A True Story, I Swear

I was going to start this post with,

 "I, like most people, enjoy a jolly good fucking". 

In my head it was good — amusing, inclusive, cheeky, with the shock element of crude bluntness; the elements were all there for it to be a strong opener, that attention-grabbing first line with which to hook any surfer just browsing through and not that minded to stop.

And then, even as I chuckled at my own cleverness while I typed, a thought struck me.

What if my mum read it?

*Squeal followed by nasty thump on bonnet*

A response bizarre on so many levels that even if I set them out with bullet points and interesting graphics AND got Peter Snow to walk us through them, none of us would be any the wiser.

So, instead I'll open with this:

There are few pleasures in life that match the slow hiss of air escaping between your upper teeth and lower lip as you formulate the work "fuck".  It's anticipatory.  It is the vanguard of a sweary satisfaction that is only moments away from attainment.   

The Irish and Glaswegians realise this.  They embrace swearing, sprinkling their conversations with 'fecks' and 'fucks' like hundreds-and-thousands, adding colour and texture to what would otherwise be a plain bun.

They use the word with such dedicated frequency that all meaning has been lost and thereby any offence.  And this is where my relationship with swearing lies.  I approve of swearing when it's empty of booze and violence. 

Writing sitcoms inevitably means you view everybody else's sitcom without laughing, even if it's funny.  Scratch that.  Especially if it's funny.  You sit there, arms crossed, a faintly disbelieving sneer flickering across your lips.  You prod for weak points, palpate for over-worked jokes, and then fall on it like the shadow of a lion over a weakened impala foal. 

And the really crap sitcoms are the ones which are padded out with 'comedy' swearing. 

News Flash 

If your script is relying on swearing for its edgy bad-assiness, then it's shit of the first order.  Show some freakin' discernment.  A well-placed fuck is worth ten in the bush. 

Moving on, then...

I've noticed I'm not an angry swearer.  I only seem to swear when considering matters of existential angst — when I'm feeling frustrated, bemused, or exasperated.  A succinct "For fuck's sake" acts as a channel for my helpless dismay in the face of what is, inarguably, a stupid universe. 

And even then there's a furtive element to my blaspheming.  Strictly behind closed doors.  With people I love and trust.  Who won't judge me.   Fellow fucksters, because of course we're like alcoholics, us swearers.   Oh yes.  We don't like to swear alone.  Swearing is a group thing, a builder of bonhomie and team spirit.  Swear together and stay together.  

But then there's the ugly side of swearing, the side that detracts rather than enhances, the side that makes you look just a little bit common.

It was the acknowledgement of this dark side to swearing — Dr Jekyll's Mr Hyde, Eric Little's Eddie Large — that was responsible for my stand on, excuse me, fucking in public.

Picture this.  The scene — a car park in Berwick with a narrow exit wide enough for only one vehicle.  The situation — a car with L-plates blocking this exit with me stuck behind.  Initially I was patience personified.  Poor sad little learner, I thought, she'll be feeling the embarrassment of her shaky clutch control for years to come, along with her feeble grasp of stopping distances. 

I waited and I waited.  Minutes ticked by.  Then I considered the possibility that Poor Sad Little Learner didn't realise I was behind her. O-ho, inadequate use of mirrors, I thought.  So mindful of the proscriptive rules in 'The Highway Code' on horn deployment, I proffered a friendly 'toot'.  Just to make other road users aware of my presence, you understand.

Now.  There's always a mate, isn't there?

So if you find yourself in a position where you personally can't be arsed to get upset about something, you can hand the responsibility over to somebody who can.  Violence by proxy.

To cut a very ugly story short, this throwback stuck her head through my car window and started yowling in my face, a bit like Charlie the Cat in the public information ads of my childhood, only this time warning about the perils of Elizabeth Duke jewellery.

She was so enraged I had no chance of reasoning with her.  On and on she went.  A crowd grew.  Tension built.  I had to seize control.  Defuse the situation.  I racked my brain for something clever, something erudite to say that would stop this scene becoming a resconstruction on Crimewatch.

