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[flyoffthecuff-blog]

The other day in a supermarket I took a wrong turn

and found myself in the small electrical goods section. I already have a kettle, toaster and microwave, so I'm fairly well-equipped, but I strolled up the aisle anyway because there was no hurry to get home. I passed kettles, hot-plates, toasters, and blenders without incident. But then I saw something that just made me sad: an electric biscuit-dough dispenser.

For some reason, I've never managed to shake the childhood idea that inanimate objects have feelings, so I was a bit ashamed of the instant loathing I felt for the poor dough-dispenser. It wasn't a bad little thing: a small cylinder of stainless steel with low-profile buttons and pleasant if unremarkable styling. It's probably very good at what it's designed to do. My problem is, why was it designed? What is it even for? I know why we have so many appliances in general: we have more to do in a day, and less time do it in. That's fine. If I had to boil water on the stove every morning before I could have coffee, my mental state would resemble that of a small dispirited sea-sponge by next Tuesday.

But be that as it may, I have had enough. I am not interested in excuses or being told to hush. I have had enough. We are kitchen-appliancing ourselves to death. It's getting out of hand, people. I understand the need for kettles, toasters and microwaves. I will accept that busy people require blenders, sandwich-makers, and coffee machines. I can sort of see the point of electric tin-openers (though I dread them) and electric grills. But what can the rationale behind an automatic egg-boiler be? What's wrong with leaving them in boiling water on the stove for four minutes? It does the same thing in the same time. An electric cupcake-maker? You can measure out ingredients, combine them correctly, and get all the lumps out of the resulting batter, but measuring it into the tin and sticking them into the oven is a bridge too far? And good God, people, don't tell me that anyone who actually manages to get biscuit dough right actually then needs help slicing it into discs? I won't stand for it. One more unneccesary “labour-saving” device and I will snap. Snap, I tell you! And I'm usually tuned to high C as it is.

But first, I'm going to go out and buy that electric automatic biscuit-dough dispenser, even though I eat biscuits only rarely and bake them never, because I feel sorry for it, sitting all alone and disliked on its shelf in the supermarket like the teddy-bear you didn't much like as a child, that sat there and sat there, looking slightly reproachful, until one day it wasn't there anymore...

Hepsibah, your deadline is Monday, your limit is 500 words, and your task, with instructions as per the ones I had for this post, is to complete the following sentence: "But when I turned around, my grandmother had..."

[flyoffthecuff-blog]

To tell you the truth, Hepsibah, I'd rather frisk a porcupine than go into a roomful of strangers.

Before you start jeering and/or recommending therapy, I'm not being completely unreasonable. There's a certain amount of risk involved. For example: not long ago I was finally introduced to someone who turned out to be gorgeous as well as ferociously intelligent, and responded to this vision of perfection by nutting her. By accident, it's true, but a headbutt is a headbutt however you choose to explain it away. So you'll appreciate that I'm certain my social skills need some work. Of course, aside from my distressing tendency to injure new acquaintances, I was not raised by a pack of jackals; I can navigate most multi-person interactions with a degree of confidence. Like almost everyone else in the world I have managed to learn a fairly complex set of rules governing acceptable public behaviour. Also like everyone else, I sometimes run into situations that aren't covered by my on-board software, and this is where we come to etiquette guides. They're supposed to be the trustworthy guide to social situations of every stripe, right?

Dead wrong.

I've just flipped through the 1922 edition of Emily Post's "Etiquette: the Blue Book of Social Usage" and all it's done is make me very bloody grateful indeed that I wasn't alive in the 1920s. Possibly the most-vaunted of all etiquette guides, it contains section headings like 'An Elusive Point Essential to Social Success', 'Have Silver That Shines or None', 'How a Dinner Can be Bungled', the truly terrifying 'The Ordeal by Ballroom' , and generally makes the Code of Hammurabi look like a kiddies' colouring-in book. Another text, "Lady Behave", published somewhat more recently, spends pages and pages explaining how to eat various foods in public without looking like you enjoy them. This is a very strong hint, of course, that people of breeding weren't supposed to do anything as gross as eat or otherwise appear to subsist on anything other than their natural grace. Both books contain extensive advice on how to introduce people to one another, remonstrate with an erring servant while in company, set a table for a five-course dinner, make sure your guests don't get bored, and so on. The only useful advice I got out of either book (other than that it's best not to eat corn-on-the-cob in public, which is just common sense anyway) is that “How do you do?” is the only greeting that is always acceptable. But then I can't quite imagine saying “How do you do?” to the new person on the pub-quiz team.

