Spam bloody comments. I had twenty six of the damn things on here this morning! I had received one or two before but twenty bloody six?! And they were all different ones as well. What is it; they go round in gangs now? Unbelievable.

Those who know me know that I am not a big fan of doing stuff. When I do something it’s usually because I know that when I come back home people will be off my back for a while about staying in all the time. And also when my mum calls and gives me a rundown of all the things she has done and then stops and says, ‘Ok now what have you been doing?’ I have a story more action-packed than, ‘I drew a very pretty donkey today.’
There’s another reason as well and that is that I had always believed that doing stuff would inspire me to draw or write about more interesting things. Except now I’m starting to realise that the more things I do, the less inspired I get! Weird, I know. I don’t know why this is.
Take these past three weeks for example (when I have been quite a bit more happening that my usual) you can’t believe how many things I’ve written and not posted on here just because they were rubbish and sounded a bit like my essays of ‘How did you spend your summer’ at school.
I don’t know if this is normal or if it’s just me being strange again but I have come to the conclusion (that for me at least), ‘Creativity loves stillness’.

Things you should definitely think twice about snacking on if you don’t have a toothbrush handy: Khoreshteh Ghormeh-sabzi (herb stew) and crispy seaweed.
Plus they don’t really go that well together.

I look like a ghost today. I’m so pale that this morning I actually scared myself when I looked in the mirror and resorted to using blusher for like the fifth time ever in my life! My mum will be pleased to hear this. She loves her blusher. As do all other Iranian women that I have ever met as a matter of fact. The way they see it, there is nothing in the world that a generous appliance of blusher won’t fix.
‘You wanna keep your man girl, you put some blusher on.’
‘You haven’t washed for three days it’s ok, put some blusher on and no one will know.’
‘You’re always coming up with excuses aren’t you? So you’ve just given birth, you can still pick up a brush and put some blusher on, can’t you?’
‘And if you run out of blusher, don’t panic, you can always use your lipstick in an emergency. Just two little dabs on your cheekbones, rub them with an upward movement and there you have it, more blusher.’
In my case it didn’t work though. I think I need a tan.
If my mum had worked out how to leave comments on here she would probably write, ‘But you look so pretty when you put blusher on.’

‘CP 19034623489 IR’
The voice activated service, ‘CP 19034623489 IR. Is this correct? Please say yes or no.’
‘Yes’
The voice activated service, ‘Please bear with me while I look for the information. This may take up to thirty seconds……….Your parcel was last tracked at Parcelforce Worldwide International Hub on 26 of August at 1:48 PM. The expected delivery date is 31 August. Now you can choose from ‘Arrange delivery’ ‘Track another parcel’ or ‘all other enquiries’. To end this call just say goodbye’
I almost didn’t want to let him go, we had been through so much together in the past few days. I was feeling very emotional and I think he might have been going through something similar too because he didn’t interrupt our little moment with his usual, ‘sorry I didn’t get that. Please choose from the following options ‘arrange delivery’ ‘Track another…’ He simply waited for me to pull myself together.
‘Goodbye’ I said at last with a quivering voice. I had chosen the wrong option again, I should have said ‘Arrange delivery’ but it was ok, I just couldn’t leave him without saying goodbye.
I waited, but he said nothing. Needless to say I felt like an idiot. I had been so close to my goal of talking to a real person. I had been so close I had almost felt the hustle and bustle of the call centre, ‘Good afternoon my name is Linda. How may I help you?’, the sound of a mug of tea being put down on a desk, ‘Is there anything else I could help you with?’, the comforting sound of professional typing (with all ten fingers) ‘Is your parcel coming from another country?’, the sound of draws opening and closing.
O I had been so close to all that and what had I done? I had sacrificed it all for a stupid good-for-nothing machine!
But then, ‘Goodbye…’ he said softly and for the first time in four days, his voice was free from its usual sarcastic tone. He paused again for a few seconds to gather his thoughts (or to rearrange his wires or something). I was getting worried. Was he ok? I listened.
‘…and thank you for calling Parcelforce worldwide.’
He was back. I smiled and hung up.

