7 Reasons

Tag: pop

  • 7 Reasons That Love is Important

    7 Reasons That Love is Important

    It’s Valentine’s Day!!!  On Monday.  Apologies for any panic we may have caused there, but the 7 Reasons team have decided to jump the gun and celebrate St Valentine’s Day prematurely.  Because we’re lovesick.  Well, one of us is in love and that just makes the other one feel sick, but that’s near enough.  So, in honour of the patron saint of pink stuff everywhere, here are seven reasons that love is important.

    A pink heart

    1.  Make Love Not War. It’s a tired expression, but – short of a nuclear missile – love really is the one thing that can end conflict. For good. We are not interested in truces. Like a dirty weekend in a Travelodge outside of Leeds, it won’t last. Real love means complete acceptance of what others believe and how they choose to live. A marriage of acceptance if you like. Not that I’m suggesting we should accept or indeed make love to radical extremists. That would be extreme. And quite dangerous if their grenades are dangling above your head. If you do find yourself in this situation we suggest you wear a helmet. Just in case.

    2.  Passion. That’s what love is really. Whether it’s passion for your partner or passion for your team or passion for passion fruit, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that you feel something for something. Because it’s those feelings that keep us alive. Without emotion we’d be robots. And if you read yesterday’s post you’d realise that’s not a good thing.

    3.  Compromise. I guess I got lucky. The person I fell in love with also loves what I love. No, not myself. Sport. Which means we don’t have to do the, ‘You can watch Eastenders all week so long as I can watch the rugby all weekend,’ thing. Claire gets to watch Eastenders and the rugby and I get to do the ironing and watch the rugby. But we know we are in the minority. Other people really do have to compromise. And while it may mean missing England beat Wales, you do it because you’re in love. And I admire that. I admire it because I couldn’t do it. Which is why I told Claire before we even started dating that watching England play cricket or rugby comes before anything else in my life. A year later I still haven’t missed a game. And that just makes me love her even more.

    4.  Inspiration.  Throughout human history, love has acted as a spur, a stimulus, a motivational factor in many of mankind’s greatest accomplishments.  The life’s work of Thomas Aquinas; Shelley’s One Word is Too Often Profaned; Shah Jahan’s construction of the Taj Mahal, the historical examples of great works inspired by, and created out of love are almost boundless.  Essentially, if we didn’t have love, we’d still be slimy-fish creatures or animal-bothering Neanderthals living in caves or swamps or our own poo or something.  But thanks to love, most of us aren’t.

    5.  Tennis. I don’t think anything in the world explains love better than a tennis match. As I am sure you are aware, ‘love’ in tennis is the equivalent of zero. Zilch. Nothing. In other words, it is valueless. And that is what love outside of tennis is too. You can’t put a value on love. Unless you are in Amsterdam. Though between you and me I don’t think ten minutes* with a Dutch girl called Helga really counts. Love is the most valuable commodity in life and yet it is free. I have always thought that is a rather wonderful intricacy. We pay our taxes so that the NHS and the Police are there for us when we need them, but the people who are there for us when we don’t need them are free.

    6.  Popular Song.  If it weren’t for the eternally prevalent theme of love, pop music would be wholly different.  There’d be no Renée and Renato’s Save Your Love, there’d be no Yummy Yummy Yummy I Got Love in my Tummy by Ohio Express, and there’d be no When We Collide by Matt Cardle.  This might initially seem like a spectacularly good anti-love argument, but it’s quite the reverse, because when repugnant, saccharine dross like this is being played, you might just find that across a crowded room, someone else is also covering their ears with their hands and bellowing, “What is this shit!?”  And at that moment, your eyes may meet, and that’s when you’ll find true love.  And all because of love songs, which really do begat love.  However circuitously.

