An Idiot’s Travel Blog

There are 2 types of holidaymaker. The ones that are content to soak up the sun and drink beer by the pool for a fortnight while turning the colour of an old leather armchair. And then there are the ‘real’ travellers. The ones who go in search of a new cultural experience, who want to learn about the country that they are visiting via trips to ruined buildings, museums and art galleries.

As someone who has the attention span of a goldfish I can’t quite manage the poolside sunbathing ritual for long and this ensures that whenever I go abroad I get to meet the ‘real’ traveller. Maybe you have seen them. They float around in a wave of cheesecloth, wearing hats that always suit them, looking serene and interested in everything. They carry a simple bag or rucksack, slung casually over their shoulder in which they carry their camera and a journal  to record every experience. They are the ones who either know the local language or have a photographic memory for phrase books. They search out interesting places and, with one kick of a Jesus sandal, always find quant little eateries serving delicious local delights and wine that doesn’t taste like Yak urine. They converse easily with the locals and lounge outside cafes in the manner of a resting lion, watching the world go by. You read their travel journals or blogs in awe and wonder if the place that you are reading about is actually the same one that you visited last year. You see, like most things in life, travelling has a sliding scale on which you can position yourself at any point between excellent and very crap. I can make this statement because I consider myself to be very crap at it and, by comparison, ‘real’ travellers seem to excel at it.

The chaos that is my usual travelling experience usually starts as soon as I get off the plane due to that minor setback that is the language difference. Like most British people I am hopeless at languages. It is tempting to blame our education system, which is often criticised for not emphasising language teaching.  But the truth is, we are taught French and usually one other (optional) language for a few years and can choose whether to continue with it beyond the age of 14. Unfortunately, even if we do carry on learning until the age of 18, the likelihood of spending regular and extensive amounts of time in France are nil for most people, so eventually the little that is learned disappears into the ether. So in our defence, the British are not lazy or dismissive of language learning, it’s just that there are so many of them. It would be the same result whatever language we learned, or however fluent we became. The fact is, unless we choose to work or live in another country, the majority of us don’t visit one particular country often enough to ever be proficient in the language. It is a dedicated soul indeed who spends 3 years learning fluent Greek for a two week holiday in Corfu. We may pick up a few phrases but these are quickly forgotten or can pop up in the form of some weird hybrid European language, as in: “Buonjourno, uno bier und trois vin per favore”.  From what I remember the French bar man didn’t find this nearly as funny as we did.

‘Real’ travellers however, if not proficient in a language, can manage to communicate with relaxed and charming facial expressions and a calm steady voice, using just enough perfectly pronounced words to be clearly understood.  The recipient beams with delight and usually offers them a broad warm smile before giving them a gift, like their dead mother’s engagement ring or something.  I, on the other hand, dread having to make conversation. I start sweating with anxiety as soon as a waiter approaches. I become aware of the desperation in my smile. My bone dry mouth tries to spit out a few words but my brain becomes a spinning typhoon of unconnected phrases that I can’t attach to the actual thing that I want to communicate. In case I am not in enough agony, I am tortured by one phrase that goes round and round my head like a scrolling news ticker. It goes like this: “Everyone hates the English….Everyone hates the English…”. By the time my thought processes have flipped through an historical timeline from Amritsar to Bloody Sunday via Colonialism I am one demonstrative hand gesture away from jumping up and shouting “it’s wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t me, honest”.  And this is before I have even attempted to order a bowl of olives. On the rare occasion when I do say something in the correct language it is so poorly pronounced and with such a staccato delivery that I am just met with a blank look. Or occasionally, pity. Apparently, no one in the world understands Yorkshire French. I die a little inside.

As well as an ability to converse with ease, ‘real’ travellers are also extremely adept at being able to find things of interest ‘off the tourist trail’.  They can be found eating in the homes of the locals and discovering secluded beaches and amazing unhindered views. They accidentally happen upon quaint villages where a local custom is being performed, right there, right then, just as they are passing through. These gems of serendipity are rare on my travels. I just get hopelessly lost for hours and usually end up in the part of town where I am concentrating less on the local surroundings and more on the Crimewatch reconstruction scenario that is formulating in my head. Oh, and I usually want a wee. ‘Real’ travellers never seem to wee. They trek for miles, up and down mountains, in and out of toilet-free villages, without ever having the experience marred by the utter terror that fills your every sense when you feel that you may, at any moment, pee in your own pants. I, on the other hand, need to piss like a carthorse most of the time. This means that any memories of wafting cheesecloth strewn trips to remote villages are somewhat obscured by recollections of my desperate pleading to use a toilet- complete with mimed squatting actions- having been forced into purchasing some hideous pot thing or a donkey made of grass or similar local handicraft. For years to come, any cultural experience is remembered, not just by what I have learned or enjoyed but by the available number of toilets. It is the only travel blog that I could feasibly write – Toilets of the World. There may be a market for it but I’m not holding my breath.

