Because I am old, the exact time and place of my first adolescent grope of a pert boob is not a fixed memory. Obviously some years had passed between this orb of delight being a source of food and comfort to being a rather more entertaining supply of teenage pleasure*. And some discomfort in the trouser department, for which I place the blame squarely at bollock tight 80s jeans.
Amazing really looking back that girls would bother with us at all. They had all the physical assets and mental maturity, while our idea of sophisticated foreplay was controlling premature ejaculation. When one of my daughters returns home shying showing off her first boyfriend, he’s going to be in the centre of a practical experiment. I’m going to ask her to touch him anywhere and when he explodes in teenage delight, I’m going to shoot him. And then place his head outside on a spike as an example to others.
Sorry Fatlad, my Neocon paternal urges kicked in there for a moment, let me get back to the point. Or points of interest, specifically the joy of poking fun at US “Weathercasters“** when compared to their somewhat more staid British colleagues.
When I worked out there, it was well understood that the Weather Channel was educational, free soft porn. All the presenters were beautiful women who could provocatively gyrate at a moments notice. Legions of gorgeous, besuited women would waft across the screen and describe the weather in a way that certainly delivered some high pressure to my lower regions.
On the downside, as they had their own channel and a whole shit load of biblical weather, it did tend to lead to excited exchanges such as:
“Hi” [Business Suit, High Heels, Size 0 and and a bit, Perfect Smile] “This is Cindy Nosemaker on the Weather channel welcoming you all to” [Toss shiny hair] “on this stormy morning in the most dysfunctional country in the world. Our roving reporter Reisling J. Pineapple the Third” [Wiggle in a way that has every man betwixt the ages of 8 and 80 reaching for the tissues] “is out on the streets of a wild and windy New York. Reisling?”
[Cut to reporter dressed in branded wind cheater against a backdrop of 10 foot snowdrifts, roofs flying past, looting in the background, sounds of murder out of shot, etc]
“Well Cind, it’s dumped another 12 inches last night” [suggestive leer] “no traffic is moving, the trains are cancelled, the airport is closed, there’s panic in the streets and the Mayor is being supplied with his breakfast truffles by Army Airlift”
Cindy [Ignores leer, wiggles again, collective grown from 60 million men] “Well that’s just swell!*** And worse to come, rains of trout are being driven in on icy polar winds and there is an 84.25{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} chance of hailing haddock by midday” [indicates galactic wall sized, interactive weather map]
“And after these messages, we’re going to the International News Desk with a breaking story that France has sunk. That’s in Yew-Rope and so isn’t important at all.”
The UK version of that goes something like this:
Michael Fish stumps onto screen wearing elbow pads, National Health Glasses and a haircut styled by backwards hedge. Removes academic pointing cane from hidden inner pocket, indicates blackboard resplendent with a crayoned version of the UK scrawled upon in.
“Good Evening. It shall be a little wet and windy. The Met Office recommends a stiffening of upper lips, a small glass of sherry and the staking out of any children left outside”
Except of course, it isn’t like that any more. The last two decades have bled us of cultural differences in the unseemly haste for globalisation. Now I watch the weather and crave the days of Wincy Willis and her sticky clouds****, 20p worth of not very special weather effects and the lackadaisical approach to forecasting “tomorrow may be warm, cold, dry or wet. We suggest you look out of the window and form your own opinion“.
It takes a special kind of mind to take an email “I’ve got quite a few American readers, fancy writing something about the weather for me?” and turn it into a discourse onto why US weather women were pretty damn hot. I can’t say it makes me proud but now I’ve finished, it’s sure to make me drunk.
I probably should end by cravenly stating my allegiance to the majority of the people I met in the US. For the first year or so, it was a Grok like reenactment of Stranger In A Strange Land as people who I could see and understand operated like aliens from a different planet. Subsequent to that and on the back of learning a culture through a culture of drinking, I found them warm, open, passionate and funny. And insular, a bit warmongery, occasionally arrogant and as shouldery chippy as a professional Yorkshireman. I liked them even more for the last one 🙂
* I do remember my second (and nearly last) day at my first proper job where a young lady – endowed in such a way you’d consider snorkel and flippers – was mammarily straining in a tight blouse. Every time she bent towards the phone, I was convinced she’d inadvertantly call the emergency services. This is not pervy – I was about 17 and everyone was like that. Probably.
** Calling Ian to the Scorpion Pit please.
*** Americans – in my experience – don’t do irony. I think it was displaced by the bombing gene.
**** Don’t try and find a simile in there. It exist only in your dirty little mind 🙂