Going to the pictures becomes a tricky business

While it was no secret that Roman Polanksi was a fugitive child molester, I’m repeatedly shocked at the number of people in The Business who are this week happily holding their hands up in support of the guy now he’s finally been arrested. I just found out that Gael Garcia Bernal is the latest in a long line of rape apologists. GAEL! GARCIA! BERNAL! What a fucktart he turned out to be.

Check out the current list of pro-rape morons. See what kind of pockets you’re lining with your cinema tickets and DVD purchases. Think about how paying to see anything these people have made means you’re basically saying, “You’re alright, you. Sure, you think it’s okay to rape a 13-year-old girl and then make a break for the border before you have to serve real time for it, but hey, your film looks good. I’ll forgive you for your sickening loud-and-proud support of a child molester.”

Alternatively, you can just keep shovelling popcorn into your gob and forget that all those people think raping a child is basically a-okay because gosh, it was so long ago. One option is far easier than the other, but I’m not so sure anymore that enjoying films involving any of these people is worth the knowledge that I’m basically supporting their fucked moral compasses with my dollars and cents.

Which means I’ll never get to see Fantastic Mr Fox or find out who killed Laura Palmer. FUCKING HELL.

Like I said, it’s easier to enjoy stuff and ignore the moral implications, but sometimes the bigger picture is much more important.

Someday a real rain will come

Nick ‘Don’t Have Nightmares’ Ross – he of Crimewatch fame – was interviewed on BBC breakfast news this morning in order to promote his made-for-two-pence documentary about (you guessed it) crime in the UK. Early on in that interview, he made the most baffling set of statements I’ve ever heard at that time in the morning.

There was a lot of discussion on the news in general about CCTV cameras, telling us yet again that we, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, are the most watched country in the known universe. Fascinating fact: the Shetland Islands, home to seven windswept fishermen and a lonely cow, have more CCTV cameras in operation than San Francisco. Insane. The London borough of Wandsworth has more than about 4 major world cities combined. (As an aside, one of the BBC presenters described it as “leafy”, a claim that some police dude from the area denied vehemently. Looking quickly at the map, Wandsworth includes, or is right next to, Roehampton, Wimbledon, Richmond and Parson’s fuckin’ Green. It’s so leafy it makes Hyde Park look like Pripyat.)

Since Nick Ross has all that Crimewatch experience, the BBC has clearly decided he is now an expert on crime in the UK. Y’know, after presenting something rather than working in the police force or one of the related government agencies or whatever. With that in mind, they asked him his opinion on the amount of CCTV cameras nowadays. His answer? I paraphrase slightly, but here’s the gist:

“They’re making it too easy for police. If someone’s running away, they can just see where to cut him off now, and it’s preventing them from thinking laterally.”

So that’s how you deal with crime in 2009! All along, they thought the frankly terrifying amount of technology we have sellotaped to street corners was helping catch the baddies, but really what it’s doing is slowing the intellectual faculties of police. When they have to run through the rainy streets of some depressing English town on a Saturday night, pursuing whichever goon’s just glassed someone for looking a bit funny at their missus, taking directions from a CCTV operator on where to cut them off, what they should be doing is solving a particularly tricky Sudoku puzzle and plotting the results on a complicated graph. THANKS, NICK ROSS!

They showed a clip from his show. It’s basically how I described above: Oxford, weekend, brawl, repeat to fade. In the clip they used, some guy legged it from a fight; when he was caught, he drunkenly wailed, “But I’m a TEACHER! I’m a TEACHER!”

Cut back to the studio and Ross sighing heavily at The State of Things Today. “That man was a teacher,” he moaned. “He was clearly very drunk and ran away from the police. Can you imagine someone like that being allowed to teach in our schools twenty years ago?”

Aaah, twenty years ago. The halcyon days of 1989, when tight-knit families sat around the wireless to listen to a crackly broadcast of Neighbours and everyone got together to have a great big cuddle at Hillsborough. And they knew how to prepare for a recession back in 1989! They put all our pre-economic collapse street parties in 2007 to shame!

It was just a better time. A better time we’ll never get back. *wipes away single tear*

Nick Ross for Prime Minister! The campaign starts here, right after I’m done punching the TV screen.

