How Not to Send a Valentine

So it’s nearly Valentines Day. Which, as many things do, led me to wonder what’s it all about? No, this is not a philosophical question, which of course would read WHAT’s it all about? We may move onto that later. Now I’m asking in a more historical way. We may move on to the hysterical later.

The story goes:
‘Saint Valentine, who upon rejection by his mistress was so heartbroken that he took a knife to his chest and sent her his still-beating heart as a token of his undying love for her. Hence, heart-shaped cards are now sent as a tribute to his overwhelming passion and suffering.’

Impressive stuff eh? No wonder the man was a bloody saint. Literally I guess too. Imagine the scene:

Valentine: I love you
Mistress: Fuck off
(this was all done by text)
(then in real life) (or at least in the same room)
Valentine: My heart is broken.
Heart: Don’t I know it?
Valentine: Well you’re no bloody good to me now.
Heart: I’m still beating aren’t I?
Valentine: That gives me an idea.
Heart: This brown paper is not as comfortable as your squishy squashy lungs.
Valentine: Don’t worry, you’re a token.
Heart: That’s ok then, just don’t tie the string too tight.

A few days later:
Mistress: Ah! A parcel. I wonder if it’s my Amazon order.
Heart: Erg squidge pitter-pat.
Mistress: Oh, quelle disappointment it’s just the butcher using a different wrapping from usual.
Heart: I’m a token.
Mistress: With peas and carrots then.
Heart: WHAT’s it all about?

So, as you send your card just think a little more carefully about true love and what veg might go well with that.

How Not to Cope With Empty-Nest Syndrome

The Physicist and the Lawyer have left for Uni in order to actually qualify for the aforementioned titles. I realise that perhaps I have left them ill-equipped for this adventure. Important things have not been passed from mother to daughter in the proper way.

The Lawyer, although adept in her field, has discovered that she doesn’t know proper cutlery etiquette for high table, why gowns have shoulders like American footballers and how to deal with impenetrable forms from government bodies. The Physicist, despite being an old hand at gowns, carnations and massive equations is still lacking in basic Tesco skills.

Meanwhile I, left to my own devices on my own, have had a minor revelation. Major revelations can be a tad painful so I’m sticking to minor ones. I can now do whatever I want.

So far I have:
Worn a mini-skirt
Turned the music up far too loud
Watched inappropriate videos
Changed my clothes up to seventeen times a day
Had strange men (or at least the Unknowable Man) round the house
Despaired of strange men
Despaired
Not got a job
Forgotten to go to bed
Smoked
Drinked
Not tidied up
Slept with the cats on my bed
And not eaten a proper meal.

Who needs teenagers?

How To Tell if a Man Fancies You Using Philosophy

The Unknowable Man’s spare career (we should all have one) (mine is as a cat walker) is as a Consultant Freelance Philosopher. The public need for such a person is fairly self-evident. Oft have I wished to consult a Consultant Philosopher on the finer points of philosophy for those every-day questions such as:
Why did I walk into this room?
Where have I come from to arrive here?
Does this interesting pile of junk on the kitchen table actually exist?
If I have free will then why is the solicitor charging me?
Why are Fallacies so often pathetic?
And
If this is reality then why does it seem so dusty?


Philosophers tend to ask the really BIG questions, such as
WHY?
HOW?
WHAT?
And
PARDON? (those are the politer philosophers)

An interesting thing about the big questions, I’ve noticed, is that they tend to be very small.

Whereas Relationship Physicists (my other spare career) tend to ask very slightly longer ones:
‘How do you tell if a man fancies you?’ tends very much to be the favourite.

So, in a spirit of trying to find something in common with the man I’m sleeping with I will now attempt to discover:
How to tell if a man fancies you using philosophy-

Step 1: ask the BIG questions

why do I want to know if he fancies me?
how will I know if he fancies me?
what does ‘fancies’ actually mean?
pardon me for asking.

Step 2: answer the BIG questions
This can obviously only be done in a personal context but if you’re stuck then some examination of the types of knowledge such as a priori and a posteriori (most relevant here) will probably be as useless as anything else.

Step 3: come to a philosophical conclusions. Popular ones include:
‘Something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.’
‘An infinite capacity for taking things for granted.’
‘Some touch of madness.’
And
‘Fuck knows.’

All in all I’m beginning to suspect that philosophy may not be the way forward for the Big Question. As a famous philosopher said:

‘Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know.’

And as a famous scientist said:

‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.’

