It's rare these days that friends actually divulge such stories, and if they do, it's usually preceded with, 'don't you dare use this in your blog!'
It's usually Teddy who unwittingly walks head-first into blooper-ville, then he'll turn, frown his beautiful frown and warn, 'no mum' as I surreptitiously reach for pen and paper.
Who, me?! As if I would Teddy, I reply, indignant (and pretend to write a shopping list).
Why, it was just last week that I promised I wouldn't write about him trying to use his little brother's bucket and spade to make 'water castles' on the beach in Dubai and I swore I wouldn't re-tell his struggle to adjust a sunbed.
Teddy: "Mum, how do I make the back go down a bit on my sunbed?"
Me: "Just pull your arms up and then lean back."
So he did. (cue smiley face with a raised eyebrow and a slight incline at the corner of the mouth)
(Sorry if you're a newcomer to withdewrespect, you're expected to work out the endings to some tales yourself and reading between the lines is a must.)
And, back to Teddy, it's absolutely not even worth mentioning what he said as he bobbed around in the swimming pool, buoyed up by the jet of warm water from the pool's temperature control system.
"Look mum, I'm defining gravity."
The thing is, I can justify using the words and actions of my nearest and dearest as blog-fodder as I'm only too happy to wag the finger of parody at my own bloopers and let's face it, moments when quite honestly I'm a right dingbat, an embarrassment to myself, my family and the human race in general.
I recall, for example, one of my first college lectures when I was doing my Degree as a mature student and keen to be cool and be down with fellow freshmen nearly ten years my junior.
We were in a small room, seated side-by-side in an intimate horseshoe shape with the literature lecturer facing us reading out the register to check our attendance. I was full of cold.
"Beckton?"....I just managed to confirm my presence with my bunged up tones when it happened.......'ha, ha, ha, ha.......ha, chew!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'
There was no time to pull a soggy tissue from up my sleeve or even raise the lecture notes to take the force of the blow.
A marble-sized globule of dark green phlegm shot out of my nose.
Thankfully, as a long-term cold-sufferer, my hand-nose coordination is fairly good so I managed to catch aforementioned matter and clutch it in my fist for duration of the class.
Uncomfortable you may think. Well, yes. But the discomfort of a fistful of snot is nothing compared to the fact that the young student dude sat next to me had witnessed the whole thing. AND, my humiliation doesn't even end there. I caught his eye as he saw me catch the sneeze and I then heard him practically choke to death on a suppressed guffaw as the lecturer paused, then continued with the next name on the register.
"Greening?"
I swear it's a true story, well you wouldn't make it up would you!? Ooo, I've kept that story a secret for a long time, I feel its telling was a very cathartic experience for me......or do I mean catarrh-tic?
Anyway, back to Dubai. Like a Center Parcs holiday many moons ago, I return from the UAE with very little blog fodder. Disappointing.
What can you say about Dubai that everyone hasn't already seen a programme on! Here are the things that stuck in my mind about Dubai, in no particular order:
- It's man-made
- It's hot
- It's big and there are lots of sky-scrapers, lots and lots of them
- It has the world's tallest sky-scraper (and, as and when Japan build a bigger one, Dubai will no doubt stick another floor on top of the Burj Khalifa, simples)
- It's man-made (did I mention that already?)
- Not many of the people who live in Dubai are actually from Dubai, or indeed the UAE
- It's made out of concrete (which has been made by man and machine)
- I'm bored of this list now
- Very rich people live there, in the concrete, and drive around in fancy cars, on roads made out of concrete
- The concrete is made by men who look really unhappy as they sit hunched on the cronky old buses which ferry them into Dubai at the crack of dawn and then ferry them back to their homes in the sandy suburbs late in the evening, looking equally unhappy and very tired - I could go on about the many, many instances of inequality in Dubai but I won't
- Why do people on aeroplanes stand as soon as the plane has finished taxi'ing and then stand for the next 20 minutes with their heads at a jaunty (and surely uncomfortable) angle and one ear pressed up against the light switch and air blower panel? Answers on a postcard.
