Do you live in a small English town? If you do then you should really relate to this song. You might even know some of the people that feature in it...
READ MORE » Small town music night
Showing posts with label stereotypes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stereotypes. Show all posts
93 Men in a Boat (7) : The Front Seaters
Do you remember the good old days when you could never get a sun bed because the Germans had covered them all with towels?
Well, this practice is alive and well - only these days it's not Germans or sun beds we need to worry about!
There's always one, and of course this trip was no exception. So in my final piece on stereotypical tourists, I shall concentrate on the Front Seater.
In the interests of fairness, we always disembarked by deck number and these were rotated so everybody got a fair shake. But this system does not, of course, apply to the front seater. No matter who was called first, he was always at the front of the queue.
Whenever there was a show ashore, he was always there in the middle of the front row, standing up in front of your camera whenever you tried to take a photo so he could get his first.
Every meal time, there he was with his face pressed to the door waiting for dinner to be called so he could be the first in the dining room and get his favourite table.
Even when we flew home, there he was first on the plane and, of course, first off the other end.
But his finest hour came whenever there was a presentation in the ship's lounge. Then he would send his wife down half an hour before the talk to save him his centre front row seat.
And she was bloody daft enough to do it - what a mug!...
93 Men in a Boat (6) : The Old Gits
Those of you who are fans of Fawlty Towers will remember the golden rule "Don't mention the war!"
Unfortunately, when you are saddled with the old gits at meal time, mentioning it doesn't seem to be a requirement as war memoirs seem to be a pre-requisite.
And don't think that being too young to have experienced it will get you off the hook, because it won't. You need to be educated as to the sacrifices that were made on your behalf.
My man had his legs crushed in '39, you know. They've never been the same since. That's why he needs a stick to walk. Of course, this assures him of the front seat of the coach on all the outings - a coach to which he seems quite capable of running and using his stick to prod the rest of us out of the way!
And his is also the ony opinion that matters. This is why he keeps touching his wife on the arm to shut her up every time she tries to say something!
And another thing - it's no use trying to interrupt him because he's deaf and doesn't like wearing a hearing aid. So the traffic is definitely one way - unless of course is to do with something they want in which case the hearing improves dramatically.
Just remember how lucky you are to have retired so young and have your reply ready - "Yes, and the harder I worked, the luckier I got."
It's lost on them, of course, because they're not listening...
93 Men in a Boat (5) : The Know-it-all
"I'm glad we're going to Samoa rather than Tonga," said Mr Know-it-all to me one evening over dinner. "It's so much nicer."
"Really" I replied. "Have you been there before, then?"
"No" he answered.
"Well I've been to both before, so I think we will have to agree to differ on that one..."
Now anyone with half a brain might decide to shut up at the point or perhaps change the subject. But that's the point of course. Mr Know-it-all only has half a brain, so he's not going to be out off by facts!
"Pago Pago has one of the most dramatic harbour approaches in the world", he went on.
"Really? Well it's got some quite pretty hills either side but I wouldn't have said it was particularly special."
"Oh, no" he went on. "You're absolutely wrong on that one!"
"Well," I said, "as it's in U.S. Samoa I can only assume you read that in an American guide book?"
On another occasion, a couple more clever bastards were lecturing me about a boat called the 'Atoll Explorer' that sails around the Maldives. They've been on it twice and it is, of course, the only way to do the Maldives you know. Well, sorry guys but I've been there 7 times and it certainly isn't the only way - although it is one of the most expensive!
And then there are the snorkeling know-it-alls or 'Pratfish' as I call them. These are the ones who leap in the water, yell their heads off at each other, swim flat out at a full crawl whacking their fins on the surface of the water and then complain afterwards that they didn't see any fish. Well of course you didn't, you dopey sod! You scared them all away!
But my favourite type of pratfish is the 'Finless Pratfish'. In my humble opinion, anyone stupid enough to throw himself into open water in the Pacific Ocean without wearing fins has a serious death wish.
Several years ago, we were in the Seychelles and three of us went off the beach snorkeling. One of us had no fins. We hit a strong current and decided to go in - rapidly! Unfortunately, we hit an undertow and couldn't get in to the beach. It was a case of 2 feet forward and 3 feet back. And even worse, the one without fins was getting swept out even faster.
We linked arms and used our fins to work with the inward surges and managed to do 3 feet forward and two feet back. Slow progress, but at least it was progress and we lived to tell the tale, but without our fins, our friend would definitely have drowned.
I told a couple of finless pratfish this story. One listened, but the know-it-all didn't. I told him that if he decided to drown himself there was no way I was coming to help him.
Death by stupidity is a common but none-the-less terrible thing...
93 Men in a Boat (4) : The Champagne Socialist
As my regular reader will confirm, there's nothing I hate more in life than a bloody hypocrite - and the worst sort of hypocrite is the champagne socialist. You know. Bastards like Blair for example....
Anyway, I will not embarrass myself or you by telling you how much this latest trip cost us, but it does not take a genius to work out that 5 weeks in a boat cruising the South Pacific doesn't exactly come cheap! I don't think there were any poor people on board unless, of course, you count the crew and the expedition team.
While we were on a coach trip around Tahiti, we had an English guide who was married to one of the locals. At one point, she asked how things were going back home. One idiot immediately yelled out "We've got a bloody Tory government now that wants to put 490,000 of us out of work." My response was "That's about two million too few, chum."
Turns out that this paragon of the Socialist State works in local government, so might might ask how the fuck he can afford this trip in the first place on the back of the taxpayers' money?
But I digress...
One of our fellow passengers was injured in a fall on the bus. A sort while later, Mrs D was enquiring as to her well being, and commented that on a previous trip the boat seemed to have enough doctors on board to start up our own hospital. This was enough to prompt this twat to launch into a major rant about doctors' pay rates. "Well", she replied looking him straight in the eye. "There aren't any poor passengers on this trip either!"
