Humour

25 Things To Do In A Dull Town: the start of a mission to create some lunchtime entertainment

This isn't Dulltown: Dulltown is even duller than this. Pic: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

The company where I’ll be working for eight weeks is located in one of those places that was once a pleasant little Victorian town but that has since been subsumed into the dull urban sprawl that is Greater London.

Part of this process has seen the high street stripped of its character and sense of community by the reinvention of many independent traders that once served the community, as bland betting shops, smelly kebab bars, dull financial advisers and soul-destroyingly uninteresting electrical discount stores.

All the locals look rather weary, as though they’ve given up on their aspirations of moving either closer into central London, with its vibrancy and history and busy-ness; or out into the countryside just a few miles away. Instead, they’re stuck in the middle, with nothing to do, in a stream of commuter traffic, amid the unfragrant charity shops, characterless chain pubs and pound stores.

I realised early on that there would be little to do during my lunchbreaks – this Dull Town doesn’t set out to offer excitement and doesn’t really want the visitor to enjoy herself there. I decided I would have to go out there and create my own leisure opportunities.

So, I decided to make a list of Things to Do in a Dull Town at Lunchtime.

I thought 25 would be a nice round number. I’ll be there for about 40 days in total, unless they extend my contract – or get the hump and cut it short if they find out I’ve been disrespectful of their chosen location – so allowing for rainy days spent brooding over a baked potato at my desk, that would still leave me lots of interesting lunchtimes out.

As things stand, I’ve got rather stuck before I’ve even reached the 20 mark, and that’s including a friend’s facetious suggestion “get your tyre pressures checked” and my own – rather desperate – “go and look at the bypass”. I did consider stopping there and starting again at number 1, which would eventually generate more than a month of lunchtime excitement, but then I decided this would be cheating. Somehow, I have to come up with more ideas.

It’s my policy to exclude most shopping, eating and drinking activities, since that would involve spending money. There will be certain exceptions, such as those necessary to carry out Number 8 on my list: “beverage-criticising” (the art of sitting in a café and muttering, in middle-aged fashion, “doesn’t anyone know how to make a proper cappuccino/decent pot of tea?”)

So, here’s the list, in no particular order, each to feature in future blog posts.

1. Have my legs waxed.
2. Purchase three nice things from charity shops.
3. Walk as far as I can northbound in half an hour, and back again.
4. Ditto, but southbound.
5. Visit the church.
6. Walk in the park.
7. Visit the “town farm” – to include finding out what a “town farm” actually is.
8. Sit in cafés, muttering to self about the inadequate beverages.
9. Walk up and down the high street, listing the shops and deciding which I would allow to continue to exist in my capacity as self-appointed Town Planner – and which I would consign to oblivion.
10. Have a manicure.
11. Go to the library and read something educational.
12. See how many dogs I can count in an hour. Breed to be identified where possible.
13. See how many ugly people I can count in an hour.
14. Talk to strangers. On any subject.
15. Ask the chatty butcher (one of the independents the town does boast) for advice on what to have for my tea – and proceed to follow his advice.
16. Ditto the bloke who runs the fruit and veg stall on a Friday. This could turn into a cookery blog before I know it!
17. Walk to the bypass and admire its talent at diverting much of the traffic, making Dulltown’s high street quieter (albeit even duller), so I can stroll around taking the piss in relative peace.
18. Have my tyre pressure checked.

I am grateful for a suggestion for 19 (go and look at the strange outdoor exercise machines in the park) to a new colleague. Our meeting was somewhat of an accident, since we don’t work directly together, but it transpires we share a mutual distaste for Dull Towns with a propensity to publish our opinions on the internet. My fellow blogger showed a great interest in my List of Things to Do at Lunchtime but rather gloomily opined that only disappointment could result – she has tried most of them out during her time working in Dulltown, and said she ended up more disillusioned than ever with “this nothing place”.

My new chum has promised to write me a guest blog about her own experiences futilely attempting to have fun at lunchtimes in Dulltown, so watch this space.

Pic credit: Tom Curtis, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=178

I get a job, become inexplicably popular and start a fire in the pub – a week of strange variety

I'm exaggerating - it wasn't quite this bad. Pic: www.freedigitalphotos.net

Imagine eight acoustic guitarists, a bazouki player and a girl on a glockenspiel, all simultaneously doing their thing in the corner of a small-town pub, doing a cover of a Turin Brakes song, when a fire breaks out on the table.

Imagine you weren’t even there at the time – you’d wandered back in from having been for a pee and found the smoke alarm going off and a right to-do going on, with the nasty acrid smell of burning plastic, and bewildered musicians beating out a burning table with their bare hands.

Then imagine it becomes evident that it was you that started the conflagration, by leaving a pile of papers and folders far too close to a lighted candle.

And an expensive violin, which had been lying on the table minding its own business, has been scorched in the flames.

Embarrassing. Very embarrassing. The only consolation was that the landlord didn’t seem to mind – he seemed kind of tired and beaten, more than angry, almost as though this was just another of the tribulations of running a British pub. And, as luck should have it, the owner of the violin just happened to be… guess what… a professional violin repairer and restorer. What are the chances of that happening? She was very nice about it and said she could sort out her charred instrument in the workshop. So things could have been a lot worse, though I did feel a bit of a berk, what with this having been my first visit to this particular music night.

Anyhow, the next day was Wednesday and I got a call from a recruitment agent about a temporary editing position I applied for a while back. “It’s for two months and they want someone to start straight away,” he cautioned. “Yeah, yeah,” I thought, having heard that particular phrase before from recruitment types. It usually means “in about six weeks, when we’ve sorted the paperwork out”. But no, he meant “straight away”. “Will tomorrow be OK?” he asked.

WTF???!!! I played for time. “How about Monday?” I suggested, wondering how the hell I was going to get the stuff done I’d been lingering over. Monday, it seemed, was far too late, and we split the difference and settled for Friday.

You can imagine the scene as I rushed to get work clothes washed and ironed, my usual uniform being leggings, a lunch-stained T shirt and slippers.

More on the new job another time. It was better than I expected: the people were nice, the bus stops outside, and there were three types of teabag, free milk and a massive fridge in the kitchen. Any employer who thinks of their workers’ beverage needs in this way can’t be bad.

