BACK DOWN TO EARTH..

Coming back into the `real world` after even a short spell away is never an easy process. And made all the more difficult by some of the things that confront you once re-entry has been completed.

Some of the things that gripped my attention included:-

- the case of the gentleman from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who is a convicted rapist and due to be deported from the UK and returned to whence he came. Until he decided to get married, but not to a bride to be from the UK, but from Germany, which is, of course, one of our friends in the European Union. It seems that, as an EU citizen, the good frau will be free to remain in the UK and so will her Congolese convicted rapist husband once the marriage has taken place. And you wonder about my scepticism of all things EU.

- then there is the case of the pet shop owner recently set up by our boys in blue to sell a goldfish to a 6 foot lad under the age of 16. So, after 4.3million year of human existence, we have developed to the point whereby a 66-year old great grandmother can be threatened with jail, fined £1,000 and put on a curfew for two months with an electronic tag stuck around her ankle as a result of this sting by the Goldfish Squad. Next I expect to see the Government appointing a Goldfish Tsar and setting up Goldfish Watch. Something very fishy about the whole thing;

- and perhaps most bizarre of all, we had the extraordinary spectacle of Tony Blair`s own re-entry from his own alien world to walk amongst us once more. Never mind all the political stuff and the blatant electioneering that went with his re-emergence, what struck me most about it was this. Since mercifully leaving the Prime Minister job, Blair`s main preoccupation has been to make money by setting up companies galore, having directorships and well paid UN appointments and, of course, invading the lecture circuit, although I am mystified by his qualifications to lecture anyone and by the fact that anyone would pay to hear him. So, for this serial multi-millionaire money-grabbing poseur to turn up at Trimdon Labour Club, that bastion of traditional socialism, struck me as the ultimate contradiction and made me hope it won`t be too long before I can escape the `real world` once again.