peterbirks: (Default)
[personal profile] peterbirks
One not to tell the girlfriend.

"I bought the wife a new belt and bag for Valentine's Day"

"That's nice."

"Yep, the Hoover works perfectly, now."


+++++++++++++++


Valentine's Day, I feel, must have been invented by women. I say this not because "stuff" is involved, but because of its sheer impracticality. It's no use taking the wife/girlfriend to a £200-a-head restaurant on the 15th. It has to be on the 14th. And it's no use getting the flowers delivered on the 13th. No, it has to be on the 14th. While people hang around, offering cheap services, for 95% of the year, the bloke gets stuck with paying 4 or 5 times over the odds, because any other day than the 14th "just isn't romantic".

Of course, this offends every sensiblity of the cost-conscious bloke, but he knows that, in this particular case, argument is futile. No, not futile, but positively counter-productive. Just the merest hint of "I couldn't get a table for the 14th, would Saturday be okay?" and you will be getting the cold stare treatment for weeks.

Bah, humbug.

+++++++++++++++

About 20 years ago, if a bloke was seen apparently talking to himself in the street, you just categorised him as "nutter" and carried on. Then, suddenly, more and more people were seen doing it, occasionally gesticulating wildly. Yes, the mobile phone and then the earpiece with microphone attached to the lapel, had arrived.

So, this morning, I was only mildly surprised, when walking the short distance to the station, to have a person no more than 10 feet behind me, talking away. Except, well, I don't like it -- particularly at 6.15 in the morning, when I am used to a bit of personal space. So I adopted a strategy I frequently use these days when someone is walking behind me a little too closely, or is walking behind me and wittering away into a mobile phone.

I stopped walking.

Not slowly, so the guy could "overtake". Just a complete, sudden, apparently irrational, halt. And the bloke walked past me, giving me a bit of a look (which, naturally, I returned, utterly unabashed), and then carried on. And, well, would you have believed it, he wasn't on the phone. But he was still talking away.

It quite took me back to my youth and the days of nutters on the top decks of buses, chattering happily away amidst the swirling cigarette smoke of the time that they met Napoleon, or Hitler, or Jim Callaghan.

Date: 2007-02-14 10:34 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Things People Tell Insurance Companies, The Nutter On The Bus.

Next up, "Birmingham City are the only club not to score a goal during the reign of a Pope".

His daughter starred in The Office, you know!

Titmus

Date: 2007-02-14 10:46 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Sometimes when cycling I have a habit to follow other cyclist a little too close to get a windshield advantage. One day while doing this I ended up in situation where my windshield tried desperately to run away from me. My competitive instincts woke up and I had quite easy time following him. We went very fast by sunday cycling standards.

After a crossroad my windshield suddenly put brakes on, almost a panic stop. Luckily I was not speaking on a phone either and managed to avoid crashing him. Had he missed his turn or was he a clever bastard like you? =)

Aksu

Date: 2007-02-14 12:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
Hi Aksu,

Nt being a cyclist, I'm not sure whether I would feel that someone too close behind me was invading my personal space; although given my reactions as a pedestrian and when driving a car, I would think it quite likely.

Like many people, I feel uncomfortable when people are too close behind me. My only difference is that "other people" tend to slow up, as if embarrassed to admit that they feel uncomfortable. When driving a car I've occasionally used the "fake brake" trick if someone is driving dangerously close to the back of my car.

In this case, though, it sounds as if the bloke missed his turn.... Let that be a lesson to you.

PJ

Date: 2007-02-14 12:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jellymillion.livejournal.com
One day the hands-free phone equipment will be surgically implanted and there will be no way to distinguish its users from nutters.

Which is a good thing - I'm not convinced that anyone carrying on a phone conversation in public loud enough for others to hear is 100% sane anyway. Lock the bastards up.

Valentine's excuse for fathers: couldn't get a baby-sitter. (I'm in credit today - she forgot the date, I didn't).

Grumpy Old Mike

Date: 2007-02-14 03:57 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Surgical implantation of mobile phones - yes, that will happen. Pretty soon. And I'll bet dollars to doughnuts you will be able to pay for them by allowing adverts to be pumped into your head. You heard it here first.

Andy.

