Tag: seven reasons

7 Reasons I Am The New Rebecca

Hello. Regular readers of 7 Reasons will know that on Sundays we do things a bit differently. Well, today is very different. What you are about to read is a job application. A live job application. We have a lot to get through so I’ve broken it down for you.

If you are a regular 7 Reasons reader head straight to (A).
If you are a POKE employee (particularly one who is in charge of hiring me) head to (B).
If you are the person who keeps finding our site by Googling ‘hot woman’ your day has finally arrived. Just stare at the picture.

(A) Yes, so this is a live job application for the position of Social Media Copywriter. Very briefly here’s what has happened so far. On Thursday the London-based agency POKE announced they’d be running a live recruitment process via twitter on Friday. The aim was to find a new Rebecca to replace the current Rebecca who is going off to play her recorder or something. This was poor timing on POKE’s part as I was at a wedding on Friday. So, I needed a plan. I set myself up as @TheNewRebecca and then requested a bit more time. Luckily, I got it. Which is why I am able to apply today. Right, got that? Good. Ignore (B) and read my job application.

(B) Hello future colleagues. Some of you might be here because you are following @TheNewRebecca (good choice) others might be here because you’re doing the sifting process. Whichever it is I shall try and make this as painless as possible. So, sorry I couldn’t be with you on Friday for the live application process, I was at a wedding. The good news is I have no more Friday weddings in my diary this year so I will make it into work five days a week. Hopefully you appreciate that kind of commitment. Right, that’s the formalities out of the way, here are my responses to the tasks.

#poketask1. We have two Thor premiere tickets to give away on Orange Film Club. Think up a comp & tweet how you’d announce it.

“Quick! Help Thor save #OrangeWednesdays! Upload your most rousing speech to http://on.fb.me/oowfc. The best wins two Thor premiere tickets!”

#poketask2. Someone complains that @PizzaExpress was too busy on Weds because of #OrangeWednesdays. Extinguish their grumpiness in a tweet.

“Ah, the by-product of being a genius. We all turn out on #OrangeWednesdays I’m afraid. (PS: Fancy beating the queue next time? Book ahead).“

EDIT: On Wednesday 13th April, @TheNewRebecca decided she’d be clever. She tweeted, “Yet again Pizza Express is heaving because of #OrangeWednesdays. I need someone to extinguish my grumpiness.” Unfortunately this backfired substantially when some even cleverer bod hiding beneath the guise of @OrangeFilm promptly replied, “We tried to respond with your #poketask2 response, but alas, it was over 140 characters. tsk tsk. ;)”. Now, I was pretty damn sure it wasn’t. Attention to detail is something of a forte of mine. So I checked. And I was right. 139 characters. Perfect. But then it dawned on me. Not many people have a username as short as ‘@’. Not liking defeat, I replied, “My defence: Yes, my response is 139 characters leaving little/no room for a username. However, it’s a DM. More special that way.” But I knew I was pushing the boundaries. Thankfully the time was just gone 6pm. The deadline for entries wasn’t for another 24 hours. Time then to reword my #poketask2 response taking into account a 14 letter username (based on @TheNewRebecca). So, here it is. My new #poketask2 response:

“Ah, the by-product of being a genius. We all turn out on #OrangeWednesdays I’m afraid. (Psst: The really smart ones book).”

#poketask3. Tweet three ways you’d get people to enter your competition from task one.

1. Pop-up video on the Orange Wednesdays website showing Thor (probably me in a Thor-like costume) urging people to act if they don’t want the darkest forces of Asgard destroying Orange Wednesdays. This would also be posted on the Orange Film Club facebook page and tweeted via the relative Orange accounts.

2. SMS alerts sent out to Orange customers telling them that the existence of Orange Wednesdays is under threat.

3. Regular tweeting of incoming videos throughout the contest from @orangefilm and @orangethefeed.

#poketask4. Oops. We just wrote ‘exited’ instead of ‘excited’ on our Facebook wall & everyone’s saying we’re half-baked. What do you do?

I write: “And when I say ‘exited’, I clearly mean ‘excited’. It’s true, I am having severe problems with my ‘c’s today. You should count yourselves lucky though, already today I’ve been asked to leave the office twice because of problems with my ‘r’s.”

#poketask5. Someone’s posted on Orange Film Club: “Tracy, you’re an idiot”. What you would do/say?

It depends on the context. If I feel it could be construed as ‘banter’, I would leave it and monitor the conversation. If, on the other hand, it was clearly posted with malicious intent I would delete it and write a general reminder to everyone that we are a friendly bunch and abuse won’t be tolerated. There’s a place for that type of thing and that place is ITV2.

Of course it could have been Tracy who posted the message herself. In which case she is an idiot and I would ‘like’ the status.

#poketask6. Think up a sticky, smart hashtag for our new project all about personalised Royal Wedding memorabilia. (Yep, you read that right).

#DuchyUnoriginals

#poketask7. Righty. That’s today’s tweet-a-thon over. Anything else you want to let me know?

