1. Ceilings. Showers generally have them. There is a reason for this. You don’t want to give plane users a good show do you? And if you do there are places for that sort of stuff. But I digress, smashing your head on the ceiling. Not clever.
2. Long hair. This mainly applies to girls and the French rugby team. Your long hair could quite easily get wrapped around the shower head. Then what are you going to do? Pulling is going to hurt. Scissors are rarely within reach. You are probably just going to have to stay there.
3. Slippery. Assuming you have actually switched the water on and you haven’t gone in the shower with your anti-slip hiking boots on, the tray isn’t going to be the safest place to jump around in. One false landing and there is no knowing where the soap may end up.
4. Design. A shower was simply not made to withstand the sheer force of someone jumping up and down in it. The tray will only take so much pounding before it cracks. And what with water being water and gravity being gravity, it isn’t going to be long before your lounge has a new water feature.
5. Sweat. Doing exercise, as jumping up and down in the shower could be classed as, produces sweat. The point of going into the shower is to get rid of stuff like sweat is it not? So jumping up and down in the shower is about as logical as taking your bike for a walk.
6. Muscle Injury. Generally speaking people do not warm-up before entering the shower. This means their muscles are cold. Contrary to popular opinion, getting under a hot shower doesn’t have the same effect as stretching. The pinging and twanging of hamstrings is only a matter of time away.
7. It looks weird. What? Do you really need me to explain why?
1. The Weather. It must be quite easy to present the weather in Australia, it’s always “nice” there, so you probably don’t have to be too bright to do it. That would explain this weatherman being outwitted by a pelican then.
2. Wipeout Australia. In Britain, we have Total Wipeout, a programme in which pudgy, potato-faced middle-managers from Droitwich lumber around a ridiculous assault course. Wipeout Australia uses the same course, except everything is harder and the machines go at about five times the speed. The people they send around don’t seem any leaner or sportier though, that wouldn’t be any fun.
3. Skippy. In Britain in the ’60s, men whistled at attractive young women in mini-skirts. In Australia in the ’60s, they whistled at kangaroos. Still, they seem quite happy.
4. Advert. Halfway through, so it’s time for a break. Would you like one of these? It’s undetectable, you know.
5. Soaps. The bush, mushrooms, a mysterious pig, a flaming hand – it has to be a soap opera. Obvious, really.
6. Marriage. This sort of thing never happened on Richard and Judy.
7. The dream. Okay, you knew it had to turn up somewhere didn’t you? That classic Neighbours dream sequence which came out of left-field and astonished the audience. No, not that one, this one. The accents are spot on, by the way.
Okay, it’s time for an admission. I was wrong. All of this stuff is awful, yet somehow brilliant. I’ve had so much fun putting this post together that I’ve become convinced that Australians should make more television – perhaps even all of it. As long as I don’t have to watch Paul Hogan again I’d be quite happy. I might even buy a hairpiece.
1. Fake Apologies.We Are Being Held At A Red Signal. We Apologise For The Delay. We? There is no we. You are a recorded voice. A recorded voice belonging to a woman who got paid to say it. No one who gets paid to apologise really means it.
2. Use Of Language.Alight Here. Who alights in this day any age? In fact who alighted in that day and age? No one alights. They hop off. Or jump off. Or barge past. Or miss their stop.
3. Vagueness.Alight Here For Museums. Any museum is that? I can alight at South Kensington for the Vatican City Tractor Museum can I? No, I can’t. I’ll tell you what I can alight at South Kensington for. That’s the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum and the V&A Museum. Tourists love me.
4. Stating The Bloody Obvious.Mind The Gap. A complete waste of oxygen this. We see gap, we avoid gap. We are not stupid. We do not have signs near rivers saying, ‘Use The Bridge’ do we? And doesn’t mind mean look after anyway? Why is it our job to look after the gap? If you ask me the gap seems perfectly capable of looking after itself.
5. Lack Of Consistency. So when we pull into South Kensington, we are told we could alight for museums. Although the Japanese don’t know what the museums are, it is quite useful information. When we pull into Embankment, we are told we can alight for ferries. Again useful. So why is it that when we pull up to Parsons Green, all we hear is, ‘The next station is Parsons Green’? Where is the additional information? Why shouldn’t people be told to ‘Alight here for Peter’s Fish Bar and the rather plush co-op’?
