Are you looking for love? If so, one of these honourable members could be looking for you!
Oldham East. Man with own nappies and nail varnish WLTM younger brunette with strong regional accent for fun and non gurkha-related chats out of the public eye. No headmistresses.
Slea(ze)ford. Old Etonian with own homes, well-tuned piano and very clean moat. Seeking special person to while away new-found spare time, not fussy on age, height, smoker, drinker, interests, sense of humour, personality, etc. but must have no spots, blemishes or moles.
Brentford. Couple seeking third for easy-going fun. We are F/M, mid-50s, professional, two homes, SW London. Are you discreet? If so, we are Keen to meet you.
Manchester. Me: small red-head with own motorcycle and a passion for communities and local government. You: squirrel enthusiast.
Havant. Intellectual with GSOH seeks similar for meeting of minds (both of them mine) and joke-swapping. No light-bulb gags.
Barnet. Nice chap, sensitive and genuine, seeks soulmate for long walks, opera and companionship, denial of holocaust, inciting racial hatred. No ethnics please.
Redditch. Recently separated, lady in her prime seeks new partner in crime. Have own home plus spare room in sister’s house, lots of scatter cushions. Likes: law and order, surveillance, biometric data. Dislikes: habeas corpus, Shami Chakrabarti, cannabis, immigration statistics leaks, pornography. No police officers.
Hull(o). Do you enjoy making chip butties, working men’s clubs and playing croquet? Big-boned, cuddly chap from working-class background, two toilet seats, mock tudor beams, seeks whore in bedroom, wife in kitchen, to help fight the upper-class establishment from one of my two Jaguars. Must be good cook, cannot stress this enough.
Camberwell. Person seeks another person for neutral kinship and fully egalitarian relationship, trips to Greenham Common and equal sharing of household chores. Can make reasonable adjustments for disabilities and at least 50% of shortlisted candidates will be women, gay and black/minority ethnics.
More to follow in due course, please feel free to suggest your own.
12 May 2009
Today Louise Explains... the beauty of mental kindness.
"A person who has good thoughts can never be ugly though. Whether you have a wonky mouth, a crooked nose, or a double chin, if you think good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."
-Roald Dahl, The Twits p.15
This morning on the tube, I was (as ever) mildly put out by a lady whose cardinal sin was to stand a little bit too close to me, thereby obstructing the reading of my book, just a bit. As the train trudged along, I got progressively, fractionally more uptight, my head practically reeling with all of her perceived crimes, letting myself get more and more wound up about it. By the time we had gotten to Leyton, I harboured such deep resentment towards this woman that my first reaction, had she tried to leave the train at the next station and spectacularly not minded the gap, I possibly would have laughed with mirth first and gone to help second. I could practically feel the beads of sweat tracking their way down my cheek, my teeth gritted and it requiring all the self-control I could muster not to.....
CRACK. There was suddenly an angry confrontation – raised voices, someone hissing at another passenger, muttering to themselves afterwards, pure vitriol. Surprisingly, this wasn’t me – this was Exhibit Number One herself, who had obviously been too busy being annoyed at some other hapless passenger to even notice her own comportment. And at that moment, I noticed how wrinkled her face was – like she’d spent the better (or worse, I suppose) part of her life sucking lemons through a straw, and she was damn unhappy about it – and how her little angry face was contorted into an expression of such rage and antagonism, and how genuinely bothered she seemed by the whole situation which ultimately was nothing. And I giggled. My shoulders dropped, my hands unclenched, my expression softened, and I smiled for the rest of the journey to work.
This episode demonstrates extremely well why mental kindness is a great habit to get oneself into. It sounds absolutely batshit crazy, and feels it at first, until you realise that it genuinely does lift your mood and make all of those necessary transactions and encounters with the outside world that much more bearable, that it is genuinely worth perservering with. It’s not difficult to do, you’ll pick it up as you go along, but here are some basic pointers:
Practising mental kindness means doing so both to yourself and others.
