How Hard Can It Be? Page 3

  This of course brings me neatly to the question of Muslim extremists. They are waging a preposterous campaign, trying to make all women in the world wear their headscarves back to front. And there’s no doubt that if their international leader was Abu Hamza they wouldn’t get anywhere.

  One eye is good. Admiral Nelson pulled that off well and so does Gordon Brown. It makes you look sinister and interesting. Then there’s the hook for a hand. That’s inspirational. The stuff of Bond baddie legend. But I’m sorry, the rest is hopeless; especially that patchy and spartan face fungus, as threadbare as an aristocrat’s carpet.

  Unfortunately, however, Hamza is not the global figurehead. That role belongs to Osama Bin Laden, and let’s cut to the chase on this, shall we? The man’s a looker. Teaming those gentle and kind eyes with an ever-present AK-47 keeps us guessing. He even manages to look good in a dress and that beard. Wow. It could so easily have come across as pantomime stupid, and yet you just want to run your hands through it. You imagine it’s as soft as silk. In short the man is cool. Cold, actually, because he’s almost certainly dead, buried under tons of daisy-cut Afghan rock. And yet, despite this small drawback, the Americans will never be able to beat him unless they wake up, smell the coffee and elect Johnny Depp.

  Mrs Clinton really won’t do. Quite apart from the fact that she seems to be a strange mix of naked ambition and lunacy, she cannot hope for victory against the forces of evil and savagery with a name like Hillary. Think of all the songs that have been written about girls. Gloria, Emily, Clair, Peggy Sue, Laura, Mary, Nikita. It’s hard to think of any name that isn’t in a song. Except one. And don’t you think that says something? That in all of human history, no one has ever been moved enough by someone called Hillary to write a song about them.

  Names matter as much as looks. Boadicea was not called Joan, and as a result was able to whip up a sufficient frenzy among her followers that she defeated the Roman army and laid waste to Colchester. Joan of Arc, on the other hand, was called Joan and got burnt at the stake. It’s not for nothing that God chose to call his only son Jesus rather than Roy or Nigel.

  I’m being sensible here. Che Guevara realized that he needed the whole package to succeed – not just a beret and a wistful look – so he dropped the name his parents had given him: Ernesto. And Temujin only really got going after he rebranded himself as Genghis Khan.

  There is some good news from all of this though. One day Robert Mugabe will be sunk by his silly moustache, Kim Jong-il will be defeated by his own wardrobe and Jonathon Porritt will fail because even if he were called Clint Thrust he sports the one thing that is guaranteed to end anyone’s quest for global domination: a combover.

  Sunday 10 February 2008

  Skiing through the pain barrier

  For your next holiday, why don’t you take all your money and put it on the fire? Then stand in a fridge for a week, beating your children with a baseball bat until their arms and legs break. And then, after you’ve eaten some melted cheese, dislocate your shoulder. If all of this appeals then you are probably one of the 1.3m British people who go on a skiing holiday at this time of year.

  Skiing, for those of you who’ve never tried it, is an extremely expensive way of combining acute discomfort, butt-clenching embarrassment, mind-numbing fear and a light dusting of hypothermia. Plus there’s a better than evens chance that at least one member of your family will come home in a wheelchair. The first thing you must understand is the ski boot. It is specifically designed to be as heavy as possible and to ensure that if you fall over – and you will, all the time – your leg will break at its most painful point: just above the ankle. The only way to prevent this happening is to cushion the fall with your face.

  These holidays are called winter ‘breaks’ because at some point you will end up in a doctor’s surgery that looks like a Baghdad market after a nail-bomb attack. Once, after I’d broken my thumb for the second year in succession, I sat in the waiting room with a chap who had a ski pole sticking out of his eye. And opposite was a pretty young girl whose left foot was on back to front.

  Of course you might think it is possible to avoid such injuries by going very slowly. Unfortunately this is not possible because to counter the surprisingly powerful effects of gravity you need to dig the edges of your skis into the slope with such force that after a very short time your thigh muscles actually catch fire. When the smell of burning flesh becomes too overpowering you let go, and suddenly you are travelling at 700 mph. Then, equally suddenly, you will be breathing gas and air while the doctor sharpens his hacksaw.

