MIND YOUR LANGUAGE

At this point in human development, I think we can look back on what we've achieved and agree that language is one of our better inventions – certainly better than Wi-Fi, the Dustbuster, “Britain’s Got No Talent” and Super Mario Galaxy. Picture a world without language. Go on. No gossip. No chit-chat. No road signs. No newspapers. No theatre. No internet. The only forms of mass media entertainment available are slapstick and photography. But then, that's the beauty of language. It can change the way you see things without actually altering anything in the physical realm. It turns good into bad and bad into good and back again without anyone ever lifting a finger.

Take "fun-size" Mars bars. They're tiny. Gone, in just a single bite. So, they don't last as long as a regular chocolate bars, in fact as a taste experience they probably last for less longer than the average X-Factor winner’s career. And there’s another thing, with them being individually wrapped, they're fiddly as hell too. And pound for pound, they're actually more expensive than their standard counterparts. But, back in the mists of time, some marketing genius decided to label them as "fun-size". And it worked. These were dinky novelties you could eat !! Hooray for fun-size !!

But the magic of language didn't end there. As well as instantly transforming each and every shortcoming of these miniscule snacks into a thrilling bonus, the sly association of the word "fun" with the concept of "small helpings" had the side-effect of making regular-size chocolate bars seem less decadent, less naughty by comparison. If little ones were fun, regular ones were pedestrian slabs of edible workload. Sometime later, of course, “king-size” Mars bars hit the market, thus imbuing an act of calorific gluttony with an unwarranted air of imperial glamour. This was an imposing, statesmanlike snack to be reckoned with; a nougat mothership; the Mars bar of royalty, language had worked its magic once again.

Now, as a result of all of this, there are many silly, twee and unnecessary words in the English language. Tasty. Meal. Cuisine. Nourishing. I also have a bit of an aversion to the use of “home” instead of “house”. So if you were to ask me round to “your home for a nourishing bowl of pasta”, I would almost certainly glare rather angrily at you until you decided to go away. But the worst word. The worst noise. The screech of Lady Gaga’s fingernails down the biggest blackboard in the world, the squeak of polystyrene on polystyrene, the cry of a baby when you’re hungover … is 'beverage'. Apparently they used to have “bever” days at Eton when extra beer was brought in for the boys. And this almost certainly comes from some obscure Latin expression that only Albert Einstein would understand.

And therein lies the problem. People who work on planes and in hotels have got it into their heads that the word "beverage", with its Etonian and Latin overtones, is somehow posh and therefore the right word to use when addressing a customer. Even when said customer is wearing ripped stonewashed jeans and a t-shirt with more holes than the plot of the last Star Trek movie. And why is a bowl of pasta more appealing than a plate or a dish of pasta ?? And why not simply say pasta ?? Because don’t worry, I’ll presume it’ll come on some form of crockery, in the same way that I’ll presume, if you have a kettle in your kitchen, you might have some coffee granules and tea bags in there as well.

Now I’m not trying to give the impression that I’m in favour of one of those “Campaigns for Plain English”, because I know how important it is that our language evolves, but just to illustrate how much of a rain check we need here, I’ll leave you with the best example I know of this nonsense. It was a rack of papers in a hotel foyer, over which there was a sign:

"NEWSPAPERS FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE"

All they had left was a solitary copy of the Daily Mail, so it wasn’t even technically correct.

ODDS AGAINST LOVE

As I write this weeks ramblings, I realise I am 10 days away from my 34th Birthday. On the celebrity death scale, I have long since passed my 'Cobain Year' (27) and this year, again figuratively speaking, will be leaving my 'Jesus Year' (33) and entering my 'Senna Year' (34).

This leads me to ask the a question that practically every male has asked himself at one point or another in his life, and the one that I find myself asking virtually every weekend whilst shaking off the inevitable hangover I subject myself to every Friday.

Why the hell can't I find a girlfriend ??

Unfortunately, there is rarely a hard and fast answer to the query. Many men try to reason their way through the dilemma nonetheless, often reaching a series of ridiculous explanations, each more self-deprecating than the last:

"Is it because I'm too shy, and not aggressive enough ??"

"Is it my opening lines ??"

"Am I a boring person ??"

"Am I too fat ??"

"Or am I simply too ugly and completely unattractive to women ??"

When all other plausible explanations have been discounted, most fall back on the time-honoured conclusion that "there must be something wrong with me" before resigning themselves to lives of perpetual celibacy.

