After the somewhat unfestive gifts of a cold, a cough and a swift dose of Noro, I finally began to feel slightly more human again, yesterday. Time to tackle some crafty gifts!
What fascinated me was the difference in tone of the various warnings and instructions. For example, it was apparent from both kits these were NOT toys, the clue to this was the inclusion of the words "This is not a toy". I don't have a problem with that, anything that helps someone in the choice of a suitable gift, and the ruling out of an unsuitable one, is OK by me.
However, should I have taken the following statement literally? "Should only be used by children under adult supervision". Well, not having a child in tow, I had to do all the hard work myself.
How about: "This item contains a sharp point". Do you mean a needle?
And: "WARNING Open with care contains a needle with a sharp functional point. You could argue that the word "needle" would be more than enough.
I'm all for people being safe, but we've already ruled out kids using this product unless heavily supervised, if adults don't know needles are sharp, it's time they learnt the hard way! I should add that in the reindeer kit there was no warning about not stabbing your hand with the leg wires when inserting them into the overly squeaky foam "rectangles" (they were NOT rectangles - for starters they were 3D).
The reindeer came with a warning about long thread presenting an entanglement hazard. Please, anyone - what is an "entanglement hazard"? Why did the manufacturers not think to cut the thread up into easy to handle pieces? It would save me from hacking my own hand off in a potential scissor incident.
My biggest gripe with the owl instructions was the inconsistency in the tone:
Great fun for all ages (although 0-6 was crossed out)
A warning on the outside about needles being sharp was talking down to the "adult" in charge, yet the instructions were almost impossible to follow. the pics were unclear and in black and white with pesky hands in the way all the time:
Also, I was told to put lines radiating outwards from the eyes to make them look more authentic - now I've seen many owls and I don't think any had lines radiating outwards from the eyes, and as the owl I'm making is pink, clearly it's not intended as a true representation of a real owl.
My favourite statement though was; "Your eyes should now look like this". I looked in the mirror - clearly I wasn't half as surprised as they expected me to be by this stage.
But all in all I was pleased with my crafty efforts!
All the warnings and instructions made me think back to a recent conversation concerning "Common Sense" - what is it? and can you define it? Most of the warnings are, in my opinion, unneccesary. They should come under the "Common Sense" heading - but then someone has made the decision that, actually, some people out there really do not know that needles have nasty pointy bits. The company is thinking - '"Oh crap, if we don't warn people and someone pricks themself, they are going to sue us!" Are these people robbing us of our common sense? Taking away 'learning the hard way'?
And I shall end this here, before I start ranting about 'health and safety' and start going round in endless circles, causing myself a bigger entanglement hazard than the horrors of the long thread.
Standing outside a charity shop and t’other half is looking at the naff ornaments and assorted objects, so naff some old granny has chucked them out. Paperweights in the shape of hippos, grey vases with blue flowers, dark green 70s coffee pots, plates with royal weddings on them. A china Alsatian. He spots this and wonders if “they do pugs”. I wonder who this “they” are! I jokingly mention Meissen Pugs – I’ve seen them on Flog-your-cash-in-the-antique-attic-bargain-road-show. I don’t know how much one would cost, but I’m guessing that a charity shop in Aberystwyth is the last place you would find one. We wander off and that is (I hope) the end of that.
Sadly, a couple of days later, it is very much not the end of it. He finds himself looking in the window of a charity shop in Welshpool. What a stroke of luck, he spots exactly what he has been looking for. He buys it and brings it home. I’ve spent much of the day de-cluttering the lounge and there are some nice crap free zones. So much easier to dust without the clutter. His ‘prize’ is carefully arranged in a space on top of the CD shelves. Suddenly I am looking at a rather nasty looking figure of a dog. Possibly a bulldog. Faded down one side from where it’s been in the sun, complete with nodding head. I mean, who the bloody hell has a nodding dog on a stationary surface?
Imagine a 4 pint bottle of milk nestling in the bottom of your fridge – now forget about it for at least 6 weeks. Now imagine finding it again. The plastic bottle is now swollen and bloated – the contents resemble a thin watery ivory coloured liquid at the top and at the bottom a solid mass of globby goo, some of which has gone pink. You look at it, you examine it closely for some time, you hold it up to the light, you feel the unfamiliar roundness of it’s shape, you wonder if it’s maybe past it’s sell by date, but you can’t quite read the date on it – so just to be sure you wave the thing in front of your wife’s face saying, “Do you think this is past it?”
What answer do you think you might get?
Would you look ‘disappointed’ with the terse ‘Yes.”
A couple of hours later when recounting this sour little tale, how much would the aforementioned wife wish she’d actually said, “I’m not sure, why not taste it and see?”
And how would you dispose of the offending “liquid”?
You see, if I had found it, I’d have dumped the whole unopened lot in the wheelie bin. I certainly wouldn’t have spent the next 20 minutes trying to push it down the sink.
