The Nurse doesn’t laugh very often. She’d laugh more if life was fucking funny, but it ain’t. Not for her, at least.

Five miles short of the ugly north London sprawl, struggling through dense, winter-dark woodland, she’s just fallen arse over tit into a filthy, stinking pond.

There isn’t a swear word in existence that can describe how she feels right now. So she’s made up a new one. Which, unaccountably given the circumstances, just made her giggle… easier said than done with a mouth full of mud.

Next time you need it, why not try ‘FUNT’? What does it mean? Fat cunt, of course.

Enjoy.

Sadly the C word is common currency these days. It doesn’t have much shock value left.

The Nurse, sneaking along the edge of a muddy field twenty miles north of Cambridge, likes to shock. So she’s amusing herself by creating a top 20 list of old fashioned expletives to liven up the boring bad language landscape a little.

Here goes.

1. crikey
2. blimey
3. gosh
4. christ on a bike
5. christ in a barn
6. hell’s teeth
7. for heaven’s sake
8. good god
9. good grief
10. my word
11. good gracious
12. cripes
13. yikes
14. jeepers
15. cor
16. crumbs
17. holy shit
18. golly
19. gee whiz
20. buggeration

She’d love to hear your contributions…

The Nurse is loving the latest Wikileaks scandal. Yet again they’ve exposed the dirty underbelly of international politics. Loads of spying, insulting other nations, gerrymandering, lying, cheating, obscuring and obfuscating.

She can understand why the US military and politicians are so cross. They’ve been caught out being naughty and nasty, sneaky and malicious, dishonourable and dishonest. Whoops.

The Nurse proposes a utopia where, because there are no such secrets, behaving badly isn’t an option. She realises pigs might fly, but if every nation on earth threw in the towel of intrigue and started behaving like grown ups, the world might be a much better place.

Maybe one day the antics of Wikileaks and similar organisations will force real change. We might be able to create a fresh political climate where what you see is what you get. A climate where behaving like paranoid silly buggers won’t be acceptable. Where governments deal with the world’s issues together, openly and honourably, in a spirit of international transparency and co-operation, for the common good. 

The Nurse is starting to sound like an old hippy. But you get her drift. Without all this secret squirrel nonsense, governments might give the important stuff the attention it deserves. Things like feeding and educating everyone, keeping the climate in check, providing enough water and looking after the environment. No mean feat at the best of times. Impossible when everyone’s too busy playing power games to get the job done properly. 

The Nurse is amused by several things this week, all of which demonstrate human silliness beautifully. 

From kidding ourselves about what we’re seeing to putting amateurs in important jobs and denying scientific fact, the human race is performing just as expected… dysfunctionally.

Have you bought an HD TV yet? If so, The Nurse recommends you don’t bother. Scientific research has proved that people don’t know their arses from their elbows as far as seeing stuff is concerned. We’re not very discerning. 

On being given a completely normal, non-high definition TV and being told it was HD, a large bunch of people swore blind it was much clearer, with a much better picture, than their old TV. Hm. The Nurse thinks it’s well scary how easily we kid ourselves… and how gullible and suggestible we are. 

Then there’s career politicians. The Nurse would like her country’s leaders  to have some life experience. She’s not keen on career politicians. Surely someone who’s run a company or two, or at least lived in the real world of work, understands voters’ needs better than someone who wouldn’t know the business world from a  hole in the ground.  People like Cameron, Miliband the Younger and Mr Clegg.  

And last (but never least) there’s good old e, beloved of cheesy quavers across the planet for more than two decades… but still a class ‘A’ substance in the eyes of the law. New Scientist recently reported that ecstasy – MDMA – is completely safe in prescribed doses. That puts it in the same camp as aspirin.

The same goes for weed and acid – LSD – both of which are also being investigated in the USA for their considerable medical and psychological benefits. The Nurse has been banging on about the UK’s stupid drug classification for years. Hopefully this news represents another nail in its already bristling coffin. 

PS. If you’re not sure whether you know your arse from your elbow, try this simple test…  http://www.dr-dilligaf.org/arseorelbow/

The Nurse never cries. But she wept last night when she heard the news that there are only three thousand wild tigers left. And she cried again after hearing UK farmers will soon be allowed to kill badgers on their land.

The whole thing set her musing on the human condition. Or the human contradiction, as she prefers to call it.

As a species we swarm over the earth like toxic scum. We pour shit in the seas. We torture our fellow creatures, experimenting on them more brutally than X files alien abduction proponents could ever imagine. We lay waste to precious environments, leaving them smashed and ruined in our wake.  

As individuals we love our mums. Most of us are polite to old ladies. We hug puppies, make beautiful gardens and write poetry. We paint masterpieces, rescue kittens from trees and pull small boys from deep wells (usually with the aid of collie dogs). We put ourselves at risk for others and give to charity. We sing and dance and enjoy picnics in unspoiled countryside.    

Talk about strange. Talk about schizophrenic. We’re a mix of Hitler and Ghandi. The wicked witch of the North and Dorothy. Mother Teresa and Hannibal the Cannibal. Alien and The Clangers. Stephen Hawking and the village idiot.

