Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged…

It is difficult to concentrate on reading one’s book about unicorns, ogres, wizards and the like when the conversation next to you in the pub is so fascinating.
Picture a group of about ten people – ranging in age from early twenties to mid-fifties – arriving and settling down close by, resembling rejects from EastEnders with Derbyshire accents. The younger ones (all male) are already arguing, which doesn’t bode well, and one of them is clearly VERY annoyed and, in a whiny voice, keeps telling another in the group to stop being so selfish and to leave him alone. His cause is not helped by his having a squint, so you can’t tell who is the recipient of his remarks. It becomes perfectly clear, however, that none of them paid much attention during Literacy Hour because they only seem to know one adjective (it begins with ‘f’), which they share liberally around them. Or maybe their Literacy Hour teacher also had a limited vocabulary?
At first there is only one woman in the group, but another soon comes along and greets one of the younger males with great delight, saying that she hasn’t seen him for ages before asking him how he had got on in prison (which may explain why she hadn’t seen him for ages). He replies that it was OK, but that he got bullied a couple of times. (He also mentioned something else beginning with ‘b’ that happened to him a couple of times, but I don’t think that’s a topic for polite company.) Now, I don’t consider that I was a ‘weak’ teacher in my former life before I took on the mantle of Lifestyle Support Guru, but believe me when I say that even I would have thought long and hard before contemplating taking on this fine young specimen of manhood – at least two upper teeth missing, a tattoo or three, and a vocabulary where the only word of more than one syllable begins with ‘f’ (see above).
A problem for the LSG then arises upon realising that a visit to the Ladies is needed – but what should be done about the mobile devices – tablet, phone, mobile Wi-Fi device and mobile phone charger (I like to cover all eventualities) that are lying on the table? Rather than packing them all away and taking them to the toilets, thus signalling to the group that I don’t trust them not to snaffle them all while I’m out of sight, I take a deep breath and turn to one of the women (she was the closest) and ask, ‘Would you keep an eye on these while I nip to the loo?’ She gives me a big smile and replies, ‘Of course.’ And yes, dear readers, I married that woman! Ha ha! – of course I didn’t, but I have to admit to a tiny sigh of relief that everything was still there when I returned to my seat. (Mind you, I also checked that they all had full pints when I went to the Ladies, which they’d have had to have drunk before bundling up all my technology and legging it!)
And there you have it, Beloved Believers – never assume that people who look like villains really ARE villains. They may just be rejects from EastEnders. Back to the unicorns, ogres and wizards…

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, Faithful Followers.
(There’s someone looking over my shoulder as I write this – I wonder what he’s thinking…)

Making Your Own Fun…

A very good evening to you all. As you know, the Lifestyle Support Guru tries very hard to lighten your burden by offering supportive and positive advice on all aspects of LIFE. Tonight, I wish to help you enjoy life more by suggesting different ways of amusing yourself, based, of course, upon my own vast experience.

So I put the question, what is amusement? Amusement is…

1. …celebrating youngest sibling’s birthday by going to Keighley for a night. Keighley… enough to make anyone laugh out loud!

2. …sitting in a hostelry (I could have said ‘café’, but you wouldn’t have believed me) with youngest sibling and asking for advice on downloading WhatsApp onto recently-acquired iPhone.
YS: Just go into Apps and look for the WhatsApp app. (He then returns to looking at his own [superior] phone)
Me: Is this what I need: ‘WhatsApp for iPhone Free’?
YS: (sighing, and without looking up from his own phone): No, you haven’t got an iPhone 3, it’s an iPhone 5.
(Spend next five minutes giggling hysterically while bar staff wonder whether to keep serving you.)

3. …measuring your ironing board for a new cover by standing next to it when it’s leaning against the wall, because you can’t find a measuring tape.

4. …standing in the aisle at Sainsbury’s for five minutes trying to work out if the ironing board cover on offer (£3 – a bargain!) will fit your ironing board. It says it’s 125 cm or 49 ins in length, and you know that you’re about 5 ft 6 in tall. (Contemplate asking a Sainsbury’s assistant to measure you from shoulder to ankle but realise that you’d then have to explain why and life is too short.) The ironing board at home came to just above the top of your shoulder and down to just above your ankle, so you stand working out roughly how long your head is and how high off the ground your ankle is to get an idea of the length. You then calculate that 49 in is about 8 ft (it had been a long morning…) but realise that that can’t be right because otherwise you’d have the biggest ironing board in the world and you’d be 10 ft tall. Recalculate to make it about 4 ft and look yourself up and down from ankle to shoulder and think that that’s about right.
5. …seriously contemplating taking the above-mentioned ironing board cover out of its packaging, unfolding it and holding it up to see how it measures against you, but realise that this may not be a good idea in a public place…
6. …buying the ironing board cover anyway.

