Fish Fingers

Has anybody noticed that the quality of ‘real cod’ fish fingers has deteriorated in recent years? They used to be plump and juicy and toothsome but now they are dry and skinny and taste of not much at all really. The ‘indeterminate fish’ fish fingers are much more nicer and more like the old ‘real cod’ fish fingers used to be. Is this a dastardly plot by undercover environmentalists at Bird’s Eye to try to stop us depleting the cod stocks? As a fan of nursery food in general and fish fingers in particular, I think we should be told.

Sunbeds

Don’t mess with me.  I am the worst person on Earth with whom to pick a fight.

 

Maybe I’m just allergic to rows, but there is something about the rush of adrenalin and the ensuing heightened blood pressure that actually causes me to shake and feel physically sick.  And, for me, throwing up is the Worst Thing in the World.  It’s my Room 101.  It is even worse than ironing.

 

I can see rows coming a mile away, and I used to avoid them like the plague.  Rows and shouting do not clear the air and make you feel better.  They can kill you.  Really.  I understand of course that it can be deeply frustrating for somebody who has psyched themselves up for a bloody good shouting match, only for me to derail the planned stropathon by squeaking pathetically while pushing them out of the door: “Look, no, please, please go away.  I can’t deal with you when you’re like this.  Please go away. Come back later and we’ll talk about it when you’ve calmed down. Please!”  I knew if I didn’t do this, I would explode into a horrible mess of undignified vituperation, almost all it totally unjustified and I would hate myself forever and ever.  And then I would throw up.  And the other person would win. And we can’t have that now can we?

 

I never ever have those sorts of shouty rows nowadays, especially with people who are dear to me.  With my loved ones, I tend to pause for a moment, shrug, and tell myself that in the great scheme of things it really doesn’t matter at all, and then let it go.  But I do know that some disputes are unavoidable, so (for the sake of my health if nothing else) I now deal with conflicts with good humour and logic, assuming a supercool demeanour.  Which of course is infuriating for the aggrieved party and very satisfying for me (and sometimes highly entertaining for anybody within earshot).  Because I always win.  It is not that I am particularly competitive and especially like winning, or have any wish to make the other person look foolish.  It is simply that I find it very pleasing to spot the fatal flaw in the opposing argument and shoot it out of the sky.  Often the ‘arguee’ will stomp off furiously thinking they have lost a war, but then later realise, on calm reflection, that actually all that has happened is that they have just had a really rather groovy debate over one or more points of pure logic.  That is my intention anyway.  Mostly.  (Very occasionally, I am in a playful mischievous mood and will wind people up just to see what happens.)

 

To give an example – one day at work I was having lunch with a group of my mates in the canteen when the conversation turned to house design.  One of the lunch party who had designed and built his own house said he wished he could have found a way to have his washing machine installed upstairs.  “Like the Americans do.”  This caused my brow to furrow slightly, but I have an open mind so I asked him why in God’s name he thought this could ever, even in a million years, possibly be a good idea.  In an open-minded sort of way.

Mate: “Think about it.  You take off your clothes upstairs and you change your bedding upstairs.  It’s all got to go in the washing machine, so why not have the washing machine upstairs too?  That’s what the Americans do.”

Me: “And where are you going to keep the washing machine?  In the corner of your bedroom?  Why not keep it downstairs in the kitchen or the utility room instead?  You know.  Where all the plumbing is.”

Mate: ”No. You would have a laundry room.  Upstairs.  That’s what the Americans do.”

Me: ”Sooooo …., instead of say, a four-bedroom house, you would design a three-bedroom house ….. with Upstairs Laundry Room.  Mmmmm, I’m still not sold on this.  What about drying the clothes?  You would have to lug all the wet washing downstairs to get it dry.  It is easier to carry dirty, but dry, laundry downstairs than clean, wet laundry, is it not?”

Mate: (growing increasingly tetchy)  ”No! Look, you would put all the wet laundry in the dryer beside the washing machine upstairs.  It’s what the Americans do.”

Me: ”Well that’s not very environmentally friendly is it?  And your electricity bills would be huge.  The only things I put in my dryer are small fiddly things like socks and knickers.  Large items like blankets, sheets, towels and jeans and stuff I hang up on the wooden clothes-horse thingy which dangles from my kitchen ceiling. That’s after I’ve taken them out of the washing machine that is plumbed into my kitchen.  And what would happen if your washing machine sprang a leak?  You’d have gallons of water pouring through the ceiling.”

Mate: (by now stumped for convincing counter-arguments)  “Well it’s what the Americans do!”

Me: “Just because Americans design their houses that way (which I very much doubt, because in every US-based movie I have ever seen that features a washing machine, it is always installed in the creepy basement where the spooky music plays, with a mad axe murderer lurking in the corner) that doesn’t make it OK.  The Americans have had lots of ideas.  Not all of them good ones:

“The Americans believe in the right to bear arms.  That’s not a good idea.

