Author: kevinrevell

Blogging that is in imminent danger of disappearing into its own middle aged, middle class, middle England hole...

My ever changing moods…

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I thought you might like to share what a Saturday evening feels like in the Emu household, now that Mrs E & I have abandoned our attempts to out-debauch Amy Winehouse and Joey Ramone. We just don’t have the appetite for it any more, you see, and have far more fun anticipating through parted fingers the future drink fuelled disasters expected of the Jr Emus.

Anyway, this is how last Saturday went.

After a fairly testing bike ride in the early morning (elated mood) and clearing out the garage (concern at being middle aged mood), followed by nipping into the city to get #2 a new mobile phone (how can all this technology be sold in such a complex style mood), I reached that period of quiet reflection that can only be reached in our house by two plates of curry and a bowl of ice cream. The concern at this stage of course, is that what with all the mood changing and calories spent and consumed, it was only a short step to a light sleep on the sofa. But this was Saturday night, and standards have to be maintained, and in our house Saturday standards include staying up as late as humanly possible.

So, a brisk walk was in order, and where better to stroll along to the Co-op (nee Somerfields, nee Gateway etc), a store that despite a number of rebrands, has still managed to maintain a level of soviet-style misery in all its employees. But my heart and mood was in a happy place, for it was Saturday night, there was beer to be bought, and I was greeted on the way by the sight of two men, in full chef’s whites, off duty from the local curry house, enjoying an impromptu game of badminton in the car park. Mood up again, in an ‘all is right with the world’ sort of style.

Managed to maintain this state of mind despite the general gurning and grunting that greets you when you try to buy anything from our Co-op, and fair skipped home, for what awaited the family Emu when I got back was the gala final of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’. To watch BGT, I think you have to be one of two things – a moron of the first order, or an opportunist with a good stock of ‘Pointing & Laughing’ chances. In a desperate attempt to avoid being labelled a moron, I went for three big P&L opportunities:

1. Jayney Cutler to be this year’s essential car crash viewing.

Well, reader, she certainly didn’t disappoint. Starting off in the wrong key, and at least a beat behind the bemused orchestra, she proceeded to kick the living daylights out of ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’, which, incidentally she’d translated into her native Glaswegian. Given this was the final, our parade of judges were magnanimous in their gentle criticism. ‘Well Jayney’, they chirrupped, ‘you were a little behind the beat, but you made it up like a real trooper’. Jayney simply stared into the middle distance, cackling quietly away, not realising that her dream of being the new Susan Boyle (except without the voice, the rapier wit or, err, the looks) was over.

2. Piers Morgan to set new records in levels of condescension.

Again, happily achieved without really breaking sweat. To Spelbound : ‘Y’know, what you’ve achieved says to me that no matter how hard this show might be criticised, it’s capable of unearthing the most amazing and unique hidden talent that Britain has to offer, and we really should applaud it’ (discernible pause) ‘…and I understand you’re also preparing for the world championships’. Not a hint of irony. Wonderful.

3. Simon Cowell to prove himself a git of the highest order.

Ok, he’s an easy target, but as regular readers of this blog will know, that’s never been a reason to hold back. In my head, SC managed to plough new lows in taste and talent as he announced his new single, a version of Tears for Fears’ ‘Shout’, featuring the woefully underexposed and talented James Corden and Dizzee Rascal. Introducing the song as something that ‘he’d been waiting to do something with for some time’, SC set our pulses racing in eager anticipation that he might have done vaguely interesting. Not for him a glib opportunity to turn the nation’s world cup fever into a ridiculously childish terrace rant, surely…

Well, by now, you’ve probably heard the result of his creative input. Honestly, it’s the work of genius to include lines like ‘Let’s get physical’, ‘Pull your socks up’ and (I kid you not) ‘Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’. All along to a driving ‘terrace’ beat that will no doubt have us singing along in the stands for years to come. No, really.

All of which left me in the worst mood of the day by far. I’m sure I’ll get over it, as long as I never, ever, ever have to listen to that song again.

