Interesting Lunch

Yesterday I went to lunch with a couple of the boys from Corby. I haven’t seen them for quite a while as

a) The offices where I work are frankly enormous.

and

b) one of them has been in Hong Kong for the last few months.

One of them is the most authentically Scottish man ever to be born outside of Scotland, the other is very English and is what’s described locally as ‘well connected’. To put it another way, he’s the person I would most likely call if I ever got on the wrong side of Tony. We’ll call him George.

Angus (can you guess which one he is?) was telling us that he had managed to get tickets for Question Time, which was being broadcast from Corby last night. He’d submitted a question in the hope of getting on the telly. It’s worth pointing out that Corby has a hugely Scottish streak, both genuine and aspirational, due to a migration of Glaswegians in the 60s when the steelworks was moved.

So, Angus’ question:

“Given the upcoming vote concerning Scottish independence, are there any plans to allocate voting rights to the residents of Corby?”

My well-connected friend hooted with laughter and asked, in the interests of clarity, where Angus was born.

“Ach, I was born in sight o’ The Great Loch.”

“You mean Corby boating lake?”

“If you want to call it that, aye.”

Also on the conversational agenda was the news that one of the local boozers had won a competition to display the FA cup for a couple of days, which drew a fair bit of disbelief all round. Corby is a bit of a ‘lively’ place for an evening out (think Blackpool, but without the donkeys) and this particular pub is more lively than most.

“It’ll need a couple of members of the SAS to come with it if they want it back again” chuckled George. He told me that the last time he walked in there was water gushing up the wall from the open pipes where somebody had just kicked the radiator off of the wall, there was a chap in the corner, fast asleep, with his shopping from Iceland* gently thawing out all around him, a middle aged woman passed out in the middle of the floor and a chap skinning up on the bar. This, apparently, counted as a quiet night.

I didn’t see Question Time last night, but I hope that the panel went out for a post-show drink.

NDC

* - The taste-free frozen food chain, not the country.