Musings of an apologetic cynic

I didn't know the definition of a 'cynic' when I was ten years old.  I just knew I was one.  How?  I had submitted an essay about First World War poetry to my English teacher, in which at the end I couldn't help questioning a few things: why was there so much poetry during World War One and not so much in other wars, how did they write them all down and how did they manage to find publishers while everybody was rotting in the trenches?  (Yes, shameful I know!)  My teacher had marked the essay, eloquently answering my stupid questions and then, right at the bottom, he'd written "you cynic" in pencil, which he'd duly rubbed out.  But the deep impression of the pencil had remained; he was particularly heavy-handed with such instruments, and even at my young age I knew he'd meant for me to read that.

I hadn't wanted to ask anybody what the word meant; it must be bad because it had been rubbed out!  So I looked it up in the dictionary.  From this, I inferred that I was "a person whose outlook is scornfully and often habitually negative".  And I wasn't even a teenager yet.

But I must admit that my teacher had been right (though at the time I didn't like him for calling me that and viewed him with suspicion from then on, just as a true cynic might have done).  I'm the sort of person who questions and dissects just about everything until it all becomes meaningless; the sort of person who is able belittle someone's hard work with a tiny twitch of my eyebrow.  But it's not intentional behaviour (really it isn't!).  It's just ingrained (I blame my Nan actually, whose sceptical eyebrow raises are legendary in our family...and beyond).

Once, when I was twenty and working in a cable television call centre, there was a lady in the upper echelons of management whom everybody feared.  She strode through the office like a wartime general; fifty-five, tall and with a stern, make-up free face. You didn't approach her for assistance unless you were feeling in a particularly kamikaze sort of mood; she could demolish your confidence in seconds by immediately getting to the root of a problem and identifying its solution so swiftly that it made you feel incredibly stupid for not thinking of it yourself.  She was also the company's unofficial disciplinarian...people would routinely come out of her office not speaking, as if, in the manner of a hard-bitten veteran of grisly battle, what had taken place in there had been so harrowing that they couldn't bring themselves to actually talk about it.  That might make it real...it might keep them awake at night, screaming for it all to be over.

On my last day working there, this lady called me into her office.  I was petrified; I'd kept my head down and hadn't had much to do with her during my two-year tenure at the call centre, and I wondered what the hell I'd done.  Shaking slightly, I sat down, she fixed me with a steely gaze...and then her face cracked itself into a smile and she said "I just wanted to say goodbye, and wish you well for the future.  I actually see a lot of myself in you; you remind me of when I first started out at work"


I was mortified at the time, but now I'm older I don't think that's such a bad thing any more.  Like a rabid alcoholic forced to finally confront her demons, these days I can admit that yes, I am a cynic and I do have high standards (most of which I fail to meet myself on a daily basis).  But I still own a pink Sleeping Beauty jewellery box that I wouldn't part with for the world, and I still get a bit nostalgic and wistful whenever I listen to the 'Late Night Love' slot on the radio at night.  Oh, and for some reason I have a penchant for ridiculously stupid films, such as 'White Chicks' which was on last night and made me laugh like a drain.  Without questioning how idiotic it is.  And it is idiotic.

So that must mean I actually have a lovely, finely balanced personality, right?  (Right?!!)

Welcome to my 100th blogpost!

I'd just like to thank my friends and family...well, the nice ones anyway...for being there for me, making me the odd cup of tea, and putting up with my ever-challenging moods as I constantly mine the rotten crevices of my brain searching for things to post about here.  Thank you; you'll be forever in my heart (raises glass of disgustingly expensive champagne).

Seriously, one hundred posts!  One hundred little snippets of me basically moaning about stuff, in the interests of keeping my daily word count going, in the further interests of one day being able to call myself an "proper, experienced writer".  One hundred disjointedly opinionated rants, mostly about things that don't really matter.  That's quite a lot really, isn't it?  If you have read all one hundred of these posts, you really do deserve a medal.  I don't know what it would have inscribed on it.  'I Am A Mental Masochist' might be a good start.  Or 'For Some Reason I Enjoy Mediocre Prose and This Is My Mediocre Reward' (that particular medal would be fashioned out of bronze, of course).

