Conspicuous indifference

Come join me in wisdom corner, 

These days its almost impossible to avoid celebrities,  just so many of them are getting churned out in ropey reality shows. 

Gone are the butter mountains and wine lakes of EU overproduction, now we have a celebrity glut, so numerous that to make room for all the new ones a few of the old heads need to get exposed in retrospective sex scandals or complex off-shore tax shaming just to free up the pantomime parts, like a Logans Run for the mildly famous.   

When you see a vaguely familiar face in the street you are as likely to think " what were they in"  rather than " did I go to school with them?" or " do they owe me money?  Look at X-Factor,  15 years that's been going, it must be about 300 people getting to the final stages and achieving their green card to self-importance.  That's just one example of the mill at work. It all adds up to thousands on top of the already celebs and the the ones that no-one really knows about, vloggers and Instagrammers who can claim a million followers and 100 million views of the froth on their coffee.  A towns worth of them, the worst town in the world right enough.  

So I feel its important to develop a strategy for dealing with the inevitable celebrity sighting, and I'm going to share my technique with you, this will make you happy,  the kind of smug happy that these end of days times so rarely allows, fleeting admittedly, but its the small things that count.  

The method I've mastered is Conspicuous Indifference.  No high horse is too high or ivory tower too...er towery, not to be withered by indifference, but conspicuous indifference, well, that's some Jedi shit right there. 

Those that have felt the icy blast of indifference and struggled on with an ever so slightly diminished sense of themselves read like the invite list to one of Frank Boughs BYOB parties. Brendan Cole, he got it in Regent Street, Robert Carlyle, Noel Fielding, despite wearing heels, Chantelle Houghton, The President of Ghana, Arsene Wenger in his duvet coat, Sir Ian McKellen, he certainly did not pass without me paying no attention to him, Barry Cryer,  Peregrine Took, he wasn't with Gandalf at the time disappointingly,  Ian Wright, on an Easy Jet Flight, Lil Wayne,  Manu Dibango, this only half counts, as I didn't know who he was to begin with and had to Google him before I could not be interested, Barry Manilow, Nigel Havers, Dara O'Briain, Lily Allen and that wee skinny junkie that used to knock about with Kate Moss. This week Sandy Toksveg got a healthy dose of not bothered, completing a bake off double for me. 

The secret is to make sure the celeb notices you noticing them, then, once you're confident that has happened, the next stage is important because that connection will most likely be fleeting,  their instinctive belief is that you don't matter after all or at best, you are a potential pest.  Your eyes have to be ready to portray a message that says " Yes, I know who you are Gandalf the Grey, but I couldn't give a monkeys toss". Next, simply don't give a monkeys toss, just go on doing whatever you were doing, all blase like, no second glances, no discrete or disguised selfies, I know the pitfalls,  " Here's a picture of me in the Diesel shop in Buchananan Street for no apparent reason, hold on? Is that Barry Manilow behind me buying jeans?"  Not even if they start flamboyantly begging for help and trying to grab your attention like Robert Carlyle,  pretending he couldn't reach his bag in the overhead locker, should you acknowledge them.  Now, saying that, if they collapse to the ground blue lipped,  clutching their chest with a look of impending doom on their face, its ok to help, remember, they may be acting, but if not and you save a celebrities life, there is a fair chance you could end up a one yourself, if that happens, discard all of the above and get wired in. 

This has been a public service announcement on behalf of the Reeking Lum  

Lang May Yer Lum Reek

FFS 50!

FFS I'm 50

Growing up I remember seeing men that I thought must be about 50, they were old and tired looking.  They had the look of miserable commuters, waiting in a long queue for a taxi at the end of a cold rainy day.  They could have been waiting in that queue all their lives, inching forward, one half step at a time, gradually being worn down by the elements, I imagine at some point they would see the front of the queue ahead and realise it wasn't taxis pulling up for fares, but hearses and their sooty shrivelled irrelevant hearts would  stir with happiness at the prospect of soon being at the end.

I don't feel like that at all.  Being 50 is actually OK.  I know I'm only 7.5 hours into middle age, nevertheless, its still a number denied to many and I'm determined to see the bright side.  So here it is, my top ten best things about being 50 that I better capture in case I lose my faculties anytime soon.

1. Perspective, all those years of living provides a back catalogue of experiences you can call on to place every drama and crisis in its proper place, the proper place being the drawer marked MEH!
2. Confidence, coming from the fact that, hey, I've survived this long, I must be doing something right, I'll just keep doing it
3. Wardrobes, by now, I know the clothes I like and feel most comfortable in, and as a bonus, at 50 I can afford them. 
4. Work,  imposter syndrome has faded, and it becomes more apparent that the job I'm doing, I'm doing well, and it's easy because no problem is a new problem.   When I worked in the whisky industry, every year among the new graduate intake, at least one bright new thing would come up with the idea of square whisky barrels, "just think how easy they would be to stack in a warehouse and how many more we would get in if they were like boxes", followed by, "I'm a genius, why has no-one ever thought of this before."
5. Attractiveness, Billy Connolly once said that the best thing about getting older was how many more people in the world become good looking, and he's right.
6. Friends, by this time, you know that friends are not fleeting, the ones you have now, you've probably had for a long time, they know you very well and are still your friend, some you won't see for a while but it doesn't matter because when you do its like you saw them yesterday. 
7. Alcohol, apart from the odd aberration, I know how to drink, I know what I can drink to avoid crippling hangovers, I know the signs that I might be teetering on the edge of true pishheadedness, sometimes I just crash through those signs right enough, but at least that's a semi-conscious decision.
8. Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention.
9. Pride, I think this grows as the years go by,  knowing that I've done OK with my 4 O'levels, knowing that in a professional sense at least, I started at the very bottom, being handed a broom and being asked to sweep but didn't stay there doing it for 30 years. That there would be limits to what I could do, but that wasn't it and I tried to find what they were.  Pride also that I think I've kept some of my mothers' values intact, egalitarianism, generosity, kindness and a belief that I'm not better than anyone else, nor are they better than me.
10. Family, my children are all grown up, some with kids of their own,  none have committed major crimes, that I know of, and they all are genuinely nice, well balanced, responsible and likeable young people.  They all probably feel exactly the same as I did at that age because the world keeps turning.

Bad things, I have to shave my ears from time to time, sometimes I get aches If I lie in bed too long and erections are just like a 50 year old car, it starts ok in the morning with a bit of choke, but your never entirely confident your going to reach your destination when you set off.  

And finally, the wisdom I would most like to share,  

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
― George Carlin   

Lang may yer lum reek.