Hypocritical Adults!

Gosh dear reader, I have been neglecting you, have I not… Truth is, things have been a little hectic in Engineer’s world lately, with the inevitable overspill into Judge’s and Boxer’s worlds and onwards into mine. It’s a feeble excuse though, and once again I thank the Almighty that I am not a serious journalist who has to produce a weekly (or daily!) column in order for my salary to roll into my bank account, or we would all be eating baked beans and living in a caravan.

My rant for today concerns the hypocrisy of people, and more accurately, adults. Children don’t do hypocrisy. It must be something we go on a training course for at around the age of 16. This particular rant has come about due to an incident at my (paid) work this week, in which someone much more important than me failed to persuade me to attend a 2 hour meeting in London because the value of the 2 hours was difficult to justify against the monetary cost of actually getting me there and back, not to mention the cost of my time, having to rise at 5am, suffer the vagaries of Easyjet and the Gatwick Express (an oxymoron if ever I heard one), and not get home until 10pm. So instead of using a more persuasive argument, or offering me the option of dialling in instead, or even agreeing that my presence at the meeting was not justifiable, my contribution could be captured some other way and the output of the meeting could be communicated to me after the event, this particular person did what the Weak tend to do in these situations and clyped on me to my boss.

For those non-Scots amongst us, the word “clype” has no easy, one word definition really. It means to tell tales. We spend our parenthood days telling our children not to do it. We try hard not to respond to a clype (it can be both a noun and a verb) but we often can’t help ourselves. We hear our teachers telling our children not to clype, unless it’s “really serious”, but they don’t really define what “really serious” actually is, and having its hair pulled is “really serious” to a 6 year old. In any work environment, the easiest way to get something done is to go up the chain of command, rather than attempt to win someone over through charm and stakeholder persuasion, and it is far easier this way to bring about retribution for behaviour which has pissed you off, rather than confronting directly and discussing with a view to solving the problem.

In many organisations, clyping is a way of life, entrenched in accepted behaviour and corporate identity, and even documented in procedures and processes. It leads to, or stems from, structures which are too hierarchical where everyone has their place and must be involved in the decision-making process, which in turn becomes unwieldy and top heavy, and it renders the process itself far more long-winded and complex than it needs to be.

And it starts in childhood. It’s a “do as I say, not as I do” situation. We tell children not to clype, and yet we do it all the time. We tell children they are empowered to sort out their own issues, and then we wade in to try and sort them out, by writing a letter to a teacher, confronting the parent of the child with whom our child’s issue is, or by telling our child what to do about it rather than letting him or her work out the best course of action themselves. This is all fondly meant – we do it because we love them, but we end up doing more harm than good because we perpetrate the clyping adult. And so it goes on into the next generation.  

In it to win it?

One of the inescapable signs of my own personal ageing process, apart from the obvious ones like grey hairs, wrinkles and the total inability to tolerate any form of human idiocy, is insomnia. It’s a horrible thing, insomnia. Nothing else is quite like it. It is the only thing which deprives you of a night’s sleep thus rendering you good for absolutely nothing at your work the following day and yet which you cannot, with good conscience, use as a justifiable excuse for not turning up to work the following day. “I’m not coming in today because I didn’t sleep very well last night” sounds very weak and is unlikely to result in any sympathy. Whereas “I’m not coming in today because I broke my ankle running for a bus in platform heels when I was drunk” is much more believable, in spite of the fact that at least when you were having insomnia you were in fact in your bed, (and presumably sober, since when was the last time you got mangled and couldn’t sleep like a hibernating bear afterwards and often in the most unusual places?) and at least trying to get some sleep before you had to go to work, which is a much more responsible state of affairs for an employee. You would think.

Lots of people have cures for insomnia. Mine is to imagine that I have won £150 million on the lottery, and then work out what I would do with all that money. It usually goes a bit like this:

1)      I will not move house. You can’t make me. I don’t want a bigger house. I can’t even keep this one clean. And yes, I know I will have a huge pile of cash with which to pay someone else to keep it clean, but a lottery win will not change the fact that I am Scottish and thus morbidly tight – why would I pay someone money to do something that I can do myself? And anyway, big houses give me the creeps. Big houses have many more corners than small houses in which creepy things, both human and arachnoid, can hide. Why would I want that?

2)      I will, however, consider buying another house with enough space for me to install a swimming pool and a football pitch. Or, heck, I may just buy a swimming pool and a football pitch. Or I might buy the house next door, flatten it (sorry Netta) and build a swimming pool and a football pitch there. No real need to apologise to my lovely neighbour though, as I will have already given her a huge cheque just because she’s nice and she pulls my curtains and puts my lights on when we’re away on holiday. And possibly to make up for the fact that I am the world’s worst and most forgetful cat-sitter and she STILL trusts me enough to look after the poor neglected creature when she goes away on holiday. It’s a good thing cats can fend for themselves, food-wise, and cannot tell tales. That’s all I’m saying.

3)      I will make all my friends and family millionaires, as long as they agree never to mention it again, and promise not to be grateful because I would hate that. We would have to have some sort of contractual obligation not to show any gratitude. I am going to need a clever lawyer.

4)      Little Vulture will get enough money so that she can retire extremely early (ie now. I mean, why wait?) and spend the rest of her living moments not worrying about Mr Osborne stealing her pension, taking photos of exotic wildlife in hot places, and coming home every so often to show me the photographs. Her, not Osborne – I have no wish ever to see his photographs. However, if she shows me any more close up photos of moths or stick insects, or once more hides a gigantic moth’s wing in an innocent looking notebook, I reserve the right to withdraw all her funds immediately. Moths are my problem area, as she well knows. And telling me they’re pretty is not helpful. They are not pretty – they are hairy, creepy and get stuck in my hair. What WAS she thinking.

5)      Lioness will get enough money that she can direct her fabulous business from behind a pair of sunglasses and a margarita on a poolside sun-lounger, and can fly home on a private jet once a month to pick up a box of Cadburys supplies and have a decent Chinese take away.

