Croissant, coffee and a twerk...

July 6, 2017
Fasion Health & Beauty Sex Travel/Nature
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Why...

Are we dancing the day away? We all go on holiday to shake up our routine and reverse-pedal the 9-5 treadmill. However I note now that on the beaches from St.Tropez to Cabo San Lucas nightclubs are so passé. Day clubs are where it's at. So after you have had your morning sh*t, shave and shower and are sucking down some java, nibbling on a croissant that costs more than your room, you can now decide where you are going to spend the rest of the morning raving. Yup. Before you can say E and bacon (and I don't mean eggs) you are up and dancing to Mura Masa Charlie, Major Lazer or Katy Perry at a time any self-respecting teen-ager should still be in bed. There are distinct pluses and minuses to this. On the plus side there are no more excuses about whom you went to bed with not looking quite so good ‘in the cold light of day’..... cause that's now when you picked 'em up! There is no need to go to the expense of paying for dinner before going out clubbing and if some ravers still come with parents attached, a curfew is irrelevant. You even get to work on your tan while twerking. The down side is even at my most degenerate, vodka shots for 'elevenses' instead of tea and digestives or an ice cream were never on the cards. The dark of the bat caves of most nightclubs hide a number of evils... not least the fact that I dance like my Dad and occasionally play air guitar. These day clubs take place outside on the beach which means you can be seen by others. Not only can members of the public see what an idiot I am, but the partner I danced with the day before and to whom I pledged my troth can see what a shallow fool I am! Even if you go right over the top and order bottles of champagne large enough to contain a Shetland pony which arrive with a fanfare of fireworks, when do you call it a day... or night? If you start at 10am do you really rave all day then from 4pm-10pm have a snooze and start all over again? Or do you bop till you drop? Your body will experience a new kind of jet lag; rave lag.

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I want a locker, not a human traffic jam...

May 5, 2017
Entertainment/Media/Arts Fasion Health & Beauty Life
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Why...

Am I forced to share my airspace? On the occasions when my trousers inform me it's time to diet and I need a swim or visit a Pilates studio, I try and visit the gym off peak to avoid the crowds. However even if there are only a dozen people in the gym, the clown giving out locker keys always gives them out consecutively. This means a dozen grown men whilst trying to retain a modicum of decorum, are all pirouetting on one leg trying to put on underpants on a floor area the size of a doormat...whilst there are row upon row of unused lockers spread over the rest of the changing area.

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Resistance is futile... I will dress like a pimp from a blaxploitation movie

Why...

Do certain pastimes creep up on me as I get older? Golf is a great example. Forty years ago the whole clubby, cliquey, smug aroma of joining a club and spending eons smacking a little white ball around manicured lawns represented everything the young urchin in me hated. I refused ever to pick up a golf club, wanting the world to know I was kicking against the pricks in every sense of the word. I would rather have entered Richard Nixon than a golf club. Then a few years ago a virus struck down many of my friends who suddenly started not only playing the game but wearing tartan V neck sweaters and trousers, accompanied by white flat caps and checkered leather shoes that Cab Calloway would have been proud of. They even started drinking gin. Fortunately around that time I met my beloved wife. In an earlier life she had dated a professional golfer and it had put her off the game for life. I was safe. However a dear friend and his wife came to visit recently and both are avid golfers. As I listened to them ramble on about such arcane terms such as nibblets, bogies and my particular favourite an Adolf Hitler; (two shots in a bunker), I suddenly said: "That sounds great." Time stood still. You can't unring that bell. My wife instead of getting up and looking for a rolling pin to shuffle my teeth added: "There is only one course here in Malta!"

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A recent opinion poll listed Usain Bolt as the slowest man and Mary Poppins as a love Goddess...

March 10, 2017
Entertainment/Media/Arts Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Sex
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Why...