I have a dream…

Of late, the budget airlines have started spamming customers a while before they are due to fly. I have had mailings from Easyjet, Ryanair and Sterling recently, all with helpful reminders of my flight times and such a few days before the trip.

Sometimes, though, they’re just weird in their offerings. Take the spam I had from Easyjet yesterday, for instance. I’m flying with them to Amsterdam next month (still another three weeks away, mind), and they were kind enough to let me know I could still spend more money with them if I cared to. The exact text (with all the emphasis their own) was as follows:

Imagine arriving at the airport, using a dedicated check-in with a shorter queue and getting through the gate first so you can all sit together….

Wouldn’t that be a more relaxing way to start your family holiday?

Yeah, that sounds alright. Nothing to get excited about, but if you have seventeen brats and an incontinent granny to haul onboard I suppose it makes sense. Luckily, I’m neither laden with sprogs nor lacking in bladder control; and since I’m only travelling on a 45 minute flight, should I be separated from my two companions for that heinous length of time I’m sure I’ll just about cope without having a nervous breakdown.

As a result, I went to click ‘delete’ immediately and forget all about it. But the following line caught my eye before I hit the button:

Don’t just dream it, do it.

Is that what passes for a dream on Easyjet these days? The idea that you might be able to spend an extra fifteen minutes on their stuffy, cramped plane in order to sit next to people you know on a short-haul flight (which, in my plebeian boarding experience, has never been a problem, anyway)?

The only legitimate copy this line could have preceded without incurring my immediate scorn is as follows:

Imagine not being charged extra to check in a bag which you can’t carry onboard because of legislation hoping to prevent terrorism mid-flight. Imagine not having to fly at 4am because you can’t afford a flight at a reasonable time. Imagine not having your eyes assaulted the entire flight by uniforms in a violent shade of orange usually only worn by clean-up workers at a nuclear power plant post-disaster. Imagine not having to pay extra to avoid a violent scrum at the gate when boarding opens. Imagine never having to go to Stansted or Luton fucking Airport ever, ever, EVER again.

Ah, the power of dreams…

Which swine forgot the grilled eggplant?

To celebrate her birthday, a good friend of mine recently organised a trip to see Romeo and Juliet at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park. It’s a beautiful location to see a play, even though the nature involved sent my hayfever crazy and I nearly suffered an untimely death by drowning on my own snot.

It was obvious a lot of people had attended a show there before, since they were smart enough to bring picnics to enjoy on the grass before everything kicked off. It was all very Pimms o’clock. At one point my boyfriend heard someone exclaim, “Xavier’s here!” Of course he is, and he’s jolly well bringing stuffed vine leaves for everyone!

The play itself was really very good, marred only by the people sat behind me. One of these days I’m going to be rich enough to go all Kermodian and buy all the seats around me so I’m never bothered by the general public. This time I was treated to a wonderful family of American tourists – a teenager, a mother figure and the dreaded Small Child. Oh joy.

They annoyed me from the off by chattering to the sprog about what was going on. I lasted about ten minutes before I couldn’t gnash my teeth any harder without grinding them to dust and turned around to shush. I found myself nose-to-nose with the Small Child, who was leaning forward in his seat. He received every last drop of my bile as I ordered him to be quiet. His eyes widened, and his mother nodded violently, pulling him back.

Luckily, this seemed to do the trick, and the sproglet sat in silence for the rest of the first half, but when the interval arrived the teenager decided to wank on about where they’d got to in the play. I was treated to what seemed like hours of his nasal musings because it took forever to get out of our respective rows. “We’re, like, at Act Three, Scene Two… No, maybe, like, Act Two, Scene One… No, like, I think it’s Act Four, Scene Three… Or it could be…” At this point I roundhouse-kicked his head square off his shoulders and we all agreed to disagree.

When the play began for the second half he once again forgot how to behave in public and spent a minute or so talking over the actors to explain what was going to happen to the sprog. Not just, “Oh, and now Juliet’s going to be ordered to marry Paris. Let’s see how that turns out, ho ho!” but a SYNOPSIS OF THE WHOLE PLAY FROM THAT POINT ON, from the proposal of forced marriage to the death of our heroes. I tried to have a sense of humour about it and muttered, “Aw, what? Spoiler warning!” The people next to me giggled, and I felt validated in my wrath.