Well yes, there is actually. I think this would be a good point to announce that my name isn’t really Rebecca. Nor do I own a pair of orange shutter shades or a splendid moustache. The finger though, is very much mine. So who am I? Well, when I’m not being The New Rebecca, I call myself Jon and one of my side-projects is this, 7 Reasons. The premiss of 7 Reasons is simple. To give seven reasons for something, every day. And that is what my co-founder Marc and I have done since latter 2009. Topics have varied from 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Date A Polar Bear to 7 Reasons You Should Not Kayak Across The Pacific Ocean to – just because it is mentioned in the tasks above – 7 Reasons To Have A Pizza Express Tattoo. Anyway, given that there were seven tasks, it seemed logical to use 7 Reasons. And it’ll also up our unique visitor count which will please Marc no end.

And one final thing, just to show you I get results from innovative social media use, I met my fiancée by paraphrasing this guy.

April 10, 2011
7 Reasons to Shop With 7 Reasons

You’ve laughed with us, you’ve cried with us, you’ve watched us, you’ve read us, you’ve heard us, you’ve written for us, you’ve tweeted with us, you’ve got engaged with us, you’ve had a baby with us and probably other stuff too. And now, in a new and exciting development, you can shop with 7 Reasons. And here are seven reasons that you should.

1. Be Unique. Everyone wants to feel distinctive, unique and a bit special. And, if you purchase a 7 Reasons t-shirt, the chances are very high that it will actually be unique. After all, how many people are you likely to bump into in your local pub wearing the same Haystack Poking Patrol t-shirt as you? And even in the unlikely event that you did meet someone else in a pub wearing that same t-shirt, you could just say, “Hello Marc” and I’d probably buy you a beer. You’ll be unique or you’ll get beer. That sounds like a good deal.

2. To Marvel At The Emporium. The 7 Reasons team have (amongst other things) expertise in web design and the retail sector. You might think that this would make putting together an online shop easy. But you’d be wrong. Because in typical 7 Reasons style, the one with the retail background did the web design and the one with the web design background is in charge of the retail side of things (and did everything else). So if it does crash or start randomly giving away free merchandise you’ll be there to witness/benefit.

3. Because Our Wares Are Really Jolly Good. I didn’t have anything to do with the design of the lemon t-shirt (God or Darwin, depending on your viewpoint, designed the lemon and Jonathan Lee did the rest), so I can say this. It’s bloody brilliant. Look at it! Just look at it! It’s really a beautiful piece of design. It’s a pop-art pie-chart in lemon. Who wouldn’t want to wear that, other than the abjectly wrong and gits? No one.

4. Innovation. Because the product range will grow as we think of more things to add. We’re already looking into producing 7 Reasons Inspirational Beer-Mats, calendars and fridge-magnets, so you’ll never know what you might find there: A 7 Reasons horse; a 7 Reasons handbag; a 7 Reasons his and his voodoo doll set; a replica 7 Reasons sofa. Anything. Or if you don’t find what you want, you might eventually, because…

5. We’re interactive. We can’t think of everything. We’ve tried and have gotten distracted by girls and tiramisu and things. But we love great ideas and, if you’ve thought of something you’d like to see in the 7 Reasons shop that isn’t there, you can email us and, if we think it’s a good idea, we’ll look into making it. And we’ll probably put your name on it too, unless it’s something really small – or embarrassing – in which case we won’t. Or if you have a really long name like Bartholomew Constantine Washington Penderghast the third, we might not. But if you’re called Jennifer Aniston we definitely will, and that’s a promise.

6. Incentive. Has any other website ever encouraged you to invade a country? Yes, probably, but only evil ones. We’re nice chaps though, and we’d like to encourage a more benign, civilised, conquest: So the first five readers that are photographed standing atop the Eiffel Tower waving a Union Flag and wearing one of our France Invasion t-shirts will get the money they spent on the t-shirt refunded.*

7. Because We’re Very Excited. So excited, in fact, that we spent a couple of hours putting this post together about our shop and forgot to include a link to it. So here it is (this is the link). Now go and shop till you drop! Or at least until your arms are very full and you feel a little faint.**

*We can sometimes tell the difference between the Blackpool and Eiffel towers and we’re also quite good at spotting things that have been photoshopped so no tomfoolery, please.

**I – Marc – would like to thank my colleague Jonathan Lee for all of the effort that he put into the shop and the merchandise (and for fielding slightly ranty emails about World War Two font styles and spacing without ever losing his cool). Never let it be said that he doesn’t work very, very hard indeed.

April 8, 2011
7 Reasons to Replace the Horse With the Cow

Great news from Germany! The horse is obsolete. A fifteen year old girl has trained a cow to show-jump because her parents refused to buy her a horse. At 7 Reasons, we love this sort of defiant ingenuity so, in honour of the quite brilliant Regina Meyer, here are seven reasons to replace the horse with the cow.

1. The Grand National. Or, The Festival of Horse-Death – as it’s called in my house – with its high fences and terrifying leaps is dangerous for both riders and horses. If we replaced the horses with cows though, imagine how much better it would be. Would cows even attempt to hurdle over Canal Turn or Becher’s Brook? No, of course they wouldn’t, they’d just amble round them, perhaps pausing to nibble at the racecourse (or grass, as it’s known to laymen). There’d be no injuries to jockeys, no innocent animals would be shot and there’d be fresh milk for everyone at the finish. Or – if the race had been ridden at a quick pace – milkshakes. Even if cows did get injured and required shooting it would still be better. If you shoot a horse, you get a dead horse. If you shoot a cow, you get a nice sofa or a handbag. Or a steak.

