7 Reasons

Tag: seven reasons

  • 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t go to the Doctor’s

    7 Reasons You Shouldn’t go to the Doctor’s

    1.  Hand-wash.  Little plastic dispensers of antiseptic hand-wash: They’re inside the main entrance, they’re in the reception area, they’re in the waiting room, they’re in the doctor’s office, they’re everywhere!  They outnumber patients by about 40-1; they outnumber patients’ hands by about 20.5-1 (there was a one-armed man).  Why could they possibly need so many?  It will bother you.

    2.  Sick people.  There are sick people at the doctor’s surgery, it’s full of them:  Coughing, retching, groaning, wailing, with blotches, pustules, buboes and weeping sores; it’s more like Hell’s waiting room than Dr Butterworth’s.  If I ever write a historical novel about the Black Death in medieval Europe I’ll visit the doctor’s for inspiration – and just hope I live long enough to complete it.

    3.  Light.  The soulless, ceaseless hum of the fluorescent strip-lights is the soundtrack to your stay in the waiting room.  Worse still, their glow bathes everything and everyone in an unnatural light, giving the room’s occupants a grey, bleached-out pallor that makes them appear unwell, even if they’re not.

     

    4.  Magazines.  Due to the Swine Flu scare they no longer have magazines in my local surgery; no Country Life, no Woman’s Weekly – in fact, nothing to read at all.  Presumably they think our hands would be too slick from the hand-wash to leaf through the pages.  Fortunately, on my last visit to the doctor, I had a copy of Vanity Fair with me, so I pulled that out of my bag and began to read.  My fellow patients – envious, I assume – saw my magazine and started moving toward it.  They rose slowly from their seats and shuffled gradually forward, eventually forming a groaning, coughing semi-circle around me.  With their fluorescent strip-light pallor, obvious wounds and missing limb they resembled the un-dead.  Fortunately, the doctor called me in before they started to feast on my brains.*

    5.  Manliness.  Convention has it that real men don’t visit the doctor.  This is nonsense.  If he has misplaced a limb, his elbow has unaccountably turned purple, or his urine is pure Bovril, a man should visit the doctor.  In all other cases, he should soldier on.

    6.  Discouragement.  They don’t want you to see you.  Why would they?  They might catch something dreadful or you might try to show them your hemorrhoids.  If they really wanted to see you they would open outside of office hours and they’d give you an appointment less than a week into the future.  They might also consent to visit you at home on occasions other than your imminent death.  They do these things to discourage you from seeking medical advice.  If you don’t go to see the doctor, their whole system runs more smoothly.  And that’s the way they like it.

    7.  Feelings.  Doctor’s surgeries aren’t just places to treat your physical ailments, they’re places that are concerned with your general wellbeing too.  These days, they seem just as concerned with your emotional wellbeing as they are with your physical health.  This isn’t necessarily a good thing:

    Bond strode into the uncluttered, homely office.  After some light conversation, the G.P. asked how he felt about his condition.

    “Do you expect me to talk, Dr Blofeld?”

    “No Mr Bond, I expect you to cry”

    break

    No one wants that, who knows where it may lead?

    break

    *Did I mention that I had a bit of a temperature?

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Live In Lagos

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Live In Lagos

    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.

  • 7 Reasons AC Milan vs Manchester United was a Disappointment

    7 Reasons AC Milan vs Manchester United was a Disappointment

    1.  Pancake Day.  Who the hell schedules a match on Pancake Day?  After all, no one plays on Christmas Day or on Easter Sunday.  That’s because important holidays should, rightly, be observed.  I had to listen to it on the radio while making the pancakes.  Why couldn’t they have played it on Valentine’s Day instead?  I love football, after all.

    2.  Hype.  No mere football match could possibly live up to the preposterous hyperbole that preceded this game.  For a week on BBC 5Live they trailed it as “David Beckham’s AC Milan vs Manchester United”.  David Beckham’s AC Milan?  Am I missing something?  The LA Galaxy player who is on loan at AC Milan?  That David Beckham?  The David Beckham who isn’t the captain, manager or owner of AC Milan?  The David Beckham who doesn’t usually start for AC Milan?  Silvio Berlusconi owns AC Milan and he’s the President of Italy, so to describe the match as “Italy vs Manchester United” would have more accurate and less preposterous than “David Beckham’s AC Milan vs Manchester United”.

    3.  Palestine.  Fergie’s tactics were odd to say the least.  Both Graham Taylor and Alan Green remarked on it.  He set Manchester United up with a five man midfield and had Park Ji-Sung marking the Palestine Liberation Organisation.  I’m no tactical genius, but even I could see that Milan’s goal threat did not come from the P.L.O.

