Get Smart

I want to be thinner.

I want to drink less.

I want to be a little richer.

It’s that time of year when we make promises that we hope to keep but aren’t really prepared to put work in to make happen. These three above are among the most popular New Year’s Resolutions and many people will be telling themselves and maybe others on Tuesday that they will be thinner, more sober and richer in 2013 than they were in 2012.

But you know what? Lots of these people will be the same ones who made the same resolutions at the same time last year. And the year before. And the year before. Because most New Year’s Resolutions don’t work.

Or at least, ones like those above don’t.

To start with they begin with ‘I want’. This allows a sneaky little suggestion of failure. We want, we hope, we wish it would happen but those words don’t involve any work on the wanter’s part. We’re much more likely to succeed if we say ‘I will’ do something rather than ‘I want to’ do it. That would help, but most of all we have to get SMART with our resolutions.

It’s an old business mnemonic but it really does work. You’re much more likely to stick to your resolutions if they’re SMART.

Significant – What’s the point of making a pointless resolution?  ‘I will walk to the pub every day’ is no big deal for me as I’m able-bodied and the pub is just thirty-four steps from my house. ‘I will run to the pub in the next village, not stop for a drink and then run home’ would be much more of a challenge.

Measurable – ‘I will get fit’ is a common resolution but it’s so fluffy and vague that it’s unachievable. Define ‘fit’. Is it being able to run a mile without stopping? Or losing a stone in weight? Or being able to button up those skinny jeans that you bought on a whim in last year’s sale but now sit at the back of the wardrobe mocking you every time you pull on an old baggy pair instead? If you can’t measure a goal how do you know if you've achieved it?

Achievable – there’s no point in me saying ‘I will win an Olympic 100 meters sprint medal in 2013’. No I won’t. I’m forty-seven, fat and have no sprint training. And most importantly, there are no Olympic games in 2013. But I could resolve to gradually build up to being able to run a mile.

Realistic – ‘I will sprout wings and fly around the building’ might be something that I’d love to do but with the best will in the world it ain’t gonna happen. Stretch yourself, but know the limits of human ability.

Time-specific – ‘I will lose six pounds in weight’ isn’t a good resolution either. It gives the resolver permission to pig out all year in the hope that a starvation diet in the autumn might achieve the goal. ‘I will lose at least half a pound every month all year long’ is much more like it.

So have a great New Year and a brilliant 2013, and if you’re making any resolutions just remember that you have a much greater chance of keeping them if you make them SMART. Me? I just have three resolutions.

I want to be thinner.

I want to drink less.

I want to be a little richer.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Which List Are You On?

It’s nearly time. Santa’s getting sore eyes from reading all those letters, the reindeer are going through their visualisation techniques for perfect rooftop landings after a full year of training and turkeys all over the world are wondering why all their buddies keep disappearing.

It’s nearly Christmas.

Children the world over are hoping that Father Christmas (or whatever local name he has where they are) has placed them on his ‘Nice’ list. Whatever their age, nobody wants to be on the ‘Naughty’ list.

We all know that good children get good gifts, but how come nobody ever talks about what happens to those who have been bad? Maybe it’s a shame thing, like how nobody talks about a particularly embarrassing rash or that strange old Uncle that no one’s seen for the longest time?

Wonder no more. And never say that my blog isn’t educational. The ‘Naughty’ list was once a very real threat.

This is one of those things that the man with the sack has evolved over time, like changing the colour of his cloak from predominately green to red or climbing down chimneys to deliver his gifts instead of just dropping them into stockings hung beside an open window. These days of course he prefers using his magic key instead of messing about with the chimney climbing. It must be his age.

Maybe that’s why he’s mellowed over the years too. There was a time when the naughty children of the world could expect some serious punishment from the jolly old fat man. He’d actually whip them, so legend has it, or pop them into a sack while they slept and carry them off to Spain, where he is said to spend his summer holidays. Suddenly he doesn’t seem quite so jolly.

He didn’t used to do these unpleasant things on his own though. While these days he just has his jolly elves to help him deliver goods to the world’s good boys and girls, once upon a time he had a shackled demon called Black Pete to assist him with the punishment of naughty kids. The story goes that Saint Nicholas defeated the demon and enslaved him, making Black Pete do his dirty work. And let’s face it, if you have to be whipped by someone then I guess an angry demon in chains would be far from the top of the list of people you’d pick to do it.

I guess that Santa has been working on his P.R. more in recent years though, as the whole whipping thing has been hushed up and he seems to have cut right back on the child-abduction too. All in all I think that’s a good thing.

