I Think I Can See Where You're Going Wrong Read online

  Findus Crispy Pancakes will always retain a special place in my heart – probably quite literally, in the form of arterial blockage.

  The Scotch egg was 1% food, 10% gristle and 89% disappointment.

  Ethical Eats

  Isn’t eating veal akin to having a likeness of Adolf Hitler tattooed on your face?

  Re: The effect of Western quinoa consumption on Bolivia’s economy

  If we can’t even feel good about ourselves when we eat quinoa, we might as well eat pork eyelid burgers.

  Suppose we legally allow the poor to eat middle-class food faddists (& fascists)? This will improve their diet, adding protein from creatures that have been reared on organic lentils of the highest quality.

  All these health warnings just make the middle classes even more paranoid. I can see the day when they have to survive sucking an organic raw carrot three times a day.

  Eating meat is morally equivalent to being a non-practising paedophile who wears a prosthetic leg which, for totally frivolous reasons, is made of meat.

  It’s clear that the sensible thing to do would be to ban vegetarian foods sold dishonestly as ‘sausages’, and require Quorn, etc., by law to be sold in different, possibly more innovative shapes.

  Re: Switching to goats’ milk

  That’s like giving up nuclear weapons in favour of biological weapons. Leave the poor goat alone. That milk wasn’t meant for you.

  Dining Out on Opinions

  The chap who runs the artisan butcher in Islington told me that cheap bacon is the problem and that his imported organic pancetta is fine to eat and actually cures some minor ailments.

  Every time I hear someone say ‘quinoa’ properly (keen-wah) I think of Bridget Jones saying, ‘Isn’t it sad about Chech-nyaa?’

  I can’t stand quinoa – it’s like eating sand. Down with this sort of thing!

  You’re supposed to cook it!

  I’ll tell you what REALLY gets up my nose: it’s the weirdos that eat cauliflower. If you don’t want to eat broccoli, DON’T EAT BROCCOLI. Don’t go messing around with something that tastes different but is still the same shape. You lot make me sick.

  Re: Broccoli

  Dreadful stuff. The black sheep of the brassica family. I’m tired of people trying to inflict it on me with their tales of its mythical health properties. I’d rather eat a boiled hedgehog.

  I was into skordalia† before it was fashionable and have nothing but contempt for hummus eaters.

  One good cauliflower cheese is worth 100 dubious beefburgers.

  Funny how you haven’t mentioned that teff‡ can be seriously, and I mean seriously, flatulence-inducing. How terrible to find everyone at the dinner-party table trumpeting away through dessert …

  Grateful Bread

  Am I the only one who thinks that ham and cheese is a ghastly mix?

  Anyone who pays less than £2 for a loaf of bread is a total philistine.

  Poundland’s toilet rolls make perfectly good organic bread substitutes.

  I ‘define my very being’ with wholemeal bread.

  I can do an impression of a sausage sandwich with my genitalia. Certainly livened up Christmas, I can tell you.§

  As for sandwich fillings, my quotidian choice is almond butter, marmite and home-made roasted pepper and chilli.

  A wrap is not a bloody sandwich, OK? That’s like trying to pass off a croissant as a pie.

  My lunch consists of black coffee and self-loathing. How do I wrap that? HOW?

  I’m middle class [so] I don’t bring sandwiches to work. Thanks.

  Smoked salmon does not make one classy and rye bread doesn’t make one continental.

  … and a cake cannot be a bun … though in the Guardian crossword it has been and that makes me really mad.

  On a personal note, anyone that puts cucumber on a sandwich needs to be extracted from the gene pool. Being beaten to death with a cucumber would be the preferred and ironic method.

  Why, oh why, does another person’s toast smell so much better than one’s own with the same ingredients?

  Resist the temptation to replace your sandwich toaster: better the Breville you know.

  A Latte Time on Our Hands

  I know someone who once drank a soy latte and six years later their car got stolen.

  Re: Addiction to caffeine

  This article doesn’t mention the benefits to the smugness of people drinking Fairtrade coffee compared with those who prefer their coffee with a slight taste of blood and fear.

  Re: The craze for camel milk in coffee

  In a year’s time there will be a Guardian article on how free camel lattes using Waitrose membership cards are putting independent artisan camel-latte retailers out of business. Or how the urge for camel milk has led to a deterioration in camel welfare.

  Mashed Pun-tatos

  I watched a potato growing competition on youtuber …

  I’m gonna watch that tater …

  Spud for you …

  I have no Desiree to take part in these puns.

  Yeh? Well stick that in your Maris Piper and smoke it.