6. Out Of Touch. The voice of the tube is monotone. How the hell is it possible to sound just as cheery on a hot summers day pulling into Wimbledon as it is in the depths of winter in West Ham? I don’t want an impossibly happy voice telling me to alight at West Ham when it’s -5 and there is four foot of snow on the ground. In fact I don’t want a voice telling me to alight at West Ham full stop. It’s miles away from home and means I have got on the wrong tube. Again.
7. Lies.Change For The Circle Line? On a Sunday? I don’t think so.
1. Trolleys. For the first time in 7 Reasons history, we have a three pronged reason. (Yes, that is the official name). One: Wobbly wheels – An absolute nightmare to control. One minute you are heading for Lady Grey tea bags the next you find yourself in frozen sausages. Two: Trolley rage – Why does everyone else push their trolley so slowly? And why do they always alter direction just as you are trying to squeeze past them? And why do they always leave their trolley right in front of the ginger nuts? You just want to slam someone through the cheese counter. Three: Not your trolley – You leave your trolley for a second to grab a box of Bran Flakes, then when you come back you put them in someone else’s trolley and walk off with it. And their baby.
2. Petrol. Petrol stations are dangerous at the best of times, but they are a just an accident waiting to happen when owned by Tesco. It is so easy to douse yourself in said liquid while imagining getting home and opening the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies you have just bought.
3. Hunger. Go to Tesco when you are hungry and before you know it you will end up with food you don’t need, a poor credit rating and dozens upon dozens of gym membership offers.
4. Acquaintances. Why is it you can’t go to Tesco without seeing someone you know? And why is it always someone you really don’t want to talk to? Or let look in your trolley? You have no choice but to creep around the store hiding behind boxes of Shreddies and buying enormous French loaves to cover your face.
5. Tills. You go to the same Tesco every week. You always see the same cashiers. You have absolutely no intention of talking to them when you are in the queue, but as soon as you are packing your bags you are talking to them as if you spent the previous night on the phone to each other. Why?
6. Stalkers. Tesco is a popular training ground for stalkers. They position themselves in the flower section, behind the lilies. Any victim who smiles at the lilies will automatically be smiling at the stalker. This is all the encouragement they need. Suddenly the stalker is off. Following their victim from fruit & veg to tinned tomatoes to their car. If you shop at Tesco make sure your list includes pepper spray.
7. Shelves. Because visual merchandising is more important to Tesco than health and safety, products are stacked in creative ways. Creativity has a habit of falling down and cracking you on the top of the head. So do tins of baked beans.
*It would be unfair of me to take full credit for this piece as someone else thought of 5 ½ reasons. But I will. I had to write it after all.
1. CD Case Design Flaw: Part A. Whichever genius designed the CD case was/is not a genius. A genius would not have made the breadth of the case so bloody tiny that the name of the artist/album is impossible to see unless you have your nose pressed up against it. The breadth of the cassette case was ideal. Perfectly readable from a sensible distance and far less risk of adding a plastic splinter to your face.
2. CD Case Design Flaw: Part B. One for the environmentalists among you. The CD case uses three parts. The cassette case uses two. It isn’t difficult to work out where Global Warming came from is it?
3. Double-sided. When you bought an album on tape, you were in fact getting two mini albums. And A-side and a B-side. Musicians actually took this into account when putting the track listing together. And it made a huge difference. Oasis’ Definitely Maybe and What’s The Story (Morning Glory?) were both released on tape. Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants was not. Coincidence?
4. Sturdiness. A cassette is to a hammer what a HobNob is a to a cup of tea. The CD is a rich tea finger. Pathetic.
5. Write Protection Override. In the good old days when cassettes appeared on every shelf in Our Price, you could go to bed on a Sunday night happy in the knowledge that you wouldn’t ever have to set foot in that store. That is because you’d just used a bit of masking tape on your father’s copy of Born In The USA and recorded that week’s Top 20 over it.
6. Manual Rewind. Sticking your little finger into a cassette and giving it a turn one way or the other made you feel in control of your music collection. Sticking your little finger through the middle of a CD and spinning it makes you look like a prick. And you’ll get a knuckle cut.
