When I was a horrible little child, the most exotic name on our council estate belonged to a kid called Glandon. I’ve since met only two others with that name. We all thought it was an amazing name because we all had ordinary names like Gary or Geoff or John or Paul or David or Kevin or Brian or Simon…
It was Wales so there were lots of Davids and Johns about. Some parents with the surname ‘John’ were cruel enough to call their sons ‘David’ and there were lots of John Davies’s around too. And you thought the Beckhams were naming their kids cruelly. How about christening your child ‘Ultra Ordinary’?
Names like Tobias Hotston-Clarke were unlikely to be found on our estate. We weren’t on anyone’s route to anywhere except the scrapyard and people with those sort of names weren’t likely to be going there. Nobody with the sort of car likely to be driven by people with those sort of names was going to get through without a scratch or a missing hubcap. Aye, we was poor in them days, but all our frisbees were chrome-plated.
The article describes him as ‘a father’. Apparently that is so rare these days that it deserves special mention, or maybe it’s a job description now. He has no other job, although in the past anyone with that kind of name was guaranteed a position somewhere out of harm’s way in Daddy’s business, where he could act as though he almost knew what he was doing and nearly cared.
Not any more. The Hotston-Clarkes have fallen on hard times, it seems, and on even harder IQ levels.
Young Toby thought he’d join in the riots of last summer and play his part in bringing down capitalism by… setting fire to the jobcentre where he collected his unemployment benefit.
So let’s see. Destroy capitalism by burning the central pillar of socialism. Burn down the only place in town where he gets any money at all. And, in utter dope style, fail to do even that.
Hotston-Clarke smashed a side window with a rock and splashed petrol from a can onto the carpet which he attempted to ignite with two cigarettes.
How strange. We are told that entire houses burn down when someone has been smoking and yet here he is with two cigarettes and a petrol-soaked floor and it failed to light.
But the father-of-one’s plan was foiled after the petrol failed to ignite. The break-in was discovered in the morning by a passer-by and police quickly arrested Hotston-Clarke after the cigarettes revealed a DNA match.
Well there you have it. Those DNA matches are rubbish. He’d have been better off with a box of Swan or England’s Glory. The police can’t tell who they belong to, unlike those DNA matches that always have your name on them.
This is one I couldn’t have made up if my future writing career depended on it. A total dimwit with an aristocratic-sounding name who tries to burn down his only source of socialist funding in a protest against capitalism but who can’t set fire to a petrol-soaked carpet in the summer.
Next year he’[ll probably stand as an MP. Might as well, he’s no dimmer than the ones we have now.
I came across Xerxes Mazda a couple of weeks ago. Now that’s a name.
I’m always suspicious of people with either two first names like Anthony George or two second name like Watson McLeod.
The toffs generally mange just fine even if they’ve had 27 jobs in 10 years because they they are called Tim Nicebut-Dim, they usually work in government departments.
“But the father-of-one’s plan was foiled after the petrol failed to ignite.”
And they are trying to tell us that the conflagration that killed so many in the (steel and concrete) jail in the Honduras was caused by a cigarette falling on a mattress.
“An inferno at an overcrowded Honduran prison killed that 359 inmates last week was accidental and may have been caused by a cigarette, a preliminary report has found.”
The fact that one of the inmates war threatening to set fire to the place just before it happened is pure coincidence, of course. Nothing to do with it at all. I mean, it just must have been a cigarette that caused it.
This is obviously seen as being a useful tool in the antis bag of (con) tricks. Now they can push for a worldwide ban in jails.
On the subject of names, I narrowly escaped being called Tarquin!
Egad!
“What’s your name then?”
“Tarquin.”
“BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA….!”
Hang about here, I thought it was a settled fact that it is nigh impossible to light a pool of petrol by dropping a lit cigarette into it? In films they fake it somehow, either it’s not petrol, or the cigarette has magnesium in it, or they spray petrol vapour over the puddle or something.
So that makes him trebly dim for not knowing that.
As far as I remember, it’s only petrol vapour that burns so you’d have to apply sufficient flame to vapourise some of it before you get an ignition. Once it starts it will rapidly vapourise more and – boom. If you drop a cigarette straight into a pool of it, it’s no different to dropping that cigarette into water. Note: Do not try this at home. Try it in someone else’s.
If it’s soaked into a carpet though, there should be no pool. Just one big wick. As long as there is some vapour it should be possible to ignite it with a glowing ember, although throwing lit matches at it would be a more certain way to do it.
Fortunately I replaced my petrol mower with an electric one this year so there’s no petrol in the shed. Otherwise, after a few whiskies, I might be tempted to try it.
I once came across a little girl whose parents, surname Scotland, had cruelly named her Bonnie. I also pity the Jaclins, Lyndas and Debras of this world.
Perhaps he was using stale petrol, the useless stuff we buy nowadays won’t run my mower if it’s been stored in the can 12 months.
“he’s no dimmer than the ones we have now” ?
Well speak for yourself because as obviously ‘cogitatedly disadvantaged’ as he is he still appears to brighter than most MP’s (at least he brought some petrol as an accelerant, forethought and planning is not something MP’s are wont to display is it?).
Personally I think he’s a sure thing for local councillor though. As a representative of the local idiots we’re saddled with we have Councillor Bill wearing.
http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/plan-to-ban-smoking-in-cumbrian-play-areas-1.893842?referrerPath=carlisle-united/latest
Do you remember the debacle over the resident of a flat being forced out because the smoke from his cigarette had insinuated itself stealthily through a concrete wall and then a concrete floor to target a non-smoker in the flat above (tricky stuff that cigarette smoke you know?). At the height of the press campaign about this Councillor Wearing started a campaign to ban smoking from a local parks childrens play area. The area in question being separated from the rest by a waist high ornamental metal fence. The reason? Why because the smoke from any cigarettes lit up in the area was restricted by said ornamental fence from dispersing and so it was all gathering in clouds to surround the little children playing there, or so he asserted.
So we have smoke that can travel through solid concrete, but at the same time it is trapped by a waist high metal fence???? And this is the calibre of councillors we have in sunny Carlisle. and you wonder why it is now considered by all and sundry, but especially we poor residents, to be the armpit of the country.
These people should have been strangled at birth, at least to prevent all the rest of us suffering from their idiocy!
In some cases, it would be fair to make ‘strangled at birth’ retrospective.
Testing, testing. Wondered where you were LI. Forgot to put your new feed on my reader. No comments about being dim please.
I’ve been going to and fro in the world, and moving up and down in it
My daughter knows a Lee Harvey, and a girl who named her kid Chardonnay