Last updated 19:37, Thursday, 28 February 2008

Apparently, the Earth moved but it never woke me – which, were I to be given the option, is probably the way I’d prefer it these days anyway.

Some other, less sound sleepers were not so fortunate. Reports of shivering timbers and wobbly headboards were made from Dumfries to Brighton. Chimneys fell in Yorkshire, dogs barked alarmingly across the Midlands and a crack as wide as a man’s finger opened up at Carlisle Fire Station.

So, it’s true then what my mum used to say. Not much good ever came of earth moving. Messy business... highly overrated.

Most blamed earthquake, subterranean tremor or act of God for rudely intrusive night shakes. Though why God would concern Himself with Carlisle Fire Station’s brick-work is beyond my comprehension. He surely has bigger things to worry about, like genocide in Darfur, plastic carrier bags in Marks & Spencer and Carlisle United’s promotion hopes.

Personally, I blame a more earthly instigator of grumbling rumbles. He’ll be well-known to most Cumbrians by now as Christopher Harvie.

Mr Harvie is a Member of the Scottish Parliament. He’s a Scottish Nationalist and a right old misery. That’s not to say those elements are necessarily joined at the hip... but neither are they always mutually exclusive.

Mr Harvie is clearly and demonstrably really quite cross about something. For no obvious good reason he has lambasted Carlisle with an unwarranted, unprompted, grouchy outburst of exaggerated anger. Had he not been a man of lofty intellect, deep dignity, impeccable honesty and political balance (aren’t all MPs?) one might have been forced to worry for him – suffering probably under heavy burdens of male menopause, haemorrhoids and heart-burning indigestion.

Goodness only knows what drove him – possibly wind – but when Mr Grumpy let rip this week, he made the earth move.

The 63-year-old history professor condemned Carlisle’s Botchergate as “booze canyon”.

“It is just a booze alley,” he said in a debate on tourism. “Going out for a meal on a Saturday evening, even if there were any good places, would involve taking one’s life in one’s hands.”

It would be unfair to suggest Mr Harvie might have drifted into the wrong committee room, mistaking a debate on tourism promotion for the Scottish war cabinet or that his CV is being studied right now by would-be pub landlords and tourist chiefs in Basra.

But you do have to wonder what he thought he might find to his liking in Botchergate on a Saturday night, where the earth moves for kids a fraction of his age while the rest of us are home watching Casualty – a box of Penrith Fudge close to hand.

He’s not the first to have a go at Carlisle, of course. Boris Johnson claimed his two-penneth in 2005, calling the city, “a Hogarthian nightscape of pagan semi-nudity”.

Haven’t a clue what he meant but – as insults go – it had its lyrical attractions. Boris one; Christopher nil.

“You’re going where?” an alarmed Yorkshire taxi driver gasped when, in 2006, I told him I was leaving Leeds for Carlisle. “Good God, woman – they’re animals up there. Especially on a Saturday night!”

“And pussycats here I suppose...”

He didn’t argue – I think for two reasons. No doubt noting the defensive tone, he’d have worried about his tip. And frankly there’s no disputing the drugs and booze-fuelled weekend mayhem fests in Leeds.

Funny how defensive we all feel about home – even before we get there. But of course we take umbrage at criticism levelled ignorantly, hastily and thoughtlessly; more to make its deliverer look smart than to reflect the facts of the matter.

Cabbie, Harvie and blonde bombshell Boris – they all made the same shallow assumptions, having considered negligible weight of evidence, before shooting from the shoulder to look big, clever and in the know.

What a pity they don’t even have the good grace to squirm when their bullets hit their feet.

Carlisle’s Botchergate has its problems, of course it does – every British city with a lively nightscene has those. But hey, it’s hardly Sodom and Gomorrah quite yet. Carlisle is no more Dante’s Inferno than Sheffield, Liverpool, Leeds or Manchester. Even Milton Keynes has its moments, I’m told.

It probably just seems excessively and wickedly debauched to blustering old grumps who – while never having inclination nor reason to party hard of a weekend – quite like the idea of making the earth move with blasts of ill-considered bad humour.

It’s never helpful, not big and by no means clever. But I’m happy to say that, while it may rock their world, it won’t wake me from peaceful slumber – which, since my party-hard days are mercifully over, is just as it should be.