Muzak

For someone who doesn’t particularly like shopping, I’ve always been able to put up with Lidl. The main reason for this is that they are ideally suited to bloke shopping – stock one of everything in a compact environment and arrange it in the no-nonsense style of “stuff-till-door”. I’m happy with that. The stock may change to take account of seasonal tastes but it is quite possible to fly in with a list, pick up all the essentials which will be in exactly the same place as last week, throw them past the checkout assistant at 90 mph (which is handy as that is the speed that the checkout works in a German supermarket) then head for the door like a demented whippet. If they don’t have any particular item in there is always the CO-OP across the road (and in fairness, they do much better coffee).

This arrangement of not-being-that-arsed-with-shopping has worked quite happily for me for a number of years. However, a few months back I found myself particularly irritated with Lidl. Initially, I thought this was because they were out of fish fingers and this would lead to the miserable task of trying to force feed the kids something healthy on Friday night. However, there were a few other things that were ticking me off: misplaced stock items, a lack of AA batteries, an empty box in the way of the fresh veg and so on. It wasn’t just me either. I could see the old Polish bloke grumbling about the sausages and someone was hacked off because the 4-ply bog roll wasn’t on offer that week. It then occurred to me what the cause of this general malcontent was: someone had chosen to put piped music into the otherwise pristine bloke-shop environment.

The big problem with this piped music was that it wasn’t even proper music. It was “sort-of” Jazz but not Jazz as I would typically enjoy. It was royalty free Jazz of the type that used to be played over the BBC test card. On enquiring further, I discovered that they also had royalty free rock, royalty free pop and royalty free ambient stuff (I think the proper term is “New Age” and it’s that thing they play in hippy alternative treatment quackeries). What made all this worse is that it was played very quietly so mere snippets of this annoyance drifted in and out of auditability with the simple aim disrupting one’s thought processes.

I don’t often contact businesses but I did feel compelled to contact Lidl about this affront to my auditory system. They said they were trying this out in a few shops (why in the name of God did they pick on Falkirk?) and were monitoring feedback. Now I can’t for the life of me think that anyone would have contacted them and told them what a singular improvement to their life this had made – I can only imagine that they would have received similar feedback to myself and other sonically offended individuals. However, after a few weeks this irritation seemed to disappear. Hooray! They do listen to people. Unfortunately, I was back in again yesterday and the music was back – possibly worse than ever and I was reliably informed by the disgruntled lad on the checkout that this cacophony of shite was also played in the staff room: that’s almost as bad as the poor guy in my brother-in-law’s local Sainsbury who was inflicted to the Christmas loop for the whole of last December (and much of November as well). Surely that comes under cruel and unusual punishments – is that even legal under health and safety legislation?

So I’m not sure what to do about Lidl and their bloody awful piped music. I think they may be trying to tell me something: shop at Aldi instead.

Still Not Dead

I’ve been feeling rotten over the last week. I ended up having to take the day off work on  Friday as I didn’t have the strength to get out of bed. It’s the first time I’ve had to take a day off work for about 10 years. The last time was when I was suffering from influenza: as in the nasty viral disease that lands you in hospital rather than the bad case of the sniffles that most people call the flu.

I’ve put my absence down as “flu-like symptoms” rather than that dreadful phrase “a touch of the flu” although it does appear to have affected my lungs as well. It’s certainly not as bad as 10 years ago when I ended up being treated at the hospital but it’s certainly more serious than the notorious “man-flu”, the combination of blocked nose, headache and grumpiness that affects us poor wee flowers more than women (the female equivalent being bird-flu).

I’m actually wondering if what I’ve been suffering from could have been preventable as I wasn’t given a seasonal flu jab this year. For the last few years I’ve received this via my employer as I was regarded as an essential health worker (at least in terms of supporting health systems). Apparently, I’m now expendable. However, this did make me wonder whether the current stretching of A&E services could be prevented with more effective vaccination programmes. Given the current problems with funding it seems less fashionable to provide a health service than a sickness service.

