Dear fancy internet food shopping delivery people.

I have a complaint. Nono, I got my food just fine. Nono, it’s all there, thanks, and more besides. It’s more the free gift I have a complaint about.

Nonono, it’s lovely, thanks but. But. But, did you notice the rest of my shopping?

The rest of my shopping - the stuff I actually ordered out of choice, from you, an internet food shopping delivery people site, because that way I don’t get distracted and impulse shop, or buy stupid things -

- Thus the rest of my shopping, you may have noticed, mainly comprised of: Fresh and frozen vegetables, fruit, skinless chicken breasts, oily fish, other fish, brown rice, wholewheat pasta, low fat soups, multigrain bread and crispbread, skimmed milk and greek yoghurt (0% fat) and more vegetables.

There are other components, of course, but the overwhelming feeling you would have got, had you looked at the shopping I ordered from you and you sent me, would have been the shopping of two people desperate- DESPERATE, I tell you - not to overindulge.

Your gift, meanwhile, thanks, is A Large Box of The Most Indulgent Belgian Chocolates In the World.

Thanks. Thanks a fuckbunch.

I notice that our devout muslim neighbours got a delivery last night. I will see if they have a nice shiny free gift to swap with ours. Maybe you gifted them with some bacon. Or a bottle of wine or something.

Anyway, sterling work, keep it up.
You bastards.

I loved board games as a child.

We had a small selection at home - Cluedo, Monopoly, something with a Haunted House that I can’t remember the name of, Trivial Pursuit, the normal lot.

There was another Game. The Game of Life. It was an exciting board game, full of little cards and spinning bits and complex yet miniscule plastic pieces that you could fit three of in any one nostril at any one time. Most importantly, it was a game that family friends had - more monied, more careful, more unlikely to put things up their nose friends - but we didn’t. Thus it was the most exciting game ON THE PLANET.

For those unfortunate not to have played it, the game can be summed up to have been one of those that did exactly, quite literally, what they said on the box. It was a game that mapped out, for the curious seven-year-old, exactly what their lives were going to be like.

You played a little plastic character who sat in a little plastic car, and you chose whether you went to college or just started a career, and then you got married because you had to and then you bought a house because you had to and then you advanced in whatever career you ended up in and sometimes paid mortgage repayments and sometimes popped out a child and sometimes paid bills and sometimes GOT paid, which was very exciting.

And then you carried on and carried on, and it was all very much much of the same, and then when you got to the end, you died. And the winner was the person who had made the most money overall. And let’s not talk about how depressing I find all of this, shall we?

So I’m thinking about this because last week, while cleaning out under their desk, someone presented me with a board game based on this very classic.

It’s called Game of Life: BECOME A TOP AD EXEC!.

And the basic theory is the same, but instead of deciding between lots of varied and interesting career fields, you get to work in advertising. You only get to work in advertising.

And on the back, next to where all the fun descriptions are:

“Rise to the top of the fast-paced world of advertising with your witty slogans and clever branding techniques!!!

Astound your friends with your ability to produce contemporaneous huge industry kudos and shocking public condemnation!!!“

they have placed a handy glossary:

“What is branding?

What is pitching?

What is the point of advertising in a world so constantly bombarded with marketing messages that even the most audience directed campaigns bounce off the intended consumer like tic-tacs off a ducks donk?“

So as far as I can tell this is a game remarkably similar to the original, classic version, except you don’t get a choice whether you want to go to college, or start in one particular field or another, because you have to work in advertising. You HAVE to.

And it’s funny, because this educational game has been in our living room for almost a week now, and we haven’t actually got around to playing it yet.

Yet it’s sitting there, staring at me - “Game of Life: BE AN AD EXEC!” it’s telling me in half formed words and pirimary coloured capitals - and I have the feeling I’m going to open it up and be very disappointed.

It’s probably not going to start wih a square that reads

Careers advice indicates you have a talent for misleading the general populace and enthusing about consumer produce! Congratulations! You’re going to work in advertising!

I think I’m going to be disappointed for a start because the squares aren’t going to be anywhere near big enough, to be honest. Let alone as brutal.

I mean, I want a square that says

You share some cocaine with the boss in the toilets at the christmas party - move forward three spaces and do a dance - maybe some voguing

and one that says

You decide that blatently redubbing a european advert into English order to save money is an actual, usable, non-laughable proposition - move back 4 squares and beat yourself around the head..