I’m Mandy*, Fly Me

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I vividly remember the first time I flew on an aeroplane. I was 11 years old, and I was despatched to Rawalpindi, to visit my uncle, aunt and cousins. Exotic, huh? By far and away the most exciting event of my life, and travelling alone gave it a level of wide eyed wonder that I wish I could have bottled and kept forever. In contrast, my last flight, on an admittedly less glamorous trip, was rather less exciting. It was really just an exercise in getting from A to B, with all the attendant long queues, intrusive security checks, last minute rush to the gate, cramming into a seat and hoping that the whole exercise would just be over with before the noxious fumes of my fellow passengers took over completely.

Given that almost 40 years separate these two journeys then it’s hardly surprising that things have moved on a tad in the airline industry, not least to what the marketeers no doubt describe as the ‘customer experience’. Let’s face it, air travel has fundamentally changed, from the most thrilling and special experience you could possibly imagine, where everything about the journey felt geared towards you, to an exercise in unsuccessfully minimising the many hassles that you have to deal with. Added to which, in these enlightened eco-sensitive times, there is lots of guilt to mask any pleasures that you might have hopelessly been hanging on to.

Which brings me to the current challenges that BA and its much maligned cabin crew have been having in the last few months. With apparently very little reference to the ‘customer experience’, the series of strikes, combined with the already challenged air schedules, have made BA a bit of a joke for travellers, and I suspect that, following the debacle around Terminal 5 and various pricing shenanigans, that this latest story means that people flying BA will be those who have to fly BA, rather than those who have any choice in the matter.

So, given that it’s all gone in that direction, why? BA has lots of good routes, an excellent safety history, and pretty reasonable record in getting large groups of travellers to the right place on time. Most of the time these days the baggage goes to the right place as well.

My theory would be that the airline has just lost its way since the halcyon days of air travel. When you get on a BA flight, it feels like you’ve stepped back to the 1970’s, insofar that it ought to feel special, but it doesn’t. Most other airlines have recognised that it ain’t going to feel that special anymore, so they don’t really bother. And part of the problem, frankly, is the cabin crew, who have, ahem, grown up with BA. So the “special” bit is delivered by crew who, frankly look and behave as if they’ve seen it all before. Which they probably have**.

In contrast, the budget airlines put people in the air who know that their role is to give you the safety talk, not deal with any flak, and generally get the trip over as painlessly as possible, not least for themselves. These (young) staff know exactly what they’re getting into; there’s no glamour to this – at Ryanair they even pay for their own uniforms. And this is a million miles away from the image of air crew in the 60’s and 70’s, where, without blushing, a pouting stewardess would appear on an ad to say to the business traveller “I’m Mandy, Fly Me”. (Technically, I think this is somewhere between a double and a single entendre.)

Meanwhile, the BA management hold out against the unions in a manner reminiscent of the standoffs of the winter of discontent, and that seems a bit out of time. And, the cabin crew complain of being ill equipped, badly paid, put into difficult circumstances and unhappy with their uniforms. Which, given that these are much the same complaints being sent back from the military in Afghanistan, means that they’re also completely out of touch. Both sides are completely losing any public sympathy, which I would have thought, given the circumstances, that they should really be craving.

I’d really like BA to be a good airline. I just wish it would grow up a bit.

*Other names are available. Evening and weekend rates apply.

**I’m acutely aware that this is about the 4th sentence in this blog that is grammatically horrible. My favourite ever line from ‘Just A Minute’ was when Nicholas Parsons asked Clement Freud “Who would you most like to be shipwrecked on a desert island with?”. To which the great man replied: “Almost anyone who didn’t end a sentence with a preposition”. So, sorry.

Rupert the Bleaurghh

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Rather disappointingly, I seem to have inherited very few of my father’s redeeming features. Not for me the fine aquiline nose, the easy athleticism, the ability to be at ease in any social situation or the capability to enjoy a good political argument without resorting to mild violence. Disappointingly, my make-up features clear opposites of all of the above, plus a rather jaundiced view on genetic inheritance.

