MOTORMOUTH

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I should warn you that they are incredibly weird, incredibly surreal and most definitely "eccentric".

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Norwich is the capital city of Norfolk (the locals claim it is also the capital of East Anglia). It is also the base for where the University of East Anglia, and is one of the few cities in the UK which has two cathedrals (both of different denominations). And if you are ever unfortunate to find yourselves there, you will quickly establish that it is one of the worst laid-out cities in this country.

For a start, it would seem that to continue the long history of shopping that has taken place in this area (mainly due to the fact that it is is geographically very close to Great Yarmouth, a gateway to the North Sea), building developpers and business men in blue suits have clapped their hands together, did gay little morris dancing with each other and decided that the way to go forward was to clash 18th Century architecture with bland 1960's breeze blocks. All in the name of subtlety and Dorothy Perkins.

Then, whenever the dimwit who thought that Norwich needed to be built drew up the plans for the city, he quite clearly thought that the main C-of-E cathedral needed to be placed 1 mile away from the main city centre (where the city hall and the world's most homosexually-inclined market is, what with all its fancy-coloured tents and minimal movement room). This means that to visit it you have to track past a roundabout, the headquarters of Anglia TV (which means you are at a major risk of being approached by a woman in a red suit-dress thing with a microphone and a hairstyle that resembles the head of a penis) and the Norwich College of Art and Design, a place that looks as if it was loosely constructed using panels you would find on a cargo ship, before being placed on a corner of a busy road. Honestly, if they really do teach Art and Design in a place as gormless as that, it's not surprising that Norwich itself has been badly designed.

And so we move on to this Cathedral, with what they say has the second largest spire in the country. Nice. But that really is the only thing large about this place, which has the effect of indifference upon someone who was expecting so much more.
The nave is as wide as a sewage pipe, with the west front about as imposing on you as a piece of mink. Honestly, I would have been more exhilirated watching Cash in the Attic.
"Oh, but it's got the largest cloisters in the country"! they proclaim in their farmer accents with bits of hay spitting out of their mouths. How lovely for the fine people of Norwich to have a a cathedral with ruddy great cloisters. I've got a ruddy great nose (but not a Polish nose), but that doesn't mean to say I'm any more of the man I would be. If anything, it's a problem; I'm surprised it hasn't got an ASBO slapped on it, the amount of windows it has demolished and old ladies it has pushed into the paths of oncoming LGVs.

I never went to the Roman Catholic cathedral. I don't know what it is; I do not mind Roman Catholics in other European countries, but in England, it just doesn't seem right. I couldn't care less if Church of England was only created by a fat man with a beard who liked eating chicken legs and chopping women's heads off in the 1500s it, to me, feels 'right'; a special religion for a special country. Roman Catholics seem in this country like taking away the butter and spreading your slice of bread with wine or orange juice. And I'm sorry, but what a pious lot they are, always looking down at you with their spectacles perched on the edge or their noses and sneering. I can just see what they think of the rest of us: "that's it, you'll go home and have sex with your wife whilst wearing some latex. You disgusting pigs". Is it any wonder that Newcastle and Liverpool, cities which are very high in concentration of Roman Catholics, have some of the highest teenage pregnancies in this country? Is it any wonder that people over the age of 30 in these cities are some of the most horrid, tight-lipped, tight-fisted spider-muffs anyone could ever have the misfortune of knowing? Mind you, I'd still rather be in the company of Roman Catholics than people who believe that taking cannabis is good for you as it gets you friends, and that sexual innuendos, particularly of anal stuff, are the epitome of comedy.

But moving back to Norwich...This is a city famed for mustard, which as far as I'm concerned, is a vile yellow product that makes your tongue receptive to drinking water and your stomach grumble for a week. In fact, lots of things about Norwich is yellow. The symbol for Norwich Union. The colour of the bricks for Norwich Union. The lettering on Norwich and Peterborough building society. The colour of the buns in the many Bakers Oven shops. The colour of the vicars. The hay that everybody eats in this city and in the region around it. The teeth of everybody that lives here.
Despite this, the Norwichians protest that actually their city is a Green City. In 2006 it was voted the greenest city in the country, and was given particular praise for cutting fuel consumption. How they did this is simple, and it's cheating. Norfolk never had any fuel consumption to start with. Norfolk is a part of the country where people flock from miles upon miles to watch a vehicle move. Norfolk is where witchcraft and buggery happen. Norfolk is England's capital of incest. Honestly, if they saw a car driving by with a spoiler on the back, they'd stop the driver and ask him whether this 'spoiler-thing' was as useful at ploughing potatoes as the massive claws they screw to the back of their tractors, or horses if you're in a village.
But the green thing in this city reaches its downright worst when it comes to politics. There are 10 Green Party MPs in the council; there are only 5 more Labour MPs. If you've read on of my response comments to a rude little worm on my last blog, you'll see exactly what I think about Green Party activists and Environmentalists.

