An open-and-shut case of men versus women

IN the eternal debate about what sets men and women apart, it’s a giant of a question: What’s the natural state of a toilet seat – up or down?

There were times when it kept me awake at night. I thought I’d buried this particular demon but it reared it’s head again with a survey about the irritating things men do – apart from breathing, that is.

More than half the women questioned listed “failure to put the seat down” as their bloke’s most annoying habit.

Snoring and failing to replace the toilet roll were also cited, along with doing a bad job at household chores for fear of being asked to do them again, leaving toenail clippings and loose change around the home, drinking straight from milk bottles and refusing to ask for directions when lost.

So, let’s examine the lavatory outrage with a little logic: if a toilet seat is made to go up and down, how can one state be deemed a failure?

Drawers are made to open and close but leaving one open when you don’t need to get at what’s inside could rightly be deemed a failure. So could leaving a tap running when you don’t need water.

But since toilet seats are designed to go up for certain activities (generally confined to the male of the species) and down for others common to both sexes, blokes could argue that leaving the seat down is a failure because most of the time, we need it up.

Perhaps we should leave it down all the time. Imagine the grief we’d get then.

Meanwhile, in the interests of balance, I commissioned a survey of my own and can reveal some of the habits men find most annoying about women:

Not knowing when to stop talking.

Talking when it’s clear that their partner’s not listening.

Saying they don’t want anything to eat, then nibbling at their partner’s food.

Taking half an hour to say goodbye.

Claiming they never break wind.

Refusing help with household chores, then telling researchers their partners won’t help around the house.

Believing that buying a round of drinks is an exclusively male verb.

Talking while swimming.

Dawdling at the same supermarket display where they never buy anything, week after week.

Refusing to understand the LBW law.

Pulling a face at a gift of petrol station flowers that their bloke’s rushed out to buy on the morning of their anniversary (simply because that’s when they’re freshest).

For all the differences, though, men and women continue to co-exist under the same roof for much of their lives, happily putting up with each other’s failings, giving and taking, never going to bed on an argument and all those other lies they tell upon reaching great marriage milestones.

I’m lucky to have known the love of the same woman for 40 years and can honestly say I’ve never given much thought to whether she’d like the toilet seat up or down.

Mind you, in our younger, wilder days, what concerned us more was whether it was the toilet I’d find in the middle of the night, or the wardrobe.

Bingo! It's the way to keep courts local

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 19.8.10

I WAS delighted when the law caught up with two homeless men who stole parts of a Derby war memorial.

But it wasn’t so much the resulting prison sentences that pleased me as the speed of local justice at work.

Within two weeks of a crime that outraged local people, the wrongdoers had been arrested, taken to court and locked up.

No lengthy adjournments fattening lawyers’ wallets. No expert reports blaming troubled childhoods.

It was a simple case and the public’s thirst for retribution was quenched quickly and cheaply.

It was also a throwback to a time when justice was done largely in the areas where crimes were committed. Magistrates met in town halls and chapels to deal with people who were often known to them. They passed sentence with an intimate knowledge of their community and the peculiar sensitivities of its people.

Police officers and solicitors walked to court from their stations and offices nearby. Many defendants faced them with a draft of Dutch courage from a local hostelry to which, if they were lucky, they would return afterwards, minus much of their spending money. (I remember one JP who laughed off feeble offers of payment of fines by instalment and quizzed defendants on their smoking and drinking habits, then made them turn out their pockets to show how impoverished they really were).

By the end of the week, everyone knew who had stolen from, beaten or abused their fellow citizens because the cases were reported in the local newspaper.

These were our towns and villages and we were glad that our people were dealing with those among us who had caused offence. Sadly, it’s a model of justice that is fast disappearing.

Derby sampled it last week because it has one of the two remaining magistrates’ courts in Derbyshire south of Chesterfield.