To yourself, it means being a bit less hard on yourself, giving yourself some leeway and mentally patting yourself on the back from time to time and saying, ‘aw, poor me’ – and actually meaning it. There’s a clear difference between doing this, and thinking ‘I am going to have some me-time’ and plugging in your Glade Airwick, or eating a bar of Galaxy Caramel. This is a genuine attempt to be self-aware enough to recognise changes to your emotional state and your mood, try and understand why this might be the case, and give yourself a break. Rather than trying on a dress in a size 8 and then berating yourself for being fat and greedy when it doesn’t fit, how about not even getting to the stage where you end up clothes shopping in a bad/irritable mood? Mental kindness to self is infinitely more difficult than to others to successfully observe, and I struggle with this constantly, which is why it’s probably best to start this as soon as possible and get into practice. It’s hugely worth it, though, because you can overcome obstacles which don’t actually exist as they are imposed only by your own self-criticism and doubt. Before I start talking in self-help catechisms though, let’s move on to...
Others. This is slightly more simple, since it primarily involves two things:
1. Keeping things in perspective; and
2. Smiling.
Perspective means that the lemon-faced lady above wouldn’t have spent her whole life procuring an ugly face which bears the tell-tale lines of years spent thinking ugly, bitter thoughts. People almost definitely don’t realise that they’re being as annoying as they are – you probably spent a good part of your day doing the odd thing that others find annoying – give them a break. Or at least don’t let yourself get wound up about it; force yourself to smile. It needn’t be a huge, wide grin, but you will assume that at rest your face doesn’t look annoyed or pissed off: the news is that if you’ve been thinking annoyed thoughts then your face will portray this. When you try putting on an expression which is mid-neutral to ‘pleasant’, you will be surprised at first how different this feels to what it’s replacing; it will hit you how you must have looked before, and you will make a mental note to keep your face looking bright and pleasant in future. You will forget.
As mentioned, though, this isn’t a problem, because it will become more intuitive as time goes on and you keep pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and forcing yourself not to get wound up by ridiculously tiny, petty things. And I would recommend that you do keep forcing yourself; as unlikely as it sounds, people will react better to you when you practise mental kindness – I don’t necessarily buy into the aura thing, but I do genuinely think that people can sense something in what you give out to the surrounding area. If that something is barely-contained rage, you’re going to get negativity back. If you are bobbing away serenely, calmly, and pleasantly – if you force yourself to smile at people and engage in tiny snippets of small-talk, give away a seat on the tube even (god forbid)- you will have this repaid tenfold in the quality of your daily life and transport around this uptight little city. And if you do it for no other reason, do it because no amount of Estée Lauder moisturiser can prevent the horrible, ugly lines you will get after 60 years of verbal unkindness – and possibly the black-eye or two as well.
-Roald Dahl, The Twits p.15
This morning on the tube, I was (as ever) mildly put out by a lady whose cardinal sin was to stand a little bit too close to me, thereby obstructing the reading of my book, just a bit. As the train trudged along, I got progressively, fractionally more uptight, my head practically reeling with all of her perceived crimes, letting myself get more and more wound up about it. By the time we had gotten to Leyton, I harboured such deep resentment towards this woman that my first reaction, had she tried to leave the train at the next station and spectacularly not minded the gap, I possibly would have laughed with mirth first and gone to help second. I could practically feel the beads of sweat tracking their way down my cheek, my teeth gritted and it requiring all the self-control I could muster not to.....
CRACK. There was suddenly an angry confrontation – raised voices, someone hissing at another passenger, muttering to themselves afterwards, pure vitriol. Surprisingly, this wasn’t me – this was Exhibit Number One herself, who had obviously been too busy being annoyed at some other hapless passenger to even notice her own comportment. And at that moment, I noticed how wrinkled her face was – like she’d spent the better (or worse, I suppose) part of her life sucking lemons through a straw, and she was damn unhappy about it – and how her little angry face was contorted into an expression of such rage and antagonism, and how genuinely bothered she seemed by the whole situation which ultimately was nothing. And I giggled. My shoulders dropped, my hands unclenched, my expression softened, and I smiled for the rest of the journey to work.
