The bunting is beginning to look bedraggled.
But it is still there, tied to gates and trees.
Strung across roads.
A somewhat dismal, bedraggled reminder of last weeks party.
Maybe it will stay up until the England Team are on the coach heading home from the European Championships?
Maybe it will remain until after the Olympics to celebrate team GB's medal count?
Perhaps eventually, tattered and torn it will blow away in an unseasonable gale and re-appear in the food chain as it is mistaken for edible food by animals and birds?
Normal service it seems is hardly being restored.
With financial markets in disarray. Spain poised to join Greece in the bailout bonanza and Germany holding the strings of the Euro purse more tightly, the UK is about to be asked:
Do you want to stay in or stay out?
A bit like the Hokey Cokey.
I remember dancing this dance at family parties around the time of the Coronation.
It's what passed for entertainment in austere times.
Young children were easily confused, and helpful, laughing Aunties would offer encouragement.
Put your left leg in, shake it all about, put your right leg in, in out in out, shake it all about, do the hokey cokey.
Invented in 1857 by two sisters on a visit to America, the song and its accompanying dance would usually end with the whole family in fits of laughter, aunties and children rolling on the floor and the men smoking calmly and remaining aloof and manly, resisting all calls to join in.
In the 1950's austerity was really quite a lot of fun.
Now of course we all sit silently often in different rooms and iball each other or text people in other rooms or play word games with friends in other countries without exchanging any words at all with folk in the same room.
This is of course the condem project.
Bring a little fun into folks lives by reintroducing the austerity gene.
Soon desperate people, unable to recharge their ithings because they are having to choose between heating or eating will start doing the hokey cokey again just to keep warm whilst they munch their takeaways in order to keep up their strength, whilst putting in and taking out legs and arms and eventually heads, before rolling on the floor and laughing uproariously.
Not had this much fun in years they will say, lets thank the condems by voting them back in.
Austerity rules OK.
In the East Lancashire town where my grandparents lived, on a Sunday afternoon the hokey pokey man came down the street.
He wasn't dancing or singing he was the Italian Ice Cream vendor who sold ice cream in waxed paper, a hokey pokey.
Google suggests that this might be a mispronunciation of the Italian ecce un poco, here is a little.
Whatever, that was about as much fun as there was what with rationing, low wages uncertainty insecurity and no NHS.
So let the bedraggled bunting be a reminder of what joy there was in austerity and what we have to look forward to when the cuts really start to bite and a visit to the doctor has to be afforded out of a reducing income. It will soon become heat, eat or treat.
But it is still there, tied to gates and trees.
Strung across roads.
A somewhat dismal, bedraggled reminder of last weeks party.
Maybe it will stay up until the England Team are on the coach heading home from the European Championships?
Maybe it will remain until after the Olympics to celebrate team GB's medal count?
Perhaps eventually, tattered and torn it will blow away in an unseasonable gale and re-appear in the food chain as it is mistaken for edible food by animals and birds?
Normal service it seems is hardly being restored.
With financial markets in disarray. Spain poised to join Greece in the bailout bonanza and Germany holding the strings of the Euro purse more tightly, the UK is about to be asked:
Do you want to stay in or stay out?
A bit like the Hokey Cokey.
I remember dancing this dance at family parties around the time of the Coronation.
It's what passed for entertainment in austere times.
Young children were easily confused, and helpful, laughing Aunties would offer encouragement.
Put your left leg in, shake it all about, put your right leg in, in out in out, shake it all about, do the hokey cokey.
Invented in 1857 by two sisters on a visit to America, the song and its accompanying dance would usually end with the whole family in fits of laughter, aunties and children rolling on the floor and the men smoking calmly and remaining aloof and manly, resisting all calls to join in.
In the 1950's austerity was really quite a lot of fun.
Now of course we all sit silently often in different rooms and iball each other or text people in other rooms or play word games with friends in other countries without exchanging any words at all with folk in the same room.
This is of course the condem project.
Bring a little fun into folks lives by reintroducing the austerity gene.
Soon desperate people, unable to recharge their ithings because they are having to choose between heating or eating will start doing the hokey cokey again just to keep warm whilst they munch their takeaways in order to keep up their strength, whilst putting in and taking out legs and arms and eventually heads, before rolling on the floor and laughing uproariously.
Not had this much fun in years they will say, lets thank the condems by voting them back in.
Austerity rules OK.
In the East Lancashire town where my grandparents lived, on a Sunday afternoon the hokey pokey man came down the street.
He wasn't dancing or singing he was the Italian Ice Cream vendor who sold ice cream in waxed paper, a hokey pokey.
Google suggests that this might be a mispronunciation of the Italian ecce un poco, here is a little.
Whatever, that was about as much fun as there was what with rationing, low wages uncertainty insecurity and no NHS.
So let the bedraggled bunting be a reminder of what joy there was in austerity and what we have to look forward to when the cuts really start to bite and a visit to the doctor has to be afforded out of a reducing income. It will soon become heat, eat or treat.
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