"Oh, fuck off, you wearying fat slag."

Tah-dah! 

Having delivered this stingingly elegant coup de grace, I threw the car forward, squeezing past Poor Sad Little Learner who had managed to park, and flipped a cheery 'V' as I sped off. Clearly it wasn't my superior education and negotiating skills that won the day, it was the fact that I was sitting in a car with the engine still running. 

And did I spend the morning in town on a victorious high re-telling this story of accomplishment and heroism equal in scale to that of the Spartans at Thermopylae? 

No.

Three things spoiled it for me.

1. The knowledge that I had sunk to Wearying Fat Slag's level so quickly and over something so frighteningly trivial.  I'd allowed her to make me lose control to the point where I had no other vocabulary left to offer.
2. To the ears of the bystanders, I sounded no different from Wearying Fat Slag to whom I felt myself so superior.   I was no different.
3. The fact that now I was marked woman and could get stabbed between the eyes with a scuffed stiletto when I least expected it.

So now I prefer to keep my swearing a private affair between mutually consenting adults...

A View to a Kill

It's that time of year where people with disposable income

are hoping to book a bargain holiday.  But how — as the credit crunch casts its damp-squibby shadow over the land and global warming submerges some of our favourite holiday destinations —

can folk be sure that they're a) getting a good deal, and b) are keeping their private carbon beach free of footprints?

Being utterly skint (but it doesn't matter, honestly, because if I were a Buddhist I'd be a gnat's breath from enlightenment), it was lovely last year to be able to say to friends with a delicate whiff of censure, "Mm, holiday?  Oh, no, we're staycationing this summer", as if we were electing to stay home amongst the credit card bills and stale, defeated air as recompense for their reckless squandering of the planet's resources on their bastard all-inclusive to Lanzarote.

I lost count of how many people asked, after a short pause, "Really? Staycationing where?"*  The problem, y'see, lies in the definition of 'staycation'. Because while for some people 'stay' means remaining at a defined, fixed point, there are those for whom 'stay' means travelling as far as possible before risking malaria or friendship bracelets.

Anyway, truth be told, we were harldy putting ourselves out.  A travel rug spread out on the lawn at home to suggest la dolce vita maybe carbon neutral, but when you add in the patio heater and gas barbecue necessary to combat the British weather, the whole concept starts to look about as leaky as the canopy of a disappearing rain forest. 

A concerned Sting experiences

rising sea levels first hand

So how do the perennially skint amongst us who don't (for various reasons known only to themselves) play the mandolin, enjoy a change of scene and the chance to experience how other people live?

I'll tell you how. 

You take a leaf out of the book of the local couple who viewed my bloody house last Sunday, who together have given rise to this year's holiday buzzword — micro-tourism. 

They arrived on foot (of course), admired the scenery (ie, an unfitted kitchen and walk-in larder);  in fact they immersed themselves in our culture for a full fifty minutes before enjoying a complimentary cup of tea and an eco-friendly walk home.

Total cost of their mini-break?

Except...

In order to undertake those lengthy, exhausting yet oh-so-necessary house-viewing preparations — namely decontaminating every surface bar the ceiling — I had to call upon the able assistance of Mr Muscle and his life partner, Extra Thick Bleach.  By the time we'd finished, the hole in the ozone had unravelled to the equator.

Bloody time-wasters.  Costing us the earth.








*And no matter how much brio I employed, "Um, here" only ever sounded weak, following as it did such a lofty statement of planet-saving intent.)

Snow Stops Play

Oh, look, I'll get it out of the way.

Gratuitous snow porn

I know, I know!  Everybody's familiar with the stuff; it's knocked news from its traditional top spot in the news, and there can be nobody alive in the United Kingdom who still believes that the sky is falling down except possibly a few creationists living in the less accessible suburbs of Dudley.

There's white stuff everywhere you look; the country has become one, big, cocaine-dusted toilet cistern, and you have to admit, everybody's certainly more chatty as a result.  I can't slip or stumble anywhere without being given conspiratorial head shakes and what-is-this-like eyebrow waggles. In the Days Before The Snow Came this would have been reason enough to keep your taser with the safety off.

