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Why irony is just my cup of tea



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Published Date: 18 June 2008
UNDER usual circumstances I love a good dose of irony. I love it almost as much as I love accidental rhyme and people with alliterative names.
An appreciation of irony may be the only uniting promise of potential friendship between myself and Alanis Morisette (unless someone were to plait our hair together and force us to walk around like conjoined twins, sharing a long, two-tone ponytail for all eternity).

She gets it a bit wrong though. Alanis sings, "It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife," a sentiment that strikes me not as indicative of everyday irony, but rather the unlucky trip of one lonely individual to a spoon factory, having packed a nice bit of rump steak for lunch.

Surely filing the end of a spoon to a point on Alanis' razor-sharp wit will in the end produce a satisfactory slicer... or you could just use your teeth.

Now if you want cutlery-based irony, it would be my flatmate attempting to steal a souvenir teaspoon from the House of Commons by hiding it in her boot.

Then panicking when she remembered the forest of metal detectors she'd walked through on the way in, disposing of the teaspoon in a sanitary bin, then being led out a different exit where there were no metal detectors at all (which is practically, we must all agree, like erecting a big sign saying 'We're the House of Commons, we're jolly important, matters of humble cutlery are beneath us. Take our teaspoons and cherish them, peasants.').

Likewise, "rain on your wedding day" isn't so much ironic, but, it seems, the new punishment for souless celeb brides who do deals with Hello!

I'll wager my own £25million that noody was clever enough to sing the lyric at Coleen as she sloshed through the Italian puddles in her Christian Laboutins.

If only I'd been there.

No, this week I have the claim on true, beautiful irony.

Irony and filtered and distilled to its purest form, like the nectar of Murphy's Law (not to be confused with Iron-bru, or indeed Iodine, their nutritional content being far more of a puzzle.

Irony is good for the soul, and never turns it that orangey-brown colour).

This irony was multi-faceted.

It was irony that kept unfurling over the course of several hours, revealing one fresh kick in the stomach after another, like little Russian dolls of malice.

It began with our tea cupboard. The tea cupboard in my house is a revered thing, a sacred ground where cultures from across the globe meet and mingle, united in their mission to hydrate and relax.

The tea cupboard is epic. It's the first thing we show to visitors, announcing "ignore the orange mould in the bathroom.

Ignore the friendly cockroach making friends in your trouser cuffs. Whatever goes wrong within these four walls can be sorted in a jiffy with the Twynings of your choice."

We're just like a hotel, except I'd advise you not to eat anything you might find on your pillow.

Our latest addition to the tea cupboard is called "Happiness Tea". We've moved on from the wishy-washy promises of camomile and echinaccea, we want no less than pure emotional fulfillment in our beverages.

For a few minutes, I genuinely believe the packet blurb.

This tea is MAKING ME HAPPY.

It is. It is.

Look, I'm smiling. And then, in the sheer force of the moment, I spill the cup over my laptop.

  • Irony #1. I perform the classic hand-flap dance over the keyboard, then dab miserably at it with a towel.

    I realise the towel is wet anyway because it has just come off my post-shower hair.


  • Irony #2. I then discover the result of my exuberant happiness is that half my keyboard no longer works. 'W' now says 'e'.

    But 'e' also says 'e'. And 't' says nothing, so if I wanted to type in "wet", it would come out "ee", which mistakenly sounds like a happy sound. I am NOT happy.


  • Irony #3. Flatmate arrives, summoned by the sound of my sobbing over the facebook page I can no longer log into.

    She goes into traditional disaster-recovery-mode and offers me a "nice cup of tea", then has the wet towel thrown at her head.


  • Irony #4. Finally, after a cheerful Father's Day conversation with pater, King of the Macs, I am in a calmer state. I am beginning to appreciate the delicious irony.

    Or maybe the tea's kicking in after all. "At least I'll get a column out of it", I think.

    Then I sit down and type this: Mylproproken//eeenronc?.


  • You are now reading irony #5. Congratulations.


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    • Last Updated: 18 June 2008 4:04 PM
    • Source: n/a
    • Location: Worthing
     
     
      

     
     


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