Ramblings Around Derbyshire

A collection of shamblings culled from the local press written by Bob Ellis.

MORI VULGARIS

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get from Sainsbury's to The Guildhall without being interviewed. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds...

I wish they wouldn't do this as it's costing an arm and a leg in Walkmans. The common market research interviewer, mori vulgaris, is easily recognised as a form of down-on-her-luck Linda Snell with a clipboard.

A pack animal, they tend to over-winter in Dixon's doorway using the best of the daylight to feed, the more broody specimens showing an instinctive nesting ritual on sites they return to year after year somewhere around the Co-op. Courtship displays have never been observed, but the early spring has combined with a successful breeding programme to bring them out in record numbers.

Hunting is ruthless and bloody. When the sun is at it's highest, while their prey is out gathering food, they strike. Forming packs of four or more, backs together facing out like meerkats, hiding among the evangelists and closet arsonists selling three lighters for a pound on East Street, they pick off those least able to defend themselves. It's usually me.

Not quite quick enough to save myself being held back by carrier bags, I freeze in the death-cry, "Have you got a minute, Sir?" The minute will be a quarter hour so, if this time is to be my last, I shall go a true Englishman and lie through my teeth...

"Do you or any of your family work in any of these professions?" They have "journalist" down there but as an L-plated hack it's only a minor fib to say no. You see, they don't want creative types, luvvy. Name, address, do you use any of these products?

If it's booze, I tick nearly all the boxes rambling on about my season ticket at The Betty Ford Clinic, my memorial seat in the snug of The Duck and Fruit bat and collected works of Jeffrey Bernard.
"Oh, yes. Any children?" Too late for the Oscar nominations, I stoop and fixing her with one beady eye, I croak, "Thirty-seven..."

With luck you are invited into the Central Suite to taste test the latest "style drink". This nearly always looks as if the grape was grown on the shady side of the pathology lab but you rant on about it being as dry as a marsupial's pouch with bouquet a little casky but with fluid overtones of jogger's locker, an arrogance thrusting hither and yon and an aftertaste like a tin of condemned veal.

With even more luck they won't ask you again. I'm working on getting blacklisted. In a straw poll in the pub today, we all admitted to fibbing to market research interviewers. This could explain why we have some of the products we have.

Now we've got Westfield with many more nesting sites, should the Council want to appoint an Interviewer Warden, I have my own pointed stick.