Clothes Horse

The Giant Boy is now at the stage when, at Christmastide, the only things he would want to find in a stocking are  a grand in used notes and Kelly Brook. So I don't have to creep about at 2am filling tights up with felt-tip pens and Lego any more, but I do have to somehow find "Christmas clothes" for him. This is an ancient Liverpool tradition dating back to,oooh, 2009, I think. It dictates that parents,or in my case, parent, pull enormous amounts of cash out of the air to buy designer gear with large ponies on it. This is in addition to Christmas presents, you understand. I don't know from girls, but the boys are all on-line, checking and re-assessing the relative merits of polo shirts and massively expensive canvas shoes. Or "plimsolls", as they were in my youth. I am then updated via Blackberry as to whom has what bought for whom, and shown photographs. Honestly, they are worse than the most diva-esque supermodel. I can applaud dandyism, and positively encourage sartorial elegance. I am also keenly aware that this conflict has been bubbling away in various forms since the Fall of Rome. Harassed Ancient Roman parents (of course they didn't KNOW they were Ancient Romans at that point, although I bet their children referred to them as such) were probably saying "So, why do you need a COMPLETELY different toga and sandals to go to the Coliseum, it will only come back covered in beast blood and sawdust? Well, I don't care if Lavinius's father has bought him one embroidered with gold, he made a packet sacking Sicily, didn't he? "
Of course it is only recently that special clothes for young people existed, anyway. If you were a Tudor teen, or indeed, baby; you were firmly stuffed into a ruff and a bodice,sewn into two outfits a year and your parent's servants threw herbs at you to conceal the niff. There are lots of portraits showing youthful Dukes sulking in white tights,or smirking in brocade pantaloons. Their acne had been painted out by the court portraitist. Pre-Restoration, there were probably heated arguments re ringlets and lace collars, with Cavalier adolescents trying to rebel against foppery and velvet by going out and getting  a New Model Army haircut.  But everyone was really too busy improving their life expectancy for teenagers to be invented, youngsters went from infant to fully-dressed adult without so much as a whimper. Whatever angst they had, they kept it to themselves or wrote poems about it in Latin,if they were toffs. Then came the Fifties, and the teenager was invented, by a Mr Chuck Haley or somesuch. Since then none of us have had any peace.
I didn't like being one,it didn't suit my temperament at all. My teenage photographs show a Neapolitan 35-year-old  prostitute with a huge bust, when all my friends were Sara Moon-faced waifs. The GB seems to be getting into it more; but I fear that his tastes are so fearfully expensive that ONE of us will have to go on the streets. I am hoping,without much evidence, that he will tire of looking like an American millionaire preppy, reeking of Hugo Boss, and will become alternative in some way. He can't be a Goth, he is far too robust, and has a raucous, filthy laugh. He doesn't give a tuppenny damn about the planet, or saving the whelk. I don't think my original aspiration , which was for him to be a gay fashion designer,is going to happen. Despite my brother's predictions to the contrary, entirely  based on the incident in which he glimpsed the Giant Baby in a  lilac cardigan  bought for him by one of my camper friends.
Well, he is off to do work experience in London, in January. He has already requested a suit in which to masquerade as an adult.
I had better go and earn some money, like Mildred Pierce did when faced with her daughter's endless demands for fine clothing. Except there aren't any diners round here, and even if they were I doubt that a shortsighted arsonist is what they require. If you hear of an opening, do let me know.

Bottoms Up.

