On Jedi Knights, Elvis Presley and Bear Skin Hats

Yesterday, we had a half-day Aikido training course in weapons... although Aikido is known as a nonviolent, noncompetitive martial art, much of its technical structure derives from the art of swordsmanship. Wooden weapons are often used as training tools to better illustrate Aikido principles and movements and to train in self-defense against weapons. The three main weapons are the boken or ken (wooden sword), jo (wooden short staff), and tanto (wooden knife).

Our Sensei arranged for a Very Important Aikido Dude (6th Dan and almost as important as O Great One that I wrote about here) to come and teach the class. Once again we were primed to be on our bestest behaviour and not show up our dear Sensei....tempted as I was to take the piss, I reckoned he may have suffered a sense of humour failure if I’d pitched up with my own Weapon of Mass Destruction, perhaps a very big umbrella (hey, I’ve had one confiscated by Edinburgh airport security) or novelty Star Wars glow-in-the dark light saber.

On the topic of Star Wars and light sabers, VIAD (a sprightly 70-year old who’s a walking advert for the benefits of keeping yourself fit and supple all your life) was quick to point out that we are NOT to grip the boken or wave it about above our heads a là Luke Skywalker and friends. The sword handle needs to be held as if it is an injured bird, just enough strength to stop it getting away, but not to cause any harm. “The boken will do its own work”, VIAD said. He had a lot to say in fact...typically, he’d pause in the middle of demonstrating a technique (usually when we were all in posture, arms stretched out clasping our boken with no one daring to release their grasp) and begin a long oratory of his views on life, the universe and everything else between.

An interesting chap, but after 3 hours of this, my aching arms made me want to yell out “Dude, in the words of the great Elvis Presley: ‘A little less conversation, a little more action, please!’” Possibly that would have drawn a bit too much attention my way...as it was, he singled me out early on, apparently delighted to see a “young lady in our midst ”....hey, to him, I’m young...as there are some very senior women in Aikido but not enough joining the ranks.

When we did actually get to do some Sword Action, it was great fun and quite therapeutic with only the odd bashed head or two. I suggested to B we have a practice session in the garden this evening (the ceilings are too low in the house). That should give the neighbours something to gawk at....maybe they’ll think twice about letting their cats use our garden as a public convenience if they think we’re armed and dangerous!

I’m going to end this ramble with a picture I came across in a daily tabloid. Captioned “Fainting of The Guard”, it shows an unfortunate Scots Guardsman who fainted at a final rehearsal for next weekend’s Trooping The Colour. Saturday was a hot, hot day...ideal for going to the beach, but not for standing perfectly still while wearing a 2lb bearskin. Protocol forbids his compatriots from batting an eyelid, let alone checking if he is OK...

Eyes front....

Getting Pissy

Picture found HERE

Way back when I first started throwing random mutterings together into one place and calling it a “blog”, I wrote a piece inspired by a conversation that I had with my hairdresser, a lady who definitely wears the trousers in her household, insisting that her man sits down to pee as she cannot abide the “Splash Factor”. In that post (Just Taking The Piss), I mentioned that while many men are quite happy to be “dudes who pee like a lady” in the interests of keeping the pee-ace at home, there was a group of feminists at a Swedish university who were taking it a step further. They’d been campaigning to ban all urinals from campus, “because a man standing up to urinate is deemed to be triumphing in his masculinity, and by extension, degrading women." I thought at the time that the feminists had missed a trick, because now, thanks to the SheWee, we girls can indeed stand up and pee too.

I have long been toying with the idea of acquiring said urinary aid, mainly to avoid having to sit on less than desirable public toilet seats on my travels both at home and abroad, or peeing onto my shoes while I attempt to hover over squat toilets (which are surprisingly more common than you may think....for example in parts of Italy!). I could have really used a SheWee when snowshoeing recently in Norway...having to strip down to just a base layer in subzero temperatures in order to get my pants down was no piss in the park, I can assure you. The wind chill on exposed butt cheek is sheer torture! No such need for public indecency with a SheWee, just unzip like the boys do, position the SheWee, and write your name in the snow...

Anyway, I have finally stopped pissing about and bought my very own, hot pink SheWee Extreme, complete with extension pipe and solid travel case. I figured the last thing I want to be doing, when hiking in the wilds of Canada in June and nature calls, is to be baring my sizeable butt to the elements or, in particular, to a hungry grizzly with a preference for white meat.