2. Food. Strange as it may seem, there are people out there that eat horses. They’re called The French. But French cuisine is awful. After all, if it was any good, French chefs would stay there and cook it, wouldn’t they? But they don’t, they’re all over here in Britain, cooking food that doesn’t contain horses; making hors d’oeuvres rather than horse d’oeuvres. Is France teeming with British chefs? No. That’s because horseless cuisine is better and they want to stay. If France replaced the horse with the cow, their chefs wouldn’t leave in their droves.

3. Milk. The phrase, “get off your horse and drink your milk”, is often attributed to John Wayne. But if we were to follow Wayne’s suggestion, and get off our horse and drink our milk, we’d still have to find a cow because drinking horse-milk would just be weird. And would you fancy trying to milk a horse? I certainly wouldn’t. So if you had a horse, you’d still need a cow. If you rode a cow though, you’d only need one animal – your cow – and rather than getting off it to drink your milk, you could probably construct some sort of straw/hose milking-device to deliver your beverage to you in situ. Call yourself a cowboy, John Wayne? Too bloody right you were.

4. Society. Cows aren’t horses. They aren’t evil, terrifying, flighty and they don’t chase me round the dining room in my dreams. The world would just be a nicer place with fewer horses. What happens in a society where there are lots of horses? I’ll tell you. The streets of Edwardian Britain were riddled with the infernal beasts running amok, terrorising women in corsets and babies in perambulators just because they’d heard a backfiring omnibus or been startled by an oncoming charabang. Would cows have reacted in such a dangerous fashion? Nay.

5. The Future. You can predict future events just by looking at animals. If you look at a horse, you can tell that something bad will happen, and if you see a cow, you can apparently tell what the weather will be, just by whether it’s sitting-down or standing-up. And there’s an old piece of country wisdom which goes, “pink cow at night, Angel Delight”. Cows tell you stuff about the future and horses just give you the heebie-geebies.

6. India. In India, cows are sacred and roam free and many drivers will swerve into almost anything to avoid a collision with them. It stands to reason, therefore, that the safest place to be in India, is on a cow. Cars and trucks would actually go out of their way to avoid you. Brilliant. It would be safer than riding a horse and safer even than riding an elephant. And cows aren’t governed by speed limits, traffic lights or contraflow systems. They can go anywhere. Usually to moo at things.

7. My Family History. My late father was a horse. Not all the time, you should understand, but occasionally. I believe he was a horse twice during his lifetime. Or rather, half a horse. As a part of Manchester University’s rag week in the late 1950s, he and two friends competed in the 2:10 at Lingfield one Saturday. He (front half of horse) and his friends (back half and jockey) hid behind one of the fences during a rare – in those days – televised meeting and waited. When the other horses approached and jumped the fence, my father and his friends sprung from their hiding place and galloped down the course in pursuit of them. Despite a great deal of exertion over the following couple of furlongs, they were unable to make up much ground and soon began to tire. Their race concluded early when they were chased away by an angry policeman. That was the highlight of my father’s sporting career. In fact, it’s the biggest sporting accomplishment in our entire family history. But if those horses had been cows, my dad could have won that race. And then we could have put him out to stud. He’d have liked that.

April 7, 2011
7 Reasons to Buy a Fisher .375 Caliber Bullet Space Pen

Great news, 7 Reasons readers! It’s now the future, for the zenith of that great and influential piece of technology – the pen – is here. Pictured down there, just below these words, is the most awesome pen ever. The only pen you’ll ever need. A pen that you can use on absolutely any occasion. If you want to be prepared, never mind the Scouts, get this pen. Did I mention that it’s awesome already? It’s awesome.

1. It’s Mighty. Okay, I can’t get anything past you. You’ve noticed, haven’t you? It doesn’t look like a pen, does it? No. It’s made from a .375 calibre bullet. That makes this pen mightier than the pen, which is mightier than the sword. It’s also packaged in an attractive gift case and is easy to transport in your pocket.

2. It’s Handy. I live in Britain where few people own guns and, as such, I have a very limited understanding of them. But what if bands of roaming barbarian hordes turned up at my house. Or hordes of roaming barbarian bands? Or reams of hording, barbering hands? Or bandaged ranks, handy with swords? I’d be fucked. And really confused. But if I had a bullet pen I’d be able to defend myself and my loved ones in the best possible way: By writing a cross letter to the local newspaper and then hurling the pen really hard at an assailant. That should work, right?

3. It’s Feminine. Now, you might be thinking that this isn’t a very feminine accoutrement, and that this awesome pen would be undesirable to women. But you’d be very, very wrong. Because if you thought that, you’d be making the crass assumption that what every woman wants is a man. But they don’t. And let me tell you right now, there is no surer way of not getting a man than for a woman to carry a large bullet around in her handbag. None. You can’t even top this with a cat in a pram or a hat made of cheese. Or Crocs.

