Deceitber!

We’ve got Stoptober when everyone stops drinking or smoking for the month – I gave up smoking several years ago and I don’t really drink much (unless I’m at a party and don’t have to drive).   At home alone I don’t drink.  Then there is Movember, an annual event in November that raises awareness and funds for men’s health issues by encouraging people to grow moustaches. I notice that in this woke world we talk about ‘people’ growing a moustache!   Obviously, like most post menopausal women, I could grow a moustache and I’m as concerned as the next person about men’s health after all some of my best friends are men, but not even for their sake would I be prepared to go out in public without a close examination of my upper lip in a magnifying mirror.

Now I’m thinking of starting Deceitber which, as we know, ‘tis season to be jolly and to tell a load of festive fibs!   Parents telling tales of Santa with his elves and reindeer with children nodding sagely and taking it all in with total belief at first and then with scepticism but not wishing to tell the truth in case Santa stops bringing them bulging stockings.   Although I’m not sure if any child ever believed that one very naughty little boy once got a stocking full of coal.   And the mock delight with which we greet the news that Aunt Anne would love to join us for Christmas as would her hairy, smelly and incontinent old dog and even if we are not sure whether she is referring to the family Basset Hound or Uncle Bill neither prospect pleases.

As for presents – ‘How lovely’ we exclaim, ‘what an interesting jumper and such bright colours too – will make a nice change from my usual muted tones,’ at the same time making a note to self to label this one ready to re-gift but making sure that we don’t give it back to the donor next year.   An old friend and I used to spend happy times thinking up the most hideous and vulgar gifts to give to people we disliked – always provided we had won the lottery and had unlimited funds when we could indulge our fantasies.   Apropos, of absolutely nothing, except Christmas, I read a letter in one of the Sunday papers where someone had written in asking if the council had any powers to insist on people taking down their Christmas decorations and outdoor lights as the writer felt that one of their neighbours was making the street look cheap!    I do wish I knew where they lived I’d be tempted to send the neighbour a donation towards their seasonal decorations.  This reminded me of Dolly Parton’s remark that ‘it costs a lot of money to look this cheap’.  I actually think the picture below is far too tasteful but I do rather love it.  

Personally, I have a large herd of illuminated reindeers outside my house and I’m sure that there are many people who think they are the height of vulgarity – anyway I do hope that this is the case.

I like to think that I’m a truthful person, but actually that is a big fat fib!   I mentioned that I don’t drink when I’m on my own at home alone however I should have added the words ‘much’ or ‘often’ to that!   

Most of the lies we tell are white lies, lies told in order not to hurt someone else’s feelings.   ‘Of course it wasn’t a mistake to cut your hair that short’ we reassure a friend who has gone for quite an extreme crop under the illusion that it makes her look like Audrey Hepburn when the reality is that she looks more like a US marine – very heroic but not necessarily the look she had been going for.  

Sales assistants in shops are often terrible – I have long given up trying things on in shops unless absolutely necessary.   The communal changing room was the worst when some wretched woman who was relying on a commission to feed her family would attempt to persuade you that the dress that gripped you like a tourniquet was in fact meant to do that as everything was being worn very snug this season while pin thin women slipped into tiny garments bewailing the fact that everything was so big!    And as for shoes that assistants assure you will stretch with wear – maybe, but how much agony are you prepared to go through whilst waiting for this to happen.  

Presumably contrary to the popular song ‘things can only get worse’ with AI.   The internet is a world of lies and scams.   The most unbelievable stories appear and what is more people believe them.   There are videos of fantastical creatures that seem completely real but are obviously computer generated and very clever they are too, but for every down to earth person with a degree of common sense there is some naïve and gullible person who will believe that everything they see or read is true.    Surely no one actually thinks that when you ring a company your call is important to them but at least you used to get to a real live person eventually but now the voice that announces ‘My name is Rachel. How can I help you?’ will turn out to be a computer.   It is possible that the computer is called Rachel, but I very much doubt it and as the conversation proceeds it becomes obvious that ‘Rachel’ can only answer standard questions – I’m sure this will change and they will be able to deal with everything – perhaps the answer is that we all have an AI assistant that can deal with things on our behalf and we can leave the computers to lie away to each other while we go out and try to enjoy ourselves

Happy Christmas Everyone!

The Snowflake generation

This was supposd to be about the Snowflake generation and it is,  but first of all in my endless quest to seek out major news that is often missed by headlines of war, plague and pestilence I found this important story about the  cheating scandal that has rocked the world stone skimming championships that took place in the Hebrides.   Some of the contestants have been tampering with their stones that have to be passed on a measuring device called the  ‘Ring of Truth’ .   And, much to my delight, the adjudicator is called the Toss Master.  