Where we stand, however, father and son together, is in our clear enthusiasm for taking a stand against some of societies irritants, to the point of boycott and damnation. If you want to see my father worked up into a furious, blue-nosed frenzy, just mention that you’re a glowing admirer of Dame Shirley Porter, the London Evening Standard, or Rupert Murdoch. If you want to see me seething in a similar fashion, you can achieve a similar effect by expounding the virtues of Bill Gates, Michael Winner, or, funnily enough, Rupert Murdoch.

In my father’s case, his sense of moral frustration has some dire consequences. He lives a long way away from the distribution of the Evening Standard, and only recently have I realised that he’s managed to put a good 10 miles between him and the nearest branch of Tesco’s, which was probably a key factor in choosing his location for retirement. He still believes that every penny spent there personally bankrolls Dame Shirley, and for all I know, he may well be right. His love of cricket is tempered on a regular basis, depending on which network has got what contract – he’d rather make a 250 mile round trip to see a county game than even consider watching a test match on Sky.

Anyway, the fantasy disembowelment of Rupert Murdoch is a passion shared, and I guess we’re both equally pleased to see the real-life Monty Burns start to get irritated about copyright law. As far as I understand the argument, the sense of outrage that News International currently has, is against the notion that its journalistic data be shared on the internet for free. As such, it is planning to introduce a new model for Times subscribers, whereby they pay for online content. And presumably NI plans to sue the backside off anyone who has the audacity to use the copy & paste facility. (Which, I might add, was not invented by Bill Gates.)

Since the first salvoes were launched on charging for online content last year, it’s all gone a bit quiet, but I can’t imagine the ambition has gone away, so the likes of me are still looking into the middle distance, jaws dropped on the floor. If it had been suggested 10 years ago, we would have pointed and laughed. To suggest this as a valid business model now is kind of missing the point of the internet, of social communication, and of how the whole realm of journalism is heading. It’s not as if there isn’t a model to base the future challenges on – I’m not sure what parts of the music industry NI owns, but there’s a pretty strong precedent there in the way that old business models just don’t work any more. In the same way that musicians are going to have to find different ways of getting people to listen to their music, journalists and writers are going to have to find different ways of communicating. And that’s no bad thing. When I buy a newspaper I’d really quite like to have a different type of paper every day. Generally I would rather buy than have something sold to me, and I’m sure I’m not alone there. The bigger point is that the days of the fourth estate and journalistic privilege are truly numbered as long as there is a persistence that the public needs to pay in old fashioned ways for new delivery. Which means that News International, Fox, The Sun, Sky and all the rest might all yet be under threat. And I’m sorry if this sounds childish, but good. And ner ner ner ner ner ner*.

For now of course, I’m pretty happy the way it is. When Principle Skinner got together with Marge’s sister in The Simpsons, they realised that their common bond was that they hated the same things. It might not be the strongest basis for a relationship, but I do quite like having something in common with my Dad.

*admittedly, that was reasonably childish.

Legal High

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As you enter the dread confines of middle age, the likelihood of spending every night in a hallucinogenic stupor gets less and less. I think this is down to a number of factors. Perhaps you’ve lost touch with the sort of chancer who used to help you achieve such a state, and you feel that asking your new best friends (the yummy mummies at the school pickup for example) where you could get a quarter of something mellow might be rather frowned upon. Possibly your career as a top judge/school teacher/shadow home secretary doesn’t really knock along with a class C habit. You might have found that your increasing years needed to kick off a review of your lifestyle, and that you were only going to allow into your body ingredients to feed, rather than addle, your brain.

Whatever your reasoning, it’s quite likely that you miss your decadent years. You might find yourself nodding along to that old joke about the man that goes into the doctors:

“Doctor, I really want to live to be a hundred”

“Certainly, all you need to do is give up drinking, smoking, chasing women, fried food and start exercising twice a day.”

“And if I do, will I live to be a hundred?”

“No, but it will certainly feel like it.”