Christ on a bike. What a mess.     

So everyone was relieved to find her latest proposition wasn’t particularly dodgy, just a simple experiment to find out more about the nature of happiness. 

The Nurse’s happiness experiment

Splitting the inmate population neatly and randomly in two, The Nurse briefed each group as follows.

Group 1:  

• Before you go to sleep, imagine tomorrow is the best day you’ve ever had. You feel fantastic. You look great. Everything’s going your way. You’re fit, healthy and the world is full of possibilities.
• Pick up the thread when you wake up and carry on all day with your positive internal dialogue     

Group 2:

• Before you go to sleep, imagine tomorrow will be the worst day you’ve ever had. You look like a bag of shite, your feet smell, everyone hates you and you’ve just been sacked. 
• When you wake up, carry on convincing yourself your life stinks and the entire world thinks you’re an arse.

The Results

The Nurse asked everyone to describe how they felt about their day.

• Group 1:  Had a great time.
• Group 2:  Just wanted to die and get it over with. 

The next night The Nurse reversed the process.

• Group 1:  Had a dreadful time.
• Group 2:  Enjoyed themselves despite being banged up in a loony bin.

Conclusion

Sadly she daren’t try the experiment herself. The Nurse understands better than anyone how unpredictable and deadly she can be when in a bad mood.  But she suspects we’re in charge of our own happiness. Interesting.

The Nurse wants YOU!

Nobody’s going to take this seriously… an experiment run by a mass murderer, undertaken on the population of a mental institution, none of whom were given the remotest choice in the matter. 

The Nurse needs fresh test data, from normal people like you. Feel free to experiment on yourself and let her know what happens.

Do you believe in Homeopathy? The Nurse isn’t convinced. Why? Because to work, it’d have to defy the laws of physics.  

Even if you wouldn’t know a law of physics if it punched you on the nose, you probably realise that it is 100% impossible to defy them. 

Fact: the only way homeopathy could work is if it managed to defy those laws. It can’t. Nothing can. Conclusion: homeopathy is bollocks.     

That’s not all. High quality clinical trials cannot find any scientific basis whatsoever for homeopathy working. Nobody ever has.

Invented in the 1700s, homeopathy is based on three so-called ‘laws’; the law of similars, the law of infinitesimals and the law of succussion. All three are too silly to merit any detail. And all were disproved a very long time ago. 

But people still persist in believing that homeopathy works… to the tune of £40 million a year in the UK, £4 million of which is spent by the UK’s NHS. 

The Nurse thinks she knows why. It’s the placebo and nocebo effects, both of which are much more powerful than you might realise.

There’s the true story of the man misdiagnosed with terminal cancer who was found, at post mortem, to have  nothing wrong with him… classic nocebo effect. There are many reports of people dying because they believed they’d been cursed – more nocebos.

The placebo effect is well documented too, with countless cases of people given a placebo and recovering. And there’s even a recent study where people who thought they were watching HD TV reported experiencing a dramatically better picture when they were actually only looking at a regular TV. 

The Nurse marvels at how easy it is to fool ourselves! 

A fellow inmate argued the other day that it didn’t matter whether or not homeopathy worked because some people’s belief  is so strong that it works for them. So what’s the harm.

Hm. The Nurse thinks that’s a thin excuse for perpetuating such a scandalous and expensive scam. Surely it’d be better to save a considerable amount of cash, spread the word about placebo / nocebo effects and make it clear to everyone that believing you’re healthy goes a surprisingly long way towards making it so.

In fact scientific experiments have proved that 30 minutes of meditation a day over eight weeks can significantly strengthen your immune system. Who needs quack medicine when you can DIY? 

Until she’s perfected her meditation techniques, The Nurse vows to steer clear of homeopathy charlatans. No doubt they mean well but even they can’t defy the laws of physics. 

The Nurse is delighted to discover that, from a genetic perspective, she’s 50% black.

The Nurse has a little Brother. He’s had his DNA analysed by Oxford Ancestors to find out the family’s genetic origins. 

The test establishes where your great, great, great, great (etc) granny and grandad originated. It traces your rellies back through the millennia, as far back as they can go in an unbroken line. Right back to your original maternal and paternal ancestors.

The results? The Nurse’s paternal origin lies with a clan who lived in the Middle East about 50,000 years ago. Later they migrated back to Africa where most of her genetic descendants are found today. She only shares 2% of her paternal DNA with the UK population but she has 98% in common with Western Africans.

On the maternal side her great, great, great (etc) granny belonged to a clan who lived in Portugal 17,000 years ago. Over the millennia they moved up through Spain and France to Britain and then further northwards to Norway, Finland and Arctic Russia where The Nurse’s genetic clansmen live today.

The Nurse is enjoying the irony. She has dark red hair and freckles. Her brother has bright red hair and freckles. But they are both, fundamentally, 50% black. Black ‘n’ proud.