  This year, on my skiing holiday, the air ambulance was lifting five newly formed paraplegics off the mountain every day.

  Falling over, however, is not the greatest danger. Far worse is being hit by a teenager with baggy trousers on a snowboard. Snowboarding is like skiing, except you have absolutely no control over your direction of travel, mostly because you will have had a lot of marijuana at lunch time.

  It’s certainly better than eating the food. The food at ski resorts is cooked by people whose only qualification for the job is that they are called Arabella. Once, I was served salt soup. Mostly, though, it’s bread, which you dip in melted cheese. And because you are expected to melt the cheese yourself, the Arabella has more time to have sexual intercourse with her surly French ski-instructor boyfriend.

  I am a very good skier … in my mind. However, video evidence suggests that I’m rubbish. I look like a bus driver in a primary-coloured anorak, sitting on an imaginary lavatory. Also I can only turn right. So to mask my embarrassment, and the pain in my thighs, I ski only when very drunk. I can recommend this wholeheartedly.

  However, what you must never do is ski while under the influence of Billy Idol. No, really. I can absolutely guarantee that within five seconds of putting an iPod in your ears one of your bones will shoot out of your skin.

  Of course you might imagine that there are other things to do on a winter holiday apart from skiing. ’Fraid not. On a normal summer break you can sunbathe, swim, snorkel, jet ski and, if you like the Guardian, go to look at museums. But on a skiing holiday what you do is get up at dawn, eat some salt soup and queue for hours to get on something that makes a Tube train look deserted. Then queue for some more hours because your place keeps being taken by burly Russians who have daggers tattooed on their foreheads. Then you ski until it goes dark.

  You have probably heard about après-ski activities. In your mind, you see nightclubs and pretty girls and drinking fiery cocktails till dawn. Well, I’m sorry, but what actually happens is that you get back to your hotel or chalet, climb into a relaxing bath to try to jump-start your burnt-out muscles and fall fast asleep.

  This is a good thing because in addition to the cost of the holiday and the flights and the ski rental and the lessons and the ski pass that lets you use the mountain, you will have been utterly bankrupted by your wardrobe. This year the cheapest pair of padded trousers we could find for my thirteen-year-old daughter were £250. And it’s not as if she can wear them anywhere else.

  Finally there’s the weather. If it’s poor you will freeze and crash into things because you can’t see where you’re going. If it’s good – and over half-term it was very, very good – you will need sunglasses. And that means you will come home after a week with a face like a barn owl.

  The thing is, though, that when the sun shines and you are whizzing along, drunk out of your mind, under a perfect blue dome with your happy, giggling children on a deserted, freshly pisted slope, and you’re about to have lunch in a restaurant with a view that is unparalleled anywhere on earth, none of the misery matters. Because there is no feeling quite like it. It’s called perfect happiness.

  Sunday 24 February 2008

  Bleep off, you’re driving me mad

  I have just bought a dishwasher. And now I am thinking of smashing it into small pieces because when it’s finished washing the pots and pans it makes a beeping noise. And if I don’t empty it immediat
ely it beeps again. And then again.

  How stupid is that? It means you’re sitting by the fire, nodding off in front of the television, when you hear the electronic summons and, because you know it will go on until the end of time, you haul yourself out of your chair, pad into the kitchen, open the door and discover, as jets of superheated steam gush into your face, that the beeping was not, in fact, coming from the dishwasher at all.

  So now you’re standing there, looking like Niki Lauda, wondering what on earth had been making the infernal noise. It could be anything, because these days everything beeps. Mobile phones beep when they are dying. Microwaves beep when your food is ready. Freezers beep when they get too warm. Cars beep if you don’t put your seatbelt on. Captains beep before they make an in-flight announcement. Airport golf buggies beep when they move. Children’s toys beep when they don’t. Lorries beep when they reverse. Parking meters beep when you put money into them. Phones beep when there’s a message. Shop doors beep when you open them. Actors beep when they swear before the watershed. There’s even a beep in the Radio 2 traffic jingle.

