Tag Archives: other people

Listen to this song. Even if you don’t want to.

‘You abosolutely must listen to this song,’ My friend told me recently. ‘It’s amazing.’ It wasn’t.

So when my friend emailed me the next day, asking ‘How good is this song?!’ I wasn’t quite sure how to reply. See if we had been speaking face to face (or even on the phone, because my point is one of tone), I would have told her instantly, ‘not very’. But when I wrote this as an email reply it looked terribly curt. I was also afraid that she would think I was being sarcastically deadpan- adding to my ‘not very’ a because ‘it’s BETTER THAN GOOD!’ I certainly did not want her to think that. Imagine the deluge of mediocre songs she’d start recommending to me.

Other people’s recommendations are a minefield. Unlike my own, which are infallible.

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Other people’s resolutions

Drink. Don’t drink.

Just don’t explain. There’s nothing worse than someone who thinks I’m interested in them. ‘I’m not drinking for January,’ someone explained to me last night. ‘I think my bed is too big so I fill one half of it with pillows,’ I replied. My friend was somewhat startled. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I thought we were sharing uninteresting facts about ourselves.’ I’m perfectly happy to drink alone. (In the same way, as a fully-functioning grown-up, I’m entirely comfortable showering alone. Though obviously it is nice to do things together. But not if you stand in front of the shower head while I’m trying to rinse shampoo out of my hair).

I’m much less happy to listen to a 10 minute diatribe on how nice it is not to be hungover/ how clear your skin is/ how much energy you now have. (Quick point on the ‘energy’- you’re substituting vast quantities of sugar for the booze you once ingested. That’s why you feel ‘so alive’). I don’t mind what your New Year’s resolution was, but let me assure you that mine was not, ‘be more interested in other people’. (For an expose of my New Year’s resolution, please check the Metro tomorrow morning).

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