But, if you’re one of those former hemp-heads, listlessly yearning nostalgically for your more agreeably wasted days, help is at hand, courtesy of the Emu, the blog that always aims to please. All you have to do is tune in to BBC1 at just after 7pm on Saturday evening. For there you will find hallucinogenic treats that you thought you’d left just to the back of your very own Camberwell carrot.

The programme is called “Over the Rainbow”, and features a number of nubile young hopefuls desperate to appear in the latest Andrew Lloyd Webber masterpiece* “The Wizard of Oz”. And if you’re short of time, don’t feel you have to watch it all the way through. But you must, repeat must, watch the last 10 minutes of each show, and you’ll be thankful that you did.

At the end of each episode is a ‘sing-off’, where through some complicated mathematics known only to Graham Norton and the BBC pension fund, two girls are pitted against each other and forced to sing a duet in which one of them will lose and be unceremoniously kicked out of the show. Which they seem to do with good humour, although it must be very tempting to try to distract your competitor during the song with a raised eyebrow, surreptitious cough, or discreet wedgie. Then the panel, which includes a slightly camper version of John Barrowman, keeps one Dorothy and loses another. If in doubt, the casting vote goes to ALW himself. Who appears to be on a throne, and is referred to at all times as ‘The Lord’. I must have missed the news on the day that popular multi-millionaire and plagiarist songwriter ALW became a conservative life peer, as I’m sure I would have remembered such a ringing endorsement of the UK political system. Anyway, the dear girl is booted out, but not before some ringing words of sympathy from ALW (sorry, LAWL), such as “I know you’re going to go far” and “Let’s keep in touch”, words which the girls are bound to hear the next time a well-educated bounder dumps them in real life. And then comes the really good bit. Rather than thanking the panel and LAWL, and offering firm handshakes all round before exiting stage left, our Dorothy is asked to sing for the final time. Which she does, with her (soon to be ex) chums, in front of a pair of 15-foot high sparkling slingbacks. And in a croaking voice, she begins a song which includes a line to the panel which goes “You’ve ditched her so completely”, that her fellow competitors gladly sing along to. Then, for reasons best known to the producers of the show, she takes her own sparkly shoes off and symbolically presents them to LAWL, whose putty-like features have creased further into the vacant stare of the rest home client. And then, she takes a few steps up the stairs to a crescent moon seat, and begins a rousing version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow”. And (this gets even better), as she sings, the seat raises up and over the stage so that she’s singing down at her erstwhile competitors. The camera angle changes at this point and looks down at the wide eyed lovelies, all fighting back the tears, and to the untrained eye, all on the verge of a stirring rendition of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”. As the latest Dorothy to go blasts out her last note, the crowd goes mad, and there are no doubt nods on the panel and whispers backstage about the latest one being a real trouper. And the very very best bit, far better than anything you could get from a tenner exchange in the back room of the Dog and Duck on a Saturday night, is as the camera pulls back. Because without warning, the crescent moon accelerates at some pace roughly North West (ie into and past the top left of your TV screen), taking Dorothy into the spotlights that you can’t see, and also very possibly into a forgotten oblivion. I believe this is called a metaphor.

You couldn’t make it up and you couldn’t buy a trip like that.

*I am marginally outnumbered in my house in not being a particular fan of ALW. If ever I find myself in a tight corner in trying to put him in his place, I always remind myself of the great Humphrey Lyttleton joke: “History has seen some great musical pairings, from Gilbert and Sullivan to Rodgers and Hammerstein, right through to Andrew Lloyd Webber and his Photocopier”.

It’s a Mythtery

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And a mystery (or mythtery, as Toyah would say*) it certainly is.

It is an absolute mystery to me that I can spend 10 hours a week, for 3 months, training for an event, do half a dozen really long runs, have a a great warm-up race, a perfect marathon taper, then go into the race that really mattered last Sunday and get horrible*** cramp at 14 miles; so much so that I ended up pleading for salt with those lovely people**** from St John’s, then walking large sections of the rest of the race, feeling very sorry for myself.

