Alarums

I don't know much about cars. My knowledge doesn't extend much further than "that is a blue one"; "that one has four doors" and "that is a boring one, why are we talking about cars anyway?". Having said that, one thing I do know about cars is that, if you can possibly help it, you don't want them to be stolen. To prevent this many of them are fitted with alarms called, rather unusually, 'car alarms'.

Car alarms are naturally one of the things about cars that I neither know nor care about. At least I didn't until this evening. You see as I walked home from work this evening I passed by a fancy looking Mercedes. There might be other types of Mercedes, but if there are I've never seen one.

As I passed this car a black couple passed it (and me) whilst pushing a pram (black, two wheels) in the opposite direction. As soon as they passed the vehicle the car alarm burst into life. Lights flashed, the horn honked and high pitched beeps beeped high pitchedly. Needless to say the couple leapt put of their socks, giggled at their surprise and continue on their way. I'm not sure what the baby did. Come to think of it I'm not even sure there was anything in the pram.

Now the sensitivity of the Mercedes alarm has truly put me off buying one at any point in the future. I don't own a car at the moment but when I do get one it won't be a Mercedes. I'm simply not prepared to buy a car whose alarm is set to 'racial stereotypes from the 1970s'.

Of course I might be wrong. Like I said, I don't know much about cars. But I do know that this one was black.

And had four doors.

And was a racist.

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Emblazoned glory

I apologise for the lack of posts, I seem to have blinked and missed three months. Are you still there? Ah, brilliant. Nice to see you. Are you well? Splendid. Now before we move on can we please make sure that all cans of worms are securely fastened. With that sorted, let’s talk about disabled people…

Apart from the parking, there aren't many benefits to being disabled. It is possibly for this reason that so many people (though inevitably not enough) put themselves out to provide disabled people with the opportunity (the kind of opportunity that able-bodied people take for granted) to take part in leisure activities such as swimming. But when you have set up a group that does this sort of thing, how do you decide on the name?

There are some groups where it is fairly transparent why they have chosen to name their club in the way they did. A swimming club composed of thalidomide victims called ‘Flippers’ for instance. Now I’m not saying they would sell many promotional t-shirts (or indeed armbands) and I’m not saying that it would be morally sound to call their group such, but at least you could understand how they arrived at the name. The same cannot be said for the bus that was unloading its passengers when I left my local leisure centre last evening.




As you can see, “Seahorses” it reads along the side of the bus, “Swimming for the less able”. By the euphemistic ‘less able’ of course, it meant ‘disabled’. I’ve no problem with the suggestion the group are simply less able, but this was quite clearly for disabled people. There were no people standing around who simply couldn’t swim very well. I’m pretty sure that they might not even qualify for membership but it’s tempting to apply to find out for sure. Like going up to an AA man with ‘join us here’ on the side of his van and when he asks what car you drive you say ‘Drive? My dear fellow, I don’t drive. I walk everywhere’ and watch your time-wasting cause a layer of their dignity to peel from their soul and flap away on the autumnal breeze.

Also, it didn’t appear to be for the entire disabled spectrum. For example, there wasn’t a man with one arm stood next to them who qualifies as less able because he can’t swim in a straight line. There was just a steady stream of wheelchair users being lowered carefully out of the minibus and parked up by the side of the leisure centre like the household cavalry on a day out. They had to be lowered carefully because if they injured one they would be even less able to swim and would have to join a swimming club called 'Stones'.

But why ‘Seahorses’? Why should a seahorse’s swimming ability be besmirched in such a way? If they wheeled themselves around the ocean bed grumbling about the lack of ramps I could understand it. If crabs were heard complaining about seahorses getting to park close to the coral it would be a different story. But they don’t. And they don't. They float through the water with an ethereal grace. They don't totter around the reef like aquatic cranefly. If it's a size thing and the club's members are simply learning to swim why not name the club after something that is more obviously in a stage of development? I for instance learned at a club called ‘Tadpoles’. And yes, I have subsequently grown into a toad.

I feel that the best course of action when naming a group of (euphemism alert) less able people you should opt for something that is relevant but not demeaning. Maybe even empowering. Actually, if it was good enough I’d probably take a hammer to my spine just to qualify. Just so that I can say “My name is Ben, and I swim with ‘Ironsides swimming club’”.

