It felt a bit like a Hollywood movie last week with volcanic ash menacingly making its way across Europe. If the Russians wanted to invade then that was the time to do it as Wing Commander Johnny Hero sipped tea and James Bond remained stuck at his skiing chalet waiting for it to blow over.
I still think it was an insurance scam by the government of Iceland as Jeremy Clarkson visited and was allowed to smoke as much as he wanted. Hot air and a packet of Woodbines is a lethal combination, but the get out for insurers is that Clarkson will boast to everyone that, as he did it, it must be an "act of God".
When things erupted, so to speak, I was stuck in Dubai on business and unable to get home so I managed a few days sight seeing. I realise you have no sympathy and there are worse places to be stuck. I could have been held in Kazakhstan or Croydon.
They love being biggest and best in Dubai. It's home to the world’s tallest building, where I sat in a restaurant with the world’s best food and watched the world’s tallest fountains go off every fifteen minutes, choreographed to the world’s worst music.
Where other schools would employ former Raith Rovers second eleven players as football coaches, one school here has ex England midfielder Carlton Palmer. Dubai - never knowingly understated.
Armani has a hotel here though Giorgio himself couldn’t make the opening because of the travel chaos, there’s Dolce and Gabanna and Chanel, as well as McDonalds and Costa. But that’s just where the fun starts. Look further and you’ll find outlets that reflect the Arab love of the gaudy. Shops like ‘You Bring It We Bling It’, a place where you can get anything from your mobile phone to your wife blinged with diamante or Swarovsky. Stupidly I had my underpants done. Now I know what having piles must be like.
I visited The Palm, a reclaimed area where the footballers have bought their holiday homes. It is a man made island in the shape of a palm tree with the Atlantis, a castle like hotel, at the end and having a foyer which is underwater. I was mesmerised looking through the floor to ceiling glass walls at giant fish and sharks swimming around a recreation of a sunken city. Wait till Dubai realises they can open the world’s biggest dentist waiting room here.
I spent some time in what’s billed as the world’s biggest shopping mall. There’s the front half of a full sized aeroplane here for kids to virtually fly, an operating theatre for them to play doctors and nurses, a university for them to graduate, and a law court in which to play lawyers and bad guys. There’s also an ice rink, a twenty screen cinema complex, and another floor to ceiling aquarium but with a cage for shoppers to be lowered in for photo opportunities as they swim with sharks. Beats the wet fish counter at the Wimbledon Waitrose.
Here I bought some sweatshirts for the kids but extra small size of course. Dubai does everything bigger
Perhaps what sums up Dubai best for me was a letter published last Tuesday in the local newspaper 7 Days. It mentioned the world’s biggest travel chaos caused by the world’s biggest ash cloud with the world's greatest publicity from the world’s largest currently erupting volcano.
The letter ended, “when can we get one?”.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Secret Lovers
I’m going to tell you a secret this week. In fact I’m going to tell you several.
Secrets are in the news as it has been shown that one in five men keep secret bank accounts that their wives know nothing about. The smiley, innocent side of me says that this is fine as the men are obviously doing it as a nice surprise, but the cynical, and let’s face it, more sensible side of me says two things – first, how sneaky and underhand of them, and second I thought I was the only one doing this.
My secret bank account isn’t meant to be underhand, it’s there just for emergencies. And don’t rat on me to the tax man. It's not that much but you just never know when you’ll need a few million here and there do you?
This week I asked my listeners on Smooth Radio to text me, under reassurance of anonymity, telling me the secrets that they keep from their partners. And, my goodness, what a lot of secrets there were.
One man in Liverpool has yet to tell his wife that he sees dead people everywhere. He says he also neglected to tell her that he fancies Judith Kepple off TV’s Eggheads. I’m guessing here, but I think he’s kept quiet because he’s scared his wife might think he’s mad. I mean who on earth fancies Judith Kepple?
There were plenty of naughty secrets revealed on the texts too, like the woman who confessed that she had been seeing a married circuit judge for the past year, and yet another who told me that her husband doesn’t know she’s been having a string of affairs throughout their eleven years of marriage. Her reason? “Men just fascinate me”. This confession led, of course, to plenty of requests from male listeners asking for her number.
