I was only Joking

 I bought one of those anti-rasist armbands the other day, it cost me a pound from the Paki shop!*

No offence mate I was only joking
 How many times have I heard this?
Hundreds if not thousands.
 How many times have I said this?
Hundreds if not thousands.

 Yet when is a joke, a quip or a "funny comment" crossing the line, becoming offensive, a means of harm?
Steve over at Bloggertropolis has posted about a passing comment by Miranda Hart on Have I Got News For You about the Royal Family that has got the chattering classes all agitated. But this raises the question of who sets the standards for what is "Funny" and what is deemed offensive.

"Ah that would be the individual that is listening to the joke", you may say. But how often we say something with no intent to harm that is taken the wrong way. Sometimes if the person that we were speaking to feels that the relationship between you is one that can take a frank and honest objection they will raise this with us and the air can be cleared, usually with an apology and no harm is done. Other times though people will just distance themselves from the person that offended them and will think twice about being in their company. Still there are those that will get filled with a righteous indignation and star shouting and hollering until all know that they have been wronged and a public apology is indeed forthcoming.

 If it was deliberately meant to cause offence? If that's the case then half of the people plying their trade as comedians would find themselves out of a job. The whole "Alternative" comedy scene would find itself in litigation 99% of the time, yet people continue to frequent comedy clubs and you cant watch an evenings television without some program trying to make you laugh. Without some one being offended we would never have had such things as The Young Ones, Spitting Image or Ali G. All these received criticism at the time yet the people in question have gone on to become successful comedy institutions( Steve Coogan, Harry Enfield, Stephen Fry,Paul Merton), except Sasha Baron-Cohen who has gone on to more and more outrageous things! The thing is what causes offence now, what we find as socially acceptable now is going to be different in a very short period of time. Thankfully times move on and people that were once the rage like Roy Chubby Brown and  Jim Davidson get left behind, but there will always be those ready to step into their shoes who's sole aim is to shock and offend. For example the recent comments by Frankie Boyle concerning  Jordan's son.

 It would seem then that we as individuals are the one that make our own mind up as to what we find funny/offensive. If we are offended by a comment in a conversation with some-one then all the dynamics of that conversation have to be taken into account. The motive, the tone, the inferred meaning, the body language even the persons background all have a baring, its the way we decode all these in a split second that really is the standard of what we find funny or not. Mis-reading these signs both on our part and on the part of others can find us labelled as blunt, offensive or spiteful. I had a friend who couldn't have a conversation without upsetting the others involved not because he was deliberately trying to offend but  because he hadn't developed the social skills to be able to interact as the rest of us do, it was later labelled as autism.
 If  we go to a comedy club or watch on tv comedians as entertainment then surely the onus is upon us, if we are offended leave or switch them off. If we sit there fuming and saying what a rude and offensive show then we only have ourselves to blame. However there will be times when the circumstances are that we feel obliged to stand up and say something and rightly so, but if we are constantly nitpicking and complaining then the voice of reason becomes nothing more than an annoying whine and any justified meaningful complaint will be overlooked. Yes we have a voice but use it wisely.




* This was a joke told to me by a friend, I found it funny...  Being mixed race and the colour of a strong cup of tea I would often get called a Paki.

This is not a sympathy post.......but...

(Warning this is a long and winding post)

 Hi, as some of you may know I have recently been a guest of HRH. No, not that kind of guest, purleeese! I was in HOSPITAL at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore. A Good old fashioned kind of  hospital, the kind where the nurses gave patient care, not just taking blood pressure and filling forms. The nurses in question were efficient and hard working, although a little too fond of rectal thermomitors. A veritable army of Malaysian care givers with one Irish girl of about 25 to keep things all ship shape and Bristol fashioned. They toiled and bustled constantly and even took the time to help the rather ancient and extremely senile old boy put his coat on while sat up in bed which he promptly took off again only to ask for his coat again.  It took a frustrating 20 minutes to realise that all the time he was asking for his GOAT, but all in all they did a sterling job.

