SUPERYULE BEAR ON BIKE ON BOX
LAST OF KIN
At certain points in your life, death is a possibility.
At times like these you’ll be asked to name your next of kin. You may be asked to write it down, an act which can turn slander into libel if you’re not their next of kin.
So why next of?
Why not last of?
There might be something in this. Imagine the more distant the relation you nominate, the more remote the possibility of your death. This is not as contrived as you might think as murdered people are usually known by their murderer.
But less seriously, it’s not about you – it’s about them. It clears their name when you peg it. Administratively, it’s an alibi.
Next time you’re asked to name someone, use the name of the person asking and see if the paperwork disappears.
THE TENACITY OF STRAWBERRY STALKS
When mid-lifers like us were kids, strawberries were a rarity, unless you were rich. So was Arctic Roll (did your teeth just go on edge?). If we were lucky, our mum’d whisk up an Instant Whip or an apple crumble might appear on a Sunday.
But strawberries…strawberrries were like caviar (as for caviar, we made do with cod roe in batter from the chippy). But when a punnet did finally arrive, we’d each be given a berry (or 3) and take enormous pleasure in yanking off the stalk – when I say stalk, I mean the green leafy hat that sits on top.
Theses stalks used to just flop out as raspberries still do. But here and now, in 2011, they’re bastards to pull out. Try it. See what a total mess you make of it, like some back-stage scene in a snuff movie. They’re implanted like teeth. The only way to lop them is to lop them with a knife. Are we all scalping strawberries in this day and age, or is it just me being a cackhanded patsy?
THE (insert your name here) EFFECT
We’re all incredible.
Every single one of us.
8 and half a billion miracle workers, but all but a few of us aren’t quite sure what our magic powers are or how to use them.
We need role models if we’re going to be everyday role models to one another.
At Liverpool FC Kenny Dalglish has created The Dalglish Effect by convincing people of their talent and allowing them to play the way their instincts tell them.
Across Africa, women have created The Girl Effect by persuading people in wealthier nations to help fund their education in order for them to carve out careers in all kinds of industry and everso quietly change the course of history for their continent.
The You Effect is yet to be decided. This is the hard part – deciding what it is you were born to do, the path you really want to follow, the mark you truly hope to make. There are two ways to get there. One is keep your mouth shut and work your arse off until the signs of change appear stark enough for someone else to say “Hey, that’s The (your name) Effect”. The other method is to tell the world you’re gonna do or be something so extraordinary that it puts irreversible pressure on you to deliver and you actually achieve your most far flung dream.
Either way, it’ll end up on your tombstone. And if it does, make sure your inscription doesn’t take itself too seriously even if you end up saving the human race from our own doom. Try instead to bring a smile to those who visit you long after you’re gone.
Here’s one of my favourites:
Sacred
To The Memory
Of
John Talbot
Who at the Age of Eighteen
Had His Ass Shot Off
In a Honky-Tonk
November 1, 1936
This Mayonnaise Jar
With Wilted Flowers In It
Was Left Here Six Months Ago
By His Sister
Who Is In The Crazy Place Now
TRIPLE DIP
It’s a grim time for most people. I won’t go into the detail as it’s like a child showing you under their 3 day old scab. Instead, I’m going to take the pessimist view in order to get to the bright side of life. A friend once told me the joys of being a pessimist – if you imagine everything is going to be terrible and it only turns out bad, then you end up cheered up.
It’s a principle I’m prepared to throw at the plight of the nation.
The Triple Dip.
In one way it sounds so dire, so bleak, that we might all as well check ourselves into that Swiss centre for foreshortened life. In another way, it sounds like a bloody lovely sherbert ice cream. But the third and most upbeat way of viewing The Triple Dip is to expect Armageddon and when it doesn’t rock into town, we all toast a brighter future and a grateful now. Just think of how we’ll all feel if we brace ourselves for a Triple Dip and we end up not even seeing the full brunt of the Double Dip – it’ll be like winning the lottery and not being fucked up by it.
So, fellow gloomsters, pray for the worst. Get down on your knees and plead to hell to rise up and fry us to pieces, money-first. The best part is the more we want this epic end to get here, the further it’ll run away.
Just like love.
And butterflies.
THE DAY MY FACE FELL APART
This’ll make you laugh. I woke up today with an eye that wouldn’t open. When it did finally open, it instantly shut again as if daylight was hydrochloric acid.
Ny nose was also a mess. It ran its snotty legs off. Mucus is still streaming down my nostrils as I fling my head back so as not to snot my keyboard. The eye must be colluding with the nose.
