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Yes, I know I’m driving you crazy – and I just don’t care

canstockphoto4701270To the guy in the car behind me:

Yes, I’m that @#&! idiot who’s hogging the middle lane and making you late for work.

And you know what? I couldn’t give a damn.

The left-hand lane is full of lorries who are restricted to 60 mph, and as they slow down to 40 every time we reach a hill, I’m not getting stuck behind them. If the road clears, I’ll pull in and let you pass, but until then you’ll just have to wait.

The right-hand lane is packed with maniacs zipping along at 90 miles an hour. If you want to overtake me, try pulling out in front of one of them. Please. You deserve each other.

Believe me, I know you want to get past. Yes, I did actually manage to figure that out when you flashed your headlights and tried to frighten me by driving close to my back bumper. Bad luck – I stopped being impressed by temper tantrums when I had kids!

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Time to dump this tired idea: why the Poop Scene has to go

toiletroll-300x152I don’t like to mention it, but… frankly, I’m the only one, these days.

Talking about such matters used to be unthinkable – the epitome of Things That Were Just Not Done in polite society. Every family had their own private word for it to avoid flushes of embarrassment when our tiny tots let it slip out in front of visitors. Even the room where it happened frequently had a euphemistic name: the little girls’ room, the smallest room, etc.

But since the 1970s, humour seems to have gone down the pan. The floodgates opened and the brown tide oozed in. The unmentionable has become the almost-unavoidable.

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Breaking news: nothing happened today

canstockphoto3810847Here is the news…

Nothing much happened today, so we’re going to witter on for hours about the stuff we told you yesterday. And the day before. And in the last two news bulletins. And in the headlines a few seconds ago.

Yes, even though there have been no new developments. And we’ve already told you two hours ago that we won’t know any more about it until tomorrow.

Here with us in the studio is someone who isn’t particularly famous, attractive or interesting and who has no more expert knowledge about it than you do. So, what can you tell us about the situation?

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Bearing up under the strain: does losing your looks really matter?

teddyThis is Sally Jones. He’s the best teddy in the world.

He used to be beautiful, with proper glass eyes and honey-coloured fur. I dropped him a few times and his eyes broke, and I kissed and hugged him so much that his fur is all worn away.

He’s had a few torn areas over the years and lost a lot of his sawdust filling. I tried to repair him with lumps of cotton wool, but I wasn’t very good at sewing.

Then he had an unfortunate meeting under the bed with my rabbit, Snowdrop, who decided that Sally was delicious before I leapt in to rescue him.

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Spoiler Alert: What my son taught me about the truth of Father Christmas

canstockphoto5027843When my son Graham was 7 years old, I told him the truth about Father Christmas.

He was just about to start junior school in September, and I didn’t want him to look a fool in front of the older kids who were certain to disillusion him that year, anyway.

Graham said I was mean and cruel, and I’d ruined the magic of Christmas for him forever.

And maybe I had. I wished I hadn’t done it – or at least not that year. He wasn’t ready to learn the truth. He’d enjoyed believing in a wonderful magic person who brought lovely presents secretly in the night – who wouldn’t want that to be true? Couldn’t I have left him in his happy delusion a bit longer?

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GIGO: it must be true; it’s on the computer

canstockphoto13030999The age of the reference book is dead. And it’s hardly surprising.

When we need to know something, there’s one place we always look first: Google. It can filter results from millions of websites and suggest answers in less than a second. Amazing!

No more desperate struggling with index references in book after book to try to find the information we need. Computerised data is easier to search and constantly updated. And with predictive text, we don’t even need to learn to spell the words correctly, as the computer can guess what we meant to write.

But let’s not forget an important piece of computer terminology: GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. If the information that’s been put into the computer is rubbish, it cannot come up with the right answers. Continue reading “GIGO: it must be true; it’s on the computer”

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I’m glad that my Dad wasn’t a war hero

poppyMy Dad won a medal in the war. He didn’t actually get it until 50 years later, but hey.

The island of Malta was awarded the George Cross, but the servicemen who suffered the horrendous bombardment and desperate privations of the Siege of Malta never received a campaign medal.

Eventually in 1992 the Government of Malta produced a long-deserved medal for these veterans, the Malta George Cross Fiftieth Anniversary Commemorative Medal. My parents decided to attend the official presentation on Malta and enjoy a holiday there.

Unfortunately their host’s English wasn’t too good, and he thought Dad had won the George Cross! Beaming with pride, he introduced Dad to his friends as a great World War II hero.

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Do you have a microwave mentality or can you remember a friendly dog for 40 years?

frustrationIt’s been suggested that middle-aged people have an attention span of 20 minutes, but young people today can concentrate for just 5 minutes – the so-called ‘microwave mentality’.

I’d be inclined to doubt these findings. Ever seen a youngster lose interest in a computer game after just five minutes and decide to do their homework instead? Or switch off the TV five minutes into their favourite programme to do a bit of tidying? Me neither.

Continue reading “Do you have a microwave mentality or can you remember a friendly dog for 40 years?”