This was like a red rag to a bull, and off he went again. "Some people can afford these things easier than others!"
Well, matey, this is what I suggest : The next time you are in agony and fearing for your life, after the operation just pay the surgeon half of what you were prepared to give him before he treated you.
But the piece de resistance in respect of this useless, two faced, hypocritical bastard is that his cabin was on the next deck up - so it cost even more than ours! What a prat!
93 Men in a Boat (3) : The Superior Bastard
I first came across this type in the last bastion of British colonialism, Barbados.There, the rich white Englishman feels free to exercise his undying belief that the slave trade is indeed alive and well and that he therefore has the God given white to abuse the wogs in any way he chooses. I hate these fuckers with passion!
Of course, when this type is cross pollinated with the miserable fucker (see previous post), then they really are something to behold...
The staff on our boat were extremely polite and exceptionally helpful and I really did feel unable to tolerate them taking abuse and not being in a position to answer back. Because of this, I feel honour bound to offer them my modest support and assistance whenever it becomes appropriate.
When this happens, Mrs D usually finds it necessary to retire either to our room or to the bar, depending on the circumstances and her mood at the time.
Unfortunately, on this occasion we were on an outing. The nasty little turd in question proceeded to attack one of the expedition crew for removing an empty cup before he had finished with it. Needless to say, he got both barrels from me on that one.
These people seem to suffer from a total and absolute lack of any obligation to display manners. I had the audacity to stand alongside one of these pigs one evening while a slide show was being displayed. Whilst minding my own business, he whacked me on the arm and yelled "Move! My wife can't see!"
Rather taken aback, I simply replied "And what's the magic word?" He glared at me and made no response, so assuming he was either deaf, stupid or both I inserted my face 6 inches from his nose and asked, rather loudly, "Did you mean to say would you mind moving aside please, you fucking ignorant ill mannered cunt?"
But the thing that always amuses me the most about the genus 'bastardus superiorii' is that I never seem to re-encounter these people in business class on the way home...
93 Men in a Boat (2) : The Miserable Fuckers
My old Dad used to have a saying : "Give some people your arse and shit through your ribs, and they still wouldn't be happy..."
I like to think of myself as a one of life's fairly happy types (No, really). But some poeple go through life with a face like a slapped arse. The sun is too fierce. It's raining, where's the sun? The music's too loud. I can't hear anything. You get the picture....
There was a woman on our ship who looked like she's just swallowed a pint of vinegar. Jesus, was she a miserable bastard! Never mind water into wine, she could turn wine into vinegar just by looking at it. We nicknamed her Morticia after the character in the Munsters because, unfortunatey for her, she had the same white streak in her black hair. The poison dwarf accompanying her we called Lurch. Neither of them ever smiled, but at least they kept to themselves...
When we got to Tahiti, we chucked a load of people off and got some fresh victims passengers. At dinner the first night, we were joined by an old biddy that we had sailed with once before. Christ, was she a miserable old bastard!
She got off to a flying start by telling me that she thought the captain on our previous trip - who had become a personal friend of ours - was fucking useless. Needless to say when I told her of our relationship and that I totally disagreed, that did nothing to put her off her stride.
Her next trick was to complain about the anchor noise in her forward cabin and insist on being moved to a different - and more expesive, of course - cabin. When this didn't swing it, she complained that her toilet was broken and that the bathroom smelt of piss. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember she had a similar problem on the previous trip? I told her exactly what I thought of her and, thankfully, she refused to talk to me after that.
But if you really want to see a bunch of miserable cunts, then go to Aitutaki for an hour's lagoon cruise in open boats followed by a beach barbeque - all in the middle of a relentless tropical downpour. That really sorts out the men from the boys...
93 Men in a Boat : (1) The Crashing Bore
As my regular reader will be aware, I have just spent the last last five weeks swanning across the Pacific from Easter Island to Fiji.I have done this in the presence of a microcosm of Society and thought I would like to share with you my insights into the interesting types I have been spending time with - or, to be honest, avoiding!
(Actually there were 94 of us in the boat - but who's counting?)
First, we had a few examples of that most fascinating of English and, indeed, Scottish stereotypes : "The Crashing Bore."
The first one buttonholed me whilst we were still in the airport at Santiago. He was a retired university administrator. He had two topics of conversation, namely work (from which he had retired 10 years previously), and railways. Frankly, I couldn't have given a flying fuck how re re-organised the university communications department, or how he used to administer his vehicle fleet, or how he built a model railway from scratch in his garden shed. I cared even less after the lecture was delivered for the fifth time!
Then there was the Scottish golf bore who wore a stupid hat, an even more stupid shirt and bore a striking resemblance to Cosmo Smallpiece. Oh, and he used to get pissed quite a lot as well. He droned on and on about how he marshaled the 17th at St Andrews in 1976, clearly the one 'interesting' thing he ever did in his tedious little life. People avoided studiously allowing him to sit with them at dinner. One afternoon, I watched in amazement as the person he was boring actually fell asleep! He failed to notice...
But the most outstanding examples were the Samoan genealogy bores. His wife would ramble endlessly on about how her husband's ancestor jumped ship in Samoa in order to shag the arse of a local dusky maiden and how they were staying on in Samoa to visit distant relatives. She told me this story twice having clearly forgotten that she had already told me once - and there was no stopping her. Then I had to listen to her telling someone else. And after we had all died of boredom? Well, she did it all again - with photographs! Dozens of them!
By the time we actually got to Samoa, I was already sick of the place!
But to all these people and their like, I would like to give just a few simple words of advice :
Get over yourself and get a life, because no-one gives a fuck...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