Date: 2007-02-14 11:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jellymillion.livejournal.com
I'd rather have concentrated sulphuric acid pumped into my head. But I agree that someone will try to sell it and anyone fool enough to take it on deserves all they get.

Alternative Valentines

Date: 2007-02-14 12:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] geoffchall.livejournal.com
You don't have to hit Valentine's day, but you do have to nod to it. So cards and flowers arriving on any day up to Feb 11th can be seen as spontaneous and fun. Also working is the present of a ticket/booking for a future event, so long as it comes in some form that can be wrapped-up/presented.

But try any of this on Feb 12th, 13th or worse still, 15th or 16th and you deserve everything you get (which is probably not a lot).

Re: Alternative Valentines

Date: 2007-02-14 09:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] real-aardvark.livejournal.com
Typical bloody accountant, eh, Geoff?

Date: 2007-02-14 01:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badblood44.livejournal.com
At my place of employ, we have a janitor who talks to himself quite frequently. He's probably in his late 50's, most likely harmless; but I quite refuse to get on an elevator alone with him. I'm sure he wields a mean mop.

And on the personal space comment, I am so right there with you. I can't stand people walking directly behind me, speaking or not.

Don't try this in Sweden

Date: 2007-02-14 09:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] real-aardvark.livejournal.com
In fact, don't ever, ever visit Sweden.

Many English people have preconceptions about Sweden. These tend to derive from the Muppets, from Britt Ekland, from Bjorn Borg (surely the most all-embracing alien being ever to win the Wimbledon title) or from a simple overdose of pickled herrings. Not forgetting Abba. And who, these days, is allowed to forget Abba? Particularly on and around Valentine's Day.

I am here to tell you that none of these preconceptions are based in fact.

The Swedes are, arguably, the nicest and most considerate people in Europe. They have a certain degree of taste, a noticeable sense of humour (just don't try joking about burning Catholics on November 5th -- their humour doesn't stretch that far. Perhaps it might, had I tried it in Swedish. It's usually easy to forget that English is only their second language), and are entirely unobjectionable, in the nicest possible way.

They also have the most bizarre sense of personal space that I have ever experienced.

Take this as an example. I stood at the bus stop in Brommaplan, which is essentially the Swedish equivalent of Ilford, and waited for around fifteen minutes. (For a bus, dummy.) The bus stop is entirely open-fronted, which is to say that it has three transparent plexiglass sides and a roof, and not much more. I stood at the far end from where the bus is meant to arrive.

Not one, not two, but three Swedes walked up, parallel to the bus stop, and *immediately* turned right as soon as they reached it. Now, I am quite noticeable. The bus-stop is, to all intents and purposes, transparent. There is nothing on the near side of the bus stop that might, even conceivably, be of sufficient interest to take an instant right turn.

And the weird thing is, they were staring at me all the time as they were doing this.

This is not unusual in Sweden. Something is going on, and I can't quite pin it down. It doesn't help that all Swedes, all the time, have mobile phones plugged in to their ears, no matter what. (I'm sure that sex here is even more interesting than one might imagine. "Hi, darling, I can't talk right now, I'm on the pull..." However, my only evidence for this assumption is the memory of two -- or possibly more -- people falling noisily out of bed in the room next to me at 4am the other week.) Ear plugs are not a necessary pre-condition, however. The Swedes just seem to like walking into people. They've done this to me from a standing start, accelerating off the blocks like an olympic sprinter. (Well, not a British one, obviously.)

Don't ever, ever, even consider visiting Sweden.

Re: Don't try this in Sweden

Date: 2007-02-15 10:05 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Perhaps you were standing in front of the timetables.

"Nokia - contacting people"

Aksu

Re: Don't try this in Sweden

Date: 2007-02-15 11:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] real-aardvark.livejournal.com
No, the timetables were at the absolute other end of the bus stop, as I pretty much implied. I don't think I was standing in front of a gorgeous blonde, either -- although that is trivially easy to do in Sweden -- because one of the three was male, one female, and one a sub-species of troll with small furry bits in unusual places.

BTW: I loved your bicycle story. There's got to be a comedy sketch in there somewhere.

August 2023

S M T W T F S
  12345
6789101112
13 14151617 1819
20 212223242526
27282930 31  

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 30th, 2025 05:16 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios