Isn't it about time we English had a haka of our own?

Did you see the Tongan Haka when the team faced England in the Rugby World Cup on Friday? It was all a bit “up close and personal”, wasn’t it? Terrifying for the England team and a bit embarrassing, too – I mean what do you do while a bunch of big men are dancing ferociously in your face? I think the haka is wonderful – and what a powerful psychological tool. Imagine if we all adopted that approach to conflict. It would certainly liven up the start to Quiz Night at the local pub. And when two businessmen meet to hammer out a deal, just think of the effect if would have if one of them were to fling his tie over his shoulder and crouch down for a spot of in-your-face dancing. Come to think of it, is the haka actually a fair tactic if only one team performs it? Shouldn’t every team have something up their sleeve to redress the balance? Personally I’d love to see the England team watch impassively while their Pacific island opponents perform their scariest haka – then whip out some sticks and handkerchiefs and break into a Morris Dance routine. It might not strike fear into their rivals’ hearts, but it would certainly disconcert them a little.

I have an aunt who plays the guitar. So what?

Let’s start Friday off with a chuckle with more of those foreign language idioms that don’t translate too well into English. I’m going to write a book about this some day – as soon as I can find a publisher who gives a rat’s cuss about idioms.

“There’s no need to push granny in the nettles.” (French) What a delightful image. This means: “There’s no need to go over the top.”
"He doesn’t have all his cups in the cupboard.” (German) He has a screw loose or even, “he’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic”.
“I know you, codfish, even though you wear a disguise”. (Spanish) Weird! This means: “I know your game.”
“If one Pope dies, we can always get another one.” (Italian) A rather cynical alternative to our own: “There’s plenty more fish in the sea.”
“He fell with his nose in the butter”. (Dutch) Surprisingly, this means: "he is lucky", or “he fell on his feet”. Sounds rather painful and messy to me.
“Come out of the cottage cheese at last!” (German). Stop joking!” Germanic folk seem to spend much of the time with part of their bodies in dairy products.
“I have an aunt who plays the guitar.” (Spanish). So? you may reply. Precisely. The English equivalent is: “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?”

You'll see - I'm going to bag the Mayor's job

I’m about to go to Tesco’s, but I don’t relish the prospect. Not because of the shoppers’ trance I’ll quickly be lulled into, what with all that extraneous choice; nor even by the checkout queues (they don’t have those anymore – Every Little Helps, apparently). No, it’s the guilt that’s going to hit me when once I again I refuse the overpriced Bag for Life and opt instead for those devil’s creations, the Plastic Bag. No matter how hard the gimlet-eyed till operator glares at me, I’m still going to say no. But why should I have to feel so bad? And what’s more, why does the burden of saving the planet have to fall on the poor, confused shopper? In other parts of Europe and even in the US – hardly the most environmentally-friendly of countries, what with all those gas guzzling cars and the ubiquitous freeze-your-whotsits-off air-conditioning – they have recyclable brown bags for your shopping. These are strong enough for bottles and so tough you can even reuse them, seemingly the greenest option of all. So if only the government would encourage supermarkets to use these as a matter of course, we could shop once again with a spring in our steps and a crystal-clear conscience.. Sorted. Me for Mayor.

Let sleeping dogs lie

Did you read in the paper that They have discovered it is bad for you to have less than seven hours’ sleep a night? Apparently being deprived of sleep can give you anything from cancer, a stroke or heart problems to boils, bunions and haemorrhoids. OK, I exaggerate, but you get the idea: Sleep, Good; Sleeplessness, Bad. Though apparently not. It appears that more than eight hours' sleep a night can actually lead to …well, death. Hmm, not so good. But wait a minute – how accurate is this study? Have They considered that the people who sleep for fewer than seven hours’ a night are spending their time drinking, smoking, visiting prostitutes and generally doing all manner of other things that could lead to disease? Or perhaps these people are lying awake worrying about the early symptoms of illnesses they have already detected? And the sluggards whose sleeping habits end in death – how many of them had slipped into an irreversible coma by the time the researchers came to quantify them? There are just so many variables that this study is pointless, and surely designed just to worry us all into an early grave. All we really need to know is that all of us will die - and some will become ill first. In the meantime, let’s get some sleep.

Oyster cards. As if life wasn’t complicated enough.