6)      Bear will get enough money to buy his dream home and pay some muscle to go and sort out either a) the seven circles of hell that is the English house-buying system or b) the total hairballs who keep gazumping him or suddenly deciding to withdraw from the whole process at the very last minute, just because they can (see item a) for reference). And he will be so pleased that he will sell me his black labrador’s MOST beautiful puppy from her next litter for insanely competitive mates’ rates (ie for free).

7)      Judge will get his 5-a-side football pitch, his on-site swimming pool and his tri-annual skiing holidays.

8)      Boxer will get her asymmetric bars, her horse and her tri-annual skiing holidays.

9)      My brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Jolly Boy and Malnu-Trisha, will get enough money to pay for their house in Florida, their Majorcan riding holiday and someone to take that confounded holly bush they hate so much off the front wall of their house.

10)   Engineer and I will buy a house in France a stone’s throw from a fabulous boulangerie. Enough said. We will also buy the house next door to the house which Jolly Boy and Malnu-Trisha buy in Florida, since my family’s level of enjoyment of a holiday seems to be strongly correlated to the presence of their family on that holiday.

11)   Horrifically, there are 30-somethings who are in gainful employment and still cannot afford to buy a house these days. Thus I will purchase a house for Boxer and a house for Judge, so that I do not have them still living under my roof in 25 years’ time when Engineer and I want to go to our French boulangerie house but don’t quite trust them not to have an Empty* whilst we are away and trash the place. Better that they trash their own places.

12)   Engineer will let me have a black Labrador puppy, because I will have given up the job which gets in the way of my leisure time, and instead I will be walking my dog, writing my blog, and cleaning all my sodding houses.

13)   I will probably need to keep enough money aside to pay for liposuction and other weight-loss-related surgical procedures on a regular basis in order to stop me from becoming a human balloon (see item 10 above). On the other hand, it looks like I will have a fair number of houses to clean and animals to exercise, so maybe that will help to keep the weight off.

*An Empty, for those who were not brought up in Glasgow, is a party which takes place in someone’s house when word gets around that their parents are away for the weekend. It almost always ends in disaster because someone always figures out how to break into the carefully locked drinks cabinet.

Well. A person can dream, can’t she?

Post-Olympic Hangover

 And it’s a doozy. I have been living and breathing the Olympic Games for the last 3 weeks, and now that it’s over I am listless and distracted. I have gone cold turkey regarding my insatiable Twitter habit. It no longer does anything for me, since no Tweet starts with the words “GOLD MEDAL!” or “TEAM GB!" I fear that, as a class C drug user moves on to class A narcotics, soon I will be left with no option other than to move on to something more addictive than Twitter. If such a thing even exists.

So here, in order to keep my own personal Olympic flame burning for just a little bit longer, are my favourite thoughts and memories of what has been, in my opinion, an enthralling and captivating competition.

1)      Football (the male variety) took a back seat in the nation’s consciousness. We ignored it, and sometimes we even mocked it for its injury-fabrication and its badly-behaved, overpaid, spoilt young men. Even those of us who love football (of which I am one) ignored it. And do you know what? It was great. We now know what sporting prowess really is. It is not the Gucci-clad guy with the overloaded bank account who turns up for football training once in a while. It’s the lady hockey player who had her jaw broken but returned to play for her team 1 day after an operation to repair her jaw, by inserting a metal plate in it, with her face bound up in bandages and sutures. Can you even imagine a footballer doing that? Of course you can’t. Kate Walsh, Team GB Hockey Captain, we salute you.

2)      The lady carrying and selling beer in the Olympic Park, who, laden with a back-breaking cool bag, nonetheless managed a few dance moves and drummed up an enthusiastic crowd by shouting “Buy some beer and get some dancing feet!”

3)      The fact that there was a sizeable section of the nation, including me, which airily imagined itself to be immune to the Olympics. At the end of day 1, I’m pretty sure every single one of us was eating our words, and on the sliding scale of interest levels we had all departed “ambivalent” and were rapidly heading for “obsessed”. How did THAT happen?

4)      The lady who, in spite of the fact that it was 11.30pm, she had probably been sitting in her high chair with her loud hailer for a few hours, she was surrounded by drunk and ecstatic Norwegians (I think Norway had done particularly well at Handball on that day) and she almost certainly needed a stiff gin and a bite to eat, managed to make up, on the spur of the moment, a rap which thanked everyone for coming today and directed them gently but firmly towards the exits and the less busy public transport options. You go girl.

5)      Usain Bolt. Simple as.

6)      The other male sprinters in Usain Bolt’s races who weren’t Usain Bolt but had a go at being him anyway. Epic Fail. Note to you guys: until you can win the 100m running backwards with one hand tied behind your back and the other one waving at the crowd, fuelled by nothing but a diet of McDonalds Chicken Nuggets, and start celebrating your victory at around the 75m mark, you will never achieve his level of cool. Live with it.

7)      The remote control minis which beetled up and down the athletics throwing area ferrying the throwees back to the throwers. How much did you want a shot of those? How long do you think they took combing the country to find someone over the age of 12 who could be trusted to operate them competently? If I had actually been given that job, how many times do you imagine the track events might have been disrupted by the sudden inadvertent appearance on the track of a mini carrying a couple of javelins?

8)      Clare Balding, who wept copiously every time ANYONE from Team GB won ANY colour of medal. She was permanently surrounded by reams of paper containing all her facts and figures. Could they not have found her a larger table? Or an iPad perhaps?

9)      Denise Lewis and Colin Jackson, who made us all feel so much better knowing that it wasn’t just us who jumped up and down and yelled ourselves hoarse at the track athletes (who could hear neither them in their sound-proof TV studio, nor us in front of our TVs at home) to try and make them go faster.

10)   Michael Johnson, who wore the long-suffering look of a man who was a) American and therefore exceedingly unlikely to jump up and down like a numpty for the sake of Team GB; b) FAR too cool to jump up and down like a numpty for the sake of any team; and c) only there, amongst these crazy people, because it was down in black and white in the terms and conditions section of his legally binding BBC contract.

11)   Jess Ennis. See item 5.

12)   Mo Farrah. Ditto. We love a bit of Mo.

