Ten Reasons

Ten reasons to be thankful

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Last week I celebrated my first ever thanksgiving dinner, where a very good American friend, bought me and a whole bunch of other great people together to share the traditional thanksgiving feast. As a Brit I don’t necessarily understand thanksgiving but it felt great to be embraced by the tradition and taking a bit of time out to pause and relfect on things I’m thankful for didn’t seem a bad idea.

 

1. The milka chocolate advent calendar Tom bought for me for next week and the sparkly picture one that arrived in the post today from mum and dad. I was wondering if I had outgrown advent calendars (at 30 years of age, now is the time to ask myself that question) but clearly Tom and my parents know me better. Although I have never really been convinced by chocolate advent calendars (having once bought one of the really cheap ones) I like milka chocolate so am pretty excited about this one. Only question is can I actually just eat one chocolate a day or will I slice open the back, slide out all the advents in one go and then feign disappointment at every opened door where the ‘manufacturers have failed to put the chocolate in’?

2. Just how good the latest book I’m reading by David Mitchell (The Bone Clocks) is. I’m a big fan of the author and didn’t want to buy this book until I knew he had another coming out (so as not to run out of future works to read and feel the sadness of knowing there are no more works out there I can enjoy…), I would have been massively disappointed if it wasn’t as enjoyable as it currently is. However at some 600= pages it is running the risk of being one of those books I can’t put down and forget to clean, sleep or go to work until I’ve finished it.

3. The accidental discovery that Netflix UK is accessible on my laptop, which has a whole new world of time-wasting possibilities to enjoy (and is bound to come in handy when Christmas comes around and I actually have some time).

4. Slipper socks. These keep my feet cosy and warm on a much longer term basis than mere slippers alone. I live in a household that is very geared up to the felicity of it’s two primary residents: Jasper and Buttons, who happen to be cats. Us poor humans are forced to put up with constantly opening and closing the living room door and all the cold draftiness that entails just so that the hairy gods we are allowed to live with can come and go as they please. Slippers are good, but if you are a wriggly squirmy, feet up on chairs, feet down again-kind of person slippers that aren’t moulded to your leg have an irritating habit of getting lost under the sofa, migrating to different rooms and generally conspiring to keep my tootsies cold.

5. Life could always be worse. It could be that one day I wake up and just from one hour to the next a series of horrible, terrifying and complicated events start to emerge over the next 24 hours, where it turns out your friends are conspiring to kill you, your enemies are suddenly on your side and you are trying to navigate complicated relationships with family members. In an alternate universe I could be Jack Bauer so every day I wake up and don’t find myself thinking that this is going to be one of those days is something to be thankful for.

Screen Shot 2015-11-30 at 13.23.506. Reusable rubber duckie drink coolers that work like ice cubes, without diliting all that wonderful alcohol, to cool down my lovely white wine I forgot to put in the fridge.

7. Every day I manage to exist in this world without adding some sort of bruise, scratch, paper-cut, scrape, twisted limb, etc to my constantly evolving collection. Not feeling like the Queen of Clutzes or having to explain to colleagues that I really did walk into the door frame or slam the cupboard door into my forehead all of my own accord, without their suspecting I am a battered woman, usually amounts to a good day.

8. Tea. Enough said.

9. Sticky paper fly strips, electric fly swats, citronella candles, copious amounts of garlic, ninja cats and anything else that prevents annoying flying buggy things from getting in my face or trying to feast on my flesh.

10. The satisfaction on a Sunday evening/Monday morning at 12.37am when I finally finish a work project I’ve spent the last two weeks sacrificing sleep and sanity to work on.

 

 

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Ten reasons British people don’t make sense

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1. We will rarely tell you an outright no or explain we don’t want to do something. To do so would be considered impolite, so instead we might say ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’ or ‘we’ll see’. These are all British ways of saying ‘no’.

2. We will apologise for everything, even things that aren’t our fault like someone stepping on our foot. We will say ‘sorry’ but actually mean ‘die in hell you foot-stomping fiend!’

3. We have a deep-rooted superiority complex but it can be hard to tell because we spend so much time apologising for being British. We may be fiercely nationalistic but would never admit it, and if anyone does admit it the rest of us will assume that person is probably racist!

