• Home
  • MN Grenside
  • Contact

Subscribe to my weekly posts
Archives
  • March 2023 (3)
  • January 2023 (2)
  • December 2022 (4)
  • November 2022 (3)
  • October 2022 (1)
  • September 2022 (2)
  • August 2022 (2)
  • July 2022 (3)
  • June 2022 (2)
  • May 2022 (3)
  • April 2022 (3)
  • March 2022 (4)
  • February 2022 (2)
  • January 2022 (2)
  • December 2021 (3)
  • November 2021 (1)
  • October 2021 (4)
  • September 2021 (1)
  • August 2021 (3)
  • July 2021 (3)
  • June 2021 (4)
  • May 2021 (3)
  • April 2021 (1)
  • March 2021 (4)
  • February 2021 (3)
  • January 2021 (4)
  • December 2020 (4)
  • November 2020 (2)
  • October 2020 (3)
  • September 2020 (3)
  • August 2020 (3)
  • July 2020 (2)
  • June 2020 (4)
  • May 2020 (4)
  • April 2020 (3)
  • February 2020 (4)
  • January 2020 (4)
  • December 2019 (4)
  • November 2019 (3)
  • October 2019 (5)
  • September 2019 (3)
  • August 2019 (3)
  • July 2019 (1)
  • June 2019 (3)
  • May 2019 (2)
  • April 2019 (2)
  • March 2019 (4)
  • February 2019 (2)
  • January 2019 (4)
  • December 2018 (4)
  • November 2018 (2)
  • October 2018 (3)
  • September 2018 (3)
  • August 2018 (3)
  • July 2018 (3)
  • June 2018 (3)
  • May 2018 (2)
  • April 2018 (2)
  • March 2018 (3)
  • February 2018 (4)
  • January 2018 (3)
  • December 2017 (5)
  • November 2017 (4)
  • October 2017 (3)
  • September 2017 (3)
  • August 2017 (4)
  • July 2017 (4)
  • June 2017 (2)
  • May 2017 (2)
  • April 2017 (3)
  • March 2017 (4)
  • February 2017 (4)
  • January 2017 (4)
  • December 2016 (5)
  • November 2016 (3)
  • October 2016 (3)
  • September 2016 (5)
  • August 2016 (4)
  • July 2016 (3)
  • June 2016 (3)
  • May 2016 (4)
  • April 2016 (5)
  • March 2016 (5)
  • February 2016 (4)
  • January 2016 (4)
  • December 2015 (4)
  • November 2015 (3)
  • October 2015 (4)
  • September 2015 (4)
  • August 2015 (4)
  • July 2015 (5)
  • June 2015 (4)
  • May 2015 (4)
  • April 2015 (3)
  • March 2015 (4)
  • February 2015 (2)
Recent Posts
  • Attention impoverished authors, here is a surefire bestseller with forever royalties
  • “Liar Liar Pants on Fire”
  • R.I.P. MIDDLE AGE
  • Welcome aboard. This is your Captain speaking
  • Twenty goes into sixty a lot more times than sixty goes into twenty
Categories
  • Animals/Pets
  • Entertainment/Media/Arts
  • Fasion Health & Beauty
  • Finance/Law
  • Food & Drink
  • Friends
  • Kids/Family/Relations
  • Life
  • Love
  • Politics
  • Sex
  • Sport
  • Technology
  • Travel/Nature
  • Uncategorised
  • Work
What drives you crazy?

Get in touch!

Want to know when I publish the next blog?

Get in touch!

See all posts for May2015

It’s my language, your accent….Mate

  • May 28, 2015
  • Life Love Politics
  • View all 5 Comments
Why...

When visiting Texas, can I barely resist the urge to yell ‘Yee-Haw’ (a must if on a horse)? If in Alabama I continually add ‘Y’all’ to every sentence. As for California I cringe as I find myself muttering ‘No problem’, ‘whatever’, ‘I’m good’ or worst of all ‘I’m stoked’. (I should be with a red hot poker up my backside every time I say that). I know to every local I must sound as fake as a flight attendant’s farewell, but I suppose it makes up for the occasional American who greets my English tones with… "Cor blimey stone the crows, do yer want-a-cuppa bloody tea, mate?" Quite apart from sounding like Mary Poppins, chimney sweep Dick Van Dyke, whose accent is as far removed from true cockney as tact is from President Putin, the speaker is also oblivious as to how to actually use the word ‘bloody’ and ‘mate’. (This is a short blog; you’d need an extra memory chip in your computer to be able to download why this is so wrong. Just take it from me, it is). However this person is cheery and thinks his English sounds are welcoming to me. Why? My beloved wife is an American with a delightful lilting Southern Accent. It’s as clear and fresh as a mint julep despite living here for over 20 years. Yet when she goes home they all accuse her of sounding English. At first I thought all her relatives were either stone deaf or making a joke but actually I realised it was not her accent, but her use of words and syntax that made my wife sound ‘furrren’. ‘Lift’ instead of elevator, ‘flat’ instead of ‘apartment’, ‘fag’ instead of ‘cigarette’ (always a dangerous misunderstanding that one) and our curious use of ending a sentence with ‘indeed’. Deny as much as you like but no matter how jingoistic, patriotic or linguistically challenged you are, we all pick up accents and grammatical mannerisms if we are someplace long enough; they stick like gum on a shoe. The reason has to be a subliminal yet natural desire for a human to fit in and be accepted; subconsciously we seem to have this strong desire when we meet someone who is different from us, to try to act and sound like them… even if we cannot speak like their language. I wonder if this knee-jerk urge to communicate is the most powerful argument for our inbuilt resistance against bigotry and illogical racism? We like to fit in, be accepted by strangers, rather than be apart from our fellow man.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Can’t get an invite to a Royal Castle even if you are a Chinese internet Czar or a Russian oil tycoon? Here’s what will…with the added bonus of a snap of knicker elastic.