Anyhow, I got home after my first day and checked my emails to find that TWO people wanted to talk to me about proofreading and copywriting work. Two! In one day! Talk about buses all coming at once. One had been recommended by a website developer I did some work for recently and I ended up speaking to him on the phone till 10.30pm about his project. The other, the owner of a marketing agency, had, believe it or not, got my details from a guitarist I met while I was setting fire to the pub. I’d been so busy apologising to everyone over the violin catastrophe that I didn’t even realise this chap was vaguely in my line of work in his day-job.

It doesn’t stop there. Had another email yesterday from an old colleague and drinking buddy, who wants to meet up to discuss some writing work he might be able to put my way.

Quite why I’m so popular all of a sudden, after a fairly quiet spell, is thoroughly inexplicable. Maybe it’s my new perfume.

Pic credit: think4photop, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2294

Technophobe male fails in bid to post a comment about my anti-men songs; I have to post it for him

One of my male acquaintances was keen to comment on my recent blog about the sexist songs I’d been writing http://fwords.co.uk/2012/01/25/my-unfortunate-reputation-for-writing-sexist-songs-leads-to-a-commission-from-a-disgruntled-friend/

Tony the Modern Folk Poet (aka Joseph Kilhane) has heard my little ditties at the pub music night so he has an interest anyway, and he seemed particularly to have taken exception to the conversation that followed my blog post in the form of comments. Kitchen Slattern http://kitchenslattern.com/ commented that women were often “driven to the knife edge of sanity by every little thing they [men] do, or don’t do as the case may be”. She told the tale of a friend who’d backed her car down the driveway and repeatedly run over a pile of gifts her soon-to-be ex-husband had given her.

I replied with another anecdote, that of a friend of mine who’d loosened the stitches in the seat of her soon-to-be ex-bloke’s work trousers, so that the next time he sat down at work his trousers split, making him unable to stand up again for the duration of the meeting.

Someone called Learning Curve (who didn’t leave a link) told how her man had complained his “balls were shrivelling” as he reluctantly did the vacuuming.

And Diane Henders http://blog.dianehenders.com/ said my song lyric  “Men, men, why is it never easy, I start off feeling horny and end up feeling queasy” – had made her “bellow with laughter”.

The Modern Folk Poet felt compelled to respond, but the poor lamb couldn’t work out how to do it. Clearly, the instructions that WordPress kindly provides, namely “Leave a reply..post your comment here… post comment” were not specific enough for him.

I’m not suggesting that he can’t follow simple instructions because he’s a man, by the way – there are plenty of men who know how to do things. If I say he’s a techno-idiot, that’s not sexist – the fact that he’s a man has nothing to do with it.

He did manage to email me his reply, though, so I’ll assist by posting it below. It’s well worth a read, as it shows how the Poet can produce a clever ditty on virtually any subject. And he can set most of them to music and perform them as comical songs on the guitar or mandolin.

“Having read this blog, I struggle
To understand its message
It must all be a joke? So?
Right! I laughed.
A woman living with a man?
Hates his guts? (but hasn’t gone)
Long-suffering? Self-sacrificing? Martyr? – or plain daft

And can somebody say from when
Women sharing homes with men
Today are still expecting
To become their slaves
I suggest it’s not the gender
That is likely to offend ‘er
But the way that said cohabitee behaves
And therefore, bad cohabitees – Are they always blokes?
Or could they be a her and not a him?!
It isn’t being male
That makes the idyll fail
It’s being inconsiderate and dim

There are males who do the cooking
(Not all of them bad-looking),
There are blokes who’ll clean throughout the house or flat
Admitted, there are others, should have stayed home with their mothers
But there’s women too, who should be doing that

The answer seems to me to be
A pre-cohabitation clause
Inserted in a document
That you both sign in blood
Is he into cooking?
Is he into cleaning?
Instead then, do you settle for a stud?

For still you stand upon the brink
With some gormless shiftless gink
Not thinking just how low you’ll sink
Or what he may become
You like ‘em muscular and tough?
Or maybe just a little rough?
I know, I know, it has to be
The contours of his bum

Some women too are dim and careless,
heartless, callous, inconsiderate ,
slovenly, preoccupied, untidy round the place
Do I sound misogynistic ?
No more than you sound misanthropic !
We’re all in this together – part of
The selfish human race”

Good, innit?

The Modern Folk Poet is available for poetry-writing commissions and live gigs. Here’s a link to his website http://www.modernfolkpoet.co.uk/ but it won’t do you much good going there, since someone else set it up for him and he doesn’t know how to update it and consequently never visits it. I’ll act as his manager and claim a commission on any bookings.

Pic credit: graur razvan ionut, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=987

My unfortunate reputation for writing sexist songs leads to a commission from a disgruntled friend

This isn’t me. I can’t play standing up yet. Pic credit: photostock, http://www. freedigitalphotos.net/images/ view_photog.php?photogid=2125

My little group of chums at the local pub music night have the idea firmly fixed in their heads that I’m a writer of sexist songs. When a bunch of musical types get together, they often ask each other “what’s your genre?” and the answer might be Folk, R&B or Skiffle – or in extreme cases Delta Blues, Ethereal Pop or Thrashcore. No-one bothers asking me, because it’s generally accepted that my particular genre is UK Pub Rock Urban Folk Comic Misandry.

This reputation stems from an early piece that had the lines “Having seen you eat asparagus, I’d rather take a monkey home instead” and “your clothes, your hair, the way you breathe, the way you drink your tea – everything you do and say annoys and antagonises me”.

A later song produced the lines “It’s a mystery that I can’t explain – he’s like a retarded slug with water on the brain” and “what can you do when a man won’t listen… I think I’ll have to buy that man a hearing aid”.

I seem to be constitutionally unable of treating songwriting as anything other than a comedy vehicle, so I’m unlikely to ever be Diane Warren or Guy Chambers or that bloke whose name escapes me who writes all the Meat Loaf songs.

Anyhow, the upshot of the retarded slug song was a challenge from one of the blokes at the pub – couldn’t I write a song that wasn’t anti-man? I tried to oblige by devising something loosely based on that nice romantic tune of Dolly Parton’s, I Will Always Love You. Somehow, though, I couldn’t find the words to match the pathos of that song. It started off well: “I said I’d write a love song, just to prove I can…” but my subsequent difficulty matching content to melody is illustrated by this later excerpt: “Oh men, oh men, why is it never easy? I start off feeling horny and end up feeling queasy”.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised then, to receive an email at the weekend from a friend who appeared to be experiencing a certain amount of irritation with her resident male. “I’ve started writing a song,” she wrote, “can you do anything with this?”

