Today's Dorothy Parker-esque musing:

From a modicum of manners
and a pinch of pleasing wit
many boys would benefit
and not be quite so shit.

Sloppy graces devastate
a gal's apparent shine
without a "please" or "thank you"
she ain't quite so fine.

I've recently been perturbed by an offended reaction to a piece of seemingly innocuous artwork. I don't mean the artwork itself was innocuous - that would be doing it down because it's well-concepted and interesting. What I mean is how anyone could possibly find it "offensive" is a matter of extreme surprise because it certainly wasn't the attempt or intention of the artist to be in the least bit provocative or deliberately shocking. 

The piece is constructed to look like a pantone colour chart, with the different shades given playful titles alluding to modern life such as "Queasyjet" for a dirty-looking orange, "Scratch Card Silver" and "Microwave Dinner" for an uninspiring shade of beige.

Along with a selection of other (apparently far less offensive) work, it was hung in an office where a member of staff duly took it down from the wall having been shocked at the presence of the words "penis" and "arse".

It transpired that the lady who removed the work from the wall felt these two words to be not just offensive, but "highly" offensive and inappropriate for a work environment". 

Firstly, I was delighted that she'd taken the time to pay such close attention to the piece - and had clearly read every single word which went to make up the full compliment of colour titles. This illustrates the interest the work had elicited from those working in the office. So many take little or no interest in their daily surroundings and it must serve to make your usual place of work incredibly dull - hence the reason why the concept of art in this office had been so well-received by the management. 

Secondly, I was similarly delighted that she'd had an honest, visceral response to the work. For any artist, be you a painter, sculptor, musician or that crazy dude who paints intricately detailed scenes on blobs of chewing gum stuck to the pavement, any response - positive or not - is good. It proves you have an audience, that you're not just talking to yourself and that there might be an outside chance you could sell a a few bits and, in your wildest dreams, that you could one day make a living from doing what the very breath in your lungs depends upon: the driving need to make and create, solidify your innermost thoughts, hopes, dreams, every shred of anger and each gentle idea by committing them to your chosen medium. 

However... (from here on in I'm apt to get a bit shouty, just so you're forewarned, but I'll try not to use too many LOUD CAPITALS) I'd love to know exactly what it was about "Smacked Arse Scarlet" and "Novelty Penis Pink" which so inflamed this woman's sensibilities.

There can scarcely be a less truly offensive word than arse in common use to describe the fleshy cushions of our posteriors. Its soft utterance, so much sweeter than "backside", fonder than "buttocks", more dashingly deliverable than "bum" and altogether more stiff-upper-lipped than the winsome "bottom" can no more be described as offensive than scarlet may be held to account for being decidedly redder than a suggestively blushing pink - which, when one's arse is properly smacked, would be a sure sign that a true professional had administered the punishment - or pleasure, depending on your predilection. 

Presumably, had the artist's alliteration led her to "Smacked Bum Scarlet" the level of offence may have been somewhat tempered although unlikely, I suspect, to have been completely absent. If one is to be reddened in the face (instead of the arse) by a good old English word describing one's derriere, it's probably safe to assume that presence of something altogether more dangly would send one's heart rate into the ascendancy of a coronary... and so it did.

If arse had been considered an expletive appetiser, penis was a giant, (one hopes) cursing main course of such malignant potency as to warrant the immediate removal of the piece from the office wall: to be marched purposefully in the direction of a long-suffering Facilities Manager who'd seen this kind of squeaking excitement once before when a dust-gathering statue of Leda and the Swan was discovered in the basement and put on show in the quadrangle for all of two weeks before it became apparent a full-scale riot would ensue were it not re-consigned back under the dust sheet with some immediacy. 

In a skit that would have done Monty Python proud, the offended party demanded the piece be "taken away". It was at this point that I think her real motivation became clear as she didn't similarly demand that something more appropriate be offered in its stead. 

Ah ha! THAT'S her problem - she's an ART HATER! Ok, now I get it. She's one of those tiresome, unimaginative fuckwits who espouses the view that art is for ponces, limp-wristed luvvies and doe-eyed dandies gavotting about the halls of art galleries stinking of lavender and sighing theatrically whenever news of the latest round of budget cuts to the arts are announced. 

I'd be willing to bet SHE'S the one who, when I was showing the nice caretaker where to hang the piece, stage-whispered to her colleague: "Oh, so I've got to look at THAT all day, have I"?

You have to feel sorry for her, really. This poor, put-upon office worker, forced to look at a piece of carefully crafted, gloriously whimsical original artwork made by a woman with more imagination, vigour, humility and humour in a single strand of her Titian hair than this moron could muster from her entire carbuncular carcass. God forbid that anything should obstruct her unhindered view of a BARE PIECE OF WALL and have the temerity to USE OFFENSIVE WORDS IN DOING SO. 

This is a breath, lest I have my own coronary right here over the keyboard. 

Or, rather, let's talk, constructively and sensibly, about the thorny issue of weight. Female weight to be precise. I've lately been the subject of vitriolic spewings by, one may hazard a guess, largely uneducated individuals claiming that "to be overweight is to be unhealthy". 

