Who wants 12 months of misery on the wall for 2020? | Verity Lush

Remember the Pirelli calendars of old? Scantily clad women, the odd breast. There’s nothing wrong with the female form – far from it – myriadpaintings exist in the art world of naked women.
A page from the Pirelli Calendar 1969.A page from the Pirelli Calendar 1969.
A page from the Pirelli Calendar 1969.

Many exist of naked men. Indeed, they are celebrated as works of art. They are nakedness in an appropriate and consensual setting. We’re not talking porn here, we’re talking about images of women looking stunning, in a variety of locations. Women such as Julianne Moore, beautiful in black and white, donning a bathing suit.

Well, not this year. This year, the calendar comprises what appear to be 12 incredibly miserable months of doom.

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The women, such as Emma Watson, who is actually clad as a nun, look as though they have emerged from either a funeral, or after having endured an extreme episode of – ironically – harassment.

Kirsten Stewart is an actress (am I allowed to say that these days? Should it be actor?) who looks permanently cross anyway, so even if they’d shot her in rainbow shades on a beach in the Bahamas, she’d still look as though you’d just slapped her.

And Watson is depicted sporting what seems to be some strange hybrid, consisting of a head bandage, suggesting injury, and a wimple.

Claire Foy appears as an Anne Boleyn character, only more feathery. Perhaps Pirelli was a bit skint this year and asked her to borrow back her costume from Wolf Hall, because she does seem to be wearing it.

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There is nothing glamorous (by which I mean old-school Hollywood glamour, not nudity) about any of the pictures. So frankly, why bother? Having such a group of glum-looking miseries on the wall is depressing.

Are we supposed to do away with Calendar Girls now because we’re all too socially aware? Should we tell the women of the WI to keep their boobs in their bras in the post-#metoo era?

In fairness, some of the Pirelli shots are striking, but others just look like ill, underfed females, some of whom need a good wash.

Life’s traditions keep us sane – not the madness of politics

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The election is nearly upon us. I have not made up my own mind how I shall choose to vote, and I doubt I am alone in that.

I did catch Jeremy Corbyn on the radio, rather amusingly claiming when asked, that he and his family sometimes have a bit of the Queen’s speech on in the morning.

As anyone who’s tried to wrestle a remote control from a small child on Christmas Day knows, it commences at 3pm, on the dot, year after year. It’s tradition – and tradition has a place in society.

Humans build their lives around tradition and routine, it keeps us sane. Unlike politics, which absolutely does not. Use your vote wisely. If past years have taught us anything, it is this.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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All I want to do is watch TV not run the Starship Enterprise

We have bought a swish new television, and just when I thought it couldn’t get more complicated to watch one, it did. Markedly more so.

I now have four remote controls. FOUR. Each has a purpose but I do not know what that purpose is.

I can no longer work the television in terms of getting it on, or switching it to the DVD setting, for example.

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The television now has a little icon thingy that whizzes around the screen, confusing me completely, with apps that are meaningless springing up all over the place.

In fact, the only folk who can watch the TV are now my children. It is quite literally their dream come true because I am powerless to do anything about it.

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