[Ramrod]

From the Times :

August 19, 2003

Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m back just in time to find itââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s backs against the wall time for my back wall
By: Alan Coren



Yes, you are not wrong, I am back. As a matter of fact, I am as back as it is possible for me to be. I am up a ladder leaning against my back wall. I am not here in order to say, hello, wall, I am back, too, I missed you, I am not even up here to thank the wall for the terrific job it did in protecting the house that the wall is at the back of, I am up here because I have come back to discover that the terrific job it did is in jeopardy. I am up here because I have been asked to sack the wall, and I wanted to run my hand along the top of it just to make sure of something before I let fly at the people who want to take my back wallâ₠¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s livelihood away. I intend to fight to save its job.
It has being doing that job unswervingly for nigh on 200 years. I say unswervingly, but it has, not surprisingly, grown a bit buckled in service, it has lost its ruddy youth, it has got mossy, it has been nibbled away by this climbing creeper and that, but as for the climbers it was formally employed to keep out, it has never failed: it has deterred Regency footpads and Jack the Ripper, it has seen off all three Krays and Osama bin Laden, it has taken it upon itself to reassure Mrs Coren and me and all who preceded us down the long arches of the criminal years that we may pick up our buckets and spades with a light and carefree heart and decamp to wherever in the world our fancies take us, in the sure and certain knowledge that our premises were in the safe hands of our back wall.

That is because it has broken glass along the top. It is very old glass: this is a back wall you could lorry on to the Antiques Road Show to bring the serried experts whimpering gratefully to their knees. But now the council wants me to chisel it off: I have just arrived home to discover among the teetering pile of mail a curt note informing me that the glass on my back wall constitutes a danger to anyone who might want to climb over it. Which is why I have come down off the ladder, now, and into the house, and vaulted over the bags that Mrs Coren is unpacking †� silently, because the years have taught her not to ask a man why he has brought only one sandal back when, without even a sidelong glance, he has hurtled past a screen on which South Africa has just lost its eighth wicket for only 81 †� grabbed a telephone and begun letting myself be bounced from one to another of 183 different departments which would not exist without my heavy subsidy until I at last find myself in contact with a prong who explains that the glass-on-wall initiative is part of the ongoing policy of care in the community. Broken glass on top of a wall could mean that someone might get hurt.

I am very patient with him. My voice is hardly more than a shriek when it points out that I am the community and what I care about is someone who might get hurt when there is no glass on top of a wall to stop hurters from climbing in. For this I get a literally sharp answer: the prong suggests a *****ly shrub. I observe that it would take a *****ly shrub ten years to grow to deterrent height, does he appreciate how many household chattels could disappear over the course of four thousand days and nights, by 2013 I might not have even one sandal to stand up in, and anyway, what is the difference between a villainââ‚à ‚¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s cutting his hand on a bit of beer-bottle and poking his eye out on a thorn, is there an ongoing policy about organically grown sharp things, but he merely invites me to ring my local Crime Prevention Officer; who says, yes, a glass-topped wall could be construed as an offensive weapon, and when I reply that I would be prepared to sign a piece of paper promising not to pick my wall up and chase a burglar down the street with it, insists that this is a serious matter, I could well find myself in trouble if a thief were hurt on my premises. He does not elaborate, but hanging in the air between us, I can tell, is the reminder that Tony Martin has recently left a cell vacant, Mrs Coren could soon be repacking my bag.

Where might this not end? I do not tell him I have coated my drainpipes with slippery paint †â€ÂÂÂ� it is possible that a second-storey man might not make it past the first floor, break his ankle, and leave the courts to decide which of us gets six months †â€ÂÂÂ� nor that my burglar alarm is a bit loud, it could quite literally frighten the life out of a villain with a dodgy ticker, nor that I have a sash-window that comes down, uninvited, at a hell of a lick and could easily leave an intruderââ‚à ƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s head rolling around on my bedroom carpet. I merely thank him, and ring off, because I have been up the ladder and I know two things. I know that my broken glass is very old, and I know that this is a listed building, and no one may touch a hair of its heritage fabric without asking the freeholderââ ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s permission. The freeholder is the Crown. I intend to do nothing. The council may write to the Queen, if it has the bottle.