Sweet like...oh

Following the previous post, the next evening I was watching 'Celebrity Britain's Best Dish'. Now, one of the contestants was Alison Hammond. Know her?

Jolly in both the literal and the euphemistic sense of the word (and black in the completely-irrelevant-to-everything sense of the word), Alison was presenting her chocolate souffle for the judges' delectation. As a souffle, it was light and fluffy and generally as far from a proper pudding (trifle) as is realistically possible. As a chocolatey thing it was...ahem...brown. Now, of the three judges the first liked it thus granted her a point, the second liked it but not as much as the other dessert (trifle) so denied her a point and when it came to the third, he also denied her a point. His reason?

"I just don't like chocolate".

Surprisingly he didn't go on to complain about "coming over here, cooking our souffles".

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Chocolerotica

[Disclaimer: Racism’s bad, kids.]

Okay, so you know black people? You know the ones. The ones that are white people, only black. The ones that were brought over to our country to do all the jobs we considered ourselves too good to do after WW2, which we subsequently complained about doing the jobs we don’t want to do, but would equally complain if we were stood at a bus-stop for three years because noone “comes over here and drives our buses”. The ones that have dreams that get them shot. Well, have you ever noticed they are [glances furtively about self]…black? Really? Why? Because, actually, they are not are they. Black people are black in the same way chocolate is black. By which I mean, it isn’t. It’s brown. But brown looks silly on placards. If we saw a bunch of un-thinking drones waving placards about with “Get browns out!” we would assume they were all constipated and were sluggishly pleading for an aid drop of Senokot.

With the exception of a 50 year old Greek owner of a bar I used to frequent, who suggested I came to his R&B nights as they were “good for picking up chocolate girls”, the fact that black people are actually brown doesn’t seem to get much of an airing. This could either be because:

a) Racism tends to concentrate on how ethnic group 1 is causing trouble for ethnic group 2, and even they, in their tiny minds, know it’s ridiculous to suggest they are doing that through skin colour alone.

b) Racists would have to give up chocolate, which would be a terrible shame as that’s probably one of the few pleasures they have left. Well, that and telling other British people to ‘go home’.

That black people are actually brown isn’t lost on children, and the fact that they are often heard to say that their black people have ‘skin like chocolate’ forms the basis for Naomi Campbell’s offence at a recent advertising campaign for Cadbury’s new product. I say “new product”, but it’s still bloody chocolate so there isn’t much that’s ‘new’ (apart from the Kraft logo on the wrapper).

Now personally I consider Naomi Campbell to be truly beautiful. Her lips look like they could suck your bones through your mouth and leave you flapping contentedly in the breeze like satisfied sock. Her legs are so long they may as well finish above her head, and her eyes have a ‘come to bed’ expression that could cause her to wake up next to Christopher Biggins if she wasn’t careful with her feminine voodoo. She is arguably one of the most famous faces in the world, and certainly one of the most successful in the world of slinking about in strange frocks. She does have a habit of getting a bit upset about things though [at this point I have flipped the switch on my ‘understatement’ sign, and it is cheerfully blinking away behind me], and that is exactly what she felt (the ‘offended’ kind of upset this time, rather than the ‘has to give back the blood diamonds’ kind of upset she felt a few weeks ago) when she opened her newspaper and saw the advert for Cadbury’s ‘Bliss’ bar.

The advert in question has an image of the CADBURY’S chocolate on a pillow, with the words ‘Move over Naomi, there’s a new diva in town’. Now personally, if it was me, I would be more offended that the advert was relying on an assumption that I am considered a preening high-maintenance diva rather than be offended by the reason she was offended. At a stretch, possibly, that she could easily be replaced by an inanimate object would be irksome. But no, her reason for distress was that the advert had ‘described [her] as chocolate’. I clearly haven’t read enough into the advert.

Instead of saying ‘famously beautiful Naomi Campbell is a bit of a diva isn’t she, well so is this chocolate bar’ as it appears to be, in it’s dumb chocolate-bars-have-emotions way, it’s apparently saying ‘everything you have previously wanted to do to famously beautiful Naomi Campbell can now be done with this chocolate bar’. Now there are many things I would like to do with Naomi Campbell. Melting her down and using her to coat strawberries is not one of them. They may as well have advertised the bar by declaring that it has a swallowing reflex.

