tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49532672710317118002024-02-08T18:43:15.524+00:00DraMatticsThe thoughts of my inner mind laid bare. You have been warned.Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-20398445983488365712012-09-20T13:28:00.004+01:002012-09-20T13:28:50.950+01:00Olympic MemoriesRemember DraMattics has moved, so if you want to check out all my musings on the Olympics head here:<br />
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<a href="http://dramattics.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/olympic-memories/">http://dramattics.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/olympic-memories/</a>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-91009080368658643462012-09-12T08:49:00.001+01:002012-09-12T08:49:37.202+01:00The First Night of the Proms<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Guess what
I am back!! I know shocking isn’t it? But before you get too engrossed a little
public service announcement – DraMattics is moving website, to a brand new much
more exciting (hopefully) blog and layout. All the old posts, and this brand
new one are there already so click now and head over to:<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://dramattics.wordpress.com/">http://dramattics.wordpress.com/<o:p></o:p></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If you’ve
signed up to the e-mail alerts I am afraid you will need to resign up on the
new website else you won’t get them. The next couple of posts will appear on
both websites to give you a chance to move over, but then after that I shall
not be updating this site. So please abandon ship now into the life raft of the
new website!!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Next up I
need to apologise for my lack of blogging, over recent months, it’s been a busy
stressful time. Incidentally if anyone knows what a mid-life crisis feels like
please do get in touch. But I appear to be back in my right mind, so it’s on
with the blogging:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I am a
slut, I am. I’ve betrayed you. I have. I’ve been blogging to other people
behind your back. I’m sorry but I had to say it. The secret was killing me. I
hope you can forgive me and we can move on. Ok so you want to know the sordid
details of my betrayal before you judge, well read on…<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The other
week a link appeared in my Twitter feed (look at me modern technology – down
with the kids), from The Royal Albert Hall inviting bloggers who’d never been
to the BBC Proms to win free tickets to the event simply by blogging about the
experience. To be honest I wasn’t really sure about whether I was that bothered
about the Proms, but knowing that I communicate far better through blogging
than actually talking to real human beings I thought why not give it a go. The
entry conditions were so simple, that even a lazy a**e like me who keeps
putting off blogging, actually managed to get round to doing it. All I had to
do was send two lines on why I should go to the Proms and an article I’d
previously written. So I e-mailed with a line basically saying “I don’t think
the Proms are for me”, and my article on how awful it is being single at a
wedding.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="http://dramattics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/happiest-day-of-someone-elses-bloody.html">http://dramattics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/happiest-day-of-someone-elses-bloody.html</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: red; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black;">Don’t
laugh, I’ve even got to be a best man this year.</span> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Reasoning
I’d almost certainly scared off the organisers, I was surprised as you to find
out that I’d actually won. Yes I had to go to the Proms and review one of their
performances for the Royal Albert Hall website. Like a proper journalist(ish). In
fact my blog was so popular with the massive Royal Albert Hall community, that
I’ve got a whole two likes and no comments. So there you go my new bloggees
don’t love me so I’ve come crawling back. But if you want to laugh in the
non-event of my new found blogger fame-dom, then check out this link:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://life.royalalberthall.com/2012/09/prom-69-review/">http://life.royalalberthall.com/2012/09/prom-69-review/<o:p></o:p></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Or
alternatively, you may want to read the full uncut, director’s edition of my
blog (apparently my submission was too long – really? Me blog for too long?),
then read on. Enjoy…<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">My name is
Matt and I’m a Prom Virgin. If from that sentence your first thought is that
this is a diary of an 18-year old American girl, trying to get off with a guy
called Chad at the end of school dance, then I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong
idea. I am of course referring to having never been to the celebration of
classical music that is the annual BBC Proms.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m not
really sure why I haven’t been to the Proms before, I guess I’ve just never
thought they’d be for me. I imagine the Proms is a bit like Opera, but with
less Viking horns, less people singing about wanting Cornettos, and no one who
looks like they’re going to try and persuade me to Go Compare my car insurance.
And without wishing to be rude, I always imagine that people who go to the
Proms are quite posh, called Giles, wear burgundy cardigans and watch The
Antiques Roadshow. And despite having a slightly unnatural love of all things
Fiona Bruce, I’ve never really seen myself falling into that category. However
having recently surprised myself about how enthusiastic a Union Flag waiver I
can be at the Olympics, I thought why not see if I can carry on my
nationalistic arm flapping at the Proms. This is where we come to our first
snag, Union Flag waving only occurs at The Last Night of the Proms. Turn up any
other night doing that, and whilst I’m sure you may not get turned away you
will look like an over enthusiastic member of the BNP. I clearly had a lot to
learn, so it was time to head to the Royal Albert Hall and see what the Proms
were really like.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was
worried that turning up to my first Prom would make me feel a bit like a fish
out of water. I’m the kind of person who if invited to a posh do, feels
distinctly awkward. It’s as if my invitation was an accident and I spend the
entire event panicking that I will break something expensive. The good news on
this front is that there is no dress code for the Proms, the majority of the
audience was on the smart side of casual, and I certainly didn’t stick out like
a sore thumb in t-shirt and jeans. Saying that you can go too casual. If you
are lucky enough to own your very own fluorescent lime green mankini, the Proms
may not be the night for it. The other reassuring sign, about the level of
class allowed in, was that on entering the Royal Albert Hall I found they
actually sold those large bags of Cadbury’s Giant Chocolate Buttons at the
kiosk – a tiny part of me had worried it would be pheasant and truffles all the
way!!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Even the
most architecturally snobby person, can’t fail to be impressed by the interior
of the Royal Albert Hall, I have been before, but the grand roof and impressive
stage still take your breath away. There’s a variety of seating options from
high up in the rafters, where you need binoculars to see what’s going on, all
the way down to the excellent stall seats (where I was lucky enough to be sat)
through to possibly the politest mosh pit in the world. Yes standing tickets are
available for the Proms, though if you are worried I think it’s unlikely any of
the orchestra are likely to be crowd surfing anytime soon! And the good news with
standing room tickets is that you won’t be alone if you choose to sit or even
lie down during the Prom, though there were a large number of audience members who
commendably manage the herculean task of standing through the whole event. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Culture
experience or no culture experience, I certainly couldn’t have managed that. A
word of warning here if you are lucky enough to be sat in the stalls, be
cautious that the chairs do revolve slightly to let people get past you. I
didn’t realise this, and nearly had as Miranda-esque moment as I span off into
a nearby Prom couple enjoying their ice creams.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The
concert I’d been asked to review was Concert No. 69 (no sniggering at the back
please), entitled “Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra – Messian & Mahler”. Call me
a cultural philistine, but I’ll be honest I had no idea what any of that meant.
I know!! What can I say; I was clearly off the day we did that at school.
Saying that, it may well be worth doing a little bit of research prior to your
visit to the Proms if you are a novice. Unless you’re happy to stump up for a
programme there isn’t any information on what you are actually hearing. In fact
bar an announcement regarding turning off mobile phones, nothing in the
performance was actually spoken, which is a slightly odd experience in itself. We
can only hope Jim Davidson decides to bring this format to his act sooner
rather than later. I found that simply checking the BBC Radio 3 listings for
the Proms, gave me a good enough brief guide to what I was going to be hearing.
So if nothing else I’d suggest you head there. Obviously in the real world you
may have had some input into choosing which Prom you go to, rather than having
a random set of tickets land in your hand (like I did), but if a friend does
take you along for example, I’d recommend taking five minute trip of Google to
keep yourself informed (that five minutes doesn’t include time spent
procrastinating and internet shopping, whilst your meant to be looking!).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If like
me, your experience to date of live musical performances consists of watching
odd episodes of The X Factor and an unloved VHS of the Spice Girls 1997 tour
that you’re not quite sure why you own, then one of the striking things about
the Proms is it isn’t a visual experience. Don’t get me wrong the sight of a
full orchestra on the stage of Royal Albert Hall is certainly an impressive
sight. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But once you’ve taken that in
there’s no other on stage movement really, there’s certainly no dancing troupes
and no epileptic-inducing pyrotechnic displays. Though it definitely was
amusing to see one member of the orchestra produce a large mallet to sound one
of the notes (I am not sure I was supposed to find that funny)! But whilst your
eyes may not feel that taxed, your ears will be treated to a full audial
spectacle. The music is amazing, and sounds brilliant in the domed hall. In fact
you could be forgiven for just closing your eyes and allowing the music to wash
over you, it’s evocative nature taking your imagination to any number of
places. Though I am not totally convinced that, that’s the reason some of the
more elderly Prom goers had their eyes closed!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Concert
69, performed by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, consisted of an initial 31
minute performance of </span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Messiaen's 1964 memorial
to the dead of the two world wars – an understandably somber piece. This was
followed by an interval and then an 85 minute performance of Mahler's Sixth Symphony,
a rousing piece of music (yes I did look this up, I am not that cultured). Each
of these performances, is interspersed with a number of tiny breaks, where I
wasn’t quite sure if you were supposed to clap or not. I felt I should, but
wanted to wait for someone else to start instead – perhaps everyone in the hall
was in fact waiting for someone else to start, and the orchestra just thought
we were a really rude audience!! Either way these short breaks, are noticeably
used for a good cough as everyone finally succumbs to that irresistible urge that
annoyingly occurred about one second into the performance, where they
desperately needed to cough up the contents of their throat. It sounds a bit
like being in a hall of people trying to perform the world’s largest
synchronized sickie phone-in to the office. As a newbie I’d be prepared for
this, as it can be unintentionally funny, to the unwarned.</span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So after
an evening of Prom-ing (is that even a word?), what did I think? Well visiting
the Proms is definitely a great spectacle and an experience worth seeing and
hearing at least once in your life. The musical performances are absolutely
amazing. I was pleasantly surprised that the event didn’t feel as aloof as I’d
perhaps unfairly expected. Personally, however, I think that this specific Prom
possibly wasn’t the most accessible for a complete newcomer and to be honest
the 85 minute second piece was a little too long for my tastes, interests and
comfort of my bottom (Just a cultural note – I do appreciate that, that was the
length of the piece and it can’t be abridged for the convenience of my
posterior!). That said, I do think that choosing your first Prom appropriately
is important. Perhaps using the guidance of a friend who knows more about it,
or even starting with one of the more themed Proms, I believe would certainly
lead to a good fun night out for a newcomer, and potentially engross you into
the whole experience. I certainly think you have nothing to lose by giving it a
go, and if they’ll let me in the Royal Albert Hall they certainly won’t throw
you out for looking out of place. Who knows before long you could be attending
every Prom in the next season, just promise me that you won’t eat too many of
those Giant Chocolate Buttons!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-81668936841897377302012-06-20T08:34:00.000+01:002012-06-20T08:34:30.339+01:00You Can with the Dukan<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Apologies if
you’ve had the misfortune of speaking to me in the last couple of months, because
I have officially turned into one of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">those
</i>people. Yeah I’ve started doing a “fad” diet and it is now all I can talk
about, all I can tell you is what I can eat, what I am going to eat, how much
weight I’ve lost, how much weight I have to lose and how regular my bowels are.
Though in fairness I always talk about how regular my bowels are so you
probably haven’t noticed the difference! So far I’ve managed to keep diet talk
off this blog, but no more I must break free and speak my mind, as I have
nothing else to talk about. Though I am hoping that I will contain all the diet
talk in one blog-sized burst and not bore you incessantly for weeks to come.
But apologies if this article does read like a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Woman’s Own</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Google</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> any fad diet and you’ll find
articles about how it does work, how it doesn’t work, how it will give you
cancer and how it is responsible for the death of Diana, Princess of Wales –
but then that’s your own fault for reading the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Daily Express</i>’ website. The diet I chose to embark upon is called
the Dukan diet, named after it’s French creator Dr Dukan, and not chosen for
some clever alliterative pun such as the one I have used to name this blog
entry. Though that is helpful.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I embarked
on the Dukan lifestyle, as he likes to refer it (lifestyle being that you can
now only talk about dieting and annoy waiters by asking for special things from
the menu), after seeing a colleague at work follow the same plan and rapidly
disappear in front of my very eyes. Now I know I am hardly obese (don’t
disagree that’s rude). I haven’t had to be taken to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">London Zoo</i>’s elephant house to be weighed, I don’t have to be positioned
correctly on a plane in order to keep the plane aerodynamic nor do I need to be
hoisted out of a Piccadilly line carriage chair at the end of my daily commute.
Though sadly that last statement is only true because I live on the Northern
line. However, I have noticed a little bit of tummy, an annoying bit that even
with a token amount of exercise and broadly healthy eating won’t go away. Every
now and again it occasionally grows, at Christmas or bingey weekends, like a
plant you occasionally get round to watering. Given enough time and slices of
cake my tummy was sure to develop its own postcode if left unchecked. And with
the recent 30<sup>th</sup> anniversary celebrations of my birth I felt now was
the time to get in check before middle-aged spread, like a virulent fungal
infection, took hold. Also I’ve never really felt comfortable being topless
anywhere, I don’t look obese but if I lie down people have mistaken my belly
for a speed hump. When I tend to get changed for swimming I find myself holding
a towel around at nipple height to cover my modesty, like a pregnant women. But
enough was enough, no more would I be ashamed of my body it was time for a
change.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">This is the book I’ve been using:<br />
</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It looks
lovely and fluffy on the outside, but the inside is like the culinary edition
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mein Kampf</i> a strict list of rules
and regulations that need to be adhered to in order to achieve weight loss. Dr
Dukan takes great pleasure in reminding you every step of the way that even one
false move will result in you being a fat bastard.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ll give
you a quick overview of how the diet works, but on a serious note (for once) if
you are following any weight loss plan make sure you do it sensibly and check
you are following all the rules. Don’t just follow some half-baked summary some
idiot has written on a blog – get what I mean? Good, now I’ve finished being
your disapproving mother I can get on.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Dukan is
primarily a high protein diet, by feeding your body just protein it’s forced to
raid its fat stores to supplement your carbohydrate and sugar deficiency – like
a crooked builder raiding a pensioner’s bank account. The diet is broken up
into phases, Phase 1 is called The Attack Phase, this doesn’t involve any
attacking, unless you actually unleash the pent up rage you will find quickly
builds up against Dr Dukan when you’ve been following the diet for any length
of time. In Phase 1 you can only eat lean proteins (poultry, lean beef or ham,
fish, eggs etc.), 0% fat dairy products (skimmed milk, yoghurts, cottage cheese
etc.) and a few selected condiments, and that is it. Drinks can only be coffee
or tea (skimmed milk and sweetener only), non-fruit based diet fizzy drinks,
water and skimmed milk. Sounds about as an appetising as a bowl of sawdust!<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Here’s a
typical meal from Dukan Day 1:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Personally I
don’t find anything on that list actually disgusting. The main problem, I
found, is what your tummy craves that it can’t have rather than having to eat
horrid things. Though saying that mention “cottage cheese” enough and
bystanders do seem to have a terrible affliction where they spontaneously
projectile vomit in your face. And I soon learnt that bringing prawns into the
office was about as welcome, with my colleagues, as if I’d brought a plague of
locusts in, or turned up for the day with the rotting corpse of Bernard
Manning.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Another
delightful meal was this one, which I arranged into the shape of a bearded face
simply to add some excitement to dinner:<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">During Phase
1 you can eat as much of the above foods as you like, but only them. This is a
rapid weight loss phase, I lost 2kgs (4lbs) in just three days, this weight
lost I suspect was almost entirely made up of taste buds jumping off my tongue
in a bid to kill themselves. However this phase is only a temporary phase, up
to a week and then you have to move to Phase 2, or you will die (possibly –
almost certainly from taste boredom).<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I found Day
1 of the Phase 1 wasn’t too bad, I was detoxing from the 40kgs of birthday cake
I gorged on the day before. By Day 2 I wanted to kill people, slowly and
painfully. Day 2 was awful and there was lots of grumpiness (apologies to those
in the office that day). By Day 4 the worst was over my stomach surrendered
even if now again I would start hallucinating about chocolate and pizza.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Dukan
book helpfully provides some recipes for this stage to turn the bland range of
foods into a selection of bland meals.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Unfortunately
the quantities in the book are absolutely mad, the very first recipe is for a
selection of salmon voul-a-vents (without any pastry!), that serve 50. Fifty!!!
I am not organising a f**king Dukan dinner party, why would I want 50 of the
bloody things. It’s as if Dukan himself knows that anyone on the diet would
have to instantly form some kind of group therapy organisation to get through
it, and of course there’d need to be catering.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I made one
recipe in this phase, this was these Mint Mousses:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It was
primarily fat-free fromage frais, mixed with sweetener, green food colouring
and peppermint flavouring. And tasted like you’d accidentally inhaled the
contents of a dentist’s hoover bag. It had the consistency and flavour of what
you spit out of your mouth when brushing your teeth. No matter how bored I was
of fat free vanilla yoghurts I never became so bored that I had a second one of
these, and most of the contents of the above photo went in the bin (except the
ramekins which have to be destroyed).<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">There was a
depressing point in Phase 1 where I started getting jealous of what I was
feeding the plants!</span></span><br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">After a few
days you advance to Phase 2 – The Cruise Phase. In order to stop your gastric
system completely collapsing, Phase 2 alternates the protein days from Phase 1
with days where you can add in most vegetables and a few more condiments. As
long as you do the same number of protein days as protein and veg days you’re
fine, so you can do this in any combination you like. Given that protein and
veg days are a little easy to do when eating with friends or being cooked for
by other people, I tended to mix up the pattern to get the protein and veg days
to fall favourably.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">By the time
you get to Phase 2 you’ll be craving a lettuce leaf, your body will want
anything to add to its restricted menu. I had a particular lust for cherry
tomatoes that was happily filled in Phase 2. I found the protein & veg days
so much more tolerable than the protein only days.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At this
point the Dukan book happily provides some top tips to get you through the
challenging times. First tip is that it’s really easy to order off a restaurant
menu on Phase 2. Just choose something like salmon or an omelette or a salad
and avoid dessert. Dukan is lying. It’s bloody impossible to find any menus you
can eat anything off. I looked through five before going out for a meal with friends,
pretty much every salad required four things to be taken off – breadsticks,
oil, cheese, avocado etc. By the time I’d gone through all those changes with
any waitress she’d already start lining up a massive turd to drop into my
dinner. I found that the simplest thing to order, in terms of least changes,
was to go to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pizza Express</i> and order
the Goat’s Cheese Salad – without any Goat’s Cheese. Which is about as exciting
as rushing out and buying a brand new games console, without buying any games
for it.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">His next top
tip, is if you wish to avoid the embarrassment of explaining to family members
your new diet. Then just dip pieces of chicken in your boiled egg instead of
toast soldiers, they’ll never know. Really?! How much does Dukan think toast
and cooked chicken look the same? Or how far away does he think family members
sit at the breakfast table? Is there about 100 meters distance between the
chairs in his dining room, strategically placed so no one can clearly identify
the foods going into their fellow diner’s mouths? Of course your family will
notice, they probably won’t mention it in front of you. Mainly because they’ll
be discussing the fact that you madly started dipping bits of chicken in your
boiled egg, behind your back for fear that any moment you’re going to crack and
start killing them. Even if your family did fall for your rouse, and believed
the chicken you were dipping in your egg was toast, that’s the only “secret”
meal Dukan recommends. After how many meals of just boiled eggs and toast do you
think your family will think you’ve gone bloody mad anyway?<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Another
problem is Dukan isn’t really very portable. Eating on the move doesn’t really
work as meats and dairy products aren’t really that travel friendly. Recently I
went on a week filming with work, where I was on the road all day and found
that while the crew were sitting eating lunch in a pub I was sat in the van in
the pub car park eating luke warm vanilla yogurt and fish sticks. A more tragic
site could not be imagined, well not without the death of a well-loved family
pet or the cancellation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Apprentice
</i>or something.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">That said
Dukan is an effective diet, after the first month I lost an impressive 7kgs
(15lbs), and a large number of invites to dinners out – which for the social
reclusive like me, can only be a good thing! I’ve tried a couple of Dukan’s
other recipes namely the Iced Chocolate Souffl</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">é</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> and the Tofu Choc Cream, and they’re
ok. Don’t get me wrong they’re not amazing chocolate desserts, if you went to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hotel Chocolait </i>and got those, you’d
piss in the shop assistant’s face in disgust. But when your taste buds are
crying out for variation and new flavours they seem to do the job. If you’re
wondering how they can be on the list, they’re primarily made with zero fat
fromage frais, egg whites and a low fat cocoa powder. In fact the whole dessert
is so low fat, it’s like the anti-matter version of Vanessa Feltz, put them in
the same room and the resultant explosion will destroy of all <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC London Radio</i> station. Which isn’t necessarily
the worst idea ever?<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">After 50
days I lost a total of 11 kgs (or 24 lbs) and reached my final target weight, a
healthy slim </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Matty not afraid to bare his new svelte chest – though don’t worry
I won’t be doing it in the office or on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Underground</i>
or anything. From my experience Dukan worked for me, if you can put up with the
tough rules, and the taste boredom oh and the bad breath – ketosis takes hold
in the first week and if you don’t use regular mouth wash your breath could be
used to cut through steel. I’m now in Stage 3: Consolidation, where I start introducing
normal foods again slowly, so I don’t balloon up instantly like the deployment
of a car airbag. I am allowed things like cheese and bread again, which when
you’ve not had anything tasty for 50 days is amazing:</span></span><br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Most
excitingly I can have two “Celebration Meals” a week where I can eat anything I
like – as long as I don’t go silly with quantities.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For my first
free choice meal I had this:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Followed by
this:<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Finally I’ll be back to a normal diet after this phase, and hopefully I’ll
never need to write another blog about tedious dieting. And if you’re lucky
you’ll never need to read another blog about tedious dieting!<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sadly, for
you, I’m off filming in a glamorous and secret location for the next week so no
blogs for a little while but I will be back soon!</span></span>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-6856692906034854912012-06-11T07:28:00.004+01:002012-06-11T07:28:53.696+01:00I’m Not a Football Fan Get Me Out of Here<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This weekend
saw the start of the Footbally Eurovision World Cup Thingy (see I can talk
expertly on subjects I don’t know about), as Europe gets very excited to see
who will win Football trophies when they exclude all the good South American
teams who would win them otherwise.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Previously
on this blog I have talked at great length about how I don’t hate Football, but
generally find it easier to say you do to get out of arguments:<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br /><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://dramattics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/its-just-easier-to-hate-football.html">http://dramattics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/its-just-easier-to-hate-football.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br /><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anyway with
England’s first game tonight, against France (see I know stuff), you may find
that you are forced to watch the game against your will, even if you are
supposed to be working. For some reason you’re allowed time off work to watch
England play, but not to watch <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cash in
the Attic </i>– it hardly seems fair. If you do find yourself in this football
watching predicament, here’s some my top survival guide to how to get through the
game:</span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">1)</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Don’t at any point say “It’s Only a
Game” – yes, of course it is only a game. But the average football watcher won’t
take kindly to you pointing out the one thing they’ve been looking forward to
for the last two years, in their otherwise tedious life, is only a game. It’s
shattering the illusion, like telling small children the tooth fairy isn’t real
(though arguably less important).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">2)</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If possible avoid watching in a pub. Traditionally
football fans prefer the pub environment for games, despite the fact that at
home or in the office, you can usually have a chair, drink and actually be able
to see the screen. Still the fans will attempt to take you to a pub, where you
are only allowed to order drinks during half-time and there’s enough testosterone
in the room that it’s a miracle people aren’t asphyxiated.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">3)</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Spend time enjoying seeing your
normal friends behave oddly. Perfectly rational people you know, become
perfectly irrational watching football at the best of times. When England play
all bets are off. People you’ve known for years will start screaming, swearing
and generally behaving madly towards people they’ve never ever met on the
screen. During last World Cup I heard a perfectly a normal neighbour of mine
shout “Lampard, you c**t!” at the screen before apologising to his wife and
kids, by saying “Sorry, but he is a c**t!”. As an added bonus here, you can
enjoying the irony of seeing out of shape, un-athletic friends who probably
would have heart failure kicking a ball, shout at people in far better health
than they are at how bad they are at football. I always laugh, though remember
Rule 1, laugh internally!</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">4)</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Organise a sweepstake. You might not
care about football in the slightest, or about who wins the European
Championship. But join an office sweepstake and find yourself swept up in the
excitement of all simply because of the promise of being able to win cash. I
can find myself cheering for even the most obscure of European nations for the
promise of thirty-two quid should I win. Discretion on when to cheer on, may be
required if your team is playing England – though you will find it hard to not
radiate a glow of smugness should your team knock England out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">5)</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A good trick if you’re fed up of
people moaning that you know nothing about football is to memorise a few key
facts from a newspaper pull-out. With luck someone will ask you your opinion in
an attempt to mock you, and you can reply with the correct answer and wipe that
smug look of their face. I’ll never forget the time I picked up the cliché “The
Spanish team never perform as well as they should on paper”, which I
regurgitated when asked on this particular team’s success. Until this point I
believed the phrase “jaw-dropping” was metaphorical. It isn’t!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">6)</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Why not set yourself your own
spotting challenge to see how many companies have inappropriately and sometimes
appalling crudely high-jacked the nation’s support of England in a desperate
bid to flog more of their unrelated products. This year, this has become a bit
harder as the Olympics has stolen the thunder of the European Championship.