4. It’s Waterproof. It writes underwater, which is something conventional pens can’t do. And it’s important to be able to write under water. For a successful submariner, for example, the ability to write under water is a necessary part of the job. They need to be able to write things down to do with charts and protractors and compasses and periscopes that you couldn’t possibly understand. If they were explained by me. The Fisher .375 Caliber Bullet Space Pen is ideal for all of this underwater tomfoolery.

5. It’s Airproof. It writes over water too. So if you’re an unsuccessful submariner, you can still use the pen without feeling stigmatised and discriminated against as a consequence of your haplessness and ineptitude. Sure, other submariners may mock you, but it won’t be because of your pen.

6. It’s Oilproof. Who amongst us hasn’t been trapped in a barrel of oil and suddenly remembered that it’s Mothers Day? If you own this pen, your mother will never be card-less again. You’ll also be able to write inside a wok and on the head of my teenage self. It’s so practical!

7. It’s A Force For Good. It raises the stakes and pushes back the boundaries of science, technology, the human species as a whole and the design of pouch laminating machines. Because the bullet space-pen is so amazing that it’s way ahead of the curve. Sure, the pen works underwater, and so does paper. For a short time. But eventually in water, paper turns to papier-mâché and, as we know, turning French is undesirable. The only thing that can prevent this horror is the pouch laminating machine which sadly, does not work underwater. Because of this technological imbalance, humankind will inevitably pour all sorts of resources into making the underwater pouch laminating machine a reality. All because of the Fisher .375 Caliber Bullet Space Pen. Bring on the future* (only £16.34 and delivered free within the UK)!

*My birthday is in June.

April 5, 2011
7 Reasons Seven Different Teams Won The 2011 Cricket World Cup

Well, that’s it. The Cricket World Cup is over for another four years. And what a World Cup it was. Some incredible performances from some incredible teams producing some incredible results. Or, if you were watching from where I was, rather tiresome once it had entered week 23. The good news is, England won! (Along with India.) (And a few others.)

1. India. The history books will show that it was the once fully-haired Mahendra Singh Dhoni who lifted the cup for one of the host nations. Given that they won the final I suppose there is an argument that they should be declared victors in their own right. But if we do that, aren’t we forgetting the other winners?

2. South Africa. They beat India – the winners – in the group stage. Surely if you beat the winners that makes you the winners?

3. England. They beat the winners of the match against the winners. Surely if you beat the winners of the match against the winners that makes you the winners?

4. Ireland. Ironically, the only people who can’t remember Kevin O’Brien’s incredible innings are the Irish. That’s because they were drinking from 9am. So, in case you have forgotten, let me remind you. Ireland beat England. They beat the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners. That makes them the winners then?

5. West Indies. Well, not quite. Because the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners (otherwise known as Ireland) lost to the West Indies. Which makes them the winners.

6. Pakistan. Or at least they would have been if Pakistan had not beaten the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners, in the quarter finals. And that’s exactly what Pakistan did. Unfortunately for them, this doesn’t make Pakistan the winners.

7. New Zealand. That’s because in the group stage they succumbed to lose to the Kiwis. And if you beat the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners, that means you win. Or at least it does here because we only provide seven reasons. Which is rather unfortunate for Sri Lanka given that they beat the winner of the match against the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners of the match against the winners. Mind you, they did lose to the winners. So I guess it doesn’t matter very much.

April 4, 2011
7 Reasons to Ignore What People Tell You About Babies*

Either I’m missing something or our six day old baby is defective. I was brought up to believe that parenthood was a living hell and that newborn babies were the worst things in all of existence. But, so far, and I hope I’m not tempting fate here, it isn’t and he isn’t. Doubtless there’ll be times when he’s poorly – or we are – and the going is really tough, but the babygeddon that I was led to believe I should expect as a new father has yet to materialise. I’m beginning to suspect that people have been lying to us.

It isn’t like this.

1. “It’s hard, it’s really hard. It’s awful. You won’t sleep for the first three years and then when you do, he’ll wake you up within five minutes just to spite you.” Blimey. Okay, so we need to feed and change him regularly day and night, but we seem to be getting loads of sleep. I actually feel guilty. I’ve begun stretching and pretending to yawn to make other parents feel better. “Oh, it’s absolute hell” I tell them in agreement, while wondering what all the fuss is about. Will it be possible for my wife and I to survive on only eight hours sleep per day each? Only time will tell.

2. “He’ll scream for hours for no reason.” No, there is a reason. In the case of the changing-table-screaming, it’s because he doesn’t want two giants tearing all his warm, protective layers off and attacking his bits with cotton wool every time he smells funny. I wouldn’t like it either. Nor would you. Fortunately we have worked out that we can distract him with the Poo Donkey; which is the donkey that comes and takes away the baby poo. (Not related to the father that takes the piss). Thank you, Poo Donkey, if it weren’t for you, the baby would still be screaming every changing time. Babies do scream for a reason. It just takes a bit of working out what it is.

All hail the Poo Donkey!

3. “You’ll never be able to go anywhere ever again.” Yes we can, and we have; every day. We’ve mostly been to Boots, Mothercare and the doctor’s surgery and we have to take a bit more stuff and it takes us a little longer to get ready, but we’ve been perfectly mobile. Okay, we get a few minutes of pushchair screaming which we don’t have a donkey to sort for us yet, but, with a bit of determination and preparation, a tiny child seems to be no obstacle to doing anything. I sense that only our own inertia would be.

