Technology 1-0 Man

We got a new TV. Actually, it’s not a new TV. It’s just a new programme thing. You know, where you can pause programmes or record them or get a whole series that’s been on before. Am I making sense here?

I had been sceptical about getting it because I thought that if we recorded everything we wanted to watch and kept it til later. We’d never move from in front of the TV. When there are no good programmes on, we just get out a book and read. Which is ok by me. So I wasn’t too keen.

But then Danda got a Kindle Fire for Christmas and the silly thing only has WiFi connection, not wireless. So to watch films, he needs to be connected to WiFi, which is usually when he’s in someone’s house and then why would you watch the Kindle instead of the full size TV?

One of the internet companies has a system where, if you have your internet with them at home, you can access these ‘hotspots’ with your internet code and use their WiFi when you’re out and about. Perfect! It just so happened that this company also do the On Demand TV thing I was talking about. So we took the plunge and decided to get it.

We got it installed a few days ago and a shortly after, Yaya and his little sister arrived for dinner and fun. Immediately they sensed the change and requested the childrens’ TV channels. So on when Mr Tumble and they were happy for ten minutes.

All seemed well. We found programmes we wanted to watch and so avoided the 8pm dip when nothing good is on and you end up watching nonsense. Danda had started to watch Spiral, a French police programme.

Last night, he decided to watch it again. When he got to episode number five, he clicked on it but the play button didn’t appear. He tried turning the TV off then on but it wouldn’t show the play button on the screen. We tried this and that and off and on and using a different channel and everything. He clicked and pressed and switched. Nothing worked.

He got more and more confused and annoyed. This went on for about half an hour until he decided to go to the ‘search’ feature and look it up. It appeared but still didn’t have the play option. We thought maybe if he cleared out the search then did it again, it might make something work. So he requested ‘clear search results’ and got rid of it…. And then we couldn’t find it again anywhere. He had deleted it off the whole TV! Incredulous, we looked around everywhere, sure that it must be somewhere. It wasn’t.

After 45 minutes of button clicking and brain effort, we malfunctioned, like robots with too much information on their memory cards, and headed for bed.

Technology 1-0 Man

Things I did yesterday

1. Giggle with glee at a programme about little fluffy baby penguins.

2. Fall asleep for about half an hour in the bath… Oops.

3. See a man have a new willy built for him out of his forearm skin and muscle on Embarrassing Bodies.

4. Get home from work to find one of my lovely neighbours had left cake on the doorstep. Mmm.

5. Read a story about ferrets getting married (yes, married) in Chat. Where else?

6. Make a beautiful soya latte. It I might say so myself.

7. Get mega involved with an episode of Crystal Maze and get a bit shouty at the woman who was flapping around trying to the puzzle in the Aztec zone and getting it all wrong.

8. Sign up for a local stag beetle conservation project thing.

9. Daydream about taking a city break to Amsterdam.

10. Have a really vivid dream about a friend who lives in Australia and her telling me she’ll never move back to England and that I should move to Australia too. In the same dream I was trying to work out how to reheat fried eggs and scrambled eggs without overcooking them.

Things I have said to famous people whilst making coffee for them

Simon Callow

Now you must bear in mind when reading this, that I had not had a television since leaving home when I was 18 and had not really been absorbing anything I did watch, even then. This is attested to by the fact that I have no idea whether I have watched loads of really classic films that I’m guessing I probably did watch at some point in my childhood. That is my defence.

This incident happened about six years later, when working in a little coffee kiosk in a train station.

A man came in one day and got an espresso and an orange juice. His face looked really familiar. When he left, I asked the others if they recognised him. One was Portuguese and the other Polish and they hadn’t recognised him at all. I’m not sure how well he is known outside the English speaking world but neither knew his face.

The next day he came in and I decided to be brave and asked him.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to sound over familiar but I recognise you from somewhere and I can’t think where. Are you off TV?”

Yes. I said that. Those exact words – “off TV.” Are you off TV? Like some chav who can’t speak properly. Me. I said that. To Simon Callow.

Simon.

Callow.

What an insult.

He good-naturedly said, “Well, some of the things I’ve been in have been shown on television, yes.”