Kamshots.co.uk


Kamyar Adl entered this world on 17 August 1975. His first ever memory is looking up from his pushchair at the sun shining through the leaves on the trees that danced in the wind. He liked that.

Kamyar says, ‘I became obsessed with 35mm cameras when I was a teenager after playing with my Brothers Nikon EL2 and its 50mm 1:1.4 lens.’ Some years later when his brother left Iran for LA, Kamyar and the poor ownerless Nikon became inseparable.
After finishing school Kamyar spent a short while at Azad University studying photography but he soon left to do his military service in some desert near the Iran Iraq border.
Kamyar never went back to university but he did some photography jobs here and there one of which being taking photos of old doors and windows in downtown Tehran for a famous Iranian architect.
Then at the age of twenty five ‘I got married to the love of my life Shirin and moved to England’ says Kamyar (at this point Shirin has a very big grin on her face and misty eyes. She thinks about making Kamyar’s favourite dinner for him, Khoreshteh Bademjoon) ‘But don’t write that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s cheesy.’
‘No it’s not.’
‘Yes it is. And it’s also kind of Bollywood. I work in a factory remember? The guys at work will crucify me if they read this.’

Kamyar currently works as a rectifier at BMW Plant Oxford. He does not get much Khoreshteh Bodemjoon and he often finds that when he goes to take a bath, the water is cold.

Day three of the Adls’ Parcel Saga

Shirin, ‘CP 19034623489 IR’
The voice activated service, ‘CP 19034623489 GB’
Shirin, ‘!!!’
The voice activated service, ‘Is this correct? Please say yes or no.’
Shirin, ‘No’
The voice activated service, ‘You said, 'No'. In that case I am going to have to ask you to repeat your parcel number again.’
Shirin, ‘CP 19034623489 IR’
The voice activated service, ‘CP 19034623489 GB. Is this correct? Please say yes or no.’
Shirin, ‘**********’
The voice activated service, ‘Sorry, I didn’t get that. Please read out your parcel reference number.’
Shirin, ‘CP 19034623489 IR’
The voice activated service, ‘CP 19034623489 GB. Is this correct? Please say yes or no.’
Shirin sighs. She has obviously pressed the wrong button somewhere but should she start from the beginning and go through all the options again or should she simply throw herself out of the window?
The voice activated service, ‘Sorry, I didn’t get that. Please read out your parcel reference number.’

My mum did a very cute thing. She sent me a parcel but forgot to put our flat number on it. So I called Parcel Force to try and track it down.
A machine with a woman’s voice said, ‘If you want to enquire about an existing account please press one, if you want to find out about our special deals please press two, If want to enquire about a late or lost parcel please press three.’
After going through ten minutes of being given options by a the machine I finally got to, ‘If you are trying to track down a parcel sent by a dozy Iranian mother who has forgotten to put the house number on the parcel, please press nine…’ Their options were surprisingly precise.
‘Finally’ I thought and pressed nine. Beep beep and a man said, ‘Hello…’ I was so happy to be able to talk to a real person that I quickly said, ‘Hello, em, good afternoon. I was…’
The man on the other end cut me off saying, ‘This service is voice activated so you can talk to me in your normal voice. Please choose from the following options: If your parcel was sent within the UK please say, ‘Within the UK.’ If your parcel was sent from the UK to another country please say, ‘International exports’ If your parcel was sent from another country to the UK please say, ‘International imports.’ Just as I was about to say, ‘International imports’ the neighbourhood crows decided it was a good time to start a little singsong.
‘Sorry, I didn’t get that.’ Said machine in a sarcastic voice, ‘was that kaa kaa? Let me give you those options again: If your parcel was sent within the UK please say, ‘Within the UK.’ If your parcel was…’
Prick

I like it when it rains but the stuffiness in the air makes my head feel totally bunged up and so sometimes I can’t do anything but to sit and watch the rain from the window and smile from time to time as I remember how lucky I am for not having to be outside.