She attached a poem that told a tale of a woman driven to distraction by close proximity to her husband. It was the old, old story of cupboard doors left open, washing up left undone, dirty clothes left strewn about, the kitchen left in chaos after a “cooking” episode for which he expected to be praised.

I was messing about at the time trying to master a new chord progression on the guitar – G, Gmaj7, G7, C, G, Gmaj7, A7, D7, G – and this worked well with a line from my friend’s poem that seemed to present itself as the chorus – “Men, you make us so perplexed. We always must remember that, you are the weaker sex”. After some tweaking and pruning to get it to scan with my melody, The Weaker Sex was born. I felt the chances were slim of my being believed at the pub when I truthfully insisted that these lyrics had not come from the pen of Yours Truly, and of course performing it would typecast me even more as She Who Writes Those Anti-Man Songs.

Still, I gave it a go. It was deeply rewarding, when I got behind the mic and asked “would anyone like to hear an anti-man song?” to hear the encouraging sounds of assent from the females in the pub. The men were less vocal, for some reason. They’d seen me approach the mic with only a single sheet of music, so they knew darn well they were getting whatever was on that piece of paper, so it wasn’t so much “would you like to hear?” as “you’re going to hear”.

Still, the song got a bit of a laugh, though when one of the women approached me on her way home and asked curiously “do you really hate men?” I realised my reputation as a sexist had been well and truly established. I quite like men really – well most of them, anyway. I’m going to try and change genres to something less controversial, like Vietnamese Trance or Salsa Erotica.

Boozy housewife, boar masturbator and feisty feminist – not me, but more of my favourite bloggers

Don't fancy yours much. Pic credit: http://www. freedigitalphotos.net

After nominating 12 other bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Awards yesterday, I ran out of steam and had to go and make my dinner, so I deferred the remaining three of the 15 I was supposed to nominate. Here they are now.

http://kitchenslattern.com Kitchen Slattern writes about cookery and domesticity, and believes that doing the housework “well enough” is far preferable to doing it well. She claims to have found “the easy way to do anything that needs doing around the house”, and as part of her researches has perfected the art of drunken vacuum-cleaning.

This “boozy floozy with a bad attitude” towards her domestic chores lives in New York and says Martha Stewart’s perfectionism makes her ass ache.

http://fortyshadesofgrey.blogspot.com/ Nat is a feisty, forthright, fearless and hugely articulate feminist from the UK, who blogs about sex, politics and feminism. I’d hazard a guess that she’s never been beaten in an argument. She also has a lovely turn of phrase when it comes to describing her adversaries – “spunkwaffling dickwits” and “piece of rotting crotchfilth” are among the gems.

Once gave me invaluable back-up when I was embroiled in an online discussion with a piece of rotting crotchfilth who’d taken exception to a mention I’d made of his dickwittish sexist attitudes.

http://occupylsx.org/ The blog of the Occupy London movement, this contains lots of info including details of this week’s High Court ruling that the camp should be evicted. The protesters will be appealing. Also current are posts about this week’s “trials” being organised by Occupy, to examine allegations against Tony Blair for war crimes and against RBS concerning the rights of its major shareholders – the general public.

Oh sod it, here’s some more. I’m on a roll.

http://www.editormichael.com/ Michael LaRocca is an American whose jobs have included teaching English in China, writing novels and masturbating boars. His blog gives tips on writing, information about English language and literature, and humorous “random ranting and raving”.

http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/ Hart Williams is another American writer – a novelist, illustrator and screenwriter. He has made me laugh with his acerbic comments on LinkedIn writing groups and he stands alone as the only person with whom I have ever got involved in an email discussion about panty pads. Blogs about writing and politics. Very highbrow and, politically, a progressive Democrat (hope I’ve got that right, I was going to say “bit of a lefty” but that might not be a compliment over there). His claims to fame include being accused in American media of wanting to shoot conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

http://vanbrown.wordpress.com/ Yet another American blogger. What is it with me and American male wordsmiths? I don’t even know many Americans in real life; they scare me a bit – if I went for a pint with one I’d be worried they’d invade the pub and appropriate all the beer so there’d be none left for me. The internet’s great for discovering ones that probably wouldn’t.

Anyhow, Van’s forte is amusing stuff about “dawgs” – he’s a great fan of the canine species – but he also does general humour and political stuff. Not sure if he’s another lefty or not – appears to be disdainful of both Republicans and Democrats.

That’s the lot for now. I’ll do some more another time, as it’s been fun.

Award details: http://versatilebloggeraward.wordpress.com/vba-rules/

Hoorah, I’ve been nominated for a Versatile Blogger Award, and in turn I name my own favourite bloggers – it’s a blogging love-fest!

Crikey, I’ve been nominated for a Versatile Blogger Award. I can’t remember the last time I was nominated for anything, other than to go to the bar ‘cause it was my round.

The awards seem to be fairly informal – it’s not like the Oscars or the X Factor or anything. There is no official judging process and no prize, other than recognition from one’s peers. In fact, cynics have described the whole scheme as being a giant internet chain letter – sooner or later, every blogger will have one. But it’s a bit of fun, and a chance to give a bit of a slap on the back to other bloggers who have amused, educated, entertained or informed you.

There are rules http://versatilebloggeraward.wordpress.com/vba-rules/, first of which is to thank the person who nominated you.

So herewith, thanks to Susan at http://lostnchina.wordpress.com. Susan is a Chinese-Canadian whose very amusing posts include the one that first attracted me to her blog, namely the one about her Chinese relations insisting on her wearing special lucky pants. Thanks, Susan, back atcha, as you say over your side of the pond, I believe.

The next rule is to select 15 other blogs/bloggers whose output you like, and to nominate them for the Versatile Blogger Award.