Do we bother to have polls which ask meaningless questions and provide useless opinions? Opinions only matter if they are a result of a relevant set of facts given to experts to make a judgement on. Bolt of course comes bottom of the speed list if the others are Superman, The Flash, and Lewis Hamilton in a Grand Prix car. Mary Poppins trounces Mother Theresa, Medusa or Chancellor Angela Merkel on a beauty list of women with the letter M. It was budget day in the UK on Wednesday and I was listening to the results of a Sky Poll that asked the question “What should the Chancellor do with a minor windfall from a small shoot of recovery from new businesses? Should he spend it on:

A) The NHS (hurrah hurrah),

B) Social Services (yeyyyy),

C) Cut the rate of Corporation Tax (boo, hiss)?”

Giving money to Social Services is not binary to giving tax breaks. We all want to look after those less fortunate. However, to offer either giving more to welfare or granting business a tax cut, is a question of such naiveté that it makes believing in a unicorn an incontrovertible scientific fact.

Lesson 101 basic social economics. You can only afford to give more if you earn more. UK corporate taxes are too high compared to others and so act as a disincentive. Let’s encourage growth, take a short term hit by lowering current corporation tax and soon there will be an increase in tax revenue. Bingo! Then give out more money from a bigger pot.

"Would you like the Chancellor to increase the debt for your children or wait a couple of years and then spend more on hospitals etc. as well as reduce your debt?"

Put like that you might get a different opinion. Or... not as no one understands the question!

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I'm an individual... so let's paint it black

February 12, 2017
Fasion Health & Beauty Life Travel/Nature
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Why...

Is the color black thought of as chic when it is the default choice for people with no imagination? You can stand out as much as you like you like when you travel. The diva in a silk shirt, sunglasses and scarves, a wannabe rap star with Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana labels or simply Mr.& Mrs. Retired from Boston, she in a fetching twin set and pearls and he in a tweed suit. But nearly everyone has a black suitcase. Why? The one time you do want something to stick out, is on the conveyor belt of endless luggage spat out at baggage claim. Maybe airlines could change the colors of the check-in baggage labels to match blocks of seat rows? I know some people put a ribbon on the handle or a big sticky Smiley Face on the side, but a guy parading through customs with that is screaming to the officials: "I am a drug dealer. Stop me and feel free to search every bodily cavity..." Jet lagged and grabbing a black bag I am amazed I have never returned to my hotel to open a suitcase full of lingerie or kids school clothing (OK once but that was my suitcase....weird girlfriend) or much worse a nun returned to her convent with my suitcase. Try and explain that content to Mother Superior! However the fault really is with the suitcase manufacturers. It's either boring black, ‘bloodshot-eye’ red, ‘arrest-me’ fuchsia, ‘suffocate’ blue or a yellow so loud you can hear it scream as it's unloaded from the plane. Samsonite designers must think subtle is what you become with yoga. Checks might be nice or patterns, even different colored top and bottom. Instead they offer a color palette from a child's paint by numbers book. And while I am talking suitcases, consistency on zip start and finish as well as direction would be nice. Have you ever been able to open every layer or pocket on a suitcase with one fluid movement per zip? Never. How about different colored zips for different pockets on the case.....and all either zip clockwise or counterclockwise?

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Never be a fitness freak in your twenties...

Why...

Workout when out of your head? I spent much of my twenties and thirties in a haze of cigarette smoke, hangovers and occasional substance abuse. 'Fit' was only an adjective used to describe a girl! Since then I am happy to say I got my act together and by my forties I even started going to the gym. Most of the sweating bodies of my age that had been fit in their twenties were miserable. They could only witness a decline in their sporting prowess from their adolescent peak. Every day in the gym was a hopeless effort to recapture their sporting glories. Not me, I reckon a seventy year old could have outperformed me at 20. At 40 I certainly could have. So having been a wreck in my youth, every day in the gym saw me reach a level I had never achieved before. I was bloody euphoric. The tide for me was coming in and for all those goody goodies of youth it was just going out. The moral here is unless you are a professional athlete, give yourself the gift of fitness later in life and be a rake in your youth! Middle age will thank you for it.

