My favourite overheard conversation this week by far.

We are in a train, grumbling into London. Having just passed London Bridge station, we are now crossing the bridge that leads into Blackfriars. On our right, Tower Bridge, large as life. Ahead to the right, St Pauls. Also, the Gherkin. Slightly behind and above one building, we can glance the London Eye. And below us, the mighty Thames. A smallish boy turns to his father.

Kid: Dad? Is this Preston, or Cornwall?*

Dad: What? Oh, with the Bridges, you mean. Yes, I can see what you’re saying.

Kid: Well which is it?

Dad: What?

Kid: Is it Preston, dad? Or Cornwall?

Dad: It’s LONDON, son. It’s the captial city. Of Britain.

(Kid thinks)

Kid: Is Manchester United a city, dad?

Dad: Well, Manchester’s a city, son.

Kid: Is Manchester United a city though dad?

Dad: No. It’s not.

Kid: Is Chelsea a city, then?

Dad: No. It’s IN a city. It’s in London.

Kid: But it’s not a city, dad?

Dad: No, it’s just a neighbourhood IN a city, son.

Kid: So Manchester United’s a city, but Chelsea’s just a little bit?

Dad: [Sighs] Yes.

Kid: Oh. Then how can They play football, dad?

Dad sighed. The other brother, older, surlier, staring out of the window until now, leant in to explain the vagueries of football to his curious sibling.

Kid: Daaaaaaad?

And then they got off the train, and I was that close to getting off behind them and having a day out following them around. Because if there was ever going to be a fun-filled, question-laden day out in Preston and/or Cornwall, this was going to be it.

Sadly, I had to go to work instead. Boooo.

*[For those reading and not in the UK, Preston is a small city in Lancashire, in the North West of England notable for... For... - Oh god, help me out Tim, please? - and Cornwall is an entire county. A HUGE area of land that makes up most of the pointy bit on the bottom left-hand corner of our little country]

I was in the pub with my mate Glendon the other day and, out of nowhere, he said “You know what I heard the other day?”

No, obviously, I didn’t.

“Matt was saying that some people, right, scrunch their toilet paper! They just take their toilet paper off the roll, right, and they SCRUNCH it up into a ball in their’and, like this!…”

He demonstrated, with disdain (and imaginary toilet paper), then stared at me for accord. For the mutual ‘Blimey-what-freaks!‘ session he thought would inevitably follow. It didn’t.

“But Glen” I squinted “What do you mean? What ELSE would they do?”

He told me.

Fold? FOLD? Surely that’s not something outside cliched portryals of serial killers and obsessive compulsives (and obsessive compulsive serial killers).

I mean, the Smearing, surely?!
Why not go the whole hog and grab yourself a grouting trowel?

(Part one here, part two here, part three here)

The story so far: So where was I? Ah yes. I was keeping a full list of every single animal that we saw while on our short but terribly romantic safari. As a slightly obssessive compulsive completist type, the list had begun not at the gates of the nature reserve, but with the sleeping cat outside our hotel that morning, and had carried on after we’d left the gates of the wildlife-rich parkplace, and was continuing as we reached the lodge, and it began to get dark.

…Bug.
Bug.
Bug. Bug. Bug. Bug. Bug.
Bug. Bug. Bug.
Bug. Bug. Bug. Bug. Bug. Bug. Bug. Bug. Bug. Beetle. Bug. Bug.
Bug. Bug. Cricket. Bug. Bug.
Bug. Bug. Bug. Bug. Bug.
Bug.
Gecko.
Bug. Bug. Bug…

After about five and a half minutes in the Safari Lodge where we would be spending the night I decided to stop writing down all the bugs we spotted. My hand was getting tired.

I’m not very scared of bugs, really, not like mice. I hate the mice so much more than the bugs. Mice hide, and sneak about, and you never know where they are, and you can’t have any control over them at all and they scuttle and they wee in your shoes. Bugs are out there, they’re basically harmless, apart from the ones that kill you, and, I learnt quite quickly, when the bugs outnumber you by quite the extent they do in Kenya, you can’t hate the bugs. They’re just THERE.

Which is lucky, really, because our Lodge had been built as a kind of a haven for little winged, wriggling and jumpy beasties. Geographically out in the middle of nowhere, with not a light to be seen for miles around, the dining room sat in the middle of the lodge - a tall, wooden roof: rafters and banana-tree-thatching stretching up to a point 60 feet above our heads, filled with chandeliers, uplights, spotlights, and fluorescents.