Although this does add the bonus game of seeing how cunningly some products who
haven’t paid the Olympics for sponsorship have cleverly embodied the spirit of the
Olympics without using the word Olympics. And now I’ve mentioned “OIympics”
three times in one sentence Sebastian Coe will be coming round my house to
smash in my kneecaps.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">7)</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If all the above tips don’t save you,
you can always team up with a similarly unimpressed friend and spend the entire
game discussing the most banal of vaguely related football things. If you are
going to be made to watch the football against your will, then get your own
back, by discussing which team has the nicest socks, which player you think
most needs a hug, and which team the person in black is playing for. If you
want to go for extra bonus annoying points, start asking football watchers what
the rules are, or confound them by trying to get them to explain to you the
offside rule in five thousand words or less.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">8)</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Despite all evidence to the contrary
England fans will convince themselves that this is England’s year, this year
England will sweep to victory and “football will come home”. It won’t, but this
won’t stop England’s fans. I realise optimism to me is a stranger, but this is
taking optimism to a whole new cultish level. The fans will charge in
regardless, like a hedgehog convinced it can stop that thirty-tonne approaching
juggernaut. And when England inevitably crash out, our England fans will be
just as crushed as our metaphorical hedgehog. At this point you should avoid
all attempts to reason with them, there will be more tears than at an onion
chopping convention, England shirts will be burnt in the street, and the St
George’s Cross bunting and flags will suddenly feel about as appropriate as a
Gary Glitter poster in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mothercare</i>.
Best thing you can do here is hide. Statements such as “Don’t worry there’s
always the World Cup in 2014” will simply earn you a punch.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">9)</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And if none of these things work,
escape while you can. As long as you don’t want to go to a pub you’ll be
surprised how deserted the streets are during an England game. You can get so
much done without the tedium of others, shopping, commuting, getting your
haircut – there won’t even be a queue at the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Post Office</i>!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Hopefully
this guide will prove of some use, and if not don’t worry it will all be over
within a fortnight. And very decently England will almost certainly have
finished at least a week before this deadline!</span></span><br />
<br /><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Oh and of course good luck for tonight England!</span></span>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-63439993527797685512012-06-07T09:06:00.000+01:002012-06-07T09:06:48.592+01:00Where's the Jubi-Glee?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In case you’ve managed to miss all media outlets for the
last few weeks, you may have seen all the bunting and incorrectly deduced that the
BNP have swept to power and Lenny Henry has been put to death. Don’t worry that
hasn’t happened, it was just the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Though having seen
his performance at the concert I can’t guarantee the safety of Lenny Henry.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Yep the Queen has been reigning for 60 years, and as nice
touch the flotilla organisers managed to orchestrate the weather so that
everyone appreciated what raining for 60 years felt like. Unfortunately the
double bank holiday allowed Fearne Cotton to escape from her maximum security
prison. Not only was she seen displaying a jubilee-themed sickbag to Paloma
Faith, but she also interviewed some World War II veteran’s. If surviving
terrible armed conflict wasn’t enough, these people were then forced to endure
an interview with the human form of stale candyfloss. All of them remarkably
grateful Hitler had never deployed such weapons of evil back in the 40s. We
also saw John Barrowman discussing the bells on the Queen’s barge and Anneka
Rice watching some people painting some awful pictures of the Queen – only to
see them destroyed by the typhoon force rain, in what can only be described as
a merciful act of God. Based on this last paragraph you may think I didn’t
watch the coverage of the Jubilee on the television and I made all that up. If
only…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Televisual coverage aside, the main problem for me with the Diamond
Jubilee is that it’s another opportunity for “organised fun” or by that I mean
forced fun. I have no problem with the monarchy, Queen, Jubilee or anyone who
wants to celebrate it. But like all socially retarded people, I’m never quite
sure what to do at these events that are designated “fun”. I get the sense that
I should be having fun, and that I should be enjoying myself. Yet I can’t work
out how I’m supposed to enjoy the event, and what I am supposed to be doing.
For instance, if I went to the river pageant, what am I supposed to do? It’s
nice to see all the boats, but I’d be crammed in with a million other people
trying to do the same, briefly glimpsing the boats as they sailed past. A bit
like being crammed on the Victoria Line trying to crank your neck to see the
station sign through the window. Logically it seems a lot more sensible to
watch it on television. Apparently you are supposed to “soak up the atmosphere”,
what the hell does that mean? And how do I do that? Was I off sick the day they
taught this skill at school? Judging by the bedraggled spectators on the TV
coverage, some people had done a very effective job of soaking up the
atmosphere – but I don’t think that’s what people mean.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I am coming to the conclusion that “soaking up the
atmosphere” simply means daytime drinking. All these events are just an excuse
to not feel like an alcoholic when you’ve cracked open a bottle of bubbly at ten
to eleven in the morning. Here again I’m left out, because I’m not really a big
drinker. I know what you’re thinking “with a face like that, how can he not be
constantly drinking in a bid to distort the hideous image his brain sees every time
he looks in the mirror?” but no I take the hit, I just don’t drink very much –
and have got used to my own hideous visage. So where is the fun, for those who
aren’t pi**ed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There are lots of other events like this that I don’t get
the point of, New Year, St Patrick’s Day, even just a general night out clubbing.
They are supposed to be the most fun you can ever have, but essentially they
just consist of me not having fun, watching people who are having fun. And not
having fun, while watching people having fun is probably the least fun thing of
all. I just don’t get why they’re having fun – it can’t just be the drinking.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At least Christmas, they tell you what to do, there’s the
cards, the decorations, the meal, the family row and the becoming obese because
you really felt your family of 4 needed 16 tubes of Pringles. Ut most of these
national events don’t come with instructions on how to have fun,. I’m never
sure what I’m supposed to do, and instead it leaves me feeling rather empty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Gay Pride is another one of these, I realise technically not
a national event – unless you consider me a citizen of Homotopia. Essentially Gay
Pride is where gay people all meet up and have a big celebration of the fact they
are gay. They do these festivals in every major city up and down the country,
even Hull, who knew there was anything to be proud of in Hull? I’m usually
dragged to at least one of these events a year, I have no idea what I’m
supposed to be doing. People appear to be having fun in all sorts of ways I
simply cannot comprehend. All I know is that as a gay man this is supposed to
be the most fun day of my life. It isn’t. There’s some kind of parade full of
floats of gay men. I’m worried that these parades are actually Julian Clary’s
attempt to recreate the Hitler Youth movement, but at least at this point I get
what I’m supposed to do – stand there and watch. But then the rest of the day
sort of seems to be hanging out in parks or gardens drinking, sort of like
being in a very big pub without any tables, chairs, roofs or way of getting
easily served – you know all the good things about pubs. Instead you have to be
introduced to friends of friends of friends, who you don’t really want to meet
and pretend to them you’re having the best day of your life ever – because “we’re
soaking up the atmosphere”. I just don’t understand, what I am supposed to be
doing?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">With all this in mind, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to
be doing for the Jubilee either. At least the Queen was privy to some kind of
instructions. I toyed with going down to the river, but that seemed awfully
sociable. I was invited to completely ignore the event at a barbecue, but that
felt wrong, I felt I should be celebrating the Jubilee. So instead I just sat on
my arse and watched it on the telly, a pathetic attempt to be involved in a
national celebration of fun. And then was shown news footage up and down the
country of all kinds of people having fun. Fun I wasn’t having, fun at street parties
and on The Mall and in pubs. I didn’t understand why what they were doing was
fun, but they were having fun. They didn’t show any blokes sitting at home, not
really having fun because they didn’t know how to join in did they?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Oh well, Olympics coming soon. Didn’t get any tickets for
that… Probably just watch it on telly…Whilst everyone else has fun.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<em><span style="font-family: Calibri;">P.S. Due to Facebook's incompetence you may have missed last week's blog all about my trip to the USA if so why not click on "Born in the UK" under the May 2012 for double Matty misery!</span></em></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-52871043879396047412012-05-31T07:50:00.002+01:002012-05-31T07:50:20.644+01:00Born in the UK<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In a desperate bid to try and make money from my blogs and retire in a
sunshine paradise with a harem of prostitutes all coated in mint chocolate chip
ice cream, here’s my attempt to become a travel writer. Enjoy.</span></span></i><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Back in April I was lucky enough to
go on a work trip to the United States of America, this was only my second
visit to our trans-Atlantic friends. My first visit was back on the 9<sup>th</sup>
of September 2001, and so I was pleased that this visit didn’t happen to
coincide with any acts of international terrorism. Which has trips abroad go,
is always a plus. Before you get too jealous of my amazing trip, here’s a photo
from the rooftop of my hotel, which as you can see is terrible, yes this truly
was an awful trip:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">America sort of tricks you into
thinking it isn’t really abroad. We’re so used to American culture in our
films, television and brands, combined with the similarity of language, that
you could be forgiven for thinking initially it will be no different to home.
However America isn’t a mirror of Britain, more Britain painted in a cubist
style – there’s the odd element of familiarity in a veneer of confusion. A bit
like when you walk in a designer clothes store, there appears to be familiar
looking shapes of clothes, but for some unknown reason they’ve been displayed
in a pile of straw on a load of broken computer equipment sprayed with purple
poster paint (it’s artistic I’m told).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br /><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The main thing that struck me about
America is the scale on which everything is done. And I’m not just talking
about people’s waistlines before you misinterpret for comedy effect, though by
this point you’ve probably started added in your own jokes just to keep
yourself from slitting your wrists in this barren wasteland bereft of humour. Try
sitting opposite me at work, if you want to know true tedium. Everything in
America is done on a huge scale, where in London land and space has to be
conserved to such an extent that I spent my entire university career folded
away in the space occupied by an edition of travel Yaztee. In America space is
abundant, why have terraced houses when you can put a kilometre of space
between each building? Even in smaller towns and suburbs large buildings
dominated the skyline, only dwarfed by the humungous advertising hoardings.
It’s if the latest movies have sponsored the very sky itself, to be honest I
wouldn’t be surprised if I’d seen clouds formed in the shape of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">McDonald’s</i> golden arches wafting across
the horizon.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I went to the post office in order to
purchase a stamp so I could send a postcard to my mother – being that she’s
unable to distinguish the difference between a work trip and a holiday, the
primary difference being the former does not provide any time to visit post offices
to send postcards. Even the post office is a hugely crafted multi-story
building:<br />
</span></span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In Britain this kind of building
would be reserved only for the town’s mayor, and only then if they’d fiddled
the public accounts to get it built. For comparison here’s the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Post Office</i> in Clapham:</span></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s not quite the same is it?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The same principal of course applies
to American food, the food is lovely but the concept of portion control
couldn’t be less American if it was daubed in a Taliban flag and burnt live on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fox News</i>. Why have a Lasagne for one,
when you can have on the size of a double bed. You could quite easily slip
between the layers of pasta sheets and have 40 winks in a nice tomato base.
America is probably the only nation whose lasagne is available in a 13.5 tog
rating. The average American breakfast, in the hotel I was staying at, required
the lifetime’s work of several chickens and the death of an extended family of
pigs. Looking for a light option, I thought I’d try out the pancakes with
banana choice on the menu. This will be light. I was wrong.</span></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It was less a stack of pancakes more
a skyscraper, each pancake could have been an individual storey, and I was
tempted to install an elevator through the centre (look at me with the American
lingo!). In fact here’s the same picture but with an average-sized human shown
to scale:</span></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Although of course that said, some types
of food are always welcome in extra large scale:</span></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was in Los Angeles,
apparently the most westerly major city in the world. There you go fact fans
impress your mates down the pub with that gem, I would but I have no mates and
the idea of socialising appals me.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course the major attraction of Los
Angeles is the Hollywood sign, and here’s some photos I took of it, which to
you will be at least 3% more exciting than seeing any other photo you’ve seen
of it anywhere else. Why? Because I took it, I was there.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And to prove that I am vaguely
intellectual here’s the famous Griffith’s Observatory:</span></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And to destroy any respect I gained
from that last sentence, I’ll tell you that the observatory is very exciting because
it featured in an episode of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Star Trek:
Voyager</i> (hashtag geek).<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Another key site of Hollywood is Hollywood
Boulevard:<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I wasn’t really sure what I was
expecting Hollywood Boulevard to look like, I think I imagined it would be a
gold plated street with impressive marble film studios all along it. And in
fairness some bits are like that, well maybe not gold-plated. But there are few
plush looking film studios, swanky hotels and amazing restaurants. However
large sections are stars just outside tatty souvenir shops and rundown cafes. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s a bit like the first time you
visit Oxford Street expecting it to be a glittery shopping paradise, only to be
disappointed to discover that amongst the big department stores there’s an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Officer’s Club</i> and a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sports Direct</i>. It somehow lets the whole
thing down. Though on Hollywood Boulevard, you can have the indignity of being
the film star whose name happens to be outside the newsagent with the filthy,
broken windows. I am guessing that would only happen if you weren’t a very good
film star. I suppose the Oxford Street equivalent would be writing Shane
Ritchie’s name on the pavement outside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Primark</i>
with a blue aerosol spray can.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">While we are talking about Hollywood
Boulevard, I should give a mention to the amazing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cirque du Soliel</i> which I saw in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kodak Theatre</i> (after fighting my way through a number of street
entertainers wearing suspiciously bad costumes, such as Darth Vader in a blue
cloak – presumably because the factory reject costume was so much cheaper). The
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cirque du Soliel</i> performance was
absolutely amazing, well at least I imagine it was. Problem was I’d worked
through the previous night and only had three hours sleep, so as soon I sat
down in a darkened theatre my eyelids dropped faster than Katie Price’s
underwear. Still I imagine it was really good. If you’re ever in Los Angeles I
urge you to go sleep through it.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br /><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And with that I think covered every
single aspect of the fifty states of America, you can’t possibly have any more
questions. Though I should imagine reading this blog you’ll soon be expecting
to me get my own travel blog. I for one and am all for the prospect of free
trips. Like all good travel writers I will sign off with a summation line
encapsulating the whole American experience. “If you like America, go to
America.”</span></span>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-60340816432092406482012-05-23T08:37:00.003+01:002012-05-23T08:39:14.646+01:00At Least There's Somewhere Now to Keep the Brooms<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This week please
indulge me on a topic that is both close to my heart and has kept me clothed
and fed for seven years, as I discuss my passion for children’s television –
that’s my passion for children’s TELEVISION you dirty minded selective readers.<o:p></o:p></i>
</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC Trust</i>, if
that’s not an oxymoron (I personally find it difficult to find trust in anyone
who puts <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Homes Under the Hammer </i>on
our television screens), have completed their latest Putting Quality First
spending review. Putting Quality First is nothing to do with ensuring that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Snog, Marry or Avoid?</i> is in the latest
possible scheduling slot, but in making sure that as the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC</i> tries to save money it puts its quality programmes first.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The main nugget of news that hit the headlines last week
when this broke, was the decision to move children’s programming off <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC One</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC Two</i>, keeping it all on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CBBC</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CBeebies</i> channels. There’s a good
logic to this decision, by the time the changes are made every television in
the country will have access to the children’s channels, the vast majority of
kid viewers already use <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CBBC </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CBeebies</i>. And critically the children’s
department loses no funding, in fact by not having to provide content for the
former terrestrial channels it has more money to spend on its main channels.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This decision has come under a lot of fire, from those who
believe this is some kind of snub to children, that this somehow is a sad day
for the children of the nation. Actually it isn’t. Children’s programmes in the
afternoon on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC One</i> are traditional
in <u>your</u> childhood, because then that was the only option for children’s
programming – we didn’t have dozens of 24 hour children’s channels, we didn’t
have DVDs and an endless supply of on demand programming. To children today the
end of children’s programmes on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC One</i>
means a little less choice in quite a busy programming landscape. Kids aren’t
going to get lost and not find the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CBBC</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CBeebies</i> channels, they’re more
across remote controls than the average adult! For the majority of today’s
children the concept of four channels is something studied in history alongside
the Vikings and the Romans. In actual fact the terrestrial channels to children
are the odd channels, channels that sometimes show news, sometimes kids’
programmes, sometimes entertainment and sadly sometimes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dickenson’s Real Deal</i>.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All that said the decision is a little sad, but I am acutely
aware it is sad as it represents the end of something I held in high esteem as
a child, a tradition for my childhood not today’s children! Yes a sad, but
logical decision. It’s a bit like the death of an elderly relative, it’s sad
but you know logic is saying you can now sell their house and make lots of
money. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For many people of my generation, a lasting memory of their
childhood will be children’s programmes on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC
One</i> (or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ITV</i>) in the afternoons,
my incarnation being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Broom Cupboard</i>,
and the big Saturday morning shows – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Going
Live</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Live & Kicking</i> being
the ones I most remember. And to me as a child, there was something special
about those programmes being on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC One</i>,
it was saying this is the time for kids. Afternoons were the kids’ version of
the evening primetime, and Saturday mornings the big entertainment extravaganza
mirroring Saturday nights. And the fact these were on the primary channels was
part of the draw.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course such nostalgia doesn’t concern today’s kids, and
it’s important than children’s television evolves for today’s kids – not old
f**ts like myself. I’d love to be making massive Saturday morning children’s
shows like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Live & Kicking</i>, but
today’s children don’t want them. The idea of sitting in front of three hours
of Saturday morning television is as arcane to them as sending in an answer on
the back of a postcard. Kids today are busy, they can’t give up their precious
time to watch several hours of a phone-in with Judi Dench and Phillip Schofield
laugh his way through a cookery item with his puppet sidekick. And in fairness
if they did want to see that, they could just watch <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This Morning</i> – apologies to Holly Willoughby.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">However it still seems fitting to mark the passing of the
children’s afternoons on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC One</i> for
us children of the eighties! To do that, I’d like to have a quick nostalgic
trip through some of my favourite children’s programmes of my time. The shows
that made up the gaps between Phillip Schofield, Andy Crane, Andi Peters, Toby
Anstis, Simon Parkin, Phillipa Forestter, Edd the Duck, Gordon the Gopher,
Wilson the Butler and many more I’ve probably forgotten. So here is a
non-exhaustive look at some great children’s telly shows!</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Maid Marian & Her
Merry Men</b> – Essentially <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blackadder</i>
for children, apparently this remains the most expensive children’s programme
ever made in the UK. The 22<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">½</span> residents of the muddy village of
Worksop (an early Glastonbury) are protected from King John’s temper tantrums
(modelled on myself after I’ve missed an edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Apprentice</i>) by a cowardly Robin Hood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Blue Peter</b> –
Everyone has a different generation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blue
Peter</i> they remember, your parents probably remember Lulu pooing on the
studio floor (the elephant not the singer) during a time when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blue Peter</i> was presented by wholesome forty-somethings.
Nowadays the presenters are so young, that the current ones are actual foetuses
that would show you how to make a model of Tracey Island out of the placenta
and the umbilical cord, if it weren’t the fact that they’re too young to
remember <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thunderbirds</i>. My generation
was Mark Curry – when he was busy knocking the heads of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">LEGO</i> men and not dying a death on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Catchphrase</i>; Anthea Turner – between getting blown up in an
explosion, and becoming annoying; John Leslie – before he allegedly starting
showing the ladies “something he made earlier” whether they wanted to see it or
not; and Caron Keating – who it’s very hard to write anything funny about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Girl from
Tomorrow and Escape from Jupiter</b> – Nowadays we’re used to American imports
dominating our schedules, but these were two excellent Australian sci-fi
dramas. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Girl from Tomorrow</i>, which
centred around a girl from the year 3000 who chose to travel back in time to
the year 1990 (presumably to be niche, as everyone else was going back to
2000). Her time machine being the Crystal Dome stolen from Richard O’Brian. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Escape from Jupiter</i> featured an unlikely
group of children (led by a ginger kid - controversial) escaping from a mining
colony on Jupiter’s moon Io. I remember being particularly annoyed when an
episode was taken off air to cut to a newsflash announcing Margaret Thatcher’s
resignation ahead of a leadership challenge. I’m sure as an adult I’d be much
more tolerant now if a programme I was enjoying was taken off-air to go to
David Cameron doing something.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="color: red;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p><em>In my mind the special effects were better as a child than they appear now!</em></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Newsround </b>– <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Newsround </i>has been, and continues to be,
an amazing show for kids. I regret not appreciating it more as a child, and
making it an appointment to view. The show’s never shied away from explaining
the complex issues of quite an unpleasant world to younger viewers. A few years
ago explaining the suicide of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CBBC</i>
presenter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Around the World with
Willy Fog</b> – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Around the World Willy
Fogg</i> was the cartoon serialisation of the Jules Verne novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eighty Days Around the World</i>, with one
minor plot point – Willy Fog was a lion and the world was populated by animals.