4. We get really upset by the idea that foreigners think British food is so terrible. We have great restaurants and culinary offerings in the UK. We introduced the world to sandwiches, pies, fish and chips and make awesome roast dinners. Not to mention deep-fried mars bars, actually we probably shouldn’t mention deep fried mars bars, I don’t think they help our image. Aside from these traditional offerings we have also some great culinary interpretations and fusions of other nations’ national dishes, the UK has some truly amazing restaurants. I will accept criticism from Italians (whose inventions make up about 80% of my regular diet) and the French (because they are so precious about food that although its hard to think of amazing French dishes off the top of your head, it’s probably not worth arguing about). I will not accept criticism from Americans (hamburgers, tasty but unvaried), Swiss (all national dishes are combinations of cheese and potatoes, again tasty but hardly inspiring) or any other European nation.

5. British people don’t like ‘z’s’ very much. I’d like to apologise to my American spellcheck for thinking I am misspelling ‘apologise’ by not using a ‘z’ but I won’t use a ‘z’ because my spellcheck is wrong and I’m right.

6. We pretend to be interested in things we aren’t. We may give the impression we are fascinated in your experiences at your model road sign club (no offence model road-signers) or on your latest pirate-spotting cruise off the coasts of Somalia. Our false enthusiasm my in fact be so convincing you could be forgiven for thinking we actually mean it and are not only interested but want to join the model road sign club or book our own pirate cruise. If we are genuine we will ask you point blank ‘can I join your road sign club?’ If we say, things like ‘wow, that sounds really interesting, how would I go about joining a model road-sign club?’, we don’t mean it. This is just politeness/a ruse to keep you talking so that we can zone out and think about more interesting things like the best way to create your own zombie make-up out of some toilet tissue and PVA glue.

7. We pretend to be interested in people we aren’t. For example we may meet someone briefly at a partner’s work event and they invite us to be their friend on Facebook, which we politely accept. They may send us the occasional message, we will politely respond to and this may provoke further conversation. They may suggest meeting for a coffee and we will reply ‘maybe’, meaning ‘no’. Mostly we are thinking, why is this person still talking to me? If I’d known they meant to establish a genuine connection I’d have pretended to have a seizure when they first asked me to pass the twiglets.

8. We aren’t great at expressing ourselves. The standard response to the question ‘how are you?’ will invariably be ‘I’m fine’. It will be the same reply if we happen to be on fire whilst fighting off a zombie hoard and suffering from a cold, which may or may not be the first symptom of something turning us into a flesh-eating virus. Similarly you’d get the same response if we have just opened the door to discover the entire apartment is filled with free chocolate and cash.

9. We aren’t great at small talk and have a tendency to talk about the weather far more than can ever be necessary. We say banal things like ‘it’s a bit grey outside’, which anyone with eyes has probably already noticed. It’s about as interesting and as easy to initiate a conversation as saying ‘I have a nose attached to my face’.

10. We are still rather attached to the archaic idea of our Monarchy, even if we are a bit embarrassed about this and can’t provide any logical reasons whatsoever as to why we should still have, and continue to encourage former colonies to have, a Queen. She does have a lovely sparkly crown though. Shiny.

 

Ten reasons to give up and go back to bed

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1. Your cat decided that she would prefer to do her business in the shower than in the cat litter box and consequently you are forced to clean cat poop out of the bath before you have even properly woken up.

2. You drop the razor in the recently cleaned shower and although it doesn’t actually do you any damage it scares the bejebus out of you and shakes you up for the rest of the day wondering how long it would be before your cat discovered you naked in the shower and bleeding from inexplicable razor wounds to the knees and ankles. You would hope your cat would not have returned to do her business once again.

3. You tried to get dressed for work opting for the nice skirt suit you had laid out the night before but, after putting on not one, not two but three pairs of tights that either already had holes or quickly gained some, you concede defeat and wear trousers.

4. Cycling to work, one of your comfortable shoes, that you specifically chose for being easy to ride in, falls off in the middle of the road and your pedal then viciously attacks the back of your ankle and makes it bleed.

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5. On arriving at work you remember that the document you have been furiously working on and took home to work on the previous night, remains lodged in the memory stick… at the back of the laptop…on your desk… at home.

6. You go to make a cup of tea at work and are upset that of the ten boxes of tea in the cupboard, these all turn out to be various herbal offerings including fennel and chamomile but all you want is just a normal cup of tea. You are forced to settle for an unsatisfactory green tea.