However on to Snowflakes.   Watching the VJ memorials was incredibly moving – such extraordinary bravery from men who came back after the most horrific experiences and for the most part never mentioned what had happened to them.   They just got on with their lives.   Difficult to read their stories without crying and also without thinking about how today’s youth might handle things.   Human nature doesn’t change and we still have wonderfully brave young people but we also want to wrap them in cotton wool.   

As children we were allowed to run wild all over the countryside.   People say there was less danger then but I’m not so sure.   We had a gardener who suddenly disappeared – my brother and I were very disappointed as we used to spend time chatting to him in the potting shed.  Years later I discovered that he had been sent to prison for being a paedophile and molesting local children!   Nobody asked us if he had done anything to us (he didn’t) but today I’m sure we would have had therapy.

I read somewhere that a council has closed the swimming pool because they can’t afford to heat it – we used to swim in the English Channel and frequently refuse to come out no matter how much our teeth were chattering.  No Costa del Sol for us, just Heinz tomato soup and sand sandwiches behind a breakwater sheltering from the biting wind.   We knew how to enjoy ourselves in those days.  

Childen today aren’t allowed to be bored – they have activites planned day and night – gym, art, music, after school clubs, and of course the digital babysitter – there is always something to amuse them.   Boredom is a thing of the past.  You don’t know anything about boredom unless you spent a wet Sunday in the 1950s on a farm with no television staring out of the window watching the puddles grow.   If we had mentioned feing bored  we would be told to read a book.   There wasn’e even the diversion of a telephone call.   There were two telephones in the house – one in the farm office and one in a cupboard in the hall.   Not only did we have to ask permission to use it thete was no privacy – my father sat in earshot and could hear every word so no confidences could be exchanged.

If children today tell their parfents they don’t like school their parents take them seriously, listen and talk to the school and  even in some cases change schools – if I had told my parents that I wasn’t happy at school they would have just shrugged and ignored me.   I wasn’t being sent to school to be happy but to learn how to be a good wife.   As long as I knew how to speak English correctly and to add up it would enough for me to find a suitable husband.   We were expected to be tough – prisoners today would riot if they had to put up with the conditions we endured at boarding school.  

And when we were out and about we were trusted to know that ponds might contain deep water and that weedkiller and pesticides were best not drunk without large warning notices.   As for bulls – we didn’t need a sign to tell us to keep out of their field – we knew to treat them with respect.   Talk about calling a spade a spade – when I was young people didn’t worry about offending people.  Now you can’t refer to a chick with a dick as a man if ‘they’ identify as a woman for fear of giving offence.   A shopkeeper recenlty was attacked because, after a series of thefts he put up a notice saying ‘Scumbags keep out’ and he was made to remove it for fear of offending scumbags!    I think I’m going to start pretending I’ve got dementia (not much of a stretch!) so that I can be rude to people and they won’t like to criticise me as it won’t be my fault!!

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

‘No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home in Weston-super-Mare’.   I have quoted this before, but it is one of my favourites from Kingsley Amies.   Life is pretty random – many of my healthiest friends have died young and yet some of the reprobates are still will us, smoking, drinking, overweight and taking little exercise.   And just apropos of nothing, another good quote from Kingsley Amies is  ‘If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing’,

My intention had been to write about what is better about modern life, but I keep getting sidetracked when I read, hear or see things that make me pause for thought.   For instance, this morning I read in the newspaper that a senior female staff member at the BBC showed a junior female staff member a dick pic and that the junior had burst into tears and been traumatised by this.   I can’t help feeling that she has either recently left a convent, is incredibly wet or wants some enormous sum of money in compensation.   For some reason men appear to think that women find dick pics attractive or arousing whereas, maybe because I’m old and boring, I imagine that most women would just think ‘Eugh, put it away!’.  

However much as there is to complain about in modern life there are good things over and above the confusion it causes to the old and bewildered and sometimes one has to stop and think about how many things have improved enormously.  Communication for example – mobile ‘phones are wonderful.   If you break down in your car at midnight you no longer have to wait on a dark and lonely road hoping that the first driver to stop will be a good Samaritan and not a mad axeman!  

If you have grandchildren in Australia they can still know you through the screen even if you only see them once every couple of years.   My grandparents lived in Scotland and when we made our annual visit to see them they were complete strangers who we talked to for three minutes (some of you will know what I mean!) on Christmas Day.  

Another thing that is better is a more relaxed way of life.   In my family breakfast was at eight, lunch at one, tea at four and dinner at eight and only an emergency would vary that.   And the food was very basic – you would never have found an avocado in our local town.   Garlic was considered an exotic foreign ingredient that no decent English cook would have any truck with and as for things such as hummus or guacamole, no one would have known what you were talking about. There may be some people out there who remember rissoles but for the unenlightened they were our version of a hamburger made with left over meat from the Sunday joint minced, seasoned, made into patties and fried.   Known at my school as Grissoles as we believed they were made from the inedible bits of meat that we had left on our plates the previous day.