I was reading this book the other day and (well a comic book actually in which the main character was a dog in a raincoat that ended up running from both the police and a hitman-dog in a black suite that smoked cigars. Nice bit of action with pictures as well, what more could you ask for? This was Sam’s idea of an appropriate read on the plane to prepare his brain for coming to Oxford and then it became my getaway from pretending to read Joyce’s ‘A portrait of the artist as a young man’. Unfortunately it looks as if he has hidden the book somewhere and so I can’t give you its name but anyway) in it the dog type things were talking about how many interesting stories they had that could be told in an evening amongst friends. You know, like when you’re all sitting around talking about something and one of you quite casually, even though inside they’re screaming with delight for a chance to tell everyone this, says, ‘Yes I somethinged when I backpacked around Africa for three months.’
Or in my case I could say, ‘Yes I somethinged when I hitchhiked around south of France for two months with only two hundred pounds.’
See, I had to do it. I just couldn’t stop myself. When it comes to bragging about stuff we’ve done it seems we really can’t control ourselves at all.
A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend of mine about this really really cold cottage that they once lived in. I stayed there for only one night in May and nearly died. By mid January her and her boyfriend both had severe colds and had to move out of their place to go and live with their friends or parents and only went in the cottage a couple of times to get some things. One would go in wearing clothes suitable for arctic adventurers while the other one would stand outside shouting, ‘talk to me, sing, sing with me come on. You fall sleep in there and you’ll die…talk to me.’
Considering all this I thought this must have been a time in my friend’s life that she would rather forget but to my utter surprise at the end of it she said, ‘Well at least we can always say, ‘That year when we lived in the cottage…’ So there you have it, she had nearly died of pneumonia but it was ok because now she could casually drop her year at the cottage into a conversation with someone and supposedly impress them!
I wonder if we would still do all the things we do now if we weren’t allowed to tell anyone about them.
For example, if you were given a choice between a whole day of bungee-jumping, sky-diving and swimming with sharks or sitting on a very comfy sofa with baggies on, eating ice-cream and watching videos and either way no one would ever know anything about any of it, what would you choose? Be honest.

It’s my little husband’s birthday today and I’m very happy as I don’t have to be 30 on my own anymore.
It’s boiling-hot outside and the ddois have gone on a walking-tour of Oxford. We are going to catch up with them in a couple of hours and go to the Trout pub for dinner where I am planning on downing four pints of Guinness Extra Cold one after the other. Umm Guinness. I think I might be in love.

I just got a letter from the bank, telling me off for not having used my credit card much lately!
Well I didn’t get it just now actually because it was Sunday today and there was no post. In fact it arrived two days ago but I don’t like to open these types of letters straightaway. Well I don’t like opening them full-stop so I leave them by the door at first for a few days and give them a few good kicks on my way in and out. Then gradually, bruised and battered, they make their way through to the living room where they will stay for another few days, perhaps spending a couple of nights in the fruit bowl, in the company of a lively banana and a shrivelled up passion-fruit and another night on top of the stereo and so on and so forth until I finally get sick of the sight of them and decide to get them opened.
This time though, my letter only stayed unopened for two days since I was cleaning up the flat for the arrival of Mr and Mrs ddoi that are finally arriving tomorrow, yay.
And so there I was in the middle of my cleaning, suddenly being told off by a woman called Suzanne Johnson from the bank who was ‘concerned’ because and I quote, ‘We have noticed that you have not used your credit card in a while.’
I must say Suzanne Johnson knew what she was doing. At first she made me feel totally guilty for neglecting my poor little credit card. Then on the second page of the letter she made me feel alive and hopeful by showing me all these new and fun things that my credit card and I could do together. By the middle of the third page, I was suddenly overcome with an uncontrollable urge to go and dig up my credit card, run out into the street, jump in the first open shop I could find and buy all that was in there.
Luckily it’s Sunday night and all the shops are shut and even more luckily, I seem to have lost my credit card!
Seriously though, shouldn’t they be congratulating me for being a sensible person and not spending the money that is not even mine instead of making me read patronising three page letters with the sole objective of proving that I’m an idiot?

