by
Frank Hatton

Having written this column for over a year now, and having had letters from a number of people, I would ask if I could put forward a suggestion on the reasons why you and I enjoy reading and writing. Everybody reads. It may be newspapers, books, magazines, or even silly little articles such as this. Can I suggest that the world is divided into two distinct types of people? Those who read, and those who write. The readers are looking for entertainment. They love to read the thoughts of other people, and enjoy digesting the words or philosophy of the writer. The writer reads primarily to look for ideas to fuel his/her thoughts for future writings. This is not to say that the writer is not interested in reading, but only that the reason for reading differs from the average reader who reads for pleasure. To develop this thought a little further,.... I love reading fiction, but, while I can get deeply engrossed in a story,( subject to it being written by an author I like), I cannot for the life of me write a fictional story. Nevertheless, I can claim that my writings are of interest to a fair number of people, soooooo, once again I say that the prime reason folk read, is to assimilate or contemplate the thoughts and philosophies of the writer. Now this in itself is a little sad..... the average reader is a very literate intelligent person, and, while he/she may be uninterested in putting their thoughts down, on paper, I feel that many potential writers are inadvertently depriving the rest of us from reading their thoughts. This particular philosophy may of course offend many folk who write for a living, but, at the same time, it must be appreciated that they have a vested interest in keeping the competition to a minimum. So,------ I hear you ask, what generated this particular line of thought???? You, my friends are the reason for this concept. So many of you have written to me with views and ideas on past subjects, and have expressed yourselves in such an articulate manner and style, I have often been a little envious of the way in which many of you have been able to utilise words and phrases to put a point forward. I am not in a position to identify those of you who would be successful in writing for a living, but,----- in my humble opinion, many of you would be better qualified than myself to write material which would be of interest to other folk. Whilst on this subject of this column being of interest to various people, I recently had a post from a TV producer who had read the article on Edd China, who you may recall has developed an armchair Sofamobile. This producer was asking for details on who Edd China was, and how he could be contacted,----- with an idea that the guy could be of interest to the TV show. While it is of course very gratifying to get this sort of interest, it occurs to me that the demise of the British pub would be of far more concern to those of us who are looking to the future of the human race. In fact, the number of letters I had on that subject was disappointingly low. This of course goes to prove how different our priorities are, in terms of what is important and what is trivial in this world of ours.

Whilst on this subject of folk writing to me, I would like to pay tribute to a very brave man....... He wishes to remain anonymous, but, his act of bravery involved hiring a car during his holiday over here, and driving on the 'wrong' side of the street. That in itself requires a high degree of confidence, ( I speak as one who has driven on the streets of New York), but, he also encountered one of the more perilous situations of our fair country, namely, our habit of parking on both sides of a narrow road, which means that a war of nerves is played out by the drivers who approach each other from opposite ends of this restriction. This normally entails one of the drivers giving way, and allowing the approaching traffic to come through, but, sometimes the temptation to both drive towards each other takes place, and the point of confrontation means that you mentally start to 'will' your vehicle to shrink in size so that you can squeeze through the gap. This in itself is very nerve racking, but, when one is driving on the 'wrong' side, it must be terrifying. Sir,... you know who you are,..... I salute you.

My wife and I recently went over to Amsterdam in Holland to visit our son, who now lives in that fair city. To those of you who are now licking their lips and envisaging a discourse on the 'red light' area's, and the drug scene, I say, "Shame on you",.... go and stand in the corner for the rest of the lesson. No dear folks, I simply wanted to enlighten you on a rather unusual situation they have regarding the inheritance of a sort of 'ground area tax'. It seems that in years past, the government decided to limit the amount of space a building occupied by imposing a severe taxation on the area the ground floor took up. Hence, the practise evolved of building upwards, and in order to maximise the floor area of each story, the stairways were constructed very narrow, and also very steep. This in itself makes the job of climbing the stairs very difficult and dangerous, but, as you can imagine, the moving in of large items of furniture is an impossibility by normal methods. So, what they have is a pulley wheel, ( I hope you use this expression in the USA) at the top of each building, and when one wishes to put some furniture into the room, a rope from the pulley wheel is tied to the furniture, and the thing is hoisted by muscle power to the room window, ( which is usually removed completely) and then swung into place. This snippet of information might be of assistance when you next feel that life is a little tough...... imagine having to shift all of your furniture into your home by this method!!!!!

I just love these little bits of news that slip into our TV broadcasts from time to time....... The item today concerned a film shoot which was being carried out near an English country village. It seems that the male star of the film became very angry about something that occurred, and stormed off of the film set, saying that he was going to telephone his agent. He saw a public telephone box just a little way down the country lane, close to where they were filming,........he went inside the box, but, found trouble getting any response from the telephone. He was getting more and more angry, when the men from the film property department asked him to leave the telephone box,....... they then picked the entire thing up and carted it off. This sort of incident does much to restore my faith that even in relatively serious situations, there is often a funny side to life.

There was quite an interesting write-up in my newspaper today on the subject of graffiti, and how the standards of humour have declined with the passing years. Nowadays, the clever slogans and wit of the late seventies have been replaced by the craze for scrawled 'tagging', which is of no interest to anybody. However, some good examples of the type of amusing graffiti of yesteryear were given, and I'll give you a few of the best of these. Underneath a poster on the London Underground (Subway), advertising 'Accounting for women', someone had added, 'There is no accounting for women'. At London University, beside a sign announcing a lecture on schizophrenia, someone had scribbled 'I've half a mind to go'. And in a public toilet, a notice, a few inches from the bottom of a lavatory door warned, 'Beware of limbo dancers !' 'Blow your mind,---- smoke gunpowder' scrawled one wit on the side of a Covent Garden building, while at Paddington Station under a political slogan 'Free Wales', someone had added 'with every four gallons of petrol'. In Cambridge University someone warned that 'Exams kill by degrees'. For those with a literary turn of mind, there were messages such as 'Oedipus- --please ring mother. Urgent', yet another stated 'Will be back soon,--Godot'. Isn't it sad that this type of wit has not been passed on to the modern writers of graffiti.

OK, now just one last smile before we part....... A doctor happened to be close by, when a guy was choking to death on a bone stuck in his throat. After the doctor had successfully removed the bone, the very grateful patient said, "Thank you so much doctor, you saved my life, how much do I owe you?"..................The doctor thought for a moment or two, and said, "Just give me half of what you would have given me five minutes ago."

'Til next time,
Frank Hatton

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