4. “Boys will wee absolutely everywhere, on everything.” Yes, and babies are the same. Fortunately though, fast-hands can protect you from this. Yes, my nephew (also a baby) has managed to wee in my sister’s mouth and eye on more than one occasion, but this – I am sure – can be attributed to her having the spatial awareness and lightning reactions of a morphine-addled sloth listening to a tuba (throughout my sister’s childhood, the cry of “catch” was almost always followed by a sharp and unexpected blow to her forehead). For those of us with superhuman awareness and reactions (or even with human awareness and reactions) it is not difficult to place a hand between the source of the wee and the thing you want to protect from it. Sadly, my wife’s coat (on the back of a door several feet away) was sacrificed in the learning of this. But so far, we have not drowned in wee.

5. “There’s poo everywhere and you’ll spend your entire life cleaning it up.” No there isn’t, it’s conveniently contained within nappies, which – at this early stage – are not unpleasant to change (even for someone as squeamish as myself). Let’s say he does six poos per day and it takes five minutes each time to clean and change him. That’s only half an hour per day. The BBC have just axed My Family, so there’s half an hour. Now all we need is for them to axe EastEnders and Holby City and that’s a week we can spend dealing with shit, rather than watching it. Or we can just turn it off (the television, not the poo). Half an hour is not difficult to find. Half an hour is not all day, and half an hour every day is not an entire lifetime. For some people it’s not even an entire lunchtime.

6. “Newborn babies are really cute and their tiny little hands and feet are gorgeous. Awww. Sssswwwweeeeeettttt ickle babies. Do do do do do do do”. No they’re not. Our child has feet almost as large as his mother’s and fingers so long that he could probably play the piano if he could reach it. Or if we had a piano. Our son also has a hairier arse than most builders. Not all babies have tiny hands and feet.

7. “The baby will take over your life.” Yes – okay I have to concede that there may be a point there – and 7 Reasons apparently**. Expect us to have wrested some of it back from his evil clutches by next week though. Jon and I can take a baby in a fight. We’re not scared. Bring it on, you big baby!

*Don’t listen to me either, I expect that everyone’s experiences of parenthood are just different and we shouldn’t imagine that what we have undergone will be universally the same for others.

**We will be putting the baby away soon and normal service – rambling on about biscuits and France – will resume shortly.

March 30, 2011
7 Reasons That There is no Stigma Attached to my Spectacles

Regular readers of 7 Reasons might be not have been aware that half of the team has been expecting a rather special delivery for the last fortnight or so but we have and now, I can proudly announce, that it has arrived. My new spectacles are here. I’ve never had to wear them before and here are seven reasons that there is no stigma attached to wearing them whatsoever. None. At all. Got that?

Spectacle-ur*

1. Because I Got To Go To The Optician. And while I couldn’t write about my experiences there – because it’s been done far better already – I was able to enjoy a unique facility that is provided by my local Specsavers: Their waiting area overlooks the front door, just inside of which is a loose doormat. I have never been so royally entertained by slapstick in my entire life. The sight of almost all of the hapless and unsuspecting customers stumbling through the door was one of the most entertaining things I have seen in a long while. And they would have been able to enjoy the sight of me stumbling out onto the busy street half an hour later if this were not an optician. There is no stigma attached to physical comedy and even Norman Wisdom is cool. In Albania.

2. Because I Am Long-Sighted. I’m not near-sighted, short-sighted, ordinarily-sighted, conventionally-sighted or even averagely-sighted; I’m long-sighted. This is optician-speak for awesome. I can see a long way. I have super-sight. There is no stigma attached to being awesome. Superman is only unofficially awesome and he can get away with wearing his underpants on the outside of his trousers. I am officially awesome, therefore can easily get away with spectacles. And perhaps even the checked-shirt.

3. Wearing Spectacles Is A Necessary Public Service. Because I’m long-sighted, there’s almost nothing that I wouldn’t be able to see if I weren’t wearing them. The spectacles are actually needed to tame my sight. If it weren’t for them, the Hubble space telescope would probably be redundant and people as far away as Addis-Ababa would need curtains (if they don’t already). I’m wearing them for the greater good and there should be no social stigma attached to philanthropy.

4. I Need Them To Look At A Screen For A Long Time. I’m not going to guilt-trip the readers of 7 Reasons by suggesting that I would go blind writing my half of it if it weren’t for the glasses, but I would. Because I have to stare at a screen for a long time and I occasionally have to look at this image. Which always makes me try to stab myself in the eyes with a pencil. The glasses are necessary protection against this. If only they made spectacles for the mind.

5. Because Science Is Cool. Science is currently seen as hip and interesting, and glasses are a universally acknowledged signifier of scientific knowledge and capability. Watch any Hollywood movie – or Thunderbirds – and you know that the one in the glasses is the scientist; usually it’s Jeff Goldblum. Does Professor Brian Cox wear glasses? No. Do I (very occasionally) wear glasses? Yes. So to those unfamiliar with him, this makes me the better scientist. Right until I start to talk about quarks and molecular something-or-other and get distracted and end up talking about Ray-Bans.

