All posts in category: Life

Duck it; shot happens

Why...

Is Spellcheck watched over by some electronic Mary Poppins? If I search in Google for any number of potentially innocent things such as water sports; adult I am offered an eye-popping smorgasbord of entertainment, many of which have nothing to do with surfboarding, scuba diving or water skiing and are very rude indeed! Yet I am prevented from typing some decent Anglo Saxon swear words in a document without them getting changed or redlined. I can almost hear my iPhone nanny tutting at the vulgarity. The only alternative is to sit with Roger’s Profanisaurus (dictionary of swear words and slang) and insert (ho-ho) every rude word I can think of into to my personal dictionary so I continue to be abusive to my friends…in a language at least they understand!

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If I come to a meeting with clean fingernails and polished shoes, don’t kid yourself, it’s not for you. I have writer’s block

February 3, 2020
Entertainment/Media/Arts Friends Life Technology Uncategorised Work
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Why...

Is writing for me sometimes a pleasure and at others a chore? Today I needed to get on with the follow up to my debut thriller Fall Out, called The Bastion. But as is often the case, I am stuck. Of course it’s not directly my fault. My Muse must have deserted me for someone more worthy, or the moon is aligned in such a way that my creative juices are drier than a cinnamon stick. Whatever the cause, anything is better than staring at a blank keyboard. I have just polished all my shoes. Nothing. So polished my belts as well. Still just white noise in my head rather than a new character or plot twist. Cut my nails, tweaked out nose hair, squeezed a few back heads. Zero. I even slung an angry riposte to some fool on Facebook. Still zip. The fool on Facebook made me laugh though. After a fatuous and totally incorrect comment about deer culling that I refuted with an article from the left leaning The Guardian entitled, We must kill Bambi. Why deer culling is a no brainer the response was: “Who asked you for your opinion anyway. Fuck off.” The irony of not understanding when you put your own opinion out into a public forum, by definition invites a response, says a lot about the lack of debate in our social media age. Most bloggers just want their voice heard, not challenged. It’s me me me on a platform that is marketed as us us us! If I actually understood the origami that is ironing, I might even see if I could attack the pile of shirts that need attention. Tonight we are due out to dinner and I will be as well manicured as a teenager trying to take out the preacher man’s daughter. My host will take it as a compliment. But for me it will be as if Samuel Taylor Coleridge himself had hung the albatross around my neck.

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The joys of becoming an accidental medical tourist

January 18, 2020
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life Technology Travel/Nature
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Why...

Do I react like a spoiled brat when forced to visit a doctor overseas? I recently returned from a trip to Asia that had me visit four different hospitals within three weeks. With more trepidation than an actress knocking on Harvey Weinstein’s hotel door, I expected to be met in Emergency by a wild eyed shaman, a witch doctor ready to behead a chicken, or a surgeon who looked like Boris Karloff. Instead I was treated to some of the best medical service and equipment I have ever seen! One hospital in Chiang Mai was like walking onto the set of 2001 space Odyssey. In fact I half expected HAL’s voice to greet me. As for the actual medication, no ‘eye of newt, toe of frog’ but drugs even I recognised. Though of course there is always a risk of a Chinese knock off, but I guessed odds were remote at the palaces of medicine I visited. What did catch me off guard was dosage. Nothing had any effect until I rang my own Dr. Frankenstein in London. “That is what you’d give a 12 year old,” which is probably the build of most males in the country. I am a beached whale by comparison. Triple the dose and all was dandy! Now I was lucky. I have insurance and was in Thailand where private hospitals put many in certain countries in Europe to shame. Even the food was so good I put on weight. I now understand why Thailand is not only the paedophiles and perverts destination of choice but now over 2m a year for those in search of medical treatment. You never know... the nurse might be a Ladyboy. I now have got my head around this relatively new phenomenon of medical tourism. With equipment this good and prices between 80% and 50% less than in the West, it starts to make sense. In fact you can save so much money that once treatment is finished you can recuperate in a five star hotel and still be in the money. Furthermore your insurance company is going to send you a thank you letter!