'Tis the Night Before Christmas, and not for the first time I am hiding from the hordes. It is too early to go Christmas shopping, really. One has to keep one's nerve. There are still sensible adults running round Asda purchasing last-minute "Christmas Spices" Room Spray;having remembered a visiting niffy pet, or relative.  The thing is to take it to the brink; tanking up on Bailey's from 11am, and then hitting the shops.  The company will be much more congenial.  There are few things worth doing that cannot be accomplished in three hours.
I intend to go to the library instead. I hold it to be the height of decadence, to troll around the shelves, trying to find an autobiography written by someone over twenty-five who is not a sportsperson, or a novel which isn't about anyone finding themselves in mid-life . I found my feet when I was eight months old, and the rest of me quite soon after that. Nothing has amused me so much as the feet, admittedly, but I have given a few other parts a fighting chance.
I want a book of old-fangled ghost stories. Modern ghosts tend to be unsatisfactory, both theologically and aesthetically. I also find it difficult to be convinced by supernatural beings who haunt places with central heating, or turn out to be demons. I would also like one of those books of humorous verse that were ubiquitous in the post-war years,and unfailingly edited by Ogden Nash. My head is full of Edwardian parodies of now totally-unread but then tremendously au courant versifiers. When I am ,as I must be, taken hostage, I shall have plenty of rubbish and trivia with which to entertain myself and my co-hostages.When we are chained to a radiator somewhere hideous; I shall recite parodies of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to my grateful captive audience.
In the meantime;I really must ask them at the Library not to persist in addressing me as a "Borrower". It makes me feel small. The banks used to do it, in the days when they allowed me to borrow. I was reminiscing with a friend about this, and she said "Oh, I DREAM I am shopping, over and over again".  I bet few men have this dream, but asking around, it seems that many of my girlfriends enjoy similiar reveries.They describe dreams in which they are wandering round department stores with limitless credit, feeling the weight and heft of shiny carrier bags, hurtling into changing rooms with armfuls of glittery things...and wake sobbing, exiled for ever from that idyllic period when it seemed that everyone could have everything and it was all practically free. I think I am the last one left who has dreams about sex, teeth, and flying;  like a normal person.
I was a terrible person, in those days. I earned proper money, and had a handbag and everything. In this handbag, there lived a set of little credit cards, store cards, and sometimes, some cash.  Plus fags, lipstick and phone of course, I wasn't a savage. I would frequently book a train ticket and a hotel room in some city with which I was unfamiliar, and trot off for a spree in their shops. I loved all of it ;the choosing correct underwear in which to appear in a changing room, being given free samples of vile perfume by terracotta cosmetic warriors in Selfridge's Beauty Hall, collapsing for an espresso in a chic cafe and rationalising one's carrier bags..poring over fabrics and colours like a goblin.
I had a well-paid mildly interesting job, and a dull domestic life. My social life was great fun, though, and a great deal of it was spent with like-minded hedonists. I still have most of them in my address book, and I still have most of the clothes I bought, which I now discover are "Vintage", and so am I. If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself. It's odd how some bits of you wear out before others do. Teeth, for instance, seem to have only been intended to last people for about twenty years.  After that, it's all veneers and wire. The skeletal structure, particularly backs and knees, seems to be a little flimsy too. But things like bottoms seem well-nigh indestructible,and probably go on after death, imperishably.  Hardy things, aren't they?  Some people don't have them at all..it's uncanny. Just a flat section, and then thighs. British people used to be becomingly bashful about their behinds; "This Englishwoman is so refined;She has no bosom and no behind", as Stevie Smith once wrote. Alas, these days they are coming at you from toutes directions.  This is a Continental practice, I feel , encouraged by the Internet. In my day, your bottom was for sitting about on, keeping in a spotless state, wrapping up in navy blue big pants, and every now and again, a spanking. Nothing erotic about bottoms in the 50's. Now they have totally got above themselves, and have started behaving like breasts. And being Americanised as "asses" all over the shop . Not to mention the fact that no sexual encounter these days can take place without a hearty helping of buggery. I  protest, and so does my British bottom. In fact, we shall stage a sit-in.      
Ooh look, it's Christmas! And here I am, banging on about bums.   I think I shall finish this bottle of Bailey's, whilst watching Bill Bailey. Pleasing though this is, I don't suppose I shall be able to keep it up.I can do you Guinness, and Alec Guinness, though. Why not spend Christmas drinking the thing with the same name as the person you are watching on TV? After a while, none of it will matter. Even not shopping any more,or having to have your bottom bleached, or anything..

