I Think I Can See Where You're Going Wrong Page 5

  You should always keep more than one fish so that they can communicate:§ ‘Look at that rock.’ ‘What’s a rock?’ ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘Ask what?’ ‘Look at that rock …’

  If goldfish were unhappy they’d cry. If they cried there would be more water in the bowl in the morning not the same amount. Ergo, fish are quite OK with things.

  My little girl’s hamster is a bit like Doctor Who – he has a habit of dying and coming back younger.¶

  Re: The popularity of cat videos

  Cats are archetypal Tories. They dislike everything that doesn’t directly contribute to their own comfort; hate change; treat the rest of the world with contempt and expect to be waited on hand and foot …

  They are slowly taking over the world. First your chair and sofa, then your bed, then your laundry, then the space between you and your computer, your food and/or water, then your husband or wife or child or any nice strangers that are foolish enough to feed or give them treats, and now infiltrating the internet in view of world domination.

  * Damn. Can we apologise for the title of this section?

  † Reference to early 90s horror film about a hook-handed bogeyman who appeared when you said his name three times. Bloody terrifying.

  ‡ Fifty Shades of Grey: mucky book, responsible for surge in sales of handcuffs and whips and the fact you can genuinely now buy grey ties in Anne Summers.

  § Goldfish, of course, famously have short memories, and thus make excellent pets for those friends we all have who insist on telling the same stories over and over. If you don’t know anyone like this, then I’m afraid it’s probably you.

  ¶ Anyone currently getting ready to email in pointing out that the Doctor doesn’t ALWAYS get younger, can you take a moment to think long and hard about your life? Thanks.

  6

  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Planet Earth

  Guardian readers are a well-travelled lot, although they’re stereotypically associated with the ski slope or Polly Toynbee’s Tuscan villa. (FACT: It’s a myth that Polly has a villa in Tuscany and she is constantly bewildered by the sarcastic references to it that occur in the comments below her articles. Besides, everyone knows Umbria is much nicer.) From gap yahs to package holidays, home and abroad, Guardian readers have traversed the world, and are only too happy to share their experiences.

  Across the Pond

  Las Vegas is unspeakably vulgar. Why would anyone want to sully their spirituality by associating with it?

  Re: Florida road trip

  I see by your driving plans that you are skipping the real Florida. It would appear that all you want to do is get to Miami. Travelling Mercies then. Peace out.

  What’s with all the San Francisco loving in the Guardian today? I know it’s a big place, but there’s plenty of stuff going on in Cirencester at the moment.

  American Craft Beer is a world beater. Are you listening, CAMRA?*

  ‘Do You Ski?’

  Re: Combined skiing and yoga holidays (costing £400)

  99% of the world lives on less than £400 a week. Next time do yoga in your front room and send the £400 to a charity.

  I love the juxtaposition of articles in this paper decrying the lack of social mobility in society while giving guides to skiing in Val d’Isère.

  Re: The glass-bottomed viewing platform at the top of a French mountain

  I am giddy and feel nauseous just looking at the photos. I think I’m slipping from my chair and the floor seems a long way off … Noooooo …

  Maybe you should give up your swivel chair.

  After a Ryanair flight to Lyon, getting into a glass box 1000 metres up will feel quite comforting.

  Re: Budget skiing

  Great: the Pyrenees are forgotten again!

  Leaving on a Jet Plane …

  Airline employees were so much more agreeable back when they were all drunk.

  Flying with easyJet has scarred me for life.

  All Ghana needs now is a Ryanair route.

  Which will fly to Togo and you’ll have get a bus from there.

  Why the hell would you fly on a budget airline in the first place? You sacrificed any claims to a decent flight the minute you bought the ticket.

  Re: Things that should be banned on flights

  I’d ban … Babies and toddlers (unless heavily dosed), the significantly overweight, people with those annoying voices that echo round the plane so that you can hear their whole conversation from miles away, people with annoying laughs, Americans, and smug weekend newspaper columnists.

  Re: ‘Nightmare’ journeys and missed flights

  I don’t think my old dad would have been too impressed with this ‘nightmare’ journey out of Italy. He came home from Rome in the bomb bay of a malfunctioning Lancaster bomber in 1945, with a circle marked on the floor instead of a seat and an emergency landing to deliver him from five years of fighting. I suppose all nightmares are relative.

  Brits Abroad

  I won’t forget drinking sacrificial-deer blood mixed with rice wine on Buddhist New Year with a family in Laos, while a group of ‘Brits Abroad’ bobbed past in inflatables on the Mekong singing ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’.

