A Christmas challenge

The unseasonably hot end-of-September weather has seen my thoughts turn inexplicably to Christmas, and I have decided to issue myself a Christmas challenge: to embrace this year's festivities in the hope that I will actually recapture some of the magic that I used to feel as a child in the run up to the big day. That's not to say that I want in any way to take on the rigidly manic approach that my Mum has to the festive season, with an 800 piece Christmas themed dinner service and perfectly coordinated decorations which are displayed around their house in regimented order every year. But perhaps it wouldn't kill me to get out our tiny wooden Christmas tree before the 24th December, maybe even dust off the rest of our minuscule collection of decorations as well and consider doing the festive food shop in a less manic and world-hating way than has become my own personal Christmas tradition. It's a shame that the Boy Wonder and I don't really like any of the traditional festive fare such as mince pies and Christmas pudding which do admittedly make it smell like Christmas, but given that I won't be able to drink anyway, I might concede to the 'wasting' of some red wine by allowing him to mull some wine.

Party Gifts

Having been to the Gift's housewarming party this weekend, and spending the evening as the sole sober person amongst a horde of drunken youth, I have had a truly eye opening experience. Not only is the Gift a lot more ebullient when with this group of friends, but they also have some peculiar proclivities themselves. Rarely have I been encouraged to tie a clock round my neck with a tape measure just to annoy someone, but the very idea produced cheers of encouragement when undertaken with a clock which is surprisingly dear to the Gift's heart, despite the fact that it neither belongs to him, nor actually works.

I was pleased to discover that his most peculiar friend (who spent a good deal of time telling disinterested people about ways in which he claimed to be able to kill them) ended his involvement in the evening when he blew into a scented candle, spattering wax into his own face, and then passed out on the floor in the Gift's bedroom.

Despite not being drunk, I still managed to get involved in a discussion about who would make the ideal combination of porn actors in the unlikely event that the shooting of such a film should break out at the party, and promised to buy one of the attendees a bike for Christmas, thus proving a point made in an earlier post that alcohol isn't necessary for me to behave inappropriately.

I was also privy to this gem of a conversation between the Gift and one of his paler mates about the Boy Wonder and I:

Pat 'You must have seen him topless!'

The Gift 'I told you - they're not those kind of friends.'

All in all, a good time was had by all, and by being sober enough to drive the Boy Wonder and I home at around 3am we were able to avoid the point where Pat pissed in one of the girls' handbags and the sordid carrying ons which took place on the 70's style sofa later that night.

Drunk me vs sober me

Due to the recent requirement for me to give up drinking, I have been spending a lot of time around drunk people whilst sober. This has lead to the surprising discovery (although perhaps only surprising to me) that, apart from the obvious physical effects, I am about the same when drunk as when sober. Although I am aware that I do not enjoy being out of control when drunk and try to avoid getting 'falling over' intoxicated, I kind of assumed that there would be some lessening of my inhibitions when under the influence of alcohol, however it turns out that I was incorrect. I can't quite work out whether I am generally just predisposed to telling inappropriate stories regardless of whether I've been drinking, or whether my dislike of excessive drunkenness (for no more uptight reasons than that I throw up really - I realise it sounds a little like I'm some kind of temperance fanatic) means that I just have a similar approach to sharing no matter how much I've drunk. I can't work out whether that's admirable or stupid, but it's certainly an eye opener.

Me vs the Boy Wonder

Apropos of not a lot, this evening I just happened to ask the Boy Wonder if he would like to be more like me. This was not designed to be a trick question, but the speed and fervour with which he delivered his answer ('no' in case you couldn't guess) and the fact that I wouldn't even hesitate to say that I would like to be more like him made me wonder whether it would be better if we were both more like me or more like him, so I have decided to score us both according to some arbitrarily chosen criteria in the hopes of proving one of us right.

1. Innate gender-specific abilities

The Boy Wonder is blessed with a sort of elemental knowledge about things like cars, guns, planes and other traditional boy stuff, whereas I fail spectacularly on the girl-stuff front. I have only one handbag, didn't know eyeliner existed until I was about 13 and don't even like cake, therefore failing on many scores at being a girl. I do like kittens and puppies, but allergies to both make that a fairly tragic state of affairs involving red eyes and rather too much snot to be anything approaching cute.