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Why...

I saw this the other day and wanted to share it. Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2020, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make the West great. Not to imply that any Western country is necessarily greater than any other country. And without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

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My Eyebrows are Silky Soft and my Hair Smells of Listerine

December 5, 2019
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life Travel/Nature
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Why...

Hotel room designers must have one thing in common (apart from calling their children Nathanial or Poppy); vision so perfect they could see a flea get a hard on. Even with all the lights on, hotel rooms at night are as dim as a village idiot. It has some very disturbing results. Instead of the bell hop pointing out the bloody obvious like opening a small door and expecting me to be hugely impressed when he says 'fridge' instead of 'hotel cash machine' why can he not explain how the inevitable mishmash of light switches all relate to each other? I am forever getting into bed and hitting some knob that instead of turning the lights out, turns on a hairdryer or activates the TV. Even once I’ve mastered how the actual switches work, the lighting is so bad that my wife insists I bring a flashlight to help with her make-up.

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Welcome aboard…. is enough

Why...

"Welcome aboard flight UR OXN flying from Heathrow to Sydney. My name is Sandra and I will be assisted by Dee in First class, Ben and Jerry in business and some trainees I look down on in economy. We understand you have a choice of other airlines and appreciate your custom ........We will be cruising today at 35, 000 feet at approximately 900 kilometres, or 560 miles or 490 knots per hour. First I need you all to pay attention to the safety demonstration, even those amongst you who have flown before…..” And so it begins. Flight attendants have become nannies in the sky, ready to instruct and scold. They know best. So listen up….and just to make you are awake the speakers screech with feedback. Most of us just want to recover from a cavity search after foolishly packing a pair of nail clippers in our hand luggage and watch a movie. The only thing we may ask the cabin staff (whose name is on their badge) is to turn the heating down.

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Are there no ghosts from the Stone Age?

Why...

If you believe in things that go bump in the night (excluding booting the dog off the bed) has anyone been haunted by a club wielding Neanderthal dragging his wife along by her hair (just her head of course)? Or how about being spooked by a crazed sixties groupie, complete with kaftan and red sunglasses (but minus her teeth following a lifetime of heroin abuse)? No. How is it mankind has existed for several millennia, yet ghosts did not seem to really get their act together till circa 1500 and lost interest around 400 years later? Clearly an enterprising soul from the other side set up a decent post life ‘how to spook academy’ around 1500. Admissions for this phantom University seem to have reached a peak from the “Burn them! Burn them!” Witch Frenzy of 1560 till the end of the Victorian era at the turn of the 20^th Century. That was the real prime time for ghost and ghoulies. After that, it all seemed to quieten down. Maybe spirits found something better to screw with? It is mildly worrying small electrical equipment with its inherent gremlins came into our world about then…but that’s the subject of a different blog……

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Sorry. Your toddler ain’t Einstein

Why...

I understand no parent is going to say to their friends that “My child is as thick as a whale omelette”………… But when pointing to their offspring gurgling “car” while pointing at the family pet, why do parents always say “Isn’t he lovely? But did you know little Tommy is very advanced for his age…….” Just because your nipper can insert a spoon of apple puree into his mouth instead of an ear, does not necessarily mark him out as a future brain surgeon. There is a long way to go from sitting in your own pooh to sitting in your own Porsche.

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Not only do most men not understand ‘female plumbing’ but we underestimate the vital importance of the ‘manny peddy’ at our peril.

September 13, 2019
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life Sex
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Why...