And also bugs.

The walls of the Great Dining Hall, were, you see, open. On all sides. Wide open. This great beacon of welcomingness and food, drawing bugs of all nations to rest their weary fangs in the eaves-above-my-evening.

I immediately smelled a bug when the waiter showed us to our table. Instead of pulling out the chair (which is mannered, and usual, if a little unneccesary) he drew back our chairs, one at a time, turned it over, and shook it, before putting it back down.

Of course, the first bit looked like the usual waiter’s pull-and-tuck, so in order to avoid us getting all going-to-sit-down-and-falling-over on his (our) ass (es) he stuck the international sign for ‘WAIT!’ (one finger, index, straight up, palm forward) (as opposed to the other way round, one index finger, straight up, back-of-hand forward, which is the polite Christian way of non-sweary-swearing) up, before he started the lodge-specific waitermove known as picking-up-and-shaking-to-get-rid-of-the-fucking-bugs.

When we’d taken our seats, he took our order for drinks, brought the drinks, set them down on the table, taken the coasters from the table, and put the on top of the glasses. To stop the bugs falling in. It was too late.

I’m sorry, I promised you a romantic ending, didn’t I? Well, as we both agreed, if two people were the kind of people to make promises to each other, this would be the kind of place to do it.

And, when faced with them en masse, I cope with them in much the same way as any rational human being would. With intense inner terror, and an outer patina of British Stoicism.

I fought through dinner, as crickets hopped merrily in and out of my rice, and little green bugs burrowed their way into my spinach. I said nice things to my best Beloved, about how happy I was, as I watched the man next to me knocked off his chair by a fast-descending mantis-type-thing.

After a relaxing repast (seven minutes forty-five seconds, including starter), we took a walk out (OUT?!) through the lack o’wall onto the verandah. We looked up. All the stars of the justsouthern hemisphere were there. Thousands of them. Thousands of thousands, piled on top of each other in the near-perfect darkness.

Settling in a deckchair, I took a long swig of my bug-infested bottle and turned to my Beloved.

“You know what? I love you. And this is beautiful. Really beautiful. Thank you for being here with me. You know what else? While we’re here we should talk about FUCK!!! FUCK!!! GETITOUT GETITOUT GETITOUT! ISITOUT???”

Because there was a cricket in my hair. Flailing. When it left, three more dropped off the outside-side of the verandah roof to take it’s place. I tried to be stoic for some several minutes more, but found my ‘relaxed post-dinner’ romanticising punctuated by sweary shouting, throwing my arms about and headbutting air.

Eventually (three minutes twenty seconds) into my polished British Stoicism routine (’Oh no, no I’m fine, happy, baby, just…‘ [FLAILS WILDLY] ‘…Fine‘ I finally cracked.

I think the end to our most-romantic-of-romantic-evenings involved phrases like ‘Fuck this’ and ‘fuck them’ and ‘Bed for fucksake’ and ‘Screw them all, seriously’ and ‘bugs’.

Don’t worry, there was another more romantic evening several nights later, but you’re not hearing about that, because it’s already taken too long to tell this one.

But here is my lesson learnt. Learning these things so I can pass them on so you don’t have to learn’em yourself:

No matter how much you love someone, it is Very Difficult Indeed to say anything romantic when you have a cricket butt-fucking your fringe. That is all.

(Part one here, part two here, part three here)

Alright, so we have ACTUALLY managed to wash a red scarf with some clothes we like with bits of white on and that.

Now, I know there’s stuff you can buy to remedy this, but what to I do until I can find some/get some delivered? Do I wash them again? Do I hang them up to dry as usual and then deal with it later? I don’t know! It is a problem. Help me.

We have many, MANY pink clothes.

This is the second time we’ve done this in three weeks.

(Part one here, part two here)

We didn’t Strictly run over, a lion, of course. Though I may have created a slightly different impression with the words ‘I should tell you about the lion we ran over’, which was not, I admit, completely true. Or, in fact, ‘true’ at all.

You’re not allowed to run over lions. I think that counts as hunting. You’re not allowed to hunt the animals At ALL - my beloved was very clear with me on this point. Mainly because I kept saying it would be a lot more fun if we were handed guns, or at least throwing knives, at the entrance and given free rein.
Not because I wanted to actually kill anything, I was just seeking to make the whole experience a bit more, you know, Interactive.