Following these simple, but effective, rules will give you a whole new outlook on LIFE! Anyone want me to measure up for curtains? Reasonable rates…

The Importance of Being Hygienic

A very good day to you all from the Lifestyle Support Guru and I hope you are looking forward to the weekend. I have so many subjects to tackle, such as ‘Coping with Technology’, because everyone seems to be ‘coping with’ something these days, don’t they? The topics can range from ‘Coping with a blocked drain’ to ‘Coping with a broken fingernail’ or from ‘Dealing with a depressed dog’ to ‘Dealing drugs’. (Oops! Sorry – that should say ‘Dealing WITH drugs’.) I also wish to discuss ‘Becoming Rich and Famous’, but I have decided these topics can wait because I have had an experience today from which I have learned many valuable lessons that I wish to share with you so that your lives, too, will become more fulfilled and fulfilling, more varied and valuable, more like the LSG’s life, which is fulfilment personified, varied (or do I mean ‘variable’?) and valuable (not the same as ‘rich’, unfortunately, but I have plans for that…).
1. START your day with a visit to the dental hygienist. The main lesson to be learned here is that it is better than FINISHING your day with such a visit because the latter will require you to avoid eating anything that is even vaguely spiced (such as Beef and Tomato Pot Noodle), whereas Red Cherry Wheat Bites are completely spice-free, so can safely be eaten prior to your visit .
2. Call in at a well-known supermarket on the way home (other well-known supermarkets are available, so take your pick of whichever is closest to you) to check the air in your tyres because you have a long and arduous journey ahead of you the following day to meet youngest sibling in Keighley because it is national ‘Take your sibling to Keighley for his birthday’ day (well, there seems to be a ‘day’ for everything else, so why not?). There is a long queue for the air machine – you’ve forgotten that it is national ‘Check the air in your tyres’ day – so you head to another branch of the same well-known supermarket to see if the queue is shorter.
3. On arrival at the next branch, you find that the queue is of a similar length – it’s definitely ‘Check the air in your tyres’ day – so you decide that, rather than wasting your journey, you will call in at the café and revive yourself with coffee and a toasted teacake (a taste for toasted teacakes seems to develop with age). Whilst reviving yourself, you read the café’s copy of the Daily Express and discover that, according to a dating website, people with dogs are three times more attractive to people looking for love (or ‘my soulmate’ or ‘my rock’) than those with cats; in fact, you learn that even people with rabbits have more success.
Resolve to acquire more cats.
You then see a headline asking ‘Why does my Labrador smell?’, but life is too short to even begin thinking of an answer to that – and, besides, you’ve finished your teacake.
4. Remember that you are running low on toilet paper (I am unable to explain why I remembered this after eating a toasted teacake) and head for the ‘Toilet paper’ aisle, which just happens to be via the new ‘Spring collection’ clothing aisle (if you make a detour) and you spot a rather attractive navy and white top, just right for a long and arduous journey to Keighley, even though you know you have several tops in a similar colour combination. (Some of you may recall a post from some time ago where I debated the difference between a navy and white top and a white and navy top, but there is no need for debate here because you know FOR CERTAIN that you have neither a navy and white top nor a white and navy top WITH A VERTICAL STRIPE RUNNING DOWN EACH ARM.) Besides, there’s 25% off all items – Keighley, here I come in my new navy and white top WITH A VERTICAL STRIPE RUNNING DOWN EACH ARM! I may even find somewhere to indulge in a toasted teacake…

May your weekend be filled with toasted teacakes, toilet paper and cats – unless you’re looking for love? In that case, get yourself a dog. Me? I’m off to the Cats Protection League…

Four Friends and a Funeral

Preparing For  A Funeral

Good evening from the Lifestyle Support Guru! Tonight’s topic – a funeral – may surprise you, but even funerals can be enjoyable. The tale may be a little long, but I make no apologies – besides, I am the LSG and I don’t need to apologise for anything!

Firstly, I like travelling with youngest sibling, even to a funeral – he’s about the only person I know (male or female) who doesn’t raise an eyebrow when you ask, ‘Is it OK to take four jackets?’ – mainly because he has also packed four jackets! (one for if it’s fine and mild, one for if it’s fine but cold, one for if it’s wet but mild and one for if it’s wet but cold)

Where Is It?