Goodness help anybody that has to go to Norfolk. It has a rubbish university, its finance companies are among the most unreliable, the people like eating horse-food with Coleman's mustard spread all over it, they fancy their sisters, they're useless at designing cities, and their greatest creation - the Lotus, is owned by the Malaysian company Proton.

Norwich - don't bother yourself the effort.

Not all that long ago, something hideous and wretched called the Daily Mail actually did something useful for once. It launched a campaign to try and ban the plastic supermarket bag because herons and tortoises were munching on them and as a result were choking to death.

I, as someone who detests the sight of some ignorant woman in a beige coat looking at her empty packet of Hula Hoops and then proceeding to drop it on the floor, hoping a Lithuanian in a fluorescent jacket will rush to her side and pick it up with some litter pincers, jumped up and down with joy like a fat chick in a tracksuit at the sight of a mountain of Dairy Milk. I can bear the sight of people mowing down dogs on footpaths with their bicycles, and watching someone riding a bull through a supermarket just leaves me shaking my head, but people who drop litter? They deserve to be stripped of their skin with an apple peeler, before having acupuncture induced on them whilst being constantly covered in salt.

It would seem that Gordon Brown was also happy with the Daily Mail campaign, mainly, me thinks, because he was so busy saying “yes yes och aye!” to Brussels that recently hasn’t had time to inflict any new laws. Whatever the reason, it certainly made sure Alasdair “look at me and my bushy eyebrows cos I’m a boring old fart” Darling included a charge of 5p on every plastic bag used in supermarkets in his yearly budget last week.

5p. Hmm. Well, that may be expensive for, say, a vicar or an asylum seeker, but to the rest of us (a large majority, you surely must agree) that’s not exactly going to put us in major financial debt. It certainly won’t do much for resolving the Northern Bank crisis, nor will it make us think much about the environment. In fact, I’ve just looked in my wallet and I counted eleven 5p coins. Any more and I might as well buy the whole stack of plastic bags in Sainsbury’s.

And what exactly does this charge achieve? I haven’t worked out the answer, but one thing I can say is that a charge presumes that you’ve planned a shopping trip. Fine, but what if you’re travelling home from work, say, and suddenly you were hungry? “Damn it, I wish I had that plastic bag I bought last week, cos I don’t half fancy a packet of Minstrels now!”

Of course, one could forget the charge and completely ban the bag altogether. Not only would this put an immediate stop to the problem, but it’d also mean that Paris Hilton, a woman so plastic she might as well have “Tesco” stamped across her head if it weren’t entirely covered in the words “syphilis seller”, would be prohibited from these shores forever.

Yet even here there is a problem. What do you replace the bag with? Unless you are Peter Kay or Michelle McManus, you probably won’t be able to carry all your shopping under your armpits, and thus need some other way of holding all your goods. A wicker basket? Oh, don’t be stupid. They’re for milk maids with Cornish accents. The Women’s Institute have suggested that we could all have bags made from hemp and wheat, which would either then be made into biscuits after use or degrade a lot quicker than the 2000-year plastic bag. Very novel, Mavis. But tell me, you stupid old nag, how is anyone going to be able to mass produce these? Via grannies sitting by the fireplace listening to The Archers? I don’t think so, somehow.
So, what about the brown bag then? Easy to mass-produce, easy to degrade, easy to carry lots of things. Yes, but only when the weather is like that of a severe drought. Any hint of rain, and you might as well be carrying your shopping in a sand castle.

Oh dear. It seems that the bag will have to stay for a bit longer. But hang on, why should this campaign stop at just plastic bags? What about the products sold inside the shop?
Yes, I understand you cannot exactly do a pick and mix when it comes to crisps and Smarties, but take for example the cauliflower. Michael Jackson may need an oxygen tent around him 24-7 just to keep him alive, but the cauliflower doesn’t.
“Oh, but the plastic keeps it fresher for longer” I can hear you cry. Hmm. But do you honestly like the idea of eating a 3-year-old vegetable that, had it not been for some horrid air-tight packaging, would have rotted away? Urgh.

But everything seems to come in plastic packaging. Button mushrooms. Magazines. Those silly weeds that women with high-blood pressure eat at breakfast instead of cornflakes. And dare I even mention the Easter Egg? Two hundred tons of petrochemicals diverted from where they should be (the tank of a car) to puff up a chocolate egg so small it wouldn’t even stretch the womb gates of a wren.

It looks like, while the intention is good, the plan was actually a foiled one before it began.