7. You manage to knock your unsatisfactory cup of green tea and it spills all over your phone, you are forced to spend some ten minutes frantically drying the device on your scarf as the nearest thing to hand and praying to the gods of technology that the essential device will survive the experience.

8. Your scarf, which was white, is now covered in unsatisfactory green tea and it’s cold in the office and you want to wear it rather than leaving it to soak in the work bathroom’s sink.

9. You realise you absolutely do not have time to attend the interesting work-related but not wholly essential meeting taking place that afternoon that you have been looking forward to for a week.

10. You heat up your homemade leftover-for-a-while soup at lunch to discover that contrary to previously held beliefs, yes, vegetable soup can go off after a week and taste very very bad. You try to eat it anyway.

Ten reasons to tidy the house

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1. Your parents are arriving soon and you would like to convince them that you are now mature enough to live in a clean and tidy house and that you have moved on from your messy teenage clothes-discarding, teacup mould-growing, chocolate-wrapper-strewing ways.

2. When you remember that you have wooden floors and the soft squishy ‘carpet’ you have been enjoying is, in fact, moulted cat hair.

3. You politely allowed an ant or two to pop in and make their acquaintance but now they have overstayed their welcome and rudely invited all their friends. It’s time for that colony to take the hint and leave already.

4. You are constantly late for work because it takes you at least an hour every morning to locate the second shoe that seems to have been subsumed into the general disarray (like a stapler dropped into a dish of jelly).

5. The laundry that you did and dried and then put in a pile to put away later, but later became too late once the cats decided to nest in your freshly laundered undies and now everything is covered in cat hair once again and you have to start the whole process from the beginning.

6. You remember that at the age of 30 you are supposed to at least be able to pretend to be a grown up and grown ups are supposed to be able to remember to tidy on a regular basis. You don’t want to be the one to dispel that particular delusion.

7. You have run out of clean plates and cutlery and are now eating your pasta straight from the saucepan with a wooden spoon. Soon you will run out of clean saucepans and wooden spoons.

8. Whilst there are undoubted benefits to practicing your contortionist, gymnastic skills as you navigate your abode, pirouetting around a trainer here and a box of recycling there, you shouldn’t have mistaken this for actual exercise.

9. You have run out of money from constantly replacing items (such as bike lights, batteries, matching shoes) you considered lost forever in the general melee.

10. You recall that your apartment was once a spacious cavern of roominess with room for swinging as many proverbial cats as you liked, but now resembles a squalid den of teeny-tininess and even the cats can touch both sides of the room from a sitting position.

Ten reasons to be a secret exercise fanatic

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1. If you exercise in the morning, even if you only spend 30 seconds attempting to do five push-ups, you get to feel really smug that not only did you manage to get out of bed 30 seconds earlier than you absolutely had to, but you can assume most other people around you haven’t done this. Don’t talk to anyone about it though or it might turn out they are secret exercise junkies too and will pop your endorphin fuelled ego as effectively as scissors taken to a balloon.

2. Getting sweaty and being gross is sort of pleasurable in instances where you can legitimately acknowledge and enjoy the feeling. Going outside with greasy hair that hasn’t been washed for a week is frowned upon, whereas untying a post-jog sweat-soaked ponytail to find the hairstyle stays up all of it’s own accord is a badge of honour!

3. Wearing comfortable clothes. If I were to go to the shops in a scrotty t-shirt covered in paint from three house moves ago and in muddy sweatpants with a hole in the knee I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the face, but going out in this super comfortable, if wholly unattractive, gear is positively encouraged if you are exercising.

4. You can surprise people. You can be sat in the bar after book club, tucking into your third pint, and casually come out with ‘I’m a runner’ and then sit back and enjoy watching people try to disguise their slightly offensive surprise face (only works if you don’t have the average physique of an athlete).