Be sure to arrive early for the service so that you can find out exactly where you need to go. Unfortunately, you find nothing to indicate whether to go to the North Chapel or the South Chapel and no one around to ask. Leave youngest sibling standing in the doorway of the South Chapel, sheltering from the pouring rain (coat – the one for ‘wet but cold’) and go on the search for any helpful signs. Luckily, you find a (tiny) waiting room and also spot someone who looks as if he might know what is going on. He says that the service will be in the North Chapel and points to a large door right next to the waiting room, so you fetch youngest sibling and take a seat in the waiting room as time passes and you wait for others to join you. Suddenly, a disembodied voice rings around the waiting room: ‘Hello! It’s nice to see you here.’ You both jump because the waiting room is not big enough to hide a mouse, let alone another person. Confusion – even terror! – reigns until you spot a speaker up in the corner of the room, which is obviously relaying the voice of the minister taking the service. Phew! Not a voice from above, then!

Troublemakers!

Five minutes before the service is due to start, despite there being no one else around, which you find rather surprising, you decide you’d better make your way into the chapel and you head

for the door indicated earlier. The door opens directly into the chapel and you are followed in by a strong gust of wind that blows all the Order of Service programmes onto the floor from the pews. The minister looks a little surprised at your entrance and tells you to sit at the back – he’s obviously spotted that you are troublemakers – before going around replacing all the programmes on the pews. Two minutes later, the door opens to allow the family and a huge crowd of mourners to enter – unfortunately, the door was not the one through which we had entered! We had come in through the back door, so to speak, which explained the faint looks of surprise on the faces of those entering to see two people already in place. It was a lovely funeral service, with some great singing, although you have to restrain yourself from shouting ‘Wales! Wales!’ at the end of ‘Calon Lân’, because that is your usual response during a rugby game. (I’m sure Speedy Freda would have approved!)

Welsh Food

It is then on to the post-funeral refreshments at a local rugby club – I have to say, dear followers, that the Valleys can equal any top-flight London restaurant when it comes to putting on a spread. Please don’t expect cheese and pineapple on sticks any longer – oh no, the cheese and the pineapple were served in separate dishes. There was even a pot of hummus. Dead posh! And vegetarians were amply catered for – at the far end of the table was a small plate with a little flag saying ‘Veggie’ and on the plate were two slices of quiche and half a tomato (cut in a posh way, of course). They were still there at the end, as was most of the hummus, so vegetarians are not yet running rampant in the Valleys.
You might be wondering where the ‘four friends’ of the title come in – they were the LSG and Speedy Freda’s son and two daughters, some of the LSG’s oldest friends. ‘But what about youngest sibling?’ you cry. ‘Doesn’t he count as a friend?’ Well, of course he does, but that would have spoiled the title!
A day of tears and laughter, but that’s what the best funerals are all about – and this was one of the best! Nigel, Karen, Sarah, you did your Mam proud. Nos da, Freed.

My career as a film critic, continued:

A very good evening to you all.

Following my last outing as a film critic (Meet Me in St Louis and The Unknown Girl), which met with (almost) universal acclaim (well, one person said they liked it), I have decided to continue this potential new career with a review of ‘Jackie’, which I saw this afternoon. I can sum the film up in one word: pointless. Unfortunately, everyone else who came along thought it was very good.
It was a little bit like ‘Titanic’ in a way – you knew what the ending was, although in this case it was the beginning, when JFK gets shot. It also reminded me of Les Misérables, another film I didn’t enjoy – just when I thought it was going to end, another scene would pop up, usually with John Hurt as a priest who could come up with more meaningless platitudes about the existence of God than I ever thought possible. Unfortunately, I can’t remember his exact words, but some of them had something to do with there being ‘no answer’ – I felt like shouting, ‘The answer is 42!’ (When Russell Crowe threw himself into the Seine in Les Mis, my friend and I were the only ones who said – maybe a little too loudly – ‘Thank God for that!’, while everyone else gasped.)

In fact, I think the script may have been written by someone who had just watched ‘Frozen’ and ‘Forrest Gump’ back to back, with a few quotes from ‘Camelot’ thrown in for good measure. Try saying this out loud with a straight face: “Don’t let it be forgotten that for one brief shining moment, there was a Camelot. There won’t be another Camelot, not another Camelot.” Natalie Portman managed this admirably, but I think she may have had Botox injections beforehand.

The film has been described as a ‘searing…portrait’ of Jackie Kennedy – to me, it was more like an undercooked watercolour of a rather boring woman who didn’t really have a great deal of personality, but who liked wearing pink and red.

My advice? Watch ‘Camelot’ or ‘Pointless’.