“The Americans elected George W Bush.  Not once, but twice.  That was a really bad idea.

“I bet Dubya keeps his washing machine upstairs in the White House to make darned sure it’s safe from terrorist attacks by pesky ole Al Qaeda.”

Mate: (picking up his lunch tray and stomping off)  “Christ Jackie, one of these days I’m going to put a bullet through your brain.”

 

See?  It’s just not worth it.  Don’t mess with me.

 

Sometimes, if the dispute looks like it’s taking longer than it should and I want to wrap it up quickly, I will go into ‘WHY?’ Mode.  Like small children do:

 

Mum:  Go and wash your hands.

Small Child:  Why?

Mum:  Because they’re dirty and we are going to have dinner.

SC:  Why?

Mum:  Because you’re hungry and you’ve got germs on your hands.

SC:  Why?

Mum: Because you’ve been playing with the dog and you can get sick if you don’t wash your hands.

SC: Why?

Mum:  Because germs make you sick.

SC:  Why? ……

 

This can go on for hours, however most Mums don’t have limitless time and patience and will usually scrub the kid’s mitts herself before the sausages get burnt.  And there’s an end to it.  Fast forward a few years and when people like me go into ‘WHY?’ Mode the outcome can be much the same.  Peace reigns and I get to eat my dinner with clean hands (figuratively speaking) with no effort required on my part.  No need to come to blows. You just exhaust your opponent’s patience.

 

I was on holiday with my daughter in the Caribbean this year at an upmarket five star resort.  Most mornings I would wake early and go and sit on the balcony, which overlooked the swimming pool, to watch the sunrise.  On the first morning at 6am, I witnessed a strange phenomenon.

 

A woman in a dressing gown appeared by the pool and spread two towels out on a couple of sunbeds.  Then, after glancing around guiltily, crept back to her room.  About 20 minutes later, a man appeared with another couple of towels and a book and bagged two more sunbeds in the same way.  Then he too went back to bed.  A few more people emerged and did much the same thing.  It was happening on the beach too.  It was like watching exotic jungle creatures marking their territory.

 

At about 10.30am, after breakfast, I was back in my room getting ready for the beach and I noted that the people I had observed at 6am still hadn’t used the sunbeds they had ‘reserved’ by the pool.  In fact, the man I had seen earlier at sunrise suddenly appeared, retrieved his book, left the towels behind and went down to the beach.

 

Personally, I take all of my stuff with me when I am ready to sit by the pool or on the beach.  And not before.  You can always tell if I’m using my sunbed, whether I am sitting on it or not.  It will be all sandy where my feet have been resting, the towel will have damp patches on it from my frequent dips in the sea, there will be a dog-eared book and a half-finished drink lying somewhere nearby and a pile of cigarette ends in the sand which I will scoop up and put in the bin at the end of the day.  No possible room for misunderstanding.

 

To go on holiday and then set your alarm clock for the crack of dawn, just to make sure that nobody else can sit on ‘your’ sunbed of choice seems, well, absolutely tragic.  Why put all that stress on yourself?  You are in the Caribbean of all places!  Pour yourself another rum punch. Chill out and relax Mon.

 

I had been to the same hotel the previous year and this sunbed bagging business wasn’t happening then.  “What could have changed?”  I pondered.

 

Over the next few days I quietly observed who was doing it.  Without exception, it was the whingers and complainers.  People who treated the delightful staff like servants, barking orders at them and not bothering even to say please or thank-you.  People who believed that because it was an all-inclusive resort and you didn’t have to pay for your drinks, then the more you drank the more money you saved.  The sort of people I hadn’t seen here before.  People, Gentle Reader, who are Chavs.

 

I reasoned that it must be the credit crunch.  These were probably some of the gullible idiots who believed the media scaremongering and, egged on by the likes of Fiona Phillips on GMTV, withdrew all their money from Northern Rock and stuffed it under their mattresses, thereby precipitating the self-fulfilling prophesy that is the 2008 British banking crisis.  Then decided to spend it all before they got burgled or their houses went up in flames.  Which just goes to show that you can’t buy either intelligence or class.

 

One day, there was a tropical storm over the whole of the island, but the next morning it was gloriously sunny.  We were lying on the beach at about noon when I glanced up and saw a man and his wife approaching three ‘towel reserved’ sunbeds that had been abandoned all morning.  Two of the sunbeds were under a parasol in the shade and another one in the sun (just in case obviously). This was the hatchet-faced couple I had overheard earlier complaining to the holiday rep about the food (no chips) and the rain and demanding to be moved to a different hotel otherwise they would be putting in a claim for compensation.  (Er… where to?  A hotel serving chips, that hasn’t been recently rained on?  How about the Portsmouth Travelodge?)  Now the wife was berating her husband because the three sunbeds he had bagged at dawn weren’t close enough to the sea, so she dropped some more towels on another two further down the beach.  Then they went off to lunch.  I was watching this pantomime with keen interest.

