The Friday question: if YOU were suddenly given one or two hours completely to yourself, what would you really do?

The two current ads for Co-operative Supermarkets are among my least favourites at the moment, and I think I know why this is. You can tell they’re supposed to be based on a universal truth, i.e. most people would rather use the time spent shopping to do pleasurable things, e.g. holding hands on a beach in the rain, eating lots of ice cream, staying in bed and ‘well, you know’. But this is only half right. It’s true that we’d all love a spare hour to do what we like in, but it’s an advertising fantasy that anyone over the age of 21 would use this to have a shag or eat ice cream. For a start I imagine that a lot of people would really like a quiet hour on their own, and even more would really like the opportunity to catch up with practical stuff – ah, lovely, a chance to pay the bills and clear that pile of crap off the sideboard.
 
Am I alone in this? I’d like to ask, if YOU were suddenly given one or two hours completely to yourself, or to you and your partner, what would you do? Really? My personal top five is below.
1 Look at electrical equipment on internet.
 
2 Make a new playlist on itunes.
 
3 Watch last episode of South Riding you recorded but have never had chance to watch.
 
4 Eat the nice chocolate (or something else) that you got as a present for your birthday without having to share it with kids who’ll wolf it down without tasting it.
 
5 Sew the button back on your favourite top that you haven’t worn for 2 months because you never even have time to sew a button on.

Chattering Class

The Royal Wedding invites

“People’s Britain” branding masterclass: soldiers for realness, Beckhams for glamour

The BBC’s South Riding

Is there anything they won’t try to turn into Pride and Prejudice?

The appeal of Justin Bieber

Significantly harder to understand than quantum physics

Ticket prices

“Fun” fact: seat in Royal Opera House box = £13.50 less than cheapest Champions League final ticket

Moving the clocks forward

Soon to be revealed as Tory scheme to privatise daylight

The Ents

We like to think it was they who saved the forests. Possibly helped by Orcs

Tony Blair’s old pals

Berlusconi, Mubarak, Bush, Gadaffi. Thank God he’s not a peace envoy or something!

Sports commentators overdoing superlatives

One of the most annoying things to happen in the history of this week

Let’s Dance

Modern lists of distinctive British characteristics really should include “crap transvestism”.

Tweets about something “still trending”

Stupid. And we mean YOU, Bieberalert. Oops.

Don’t hate me just because I drive a John Deere and ruin your holiday: a lonely plea for understanding from tractor boy

 flickr: Pete StewartIf you drive a car in Britain, the chances are that I am one of the people you hate. In fact, if you drive a car in Britain and are a young male, the chances are that I am one of the people you have verbally abused or tried to physically attack. I am, you see, a tractor driver. A farmer who drives a tractor anyway. And while I’ve been driving tractors on the roads in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire since the early 1980s, I have to say that in the last ten years, the reaction I get from car drivers has got much more hostile.

And I mean hostile. Last autumn, I had my way blocked by a group of four lads in an Astra who had been angry at what they took to be me not letting them pass. One of them got out as if he intended to get into the cab and sort me out; I wasn’t that bothered (the verge was wide, and I just drove around them, rather pleasing as the little chumps hadn’t spotted that option) but it shook me a bit. A few years back, a woman from near where I live was dragged from a cab and assaulted.

That sort of thing is rare obviously, but what’s become more common is the hooting, flashing lights and reckless overtaking out of impatience (always worst on Saturdays, and worse in cloudy weather). There’s also the plain weirdness. You’d be amazed by the number of drivers who, pull up behind you when you stop to let them pass, as if hypnotised by your trailer. And then there are those (often families – perhaps the kids like the tractor) who follow you for miles despite long, straight empty roads in front and then me waving them on.

From the motorist’s point of view, it could be that things have got worse – there are probably more tractors about on the road these days, after all. Small farms being swallowed up into larger ones, means more tractor journeys by road to reach fields, and more and more work is outsourced to contractors, who have to move machinery from farm to farm. And the drivers are not blameless themselves; you can hear them in pubs boasting about who had the longest “convoy” that day. But most of us are just trying to do our job and not cause any more hassle than we need to, honest. I know it’s no consolation, but it’s not much fun chugging along at 20mph on a hot day for me, either. 

