Chronicles of Junior Misssy

Aslan: Always "Happy to Help"

All of a sudden I have become acutely aware that my little girl is growing up fast. Little teeth are getting wobbly, she’s finishing nursery and moving on to school and she’s becoming a lot more independent.

The kids and I went to the cinema tonight and my girl showed there was still a lot of baby left in her, though. Jnr Misssy just can’t sit still in the cinema, and within ten minutes of the film starting, I had taken her to the toilet, taken her for a drink, had to retrieve her shoe from the floor of the row in front of us and had to pick up her spilt sweets from all over the floor to the soundtrack of her wailing.

After fifteen minutes she had given up her seat for my lap, as she always does.

She also talked to me throughout the whole film. Normally, I hate it when people talk through a film but tonight, watching Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, I enjoyed Jnrs commentary immensely. This was, in part, because I realised that I’m not going to have too many years left when my daughter wants to sit on my knee whispering to me, with her arms round my neck and her little hands buried in my hair.

The other reason was her commentary was hilarious. If only it could be an extra feature on the DVD of Prince Caspian.

Highlight One: “Where’s Asda?”

“It’s Aslan”

“Where’s Asdan?”…..

Highlight Two: “Who’s that beaver?”

“It’s a mouse”

“Well, it looks like a beaver to me”……

Highlight Three: “Are the bad men good yet, can I open my eyes?”

“I’d give it a minute”…..

Highlight Four: A little centaur with blond hair and a beard walks on screen, he says nothing, just blows a little horn. Junior Misssy absolutely cracks up laughing in an otherwise silent cinema. Really cracks up. The shot changes to something else, then returns to the little centaur and Jnr Misssy cracks up even more.

I’m reviewing Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian on the radio this Saturday…better read some newspaper reviews beforehand so that I can pretend I was paying attention….

(Podcast here)

********

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Carry on up the Khyber

PROMISE TO ALL: An embargo on this kind of thing
will be in effect from the 9th of July

The Flying Martinis never do things by halves. In two weeks we are off on a school trip to India with 23 teenagers, a biologist and his wife, a medic (whew! I won’t be having to hold anyone’s hair back while they puke except my own) and a list of stuff we can’t eat without spraying it with Dettol first.

I thought about NOT blogging it and just having a holiday from the Misssives but then I worried I might come out in hives as a result. Two years of blogging and not a single week missed? Surely the crack cocaine would be easier to get out of my system.

And then I remembered why I started the Misssives in the first place. It was to record my travels. I wanted to let my friends and family hear all our holiday/travel stories without having to:

A: Actually speak to them
B: Be arsed to send postcards
C: Clock up international phone charges

I first started to think about writing a diary when I went to Finland with 12 of my own students for two weeks. Instead, I wrote regular emails about the jolly japes of my students’ X-rated sexual activities, the damage done to Scottish-Finnish relations when a fight erupted in a sauna as a result of a lad from Inverness being insecure in his genital size/general sexuality, and the delights of Finnish cuisine.

Apparently my indiscretions at the expense of my students made some of my pals laugh and some emails even got forwarded on with headers like “Anyone know how to contact the British Ambassador to Finland? Misssy needs help” and “I can’t believe she ate Egg Butter*”

Two months later I was off on a school trip to Sri Lanka, so I started a travel blog.

One month after I came back from Sri Lanka I realised that I needed to keep writing even though I didn’t have the excuse of travelling. The fillers in between trips kind of took over, you may have noticed. But even though the Misssives have become a different animal over the two years, I’ve still enjoyed travel blogging my occasional trips to Thailand, Holland and Paris.

So, next month The Misssives go back to their roots and become a travel blog once more. I hope you’ll join me. I promise to keep it in the style you are used to, where people are gently mocked, my children are unfairly quoted and ridiculed, Meeester’s every flaw is exposed for the delight of others and I come out of it all looking like a flipping superhero.


I solemnly make this promise to you: whilst in India I will not go all spiritual and hippy trail on you, I will not sit in the Lotus position even once, I will not adopt a brown baby like Madonna or Jolie, and I will most certainly not ever utter the words,

“This place is magical”.

Even if it is.