I'm off now...to think of some more things to post about.  I might brave Southend High Street tomorrow - yes, in the midst of the summer holidays!  Something tells me I won't be running out of rants for a little while yet.

So...just what does constitute humour in the age of Celebrity Internet-ness?

I came back from the gym this afternoon (where I'm trying to build my fitness level back up after a week's convalescence due to an operation...stupid paranoid me is terrified I'll turn into a couch-potato for life just because I've spent - shock horror - nearly a whole week being one due to necessity...but that's another story), grabbed my laptop to read today's paper...and was faced with the news that Amy Winehouse was found dead in her flat; cause of death so far unexplained.

It was horrible news that put me in a grey melancholic mood, even though I obviously didn't know Amy Winehouse and there's no doubt that we wouldn't have been friends if I had.  Celebrity deaths are no more important than 'normal people' ones of course; except there's something about the death of someone famous, and especially one who had such amazing talent, because no matter how self-destructive they may be, those charismatic, larger-than-life people aren't supposed to just disintegrate like that.  Even more so in this day and age when everything's geared up for the average person on the street to feel as though they know the rich-and-famous on a synthetically intimate level.

But the cause of my 'grey melancholic mood' wasn't just the news of Amy's death; it was also the immediate reaction it spurned in the online community.  The online edition of the paper I read has sections under its articles for people to make comments, of which there were numerous; some sympathetic, some wistful and some disgustingly self-righteous...and of course you can't avoid people's reactions on Facebook, Twitter and the like, even if you don't have an account.  But I do have a Facebook account, and a quick scan of my 'News Feed' revealed a count of five tasteless jokes about Amy Winehouse, all posted within half an hour of the news of her death having been first reported.

I like to think I have quite a good sense of humour on the whole, but I will admit to not understanding that type of 'black' humour that focuses on a particular somebody's death, and especially if those attempts at humour are being made within moments of that person actually dying.  A few years ago, within moments of my hearing about Michael Jackson's death, my mobile phone beeped with three new texts, all from people seemingly desperate to get their jokes out there.  I deleted them all immediately; not because I was being pompous (which makes a nice change from usual!), but because I simply find it impossible to glean any humour from somebody who's just died a horrible death, leaving their friends and family distraught.

Now I've just read that back and it does sound a little bit pompous, doesn't it?  But it's true - I don't understand the mentality of people who can find things like that funny.  It really is alien behaviour to me.  And as such I find it fascinating, particularly as there's increasingly so much of it due to the aforementioned Facebook and Twitter phenomena.  Perhaps due to that, it has also become creepingly acceptable to openly laugh at it.

One of the best examples I can provide regarding the blanket 'acceptability' of this type of humour is the screening of Frankie Boyle's 'Tramadol Nights', a bit of which I watched just to see what the fuss was all about.  The episode I saw switched to a standup section in which Frankie made a joke about the deceased Jade Goody that made me feel physically sick, prompting me to change the channel immediately with a shaking hand and a heavy heart that anybody would ever laugh at something like that.  And yet a lot of people I know, like and respect are fans of that show, and of that type of joke.  So does that mean that deep down they're not very nice people, or just that they don't get attached to jokes about people they don't know and therefore can see the humour in them - and by that token - life in general?  If that is the case, then they actually have the type of mindset it would probably benefit me to develop more of, especially as an aspiring writer.  But you can't choose what makes you laugh and what doesn't.

I don't tend (at least, not in public!) to get on my high horse too much about jokes I don't find funny, or deep down actually find a little bit offensive.  That's because I can't assume that my reaction to something is automatically the right one, or that it should be universally shared by all...and also because deep down I can't help wondering if it's a little bit...well, uncool, to be a 'little bit offended' by anything, especially in this day and age.