After he left, a poster on the station wall caught my eye. A poster for a pantomime showing at the nearby theatre. The man was on the poster! I quickly googled his name on my phone and realised, with a sinking feeling, that it had been Simon Callow. The famous Shakespearean theatre actor, Simon Callow. Yes, him.

And I’d asked him if he was “off TV.”

The next time he came in, I apologised and he was lovely and gracious about it, obviously. He asked my name and every time he came in, most days for the next few weeks, he always popped his head round to where I was tucked away making coffee and said, “Hello,Laura.”

Thank goodness he was so nice about it!

Gita from Eastenders

This one is from the same coffee job. A lady had been in every day for a few days and I had a real feeling that I knew her, or had known her, from my childhood in Liverpool. Now Liverpool isn’t the whitest place in the world but in comparison with London’s ethnic make-up, you just do notice people of different ethnicity a bit more because there are fewer of them.

This lady obviously had an Indian background and a slight Indian accent and, for some reason, my first thought was of my Maths teacher at school, who was also of Indian origin but had a Liverpudlian accent. So the picture didn’t match exactly but I couldn’t think of anyone else Indian I had known during my childhood. Other ethnicities, yes, but not Indian.

But she was really familiar so I knew I knew her somehow.

“Hi, I hope you don’t think I’m being rude but I feel like I know you somehow. Did you ever live in Liverpool, I grew up there. Have you taught before?”

“No, I’ve never lived there. I was an actress about ten years ago though. You might have seen me in something?…”

It started to dawn on me and my face started turning red.

“I was in Eastenders. My character was called Gita.”

And there it was. That was how I knew her. My mum used to watch Eastenders so I’d been peripherally aware of her via TV. And then, years later, I’d seen a face that I knew from my childhood and asked her if she used to be my Maths teacher! What a let down for someone who spent a significant amount of her life doing a job she presumably loved, being recognised at the time and being in a well established television series which has won awards. Then you go for coffee ten years later and someone says, “Did you used to be my teacher?”

Big fat fail by Laura. Oops!

Mystic Maisey

The other night, something quite strange and potentially supernatural happened. My first thought was, “I could write about it for Chat magazine.” Obviously. So here is the article I am planning on sending them. I thought it could be called Mystic Maisey, just because it sounds good, although the story is not about me being being mystic at all…. O well.

Mystic Maisey

Ever since I was a child, I’ve always felt that I was destined for great things. I was very aware of other possible realms and wanted to investigate the potential for supernatural activity. Once, when I was eight, my tooth fell out and when I put it under my pillow, it turned into a 50p. For me, this was proof that there were other beings sharing planet Earth with us.

Back in November 2012, I was watching television with my fellow mystic, Divining Danda. There was a sound from the kitchen that neither of us could work out. It may well have been the surround sound as one of the speakers is next to the living room door. But Danda decided to check it out anyway. He got up walked to the kitchen and stopped.

“Laura,” he called. “Come here a minute.”

I got up and went to see what was happening. At the far end of the kitchen is a light switch that you work by pulling a string. On the end of the string is a pen shaped like a golf club.

There is nothing which touches this switch and pen except the door to the garden. Neither of us had been in the kitchen or opened the door. Yet, as I looked, the pen was swinging vigorously from side to side….

And that’s when I knew it. They were hungry. There were ghosts in our kitchen and they were hungry. So occasionally, I leave out a lettuce leaf or some bread. It hasn’t been touched yet but I know they are there and they are hungry. I sensed it when I saw the pen swinging.

For now, I just hope my hungry ghosts don’t do anything more than that! If they start raiding the fridge, I’ll have to get the Ghostbusters in!

…..so what do you think? Worthy of Chat magazine? The standards are quite high so I just hope they’ll accept my story…..

In honour of a special birthday

It is one of my favourite people’s birthday today. She is 5 years old and probably one of the funniest people I know. The funniest thing I remember her doing is on New Year’s Eve last year.

Because Mummy had said she could stay up until the final countdown to midnight, she was told her and her younger sister must have a nap during the day. She agreed but obviously the excitement of the whole day made sleep difficult. They went upstairs and promised to go to sleep. For the next fifteen minutes, the sound of footsteps dancing about was all too clear on the ceiling. Giggles trickled down the stairs and the little singsong voices were quite clearly awake and playing a game.

