Tag: window

Guest Post: 7 Reasons I’m Going To Buy Window Blinds As A Christmas Gift For A Stranger

If you can remember as far back as March, you may recall Ewan MacDougal advocating the art of building a fortress from furniture. Well, we are pleased to say he’s back. And this time he’s got Christmas on his mind.

Window blinds as a Christmas gift for a stranger? “Well that’s a little odd!” I’m sure you’re thinking. Window blinds are generally something one buys for themselves. Choosing window blinds is a big task that can change the whole feel of a room. It would be presumptuous for me to think I could choose how someone else’s’ room must look. “Maybe,” I imagine you suggest. “Maybe choosing window blinds for a loved one could work.” And certainly I agree it would make more sense if I told you I was buying window blinds for, say, my Grandmother – whose tastes I’m likely to know well, especially if she had been hinting she wanted window blinds and knew I had worked with a window blinds company for my job. However, Grandma will have to wait, because this Christmas I’m buying window blinds for a (near) stranger.

It is not that I am a blind fanatic who hopes he can create a little piece of Christmas magic by having blinds delivered to a random strangers’ home. It’s actually far more self serving than that. It has been said on occasion, that I am perhaps at times a little socially awkward. (Shocking I know.) This was proved to me the other day at a party when, whilst trying to make friends with a stranger, I may have accidently given the impression I could be a stalker. I assure you I am not a stalker!

It’s okay, though, I have a cunning plan, window blinds will save my reputation and potential friendship, and here are seven reasons why.

1. Proof That I’m Gainfully Employed. I have a job, like a proper one with an office, day time hours, email address, phone number, a monthly wage, the works. All these very normal things. I’m sure the random stranger I may have seemed like a stalker to, has in mind a stereotypical stalker. I imagine this stereotype of a stalker is quite a weird individual. Who does not get on with people and does not keep regular hours. A stalker fitting this stereotype would probably struggle to get or hold down a regular office job such as mine. Thus by making it known that I have a job I will surely seem less stalker like. How will blinds help? Well one of my clients at the moment just happens to be a leading window blind manufacturer. I’ll be sure to mention the work connection on any gift tag, making my normalness apparent.

2. Window Blinds Create Privacy. This reason is surely an obvious one, but in case some didn’t share quite the same train of thought as I did… Stalkers are notorious for staring through the windows of their victims. Watching all their movements, keeping track of every happening in their life. If someone was to use blinds this would become much more challenging. So, unless I was a stalker particularly looking for a challenge, it would be completely counterproductive to give someone blinds. Thus, the stranger I met at this party will only be able to conclude that I am not a stalker.

3. Sending Window Blinds Is Actually Less Creepy Than Explaining The Situation. So the ‘sensible’ among you may be thinking, “Surely this mistaken stalker conundrum is all just a miss understanding that could be sorted out by explaining.”. Well.. maybe. However, the only means of contact I have for my possibly alleged victim soon to be friend, is a postal address. This is what got me into the whole mess in the first place. After the party I was calling a taxi for myself, and being the generous non-stalker that I am I called one for her as well (hence having an address) and at the time I joked that now I had her address I could send her a postcard. I’m no comedy genius, but even I can tell that offering to send someone a postcard isn’t a particularly funny joke. In fact, in all honesty, I don’t know if it can be deemed a joke at all. So how could I save myself as being remembered as that guy who tells non-funny jokes? Well, I could only think of one way. Pretend it was never a joke at all and actually send her a postcard.

So, that’s what I did. The next day I bought a postcard, drew a nice scene of seals on the back (why seals? Why not?), wrote on her address, a return address and a shiny first class stamp and popped it in the post.

It’s been four days now and still no response.. the more I think about it, sending a hand drawn seal scene to someone you hardly know might be a little weird.. perhaps stalkerish? It was a party, there was drinking. Does she remember I have her address? How will she think I got it? What if she thinks I found it from somewhere else? Is finding home addresses of strangers stalkerish? Yes.

So, if my fears are founded, and I have been deemed a weird stalker by sending a postcard, is sending another really the best option? Fixing a mistake by doing the exact same thing again, has been proven (I’m thinking the Brand/Ross vs Andrew Sachs thing) to be a bad idea!

No, the only option is a completely different gesture. Sending window blinds to her home address instead.