But I still struggle, especially when I saw a comment on Facebook regarding Frankie Boyle's programme which stated that "comedy should be out there pushing all the boundaries!"  I wasn't personally aware that comedy should do anything other than make people laugh, but then I suppose those laughs can come from the unlikeliest of places, sometimes.

(Written whilst listening to Amy Winehouse's brilliant 'Frank' - RIP)

Where the Kids Aren't Alright

'Can you enjoy a music festival with your kids?' asks an article in this morning's paper, after a new survey has apparently reported that "one-fifth of parents have taken an under-five to a festival".  I was genuinely surprised to read this.  And the only answer I can think of is: "why the hell-in-sparkly-underpants would you ever WANT to?!"

Granted, I'm not really a fan of music festivals per se.  I've been to a couple in the past and discovered that - shock, horror - I don't actually like the prospect of mud, tents and smelly chemical toilets.  That's before we've even got to the huge crowds of smashed people who are mostly interested in their own enjoyment; sod anyone else's.  The music might be good; you could have the best band in the world up there on stage, but unless you're shimmeringly drunk or high on something curiously illegal, the experience isn't going to be all that great really (well, it never has been for me, and so I'm naturally applying my experiences to everyone, OK?!)    

Even with the seemingly child-unfriendly festival conditions established, why can't there be some places adults can go where they're not having to worry about knocking over a small child by accident or having to 'keep an eye' on their language or general behaviour, just in case someone's precious little darling might be watching?  Before reading that article today I'd just assumed that music festivals, even with all their (self-perceived) faults, were the last - sorely needed - bastion of child-unfriendliness.  But it seems they're not.  So...what is?

Now, I realise that every older generation needs something to have a moan about.  For my Nan's generation, this includes "women in the workplace" and "all that counselling people get nowadays".  Well, alright...that is just my Nan actually, but I'm assuming her moans are the moans of her generation, because they're things they didn't have and that's what we all enjoy moaning about the most, isn't it?   But while my Nan is moaning on about how women don't want to stay in the home any more, sometimes I can sense a sad, bitter-tinged envy at the fact that she didn't have access to all the opportunities currently available to women like me.

It's the same for men, of course.  I had to write a 'Paternity Leave' policy for my workplace when the law changed, allowing new fathers up to two weeks off to spend with their new family.  None of the men old enough not to be able to qualify for this new leave liked it.  "What's all this extra holiday for Dads about, then?" stormed one senior member of staff (the union rep, actually!) after I'd distributed the new policy.  "I never got offered any of this when my kids were born!  And I wouldn't have wanted it anyway - you're not going to get anyone take this up...men want to get straight back to work, they want to be as far away from the family as possible!"  

You see?  People always moan about what they didn't get and can't possibly have now.  And so it goes for my generation.  When I was growing up, the world was not geared to "family-friendliness".  There's a bit in one of Adrian Mole's diaries that describes a trip to the pub with his parents in which he has to stay in the car because pubs don't allow kids, so his Dad has to come out with "a bottle of Vimto and a packet of crisps for me".  Most people my age will be able to identify with that.

In recent years, every summer the papers are packed with ideas to "stop the kids getting bored over the summer holidays!" - as though letting the kids have nothing to do for a couple of days is comparable with extreme neglect. Yet during my school holidays I knew not to ever say "I'm bored!" to my Dad, as the answer that came back would always be the same.  It was: "well, go and find something to do so you're not, then".    Going to McDonald's was a treat - something my sisters and I did once every couple of months - and we never, ever got taken out for any other meals unless it was a special occasion.  And don't get me bloody started on mobile phones and computer games; not unless you want me to be still sitting here typing once the clock goes past witching hour.

So I do recognise where some of my carping on about how "kids are allowed everywhere these days" comes from.  I really do, and as a responsible person who wants to keep her friends I do try to keep a lid on it most of the time.  But still...festivals...really?

Celebrity depression...try living in the real world!

