Today, our disgraced ex-Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, gave her first media interview since unceremoniously losing her seat in the election. After revealing that like a lot of other people in this country, she's looking for a job, and 'holding her hands up' on the issue of the claim she 'mistakenly' made for her husband's porno movies, she segued seamlessly into talking about Theresa May, our shiny new Home Secretary. Jacqui publicly sympathised with Theresa about the 'style police' who seem obsessed more with clothes, shoes and hairstyle than they are interested in substance and Home Secretarial capabilities. Ms Smith thinks they should all get over themselves and concentrate on what's really important. Mmm, we'd all like a friend like Jacqui wouldn't we? Well, who's she to decide what's important in a job or not? For me, appearance is everything, crucial in fact. Far from putting a stop to it, it must continue unabated and be equally applied to the men. Is it my imagination or is Nick Clegg's goldy-yellow tie getting a bit grubby? Perhaps he models himself on Erik Satie, the French composer and pianist who owned ten identical suits, shirts and ties? And why are they all completely plain? Has our Nick been taking lessons from Obama's stylist or is he fixated on out-plaining Dave in the tie stakes? As for Vince Cable, isn't it about time he shaved those stickie-out hairs on the top of his head and whilst he's at it, his eyebrows and nostril hair could do with a trim and brush up. Ken Clark's going to have to shed the Hush Puppies this time around whilst George Osborne could badly do with a San Tropez spray tan - I've never seen anyone that white and still alive. As for Eric Pickles and Lord Strathclyde, we know they ate all the cookies in the cookie jar. Get those boys a good dietician - and fast.
I'm glad that this government is re-considering the Gary McKinnon case. He was the guy who hacked into the Pentagon systems and stands accused of committing the biggest military computer hack of all time. The Americans want him and, if tried and found guilty there, he faces up to sixty years in the slammer. This is patently absurd. Forget that he suffers from Aspergers, pay no heed that fear of ending up in the American penal system poses the very real risk that he'd kill himself - if the guy is clever and resourceful enough to repeatedly hack into the Pentagon's system, he shouldn't be facing prison, someone should give him a job. All he needs is a bit of direction along the lines of 'Gary, forget about looking for UFO's luv, we all know they don't exist. How about trying to track down some terrorists? That'd be so much more useful.' Just think, with his computer capabilities, what couldn't he do for to MI5, the CIA or Mossad? The authorities really are missing a trick here.
Finally, my sister published an article on the US website, www.salon.com, today. Salon (according to their own website) is 'the award-winning online news and entertainment Web site, combining original investigative stories, breaking news, provocative personal essays and highly respected criticism along with popular staff-written blogs about politics, technology and culture', it's worth a look. My sister's article was a review of Rodrigo Garcia's new film, Mother and Child (yet to open on these shores), a film exploring 'grief' using adoption as it's wrapper. Actually, my sister wrote her piece from her own perspective of the adoption process, something with which she is familiar having adopted her daughter three years ago. I know I'm biased but her article was excellent. Some of the huge on-site response the article generated has been breathtakingly hostile with people out there willing to pillory my sister from a position of total ignorance. It really is quite shocking what these contributors are prepared to say and write under a cloak of anonymity. One of the worst suggested that people who adopt children do it because they're either too vain or too lazy to have children themselves. Pur-leese! To make a comment on the site, you have to sign up and other readers then have access to all of your past comments on other articles. Suffice it to say, some of the commentators have three, four or five hundred previous postings. What can I say? They really should get out more.
Thursday 20 May 2010
Wednesday 5 May 2010
Man on the edge
Big-J is a man who likes to live life on the edge. On the edge of driving me into an early grave that is.
When we left for the airport, at the crack of sparrow fart last Saturday, we had travelled no further than a mile when his dashboard turned fluorescent red and pinged repeatedly in an alarming way. ‘Oh no’ said he, ‘it’s a flat’. We hastily detoured into the nearest service station to inspect the tyre. ‘It’s a slow puncture’ said he knowingly, ‘I’ll pump it up and it’ll be fine’.
I suggested that the chances were that the tyre would be flat after five days in Luton airport’s car park and that really, if we were sensible, we’d go home and swap his car for my slow-puncture-free alternative vehicle. But oh no, he didn’t want to do that. My guy only likes to move forwards, never backwards.
So, after five rain sodden days on the French Riviera (a place where it’s really difficult to do anything when the weather is very wet), and a long walk back through the aforementioned airport's car park, we found - and yes, you’re there before me - a totally flat tyre. Well, I had warned him and now I told him so, several times. Nightmare visions of having to call out the AA and waiting the obligatory three hours for them to arrive. ‘No, I’ll have to change it’ said Big-J with a show of complete confidence entirely for my benefit I’m sure as his last tyre change was probably back in 1973. Nevertheless, he brushed aside my enquiries as to whether or not he knew how to change a tyre or even how to unscrew the thief-proof wheel nuts especially fitted to the vehicle to prevent thieves (or hapless amateurs) from removing the wheels, as he rolled up the sleeves of his pale blue Ralph Lauren shirt.
With real teamwork, reminiscent of Dunkirk, together we burrowed deep into the boot and spied an interesting looking small black box, about the size of two paperback books stuck together. “I think that’s a pump,” I said (actually, I’d cheated because the pictures on the box front showed quite clearly that it was some sort of pump). Imagine our surprise and delight to find that it was a dear little electric tyre pump which plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter at one end and screwed onto the tyre at the other before, at the flick of a switch, pumping in air and bringing almost instant relief and unbridled joy to both of us. High five!
