Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Intimations of Mortality

Sometimes when they get a lot of advertising in and they have to fill up a corresponding amount of editorial space, the glossy women´s mags like nothing better than to torment their readers with such intimations of mortality as "20 (or 50, or 100, depending on how many pull-out gatefolds Lancome want that month) Things You Should Do Before You´re 35".

(Usually I haven´t done more than three or four of them, ensuring a depressingly regular confirmation of my suspicions that I am a complete and utter loser, unworthy of the air that I breathe and the space that I take up on this earth.)

However, should I ever be called upon to compile such a list (perhaps when I finally get offered that lifestyle columnist job on the Sunday Times), I´ll make sure that the number one thing is "Sip Cuba libres on the lantern-illuminated deck of a weather-beaten yacht in the midst of a Venezuelan thunderstorm."

See, that was meant to sound romantic - because it was amazing, the strange yellow light, rolling thunder, sheet lightning illuminating the jungle-covered mountains in the distance, tropical downpour, Moroccan lantern swaying in the eerie wind etc. - but actually it just sounds really, really bourgeois. I think you´ll be stuck with Kate Muir for quite some time yet.

The Alexandria Quartet is really good, though. I urge one and all to purchase and read a copy immediately.

5 comments:

cello said...

You're obviously having a marvellous time. But beware of romantic weather-beaten yachts -especially in Venezuela and when drunk.

In the days when I had a glamorous lifestyle, we used to hire a yacht in Cannes each year for the advertising festival, on which to entertain clients. We got to sleep on the yacht, which is not as romantic as it sounds. I had to keep my big pants in a shoebox and we all had to employ some strange grinder thing to deal with our poo.

Late one evening, we were all inside the yacht, playing games probably, though not a Biddy. The clients weren't clever enough for that. We had all drunk rather a lot of Pinot Noir and imbibed other medicinal substances. Suddenly, the most dreadful thunderstorm broke; huge crashes and blinding flashes. We were moored out to sea and we were all terrified, so I ran hysterically to wake up the captain, to get him to take us back to port and our safe mooring.

It was only the bloody end of festival firework display.

cello said...

Please tell me you weren't doing.......a Michael Winner impersonation?

cello said...

Yes, I was thinking that. I guess they really have decided to make her a goddess, due to her exotic blonde hair and mysterious babbling about Nick Cave and Nathan Barley. She'll be really angry though, seeing as how she won't be able to be a cyberbabe any more.

Anonymous said...

fine use of the expletive blimus
more power to you vicar

patroclus said...

Hello Buttock. Should I know you, or do you all talk like that in the greater Aldershot 'n' Guildford area?