Safe in the knowledge their idiot child knew exactly what was going to happen, they stayed silent till the end (which, incidentally, borrowed a little too much from Baz Luhrmann’s version but brought tears to my eyes regardless). Romeo had poisoned himself in a dramatic fashion and Juliet had shot her pretty little brains out. They lay draped over one another, their families wept and the Prince made his dramatic, “Now look what you’ve bladdy well gone and done!” speech. The Teenager clearly found the performance somewhat lacking, and at this final moment felt it necessary to start reciting the lines in a stage whisper, saying them just before the Prince did. Oh my god. OH MY GOD. And to add insult to injury, he got them wrong.

I’m still not sure why I let him live. Actually, I’m annoyed at myself for not having turned to him afterwards and told him that he’d ruined the end of the play for me. Because he did. Totally. I should have said something, but I just clung to my boyfriend and tried to let my anger disperse in a non-violent fashion.

I understand that my fury is probably disproportionate to the various crimes, but that said:

1) If your child is too young to understand or be entertained by Shakespeare, take him to see the fucking Lion King. That’s what it’s there for.
2) DO. NOT. TALK. DURING. A. PLAY. With it being outside the ambient noise was distracting enough (planes, a random air-horn, kestrels going WAGH! WAGH!), and I didn’t need twunts like you pulling me even more out of it.
3) If you know the play well enough to recite it, good for you. Save it for the home times, the special secret sexy times. No-one is impressed that you can quote Romeo and Juliet. Like a lot of people, I know great swathes of the play by heart after studying it at GCSE, but I didn’t feel the need to show off. They are the actors. You are the audience. Know your FUCKING place, dickhead, and shut the goddamn hell up.
4) I hate the general public.

And Terry Wogan explodes from his own anger after one of those undeserving ethnics takes the crown AGAIN.

I love Eurovision. I do. I bloody love it. And not in a painfully kitsch LOL FOREIGNERS AND GAYS fashion, but in a tragic, treasure-every-second way.

I’ve missed the last couple of years, much to my distress at the time, but this year I switched over just in time to see the UK take the stage and bore the arse off the viewing public with some instantly forgettable disco number. Brilliant. When Terry Wogan announced that our singer, Whatshisname McThingy, had done an amazing job, I couldn’t wait for Tels to be totally confounded when we went home with nil points again.

Which of course he was. We managed to avoid the horror of scoring nothing, but we still did shockingly, coming right at the bottom, and as always Wogan decided to spout on about political voting throughout the whole thing, as if certain countries really do vote for one another to make some sort of statement. I was writing my dissertation the first year we scored nothing (for a momumentally cack performance from the ones that sang out of tune, Blondetits and Wankface. You remember them, right? It was 2003, I think). Anyway, after that debacle certain people couldn’t wait to blame it on Labour. Our culture had gone to the dogs under Blair, crowed a Tory politician! Like Eurovision has ever been anything other than shite where we’re concerned.

When it comes to certain countries voting for one another, the so-called political voting – I have another theory. It’s really fucking out there, but bear with me, okay? Here it comes:

Other countries take the competition seriously.

Let me explain. We’ve been doing this for donkey’s years; since 1957, in fact. We’ve won a bunch of times and we always get our entries in, even if they sucked, thanks to the big fat cheque we pay the heads of Eurovision every year. However, a lot of countries are new to this song contest lark. In the last five years alone no fewer than thirteen new nations have started taking part. And you know why they want in in the first place? Because they actually care about being in it, and they care about winning. We don’t. We couldn’t give a fuck, truth be told. We don’t want to be beaten by Moldova or somesuch, but we don’t really care that much otherwise.