  As a 31-year-old, I cannot go on a Club 18–30 holiday – an argument for suing them for discrimination?

  Amsterdam is hell on earth. Total anarchy. Millions of near-naked women, on bicycles. I will not return.

  Whereabouts in Tuscany is Butlins? I can’t see it on any maps.

  Re: How to have a budget holiday in Italy

  I live in Siena and think tourists already have a very good idea of how to do things on the cheap. Witness the people with their supermarket bags having picnics in Piazza del Campo, or sharing one salad or plate of pasta in a restaurant. The ultimate way to save money is to stay at home and look at it on the internet!

  Re: Beer-tasting holidays in Tuscany

  Idiotic. On a par with the Americans I met in Paris looking for Mexican food.

  Re: Italian resorts banning trashy souvenirs

  This is seriously going to affect my collection of memorabilia with Michelangelo’s David’s member on it.

  I had the bus journey from hell to an obscure suburb of Rome to do a one-day zumba qualification. I would have paid a lot to have not suffered the anxiety of that.

  Ibiza would be my idea of purgatory. Pointless clubbing with gyrating exhibitionists and pounding noise. Hedonism without any of the actual pleasures.

  If you want to re-create Ibiza at home just flush loads of money down the toilet while taking lots of drugs. I mean, come on, the main attraction of the island is watching the sun rise? You can do that anywhere!

  Re: Increasing tourism in Budapest

  Another authentic city district ruined.

  French wines are toxic, unless they are ‘natural’. Don’t buy wine unless it is from the emerging ‘natural-wine’ movement.

  Ah, nothing ruins a magical isolated paradise like pointing them all out on the front page of the Guardian. ‘Honey, I’ve read about an amazing isolated beach in Indonesia’ … Two years down the line, ‘Where did all of these gap-year students come from?’

  Frankly, ‘paradise’ for me would be being able to do something constructive and socially useful.

  Sickeningly ironic that so many of these tips about ‘paradise’ involve long flights, which of course contribute so directly to climate change and planet death. Perhaps this article should be renamed ‘The Deniers’ Guide to Selfish Holidays’?

  Re: Road trip across Canada

  These ‘road-trip’ articles clash horribly with the Guardian’s otherwise laudable stance on selfish and wasteful use of precious fossil fuels.

  Re: Seasickness

  Hi, Gordon Brown here (not that one). I’ve never been seasick; at times the whole crew was throwing up. Sometimes it was just me and the skipper who weren’t sick; sometimes just me.

  Are you sure you’re not ‘the’ Gordon Brown? Would put a whole different meaning on your po
st if you were …

  Re: Goa’s quest for a better class of tourist

  They should change the name to ‘Goaway’.

  There’s only one thing spoiling Thailand, and that’s the foreigners there.

  Re: The Great Wall of China

  Great? Longest wall in the world and not a single cash machine!

  South Korean pop music is the best argument I’ve heard for the state of North Korea.

  Hi-De-Hi Campers –

  Holidaying at Home

  Let’s show the French that British food is better than it’s painted.

  Painted? What next?

  Re: Life sentences for criminals

  Hang them. Prison would be a life of holiday!

  Were you taken to Butlins as a child too?

  Butlins in Minehead? Five minutes of that and they will voluntarily drown themselves.

  I would rather forgo a holiday than go to Butlins.

  I thought steak was the choice of the unambitious – you know, like consistency, chinos, urban 4×4s and holidays at Center Parcs.

  I have only ever sent food back twice in my life. Both at Center Parcs.

  Anywhere that describes itself as ‘open for business’ is not where I want to go for a holiday, thank you very much.

  Re: Holidays in the South West of England

  It looks lovely down there. Like going to Yorkshire, but not quite as good.

  Re: Celebrity holiday destinations

  I notice that no one admits to a week in Skegness.

  I couldn’t think of anything more ghastly than an Ibiza holiday, but Haworth [in Yorkshire] is a tremendous experience.

  Why spend a day by some wet beach when you can book your holiday when it’s quiet and jet off to France or Spain instead for two weeks? And everything doesn’t shut early.

  Your kids will hate adventure holidays just as much as you did. My parents dragged us up-hill-and-down-bog and have left me enjoying nature only when it is presented to me by the BBC in the comfort of my living room.

  Bee stings in unmentionable places, soggy ice-cream, rows and vomiting in the back of a Hillman Imp … You can keep it, quite frankly. I’d rather stay at home and do my own thing these days.