 

“Oh look,” I said to my daughter.  “It’s Proles ‘R Us.”

Lydia giggled.  “God Mum.  You are such a snob.”

“Possibly,” I said.  “But if getting pissed off with selfishness and bad manners makes me a snob, then so be it.  Look at that – they are now hogging five sunbeds and they aren’t sitting on any of them.”

 

Something had to be done about this, but what?  The hotel management can’t exactly put a notice in everybody’s room saying: “Don’t be so bloody selfish” so I decided on a more subtle approach.  It turned out to be an interesting social experiment.

 

Occasionally thereafter, if we arrived at the beach and found carefully folded up blue hotel towels on a pair of clearly unused sunbeds I would remove the towels and put them on another pair of sunbeds a few yards away and we would sit on the ‘bagged’ sunbeds ourselves.  Sometimes, if there was just a single ‘bagged’ sunbed under a parasol which had been vacant for a couple of hours, I would pull my sunbed into the shade beside it on the other side of the umbrella pole.  Then all I would have to do is lie back and wait for the fun to start.  Would anybody, I wondered, come back and have the nerve to tell us to move?  Actually, apart from one gloriously memorable occasion*, nobody did.  There was a lot of bemusement as if folks were suddenly not sure if they had returned to the right place, many, many black looks, and loads of huffing and puffing and tutting. But I lived to write this blog.

 

Once, just to mix things up a bit, I removed just one of the blue hotel towels from a pair of ‘bagged’ sunbeds and lay down on it myself, on my own sunbed a few feet away.  About an hour and a half later a young tattooed lad appeared and stared at ‘his’ sunbeds for a few moments as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

 

“Uh-oh,” Lydia muttered anxiously.  “It’s OK,” I reassured her, “let me handle this.”  I didn’t have to.

 

He ran along the beach, dragged his girlfriend by the hand the full 100 yards back again for her to confirm the evidence of his own eyes, pointed at ‘their’ sunbeds and shouted:  “Look Trace!  Somebody’s taken one of us towels!”  Then, after throwing an evil glance at me (“I can’t prove it, but I know it was you! Bitch!”), made the return 100 yard trudge to the other end of the beach to another pair of ‘bagged’ sunbeds.

 

Why, you might well ask, if there really were plenty of unused sunbeds and parasols, did I not just use them myself, and stop trying to wind people up so much?  Which is a very good point.  Sometimes I feel it is my mission in life to stop people being so selfish, petty and bad-mannered, because that winds me up. They needed to be shown the error of their ways:  It’s a private beach.  It was low season, and even if it wasn’t, unless the hotel was actually on fire, not everybody is going to want be on the beach at exactly the same time.  There are plenty of sunbeds for everyone.  Plenty of cushions and plenty of parasols and plenty of shade.  And it doesn’t matter where you sit on the beach – the view is just as beautiful. This isn’t some tatty resort on the Costa del Prole. And we are not Germans.

 

*One day after breakfast, I felt I needed a bit more sleep, so arranged with Lydia to meet up on the beach later on while I stayed in the room for a nap.  Around 11.30 I went down to the beach and found the kid lying in a nice shady spot.  I spread out my stuff beside her, ordered some drinks, and thus we settled down for a pleasant day of peaceful lotus-eating idleness.

 

After about ten minutes, I heard an annoyingly loud squawking noise somewhere very near to my left leg.  For a surreal moment I thought that a Birmingham-hatched seagull with the power of human speech had found its way across the Atlantic. I then remembered that seagulls generally don’t have their breeding grounds in the Midlands, so with curiosity getting the better of me, and taking my own good time, I put down my book, propped myself up on one slender elbow, slid my sunglasses slightly down my nose and peeped over the top of them.

 

The source of the disturbance was a portly, slightly pinkish, middle-aged couple, arms folded defensively across their ample stomachs, bristling with indignation and clearly spoiling for a fight.  I am never one to let the joy of a gentle piss-taking opportunity pass me by and I could see this was going to be fun.  BIG time.  Just what I had been waiting for.  “Good morning,” I smiled pleasantly.

 

Mrs Seagull: (spitting feathers)  “Did YOW take our towels off of them beds?”

Me: (innocently) “Not me, I assure you.  I just got here.”

Mrs Seagull (pointing): “Well we put our towels on THEM beds and then it started raining so we went back to our room!”