Only myself to blame. Who in their right mind would want to go to Aberystwyth? Certainly not me, but (as is often the case) it was a matter of principle. The day before – when I was busy, I was asked several times if I wanted to go – and I felt I was only being asked because I was busy – I couldn’t say ‘yes’. Then for whatever reason (assuming there would be a reason) he (he = the husband) decided NOT to go, but to go looking at trains instead. So, the next day when I was as free as a (partially caged) bird with no plans to go to the cinema, suddenly the Aberystwyth trip was back on. But am I asked to go? No – I am left sleeping, ignored. He was clearly trying to sneak off for his day out at the seaside. He waited until about 10 minutes before leaving the house to tell me he was going – he probably didn’t realise that 10 minutes is plenty for me to wash and dry my hair, generally get ready, feed the Guinea pigs etc. and have my bag packed, ready to go!
I knew deep down it would be hell, but, like the pain of childbirth, you forget what days out are like, especially when you have managed to avoid them for some time. The journey wasn’t too bad – got seats on the train with a table (essential!) and read half a book on the way despite hundreds of interruptions (mindless ones) including one about the price of “I can’t believe it’s not butter”. I should really have learnt by now that if I don’t want him to speak then all I have to do is sit doing nothing. If I want constant mindless comments about nothing, then all I have to do is pick up a book!
Arriving in Aberystwyth I expected the usual trek past all the shops, down every street, him out in front, just far enough away to make sure that I can’t actually go inside a shop in case I get lost. However, he stood and pointed out all the shops that were the same everywhere. Boots, Smiths, New Look, Millets, etc. etc. But I didn’t want shops – I wanted sea air, I wanted boats, rocks, stones, lobster pots – things I could take photos of. I can go to Superdrug any day of the week – I don’t need to travel to the end of the world to do that!
It wasn’t the best day for photos – the sky was as dull as the town, what I would have liked was to look at some nice little gift shops. Now my idea of a gift shop is clearly very different from his. Mine is one that sells ‘gifts’. His is one that sells tea towels, fudge, small flags, postcards and plastic sheep. To me, that is a ‘souvenir’ shop. He told me there were no ‘gift shops’, but every time we found one he walked past really fast so I couldn’t go inside. The only time he stopped was when he found a souvenir shop and said ‘Here’s a gift shop’, he also loitered by charity shops, looking for ornamental pugs. Luckily there were none!
Another ‘gift shop’ would come into view, big rustic looking vases of twisted willow in the window with all sorts of nice little objects hanging from the gnarled twigs, wooden and metal hearts, next to them spotty coffee mugs, birdcages, pretty cards, doorstops shaped like houses – I just got whisked past them all, so it became one multi-coloured blur – dragged to the next plastic bucket, crab-line and lilo shop.
After deciding against climbing what looked like a particularly steep hill, we battled the tide-turning wind to go and look at the sea. We walked till lunchtime – and then the inevitable ‘what do you want for lunch?’, ‘oh I don’t know – you’ve been before, what is there?’ – then he lists all the places I really don’t want to eat and I suggest somewhere a bit ‘nicer’ – so he lets me choose and I like the look of the first place we come to a “Greek” taverna. He laughs at my suggestion like I have made a very funny joke – and this happens at every place that looks half decent and eventually we have been walking for at least an hour just looking for something acceptable to us both. We end up having a giant all day breakfast at a ‘caff’ and he asks me if I want to make a day of it and stay till 5. I ask what there is left to see and he says ‘nothing, we’ve seen it all – but there is still the big hill’. I decide the early train might be best! We end up arriving at the station an hour before our train departs, because he wants to see if the little steam train is in. It isn’t. There’s a pub on the station and he asks if I want a drink – and boy do I want a drink. He doesn’t want a drink though so I have to sit drinking on my own, on a sticky chair by a sticky table, on a sticky floor while he looks wistfully over at the signal hoping it will suddenly drop so we can go and look at the train. It doesn’t.
On the way home I read the rest of the book. I never want to see Aberystwyth again.
Oxford is great! I love it. I have been threatening to come here for the past couple of years, ever since I got my DSLR. What I can’t come to terms with is the amount of bikes that look like they have been abandoned, and the amount of signs saying ‘No Bicycles’. I see lots of bikes with seriously bent wheels, rusty chains, and no seat. Are they abandoned – or have people just been very careless with their keys for their bike locks? Is there a phantom seat-nicker at large? Do students buy a bike (or find one?) when they start at Uni and chain it up somewhere when they leave 3 years later, rather than the hassle of trying to take it home or sell it? But then I think if I was going to abandon a bike I would at least release it into the wild and NOT chain it up. Anyway – there are thousands of the things, everywhere. Next time the trumpet blowing scrap iron blokes come round I might suggest they take a trip to Oxford – plenty of scrap iron for them, and I won’t have to listen to their tuneless trumpeting. There is nothing quite like the noise they make. How much better would it be if they actually learnt to play the instrument and produced something good as they drive round at half-nine on a Sunday morning? I’d probably still want to kill them for waking me up, but I wouldn’t be planning quite such a painful and violent death.