And one that says:

You have disappeared up your own bottom, move back to the bottom-feeder square. Do not pass go, do not collect your ridiculous monthly bonus

I think there are possibilities for this game. I think we could create an entirely new version, a realistic version, and then I should send it to someone as some kind of prize. But I don’t think I’ll be able to do it all myself. I think I will need help.

“Disaster! Someone sues your agency, claiming that there is no such thing as ‘hairsperts’! Move back two squares and hang your shiny head in shame“

I think more than anything in the world, I want the last square to say:

“Congratulations! You spontaneously decide not to work in advertising anymore!“

And then you would have finished, and the winner would be the person who’d managed to retain the most self-respect.

Chewbacca’s blog: Hahahahahahahahaha

That is all.

I have been thinking about doing one for a while, but spurred on by that bloggies thing (have you voted for me yet?)(Um. Could you?), I’ve started to put together some kind of list. I will keep adding to it, I think, but in the meantime, I have hidden it away

here.

If you wanted to have a look at what some people remember as some favourite posts of the last few years, they are here. Any other suggestions are gratefully recieved, my loves.

Thank you.

Sorry about the not-real-content-content. I am VERY spring-cleany.

I don’t generally get tagged by meme things, and don’t generally do them if I do, because I am forgetful and tend to write about other things. Like cheese, or lions, or punching myself in the chin (see below).

But this week, two people have tagged me with these things, so I thought for once I would do the dance of the meem.

Problem is, my darling meg did one where you had to answer lots of questions about various things to do with the number 4, which is a random sort of number, and dear Raf seemed to think I would like to write about 7 things involving the number 7.

I would feel bad doing neither, but I’m certainly not doing both, because a) I don’t have time, and b) it’s a bit silly, and c) to be honest, I am rubbish at them. Really, really bad at them. Also d) I don’t know why anyone would want to know these factual flibbertygibberties about little old me.

So I think I will have to combine the two, this four questions and seven questions thing, if that is ok, in order to get this over and done with, for all concerned. You will thank me, my darlings, I promise:

The five and a half things meem
All questions constructed by combining, in some way, shape or form, those of my two taggers.

Five and a half movies I’ve loved that I can watch over and over

1) His Girl Friday.
2) Last Night. And it makes me cry every time. As does Truly Madly Deeply, although in a different way. Sorry, I’m not actually mentioning that second movie, you understand, because that would throw all the numbers out.
3) Pretty in Pink (although not for 10 years or more)
4) The Big Lebowski
5) Sideways. The only film I’ve been sent by the DVD rental service and watched three times before sending it back and buying it immediately.
and a half) Weekend at Bernies, Dave, Groundhog Day, I have watched these movies possibly more than 400,000 times, put together. But two of them are a bit flimsy, aren’t they? So they don’t count anywhere near a whole movie - more like 1/8 of a Coen Brothers, I think. And I only generally watch half of Groundhog Day because I truly believe Andi MacDowell to be as fall-in-loveable-with as Gonorrhoea.

Five and a half things I cannot do in up to 7 jobs that exist in something between 4 and 7 television programmes that I love

· I cannot Walk really fast and talk at the same time like the political staff and aides in the West Wing without getting out of puff or tripping over my own feet.
· I cannot diagnose complex diseases like a Diagnostician, for example House. I could probably take a fair stab at it, having watched a lot of episodes of House, but it is a fair bet that I would get it wrong.
· I cannot countenance the idea of looking at dead and mangled bodies every day without being violently sick, or pull bits of evidence or bugs out of oozing wounds like the CSIs or Policepeople in any of the various CSI branded shows do.
· I cannot imagine living in the same house as a lot of my family due to my inherited position as a Property Developer like in Arrested Development.
· Nor can I travel through time like a Timelord

Seven things I say (too much) about four of my favourite dishes

· No, I said I want pizza.
· God, I love sausages.
· What do you mean yoghurt doesn’t go with this?
· I want pizza.
· Are the sausages done yet?
· I think there’s some brocolli in the freezer.
· Are you going to eat that sausage? Can I have your sausage? I love sausages.