‘Real’ travellers are chameleon-like in their ability to melt into the environment.  They never get mosquito bites, blisters or the shits. They never sweat. They can drink 3 glasses of wine in 35C degrees and not get dehydrated, sunstroke and have to be sick.  They never get drunk, even accidentally, and consequently, never have to spend a whole day of their trip horizontal in their Yurt, or whatever it is they are residing in (hotels being far too prosaic).  But more than that, ‘real’ travellers NEVER seem to do anything embarrassing.  You never hear a ‘real’ traveller tell of the time when the automatic toilet door opened while they are still peeing (Rome 2011), or when they had to dig their friend out of a large plant pot where they had wedged themselves after thinking it was a seat (San Francisco 2002).  It is unlikely that they have ever stepped off a metro train at 1 in the morning to ask directions before hearing the doors close and the watching the  train hurtle off,  their friend’s horrified face plastered against a disappearing window (Paris 2005). And I would bet a large sum of money that they have never introduced a whole bar full of Japanese tourists and American honeymooners to the British drinking culture by getting them all pissed and dancing to Motown. Or that they would spend a significant amount of time explaining  to the bewildered barman why he really should get a few Stone Roses tracks on the jukebox (Hawaii 2002).  I could go on but I’m sure you get the gist.

That said, I may be impressed by the way that these dignified creatures conduct themselves in any given social situation, but I am also astonished by how they  seem to find beauty and wonderment in the most trivial things. I once heard a female traveller, with requisite beatific smile, comment on how “amazing” it was see a local woman shaking a rug outside her front door. Eh? Am I missing some massive point here? Some sociological signifier? Some political message on the plight of rural rug shakers? I’m not convinced that I am but it doesn’t stop me wondering why I am not as awestruck by such simple events. I’m not sure what my fellow travellers thought of me when, at some village ‘spectacle’, I remarked that there really is only so many times I can watch a small dog jump through a hoop without hoping it will explode or something.  They were probably too busy being enchanted.  And it’s not just about quality it’s about quantity.  ‘Real’ travellers never seem to tire of looking at exactly the same thing.  Take pots, for example. Unless you are an archeologist, museums full of broken old pots must surely have a rapidly reached fascination threshold. There are only so many fragments of clay I can look without being all potted out, so to speak. At the risk of sounding obtuse, I’m just not feeling it. Does this really make me a Philistine, or just honest?

I am not saying that I am not as awestruck as the next person at the size of the Grand Canyon (or the size of everything in America for that matter), or that I am not suitably fascinated by places of historical interest, or that I find it impossible to enjoy a stunning landscape.  It’s just that wherever I go in the world, a cloud of ridiculousness follows.  As we all know, just because you love something, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you are any good at it.  So if there is anyone out there who might offer advice on how to improve my travelling experience then your assistance will be gratefully received. Answers on a postcard please…..

Computer Rant – Why I don’t get, why they don’t get, why I don’t get IT.

In my last job I had occasions where I had to explain various bits of complicated legislation to the layman.  Each time, without exception, I would reach a point when I would become aware that the listener’s eyebrows had furrowed, their tongue was resting on their bottom lip and their head would be making little jerking movements from side to side in the manner of a bewildered dog. I knew I had lost them.

For much the same reason, if you are an IT techie, then believe me, if you read this you simply won’t ‘get’ what I don’t ‘get’ about what you ‘get’.  If I was you I would look away now. If you can face it however, stick around and feel my pain.

I have to confess that I am old and ugly enough to remember when the home computer was an old bulky Amstrad writing machine that was the size of a small bungalow, with no more than a black screen, green ‘computer’ font and a ‘boot up’ disc. Early classes in the wonder of technology involved learning what the ‘F’ keys did -which was not very much- and how to make some writing appear on the screen and print it out.

By the time I got to college a couple of years later the computer had advanced to the stage where you could save things ‘onto’ it and wondrous additions like spreadsheets and databases had been invented.  By current standards many changes were basic but still somehow baffling. Take, for example, the following true scenario:

Me to college computer guy- “The screen has turned blue and I don’t know what to do”

College computer guy, sarcastically – “What colour would you like it to be?”

Me, indignantly – “It’s never been blue before. It should be black”.

College computer guy, sporting a withering expression – “well now it’s blue” *walks away*.

No books, no classes, no pop ups, just a pissed off IT guy summing it up in one sentence.  From then on the changes in computer technology were regular but manageable and I shambled along happily into the ‘90s, content that anything I may need to know would be explained to me quickly and simply by some bored computer person who never really wanted to go into teaching.

It was during this time, in the early to mid ‘90s, that I had my first encounter with a brain exploding piece of kit that was so abstract and trippy that it may as well have landed here from planet Wacko via Shaun Ryder’s bloodstream.  One afternoon this techie-type student excitedly dragged a few of us from the student bar and into a computer room to show us this incredible new phenomena.  We all stood behind him, agog, as he tapped away on the keys like a demented typist until some pictures popped up on the screen.

“What’s that?” I asked the beaming techie

“It’s the internet” he said as he struggled to hold back tears of joy.

“What’s it do then?” I asked

“It’s the future. It’s zkjhdeurh hqhohroooADOaoo555&&00*adla sddh”  he said

“Yes, but what does it do?” I asked impatiently

“Well, like, for example, if you have got a business then you can advertise things on it” he said as he twitched with glee and wet himself.

“Advertise things on it?…..Eh?….On a computer?” I creased my face up as if someone had wafted a dog turd under my nose before uttering the immortal line “naaahhh, it’ll never catch on”.

Surprisingly, Alan Sugar did not race to York at breakneck speed clutching a job offer.