Oyster cards. Why? Remember when you would hand over your money to a Person at the underground station? They would give you a ticket and some change. Simple. Now you have to force-feed a machine with your last precious banknote and perform a series of mad swiping movements to be allowed through the barrier at all. Youngsters seem to understand the system, but what about the rest of us? What ever happened to the Person, anyway? And who do you ask when your banknote gets chewed up and it all goes horribly wrong? The youngster, presumably, only he's already spent five minutes explaining to an old lady how to buy a day return and there’s only so many trains he’s prepared to miss before his patience runs out. That’s supposing you can actually get an Oyster card at all, that is. Adult ones are fairly simple, but it’s a nightmare trying to get one for your kids. You need the right form (there’s two categories of youngster, apparently) and don’t even think of asking for a form at the station. That would be too easy. You can’t download it, either. No, you need to go to the Post Office, fill it in, add a photo, add signatures of the child, yourself and maybe even a teacher, add some dosh and then return it to the Post Office, then wait for the Oyster Card to arrive in the post. It arrives with some patronising drivel about how they will take your Oyster Card away if you misbehave on the train (over my dead body). Your youngster then takes it to the underground, promptly loses it, and the whole process begins again. Life is complicated enough without Oyster Cards. Or multi-choice telephone answering services. Or Indian call centres. Let’s face it, I don’t even understand my TV anymore.

Things you didn’t know about kids before you had them

• You don’t always bond with your kids straight away. When my first child was born I thought: “A boy. Nice. Now I could do with a good night’s sleep.” And I got one – ooh – it must have been only about seven months later.
• Children are really dull for the first six months. Did you know you can spoonfeed a young baby and watch paint dry at the same time?
• They eat on an epic scale. If I leave six bananas unattended in a bowl, within five minutes they’re gone. It’s like having live-in burglars.
• As they get older you can have a really good laugh with them.
• They know you almost as well as you know them. My heart sank when I first overheard: “Mum always pulls that face and does that dance when she’s had too much to drink”.
• There are always at least 20 odd socks around the house at any one time.
• No matter what else you do with your life, they will always be your biggest achievement.
  

It's no longer just Big Brother who's watching you anymore

Don’t get me wrong, I think the internet is wonderful. How else could I get away with publishing this drivel in the privacy of my own home for the rest of the world to read (or realistically, just you). And I love the fact that research is now a doddle. As a young freelance journalist any article would involve countless trips to the library, many phone calls (perish the thought) and days and days spent waiting for background material to arrive in the post. But there are a few downsides to the WWW. People we lost touch with, quite voluntarily, 30 years ago start to come out of the woodwork and expect some sort of correspondence to ensue. Spooky. Also, having teenage children makes me realise just how linked-in we really are. I only realised recently that when my son is on the computer, chances are he has allowed the rest of the world to view him on webcam. That’s all very well, but it also means that I’m live to half the glamorous 16-year-olds in the county when I wander haplessly into the study in my old dressing gown and specs. He even has a microphone now so that he can speak to his friends with his actual voice while looking at them at the same time. It’s almost – well, like meeting them in person.

"Four pints coming up. You have a nice day now."

It’s Saturday, which means it’s Pub Day. Aah, the pub. Great place. Not necessarily because of the booze – you can get that at home – but for the wonderful quirkiness that is the English pub experience. Some American friends visited us a few weeks ago. They were new to England and it was weird trying to describe to them the peculiarities of the pub, “No, you can’t look through the window first to see what it’s like inside – that’s as bad as peering into somebody’s house”. “Yes, it is normal to cover the walls with all those trombones, horse brasses and bits of old ship” And: “Don’t mind the guy behind the bar – pub landlords are always over-familiar and tend to take the mick.” Can you imagine how the American version of the pub would be? “Hello, my name’s Stan. I’ll be your pub landlord today. Our specials are lager and lime and John Smiths on hand pump, and I can recommend the pie and mash. Oh - you’ll have the Sunday roast. Would you like over-cooked roasties or lumpy mash with that?” Give me grumpy, mickey-taking publicans with a tendency to take unreasonable dislikes to their customers any day. Yes, you know who you are.