So these books are no bloody use to me, not just because I'm unlikely to be holding a bridge party any time soon (or ever, really: on top of all my other social ineptitudes I'm also shit at cards). I need considerably less celestial advice. Such as: when you arrive early for a meeting and there's only one other person there, do you have to talk to them? And, if one person is invited to the party but arrives with an entourage, how many of the hangers-on can be denied access to the catering? Are there any universally-applicable rules for making small talk with people with whom you have nothing in common except species? When is it not impolite to insist on a point because you know the other person is just dead wrong? Is it ever socially acceptable to fake narcolepsy? And, if it's at all possible to apologise for smacking someone in the nose with one's head, how does one go about doing it?

Thanks, Hepsibah – I'm a quivering heap of social insecurity after all this time spent perusing etiquette manuals! There are thousands, literally thousands, of opportunities for fauxes pas that I hadn't even thought of before I started researching this post. On the other hand, now I know how to recover from an impertinent utterance from a young lady (though chance'd be a fine thing). As thanks for this – and I'm not being sarcastic, oddly enough – I'm offering you a choice of two potential topics for your next post: “On the Urge to Categorise Oneself”, or a take on at least three of the following: municipal tap-water; hunky gym assistants; baking; energy-saving lightbulbs; the change of season; moving house; and small dogs. Your deadline is Thursday morning, your limit is 600 words, and I am as always available if we need to negotiate anything. Anything at all. You know where to find me, H :-)

[flyoffthecuff-blog]

In descending order...

A bit of rush this week, thanks to my tottering workload and the fact that I sort of lost track of what day it was and consequently shot out of bed this morning with a startled cry of 'Oh God, how is it Wednesday already?'. Also, really, 'This Mortal Coil' is 100 words or less? Your faith in me is touching, Hepsibah, but I suspect somewhat unfounded.

1.This Mortal Coil: 

Some days, the world appears to have been created solely to irritate and enrage me. On other days, it's so beautiful that it's all I can do not to wander around. Most days, regardless, it's worth the effort. So I've mostly stopped wondering what the point of it all is. Insisting there must be a point won't ensure that there is one. And it pisses me off that we're fucking it up because we're too lazy to take proper care with it and each other. A lot of people are going to be very bloody surprised if it turns out there's no afterlife and this was the only chance they got. 

2.Elephants: 

I know why we conserve them, and I agree their social structures are remarkable, but my reaction to elephants, on television at least, is almost always an exasperated wail of “Oh God, not elephants again?” I just don't understand our  attachment to the things. We should pay more homage to their relatives, rock and tree hyraxes, manatees and dugongs, which are equally fascinating and  have the added benefit of being unable to trample you no matter how hard they try. Any species that chews as part of its threat display (I'm looking at you, procavia capensis) has to be worth more attention.

3.The Importance of Sharp Pencils: 

Without wandering too far into Auster territory, you can't write with a blunt pencil and if you can't write with a pencil what is the point of its existence? So, firstly, we need to keep our pencils pointy to avoid bringing people like me out in a philosophical cold sweat. Secondly, failing to sharpen one's pencils is a sign of chronic laziness. I never knew a kid at school who wrote with a blunt lead and went on to do anything more spectacular than produce offspring. The world belongs to those who sharpen their pencils: the precise, the ambitious, the careful. Or it should, anyway. 

4.Pretentiousness: 

I have a troubled relationship with pretentiousness. Most of the time it makes me want to snatch up the nearest easily-to-wield object and start laying about me until the guilty party (or parties, since where you find one pompous arse you will find two; it's the same principle as with doorstep missionaries and tarantulas)  is lying stunned on the floor.  But then every so often I find myself saying something so self-evidently up it's own arse that even as I hear myself speak I wish that Western society allowed for hara-kiri. 

5.An Inability to be Quiet in a Library: 

People, it's not rocket science: keep it down. It's not a fucking coffee-shop. If you want to talk, go elsewhere. Set your phone to silent. Do not type as though chipping letters into a rock-face. Take your social networking and your little black book and your street-cred, and your smoothie and your toffees and your steak-and-kidney pie, somewhere else. And also give some thought as to why you're bothering with a smoothie if you're going to consume shortcrust pastry anyway. 

I think that's pithy enough. It's difficult to be concise – or even coherent, let alone humourous - when I've consumed so much caffeine in the last 24 hours that I can feel my pulse in my eyeballs, so I apologise. Your challenge, whether or not you choose to accept it, is to write no more than 600 words, by Saturday midnight, on the subject “Oh, I Used to Love This Song!”. You can concentrate on a particular song or artist, or a number of either. The other criteria are yours to decide, but be sure to outline them in the post. Have at it, Easy H :-)

[flyoffthecuff-blog]

Hepsibah! I have two words for you...

Well done! 

You did it. You made me write about toilets. I swapped internet classifieds for indoor plumbing. To be honest this made me wail and beat my little head against my desk first thing this morning. But look, here it is!