5. Being a secret exercise fanatic is a bit like being a member of an exclusive cult (you know, not the kind where they let anyone with a fetish for duck themed hat wear in but the fancy kind you’re not really sure if it actually exists or not). When you come across another closet workout enthusiast and discover each other’s secret you will share a bond for life, which will only be ruined if you actually discuss mutual physical activity and discover one of you is far superior to the other. Better to just find out you both like exercise and occasionally throw out a quick ‘go for a run today?’ and give each other a sly nod in passing.

secret exercise nod - bp image6. Running isn’t easy, there are times when I huff and puff and wish the world would end after less than 30 seconds of actual movement, but it does get a bit better over time. It is satisfying to know that the me of today could run rings round the me of six months ago. Although actually that might still make today me pretty dizzy, but I could beat six-months ago me in a race. Probably.

7. No pain no gain. I wouldn’t advocate properly overdoing it and crippling yourself for the next week or so but there is something rather pleasant about being able to feel a gentle ache across muscles irregularly used the day after exercising.

8. Some people will try to tell you exercise is good for your health, will make you lose weight, live longer blah-de-blah, but this is all irrelevant nonsense to the simple truth that exercise only exists to remove junk-food fuelled guilt! I like to think of exercise as balancing out those terrible unhealthy life choices I stubbornly plan to give up (I’m sorry but chocolate just tastes too good!). Think of half an hour’s run as carte blanche to eat an entire family sized bag of crisps and/or a tub of ben and jerry’s ice cream and ignore anyone who tries to tell you otherwise

9. Novel ways to hurt yourself. If you are a bit of a clutz like me, you will often find yourself covered in bruises or with twisted limbs for no particular reason, this is both painful and quite frustrating. But if, whilst running, you twist an ankle tripping over a tree root, fall over trying to dodge a dog or scalp your knees careering into the tarmac of a busy  carriageway you will most likely remember the cause of your injury much more vividly. It will also be a lot easier to simply explain ‘I hurt myself exercising’ than bringing up any of the more embarrassing details.

10. If you are good at one particular exercise you can feel superior to anyone else that isn’t as good as you at that particular thing. I joined the rowing club at university and was taught how to use rowing machines properly. Every single time I go to the gym I check out other people’s rowing form and if they don’t know how to do it properly I feel infinitely superior. This feeling of superiority remains undaunted even if said individual is simultaneously half the size of me and yet capable of lifting weights twice the size of me. Whatever. I can still row better than they can.

Ten reasons to hate the sunshine

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1. Mosquitoes

Little flying biting bastards that love the taste of my sweet sweet blood. On the plus side if you take me with you on nice days out in the sunshine I will act as a mosquito magnet and draw them away from everyone else. You’re welcome.

2. Too much flesh

I get it, it’s hot, you want to feel the pleasure of the sun on your bare skin but could you possibly save this for the privacy of your own garden or confine yourself to a beach area where others can at least prepare themselves for this? What I don’t really want is to encounter masses of exposed flab, lobstering itself up to perfection, when I’ve just popped out to buy a bit of milk.

3. Skimpy outfits

It’s too hot to wear your normal wardrobe staples, but the heat always comes when you aren’t expecting it. You might have been meaning to buy a decent pair of shorts for years, as opposed to those ridiculously skimpy cut-offs you made out of an old pair of jeans ten years ago, but you are caught out and have no choice but to parade yourself in your silly outfit and open yourself up to the ridicule of others. By the time you are geared up for a summer shopping trip the heatwave is usually over.

4. Dieting/not-dieting

By the time you want to put on your skimpy summer clothes and bare that flesh you’ve realised that those ice creams that go hand-in-hand with the hot weather really aren’t doing you any favours. It’s also this time you realise that your plan to slim down for summer might be a bit behind schedule. You plan to eat salads to remedy the problem but end up filling up on tortilla chips and hot dogs at BBQs instead.

5. Sweat

Perhaps you did manage to buy some nice summer clothing, maybe you even managed to slim down so that your figure is nicely displayed in a little summer dress, but you haven’t factored on sweat. The make-up you apply before leaving the house usually melts off your face before you can make it to the bus stop and the carefully blow-dried hair has gone from swish-quiff to sweat-drenched-flop in less time than it takes to say ‘I should have worn a hat’.

6. Eczema

Just in case I didn’t look pretty enough with little mozzie bites covering all parts of exposed flesh my eczema likes to join in the skintastic party and happily applies itself to all bodily joints. This is very convenient as it is easy to hide if I curl up in a foetal position. It is less convenient if I try to do anything silly…like…moving.

melting chocolate - bp image7. Chocolate loses it’s magical powers

Normally chocolate provides the solution to everything, it can pick you up when you are flagging at work, it can cheer you up after a bad day and it can even help you bond with intimidating workmates. But in the summer chocolate doesn’t get to melt in your mouth because it has normally melted all over your hands, work, home and cat long before this.

