Talking to Teenagers

We are at home, my daughter and I.  It is morning and I am having to wait in for good old British Gas to call round and replace the water cylinder they mis-sold us last year.  

We are laughing hysterically at some really silly animal photos that she is showing me on her Instagram feed and I comment that one of her friends is 'soppy' about animals. (Old fashioned word, but it fitted the bill perfectly).  The following conversation ensues:-

Her:  I'm glad I'm not soppy.  I'm more....what's the word?  That other word...you know ...also begins with 's'....can't think of it....

Me: Sweet? Sneaky?  Silly?

Her:  No, no and no!  You know it....it's on the tip of my tongue...

Me:   Safe? Saturated? Scummy? 

Her: No!  Be serious - this is driving me mad!

Me:  Seasick? Sizzling?  Sebaceous?

Her:  Gaaah!

Me: Skint? Stupid?  Solipsistic?

Her:  NO!  Oh wait - I've got it - CYNICAL!  Yeah, that's it.

Me: (Attempting to speak despite mouthful of carpet)  I'm so glad all that money we spent on your education wasn't wasted......*crawls away weeping gently*

Silent Sunday 21st April 2013

NaPoWriMo

This is NaPoWriMo or National Poetry Writing Month during which the aim is to write a poem a day for the whole of April.  Oh yeah, right. Like that's going to happen round this neck of the woods.  

I am hopeless at writing serious poetry.  Actually, I'm hopeless at writing serious anything.  I admire people who can do it, but mostly, it just makes me snigger at its awfulness or (more likely) yawn and turn the page.  Raised as I was on a diet of Spike Milligan and Edward Lear, I have a fair appetite for doggerel and stupid Limericks but I also enjoy a bit of Browning and I loved the Liverpool Poets as a teenager. However, the closest I can get to producing anything remotely sober and considered is by playing with the Instant Poetry App on my phone which can produce something quite convincing.  Might try shoving a few words together and sending them to a competition one day - if only I can be bothered.

When the children were younger, I used to make up the odd rhyme to keep them entertained and one of their all time favourites was The Sad Story of Bella Balloo.  Many's the long car journey that has been enlivened by this being roared in the back seat of the car.....

The Sad Story of Bella Balloo

Bella Balloo was forty two and fat as a fat thing could be,

Her mother said 'Bel -  you're starting to swell - you'll soon be as fat as me!

Take care of yourself or you'll be on the shelf until you're a hundred and three.'

'No, no', said our Bella, 'I'll find a nice fella - one who will make a good hubby.

Who is fair, fat and kind and one who won't mind if his darling intended is chubby'.

But sadly for B, she picked upon me, I'm Herman, the German, the rogue.

I'm round fair and spotty, with a big flabby botty and a passion for Kylie Minogue.

I fed her on pies and told her sweet lies, she loved me for better or wurst.

I fed her on honey and stole all her money and, eventually, poor Bella burst.

Margaret Thatcher

It must be a sign of the times, but when I heard about the demise of Margaret Thatcher today (in a text from a friend in Singapore, bizarrely), did I turn on the radio for the details?  Nope.  Did I switch on the TV to catch the headlines? Nay.  Did I pick up a newspaper or access its website?  No siree.  I just rushed straight to my Twitter feed to see what the world had to say.  The comments, by and large, were reasonably bland and respectful.  There was the occasional idiot making an inappropriate joke or two but nothing like the bile I had been expecting.  Still, it was a lesson in social media one-upmanship with Gerri Halliwell informing us that Maggie had been the original Spice Girl.  Really?  And bless little Harry Styles of One Direction who immediately tweeted an RIP to the former Prime Minister.  Below are some of the hilarious comments that followed:-



Elsewhere it was rumoured that, in the USA, some folk thought Cher had popped her clogs due to the hashtag #nowthatchersdead.

Then I happened across this - also on Twitter, although I can't seem to find out who the originator was, so I can't credit it properly.  Very accurate and made me laugh...




The internet is also awash with her finest quotes - especially the one which goes "if you want something said, ask a man.  If you want something done, ask a woman", but I prefer this one: "Being powerful is like being a lady   If you have to say you are, you aren't."


Oh yes, and I hope you appreciate my very restrained headline.  Was tempted by "the lady's now for burning" but thought it might be a bit disrespectful under the circs.

My brush with Boris

I am not a person who has many claims to fame.  I have never done anything notorious nor have I met many very famous people. To be honest, I'm not that interested in meeting the rich and famous - the ones I have had a minor brush with have turned out to be a bit of a disappointment - they're always so much smaller than they look on screen and the tales that some of my TV and film industry friends tell are enough to make you think that success in those worlds is entirely based on a predisposition to massive fuckwittage.