I immediately realised that the kid had followed my example, found a pair of ‘bagged’ but unused sunbeds and confiscated the towels. Excellent! That’s what I like to see!  Go Lydia!  Big respect!  I could tell where this was leading (and also with a tigress’s instinct to protect her cub) therefore, with no preamble and maintaining a polite effortless cool, went straight into WHY? Mode.

Me:  (with a puzzled expression) “Why didn’t you take your towels back to your room with you?”

Mr Seagull: (gruffly) “Because we wanted to keep them beds for us.  For when we got back to the beach like.”

Me: “Why?  There are plenty of other available sunbeds over there.  And just over there too.  My daughter has been here since 9am.  It’s now nearly lunchtime and, three hours later, you have only just arrived.”

Lydia had by now screwed her headphones tightly into her ears, turned her iPod volume up and was hiding, chortling silently, behind her book.

Mrs Seagull: “But we wanted THEM beds!”

Me: (persisting) “But why?”

This (to my mind) unanswerable question could have been the end of it, but by now I was thoroughly enjoying myself so I threw them a curved ball:

Me: “Were the towels your own personal towels or the hotel’s towels?”

Mrs Seagull: (snappily)  “They were the hotel towels that we left on them beds. What’s that got to do with it?”

Me: (cheerily – and deliberately missing the entire point) “Oh well, that’s alright then!  I’m sure the hotel will give you some more towels.  Just ask at the watersports hut over there.  They’ve got plenty” and with a helpful but dismissive wave in the direction of the hut, I pushed my sunnies back up my nose and settled down again behind my book. (Instead of apologetically getting up, prodding Lydia, gathering up our stuff, and murmuring grovellingly: “No, please DO have the sunbeds back. And take our towels TOO if you like. I’m so TERRIBLY sorry.  How very rude of us.” And then skulk away, horribly embarrassed, to the other end of the beach to eat slugs and worms.  As we were supposed to.)

 

I could see that we and Mr and Mrs Seagull were never likely to forge a lifelong and loving bond after this exchange so, with nothing to lose as she and her husband huffed off in defeat across the sand (to a perfectly good pair of vacant sunbeds ten yards away) throwing glowering black looks across their sunburnt shoulders, I was sorely tempted to correct their grammar and lightly call out: “Forgive me for saying so, but what I think what you meant to say was ‘THOSE’ beds. Or even ‘THESE’ beds. But please, not ‘THEM’ beds.  So common.”  But that would have been a bridge too far (and very bad manners on my part too).  I do know when to stop.  It was early on in the holiday and I didn’t want a bloody nose.  Or a bullet through my brain.

 

See what I mean?  Don’t mess with me.

 

Travelling with (other people’s) children

Every now and then, sometimes even quite late in life, people discover they have a latent talent.  This could be ambidextrousness, double-jointedness, being able to wiggle their ears, touch their noses with their tongues, throw their voices, play the banjo, do the splits, ventriloquism, ESP or even having magical and/or healing powers.   Sometimes this is useful and can have a huge practical benefit both for oneself and others.  I discovered my latent talent just a couple of months ago.  I think it could prove to be very useful indeed.  Lucrative even.

 

·         About a year ago I was making a transatlantic flight in business class at great personal expense, and had made the mistake of pre-booking myself into a window seat in the second row from the front.  This was a huge error on my part, because I remembered, too late, that all airlines always reserve the front row (which you can’t pre-book) for parents with small children.  In other words, the passengers most likely to disturb everybody else and have paid the least for their tickets are guaranteed the best seats.  (Why?  Give me one strong Moscow Mule with a lot of ice, a plate of food and a pillow and I’m as good as gold.  Silent.  Asleep.  No trouble at all. So why can’t I be rewarded with the comfiest place?  Eh?  Eh??)

 

The people in front of me had a small baby with them, which had the biggest and healthiest set of lungs in the whole wide world.  For all I know, by now it has claimed the record for youngest person to scale Mount Everest without oxygen.  The crying started even before we took off from St Lucia and continued into baggage reclaim at Gatwick and beyond.  A solid eight and a half hours folks.  One of the benefits of flying business class is the extra seat recline you get and these parents took full advantage of it.  Really.  For the entire flight both of their seats were reclined so far back that the howling child’s head was practically in my lap, propped as it was over its adoring father’s shoulder.  I know this because my best red cashmere sweater got covered in baby drool and baby snot.  Also it kept chucking its (completely ineffective) dummy at me, and then screaming for me to return it.  After about the fifth or sixth or twentieth time, I put the dummy in my handbag, shut my eyes and tried to ignore the ensuing uproar. Like the cruel hard bitchy witch I am.