I have a somewhat Pavlovian reaction to the song 'Handbags and Gladrags', in that whenever I hear it I find myself thinking about Paris Hilton.  Not that I listen to 'Handbags and Gladrags' all that often, not being much of a fan of gravel-voiced soft-rock songs; but you can't really avoid it when you're watching 'The Office', as I have been doing this week to commemorate its tenth anniversary (on that note isn't it funny how cultural things, especially cutting-edge ones, can make you feel unnervingly old; I remember coming back to my tiny one-bedroomed flat after a meal out ten years ago, flopping my over-stuffed self down onto my sofa, switching on the TV and watching the first episode of 'The Office' which threw me into utter confusion - surely this couldn't be a real documentary?  I fell in love with it instantly.  Now when I watch it I marvel at the size of Gareth's (wait for it) mobile phone, and the fact that smudgy faxes were so much a part of office life).

But I digress.  The reason 'Handbags and Gladrags' makes me think of Paris Hilton is because it's about a person who has everything but doesn't understand the value of anything that isn't expensively tangible.  And the 'grandad' reference rings true as well (though it was actually Paris's great-grandfather who founded Hilton hotels - fact fans!).

It didn't surprise me when I read reports of Paris Hilton suffering from depression a little while ago, even though it spurned outrage in various sections of the media, and even among people I know.  "How can she be depressed...she's got everything!  She should try living in the real world".

Just for a moment, try to imagine actually being Paris Hilton, a woman who is probably most sympathetically described as a "socialite".  It isn't her fault really though, is it?  Because just like girls born on certain types of grimy council estate are expected to do nothing other than produce reams of kids at an early age, Paris Hilton was expected to do nothing other than to be a "socialite".  This is somebody who has never had to do a day's work in her life; someone born with servants and ready-made circles of contacts already established.  That might sound idyllic on the surface, but scratch it a little and it's clear that Paris and people of her ilk have never had, nor been expected, to put in the grimy blood-sweat-and-tears necessary for anything of intrinsic value.

A while back, I watched the first episode of 'Paris Hilton's British Best Friend' out of curiosity (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it) - the game show of sorts in which a group of people compete to win the "friendship" of the great lady herself.  It made me feel a bit sad.  Particularly the opening part of the show in which Paris was shown living the high-life with her current set of friends.  Us peasant viewers were obviously expected to be gurgling at the telly in wide-eyed envy, but I couldn't help noticing that despite being surrounded by unending luxuries, none of them ever smiled, including Paris herself.  They all looked distinctly bored, chewing on their caviar tartlets as though in the dim backs of their minds they knew there must be more to life than this, they just couldn't process what that might be.  And not one of them, when interviewed for the programme to talk about why Paris made such a good friend in the first place, could bring themselves to say anything deeper than "she throws excellent parties...she'll always make sure you have a good time..."

So I respected Paris Hilton for her depression; to me it proved she might actually be a tiny bit human.  She might even have tried to set up the 'Best Friend' programme in a desperate, misguided attempt to bring a genuine relationship into her life, except of course the contestants were all impossibly big-haired, spitting harridans in sequinned minidresses (and I'm including the men here!) who were exactly the type of people you'd expect to apply for a programme called 'Paris Hilton's British Best Friend'.  That programme was probably the best advertisement for controlled eugenics I've ever seen.

Later that year, Paris was featured on a TV documentary detailing her wonderful life, in which she showed presenter Fearne Cotton the beautiful pink glittery mansion she'd had built, complete with spa and swimming pool...for her three little dogs.  As a viewer, you got the distinct impression she'd developed a deeper closeness with them than she'd ever felt with any actual person.

Years ago, when I was a little girl, my Dad mentioned on watching a programme about Michael Jackson: "it's no wonder he's nuts; no-one's ever said 'No' to him in his entire life".  Bless my Dad for his bluntness, but I felt he might have had a point there.

Lord Sir Alan's dilemma...to spell or not to spell?