Long Eaton, Ripley, Alfreton, Belper, Heanor and others have long gone. Ilkeston could follow, with more than 100 nationwide facing the chop under Government cost-cutting plans.

We know that the country has to save money. But if we are to rebuild “broken Britain”, then restoring faith in the justice system is crucial. And it need not be so lumbering and expensive.

We don’t need purpose-built courts when we have schools, village halls, leisure centres – bingo halls, even – sitting empty for long periods.

Magistrates and lawyers could gather there to hear cases from the locality. What’s wrong with a simple chalk board outside announcing: “Trial here tonight. Alleged vandalism to children’s playground. Defendant: S. Croat”?

Come to think of it, do we always need magistrates? Why not have panels of ordinary folk – drawn from the neighbourhood and properly advised in law by a magistrates’ clerk – to hear straightforward cases?

Even in an age when many of us cower and hide, I believe there are still enough public-spirited people who would be willing to play a part in creating happier neighbourhoods.

Politicians talk a lot about reducing centralisation and giving power to the people. Here’s a chance for them to prove they’re not guilty under the Utterance of Weasel Words Act.

Young thugs need a good hiding...or a peashooter

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 5.8.10

THE Asbo is dead, long live the peashooter.

Labour’s long list of powers for tackling anti-social behaviour has been torn up.

And toy firms say sales of old favourites like peashooters, catapults and cap guns are soaring. Parents, they claim, want kids to have fun-filled childhoods instead of being stuck in front of PCs,

I don’t know what this says about the drive to mend Broken Britain but I do know I’ll miss the Asbo.

It’s given us some fascinating stories, from hell-raising teenagers to neighbours disturbed by the sex lives of ladies old enough to know better.

And frankly, I’m worried: how will law-abiding citizens cope without such revelations to remind them of how lucky they are?

I’m also suspicious. Is Prime Minister Cameron simply trying to conceal the extent of the yobbery and bedroom grunting that police and councils will have to handle in some other way, with even less power to their elbows once spending cuts bite? But, above all, I’m curious to know who’s going to combat the mayhem that will ensue if the toys of my youth make a lasting comeback.

You can do serious damage with a peashooter, not to mention the anti-social behaviour those dried missiles can induce once they’ve been soaked in bicarbonate of soda and served with Sunday dinner.

Firing at shoppers and cars was as bad as I got as a youth. But a friend, aged ten at the time, was beaten with a slipper (named George) by his teacher for getting a pea stuck in another pupil’s ear, resulting in surgery.

Then there were spud-guns and rice cannons, balsa wood planes with metal tips and blotting-paper bullets fired from huge elastic bands – all capable of taking an eye out, though the fear of a good hiding from dad kept most of us in check.

We scrumped apples, took bangers to school in our satchels, dropped cap rockets next to nervous dogs and incontinent relatives, door-knocked, hedge-hopped and threw plastic-flighted darts into our brothers’ legs, knowing we’d get a smack (or at least a week without sweets) if our parents found out.

At some point, babies grew into monsters, stealing cars, terrorising estates and sticking two fingers up at authority in all its forms. So, where did it all go wrong?

I don’t yearn for the days of Dixon of Dock Green, steam trains, lard sandwiches and shops shut on Sundays. I don’t want working men tugging their forelocks and children speaking only when spoken to.

But 17,000 Asbos in eight years represents, largely, 17,000 parental failures.

If Cameron is to get his “big society”, he’ll have to turn the focus away from children and on to parents. It’s their job to control their offspring and it would be nice to think they could do it with bucket loads of love and persuasion.

Ultimately, though, it’s fear that keeps us in check: fear of losing our homes, jobs, liberty, the respect of those we care for – and fear of pain.

That’s why, when I see TV images of kids brawling and wrecking property when they should be tucked up in bed with loving families, I can’t help thinking: What they need is a good thrashing – the parents, too.

It's been a mad summer for buzzy pests

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 22.7.10

WHAT’S got into the flies this summer?