*Finnish cuisine can be summed up by the dish "Egg Butter". Fact: Egg butter is the reason the Russians or the Nazis didn't invade Finland.

*****************

Meanwhile over on hot new blog (hint hint...) Spontaneous Production, I'm telling people to stay out of the cinema. Click here




Don't ever miss a Misssive, click here!

Serge Gainsbourg wrecks my gran's birthday

Last night I was listening to the radio and the presenter posed the question, “Have you ever been in a situation where a completely inappropriate song has come on and completely caused mayhem”. As I was driving, I couldn’t text in, so instead I thought, “One for the Misssives, non?”

It’s my Gran, Jessie’s, eightieth birthday and the family has gathered for a dinner in a big hotel. We’ve booked a private room as we’re a bit of a noisy bunch, and have brought our own CD player and music to provide ambiance. A few CDs are chucked in there and one must have been some kind of “Love Songs” type compilation. We've, no doubt, chosen a few CDs that will be a gentle mix that Gran will enjoy; a bit of Johnny Mathis, some Minnie Ripperton and a splash of Take That for the young uns. You know the type of CDs; Marks and Spencer sell them for Mother’s Day. Mum-wise; you can’t go wrong.

Dinner is finished and it is time for the speeches, the presentation of gifts, and the making of Gran cry with emotion, which no eightieth birthday would be complete without. My Uncle gets up to say a few words.... just as Jane Birkin starts to tell Serge Gainsbourg she loves him in the background. Yes, yes she loves him. Oh yes, she does.

Help! Help! There’s a rogue track on the “Woman in Love” CD as-advertised-on-TV, and to be fair, you can’t get them with the Trades Description Act. Jane Birkin is definitely in love, oui, oui, she’s in love alright, and not in an airy fairy "Hey! Hey! My boyfriend's back" kind of way. If legend is to be believed Serge was in the sound booth right there beside her, manufacturing some ambiance of his own, the dirty French beast.

Uncle sits down after a short round of applause. He’s lucky, he gets away with having the more innocuous part of the song as his backing track- perhaps Serge is still in the main studio smoking a Gauloises at this point and has yet to come up with the genius idea of running into Jane’s vocals booth and tampering with her underwear. "Vocals booth" is not a euphemism, by the way. You filthy beasts. French or otherwise.

Very quickly gifts are being offered up to my gran and she is starting to reply to the best wishes when Jane Birkin gets a little bit carried away about how much she loves Serge. Serge is now adjusting the vocals in a way that no modern music software can equal.

A five way glance, that says on the faces of each of us that we are about to lose it, ricochets between me, my brother, then onto my sister and then finally rests on the two brothers-in-law who are already in stitches at the far end of the table.

“Well, I am so lucky to have such a lovely family,” trills Gran

“Ooooh, uuggghhh, oui, oui je t'aime, oui je t'aime..uuggghh (pant pant)”

“And look at all these lovely gifts,” she beams.

“Oui! Oui! Je t'aime! Ugh, Ugh ! Oui!”

“This has been a wonderful day”

“(Intense heavy breathing, intense heavy breathing)Ugh! (Intense heavy breathing)”

“Thank you all so much”

By this time everyone in the room has cottoned onto the fact that Jane is in danger of upstaging the guest of honour. Except Gran.

Should we change the CD? Do you think someone should pull the plug?

Non! Moi non plus!

*************

(For your entertainment, now listen to Serge and Jane sing "Je t'aime, moi non plus" and imagine a eighty year old woman trying to thank her family in the last minute of the song over the top).

Meanwhile over on Spontaneous Production,

I'm revewing, M Night Shamalayan's The Happening.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Post-its from the poison pen

Image from passiveaggressivenotes.com

Ever stuck up a note, or written an email that was a thinly veiled rant disguised as a polite reminder? This is the kind of stuff I mean:

“Would everyone please remember to put the milk back in the fridge as I find cottage cheese in my tea rather a turn off. Love you!”

OR

“To All Tenants, Please remember to lock the back door when you come back in from the garden as personally I’d rather not be murdered in my bed by an axe wielding intruder”

OR

“Many thanks for the copious notes you have left me asking me to do things that treat me like two year old. It really is so kind of you to act as a surrogate parent.Mwah!”

