Yet another Bank Holiday but only for a day so the pub was quiet on Tuesday.  It used to be called Whitsun when we were kids and we normally had a week off with all sorts of events taking place.  The politicians changed it in 1971 – we were having too much fun.

    Sam surprised us, but only because he’s not a church goer, by telling us that Whitsun was often thought of as the birth of the church when the Holy Spirit descended to the Apostles, 50 days after the resurrection.  The Apostle Peter preached a sermon that resulted in 3000 people becoming believers.  Jez jumped in to say Nigel Farage would have converted a lot more than 3000 based on the recent elections.  It made us wonder if Nigel in a cassock, with a pint in one hand and a fag in the other, could fill the churches.  Putting a bar in would certainly help!

    The rest of us had been taking bets about how long it would take Jez to raise Nigel’s name. You could have got long odds about it being in the first sentence after a biblical discourse. We had to agree to give credit where it was due and accept that UKIP had caused a shake-up in political terms.  The major parties see the result as a protest vote but with a turn out around 30% I suggested the DGS party (see 7^th May) made the strongest point. When will these political grandees understand the electorate?   In most of the post-election interviews the major players say they will listen to the voters.  We greeted that with derision. They’re always too busy talking at us.  I wonder why they believe they know best, when most never held down a proper job or lived among the general population.   

    We all had ideas about what sort of job would best fit the party leaders.  ‘Call me Dave’ came out of PR and it’s clearly his vocation.  He tells a great story, spins it with the skill of Shane Warne and leaves us with promises, promises.  Sam suggested he’d make a great undertaker on the basis that he buries Ed Miliband every Wednesday at Question Time.

    ‘Red Ed’ proved a tough one.  Paddy suggested that politics deprived the circus of a great clown and that Ed might benefit from changing his looks with make-up and a funny nose.  Imagine him on the stump acting as a clown.  “Would anyone notice a difference?” Adrian posed. Shrugs suggested not.  It seemed a bit harsh, but with Ed likely to win the election next year it raises the spectre of him astride the stage with major statesmen like Obama, Merkel, Putin et al.  Angela Dorothea Merkel won’t mind being called a statesman by the way. She shows bigger balls than most blokes.  But try to imagine Miliband alongside as an equal no less.  We’ll be expecting a pig’s fly past. 

    That left us with Nick Clegg, and Paddy made the sign of the cross when I said it.  As deputy Prime Minister he has already qualified as an illusionist, striding the halls of power but leaving no footprint. I’m surprised he hasn’t followed the work of Dr Duncan MacDougall in his fanatical search for renewable energy (See Soul Searching on Kindle).  It seems to fit his definition of logic.  If he hangs on as captain of the SS Lib Dem, we strongly suggest his followers invest in water wings.       

    Jez has another bee in his bonnet because he read an article about the elderly being a drain on society, resented by many young people as a burden they shouldn’t have to carry.  Apparently Chris Huhne had a lot to say about it in The Guardian.  He’s quoted as saying ‘someone needs to fight the selfish, short sighted old’.  We found it hard to take too seriously if it’s accurate.  Anyone who claims his wife is driving his car when he’s sitting behind the wheel, clearly has to be delusional.  And a man living off the public purse as a Minister, who moves directly to prison without passing GO, certainly knows about drains on society; we decided he qualified as an expert on the subject.  We’re still paying tax so we’re waiting for his next parable, hoping it offers us a get out clause, apart from euthanasia that is.

    The BBC finally succumbed to Politically Correct Dementia, a syndrome associated with not going out much in the real world.  The word GIRL may now be considered sexist in certain circumstances.  Paddy feels vindicated and will continue to use his preferred bird.  Clearly the Beeb are taking it seriously.  We all tried to watch the new drama Quirke on Sunday only to find that lack of sound and whispering are the new filters used to cover any risky words.  We’re awaiting the appearance of the little figure doing sign language for the benefit of those with perfect hearing.   Presumably, they’ll erase the sign for girl! 

