Rodney Edwards | Sunday Life Column | 4th January 2009 - Week 13
Rodney Edwards | Sunday Life Column - 4th January 2009 | DITHERING, DOTTY AND DRIVING ME POTTY
THE last two weeks have been shocking for queues.
I am wasting so many precious moments of my life waiting in a variety of wearisome queues that I am now frequently questioning my existence on this earth.
Every single day my unyielding torso will inhabit some sort of backlog, a procedure that may require great personal strength and tolerance but instead receives lashings of hostility and contempt for other human beings. Is my purpose in life really to spend my days persistently praying that a shop assistant in Asda will open another check-out and I’ll not have to linger around for a month until the large family of 14 in front pays for their three trolley loads of ham? And when will that horrid traffic jam-educed spasm I’ve developed vacate my leg?
Man or indeed woman has never led such a chaotic and demanding existence as they do today ensuing that all of us wait until they are done with whatever it is they believe themselves to be doing before we are allowed to get on with our own futile lives. We stand back and we let these mere mortals possess our personal space for their own gluttonous gain.
Do I honk the horn when stuck behind miles of vehicles? No, better not, for that might be construed as road rage. Do I attack that chap with a fish in the delicatessen for paying in bottle tops in a sequence that took so long I grew a full facade of facial hair? No. That might be seen as unnecessary violence. Even though it leaves you as mad as a March hare who’s lost his winning lottery ticket the day after Mrs March hare ran off with a squirrel taking all fifteen of the March hare juniors with her and spray painting on the martial hutch: “To hell with you, bugs.”
The worst kind of waiting is at the local shop when the order of events goes a bit like this.
At 5.05pm - spectacle wearing woman in three-quarter length trousers and flip flops parks her foreign branded motor vehicle as closely to the door as possible, thus blocking the petrol pumps as pandemonium on the forecourt deepens.
5.50pm - spectacle wearing woman in three-quarter length trousers and flip flops changes into rain coat and slowing makes her way out of the car, leaving the engine running.
6.15pm - spectacle wearing woman in three-quarter length trousers, flip flops and rain coat goes into shop and meets Elsie from down the legion at the fruit and veg. The pair manage to obstruct the entire aisle as they recall the good old days of riding the penny farthing of an evening and sewing their own shoes.
7.15pm - spectacle wearing woman in three-quarter length trousers, flip flops and rain coat picks up some bread and pays for it using a cheque – except, she’s worn the wrong glasses out so it takes a while for the transaction to be completed.
9.55pm - spectacle wearing woman in three-quarter length trousers, flip flops and rain coat gets shop assistant to help her to her car with the bread as the entire store continues to wait to be seen.
10.40pm - spectacle wearing woman in three-quarter length trousers and flip flops takes off rain coat and attempts to put bread in the boot before realising because she’s taken so long in the shop, her light blue Skoda has been stolen.
This woman is what is known as a ‘ditherer’.
No matter where you go you will always come across a ditherer because he or she will be the one that manages to make you bubble at the mouth at such a force it’s like having a Whirlpool Foot Spa on your chin. On the roads, in the supermarket and especially in card shops - these people have become the bane of my life and are completely responsible for queues and should be repeatedly prodded with a razor-sharp stick - or just forbidden from civilisation.
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Rodney Edwards | Sunday Life Column - 4th January 2009 | GIVE HUGO DUNCAN A KNIGHTHOOD
It’s a charade that my uncle Hugo Duncan has been harshly left out of the New Year’s honours list. Lewis Hamilton gets an MBE? Do me a favour. When did driving a car terribly speedy around a track become worthy of such a reward? I’m not having any of this mumbo jumbo.
If I was in charge of the swords and stuff then a knighthood would effortlessly find its way upon the diminutive shoulders of Hugo Duncan. The man has become a cult figure in rural areas and barn yards across Northern Ireland. When not bellowing out a merry rendition of ‘Horse It Into You Cynthia’ on his Radio Ulster show, Hugo is raising thousands of pounds for charity up and down the country because he yearns to help and not because he wants to feed his ego like other broadcasters. So, arise, Sir Hugo.
I would also hand a couple of MBE’s out to UTV’s Pamela Ballantine and Paul Clark for their services to local telly and for preventing me from having to suffer watching Ready Steady Cook on two. The eminent and coiled haired Ivan Little will also get the same honour for his illustrious journalism career during which he has covered some of the province’s most traumatic tales.
Another recipient of my honours is that burly gentleman dressed as a dog in that ‘it’s nicer to neuter’ advert but only because me and the girlfriend spotted him once at a hole in the wall in Belfast and couldn’t believe it was him. And we’ve met Gok Wan.
Which celebrities and politicians would you reward in your very own honours list and why? Email your list to rodney@rodneyedwards.co.uk and I’ll award the best suggestions with a splendid congratulatory email.
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Rodney Edwards | Sunday Life Column - 4th January 2009 | SILLY LILY’S NET FAD
MY nemesis Lily Allen has made social networking on the internet as contemporary as drawstring curtains on a skylight in an open plan apartment overlooking a marina.
Everyone including the springer spaniel it appears feels duty-bound to be in possession of a Mybook or a Faceache plus an unwavering fascination with sharing every second of their relatively mundane days with complete strangers.
If you’ve become so socially inadequate that you have more electronic friends than real ones amid mankind, then it’s time to get yourself a life. Or a girlfriend / boyfriend / hamster / employment.
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Rodney Edwards | Sunday Life Column - 4th January 2009 | TIL TOSSER WOULDN’T PACK MY BAGS
Note to the patterned faced hooligan that “served” me in the shop the other day, it might benefit the customer a great deal if you discontinue having forty winks at the till.
It might also be accommodating in future if you could manage to administer the bagging of the several items one has exchanged actual money for – instead of muttering “It’s not my job” when asked to do so.
Oh, I’m sorry, how inconsiderate of me. It’s obviously my job to bag the three rolls of wrapping paper, the pint of milk, the oranges, the set of four tumblers, the floor polish and the cheese I stupidly understood I just paid you to do for me.