Our listeners must be a wealthy lot as one had kept secret from her partner that she owns three racehorses, while another had fixed a date for her marriage to her future husband without telling him she had just inherited three million pounds. A male listener in Birmingham kept secret from his wife that he had been betting successfully on horses throughout their twenty three years marriage and had a small fortune in a secret bank account. Well he did keep it secret until just after they divorced, and he then took great pleasure in telling her and showing the pass book.
And it seemed that more women had secrets than men. A lady from Bolton hated her husband’s snobbery so much she bought cheap ketchup and kept refilling the expensive Heinz bottle all the years they were together without him noticing, another encouraged her dog to wee regularly on her husband’s prize pumpkins, and yet another confessed she hadn’t told her partner that she had been abducted by aliens a few years ago. Then a Manchester woman said her husband thought she didn’t know that he dressed in her clothes when she was out. What he doesn’t know is that she does know, and that she’s about to serve divorce papers.
My favourite secret, though, was also the nicest. A male listener told me he has been buying up shares in his company without telling his wife so that when they retire he can sell them and give her a surprise nest egg. He can’t wait to see her face.
Secrets are probably not a good idea but they don’t have to be nasty, do they?
Secrets are in the news as it has been shown that one in five men keep secret bank accounts that their wives know nothing about. The smiley, innocent side of me says that this is fine as the men are obviously doing it as a nice surprise, but the cynical, and let’s face it, more sensible side of me says two things – first, how sneaky and underhand of them, and second I thought I was the only one doing this.
My secret bank account isn’t meant to be underhand, it’s there just for emergencies. And don’t rat on me to the tax man. It's not that much but you just never know when you’ll need a few million here and there do you?
This week I asked my listeners on Smooth Radio to text me, under reassurance of anonymity, telling me the secrets that they keep from their partners. And, my goodness, what a lot of secrets there were.
One man in Liverpool has yet to tell his wife that he sees dead people everywhere. He says he also neglected to tell her that he fancies Judith Kepple off TV’s Eggheads. I’m guessing here, but I think he’s kept quiet because he’s scared his wife might think he’s mad. I mean who on earth fancies Judith Kepple?
There were plenty of naughty secrets revealed on the texts too, like the woman who confessed that she had been seeing a married circuit judge for the past year, and yet another who told me that her husband doesn’t know she’s been having a string of affairs throughout their eleven years of marriage. Her reason? “Men just fascinate me”. This confession led, of course, to plenty of requests from male listeners asking for her number.
Our listeners must be a wealthy lot as one had kept secret from her partner that she owns three racehorses, while another had fixed a date for her marriage to her future husband without telling him she had just inherited three million pounds. A male listener in Birmingham kept secret from his wife that he had been betting successfully on horses throughout their twenty three years marriage and had a small fortune in a secret bank account. Well he did keep it secret until just after they divorced, and he then took great pleasure in telling her and showing the pass book.
And it seemed that more women had secrets than men. A lady from Bolton hated her husband’s snobbery so much she bought cheap ketchup and kept refilling the expensive Heinz bottle all the years they were together without him noticing, another encouraged her dog to wee regularly on her husband’s prize pumpkins, and yet another confessed she hadn’t told her partner that she had been abducted by aliens a few years ago. Then a Manchester woman said her husband thought she didn’t know that he dressed in her clothes when she was out. What he doesn’t know is that she does know, and that she’s about to serve divorce papers.
My favourite secret, though, was also the nicest. A male listener told me he has been buying up shares in his company without telling his wife so that when they retire he can sell them and give her a surprise nest egg. He can’t wait to see her face.
Secrets are probably not a good idea but they don’t have to be nasty, do they?
Sunday, April 4, 2010
American Pie
I spent part of Easter Sunday catching up on the last episode of series one of Glee. As an admission designed to shatter any image I might have of being macho, I realise this is up there with being word perfect in Judy Garland’s role in Meet Me In St Louis, having posters on my wall of Audrey Hepburn, and just slightly behind choosing Elton John, Ricky Martin, Edith Piaf and Tinkerbell as my all time fantasy band. But I can’t help it. I love it.