This excellent cartoon, conveyed the excellence of the story, whilst including
the fun and excitement required to keep it suitable for kids. Although the
cartoon never did explain why no one ever complained about Fog smelling –
despite the fact he wore the same suit for eighty days, nor why Transfer had a
disco ball for an eye, or why the Governor of the Bank of England was allowed
to gamble away all his wealth (fortunately today’s politicians could never be
that irresponsible). I remember sending off for a song sheet with all the words
to the theme song, from then broom cupboard presenter Andy Crane. Ahh how
easily I was pleased back then.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://3.gvt0.com/vi/6nqN_7eGItM/0.jpg" height="266" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6nqN_7eGItM&fs=1&source=uds" />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’m sure there’s many other highlights you remember. So here’s
to the end of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CBBC </i>on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC One</i>. Whilst I totally understand the
decision, the kids of today probably don’t realise the significance of the
change. I for one will be a little sad at the passing of an institution of my
childhood, that later went on to inspire what I laughably refer to as “proper”
job and career!</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And whilst I’ve sung the praises of programmes past, it goes
without saying that today’s children programmes still feature some excellent
content, particularly the programmes I’ve produced! As a final note I would
like to say that all the programmes made and shown by my current employer and
any future employers are excellent and well worth watching by children and
adult alike – especially if you own a Barb box.</span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-17976242611461212842012-05-16T07:16:00.001+01:002012-05-16T07:16:30.867+01:00Is a Fascist Dictatorship really that Bad?<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This week’s
blog is entirely about the thorny subject of voting and democracy, I tried to
write this in time for the London mayoral elections a fortnight ago, but
failed. Voter apathy there, in action.</span></span></i>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Two weeks ago many of you across the
country will have been lucky enough to vote in one or more elections to choose
councillors for your local area. Those of us in London were lucky enough to
have three votes we didn’t care about – London Mayor, London Mayoral Assembly
Members and our own local councillors. In fact in London there was more box
ticking than in a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United Colours of
Benetton </i>advert, well there would have been if we hadn’t been crossing
boxes – but the gag about more box crossing than at a Noughts and Crosses
convention didn’t seem as funny.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Fortunately for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC</i>, exactly the same three main
candidates ran for London Mayor, as in 2008. And the voters were kind enough to
generate exactly the same result, so the Beeb were able to just put on a repeat
of the election coverage from four years ago. While someone explained to Boris
Johnson what “second term” meant, Ken Livingstone vowed never to return to
politics (whilst plotting his 2016 election campaign) and Brian Paddick sweetly
presumed his electoral demise was down to the unpopularity of Liberal Democrat
coalition policies – no Brian, we’ve haven’t forgotten <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m A Celebrity…</i> an appearance that puts you in a category
alongside just George Galloway, though at least you weren’t meowing in a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lycra</i> cat suit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">One of the big comments on modern
elections is the poor voter turnout – according to some statistics I just googled
now in a highly checked piece of research voter turnout was 31.8%, meaning just
under seven in ten people didn’t vote. Commentators say this is a bad thing,
but is it?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You see in my opinion, what is held
up as the guiding principal of democracy is its biggest weakness – the fact
everyone can vote. I’ll let that earth-shattering statement sink in as you
judge me entirely. I should point out I don’t have a problem with allowing
everyone to vote in principal, in a perfect world everyone casts a well-thought
out vote for the party whose principals they truly believe in. However in the
real world you allow people who have no idea what they are voting for a vote
and you allow people to vote on spurious reasons. No one has to justify to
anyone why they vote, so you can based your opinion on who has the best
haircut, who seems like a nice person, or whose face doesn’t clash with your
curtains.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I consider myself the perfect
example, whilst I had a vague idea of the effect my box crossing would have in
the London Mayoral vote (based largely on a significant proportion of the main
candidates having already had a go), I had no idea what the other two ballot
papers do. I couldn’t tell you what the position I was electing actually did, I
knew nothing about the candidates, other than the party name scrawled next to
them. Though as anyone with a passing familiarity with politics will know, a
group of people representing one party is less unified mass with one vision,
more bickering crowd of infighters who resemble a group of friends trying to
decide which take-out menu to order. Despite all of this and my lack of
background knowledge, I still diligently filled out each ballot paper,
following the dictatorial anti-origami ruling and posting them in the voting
box. I didn’t really know who or what I was voting for, but I did anyway, I
voted on what felt right.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And that’s the problem with democracy
anyone can vote without really thinking about it just based on image. It might
sound draconian, but wouldn’t it arguably be a lot better to let the 10% of
people who can be bothered to engage in politics to vote on our behalf and
choose the best outcome. Why let the ignorant masses, who let’s be honest don’t
really understand the minutia of fiscal policy, have an uneducated say? We
certainly should react to the claims that the only way to counter poor voter
turnout is to force everyone to vote. Forcing those who know nothing to choose
a box at random in some kind of political lottery would be awful and
inefficient. Surely best to have people pass a small politics quiz before they
were allowed to enter the ballot box and have a say in who runs the country –
it is after all an important decision.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Politics nowadays has reacted to the
fact that most people aren’t properly scrutinising their actions, the main
parties fighting not to give you any substance or policy but to just leave that
instinctive feeling that you should vote for them. So that when average Matt
public (i.e. me) heads to the polling station he feels the need to put the
cross in the right box because it feels right. Not because he’s examined in
depth the range of party lines and policies and knows it’s the right decision.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Image now for politicians is everything;
take the last general election in 2010. Now while I’m not saying you couldn’t
find potential fault in the previous Labour government’s policy, a lot of fault
finding was taking place with the image of Gordon Brown. Admittedly the man’s
smile looked like it had been generated via the use of strategically placed
electrodes, but is this reason he shouldn’t be Prime Minister? I know I look
awful when I pose for a smile in any photo – my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Facebook</i> album looks like a collection of Barbara Cartland’s death
masks, but is that reason enough for me to lose my job? Shouldn’t we should be
judging our politicians on slightly tougher criteria than facial expressions?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And then there’s the inevitable gaffs.
Remember when Gordon Brown infamously left his microphone on as he left an
interview and describing voter Gillian Duffy as a “bigoted woman”? OK a P.R.
disaster, but there was something about the incident that made him ultimately
more human. We saw fully through the (admittedly cracked) politician’s veneer
and saw someone who ultimately makes the same mistakes we do. I know I say
awful things when I think people have left the room, or when I’m reading
something someone’s written. You’re probably reading this thinking “What an
absolute t**t? Why do I give a toss what this needy spiky haired pillock is
thinking about politics?” And that’s ok, you’re allowed to think this, because
I guarantee I am thinking far worse about you dear reader as I type </span></span><span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">J</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">My point, and there is one in case
you’re thinking that this is the literary equivalent of Where’s Wally?, is that
surely for politicians ability is more important than both image, and even their
own moral standards. If it’s a choice between, for example, a chancellor who is
rubbish at running at the economy but who lives a squeaky clean life, or a
chancellor who is excellent at the numbers stuff but routinely cheats on his
wife with animals, then I know who I’m voting for. It’s Mr Goat-Shagger for
office here. What?! Really you have a problem with that? Why would I be
bothered? After all I’m neither his wife, nor a goat, just a citizen looking
for a well-run economy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So there we go let’s make a stand
here, politicians should be elected on substance not style, by the 10% of
people who have done their homework and know what they’re voting about. Not by
people who know nothing like me. And certainly not by the same tedious people
who consider “engaging with politics” to be e-mailing into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC Breakfast</i>. Outlining their pointless opinions on matters which
are of no concern to them, like should <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">NASA</i>
be dumping sofas on the Moon? Because stupid people always have an opinion, a
stupid opinion. Stop asking for it, and certainly don’t let them choose the
leader of the country.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Failing that we could always go for a
fascist dictatorship. Don’t get me wrong the invasion of Poland was awful, but
at least Hitler was able to get on do things. Under a democracy he’d be too
busy worrying about which side to part his hair for his appearance on the Nazi
equivalent of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The One Show</i> to get any
conquering done. And that surely is a bad thing? I think.</span></span>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-27430624209014409742012-05-02T08:14:00.001+01:002012-05-02T08:14:46.832+01:00The Prophet of Doom<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In olden times there were always prophets of
doom, people who foretold of the end of mankind, be it for religious or
cultural reasons. Perhaps even the coming of war or disease, or maybe they
correctly predicted that human civilization would reach its low point in the twenty-first
century with the birth of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Jeremy Kyle
Show</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Either way in the present day, we rarely see
people wandering the streets chanting about the coming of the end of the world,
the collapse of civilization or the death of all mankind. The main reason for
this, is that their role in society has now been entirely replaced with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sky News</i>. In fairness all twenty-four hour
news channels have a fundamental flaw – on the vast majority of days there
isn’t twenty-four hours of news to fill them with. So they have to be filled
with repetition, speculation, deliberation and hypothesis, all the things
banned on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Radio 4 </i>show <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Just a Minute</i>. However <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sky News</i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> seems to be the worst for using this as an excuse to
explore the worst case scenario in all possible situations in a desperate bid
to keep panicked individuals watching across the break lest they miss out on a
vital piece of information that would keep them alive. I wouldn’t be surprised
if Eamonn Holmes actively told viewers to stay tuned because after the break
they’ll be explaining how not watching the commercials can kill you. He
probably already has, I’ve not see <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sunrise</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Breaking news is <em>Sky News</em>’s big thing, their
tagline is “First for Breaking News”. Obviously it doesn’t matter if the news
isn’t quite right, exaggerated to the point where it is blown out of all proportion,
or just plain wrong. The news is first and it broke here. Everything on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sky News</i> is breaking news, in fairness
every event is breaking news at some point – Christmas Day after all was
breaking news at one point. But I strongly suspect the Three Wise Men and the Shepherds
weren’t alerted to the birth of Jesus by a giant, colourful strap slapped
across the bottom of their vision, followed by a “festive” expert discussing
how the birth of the Son of God is likely to cause complete economic collapse
and a rise in the value of house prices.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I remember a few weeks after the
tragic London bombings, having my attention caught by a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sky News</i> strap titled “Gas Attack” – panicked I looked up to see
what terrible event had transpired. It turned out that gas prices had gone up,
seemed a rather dramatic, misleading and dare I say it “factually incorrect”
headline to me!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Last Friday represented an excellent example
of this, when Tottenham Court Road (a road very close to my office) was briefly
closed. For those of you unaware of this story, basically a man stormed an
office on Tottenham Court Road, claiming to be armed with an explosive, and
started throwing office furniture and computers out of the windows. The police,
understandably, sent a large response force, closed the road evacuated the area
and talked the man down with negotiators. Now without wishing to trivialise
what would have understandably been a traumatic experience for those involved,
as a news story my two line summary pretty much covered everything that
happened. There was no more detail than that. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And that’s basically how the channel
everyone calls <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">News 24</i> that isn’t
called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">News 24</i> reported it. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC </i>simply mixed it into their rotation
of stories, and on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC News</i>
website for a while it was even entitled “Man throws office furniture out of fifth
floor window”, until the bomb threat aspect became clear.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course this wasn’t the case on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sky News</i> where four hours of rolling
coverage was leant to dissecting every single unperceivable nuance of this
story. Under the title of “Armed Siege in London” we went live to various
rooftop camera and helicopter shots of London, all of which showed absolutely
nothing happening. It was bit like watching live coverage of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">London Marathon</i> the day after it had
happened.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The only shot of any interest was
when we saw a filing cabinet being thrown out of a window, on an extreme wide
angle. And then the most gripping point of that shot, the point where the filing
cabinet hit the street below, was completely obscured by the “Breaking News”
strap. Meanwhile Kay Burley was busy in the studio discussing the impact of the
“hostage” on the upcoming Olympics, clearly visibly creaming herself below the
desk at the excitement that she would be the reporter on duty when London would
be destroyed by a crazed terrorist – at least in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sky</i>’s prophet of doom-esque mind anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The climax of the discussion occurred
when an “expert” came into the studio, labelled an expert presumably because he
had the ability to use <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Google</i>. He’d
discovered a forum, where contributors had claimed that the company whose
building had been stormed had been engaged in some disreputable behaviour over
the issuing off HGV licences. Kay Burley then instantly announces “Well that
explains the actions, it doesn’t excuse them, but it at least explains them.”
Well thanks very much Kay Burley, who has instantly declared herself judge of
all things moral. And whilst I’m sure her words were chosen carefully to avoid
any form of litigation, she’s effectively bad-mouthed the reputation of a
company entirely on the basis of something someone else has read on a random internet
forum. It may be correct information, it may not, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure
Kay Burley doesn’t either, but at least she was first with the breaking “news”.
The fact that most of this conjecture didn’t turn out to be correct, and the
fact that the coverage seemed to do a better job of whipping everyone up into a
panic than the actual event did seem to be secondary concerns. And surely that is not the point of news.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I hope you enjoyed this blog, if you
did why not tell <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sky News</i>, I look
forward the entirely plausible strap that reads “Breaking News: Some people
like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DraMattics</i> – Al Qaeda links not
ruled out.”, appearing on my television screen soon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Please note any inaccuracies in the
information contained in this blog entry are simply a tribute to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sky’s </i>own newsgathering output!</span></span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-24600647351450437382012-04-30T12:37:00.001+01:002012-04-30T12:37:50.903+01:00The Fourth Decade<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Welcome back to DraMattics, yes I’m sorry I’ve
left you in the dark for a month. But, whilst it may sound as unbelievable as
James Murdoch’s testimony at the Leveson inquiry, I have actually had a life
for the last few weeks. You’ve probably noticed I have also made a few changes
to the layout of the blog, I hope you like it. For some reason I thought the
picture was appropriate. I choose to imagine the little girl in the raincoat is
crying, I don’t know why, but somehow it works. For those of you following the
blog by e-mail update, you probably won’t be able to see the new blog format,
sorry but you are missing out – it’s actually a picture of Tulisa’s naked
breasts. I say missing out, you’ve probably seen them before, if you’ve used
the internet.<o:p></o:p></span></span>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Enough discussion of Tulisa’s breasts, time
instead to talk about what I’ve been up to whilst you’ve been sitting at your
computer crying waiting for this blog to update. Well friends I have turned the
ripe old age of thirty. Yes who’d have thought? Certainly not my mirror. Which
currently is estimating my age, to be the average age of items shown on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antiques Roadshow</i>. Regular readers of
blog, familiar with my tone being much like that of Victor Meldrew crossed with
an angry goose, will expect me to have had a miserable 30<sup>th</sup>
birthday. Well in fact I had a good birthday, so there! You didn’t expect that
did you?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The actual day was Easter Saturday, which was
a little inconvenient as everyone tends to be busy across the Easter weekend.
But it did give me the opportunity to spend the day itself with my family. Who
organised this lovely birthday cake for me:<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was also lucky enough to receive a shout-out
on Graham Norton’s radio show, organised by my flatmate. Despite actually
working in the media industry I still found this deeply exciting, as if all the
other listeners were wishing me a happy birthday, instead of ignoring it and
sipping coffee like I do when I’m listening and hear other birthday messages.
Anyway I played the whole thing very cool, and absolutely didn’t record the
shout-out on my computer so I can play it back again and again. No I definitely
did not do that.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The rest of the day was spent with my Dad
constantly reminding me I was now thirty. I couldn’t work out if this was his
way of getting his own back for all the times I called him “old” as a child, or
just the worry dawning on him that he was now old enough to have a fathered a
thirty year-old child. In hindsight the crying should have given away it was
the latter option.</span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The next Saturday saw me have a birthday
party, horray if you came, boo if you didn’t come and awkward if you’re reading
this and weren’t invited. I blame <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Facebook
</i>which manages to have a message delivery system about twice as inefficient
as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Royal Mail,</i> admittedly with a
slight smaller queue than in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Post
Office</i>. Seriously where do those lost <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Facebook
</i>messages go? Maybe one day they will turn up and I’ll find out I missed my
own wedding or something?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I should of course say thanks to my friends
who made me wear this “30” balloon around my arm for the whole evening, like a modern
day slave labourer’s ball-and-chain.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Effectively it’s like having a giant
advertising hoarding strapped to you saying “Too old to date”, which you then
have to take around on the Underground. This resulted in one memorable exchange
on the way home with two rather drunken women, who first of all asked “Whose
birthday is it?”. I resisted the urge to reply “Me, you daft cows. That’s why
I’m holding the balloon.”. After explaining it was my birthday one of the women
then went onto then say “Oh I just turned 30 myself, it’s really awful isn’t
it?! Are you having a good night?”. To which I replied “I was…”.</span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was then asked “Are you the oldest person in
your group?”. “Do I look the oldest?”, I said. “Yes” came the reply. It was at
that point when I pushed them under the train, so sincere apologies if your
Northern line service was held up on Saturday 14<sup>th</sup> of April. It was
necessary.</span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was lucky enough to receive quite a few
birthday cards:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Thanks so much everyone who sent me one, sadly
if I added up all the 30’s listed on the cards, I’d have an age of about 1,200.
Fortunately no one was stupid enough to send me a “With Deepest Sympathy” card,
probably realising that had they done so their nearest and dearest would be
receiving similar cards very soon. I should at this point show you a card made
by graphic designer friend, which is amazing:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So there you go, shocking as it seems I’ve
actually written a happy blog – broadly. Bet you’re surprised. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Has anything changed since turning 30? Well
not really, my face doesn’t seem to need more ironing than it already did, and
no vital limbs have fallen off or anything. I have made a few life changes,
I’ve lost three and a half <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>kilograms on
a diet and have started driving lessons. Yes clear the streets of Clapham, I am
learning to drive – more on that in a few weeks’ time (provided no one,
especially me, dies in the process).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Is there anything I regret not doing before
turning 30? Well veteran readers will remember that back in September I went
through a list of 30 things I was “supposed” to have done before turning
thirty:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://dramattics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/30-reasons-to-take-cyanide.html">30 Reasons to take Cyanide</a></span></o:p></span><br />
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<span id="goog_1084214780"></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1084214781"></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And that I had achieved six of these things, I
still have achieved six of these things. And do you know what? I don’t care.