Ostriches (lady), water buffalo.
LOTS of water buffalo!…
Dik-dik.
Dik-dik.
Lion far away!

You know, I’d never quite understood before why people always said they wanted to be lions, or what the big deal about lions was.

On that day, I realised. In the whole nature thing, everyone’s always running away from someone else, everyone’s always looking over their shoulder anxiously, for who’s trying to eat them this time.

Apart from if you’re a lion. Lions aren’t afraid.

If you’re a lion, you’re like “Yeah? Whatever. Who gives a shit, I’m a lion, fuck off.” Because you’re not very verbose, you see, because you don’t HAVE to be, because you’re a lion! Do you see?

I don’t think I’ll ever be a lion, or really want to be one, but for that moment I could suddenly understand why someone might want to. Because that must kick arse, never being afraid. Rowr. Anyway.
Our driver started shouting: “A LION! OVERTHEREALION!” and raced toward toward it in the Nissanny minivannithing.

We could see a face, hidden in a bush. Certainly something, but it was so far, and so we stood up and stuck our heads out of the top of the flip-top roof, and stared into the nearing distance we were bumping towards, rushing past bushes, and whizzing past brush and, brushing past… on almost two wheels, skidding around the corner to see the faraway lion we nearasdamnit run over a lioness. There. Lying on the road, on the corner of the road, a lioness. Just us, and her. She didn’t give a fuck, clearly. I looked at her, she looked at me, then slowly, lazily, looked away again. Because she’s a fucking lion, etc.

“Fucking STOP OhmyFuckingGOD! LionLIONhereLION!” I calmly requested the driver. And, screeching to a halt he eventually sees why the upstart tourist have deigned to shout, and starts radioing all the drivers of the other Nissany Minivannythings to come have a gander with their own canned pale meercats, standing on their hind legs, cameras in hand.

Lion! Close-up (lady)

Within minutes we were surrounded by dozens more vans, and the lioness got up, stretched, and, bored, went to stand in some bushes to stare at the buffalo, and we couldn’t see her from any angle, because there were 8 vans of the the Greater Spotted species of screaming British idiot in the way.

But I did see her. And she saw me. And neither of us were afraid.
Except possibly me a bit. Obv. She was a fucking lion and that.

Apparently, safaris, they are much the same, collective staring-and-pointing-wise, as another popular exotic holiday activity: swimming with dolphins. I was told about this by a dental assistant, only after the holiday, only after I got back and was lying with my gob flopping, suitably terrified.

“Yeah, we went swimming with dolphins, it was alright. We went oot, three boat-loads of us, and drove around fer a bit until someone spotted one, and then they called fer the uther boats, and they all came round and formed a little triangle aroond the dolphins, and then we all had to stand there, and on the coont of three – one, two THREE, we all jumped in.”

That’s not the quiet, peaceful, meditative experience I’d always imagined.

That’s what’s known as a fucking ambush, mate.

[Will tell the last, and by far the soppiest, part of the story in the next few days, when I know for damn sure everyone will have stopped reading by. In the meantime, I may still be updating dull realtime stuff by twittering]

(Part one here, part two here)

Yes, maybe I won’t tell you about how we may or may not have run over a lion “tomorrow”, which was actually, of course, yesterday.

I will carry on, of course, over the next few days, but - and knowing that most people will have stopped reading this for the holiday period already and will have wandered off to wherever they’re spending their yuletide repast, just in case I don’t speak to you before (and if you are around, don’t worry, I’ll be posting every day probably over the joyfest) then let me just say this:

However it is YOU’RE choosing to celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ this year, make sure you do it responsibly.

Also: please have a happy christmas, whatever that means to you.

xxx

As previously mentioned, for the sake of posterity, I made careful note in my Moleskine of every animal that we saw from the moment we left the hotel reception, all the way through our safari. Here is my list.

Cat asleep under bus.
Possibly a bird.
Really big slug.
Chicken (or heard chicken noise).
A small dog.
Goat, some (together),
Pigeon.
Goat singular.
Dog (bigger)
Cows. (Normal)

Look, you have to realise there was quite a long time we were in the minivan and making a list before we got to any kind of Safari type of area. Most of those animals were between my dozing off and in the suburbs of Mombasa.

Where India was dotted with cows, which at least had the excuse of being a bit sacred, Kenya was dotted with a billion goats, which had the excuse of – well, of tasting nice, producing milk and fucking a lot, one can only assume.