  I do miss that lovely series about King Edward.

  Or that other one about kings and queens and the Channel Islands – Jersey Royals?

  No need to have a chip on your shoulder.

  I’ll get your jacket.

  You deserve a roasting for that.

  Mash to do about nothing.

  Oh Croquette! Goodbye Mr Chips.

  * Nando’s: posh KFC.

  † Skordalia: Greek foodstuff, essentially potato hummus. In Britain tends to be a posh name for a fine garlic mash.

  ‡ Teff: Grain-based foodstuff originating from Ethiopia and increasingly common in UK health stores and right-on households. Like quinoa but substantially easier to pronounce.

  § Don’t attempt to mimic this in public. Or in private for that matter.

  2

  The Joy of Sex, Health and Yoga Mats

  Sex is a subject close to the hearts (and somewhere slightly further south, biologically speaking) of many of our readers. However, if there’s one thing they like more than sex it’s yoga, cycling and telling people how to have sex. Every week the Guardian runs at least three columns that essentially boil down to sex advice, the most notable of which is Sexual Healing, the weekly agony-aunt column written by noted sexpert and one-time comedian Pamela Stephenson. Every week her good advice is torn to shreds by well meaning commenters who are only too happy to discuss what goes where, in whom and how to avoid friction burns from your yoga mat.

  Don’t Worry, Be Happy

  Re: The January blues

  Depressed? Many people are just relieved, if not elated, to have the whole ordeal of Christmas and New Year behind them.

  Re: How to beat the Monday blues

  A tad pretentious, but we have office poetry every Monday as a tool to combat the despond.

  If a placebo can make people feel better and improve quality of life, why can’t homeopathy?

  Placebo had one decent song. End of.*

  I recommend six to eight glasses of homeopathy a day. It’ll do wonders for your complexion.

  Yoga†

  I’m just about to launch ‘poga’: it’s like yoga, but on a pogo stick.

  Re: Voga – a craze combining yoga and vogueing

  A complete insult to the art and culture of vogueing.

  My partner and I have multiple joint problems that we attribute to over-enthusiastic yoga practice when younger.

  I find knitting much more relaxing than yoga. Mostly because knitting rarely ends up with me attempting a headstand.

  I usually have a yoga mat slung over my back and ride a vintage Gerber bike that I bought when I was working in Zurich. I guess I stand out because of the yoga mat, I’ve met only one other person with a mat.

  The yogic community I am involved with has succeeded in combining knitting and yoga. A knitting circle has been established where anyone can knit a garment for a s
mall child. These are taken to an economically challenged community in India where the children receive beautifully made jumpers, beanies and scarves. Last year we shipped two suitcases of lovingly knitted wearables for kids, some of whom sleep with the goats to keep warm. The programme continues and I intend to try to knit a jumper soon. Doing so would probably help with my meditation practice as well as observing the thoughts as I learn a new skill.

  The Joy of Sex (Solo)

  Re: Masturbation

  Could we have a large print version of this article, please?

  I’m an artisanal masturbator. All done by hand, and no out-sourcing.

  Masturbation weakens your muscles, causes anaemia, and depletes your selenium, zinc and copper, which causes iron deficiency. This in turn can lead to bad eyesight, and even blindness.

  The Joy of Sex (in Company)

  The fluffy, corrupted Westernised version of tantra involves pleasant tasks like pleasuring oneself in front of a mirror or stroking one’s partner with a feather. In the East it involves contemplating rotting corpses and excrement. I am running a series of weekend workshops in exploring the latter. Corpses provided, but please bring your own lunch.

  At 72 years of age I have cut down on the amount of sex I have by 50%! The very small-wattage halogen bulbs in our bedside lamps have not had to be changed for over three years so we are not causing much environmental damage with our mutual pleasuring. We don’t want to do our thing in the glare of two – or even one – 40-watt bulbs either.

  I recall my grandmother saying with great concern that she hoped I would never have sex before marriage. ‘Of course not,’ I told her. I had no intention of ever getting married.

  All this talk about shagging has just reminded me how frustrated and miserable I am for the lack of shagging in my life (not through lack of trying) … I think I’m going to have to drown my sorrows in half a bottle of Jack Daniels now.

  I think I can see where you’re going wrong.

  You might be wondering where condoms fit in.

  You are doing it wrong: they fit on.

  Sex is a divine union with the beloved, nothing could be better than that … To find your Shekinah and join her in a blissful union.

  Re: Is anything better than sex?

  (Quoting Conan the Barbarian) Crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, hearing the lamentation of their women.

  That IS how I have sex.