13)   Beth Tweddle. Ditto. Made doubly pleasurable because of the infinite rhyming possibilities. The whole nation had stolen a march on every possible tabloid headline for the following day. We’d done them all, folks.

14)   Heck. ALL our medal winners. Especially those who had got there in spite of having all their funding withdrawn. In effect that’s the same as me doing my job (except without the sweating and bleeding and vomiting of course) but not receiving my salary. Wouldn’t happen, let’s face it.

15)   That moment during the Opening Ceremony when the person we all thought was Dame Judi Dench or Helen Mirren dressed up as the Queen turned around to Daniel Craig and said, “Hello Bond…” and 55 million jaws simultaneously hit the ground as we all realised it actually WAS the Queen.

16)   Gary Barlow in the Closing Ceremony. You cried, didn’t you. Of all the courage we saw over the 17 days of the competition, surely his was the greatest.

17)   The moment during the Closing Ceremony when a chance camera angle visited upon us all the sudden but inescapable realisation, courtesy of Messieurs Cameron and Johnston, that the Conservative Party may be crap at governing, but they are far worse at dancing.

There are a million other memories. How many accidents were caused by people scrolling Twitter obsessively whilst walking across the road I wonder? Roll on the Paralympics, I can’t wait.

Olympic Fever

You don’t have to be a Democrat (or Labour voter, for those of us Brits who remain unable to get our heads around the American political system) to be heartily pissed off with that upstart Mitt Romney this week, who had the gall to suggest that the UK might not be ready to host the Olympics, nor to have (secretly or otherwise) pumped a triumphant fist at David Cameron’s response, which was to suggest, without pointing any fingers or naming any names for fear of offending anyone (in true British style) that it would have been far easier to host the Games in the middle of nowhere, which was an oblique but scathing reference to old Mitt’s tenure as Chief Executive of the Games when they took place in Salt Lake City, Utah, back in 2002, a reference which was in fact not missed by anyone at all and was designed to maim (in true British style).  

How very dare he. Luckily we can be comforted that he didn’t just pick on the UK for abuse on his tour, since in the days that followed he managed to offend the Palestinian nation as well. So we know he hasn’t just selected us as the recipient of his badly constructed and uninvited comments.

However, I suspect that if Barack Obama were to be in need of a few extra votes come the US elections in November, all he would need to do in the interim is alter the US constitution to make the UK population eligible to vote and he could probably count on an extra 25 million or so in his favour, since I’m pretty sure, Mr Romney’s recent comments notwithstanding, most of us Brits are rather puzzled at how the crazoid is proposing to get any votes at all. Obama could make us a sovereign state or something. Perhaps it would make up in some way for us sending all our religious crackpots to arrive uninvited on American soil in the 1600s, and refusing to leave again until they started getting shot at. It’s just an idea Mr President. Let me know how you get on with that.

It seems that we remain slightly incredulous, now that the Olympics have kicked off in earnest, at our ability to host them with any degree of style and success. How very British of us. We cannot really believe that the Opening Ceremony was quite such a fabulous if slightly weird triumph, Mr McCartney’s epic fail notwithstanding of course. We wheeled the Queen out in the same sequence as James Bond, for heaven’s sake! Arguably our 2 most exportable assets. It was a touch of genius. As was David Beckham driving a speed boat, the Red Arrows, the Chariots of Fire music, and Rowan Atkinson trying to find a hankie. Marvellous.

And now we seem to be winning some medals! I know! Most significantly a bronze in the men’s gymnastics, a result which was a downgrade from the original silver awarded to the team, after the Japanese complained because one of their guys fell off the pommel horse and didn’t get any marks for it. He was eventually awarded some marks for it (was it a particularly artistic botched dismount I wonder?) which took the Japanese team into silver medal position from 4^th place, knocking the Ukrainians out of the medals altogether.  Will the Japanese ever live this down I wonder? I doubt it. If we think we were annoyed at this turn of events, imagine how it feels to be Ukrainian.

Our fabulous Tom Daley didn’t win a diving medal, but won a veritable army of supporters who may have been somehow previously ambivalent about such a handsome, youthful and talented young man but are now ferociously pro-Daley for a number of reasons. One, how can Tom and his partner’s fourth dive have scored so badly? We saw them jump together from a platform 10 metres above the pool. They entered the water together, with their toes pointed, after a series of twists and turns the likes of which most of us could only manage if we got tangled up in a parachute and had 1500 feet of free fall in which to rectify the situation. But probably not with our toes pointed. Two, how very dare the idiot who tweeted Tom afterwards about disappointing his dead father? The same idiot who is now claiming he didn’t know that Tom’s father passed away tragically last year? Even those people who don’t Tweet want to Tweet now. You don’t mess with a British sporting hero.

I sat and watched the Judo a few days ago because there was a British guy playing / fighting / competing / writhing. Whevs. Delete as applicable. I have absolutely no notion what the rules are, so this is a mark of how gripped by Olympic fever I actually am. There was a lot of writhing about on the floor with legs wound around each other, accompanied by a lot of frantic cheering from the crowd and then groans from the commentary team and random marks appearing for no visible reason on the score board. Were they trying to remove each other’s clothing? There were certainly some pauses in the middle during which an amount of dishevelled clothing adjustment was clearly allowed. It still made me clench my fists and grit my teeth though. COME ON TEAM GB!!

Jubilee-mania!

Now then. The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. I’m guessing you fall into one of two very distinct camps. Either you have loved the whole affair, your veins are bursting with patriotic pride and you're utterly devastated that it’s over, so thank God for the Euros and the Olympics. Or you are a dyed-in-the-wool republican, hated the whole thing, the very sight of a union flag brings you out in hives, you couldn’t stomach another red, white and blue cup cake and you’re heartily grateful that it’s all over, so thank God for the Euros and the Olympics.

If you fall into the second camp, I imagine you were secretly (or perhaps publicly) gratified that the heavens opened on to the “flotilla”, although you might have been rather hacked off that your street party was a wash out since burying your head in a bucket of beer was probably the only way to get through the events.