    We’ll have to stop Adrian reading the papers so much.  He turned up with an article from the Daily Telegraph on tests that show if you’re at risk from an early death.  With the average age of the group already 70 I asked for a definition of early.  The tests led to one of the funniest sessions we’ve had for months. 

    The balance test is a gem.  The aim is to stand on one leg with your eyes closed.  In the research, I believe the writer used the term research with tongue firmly in cheek, the least risk group managed 10 seconds or more, the worst only 3 seconds.  It seemed like a pretty straightforward test.  We left Ben out because he’s still waiting for his hip. He can’t stand upright on two legs with his eyes open for 10 seconds at the moment.  That made Ben the timekeeper, not that we needed one.  The other five of us took it in turns and didn’t manage 3 seconds in total.  We decided we may have misunderstood the instructions and went back to the article.  We hadn’t.

    We thought it might be easier to stand on one leg and then close your eyes.  That was when we found out that most of us couldn’t stand on one leg for 10 seconds with our eyes open. By now some of the kids in the bar, our terminology for those around sixty had begun to barrack us, water off a duck’s back at our age. Undeterred we switched to the next test.

    That involved standing upright from a sitting position in a normal straight backed chair.  “No problem,” Sam said, until he found out you had to repeat it as many times as possible for one minute.  We had to leave Ben out of that test as well.  At least he can count so remained useful.  Jez led off with lots of encouragement from all over the bar.  Ben stopped him at ten because he’d read the instructions again.  It had to be a chair without arms and the low risk group averaged 39 in the tests.  All the chairs in the bar have arms so we ruled out the test.  Richie chimed in from behind the bar, suggested we use the bench seat in the window.  Adrian suggested he got on with his work.  

    That only left the grip test but we hadn’t got any kit to measure that.  The researchers used something like a bicycle brake lever that measured the squeeze power.  After a bit of discussion, Richie gave us an unopened bottle of tomato relish from the kitchen.  Since Ben hadn’t been able to do any of the other tests, he led off.  To be fair, we let him try both hands several times before we sent the bottle back to the kitchen.  The obvious conclusion was that Ben had already died but no-one had told him.

    Adrian finally told us the tests had been applied to groups with an average age of 53, with low scorers more likely to die in the following thirteen years during which the tests were used.  Once we had the full picture we were in high spirits and Paddy summed it up with what he calls logic.

    “It’s pretty obvious from our age’s lads.  We’d have sailed through these tests at 53.” 

    The tests led naturally, naturally for us anyway, onto the ages when our fathers died.  Three didn’t make sixty, two made late seventies and Jez was a ‘don’t know’.  We didn’t explore that.  Billy Connolly has just produced a brilliant television series about the final journey so we had another straw poll.  Cremation won hands down with one ‘don’t know’.  I’ll leave you to guess who that was!  Paddy wanted a pint poured on the ground where his ashes were scattered.  Any of us who survive him offered to do just that provided it went via our kidneys.

    I couldn’t believe the Eurovision Song Contest would ever become a topic of conversation for our lot but Paddy raised it before we’d got the first round in. 

    “What do you think about it being won by a woman with a beard and a moustache?”

    The question got greeted with shrugs.  We’d all seen the papers with celebrities queuing up to get their picture published with facial hair mocked up.     Paddy wasn’t ready to let it go.

    “It’s not like you lot not to have an opinion.”

    Clearly it wouldn’t go away.

     “Was it the best song?” I posed.  It seemed a reasonable question.

     None of us had watched it and decided to let Adrian open up his phone, normally banned when we’re having a pint, to check what the pundits said.  It was hard to get a precise view but comments suggested other songs were better, but the overall performance probably deserved to win.  We considered doing another of our straw polls but only one of the drinkers had watched the programme, and he’d dozed off mid competition and wasn’t sure how many acts he’d missed.   The UK came nowhere, continuing a trend that has gone on for several years so maybe a performance would give us a better chance next year.   We tried to decide which of our bearded members might represent the UK.