    7.  Emotional Intensity.  Love – and this is important in these straitened economic times – is free.  Your other half loves you because you’re you, not because of what you can give them.  Love – true love – transcends the baser human tendency toward being fiscally and materially acquisitive in favour of devotion to and acceptance of another person; no matter what their circumstances or their idiosyncrasies.  When you have found your true soul-mate you will have found unconditional acceptance.  Which is why my other half is going to love her Valentine’s Day card this year, no matter how much it cost.

    A Valentine budget card from Tesco
    She's gonna love this.

    *Okay, two and a half.**

    **This never happened.***

    ***Well, it probably did to someone exciting.

  • 7 Reasons That Sparkling Water is Better Than Still

    7 Reasons That Sparkling Water is Better Than Still

    A photograph of the bubbles in carbonated water

    1.  You Can Put Fruit In It. I’m perfectly aware, of course, that you can put fruit into still water too.  But if you do that, then you tend to look a bit weird; it looks like a bit of an affectation.  But you can put fruit in sparkling water anytime you like without anyone batting an eyelid.  It has to be the right type of fruit though, a wedge of lemon or lime, for example.  If you chuck a banana in there – or a tomato – you’ll look quite mad.

    2.  You Can’t Drink It Too Fast.  Being carbonated, sparkling water is almost impossible to drink too fast – you just end up full of gas and burping for England (I wonder if people of other nations also represent England when they use this expression?).  So, basically the major consequence of drinking too much sparkling water too quickly is a comedic one.  But if you drink too much still water too quickly, the consequence is death; from water intoxication.  So, sparkling water leads to burping and still water leads to death.  Hmm, decisions, decisions.

    3.  Cats Won’t Drink It.  If you pour yourself a glass of still water and leave it lying around then cats will often try and drink it.*  Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, you’re probably thinking, my cat’s a loveable and hygienic animal. But wait!  How do cats drink?  With their horrible, hideous, velcro cat-tongues, that’s how.  And what does your cat spend most of its time doing with its horrible, hideous, velcro cat-tongue?  That’s right, licking its own bottom.  So by sticking its tongue into your drink, your cat might as well be defecating into it.  Would you want to drink it then?**  Cats don’t do this with sparkling water, of course.  Firstly, it often contains citrus fruit (which cats hate), and secondly, in many cases it frightens them (they don’t like getting wet while drinking it).

    4.  It’s Easier To Find.  Ever tried to find a glass of still water in the dark?  No, of course not.  You probably have more interesting things to do in darkened rooms than finding glasses of water.  But I haven’t, and I can reveal to you that sparkling water is far easier to find in the dark than still water, being more easily apparent to the auricular senses.

    5.  It’s Cooler.  Not temperature wise, though I imagine that the freezing point of sparkling water would be marginally lower than that of still water due to the bubbles agitating the liquid causing its transformation to a solid to take longer***.   But no, it’s cooler.  What would you rather be seen swigging from when cruising down the Via Giulia in Roma in a dark suit or pencil skirt on your Vespa, a bottle of San Pellegrino or a tap containing Severn-Trent?

    6.  It Effervesces.  It moves!  Now, moving can be a desirable feature; who among us hasn’t berated a car for not moving at some time or other?  And, by way of adding balance, moving can also be an undesirable feature; if you leave the same car in the car park and it moves while you’re away, you’re going to be pretty damned cross.  But moving water is good.  Because still water stagnates, and moving water doesn’t.  Would you drink the contents of a little-disturbed pond?  No.  Would you drink the contents of a fast-flowing mountain stream?  Yes.  Movement – in terms of water – is a desirable feature.

    7.  Aesthetics.  I know what I’d rather look at while I’m sitting in my living room sipping water.  Yes, the television.  But in the unlikely event that I wasn’t allowed to look at the television/out of the window/at the cat/at my right knee/at album covers/at the owl cushions, I’d far rather look at a glass of sparkling water than still water, no matter how deep the latter runs.

    *This is assuming you have a cat.  If you don’t have one, it won’t attract any.

    **No!  Why did you even have to scroll down to check the answer?

    ***Blimey.  Science!