Very cool. And a big one in the eye for Nick Griffin and co. Because The Nurse is feeling particularly provocative today she’s challenging Nick Griffin and his BNP membership to take genetic tests and establish their ancestry. As far as we know, Nick Griffin might be half black too.

Ha! The Nurse finds that most amusing. She crouches, rocking, on her hard iron bed, grinning in the half light… 

The Nurse is getting on a  bit. She’s long in the tooth. Her intimate bits are heading south fast and she automatically lets out a wheezy old lady groan whenever she sits down.

But is she finding the ageing process terrible? Not particularly. There are loads of advantages to getting older. Here are The Nurse’s top six reasons for relaxing and enjoying the ride.

1. At last, you can finally distinguish your arse from your elbow. Decades of experience mean you finally begin to understand who you are and what you want.

2. You know what you like – and what you don’t like. All those years spent experimenting and practising. Now you know exactly what you like and what you don’t like. You’ve tried and tested the lot. Now you can start enjoying yourself properly.

3. Age is a great disguise. You no longer give a flying stuff what other people think and they don’t notice you anyway. You can sail forth into senility secure in the knowledge that you can do, think, eat, wear or say almost anything you like. Most younger people will dismiss you as an old nutter, or simply fail to acknowledge that you exist. As you age, you become wonderfully invisible.  

4. You’re wise. Ok, so your bum’s gone a funny shape. Your face is roadmapped with craters. Your feet hurt and your elbows are giving you all kinds of gyp. But, in compensation, you’re as wise as an extremely wise person from a very wise place. You might not be pretty. But you sure ain’t stupid.  

5. You keep warm and dry. No more foolish youthful clothing. You’re in cagoul and waterproof trousers territory now. The agonies of high heels and following fashion belong in the past. Next stop? The thermal vest department. Yay!

6. It’s inevitable. Everyone gets older. Trying to stop, slow or deny ageing must be one of mankind’s most pointless endeavours. Why not loosen up, let it lie and spend your remaining time concentrating on achievable, realistic goals instead of trying to stay young? 

If false teeth were hot stuff The Nurse would have her gnashers whipped out without a second thought.  

As the UK’s population ages, will false teeth ever become stylish?

The Nurse, brought up in the ’60s and ’70s, has crap teeth. Her 1970s childhood dentist was spectacularly bad as well as really scary. So when she left home she daren’t go to the dentist for a decade. Her teeth don’t do the job any more. And they’re no oil painting. 

Bored one long dark winter, she filed her front teeth to sharp points. Cute. But painful in a draught. So this summer - in solitary again for an ill advised medical experiment on a fellow inmate - The Nurse has been speculating about marketing false teeth as the next hot new fashion item.

Hip hop has gone some way towards kicking things off. The Nurse can envisage a time when ageing hip hop superstars might go the whole hog and replace their bejewelled tombstones with super-blinged falsies.

Party teeth for party occasions: royalty with diamond encrusted teeth. Self assembly Ikea false teeth in cheery primary colours. LED flashing teeth. Glamour teeth. Limited edition teeth. Hello magazine would wet themselves over the latest celebrity teeth. Exclusive designer false teeth boutiques. Porn teeth. Gok Wan making recycled funky teeth.  The opportunities are endless.

But… the worst thing about false teeth is the way your face collapses into a terrifying, lumpy heap when you take them out. 

To remedy this The Nurse proposes that someone invents a self-cleaning, totally comfortable device that sits permanently in your mouth. You just slot your various sets of teeth smoothly into it; your mourning teeth, Bah Mitzvah teeth, Divali teeth, Valentine’s day teeth, wedding teeth, Fatwah teeth and whatnot.

That way you never have to horrify your partner – or yourself - with a face that hangs like a brown paper bag half full of jelly. You always look nice and pert, with cheeks like a baby’s bum. Stunning false teeth plus the extra benefit of a non-invasive partial face lift. Howzat?

What The Nurse needs is the support of some great science brains, a marketing genuis and a celebrity endorser. Then she’s off. 

Imagine. A huge and growing market of people all over the planet who are sick and tired of things going wrong with their teeth. Many of whom would, if it suddenly became de rigeur, jump at the chance of having The Nurse’s groundbreaking false teeth system fitted.

The basic permanent mouth unit would be painless and simple to fit at home. And affordable. We’re talking high fashion false teeth for the masses here. No elitist nonsense.

But once you’ve got your basic kit in place, the sky’s the limit as far as your falsies are concerned. From basic white to rainbow, ruby or billiebobs. Pure gold to plastic disposables. Whatever tickles your fancy.

The Nurse, a generous type despite her murderous tendencies, would like to throw open the false teeth fashion challenge to the world at large. All she asks is a 1% cut – for life - of the profits of every single company that hits the market with her invention.

While it might seem naive to be so free and easy with such a superb business opportunity, The Nurse is confident that nobody will take the piss. She is a very, very scary person indeed.   

And the sooner it happens the better, as far as she’s concerned. Winter’s coming and The Nurse is keen to be in a position to get Vlad the Dentist, in the next cell, to knock these super-sensitive, pointy fuckers out for her before the icy winds start to blow through them.