4. Drawing Another Picture Would Make Things Worse Still. Before I completely ruled out writing to her again, I did consider creating a second drawing. This drawing would be entitled ‘proof I’m not a stalker’ and feature a sketch of the bushes I saw outside her house on Google street view – it would be clear I’m not hiding in them. The picture would also feature a dustbin being raided for food by foxes – and therefore confirm it was not being raided by me looking for whatever it is stalkers steal from bins. Finally, it would include a sketch of the shelf in my bedroom – which currently has books on it and not a creepy shrine dedicated to her. So that’s what I was going to draw.

However, I do all my drawings from life, and I feel the amount of time I’d have to secretly sit outside her house to capture the bins and bushes really might not help my case. So really we’re back to the window blinds.

5. It’s A Good Value Gift With 50% Off Selected Blinds. The window blind shop I’m looking at currently has 50% off most products. I know I shouldn’t be cheap about saving my own reputation, but there’s no harm in looking for good value.

6. Christmas Is A Magical Time Of Year. By making the blinds a Christmas gift the recipient will get them at the most magical time of year. It’s surely much harder to be mad at someone and worry that they might be a stalker when you’re filled with Christmas cheer. Plus, Christmas is a time when you have lots of guests. So what better time to spruce up your living room with some new blinds?! She’ll only be able to think good things about me after this Christmas gift.

7. A Personal Gift Will Say I’m Thoughtful Not Creepy. Blinds are a really personal gift, which takes a lot of effort to give. Think about it, I’m going to have to break into her house to measure the windows to make sure the blinds fit. Then I’m going to have to go through all of her stuff to get familiar with her tastes and make sure I choose blinds she’ll really like. Roller blinds or Venetian blinds? I’m going to have to track down the homes of all her friends and family to make sure none of them have blinds that look too similar. It’s really going to be a lot of hard work to make sure the gift is perfect. How could she possibly be mad or scared by me once she knows how much work I’ve gone to in order to get her this perfect and special Christmas gift? I mean, if someone broke into my house, rummaged through all my things, started snooping around the homes of all my friends and family, I know that I’d feel… uh… oh wait… maybe not then.

December 2, 2011
7 Reasons to be Glad That The Transfer Window Has Closed

Hurrah! It’s finally over! And here are seven reasons to be glad that it is.

1. There’ll Be More News. The 24 hour rolling football will finally stop and news stations and channels will carry actual news: Proper news; vital news; weighty news of great import, historical gravity and epoch-defining momentousness. For all we know, Beyonce could be pregnant and because of the transfer deadline day absolutely no one in the world will have heard about it. Also, Colonel Gaddafi could still be hiding in a tunnel somewhere, possibly in Libya. Literally anything could be happening out there and we wouldn’t know because of the seemingly endless saga of will he/won’t he buy him, will he/won’t he join them and David Ngog? Hahahahahahaha!!!! Let’s find out what’s happening in the world.

2. There’ll Be Less Bullshit, Rumour, Bullshit, Bullshit and Bullshit. There’s a saying in motor sport: When the flag drops, the bullshit stops, but there isn’t enough fabric in the world to make enough flags to stop all of the falsity, mendacity and unabashed calumny that makes up the speculation on transfer deadline day. And even if there were, there wouldn’t be enough seamstresses to sew them, poles to fly them from and this analogy stops here as it’s making the writing part of my head hurt. It seems that absolutely anyone can say absolutely anything and get it reported by ordinarily sensible yet temporarily scoop-frenzied news organisations (and Sky) on transfer deadline day. You would think there would be a limited number of Dan’s cousin’s osteopath’s brother’s friend Terrys that could possibly be at an airport terminal or a motorway service station to witness Sol Campbell (who by my reckoning is now at least eight thousand years old) heading off to one training ground or another, but apparently there aren’t. Dan’s cousin’s osteopath’s brother’s friend Terry achieves absolute omnipresence on transfer deadline day as does Yossi Benayoun who, according to Dan’s cousin’s osteopath’s brother’s friend Terry has now signed for at least six clubs and consumed twelve different flavours of Ginsters pasties at various motorway service stations across the land. And every word of this gets reported in every medium by every organisation reporting on the looming transfer deadline. Benjamin Disraeli said that there are“…lies, damned lies, and statistics”, but he never experienced a transfer deadline day. On transfer deadline day there are no statistics.

