I took a much-needed break from promoting Perking the Pansies. I switched on the TV, put my feet up and settled down to watch Beautiful People on BBC Entertainment. The series is from the magical pen of Jonathan Harvey, the creative comic genius behind Beautiful Thing (one of my favourite films) and Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, the deliciously wicked, surreal TV comedy starring James Dreyfus and the inimitable Kathy Burke. There’s a reason I’m wittering on about this: something interesting cropped up in one of the episodes, How I Got My Water Feature, inspired by the British national obsession in the late Nineties with Ground Force (a gardening makeover programme featuring the bouncing, bra-less breasts of Charlie Dimmock). One of the characters came out with the immortal line ‘We’re just planting perky pansies.’ I recoiled in horror. I’d never seen this episode before I started the blog. Honest, Your Honour. Will Jonathan sue me for breach of copyright? I hope not. Maybe a case of great minds think alike? Even if Mr Harvey’s mind is a significantly greater than mine.
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Perking the Pansies 
No worries, great minds DO think alike. I’ll never forget the day I was reading another expat blog and I stopped in my tracks because the sentence was almost verbatim what I had written a few months earlier. I was flabbergasted, sputtering, until I noticed that the post had been published TWO YEARS earlier. (And no, I am not so arrogant as to think the person went back and updated it with my little gem!) Bottom line? Our gems are probably not all that fresh and unique. Give credit where it is due, not merely because you happen to stumble upon it. You’re in the clear my dear.
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I’m sure you’re right.
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Charlie Dimmock – getting down and dirty!
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Calm down. Take a cold shower.
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Jack, what was your own motivation for the blog title? Am I missing some deep and delicious double entendre?
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It just came to be. The pansies characterise us (in a derogatory but we’ve-taken-back-ownership-of-the-word kinda way) and the perking illustrates our escape from the rat race. Originally it was going to be called Perking Up The Pansies. The ‘up’ got lost along the way. Thanks for asking.
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