Are people so keen to lie in 40c (110f) sun to turn their bodies the colour of condemned veal? Global warming is at last having a visible effect we rich westerners can relate to. Over-hot summers. We still flock to destinations that should only appear in Lucifer’s holiday brochures. But for how long?
Are our drawers filled so randomly?
When I need a suitable coffee cup for a cappuccino it’s right top shelf above the fridge. A small cup for an espresso is top left above sink. I mean, isn’t everyone the same?
Random draw pulling in other people’s homes searching for something is an occupational hazard when cooking for friends.
I used to think the way we fill our cupboards and drawers is 100% random. When you move house your ultimate goal apart from not strangling builders or recommending the electrician to a good vivisectionist is unpack, unpack, unpack.
Who cares which drawers contain toothpaste, soup bowls or neckwear? You just stuff it in relieved that another cardboard box has bitten the dust. However, having recently gone through the experience (more like trauma) of moving, my wife and I have found our subconscious has been in overdrive.
Because I unloaded kitchen apparatus and my back creaks bending down or stretching up, weight was the driving factor where things got stored. No more mixing bowls on bottom shelf or air fryer on a top one. Now heavy things are all on middle drawers… but being chief unpacker also had other advantages. Things my wife enjoys but I dislike, such as pulses, peanut butter and gherkin’s miraculously now appear at the end of cupboards whereas things I enjoy are right at eye level dead centre; Marmite, Branflakes dark chocolate and cheese biscuits.
Would any sane married couple go through moving together? Let alone reassembling everything in a new location. When we actually move, my wife has banished me in case she decides to strangle me.
I have already been through a clear out of possessions that has been a mixture of surprise and horror. Surprise at the things I thought I had lost forever, and horror that I had paid for them to follow me like the rats and the Pied Piper of Hamlin from the UK to my two previous homes here in Malta.
I am sure there was a point in my life when a belly button cleaner, singing fish, cassettes, CDs and DVDs seemed essential, but those days are gone. Much as it pains me to see I once paid £17.50 for a CD, they now need to go to the big juke box in the sky. And no, please don’t tell me I can make a fortune on sites like Magpie. Living here in Malta exporting or importing anything is absurdly expensive. We have probably filled a couple of charity shops with enough things to keep them busy for months. Some stuff I could not believe they sold within days! Who goes to a charity shop looking for bongo drums, but a pair we donated were snapped up faster than a lock of Elvis’ hair!
Am I not dressed in grey leather shoes and polyester trousers?
One of the casualties of every generation since the Silent Generation (1935-1950), has been the demise of Middle Age.
Right now, the only limits to me behaving as I did in my youth are physical.
I do not own a tartan coloured shopping trolley with matching tartan booties. I don’t possess a cardigan, a pipe or a jacket with leather elbow pads. Nor, do I endlessly suck on a Werther's Original caramel or have a glass by my bedside for dentures.
Right now, if you take a photo of a group of a hundred people, they may display their own tribal colours but within that tribe, between the ages of 25-65, are actually pretty alike.
Yet when I look at photos of my salad days and at people now my age, they all appear distinctly different to the youth that’s with them. The women are all dressed in ‘A’ line skirts surrounded by Tupperware containers. The men either have a comb-over or a short back and sides haircut, and are in ties and lace up brogues, even on weekends. Folk barely fifteen years younger are in jeans, with varying lengths of hair and a perpetual grin on their faces.
All the middle aged were so different from the youth. They all respected the speed limit and positions of authority. The men shaved every day but the women never did. Married couples were rarely able to travel beyond home shores and certainly never ate food that was not either frozen or a domestic recipe. There was fear of the foreign rather than curiosity. And nearly all had the same job in the same firm all their lives. Sad.
My generation has actually found the secret to eternal youth. Act like you want, not how you should.
I may now wake up with a sixty-year old’s body, but my mind and mannerisms are distinctly those of a thirty-five year old. I ignore that old man as I get in my car for a blast down a country road, work out in a gym or cuddle my beloved wife.
At the beginning of each year, do we go through this ritual inspection of the chicken entrails to reveal the booby traps or goodies awaiting us in the New Year? If you are a sentient being with an IQ bigger than your shoe size, you already know the answer. In sport there will be a couple of upsets, otherwise the usual suspects clean up at everything. Politics and global warming will get hotter and a couple of natural disasters will blight lives. Mid-summer a silly story about some animal being able to perform open heart surgery, play a Beethoven sonata or predict the outcome of a football match will make worldwide headlines. A big rock star will fall off his perch as well as a past-it-sell-by-date TV show will get the ax. Two certainties are the winner of the Best Actress at the Oscars will cry, and then suggest the category is sexist and should just be for best actor.
