How Hard Can It Be_ - Jeremy Clarkson [33]
I fear for our future. I worry that bad behaviour is being erased from society, and that unless the trend can be reversed somehow we’ll all have to go through life on the Planet Stepford, a rictus grin masking the boiling turmoil of desperation inside. I yearn sometimes when I encounter a neatly stacked pyramid of tins of beans to push it over. Don’t you? Wouldn’t it break the monotony of having to drive at 30 mph and eating a wholefood Fairtrade sandwich at your desk?
Recently Annie Robinson and I dreamt up a TV show that would serve as an antidote to the endless parade of hectoring and finger-wagging programmes we get today. Instead of running down the street after a cowboy builder who’d charged an old lady a million quid to build a fireplace, we would go after the victims. It was to be called Sucker and it would celebrate the ingenious while pointing the finger and howling with laughter at the stupid, the gullible and the fat. Never has the nation needed such a show more. And never has such a thing been less likely to get commissioned. Unless, of course, we could get Max Mosley to present it.
Sunday 13 July 2008
Working while on holiday is … wow, just look at that
In the Sunday Times last weekend there was a huge story about how thousands of city families are now decamping to the countryside each summer. There were pictures of smiling mums with lovely teeth, under the wisteria, telling us how their children go on bike rides without being stabbed, and that because Nethercombe End is only 40 miles from the M5, their husbands can get up to the City for important meetings (with their mistresses, but it didn’t say that) in just sixteen hours.
Right. Well, since I’m currently at my seaside cottage for the summer, let’s see if it really is possible to combine a family holiday with work. Here we go.
The slate-grey sea trembles under a tempestuous sky. Waves: big green fists smash into the rocks and explode in a shower of crystalline white, whipped by the wind into a swirling ethereal moment when nature’s savagery and power combine in an instant of shrieking glory.
Hang on a minute. I wanted to write this morning about Australia’s immigration policy. But sadly, each time I look out of the window, I’m consumed by the view. This means that every time I try to send an e-mail to the Top Gear edit suite about cuts I need for next week’s film, it always begins: ‘The seagull’s lonesome cry echoed eerily from the volcanic jaggedry …’ and no one in Soho has the first clue what’s got into me.
Anyway. Australia recently announced that all illegal immigrants … Oh, God almighty. I’m going to have to break off for a moment. It appears my son has fallen over on the rocks while emptying the lobster pots … and yes, there is a great deal of blood spurting from his left leg. I fear he needs to go to hospital.
He does. Back shortly …
Right. Australia’s federal immigration minister Chris Evans, who is no relation to the biotech Welshman, announced last week that … holy Mother of God, I’ve just seen a whale. I’m not kidding. Was it a fin? Or a killer? There it is again. Bloody hell. It’s massive.
I must go on the internet to find out. And that’s going to take hours because here at the seaside, broadband is not the width of a human hair. It actually is a human hair, which feeds information at 35.7 kb per second. In English, that’s 7 mph.
Two hours later. It was a minke. Fairly common in these waters, apparently. So anyway. Australia. Oh, hang on. Jane Moore’s leaving. She’s been staying for the past week, which means her column in the Sun will be all full of whales and tempestuous seas as well.
This is the problem with trying to work from a house at the seaside. Because none of your friends has one, they come and stay in yours, which means you can’t do any work in the morning because you stayed up till three and your head hurts, and you can’t work in the afternoon because you’re drunk from lunch.
The coastguard’s here. It seems a cyclist has careered through my field and six of our sheep were so frightened by