    Ben has a beard, a bit ragged and more than slightly grey, but it made him a potential entrant.  He’d be a bit static until he gets his new hip and any dancing would need serious choreography to avoid a nasty fall.  None of us knew if they made trainers with high heels.   The only time we heard him sing was at Vic’s funeral and that turned heads in the crematorium, most mourners thinking it sounded like a last breath and fearing they’d have to stay on for a second event.   Jez suggested Ben could make his entrance in an upright coffin but we thought enough singers had already died during their performance.  

    Paddy has the other beard but combines it with the build of a front row forward.   He loves to sing and in fairness doesn’t sound too bad in our opinion.  None of us had any idea what sizes dresses went up to, 12 to 16 our only experience, leaving us pretty sure Paddy would need something over a 30 and that might be a squeeze.   The other issue would be his ears.  He grows more hair there than most of us on our heads.  He would need earrings the size of dinner plates before they’d show.  Sam thought platting it might be different.

    We soon tired of the Eurovision but the discussion led us onto the social changes that we’ve seen since we were kids.  Even H G Wells couldn’t have forecast these and any fictional book, even in our youth, that had described modern society in social terms would almost certainly have been pilloried, probably banned.   Is it all for the best, progressive, positive?   A consensus in the group said we weren’t sure.   We’ve reached an age where we tend to keep our heads down most of time, pretty comfortable with whatever way people live their lives, provided it doesn’t impinge negatively on ours, happy to accept the oft used ‘silly old farts label’.  After all, what do we know?  We’re comfortable in the knowledge that our time is limited and we won’t be around if there is a downside to what passes as normal behaviour in the modern search for celebrity.  

        

    I suppose it was inevitable with EU elections on the horizon.  Even so, the advice never to discuss politics or religion with friends has never been proved more appropriate.   There weren’t many people in The Duke but it didn’t take long for those within hearing distance to get involved.

    Sam has gone all UKIP, sounding like Corporal Jones from Dad’s Army that kept saying “they don’t like it up ‘em,” ‘em being all the main parties.  He’s voted Conservative for as long as we’ve known him but the change may be a reaction to him being a constituent of Maria Miller.   Sam’s loud comment that “she won’t like it up her next time she stands” had to be explained to two elderly ladies who got a bit excited when they heard it.  He has a point in the sense that none of the major parties would discuss immigration or the EU until recently, but asked to name another standing member of UKIP he was none the wiser than the rest of us.

    Adrian reads more newspapers than most of us and has Radio 4 on permanently at home and in the car.  His point made sense.  Our problem with both the EU and immigration is that we don’t have any quality information.  Dependent on which politician is stating their case, they spout statistics to prove their position, but heaven knows where they find their numbers.   Adrian says there is no forensic statistical analysis, worth the breath used to deliver them.  I think  Jez made the same point more clearly by saying they all talk bollocks.  In that circumstance, you seem left with no option but to take a gut feel punt on the character of the person who states their case.  It raised another point.

    How much do we actually know about the folk we elect?  Ben raised a moot point.  What process did we go through when we applied for a job?  Inevitably it meant producing a CV and going through an interview process.  Clearly 15,000 or so constituents can’t interview an individual who wishes to stand as an MP but the applicants could be made to publish a detailed CV.  They’re applying to run the country and it would be nice to know if they’d ever run anything in their lives.  Based on the cock ups with most major projects, the answer is probably no.

    By now the entire audience in the bar were involved in the discussion so Paddy decided to run his own poll.   There were nineteen of us, including publican Richie and his better half Pam.  The results were as follows for the EU election.

                                                UKIP                                      12

                                                Labour                                    2

                                                Conservatives                       1

                                                Liberals                                   0      Jez said they’d get less on the day

                                                Undecided                             1

                                                Don’t give a shit                    3

    According to Adrian, proportional representation means that the ‘Don’t give a shit party’ will have representatives in Brussels.    As drink was taken, a lively discussion ensued about the cost of standing as a delegate.  While unlikely, I would like you to give serious consideration to how you use your vote if a DGS candidate appears on your voting slip.