Poor old America gets some really bad programmes on television, as we do, but we’re lucky in the UK as we usually get the best of their stuff because that’s what sells abroad. I exempt from this, of course, anything with the word “Model” in it and everything that includes Paris Hilton.
My weekly viewing seems more and more to lean towards Americana with my faves including Mad Men, Glee and True Blood along with comedies like 30 Rock, Modern Family and Fox News. Except, of course, Fox News is supposed to be serious.
Being a news anchor is one of the cheesiest, most shameful jobs in television when you take yourself seriously and, my goodness, they take themselves seriously on American News. The bad acting as they read distressing stories, the forced, unfunny jollity between co anchors as they fill between stories, and the over rehearsed questions and answers with reporters live from a scene, are beyond parody. These nylon headed tailor’s dummies make a fortune and are hammier than Animal Farm during Pork Festival week.
Think of the worst programme idea you can come up with and it’s already been done in America. Just this year “One Thousand Ways To Lie”, an American show where people share the biggest lies they have ever told, was cancelled after just one outing. “The Will”, a show that followed bereaved families attending the reading of loved ones’ wills, premiered in December and was cancelled after the pilot. Also cancelled after just a few shows this month were Past Lives, a detective story based on reincarnation, and Ruby And The Rockits, in which David Cassidy played a “past it” pop star.
But all these lasted longer than a show called Blonde Charity Mafia which followed three blonde twenty somethings who think work is something servants do to feel useful. These princesses worship the Bank Of Daddy and were such poor company the networks hid their embarrassment and it never aired at all. Ditto with Our Little Genius, where child prodigies competed for money by answering questions like “name five Trojan asteroids around Neptune”. No one understood the questions, no one liked the kids.
But before we all start to feel sanctimonious we must remember that because we get a filtered version of American TV, they also get an unrepresentatively good version of ours. They watch The Office or whatever and think all our TV is like that, blissfully unaware of Nick Knowles, My Family, or Last Of The Summer Wine.
We saw off Michael Winner’s Dinners, but you may think a country that allows Ian Wright on Channel Five, or Amanda Holden on anything, or lets Jeremy Kyle earn a living rather than putting him in a cage with Loose Women and a pride of starving lions, is in no position to comment at all.
You may think that. I of course couldn’t possibly comment.
Poor old America gets some really bad programmes on television, as we do, but we’re lucky in the UK as we usually get the best of their stuff because that’s what sells abroad. I exempt from this, of course, anything with the word “Model” in it and everything that includes Paris Hilton.
My weekly viewing seems more and more to lean towards Americana with my faves including Mad Men, Glee and True Blood along with comedies like 30 Rock, Modern Family and Fox News. Except, of course, Fox News is supposed to be serious.
Being a news anchor is one of the cheesiest, most shameful jobs in television when you take yourself seriously and, my goodness, they take themselves seriously on American News. The bad acting as they read distressing stories, the forced, unfunny jollity between co anchors as they fill between stories, and the over rehearsed questions and answers with reporters live from a scene, are beyond parody. These nylon headed tailor’s dummies make a fortune and are hammier than Animal Farm during Pork Festival week.
Think of the worst programme idea you can come up with and it’s already been done in America. Just this year “One Thousand Ways To Lie”, an American show where people share the biggest lies they have ever told, was cancelled after just one outing. “The Will”, a show that followed bereaved families attending the reading of loved ones’ wills, premiered in December and was cancelled after the pilot. Also cancelled after just a few shows this month were Past Lives, a detective story based on reincarnation, and Ruby And The Rockits, in which David Cassidy played a “past it” pop star.
But all these lasted longer than a show called Blonde Charity Mafia which followed three blonde twenty somethings who think work is something servants do to feel useful. These princesses worship the Bank Of Daddy and were such poor company the networks hid their embarrassment and it never aired at all. Ditto with Our Little Genius, where child prodigies competed for money by answering questions like “name five Trojan asteroids around Neptune”. No one understood the questions, no one liked the kids.