7. Labeling. It was so easy to write on a cassette. Usually it came with specially designed labels anyway. All you had to do was get out the biro. With a CD though, you need a special pen. Does a special pen come with a blank CD? Does it hell. You have to go and find a branch of bloody Hobby Craft. And of course that is miles away. On an industrial estate. Next to a Wickes and Charlies Car Wash and a burger van.
Elbowing us out of the way and lounging on our sofa this week is photographer and all round nice gal, Sarah Ansell. Having lived and worked in Lagos between 1995-98 who better to tell us why to live there? Well, maybe someone who lives there right now, but we don’t know any of those. Obviously these reasons are based on her experiences of life there a few years ago and so they may not be an accurate reflection of life there in 2010. But no one is really bothered about that are they? You can view Sarah’s showcase of work over at SarahCanterbury.com. It is well worth the visit.
1. A greater tolerance of the M25. Once you’ve cleared the joy that is Murtala Mohammed International Airport, the first thing that strikes you about Lagos is the driving. And I use that word in its very loosest sense. Go-Slows (their wonderful name for traffic jams) are the norm and as for adhering to something akin to a Highway Code, pah! No such thing! It’s each man (or in my case, woman) for him(her)self. Don’t worry about the direction the traffic is meant to be facing – see a space, take it! Add to this all sorts of delights: habitual fuel shortages; attempting to drive through black fumes churned out by ancient vehicles liable to shed exhaust pipes at any moment (MOTs? Hahaha!); avoiding rust heaps abandoned at the side of the road; passengers leaping on and off buses; road sellers trying to talk you in to that must-have plastic toilet seat purchase; beggars on skateboards; and the occasional dead body (sadly I kid you not). As if this wasn’t enough, all is accompanied by the din of a thousand car horns. The M25 is a doddle after this.
2. Communing with nature. For lovers of wildlife, Lagos is a quite marvellous place to get up close and personal with creatures in a manner you could only dream of back home in Britain. There’s nothing quite like opening your pencil drawer at work and seeing a frantic scurrying of cockroaches to sharpen your hand-eye coordination and speed up those reflexes. Ditto the reaction time on seeing a rat run across your sitting room to hide behind the bookcase when you’re home alone at 10.30 on a Friday night. Or any night for that matter. Also, where else could you have a real live gecko as a wall ornament in your dining room? Lagos is also an excellent place in which to overcome silly phobias – no longer do I run shrieking from teeny tiny spiders (or even the big ones), but embrace them with equanimity. Well, not literally embrace them or they would get squashed and I’d suffer from spider murdering guilt. I should pay homage here, too, to the humble mosquito. Ah, the fun of being awakened from your slumbers by that distinctive whiny noise and having to go into full on Rambo attack mode with a rolled-up newspaper while you’re still half asleep. That’s assuming, of course, that you can locate the bugger.
3. An appreciation of the finer things in life. Baths with clear water in which you are not perched on grains of brown rust doubling as a makeshift mat. Electricity that works (for electricity substitute telephones, lifts, pretty much anything really) and the knowledge that the power isn’t suddenly going to cut out just as Nasser Hussain faces Curtley Ambrose with 2 runs needed off the last ball. PAH! Hairdressers: I never quite summoned up the courage to have my hair cut there, so trips back to the UK every 6 months always began with a hat wearing trip to the hairdressers – a maximum of 30 minutes after arriving home. I have the fondest memories of the subsequent sheer joy of sporting a “do” for the next six weeks that didn’t make me resemble Hair Bear (Google the Hair Bear Bunch if you’re too young to remember him!). Croquet played on the lawn during a weekend trip to the High Commissioner’s residence in Ibadan. I felt very posh. And mushrooms. Oh how I missed mushrooms.
4. The thrill of living on the edge. I appreciate that living on the edge is not exclusive to Lagos, but it is the only place I’ve lived where the excitement of a Friday night trip downtown included being caught up inadvertently in an exhilarating car chase complete with gunfire. Mercifully I wasn’t driving! A G&T in The Red Lion has always seemed a little tame in comparison since. Then there’s living in a compound surrounded by razor wire & patrolled by gate guards; negotiating army & police roadblocks in bulletproof glassed cars (“have you got something for my Easter?”); being bussed to work with an armed policeman and accompanying security vehicle because the office was in a dodgy part of town; and the very real danger of a potential car-jack. All a little removed from nipping out to Sainbury’s on a Tuesday afternoon in February. Just call me Lara Croft!