 

·         The previous winter I had fancied a spot of skiing.  I booked the first week in March to avoid both the French school holidays and the British half term. Parents complain about how much more expensive it is to take their kids away during the school holidays, but nobody seems to consider that people like me might not want to share their precious leisure time with other people’s sprogs and therefore plan accordingly, only to have those plans scuppered by mummies and daddies breaking the rules and furthermore then refusing to control their little darlings.

 

When I arrived at the chalet I discovered that the guests consisted of me and three married couples on holiday together.  And their nine children.  And a baby.  So that was seven adults and ten kids aged between one and eight.  I was totally outnumbered by the worst behaved, rudest, loudest, most spoilt brats I have ever deliberately wanted to avoid.  The children were even worse.

 

My idea of a perfect day’s skiing is to start off with several cups of tea and a long warm bath.  Then I will have a bit of a sit-down and another cup of tea and maybe a slice of toast and Marmite.  Then if the weather looks nice and sunny, I’ll get togged up and go up the mountain.  By this time it is never earlier than 11am.  Then I will scoot about for a bit until I get hungry, stop and have a bowl of spaghetti with a glass or two of wine, and then scoot about a bit more until I get tired. Then I will clonk back to the chalet with my skis poised jauntily on my shoulder, feeling horribly smug at how much fitter I must be by now, that I haven’t once fallen over, thanking the mountain gods that I haven’t broken any bits off myself, looking forward to taking my boots off, yet another long bath, a drink and above all a couple of hours’ nap before dinner.  (Look, I know there are some Keenies who are up at the crack of dawn, shivering in the queue for the first lift with icicles hanging from their noses, when it’s all freezing cold and hard and icy (these, in my experience, are the folks hogging all the airport wheelchairs at the end of the week) but hey buddy, this is MY holiday.  I will be the first to admit that I’m pretty rubbish at Alpine sports and tend to ski within my own very considerable limitations most days apart from occasional flashes of brilliance, but I love it nevertheless.  I paid good money for this, I am World Class at enjoying myself, and I’m not in the bloody army or training for the Winter Olympics either. OK?)

 

My post-ski nap time always seemed to coincide exactly with the end of the kids’ ski school lessons and as soon as my head hit the pillow they would pile into the wooden floored chalet in their boots like a herd of shouting, arguing elephants.  The parents, not wishing to have their conversations about Islington house prices and school fees interrupted, would just wave them away like flies and tell them to ‘go and play downstairs’.  ‘Downstairs’ being right outside my room of course.

 

·         On the plane home I found myself seated next to a woman and her screaming infant.  (Just call me Baby Magnet.)  I had been up since 4.30am and by the time the delayed plane took off from Geneva it was about midday and I was absolutely bloody starving.  The trolley was making its tortuously slow progress down the aisle and I could smell the food.  I could almost taste it. I was practically weeping with hunger.  I could have chewed my own arm off like a small mammal caught in a wire trap.  The flight attendant finally put a tray in front of me and the woman beside me, without apology, chose that EXACT MOMENT to change her baby’s DIRTY nappy.  Of course, being British, I didn’t say anything but glanced sideways and gave a small, exasperated sigh.  She said “Oh don’t be so miserable.  He’s only a little baby boy!”  “I can see that,” I muttered.  “Well why don’t you go and sit somewhere else then?” she shrilled.  I shall leave that question dangling in the air along with the smell of my delayed breakfast and the baby’s bowels, which remain with me to this day.

 

·         I was on an early train to work in the so-called ‘quiet’ carriage, looking forward to a few minutes’ shuteye.  The train stopped at Guildford to pick up Enormous Chas and Charlene Chav, two baby buggies and their three podgy children.  They spread themselves out and Dad and Mum immersed themselves in their improving reading matter – the back pages of the Star and Heat magazine respectively.  The baby was fast asleep.  The elder of the three kids slumped back in her seat and seemed quite happy drumming her pink Bratz Dolls-encased heels on the seat and poking chips in her mouth.  So far so peaceful.  But the three-year-old wasn’t pleased with this tranquil if somewhat bucolic scene and started playing up.  “MUMMMMMMMMAAY!!!!!” she yelled over and over again.  Mummy was too engrossed in the latest Celebrity Cellulite Scandal to notice, so the kid turned her attention to her father.  “DADDDDDDAYYYYYY!!!!!”  No reaction. “DDDDAAAADDDDAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!” she shrieked.  Daddy eventually looked up and bellowed “SHAAADDDDUPPPPP WILL YOU!!!  JUST. SHUUUTTT. YOUR. FACE.” This little tete-a-tete repeated itself in exactly the same vein for quite some time.