The internet is another modern day wonder – of course it can overwhelm us, but there ae so many excellent things about it.   The Encyclopaedia Britannica was an amazing set of books, but they were not only incredibly expensive, but took up a vast amount of space and quickly went out of date.   Search engines on the internet can be carried  around on your ‘phone in your pocket and are up-dated hourly. 

Another good thing is that most of us live much better for longer – although our heirs might not necessarily appreciate that!   Photographs of my grandparents show them as very old people when judging by my age in these photos they can only have been in their 60s!   This must in part be due to medicine – when I was younger people whispered the ‘C’ word (not just the four letter one which was seldom, if ever, even whispered!) but Cancer, because we assumed that if someone got cancer they died and yet today there are millions of people who have had cancer and have continued on with their lives very healthily.   And what about all those new parts – hips, knees, shoulders –  you name it.   And all the amazing procedures they can do on hearts, and then there ae cataracts – or rather no cataracts as you seem to be able to have those done in your lunch hour.     

Cars are much more reliable too – when I was young everyone (apart from the very rich) had an old banger for their first car and it broke down with monotonous regularity.   There was no such thing as an MOT and seat belts didn’t exist – admittedly there was not nearly so much traffic on the roads so we didn’t crash into each other so much, even though we frequently drove after several glasses of wine!

Finally, birth control.   The freedom that women felt once they could regulate the number of children they had and weren’t forced like our grandparents to have dozens of them, many of whom died in infancy.   One of my ancestors had four sons with the same name, so determined was he to have a son who bore his first name that no sooner had a wretched little baby died of scarlet fever than the next one was given the same name.  I’m not unduly superstitious but even I would have felt that it might have been putting a jinx on the poor mites.   

So all in all we don’t really have much to complain about – but when did that ever stop anyone?

When did saying no become a no-no?

When did it become taboo to say No.   There is a dog lady on the internet who maintains that you should never say no to your dog. Excuse me?   I have four dogs and they all know that No means No.   I am in charge of the pack – I am the head bitch and they all understand that and are happy, well balanced, cheerful thieves – well nobody’s perfect and they are Labradors!   And  children aren’t allowed to hear the ‘no’ word any more, much less have a clip around the ear.   The frazzled parent is supposed to crouch down and talk soothingly to the little thing who is having a temper tantrum in one of the aisles in Tesco – we don’t usually see that sort of thing in Waitrose!  There are new parenting expressions like  ‘gentle hands’ instead  of saying sharply, ‘No – you do not hit your sister’.   As for the American way that seems to be a matter of negotiation along the lines of ‘If you stop hitting your sister you can have an ice cream’!  And the overuse of the expression ‘Good job’.   It is as if people are scared that saying no to your child or your dog will make them hate you.   In fact the reverse is often true – boundaries make people feel safe.  Families aren’t democracies –a family run along those lines would be complete chaos with a diet of ultra processed foods and sugar.  

Social situations aren’t much better.   Mrs Ghastly-Bore rings up and asks you to dinner and instead of saying a flat ‘No’ you wriggle like a worm on a hook trying to think of a suitable excuse.   Would you like to go and see Little Miss Ghastly-Bore in the school production of Annie? Obviously not,  but your middle class upbringing forces you to tell a lie and say that you are having an operation that week, visiting a dying aunt, have your cousin’s wedding  and are then caught in a trap when you realise they haven’t  told you the date yet.   The worst invitations are the ones where someone rings and asks what are you doing  the 27th?   It would be logical to ask Why, but somehow most of us find that difficult.   Nothing, we say.  Ah good, comes the reply, because my great uncle needs a lift to the Ghastly-Bores and I know they are asking you because I checked.   Now you are trapped.   The best thing to do when asked what you are doing on a certain date is to copy Oscar Wilde and invent a Bunbury.    “Bunburying” is to have a mysterious relation of the name of Bunbury, who always falls ill and requires to be visited. Either when you want to go out of town on some unavoidable business, or when you receive an invitation to dinner which you wish to decline, there is always that invitation to Bunbury which comes in handy.   I had a much loved aunt who fulfilled this purpose – she was in fact perfectly healthy and only about fifteen years older than me, but I used her as an excuse to get out of anything I didn’t want to do.

Perhaps part of the problem is that ‘No’ can be quite a soft word, as opposed to the Russian ‘Nyet’ or the German ‘Nein’.   You have to put quite a lot of effort into the word ‘No’ for it to work really well!   Many years ago I was walking past a garden with my dogs when a large German Shepherd (the four legged kind) burst through the fence and started attacking one of my dogs.   I couldn’t think what to do so I screamed ‘NO’ as loudly and fiercely as I could and much to my surprise it slunk off back into the garden.   I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed with the power of my voice or rather worried by how frightening I could be!

