Hey, guess what. I’ve had a brilliant idea. Well, I had it about ten years ago, actually, and it’s SO bloody brilliant that I’m not going to even tell you what it is.

What it is, is that I’m going to….

Oi! I told you that I’m not going to tell you!

Clicky the pictures to play.

That’s a picture that sums up a mood.

Here’s another…

I was quite pleased with the way that that one came out.

There’s a lot more to a drunken life than just walking into lampposts and getting stabbed off of scummers. You notice things. Well, if you’re me you do. There is beauty in the most mundane and all you have to do is look.

My brilliant idea combines my artistry, my sense of the past, my hope for the future and my sense of loss. My notion of the dreadful waste of mankind. Futility. That there is nothing learned from history even when it bangs you in the face with a red hot frying pan.

Nope. I’m still not going to tell you what it is but I WILL tell you this; I’ve got my first gig.

How it will turn out; who can say? I hope that I will make a good work out of it all even though I don’t want any money for what I’m going to do. I spoke to my keyworker and I told her that I needed a project, something to keep me going. She couldn’t help but very shortly after the words were out of my mouth my brain had invented the project.

Tell you what. Sometimes I love being me.

Here’s my new tattoo.

Do you know what the most important words are in the English language? I’ll tell you:

“Psst, Hoi, Scuse me mate…”

That’s all you need to know.

I don’t know which, or how many, people went to the meet-up at the weekend. The reason I didn’t go is because I didn’t have a hundred quids to spare and I didn’t want to travel by train and get stabbed off drunken scumbags on a Saturday night on a train featuring non-working toilets at a rate of about a quid for a quarter of a mile.

So I went to the Byfleet Horticultural Show instead. Free to get in. A trip back in time.

I took some photographs but I made a bit of a mistake. Here’s a picture I took using flash.

The rest of the pictures I took I disabled the flash and brought a lot more light into my snaps. Trouble was, the exposure time went up and so, because I wasn’t using a tripod, the camera shake made the pictures just a little too blurry.

We had a go on the tombola and Trouty won a super rake thing with all prongs on and that. The show was great. There were loads of categories or classes, whatever, and people had submitted all sorts. Best potatoes (white), best potatoes (coloured), four salad vegetables (different varietals), beetroots, turnips, cabbages, onions (autumn sown), animals made out of fruit and cocktails sticks by seven year olds, nice kiddy paintings, best rhubarb - it went on and on.

The book of rules went on about how things had to be dressed and there obviously must be a proprietory onion polish to use on your displays (entrance fee 20p per category).

There were cakes and model gardens and flower arrangements to various themes.

Tell you what, it was bloody MARVELOUS.

There was a dog show on down at the Rectory Fields and I wanted to see the ‘dog with the waggiest tail’ so we started to walk down to the fields even though it was getting a bit late in the day. BUT. On the way we saw the poster up for the Byfleet Art Exhibition.

In we went to the Church Hall and had a good look round. The quality was amazing. The next year starts in September so I thought I might sign up but it costs fifty of Her Madje’s Quids so maybe I won’t.

Plus, the exhibitors had knocked out stuff that make my efforts look rather feeble in terms of realism. But I’m rubbish at watercolours and I do different stuff anyway. If I walked all the way there in the pouring rain in September with a collection of my gear I should imagine that there may be a few eyebrows politely raised.

Anyway. I had a lovely village type weekend of the type that I thought had died out decades ago.

I’m sorry that I didn’t make the meet-up but finances dictate.

Cheers, my friends,

H.

Lucky me, I made a find in Messrs. Tesco.

I bought the first series of ‘Life on Mars’ on DVDVDVD and enjoyed it plenty. I wanted to watch the second series but it cost 34 quids so I wouldn’t buy it. I figured that the price would come down eventually but all that happened was that they stopped selling it. Oh poo.

Then I started waiting for the episode of ‘Lewis’ that was filmed at Bowers Lock and the pre-filming location blah-blah featured a drunken argument between myself and some people who didn’t know what they were doing while they bunged the lock up and pretended that they owned the canal when everyone knows full well that I do.

But anyway.

I saw the second series of ‘Life on Mars’ in’t shop the other day and I whacked out 18 of Her Madjes Royal Quids on it.

What a treat.

In the second half of the second series, the writing, which had been a tad sloppy beforehand, got wound up to an incredible pitch.