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Slow...slow...quick quick...slow...you don't know how to walk

Why...

Has the basic action of putting one foot in front of the other become obsessively scrutinised? In the not too distant past we had Neolithic man....let's call him Uggg. After he has dragged his wife by the hair around the cave as foreplay before some prehistoric love-making, he ventures outside with his trusty club to find dinner. "Just popping out for a bite, dear." It was a toss-up in fact who would be dinner, Uggg the caveman or Tiddles from next door, the local sabre tooth tiger. This is not quite on a par with you or me popping down to Tesco's for a microwave chicken korma and a six pack of Aussie beer. (Neither of which you actually eat, just rent.) Apart from his club, loincloth, toothless grin and a few fleas, Uggg took nothing else with him. The intrepid Tesco visitor if he came on foot would have a Day-Glo jacket, mobile phone and in case he died from thirst or hunger on the long trek from Acacia Avenue to the supermarket, a bottle of water and an energy bar. That seems a little excessive even for the suburbs (unless it's Texas where you would rather walk naked than without your two friends Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson).

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Light bulbs. The devil's own testicles!

Why...

Is the simple light bulb really the work of Beelzebub? Whenever a lightbulb goes 'ping' in my house, my whole day gets dimmer. Bayonet, screw in, full width, half width, 40 watt, 60 watt, clear, pearl.... pointless and endless variations.....yet on top of all that nonsense I now have to deal with eco friendly bulbs. These are a giant stride backwards. Firstly they are all fugly (f*cking ugly). The shape looks like Mr Whippy has poohed a glass. I guarantee Thomas Edison's prototype got brighter quicker. These new things need an eon to warm up before on full beam. It's like going back to old cathode ray tube tv's. I used to turn those on, go make a cup of tea, have a cigarette, a wee and when I came back my TV was just flickering into life. Eco bulbs.That's progress like saying a cannibal uses a knife and fork! However the palaver of changing normal bulbs pales compared to swapping out a halogen ceiling light. There are more variations how these little bastards screw into the ceiling than excuses Justin Bieber gives for speeding. Firstly as I try and get the inner socket out, ceiling plaster always gives my head a nice quasi-dandruff coating. Next, whichever catch spring or twisting technique Torquemada the builder fitted, the burnt out bulb clings to the socket like a slinky twenty year old Russian to a fat billionaire. So then I make the mistake of grabbing the bulb which is hotter than Satan's underpants and I a) burn my fingers, b) drop the bulb to the ground where it smashes. I try and reverse the whole procedure fitting a replacement. Another dusting of plaster this time in my eyes so I'm half blind as I try and screw the new one in. After wrestling with the fixture until I get neck camps I eventually get the bulb in...only to turn the thing on and discover it's not the bulb but the transformer that's bust. Frankly I'd rather use the man who invented these things as a human candle than have to change another.

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Never ask for directions and other essential tourist information...

October 20, 2016
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Sport Travel/Nature
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Why...

Do I know more about where I visit than where I live? If you want to amuse yourself in a city you are visiting ask directions to a made up address. If it's slightly rude… even better. Piddle Lane, Butt Hole Road, Divorce Court or (my favourite) Camel Toe Drive. (These in fact all exist). Nine times out of ten the person you ask will point you with utter certainty in the direction of your fictitious address. Locals never, ever, can be seen to know less than a foreigner. It is a maxim that you are always better informed of the cities you visit than the ones you live in. Most foreigners know far more than I do about London....and I lived there off and on for fifty years. The last time I viewed the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London, TV was black and white and The Beatles wore suits. My most recent visit to the British Museum was with my toddler son......who is now a pilot! However I visit the Louvre every time I am in Paris and the Met every time I'm in New York. I would rather kiss a politician than go to the Opera in London but in Vienna it's a must. If you do want true culture always search out a local museum. There are only so many Botticelli's a man can see in a day but how about the Phallogical (gentleman's sausage) Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland? You can compare notes with the Condom Museum in Bangkok or Sex Museum in Amsterdam? Got the kids? No problem. There are Barbie museums in Paris, Rome and Montreal or a Cup Noodle Museum in Osaka.