I don’t have time to do all 15 right now, so I’m going to go with the 12 I’ve done so far and come back another time to nominate some more. For now, my nominations are as follows (drum roll……):

http://chroniclesofeldon.wordpress.com Amusing chatter about life, parties, friends etc from a young American chap who goes by the name of Awkward Eldon. He sets the scene with a sit-com-friendly cast of odd friends and a dog who is described as looking like the Anti-Christ.

http://roboticrhetoric.wordpress.com Fluent and amusing chatter from “an inexperienced and impressionable youth of 18”, British this time. What is it with me and young men?

http://sw9red.wordpress.com/ Ooh, another young man – at least, I’m assuming he’s young and a man. Red runs what he calls “Brixton’s best-read political blog”. One of several blogs I like for imparting to current events a left-wing perspective that we never see in the mainstream, corporate-owned media. Appears to have been learning the guitar recently, so his politics is now mixed with stuff about music.

http://laughingnoam.blogspot.com/ A strange but interesting and prolific mixture of intelligent comment and humorous chatter about politics and society, with a left-wing slant. For some reason I thought Noam was another young man, possibly because of a recent adolescently-comical Twitter exchange about “bum fudge”, but a recent post says he’s been a fan of David Bowie for 30 years, so he (or possibly she) can’t actually be a teenage boy. In light of this, I’m not sure he’s strictly eligible for my nomination, but I’ll let it go this time.

http://wrapcloth.wordpress.com/ Nigel isn’t a teenage boy either. I know this cos he has referred to his grandchildren. He and I are both in writing forums on LinkedIn and keep ending up in the same discussions with scammers, loonies and argumentative forum members. In a small-world coincidence, he lives in the same Welsh town, hundreds of miles away, where my grandmother lived briefly in 1911, and knows the owner of the hotel she worked in.

http://unemployedhack.wordpress.com/ Hack isn’t a teenage boy either. He or she (I know which, actually, but I won’t tell) is probably in his/her 30s and writes about his/her experiences of being an out-of-work journalist, offering commentary on the difficulties of finding work, the benefits system, the greedy utility companies and the British media and political system. His/her cat is a major character in the blog and anything to do with cats is fine by me.

http://pigsinwales.blogspot.com/ Right – this one’s definitely a girl. I know this because I’ve met her. Liz Shankland was on my journalism course many years ago and has since gone on to become an expert in pig-breeding, smallholdings and similar rural pursuits. Anything you want to know about piggies or farming, she’s your woman.

http://malvikajaswal.wordpress.com Another girl! Malvika lives in India and writes about an eclectic variety of topics, including Indian culture, art and cooking. She gave me a nice recipe for dall which I keep meaning to try.

http://prettyfeetpoptoe.wordpress.com/ And another girl. Pretty Feet’s writing style is perhaps more closely aligned to my own than any of the other bloggers I’ve named, though she’s got shitloads more followers. Bah – who needs followers anyway, bloody nuisance, the lot of them. Pretty writes fluently and humorously about shoes, the Underground and living in London and stuff.

http://www.thewritersremedy.com Shelley is an American who blogs about her experiences of trying to develop a freelance writing career. Her blog includes handy hints and tips, commentary on scam sites and the like.

http://talkingquestions.wordpress.com Back to blokes. These are two Americans called Lee and Gage, who do a weekly podcast of themselves chattering on humorously about all manner of things. It’s a bit like listening to a pair of harmless drunks in a pub.

http://theactivists.wordpress.com/ Socialist artists, writers, photographers, bloggers, poets, illustrators, all dedicated to creating “a revolutionary information flow”. This blogs offers an alternative perspective on current affairs and challenges readers to think more deeply about their dependence on capitalism and traditional attitudes.

That’s the end of the nominations. I hope they all realise they owe me a pint.

As the final rule in the awards scheme, nominees have to reveal seven facts about themselves. Here goes.

Seven pieces of useless information about me

1)    I know how to train cats to use a cat flap. All you need is two clothes pegs and some tuna. And some cats. And a cat flap, obviously.

2)    The most expensive item in my home is a set of saucepans. I found out only after I’d scrimped and saved to buy a really decent set that the Beckhams have the same brand in their kitchen. I tried to take the pans back when I realised this, but the shop said that sharing a liking for high-end cookware with a not-too-bright footballer was not grounds for a refund.

3)    I get really annoyed when people walk slowly. They dawdle and idle along, blocking the pavement and walking three abreast and getting in my way when I’m trying to get somewhere. Or they trail behind me, puffing like wart-hogs, when we’re out on country walks. Pick your feet up and MOVE, for goodness’ sake.

4)    I picked up a recorder recently for the first time since I was a child, and found I could remember most of the notes. It was very exciting. For me, at least. Not sure the neighbours had such a good time.

5)    I have a qualification in map-reading and navigation and have co-navigated a two-day trek on Dartmoor (one of the UK’s remaining “wild” areas, for those outside the UK). Yet I still manage to get lost with annoying regularity when taking out friends who were temporarily impressed by me boasting about my navigation skills. Now, I mostly go on my own. Most of my friends are doing doggy paddle in the Grimpen Mire, so they can’t come with me.

6)    Inspired by a friend of a friend who wrote a comic song about lady gardens, to the tune of Sonny & Cher’s I Got You, Babe (it was called I Won’t Shave, Babe), I wrote a song about breasts, to the tune of Mary Hopkin’s Those Were the Days. It’s called Your Chest is Best, and includes the line “Oh my friend, we’re older and we’re wiser, but down our tops the bazoomas are the same”. I hope to record a video of this at some stage so you’ll be able to listen to it.

7)    I get unreasonably annoyed by catering establishments that don’t understand the definition of cappuccino. It’s one third espresso, one third steamed milk, one third froth, you arses, not a cup of milky mud with some scum on the top.

Castration, tax dodgers, flowers & Assange – strange search terms that have brought people to my website

If they're looking for info on these, they've come to the wrong website! Pic by me.

It’s fascinating to look behind the scenes at a website to view the search terms that have brought people to visit.

Of those visitors to my site that were the result of a search engine search, the single biggest number came via searches for the name of the person who produced the vulgar T shirts I blogged about on a couple of occasions. That topic also provoked the largest single number of comments on any blog posts I’ve done, not all of them pleasant.

The second single biggest number of hits has come, not surprisingly, from searches for F Words – though I suspect some of these visitors may have been looking for something rather different!

The third biggest number of visits resulted from searches on my name. Again, some may have been hoping for something else – other Sue Fentons are available, so many, in fact, that I did a blog on the subject. http://fwords.co.uk/2011/06/23/me-myself-and-i-%E2%80%93-and-the-other-ones-%E2%80%93-how-i-found-i-wasn%E2%80%99t-unique/

A huge variety of search terms have brought other visitors. Some of the terms are really rather bizarre. I blame myself for this – it’s all because of my tendency to chunter on about random topics instead of sticking to the initial purpose of my blog, which was to promote my skills and knowledge as a freelance journalist. It’s funny – you start off with a policy of earnestly discussing missing apostrophes and bad spelling and before you know it, you’re rambling on with tongue in cheek about bacon sandwiches, corporate tax dodging and fantasy dog breeding. That’s the beauty of blogging, I suppose – it brings out the true inner writer – but of course Google and the other search engines are always lurking about taking notes and suggesting you as a source of fascinating information on subjects that (in my case) include: 

Bagology

American death penalty

Greek flowers

Assange

Coastal pathway

Ode to a Nightingale translated into Arabic

Some are really rather bizarre, since I don’t remember having actually written anything on these specific topics – still, Google appears to think I’m an authority:

Lapland immigration strategy

Hairy arms

William Hague fascist

Chihuahua fights

Indecent behaviour within the British Army

Naked lady jumping into water

Ugly gorillas

Topman tax dodge is quite a favourite term – I show up well on this one due to a couple of posts I did on the subject a while back.