The violence was brilliant, the script very funny, the acting so cool. Unfortunately I glimpsed a spoiler somewhere so I thought I knew how the thing was going to end. Or did I?

The last four hours were brilliant with a capital Buh.

You’ll get no spoilers from me, but if you never saw how it all worked out I must urge you to see for yourself.

Now I have no telly and would not give one houseroom. What I say here must seem like ancient history to avid telly watchers but I’m just trying to pass on the feeling of delight that I had while watching this most excellent series.

I implore you to watch this. The last two DVDVDs in the pack should be in the Tesco’s Finest range.

Bliss on a stick.

And the ending? Ohhhhhhhh.

As a youngster I used to go to jumble sales. So did my brother. We would come home from the village hall with dead man hats (which my Ma did a swift edit on and chucked in the bin) and all stuff like that.

Being nine years old I liked to patrol the common dressed in a red patent leather belt on top of my trahsis. This belt had two prongs on the buckle. I had a shirt with matching ‘kerchief that was fixed with a gilt-effect ring thing.

I had a water bottle thing that was a souvenir of a Spanish holiday I suppose. Swigbag of Spanish leather (see what I did there?). This was from a jumble but I needed it in case my nine-year-old throat needed a swig of refreshing orange squash as I patrolled my land.

As a trainee smoker I had procured a metal-stemmed Falcon pipe that was from a dead man’s collection. Now all I needed was something to put in it.

Luckily my hippy uncle came to stay and he was smoking roll-ups. Old Holborn.
The dog-ends got snaffled and my pipe bowl was filled.

Over the common there were two hollow trees and I like to think that I portrayed a solitary and contemplative figure as I sat, up a tree, puffing like some kind of pre-pubescent Jack Hargreaves in the branches and letting out thoughtful smoke-rings as I communed with nature.

Getting down from the tree I felt the need to return home. There was a basin in my room.

On arrival at Lane End I was white and sweaty. On arrival in my bedroom I was a shade of pistachio. On arrival on my bed I went rather avocado. On arrival at the wash hand basin I let rip a gout of orange puke.

Nine year olds should not smoke pipes full of dog-ends and this woman shouldn’t drive a car…

I’m in a bad mood today which, albeit against my better judgement, is something I feel powerless to resist.

Maah.

It is a well known fact that I have been corresponding with England’s greatest living poet, Martin Newell.

What a surprise at Thirst Hall when a postal packet arrived. Was it some more stuff that La Truit had ordered off of Messrs. EBay?

No. It wasn’t. What it was was a super CDification of pomes from the Bard of Essex him very self.

Now consider this: I have never met Martin Newell. He don’t know me and I don’t know him. But what a geezer. He even refused one of my paintings. But he sent me some of his works and I am grateful.

Martin, to you I raise my glass and you may consider my trilby fully doffed in your direction.

You are a truly great bloke.

Mr Newell’s works are available from all good bookshops. And some shite ones as well.

This is bliss in a tin…

I’m always banging on about Badfinger. The reason behind that is that they were the best musicians that this crappy country has ever turned out, that they were better than the Beatles, that Pete Ham could have had an arse-chewing contest with Clapton and would probably have won, that Tom Evans was a songwriter almost beyond compare and then…

Fill in the space for yourself.

Vodka Mick has done some research for me and this is what he reports back. I know off the top of my head that Pete Ham hanged himself on the 23rd April, 1975. I know it was in his studio. I know it was in Weybridge.

Mick found his death certificate.

Shall we have a look at his house? Shall we see where the greatest songwriter of his generation hanged himself in poverty. Let’s have a look at where the best bloke who was never in the Beatles couldn’t cope any more and his so-called fucking mates wouldn’t even give him a fiver.

Come on Clapton and Steptoe look-a-like Macca. You bastards left him out to dry. And THEN, after Pete was dead you left Tom to die, in Weybridge, by hanging.

It’s possible to visit the shrine of Pete Ham’s death.

It’s called Waitrose.

Out today I wandered down the path…

I saw an old friend. My bloody boat. Look at the state of it. It’s no wonder that I don’t go out because the stuff I have to put up with whenever I do.

My boat has been turned into a gin palace and I don’t like it. The Charley is a working boat and she should run and be free like a dog. She should be smashed and dirty; she should be scuffed and the best/worst boat in the lock. It’s not too much too say that I felt physically sick when I saw how tortured she was.

