A new blog thing featuring David Jandrell's (academic/author/musician) perspective on the world an' all that.
Please note that these views (esp. those about prog rock!) are not necessarily the views of either Jon or the rest of the band (though the party piece - ho! ho! - resonates with Jon more than a little!)
David Jandrell (academic/author/musician) - his perspective on the world an' all that.
Deck the Halls With Boughs of Holly
I suppose it all started when I was about three – or when I was able to press downwards with enough pressure to depress ivories, I’m not sure which came first. My grandmother was a piano teacher, we had a piano. I guess it was inevitable.
I was taught to play by a man called Cedric Hurrell who lived in Ivor Street, Cwmcarn, not my grandmother, and I got to something like Grade 4 before I finally managed to convince my parents that I hated playing the piano more than the words in my vocabulary could describe. I didn’t have that many words at the time, I mean, in those days I couldn’t even spell palaeontologist – and now I are one!
My attention had been grabbed by these things called guitars. I guess this would have been circa 1963 when I noticed these come to the front of the stage. Prior to that, I was aware of their existence – you saw them usually in the front row ‘stalls’ of ‘big bands’. They were always the very large cumbersome looking Gretchs or Gibsons, you know, the ones with the ‘f’ holes in them.
Suddenly, on TV, you began to see 3 blokes standing there as bold as brass, strumming these things and singing with a drummer behind them. I believe in those days they were known as ‘popular beat combos’ and they were always in black and white.
They sang three minute ‘pop’ songs and I was never really into it much at that time. Whilst I was intrigued by my newly found instrument, I was still influenced by my classical training and my favourites in those days were the heavy Russians; Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Mahler and Bartok – even though Mahler and Bartok were neither Russian nor heavy at that time. They still aren’t.
I never really liked the twee, pointless little ditties they sang. It was always about somebody’s baby had left them and other crises which I couldn’t really care about, no matter how much I tried. I was interested in the music though – they way it way constructed and what each person was doing in order to produce the song.
I found lyrics a barrier to my quest to analyse what was going on and tried frantically to ‘blot’ out the singing in order to listen to the music. My opinion in those days, and these days, is that singing actually ruins a good song.
My parents had a similar problem with lyrics – they hated them as well, but for a different reason. They used to say;
“Blinkin’ racket! All that screaming and shouting. That’s not singing! You can’t understand a word they’re singing!”
The thing that confused me about that was the fact that my parents blasted Gregorian chants and opera out of our radiogram during this period of my life – and they couldn’t understand a word of that either!
Anyway, getting back to guitars. I decided I wanted to play a guitar and that was it. My parents told me that I should carry on with the guitar because; “If you can play the piano, you can play any instrument.” That is a very popular little saying – heard it loads of time. Doesn’t make any sense though. But when your parents tell you things, you believe them don’t you?
I often wondered what would happen if you gave Keith Emerson a trombone and said;
“Go on son, give us a rendition of ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ on that!”
So, I carried on with the piano. And then, and I guess I would have been about 9 by this time, I acquired my first guitar. I can’t remember where I got it from, but it was my first, and I loved it more than all the words in my vocabulary, at the time, could describe. My vocabulary was about the same as the last time I mentioned it, and I still couldn’t spell palaeontologist!
Whilst there was a plethora of piano teachers around at that time – teachers of other instruments were scarce – in fact there weren’t any. There was a paper and comb player who did impromptu sessions in Cwmcarn Club on Saturday nights, but these performances were booze related and he didn’t actively ‘teach’ people how to do it.
There was a spoons player in Abercarn – a Squire Reg Jones who was famous throughout the eastern valleys and ………….er …………..that was it.
So, I had to teach myself.
I based my ‘learning plan’ on something I’d noticed when playing the piano.
I played very formal exercises during this period and short, light classical pieces and when I had played them a few times I found I was able to do them without looking at the sheet music. This was, ‘a very bad habit’ according to Mr Hurrell when I went to him for my lesson. The main reason for this was that I used to ‘add’ bits and sometimes even take bits away – I always thought that my versions were better!
The reason why I was able to do this is that I realised that if you listened to the notes, they would all be higher or lower than the previous one. Easy innit?
So, if you could find the first note, all you had to do was identify whether the next one was higher – in which case you’d move right on the keyboard, and if the note was lower, you’d go to the left.
And this is the way I learned to play the guitar, by listening and moving up or down the fret-board according the individual notes for whatever I’m trying to play.
And now, 40 years on I just know where I have to put my fingers to enable me to produce the things I want to.
People have asked me to teach them how to do it, but I can’t – not unless they have 40 years to spare.
So I guess I can play the guitar – to a fashion. The problems start when I start playing with other people. Well, initially things go very well. People say things like;
“That was good Dai, can you play that again?”
That’s my biggest nightmare, because generally I can’t! I can play something similar at a push, but the same? No chance.
I’ve left bands because of this.
One band I played with gave me a tape which contained their favourite versions of the songs we did and asked me to learn the guitar solos because they wanted them played like they were on the tape every time we did them. I listened to the tape and we had a conversation. It went like this.
“Have you listened to the tape Dai?”
“Yes.”
“What do you reckon?”
“I can’t play that!”
“What do you mean you can’t play that – it’s you playing!”
“I know that, but I can’t play those, note for note as I played them before.”
“But we want you to.”