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Step right this way for your daily insult...

October 13, 2016
Entertainment/Media/Arts Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Travel/Nature
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Why...

Do I allow myself to fall repeatedly into life's traps and snares in the modern day insult pit? First public smack in the face started in record shops. Nowadays people just nick music off the Internet so a whole generation has missed out on the condescension and scorn that was directed at customers at local music stores. Whatever record I asked for was met with a "tsk-tsk" and a look of abject pity at my choice of music. So withering were the looks that I can honestly admit more than once saying with a shrug: "Yeah, I know. Crap, but what can you do? It's a birthday present for my little sister!" as I slide a Billy Joel LP into the plastic bag like it was porn that I wanted no one to know I was carrying. It only occurred to me years later that if these guys were such discerning musical genii, how come they were working at the local Kidderminster Virgin record store at minimum wage rather than rubbing shoulders with Prince or Springsteen in the recording studio? The record store guilt trip has now morphed into the facial tick I get visiting a phone store to buy a new mobile or tablet. Please tell me there are people who actually understand what the salesman is saying.... however I assume it's no one over the age of 15! Invariably I say something dumb that shows I have completely misunderstood what has been painstakingly explained to me and then bang.....that look of sympathy, like an adult indulging a child asking why the sky is blue or grass is green, flashes across the salesman's face. "I think perhaps the basic version is all you require....." Ouch.

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You have a vocation...? My arse!

Why...

Am I most jealous of people who know from the get-go what they are going to do in life? The kid who instinctively knows he or she wants to be a vet, concert pianist, architect or pilot and seemingly glides into his or her chosen life path. The rest of us stumble across jobs both weird and wonderful but as far from youthful aspirations as you can get. Do kids fantasise about being an arbitrageur, systems analyst, account manager, VAT inspector or Border Control/Customs Official as opposed to firemen, nurses and astronauts? Proctologists really worry me. I cannot believe that among the fresh faced interns at Med school there's a clutch of them burning with desire to spend their working day with their digit stuck up a strangers butt. Indeed if there were such people, counselling is what they need rather than medical training. Nope I suspect many proctologists flunked their first choice. "Sorry, grades not good enough for brain, cosmetic or heart surgery but there is an opening (in more than one sense) in the proctology department". Shock, horror, forlorn look on student. "It's not so bad...though no one wants to shake your hand. The pay is stratospheric and you don't take your work home with you." Job sold!

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Hitler, Genghis Khan, Pol Pot and Charles Manson all had one thing in common...

Why...

When we are designed as omnivores do some people become fanatical at becoming a vegetarian. Many indeed argue that on top of health benefits, not eating meat can do wonders for your temperament. The above lot in the the title were all famous vegetarians but it certainly didn't do much to improve relationships with their fellow man! Don't misunderstand me, if you choose to eat mung beans, Brussels sprouts and cauliflower cheese that's entirely your choice, (though I'd prefer not to sit next to you on a transatlantic flight). What does puzzle me is if you are vegetarian, why on earth would you then eat food that resembled meat?! Nut cutlets, Quorn sausages, tofu based spaghetti Bolognese, or nut roast at Thanksgiving! That's like giving up smoking then spending all day sucking on candy cigarettes (yup, believe it or not, when I was a kid you could buy sweets that looked like cigarettes).

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My Underpants intimidate me…

September 8, 2016
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life
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Why...

Do I allow marketing and fashion to seep into the crease of my subconscious? I can’t buy a pair of boxers without David Beckham’s tattoed physique reminding me what I should look like (or years ago a grinning Marky Mark before he turned into Mark Wahlberg)? So obsessed are we with visions of perfection in advertising that there are casting calls for pets and ‘make up artists’ when you shoot a plain old Hamburger

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Beware! Hair... It is not Darwinian but it's certainly Machiavellian...