3. Arsenal Fans Will Seem Less Mad. If you’re of the opinion that Arsene Wenger has lost the plot in recent months with his bizarre refusal to sign any football player that is both over the age of twenty and has a spine, you could be seen to have a valid point. But Wenger’s reluctance to spend his football club’s money buying football players for their football team has made such blubbering wrecks of the supporters that Mr Wenger himself seems like the sanest man in the world (except David Dimbleby) in comparison to them. I’ve experienced this myself as, while I don’t support a Premier League club, I think that a strong and competitive Arsenal team is a lovely thing to watch and makes the Premier League competition far more exciting. Today I’ve frequently found myself foaming at the mouth and bellowing “Buy him! Buy him! Buy him!” This happens whenever Dan’s cousin’s osteopath’s brother’s friend Terry spots any footballer with at least one and a half working legs and the ability to grow even the sparsest of beards within a hundred mile radius of North London. The combination of Arsene Wenger’s parsimony and transfer deadline day have contrived to turn me into a babbling idiot (even more so than usual). It must be so much worse for those that actually care: Those poor people also have to bellow “Sell him! Sell him! Sell him!” whenever Nicklas Bendtner’s name is mentioned. It must be hell for them.

4. We’ll Rediscover Words. How often do you hear your own name said out loud? A couple of times a day? Ten times a day? It might be more if you’re gregarious or popular, I wouldn’t know. One thing I do know though, is that if your name is Scott Parker you’ll have heard it said out loud more often than anyone else in the entire history of humanity. Anyone that has watched a sport bulletin between May and September (that period we refer to ironically as “the summer”) this year will have heard the words Scott and Parker more times than they’ll have heard the words if, it, bit, but, the, a, dog and salamander combined. Oh, and and. Craig David has heard his name said out loud fewer times than Scott Parker has and he spends his entire life singing it at people.

5. We’ll Be Less Baffled. My wife knows less about football than I know about the female orgasm. Of the sea otter. And when she turned to me today and wearily asked “Why do they always leave it until the last minute?” I loftily dismissed her amateur enquiry and, in a knowledgeable and not un-patronising tone replied, “It’s because…”. That’s as far as I got. Because when the transfer window is open from the end of the previous season until the end of August, it’s absolutely barmy to be trying to buy a player (that the selling club usually need to replace) minutes before the window shuts. The buying club won’t find a bargain as the seller will be far more reluctant to sell them at that time and they won’t get a pre-season to help them settle into the squad. There is no level on which leaving buying a footballer until the last minute makes any sense. Unless it’s the same level on which Jedward are entertaining and Nando’s is a desirable place to go for dinner, in which case it makes all the sense in the world. More probably. All of the sense everywhere. Even the sense in the cupboard under the stairs and the sense that has dropped out of your trouser pockets and fallen down the back of the sofa. Am I still making sense? No? There, that’s how much sense leaving it until the last minute makes.

6. We Will All Be Safe. It’s okay. Really, it’s alright now. We can all breathe a deep sigh of relief and relax as we’re all perfectly safe now. Though it does seem that their strategy is to buy absolutely everyone in the world, there are rules and regulations to deal with that sort of thing and if you haven’t already been purchased by Manchester City (something that is worth checking), you won’t have to worry until January. I’ve spent much of the last month absolutely terrified that I’m going to get signed and dragged off to Manchester to play football in the rain, but I seem to have escaped. My five month old son (who can nearly stand up unaided) seems to have slipped the net too. We got off lightly, as it seems that they’ve even resorted to raiding hospitals to find players to sign.

7. Football Will Be About Football. Remember when football was about football? That wondrous, gilded, golden-age when football wasn’t about finance, negotiation, and acquisition? When it was about sport and not business? Now that the window’s slammed firmly shut, those of us that want to see business (and who amongst us doesn’t find watching a meeting utterly thrilling?*) can watch Dragon’s Den or The Apprentice and those of us that like football can watch football which is a sport, not a bunch of self-centred prima-donnas making utter cocks of themselves for our entertainment. Oh, it turns out that it is. Still, it’ll be nice change from all of the business. Until it all starts again in three months. Bugger.

*Yes, it’s me.

August 31, 2011
7 Reasons Not To Have A Bat In Your Dining Room

This may come as something of a surprise to regular readers of 7 Reasons, but we’re not experts on everything that we write about. Often, our pieces contain much speculation and conjecture. Today’s piece, however, is different. Today’s piece is written from experience. If you should find yourself in a dining room with a bat, this is exactly how it will go down.

1. Surprise! As you sit in your dining room on a quiet Saturday night catching up on missed television programmes using the iPlayer, you’ll feel relaxed and at ease. You’ll take a sip of your drink and languidly stretch out your legs. You’ll stifle a yawn and stretch out your arms. Eventually, you’ll lean back in your seat and glance up toward the ceiling light, to ascertain what is casting the strange shadow that you have seen from the corner of your eye for the past few seconds. Then you’ll scream involuntarily and bolt from the room and slam the door shut behind you. A large bat flying around your dining room will come as something of a surprise to you.