 

Now it is a fair old while since I was the mother of a really small child, but as far as I can recall, when they start kicking off, especially in a public place, the way to deal with it is to provide some sort of distraction.  You can, for instance pick them up and give them a cuddle, sing, read a story, make soothing noises, offer a toy to play with, or something to eat and drink.  (Preferably NOT a packet of Monster Munch and a can of ADHD-inducing, luridly orange-coloured, radioactive fizzy liquid.   I would recommend instead milk and slices of organic apple.)  What you don’t do is look up from your copy of the Daily Prole and bellow at them to shut up.  It never works.  Really.  You must trust me in this.  (Of course if you are at home when the tantrum occurs, you can just roll them up in an old piece of carpet (or a rug) and shove them in the cupboard under the stairs for a couple of hours which gives everybody a chance to calm down.) *

 

Now even my most ardent admirers could never say with a straight face that I am the absolute spit of, say, Julia Roberts, but I do scrub up quite nicely, have curly red hair, big blue eyes, clear skin, rosy cheeks and a cheery winsome smile.  However, when the mood takes me, I don’t look like anything like that. Especially when the hair and the smile are out of view as they were that morning.  At the time, I was wearing my French Lieutenant’s Woman’s coat, which is a sweeping black ankle-length jobby with a black velvet-lined hood.  Because it had been raining and I hadn’t been on the train that long, I still had the hood up.  The smile was absent for obvious reasons.

 

By now my ears were actually starting to hurt so, abandoning all hope of my usual five-minute power nap, I put down my newspaper, leant forward slightly, inclined my head, and fixed the kid with a Very Hard Penetrating Stare.  The effect was immediate and startling.  The colour drained from her furious purple little face, her eyes widened like saucers, her jaw went slack, her mouth fell open, she gave a small frightened whimper and …… fell silent.  For the remainder of the one hour trip.  Result!

 

Looking back, my appearance must have been similar to that of a Dementor – you know, one of those creatures that scare the shit of out Harry Potter.  The kid is probably even now suffering nightmares and post-traumatic stress.  “Oooooh everything went all dark and swirly!  I felt as though all the joy had been sucked out me and I would never be happy again.  Ooooooooooh.”  Or something.  Whatever.

 

Jean-Paul Sartre was a miserable old goat who once said ‘Hell is other people.’  Being a fairly gregarious soul myself, I can’t agree with him there, but if he had said ‘Hell is other people’s out-of-control children and their appalling, feckless  parents’ then he would have been right on the money.

 

Which brings me, Gentle Reader, to my latent talent.  I have been looking for a change of career so I have decided to offer my services as a Child Silencer.  A bit like a sterner version of the Horse Whisperer, but for kids.  Willing to travel on trains, aeroplanes, the rear seat of a car on long tiresome journeys to the West Country, Wales and the Lake District, in broken-down lifts.  Will even share the dreaded ‘family-friendly’ ski chalet (for a supplement).  Indeed, I will consider any confined space from which there is no immediate escape and wherever small children are present.  Fee negotiable and enormous.

 

*  Before I get flamed by doting parents, social services, the NSPCC, anybody with a sense of humour bypass, (or Sotheby’s) – I’m just kidding.  I do not really recommend this method of dealing with unruly children.  Especially if your rugs and carpets are valuable or antique.  Soiling may occur and Shake ‘N Vac doesn’t really do the job.

 

 

Mind the Gap

There used to be a BBC radio announcer called Daphne Oxenford who retired from Listen With Mother in 1971 having presented the programme for 21 years.  She spoke with the cut glass BBC accent of the era with immaculate Received Pronunciation.  No Radio 1 Laddette she.  I often wondered what happened to her.

I can exclusively reveal that she has been dragged out of retirement, locked once again in a recording booth, and now provides the Voice of South West Trains, the dominatrix and torturer of commuters everywhere south of Waterloo.

However something awful has happened to her.  The warmth in her voice, which charmed small children in the 50s, 60s and early 70s, has vanished to be replaced with a shrill, finger-wagging, headmistressy bossiness.  She speaks in an irritating staccato and puts inflexion and emphasis in her sentences in strange places.  She doesn’t seem to know when to shut up either.  Have you forgotten all your BBC training Daphne?

I could be wrong.  Perhaps I am doing Mrs Oxenford a gross libellous injustice.  Maybe it is really Princess Michael of Kent earning a few bob on the side.

Whatever.  Here are a few examples:

You get on the same train you use every morning and she tells you which station it is:  “This. Is (station name)”  (“Really??  I thought this was Istanbul!”)

The train pulls off and Daphne/HRH pipes up:  “Welcome  on BOARD the South West Trains service.  To London.  WATERLOO.  Call. ING at (station name, station name, station name, station name, station name, station name ………) to London.  WATERLOO.

Just before you arrive at the next station, Daphne/HRH tells us:  “The next. STATION is.  (Station name).  PLEASE mind the GEP.  Between the PLETFORM.  And the TRAIN).  Sometimes she adds:  “Please change HERE.  For (station name, station name, station name, station name ………)  Sometimes this information is wrong.