This episode demonstrates extremely well why mental kindness is a great habit to get oneself into. It sounds absolutely batshit crazy, and feels it at first, until you realise that it genuinely does lift your mood and make all of those necessary transactions and encounters with the outside world that much more bearable, that it is genuinely worth perservering with. It’s not difficult to do, you’ll pick it up as you go along, but here are some basic pointers:
Practising mental kindness means doing so both to yourself and others.
To yourself, it means being a bit less hard on yourself, giving yourself some leeway and mentally patting yourself on the back from time to time and saying, ‘aw, poor me’ – and actually meaning it. There’s a clear difference between doing this, and thinking ‘I am going to have some me-time’ and plugging in your Glade Airwick, or eating a bar of Galaxy Caramel. This is a genuine attempt to be self-aware enough to recognise changes to your emotional state and your mood, try and understand why this might be the case, and give yourself a break. Rather than trying on a dress in a size 8 and then berating yourself for being fat and greedy when it doesn’t fit, how about not even getting to the stage where you end up clothes shopping in a bad/irritable mood? Mental kindness to self is infinitely more difficult than to others to successfully observe, and I struggle with this constantly, which is why it’s probably best to start this as soon as possible and get into practice. It’s hugely worth it, though, because you can overcome obstacles which don’t actually exist as they are imposed only by your own self-criticism and doubt. Before I start talking in self-help catechisms though, let’s move on to...
Others. This is slightly more simple, since it primarily involves two things:
1. Keeping things in perspective; and
2. Smiling.
Perspective means that the lemon-faced lady above wouldn’t have spent her whole life procuring an ugly face which bears the tell-tale lines of years spent thinking ugly, bitter thoughts. People almost definitely don’t realise that they’re being as annoying as they are – you probably spent a good part of your day doing the odd thing that others find annoying – give them a break. Or at least don’t let yourself get wound up about it; force yourself to smile. It needn’t be a huge, wide grin, but you will assume that at rest your face doesn’t look annoyed or pissed off: the news is that if you’ve been thinking annoyed thoughts then your face will portray this. When you try putting on an expression which is mid-neutral to ‘pleasant’, you will be surprised at first how different this feels to what it’s replacing; it will hit you how you must have looked before, and you will make a mental note to keep your face looking bright and pleasant in future. You will forget.
As mentioned, though, this isn’t a problem, because it will become more intuitive as time goes on and you keep pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and forcing yourself not to get wound up by ridiculously tiny, petty things. And I would recommend that you do keep forcing yourself; as unlikely as it sounds, people will react better to you when you practise mental kindness – I don’t necessarily buy into the aura thing, but I do genuinely think that people can sense something in what you give out to the surrounding area. If that something is barely-contained rage, you’re going to get negativity back. If you are bobbing away serenely, calmly, and pleasantly – if you force yourself to smile at people and engage in tiny snippets of small-talk, give away a seat on the tube even (god forbid)- you will have this repaid tenfold in the quality of your daily life and transport around this uptight little city. And if you do it for no other reason, do it because no amount of Estée Lauder moisturiser can prevent the horrible, ugly lines you will get after 60 years of verbal unkindness – and possibly the black-eye or two as well.
07 May 2009
Today Louise Explains... the News. And brings you Value Judgement
Bringing you an open-minded, objective breakdown of current affairs, and then discarding it all and just making spurious generalisations. It’s all very well balanced though, so don’t worry.
Politics:
PRO.
The fact that Gordon Brown has ‘the worst fucking smile in the world’ is now in the public domain, this having finally been revealed by, of all people, the Rt Hon John Prescott...truly a man who should have no trouble in spotting ridiculous things, unless he makes a habit of avoiding mirrors. Brown’s smile and indeed face and general appearance have troubled me for some time, however, I’ve never felt completely comfortable in expressing this. So I am of course delighted that someone has publicly done this for me, and we can all get on with our lives, although I nonetheless feel a bit sad for our PM. What was that saying again? You wait for decades for a job, and then you get it but you’re fucking awful at it and you manage to completely wreck the British economy in the process. Something like that, anyway. Frankie Boyle, imbued with none of the burden of social niceties nor diplomacy of most reasonable people, has previously described his fellow Scotsman’s visage as being ‘like a sad face painted onto someone’s scrotum’, and now that Brown’s loyal colleague has joined the catcalls, I feel that I am finally free to declare Brown’s smile, face and indeed premiership as a huge, terrifying farce. Cheers, John.