July 7, 2016
Fasion Health & Beauty Kids/Family/Relations Technology
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Why...

Is hair growth so inconsistent? Falling out. What exactly is Nature's point in letting some men go bald? Obvious answer, I suppose, is because she's a woman and it screws with men's egos! I mean baldness is not exactly Darwinian Evolution of the Species material. As someone who is lucky enough to still have a thick mop on my head, I do sympathise with my mates who now have a shiny dome where once stood a mighty forest. Can someone explain to me why? Not the medical reason but what is the evolutionary point of baldness?

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My pet is a drug dealer.......

June 9, 2016
Animals/Pets Fasion Health & Beauty Life Technology
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Why...

does my beloved dog get prescribed Prozac easier than me? It seems pets have far easier access to grade 'A' drugs than humans. My pug has been known to bark and the effect of our entire house going into packing cases and being shipped to Malta, now has him in paroxysms of fury. To be fair his eyesight is a bit dodgy and maybe at 13 years old he imagines all the tall wooden cases are people. ( As for the dogs thinking my friends are wooden...well that's a worry at a different level). So to calm his anxiety he has been proscribed Prozac. Who knows... if it gets worse maybe Xanax? He sure has taken on a calm 'Jack Nicholson-like' insouciance now. He's even relaxed and laid back as I prepare his food. Before he used to jump and pirouette in wild anticipation of the plate. Now he just watches looking at me as if to say: " Yeah, OK, Mark. Looks good, bro.Can I check those ingredients? No mono sodium glutamate, no artificial preservatives, contains 80% meat. Perhaps a glass of Pinot Noir with that?" When he and his younger brother go to the park I understand why other dogs come up to him so enthusiastically. They all think he's carrying! No barking, just a wry grin. I can almost hear him saying to the gathered crowd of fellow dogs: "Isn't that grass so green today? Hey, like what you did with your fur...Nice lead....., your owner still going through a bad divorce? Stressed? You should try these. Two bones a pill. Trust me. You'll just glide through the day....."

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For you Sir, no charge... For Madam though that's $10...

Why...

Are some things free for one sex and not for the other? If I order a whisky and soda in a bar, the soda is free. If my wife orders a lime juice and soda and asks the barman to top up the soda she is charged for it! That is logical bollocks. Tea at Starb*cks. Why do I get charged progressively more for a small, medium or large tea when each cup only contains one solitary teabag? So is it the hot water I pay for? Yet if a woman were ask for a cup of hot water to warm a baby bottle… No charge.

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WHAT SIZES DOES STUPIDITY COME IN?

Why...

Are the numerics on sizing so bizarre? In my hand I am holding something that extra small is still 7 inches and extra extra large is 11 ½ inches. Nope, it’s not my gentleman’s sausage, (you all have brains like sewers) it’s a glove and refers to sizes. Do you actually know yours, let alone what it refers to? You’d think at least it might be to do with length from the longest fingertip to wrist? Nope. The number is the circumference of your fist…. which is why as I have long fingers, gloves always hang on my finger-tips and end halfway past my second knuckle joint like long johns ending at my knees. It leaves my wrists perfectly exposed to get frostbite. As far as I am concerned any idiot who says what I have on ‘fits like a glove’ means it sticks out in five places.

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I shot the TV, but I didn't shoot the tab-elet ♫

Why...

Am I supposed to watch the same TV commercial from 1^st November through to December 25th without eventually hating it and the company it’s advertising? Even Manuel Noriega went mad as the US Marines continuously blasted a couple of David Bowie records at him in his palace. After a couple of days he begged for mercy. Yet I will have watched the latest two or three minute Christmas extravaganzas for a dozen major brands more than 100 times each. By mid-December I would rather put out my lighted hair with a hammer than visit any of the advertised stores. I cannot be alone. Market research must tell them such an assault is counter-productive or do they really think the production values will keep us watching.