By the beginning of the new millennium however, I had pretty much got my head around emails and had grasped the basics of the internet even if I didn’t have a clue how it worked.  It was there. Like a telephone. And like a telephone, I was happy to use it without needing to know who was pulling its strings. I had learned all I needed to know about how to have a functional relationship with my computer. We were still a little bit in love. It played up sometimes, it was often slow but on the whole we managed to kiss and make up before a fight broke out.

Then in 2010 I bought a new computer.  When I got it home it didn’t work. I phoned up Computer World with the intention of asking for a replacement but was surprised to find that I was expected to sit on the end of a phone and listen to some IT person talk ME through ‘fixing’ it.  ME! It took 3 hours. This did not happen when my microwave broke. I did not have to dismantle it all over the kitchen floor and reassemble it while on the phone to a microwave technician. Now I was expected to miraculously become an IT boffin and be placed in a situation not unlike that of the air hostess in that film who had to be ‘talked’ through landing the plane when all she had ever done before was hand out a few sweaty box meals and flog some in-flight cigarettes.

As if that wasn’t enough, rather than just plug it in to the phone line to use the internet as I had before, I had to buy a ‘package’ from an internet provider company and again, listen for hours while a techie instructed me on the art of internet connection.  At some point I was informed that in order for the damn thing to work I had to ‘download’ stuff.  Stuff I had never heard of. Stuff that had no discernible purpose. I also had to ‘protect’ it with anti-virus ‘downloads’ that needed me to ‘install’ things and click on buttons and move from window to endless window in order to stop ‘something’, I’ve never been sure what, from knackering the ‘hard drive’. Then, in order to make my nervous breakdown complete, along came the screamingly irritating ‘updates’ that, quite frankly, make me weep.  Not once as anyone ever explained to me a) what is being ‘updated’ b) why it needs ‘updating’ and c) why computers of years gone by used to function perfectly well without being ‘updated’ every other bleedin’ day.

In the last few years, it seems to me, computers have become so user-unfriendly that my once happy and stable relationship has become an abusive domestic hell.  I am bullied into downloading things; I am deliberately confused by indecipherable jargon; I don’t know, when I click on something, whether it’s going to be nice or nasty and on more than one occasion I have been reduced to tears of hopeless frustration by pop up boxes that threaten me with all manner of horrible outcomes if I don’t purchase this or click on that. The love has definitely gone out of this relationship.

Now that I have entered the world of blogging the horror continues.  Having taken advice from friends and a very nice man called Mike, I have learned that I need to have a website thing rather than just a blog.  It looks the same, it says the same things but despite patient and lengthy explanations I still couldn’t tell you why I need one. But apparently I do. And a facebook page. And a twitter account.  Gone are the days when I just wrote some waffle on the back of a few fag packets.  Now, it feels like I have to be a marketing guru as well as needing to have a grasp on technology on par with Stephen Hawking’s grasp on theoretical physics.

And then there is the workplace computer. Oh what fresh hell is this? You could cook a full English breakfast for all your colleagues in the time it takes the damn thing to crank up in the morning.  I have a friend who had to incorporate some graphs into a report, which was, not too long ago, a relatively simple task. It took 4 people and 3 days to get the software working to do it. Mr Fizziwig could have hand written it out on parchment with a feather quill in half the time it took her to complete it. The phone call to the IT department has now become a daily feature of the working day because something won’t work or some system won’t ‘let me in’ or the whole damn thing has ‘frozen’.  And they always, without fail, say “mmm…I’ve never come across that before” as if each day, I, and only I, can summon the wherewithal to create, and/or stumble upon, a never-before-known computer glitch that is a source of bafflement for every IT guy in the company. And yes, they do tell me to turn it off and on again and no, it still doesn’t work so yes, I have to sit there for an hour and be instructed how to fix it myself again, because obviously, I have absolutely f**k all else to do.

So why has it all got so confusingly complex? I understand that technology must progress, but now, it seems to me that it advances so rapidly that the previous ‘advancement’ hasn’t had time to bed in before the next ‘advancement’ comes along.  The previous  thingymebob  isn’t removed or altered, but rather the new advanced thingymebob  is added onto it until you end up with layers and layers of half-cocked technology at varying standards of effectiveness, all piled up in a very unstable wonky wall of techo-witchery. And to make it worse, it seems that Computer Science graduates are no longer inventing this stuff. Apparently any lonely boy who has never kissed a girl and who has read a couple of copies of ‘Geek Weekly’ can have a go. Can you imagine if other industries managed their R &D in this way? What about if the medical profession ran itself like this: “Ah Mr Smith, I have just been online and purchased your new tablets.  I’m not sure how they work but they have got a 4 star review on Amazon and were invented by ‘Coolpillgamer.Inc’ who invented the fabulous ‘Pain-in-the-Head’ brain surgery app. Just take them on top of your other 27 pills a day and let’s see what happens. Oh, and Coolpillgamer.Inc follows back if you want to find them on Twitter”. God help us.