2. Disbelief. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Your wife will enquire in a startled manner, somewhat surprised by your shrieking.

“There’s a bat in the dining room.”

“What?”

“There’s a bat in the dining room.”

“What?”

“Bat!” (You’ll flap your arms about miming flight at this point). “Dining room!” (You’ll also point at the dining room.)

“What’s it doing in there?”

“Flying around the ceiling lamp and watching a documentary about Stalin.”

Rather disbelievingly, your wife will go to the dining room, open the door slightly and peer through the gap. On closing it very quickly, she will then announce that “there’s a bat in the dining room”.

3. Spin. Anxious that you should always see the positive side of any situation, you’ll start brainstorming. A bat in the dining room could be a good thing, you’ll think. A bat in the dining room would mean that there would never be any insects in there. A bat in the dining room would ensure that you could write in there with absolutely no chance of interruption: You could look at the internet with no chance of interruption! A bat in the dining room would…be a bloody great bat in the dining room. It turns out that the elephant in the room is that there’s a bat in the room. There’s no upside so good that it can surmount the fact that your dining room contains a bat.

4. Whimsy. Having established that having a bat in the dining room is a bad thing, you’ll turn your mind to what the hell to do with it. “We could call the RSPCA”, your wife will suggest.

“We’re not being cruel to it. We’re being inconvenienced by it.”

“Perhaps there’s a local bat group.”

“Yes, maybe they could send some sort of bat man.”

“A dog warden?”

“Or, we could call Commissioner Gordon and he could raise the bat-signal. Perhaps we could…”

5. Motivation. “…Oh my god!”

“What?!”

“My gin and tonic’s in there!”

6. De-batting. “Darling”, you’ll say, “We’re just going to have to man-up and deal with the bat ourselves…In you go.” This motivational speech will fail to make her deal with the bat on your behalf, so you’ll have to work as a team. You will close every door in the house (so the bat can’t start terrorising you in other rooms) and your wife will peer back into the dining room. She will find that the bat is still flying around in there, fluttering in haphazard circles around the ceiling light like a terrifying and gigantic moth. A behemoth*. You’ll formulate a plan. You will run in, raise the blind, open the window and run out again: Your wife will be in charge of opening and closing the door. You’ll take a deep breath and steel yourself for the task. Eventually, though too soon for you, your wife will open the door and you will burst into the room and stride toward the blind. Startled by the sudden presence in the room, the bat will realise that flying around is not a safe thing to do and he will decide to land. At the very instant that you arrive at the blind, the bat will land on it, inches from your face. “Aaaarrrgghhh”, you’ll scream as you run out of the room. Your wife will close the door.

You’ll realise that another plan is called for. If you raise the blind with the bat on it, you’ll just squash the bat. You’ll have a flat bat. And bats, if you flatten them, appear bigger. So, if you can’t raise the blind and open the window, you’ll have to trap the bat and remove it. Having rummaged in the kitchen cupboard for a suitable container for a considerable time, your wife will emerge with her Tupperware bat-trap. This time, she will be in charge of trapping the bat, and you will be in charge of the door (yay!) and the lid (boo!). You’ll open the door and your wife will stride in and head toward the blind with the container held out in front of her. Arriving at the blind she’ll cover the bat with the container. Now that the bat is safely contained, you’ll enter the room clutching the lid. You’ll slide the lid slowly and carefully between the blind and the Tupperware box and affix it. Phew.

7. Post-bat. As you breathe your sigh of relief the bat will let out a heart-rending squeak. Your wife will head into the back garden to release the bat and you’ll be in charge of the back door (yay again!). The moment that the lid is removed, the bat will flutter out and your wife will scream and run toward the door, which will cause you to laugh. Briefly. Eventually, having congratulated your wife on her brave conduct in the face of a big, scary bat and having closed every window in the house (twice), you’ll return to the comfort and security of Josef Stalin and your gin and tonic. Then you’ll discover that the bat has left you a “present” on your white Verner Panton stackable chair.

So there you go. That’s roughly what will happen if you have a bat in your dining room. I don’t recommend it.

*You’ll be inordinately proud of that wordplay.

