You’ve probably heard Rihanna’s latest single so many times that you want to jab yourself in the temples with said umbrella until you render yourself thoroughly dead. I’ve not listened to the radio, been in a shop or been party to digital television viewing for some time, and am therefore completely out of touch with the chart offerings of today. It is for this reason that ‘Umbrella’ is relatively new to my unfashionable ears and my, it’s a corker. I’m a big fan of Rhianna and her ambiguous and vacant-yet-beautiful face, but she should lose the obligatory and entirely unnecessary rap intro/solo if she’s to remain in my favour. Off you pop, Jay-Zzzz. You were good, once.
Anyone who has had to share an umbrella will know that they’re about as romantic as waking up next to a man wearing verruca socks on BOTH his feet. Rhianna evidently hasn’t ever resided in South Wales. Umbrellas may be a novelty in the Caribbean, LOVEY, but they’re a necessity round these parts. One minute you’re strolling along arm-in-arm with a beau; the next minute a gust of wind attacks you and there are prongs EVERYWHERE and a film of red is obscuring your vision and there’s bits of your face on the pavement AND all you can hear is the echoic screams of passers by. Brollies are evil incarnate. There’s also the power struggle between holder and holdee. Height differences only worsen this potentially relationship-crushing activity.
Oh, I don’t like umbrellas. I wish I was a duck. Scrap that, ducks are wank. I wish I was coated in Teflon, or Clingfilm, or grout. That way I wouldn’t have to bother walking around with such preposterous contraptions on the many occasions when precipitation dilutes the perennial dullness of the Welsh skies.
Let’s assume here, that she’s referring to a figurative rain shelter as opposed to the canopy of doom that we here in (Great) Britain have to contend with on an all-too-regular basis. Would Rihanna grant you hypothetical refuge from the allegorical rain under her metaphorical umbrella?
Probably.
In the hair-frizzing, ankle-soaking, disappointly cold real world, she’d almost certainly tell you to 'FUCK OFF AND BUY YOUR OWN FUCKING UMBRELLA-ELLA-ELLA-ELLA', and you'd put your hood up and try not to let her see you sobbing furiously into the lining of the flimsy cag-in-a-bag you purchased in the Millets' sale because you knew it'd come in handy one day.
Sorry, did I ruin that song for you? I'd better not dissect Whitney Houston's 'It's not Right (But it's OK)' then. Suffice to say: she'll not eat the skin of her baked sweet potato ever again.
Saturday, 30 June 2007
Wednesday, 20 June 2007
Ten Reasons why my Father is Brilliant:
1) He has a big beard.
2) Until I was about fifteen, he used to cut my cheese on toast into small squares and decorate it with a ketchuped smiley face. He also did my homework for me on many occasions. I don’t know how wrong all this is.
3) When I had friends round, he often procured a large bottle of pure alcohol and let us dip our hands in and set them on fire. I don’t think their parents approved.
4) He has tolerated my mother for thirty years. I’m thinking of writing to the Queen and requesting that he be rewarded on the New Year’s honours list for this mammoth undertaking. As an aside, Father tells me that Mother has taken to wearing sunglasses atop her head at ALL times. I witnessed this at the weekend; she never once wore them over her eyes. I think she may even wear them in bed.
5) Despite being the clumsiest man in the entire world, he is seemingly indestructible. Notable examples include the time when he walked into a glass door and split his nose open, and when he severed an artery with a grind saw and hid in the downstairs toilet while he tried to sew himself back together because he thought Mother would chastise him for his afore-mentioned clumsiness. He had to go to hospital after I followed the trail of blood and panicked a little.
6) He likes Kate Bush.
7) He’s a secretive old bugger, but I understand he was in the Mountain Rescue at some point. I’m glad he wasn’t in the Cave Rescue. See, he somehow thought it’d be responsible to break into a closed-off pothole using bolt-cutters and take his children down what was essentially a muddy tunnel of fear. A few months later, the same pothole was featured in an episode 999 when the shaft had collapsed and squashed some cavers. My dad IS safety.
8) He persists in wearing a bright orange fleece while shopping at the local Sainsbury’s. Friends who work there find it hilarious; I think he’s angling for a job.
9) He possesses a vast wealth of knowledge on more or less every subject imaginable, yet still forgets my name and how many children/grandchildren he has and our faces AND all of our birthdays AND where he parked his car.
10) He can make anything out of anything, from industrial-sized refrigerators (from scratch) to silver rings.
He’s never going to see this belated Father’s Day tribute, but my dad really is better than your dad.
So THERE.
2) Until I was about fifteen, he used to cut my cheese on toast into small squares and decorate it with a ketchuped smiley face. He also did my homework for me on many occasions. I don’t know how wrong all this is.
3) When I had friends round, he often procured a large bottle of pure alcohol and let us dip our hands in and set them on fire. I don’t think their parents approved.
4) He has tolerated my mother for thirty years. I’m thinking of writing to the Queen and requesting that he be rewarded on the New Year’s honours list for this mammoth undertaking. As an aside, Father tells me that Mother has taken to wearing sunglasses atop her head at ALL times. I witnessed this at the weekend; she never once wore them over her eyes. I think she may even wear them in bed.
5) Despite being the clumsiest man in the entire world, he is seemingly indestructible. Notable examples include the time when he walked into a glass door and split his nose open, and when he severed an artery with a grind saw and hid in the downstairs toilet while he tried to sew himself back together because he thought Mother would chastise him for his afore-mentioned clumsiness. He had to go to hospital after I followed the trail of blood and panicked a little.
6) He likes Kate Bush.