Another favourite one is piglet castration and I wasn’t even responsible for this one – it was a guest blog written by a college friend who breeds pigs. Another guest blog, by an journalists’ union official, got me hits from people searching on sacked for Twitter comments and similar phrases.

Other phrases that have brought visitors here include:

Crap press releases

Dogging

Obnoxious responses to Facebook misspellings

Larry the prime minister’s cat

Jane Asher

Commas

Daddy long legs porn

Space Hijackers

Italian tableware

Swearing

Arms trade hoax

Circumcision

Troy David

London protest

Bad English.

Of course, it’s even nicer to be found through searches that are actually relevant to my work as a journalist. One visitor today found me after searching “I want to find a freelance journalist in Surrey”. They (or someone) even looked at my online CV, details of qualifications and clients and fees. My curiosity is now piqued – who are they, and did they find what they were looking for, or did my chunterings on about bacon and Lapland send them scurrying off to get the Yellow Pages?

“Bagology” – the career I’d have chosen over journalism had I known it existed

Pic credit: duron123, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ images/view_photog.php?photogid=3506

I’ve been in some kind of journalism ever since I sat at a manual typewriter in a college classroom in Cardiff reading about libel law, learning shorthand and writing news stories about made-up events in a made-up place called Newtown that suffered from far more of its fair share of fires, murders and motorway pile-ups.

Doing anything else was never really an option although I had previously considered other ideas – then written them off as I wasn’t qualified and wasn’t likely to become so.

Working with animals – no, not clever enough to be a vet, not tough enough to deal with ill-treated animals.

Advertising – no, didn’t want to encourage consumerism and corporate greed.

Being a film director – no, cos I don’t know how to use a video camera.

Law – no, cos I can’t retain facts for more than five minutes.

A while back I did discover a bit of a knack for analysing people’s personalities and lifestyles from the contents of their wallets or handbags. It’s great fun in pubs and an ice-breaker at parties – get someone to empty their handbag on the table and tell them all about themselves. It’s a skill akin in some ways to palm-reading or phrenology except that you don’t need any esoteric knowledge. It’s interesting to see how comprehensive a knowledge of someone you can gain from analyzing their bags – for women especially, the bag is an extension of their personality.

As I say, it was a bit of a laugh for an idle hour in the pub – no-one told me the art of handbag-gazing had a name, or that you could make a career out of it!

So I was captivated by a press release issued today about a life coach called Debbie Percy, who is billed as “the UK’s leading Bagologist”. Leading? So there’s more than one? No-one told me it was possible to make a living out of three-pint party tricks – I’d have thought twice about journalism had I known!

Debbie has apparently “developed an extremely accurate means of understanding someone’s personality and lifestyle just by analysing the contents of their bag. This then enables Debbie to identify and address particular issues in someone’s lifestyle.”

The Bentall shopping centre in London is offering free “bagology” readings from Debbie to winners of a draw being run on Facebook. www.facebook.com/TheBentallCentre.

It got me wondering how I’d fare in such a reading, so for a laugh, I thought I’d analyse myself from the current contents of my bag and purse.

Notebook Forgetful, needs to write everything down.

Five pens Obsessive, hoarder.

Camera Anti-social – always taking pictures instead of talking to whoever she’s with.

Calculator Can’t add up.

£5 off book voucher Thinks she’s intellectual.

0.02p off Sainsbury’s voucher Obsessed with saving money, however minuscule the amount – can’t see the bigger picture.

Instructions for colleague in an local group I belong to, explaining how to update the website Lazy, tries to palm work off on others.

Handwritten list of long words uttered by friend who’s gone to uni, collated for amusement of mutual friends Bully, intellectually inadequate.

Hand mirror Vain.

Tweezers Has a mono-brow.

Comb (broken) Unkempt.

Two lipsticks – one red, one brown Split personality – slut and frump.

Emery board (worn out) Needs a manicure.

Two eyeshadow brushes, no eyeshadow Disorganised.

Press card Perpetually hoping to blag her way into something exciting.

WeightWatchers membership card Eats too much.

Collection of coupons to get 70% off wine glasses at Tesco Cheapskate. Drinks like a fish.

Collection of own business cards Egotistical.

Collection of other people’s business cards Aspires to popularity.

National Trust membership card Aspires to be middle class. Likes drinking tea.

Filofax Out of touch. Probably wears shoulder pads.

Mobile phone (bottom of the range) Technophobe. Cheapskate.

London tube map and street map No sense of direction.

Southern Railway penalty charge notice Fare dodger.

Leaflet about Shut Guantanamo protest Trouble-maker.

Appointment card for blood donation session Do-gooder. Probably hasn’t got HIV or syphilis.

Well, that was fun. If anyone enters the Bentalls competition and doesn’t win a handbag analysis from a proper bagologist, send me a list of your handbag contents and I’ll see what I can do!

“You hit the nail upon the top”: more ludicrous compliments & idiocy from half-wit spammers

Hitting the nail upon the top. Pic credit: Carlos Porto, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ images/view_photog.php? photogid=345

For some reason, I really enjoy writing about spam (perhaps because it is so entertaining I don’t need to think of anything funny to write myself), so I am pleased to bring readers the latest batch of illiterate rubbish that fills my inbox in response to various blog posts.

Let’s start with a compliment. “Rodney” tells me: “The website pattern is perfect, the subject material is really wonderful”. Thanks Rodney, be honest with me though, you haven’t actually read it, have you?

“Luke” was also enthusiastic. “Hey There,” he writes, “I found your blog the use of msn. That is a very neatly written article. I will be sure to bookmark it and come back to learn more of your helpful info. Thank you for the post. I will definitely comeback.” [sic]

“Eleonor” was even more effusive, though rather less literate. “Definitely believe that which you said. Your favourite reason seemed to be on the web the easiest factor to have in mind of. I say to you, I certainly get annoyed while folks consider concerns that they plainly don’t know about.” (Eleonor, we are soul-mates!)