5 and a half books I’ve read (4 of which I’ve loved) in 7 places that I’ve lived.

ay) I’ve read Fever Pitch in New Mills, Manchester and the Inner Hebrides
bee) The Double, by Jose Saramago in Sri Lanka. I may not strictly have lived in Sri Lanka, to be fair.
cee) Breakfast of Champions, read in New Mills and London
dee) Mr Meebles, the best and most metaphysical children’s book in the world ever. London, Manchester, Davis (California).
ee) The Best Of Dave Barry. Pretty much everywhere. It helps put me to sleep.
ehh…) Tristram Shandy remains half read in the Inner Hebrides and My present flat.

Five and a half places I would like to vacation go on holiday before I die

1: A private island. A hot one. Although not one with monsters and ‘other’ on it. Or ‘others’ for that matter. A private island, white beaches, hut on stilts. Sometime before they all disappear with all that global warming yadda.
2: New Zealand. It looks pretty. Maybe I could live there. Although, to be fair, I have no useful skills. Or mad skillz. So they might not want me.
3: Australia, while I’m down there.
4: The Antarctic. A cruise. With a camera. Around icebergs. Sometime before it all disappears with all that global warming yadda. Yay!
5: Moscow. In the snow. I want to go and visit all the dead literary, literally dead Ruskies.
and a half: The moon. Or rather, I’d like to go on a anti-gravity flight thing. So that’s a half, right?

4 ways of saying 7 things that attract me to 5 and a half sites I visit daily

· I like people who write extremely well, and are funny, and clever, and tell stories. That’s why I visit JonnyB and Petite first thing in the morning. It’s the writing that counts in blogging, for me.
· Email and comments and stats. My comments get emailed to me, but I’ve always been a stats neurotic. So I visit Gmail first thing in the morning and compulsively keep it in my Firefox tabs, watching to see if it refreshes with new exciting mail/comments every few minutes. And Extreme Tracking. Yes, yes, I know. But it’s the system I’ve always had, and have never seen reason to replace with that siteymetey thing.
· Here’s your half - I have a nasty habit of reading blogs that I hate. And I hate myself for doing it. I read them because I find the people repulsive or the writing abysmal. I know it’s bad. And I know I’m simply inviting bad karma. But I di it. And I visit them every day - and quickly, I feel bad, and run away, always without leaving a comment, that would be rude. I call that half a website. Sorry - I’m one of those people I hate.
· I spend a lot of time looking at the Guardian Unlimited sites every day. Not only is the news quick, the comment incisive and the writing incredible, but I also work there, and have to say that.

Five and a half meems I have done, although admittedly I may have done them really quite spectacularly shittily indeed

1) That one about food, once.
2) The “Name here needs” meem.
3 My “desk” and the contents of my bag meeeeeems, on flickr
4) I started a blog, some time ago, which is probably some kind of meem that I contracted from somewhere, I think.
5) I sent Misty a picture of my favourite drinking vessel, really fucking randomly enough. It’s like a competitionny thing. The woman’s offering prizes, I think. (Apologies to all concerned if not).
and a half) I have kind of half done the seven things meem and kind of half done the four things meem, though I really haven’t done any of them at all, on the basis that if I wanted to let you know the answers to these questions, i would write about it. I think.

Five and a half people that I am tagging with this “Five and a Half” meme
None. No people.
This “five and a half/four/seven/conglomorate” thing is a pain in the arse and you’d be an shiny-arsed idiot to attempt it.

Although if my beloved, my brother-in-law or, basically, any of the dear sweet people I know/anyone out there who deperately wants to do some stupid meem wanted to attempt either this bastard, the 4 things or the 7 things meem, I’d be happy to say that I made them do it. Do it.

[Can I stop meeming now, please? It's a very complicated thing to do and I don't think I am very good at it] [sorry]

Used to my morning routine.

Too used to my morning routine. All winter it’s been the same (apart from the fact that there were cigarettes at first, and then there weren’t anymore).

Pootle about, wash, make-up, some vague form of breakfast, some vague form of tidying, check everything is in bag, check again, check again, run around in circles, leave the house.

Walk to the bus stop. Wait at bus stop. While waiting, uncoil iPod earphones from around iPod, thread earphones UNDER two middle buttons of duffel coat, then forcefully RAM them under scarf so they don’t get lost in it.

Problem is, it’s got a bit warmer, I’ve left the scarf at home, but still I am stuck in my morning routine.

And have consequently stuck my hand up my coat and punched myself in the chin two mornings in a row.

[Ach, Wednesday, Thursday, whatever]

I was in a meeting, once. A meeting in a Meeting Room.

