2_6_ScanMag_72_Feb_2014_Text_Q9_Scan Magazine 1 04/02/2015 10:59 Page 79
Scan Magazine | Humour | Columns
IS IT JUST ME...
By Mette Lisby
Who finds myself emotionally exhausted on a daily basis? Social media sends me on a wild, emotional rollercoaster-ride daily, before I’ve even left my house. My daily “wake up-catch up” routine used to be reading the paper, maybe listening to the radio or having the TV on in the background while preparing for the chores of the day, which was easy to fit into my usual morning rituals. Also, it left me feeling ready and prepared for the day. This is no more. Today – frankly – I’m emotionally drained before I take my third sip of coffee. Just today I had cried TWICE by 8.45 am. First because Justin Timberlake made the crowd sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a 9-year-old at a concert, which was very moving, and second because two lion brothers found each other and hugged like humans and it was SO cute and endearing. I mean – they were LIONS! And they were hugging! See? How are we expected to deal with this sentimental turbulence of emotions that wellmeaning popstars and hugging lions submerge
us in? Granted I’m a sensitive person, but how are you supposed to – on a daily basis – make it through social media’s brutal bonanza of laughing babies, cuddly puppies, hilarious cats, funny toddlers, honourable homeless people (did you know homeless people are the ONLY ones that help you if you fall on the street?! Well, you do after watching videos on social media!), plus the occasional “you won’t believe what happened” auditions from generic talent shows, where some person we all secretly think is a loser turns out to have the voice of the decade and belts his/her pain out on front of a guiltyturned-adoring audience? I mean, my God, it’s a wonder I even make it to 9.30am without sobbing hysterically while running out of Kleenex. And after all this I’m expected to leave my house and throw myself out into REAL life? Who knows what I am going to see out there, in the real world. Whatever it is, I’m too exhausted to engage in it. If it’s really enticing I might just film it and upload it on social media…… You know, just to make YOU cry.
Winter Crime
By Maria Smedstad
snow had accidentally fallen into their boxes, and – with the temperature being sub-zero – it would brush off any letters and newspapers easily enough. Perhaps my childhood would have been less marred by crime if I’d grown up in the UK? Or maybe the crime would just have been different? Mud through the letterbox and fear of reprisal in the shape of a Jersey cow, perhaps?
Spring might be just around the corner in the UK, but in the north of Sweden it is still far away. Growing up in Sundsvall, I generally lived in the hope that it would be warm enough to ditch the Long Johns by the time we had our end of term school concert. This took place in June. February was still very much a winter month. Bored and cold, we occasionally turned to crime to keep ourselves entertained. Not serious crime, just the odd sporadic act of sabotage. A popular undertaking was the classic snowball in the letterbox. Letterboxes in Sweden are often freestanding in the streets, yards away from the houses. The neighbours that we considered to be nasty or grumpy would suffer at our mittened hands, as we slipped a lump of snow inside their boxes. We didn’t do this lightly. Generally we were extremely law-abiding and our acts of unruliness were followed by panicstricken flight from the crime scene. I lived in
Mette Lisby is Denmark’s leading female comedian. She invites you to laugh along with her monthly humour columns. Since her stand-up debut in 1992, Mette has hosted the Danish versions of “Have I Got News For You” and “Room 101”.
fear that karma would catch up with me, possibly in the shape of a moose-attack on the way to school. It seemed only fair. Only now do I realise that our intended acts of mayhem probably went unnoticed. It would have been logical for our neighbours to assume that the
Maria Smedstad moved to the UK from Sweden in 1994. She received a degree in Illustration in 2001, before settling in the capital as a freelance cartoonist, creating the autobiographical cartoon Em. Maria writes a column on the trials and tribulations of life as a Swede in the UK.
Issue 73 | February 2015 | 79