There used to be a fashion for notices hung up in offices that read ‘You Don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps’, and I believe it was intended to convey an idea of a scatty, fun place to work although it actually made one think ‘You don’t have to be clinically depressed to work here, but you probably will be.’   And there was another one that said ‘Please do not ask for credit as a refusal often offends’, and this was supposed to be a jokey way of softening the blow of saying ‘No’.   

My generation are pretty tough,  when we were young passing every building site was a minefield with wolf whistles and cries of ‘you don’t get many of those to the pound’ to every young and certainly well endowed women who walked by and for the most part it was good natured, if vulgar, and not frightening and on days when one didn’t attract any attention it could be a bit depressing.   In my youth nice girls nearly always said ‘No’ and nice young men didn’t push it.   And for the most part even the old roue who would ask you back to his flat at three o’clock in the morning ‘to see his etchings’, would accept a firm ‘no’ and ‘nice’ girls generally had the sense to say “no”.  But all that seems to have changed and I don’t believe that any teacher would say, as my old headmistress said to me ‘No one wants to buy a cake if there’s a slice missing’.   We were taught to say No to save us from ruining our reputation – sometimes modern girls might like to think about this!

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire – unless you’re trying to cook chicken on a BBQ

Jane Austen famously begins Pride and Prejudice with “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”.   Today I think he would want a luxury car and a large house and I imagine that potential wives would miraculously appear.

Many old proverbs don’t really stand up to close analysis.

A watched pot never boils – oh yes, it does, although it is true that it will almost certainly boil over the moment you turn your back.

Absence can make the heart grow fonder, usually for someone else.

We were told that ‘It will never get better if you pick it’, but as one of my grandchildren pointed out when she was about three, “That’s not true ‘cos I picked it all the time and it’s better now!’

A Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step – maybe but more sensible to make sure you have a valid passport first.

A picture paints a thousand words – indeed, but a picture of a toothbrush is only a toothbrush until someone captions it ‘Hitler’s Toothbrush’.

Beggars can’t be choosers.   Oh, can’t they?   The last time I tried to buy a cup of tea for a man begging in the street I got a mouthful of abuse

Good things come to those who wait – but better things come to those who help themselves first.

Honesty is the best policy – until you tell your best friend that her new, expensive dress makes her look fat!

All roads lead to Rome – not if you are on the M6 at Spaghetti Junction where all roads seem to lead to hell.

Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today although as Oscar Wilde said ‘I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after’.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away – if you throw it hard enough.

Let sleeping dogs lie – they won’t tell the truth once they wake and even though you know they ate the sausages.

A woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more you beat them the better they be!   Good luck with that one today.   You’d be in terrible trouble for the first two and there could well be a Walnut Tree Protection Group out there somewhere!

All the world loves a lover – although not necessarily in public.

If life gives you lemon why not make a gin fizz.

Give a man enough rope and he will hang himself – alteratively he might tie you up and run off with all your money.   Don’t think that would be worth taking the risk.

The best things in life are free – try telling that to your family at Christmas.

We could all do with some new proverbs couldn’t we – well, anyway I’ve had a bit of fun making them up!

The wetter the dog, the warmer the welcome.

The fatter the legs the shorter the skirt.

The worse the speaker the longer they will speak

If you observe that traffic is very light you will immediately run into a traffic jam

If you say work is very quiet the ‘phone will begin to ring off the hook

If you go shopping without brushing your hair you will bump into your best friend coming out of the hairdresser.

On the other hand if you set out in your best finery you will never see anyone you know.

If you are waiting for a telephone call get into the bath.

If your dog suddenly starts to drag its bottom along the grass you will meet the vicar.

If money doesn’t grow on trees why do banks have branches?

Sell the vacuum, all it is doing is gathering dust.

I’m on a seafood diet – I see food and then I eat it.

Keep away from children – seen as safety instructions on lots of products but can also be read as a lifestyle choice.

Enjoy every birthday, studies show that people who have more of them live longer – lot of research must have gone into that!

Apparently God created the world but everything else is made in China.

If you’re not supposed to eat at night why is there a light in the fridge?

Alcohol doesn’t solve problems but neither does milk so you might as well get drunk.

I’ve made a long list of things to do today now I’ve just got to find somebody to do it.

Time wounds all heels.     

There must be hundreds more both new and modifications of old ones in this changing word.   I’d love to hear some of yours.

Are you having a laugh?

