WHO is Matlock's Banksy, the Derwentside equivalent of the acclaimed graffiti guerilla unmasked last year as public school boy with a thick West Country accent?
Don't know what I'm on about?
OK, between Woolies (gone, but not forgotten by my five-year-old) and Wards shoe shop is the image of a rodent of some description contemplating suicide.
Then there's the stencilled gas mask on the utility point at the top of Edge Road, and the sinister Charlie and Lola-style Jack Frost figure on some sort of storage bin outside Matlock Glass on New Road.
It's not your common or garden graffiti, that's for sure.
There's a bit of thought gone into these.
I can't work out whether the rodent is a rat because of its elongated body or a mouse because of its oversized ears.
I hope it's not a lemming because the whole mass suicide off the edge of cliff thing is a complete myth apparently, devised by some maniacal film director. I have QI, television's most middle-class programme, to thank for that factoid.
I don't object to it - the graffiti, that is, not the perverse manipulating of small defenceless animals into out-of-character acts of self-destruction or the excrutiating cleverness of Stephen Fry. 
It's not glaringly obvious from 100 yards away or messy like most graffiti is.
It is, however, a tantalising glimpse into an artistic mind or minds bent on some kind of barely perceptible revolt the object of which can possibly be deciphered from their artworks, yet is beyond the ken of most, which demands the cry of 'IF YOU'RE TRYING TO SAY SOMETHING THEN JUST S-P-E-L-L IT OUT'.
This frustrates me because I'm rubbish at hints and nuances.
My wife, in common with most women in my experience (that's not to suggest I have had an experience with most women), is like a metal detector of moods, implications and that which is generally unspoken.
She can hold the briefest of conversations with another woman and then, if she feels she can, relay to me not only what was actually said but deliver a veritable 'family tree' of insinuation and hidden meaning based on singular words which seemingly spawn entire paragraphs full of silent intrigue and torment.
Her gravestone will surely read: "Well, you know what that means, don't you?"
Another thing I'm really bad at (and it's a long list) is lip-reading.
I suppose if I had a hearing impairment I would, needs must, develop that skill, but I'm lucky enough to be able to hear.
So why is it that other people who can hear perfectly well can lip read and I can't?
To me it's like looking at someone chewing on something gristly, with no apparent communicative element whatsoever.
Yet whenever I stop looking like a rabbit caught in headlights, frown and mouth "eh?" in return I am met with rolled eyes and the synchronised shoulder slump of an exasperative sigh.
Then they do more exaggerated chewing, as if noiselessly applying the tried and trusted Englishman Abroad vocal technique and plainly expecting the penny to drop.
After three returned "eh?s" I invariably receive the three mouthed words I have no trouble understanding: "It doesn't matter."
Clearly, if it mattered enough they would sound the words so it was clearly audible for all to hear (unless, do you think, the point is that someone in the room shouldn't hear.)
Now and again, after such an episode I will say something to my wife that I gleaned from TALKING to someone else and she will, irritatingly, reply: "That's what I was trying to tell you."
You may have been trying to tell me, my love, but you neglected one crucial element: sound.
I quite like modern art as a construction of shapes and colours, but as soon as the painting's meaning is explained to me the whole effect is ruined and I can't bear to look at it a moment longer because until that point I felt something entirely different from that which the artist was trying, as the say, 'convey'.
At least those painted commemorative plates they advertise in tabloid Sunday supplements tell you precisely what the picture's about.
"To mark the 11th centenary since King Alfred burned an old dear's cakes because he was too busy thinking about giving the Danes a good hiding." one might say, or "A celebration of the wedding of a middle-ranking royal to a smarmy banker" or, my favourite, "Some ducks."
This either means I'm an idiot or supremely intellectual on a purely 'face value' basis.
So, as far as I'm concerned it's a rat/mouse on a cliff looking at a downward-angled dotted arrow.
And as I'd rather see that on a wall than 'Gaz and Ste 12/2/09', that'll do for me.
 


 

I LOVE snow. So much so, in fact, that on Monday, when the first really big splodge of this year's batch hit Matlock, I met a fellow snow-lover in the beer garden of a pub for a pint and a sit in the white stuff.