But before we all start to feel sanctimonious we must remember that because we get a filtered version of American TV, they also get an unrepresentatively good version of ours. They watch The Office or whatever and think all our TV is like that, blissfully unaware of Nick Knowles, My Family, or Last Of The Summer Wine.
We saw off Michael Winner’s Dinners, but you may think a country that allows Ian Wright on Channel Five, or Amanda Holden on anything, or lets Jeremy Kyle earn a living rather than putting him in a cage with Loose Women and a pride of starving lions, is in no position to comment at all.
You may think that. I of course couldn’t possibly comment.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Hey Fatty Bum Bum
With an election approaching, I’ve been chewing things over a bit this week like a cow with more stomachs than it knows what to do with. I’m bored with politics so I turned my thoughts to what I would do as Prime Minister and how I would stamp out obesity. I think I’ve found an answer which is simplicity itself - just as well with my limited brain.
I’m probably a little obsessed just now with exercise as I mentioned last week that I’ve been going daily to the local gym for a blast of cycling, running, sit ups and gossip, and it that has been exhausting. Well, the exercise has been tiring, but coming up with new gossip every day for all the gym buddies and Wimbledon wives is absolutely knackering, let me tell you.
My weight, however, has not been falling off fast enough through diet or exercise so, like a latter day Tony Blair, I have been on the lookout for a third way, and now I think I have it. I will share it with you, but I don’t want my idea stolen and put in some Paul McKenna self help book – he has more money than a Banker celebrating a Lottery win – so I am sharing this for free.
We stayed overnight at a hotel in the countryside on Friday and they gave us a breakfast which was probably left over from the last Apollo moon landing with milk, spoon and cornflakes all contained in a small, shakeable, tub. Very healthy but at times like this I wish I had a gerbil to feed. So we went next door where they had a restaurant run by a gourmet cook who was possibly on the short side, and this Little Chef served porridge that made me feel as if Pavarotti was hiding in my lower intestines. With food very much on my mind then I set off and I noticed Mother Nature giving me the answer to the world’s weight problem.
As I drove I noticed fields filled with sheep, and I idly wondered if I could find one who was not eating. For mile after mile, sheep after sheep, not one of them stopped munching. You never see a sheep just looking around or shooting the breeze with his mates and yet you never see a fat sheep either. So I asked myself Why?
Anyone else would have come to the conclusion that it is because they only eat grass, but not me. I knew the real reason. You never notice fat sheep because we always assume their bulk is down to their wool needing to be sheared off. In other words sheep are masters of disguise by hiding their obesity cleverly under a blanket of wool. Again, someone else would say this means we should all wear baggy clothes, but what happens in the changing rooms at the gym? People would see your playdoh tum and bum then wouldn’t they?
The simple answer for us is to do what sheep do. You never see sheep shaving or using a razor under their arms or on their legs. Sheep just let the wool grow, and that is what we should do. No more epilating, no more razors or special creams. Let’s all grow long beards to hide our double chins. Let’s all encourage hairy legs and other bits to hide our excess flab.
Of course chewing gum would be a thing of the past - I’m told lambs don’t appreciate the smell of mint - but, let’s face it, it’s a small price to pay.
If we all live like sheep, our confidence will be higher. Mortgages will be history as we all commune together, fitness trainers will have to retrain as hairdressers, January’s Fitness DVDs will be obsolete, and every TV programme will be presented by The Hairy Bikers.
And politics and elections will be a thing of the past.
I’m probably a little obsessed just now with exercise as I mentioned last week that I’ve been going daily to the local gym for a blast of cycling, running, sit ups and gossip, and it that has been exhausting. Well, the exercise has been tiring, but coming up with new gossip every day for all the gym buddies and Wimbledon wives is absolutely knackering, let me tell you.
My weight, however, has not been falling off fast enough through diet or exercise so, like a latter day Tony Blair, I have been on the lookout for a third way, and now I think I have it. I will share it with you, but I don’t want my idea stolen and put in some Paul McKenna self help book – he has more money than a Banker celebrating a Lottery win – so I am sharing this for free.