  * The Campaign for Real Ale: a British organisation dedicated to combating gassy cheap lager and the promotion of proper craft beers, alongside lengthy facial hair and fishing hats.

  7

  A Guide to Great Britain and Northern Ireland

  You can always rely on the British for pathological and completely ungrounded hatred for largely blameless parts of their country. You’ll be hard pushed to find a Scouser with a nice word to say on Manchester; a Yorkshireman would rather walk through fire than be complimentary about Lancashire; whereas the only thing a Lancastrian hates more than a Londoner is, well, a Yorkshireman. Cornwall and Yorkshire claim to be ‘God’s own country’, which suggests that if nothing else God is fond of a cream tea, although which way round should he do the cream and the jam? Cornishmen and their Devonshire neighbours have come to blows over this for years, while a resident of North London will moan about anyone born above the Watford Gap, but would still rather venture past the Midlands than go south of the river. Given all this, it’s astonishing most Brits are able to leave their own street, so convinced are we that the rest of the country is a bit disappointing.

  Aberdeen

  Aberdeen is just like Hawaii crossed with Switzerland, combining the cultural sophistication of, say, Paris, New York and Verbier.

  Ashby-de-la-Zouch

  We have a biscuit factory, a soap factory, an outdoor swimming pool, a market and a pub with a stuffed grizzly bear. What we don’t have though is Ashby Canal, but a pub with a bear is not to be sniffed at.

  Bedford

  I’m so glad I live so, so, so far away from Bedfordshire – it sounds pish.

  Belfast

  A bit like Mogadishu, without the sun.

  Birmingham

  It’s arguably one of the most hideous city centres I’ve ever seen. One fancy, expensive library cannot possibly redeem the festival of ugliness that is Birmingham city centre.

  Bracknell

  ‘The man who’s tired of Bracknell is tired of life.’ Not sure about that one.

  Brighton

  Pebbly beach. Not terribly beautiful. Preferred Whitby.

  Brighton

  I just don’t get the ‘seaside’, wherever it is. Unless Brighton feels it’s being ironic, it is just so passé. Mountains and lakes for me.

  Bristol

  Am I understanding this correctly – they’re going to put a giant inflatable water slide right smack on the road????? And people are actually hailing this as genius????? It looks unseemly and is such a stupid thing to do. Bristol is not a kids’ playhouse. Everybody will become obese. What harm is there in plain old walking? None.

  Bristol

  Can the council ban hippies? Bristol is inundated with them. Like pigeons.

  Bristol

  All this beauty, all built on the slave trade.

  Canvey Island

  What happens below sea level stays below sea level.

  Carlisle

  It’s only 25 miles from Cockermouth and it has a good Marks & Spencer.

  Carlisle

  I’ve only been through Carlisle while hitching so know only two things about the place: it’s very close to the water table and it is a mecca for plasterers.

  The Channel Islands

  Re: The best islands in the UK. As a Jerseyman, I don’t care where we come in the list so long as we are higher than Guernsey.

  As a Guernseyman I’m not sure I’d have Jersey on a Top-10 islands and islets of the Channel Islands, let alone Top 10 of the UK(ish).

  Chesterfield

  Surprised no one has mentioned the fact that the roundabouts in Chesterfield are the single worst in the entire country.

  Cornwall

  It’s like the Florida Keys without the sunshine: you get there and it’s grey, pebbledashed houses and no cheer whatsoever. There’s potential aplenty, but without effort Cornwall will always be Leonard Cohen masquerading as a Beach Boys song.

  Croydon

  Re: Survey of the best places to live in Britain. How on earth did Croydon do so well in this survey?

  Devon

  Along with Scottish Independence can we vote to get rid of Devon? But this time can we cut it off from the rest of Britain and let it float out to sea?

  Dorset

  Culture in North Dorset? Only the Larmer Tree Music Festival could be described as culture and most of that is in Wiltshire.

  Dublin

  Drink to forget.

  East Ham

  FACT: All places with ‘Ham’ in the name tend to have residents that live longer including – unfortunately – Buckingham Palace.

  Essex

  Best thing about Brentwood? The lido and that closed years ago.

  Glamorgan

  Anywhere west of West Cross is OK, but avoid Swansea at all costs; it makes Chernobyl look like Monaco.

  Glasgow

  Stop dreaming, boys, the happiest city is always Glasgow! Why? Because we are not in Edinburgh, that is why!

  Glossop

  From the many times I’ve driven through it, I assumed it was just a damp grey disappointment of a town built around a permanent traffic jam.

  Harrogate