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.