Homer’s cure
Jeremy Clarke
This morning, when I woke up, I reached out and pressed the button on my bedside radio and the first word that came out of it was the word ‘tolerance’. The radio was tuned to the Today programme. It isn’t the first time that the first word I’ve heard has been ‘tolerance’. For the past few weeks I’ve been keeping a mental record. I’ve heard ‘tolerance’ three times as I’ve pressed the button, ‘Muslim’ three times and ‘community’ twice.
Then I came downstairs and looked at the newspaper. Starving millions, an overheating planet, polluted skies and oceans, scarcities, extinctions, wars, rumours of wars — it was grim reading. And that was just the advertisments. There was also a load of comment and speculation about the credit crunch and the collapsing property market and the potentially disastrous commodities bubble. A pundit warned that until liberal capitalism acknowledges that the earth’s resources are finite, we’re all doomed.
Am I anxious? I am not. Did starting the day with the politically tainted word ‘tolerance’ depress me? Not in the slightest. On the contrary, I’m in a state of euphoria. For this morning the postman finally delivered the Homer Simpson talking bottle-opener I’d won on eBay.
I hope nobody takes a blind bit of notice of that newspaper columnist and liberal capitalism stays as it is. Under which other political system would I be able to buy a Homer Simpson talking bottle-opener? I’m not a devotee of the Simpsons TV show. I saw it only once, on a wet afternoon in a caravan in north Cornwall, with two children, who gave me no choice in the matter. But I’m a big fan of the merchandise.
The talking bottle-opener looks like an ordinary bottle-opener with a fat plastic handle. Lever the cap off a beer bottle with it, however, and you hear Homer Simpson having a weird conversation with wife Marge. She says, ‘Beer makes Homer go cray-zee.’ Then Homer yells, ‘Don’t mind if I dooo!’ Then, out of his mind with excitement at the prospect of a beer, he proves Marge right with a succession of mad animal noises. If, as some contend, alcohol addiction is caused by demonic possession, I can imagine an alcoholic’s resident demon celebrating every drink with a similarly diabolic hooting and babbling.
I first encountered the talking bottleopener at this year’s Cheltenham Festival. Each year I’m invited for two or three days during the week into the famous racing tipster Colonel Pinstripe’s luxurious hospitality tent in the Club enclosure. To occupy his guests in the evenings, the Colonel also hosts a lavish week-long house party at a lovely old country house in the Cotswolds. The interior is all wood panelling, comfortable chairs, sporting paintings and trophies, freshly cut flowers, tranquil log fires, clacking snooker balls, cigar smoke, mullioned windows (through which one can see nothing but well-ordered countryside), and conversation so intelligent, or at least well informed, that I keep right out of it.
This year some cheerful soul brought along to the house party this insane talking bottle-opener and we all nearly died laughing at it. I was the only person drinking bottled beer. But once I got into my stride, Homer Simpson was crying ‘Don’t mind if I dooo!’ every 20 minutes or so and setting the African Grey parrot off on a virtuoso performance of whistling. You’d think some of the older guests might have quickly tired of something so inane. But they didn’t. Each time I used the opener the entire company fell about laughing. It does help, I suppose, if you’ve had a few drinks and maybe a couple of winners when you first hear it.
As soon as I got home I set about getting hold of one for myself. A Homer Simpson talking bottle-opener came up for auction on eBay and I won it for £5.53. The seller was called Alastair and he lived in the Scottish highlands. I dispatched a postal order, notified him that it was on the way, and looked forward to entertaining friends and family with it.
A week passed. Then another. Then I received an email from Alastair. The postal order hadn’t arrived. Had I posted one, as I’d said I had? We had to conclude that it had been stolen. I sent a second postal order. A week later that one hadn’t arrived either. I sent a cheque concealed between the pages of a paperback called Secrets of Dog Training by D. Brian Plummer. Five weeks later, postal orders and cheque mysteriously arrived on his doormat all together. Alastair returned the cheque and one postal order and posted the goods.
I have it now, beside me on the desk. Ecological catastrophe? Financial disaster? Multiculturalist propaganda on the radio? Bring it on. I’ve got a Homer Simpson talking bottle-opener to cheer me up. Don’t mind if I dooo!
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