OR

“Would the person who left the office ladies toilet unflushed please be reminded that we have evolved from cavemen who leave their droppings on display to warn off others and mark our territory”

Image from www.passiveagressivenotes.com

The passive aggressive note is something we’ve all either done or been in receipt of. Several ex- flatmates of mine excelled in this sport. One girl, Kirsty, whom I did not know before I moved in with her, pretty much communicated wholesale with me through the medium of snippy yet overly faux-polite notes. It seemed that after every action I performed in our communal space, I would find a little note asking me to perform that action differently.

For a while I would collect them to show my friends and have a giggle over them, but in the end frankly I didn’t even have enough time to read them myself never mind share them with others a second time. Kirsty was a girl who would have her boyfriend over to stay every night, with never a thought to my privacy, and who once left me a note after I had offered my chum our living room floor after she missed her train home.

“Misssy, Can you please let me know if there is going to be a stranger in the living room in the morning. Love Kirsty” (always with the love, the kiss and the smiley face- the passive aggressive hallmarks)

And passive aggressive notes aren’t just for the estranged flatmates, even people who are your so -called friends can turn into a passive aggressive notewriter.

A girl who I am still in touch with (against all odds, frankly she doesn’t deserve me) loaned me a blouse to go to an awards do when I was a student. After I had worn it, I laundered it and went into her wardrobe to put it back. On the inside of the wardrobe door was a post it with this written on it:

“Fuck off out of my wardrobe”

As passive aggressive notes go, this one was heavy on the aggressive with the only passive element being that it was left for me to find in the inside of a wardrobe rather than any issues being addressed directly to my face. In true passive aggressive style, I never mentioned the note directly but was sure to tell her that her shirt was washed, ironed and back in her wardrobe.

The passive aggressive notes don’t stop when you cease to do the communal living thing, though. Just this morning I received a group work email that was clearly having a go at the behaviour of one person but was thinly veiled as a polite instruction to all staff. How many of those have you received this week?

And what would the passive aggressive notes of history be like. I imagine the likes of this to have come from the pen of Ann Boleyn, for example:

“Dear All at Court

It may have slipped someone's mind but I believe that someone did promise to love and honour someone else and not chop their head off. I wouldn’t mention it but it seems that someone's been a bit busy fornicating with another woman, and it may have slipped their mind- Ann B ;0) ”

Or from the pen of Neville Chamberlain directed at Adolf Hitler:

“ Would all dictators be reminded that they must not leave their troops in the Sudetenland. All persons leaving their armies in independent countries without permission will be dealt with severely. Thanks! :>)

This post was inspired by my favourite new internet haunt http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/. It invites readers, Post Secret style, to send in all the passive aggressive notes that come their way. Great reading.



Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

She is the Walrus

My dear friend Taexalia is having a bit of bother with dreadful noise emanating from a clumping neighbour who has installed laminate flooring in the flat above her. I really feel for her. I too had noisy neighbours in the first flat I ever shared with Meeester. But we could never complain as the noises were... sex noises. If there is a social protocol for dealing with complaining about orgasmic noises throughout the night, EVERY NIGHT, FOR WEEKS then I wish someone had told me what it was. This is not the kind of situation that you can knock on someone’s door and ask politely for the noise to be “kept down”.

The first night the noises occurred, a group of us gathered underneath my bedroom ceiling to have a good listen and a bit of a chuckle. The noises came exclusively from a throaty voiced woman but at certain points we wondered whether the tenant was illegally making walrus porn.

At the crescendo, which seemed to take about forty minutes to occur, I remember we gave them a hearty round of applause. How naive we were that first time! How could we have known then that the walrus and her special friend would make our daily lives hell on earth?

After about a month of no sleep and nights filled with clasping our hands over our ears, rocking silently in corners and praying to every deity we could think of for peace, the noises stopped. “Fantastic,” we thought, “the Howling Sex Banshee’s been dumped!”

Again, in complete naivety, we went about our lives again, once more able to concentrate at work, once more able to invite relatives round, and begin to put the fragile pieces of our psyche together again. It was actually refreshing not to have conversations interrupted by “Oooheeeeahhhhhh! Ooooh Ohhh! Ohhh!”, not to have to have the telly constantly at full volume, or have to go out to the pub every night to get peace and quiet.