  • May 21, 2015
  • Entertainment/Media/Arts Finance/Law Love Travel/Nature
  • View all 2 Comments
Why...

Has the classic car market seen such unprecedented growth over the past ten years? If there has been one boom industry over the same period it has been the creation of new centi-millionaires and billionaires. So what does he or she spend their money on? Assuming he has collected enough real estate to house a small nation and a mistress who looks like a snake that has swallowed two bowling balls (the male equivalent having the balls on his arms and a dumbbell in his underwear), next on the shopping list in the glamour stakes are one of the big three. 1) Hollywood cachet 2) A mega Yacht 3) Art and collectables

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Fill her up please with Starbucks latte and can you check the oil is sun factor 50?

  • May 14, 2015
  • Food & Drink Kids/Family/Relations Life Travel/Nature
  • View all 3 Comments
Why...

Can I no longer find signs at motorway service stations that say Fuel Only This Way→? They have disappeared over the past few years. Now, before I find the pumps, I am led like a piggy with a ring through my nose past the retail equivalent of a children’s honey trap; an entire village of tat. I feel so sorry for families with kids in the back, who, on seeing these places bounce around like squash balls on heat wanting to get out and empty their parents’ wallet. On entering these cluster of shops I am simply blown away at the kind of stuff you can now buy, as well as what you can’t (i.e. indicator bulbs for your car). Quite apart from just about every franchise that sells you a ‘heart-attack in-a-sack’, there are video games rooms, playpens for toddlers, make-up bars, CD’s, DVDs, clothing and numerous toys….some so large I’d need an articulated truck to take them home. Let’s not forget the wide selection of abandoned puppies. Kids are running around the place screaming and yelling from a massive overdose of sugar yet there is always a solitary Janitor sharing my ablutions in the bathroom along with the triangle warning sign of a slippery floor. Sadly at my age a full tank of fuel lasts much longer than I do so rest stops are quite frequent, but the only time I have ever fallen over in the bathroom was due to alcohol not an attendant’s mop.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Friend=Foe

  • May 7, 2015
  • Entertainment/Media/Arts Life Love
  • View all 3 Comments
Why...

Do I keep getting contacted by people who claim to be my ‘friends’ yet most are as unknown to me as a humour chromosome is to an Immigration official? One of the biggest casualties of the internet has been the murder of the true definition of a favourite noun: Friend. The Oxford Dictionary definition: A person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations. Current definition: Anybody who is able to contact you. ‘Privacy’ would seem to be the digital reverse of ‘friendship’. “Internet friendship sites increase communication between people, ” I hear you cry. Bullsh*t. Friendship is two way; it requires time and continual interaction. These sites are in fact the ultimate expression of the self, the antithesis of communication. The data is nearly always one way. The sender does not care what you think, just that you read them. But he or she is quite happy to blindly impose on your time under the cover of somehow being a friend. I suppose a burglar is always grateful to those people saying they are on holiday or are walking around with an engagement ring. However if I have something really personal I want to enjoy with someone I’d pick up a phone, send an email or, heavens above, even write a letter. Apart from a persistent Jehovah’s Witness who rings my door bell and calls me friend, the digital rot all started with early sites like Friends Reunited. This let loose a bunch of people from the past, mainly old school contempories, who reached out of nowhere and dragged you back to the past. Suddenly I was being tracked down by people I vaguely remembered but had never kept up with…… for good reason. They were never my friends in the first place. I didn’t like them when half size so why would I want to be in contact with them in full adult form? As I went to an all-boys school, these ‘friends’ from the past did not even come with the veiled promise of some quick tryst to make up for what I missed all those years ago. (They say it’s the ones that got away that haunt you forever. I can understand why divorce rates shot up amongst those from mixed schools who were contacted). However at least this bunch could claim to have at one time known me. They were simply guilty of stretching the meaning of acquaintance into friend. Sadly that was just the beginning.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

What is rss? "rss" is about getting live web feeds
directly to your computer.