Drayton Bans Everything

What a lesson it is to us never totally to close ourselves off from the world. For if, like the ungodly monks of the Romish religion, we were to lock ourselves away into (strictly segregated) monasteries and nunneries - we would miss out so much news with which we can educate ourselves.

For example, I have been hearing about  the people who, not content with boycotting the News of the World before it closed, are now boycotting all things from News International.

I was already refusing to buy any of News International's wares. The Sun because of page 3. The Times because Crosswords, being cryptic and arcane, are works of darkness. And all satellite TV because of Keeping up with the Kardashians. But then in the Parslow household we also shun the Guardian for its smug liberalism, the Telegraph for its pompous Toryism, and the Daily Mail and the Express because their health-scare stories bring on Marjory's hypochondria.

In more recent times, I have been studiously avoiding supermarkets. Do you realise, oh my brothers, that these brightly-lit dens of inquity sell - under the same roof - bottles of wine, boxes of chocolate, and packets of contraceptives. They are clearly encouraging the people of this country to debauchery.

Clearly I would never, under any circumstances, enter an off-licence - that is if any are left, now that the supermarkets' debauchery-under-one-roof  strategy is in place. For in the old days, a libertine would have to visit an off-licence, a chocolatier and a barber's to accumulate his full nefarious shopping list.

Which reminds me. I am boycotting the barber's. When I was young, I used to think those boxes bearing the words "Safe, Effective Family Planning" was to do with creating a diary to co-ordinate one's children's out-of-school clubs and sports. But when I became a man, I discovered that these fiends with combs and Brylcreem were trying to encourage extra-curricular activities of a totally different kind. So from now on Marjory shall be giving me my six-weekly cut and blow dry.

I am also boycotting menswear shops on the grounds that they sell the kinds of low-slung jeans that the youth of today wear. And chemists, for all the above reasons more or less.

And so I find that I have boycotted nearly everything. Thankfully this year we can live off the fruit of the land - although Marjory is getting rather tired of raspberries and rhubarb, we have a fine crop of potatoes. But I have just realised, my brethren and their suitably-guarded womenfolk, that I am attempting to communicate with you through the medium of the Internet. That bastion of all things ghastly. And yet all this time I have been using its tainted telecommunications wires. Maybe it is time I decided to