Are so many nursery rhymes and fairy tales hidden stories of sex drugs and booze? Let’s start with Rudolf. The only way you have a shiny red nose is excessive booze or cocaine; in which case he certainly should not be driving late at night over vast distances and at warp factor speeds. Snow White. So are we really to believe she lives with seven men and no one tries any hanky panky? Then there are the names. Bashful, Sleepy, Happy, Grumpy, Dopey, Doc and Sneezy are all as a result of cocaine. Hence, Snow White. Ah, I see that’s got you all thinking now! We all know Samuel Taylor Coleridge was high as a kite dreaming of Kubla Khan, Xanadu and The Pleasure Dome, when the postman woke him up... only time I suspect he was not happy to have a package delivered. Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass are an absolute drug smorgasbord. Alice is constantly eating magic mushrooms or drinking (laudanum) potions that have a dramatic effect on her. The caterpillar and his (opium) pipe, the white (cocaine) rabbit who is continually and frenetically running about saying he is late, and a cat stoned off his whiskers who simply vanishes.
Can nostalgia be dangerous? Brrrm Brrrm! Walking straight onto a plane with no security checks Carrying my speargun as cabin baggage in a plane First and business class transatlantic flights with no beds Airplane tickets made by travel agents only Smoking carriages on the subway/smoking sections on a plane Asking what is the movie on the plane Hovercraft to France Railway carriages with compartments and corridors Going for a Sunday drive 101 Octane Fuel Buses with conductors Driving without a seatbelt Just a radio with a single speaker in the car Spare tyres in cars No speed limits on motorways Electric Milk Floats Parking meters fed with coins
Is Nanny so under appreciated? When I was a nipper, I was lucky enough to have had several people look after me in my early years. My first, Nanny Roberts, was a cross between Margaret Rutherford and a rugby prop forward from Pontypridd in Wales. She was absolutely terrifying complete with white apron and hat like a server from Mickey D. I was always free to question her decisions, but rarely had the temerity to do so. She could probably have made me pee in my pants.But then again I adored her! She foisted upon me manners and life lessons along with traits and hang-ups that still haunt me now. I can still hear her hiss at me “Don’t eat with your mouth open or the tooth fairy might come along one night and pull all your teeth out!” It takes every effort for me not to blurt that out if I see someone munching open mouthed at another table in a restaurant, some sixty years after I last heard her say it. The fact that some expert told Cosmopolitan Magazine ‘that chewing open mouthed may actually help to release more of the volatile organic compounds, contributing to our sense of smell and the overall perception’ would have only confirmed her very dim view of the magazine. But when I was ill or hurt she was the ultimate comforter. And if someone biffed me at school she would make her displeasure known to the offending child’s parents, usually suggesting they get a decent Nanny to pump some manners into their offspring. Having been grilled over my appearance, told to always comb my hair, and forced to wear sensible lace up shoes when going on walks, she at least left me with the ability to tie a bow… let alone a sense of complete shame if my fingernails are dirty. Later on we switched to Au Pair girls, some of whom were breathtakingly beautiful. I remember a blond Danish girl called Bambi who was the spitting image of Julie Christie. I got to spend every evening looking at her with my eyes as wide as an owl’s. She taught me a Danish nursery rhyme that I can still perform at the drop of a Danish bacon sarnie. I cannot repeat with such clarity anything else from that period.
Does the impending holiday season now revolve exclusively around my TV? Firstly I should say that while tapping out this blog, the sky here in Malta is blue and the dogs are sunbathing in 22c/72f. Thanksgiving and Christmas are about as far from my mind as next year’s tax bill. However television commercials insist on dragging me away from my balmy reality into the fantasy of snow, turkey, goodwill to all men….and get me to start buying. I really do not understand how these companies who start commercials in November and scatterbomb the schedule for nearly two months with the same message, think this warms viewers to their cause. No matter how brilliant a commercial is, there comes a tipping point when repeated viewing turns into watching it again is worse than nails dragged down a backboard.
Am I feeling the teensiest bit envious today? They used to say the definition of rich was when you could not hear your spoon hit the bottom of the caviar jar. This winter in the UK, rich as Croesus will be if you can live in your home without wearing thermal underwear or not sucking on frozen TV meals like ice lollies. Meanwhile the Czars of energy will be taking a dip in their heated swimming pool followed by a nice sauna and a dinner of roasted lark’s tongues and baked Alaska, the country not the pudding. Well, my imagination is a strange thing but you get the picture. Now don’t get me wrong. If you build up a company from scratch, eat nothing but pot noodle and sleep on a bean bag for years, you deserve all the rewards you reap. But common decency also needs to step in. Do you really have to pay yourself £469m per annum (as is alleged for Bet 365 founder Denise Coates)? Greed seems to have made a comeback, making its first appearance in the 1980’s when it meant missing lunch with Gordon Gekko, look like it was a philanthropist. What is more galling is most of these energy companies are not run by the people who created them. Talented as I am sure they are, these are salaried people, whose risk reward ratio has gone potty. Someone was always going to be head of these companies. Unless I missed a trick, none of them persuaded Putin to duff up Ukraine causing a tenfold hike in what Vlad charges for a therm of gas, so resulting in the energy companies with a bonanza of profits and bonuses. The current situation for the energy companies is really serendipity.