Vodka Mick was out and about. I took a rather lovely snap of him…

Bumped into the nightmare that is John the Bosh. Do you know, when he was well cancered up he went down to 4.5 stone. I think that I probably weighed that when I was born. They didn’t have to X-Ray him, said Mick, they just hung him up over the window.

The company of alcoholics is something to be nurtured; I should know.

As their brains are destroyed the sparks fly upwards. The crackle of our lives. The splendour. The ache and the pain and the fire.

At home I took another photograph and it wasn’t a very good one.

What I was doing was hunting about for a canvas and I found a painting that I had forgotten that I had painted.

As paintings go, it is a bit weird. The colours that I used to compose it were very odd but, as with all my paintings, if you squint very hard you can see the face.

To me, this painting is called ‘The Explorer’. His brow is blue and his beard is green and his scarf is silk.

If you want to buy it then you should have 550 quids in your pocket.

I am an artist (shut up at the back) and I can charge what I like.

See, the difference between me and pop artists with their 45s is that where I can steal their so-called musak off the interweb, they can’t steal my pictures. They can have copies, that’s for sure, but they cant have the real thing that is stuck on my wall with Blu-Tak.

I am an artist and I dwell in an artistic world.

Hey, tell you what. I have quite ordered opinions although they might seem to be bang mental.

Like Spike, one of the things that I really cannot bear is noise. Sound I do like but noise is something else. My mental appreciation of sight is failing a bit but my sense of smell is terrific. My hearing is not too bad neither. What you have to do is get some drops of Cerumol from the chemist. After a few days you get in the bath with an old Sqezy bottle and blast your earholes. Out comes stuff you don’t really want to see but at least it’s no longer in your head.

With my Judge Mental hat on I’ve been roaming the plains of BoobToob for you. Recently I watched Manfred von Richthofen and his demise after 80 plus kills. He got shot up the arse by an Australian machine-gunner and that brought his evil red triplane down. There is a lot of flying circus stuff on BoobToob so I spent an evening watching dog-fights.

Man and machine in harmony.

Here’s a bloke who’s not in harmony with anything. Look mate, the only way you’ll ever get that in there is with a long-tine forklift truck.

Twat.

Oh, the gardener. He was using a leaf blower. A leaf blower indeed.

From my small bathroom window I shouted…

“Go and buy a rake, you moron".

As I was eating my tea I thought to myself, ‘Hmmmm’.

And then I thought that as I am so bloody fantastic at cooking I really should vid some of my enterprises so that common people could enjoy what I do too.

Tell you what, I am so great that I never follow recipes and I never weigh anything. I cook like I drive; through the seat of my pants and I don’t really care.

How have I got to this pole position? Tell you how. By watching and using all my senses in everything I do.

If you want to be a great cook like what I am you have to start cooking. Look in the fridge and what you have on the shelf - then cook it. Combine things. Listen to music. Use vegetables. Let the food tell you what to do.

Today I invented a kind of soul food rice with mussels. Man, it was beautiful and I’m going to be cooking it again. I’m thinking that maybe I should be making films for BoobToob seeing as how I have FilmMaker software and all that.

In the meantime…

Here is the King of Soul; take it away, Arthur

(scribbles in recipe book)

Yeah, G’Night.

At school we used to have, every now and then, what was called a ‘Disc Break’.

Smelly fourth-formers with greasy hair packed into a classroom and straining to hear the sounds from the school gramophone player.

One particular track struck me and I went out and bought the album.

‘Hocus Pocus’ by Focus.

Jan Akerman on guitar and Thijs van Leer on mental behaviour.

When I hitched round France I met up with a Dutch bloke and asked him how the name ‘Thijs’ was pronounced…

He told me it was ‘Taish’.

I can never remember whether I have written this stuff before or not. Nah, I don’t think I have.

Does anyone, apart from me, remember the battle of Bedlam Fields in the year of our Lord, 197something?

It happened like this. The word got out that Tim Leach, our teach, had been on the piss the night before and had a hangover. Nasty bastards that we were we shouted out the names of all the pubs we went past on our coach trip to the Imperial War Museum.

Six bells.

Fox and Hounds.

Every one we shouted out for no reason other than group evil mentality.

At the War Museum (how appropriate) we mucked about and then went to eat our packed lunches.

Now Dave Jones, the last bloke in world you would expect this of, was sitting there when a scummer from Scumbridge Comp approached from the rear. We were grammar school boys and nicely brought up. But Dave Jones was in the Rugby team.

