Tally Ho!

Do you sometimes become tired of your own opinions? So tired that you stay silent as everyone else expresses theirs, then - when you can stand it no longer - blurt out your own in an irrational and incoherent outburst which puts an end to any chance of reasonable discussion on the issue for the rest of the evening?

The trouble is, I get tired of other people's opinions too, even if they concur with mine.

Dr Michelle Frantom (aka Dr Grafix, aka Munted Doll - I hope she's not a G.P.) recently stressed the importance of responding to people whose views she already knows and disagrees with, on the basis that preaching to the converted is not a healthy thing to do. To not respond at all would be disrespectful. Nobody likes being ignored, but sometimes it is such hard work.

The tradition of never talking about politics in a pub has gone completely out of the window. People now choose their pubs according to their political affiliations. My pub considers itself to be left-wing, and in many ways it is. This was the pub which ejected Nigel Farage and his film crew a couple of years ago and sent him on his way with a wanking gesture which was made behind his back and caught on camera whilst he was in full flow with yet another rant. It made it onto the national news and was henceforth referred to as the 'Farage Wave'. When people now say that someone flicked them a Farage Wave today, everyone knows what they are talking about.

During the last election, a young person at this pub said he supposed I had voted Labour the previous evening, and you should have seen the look on his face when I told him that I had not. But this is The Bell!

The laziest person I have ever met is a right-winger who goes to our pub. You may find this hard to believe or understand, but I have known him for many years and have come to the conclusion that he is so utterly lazy that he cannot be bothered to think. I know this to be true because I have tested him many times. He pretends to be deaf, but in reality he cannot be bothered to listen. As you talk to him, he is composing the next sentence of his own, so the words which come out of his mouth often bear no relation to the subject under 'discussion'. Many, many times he has asked me a question which I have answered, then he has immediately asked me the same question again within three seconds. He defends himself by claiming that he is deaf, and I respond by saying that I am not so there is no need to ask me twice.

During yet another election campaign some years ago he was door-stepped by the local Conservative candidate. Stopping the man at the beginning of his scripted appeal, he said, "All I want to know is do you support fox-hunting?" When the candidate said that he did, indeed, support hunting with hounds, my mate responded with, "That's all I need to know. You've got my vote."

Our pub played host to the local Hunt Saboteur group in those days, even putting up lurid posters of foxhounds tearing up a fox and a red-coated master on horseback flicking a V-sign to the photographer (these were the days before the Farage Wave).

This man usually finds himself the only right-winger sitting amongst a group of rabid lefties at the bar, and people used to wonder why he put himself through that every night.

The answer is simple. He lives over the road. Like I say, he's lazy.