8. Working

Having to work when the weather is nice should be criminal. You want to join the other sun seekers and parade around in tiny shorts and crop tops like everyone else but instead you are forced to put on grown up clothes and look longingly out of the office window from Monday to Friday, knowing full well there is a good chance the nice weather will have buggered off come the weekend.

9. Sunburn

We all like to amuse ourselves sniggering at foolish tourists caught out in the sun and happily wandering around seemingly oblivious to the fact they have turned a beautiful shade of race-car red. Some of us are pretty good at applying suntan lotion but might miss a spot or forget to reapply after a couple of hours and are unfairly punished with burnt tomato skin. And then laughed at by others. This just isn’t fair.

10. Judgement for drinking tea

Tea maintains its potency as remedy for all the world’s ills and general pick-me-up even in the heat but when the sun is blazing you are forced to respond to so many comments about why you are drinking tea on a hot day it’s enough to make you want to hurl your cup of boiling water at these naysayers as you try to convince people that tea is still bloody amazing, whatever the weather!

Ten reasons to love weddings

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1. The groom’s expression when he first spots his bride. I haven’t been disappointed with any of these yet. So grooms if you think no-one is watching you when the bride marches in then think again! On the plus side if your tongue hangs out, you make an eyes wide and circular mouthed ‘ooo’ response or just produce the sappiest grin you never knew you could make, those of us watching you will think it’s rather endearing. If you roll your eyes at your bride’s firework tiara or zombie make-up then maybe rethink whether or not this is the woman for you before you commit yourself with the vows.

2. Everyone is so happy. Or at least at the weddings I’ve been at. I’ve yet to attend one where the bride’s divorced mother and father try to set each other alight with romantic candles or the best man punches the second usher who happens to be the brides brother-in-law after some inappropriate remark, but I’m sure these things must happen.

3. That moment of suspense when the vicar or registrar or whoever asks whether anyone has any objections. Although I know this is unlikely and recognize it really would spoil the wedding I can’t help but eagerly squirm around in my chair to see if anyone is feeling objectionable or hope that the groom’s pre-existing but previously unknown wife comes bursting through the door or something.

4. The wedding dress. I’m sure some brides wear terrible outfits for their own wedding, but on the whole the bride tends to look the loveliest you have ever seen her before. Truly worthy of the ‘ooo’ face the groom is making at the other end of the aisle.

5. Wedding outfits of everyone else. Generally men all look rather dapper in a suit but there is a whole range of options for female guests, members of the bridal party etc that are a feast for the eyes and a source of much amusement as you bravely voice loud approval of the bride’s mums outfit or silently whisper to a friend your condemnation of something another guest is wearing.

6. The ceremony. I like every part of this, I like thinking about why the couple have chosen the readings they have and why certain people have been asked to say certain things. I like hearing the vows and noting the way the couple support each other as they do this. I like heartily agreeing, with the rest of the guests, that we’ll help support the newlyweds in their marriage and really meaning this. I like feeling the love.

7. The free food and drink. Given my passion for eating and drinking you’d think me remiss if I failed to put this in my top ten. Obviously it’s not the best thing about a wedding (if it is that doesn’t say a whole lot about the special day) and I’d still want to go even if I had to pay for all my own beverages and refreshment but I like the drinks on the arrival, the wine at the table and a nice meal shared with happy people whom you may or may not know.

8. The singing. Not always a component of every wedding, tends not to feature so much in civil ceremonies but I do love the opportunity to belt out a song in unison with others, which I tend to otherwise only get the opportunity once a year with Christmas Carols. So long as everyone is singing loudly it really doesn’t matter if you can’t actually sing or not, it’s just fun to all do it together.

9. The dancing. The little ones running around in circles or playing hide and seek behind their mums, the dads breaking out the dance moves, the increasingly drunk guests bouncing around and pretending drunken stumbles were part of the moves they were trying to pull off.