Surbiton Grammar Rugby XV was the hardest in the world. We destroyed anyone that got in our way. Brilliant striped shirts and hard as hell. My hippy uncle remembered playing us (he played for Purley Pooftahs) and he got the ball and a kick right in between his fingers that split his whole hand open. I remember Dave Jones stiffening and looking us all in the eye. It was time to go.

This was the battle of Bedlam Fields. We all knew it and we were on the case. Poofy grammar school boys, were we?

There was a dusting off of hands, a weary look, lunches packed away and then we went for them like a gang of mental dogs.

I got a lot of gob on my blazer; that’s how hard THEY were. The scummers soon found out how hard WE were. They got dismantled and hoofed when they tried to run away.

This was the joy of a grammar school education; they started it and we finished it and nothing needed to be said. Black blazers with a golden griffin.

The museum was alright. Someone let off a stinkbomb and all the way home we shouted out pub names.

On holiday in Royan I bumped into Melon. ‘Hello, Melon’ said I, ‘Funny seeing you here’. ‘That’s nothing’ said he, ‘Johnny Whitlock’s in a tent over there with a bird’.

Johnny Whitlock was our P.E. teacher.

We went to annoy him. ‘Hello Sir’ we said.

Now if anything’s going to cock your holiday up it’s two kids who know you and will taunt you. Which we did.

Imagine meeting Melon (fave song,’ Call me round’) and then finding your P.E. teacher trying to have it off in a tent.

Tell you what, schooldays can’t get better than all that stuff.

Now you aren’t going to like this but believe me… IT’S TRUE!

What happened was that I was talking to Trouty on the telephone and she told me about a bird she had seen in her back garden in Scumdon. Now her slum is about a hundred miles from Thirst Hall (although I’m making arrangements to have it towed further away). All the same, once she had stopped shouting I pretended to listen to what she was shouting about. Now listen to this for spooky…

She saw, in her own back scumden, a weird looking bird. It was all black and had an orange beak stuck on the front of its stupid face. This is the really freaky bit. I bet you can’t imagine what I’m going to tell you.

I was walking down Oyster Lane this evening AND I SAW THE VERY SAME BIRD.

This time, instead of sitting in Trouty’s garden, he was standing on a hedge and laughing about it.

I think he must have been what’s called a Mockingbird because he’d been making a nuisance of himself in her slum garden and then he’d flown all the way to Oyster Lane to annoy me, still with the same stupid beak on his face.

Looking around, I found an old lager can and threw it at his head.

Well, he won’t be doing that any more, I can tell you.

Mockingbirds watch out. You aren’t welcome in the KT postal district.

This is just a quick pointer in this direction…

The photograph is truly beautiful and Cooper-Clarke lets us linger there, in the filthy street, as his lyrics hammer home.

He knows and he tells. There has never been, nor will there be, remorse from John - he just piles it on.

We know what Beasley Street is like because we’ve been there; we know the stink. In his poem we are forced to look deep into our own lavatorial bowl. We are there. We are there in the poverty and the dogshit and the rubbish of discarded lives.

Will he give us release? Will he relent under the lowering torment and weight of the halftone sky? Can there be anything else? A future?

Can there fuck.

He will never let you go because life never let him go. Wherever he went, the wet streets were always behind him.

Goodnight children,

EVERYWHERE.

So there’s a poet I like and what are you going to do about it?

Calling me WHAT?

Anyway, here’s a mail that I sent:

Hello Martin.

You don’t know me and I don’t know you but I thought I might drop you a line.

A long time ago I lived in Brighton and I had a friend called Ralph who sort of knew a few people in your line of business. He loaned me a copy of, Under Milk Float was it?

‘Liked a song by Kiki Dee’. You know how to write a line, don’t you? I cried over that one.

I read your poetry in that dreadful rag because every now and then my friend buys it. And every time I am impressed. And every time you fill me. And every time you never let me down.

Do you know, having read your book all those years ago I phoned the pub you mentioned and asked if you were there but you weren’t. I expect, like J C-C says, you were out mowing a fucking lawn. I wanted to send you some money for a drink and to say thanks for the book but you weren’t there and I never phoned again.

You are gifted. I try to keep a watch on the works of the people that I admire and you are one of them. Sorry to have butted into your life like this but I believe that credit should be applied where it is due. So I’m telling you.

I’ve got a blog at http://henrythethirst.com/ and I like to contribute to the limericks and the chat at http://simong.org/

One day I would like to buy you a drink but you will have to get the next round in.

