IN the last few days I have done seven things of which I am deeply ashamed. The week started badly when I allowed myself to be seduced by one of those M&S food adverts.
Usually I scoff at the soft porn camera angles and food descriptions, but there was something about the burgers with mozzarella in the middle that drew me in.
More fool me.
While tasty, the burgers swelled up to a size that made them almost unfeasible for a normal bread bun, and once you bit into them, the melted cheese spurted everywhere.
I was chastened, but things got worse the next day when I swore in front of a small child.
True, he was only three weeks old and probably has no verbal acuity, but now I go to bed in a cold sweat, thinking that his first word will be … oh, well, you can imagine.
On Wednesday I opened a Facebook site – nothing wrong with that in itself, of course, but when I got in battle with the secretary in our office over who has the most Facebook friends, I knew I wasn’t going to come out of it with any credit.
I haven’t competed to see who has the most friends since I was in top infants and I shouldn’t be starting now.
(Somehow I’m winning, even though she is much nicer and much younger than me, and you can only imagine, more popular.)
Thursday saw me laughing at a fat bloke who fell over in the street (an old failing) while also hanging up in rage at someone who called me at home trying to sell conservatories (understandable perhaps, but you should still remember that the person on the end of the phone is not really the one to blame. They’re probably on minimum wage and getting shouted at 10 times an hour.)
But it was yesterday that I did the worst thing of all.
Oh God, I’m reddening even now as I type out my terrible crime, the misdeed that haunts my waking thoughts and then refuses to leave my dreams when I drift into sleep.
Who knows what I was thinking, if indeed I was thinking.
Yet it cannot be denied that for seven minutes on Friday, I, Ken Gorm, being of sound mind and body, did knowingly sit on my sofa and watch a repeat of Top Gear.
(Actually, that last one is a lie, so here’s shameful deed number seven: making things up just so that I can reach the word count for this column. Top Gear? Even I would never stoop so low …)