There may be a third school of thought, containing The Confused. People who thought they were republicans but have nonetheless become swept along by the general outpouring of national pride. Or people who thought they were Royalists but have found themselves becoming inexplicably irritated by the whole sorry affair and dying for it to be over. I find myself somewhere in between. I am a big supporter of the worthwhile royals (i.e. those who are able to conduct themselves with the dignity which we, their subjects, are entitled to expect from people whose job it is to represent our nation abroad, attract tourists into the country and make us feel proud of our heritage, rather than behaving like an advert for the Jeremy Kyle show) but I don’t really get the British class system and all these well-heeled pseudo-royals who enjoy enormous privilege, do sod all to earn it, and behave unspeakably badly to boot, really do make me grit my teeth.

It’s interesting, although probably not surprising, to note that the Queen herself enjoys a huge amount of national fondness, even from those people who are dyed-in-the-wool republicans. They may have no time at all for the lesser royals (Prince Charles downwards as I like to think of them) but they seem to hold the Queen in high regard, even though they don’t agree with the whole inherited privilege system which is the basis for our Royal Family and our class system, like it or loathe it.

Personally, I am a big admirer of the Queen. She’s 86 years old and is allegedly privileged, and yet she still works very hard, has to be nice to, make conversation with and be interested in absolutely everyone she meets even if they are a total bore, and has worked for more years than anyone else I can think of, apart from Prince Philip of course. I like him too – he is an old rogue who takes delight in being as politically incorrect as he possibly can (and then writing to apologise about it afterwards). His brain is no more age-addled than mine, he just likes to say what he feels, and good for him. I am reminded of an incident back in the 70s when the Queen came to visit our regiment to present a new pipe banner, an excruciatingly expensive piece of kit which is a critical part of the paraphernalia of a Highland regiment. Times were hard and the officers had managed to pull off something of a miracle and procure a free plate from Wedgwood with all the regimental battle honours on it, through either an administrative error or some sort of bulk order deal. They thought they could present the Queen with this free plate as a token of their gratitude for their new pipe banner. Came the day, and Her Majesty was duly presented with her free plate. She examined it closely, proclaimed it to be “lovely”, and then uttered the words which even now remain imprinted upon my father’s brain: “I bet it didn’t cost as much as my pipe banner”. Horrified intake of breath. How could she know?!? She wrote to apologise for her remarks afterwards though.

You know you’re an army brat when…

You have a pathological need to clean a house before you move out of it. It’s a matter of personal pride. You could no more leave a house dirty for the next person than walk about without your head on. You are also extremely unlikely to start unpacking in a new house before you’re cleaned it from top to bottom either. This state of affairs has 2 possible explanations. Either all Army brats are bonkers. Or there is a squad of secret squatters with highly questionable personal hygiene who move from empty house to empty house wreaking their manky havoc and the moving on before they are discovered.

You really don’t get redecorating. Walls are magnolia. Doors and edges are white. Carpets are exactly the same throughout, normally beige. You definitely don’t understand degrees of beige-dom. However, you do draw the line at curtains, you do have some standards! Army curtains shriek at you, so you have your own curtains handy somewhere, definitely freshly laundered, and almost certainly folded neatly at the top of the first packing crate to arrive, and clearly labelled. But they are for standard sized windows. So you don’t really understand measuring up for new curtains either.

Where you are from is not the same as where you live. So you can be “from Edinburgh” but “heading home to Germany”. Come on folks, it’s really not that hard. If where you are from is ever the same as where you live, you’ve either left the forces, been sent to boarding school or been very very fortunate (well, that’s if you actually like being where you’re actually from). The latter won’t last.

You don’t sound like where you’re from. Your accent is an amalgamation of the local accent(s) deriving from the geographical locations of your early years, and your parents’ accents. Usually this boils down into a standard army issue accent. However, it can also be influenced by how posh your regiment is. The more highbrow your regiment, the fewer the number of vowel sounds you are able to enunciate with any noticeable level of aptitude.

You can pack an entire room into a wooden crate in about 10 minutes. You can wrap china so that it will not break even if the box were to be dropped off the back of an army lorry, a distance of roughly 1.5 metres.

Your relatives are usually on a different continental landmass to you. This is sometimes a good thing, relatives being what they are. Any relatives to whom you happen to find yourself geographically near are usually not the ones to whom you would choose to be geographically near. This is a little-known facet of the Law of Sod. Lioness spends her days on the opposite side of the globe to me, and I would really rather she didn’t do that. It would be nice to exchange her with one of my less-favourite relatives who lives a bit closer. Someone who would enjoy the sunshine and lifestyle of South Africa perhaps. The makings of a win-win I think!

You spent your younger days kitted out in clothes from the Thrift Shop. Your jeans had hem lines and a mismatched selection of those iron-on patches in the knees. For those civilians amongst us, being dressed out of the Thrift Shop is like having all your clothes bought for you out of a charity shop, except it’s worse because you are almost certain to meet the person whose cast-offs you are sporting, army life being the village that it is. This state of affairs will push you one of 2 ways once you reach your teenage years and beyond. You will either obsessively spend lots of money on absolutely beautiful clothes. Or you will grow up to have the fashion sense of a goat. Possibly this latter is just me, and it may even be disrespectful to goats, some of whom wear cashmere all the time, let’s face it.

You can calculate amounts in sterling of almost any currency in the world in record time without the need for a calculator. Unless of course you happen to be Little Vulture, in which case you never know how much money you have, how much money you are spending, or how much change to expect. Thus a childhood spent in multiple different countries spawns an adulthood of total and utter blind panic-stricken confusion with all numbers. A quote from LV circa 1983:

“HOW many Deutsch Marks to the £?!? Good God…it was so much easier in 1976 when there were 4. I can sometimes divide by 4. I can’t ever divide by 2.5.”

I think you see the problem. Today’s army brat has it so much easier, with the advent of the Euro, an unexpected benefit for the pro-European politicians to claim I think, and probably the only positive thing they have ever done for the Armed Forces.

There are gigantic proportions of your life you will never get back, spent in airport lounges in Lyneham, Brize Norton and various locations on the European mainland waiting for the RAF to deem the weather to be good enough to take off in, whilst all the while watching civilian flights taking off left, right and centre, apparently immune to the ‘fog’ currently preventing your journey from taking place. You are usually surrounded by around 600 other Army dependants at the time, all with rapidly depleting senses of humour.