There were other things to be seen in the suburbs of Mombasa, of course, quite apart from the goats. On the ferry that carries people across the river in their thousands, there was an enormous wooden bos with a slot that read ‘ANTI-CORRUPTION SUGGESTION BOX’ that I never managed to get a picture of. There were little run-around minivan buses, hundreds of them. Matatus, they’re called, holding 18 people on 8 seats, and each decorated with seemingly random colourful transfers saying ‘De Lynx’, or ‘Take the Bull by the Horn’ ‘WickedMobile’, ‘Surfs UP or, my favourite, and possibly my new strapline: ‘Innasity Lady’.

I became hooked on the smell of the countryside just outside the city. Burnt wood, acacia, rosemary, and hot earth. I was in love with that, and with everything. I became a soppy bastard, this much is true.

After a while I slackened on the initial mission statement, and decided to resume my comprehensive list whenever I had different types of animal to mark down, rather than different members of the same breed (or the same member of the same breed moving faster than the traffic, it was sometimes hard to tell). So for the sake of you, I will pick up my incredible comprehensive list at the gates of the reserve.

(For what seems like a long time but isn’t, we see nothing, then suddenly!…)
Warthog.
Thompson’s Gazelle.
Zebra.
Zebra AND warthog.
Dik-Dik. Oryx. Termite (mound). Red bug. Elephant!
Weaver birds (tree fulluvum). ‘Waterbuck’ Thompson’s Other Gazelle.
Other Gazelles (not Thompson’s). Almost a leopard! Dik-Dik.
Dik-Dik. Dik-Dik

Realising that no matter how many dik-dik I wrote down (and how many I saw) the name dik-dik wasn’t going to become substantially more funny, I decided to quit while ahead, and stop writing down every dik-dik I saw. I got a bit bored of dik-dik, if I’m honest. There’s only so much dik-dik one girl can take. Etc.

I know it seems a little over-fortunate, but I’m extremely glad we could only afford a little pootly one-night safari. It’s the one thing no one ever mentions. They’re a bit dull.

Dull in a beautiful way, of course, but, as any person with an attention span as short as mine can tell you, there’s only so much gazing at bushes and willing them to be monkeys you can do.

After a while you realise there’s not that much point hanging your head out of the bumpy bus, because if there’s actually something to see, the drivers will all radio each other, race toward the same point and you’ll know where there might be a leopard because you have to join a traffic jam to see it. Or not see it, rather.

And speaking of not seeing things, I should tell you about the lion we ran over.

Tomorrow, maybe…

Part 1

For the benefit of posterity (or blogging, whichever should come first) I was very careful to make a list of all the animals we saw on safari while in Kenya.

It was a short safari – as short as a safari could possibly be, in fact, comprising of one night in a safari lodge, some pootling about in a very large national game park thing, and about eleven hours bumping along the worst roads to possibly ever bear the word ‘road’.
Or, in fact, the word ‘worst’.

It was fun. Apart from that bit where two of the people in our 6-person minivan decided to eat the boiled eggs their motherbastard hotel had packed for brunch. Why would anyone do that in a confined space? Why would anyone GIVE that to people they knew were going to be IN a confined space.? Bastards. Motherbastards.

Anyway, apart from that bit, it was fun. And the bit where the minivan fell over in a ditch. Apart from those two bits, it was fun.

Picked up far before dawn amid the chirruping of the Chirrupy-Bug (East African Variant) we bombled along the bumpy road that led from our hotel to where the eral road started, or at least started until it stopped again, in an amusingly catastophic type of way.

We drove in and out of posh hotels along the strip near to ours, and picked up couples on their way to bigger, more expensive and impressive safari trips. Everyone seemed to be on honeymoon or wedding anniversary trips. The couple who stumbled out of the hotel twenty minutes late, the get-a-room pair and an older married couple, one cigarette each away from a voicebox.

Each time one of them asked us why we’d come, we just squeezed each other’s hand and said ‘Oh… no reason, really…’, liking the seeming-decadence of the answer, given without having to go into the whole ‘Yeah, saved up all year… stressed … sun … Seasonal Affective Thingy Shit … depression … ’ answer, because it never sounded quite so sexy or impressive.