“Well I’m not going to sit down and work out each solo as I played them before, I’ll just do them off the cuff as I usually do.”
“But we want them to be the same every time we play.”
“Well if you want that, when we have a gig, why don’t we just send the tape to the venue and we can go to the pictures instead?”
I don’t think that’s what music is all about – do you?
As I was saying.
My classical upbringing meant that the pop tunes of the 60’s didn’t really mean much to me. Neither did those of the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and naughties, for that matter.
I’d go as far as to say that I went out of my way to avoid listening to it.
Sometimes you couldn’t avoid listening to the pop that was current for the day. In the 70’s and early 80’s, when I frequented discos, you would be bombarded with whatever was in the charts at the time, so, on the whole I was present when quite a lot of this was being played.
Occasionally I’d hear something that was interesting and it would spur me into asking someone ‘in the know’ what the record was. That happened lots of times but, at the time of writing I can’t recall any bands from that time that warranted a mention. The interest must have surely been short lived.
The trouble is, I never watched Top of the Pops or listened to Radio 1. I guess I would have had a lot more knowledge about these things if I had.
A good example of my ‘lack of awareness’ of the ‘music scene’ is illustrated perfectly when myself and my partner ‘took on’ another couple at a ‘Seventies Pop’ version of Trivial Pursuit. Everyone wanted to be on my side on the basis that; “Dai has 8000 albums, and plays the guitar – he’s bound to win.”
The reality was, I was hopeless.
After playing for 4 hours, I had actually got one correct answer – and that was a ‘guess the year’ one. I had a one in ten chance of getting those right and I managed one in four hours. Dreadful!
I didn’t even know Beatles’ songs. Everyone was amazed. I wasn’t.
My friend couldn’t understand why I didn’t know any of the songs on the basis that it was ‘our era’.
What did he mean by that? Did he decide to stop listening to music on the 31st of December 1979 or was there another landmark that heralded the end of his music-listening career?
I haven’t got ‘an era’. I started listening to music when I was about three and I haven’t stopped yet. I just suppose it depends on what you listen to.
I mentioned the Beatles. This next bit always floors people – I’ve said it a thousand times when I’ve been on this topic and no-one ever believes me. So here it is.
I never liked the Beatles. People think I’m joking when I say that. People think I say it to cause a stir or to be controversial. No, none of that – just didn’t like them. Still don’t.
The Beatles and the Stones were the two ‘big boys’ at that time. I didn’t particularly like the Stones either, but if someone held a gun to my head and asked me to choose I’d have gone for the Stones. I would listen to the Beach Boys out of choice though.
My favourite single of all time is “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys. Fantastic! The variations, tempo changes, the theramin, the way it was constructed – a masterpiece!
Even so, I was pretty much disinterested with the music of the swingin’ sixties, I was mainly still in classical mode …………….. until …………………
My first real interest in the non-classical music (know as underground) at the time was when I heard a band called The Nice. They played music for music’s sake and not as a matrix to house the pointless self indulgent lyrics like;
“Oh my baby’s left me ooooh ooooh oooh
What I am I gonna doooh ooooh ooooh
I love you so much I can’t poooh ooooh ooooh
Ooooh ooooh ooooh ooooh ooooh!”
Yes, it’s number one – it’s top of the pops, as it ‘appens guys and gals eurghh eurghh eurghh now then, now then. It’s “I love you so much I can’t pooh” how’s about that then? Goodness gracious!
From there I quite easily made the transition to people like Egg, King Crimson, Van der Graaf Generator, ELP, Refugee, Genesis et al. I’m still listening to ‘prog rock’ as its known these days. Full of big chords, crashing symbols, swirling synths, mellotrons ….. aahh bliss!
I’d go as far as to say that if someone brought out a cd and the only lyrics were;
‘That Dai Jandrell is nothing but a great big fat slob’,
as long as there was plenty of guitar and synthesiser in it and it lasted for about 40 minutes, I’d probably like it. In fact, thinking about it, I might even do it myself one day unless someone like YES or the Floyd beat me to it.
The nature of my job means that I have to wear a shirt and tie. This causes massive problems for a number of people – me being one of them.
By far, the most difficult thing I do on any working day, is put a shirt on. This is due solely to my fingernails. They are very long, well on my right hand anyway. Rose, my partner calls them ‘talons’. I use them for playing my guitar.
Some people have asked me why I don’t use a plectrum – this is because I grow my own and I very rarely lose them. I was always losing plectra when I used them – usually by dropping them in the sound-hole in acoustic guitars. Have you ever tried getting a plectrum out of an acoustic guitar?
I also find it impossible to pick coins up from flat surfaces for the same reason – but that’s another story.
Anyway, back to shirts. The problem is doing the buttons up. I reckon I could have an extra hour in bed in the mornings if I didn’t have to put a shirt on. And the worst shirts are those that have buttons on the ‘point’ of the collar. A nightmare!
So I’ve got the shirt on, fully buttoned. I add the tie. Job done. Problem solved for me. This is where the problems for the other people start.
These problems are all about colours and patterns. I don’t understand anything about colours and patterns. Not when it comes to shirts and ties anyway.
The technique I use when selecting my shirt is to grab one from the wardrobe – usually when I am looking somewhere else, maybe to locate my shoes or at the clock to see exactly how much time I have to get ready. My ‘tie selection’ is remarkably similar – a random ‘grab’ from the tie rack.