Then, having told us 30 seconds previously at which station we are arriving, just in case we have the attention span of a goldfish, she tells us the name of the station again.  The train pulls out of that station and she starts all over again.

The distance between  SW Train stations into Waterloo is no longer than five minutes in most cases, so you would think that lot would be enough to keep Daphne/HRH occupied and the commuters thoroughly informed, but no.  She also feels duty bound to tell us between each stop that “CCTV camera and video recording.  Is in USE.  On this TRAIN.”  She then reminds us not to leave our stuff lying around unattended like the morons we undoubtedly are:  “DO try to.  Keep ALL personal ITEMS with yew.  If yew SEE anything SUSPICIOUS.  Please tell a member of STAAHFF.”  As far as I can recall the last time anybody was killed or injured on British public transport, the ‘personal items’ responsible were very much attended.

However the absolutely lulu, the one that really gets my goat is as follows:

 

“Yew MUST have a valid ticket before.  Yew get on one of.  OUR. TRAINS.  If yew do NOT.  Show a valid TICKET when yew are ASKED.  Yew MAY.  Have to pay a PENALTY fare.  Thenk yew.”

 

Now tell me please.  What is the point of that?  While you are sitting there, when you hear this announcement, do you think:  “Really? You mean I should have bought a ticket???  Well, fuck me!!  I thought train travel was free!  Blimeys, I must get off right now and buy one.  Oh no!  I can’t!  The train’s moving!”   If that is the case, Gentle Reader, then I’m afraid you should definitely not be allowed outside your front door unaccompanied, let alone try to travel on public transport without your personal carer.  Look, maybe I’m missing something here, but if you are already on the train and you don’t have a valid ticket then it is too bloody late.  And if you do have a valid ticket then the message is totally redundant.  So please Daphne/Your Royal Highness, do us all a favour and SHUT UP.

You can’t even get away from it in the so-called ‘quiet’ carriage, and if you are unfortunate enough to be sitting under the PA system you had better already be deaf because the decibel level is so high that Daphne/HRH threatens to burst your ear drums.

SW Trains have been asked why there have to be quite so many announcements given that there are on board electronic signs constantly in operation and their reply was that some people have learning difficulties and can’t read.  In other words, they inflict this racket on us for the benefit of less than 1% of their customers.  This 1% could ask the guard for help surely if they are travelling alone?

Once, just once, Daphne/HRH piped up with something useful.  I boarded the train home, knackered as usual, and after she had welcomed me on board, told me where I was, where I was going, all the stops along the way, had reminded me to look after my stuff etc for the first of umpteen times, to my astonishment she said:  “We are pleased to ANNOUNCE.  That there is a REFRESHMENT service.  On this TRAIN.  Serving tea, coffee.  SNECKS, sendwiches, het end keld DRINKS.  Beer, WAINS and spirits.”

“Great.”  I thought, “That makes a change.  I could just do with a naice gless of wain.  Cheers Daph.”  Unfortunately she then blew it by saying sternly:  “Please make sure yew keep the AISLES.  Free of any luggage.  So the TROLLEY ken pass without HINDRANCE through the TRAIN.”

“Christ!”  I thought crossly.  “I’ve paid eleventy-seven quid for the privilege of getting to and from work and I just get told off all the bloody time!  Just shut up will you woman!”

Listen Daphne/Your Royal Highness, I DO have all my marbles, I DON’T have special needs, I CAN read, I DO know where I got on the train, I DO know where I’m going, I KNOW the names of ALL the stations in between, I DO have a valid ticket, I DO know that CCTV is watching my every move, I WILL mind the gap, my personal items are RIGHT here beside me thank you.  And I am sure that if anybody should see ANYTHING suspicious, such as a wild-eyed woman in a pink cashmere coat smashing up the public address system with the heaviest of her ‘personal items’, they WILL tell a member of staff.  Who will no doubt gently lead her gibbering off the train to the safety of a padded cell.

In the meantime, please bear in mind that I have been awake since 5am.  When I eventually get to work I will have to earn eight hours’ wages.  Then I will have to get home again.  Right now I would like to concentrate on my Sudoku puzzle.  I would like to finish the crossword.  I might like to start my new book and not have to read the first paragraph over and over again because YOU keep interrupting my train of thought.  Then I would like to have a five-minute power nap.

So could you PLEASE.  JUST.  SHUT. THE.  FUCK. UP.  Thenk yew.

 

 

Litter

Litter is an abomination.  Of all the things that piss me off, I think that wading through other people’s thoughtlessly discarded flotsam and jetsam takes the absolutely biscuit.