6. Because They’re Ray-Bans. I love Ray-Bans. I’ve always worn them as sunglasses and I once got called a Ray-Ban geek by an assistant in a Ray-Ban shop, just because I knew the model numbers off by heart. And what the little codes on the arms mean. And I foolishly mentioned it out loud. Once. And my spectacles are Ray-Bans that I can wear at night and indoors without looking like a complete cock**. This is progress. Now the only place I can’t wear Ray-Bans legitimately is in bed when I’m asleep. And perhaps even then I could put opaque lenses in and use them as the world’s coolest eye-mask. Wearing spectacles is another step on my journey toward having Ray-Bans permanently affixed to my face. And Ray-Bans are cool: In my head, if not outside it.

7. Parenthood. I’m now a parent and, in years to come, when Byron Sebastian Fearns is making the long and daunting walk to his father’s desk to receive some sort of stern admonishment, I will need to move the glasses to the end of my nose so that I can look over the top of them while rebuking him. Because I know – from experience – that no telling-off is complete without that. And that putting clingfilm over the toilet bowl is frowned upon by people in glasses. Bugger. I used to love that.

*Yes, I did type this entire piece using only one hand.

**Sadly, they won’t prevent me from being one.

March 28, 2011
7 Reasons That I Hate the M&S Dine in for £10 Deal

Marks and Spencer have a Dine in for £10 meal deal in which you select a main course, a side-dish, a dessert course and a bottle of wine and pay only ten pounds for them. Other supermarkets have similar deals but I don’t shop at them, so I’m only qualified to write about my abject hatred of the M&S meal deal, which seems to be aimed solely at people who dine together in even numbers. Anyway, here are 7 Reasons that I loathe it. With every fibre of my being.

Grrr.

1. They’ve Got It Surrounded. It’s the weekend and there they all are. The throng. A grey horde of people aged over fifty-five standing four-deep, apparently transfixed, around the Dine in for £10 (But Only If There Are Precisely 2.0 Of You And Absolutely No Singletons Or Children Welcome) display. Some of them are actually viewing the food, picking it up and inspecting it, but many are not. A lot of these people seem not to have any involvement in the decision over what to eat at all, but there they stand, in the way of anyone else who might conceivably want to see the food. My wife, for example, will want to see the food. As will other customers so, if you’re not actively looking at the food, why not step away from the food? Hello! Hello! We want to see the food! Actually, I can already see the food – as all people over the age of fifty-five are tiny – but I can never get within nine feet of it for fear of damaging the doddering Lilliputians as I lumber through the waist-high mass of grey to get to the growers choice salad bag. Get out of the way! Other people want to see the food!

2. It’s A Compromise. Putting together a meal from the Dine in for £10 menu is a study in the art of compromise. And compromise is an abomination. Did Churchill compromise? Rarely. Did Neville Chamberlain compromise? Yes. Ergo, compromise is abominable and speaks with a Birmingham accent. So when my wife and I put together a meal from the Dine in for £10 menu it becomes a power-struggle that even the UN would back away interceding in (we don’t have any oil, for one thing). I approach the menu searching for the most interesting and tasty thing there, and my wife approaches it searching for the most insipidly dull and bland thing that they have which, in turn, causes me to become angry and refuse to compromise further on any of the other courses or the wine (just imagine Hitler food-shopping or, if you shop at the same branch of M&S as me, look for the angry giant bellowing “Who the hell has fish and chips with a side dish of rosemary new potatoes?!”). So in the end, neither of us get the meal we want. I can’t really blame M&S for this, it’s my own fault. If I wanted to eat nice, tasty, well balanced meals I should have followed Simon Cowell’s example and married myself.

3. It’s Discriminatory. I’m not a single person but, between bouts of not being single, I have been. I remember it well; a time when I would always find things exactly where I left them and had much more space in bed. But single people today need that extra space in bed because they are required to eat twice as much as people in couples to take advantage of the Dine in for £10 offer which will, ironically, increase their chances of remaining single. Or perhaps I’m being fanciful there. No one (in Europe) is actually going to eat twice as much to take advantage of a special offer, so the offer discriminates against single people. But M&S don’t care. They seem perfectly happy to condemn the single to evenings of dining – on full price non-special food – alone while viewing whatever television programme they fancy without interruption and in their pants. But surely being single is tough enough without being excluded from special offers? What if you were unfortunate enough to be a widower? What if, after the two of you have enjoyed a Saturday night ritual of dining in for £10 for a few years, your tiny grey husband dies (possibly crushed to death by a giant food-Nazi next to the ultimate potato mash)? There’d be no more Dine in for £10 menu for you. How iniquitous.

4. It Forces Extreme Measures. Many of the best ideas are borne out of adversity and, much in the noble tradition of Barnes Wallis inventing the bouncing bomb or Soviet cosmonauts using pencils in space, I have formulated a plan; a method by which single people might take full advantage of the Dine in for £10 offer and stick it to the man by enjoying a spinach and beef roulade followed by a raspberry panna cotta at the cheaper price. Single people need to find a food-buddy. They can do it by placing a personal ad like this:

Fiscally frugal food-lover (Male, early thirties, GSOH, NS, NK) with a penchant for rosemary and lemon crusted seabass and the green pea, bean and vegetable layer seeks similar to take advantage of the M&S Dine in for £10 offer. Must be willing to consume a lesser share of the profiteroles. All applications welcome but please, no time-wasters or merlot-drinkers.

