Something very exciting happened. I’ve been to see the Osmonds.
I was innocently eating dinner, or as innocently as I ever eat dinner. My mobile rang. ‘Are you an Osmonds fan?’ my friend asked.
‘Are you at the pub quiz?’ I asked.
‘Can you name five Osmonds songs?’
‘Am I a woman in my forties?’
‘They come on in half an hour I have a spare ticket.’
My heart raced. It was only puppy love. I dashed upstairs and changed into my best flares, paper roses, shiny top and floppy peaked hat, grew my hair down to beyond my shoulders and broke out in a display of colourful acne. Crazy horses couldn’t keep me away.
Half an hour later I was sitting in the Cardiff International Arena with most of the mid-forties female population of the world. Waiting. In anticipation. In an anticipation only those who have known the unrequited love of the world’s premier heart-throb can anticipate.
We chatted to our mates and wondered if we had time to nip to the loo before they came on.
Soon the waiting became too much. We nipped to the loo. Then the waiting and lack of heart-throb became too much. Hysteria was setting in. We stamped. We clapped. We shouted ‘We want the Osmonds’.
And there, like a miracle, they were, all very many of them.
My friend shouted:
Alan!
Wayne!
Merrill!
Virl!
Tom!
Donny!
Jimmy!
I shouted:
Donny!
Strangely no one shouted:
Marie!
Much swooning and general middle-aged hysteria went on.Thus:
And it all made me realise that I had missed out a very essential part of growing up. As a teenager I never did the hysteria thing. And frankly thought the Osmonds a soppy, pathetic, time-wasting, drippy lot who were only good for dentistry adverts.
‘Donny I love you!’ I shouted. Hysteria is a lot better than it’s made out to be.
Friday 30 May 2008
Monday 26 May 2008
How Not to Go Camping on the Gower
It’s raining. It’s half-term. Some people decided to go camping. This is what happened:
My sister (from here on to be referred to as The Artist) her partner (from here on to be referred to as The Artist) and my nephew (from here on to be referred to as The Train and Transport Expert) decided to go camping.
They didn’t have a tent. So bought one on a well known auction site (from here on to be referred to as e-bay). They live in London. The tent was in Port Talbot. The Artist, the Artist and the Train and Transport Expert had never met the tent before. Nor had the tent met them. They decided to meet, greet, and erect the tent in my garden. Just to make sure it was a tent. And not an elephant, hamster or tower block.
We may, at this point, ask ourselves – How many Artists and Train and Transport Experts and Writers (that’s me although many other proper and improper nouns are applicable) does it take to erect a tent bought on a well known auction site?
Essentially an infinite number. So we had to draft in the Lawyer too (dragged from her post-exam bed in a state of advanced post-exam stupor). She had done such things before. I had done such things before, but the before that I had done them in was in the days that tents had triangular elevations and rectangular aspects. These days it’s all curves and contours. Like my body except harder to comprehend.
Now understand that this tent is large. Not one of your one-Artist tents that has room for just the Artist, a nibbled pen and a small sketch-pad. No, this tent is designed to house (or tent) an army of jobbing Painters, Sculptors, Potters and Cameo Cut-Out-Profile-Scissor-Wielders. And a Train and Transport Expert.
We began in the early afternoon in my garden. We finished in the late evening in my neighbour’s garden. The initial destination of the half-term camping expedition was the Gower. The tent, although of generous proportion, didn’t quite reach the Gower. So the cunning plan was to de-erect the tent and move it and its army of Artists and Train and Transport Experts to the Gower on Friday.
Then it began to rain and generally wind. Thus making it impossible to de-erect the tent without transporting a soggy tent or not transport a soggy tent because it had blown away in the direction of central Cardiff.
It’s still there. The Artists and the Train and Transport Expert are still here. This is Wales. It may never stop raining. They may never return to their delightful council flat in North London that is about half the size of their tent.
I have made enquiries at the local school to see if any further training for the Train and Transport Expert is available. If anyone can employ a couple of Artists please let me know.
My sister (from here on to be referred to as The Artist) her partner (from here on to be referred to as The Artist) and my nephew (from here on to be referred to as The Train and Transport Expert) decided to go camping.
They didn’t have a tent. So bought one on a well known auction site (from here on to be referred to as e-bay). They live in London. The tent was in Port Talbot. The Artist, the Artist and the Train and Transport Expert had never met the tent before. Nor had the tent met them. They decided to meet, greet, and erect the tent in my garden. Just to make sure it was a tent. And not an elephant, hamster or tower block.