CON.
This probably is fairly bad for society as a whole, what with it now being absolutely fine to brazenly insult and ridicule our leaders. I highly doubt that this is what Peter Cook and the nice chaps at Beyond the Fringe had in mind when they set about to satirically undermine deference towards our ruling class. Have we really gone from thinking of our leaders as a flawless elite, to treating them as if they were in some way inferior to the rest of humanity? There isn’t room here for a rant about what the row over MPs’ expenses has done for their credibility in the public’s eyes, but suffice it to say that really aren’t all self-interested, egotistic wankers a la Lord Archer (of Weston-super-Mare, a great town for a great man).
Film:
PRO.
In the Loop is spectacular, I can’t elaborate any more without tedious quoting or lots of exclamation marks, but do see it. The world of film is, net, a happy place.
CON.
Hannah Montana, the existence of.
Health:
PRO.
We seem not to have been obliterated by Swine Flu as previously predicted, good stuff. Props to the Sun who tackled the issue in their usual, moderate way, by proclaiming ‘This Has the Potential to Wipe Out All of Humanity’.
CON.
Tragic deaths, possibility of having spoken too soon. Plus, more importantly, no more jokes about people’s illness manifesting itself with styes or rashers, or of treating the flu with oinkment.
Tv:
PRO.
Eastenders has a new doctor and I can confirm that he’s more attractive than Dr Legg.
CON.
Phillip was fired from the Apprentice last night.
Home affairs:
PRO.
Gurkhas are well on their way to finally and very deservedly receiving the right to settle freely in Britain. As someone or other (almost definitely not Brown) said, anyone good enough to die for England is good enough to live in England. This also represents more embarrassment for Gordon Brown, thereby hopefully leading to his speedy departure from number 10.
CON.
Joanna Lumley is now in with a very genuine chance of becoming the next Prime Minister of Great Britain and First Lady to the Treasury.
Hygiene:
PRO.
All Ladies of Scotland whose husband has just been involved in slaying the heir to the throne for his own personal gain, take heart; hand-washing is now tres chic. Thanks to swine flu, sales of liquid soap have soared and everyone’s doing it, all the time. This can only be a good thing.
CON.
Overly uptight people on the tube who shoot you the Deathglare of Doom when you so much as sniff on a train – it’s not like I’m shooting up, just scratching my nose, okay?
Nationalism:
PRO.
Essex has turned out to be a nice place after all, and not all of it is like Southend, Basildon (Baz Vegas) or indeed Ilford. Some bits of Essex are rather lovely, like Thaxted, where a windmill, cream tea and a lovely walk were all enjoyed on the Bank Holiday.
CON.
No morris dancing to be sighted.
Humour:
PRO.
A pensioner in Berkshire alerted police to the fact that the house next door was being used as a factory to grow fifty-thousand pounds’ worth of cannabis, after she noticed a funny smell... oh, and that her dog, Holly, had started to sleep until mid-morning. Brilliant.
CON.
I thought that Sion Simon’s twitter update, "I'm not saying Susan Boyle causes swine flu. I'm just saying nobody had swine flu, she sang on tv, people got swine flu.", was great. Turns out that this isn’t the general consensus. So the country gets a fuck-off big ‘Sense Of Humour Fail’ from me.
---
A pictoral representation to follow.
Politics:
PRO.