They are all stupid things I don’t wish I’d done anyway. Like having a
meaningful relationship. Who wants to do that? I guess if I was to list one
regret over the last thirty years, then it would probably be not having
assassinated Katie Price. I’ve had two distinct opportunities to do this
neither one I have taken up and I feel for the good of humanity I should have.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The first was when I interviewed her at the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brit Awards</i></span> <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">back when I was making student
television. It was just after she launched her bid to represent the United
Kingdom in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eurovision Song Contest</i>,
you may remember her being dressed in a very tight pink PVC suit whilst heavily
pregnant:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Apologies for sharing that photo with
you. I asked her to tell me something about her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eurovision </i>entry, which she said she would if I promised to vote
for her in the UK selection process. I duly promised her my vote, and she then
told me nothing. Well I got the last laugh bitch, because guess what? I didn’t
vote for you. Hahahahahahahahahaha!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The second time was when I was
working at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The London Studios</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ITV</i>’s Southbank Headquarters, in an
adjacent studio she was filming some tedious Katie & Peter-esque chat show
for that highbrow channel, and home of thought provoking documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ITV2</i>. Humorously the show was cancelled a
few episodes before the end of its run because Katie Price had booked herself a
plastic surgery session out of the country and therefore couldn’t attend the
last few episodes of her own show. I’m not even making it up, that actually
happened! My regret is I missed a perfectly good opportunity to run into the
studio armed with a flamethrower and melt her breasts into molten plastic. I
would like to take this moment to point out to any security services monitoring
this blog, that I in no way encourage or endorsee any kind of terrorist
activity. Though I suspect any court in the land would let me off, when they
heard my motivation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So there we go, thirty and happy(ish)
and bar sharing the earth with Katie Price, I think I am happy with my
achievements. I look forward to a stream of comments and replies telling me why
I shouldn’t be happy!</span></span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-740974215801753052012-03-27T08:34:00.000+01:002012-03-27T08:34:16.477+01:00Bathing with the Masses<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The other day I was going to the toilet – apologies for starting a blog with this sentence, but if you had any standards of taste and decency you’d surely by now know that you need to leave them at the door when dealing with this blog. Without wishing to be indelicate, I was having an extended visit to the bathroom, if you know what I mean. This particular visit was happening in a bathroom in a company I happened to be visiting, not one of my regular bathrooms. I promise this is all important information. It was then whilst “at stool”, that I glanced to the right, to notice a full length mirror. A full length mirror showing a reflection of myself on the toilet. Why on earth would you put a full length mirror in a toilet? I tried to look away, but like a horrific car crash, I was drawn back. There I was witnessing my body in the least flattering of circumstances, and as I glanced down I saw the hideous rolls of fat bulging over the rim of the toilet bowl.<o:p></o:p></span></span> <br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">You’re probably feeling somewhat nauseous reading that statement, so imagine how I felt seeing it in person. There at that moment it became clear why I was single, because I had the physique of an old bean bag, recently sat on by Heather from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eastenders </i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">(rest in peace)</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">. It was time to do something about it, and hence I have made a concerted effort to get back into swimming. Yes that’s right exercise, I know I am as surprised as you.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ve previously been a reasonably regularly swimmer, I wouldn’t say I was a good swimmer, but then I’ve never drowned so that must say something. My last regime of water-based exercise ended when I was unfortunate enough to read a set of rules printed on the wall of Brixton Leisure Centre. It was the final rule that got my attention:<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Rule Number 7: If you notice any discharges of bodily fluid into the pool, please inform a member of staff immediately.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Then printed directly underneath it said:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Enjoy your swim.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Which is now impossible, given what you’ve just read. And thus I decided swimming wasn’t for me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anyway to mark my return to the swimming pool, just in time for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">London 2012 Olympics</i> – which is entirely coincidental I assure you, I thought I’d give you some of my rules of swimming. These rules, you’ll be pleased to know, primarily don’t involve bodily fluids. They simply represent a series of what I believe are socially acceptable ways to behave in a swimming pool – though it probably wouldn’t do any harm to make them law punishable by death.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Here’s the Draconian laws that I will now pass:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">No affection in the swimming pool. Heavy petting in the deep end, holding hands across lane ropes and god forbid a naughty kiss near the diving board should all be banned. There’s just no need for it, save the hideous displays of affection for the escalators on the Underground (though if it could be banned from there too that would be nice).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">My speed is the correct speed. The lanes in my pool are divided into Fast, Medium, Slow and an unnamed lane which presumably is for those so slow that they’d be considered static. I swim in the medium lane, if you are swimming faster than me go in the fast lane, and if you’re swimming slower than me get in the slow lane.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Don’t pull out in front of me. If I’m coming to the end of pool, and about to turn round, don’t suddenly pull out in front of me and force me to stop. You wouldn’t do it in a car because we’d up having a multi-car pile-up. And a multi-swimmer pile-up will make the least touchy-feely people feel very awkward.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Old men should not wear tight inappropriate swimming trunks. Self-explanatory really.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Good looking men should wear tight swimming trunks – I need a cheap thrill in my life, and a reason to do exercise. So do your civic duty and help out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Get your hair wet. Anyone who isn’t prepared to get their hair wet should instantly be relegated to the slow lane. Bobbing about with your head above water, in the fast lane is annoying and not fast.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">No talking at the ends of the pools. It’s not a bloody coffee shop, if you’re lucky enough to have a friend stop showing off and clogging up the end of the pool so no one can swim.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">No diving over me. I don’t appreciate people diving over me, to get an athletic start in their lane swimming. I remember <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">999 </i>with Michael Buerk, there’s every chance you could land on me and break my back into more pieces than the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">NHS</i> will soon be in.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">No backstroke. Backstroke is about as socially friendly, as releasing a combine-harvester into the swimming pool – only more people get injured. Until some special magic goggles that allow you to see where you are going are invented, no backstroke in the pool.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Don’t have more fun than me. Basically this is what all my rules are saying, and to be honest this one can be applied both in and out the pool. I am a grump, don’t have more fun than me, it makes me jealous.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">There you go, ten rules that will make my life better in the swimming pool – well they would if I hadn’t shamed myself by choking on water the other day and the life guard coming over to check I was alright.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ll be issuing some rules for other life situations soon, so look out for them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And that is it, it’s also it for a couple of weeks! Sorry guys, I won’t be updating for a little while, because I’m on a work trip to Los Angeles, yep I realise that even saying that makes me sound like an utter w**ker! But if it makes you feel better I’ll be turning 30 pretty much as soon as I get back, see karma giveth and then taketh! Don’t worry I won’t be going on about the LA thing too much – did I mention I’m flying business class. No? Oh I’m flying business class!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Have a great couple of weeks and yummy Easter, and I’ll be back blogging very soon!</span></span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-33262852475304234452012-03-22T07:12:00.001+00:002012-03-22T07:25:04.894+00:00“I’m so full of business, I’m pissing cash up the wall” – and 101 other reasons why I won’t be appearing on The Apprentice<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Don’t worry I won’t be revealing who lost or who was fired in this week’s episode so even you have a date with </span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">iPlayer <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">booked you can read on.</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In case you’ve somehow slipped into a coma, perhaps you watched the Budget, you won’t know that yesterday marked the return of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Apprentice</i>. This is the eight outing for this now stalwart of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC One </i>schedule. On the face of it this show shouldn’t be successful, after all on paper it’s an hour of watching a group of business people unsuccessfully selling printed T-shirts whilst being sneered at by the host of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Countdown</i>. Yet somehow <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Apprentice</i> is so much more than that, not just a reality show, but such a classy reality show that unlike with its <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ITV </i>rivals you don’t feel like you need a wash even if you fully immerse yourself in it. I’m a full <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apprentice </i>fan, cancelling all my plans for 13 Wednesdays of the year (admittedly not that hard if like me you have no friends), and watching avidly through not only the main show but its excellent support show – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Apprentice: You’re Fired </i>over on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC Two</i>. If I did this for any other reality show, I’d feel ashamed, I certainly would admit on this blog (even if it is read by approximately no people).<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For me <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Apprentice</i> doesn’t feel like any of the other reality shows, I’m not quite sure why this is. Maybe it’s the high production values, maybe it’s the fact that there’s no telephone voting or begging for calls, perhaps it’s the fact that the contestants actually want a career that doesn’t make them a “celebrity” or perhaps it’s simply the fact that everyone is in a suit. I can’t be sure why but either way the format keeps me more glued to the telly than a documentary exposing how writers of excellent internet blogs make the best sexual partners. They do, it’s science fact.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Viewers of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Apprentice</i> are much like armchair football fans or passengers on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">London Underground</i>, in that they arrogantly seem to think they could do a better job competing/playing/making all Londoners miserable than the people currently doing the job despite their obvious lack of experience, skill and qualifications. I take a different approach to the norm, I know full well that no matter how badly the contestants are performing I’d be doing worse. I’d be awful at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Apprentice</i>, absolutely bloody awful, worse even than Germany is at World Wars. I’d fail at the first step, no not the first task, the first step – the purposeful group walk across The Millennium Bridge. The problem is in my head I’m sure I look like a purposeful power bastard strutting across the Thames, but in reality I look more like I’m power mincing across the bridge desperately trying to find the toilet. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The next step of failure is recording the cringe worthy sound bites, the bits where the candidates say something ridiculously stupid such as “I’m the reflection of perfection” or “I’m a business superstar”. In fairness the candidates are probably egged on by a t**t of a television producer – don’t you just hate television producers – right k**bs they are. However in my case I’d even fail here, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d oscillate between either saying something ridiculously meek like “I’m, alright at business, as long as I don’t do anything involving selling” or saying something so ridiculously over the top that even the usually bulls**t-immune other candidates would point and laugh such as “I’m so full of business, I’m pissing cash up the wall”. Mind you given what was said this week I’m not far off the mark.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">All of this abject failure and we have even got to the instructions for the first task yet, the first time you face Lord Sugar in the boardroom. I don’t know about you but if Lord Sugar was my boss, I’d s**t myself so much that the boardroom would soon resemble a particularly grim sceptic tank accident with Nick and Karen clinging onto each other in a desperate bid to stay afloat. A grim image maybe but a true one. I strongly believe that if commanded to by Lord Sugar, Nick Hewer would don a pair of leather gloves and strangle any complete abject failure before tossing their lifeless body out of the nearest window – there wouldn’t even be a taxi or anything. And for good reason that image terrifies me. Though in fairness if Lord Sugar did start talking about solving a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Where’s Wally? </i>puzzle or locating Lord Lucan I am more likely to laugh at his insane madness rather than open up my bowels.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">With suitably random task set, the teams have two important pieces of business to deal with, firstly naming the team. This always results in a series of potential answers so pretentiously wanky you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d tuned into a toff’s special of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who Wants to be a Millionaire?</i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">. I on the other hand would play it somewhat more downbeat “Team Disappointment”, “Team Utter Disaster” I think would be more realistic choices, at least that way your results in the boardroom can only be an improvement on Lord Sugar’s expectations. Or how about “Team Kittens”, even the cold heart of Lord Sugar would surely not be able to fire someone from Team Kitten? No? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Second on the to-do list is to select a project manager, a job which often has less willing volunteers than a Jeremy-Kyle-snog-a-thon. As admirably demonstrated by the boys this week if you asked for those willing to project manage to step forward, the entire room would shuffle back faster than a group of parents confronted by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mothercare’s </i>new paedophilic range – don’t be disgusted, worse ideas have regularly been pitched on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Apprentice</i>. In fairness to these people, they are right to be scared of project managing, in Week 1 it is invariably suicide to project manage – there simply isn’t enough time in that first week for anyone else to f**k up enough to out f**k up the simple fact that you project managed the losing team. If it was up to me, I’d vote Karen to be the project manager, how could we possibly lose?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Next it’s onto the project, this week saw the teams printing t-shirts, bags and teddy bears to sell. I am going to say something shocking here, unlike the millions of people sitting at home confident they could do better, I can exclusively reveal that I have no idea how to run a printing business – not a clue. By the end of Day 2 I’d most probably still be sitting in the introductory boardroom position, dribbling and burbling loudly whilst internally wishing I’d paid more attention in my reception class on potato printing. Mocking the actual candidates for missing the finer points of cost-benefit analysis, choosing the right location and harassing people in shops sounds funny now, but I would never have got anywhere near those. I’d still be wondering if a print of man entering his earlier thirties hanging himself would be appropriate on a baby’s T-shirt. Then there’s the selling part of the task, somewhere else where I wouldn’t excel. In a sales-based situation I have all the imposing dominance of a piece of belly button fluff, my sales’ pitch is something on the lines of “Would you like to buy this? No?! Ok.” – meekly whispered with all the authority of a struggling supply teacher who has just been locked in the stationery cupboard by a load of 17 year old bullies. I’m just not pushy enough, I’m exceptionally British, I could make awkward flailing an Olympic event – though I’d never be forceful enough to get to the top of the sport.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">After a horrid two days, I’d return into the boardroom to have everything I’d done ripped apart by Lord Sugar – and fail to get any customer service support for my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Amstrad </i>computer I owned back in the 1980s when computer games had to be loaded off a tape over a period of approximately fourteen working weeks. Predictably the boardroom discussions on this week’s show turned into the shouting version of last year’s London Riots, where a selection of gibbering morons shouted at each other so well that they could probably replace the House of Commons and no one would notice. Again I wouldn’t contribute well here, I’d be sat in the corner, raising my hand politely waiting for my turn to speak. When confronted by an angry Lord Sugar wondering why I’d lost £600 of money that probably wasn’t his on a ridiculous task that would be a far less effective way of raising money than just begging on the street, I wouldn’t be able to robustly defend myself. I’d probably just mumble something about wishing I’d applied to be on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pointless</i> instead of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Apprentice.<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At this point understandably Lord Sugar would fire me, because let’s face it the boardroom chair I’m sitting on has done better in the task than me. Here at least I would have the common decency, unlike all the other applicants, to burst into tears throw a tantrum and slap Karen round the face. None of this “thank you for the opportunity Lord Sugar” c**p from me – the biggest piece of bulls**t anyone on that show says. Though at this point Lord Sugar probably wouldn’t order me a taxi, and instead I would have to get the night bus home, and then get stabbed by a drunken man as I pathetically ranted about what a terrible mistake Lord Sugar had made and how one day he would regret it. He won’t.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I imagine none of this year’s contestants will do as badly as I would, though it would make a difficult interview for Dara O’Briain on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Apprentice: You’re Fired </i>as he desperately tried to ask you where you think you went wrong as you bled out of several new orifices happily carved for you by a drunken man on the N67. And on that grim note I’m offer to hand my resignation into Lord Sugar just in case for some reason he does decide to hire me – apparently Nick Hewer is a known stapler thief and I can’t bear to work with people like that!</span></span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-74851111601302409212012-03-15T09:05:00.001+00:002012-03-15T09:06:29.753+00:00Oh my God there’s a Raging Inferno in the Kitchen – Oh no Wait it’s just the Candles on my Birthday Cake!<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This week <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DraMattics</i> is celebrating its 30<sup>th</sup> blog entry, sadly I’m about to celebrate a similar anniversary, so it seems rather appropriate to tackle that thorny subject of age.<o:p></o:p></span></span> <br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ever had someone ask you how old you are, and then when you reply with you REAL age, they say the phrase “In your head maybe, go on what’s your real age?”. This is always a comforting reaction to admitting your age, in that sort of way that having an armed squad from the KGB smash in your windows and hold you at gun point is comforting.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">To avoid the inevitable awkwardness of having to guess my real age is I can tell you now, that contrary to popular opinion it’s not 21, but I’m in fact 29 but not for much longer, 30 is looming like Eric Pickles looming over an all-you-can-eat buffet, hence the reason I feel this conversation is specifically pertinent.</span></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As I get towards the age where the London Fire Brigade need to be called to put out the candles on my cake, I’m forced to question at what point am I old, and at what point is it ok to moan about being old? Is 30 old? It would be old for a cat but young for a cast member of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Last of the Summer Wine</i>, so I guess like all things its relative.<br />
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Which brings me to the next point, friends of mine who are closer to 40 have claimed that I have no right to moan about being old? Really? But what about a 50 year old, surely they would say the same to thing to the aforementioned 40 year old, if he moaned about being old. Extending this logic surely the only person allowed to moan would be the oldest person alive, as they bore the second oldest person alive with statements beginning “You think you’re old…”. But surely if you follow my earlier logic a two-year old can moan at a one-year old about how young they are, which to be honest I don’t mind if it’s done with appropriate wit and comic flare.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Clearly neither of the extremities I have detailed above are any more correct than the fact that Kerry Katona’s allowed to breed and she hasn’t been chemically sterilised for the good of the gene pool. So what age is it ok to moan about being old? To add to the evidence only a few weeks ago I was telling a friend who’d just turned 23 to “shut up” after they moaned about being old. If that’s the case what gives me the right a mere seven years later to do the same?<br />
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Well in fairness I think there’s one very good reasons why the mid-twenties (and by that I mean late-twenties, but at least it’s still the twenties), are the time to start moaning about your age. Because this is the first time in your life you start to realise you’re not the youngest any more. Fair enough people in their thirties are older, but it’s in your late twenties when you first realise you are at the top of a slippery slope. It’s here at the top of a hideous metaphorical helter-skelter ending in a pit of spikes somewhere around the eighties mark, that you realise thirties are your inevitable destiny, just as forties are the destiny of those in there thirties and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You see between 18 and 25 you can claim you’re young, because no one’s younger than you. Of course there are children, but there have always been children, and you’re used to children being younger than you from school. In school children are segregated entirely by age, and there was an advantage to being older, as older kids got to beat up younger kids/take their pick over who got anally bu**ered (dependent on whether you were state or private educated). No the late twenties are the first time there are genuine adults younger than you, and not even ones you can excuse away with the fact they are at university so there still kids really. I have two 25 year old people working in my office (who nominally I’m in charge of, though they have other ideas), they’ve been to uni, and whilst I think of them as kids, they’re proper genuine adults and they are clearly younger than me! Up until the mid to late twenties this has never happened before; people younger than me have always been children.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Additionally you spend the first twenty years of your life believing your body will never age, the most traumatic thing to drop out of your body are your teeth and your testis (but you get a new set of at least one of these). Now hair’s starting to fall out, except for my nose which is now sprouting hair so fast a team of landscape gardeners needs to be called in. Seriously if don’t do at least a weekly root around the nasal area with a shaver I start to look like that attachment you put on the vacuum cleaner when you want to do the skirting boards. I’m also coming to the inescapable conclusion that my face is slowly starting to slide down my head, there seems to be a build-up of excess skin around the chin area, at this rate by the time I’m fifty my face will look much like my scrotum. Though in fairness I’m less likely to get arrested for waving it around in a school playground.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And then there’s my health and physical fitness, gone are the days where I can eat what I want, no longer am I able to hide successive days of junk food binging without worrying. Now a pizza binge manifests itself so that under poor lighting I look like I could be a few months pregnant. And as for exercise, it becomes that much harder for that much less reward, gone are the days where a quick 5 mile jog started the day and got me off to a bouncy start. Now running for the Tube makes me more breathless than an asthmatic in the vacuum of space.<br />
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There’s also the worry about things you can’t do any more, as a child getting older meant there were more things you can do drinking, driving, lottery, buying pornography without the need for a step ladder. The only things you stopped being able to do was go to the under 8s ballet class, and then that was alright because you got to go the 9-12 year olds ballet class. As you get to the late twenties, you’re simply not allowed to do things any more, I’m questioning whether I should go on an 18-30 holiday now before it’s too late. Yet the concept of an 18-30 holiday utterly despises me, but what if on the day I turn 31 I suddenly decide that I really want to vomit all over beautiful areas of the Mediterranean, hang my undergarments off a lamppost and go to a foam party and have more inappropriate fun with bubbles than Michael Jackson ever managed?<br />
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So you see I admit that 30 is not that old in the grand scheme of things, but it’s the end of that crucial age where nature finally reminds you that you are going to be old. As superhuman and as invincible as you may have seemed during childhood, 25-30 is the age at which your body starts to rebel, at which the signs of age start to show you that soon you will look like a Colonel Gadaffi body double with exactly the same employment prospects. You may not be old yet, but you’re no longer young and no matter what you thought, your body is deserting you, it won’t be long before when you stand up your knees make a sound like an old dial-up modem connecting to the internet. Or put another way the late twenties-early thirties is the age where getting older starts turning s**t, under 25 and there’s usually a bonus to getting old, over 30 and you already know your life is s**t so you shouldn’t be surprised! There the perfect conclusion to an argument on why turning 30 is the worst age to be, I think it makes sense, but it might not – my brain is old now.<br />