  So you creep about the house, with your melted face, hoping that you’ll be near the source of the noise when it strikes again. Then, suddenly, you think: ‘Jesus. It’s a smoke alarm warning us that its battery is dead and that unless I do something about it – right now – everyone will be burnt to a crisp.’

  Quickly you get a stepladder and replace the battery and just as the cover snaps shut you hear the beep again. This time, of course, you know it really is the dishwasher. So you open the door and it steam-strips the bits of your face that weren’t burnt off the first time. Because actually the noise was coming from the freezer, which has got a bit too warm.

  Now I should warn you at this point that I’m not about to embark on a tub thumping tirade about silly technology. Rather, it will be an impassioned plea from an insomniac who’s stumbling towards the mid-point of middle age for people to stop making an unnecessary racket. We are constantly being told that light pollution is ruining life for astronomers, that patio heaters are killing polar bears and that your carrier bags will one day choke a turtle. But I don’t give a fig about aquatic tortoises or astronomy. All I want is a bit of peace and quiet.

  Some things make lovely noises. Playful children, car tyres on gravel, sheep and the Doobie Brothers, for instance. My particular favourite is the mournful throb of a distant light aircraft. Or the fizz of ice cubes being dropped into a freshly made gin and tonic. But mostly I spend my life being bombarded by sounds that screech into my head like polystyrene fingers on a 6-acre blackboard. Motorcycles, crows, other people’s strimmers, ‘amusing’ ringtones, Birmingham accents, Radio 1, dogs, diesel engines, Ken Livingstone, ‘Mind the gap’, James May’s bottom, unnecessary announcements in shopping centres. And then there’s the worst noise in the world; a noise that’s worse than morris dancing and even that child’s toy called Bop It.

  I’m talking, of course, about The Archers.

  I’ve always said that when I divorce my wife it’ll be because we are incompatible at airports. She likes to be there two weeks before the flight leaves. I think two minutes is plenty. But in fact we are much more incompatible at 7 p.m. every night when she turns on the radio and fills the house with the pointless sounds of Ambridge. Should Mike divide the house for Roy and Hayley? I really couldn’t give a monkey’s. Just turn it off.

  There isn’t even any respite at work. My office at the BBC is next to the lifts, which spend all day telling everyone within 5 miles what floor they’re on. I know this helps blind people but why have the announcement read out by Brian Blessed in his full pantomime baddie mode? Why not use whispering Bob Harris instead? Or play it at a pitch that’s audible only to guide dogs?

  I appreciate that some things have to make a noise. Heathrow airport, for example. And the Heckler & Koch sub-machinegun. But most things do not and I urge people to think about that when designing products and services. Did you know, for instance, that Microsoft employed Brian Eno to write the four-note welcome chime when you turned on a Windows 95 computer? Why? I know when the sodding thing comes on because when I push the buttons on the keyboard, words appear on the screen. I do not need an audible alert. Nor do I need a car to chirp when I lock it. Oh, and publicans. If you have a jukebox on the premises, here’s an idea. Why not allow customers to buy three minutes of silence?

  I also have an idea for people who run supermarkets. We managed for many years before you started saying, ‘Cashier number four, please,’ over and over again. And I’m fairly certain that we could manage again if you stopped.

  Normally, I would turn to the Church for help in these difficult and noisy times, but I fear no backing will be forthcoming. Partly because the Archbishop of Canterbury is too busy chopping the hands off shoplifters, but mainly because, with its nonsensical and infernal bell-ringing, it is the worst offender.

  Sunday 2 March 2008

  Oi, shoppers – that’s my petrol

  If I were to see someone indulging in antisocial behaviour, such as cycling on the pavement or urinating in a public place, I would roll my eyes and quietly tut. If it were something more serious, such as riding a horse through a supermarket or throwing a baby dog into a ravine, I might even say something.

