Monday 23 April 2007

Not so much a smile as a grimace of controlled revulsion



Happy St George’s Day. Last I checked on Google News, the only media outlets making any reference to this were the Wimbledon Guardian, Blackpool Today (pretty similar to Blackpool yesterday, I should think), and the fabulous Suffolk Evening Star. I wonder how many junior hacks over the course of history have started the headline to their St George’s Day article with the words 'By George…'?


Call off the search - after many years of fruitless casting about, the definition of ‘holistic cross-platform solutions’ has finally been made clear. It’s a term employed by thieving swine to describe robbing the feckless poor via their tellys.


As I sat in Battersea Park over the weekend with junior chimps, chewing absentmindedly on a Mini Babybel Light (which somehow tastes of absolutely nothing at all, despite containing a generous portion of vegetable rennet, whatever the hell that is), I suddenly became aware that each of the 20 thirtysomething dads within a 200 metre radius of our tartan picnic rug was wearing identical blue Polo (with a big 'P') shirts and camel cargo shorts. So maybe there’s nothing new under the sun. I then returned to helping the junior chimps to wave a cheery ‘bye bye’ to every single aircraft flying overhead. We sat under the Heathrow flight path for 3 hours; there is a plane every 60 seconds – you do the math.


Dietary warning: a new nutritional menace is heading our way. Having never heard of it in my entire life until recently, I’ve crossed paths with something referred to as ‘the Bolivian super grain,’ or Quinoa, twice in the last week (once in a scandalously overpriced pot of plums, the other in a Tupperware pot full of baby sludge being emptied down a one year old’s reluctant throat). Mark my words, ‘the staple diet of the Incas’ is back in a big way. And we all know what happened to the Incas.

Would an Anglo-French aircraft carrier really be such a good idea? Given that it took the best part of four years to decide whether Concord(e) should be spelt with an ‘e’,, how long would it take to determine whether the speedometer (or whatever they have on boats) should read kilometres or miles, let alone whether planes should take off and land from the left-hand or right-hand lane?

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