It is this ‘hit and miss’ selection method that causes the problems for the other people.
The trouble is, they very rarely match. These people are never shy in coming forward with their comments on my ‘colour scheme’ of the day. My reactions to these outbursts are pretty much the same.
In July 1986, I bought a box of Tic-Tacs, (mint flavour). When I was getting near the end of the box, I poured some into the palm of my hand to eat and realised that the box was now empty, so I decided to put one back to eat later on. I ate the remaining Tic-Tacs safe in the knowledge that I had one left.
When ‘later-on’ finally arrived, I decided to eat my last Tic-Tac, and I discovered that something had happened when I put the last one back into the box. I don’t know what had actually happened, but I know that I hadn’t put it back in the box as it was empty. Maybe I dropped it. Maybe it had slipped through my fingers and was lurking somewhere in the lining of my pocket. Whatever had happened, the true fate of my last Tic-Tac was going to be a mystery for ever.
Quite frankly, I have worried more about that Tic-Tac than I have ever or ever will worry about my shirt/tie colour scheme!
Nevertheless, despite my attempts to explain to my critics how little this means to me I still get barracked as soon as I arrive at work.
“Get dressed in the dark this morning Dai?”
This is the most common greeting.
Of course, I need an explanation and we have a little conversation. I goes like this;
“Problem with my colour scheme?”
“That tie doesn’t go with that shirt!”
“Why?”
“Because they clash!”
Lets analyse that. When I ask my critics the exact nature of the complaint, I am told that the colours don’t ‘go’! When I ask why, I am told that they ‘clash’.
Neither of my questions have been answered.
When I ask ‘why’ the colours don’t go together, ‘because they clash’ is not an answer. It’s merely saying that they don’t go together in a different way. I want to know why they clash. There must be a reason.
I think that the main reason is because people believe what they hear without ever thinking it through. They have been told that these colours ‘don’t go’ and they stick with that for the rest of their lives.
If someone can give me a rational explanation as to why they clash and I can understand that there is a physical reason why I should not wear a striped shirt with a paisley tie, I will be a little more selective about my attire. Until then, I will continue to dress in the way that I do.
Some of the more articulate of my critics, try to explain my lack of fashion sense by quoting a little poem. It goes like this;
“Blue and green should never be seen,
Unless there’s another colour in between.”
Well, if this is true, what about bluebells? If they feel strongly about this little poem and they want to take it up seriously, then they should be prepared to cross swords with God! I mean, you can’t criticise his or her fashion sense can you?
I reckon my shirt and tie combination is the new black anyway.
I would have been the mid to late 1970s when I heard it first. It may have happened before that, I just noticed it then. By the mid 1970s, my vocabulary had increased exponentially since the last time I mentioned it – and I could spell palaeontologist!
Most of the words that I had added to my vocabulary were scientific ones as I have become a scientist by this time – which is probably why I noticed it.
“What did you notice, Dai?”, I hear you say.
I noticed that advertisers had started to use scientific words and terms in their spiel.
I suspect that this was because advertisers thought that introducing these terms into their ‘jingles’ added credibility to the products they were hawking. I guess it worked because adverts today are peppered with ‘scientific words’ that give the consumer very little information about the product, yet make it sound good.
Probably the most used at the time, and still in use is the word ‘aerobic’.
People did everything aerobically – they went to work aerobically, climbed the stairs aerobically, exercised aerobically. They even had classes where people danced around to music. This was called aerobics.
Aerobics classes were, basically, a disco in the day without booze and no scrap in the car park. And someone led the dancing. You didn’t get that in proper night-time discos.
At the moment I am actually writing this in an aerobic environment – I’m not Hercule Poirot but I am 100% certain that you are reading this in an aerobic environment as well. Unless you are currently residing in a vacuum.
The thing is you see, aerobic used to mean ‘in the presence of air’. Well, it still does. The only thing is it now means lots of other things as well.
I have never been in a vacuum so I can state categorically that everything I have done so far (and I’m 53) has been done aerobically. I guess you are the same.
One of my favourites is polyunsaturates. What a fantastic word! What a word to ‘chuck’ into advertising spiel – genius! Who knows what it means?
But, there it was, right in the middle of a margarine commercial. Suddenly everyone ‘knew’ that if something didn’t have polyunsaturates in it, it wasn’t worth eating and people spent hours scouring the small print on the packaging to weed out the products that didn’t have polyunsaturates in them.
“I only have stuff these days that have so many polyunsaturates in that you need to be Geoff Capes to push lid on.”
Personally I prefer monosaturates, but I’m a bit funny like that. And these ‘free radicals’ that everyone talks about – I’ve always had to pay for mine!
So the scientific boom took off and advertisers clambered over themselves in order to find a more complicated sounding word. And then suddenly …… they found it …….
Monosodium Glutamate – Wow! What a corker! Where can I get some from?
Shoppers now had a new word to discuss at checkouts. If you were really lucky you could find ‘stuff’ that was packed with polyunsaturates and had monosodium glutamate in it as well. Once you had identified products containing both, you rang all your friends and you bought only those until the next word came along.
And, these words came along – too many to mention here. That’s because I have to concentrate on the best, most profitable scientific term to be exploited to date.
Organic.
I doubt whether they’ll ever beat organic as a misleading licence to print money.
Everything you can eat is organic. If it wasn’t, you couldn’t eat it.