In case there are any Techies, computer manufacturers, or similar who have managed to get this far down the page without becoming apoplectic with despair let me try and explain what a particular non-techie percentage of the world thinks about computers. We know that you love them and we don’t mind in the least that you enjoy fiddling with them in that twiddley way that you do. We love that you love your computers and can be arsed to tap away for days and we marvel at your inhuman levels of patience.  We love this because it means that we don’t have to do it. We don’t care how they work. We don’t want to learn how they work, mainly because we already have full time jobs, deadlines to meet and families to feed. On the odd occasion when we have to call you in to help us please don’t ask us what we want. We can’t tell you what we want because most of the time we are unaware of what we want.  The caveman did not understand the benefits of the wheel until his mate showed him how to attach it to a cart and move some stones on it. If you are sitting there waiting for me to initiate a conversation on widgets and plug-ins it will be a very long wait.

You see, we, the non-techies, we want our computers to be like our cars and our hoovers. We just want them to work. And we want them to be simple. We want functional relationships with them again, like those aforementioned lost loves of simpler times. And like car and hoover technology we want it advertised and explained to us in simple terms using language we can ALL understand.  When the car manufacturers invented air bags, they didn’t call them ‘Tea towels’ and let us wait until the car rammed into the back of a taxi to find out that they were there. Can you see where I am going with this?

So if there are any techie gurus out there who can co-ordinate this mess and make it simple again then please do it. Save the uninitiated and the uninterested from this living hell, then sit back and feel the love. I, for one, will be forever in your debt.

Thank you. Rant over.

Oh, and the website will be www.lazycatfish.co.uk  Eventually.

WORK RANT – A DEDICATION TO FRONTLINE STAFF EVERYWHERE

TO ALL THE WONDERFUL FRONTLINE STAFF OUT THERE, NURSES, COUNCIL WORKERS OR ANYONE WHO HAS TO DEAL WITH CUSTOMERS/CLIENTS AND THE GREAT GENERAL PUBLIC, THIS IS MY GIFT TO YOU. IT’S THE LETTER YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO WRITE TO THE ONE TOSSER WHO MAKES IT THEIR LIFE’S MISSION TO MAKE YOUR WORKING DAY MISERABLE. FRONTLINERS, I SALUTE YOU…..please feel free to copy n paste.

Dear Mr Pottymouth

As this is my last day at Paydlittle District Council I would like to take this opportunity thank you for your feedback on our service.

Over the years my colleagues and I have been inspired by your keen observations and thoughtful insight into how we manage our service and have often been left swooning in awe by the breadth of your knowledge on the workings of the public sector.

I understand that you were occasionally disappointed by the service you received but I am happy to say if it wasn’t for your insightful feedback we never would have realised that we were “just a bunch of wankers” and made such fantastic improvements to our service.  Prior to your motivational advice Mr Pottymouth, I am ashamed to say that staff at Paydlittle DC did little else but sit in the office with our feet up on the desks, playing on Facebook, swigging cans of lager and ignoring the phones, but thanks to your enlightening comments, in which you referred to us as “a load of idle twats” we have since cut our lunch breaks down to 6 minutes and banned toilet breaks. I want you to know that when you spoke Mr Pottymouth, Paydlittle DC  listened.

I would also like to thank you personally for the positive effect your feedback has had on our service managers. You may be pleased to know that my line manager likened your wit and insight to that of Gore Vidal when you offered her the opportunity to re-think current working practice with your thought provoking suggestion to “sort this fuckin’ place out or I’ll be back here to fuck you up”.  There’s nothing like a threat to “kick [someone’s] fuckin’ head in” to make a person re-think their management style. Your feedback was also greatly appreciated by the HR manager who attended a number of leadership courses after your considered observation that “he couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery”.  You’ll be pleased to know that he has now been given the challenging responsibility of organising the staff Christmas party. Not quite a Brewery, I know, but thanks to you he is on his way to better things.

With regard to your complaint about waiting times, I do understand how frustrating it must be have been for you to have to wait 7 minutes to be seen by a member of staff.  I am aware of how busy you must be considering the length of the queues in Bargain Booze, and there are always a few puppies that need kicking, so I can appreciate how you felt the need to inform our Administrator, Jane, that you would come back and smash her face in when she added to your wait by misplacing your file.  In fact I was empathising with your painful experience the other night as I was watching a programme on the plight of the child war victims in Uganda.  Yes, they may have been mutilated and had to watch their parents be murdered in front of them but come on, I thought, that’s nothing compared with the agony endured by Mr Pottymouth as he waited for that file to appear?  I just hope that you will find it in your heart to accept this apology and that it goes some way to easing the seemingly endless suffering you must have experienced because of Jane’s thoughtless ineptitude.

I know that you have often been keen to express your frustration with the complex bureaucracy that pervades our services at Paydlittle District Council and I agree, it may sometimes appear that we are indeed “talking bollocks”.  It must be difficult for you to understand the constantly changing procedures in any workplace considering that the last time you had a job you were paid in Groats, but let me assure you that these changes are necessary if we are to consistently improve our services. For example, following your recent complaint that Paydlittle DC is ”a pile of shit” we decided to make a number of improvements to our customer services department. In addition to the Indian head massage and pedicure service that is now enjoyed by customers in the reception area we have decided to implement an arse wiping service so that even the act of defecating can be a positive experience for our customers.  I hope you agree Mr Pottymouth, that here at Paydlittle DC, we truly do love to serve.

