The Obscurer

I can take or leave Easter really, but now it’s come and gone one thing I won’t be sad to see the back of is all those adverts in pubs and shops promoting their various Easter “Eggstravaganzas”. I has gone beyond a not very funny joke.

In fact this year that oh-so-clever pun has been so omnipresent that I have resolved to act. I’m going to track down whoever it was first fashioned that keen wordplay and deal with him or her accordingly. And once I’ve started, why should I stop there? Why not go after the originator of “sax appeal”, and then the person who dreamt up “life’s a beach”. If I’m lucky they will all have been invented by the same person, holed up in a cave somewhere with a wi-fi laptop from where they work out their commission for ITN, thinking up those smart-arsed one-liners that lead into the ad breaks for Channel 4 News; if so, that would certainly make my job easier.

But I don’t hate all puns, clearly; what makes the difference between the good and the bad? For instance, each October Alton Towers hosts its Halloween “spooktacular”. Now that is surely no better a pun than “eggstravaganza” in essence, but somehow I quite like it. Is it because it is not so established, less commonplace, so it still seems to hold some originality and charm that it would lose if it became more ubiquitous? While I’m at it I actually appreciate most of those Channel 4 News headlines. And looking at the title of this post, and the titles of about 40% of my posts, if my task is to rid the world of bad puns perhaps I could make my job even easier and start a little closer to home?

So perhaps it isn’t the puns themselves I dislike but the way they spread virally? Maybe I react negatively not so much to the actual puns as to the unthinking manner so many people take them up? Should I instead go after all the slack brained copyists who thoughtlessly and lazily regurgitate those same tired old puns that have lost their sheen? But their very popularity means that I really would be making work for myself, and that ultimately would involve me having to tackle poor old PTA members and charity shop workers who scrawl “eggstravaganza” onto cardboard posters with marker pens and whose only real crime is a lack of imagination.

Overall then, is it the originator of the pun I should fault, who releases their idea into the public domain but who has no eggsclusive control over its subsequent use or eggsecution? Or do I tackle those who take on the pun and eggstend the idea beyond breaking point, transforming a quirky play-on-words into a eggsecrable cliché far away from whatever the inventor may have intended? Or am I perhaps looking into this far too eggsistentially?

There seemed to be an interesting item on BBC1’s Breakfast programme this morning, concerning children’s communication skills. Are today’s pre-schoolers lagging behind previous generations in their ability to speak? Have standards in language and vocabulary dropped in recent years?

I say it seemed an interesting article because I could barely make out a single word emanating from the television; my 3½-year-old son was yabbering noisily and unceasingly throughout the whole piece. Is it the done thing to tell your child to “just shut up for one minute, please” during a telly programme lamenting the decline in the nation’s language skills? It’s a judgment call, but I decided against it.

As a result I was unable to take in a thing; I have no yardstick against which to gauge my son’s development, I cannot tell if there is a problem or cause for concern, and I am unable to take any further measures to correct my son’s communications gap if it exists. Because he never stops talking.

Today’s top tip comes from a bag of Jelly Babies.

Next Week: some Dolly Mixtures caution against common household dust-mites.

And another thing (oh I’m really on a roll now). Hot on the heels of my post concerning the removal of Cheadle’s Christmas lights, here comes news of another recent disappearance. The bench at the top of my road, outside the old police station, has vanished like an old oak table. All that remain are two twisted and rusted stumps of metal jutting out of the tarmac, the remnants of two of the bench legs. That old bench had sat there for as long as I can remember, but now it is no more.

It’s not difficult to realise what has gone on. Just around the corner is an off-licence, and that junction is a popular congregating spot for the local youths. It doesn’t take much to imagine hoodied louts, high off their heads on ThirstyMan Cider, kicking the bench until it can take it no more. Bloody typical.

Ironic though; the only people I can remember using that bench are the local teens of an evening. Flush from getting the tallest lad or an adult passer-by to purchase their fags and booze at the offy, they would often lounge around on the bench and put it to good use. Without the kids it would have been merely an obstruction on the pavement. In bringing about its destruction, the youths have cut off their various noses to spite their collective face.

Which makes me wonder if there may be more too it. Why would the kids smash up what is effectively their own bench? And if they didn’t do it, then who would gain from the its removal? My mind wanders to the Conservative Club opposite, and the old people’s flats that ring the area immediately surrounding where the bench once stood. Could these residents have taken the law into their own hands, sick of seeing teenage thugs thronging the bench and making the place look untidy?

It is surely the more likely scenario, and provides an entirely different image; of cravat-wearing gents and blue-rinsed dames, who, spotting the bench deserted and with no-one looking, bash the fuck out of it while on their way home from the Con Club one evening, belting it until it finally gives and lies twisted on the ground. Unwitnessed and their job done they depart for home; and turning the key in the lock they relax, happy that tomorrow the kids will have had to move on somewhere else.

Isn’t there another bench outside Londis?