Audrey Hepburn, roses and frivolity

I got told to do something frivolous last week. It's a task. I have to complete it by this Saturday. How the hell am I supposed to be frivolous? My dictionary defines it as:

–adjective
1. characterized by lack of seriousness or sense: frivolous conduct.
2. self-indulgently carefree; unconcerned about or lacking any serious purpose.
3. (of a person) given to trifling or undue levity: a frivolous, empty-headed person.
4. of little or no weight, worth, or importance; not worthy of serious notice: a frivolous suggestion.

Now granted, this entire blog (well most of it) certainly satifies definition number 4 but aside from this blog, I am not a frivolous person. In fact, I'm too damn serious for my own good. Yes, I'd like to be frivolous; I'd like to be carefree; I'd like to be characterised by a lack of seriousness but about the only criteria I meet is 'lacking any serious purpose' (at all, in anything!). (Anyone suggesting 'empty headed' as an alternative epithet is likely to wind up with a boot up the jacksie!)

So what I am to do? I wear my t-shirt when I go to the shops so I can brandish the words emblazoned on my chest: "I am not drunk. I have had a stroke. Have patience." but does this count as frivolous? It raises a smile but that, I suspect, is because no-one's done it before. (Well at least to my knowledge.) And it serves a serious purpose - it means I don't have to try to explain why I'm talking like a spastic; so it is disqualified by definition 2, no?

What about what I did last night? As the proud(?) owner of low fat/fat free diet, I had a 'magnum' for dessert. No, not two bottles of champagne, I have been told to steer clear of overindulgence in alcohol as well, but ice cream composed of 25% fat (covered in Belgian chocolate to boot). Does this count as frivolous? It's certainly 'self-indulgently carefree', although my doctor would say it was just damned irresponsible, but frivolous? Does it count even when watching the puerile '633 squadron'?

Is spending £600 on a Gaggia machine just so I can get expresso when I want it frivolous. Yes, certainly. But I have already done that! And I don't have room for two in my kitchen.

Is buying 2 Audrey Hepburn photographs at exorbitant price and then having to spend an arm and a leg to get them framed just so I can look into her eyes every time I go into the kitchen frivolous? Perhaps, but they are beautiful and go well with the Kazhak horseman with the eagle, beauty and the beast, so there is a kind of purpose here.

Would annotating the 1892 map of my area with 'You are here', over where I live, formerly the sewage works, and pinning it my wall, count as frivolous? Or does it serve a purpose? Like explaining the heady scent that sometimes emanates from my drain in summer. (I don't actually know [except my neighbours] of anyone whose flat was built on the site of a sewage works, so I can't check. Just goes to show, they'll build on anything! Could have been worse. They might have built it where Sellafield used to dispose of their 're-cycling')

You see my dilemma.

It's not that I don't want to be frivolous, I want to please, complete my task (the other ones I have to do are easy - they require me to be serious) but in one sense I don't know how to anymore. What happened to the juvenile adolescent doing 'Knees Up, Mother Brown' along the path to Salzburg castle with three friends? (Oh alright, one friend and two women we were trying to 'get off' with. Didn't work, in case you're interested. Never did!) What happened to the idiot who ate the roses in the pub garden and did the seal impression in the pond? Why can I not walk up to railway station porters anymore and ask the whereabout of Harvey in a Jimmy Stewart accent and, when quizzed about his appearance, reply that he's a six feet tall rabbit.

Did something happen along the way? Did my frivolity gland shrivel up (like everything else); atrophied from a lack of use? Can I blame my parents, the Government, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, the Sainsbury's SavaCentre, and if so, for what? Why did I stop inviting the Jehovah's Witnesses in for tea instead of slamming the door in their face? (I learnt that from my sister - who used to add: 'You would have killed my baby!' - needed a blood transfusion at birth, rhesus negative, and JW's don't like them, corrupts the divine creation, see). Totally pointless but it used to be such fun! Especially when you start proceedings with: "Why does the Bible begin with a plural (Elohim - God[s]) and then make the verb singular - of course that's in the Aramaic. The King James version fudges the issue by making both singular. Milk? Sugar?"

Maybe I'll clean the windows. Or rather window. I tire easily right now and one a day is all I can manage. It certainly is 'characterized by a lack of ........sense'. After all, where is the sense in cleaning a window when two minutes later it's covered in polluted, acid rain. One of God's little jokes, that. It always rains immediately after you clean your windows, even if there's not a cloud in the sky, there's a heatwave and the weather forecast is for no rain until 2012 (just in time for the Olympics!)