2. Social Awkwardness

Whilst I am currently the owner of an unwanted fringe (on which more, perhaps, another time), an odd 'friendship' with the eastern European guy who sells the Big Issue outside our local Budgens and a weird village magazine delivery round due to my inability to extricate myself from awkward situations, the Boy Wonder is admirably able to sail through life without ever seeming to torture himself with the idea that he is secretly offending people who will hate him more and more with every encounter until their seething resentment causes them to break into our house and lick every item in the cutlery drawer.

3. Ability to Deal with Bugs

This is where I triumph, largely due to the Boy Wonder's hilarious and irrational fear of moths. For reasons which may well be due to some deep psychological trauma from which his memory is protecting him, he believes that moths will bite him in the face and transmit some kind of moth based disease from which he will never recover. He is also scared of cockroaches to the extent that he once declared the sighting of four cockroaches to be an 'infestation' and made me run the gauntlet of an unfamiliar side passage in the pitch dark to activate a security light which would send them scuttling back underneath the house we were living in. He claims to be 'fine' with a selection of other creepy crawlies, but rarely passes up an opportunity to get me to deal with them whilst lurking on the periphery of the room offering encouragement and keeping a safe distance. Perhaps the one downside of my awesome abilities when it comes to bugs is the fact that gardening becomes almost impossible when I have to stop and rescue every insect which might be injured during the process.

4.Ability to Exist Without External Stimulation

Sometimes the Boy Wonder will just sit and stare at a wall, thinking about nothing. I, on the other hand, require almost limitless entertainment, finding that just watching television for example is nowhere near enough for me to remain focussed without another task in hand (such as writing this post). This has some benefits in as much as I can get a lot done when I'm on form, but also some negative side effects such as my hatred of showering on the grounds that washing is nowhere near fun enough to make listening to the radio an acceptable alternative form of distraction. I should point out, I still shower once a day, I just put it off and whine about it until I absolutely have to do it, making me sound like I actively want to be a hobo with things living in my hair, whereas I actually quite like being clean but would prefer to achieve that effect whilst reading a good book.

5. Ability to Fill in Forms and Deal with Admin Tasks that Keep Our Household Running

I recently completed the application process for a new credit card, including a secondary one for the Boy Wonder. All he had to do was sign and date a form to confirm that he was aware of this. I took my eye off him for around a second, which was apparently long enough for him to sign in the wrong box and then dither uncertainly as to where to write the date. He once declared the process of buying a house as 'easy' on the grounds that his main contribution to the whole affair was pretending to read the masses of paperwork which came our way, before saying 'it looks fine to me' and writing his name wherever he thought looked most likely.

6. Ability Not to Die in Normally Non-Deadly Situations

The Boy Wonder totally kicks my arse on this one - not only has he rarely even been hospitalised, but his body apparently understands that nuts are a good source of protein and can make a delicious snack. My body on the other hand, seems to be under the impression that nuts are a threat to my wellbeing on such a scale that it's worth killing me to keep their marauding ways at bay. Not only that, but apparently it has now decided that penicillin, a drug specifically designed to treat illness, falls into the same category and warrants a similar sort of nuclear stand-off whereby it races to kill itself before the penicillin can. All this despite the fact that for the last 31 years (up to and including the last 8 weeks) it has recognised the healing properties of said antibiotics and it has only been in the last week that it's taken it's near psychotic stance on the matter.

7. Apoplectic Rage

I can barely go a day without descending into apoplectic rage about one thing or another. Recent examples include: a woman on 'Wanted Down Under' who was considering moving to Australia with her husband of four years and leaving her 14 year old daughter back in England; the book I read by Moon Unit Zappa and the reviews about it on Amazon; the fact that all store bought pesto has nuts that I can't see in it (c.f point 6); misleading use of statistics in contexts that are supposed to be educational.

The Boy Wonder works himself into a rage about things that can really easily be avoided: me saying that I have a tapeworm; people leaving the ends of their guitar strings hanging out of the tuners instead of trimming them neatly; me saying 'oui' like a French trucker when he asks me a question; the fact that our guttering keeps springing leaks and depositing water into the air bricks which ventilate the area under our house.

8. Being Ticklish

The Boy Wonder is ridiculously and entertainingly ticklish, meaning he can be completely incapacitated by a light poke to the side. I, however, quite like being tickled and am therefore impervious to retaliations, meaning that I would hold up better under interrogation by a pervy clown or feather duster, which I suppose is some sort of skill.

9. Light Footedness

Living with the Boy Wonder is like having a herd of elephants stampeding around the house, and even when he's trying to be quiet he manages to make everything in the entire house shake as though we live at the joining of tectonic plates beneath the earth's surface.