We may, at this point, ask ourselves – How many Artists and Train and Transport Experts and Writers (that’s me although many other proper and improper nouns are applicable) does it take to erect a tent bought on a well known auction site?
Essentially an infinite number. So we had to draft in the Lawyer too (dragged from her post-exam bed in a state of advanced post-exam stupor). She had done such things before. I had done such things before, but the before that I had done them in was in the days that tents had triangular elevations and rectangular aspects. These days it’s all curves and contours. Like my body except harder to comprehend.
Now understand that this tent is large. Not one of your one-Artist tents that has room for just the Artist, a nibbled pen and a small sketch-pad. No, this tent is designed to house (or tent) an army of jobbing Painters, Sculptors, Potters and Cameo Cut-Out-Profile-Scissor-Wielders. And a Train and Transport Expert.
We began in the early afternoon in my garden. We finished in the late evening in my neighbour’s garden. The initial destination of the half-term camping expedition was the Gower. The tent, although of generous proportion, didn’t quite reach the Gower. So the cunning plan was to de-erect the tent and move it and its army of Artists and Train and Transport Experts to the Gower on Friday.
Then it began to rain and generally wind. Thus making it impossible to de-erect the tent without transporting a soggy tent or not transport a soggy tent because it had blown away in the direction of central Cardiff.
It’s still there. The Artists and the Train and Transport Expert are still here. This is Wales. It may never stop raining. They may never return to their delightful council flat in North London that is about half the size of their tent.
I have made enquiries at the local school to see if any further training for the Train and Transport Expert is available. If anyone can employ a couple of Artists please let me know.
Thursday 15 May 2008
How Not to Formicate
My internal body thermostat is broken. It’s a problem. This is what happens:
Mostly I’m fine
Then
My feet freeze from the toes inwards in a sensation reminiscent of a paddling in the North Sea not wearing sufficient Wellington-ness.
Then
My face becomes rosy and generally glowing like an embarrassed lady from a Victorian novel.
I glow like and embarrassed lady from a Victorian novel.
My breasts decide that since they are the most important part of me they’ll go on double-glow duty, and since there are two of them they decide to go on quadruple glow duty like a collection of ladies in a Victorian novel gossiping about the size of their husbands’ cummerbunds.
Meanwhile my knees and upper shins are fine, a sort of balmy spring afternoon Edwardian novel about the great outdoors manner of fine.
My toes continue to freeze like a novel of unspecified vintage about polar exploration.
I’ve told the doctor. Her solution was to remove some blood. I’m assuming that she felt that all this glowing and Victorian-ness was due to an excess of blood. And the removal thereof was a Victorian style solution. She had no leeches. I’m quite glad about that.
It all makes it difficult to know what to wear of a morning. This is what I’ve come up with (working up from the floor region) :
Twenty pairs of thermal walking socks (on each foot)
Jeans or legwarmers (rainbow striped)
A cummerbund and bustle
Nothing
A pair of pre-cooled coconut shells
nothing
A scarf
A gel-filled face mask
A balaclava
A straw hat with a jaunty collection of peonies and a puce ribbon.
The doctor believes that it is a case of Raynaulds Syndrome meets PMS meets the Perimenopause. I’ve just looked it up on Wikipedia and it informs me that it might be a case of formication. If only.
Mostly I’m fine
Then
My feet freeze from the toes inwards in a sensation reminiscent of a paddling in the North Sea not wearing sufficient Wellington-ness.
Then
My face becomes rosy and generally glowing like an embarrassed lady from a Victorian novel.
I glow like and embarrassed lady from a Victorian novel.
My breasts decide that since they are the most important part of me they’ll go on double-glow duty, and since there are two of them they decide to go on quadruple glow duty like a collection of ladies in a Victorian novel gossiping about the size of their husbands’ cummerbunds.
Meanwhile my knees and upper shins are fine, a sort of balmy spring afternoon Edwardian novel about the great outdoors manner of fine.
My toes continue to freeze like a novel of unspecified vintage about polar exploration.
I’ve told the doctor. Her solution was to remove some blood. I’m assuming that she felt that all this glowing and Victorian-ness was due to an excess of blood. And the removal thereof was a Victorian style solution. She had no leeches. I’m quite glad about that.
It all makes it difficult to know what to wear of a morning. This is what I’ve come up with (working up from the floor region) :
Twenty pairs of thermal walking socks (on each foot)
Jeans or legwarmers (rainbow striped)
A cummerbund and bustle
Nothing
A pair of pre-cooled coconut shells
nothing
A scarf
A gel-filled face mask
A balaclava
A straw hat with a jaunty collection of peonies and a puce ribbon.