    4.  The Referee.  Early in the first half, Ronaldinho went down on the edge of the opposition penalty area.  The ref didn’t give Milan a free kick.  Technically he was correct, there was no foul, but he obviously hadn’t read the script.  Has he never seen a Hollywood movie?  Of course he should have let Beckham have a free kick from the edge of the area.  The occasion demanded it.  Wayne Rooney obviously hadn’t read the script either.

    5.  Alan Green.  He came back from some time off to resume his monomaniacal ranting about David Beckham.  Among the first words Green said on taking over the microphone during the first half (after his customary dig at Sir Alex Ferguson)  were, “Beckham, in 24 minutes, has taken two free kicks”, he went on to complain that he had been, “static in the midfield”.  There were 21 other players he could have mentioned, but no, not Alan Green.  The one occasion on which Alan Green didn’t mention Beckham, was when the Man United fans sang “One David Beckham” as he left the pitch.  I don’t know what Beckham ever did to Alan Green, but I hope he does it again.  Frequently and with vigour.

    6.  Behaviour.  As I write this it is over eleven hours since the match ended.  There have been no reports of players drunkenly cruising the autostrada in golf carts or capsizing pedalos in Lake Como.  Why can’t footballers act more like the gentlemen that play cricket and rugby?  Football players are over-hyped, over-paid and over-behaved.

    7.  Excitement.  There were five goals and a last minute sending off, Rooney was brilliant – it was an enthralling and exciting match.  You might wonder how this is disappointing.  Let me assure you, it’s bloody disappointing when you’ve got a piece of paper in front of you with the heading “7 Reasons That AC Milan vs Manchester United was a Disappointment”, which is just as well, really.

  • 7 Reasons to go and Watch Invictus

    7 Reasons to go and Watch Invictus

     

     

    1.  Morgan Freeman.  Usually the veteran actor gets typecast as God, but in Invictus he gets promoted and puts in a superb performance as Nelson Mandela.  His accent is a bit dodgy, but the same could be said of all South Africans.  Either that or they genuinely believe it’s called “Sowt Efrica”.

    2.  Rugby.  There aren’t many decent films about rugby and the depiction of the game is pretty good in Invictus.  It’s not up to the standard of This Sporting Life, but that’s almost 50 years old and is about the wrong rugby – the one they play in the North-West that makes you shout “For fucks sake, run around him” when you accidentally see television coverage of it.  Perhaps I’m missing some subtle nuance of that game, but why do they always run straight into an opposing player?

    3.  Crying.  Everyone loves a good cry – something I often tell myself when I’ve put my foot in it again, and if you’re prone to crying at sport or movies, you’ll definitely cry at the conclusion of Invictus.  Eastwood manages to wring just about every ounce of emotion out of the film’s climax.  If you’re at all sensitive, you’ll cry like a girl – even if you aren’t one.

    4.  Crying.  I didn’t cry like a girl while everyone else in the cinema was blubbing though.  Oh no.  I cried when Jonah Lomu ran amok with the ball and rampaged through the defenceless England backs.  It brought it all back to me; the big bully, those poor little mites, the carnage.  Oh, the horror.

    5.  Sound.  Want to hear rugby with improbable sounds dubbed on?  Of course you do.  Go and see Invictus.  Every tackle sounds like a gunshot within a biscuit-tin within a kettle-drum within an empty water-tank within an Airbus A340 flying through a thunderstorm.  The woman sitting next to me gasped during every tackle.  She may have been mental though, there’s usually one in every cinema.

    6.  England. As the film is based on real sporting events I’m not giving anything away when I tell you that Rory Underwood scores a try for England during the film.  This is great, though the rest of the audience will not thank you for celebrating it.  Trust me.

    7.  Matt Damon.  MAAAATTTT DAAAAAMMMON!!!!!  He is brilliant in Invictus.  His South African accent is convincing and he plays Francois Pienaar with a lovely, understated dignity.  He has also transformed his entire body to play the role.  The shot in which they show his upper torso is entirely gratuitous, but his musculature is astonishing – it is physical evidence of the dedication that he brought to his preparation for the film.  Being much shorter than the real Francois Pienaar, he had to stand on a box for several of his scenes.  I explained this to my friend before we went in to see the film. “Matt Damon’s pretty short”, I said, demonstrating his height with my hand at about chest level.  I then raised my hand above me, stood on tiptoes, and extended my right arm fully, “but Francois Pienaar’s enormous, he’s 6ft 3!!!  That’s…er…an inch taller than we are”.  I have already been made to feel quite silly for that, thank you for asking.

