101 Things #55 - Spare Any Change?

There are really no rules about what makes a valid bucket-list item. Some are easy to do and seem rather trivial - such as travelling to somewhere that's not too far away and where you had intended to go anyway. Some require a bit more work or dedication, such as getting tattoos, running marathons or swimming with sharks. And some, taken the wrong way, seem to be utterly fantastical and impossible. Taken the right way, maybe they make sense but who are we to take anything the right way if there is a much more amusing alternative to play with? Today the proposal to be reviewed, dissected and discarded belongs to the last category, the impossible, which makes it an obvious candidate for my anti-bucket list compendium 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die.

It is on the website Life Lot that the unwary web traveller will encounter the suggestion that, as something you should aim to achieve, you should

Change the world.

In this column that you will find it argued forcefully that if you go down this path you are venturing into very deep waters indeed. [Is this a path that goes directly into deep water or what? Shouldn't there be a warning sign? Ed]

Change the world, huh? What would you like, a bigger diameter? More landmass, fewer jungles, a more equable climate in the temperate zones?  Perhaps evolution should have taken a different course? Bring on the talking unicorns and let's all live to be 400, be utterly disease resistant and able to fly. Fans of Douglas Adams will know that Magarathea, and the promise of crinklier coastlines with wider and deeper fjords, is what I'm on about here.

OK, OK, that's a bit too sarcastic, I know. So now we have to embark on a long, tedious discussion about what is really meant by "the world". Or would embark on one, if I could be bothered but as I can't let's settle for the shorter interesting version. Let us suppose that by "world" our Life Lot mates mean the biosphere that we, the animals fish, plants, insects and unbelievable numbers of bacteria and single celled things inhabit. Hum, changing that lot would still be pretty hard. I suspect we are meant to narrow our sights a lot more and maybe hone in on what matters to us humans. What might we change?

Technically you are changing the world with every breath as you convert oxygen to carbon dioxide and your internal organs turn complex animal and plant cells into proteins and sugars and the like. You are changing it each time you switch on a light and consume some electricity and every so slightly heat it up. You change other people's lives with every interaction with another person.

Yes, you will be muttering, we all know this, what is meant, clearly, is to make things different from what they otherwise might have been so that you can look back in years to come and think, proudly "I did that". Well, go on muttering, my friends, because this is where it gets murky. Alfred Nobel was really chuffed to have invented dynamite because it made industrial extraction of minerals easier. He was less pleased when people started blowing other people to bits with it. A handful of scientists worked out, purely theoretically, that atomic fission would generate a lot of energy very fast but did not foresee nuclear weapons. How many city centres have been made desolate thanks to the motor car and the shopping mall, and by internet-based shopping? How many humans died because for a long time smoking was thought to be beneficial to health?

"No, no, no" you are saying, angrily "Obviously we want to change the world for the better. Something wonderful like a new medicine, or a Middle East peace plan, or a solution to remove all the plastic in the ocean".

"Yes" I riposte "And how the hell are you going to achieve these things given all the attention that vast numbers of well-qualified and experienced people have given to them and not got anywhere? Answer me that."

"Ah, you've found the weak spot in our defences" you feebly admit "OK, forget the grandiose stuff. What's wrong with just spreading a little happiness? Making one person feel better because we have smiled at them. How about that for a start?"

"Fine, fine" I say, gracious in victory as always "But surely now we have wandered away from the grand theme of Changing The World and ended up with something you might as well have done all the time whether it was on your bucket list or not. Haven't you?"

And there we must pause a while. By all means discover that new vaccine, that new theorem, that breakthrough in international relations - but don't do it because it seems like a neat idea to be ticked off a list. Do it because it is worthwhile for its own sake. Do it because you can. And it is precisely because I know that I can't, that this is one item that goes onto my own list of rejects.

101 Things #54 - Whiter than White

As I build my collection of undesirable achievements, the anti-bucket list I whimsically call 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die, I tend to wade straight into the attack in tearing to pieces the notions advanced by others. Today is different. When I first stumbled on a certain suggestion found on Bucket List Journey my instinct was it might be rather a good idea. Only on further examination does it turn out to be utterly unworkable. Let me share this journey of discovery with you as I explain why I must, with reluctance, refuse to entertain the idea that I should

Attend a white party.

I don't know what a white party is¹. I assume it is not some sort of social gathering held in the American Deep South to which persons of colour are ostentatiously not invited. Instead, I like to think that it must be a party to which all the attendees hold the surname White.