You can hold a conversation with absolutely anyone. Heck, you almost certainly know someone they know.

You don’t really understand class. Unless of course it’s to do with how cool your regiment is compared to everyone else. On this basis, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders are the aristocracy of the Army, obviously.

Letters I Wish I Could Send (part 1)

Dear Insurance industry (you Bunch of Thieving Bastards)

The way I see it, the raison d’etre of you guys is this: If something bad happens to me, something bad happens to you. It’s that simple. That’s what we pay you for. Shouldn’t you spend more time ensuring that nothing bad ever happens to me, rather than messing about with your terms and conditions in order to try and ensure that even if something bad happens to me, absolutely nothing bad ever happens to you?

Kind regards

Wittering Sara

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Dear everyone who ever applied for a job as a traffic warden

What were you thinking? Executioners in the 17^th century had more friends.

Kind regards

Wittering Sara

PS Being a traffic warden does not make you a member of the constabulary. Not really. They’re all laughing at you behind your backs too.

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Dear people with medical qualifications

Exactly which one of the no doubt hundreds of text books you have had to wade through during the process of you gaining your medical qualification taught you that the words “this will sting a little” was a good way to mitigate pain? Clearly you are intelligent people. Did you not imagine that we (the recipients) might see through this bare-faced lie eventually, ie when we actually have been on the receiving end of the “little sting”?

And another thing. Any medical person who is either female and childless or male, no matter how much cleverer than me he or she is, is not qualified to tell me that breast-feeding “doesn’t hurt at all”. It doesn’t hurt about as much as sinking a sodding great needle into any particularly sensitive area of living tissue doesn’t hurt. Of course it flipping well hurts.

Kind regards

Wittering Sara

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Dear traffic cops

What were you thinking? Traffic wardens have more friends.

Kind regards

Wittering Sara

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Dear Great British public

Remind me again. Did we seriously just vote a dog to perform in front of the Queen at the Royal Variety Performance and to win £500k? Did we? Rather than a boys’ choir, a 17 year old opera singer and an 11-year old girl, all of whom sang like angels and made the hairs stand up on the backs of our collective necks? Did we? I thought so. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love dogs, and Pudsey is a very sweet, very clever dog. But what on earth is Pudsey going to do with £500k? A gold kennel? A diamond-studded collar? A bequest to the Battersea Dogs’ Home? Caviar-filled dog biscuits? Or will that £500k actually end up buying Pudsey’s owner a Gucci handbag and a round the world holiday whilst Pudsey is sent to a dog boarding kennel?  I’m just saying.

Kind regards

Wittering Sara

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The Voice UK. Discuss.

Now then folks. The Voice UK. Addictive viewing isn’t it! (Note: “addictive” does not necessarily mean “nice”, I mean take crack cocaine for example.)

Danny, the incredibly handsome and charming Irishman, has his big chance to become more mainstream. This roughly translates as: Danny, of whom most of us have been hitherto unaware, has suddenly erupted into the nation’s (mostly female) consciousness because, let’s face it, we all secretly want to ruffle his hair.  Can he actually sing? We have no idea and it’s mostly irrelevant since it is unlikely to diminish our enjoyment of him on our screens every Saturday night.

Most viewers of my age or above may have felt a certain amount of relief when Will.i.am mentioned “The Peas”, and particularly when he mentioned “starting The Peas”, because we have heard of the Black Eyed Peas even if we have not up to now considered ourselves cool enough to call them “The Peas”. But at least from that point in the programme on we felt considerably cooler because he is, of course, Mr Cool out of all the coaches, and now we can place him as well. It’s a win-win.

Jessie J is Boxer’s favourite singer, so I for one knew all about her, as did, I imagine, most Mums of little girls. It’s difficult to determine if it’s cooler to know about Jessie J or not to know about her. I mean, she is very young, and her target audience is very young, but on the other hand she is strangely likeable on the programme, mainly because she knows she cannot name drop like the others and is very self-effacing about it (“Woo! I met Justin Bieber once!”), and because she weeps on prime time TV. Also, it turns out she can actually sing! Clearly this means that she is not quite the manufactured young female pop star we have been subjected to over recent years, which makes us like her even more.

Sir Tom Jones. The only man on the planet, and definitely the only person on the coaches’ panel, who has enough charm and wit to name-drop with impunity. So what if it’s a thinly disguised way to attract a younger fan base by appealing to the BBC’s audience on prime time Saturday night TV? And if he has to lower his standards by singing someone else’s songs in an oddly-matched, randomly assembled quartet, then so be it. Sometimes these sacrifices just have to be made. It just leaves me pondering what on earth possessed Sir Tom to take up The Voice UK cudgel. I mean, I cannot believe he’s in a tight spot, financially. He’s not short of fans or renown. Does he need an extra million to buy a racehorse or a 747? I seriously doubt it. Someone talked him into it. Someone who should be brought in at once to sort out Afghanistan by talking the Taliban into abandoning their life of crime and suppression, chucking their weapons into the sea and retiring to the mountains to tend goats and grow organic tomatoes.

However, let us not beat about the TV ratings and general broadcasting skulduggery bush. The main reason we are so enamoured of The Voice is because it beats Britain’s Got Talent into a cocked hat, and it means that we now have at our disposal some blindingly brilliant diversionary tactics with which we can effectively distract our children from the awful cringe-worthiness of BGT and in particular Simon Cowell’s pathological inability to be respectful to anyone. And by the time they have realised that BGT is on, it’s past their bed time and we don’t need to subject ourselves to it at all. Four yesses!

Money for Old Rope

Gosh dear Reader, hasn't it been a long time? Doubtless you have missed my pointless ramble, much like you miss a verruca when it finally goes away and stops bothering you. Sadly, I am back though, much like a verruca usually is if you use a public swimming pool without dousing your feet in Agent Orange before and afterwards. I cannot guarantee I shall be back for long though (much like a verruca....etc). This time it's about money. Again.

As ever, like any good Scot, I am keenly in tune with value for money, I do love a bargain, and it physically hurts me to part with money for old rope.