And while we are on the subject of your intuitive suggestions, I would like to thank you for consistently reminding us that you are “fuckin’ skint” and therefore unable, through no fault of your own, to attend appointments on time. Following your proposition that “if you [we] want you here, you [we] can fuckin’ pay for it” we used the last team meeting to suggest taking some money out of the Disabled Facilities budget to arrange for a golden carriage drawn by 4 white horses – replete with angelic children to scatter rose petals in its path – to collect you from your home but unfortunately the cutbacks have prevented it.  I hope that you are not too disappointed.  If you wish to complain about this you can always follow PDC’s complaints procedure, again.  Since your previous 4 formal complaints we have improved our procedure considerably.  We have managed to get the staff time down to 9 hours – and only £4000 of taxpayers money- to prepare for each tribunal and that’s all thanks to you. I know that you felt that you were unfairly treated at the last tribunal and that it was not in any way your fault that you were unable to communicate your displeasure coherently due to the copious amount of White Lightening cider that you had consumed on the wall outside the office, but do not let that deter you. As you know, at Paydlittle DC, we pride ourselves on our listening skills.

Whilst staff here at Paydlittle District Council are overwhelmed with gratitude for your contribution to the improvement of Council services, we cannot, on this occasion, meet with your innovative suggestion to remove all black and Asian people from our workforce.  Paydlittle District Council operates an Equal Opportunities Policy both in the recruitment of staff and our working practice. I know that this must be a difficult concept for you to understand given that every time you look in a mirror you are confronted with nothing less than a perfect specimen of your own superior race.  I understand that you may be disheartened by our decision not to “send them back” for I am sure that you could indeed, as you so eloquently put it, and I quote, “do their job spinning on [your] cock”. I can sympathise with your predicament for I can’t understand either, how someone with your incredible interpersonal skills, extensive vocabulary and beer stained tracksuit can’t get a job. And no, I don’t believe for one second that not knowing your own date of birth is an indicator of a low IQ. It’s a mistake anyone could make whilst under the influence of marijuana.

To help ease your disappointment, and in gratitude for your outstanding contribution to public service over the years, the staff at Paydlittle Disctrict Council have had a whip round to send you on an all-inclusive holiday to Syria. I realise that you will have not heard of this place as the furthest you have travelled from your hole, sorry, home, is Burger King so in case you are wondering, it is just outside London.  I enclose the one-way ticket.

Happy Holidays Mr Pottymouth,

Your loyal servant.

HOW TO BE POOR BUT SMUG

As some of you will know I am about to be made redundant.  The word ‘redundant’ did, initially, as I am sure it has with many, render me rigid with terror, especially in the current economic climate.  For a while I was consumed with images of my house being towed away, like that scene from The Shipping News, my children taken into care, their little teary faces looking up at me while they whimper “mummy, mummy please don’t make me go with the bad mister”, the dog left to scavenge in the bins until such a time when we are forced to….yes…eat the dog, and then my ultimate downfall,  queuing behind Oliver himself in the Workhouse, empty bowl in hand and just a little gruel to look forward to before being tortured by that 21^st century equivalent of the treadmill: Jeremy Kyle on a loop.  At that point on my journey to redundancy dear readers, you may have found me on a bar stool, drunk on self- pity and Margaritas, my dripping tears being carefully wiped off the bar by a patient and pitying barman whose sleeve I would occasionally grasp while slurring “but why me John, why me?”, even though his name probably wasn’t John.

It wasn’t too long though before my mood lightened considerably as I realised that actually, I only have one child and they are unlikely to take her into care now that she is in her 20s.  And I don’t have a dog.  And furthermore, when I added up our income, it happily turned out that we have just enough money coming in to pay the bills and eat some Aldi food so I wouldn’t even have to enter the workhouse. Hurrah! But still I was bothered by unfamiliar feelings.  I was still  nervous, unsettled and even a little anxious.  Not to be outdone and in the stoic style of the wartime generation, I decided to face my fear head on.  What exactly was I afraid of? *adopts furrowed brow and looks skyward*.  I pondered this for a few weeks and as my leaving date drew near I still didn’t seem to be any closer to understanding what worried me so much.  Then, approximately 3 weeks ago, at 4am, I sat bolt upright in bed, banged on the light, shook my other half by his hair and said in perilous voice “MY GOD, I’VE BECOME A RAMPANT CONSUMER” .

Self-perception, I realised, is not a great best mate. I had always imagined myself to be the sort of person who deplored materialism. I thought I had always been aware of, and tried to avoid, being sucked into the rampant consumerism that was so cleverly driven by the ubiquitous and powerful advertising campaigns that brought us such icons as the ‘shake n vac’ lady.  After all, didn’t I steer my child stealthily away from the 90 quid trainer and ‘label’ fad? And hadn’t I always refused to pay more than £40 for a handbag, even for a wedding?  I had never got into that lady/shoe thing had I? OK yes, I did always run at the TV, shouting to the family “it’s on, it’s on” whenever the M&S melt-in-the-middle chocolate pudding advert came on but I never bought one. OK maybe just one but I was brave enough to speak up when it turned out to be crap.

