Broke Girls ’

I offer forgiveness to my brother Adrian Scott Wade

It is much easier to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, so that’s why I didn’t do a focus group on whether or not I should do a series of columns that are ostensibly about me forgiving my brothers. The formula is that I list things that they kinda, sorta need forgiveness for and then I emulate a John Hughes (“The Breakfast Club,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”) moment and get serious amid all the comedy at the end.

I ask your forgiveness as I now apply the formula to my youngest brother Scott.

NAMESAKE: I forgive Scott for never going by his actual first name Adrian, but instead by his middle name. Before he was born in 1970 my mom, Katy Lou Wade, told me that because there were already two people in the family whose names started with “O” (my dad Orvis “T” Wade Sr. and my oldest brother, who is a junior), and three whose names started with a “K” (she and my brothers Ken and Kelvin), that the baby would be sorta named after me and have one that started with an “A.” My name is Anthony although my friends, readers and bill collectors call me Tony.

So I brainstormed “A” names. Here are some of the suggestions I came up with: Archibald, Agnes, Arugula, Abner, Amadeus, Aristotle, Arnie, Angus and Antidisestablishmentarianism. OK, actually I didn’t make a list. I mean, I was only 6 years old. My mom just chose Adrian and it sounded great to me. It’s not her fault that Sylvester Stallone used it six years later for the name of his love interest in a blockbuster film. VEGGIES: I forgive Scott for blaming me for his hatred of vegetables for most of his life. I mean, it is true that when he was a baby and my mom let me feed him Gerber baby food that I would give him the pureed carrots or peas and eat the super yummy (endorsed by RoboCop) applesauce and apricots or peaches ones. But he loved those vegetable ones back then. He loved them so much he used to spit them on the floor to share with our dog Sandy.

AMERICA’S PASTIME: Scott was the only one of me or my brothers who played Little League baseball. The rest of us played football, basketball and were wrestlers, but Scott was the only one to dabble in America’s pastime. I was envious because I sucked at baseball and my dad loved it. Back in the day, I used to hate it when I was riding with Dad somewhere in his Peugeot and he would be cranking the AM radio play-by-play of a San Francisco Giants game as loud as I cranked Iron Maiden.

SPEAKING OF IRON

MAIDEN: I forgive Scott for not recognizing my exquisite taste in music back when I used to pick him up from Grange in the mid-1980s in my parakeet green Mercury Montego I lovingly referred to as The Concert Mobile. For some reason, he would be embarrassed as he walked to my car that was blaring either Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Dio or the Scorpions.

BLOWING HIS OWN

HORN: Scott was a band geek through elementary, junior high and high school. He played trombone and got really good at it. After 58 years, I am still trying to master the kazoo.

RIVALS: Scott was the only Wade brother not to attend Armijo High School and instead went to crosstown rival Fairfield High School. I forgive him for . . . well, no, some things just aren’t forgivable.

GREAT WHITE NORTH:

Scott married Michelle Peterson, a Canadian girl, back in 1992 and he has lived in Saskatchewan longer than he ever lived in California. Canada is cool. I mean, it’s where Rush and Triumph came from, but I forgive him for trying to talk to me or my other brothers about hockey or the Canadian Football League.

PREACH! Scott graduated from Columbia Christian College in Oregon and was a preacher for many years. I was resentful of this because there was a time in the early 1980s when I had wanted to attend Costa Christian School in Martinez, but my parents told Tony Wade me they couldn’t afford it. The last laugh Actually, the reason I wanted to attend Costa had much more to do with the girls I had met at Sierra Bible Camp that went there than, you know, God. GENESIS 1:28: That verse in the Bible says “Be fruitful and multiply” and Scott won the Wade fruition multiplication sweepstakes as he and Michelle have four kids and one grandkid on the way. Show-off.

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

HEADSTAND: Typically, the youngest brother looks up to the older ones with a sense of awe and reverence, but Scott turned that around as I cannot help but be blown away at what an incredible brother, son, husband, father and friend to many that he has become – in two countries!

Courtesy photo Scott Wade, left, and Tony Wade at an Oakland Raiders game in 2006.

Fairfield freelance humor columnist and accidental local historian Tony Wade writes two weekly columns: “The Last Laugh” on Mondays and “Back in the Day” on Fridays. Wade is also the author of The History Press books “Growing Up In Fairfield, California” and “Lost Restaurants of Fairfield, California.”