There are things that are organic that you can’t eat, but you can’t eat anything that isn’t. At least, I can’t think of any at the moment.
The word organic simply means that suppliers can stick an extra fiver a pound onto something that they ‘claim’ is organic – even though the product is organic anyway!
“Can I have a pound of carrots please?”
“Certainly madam, would you like these organic ones?”
“No, I think I’ll try the stainless steel ones over there …..oh and I’ll have two pounds of granite tomatoes while I’m at it. Didn’t like the garnet mica-schist ones I had last week, they were a bit gritty.”
“Anything else madam.”
“Yes please anything that has polyunsaturates, monosodium glutamate and pro-V vitamins in it. Gotta be careful these days innit. Global warming see. Oh Aye!”
Where will it end?
Perhaps ………………………
“Don’t miss Jon Airdrie’s new album. It’s marvellous. Lots of great songs, great flute, singing, harp and packed full of trioxydiphenolpolysynthacetyldistratalamine!”
And monosodium glutamate.
It’s organic ‘an all.
Honest.
Ah, the language of the office – bliss !
I first heard it when I joined a new company in the mid 80’s. I’d been given the customary tour and been introduced to everyone and told what they did.
A very common part of this exercise comes just after an introduction like;
“Here’s Bob, he’s in charge of production”
And, after all the pleasantries with Bob, he walks off and the tour guide says, when Bob is out of earshot, of course;
“Watch him. He’s an absolute swine. It’s a pity really ‘cos he used to be one of the boys, you know a great laugh. But as soon as they made him up to manager …….”
You know what’s coming next.
Anyway back to ‘Offlese’.
When I got back into the office, the big boss arrived, extended his hand and said;
“So, you must be David. Welcome aboard.”
I thought, “Welcome aboard? I wasn’t aware that I’d just joined the Navy!”
Since then I’ve taken part in ‘thought showers’ where everyone ‘touched base’ to ‘make sure we were all singing from the same songsheet’ before shinning up the proverbial ‘greasy pole’. You know, ‘making sure we had all our ducks in a row’.
I thought I’d better become fluent in this language ‘PDQ’ to be honest. Didn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of the ‘fat man in the canoe’ did I? This involved two strategies, ‘blue sky thinking’ and the sort that is done ‘outside the box’. If I was going to get ‘up to speed’ – it was a ‘big ask’ I know, but I was ‘on the case 24/7’.
Anyway, after I had ‘drilled down’ all the inappropriate non-offlese terms, I was ‘going forward’ in my quest to avoid being the ‘Dilbert’ in the company.
It nearly went ‘pear shaped’ a few times but I managed to ‘ramp up’ at the ‘eleventh
hour’
Even though I had always been taught to avoid clichés like the plague, I had quite a ‘bumpy ride’ and when all said and done I ‘upscaled’ by listening to other speakers and I managed to ‘wash the face’ of my problem – it was a sort of ‘quid pro quo’ strategy that ‘put it to bed’ adequately.
When I thought I had the ‘bandwidth’ I decided to ‘run it by’ the ‘man in the chair’ by arranging some ‘face time’ – luckily enough he had a ‘window’ and he was able to see me. He’s a bit of a ‘crackberry’ but I decided to give it ‘my best shot’ – If my ‘arse was on the line, I didn’t want any cock-ups’.
Fortunately the ‘one-to-one’ was a success and I was able to converse with my colleagues in such a way that I was understood and my language didn’t become a ‘negative value driver’ to them.
In the end, I became ‘head honcho’ of the ‘whole shebang’ and ‘wore the crown’ until the owners decided to ‘draw a line under it’ and the ‘whole caboodle’ went ‘down the pan’ as a result of ‘corporate downsizing’.
Now I am in a totally different environment where ‘offlese’ is hardly spoken at all.
I have noticed, however, that people use another sort of language which could be described as ‘offish’.
Offish is a very impersonal way of communicating and you can hear it anywhere.
One of the most annoying phrases, is the throwaway; ‘whatever!’ response made to any comment that the recipient is not happy with.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you, but we’re going to have to amputate your legs.”
“Whatever!”
This comment normally follows the adoption of a particular pose – arm outstretched, other hand on hip, a tapping of a foot and eyes raised to the heavens.
Another one is the equally annoying ‘gap after like’ method of conversing.
“And he walked in, right, and I was like ……………………… (long gap accompanied by a facial gesture supposed to convey what the person was ‘like’)
“And he was like ……………….(another gap, same as above)
“And the atmosphere, it was like …………(ditto)
“I said to him, I said ‘great to see you again’ ……………..(long pause) ………..Not!”
“And he was like …………………..(etc).
I can’t understand why people keep telling me they’ll see me later. It’s a popular parting greeting these days. I was on my way home the other night and I stopped to exchange pleasantries with someone I know. His last words to me were; “See you later.” He lives 40 miles away from Cwmcarn!
I wondered if he was going to pop round the house that evening. He didn’t. I stayed in though in case he did.
I don’t know whether people think I’m a bit thick. I’m beginning to think they do. I don’t know why, but nowadays people seem to want to confirm that I’ve understood what they’ve just said by tagging on a “D’ya know what I mean?” to the end of every sentence.
“I don’t want another drink, I’ve got work in the morning. D’ya know what I mean?”
“They’re a good band, but I wouldn’t go to see them live. D’ya know what I mean?”