Despite this sudden disintegration of my facial functions, I rode my eldest daughter to school. A simple act you’d think, followed by the even simpler act of posting two letters. It was between these two tasks that a bee flew into my face and rammed its sting into my lip – if it hadn’t been for my teeth, the little fucker would have javelin’d my tonsils such was the speed I was freewheeling at. Still, I rode on having posted the letters. It was at this point I met a neighbour who stopped me to stare at the state of my deformed face. I explained how I’d come to impersonate the bastard offspring of Daniella Westbrook, Michael Jackson and some strange large-lipped in-bred Royal gene from the Windsor clan. Then I rode home, remaining alive.
By now the paranoia stakes had risen to manic heights. Never before had cheese, ham and tomato on toast presented itself as gastro-terrorism. I swear the mustard was smeared in semtex. The 4 day old bread was as barbed as a bayonet, so I hacked the crust off and buried it in a reinforced lead trunk (ok, so that’s a fib but you the gist).
As my face lies strewn in watery fragments around the house, I try and piece it back together knowing one false move could be fatal to the land mine that was no doubt planted in the head at some point the night before.
If you too come across a hattrick of ailments/accidents in a single morning, do not attempt to drive a car, fix a plug or mow the lawn.
INTERDEPENDENCE DAY – JULY 4TH 2011
As most Americans on Earth slap their thighs and each other’s backs with congratulatory yee-haa on their big day of freedom, the rest of the world looks on and wonders if there’s a need for a bigger, broader, deeper day that we can all join in on. In a word, yes.
Interdependence day is the penny dropping that everything is interconnected – from the writing of this post to the reaction of you reading it to the confluence of people finding things easier if they form a chain. History tells us it’s pointless fighting over whose hedge it is when it easier to remove the hedge. You can drill down into a thousand theories as to why things are linked, but frankly life’s more fun if we just live with it.
The one rule of interdependence day is: as hard as you may try you cannot spend it alone.
There you go.
Best be off now as I have a war to fight over a drooping tree.
THE TRAIN WILL CRASH BEFORE THE JOURNEY’S OVER
And this will be the only real time witness on record. They will scour the entry for meaning and hope to find threads to Al Qaeda, or Sectarianism, or some suppressed psychosis that can provide an answer for the families of those mourning the loss of my fellow passengers.
Don’t tempt fate, I hear the non-conspiracy theorists among you cry. What kind of a story would it be without an irreversible moment that would render you helpless? Not a very interesting one I’d guess. So go with the downhill, kamikaze, out-of-control flow and accept the imminent catastrophe. Accept, like the second plane going into the last standing twin tower, that you’ll read this and later see/read/hear the headline news of the 10:06 from Paddington derailing and wiping out a ninth of its passengers. Enquiries will prove fruitless and seek blame to no avail. New safety measures will be demanded but not acted upon as network rail reneges on the interest payments of its £34bn debt.
Hope will come via Hollywood, who’ll construct a screenplay around the tragedy with Sean Penn playing the role of the messenger who the rest of the world want to assassinate. With little time left, all that needs to be said is for you all to seize the moment before it’s snatched away from you.
BUFFETT’S 99% RULE
Warren Buffett is an extra-extraordinary man. His £42bn gift to the Bill Gates Foundation said as much about his ego as it did about his wealth. He has stated on record that he will give away 99% of his wealth. Maybe if we all adopted this spirit of generosity, we’d all be billionaires, if only until we passed our fortune on.
Earth Tax, Gift Aid and other well-named philanthropic gestures are 1% there. It’s just the remaining 98% they need to work on.
MR DASWANI – THE THORN IN FASHION’S ARSE
Since when did a tailor go on tour?
Well today, as it happens.
Mr Daswani (and his Raja Fashions label from Kowloon, Hong Kong) is no ordinary tailor. He’s a showman. He makes Oswald Boateng look like Mr Buyright when it comes to front. Mr Raja M Daswani advertises with the balls of a brontosaurus. His full page epics in the sports pages of the broad sheets read like a Christopher Guest screenplay. These cocksure jabs at the not-so-Great British suit take the whole industry of fashion and ram its head through a mangle. When he starts a sentence with ‘I love seeing customers walk in a really bad suit that cost a fortune’ he makes you want to head for the Hilton Newcastle Gateshead just to see if a) he actually exists, and b) how fabulous his insults are face to face.
Before you storm his tour, read the big print: By Appointment Only.
Bagsy first.