We shall see which ‘option’ she opts for, my guess is a massive payoff but I might be wrong (I won’t be wrong). There are lessons to be learned, and as ever it remains to be seen whether or not they are actually learnt. Sweet and savoury is always a controversial mix. Perhaps Kraft should have stuck to making cheese.

Don’t cry for me, Angina

“It’s not easy being fat”. That is not entirely true of course, it is very easy to be fat, you just need deep pockets along with a swallowing reflex and either strong teeth or a good quality liquidizer. It is true that it is miserable to be referred to by any of the various labels that relate to lardy bums. 'Morbidly obese' is certainly less jolly than the one employed by the producers of ‘Britain’s Best Dish’…




…however that also means it’s more powerful. This applies to any term that means “you are so [adjective] you will die” of course. Although come to think of it I can’t think of any more. Quite why ‘morbidly thirsty’ hasn’t been applied to alcoholics is a mystery. Certainly there’s a practical use for ‘morbidly sexy’. Perhaps for the frequently molested.

Anyway.

It is difficult when you are confronted with labels such as these, but they are accurate and those doing the labelling are frequently doing it for our own good. No self respecting GP says “you are morbidly obese, don’t forget your complimentary cake on the way out” (a bun with ‘big is beautiful’ iced on the top), but should it not be the case that if I want a pork pie for breakfast I can just have the bloody pie? Well, no as it happens. Not if unnecessarily buff Julian Sands look-alike Dr Christian gets his hands on your Supersize self. And let’s face it, you’re not going to outrun him.

The concept of ‘Supersize Vs Superskinny’ is both simple and, ultimately, disappointing. This is not a hilariously mis-matched wrestling bout. Instead we have a fat person of around 25 stone (a very round 25 stone). We also have a disturbingly skinny person, generally of around 6-8 stone. They swap diets for a week and learn the lesson that one needs to eat more and the other needs to eat less. I have not seen many episodes, but I’ve yet to see one where the lesson is learned the wrong way around. I live in hope.

There was a time when ‘Supersize Vs Superskinny’ was not very confrontational. We just saw the people sit down and start eating each other’s menu. This was after we’d been introduced to them. After the requisite footage had been shown of the supersize wheezing about; eating and generally being wobbly, followed by shots of the superskinny wafting around like a twiglet in pants. But, possibly due to the feeble, withered influence of food witch Gillian Mckeith, the programme now begins with the ‘food tubes’. This is the moment when the players are shamed into admitting that their diet is not very good. Mckeith did it by covering a table in a mountain of chips and cake. This wasn’t very effective as the subjects of her programme would just stare it with their stomachs rumbling, only snapping out of their carbohydrate-induced hypnosis when chip city was cleared into a hundred black sacks and driven away to chip doom. Gillian Mckeith was essentially a wizened vegetable Hitler gleefully masterminding a fried-food holocaust.

Time’s marched on and now we are confronted with the food tubes. This, amazingly, is a set of two large tubes into which food is deposited. It is clearly designed to disgust all concerned so that ways are changed.Whereas Mckeith showed a table of nicely cooked greasegasms and relied upon the quantity to shame the subjects, now we have the image of curry; fries and pasties being farted out of a black gutter to plop sadly into a murky lagoon of coffee and burgers. It’s all deeply grim and the episode I saw recently was no exception. It’s a shame because the supersize fellow, Stu, was very cheerful when he arrived. Unnecessarily buff Dr Christian soon saw off the smiles of course, liberally sprinkling his conversation with references to death like he was applying croutons to soup. Or perhaps a stu. As Stu’s food tube was filling up Christian looked up at him with sympathetic eyes. “Do you have chips with everything?” he says, rhetorically.
“Yes,” said Stu “with cheese”.
Alice, the superskinny’s tube was predictably less full than Stu’s, consisting as it did of coffee and a tomato.

It was quite nice to see the two of them together, Stu beaming down at her like a tyrannosaur eyeing up a gecko. “How much do you weigh?” he asked, and was clearly shocked when she said how much (7stone). Not just because he knows he weighs a lot more than her, but also because he knows that her size is just as wrong as his. Sitting down to their first meal together, Stu declares “I don’t expect you to eat all of that”. Stu weighs three and a half Alices apparently. Which coincidentally is what he was hoping to have for breakfast. Instead he gets a thimble of porridge. By Alice’s third meal of the day (coincidentally, her second visit to McDonald’s of the day), she unsurprisingly complains of not being hungry. Stu is close to tears at this point, desperate to lick the air around the burgers. The narrator informs us that Stu’s diet contains too much salt.

