Just a thought

It’s just a thought, one of those bats that flits through the empty belfry of the freelancer’s cranium.

(I’ve heard it said that one of the reasons that we freelancers spend so much time fettling up the lance between campaigns is that we have a short attention span. Bad habits from an early age. Hence, it’s just the one thought. Invoice in the post.)

This particular thought is a thought about a - never mind.

 
The point is: the following notice has appeared on Stockport Road in Marple.

Can you see that? It says:

Young drivers THINK

There’s a thought. One would like to think that this thought is founded on observation, but I haven’t found any evidence to back it up. However, I expect that it’s the considered view of our friends over at Traffic Services in the Stockport Communities, Regeneration and Environment Directorate, CRED for short. (I mustn’t knock CRED. By this time next year, I fear the Big Society will just be a Big Hole, and that our liberal democrat council will have lost its street CRED altogether.)

Mrs M and M1 rage against this sign every time they pass it. It’s making a terrible mess of the Fiesta.

Mrs M is a great defender of modern youth. Returning recently from one of our family outings to Pizza Hut and the Royal Exchange in Manchester, for instance, Mrs M observed that the younger Ms ahead of us were having difficulty persuading a G4S security operative (who has replaced the ticket inspector) at Piccadilly Station to let them board the Marple Express.

The boys’ rational arguments appeared to be having little impact on Mr G4S: mere boyish reason was nothing to him. I don’t know whether it was the force of Mrs M’s reason, or the end of the rounders bat poking out of her capacious handbag, but, at her appearance, Mr G4S quickly waved the Mandalls and the rest of middle-aged, middle-class rabble onto the Marplestar.
 
“They always try it on with the kids,” she said, poking the handle back in her bag.

I don't want to fall out with the family, but I think Traffic Services have got a point. There is plenty of evidence that young people think, and I am not aware of any research that young drivers are an exception. Young people conceivably employ thought in choosing whether to protest against a war or join the army. Some may use thought in the course of their research into the relationship between prime numbers and the Neanderthal genome. Others weigh up the economics of having a baby at 15, while yet others discourse on whether Mumford and sons are arrivistes, and whether their bumbling onto the stage at summer festivals to coincide with their surprise hit single, is not quite as haphazard is it appears. ("Dad," I hear the chorus. "Stop trying to be Down With The Kids." I'm not, I retort. I heard about them on Radio 4. So there.)

The strongest evidence that young people think, however, is Facebook: young people spend a great deal of time thinking about each other, about themselves, and about hair products.

I suspect that Peter Jenner, the vicar up in Mellor, might agree with Traffic Services. Peter says that he hopes his parish is a place for “seekers” at least as much as for “finders”. We think, we seek, we hope.

If Peter is right, perhaps Marple is a bit different from, say, Alderley Edge, whose portals sport following the message:

Children please drive slowly

This, one feels, is addressed to under-aged footballers who have already found themselves in possession of everything that they ever wanted, and have therefore already wrapped their first Lamborghinis around my Zimmer frame.

* * *

Back in Marple, and a little further along Stockport Road, Traffic Services – or whoever – exhorts us as follows:

That's right:

Don't become a Statistic

One thing we are never short of is a statistic. 56,817 drivers and riders aged 30 to 39 were involved in recorded UK road collisions in 2008, nearly as many as the 58,846 under-24s. (That's approximate: Mrs M wasn't available to check the figure-work.) What is more, the alcohol level in the blood of thirty-something drivers involved in crashes is much more likely to be over the legal limit (39%), than that of 16-19 year-olds (23%).

Anyway, all I was thinking was that young drivers might like to know this too, before they are crashed into by a drunken git in a bloody Range Rover.

M3 has just come back from an extended Graffiti workshop at our local Specialist Youth-Wise Communication College. I have suggested that he add a rider (so to speak) to the road sign.

Young drivers THINK

Thirty-somethings DRINK

It was just a thought.

* * *

NOTICES

Deaths

MAC our dear goldfish Freddie Mac, on 7^th July at Mandallay, of a bloated bladder, bravely borne.  He leaves his beloved Fannie Mae, and their young friend from Brabyns Fair, John. Freddie is re-united with the Dreamers on high.  Donations to Lehman Brothers. No weed please.

Marriages

HADDOCK Fannie Mae to Johnny on 7^th July, after a long engagement.  The Bride’s Maids wore salmon, and the periwinkle bouquet was caught by Ann Chovy. Fannie and Johnny plan to honeymoon in Wales, before returning to found a Cordon Bleu School in Mandallay.

Cork and the Wider World

I knew a pair of Irish doctors, Fiona and Brian, who went off to work in either Peru or Zimbabwe. They were from Cork, where they corresponded with a journal called Cork and the Wider World. How marvellous to say your home town and the whole world in one breath. I gained a respect for Cork and for Ireland at that moment, and have never lost it.

Marple Bridge is also in communion with the cosmos. I don’t mean through the cultural outings to Disneyland arranged by our specialist language college. I’m thinking more of the Stockport Metros: “Friendship through Lacrosse”. Families from Mellor, Poynton and other local lacrosse clubs receive a touring youth team from Anne Aroundel Lacrosse in Maryland every two years, and take a touring team over there, in between. That’s better.