Country Diary of an Edwardian Meerkat

Some people make a very pleasant living by describing in various magazines and journals the delighful antics of wildlife. "Through my kitchen window" they say "I marvel at the red red robin, who is indeed bob-bob-bobbin' along, as per instructions. Oh, and here comes Mr Badger, looking sleek and pleased not to have been gassed.."
Well let me tell you what I can see in the garden this morning, and why I do not write for "Country Life; Nature Notes". Actually it is my Mother's garden. This morning, someone sent her a box of assorted meerkats. On the box it says "Lifestyle Solutions". I suppose if the original problem was that one lacked four bobbing figurines of meerkats on springs, then they have indeed solved it. The Giant Boy was called into action to insert the wobbly devils into the ground. Of course, he had no trousers or shoes, he never does. I spend my waking hours buying him trousers and shoes, every week in a bigger size, it seems. And yet, when called upon to pitch in with an activity traditionally requiring trousers (paying the milkman, chasing the postman up the road, preventing the Dog from throwing itself under the wheels of the icecream van), he is ALWAYS trouserless and shoeless. It didn't save him this morning. My Mother wanted those meerkats in position, and she wanted them there now. So out of the window I can see a large daft teenage boy, wearing his school shoes and a pair of droopy underpants, plus Rob Zombie teeshirt, moving four meerkats around. "Here, Nana? " "No, that's too far away, I can't see his little face." Huge advantage, if you ask me. These four  eldritch things have been painted to have four different faces,each capturing  a particular emotional state in the no doubt eventful life of the meerkat. To wit;  Suicidal, Murderous, Insanely Cheerful and, my favourite, Massively Shifty.  I  like to imagine the face-painter, bored beyond belief in the excruciating heat of the "Lifestyle Solutions" Filipino factory,conjuring up the fizz-ogs of the last four serial-killers to have made the front pages of the Daily Reaper, and painstakingly recreating them in meerkat form.
So eventually Mum  decides that they be positioned around the statue of St Francis of Assisi, who in turn lurks around the base of the birdbath/buffet table. When new, he resembled Peter O'Toole in a cassock. But weather and time have taken their toll, and now he looks like Freddy Starr. He was touched up with brown Airfix paint a few weeks ago;his gown had become leprous-looking as the paint had peeled away. Previously, St Francis had stretched a benevolent arm out towards a squirrel,( which had it stood up would have towered over him), a camel, a gloomy otter, and a brace of swans with pansies inserted into their undercarriages,  appearing, understandably, very bad-tempered. He seemed to take control over this peculiarly ill-assorted menagerie with suitable gravitas. But now he has four new additions to his flock, and they look like trouble to me.

Inside the house, Ma has continued to signal her fondness for animals. As I look around the living room, I am surrounded by a dozen or so robins, perched on picture frames, leering down from the curtain rail, balefully beady-eyed. It is like one of the more sinister bits of "The Birds". I sleep on the sofa when I stay here; and my pre-bed ritual now includes robin-removal, as well as smothering three ticking clocks  with crocheted cushions and spraying Spider-Discourager in the murkier corners. She has a Victorian oak cabinet which is from  " MY Grandmother's Old House in Ireland". It holds many curiosities and ornaments, but is  known in the family as "Death Row" due to the large number of framed likenesses of the Dear Departed it holds  behind diamond-panelled glass doors.
In another corner is the pared-down remnants of what was once a collection of over 400 owls.The largest is made of rubber. Who on earth gave it to her? It looms over the china likeness of the late Queen Mother, like Godzilla with a beak. Another cabinet is dedicated to "Animals No Longer With Us". I do recall most of them,unfortunately. Particularly the Scottish Terrier that was so spectacularly inbred that it was its own Grandfather. It used to conceal itself under the dinner table. When all were engrossed in light chit-chat,or negotiating  a tricky kipper it would begin to snarl, bite itself, and speak in tongues: prior to running up the curtains and collapsing in a frothing fit.
As I have mentioned, the Giant Boy wishes for a dog. He is going the same way as his Nana, I fear. Fortunately, I am able to stall for a little longer, as Downturn Abbey is unfit for pets. Keeping so much as a vole there would amount to cruel and unusual punishment, so short of space do we find ourselves. The wildlife to be observed from my kitchen window(which is also my living room window) tends to be human, and going through the bins. The sound of growling and howling commonly rends the night round here,  but tends to eminate from homecoming student drinkers rather than from foxes. There is a three-seater leather sofa in my back garden; I think it was placed there in the hope that a couple would nest there , with a bottle of wine and a DVD, perhaps. I am not sure that it is bio-degradable, but we shall see. As everyone in Britain must own at least three sofas by now;if the amount of money spent advertising them works at all, I suppose it is inevitable that the unwanted ones will appear in unusual contexts. And it looked awfully pretty,covered in snow.By spring,it may sprout little pouffes. I shall do a wildlife film, and David Attenborough will beat a path to my door.If he can get past the pizza boxes and the wild herds of trollies.