Great news; my good friend Gazankhan is back and doing his thing again. So in his honour I’m posting a little anecdote of my own here which I have a feeling he will enjoy.

Those of you who are familiar with my father(the great Farokh Saramad)’s books, know that he is, to put it politely, rather liberal with his use of (what some people may consider) bad language and that he also likes a good laugh and a joke. Those of you who are not familiar with his books, well you’re just going to have to take my word for it.
One day my father came up to my two cousins and me and took great pleasure in telling us this joke.
Two old Ghazvini men are sitting outside a café, talking about their youth. One turns to the other and says (this anecdote relies very heavily on the Ghazvini accent, so if you know it, great. If you don’t, I’m going to try and guide you through it somehow), ‘Jafar-khan, (pronounced, Dsjafar-khaan (yeah good luck with that!) onsal keh to Ghazvin kon (tkon) arzan bood che (tche) saali bood?’
‘Jafar-khan, which was that year when kon was very low-cost in Ghazvin?’
‘Haa (long nostalgic sigh) jang-meynolmelal avval rah migi?’
‘Aah, are you talking about the great First World War?’
‘Haaa (an even more stretched out, longing sigh) digeh jang-meynolmelal avval namishah?’
‘Ah yes, isn’t the great First World War ever going to come back again?’
Here the joke ended and we laughed along with my father. Although unlike him, we three had no idea what we were laughing at. Sure we had liked the accent that he had done but our ages only being, nine, seven and six; we for example had absolutely no idea about the fact that Ghazvinis were world famous for their liking for young, good-looking men. Also our unfamiliarity with the Ghazvini accent meant that we had failed to recognise the word ‘kon’ as being the same as ‘koon’ (bum).
‘Amoo (uncle)’ my youngest cousin asked very innocently a few minutes later, ‘what is Kon?’
My father sat in front of us and while trying to hide a very mischievous smile (that kept trying to break out from the corners of his mouth) began to give us the meaning for the word Kon. This seemed to amuse him even more than the joke itself and so I for one knew straight away that he was not to be trusted with that explanation. I still had no idea what this word meant but I was pretty sure by then that it was rude. And as if we had all silently agreed on this together, the word kon mysteriously vanished from this joke and from that moment on, it always began with, ‘Jafar-khan, onsal cheh saali bood?’ (Jafar-khan, what was that year?)
This became a little inside joke between us four. When we wanted my father to come and hangout with us or if we wanted to cheer him up, we would go up to him and say, ‘Jafar-khan, onsal cheh saali bood?’ and watch his face break out into a smile. Or if people were having a discussion about when a certain event had taken place, we would whisper to each other, ‘Jang-meynolmelal avval rah migi?’ (Are you talking about the great First World War?)
Some time later, my same two cousins and I were at our grandmother’s house one night in the company of our lovely and very elegant grandmother and her equally graceful and sophisticated friend. After dinner we were all sitting around the table, telling jokes. When it was my youngest cousin’s turn, he very coolly started to tell the complete version of the story of Jafar-khan and his old friend.
My older cousin and I watched the expressions on the faces of our grandmother and her friend intently as they went from affectionate to horrified to a simple wide-eyed and wide-jawed. This last expression was the one that they carried on with until about ten seconds after the joke had ended. And then quite suddenly they broke out into a very coordinated hysterical laugh which went on for about two minutes.
When after numerous failed attempts our grandmother finally managed to calm herself down, she turned to my little cousin and asked, ‘Azizeh delam (my darling) do you know what Kon means?’
My little cousin’s eyes twinkled with pleasure as he said, ‘Of course I do Mamanjoon’ and then proceeded to repeat the (when I think about it not so out of place) explanation that my father had given him, ‘Kon is a sort of sweet dish that is very popular in Ghazvin. It is made form a mixture of nuts (like, walnuts, pistachio nuts, almonds and peanuts) raisons and dates. These are all mashed up together into a pulp and sold either like that or some water and icing sugar is added to them and they are made into little ball shapes.’

