Stereotypes, there must be more to life…

Firstly, let me just say that my recent spate of Blur quotes will soon be coming to an end. I promise.

Well it happened. Along with about 50% of the working population, I found myself feeling queesy over the Easter Weekend. Not queesy so much, more a stomach ache that left me feeling like I was about to give birth to not just a small baby elephant, but it’s rather larger siblings too. Fortunately, I still have 2 weeks of enforced holiday (two of the 20 or so I get each year), so I’m not going to complain.

However, two days of enforced staying-in-ness has left me contemplating a few things. Firstly, I’m a little concerned that I’m becoming a stereotype. Today I found myself in a garden centre, which afterall is what Easter is all about. Surely Jesus, after a hard weekend of falling and rising, thought on Monday, ‘why, that lawn’s looking a little shoddy over there by the sand dune, must pop down to B&Q. And in years to come, my followers will do the same’. And lo when I set forth into the garden, I did see every other person in suburbia doing the same. I’ve even started coveting a Ford Focus as my next car…

Thankfully the rest of my contemplating left me feeling less stereotypical. Whilst eating a few Jelly Baby/Gums I felt a strange warm glow when I realised they are still made in different shapes. Each colour has a corresponding character, including a green one who seems to be either a) mopping his brow after a strenuous jog, or b) crying like a lost little child/jelly baby. I take this as a sign that the corporate ‘man’ hasn’t yet got to every institution, cost-cutting every facet of English life to the bear minimum.

My second contemplation was slightly more alarming. My enforced sofa-rest due to my incubating baby-elephant which by then had been joined by a giraffe called Jeremy, meant lots of television watching. As it was a Bank Holiday, this left me with a choice of The Sound Of Music, programmes auditioning for people to play characters in musicals, Channel 4’s the top 100 musicals, or a slightly more heterosexual schedule of American sitcoms on E4 and Channel 5. Thus I’ve been watching a lot of Friends, Joey, Happy Days, and Scrubs. The latter is perhaps the most alarming. On the first day of my holiday I knew scrubs was rubbish. However, in my mission to stay completely heterosexual and not press the red button to sing-a-long-a-Julie Andrews, it’s worked it’s way into my brain. I’m not sure quite what did it. I’m still not a fan, I know it’s absolute Elephant dung, but I was won over by a Dick Van Dyke cameo, and the geeky looking kid from Road Trip putting in an appearence. What’s worse is that I’ve started to think of each episode, with it’s unique Zach Braff monologue, as some kind of allegory. As the prologue fades out and the credits begin to roll, I’m left thinking, ‘yeah, that I can really relate to that’.

So there you have it. I’ve become a suburbanite clone, and I’m viewing Scrubs as some kind of philosophical oracle on how to live a good life. I must be ill…