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So there you go, the official point at which my mental breakdown at turning 30 starts is here. Don’t worry there’s a few more blogging opportunities between now and the big day for me to cry. And when I say big day, it will actually consist of me crying into a large tub of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ben & Jerry</i>’s with a candle in, because I’ve dropped the spoon on the floor and my stiff old back won’t let me bend down and pick it up.</span></span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-31331176907911149852012-03-06T09:05:00.000+00:002012-03-06T09:05:36.836+00:00Where were you when ITV Play died?<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There are many important moments in global history that for the rest of your life you’ll almost certainly remember where you were, when you first heard about them.</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Where were you when The Berlin Wall fell?</b> – I don’t know, I was only seven at the time. Though I do seem to remember hearing about it on Newsround and wondering why the people didn’t just walk around the wall to get to the other side of Berlin (simpler times).<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Where were you when Princess Diana died?</b> – At home sitting on my bed annoyed that the news was on when it was supposed to be CBBC.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Where were you when the Queen Mother died?</b> – At home, where I’d just finished watching Auntie’s Bloomers, the outtake programme hosted by Terry Wogan. Problem with watching outtake programmes is you get in the mind-set that whatever you’re watching is about to go wrong. So as I was watching Peter Sissions break the news of the Queen Mother’s death I kept expecting him to fall of his chair – as it was the only thing that went wrong on that day was when he decided to leave his burgundy tie on. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Where were you when September the 11<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> happened?</b> – On my first trip to America, unashamedly shi**ing myself as my holiday seemed to be turning into Armaggedon – obviously now with hindsight I wasn’t really affected by those events, certainly compared to the thousands that were, but sadly that logic still doesn’t pay for the resultant rather expensive dry cleaning bill.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is rather roundabout way of filling up some blog inches before I ask you the key question of this blog, where were you when ITV Play died? You probably don’t remember, the reason I ask is because today the 6<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> of March is the fifth anniversary of the day ITV Play said goodbye – and they say I can’t be topical. I believe to mark the occasion ITV are burning Brian Dowling on a giant bonfire consisting of your cash. If you want to be part of this event all you have to do is call 08845 600 9000, and answer this simple question, what is the name of the main street on which Coronation Street is set?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Coronation Street<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">B.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Baghdad High Road<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">C.</span><span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Cheryl Cole’s Driveway<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Calls cost £85 per minute and you almost certainly won’t be picked to be put through to the studio but your call will still be charged.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For those of you who don’t remember ITV Play it was one channel, amongst a plethora of other digital and satellite offerings which showed back to back phone-in quizzes. Where suspiciously attractive looking presenters, and Brian Dowling (I should at this point apologise to Brian Dowling for being the only quiz show presenter I unfavourably compare throughout this blog, but it’s your own fault being the only quiz show presenter who has reinvented their career and thus remains in my consciousness) asked a series of apparently deceptively simple quiz <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>questions. Each question was worth a not unreasonable cash prize, and as caller after caller rang into the studio only to give the wrong answer the average viewer was left increasingly confident that their answer was the correct one, until eventually they called in.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Television call-in quizzes got in trouble back in 2007 after a number of high profile programmes, across many channels, had been found to be conducting their quizzes unfairly with callers not being selected equitably or production team members standing in for callers, amongst some of the complaints. ITV Play itself got in trouble when viewers complained about the question “What items might be found in a woman’s handbag?”, to which two of the answers were “Rawplugs” and a “Balaclava”. As the numbers of scandals across the industry increased the Press eagerly started a campaign against television for not being 100% honest, thus making the revelations back in 2011 that the press weren’t 100% honest all the more shocking. Eventually, with public opinion mounting, ITV suspended all quiz channels and interactive quizzes within programmes on the 5<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> of March 2007 pending an independent audit with ITV Play broadcast its final shows in the early hours of the 6<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> of March. On the 13<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> March ITV announced ITV Play would not return, and on the 16<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> of March ITV replaced the ITV Play channel with ITV2 + 1 making the channel about 96% less watchable.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course television has changed lot since then, after it went through another scandal as viewers realised that television lied to them about other things to. The scandal had many sorry chapters including the revelation that EastEnders wasn’t a documentary, the discovery that Gordon the Gopher wasn’t real and the outrageous disclosure that Dale Winton was actually straight.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The reason why I bring all of this up and focus specifically on ITV Play, yes there is a point – you’ll be shocked to discover, is that I once auditioned for ITV Play. Many years ago when I began my career in television when I was 18, (don’t question the fact that according to this blog I was seven in 1989 and eighteen in 2007 – that would be rude), I was on many websites where television jobs were appearing and I often applied for all kinds of different entry level jobs in order to get myself more experience. One such job was as an assistant presenter on an ITV Play programme called “The Debbie King Show”. The job involved being taking over during the show when quiz-show royalty Debbie King was having a break, clearly it’s exhausting ripping off the general public for three hours straight.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Despite my MAJOR reservations about doing this kind of job, let alone the moral and ethical issues, I was convinced by friends that applying would be an experience – they weren’t wrong! After sending off my application I was contacted by a researcher from the programme, for the purposes of storytelling let’s call him Gavin. Gavin informed that they would like me to come in for an audition and provided me with the time and location for where to attend. It was at this point it first became clear that Gavin had all the intellect of a Findus Crispy Pancake. I quickly Googled the provided address only to find it was several miles away from the nearest station that Gavin had told me to go to, something smelled odd. I e-mailed Gavin to confirm that the address provided was correct, only for him to reply with “No! That’s not the correct address” in a tone that seemed to suggest I’d volunteered the location, rather than was querying the address that he’d sent me in the first place. It turned out that Gavin hadn’t sent me a different address, he’d just manage to make a typo in the correct address. Easily done you may think, except Gavin had managed to make a mistake on three lines of a four a line address! An impressively moronic feat even before you remember the fact that this address was the location of where he worked, his office, a place he visits every day! It’s almost if Gavin had got the address of his workplace through an elaborate game of Chinese whispers in the office.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Despite Gavin’s best attempts I managed to turn up at the company’s offices, where I was shown in by Gavin who impressed even himself by being able to successfully operate a door. It also turned out that Gavin was not only a cretin, but had an annoying habit of just laughing moronically in response to whatever was said. I introduced myself as Matt, Gavin laughed. I thanked him for showing me in, Gavin laughed. I think the response would have been the same if I’d have produced a surface-to-air missile launcher from my bag and threatened to fire the entire salvo directly into his genitalia.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Inside I found myself in an office so ridiculous trendy that it was almost a caricature of itself, if Edina and Patsy had stumbled out from one of the doors I wouldn’t have been surprised. I wandered in between desks, avoiding the office’s resident dog – which apparently was necessary for a “creative department”. Gavin headed towards a room named the “creative room”, which given what I’d already seen, concerned me that it might be a wing of Battersea Dogs Home. Fortunately I wasn’t set upon by a pack of ravenous hounds, Gavin ushered me to one of the chairs, but being a “creative room” these weren’t normal chairs, instead I was asked to sit on a Perspex chair which was artily designed so that the seat of the chair was approximately one inch off the floor. This major design feature essentially made the chair impossible to use for its primary purpose of sitting, as I was forced to squat down in a ridiculously low position looking about as graceful as I imagine I would if I was trying to climb onto a camel. Once in the seated position, I now had the strange problem of what to do with my legs, with my bottom only an inch off the ground my legs were completely obscuring my face to Gavin as he tried to brief me. In the end my legs ended up sort of splayed out across the floor, making it look as if I’d fallen off a high balcony and landed on the chair breaking my back in the process. These ridiculous transparent Perspex chairs were accompanied by an equally stupid clear Perspex table which to match the chairs was only two inches high, thus representing an almost invisible trip hazard. I started to seriously consider the possibility that Gavin had designed this furniture himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">After a quick briefing I was taken over to stand in front of a camera and do my audition piece, I wasn’t too nervous about this, primarily because Gavin was operating the camera so I suspected the chances of it actually being filmed were minimal. I was given a question, a fictitious phone number and a celebrity gossip story to talk about. The twist on The Debbie King Show, was that as well as playing the competition she would also be discussing topical celebrity news stories, which viewers would be able to call in about and offer their opinion on (for the nominal fee of 75 pence a call). My celebrity gossip story was about Heather Mills’ appearance on the American version of Strictly Come Dancing. As I preceded to “host” the competition, Gavin played the role of a series of moronic callers giving ridiculous answers to the set question and asking me whether I thought Heather Mills would be able to dance with only one leg, a role which he seemed suited to, were it not for the moronic laugh he gave every time I told him he had the wrong answer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once I completed my audition Gavin laughed, unsurprisingly, and then told me I’d been very “technical”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Technical? Really? The only technical thing I did was read out the question and phone number, a question and phone number he had invented?! Perhaps reading out 11 consecutive digits is technical to Gavin, either that or in my tedium I’d accidentally told the audience how to go about changing a carburettor in your car engine. It could have happened.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I never saw my audition tape, according to Gavin it was sent to the ITV Bosses for review, which I sincerely hope is a different postal address than submissions for You’ve Been Framed. So rather fortunately that tape will never see the light of day again, though this is ITV so there is a chance it will be played out during England’s next World Cup goal or broadcast on their current affairs programme after being described as IRA training footage.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As I went to leave the audition room an unbelievably camp drip of a man burst through the door in a manner so ridiculously over the top that even Julian Clary would have thought it a tad effeminate. He introduced himself as JC, presumably because he shares all the personality of two-thirds of a digger. And then with his camp lisp, excitedly disgorged the information that Britney Spears had just shaved her head and walked into the path of oncoming traffic. This revelation that a celebrity and mother was having a full scale mental breakdown caused both Gavin and JC to burst into hysterics, something that I felt was rather distasteful. I left at this point, worried that my Gaydar was going to explode in the presence of such a highly refined source of pure homosexuality. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I never heard back from The Debbie King Show, which I presumed meant I hadn’t been successful in my audition, though it may have been and Gavin simply rung the speaking clock in error confusing our similar phone numbers. To be honest I was quite relived not to have been selected, if anything the audition process had cemented my views on the hideousness of the genre. I did decide to watch the launch night of The Debbie King Show, in that sort of morbidly curious way you watch a car crash. I was strangely intrigued to see if JC had got the job, though the bit I managed to stomach solely featured Debbie King. Based on my snapshot of the programme, it would appear that the production company had hoped to recover the entire outlay spent on the set with the first phone call!<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Unfortunately for The Debbie King Show its first transmission date was the 5<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> of March 2007, and if you remember way back at the beginning of this blog, you’ll know that on the early hours of the 6<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> of March, ITV Play ceased transmission permanently. That’s right after all that effort there was only ever one addition of The Debbie King Show – poor Debbie, Gavin and JC, they must have been devastated.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If you take one thing from this blog, let it be the theory that if you turn me down for a job your channel gets pulled the very next day! If enough people think it’s true, the myth will enter folklore and I’ll never be looking for work again!</span> </div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-15113291791725049502012-03-01T08:53:00.001+00:002012-03-01T10:44:19.904+00:00Abercrombie & Bitch<span style="font-family: inherit;">I look and feel like a tramp, no really I do. Recently I’ve noticed that my favourite clothes and shoes are starting to resemble a novelty colander, there’s so many holes in them that I look like a cartoon representation of Wile E. Coyote after he’s been savaged by a pack of hungry tigers. This means it’s time to go clothes shopping. Problem is I’m sure clothes shopping is supposed to be fun, after all I’m a gay man I’m supposed to find purchasing new garments at least 168% as much fun as throwing around a selection of scatter cushions in an artistic fashion. Sadly stereotypes aren’t always correct, though I do like a good scatter cushion.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Middle age must be beckoning, because now when I go around clothes shops I find myself saying horrendous comments that I believed only my parents were capable of uttering such as “These don’t look very practical”, or “They’ll be a bugger to iron.”. It’s all really quite upsetting, I blame modern fashion. How on earth are you supposed to wear jeans whose legs taper to an infinitesimally small point at your ankle, so that they only really fit the triangular Mr Rush from Roger Hargreaves’ <em>Mr Men</em> books? Or trousers that have a seam that spirals around your legs like a rampaging anaconda desperate on sucking the life force out of every vein your body. See they don’t look very practical, and they would be a bugger to iron.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Frustrated by my inability to find anything I like in my regular shopping haunts, which whilst boasting an impressively large shop floor space seem to be laid out much like an episode of <em>Scooby Doo</em>. In that if you run for long enough it turns out you’re just passing the same three T-shirts and one style of chino as that is all the animators could be bothered to draw. I decided to take the plunge and head to some more “designer” shops, shops that have been recommended by my friends, who whenever I meet them seem to be wearing clothes that look fashionable but not so outlandish fashionable, that they look like thye were dressed by a blind flamingo. So with expectations riding high, and a need to get some clothes that don’t make me look like I’ve been attacked by Edward Scissorhands I headed for the “designer” shops.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The first thing I notice upon entering such stores, is it’s not immediately obvious where the gender divide runs. Shops I’m used to like <em>Next</em> and<em> River Island</em> and even the department stores my mother used to take me to, are usually split with male and female departments on different floors. Which for men always means a trudge up and down a flight of stairs, I sometimes think it’s a miracle that disabled men actually own any clothes and don’t have to wheel around naked all the time. However in the new-fangled designer stores of my new fashionable lifestyle, it’s not to so obvious. An arbitrary wiggly line runs down the middle of the shop with all the definition of a hotly dispute international border. It’s easy to accidentally stray into hostile waters and find yourself looking at a T-shirt that looks really nice, except upon checking the price you realise it’s a Size 8. With disgust you throw back the T-shirt horrified that someone might have seen you and instantly presumed you’re a transvestite, rather than coming to the far more logical conclusion that you were shopping for someone else. Some shops make it even more complicated, <em>Gap </em>for example has pictures of androgynous models all around the store so you can’t be sure if their male or female pictures near the clothes you are looking at. They’re beautiful definitely, but every single model has a smooth face is clean shaven and sports suspiciously short hair. It takes just as long to judge their gender as it does to judge the gender of the clothes beneath them. Other stores go to more random extents, I’m sure my recent visit to<em> Superdry</em> was confused by them having a large men’s department surrounded by various satellites of ladieswear, with no clear frontiers between the two. The other problem with this kind of stylish fashion, is even the garments that look obviously feminine could be for men, perhaps plunge neck T-shirts have become fashionable for the man about town, or maybe Culottes are now a unisex item, you can never be sure.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course complex segregation of male and female stores isn’t the only potential pitfall for the unwary shopper. I recently visited a store called <em>Abercrombie & Fitch</em> for the first time, despite sounding like the name of two particularly ostentatious cats (“come down from the worktop Abercrombie”), it’s actually a high-end designer clothing store. On arrival you’re not met by the usual shop system that we’re used to, the one that’s served us well for the rest of our lives. No rather than being faced with the traditional door that you enter the shop through surrounded by windows displaying what the shop actually sells. You instead come face to face with a store with no windows, because it’s too exclusive to actually display its wares, and a queuing system that would make <em>Chessington World of Adventures</em> envious. Yep that’s right you have to queue outside the store just to make the store look more desirable so that more people join the queue, in a vicious cycle that couldn’t be more British unless whilst waiting you were served tea and scones and got to say something deeply xenophobic. In my mind this doesn’t make <em>Abercrombie & Fitch</em> look designer, it makes it look like the <em>Post Office</em> but with less old people.</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once you’ve meandered your way through the queuing system, there’s a veritable team of people to great you at the door. Firstly, in order to give you the entirely false impression that the store is actually a five-star hotel, a number of smartly dressed men open the doors for you. Because you are clearly too important to open the door for yourself, as an aside (and I don’t wish to do people out of jobs, especially in these tough economic times) but if not having to open the door is that important, why not just fit automatic doors – it works for <em>Poundland</em>. Up next there’s a woman employed solely to say “Hello”, that seems to be all she does, just says “Hello” – I could do that job…, if I was woman, wasn’t a grumpy s**t and didn’t have all the looks and charm of a rancid plate of semolina. Then there’s an unfeasibly attractive half dressed man, with a ripped torso who you can pose and take a photo with. If that is you’re mad. No one in their right mind gets their photo taken next to an unfeasibly attractive person, because in the resultant photo their beauty will make you like Quasimodo on a particularly unpleasant visit to the Burns unit. Upload that photo to <em>Facebook</em> and people won’t be thinking about how attractive the man looks, or how much of a fun time you’re having, but instead on how old you’re looking or that they didn’t realise you’d got fat. This is why sensible people only ever agree to get their photo taken with their ugly friends, because it makes them look that much better. And if you can’t work out who the ugly person in your group is, then it’s you. And before you make a smart a**e comment, I am fully away of my place in the food chain of looks, what can I say? I appreciate the plight of the plankton. Apparently you have to pay for the photos, again another connection between <em>Abercrombie & Fitch</em> and <em>Thorpe Park</em>, though at least in this photo you won’t look like you are vomiting your dinner up (sadly the same cannot be said about your friends viewing the photo making unfortunate comparisons between you and the model).</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">All this and you haven’t even entered the store properly, in fairness it has to be said Abercrombie & Fitch looks pretty plush. Where <em>Primark </em>at the end of a busy day looks like the aftermath of a particularly bloody explosion at a Bring and Buy sale, <em>Abercrombie & Fitch</em> still looks elegant and tidy. Primarily this is because the minute you do so much as even breathe in the direction of one of the display racks a team of highly trained professionals rush to rearrange all the tops lest you upset the karma of the store. The shop’s wears are, as you’d expect from a designer clothing label, perfectly bog standard t-shirts, hoddies and jumper swhere the inclusion of a designer logo has led to the decimal point, on the price ticket, jumping one place to the right. Aside from the clothes, the most bizarre thing I discovered in the store was a dance floor complete with dancers. No, not some professional dance act recruited in from a swanky London performing arts college, but actual members of staff, in the staff “uniform” dancing away. As if to show that working for this company is soooo amazing, all we get to do is dance all day because we’re that cool, and our lives our wonderful because we work for <em>Abercrombie & Fitch</em> and we’re only employed because we’re beautiful. All us mortals can do is hope that they all spend the work Christmas party crying in the corner because they realise just how fake all their work friends are, that they’ll be forced to wear a branded paper bag over their head the minute they hit 25 in case they make people wretch, and that their lives are meaningless pawns in a sea of commercialised bulls**t. As I say, all we can do is hope, because actually they’re having a great time. To**ers. </span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite the clear abundance of staff in the store, with enough spare people to dance next to the racks of clothes and fold out every micro-crinkle that the displaced air caused as you moved your fat body through the store. Despite all this, when I visited there was only one till open, and a massive queue. Would it have killed the brand image if for one moment the dance floor had been emptied and some people manned the tills? Apparently it would have. Unfortunately for some ridiculous reason the problem of the large queue was magnified by the fact that the till area was decked out with more mirrors than the average swanky hair salon. Resulting in thousands of copies of the same row of frustrated sand bored faces being visible on every surface wherever you looked, much like a <em>Girls Aloud</em> concert.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Obviously the big question is did I buy anything? Of course not, I was just confused by the array of unknown shopping experiences I hadn’t expected. Like Henry VIII wandering through a modern shopping centre for the first time, both appalled and intrigued at what I saw with equal measure. Which coincidentally is the same set of facial reactions you see if ever I’m forced to watch <em>The Only Way is Essex</em>. Instead I simply walked out of the store, empty handed only to pass the “Hello” lady again, except this time she said “Goodbye” – but in a tone that really said “I knew this shop wasn’t really for you, but I didn’t say anything as you came in.’</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">On that note I’ll bid you adjure, except to say you can now follow my tedious ramblings on Twitter just “connect with” @mattymatician #goonyouknowyouwantto – see look at me down with the kids. And incidentally if anyone has any decent second hand clothes they wish to send me, they’ll be welcome. The situation is getting quite desperate. I claim to be a size Small, but in reality unless it’s at least a big Medium, the fabric will be pulled across my body tighter than the skin on Anne Robinson’s face.</span>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-26565004673640953142012-02-22T08:06:00.001+00:002012-03-05T12:58:45.460+00:00The Cycle of False Hope - The Horrors of Online Dating Part 2Welcome back to DraMattics the blog you’ll be wishing was stopped halfway through by James Corden. If you read yesterday’s entry you know that we’re halfway through a two-part special on the pitfalls of online dating. With your profile finally constructed it’s now time to meet that special someone online.<span lang="EN-GB"> Slightly nervous, you log online and start the search...</span><span lang="EN-GB"></span> <br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Initially you start browsing through the profiles carefully reading all the text, as you know that compatibility and shared interests are far more important than looks. Within 15 minutes you just start flicking through the photos and dismissing people based on the slightest blemishes. Eventually after a lot of searching, you find the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen, there’s not a flaw in any of their photos, they are the one. You even read their profile and convince yourself you’re a perfect match “They like watching television, going to the cinema and socialising as well, what are the chances?”. So you go to write them the perfect message, the message that’s going to get them as excited about you as you are already about them. Problem is it turns out that just because you’re not face to face with them, doesn’t stop you being awkward, which makes writing an opening message rather tricky. You start with “Hi”, after hours of thinking of something witty to say your message still reads “Hi”, eventually you send a message reading “Hi, how are you?”.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The minutes pass, they’ve not replied, why not? Your opening message was so good. Finally an e-mail pops up, someone has messaged you – it must be them, you log on with excitement. What can they have possibly said? You open up your messages, it’s not from them, it’s from someone 20 years older than you with a face that looks like it’s been attacked by a cheese grater. Additionally they have a bizarre penchant for typing their messags in capital letters SO IT LOOKS LIKE THEY’RE SHOUTING AT YOU LIKE A PSYCHO. Disappointed you reply to the sender, “Sorry you seem like a nice person, but you really aren’t what I am looking for. Thanks”. And then the questioning begins, they ask you “why aren’t I what you are looking for?” no matter how polite you try to be in fobbing them off they continue to reply to you. It as if their emotional self-worth has a death wish that it’s desperately trying to fulfil and won’t be sated until they hear the words “Your face looks like a scrotum that’s been in a hot bath too long”. Finally they stop e-mailing you, you can’t be sure they haven’t taken their own life but by this point you don’t care, just desperate stop the never-ending torrential barrage of questioning. It represents the most pointless conversation you’ve ever been in, since you last got stopped in the street by a charity worker, knowing full well that as soon as they pause to take breath in their opening spiel you’re going to say “no”. You soon learn it’s better to ignore those who message who you clearly want nothing to do with.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">It then dawns on you, that maybe the reason your true love hasn’t replied is that they, didn’t get your message – that’s the only logical answer left clearly. You best send them a new message, however if you thought the first message was awkward, you soon realise that trying to explain in words that “you’re not sure if they got the first message” only serves to make you appear desperate. You send the message, and wait. Suddenly a new message pings in your inbox, you open it excited, you were right they didn’t get the first message. Turns out the message is an automated message from the site, telling you about an exciting new feature, where you answer a series of mind-numbing questions in attempt to match your pathetically vague answers to other people’s pathetically vague answers on the site.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Finally you accept that the true love, isn’t going to reply. In fact you don’t actually know if they want to reply but are unable to. The clever thing about the strategy that allows you to join a dating website without paying is that there can be a number of profiles online at any one time, of people who haven’t paid up. So you can send these people messages (the site wants this, to encourage those people to join to read your messages), but you will never know if you were ignored because of your face or because they weren’t prepared to part with their cash. You decide to move on, knowing the reply rate of dating messages is about the same as letters to Santa Claus, or CVs sent in </span><span lang="EN-GB">Wolverhampton</span><span lang="EN-GB">, you send a number of messages to different people. Lowering the standards of your potential suitor as you go. Again you wait for replies. Nothing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Eventually you get a reply, to your dismay, it’s from one of the least worst choice options you e-mailed, someone you messaged on a particularly lonely night home alone when your standards were so low you’d have considered dating a jar of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bovril</i>. Now in the cold light of day, you realise that their hobbies include murdering babies, strangling squirrels and watching <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Loose Woman</i> and their picture makes them look like a less attractive version of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crimewatch </i>photo fit. You feel awkward now you have to fob them off, and you initiated first contact. You try hinting in your e-mails that you have socially unacceptable hobbies, like developing your own deadly strains of body odour and kleptomania – sadly they find this endearing. Eventually the only option is to tell them you’re dead, or convince them that you’re seeing someone else. All the more difficult a lie to spin when you’re still regularly logging onto the dating site, as most sites have an annoying feature that lists when you last logged on, on your profile. After this loop completes itself a number of times you decide to give up, online dating clearly isn’t for you. Your membership is going to expire today, there’s no point in wasting any money and renewing it. Oh well there’s more to life than being happy you reason.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">One hour after your subscription expires, a new message pops in, you can’t read it but you check the sender. It’s your true love, they’ve finally replied. But now you can’t read the message, your subscription has expired. Hurriedly you reach for your debit card, eager to tap in the 16-digit card number, just so you can read the marriage proposal you’ve clearly received. You go for the worst value for money option, the one-month subscription, you won’t need a longer subscription – this is the love of your life after all. With your payment approved you hurriedly open their message, your heart is racing with excitement as you read the words “Sorry you seem like a nice person, but you really aren’t what I am looking for. Thanks”. Your world collapses in on itself, you experience the kind of disappointment usually reserved solely for opening Christmas Crackers and discovering the “prize” was a novelty one-piece jigsaw. Convinced there must have been some terrible mistake you reply “why aren’t I what you are looking for?”. A number of messages are exchanged before they block your profile and report you to the site administrator.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Still your disappointment has been slightly tempered, one of the other people you messaged a few weeks back has replied. You’ve agreed to meet up for a meal, that should be nice. It’s only a few days until your date and you keep looking back at their profile. You realise actually you’ve got a lot in common, they’re pretty attractive and you’re sure something special is going to happen between the two of you. Finally it’s the day of the date, you’ve made a supreme effort, much to the mocking of friends and colleagues, you’re wearing your best clothes, your smart shoes and you’ve spent ages getting your hair to look just perfect. What could possibly go wrong?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">You turn up at the pre-arranged meeting point, eager to find your date you look around, there’s lots of attractive looking people but you can’t see the person shown in the pictures you’d been looking at. Finally you spot them amongst the crowd, except it’s not them as you expected, it’s a hideous cartoon parody of the pictures you’ve seen on their profile. You approach them, not sure whether you should make contact or run, but too late they’ve spotted you, and you realise the awful truth it <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">is</b> them. In that three seconds the extent of their “being economical with the truth” unravels as you realise that the photos they uploaded of themselves were taken at least seven years ago, before they put on six stone, before they developed male pattern baldness (even if they aren’t male), before they decided to have a tattoo across their face and before they suffered a terribly disfiguring car crash. Additionally their description of age and build are so wildly unbelievable that even Hans Christian Anderson wouldn’t have attempted to write such fanciful bulls**t.