As for Black Pete, well he’s rarely heard of these days, except in Scandinavian countries where he’s still sometimes seen helping his beardy boss in the run up to the big day. Even there he’s been given a make-over though, seeming to have become almost as jolly as the main man himself. The worst he does these days is threaten to leave children a lump of coal instead of gifts if they haven’t been good, or maybe a twig to remind them of the olden days when he’d deliver a thrashing with one.

So with this in mind, I hope that everyone in your household has been good this year. And that Father Christmas continues to get nicer as he gets older.

Have a great Christmas.

Wash Your Mouth Out

‘I’m not a racist but…’

I’m guessing that you’ll have heard those words sometime in your life. And if you have, then you’ll know what comes next – the person whose mouth they came out of invariably goes on to say something which many people would interpret to mean that they are indeed a racist of the highest order.

The same thing goes for sexism. ‘I’m not a sexist, but…’, before launching into some tale attacking whichever gender isn't represented among the speaker or listeners. Or ageism. ‘ I've nothing against the kids of today, but…’  Some people just love denying that they have a problem with anyone from a social or political group to which they themselves do not belong. With this in mind and a sizable spoonful of irony here’s my rant of the week.

I’m not a prude, but… how come young comedians (and comediennes – I’m not sexist) feel the need to swear profusely in their stage routines? Now I’m a proper Northern bloke who can eff and blind along with the best of them – years of suffering on the terraces watching Sheffield United will do that to a man – but when did it become normal everyday speech as far as stand-up comedy is concerned? In the ‘sixties Lenny Bruce fought important freedom of speech battles against the authorities, finding his humour in the absurdity of obscenity laws. His use of language that hadn’t been heard on stage up to that point was ground-breaking. And here in Britain a decade later the likes of Billy Connolly pushed the boundaries of industrial language using the shock factor to illicit embarrassed laughter alongside genuine observational wit. For many people this was the first time they’d heard these words uttered in polite company and they didn't know whether to laugh or hide in shame. It was a perfect example of the shock of the new.

But now? Most live comedy shows are littered with swear words without any reason. The difference between seeing a comedian’s act on a BBC show or on a live DVD is staggering. Four-letter expletives can appear in every sentence as a potty-mouthed garnish. I have to ask, why? Occasionally I can understand they’re used for emphasis but mostly it’s simple unthinking punctuation. The comic scatters them throughout their act in a way that they wouldn’t if they were, say, at a bakers buying some bread. “I’d like six rolls and an uncut ****ing bloomer please” would be completely unacceptable to most people so why do we have a need for “This nun goes into a ****ing chemists”?

What strikes me most is the sheer amount of expletives that they deliver. Add the number of unnecessary words up over the length of their act and then realise; these unnecessary interjections take the place of well-thought out comedy. They eat up time for no reason. They actually rob the audience of a couple of good jokes over a set. A few years ago, as an experiment, Frank Skinner cut all the swearing out of his act for just one night during a tour. The show went really well and the audience laughed just as hard and in just the same places as on the other nights of his tour. They hadn’t even noticed the change that he’d made to his delivery. The only difference was that his act was quite a bit shorter than usual.

So is there any real need for it? Comedians who pepper their shows with words I wouldn’t use in front of my mother aren’t shocking or proving any political point. They’re actually committing the worst sin that any entertainer can commit. They’ve become boring.

Ripon

I overheard a couple of girls in the pub the other day. They weren’t girls in the sugar-and-spice, pre-teenager sense, but girls as in that they were about twenty-two years old. I suppose they were technically young women but at my age any female under thirty is still a girl. But even old dogs can learn new tricks and these ‘girls’ taught me one. It was one of those lessons that I particularly love to learn. They taught me a new word.

‘I got a fantastic Ripon in Matalan yesterday’, one proudly said to the other. Now being male and in my late forties I had no idea what a Ripon was. That’s not really unexpected though, given that it took me a while to work out what a Matalan was. I presumed that a Ripon was some kind of handbag or maybe a skirt named after the hotbed of haute couture where it was first designed. I’m not really au fait with women’s fashion. Or men’s fashion either come to that. I tend to just stumble around in the dark of a morning, grab whatever’s lying on the floor and that’s my attire for the day. If it fits then I know it belongs to me and the Beloved, and that’s good enough for me.

What the other girl said explained the situation though. ‘I love it when you get a Ripon, it’s nice to get your own back. They try to rip you off so much these days.’

Ah! So it wasn’t Ripon, the cathedral city of North Yorkshire. She used the term rip-on  to mean the opposite of rip-off, a bargain, a transaction where she got more value for money than she’d expected.

I loved it. Isn’t the English language magnificent?

© Shaun Finnie 2012