When push comes to shove

Today was June 6th 2014, the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy. I’m sure most of you noticed: I did. We had a very nice fly-past by two 1940s fighters here today, and it quite filled my heart with Entente Cordiale pride.

While we’re on the subject of history, I’d like if I may to switch the focus from macro to micro, and point out that it is now 23 years since the one time I have ever hit anyone in my entire life. Even then it was with a cushion, and the recipient was my first wife. The lady had just told me that she’d been having it off with a man who, just two weeks earlier, had been guzzling my vintage Champagne at a New Year’s Eve party chez nous. This was despite me asking her five times in the previous ten months whether she was actually jogging horizontally with another, and being told with solemn certainty that she was innocent of any such accusation. Her excuse later was to say “I thought the truth would hurt you too much”. You have to work very hard in this life to be that patronising, especially when most of your mutual friends already know all the gory details.

There is never any excuse for hitting another human being: but equally, we are all human beings wired for flight or fight….and let’s face it, a cushion is not exactly germ warfare. From that day to this I have regretted doing it, but on the other hand I will always reject the Freudian psychiatric tosh that insists all anger we display is about ourselves and our “issues”, not somebody else.

This theoretical horse falls at the first fence because the nature of one’s response differs depending on whether one is dealing with a reasonable and intelligent human being, a stupid but fundamentally nice human being, a borderline psycho who just happens thus far to have stayed on the wrong side of the high-security asylum walls, or a fantasist who lies pathologically.

Today June 6th 2014 was also supposed to be the day I re-occupied the house whose internal comforts I have been largely denied now since early March by eight construction “workers”. Two weeks ago, all those involved (with one exception, whose absenteeism remains unexplained) attended a site meeting at which The Client (moi) spelt out how and why today, June 6th 2014, would be my invasion of the north coast of Slogger’s Roost.

It could not have been clearer. Of the attendees, 6 out of 7 have the same recall of the meeting as I do. One person sez ‘e dunt remember ennifink abart it. The non-attendee claims he too was not aware that this was The Big Push, but the site manager says that’s bollocks…and I remember explaining the directional push to him on several occasions. Anyway, the non-attendee himself has today fallen victim to The Big Shove. It was a long-overdue shove – and the more overdue they are, the Bigger they tend to be.

The one dissenting site-meeting attendee was – no surprise here – the plumber. Now in genuine deference to regular Slog threader Hieronismub (who I think used to be a plumber) the Plombum Saeculo Filiusvigintietunius version referred to hereinafter would bear zero resemblance to his species. But Plumber2014 does seem to be the one tradesman with whom I have ever worked capable of suggesting that a stud-wall not being formed in a rear ground-floor bathroom is the reason why he has broken all his promises about me being able to move back in, the better to cook on a proper stove and wash in a proper shower by 5.30 pm tonight.

Herewith the real reasons why I am this weekend yet again ensconced in my motor home, as opposed to the one I used to occupy before builders trashed it: absenteeism, and a workrate any disabled snail on valium could put to shame.

So it was that when, at 10.15 this morning, the plumber (under extreme duress) admitted that he could offer me no gas for the oven, no hot water for the shower and not even a sink of cold water in which to wash my vegetables, his excuse was “Wull, nobody put up de stud woll in de back barfroom, mite”.

Now I’m sorry, but at this point a reasonably sharp chap like myself is bound to realise that he is dealing with a braindead barbarian not only incapable of productively sequential thought, but also a bloke in the process of, as we in the construction industry say, takin’ the fackin’ piss.

And this is what I said:

“Today my friend, it is June 6th, the 70th anniversary of D-Day. I can only say that, had the arrangements been left to berks like you, the Second World War would’ve ended at some point during 1964.”

It then degraded into a screaming match in which I appreciated, for the first time, how undeservedly demanding the average expat British ouvrier really is.

There is an interesting – and for many innocent folks around the world, tragic – process taking place at the moment, in which Western World workers are discovering that East Europeans and Asians work infinitely harder than they do for a fraction of their hourly rate. For neoliberal sociopaths this is a reason for great joy: but speaking for myself, I see it as a chance for westerners to focus on added value and excellent trade training…a way for the old skilled working class as I once understood it to rediscover its pride in manufacturing creation.

Asians work hard, but their goods remain shoddily manufactured and creatively inflexible. This, surely, is the great opportunity for the West: to charge more for something, and thus offer genuine added value that is fully deserved.

This is not me being patronising, for I am an ardent admirer of genuinely talented craftsmen. But thanks to the bourgeois idiots who took over the Labour Party during the mid 1950s – the Croslands, Crossmans and the Shirleys William – we now have a generation of pampered third-rate University graduates who have a BA in the History of the Beatles, but f**k-all qualifications relating to the domestic and communal trade skills of life….and absolutely no idea at all about client service.

Seeing the potential pride of the woodworker, electrician, plumber, and otherwise practical designer diluted by fathead bully-boys – aggrandised by this dearth of real artisans – pains me beyond belief. I am not and never will be a Devil-take-the-hindmost quasi-Darwinist: but I do believe that not all humans are equally deserving. There are people I genuinely like on the Left who part company with me on this issue: but I am a communal mutuality capitalist fan, not a Communist. This means I put the fulfillment of the community-responsible individual way way beyond the State in terms of importance….and believe that every able-bodied member of that community must play his or her part.

In the meantime, we have English workers here in France who thought they had escaped the work-ethic of the Poles in Britain. They now find themselves squeezed out of the market by the pleasing pleasing quality and reliability of the French artisan….and the ambition and enthusiasm of the Poles who are rapidly making inroads here. This is genuinely fair competition – not the faux neoliberal drivel that so often turns out to consist of thinly-disguised monopolism.

But ultimately, when push comes to shove, we are all going to have to adjust. And in that context, jerks who don’t want to get out of bed in the morning – or think they can ‘ave a larf because the competition is thin on the ground – are going to discover in short order just how misguided they are.

How odd it is is that we have the Labour Party to thank for this insane attitude problem.