You know, a Meeting Room. One of those crazy office buildings that contain empty meeting rooms and nothing else - little boxes that people can hire by the day, in order to think outside it.

I worked as a receptionist in one of these places once. We had the ‘The Red Room’, ‘The Green Room’, ‘The Blue room’, ‘The Yellow Room’, ‘The Crimson Room’ (quite like the red room, then, but a bit Darker.)(Mwa ha ha ha ha, etc), ‘The Turquoise Room’, ‘The Tangerine Room’ (Again, you might have thought the orange room had that pretty well covered, but whatever). It was a very boring job.

The other meeting room I was in, the one I mentioned at the top of the post there, was named after a planet.

It was called ‘Jupiter’. The room on one side was ‘Mars’, you see, and on the other side, ‘Saturn’. So they were clearly in order.

It was only a shame that the next room was missing. The one that’s supposed to come after Saturn.

Which is sad, because, you know, that would have made the receptionist’s job so much more enjoyable. “Are you heading up the management consultancy day out, sir? You’re looking for your team, sir? Certainly. They’re in Uranus”.

But it wasn’t there. It was missing. It wasn’t there. Uranus wasn’t there at all.

And in its place? The door to the bathrooms.

If that was intentional, I’m happy to give someone a medal.

Yesterday, I got suckered into buying weird soup from the supermarket.

Well, I say “suckered” it’s more the case that they just produced it, and I’m an idiot. Although they did say it was “soup of the month”, which was clearly a lie, unless they were presented a choice of Leek and Banana, Oxtailabeti, and this one, and decided to go with the slightly less weird of the three.

“Bloody Mary soup: Spicy Tomato Juice, with Vodka, Horseradish, Woucerstershire Sauce and Tabasco, delicious hot and cold!”

Delicious cold I can well imagine. What with it being essentially just a fucking bloody mary, at the end of the day. But delicious hot? Well, it was as delicious as you can imagine any hot cocktail to be.

How delicious is that, exactly, that you are imagining?

Because it wasn’t that delicious at all. It was just a bit weird.

Although I’m now considering replacing my hot chocolate with a heated up White Russian. Not a real Russian Caucasian, you understand. Instead, a mixture pleasant combination of vodka, kahlua, and milk.

Would that be weird?
Has anyone tried it?
Has anyone got a hot White Russian?

Does anyone want to swap it for half a bowl of hot Bloody Mary?
It comes with a free slice of toast, if that helps.
Anyone?

I woke up this morning with the following words on the back of my hand in very very bad hadwriting:

“Woulddo anythig for you.
knees?
supermarket?
lion?
face?”

Now, I remember drifting off to sleep and suddenly waking, thinking of something really fucking funny that I should write about here.

I remember not wanting to wake my beloved up, so grabbing the pen from the shelf next to my pillow and writing, in the nigh-on-darkness, on my hand.

The only thing I can’t remember, of course, is what the hell it was I was going to write. not a clue. Not a thing.

I imagine the last four things were punchlines, though.
And Fucking funny, they were too.

I am a city girl, and proud.

I can name all the stations on the Hammersmith and City line - a fact that has done me precisely no use whatsoever in 28 years…

I find it difficult to go to sleep in silence - I need the soft rumble of cars to lullaby me into urban dreamland…

The closest I come to being able to identify a tree is: “Ooh. That is a tree” - I can’t get any more detailed than that, unless it is a monkey tree. No, sorry, a monkey AND a tree - I can differentiate a monkey from a tree. I don’t know what a monkey tree is. In fact I suspect I may have just made it up.

My idea of communion with nature is a nice afternoon in the park, and possibly a paddling pool, and the stroke of a friendly cat. ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’ means to me simply being able to distinguish the things of nature that can kill me (large holes, ladybirds, buses, brightly coloured fungi, lions) and the things that can’t (flowers, wool).

So, all in all, I haven’t really had that much of a need to tell one bird from another, really.

I mean, I suppose I could muddle through if there was a giant angry duck standing over me, because that would fall under the things of nature that kill you/things that can’t rule, above, and also because ‘a duck’ is pretty high on my list of “Birds I can recognise without any help or a book or the internet or anything”.

Birds I can recognise without any help or a book or the internet or anything

1. A duck: Probably only your run-of-the-mill duck, or course, although I could probably pick a funny-looking one out of a line-up if it said ‘quack‘ to me.

