PINS AND NEEDLE

Regular readers of The Autolycan – should there be any – will notice something odd about this article from the very beginning. That's right, there is no standfirst. Yes you do, it's that bit at the top which introduces the article and which usually looks like this. But this time the subject matter is so inconsequential, so very trifling, piddling, pettifogging, nit-picking and footling – and hats off to Roget for his matchless command of synonyms – that there can be no standfirst, because there is so very little to standsecond and nothing at all to standthirdorsubsequent.

In part, this is about prepositions, those minuscule elephant traps that all too easily ensnare the unwary and transform meaning with no more than a couple of letters. I am looking – with transparent desperation – for something to pin an article on. Mrs Miller – with equal desperation – is looking for something to pin an article up. Don't worry about Mrs Miller; we'll come to her by and by.

The Autolycan has always had a standfirst. It's how you know that you're going to get a story about Neolithic dentistry, about elderly bank robbers, even about a yacht club in rural Oxfordshire. Or some travesty of Chaucer, Wilde or Wodehouse. Now there's a thought – what about all three? What if a trawl through the alleged garage - piled to the rafters with old kitchen units, offcuts of lino which no longer match any oncuts of lino, dead spiders, great strapping spiders whose agility and ferocity would make feral cats tremble, together with, incongruously, a chemical toilet unused in decades but which 'might come in handy one day' - what if somewhere under this lot we found the original manuscript of Shreeves and the Wife of Bath's Handbag? That would be a future edition of The Autolycan to wow them, wouldn't it?

See what happens without a standfirst? You get an incoherent ramble about dead spiders and prepositions. Ah yes, prepositions, that was it. And Mrs Miller. We'll come to her.

Fifty years and more ago, Dr Peter Clarke, Head of English at my boys' grammar school and known universally as Basher probably ever since Wodehouse's time and quite possibly Chaucer's, dinned into me everything I know – and much that I have forgotten - about the arcane rules of writing what he insisted was good English. Relative clauses, and when to use that and when to use which. He would have winced in unfeigned distress at a verbless sentence like that one. It would have offended his fastidious sensibilities. He was of course mustard when it came to prepositions - whether it should be different from or different to – the latter being unacceptable back then and requiring the precision launch of an immaculately aimed piece of chalk. (We never dared risk the American different than, which would inevitably have resulted in Basher deploying heavier artillery in the form of the blackboard duster. Whenever he did so, of course, he was left with nothing to clean the blackboard with, and mostly resorted to using his gown. We thought that was hilarious; half a century on I imagine Mrs Basher would have begged to differ. He was no fan of brackets at the best of times, and a bracket opened nearly a hundred words ago like this one, and showing no signs of reaching the far end any time soon would only have depleted Hillingdon Borough Council's precious reserves of chalk still further. Heaven knows what he would have lobbed into our trenches had he he spotted a shameless and brazen attempt – rather like this one – to digress yet further in the bracket because there really was nothing to say about the main subject.) Sorry Basher, that's 155 words in the bracket now, none of them relevant. If you're reading this wherever you are, I fear one of your exquisitely nuanced marks. C+?+, perhaps? If that.

Clumsy construction like that would have triggered a beautifully crafted letter of complaint to my parents, overflowing with elegant uses of the subjunctive, with accurately used gerunds, and of course with nary a split infinitive or a preposition to end a sentence with. Which brings us labouring to within touching distance of Mrs Miller, if you'll excuse such a conceit in these sensitive times.

Mrs Miller is a lady with a mission. Not a very noble one, it's true, but she has plainly been reading about an outfit called OnePoll. OnePoll has been studying trivial complaints and has published a list of the most trivial its researchers have fielded from aggrieved respondents in performance of their somewhat contrived duties. Top of the list was a rant that two Weetabix don't fit into a round bowl properly 'resulting in one becoming soggy and the other dry'. Dynamite, that. Or what about the lament that supermarket assistants work too quickly, scanning goods faster than you can pack them? That'll teach the politicians to bang on about hard working families all the time. And then there was the man who was unfeasibly distraught that his wallet wouldn't close properly 'because there's too much money in it.' How do you top that?

Mrs Miller has. She has felt the blood rising. She has stared these mere pretenders straight in the eye. She has picked up the gauntlet. She has felt the blast of war blow in her ears, stepped unto the breach, stiffened the sinews and summoned up the blood. She has trumped the lot of them. Mrs Miller's peerless complaint to Belton Parish Council, recorded in the Scunthorpe Telegraph, stands head and shoulders above – unless that should be feet and ankles below – the puny milksop competition raked up by OnePoll.

That it appears in the Scunthorpe Telegraph is in itself of some significance. Once a mighty daily with the word Evening nestling proudly between Scunthorpe and Telegraph, it has, like so much of the provincial press, had to contract and relaunch itself as a weekly. You would think, wouldn't you, that with only one edition per week whereas there used to be six, the Telegraph would eschew the whimsy for the weighty, and that the worthless would be worsted by the worthy.

And perhaps it has. Perhaps the Telegraph has touched a nerve after all. Ray Matthews, clerk to Belton Parish Council, certainly seems to think so. In his bluff, no nonsense, North Lincolnshire way, Mr Matthews has had the temerity to answer Mrs Miller back. As far as Mr Matthews is concerned, Mrs Miller has previous, having complained before that Parish Council minutes were not published quickly enough. 'This has been explained to Mrs Miller before,' he rasped in what were doubtless controlled but exasperated tones, 'we cannot publish them until they have been approved at the next meeting.' But his most vituperative remarks were reserved for her most recent complaint. 'Nothing is going to blow away,' he gritted through clenched teeth 'the edges of the paper curl slightly and I believe she thinks it doesn't look neat enough. I don't know what her problem is.'

And so, in what I claim as a World Première for a standpenultimate, we come almost apologetically to Mrs Miller's complaint.

A RESIDENT has issued a complaint to her parish council - that there are not enough pins in 

the village notice board.

The unusual complaint was brought to Belton Parish Council at the August monthly meeting.

The resident said she was "not happy" that not enough pins are used for notices on the notice 

board.

Alongside issues such as grass cutting, tidiness and hedges, the notice board problem was 

discussed under the "parish affairs and other items of an urgent nature" section.

Scunthorpe Telegraph

We must assume that Belton Parish Council has a Complaints Procedure, and that the

 unfortunate Mr Matthews is obliged to adhere rigidly to it in order to head off a further

 complaint about the Complaints Procedure not being followed.  He has, as required, pinned

 back his ears. Now that he has done so, his opinion of his disputatious parishioner is not 

difficult to pin down.

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ANAGRAM CORNER

                       REBEKAH BROOKS - ANDY COULSON

                       HACKERS?  NAY, BONKERS!  (Loud boo!)

And finally, an Autumn bonus.......

This story's a bit of a wrecker

Of the image of Andy and Bekka

He looks quite aghast

And is clearly downcast,

He really should keep up his pecker!