The doctor believes that it is a case of Raynaulds Syndrome meets PMS meets the Perimenopause. I’ve just looked it up on Wikipedia and it informs me that it might be a case of formication. If only.
Friday 9 May 2008
How to Stop a Man Fancying You and then the Opposite
I know, jumping the gun a bit, but, just in case.
Because this is what might happen:
I finally get a man to fancy me. We go out, we stay in, we get married, we live happily ever after. And then, well, what if I’m fed up with him, or he turns out to be not Mr Right, or a serial killer, or someone who leaves toast crumbs in my shoes? There will be no solutions left (aside from divorce, murdering him or disguising him as a hoover and hiding him in the cupboard under the stairs ) aside from getting him not to fancy me.
Prepared or what?
So - How to Stop a Man Fancying You Using Newton’s Law of Cooling:
The law states: The rate of change of the temperature of an object is proportional to the difference between its initial temperature and the ambient temperature
In our case we obviously want to reduce the temperature of the object. Simply a matter of reducing the ambient temperature. There are a number of ways of doing this:
Hide all the object’s clothes.
Turn off the central heating (also saves the planet as well as your sanity).
Move to Alaska (this may not work as the men to women ratio is about 6.456:1.3 ).
Make a suit out of those ice-cube bags and put it on him when he’s not looking.
Throw a bucket of cold Ribena over him.
Blow on him.
It may be the case that the object objects to being cooled by any of the above methods. Objects can be stubborn like that. The last resort is to simply point a pair of heated curling tongs at him and tell him to fuck off.
Now I’m thinking that surely if this works for stopping a man fancying you, science being what it is, the opposite approach should engender the opposite effect. And since, at the moment, I’m still on the opposite end of the process and conveniently an object is coming to my house tomorrow. I have a cunning plan:
I’m going to –
Turn my heating back on
Wrap us up together with woolly jumpers, long johns and my hot water bottle (which has a cover like a baby rabbit; that should help).
Fill the bath with hot chocolate and throw us in.
Curl his hair.
Hug him whilst in the throws of menopausal hot flushes ( I knew those would come in useful for something).
Blow on him.
I don’t think he’ll spot what I’m up to will he?
Because this is what might happen:
I finally get a man to fancy me. We go out, we stay in, we get married, we live happily ever after. And then, well, what if I’m fed up with him, or he turns out to be not Mr Right, or a serial killer, or someone who leaves toast crumbs in my shoes? There will be no solutions left (aside from divorce, murdering him or disguising him as a hoover and hiding him in the cupboard under the stairs ) aside from getting him not to fancy me.
Prepared or what?
So - How to Stop a Man Fancying You Using Newton’s Law of Cooling:
The law states: The rate of change of the temperature of an object is proportional to the difference between its initial temperature and the ambient temperature
In our case we obviously want to reduce the temperature of the object. Simply a matter of reducing the ambient temperature. There are a number of ways of doing this:
Hide all the object’s clothes.
Turn off the central heating (also saves the planet as well as your sanity).
Move to Alaska (this may not work as the men to women ratio is about 6.456:1.3 ).
Make a suit out of those ice-cube bags and put it on him when he’s not looking.
Throw a bucket of cold Ribena over him.
Blow on him.
It may be the case that the object objects to being cooled by any of the above methods. Objects can be stubborn like that. The last resort is to simply point a pair of heated curling tongs at him and tell him to fuck off.
Now I’m thinking that surely if this works for stopping a man fancying you, science being what it is, the opposite approach should engender the opposite effect. And since, at the moment, I’m still on the opposite end of the process and conveniently an object is coming to my house tomorrow. I have a cunning plan:
I’m going to –
Turn my heating back on
Wrap us up together with woolly jumpers, long johns and my hot water bottle (which has a cover like a baby rabbit; that should help).
Fill the bath with hot chocolate and throw us in.
Curl his hair.
Hug him whilst in the throws of menopausal hot flushes ( I knew those would come in useful for something).
Blow on him.
I don’t think he’ll spot what I’m up to will he?
Sunday 4 May 2008
How Not to Find a Man to Fancy You
I heard some handy pieces of relationship advice. From Lulu. Who was hosting ‘Sunday Lovesongs’. Which I was listening to as a form of aversion therapy. Lulu is highly qualified to give relationship advice as she sang ‘Boom Bang-a-Bang’ in the Eurovision song contest.
