Everest – Antarctica – Stockport

The news this weekend that Sir Ranulph Fiennes crashed his Nissan Micra on the A6 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8554639.stm will come as no surprise to local activists campaigning for greater safety on this busy and dangerous road.  Well, it might surprise them a little bit that a man who climbed Mount Everest as a pensioner, crossed Antarctica, and got to both Poles on foot, couldn’t negotiate a dual carriageway safely.  I don’t know the ins-and-outs of the case, not being either a policeman or related to Sir R, so that’s all I have to say about that. 

Maybe he should join a complaints choir – a fabulous Finnish idea: take the energy used to complain about where you live and write and sing a song about it.  According to the website  http://www.complaintschoir.org/

In the Finnish vocabulary there is an expression “Valituskuoro”. It means “Complaints Choir” and it is used to describe situations where a lot of people are complaining simultaneously.  Kalleinen and Kochta-Kalleinen thought: “Wouldn´t it be fantastic to take this expression literally and organise a real Complaints Choir!”

Somehow they ended up in Birmingham; a city the website says is known to some ‘as the “arsehole of England”.’  As a Brit I could take exception to this description.  However, I grew up on Mike Harding and one of his funniest lines ever was about Birmingham: ‘If the world had piles, that’s where they’d be!’  So maybe there’s a good reason the movement started there.

I quite like the idea of grabbing the Hub, going into Tesco’s and singing:

You overcharged me on the butter

You might think I am a nutter

But I’ll stand and utter mutters

Until I feel much better

Send an apology by letter

And a refund on my tenpence

Then I’ll stop being a nuisance

I’d join a choir myself but I have pitching issues.  I remember going to my auntie’s funeral and singing with gusto and feeling rather pleased with my ability until my Little Brother said, ‘I wanted to laugh in there when you were singing; you were all over the place.’  Sigh.  Never mind; you know what they say: those who can, do; those who can’t, write bad poetry.