There we were, two blokes in our mid-30s with mortgages and kids, mulling over the worst case scenarios of the economic meltdown (no pun intended), drinking a pint of something called Canal Bottom or Shape Shifter or whatever, occasionally cooing like silly, teenage girls about perfect snowflake shapes that landed on our outer garments.
My arrival had been greeted in the only acceptable manner - with a snowball ambush in which I was blitzed into powdery oblivion.
Anything less and I would have been sorely disappointed.
It was a thoroughly professional job, leaving me so swiftly dazed that I could muster only one half-formed blobby ball, thrown woefully inaccurately, in response.
As the Geneva Convention dictates in battle situations such as this, I, the vanquished, was obliged to buy the round.
Much of the media coverage has hailed the snowfall as the heaviest for 18 years (those media organs who plumped for 'worst snowfall' as its description for the conditions should be liquidated immediately and their assets forfeited to all those who used the phrase 'best snowfall'), but that was an overwhelmingly London-centric assessment of the precipitation.
I can recall in early December 1990, leaving a pub in Belper in the rain, taking my girlfriend home and then heading for my home in nearby Ripley two hours later.
By this time, the rain had become snowfall so heavy that I was forced to abandon the scenic route home as I slipped and slid across the carriageway and detour along the more popular, but little clearer route.
I doubt if my speedometer got above 15 mph that night, but I made it home in the early hours and woke to a snowy scene the like of which I had not seen before or, indeed, have seen since.
To add a touch of inconvenience, we had no power and would not in fact be reconnected for EIGHT DAYS!!!!
Given that experience, and hazily remembered shopping trips as a nipper on the back of a sledge, on my snowy Richter scale this current dollop has registered a 'satisfactory to a bit rubbish'.
What I really love about snow, apart from its whiteness, crunchiness, coldness and all-round brilliantness is its role as an antidote to idiocy.
You see, summer brings about the moron in many of us, in my 'umble opinion, which is one of the reasons I hate it.
The sun fries the brain, we cook it in lager or white wine and we become utterly certain that everybody wants to hear every word we have to say even if it is the most garbled, bigoted, expletive-laden tripe.
Men routinely feel the urge to shed their shirts, oblivious to the fact that they were hideous enough to look at fully clothed.
Oh, and they wear sandals (surely the sole preserve - again pun unintentional - of daintily-footed, perfectly-pedicured females).
You don't get any of that in the snow.
The other great thing about snow is that it can make any town look - briefly - picturesque.
It blankets litter-strewn streets, untended roofs and sickly trees.
Most importantly, it keeps 90 per cent of the population indoors and out of view, which can only a be a good thing.
People moan about school closures and health and safety zealots, but I can't agree, I'm afraid.
Part of growing up in Britain should be about mucking around in the snow and if it doesn't arrive conveniently at the weekend, give them a day off in the week.
It's the kind of thing my and my drinking partner would bank on when we were at school in the winter months.
A canvas of white in the gloom.
In a moment of conversational emptiness on Monday I said something I didn't really mean. 
"I think I'd get a bit sick of it after about three months," I said imagining life somewhere particularly snowy.
"I wouldn't," came the reply.
Checkmate. I had shown a moment's weakness and been cudgeled into abject verbal defeat with two (strictly speaking, three) words.
Just like the snowball ambush, I had been punished in the right and proper manner.
We said our goodbyes and trudged home.
I made one more attempt at clawing back some kind of well, I don't know what, (but it certainly was not dignity) by forming a robust ball of snow and ice, packing it hard between my hands, and throwing it without warning at my friend, who was walking off in the opposite direction.
I was like the cowardly cowboy whose name I can't remember shooting the other cowboy whose name I can't remember in the back.
It missed.
Not only did it miss, he didn't even notice as a rolled down the road ahead of him.
Tail between legs, I went home...to be indoors and out of view.
Best place for me.


 

PLEASE allow me to introduce myself, as I believe the song begins.
I'm certainly not a man of wealth and occasionally my taste is questionable (but never unsavoury or inappropriate).
I can still just about remember where I was when Obama got elected, but can recall with perfect clarity the England World Cup 86 side so cruelly robbed by a stumpy bloke with one good leg (Shilton, Stevens, Sansom, Butcher, Fenwick, Reid, Steven, Hodge, Hoddle, Lineker, Beardsley. Subs: Barnes, Waddle. Robson injured, Wilkins suspended), and I don't even like football that much.