Does nail upkeep score so high on life’s necessities for women and are just a short chore to men? During one of those lulls in a dinner party conversation after I had chatted for twenty minutes on politics, shopping, Love Island and varicose veins with the woman on my left and now waiting for a chance to break into conversation with the woman on my right, I heard the most extraordinary exchange between two women sitting opposite each other. “… Yes. Ruined it. Can you imagine?” “Oh my God. Disaster. What did you do?” “Well. I had to have a drink just to keep me from screaming and losing it. No choice. That night I had to wear closed toed shoes and came back first thing next morning before anyone could see. I mean. It was horrific.” The cause of this tale of woe was not frostbite, a malignant verruca or even an in-growing toenail. The nail varnish that had been so lovingly applied to this lady’s big toe had not dried properly before she left the salon and when she got home found her shoe had smudged the scarlet varnish and left a wave effect on her nail. With this severe handicap, open toed shoes that night were clearly not even a remote possibility. The fact the other lady expressed equal shock, drove home to me the importance to women of the upkeep of their hooves. Something men cannot comprehend. Every so often my wife remarks I could play the banjo with my toenails and I take three seconds per toe with clippers to prune them. That’s it.

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To serve you better it just means do it yourself

Why...

Has the concept of service become a lost art and rarer than a redneck with all his teeth? It is an anomaly that we live in an age with every company, from car insurance to incontinence pads, to mobile phone providers, shouting about service, yet not really giving any. Customer Service is on life support. You can experience its death throws in shop assistants who don’t look up when you approach them, people who leave you on hold for a couple of millennia, to being rebuked for misplacing a dry-cleaning ticket etc. Top of the list of people I would like to recommend a visit to the vivisectionist are restauranteurs who present you with sliding scale charges. These starting at (clearly in their opinion a mean and piffly) 15% via 20% to clearly a justifiable 25%. Add VAT at 20% and before you have so much as nibbled a grissini stick nearly half your bill has been swallowed by tax and services. I appreciate waiters are underpaid but for the life of me I cannot understand why this extra is simply not built into the bill. It’s not as if you can order a meal without a waiter. Seems as basic a requirement in a restaurant as food and a chef. If I have received spectacular service, I leave an amount at my discretion. It’s never a percentage that I have been nudged into paying because it’s printed out and therefore looks official. It’s usually a few pound notes rounded up or down as I see fit.

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Assume the position...

July 5, 2019
Fasion Health & Beauty Life Travel/Nature Work
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Why...

On some occasions do I happily perform physical feats that I know are pointless or make me look like a gormless half-wit? Another day, another business flight... another useless safety demonstration. My favourite part is when instructed, I must… “Assume the brace position” (i.e. bend forward, head on lap, hands locked under knees). The only position I am assuming, is that in a moment or two I will be zipping through the Pearly Gates of St. Peter at 600MPH. Whether seconds before this I perform a handstand or a fiendishly complicated yoga position, will make no difference to the outcome.

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If you are going to sing the National Anthem at an event, the faster the better

Why...

Do people insist on singing National Anthems at major events at full vibrato and wringing out every note for eternity? I understand the recently deceased Aretha Franklin set the bar in the USA at a staggering 4 minutes 55 seconds at a football game on Thanksgiving 2016. That’s longer than it took a surgeon in the 1550’s in Malta to whip out a kidney stone AND amputate a leg! The normal time for the US ditty is one minute 40 seconds. I mean, I’m all for putting your hand over your heart and showing some national pride but 5 minutes before you get to ‘From sea to shining sea…’!? In winter?

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Moving house... so time for an overseas trip or be admitted to hospital

Why...

Does my wife and I moving to a new house together equate to impending divorce? My wife was brought up a military brat and so as a kid moved to a new house every two or three years. To her, it’s a disciplined exercise, undertaken with logic. To me it’s a maelstrom of chaos mixed with a healthy dollop of fear. Without fail, the one thing I need will be in the last box I unpack. This means as soon as we arrive, I start emptying one of 300 boxes to find this missing necessity (for example my lucky underpants worn at crucial meetings), without which life as I know it will cease and my business will go bust. On our first move together, my scurrying from box to box emptying contents all over the floor to unpack that moment’s ‘must find item’ upset my wife and sent her off to find a pick-ax to discourage me from my manic actions. That was the first and last time we moved house together. We survived the experience thanks to industrial strength tranquillisers, a plantation’s output of tobacco and a vat full of booze. After that trauma, during all other moves I have either:

been in the US on business,
been in hospital with pneumonia
or left the country at the start of a tax year.

