POOR old national treasure Joanna Lumley has put her foot in it. Still, when it comes to the climate debate, that’s better than putting your face in it, like that Revolutionary Loft Insulation activist who glued his coupon to the road.

Joanna suggested a return to rationing to help save the wotsname. The planet. Initially, I saw merit in this, thinking back to the war (Second World) and after, when food was rationed and people got healthier because they couldn’t scoff whole cows on burgers and had to eat wholemeal bread.

But then she explained that you’d be given “a certain number of points and it’s up to you how to spend them, whether it’s buying a bottle of whisky or flying in an aeroplane”. Eh? Unhand me at once, madam! If you ration whisky, I’ll be out there gluing my heid to the Sheriffhall roundabout.

One person tweeted: “Utter nonsense but playing neatly into Boris Johnson’s love of wartime rhetoric.” Not so sure about that. I don’t think we went to war with the Germans because of their excessive sausage consumption.

What would we ration anyway? During WWII, it was chops, cheese and butter. But nobody eats these now. Today, you’d have to ration Hula Hoops (currently touted, no kidding, as a cure for Covid), caviar and mash ready meals, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Not going to happen.

Set a record

HERE are two things I’ve meant to do of an evening but never done: one, listen to my vinyl records; two, peruse my art books. I wanted these to be special evenings, with artificial candle light, ditching my usual dram for fine wine, and maybe having pretzels or Pringles, something right sophisticated.

But, at the time of havering, no such evening has transpired. My excuse with the vinyl is that my record player’s plug doesn’t reach to the socket, and a busy man in my position has no time to muck about with extension leads. In the absence of listening, I sniff the cardboard album covers. It’s the pong of my youth.

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Sometimes, I see folk’s names on the inside cover, sparking memories of buying the record off them. I’ve also a pile that a mate gave me for free. I think he inherited them off his big brother. It’s real Sixties stuff that I’ve hardly listened to – Buffalo Springfield, Butterfield Blues Band, the Byrds, Clear Light. Country Joe and the Fish, the Left Banke, Lemon Pipers, Moby Grape, Al Stewart, and one collection called The Rock Machine Turns You On.

I’ve plenty other Sixties stuff I bought myself, in the Seventies: Kinks, Syd Barrett, early Floyd, Donovan. I can’t remember the first album I bought: either The Age of Atlantic (record label’s sampler including Led Zeppelin, Yes, Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge) or Free Live (still the best live album ever). After that, it went downhill with much Quo and some Slade.

The late Seventies and Eighties vinyl features challenging acts like the Art Bears and Cabaret Voltaire, but also every note sung by Kate Bush (seven albums before I went all CD). There’s also some miscellaneous: a dozen classical, a Billy Connolly, a House at Pooh Corner.

The art books are more disappointing. I thought I’d tons of such tall tomes but, on checking the shelves I’d thought devoted to them, found mostly comic collections, How and Why books, instructional volumes on woodwork (periodic fad; never opened), Dad’s Army annuals, and illustrated guides to the engine room of the Starship Enterprise.

True, there are a couple of Carl Larsson collections, John Bauer, Eric Ravilious, Hans Dahl, artists inspired by Tolkien, an Ernest Griset, George Grosz (some obviously opportunistic purchases). There’s Gombrich’s famous Art and Illusion, kids’ stuff like Elsa Berskow and grown-up cartoons by Raymond Briggs’.

I know there’s a Hopper somewhere, a Gauguin and E.H. Shepard, but can’t find them. I’ve so many disorganised books I sometimes have to order things I know I already have. I can’t find exhibition catalogues (Munch, the Glasgow Boys) either. It doesn’t help that many books went back into crates when I intended flitting again.

I don’t enjoy reading about artists’ lives, as they’re always louche and morally disappointing. It’s just the pictures I enjoy. I know the square root of diddly about art, but some of it makes me feel stillness and peace. Unsurprisingly, therefore, I like pastoral English or Scandinavian scenes. I can appreciate Picasso, but find nought for my comfort in eyes stoatin’ aboot all over the place.

I enjoy visiting art galleries, except in Edinburgh, where I dislike the oppressive atmosphere and uncomfortable lack of Scottish people. I like the space between me and the painting. A bridge of calm spans it and, er, I cross this contemplatively. I’m out of my depth now and talking urine. But ye ken what I mean.

In the relative absence of books, I could look at my walls, which are covered in prints. But I dislike standing up of an evening. So, I’ll just remain seated in front of the telly and watch the fitba’. As usual.

Small wonder

WHATEVER ya got, there’s somebody out there to hate it. A six-foot woman who runs a “Tall Girl Brunch Club” has had death threats from small chaps with a wee bee in their bonnets. The club has had to hide the location of events to stop bijou men turning up with bazookas and home-made cardboard placards bearing messages like “Down with lofty lassies”.

The world is getting weirder. Jade Egemonye says: “People stare at me as if I’m not a human being.” Yep, if you stand out in any way, gawpers gonna gawp. Just ask my nose.

I’d have thought there were enough tall men out there nowadays to team up with the rangy gals. This column, standing at 5ft 9in, has complained bitterly about the number of tall men around today, insisting that wee Nicola Sturgeon take action on our behalf, with pleasingly ironic short periods of imprisonment for anyone over 5ft 10in.

However, we don’t go around dishing out death threats willy and certainly not nilly. People should stick to reasoned argument and mature debate, as exemplified in this column from time to time.

Driven daft

NEWS stories about buses: you wait ages for one and then a whole bunch come together. Drivers are quitting the buses for jobs as £70,000-a-year truckers. Good luck with that. I don’t know how anyone can drive anything that big. I can barely manoeuvre my wee saloon.

The development won’t please campaigners who say the lack of buses bosky-side is because the countryside is racist and elitist. I see. They want improved public transport to help ethnic minorities access the wild.

Countryside-dwellers, meanwhile, want more buses to get them from village to village without using the car. If there were more regular services, I’m sure bucolic folk would give them a go. Every Scottish island offers a similar service: you can get a bus out but not one back. Then there are all the footnotes on the timetables: not Mon-Sun; saints’ days excepted; bald passengers only.

I get that bosky buses would run empty some of the time but, if they were self or robot-driven, what would it matter? Nobody aboard! All together now, after the Talking Heads song: “We’re on the road to nowhere!”

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