We stayed overnight at a hotel in the countryside on Friday and they gave us a breakfast which was probably left over from the last Apollo moon landing with milk, spoon and cornflakes all contained in a small, shakeable, tub. Very healthy but at times like this I wish I had a gerbil to feed. So we went next door where they had a restaurant run by a gourmet cook who was possibly on the short side, and this Little Chef served porridge that made me feel as if Pavarotti was hiding in my lower intestines. With food very much on my mind then I set off and I noticed Mother Nature giving me the answer to the world’s weight problem.
As I drove I noticed fields filled with sheep, and I idly wondered if I could find one who was not eating. For mile after mile, sheep after sheep, not one of them stopped munching. You never see a sheep just looking around or shooting the breeze with his mates and yet you never see a fat sheep either. So I asked myself Why?
Anyone else would have come to the conclusion that it is because they only eat grass, but not me. I knew the real reason. You never notice fat sheep because we always assume their bulk is down to their wool needing to be sheared off. In other words sheep are masters of disguise by hiding their obesity cleverly under a blanket of wool. Again, someone else would say this means we should all wear baggy clothes, but what happens in the changing rooms at the gym? People would see your playdoh tum and bum then wouldn’t they?
The simple answer for us is to do what sheep do. You never see sheep shaving or using a razor under their arms or on their legs. Sheep just let the wool grow, and that is what we should do. No more epilating, no more razors or special creams. Let’s all grow long beards to hide our double chins. Let’s all encourage hairy legs and other bits to hide our excess flab.
Of course chewing gum would be a thing of the past - I’m told lambs don’t appreciate the smell of mint - but, let’s face it, it’s a small price to pay.
If we all live like sheep, our confidence will be higher. Mortgages will be history as we all commune together, fitness trainers will have to retrain as hairdressers, January’s Fitness DVDs will be obsolete, and every TV programme will be presented by The Hairy Bikers.
And politics and elections will be a thing of the past.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Holiday
I’ve just had a week off from work and I would love to tell you that my plan of having seven days of debauchery, lying in bed till the afternoon, getting up to have a breakfast of chocolate Easter eggs and then lying around catching up on unwatched Desperate Housewives episodes, came true. But it didn’t.
Life, sadly, doesn’t turn out the lazy way we plan, unless you’re a WAG or a politician. When the first WAG becomes an MP then the game really will be up.
I had written down loads of things to catch up and do this week, and by the weekend I had accomplished most of the important stuff on the list. I had written my quarterly fan letter to the VAT man, a distant bloke who seems never to give any love back despite the money I send him, I renewed my house insurance so my collection of single socks and dead plants are once again protected, I caught up on a few new albums, and I even dropped in on my daughter’s dance class to watch her end of term display. Being the only person not wearing a bra in the room I felt completely out of place and I waited expectantly for my Billy Elliot moment when I would suddenly jump up and join in. To my daughter’s relief, it didn’t arrive.
Last time I watched her perform it was like looking at a class of seals tapping their flippers in time to a beat that was in their heads but not on the CD. This time was magical. Suddenly they had evolved into mini grownups who actually looked like they could stay on their feet and knew that “coordination” wasn’t the street with the Rovers Return pub. I was very proud.
After the dancing I even managed to get out in my garden, although the word “garden” at the moment seems an exaggeration as it has as much colour as an X ray – unless you count the lovely green moss growing in the brown grass and spreading its joy on the patio.
Our plot is around half an acre which is large compared to a window box but small when next to, say, Beth Ditto’s drawers. It’s big enough to warrant me being out there every weekend from now till winter and I did really enjoy the first weeding, clearing and backache.
If you’re thinking “how sad that in his life that passes for fun” then you don’t understand my neighbourhood. Over the garden walls you can catch up on the gossip from the past few months while everyone has been shut indoors, and a quick try out on the kids’ trampoline means I can see what others are having for their tea or what they’re watching on telly. One neighbour even told me he’d seen things from his trampoline that would make my hair curl, and then he shut up before expanding further. I think he suddenly realised he’d seen them going on in my house.
Talking of expanding further, my proudest achievement this week is that I have finally got around to doing something about my waistline, by going back to the gym. I managed five trips this week to do cycling, running, sit ups, weights and the recovery hot chocolate, and I am now officially obsessed with exercise again.