By getting organised, single people can take advantage of the Dine in for £10 offer. But should single people have to resort to their guile, cunning and organisational adroitness to take advantage of the same offers that are unconditionally granted to couples?*

5. It’s Being Discriminatory Again. My wife and I qualify for the meal deal now, but what if we were to have a child one day? It’s not inconceivable (and nor are children, hopefully). Or three children? We’d be disqualified from the offer. Cruelly cast asunder by Marks and Spencer. Because you can’t feed three or five (or any other odd number, I won’t list them all) people from the M&S Dine in for £10 menu. In fact, only one person has ever successfully accomplished a similar feat: His name was Jesus and what he did with the wrong quantity of food for a gathering of people is spoken of as a miracle (which is a biblical word meaning fiction). So – miracles aside – families that contain an odd number of members are excluded from the deal too. The father, the son and the holy ghost can’t take advantage of the Dine in for £10 deal but Hitler and Eva Braun can.

6. Paying For The Thing. Okay, so – after about an hour of pushing tiny grey people around and bickering with your partner about broccoli – you’ve carefully assembled all of the components of the meal and you take them to the checkout. But when you get there they don’t ask you for ten pounds. They ask you for seventeen. “I thought that it was all a part of the Dine in for £10 offer”, you will state. And then they’ll press the Total button and say, “Oh yes, I hadn’t pressed the Total button”. This happens every time. Just press the Total button! We know we’re saving money, we don’t need you to remind us of that every time we buy the meal deal – that’s why we’re buying the bloody meal deal in the first place. All you’re accomplishing by reminding us of the money we’ve saved is to make the widow in the queue behind us cry.

7. The Third Pie. Marks and Spencer does something further to confound us all. As a part of their 2 for £10 menu Marks and Spencer offer a key lime pie. Which comes in three portions. Why three? We’ve already established that there’s only room for two people in this meal, what do they want us to do, fight over it? Go outside and scour the streets for a total stranger to hand it to as a random act of kindness? Perhaps they think we’re so abominably cruel that we’ll invite a dinner-guest – a single dinner-guest – round to watch us consume the rest of the menu before we reward them with a tiny dessert? I know this for certain; cats will not eat key lime pie, no matter how much cat food you mix in with it, so what’s with the third pie, Marks and Spencer? The third pie is sinister, frustrating and baffling. As is the rest of the Dine in for £10 deal.

*No. (But your conscience will surely have told you that already).

March 21, 2011
7 Reasons That Mongolia is Wrong to Celebrate Men and Soldiers

Hello 7 Reasons readers! It’s Friday here in the world, but in Mongolia it isn’t. In Mongolia, today is Men and Soldiers Day: The day when the good folks of Ulaanbaatar (and the parts of Mongolia that we can’t name) celebrate men and soldiers. Are men and soldiers the right people to be celebrating though, we asked ourselves. Doesn’t it seem a little unfair and iniquitous to be only celebrating men and soldiers? We think it is. We think there are far more deserving groups for modern Mongolia to celebrate. Here they are.

1. Men and Sailors. Now, the more observant of you will point out that Mongolia is a landlocked country and as a result have little need for sailors. While I might agree with you, it doesn’t stop Mongolia having a Navy. Indeed, as recently ago as the 13th Century, Mongolia had the third largest Navy in the world. Sadly, these days it comprises of three boats, two guns and seven sailors. Laughable you may think, but when I tell you that only one of the sailors can swim you will understand the gravity of the situation. Mongolia should be celebrating their sailors before they’ve all gone.

2. Men and Roy Chapman Andrews & His Merry Men. A name not familiar to most of you I am sure, but in the early 1920s Roy and co explored Mongolia in a fleet of Dodge cars. He was intending that his trip to Mongolia would help him discover something about the origin of man – why he thought Mongolia was the place he’d find this remains a mystery – he’d have probably had more luck in Lidl. Unsurprisingly he discovered little about man, but did discover a treasure trove of dinosaur bones. Not my words, those of Wikipedia. Then in July 1923, he became the first man to discover dinosaur eggs. All this leads us to believe that Roy Chapman Andrews inspired the creation of Indiana Jones. Given the success of the franchise, I feel it only proper that we should celebrate the real-life Indiana. And when I say ‘we’, I mean Mongolia.

3. Men and Weathermen. In summertime the temperatures can reach as high as 40 Celsius in Mongolia and in the winter drop as low as -45 Celsius. That is some extreme weather one has to stand outside holding a thermometer in. No one ever thinks about this though do they? All they care about is whether they need the camel or the bus the next day.

4. Men and Trans-Siberian Train Drivers. The Trans-Siberian railway line cuts through Mongolia as it joins Russia and China. A trip from St Petersburg to Beijing – taking in Ulaanbaatar – can take anywhere from between fifteen days to a month and a half. The first reason that Mongolia should be celebrating this dedicated group is that they are bringing in tourists which of course boost the economy. Secondly, do you know how hard it is to stand up for a month and a half? No, neither do I. But that is what these train drivers do. Heroes. The lot of them.