But all was not entirely well. No, no, no. Four miles later, those now familiar red lights flashed as the pings resumed pinging, ‘Maybe it’s not such a slow puncture’ he said as we pulled onto the hard shoulder to pump up the tyre again.
Having narrowly avoided death by exhaust fumes or worse, moments later we were off again, homeward-bound when Big J uttered what I can only assume is one of his favourite lines (because he says it quite often) ‘… and now we’re running out of petrol’. This is what I mean by living on the edge. He likes to run the petrol right down to the last teaspoon before filling up the car. I really don’t know why. Is that a man thing? And I absolutely don’t know why he especially seems to like doing this when we’re driving abroad. In this particular instance, we were only four miles south of Luton and twenty from home with the prospect of a friendly service station looming large. I suggested that we take the opportunity to stop there to fill up the car – and pump up the tyre once more which might just get us all the way home without another hairy stop on the hard shoulder. Fortunately for him, he agreed. Had we been in deepest Croatia, he’d probably have wanted to drive on, in the spirit of discovery, until we found the service station after the one we knew was just about to appear or even try to eek out the petrol to get to the one after that. What is it about men that they seem to thrive on the danger and uncertainty of an empty petrol tank? (That’s me trying to be complimentary, plenty of other less flattering thoughts spring to mind here.)
We stopped, we took our fill of fuel and pumped in beautiful fresh air whilst managing to have a run-in with four burly bailiffs - but that’s another story. (Perhaps I should mention that this was pure co-incidence and nothing at all to do with us or our chattels.)
And guess who’s going to be taking the car to have a new tyre fitted tomorrow? Here’s a clue … not him.
When we left for the airport, at the crack of sparrow fart last Saturday, we had travelled no further than a mile when his dashboard turned fluorescent red and pinged repeatedly in an alarming way. ‘Oh no’ said he, ‘it’s a flat’. We hastily detoured into the nearest service station to inspect the tyre. ‘It’s a slow puncture’ said he knowingly, ‘I’ll pump it up and it’ll be fine’.
I suggested that the chances were that the tyre would be flat after five days in Luton airport’s car park and that really, if we were sensible, we’d go home and swap his car for my slow-puncture-free alternative vehicle. But oh no, he didn’t want to do that. My guy only likes to move forwards, never backwards.
So, after five rain sodden days on the French Riviera (a place where it’s really difficult to do anything when the weather is very wet), and a long walk back through the aforementioned airport's car park, we found - and yes, you’re there before me - a totally flat tyre. Well, I had warned him and now I told him so, several times. Nightmare visions of having to call out the AA and waiting the obligatory three hours for them to arrive. ‘No, I’ll have to change it’ said Big-J with a show of complete confidence entirely for my benefit I’m sure as his last tyre change was probably back in 1973. Nevertheless, he brushed aside my enquiries as to whether or not he knew how to change a tyre or even how to unscrew the thief-proof wheel nuts especially fitted to the vehicle to prevent thieves (or hapless amateurs) from removing the wheels, as he rolled up the sleeves of his pale blue Ralph Lauren shirt.
With real teamwork, reminiscent of Dunkirk, together we burrowed deep into the boot and spied an interesting looking small black box, about the size of two paperback books stuck together. “I think that’s a pump,” I said (actually, I’d cheated because the pictures on the box front showed quite clearly that it was some sort of pump). Imagine our surprise and delight to find that it was a dear little electric tyre pump which plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter at one end and screwed onto the tyre at the other before, at the flick of a switch, pumping in air and bringing almost instant relief and unbridled joy to both of us. High five!
But all was not entirely well. No, no, no. Four miles later, those now familiar red lights flashed as the pings resumed pinging, ‘Maybe it’s not such a slow puncture’ he said as we pulled onto the hard shoulder to pump up the tyre again.
Having narrowly avoided death by exhaust fumes or worse, moments later we were off again, homeward-bound when Big J uttered what I can only assume is one of his favourite lines (because he says it quite often) ‘… and now we’re running out of petrol’. This is what I mean by living on the edge. He likes to run the petrol right down to the last teaspoon before filling up the car. I really don’t know why. Is that a man thing? And I absolutely don’t know why he especially seems to like doing this when we’re driving abroad. In this particular instance, we were only four miles south of Luton and twenty from home with the prospect of a friendly service station looming large. I suggested that we take the opportunity to stop there to fill up the car – and pump up the tyre once more which might just get us all the way home without another hairy stop on the hard shoulder. Fortunately for him, he agreed. Had we been in deepest Croatia, he’d probably have wanted to drive on, in the spirit of discovery, until we found the service station after the one we knew was just about to appear or even try to eek out the petrol to get to the one after that. What is it about men that they seem to thrive on the danger and uncertainty of an empty petrol tank? (That’s me trying to be complimentary, plenty of other less flattering thoughts spring to mind here.)
We stopped, we took our fill of fuel and pumped in beautiful fresh air whilst managing to have a run-in with four burly bailiffs - but that’s another story. (Perhaps I should mention that this was pure co-incidence and nothing at all to do with us or our chattels.)
And guess who’s going to be taking the car to have a new tyre fitted tomorrow? Here’s a clue … not him.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)