Lost & found #3: Rose’s Lime Marmalade

flickr: Roy T By rights, Rose’s Lime Marmalade should have had a huge boost in popularity in recent years. The jam market is booming, and people have become more adventurous when it comes to trying new and unusual flavours; the sort of old-fashioned styling that informs its jars and labels has become trendy, thanks in part to the revivalist efforts of Cath Kidston; and lime as a flavouring has not had such a high profile since the 19th century. As for its middle-class credentials, they could hardly be stronger; pale and interesting, with a distinctively English-sounding name and a jar that seems made to be refilled with home-made strawberry and sold on at a church fete.
 
And yet, the light-green lovely still remains where it’s been for the last few decades, i.e. a faintly eccentric choice, a just-for-a-change buy with Marmite-sque love-it-or-hate-it qualities that have (thankfully) yet to be exploited. A part of me, a long-term lover, feels sorry for its apparent neglect by the Chivers-Hartley empire that now owns it. However, a far more substantial part is glad of this oversight; Rose’s would be ruined if it had a “push”, and I suspect that’s actually why they really leave it alone. I like to imagine its core customers are that cantankerous lot who like to imagine they’re basically the last person on earth keeping faith with the old beauty. I know I do.
 
For me, Rose’s Lime is one of the most nostalgic choices I can make in a supermarket. Every time I buy it a small part of my brain thinks: “ah – I’m so glad you can still get this. Its days must be numbered, but while it remains, I have a link between this horrible modern shop, my childhood, and the recent, decent British past." I think this may be because I liked it as a child. Liz Marcy points out here that Rose's Lime serves as an unofficial trainer marmalade for middle-class children not yet ready for the serious orange stuff (Golden Shred offers an intermediate level) and this was certainly true for me. I liked not only the marmalade itself, but also the jar; I still love the shape and weight of it, not least because when I was a boy it used to remind me of the shape of a British World War 2 hand grenade. I know that might seem weird, but that’s boys for you.

 But the other thing is the strong sense of the past you get from the taste and the brand; it’s like eating something from a living museum or a stage set. Its heritage is genuine, which is nice, and even better than that it’s bound up with seafaring, which is very British. It began with shipping-line-owner Mr Lauchlan Rose manufacturing Rose’s lime cordial for the crews on his ships (a legal requirement, to ward off scurvy; it’s the origin of the slang term “limey” meaning a Brit). Mr Rose needed to find a use for the left-over bits, and in 1930 (one could imagine it having been earlier; 1500, for example) discovered they could make a very fine marmalade. And the rest, as they say, is history. Neglected history, perhaps, but then that may be the whole point; I’m not sure we in the unofficial fan club would have it any other way. 

Affluenza overload: an undercover teacher reveals five distinctive problems facing middle-class children

Flickr: Fraser Reid

I have been a teacher for a good many years and I have worked in schools in many different areas including inner city schools with high levels of social deprivation, schools in rural areas with a very mixed cohort of pupils, and my current school in an affluent suburb of a northern city. During all these years I have come across children with many different problems and concerns. Some problems, such as family break ups, arguments with siblings or the death of a beloved guinea pig span across all social classes. Others that I have recently come across, however, are rather more distinctly middle class, and I’m sure that these are becoming more plentiful. Here are my top five from the last 12 months. 

 

1. A boy sobbing because his parents were having a meeting with their architect while he was at school. When I asked him what was worrying him about this, he explained that they were planning to have a two storey extension built onto their house. He was concerned that it would spoil their house as he liked it the way it was.
2. A parent asked me if I would take responsibility for making sure her daughter’s Christian Dior coat did not get dirty as it was a gift from her grandparents and they would not take kindly to it getting spoilt. When I suggested that she did not wear it for school, the parent snorted at me in a derisory manner and said “But my daughter wanted to.”
3. One child suffered an unpleasant and painful allergy to horses. Her mother asked my advice on whether she should allow her daughter to withdraw from her pony riding lessons. When I offered my opinion that she should stop the lessons immediately as the child was in pain and distress, her mother said “I’m just not sure what to do. We so wanted her to learn to ride.”
4. On a fund raising non-uniform day, a girl in my class came in after playtime in floods of tears. I asked her what had happened, thinking she had hurt herself. She replied, “The other girls are saying that my clothes are from George at Asda and they’re not! They’re all designer label.”
5. A child was two hours late for school because she had not been able to leave home. Vague and dubious, you might think, but no, it’s was genuine. The electronic gates at her family home had failed, you see, and so she was trapped on her own property. Don’t you hate it when that happens?