Sat 17th Jan 2009

A few of my friends use public transport to head to some nice countryside destinations of a Saturday afternoon and go for a ramble. Today, they decided to take a hike through a wooded area toward a quaint little village called Brewood. Given the close proximity of their starting point to my house, I decided that it might be quite nice to join them.

They're a pretty academic bunch. Which is what made it was so surprising that they hadn't accounted for the fundamental fact that day turns to night quite early in the winter. By the time they'd visited our local bookshop (see - told you they were academic), it was about 3.30pm and dusky skies were already beginning to threaten our trip. These are not the best conditions to embark on a muddy walk through a wood and canal bank.

By five o'clock, we had safely arrived at a pub in Brewood without incident, having concluded our walk. And there we would stay, sinking ale for the rest of the evening, until the last bus ferried the ramblin' crew back to the cities they'd arrived from.

I was beginning to think that maybe the exercise element was not the primary motive of the brisk walk, given that only one of their 7 hour visit was spent doing anything remotely physical. For the last year they have been trying to impress me with tales of their epic foot journeys, but they are clearly charlatans.

Also, being from a sprawling glowing metropolis like Stafford or Wolverhampton, I think my friends find the humble ways of a small middle-class suburban village a little strange.

Whilst in the pub, they chanced upon a copy of the local Parish Newsletter and derived juvenile amusement from satirising the simple pastimes listed in the magazine's 'What's On' section. You know the sort of jokes I mean:- where the descriptions of activities are diliberately mis-interpreted to make the banal even more banal.

For instance, the advertised weekly meeting of the Coven Morris Men is not actually about the art of a particular dance, but a chance for people called Morris to find out how others are representing their monikor.

The local Open Mike Night is not an expression of amatuer musical ability, but a public chance for people called Mike to receive a medical procedure.

The Albrighton Aero club is not a meeting for hobbyist pilots, but for chocoholics to eat Nestle Aero bars. And Jacobs Clubs.

You get the picture. It's probably best to stop before we mine the possibilities of 'the
2nd Brewood Brownies Club'.

Of course I should state that any racist implications of such a reading would have been tactfully stressed with the obligatory 'ironic' tag.

Like I say - I should state that.

But I'm not going to.

It's my blog.

Let their reputation be soiled by bigotry forever more.

If this assortment of Phd students and doctorates can so willingly misinterpret intent for comic effect, then so can I!