I’m not talking about obvious things, like being sold payment protection insurance back in the day when everyone was flush and thus apparently not scrutinising every tiny area of possible belt-tightening in their finances. Or like the “payment processing fee” or the “administration fee” which is added on to every online or telephone transaction for virtually anything where the retailer imagines they can get away with it, even though we all know that the entire transaction is automated and no single human finger has to be lifted in any way in order to complete it. I’m talking about the sneaky methods we encounter every day in order to make us part with Money for Old Rope…

This morning I made the mistake of telephoning my current car insurance company in the naïve assumption that I might get a better deal on the insurance for a second car by going to someone with whom I already have a policy and a 7 year no claims bonus. Not so, it would seem. Not only did they charge me £25 for the privilege of making such a small amendment to my details on the policy that it made absolutely not a scrap of a difference to the premium (that’s right folks…), and once I had said it I couldn’t really unsay it and leave the policy as it was, but also the quote they gave me was approximately 2.5 times more than the quote of the first competitor I approached. So much for customer loyalty. Annoyed, I attempted to cancel my policy, but was told that would cost me £59 to cancel it now, and £84 if I wanted to cancel it in 10 days’ time in order to coincide with the start date of the second car’s insurance policy. Why? I was way too furious to have my ears in gear, so I have absolutely no idea why. I know it’s in the small print, because my customer services adviser kept helpfully pointing that out, like somehow that would render me less annoyed, and less mindful of the household cash flow. Money for Old Rope…

I read an article recently about olive oil. Sad, I know. However, it seems we should all be on the alert because the Olive Oil Burglars are alive and well! An independent panel of tasting experts blind-tasted a whole bunch of different olive oils, from one priced at £137 for a half litre (seriously? Do people really have this much money??) to a much more normal £1.99 one. Whilst the £137 one was nice, it was not actually the nicest – they reckoned that accolade went to a humble £6 one from one of the supermarkets. No, I didn’t note which one, because I am the least likely person to select olive oil on any basis other than how cheap it is of anyone on the planet. The fact remains though that we are being collectively fleeced by the olive oil market. Money for Old Rope…

Now then. Is it me? Or is it really, deeply, mind-wrenchingly annoying to pick up a book by an author who is new to you, only to find the story peppered with references to previous exploits by the leading character in a clear attempt to get you to rush out and buy all the previous books by this author? In fact, I find this annoying to the point of wrecking the entire reading experience because I am so furious about the author’s blatant attempts to ferret more money out of me that I forget to pay attention to what the story is actually about, thus rendering the whole thing destined to fail because if I do make it to the end of the book I can’t remember if I enjoyed it or not, and am therefore extremely unlikely to read any more by the same author. I realise of course (before I drown in a sea of furious criticism from all you authors out there, a breed to which I bow in awe and whose ranks I fear I will never be disciplined or creative enough to join, since I cannot maintain a weekly blog for any serious length of time) that sometimes it is important to the story line to explain something which happened in a previous book and I am perfectly ok with that – my fabulous friend Ceci Jenkinson (Oli & Skipjack’s Tales of Woe) does this very legitimately, as does JK Rowling – but senseless name-dropping is tooth-grittingly annoying, so just don’t do it. Unless of course you happen to be Tom Jones on The Voice UK and you can do it with charm and flair. Otherwise…Money for Old Rope!

Petty Annoyances

I know you’ve been missing it, so I thought some more ranting on stuff which riles me might be gently entertaining this week.

For instance, how annoying is the word “sic”? This is a short version of “I know! Imagine spelling / grammar / punctuation this bad. But luckily I noticed, so I’m smugly going to draw your attention to it, knowing full well that if I hadn’t, you almost certainly wouldn’t have noticed it, thus neatly making you feel like a plank of wood..”  And it's a written version of thumbing your nose whilst blowing a raspberry.  I realise of course that this is dangerous ground for me, having ranted long and tedious over bad grammar once upon a time. This means that if I ever in fact did use the word “sic” (in other words if its smugness didn’t irritate me quite so comprehensively and overwhelmingly, for me it would be the equivalent of “Aaarghh!! This person’s grammar / punctuation is horrible!!”) I am confident that my readers would immediately bring it to my attention in a most forthright manner. But I don’t use it. Because it’s annoying. And self-congratulatory. And deeply offensive. And Latin, for heaven’s sake.

People who do not write to say thank you - except new parents who should have some sort of letter-writing amnesty until they have attained at least 4 hours’ uninterrupted sleep in one stretch. If my beautiful 11 year old god-daughter can write me a card from America to thank me for her Christmas present, and my other beautiful god-daughter, aged 14 and having way too much fun at boarding school, and connected to me by all the normal methods of electronic communication, can find a few minutes to write me an actual thank you letter with a real pen on a physical piece of paper, I say anyone can manage it…

Bullies. School playground bullies are bad enough. And since most of us at one time or another in our lives have borne the hideous brunt of some form of bullying, I cannot imagine how people grow up purportedly to adulthood and yet still find it necessary to be a bully. Don’t these people ever grow out of being vile and obnoxious to others?  I will never get it.

People who are of the opinion that only their opinion counts. This is particularly offensive in the world of new parenthood, because it is difficult enough being suddenly responsible for a fragile little life without an instruction manual of any sort, but to have other people question your parenting decisions when you are at your most vulnerable and short of confidence, and just because those decisions don’t match their parenting choices, is downright mean. The world is rife with this sort of behaviour though, it’s not just parenting. Different (or in my case complete lack of) sartorial flair is wrong. Different financial choices are wrong. This latter rankles particularly sorely. It’s our money, we earn every single last penny, so the decision about how to spend that money is ours, and ours alone. Thus it cannot be wrong just because it is different from how others would spend that money. Engineer and I choose to spend our disposable income on our home, our children and shared experiences. Others choose to spend theirs on long haul holidays and designer clothes. Neither choice is wrong, both are equally valid.