In my mind the pounds are coming off, I no longer look pregnant, I’ll soon be able to squeeze back in to my XXXL pants again, and elasticated waistbands and smocks will be a thing of the past. I’ll even be able to throw away my new T shirt which Debbie uses as a Slanket.
Having a week off is fun. Why don’t we do it every week?
Life, sadly, doesn’t turn out the lazy way we plan, unless you’re a WAG or a politician. When the first WAG becomes an MP then the game really will be up.
I had written down loads of things to catch up and do this week, and by the weekend I had accomplished most of the important stuff on the list. I had written my quarterly fan letter to the VAT man, a distant bloke who seems never to give any love back despite the money I send him, I renewed my house insurance so my collection of single socks and dead plants are once again protected, I caught up on a few new albums, and I even dropped in on my daughter’s dance class to watch her end of term display. Being the only person not wearing a bra in the room I felt completely out of place and I waited expectantly for my Billy Elliot moment when I would suddenly jump up and join in. To my daughter’s relief, it didn’t arrive.
Last time I watched her perform it was like looking at a class of seals tapping their flippers in time to a beat that was in their heads but not on the CD. This time was magical. Suddenly they had evolved into mini grownups who actually looked like they could stay on their feet and knew that “coordination” wasn’t the street with the Rovers Return pub. I was very proud.
After the dancing I even managed to get out in my garden, although the word “garden” at the moment seems an exaggeration as it has as much colour as an X ray – unless you count the lovely green moss growing in the brown grass and spreading its joy on the patio.
Our plot is around half an acre which is large compared to a window box but small when next to, say, Beth Ditto’s drawers. It’s big enough to warrant me being out there every weekend from now till winter and I did really enjoy the first weeding, clearing and backache.
If you’re thinking “how sad that in his life that passes for fun” then you don’t understand my neighbourhood. Over the garden walls you can catch up on the gossip from the past few months while everyone has been shut indoors, and a quick try out on the kids’ trampoline means I can see what others are having for their tea or what they’re watching on telly. One neighbour even told me he’d seen things from his trampoline that would make my hair curl, and then he shut up before expanding further. I think he suddenly realised he’d seen them going on in my house.
Talking of expanding further, my proudest achievement this week is that I have finally got around to doing something about my waistline, by going back to the gym. I managed five trips this week to do cycling, running, sit ups, weights and the recovery hot chocolate, and I am now officially obsessed with exercise again.
In my mind the pounds are coming off, I no longer look pregnant, I’ll soon be able to squeeze back in to my XXXL pants again, and elasticated waistbands and smocks will be a thing of the past. I’ll even be able to throw away my new T shirt which Debbie uses as a Slanket.
Having a week off is fun. Why don’t we do it every week?
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Mother Of Mine
Well we can put the rhubarb wine away now as that’s another Mother’s Day over. It’s a day that should be filled with joy and happiness. The most important bit of that sentence, of course is, SHOULD BE, because for me it’s a day when just about everything that can go wrong usually does.
As I leave it too late to book a nice restaurant, and the days of getting away with McDonalds and a free toy seem to have paled for my wife, the whole Mother’s Day thing is a minefield.
First up my own mum told me, as she does every year, that she didn’t want me to waste money on a present, which is very kind but leaves me every year asking “but does she mean it?”. She says that flowers just die and chocolates make her fat, but if I sent her paper roses and a box of Diet Chef meals she just might be offended, no?
This year she excelled herself with a new one. After the usual pleas for no presents to be sent she said, “And I don’t need a card either - I’ve still got the one you sent last year”. So I was then faced with a double whammy of potential minefields. So what to do?
I turned to friends who told me the solution was to send her a poem that I should write myself. I tried constructing a work of art but it all looked like a Christmas cracker insert and I couldn’t get anything to rhyme in a way that my mum would have liked. Poems are easy when they’re about girlfriends as you can always get something romantic to go with their name, but unfortunately I couldn’t get away from rhyming Mum with Bum.
In the end I decided to send something that would remind her of how important and indispensible she has been in my life. I sent her my washing.