They’re everywhere they shouldn’t be, and they’re mad for human contact.

I can accept this when I visit their gaff – the great outdoors – like the night I went for a bike ride and almost swallowed one black buzzy thing while trying to extricate another from my nose.

It was an unpleasant experience, but a flea bite beside the horror of learning that a friend had spotted me spluttering and flailing as I committed a fashion crime – jeans tucked into ankle socks to guard against amputation by bike chain.

It was my first offence, too.

But at least I can avoid the outdoors if I wish, unlike the place I called home before it was turned into Flies’ Paradise.

Open the tiniest of gaps in door or window and in they come in their dozens, from minute midges to big, bonkers bluebottles and an army of common in-betweeners.

It may not be very PC to dismiss them thus. There are, after all, nearly 7,000 species of fly in this country and I’m sure they’re all complex individuals, beautiful beings in their own way, a maze of colours and textures: the apple of their mummy’s multi-sectioned eye.

They probably have names like Horatio and Eugenie and organise poetry readings on their favourite dog droppings.

But we’d get on so much better if they kept out of my face.

Irritating as it is, their attention at meal times is understandable. I don’t like them hovering around my plate or trying to follow a forkful of food down my throat but, hey, a fly guy’s gotta eat.

At any other time, though, they should be doing what flies did in the old days – bombing around lampshades and watching TV in ultra close-up.

But this modern generation has no respect. They just want to dart around eyes and ears or play bounce on my balding pate – the bird’s nest, as my kids call it, though nowadays it’s more a heron’s hotel than a sparrow’s squat.

They (flies and kids) taunt me because I’m getting on in years, my sight’s dimmed, my reactions slow.

Time was when I’d waft them dead (the flies, that is) as soon as look at them, but now they have time to weigh me up and chat…

“Buzz! Look! The old lad’s picked up a newspaper. Pretending he’s gonna read it, and swearing like mad, he is! Oops, wait, he’s got to find his glasses. Now’s he’s putting them on. Where’ve we gone? Ah, he’s clocked us! Rolling up the newspaper, taking aim and….seya sucker!”

Back in the real world, scientists in California have established why me and millions of others face an uphill battle in our bid to splatter the invaders.

Using high-speed cameras, they discovered that flies calculate the location of the impending threat, come up with an escape plan, and place their legs in an optimal position to hop out of the way, all within 100 milliseconds of spotting the enemy.

Undeterred, I’m off to the pound shop. They’ve got an offer on fly-swatters.

The gladiator will rise again!

But first, I think I’ll renew the house insurance and warn the local hospital.

Doctor Who would be proud of my journey to the Vortex of Vexation

IT may be mere coincidence but I’m intrigued by the fact that one magical box arrived in my life as another departed.

While TV’s Doctor Who was zooming off in a revitalised Tardis in the series finale, a tin shed from the land of Argos was materialising in my garden.

Helpfully, the huge cardboard box in which it arrived was marked: “This product must be assembled before use.”

Over two sweat-drenched days, I played cack-handed assistant to an engineer friend as a galaxy of screws and steel bars, washers and tin sheets were transformed into a shelter for my bike and the wife’s lawnmower and tools.

It’s not a time machine and I’ve not closed a tear in the space-time continuum. But I do journey occasionally to the Vortex of Vexation, wherein, a bit like the good Doctor, I fight the enemies of justice and common sense.

My latest foe was the media monster that provides my internet service, phone line and cable TV.

Unable to record telly programmes since my video recorder died, I was lured by the monster’s adverts for a “free” digi box. Except it wasn’t free, but £35, according to my reading of the company’s website.

A series of phone battles with the inhabitants of Planet Call Centre followed.

GoodafternoonMynameisScott spoke in an alien tongue, or it might have been Glaswegian, but I could make out the bottom line: £75. I told him what the website said. He told me there was an installation fee of £49. “But that’s not £75,” I said. “Forty-nine quid plus 35 makes 84.”