When I reply;
“No I didn’t understand a word of that mate, can you say it again, only in not such complicated terms”, people look at me as if I’m from Mars!
Now if someone said;
“The obliquity of the ecliptic is not a fixed quantity but changing over time” in mixed company, I think that a “D’ya know what I mean?” would be an appropriate tag on.
This is a complicated term.
But there’s nothing intrinsically difficult about,
“I watch Emmerdale, but I prefer Coronation Street.” D’ya know what I mean?”
I know what this means, my vocabulary is such that I can grasp statements like that.
I can spell palaeontologist.
Party
I love a good party ……………….. sorry, I’ll start again. I hate a good party. I also hate bad parties, mediocre parties and anything else in between. The word ‘party’
makes me shudder, especially if preceded with the term, ‘Will you come to my?’
Apart from driving cars, parties cause me more stress than anything else.
“But you are supposed to enjoy parties!” I hear you say.
Well, I guess people do enjoy themselves at parties, but it’s not compulsory.
I think people ‘enjoy’ themselves at parties because they think it is compulsory.
They go into ‘enjoyment mode’ as soon as they arrive at the venue – ‘enforced glee’ if you like.
“Yippee, here we are! So nice to see you! Let’s start enjoying ourselves!”
And they don a paper hat and bounce off into the ‘crowd’ making strange whooping sounds whilst firing party poppers at anything that moves.
I can’t seem to be able to start ‘enjoying’ myself to order – unlike most.
“Right lads, enjoying yourselves, on the count of three. One ….. two …… wait for it …. wait for it, …..too soon Atkins, get to the back of the queue. Three!! Begin now!!”
I have spent hours staring aghast at groups of people doing the ‘Birdie Song’, ‘Agadoo’ and that one where they all sit on the floor rowing to the Hawaii 5-0 tune. Fascinating!
And then suddenly one of them will spot me and come over.
“Don’t sit there on your own Dai, come over here with us and enjoy yourself.”
The sheer arrogance of it. The whole concept that I would enjoy myself if I ‘came over there with them’ is absurd. “This is a party Dai, you need to enjoy yourself. The trouble with you is you don’t know how to enjoy yourself and we’re the people to show you how.”
I’m 53 now and I’ve enjoyed myself thousands of times. The trouble is, none of those times have been at a party.
I don’t like the people who force themselves onto me in order to ‘aide’ my enjoyment. They try to drag me physically onto the dance-floor when it’s obvious I don’t want to. I object to that.
I also object to the fact that when they are trying to do it, they are so drunk that their eyeballs look as if they’re about to change places with each other at any moment whilst they’re blowing those hooter things, you know – they look like a Swiss-roll that uncurls when you blow into it. Usually has feather on the end.
Now, let’s get on to weddings. Obviously a big day for those getting wed, but for me it’s an utter nightmare.
A typical wedding itinerary is;
1) Arrive at the church, hang about and exchange pleasantries with other people who are also hanging about.
2) Go inside the church and hang about until the bride arrives (late by tradition)
3) Participate in the service (half an hour of real activity, although contains 10 minutes of hanging about while they sign the book)
4) Go outside the church and hang about while photos are taken and aunties kiss the couple.
5) Go to the reception venue and hang about until the bride and groom arrive.
6) Hang around inside the venue with the bride and groom, until dinner is ready.
7) Participate in the reception (this is the second real activity of the day – but is interjected with several periods of hanging about, between courses, speeches etc)
8) Largest period of hanging about yet – clearing away the dinner stuff and setting up the disco.
9) The Party! Agadoo, Birdie Song, Hawaii 5-0 thing et al. Stopped half way through for the buffet.
10) Disco continues after buffet. Scrap starts. Scrap normally heralds the end of the festivities.
A lot of hanging about. I don’t like hanging about either.
I like looking at the factions at the wedding reception. You have;
1) The bride’s family – top tablers
2) The groom’s family – top tablers
3) The bride’s friends – all on one table
4) The groom’s friends - all on one table
5) The people who the bride works with - all on one table
6) The people who the groom works with - all on one table
7) The ‘others’ - all on one table
The others? There always seems to be a group of people at weddings that don’t fall into any of the categories 1-6 in the list above. These are the ‘nobody knows who the Hell they are’ faction. They are at every wedding and don’t get involved with any of the others. In reality, the occupants of the other tables don’t mix either. They conduct their own festivities within the confines of their own table. They’re like satellites orbiting the ‘top table’. The merging of the tables’ occupants only comes when the disco starts and they venture onto the floor to jiggle around to whatever drivel the DJ decides to bombard his audience with.
All participants in this exercise must be made aware of a major Health & Safety hazard here – the children, formerly employed as page boys and bridesmaids, will be holding hands running around uncontrollably and weaving themselves around all obstacles – furniture and people alike, in some sort of ‘time’ with the music, like a great big snake, only more deadly than any encountered by the likes of Irwin and Attenborough.
It is the period after the buffet when the disco gets going for the second time that ‘bonding’ of the factions takes place with earnest. This is more generally known as ‘the scrap’ and these, previously autonomous groups merge into one and really ‘get close’ to each other. By this time, of course, the feral children will have discarded their shoes and are now sliding around the floor independently of each other. They will have realised that you can slide farther if you are not connected as a snake and will pursue their newly found skill until they are either stopped by a parent or collide with an object, such as an item of furniture or another human being.