Here in my own home we are past the stage of our kids making necklaces from sweeties and painting the word Mum on stones from the garden and calling them paperweights. The kids are a bit more mature now, even if their Dad isn’t, so they bought Mum a teapot and made a card.
I booked a restaurant which was great for atmosphere and food tho’ I could have done without the kid with the hula hoop knocking dishes over and generally confusing the dining table with a Tumble Tots picnic.
I also got the flowers. The last bunch of roses I bought was for our wedding anniversary and they died quicker than the smile on a flying ant in a room full of spiders. So I had to source these ones with all the care and research of Doctor Who looking for a heart surgeon. I’ve noticed, by the way, that the good doctor, the man with two hearts who should be able to give twice the love, gets rid of his companions before they get too close. Saves on poems and dodgy roses.
He’s not daft as it also means he’ll never have a mother in law to worry about, wondering if Mother’s Day falls on the same date on Earth as on Gallifrey or Mars. In fairness mine never says “don’t send me anything” but we still have to make sure she gets a call.
Marriage should come with a warning. Get hitched, have babies by all means. But they don’t tell you when you get married that you’ll end up with three Mothers’ Days to worry about do they?
As I leave it too late to book a nice restaurant, and the days of getting away with McDonalds and a free toy seem to have paled for my wife, the whole Mother’s Day thing is a minefield.
First up my own mum told me, as she does every year, that she didn’t want me to waste money on a present, which is very kind but leaves me every year asking “but does she mean it?”. She says that flowers just die and chocolates make her fat, but if I sent her paper roses and a box of Diet Chef meals she just might be offended, no?
This year she excelled herself with a new one. After the usual pleas for no presents to be sent she said, “And I don’t need a card either - I’ve still got the one you sent last year”. So I was then faced with a double whammy of potential minefields. So what to do?
I turned to friends who told me the solution was to send her a poem that I should write myself. I tried constructing a work of art but it all looked like a Christmas cracker insert and I couldn’t get anything to rhyme in a way that my mum would have liked. Poems are easy when they’re about girlfriends as you can always get something romantic to go with their name, but unfortunately I couldn’t get away from rhyming Mum with Bum.
In the end I decided to send something that would remind her of how important and indispensible she has been in my life. I sent her my washing.
Here in my own home we are past the stage of our kids making necklaces from sweeties and painting the word Mum on stones from the garden and calling them paperweights. The kids are a bit more mature now, even if their Dad isn’t, so they bought Mum a teapot and made a card.
I booked a restaurant which was great for atmosphere and food tho’ I could have done without the kid with the hula hoop knocking dishes over and generally confusing the dining table with a Tumble Tots picnic.
I also got the flowers. The last bunch of roses I bought was for our wedding anniversary and they died quicker than the smile on a flying ant in a room full of spiders. So I had to source these ones with all the care and research of Doctor Who looking for a heart surgeon. I’ve noticed, by the way, that the good doctor, the man with two hearts who should be able to give twice the love, gets rid of his companions before they get too close. Saves on poems and dodgy roses.
He’s not daft as it also means he’ll never have a mother in law to worry about, wondering if Mother’s Day falls on the same date on Earth as on Gallifrey or Mars. In fairness mine never says “don’t send me anything” but we still have to make sure she gets a call.
Marriage should come with a warning. Get hitched, have babies by all means. But they don’t tell you when you get married that you’ll end up with three Mothers’ Days to worry about do they?
Sunday, March 7, 2010
I Go Ape
I sang a duet with multiple Grammy award winner Neil Sedaka this week.
As he has a new musical about his life story being premiered I was lucky enough to meet and interview him again and, as we chatted afterwards, I mentioned a favourite song of mine that he’d written years ago. Unfortunately it’s not a song he sings often and he’d forgotten the words, so I sang them for him and his eyes lit up as he joined in. Of course I should have told him to butt out, one singer one song and all that, but I figured “well if he’s enjoying it let him have his moment”. Having duetted with Elton John, Carole King and others, he probably saw this as something his career had been building towards.
Over the years many have fought to sing with me – at least I think they have as fighting usually breaks out when I sing - and I’ve lost count of the number of times folk have shouted at me the title of that classic Joe Dolce song “Shaddup Ya Face”, presumably expecting me to burst in to song with them. Simon Cowell even told me I could win the X Factor and he rated my voice. Actually, what he said was “your voice is X rated”, but I knew what he meant.
