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I’m afraid there were some complaints after last week’s outbreak of contentment.

Well, let me put that right straight away: as Mercury Rev so beautifully put it in The Dark is Rising, “dreams don’t last for long”. Here are two morality tales about contentment in the digital age.

I was content last week, when losing my home brewing virginity. I’ve always avoided the pursuit, being an enthusiastic supporter of the licenced trade for reasons of companionship as much as ale, and having a strong suspicion that all home brewers drink from pewter tankards, filtering their filthy potion through straggly beards with small insects living therein, dreaming of morris dancing the while.

But times are hard and I have hedges full of nettles, so I followed a recipe for nettle beer.

All was well. Content, in fact. Nettles bubbled in their stockpot, ingredients lay ready, all kit was safely sterilised and a warm place was set aside for the brew bin to bubble.

The stated time having elapsed, I let the brew cool and strained off the nettles. All fine. I emptied in the sugar and dissolved it. No problem. I set the yeast to ready itself for its labours. Straightforward.

I reached for the tin of malt and applied the tin opener.

Which went  “spoinnggggg….” and shed its cogs all over the kitchen floor to the strains of the “that’s all folks” music from the Looney Tunes cartoons, which is my theme song, as you know.

Now the one thing I’d read about brewing was that everything has to happen at roughly the right time and temperature for the effort to bear fruit. So no running into the shops for a new tin opener.

From domestic idyll, calm, cool, collected, we turned in a few brief moments into a scene of frenzy: an allegedly intelligent man bent over an unyielding tin grasped between his knees, oozing sticky, glue-like malt all over the electric drill attacking it and a wide zone of devastation beyond; the same man trying to squeeze said pierced tin hard enough to force the glutinous mess out of the drilled holes onto a wobbling set of kitchen scales to weigh the requisite amount. Fishing with a sieve to retrieve sharp metal drilled discs from the brew. The swearing; Lord forgive me, the swearing.

Having fought the damned potion thusly into existence, I bottled it up today. I have to say it looks and smells worse than the contents of the colostomy bag of the late Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, God Bless Her (my little tribute to the royal family for jubilee weekend).

The stuff is presently fizzing away in bottles in A Cool Place. I’ll keep you posted.

That done, I embarked on taking down one of the greenhouses we inherited. It’s old, with missing panes, and has to go. But I had promised to try to save the frame, having been told by a DIY-type handyperson that such things may sell on e-Bay.

I know that’s just one of those phrases used on the readily gullible: “That’ll fetch £50 on e-Bay”, said encouragingly by somebody who just can’t wait to have a really good humiliating laugh at the ensuing tale of woe.

But anyway, I started off saving each nut and bolt carefully and labelling the frame bits.

So old, warped, rusted and pliable was the metal, however, so insistent the nettles that had overgrown the site, so sharp the rusty accoutrements, that this idyllic scene also descended into ill-tempered frenzy. I ended up attacking the wretched thing with a hacksaw while yelling “You f***ing ****, you **********er, you filthy stinking t*ssbiscuit” at a volume sufficient to be heard by the loyal revellers in London waiting to greet Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee, forelocks at the ready.

The dog watched as I fell to my knees in the middle of a heap of twisted, roughly sawn metal, my skin alive with burning hives from the nettles, trickles of blood running down legs and forearms, a blunted hacksaw in my convulsed grip.

I could see she was trying to pluck up the courage to say “any chance of a walk, me old mate?”, but she thought better of it.

Alright, alright. The jubilee

The good Captain Kay and I have been operating a sort of two-man helpline this last week or so. Whenever I’ve felt like I can’t take it any more – returning from a rare venture out and assault by fluttering bunting, failing to avoid the smug patronising “oooh aren’t they lovely” smile of a ‘news’reader – I’ve rung him, and vice versa. “I can’t take much more of this” has been the constant refrain, but we’ve kept ourselves going for the sake of the families.

God, the triteness and banality and fatuity of it all. The gushing. BBC presenters having multiple orgasms over the Thames pageant. Alleged journalists asking: “How does it feel to have been granted the honour of taking part?” in the year 2012.

The delicious irony, made so beautifully hilarious because everybody ignored or was unaware of it, of a golden boat called Gloriana being rowed by uniformed oarsmen and women in nothing so much as slave-like style. Only the whips were invisible; they were there, though, in the heads.

The “it can’t do any harm” as apparently sane people bow and scrape for an accident of birth in a world where we try to teach children they can achieve great things if they work hard and behave with fairness and decency.

The “what’s wrong with you? It’s just an excuse to have a party” as the whole stinking edifice supports a class system which, for example, has presented us with Cameron’s government by the privileged for the privileged.

The “don’t be such a grump” from people who grumble about tax rises, fuel prices, job losses, long hours, increased pensions, later retirement, dental fees, the health service.

The “would you sooner have President Blair?” from people who proudly declare they (like me) would vote against such a thing without acknowledging the irony that I haven’t been granted the courtesy of a vote on their preferred head of state.

The “it’s good for tourism”; well, for example, millions tour the First World War battlefields every year, but they’re not still shooting each other.

The “aren’t you proud to be British?” from people with no idea that “British” is barely 250 years old; from people who are proud of the monarchy but want nothing to do with the sort of British achievements which make me glad of the privilege of living here – a welcome to the needy, the ongoing belief in and fight for fairness and social justice exemplified by a state education system, a national health service and a trade union movement; the right of all of us, fought for and died for by millions, to free speech.

God. Blood pressure rising, rising.

Flags and uniforms and medals and pearls and plush and velvet and curtseys and millions, millions of pounds. While we tolerate it, wave flags at it, grovel to unearned privilege, give unearned respect, nothing changes. Rich kids go to Eton and join the cabinet, bankers take their bonuses, managers drive their £80 grand BMWs.

But there. It’s all a bit of fun.