“You managed to hit the nail upon the top as well as defined out the entire thing without having side effect, “ she continued. “Other folks could take a signal. Will likely be again to get more. Thanks!”

Rodney, Luke and Eleonor had filled me so with pride and self-love that I was positively insulted by a subsequent remark from “Elvia”. “After reading your blog post,” she said, “I browsed your website a bit and noticed you aren’t ranking nearly as well in Google as you could be. I possess a handful of blogs myself and I think you should take a look here [link supplied]. You’ll find it’s a very nice tool that can bring you a lot more visitors.”

Fuck off, Elvia. If my site gets found only by perverts Googling “rancid, bitter, middle-aged, hairy-legged failed woman journalist UK” that’s my bloody business, OK? No need to rub it in.

“Ethan” thought I was lacking in efficiency. “Next, take all the activities you want to accomplish in the first year, and break them down by quarter,” he suggested, apropos of nothing. Would sitting on a spammer until he bursts count as an activity I should accomplish, I wonder?

On a completely different subject, “Stephanie” informed me that “one major benefit of this oil it does is to reduce triglyceride a form of fat made in the body levels.” She neglected to inform me which oil, otherwise I’d obviously have rushed out and bought some. Actually, even if I knew what triglyceride was I probably wouldn’t want to pay a total stranger to help me reduce it – does that make me a bad person?

I simply don’t understand what purpose most of these ridiculous posts serve. The spammers clearly want people to look at their comments and then visit their sites, but why would anyone do so, given such irrelevant and ill-written comments?

What the hell is anyone supposed to make of comments like this one? “I mapped out my route and the first stop was Reagan National Airport where I was picking up a friend”. I’m not a bloody travel writer, “Seth” – you’re in the wrong website.

Seth’s not alone in having not the slightest comprehension of who he is or where he is. “Ryan” commented: “The boy, blissfully unaware of what he has just escaped, wanders up the hill to the graveyard at the end of the street, where he is taken in and raised by the ghosts and spirits who live there.” I’m so at a loss as to what Ryan’s purpose is in visiting my site that I can’t think of a single witty or sarcastic thing to write.

So, moving swiftly on in the hope that I recover quickly, here’s one from “Jesse”, who says: “If any of you know of a forum devoted to follow spot techniques, please reply here, or email me.”

I don’t have the first inkling what a follow spot technique is, and even less interest. Another spam post advertising “cheap London hotels” recommended a hotel that is (I discovered after looking it up on independent sites) very far from “cheap”. What on earth is the point – what are they hoping to achieve?

Perhaps the best offer I’ve had all week was for a brand of e-cigarettes. Apparently, this product looks “similar to a fabulous Marlboro” and the experience is akin to “having an breathed in measure associated with tobacco smoking flavor cigarettes”. Even better, “the cigarettes is supplied in the shape a fabulous vaporized the liquid brought to all the bronchi.” Not only but also, these “fabulous cigarettes repair you wish for not having the tar, untidy lung burning ash, smelly cigarette smoke, grey your smile unsightly stains, or perhaps second hand smoke. What this means is they are really possibly reliable roughly toddlers and children.”

Hm, that sounds lovely but I’m a bit bored now, so I think I’ll just nip outside for a cigarette.

I attempt to annoy a scammer by engaging in time-wasting correspondence with him – Part 1

Most of the scam and spam emails I receive go straight into the electronic circular file, but one captured my imagination today and I thought it would be rather fun to reply to it – all innocent, like.

“The Better Business Bureau has been filed the above-referenced complaint from one of your clients concerning their dealings with you,” was the shocking news that popped into my inbox.

“The details of the consumer’s concern are presented in attached document. 
Please give attention to this matter and notify us of your standpoint. 
We kindly ask you to open the attached report to respond this complaint. 
We look forward to your prompt reply.”

The email was signed by a “Paula Tap”, who holds the position of “Dispute Counselor” at the “Better Business Bureau”. It was actually sent by a “Susanne Cook”, whose email address appears to be in Japan, though I rather doubt this.

Presumably the idea is that one opens the attachment, for what purpose I’m not sure, but not having been born yesterday I didn’t. Instead I thought I’d write back to my new penfriends and see if I could waste a portion of their time.

I replied:

“Dear Susanne and Paula

I was very upset to learn that a complaint had been filed against me. I have always done my best to give a good service to my clients and it is obviously a cause of great concern if a client is unhappy enough to contact a leading authority in business matters, such as yourselves.

I am asking myself, why did the client not contact me direct in the first instance? Maybe I could have explained matters to their satisfaction. Had things got so bad that we couldn’t at least TALK, and try to reach an amicable settlement?

Could you please outline the basic details of the complaint? If it was that matter of the member of parliament and the lady snake charmer, I can say in my defence that I did my best under difficult circumstances and that I always strived to maintain a sense of dignity, diplomacy and good humour. I really feel I can vindicate myself if you could tell me the exact nature of the complaint against me.

If privacy considerations prevent you from revealing the precise details, I will understand, and please could I ask to you tell my client that any shortcomings on my part would have been the result of a concatenation of events, namely an unforeseen shortage of office stationery, the pressures of maintaining a long-distance relationship with a married man in Nether Wallop, Hampshire, England, and my boss’s unfortunate dependence on prescription drugs.

It’s far too long a story to go into now and in any event, I fear you would think I was making excuses for my incompetence, but if you could let me have sight of the official complaint I will do my best to remedy it, even if that means not getting to Nether Wallop in time for the New Year’s Eve celebrations.

We at the Scottish & Caledonian Allied Manufacturers of Buns and Sweet Tortillas are at your service.  

S Fenton (Mr)

Customer Service Representative”

The words are all mine, and I’m rather pleased with the unspelled-out acronym at the end (SCAMBUST), but I owe the initial idea of getting into correspondence with scammers, with a view to irritate, to www.scamorama.com, which has indulged in some hilarious exchanges of emails with various internet penpals whose sole aim in life is to extract money from half-wits.

If “Paula” or “Susanne” reply I will report back.

Nuts, spa pool tsunamis, royal visits and budget shopping – the latest gossip from the steam room

On the alert for another water-based coccyx-cracking drama. Pic credit: JulesInKY, www.morguefile.com

The hot topic in the steam room tonight was Nuts: the Nutritional Benefits Thereof. The latest newsletter from the health club management was apparently full of top tips about how to get enough nuts in your diet. Allegedly – I haven’t seen it – the management say nuts are the new garlic-and-tomatoes. It sounded a pretty outlandish claim to me – I mean, how is a handful of brazils and walnuts going to help anyone make a nice spaghetti Bolognese? How would home-made tomato soup turn out if based around a mix of almonds and hazelnuts? Barely adequately, one would have thought.