We are left to digest this bombshell whilst we check in on a group of recovering anorexics. It’s sad seeing the anorexic people. They have survived for years it seems by drinking a cup of coffee every few days and prodding their protruding bones complaining about being fat. It’s tragic and therefore heart warming when you see this group getting better. This week they were looking at photos of each other before they (euphemistically) “became ill”. They all coo over the beauty that the subjects never saw. I imagine they’re thinking “fat fuck”, but we have cut back to the matter in hand before the thought is verbalised and a very slow fight takes place.

Back at the feeding clinic, Alice observes “these portions are huge”. She can barely see Stu over the top of her snack (tower) of cheesy crumpets with cheese and beans and cheese. Stu didn’t really say anything to this. Perhaps he realizes that it’s a moot point. Perhaps he thinks that in the absence of all other protein his body has started to digest his brain, and that’s why the crumpets are talking to him. By dinnertime she is fighting her way though two muffins and four sausages, snugly parked beneath a melting igloo of cheese. Stu gets a yoghurt, which is less than he had hoped but on the plus side the pot never empties since his tears keep topping it up.

It pays to be a supersize on this programme, because whilst Alice stays at the clinic and eats two portions of cheese with some cheese on top, served on a bed of cheese with a cheese garnish, and unnecessarily buff Dr Christian shows her pictures of people with rickets, Stu is off to America. Hooray for Stu! “I love Universal Studios” he must be thinking. “And the Mouse. And Shamu!”. Sadly it’s just a trip to meet a fat bloke who lives on a broken bed in a foil tray filled flat. “Fuck”, thinks Stu.

“Don’t end up like me,” says Tony, the fat bloke who lives on a broken bed in a foil tray filled flat. “jump off the elevator as there’s only one place it’s going”. This question is left hanging in the air as the camera closes in on Stu’s face. The penny has dropped for Stu. He has been confronted by his own mortality. He is clearly a little distressed. After all, how is he supposed to jump anywhere weighing 25 stone? He hasn’t jumped since House of Pain was in the charts.

Back in the UK Alice and Stu shake hands and go home to eat more healthily and do some exercise. It turns out that’s how you look after yourself. Who’d have thought it? A few weeks later they meet up with the good (but unnecessarily buff) doctor. He weighs them and wouldn’t you know it, she’s lost weight (hooray!) and he has lost weight (jump around!). It’s all very positive and we are left with a feeling of cheerful optimism. Stu is clearly not finding the change of lifestyle as easy as Alice though. For a start he mentions cheese 45 times. He may never be thin, but he will remain with us for longer than he would have done without that yoghurt. And that can only be a good thing.

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Not coming over here and killing our villagers

Yesterday I had this link sent to me:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-12741847

Like Ash Atalla (who, as producer of ‘The Office’ and ‘The IT Crowd’, is someone who warrants a prole walking in front of his wheelchair sprinkling rose petals before him), I don't watch the programme. However I wonder whether the colour of the villagers' faces really matters? I would suggest not, unless the storyline is going to deal with race. If it does it is always better to have 'minority' actors involved since white folk blacking-up looks ridiculous. Unless they happen to be singing 'Mammy', obviously. If it isn't a race-related plot, shouldn't it just be about whether the actor is any good? Is the producer actually saying that people will turn it on, see an ethnic face and then immediately turn it off on the grounds that black faces don’t 'belong' in Midsomer? I hope not. Maybe it is simply the 'realism' aspect, being that in the 'traditional' English village there simply isn’t the racial diversity that you find in, say, the east end of London. Fair enough, but also in the traditional English village there are not fifteen murders a year. In fact, in the traditional English village the best you can hope for is a cake sale. Try stretching that out for fourteen years.

It's a curious thing. Noone ever worries about the realism of Coronation Street do they, a street which has to be the only street in Salford with a population that verges upon Aryan. Until recently, ethnic minorities were represented by one slightly tanned man that resembled David Essex after a nice holiday. I can almost hear the producers asking each other "how dark shall we go?" before nodding in agreement after one trailblazer suggests "south of France?". And what did they have him do? Own a corner shop and steal men's wives. They may as well have dressed him as a Golly and have done with it.