Anyway, I digress.  This blog is not about snow, despite this;

Snow — hardcore,  full frontal

but rather, the effect it has had on my new job.

Not my new new job that involves long hours hunched over my keyboard like, totally working, instead of blogging.  This is my explanation for the paucity of posts lately, by the way, highlighting the main failing of a capitalist society — that the lazy and work-shy go unrewarded. 

No, not my new-new job, but my new job as

Simon Cowell.

You see, I love writing.  I always have.  I was the annoying kid in class who would ask to do essays, and whose educational highpoint was having to write a 1500 word essay in detention on 'The Inside of a Ping Pong Ball'.  That wasn't punishment, that was careers guidance.

Trouble is, I'm not really qualified to write about anything. 

I haven't had a particularly interesting life, althouth I did almost enter my family to go on Telly Addicts and so conceivably, in an alternate reality, could have met Noel Edmonds.  

I didn't go to university, thereby spectacularly failing to chum-up with future editors/producers/oscar-winning directors with whom to play the nepotism card. 

I basically have no doors in which to jam my foot. 

I've failed woefully in my efforts to initiate sex-romps with useful captains of industry, so blackmailing my way into my dream job looks doubtful, and I'm not prepared to be a war correspondent because

• they get shot at, and
• the desert air would create merry keratin-hell on my hair, no matter how much Frizz-Ease I managed to get through Customs.

A girl always wants to look her best, even under sniper fire.

Trouble with autodidacts is that they know a little about a lot of stuff.  And a lot of that stuff isn't anything to be proud of.  We just sort of pick up useless bits of information like a cat (Felis silvestris catus) picks up sticky-willies (the fruit of the plant you may know as cleavers, beggar lice, gripgrass or catchweed.  Makes an excellent emetic/laxative, if you ever feel the need to purge organically).

I know a little bit about literature, theatre, film, editing, acupuncture, psychology, world religion, quantum theory, car mechanics, biology, chemistry, yoga, the natural world...  Basically, I'm fairly useful to have on a pub quizz team, provided I'm not too drunk and it's not past my bedtime. 

But looking through the newspapers, well, they're all experts aren't they?  Political experts, Middle East experts, financial experts, gardening experts, relationship (ahem) experts, food experts, wine experts, fashion experts.   There doesn't seem to be a place for someone who just, er, whitters, and y'know... rambles on about... erm... stuff.  Vaguely.

I became momentarily excited when I discovered Caitlin Moran, columnist for The Times.  She didn't seem qualified in anything except watching telly.  But then I discovered she had an Interesting Childhood, and was into the Music Scene, and Flirted with Drugs.

How can I compete with that?  My journey to adulthood was strictly lower case.  My parents,with a shocking lack of Bohemian instinct, insisted my brothers and I went to school, failed to divorce or have Interesting People around to the house.  For about a fortnight in my twenties I smoked a bit of skunk, until I realised I got the same result from a big meal. 

Fortunately, thanks to a very angry comment left in response to one of my blogposts, my way forward has become clear.

I will become Simon Cowell.

Q: What is Simon good at? 
A:  Stating his opinion. 

Well, I can do that. 

Q: What else is he good at? 
A:  Letting criticism slide off him like a buttered whore on a fat man. 

I can do that, too, courtesy of being an INTJ.  Which is just a nice way of putting 'Borg'.

I am designed to rip people's dreams to shreds, to cast their hopes and aspirations onto the cold, cruel waves of life so they get tugged away by reality and lost forever.  Basically, I am born to be a reviewer! 

I mean, it started off as something to while away the time, a bit of a laugh but... I could do it for real, and in a Simon Cowell stylie!  Thanks to the support and motivation of Mrs Keira Knightley's Pancakes, my future is opening up before me like an underage sex-pest on Jeremy Kyle.

*Sound of screeching brakes*

I've just heard that the local play I was planning to review this week, that I was itching to review — 'A Celebration'  by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall — has been cancelled due to, oh yes, the bloody snow!

Guess I'll just have to put my dreams on ice...