The fact that Gordon Brown has ‘the worst fucking smile in the world’ is now in the public domain, this having finally been revealed by, of all people, the Rt Hon John Prescott...truly a man who should have no trouble in spotting ridiculous things, unless he makes a habit of avoiding mirrors. Brown’s smile and indeed face and general appearance have troubled me for some time, however, I’ve never felt completely comfortable in expressing this. So I am of course delighted that someone has publicly done this for me, and we can all get on with our lives, although I nonetheless feel a bit sad for our PM. What was that saying again? You wait for decades for a job, and then you get it but you’re fucking awful at it and you manage to completely wreck the British economy in the process. Something like that, anyway. Frankie Boyle, imbued with none of the burden of social niceties nor diplomacy of most reasonable people, has previously described his fellow Scotsman’s visage as being ‘like a sad face painted onto someone’s scrotum’, and now that Brown’s loyal colleague has joined the catcalls, I feel that I am finally free to declare Brown’s smile, face and indeed premiership as a huge, terrifying farce. Cheers, John.
CON.
This probably is fairly bad for society as a whole, what with it now being absolutely fine to brazenly insult and ridicule our leaders. I highly doubt that this is what Peter Cook and the nice chaps at Beyond the Fringe had in mind when they set about to satirically undermine deference towards our ruling class. Have we really gone from thinking of our leaders as a flawless elite, to treating them as if they were in some way inferior to the rest of humanity? There isn’t room here for a rant about what the row over MPs’ expenses has done for their credibility in the public’s eyes, but suffice it to say that really aren’t all self-interested, egotistic wankers a la Lord Archer (of Weston-super-Mare, a great town for a great man).
Film:
PRO.
In the Loop is spectacular, I can’t elaborate any more without tedious quoting or lots of exclamation marks, but do see it. The world of film is, net, a happy place.
CON.
Hannah Montana, the existence of.
Health:
PRO.
We seem not to have been obliterated by Swine Flu as previously predicted, good stuff. Props to the Sun who tackled the issue in their usual, moderate way, by proclaiming ‘This Has the Potential to Wipe Out All of Humanity’.
CON.
Tragic deaths, possibility of having spoken too soon. Plus, more importantly, no more jokes about people’s illness manifesting itself with styes or rashers, or of treating the flu with oinkment.
Tv:
PRO.
Eastenders has a new doctor and I can confirm that he’s more attractive than Dr Legg.
CON.
Phillip was fired from the Apprentice last night.
Home affairs:
PRO.
Gurkhas are well on their way to finally and very deservedly receiving the right to settle freely in Britain. As someone or other (almost definitely not Brown) said, anyone good enough to die for England is good enough to live in England. This also represents more embarrassment for Gordon Brown, thereby hopefully leading to his speedy departure from number 10.
CON.
Joanna Lumley is now in with a very genuine chance of becoming the next Prime Minister of Great Britain and First Lady to the Treasury.
Hygiene:
PRO.
All Ladies of Scotland whose husband has just been involved in slaying the heir to the throne for his own personal gain, take heart; hand-washing is now tres chic. Thanks to swine flu, sales of liquid soap have soared and everyone’s doing it, all the time. This can only be a good thing.
CON.
Overly uptight people on the tube who shoot you the Deathglare of Doom when you so much as sniff on a train – it’s not like I’m shooting up, just scratching my nose, okay?
Nationalism:
PRO.
Essex has turned out to be a nice place after all, and not all of it is like Southend, Basildon (Baz Vegas) or indeed Ilford. Some bits of Essex are rather lovely, like Thaxted, where a windmill, cream tea and a lovely walk were all enjoyed on the Bank Holiday.
CON.
No morris dancing to be sighted.
Humour:
PRO.
A pensioner in Berkshire alerted police to the fact that the house next door was being used as a factory to grow fifty-thousand pounds’ worth of cannabis, after she noticed a funny smell... oh, and that her dog, Holly, had started to sleep until mid-morning. Brilliant.
CON.
I thought that Sion Simon’s twitter update, "I'm not saying Susan Boyle causes swine flu. I'm just saying nobody had swine flu, she sang on tv, people got swine flu.", was great. Turns out that this isn’t the general consensus. So the country gets a fuck-off big ‘Sense Of Humour Fail’ from me.
---
A pictoral representation to follow.
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