By some miracle each time I arrive back at our new home, I find nearly everything unpacked and all that’s left is to hang the pictures and iron my lucky underpants.

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Legs eggs and stupid regs

April 19, 2019
Animals/Pets Food & Drink Friends Life Sex
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Why...

Is Easter so weird? In reality of course it commemorates the trial and death of Jesus Christ. Yet in a deft bit of marketing mixed with heathen tradition it has become all about birth, sex, spring and chocolate eggs. Of course to kick all this off we have all the Mardi Gras parades, the hottest of which is of course the Rio Carnival. I have the utmost respect for the Brazilian Catholic’s. They managed to turn the beginning of 40 days of fasting mixed with sackcloth and ashes into a bacchanalian extravaganza. In fact during the carnival things really do go with a bang. The amount of cocaine consumed is so vast that there are discernible traces in the air! No wonder even your grannie can samba for a week non stop.

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When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you

Why...

Are we surprised at the contempt in which politicians hold the voter? There was a comment the other day on the radio from a frustrated Brit who mewed: “If my vote really meant anything they would take it away.” The honest answer is, no need... it’s simply ignored.

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I can happily eat quiche, but will never be seen wearing sandals or carrying a manbag

March 29, 2019
Animals/Pets Fasion Health & Beauty Life Work
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Why...

Do some men allow themselves such sartorial sins that they verge on crimes against humanity? The disappearance of men in sandals was one of the few blessings of the Dark Ages. And yet there seems to be a renaissance of this fashion disaster made worse by the adoption of wearing these atrocities with white socks. Who on earth outside mung-bean-eating tree-huggers thinks this footwear is acceptable? Puh-lease don’t bleat they are good for walking. They are not. All they do is present lunch to various ants, centipedes and any other carnivore creepy crawlies. Unlike ladies dainty tootsies, men’s hooves are unsightly things that should not be exposed... mine are known to scare children and horses.

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Just show me ... don’t write it

March 22, 2019
Entertainment/Media/Arts Life Sex Technology
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Why...

Have written instructions survived? Whenever I buy anything, I am required to download instructions or manuals as if the digital video age never happened. You can download a video on everything from how to get to the next level of Minecraft, to poaching a peacock, or sticking false eyelashes on your goldfish; so why can’t all instruction manuals be videos? Yes, if I really want to get down to the minutiae of how my MP4 player can change the space time continuum or my mobile phone will connect with the dead, I can read up on the fine print. However, 90% of people (and 100% of normal ones) simply want to know the basics of how their latest toy works. So please, let’s just have a video showing me? It would certainly make buying the odd sex toy more interesting! Part of the reason I find digital currency so complex is not the theory of having a secure method of payment outside of the clutches of government or banks but the assumption the guy in the street understands how to actually go about the process. It’s Gobbledigook. Double gobbledigook if you tried Das Coin and the electronic WebWallet nonsense via NetLeaders. In an age when FaceTime, Zoom, Skype and Instagram are the communication medium of choice, why am I still asked to download a PDF on how to work a camera! I mean it’s a camera. Visual medium. Which bright spark in marketing thought: “Well, once we have sold this, let’s send a booklet to read that’s a couple of hundred pages long....” Show me how and I might even buy some of the bolt in extras like telephotos etc.

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If you don’t want to do it, screw up badly ... once

Why...

