Category Archives: pensées

Random Park Lane-centric musings

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The Swinford toll bridge at Eynsham sold at auction yesterday for £1.08m. I have forked out many a 5p to cross this – it’s often been a handy short cut to get between north Abingdon and Witney without having to come round the ringroad to the southern A34 junction – but I had no idea I was contributing to an annual income of c. £195,000, nor that the bridge has its very own Act of Parliament (1767) exempting it from all kinds of tax. Cor. Nice little earner – though as the report does point out, maintenance of the bridge also has to come out of that £195k.

I’m going to go out on a limb and bet that the salaries of the spotted youths who sit shivering in the tollbooth day in, day out make a very small dent in the £195k indeed.

Apparently the auction was done in Park Lane. I was in Park Lane yesterday, as Marble Arch is one of the drop-off points for the Oxford Espress. I could have popped in and made a bid. I was however in the area for the much more important Random House Children’s Authors Christmas Party, off Berkeley Square. Had a nice chat with John Dickinson and this year finally did get to tell him that his father gave menightmares when I was 10. He seemed delighted to hear it and told me about the nightmare his dad had, of being burned as a witch, that inspired The Changes in the first place. I also met a couple of fellow ghostwriters: one for someone I have always suspected of being ghostwritten but had no proof, and one for someone I had no idea was, um, writing at all. Officially. We all shared a slightly baffled but gratefully smug bemusement that ghostwriting is actually legal. I mean, it’s lying! To children! (Which is not always a bad thing.)

A childhood spent playing Monopoly means I can never quite feel happy in Park Lane. I have a lingering fear I will make the wrong landing and go bankrupt. My cousin’s childhood Monopoly strategy was to eschew all properties except Park Lane and Mayfair. Sometimes it paid off richly but it was a high risk strategy with a lot of attrition on the way. I doubt he kept this up for long.

I must have passed it often before without blinking, but for the first time I noticed that Park Lane has a quite large war memorial – certainly larger than a lot of the ones you see for humans – for animals who died in conflict. The statues show pack animals like donkeys carrying machine guns: the engraving on the wall states “they had no choice”.

Well, true, they didn’t. I would however say they had more of a choice than the people who made them carry the machine guns. A donkey that refused would probably get sworn at. A man that refused would get shot by his own side. That is what I would call having no choice.

Excuse me, you’re standing on my principles

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A few years ago – must have been more than four, because that’s how old this blog is and I would have mentioned it – round about this time of year I got a mailing from the Mouth and Foot Painting Artists. These are artists who would be very talented even if they were able to use their hands to paint. They can’t, for sundry reasons, hence the name of the outfit, and thus are even more worthy of respect. Their pictures are very good indeed, which I say in the full knowledge I couldn’t draw my way out of a paper bag. Nor do they want to live off charity – they intend to pay their way. Respect.

What a shame they do it in the most unseasonably cynical, manipulative way possible. The mailing contained a bundle of Christmas cards painted by said individuals. Very nice Christmas cards. Proper Christmassy scenes. Nothing cutesy or twee. With a Christmas message inside – none of this “Season’s Greetings” twaddle. The covering letter said I was under no obligation whatsoever but if I liked the cards they really hoped I’d buy them …

Which I did, with a covering letter of my own saying that admired their work, despised their tactics, and any further unsolicited bundles of cards would be treated as a gift. I didn’t hear from them again for at least five years, until last week when they kindly sent me another present.

AAGH! Curse these principles of mine.

The cards are good. The artists are amazing. Their marketing is beyond contempt. If they had just repeated the stunt year after year I would find it much easier to live up to my promise and treat the cards as a gift. But, five years minimum? They may well have a new marketing person. They may be working off an old backup. Or, are they just thinking that enough water has passed under the bridge for me to soften up. How’s a guy to know? How annoying that the one known, guaranteed constant is their utterly shameless, scheming emotional blackmail.

So, no, sorry. I said what I’d do and I’m doing it. I’ve sent the cards out to various friends (hey, free advertising! They do get something out of this) and I’m not paying. There are plenty of charities out there that play the game. Okay, this lot emphasise they’re not a charity … well, there are worse things, you know. You don’t have to be like Bernard Cribbins in The Railway Children. And if you were a charity, any donations could be Gift Aided.

Anyway, what are they going to do? Beat me up?

Whee! I mean, oops

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Honestly , it could happen to anyone. I mean, I bet it’s happened to you, too. You know how it is. You’re sitting in a Victor bomber, which is one of the most Derek Meddings-esque aircraft ever to have actually existed but which isn’t actually, you know, at this present moment in time, um, officially air-worthy … And neither you nor your co-pilot or indeed the plane are licensed to fly … But anyway, you’re sitting in it and you’re doing a 100 knot run down the runway to give the spectators a thrill and you really mean to slow down but your co-pilot freezes and doesn’t throttle back in time and you keep accelerating and … well, what would any plane do in those circumstances?
Accident, my afterburners.