Mat Sadler is a thieving bastard shitbag

Entitled thus because Mat has set up a ‘feed’ from this blog - and others - to his newly revamped website in a desperate attempt to pass them off as his own work. So we’ll see how that title looks on his shiny new homepage. Very professional, I imagine.

We went to the fireworks at Button Common, Herongate. Mat prophesied that the trees, getting nearer to the bonfire every year, will one day go up in flames. ‘The trees are growing’, he announced, as though it might be news to us. I had a sudden image of him running about in the crowd, all dishevelled, screaming into the uncomprehending faces of bonfire-goers: ‘The trees are growing!’ But everything passed off without incident: no fireworks, as they say.

Although there were fireworks. That phrase was not, perhaps, the best I could have chosen.

Talking of clumsy writing, there was some discussion of this blog at the Green Man later. Some of it was praise, even: it was suggested that, if it isn’t actually worthy of publication, it does at least show ‘transferable skills’. Hannah said it was ‘brilliant, but not accomplished.’ She seemed to have an unusually specific idea about the definition of ‘accomplished’.

But it is nice to be appreciated. I just hope it doesn’t make me too self-conscious to

What was I saying? Oh yeah, Rhys was down from Cardiff, staying at our place. In the absence of taxis, I ended up walking back to Brentwood with him. Cars kept honking their horns at us. As two people walking along the pavement we were a real novelty, it seemed: enough in ourselves to promote a carnival atmosphere. Later a car stopped for the occupants to ask us the way to Southend, then they laughed and drove off. Were we missing something? At one point, the cheerful sounds of a party ending (fond farewells, car doors slamming) gave way, as we approached the house in question, to vicious abuse: two blokes had got out of their car and were verbally laying into their host, who was responding in kind. What had gone wrong? One imagined these men cheerily saying goodbye and getting into their car, then one of them suddenly saying: ‘Those twiglets were stale! He was insulting us!’

Or was this just a traditional Essex farewell?