Anyway, the whole thing resulted in the slowest I’ve run a marathon for 12 years, and it’s really really really infuriating that I can’t put my finger on the reasoning. I guess if I were to take a world view on this sort of frustration, I would assess it as indicative of our desire these days to capture everything in black and white – everything has a cause and effect, and the simpler the better. And whilst it would be great to be able to do this, I think it’s pretty unlikely in practice – in this case, I might just have to put the whole thing down as a bad day at the office. And in doing so, maybe accept that there’s a bit of ambiguity and mystery in why things happen, and that sometimes all the planning in the world won’t stop some bad luck.

Meanwhile, at the end of the course, Jr Emu #2 was waiting with his mother.

“Well Done”, he said, really meaning it, “You did really well”

“Thanks”, I said, “but I should have finished about 15 minutes quicker than that”

“Yes, but Dad”, he reassured me, “I was watching everyone finish, and noone ahead of you looked nearly as old or as grey as you”

Which I think he meant as a positive.

Must dash now. Got an autumn comeback marathon to plan.

*And this does give me an opportunity to tell you my favourite Toyah story. Some time after her ‘classic’ EP ‘Sheep farming in Barnet’, Toyah shot to the top of the ‘hit parade**’ with an album that included hits like ‘It’s A Mystery’, and, err, some other stuff. A friend of mine was manager of a large record store at the time and took delivery of several boxes of the album. The record bombed, and he was left with boxes and boxes of records that he had to return. Normally, this would involve cutting open a record sleeve, putting a light scratch on it and sending it back damaged, but there were hundreds of these, and a) it would have taken ages and b) it might have been seen as a bit of a scam. So, in a moment of sheer genius, he put a ‘damaged/return’ label on each box, and wrote in big letters: “Singer has lisp”.

** ask your Dad

*** Really horrible

**** I’m sure they really are lovely people. Just wish they knew a bit more about fixing injuries.

Teenage Kicks

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The defining force behind the Marx Brothers was not Groucho, Chico or Harpo (or even Zeppo, or Gummo), but their mother, Minnie. Mrs Marx drove her boys pretty hard, to follow her into a career in Vaudeville, where she’d enjoyed a fairly lively career herself. In fact, trivia fans, her early career is referenced in the excellent ‘Carter Beats the Devil’ book, under the alias of Minnie Palmer. Anyway, I mention her name, as I heard an interesting story about her approach to parenting last week from Jr Emu #1. Apparently, in a bid to save money, Minnie would travel by train with all four (or five) of her boys on child fares. On one such trip, the conductor approached her mid-journey.

‘Madam’, he said, ‘Of your children on this train, one is smoking a cigar in the first class carriage, and another is having a shave in the bathroom’
‘Gosh’, said Minnie, ‘they grow up so fast, don’t they?’
I was reminded of this story, when called upon to give The Talk On Drugs And Sex to Jr Emu#2 earlier this week. TTOD&S doesn’t get made very often in our house, largely as the subject matter is delivered far more successfully by free access to the internet, adolescent boys being adolescent boys, and having a nurse for a mother. But occasionally, fatherly advice needs to be given, and for want of a more qualified person in the family, I’m enlisted to help.
‘So’, I said to #2, after a particularly challenging discussion on why meow meow was essentially a bad thing, is there anything you need to know about sex? Anything bugging you about stuff you don’t understand?’
‘Only one thing’, said #2.
‘Then ask away’, I said, in as much of a man of the world fashion as I could muster.
‘It’s just that I’ve never really understood what felching is’

As Mrs Marx would say, they do grow up so fast.

Shoot me the sherbert, Herbert*

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So, we’re back in foreign climes again, or as my friend Richard would say, the land of ecouté et repeté.

And, given that this part of my marathon training plan calls for a horribly tough training week, what better time to lace up, and head out the door, much to the surprise of the French residents hereabouts, who tend to regard anyone not wearing overalls and driving a tractor with deep suspicion. And yesterday, out the door I went, with a certain amount of trepidation, to try for a rather hilly 20-miler.

All good up to about mile 15, where I aimed to take on (as we runners call it) a drink and a gel to see me through the last quarter of the run.