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  • Russian Roulette Sunday – 7 Reasons: The Comic Strip

    Russian Roulette Sunday – 7 Reasons: The Comic Strip

    Well, it’s Russian Roulette Sunday again, and this week we’re re-visiting an earlier topic – possibly for the final time.

  • 7 Reasons Owl City’s Fireflies Is Nonsense

    7 Reasons Owl City’s Fireflies Is Nonsense

    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?

  • 7 Reasons I’m Afraid of Flamenco Dancers

    7 Reasons I’m Afraid of Flamenco Dancers

     

     

     

     

    1.  Stamping.  The cacophonous, aggressive, rhythmical stamping that makes up part of the flamenco dance is terrifying.  Stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp, it’s the sound of a lone Nazi stormtrooper goose-stepping on an upturned tea-chest.  And that’s before they begin the more frenzied stamping and shuffling – which is beyond bone-chilling.

    Terrifying!

     

    2.  Castanets.  Clickety clickety clickety click.  How do they work?  Nobody knows.  Bastard things.

    3.  Clapping.  They clap too.  They start doing this when their castanets run out of batteries or they realise they’re impossible to use or they just become heartily sick of the clicking or something.  Perhaps they clap during the dance so that I don’t have to at the end.

    4.  Shrieking.  They also shriek unexpectedly and make other startling noises.  Random shrieking is enough to put anyone ill-at-ease.  A woman started shrieking when we were in bed once.  It was most off-putting.

    5.  Fans.  They’re not content with all the stamping, clicking, clapping and shrieking, oh no.  They wave fans about too.  Well, it’s not so much waving as a sort of semi-hypnotic swooping; all swooshing and whooshing like the flight of an errant kite.  The fan moves a lot, but always covers the face.  This is good, because at some point the fan will be lowered to uncover…

    6.  The Man-Face.  Aaaarrrrrggghhhh!!!!  You’ve spent a while checking the dancer out – she has firm, shapely legs and a good figure – when she abruptly reveals the man-face.  And it’s not even the face of an attractive man.  All flamenco dancers have a man-face, every last one of them.  I don’t know why, but they do.  I know that there are Spanish ladies with nice faces, they just don’t let them dance the flamenco.  For some unfathomable reason, the flamenco is danced exclusively by otherwise elegant enchantresses with the powerful, chisel-jawed countenance of the Marlboro Man and the leaden-footed bearing of a startled horse in clogs.

    7. The Dream.  I once dreamt that a flamenco dancer snuck into my bedroom and ate my cat.  I woke with a start exclaiming, “fffffnuduhuh!”  Scared the pants off me.  And I’m quite sure I went to bed wearing pants.

  • 7 Reasons to Replace Chickens With Flamingos

    7 Reasons to Replace Chickens With Flamingos

    1.  Flavour.  We’re all familiar with the expression, you are what you eat.  This is true; diet informs flavour.  The diet of chickens is dull.  Chickens are fed corn and grains and the sort of dreary stuff that we use to bulk-up stews and casseroles.  Flamingos eat shrimp, which are wonderfully flavoursome, and a substantial portion of their flavour comes from these.  Chickens taste dull; flamingos taste of fish, which is much, much better.  Also, as you are what you eat, which would you rather be, a chicken or a flamingo?

    2.  Health.  Most flamingos are wild and are, therefore, game.  They are free to roam and free to eat natural food.  Most chickens are not.  Eating flamingos would, consequently, be healthier than eating chickens.  It would also provide American hunters with exercise as they stalked their dinner by the lake rather than driving their pick-up trucks to the supermarket.  They would also have to camouflage themselves in pink, which would give the rest of us a laugh.

    “Billy-Bob, you’s a sissy.”

    3.  Leg.  Everyone wants the chicken leg because it’s firm:  this is because the leg is one of the few limbs that the sedentary farmed chicken exercises regularly – as a result of this, it is toned.  Flamingos spend most of their lives standing on one leg – they alternate regularly between them.  This means that flamingo legs are firmer and nicer than chicken legs.  They’re also bigger.  This will mean that sharing the leg becomes a possibility, saving mealtime arguments.  Or it will mean that you get a bigger leg, it depends how mean-spirited you are.

    4.  Milk.  You can’t milk a chicken.  You can, however, milk a flamingo.  We all know that the aisles of Waitrose are choc-full of people shopping for organic, Bermuda grass-fed, hand-reared, free-range Angora goat’s milk.  Imagine how much they’ll want the new fad  – flamingo milk.  Waitrose shoppers will be buying so much flamingo milk that they’ll probably have to fold the seats down in their Audi estates to transport it home.  They may even have to buy a second Smeg fridge to put it all in.