5. The ability to reinvent yourself. Fed up with your mundane existence? Then change it! You can be whoever you want to be. Just pop along to any street corner and pick yourself a fresh identity, complete with sparkly new passport & a full set of supporting documents. You’ll also be well placed to learn from the finest scammers in the world.
6. A reminder that there’s always someone worse off than you. Lagosians are truly inspiring and I do mean that sincerely – their faith & resilience in the face of adversity is astonishing. Plus they have lots of fab names like Patience, Charity & Blessing and give uplifting names to their businesses. Buying your tin of beans in Goodness & Mercy Enterprises or God’s Favour Enterprises seems so much more edifying than in a store with a name like Lidl (not that I have anything against names like Lidl – I am just using artistic license, you understand). Also, having never lived somewhere before where it took no less than 5 men to drill a hole, I appreciate their inventiveness when it comes to job creation.
7. The lack of snow. It has to be said that it’s highly unlikely you will be bothered by a preponderance of snow in Lagos. That’s a good enough reason all by itself to live there. Though it can get a bit wet at times.
1. The Importance Of Being Important. Most people like feeling important. It gives them an enormous sense of wellbeing. (Thanks to Damon Albarn for that insight). When you feel important, you feel proud. When you feel proud you take pride in what you do. Generally it means you do something well for once. Just think, if we got 75% of all MPs in first class, Great Britain would be 75% better. Believe it.
2. Forget Forgetfulness. Working in first class means you have more space. It means you don’t feel overcrowded or have the sensation that everyone is looking over your shoulder. In this relaxed state of mind you are unlikely to be flustered when you realise you have already pulled into the station. In turn it means you are unlikely to leave important documents on the train. Like the names, addresses and shoe sizes of all your friendly neighbourhood swinging couples.
3. The Art Of Complaining. These days the British like complaining. It is a fairly new phenomenon. Usually such pathetic behaviour was left to the French, while those in this country sucked it up and displayed their stiff upper lip. But for one reason or another those days are fast dissipating and now there is nothing a Brit likes more than a good old moan. Particularly if it is about an MP. Letting MPs travel first class gives us stuff to talk about in the pub, listen to on the radio, watch on Question Time and write about on websites.
4. The Art Of Moaning. MPs, being British themselves, also like to moan. Moaning about having to pay back expenses or moaning about the lack of fresh water crabs in their moat or moaning about Gordon Brown moaning about David Cameron moaning about Labour moaning about the Conservatives. Quite frankly I am bored of it. The Winter Olympics are on and all I can think about is how cool it would be to put Harriet Harman in a bobsleigh. If we force MPs to travel standard class we will hear moaning about not having the correct environment to work in. I don’t want to hear that. It reeks of an excuse. Stick them in first class and they no longer have an excuse for doing a sub-standard job.
5. News Of The Country. Newspapers are free in first class. Perhaps this will encourage one or two of them to read one and find out what is actually happening in this country. Then perhaps one of the two would like to do something about it instead of just talking about it.
6. Strangers On A Train. If the MPs are up at the front of the train, it means there is an empty seat in front of you. Who knows who might join you on your trip to Reading. Maybe a splendidly pretty young thing who doesn’t use text speak? Or maybe a female Canadian Mountie? Or maybe both? Not that either of us would even think about looking at them. We’d be far more interested in cows rushing by our window.
7. Fight Club. No MPs with all us ‘different type of people’ down in carriage D, means it will remain the quiet carriage. That has to be a good thing. For First Great Western.
1. B is for Brilliance. Don’t take this website as evidence. Take a look here and here. It is all around us. Brilliance is good. Without it we’d be distinctly average. And no one wants that.
2. B is for Britain. Yes, I am biased (and not just because I feel the need to be given the subject of this post), but Britain is the best country in the world. It has history. Spectacular geography. Culture. Art. Morris dancing. Cheese rolling. Test Match Special. Marks & Spencer. Gardens. The Archers. Castles. Cornish Pasties. Colin Firth. Allotments. And me.
3. B is for Brown. No, not Gordon. Sauce. Brown Sauce is great. Brown Sauce doesn’t need Piers Morgan to make it look good.
4. B is for Beauty. Life is beautiful. People like looking at beautiful things. People are beautiful. People like looking at beautiful people. I like looking at pictures of Sandra Bullock.