As an old relative of ours once said at the end of an anecdote that had completely appalled her (with some little changes), ‘Vaay bar on pesar, vaay bar on Ghazvini va vaay ham bar on Amoo.’ ‘Shame on that boy, shame on that Ghazvini and what's more shame on that uncle.’

So Mr and Mrs Daily dose of imagery are still stock in Toronto after their flight to UK was cancelled on account of baggage handlers going on strike because they didn’t like the fact that 600 of their caterer friends were sacked. Yaah we Brits stick together my friend through thick and thin.
I was in fact thinking of going on strike myself as a show of solidarity but then realizing that by me going on strike, the whole country would practically come to a standstill, being the responsible person that I am, I decided against it and so rest assured people; I will be continuing with my vital job of spying on the local squirrels.
Now anyone who has ever been on a British Airways flight knows that food is not exactly this airline’s strongpoint. My good friend Talayeh wrote in an email to me, ‘I have been in a British Airways flight before, and the food was even worse than my mum's idea of cooking fessenjoon with Golpar!!’ And that’s saying something because I’m pretty sure that this is considered child abuse and having been a child in this country, Talayeh would surely have been taken away from her mother by the social services and re-housed and maybe even given a new identity as well.
The BA’s food situation gets even worse when you realise that their meals are in fact supplied by a company that call themselves Gate Gourmet! I really don’t understand these companies that give themselves names that they will most definitely never be able to live up to. I think maybe if they had called themselves ‘Gate Greasy spoon’ or ‘Kinda like McDonald’s but maybe a bit better’ to begin with, they could very easily have stopped a lot of confusion and maybe even the sackings too.

My good friend Gazankhan is threatening to leave the bloging world! Please help me make him stay.

Yesterday our marriage had its biggest test of strength to date and I’m very pleased to say that it managed to come out of the other end with its head held up high.
Just as you think all is going well, there comes a time your life for you and your partner to get in your dodgy car, arm yourselves with your equally dodgy, cheapo (2.99£) map from The Works and another step by step map (yeah right) from the internet and set out to find Ikea.
O how naïve we were at the beginning and how arrogant was our way of thinking that there was no stopping us because we had two maps, a full tank of gas, two plums, two nectarines, a medium sized bottle of water and a fat spider on the dashboard for entertainment. We were like Bonnie And Clyde; fast, focused, unstoppable and in love. O how to start with we called each other ‘my love’ and ‘my darling’ and used every traffic light to give each other a cute little peck on the cheek.
The map said it would take one hour and twenty minutes. Eight missed turnings, ten separate occasions of ‘let’s just go back home.’s from me, numerous cries of, ‘Did I say turn? Did you hear me say turn? Who’s the one reading the bloody map here, huh? Well now you’ve done it. Now we have to go all the way to bloody Slough (the name of the city we sidetracked to of course changed depending on where the wrong turn had taken place. Other towns we were helplessly drawn towards included, Birmingham, Cornwall, New York and Bombay) just to be able to turn round and come all this way back again.’ countless numbers of, ‘Instead of just pointing or shouting ‘that way’, can you just give me a direction like east or west or something?’s from hubby (and then me quite innocently asking, ‘When you say left, is that my left or the map’s left?’), nine times of stopping to ask directions from strangers and exactly four hours and fifteen minutes later, hungry, thirsty and desperate for the toilet, we finally arrived at Ikea, halleluiah.
They say ‘What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger’ and as I leant against that table, drinking my Pepsi and wolfing down my second hotdog of the day, I looked across at hubby in his creased up shirt, shoving the remains of his hotdog into his mouth and in proper True Romance fashion thought, ‘You are so cool, you are so cool.’

