. After about 5 minutes, she returned to the desk with paperwork and the information that we had to pay VAT on the items. Her colleague followed to see for himself this rarity.

“You wish to declare goods from Spain? Well, you’re honest. Most people…”

“…go through the green lane, we know”. I did not actually say this as it is bad form to interrupt an Officer of the law in the middle of their duties. Border Force, Customs and Police officers are best left to think they are in charge because…they are in charge and have big head-banging sticks. They also have the power to keep you in detention for hours if they suspect you are taking the piss. You can be arrested for just making their day difficult. It is best not to put their backs up with jokes about drugs, bombs and asylum. 

The two officers then did a little calculation and finally informed us how much we would pay in VAT. 

Turns out, it was a few pounds more than the 20% return of IVA from Spain. 

We paid up, bid them farewell and returned to the teeming melee in the Arrivals hall.

I am tempted to tell the eager shop assistant in Mijas that we indeed could enjoy the benefits of not being in the EU, including claiming the IVA. I would also add that we would end up paying more in VAT back home. Therefore, as a selling point, it was a dead duck and about as attractive an offer as a colonic irrigation with a cold Vindaloo as a flushing agent. The process also meant paperwork on both sides of the EU border and involving increased time and  expense. 

There might be a lesson there for the wider economy?

Putting aside the legality of either paying IVA or VAT, we have an excellent example of a dividend that feels almost as good as smashing oneself in the face with a cast iron frying pan.

“Payment declined, please contact your card issuer”.

There are quite a few messages that bring you information you did not want to know, while also increasing your frustration point to ‘nose bleed, migraine inducing, kick a cat (any cat)’ level. This payment declined message is just one of the many. 

It’s right up there with ‘your rail replacement bus service will leave from platform f*cked’. It is also up there for frustration with finding that you have bought salt and vinegar crisps instead of cheese and onion, because you forgot the manufacturer switched the bag colour quite some time ago but, to you, green is always cheese and onion. My other favourite in this delightful sack of information shite is ‘Toilet Closed’ just as your ‘turtle’s head’ is popping out to ascertain whether it is safe to venture abroad. 

In this digital paradise of the 21st century, these messages increasingly arrive via the miracle of technology, as they were probably designed to do…by weirdos in California brought up on a diet of pulp TV, coca-cola, digital porn and absent parenting. 

So, I believe there is chap or two in a place called Silicon Valley who have decided that our lives were not complete, and so they invented Apps. Silicon Valley, contrary to some wishful thinking,  is not the place where you can find breast implants to suit all tastes and sizes. Rather it is a strange place far away somewhere beyond the Tamar. It is populated mostly by pony tailed, goatee bearded, pale faced men in T shirts and jeans who have only a passing relationship to personal hygiene rather than a fully engaged jojoba infused one. They spend their lives in the dark, in between wanks unblinking at computer screens, as their binary minds flit between a 0 and a 1. 

I’m not being deliberately sexist in excluded women from this technological cesspit, I’m sure there are a few of them working as App developers who are as obsessed by numbers, logic and certainty as the boys are, and whose empathetic understanding, emotional intelligence and raw human feeling have taken a bus to a permanent holiday elsewhere. But this obsession with humanity free technology does seem to be a male preserve. I’d not be surprised if the boys wouldn’t be happier with an ‘emotion free’ robot woman sex bot with pre set and programmable wanking skills than a real female human being. If they could design one with a prostate ticking function, even I might be interested. 

The tech boys of Silicon Valley’s preferred answer to any question about the universe, human relationships or haute couture is either ‘Yes or No’. Nuance, subtlety or even common, human experience of everyday matters such as car parking, passes them by unnoticed and ignored like a pork sausage at a bar-mitzvah. They’ve more chance of cracking the enigma code than understanding common human experiences such why a woman might like to wear make up or indeed why women choose to get their breasts pumped up with bouncy cleavage inducing plastic. Mind, I’m not sure I completely understand the latter but I do accept it might be fun. Women are to them a source of mystery inflamed tumescence matched only by a total lack of skill, knowledge and understanding which forces them into an incomprehensible retreat when confronted by a living example of femininity who might ask awkward questions about feelings, empathy and sex. 

