Thursday 27 September 2012

Observing the Loons: The OAP of Today...

Observing the Loons: The OAP of Today...: Last month the Tabloids and Broadsheets alike feasted on the suggestion from Parliament that OAP’s could be means-tested before being automa...

Observing the Loons: Ennis for Big Brother?

Observing the Loons: Ennis for Big Brother?: A year has now passed and we’ve dealt with the aftermath of the riots which shook, shocked and held England to ransom which made us spectato...

Observing the Loons: Observing the Loons pt1

Observing the Loons: Observing the Loons pt1: What is this? This is a collection of my thoughts based on random peoples' everyday behaviour that make our headlines or people I have r...

Observing the Loons: Young man, stop slouching.

Observing the Loons: Young man, stop slouching.: My previous two blog’s have hopefully portrayed me as someone having patience and respect for the ‘youth of today’. Give them every chance I...

Young man, stop slouching.

My previous two blog’s have hopefully portrayed me as someone having patience and respect for the ‘youth of today’. Give them every chance I say, nurture, develop and lead them towards a life of happiness and success. Guide them through hard work and promote being able to live alongside their fellow humans by having respect for others around them. You reap what you sew. But, this blog may make me look a little bit hypocritical as I am about to don my grumpy old woman with nothing-better-to-do-than-whinge head. I believe with good reason though.

I have some advice for parents, no-one I know, but then none of my friends have rude children who don’t know how to conduct themselves correctly in a public place. Here we go and if you are offended then please accept my apologies but congratulations for being able to read- your children probably can’t.

Educate your child on supermarket etiquette, simple mannerisms that are damn right wrong and what is quite simply unacceptable. Teach your child not to flatulate in the bread aisle in Tesco’s- it’s vulgar, extremely rude and it’s usually the same uncouth youngster ten minutes later at the patisserie counter with his hand down the front of his trousers playing with his adolescent, yet-to-develop-fully testicles. There doesn’t need to be a sign displayed informing customers to ensure that they are fully clothed when shopping- people should just know this. Just because the sun is breaking through the clouds it doesn’t make it acceptable to go shopping for your cider in a supermarket with no shirt on as it’s unlikely that you will get a suntan indoors and even less likely that people will ‘check you out’ and think ‘oh he’s well fit innit’. It is more likely that when you are farting and fondling down the front of your trousers topless, people will think, ‘what a tit!’ and may even shake their head in shame and think that the youth of today has gone to the dogs. I would suggest that a code of shopping etiquette is installed in our children as we have evolved quite well over the past 200,000 years from Neanderthal - people who were less educated with less luxuries and access to what is acceptable yet would probably have a more successful, less offensive shopping excursion than ‘Dazza’ (born in 1996). It quite frequently seems that when I go shopping to my local civilised supermarket it’s like a surreal dream that I’m an extra in a scene from the Chatsworth Estate or California Man?

Teach your child that they don’t need to spit in-between each out of context expletive as they walk down the street past a primary school or church. Saliva is quite important, it keeps your mouth clean and aids in the digestion of your food, don’t take it for granted, plus it’s disgusting to see a pavement decorated with it.

Now, everyone swears, even saint’s let slip the occasional ‘buggery bollocks’, which I presume means ‘shit’ to the rest of us, but continual out of context swearing that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and is used just because someone has run out of suitable adjectives/nouns/verbs makes you sound a little bit stupid. I definitely agree there is some truth in the saying that suggests swearing is used by people who have a limited knowledge of vocabulary and that it seems that if people cant think of a suitable word they simply replace it with a swear word. In all fairness some of their chosen expletives have more syllables than the rest of their sentence so well done on that achievement.

Ok, last gripe. It irritates me beyond explanation when ‘Dazza’ accidentally takes his Saxo/Corsa/other small-engined vehicle and mistakes it for a McClaren F1 and then confuses a cul-de-sac for a Formula 1 race track. It doesn’t matter how many go-faster stripes you plaster on it, it’ll forever remain a Saxo/Corsa/other small engined vehicle- just with lots of stupid stickers on it. Please teach your child that this kind of reckless behaviour is grossly unacceptable, stupid and very dangerous to the rest of us who know that it is just a cul-de-sac.

