Emerald Bile

I know what you are thinking - you are thinking I am about to start on about immigration and how I am over people either saying "God, aren't the Poles great - bumped the number of Catholics in the UK up, so they have". Or moaning "Polish Plumbers blah blah". Well you are wrong. Interesting and fascinating a debate the relative merits of Poles might be - I don't give a shite either way. This is about the other poles - the ones on the earth, and I can't see the fucking point of them.

People are obsessed with the poles. After Hitler, they are the most popular thing to talk about if you are talking about history. I rarely talk about history but if I get sucked into a chat about it you can bet it will move swifly from "Hitler made lampshades out of Jew skin" to "How many toes the latest explorer has had go black and fall off with the frostbite". Just tedious. And on the telly hardly a day goes by without an hour of snow upon snow and some ghastly group of do goodery environmentalists, mucking around with arctic hares, or tutting and watching icebergs melt a bit. And then you have those cunts who are so pushy that simply going around irritating people and boasting about their achievements in places with foliage and ground that is not made of frozen water, is not enough for them - no, these pushy fuckers feel the need to go off and race, to see who can get to the north pole or the south pole first. It used to be quite a handy evolutionary tool in ridding the world of ghastly self important "discovering" sorts, but now even a total mincing gaylord can get to the poles - it is not that hard. I watched this thing, where that irritating little catamite of Jeremy Clarkson's, who you aren't allowed to be mean about because he "nearly died" driving a very fast car, that little drip got to the North Pole on a skateboard with a kite on it and some dogs. He made a dreadful meal of the journey, of course, crying behind his goggles and shivering in a tent, but I could feel nothing but utter contempt, and massive irritation that the man has the luck of a cat, when it comes to evading death. There was no need whatsoever for him to be there on the telly shivering. He is just a desperate, awful cunt.

And don't give me "Oh but the landscape is something else" It isn't. You have a choice of frozen river, snow, snow mountains, bits of sludgy sea - less choice than you would find in a council house front garden, which might have a wall, a gate, some concrete, a bit of grass, a mattress, a car up on blocks, windows, a crisp packet, some flowers. Places whose names end in Arctic are just big blank white expanses - not daunting, not exciting, just really boring - like a colouring book when you've lost your felt-tipped pens. And what about the wildlife? - it's shite! Nictoine- stained, oversized, albino bears, that mean you can't wear deodorant in case they eat you, or slimy oily flightless birds, a few pale rabbits and foxes and that's your lot. Utter, fucking overrated crap. So shit, in fact that people resort to coming out with fascinating nuggets like: "What do you think it will say on your compass then, eh? When you are at the North pole itself", as a lame bid to make you think it is an interesting place after all. There is only one answer to that question, by the way, which is - to point out that you don't carry a compass because you aren't a freak, but instead carry a large knife which you can then use to slice toes off the Pole-lover so they can feel empathy with that pickled old cunt Ranulph Fiennes and the scrawny woman who had to come home and various other fucking tedious, driven, self-promoting grass dodging malcontents who can't just go to Spain like the rest of us.
Noreen