Do You Understand The Words That Are Coming Out Of My Mouth?

When I first came to live in the UK, I had to learn to communicate with the locals. You’d think that would be an easy task - we all speak the Queen’s English, right? Wrong! Regional accents, different slang words and inflections in totally different places only served to confound me almost daily.

“You talk funny!” my first UK boss informed me (in his broad Leeds accent) on my first day at work. He then spent the next two years “correcting” my pronunciation at every opportunity.

Typical conversation with my boss:
Boss: “You have a good weekend?”
Me (trying to quickly recover from the shock of actually being spoken to and not just sworn at): “Yes, thank you....we visited the city of Bath.”
Boss: “I think you mean Baaaatttthhhhhh!”
Me: “No. Bath... as in BARth....the way people who live in BARth say it.”
Boss: “Do some f*cking work!”

For the first three months in London, I was convinced that people around me were politely commenting that they couldn’t be asked to do such and such, when they were rather more rudely saying that they couldn’t be arsed. In other words, they couldn’t be bothered (pronounced bovvered in some circles).

I quickly learnt that the response to All right? is in fact another All right?... and that this means “Hello, how are you?”, much like the southern African, all encompassing Howzit? People you have never set eyes on before that moment will call you their mate, sometimes even going as far as to claim you as their luv or pet if you wander far enough north. Someone calling you a chav (or in my case a chavette) on the other hand is not a good thing, and it means you may want to stop wearing so much knock-off designer sportswear and vulgar jewellery.

Littering conversations with know what I mean? is common practice....but it does not in fact require any formal response, such as "Yes, I do know what you mean" or "No, I am not quite sure what you mean....please elaborate." Similarly, the term innit!... though sounding suspiciously like a question along the lines of “Is that not so?”....is merely a statement to generate emphasis and requires no further action on your part. Further north, a variation on this is the frequent use of the query Right? I once worked with a bloke who wore this word out, leading to some logistical confusion in the lab..."So what you need to do, right?, is take this one on the right, right?, and feed it through the right slot on the left, right?" Luckily he was not a driving instructor....."Turn left, right? Then right, right?....."

I’d always known bollocks to mean testicles, but it turned out to be a multitasking word...it can be used to describe something that is no good (“That's bollocks!” or “A load of bollocks!” or “He's talking bollocks!”). Surprisingly it can also be used in a positive manner to describe something that is the best as being the dog's bollocks.

Traffic lights are not "robots" in the UK and trousers are not "pants"...in particular, the term pant is never, ever used in the singular, a common southern African trait (“I wore my jean pant”). Another Saffa phrase best avoided is the classic (buying time before responding) “Ja, no, well, fine, but...”. The Brits have their own version of this tactic (“No but yeah, but no, but yeah....”), but by using it you run the danger of being labelled a Vicky Pollard (see chav).

Cheers! is most typically used to say “Thank you!”....but it can also be said on leaving, in which case you may favour Laters!, a shortened version of “See you later!” Actually there is no time frame for this “later” business and it could be in a few minutes, next week or even a few months’ time....a bit like the Saffa trick of saying “I’ll do that just now” or maybe “now-now”, when you really have no intention of even looking into the task for the next week.

After 8 years, I think I'm sorted! on the language front and could easily blend in with the locals, were it not for my accent, which I will probably never lose....it will just become slightly more diluted with every year spent here. Friends back in South Africa claim I sound English, but most people in the UK think I’m a Kiwi(!)

Maybe I should take elocution lessons from these lads...

Christmas Karaoke

It's that time of the year again when Christmas songs from decades past fill the airwaves....the gravelly tones of '70s Glam Rockers Slade, Pretty Boy Pop in the shape of Wham (when George Michael had a perm and was still pretending to be straight), a medley of squeaky clean tunes from Sir Cliff, and Band Aid in all its worthy forms are dusted off and given their annual airing.

Bad hair and clothes were big by Christmas 1973, and this song ruled. I was in utero at the time and would grace the world with my presence in just four short weeks' time....



In recent years, there's been no contest for the UK's Christmas Number One spot....it's been a given that the single of the winner of X Factor (its release conveniently timed to simultaneously line the shop shelves and Simon Cowell's pockets the week before Christmas) will go straight to the top.

But this year, X Factorite Joe McElderry's cover of 'The Climb' (Miley Cyrus) is facing some unprecedented competition from Rage Against The Machine's 'Killing In The Name', thanks to an anti-X Factor Facebook campaign that already boasts over 40,000 supporters.