10. Speeches. These are best enjoyed if I’m not giving them. Even if speeches are awful it’s fun to dissect them afterwards and talk about just how awful they were. The Best Man definitely has the hardest job in trying to be amusing without upsetting anyone, remembering to acknowledge the bride and resisting the urge to go too much into a bromance ode of love to the groom, a bit of emotion is nice, wailing throughout the duration so that no-one can hear what you are saying isn’t fun for anyone. Tough gig.

 

Ten reasons you aren’t as civilised as you pretend

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1. In company you will carefully scrape off the yoghurt stuck to the lid with a spoon, at home you’ll just lick it off.

2. You tell people you joined a martial arts class because you like to try interesting things and wanted to meet new people, but really you just like having an excuse to hit other people without getting in trouble.

3. You pretend you watch Eurovision because you are an ironic spectator of a regional mass-entertainment event, actually you just love the cheesy tunes, over the top outfits and ridiculous antics of the competitors.

4. You get ridiculously excited about free stuff, you have no qualms about accepting giveaways, you gleefully take free pencils and paper rulers from IKEA and you shamelessly eat other people’s leftovers (when offered to you, you wouldn’t go as far as steal people’s lunches from the fridge or raid their trash or anything).

5. When someone takes two of the four sandwich squares you’d carefully saved for lunch, from an event you worked at until 9pm the day before, and you then discover that of the two remaining sandwiches one has a big dead fly in it, rather than expressing disgust at the dead insect and throwing the offending article away, you express disgust and then quietly flick the fly away, along with the piece of aubergine it had met its demise on, and then continue to eat both sandwiches. You may tell yourself you’d have been pickier if your lunch hadn’t already been halved for you by some unscrupulous sandwich thief, but you doubt it.

6. You would never dream of leaving your apartment in jogging bottoms (unless actually exercising) but would happily spend an entire day inside the flat in the same pyjamas you sleep in.

7. You really can’t tell the difference between Champagne, Prosecco, Cava or any other variety of sparling wine. If it’s alcoholic with bubbles, then you are happily going to drink it.

8. You can only tell the difference between a fake and a genuine Louis Vuitton bag by location. You assume if someone is sporting an LV bag in Geneva it’s genuine, in Greenwich it’s fake.

9. You would never dream of expressing obscenities directed at a stranger in face to face scenarios, but from the safety of a car (or a bike helmet with visor), when no one can hear to judge, you will unfailingly shout all sorts of rude words at the twat who just cut you up.

10. You wouldn’t belch or bottom-parp in a meeting but yet have no trepidations in letting rip in front of your fiancé or friends and then giggling like a child afterwards whilst trying to blame the outburst on the cat.

Ten reasons to watch Eurovision

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For those of you souls unlucky enough to not know what Eurovision is, it’s an annual event where European nations, more or less, commit to send some people who have at least a vague understanding of what a tambourine is to put themselves forward as the musical representatives for their country, other countries then vote for their friends or whichever act they find the most amusing and a Eurovision champion is born…

1. It’s great for geography, not only will you get to learn the names of all the European capitals you’ll also discover lesser known facts, like Australia is in fact in Europe (well they are performing in a contest for European countries so it must be true).

2. It’s a great way to learn about international (well European+) political affairs. You’ll learn which countries are afraid of retribution if they don’t vote for another nation (just you watch all those former soviet-bloc countries break away from old alliances…), which countries like each other (close neighbours, like the Scandinavians, often stick together) and who the least popular countries in Europe are (UK is definitely up there in the ‘other-European-nations-really-don’t-like-you’ stakes).

3. Unlike some more acoustically sophisticated types of music you don’t need to have any musical skills, appreciation or understanding to enjoy (or even represent your country at) Eurovision, in fact the more tone-deaf you are the more you will probably like this.

4. If you are an alcoholic it’s a judgement free way to enjoy your favourite beverage, no-one in their right minds would ever expect you to watch Eurovision sober!

5. As Avenue Q so famously put it ‘everyone’s a little bit racist’…indulge your inner xenophobia in an annually encouraged event by ridiculing, mocking and then bemoaning the intolerable success of that nation you just love to hate (come on you Swiss and English, let’s not pretend we aren’t eager to see France in an epic fail).

6. If you love ridiculously bad poppy music you can scream enthusiastically at this terrible genre without anyone suspecting you aren’t being ironic and that you actually like the music.

