Men behaving inappropriately

There’s something about the word inappropriate that gets to me. That and its near relation appropriate. They really do cover a multitude of sins. “I would like to apologise for my inappropriate behaviour at the ambassador’s dinner. I recognise that what I did could not in any way be considered to be appropriate.” Roughly translated that means “I’m sorry I drank enough to sink an aircraft carrier and then groped any woman in arm’s reach. I realise that I am lucky not to find myself in a cell facing charges for a serious sexual offence.”

Instead we use appropriate/inappropriate. While I suppose that is quicker than my rather long-winded translation, the words lack detail. Someone whose behaviour is described as inappropriate could be a sexual predator, violent psycho or raving nutter who likes to sing a version of the Sex Pistol’s God Save The Queen during the committal at a funeral.

Anyway, what brought this on was watching a TV programme which was a sort of rude grandson of Candid Camera. In this instance the clip showed a young TV presenter interviewing people in Hollywood, but instead of a microphone she had a flesh-coloured dildo with all veins up it (as they say). While interviewing a young film starlet, one of the said starlet’s assistants pushed the “microphone” away and said: “That is not appropriate” - no, but it was quite funny.

A tale of two questions

"Excuse me, mate. Could you help me with my zip?" Good Lord, it's not often walking the dog at the beach ends with someone posing that question. OK, it's not EVER. I suppose people who hang around dogging sites are used to such queries, but I don't and I'm not. Anyway, no point in getting excited. The question came from a rather burly aging surfer who was struggling to get his zip all the way to the top of his suit before plunging into the water at Westward Ho! I suppose only in my rather sordid imagination would it be a comely lady surfer needing help to get out of her suit.

And then, guess what? On the way back from the beach I call in at the vets where an attractive veterinary nurse asks if I need a packet of three or even a packet of six. Blimey, but we hardly know each other and....Oh God, I'm turning into Finbarr Saunders, except mine are single entendres. Still, at least the dog is protected against fleas and worms for the next six months.

Could all these thoughts of raunch be to do with the slow onset of spring. The birds start singing earlier and earlier in the mornings, bulbs are showing signs of poking up through the soil and catkins are appearing on trees. Yup, that's it - the natural cycle of things.

Seven days make one weak

That's the punchline to some sort of seaside postcard featuring a weedy looking man and a pneumatic blonde on their honeymoon. But in my case, it's all about seven days of sobriety because, yes, we're in Lent and during Lent I give up the booze. No real reason, certainly nothing to do with the approach of Easter. I suspect it's more to do with testing my powers of self-control, which might be foolishly stiff upper lip of me - I don't know. It does, however, make a surprisingly pleasant change to remove alcohol as a factor in some of the things I do.

Going out, for instance, is a lot easier in some respects (no relying on buses, taxis, lifts or Shanks's Pony to get back from somewhere). That being said the company of people who are hell bent on getting tanked up when I am stone cold sober is not high on my list of favourite things to see and do, but then I'm sure I'm just as scintillating when I've had a few.

I also have very vivid dreams - Jacques Cousteau urinating down a well and Denise van Outen hanging up a skimpy dress in a cemetery are just two such dreams. The other thing I notice is that I get quite fidgety. Not because I'm desperate for a drink, but because I just want to get out and do stuff.

So anyway, I've given up drink (but only for Lent) and, sadly, work has given up three of my colleagues. In other words they've gone for a combination of reasons which all have the recession at their root. And if anything is an excuse for a good old piss up, it's people leaving work, but no, not for me. I'm on lime and soda, BUT ONLY FOR LENT.

In which I fall among hippies

Strictly speaking I suppose they weren't hippies in the historical sense of the word, but they had the air of people who had once been closely acquainted with cheesecloth, patchouli and the occasional exotic cigarette. The encounter took place at a party celebrating someone's 70th birthday and I suppose if I am honest I didn't want to be there (which sounds terribly rude - why did I just not politely decline?). Anyway, I was there and it was rather like stepping back in time, but the hippies had aged and withered. The bright summers of the 1960s - when I was just a boy - had turned into the wet and cold winter of 2010 and the passage of time had knocked us all about to some extent.

As someone whose musical puberty was spent in the punk era I suppose I have a residual - and entirely unreasonable - antipathy towards hippies. Sorry for continuing to use that word, it's very lazy of me. And I continue to warn "Never trust a hippie." I'm not sure why now. Could it be that love and peace turned into stuff and nonsense and then just plain old power and money. If that is the case I have to put my hands up to the fact that such transitions seem to affect all movements and punk was no exception. "Tempora mutantur" as the wily Romans were often heard to mutter before then observing "but not much".

Waiting for the other shoe to drop

I've never quite to grips with what that expression really means. Anyway, there was no waiting for the other shoe to drop this morning as I walked along Bideford Quay. Just near where the Oldenburg is moored was not one, but two, bright red ladies' platform shoes, laying on their side, looking rather forlorn. Because they were so close to the lip of the quay I feared that their unfortunate owner might have pitched headlong over the edge and into the river. I peeked down in the gap between the Oldenburg and the quay wall, but, I'm glad to say, there was no sign of a bright young thing (drunk young thing?) in the water.

Maybe whoever the shoes belonged to had found them too uncomfortable to bear and simply abandoned them. I am often surprised at the amount of footwear and clothing that can be found discarded on our highways and byways. Do the people to whom this stuff belongs not realise that suddenly they no longer have their trousers/shirt/socks on? What excuse do they offer to anyone who politely inquires: "Didn't you have a pair of trousers on when you went out?" Maybe they are like a South American footballer I was reading about recently. I think he played for a Peruvian team - Quito, possibly? - and was arrested by police who had found him running stark naked down the street. His explanation to his wife for how this state of affairs had arisen was that he was "being chased by a ghost". Brilliant, I think some of the grubbier types who infest the Premier League could learn from that. Certainly beats blaming "sex addiction".

Is that the time already?

Six weeks in to 2010 and so far I've notched up one funeral and a birthday party for an 80-year-old. I've also been invited to a birthday party for a 70-year-old (can't say who, it's a secret, but suffice it to say he was once ultra-bearded) and to put the cherry on the cake - or to poke the lolly stick into the dog poop - there are question marks over my job.
So, one by one, I don't relish going to funerals, although as long as you are aware you're there it's better than the one you go to of which you are oblivious ( because you're dead, obvious innit?). And I hope this doesn't sound too rude, but I don't really like going to birthday parties for people who can be described as a whatever-genarian. Trouble is, I'm not too keen on birthday parties for people much younger than me, either. In fact, if I'm honest, I'm not too keen on parties at all which makes me sound like a miserable git, but frankly I don't care.
And the job thing? Well, I think I'll be OK in that I'll keep my job, but that does open up the prospect of having to run even faster to stay on the same spot. Those immortal - and frankly fatuous - words "We'll be working smarter, not harder" were trotted out. Presumably that means my lords and masters think we all currently work like a bunch of dumboes.
An added cloud on the horizon is that the Greek economy is looking decidedly shaky so the dream escape plan of fleeing there looks somewhat remote. Anyway, mustn't grumble. [Sound of hollow laughter receding into the distance.]