To wit to woo

So, here we are - it's nearly the end of November and soon we'll be heralding in a New Year with fireworks and drunken behaviour. And that will be after gorging our fat, slob-like selves on Christmas foods.

Ok - so what's bothering Caroline at the moment? What's her gripe of the week?

In fact it's more like a gripe of the month, as November has proved to be the month where good fortune went crashing out of my life, as hurdle after hurdle had to be overcome.

Well, we're nearly in December and I shout loudly to the heavens: "I LOVE A CHALLENGE! GIVE ME MORE MISERY AND HARDSHIP AND I WILL GRASP IT WITH BOTH HANDS AND FACE IT HEAD ON - I WON'T GIVE UP AND I WON'T BE DEFEATED BY IT - I AM A FIGHTER, A SURVIVOR AND AN OPTIMIST - SO BRING IT ON NOW!!!!!!!!!!".

P.S. Roll on 2008!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Secret Lives

My son goes to a mixed education school. You know - boys and girls at school together as opposed to single-sex schools. He's made friends with a couple of girls who go to all-girls schools. I don't consider myself an old fart or naieve but I have been stunned at a couple of things that he's told me.

Both of these girls (who go to different schools) appear to lead double lives. They are early teens and at the weekends give their respective parents the lie that they're staying over at friends. Secretly they're tarting themselves up to go out to nightclubs and bars and flirt with (older) men and drink alcohol. They've even forged identity cards to get them into bars and nightclubs.

Do they not realise the dangers of doing this?

It tends to be the girls from single-sex schools. It's like they see a male and go crazy!!!!!!!! At their age - with their whole lives in front of them they're going to end up like burnt up young tarts with fried livers and creaking with STD's!!! And their stupidly fooled parents are thinking that they're at a friend's house tucked up in bed giggling about boys that they fancy and having midnight feasts in 1950's style Enid Blyton books! I am afraid not! They're enacting their sex and alcohol fantasies and feeling very grown up but not actually having the emotions to deal with all this.

I do despair!

The Christmas Con

Well, it's nearly Christmas and I am fed up already of being sold a vision of an idyllic Christmas by tv advertisers.

You know - z-list, past-it celebrities on tv in snowy surroundings shopping at places these millionaires wouldn't touch with a barge-pole. So we've got Lulu merrily wheeling a trolley around a lower-end-of-the-market supermarket whilst in the background a recent hit pop-tune gets the obligatory Christmas bells makeover as the jingle. Awwww - ain't that wonderful, Lulu, who drives a Rolls Royce (and isn't always keen on signing autographs for fans) is actually one of us - bless! Even dour footballing "pundit" Alan Hansen's getting in on the act by also doing a commercial for this store. Good grief - stick to slating Spurs Alan!

Then there's the now obligatory Hollywood style M & S showpiece featuring Twiggy and Antonio Banderas recreating 1950's Hollywood Christmas glamour. Would either of these very wealthy people be shopping in a high street store? I think not!

I'm not even going to comment on the Trinny and Susannah one!

So, we're being sold an idyllic Christmas where there's snow on the ground, ethnic minorities don't exist, Christmas trees are wonderfully fluffy, it's always snowing and cold, people are walking around in scarved cosiness, smiling and carrying beautifully wrapped presents! There's no mugging, no happy slapping, no rape, no crime. Above all, there's no identity fraud - except for the one being performed by the advertising agencies on us by the creation of such unrealistic and unrepresentative utopias!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Only

There's a bizarre marketing strategy that goes on in the UK regarding items for sale.

If an item is £11.99 the shop will advertise it as being "ONLY £11.99". It is as if the word ONLY makes the whole purchase seem like an absolute bargain. As if the psychological effect of the word ONLY will sway the reluctant purchaser into parting with their cash for the item.

I have to ask - Why?

Just because something is ONLY dot dot pounds doesn't make it a bargain or cheap. If it was fairly priced in the first place there'd be no need for this pop psychology.