This blog was started so that I could write about the things that amused and surprised me with the occasional rant.  By nature, I am an optimist and my glass is usually half full, but recently the world has seemed like a rather disturbing and depressing place.   There is certainly plenty to rant about.   I saw this the other day and wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry out in disbelief –  there is a new film that has raised the question as to whether dog show judges manipulating the genitalia of male dogs constitutes sexual harassment.   Surely this must be a joke   My father always used to say, ‘To the pure, all things are pure’ and all I can say is someone with a very impure mind must have raised that concern.

However, there is always something to cheer one up if you look hard enough.  Recently I was helping out at a Pony Club event.   I had forgotten about Pony Club mothers – the most formidable and admirable group of people – a regiment composed of these women would never be defeated.   And what is more they are bringing up fearless children who understand that life is full of obstacles that can be overcome – such as a bolting pony or a tumble over its neck!   ‘You’re fine…hang on…oh, dear, never mind… just get back on.   You can do it.   Don’t cry, it’s fine.’     It was wonderful and so refreshing after all we hear about gentle parenting!   Music to my hard boiled ears – it reminded me of the way things used to be and cheered me up enormously.  

I have always considered a day without laughter to be a wasted day, but sometimes you have to search quite hard for the laughs.    I didn’t think the 6.30 comedy programmes on Radio 4 could get less amusing than the News Quiz in its present incarnation, but the Naked Week manages it.   Whatever made the scriptwriters (if they have any) think that the word ‘knob’ used to describe someone would be hilarious – although to judge by the shrieks from the studio audience some people do, unless they are all on drugs.   Of course, the word ‘knob’ is innately funny but is it prime time listening on Radio 4 funny?    More and more I turn to my favourite humourists of the past.   Who doesn’t find P G Wodehouse amusing?  

For example Bertie Wooster asking the wonderful Jeeves his opinion of a new and rather loud tweed suit that he has just bought:

‘Lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.’

‘Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir’

Very dated, but still funny.   A reassuring world where Bertie Wooster is a bit of an ass, charming and well intentioned, but an ass nevertheless and Jeeves is so infinitely superior as far as intellect goes, albeit a bit supercilious.   This was a world ruled by aunts – the sort of aunt who has disappeared.   What has happened to the aunts of yesteryear when Aunt called to Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primaeval swamps and every family member leapt to do their bidding?   They certainly don’t make them like that any more.

And more recently the late Alan Coren whose observational humour always made me smile – just putting into words things that I have thought about myself such as:

“There are many mysteries in old age but the greatest, surely, is this: in those adverts for walk-in bathtubs, why doesn’t all the water gush out when you get in?”

A bit obvious but something that I have wondered myself.   David Mitchell said something similar on Radio 4 the other day and he is one of the few modern comedians that I find both intelligent and funny.

Of course, there are others, but you have to look quite hard to find them.   There is no doubt that there is nothing better than having a fit of helpless giggles with a friend or two or that wonderful feeling you get when something has tickled you so much that you just have to share it with someone.   One of the secrets to a happy marriage has to be a shared sense of humour.   Although that can be dangerous if you catch each other’s eye at the wrong moment.   My father loved to make people laugh at the inappropriate time so when he and his brothers went to visit the family solicitor after their mother died he told them that the solicitor, who was a very short man, was taller when seated than when he stood up.   As the brothers came into the office, he got to his feet whereupon my two uncles gave out loud guffaws in front of the poor bewildered man.

Just as an afterthought here is my Mystery of the Week.   English is my first language and I pride myself on having a good vocabulary.   Admittedly I don’t understand a lot of the words my teenage grandchildren use, but surely that is the point of what they say.   On the other hand, I do expect to be able to understand things on mainstream television, so what is ’A Gaffer of an Acca’ – No idea!!!  Something to do with betting?   Am I the only one in the dark here?

Germ Warfare.

When did germs become such a thing and a cause of major panic?  Covid exacerbated everything but long before that products were being advertised that killed 95% of all germs.   People seem to have a meltdown at the very word.   I don’t remember ever thinking about germs when I was young.   As feral children growing up on a farm we spent our days running wild.   If we had to answer a call of nature there was nowhere to go expect behind a tree and certainly nowhere to wash our hands.    There is an old joke about an Etonian and a Harrovian meeting in a gents loo and the Etonian says to the Harrovian ’ At Eton we were taught to wash our hands after having a pee,’ to which the Harrovian replies  ‘At Harrow we were taught not to pee on our hands’

There was a report some years ago that attributed allergies to super clean houses whereupon my son, rather unkindly, said “It’s not surprising I don’t have any allergies.”    Shirley Conran famously wrote, many years ago, that life was too short to stuff a mushroom.   I agree with the sentiment behind that although I don’t mind stuffing  the occasional mushroom life is certainly too short to hoover every day – the dust and dirt is only going to come back.   Do it when it looks as though it needs it! 