Now, as I do not have such a name, that appears to rule me out but let us assume that this is the whole point of it being a bucket list item for others - You gatecrash the bash, mingle with all the genuine Whites and then grab a few selfies just to prove you were there. I didn't fancy doing that much and I've never heard of such an event anyway. And then I thought - aha, what if this is a party where you invite people called White? Obviously, as the host you can attend the do, but everyone else would fit the requirement.

This was the point at which I thought this could be rather a fun thing to do. Who should I invite?  I decided it must only include people I had heard of and who had a certain degree of fame (If I were to restrict it to people in the vicinity, for example, and invite the Whites of Lower Ruislip Manor (yes, all six and the dog), the White brothers from Ruislip Common (I think they're both currently out on bail) and the Very Rev. White plus "housekeeper" from Over Ruislip-cum-Northolt, the evening would comprise a long, dull discussion about the merits of Waitrose vs Asda and why the Audi 3.6 is better than the 3.53.)

I drew up my shortlist and here it is:

Pic: biography.com	Barry White. Legendary soul singer with a deep mellow voice.
Pic: ents24.com	Jimmy White.  Top snooker player of the 1980s and 90s, six times a finalist at the World Championships and still playing.
Pic: schoolworkhelper.net	Wlward Wit (or White). Saxon Thane under King Harold, holder of the Manor of Ruislip, dispossessed after the Norman Conquest 1066, possibly died at the Battle of Hastings.
Pic: diabetes.co.uk	Timothy White Victorian chemist who founded a retail empire that persisted until takeover by Boots in 1968. Sadly no picture of him appears to have survived.
Pic: littledreamersproductions.co.uk	Snow White Queen of somewhere, rather gullible, fond of apples and small men.

There's a guest list to marvel at, eh? Sport, culture, politics, science and retailing, and a bit of royalty to impress the neighbours. Unfortunately, as keener-eyed readers will have spotted, there is a fatal flaw that undermines the scheme. We no longer have Barry, Tim or Willy amongst the living, and Snow is what we writers call a fictional character. Now, I'd be overjoyed to entertain Jimmy and perhaps I could show him a thing or two about potting those last awkward balls when you've got Steve Davis sitting in the other chair with that quizzical smirk on his face, but it wouldn't really be a party, more like two old blokes having a drink (or several).

I can't think of any other Whites, aside from my cousin Paula who is indeed a true White but not really famous enough to qualify.   On these grounds, sadly, I must decline to host or attend a White party or a party featuring any other surname of colour for that matter. Pity, really, as I happen to know that George Ultra-Violet is in town next year.

Footnote:
1. Naturally I couldn't be bothered to find out and although I asked the Editor for help, nothing was forthcoming (surprise, surprise).

101 Things #53 - Blanking Out

1. The Opening of the Book
A book lies
open. I read the
lines that fill the page, the lines that line the whiteness of
the
page, that creep toward the number denoting a
page
a new page
I flip to find each page adorned
with a number
So many numbers I cannot
comprehend them all.
There would be
fewer
pages if only each line were a sensible length and if the line breaks made any form of sense but this
is
not the case.

2. The Marshalling of the Argument
There are things I shall not do, must not do, will reject
Forever.
Let us cast them out, let us turn our backs, close our eyes, close
our
eyes
and inscribe their names in our list that all may see, that
all
may know
that all
may understand.


3. The Naming of the List
How shall we understand?
The list of that which is
an
outrage
in our
sight.
It shall be named thus:
101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die.
and everything within shall be that which we
will
not
do. 

4. The Naming of the Thing
 What is it, this stuff, this book of broken lines, wherein are
 the rhymes and the reasons? How shall we
 know it to
 include it? What is it, about it, concerning it that
we shall not do?
We shall turn our backs
upon

 Trying to understand blank verse.

5. The Ending of the Matter
There came one from the east
 who cried Master, it is I,
your Editor. And I have reviewed your opus,
 your works,
your outpourings, your cries are
heard and herein are they well represented.
Let this be an end to it for it is of sufficient length and surely,
by now you have
made your point. I shall put the
kettle
on and let us have peace.

6. The Closing of the Book
And at last a sentence was written on one line and did not have a false break anywhere within it and the Writer and the Editor looked on it and were content.

101 Things #52 - Burns Night

I love Scotland and have visited many times. But an admiration for magnificent scenery, whisky, the birthplace of some world class engineers and Edinburgh, does not mean uncritical acceptance of all things tartan. I need to draw the line and in today's 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die, and cunningly posted on the correct date, the finger of rejection points firmly at any proposal to

Eat a Burns Night Dinner.