So you see, I was quite surprised when I realised that what I was really fearful of was not abject poverty, of the kind described by Seebohm Rowntree in his seminal study on the subject, but the impending prospect of not being able to purchase goods that are excessive to my basic needs, in other words, crap. I quietly admitted to myself that I too had experienced an urge for instant gratification, especially when it came to buying holidays.  I have been known to have the suitcase packed before website has thanked me for my payment.  And yes, I now hang my head in shame but I did actually ‘reason’ my way through, and eventually win, the argument with my other half as to why a Smeg fridge freezer was infinitely better than any other fridge freezer. In the world. Ever. I had been brainwashed.  They had finally got to me. Reeled me in like a helpless, hapless, herring of the red variety.

That was my fear.  I was afraid of not being able to buy shit that I didn’t need.  So with that in mind I decided spend the last few weeks of my working life deprogramming myself and freeing myself from the accursed cult of consumerism in the quest to arrive at a happy and contented redundancy.  Having embarked on this path of enlightenment I thought I would share with you some top tips on how to embrace austerity, clasp it to your bosom and shout “mamma I’m home”.  Or put simply, how to be poor but smug.

• AVOID THE ‘VINTAGE’ SHOP.  Embracing poverty does not mean that you must frequent the ‘vintage’ shop.  A ‘vintage’ shop is not for the poor, it is for the non-poor to pretend they are poor.  You can buy a holey cardigan and 2 glass vases that don’t match from any RSPCA shop and their pricing method does not involve thinking of a number, doubling it and adding ten quid on.

• GET YOURSELF AN ASBO.  This is an effective and fun way of ensuring that you don’t enter your local shopping centre and spend money, mainly as a result of the attached exclusion order which acts as a bit of a deterrent.  In order to obtain an ASBO you must first behave in an anti-social way.  Note the definition: “causes, or is likely to cause, alarm and distress to others”.  Unfortunately, dressing up as a freakish monster and making yourself look terrifying doesn’t count, otherwise Katie Price would have been arrested years ago.  Alcohol is usually a good driver in the quest for an ASBO and, according to the latest news reports, can be purchased for 5 pence or something, in any local supermarket. Once purchased, the next step is to make a nuisance of yourself.  I would suggest, from personal experience, that drinking copious amounts of alcohol then singing along to your mother’s Barry Manilow records may be a good starting point. However, to be on your way to an ASBO this must be repeated loudly, every night and for at least a month.  If this fails just remember that the basic requirements for obtaining an ASBO are that you must persistently behave like an annoying knobhead.  In the interests of encouraging real blog-reader interaction, please insert your own example here  ­­­_________________
• SELL ALL THE SHIT THINGS  THAT YOU BOUGHT WHEN YOU WERE A BRAINWASHED CONSUMER.  Make e-bay the vehicle by which you purge yourself of your indoctrination and make some cash in the process by selling the contents of your garage/shed/dumping cupboard.  This may include one or all of the following: the smoothie maker; the bread oven;  the treadmill/bike/dumbells/big plastic ball thing/fat shaker machine/step aerobic dvds and any other exercise equipment that you now use to hang your clothes on; the oven/grill/microwave/dishwasher combo; the slow cooker; the nail polish dryer; the dehumidifying egg cooker; the footspa; the can crusher; the pasta maker; the picnic basket and anything that you have ever bought from a shopping channel.
• HAVE A WORD WITH YOURSELF.  The money management gurus will tell you that when faced with the desire to purchase something you must ask yourself “do I want it or do I need it?”.  For the redundantee I would suggest the following: Close your eyes and imagine the worst day at work you ever had. You know the one. It’s the morning after the office party and you wake up to find yourself lying naked on a pile of empty Vodka bottles and covered in Pringles.  You look up to find that a donkey, who is wearing a thong, is happily eating the remains of a quiche off the chest of a corpse. Or something like that. Now start to remember how it felt to have to enter your workplace on the first day back.  Remember it. Feel the paranoia all over again when you remember how Barry in Accounts did that Anne Robinson wink, and how your memory loss prevented you from understanding what he meant when he said “it’s the first time I’ve seen an Alsatian do that Carol”.  OK, are we in the zone? Now I want you to say after me “I may be redundant and poor but I never have to go back there again”.  All of a sudden redundancy won’t seem so bad and within seconds you will be tossing the beautiful-thing-that-you-can’t-live-without back onto the shelf and skipping gaily out of the shop.

And finally….

• Acknowledge once and for all that the following are manufactured solely for the purpose of parting the brainwashed from their money:

-       ‘Chain’ coffee shops – The Japanese tsunami was a tragedy. Giving up your ten quid a pop, daily Chocomochaskinnysyrupedlatte and that slice of cardboard consisting of some rice crispies dipped in melted dog treats is not. Buy a bottle of water, sit on a bench and get over it.

-       ‘Luxury’ chocolate – You can bang on all you want about how you can taste a hint of orange caused by the cross pollination from the orange groves that lie next to the Amazon coca plantation but really what it tastes like is chocolate. Just some chocolate.

-       Designer clothes/bags/shoes – Trust me, Armani himself, did not sit up all night personally hand stitching the sleeves on that shirt. It was probably made in the same sweatshop that produces Primark’s finest range. And ladies, hear me now, no one, that is NO ONE, can walk in anything higher than a 2 inch heel without looking like they are recovering from a hip operation.  You are paying for nothing more than some writing on some stuff.  Sort it.