The hiatus was brief. Within a couple of weeks it all started again, with a vengeance that would have made Hugh Hefner purse his lips in prudish disapproval.

We deduced after a period of time, and the careful use of Excel spreadsheets, that our sex-god neighbour must work on the rigs. The sex was definately two on/two off. We also surmised that he must be drinking some monkey gland juice or something, as he was able to perform at a quite incredible rate. We considered calling the Guinness team to come round with stop watches and clipboards.


One day, we actually bumped into them on the stairs, having never clapped eyes on them before. In our minds, our image of the couple was one of protagonists from seventies porn films. We were very, very wrong in this assumption. Our Love King was a small rakish man with a handlebar moustache and no hair; and our Excitable Howling Walrus was a Size 20 lady with bright ginger insanely curly hair and Christopher Biggins-style red rimmed glasses wearing a Barbour jacket.

Now I’m not saying that big ginger lassies with no fashion sense don’t deserve to have a fulfilling sex life, but the sight of them in the flesh put paid to any notion that one day Meeester or I might go up to their door mid sesh to ask them to “pipe down”. Neither of us wanted to be confronted with the sight of a half naked Rubinesque lady with steamed up bins and beads of sweat on her top lip coming to the door to see what the problem was. Or, heaven forbid, to be invited in. (Shudder)

So what do you do when your life is disturbed by a couple having repeated and noisy sex 3 metres from your ears from about 10 at night til 4 in the morning every night?

Turns out many people had the same problem. At the time I was comforted greatly by a phone in on Richard and Judy’s “This Morning” about noisy neighbours. Now given that the great Richard Madley himself reads this blog, I must be careful to give an accurate depiction of his demeanour when confronted by a lady caller with exactly the same problem that Meeester and I had.

In short, Richard laughed when he was told of the woman’s dilemma. I think he might have even slapped his thighs in mirth. And the lady caller didn’t take his flippant attitude lightly. She immediately chastised Richard in no uncertain terms, “This is no laughing matter. These people are ruining my life”. Richard had to apologise and I nearly wept in the realisation that I was not alone in my suffering.

In the end we never did complain. We were too embarrassed, and frankly a little worried that they might even up it a gear for revenge for our insolence. We, instead, decided to move to a top floor flat, where the only sex noises we could hear was the occasional communion of a couple of overexcited pigeons.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, push the button!

Give me the child and I'll show you the man

Misssy at 8 (far left)

Junior Misssy went to visit her school today. She starts proper in August.

Me? I hated Primary School. I think that’s maybe because I went to a total of four different schools in the course of the seven years. Just as I stopped being the new girl, I went to another one and was the new girl again. I would love to say that this was because my Dad was wanted for political activism like Judd Hirsch in the film, “Running on Empty” and we had to move about to avoid the Feds. But, disappointingly, that was not the case.

Card carrying Scottish Nationalists might have to put up with a bit of slagging in the 1970s but to my knowledge none of them ever had to have face-changing surgery, identity reassignments or go on the run. They just had to embarrass their kids on polling day by driving them to school in a car covered in flags, rosettes, posters and loud speakers so that their kids wanted to go on a witness relocation programme afterwards. (But that's a whole other post).

Another reason I probably hated primary school was that I was chronically shy as a kid. This is something that people who know me now laugh about, as I’m a bit shouty and “let’s do the show right here” these days. Back then, I was more whispery and “Oh don’t look at me, there’s someone else doing a show over there”.

Looking at old school report cards, the key words are “quiet” and “conscientious” , which is teacher talk for “I can’t remember who the blazes this kid is, but they can’t be any trouble or else I would at least know who they are.”

Meeester has similar reports, yet he is Foghorn Leghorn these days.

All this is certainly putting paid to that old quote: “give me the child until seven and I'll show you the man”

If I were to be like the seven year old Misssy now, I would not be telling you all this, as I would be firmly behind my Mum’s skirt pretending you weren’t there. You might try to coax me out with sweets, but I can assure you, I would be having none of it.

So as Junior Misssy’s first day at school grows closer I wonder what’s in store for
her. She’s vastly different from me, so the next seven years should go fine. I am even looking forward to getting a couple of notes home saying that she was caught setting fire to something or was setting up illegal poker games.