I don’t remember us having baths every day and there certainly wasn’t a shower in the house.   We only washed our hands if they looked dirty – which they usually did!   At my boarding school we were filthy – I don’t they had ever heard of germs.   Access to soap and water was strictly rationed – the idea that we might have a shower after gym or games would have been looked upon as very odd.  

Nothing had a sell by date on it – and I have to say I don’t take much notice of them now, although I confess that I was caught out by some prawns the other day.   School food was pretty disgusting but the fact that all vegetables had the goodness boiled out of them had nothing to do with germs or food safety.   When we used to stay with people who had an ‘old school’ cook my husband used to say that they put the sprouts on before church.   Green was certainly not a colour associated with vegetables; they were mostly grey.   In the event we have turned ourselves into a nation of worriers although it seems unlikely that the hundreds of thousands of people who live on the poverty line  have the luxury of worrying about every little germ. 

There are germs in the air, on food, plants and animals; and in the soil and water. Germs are on just about every surface, including the human body. Most germs cause no harm. The immune system protects against most things that cause infections.   There are obviously a few that you probably want to avoid such as Listeria, Salmonella and E-Coli, if you can as they can be extremely unpleasant even if they very rarely kill healthy people.  It is surely far better to forget about germs as much as possible particularly as I believe that Donald Trump is a germaphobe – that must tell us something!!

But we live in a world of trigger warnings and not just for germs – there are trigger warnings everywhere.  Apparently, there is one warning people that Shakespeare’s The Tempest has a storm in it!   Who would have guessed that!   I went to buy a knife today and the shopkeeper warned me to be careful with it as it was very sharp, almost as if I was looking for a blunt one.  

Apparently I belong to the Silent Generation, I only found this out the other day and I wondered why.   I still don’t know the official reason but I imagine it if because we look at modern life, sigh, shrug our shoulders and mutter ‘Really’ under our breath.   There is a great deal that is confusing to us and there is very little we can do about it.  Although I do know that being treated like a small child of limited intelligence is very irritating.   Maybe the all the subsequent generations need a notice telling them to be careful of hot water taps because they have hot water in them or a warning letting them know that ponds could contain deep water (although I doubt it: the human race hasn’t survived this long through breeding generation after generation of congenital idiots) but my generation certainly don’t.    I look around me in bewilderment much of the time.   Scarcely a day passes when I don’t read a newspaper story that makes absolutely no sense at all.   Why, for example, are MPs and other public figures, so naïve as to imagine that posting offensive remarks on a WhatsApp is a good idea!   We all know that the written word remains and however ‘private’ you think something is – it is out there!  It seems that life becomes increasingly perplexing but perhaps it was ever thus.

Free Speech!

In my youth people said things that would get you dismissed from your job today.   We fought for Women’s rights (well I didn’t personally, but I benefitted) and we were quite tough.   Women today can join the army, the police, play football,  become boxers, but apparently cannot cope if a man asks to see their tits, something that used to be quite common – in both senses of the word!   The response then being either to show him or tell him to get lost depending on how you felt, but not to report him to the police!  In the good old days a large breasted girl could scarcely pass a building site without some wag shouting out ‘You don’t get many of those to the pound’.   And when I worked in the City the Christmas party was a minefield.   I had been brought up in a family that enjoyed the odd gin and tonic and a glass of wine, but many of my female colleagues hardly ever drank so come the party they would down several Snowballs (I presume people still drink this disgusting combination of Advocat and lemonade) and then throw up into the wastepaper basket but they still had the sense not to follow Mr Snodgrass into the stationery cupboard where he would claim that he had a Christmas surprise for them  – more likely a nasty shock.  Had he looked like George Clooney I feel that people would have been trampled underfoot in the stampede to get into the stationery cupboard!

 I would never want to trivialise any serious assault whether sexual or otherwise but a coarse remark or even a pinch on the bottom hardly merits women claiming that they are still traumatised twenty years later.   It is minefield out there – luckily I live in rural England among people who are pretty robust both in their behaviour and their language.   We can tell the difference between silly banter, offensive language and a serious assault.   I’m perfectly happy if someone calls me ‘love’ or ‘darling’  although, perhaps irrationally, I don’t really like people who ring up in order to sell me something, calling me by my first name, or what we used to refer to as a Christian name!   I hate to think that I burnt my bra – figuratively speaking – all those years ago to reinforce the view that men and women are equal only to have today’s generation have a fit of the vapours over a risque joke or an off colour remark.   I doubt that Mrs. Pankhurst would have turned a hair.   Human nature doesn’t change much but social mores do and time was when you would have been more surprised if someone didn’t pounce on you than if they did.   There was a man I knew who was infamous for his wandering hands and no woman was considered safe in his vicinity – he wasn’t very attractive and I would never have countenanced his advances, but I was irrationally quite annoyed to discover that I was the only woman at his 40th birthday party that he hadn’t propositioned!