Are some airlines hellbent on pi##ing off their passengers, whilst some notable exceptions bend over backwards to be helpful? Let’s face it. Airports in certain cities are in chaos. I recently heard of a passenger checking into First Class on an international carrier asking for his bags to go to Rio as he went to New York. An exasperated check in staff called over the manager who explained this was simply impossible. Baggage had to accompany the passenger. “Well, you managed it last time I flew to New York”, came the response, to a ripple of applause from other passengers.
During two years of lockdown and feeling like Papillon on Devil’s Island, locked in and no way out, my wife and I took the sports car to Sicily then on to Calabria and Puglia in the boot of Italy. The problem was we did not want to come home. After being cooped up in Malta, an island so small you could carpet it in an afternoon, the sense of freedom was overwhelming. And just like a single Pringle, a short break is not nearly enough. Had we not had two pooches waiting for us, we would be in Croatia by now on the way to Istanbul!
Are we so desperate to buy Duty Free? The truth is duty free is daft. I mean who said… “I know. Let’s fill all departing aircraft with more weight to burn more fuel. In addition, let’s fill the passenger compartment with a bunch of combustibles; booze, perfume, tobacco and raffia or plastic tat.” The truth is airports don’t give a fig about passengers so long as they can claw money off you in the two hours they hold you captive. The logical thing to do of course is to buy items to be collected when you land, thus avoiding transport cost and safety issues. That means all the crap you buy at the airport for friends and relatives because you forgot to buy on holiday will fall by the wayside. And no more local hootch that most of the time is used as paint thinner anyway. If you are desperate to buy a diamond encrusted watch or unobtainium rings because they are massively cheaper than at home, then search them out and buy them when you land. Makes the custom clearance queues shorter for the rest of us.
Do parents inflict on their children the misery of learning an instrument?
Well of course the answer to the above is probably one upmanship and ignorance.
“My Johnnie is learning the recorder…”
“Ah yes, the sweet little simpleton’s flute. Miranda found that soooooo easy she is now playing the oboe…”
All this lasts as long as the parent can stand the noise. No sane person would ever inflict on themselves, a child practicing the violin. Strangling a cat produces melodic bliss in comparison.
Then of course you get trendy parents who allow kids something a bit more useful and contemporary like drums or electric guitar. That is just masochistic. An electric guitar wails, and it’s the listener who ‘gently weeps’.
Drum solos are like nails down a blackboard even at a rock concert, but performed for hours on end, it is likely to end in mass murder. In addition, unlike a pair of maracas which your child can carry anywhere, you need a lorry to lug a drum kit about and a fork lift truck to load the stuff into the lorry. And then what? If your beloved keeps it up, he or she will spend all their teenage years doing no work but instead auditioning for bands convinced they are the next Nirvana.
When you come to my house do I suggest you don’t criticise my dogs as I won’t judge your children (at least not out loud).
Now I completely accept some people don’t like dogs... in the same way I accept that some people believe Elvis Presley is alive, well and riding Shergar across Area 51.
The thing about dogs is their love is unconditional. Even Hitler’s pet Alsatian Blondi no doubt thought Adolf a loveable chap who fed him scraps and gave him a splendid kennel complete with a swastika weathervane. That pooch was always pleased to see Mein Fuhrer, even after a hard day’s genocide.
In fact dogs are the ultimate sycophants. They laugh at your jokes, look at you admiringly, even perform tricks on demand... of course in return they expect to get food and shelter.
Dogs have indeed come a long way from their wolf forebears and many are more metrosexual with clipped nails and smart coats than flea infested hunters of old. In fact were man to become extinct in a haze of radioactive mushroom clouds, I’m afraid man’s best friend would follow pretty shortly afterwards.
The idea that Pepe the Chihuahua would survive in a post apocalypse world is farcical unless the radiation allows him to develop thumbs to open any tins of Kanga Chunks that he might uncover in the ruins of the post atomic blast.
Are there such tenuous connections in life that lead to extraordinary outcomes?
When I was first employed at Lloyd’s of London for Kidnap and Ransom insurance it was during the heady days of the four martini lunch…followed by a discreet snooze in the afternoon. Then after Big Bang, it was all red braces and Porsches, and the only thing to put in your body was hair gel. As Gecko said, lunch was for wimps. Step forward a wimp.