    5.  Farming.  Eventually, of course, the new niche popularity of the flamingo will lead to a mass-market demand for it.  This will cause flamingos to become the exotic farmers livestock of choice.  These people are usually found experimenting with farming ostriches, which will be replaced by the new glamorous avian farming fashion – the flamingo.  This is great, as I’m – justifiably – terrified of ostriches, with their cruel, murdererous eyes, their sharp, oversized talons and their menacing, powerful beaks.  I have no fear of flamingos.  They are pink.

    6.  Colour.  There are few sites in the British countryside more breath-taking than vast swathes of bright yellow rapeseed in full bloom.  With the new flamingo farms, it will be possible to stumble across fields full of pink clusters of gangly birds – all year round.  This will brighten up the landscape no end, especially at sunset.  Countryside campsites will become countryside camp sites where you’ll be able to enjoy the countryside camp sight of intense pink colours in tents (pink coloured).

    7.  Feathers.  The best feathers for stuffing pillows are goose and duck feathers.  Chicken feathers aren’t very good so they’re usually ground down and used in textiles and plastics.  Flamingos – like geese and ducks – are water-birds so, presumably, their feathers also make good stuffing for pillows.  Their colourful down would enliven pillow-fights no end.  The abundance of pink feathers would make feather boas cheaper and more commonplace which may lead to a boom in the burlesque industry.  Sadly, it would also lead to an increase in gaudy hen nights.  You don’t have too much to fear from the greater incidence of gaggles of lascivious, portly, bingo-wing-sporting harridans drunkenly cruising your local high street draped in pink feather boas though, because with your new healthier diet of flamingo, you’ll be fitter and able to run away that much faster.

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons to Watch the Six Nations

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons to Watch the Six Nations

    If you get your news from 7 Reasons, you’ll be delighted to learn that the Six Nations starts today.  We have decided to celebrate this with a guest post.

    Our guest post comes from Rachel Simmonite, a 21 year old BA Hons Media and Communication (Journalism) student at Birmingham City University.  When she’s not busy gracing Twitter with her wit, wisdom, and frankly astonishing knowledge of club rugby, she can be found writing here.

    1.  Birthday.  This year, the Six Nations celebrates its tenth birthday.  Of course, the tournament has been going on forever – in various guises of the Home International Championship and the Five Nations – but this year is the tenth year since the Italians joined the party; with their light blue kit, dodgy hair and sideburns, and their habit of beating Scotland every other year or so, Italy – despite being the whipping boys of the tournament – have always provided good competition.  And they have the best national anthem.

    2. Rivalries.  Talking to an Irish or Welsh friend during this tournament means you get a lot more abuse than normal.  National pride and traditional rivalries are all the rage during the Six Nations.  Being English, and therefore supporting the red roses through thick and thin while thinking back to the good old days of 2003, you get it in the neck more than anyone else, as every side wants to beat you more than anything.  The Celtic teams (Ireland, Wales and Scotland) need to beat you for bragging rights – I haven’t been able to face my Welsh friends for the past two years – and to try and get the Triple Crown or, in the case of Scotland, the Calcutta Cup, while the French and the Italians just like to join in with the English bashing.

    3.  Something for everyone.  Whether you’re after someone nice to look at, or a good game, the Six Nations provides both.  The annual desire to beat your local rivals for northern hemisphere dominance brings out the best of the teams, both in the forwards, and the backs.  With the return of the rolling maul to the game – following last year’s ELVs* – the forwards can add that extra string to their bow again, enabling loads of fans (either in the pub or at the ground) to go “HEAVE” whenever it happens.  As for the backs; as long as they’re running with the ball, it doesn’t affect the precise alignment of their gelled hair, and they’re stealing the headlines, they’ll be having fun.

    Rugby isn’t just about the game now, it’s about the totty.  Following calendars such as Le Dieux de Stade, the word “moisturiser” has become commonly used in rugby changing rooms, as has the phrase “fake tan” – particularly if you’re Welsh.  If I was feeling shallow then my 7 reasons to watch the Six Nations would be very short: Jonny Wilkinson, Tom Croft, Leigh Halfpenny, Hugo Southwell, Brian O’Driscoll, Yannick Jauzion and Sergio Parisse.  Of course there are more than seven good looking players in this year’s tournament, that selection are just my favourites.