Indy, however, was built from the same blueprint as me, but when teachers tell me he’s conscientious and quiet, it doesn’t bother me.

The quiet kids are just saving their noise up for later.

* * *

So first day memories then folks. You know what to do.

Mine are:

1. Sat with two kids I didn’t know and we all shared our crisps so that we each had a bag with three different flavours. One other girl was wearing her green cardigan under her pinafore.

2. Wouldn’t let my mum walk beside me on the way to school, as I wanted to go myself. She humoured me and stayed several paces behind like she was a wife in some hardline Arab country and I her domineering husband.

3. The teacher was called Mrs Potts, which has to be the best Primary One teacher name ever.

4. Was told to look out for my Uncle’s name on the School Dux board by my gran, but didn’t know anything about ducks or indeed how to read. She is still going on about this achievement 30 years later. I think she wants it written on her tombstone, “Loving Mother to a son who was the Dux of the School”

Don't ever miss a Misssive, press the button!

You're Not the Only One

The blogosphere is alive tonight with the sound of 99 bloggers writing a post very much like this one.

Tonight a very determined and hard-working blogger called Peach announced the publication of the book she compiled to raise money for War Child and showcase the talents of 100 bloggers.

I am hugely delighted to say that something I wrote made it in there. And that some of my favourite bloggers like Cat, Ms Robinson, Boy, Anna , Reluctant Memsahib and Emma K are in there too makes it even better. I can't wait to read what they've written as well as finding some new great blog writing in amongst the 99 other posts.

You can buy the book by clicking here

Or just nip over to Peach's blog for more details and check out who else is in it. Well done to her, it can't have been easy to pull this off. And a million thank-yous for choosing my piece to be included. I'm beyond chuffed.

Buy it! I bet it's really good!

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

That was the week that wasn't

You may have noticed that I’ve been posting stuff up on the Missives like a frantic attention seeking jackass. There is one simple reason for his; I’ve had no work this past fortnight and have developed Attention Deficit Disorder.

This free time is not a holiday, you understand, but a vast wasteland of waiting for a client to get back to me so that I can continue with the mountain of work I have for him. I can’t do anything until then, hence I am rudderless and every second I exist I am effectively sliding further towards financial destitution. And the thing is with clients you can’t pick up the phone and sob at them til they feel bad or threaten to take their kids hostage. They don’t like that, and it rarely gets results.

Instead of enjoying this hiatus, any of you who are freelance will understand that making the most of my temporary situation is impossibility. You can’t enjoy free time, you must use that time to worriedly pace about the house muttering, “But who will feed the chillllldren” and “I must make an egg last three days” .

Within days of your temporary unemployed state you are looking out the wartime recipes of Marguerite Patton, buying some powdered egg and putting all of your kids' birthday presents on Ebay.

You know the situation is serious when you say, “You not wanting that?” as you reach to snatch the dog’s uneaten Butcher’s Choice from under his snout, whilst polishing off the dusty bits at the bottom of a packet of Go Cat Munchies.

After a week of no action you start to think of other things to occupy your time that don’t involve doing any housework. Maybe to fill these regular workless voids I need a project, I think to myself. Or an alternative earning opportunity. Here are some of the ideas that I’ve thought of in the middle of the night , got excited about and then dismissed by morning:

I shall write a novel! Yet, I will not complete any of the four that have currently stalled at Chapter 5, are buried deep in the folders of my laptop and I now think are utter shit. But I will write a new one that is better.

My problem here, is that I keep on reading David Mitchell novels and then I think, “I can never be as good as that, even though he must be on acid to come up with that crazy shit. Why even bother?” and then I scrap what I’ve been doing and go in the huff for a few days. I need to start reading Jackie Collins to make myself feel better. And my genius plan of eating Brie just before bedtime isn’t giving me good enough surreal ideas, just loose poops.

I will become an internet phenomenon, blog about stuff millions of people want to read about, sell ads on my site and live off the revenue! Then I realise that there is a surprisingly small readership for stories about snails ( Breaking news; a yellow painted one came back by the way), I’m not maternal (or nice), (or desperate) enough to tap into the lucrative Mummy blog market, I don’t want to talk about my sex life or make a more exciting one up, have no whistleblowing stories that will bring down corporations, I have no information on what celebrities are doing unless you count the fact that my sister lives next door to the former anchor of the now defunct Grampian Television’s flagship news programme and have no technical advice for people other than “hitting something that doesn’t work with a short sharp knock can often give results”.