‘Yes or No’ is a fine option to questions such  “would you like an enema?” But it falls short as the only option at a candle lit first date restaurant dinner. Your dinner date is likely to poke her fork in your eye if you continue to answer questions about your family, interests and previous girlfriends with only Yes or No. This binary response is also totally inadequate when confronting even the most basic of human tasks such as weasel tinkering, soap dodging and tiddlywinks. Each requires complex cognitive processing beyond the simple if/then or either/or binary alternatives of the Silicon Valley App designer mind. 

We of course now have an App for everything thanks to the dedication of this small army of post modern hippy techno-incels whose stage of emotional development is still in nappy stage allowing them to defecate their values and assumptions loosely upon the rest of us. 

In the olden days when life was a simple choice between staying alive or being convicted of being a witch, old money served as a primary means of transaction. A few copper or gold coins could purchase anything from donkey’s milk, a bag of turnips or the Throne of England (if you threw in the odd murder). This pertained right up until recently. Sure, donkey’s milk is rarely on offer, turnips are still in fashion and the throne of England is still secured by a vast fortune starting with an expensive education, but cash got you through the day, even if there was no ‘phone signal’. 

Take parking your horse. 

Simple, just ride up to the pub, tie up and go. Maybe you needed to grease the palms of the local scallies to keep an eye on your horse rather than leading it away to the dog meat factory. What you did not need to do was ensure your phone connects to the internet through something called ‘mobile roaming’ ensuring of course one’s ‘data bundle’ was large enough. Life was simpler.

Parking Apps are supposed to take away the stress of calamities such as not having enough spare change. Yet they don’t cater for those possessing the wit of an overcooked ring of fried calamari so that App instructions appear as dense and as impenetrable to interpretation as the technical manual of the Large Hadron Collider. The yes/no, 0 and 1 approach to the complex algorithms running these Apps have to be carefully designed to take in every eventuality of human fuckwittery using it. And yet fuckwittery often trumps technical analysis, largely because no amount of technical analysis can predict just how deep is the well of fuckwittery human beings can draw from. One snag completely overlooked by the Tech bros is that their Apps have to work in places like Redruth Town centre, where a mobile phone signal vacuum rivals a black hole for sucking all light into it, preventing its escape.

Back to parking. 

The theory is straight forward…open the App (assuming you have already downloaded it), enter the location code, decide how long you want to park for, enter your car registration number, ensure you have a valid payment method and press ok. Then through the miracle of electricity and radio waves (?) you can continue the day safe in the knowledge you car will not be towed away.

I am 100% confident of the process as I walk away from the parking meter to catch a train to Plymouth with about 20 minutes to spare. Nothing could really be easier especially if one has tried it before. I walk across the car park not quite with the confident swagger of the man who absolutely knows the God owes him a living, but I am pretty sure paying for parking will not cause a psychotic episode or a personal emotional crisis resulting in finding oneself curled into a ball in the police cell covered in blood, kebab and truncheon bruises. 

However. 

Put together a lack of mobile signal strong enough in that part of Redruth from car park to station, then blocked access to the Wifi at the station until I rejoin with a new password/username combination, intermittent connections on the train, a fraud signal to my bank regarding the card payment, waiting until I could speak to a human being and clear the credit card for use whilst also trying to ensure the VPN is connected, tunnels, an increasing feeling of hypertension strong enough to burst an aortic aneurysm (should I have one`), and it takes until the train is pulling into St Austell before I get confirmation that I have paid for parking. This took about 35 minutes from the moment I walked confidently away from the parking meter. 

I only hope that the App, and the technology supporting it, that sets off Putin’s Nuclear missiles is just as bad, forcing him to give up pressing the button and instead go looking for donkey’s milk,   Turnips and a witch to burn. I also hope Putin has more options than Yes/No when deciding whether to turn most of the world into molten rock and ash. If he does decide to press, I hope  his first targets are Silicon Valley Twats. 

Mind, if he finds himself in Redruth he’ll be out of signal.