What is this fascination people have with turning up at other people’s houses unexpectedly? Does anyone actually like this kind of surprise? Because I for one can’t think of a single time when someone has come over to my place and I’ve thought, ‘How nice to see this person but it would have been even nicer if they had just turned up without me knowing, either when I was in the middle of scrubbing the toilet bowl or plucking my moustache or this morning when I was still in my underwear, finishing another illustration for my book.’
Seriously though, is there anyone out there who prefers people turning up at their house unexpectedly rather than them knowing?
I get it the worst I think because I work from home, doing art, which to most people means just sitting around being bored and waiting for someone to come over and entertain me. The way they see it, by coming over here, they will not only do a good deed by ‘getting me out of myself’ for a while, but also get a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits as well. Can’t get better than that, can it? And I think fair enough, come over but why not give me a call as you’re coming up the road and say, ‘I’m coming, put the kettle on’? Just so I get a two minutes warning so I can maybe try and flatten my hair a little. Is that too much to ask?

Yesterday we became accidental vegetarians for one day, meaning I was making the pasta sauce and right at the end, shock horror, I realised that I had forgotten to put the bacon in. This morning I feel like running out into the countryside, grabbing the first cow I can find and sinking my teeth into its leg. Is that normal?

It’s always hard when someone close to you gets Alzheimer’s disease but it’s especially hard when it’s someone that you rely on for your day to day functions. When Goldair first started burning my toast, I kept getting angry; huffing around the kitchen opening windows and waving a towel in front of the fire alarm, I used to say things like, ‘How hard is it to make a piece of toast really?’ or ‘I ask you to do one thing for me Goldair. Just one thing and you blow it.’
In hindsight I realize that my remarks to poor old Goldair were totally insensitive. Since realizing what the problem really is, I have tried to make it up to him by being more understanding and very patient. I pop the toast in but instead of just going off like I used to and leaving him to it; I potter around the kitchen doing this and that (pretending to be busy). On his good days (which are getting rarer and rarer) by some miracle, he remembers to pop the toast out before it gets to that charcoal stage. But other days (when he looks as if he is in a sort of trance) the toast goes in, Goldair's eyes glaze over and next thing I know, I’m running around a kitchen full of smoke shouting, ‘That’s enough Goldair. Please stop, please.’
For a while I decided to stand over him and just guide him through the process regardless of whether he was having a good day or bad. At first it was fine and I think he quite liked the attention too. But after a while, every time I stood with him, I noticed a kind of mocking murmur going around the kitchen. So I decided to stop that because I didn’t want him to get bullied by the other appliances. They can be very mean sometimes. And poor old Goldair, in his condition, just wouldn’t be able to stand up for himself against all of them. And thus, the catch 22 situation with my old toaster continues.

Last night at 8:40 pm Foad and Sylvie became parents to Sasha who entered this world in a thinking pose (as his father put it) with one hand pressed against the side of his face and chin. Apparently he took it upon himself to continue with this posture for about an hour and a half after. Now, philosopher or male model? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Welcome Sasha and congratulations Foad and Sylvie.

My mum: Is there any talk of any of your cousins getting married?
Me: Did you have your fortune told again?
‘Yes’ (laugh) ‘Just for fun though you know’ she said ‘I don’t believe in it or anything.’ Although she did admit that when she was told that I would get pregnant (for the Nth time) and it would be in December she started counting down on her fingers and when she was asked what she was doing she replied, ‘I’m trying to workout when she will be giving birth because I want to be there for that.’
‘O when is it then?’ asked my husband’s mum who was next in line to have her fortune told, ‘Because I’m gonna go there when you get back.’

