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.