I’d not counted on GoodAfternoonMynameisScott’s special powers. He was able to make that offer to me on that particular day as I was a loyal customer. I said I’d think about it.

Next day, same phone number, different voice: the price was £110.

Suppressing the urge to yell unpleasantries, I hung up and wrote to the monster’s HQ with a simple question: How much?

Then MynameisJav phoned. He promised that the price was £75 and said that, once the digi box had been delivered, I was to call and arrange for an engineer to fit it.

The box duly arrived and I phoned again… to be told there’d been a mistake all along and the price was only £35.

How nice. But what if I hadn’t hesitated and argued? I might have ended up paying £110.

Isn’t that a disgraceful way to treat customers?

Sadly, though, it seems it’s par for the course with many companies these days. They’ll weave and wriggle to get out of you what they can, until they’re rumbled.

Special bargains, two-for-ones, loyalty deals that you have to stumble across –it’s all smoke and mirrors in the age of the digital spiv, outwardly respectable but as shady as Del Boy Trotter with a barrow load of unlockable suitcases.

I’ve since received a “contract” that says the price is £75 – but I’m assured that the “bill” will show a £75 refund. We shall see.

For now, the Vortex of Vexation has closed. I’m at peace with my digi box. But further battles lie ahead– and if Doctor Who wants to lend a hand, I know where I’d like to insert a sonic screwdriver.

In a weird world, someone's got to stand up for the likes of Bob

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, June 24, 2010

FORGET the BP oil scandal, Bloody Sunday and the World Cup. The story that’s fascinated me lately concerns two Leicestershire men whose legs were thrown away.

Obviously, they’d been amputated first. And the patients wanted to keep them (their own legs, that is, not each others’) but surgeons said no.

You’re probably expecting me to poke fun. You might be confusing me with the old grump who writes here under my name occasionally, railing against dad-dancing, cucumbers and the grime behind cookers.

But the plight of Bob Brownlow and Gareth Ferrin is too tragic for levity.

I can’t imagine anything worse, short of having a terminal illness, than losing a limb. So let me assure you there’ll be no cheap gags about people being stumped or knee-jerk reactions or not having a leg to stand on.

Bob’s right leg had been amputated after he caught an infection following knee replacement surgery. Gareth lost both legs because of complications arising from spina bifida. Both asked if they could take their legs home after amputation. Instead, the limbs were incinerated as clinical waste.

“It was dropped in a yellow sack with all the other swabs and sent off to be burnt,” said Bob. “That leg has been mine for 50 years. It’s part of me and, though people might think it strange, I wanted to be buried with it as a complete person.”

As Gareth put it: “Somebody owns their legs whether they are attached or not.”

You might think a surgeon would pop the severed limb at the foot of the bed – the first thing the patient saw when he awoke from anaesthetic; with a little ribbon, perhaps.

You might wonder what the unfortunate amputees would do with their legs once they got them home. Mount them in display cases on the mantelpiece? Stick them in the freezer with labels saying “do not eat”?

But not I because, bizarre as Bob and Gareth’s, erm, stance might seem, I can see their point. If we don’t own our bodies, what do we own?

I bet David Cameron didn’t think of this when he promised to increase personal freedom.

Even the medical authorities are in uncharted waters. As a spokeswoman for the hospital said: “It’s very rare for a patient to ask to keep a body part following its removal. We would deal with such requests on an individual basis.”

That’s nice to know. Perhaps they’ll reword the consent-to-surgery form along the lines of: Please tick Box A if you’d like to take your body part with you when you leave hospital: If you ticked Box A, please choose a style of container: A, luxury. B, standard, C, economy. Now indicate your choice of delivery: A, courier. B, bus. C, post.

The Government’s Human Tissue Authority had never heard of an amputee wanting to keep a limb and says the law does not address the issue.