Anyhow, the topic of nuts held no-one’s interest for long and conversation moved onto speculation about what would be the upshot if a certain club member, who’s built more for endurance than speed, were to take a running jump into the spa pool, while The Boys were in it. Apparently he had recently tried this feat in the swimming pool, with unfortunate results. Not realising the pool is only three feet deep at its deepest, he incurred a nasty crack to the coccyx.

I hardly need mention the opportunities exploited for crack- and coccyx-based jokes, but “a trip to A&E all round,” seemed to be the consensus on what the resulting tsunami would produce if their absent chum were allowed to carry out his daring leap while the spa pool was occupied.

Next on the agenda was last week’s visit by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh to the town, to open the newly-refurbished college. Nick said the royals had been greeted by a load of students dressed and made up as aliens. The college does courses in make-up and tv/film production, among other things, so I daresay their choice of dress was something to do with their studies, but Tim said no, they weren’t students, they must have been just the people of the town, come to have a gawp at the Queen. Bill asked if they were wearing Crocs with white socks and grubby tracksuit bottoms; if so, they were definitely the townsfolk, on their way to an afternoon at the Wetherspoons.

Rory then did a rather good impersonation of Prince Philip asking if they could pop into the local Iceland for a spot of shopping when they’d finished opening the college; and the Queen replying that there was no need, the freezer at the Palace was full.

This reminded Bill of a rather coarse joke involving someone bending over the frozen chicken freezer at Iceland. He withheld the rude words though, out of consideration for the “ladies” present, so I thought it only respectful not to repeat the one I’d heard about the obscene phone call and the television-watching husband. If anyone wants to hear it I can repeat it privately, but it does have a very rude word in it – and anyway, I’ve already revealed the punchline, so best not to bother.

Anyway, when conversation turns to Iceland – as it does frighteningly frequently, Rory claiming to be an avid fan of frozen party snacks – I always know we’re in dangerous territory because it means we’re about to start a tedious conversation about Shopping. Never believe anyone who tells you that it’s women who like talking about shopping. Most women I know find the process pretty tedious. But the Boys in the Steam Room love it – and the more budget the better. That lot could form a Lidl and Aldi appreciation society.

Insults fly as “Tarquin” is accused of being too posh and I receive jibes about being overweight

The Boys were on top form last night in the steam room. I hadn’t been for a while, what with one thing and another, and in my absence they seemed to have imbibed a dose of some substance that makes you think you can sing or are funny.

There was a debate about favourite karaoke songs, with Maggie saying hers was These Boots are Made for Walking by Nancy Sinatra. Someone asked how that went, so she sang the chorus, helped by Richard, who stood up and did the moves, following up with a rendition of the bass line to Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower. It’s quite rare to hear music in the steam room – idle banter yes; half-witted laughter, yes; voices raised in heated political debate, yes; but live music, no. It was quite hot in the steam but everyone was reluctant to leave for fear of missing any of this unprecedented piece of performance art.

We wondered what would be the favourite karaoke song of one of the absent Boys, whom I shall call Tarquin. He’s generally agreed to be the poshest member at the club, which is saying something – we’re in leafy Surrey, after all, and four-wheel-drive vehicles aren’t in short supply in the car park. Rory said Tarquin was too posh to sing karaoke – after all, he’s been known to wear his ermine and coronet to the health club, before changing into his swimming trunks. Nick said he didn’t know about that, but that Tarquin did have Royal connections, namely a Prince Albert. This led to a rather coarse conversation about whether the Prince Albert was too loose and needed tightening, or whether it was actually a bit tight and Tarquin struggled to push it on of a morning.

Like his namesake, Rory Bremner, Rory is rather good at doing impersonations and made us laugh by doing impressions of two of the absent members getting into the spa pool. Even though he didn’t say a word – just imitated their posture, facial expressions and methods of noisily displacing water – we were able to guess straight away who he was impersonating.

Someone speculated as to what people might say about Rory and Nick when they are not there, to which Rory cogently replied: “That’s why we’re always here, so they don’t get a chance to talk about us”.

I wonder what they say about me behind my back. It’s been quite a good week for insults. I bumped into a former neighbour when I was out for a jog the other day – she was walking her dog. Passing the time of day I said I’d taken up jogging to try and lose a bit of weight and she looked me up and down and said: “Mm yes, you have put some weight on, haven’t you? Must be all that food you eat.” Based on the fact that she once saw me making a chicken casserole!

This came only days after my musical guru, the Modern Folk Poet, revealed he’d written a comic song about overweight women, inspired by me. He then made matters worse by bringing the subject up every five minutes.

“I haven’t offended you, have I, by suggesting you’re fat? It’s only a joke.”

“I mean, I didn’t mean to offend you, by implying you’re overweight.”

“I thought you’d see the funny side, being as you’re a bit porky at the moment.”

“It’s not that I think you’re really fat – maybe carrying just a few too many pounds. Bit of exercise, soon shed that bit of flab.”

“Women can look quite nice if they’re a bit curvy; who wants a skinny woman?”

He ran out of steam in the end, before I had to resort to a vicious kick and a “Shut the fuck up.” Anyway, I remembered that I am in a position to get my own back. I have a half-written comic song of my own which I can polish up and wheel out. Set to the tune of What a Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong, it’s a moderately offensive parody about men with beards, one of which objects the Modern Folk Poet possesses. As soon as I can learn to play C sharp major on the guitar, which the somewhat complex chord structure demands, I’ll be in a position to get my own back.

Pic credit: Michelle Meiklejohn, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=901

….and on a lighter note, some daddy long-legs porn

“Oooh, yeah, baby, I love it when you do that with your big fat thing”

“Can I have a cuddle?” “In a minute. Where’s the fags?”

A pair of daddy long-legs chose the wall above my bed on which to mate the other night. They started, appropriately, at bedtime, and were still at it in the morning. And they showed not the slightest embarrassment about me watching them and taking dirty pictures to post on the internet.

Luckily for me, crane fly sex is a peaceful, noiseless business – they simply sit there for hours with their naughty parts glued together – I’d have been well annoyed if there’d been lots of flapping about and moaning.