2. An ostrich: Which I recognise mainly because they look like really ugly llamas. Or like supermodels, but with large arses - big eyes, long necks, legs that go on forever, they’re only a huge donk away from a being Somewhere’s Next Top Model.
3. A rubber duck: Possibly connected to my ability to spot the other kind. Although if they were outside their normal habitat of ‘bath’ (not ‘Bath’, the historic spa near Bristol, ‘bath’ as in ‘tub’) I might get a little confused.
4. Big Bird from Sesame Street.
5. A Neagle: There were lots of Neagles in Scotland, although their usual habitat seemed to be ‘Far Away’, and they were mainly recognisable by their jagged wings. I’m not sure I could recognise one close up, unless he was squawking and pecking my ears out with his sharp, pointy beak, and scooping them up with his jagged wings like those things you get attached to dustpans sometimes, shouting “I am a NEAGLE! Mwa ha ha etc! Etc, I say!!!“.
6. A pigeon: I am from London. I can recognise a rat with wings when I see one.
7. A spuggy: Sparrows are small and brown, which makes them quite like mice in many ways, and also poo, except they have wings. I think that we are all glad that neither mice nor poo have wings.
8. Magpies Plural because magpies are good in sets of two and above. If you see just the one, bad things will happen to you and you will probably die, horribly. The only scientifically verified method to avoid bad things and horrible death involves turning around three times and saluting.
   The magpie issue is black and white that way.

9. Tits: Blue Tits look a bit like pale spuggies except with a bit of blue on, and Great Tits look quite similar, but not blue, and a lot more kind of rounded, and perky.

This is all well and good. Due to a childhood immersed in Blue Peter annuals, I could probably also spot a dodo, a pterodactyl and The Wright Brothers (MB: not neccesarily all birds) without too much difficulty, I’ll just never need to.

My current problem is that there’s a bird in the back garden that I don’t know the name of, and it’s funny-looking, and I’m curious, but aren’t quite sure how to find out, so:

Birds I can’t recognise without help from a book or the internet or anything

1. The one in next door’s back garden: It was black and white, right, with a splash of bright bright red on its head, and red somewhere near the bottom of it too. Maybe its feet.

   To sum up, it was black and white, with red all over.

   But not a newspaper. Or a nun falling downstairs. Or half a panda. Or a zebra on the blob.

And it kind of scampered, if that helps. And there’s some kind of buried rural instinct in me telling me that it might be a woodpecker. Well, buried rural instinct and the fact that it was pecking at some wood.

But it can’t be a woodpecker, can it? Do you get woodpeckers in London? Do you get any kind of birds that aren’t pigeons?

And, now I think of it, I haven’t seen a spuggie in ages. Where have all the spuggies gone? Do you have them? Are they dead? Can I put them on the dodo list and forget about them?

Also, if it is a woodpecker, should I try and catch it? Are they very rare? Do they poo golden eggs? Or sneeze chocolate, or something? Will it make my fortune?

If I do catch it, will it peck all my wood? Everything we own is from IKEA, it is all made of wood. But perhaps that is how I could lure it into the house, by promising it cheap IKEA pine. But what if it doesn’t like cheap pine, and can sniff out the chipboard beneath?

It is a complex issue.
I don’t think I will be a birdwatcher after all.
It seems like a very complex and worrysome hobby.

I will take up something soothy and calming, like The Luge.

I will post properly later - but in the meantime here I am pretending to be a ‘panel of distinguished judges‘. Yes, the WHOLE panel.

Sorry - you know I don’t usually link to these kind of things, but I really liked this one. A prize for anyone who can tell by the quotes which two others I might have written in the gallery archive.

When I say a prize, of course, I mean a big smile, and possibly a pint.
If you’re allowed to post a pint in this country, which you may not be allowed to do.

[By the way, that page is changed every week, so anyone clicking through a week after I've posted this won't see the one that I wrote. They might see a *different* one that I wrote, but not the same one. Yes, I know it's confusing. Sorry]

Well, it was good to see that they finally managed to disarm that ‘whale‘ on Saturday. It was all really quite scary there for a while. Trojan Whales such as these - splinter whales from terror pods - are a terrifying new development, and we should be on our guard.

Imagine if those secret agents dressed as marine biologists had failed in their dangerous task of keeping the thing away from the shores of the Thames, and it had actually managed to land. We could all have been blown to pieces. And covered in bits of whale. Which would have been simultaniously both tragic and icky.