Mandall 3 tells me that Jimiyke is in town. M3, our youngest, has more antennae than Fylingdales. He can pick up a signal from friend or foe, foul-mouthed celeb or pregnant head of physics, before you can say semi-conductor. I caught him checking out a furniture van on Marina Drive, yesterday. Then he got lost in Big Brother briefings when was supposed to be on MyMaths.co.uk. M3 says he’s no good at maths. So why does he have such an infernal memory for number-plates?

Jimiyke lives in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He takes his name from an American celeb called J-Mike or similar. Jimiyke was a boy-soldier, but found his way back to school, EducAid, where he became Head Boy last year. Then he suddenly became ill with dreadful maladies that turned out to be hepatitis. Thanks to the school and their friends, he travelled to England for treatment, where he also proved a great ambassador for EducAid at schools which support it.

Jimiyke, EducAid and Sierra Leone have been on M3’s radar for a while. Indeed, it was thanks to M3 that, last June, Jimiyke’s English headmistress Miriam and her Sierra Leonean husband Alhassan came to the Mellor village fete.

Alhassan and Miriam hit the Mellor Church Fete in African garb

We had a May Pole, and country dancing in the evening. Alhassan clearly thought our ethnic dancing was nuts, but joined in anyway.

Alhassan died soon after he went home. Just like that. It happens a lot in Freetown when there isn’t time or money to get you out of the country to a decent hospital. EducAid lost 4 students last year.

Son of a junior wife, Alhassan never got a formal education, but met and married a British teacher, Miriam. Together they set up EducAid, now a network of schools in Sierra Leone. Then, last July, driving through Freetown, Alhassan, to all appearances a handsome and fit young man, had a headache. He thought it might be malaria, which is common, so after dropping Miriam off for a meeting, he headed off for some pills. He passed out at the wheel and hit a telephone pole, which was home to a swarm of bees. (Telephone poles in Freetown don’t carry much in the way of phone conversations). Too ill to move, he let the bees sting him over a thousand times. He died some days later. Nobody knows whether the bees, malaria, or some other condition killed him. Nobody can tell you these things in Sierra Leone, any more than they probably can in Haiti. He just died. Of course.

Jimiyke is staying in Stockport with a teacher whose class he’s been skyping. He’s also completed his medical tests, and is fine. I expect M3 will find out more soon. Or perhaps we'll hear on Miriam's blog from Freetown. It's always a good read.

Meanwhile, I must pay the deposit for M2’s Lacrosse tour. Rather Maryland than Disneyland.

Holiday Time

No sooner has the Christmas pudding settled into a warm bump on my tummy, than the family starts mithering me about summer holidays.

I hide the Radio Times (Mrs M always insists we get the bumper Christmas edition). I just don’t want to see the adverts for timeshares and city breaks, Squeezyjets and Caribbean cruises.

I try to avoid the ads on telly too. Even ad-free BBC has its risks, what with the Royle Family off to a static caravan in Prestatyn.

The first problem about planning holidays is that the boys’ school, now re-badged a Specialist Language College, always gets in first, at the start of the autumn term. Barely have I reclaimed my (ha!) study from the kids’ junk, and purged my computer of piratical download software, than they are back home from school, trailing consent forms for Madrid, Iceland and Antarctica.

Mrs M and I sigh. We know that lager works the same in any language, leaving them less than receptive at the Prado, the hot springs or the South Pole. Could not our Specialist Travel College achieve the same effect without contributing quite so much to global warming? (I am now ranting at Mrs M, who as usual says nothing).

I recall those happy days when our primary head teacher showed us snaps of Year Sixers licking ninety-nines on windy northern beaches, and when our “contribution” was measured in tens of pounds not hundreds of Euros.

So, as 2010 dawns, even an off-peak mid-week break at Center Parcs looks pricey for our summer hols. I know better than to suggest a week in my favourite holiday cottage at the unfashionable end of the Lake District. The risk of a wet muddy week in a cold damp spidery house is just well, too like home. My work often takes me abroad: it’s all very well for you, they clamour, off to sunnier climes for what you call work (ha ha), but for those of us whose journeys end in Piccadilly and Offerton, a beach and a pool are basic Human Rights.

Cabin Fever is setting in at Number 72. Any minute now they will bring up last year’s cancelled holiday in Antigua, where Mrs M and the boys were meant to join me at the end of my contract. Sometimes clients cancel: it’s just one of those things, but you can’t expect the family to see it that way.

I seize the high moral ground by asserting basic Canine Rights: Bono’s lead must be somewhere. I shall take him up past Red Row, a terrace of brick weavers’ cottages by the Royal Oak in Mellor. I’ve always liked the way “Red Row” as written looks like a full-on family blazer, but when you get there, the soft red bricks are as warm and kind as the people inside. I might even get a cup of tea if Bono promises to behave.

On the way I shall compose a letter in my head to the head of a certain Specialist Impoverishment College, and by the time I am home, I’ll feel better.