Do people moan about doing things they hate? Don’t like washing up? Drop a few tea-cups or leave a couple of cornflakes welded to a plate. Hate spring cleaning? Dribble drops of eggshell enamel onto the dog’s head. My father, when asked to change his first nappy (and they were toweling ones back in the day) gagged at the smell then promptly flushed waste and nappy down the loo. He blocked the drains for an entire apartment block and was forbidden from ever changing my diapers again. Result! At school I found playing cricket matches a waste of four sunny afternoon hours. Dragooned into playing against another school because I was a half decent bowler, I swapped the ball for a tomato. Splat! Cricket whites covered in red spots. I was called to the housemaster, told I was a disgrace to the school and as punishment I would never be allowed to play cricket again. It took the acting skills of De Niro to look thoroughly upset, rather than punch the air for joy.

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Say what you like about Trump... at least he understands deals need to close

Why...

Has the great European jaw-jaw resulted in a draw-draw? When the history of Brexit is eventually written, no matter on which side of the great divide you stand, the sheer lack of understanding by politicians as to what a clock is, will stand as a supreme lesson. I cannot think of a peace treaty let alone a deal negotiation which has taken two years... and that does not look like it’s long enough! At the time of writing this blog, it seems like the negotiation is going into extra time to prevent everyone throwing their toys out of the pram. Yet, so far this chit-chat (note: with our friends and allies) has cost the British taxpayer on expenses, travel and outside consultation fees around £600m. Nearly a billion dollars and it’s got nowhere. That is in itself such a monumental achievement I have to pinch myself whilst re-reading my own text. To paraphrase dear Winston, “Never in the field of human negotiation has so much time been wasted at so much cost by so few to the utter bewilderment of so many...” Like him or not I suspect the UK might have saved a fortune by asking perma-tanned occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to thrash out a deal for a fee of say £100m, with a £100m bonus if he could wrap it all up in the time it takes the English cricket team to play a test series. Sadly, La Donald had just got another job when this all started so we might have needed another slippery deal maker. Anyone know what happened to the other Donald, Don King?

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Imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery - it’s breach of copyright.

February 21, 2019
Entertainment/Media/Arts Finance/Law Life
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Why...

Have these little blogs been sprouting up elsewhere? Recently I may have been suffering delusions of grandeur as a bunch of themes from my recent missives seem to have been turning up in the wider press in a number of musings of weekly columnists. Of course it could simply be that great minds think alike and fools seldom differ. However recent posts about the Oscars (Oscar night... just has me riveted to my seat, January 24th) and hidden car rental charges (Extra! Extra! Read All About it... Actually we’d rather you didn’t which is why we put the extra costs in the fine print, January 5th) have both popped up in British national newspapers. So if you are a bored columnist itching for a quick answer to your highly paid weekly article... sod off. Otherwise I shall be forced to ask the advise of my litigious Japanese lawyer Mr. So-Sue-Me. Of course these regurgitations of my latest ramblings could be pure coincidence in the same way as those columns which have included ideas might find their articles repeated here... quite uncanny!

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All posts in category: Life

Duck it; shot happens

Why...

If I come to a meeting with clean fingernails and polished shoes, don’t kid yourself, it’s not for you. I have writer’s block

Why...

The joys of becoming an accidental medical tourist

Why...

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Why...

My Eyebrows are Silky Soft and my Hair Smells of Listerine

Why...

Welcome aboard…. is enough

Why...

Are there no ghosts from the Stone Age?

Why...

Sorry. Your toddler ain’t Einstein

Why...

Not only do most men not understand ‘female plumbing’ but we underestimate the vital importance of the ‘manny peddy’ at our peril.

Why...

To serve you better it just means do it yourself

Why...

Assume the position...

Why...

If you are going to sing the National Anthem at an event, the faster the better

Why...

Moving house... so time for an overseas trip or be admitted to hospital

Why...

Legs eggs and stupid regs

Why...

When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you

Why...

I can happily eat quiche, but will never be seen wearing sandals or carrying a manbag

Why...

Just show me ... don’t write it

Why...

If you don’t want to do it, screw up badly ... once

Why...

Say what you like about Trump... at least he understands deals need to close

Why...

Imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery - it’s breach of copyright.

Why...