I used to be a fan of ‘The Apprentice’.  The contestants used to be a bit bumptiously driven and a tad too eager to give everything "one hundred and ten per cent"...but they were on the whole quite endearing, and usually you could detect something resembling a ‘head for business’ (whatever the hell that actually means) lurking around somewhere in their collective psyche.

These days the calibre of the contestants has dropped so much I can only assume news has travelled rather speedily about how soul-destroying it must be, working in close proximity to ‘business stegosaurus’ Lord Sir Alan Sugar.  Which - let’s face it - it REALLY must be…previous winners of the show have been plonked in charge of his ‘health and beauty division’ (on which they were destined to fail, on the obvious basis that Lord Sir Alan Sugar, business success he may be, aint no bladdy oil painting, son), not to mention heading the division ‘in charge of the disposal of unwanted computer equipment’.   That’s the reality, folks.  That deadly interview, all those glamorous tasks; you've been on telly and everything...but deep down you must have known you were unlikely to end up as the next JR Ewing by kicking a few hundred thousand Amstrad computers off the end of the nearest pier.

But back to last night’s episode, which really did make me want to turn my eyes inside-out, even more than usual.  Where should I start?  Calling a Mexican restaurant ‘Caraca’s’ (complete with apostrophe!) might be a good place (“because it sounds like maracas and that’s Mexican, right?”)  Watching Susan and Natasha with their rumpled brows talking about how “Mexicans say ‘el’ a lot, don’t they?  Oh yes, they do...all the time.  Do you know what it actually means?  Errr…no…”  made my insides cry with despair.  Ditto lovely Tom deciding that Christopher Columbus was a symbol of Britishness, and that “Walter Drake discovered the potato in America”. 

Now I know that to be a success in business you need ‘spark’, and ‘guts’ and ‘instinct’.  That’s all everybody talks about on ‘The Apprentice’, and how many times have we heard all about how Lord Sir Alan started from nothing, before the internet and before modern telephony services and before the abacus was discovered to be a useful calculating tool?  But surely, surely, to be any sort of success you might find a bit of ‘general awareness of things that go on outside your own head’ or  ‘a basic grasp of the English language’ useful as well? 

In the very first episode of this series, Ellie wrote on a chalk board to sell soup for the girls’ team. ‘VEGATABLE SOUP’ she scratched out carefully…before hesitating, staring at it and muttering “have I got that right? Oh, it doesn't matter”  And for me, that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the series.  A bunch of people who have earned business degrees and can spout endless vaguely-business-related clichés until everybody’s ears have shrivelled up and turned black before finally crumbling off like ash from an abandoned cigarette.  But they’re not very bright; they’re not very aware, and they can’t even spell ‘vegetable’.   Next time Lord Sir Alan might be better off wandering down to the ‘Jeremy Kyle Show’ studio and picking his latest bright business mind from the guests on there.  I'm sick of all that bloody pinstripe anyway...a Burberry cap might be a nice change in the boardroom.

I realise that I sound a bit harsh, and that anybody who might care to watch me try to calculate a basic ‘profit and loss’ sheet or even work out a simple sum in my head might feel bubbling levels of frustration and despair that had previously gone un-experienced.  But the difference, you see, is that I’m not presenting myself as one of this country’s most promising business minds.  Far from it.  One: I know where Caracas is, and two: I can spell “vegetable”.  So I am, quite simply, stuffed.

Pointless ponderings on the impotent fear of dating in middle-age

There was an article in the paper today, bemoaning the "over 40s woman on internet dating sites".  The complaint from the particular woman in question was that she felt as though she was in a "dating no-man's land"; forever consigned to the scrap-heap, along with Sarah Jessica Parker's Eighties' perm and men's brown-and-yellow Y-fronts.