This was her advice on the topic of finding your perfect man –
1. Remember, no matter how many many many many many many (I added a few of those manys) years you have been looking for Mr Right he is out there somewhere.
2. Be beautiful, or as beautiful as you can.
3. Think what attributes you might like in your perfect man. Then in order to find him think of the places a man with those sorts of attributes might be. Then go there. Looking beautiful, or as beautiful as you can.
I lost no time. I made myself as beautiful as I could with the limited resources available to me. These included:
A toothbrush
A hairbrush
Hair
Teeth
Then I was stuck. So I rushed to the computer opened Wikihow and put ‘Be Beautiful’ in. And proceeded to follow their advice:
1. ‘Seek beauty’. I assumed this was an important preliminary step so I found what beauty I could that was knocking around the house –
A clean kitchen floor
A cat
An apple
A carrot
A potato shaped like a potato
The Lawyer hunched over her revision.
Essentially that was it. And I ignored the Lawyer as any attempt to be beautiful alongside a seventeen-year-old version of a much more beautiful version of myself is fucking hopeless. I returned to contemplating the potato shaped like a potato.
2. ‘Recognise the beauty in yourself. Look in the mirror and search for beauty. By now, you've probably noticed that the most beautiful things in life are often subtle and hidden’ Well put I thought. I searched and eventually discovered that my right shoulder was of a moderately attractive nature.
3. ‘Enhance your physical beauty’. I did a few press ups.
4.’ Develop your inner beauty’. I drank some very pretty coloured fruit juice.
5. ‘Create beauty outside of yourself.’ I drew a flower on my arm.
6. ‘Character is beautiful’. Good.
It went on to advise listening to some music that made you dance and sing and smile and then your happiness will shine. What usually happens to me is people leave the room with comments like ‘life’s not a fucking musical’. Although, of course, mine is.
So, now I was beautiful I set forth to seek my perfect man in places that perfect men like to hide.
I wore the white fluffy dress with all the skirts as it was the only item of clothing I had that showed my shoulder off in all its moderate attractiveness.
I danced and sang to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious as is appropriate and makes you sound precocious which surely is akin to beauty.
I drew a few more large pink felt-tip flowers on my arm just to make sure.
I took of the usual amount of character (in retrospect I probably should have toned that down a bit).
This is where I went:
To the DIY shop
He may have been my perfect man, I’m not sure. He had a nice bright orange uniform. And his chat-up line was original:
‘Would you mind leaving the store?’
Fairly obviously he wanted to get me on my own. I’ve given him my number.
This was her advice on the topic of finding your perfect man –
1. Remember, no matter how many many many many many many (I added a few of those manys) years you have been looking for Mr Right he is out there somewhere.
2. Be beautiful, or as beautiful as you can.
3. Think what attributes you might like in your perfect man. Then in order to find him think of the places a man with those sorts of attributes might be. Then go there. Looking beautiful, or as beautiful as you can.
I lost no time. I made myself as beautiful as I could with the limited resources available to me. These included:
A toothbrush
A hairbrush
Hair
Teeth
Then I was stuck. So I rushed to the computer opened Wikihow and put ‘Be Beautiful’ in. And proceeded to follow their advice:
1. ‘Seek beauty’. I assumed this was an important preliminary step so I found what beauty I could that was knocking around the house –
A clean kitchen floor
A cat
An apple
A carrot
A potato shaped like a potato
The Lawyer hunched over her revision.
Essentially that was it. And I ignored the Lawyer as any attempt to be beautiful alongside a seventeen-year-old version of a much more beautiful version of myself is fucking hopeless. I returned to contemplating the potato shaped like a potato.
2. ‘Recognise the beauty in yourself. Look in the mirror and search for beauty. By now, you've probably noticed that the most beautiful things in life are often subtle and hidden’ Well put I thought. I searched and eventually discovered that my right shoulder was of a moderately attractive nature.
3. ‘Enhance your physical beauty’. I did a few press ups.
4.’ Develop your inner beauty’. I drank some very pretty coloured fruit juice.
5. ‘Create beauty outside of yourself.’ I drew a flower on my arm.
6. ‘Character is beautiful’. Good.
It went on to advise listening to some music that made you dance and sing and smile and then your happiness will shine. What usually happens to me is people leave the room with comments like ‘life’s not a fucking musical’. Although, of course, mine is.
So, now I was beautiful I set forth to seek my perfect man in places that perfect men like to hide.
