Things Just Aint What They Used to Be!

In the salad days of my youth the streets were not lined with gold. Instead they were littered with dogs mud and fizzy drink cans (also known as fizzy pop by strange people). Walking on the pavements in those days was a real challenge. It was not a task for the faint of heart or those with extra wide feet. You need dexterity and 20-20 vision to avoid what was known locally as the tread of dread.

Please excuse me whilst a go into a separate rant about shoe designers. Why do they always make the tread of shoes so complex. It is almost impossible to get dog dirt from one of these complex patterns. I've tried following all those mazy patterns round with a stick, a knife blade (not from the kitchen draw) and even a specially adapted cotton bud. It really does make my blood boil and on one occasion recently I simply threw the shoes away still caked in the little sausages from a little sausage dog. High pressure hose pipes do a great job but the shoes get wet and also the water splashes me in the face and mouth. This always leaves me paranoid that I may have contracted some form of botulism. (well it was a sausage dog after all). Another idea was to wear shoes with smooth soles but I slipped on a wet floor in the public toilets and injured my knee.

This post is of course lamenting the loss of pavement skills required to walk safely on the busy streets of English towns. New legislation has removed the huge amounts of dogs waste from the pavements. Most see this as a good thing but they have not thought this through. Yobs never used to hang out on the street corner when I was younger. This is because Mr Edwards Labrador from number 16 used to do his business around there. Nobody in the right mind would want to spend an evening standing next his steaming brown memorials. You certainly would not want to lose one of your trainers in there. In the past you needed skills and hawk like vision to survive on the streets. Now with much more isolated dollops walkers have become nonchalant and complacent. A dangerous sense of security has soaked into their subconscious. Under these modern conditions an innocent walker is much more likely not to spot a huge mound and steam straight into it. {{{SPLAT}}}

Another problem that we face today is the dog poo scooper. It is all well and good removing the dog dirt from the pavement, but when I am walking and eating a cereal bar I don't like to see a fat person bent over. It is even worse if I can see them actually manipulating the lumps into those horrible little green bags. I just hate to see people carrying those small bags around with them whilst I am walking. Where do those small bags of dog excrement end up? Well I see them in trees quite often! most of it goes in the ground where the pathogens can happily multiply - real nice idea.

I think that the modern man...when in their youth (also known as chavs) like to wear hooded tops and baseball caps. They have no peripheral vision and are at a great risk of landing the top prize in the weekly doggy-do lottery. Personally I used to enjoy all the streets could throw at me. The new regulations that keep pavements tidy of dog mess have robbed me of this daily challenge. To get home knowing that you have avoided all hazards, leaving them intact for your greatest enemies, is one of the greatest sensations in the world. The next day when you see that someone has taken the top layer off the brown-mountain your spirits just soar.

I think that this matter needs to be investigated. Sent a letter to my local MP. (no reply)

Keith Doughnut
(Addressing the real issues of broken Britain)