Challenges!!

Some time ago I read a book called "Pay it forward" in which the young hero did a kindness to three people, asking only in return that they too should do something nice for three other people. They should then ask those three in turn to pass on the kindness. And so on. And so on. And because it was a book, it worked. The youngster concerned made it his project for the summer, which he had to report on when he went back to school. This was the USA where they tend to do things like that. They even made a film of the book. 

It reminded me of those chain letter things you used to get as a child. You were supposed to send postcards to five people who had in turn to send postcards to another five. After several weeks, the system promised you, you would receive postcards from all over the world. How interesting!! It never worked. 

Anyway it seems that a woman is Saint Petersburg, that's Florida, USA, not Russia, decided to do something similar. She was in Starbucks and decided to pay not just for her own iced coffee but the caramel latte (no comments on weird coffees sold by Starbucks today) of the lady in the queue behind her. This person then paid for the coffee of the person in the queue behind her. And so it went on and on and on until close to 400 people had played the game. They were "paying it forward". Then along came the spoilsport. 

There had inevitably to be one customer who, on being told that her coffee had been paid for by the previous customer and did she want to return the favour, answered that no, she didn't. All she wanted to do was pay for her own coffee and not be bothered by anyone else, thank you very much!!! 

There's always one! 

A similar thing, perhaps more amusing to watch, but not so nice-natured, is the ice bucket challenge which is all the rage on Facebook at the moment. It's supposed to be a way of raising money for charity; that's the nice-natured aspect. You know the kind of thing. A "friend" nominates you to be videoed having a bucket of ice cold water thrown over you. You then nominate others. Very funny. My friend Colin has just taken part, or at least his blog says so, and declares that the video can't be shown because his language is too dire and dreadful. 

I have read that the actor Patrick Stewart, challenged to take part, agreed, had a bucket of ice delivered and proceeded to put some of it in his drink. That was his way of doing the challenge. 

As I said, there is always one! 

So here's another. 

I have never watched the TV show "The Apprentice". All the clips for it that I ever saw put me off. They always consisted of someone being rude and obnoxious to someone else. People were being reduced to tears as they desperately sought to meet certain targets. Is this entertainment? I wouldn't really want to watch a film on that sort of theme, let alone a so-called reality show. Consequently, when I saw an item about someone called Katie Hopkins, I had no idea who she was. A former star of the show, I found out. 

One of her unique selling points is her nastiness. There's a surprise! One manifestation of this is her rude comments about ginger-haired people. Another, is her saying that fat people are innately lazy and that she would never employ one. To drive her opinion home, she now plans to try to gain three stone and then lose it again, just to show that of you really want to lose weight you can do so. This will be televised, naturally. 

Now, there's something of a difference between having a long term weight problem and deliberately putting weight on just to lose it immediately afterwards. Someone commented in the newspaper that it would serve her right if she managed to put the weight on and then couldn't get rid of it. 

 Whatever the result, I have no intention of watching that TV show either.