So, it turns out that tomorrow is the first day of May, and not as I had assumed another day in April. That means that this post is being thrown online in a hurry so that it counts towards my April beans and not my May beans.
Anyway, since it’s April, and since it’s Four Word Reviews time, tradition dictates that we must listen to a Christmas album. In Aprils gone by we have heard from Mahalia and Barbra Streisand. This year we’re going for the big one: Christmas, the 2011 album by Michael Bublé. It rewrote Christmas music as we know it – a solid album of Christmas classics, reworked by the smoothest sounding chart act since Sade stopped releasing new music. Now everyone comes along and releases a few slick Christmas cover versions every year. Especially Michael Ball.
I travel by train a lot these days, so you’d think that – like Smidge Manly – I’d be an expect in the ’istries and mistries of the railway – but sometimes I still stumble on something that baffles me.
Yesterday I boarded a train and found this. I cannot explain it.
The human face is capable of showing a huge variety of emotions. Some of them are obvious, so plain that even children and dogs can recognise them: smiling means happiness, for example, while a furrowed brow often means consternation or constipation. You may know of others.
Today we are going to look at four of the lesser-known emotions and the facial expressions that go with them. I hope you find this guide instructive.
Pudding shop
The pudding shop face should show a mixture of delight and surprise. Some people choose to include a measure of snootiness but this is optional.
Crescent in disrepair
When faced with a grand Regency Crescent in disrepair, perhaps while visiting a spa town that has fallen on hard times, most people extend the tongue slightly, making a face that is close to some expressions of unbridled silliness, but which is actually a sign of great concern for the preservation of listed buildings. A minority of people make a face that is virtually indistinguishable from the pudding shop face, Ian.
Very exciting
Excitement usually produces wide eyes and an open mouth, but in extreme cases – where the excitement being felt is beyond the highest reaches of the Alton Towers Excitement Scale – a common human reaction is to close the mouth, move the hand protectively to the chin or sideface, and look sideways on at the exciting phenomena.
Terrible man
A terrible man will arouse strong feelings in anyone of adult age. Many people find themselves involuntarily contracting their neck and tightening their lips. Some also experience gastric bloating and wind.
Like Ian, I use my eyes while driving, both to look at things, but also to observe them. Sometimes my looking and observing is simultaneous and sometimes both have to take it in turns.
There is one thing that sticks out when I drive to the station, and it’s this:
If it was called Clennel Hill I’d know exactly where I was. We all know that Clennel is a small village and a former civil parish in the parish of Alwinton, in Northumberland, England. We also all know that a clennel is a genteel way to refer to a kind of arse flannel. But it’s not called that, it has a name that’s far more obscure and meaningless. A quennell? Nobody knows what that is.
I’m posting this here in the hopes that, having declared that this is a meaningless word and that nobody knows what it is, I’ve created the right circumstances for Kev to put the word into Google and immediately tell me what it means.
I know what you’re going to ask. This is Atomic Kitten’s debut album Right Now, so I know before you say anything what we need to clarify. Is this the actual first album, released in March 2000, or is it the second release from August 2001, re-recorded with the band’s new line-up after Kerry Katona left? Well, it’s the second release, featuring the new line-up of Liz McClarnon, Jenny Frost and Natasha Hamilton. Here they are now, looking improbably youthful and slightly distracted.
After a suitable gap, long enough for us all to forget most of what’s in it, I’m delighted to announce the online publication of Three Men in a Tin Shed, the commemorative book of Bridlington 2021.
If you care to flick through its lemon cake tinged pages, you’ll find:
Ian’s Love Pipe
Kev’s fizzy pizza
Chris showering in jeans
Ludwig von Slugwig
Ian “taking the weight”
Chris’s cockney French
Kev stepping over Wom
The “ramming it home” flowchart
You can read it, and all our other literary masterpieces, in the Books section.
Oxford Circus late at night Crowds of wankers, lights shine bright Down below the crowds that mill Sits a sneaker calm and still
Who would drop you in this place? Who has joined the unshod race? Who would think their grand night out Is better with one bare foot out? I see you, shoe, and I see beyond I see how great you’d be if donned I see potential through the grime I see the reason and the rhyme
Oxford Circus late at night One lone trainer shining bright The key to one foot’s endless roam I envy the toes that take you home.
