Every day I drive to work.
Shocking I know, right? When I’m driving I use my eyes to see things like a lot of other drivers. I tend to use my regular eyes instead of all the other pairs that I have lying around. They only have a finite lifespan after all and who am I to liberally chunter off an expensive set of peepers for my own benefit?
There is always one thing that sticks out when I drive to work and that is this:
Everything else looks and behaves fine. If there’s a zebra crossing it behaves like a zebra crossing. The roundabouts are standard, the kind that you would see anywhere else. See that junction over there? It’s functions as a junction. It’s a functional junctional. The clennel though, I’m not buying it.
Firstly it’s not a word. I’ve tried looking it up and there’s nothing there. It’s definitely not a name or a surname. It’s as though someone misspelt the word ‘kennel’ and nobody bothered to correct it. I’m pretty sure it’s not a breed of dog or a type of salmon or the spoon on the table when you go out for a fancy meal that you never use. It’s not an illness; you can’t be off work with a spot of clennel. It’s not a film by Federico Fellini. It’s not a perfume or aftershave by Jean Paul Gautier.
What were they thinking? Does anyone else know about this and can they see it? It’s a clear indication that something isn’t right and I am convinced that there’s something or someone hiding down Clennel Avenue, a hidden thing that might be sinister and otherworldly like a sock that can tell the time or a bee that hums French fancies. I want to know the secrets hiding in plain sight and yet I know that some things man was not supposed to know. It eats away at me, day after day, the chewing on my elbows is unbearable. Don’t listen to your gut. Don’t go down the Clennel. Leave it alone and you’ll be fine. Wipe the sweat from your brow and go back to thinking about whistle pops and candy whistles.
There it stands as a monument to things that do exist but probably shouldn’t. I hope to God that I never find out the truth.
12 comments on “Clennel”
I mean, I’m no historian, or a librarian, but it only took a very quick google to see its probably named after a town that’s pretty close by…
History of Clennel, in Alnwick and Northumberland: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/8930
Wikipedia: Clennell is a small village and as Clennel, a former civil parish, now in the parish of Alwinton, in Northumberland, England.
But no, you’re right, its obviously something nefarious hiding in plain sight.
I too discovered that typing these seven letters into Google produced the answer that it’s the name of a country house, a parish and a reasonably common surname. I would now like to know where Ian looked it up. I’m imagining he searched for it in the index of a book about French cuisine or perhaps in the instructions for a tumble dryer.
I don’t like the fact that you’re both critiquing the absolutely zero research I did for this post but I do like the fact that you’re now heavily invested in the searches of clennels and clennel-related history.
I’ve also discovered that a clennel is a very special type of flannel for use in clefts and crevices.
an arse flannel?
It sounds like an arse flannel.
Right up the clennel!
Yes. But “arse flannel” is considered uncouth in polite company, eg at Ascot. So “clennel” is the proper term.
You need to stop going to Ascot and talking about your arse flannel, mate, because nobody wants to be your friend with bants like that.
Look, I’m not good at small talk and I panic sometimes. Don’t hold it against me.
I’m not even going to touch your arse flannel mate, let alone hold it against you.
It’s called a clennel.