Anyway, I pitched up here about a decade ago (although I am a Derbyshire lad), buying a house with a view and an old iron bath but only three plug sockets.
The view's still there-ish, although we've been hit on the ground floor by an outbreak of conservatoritis on our row (thank goodness someone had the presence of mind to cut down that 40ft mature birch that was blocking Enthoven's from our upstairs eyeline).
Thankfully we've been immunised by prolonged courses of inept budgeting which, if taken in too large a dose, develops into self-inflicted poverty, the side effects of which include premature baldness, puffiness under the eyes, a tendency towards unreasonsable and illogical bickering and bad clothes. 
The bath is due another respray, but only for hygiene reasons, so it's not like it's a top priority or anything.
However, the socket breeding programme has proved a real success and we are about ready to publish our findings in the New Scientist.
Every few months E.ON write to congratulate us on our progress in this field, calculating its value to society (or should that be shareholders?) by means of bewildering formulas. It is obviously costly to employ such brilliant mathematicians so we donate £40 a month to keep their 'stattos' from starving.
Rumour has it that the home's previous owner hired a painter and decorator whom he subsequently failed to pay.
My own belief was that the owner must have made it clear to the contractor that payment would not be forthcoming before the job even began because it certainly looked upon our arrival that it had been decorated by someone who either a). had a vendetta in mind or b). only possessed one paint brush, and a large emulsion one at that.
Mind you, it's not as if he (or she) was working with the easiest canvas. 
The house must at one time have been a YTS plasterer education unit.
In fact, it looked like our house served as the venue for week one of a 26-week course for what were then aimless, skinny 16-year-olds with dreams of one day being the proud owners of a Vauxhall Nova with an exhaust that makes noise like a plegm-filled tuba, an in-car stereo with - get this - a graphic equaliser, a speedometer that measures beats per minute rather than miles per hour and an offensive sticker on the rear windscreen. 
Now, of course, they are shaven-headed, barrel-chested successful businessmen and fathers of four living in detached new-builds, driving Audis with tinted rear windows and holidaying in those foreign hotel complexes you should never EVER leave unless you want to risk getting mugged and where the food is on permanent display to tempt residents and flies alike. 
I've certainly progressed to the barrel chest, I'm too vain to have my head shaved and I can't do hot weather (what's the opposite of nesh?), but the rest remains a pipe dream.....
I have a theory, too, that the right angle was only discovered in the mid-20th century.
That's because there are - incredibly - almost none to be found in my Victorian gritstone terraced home and those that do exist were probably a mistake for which some poor labourer probably paid a heavy price.
I can almost picture the land-owner, heavily moustached, bowler-hatted, fiddling irritably with the chain of his pocket watch in silent rage as a hob-nail-booted, flat-capped ex-employee sidles dolefully off the site to his two-room hovel to break the news of his shameful dismissal for 'unacceptable neatness' to his wife and eight children, as she prepares a sawdust and well-water broth for tea.
Anyway, there's been a 100 per cent population growth (humans that is, not appliances) since we bought the house and it's feeling a little on the small side.
Add to that the fact that the neighbours' kids have had the temerity to become teenagers complete with enlarged larynxes (my children are, of course, the perfect seen-and-not-heard types the Victorian architects had in mind when building their wafer-thin dividing walls), self-awarded control of the TV and stereo volumes and like-minded friends to invite back, which in turn causes the parents - lovely people though they are - to retreat to the garden to stage an impromptu summer-long easy listening disco on the few sunny days we get.
Of course, had we had the foresight to anticipate the WORST ECONOMIC CRISIS SINCE THE 1930s, we might have sold up when prices were ridiculously (yet deliciously) overinflated.
But if we'd known what was going to happen we'd have also launched an audacious plebeian assault on the City, made a killing, bailed out before it got messy, and kept the house to rent out to poor people and remind us of our humble roots lest we forget them.
But as I said at the start, I'm not a man of wealth and getting the bathroom redecorated is as much pleasure as our four walls are going to give me for a while.
Now, where's that emulsion brush?