  The only time I told someone there was anything better than sex, it was having seen Britain’s first, and so far only, golden-winged warbler (a tiny jewel of an American bird) near Tesco’s car park at Maidstone, on 14 February 1989. The adrenalin rush was phenomenal.

  Re: My neighbour can hear me having sex

  Turn on the radio quite loudly and just ignore them!

  We used to live TWO floors up from a guy who used to entertain a string of handsome young men at his place. To mask (rather poorly, I might add) the sounds of them getting to know each other better, he would play Ride of the Valkyries loudly for the duration. On a record player. Which sometimes skipped.

  An old flatmate of mine used Pachelbel’s Canon.

  I bet that blew the neighbours away.

  Slimmers’ Corner

  (So Long and Thanks for All the Crisps)

  Re: Okinawa diet could help you live to 100

  I would rather choke on a slice of cake tonight than live out the rest of my days eating tofu. Nothing is worth tofu.

  I am in Japan, and may I suggest you look up ‘tofu hamburg’ as a starting point? It may just help to change your mind.

  My uncle lived to 115 and all he ever ate was smug vegans. He said they tasted stringy and bitter.

  I am currently suffering my third Tory-led government; it already feels like I have lived 100 years.

  Re: The worst diets

  I’m on two diets. Tried one and found it wasn’t enough food.

  I’m on the whisky diet. I’ve lost two weeks already.

  10% of our body mass isn’t human, but bacterial, and those bacteria are mainly essential to life. If detoxing really worked you’d be dead.

  Eating earth is called geophagy (from Greek), and has been around for a very long time. Probably healthier than the processed crap filling the aisles of our supermarkets.

  An onion a day keeps everybody away.

  Yoghurt, berries and nuts are my saviours.

  I’ve been taking a homeopathic ebola vaccine for years and I haven’t had it once. Not ONCE. You’re all just scared because you don’t understand it.

  Ran 48 miles yesterday, off road and with some brutal hills, an absolutely perfect Sunday! Gentle bike ride and swim today (yoga is off due to public holiday).

  I have a whole beetroot first thing in the morning in a smoothie with avocado, walnuts, coconut oil, banana, ginger, kale and carrot. Doesn’t taste great tbh, but I feel magnificent afterwards! Beetroot’s good for men’s sexual health too apparently, because of the vasodilatory, nitric oxide effect.

  * Placebo: glam-indie-rock band formed in the mid 90s whose gender-bending singer, Brian, is responsible for a whole generation of male music fans having to think long and hard about their ‘preferences’. They did indeed have one good song.

  † Not a character in Star Wars.

  3

  The Only Way Is Ethics: Modern Living and Moral Quandaries

  For the Guardianista life is never simple. Yes, we have organic hummus for lunch, but is it the right sort of organic hummus? What is its carbon footprint? Could we not have bought British? Can you even get British hummus? Is asking for British hummus offensive to Middle-Eastern people? What does choosing non-indigenous hummus say about my child’s development? Is he racist because he won’t eat it? Should I buy the Fairtrade Kit Kat for his pudding, even though I disapprove of Nestlé’s policies on baby milk in Africa, or should I buy the Mars Bar which isn’t Nestlé but also not Fairtrade? Does that make me a bad parent? Can anyone recommend a book on good parenting? Is it on recycled paper? These questions go on and on and on, because life is an unending ethical minefield in which no one ever really manages to do the right thing all the time, which is why most people are desperately in need of a stiff gin and tonic and a nice sit-down.

  First-World Problems

  Re: Ad campaign about problems in the developing world

  I hate it when meaningful ad campaigns make me feel like a selfish privileged elite.

  I have been successfully growing various herbs in my kitchen window for many years, but for some reason or other I have always failed to grow rocket. The seeds germinate, but after reaching about 5 cm simply die.

  My least favourite queuing experience was for the gondola in Bulgaria. It was a daily 45–60-minute, ill-tempered scrum, and when you got up the mountain the skiing was pretty shit.

  Why has my download speed dropped from 75 Mbps to 63 Mbps?

  I have terrible luck converting pasta sauces into gnocchi sauces.

  I did have a plant next to my router and its leaves turned brown and dropped. Coincidence?

  My router is placed near some house plants and has stopped working.

  I just can’t seem to source any freshly prepared harissa for my cous-cous.

  Since they stopped stocking classical music I can never find enough books, CDs or DVDs I like in W. H. Smith to make use of their ‘Three for £17’ deal.

  The sushi situation in Dublin is very dire.

  Dilemmas

  Re: Travelling back in time to kill Hitler