And this is Manchester, so presumably (were it to be made by the same people) 'Midsomer' would be populated exclusively by actors so white they are in fact transparent. The only way you would know they were onscreen would be that one hazy form was standing over another hazy form, lamenting that it couldn't put up with the affairs any longer and had to do them in. We would then be treated to the sight of a pair of floating handcuffs being bundled into a police van.

At which point I might tune in.

Bunch of cooks

Strange things are happening at Masterchef Towers. For a start, why is it being filmed in an aircraft hanger? Does Greg Wallace make that much mess whilst splashing about in trifle? Secondly, who watched ‘The X Factor’ and decided that the same auditioning formula would work when grafted onto a cookery show? Did they think viewers would have tears in their collective eye if a prospective contestant blubbed their way through telling John Torode and Greg Wallace that their quiche was dedicated to their dead Gran who always supported them and, more importantly, made them realise the importance of frying off the bacon first? As it happens, yes.

The new concept is actually brilliant in its silliness and I’m sad that the audition process has finished. Hopeful chefs would scurry into the main hall (where John and Greg sat waiting on their respective thrones) clutching half cooked food, and then have twenty minutes to finish it off whilst trying to avoid the shocked/appalled/disgusted/concerned/dribbly faces the presenters kept pulling. Once their time was up, the Masterchef Gods descend from Mount Olympus to pass judgement. If successful the hopeful is handed a Masterchef apron and told that they are allowed to enter round one. Round one! They haven’t even started yet and they have been made to prostrate themselves before the plump faced foodies. Trailers for the next episode (the first stage) have been shown and it looks like the silliness is going to get even more over the top. Primarily because it’s been filmed in such a huge studio that in order to get the aerial shots the cameraman may as well have been on the moon.

My favourite hopeful thus far was an ex-army fellow who served some hard-boiled quail eggs on a mushroom pastry thing. So far so standard, however his stroke of genius was serving it with (literally) a pint of hollandaise sauce. It was ridiculous, he just kept ladling the stuff on until the bowl was full of it and the eggs looked like tiny fat men on a life-raft, adrift in an ocean of custard. Needless to say he didn’t get through to the next round. Greg “quite liked ‘is flavours” but John Torode dismissed this, amusingly pointing out that Greg simply “likes soft food”. The juxtaposition of these two is amazing, with John Torode saying things like “complex flavours, well balanced seasoning, delicious” and Greg saying “it’s too fucking small, fuck off”.

One programme to take the cookery show format and turn it into something properly fun is ‘Come Dine with Me’, although admittedly that is starting to get a little stale. Same old contestants; same sarky voiceover; same squabbles; same same. It is a brilliant ‘same’ of course even if the formula is getting so obvious it lazily slaps you in the face every time you watch it. Entertaining though he is, I’m not sure that even the great Dave Lamb could save a cookery show I happened across the other day, since it was so deathly dull I fell asleep. Twice. It was called ‘Daily Cooks Challenge’ and was presented by Wozza Thompson. It featured Peter Purvis as the (ahem) ‘star’ guest and two bored looking chefs as the challenged cooks. I say ‘challenge’, but it’s hardly ‘The Krypton Factor’. All the programme involves is the chefs each cooking something and the guest saying which one he likes best. That’s it. In this episode they each cooked a piece of meat and we learned that Purvis’ favourite was the less well-done bit. Wozza then showed him how to make a terrine, which I imagine he proceeded to squish into his ears while Purvis droned on about dogs. I can’t say for certain, I was asleep.

Just (for the) Love (of God, please) Stop

What is your opinion of JLS? Or to give them their full name, ‘Jack the Lad Swing’. No, really, that’s what they are called. When they were naming the group they whittled it down to two names, this one and ‘Coins Under Nigel’s Tan Sofa’, and the small one was out voted on that one. Partly because the hairless teenypops that form their core fanbase don’t care where Nigel’s coins are (nor do they care about the colour of his sofa), and partly because, whilst accurate, the acronym would have proved controversial. Small One from JLS was upset that his suggestion was discarded but took solace in the knowledge that his backflip was more convincing than Tall One’s; Not-quite-so-tall One’s and Not-quite-so-small One’s combined. In fact, Not-quite-so-small One from JLS’s backflip is really quite laughable.

