Skip to main content

Who do you think you are kidding?

The older mini-W was keen on buying a goat for Christmas - one of the 'living gifts' that charities invite you to send to the developing world. Delighted at her early sense of social responsibility, I said that if she saved up enough pocket money to buy one of the trusty ruminants, I would get one too. It was a kind of BOGOF deal with a benevolent twist.

Little did I know that I was about to enter a world of extreme kitsch. On the Oxfam website, our goat 'couple' is pictured dressed for a wedding. Mrs Goat is wearing a veil, while the groom proudly boasts a top hat. All that's missing is the Best Goat making his after-dinner speech.

'Go on,' the excitable copywriter urges us. 'Do it for the kids!'

It's good to know that the animals we're sending are happily married, as co-habiting goats are probably frowned upon in many parts of the developing world. Two goats of the same sex would be absolutely out of the question, even if there had been some kind of civil ceremony.

The mini-W has an idea that the living gifts are being flown out to Africa. In my own fevered imagination, I wondered whether they might be taking the honeymoon suite on a cruise ship. The reality - that they're probably found in Africa anyway and are simply given to communities that need them - was causing some confusion among the younger generation at Woodford Towers, so I decided to let the subject drop. Until Mrs W happened to chip in with an idea for a TV sketch.

She envisaged a scenario in which the gift vouchers go to Africa by mistake and the goats end up at the door of the well-meaning donor in Hampstead. Nice idea and copyright Mrs W, all rights reserved. Of course, in that kind of mix-up, it wouldn't matter if the goats weren't married. They'd be made welcome regardless of their marital status, gender or sexuality.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Becoming a Twister board

I spent yesterday evening in an old factory building off Brick Lane playing kids' games with an organisation called Fun Fed. The idea is that a bunch of adults get together and act like children for a couple of hours. We played tag and stuck big coloured discs on ourselves so that we could become human Twister mats. There was an awful lot of running around and I was thinking that I ought to get to aikido a bit more often. Being a child is very hard work.
1 comment
Read more

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at ...
Post a Comment
Read more