All and sundry

And so we arrive at the end of yet another week during which little enough has happened worth boring anyone with so I suppose that I will have to fall back on that old favourite - facetious comments about all and sundry.

All and sundry, that's a great phrase, covers a lot of ground.

Andrew has gone off to France for a week, taking his brood with him for a bit of a rest, and why not? I was going to say that he has gone off to sunnier climes, but looking at the weather I'm not so sure. When he told me he would be away for a while I presumed that the weekly Voice in the Wilderness would be sort of left hanging in abeyance, or purgatory, and some folk probably think that is the best place for it. They could be right of course - let's face it, I'm no William Shakespeare.
I presumed that while he was away (Andrew that is, not Willy - he's been away a long time) I would simply continue to write these little vignettes (bit of French for you there, Andrew) and send them as usual to pile up on the doormat. In steps the heroine of the piece at the eleventh hour - well she is either the heroine or the villain of the piece, it all depends on a fellow's perception really. Anyway, up steps good old Boudica, or as she is known to her feathered friends, The Mad Pigeon Lady.

"I have a scanner!" says she. "Don't know how to work it, don't know nuffink about it, but I've got one."
"Excellent!" cries Andrew, "Here's what we will do..."
There followed a complicated series of test runs and texts which I do not understand, me being a simple man, and the upshot of it all is that I continue to write this drivel, send it to Lesley by "snail mail", as Andrew calls it, Boudica then scans it or fries it or something, then somehow manages to send it to France
where it is edited and sent back by electronic means to Andrew's base where it is put onto the web for everyone else to snigger at and threaten to send me Emails about.

Clearly I bring out the best in people.

She is blonde you know and, like all blondes, she pretends to be a bit dumb. Don't be fooled, there is nothing silly about Boudica, she's nobody's fool. They have a saying in Yorkshire, (or somewhere) which goes:

"There's none as thick as them who want to be."

Lesley is currently at war with a neighbour because it seems that the neighbour, an absentee landlady who can't find anyone silly enough to rent the house next to Lesley, has been complaining about good old Lucretia Borgia feeding the pigeons - and blackbirds and bleedin' penguins for all I know.

A big mistake, going to war with Boudica. People learn nothing from history, clearly. She just digs her heels in and gets quite rude, and until you've heard Lesley being rude and offensive you ain't heard nowt! Strong men gulp and quail, the SAS apply for compassionate leave and people of a nervous disposition are advised to double their medication until she calms down again.

I have no idea who the neighbour is but she is one of those who bought the house just to rent out. But whoever she is, she is clearly a fully qualified nitwit for annoying Boudica. Either that or she is a braver man than I am.

Where does that bring me to? Right back to where I started at the beginning of this little meander through the depths of my own insanity, and that is that there is nothing to tell anyone this week, so I probably won't be writing a Voice.

I could of course merely write a catalogue of abuse about the various fools who run things, but that would only annoy them and I don't particularly want to do that. Let sleeping dogs lie, that's my motto.

It's like the story of the ould IRA man who is lying on his death-bed and the priest comes to give him the last rites.

"Do you renounce the Divil and all his works my son?"

The ould IRA man looks up and croaks out, "It's a bit late to go making new enemies now Father."

The Voice In The Wilderness