So that’s that then. The Misssives will stay as they are; random and cheap.

I will proofread documents from home! Being a bit of grammar Nazi who has actually gone into shops where their doorfront sign has a rogue apostrophe to tell them the bad news, I feel I am well qualified.

On seeing Apprentice candidate, Lee MCQueen’s, spelling errors pointed out in his CV this week’s show, you would have thought I’d just seen video evidence of him having been involved in war crimes.

“Fire him! Yer Fiyerred! Get him out! Arse! Arse! Lee McQueen is out of a job! Get him out, now!” I shouted at the screen like a Tourettes sufferer, veins straining at my temple and froth gathering in the corners of my mouth.

Five minutes into researching the proofreading business,however, I realise that the whole world has already had this idea and have fantastic adverts offering their services that are hard to say no to. I find myself actually signing up to be proofread by someone else and have my colons corrected. Eagle eyed readers will notice she hasn't started her contract yet.

So given that I have dismissed all these things out of hand within mere hours of thinking about them what have I actually done this week?

1. Rifled about in my loft for an afternoon. Holy grail not found.

2. Exfoliated my entire body, even the inside of my mouth.

3. Grouted my kitchen floor. Discovered new medical ailment: Grouter's Knuckle.

4. Pruned a thorny bush with inadequate tools and no protective gloves, resulting in further shredding of hands and a septic finger as a result of a 1cm thorn being lodged in my pinky overnight. Extracting the thorn is the highlight of my week. Wish I'd videoed it.

5. Taught Sonny the Dog to lie down in the grass verge when cars pass, rather than sticking his thumb out and trying to get a lift with a more lucrative family with steady jobs and human food in the fridge.

6. Blogged too much because if I can’t write scripts about the electrical safety rules on seagoing vessels I must write about starting bitch fights in cinemas and David Bowie in implausible situations.

Pray I am employed next week or else I’m blogging about a rash that I have developed on my toe through running, or Meeester blocking the sink after shaving off his beard, and then lying about it.

Or worse, the most disgraceful story of Misssy puking into an umbrella. When you see that, it's time for an intervention.

***********

In other news, I've finally started my film blog, Spontaneous Production. It's somewhere for me to talk exclusively about films and put my podcasts but may feature some homegrown movies in the future. That's what else I've been doing. It's a work in progress...


Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Tartan telly: J'Accuse

TV production empire Endemol are looking to recruit a Scottish representative. I know this because I know someone who seems to think he’s perfect for the job and is bounding headlong into an interview. I am not going to go on record as to what I think of his chances, but as much as I love the guy, I fear for our reputation as a nation if he gets the job. An Englishman who has migrated and embraced the hunting, shooting, fishing life of a Scottish laird, I will weep if he is thought eminently suitable.

It seems to me that the very fact that TV companies have Scottish representatives who are charged with making programmes about Scotland for Scotland really is the problem with Scottish TV. As far as perpetuating the Scottish stereotype, we are our own worst enemies.

It all started with Scottish reputation Enemy Number 1: Harry Lauder. This boil on the bum of entertainment was a music hall turn in the 1920s and 30s who realised that taking the piss out of his own country would get him cheap but plentiful laughs, as he was devoid of talent and could think of nothing else to get the punters rolling in the aisles. Unfortunately for us, Lauder seemed to be quite successful and many of his onstage character’s traits like meanness and tweeness are now the world's perceived image of my countrymen. Effectively Lauder’s legacy has poisoned our culture in a very far reaching way. It really is very wearing to have people shout “There’s a Moose Loose Aboot this Hoose” at you when on holiday.

Lauder was like Borat except not funny and unlike Sacha Baron Cohen, he actually took the piss out of his own country so can’t be accused of racism. Does it count if you are racist about your own country? Well it should. Anyway, I don’t know where the talentless bugger is buried but I’m guessing it is in Scotland. I’m all for exhuming him and chucking his corpse over Hadrian’s Wall to break the curse. It could be messy, and get us some grave-robbing charges but who's with me?