    4.  Anyone can win it.  The beauty of the Six Nations is that you never know who is going to win the tournament; there’s no runaway winner or clear favourite.  I mean, nobody would have thought that Wales would win the Grand Slam in 2005.  Likewise, we didn’t expect Italy to come fourth in 2007 – the year when France beat Ireland with a +4 points difference – but that was all that separated them.  Of course, with Ireland having won the Grand Slam last year (only their second since 1948), they will be labelled as favourites for this year’s tournament.  But on their day, anyone can beat anyone – the Welsh very nearly spoiled the Irish party last year and who knows what the French will come up with, having beaten the World Champions, South Africa, in November?  We do know that the Scots and the Italians will probably be fighting it out for the wooden spoons, but who knows?  And as for England…

    5.  The WAGs.  Becoming a rugby WAG is increasingly popular – even a member of the royal family, Zara Phillips, is a rugby WAG.  The recent crop started with Gabby Logan and Kirsty Gallacher; the likes of Kelly Brook and Una (from pop group the Saturdays) followed for England, with Duffy and Charlotte Church flying the flag for the Welsh WAGs.  It is inevitable that if a well known rugby WAG is in attendance at a match the television director will give them plenty of screen time.  If not, you’ll be able to see photos of them cheering on their men in the Daily Mail.

    6.  The singing.  You can’t have a rugby match without the singing.  The Welsh, in particular, are very good at the singing – it’s like their second sport after rugby.  With the likes of Katherine Jenkins, Charlotte Church and that blond one off of the X-Factor to sing the national anthem, Delilah, and Bread of Heaven, they do their singing brilliantly.  England have adopted a song that comes with actions, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”.  I think you have to go on a rugby tour to learn the actions though.  Ireland spoil the crowd with two anthems before a match while the French and Italian anthems are just great – I love them – like I love the bagpipes in Flower of Scotland.  In fact, I love the anthems more than the bagpipes.

    7.  The romance.  How could you treat your better half on Valentine’s weekend this year?  Card?  Flowers?  Cheesy Marvin Gaye CD?  How about a weekend in Cardiff, Paris or Rome?  Arrive on the Friday night, take them out for a meal, let them do damage to the credit card on the Saturday morning and then – come the Saturday afternoon at about midday (or Sunday in the case of Rome) – announce that you’ve got tickets for the rugby and enquire whether they fancy a romantic afternoon watching thirty men run around a pitch for eighty minutes?

    Of course, if your other half really doesn’t like rugby then you may find yourself in a spot of bother – but it is something that you love…

    *Experimental Law Variations

  • 7 Reasons To Climb A Mountain

    7 Reasons To Climb A Mountain

    1.  Measure It. Nothing excites me more than when the end of year mountain height measurements are released. Is Everest still 8848 metres tall? Is Ben Nevis still the biggest in Britain? So many questions answered in one PDF. Obviously these figures aren’t just made up. Someone has to use a tape measure and a long stick.

    2.  Picnics. Nothing beats a picnic with a spectacular view. Of clouds. I know you can get this type of view atop a grassy hillock, but it is far more exciting trying to eat while simultaneously struggling to breathe.

    3.  Photo Opportunity. Let’s be honest, a facebook profile picture of you standing atop a mountain looks so much more impressive than a self portrait you have done of yourself at home. You know the one I mean. The one that took 30 attempts to get right and then ten minutes of cropping so your outstretched arm isn’t showing.

    4.  Getting Home To Babe. Because there ain’t no mountain. No mountain high enough. No valley low enough. To stop you from getting to baby. So you may as well go and climb one. Babe will be so much more impressed when you tell them that you took a shortcut across the top of Scaffold Pike* to get to the restaurant.

    5.  Eye Of The Tiger. Eye Of The Tiger, Rock. Climbing a mountain is one thing. Running up it is even better. Especially if you are making a movie about a boxer. Or indeed if you are just plain daft.

    6.  You’re Hot. No, not in the Sandra Bullock way. If you are hot in the Sandra Bullock way you can ignore all mountains and just come straight round to mine. You won’t even have to wipe your feet. I mean hot as in temperature hot. In other words you need to cool down. Common sense tells you that it’s much colder up a mountain.

    7.  No Pain, No Gain. There are a couple of ways to get blister repellent feet. One is to chop them off. The other is to build up calluses. You can do this by walking. Barefoot. Up mountains. Yes, it’ll hurt the first few hundred times you do it, but eventually your feet will have Zola Budd written all over them.

    *Yes, I know it’s Scafell Pike. Scaffold Pike is a clever play on words. What with scaffolding being something you climb. Clever, yes.