So YOT, pull up your trousers so I’m not forced to look at your underwear, comb your hair and wash your mouth out. Learn something beneficial to society, you are the future role models- embrace this responsibility. I don’t mean that we should all be the same robotic types so be creative, individuality is great so don’t be afraid to be a salmon - swim upstream against the current. You don’t need to put a massive spoiler on your Punto to be cool, get a Reliant Robin instead. Now that is cool.

Friday 7 September 2012

The OAP of Today...

Last month the Tabloids and Broadsheets alike feasted on the suggestion from Parliament that OAP’s could be means-tested before being automatically given some benefits. Whilst newspapers speculated wildly and crucified the coalition I quite simply pondered on my experiences of OAP’s…..

Before I begin I must ascertain that I have nothing against our elder generation of pensioners, in-fact I carry the greatest respect for our elder, senior members of society. My mum is older than me and I quite like her so that proves my point. I have two incredible grandparents both in their 90’s, both still the life and soul of any family gathering and both still capable of making me laugh at the top of my lungs. Often this isn’t their intention though. My slight issue that I have isn’t really with the ‘fighting generation’, the generation that took us through two World Wars and years of struggle in the aftermath to give us a Great Britain to be proud of. Who stood tall with their chests stuck out, shoulders back and heads held high and maintained that wonderful stiff upper lip of unswerving dignity. The wonderful story tellers of yesteryear, the fabulous elder-folk oozing with wisdom and experience and those who gave us our today need not defend yourselves- this isn’t about you, I simply adore you.

My ‘beef’ is with the inbetweeners, the busybodies who think the world owes them something. In particular the ones who believe every young person is a yob, has no respect for anyone else, their property and is running this country into the ground. These people who demand respect but fail to give it to anyone else.

I witnessed a man (not a gentleman, I use that term only for those who display gentlemanly like qualities) whom I would approximate to be about 55 years old, middle class at a guess, walk straight into a teenage boy. He straight away straddled his extremely high horse and accused the boy of walking into him and having no manners,

“That’s the problem with the youth of today, they have absolutely no respect for their elders, you all need to learn some manners!”

Well judgemental Sir, I for one applaud you, well done you for managing to stay alive until you’ve reached the grand age of 50, why should this unsuspecting teenage walker respect you? What, you’ve managed to not die? Well done, now p**s off and go and judge someone else, somewhere else. I can pretty much say with confident conviction that if the young lad mentioned anything about ‘the barger’s’ age or mature standing then he’d most likely be accused of being ageist. Lose/lose situation just because he was young and battered with the ‘youth of today’ stick.

This is most probably the type of person who is least likely to adapt to change, unable to live alongside anyone slightly different to him. I imagine should a gay couple move in next door or someone with tattoos/different accent/children/cats/anything, he would most probably judge and curtain twitch and become obsessed about his awful neighbours before even saying hello. Yes Sir, great example of respecting your fellow human. My friend often falls victim to this sort of middle aged, middle classed-up-their-own-arse judgement.

She has the most wonderful tattoo’s covering quite a lot of her body and this is the first thing people take notice of, quite rightly, they’re spectacular, wonderfully artistic that was probably her aim when she started decorating herself. These inbetweeners however, seem to think she’s a crazed criminal not to be associated with and for god sake watch your handbag dear! She hold’s doors open for people in shopping centre’s/supermarket/fluffy kitten centre for abused fluffy kittens and in return she gets glared at and given filthy looks. She is a wonderful mother, loving wife and war veteran and a great example of human benevolence. She is more than capable of living alongside other people whether they be old, young, gay, Polish and she does it without too much of an effort.

So, artistic charismatic individuals, people with funny accents, the gays and ‘the youth of today’, keep your heads held high, continue to walk with pride because the narrow-minded, self important middle class buffoons need not matter, for if the ‘important’ members of society are unable to live alongside you then that’s their problem. And ‘the youth of today’ enjoy your youth as one day you will be running the country, keeping us alive, engineering engineer-y things, sending people to Venus and finding a cure for middle classed, judgemental whinging old bats.