Anyway, enough of that.
On the whole, I am always likely to decline an invitation to a party because I dislike them so much. The trouble is, when you decline an invitation there follows an inquest as to why you won’t go.
I think that if people are kind enough to invite me, they should then be gracious enough to accept my ‘thanks but no thanks’ response.
So, although I am not obliged to explain my reason why, it’s never good enough.
For some reason the term; “I don’t like parties.” becomes either misunderstood or misconstrued to mean something else.
Misunderstood? – perhaps by the time the term leaves my mouth and before it reaches the ears of the person I’m speaking to, it has mysteriously been translated into Latin or Klingon or something, because it is normally countered with;
“What do you mean, you don’t like parties?”
Misconstrued? – He didn’t mean that, there’s obviously some sinister reason why he won’t go and he doesn’t like to say. Perhaps he doesn’t like me!
It seems that it is acceptable to refuse some requests but unacceptable for others;
Quiz time
It is OK no answer ‘no’ to some of these questions. Which are they?
“Would you like to come to my house and hang from the ceiling by your toenails?”
“Could you look after my cobra while I pop down the Spar for some cornflour?”
“Can I take a few snaps of your missus in the nude to show the lads in work?”
“Do you want to come to my party?”
Answer
The first three
D’ya know what I mean?
Tra-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la'Tis the season to be jolly Tra-la-la-la-la, la-la-la- whoa! No, no, no! “Oh surely not Christmas, Dai?”, I hear you say. ‘Fraid so. Christmas is a time of great ambivalence in the vicinity of ‘me’. Can’t really decide which way the needle on the swingometer would go on this one.On the one hand, I get time off work. Which is good.On the other hand, the rest of it is bad. Very bad. I work ‘office hours’ which means that everything is closed when I leave in the morning, and closed when I come home. That means that if I want to go to the bank, the dentist, the post office, ring the tax office, renew my TV licence etc., I have to book a day off. Quite a lot of these things I can do on a Saturday, so Saturdays are written off trudging around all the places that I can’t visit through the week. Even then, there are things that I can only do on weekdays, so they don’t get done unless I use valuable annual leave days in order to do them. So, when Christmas comes, I find I have weekdays off – marvellous. And then I find everywhere is closed …….. because it’s Christmas. That’s not the worst thing about Christmas. There are lots of worse things about Christmas, the trouble is I can’t decide which of the worse things is the worst. Perhaps it’s the relentless barrage of back-to-back ‘family films’ where American children save the world over and over again. Plot : their parents will be separated at the start of the film and they will have a little dog that goes missing after five minutes.An hour and a half later, just after they’ve saved the world, their parents will fall in love again and as the ‘lovey-dovey’ strings come in to herald the start of the end titles, the dog suddenly appears from a manhole, safe and sound. “Aw, there’s lovely”Just time for a quick break dominated by Ker-Plunk, Mousetrap and My Little Pony ads, before another remarkably similar ‘American children save the world again’ film starts. These are interjected occasionally by British films such as The Great Escape and the Wizard of Oz – sorry that’s about an American child saving something. And there’s a dog in it.So it’s just one British film then. But it’s always those two. Perhaps it’s the Slade song. Everywhere you go it’s blasting through tannoys and piped into lifts and public toilets – normally comes as a package with classics such as the Wizzard song, and the plethora of other Christmas ditties that are supposed to ‘get us in the mood’. Gets me in a mood! Perhaps it’s the droves of frantic shoppers who swarm into Newport and Cardiff like herds of stampeding buffalo so that they can buy ……….. anything. And they’ll be yelling into mobile phones ;“Where are you now? I’m in Smiths, I’ve got the X-Box and the DVD and the 139 inch flat screen, the entire Simpsons episodes box set, the Wii, the Fender Stratocaster, the I-Pod and the MP3 player for Jamie. Shall I get Amy’s Wii here? They’ve got two left? Oh you’ve got one. Great. Did you get her laptop and the digi-cam? And the new mobile with the video and built-in DVD player, you know the one that cooks your tea for you when you get home? Good. I’ll just pop over the jewellers for their main presents, then all we have to do is get something for their stockings. Oh, and they haven’t got the Duffy CD, perhaps we can nip over to Bristol, they’re bound to have it over there. Yeah, see you back at the car.” Or perhaps it’s the woman who can see that the shop she wants to enter is crammed solid to the front door with people. The aisles are full, people are queuing to get out, it’s worse than the Black Hole of Calcutta – and she is trying to force her way in, with a pushchair! She will probably have three squealing kids hanging off each arm as well. She will be ‘empathising’ with their obvious distress by saying something like; “If you don’t shut up, you can stay at nannies tonight, and you won’t have no Christmas dinner neither!” If I decided to walk into an empty shop with a wheelbarrow full of pigeon droppings, they’d probably ask me to leave. Why? I’d cause less problems. If there’s anyone out there who can explain the mentality of someone who does that, please get in touch. By that I mean ‘try to get into an already crowded shop with a pushchair’ – not a barrow full of pigeon droppings, although both actions throw serious doubts on the perpetrators’ sanity Maybe it’s the parties – I won’t dwell much on this topic as I have mentioned these before, but it’s ‘party time plus VAT’ at Christmas!The first, and for many the last over the Christmas period, is the works ‘do’. This is where a whole conglomeration of people, who have nothing whatsoever in common apart from the fact that they work together, are thrown together for a ‘social event’. So you’ll have seasoned drinkers and people who rarely bother, guzzling beer together as if it’s going out of fashion.The end result – the whole payroll are howling drunk , usually