So imagine that all the ex-Soviet and Balkan countries care about the contest. They take several steps to ensure they do well:

1. Fame. They know it.
They pick someone well-known to represent them. Russia’s winning entrant this year, Dima Bilan, came second in the 2006 contest, and he’s a bloody great big star in his homeland. This guy is one of Russia’s biggest selling acts. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that if he’s big in Russia, he’s going to be somewhat of a name in places like Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Armenia et al. In short, check out his bloody big ready-made walloping gallumpha of a fanbase. Those people already love him. Those people will vote for him, even if his song is a turd. He even roped in Evgeni Plushenko, a world champion skater, to slide around him on Saturday night, and some dead popular violinist. In contrast, we have Splatty Thingyjim and his backing band of nobodies. Who gives a shit about Splatty Thingyjim? No-one, except maybe his mum. Who’s going to vote for him, besides his mum? No-one. Because no-one knows (or cares to find out) who Splatty Thinyjim is. Which leads us onto…

2. Promotion. They use it.
This is a simple one. If you want people to vote for your song, it needs to have stuck in their heads. Our entry failed because it was instantly forgettable. Then again, I can’t remember the Russian one either. However, I’m willing to bet hard cash that Dima Bilan promoted his arse off in the run up to the competition. That song would have been on radio and television all over eastern Europe. Why? Because they take it seriously. We, on the other hand, employ some X-Factor reject and poke them onstage at the last minute before throwing a cheery thumbs-up their way and running away giggling.

3. Music. They like it.
Terry Wogan, eh? What a funny chap. ‘Oh ho!’ he crows, ‘This is going to be rubbish!’ over every single slightly ethnic sounding track. I’m quite happy to giggle at the utter rubbish some countries send into the contest – Spain excelled themselves this year with new levels of bonkers arsewankery – but on occasion his commentary borders on xenophobia.

Take the half-time entertainment this year, for instance, provided by the amazing Goran Bregovic. If you love a little eastern European brass madness, go buy some of this guy’s records. I had no idea he was due to appear, but I was delighted when I heard his name. It was such a brilliant addition, and such a surprise – one comment on YouTube phrased it perfectly: “I didn’t expect to see him there at all. Brega playing in Eurovision is like Stanley Kubrick showing up at your high school’s amateur film festival”. I may well have clapped my hands in delight. Wogan sneered at it all, of course, but I expected him to shut up after a few seconds. He didn’t. He talked over almost the entire thing, and even when he wasn’t sniping, he had the sound turned down, so we couldn’t hear the music either way. I was so frustrated and angry I wanted to cry.

Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, I’ve been able to watch Bregovic and his band back at my leisure, and it was bloody worth it, I tell you – check it out for yourself:

The point is, what the fuck does Terry Wogan know about music from this area of the world? Nothing whatsoever, if he chose to talk over Bregovic. And really, most of us won’t be familiar with the trends of the music industry in every country in the world, unless we’re a bone-fide expert (or, probably, Stephen Fry). So he can talk over the entries all he likes, but I’m going to go out on yet another limb and guess that many of the entries are styles of music very popular with people from that part of the world. They like it. They vote for it. They’re less keen on limp and self-consciously camp disco from the UK. They don’t vote for it. It’s a simple system, and has fuck all to do with politics.

If you combine all of these elements, you’re onto a winner. Sorry Terry, it’s got nothing to do with Iraq. We’re just shit at this.

As a side note, my favourite entry was the ridiculous song from Bosnia & Herzegovina. The version on the night was much weirder – no chicken, but a washing line and loads of brides – but this one still delights me. I found myself genuinely liking the song, and it’s the perfect example of why I like Eurovision so much. Who knows what utter weirdness is going to make it onto your iPod?

Hey, Uncle Sandro, how we don’t really know, but seems like politicians can be only wrong.

If you had a vote yesterday I really hope you took some time to read the mayoral manifestos on the London Elects webpage. I did so last night, realising I had no idea who to award my second vote to, and it was both terrifying and hilarious. Here are some of my favourite political jackasses.

Matt O’Connor
English Democrats
First off, this is not a man. This is a creation. Somewhere in this world, Dr. Fox has secured the funds to build a lab deep in the earth’s crust, and in that lab he built a man based on his own image. Foxy gave him a rudimentary history lesson, made him angry about kilts, named him Matt and released his creation into the world.

This is what the leader of Dr. Fox’s master race has to say about things:

“We all remember a country we called home. A green and pleasant land that gave the world the English language, Democracy, the Mother of Parliaments and the Magna Carta.”

Seriously? That’s his political angle, to make people feel nostalgic for the days of the Magna Carta? This particular piece of English legislation hasn’t crossed my own mind since I studied it at school circa 1992, and I struggle to think of the last time it came up in any sort of conversation.