After the fifteen minutes of fun, they both descended the stairs, serious faces on, and announced to Mummy, “Mummy, we’ve been asleep for ages. For TWO HOURS!”

“Have you really?” asked Mummy, suspiciously.

“Two hours!” she repeated, putting up two of her fingers, for emphasis.

“Ok,” said Mummy.

The day continued on and it came to the evening time. We were watching Ice Age, everyone cuddling on the sofa. And that’s when the tiredness-induced meltdown happened.

There was this scene where we see some eggs, unguarded, in a corner somewhere. There are big booming sounds, footsteps of an approaching dinosaur. And my favourite little birthday girl had an utter freak-out.

“Ah! Ah! I’m scared! Turn it off! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!”

We said soothing things like, “It’s ok. We’ve turned it off. Look, it’s just the normal TV. Oo, Spongebob Square Pants is on. We like him. It was only a silly dinosaur, he can’t hurt you.”

It didn’t matter! It didn’t matter that the dinosaur was inside the TV, she was scared and that was that. She wasn’t interested in Spongebob Square Pants. In fact, she wanted the television off altogether. She was terrified! She cried uncontrollably and as we all watched in confusion, cuddles from Mummy eventually soothed her a little. She gulped big sobs down and rambled on, the words hardly decipherable, until suddenly, in a fit of confession, she sat up and announced to her mother:

“MUMMY! WE DIDN’T GO TO SLEEP FOR TWO HOURS! WE WERE PLAYING GAMES! I’M SORRY!”

Probably the best voluntary confession I’ve ever witnessed.

Shortly after this, at 9.15pm, we sneakily wound the wall clock forward and said it was midnight soon, then all stood, counted 10 down to 1 and had a big ‘celebration’ before sending poor tired child off to bed.

The Strange English Language

The following is a guest blog from RuthJ at caderyan.com and was submitted to me via myblogguest.com. Enjoy!

 

The English language is a strange little thing. It contains the most words out of any other language, and though it is widely spoken throughout the world, it is actually one of the most difficult languages to learn.

Most other languages have rules associated with why the language is the way it is. Sentences are laid out to make sense and phonetics are easier to dissect. In English, there is no rhyme or reason to the way certain things are spelled or pronounced, and some of the words we use today don’t make sense as to why.

Languages were invented, which leaves it susceptible to error and confusion, and the English language is no exception. If we could go back in time when the English language was being created, we would have plenty of questions.

Did you ever notice that certain words would make more sense if used correctly with its counterparts? For example:

1. Why do we drive on parkways, yet park on driveways?

2. Why do we use garment bags to pack suits, yet we use suitcases to pack garments?

3. How come we play at a recital, yet we recite a play?

4. How come when we move something via a ship it’s called cargo, yet when we move something by car it’s called a shipment?

5. Why do we call people who ride bikes cyclists, but people who ride motorcycles bikers?

For the English language to make perfect sense, you would think that we would drive on driveways and park on parkways and that we would call those who ride bikes bikers and those who rode motorcycles cyclists. Instead, we do things backwards.

Then there are those items that involve numbers that simply don’t make sense. For example:

1. Why is it called a pair of pants when you only get one?

2. Why is first-degree murder worse than third-degree murder, but first-degree burns are less serious than third-degree burns?

3. Why do we call it a television set if we only get one?

We also have words that follow one rule but not for others. For example:

1. How come the day breaks but never falls, yet night falls but never breaks?

2. How come a king rules a kingdom, but a queen doesn’t rule a queendom?

And then there are just certain questions we wish we had answers to, including:

1. Why does the word lisp have an s in it? Was it some type of cruel joke?

2. How come there is no synonym for the word synonym?

3. Why are deer and moose the same for both singular and plural versions?

4. What was the purpose of spelling read and read or lead and lead the same but making them have two different phonetics?

5. How come you can turn a light on, off or out, but you can’t turn it in?

6. How can you be head over heels? Aren’t you already head over heels? Shouldn’t it be heels over head?

7. Why can -ough be pronounced seven different ways?

Unfortunately we may never know the answer to some of these questions, and the English language will continue to be a mystery to everyone.

 

Robert Hunt is a writer and linguist. He has studied the forms and details of many different languages. Robert has recently enrolled in Accent Pros accent classes to learn how to pronounce words with different accents.