-       Any bottle of wine that costs more than a tenner.  If you are British you need to face the fact that the wine stopper will NOT be going back into that open bottle and that after 3 glasses you could be drinking photocopier fluid for all you will care.  You are British. Learn to love yourself. Wine connoisseurs and other people of the world, I have no defence against any argument that you may put forward so I won’t even try.

-       Any beauty product that costs more than a tenner.  Face it, you may think it’s an investment into your future loveliness to purchase a face cream that purports to be infused with oil the of the Aluva plant from the jungles of Borneo and the semen of the local men of the Tika Tika tribe but trust me it’s not. If anti-wrinkle creams really worked no one in the world would look over the age of 30.  Look around you.  I rest my case.

Rant over. I thank you.

MUSICALS – Why They are Detrimental to Young Minds

This is the story of my enforced indoctrination into the teachings of ‘The Musical’.  It is a cautionary tale of how the world of spontaneous singing and dancing and happy-ever-afters can encroach on young, impressionable minds and warp them forever.  Oh yes, for when the two opposing worlds of reality and Rodgers and Hammerstein collide, the still- beating heart of their hopes and dreams can be ripped out and mercilessly discarded, like an old tap shoe. It is a warning of clear and present danger. Of how, behind the joyful, melodic, union of the terminally loved-up, lurks a force so evil….Oh, whatever, you get the gist.

Now let’s be clear about this. I don’t dislike musicals. I think. In fact I have a nostalgic fondness for them, although I am not entirely sure how much of this fondness is through freedom of choice and how much is born out of my family’s excessive consumption of the genre throughout my formative years.  When I was a kid we would sit round the TV after Sunday lunch with my old nan dribbling her way through a Mars Bar and looking like she was having a mini dirty protest, and watch the afternoon musical. It was a ritual. The glasses of pop would be poured, the Quality Street would come out at the opening credits and for the next ten minutes or so we would gaze at the screen in silence….watching….waiting…. Then someone would shout “hey up we’re on” which in our world meant that the actor was about to sing.  And yes, sure enough, the actor/actress would do a 90 degree turn, the shoulders would go back, the chest would swell  and yes…here it comes….the chin would tilt upwards….. And at this point we would all cry in unison “OOO I can feel a song coming on” and start clapping.  I don’t know which old 70s comedian we stole that line from but somehow it managed to get itself woven into our family history.  It was practised so often that it evolved to the point where the whole process was performed by rote and with completely straight faces. A performance in itself, that was often a little unnerving for visitors.

We watched every musical that the three channels (yes, that’s a THREE kids) could churn out. We particularly loved the ones starring Deanna Durbin whose unique singing style was the source much mirth.  Deanna would trill her way through a song then, at the penultimate note, would pause for a second before blasting out a lengthy final wail, a sound that pitched just one notch below, and just within the human decibel threshold, of a sonic rat repeller.  We often joined in to that bit too, which probably explains why the neighbours didn’t like us.

In the 1970s it was usually the old 40s and 50s musicals that made it onto TV so it was this particular era that was so extensively employed in my indoctrination.  I was forced to watch so many of them during this decade that it may be considered by some to be a form of brainwashing.  These days, you could probably be taken into the care of Social Services for less. Like all forms of brainwashing I was eventually imbued with a set of beliefs and distorted truths that would take years of de-briefing to rectify.  For example, I truly believed that it was only possible to sing in a musical if you had an American accent. Inadvertently supporting this belief was my old nan, who, by my reckoning had watched thousands of musicals but never sang in an American accent. She sang all the time, mostly when she was doing some, now largely obsolete, ‘nan stuff’, like scrubbing the front step, but never in an American accent.  My ‘accent issues’ were further embedded by my nan’s own strange singing eccentricities, although I have since come to realise that she was probably a bit mad.  You see when she spoke, it was with a broad Yorkshire accent but then on the frequent occasions that she would burst into song, she would sing with the most refined, full on, BBC, best Queen’s English accent you would have heard since….well, the Queen.  It was quite disconcerting for me as a child, to hear someone shout “Oy ‘as tha put thi toys away like a telled thi” before turning their attention to the mopping and bursting into “There’ll beee blue birds owvaarrr thar white cliffs of Dowwwvaar…”.  It was if the Duchess of Kent had just popped in.  When I eventually got to see My Fair Lady it was a revelation.  It was my Darwin’s Theory of Evolution moment, my ‘money fairies’ don’t pay the household bills moment and the start of my journey into disillusionment with the teachings of ‘The Musical’.

The other thing that musicals brainwashed me into believing was that all relationships were conducted in a polite and respectful manner synonymous with the era of chivalrous decorum.  Which explains why I have had so many disappointments:  “But you have to SING to me Dwayne, SING…like you meeeeeaaaan it”.  In fact I sat around for so many years waiting for someone to ask my ‘pappi’ for my ‘hand’ that in the end I gave up and bought a dog.