There was a song many years ago that went “It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it and we were taught,  ‘It ain’t what you say but it the way that you say it’.   We were forced to enunciate everything clearly and, in my parents’ view, properly.   My voice is an anachronism today from being made to say ‘How Now Brown Cow’  in the evenings after school to make sure that my vowels were acceptable!   And tongue twisters were all the rage, I can still say ‘If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked’ and ‘How much wood would a wood chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood’ at speed and without hesitation!   It was deemed very important to speak clearly with the Queen’s English.   We weren’t allowed to say certain slang words.  ‘OK’ was forbidden! because it was American along with other prohibited items such as chewing gum, jeans and Coca Cola.   And we also learned John Betjeman’s a famous poem ‘How to Get on in Society’ that meant something to us, but I doubt that anyone today would understand it.   You can look it up and see for yourselves!    Nancy Mitford wrote of U and non-U and people took it all seriously although it was intended to be humorous.   A different and rather snobbish age.   Today people have much lazier speech – their sentences are littered with ‘Like’ and ‘You know’, endings are left of words and nasal speech is pretty ubiquitous.  My hearing is not what it was, but if I listen to a radio play from forty years ago I can hear every word- not so much today, particularly when I struggle to make out the mumbling over loud ‘background’ music.

So the world has changed and we can accept sloppy speech as long as we don’t say the wrong thing and we have to be alert to change.   I can understand that it might be sensible to change the name of a character in Swallows and Amazons from Titty to Tatty – presumably we didn’t know the word Titty as if we had we would have sniggered away like mad.   And as for the N word in Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo, Catch – it obviously makes sense to catch a Tigger by his toe – although good luck with that!   But it does keep one on ones toes making sure that you are not inadvertently causing offence by misgendering someone or addressing a room full of people as ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ – as for emojis – probably safer not to use them at all!

So much for free speech.

Anti Social Media

When did Social Media become such a thing?    Everything is commented on and the most unlikely people become influencers who can apparently make a fortune endorsing products and giving their opinions on everything from the American election to the best way to train your Cockerpoo

As far as I know Facebook was the first in 2004 but just in America, then the next few years it appeared here.    I am considered amongst the geriatric set as being on the cutting edge of modern life and I joined in 2010 when there were a lot of young people on it.   I would say that I was ‘With it’ except that would instantly prove that I was completely ‘without it’.  In those days I allowed anybody I had ever met to become to become ‘friends’ with me if they asked.    Some of them were people I would go a long way to avoid IRL, as we techie folk say (it means In Real Life in case you were wondering).   Today I don’t think many people under 50 are on Facebook.   Before that we didn’t Google everything but we Asked Jeeves – whatever happened to Jeeves?   Well of course I Googled that very question and it shut down in 2006.

Surprisingly Facebook is still the most popular platform with 3.07 billion users followed by You Tube with 2.53 billion users. After that we have Instagram, WhatsApp and Tik Tok and I am feeling quite ‘down with the kids’ at the moment as I know a bit about all of these and indeed spend probably far too much time on them.

Instagram came into my life next as it was a way to see what the next generation was up to including the grandchildren.  And it is still good for that but I have no idea why the great computer brain in the Cloud who presumably puts together all the algorithms has decided that I want to see videos of nubile young women cavorting about on beds who on closer inspection by a sophisticated woman of the world like me, who has after all had two husbands, tum out to be what I can only describe as Chicks with Dicks.   A little bit disconcerting to say the least.   What on earth did I do to make this happen?

Tik Tok was by far the most addictive.   When I first started looking at it there were lots of jolly song and dance routines and some quite gripping American court dramas.   Now it seems to have descended into an endless opportunity to buy rubbish from Tik Tok shop and wretched people with medical problems wanting money.  Say what you like about the NHS it is free.   It is appalling to realise what a terrible burden medical bills are in America and with my deeply suspicious mind I can’t help suspecting that some of these stories are just that, stories.   One thing is apparent that there are an awful of people with absolutely no sense of humour.   When there are posts that are quite obviously AI generated of people being eaten by a lion or trampled by a herd of buffalo there will always be people commenting on how tragic this is!   There was a video of a woman a couple of days ago with twenty-five new born babies and plenty of comments from people saying that this was a miracle. And yet still I am capable of wasting a lot of time scrolling down to see if there is anything more interesting lurking there.

During the pandemic we all got used to talking to each other via Teams and Zoom and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to use the special effects to add some Mickey Mouse ears and a nose to amuse my friends and then fail to remember the way to remove these when I had to talk to my accountant the next day.