…apart from when Hugo, Toby, Rupert and I went boating at Toby’s divine family estate and discussed all manner of bloody brilliant English things over ginger beer and hard boiled eggs. We made a top ten. The Magna Carta came third, beaten only by cricket and the Queen. What ho!

Matt is also Very Angry About Scotland. You get the feeling he’d start stabbing the place up if you so much as offered him a piece of shortbread. He probably spends his days writing letters to the ASA complaining about that Wine Gums advert.

Alan Craig
Christian Choice
Say hello to your friendly religious fundamentalist candidate! I don’t know about you guys, but in a diverse city like London we DEFINITELY need the person in power to bleat on about Jesus. You know, just to bring the community together. Well, the Christian community, anyway. Just ignore the fact London is made up of Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews, Rastafarians, Atheists and more religions than I have time to think of. In short, there’s loads, and the vast majority don’t give a toss about Luke or what he had to say in 22:26. For that reason, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that ‘Jesus said “The leader is the one who serves”‘ has no place in a political manifesto. Also, if it’s a direct quote Luke had poor grammatical skills. Wanker.

Beyond that, here’s the first three points on Craig’s winning manifesto:

The Christian Choice priorities:
- Promote marriage and stable family as a long-term solution to youth crime, educational under-achievement and child poverty
- Stop the mega-mosque at West Ham near 2012 Olympics proposed by a controversial Islamic sect (MegaMosqueNoThanks.com)
- Champion London’s most vulnerable – the unborn, the elderly, the refugee

Which essentially translates as:

- Continue to blame single parents for all the crime on our streets.
- Pretend that racial and religious diversity doesn’t exist in London. Also, ensure even more hostility between The Good Guys (henceforth known as ‘Us’) and the Muslim community (henceforth known as ‘The Terrorists’).
- Ban abortion.

Cunt.

Finally, let’s go see what everyone’s favourite neo-Nazis have to say.

Richard Barnbrook
BNP
You see this chump? See his wistful face? Guess what he’s thinking. I’ll give you a little time to construct an answer.

…

If you said, ‘Our wonderful party is so inclusive! YAY!’, you’d be wrong.

If you said, ‘I hate it when people think we’re racists. It makes me have sad face. ‘, you’d be wrong.

If you said, ‘I think I’ll have a wank over the Stephen Lawrence thing later… no matter how much time passes it still makes me stiff as a board!’, you’d be closer, but still wrong.

What this absolute cockend is thinking is:

“Remember London the way it used to be? Clean, friendly and safe.”

No, Richard. No, I don’t remember that. What you’ve done, right, is confuse London, the sprawling capital city of our dear nation, with a rural idyll somewhere in Cornwall. You know the one – it’s where all the nice, non-threatening white people live.

London has never been clean, London has never been friendly, and London has never been safe. It’s a fucking capital city. It has eight million people living in it, not to mention all the commuters and visitors. Nowhere this big, this busy, this exciting will ever be clean and safe. As for friendly, why not try being a little less terrified of anyone who doesn’t share your dour pallor? It helps breed the wacky things like friendship you crave so much.

You know, I could lay into this asshat for days. Look at some of his policies!

- British jobs for British workers

British jobs? What exactly is a ‘British’ job? Tea maker? Yorkshire pudding chef? Stout landlord at the local free house?

- Build a better NHS

That’s something for the MPs of the House of Commons to deal with. Unless you have something to say about LON-DON, get off my land.

- Scrap the congestion charge

YEAH! DOWN WITH ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN! Fucking PRICK.

- Better education for all our people

Again, not your fucking concern, matey. And don’t think for a second that any of us are stupid enough to miss ‘our people’. That’s right, keep the immigrants down where they belong – uneducated and too underqualified to do anything but sweep our dirty, dirty streets. That’s progress, that is. That’s what it’s all about. Ooh, I’m feeling rigid.

What do things like ‘build a better NHS’ and ‘Better education’ mean, anyway? They’re just words. We all want our free healthcare to survive – it’s a wonderful ideal. But you can’t just say it, you have to say how you’re going to do it. Or don’t, since, y’know, it has no place in this election anyway.

The worst thing the BNP does is use quotes from people ‘just like you’ to try and convince you it’s okay to be a racist these days. Here are the ones they picked this time:

People Like You Voting BNP

HOUSEWIFE – Lorraine Henry
“I’m terrified about my children’s future. Knife and gun crime are out of control and paedophiles are released back into the community. Only the British National Party have policies which keep our children safe.”

