A Night In

Nightcap, anyone?

Hallo? What suppurating bollocks is this that I have just spied in The Times' property section? In a feature about how to sell a house I've found the following advice. Gird yourself, kraken lovers: "If conventional viewings aren't drumming up business...you might want to consider offering potential buyers an overnight stay." 

Excuse me? You might want to what? Allow complete strangers to stay in your house overnight in the hope that they'll stump up the cash to buy the thing? Fuck me. That has to be the most spectacularly wanky piece of advice I have ever, ever heard. Perhaps, as this piece appeared in The Times, it's aimed at the toffs who have a few empty wings on their country estate and can afford to send the staff in to bully the potential buyers into, well, buying. Otherwise, who in the fuck is actually going to do this?

Moving house is a complete and utter bastard. I find the effort of having to keep seven rooms tidy and synchronised with the smell of fresh coffee so grinding that I'd rather live in a tramp's trouserleg. So the thought of opening my house up to any ole knob end who fancies a free night out would be the equivalent of removing my own kidneys with a chipped hockey stick. Un-frigging-thinkable. 

Jesus, if it took this sort of activity to sell my house I'd take it off the market and get on with stabbing to death the neighbours. Living in the centre of a terrorised Damascus couldn't be as bad as resorting to allowing strangers to fart in your fresh sheets in the hope that you could move to a fancier postcode.

As with other semi-hysterical advice on how to flog a house, this is equally as grim. No, I don't want to get rid of the kids or conjure up the smell of baked bread or repaint the front bloody door. What I want is for potential buyers to have a modicum of intelligence, foresight and imagination and to understand that it's the house they're buying, not my fucking book collection. And if, to do this, I have to treat them to an overnight stay I'd rather sell my frigging soul.

Yes Ma'am, No Ma'am

Whatever you say, Ma'am

You know, it's the deference that I can't frigging stand. The publicly dripping deference. Problem is that the nation has been oozing the stuff over the Jubilee weekend and chief forelock-tugger of all has been the vile Nicholas Witchell. 
I'm sure the boy Witchell is a fine journalist - fuck knows he's been doing it for long enough - but what makes me want to plant a bomb in my own brain is his giddying level of obsequiousness. Christ, watching him file a report on the royal doings is like watching a text book-perfect definition of arse-licking. It's a miracle that his nose isn't smeared with Queenly outpourings.
And, OK, the Queen and her dysfunctional family need to be reported on - otherwise how will we keep an eye on how they're spending our money? - but does it really have to be in Witchell's hushed and revered tones? Whenever I see him I'm reminded of Dickens' Bob Cratchit, rubbing his hands over and again as he begs for money or mercy. Witchell looks like the 21st Century version, except I can only assume he's crawling furiously to secure either a gong or his next story. I mean, heaven forfend that the royals should be offended by Witchell's lack of breathless adjectives. What in the fuck would he do the next time he has to report upon such globe-shaking events as the Queen taking a dump?
I've only known one other person to be so deeply crawly and I used to work with him in a magazines department. He was equally as sickening. In fact he was even worse than Witchell, actively rubbing his hands obsequiously whenever the new editor walked into the room. Jesus, I recall one afternoon when the old and new bosses were together and this grease bucket actually hopped from one foot to another and rubbed his hands as if he was trying to make fire with his fingers. Put him and Witchell in the same room and fuck knows what could happen. They'd out-fawn each other and create a black hole into which personal dignity would be forever lost.
So it can only be a good thing that the Jubilee celebrations are at an end. Witchell must be exhausted after a long weekend of gabbling royal superlatives and cow-towing on the banks of the Thames. Fuck knows, I'm exhausted from watching him. And there's only so much more tugging that his hairline can stand.

Got Mail?

Fake, but who'd guess?

Don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not but I hate the Daily Mail. No, hate isn’t a strong enough word. I utterly fucking despise it. As a freelance journalist it was the only newspaper I refused to write for and, frankly, if I were so desperate for a shit that I was turtling and a copy of the DM was the only available toilet paper I’d wipe with my own clothes instead.

Apart from the fact that it displays the insight and intelligence of a pissed-up lunatic in a bus station, what with its panicky headlines about immigrants/ mothers/ homosexuality/ Europe/ immigrants, it’s got this weird Sutcliffe-like obsession with taking down every woman it meets.

Jesus, look at the features it runs in the paper and the daily spewing of girl-hating insanity that purports to be its website. If it’s not tearing a new arsehole for fifty per cent of the population by deriding working mothers/ non-working mothers/ happy mothers/ depressed mothers/ mothers just daring to take a shit every 24 hours it’s bitterly haranguing female celebs for getting fatter or thinner or older or scruffy or wrinkled or cellulite-y or any other variable between alive and dead.

Even fucking worse is the way that it presents these features, by using women to bully women. Women may write the gasp-worthy features in their bid to get printed but these 1000-word spoutings are always barbed and written or edited to incite ragingly bitter debates about the worthiness of said women. It’s the national equivalent of watching two arseholed girls tugging at each others’ hair in the street on a Saturday night.

Thing is, the DM even manages to make the female writers victims. Clever, eh? Yeah, they may seem in control by sticking their names at the business end of however many column inches but the fact is that the Daily Mail then throws this fodder (however well intentionally written) to the baying crowds of its pitchfork-waving readers who take it upon themselves to decree whether said woman should be sent back to the kitchen fucking sink.

It’s not just the deeply confessional nature of its features that does women such a staggering disservice but it’s the equally staggering bitterness with which they are received which makes me want to weep. In fact I don’t know why the DM bothers offering space to its female writers. It could save time and effort by rigging a set of stocks outside DM Towers and slapping women in them instead.

And yeah, this rage of mine has been given a sound prod by the recent Samantha Brick debacle but that’s the frigging least of it. Female writers have been spilling their most intimate of guts for the delight, delectation and judgement of the DM’s readers for one fuck of a long time. Thanks girls. Thanks a bleedin' lot.

But what the fuck do I know? While the DM has enraged readers on one side and female writers willing to spill and run on the other the paper will keep weaving its vile magic over the Great British public. Me? I’ll stick to taking more notice of my toilet paper. At least it’ll keep my hands clean.