I think the reason that all this has been weighing on my mind is that as of this Sunday I have actually managed to live longer than my father achieved. As he died from a relatively rare disorder (motor neuron disease) rather than anything known to be hereditary I shouldn’t really have been that bothered. However, as he went from someone active and still taking part in competitive sport to death in under 18 months it does somewhat put things into perspective. At least I can report that as of today, I’m still not dead.

The Offenserati

You know it’s been a long, hard, slogging start to the new year when the biggest pleasure of the week is discovering a new word. It can’t be any old word, though. It has to be a word for which the definition has been desperately searching for a succinct, descriptive term which has apparently not existed. One that has been bugging me for a while was put to me by a colleague who wanted a word to describe those who actively seek out and seemingly take pleasure in being offended by something. I racked my brain but I really couldn’t think of one: “Daily Mail reader” seemed to fit the bill but that is merely a subset of a much wider group that includes the self-righteous, unreasoningly witless and dim-wittedly cretinous. However, I came across a phase, in fact a collective noun, to describe the kind of baying mob that seems to descend in this age of Twitter, Facebook, Mumsnet and the BBC’s “Have Your Say” comments section. Those people are the offenserati.

I’ve tried to trace this phrase back and I can find a few references 5 years ago amongst Australian comedians. I’m assuming that they needed such a phrase since Australians do seem to have a habit of pressing the buttons of those who are likely to become incandescent with rage at the merest slight. To be honest, it’s one of the reasons I like Australian comics and their brash, politically incorrect, often scatological and usual dark humour is only really surpassed by New Zealand’s comedians whose sole raison d'être appears to be to take the piss out of Australians. Whatever the origin, the offenserati have probably been around for years, long before the advent of antipodean satirists, but they do appear to be a worryingly growing phenomenon.

That’s not to say that there are not things out there which will cause offense. Most people are quite capable of avoiding those things that they find offensive and I have sympathy with those that are exposed to offensive material against their will. The interesting thing with the offenserati is that they will actively seek out things to be offended by whether this is responding to chain emails, social media campaigns, clicking on internet links that are quite explicitly not for the fainthearted or by reading the Daily Mail which is a magnet for the offenserati and their faux outrage. It does lead to the question of what they actually get out of it. I suppose it gives them something to do.

So now I’m happy that I have a new word: offenserati. The only thing that worries me is that it’s a plural. What is the singular? What does one call a single individual who gains pleasure by taking offense? An offenseratus?

Teenagers

I am now officially in possession of a teenager. To be honest I think I have had a teenager in the house for quite a while but I was thoroughly expecting to celebrate the new year with Harry Enfield’s Kevin the Teenager sketch:



That’s not what happened and, in fairness, Harry Enfield’s humour usually works by making fun of stereotypes (for example, his “Scousers” sketch which was a parody of lazy 1980s media portrayals of Liverpudlians). There is always an element of truth in these clichés although I seem to recall my teenage years were pretty miserable largely because many of my acquaintances were irritating, pubescent arseholes (and those that weren’t I tend to still be in touch with.)

I think the media creates a rather poor image of teenagers and, if we are to believe them, they are Neanderthal cretins with a penchant for violent behaviour, petty crime and more ASBOs than exam certificates. Even the nicer portrayals would have one believe that the average adolescent is a lazy couch potato into rubbish fashion, rubbish music, binge drinking, sex, drugs and video gaming. Whilst there will always be exceptions to the rule I would say that most of our local youth are a fairly decent bunch. The odd thing is, if I was asked to describe what the typical teenager now looks like, I probably couldn’t. Maybe that says it all – rather than being the rebellious angry young people they are actually a bit dull?

There is actually good evidence that the current crop of teenagers are fairly tame compared to those of my youth. Certainly the statistics would seem to indicate that they are harder working and more law abiding than the past. I don’t think today’s teenagers have it any easier than I did. Back then, mass unemployment and the constant threat of nuclear destruction where pretty grim but access to higher education was much better funded and there was a reasonable access to housing – now it is so ridiculously overpriced that even basic accommodation is a concern and I wouldn’t blame young people if they did feel like giving up. As it is they seem to be remarkably chipper so I don’t think I’ll be that concerned about having a teenager in the house.