Honour thy parents

I bask in the fading light of this crisp Saturday afternoon.

I am back on the busking mission. I gave myself a full two days to feel officially miserable and publicly hacked off by the forced separation from my true love. However, my overdraft looms over me, and frankly, I hate feeling miserable and poor.

Yesterday I busked in Ilkley (posh, old crowd, very lucrative, quite boring), today in Wakefield (not posh, still lucrative, rowdy).

Today my father asked me if there was a more politically correct term for ‘busker’.

Which begs the question: is the word ‘busker’ politically incorrect?

Does it conjure fuzzy images of sallow-faced, sore-ridden junkies, squatting in a puddle outside Clinton’s Cards, injecting smack into one arm whilst tapping a drum with the other?

The word 'busk' sounds a bit like ‘husk’, a word with the dictionary definition:

“a shell or outer covering - considered useless.”

Not encouraging.

Or ‘rusk’. Definition:

“A light, soft-textured, sweetened biscuit.”

Not much help, everyone likes biscuits.

I offered the term ‘Street entertainer’ or ‘Street performer’. That definitely sounds more politically correct, if politics is an issue when you're strumming and taking the piss out of strangers on a prime bit of pedestrianised pavement.

I am starting to suspect that my father is doing and saying things these days in the distinct hope that I will write about him more on my blog.

Most writers crucify their parents, it’s true. I think he’s secretly disappointed by how much leniency they get on here. Because in blog terms, I’m statistically much meaner about Indian rickshaw drivers than I am about my own parents!

What a disgrace.

My father was clearly begging for a blog-heckle (bleckle?) when he was driving me home from the airport the other day and we stopped for food. This particular roadside services offered a surprisingly wide selection of different food outlets.

As I vocally praised the lord for the presence of a Marks and Spencers Food shop (always offering slightly over priced but generally healthy and tasty food), my Dad undid a lifetime’s teaching and instead hurried head first to the nutritional equivalent of having someone shit twice down your neck. He ate Burger King.

Whilst I chomped down on my lovely tortilla wrap, fresh juice and greek yoghurt, he lip serviced something incoherent about wanting ‘comfort food’ and forced down a ‘burger and chips.’

Yes I tried to stop him. The words ‘senses’ ‘leave’ ‘taken’ were probably reordered into a sentence. I also suggested the other mid-market options: 'Little Chef' and another family restaurant, you know the type - visually marketed around images of wooden barrells and wheat sheafs.

But he’s not that old, it’s not like I can officially override his decisions. Besides, he was paying.

Well, fair enough, I’ve eaten Burger King in my life. But nowadays I make a rather conscious effort to regard fast food outlets as serving Regurgitated Hell Pellets, staffed by The Children of Satan. It helps me to avoid the temptation of that awful, yet weirdly magnetic smell.

And then a couple of days later I find myself watching Morgan Spurlock’s film, Supersize Me, for the first time. If there was ever any doubt about the outright evil involved in the fast food industry, it was well and truly…

You get the point.

Hi Mum!