BUILDER – Ken Seager
“I vote BNP because I’m proud of my country and our heritage. We should celebrate things like St. George’s Day and other Christian festivals like St Patrick’s Day instead of other festivals such as Ramadan and Eid.”

STUDENT – Samantha Winter
“I’m voting BNP because I’m Irish and the BNP are the only party that cares about the indigenous peoples of these islands. Our jobs are under threat from economic migrants and only the BNP will protect our interests.”

Now, these are clearly made up. Any halfwit can see that. But doesn’t it make your skin crawl? Take this fictional Ken Seager character. His major concerns when it comes to governing a city is whether or not we celebrate St. George’s Day. He doesn’t want to be celebrating Ramadan and Eid. I can’t even summon up the words to describe now sick this kind of rhetoric makes me.

Oh, and notice the insidious inference in the title? People Like You Voting BNP. Read it again. Poor grammar? Bad English? Maybe. But you can read it two ways and both offend me.

So what did people have left? The UK Independence Party, another right wing wankathon that’s desperate to remind us how bad Europe is; Left List, whose candidate seems fine and dandy with a solid background in feminist and anti-racist political work, but clearly has no hope of winning; and Winston McKenzie, an independent with a grainy photo and no manifesto.

Then there are the real front runners: Ken, Boris, PC Brian and the lovely Sian Berry, representing the Green party. When you look at his competition outside of those three (and Left List), Boris almost seems like a warm, fluffy option.

How terrifying is that?

Another shitting epidemic

I’m delighted to see yet more news of the current Norovirus epidemic.

Otherwise known as Winter Vomiting Sickness, this particularly evil bug is spreading so widely right now that they’re actually stopping non-essential surgery in hospitals to try and prevent an even bigger epidemic.

If you’ve never had WVS, imagine food poisoning twenty times more violent than anything you’ve had before, and without the joy of the dodgy curry or off-colour kebab that tasted so delightful the night before. It’s like having the festive season banned in your house as a child, and then having coal hurled at your face by your entire family if you so much as dared look at a Christmas tree in someone else’s window.

It hits you like a truck equipped with a jet engine. You crap at an unimaginable velocity, and then you projectile vomit. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And then, when you think it can’t get any worse, you start doing both at once. You’re leaning over the bath while still on the toilet, pants round your ankles, dignity having long since deserted you, sweating and sobbing. There’s nothing more your belly or bum can give this ill-thought out project, but they just can’t help but have yet another go anyway. Eventually, you start to wonder if you’re shitting out your internal organs and puking up your very soul.

Don’t worry too much – that only goes on continuously for a few hours. You eventually get a break between rounds, and it usually allows you about half an hour’s feverish rest before forcing you to lurch in a horrified and delirious state towards the bathroom once more.

And then there’s the dehydration. You’re thirstier than you’ve ever been in your life. Your throat feels like it’s lined with sandpaper, and if you’re lucky enough to have someone living with you to help you out you can barely even croak water loud enough for passing superheroes to hear.

If you get that precious glass of water you will puke if you’re impudent enough to drink anything from it. And I mean anything. A sip is all it takes. You can’t help but try again and again, like Pete Doherty scrabbling for smack sellotaped to a Buckaroo donkey, which is in turn wired up to a particularly fractious suicide bomber; but try you will. Ten minutes later, your stomach will scream “RAUS! RAUS!” in a thick German accent and deposit that precious fluid into the unsavory washing-up bowl beside your bed.

And then you’ll cry, because that’s all you can do. You’ll sob your little heart out and wonder why you? Why now? Why why why?

But it’s not all doom and gloom! It only lasts about forty-eight hours, and you’ll emerge a pale and sickly ghost, several stones lighter and somewhat scarred by your experience… but you’ll be alive.

They say that you need to give yourself another two days of bedrest after the symptoms have gone to make sure you don’t infect anyone else. I hope I’ve scared each and every one of you enough with this post to respect that rule should you be lucky enough to acquire your very own viral friend. Because if you don’t, and I get this FUCKING illness again, I will come round to your house and use your bed as my own personal Winter Vomiting Sickness toilet.

Are we clear?