And anyway, it was no reason. We were there for lots of reasons and for none. Just to be together. Just as I would remember, that night, as we stood on a verandah outside a Safari lodge in the middle of nowhere and prepared to say very romantic things to one another. Oh stop making those gurning noises, it’s not becoming.

And so. So, we drove on, into the Mombasa rush hour, making careful note all the way (in between the very British smalltalk) of Every Single Animal We Saw.

[To be continued. Tomorrow, I think]

No.14 in an incredibly lacksidasical series.

While on holiday I landed upon and developed a liking for the word ‘Motherbastard’.

When said in the right way (terribly fast and poshly) it sounds like the most beautifullly English swearword. Though it at first seems cumbersome and makes little sense. After a while, just saying it becomes a pleasure:

Mutherbarrrstud.

Every time I say it I enjoy it so much that I keep saying it in my head for hours afterward.

Mutherbarrrrstud. Mutherbarrrstud. Mmmmm.

Usages:
That man who pushed in front of me is a motherbastard.
Oh motherbastard, I have spilt my tea.

You know, if this year is notable for nothing else - and it’s already notable for a whole fuckbunch else, so let’s count that sentence as rhetorical, or metaphorical, or nonsensical or something - it is notable for the one master-moment of unEnglishness that took place one Sunday in the month of November.

My beloved and I are probably two of the most English people you might care to meet, in terms of over-politeness, propensity to apologise, unwillingness to complain (well, we’ll complain till the cows come home under our breath, to our friends and family and for months following the event, but at the time it is asked, the question ‘Is everything to your satisfaction?‘ will be answered with a false and effusive ‘Oooh, YES, thank you. Lovely.‘) we are terribly, terribly English.

And so it was that we went for a terribly English Sunday Lunch at a terribly English pub which, we had heard, was terribly good.

After taking seats, we looked through their menu (which was terribly good, yes) and ordered our drinks and food with the terribly nice waitress.

Twenty minutes later we received our lemonade and an orange juice and we sat and watched other people being served, and getting a little hungrier and talking about plans for the rest of the day, and got a little hungrier and a little grumpier and tried to catch the waitress’s eye to order more drinks and failed. And so one of us left and went and bought a bottle of water from the newsagent down the street and brought that back to drink and sat for a while longer and talked a bit more but mostly talked about where our food might be and whether we could just get up and leave since we had already ordered food and hadn’t paid for the drinks, and how we couldn’t pay for the drinks until we actually managed to find a waitress.

About forty minutes after we were given drinks - so almost an hour after we ordered - the waitress came over.

“Hi!” She grinned “Hi! The kitchen’s really busy - your food will be out shortly.” said Pretty Susan the Invisible Waitress.

“Ok. Um, thanks!“, we Englished.

“Great!” she said.

“No.” Said a voice from somewhere. “No, actually, not great. Sorry, I think we’re going to have to just go. Actually. I think we’re going to have to, you know, just go. Sorry. Thanks.”

It’s worth noting that at this moment - possibly the bravest of my life - I was still apologising to the restaurant staff who’d been ignoring us for an hour.

She looked a bit confused. I looked a bit confused. My beloved looked rather shocked (and also confused). There was someone at the table talking like someone not English at all. This wasn’t at all right.

The proper thing in this situation is to say ‘Oooh, thank you, LOVELY.‘ and someone was breaking the unwritten rule of the overpolite. Terrifyingly enough, it seemed to be me.

“So can we just pay for the drinks and go? Would that be alright?”

“Um. I’ll just go and get the manager.’

We sat and looked at each other, my beloved and I and whispered, worriedly: “Was that the right thing to do?”; “Do you think we should stay if they offer us money off?”; “Should we just stay anyway, I mean,they are very very busy, I suppose” “But they still didn’t say anything to us until…” Until we were interrupted by a short man with a long future in restaurant diplomancy ahead of him.

“I’ve just spoken to the kitchen, and they said they’ll put your order on priority. It shouldn’t be any more than five minutes.”

“Oh. Ok, well thanks…” I began to capitulate at the news that now, after more than an hour and ten minutes of waiting and a decidedly latter-day interest in our wellbeing, we were going to be put on some kind of pissed-off-priority list in the kitche (a kitchen which was either 40 miles away or run by thumbless oxen in heavy boots). “Thanks, that would be good…”

“…Yes, that WOULD be good,“picked up my beloved “But it’s too late. We’re just going to go, actually. Actually, we’re just going to go, I think. Yes? Yes. How much do you owe you for the drinks?”

