Ageing and Andrews

I’ve been thinking about age recently; I’m approaching another landmark birthday.  As one gets older, landmark birthdays are separated by more years but seem to come with increasing frequency.  Generally, as they age, men lose hair where they want it and grow it where they don’t.  They spend less time washing their hair and more time washing their faces – my thanks to a man named Andrew for that last observation.

“A man named Andrew” sounds like a title for a western.  I wonder what others there might be in the series: “The Magnificent Andrews”, “A Fistful Of Andrews”, “For A Few Andrews More”, “Pale Andrew”, “The Good, the Bad and the Andrew”, “The Wild Andrew”, “Pat Garrett And Andy The Kid”, “Andrew Cassidy And The Sundance Kid”, “The Outlaw Andrew Wales”, “Andrew”, “Andrew Rides Again”. Of course, there are also the classic old TV westerns: “Shotgun Andrew”, “A Message From Andrew”, “Flowers For Andrew”, “Sentenced To Andrew”, “Old Andrew’s Sister”, “Cannonball Andrew”, “Hopalong Andrew”, “The Lone Andrew”.

Phew, I think I’ve got Andrews out of my system now. And westerns.  Perhaps I should turn to music for a change of pace and a bit of light relief; something by the Andrews Sisters, perhaps?

Predictions for 2009

Finance:

• Sterling weakens further and the pound sinks to parity with the Zimbabwean dollar.
• In a completely unexpected move, the Federal Reserve recommends that the USA join the Eurozone.

Sport:

• FIA regulations restrict Formula 1 cars to human only power and the World championship is won by a previously unknown tap dancer from Kidsgrove.
• In response to the continuing credit crunch and declining pound, Lord Coe announces that the 2012 Olympics will be held in the back garden of a Mrs Nellie Pardue of 29 Bramble Way,  Croydon. It is hoped this move will reduce the overspend to around £14bn.

Music:

• Eligibility for the download chart is restricted to finalists from X-Factor, Pop Idol and Big Brother. No-one over the age of eight notices.
• It is discovered that Osama bin Laden has been making fake video broadcasts, in which he claims to be Ringo Starr, hates Liverpool and doesn’t want anything to do with his fans. The prank only comes to light when the real Ringo makes an impassioned plea for anyone to get in touch with him; even Sir Paul McCartney.

Technology:

• Windows version 7 early release is made available. All features of previous releases, including the text editor, calculator, e-mail client, web browser and the ability to run applications are now only available in an add-on entitled “You’re stuffed without this pal – Live!”, expected to cost $99. All familiar menus, options and general features have been moved into illogical and difficult to find groups, which reflect the way Microsoft believe their users think, having not bothered to ask them. The new operating system requires a 3 gigahertz quadruple core processor, 8 gigabytes RAM and 500 gigabytes free disk space. It takes a mere twenty-five minutes to start up and is capable of running MS Word at nearly 50% of the speed Word 1.0 ran on an IBM PC with around one thousandth of the raw computing power, back in 1983.
• Nintendo release Wii Yum, using a special food tray controller, with built in sensors – the Wii diet dish. Wii Yum allows players to measure food intake and play amusing games, whilst dieting. Amazingly, Nintendo appear to underestimate demand and only ship a dozen units to each continent to cover the first six months sales.

Navigation by Spam

Have you noticed that slices of Spam don’t have a uniform texture? Each slice contains changes in colour and contour, which look rather like a map of a region of wilderness; albeit, a pink one. Living, as I do, amongst the hills of England’s Peak District, I am familiar with such charts. The other uncanny thing about this tinned meat / cartography correlation is the fact that ‘Spam’ is, of course, ‘maps’ spelled backwards.

Maybe I should point this wonderful phenomenon out to Hormel Foods, owners of the Spam licence. Perhaps specific maps could be incorporated in the Spam manufacturing process. Imagine setting out on some intrepid expedition, with your survival and navigation equipment:

High tech wicking base layer – check
Thermally efficient middle layer – check
Durable, ultra light, breathable outer shell layer – check
Bivi bag – check
GPS – check
Emergency flares – check (I withstood the temptation to insert a 1970s fashion joke at this point)
Water purification tablets – check

Hey, wait a minute! Where’s the Dark Peak region 1:25,000 scale tin of Spam? OK chaps, I need to plot a course to our revised first expedition objective, the village store, tinned food shelf.

Anti-gay support for lesbians

I couldn’t help sniggering this morning when I found out about the planned ‘State-Wide School Sick-Out’, in protest against the California Teachers Association’s $1M donation to fight Proposition 8. In summary, a group of parents, students and teachers, who are against gay marriage in California are planning to stage a protest today.

The funniest thing about this is that the State-Wide School Sick-Out organisers have selected a war-time reproduction  poster to support their campaign; the same poster which has been available for purchase, with a lesbian caption, for several years.

