MISCELLANEOUS POSTING NO 766

In the office where I work, about every three weeks or so, there comes a tapping at the door and our regular window cleaner walks in to wipe down the insides of the glass. He usually has “forthright” (if not exactly “progressive”) opinions upon most subjects and we have a kind of unwritten “sweepstake” amongst ourselves about which topic from the week’s news he is most likely to want to talk about the next time that he’s due to appear.

Last Tuesday, he surprised us all (“Don’t Panic!”) by asking us whether we were going to stay up to watch the election results which, given that it wasn’t even  a UK election that he was talking about but the American one, left us all feeling a little nonplussed, and we had to pack away our cartridges full of “witty” retorts and bon mots in response to the topic we were sure that he was most likely to have something to say.

That said, I did rather need reminding about the elections happening on the other side of the Atlantic, but not because I’d forgotten about it exactly (any visit to TwitWorld made that rather unlikely), but because I did kind of keep forgetting that it was actually happening right now, if you understand what I mean. I would remember and then I would sort of just forget about it again...

Mind you, I’m not a big fan of making sweeping political statements or opinions in places like this because I tend to find that doing such things only gets you a great deal of grief, and it really isn’t worth the effort, and, whilst I wasn’t a huge fan of the challenger in those particular elections this time around, I wasn’t going to say so publicly until, at the very least, he’d either won it or lost it. There were enough people complaining about “You Brits” poking their noses into, and spouting their opinions about, the US Elections as it was, without me having to add my two cents worth to the melee…

So, I went to bed on Tuesday night with a certain amount of trepidation about the result (“Don’t Panic!”), but I found that it didn’t seem to bother me enough for me to want to stay up and make sure of the outcome, but it was with a certain amount of relief that I booted up the old computer the next morning to find that, by almost the narrowest possible of margins, the result which I personally preferred had actually come to pass.

In other words, the day started well enough, with me getting up to the news that the American Election, whilst being a close run thing had ended with, in my opinion anyway, sanity prevailing, and so I then felt able to share my relief at that result with anyone who wanted to hear about it, as my opinion was now unlikely to shake the beliefs of the six individuals who read my words regularly, none of whom were eligible to vote anyway, but, ah… You know…

Shortly after this happy moment, I had to head to work and I found myself in some of the worst traffic jams that had happened in these parts for quite some time (“Don’t Panic!”), because of various accidents closing various major routes, and my mood plummeted again, although my spirits were jocular enough to say to myself that the traffic had been far worse since Obama got re-elected…

The things we say and do to entertain ourselves when stuck in traffic, eh…?

There were rumours that the problems were still persisting during the evening rush hour too (“Don’t Panic!”), but, when I left work that evening in something of a flat panic, hoping to at least keep myself vaguely on schedule, there was no sign of any trouble and I sailed through to where I was going without a hitch. This, of course, should teach me something about anticipation of the worst possible scenarios which might never happen, but I’m not sure exactly what it is that I might be learning…

Later on that day, there was more bad news when I found out that the actor Clive Dunn, who played Lance Corporal Jones in “Dads Army” (“Don’t Panic!”), had passed away at the grand old age of 92 (although, to be honest, quite a few people seemed to think that he’d already been dead for years).

Perhaps that’s what happens when you spend your acting career playing old men and all of the old men that you played opposite are already long gone. He was even playing an “old chap” in the earliest thing that I became aware of him being in, way back in 1960 when he made a guest appearance in the “Hancock’s Half Hour” episode “The Reunion Party” when he would have been, by my calculations, around forty.

These news items always make me feel just a little bit sad, as if there are great chunks of my past, detaching themselves like melting icebergs…

On the way home later on that evening, I had to slam on the brakes as a great big badger crossed the road in front of me (“Don’t Panic!”) right on the edges of town, which, apart from the obvious shock, made for a rather nice rural moment upon which to end a tricky old day. I don’t know whether or not it’s considered to be “lucky” to have a badger cross your path, but well, fingers crossed, eh…?

I don’t know… American Elections, Clive Dunn, Traffic Jams and a badger…

It all sounds a bit like one of those dreadful “improv” sessions where someone had to include various elements suggested by members of the audience into a story that they had obviously prepared earlier…

Not that I’d ever want to give you the impression that I put any kind of thought into these musings… ;-)

(By the way, you might not have realised it, but I did come very close to calling this posting “Don’t Panic!” but, ah, you know...)