This morning I was searching on the BBC website for a programme that I wanted to listen to when I came across another programme that was presented by an Iranian DJ. Naturally I started to listen to what my fellow countryman had to say.
Two minutes later I found myself getting a head-spin as I washed the dishes at nine in the morning while my body, quite independently of my brain, bopped to some crazy clubbers’ anthems dance music. I’m not trying to put it down or anything but it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, especially at that time in the morning. But still I tolerated it and refrained from going with my first instinct which was to grab the radio and throw it out of the living room window (rock and roll style) because the guy was Iranian! (Ok and if I’m honest also because I didn’t want to break our newly mounted double-glazed window. Nor did I want to get a reputation amongst my neighbours as a nut-case. And also because the sound was actually coming from the computer and so throwing the radio out of the window would just have been plain idiotic. But the main reason as I said was that this DJ was Iranian) I couldn’t believe it, I always make fun of others who are obsessed with all that other Iranians do and here I was doing it myself.
As it turned out though, the poor guy wasn’t even Iranian. He had just got someone to say something in Farsi at the beginning of his programme and thus had tricked me into thinking that another fellow Iranian had made it big. Cheap trick I thought.

I just wanted to drop a little note here and thank all of you for all your support and kind words regarding my Friday, July 29 post. After years of suffering in silence I finally decided to go public about this controversial subject. Of course it wasn’t an easy thing to do. But when I see how many of your hearts I have managed to touch as the result, it makes it all very worthwhile. Thank you all again and god bless.

We watched this programme last night called the sex inspectors. Each time a couple with a very bad sex-life come on the programme and get help from relationship experts. The couple’s problem last night was that apparently the woman was never in the mood for sex while her partner constantly wanted it. Before trying to help the couple with their problem, the relationship experts put cameras all around their home and watched them for a week to find out exactly where the problem was. It soon became apparent that the woman was shy about being naked and the guy’s idea of getting her in the mood was to grab her from behind and hit his front repeatedly against her back whilst winging, ‘let’s have sex. Come on let’s have sex.’ There was a real comedy moment when they cut from this, to the poor guy (being interviewed) shrugging his shoulders and talking through his nose saying, ‘I really don’t know why she doesn’t want to have sex.’ The guy also claimed that what sex they managed to have was always the same and very boring. When the woman was interviewed she said that she simply wanted to want to have sex.
Now I think after watching this, any normal person would be able to spot that this couple’s biggest problem was that they where not in love. The relationship experts however, unanimously decided that what this couple needed was to spice up their sex-life. Well the programme was called Sex Inspectors so I guess you can’t fault them on that really. This of course meant the introduction of the couple to sex toys and sex games. The sex toys were a load of multicoloured vibrators that came in many different shapes and sizes and the sex game was that the couple would each take turns to throw a dice and pick up a card with one of the other person’s sexual fantasies written on it. In the process of writing out their fantasies, it became apparent the woman was a lot friskier than she had let on and while she had absolutely no problem coming up with her list of fantasies (which included tying each other up and hair-pulling) her partner just sat there shrugging his shoulders, raising his eyebrows and repeating his favourite sentence through his nose, ‘I don’t know.’ Then the couple were taught some new sex moves and stuff and after that they were left to their own devices for two weeks to tryout their newfound skills on each other. But stuff happened during that week and to make the long story short, as their sexlife apparently got better and better, their relationship started to fall apart. When the sex inspectors went back to visit the couple, they had broken up four days earlier.
It was sad to see that but to be honest I actually felt quite relieved. Call me a romantic or whatever you like but I absolutely refuse to believe that you can arm a couple with a bunch of vibrators and some new sex moves and make them fall in love with each other. For some reason most people think that you have a good sexlife first and then your relationship will be good too. Maybe I’m a bit old fashioned but I had always thought it was the other way round. After all it is called lovemaking. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not saying that people definitely need to be in love to have a good sexlife, what I’m saying is that having good sex will not make people fall in love. And a spiced-up sexlife will not save a couple’s loveless relationship. Because like my wise tutor, Mario Minichilio always used to say, ‘You can’t dress up a turd.’