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Reluctantly you proceed to dinner with them, cursing yourself for not suggesting any other dating activity that would have been shorter such as a pint, a coffee or even a group suicide pact. As you begin dinner they suggest doing the full starter, main course, dessert option, whereas you’d hope you could have taken one bite out of your meal said your full and then left. As the conversation continues you realise that you have nothing in common, the only thing they can talk about is how exciting Lady Gaga’s latest video is, which you haven’t seen. They find it incredulous that you haven’t seen it, they’d be less shocked if you told them that you were a Mermaid and had to return to the ocean in the next five minutes before you dehydrate and die. The only other thing they can talk to you about is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Only Way is Essex</i>, you realise that you are essentially on a date with a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Heat Magazine</i>, except it’s costing you a lot more than one pound fifty and doesn’t have the one redeeming feature that you can wipe you’re a**e with it if you’ve run out of loo roll.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Worse still they haven’t asked a single question about you, instead they’ve spent the last hour babbling along about their pointless life, a life so disinteresting you want to rip your own windpipe out and fashion into a crude trombone just to give yourself something to relieve the boredom. When they do finally let you speak, no matter what you say their only response is to laugh inanely, like a hyena on nitrous oxide. Regardless of whether you utter a simple reply to what they’ve said, tell a joke, say a statement of fact, or even commenting that you have megalomaniacal tendencies and one day hope to destroy the world, all they can do is reply with that inane pathetic laugh. Despite all your best efforts to wrap up the meal as quickly as possible you can’t they wait out for dessert, don’t get any of your hints about having to leave soon or be up early the next day. Not only that but you’ve got food down your best clothes, they’re ruined, like your life. Finally the meal comes to the end; they have forgotten their credit card, so you end up paying. They then suggest going for a drink afterwards, inexplicably you lose your mind and say “yes”, what the hell were you thinking?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Five hours later, five hours of utter torture with someone you wouldn’t even want to spend ten seconds in a lift with, let alone a tedious evening of pathetic prattle about topics so low brow even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ITV2 </i>would turn its nose up at them you crack. You inform that you have to go and that you’ve had an awful night. They simple inanely laugh at you. As you leave you stupidly give the automatic response “See you soon” cursing your own idiocy. They then move in for a goodbye kiss, which you spot and try and manoeuvre yourself to force it into a goodbye hug, but you end up knocking a table over and embarrassing yourself. Still you’ve left, you’ve escaped the hell.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">There are four potential outcomes of a first date, providing you didn’t kill either them or yourself during the initial encounter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB">You both like each other – this is so unlikely to have happened that we won’t bother discussing any further.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB">You both hate each other – given the remoteness of option 1, this is the best option you can hope for.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB">You like them and they don’t like you – you send them a nice text saying you’d like to meet again, they politely tell you how awful it was and explain they never wish to see you again. You cry lots.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB">They like you and you don’t like them – this is the worst option, as then you have to send the awkward message saying you don’t want to meet. At least in option 3 you had the comfort of being bitter, now you have to be the ba****d, and there’s no comfort in that.</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Clearly your date ends in option 4, but you speak to some friends about it, and they convince you it’s worth giving this person another try. After all maybe a spark will grow. Reluctantly you agree. The above scenario plays out again, except you feel even more guilty sending the text in Option 4 as now you’ve strung them along for two dates. At the end of it all, you’re poorer, bitterer and just as single. You continue trawling the website looking for more dates, but they all end as above, before long you’ve been on the website for six months, and all the profiles that pop up are just the same faces as before. All of you locked into a cycle of loneliness, depression, and false hope fuelled by the dating website’s empty promises.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">And that’s how internet dating works, happy hunting!</span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-40586069088369075972012-02-21T07:58:00.001+00:002012-03-05T13:00:00.237+00:00If Argos did Romance… - The Horrors of Online Dating Part 1<span lang="EN-GB">Have you ever been online dating? If the answer is no, then you’re probably a good-looking, confident, humorous, approachable person who enjoys the company of others. If not then you probably fall short or one or more of these traits, or like in my case all of them.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">As the most socially awkward person in the Western hemisphere with all the confidence and small-talking ability of a British-Argentinean state dinner, I have succumbed to the potential pitfalls of online dating. There’s a number of online dating sites all keen to collect the loneliness tax from you and add you to their books, but broadly speaking they all work in a similar way (not that I’ve been on many – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">awkward</i>), from the mainstream, heavily advertised dating sites to the niche <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Velcro</i> fetish ones (not that I’ve been on any of those at all – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">awkwarder still</i>).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Anyway after last week’s Valentine’s hell, many people have suggested I be more proactive and try and find myself a boyfriend, so for those lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the process of internet dating, here’s my two part guide to the potential horrors you face in searching for your soul mate, which will hopefully convince you it’s not worth trying. Today we’ll look at setting yourself up on a dating website, and tomorrow we’ll go through the exciting carnage of interacting with other people online and arranging that all important date.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The first step is creating yourself a profile, so that prospective suitors can find a good reason to dismiss you and save both of you the cost and inconvenience of a date. Many sites will ask you to choose a unique username, rather than just allowing you to call yourself by your own name – which would be arguably a lot more helpful. The trick here I’ve found is to be broadly non-emotive and not try and use this to sell yourself. Overconfident usernames such as HornyDogXXX and BigBreasts49 generally make you come across as a knob, ironically trying the reverse and using under-confident usernames like EssexWeedyBoy and LonelyGirl2 actually just come across as truthful and plastered immediately above a photo of you leave a strange psychological imprint that makes other users instantly close your profile.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Next up you’ll need to fill out a short questionnaire to give a summary of you and what you are looking for. Questions that usually come up include age and location – which provide a helpful way to filter out a large proportion of the online community. Also things like occupation, education (for some unknown reason), eye colour (just in case Hitler himself is indulging himself in a spot of online dating) and the important question “do you drink?” – I think if you select no to the drinking option, a pop-up box appears warning that you need to start, in order to meet the level of tolerance required to survive on-line dating.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I’ve noticed a handful of questions that particularly stick out, first is Height – not necessarily an odd thing to ask, but am I the only person who doesn’t actually know their own height? This has come up in other situations and I haven’t a clue, the last time I measured myself was when I was 12 and my parents routinely stood me next to a height chart. This seemed to serve no practical purpose other than to give family members an opportunity to tut loudly and moan about how fast your growing, and how you’d probably need a fortune worth of new clothes soon. Then there’s increasingly common question of “Do you take Drugs?” – for the avoidance of doubt I don’t, I’m simply not cool enough. To be perfectly honest I’m not sure why the police’s anti-drugs team don’t get themselves a profile and round up all those who tick the “yes” box to this question. As a side note to the people who leave this box empty or select “prefer not to say”, you aren’t really creating any mystery – even the stupidest of people can read through your elaborate avoidance of the question. Lastly there’s the question on “Build”, this is the first real opportunity to be creative with the truth, unless you’ve been trying to cover up your red satanic eyes in the eye-colour question. Options here usually range from “very skinny”, through “muscled”, “average” or “a few extra pounds” right through to “have been mistaken for a bouncy castle”. The general rule seems to be always class yourself one category better than you actually are, anything more is a blatant lie, and may result in a visit from trade’s descriptions.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Next up you’ll need to write a short essay on your interests, broadly speaking this will go one of two ways. Either people struggle to write this and up putting down a lame set of interests that include “watching television, going to the cinema and socialising” as if they’re fleshing out their CV circa the age of 14. Sometimes given how obvious the choices are, you wonder if the people considered listing things like breathing and defecating just to fill up the character count. Though this at least feels like it has a sense of refreshing honesty, unlike the other option, which is to go crazy and make your entire life seem like one long gap year. Contenders for this need to list white-water rafting, abseiling, kayaking and travelling, lots of travelling – if they haven’t listed The Moon as one of their top tourist destinations they’re not even trying. The primary problem with this is that all the non-liars won’t want to date you as they feel they will be shown up as exceptionally boring in your company. And all of this is rather arbitrary as the average forum browser will select you solely based on your picture and won’t read any of the torturous c**p you spent seven hours writing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">This leads us nicely onto the final thing you need to do – select at least one, preferably a number of, photographs. As a quick note here if you don’t select a photograph you will not be appear like a mysterious romantic stranger – instantly people will correctly presume you are ugly. Photo selection is always fraught with quandary, particularly if like me you are about as photogenic as an explosion in a septic tank. Clearly you don’t want to show a picture that actually features an accurate representation of yourself, because quite frankly if you looked naturally attractive in all your photos you wouldn’t be needing online dating in the first place. The question here is always how much to lie, a flattering photo taken at a good angle seems reasonable, one taken a few years ago possibly less so, a photo of someone else seems definitely morally questionable. But you’ll be surprised at the lengths some people will take “bending the truth” hoping you won’t notice the extra 50lbs when they have subsequently put on when you meet them in person.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Up to this point you won’t have had to pay a thing, all dating websites allow you to create a profile and search for matches for free. But the minute you want to send or read a message, is where the cash comes in. Incidentally setting up your profile counts as joining the website, being able to read messages is considered an “upgrade” even though there’s no way to use the site without it! This is why many website list themselves as “free to join” even though just joining them is about as much use as voting for the Liberal Democrats historically was.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">At this point you can receive messages, but not read them so the temptation to part with your cash increase all the more in order to view these mystery messages. The pricing strategies of dating websites follow an interesting model, despite adverts suggesting you’ll be finding your true love very soon, the price list encourages you to sign up long term – as let’s face it you’re destined to be single. Just one month’s membership comes in at a hefty thirty pounds on average, but if you’re prepared to part with upward of a hundred pounds you can join for a year. Which if you do certainly implies you don’t have much faith in your own ability.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">With credit card worn out, you’ve finally joined, you can start browsing the website, flicking through the pages like your glancing through the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Argos</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></i><span lang="EN-GB">catalogue looking for a flat pack wardrobe. Although sadly should you meet up with anyone from the dating website they won’t be delivered to you down a conveyer belt – which would make the whole thing a lot more fun. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">By this point you’re exhausted, to get this far has taken you all weekend and now you can’t be bothered to look at all the other profiles. With any luck you’ll forget about the whole project and not bother arranging any dates. Just cut your losses here, because the actual dating part will be awful.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Join me tomorrow when I’ll explain the fate that you are destined to fulfil when you start browsing those online profiles.</span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-32150651678146685972012-02-15T08:48:00.001+00:002012-03-05T13:00:36.440+00:00Anti-Valentine’s Day – The Business Pitch<span lang="EN-GB">If you read yesterday’s blog you may have seen a tiny hint of bitterness that I have on Valentine’s Day. I’m not sure, it might not have come through, the writing was quite subtle. Oh and for the curious, no I didn’t get any Valentine’s cards - no surprises there.</span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Well today, the 15<sup>th</sup> of February I propose to turn into Anti-Valentine’s Day. I know I am not the first, and probably not the last, to propose this celebration by any means, but I may the first to actually have made a full range of products – so dear readers I am looking to you for an investment of up to £250,000.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Just in case you’re the kind of annoying happy person who has never thought about launching this kind of event, here’s a quick overview. Anti-Valentine’s Day is the celebration where we celebrate failed and unrequited love, bitterness and singledom. I think it’s only fair when we already have Valentine’s Day, and indeed represents a massive marketing opportunity, which in these harsh economic times can only be a good thing for the country.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">First job is to get <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clinton Cards </i>onside, given they’d happily push “I am a Child Molester Day” if they thought it would flog them a few cards and some of those stupid grey teddy bears (though I would be interested to see the versions of that teddy that would be produced for I’m a Child Molester Day), they surely would be happy to jump on the bandwagon. Especially given there are lots of greeting cards opportunities for Anti-Valentine’s Day. In fact arguably a single individual would be able to send a whole range of cards, rather than just one card to their only true love, because there’s a whole range of unfortunate relationships you could, and probably, have had.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">First up you’d be able to send cards to people who you hold an unrequited love for. For example the card could have the message on the front “Why Won’t You Go Out With Me?” and inside read:<br />
<br />
“Roses are red,<br />
Violets are blue.<br />
You’re responsible for the unfortunate stains on my bed,<br />
And I’m outside your house watching you”<br />
<br />
Touching.<br />
<br />
Or for the person who dumped you, a card that simply reads “You Ruined My Life” and inside:<br />
<br />
“Roses are red,<br />
Violets are blue.<br />
I can’t get the thoughts of you out my head,<br />
I’d do anything for one last screw”<br />
<br />
Or my favourite for the person who cheated on you a card that reads “Remember Me?” and inside:<br />
<br />
“Roses are red,<br />
Violets are blue.<br />
I want you dead,<br />
And your new boyfriend too”<br />
<br />
Like Valentine’s Day cards these should all be anonymously signed for proper stalkerish effect, and to reduce the likelihood of the relevant authorities finding you. Personally I think this would be a genius marketing ploy for retailers because as we all know love may last forever but only bitterness is eternal.<br />
<br />
But why stop at cards? Like Valentine’s Day there’s a full range of tatty merchandise that could be released for Anti-Valentine’s Day, and the good news is you don’t even have to imagine them because I’ve actually made them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">For the last few years I have been embracing Anti-Valentine’s Day with my own Anti-Valentine’s Day meal where I have cooked for a selection of my single friends on Valentine’s Day, forcing my housemates in couples to go out for the evening and spend an inordinate amount of money on their partners – ha ha ha. <br />
<br />
The below photos from my Anti-Valentine’s Day meals show the full range of potential investment opportunities, in a whole wealth of tatty Anti-Valentine’s merchandising:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2333.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2333.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Just as the heart is the symbol of Valentine’s Day the shattered heart is the symbol of Anti-Valentine’s Day with broken hearts everywhere.<br />
<span id="goog_116944512"></span><br />
</span><span lang="EN-GB"><span id="goog_116944513"></span><span style="color: black;"></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2338.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2338.jpg" width="239" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
To remind us why it’s better to be single than in a couple, pictures of famous celebrity break ups are scattered around the dining room:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span><span lang="EN-GB"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2336.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2336.jpg" width="239" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2340.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2340.jpg" width="239" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Always good to see Les Dennis and Heather Mills featured in the same vein.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
Even the menu can be themed:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2341.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2341.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
With the starter being Bitter Paté, main course being Broken Chicken Hearts and dessert being Date-Free Cake – see what I’ve done there? Additionally shots are only available as singles. Oh come on that’s clever!<span style="color: black;"></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">It’s important to make sure the door into the event is appropriately themed:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2342.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2342.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Incidentally this image makes a great R.S.V.P. to wedding invites that your more successful friends send you. The bastards.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">No Anti-Valentine’s Party would be complete without a touch of burnt rose petals for the smell of your hopes and dreams burning:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2337.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2337.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Just in case it gets too much an appropriate emergency sign is placed on the balcony:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
<span style="color: black;"></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2339.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2339.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Of course you need some table decorations. Here’s Valentine’s Doggy holding a lovely heart and with a knife sticking through his chest, and blood dripping out of his body:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2334.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/HighElfBlog2334.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">And Valentine’s Teddy whose head has unfortunately been ripped off – the smug smiling turgid bear:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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I’d like to say no Valentine’s Teddies were hurt in the making of these products, but I can’t.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">So there you go potential investors, the perfect celebration to get your backing. It’s a sure fire way to make money. Make your offers, except Deborah Meaden, you clearly don’t actually have any money.<br />
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At this point you’re likely to be backing away from the computer, and thinking to yourself I probably shouldn’t approaching the person who wrote this blog if they’re holding a sharp instrument. And to be honest any good psychologist would probably agree with you.<br />
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Now to those of you, who think this is unhealthy and I probably shouldn’t spend Valentine’s night hosting Anti-Valentine’s parties. I have tried. Last year there was no Anti-Valentine’s night, primarily as my regular group of single friend invitees had pretty much all found partners, and those that hadn’t, responded to the above paragraph. So in an effort to be positive and take control of the situation I signed myself up to a Valentine’s network and socialising event, the idea being that as it was on Valentine’s Day only single people would go. Thus you could all meet up get laid and live happily ever after – well that’s what the brochure said.<br />
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The problem is that any event in which romance is being attempted to be artificially orchestrated will only attract social retards, like myself, because clearly those who aren’t social retards can meet people they like in normal situations and ask them out without the need of some grand "shag me" event. Also I failed to realise the key plan that everyone else would do at this events, they’d bring at least one other single friend along, so they had someone to talk to. I didn’t. So now we had a room full of social retards, no one talking to anyone, except within the pre-existing groups of friends. And the individual singletons, like myself, standing there in a corner on their own, either acting excited by a coat hook or pretending to read texts on their mobile. Seriously I ran out of things to do on my phone, I’d cleared out the drafts text message folder and reorganised my phone book all whilst pretending to read a text. In fact it was this kind of social awkwardness that encouraged to get a smart phone, at least now I can use <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Google</i> whilst pretending to read texts to escape awkward social situations.<br />
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Anyway having spent £10 for this “exciting” event and drunk my free glass of wine, I decided, after an hour of avoiding making eye contact with the creepy looking people, I should abandon this lost cause. So my Valentine’s evening consisted of wasting £10, feeling depressed about being unable to pull in what by all accounts should have been a dead cert – room full of desperate singletons on Valentine’s Day. Then I went home binge ate a pizza and two cheesecakes and completed a level on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mario Kart</i>. So there we go Anti-Valentine’s is the way forward, and I look forward to reintroducing it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
Before I go and calm down and let my vein stop throbbing, I should impart to any couples out there the three golden rules that you should always obey when trying to comfort single people on or around Valentine’s Day:<br />
<br />
<span class="bbccolor"><span style="color: red;">1. Don’t tell us that Valentine’s Day is worse for couples.</span></span> If it that’s bad leave them, you are miserable by choice, we are miserable despite our best efforts not to be. Your level of pain pales in comparison to our own, don’t try and trivialise it.<br />
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<span class="bbccolor"><span style="color: red;">2. Don’t tell us that you and your partner aren’t doing anything for Valentine’s Day.</span></span> How could this possibly help? What you are effectively saying is that you have a ticket to the Happiness Party we're not allowed to go to, but your life is so happy you don’t need to go to the Happiness Party – this makes us hate you.<br />
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<span class="bbccolor"><span style="color: red;">3. Don’t tell us that "don’t worry you’re bound to meet someone perfect soon".</span></span> Quite frankly I’m too old for this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Disney</i> bullshit - it’s perfectly possible that I will spend the rest of miserable life sad and lonely with my only companionship provided by a group of dismembered Valentine’s Day teddies. Fate has nothing to do with it, don't patronise me!<br />
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On that cheery note I bring this post to a close. I wonder if anyone will still approach me in public without a canister of pepper spray.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-58977290516599632722012-02-14T08:30:00.001+00:002012-03-05T13:01:03.935+00:00Happy I Have a Job Day<span lang="EN-GB">Why don’t we have a nationwide celebration, one day a year where we celebrate having jobs? That’s right everyone who has a job sends one other person who has a job a card congratulating them on having a job. Giant displays would go up in windows two months before hand reminding people that they must buy chocolates, flowers and other themed tat to show those people who have a job just how lucky they are. Then on the big day all those with jobs would go out and have the best night of their life, enjoying a nice meal, a trip to the cinema, or even a holiday to </span><span lang="EN-GB">Paris</span><span lang="EN-GB">. Meanwhile those without jobs would stare forlornly at the festivities, cursing the unfairness of it all that they cannot attend. No matter how much they tried to avoid thinking about “I have a Job Day – Ha Ha Ha” (as it would be known) they wouldn’t be able to escape seeing the merchandising, advertising and general hubbub about the day.</span> <br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Of course we can’t do this because this would be inhuman and insensitive. It’s just one step away from locking up the unemployed in a giant animal enclosure, forcing them to dance for us naked whilst we throw scraps of food at them and cheer as they fight each other for every morsel. Though please don’t suggest that idea to George Osbourne, I can already see Her Majesty’s Government putting in a bulk order for chicken wire as I type.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">No kind and thoughtful person would want to rub their current employment status in the face of a less fortunate individual. And no right-minded society would allow a national day in which this kind of behaviour happened. Except that they do, not in the case of jobs but in the case of romance. Yes that’s right Valentine’s Day is here again. In actual fact, I hadn’t noticed, over recent weeks I’ve managed to navigate my supermarket blind so haven’t noticed the large heart shaped displays hovering above every isle like an extract from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ladybird Book of Autopsies</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Obviously it’s still before three in the afternoon, so the postman hasn’t been and I have no way of knowing yet if I’ve received thousands of Valentine’s cards or if I have strained the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Royal Mail </i>to breaking point. For the sake of reality let’s assume I haven’t, in fact let’s assume that my letter box has been opened less today than a branch of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lloyds TSB</i> after </span><span lang="EN-GB">12pm</span><span lang="EN-GB"> on a Saturday. In fact the only way I am managing to get through today is by routinely placing pictures of happy couples in my handy home office-sized shredder.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I wouldn’t really shred the nation’s sweethearts Wills and Kate would I?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers2474.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers2474.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Turns out I would, there goes my knighthood.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Over the years that I’ve come to accept that I will never know the love of another human, and that at death my genitalia will able to be auctioned in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eBay </i>under the description “Mint in original packaging”, that or very soon I will be getting myself a cat. But despite my apparent grumpiness on the issue, I have come to happily take my position at the bottom of the romantic food chain along with the other socially retarded individuals such as the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Go Compare </i>tenor and Justin Bieber fans. I am content in life, knowing that no matter how lonely I am, I will never have to share my dessert in a restaurant with someone who didn’t want one at the point of ordering. I’ll always be able to wrap a full double duvet around myself on cold winter nights. And the only awkward conversations about children I’ll have to have, are if I’m caught abducting a baby from the local hospital’s maternity ward. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I say I am content being single, I am content when I am allowed to wallow in my own self pity and masturbatory juices free from reminders of my own inadequacies. Valentine’s Day does not allow this, a national celebration where the nation gathers together to point, laugh and throw stones at the single people. As if the knowledge that their genetic material is being removed from the gene pool isn’t punishment enough. Rational humans, and I do realise I’m not one of those, may say, “Well it’s just a day, ignore it!”. Really try! Everyone under the sun wants to remind me that today is Valentine’s Day. Just a walk along the High Street will lead you to pass a thousand different window displays filled with giant red hearts starring down on you like the Eye of Sauron, only marginally more satanic. I appreciate restaurants, chocolate shops and perfumeries need to advertise and rely on the Valentine’s day business, but really do toy shops, chemists and estate agents need to fill their windows with hearts. I swear I passed the funeral director’s last week and they had a giant heart-shaped coffin in the window. Is it me or does that seem a bit much?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Sorry please excuse me I need to shred another happy couple…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers2460.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers2460.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Sorry where was I? Oh yes, even if you lock yourself in your house you’ll be constantly reminded of Valentine’s Day what with television adverts telling you all about the special Dine in For 2 offer at your local supermarket. Mind you I did take that up – mainly so I could eat both meals at home tonight and get fat. Well it’s that or cry. There’s no escape even if you turn your television off, I clearly hadn’t set my spam filter correctly as a number of Valentine’s offers managed to get e-mailed to me. Including, and I’m not making these up, a Valentine’s e-mail suggesting you buy your loved one something from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eBay</i> – I mean nothing says I love you, like second hand goods. Plus I also received this e-mail… </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers2375.