_____________________________________ _ _ _

My word of the day is ‘Frotting’. I have attempted to inject it into most of the conversations I have had this morning, but am having difficulty slipping it in with any degree of subtlety.

__________________________________ _ _ _

There is a funny-looking bird hanging around in the garden of the house next door. I don’t mean a young woman with unfortunate and unusual facial wrongity, by the way. I mean the feathery kind. More on this later.
__________________________________ _ _ _

I have been shortlisted for the bloody bloggies!!! Fuck ME!

Hello. If you are new, and here finding out if I am, indeed, the best blog in Britain, then hello. I’m afraid I can’t help you, because I don’t know, but it is nice to have you here, welcome etc.

There is an ‘I feel Boaty!’ button on the sidebar, (along with a bunch of regular archive things), that will take you to a random post. Please excuse me if the first few returns simply read ‘I have a hangover, ow’. You may find something worth reading eventually.

If you are not new around here, hello. Two things for you. Please vote for me. Please. I don’t have much of a chance against the competition, who are all very big, and very good, and all contain winning content like cartoons and buses and important London things and frotting, so you will need to vote for me, if that is alright, for me to have a vague look-in.

You could vote for me several times, maybe. That would be wrong, and bad, and cheating, obviously - but conversely also good, and right, and pleasing, in a way. In a bad way, obviously. But in a bad way that feels kind of good, no?

Also, thing two, if you have ever read anything on here that you have enjoyed, can you drop me a note in the comment box to tell me what it was vaguely about, or a link, if you can be keffed? I might put a link to some favourite posts on the side, you see. Because I am a big competitive whore.

____________________________ _ _ _

I was disappointed to discover, when opening the cupboard this morning, that I had eaten all the Special K bars. I was annoyed, several hours later, to discover that I had an unshiftable earworm stuck in my head. It was “Gay Bar” by Electric Six.

Except it wasn’t. Because I’d somehow managed to change the words to “Damn! I’ve eaten all the Special K bars! I’ve Eaten all the Special K bars! I’ve eaten all the Special K bars, K bars, K bars!” in the process of the morning.

It will not go away.

______________________________ _ _ _

Other than that, the day is pleasantly Mondayish.
Sorry - that sentence makes no sense.
The day is Mondayish. No Monday is pleasant.

Not that you can tell. Because I’m blogging in 2002. Look at me with the crazy time-travelness etc.

See, when this blog moved over from Blogger to Movable Type some time in 2004 or something, there was one little problem - every post before that didn’t have a title, and instead the first few words were being picked up, which looked stupid. And nothing had categories. And yadda yadda yadda housekeeping dullness.

So my beloved is away, again, and here I am, again, renaming posts and adding categories to post after post after post. Have you ANY idea how much crap I’ve written?

I have written a lot of crap. 2200 posts or more, something stupid like that. And, you know, since I’m in them anyway, adding titles, I start re-reading, editing, correcting typos, adding the paragraph breaks that seemed to so wildly elude me for the first couple of years of this site.

And so I am blogging, I really am. I’m just blogging in 2002, so you can’t see me. I’m elsewhere in time. Changing archives that I’m not sure if anyone even reads. And what’s the point? It’s not like anyone’s planning to turn it into a book. Although I can promise them that if they did, it would just like the Bible. In that it would be really long. Possible longer than the Bible, I think, but with the word ‘pissflaps’ used a lot more often.

So do excuse me, I’m not here, or rather, I am, but I’m in the past. I’m putting right what once went wrong. It’s like Quantum Leap. But, you know, not as fun to watch.

Right. I’ll be back, right after I climb out of my typoed history.
Oh boy.

I don’t like Opera. And I’m not talking specifically about contemporary opera, or the big old standard opera classic things, it’s just Opera. The thing. The concept. I don’t like it.

It’s not the music, so much - no, well, we’ll get onto that in a second - my main problems are more the opera “experience”.
Or
“When Operas Attack - LIVE!”

a) I remain unconvinced by the idea that overdramatic singing is the best way of getting a point across. In fact, come to think of it I don’t like ballet either. I’m trained in theatre, in acting first, then in dramaturgy, and there’s a good reason that theatre appeals to me more than opera (or ballet) - it’s logical, on a very basic level.

Say Person A wants to tell Person B that they don’t wan’t want to marry them.