7) He’s a secretive old bugger, but I understand he was in the Mountain Rescue at some point. I’m glad he wasn’t in the Cave Rescue. See, he somehow thought it’d be responsible to break into a closed-off pothole using bolt-cutters and take his children down what was essentially a muddy tunnel of fear. A few months later, the same pothole was featured in an episode 999 when the shaft had collapsed and squashed some cavers. My dad IS safety.
8) He persists in wearing a bright orange fleece while shopping at the local Sainsbury’s. Friends who work there find it hilarious; I think he’s angling for a job.
9) He possesses a vast wealth of knowledge on more or less every subject imaginable, yet still forgets my name and how many children/grandchildren he has and our faces AND all of our birthdays AND where he parked his car.
10) He can make anything out of anything, from industrial-sized refrigerators (from scratch) to silver rings.
He’s never going to see this belated Father’s Day tribute, but my dad really is better than your dad.
So THERE.
Monday, 11 June 2007
There's no Jolly Hostess
Nothing beats the enjoyment of a cup of peppermint tea on a tar-meltingly hot afternoon. Nothing. The sheen wears off somewhat if you have to buy a cup of regular tea from the drinks machine because it fails to serve hot water and you need the plastic cup as a receptacle for the hot water you’re ‘stealing’ from the staff kitchen as you’re too lowly to be able to use ceramic beverage vessels and might get a right ticking off if you’re caught with a prohibited mug. I lead a dangerous life. So dangerous, in fact, that I’ve written about my work’s drinks machine several times on this blog.
At the weekend, I spent fourteen hours travelling. My vast experience of cross-country travel has enabled me to identify three key stereotypical figures always present during a coach trip:
Firstly, we have The Smelly Man. No matter where I’m destined or where I position myself on the bus, there will always be an assault to my olfactory organs seated directly in front of me. I’m evidently a magnet for pungent males. This particular gentleman was so very offensive to my nose that I made an attempt to breathe through my mouth for a considerable amount of time, only to stop when I realised that the aroma was so strong that I could actually TASTE the sweat. Later, he reclined his chair so that his waxy hair was less that forty centimetres away from my face. I promptly whipped out my Olbas Oil and sniffed it with as much gusto as a fifteen-year old experimenting with poppers. It didn’t help.
This leads me to my other observation. I was sniffing away at my smelling salts when I suddenly became aware that a teenage girl was eyeballing me like a crime scene. It wasn’t just a case of my overdeveloped paranoia; there will ALWAYS be someone who stares at you for the whole journey. They’re usually sat on the seat opposite, and seem to find your every breath inexplicably engrossing. Granted, I regularly contort my rather odd face into all manner of strange configurations, but it’s disturbing to discover that during a moment of deep self-evaluation, someone has been watching the way your eyebrows do That Thing. Read a magazine or look out the window, just DON’T look at me. I’m not going to be doing anything more interesting than accidentally squirting myself in the face with Satsuma juice or attempting to sleep by resting my head on my knee.
The third and final coach passenger of note is The Lovebird. This individual is either travelling across the country to be reunited with their paramour or leaving them in a sticky puddle of longing. At Sheffield bus station, I watched this journey’s deserter prise himself away from his pigtailed fancywoman with considerable difficulty. She wasn’t keen on letting go. And as he walked up the aisle to find his seat, she was making all sorts of wild hand gestures, presumably by way of saying goodbye. And then there were tears as he mouthed sweet nothings through the glass. If I was anything other than an emotional leper, this might’ve moved me. Instead, I noted that her shoes were scuffed and unattractive and her handbag had ‘The End of the World is Now’ emblazoned on the side. Perhaps that’s why they were so desperate not to be parted. Perhaps.
I prefer train travel.
At the weekend, I spent fourteen hours travelling. My vast experience of cross-country travel has enabled me to identify three key stereotypical figures always present during a coach trip:
Firstly, we have The Smelly Man. No matter where I’m destined or where I position myself on the bus, there will always be an assault to my olfactory organs seated directly in front of me. I’m evidently a magnet for pungent males. This particular gentleman was so very offensive to my nose that I made an attempt to breathe through my mouth for a considerable amount of time, only to stop when I realised that the aroma was so strong that I could actually TASTE the sweat. Later, he reclined his chair so that his waxy hair was less that forty centimetres away from my face. I promptly whipped out my Olbas Oil and sniffed it with as much gusto as a fifteen-year old experimenting with poppers. It didn’t help.
This leads me to my other observation. I was sniffing away at my smelling salts when I suddenly became aware that a teenage girl was eyeballing me like a crime scene. It wasn’t just a case of my overdeveloped paranoia; there will ALWAYS be someone who stares at you for the whole journey. They’re usually sat on the seat opposite, and seem to find your every breath inexplicably engrossing. Granted, I regularly contort my rather odd face into all manner of strange configurations, but it’s disturbing to discover that during a moment of deep self-evaluation, someone has been watching the way your eyebrows do That Thing. Read a magazine or look out the window, just DON’T look at me. I’m not going to be doing anything more interesting than accidentally squirting myself in the face with Satsuma juice or attempting to sleep by resting my head on my knee.
The third and final coach passenger of note is The Lovebird. This individual is either travelling across the country to be reunited with their paramour or leaving them in a sticky puddle of longing. At Sheffield bus station, I watched this journey’s deserter prise himself away from his pigtailed fancywoman with considerable difficulty. She wasn’t keen on letting go. And as he walked up the aisle to find his seat, she was making all sorts of wild hand gestures, presumably by way of saying goodbye. And then there were tears as he mouthed sweet nothings through the glass. If I was anything other than an emotional leper, this might’ve moved me. Instead, I noted that her shoes were scuffed and unattractive and her handbag had ‘The End of the World is Now’ emblazoned on the side. Perhaps that’s why they were so desperate not to be parted. Perhaps.
I prefer train travel.
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