It’s Small One from JLS that prompts these words to appear in front of you. You see, it appears that despite being able to do a good backflip, someone doesn’t like him as much as…someone who likes him. I can’t think of anyone off hand, but they are possibly somewhere. We know they are possibly out there because of the huge success that JLS are possibly having, evidenced by the massive range of JLS branded merchandise that people are possibly buying – such as the selection of JLS condoms that people are possibly sliding onto their embarrased genitals. These of course are available in large; not quite so large; not quite small and small sizes.

So how do we know that someone doesn’t like Small One from JLS? Well last evening I was walking (sadly a Jack the Lad Swing still eludes me) home and I saw a number of small packets littering the pavement. These weren’t just any packets though, these were JLS’s ‘Just Love Safe’ condoms, each emblazoned with a small image of Small One from JLS’s small face. Who would do this? What has Small One from JLS done to deserve ritual prophylactic scattering? We can only assume that Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber was going about his business opening musicals when he heard the JLS classic ‘The Club is Alive’ and was enraged that it sounded a bit like a song from ‘Phantom of the Opera’. Naturally his only recourse was to immediately purchase some JLS branded willy raincoats bearing the cheery visage not of Tall One from JLS; nor of Not-quite-so-tall One from JLS, but of Small One from JLS and immediately throw them on the ground! Yes, that would show them. Stamping on Small One from JLS’s small foil face he shouted their alternative bandname at the top of his voice, ignoring the small splats of spermicide that were appearing on his loafers.

It should probably be noted that Not-quite-so-small One from JLS was always going to escape Sir Webber’s wrath. You see, due to the quality of his backflip he is his least favourite One from JLS. In fact it is said that he dislikes him so much he offered him a role in ‘Love Never Dies’. Now there’s evil.

But why would Small One from JLS be the sole focus of his anger? Maybe it is because he is the true brains of the JLS operation and Sir Andrew is secretly envious of the power he wields not only over the two (sorry, three) other sizes of One from JLS, but over the world of pop – indeed, art – in general. We all know that Small One from JLS straddles the musical landscape like Mecha-backflippy-Godzilla. Perhaps Sir Lloyd simply snapped? We can never know for certain, we can only guess. And I am not given to conjecture.
 

The kindness of strangers

There is an episode of Panorama on this evening that deals with the issue of stalking. Apparently it affects over two million Britons. I don't know if that's one million people and one million stalkers or two million people that are being stalked. Maybe it's one very popular person with one million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine stalkers. This, however, is unlikely. It's probably two people.

For the stalked it can be terrifying, the shadow of Jill Dando's case hangs heavy. Dando you may recall was killed in 1999 and for years it was believed that the murderer was a celebrity obsessed stalker. The 'stalker' was acquitted a few years ago though as the case against him was too thin (though not too thin to find him guilty the first time around). He's currently living a quiet life in Carol Vorderman's back garden. I can't understand why he's chosen her, I think she's a bit strange. I mean you should see the state of her curtains.

Whether Dando was killed by a stalker or not, the fact that it was a real possibility means that to be stalked is surely a very scary situation to find yourself in. It just makes you wish that stalkers found each other as fascinating as their celebrity idols, then they could stalk each other and leave the non-obsessed alone. They could have special parks away from town centres in which they merrily sit in bushes and stare at each other without being disturbed. Apart from in their heads of course.

It's certainly worth thinking about, however we probably need a few more celebrities lined up with pennies on their eyes before it's given serious consideration in council budgets. I'm not about to suggest anyone for fear of tempting fate and my suggestions coming true, causing me to be thrown in jail or burned as a witch. You could though. Try it. Just throw a few darts in a copy of 'Heat' magazine. It won't actually help raise any money to set up a stalker park of course, but try it anyway. 'sfun.

Anyway, I've got to go as I think Julia Bradbury's back and I need to stop this cat from scratching the wardrobe door.

"Here Tiddles...who's a good girl, yes you are, come on sweetie....".