Here are the two:

Pro Proposition 8

Pro lesbian

You can find out more about the pro Proposition 8 guys over at Beetle Blogger, the ‘No on 8′ campaign at All Facts and Opinions and you can buy the poster from Amazon UK. Tee hee!

Edible golf tees

In these times of financial hardship, an increasing number of people are turning to the old war-time practice of ‘make do and mend’. I thought I’d share a few tips, inspired by those passed down to me by my parents and grandparents.

• Grow lots of carrots and use them for everything. Here are some ideas to start you off:
  • Edible golf tees
  • Novel wine bottle stoppers
  • Aerodynamic improvements to the fronts of roller-skates
  • Cut into the right shapes, artificial goldfish
  • Any labour-saving device, which can be fashioned from a carrot
  • Exciting and original knee-cap decorations
  • Very realistic toy carrots
• Short car journeys are less fuel efficient, so always use the longest possible route to any destination.
• When following a recipe, don’t rush out to buy missing ingredients. Just substitute a carrot for each item you don’t have in the cupboard. Carrot and butter pudding has become a particular favourite in our household.
• Treat your house spiders as pets. They’re free, don’t need feeding and look after themselves whilst you’re on holiday.
• Save money-off coupons from magazines, your local supermarket etc. Boiled up with some grated carrot, they can make an appetizing meal.
• Potato peelings can be sewn together to make stylish and eye-catching leg-warmers.
• If you must buy new clothes, sew fragments of old clothes to them immediately after purchase. This will make them last longer and stop poorer people from feeling jealous.
• Individual strands, from a carefully dismantled hair-net, can be tied together to make an excellent hair-net.

Boo strongly

Many people may have noticed that a golf tournament, called the ‘Ryder Cup’, took place this weekend. There seems to have been a bit of a kerfuffle amongst European fans, over the fact that Team USA’s supporters kept shouting “boo, boo” a lot. This was deemed to be rude, unsporting and off-putting – given the golfing context, you can pronounce that last one however you like. Now, even golf ignoramuses like me know that Team USA have a player named Boo Weekley and it was for him the crowd were calling.

I don’t think European golf fans will have any cause for complaint in the future, unless the little known American player Bert Eurolosers were to improve his game significantly. However, it will be interesting to see how the Team USA supporters react to the fact that the next Ryder Cup, in 2010, will be played at the famous Welsh ‘Yahnkirrhubbish’ course.

Puffin Lap Dancing Club

I’m amazed at how many blog posts relate to Club Puffin, or something like that. Information abounds relating to Club Puffin cheats and even snazzy outfits for your Club Puffin alter ego. I know Club Puffin is extremely popular and hugely successful, so it’s obviously just me not getting it, but I don’t get it.

I’ve discussed this with a few kids and some not so young people who I would have thought were old enough to know better; apparently there’s a staggeringly huge population of college student Antarctic – oops, I mean North Sea -  cyber sea birds too.

I believe that Club Puffin is based on the principle that a) you’re a puffin b) you live in an igloo – silly me, I mean ‘hole in the ground’, c) you have furniture, clothes etc. and a social life. OK, I can accept that; this is the Interweb after all. As far as I know, given my pitifully minimal research of this subject, all these things are available with the free membership. The source of my confusion is that when you take up paid membership you’re entitled to more of the same, but better. So, you’re telling me that I can dress my Puffin in a virtual (i.e. not real) cheerleader outfit, but if I pay I can dress it in a better virtual (i.e. still not real) cheerleader outfit. This is like saying “I’m not going to give you a bicycle tomorrow, but if you pay me £1,000 I won’t give you a Ferrari.”

The problem for Club Puffin must be that its members stop renewing their membership and drift away as they get older. Surely there’s some way of retaining them with a more mature version. Let your puffin grow up with you, go to bars and visit other adult establishments. Perhaps it could be called ‘Penguin Lap Dancing Club’ – drat, there I go again – ‘Puffin Lap Dancing Club’.

Hot and cold running torture

I travel with work and have stayed at a wide range of bed and breakfast establishments around the United Kingdom.  I have discovered there is a hateful device to be found in many of the guest houses and small hotels of the land: the electric shower. Generally, these are based on a common design principle, usually requiring three main controls: a cord hanging from the ceiling, a power setting switch and a temperature knob.  In my experience, most electric showers appear to have these controls implemented as follows:

The pull cord, which controls the supply of electricity to the water heater, is hidden (e.g. behind the bathroom door).  Its presence and state (switched off) aren’t discovered until the showeree is ensconced in the bath or cubicle and has been drenched by a sudden jet of ice cold water.

The power setting switch usually has ‘high’ and ‘low’ settings. More sophisticated examples, with more settings, simply offer finer degrees of the same thing.  The ‘high’ setting alternates the water temperature – at random intervals from ten to fifty-five seconds – between scalding, instantly skin peeling heat and whatever setting is selected on the temperature dial.  The ‘low’ setting alternates the water temperature – at random intervals from twenty to ninety-five seconds – between blood thickeningly freezing cold and whatever setting is selected on the temperature dial.