All the best!

Henry.

And then, guess what, I got a reply. I got a reply from England’s greatest living poet. He wrote to ME, not to you. In fact he hates you but he likes me.

Hallo Henry
Thank you very much for this, on a blazing hot day when I’ve been visiting poet in a Clacton school, telling kids about poetry.
You might be interested to know that there is now a Selected Poetry out…20 years of my best /worst work, with Funeral of A Young Man in it too. Foreword by Prof Germaine Greer no less. It’s from Jardine Press, who can generally be reached at www.jardinepress.co.uk.
I write poems the Sunday Express now because they’re generally rather nice to me and the Ed…. who’s not as rabid as the sister paper’s editor is a big poetry and pop fan as well as being a good journalist. I was with the Indie for 13 years and with the Sindie for two or three, but the Sindie were a bit shabby with me and the Sunday Express made me an offer. I’m the most workingest poet there is, newspaper-wise, so I feel quite lucky really.

Oh and I was out cutting a fucking hedge actually.

thanks for writing. I must get down to Brighton again soon.

yours

Martin

What on earth are you going on about you don’t know who it is. You moron.

Martin bloody Newell, that’s who.

Tell you even more what, here’s John Cooper Clarke. Take it away John…

Trouty is not very pleased with me, and that’s a shame.

On one hand I can see that she has to put up with quite a lot but on the other hand I can see that she doesn’t. Tell you why; it’s because I am quite a nice bloke.

Like all people plagued with depression I spend an awful lot of time thinking about myself and feeling ill and wondering when I’m going to die. Introversion is a terrible thing.

But listen to this.

Nothing jerks me back to reality like a disaster. When something goes really badly wrong it frees me from myself and I go into a programmed mode.

The sorting things out secret of being an efficient policeman lies, bubbling yet dormant, just beneath my brainal skin. When it all goes tits-up, I AM your man. All I need is a disaster and then I am there. Pranged your boat in a lock? - I’m there and everything will be fine.

Left to myself, I’m horrible. Self-obsessed and self-dwelling. Being ill and knowing too much about exactly how I steer my ship towards DEATH is all consuming and then…

HEEEARGH BANG!

All I was doing was walking to the garage to buy some nourishing apple-based survival fluid to keep myself going and there was a wizard prang.

Click, click, click and the brain clicked in and I was there. You have to bear in mind the mnemonics because they tell you exactly what to do. ‘KILL THAT COW’ is what you have to bear in mind at a road traffic accident. That’s CASUALTY-OBSTRUCTION-WITNESS.

I saw it happen but I was rubbish as a witness. I knew exactly whose fault it was but I didn’t say anything because it wasn’t important. Up I strode in my scruffy clothes and it was what came out of my head that was important. Take command; you know what you are doing and people need to be told what to do. Like training a dog, you have to assume authority. Click and click and click and I’ve been doing this for years.

There were no direct casualties so I didn’t need to use my excellent first-aid skills. However, in the passenger seat of the Fiat was a little old man who I quickly found out was half-blind and half-deaf and suffering dementia. He immediately became my first concern. The voice I heard coming out of my head was the voice that used to be employed on the Sarf Lahndon streets all those years ago.

So, what I’ve got is a gorgeous bird in a 4x4 that is a bit bashed but still driveable so I ignore her. I always carry a pen and paper so I start taking details so that information can be exchanged in compliance with the Road Traffic Act. I’ve got an elderly lady driver who is saying that she’s never had an accident in 50 years and is worried because there is a wedding to go to at the weekend. When people are stressed their brains start to pop and they focus on weird little things. My voice and manner stayed calm and clear.

She wasn’t with a recovery service but she said that her son was a taxicab man and he’d be able to help. I got the number out of her and tapped it into my mobile and then handed it over to her. Checking on the little old man I found that he was crying. It’s very easy to neglect people when they don’t seem to count for anything any more. He was all hunched up with his walkingstick and I sat near him and put my hand on his shoulder so that he knew I was talking to him. He told me that he used to be on the lorries and he knew there had been a smash and he just wanted, needed, to know what the score was. So I told him. Your car is smashed up and isn’t going to go anywhere except on the back of a trailer. At least he’d been told.