Zombies R' Us

As everything is careering Hell-wards in a selection of hand baskets,I have decided to ignore oncoming economic ruin, and worry about the forthcoming and inevitable Zombie Apocalypse instead. This is partly because I don't understand the Euro sufficiently to know what it is doing, and need distraction, partly as a result of a ferocious and recent addiction to a television drama on this very topic. "The Walking Dead" is a  well-made and involving American soap opera with a topping of extra zombies. Zombies used to be rather sedate;they were seen from time to time in black-and-white movies about Voodoo in Haiti, stumbling in a blank-faced manner looking for all the world like a tardy cinema-goer seeking his seat in a darkened auditorium, but marginally less sinister. Then a Mr George Romero got his hands on them, and they acquired some unpleasant habits. According to horror convention and classification, they are actually ghouls. Ghouls hang about in churchyards, eating the dead and bothering the living, should any pop round. Traditional zombies did not gallop around demanding brains and decaying in a rapid and distressing manner. They only started that moving quickly caper quite recently, reaching alarming speeds in modern post-apocalyptic films like "28 Days /Weeks Later". The "Walkers" in "The Walking Dead" revert to stalking about slowly, and they are recognisably human. This assists in one of the major themes of TWD, which examines through considerable debate and discussion, the nature of what it is to be a living person. The characterisation and relationships within the survivors are given as much attention as the prosthetics and special effects. Apart from the female characters.Apparently it is much easier to write  Undead characters than it is to bring a female protagonist to life. The women are annoying, whiny, and are either weeping or over-analysing everyone's motives. Oh, and one of them is pregnant with a baby who is destined to be a light snack. If there is one situation in which a baby should not be on board, it is a Zombie Apocalypse. You often have to keep very quiet and hide under cars. There is a lot of running. Babies are  troublesome  at the best of times, one of which this is clearly not. This mite  will be doubly so , as our heroine  has little clue as to which of the two main chaps is the father. There's also a  Victorian  fairytale quality to the plotting;  people think that their loved ones have perished, but they are miraculously or horribly  restored, children are lost in the woods, and moral fibre is tested until it twangs several times a day. There is an interesting schism going on just now between a farmer who believes that the flesh-munching growlers are just sick, and consequently is keeping twenty or so in a barn and feeding them on chickens, in the hope that a cure will be found; and the more pragmatic element who are now seeking shelter on his farm. They are of the mind,as a result of several dismaying experiences,that the Walkers are now far removed from humanity,and the best course of action is a swift and thorough dispatch. This can be achieved only with the time-honoured decapitation or head shot method,and is not as easy as all that. They all spend a great deal of time practising,though.Sometimes on each other.It is not wise to yawn or to  slacken one's pace in their company.