Show biz types. I watched the Brit Awards a few weeks ago. Aside from the fact that I recognised virtually none of the nominated acts, which may explain some of my rancour in this regard since clearly that makes me feel ancient and past it, I thought that they all behaved arrogantly and appallingly (with some notable exceptions, for instance Adele, who professed to Kylie that she felt like a “drag queen” beside her – now there’s a singer with talent, humility and normal body weight, so thus we know it is possible to have all three…) In consultation with my friend Glamour Geek, I have established with some relief that I am not alone in holding this opinion. What on earth makes these people think that just because they can sing a bit they are somehow better than everyone else on the planet? What about heart surgeons? Charity workers? Paramedics? Teachers? Explorers? Scientists? Shouldn’t we have a Brit Award for normal people who make a real difference and probably don’t realise it?

And…breathe.

Words which are only words in our family

This week I want to elaborate a little bit on the theme of my crazy family. Amongst all of our foibles and strange ways, there is a full vocabulary of words which have very clear meanings to us but which, when utilised in the wrong company, tend to be met with at best a blank look and at worst a rapid and very jittery reversed exit from the room.

Tiddly Push: a Morris Traveller. Little Vulture and I were despatched to boarding school still under the mistaken impression that everyone knew this. It was a puzzle to us that the words “Tiddly Push” did not appear on the back of our Morris Traveller, but we had concluded that it must have fallen off, much like the events which overtook my parents’ Ford Zephyr which returned from the accident repair workshop in Singapore as a Ford Zerhyp.  Other street cred inhibiting rude awakenings which we received at boarding school include, but are not limited to, the discovery that the words malevolent and benevolent are not pronounced “male-volent” and “been-volent”; the non-existence of Santa Claus; the fact that pigs do not slit their throats when they swim (in fact it transpires that they are very good swimmers, as it happens); and the stark realisation that Granny’s ancient Triumph Herald was seriously uncool, and not a beautiful car as we had previously thought.

The Thing: this is the item of furniture which contained all our stuff when we had a cottage in the Cairngorms. It was discovered in the garage of one of our army houses, unused, having been removed from the kitchen of the same house. It was a strangely-shaped ex-kitchen cabinet, a piece from a fitted kitchen which had been unfitted and had survived. It contained glasses, alcohol, napkins, board games, sellotape, string, ash trays, puzzle books, art material, playing cards, table mats, maps, compasses, scissors, nails, light bulbs, measuring tapes, and an AK47 Russian hunting rifle. Actually, scrap the rifle, it didn’t have one of those. So we called it The Thing. Well, what would you have called it?

La-Di-Da: a game to be played at the dinner table. When people say an occasion was a bit “La-di-da”, Little Vulture and I immediately have visions of frightfully drunk people wearing inappropriate hats and passing a variety of objects, or indeed the hats themselves, around the table to the rhythm of the words “La-di-da! La-di-da! La-di-diddly-da-di-DAH!” and we think it sounds rather fun. Turns out most people have a much more negative view of a la-di-da occasion - who knew? The word la-di-da spawns the noun “da”, meaning the object which you intend to start the game holding (everyone must have a da to pass to their left), and also generates lively discussion regarding the fact that you must not let go of your da during the diddlies. A word to the wise – never play this game with someone who has had a stroke. They were probably rubbish at it before. But they will now blame their stroke on the fact that they are still rubbish at it.

A Grampa Egg: an omelette. Obviously. Well, which other eggs can Grampas cook?

Cherubali: Boxer’s pet name, made up by her big brother. I have no idea where he got it from. She is also variously known as The Baby Cheese and Stinky Malinki. No of course we don’t call her by her actual name, that would be boring.

Bonkers Bankers

So this week we are full of self-righteous (and envious, let’s not deny it) rage about Mr Stephen Hester who was to be awarded 20 years’ salary for a normal person as a wee extra for being a jolly good chap. That is on top of his 20 years’ salary for a normal person that he receives in one year. We are doubly annoyed about this because, as we keep being reminded, we tax payers own his employing bank, so should we not have a say in how our bank’s dwindling resources are deployed?

However, I don’t wish to be drawn into an argument about whether or not Mr Hester deserves his bonus because I know precisely squat about running a bank, and presumably he knows quite a bit about it, so this makes me completely unqualified to offer an opinion one way or the other. For me, this is more about endeavouring to imagine what on earth one could possibly do with all that money. And more than that, who on earth actually needs that kind of money. There are people living in the rich countries of the western world who cannot afford to put food on the table, and then there’s this guy, who could live very comfortably on a tenth of his salary, never mind his bonus.

This is where I get worried. Our politicians are mostly millionaires, born and raised in wealthy families, the original silver spoon brigade. I don’t begrudge them that at all. I was raised in a normal family where the overdraft was well-used, but I wouldn’t have traded my childhood for a silver spoon version because I have witnessed many times the fact that money does not buy happiness. However, it concerns me that our politicians cannot possibly empathise with the very people they have been voted in to government to look out for. They have no idea what it is like to have to make a choice between putting food on the table or money in the electricity meter. Heck, I can’t really imagine what that’s like, so how could they?

I wonder if Messieurs Cameron, Clegg and Osborne sip Darjeeling together in the withdrawing room at 10 Downing Street and wonder what all the fuss is about.

“I mean, it’s under a million pounds! What on earth is wrong with everyone? It’s not as if we’re paying him £100 million! That really would be too much.”

“I know. I mean, the poor man has to have some capital to service his yacht, and that Lear jet can’t be cheap to run, but how else is he to meet all his commitments? We can’t have him using Easyjet like the Great Unwashed.”

These are the same people who are withdrawing / reducing / scrapping benefits for low income families, voluntary sector organisations and public services. This is where the money is really needed. This is where that million pounds could make a real difference to peoples’ lives. That’s why people are so annoyed about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I recognise that we live in a capitalist world and I am perfectly ok with that. I realise that to redistribute wealth forcibly is to suppress ambition and potentially to reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator, which wouldn’t be good for anyone. We have to be allowed to make choices. But trying to squeeze money out of people who don’t have any (people on benefits getting less benefits, people on low and middle incomes paying more tax, etc) is no way to address the situation we find ourselves in. People who take a job which involves a bonus are perfectly entitled to take that bonus, of course they are. It’s not about entitlement. It’s about doing what’s right for society. Most people have to budget because that’s the only way to make their disposable income stretch to cover everything it needs to cover. Why shouldn’t everyone have to budget?