I had been slightly influenced in this by a presentation on sports nutrition that I went to a couple of weeks ago. Now this had been sponsored by the lovely people from Lucozade, and reminded me, probably quite unfairly, of the posters that I used to see at school advertising drug use. Well, not advertising drug use in the traditional sense (although if you jotted down some of the numbers in the boys toilets then you’d probably be alright for a lively weekend. However, you needed to be reasonably alert – I knew a boy who swapped his moped one Friday for what turned out to be an Oxo cube.) I mean advertising that drugs use was pretty much A Bad Thing, and that people who dealt in such wares always gave the first few hits free.

And so it turned out with the Lucozade man, as he described how important it was to get nutrition into you during a marathon, and that the London Marathon would be supplying all runners with Lucozade gels and drinks on the course. Anyway, all interesting stuff, and in true Nick O’Teen (remember him?) style, he invited us at the end of the talk to help ourselves to as many free samples as we could justify to ourselves. Which, looking at some of my fellow runners, was quite a generous justification. Standing outside the scrum, I asked a friend if she could pass me a couple of gels, which she duly did, and off I went, happy that I could try the gels out (For Nothing!) before I set off on a race proper.

So, at mile 15, I had stashed a bottle of water and a gel, and picked them up almost without breaking stride. I should mention at this point that the weather at that point featured what I believe weathermen call ‘squally’ winds. I think this just means the wind blows fairly random directions, and I evidenced this earlier in the run when I spat out of the right side of my mouth, only for the spit to complete a 270 degree rotation of my head and land in my left eye. Anyway, let that be a lesson for all sportsmen to keep their saliva in their mouth at all times. Back to mile 15, and I expectantly bit the side of the wrapper off the gel, and squeezed the contents into my mouth. There followed an odd sensation, which was a bit like eating stardust sweets mixed with the inside of a sherbert dip. Not unpleasant, but not quite how I expected a gel to feel. About half way through I realised that I wasn’t eating a gel at all, but a single serving Lucozade powder. At which point, two things happened. Firstly, running along at a reasonable pace, I was briskly followed by all manner of insects, who were for some reason attracted to a runner caked in sweat with a unshiftable layer of raspberry sherbert all over his face. And secondly, I remembered about osmosis. Osmosis, you may recall from school, is where water diffuses across a semi-permeable membrane, such as you might find, oh I don’t know, maybe in your stomach wall. And if you put a concentration of powder that absorbs water into a stomach when you’re nicely dehydrated, you can almost feel the particles of water dragging their way across the stomach. I really don’t know if this is an exact physiological description of what happened, but it certainly felt like it at the time.

The rest of the run wasn’t quite so much fun as the first bit. The flies disappeared after a while, and I dragged myself back to the house.

‘How was your run?’ enquired Mrs E.

‘Finished.’ I said.

*If you get this reference, then good on you. I miss Norwich in the 1980’s.

Oh Boy!

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This morning’s Guardian carries a piece titled ‘We get what we want in life’, which is about couples choosing the sex of their baby. For me & Mrs E, this turned out to be an interesting read, and brought back some memories that frankly were probably best consigned to a bucket marked ‘irritations of the past’.

For background, and in rudimentary code, this is how our family arrived:

010 Set ‘children we have’ to zero

020 Mrs E fills a little faint, and several months later adds 1 to ‘children we have’

030 Despite expecting to have a girl, we had a boy. And he was gorgeous and we couldn’t imagine our lives could be more perfect.

040 If ‘children we have’ = 4, go to 060

050 Go to 020

060 Live Happily Ever After

Thus, by the time we got to line 060, we had four fantastic and healthy boys, all of whom were great value and continue to be so. And largely, you’d think, that would be that, and we could look forward to living HEA. Which, of course, we’ve largely done, and only little minor annoyances have distracted us from that course. Especially the early ones, where ‘children we have’ had just equalled 4. Mrs E would find herself stopped in the street by relative strangers, who’d tilt their heads gently to one side and tell her that she mustn’t be so sad at having a boy. While she was pushing him along in the pram. I heard one exchange with a woman at a supermarket till that ended ‘Oh dear; I was lucky of course, I had one of each’. I was asked incredulously at work (in an IT department, indeed) ‘What are the chances of having 4 boys?’, to which, of course, the answer is 16:1, i.e. the same odds as any sequence of 4 children.