Litter is one of the so-called ‘petty crimes’ and is probably the most unnecessary.  There are bins everywhere.  If not, everybody has pockets, or bags or even hands to carry their rubbish away from public view to be disposed of at home.

Litter is one of those things that makes life just a little bit more unpleasant for everybody, but what to do about it and who is doing the littering and why?

 

Why

Simple.  Selfishness, that’s why.  Somebody else will clear it up.  Can’t be bothered.  When I walk away I won’t see it again.  Everybody else does it.

 

Who

It’s surprising.

·         I was watching a discussion on a news programme about the problem recently and there was a fairly heated debate between a member of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England and a well-spoken, middle-class woman who said that the solution to the litter problem was to employ more street cleaners.  End of.  She admitted that she dropped her rubbish in the street if there wasn’t a bin handy.  She said she didn’t like carrying her rubbish around with her because it made her hands feel grubby.  Dear well-spoken middle-class woman:  Street cleaners cost money.  They are paid out of our council taxes.  Taking your rubbish home with you or dropping it in a bin costs nothing.

·         Some months ago I boarded a train at Havant for the one hour journey to Woking.  The carriage looked brand new.  The windows sparkled, the seats and carpets were spotless, the paintwork gleamed.  A man got on the train just after me, sat down, stuck his feet up on the seat, and started eating a baguette sandwich and spraying the crumbs everywhere.  When he had finished eating he dropped the sandwich wrapper on the floor.  There was a litter bin within his line of sight just four feet away.  This, dear reader, was not a yob in a grubby tracksuit and filthy trainers.  This was a yob in a sharp suit and polished shoes (resting on the seat in front of him).  When his mouth was finally empty, he picked up his mobile phone and spent the rest of the journey regaling the so-called ‘quiet’ (ie no mobile phones or noisy iPods thank you) carriage at the top of his lungs with the tale of his hard day at the office and how he sacked somebody because ‘someone like me don’t take no crap from no-one’.  Oooooh Big Man!  He must be a Really Important Power Person!  What a Big Willy he must have!  Tosser.

The train pulled into Woking and the Tosser tossed his empty can of cola onto the seat and got up to get off the train at the same time as me.  Standing beside him at the door I said pleasantly: “Excuse me.  You have left something behind” and pointed at the discarded rubbish.  He bridled:  “That’s not mine.”  I smiled:  “Don’t be ridiculous.  I was sitting beside you and saw you drop it.”  He said: “They pay people to clear up after me.”  I said, still smiling:  “So everybody who gets on the train right now has to sit and look at your rubbish until the train staff clear it up?  Why don’t you pass it to me and I’ll put it in the bin for you?  It’s not hard you know.”  By now the train doors had opened and I had clearly pissed him off because he stuck his face two inches from mine and snarled:  “No!  Nobody tells me what to do.  Especially the likes of you!”  He pushed me backwards off the train onto the platform and stalked off full of righteous indignation.

·         I was walking down a street in Hackney with my daughter one evening behind a small chavette dressed in her standard chavette uniform of black nylon puffa jacket and leggings and mobile phone glued to her ear.  Walking past a bin she unwrapped a bar of chocolate and dropped the paper on the pavement.  Outraged I said to my daughter: “Did you see that?” and called out:  “Excuse me, you have just dropped something!”  and picked the litter up and threw it in the bin.  The chavette turned around and said “Fuck off.”  My daughter gripped my arm and said: “Mum! No!  I entirely agree with you but Not. In. Hackney.”  She told me about a man who said something similar to someone who discarded a beer bottle in the same street and got glassed. With the same bottle.

 

What to do about it

 

A friend was having a rant about police powers the other day.  He said he thought it outrageous that people accused of minor crimes ‘such as littering’ could have their DNA and fingerprints taken.  “Good idea” I said.  If such yobbish behaviour can result in being marched to the police station, having DNA swabs and fingerprints taken and a night in the cells it might make them think twice about doing it again.  I would go further.

 

When I am in charge, anybody found littering or flytipping will be put in the stocks in an open public space and pelted with greasy pizza boxes, polystyrene fast food containers and coffee cups, beer bottles, Coke cans, sacks of cigarette butts and football-sized wodges of chewing gum wrapped in the discarded plastic carrier bags that blow around my street. Then I would make them pick it all up again.  On their hands and knees.  With their teeth.  That’ll teach them.  Form an orderly queue.  Behind me.

 

Until that glorious day, why not join the Campaign for Rural England’s Stop the Drop Campaign which aims to tackle this appalling problem which is ruining our beautiful countryside.  It is headed by the CPRE’s president Bill Bryson, a brilliant and funny author and passionate anti-litter campaigner.

 http://www.cpre.org.uk/campaigns/stop-the-drop/litter-and-fly-tipping