Then I went all round the factory estate and tried to get a towaway sorted - to no avail. Back at the wreckage the taxicab boy had turned up so them two were alright. Gorgeous girl was next on my list but she was sorted although she was rather pissed off. Someone had told her on her mobile that is was her fault. Which was quite right; it was. I said nothing because there is no point in blame in any of these things and that’s what insurance companies are for.

So I sorted all that out, made sure all details were swapped, and wandered off.

Later on we went to the pub with Vodka Mick and then we went home and I started watching Jonathan Meades doing architecture on BoobToob. Trouty got the hump and went to bed and then, this morning, she was in a mood with me. She’s gone back to Lahndahn now.

Hope you enjoyed this peer into my life.

Oh dear.

Oh very Oh dear.

Now, I always want my doughnuts to look like Fanny’s. And taste like them.

Hello.

Judge Mental here again and boy have I a feast for you tonight.

You know Gene Krupa playing Drum Boogie don’t you?

Listen to me, listen to me. Before I start to beckon you into my twisted world of comedy…

Oh no, not now missus please.

Hey, I’ll tell you something and that’s a fact. Well, I will and if you don’t stop me then I won’t. So I will and you’ll be sorry when you find out.

Actually I just make this stuff up.

Well, you will. I told you.

Ah well. You need to have a mind, you see. Without a mind you will never get there. Some people have it and some people don’t and that’s it.

You see I am, ahem, a very funny person. My brother thinks that blah blah me of him etc.

The way I do it is to rely upon my soaked brain. Did you see what I did there? I used the word ’soaked’ completely out of context but everyone knows what I mean.

To make a joke you have to twist things; that’s obvious enough. The way my brain has been set up makes this very easy for me - like being good at swimming or mathematics.

I mistitled this.

There is no way you can learn to make, as opposed to tell, a joke. In my whole life I have done it, with every step I’ve done it. With every woman I’ve done it (see what I did there?) and I will continue to do so. For me, everything is 75/25% odd.

If you want to be funny then give up; you already lost. What you should do is support your friends who live just outside and be grateful for minds that cook rather than serve up cold.

In the pub of ultimate swearification I heard this interchange. A man was doing the crossword. Another man (name of CUTS) leaned over and said…

“Seven up - that’s lemonade”

See, I can’t teach you - you either have it or you haven’t.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

I rarely get up before 1 of the clock. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been awake. Oh no.

What I do, between bouts of heaving nausea, hypo fits and micturition is listen to the radio and read old copies of Viz and I THINK.

This morning I was looking at my hands. My hands which were once so beautiful but are now so old and ugly; twisted with arthritis and liver-spotted. They are scarred from jobs that I have had and from washing up a broken glass and from burns involving ovens and badly made spliffs.

I am left-handed but not cripplingly so; after half a century of it I’m almost ambidextrous.

Therefore I have an affinity with SINISTER people and always mention it when I see one and make a mental note when I identify the obvious signs in manuscript.

Jimi Hendrix, Paul Macca - left-handed men who played guitars specially made for left-handed people. As for myself, well, I tried to play the guitar right-handed but that didn’t work. Then I went and BOUGHT a left-handed Yamaha acoustic but all that taught me was that I was rubbish on guitar and there didn’t seem to be a handy crossroads upon which I could meet the Devil at midnight.

Here’s the question:

DO THEY MAKE LEFT-HANDED PIANOS?

I bet they don’t.

But why not?

Now then.
Here’s my new and latest brilliant idea and I phoned up the radio but it seems they don’t want my great idea on the wireless.

O.K.
Bear with me on this one.
Everyone would have to stick together and I would probably get made mayor or king or P.M. or something.

Right.
What everyone has to do, on a certain day, is this:

What?
What’s that you say officer? No registration plates?
Well they must have been stolen so thank goodness that you are here. Can you record the details of the theft and give me a reference number?

What’s that you say? EVERYONE has had their number plates stolen today? Goodness me, the boys in blue must be hard pressed to try and stick everyone on. Especially as I can’t be shown to have removed the plates myself.

Come, come, officer. Just because you couldn’t prove that I was in the congestion zone or speeding or anything and neither could anyone else doesn’t mean that any of us were doing anything wrong.

WE HAVE ALL HAD OUR NUMBER PLATES STOLEN

So get your pen out and give me a reference number. Shall I abandon my vehicle here seeing as it has no registration plates? As you can see, my tax disc is current - what a shame your cameras can’t read it.

It’s time to take the government on. It’s time.
Time to stick together and then we won’t get hurt any more than we have been already.

Let me know what you think.