Britain went a bit mad on the 5th of February thanks to a very chaotic Parish council meeting. As I can finally now think about it without breaking into wheezing laughter, I decided to go off-topic with the blog. Why? My French girlfriend’s inability to understand what was so wonderfully funny rendered me slightly homesick.
I’ve never heard of Handforth, let alone can I confidently point out the county of Cheshire. But I reckon I could quite easily give the pretence of having lived there. This isn’t a boast on my acting ability, rather, it’s indicative of the reason why most British people were able to react to Jackie Weaver opening the trapdoor beneath the feet of ‘Handforth PC Clerk’ with such fondness and hilarity. I recognised my community in the thrifty seconds of footage that propelled this unlikely internet sensation. To give a bit of context, a hashtag relating to this zoom call was trending in one of the number three spots on UK Twitter all day.
To those who don’t hail from Britain or who live in cities, a parish is defined as a ‘small administrative district typically having its own church and a priest or pastor’. I grew up in one which consisted of two villages and two hamlets (smaller than a village, doesn’t have a church). In these small ponds, the big fish thrives or, in the case of Handforth PC Clerk (let’s just call him HPC from now on), they try to until Jackie Weaver comes along with little regard to authority and standing orders. I have known many a Jackie Weaver, HPC, John Smith and Peter Moor in my childhood.
Jackie Weaver reminded me of a dark horse. The kind of woman we village kids initially thought we could pull a fast one on. At a village fête, I remember bagging myself a copy of ‘Paranormal Activity’. I was aged 11 or so but very tall so I promised the unwitting vendor I was fine to watch it. With the contraband safely tucked in my trousers, I swaggered into the corner of the field, my lips curling with the tasteful delight of what a gangster life must be like. My friends gasped and nodded as I promised the boys we’d watch it at the next available moment. “May I be seeing that?”. It was the same calm and collected tone of voice that Mrs Weaver had used when dispatching HPC to the underworld. I tried to act like I had nothing, I pretended I was sharing out one of my £1 bag of sweets (It’s worth adding here that you should never give a child more than a fiver for these events, the sweet counter becomes a New York stock exchange). Yet, I had under-estimated the authority of this woman, she stood firm and my friends fidgeted in discomfort, “you’re not my mum!” But as poor HPC will tell you, any reminder of authority was never going to work. The DVD was produced and I followed the same fate as HPC, my father took me home.
Village life is like that, full of whimsical little moments. At a primary school fête, it all kicked off because a mother felt that the hot-dogs were overpriced, the villagers called it sausage-gate and a turf-war broke out between the groups of parents whose bullets flew in the form of ‘strongly worded letters’. I suppose rather than British culture, this happens in small communities all over the world. But as they were British I was reminded of the silly aspects of my culture. Aled’s laugh as mayhem ensues would be the laughter amongst the “wheyyyyyyys” I’d hear in the pub as a pint of beer comes crashing down. Now that is very British, I wouldn’t imagine that in a French bar. HPC who was obviously fuming but concealed it in a polite question, “Can we be assured that we won't be kicked from the meeting like we were last time?” The conversation continued to dance around the edge, “so long as we have reasonable behaviour,” chimed Mrs Weaver. A group of angry Frenchman wouldn’t survive one minute with Mrs Weaver at the helm of a zoom call. I don’t write that to suggest some kind of superiority. It’s simply that in France if they’re upset, they don't hang around with cordial questions or phrases with double meanings (honestly, I should write an article based on trying to convince my girlfriend that ‘quite good’ is categorically the height of insults). Us Brits knew the what the exchange might as well have said, “Don’t you f****** dare give me the boot”
“Threaten me like that again HPC and we’ll bloody well see huh? Behave yourself this time you absolute mug.”
Instead, in typical British fashion, it was left until feelings couldn't be constrained and as the shouting came, everyone looked on in disgust. How dare one expose their anger like that? Maybe Aled was a Frenchman in another life.
When I was 18 and coming to the end of my month tour of Italy, I was sitting on a beach with an American of the same age who I had befriended. He was from L.A, not only that but his family were actually in the film business. I was feeling sad and sorry for myself, I had spent every penny I had saved for the past few years, it was likely that I wasn’t going to my university of choice and it seemed I’d be spending another year in my village working menial jobs. I mused, “you’re off to the sunny hills of L.A and I’m off to the muddy, wet fields of Devon”. He obviously had no idea what the hell I was talking about but responded, “Hey man, home is home.” Cheesy bastard but nonetheless I was glad that the British ability to handle meaningful moments had sailed back with the defeated military forces in 1776 else he’d never have said that. There’s a lot more about my homeland that I miss but sometimes it’s the smallest things that can bring a smile. Why it makes me happy at the thought of broken glasses inducing a hysteria at the pub, elderly figures in the community abusing power as though they’re a dictator watching a rebellion and listening to double-talk makes me miss the rainy old island, I can’t quite say. I’d like to think of it that the residents of Handforth parish council reminded a nation, a nation whose dead from covid is 100,000 and whose citizens are locked away that there is a shared culture to which we can all soon return to and revel in for better or worse. Or maybe I’m just a soppy so and so who writes about culture too much.