Despite it being mid-June, the weather has been, and still is, proving to be really weird. Up in the north there have been terrible floods and yet here on the Costas we´ve had up to 30 degrees for a week or so.Until a few days ago. Then the sky opened and it chucked it down. We had another load today and believe me, those of you who might believe that Spain is just Sun, Sand and Sangria, when it rains it´s torrential.
OK, we know and accept that. It always rains like that. In September and October.
BUT NOT IN JUNE !!!!! I didn´t sign up for this . I want the sun back!!!
Anyway, as it´s my birthday, I´m off out tonight so I haven´t got time to write any more from scratch. So what follows is a mild Rant I did for the latest Writers´Circle.
It´s called Recycling.
Recycling.
As we speak, I´m pushing the envelope but I hope that although I´m in your face 24/7, we´re both on the same page even if that´s both outside the box and off the wall.
If I´d said any of this a few years ago, nobody would have understood at all. Now not only do people understand but ordinary folk, who you would think would know better, pepper their conversation with these phrases.
They probably sounded really smooth when they were first casually tossed into the chat in Silicon Valley or New York but by the time they´ve been recycled via Internet and TV around the world and end up said by a middle-aged housewife in Bolton or an office worker in Neesdon they don´t have quite the same cool ring to them. When used in the place and situation they were tailored for, they are OK, but taken out of their context, at best they jar and at worst they sound absurd. In a TV series called Criminal Minds , the FBI team constantly refer to the murderer as the Unsub. How ridiculous would this sound said by a police constable in Birmingham?
In the same way as language is re-used inappropriately, so is fashion. Blokes of 40 plus go around pierced and tattooed with heads shaved, despite their false teeth and flabby ab. They simply don´t have the style of David Beckham when he first had that look. Women are equally out there emulating something that only Supermodels and Lady Gaga have the attributes to carry off. Saggy cleavage, wobbly thighs and batwings need to be under cover in the same dark place as the blokes` beer bellies.
Yes, but it´s fashion, people say. It´s always been like this. People follow what the trend is. What begins in Paris, Milan, LA and New York gets filtered down to the High Street and is sooner or later seen or heard in Surbiton and Handsworth. Certainly that´s true, but things aren´t quite the same as they used to be. Nowadays, everyone, from the really young to those knocking on, seem to need their space, time, moment of fame, chance to live and be like the glitterati, whether it´s suitable, appropriate or pleasant to look at or hear. On TV, Gok, Trinny and Susanna, extreme plastic surgery makeovers, Supersize versus Superskinny, all encourage us to re-define ourselves, re-style our bodies, our clothes and our homes.
Hundreds of years ago, children were regarded simply as adults who needed to grow up and so were dressed and taught to behave as adult from the word go. In more recent history they were allowed to be children and play, be childish and enjoy the years of freedom from the rat race of adulthood. Things are now going back to the way they were. Kids are sexually active much younger once more, they are dressing like adults and being helped and even actively encouraged to sound and look like their much older and more sophisticated idols. At the other end of the scale the generation which would once have been in rocking chairs on the porch are out raving it up and being told that 60 is the new 40. Fine, within certain limits but we all really know that 60 never has been nor ever will be the new 25.
So where is all this recycling of fashion and language leading us to? Will we all end up looking like slightly blurred and shopsoiled copies of whoever is the latest jetsetting fashionista in the headlines? Possibly, but whatever happens, we know that, as the Ad says, we deserve it.
