Verbal High Fives

Christmas can be a stressful time of year; what with gift shopping, long queues everywhere, and prolonged exposure to relatives and/or Brussels sprouts. So to bring a bit of merriment to the situation, we thought we’d go carol singing as a random act of Christmas kindness.  When planning to go Carol singing, one must consider The distance you want to travel on foot The probability of people actually opening their front doors to you If you should go for modern or more traditional carols And whether to undergo comprehensive voice box surgery weeks beforehand.  But the most important consideration of all is presentation. And by presentation, I mean festive jazz hands.  In the end, we decided to go Caroling at local retirement centres because w e believed the elderly would truly appreciate festive jazz hands. Plus t hey are the generation least likely to unleash vicious dogs on us if they think we’re rubbish. As we gathered in the retirement centre di...

It is less than 1 week until Christmas; that curious time of year in which most humans of the masculine gender have yet to dedicate much mental activity to the topic “Christmas shopping.” The alarming spike in women receiving shower caps, air fresheners, or car windscreen wiper blades for Christmas can be traced back to modern man's last-minute approach to Christmas shopping - when, at around 10.30pm on Christmas Eve, many men initiate their shopping experience by driving to the nearest chemist or petrol station to purchase items that they think qualify as Christmas gifts women actually want . Ladies across the globe are already working themselves up into an advanced state of ire over the situation as they feverishly wrap the 72.5 Christmas gifts they bought (way back in October) for family, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, the postman, the cat, the dog, and gifts from the cat and dog too.  Women don’t understand why so many men seem to be unable to commence their Christm...

I was off to visit the zoo. It had been on my ‘To Do’ list for ages because I am from Africa and have therefore never seen real animals in captivity before. I've rather been forced to wrestle them out of my swimming pool (snakes), out of my kitchen (monkeys), and away from my quad bike (lions) in direct mortal combat. Frankly, I was looking forward to admiring them in a more controlled environment where I was not at imminent risk of being poisoned, bitten, disfigured or otherwise morbidly neutralised. First we "saw" the lions. They were massive. They were majestic. They were completely ignoring us by hiding in the bushes and facing the back wall in a manner that openly communicated, “I care nothing for the £14.95 you paid to objectify me.” I was initially concerned about how small the lion cage was (thinking that you couldn't even swing a cat in such a confined space) but then I remembered DreamWorks’ factual animated documentaries, Madagascar 1, 2, & 3, which acc...

There are certain words that can strike fear into the hearts of the most courageous adult. Words like recession, war, Tsunami, cellulite, paisley, and telephone pole. I used to live in a world that did not include any strong feelings regarding telephone poles but then something happened on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Shropshire and I now seem incapable of restoring a state of mind in which I can walk down the road, look at a telephone pole and not fearfully crumble into the foetal position. It all happened on a weekend work retreat that included team-building activities. If you haven’t been traumatized by these before, they are basically random scenarios designed to help you “face your fears” by subjecting you to bizarre situations that you could never realistically expect to encounter in your normal, everyday life without being a professional stunt person. The first thing we had to do was put on a crash helmet in order to protect our brains from the inconvenience of being ...

This year I’ve found myself engaged in a lot of home-improvement type activities: you know - painting walls, constructing lamps, potting plants, and successfully building an Ikea flat-pack chest of drawers and matching wardrobe without burning the incomprehensibly ridiculous cartoon instructions in a blind rage. Last Saturday I was at a dinner party with 3 other women when someone suggested we attempt to re-mount a fallen curtain rail in the main bedroom. Now we didn’t have the benefit of a ladder, or tools, or even a man  with a Swiss Army knife on the premises (I would be lying if I didn’t admit that wine was a factor in the decision-making process) but I was not deterred because even professionals will tell you; when it comes to DIY, the most important thing is not technical ability but to appear confident . And my confidence was at an all time high because I had a pretty impressive DIY track record inasmuch as I have never been trapped inside a flat-pack wardrobe I myself w...

I recently broke one of four fundamental rules that govern my adult life: 1. Never leave the house without antibacterial hand sanitizer. 2. Never listen to Kenny G. 3. Never watch a musical unless being forced to do so at gunpoint. 4. Never go camping after 1997. I broke rule Number 4. Camping is widely promoted as an outdoor recreational activity which offers the participant a "wonderful" opportunity to get close to nature. As a nature-lover myself, I thrive on engaging with nature in its various untamed natural wilderness states - as long as it is on TV or located within 5 feet of urban sprawl and plumbing.  So, it was with a certain amount of apprehension (and a statistically alarming quantity of antibacterial hand sanitiser) that I recently found myself camping in a muddy show-ground in Shepton Mallet for mandatory - by which I mean “work-related” purposes.  We were camping because, even though mankind has developed perfectly adequate towns and cities ...

It’s the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee which, for those uneducated plebs out there, means that the British public just had a long weekend in which to pay tribute to their Queen and celebrate her incredible 60 years of Royal service. Q . How did the British public go about accomplishing this important task? A. They toasted Her Royal Highness until they became inebriated to the point of not knowing who the Queen even was.  Just kidding, the British public would never do that! They showed their appreciation for the Queen by turning out in their hundreds of thousands to attend 4 days of Jubilee events, stand in the rain for hours, and wave their British flags until they got tennis elbow. My family and I decided to attend the Thames River Pageant to watch the 1000 boat flotilla, by which I mean we sat in the rain for 6 hours. After all, the origin of the term “British support” comes from the West Germanic phrase for “to be rained upon in a patriotic manner.” We ...

I have not been able to operate heavy machinery for the last 10 days, nor the 30 years before that - but especially not in the last 10 days - thanks to Labyrinthitis. It’s an inner ear infection with a range of delightful symptoms that include Vertigo, nausea, and a pressing need to lie down at all times. Technically speaking, Vertigo is the light-headed, off-balance, out-of-sorts feeling you would get if you ascended too quickly when Scuba Diving in jelly, only it sadly doesn’t come with the fashion awesomeness of flippers or snackable environment. Consequently, balancing has lately become a full-time occupation for me. Just getting out of bed and remaining upright seems like a strange new skill that requires a preposterous level of focused intent. I’m so vertically challenged that my single greatest personal achievement of recent days has been heroically bringing the spoon to my mouth with the cereal AND milk still in it. I reached my lowest point...

I recently moved to a country that (alarmingly!) cherishes wearing fancy dress. I was faintly mortified to realize that the average, hard-working, reasonably rational British citizen will seize every opportunity to embrace the Fancy Dress dress code; eagerly jumping into fancy-dress outfits for New Year parties, Halloween, church socials, staff parties, hen nights, weddings, lunch time, dentist appointments, filling in a tax return etc. This is unfortunate because I believe fancy dress is an outrage against humanity and strongly recommend that anyone suggesting fancy dress themed parties should either be (a.) quarantined or (b.) extradited to Australia. You see, fancy dress violates one of the two fundamental principals that I live my life by: 1.) Never run with a chainsaw 2.) Never look directly at any Lycra-clad area of the human anatomy Because everyone in the business of seeing (including guide dogs) cannot deny the glaring reality that fancy dress places far too high a ...