July 26, 2011
7 Reasons Windowgate Is Baffling

If you’re at all interested in cricket or windows, then you can’t have failed to have noticed that, in a tale that came to be known as Windowgate, a window in the England dressing room got broken by Matt Prior at Lord’s yesterday. This story then snowballed taking many unexpected twists and turns along the way. I was listening as events unfolded. Here are seven reasons that the story is baffling.

1. The Explanation. The ECB’s initial explanation for the incident was that “the glass had been broken after Prior’s gloves ricocheted off a kit bag and knocked the bats, resting on the window pane.” This seemed almost entirely plausible. To the abjectly mad. People who have no concept of the relative mass and density of gloves and bats might also be misled by this statement. I, as an owner of both gloves and bats, however, am not taken in by what we can only call the Magic Glove theory. I can categorically state that in over thirty years of glove ownership, I have never seen one ricochet.

2. The Withdrawal Of The Explanation. By the time the explanation was withdrawn, my speculation had become fevered. So if it wasn’t a Magic Glove, what was it? Was a lone glove-man in the England dressing room hurling gloves at bats from a grassy knoll? Were bats being hurled from book depositories? Were books being hurled from bat depositories? Was there a shadowy third glove-hurler in the showers? Oh, they’ve withdrawn the explanation now. Wait! That makes it seem even more sinister and mysterious.

3. The Explanation For The Withdrawal Of The Explanation. On withdrawing his initial explanation, England spokesman James Avery said that he “had been working from second-hand information”. He failed to mention that not only was the information second-hand, it was also implausible gibberish. After all, second-hand information isn’t intrinsically bad. I didn’t find out about the sinking of the Titanic first-hand, and I’m fairly sure that you didn’t either. I’m confident that it happened though, and in the manner that it was told to me. To blame the implausibility and inaccuracy of a laughably shoddily fabricated account on it being second-hand is preposterous. What he should have done is blame it on an idiot, because there’s definitely one involved there somewhere.

4. The All-New Explanation. The ECB then had another go at explaining the breakage. “Prior had his bat on the ledge where the wall met the window of the dressing room. The bat handle bounced off the wall onto the glass and the glass broke.” Ah, this sounds more plausible (as most things do when there isn’t a magic glove involved). This account of events is far more believable than the first, unless, that is, you’re an exponent of that arcane and little-known (to the ECB) science, physics. Newton’s law states that “to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction”, and that holds true in this case. In my over thirty years of bat-ownership, I’ve never seen one move of its own accord. I also believe that if England possessed a magic or sentient bat, Straussy would have been using it in the second innings, so we can be certain that this is a conventional cricket bat. This means that for it to have bounced off the wall, there must have been an action to which the bat was reacting. In this case, the only possible explanation is that the England dressing room at Lord’s has a twitching wall; a wall that twitched and caused the bat handle to bounce onto the glass, which then shattered. In the interests of research I googled “Lord’s twitching wall” and found no account of it, which is strange for a cricket ground with such a well-documented history. I smelled a rat.* The second explanation was no better than the first.

5. Just What Are They Trying To Keep From Us? So if neither of those explanations are to be believed, what could possibly have happened in that dressing room that would cause the ECB to go to such lengths to cover it up? Some sort of second Roswell incident? Was Glen Miller in there? The Loch Ness Monster? All the ECB seem to have achieved with their accounts of the incident is to fuel much conjecture, discussion, speculation and publicity.

6. I Have A Theory Of My Own. Some may call it fanciful, some may call it far-fetched, some may call it pie-in-the-sky, but here’s what might – in my mind – have happened. Competitive sportsman Matt Prior, who was, according to an eye-witness, “…cursing and muttering when he walked up the stairs to the pavilion”, furious at being run out, entered the dressing room and angrily hurled his bat to the floor. It then ricocheted off the floor and struck the window, causing it to break. This theory of mine is unsubstantiated, unlike the Twitching Wall theory, which has been endorsed by Andrew Strauss (though he was on the balcony at the time and didn’t see it himself), but it does have some advantages over either of the explanations offered by the ECB: It’s plausible, it’s physically possible, it doesn’t involve a magic glove, it doesn’t involve a twitching wall, and James Avery didn’t say it.

7. The Biggest Mystery Of All. If my theory were, in fact, true, no one would have batted an eyelid at that course of events. No one was badly hurt and Prior apologised and was fined. We would all have put it down to a bit natural frustration and moved on. The ECB seem to have taken what was a very unremarkable incident and have turned it into Windowgate: An epic tale of ineptitude, implausibility, bullshit and chicanery. Quite why they did this is the most baffling thing of all.

*Figuratively.

June 8, 2011