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Nice Tattoos. Perfect for Shakespeare

November 19, 2015
Entertainment/Media/Arts Fasion Health & Beauty Work
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Why...

Would an actor cover his or herself in tattoos (least of all those with spelling mistakes….Tradgedy??) The whole body is a blank canvas, on which the actor creates a character. Yet serious actors now want to cover themselves with designs and phrases totally at odds with their profession. If you are playing Hamlet, I would have thought names of previous girlfriends and a design that looks like the cover from a Meatloaf album might be out of context? It was one thing when Sean Connery had two small tattoos on his right arm, Scotland Forever (surely a mistake as he hasn’t lived there for more than half a century?) and Mum and Dad, as both were easily covered up by make-up in the Bond movies. (You can still see them though if you look carefully). In any case MI5 and MI6 ban any kind of body markings that can identity an agent. Actor Tom Hardy is a veritable Etch-a-Sketch of body tattoos. When his half naked torso was shown playing the baddie Bane in The Dark Knight I assume at times CGI (computer Generated Effects) were employed to cover them all up, however good old pancake make-up seems to have done the trick most of the time. You can see in some outtakes or set photographer shots the smudging of the thick layer of body cover-up revealing a tattoo underneath. In a more recent film, Mad Max, Fury Road he looked a bit ridiculous as he was so buttoned up with only his head and hands showing! Maybe being in the Namibian desert with all that sand sticking to thick pancake body make-up would have driven him nuts!? But now he wants to be Bond?? The point is, talented as he and many other like him with body tattoos are, it seems to run against everything an actor’s body should be. If I was a producer shooting a Roman epic and saw Kiss me qwick tattooed on a centurion’s ass and had to pay to cover it up, I’d be offering to sandpaper it off!

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If it’s cheap…it will last a lifetime

Why...

Do I have drawers full of cheap reading glasses yet empty Persol, Gucci and Porsche glasses cases?

It seems to be a rule of life when you buy an expensive version along with a few cheap ones on the side, the cheap one sticks to your life like chewing gum to fur, but in an instant the expensive version is lost.

In the kitchen the potato peeler I use was bought from a street urchin in Vietnam years ago but the fancy Alessi one my wife gave me in my stocking for Christmas fell into the waste disposal on Boxing Day.

I cannot begin to count the number of Fox’s umbrellas, Cartier fountain pens, Ray Ban sunglasses, AKG earphones, or fancy schmanzy watches I have lost over the years. However as I sit at my desk there is a biro dated 2006 in front of me, my desk drawer has endless cheap Apple earphones and my car has an umbrella I bought in Hong Kong during a down-pour for HK$1 in 2002. There is even a ten year old Swatch on my wrist.

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All posts in category: Fasion Health & Beauty

Croissant, coffee and a twerk...

Why...

I want a locker, not a human traffic jam...

Why...

Resistance is futile... I will dress like a pimp from a blaxploitation movie

Why...

A recent opinion poll listed Usain Bolt as the slowest man and Mary Poppins as a love Goddess...

Why...

I'm an individual... so let's paint it black

Why...

Never be a fitness freak in your twenties...

Why...

Slow...slow...quick quick...slow...you don't know how to walk

Why...

Light bulbs. The devil's own testicles!

Why...

Never ask for directions and other essential tourist information...

Why...

Step right this way for your daily insult...

Why...

You have a vocation...? My arse!

Why...

Hitler, Genghis Khan, Pol Pot and Charles Manson all had one thing in common...

Why...

My Underpants intimidate me…

Why...

Beware! Hair... It is not Darwinian but it's certainly Machiavellian...

Why...

My pet is a drug dealer.......

Why...

For you Sir, no charge... For Madam though that's $10...

Why...

WHAT SIZES DOES STUPIDITY COME IN?

Why...

I shot the TV, but I didn't shoot the tab-elet ♫

Why...

Nice Tattoos. Perfect for Shakespeare

Why...

If it’s cheap…it will last a lifetime

Why...