A mayor in England is fighting for his office; he’s also a pony

The WashingTon PosT

LONDON — Patrick has only been mayor of Cockington, a small English village, for less than two weeks. But he’s already had his office taken away.

That is, his small pen filled with hay. Because Patrick is a pony.

Patrick, a 4-year-old Shetland pony with wellcombed bangs, had been meeting with constituents at an “interaction pen” in the garden of a pub, which he regularly frequents for a few slurps of Guinness. But that has been dismantled, after a single complaint lodged to local authorities.

The dispute is ostensibly about building permissions – but supporters are convinced that it was designed to take him down. Possibly by a human who wants to be mayor.

“It was a one-horse race for him to be mayor, but apparently someone was jealous,” said Kirk Petrakis, who, along with his wife, Hannah, owns the mayor of the town in Devon, England.

Patrick’s pen, constructed almost a year ago by volunteers at an agricultural organization, was outside the Drum Inn pub in Devon. Locals – especially those who had anxiety, disabilities and terminal illnesses – knew they could always find him there, Petrakis told The Washington Post.

But since he became the mayor – at an official ceremony on July 23, in which Patrick donned a traditional British mayoral red gown complete with a white trim – there was a complaint to local authorities from an unnamed person.

Petrakis says they don’t know who is behind the complaint, but “we have our suspicions.” Patrick currently resides at a “luxury stable,” his owners said, but they did not want to share his exact location because of safety fears.

A Torbay Council spokesperson confirmed it had received a complaint from a member of the public and said that it had “not received or approved any planning applications for the fencing or the change of use for horses” and that it encouraged Patrick’s supporters to seek adequate permission to erect a space for him to meet with locals.

The council said it had opened an “enforcement case” into the erection of “unauthorised timber fencing and the display of advertisements within the beer garden,” which is in a designated conservation area and next to a historic building.

Patrick’s owners say they are devastated by the council’s actions and say they are alarmed at how quickly the council responded to a single complaint about the town mayor.

Petrakis says he and his wife, Hannah, were forced to dismantle the pen as onlookers cried. Patrick’s pen “meant a lot to so many people – it was to support those most vulnerable in our community,” he said, especially after lockdowns enforced by the British government during the coronavirus pandemic.

Petrakis added that he did not think special planning was needed for Patrick’s pen, insisting there “is lots of other fencing close by, without permission.”

According to Patrick’s owners, the pub says the mayor is still welcome inside. “But it’s not the same,” Petrakis said. As for the Drum Inn, “we won’t be commenting on the pony,” its manager said when reached by The Post.

British lawmaker Kevin Foster, who serves as a Conservative member of Parliament for Torbay, said Thursday that he was “stunned” by the council’s “disproportionate response” to scrap Patrick’s pen.

“The move to make Patrick ‘mayor’ was meant as a lighthearted and humorous way to promote Cockington Village to tourists,” Foster, who supported his campaign, told The Post. “Yet the overthe-top reaction of Torbay Council in response to one complaint is the real joke.”

Foster attended Patrick’s swearing-in ceremony, where Patrick paired his red robe with a handcrafted golden chain around his neck as his insignia of office, just like the many mayors who stood before him (on the usual two legs, not four).

During the pandemic, people who became isolated at home followed Patrick online and quickly considered him a friend, his owners said. When his pen opened and lockdowns lifted, locals then ventured out to meet Patrick.

They knew he would be there, waiting. Patrick is “for everyone,” Hannah Petrakis said.

Foster said that Patrick’s “small therapy area in a large beer garden” was a space for residents to share their comments and concerns - and was of “no inconvenience to anyone.” He implored the council to rethink the decision and instead “help facilitate the serious therapy work being done.”

Thousands of people have sent messages of support amid Patrick’s pub controversy, Petrakis said.

Petrakis and Patrick posted a video Wednesday to the mayor’s official Facebook page this week to update supporters on the situation. After nine minutes on Facebook Live, the pony fell asleep.

“We are all in this very difficult situation in our lives at the moment,” Petrakis said citing the cost-of-living crisis in Britain and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Patrick has recently raised money to support Ukrainians.

Patrick’s owners told The Post on Thursday that they would carry on trying to develop a designated space where Patrick can meet people.

Petrakis explained that though Patrick is allowed indoors in some cases, sometimes such environments can be too noisy when he is attempting to comfort those who need it.

“We will find somewhere,” they said. “If Patrick here can bring a little bit of happiness to everybody, what is the harm in it?”

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