HIDDEN DEPTHS?

Some people have hidden depths, but I think I have not very well disguised shallows.   I suffer from FTTTSD – Failure to take things seriously disorder.   I do try to concentrate on the more serious things in life but I am very easily distracted.   If I had been born seventy years later I would undoubtedly have been diagnosed with ADHD – I just consider it a butterfly mind, flitting from one trivial subject to another.   But today it has to be a ‘Disorder’ and then you will be subjected to counselling.   This is obviously very helpful in many cases, but there are so many people who claim to suffer from OCD because they go back to check that they have locked the front door.   I do that all the time but I don’t think of it as being anything other than being absent minded.   There are countless others:   I just Googled them –

AD: adjustment disorder. …

ASPD: antisocial personality disorder. …

ADD: attention deficit disorder. …

ADHD: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. …

AvPD: avoidant personality disorder. …

BED: binge eating disorder. …

BDD: body dysmorphic disorder. …

BPD: borderline personality disorder……

And we’ve only got to ‘B’ – the list goes on and on.

When someone is trying to explain theory of relativity or the respective merits of the classic Scott Moncreiff translation of Proust as opposed to the later one by Christopher Prendergast and I am thoughtfully stroking my chin as though listening intently but more often than not I am surreptitiously feeling for any stray hairs on my chin.

Maastricht Treaty – no idea what that is about, but I can name all the Kardashian sisters , (I’m not proud of that but I can) not so much the children who have weird names like Thunder and Blizzard.   Poor little mites.   As for Elon Musk who has two children but someone called Grimes whose given names were Claire Elise Boucher – fairly innocuous and I can see if you wanted to be famous you might wish to change them, but to call your children Exa Dark Sideræl and X Æ A-Xii – you can at least pronounce the first one but the second one! No idea what sex it is but even if your father is the richest man in the world all but the creepiest most  sycophantic children are bound to tease you – it is almost a racing certainty that they will change it to John or Mary at some point in later life!

And to prove my point on the triviality of my brain here are some of the fascinating things that have popped into my mind recently after spending an evening sitting next to an erudite and highly respected intellectual who had absolutely no small talk (and obviously I have no ‘big’ talk).   I’m sure he was the most interesting man but he was so dry he made the Kalahari seem quite refreshing!

So in order of absolutely no importance:

Haloumi – why?   I used to nibble the erasers at the end of my pencils at school but I never thought of grilling them and making a meal out of them.

Coming Out – when I was young this was something young girls did in order to be exposed (not literally!) to suitable young men.   When an old friend of mine told a gay American that she had had a coming out dance he was very impressed that she was brave enough to do that in the l960s.

Wagatha – even I can’t raise any interest in that! – what was it about other than two very rich women with too much time on their hands.  

The Met Gala (Did you see any photos of that?)    Apparently it is known as “fashion’s biggest night out,” In reality a fancy dress  party for very rich grown ups.   As far as I could see it is the night when elegance bites the dust.

Complementary/Complimentary Therapy – I like the idea of a therapist who tells you you’re looking lovely.

Adenoids – when I was young children often had theirs removed – I had no idea why but I do know that nowadays half the people you hear on the radio should have had their removed to stop that irritating adenoidal whiny voice that I seem to hear far too often.

Underarm hair – I heard someone on the radio say that she had dyed hers green as some sort of protest against shaving it! I must have misheard or it is a joke and I am rapidly losing my sense of humour.

I’ve noticed how food keeps having new buzzwords.   There have been Drizzle, Coulis, Rocket,  Samphire, Kimchi and Star Anise to name but a few and it is the same with health,   Dyslexia was one of the early ones, PTSD and then maybe Asperger’s came next and at the moment it is the menopause and periods.   People can suffer terribly from all these things but inevitably they are trivialised when people say they are suffering from PTSD because their dog has died.   I adore my dogs and am heartbroken when one dies but to compare this to something that a soldier may have gone through in Afghanistan is just wrong.

But keeping the best until last I read the other day that an ‘Intimate health brand has launched uterus-shaped cereal to encourage period based conversations’ – they are actually dyed red with beetroot and are meant to encourage families to have these conversations over breakfast!  They even helpfully include conversation prompts in the box!   I so often think the world has gone mad but the lunatics really are running the asylum now.