Skip to main content

When 9 to 5 becomes 24/7

A lady called Diane Duffin has run into trouble with authorities in Sheffield for playing Dolly Parton tracks around the clock. Apparently, neighbouring tenants haven't taken too kindly to her non-stop country music festival.

It reminds me of the lyric to a 1970s Parton hit called "Two doors down", in which the prescient songstress clearly foresees events that are to take place in the UK some three decades later:

Two doors down
They're laughing and drinking and having a party
Two doors down
They're not aware that I'm around
Cause here I am
Crying my heart out and feeling sorry
While they're having a party two doors down

Press reports suggest that Diane may be evicted and given an ASBO, but I have a more inventive suggestion. Why don't they turn the estate into a British version of the Dollywood theme park? That way, the neighbours could get involved too.

Comments

  1. A similar nuisance prosecution has just happened up the road in Newcastle - this time Wham's "Last Christmas" was the nuisance track being played repeatedly at top volume. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/6948126.stm).

    I think the seasonal goodwill had run out by mid May when the offence took place.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at

The race for bogus Olympic stats

Of all the dubious statistics thrown around in relation to the London Olympics, the claim that there are '47 tube journeys in central London that can easily be walked' is surely one of the most misleading. I suspect it is based on the relative proximity of one station to an adjacent one. Embankment is walking distance from Temple. Charing Cross is a stone's throw from Leicester Square. But what exactly is a 'tube journey'? As I've understood it - and I'm only going on three decades' experience of using the network - it is a journey that takes you from any one place with a tube station to another. My journey from Leicester Square might take me to Charing Cross, but it might also lead me up the line to Camden Town or down south to Morden. In fact, from any one tube station - thanks to the wonders of interconnections - there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of options available to me. Now, I don't claim to have a PhD in mathematics, but the number of p