*snap*

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President visits a resident President

President Obama has held a dinner in honour of the visiting Chinese President; attendees included everyone who is great and good in the world of being Chinese, looking Chinese or in Barbara Streisand’s case, once met a Chinese person and wasn’t sick down her blouse. I’m not sure why she was there, and neither it seems was she. When asked she said “I worked in a Chinese restaurant”. I like to think the person asking her then replied, flatly:

“How interesting. Why are you here?” then, upon her repetition of this comment, shoving her in a manner to ensure she stumbles backwards over her mobility scooter muttering something about her name not being on the list. I realise this didn’t happen but it doesn’t prevent me wanting it to. I know it didn’t happen because she goes everywhere with James Brolin these days, and he always looks like the only reason he isn’t punching you in the face is because he’s too far away. A fact that frustrates him intensely. So intensely he’s liable to punch you in the face.

Anyway, the reason I bring up the subject of this dinner is that it was obviously intended to improve relations between America and the Chinese people. Or perhaps to cement the brilliant relations they already have. I hope they are brilliant, after all racism is so mind boggling stupid I find it amazing that it still exists (however I am told that I live in a naïve bubble with relation to this and various other prejudices). So President Obama holds a dinner to say “we know the old stereotypes are essentially nonsense” (without stating it quite so baldly since he is so distressingly erudite this would invite suggestions of his being swapped for a double by the rascally Republicans). This is good to hear, since in our hearts we know that the Chinese are as unlikely (or indeed as likely depending upon how you choose to think of it) to be, say, wandering around with cameras taking photos of everything as Americans (or [insert nationality here]) would be.

Compare the lack of difference between Jackie Chan and Mr and Mrs Streisand.

Nice to see Jackie Chan doing his bit to resist these clichés, isn’t it. Silly Jackie. It could be worse of course, he could have turned up dressed as Mr Yunioshi, so every cloud.

Happy no ear

“So what were you thinking I would do for you today?”

It was Bank Holiday Monday and so I was watching these words plop steadily from the mouth of an out-of-hours GP. Whilst my own doctor was parked at home counting the festive gravy stains on his shirt, the man in front of me had drawn a short straw. Maybe that’s why he didn’t seem very interested in my reason for sitting before him (why wait?). A lack of interest so overwhelming he had forgotten his role in the transaction. An hour earlier I had drifted into the surgery in a fog of pain and confusion. Pain because…well…I hurt, and confusion because I didn’t know why. All I had done was go to sleep and had woken up with my ear blocked and a pain so intense that I was unable to have any thought other than “oww”. I consoled myself with the knowledge that although I was only able to think about one thing, at least that thing was relevant.

I described my symptom to the doctor and having had his verdict (sounds like a perforated eardrum) waited to hear what he planned to do about it. I was quite surprised that this was a decision I was to make myself. Not least for the fact that my description had not only involved an in depth discussion of the pain (“I have a really intense pain”) but also a helpful indication of where the pain was located (“here” [points to ear]). I was confident that my efforts would be rewarded with more than a declaration that there was something wrong with my ear that was resulting in pain. At least it was now official though. I had a hurty ear.

“So what were you thinking I would do for you today?”
“Nothing, I just don’t get out much and wanted to share. Bye!” I didn’t say.
“Well, I had hoped for something for the pain” I said.
“Ok” said the doctor, and handed me a paper permission slip to buy some painkillers.

Over the next day or so I decided I needed to see my regular GP. This was for two reasons:

1- I wasn’t satisfied that the other chap had shown sufficient interest in my hurty ear, and my regular doctor has a long history of tilting his head sympathetically and generally letting you feel it’s ok to feel sorry for yourself. He may call you a c**t when you leave but I that doesn’t bother me, I assume that of most people.

2- In the preceding 24 hours my ear had started leaking. A lot. Leaking to such a degree that I could have extinguished a small fire simply by shaking my head in disagreement nearby.

Sitting by his desk I described my symptoms (I was now ill in plural) and my doctor tilted his head sympathetically. I was reminded why he is a good doctor and promptly let myself feel sorry for myself.

“Let’s have a look at the ear” he said, and produced one of the small illuminating funnels that doctors keep for such activities. It didn’t help.

“There’s really too much stuff there to see the eardrum, so it’s obviously infected” he said.
“Right” I said, sponging gloop from my shoulder.

And so, clutching a prescription for anitbiotics I departed, feeling sorry for those people whose GP I had seen on Monday, but not sorry enough to trade places with them. I was soon to be fixed, and that knowledge was enough to make me ignore the faint ‘c**t’ I heard as I pulled the surgery door closed.


So, a belated happy new year to you.

Cheers.

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