I’M sorry to sound so depressing but nothing in this country is working properly. Even Big Ben has broken.
They just spent 80million of our pounds restoring Britain’s most famous landmark.
And it’s now as reliable as a 1973 Austin Allegro.
Then you’ve got the NHS, which is fantastic if you want to be addressed by the correct pronoun but there’s no getting round the fact that it’s pretty much useless if you need a doctor.
And you can only talk to a nurse if you are fluent in Latvian.
The Police? Don’t get me started. If you get stabbed, they’ll only be interested if it happened in a bus lane.
And if you’re burgled they will put you on hold until the end of time.
Which, according to Big Ben, happens once every three or four days.
But it’s the transport system that causes my shoulders to sag most of all, because that’s just hopeless.
Back at the beginning of April, engineers noticed that a railway bridge over the Thames in Oxfordshire was becoming a bit wobbly.
So they imposed a 5mph speed limit on the few trains that were running due to industrial action by the drivers.
It then transpired that 5mph was still too fast so they announced the line would be closed while repairs were made.
Now, back in the days when Britain worked, this wouldn’t have taken very long.
When engineers had to narrow the gauge on the line from London to Bristol, they got the entire job done in one night. One!! Not a single train had to be cancelled.
But to repair a bridge in 2023, they need three months. Unless it’s Hammersmith Bridge in London which for reasons no one understands, can’t be repaired at all.
So if I have to go to London, I need to use the car.
Which is tricky, because that means going round the Oxford ring road, which is currently being turned into a bus lane. The traffic is terrible.
And I can’t miss it by going through the city centre because Oxford is run by lunatics who think the motor car is more dangerous than an nuclear missile.
So they’ve put plant pots in the middle of every street.
This means that to get to London, I have to use country roads that have grass growing in the middle and there are signs saying, “there be witches”.
I haven’t seen one yet, but I bet there are highwaymen too, hiding in the bushes with their flintlock muskets.
And as I’m bumbling along, in the middle ages, at 4mph, I can’t help wondering how the powers that be can allow both the road and the railway to be closed at the same time.
Someone must have signed off on this and it beggars belief that he’s not in prison. Because that’s where he belongs.
Maybe it’s because the prisons don’t work either.
I’VE spent the past couple of weeks in Mauritania and it’s OK.
I didn’t know where it was either, until I got there.
Nor did I know that this vast West African slab of desert was dry. In both senses of the word.
It very rarely rains and there’s a strictly enforced ban on alcohol.
Which is a nuisance when you’ve been working all day in 50 centigrade and you really want to sit down afterwards with a beer.
Happily however, many years of extensive travel has taught me that there’s a chain of off licences in every capital city in the world – even the dry ones – where you can always get a drink. They’re called British Embassies.
The membership card is a British passport and you can bring two guests, even if they are James May and Richard Hammond.
And so it was that we watched the Coronation with our man in Nouakchott, while supping several refreshing pints of delicious, chilled lager.
KALEB COOPER, my not-well-travelled farm manager, went to London for only the second time in his life this week.
He encountered his first ever revolving door which he described, after a couple of circuits, as “amazing”.
And then he went to Downing Street to meet Rishi Sunak.
“I couldn’t turn that down” he said, excitedly. “I’m only 24 and I’ve been invited to meet the President.”
LIKE most normal people, I loathe art galleries.
But for some unfathomable reason, I dropped into London’s Design Museum this week where there was an exhibition by someone called Mr Wee Wee.
That’s not his real name but it’s something like that.
Mostly, his show consisted of enormous rugs, one of which was made from bits of broken tea pots. And another from a million pieces of Lego.
Can you imagine stepping on that in the middle of the night?
And also, can you imagine how daft you have to be to look at what is basically an eight-year-old’s bedroom floor and say: “Yes, Mr Wee Wee. That is art and we’d be happy to charge people for looking at it”.
OVER the years, I’ve occasionally been chased around the place by a swarm of paparazzi, and it was never even remotely frightening because it only took me about one second to work out how I could shake them off my tail.
I’d simply get on a bicycle and head for the nearest narrow alleyway.
And if they were using scooters, or there wasn’t a bicycle to hand, I’d head for the Selfridges department store, which has about 200 doors.
And they would have no idea which one I’d come out of.
I RECEIVED word this week from a chap whose 2002 Ford Focus does not comply with London’s new low emission regulations.
He was going to scrap it. But instead, he has registered it in the name of London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, and will continue to drive around in it until Mr Khan pops by to pick it up.
He claims this is completely legal and he may have a point, as the owner of a car does not have to be the same person as the registered keeper.
It may well be then that soon, Mr Khan finds he suddenly has more old cars than the Beaulieu National Motor Museum.
AMERICA is very close to going bust.
It currently owes 31trillion dollars (£25trillion) and its borrowings are greater than the worth of the entire country.
To try to address the situation, the nation’s economists and political heavyweights decided that they needed to distract the doddery old fool in the White House.
So they went round to the Oval office and, while his nurse was fetching a new nappy, they spoke into his ear trumpet, telling him that he was going on an important meeting in Papua New Guinea.
“It’ll be brilliant”, they shouted. “You’ll love it.”
But now he’s refusing to go, saying the financial situation is so bad, he needs to stay at home.
“Wstrefheignphlampos ze carruthertheruther”, he announced to a room of full of people, who are now in total despair.