So I am going to have to brush up on a few survival skills currently not in my repertoire.  I have been a keen zombie studier  since childhood, and have picked up a few wrinkles. I know, for instance, not to take advantage of the inevitable breakdown of law and order and head off to the nearest shopping mall.This would normally be most awfully tempting, as I have not been shopping properly since the Credit Crunch. However I also know that I  share a love of hanging around shops with the Undead ( in addition to slow un-coordinated movements). Wafting round Marks in a stunned condition is what I do.  However, after Z-Day, there would be a better than average chance of being bitten before you reach the self-service till. "Unexpected item in bagging area" indeed.
American Zombies are easily recognisable, due to their pallor and staggering gait. Over here, people would just assume that they were very drunk. In fact "Shaun of the Dead", a sprightly British comedy, riffs amusingly on this idea.  In it, Crouch End is being overrun by the walking dead, but since the plague starts on a Sunday morning, no-one notices for a few hours. When I lived there, a ghastly-faced man shuffling towards you in his pyjamas was an unremarkable feature of a weekend trip to Budgen's.
It was all about vampires for the last few years, but that vein is now exhausted, what with "True Blood", "The Vampire Diaries",and the tedious teenagers of the "Twilight" franchise. Since "American Werewolf In London" , there hasn't been a good film about werewolves, and besides, in the UK we are a bit too soppy about dogs to find a slavering hairy beast particularly frightening.
We are evidently intrigued, as a species, by the idea of our loved and familiar fellows turning into something from which all vestiges of humanity have disappeared, and we are constantly examining the idea of afterlife;the persistence of the essential essence on some form or other, and the nature of revivification.  The Zombie notion is just another in an ancient tradition of stories we tell ourselves about death and personhood. "The Walking Dead" differs from other explorations of these themes in that it looks at them overtly and discussed them openly. And the zombie effects are tremendous;the people playing the Walkers are obviously having a marvellous time, and I have to keep watching it because there are some characters I really do want to see survive, and several others whom I wish to bite the dust, or vice versa.  Sadly, the series is "on a break", an irksome feature of American TV scheduling, apparently, so I shall have to wait until Valentine's Day to see sub-human critters preying upon each other in slow-motion. Unless I go out over New Year, that is.

HMS Pinafore Dress

I used to know quite a few clever youthfuls  who worked in advertising. I had to be careful when drawing up party lists, because there could sometimes be ideological clashes between the bright young things of Adland, and people who thought it unacceptable to project a huge Coca-Cola advert onto the Moon. I don't really mind it much myself. I look at the pretty pictures and move on. Unless a really good new mascara seems to be promised. Advert people don't care for THAT attitude at all..it's as irritating for them as is the "pornography just bores me" school of thought. One of my dear friends who was something very important in a company with a string of names and initials once said to me "If you don't see the point of an advert, it wasn't aimed at you".
As ever, the best thing to do with an irritant is to move away from it, and I have a great many crossed-out "Home"addresses to prove it. However, sometimes one becomes exposed by ill luck or circumstance, to a television set which is not one's own and therefore it is not permissable to hurl it from a high window with a curse. Distressing items  can accidentally swim into one's normally highly filtered limpid pool. I do find it difficult to love the Littlewood's Christmas Advertisement in the spirit of Christian charity which I realise is expected of me by the vicar. It's not the open exhortation to ALL Mothers to buy everything in the world from Littlewoods with credit cards that should have been frozen in the compartment bit of the fridge designed for that purpose, and the lack of male parents (WHY are Fathers For Justice not dressing up as Spiderman and storming Littlewood's HQ at this appalling slight?),and that perfectly foul little girl with glasses and facepaint. It's the rapping that gets to me. There should NEVER be children rapping, it must be confined to those with pubic hair or the whole point is lost.
But the one that really gets to me is the one with Linda Bellingham. Now I used to see this perfectly pleasant woman around when I was a Crouchender, as was she.She always dressed pleasingly,in a very North London Boho way. However, she has now sold her soul to a catalogue called "Isme". They have an utterly revolting commercial on the television, the burden of whose song is that mad menopausal crones get even madder at Christmas (grain of truth, there is always one..) and are therefore only too likely to hit the cooking sherry and stagger round the high street, buying sequinned leggings and midriff-throttling dresses in shiny red nylon. They can escape this fate, (and thereby,it is suggested, find themselves at the mercy of an unshaven toyboy who will glower darkly on their sofa and eat all their After-Eights in tractor-like, mechanical shovelling motions,by the way),only by purchasing matronly garments in "jewel colours" with suitable draped necklines and sleeves cunningly fashioned to accommodate the vast swoops of dinner-lady underarms that afflict us all when someone blows a whistle somewhere around our fiftieth birthdays.
Oh God spare us from A-line "fit and flare" and dipped hemlines. Did Joan Crawford slip into an easy-to-wear draped horror frock when she reached her foxy fifties? No,she did not;she ramped up the eyebrows and the tailoring. I met a picturesque woman the other evening, who had it seemed, recently turned forty and become invisible,or so she said.I could see her perfectly well, I reassured her. "No!" she ejaculated, almost causing me to loosen my grip on my Big Dirty Red. "Men! They just don't see you after a certain age". I have mentioned this before, but it is worth repeating. If someone ignores you because you do not fit in with their addled and poisoned idea of pulchritude, you have had a Lucky Escape, and should rejoice. I used to be whistled at by builders and van drivers and roadmenders. Now, I am rarely the object of that kind of attention. This is not due to my suddenly becoming a hag,it is because I now give every impression that I will stride up to these miscreants and shake their ladders viciously, delivering invective in crisp tones,rather than slinking away or blushing. And this impression is accurate.
Differing tribes see the same landscape differently. Another darling friend once pointed out that his teenagers saw threats, portents, hazards and landmarks in their own neighbourhoods which are invisible to the adult negotiating the exact same territory. We see a junction or a takeaway, they see a postcode boundary likely to end in a stabbing . And so it is with what might be referred to as street hassle, as Lou Reed called it.Although it would be a foolhardy builder who whistled at Lou these days. We are all invisible to teenagers, but charity collectors can see us several miles away. It is a matter of perspective. However, I will not be trussed up in stretch velvet with a "flattering" bolero at this time of year or any other. I shall wear what I damn well please and do as I damn well like. That is the divine blessing of advancing age, and I intend to get the maximum fun from it while I am still spry enough to dodge the ISME catalogue and run from a rattler of tins into the nearest Low Dive. Coming?

