Frankly Speaking

  • The Great Unwashed

    I don’t know if you’ve been on the Tube when the weather’s hot, but during the evening rush hour it’s really the last place you want to be. It’s packed tight with smelly, sweaty bodies and you have nowhere to turn when you find that your face, unfortunately, is slotted into the fetid armpit of the man holding the rail above your head.  
    Ever since I turned thirteen, (when for some inexplicable reason my nose started working and I could begin to smell my own body odour), personal hygiene has been a priority for me. I’m a considerate person you see, and I know how uncomfortable it is when those around you are unwashed, have poison breath or are infested with body lice. 
     
    Many people however, do not always see fit to indulge in such niceties. 
     
    Some can be excused somewhat, by virtue of extenuating circumstances. For example, there will be extended periods of the day when professional sportsmen and women reek. And if we expected them to shower every time they break out in a sweat, the only category that we’d have a chance at winning at our own Olympics would be in the Trainer Sniffing event. Which hasn’t been invented. Yet.
     
    Others who might be excused from their duty of care to the general public and themselves would be the morbidly obese (you try carrying around 40 kilos without a trickle running down your back), those afflicted by a medical condition, and tramps. After all, you can only complain about a smelly tramp if you are willing to let him have the run of your bathroom.
     
    For everyone else, however, if you smell, take a bath. Take a shower. Otherwise, keep your armpits well out of range. There has never been an excuse for smelling bad.
     
    Until now.
     
    You see, with the introduction of the new hosepipe ban, smelly people can hide behind the banner of environmentalism and flaunt their foul odour guilt-free. They’ll say they’ve stopped showering for the sake of the water supply and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
     
    “We are saving water,” they’ll argue. “We are helping to sustain England’s rivers, we are caring for our reservoirs.” 
     
    This is the danger of the hosepipe ban, my friends, not the prospect of dried-up lawns and out-of-work gardeners. The danger lies in you or I passing out in the Tube carriage, in our gagging to death in the workplace. And, as far as I know, the environment wouldn’t want that, either.
     
    We must do all we can to protect our nostrils from the oncoming onslaught of acridity. We must fight to protect our olfactory senses from those who would use the environment to further the cause of smelliness and perpetually moist armpits. 
     
    Ban or no ban, if any one of your acquaintances starts using the ban to justify their newfound ponginess, there’s only one thing for it. 
     
    Douse them with a hosepipe. Believe me, the environment won’t mind.





     

    Follow Frankly Speaking on Twitter Frank Leigh
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  • Insulted intelligence

    When you’re two years old, an insult is when you call someone ‘icky’ or ‘pooey’. A little bit older and it might be something more complex and imaginative. Like the insult thrown my way by the four-year-old daughter of a friend. She didn't like me. So she told me I was 'in the bin.’ 

    The quality of insults tends to get better with age. Playground taunts for seven-year-olds, if I remember correctly, were all to do with girls having fleas. Which is, in all honesty, a step up from poo and litter.

    But it’s not all one-way though, this journey towards patenting the perfect insult. Quality, I admit, does take a step or two backwards during the teenage years when one is wont to pick a swear word and repeat it manifold.

    Once you’re an adult and more intelligent, however, you should have outgrown your teenage silliness. You'll hopefully become aware that the possibilities for a really great put-down are almost limitless. You'll realise that you have a wealth of life-experience and name-calling to draw upon.

    And with so many options to choose from, it can become quite difficult to pick out a favourite.

    So if you find yourself looking for that one term of offence that is a cut above the rest, perhaps I can be of service. The subject is one that I have spent some time thinking about.

    Now it seems logical to me that, if quality of insult is directly correlated with age and intelligence, then the masters of the put-down would be our politicians. They are obviously old enough, they are intelligent, sensible and thought-through.

    Moreover, as role models for the nation and our elected representatives, it would only seem fit to pay close attention to the type of insult they favour.

    And the worst insult in the armoury of the MP is the accusation that the opposition is ‘out of touch’. Look at the way Ed Miliband branded Cameron ‘out-of-touch’ over the NHS reforms. Look at the relish with which he said it.

    ‘Out of touch’ means you’re behind the times, you’re past-it, you’re yesterday’s news. More than that, 'out of touch' means you’ve lost your grip on reality, on what’s really going on. It means that you're not fit for your job.

    It’s a terrible thing to say to someone, and that’s why the politicians love to use it.

    Bearing all that in mind, it becomes really difficult to understand why the very same politicians are pushing for teachers’ retirement age to be extended eight years to 68. Teachers need to be very much ‘in-touch’ if they are to succeed in their jobs. How is forcing them to stay teaching till they’re almost 70 going to help?

    You’re out of touch if you can’t figure out predictive text on your phone. You’re out of touch if you think ‘bare munch’ has anything to do with hairy animals or eating in the nude. It’s hard enough for anyone born on the wrong side of 1980 to stay ‘in touch’. It’s even harder for the average 68-year-old to manage it. Surely the politicians must know that an ‘out-of-touch’ teacher is a recipe for disaster.

    Where has all their intelligence and experience gone? Why don’t our MPs practise what they preach? Surely they, of all people, should be sensitive to the blight of out-of-touchness. Surely they should be concerned that our poor hard-working teachers will, at the age of 68, be unable to evade being branded with that most shameful of insults – the ignominy of being ‘out-of-touch’.

    If you really think about it, there’s only one place this proposed legislation deserves to be.

    In the bin.


    Follow Frankly Speaking on Twitter Frank Leigh
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  • If you have any comments or suggestions for things you would like Frank to write about, why not email him at franklyspeaking@247mediagroup.co.uk
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