Jeezy-weezy¹. I wish they wouldn't do this to me first thing in the morning.

It is my wont first thing in the morning to amble over to the cafe across the road, order some strong tar-like caffeine solution, and peruse the newspaper whilst my brain gets into gear.

Unfortunately this cafe, being towards the lower-class end of the scale, only supplies two newspapers: the first of those is The Sun, which is less a newspaper and more a piss-stinking right-wing-bollocks-and-tits rag not fit to wipe one's arse with, and the second is the local daily paper, the East Anglian Daily Times² which, whilst it's rather parochial, at least is fairly [if nowhere near perfectly] balanced in its coverage. So it's the latter which I try to focus on as I wait for the morning stimulant to hit my cortecies.

This morning's top story though made me choke into my espresso. "Norman Tebbit to move to Suffolk". Alarm bells went off in my head as I contemplated the logistical niceties in moving home very quickly – to Norfolk, to Scotland, to Luton, to Azerbaijan, to anywhere he frogging wasn't.

Luckily, the detail of the story revealed that his destination was Bury St. Edmunds, at the other end of the county and far enough away for me to cancel my phone call to Pickfords' Removal Vans company.

For those of you who don't remember the Eighties, I should explain. Mr Tebbit was the "dog-whistler" of Thatcher's government, brandishing a "populist" right-wing paranoid³ Marxist-phobia, homophobia and soft racism which was lapped up by the gutter press.

Perhaps his most famous utterance was when he said that people of ethnic minority origin should undergo a "cricket test" – only those who supported the England cricket team could be called British. The day after he said this, I bought an India cricket shirt.

…Okay, yes, this is an ancient emnity. It still has big topical resonance though. If, if seems likely, in 2009 or 2010 we have a change of Government to the New We're Actually Quite Nice Now, Honest, Conservative Party, how long before the nutters – still there in the party, in large numbers – take back over and roll back the few successes of the past twelve years⁴?

Usually we have a better class of minor celebrities round here. Quite a few have second homes up on the coast in Southwold [aka Hampstead-On-Sea], but others live here permanently. The one I keep hoping I'll bump into in my local post office is Amanda Donohoe -

- whilst the only one round here I've actually met is John McCarthy, who I once delivered a parcel to.

…I had great difficulty in stopping myself from saying "thank you, Mr. Hostage" to him.

 shoenotes:
1 If anyone can tell me where I picked up this particular ejaculation, and more importantly, how to froggin' stop saying it, I'd be ultra-grateful.
2 Also known locally as the East African or East Armenian.
3 For instance: when in the late 90s two openly gay ministers were appointed to Tony Blair's government, Tebbit accused them of being a "gay mafia", despite it being common knowledge that the two hated each other and hardly even spoke.
4 Although Blair's New Labour of 1997-2007 will always be damned as the government which lied, cheated and tricked our way into a disastorous war, the small victories – for instance, devolution, transsexual recognition, civil partnerships mustn't be overlooked. And there's plenty of Tories who want to see all of those reversed. My MP is one.