Quite apart from the gormless insensitivity shown by people who really should know better, it really teed us off at the time to think that Jr Emu #4 should arrive as a disappointment. He has, incidentally, been a bit of a testing individual since, but that’s not the point. The point is that, by and large, he arrived healthy and happy and has continued to be so.

So, when the Guardian feature quote a woman with four boys as being ‘traumatised by what she hadn’t got’*, it really…feels wrong. Not so much morally, although the middle class outlook on gender selection is of tiny relevance compared to the interest in, say, India or China, but in the context of just being happy with your lot.

For our part, I don’t think any of us could contemplate a different gender mix in the family. Nothing against girls, you understand, just can’t imagine how it would work. For Mrs E, it’s like having two sets of the Kray twins on hand. For Jr Emu #1, he has 3 younger brothers to boss about, and for #4, 3 to copy, wrestle with and torment. And neither #2 or #3 has exclusivity on being a difficult middle child. And if you’re reading this and you have a family, you’ve almost certainly got a similar dynamic going on, because that’s how families work, they just get on with the situation of just being a family. And so, in my humble opinion, it should continue.

*Accompanying pictures to the article: 4 solemn looking boys on p16, the 2 girls born via IVF, post vasectomy sperm extraction then gender selection in Spain** on p17

** Because it’s banned in the UK

Grammar, we love you

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Just a very short note in case you are interested in the ways of internet linkage. I was looking on the BBC website just now (if the link is still there, it’s http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8597399.stm), and, also if it’s still there, you may see the link in the bottom rhs of the page.

It reads:

Times Online Lonmin shares take tumble as problem child furnace is shut – 8 hrs ago

Disappointingly, the grammar changes as you go to the link:

Lonmin shares take tumble as ‘problem child’ furnace is shut

All of which is a bit of a shame. Those of us with problem children might not ever want to put them in a furnace, but every now and again it might be nice to use as a threat.

My Funny Valentine

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Some time ago (possibly in the 1980’s) I set what I thought was a reasonable ceiling on footwear. In them days (I know, I know), you could get a decent pair of DM’s for £30, so I thought it was a pretty valid benchmark. And, with the exception of running shoes, which I can justify on the basis that cheap ones will limit my ambition of still running marathons well into my 70’s, I still pretty much have £30 as my top limit for shoes. Which, as you might imagine, means a fairly limited approach to shoe-buying that isn’t always successful.

I tell you all this as a context for a recent conversation with Mrs Emu, a woman who I hold in considerable regard, and with whom I share almost every moral code. There are exceptions, however, and both the length of time allowed shopping for shoes and the price ceiling are good examples.

Here’s my favourite phone call of the week:

Mr E: ‘Hi, what’s up’

Mrs E: ‘Well, just thought I’d phone to see how you were’

Mr E ‘All good…you don’t normally phone up just for that’

Mrs E ‘No, well just thought I’d let you know that I had half an hour spare so I cycled into the city, and I found the most amazing pair of brown boots. You know I’ve been after some for ages, and these are just fantastic’

Mr E ‘Great, did they cost much?’

Mrs E ‘Well, far less than those road bikes you’ve been looking at online’

(The conversation went back and forth a bit, even involving a bit of ‘The Price Is Right’ ‘higher/lower’ action, until the full price was revealed.)

Mr E ‘That’s quite a lot of money for a pair of boots’

Mrs E ‘I know, and I’ll work a couple of extra shifts to pay for them. Besides, these boots will make me happy in a way that you’ll never be able to’

My advice if you’re looking for a wife or husband…find someone who makes you laugh while they put you in your place. Although, if you’re reading this dear, ideally also someone who doesn’t end her sentences with a preposition.