Duckers & Diving: In a right Pickle(s)
THIS week our stouthearted scribe risks incurring the wrath of the gods by recounting a tale about heavyweight Communities Secretary Eric Pickles and discovers the portly politician can put on a brolly good show when he needs to.
Had the gods finally decided to punish controversial Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles?
There he was giving his support to the launch of the South Kidderminster Enterprise Park on the town’s former British Sugar site when the heavens opened.
Torrential rain; thunder and lightning.
Thankfully a small marquee had been put up for the occasion and equally thankfully it didn’t leak and neither did the weather drench the Pickles’ spirits who, despite his wide portrayal as some sort of political ogre, was in affable mood.
Albeit he perhaps wisely watched from under an umbrella as a long reach demolition machine took the first step to flattening silos at the Stourport Road complex rather than have a bash himself.
Having arrived courtesy of the Severn Valley Railway, and had the nearby West Midlands Safari Park, also intent on expansion, pointed out to him, he told his bedraggled audience of business executives, councillors and school children: “I looked across at the Safari Park and there were rhinos and elephants.
“Can I thank you for making this complete by putting on a monsoon. Not many people can do that.”
And he recalled a similar occasion when the rain was sheeting down.
He was with the Bishop of Chelmsford and quipped that, given the circumstances, the reverend gentleman couldn’t possibly have much of a hotline to God.
To which the Bishop replied that control of the weather was nothing to do with him.
“I’m in sales, not management,” he told Pickles.
Boom! Boom!