I remember my first boyfriend, Tony.  Ahhh Tony.  Tony to my Maria…Our parents said we were too young….Oh the sweet agony. If only I could have quickly chucked together a couple of opposing violent street gangs with a long standing vendetta my own West Side Story would be complete.  Of course, inculcated as I was by the traditions of Rodgers and Hammerstein, or in this case, Bernstein and Sondheim, I just knew that our love would overcome any obstacle. We would prove to the world that we were meant to be together forever. I knew his love was true. He proved it by daubing our initials on the side of the chip shop wall with his dad’s Fix it Pro scratch repair pen.  In a heart. We met in secret under the romantic glow of the neon security light at Johnson’s Haulage and as we tried to fend off the attentions of the growling Dobermans he would look into my eyes, cup my chin and say “why miss Catherine, you have no idea how long aaa’ve been wait’n to hold you in ma arms and tell you that ah love ya”. Or something like that. And not in an American accent.  So imagine my disbelief when Tony, MY Tony, the ‘one’, the man who was going to “make me his”, ended up dumping me cos I wouldn’t shag him, then running off with fat Linda from the very same chip shop that still brandished the evidence of our now cruelly discarded love.  The end of my love affair with Tony marked the beginning of the end of my love affair with musicals.  But there was one final blow to come…..

The teachings of ‘The Musical’ had really let me down.  But I recovered, and, like a partner in a bad marriage, continued to cling to the hope that one day, yes one day, my faith would be restored. Sadly, it was not to be and the time came when I had to face the final disappointment of my young life. If the musical was a balloon, the time was nigh to let it go.  Let it float high among the cloudless skies and….yeah whatever.

As you will know the other component that makes up the standard musical is the dancing bit. Most musicals contain a dance scene or two, even if it’s only a gay little tippy toe’d trot around a maypole between verses. But a new day was dawning. The days when gay meant happy and Fanny was a girl’s name were over.  Times had moved on. In the 70s the biggest thing to hit the screens for teenagers was of course the all singing, all dancing, Grease.  The other big movie of the day was Saturday Night Fever. I always lump Saturday Night Fever together with Grease for some reason. I know it’s not a musical as such, more a danceical, or maybe it’s the John Travolta link… Anyway, even though I was too young to see it when it was released, by the time I went to a nightclub for the first time I had watched it on, are you listening you young folk, slowly now, a vid-e-o re-cor-der.

So there I was, circa 1983, about to embark on my first night club experience.  Now in MY head, when men and women came together at a venue where music is supplied then obviously, what will happen is this:  The boy grabs the girl and launches straight into a perfectly co-ordinated dance routine involving lots of whoops and smiles and a few acrobatics, then their mates join in, who instinctively know how to do exactly the same dance and a good time is had by all. And no one sweats. OK, so maybe that example was a bit on the ‘Grease’ side.  But Saturday Night Fever on the other hand, well, wasn’t that supposed to be a more serious story with almost like, y’know, real life stuff in it?  Wasn’t it a cinematic depiction of the low aspirations of the working classes and a study of early New York gang culture, but with dancing? In other words, wasn’t the dancing supposed to look like ‘real’ dancing, of the kind performed in nightclubs the length and breadth of the Western world? I certainly thought so.

I can still remember my wide eyed wonder as I entered that club.  How I excitedly scurried towards the door of the dance area and burst through the entrance to the dance floor, half a lager and lime in hand and……..but hang on, where’s the perfectly aligned formation dancers strutting in perfect harmony to the pound of a dance beat?, Shouldn’t there be a hundred feet moving in perfect synchronicity?  Where are the clapping crowds, cheering on an agile, floor spinning acrobatic, gymnastic, high kicking, whooping, floor sliding disco hoofer? Where are the men, flinging women around their heads, and twirling them like cheerleading batons or spinning them under their arms like delicate little music box ballerinas? In fact, hang on a minute, where ARE the men? I surveyed the room again, wondering if nightclubs had ‘intervals’, like they do in the theatre, and expecting that, at any moment, they would change the record and the whole room would erupt into a frenzy of gyrating, spinning, boogieing bodies. It didn’t.

What actually happened was this:  Approximately 7 separate groups of women had formed circles around heaps of handbags and were shuffling from one foot to the other while moving their arms slightly, in the opposite direction to their feet.  Occasionally one of them would wiggle her arse, or shimmy her shoulders and her mates would laugh, before readjusting their faces back to that of the terminally bored.  Then they would all resume their little ‘shuffle’ dance (not to be confused with the ‘hustle’ which was also a dance, and also something that prostitutes did).  It was more reminiscent of a scene from Night of the Living Dead.  The men stood around the edge of the dance floor looking like they would much rather be under the bonnet of a car, but grudgingly accepting that this was a marginally better way to procure sex.   They dealt with this predicament by necking back copious amounts of beer in order to make the whole thing bearable, and occasionally decided to hit each other.   Every so often a brave (or pissed) one would move onto the dance floor and proceed to do exactly the same dance as the women, only with less grace and co-ordination and never- I repeat never- in time to the music. If you think this was bad fast forward to the end of the night and imagine the whole of the above scene played out again only this time on a carpet of broken glass, spilled beer and vomit. By 2am, during the last slow dance of the evening,  known to all as the ‘smooch’, the men were pissed enough and brave enough to try and  grope the women’s arses and the women were pissed enough to let them. Then they all went home.  As for me, I got into The Smiths and never danced again.

So there you have a cautionary tale my friends.  Never let it be said that someone, somewhere didn’t try and warn you of the detrimental effect of ‘The Musical’, even if it is only on an obscure little blog in the vast world of cyberland. Mothers and fathers, protect your young. And if the damage is already done take comfort in the knowledge that there is someone out there who feels your pain.  OOO I can feel a song coming on…..