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers2375.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Yes that’s right <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">First Hull Trains</i> want me to book a special romantic getaway to </span><span lang="EN-GB">London</span><span lang="EN-GB">, this is wrong on so many levels, it’s virtually become the </span><span lang="EN-GB">Empire</span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-GB">State</span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-GB">Building</span><span lang="EN-GB"> of awkwardness. Surprisingly the most difficult problem to overcome is not my singledom, but the fact that I would have to move to </span><span lang="EN-GB">Hull</span><span lang="EN-GB"> to take advantage of this offer. I am not saying anything bad about </span><span lang="EN-GB">Hull</span><span lang="EN-GB"> but I’d rather jump into the bath with a live three-bar electric fire under my arm than move to </span><span lang="EN-GB">Hull</span><span lang="EN-GB">. Apologies to anyone living in </span><span lang="EN-GB">Hull</span><span lang="EN-GB">. No seriously you have my condolences, still on the plus side if you want to move <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">First Hull Trains </i>have got some good special offers on. And if e-mailing and television advertising offers weren’t enough my weekly trip to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sainsbury’s </i>was largely ruined by a repeated tanoy announcement beginning “Did you know it’s Valentine’s Day this week?...” – no how could I have possibly noticed what with the fact you’ve played the same bloody announcement every five minutes for the last half hour and the store has more pink bunting up, than at Elton John’s wedding? Plus of course the cashier who upon receiving payment wished me a “Happy Valentine’s Day”, which is creepy A) because the cashier actually spoke to me and B) because f**k off, you’re intervention into my life is about as welcome as those old school friends who haven’t spoken to you for the last 20 years but decide it would be really good idea to upload an old class photo to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Facebook </i>and tag you in it. Piss off.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Sorry the vein is throbbing again…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers2464.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers2464.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Ahhh, that’s better.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">At this point some rational people will probably be suggesting that all this is due to the unwanted commercialisation of Valentine’s Day, well no, normal people are bloody annoying as well – and they have no commercial need to cause vitriolic bile to rise to my throat. Public displays of affection are never welcome within my eyeline, but especially not on or around Valentine’s Day. The escalators on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">London Underground </i>are not an appropriate place to do a quick dental inspection of your partners pre-molars using only your tongue – even if the staggered staircase corrects a rather awkward height difference that otherwise blights your happy relationship. And as for the couple in the queue in the supermarket this week, who had their tongues wedged so far down each others throats they were practically popping out of each other’s anuses. Is it really necessary to also make a noise wallpaper paste being slopped around a bucket? I nearly had to run them both through with a frozen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Be Good To Yourself </i>garlic baguette.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Oh and please don’t bring Valentine’s Day into the workplace, if a loved one sends 24 red roses to your office. When all the single people say “isn’t that lovely”, what we’re actually thinking is “Bitch” and wondering if we’d get fired for feeding the flowers into the shredder. One year, a girl genuinely arrived into my office on Valentine’s Day and started moaning at me about how awful it was she had to come into work so early, because she had missed the post and would have to wait until she got home to receive her boyfriend’s card. She moaned about this to me. Yes that’s right to me. It’s the equivalent of complaining to a person who has had both legs amputated that the shoe shop is closed. By the way if anyone is wondering what happened to the aforementioned girl, and why she stopped coming to work, you’ll find her bloodied body hidden behind the photocopier. For some reason I felt the need on that Valentine’s Day to repeatedly slam her head in the lid of the photocopier, that will also explain what the red mess on the glass plate was<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> </span></b>– just in case the police are reading this I didn’t actually do this (except in my mind).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Oh and if you even think of commenting on this blog that Valentine’s Day is just as bad for people in couples, it’s not. Otherwise logically you would dump them, to make yourself happier, and you haven’t – although if you have I would like to hear about that it would make me feel better.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">See told you Valentine’s Day was anti-social, inappropriate and unjust. In fact I’ve decided it would be less awful to rename this day “I Have a Job Day”. So Happy “I Have a Job Day”, unless of course they do find that body behind the photocopier in which case I may no longer be joining in with this celebration either.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">On that note it’s time for another trip to the shredder, bloody happy couples.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers2481.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers2481.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-62693614518415735002012-02-06T08:14:00.001+00:002012-03-05T13:01:54.572+00:00I’m coming out – scores 54 on a triple word score!<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><i>Warning this blog contains some grim imagery, you have been warned!</i> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I’m having a baby. I’m dumping my girlfriend. A pet died in my care. I’m ginger. I have an unnatural love for royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell. What do all those sentences have in common? That’s right they can be quite difficult to tell your nearest and dearest.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I think everyone in their life at one point or other has had difficulty telling people a particular statement, with the possible exception of Katie Price – who could perhaps do with developing the ability to not routinely tell us all about her private life. Get a super injunction woman, we’re not interested.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The statement I’ve struggled with telling some people over the years is that I am gay. There I’ve said it. Though in fairness at this point I am only telling my computer, and given it’s been the sole observer of my pornography collection, it has probably already guessed. Apologies by the way if you didn’t already know this news, as you will discover I probably wasn’t keeping from you for any bad reason, extra apologies if you were a woman and was hoping that one day I’d be your husband – I realise that this post may be a bitter pill to swallow.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">For some of you, mainly those who have met me, you may be wondering how I ever managed to keep it a secret from anyone. Well you’re quite rude. Certainly in recent years I’ve never really had a problem in people finding out my sexuality, although if they come towards me waving a placard marked “Burn in Hell Faggots” I’ve found it best not to choose that moment to begin a sentence “By the way…”. As it turns out whilst I’m reasonably adept in defending myself with some cuttingly witty remarks, these count for little against pitchforks and flaming torches in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Top Trumps </i>situation that is an angry mob. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">One of the main problems of sharing this secret is how you go about working it into the conversation? I don’t consider my sexuality to be an issue, but it can be tricky to tell people without making it an issue. For example last time I started in a new job, where I didn’t know anyone in the office, I had no problem on the face of it of telling my colleagues I was gay, but how do you go about it? I mean if I burst into the room, bounding between the desks shouting “I am a homosexual” that might seem a little inappropriate. And you wouldn’t expect any of your heterosexual colleagues to confess their sexuality in a similar way. I could of course wolf-whistle at a passing male colleague and shout “Phwoar” but again that feels indelicate and may mean that the Human Resources department find out I am gay quicker than I’d anticipated.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I always figured it would be easier to tell people if I had a boyfriend, then you could at least answer the natural office question “What are you doing at the weekend?” with “I’m spending it with my boyfriend” which feels like a subtle way of announcing the news. Sadly, as anyone who has read even one addition of this blog will be able to tell you, I am not with boyfriend. My Facebook status has been displaying “Single” for longer than a branch of discount store <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Madhouse</i>’s window has been displaying “Closing Down Sale”. It becomes less discreet and office friendly if you answer the question “What are you doing at the weekend?” with “I am out in pubs desperately trying to get a boyfriend. I am looking for a man by the way, that’s right looking for a </span><span lang="EN-GB">MAN</span><span lang="EN-GB">! Get the hint”. Not so subtle. So typically I’ve had to wait for colleagues to ask me the question, and this inbuilt waiting time only suggests to them, that I may have an issue with said subject prompting them not to feel it’s appropriate to ask. A vicious circle of secrecy ensues.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Now if telling people you’ve only just met seems difficult, telling people you’ve known a long time always feels much harder. I probably realised I was homosexual at the age of about 16, after spending the last four years of my puberty wondering when the oft-mentioned childhood phrase, recited by elderly relatives, of “one day you won’t mind it when girls kiss you” would come true (it still hasn’t), whilst in the meantime vigorously pleasuring myself to the thought of male boyband members. Seemingly unaware of the actual implications of what I was doing. It then took until I started university at the age of 20 to be comfortable telling selected other people about it, (I am referring to the sexuality aspect, not the “vigorous pleasuring” aspect which you’re probably wishing I’d been more coy about). The main reason it seemed fine was because, these were new people to my life if they didn’t like it then we would simply not be friends – no real loss. As it turned out, no one I’ve told has ever had an issue with my confession, in fact I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve only ever bumped into a very small number of homophobic people. And usually this has been in the company of a much larger number of right minded thinking individuals, which meant that the homophobic idiot has ended up being the one shunned by the group – which I actually find quite fun. In fact I often like to vigorously pleasure myself thinking about homophobic people I’ve met, simply because you know it would really annoy them. Sorry too much information I know!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Whilst it might seem good that I came out at the age of 20, and now am happy telling people going forward, this does present a back log of two decades worth of acquaintances and family members that you need to update with the news. And this to me is the hardest part. It’s not really that I expected any of these people to react badly to the news, it’s more that the longer I’ve known them, the longer it feels like I’ve been keeping a secret from them, which makes telling them all the harder in another vicious cycle of secrecy. There comes a point when you wonder if it would just be easier to publish a pamphlet to all your loved ones, with a series of questions answering what they’re likely to ask, with a small tick box at the bottom asking whether you wish to receive any more direct mail from the author.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Anyway I’ve finally broken the secret pact, over the last few months, I’ve managed to tell some key school friends, and my immediate family. Apologies if this blog is how I got round to telling you. It wasn’t that I thought you’d object, it was just I didn’t really know how to bring it up.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The biggest trauma was of course telling the parents, I sort of had an attempt at this a few years ago, I built myself up to telling them and my sister all in one go at the end of a birthday. Sadly at the point I was about to speak, my dad decided to go to bed, ruining the plan and I ended up half-heartedly muttering it under my breath to my mum and sister. Obviously they heard, but I can only describe the situation for me as feeling wrong, so utterly wrong, like I’d told them an untellable secret such as the fact I’d been vigorously pleasuring myself on their bed – for the avoidance of doubt I haven’t, but it felt like I’d revealed something THAT wrong. Apologies that is the third time I’ve used the phrase “vigorously pleasuring myself”, I promise not to do it again. Anyway the upshot was that in my mind I hadn’t really told them and I certainly didn’t go on to tell my dad.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">As 2012 dawned I finally resolved I really need to tell the family, it would be awful if I never got round to doing it, and if my mum and sister knew it might break their heart that I didn’t talk about it more or tell my father. So it was when I was at home over New Year that I decided that the 2<sup>nd</sup> of January would be the day I’d tell them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">As with all such things, the more time you spend worrying about the potential permutations of outcomes that might occur when you tell someone some big news, the less likely it is that there will be any discernable reaction. I finally managed to blurt out the phrase “by the way there’s something I should tell you, I’m gay” over an evening game of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scrabble</i>. The result of this was odd. My mum said “Why are you telling us this now?” as if the news had ruined her placement of a key word, my sister said “Is this relevant to the move you’re about to make?” as if somehow I was desperate to place the word “Butmuncher” on a triple word score – just in case you were planning on using that word it’s not in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chambers Dictionary</i>, I checked. In response to the general reaction of this being inappropriate time I replied, “I thought it was about time I told you”. To which my mother and sister replied “We already knew!” and my dad said “I didn’t!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">So there we go I managed to tell all my family I’m gay, and create family tension as my dad now knows he didn’t get told first, all over a single game of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scrabble</i> Oops! Despite all my worries about what they might say, they said nothing. On the face of it this is the best reaction “I’m gay”, “Yeah and…” but still whilst I’m sure it’s for good reasons I find it odd they had nothing to say no questions, nothing. As if there’s still an elephant in the room and one day we’re going to have the awkward questions. Or maybe they just realise how terminally single I am, and figure it doesn’t matter whether he fancies women or men, he’s not getting any. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Oh well there you go even the biggest drama of my life - coming out, turned out to be dull beyond belief. Still it filled some virtual pages of this blog. On that note I’m off to check the family will… just in case.</span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-72772127426741911702012-01-19T08:19:00.000+00:002012-01-19T08:19:47.044+00:00Want to come clubbing? Unless it involves bludgeoning baby seals to death, NO!<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">What on earth is the point of clubbing? What am I missing? Is the part of my brain that appreciates clubbing simply not functioning? I just don’t get it. You pay a small fortune to use it, cram yourself into an overcrowded area where you get shoved about by other people, have to put up with listening to awful music, have limited toilet facilities, the chances of getting a seat are remote and you’ll leave the place dripping in sweat. In all regards it is exactly like your morning commute on the Northern line except for the one small detail you don’t actually end up going anyway. That’s right you are re-enacting the morning commute, but without commuting. What is wrong with you people?!</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">If you’re reading this and are under 18, you might not know what I am talking about. Consider yourself lucky. Those bouncers on the door aren’t doing you a disservice by not letting you in; they are saving you from a horrible fate. Stop trying to fake ID, flutter your eyelids or look more grown-up, you are only wishing a despicable evening of disappointment on yourself.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">You might think this grumpy nature is due to the fact I’m getting on a bit, and whilst I am getting on a bit I can assure you I’ve never enjoyed clubbing. I’ve been with friends in sixth form, I’ve been with university friends, I’ve been with work colleagues, I’ve been in my late teens, I’ve been in my early twenties, I’ve been in my late twenties, and the only times I’ve ever enjoyed clubbing is when I’ve been paralytically drunk. Literally so<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>off my face I’d have a good time wherever I was, I might as well have been locked in a burning Biffa bin at a lock-up in Croydon. I’d still have had fun because I was so drunk that I was unaware of my surroundings.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Really is that the secret to clubbing that I’ve missed all these years? Is the only reason it is enjoyable is because any sense of taste and reason have been destroyed? Be it by alcohol, drugs or the worst toxin of them all love, unless you’re up to your eyeballs on some combination of these you’ll hate clubbing. And if you are, you’re so unaware of you’re surroundings you’d probably have just as much fun being mauled by a pack of hungry rottweilers in a septic tank connected to the diarrhoea ward of your local hospital.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Oh but you should go clubbing, you might pull?”, or so the idiots cry, I could count the number of times I’ve pulled in a club on one hand, even if I had a tragic accident involving an out of control threshing machine. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not for the want of trying. I’ve ground my hips up against some attractive specimen in a desperate bid to prove to them that the reason they should choose to spend the rest of their life with me isn’t due to my intelligence, ability to provide witty conversation, amount of money I own or how nice a person I am, but is instead due to my ability to gyrate my hips to the latest number by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Eyed Peas</i>. Not because this is in any way logical, but apparently because this moronic act of patheticness is how “dating” works. I’ve tried flashing a smile at a potential suitor, but usually they call a steward over because they think I’m having a stroke. I’ve tried making eye contact with a potential target, but as soon as I lock onto them with my eyeballs they are forced to glance elsewhere, it’s as if our eyes are like two magnets of the same polarity forced never to be aligned due to the epoch shattering forces on display. Hell, I’ve even tried jumping up and down with a giant placard saying “for god’s sake won’t anyone date me please”. All that manages to do is get the token bald, one-eyed, seventy-five year old homeless person, that all clubs seem to be legally obliged to employ to stand in the corner of the dance floor, to lollop after me all night with a blood rage in their eyes. You know that look that means should they ever get within touching distance of you, they will rape you an infect you with dry rot.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Combine all these factors in and you’ll see exactly why it is hell! Firstly the fact that the floor of every club is stickier than a box of tissues in a 15 year old boy’s bedroom. Secondly all nightclub toilets seem to operate on some communal urine pool system. Thirdly on entry you’re forced to pay a pound to enter a raffle you don’t want to enter, where the best you can possibly do is win your own coat back at the end of the evening – there’s reasonable chance you won’t even be that lucky. Fourthly until someone invents a live subtitling app for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">iPhone</i> it’s impossible to have a conversation with any of your friends there because regardless of where in the club you stand, you will always end up rammed up against a speaker bumping puerile pop trash into your brain at a level so intense your ears are about to melt. Fifthly entry to the club requires your arm to be branded like cattle, with an ink stamp that will only come off when you scrub the skin clean off with a scouring pad. As you can see clubbing really isn’t my cup of tea in any shape or form, in fact I’d rather lower my scrotum into a tank of piranha fish than go clubbing. Oh and if I am clubbing with you, stop moaning that I look miserable, I am miserable, I’m clubbing it’s s**t. I could only be having a worse evening if I’d accidentally got my nipples caught in a cheese grater. Forcing a false smile onto my face will not improve the situation or lift the cloud of doom circling above my head.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">At this point you’d probably be thinking “Given all these reasons to hate clubbing, why do you go?”, and you’d be right to think that. It is utter madness, but the problem with clubbing, is that clubbing is universally seen as cool. And any person who doesn’t like clubbing is seen as the world’s biggest loser, who deserves to live the rest of their days in solitary confinement as they clearly don’t have the capacity to enjoy themselves in the company of others. It doesn’t matter that I am happy to go for a meal, have a coffee, go for a drink, see a film at the cinema or even spend an evening round a friend’s house or any number of other social activities, if I don’t want to go clubbing I’m boring. Because clubbing is the universal definition of the epitome of enjoyment, the pinnacle of pleasure and social interaction, so clearly everyone must enjoy it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Well guess what people? I’ve got news for you. We don’t enjoy the same things. I get pleasure out of knowing that my CD collection is in alphabetical order, that doesn’t mean I expect you to come round my house and sort my CDs whilst standing in an inch deep pool of piss at 4am in the morning, only to leave my house throw up and then have to travel home on the night bus of the damned. I also enjoying learning and reading about science, but unlike clubbing morons, I don’t expect you to enjoy it because I enjoy it. If I get tickets to a series of lectures on quantum string theory, I won’t declare you a boring loser just because you don’t want to go. Somehow clubbing is exempt from this system of logic and acceptance of variations in tastes and interest, if you don’t want to go clubbing your hen-pecked and bullied into, and told you must go because “you will enjoy it”.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">No more, I am making a stand on behalf of all those of us who don’t enjoy clubbing. I am a 29 year old man, I don’t like clubbing and I am not going any more. I don’t care if you find it fun, you go. I’m not. I have to do enough things in my life that I’d really rather not do, without actively going on leisure activities I utterly despise, simply because society has deemed them fun. Personally I would rather lock myself in an airing cupboard with a bunch of 85 year old retired French teachers with a terrible degenerative groping disease and only the board game <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twister </i>for entertainment than spend another minute on a urine soaked dance floor.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">On that note it’s chucking out time, so in true club bouncer style – grab your coat, piss off, wait in the rain for an unlicensed minicab and make some bearded cesspit man’s dream come true.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I am not sure the medication’s working. See you next week.</span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-51228184140759813472012-01-12T09:22:00.001+00:002012-03-05T13:08:22.908+00:00If 2011 had been voted off The X Factor… Part 2<span lang="EN-GB">Welcome back to my review of 2011, a review so showbiz that it’s got more celebrity<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>appearances than on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dancing on Ice</i> so one. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Now let’s get back to the review…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">2011 Review of the Year – Part 2</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">July</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">In July </span><span lang="EN-GB">Norway</span><span lang="EN-GB"> was rocked by a shocking series of terror attacks. The Space Shuttle Atlantis completed the final mission of the fleet to deposit Piers Morgan into outer space for the good of all humanity, and the first artificial organ transplant was carried out, or so says <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wikipedia</i> I after all know nothing. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">News of the World</i> was closed down after 183 years, when it emerged it’s journalists had hacked the voicemail of the missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Rupert Murdoch became one of many big names to visit the Levison inquiry where he was hit in the face by a custard pie, which contained no custard – even now the media lie, and the whole significance of his appearance was reduced to the level of a children’s television programme – still at least I understood. In showbiz news the final Harry Potter film was released in cinemas, and Amy Winehouse defied medical science by living to the age of 27 despite the abuse her body had suffered.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">August</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">In August the season finale to the Arab Spring began with The Battle of Tripoli as rebel forces seized the capital from Colonel Gaddaffi’s hands, in other news about tyrants <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The X Factor</i> began it’s eighth series. A raft of new judges couldn’t distract the general public from the shock news that Louis Walsh is still on the show! <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Big Brother</i> launched over on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Channel 5</i> and some people won it. And the Iranian embassy condemned British authorities overuse of police force in a “hahaha” comment, as rioting and looting spread across </span><span lang="EN-GB">London</span><span lang="EN-GB">. Initial anger towards the police shooting of a suspect in Tottenham soon lead to looting in large areas of the capital later spreading to other parts of the country. A shocked nation found things only got worse with every political commentator in the country trying to come up with inventive reasons as to why the riots started, while the rest of us wondered how on earth anyone could be stupid enough to loot <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tesco Value</i> Basmati Rice and then post a picture of themselves doing it on the internet so the police could find them. Plus of course this very blog was launched to worldwide apathy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">September</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">September like April and June saw another quiet month in the world, according to the news summaries anyway, again with more continuations of all the year’s big stories. However other things popping up in the news were the news that Albert Enstein’s Theory of Relativity might be wrong after some neutrinos managed a cheeky shortcut to overtake the speed of light in a tortoise and hare style race. While TV scientists desperately tried to explain neutrinos to a confused population shock spread the world, nothing to do with the science, Lindsay Lohan had unveiled her new haircut. Meanwhile <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ITV</i>’s brand new current affairs show <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Exposure</i> exposed itself to ridicule and embarrassment after accidentally airing some computer game footage claiming it was shots of the IRA. Of course as a former employee of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ITV</i> who was made redundant by them I would never dream of enjoying revelling in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ITV</i>’s embarrassments, so let’s move onto <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Red or Black?</i> Oh dear. Ant, Dec & Simon Cowell’s hyped up version of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You Bet</i> with all the charm sucked out. Contestants were whittled down by answering a question even simpler than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Deal or No Deal?</i> in order to whittle them down to one contestant who would get the chance to spin a prop left over from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wheel of Fortune</i> in order to win one million pounds. The programme didn’t help itself when it turned out one of it’s winners had spent five years in jail for attacking a former partner.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">October</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">October saw the Eurozone lurch from crisis to crisis as combined talks lead by the French and Germans tried to prop up the economies of </span><span lang="EN-GB">Greece</span><span lang="EN-GB">, </span><span lang="EN-GB">Italy</span><span lang="EN-GB">, </span><span lang="EN-GB">Spain</span><span lang="EN-GB">, </span><span lang="EN-GB">Portugal</span><span lang="EN-GB"> and </span><span lang="EN-GB">Ireland</span><span lang="EN-GB"> as a domino effect threatened to engulf </span><span lang="EN-GB">Europe</span><span lang="EN-GB"> – in the sense that the only entertainment anyone in these countries could now afford would be dominos. The global population reached a massive 7 billion, all of which attempted to travel on the Northern Line with me on a daily basis. The government proposed raising the speed limit on the </span><span lang="EN-GB">UK</span><span lang="EN-GB">’s motorways to 80mph in order so that people could leave </span><span lang="EN-GB">Wolverhampton</span><span lang="EN-GB"> quicker, and broadcasting legend Sir Jimmy Saville died and then turned in his grave when he heard that Shane Richie was to present a tribute show. And the Arab Spring came to it’s conclusion with the death of Colonel Gaddafi and the subsequent printing of his bloody corpse on the front of every newspaper which was only marginally more tasteful than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sun</i>’s page three that day.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">November</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">November 2011 saw a host of goodbyes as Silvio Berlusconi reluctantly stepped down from his country’s premiership in order to allow it to be guided through economic turmoil, depriving a number of good comedians of reams of material. Berlusconi himself is unlikely to be happy with the decision as he is now no longer immune to trial in a number of Italian cases – that should be fun. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Daybreak</i>’s presenting team of Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakly were unceremoniously dumped amid poor ratings and reviews after a high profile poaching from the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">BBC</span></i><span lang="EN-GB"> resulting in replies of hahaha from former <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">GMTV</i> presenters and the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">BBC</span></i><span lang="EN-GB"> alike. Michael Jackson’s doctor Conrad Murray was found guilty of accidentally causing the singer’s death after confusing painkillers with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pringles</i>. Nick Hewer was announced as the new host of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Countdown</i> after completing a series of tasks where he had to sell as many letters to members of the general public as possible in two days, make an advert for the show itself and project a manage a team to clear out Jeff Stelling’s dressing room. After a nervous final boardroom battle he beat The Chuckle Brothers to the role. Meanwhile the public sector went on a day of nationwide Christmas shopping in order to protest about reduced public service pensions and Jeremy Clarkson offended them all by suggesting they should be shot in a completely serious interview untouched by any hint of irony.