Whoever is behind the publicity for Cowell’s various money making projects is doing their job too well just now as I’m suffering from Cowell fatigue every time I look in the papers or on television. Even his partners in crime are so horribly over exposed that I find myself wishing Piers Morgan would join all the other great British piers and catch fire before falling in to the sea.
Then there’s Cheryl and Ashley, toughening it out in their Cole bunker and only coming out when there’s an emergency like an album to plug or a party to attend. As journalists try to unearth ever more dirt on them they make it impossible for me to go anywhere without wanting to scream for sanity, and I cannot bear Brat King Cole and his missus any more.
That’s why I was delighted this week to come across a web site called Happy News Dot Com. It sets out to show only the good news from around the world, and this week it featured the warming tale of Grace Groner, an American lady who died aged 100. She had lived all her life in a tiny house and bought all her clothes from car boot sales yet, in her will this week, she left her former college a surprise seven million dollars.
Then there was the story of two eight year old boys in Australia who saved a man from drowning, a diver who wrestled a Frisbee ring from around a suffocating shark’s throat, and the tale of a dog collar and lead, billed as “once belonging to Charles Dickens”, being auctioned off for twelve thousand dollars. I’m hoping that it actually belonged to Charles Dickens’s dog rather than to the writer himself.
But no matter how hard I looked amongst the good news stories, I couldn’t see any sign of my duet with Neil Sedaka. I should email them with the background and suggest an uplifting headline like “Old Man Made Very Happy”.
Or perhaps I’m being selfish. Maybe the headline should be about Sedaka instead of me.
As he has a new musical about his life story being premiered I was lucky enough to meet and interview him again and, as we chatted afterwards, I mentioned a favourite song of mine that he’d written years ago. Unfortunately it’s not a song he sings often and he’d forgotten the words, so I sang them for him and his eyes lit up as he joined in. Of course I should have told him to butt out, one singer one song and all that, but I figured “well if he’s enjoying it let him have his moment”. Having duetted with Elton John, Carole King and others, he probably saw this as something his career had been building towards.
Over the years many have fought to sing with me – at least I think they have as fighting usually breaks out when I sing - and I’ve lost count of the number of times folk have shouted at me the title of that classic Joe Dolce song “Shaddup Ya Face”, presumably expecting me to burst in to song with them. Simon Cowell even told me I could win the X Factor and he rated my voice. Actually, what he said was “your voice is X rated”, but I knew what he meant.
Whoever is behind the publicity for Cowell’s various money making projects is doing their job too well just now as I’m suffering from Cowell fatigue every time I look in the papers or on television. Even his partners in crime are so horribly over exposed that I find myself wishing Piers Morgan would join all the other great British piers and catch fire before falling in to the sea.
Then there’s Cheryl and Ashley, toughening it out in their Cole bunker and only coming out when there’s an emergency like an album to plug or a party to attend. As journalists try to unearth ever more dirt on them they make it impossible for me to go anywhere without wanting to scream for sanity, and I cannot bear Brat King Cole and his missus any more.
That’s why I was delighted this week to come across a web site called Happy News Dot Com. It sets out to show only the good news from around the world, and this week it featured the warming tale of Grace Groner, an American lady who died aged 100. She had lived all her life in a tiny house and bought all her clothes from car boot sales yet, in her will this week, she left her former college a surprise seven million dollars.
Then there was the story of two eight year old boys in Australia who saved a man from drowning, a diver who wrestled a Frisbee ring from around a suffocating shark’s throat, and the tale of a dog collar and lead, billed as “once belonging to Charles Dickens”, being auctioned off for twelve thousand dollars. I’m hoping that it actually belonged to Charles Dickens’s dog rather than to the writer himself.
But no matter how hard I looked amongst the good news stories, I couldn’t see any sign of my duet with Neil Sedaka. I should email them with the background and suggest an uplifting headline like “Old Man Made Very Happy”.
Or perhaps I’m being selfish. Maybe the headline should be about Sedaka instead of me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)