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Oliver Cross: Unwanted Xmas gifts and Sally the student
Woodhouse resident and YEP columnist Oliver Cross talks unwanted Christmas gifts and Sally the student.
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Green day
I think the seasons start like this; around Christmas your aunty gives you a Lily of the Valley Luxury Talc and Soap Set, which you hide immediately.
Then, during the spring clean, you find it again and spend a few weeks puzzling about how to get rid of it without anybody, even the landfill bulldozer driver, noticing, because throwing away Lily of the Valley products when people around the world are starving is grossly insensitive.
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Fortunately, a solution soon presents itself because in no time at all it's the summer fete season, where you can offload your aunty's gift on to either the tombola or raffle stall, where the winner will have to accept it with good grace even while cursing the jammy sod who picked up a litre of Johnny Walker and while thinking up plans to get rid of it in an eco-friendly and culturally-sensitive way.
This is why the Lily of the Valley soap set will probably make another appearance at a fete next year and if you were to carbon date it you might find it made its debut during the 1920s, possibly at a 'Re-elect Mr Baldwin' fund-raiser.
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I've been thinking of summer fetes because at the weekend, as is my wont ('Excuse me mister, what's a wont'? 'Search me, son'), I went to the Alliance for Green Socialism's annual garden party to admire a wonderful garden in Roundhay, eat some lovely food and (although this was no part of the plan) buy myself a Magic Light Tunnel Necklace.
The Magic Light Tunnel Necklace, secured from the bric-a-brac stall for a very reasonable 25p, even though I was prepared to go lower, offers an 'Incredible multi-function light show' and is the sort of thing you can only get at summer fetes and failing pound shops.
I don't really understand, in this context, the use of the words 'multi-function' (not to mention 'incredible', 'magic' or, particularly, 'show') since what we are dealing with here is a Jimmy Savile-sized medallion which, when you press a button, flickers a bit and then reluctantly displays a collection of pin-point lights in a kaleidoscope of colours ranging from red to blue to green and green to blue to red again.
Also, because some of the light dots are bigger than others, it can produce a three-dimensional effect, which appears, say the makers, 'to defy the laws of physics', even though the Alliance for Green Socialism lot are very intelligent and as one of them, possibly a physicist, felt bound to point out that you can't defy the laws of physics, or at least not without redesigning the universe, which would be a heavy price to pay for a plastic medallion which can't even do yellow.
I want to know how these things get made because even the most simple-minded electrical product in the world has to pass through some tough hurdles; the designer has to spend sleepless nights perfecting the prototype then convince the MD that the proposed product is a fantastic idea which will make all their fortunes, then the accountants have to agree, then the product has to get all the way from some factory in south-east Asia to a pound shop in Yorkshire without anybody pointing out that the concept is completely hopeless – more flawed even than the Jacqui Smith.
Incidentally, it was at a previous Alliance for Green Socialism summer fete that I fell, while perfectly sober, into the garden pond. You would have thought the green socialists, being in favour of the disadvantaged and also of achieving harmony with newts and frogs, of which there were plenty in this pond, some of them in my trousers, would have had some sympathy for me.
But instead of allowing me to deal with my trauma in my own way and move on, they never tire of reminding me about it. This year, one of them apologised for going on about the incident but said she couldn't resist it because she had found it so funny that she wet herself. "Though obviously not as much as you did," she felt impelled to add, which just shows how very insensitive socialists can be.
My old lodger's a medical marvel
If you've followed this column for as long as I've had to, you may remember that, maybe seven years ago, I wrote about my then lodger, Sally the student.
Sally, being very bright and smiley, made a big impression in the Woodhouse area, particularly at quiz nights in the Chemic Tavern.
For months after she left (and she didn't stay long; she was between rooms), I dreaded going to the Chemic quiz because people would ask if
Sally was coming along and when I said no, they would look so desperately disappointed that I felt I should be starting a helpline.
Sally also, by example rather than shouting, gave me a short course in organised living and although I might have given the impression in my column that I didn't need lessons in cupboard management from a slip of a girl, I didn't really resent it at all, Sally being so nice that she overcame my instinctive resistance to sensible people.
Anyway, Sally, who was doing a Leeds University degree in medical science, graduated top of her year, went on to seek full medical qualifications and this week became Dr Sally Wood, thus bringing honour unto my house and putting herself in a position to organise hundreds of hapless patients who won't know what's hit them.
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Weather for Leeds
Saturday 19 May 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 6 C to 10 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: North
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