5. Men and Yurt Manufacturers. While Mongolian soldiers might once have blazed a bloody trail across Asia under Genghis Khan, the Mongolian Army is no longer the all-conquering behemoth that it once was. Mongolian yurts, however, unlike Mongolian soldiers, can be found all over the world and are something of a national Mongolian symbol. You can even order them online. Can you order a Mongolian soldier online? Well yes, probably, this is the internet we’re talking about, but a yurt would look better in your garden and would be less terrifying to your womenfolk and neighbours.

6. Men and Economists. The major currency of Mongolia is the tögrög, the tugrik or the tugrug, it depends who you ask. And if you ask me, it’s the tugrug. I don’t know how many tögrögs there are to the tugrik or how many tökraks there are to the tugrug (I just made one up myself, being an economist is fun!) but anyone who has invented a currency that has at least three names – one of which sounds like a silent comedic prank – should be celebrated. And then locked up.

7. Men and the Sun-Starved Geeks That Update Wikipedia. If it weren’t for Wikipedia, how much would we know of modern Mongolia? Sure we all know about Genghis Khan and the yurts and…the…yaks and things? But Wikipedia – fortunately – knows everything. I, for one, was flabbergasted to learn that Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan and that on November 21, 2005, George W. Bush became the first-ever sitting U.S. President to visit Mongolia. To the rest of the world, Wikipedia is a shop window for Mongolia, spewing-forth fascinating facts and marvellous Mongolian minutiae for our amazement and astonishment. Mongolia should celebrate the people that update Wikipedia from their bedrooms in their pants. And so should we. Wikipedia, we salute you.

March 18, 2011
7 Reasons to Borrow a Flat Cap
Yesterday, my colleague Jonathan Lee wrote 7 Reasons to Borrow a Cat Flap. As sometimes happens at 7 Reasons, I found myself in disagreement with some of his reasoning and decided to write an answer post. I sat down. Before I had accomplished anything, my wife asked me what I was writing. An answer post to “7 Reasons to Borrow a Flat Cap…Flat Cap…Flat Cap………Flat Cap! Fuck it. I’m writing 7 Reasons to Borrow a Flat Cap.” So there it is. Today’s post is brought to you courtesy of my inability to say the phrase cat flap.

This is not a flat cap.

1. DNA. If you borrow a flat cap you might find that there are fragments of DNA in it that you can use to clone the lender. And what better birthday surprise is there for a flat cap owner than to be presented with the gift of themself? Then they’ll be able to see how daft they look in a flat cap. And pretend to be in the dining room when they’re not.

2. Yorkshire. Yorkshiremen are notable for two things. Their wearing of flat caps and their fiscal prudence/utter meanness. While a purchased flat cap satisfies one of these criteria; a borrowed flat cap fulfils both. Nothing screams Yorkshire like a borrowed flat cap (except for a drunken ruddy-faced cricket spectator screaming “Yorkshire” at a whippet). Real Yorkshiremen borrow hats. I’m certain of it.

3. Versatility. Flat caps aren’t just headgear. They can be used for other purposes too. Imagine you find yourself at the beach without a Frisbee. You can borrow a flat cap and use it as one. Always remember to remove the owner first and include them in the game though. Otherwise you’re just bullying them.

4. Disguise. You’re on the run. They’re after you. They’re after you! You’re like Richard Hannay in The Thirty-Nine Steps (except that in this example I have thoughtfully provided an escalator). As you flee through the fog, the whistle-blowing rozzers are hot on your heels. You round a corner and almost collide with an old man in a flat cap. Thinking quickly, you tear the hat from his head and place it on your own. You spin round, stoop, and shuffle in the direction from which you have come, while the police tear past you round the corner and continue running into the fog. You breathe deeply, fleetingly experiencing the sweet serenity of relief. Then the old man – a retired escalator salesman – sets about you with his walking stick, hitting you thirty-nine times, as you repeatedly yell “Stop!”

5. Finance. A borrowed flat cap has an approximate annual maintenance cost per annum of £0.00. This represents great value. If worn all the time this could – in my case – mean an annual saving of £120 on haircuts. So borrowing a flat cap makes great fiscal sense. You could use the money you’ve saved by not getting your hair cut (highlighted/dyed (you might be a girl or a pillock)) to buy some sort of larger over-hat to hide your flat cap. Perhaps a pirate hat. Then you’ll have saved yourself money and you’ll look like a pirate. I really should have been a financial adviser.

6. Comedy. Why, you might reasonably ask, would someone wear a hat which makes their head look like they’ve had an unfortunate accident involving both gravity and an anvil? The answer is comedy. Borrow a flat cap and you can:
- Convince a small child that your head is flat.
- Wear it backwards and pretend to be a git.
- Impersonate Norman Wisdom (this is only funny in Albania)
- No, that’s about it.
- For comedy you’re actually better off borrowing a custard pie.
- Or a plank.
7. Benevolence. By borrowing a flat cap, you provide a valuable service to the flat cap owner. I, for example, am the owner of two flat caps. If someone borrowed one of them I’d feel less like Guy Ritchie. I’d like that.

Coming tomorrow: 7 Reasons to Borrow a Flat Cat*

*or 7 Reasons to Borrow a Cap Flap
March 15, 2011