Diary
Dianna Rigg on the joys of being out of work and why she is a fatist
Most people will agree that travelling nowadays is a nightmare, compounded by regulations that have become increasingly illogical. Why, for instance, going through airport security, was my mascara stick spotted as a potential God-knows-what, and taken from my make-up bag, put into a dinky little plastic one and then handed back to me? And why, on reaching one’s destination, is it well nigh impossible to get fresh air in a hotel bedroom? All the windows are sealed. If hotels are anything like airlines, the first and easiest corners to cut are the unseen ones. Change the filters infrequently and what we are forced to breathe through the hateful humming grill might well not be as squeaky clean as we would like to think. In Bombay I paid an obliging man working on my floor mucho rupees to chip off the paint round my windows and I was able to drift off to sleep listening to Bombay’s characteristic sounds carried on wafts of warm air.
Returning to London, the contrast between a traffic jam here and in India is extreme. In India utter chaos prevails, the spectrum of vehicles involved mind-boggling: cars, vans, over-loaded lorries, tuk-tuks, bicycles, scoot-ers, motorcycles, bullock and camel carts and occasionally the odd cow, meandering across to add to the mêlée. Yet nobody seems to get angry. They wait, chat among themselves and slowly, patiently, the mess gets sorted. Here, however, it is a completely different picture of manifest aggression personified by the testosterone-fuelled man behind a wheel who behaves as if the road is his by right. Stand your ground and you get mouthed obscenities and the middle digit. I have the perfect response — ladies take note — waggle your little finger at him and assume a tragic expression, thereby communicating not only your belief that he has the smallest dick known to man but also your deepest sympathy, then glide on by.
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Nev Parker
January 12th, 2008 10:13pmNot long after becoming my own 'Boss', many years ago and then starting to employ people, hence I became very interested in their work rituals, I gradually formed the conclusion that fat people were slower workers and passed them up in favour of more average bodies. Well before Public opinion agreed with me I also found that smokers also were time wasters, with the anti-discrimination laws in Australia I had to keep these conclusions to myself. Later on I found that, generally speaking, young people who came from regular 'Mum and Dad' still married parents were mostly better adjusted individuals and had a few abstract interview questions to try and determine this aspect. So if you were fat, smoked and had a strange parentage you didn't get to work for me. I probably missed out on some good people but my formula meant that the ones I chose were all solid, honest well adjusted workers
Scratch Schillinger, Germany
January 16th, 2008 11:11pm@dian(n)a: So why are you a fatist? I certainly wont buy the magazine to be insulted. @Nev Parker: you could say the same about women, or Mexicans, or some other group. Generalization is never correct. I for one, think that in Australia only live convicts.
David Tobor
February 13th, 2008 5:18amHmmm. Leaving no stone unturned, I must ask what the difference is between "an article" on a web to one that is placed in a magazine or book? If it isn't news then aren't you giving some insight of yourself?