“If it is a diseased limb,” said a spokesman, “one would imagine a hospital would be right to dispose of it on health grounds, and why would a limb be removed if it was not infected in some way?”

I’m sure we could trust our legal system to sort out disputes over what is and what isn’t an infected limb, don’t you? The ensuing court cases would make enthralling reading.

There is, however, a danger of opening Pandora’s box. We might be comfortable with patients keeping arms and legs but what about fingers and toenails, warts and moles, spleens and varicose veins?

In these troubled economic times, I sense a world of opportunity for lawyers, entrepreneurs and bureaucrats.

But first we need the law to be clarified, which means an MP being bold enough to go out on a limb.

What?

There's a place in the house where a man shouldn't go

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, June 10, 2010

I’VE been to a dark place and come out the other side. The scars, however, will remain.

Let me set the scene: Day off work, house to myself, no must-do jobs to be done.

I can slob about, unwashed, unshaven, reading the paper, watching TV, feasting on tea and biscuits. Sounds heavenly.

Or I can stop being a sad, stereotypical bloke and Do Something Useful – aargh, the words won’t stop coming – Around The House.

I mop my brow and pinch myself. No, not dreaming.

When I said “no must-do jobs to be done”, I meant the man-of-the-house variety, which excludes ironing, washing, dusting, putting clothes away, shopping, cleaning windows and minor plumbing and electrical work, for all of which I have a perfectly able wife.

So what will it be? Something that won’t deprive the lady of the house of job satisfaction; something, perhaps, that she doesn’t enjoy doing. Difficult.

Tea. Biscuits. Deep breaths. I’ve decided: I’ll de-crud the hole where the cooker sits.

Despite the absence of safety suit and rubber gloves (must remind the better half of her health and safety responsibilities) I set to work, twisting the cooker this way and that to ease it out – and trapping my hand between cooker and cupboard. Fffffflip, that hurt!

The gunk down here is unbelievable: caked-on rivers and pimples of grease, a few hairs, a pasta spiral, two raisins and a new species of fluff. Think I’ll phone David Attenborough.

This would never have happened years ago. Families would have wiped up the gunk with a slice of bread and fed it to Grannie for her supper. That’s why the wartime generation’s so ’ard.

Out comes the hoover (I don’t care who made it and which trademark lawyer’s watching, that carpet sucker will always be a hoover) and I spend ages disconnecting the hose and finding somewhere to slot it into, then taking one nozzle out of another out of another. And still it won’t work, even though I’ve cunningly located the on-off switch. Ah yes: it’s not plugged in.

Bowl of water and scouring pad at the ready, it’s time to choose my weapon, the kitchen-cleaner’s equivalent of napalm: I snub the one that goes with a flash in favour of the one that boasts a bang (despite the horrifying safety instructions: do not gargle, snort, spray in eyes, bathe in – that sort of thing)

There follows much frantic fiddling for the “on” bit of the nozzle because it’s the same colour as the rest. Don’t they consider squinting old buffoons when they design these things?

Three applications later, I’ve barely scratched the surface.

A hairy spider, a foot wide if it’s an inch, squeezes out from behind a working unit and as I recoil, my elbow meets some of the cleaning fluid that’s supposedly eating its way into the grime. Now I’m going to lose an arm.

Feverish, I read the instructions once more: Do not leave on enamel surfaces for more than five minutes. Now they tell me. Still, if I get a move on and put the cooker back, the missus might never notice that the sides have disintegrated.

It seems like weeks have passed but it’s little more than half an hour. Gunk and grease have all gone, floor spotless.

All that remains is to disconnect the hoover and curse the invisible fiend who’s tied the cable in a knot, the same one, I suspect, who steals half my cutlery, eats my pens and hides my glasses in the most bizarre places.

I stand back to admire my work, arms raised in triumph to the adulation of an unseen crowd, and think: This housework lark’s a doddle.