I SHOULD have become a plumber. Readers’ chorus: “Yes, you should. There’s still time, young Bobby.”

Alas, while it’s kind of you to call me young, if not Bobby, I’m too old to learn new tricks. Also, I’m handless and impractical. And I don’t like poking about in toilets.

That said, I did consider plumbing and other trades a few years ago. There’s good money in it now and you feel genuinely useful – I can’t imagine what a job like that must be like. I could, however, picture myself flooding entire peninsulas and causing nationwide blackouts after trying to fix someone’s sink.

Tradesmen are respected now. But the jobs are failing to attract a “diverse” workforce. I know: yawn. However, the figures are startling, and could even muck up the tortoise race to net zero because there won’t be enough tradesmen to replace gas boilers and switch to heat pumps in time for 2050.

According to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the plumbing workforce is 95 per cent white, at least 95 per cent male, and more than two-thirds of its workers are over 45.

I’ve no idea why the first situation should be the case. As for the second, it could be that women don’t like getting dirty (well, they never put out the bins). Could be, from my limited experience trying to shift plumbing’s huge nuts and bolts, that it’s a strength thing. It’s a man’s job, hence my incompatibility with it.

Or, possibly, there’s lingering derision in some quarters for a career in trades. However, as Mica May, co-director of Stopcocks Women Plumbers, put it: “If everyone goes to university the country will fall on its face. You’ve got people saying ‘only thickos go into trades’ and young people don’t see the skilled aspect of it.”

She said it didn’t help that soap operas often portrayed tradespersons as “scallies” or even murderers. Yes, that’s an image problem, all right. Even journalists are usually portrayed as lovable, morally corrupt rogues.

But my image of plumbers and other tradesfolk is one of admiration and envy: the overalls, the big tools, the practicality. They cure distressing household problems. Imagine having people being grateful to you.

Young people: your country needs you to plumb. Forget university. Engage the brain in practical matters rather than idle speculation. Reader’s voice: “But you carved a career out of idle speculation, Bob.” True, I did. But, in so doing, I lost the respect of decent ratepayers and forfeited any sense of self-worth.

Worse for swear

I SWEAR too much. Also, I don’t get out often these days but, when I do, I find I’ve forgotten how to behave.

Partly, that manifests itself in talking too much. Formerly famed for being taciturn, now it’s all, as Alan Bennett would put it, gab-gab-gab. And much of the gab consists of f-, b- and c-. I wish I was a better person. A novel written in my head involves two versions of moi: the first is the fellow you see before you: dissolute, bitter, angry. The other, in alternate chapters, would be a straighter, more conservative moi: never having been a hippy or been cynical and immature or espoused the far-left politics that bequeathed us the current deliration.

I’d just have married and had kids and pets, like the unthinking normies. I’d be an accountant, lawyer or teacher. My novel plan was that, towards the end, the two versions of me would converge. Of course, now that I’ve told you about it, I won’t write it.

But crucial parts of that other me would consist of being clean-cut, well-spoken, a martyr to social obligation, and someone who rarely used bad language.

Alas, as regards the latter, I do not consider myself unusual. Indeed, a tribunal judge in yonder Berkshire this week opined that the F-word is so “commonplace” now that it cannot be considered offensive.

It’s another marker for the decline of civilisation. You say: “It’s just a word, Bob. No need to get your knickers in a twist.” Knickers, there’s another one. Rude.

Where will it all end? And don’t you dare say: “Eff knows.” It’s not big and it’s not clever. And neither, alas, am I.

I’m not a number

ARGUABLY controversial television personality Jeremy Clarkson claims snooty nimby-types complaining about his farm-shop tend to be those with names rather than numbers for their houses.

Could be some truth in this, though surely many common people in the boondocks have house names rather than numbers. I’m as common as swear words, and even my hoose has a name, When I lived at another rustic address, I just couldn’t get a woman at a call centre to understand that I didn’t have a street name and number. It was bizarre.

I said: “I live in the country, madam. I don’t have a street or a house number.”

She said: “You have to have a street name and number, you unspeakable clot. Everybody has. I need them to process the form.”

In the end, there was just no getting through to her, so I terminated the conversation by telling her to eff off.

Bright outlook for dark sky

Now we’re knackering the night sky, with the number of planned satellite launches so great that 10 per cent of “stars” you see will actually be satellites. There are 8,000 up there but hundreds of thousands are planned. Regulation is paltry. They should at least have to go down the post office for a licence.

Alien microbes

Increasingly, one feels we should leave ooter space alane. Nasa is planning to send rock samples from Mars down to Earth, sparking fears they could harbour deadly microbes which might trigger a worldwide pandemic. Earth is already full of these little swine trying to kill us, without importing more from up yonder.

Colditz war

More dispiriting revelations about Colditz. Already we’ve heard of bullying, class distinction, libidinous hanky-panky, and inebriation on hootch. Now we learn that, as part of their “goon-baiting”, inmates at the famous PoW castle in Germany made their bottoms blow loud raspberries. Frankly, I’m beginning to feel sorry for the guards.

Colouring books

“Shelfies” is the new bourgeois fad whereby folk post snaps on social media of their posh, bespoke libraries. Some collections are organised by colour. Better still: display them by coloured title: Black Beauty, The Woman in White, Anne of Green Gables, The Silver Chair, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Color Purple. Er, etc.

Mocking birds

Feeding the garden birds is good for our wellbeing, helping to cheer us up, it says here. I have two wee robins that eat out of my hand every morning. They communicate to me with trills and tweets. Translation: “Haw, Rab, why don’t you cheer up, ya greetin’-faced poltroon?” Wee swine that they are.

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