Monday 11^th February 2008

My day started tediously when it became apparent that I’d left my lunch at home, but I had high hopes that the afternoon would be a bit brighter. I was, you see, booked in for a cryogenics safety course.

That may not sound like the height of entertainment, but I had it all planned out. I’d already attended the first half of the course, on compressed gases, last term, but sadly the afternoon cryo talk had been booked up at the time. I knew what to expect. And what to expect was that, even if it’s not worth taking notes on the intricacies of health and safety law regarding pressurised containers, it’s worth taking notes on what the bloke who takes it is saying.

Said bloke is a cheery northerner with a jovial presentation style. He tries to keep his weary pupils awake with a stream of poor jokes. One imagines charitably that they are ironically poor and he does not think that they are the most hilarious things ever penned—though on the subject of compressed gas safety, he’s probably in the running. These aren’t all worth noting, however, either as a study of humour which doesn’t quite hit the mark or even just as an exercise in keeping yourself awake: it was only a subset of them I was eagerly anticipating. The ones which are hilariously right-wing.

Last time’s jokes were peppered with anti-European, libertarian, deregulatory bile which, one this time doesn’t imagine was intended with any irony. Though he seemed fairly at ease with the raft of health and safety regulations the nanny state had handed down, Heaven forfend that the tax man should get his grubby mitts on any of the hard-earned he’d acquired from telling people about the regs, or selling them safety equipment such that they might fulfil them. Heaven can forfend a second time when it comes to any of that cash rifled by the Inland Revenue making its way away from our sceptred isle onto the continent of Europe. Imagine a (more) balding Jeremy Clarkson with a Yorkshire accent, proffering safety specs catalogues as he delivers a talk on cryogenic safety and you wouldn’t be too far wrong. In fact, you’d be dead right because I am the master of scathing analogy.

And what could be more exciting than seeing Jeremy Clarkson? Well, seeing the real Clarkson rather than an analogous one who shared few common features apart from political orientation might register, as indeed would seeing almost any slightly famous person, or even something quite mundane, like stepping in a puddle or probably, given how excited Clarkson makes me, attending a protracted health and safety course about cryogenic liquids. So, if you muddle your way through that previous sentence, you establish that my afternoon should be more exciting than meeting Jeremy Clarkson. I was confused, not to mention intrigued. After all, what could be more exciting than meeting Jeremy Clarkson?

It started promisingly. We were introduced to fractional distillation of air as a method of obtaining a variety of cryogenic liquids and then…

Some cutting right-wing satire straight in the kisser like an onomatopoeic special effect from the early Batman TV series. The fractional distilling people are making money from air when air is a free resource…or is it?

As I know from any given bank statement, the only thing I’m not paying for is air. And it’s not too long ’til Alistair Darling starts taxing us for that, too. The government will measure all our lung capacities, and people will be charged extra for spurious exercise like running or cycling.

Take that Nu Labour! A leopard can’t change its spots, can it, Tony Blairs and Gordon Browns and Alistair Darlings! Your socialist tax-and-spend policies just took it bad at the hands of the cryogenics safety man! And what do we get for all the taxes? Nothing!!! Ha!

But that was it. I mean, it was a pretty killer blow and all, but he could have spiced up the three hours which were to follow with at least one more pithy shot at the state. Would it have been too much to ask?

The reason I’ve not got a little compendium of these from last time is that I only noticed on, say, the third or fourth that they were coming regularly enough to be amusing and worth noting. This time I thought I could make amends for my laxity.

So, my day ended as depressingly as it started. So much for happy endings. The bloody government would probably tax those if it could get away with it.

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