Clearly, the temperature knob plays a crucial role in the overall showering experience.  Most examples have a setting scale of one to ten; they never have actual temperature settings.  Settings one to five are normally coloured blue and six to ten coloured red; the implied effects on water temperature couldn’t be made more obvious.  But it’s all a lie, of course. Numbers one to three are all just above freezing.  Numbers four to ten are all just below boiling.  The region between three and four results in a temperature fluctuation between fifteen and eighty-five degrees Celsius, the rate of which would be predictable, were it not for the randomising effects of the power setting switch.  Within this region, there exists the mystical and rarely discovered “safe zone”, in which a bearable temperature can be maintained for anything up to a minute, though rarely longer.  The safe zone can never be found directly, but has to be discovered by selecting a nearby hot or cold setting and enduring it until the safe zone, if it chooses, anoints the blistered, or frost-bitten, would be clean person, with water at just the right temperature.

It’s amazing how adept one can become at washing, quite thoroughly, using only a hand basin.

Apples and meths

Why oh why do people put stickers on apples? I eat an apple most days and these things are the bane of my life, well my lunch-time anyway. What are they supposed to be telling me? That I’m looking at an apple? I think they usually have the variety of apple printed on them. I’m not sure if this is intended to promote brand loyalty; in my experience, all it promotes is apple sticker loathing. Anyway, how is apple brand loyalty supposed to work? If I like the taste of a Cox’s Orange Pippins, I’ll go out and buy Cox’s Orange Pippins. No amount of well placed apple sticker advertising will persuade me to switch my allegience to Granny Smiths, for example. If the stickers actually tell me which distributor is responsible for ensuring my lunch-time apple is available at the local greengrocers, I can’t say I’ve noticed, and what would be the point anyway?

“Good morning Mr Greengrocer. I’d like half a dozen Cox’s Pippins, but they must be from ‘Scroggins & Co. – farm produce and fruit adhesive specialists’. I understand from their stickers that they are the premier grower and distributor of said apples.”

Some apple stickers have a the words ‘Peel here’ printed on them. Don’t fall for it. ‘Peel here’ actually means ‘You will struggle for the next ten minutes and end up gouging a chunk out of your apple, whilst getting a small amount of apple and apple skin wedged hard under you finger nail. Oh, and the sticker will still be there.’

When you finally manage to remove one of these evil little labels, does it reveal a pristine, shining patch of apple skin? Does it buggery. It leaves a nasty, sticky patch of apple sticker adhesive, which will attract every mote of dust in the vicinity, now that its protective label has been prised off. The only stuff which seems capable of removing the adhesive completely is methylated spirits. I tell you, there have been days when my apple sticker induced frustration has been such that I’ve been tempted to chuck the apple away and drink the meths.

Underpants on parade

I know every emerging generation has to embrace a fashion, which must be, at the very least, unfathomable to anyone over the age of twenty-one and preferably abhorrent to them. I realise I’m falling into the trap by even raising this, but who are the fools here?

I recently followed three young men around a crazy golf course – when I say I followed them, I don’t mean in any sinister sense, I just happened to be in a group, which was playing one hole behind them. All three of the young gentlemen in question were wearing jeans, the tops of which hung half-way down their buttocks and the crotches of which hovered closer to knee level than anywhere else.  Every time a member of this sartorially challenged team bent over to play a shot, he had to make a quick grab for the nearest belt loop, to prevent his denim trousers from becoming a laundry pile around his ankles. The regular movement required to maintain the half-masted status of the jeans appeared to have become so familiar that it was a barely concious, almost reflex action. Indeed, it appeared to have surprisingly little detrimental effect on the wearer’s ability to propel a golf ball through the whirling sails of the windmill at hole 4, across the castle drawbridge at hole 6, or even up the slopes and into the crater of the volcano at hole 7. I suspect running for a bus, whilst carrying the latest batch of low slung trouser purchases may have proven more problematic however.

Flared trousers, hot-pants, platform shoes etc. have all been considered ridiculous by those above a certain age, during the fleeting moments they were in fashion. Platform shoes, it could be argued, were even a bit dangerous, particularly when mixed with teenage cider experimentation. Whatever the current, fashionable description for falling down trousers is however, they are still falling down trousers.  This has to be one of the less convenient clothing trends to have emerged in the last few decades.

I’ve heard recently that the former public (or private, if you’re American) school prank of de-bagging is making a comeback amongst the modern youth, although with the slightly misleading title of ‘bagging’. I suppose it was inevitable really. Let’s face it, it’s never going to be easier than this and there are potential victims everywhere.

I wonder what the next fad will be? Underpants, boxers, posing pouches, or whatever is deemed fashionable at the time, worn on the outside of trousers, a la super-hero? Perhaps now is the time to start manufacturing utility belts.