“Big boys don’t cry” - oh yes they do!

Indeed, in some ways I would quite like to able to emit uncontrolled emotion now and again so as to prove that I really care about someone or something - anything! Okay, that’s not strictly true, because I have been known to quietly weep on a number of occasions in my life, particularly at the death of a parent or loved one and on the other hand the birth of a child or grandchild. However I was reading a particular interesting article the other day that focussed upon modern manners and they way we nowadays express emotion in the modern world.

Indeed we British are said to be on a fast track to a sort of empathy overload as some seek to dispel the so called modern myth of a cool and distracted indifference to anything mildly emotional. Indeed, even someone as emotionally, tightly bound, as myself has on occasions found myself wiping away a single tear when something touches upon my heartstrings.

I don’t know if it’s my age, but on occasions when watching some absurd romantic movie I find myself damp eyed and a tad quivery - so much so that I have to go and pour myself another large glass of Romanian Shiraz late of an evening. On one occasion the woman in my life asked me outright - “Are you crying dear heart?” whereupon I had to pretend that the wine I was drinking - was indeed corked.

I suppose the main reason why I have raised this subject today is that it has been noticed that lately a number of broadcasters, newsreaders and reporters have succumbed to tears when reporting not only the war in Ukraine, but also on other occasions where emotions have been running high. For instance I noticed that the BBC newsreader Joanna Gosling broke down with emotion as she announced that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was coming home.

Yes, we are supposed to admire newsreaders’ cool, professional detachment, but sometimes losing control doesn’t seem wrong at all. Indeed, on occasions in the past, quite a few people who have been charged to bring us the public, sad or just bad news, have let their emotions show, and as far as I’m aware nobody has ever thought the worst of them for that.

However, in my memory it is always women who expose their emotions in this way; could it be that we men are still subject to a very different emotional code to women? In answering my own question, as I get older (not particularly wiser) I have noticed that many men have rejected the macho nonsense of cool indifference in all things and are just as likely to emotionally engaged in a subject as some women have moved in the opposite direction.

It seems to me that the modern world is itself divided into two groups of ‘mindset’ in this context. On one hand we are constantly being urged to show our emotions and look to interact with our fellow human beings, whilst other parts of our world insist upon us all doing the exact opposite. Read any UK based Sunday newspaper magazine and you will be astonished by the number of articles there are talking about our emotions and the way that we need to - “…work alongside them” and treat them as either a guiding light or if they are negative, ways of dispelling them altogether.

Is this I wonder, a natural way of living a life - or could it be an unhealthy obsession with self? One thing is for sure, the fascination we seem to have with almost our every thought or action seems to be completely at odds with the way that the world is spinning at the moment and I wonder why this might be?

The things my aunties used to say!

As your dedicated Mallorca Daily Bulletin television guru I have been watching a number of deeply depressing dramas on your behalf over the past year or so. So I am happy to relate to you my enjoyment of one new series on the box at the moment. The drama series - Holding, which is adapted from a novel written by television presenter and all round good guy, Graham Norton, has a splendid cast of Irish actors.

However, forget the plot-line, because what I love about it most, is the fact that some of the characters espouse some of the sayings my old mum and her many sisters would introduce into everyday conversations. How about - “He’s so cute he could meet himself round the corner” was baffling to me for a while - but it possibly means that - He’s really ahead of himself? Whatever that is supposed to mean….!

What about one of my all time favourites - as in, “She’s only as good as she should be.” I have a feeling that this could be about a particular woman’s sexual reliability - but alas, I‘m not really sure anymore. Then there was, - “If she went to a wedding she’d wait for the christening.” Which I’m pretty sure denotes an overstaying guest unlikely to leave of her own free will any time soon.

One sayings meaning that is easier to nail-down is - “He couldn’t lie in bed straight” which must indicate that somebody is bent and deceitful, and I still hear that one used about all sorts of folks on the island that anyone would not be surprised about at all. Have you got any that you would like to share with fellow Bulletin readers?