5. B is for Baths. At the 7 Reasons HQ, the bath is rarely sans person. (Though unlike the 7 Reasons sofa it is never occupied by more than one person at a time). A bath is relaxing. A bath is stimulating. A bath is a place of discovery. Just ask Archimedes. If he hadn’t jumped into the bath on that glorious day in 240BC, we wouldn’t have submarines.
6. B is for the Beach Boys. Just to show that while I am biased towards my country I am not xenophobic, I am going to ignore The Beatles – a pretty good band – and head stateside to find the best. Not only were The Beach Boys brilliant exponents when it came to creating the 2:30 pop song, they also created the masterpiece that is Pet Sounds. One of – if not the – greatest albums ever made.
7. B is for Buses. Without buses we wouldn’t have seen Holiday on the Buses. Or Summer Holiday. We would also have forgotten about Darren Day five years before we eventually did.
1. “You would not believe your eyes, if ten million fireflies, lit up the world as I fell asleep.” Ten million fireflies? Seriously? Do you know how difficult that would be to organise?
2. “’Cause they’d fill the open air, and leave teardrops everywhere.” Erm…if a firefly cried it would just put itself out. In fact it would probably drown itself. Logic fail and animal cruelty in one sentence. Classy.
3. “It’s hard to say, that I’d rather stay, awake when I’m asleep.” Well of course it bloody is. Even the most accomplished of sleep-talkers struggle to say what they want when they are asleep. Most of them talk about cows.
4. “’Cause I’d get a thousand hugs, from ten thousand lightning bugs, as they tried to teach me how to dance.” No, no and no again. So that’s one hug from every ten bugs is it? How exactly does that work then? And what the hell happened to the other 9,990,000 fireflies? Oh, that’s right. They died in a teardrop suicide pact.
5. “A foxtrot above my head, a sock hop beneath my bed, a disco ball is just hanging by a thread.” What? What the hell is a sock hop? Is that the thing a newly pubescent boy uses eight times a night?
6. “To ten million fireflies, I’m weird ’cause I hate goodbyes, I got misty eyes as they said farewell.” Yeah, not just weird to fireflies buddy. Now stop being a big tart and grow a pair.
7. “But I’ll know where several are, if my dreams get real bizarre, ’cause I saved a few and I keep them in a jar.” What is wrong with you man? You keep fireflies in a jar? Can’t you afford a lava lamp?
1. Primetime. This time around, the Winter Olympics are in Vancouver. That means it will be shown on the TV in the evenings. Assuming you are reading this in the UK that is. Watching sport on a weeknight evening is brilliant. It is what makes life so enjoyable.
2. We Might Win A Medal. And if we do, it will almost certainly be won by someone we haven’t heard of. In a sport we know nothing about. But come Sports Personality of the Year in December we will all be voting for her. Or him. Or them. Those of us who aren’t voting for Rory Delap that is.
3. Last Chance To See. The British Ski and Snowsport Federation has gone into administration. This could be the last time you get to see Great Britain represented at the Winter Olympics. History in the making.
4. Anthems. It gives us a chance to hear National anthems that we don’t normally in the Summer Olympics. The Austrian and the Swiss for example. I can’t tell you whether they are any good or not because it has been four years since I last heard them. But we’ll find out next week.
5. Curling. Despite being one of the earliest nations to have adopted widespread use of the vacuum cleaner, Britain is actually quite good at a sport that involves sweeping. Even more astonishingly, the captain of our women’s curling team is a teenager. Predictably, she isn’t involved in the sweeping, preferring to leave a big mess containing worn clothes, dirty plates, miscellaneous make up and cds without cases in the path of the stone.*
6. Commentary. The Winter Olympics provides commentators with the opportunity to commentate (naturally) on sports that they are none-too-familiar with. It gives you the chance to shout at the TV whenever they make a mistake. But there are also commentators who see it as an opportunity to make a name for themselves. They’ll try and make the sport far more exciting that is actually is. Don’t take my word for it. Watch this. And make sure you stay with it until 2:20.
7. Baring (sic) Up Under The Strain. I know everyone has seen this, but I can’t think of another reason. And I chose this particular version of the video because it is called, ‘bob sled chick rips pants and shows her ass in a thong…sexy’. Thanks jimni999
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*This is not true, Eve Muirhead is bloody brilliant – and probably very tidy too.