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">December</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">December not only was the close of 2011, but bought close to a lot of other things, the British ended all pretence of being popular in </span><span lang="EN-GB">Europe</span><span lang="EN-GB"> after vetoing its latest mandate on economic harmony in order to protect its important financial mismanagement industry. The </span><span lang="EN-GB">United States</span><span lang="EN-GB"> officially declared the end of the war in </span><span lang="EN-GB">Iraq</span><span lang="EN-GB"> leaving the country in a completely stable unwarlike state. A plethora of reality TV shows came to an end with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Strictly Come Dancing</i> stealing the ratings crown as Harry Judd won the glitterball trophy, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little Mix</i> won <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The X Factor</i> and were forgotten in the space of a week, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m a Celebrity…</i> was won by one of the other <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">McFly</i> people, I wasn’t watching. </span><span lang="EN-GB">Kim-Jong</span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-GB">Il</span><span lang="EN-GB"> ended his grip on </span><span lang="EN-GB">North Korea</span><span lang="EN-GB"> prompting a large number of jokes around his name and being “oh so lonely”. </span><span lang="EN-GB">Samoa</span><span lang="EN-GB"> and Tokealu said goodbye to the 30<sup>th</sup> of December, entirely skipping the day, to shoot across the International Dateline and be at </span><span lang="EN-GB">GMT</span><span lang="EN-GB"> +14. And we all shed bucket loads of tears as a child gave a poorly wrapped present to his parents from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">John Lewis</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Military Housewives</i> stole the Christmas Number One from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little Mix</i>’s clutches.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">And that ladies and gentlemen was 2011 in a slightly large nut shell. Of course no review of the year would be complete without some updates on my previous blogs. On the subject of socks I decided to use the day specific socks in the end – you’ll be pleased to know. Plus I was given the excellent suggestion of wearing socks with aggressive toe seams inside out. Thank you for that.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers1388.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers1388.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Yes that is my leg hair, calm yourself.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">And as regards <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">WHSmith</i> as you can see things have improved in their shops as this photo I took at Brixton store shows:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers1846.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers1846.jpg" width="239" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Not spotted the problem yet? How about now:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers1847.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae119/cunningmatt/ProcrastinationbyNumbers1847.jpg" width="239" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB"> </span> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">There you go!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><u><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">On that bombshell, all that remains is to wish you an exceptionally happy New Year (a bit late I admit) and I hope that 2012 doesn’t pan out anything like the film of the same name, if we are all to die this year let’s hope the plot’s better, and also hopefully nothing like the awful </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">BBC</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"> Three</span></i><span lang="EN-GB"> spin-off <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spooks: Code 9</i> kudos if you remember that, and indeed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kudos</i> if you made it – a little TV production joke to end with, forgive me.</span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-78923991974130566322012-01-10T09:06:00.001+00:002012-03-05T13:08:47.475+00:00If 2011 had been voted off The X Factor… Part 1<span lang="EN-GB">Welcome back to DraMattics returning after the Christmas break. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As you’ve probably noticed by now its 2012, and as is customary I’ve written an exciting review of 2011 for us to reminisce over. Now traditionally reviews of the year are written before the end of the year, but by saving my review until 2012 I won’t have missed out on any last minute events that occurred of those final days of 2011 – I mean if the world had ended on the 30<sup>th</sup> of December 2011 what a fool I’d have looked with this incomplete review of the year. Secondly and most importantly publishing in 2012 gives me an opportunity to look at everyone else’s reviews of the year to save me having to rely on my increasingly erratic memory or doing any proper research.</span> <br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">2011 was a bumper year full of more events than you can think of, the months literally whizzed by with your calendar pages turning faster than Aleisha Dixon at the sight of Simon Cowell’s cheque book. I’ve broken the year down into 12 nice convenient chunks which I’ve called months, sadly the real world has s**t all over this by spreading more complex news stories across many months so please bare with any chronological errors. And I challenge you to get through this list without at least once saying “oh I’d forgotten that”.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">2011 Review of the Year</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">January</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">2011 began bright eyed and bushy-tailed with the </span><span lang="EN-GB">UK</span><span lang="EN-GB"> buried under tonnes of white stuff, no not the explosion of Kerry Katona but a thick blanket of snow. And 2011’s Award for “If only we’d had hindsight” was claimed early in the year when on the 1<sup>st</sup> of January </span><span lang="EN-GB">Estonia</span><span lang="EN-GB"> became the 17<sup>th</sup> country to join the Euro. And in what would become known as the Arab Spring, the Tunisian government fell to a wave of upraising all started when a vegetable seller set fire to themselves in late 2010. </span><span lang="EN-GB">Southern Sudan</span><span lang="EN-GB"> became the world’s newest country annoying atlas makers by declaring peaceful independence from </span><span lang="EN-GB">Sudan</span><span lang="EN-GB">. </span><span lang="EN-GB">England</span><span lang="EN-GB"> won the Ashes representing a token effort by me to include sport when I know nothing about it (apparently that was good?!). And in stupid news Andy Gray and Richard Keys got fired from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sky News</i> after tapes of them accusing women of not being able to understand the outstandingly complex game of football were released. The primary mistake the duo made was in thinking that women don’t follow football because they’re too stupid, whereas in reality they don’t follow it because their too busy getting incensed over <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">EastEnders</i>. The soap spent January in trouble for portraying a depressing story, even by it’s standards, as Ronnie Mitchell swapped her dead baby for that of Kat Moon’s, to an increasing chorus of angry viewers who’d completely forgotten that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">EastEnders</i> wasn’t a documentary.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">February</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Back in February the traditional Valentine’s month saw the glittering <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oscars</i> ceremony where the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">King’s Speech</i> triumphed winning 4 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oscars</i> and showing that people with speech impediments used to have proper jobs and didn’t need to become chat show hosts. The Arab Spring continued (even though February is technically still winter), as the Egyptian government was overthrown. Up until then Egypt had been considered one of the most stable countries in the region, primarily as it’s government was built on a pyramid scheme – oh come on give us a laugh, there isn’t much funny about global uprising, except of course Colonel Gaddafi who continued to deny the existence of the Libyan rebellion, his fashion sense and sanity in a series of bizarre speeches that caused confused even Charlie Sheen. Back in the </span><span lang="EN-GB">UK</span><span lang="EN-GB"> surprise TV hit of the year <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Big Fat Gypsy Weddings</i> launched on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Channel 4</i> regularly achieving a massive eight million viewers, just shy of the figures this blog gets.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">March</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">March’s news was of course dominated by the tragic earthquake and subsequent tsunami which devastated the North East of Japan, which then became further overshadowed by the meltdown of the </span><span lang="EN-GB">Fukushima</span><span lang="EN-GB"> reactor. Providing the disturbing revelation that I along with most people in the developed world seem more shocked by natural disasters that occur in other developed countries. At home large scale protests against the government’s austerity measures were overshadowed when a small angry group attacked banks and shops in an anti-capitalist protest which it later turned out was just the qualifying heats to the August finals. Charlie Sheen was fired from his job as the world’s most highly paid actor, after an increasing series of bizarre public statements and the revelation he was on the drug “Charlie Sheen”. 13 year old Rebecca Black became the subject of an internet hate campaign after she recorded a pop video as part of one of those day-out experience events that was universally condemned as the worst music video ever after being shown on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">YouTube</i>, causing bitter disappointment amongst <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Cheeky Girls</i> who had been assured of the award. And <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Midsommer Murders</i> got in trouble after revealing to those fearsome interviewers at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Radio Times</i> that they portray the universally white middle </span><span lang="EN-GB">England</span><span lang="EN-GB"> with a cast whiter than a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Persil</i> advert.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">April</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">My research into April showed that according to the news not much happened, this was primarily due to some unseasonably hot weather – due to the disastrous project of outsourcing climate to Boris Johnson, which resulted in the hottest weather of the year falling in April and October. Additionally Easter and a bumper crop of Bank Holidays (three with a further one close behind in May) due to the Royal Wedding increased the incentive for a non-news worthy month. Although an estimated TV audience of 2 billion tuned into watch Prince William and Kate Middleton tie the knot, with 1 billion women ogling the dress and 1 billion men ogling Pippa Middleton’s bottom, all of them distracted from the disturbing sight of the spontaneous growth of a forest in Westminster Cathedral. April Fool’s Day erupted into a bumper edition when Nick Clegg launched a referendum on the Alternative Voting system (you’d forgotten about that hadn’t you?!) the result was announced in May, but not much happened in April so I needed something to write about here.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">May</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">May saw a flurry of US news stories makes the headlines when Cheryl Cole was shot by US Navy Seals and Osama Bin Laden was sacked from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The X Factor USA</i> – I think that’s the right way round. While Osama’s Geordie accent was blamed for his lack of likeability critics praised his judging of American talent, whereas Cheryl Cole was found holed up in </span><span lang="EN-GB">Pakistan</span><span lang="EN-GB"> and buried at sea. In sports’ news Manchester United and Manchester City won some things and the superinjunction story finally came to a head when the world’s worst kept secret that footballers do stupid things emerged. As it became clear Ryan Giggs had slept with someone he shouldn’t have. Obviously the most disturbing thing about the whole superinjunction saga was not the limiting of the freedom of the press, but the shock news that two people had slept with Andrew Marr – amazing, I thought one was pushing the limits of plausability. </span><span lang="EN-GB">Portugal</span><span lang="EN-GB"> was rescued by the EU Monetary fund in what turned out to be a mini-cliff hanger on the road to 2011’s season finale of Europe-wide financial collapse. And it was proved the public really shouldn’t be allowed a say when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Only Way is Essex</i> won a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BAFTA Audience Award</i> – thank god we don’t let the public have a say on any important issues like who is running the country.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">June</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">According to all the news websites nothing happened in June, nothing not a single thing. Every review of the year skims over June like a proud mother skims over her rapist son when introducing her family at Christmas. Broadly speaking there was a continuation of every event already running, the Arab Spring rumbled on (even though it’s now summer), the </span><span lang="EN-GB">Fukushima</span><span lang="EN-GB"> reactor continued to degrade, economic collapse continued in the Eurozone and protests at austerity measures hit many countries. Oh err… </span><span lang="EN-GB">Glastonbury</span><span lang="EN-GB"> happened.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">And on that pathetically lacklustre note, I will leave our review of 2011 there. No it’s not because the second half isn’t written but just because I am an irresistible tease, make sure you check out Part 2 later in the week!</span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-10076789422371599602012-01-04T09:30:00.001+00:002012-03-05T13:09:11.958+00:00The Return to Tedium<div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">So can I officially be the last person to wish you a Happy New Year, and can I also be probably the only person to welcome you back to your tedious life. Yes I’m afraid Christmas is over, the New Year is gone, there are no more Bank Holidays left and it’s back to the hum drum tedium that is your life. The only difference being you’re fatter, a lot poorer and you have a selection of jumpers you didn’t want. Sorry. Unless of course you’ve taken a couple of extra days off, in which case you’ve simply prolonged the inevitable and essentially made the fall all the worse. </span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">All you have now is months of poor weather, and no bank holidays to look forward – the next one is not until April 6<sup>th</sup>, really that long away? Oh well, on the plus side at least New Year’s is gone and done, is it me but isn’t the worst celebration ever? Perhaps that’s why they have it at the beginning of the year to get it out of the way? I mean talk about anti-climax, everyone waits excitingly for the clock to change to </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">midnight</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">, and then what? What changes? Nothing. Other than the physical number of the year, your calendar and the fact that you’ll spend the next six months mucking up filling in forms, sometimes inexplicably writing the year as 2013 (why does that happen?), nothing has changed. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">I’ve had a series of New Year’s horrors, dealing with drunken/hysterical friends, being rammed into pub/clubs/parties with loads of happy couples kissing over the New Year (my favourite thing as I’m sure regular readers will have guessed), attending a party where the DJ missed midnight and announced 10 minutes late that it was now the New Year, and being in bed with food poisoning over the Millennium New Year’s celebrations after eating a dodgy prawn sandwich. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">Worse than all those disasters was the year I did the traditional banks of the Thames, standing in conditions so arctic that my reproductive organs had retracted so far into my body that I’d become an <i>Action Man</i> figure, however to make up for it my nipples had become so erect that if I turned round quickly I’d have run the risk of knocking five people into the Thames. Typically you spend hours standing at the banks of the Thames just to get a good position to see a clock strike 12am – at no other time of the year is this considered entertainment for very good reason, it’s dull. Some people have actually turned up at lunchtime to get the best positions – I mean I ask you?! Then you seem some admittedly nice fireworks, but you’d have a better view on telly. And then you have to get home, yes the Tube runs all night and is free – but all the useful stations have been closed to avoid overcrowding, so you have to walk to Zone 2 before you can even board a train.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">This year I had none of that, I stayed at home like a miserable git with my parents, for the second New Year running where we watched Jake Humphrey – the <i>Formula 1</i> presenter, who’d lost the </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">BBC</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">’s annual sweepstake and was forced to endure the banks of the </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">Thames</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;"> so we didn’t have to. We all had one drink, then played <i>Scrabble </i>on the <i>Wii</i> until </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">2am</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">. Perfect, and much like the rest of the year, miserable. Still I’m happy I got a 203 point word, which really annoyed the rest of family “EQUALING” across two treble word scores (yes it is an Americanism but it was worth it). In some ways it was probably the best New Year I’ve had.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">And of course since I last ranted at you, it’s been Christmas, how was your Christmas? I don’t really care, but it’s polite to ask. The Christmas period, I find, brings with it its own ills – and I’m not talking about Christmas dinner washing up and pretending that you liked those Christmas presents that you really didn’t. This Christmas I ended up feeling very old, there’s many reasons for this. Firstly spending time with your parents, which I’ve come to realise, is like looking into a mirror of the future, you see yourself in thirty years time an inescapable fate, your destiny is to turn into this people no matter what you do, you cannot avoid it. It’s like a science fiction movie where the characters see their own future and no matter how they try to avoid the future unravels as is written. Those of you under the age of 25 will be reading this puzzled, I spent all my late teenage years and early twenties convinced that I would be nothing like my parents, determined in fact I wouldn’t copy their annoying habits, I’d be “cool” at the age of 60. Then somewhere around the mid-twenties the awful truth hits you, you are turning into them, well a hideous hybrid – almost like you’re 50% your mother and 50% your father. You’ve started seeing their traits in you. I know I’ve started shouting at inanimate objects like my mother, sighing loudly for no reason like my father, generally being baffled by new technology and moaning that the buttons on new gadgets are too small, turning down the TV and wandering round the shops rejecting the arrays of clothing presented to me because “it wouldn’t be practical”. It’s only a matter of time before I start going upstairs and by the time I get there forgetting what I came up for – though I’ve come up with a cunning plan to avoid this by only every living in single story buildings, clever eh? Then I’ll be off to buy a beige cardigan and start a 1,000 piece jigsaw just for fun. Why on earth they need to do </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">DNA</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;"> testing on Jeremy Kyle, just wait until the child is 30 you’ll be able to tell the parents just from the annoying traits.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">However that’s not the only reason I’m feeling particularly old, whilst seeing family this Christmas my sister said “Is that a grey hair on your head”, following up with “only joking!”. How we laughed… until I throttled the bitch with a string of tinsel and shoved her face in a <i>Sainsbury’s</i> Yule Log – the cow! Not that I’m overly sensitive, you understand. But worse than that, I got the news that everyone dreads, the awful news that you lay awake at night hoping will never come. The first of my university friends has had a baby. Yeah some of my school “friends” have been pregnant before, several times, but they were slags they don’t count, these people are like you, they are your peers. I mean it was bad enough when they all got into long term relationships, and increasingly you realised that you were in a minority and that single didn’t just describe your relationship status, but how many of your friends have time for you any more. Then a year or two after you last spoke to them a card drops through your door inviting you to their wedding, laughably asking if you’d like to bring a +1 with you, if they’d actually spoken to you in the last year they’d know I was still terminally single, still sitting on the shelf as wanted as a <i>Jedward</i> Album, where even a 99p sticker hasn’t done anything to shift you.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;">I’ve just been through that phase, there are two of us left unattached, bitterly meeting for coffee to bitch about all the friends that we haven’t seen in years. Now the next phase has begun, the one that makes you feel even more alone, the baby phase – there all going to start popping them out soon. I’ll be invited to baby showers, your last chance to see these people before they become eternally tired, where undoubtedly well meaning but essentially moronically patronising friends will declare “don’t worry I’m sure it’ll be your turn soon”, I have news for you the evidence suggests that it won’t be. Who knows maybe even asked to be a Godparent – though if any of them have read this blog they’ll surely be questioning my suitability in that role? It’s all so deeply depressing and cementing two things, one I’m no longer young – if people my age are grown ups, and two I’m living my life through moaning about their lives. Oh dear. Still I’m looking forward to the next phase, the awkward and bitter divorce phase, at least I’ll feel less single this time round. Perhaps we can have divorce parties, where I can cheerfully announce to the remaining couples don’t worry I’m sure it’ll be your turn soon”. And some people say I have issues.</span></span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953267271031711800.post-86360108270949807852011-12-23T08:48:00.001+00:002011-12-23T08:49:11.863+00:00The Third Great Trial of Christmas: Friends & Family<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Here’s my third and final moan about all the nice things about Christmas in an attempt to ruin the festive season for all.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The problem with Christmas is in a sense the whole point of it; you have to spend it with family and friends. Admittedly a Christmas spent on your own would be about as much fun as spending the festive season in the Fritzel’s basement, but at least there wouldn’t be the rows, awkwardness and general problems always associated with interacting with other people which are compounded during the holiday season.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Now before you get deeply offended early on in the post (there’ll be plenty of time for that later), I want to say I love my friends and family – as much as my bitter and twisted cold heart will allow for anyway. But the problem is everyone has a different vision of what Christmas should be, from the full on Victorian traditional feast with the million friends and family around sharing well-thought gifts and cards over the ultimate meal, to a quiet one with only your closest, to avoiding every relative at all cost, like they were street based charity workers. If everyone had a same standard idea of what Christmas should be, at least we’d all know the bench mark.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Christmas Cards seem like such a simple idea, a brief message to say Merry Christmas in a card posted to a loved one. But nowadays do you bother? And if you do bother, who do you leave on or off the Christmas card list? It’s a bit like a dry run for organising your wedding (were that ever to be likely – in my case I think this would be wasted practice), admittedly with smaller ramifications but still... if you send a card to one friend why aren’t you sending a card to all your friends. It may seem like a small thing, but generally most friends don’t like to find out that they’ve been segregated into a sub-friendship group within the rest of your friends, it’s not considered polite. Cards sent around the office are even more problematic, as there’s a lot more of an obvious opportunity to compare who received a card and who didn’t, in a small office you can probably manage everyone but in a large office the line has to be drawn somewhere unless you want to spend December operating like a 17<sup>th</sup> century printing press. And then of course there’s the awkward moment when you receive a card from someone who you haven’t sent a card to, uh-oh potential festive disaster (unless you don’t give a toss!), especially if it’s now past the last posting date for Christmas, or you’ve run out of cards in your festive box consisting of 24 cards consisting of 4 designs – I mean I probably should send them a card, but it’s not worth rushing out to buy a new box.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">If you think card giving for friends is tricky, consider how this problem is magnified within the realm of present buying. Whilst your said friend may not be that concerned if they’ve missed out on a well thought, but essentially cheap card, they may when actual cash value presents are taken into account start to get a bit miffed. But say a special friend has done something nice for you this year and so you want to thank them for it. Well do you need to buy every mutual friend, that you and the original friend share, gifts as well for fear of offending them? And then where does it stop? Sufficient extension of this logic results in the nightmare scenario where you end up having to get every person you’ve ever met a gift and that can be expensive, even for the socially retarded. The potential for absolute awkwardness for me doesn’t end there, because what if you receive a present from someone you haven’t actually got a return present for? Are they expecting something back? Will they be offended if you haven’t got them anything? Are you supposed to rush out and get them something at the last possible moment?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">In some ways worse than this can be the potential for gift mismatch, this is where you’ve both bought each other gifts but one person has way out spent the other. If you receive a luxury designer watch costing around £300, and in return you’ve got them a chocolate Santa and a soap in the shape of a reindeer, you can feel a little uncomfortable. Even worse because you’ve got them something, you can’t play the “sorry I haven’t had a chance to get you a present yet” card.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Still at least with friends you can shop in nice shops, after all they’re likely to have similar interests and be a similar age to you. Whereas this luxury is not often afforded with family members, in the case of friends you can shop in nice clothes shops or look for fun music and DVDs. However involve family members and you’ll be soon trawling through shops you feel about as comfortable at as a South Korean who is accidentally stumbled into Kim Jong-il’s funeral service. Before you know it’ll you’ll be groping your way blindly through places you’d never normally go cross-stitch shops, Fishing Accessory World and worst </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Edinburgh</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"> Wool Mill.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The family gift buying trauma is also compounded by the fact that as you know family better you know what they’ll do with your gift – more to the point if you buy them tat you know they are going to put it in the bin. You can pretend your friend will keep that awful Wall-mounted Singing Mackerel you found in the junk shop, your mother will not and you know it. You’re going to have to get something thoughtful. Worse still my parents make rules on what I can and cannot buy them – no clothes as no room in the wardrobe, no toiletries as they never get used, no food as they’re on a diet, and nothing that will take up any space as the house is full of junk. I mean what can you get them, a gift-wrapped skip for them to empty the spare room into?! Then you ask them what they would like and they reply “I don’t really know” – well if they don’t really know, what chance do I have. Instead I end up plodding up and down the high street so much the shop assistant in<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Boots </i>thinks I’m stalking her just for her clubcard points.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">To make matters worse, 10 years ago I foolishly suggested that wouldn’t it make a nice change to use Make Your Own Crackers – these are crackers where you buy them unassembled and purchase your own gift to place inside. An ideal way to avoid the usual awful crap they put in crackers, which they might as well send straight to landfill now and save us all wasting 2 seconds of our life doing it. Anyway at the time the cracker idea seemed like a good one, but now it’s been adopted as a family tradition this means having to hunt down another set of family presents obeying all the above rules but being small enough to fit within the inside of a cracker. Why did I ever suggest such a disastrous idea in the first place? Now a decade later I’m wandering through stores with a tape measure trying to see if gifts will fit in a cracker, desperately resisting the urge to form the bloody thing into a noose and end it all there.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The other problem with family, bar the rows and having to spend time with them – things I’ll gloss over because surprisingly I actually get on with my family and so have nothing to add on this subject (An optimistic note?! Who’d have thought, well it is Christmas). Any how, the other problem with family is that they have a bizarre set of traditions that they insist you adhere to, being sent out to buy two jars of pickled onions and a Christmas table cloth on Christmas Eve because “otherwise Christmas will be ruined” I feel may be taking festive preparations a little too far. In fact let’s sod the whole thing and have fish fingers and chips?! What do you reckon? Who could be unhappy with that?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">And with that my last blog of 2011 is drawn to a close, thank you very much reading and commenting. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about the collapse of my life!! I’ll be blogging again in January so look out for that, in the meantime have an amazing Christmas and a brilliant New Year. I’ll be spending the break relaxing and attempting to find a partner to end my miserable single life and make next year’s blog a whole lot cheery. And although Christmas may be a time of miracles, this plan still seems rather unlikely doesn’t it? Until 2012 bye bye! </span></div>Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745738868355268880noreply@blogger.com0