Thankfully my brain is well-trained so that when I see ONLY before a price, I don't register it. I don't get a rush of adrenaline to buy it and I don't view it as a bargain.

LONG LIVE CYNICISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh joy it's fireworks season!

Well here we are and from now on until New Year's Day we are going to get a dose of nightly fireworks going off at all hours, disturbing our sleep, scaring our pets, smoking the air and bringing joy to ... but a handful of people letting them off!

I really wish we would outlaw fireworks. What other civilised country gives gunpowder to their youth and trusts them not to misbehave with it? There's always accidents and injuries and chaos and mayhem.

I am not a boring killjoy - I've enjoyed watching plenty of fireworks abroad at organised displays and festas where people don't throw them at old people or young kids and run off laughing or let them off until the small hours of the morning.

It just makes me hate England even more! Now, where are my earplugs?

Friendship

This year it appears that I have lost the friendship of 2 people I considered very close friends.

One of them, a male friend, deliberately stitched me up financially to prove a point and make a laughing stock of me. Thanks very much - you know who you are! That person also didn't like my child very much so it's perhaps just as well. It wasn't a romantic relationship but it was a good friendship until he let me down.

The other friend is a female who has decided to pull away from her friends after getting engaged. Her fiance's a weird kind of chap and is making her adapt an "us together against the world" viewpoint. That's ok and I guess I have to cut ties as her loyalties are with him and not with her friends but if their relationship doesn't work out, and I am not sure that it will, she will be quite friendless.

Funnily enough someone I was friendly with years ago recently got in touch with me during the course of work. She had been a really good friend and we'd even been on holiday together, attended self-defence classes together and worked together. Then someone told me that my friend's current boyfriend was 2-timing her and I made the mistake of telling her. That was the end of the friendship as far as she was concerned as I didn't tell her who had told me. Are you following this? A few years later I heard that her father had died so I wrote her a condolence letter and followed it up with a phonecall. She was quite chatty and said she'd keep in touch but never did. A few years later I read that she'd got married. I thought no more of it until I realised I'd have to speak to her in the course of my job. I told my colleague the situation and he dealt with her but it finally reached a point where I had to deal with her and she was very apologetic for what had happened in the past. Although I accepted her apology with a "that's all in the past, forget about it" manner, I was actually quite cross and certainly wouldn't want to see her socially again.

So, friendship eh! Is it worth it? Why do we bother? Suckers, aren't we?!

"Rispekt - innit?"

I was on a bus the other day seated behind a young mixed-race girl and her, very smiley and cute baby.

An old woman with a walking stick wanted to sit down on the inside seat and this "young lady" made no attempt to move, or uncross her legs to allow the old lady to sit, so the old lady squeezed silently into the seat. This whole scenario silently enraged me and I sat thinking venomous thoughts about the uneducated youth of today.

When it was time for the old lady to get off the bus, it was apparent that the youth would neither uncross her legs or move to allow the old lady to pass. I just couldn't keep my mouth shut any longer. I weighed up the likelihood of getting stabbed, punched, spat at or otherwise and realised it would just be verbal,
particularly as she had a baby in a pram. So I leaned forward and said to the youth, "Perhaps you'd like to move your legs to let the lady pass". "Oi, watch yer mouth, it's got nufink to do wiv you!" was her predictable reply. By this time the old lady had had to barge her way past and was off the bus. "Well, I think you could've made it easier for that lady to get off the bus," I replied, "Couldn't you see she was an old lady with a walking stick?"

"She didn't give me any respect!!!!!!!!!!!!" was the bizarre reply.

Ok, I reasoned - what a strange world we live in. We're living in a free world today and not speaking German because the old lady's generation fought in the War for our freedoms only so that she could be dissed by the youth and told to show them some respect! No doubt the mixed-race girl would've been sent to the concentration camps - and now her daughter is going to grow up in a world based on misplaced concepts of "respect"!

I shall wear my poppy with pride and continue to plan my emigration from the UK!