Though I'm a 'Smug Married' (as the detestable Bridget Jones would put it), it scares me slightly to read stories like these.  I don't really know why...maybe because it's a reminder of my own advancing age and therefore the perceived diminishing of my 'worth'.  Jerry Seinfeld once brilliantly and succinctly summed this up by comparing marriage to shopping for a new car, adding something along the lines of "of course you realise your own value drops by about fifty per cent the moment you've driven each-other off the forecourt" (apologies - I've probably got the words and the figure completely wrong, but hopefully not the sentiment).  And before you ask, no - it doesn't matter; not really.  It's just that I'm a great (if somewhat very annoying) "what if?" question asker, that's all.  Example: what if something horrible happens and I'm forced to consider the cut-throat world of internet dating after all?  (Hey, I'm a child of messy divorce and general abandonment...you can't expect me to be a sparkly-smiling optimist ALL the time, now can you?)

I met my husband when I was twenty-three, so I haven't been subjected to the wilderness of 'dating in your thirties and beyond' (so far - touch wood!)  Some of my friends have, though, and their stories were pretty terrifying.  One friend, who at thirty-three is the same age as me, bemoaned the fact that on the sites she registered for, all the men our age were going for women in their late twenties at the oldest.  The only men who contacted her were in their forties or fifties (one fifty-seven year-old did invite her for a weekend trip on his luxury yacht - but still!).  Another similarly-aged friend had less trouble getting dates, but there was something about these dates, she said, that made them different from the dates she'd enjoyed in her twenties.  The men themselves were pickier; fidgety even, especially the ones who were approaching forty.  It was as though they felt that this was their last chance to 'get it right'  as far as the inevitable 'marriage and kids all-in-one package deal' was concerned, and so the pressure was on to get the best partner they felt they could.  There was a lot of shopping around going on; a lot of browsing and picking-up-and-having-a-good-feel (as it were) before you 'bought'.  Lots of game-playing and saying you'll call someone when you have no intention of actually doing so; lots of thinly veiled insincerity and "just in case" back-up plans.

And it is this aspect that terrifies me were I ever to be confronted with it, because on this subject I am greener than Kermit the Frog in camouflage.  I think I would have to embrace a life of cats and cardigans if I were ever to find myself single again, because I couldn't be bothered with all that.  I either like someone or I don't, and I tend to act accordingly.  This was a simple approach that worked in my twenties, yet it seems to be utterly the wrong way to go about 'dating in your thirties and beyond'.  You need to be cannier than that.  And I don't think I've 'got it'.  I don't know how I would negotiate all the baggage that comes with getting older; litanies of failed relationships, kids and various overdeveloped fetishes.

I'm a fan of "wheat from chaff" separators generally; the sort of behavioural traits that marks somebody out as "chaff" very quickly and so you know whether or not they're worth bothering with from the off.  Such as: whether they consider anything by Dan Brown as great literature, or if they're a fan of Roy 'Chubby' Brown, or are a member of aforementioned-on-this-blog BeautifulPeople.com.

OK, so I'm being flippant there! - but for the most part that's because I am quite a flippant person generally.  But would I be so blase and flippant if my options had suddenly reduced to quite a drastic effect?  Would I suddenly find myself desperately trying to bag myself a respectable man so that I wouldn't die alone at the age of seventy-six, "survived by her beloved quartet of feral cats, one of which was found nibbling on her arm as she lay decomposing in the kitchen"?

I guess the truth is that I really won't know unless it happens.  I just quite like pondering these things, that's all.  So if you've time...do come back next week, when I shall ponder the prospect of the entire left side of my house getting whacked by an asteroid, fuelled by my reading of a free 'Science Made Easy' magazine someone left in the opticians.

Movie Times

I've never really and truly enjoyed going to the cinema.  Even when I was little, and it was presented as a treat...nine times out of ten I'd always end up being led out in tears anyway.  It was just too...well, dark in there.  Too intense.  The screen was too big and bright and loud, and I found it deeply unnerving that you weren't allowed to move or talk (this was quite a long time ago, remember).

When I look back on my childhood dislike of the cinema I think it was borne of the fact that it's just too much life...there on that huge screen, presented for you to give it your full attention.  As somebody who has always pretty much drifted through life, planning mostly nothing, with things happening by accident here and there, that was always going to be a pretty daunting concept.  Even now, I usually always find myself welling up in the cinema, even if the film isn't conducive to it.  You can't not care about the people on the screen; can't help relating the plot to your own life and getting all existential about what it all actually means...while a poignant soundtrack plays in the background.