before the meal is served, and the garbled conversations throughout will be about work – because that’s the only thing they know about each other. This is an ideal opportunity for drunken members of staff to tell their line managers what they really think of them, and for the ‘aggression gene’ to be triggered into action – owned by those who think that they turn into Mike Tyson after three and a half pints of lager, and attack the first person who they think are ‘looking at them funny!’It will also be an opportunity for the office lothario to use the office ‘do’ as a hunting ground to ‘add a few notches’ to his well hacked bedpost. On the other hand, it might be the daft things people say – one of my favourites is; “Oh we love Christmas morning, watching the kids opening their presents.” Watching the kids opening their presents! What on earth does that mean?Well I actually do know what it means, (my vocabulary has increased exponentially and as such I can now spell micropalaeontologist), I just can’t understand the fascination of it.I haven’t got kids myself but I don’t think I could see how much of a big deal this is.Perhaps someone who has kids may like to invite me round to their house on a Christmas morning to watch their children opening their presents and maybe I can see if there’s anything in it. And what’s the protocol? – would I return the invitation by asking them to pop round my house one morning to watch me opening my mail, or maybe observe me putting the shopping away when we come back from Morrisons? According to most parents, kids have more fun out of the boxes that these presents came in that they ever did from their contents! Perhaps it’s the carol singers. These are really irritating. Nobody does it properly – they think they can arrive on your doorstep, sing three quarters of the first line of a well known carol and then you are obliged to shower them with money and platefuls of hot mince-pies covered in clotted cream.They do it backwards these days, and that really annoys me – they knock the door and start singing when you answer it, and never a great rendition either: “Good King Wencelas looked outDum de doo de da da” …………………………gradually fizzles out, accompanied by a ‘give us some money’ gesture. Perhaps it’s the 14-17year old hoodies who don’t even bother to learn the first line of the carols they ‘hum’ when you answer the door – they are too busy trying to hold themselves up whilst trying to get you to fund their next flagon of White Lightening or whatever is the most popular ‘yoof’ tipple of the day, nowadays. Another really irritating thing about it all is the way that the media controls people. Christmas is a prime example.Poor old Joe Public, apart from having to find the cash to pay for the mortgage, gas, electricity, car, water, TV, insurances, food and everything else his family use throughout the year, has two BIG things to set his sights on. Woes betide him if he fails on either of these, well, on any of the others as well, but these are the ones everyone notices, the main ones.They’re the summer holidays and Christmas. So, he’s been saving hand over fist for (revisit paragraph recounting the person in Smith’s on the mobile), to ensure that he has ‘met his requirements’ for the occasion and earned his Christmas dinner. He’s done it. All the family are happy, he’s had his dinner – found a 10p in the pudding! The queen’s speech has finished …and ....the first advert after the queens speech is …….for Thomson holidays! Poor old Joe gets about 18seconds of respite before the media give him just a little nudge, as if to say; “Well Christmas is gone now mate and if you haven’t got everything by now it’s too late. Put it behind you – hey, don’t forget your holidays, that’s the next thing you have to strive for. Christmas has been a success, now don’t let them down – make sure they have a goodun this summer!” And do you know what? Even though people are pressured throughout the year to provide Christmas, holidays, a home, service bills, the car – it seems that the only thing they have to worry about is if my tie matches my shirt. Yes, I think it would be fair to say that I’m not a huge fan of Christmas.
Sometimes I experience problems communicating with people – although I guess most people do. The thing is, I want to be able to understand why I have experienced problems. It can’t be my vocabulary – I think I may have mentioned this before. Perhaps my vocabulary is too good. It may be because I understand too well what people are saying, but I understand very little about what they mean. I think people say lots of things and mean something else.
Now, I’m not a mind reader so this may be the root of my misunderstandings.
I’m very good at answering questions, as they are put. I can give someone an instant answer to their questions, as they put them, and immediately I am aware that we may be slightly ‘out of sync’ with each other as sometimes my responses are met with frowns and furrowed brows.
When people say things like; “Why do you grow your nails?”, well, they’re obviously longer than one would expect to see on a man, but they’re not for ‘cosmetic’ purposes, they are used as ‘guitar playing accessories’. People make it sound as if I nurture them like someone who grows tomatoes.
The truth is, I don’t ‘grow’ them, they grow themselves. I have no control over their growth whatsoever. The only thing I make a conscious decision on when it comes to nail length is – when it comes to cutting or biting them, I opt out.
Call me obstreperous but I think there is a difference between ‘growing my nails’ and ‘not cutting them’. What do you think?
One of the most frequent occurrences of misunderstanding that I have experienced is when the term; “See you next Friday”, crops up. It doesn’t have to be Friday, it could be Sunday, Wednesday or any other day, but I will use Friday for this example.
When I agree to meet someone next Friday, about 50% of the time one of us fails to turn up. For some reason, the term next Friday means different things to different people.
Now I know what the word ‘next’ means, so if I make on appointment for next Friday, I will honour that and be at the rendezvous point at the agreed time on the next Friday that arrives. So, on a Tuesday if I am meeting someone on a “See you next Friday” basis, I will be there on the Friday of that week – because it’s the next one that comes along.
