WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE, ANYWAY? by Harry McAvinchey

“…Meanwhile,  back in early summer as the Tardis slips through a temporal wormhole and  lands in Norneverland

I’m out here in the garden raking hard at  some broadleaf clover that is beginning to win its war of attrition with it  co-joined neighbours, my grass. At around this time every year it’s the same old story. Everything is rolling along very nicely and quietly, but sometime in early  July, just as school gets out for the summer , the bovver boys of the lawn stretch their collective spindly  arms, shake the Spring sleep from their eyes and begin a potential putsch  right there on the greensward before me .Without my help with that old long-tined lawn rake that was part of my late Uncle Paddy’s bequest, my poor old skinny grass would have no chance against these thick- leaved stumpy , muscle-bound  hellions from herbal hell. They’d begin their slow strangulation creep across the territory.

I’ve just been listening in amazement to some wee Irish  girl singing on the radio who is sponsored by someone called Will. I. Am….I know, don’t ask..He couldn’t have called himself “Liam” and be done with it ….but anyway….The wee singer was called Liah Mc Fall and  I  have to say,  to ask any singer to sing live at any ungodly time of the morning would present a challenge to anyone. Most singers hate that but this young vocalist amazed me with the easy  vocal control she displayed …all this at a time of the day when I can barely speak without a pot of Punjana  tea in me.

Anyway that was a pleasant interlude, but it wasn’t what I was thinking about while I fought the good fight with this aggressive clover. I was thinking , what the hell is wrong with people?

Earlier on the radio  there was  a story  about a baker who wouldn’t bake a cake celebrating the gay marriage of two individuals or somesuch The details are a little hazy, it being early and the old mind is still in second gear..I assumed they were two male gay men because they wanted the two Muppet Show  characters …or was that Sesame Street …? . Bert and Ernie on the top of the cake. Okay, let’s assume that these two wee wooly puppet- muppets were nominally male {even though none of us ever saw their nominal male sex organs inside their wooly trousers}, who knew they were “Gay Icons”? Not me anyway! I suppose though ,if you were some young gay guy or girl , you might pick up those kinds of signals…y’know catching straws in the winds  of insecurity and that.

Now, I can understand that a lot of young ladies were very disappointed when they discovered too late, that George Michael and Boy George were “true” gay icons and probably tore down their wet- dream posters from their collective bedroom walls, in a fit of adolescent pique  , but they got over it, just as previous generations got over Rock Hudson, James Dean and Richard Chamberlain when they discovered their true sexuality…It’s not as if they were ever going to marry any of them anyway or even get into the same room with them .Right? Most of it all hinges on fantasy and disappointment , doesn’t it .It’s like finding out that Clark Gable had false teeth and every time he smooched up to Scarlett in “Gone with the Wind”, she recoiled at the stench of his gale ten breath…Or that Marilyn Monroe had serious flatulence and farted like a donkey on beans. Or that Abraham Lincoln had wooden teeth. Some of these things are undoubtedly true, mind.You should look them up if you are feeling particularly salacious.

Anyway….what is the Big Deal? .Every one of us has some gay relations or friends that we may or may not know about. It’s like all those people walking about in the street or living across the road from you .What do you really know or care about what they do in the privacy of their own homes? .When are you ever in their homes? How many times in any given day, week, month or year would you ever see them, never mind get into their bedrooms or bathrooms and see how much or how little sex they have, or with whom,  or whether or not hair grows on their toes.?

It might sound daft and that’s because people really are daft.  That’s the kind of mad imaginary stuff that bugs and bothers them .

Now this baker may have a thing about the sanctity of marriage .That’s fair enough, I suppose.It’s a personal thing , but how does that translate in relation  to what someone else believes in.? To all intents and purposes “marriage”as we know it is a fairly recent construct anyway. There are plenty of people who would never dream of bothering with it anyway. Ma and Pa Larkin in “the Darling Buds of May”, for one example .You’d think that those who like it would encourage it though….whether or not it was between males , females or aliens!

From the late 19th century throughout the 21st century, marriage has undergone gradual legal changes, aimed at improving the rights of women. These changes included giving wives a legal identity of their own. Before that the female partner had about the same status as a good horse.Marriage was about ownership, anyway. People felt safer within the folds of a “stable” household….

See how I slipped in that “horse” reference there?..

A lot of  the rules of marriage were to do with a safe  exchange of sex between safely consenting adults..rather than those disease- ridden free-range  choices out there  in the streets at that time. They were aimed at  questions of the right for husbands to physically discipline their wives, It was about  giving wives property rights and  liberalizing divorce laws,. It was   to do with  asking a wife’s consent for sexual relations  to occur. This was mostly in in Western countries. . Now it is understandable that social changes are moving too fast for a lot of people in this modern world, but you would think that “any” kind of marriage would be a stabilising factor for everyone should they wish to marry a male or a female .

No one is being asked to share a bedroom with them as they practice macrame or  knit a shawl, after all.

Anyway , there I was thinking about this , when the rain came down.Such a bloody shower!! The kind of downfall that would soak you to the skin  within minutes and have the roads  running like rivers into blocked drains.

I’ve no doubt at all that what with all this extra moisture and the clammy heat, that  the bloody clover will be springing back to life, with a vengeance too….

Grass and clover ..a marriage made in hell.