I wore the white fluffy dress with all the skirts as it was the only item of clothing I had that showed my shoulder off in all its moderate attractiveness.
I danced and sang to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious as is appropriate and makes you sound precocious which surely is akin to beauty.
I drew a few more large pink felt-tip flowers on my arm just to make sure.
I took of the usual amount of character (in retrospect I probably should have toned that down a bit).
This is where I went:
To the DIY shop
He may have been my perfect man, I’m not sure. He had a nice bright orange uniform. And his chat-up line was original:
‘Would you mind leaving the store?’
Fairly obviously he wanted to get me on my own. I’ve given him my number.
Friday 2 May 2008
How Not to Test if a Man Fancies You
Something odd is going on. Someone is using my distorted laws of relationships to understand the laws of science.
This is what he wrote (his name is Bryan) ‘you've done a great service to all the budding scientists of the world’ and there I was thinking I was doing a service to all budding confused potential lovers in the world.
So I’m thinking maybe I’ve got this all wrong, backwards or somewhat distorted. Perhaps I should be using the basic laws of relationships to understand the laws of science.
And so I was lead to attempt to find out what exactly the basic laws of relationships are. This was a while ago. There was a fairly major problem. There are none. Or at least all the ones I was offered on a famous search engine and online encyclopaedia differed from each other. As any dedicated researcher like myself knows that means that there are none.
Why has no one applied the scientific method of proof to the field of relationships? It seems simple enough. All that is required is the use of observation and experimentation to obtain a law.
Hence I took it upon myself to do so.
This is what happened.
Hypothesis tested:
Man fancies Woman
Equipment used:
Man
Woman
Test tube
Method:
Put Man and Woman together in a test tube, mix thoroughly and observe what happens. (Note – I couldn’t find a test tube of sufficient size so I had to put the Man and the Woman near a test tube instead) (Also note that I didn’t actually have a man to participate in the experiment so I had to use a cat instead) (so for Man read cat).
Results:
1. Man and Woman had interesting conversation about test tubes.
2. Man and Woman tried to use test tube to grow a baby.
3. Man had a nice purr and snuggled down on Woman’s lap.
4. Man discovered that there was a mouse/football in the next room so he left.
5. Woman washed up test tube and went to bed.
Conclusions:
Probably not.
So – Basic Relationship Law 1:
Men don’t fancy women if they are cats and not men. But they think they’re okish.
Obviously there is a lot more work to do. I’m applying for a research grant. Or donations. Please. This is important work. Also if there are any men out there interested in furthering my research please contact me as the cat is not all that cooperative.
And Bryan – research suggestions always welcome as I can see now the whole reverse field is fraught with hazard. And cats.
This is what he wrote (his name is Bryan) ‘you've done a great service to all the budding scientists of the world’ and there I was thinking I was doing a service to all budding confused potential lovers in the world.
So I’m thinking maybe I’ve got this all wrong, backwards or somewhat distorted. Perhaps I should be using the basic laws of relationships to understand the laws of science.
And so I was lead to attempt to find out what exactly the basic laws of relationships are. This was a while ago. There was a fairly major problem. There are none. Or at least all the ones I was offered on a famous search engine and online encyclopaedia differed from each other. As any dedicated researcher like myself knows that means that there are none.
Why has no one applied the scientific method of proof to the field of relationships? It seems simple enough. All that is required is the use of observation and experimentation to obtain a law.
Hence I took it upon myself to do so.
This is what happened.
Hypothesis tested:
Man fancies Woman
Equipment used:
Man
Woman
Test tube
Method:
Put Man and Woman together in a test tube, mix thoroughly and observe what happens. (Note – I couldn’t find a test tube of sufficient size so I had to put the Man and the Woman near a test tube instead) (Also note that I didn’t actually have a man to participate in the experiment so I had to use a cat instead) (so for Man read cat).
Results:
1. Man and Woman had interesting conversation about test tubes.
2. Man and Woman tried to use test tube to grow a baby.
3. Man had a nice purr and snuggled down on Woman’s lap.
4. Man discovered that there was a mouse/football in the next room so he left.
5. Woman washed up test tube and went to bed.
Conclusions:
Probably not.
So – Basic Relationship Law 1:
Men don’t fancy women if they are cats and not men. But they think they’re okish.
Obviously there is a lot more work to do. I’m applying for a research grant. Or donations. Please. This is important work. Also if there are any men out there interested in furthering my research please contact me as the cat is not all that cooperative.
And Bryan – research suggestions always welcome as I can see now the whole reverse field is fraught with hazard. And cats.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