Consequently, a phone call a couple of years ago from a harassed sounding PA with a heavy Russian accent requesting that I set up a meeting between her boss and mine didn't do much to ruffle my feathers.  Although I'd heard of Boris Berezovsky and I was certainly curious at the prospect of coming face to face with one of Russia's most notorious ex-patriot oligarchs, here in deepest, darkest Surrey we are inured to the rich and famous and have a tendency to view them as a bit of a pain in the arse most of the time.  But I had never witnessed wealth and status on this level.

Boris Berezovsky - note the heavy in the background

Three identical, blacked out limousines swept into the car park.  A black Range Rover stationed itself outside the entrance.  Out of each limousine sprang bodyguards straight out of central casting - close cropped hair, black suits, white shirts, black ties, mobile phones clamped to one ear and a large bulge under one armpit.  They surveyed their surroundings before a series of grunts and nods passed between them and they opened the doors of the cars to let the occupants out. I introduced myself.  Mr B was warm and twinkly and instructed me to call him Boris.  He had that trick that some very successful people have perfected - that of looking intently at you, making sure that they use your name immediately and holding onto your hand for just a couple of seconds too long.  So Boris exerted his not inconsiderable charm, introduced the people who had come with him and headed into his meeting.  I learned later that he and his associates use separate limos to minimise the threat of kidnap.  

It's another world - one which makes me ponder how you get to the level of Boris, Abramovich, Patarkatsishvili et al from their humble beginnings.  I imagine the answer would be by ducking and diving and employing many none too savoury business methods - like arbitrage, for example.  Coincidentally (ahem) this is the latest Richard Gere film and what I had intended to write about until Boris hijacked the headlines.

The Shah and I have seen Arbitrage and I find it pretty much impossible to review, given that I fell asleep in it twice, it was so riveting.  As the Shah reported gleefully afterwards "you were snoring away at one point!" 

Anyway, I have always been somewhat ambivalent about Mr G, never quite got it.  American Gigolo?  Meh. An Officer and a Gentleman? Mayo....NAISE. And don't start me on Pretty Woman - there's nothing I enjoy more than a movie that glorifies prostitution. However, I really didn't expect the level of self aggrandising nonsense that accompanied his recent appearance on the Graham Norton chat show here in the UK. Just watch the first minute or two of this...

Now Graham Norton is hugely successful over here and gets all the big names to appear on his show.  Up until now, the majority of them have managed to give the appearance of being fairly reasonable human beings, if occasionally tired and emotional (I'm talking to YOU, Mark Wahlberg :))  Which begs the question, WTF did Richard Gere think he was doing tramping round the studio glad-handing the (largely torpid) audience?  Probably I'm just too British and up myself but it made me (and those watching with me) cringe.  If you can be arsed to watch the whole show, you will also be able to enjoy his attempts to make Norton look stupid by claiming not to understand straightforward questions and generally act as though he resides somewhere on the twat spectrum.  All of which makes me think that my TV and film industry friends probably have a point...

Argo

Welcome to my very first film review.  Sleep easy Barry Norman.

In the wake of its Oscar win and many rave reviews, the Shah and I took ourselves off to see Argo the other night.  Not for us the local chain cinema flea pit with its revolting pick 'n mix that a thousand snotty fingers have pawed and its vom-inducing nachos adorned with a slick of greasy yellow slime.  Oh no - not for us the multi-screen behemoth with its tacky carpets, chavvy clientèle and the car park that saw a drive-by shooting not that long ago,- oho no m'lud.  We took out a small extra mortgage and sallied forth to our local Everyman Cinema which is nowadays adorned with comfortable sofas and dinky little tables on which to rest your over-priced Chablis, darling.

But to the film.  I have to admit that Ben Affleck with slightly long hair and a full beard is surprisingly gorj which was an added bonus as the rest of the cast were very convincingly attired in proper 70s over-sized spectacles, frizzy perms and what the Shah likes to call "fuck off collars".  These are so named because they are so ludicrous you take one look at them and go ...you fill in the blanks.

I'm not going to re-hash the plot here, (yes I know I said it was a film review but whatever) save to say that the film concerns the fate of six American citizens who managed to slip away from the US Embassy in Tehran when it was stormed by militants and then had to be got out of Iran pdq.  It also details the preposterous plot that was cooked up by Hollywood to effect that rescue.

I wasn't expecting to be enthralled but I was.  I wasn't expecting it to be edge-of-the-seat gripping, but it was.  Modern day footage was very cleverly inter-cut with newsreel of the time in pivotal scenes, such as enraged Iranian militants chanting and protesting outside the embassy building and it brought back many memories of those days and of how, being so young (ahem) I was pretty disinterested in all that stuff going on, on the other side of the world. It seems extraordinary to me now that I couldn't have cared less - but I guess that was then and this is now and I have a good many more years on the clock in 2013.

Most of all, I wasn't expecting the film to be laugh aloud funny but, surprisingly, it was - in many places.  There has, of course, been a lot of online debate about its historical accuracy, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah -  I'm not getting into that - I enjoyed it.  The end.  So, here's a trailer, featuring a good deal of the lovely Ben and to quote one of the running jokes in the film - Argo and see it!