While I'll be the first to admit that my chances of ever entering into a meaningful relationship are somewhere between the carpet and the floor, I staunchly refuse to admit that it has anything to do with some inherent problem with me. Instead, I am convinced that the situation can be readily explained in purely scientific terms, using nothing more than simple demographics.

At the risk of sounding like Dr. Sheldon Cooper from the "The Big Bang Theory", lest anyone suspect that my standards for women are too high, let me allay those fears by enumerating in advance my three basic criteria for the match.

First, she should be approximately my age … let's say 30, plus or minus three or four years. Second, yes, she ought to be beautiful, but I DO use that term all-encompassingly to refer to both inner and outer beauty … stop being so cynical, and stop sniggering, yes, you there at the back !!

Third, she must also be cultured and reasonably intelligent … she doesn't have to be Mensa material, but the ability to carry on a witty, insightful argument would be nice. Admittedly that rules out the entire female population of Cheshire, but we'll come to that in a moment.

So there they are, three simple things, which I'm sure everyone will agree are anything but unreasonable.

That said, I now present why the probability of finding a suitable candidate fulfilling the three above-noted requirements is so small as to be practically impossible.

In other words, proof as why I will never have a girlfriend.

Number of people on Earth: 5,592,830,000

We start with the largest demographic in which I am interested, namely, the population of this planet. That is not to say I'm against the idea of intergalactic romance (hey, if it worked for Rose Tyler from "Doctor Who" … ) I just don't assess the prospect of finding myself a nice Vulcan girl as statistically significant. Anyhoo … next breakdown …

Who are female: 2,941,118,000

This criteria goes without saying. In case anyone missed it, though, I am looking for a female companion. Accordingly, roughly half of the Earth's population must be discounted. Sorry, lads.

Who live in "developed" countries: 605,601,000

We now further restrict the geographical area of interest to so-called "first-world countries". My reasons for doing so are not motivated out of contempt for those who are economically disadvantaged, but rather by simple probability. My chances of meeting a babe from Barbados or a goddess from Grenada, (either in person … or on the Internet) are understandably low. In fact, I will most likely spend nearly my entire life living and working in Europe, so it is to these types of regions that the numbers have been narrowed.

Are aged 25 to 35: 65,399,083

This is where things get a bit tricky, for two reasons: first, "population by age" tables are not separated into individual ages but are instead quantized into groups (as anyone who works in Market Research knows … ). Similarly, the older I get the more I have to raise my chosen age limit. Thirdly, and unfortunately, roughly 1% of these girls will have died.

One of them being one of the closest friends I have ever had.

Who are beautiful: 1,487,838

Personal attraction, both physically and personality-wise, is an important instigator of any relationship. Of course, beauty is a purely subjective trait whose interpretation may vary from person to person. Luckily it is not necessary for me to define beauty in this blog except to state that for any given beholder, it will probably be normally distributed amongst the population. Without going into the specifics of precisely which traits I admire, I will say that for a girl to be considered really beautiful to me, she should fall at least two standard deviations above the norm.

And yet it is not necessary to resemble anyone from the cast of "Hollyoaks", "Made in Chelsea", or "The Only Way is Essex". Which, funnily enough, leads us onto our next category …

Who are intelligent: 236,053

Again, intelligence can mean different things to different people, yet I am once more relieved of making any explanation by noting that it, like most other characteristics, has a notionally normal distribution across the population ...

Unless you live in Chelsea or Essex, for reasons we have just described above.

And not already committed: 118,027

I could find no hard statistics on the number of above-noted girls who are already married, engaged, or otherwise committed to a significant other, but informal observation and anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that the proportion is somewhere around the 50% mark (Fellow unattached males will no doubt have also noticed a preponderance of girls offering, "Sorry, I already have a boyfriend" as an excuse not to go on a date).

For reasons of morality (and perhaps self-preservation), I'm not about to start hitting on girls who have husbands and boyfriends. Accordingly, that portion of the female population must also be considered off-limits.

Now for THE most difficult cut of them all …

Who might actually like me: 18,726

Naturally, finding a suitable girl who I really like is no guarantee that she'll like me back. Assuming, as previously mentioned, that personal attractiveness is normally distributed, there is a mere 50% chance that any given female will consider me even marginally attractive.

And that's even before I open my mouth and actually attempt to talk to them.

