Male friend with whom I am having lunch: I have to fill in one of these pointless EU gender equality things.
Me[neutrally]: Mmm, what do you mean?
Pause to pass up a folder to older gentleman struggling to reach it from his barstool [lunch in the pub, some stereotypes are true].
MF: Ach, you know, just ticking lots of boxes and really, do we need it?
Me: Well, it depends, I suppose.
Pause to pick up the umbrella which has tumbled from the older gentleman’s grasp.
Older gentleman in patrician tones: Thank you very much young lady, you are like [pauses to search for top compliment from range available to him], you are like a really excellent P.A.
MF: Bite your lip, bite your lip, ok we need the gender equality thing.
Homage to Myles
From Frank McNally’s column last week:
“…New metaphors were badly needed at the time. As long ago as 1999 – probably during a wet day on Hope Street – I called elsewhere in this paper for the decommissioning of the peace process’s “deadly arsenal of clichésâ€.
This included an estimated 40,000 windows of opportunity, 50,000 variations on the theme of moving the situation forward, and perhaps half a million phrases to describe nothing happening: including such foreign imports as “log-jamâ€, “stand-offâ€, and the French-made “impasse†(which was smuggled in, probably via Libya, during the late 1980s but never deployed properly because most broadcast journalists lacked the necessary phonetic training).
And this was only the more recent material. If you went back further, there was any amount of other stuff lying around, like those old jokes about the “Carmelite and the ballot box†and the need to take “all the nuns out of Irish politicsâ€.
Rust might have made these unusable, I thought. But even so: most newspaper readers would not rest easy until the material was put permanently beyond use. I recall wishing that we could just dump all the clichés “in a big hole somewhere, and pour concrete over them  ”
Look, nobody said that all of the NaBloPoMo content had to be original.
Oh very funny
From: Me
Sent: 16 November 2009 12:13
To: IT Helpdesk
Subject: My printer will only print instruction pages in Swedish
Any advice?
From: IT Helpdesk
Sent: 16 November 2009 13:19
To: Me
Subject: RE: My printer will only print instruction pages in Swedish
Learn Swedish.
Regards
Helpdesk
And a couple of links:
Don’t be a nanny in Dubai.
Belle de Jour outs herself as a scientist, what a surprise, we were sure that she was an arts graduate.
The Americans are excercised by Obama’s bowing.
From the PhD comic people, so true:
Car games
Boys [singing]: Stop, in the name of love, before you break my heart.
Me [singing back]: Think it oooover, haven’t I been good to you?
Daniel [speaking]: I don’t know.
Daniel: I spy with my little eye…something lovely.
Michael: Mummy!
Linkedy Link
Lesley uses words of which the Academie Francaise would disapprove. However, she has been in France too long: she thinks la peoplisation is an English word. Any native English speakers who speak no French know what that means? I think not. If you do, put it in the comments and prove me wrong. Also, comment, I would like that.
Mr. Kottke has a post about things which are disappearing: “blind dates, mix tapes, getting lost.. looking old, operators, camera film, hitchhiking, body hair, writing letters, basketball players in short shorts, privacy, cash, and, yes, books.” Do you agree?
I watched this woman on the television the other night and found her coping skills to be really quite exceptional. That would probably be in contrast to the woman on “Wife Swap” who looked, aghast, in the cupboard of the other woman’s house and said “the only English food here is a banana and a pineapple”. Quality television.
Quality Time
I don’t work on Wednesday afternoons. I collect the children from school and bond with them.
Last Wednesday, there was a demonstration and I arrived late to collect them. A guard shouted at me as I tried to manoeuvre past the crowds of marching off duty guards, nurses and prison officers (cross about pay cuts). The children were full of reproaches. The school had sent text messages to parents asking them to come early as they knew about the demonstration. I didn’t get a message. I could tell that neither the principal nor the children believed me though it was quite true. Thus, I was feeling weak when the Princess asked whether we could to the vile greasy caf adjacent to the school.
I tramped in crankily. I had exactly €7 in cash on me and cafs do not take cards. The children were told that they could spend two euros each. Michael and Daniel each got a drink and the Princess got a particularly greasy bacon sandwich which she devoured with every appearance of enthusiasm. This was the cause of some friction with her brothers who were anxious that she should share and got a microscopic piece of bacon and some crisps each (of course, the sandwich came with crisps). The Princess told me that Brian Cowen was taking all her teacher’s money. I endeavoured to explain to her the financial crisis and the arguments for cuts in public spending. Very cannily, she instantly asked whether her father and I worked in the public sector or the private sector.
Having only parked the car for a quick scurry to school rather than an extended snack, I realised that I would need to feed the meter. I abandoned my children with the injunction not to move and left them in the care of the Polish greasy caf lady. I came back to find them all still in situ. We finished, put on coats, went outside, got to the traffic light and the Princess announced “I want to go to the toilet”. Excellent. We all traipsed back in, everyone went to the toilet. While Michael was in the toilet, herself asked whether she could have a drink of his juice. He said yes but, when he emerged from the toilet, he discovered she had taken more than he bargained for. He began to cry and we put on coats again and traipsed out of the cafe with a howling Michael bringing up the rear.
Having reached the safety of the car, I said to the Princess “I assume that you have your school bag”. But, of course not. I left them in the car and flew back to the cafe where it was sitting waiting for me.
An hour after emerging from school we were finally on our way to the science gallery which has consistently provided entertaining exhibitions and did not let us down on this occasion. The children happily created a number of new animals and I would have loved a go myself but they were not in the mood for sharing. We met a colleague of mine on the way back to the car and they all said hello politely and she said “what nice polite children” and I was ecstatic (low bar these days) until two seconds later when Daniel started tugging my sleeve and saying “Muuum” in that whiny voice that small children sometimes favour.
On homewards where we had to settle down to homework. I promised a half an hour of television when homework was over. Homework, normally a 15 minute exercise lasted ages as herself had an impossible word search which stymied me (Mr. Waffle of course, found the last word instantly and annoyingly on his return home). So a bit hard to get dinner on and general fratchetiness all round.
Over dinner, Daniel turned to me and said anxiously, “Will F be collecting us from school tomorrow?”