(Ahem.  Well, that's what it's like for me, at any rate).

I worked in a cinema as an usherette once, when I was eighteen.  It was 1995 and the summer blockbusters were Judge Dredd, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Free Willy 2 and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.  Now, please don't envy me when I say I had to watch these films about three times a day, every day.  The scripts for all of them are burned onto my brain, even now.

Sometimes I would sit there, in my little bucket seat by the doors, clad in a skirt pinned up at the back with a huge safety pin and a blouse whose sleeves I'd had to roll up due to them coming past my hands (there were no uniforms left in my size and being as I was temporary staff, they were reluctant to order me one) - and I'd just mouth all the words.  Occasionally I'd flash my torch into the audience just as the film got to a 'jumpy' bit; that was my lame idea of relieving the stupefying boredom.  Or there'd be someone kicking the seats, and it'd be my job to tell them to stop.  The first time I did that was pretty terrifying, actually.  I'd never so much as said the proverbial boo to a goose, and now here I was, having to tell a great big man with a shaved head to stop kicking the seat in front of him!

With extreme trepidation and my heart threatening to leap out of my chest, I approached him.  I switched on my torch and shone it right into his face, as though he were a police suspect. "I'm going to ask you politely; will you please keep your feet off the seats?"

Whether I'd shamed him with my politeness or he'd just felt some sympathy with my strange pinned-back-and-rolled-up attire and the fact that my voice was trembling more than, say, it would have sounded had I been standing on a washing machine in full-spin, he duly did what I asked.  He even added a genuine-sounding "Sorry".  I went back to my bucket-seat with a feeling of elation I'd never previously experienced.  That incident went quite a long way to creating the 'dragon-lady' persona that followed (sorry my family, friends, vague acquaintances and everybody I've ever worked with).

As I got older, I realised that my disenchantment with the cinema didn't centre quite so much on the film or the big, bright 'n' loud screen, but with the other people sitting in the room with you.  That doesn't just extend to strangers; these days I choose my cinema-partners carefully due to the fact that I've previously been to see films with people who have committed the following crimes:

• Fallen asleep and then started snoring loudly
• Behaved as though we were just lounging around at home; loudly commenting on the film's events and characters: "Oh - I recognise him...what else has he been in?"  "Oooh, that wasn't very nice was it?" (poking my arm) "WAS IT?" 
• Gone off to the toilet just as the film's started, then expected me to fill them in with what they missed as soon as they got back
• Taken me to see a grisly horror under the guise of it being 'plain old science fiction' (the culprit was a man I'd started seeing; the film was Event Horizon.  I spent the entire film sitting in the cinema with my eyes squeezed shut.  We didn't last long)

So you see, for me the cinema is a complex place...full of fear, frustration and life-changing events.  You could say it has the basis of a Hollywood blockbuster, really.  Or at least a low-budget British sleeper hit.

Celebrity doppelgangers

These days I have a rule of thumb (where does that expression come from?!) - "never tell anybody they look like someone famous".  Because even if you think it's a flattering comparison, you'll be on dangerous ground.  Everybody has an idea of their own self-image, and you telling them they look like "that bloke from 'The Bill'" may well throw it all confusingly out of kilter.  Even if it's one of the better-looking blokes from 'The Bill'.


My rule of thumb was compounded about ten years ago when I was on holiday in Sardinia.  There weren't many other people around, so we ended up getting 'stuck' with two other couples for the duration of our week there (and they with us, obviously!)  One of the blokes was a dead ringer for Dale Winton - he really was - in fact, at first I'd thought it really was him swearing at a waiter and swigging from a bottle of Sol.  The subject came up while we were all out at a lovely farmhouse dinner (which my husband was later to throw back up again, all round our lovely villa at which there were no cleaning products...but that's another story entirely).