I had a great day today. Nearly every person I had eye contact with smiled at me. The bus driver called me his love and then I saw a very cute puppy jumping up and down, trying to catch a butterfly. The geeky guy (still wearing his cycling helmet in the supermarket with his trousers’ legs stuffed down his socks) who I asked to grab the last organic milk for me from the top shelf (as being a short-ass, I couldn’t get it myself) said, ‘No problem my darling’ and then stood there waving and smiling until I got to the end of the aisle and turned (bit creepy actually now thinking back, but it was cute at the time). Even the menopausal cashier lady with greasy hair was nice. I don’t mean she smiled or anything, oh no, but she did say hello which for her is the equivalent of me and you suddenly jumping up and starting to tap-dance. Then I saw a lady coming down the hill on her bicycle, wearing a very bright, flowery dress and a massive grin. It was all getting a bit too much for me since I was going up the hill with all my heavy shopping with sweat running down my back. I still tried to return her lovely smile but unfortunately all that I could muster was a weird shaky movement on one side of my lip, more of a twitch than a smile I’d say. But I did try and that’s all that counts, so there.

A little while ago I bought a hot chocolate from Starbox and when I had the first sip I realised that rather than getting a hot chocolate, I had received a lukewarm-bordering-on-cold chocolate. When I complained about the appalling state of my beverage, I was told that some kid had burnt himself with the hot chocolate drink and from then on they had decided to bring the temperature down to avoid any more burnings.
This may not seem like much but now-a-days every little health and safety thing like that attracts my attention because I have seriously started to worry about the next generation. It really seems like we are more than ever wrapping them in cotton wool and not letting them learn anything. For example, when are they suppose to learn to wait for a few seconds instead of just gulping down whatever is put in front of them in a cup?
I think there are some things in life that (no matter how much one is told about) can never be learnt without firsthand experience. Mastering the art of drinking a hot drink without burning one’s mouth is one of those things. And no matter how many times an adult might tell a child to be careful, they are just going to have to burn themselves a few times before they get the hang of it. And what better time to learn these things than when they are still children?
I mean there are some things in life that we should really experience and be over and done with as a child so as an adult we will not embarrass ourselves and others around us. Things like chickenpox (if you haven’t seen an adult with chickenpox before, take it from me; it’s quite humiliating) or that no matter how delicious a bar of soap might look, it is still not to be bitten into, or that no matter how fast we flap our arms, we will never be able to take off like a bird, and so on and so forth.
You may think I’m saying these things just to be funny but this is really serious. Listen to this: some time ago, an old lady burnt herself, taking a bath. This for some reason got the government so worried that they started talking about passing a law that meant every hot tap in every bath in the country had to be fitted with a thermostat so not to allow the temperature to go over a certain point! It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? And unfortunately the government’s fascination with our safety does not end with preventing us from burning ourselves. Now they’ve decided that since we have absolutely no idea how to feed ourselves (on account of everyone being so fat and unhealthy) they should put colour coded labels on all food products with red being bad, green being good and orange; frowned upon! I’m not kidding.
They have also either put a ban on king-size chocolate bars or have advised companies against making them! I’m going to stop putting exclamation marks at the end of every sentence now I think, because to me this whole thing is just one huge exclamation mark altogether.
Maybe now you can see why I said I was worried about the next generation. Because the way I see it, twenty years from now, Britain will be run by a nation of imbeciles who will walk around wearing shoes labelled, ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, drinking lukewarm coffee with tiny little chocolate bars with red labels (if they’re feeling naughty), washing their hands with soaps that despite of all the warning signs, still have teeth marks on them and who in their offices have signs that say ‘No running with scissors.’
God help us all.