In the theatre, they would simply tell them they didn’t want to marry them. Sure, they might do it in iambic pentameter, or using floaty metaphors, but essentially, they’re going to say “I don’t want to marry you, Blaze” We’re imagining person B is called Blaze, by the way. It was either that or Doowayne. I thought we should go with the sensible option - I mean, we’re talking about the classics here.

Essentially, whatever the length or style, some semblance of sentence of varying length would be uttered, containing such words as “marry”, “want to” , “I don’t”, “you”, and, of course “Blaze”.
God, that’s a great name.
My point, though, is that it would be communicated in the way that people communicate to each other. By speaking. Perhaps by gesture and facial expression too, but likely, in this artform, to be facial expressions and gestures that are likely to be used in human interaction.

In an opera the sentence “I don’t want to marry you, Blaze” could last anything up to 38 minutes. The word “don’t”, by itself, might plausibly be stretched over 8,496 syllables, and be repeated more than 630 times at nose-shattering pitch and bladder-popping volume.

Believe me, sweetheart, it ain’t a good tactic to pull if you were just trying to play hard to get - cause Blaze ain’t don’t gonna wanna marry you after that neither.

In a ballet, of course, the sentence would be communicated by two stupid poncey flippy hops and a dip of the elbow. But we’re not talking about ballet right now. Anyway, they’re all just enormous phalluses topped with tiaras, remember - we’ve discussed this before.

b) It is for posh people. Yes, that may not be true. Yes, a lot of people of all backgrounds and classes like opera, but I just have a block about walking into a building like the Royal Opera House and feeling like I should actually be there.

They cost an obscene amount to put on, an obscene amount to stage, and an obscene amount to buy tickets or, unless you happen to be one of the lucky buyers of one of their ‘Listen, we ARE catering to the proles, we’re selling tickets for Ten English Piynds! Can we have some more of that Arts Ciyncil Money Niy?’ opera-for-everyone tickets. If it’s all supposed to be about the music, then why not wear joggy bottoms and stand in a kitchen? In a very nicely acousticated kitchen?

Oh I don’t know. The fact, pure and simple, is that I don’t like opera.

So I’m going to one in February.

No point utterly bloody-minded in your determination to solidly, restlessly abhor a thing if you haven’t actually tried it, is there?

So I’m going to an opera - I’m going to one that I studied the original play of, so at least I’ll know the story. And as I said already - I like the music. Kind of.

I’ve been trying to spend at least one day a week listening to opera on the way to and from work. I’m currently trying to build up to two. Trying. Give me time, I’m giving up smoking at the same time - my tolerannoyance levels are low.

It’s all fine, you see, they’re singing away, it’s all quite pleasant, and then suddenly - DoooodleDABAAAAAAAAA - something dramatic happens. I don’t know what, of course, because I have no idea what they’re talking about. I assume someone just told Blaze they didn’t want to marry him.

The music starts building. The tension starts building. The volume starts building. My anxiety levels start building.

See, this is the reason I could never study or write to the strains of random classical music - it’s all going along perfectly nicely, and I’m concentrating on something else, and all is well; in the case of the current opera experience, for example - I’m staring out of the window of the bus. Doo-be-doo-be-doo

Then I start to feel anxious, then tense, then angry, but have no idea why. I realise: The music’s gone mental - all timpani drums and squeaking violins. The singing people have got all excited, and it’s now more like shouting - you can almost feel the enormous breasts bouncing up and down - and then the women start singing, and the boob, pitch and squeak count rises even higher.

The people in the pit also seem to get very excited round about now. It might be the bouncing. But the violins all start going - NWEEK NWEEK NWEEK - and the te horns are “Poop”ing and they’re all going at it with enormous gusto - and then someone wheels the monkeys in.

I don’t know why, but Mozart in particular seemed to have some sort of thing for bringing in a bunch of cymbals just at the most exciting point - when Blaze was getting the most upset about no one wanting to marry him, I think. So suddenly there this TSCH! TSCH! TSCH! in the middle of the bumbubahbahbumboobumbah … TSCH! TSCH! TSCH!, and it sounds for all the world like someone’s wheeled some little tin monkeys onto the stage and they’re rolling about letting off at ay available opportunity. And then…

Well, to be honest, I don’t know what then, because I get so annoyed I reach for my ipod, and I flip to the next track, because I Just Can’t Take It Any More.

See - I don’t mind Mozart. I just wish he would leave his monkeys at home.

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Oh god, I’ve wasted fifty quid, haven’t I?