"I'm always getting mistaken for Dale Winton!" this bloke said good-naturedly, and we all had a laugh about how much he really did look like him.  Then his partner simpered from the other side of the table "I'm always being told I look like someone famous as well! Can you guess who it is?"

I looked at her for a moment, and then without thinking I said "Is it Miss Jones from 'Rising Damp'?"

In the milli-second after I'd said that, it felt like someone had come in wearing a cloak, duly breathing a sparkling blanket of ice straight into the atmosphere round our table.

"No" Miss Jones (not her real name) said, firmly.  "It's Jamie Lee Curtis, actually"

I didn't apologise, mainly because I didn't want to draw attention to the fact that I'd just basically insulted her without thinking.  But I also didn't apologise because if you ask the question "Who do you think I look like?" you have to be prepared to hear whatever the person you're asking actually thinks, not whatever you're wanting to hear.  It's like the perennial "how old do you think I am?"  I got caught with that one at a friend's party last year, with one of her friends who worked at her childrens' school.

"People can never believe how old I am when I tell them!" she said, and I grimaced involuntarily as I knew what would be coming next...


"Go on, have a guess!"


I tried the old "Oh, I couldn't do that", but that never works; you're always roped in eventually.  So I looked at her, and then for insurance I knocked a few years off the age I'd guessed she was: about thirty-six.  "Errr...you're about thirty-two?" I said uncertainly.  The response I was awarded was her stomping off to the other side of the room without speaking to me again, and I later found out from my friend that she was only twenty-four.  Again, I didn't apologise...in fact her stomping off had conveniently saved me from listening to any more of her conversation on the history of why she always takes a sweetener in her tea instead of sugar.

I also knew a friend-of-a-friend who, whenever we all met up, always mentioned his perceived resemblance to a 'Hollyoaks' character...something nobody else ever commented upon.  He asked me directly once if I thought he looked like the said character, and though my response was disappointing, at least that time it wasn't insulting.  It was, simply, "I don't know - I don't watch 'Hollyoaks'".  We didn't have much to talk about after that.

I think most people have, at some point, been told they resemble someone famous.  It's a bit like when a new baby's born and the family insist that he or she's "exactly like Grandad/Auntie Jean/Cousin Eric was at that age".  People like to make comparisons; it's just that some people come off worse than others.  Like the woman I worked with for a little while who came into the office on a Monday morning, outraged that someone at a party had told her she "looks like Ian Hislop from 'Have I Got News For You'".  I joined her in her outrage, but as I went off to make her a consolation cuppa I slowly realised that that person had been amazingly perceptive, because she actually did look like Ian Hislop from 'Have I Got News For You'.  But this time, you'll be pleased to hear I kept that information to myself.  As she should have done herself, because as she retold the insulting story to everyone in our office I could see the resemblance slowly dawning on them as well.  It was all some of them could do not to leave a copy of 'Private Eye' on her chair after that.

I myself haven't got off so lightly in the old "celebrity doppelganger" conundrum.  I've been thrown some flattering comparisons in the past, such as Cameron Diaz, Kate Bosworth, Geena Davis and Jane Leeves (Daphne from 'Frasier') - see, I haven't quite resisted the temptation to mention the good ones, have I?!  But before you start thinking how cocky I am, I've also been told I resemble the Honey Monster (due to having had a bob cut in pretty much exactly the same unfortunate style) and "that bird from Countdown's Dictionary Corner".  I never found out who exactly, but on the few occasions I've ever watched Countdown I didn't see anybody I'd have liked to remotely resemble plonked in the Dictionary Corner.  I also uploaded a picture of myself onto one of those 'celebrity comparison' websites for a laugh, which I duly got when one of my matches came back as Kate Moss's druggie ex, Pete Doherty.

Next time I go out I might ask people who they think I look like, and then mention him.  Well...it'll be a conversation starter, at any rate.  Unless they ask me who I think they look like in return.  In which case...it may well be the start of a long night.