So which would you choose? This one......



Or this....?



Personally, neither! My favourite Christmas song is this one from The Darkness - I love the way these guys just take the piss....

Just Taking The Piss

So what do you usually talk to your hairdresser about while he/she’s cutting your hair? Let’s think....holidays (pretty standard)....the weather (it usually comes up before holidays - the desire for some sun).....maybe house renovations, which invariably leads onto the topic of husbands.....and their DIY skills, or perhaps their lack thereof. But what about discussing our husbands’ toilet habits.... that’s a bit off-side, isn’t it.... or is it? It turns out my hairdresser’s husband is pretty much on target, or at least his aim is...because she insists he sits down to pee, and he obliges! B says “That’s one ‘whipped’ man!”......but I’ve done some ‘indepth investigations’ (I Googled “Men Sitting Down To Pee”) and I can reveal that it’s a fairly common ‘peenomenon’.

Forget the age-old ‘seat-up versus seat-down’ debate between the genders, apparently an increasing number of women are now asking their men to sit down when they ‘point Percy at the porcelain/siphon the python/get out the one-eyed trouser snake/strain their tatters/wring out the sponge/empty the hairy plums/water the horses/go where the big knobs hang out/shake hands with the wife's best friend/drain the dragon/ring the rattlesnake/unbutton the mutton/take a leak’. Even in these good new days of equality and chore-sharing, women are still more likely to be the ones that clean the bathroom...and we’re weary of wiping up wayward weewee (now say that last bit 20 times, fast).

Japanese men, in particular, are not afraid to admit they’re ‘dudes who pee like a lady’ (with apologies to Steve Tyler). A survey conducted in 2007 by Western-style toilet manufacturer Matsushita Electric Works found that around 40% of adult Japanese men sit down to empty their bladders...almost three times the number recorded in 1999.




Astonishingly, the statistics are even higher for the Germans, a population already renowned for having more than a healthy interest in the contents of their toilet bowls. There, men are being shamed into sitting to urinate by a little gadget called Spuk, or ‘Spook’. Attached to the underside of the toilet seat, Spuk quietly endures sitting visitors.....but anyone trying to lift the seat and attempt to stand and urinate (known as ‘Stehpinkeln’) should be prepared for the ghost’s unrelenting wrath.

“Hey, stand-peeing is not allowed here and will be punished with fines, so if you don’t want any trouble, you’d best sit down,” one of the devices orders in a voice impersonating the former German leader, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder. Other versions start roaring like a lion or try to persuade stubborn customers with the soothing voice of a female flight attendant. “We welcome you aboard Never Come Back Airlines,” the voice says. “We’d like to ask our male passengers in particular to sit down, buckle up and refrain from smoking.”


Patentwert, the manufacturers of Spuk, say they are ready to direct their gadgets at the British market. Their prototype English-speaking ‘WC ghost’, says in an American drawl:
“Don’t you go wetting this floor cowboy, you never know who’s behind you. So sit down, get your water pistol in the bowl where it belongs. Ha, ha, ha.”

Patentwert also plan to copy the voice of the Queen....perhaps to say something along the lines of: “Kindly be seated. One does not want one’s bottom wetted with one other’s weewee”. Indeed ma’am....that would be an ‘anus horriblis’.


Avoiding the ‘splash factor’, though, is not the only reason some Swedish women are pressurising their men to take a seat. A feminist group at Stockholm University is campaigning to ban all urinals from campus, “because a man standing up to urinate is deemed to be triumphing in his masculinity, and by extension, degrading women." Their argument is that “if women can't do it, then men shouldn't either”. Personally, I think they’ve missed a trick...thanks to the Shewee, we girls can now write our names in the snow as well as any lad. Invented by 28-year-old New Zealander, and James Dyson Award winner, Samantha Fountain, the portable urinating device is ergonomically-designed and (most importantly) dishwasher-safe. The 'suction' of the Shewee’s fit to ladies’ 'bits' has been likened to that of Dyson’s vacuum cleaners....let’s just hope that’s an exaggerated description of its leak-proof seal.


No more sitting on less than desirable public toilet seats, peeing onto our shoes as we attempt to hover over squat toilets, and baring our bums in the public eye or...and here I write from personal experience....straight back onto stinging nettles!

Ladies, it’s time to stand up and… pee!