I can't claim to be much of a fan of Robbie Burns' poetry but then he's probably not too keen on mine. What I really wish to avoid for the rest of my days is the plate of splodge that is a traditional Burns Night dinner, a dish of haggis, neeps and tatties that looks like something dredged up in a old-fashioned works canteen when you're too late for the fish and chips. Something, in fact, like this:

Pic: Telegraph.co.uk

The white stuff is the tatties, or mashed potato. Fine, I have no problem with a decent wodge of this underneath a couple of sausages, or escorting a lamb shank or a fresh fillet of sea bass. Or almost anything, actually. The orange stuff is mashed swede or turnips, vegetables I will not eat, no matter how much they are boiled and beaten into submission and covered with lashings of brown sauce. And parsnips can get knotted as well. So don't think you can get round me by subtly changing the recipe for neeps.

The haggis, of course, was immortalised by Burns. I believe his first draft went on these lines:

They were burning a witch in Clackmannan
Just for a wee bit o' fun
When she started to smoulder
Said a nearby beholder
"It smells like that hagg is done"

But this never got printed. Anyway, what actually goes into a haggis?

Historically, when hunters made their kill, they would use up the offal, which went off first, using the cleaned animal’s stomach as a cooking bag. Minced heart, liver and lungs are bulked out with oatmeal, onions, suet, seasoning and spices before cooking

source: BBC Good Food

So the bits of the animal that nobody really wanted to eat are cooked inside another bit nobody wants to eat and then, in order to get it into your mouth without you gagging, are concealed under perfectly good oatmeal and onions so as to produce a brown sludge that takes me right back to the school dinners served in my primary school, when the main course was either "hash" or "mince". 

Presumably the good bits, you know, the actual real meat that didn't go off the moment you ripped it out of the stricken animal, were presented to the Laird. Well, I'm one with the Laird here. You may keep your haggis and neeps and pipe them in and salute them to your heart's content. I'll be the bloke in the other room tucking into a decent steak-and-ale pie. With mash.

101 Things #51 - Mirror, Mirror

When the time comes that the most exciting part of your day is to choose between brown and white bread for your morning toast, then you will undoubtedly reflect, from time to time, on the great, wonderful and varied achievements of your life. Some will perhaps have occurred to you as you examined the ideas and accomplishments of others and, inspired by their example, you will have committed yourself to success in that same field.

And there will be other notions that either you threw straight into the (metaphorical) waste-paper basket of your mind and now, looking back after all those years, you can still smile with satisfaction that your first instinct was correct.

Today, as we continue to build the veritable warehouse of those discarded suggestions that is 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die, we hurl on top of the pile the paean to narcissism, found on Hello Bestow, that a worthy bucket list item is to

Compliment yourself every day in the mirror.

There does not appear to be a time limit on this one. Normally it is easy to say when a bucket list item has been completed - you run your marathon, you visit the Pyramids, you see the Mona Lisa etc, you pull out your battered old notebook and tick it off. This is not possible with the idea under review - the compliments must flow every day until, presumably, you can no longer see the mirror, or the nursing staff refuse to let you look, or your flat is repossessed together with all your wordly possessions. Maybe this is not really an issue. As you brush your teeth or do your hair then that is the time to say those few gentle, yet heartening words of comfort. Soon it will be become second nature to do so.

Unfortunately there is a catch. For what, after all, is a compliment? To be effective it must be spontaneous and unexpected. If your boss, who has barely grunted at you all year, manages a "Well done" as you once again top the monthly sales charts, then you can truly bask in the glow. If that attractive new person at the social club, who has hitherto ignored you, gives you a long, admiring glance before saying how good you are looking tonight, then you are bucked up. Now contrast these examples with your morning routine as you blink blearily into the glass, wishing you had had more self-control the previous evening before accepting that sixth tequila slammer.

"Morning, gorgeous" you mumble, aware of the hollowness and futility of the remark, sick at your own self-deception "You're really looking well".

You remember that you said the same thing yesterday. And the day before."Ok, I didn't mean it. You look pretty ropey. Oh no, that's a terrible thing to say, I'm so sorry, no, you're good, really you are, that spot on your nose is hardly visible any more and those wrinkles - no, I mean, I'm in awe here, you radiate health and vitality ..."

How can you keep this hollow charade up, day after day, every day trying to find something new to say? I am beginning to see why this might be a creditable bucket list achievement - simply having the stamina and the imagination to go on finding ever more intricate praises of yourself without making yourself utterly sick of your own hypocrisy; it calls out for recognition if not for some sort of award. But even if it does, I'm not going to be the one attempting it. I'd be more likely to start insulting myself, followed by a set of "You what?", "You heard", "I didn't", "Well, I'm not going to repeat it" and quite frankly the prospect of a daily fight with myself does not attract.