  Strangely, however, when I spot someone dropping litter, I am overcome with a sometimes uncontrollable need to perform experiments on his head involving petrol and scorpions. Prison? No chance. That’s for rapists and robbers. Litter louts should be peeled and rolled in a barrel full of salt and snakes.

  That’s why last week I was delighted when a newspaper called the Daily Mail began a campaign to rid Britain of the carrier bag. Gordon Brown was delighted too as he’s fast running out of other things to ban. ‘Oooh, goody,’ he didn’t say, but you could see he meant it. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Yes. Carrier bags. I’ll install a network of cameras throughout the land and anyone caught using one will be fined a million pounds.’

  The trouble is that while I support any move to rid the world of carrier bags – and shopping in general for that matter – I cannot think of an alternative. If you have been to the supermarket for your weekly groceries, how else are you supposed to carry them home? Especially if you’ve gone there on a sustainable bus.

  Brown paper is one suggestion but it really works only in places such as Arizona. Here, where there is rain, it quickly becomes soggy – and then it has the tensile strength of fog. The Women’s Institute suggests that bags could be made from hemp or wheat so that they would degrade. But while it might be possible for a little old lady to knit a bag from natural fibres while listening to The Archers, I think she might struggle to produce 60m a day.

  Some people say supermarkets should charge for bags to encourage people to reuse the one they were given last week. But the figure being bandied about is just 5p, and that, unless you’re a refugee or a coastguard, doesn’t seem much of a financial hurdle: £5,000 would cause us to think twice; 5p won’t. And besides, a charge presupposes that you have gone on a planned shopping trip. Not that you were just passing and suddenly thought: ‘God. I wish I had last week’s bag with me because I don’t half fancy some Smarties.’

  I fear, therefore, that we are stuck with the bag, but this does not mean we should give up on our struggle to deprive the stupid and the fat of things they can drop on the street because they are too gormless to go and find a bin. And my suggestion is, we look hard at packaging. Three years ago there was much brouhaha about this – and of course the government made lots of threats and noises. Such was the outcry, in fact, that most of the big food producers and supermarket chains promised to clean up their act.

  I should have thought this would be a simple thing to do. A cauliflower, for instance, does not need its own Michael Jackson-style oxygen tent. It will not run off if placed on a shelf naked. Nor will it be embarrassed. Can it possibly take three years to work this out?

  Evidently yes, because in my local supermarket ev
erything except the spring onions still comes in a packet of some sort. No, really. Those manky-looking weeds that silly women eat at breakfast time instead of food are served under Cellophane. Apples come in polythene on a polystyrene tray. And you should see the Easter eggs. Jesus. Two hundred tons of petrochemicals diverted from where they belong – in the tank of my car – to puff up a chocolate egg so small that it wouldn’t stretch the birthing muscles of a wren.

  In just one night at my flat in London – that’s one dinner for one person – I generate enough waste to fill a hole the size of Worksop. And it makes me seethe, not because of the carbon emissions from the planes bringing it here – I couldn’t give a stuff about that. No. It’s the fact that while I will parcel it all up and put it in the right part of the right bin on the right day for the right binmen to take to the right landfill site, thousands will simply drop it in the street.

  And have you bought a toy recently? Every single one comes in a steel-hard plastic mould that blunts all your scissors and severs all your fingers. Seriously, you could store Britain’s nuclear arsenal in the packaging used by toy companies and it would be completely safe. And then you have those plastic tie strips used to secure the product to the box. By the time you’re past those the child is twenty-eight years old.

  So, what’s to be done? Well, amazingly you are legally allowed to remove all the packaging in the shop and leave it on the counter. But this will infuriate those stuck behind you in the queue. Or you could refuse to buy anything that has been packaged, but I fear that pretty soon you’d be naked and starving.

  So how’s this for a plan? Companies should be fined if any of their branded litter is found on the street. This would soon encourage them to remove all unnecessary packaging. And if they found that impossible, they’d have to ensure their products were sold only to people intelligent enough to dispose of the waste properly.