For some people, ‘next Friday’ means the Friday of the following week! Why?
If I was standing on a bus stop and I asked a passer-by which bus I needed to catch to go to Bargoed and I was told to get on the next one, I would get on the next one that chugs into the bus stop. I wouldn’t let the next one go by and then catch the one that comes after that. So why are Fridays different?
I have discussed this matter with people who display this trait of not understanding what the word ‘next’ means, and I have concluded that the confusion is solely down to the introduction of a red herring - the mystical; this Friday.
In reality, there are only two Fridays – last Friday and next Friday. If everyone got that simple concept into their heads, everything would run smoothly.
But chuck in the rogue ‘this Friday’, which doesn’t actually exist, and ……. mayhem!
According to these sorts of people, if, on a Tuesday I arrange to see someone ‘next Friday’ then I should turn up on the Friday of the following week. This is because, according to their understanding, the Friday of the same week is ‘this Friday’.
If I was Prime Minister, one of the first things I’d do is make the use of the term ‘this Friday’ illegal. It would make life a lot easier – for me, at least.
I remember mentioning the fact that I had been given a copy of a DVD of one of the latest Hollywood blockbusters to one of the guys I work with.
He asked me if it was a good copy.
When I replied; “Dunno, I haven’t seen the original”, he looked at me as if I’d grown another head! He seemed to think that I could give him a judgement on the quality of the copy without having seen the original. I didn’t.
Apparently his query was all about whether the copy was watchable or not, my answer was to the question as it was put - about whether the ‘copy’ was an accurate representation of the original. Isn’t that what a copy is?
On the other hand, I was given a copy of a DVD of a concert that was shot from the audience on someone’s mobile phone – it is absolutely awful! A friend asked me if I could copy it for him, and I did. This ‘copy’ is equally as unwatchable as the original but it is an excellent copy of it.
When asked to check ‘how many potatoes’ we had, I was met with a severely furrowed brow, when I replied; “Seventeen”.
I made the mistake of thinking that any question that started with the words;
“How many ……?”, more or less dictated that the answer should be a figure.
According to my partner, what she wanted to know was ‘if we had enough’.
Enough for what? The rest of our lives? The street? ………….apparently it was if we had enough for dinner. Well the answer to that is, if we are going to eat anything under or up to seventeen we’re OK, anything over that and we’ve had it.
And to answer the question that everybody asks, how did I know there were seventeen in the ‘spud tray’?, I counted them. This is why I was able to give such a precise answer to a very flimsy question.
So, I suppose it is fair to say that I have been criticised for some answers that I’ve offered up in response to questions, but they have all been presented in good faith as a result of understanding the meaning of the words used, but a complete misunderstanding of what the ‘questioner’ meant by what they said.
Criticise my technique if you like, but consider a very common question and answer technique by millions of people. I call this the;
“Answer any question apart from the one that has been asked, technique”
Here, the ‘answerer’ makes a statement that is totally removed from the question that has been asked.
Here is a good example. Following a Christening, I was sitting in the family home with other guests eating cucumber sandwiches and drinking tea from the finest bone china, when someone spotted an unusual vase on the windowsill. The guest said how nice it was and asked;
“What a lovely vase. Where did you get it from?”
To which, the lady of the house replied;
“Oh, I’ve had it for ages.” ……………. and everyone in the room accepted that as an answer! No-one queried it, just a few murmurs which amounted to things like;
“Yes, it’s most unusual.”
“It’s a very attractive piece, goes well with the curtains.”……instead of addressing the real issue – Okay, you told us you’ve had it a long time, which we didn’t want to know, now, WHERE DID YOU GET IT FROM!!!
Here are some more.
“Are you enjoying this film?”
“I’ve seen it before”
“How long are you going to be?”
“I’m just putting my boots on.”
“How far is it from here to Newport?”
“About half an hour.”
Since when has distance been measured in hours? And time taken to reach a destination surely depends on which way you go and how fast you drive, doesn’t it?
Another annoying technique is the one I call;
‘The questioner already has the answer he/she wants to hear in his/her head prior to asking the question and if the answer is not the one that he/she wants to hear, he/she will ask the question again in the hope that the answerer will change their mind and if not, start an argument, technique’.
Like this;
“Dai, would you like to come to my party?”
“No thanks.”
“What do you mean? ……….. no I’m not doing that one. Try this instead;
“Do you want something to eat?”
“No thanks” (notice that the question has been answered here)
“What about some beans on toast?”
“No thanks”
“Ham sandwich?”
“No thanks”
“Pasty?”
“No thanks”
“I’ve got some lovely sponge cake – fancy a piece with a nice cup of tea?”
“No thanks”
“Egg and chips?”
“No thanks” (is now starting to get annoyed)
“Mango?”
“No thanks.” (now getting really annoyed)
“Apple crumble?”
At this point the ‘victim’ decides the only way to get some peace is to agree to have something to eat.
“Alright! Alright! I’ll have something to eat!”
At this point, the questioner has won, but has decided to shift the onus back onto the victim by making it seem as if he/she is indecisive and generally dithering about by saying impatiently;
“Well, what do you want?”
So, to recap. I’m writing this on a Thursday night. I’m very tired so I’ll wrap this one up – I have to be up early to go to work next Friday.
In this case, there is another word that can be used to describe ‘next Friday’ – it’s tomorrow.