These days Scottish television seems to think that programmes about the countryside and outdoor pursuits seem to be wholly representative of our culture. How very dull. If there’s one thing people who like telly don’t do it’s go outside much and canoe anywhere. Why, we’re too busy watching telly.

Still it could be worse. The Rab C Nesbitt Show could still be on. For those of you who don’t know anything about it, the 1980s/90s show’s hero (see top photo) was a dipsomaniac loser wearing a string vest and a stained bandage round his head, stottering about the streets of Glasgow making unemployed mischief. And the man who played him was a Scot. Worst of all Scottish people LOVED this show. The shame of it!

Having dabbled in TV production in my country I found it hard to get a foothold in homegrown broadcast production. When asked for ideas, I never had a Scottish angle. I wanted to make telly that happened to be in Scotland; not Scottish telly. When applying for jobs at BBC Scotland when I graduated in 1991, I would not make the shortlist as I couldn’t speak Gaelic. A BBC Charter enforced a strict and demographically disproportionate quota of Gaelic programmes at the time. I soon found my way down a different career path, but I am still very critical of the way Scottish TV is produced.

So as Big Brother producer Endemol look to produce programmes with a Scottish angle, expect some kilted bare-breasted, kilted, haggis hurling and stag fighting on the shores of Loch Ness with a Proclaimers soundtrack and a sponsorship deal with Glenfiddich.

Meanwhile the rest of us will go on leading our non-twee, non-tartan, non-water-rafting lives, watching something better on the other side.

(PS: Anyone else having trouble with Blogger's formatting? it's driving me insane!)


Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

This Could Destroy the World!

Yesterday in the office I sometimes swan into when I'm not working from home, there was much hilarity. Loud guffaws of laughter were heard. Screams of mirth were piercing the air. At points it was startlingly loud. Clearly someone visiting the office was a bit of a joker, a character, or a “good laugh”.

At one point the laughter that erupted from the office this bloke was in was so uproarious that it prompted one of my colleagues to say this:

“Bloody Hell, that’s not even a corporate laugh. That’s an actual laugh”

I thought my friend’s comment was funny. So I laughed. A real laugh; not a corporate laugh.

I’ve been thinking about corporate laughing ever since. The social and business oil of the corporate laugh is a powerful force. The forced or fake laughing at the joke or the comment that someone makes, even though you don’t find it particularly funny, in order to make life go smoother, is the Castrol GTX of the global business machine.

I wonder what would happen if one day we all decided not to do the corporate laugh?

What would happen if everyone, one day, didn’t laugh at the lame comments a workmate makes about their weekend exploits, but instead just looked at them silently?

I'm not saying we shouldn't laugh at all, but only genuine situations of hilarity should get any response.

A typical day would also involve not laughing at meetings or presentations where the boss tells a funny story to get everyone on board with something, makes remarks about fellow workmates, or generally just tries to show what a wag he is. Unless any of this was genuinely funny. Which in 99% of cases, it wouldn’t be.

We could widen the definition to extend to social occasions. For example, hopeful boyfriends meeting the girl’s parents for the first time would be banned from doing the corporate laugh. If the meeting of Dad-in-Law-To-Be fell on “No Corporate Laughing Day” they’d be screwed as they’d have to look Daddio unsmilingly in the eye as he tells all his mother-in-law jokes and expects a captive and generous audience in the form of the suck up future son in law who wants full approval.

Excepting the office of Gordon Brown which I’m guessing sees little in the way of joshing, the political machine would seize up. All that forced laughter and barracking in the House of Commons would cease and some actual progress might be made. Similarly the ass kissing laughter of the minions during a golf game with George Bush would result in shockwaves of indifference leaving the ego of the President battered, forcing him to do God Knows What.

Would all business deals fall flat? Would “office pranksters” find themselves facing a wall of silence provoking a crisis of self doubt? Would the psyche of the corporate drone be irrevocably damaged causing most of them to cease to function? Would the social grease of the day be wiped away, make us all anxious, disorientated and even angry?

Maybe even then I’m understating it: would a global war break out within one day of the no corporate laughing embargo???

Let’s try it and see what happens!

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!