With laughing song and happy dance

[peredur_glyn]

Apologies for the dearth of entries of late. (This is assuming anyone particularly noticed.) I've been shitting busy with the choir, as we had a major concert yesterday, being the first one we've actually set up and organised ourselves and featuring, pretty much, just us (we also invited a national-winning baritone, who ahemhappensahem to be a past

Comments

[peredur_glyn]

Diolchiadau (DEE-olch-IAD-aye, ish) means "thanks" or, more accurately, "thankings", but in the context of any Welsh gathering it's the formal thanking at the end, by some poor sap who's been chosen to do it, of everyone who took part in the event or brought about its existence. Usually the list is long, and you have to explain exactly why they need to be thanked. I don't think this is particularly unique to Wales, but what follows is what I've not seen outside this country, and that is the reinforcement of the thankings. This doesn't usually happen in a big concert, but it often does in smaller events, where, after the first thankings have been made, somebody else then chooses to stand up and say "May I reinforce those thankings," and then goes on, usually, to thank the person who thanked originally, and then going to repeat thanks to some people he/she found particularly engaging. It's not then unheard of for someone to follow these reinforcements up with more reinforcement (the Welsh word is "ategu", meaning something like "say again"), but they usually have some sort of death wish, as it takes a staunch/insane Welshman to tolerate three doses of thanks. What frustrates me most about them is that the very process of their formality makes them insincere, compounded by the stock phrases that continually occur in the speeches, no matter where you go and who says them. It also, almost always, goes on for too long, and Welsh concerts often last over 3 hours anyway. Also, the names of those who are thanked are printed in the programme, which makes the whole thing obsolete. I do concede, however, that there are degrees of awfulness of the process. The worst is the person who's written out a 17 page script and reads it diligently. Almost as bad is the person who's written nothing at all, and tries to remember who took part. As the person thanking is often aged and probably deranged (you have to be, to accept the task, anyway), this can take a looong time.

So yes. Hate.

No, haven't put a mirror on the ceiling. Have put a poster of Keeley Hazel topless on the wall, though.

[symbelgal]

Have put a poster of Keeley Hazel topless on the wall, though.

Inspired taste, Mr Davies.

Does she have a topless picture of you on her wall though?

[peredur_glyn]

Assuming she too has inspired taste, she probably does. There's a good line of posters of me on myposters (though they've clumsily misnamed me as Tom Cruise, the eejits).

[donals_girl]

I didn't think it could be worse than Middle School Prizegiving, but it sounds it. You have my sympathies. It sounds even worse than an Easter Sunday Mass I attended in America - there were over a thousand there, mind, and the insane priest got all of the hundreds of children up to the front to say into the microphone the person/thing they wanted to pray for. It went on for ages and ages: "My dog", "My grandma and my dog", "My parents and my hamster and my dog", "My dog", "World peace", "My dog and my cousin". In the end, we couldn't bear it any longer and just walked out.

Aren't topless posters reserved for use in bedsits?

[peredur_glyn]

Aren't topless posters reserved for use in bedsits?

Well, my flat is sort of a bedsit. It has a bed in it, and I sometimes sit on that. But i think topless posters are becoming more acceptable in other types of dwelling nowadays (flat, semi, caravan, hovel, kitchenette, etc.).

Insane priests need lessons in pragmatics. And, possibly, some ritalin.

[donals_girl]

So, they're becoming more mainstream? I don't know about this sort of stuff - the cult of the topless poster passed me by. My posters have always been very innocent.

[peredur_glyn]

With FHM, Zoo, etc. etc. becoming less afraid to print nudey women on their centrefolds, yeah, I suppose it is becoming more mainstream/acceptable.

Innocent? You strike me as the kind of woman who'd buy "fantasy art" posters with naked women/men draped in furs/silk/corpses of the slain and with a title like "Fate's glittering reward". No offence. (I used to download that sort of thing when I was innocenter as an undergrad. It doesn't clock up on the Computing Officer's log as porn. Um, yes.)

[peredur_glyn]

Shittyballs. I wasn't logged in there.

[donals_girl]

No, my big glossy posters have always been of the 'Famous Kings And Queens Of Europe' variety, or 'Our Millenium', or 'Human Evolution', or The Sound of Music.

Admittedly, I did for a short time have a 'Wall of Westlife', when I stuck up some pictures that my brother kindly cut from his Top of the Pops magazine. And I did used to cut out perfume adverts, and stick them up on my wall too. The women in those were usually fully clothed, though.

As for the sort of fantasy art you're talking about? Laughed at, but occasionally viewed on the internet as a guilty pleasure. www.rowenaart.com

[peredur_glyn]

Two n's in millennium.

Wow, magazine cuttings on the wall, eh. Never got to that stage. Is that the girl equivalent of cutting out page 3 and pinning it up in the lavs? (Note: not sometihng I do.)

Where did you find perfume ads where the women are fully clothed? Isn't that almost a contradiction in terms?

[donals_girl]

There is no girl equivalent to cutting out page three and pinning it up, because you do not often find pictures of naked men in magazines. A topless woman has to be regarded as equivalent to a naked man, I think, as there's nothing really taboo about blokes' chests. For example, I can see one anytime I have to go and wake up my brother in the morning - although it's not a particularly inspiring specimen. Not that I'd want to see my brother's in particular - that would be creepy - but the point is that the naked male torso is everywhere and not particularly remarkable.

There are indeed two 'n's in 'millennium'. I was just checking that you were paying attention ;)

Most perfume adverts are of women's faces, actually, and aren't that suggestive. It's the commercials on television that you want to watch out for. They raise an eyebrow. I take great delight, after they come on the telly, in saying plaintively, "But what does the perfume smell like?". It's a fun game. Almost as fun as watching car adverts and yelling out what you think they could be advertising instead, based on on the imagery used.