There was a discreet upmarket cocktail bar and restaurant called the Victory Rooms in the City. So Old School you expected to meet Tom Browne, Mr Chips and Jean Brodie, in her prime.
Now I believe it’s a gym for your lunch break. In my day at lunch time it was manned by the super famous Savoy American Bar cocktail waiter, Joe Gilmore. My first day whilst sitting at the bar trying to work out what to order, I noticed a tiny framed a picture of Apollo 11 resting on the USS Hornet, the recovery vessel after that historic flight.
“Why is that there,” I asked.
Joe beamed and brought it over. I could now see the signatures of Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin. ‘Thanks. Would never have got through it without you’ it read.
When the three astronauts were asked what they would like to keep
them occupied for the two weeks they were locked in quarantine, Collins and Armstrong asked for various books and music. Buzz said, ‘“Fuck that. If I am going to be locked up I want to be blissful. Get Joe from the Savoy to keep us smashed”.
Joe poured me a combination of grapefruit, orange liqueur, and a hint of rosewater, topped with Champagne. “It’s called a Moonwalker,” Joe explained. It was heaven in a glass. I owe Buzz Aldrin my love of cocktails.
Have we let naked ambition put cordial working relationships on a strict diet? Of course I blame purple braces, red Porsches and Gordon Gekko. The first casualty from Big Bang in the 1980’s was the three martini lunch. If lunch was for wimps, then count me in (if that’s no too much trouble)! I remember my early days in the City working in Lloyd’s Insurance market on Kidnap and Ransom insurance. Twice a year I would have lunch in the Directors boardroom at Fenchurch Street Brokers with an underwriter who got deeply offended if after cocktails then wine, we did not finish off a bottle of port. Of course we were fried as owls and no work was done that afternoon, but we never had a row, always got our man back if someone was kidnapped and the world shone brightly through the gimlet of the bi-annual assault on our livers. Could this Underwriter have been a touch richer, more ruthless and generate more moohlah for his company? Possibly? But then I probably would not have wanted to spend time with him or give him my business. In 1980 everything suddenly got serious. Fun was out as the new slave drivers assured us no one could possibly get rich being a bit silly. I suppose that’s one reason why shortly after Big Bang I left the City and ended up working for a man who had made millions sticking his hand up a Frog’s bottom. Jim Henson and The Muppets were back then an Entertainment behemoth... and not that we ever overindulged in anything to the detriment of that wonderful company, but indulge we all did. And it all (like Kermit) went along swimmingly. Chalk one up to the silly people.
Do I have to listen to drivel? Jargon is really a verbal hedge professionals hide behind... waiting to jump out and financially mug you. The truth is most businesses are not that complex, but to make everyone think someone has an IQ the size of a planet, people make up complex words (acronyms if in the Army) that no one understands. Never let a simple word stand in the way of a complex one, especially if as a lawyer you can charge £500 an hour to explain it.
Does anyone think reducing the width of a road increases mobility?
Recently in Malta, many of our main arteries are being choked with cycle lanes cutting into the roads in the name of increasing mobility and reducing pollution.
To be honest, whilst I sort of understand the logic, it is a million miles away from reality. Let’s start with heart attacks. Who is really going to cycle between the months of July and September up and down our hilly rock where heat and humidity would test a Tour de France cyclist? And these are the months the traffic is at it’s height due to tourists.
If these cycle lanes cut into and reduce the pavement width I would be prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt as people promenading during these months along artery roads is rarer than a smile at passport control. But with each car in summer shuffling usually four tourists about in a mini car not much longer than a bicycle but going four times quicker, can it really help movement of traffic by narrowing the lanes? Lorries and buses are now perpetually driving like threading a needle adding to jams and pollution as everyone now grinds to a halt to let them squeeze around corners or roundabouts.
Do Hospitals insist on waking patients up at 0:Dark Thirty?
Recently, due to a prolonged hospital stay where I was actually woken up each morning at 05:00, I now luxuriate in home visits from a nurse every morning at 07:00. So, my wife and I have been getting up at a time which in my younger nightclubbing days I would have just about been going to bed.
Before you all send me messages about how much earlier you get up, that is not the point. For me, I usually wake around 08:30 and down a heart-starting double macchiato by 09:00. Remember the commute to my office is a flight of stairs. So, for me I expect all my friends in the same time zone to be bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to talk within an hour and a half of my waking up, i.e 10:00.
Right now though,10:00 seems an eternity away from when I greet the dawn. 3 1/2 hours for European time and 4 1/2 for UK. I mean there is only so much shit, shower and shave, breakfast news, morning papers and Facebook abuse a man can take. I need human contact outside of my beloved wife!
I start to wonder who will equally be up early because of kids or gym. At least I can call friends in LA when I get up. It’s early evening for them.