They eventually separated about 11am and buzzed about for a bit – perhaps stretching their wings after the long spell of inactivity – before settling languorously back on the wall, a few inches apart, in poses suggestive of extreme sexual exhaustion.

According to Wikipedia, most crane fly species exist as adults only to mate and die. Which might explain why daddy long-legs sex lasts so long – if shagging is your sole occupation, you might as well do it all night long. It’s not as if you’ve got to get up for work.

The Boys refuse to take their knickers off for “Let It Hang” Day: and other piglet-related news

The Boys in the Steam Room displayed little enthusiasm when I told them they ought to go without underwear this Friday to mark “Let It Hang” Day, an event being held in support of the millions of piglets that are apparently needlessly castrated every year.

The event is being organised by a Belgian animal rights group, Gaia, which says vaccination could replace castration as a more humane way of preventing “boar taint”, an odour released when sexually mature pigs are cooked.

Gaia wants men to go commando for the day in solidarity with the piglets, to persuade supermarkets not to sell pork made from castrated pigs. It is targeting men because they are best placed to imagine the pain of castration, especially if they have ever received an unexpected football or stiletto heel in the crotch. “Be careful before you sit down,” the group thoughtfully warned participants.

The group says women can help too by hiding their men’s pants on Friday morning so they are forced to go to work with it all hanging free. Or, as the Google translation from the Belgian charmingly put it, “[women] can help by their husband’s underwear to hide”.

None of the Boys seemed keen to join up. Tim avoided the issue by arguing that the phrase “Let It Hang” sounded all wrong – wouldn’t “Flop It Out” be better? Nick said anyway the organisers probably meant trousers, not underwear, as they were probably using “pants” in the American sense.

Rory crossed his legs and begged me to stop saying “castration”. He added that he had no intention of not wearing his undies on Friday because “if I said I wouldn’t, you’d put it in that diary of yours”.

Anyone who would like to join in can register on the Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=221483921232834. And anyone who’d like to see how piglets are castrated without anesthaesia can see a film clip at http://vimeo.com/25771292

Meanwhile, here in England, in another piglet-related incident, Surrey Police announced today that it had released from bail four people previously suspected of having pinched micro-piglets from an address in Capel in March.

Four micro-piglets have been reunited with their rightful owner, but police continue to appeal for information regarding the whereabouts of the remaining animals, named Squiggle, Dotty and Spotty.

This tickled me; obviously it’s not funny when loved pets are stolen, but I found it quite charming that the police, who events of recent years have led us to believe are primarily concerned with protecting the interests of government and big business, rather than those of the community, are willing to spend time on tracking down a householder’s piglets. Sweet.

Pic credit: Tina Phillips, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=503

Cocaine smuggling and other scatological topics

Conversation in the steam room got a bit scatological at the weekend, so don’t read this if you’re about to have your breakfast.

One of the Boys, who’s a customs official at the airport, was telling us about the increasing number of “swallowers” they’re seeing arriving off international flights. Swallowers, apparently, are those optimistic travellers who board a flight with their stomach full of packets of cocaine. The idea is that, in due course, the packages work their way through the digestive system and emerge at the other end ready to be extracted from the lavatory and sold on.

Airport Man said that suspected swallowers are detained until such time as the packages might reasonably be expected to travel south. Sometimes the packages leak, causing the suspect to exhibit bizarre behaviour and astonishing strength, needing four or more customs officials to hold them down. Other times the packages burst, causing the suspect to drop dead.

More often than not, the cocaine turns up as expected in the toilet pan, causing the suspect to spend long periods of time in a British prison.

Airport Man said some smugglers “hold onto” their stomach contents for days, even weeks, until nature finally forces its way through. Apparently a customs officer has to stay with them until this happens, which must get a bit tedious for both parties. I can’t imagine that someone who’s been used to a regular post-breakfast poo would feel much like witty banter or intellectual conversation after a week of straining to keep it in while being closely watched by a bored foreign bloke in a uniform.

Some smugglers are driven to it out of desperation – one young man was trying to raise money to pay for his mother’s cancer treatment in Africa – others out of coercion, like the young woman who arrived at Gatwick with black eyes and a broken nose but no cocaine, having refused at the last minute to act as a mule.

Airport Man told the tale of one man who got the mother of all sore throats after swallowing 96 packets and refused to continue, at which the drug baron insisted he bend over, and inserted the rest of the 100-strong consignment where the sun doesn’t shine.

And one swallower got safely through customs in London after a flight from Portugal and ejected the packets, only for the compatriots she met at the airport to retrieve them from the toilet and swallow them, unwashed, in preparation for their onward flight to Africa.

Other poor sods have apparently been told that, having had the correct magic ritual performed pre-flight, they will be invisible to the customs officers, only to find that’s not quite true.

Sometimes the detainees are apparently respectable, middle class businessmen who give no outward appearance of being crims, whose baggage carries no incriminating traces and who would normally be let through – the only reason to hold them being the utter conviction of the police in the country of departure that they are guilty as hell, a conviction that often proves correct, once their digestive juices lead to the inevitable conclusion.

All this led to a discussion about whether drugs should be legalised. Most felt this would be a good idea as it would take the drugs trade out of the hands of gangsters and put it in the hands of the state. While agreeing with this in principle, I’m slightly averse to the idea of putting any more profit-making opportunities in the hands of the greedy corporations that presumably would end up running the newly-liberated cocaine retailing industry. The very idea of banning certain drugs would then be unthinkable, since the corporations would simply not allow it. We could then no more ban heroin than we could ban alcohol now – the commercial interests involved would outweigh any public interest.

Rory arrived at this point in the discussion and lowered the tone by talking about his new haircut, an all-over Number One crew-cut, which had left him looking like that dense blond pilot bloke out of Top Gun. Why pay good money for a haircut, he argued, when you can do it yourself with a £12 gadget that, admittedly, did look like it was intended for chopping onions and might perhaps take your ear off.

This led the boys on to discussing other methods of hair removal. Julian said he’d once had his chest waxed for charity and it had stung something shocking. The others weren’t aware that hair grew back after waxing, so I showed them my legs, looking fairly hairy three weeks post-wax. The subject of “back, sack and crack” came up then. Rory said he’d not consider the “sack”, and would far rather deal with that bit with a pair of nail scissors. Julian said he’d never have the “crack”, for fear it would “play havoc with me piles”.

I left them in the spa pool debating the possibility of hormone replacement to address middle-aged libido loss.

Pic credit: Ambro, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1499