Perhaps it’s time to stop asking The Question. Surely we all really know the answer. 42.

Mamma Mia! Or How Life Really Could be a Musical

I’ve been to the cinema. The film went like this:

A young beautiful blond 20 year-old was about to get married.
She sang a song.
Her 40 –something-year-old mother did DIY.
She sang a song.
Some men were involved who also sang.
There was dancing.
And in the end it wasn’t the beautiful blond 20 year-old that got married but the 40-something-year-old mother. She lived happily ever after. With Pierce Brosnan.

Mamma Mia!

This, I feel should be a parable for life. Aside from the Pierce Brosnan bit.

So why, we ask ourselves, isn’t life more like a musical? When was the last time that a group of people were, at one moment discussing something quite mundane, like money, or oranges, or perforations and then spontaneously broke into a song and dance routine? Where are the hidden orchestras playing overly-arranged tunes? The young tight-buttocked men grinning inanely whilst flinging their limbs into the air? These, surely, are the elements in life that lead to long-lasting happiness.

And so I feel it is my mission to rectify the aforementioned shortcomings. I have the technology. I have just purchased the costumes.

This is how it will go:
A not-so-young woman wants a man.
She sings a song, the orchestra plays from her iPod (we won’t worry that no one else can hear it for it is only the main protagonist that we are interested in).
The young tight-buttocked chorus dances and flings limbs about (this will be in miniature using the woman’s daughter’s ex-collection of Ken dolls but some cunning camera work will cover this lack of scale).
The woman dances wearing her new costume that she bought for her forthcoming holiday but will double up for the purpose (a purple tankini and a pair of red houndstooth daps).
A man sees her (through the kitchen window) (for this is a kitchen-sink musical) and falls in love with her.
He sings a song (or possibly it is groaning, but we are not sure, nor do we actually care).
The man is not Pierce Brosnan because his singing is crap.
In the end the woman of a certain age marries the peeping Tom accompanied by a dancing chorus of Kens and Barbies and much merriment and music that only she can hear.

There are no young beautiful blond 20 year-olds involved because she died of embarrassment in the very first scene.

I believe it will be a hit and run on Broadway for many years until purple tankinis and red houndstooth daps fall out of fashion and women of a certain age are no longer wanting men.

Not Sex and the City or 'Point of View – What’s the Fucking Point?'

I’m still supposed to be writing my Critical Study. It is now entitled ‘Point of View – What’s the Fucking Point?’ The answer, it turned out, quite fortuitously, was on Sky Everything.

I’ve been watching Sex and the City. It’s a program with multiple limited third person limited multiple perspectives. As well as a first person narrative point of view . This tends to put the whole idea of Sex in perspective, or at least from my point of view.

And I noticed something. Wherever the characters go they meet someone to shag. And they live in New York.

It’s a well known fact that Cardiff has all New York has to offer except without the wide pavements, wide sidewalks, Americans and lack of discourse about rugby. So, therefore, logically, wherever I go I should meet someone to shag.

Logic is a flawed logic I find. For this hasn’t happened to me. As someone wise once said – ‘Some are born celibate, some achieve celibacy and some have celibacy thrust upon them’. I have accomplished all three. Without the thrusting bit.

But I’m not going to be outdone by New York. I have briefly given up living in a musical and being Mary Poppins in favour of (sorry in favor of) living in a Welsh version of Sex and the City. Entitled Sex and the City. Interesting how the title works for both places.

Episode 1:
I get splashed by a bus.
I write on my computer a telling question: ‘Are New Yorkers sexier than Cardiffians?’
Friend 1 tells me about her sex life – it doesn’t exist.
Friend 2 asks me how to tell if a man fancies her – I explain about quantum physics.
Friend 3 doesn’t exist.
I go out to the greater metropolis to get chatted up and taken home by a sexy man. This doesn’t happen. I buy shoes.
I write on my computer – ‘Yes. And we buy shoes too. Albeit shoes from Clarks with flat heels and orthotic inserts. But they are red.’

I write on my computer - ‘The problem is that Welsh men don’t watch Sex and the City. They watch rugby. So they don’t understand multiple perspectives. Or that when a sexy woman in flat red shoes with orthotic insoles gently nudges their car in a multi-story car park that means she wants to be propositioned. They think that propositioning is something to do with rugby.’

So, thus I found out – the point of point of view is fucking. Or not. As the case may be.

I’m going back to being Mary Poppins now. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.