Old age cometh – better shoot us all now

Have you ever noticed how well-turned-out the elderly are? You see them in town struggling with their shopping, clearly finding the very act of putting one step in front of the other a major effort. But their shoes are immaculate, their clothes beautifully pressed and every hair is in place. I’m full of admiration. Now look around at the younger generations (and for the sake of argument I’ll include myself since you haven’t seen a picture yet). Scruffy jeans, old trainers, sloppy jumpers, crumpled T-shirts….I know that’s just me, but I’m certainly not alone. The very young with their brand new bodies can get away with sub-standard, crumpled clothes. But we older people with our sub-standard, crumpled bodies need a smarter outer layer to compensate. I can’t help wondering what will happen when we scruffy middle-aged people become elderly ourselves. We’ll be down-at-heel, messy, still wearing our ancient jeans and trainers – give us a couple of placcy bags and sympathetic passers-by will be throwing us the occasional 50p for a cup of tea. Now there’s a thought.

If you are fat, broke and have a terrible voice, you too could be on TV

Did you read this week about those sad women addicted to being on TV? It seems they will do anything - swap partners, proposition strangers for sex, even undergo intimate surgery just for the thrill of being on TV and subsequently recognised in the street. Do you remember a time when people became famous for, well, for having talent? Now you merely have to know someone with a dubious talent (yes, Abby Titmuss I'm thinking of you here) to get onto the reality TV show circuit. Soon everyone will have forgotten that you can't actually do anything clever, funny or entertaining. As for those TV-addicted women, how weird. They are willing to put their real lives in jeopardy for the sake of having complete strangers come up to them at parties and say: "Wasn't that your spleen I saw being removed on 'Gory Operations' the other night?" I've just had a look on their favourite website - http://www.beonscreen.co.uk/ - and it seems that the reality TV wannabes in big demand at the moment are obese people, bad karaoke singers, people in debt and couples who've lost the "spark" in their marriage. Chances are that "spark" will be a long-forgotten memory if you're married to a fat, broke person with a terrible voice who is also a reality TV junkie. The whole thing is madness. Why crave recognition in this way? It's like standing in a public place and shouting "look at me!" It's like writing your innermost thoughts and pinning them up on the town hall noticeboard! It's like.......oh.

If you can learn a language in a week, I'll eat a whole broomstick

Do you know what makes me mad? It's the current trend for "Learn a language in a week" CDs to be given out with your Sunday newspaper. So presumably you idly peruse the sports pages in the morning, then slip your CD into the machine and by, ooh, teatime you'll have mastered the present tense and all the subject pronouns. And by Wednesday you'll be forming complex sentences and starting on the subjunctive.
It's madness. If you were to study for 24 hours a day for the entire week you'd probably be able to ask for a beer and a room by the end of it, but what about all that vocabulary it takes a lifetime to learn? Even if you're a native English speaker I bet you don't know what honorificabilitudinitatibus means, do you? (Neither did I - I had to look it up). And what about all those idioms? In English we might talk about someone being "a chip off the old block", or we might comment: "It's an ill wind", or "What goes around comes around....".
Foreigners would be totaly flummoxed by these idioms (flummoxed? Is that a word?) And of course, they have their own quirky idioms. For example: the "I'll eat a whole broomstick" reference in the heading is the German equivalent to "I'll eat my hat" in English. Why? For the same reason, presumably, why it "rains cats and dogs" in this country whereas in Sweden it "rains small nails" and in France it "rains like a urinating cow".
People who think they can learn a language by investing only one week of their lives are the type who want their cake and eat it. Or who want their butter and the money for the butter, as the French would say. Or as the Italians put it, who want their full bottle and their drunken wife.

Who's afraid of the big bad PR?

It's my belief that a lot of companies don't use a PR agency because they are afraid to. PR charges can be pretty hard to pin down: how many hours did that press release take you to write?? And did you really need to charge me for two hours' work when you came to my offices to present it to me?
Grasping PRs give the rest of us a bad name. Personally, I charge per press release or per 1,000 words of copy rather than by the hour. But then again I've never really understood how people who charge an hourly rate ever do so with any accuracy at all. Do they stop the clock for every bathroom break? And do they also stop timing themselves when their mind starts straying to Johnny Depp, say, or chocolate?
No, charging per item is much more straightforward. As a journalist you always charge by the article, after all, so why should PR be any different?
For more information on my PR services, email me at annlaffeaty@rockford.u-net.com

Welcome to my blog

Hi. I am a freelance journalist, PR, copywriter, editor and general creator of all sorts of stuff made up of words. This is my first attempt at a blog, though, so bear with me!

See my website at http://www.annlaffeaty.com/ for more information about how I can help you out word-wise. Otherwise, watch this space for further blogs.