Neither online dating nor nightclubs can compete with Latin conjugations, farty food or inebriated trampolining
IN a recent exclusive report, I revealed how I never attend nightclubs. I had not intended to arouse controversy or cause offence – and indeed, disappointingly, did neither of these – but am convinced in my own mind that I gave many millions of people food for thought. Now, with the mystifying synchronicity that governs all our lives, I read that nightclubs are closing down because sensitive young persons, described as “snowflakes”, prefer vegan food festivals – and trampolining. This is excellent news, apart from the trampolining, which is not an activity a man in my position could possibly undertake, jumping up and, as far I can gather, down again. Friends of mine have a trampoline in their big back garden and, on the one occasion I tried it, while inexplicably inebriated, I ended up having to pick myself out of a nearby hedge.
Indeed, it says here that trampoline parks, which are apparently springing up hither and arguably yon, serve alcoholic drinks to patrons, which strikes me as a recipe for disaster and, as I recall, vomiting.
The other reason that nightclubs are folding – a quarter have apparently gone in the last decade – is that decent ratepayers no longer visit them in the hope of romance or a lumber. Instead, they woo each other on social media and apps such as Tinder. I will be quite candid with you here and confess that I have never looked at the latter, not even out of curiosity. I should probably look at it now in the name of wotsit, that overrated activity – research – but, though renowned for my fearless investigative journalism, I find I cannot summon the courage to do this. Instead, I shall confine myself to a few ignorant remarks.
Firstly, and lastly, it seems to me that there is something both sly and purposeful about dating online. Romance, in my view, should always come from “chance” encounters engineered by God or some other cosmic entity.
It shouldn’t be done with CVs, cautious wordplay and spectacularly inaccurate photographs (the camera always lies; look at the picture accompanying this column – I have never had a beard in my life).
At the same time, one reads that many people on dating websites are not what they seem and are only after your money which, in my case, would result in me receiving few “likes”, if that’s how it works.
The world is a deceptive place, forever tempting upright citizens into mischief and its boon companion, fornication. I will be reasonably candid with you here and confess that I did once find myself in – I don’t know what to call it, to be honest – an establishment famed for bag-offs.
I had no idea at the time. It is, or was, just a pub, but it had a licence later than others and, on this occasion, I recall that I was not sufficiently inebriated and had become aware that time was running out. Friends, who soon disappeared, suggested this place, leaving me standing at the bar where, in a highly unusual development, I was assailed by platoons of mostly ageing females. They soon disappeared when I asked them if they could translate works from the original Latin (alas, it was all Greek to them) and, unsurprisingly, I left the joint alone. But at least, from their point of view, what they saw was what they got – or not, as it turned out – and they were able to pooh-pooh the possibility of procreation.
Online, by contrast, I could have portrayed myself as handsome and interesting in order to lull poor, innocent maidens into a twilight world of Latin conjugations, farty vegetarian food, and inebriated trampolining.
Years of rude, boozy, health
I’M not going to make any point here, just a couple of related observations that leave me confused.
Firstly, in days of old when knights were bold and so forth, the king and the aristocrats, who drank heavily of sherry and wine most nights, often lived to a grand old age, which in those days would be 60 or 70.
Meanwhile, the peasantry, eating wholemeal bread and quaffing only the occasional pint of home-brewed ale, pegged out at 30.
Secondly, and not unrelated to firstly, if you go around examining folk’s recycling bins, as I do, you will find that, in the well-off areas where people live longer, the tubs for wine, beer and spirits bottles are generally overflowing.
In poorer areas, meanwhile, where folk still die younger, you find very few bottles in their recycling bins, perhaps even just the odd one for ketchup or broon sauce and, often as not, no bin out at all.
This extends to the pious upper working or lower middle classes, such as to be found on my street – all tradesmen and junior functionaries – where the bottles are few; while the nobs on the hill up the road can hardly get all theirs into their bin.
As I say, there is no moral to this story. But the phenomenon is genuinely baffling to me.
Why are academics such a thick lot?
IT was intriguing to read in that Herald newspaper that kids don’t want to be scientists. There is, however, a reason for this, and it is this: they are not dense enough.
The smart fellow or burd about town will have a cosmopolitan approach to both study and life, while the scientist is someone who can only cope with a narrow specialism.
It’s the same with academics generally, including those in non-technical subjects. As a reporter, I interviewed folk in all avenues of life and can say that academics were, by a country mile, the dumbest. They were also the tetchiest, possibly as a result of being asked, “How can you cope with everyday life, when intellectually you are only just clear of being considered vegetation?”
An extreme paradigm of the phenomenon is Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory, who considers himself a genius in his chosen field but, in all other respects, is a fully-functioning idiot.
I make no point here about these observable facts. But they are surely food for thought.