 I was placed between two patients that could not have been any more different if they had tried, this made it a little difficult to have a conversation that all three of  us could share. Firstly to my left was a man of mid to late 40's with what could best be described as a colourful character, he was "in" to have various stab wounds to his legs and buttocks tended to. So severe were these stab wounds that they had chipped bone. He had been hospitalised for a few days alredy and when I went in and he was due out that day much to every-ones relief. I think he thought I was a plant by the police because he kept looking at me in a weird way and saying things like "Yeah you know who it was don't you" and "You wont get me to point any fingers, I aint standing up in no court". But this didnt stop him from telling me in great detail the way he fought off four, yes four, blokes that "raided my gaff" and "did me" for no more than "a small bag of weed and a few pills". What I found most disturbing was the way he would pace up and down the ward with a stiff legged walk rather akin to Douglas Bader trying to put the "look" on everyone, most bizzare, it wasn't as if he could have done much about it even if we had given him the cause to. All this and not once did the irony of "getting shanked in my arse" ever cross his mind. He had a family member phone the ward to see if he needed picking up but because of the language barrier between the Malaysian nurse and this chap who spoke a kind of cockney that he though made him sound like Ray Winston, but in reality made him sound even more of a "mug" than Danny Dyre(Dire?), there was confusion as to who was making the request for information and our "Geeza" thought it was "the do'er tryin' to find aaht wot time e wuz aaht of ere and wantin a finish the job". This sent him into a panic and after a quick fag he was spotted hiding in the tree line opposite the ward entrance with all his worldly goods in an Aldi(yes no lie, ironic eh) carrier bag and a bit of wood he found laying around. His sister later arrived and told him to "Stop being a Twat and get in the Bleedin' car". Oh how we giggled as he slipped and slid down the little embankment and she roughly bundled him in to the car all the while stiff legged and throwing "looks".
 As to the gent in the bed on my right the best way to describe him would be a moth, constantly fluttering and preening, backwards and forwards peering in on each patient on the ward never staying still or in one place to long, avoiding the chap on my left but drawn to his every word and action as though drawn to a flame that would eventually be his demise. He was in his late 60's a city worker, Banker and stock portfolio manager for various worthy establishments. His nervous energy and his inability to stick with one thing for more than a few minutes probably served him well in his career, managing multiple funds, markets changing by the second, you could tell he was used to a busy life, just not used to much social interaction. All there was to occupy him now was the crackling voices of his portable t.v and the bodily functions of crippled old men. That was until I came along and gave him the go ahead to go into great detail as to his job, his life and all the intimate details of his illnesses. Now this wasn't an explicit assurance from me that he could literately unload all this on me, I kind of had him sussed from about 10 minutes of arriving so I made sure I had my ear phones tightly screwed into my ears and my nose buried in a book. The only time I didn't was when the nurses needed to take my blood pressure and defile me with the thermometer(don't they have the electronic ones that they put in your ear now?) but some how he managed to find a chink in my armour and eye contact was made spelling the end to any chance of escape. I had to listen to his views on how the media had got it wrong about The Nhs, Immigration, The world cup bid, Trains(?) and of course the Bankers who were in fact the victims rather than the cause of the financial meltdown both here and in the U.S.  How glad was I to be told that they were ready for me in Theatre, another 1/2 hour and I would of made a start on my own surgery!!

 As mentioned these were not the only co-inhabitors of the Duke Of Gloucester(DoG) ward, oh no I could go on to tell you of the chap who insisted on wandering backward and forward with his gown undone to reveal  what would have won him  the Blue Riband at the Hereford County Show

Or the guy that farted so loud the nurses kept running with bed pans.......sorry that could have been me oops!

 So why was I  in hospital? 

FOOTBALL

 Two years ago I had a career ending knee injury, I twisted, dislocated my knee, snapped my Cruciate  Ligament, tore both medial and lateral ligaments and tore both medial and lateral meniscus(cartilage). Not only all that but as I fell I landed on the exposed end of my Femur and badly bruised that too. As the consultant said at the time there was hardly anything left in my knee to damage. So after three...yes three Keyhole surgery and one open Reconstruction I found myself again in need of attention. I had to have cartilage removed from the end of the Fibular, an area of the femur that has now got Osteoarthritis cleaned and trimmed, and a clean up of the graft that was used to replace my Cruciate ligament. All in all a bit of maintenance that will mean I'm off my feet for a few weeks, but hopefully will mean pain free walking and even a bit of much needed exercise. 

 So if your out and about in the next few weeks and see a big chap on crutches say hi it  might be me ; )

OOOhhh its a bit nippy!

. The weather has had a firm grip on the brass monkey and his eyes are beginning to water. Most of the snow has passed us by and unlike many parts of the country we were somewhat disappointed at the lack of sledging opportunities. What little snow we did get was that tiny dry snow/hail combo that is useless at making snowballs and just rolls around in complacent little drifts. The Emo of the climate world, it can't really be arsed to be a full on snowfall but it kind of likes being a bit cold.
 So when we see all the photos of deep white drifts, trees heavy under their snowy burden and children bunking off school we get just a touch envious. I have even got the super little snow sledge things out of the shed in readiness and got "The Box" for the little 'un, alas to no avail we just didn't get enough snow to enjoy it. That's not to say the brief smattering that we did get didn't send waves of panic and hysteria through our local community. At the first sight of a heavy frost Sainsbury's had ran out of milk and bananas, why bananas I don't know maybe its Bear Grylls fault. Anyone would think that there was going to be a white out and the supplies were going to be cut off for the next 4 months, lets face it we live in Britain not Greenland, after all if it got too cold to go out the good chaps at Ocado would pop round with the necessaries.

Phoebe pulling her little brother in "The Box"(last year)

 As disappointed as the children were that we were not up to our necks in the white stuff I can honestly say that I  was extremely happy that we "missed out". I think that the appeal of snow wears very thin after about 14 for girls and 35 for boys. Its true you can see that the girls of 14 are slipping and sliding their way to school in what look like ballet pumps just dreading falling over and embarrassing themselves in front of the boys, whereas the boys(up to 35) are like Labrador pups with their noses pushed against the window slathering at the opportunity to get out there and start throwing the stuff at each other. I passed an office the other day and although the snow was that crappy dry stuff that didn't hold together there was about 6 guys in suits having a snowball fight.....with the kids at the bus stop.It only ended when one of the guys slipped and fell really heavily and banged his bottom laying him out for quite a while, this didn't stop all the kids and some of his colleagues kicking snow all over him first though.

This kind of makes the point better than my words.

BBBBRRRRRrrrrrrrr!

 The above pic is from somewhere in america.....sorry ladies.(he BUFF!!)