Smelly bellies and bleached patios

Last Wednesday, my brother came over for a barbecue. He brought with him a copy of Chat. Is there any better present in the world? So today, I am proud to present to you, The Nonsense From Chat.

First up, a rare occurrence, a story which has been given 10 out of 10 on the shock factor scale.

And I think I know why. This woman, Jonty, has named her children Kai, Bailey, Skye and Hunter. I’m sorry, Kai and Skye? O, and friends of theirs, a couple called Lee-Anna and Liam. Lee…. Anna…. Leanne?… Whatever.

On the random photos page, there’s a lot of good stuff going on. We’ve got a picture of someone reading Chat on holiday, a picture of a baby asleep, a picture of a baby in a sunhat, a picture of a cat and, best of all, a picture of a cake someone got on their birthday, which had been made to look like a copy of Chat magazine! Epic!

Next up, we’ll visit the top tips page which, I’m sure, is your favourite. It’s certainly mine. Our first fabulous tip is to cover an old chair in a pair of jeans. It makes it look better. Apparently.

You decide.

The next tip is, basically, use a small vacuum cleaner to clean the little bits out of the bottom of your handbag. Thank you, D Thornton from Bournemouth. Where would I be without this tip?

The next tip is put bleach all over your patio to kill the weeds. Boy, do I love a bleach covered patio. The smell, the discolouration on your paving stones. What brilliant advice. Thank you, Julia Wakeford from Romford. You have improved my life immeasurably.

Lastly, stick some sea shells on your wall. Check it out.

Good, hey?

To finish off today’s look inside Chat, we’re going to briefly visit the Health pages and one letter in particular. This letter is called ‘Whiffy midriff.’ Already, you know it’s going to be amazing.

It starts with ‘My bellybutton pongs!’ Get straight to it, Ashley, aged 28. Don’t beat around the bush.

‘If I put my finger in and sniff it, there’s a smell like rotting veg!’ Ok, Ashley, 28, what… on…. earth. I’m 28 and I can tell you this for nothing. If I had a smelly bellybutton, Chat would be the last place I’d go for advice. I mean, give Google a try first, maybe? The NHS has a free helpline? Ask friends?

And what is she doing sticking her finger in her bellybutton then smelling it? Unless the bellybutton smell is so strong that she catches a whiff of it while sitting on the sofa then decides to see what’s happening, am I suppose that one day she was just eating her dinner, watching TV with her boyfriend and thought, ‘I’ll quickly smell my bellybutton.’ For no reason. And is that something we all do? Am I the stupid one here, for not jabbing my finger in my bellybutton then inhaling the resulting odours?

She finishes the letter by saying, ‘My boyfriend says he can’t smell it though.’ I bet he’s not your boyfriend anymore, is he, Ashley, 28?

“Smell my finger, darling.”

“What? Why?”

“Just smell it. Go on. Please.”

“Um, ok…. Where has it been?”

“In my bellybutton.”

“And why do I need to smell it?”

“Cause it smells like rotting veg. Don’t you think? Give it a smell. Go on. Tell me what you think.”

“Err… No. It’s fine. There’s… There’s nothing wrong with it at all. I’m just, um, going to nip out. Um. To the shops. Yeh, the shops. If I’m not back in a few days, don’t call me….”

“I’m so different and unusual”

This is one of those things that doesn’t need to be said. When people write in their descriptions of themselves on their ‘About’ pages for Facebook or something, “I’m really wacky and random,” I just don’t believe them.

If you really were so unusual and wacky and different and cool and funny, surely it wouldn’t need to be said? It’s not as though I’d be chatting away to you, thinking how normal you are, and then you’d suddenly say to me, “Omygoodness, I’m really wacky,” and I’d suddenly think, ‘O yes, yes you are. Now that you’ve said it I can see it.’ If you have to point it out, it’s not actually that noticeable, so it’s not really true.

I went to university with a girl who I got on really well with. We stayed in touch a little afterwards. I moved to a different university to start a new course after one year, she left to go and live with a guy she met on the internet. I got a friend request from her on one of these social networking sites, it was before Facebook was really big so I don’t know what site it was. I went on her page….

Awfulness. There was a photo of her doing slightly shocked eyes and jazz hands with a bit of a mad hairstyle and her description of herself went something like this:

“I love making jewellery, I live in Ireland with the best boyfriend in the world, I have the best friends ever, I’m totally wacky and I love being quirky. Take me or leave me!”

Now, this is not only annoying in the way that I have already explained. It is annoying on two more levels. One is that she is the furthest thing from ‘wacky’ I could describe when I knew her. She was just down to earth and normal. A little bit mumsy, if anything. She wore a sturdy but unfashionable backpack and long, heavy, war-time-ish skirts. She was lovely. I loved killing a few hours in the cafe chatting to her. I never noticed how she looked really. And then I got this silly friend request about how ‘craaaaazy’ she is and I thought about her and thought how definitely un-craaaaazy she is. And I just didn’t believe her. I didn’t believe her description of herself and I didn’t really want to be friends with her anymore.

It reminded me of going to secondary school and getting all excited because I’d moved up a year so there were younger ones to boss around. You know, you suddenly get really full of yourself and think you’re extremely cool and everyone else is thinking about how irritating you are.

It’s like Danda says, “If you have to try for even one second to be cool, you ain’t cool.”

The second reason this statement is annoying is this whole ‘best in the world’ thing. This is so silly. Birthday cards that say, ‘To the best sister in the world,’ for example, are ridiculous. How can anyone possibly know that? Unless they have had every sister in the entire world and concluded this one to be the best. Yes, they might be great and kind and lovely but ‘the best in the world’? Did they donate a kidney? Did they die trying to rescue you from a treacherous river? Did they carry you single-handedly across a desert to save you from thirst? Did they? Unless you know what every sister in the world has ever done done for their sibling, it’s a statement you can’t make. People say it on Facebook when it’s Valentine’s or something. So-and-so has got the ‘best girl/boyfriend in the world.’ As though we’re all sitting there going, ‘O well, I thought my boy/girlfriend was amazing but now I realise that person’s actually is. I’m so jealous. I only have the second best boy/girlfriend ever.’