Although I have the constitution of a camel, everyone else in my family, going back three generations, must apparently spend their lives within sprinting distance of a public convenience. There is no medical reason for this. They just have the bladders of small, frightened spaniels. No trip out of the house is complete without at least three – sometimes as many as six, depending on the number of Knights involved - forays into the netherworld of whatever mall, amusement park or bus station is on the itinerary. The obvious solution to this would be to develop some sort of mental map of WCs, possibly arranged by accessibility, cleanliness and likelihood of ending up mugged, bleeding and stuffed into a rubbish bin.   Another thing my relatives all signally lack, apart from adequate sphincter control, is a sense of direction, so it's no good saying “Meet me back here” - I have to go with them, because I do so hate to end the day filing missing-persons reports. What this means is that I have spent an inordinate amount of time hanging around public toilets, and not in a fun 1970s meet-new-people kind of way. 

All of this has made me a bit sour about the whole restroom thing, so as a rule I give them a skip while at the office. This presents it's own challenges, of course, but on the whole I am spared having to stare intently at the tiles while washing my hands, pretending that I didn't just hear my boss peeing like a racehorse in the next stall. Of course, I could handle it if it was just my boss, but it's everyone, isn't it? And the etiquette is impossible. Obviously it's not done to greet your fellow hand-washer unless you already know them, but since it's impolite to completely ignore someone if you're the only two people in the room, what level of interaction is acceptable? The brisk nod-and-glance? The curt, “Good day”? A brief but pertinent remark about the weather? I'm in favour of just sending courtesy to the wall and treating anyone else like they're painted on the wall. Rude? Yes. Do I care? No. Would you? If the answer's yes, you're oversensitive. Sorry.

The Tate Modern in London found an interesting way around this issue in the early 2000s by simply sorting the shy sheep from the gonzo-baby goats. Italian/American artist Monica Bonvicini built “Don't Miss a Sec”, a glass toilet cubicle placed just outside the gallery. The user could see out, but nobody could see in. Small consolation, this, since because the outer surface was reflective there was always a crowd gathered around it, pulling faces and knocking on the glass in the hopes of startling whoever was inside. If you can take a slash under those fishbowl-from-hell conditions, clearly, you're not going to flinch at the idea of making washbasin small-talk with the dishy new person from the accounts department...

My revenge will be sweet, Hepsibah! Sweet, but not immediate. In the meantime I think we need to work on our penalty system.

Your next topic: “How to get what you want out of your medical aid without threatening them with fire.” You have until Sunday, and no more than 600 words. 

[flyoffthecuff-blog]

Oh Hepsibah...Was that a gauntlet I just heard being thrown down?

Since you asked:

Long, long ago, my mother sat me down and told me never to get a tattoo. This was something of a stupid move on her part because the possibility hadn't entered my mind until then and hasn't left since. But being the contemplative type, here I am hurtling blithely into my late twenties with not a single bit of body art to show for it. Hey, tattoos are expensive (if you want them the right way up and spelled correctly) and I've had other things to pay for, like university. Or at least, that's the reason I give, for fear of seeming even more breathtakingly lame than necessary. Truthfully it's just that I can't make up my mind. It's not that it hurts, or that I'm worried about changing my mind and having to get it sanded off. I'm okay with pain - one thing being accident-prone teaches you is if you cuss enough, it'll stop hurting - and if you're worried about wanting it gone ten years down the line you're probably not ready for the commitment anyway. The real reason I don't look like I've been rolling around on the classified section is...overthink. I can't decide what to get or where to get it. Given free reign and someone else's bank account, as well as a plentiful supply of topical anaesthetic, I'd be all coloured in within six months. My self-control, usually an iron clamp on any fun decision I might make, would finally go on that cruise it's been wanting for so long, and I'd end up looking like a bus-shelter in gang territory. The thing is, I can't decide what I want. I want everything. I can't walk past a well-designed poster without thinking, hey, that'd make a nice tattoo...And even if I somehow managed to shortlist, there's the question of where it would all go. There's a finite supply of skin surface available, even less than you think: a lot of you is out of bounds unless you're spectacularly indifferent to agony or want to go to work in long sleeves every day of your life. You're okay with your masseuse having Quetzalcoatl on her forearm, but what about your child's fifth-grade teacher? A lot of people still equate tattoos with an increased likelihood of having shanked someone in the shower queue, so better make sure you have the requisite amount of zen to live with the funny looks...

Right, Hepsibah Ada! I hope you brought your A-game. In return, I'm going to come over all Sphinxy and insist that you riddle me this: what is it that makes me keep on watching reality TV shows like “Toddlers and Tiaras” even though I practically need to be darted by a vet afterwards? You have until the end of the week (lies; you have until Thursday), and no more than 500 words. Try not to hunt the exclamation mark into extinction while you're at it, Easy H.