10. The Ability to Accurately Ascertain My Level of Drunkenness

In recent times, the Boy Wonder has been responsible for the following when under the influence of alcohol: three stops for sandwiches and ice cream on the way home at 3am, drunken limping and the subsequent denial thereof, pretending to be a toad (albeit a fairly poor impression which fooled nobody), and consistently telling me he's 'not that drunk' despite being clearly quite drunk. I, on the other hand, seem to tend more towards believing that I'm a lot more drunk than I am even when I am actually still in control of most of my faculties.

Totting up the results of this supremely unscientific analysis it appears that unless one of us proves to be a dab hand at the arbitrary assigning of value to any of the criteria above, it has proved a wildly inconclusive yet somewhat entertaining exercise.

Giving myself the finger

For reasons best known to itself, the ring finger on my right hand (is it still called that even when there is no designated ring for it?) is in the throes of a rash and has been for around 8 months now. Despite accounting for less than 1% of my total skin tally (probably - I am buggered if I'm actually going to work it out) the 5cm x 1cm stretch of skin between fingernail and second knuckle is currently the focus of 99% of my angst. A part of my brain is constantly devoted to coming up with new ways to scratch this patch of skin, most of which involve going to town with inappropriately rough objects ranging from the ragged edge of the cuff of my sweatshirt to the dish scourer. Another part of my brain is on 24 hour alert for the feeling which indicates that I have undertaken an activity which has caused the cracked skin on said finger to open up and sting like hell requiring the application of some form of unguent cream to make normal life possible. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to matter what I use for this process as the overall effect is the same whether I root around for long enough to find the specially formulated cream designed specifically to treat topical eczema break outs of exactly this kind or just use the Skittles flavoured lip-smacker that I already have in my hand.

There is also a seething, resentful part of my brain that is always thinking about how peculiar it is to just have this one small patch of rebellious skin which seems impervious both to the marvels of modern medicine and to the violent anger which is constantly bubbling under the surface of my otherwise cool, calm and non scabby exterior. I know I should be grateful - there have been times in my life when both my legs have been covered in eczema from ankle to knee and I have been unable to sleep, walk or think straight for the torture of trying not to scratch. But that always responded well to the merest suggestion of high strength steroids, rather than steadfastly refusing to even countenance the idea of vague improvement despite my lavishing vast amounts of attention on it like my finger. Now I'm sitting here dabbing at what appears to be tears oozing out of my finger, and wondering whether it might be simpler just to have the damn thing amputated. Pretty sure one of the others would take over though - that's just the kind of bloody minded, bloody fingered thing that happens in the world of my skin.

The Glee Project

I have never watched an episode of Glee, and don't really have any desire to, but apparently not content with just one programme dedicated to jazz hands and lipstick, there is now a show called 'The Glee Project' being advertised relentlessly on Sky. From the outset I was annoyed because the first ad featured a woman proclaiming something unlikely about 'the phenomenom' of Glee, but the more recent version seems to be advertising a show which is essentially about making teenagers cry. For whatever crack-pot psychological reason the show's makers have constructed between themselves, this week's episode seems to be an exercise designed purely to make these kids break down for the cameras. I'm not saying that they don't deserve it (after all, anyone putting themselves in the firing line for this kind of show should be well aware of what they are letting themselves in for) but forcing a girl to stand at the bottom of an escalator wearing a sign saying 'Anorexic' seems to be a woefully poor way of dealing with a teenager's eating disorder, whether that be real or perceived.

Presumably the makers of the show will claim that the exercise will make the participants stronger (although how a fat person wearing a sign saying fat is in any way enlightening is beyond me - some of the contestants are quite obviously wearing their 'weaknesses' on their sleeves), but whether they have actually considered the fact that surely being able to sing and act is more important than any perceived benefits of taunting them with their own insecurities until they burst into tears is another matter. It does seem as though this task is not far short of confirming their beliefs that their perceptions of themselves are something to be ashamed of and for others to judge them upon - the perfect way to nurture youngsters through their difficult teenage years.

Beyonce's Dressage

We've just been watching the coverage of Beyonce at Glastonbury, and I was surprised at how much she and her backing dancers looked like they were doing some weird kind of human dressage. Perhaps it was the combination of impractical shoes and potentially crotch revealing leotards that made them wary of taking steps that were too large, but whatever their reasons the overall effect was pretty peculiar. I was, however, impressed at her knee sliding action which, contrary to my personal experience, didn't seem to end up in scabby blisters and bruised kneecaps.