7. You can learn the art of maintaining the perfect composure appropriate to the kind of social occasion where they can only be one winner (Oscar nominees take note) by noting the behaviour of the acts that continuously receive ‘nil points’ from every other nation. Note how that happy gleaming grin distracts you from the fact they are now dead behind the eyes.

8. If you don’t actually have any friends, family or interests and wonder what to do with yourself at evenings or weekends, you can kill not just one entire evening watching hours and hours of this seemingly never-ending competition but they even have semi-finals and often competitions to select a country’s acts too. That could account for at least four out of 365 evenings in the year.

9. You can learn about European+ regional economics. Note how some countries deliberately field an atrocious act (but in the ‘wholly-bad’, think Kate Bush, not ‘so-bad-it’s-good’, think Spice Girls, way) to avoid winning the competition and being rewarded with the financially black-hole-inducing prize of having to host the competition next year (Greece’s entry, or Ireland entering Jedward yet again, should give you an idea of what I mean).

10. It’s an annual excuse to get together and throw a little party, bring people together, throw in a little babycham and a peanut or two and use your human guests as a shield to hide the shameful fact that, secretly, you really love this yearly event, even though you know you shouldn’t. Tears of emotion flowing down your face as you are moved by a man continually spinning in a giant hamster wheel can easily be disguised as tears of laugher.

Ten reasons to vote

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1. You only get a chance to vote in the national elections every few years so might as well as not. Imagine if something amazing happened at your local polling station, like one of the counting officers did magic tricks and you weren’t there to see. You’d feel like a right chump!

2. It’s a chance to vote out/vote in again* the government you loathe/love* (*delete as appropriate). If you don’t vote then you can’t later whinge with legitimacy about how the government you voted in have let you down or how everything would be champagne and roses if the other lot, that you voted for but didn’t get in, had won.

3. You won’t be able to keep up with workplace banter round the kettle about who’s waltzing into the lead or tripping the light fantastic if you don’t plan to vote. It’d be like trying to keep up with Strictly Come Dancing conversations when you don’t know any of the finalists, except everyone will be paying attention to this political dance show.

4. Even if you think everyone standing is a right bunch of numpties (and everyone knows only egotistical lunatics want to be in politics) and you’d rather be ‘governed’ by a wet tea towel, which at least used to have a purpose in life, it’s better to go and deliberately spoil your vote (scratch through all names and write none of the above) than just not bother. Better to be counted as a pissed off voter than apathetic unengaged person who doesn’t care one way or the other.

5. If you can’t be bothered and don’t vote then you run the risk of those militant crazy types full of misplaced political fervour and zeal voting for the random ‘everyone must wear purple every other day’ parties and before you know it you are having to buy a whole new violet wardrobe and trying to remember if it’s a purple day or not.

6. Apparently there are some areas where who you vote for makes a difference. I’m not 100% sure how this works, having always lived I’m safe seats, but I think there’s a chance that your vote might actually change the party representing you, which must make the whole thing much more exciting.

7. If you live somewhere where it’s pretty much a given who will be your next politician it’s still good to vote to either let that politician know how much everyone likes them or to let one of the little guys (with snowball’s chance in hell kind of odds of winning) feel like someone liked them. It’s like taking the time to cheer for a support band at a concert when no-one else is paying attention them just waiting for the main act. Giving someone a bit of validation is a nice thing to do. 

8. It is possible that some politicians actually do care more about the possible people they will represent than the thought of wielding metaphorical swords of power, so it doesn’t hurt to skim the literature they send through (or whatever the modern day online equivalent is) and pick your champion.

9. It’s good to remember that there was a time when all women and most men couldn’t vote and that actually people worked pretty hard to change that, some of them even died (Emily Davison threw herself under the King’s horse to raise awareness of the fact women in the UK couldn’t vote; and, to make men feel less threatened by the prospect of women voters, she even took herself off the prospective voters list). These people would probably be pretty peeved if the right to vote they worked so hard for, no-one actually bothers to use.

10. The topic of politics might sound dull but who governs the country isn’ t just about old men droning on and on for hours on a dedicated channel no-one wants to watch. I mean that does happen but the things they drone on about impacts a lot of other things, like the kind of education your kids get, whether or not your streetlights stay on, if you have to pay for healthcare or not, whether wearing purple can ever be made mandatory and so on.