This rather simplistic viewpoint is, in my view, vastly overstated. To begin with, who or what is the all-powerful oracle on what exactly constitutes being overweight? That oft-touted beacon of authority, the body mass index is flawed in the extreme, owing to the rather obvious fact that it doesn't provide any distinction between fat, muscle, organs or water for its primary data. It's starting from a nonsensical point.

The health profession, then? Perhaps they can offer a realistic and sensible view on the matter. My own GP readily admits that there are such wide-ranging differences of opinion among even a small group of her peers that, at either ends of the spectrum I should weigh somewhere between a stone and four stones less than I do now. Hmm, no real precise answers there either. 

The key word here is "unhealthy". Forget "fat" in its entirety - just for a moment. The reason so many people appear to have an issue with large women is because it's repeatedly promoted as being bad for your health. Here's the news: it's a cover-up. A convenient, thinly-veiled method of vilifying those who carry more weight than is deemed acceptable in our image-obsessed society. 

Larger women who lose weight, then put some of it back on, then lose it again are often described as "battling" or "struggling" against the devilish machinations of their own bodies, as though they have have no control whatsoever. How many times has Oprah Winfrey - a woman whose life is one of towering achievements in the face of many an obstacle - been subjected to the indignity of scrutiny over her weight? 

Of course, what we're really "battling" is the notion that in order to be considered attractive, worthy or even half-way human, women must run the gauntlet of public interest in our weight until we can run no more and either a) emerge, triumphant at the finish line having shed our ugly excess, or b) died from the rigours of maintaining a gamut of voracious eating disorders or dysmorphic conditions which render us incapable of sentient reasoning.

It's not the fat on our bodies that's unhealthy but the insidious creep of strangling unacceptability which comes from being overweight. Far more dangerous than any amount of crash diets, slimming pills, gastric bands or liposuction is that little voice in the back of our heads whispering "You'd be happier, more successful, more confident, less negative, prettier, nicer, more likely to win the lottery if only you weren't so fat".

Clearly that little voice is massively under-informed when it comes to lottery winners, because many are actually quite fat, but the voice will use all manner of persuasion to get a rise out of us. 

I don't buy celebrity slag-rag magazines, or watch very much TV, but I do have a terrible habit of trawling gossip pages on the internet, looking at photographs of famous and not-so-famous people for whom weight is not only a daily concern, but a career-breaking, deal-making reality: literally their weight may determine whether or not they really do eat, ever again. 

Most often weight is the crux of a story, with a headline geared towards elevating the image of the subject to the dizzy heights of tabloid adulation, or knocking it straight into the nearest ice-cream parlour for a litre of something liable to put ten pounds on their hips before they've even paid the bill. 

It's unlikely, however, that any one of these people could be described as "unhealthy". They all do more exercise in a single day than Daly Thompson did in his entire career. We know this because they're often photographed coming out of a gym, sweaty and forlorn-looking with that expression that says "Yes, I know the next story about me will be something along the lines of how I battle with my weight and have to go to the gym because otherwise I'll put on seven stone overnight".

No celebrity in Christendom can be honestly be described as fat. Not truly. At least not the ones with whom the media is so scarily obsessed that they print fourteen photographs of them in the same fucking dress in the space of one "news" item. 

Real people, however (y'know, us mortals for whom life isn't a constant round of gym sessions, red carpet events and trying not to be photographed exiting a public lavatory holding a used tampon at arm's length in desperate search of a bin), well, I guess we might be a little bit behind on the macrobiotic-drink-your-own-wee diet of purity, but we're not all fast-food munching sofa-hounds who get out of breath trying to get the last packet of prawn cocktail out of the Walkers multi-pack. 

So, it's with a little bit of pride that I can say this: Yes, I might be F.A.T. but I'm not unhealthy and if you confuse the two ever again, I'm going to come round your house and sit on you until you really understand that very important distinction. 

I have no passion, no all-consuming desire, no realisation of my purpose in this life and no motivation to find it.

I can sit, in suffocating inactivity for hours at a time. I am unmoved by the work of others, although I try to understand, to appreciate, and imbue myself with their teaching and understanding, by a process of staccato osmosis – jumpy as a frog with the shits, leaping from one notion to the next, never settling, never sinking into that exalted state of total immersion.

Is there any hope for me? Can I ever find such inspiration so enthralling as to exclude daily processes, leaving my hair and teeth unbrushed, my body unwashed, lest time spent on such wasteful diversions deny me even one second of revelation?

I dart like a fly from one mish-mash of momentarily searing excitement to the next. Never absorbing: ideas, knowledge, prayers, hopes and disgust pouring through me as though I were full of holes.

Hold me up to the sun and let the light in. There’s nothing here I can remember with any depth of intention. Visuals excite me, briefly, but words don’t stick. It’s hateful, this wanting, this need to be literary but with nothing to back it up. I write all this stuff but my grammar is non-existent, my vocabulary pathetic and my love for the comma bordering on the pathological.

I’m not even frustrated… at least, not today. This is only today and tomorrow will be different.