Beware the holiday bores!

Yes, I realise how heartless this sounds. But let’s face it, we’ve all been there, haven’t we?

You know how this happens. That casual chat with complete strangers in the queue at the airport or in the hotel lobby can so often be the cue for the dreaded ‘team up.’

One brief encounter that should remain just that becomes a joined-at-the-hip nightmare which can ruin a vital break that body and soul so vitally require.

This is not me being anti-social. Far from it, I love to talk to people. But when on holiday, I do like a modicum of anonymity.

Have a conversation round the lounge table by all means, it’s part of the holiday.

But when your new companion starts to talk about “what WE’RE going to do the next day” or wonders whether you’ll be in the vicinity of the pool tomorrow, then those alarm bells should start to ring.

The worst example of this occurred a few years back when we got stuck with a husband and wife team of hypochondriacs. The wife’s conversational tour de force was a seemingly endless discourse on her chronic ear wax problem.

Granted, such subjects should not necessarily be taboo. Nevertheless, it’s not a particularly appropriate subject for the breakfast table.

So. You’ve been warned. Beware the deadly holiday ‘team-up’.

Witch hunts have gone on too long

THE number of aging celebrities being hauled before the courts accused of ‘historical’ offences goes on.

As I’ve said before, the guilty should be punished… within reason. But what of those found to be innocent, who will have endured a stressful few months not knowing whether they’ll soon be behind bars?

My view is that the false accusers should be arrested and be given a taste of what their victims will have suffered. After all, if the accused is not guilty, then that must logically mean that the accuser has lied.

Two cases spring to mind – Coronation Street stars Bill Roache and Michael Le Vell. Both were cleared but did they really get justice? No.

We live in strange times. Society has been completely sexualised by the media and particularly by the internet. Images abound, whether it’s on the pages of a tabloid newspaper or some dodgy website.

And yet transgressions, both minor and major – some of which allegedly took place more than half a century ago – are met with the full force of the law.

Yes, punish the truly guilty. But let’s have less of this mediaeval witch hunt mentality and more compassion for those who must live under a cloud despite being absolved of guilt.

God save us from journalism's armchair experts

A RECURRING theme among a minority of ‘commenters’ on the Worcester News website is that this paper’s journalists sometimes write what these self-appointed armchair experts term a ‘non-story’.

This always makes me laugh out loud. As if the average person could recognise what constitutes a story, indeed. It takes a professional to do that.

What such people are really saying, of course, is that they don’t like the content or the subject of the article therefore it should not see the light of day. And that’s a very different matter.

When the internet first came about, there was much trumpeting in some quarters about how this new technology would somehow democratise the media. No longer would the dissemination of news be just down to a privileged few.

This would be the dawning of the age of the ‘citizen journalist.’ Everyone could have a bash, how marvellous this would be in a brave new world.

But it hasn’t happened. The vast majority of comments are illiterate, rarely make a constructive point, are littered with spelling and grammatical errors, plastered in typos, and occasionally defamatory.

In many ways, the whole experiment has turned out a bit like that open mic night at the pub where any hopeless three-chord strummer can get up and bore the rest of us rigid with some endless dirge about a lost girlfriend.

Citizen hacks? Prats more like.

Comforts that start with the letter M

WHEN I was a child I had a Teddy that was literally loved to pieces. One day, his leg fell off, so I buried him in the garden. Poor Teddy.

As any parent will tell you, all children have their ‘comfort’. Teddy was mine and I was heartbroken when he started to fall to bits.

Anyway, this is going to embarrass the hell out of them, but my kids had ‘Nuts’ and ‘Noo-Noo’. Sorry girls… call it revenge for all the grey hairs you’ve given me down the years.

Now, there is a third generation carrying on the great tradition. My grandson Alfie’s ‘comfort’ is an old vest called ‘Num-Num’. For some reason they all start with the letter ‘n’.

However, we shouldn’t laugh too much. For I reckon that there are now millions of adults walking around loving their ‘comforts’ all day long, and they can be observed on any day of the week and in any type of surroundings clutching the objects of their affections.

But these comforts start with the letter ‘m’. They are, of course, mobile phones.