Things I Like

As promised, after last week’s doom-and-gloom-laden blog, I have put all my moans behind me, put a smile on my face, and song in my heart and I eagerly await the bank putting some money in my pocket, but I won’t be holding my breath…MAN January goes on forever! But enough of things I hate, I covered all that last week.

I like wind farms. I realise this statement may place me at risk of drowning in a deluge of tree huggers and the noise pollution brigade helpfully expressing opposite points of view, so can I please quickly point out that I don’t like wind farms because they are going to save the planet - indeed, the futurologist recently interviewed by the BBC stated that he did not expect wind farms to feature much in the planet’s energy generation systems in the year 2112, and since he is a guy who was clearly born with a crystal ball in his hand, who am I to argue? I mean, it’s not like he makes stuff up by guessing what’s going to happen in 100 years’ time. He’s paid to be a futurologist, so he either has a crystal ball or a time machine, and either way I’m not about to argue with the man. I just like wind farms because they are big, white and beautiful, and they stand tall on windy desolate moorland where no other idiot would go. I also love the fact that they have to be shut down when it’s too windy. I like a field full of wind turbines. Engineer likes a field full of round hay bales (dispersed neatly at regular intervals). We are the Weird Family.

I like my Brie rock hard. Not many people know, but there are 4 versions of Brie: Break-the-wall, bounce-off-the-wall, stick-to-the-wall and run-down-the-wall. Well of course you didn’t know. You have to be a cheese connoisseur to know. Of course I didn’t make it up. Mine has to be break the wall hard.

I like junk food. It grieves me that junk food is so bad for you. This raises the philosophical question, do I love junk food because I know it’s bad for me? Would I love carrots if they were classified as junk food? Don’t get me wrong, I like carrots. But I wouldn’t stagger out of bed with a hangover and head out to get hold of some carrots. I would do that with a Big Mac Meal though, or a multipack of salt and vinegar crisps and a boat load of Twirls.

I like the fact that people who send me spam messages actually believe that I am stupid enough to send my banking details to them so that they can help themselves to whatever is in my bank account. I had a message recently purportedly from Paypal and it was addressed “Dear Valued Costumer”. A dyslexic thief! You couldn’t make it up.

I like people who are under the misguided illusion that because their child walked / talked / spelled / read / wrote / counted / potty-trained early, they will be a rocket scientist in later life. These people are optimistically delusional and we should cherish them as an important and colourful ingredient in the fabric of society. There’s time enough for them to become realists, and when that time arrives, when their rocket scientist child who could count to a hundred aged 2 struggles with bastarding derivatives or ballistics aged 17, we should all be there to support them. Boxer climbed out of her cot aged 18 months and spoke a full, grammatically correct sentence: “Mummy, I want to see Daddy”. All this means is that she is extremely determined and resourceful, a total Daddy’s girl, and a right royal pain in the tonsils. I’m not naïve enough to believe that this somehow makes her a child prodigy. Judge says the six times table is a sod. I say that equips him well for A Level Maths, most of which is a sod.

Off to get a packet of salt and vinegar crisps.

Things I Hate

So this might sound like a slightly pessimistic post, but, unusually for me, I’m in a pessimistic frame of mind. It’s not like me, and it’ll pass, but hopefully a small blog-sized rant will aid the process of self-healing.

Politicians: What were we thinking, electing a bunch of old Etonian millionaires to run the country, a task which includes but is not restricted to passing us non-millionaires advice about how to manage our finances? I say “we”, I really mean “you”, since I bear absolutely no responsibility for their election, but someone must have voted for them. This is like having a swimming teacher advise us how to hang glide. For Mr Cameron and his cronies, it must be like having an extra-large Monopoly set to play with, except that only they can afford to purchase any properties on Mayfair or Park Lane. Apparently the easiest way to deal with this period of economic difficulty is to “just pay off our credit cards”. Well thanks Mr Cameron, why didn’t I think of that.

Childless or expectant parents advising actual parents on how to rear their children: No one’s perfect, and I know my parenting skills could do with a brush up, but having someone who doesn’t actually have any experience in it passing me tips can be hard to take, even from a health visitor or medical professional. Actually, the people who are least likely to give out parenting advice are parents themselves, because we are wise to the fact that we will be trying to outwit children until the end of time, and we will never succeed, no matter how many self-help books we read. The cantankerous little sods remain one step ahead of us at all times.

Herbal or holistic remedies: You know what, if it’s your last resort, nothing else has worked, and you’re prepared to give anything a go, then fair enough. Fill your boots with all the holistic mumbo jumbo you can lay your hands on. But seriously, what manner of an eejit would rather have colonic irrigation that a simple course of antibiotics?

Corporate or school playground bullies: Rule of thumb – if you wouldn’t treat your family and friends that way, it’s probably not acceptable to treat anyone like that. Life is so much more pleasant if you are respectful and polite to everyone, but I believe that for some reason this is a lesson we don’t learn until quite late on in life, around the time that we develop empathy, and some people entirely fail to learn it at all. A good celebrity example is Jeremy Clarkson. He’s ever so funny, until you find yourself being the butt of his jokes.

Reality TV: I will never understand the attraction of watching people sleep on live TV. Or watching people humiliate themselves on live TV. Or watching people be humiliated by a large audience on live TV because some cruel “friend” has told them they can sing – “seriously dude, you should go on X Factor…”. Those people who know me will know that Engineer and I have a secret X Factor habit though, but I have to watch the initial auditions through my fingers and I leave the room if there’s a cringe-invoking moment.

Always getting the weirdo on an early morning flight: Nothing is more offensive than having to sit beside someone who has partaken of a goodly quantity of Vodka for breakfast, except perhaps having to sit beside someone who considers toothpaste, deodorant and soap as nice-to-haves. Red eyes are bad enough. Malodorous red eyes are a step too far.  

Ah, that feels much better. I’ll do a piece on “Things I Like” next week, just to balance out the positive / negative pendulum, I promise.