“Oh. Nothing. The drinks are free.” He chirruped, and slumped off to work out which of the other patient diners were about to get their meals miraculously early.

We left money on the table for the drinks - we drank them, after all - and wandered off into a dimming November day.

Ten minutes later we were sitting on long wooden benches, scarfing The Noodles Of The Righteous.

I know it’s the littlest, stupidest thing, but it might well be the bravest thing I’ve done this year.
And I’m still feeling bad about it.

Learning not to feel bad about it is the next step, I think.

You know, thick, heavy, and most of all, unable to write.
Which is, currently, a problem. Not just here, everywhere.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that Christmas puddings are bad, or that I am bad for being one. Christmas puddings are, of course, good. My god, I’d set light easily, and I’d undoubtably taste pretty good with brandy butter, but the case remains that of all the great things that can be said about Christmas Puddings, one of the things that is very rarely expressed about them is admiration for their skill as writers.

I am not sure what can be done about this. Apart from what I’m about to do, which is sit here and write and write and write until I like something. If not, if nothing works, I will say fuckit, and take a spoon to myself. I deserve nothing more.

1. There are around nine classifiable types of hangover. These range from the Type A, a grumbling, low-level woozy angover, through the Type C, a maniacally miserable hangover, full of tears and regret and sick burps, to the dreaded Type X Death Hangover. Of the nine classifiable hangovers, I have had, today, all of them, sometimes sequencially, and sometimes all at once.

2. There are now, it seems, barely four hours of daylight in a day, or that’s how it feels. This is not good enough and should be remedied. By someone. Please.

3. I’ve got a new skirt.

4. And an empty head.

5. And a twitter addiction.

5. I’ve been rubbish and busy and rubbish at blogging (but just in case, here is my latest Video deconstruction thing if you want to read it which you don’t have to at all of course)

6. There was something I was going to write here but I have forgotten what.

5. But nothing to do this weekend except upload photos and blog. About which I am truly happy.

Just, you know, the other thing.

After busily lying around on beaches for two weeks, I have developed what is called a ‘healthy glow’. I know this because people keep saying it. Ooh, you have a ‘Really Nice Tan‘, they keep saying, ‘A Really Healthy Glow‘, it’s ‘Great Colour‘. And it’s incredible, because they manage to say all these things without once ungritting their teeth.

I had no idea so many people I knew had gritty teeth, but they really really do. Because the fact is that everyone likes a nice tan. Just not when it’s some one else that has it, it’s the middle of winter, and they themselves are the colour of skimmed milk.

Therefore, with all-comers despising my sunglowedness, I am left to smugly compliment on my own glowy tone. Well done me.

So as a treat, to congratulate myself on having quite such a damn good tan, I buy myself some new foundation.

The foundation I buy is, it seems, a chemical beauty product breakthrough, a modern miracle of cosmetic science - even though it only costs Ten English Pounds, which in the circumstances must be an incredible bargain, since it is apparently made of magic, and it’s special powers include liquid to powder cloak of invisibility.

‘Intelligent colour‘ it says. ‘Foundation that cleverly adapts to match exactly the colour of your skin‘

Since the only reason I wear foundation in the first place to cover my slightly jolly and ruddy complexion, I have to wonder about the efficacy of a product that is, it seems, claiming to be intelligently see-through.

So what, the complex chemical compound contained in this harmless looking Boots tube is going to magically fake a pleasant beige on quite a lot of my skin, but will automatically adopt a hearty rouge when it hits my blusheasy cheeks? Isn’t that a bit pointless?

But very clever, obv. And on the positive side, it will not matter if I drop it on my top, as it will immediately ape the hot pink of that, or on my coat, as the matter will, by it’s certain nature, suddenly adopt a khaki hue.

I realise why they have chosen to put this product in an opaque containers, it is very clever. Attempting to sell them in see-through tubes would be a very costly mistake, as every time you put them down on a surface they would blend seemlessly with the background and effectively disappear. Once out of their box, you would never find them again. And also they’d be horrifically easy to shoplift.

For a while, I dwell on the questionable wisdom of whether a cream with such a powerful - almost magical - chemical properties is something I should voluntarily be smearing on my own face, but then I notice it says ‘hypo-allergenic’ near the bottom of the tube, so conclude it must be ok, and most likely made out of mainly natural ingredients.

I conclude that it is mainly made out of pureed chameleons.