Wpl

Actual Posting Date 12-02-2011

Just Released
Chapter Three of my novel The Under-manager, set in Scotland in 1998.
To read this and the previous chapters, go to:-

http://www.scribd.com/poetonahill/shelf

Other chapters will be released at approximately fortnightly intervals.

***

This is a mad, mad land

A friend of ours delivers Meals on Wheels to the old and infirm. She drives a van, and she’s in and out like the Eddystone Lighthouse. A woman approaches her and says, ‘You are not wearing a seatbelt. I’m a council official. Either pay a £60 fine on the spot or attend a Highway Code Course, immediately.’ Our friend says, ‘I’m not paying £60. And I can’t attend a course, immediately, because I’m delivering food to people.’ The official says, ‘If you don’t go to the police station now, and attend a course, we’ll stop you from driving.’ Up against a brick-wall, our friend went to the police station.

And this is the maddest bit.

At the police station she had to wait in a massive queue of taxi drivers, van drivers, social workers and dozens of others who had been trying to do something useful before being grabbed by a jumped-up jobsworth and ordered to go on a worthless ‘course.’ Then, when she came out of the ‘course,’ there were dozens of other ‘real workers’ waiting to go in and waste their day.

Don’t anyone tell me we need these petty tyrants. Sack ‘em! Sack ‘em and sod ‘jobs for the boys and girls.’

***

What’s the difference between iron man and iron woman?

Iron man is a superhero and iron woman is a simple instruction.

Wpl