In practice, however, people are unlikely to consider pursuing a relationship with someone whose looks and personality just barely suffice. Let's make the rather conservative assumption, then, that a girl would go out with someone if and only if they were at least one standard deviation above her idea of average. In that case, referring to our previous calculation, only 15% of females would consider someone with my physical characteristics and personality acceptable as a potential romantic partner.

If that …

So then, here we are, at a pool of 18,726 females. At first glance, a datable population of 18,726 may seem a lot, but consider this: I would have to date one girl a week (presuming we even GET that far) for 3493 weeks before I found one of the 18,726.

That's very nearly 67 years.

As an English male born in the early 1980s, and taking into account the amount of Guinness and Whisky I drink and the amount of crisps I eat, my life expectancy is probably little more than 70 years, so we can safely say that, climate change and the advancement of plastic surgery notwithstanding, I will be quite considerably dead before I find the proverbial woman of my dreams.

Come to think of it, she'll probably be dead too.

Happy Birthday to me …

OMNISHAMBLES

It's great being a shambles. Just totally peachy. Rather than gliding through a staid, predictable life full of contentment and excitement, you lurch from one mini crisis point to the next, constantly being challenged by your own ineptitude. One day I'm going to write a ‘24’-style thriller in which the main character is under constant threat, not from terrorism, but himself. A typical episode would open with him being woken from oversleeping by having his house repossessed because he's forgotten to fill out some forms. It might sound dull at the moment but trust me - once we've layered a pulsing soundtrack over the top you'll need to sprout fingernails at an unnatural rate to keep up with the amount you're chewing off.

I practise incompetence at an Olympian level. It recently took me a week to get round to replacing the lightbulb in my kitchen, which for several days had been blowing one-by-one until finally the whole room was plunged into darkness. For 7 whole days I had to feel my way into the room like a blind man, then prop open the fridge door in order to have enough light to be able to see. Your eyes get used to it after a while. So does your brain. It became a routine. Opening the fridge felt as natural as flipping the light switch. It took an incident with a cheese grater on the floor and a shoeless foot to nudge me in the direction of the nearest lightbulb stockist, and even then I instinctively used the fridge as an impromptu lamp for another day before re-acclimatising myself to the concept of ceiling-based light sources.

Working in a Call Centre might look like a parade of easy-going giggles from the outside, but on the inside it's an endless treadmill of numbers that eats time like a New York Cop eats doughnuts: in immense, cavernous gulps. Yesterday I rose at 6am knowing the builders next-door-but-one would start clanging scaffolding poles around like an open-air tribute to the musical ‘Stomp’ at about 7am, so I found some earplugs and wedged one in each lughole. I tried to sleep. But instead I just laid there with the old Birds Eye Steakhouse Grill song looping endlessly in my head. "Hope it's chips, it's chips. We hope it's chips, it's chips." It’s a classic. In between verses I worried that my boiler might malfunction and kill me with carbon monoxide fumes if I fell asleep. I'm not one for keeping up appearances, but even I blanched at the thought of my neighbours seeing my blue, icy cadaver being hauled out on a stretcher. That's what they'd remember me for.

The fear of this kept me awake until sometime around 6.45am, when my bladder complained that it needed to go to the toilet. I got up, but in my confusion - "hope it's chips, it's chips" - I attempted to make my way to the loo … and walked smack, bang into the door. Now I was performing slapstick for the benefit of no one. On the way out of the bathroom I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I laughed, then saw myself laughing, and laughed some more. I returned to bed, still giggling, and lay there with the singing Birds Eye workmen driving their van around in my mind. "Hope it's chips, it's chips. We hope it's chips, it's chips." I think I even said that out loud at one point.

For a moment, I was genuinely certifiable as clinically insane. I overslept of course, and awoke at 7.30pm in a state of some confusion, stumbled downstairs and opened the fridge door so I could see the kettle - unnecessary, what with the daylight and all. I drank a coffee, and said to myself I was going to start writing something. Then I typed the first sentence of this blog post. Then when I got home last night, I wrote the rest. And then you lot (hopefully) read it and laugh out loud at it. This proves I can, at least, maintain a veneer of efficiency amid the self-inflicted mundane chaos of my daily routine, even if in doing so I end up ever-so slightly wasting your time. 

Other bloggers write of glamorous parties and faraway lands, of politics, or romance, despair and elation and the unending mysteries of the human condition. On this blog you find nothing but the fevered hope that it's chips, it's chips, and for that I apologise unreservedly.

Yours, from the funny farm, hoping it’s chips.