Added to all the above we have many other platforms some of which I have never heard of and have no idea how to use.  I imagine that Douyin  and Kuaishou are quite niche markets in the West as they are aimed at the enormous Chinese market.. I have heard of Snapchat and that has 850 million users, but I have no idea how it works.   And then or course there is X (formerly Twitter) I have to confess that I have Tweeted or Xed (is that what we call it now?) but I don’t really see the point of it.   Surely if it is beloved of Donald Trump there must be something wrong with it. 

We are living our lives more and more on screen – when travelling by train recently I felt like a dinosaur as I was reading a book while everybody else without exception was looking at a screen either on a phone, laptop or Kindle.   And as far as I can tell the vast majority of people today meet their partners on-line with some of them announcing that they are in love with people that they haven’t actually met.   With my predilection for watching strange television programmes I know that there are many instances of people being ‘catfished’ by people who are not who they say they are – sometimes they are not even the sex that they claim to be – and yet they have managed to get some innocent to fall in love with them.   I recently discovered a fascinating programme called Prison Brides where girls – pretty, intelligent girls – are marrying prisoners that they have either met for a couple of hours or sometimes not at all.   And these are not men who are in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed their starving family – they are in for armed robbery or murder.  

So where will it all end?   Will my great grandchildren ever go to school, a party or work in an office or will their whole lives be conducted via a screen?  I really do hope not.

Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional!

People boast that they want to grow old disgracefully – as the poem says: 

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

However, there is a fine line between a charming eccentricity and dementia.   I think that I shall err on the side of caution and aim to grow old gracefully, whilst still getting the most out of life.   So many of my contemporaries are total Luddites refusing to engage with computers or smart ‘phones, in fact they take great pride in telling you this.   But I think that modern technology is wonderful and I try to embrace it as far as I can.   I love my computer and happily use internet banking and Apps for parking and train tickets.  On the other hand one must be careful not to appear ridiculous.   I have no wish to wear ‘old lady’ clothes or to have a blue rinse on my permed hair but then I certainly wouldn’t wear a mini skirt or expose my midriff in public – I wouldn’t want to frighten the horses.   Tik Tok (something I find hugely time wasting and addictive) is full of make up tutorials that look wonderful on young, line free skin but I would find it inordinately depressing trying to achieve anything like the same effect on my face!!!   I remember seeing Dame Sybil Thorndike (who, older readers will remember, was a very famous actress who died aged 93 in 1976.) who lived in Chelsea and when she was in her 80s I was having dinner in the same restaurant as her.   She was with her grandchildren and they were having the best time.   She wasn’t a great beauty but she had amazing presence and whilst she didn’t appear to be wearing any make up she looked terrific because she was animated, laughing and smiling with her family.   After a certain age a smile is worth far more than face cream!   Plastic surgery certainly has a lot to answer for.   Many films today are made almost incomprehensible as many of the leading actresses can’t move their faces.   They take the news of their husband’s murder or large payout from a life insurance policy with the same impassive face.   Did she kill her husband is that why she appears unmoved?      Is she angry, curious, sad, happy?   We can only guess.  

After a certain age there is often a division in the way we live our lives.   When our children were young, many of us were wildly competitive, “Oh isn’t she walking yet?  Coriander has been doing that for ages!”   “Of course, Persephone was potty trained by seven months”.   How important it seemed but in retrospect most people learn to talk eventually and are potty trained before they start work!   But then it all starts again.   “My mother’s 87 and she’s just done a parachute jump.”   “That’s nothing my father’s 90 and he’s training to run the marathon.”  And of course there is the slow descent into second childhood.   Our grandchildren come out of nappies just as our grandparents are going back into them and while our grandchildren are getting their first teeth our grandparents are losing their last ones.  I remember my mother, never the most tolerant of women, being furious when a younger friend couldn’t manage to climb a couple of flights of stairs without getting out of breath.   And my grandmother (equally intolerant – sadly I think it is probably genetic) fell out with a lifelong friend who cancelled a cruise because she had broken her hip.  My grandmother said to me “Daphne’s always been the most frightful hypochondriac,” which seemed a bit harsh!    I don’t think they ever spoke again.

The fatal flaw in my desire to grow old gracefully is I don’t think that I’ve lived very gracefully thus far.    During the 60s I shared a flat in Chelsea and they say if you can remember the 60s you weren’t there.  After all we were the generation that invented sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll.   For my part I always gave drugs a miss as I knew I was quite capable of getting into all sorts of trouble without them.   As a very wise cousin of mine once said “The trouble with drugs is that they convince every idiot that they are a genius and they turn every genius into an idiot.”  A strong streak of self preservation meant that whilst I might have paid lip service to the hippy movement at the weekends I managed to take the flowers out of my hair in time to go to work on Monday morning.   You can take the girl out of the home counties but you can’t take the home counties out of the girl.   So, I think that I was probably fairly sensible (most of the time) if not necessarily gracious but I’m working on it.