Call me sad – and I am sure people do, but I love being able to check for emails on the train! And yes, I know it’s pathetically sad, it really doesn’t matter here, right now, in New Street Station, that Amazon has despatched my latest 1p purchase! This news cheers me up though, as the book is yet another attempt in my quest to find a gloriously ‘laugh out loud’ funny novel. It has to be better than the last few attempts. I buy books which look funny, I buy books which sound funny, and I buy books which claim to be funny – so far though, they have just been disappointing. This time I am taking no chances and have Googled a list of Top 10 funniest novels, so it had better be hysterical or I will demand my 1p back.
I am worried that I am losing my sense of humour – perhaps they fade with age, like taste-buds. I suppose they must really, when you think how hilarious babies find even the simplest of amusements, and I can see that it really wouldn’t do, as an adult, to maintain that level of uncontrollable hilarity. I just wish I found some things funnier, for example “comedy” programmes – especially sitcoms.
Sit-com = situation comedy?? Well to me they are just “sits” – because that’s all I seem to do. Friday nights are particularly bad at the moment. “My Family” gets progressively worse each series – and I can clearly remember after the first series thinking they surely wouldn’t be making second series and there wasn’t one laugh. Then that awful programme with ‘Trigger’ from Only Fools and Horses and ‘Hyacinth’s’ husband from “Whoops there goes my Bucket” or whatever the hell it was called. Then, the absolute cherry on the icing on the comedy cake – Dawn French talking about bugger all to Alfred Molina for what seems an eternity. Three programmes, no laughing, no giggling, no smirking, not even an inward smile. Yet I laugh when “Would I Lie To You” comes on – but the programme seems over in a flash. Couldn’t we just have two hours of that?
It’s on using the toilet facilities at Wolverhampton station that I realise I have become a creature of habit, and wonder what it would take for me to NOT use the middle cubicle. Clearly more than paper strewn all over the floor, wee sprinkles and a dubious – quite fresh looking – stain on the curiously laminated toilet seat. A big poo would probably do it – I am sure everyone (like me) recoils in horror at the sight of a vast turd in the bog. Why, I wonder, especially if it’s safely languishing below the water line, and not peeping out menacingly like a brown killer shark? Is it, perhaps, the worry that it might be an “unflushable” and next bog-user might think it’s mine?
We humans just don’t have the canine pride in a turd that dogs have. After circling, and finding just the right spot, they are happy, it seems, to assume the position, and maintain eye contact with anyone who happens to be watching, then, after the event, they give it a really good sniff, thinking “Yes! That’s one of mine! I created that work of doggy work of art! Consider my territory well and truly marked.”
Perhaps that’s it, we are not in “our territory”, and no amount of peeing, and – God forbid – emergency crapping, in a public loo is ever going to make it feel like home. The sign on the wall clearly states that the loos have been checked today. As it’s only 9 am I wonder who checked them – someone wearing a gas mask, and perhaps a blindfold. I can imagine the conversation after the loo check: “Have you checked the toilets this morning?”, “Yes, they are in exactly the same state as they were last night.” It’s not a checker they need, it’s a cleaner.
If they can put a man on the moon (and that’s debateable I know, depending on which conspiracy theory you currently follow), you’d think some kind of super-food would have been invented that would make urine smell of lavender or roses. I expect it has really, but Glade and AirWick are objecting to it.
And what on earth is going on with hand dryers? I am used to the ones that less than half-heartedly puff out the dying gasps of an asthmatic butterfly – but now and again you come across a rogue one that is so bloody powerful it blasts all your skin and flesh half way up your sleeve – it takes ages for your hands to feel ‘right’ again – and neither of them actually dry your hands!
Still in the station, it strikes me that the shop is a total rip-off. I was idly contemplating an exercise book to write in on the train. I’d got a small one in my bag, but thought something slightly bigger would be easier to use. A tiny notepad – smaller than the one I’d actually got was in excess of £3. An exercise book was over £4. I was prepared to pay around a pound!
On the train. I am not in a prime spot for people watching, and wish I had something better than a Sudoku book and propelling pencil for entertainment for the hour and a half-ish journey. I am not even in a window seat, but I can see that the morning greyness has lifted and blue sky and fluffy clouds have appeared. The Countryfile weather forecast seems to be right. Hopefully it will be even better in Oxford, and it will be worthwhile lugging “big” camera with me.
I make a mental note to bring earplugs or headphones for future journeys, mainly to block out small pink-clad, curly-haired blondes called Giselle. Grizzle would have been a better name. She is clutching a pink and grey blanket that clearly should be pink and white. She’s got a purple dummy which serves as a speech impediment and the only words she utters are ‘Neughhhh’ and ‘Uaaahh’. Thank goodness I am not going as far as Bournemouth. Grizzle’s mum is reading ‘Heat’ and expecting the child to just sit there – there is no communication other than, “sit still”, “sit still”, “sit still”.