Please Hold...For All Eternity.

I have been babysitting. Well, they aren't,  strictly speaking , babies, and I didn't really sit on them. The mites belong to my charming friends on the Wirral. The boy is eleven, and may be a genius. The girl is four and either heading for international superstardom, or they will re-introduce the death penalty just for her. It could go either way at present. There is also a low-maintenance fish, not even given to that disconcerting habit of leaping out of the bowl gasping and flailing,which I have encountered in other, rowdier fish; and which always causes me to have palpitations. In fact,   after suicidal fish has been restored to bowl or tank, it recovers itself immediately, and continues to calmly circle the bowl once more, with an expression of "What?" on its face more usually seen in the male teenager. I, on the other hand, am a wreck, and need nicotine and strong coffee before becoming soignee again.Which proves, to my great relief, that I am a more sensitive and evolved creature than a goldfish.It's not much to show for decades of higher education, but it is SOMETHING.
Anyway, the intellect of even the most limited member of the Plankton family;the one that all the other Planktons sigh over and say "Well, he's got a Very Nice Nature", effortlessly soars above that of people who deise telephone systems used  by banks. As I discovered when, thinking to myself " I am babysitting. My favourite television programme "The Walking Dead", has yet to start. I have read everything in the house which does not concern Peppa Pig or advanced calculus.I shall ring my bank, who offer a "24/7 service", and discuss some amusing discrepancies which I have noted on my statement". Why did I do this, and not choose instead to attack my nose with a cheesegrater? The relaxation thus afforded would  have been of a superior quality.
First of all, they refused to believe who I was. I  was obliged to prove this by producing a series of numbers,which I had previously selected without telling myself what they were.  To make it more interesting, they were to be produced  in a different order from anything that might have made any sense.My memorable name wasn't, it appeared. By the end of this process, I had locked myself out of my bank account, possibly for ever. I could only get it back by ringing an expensive-sounding helpline, who asked me for a further series of numbers.
 I gave up, resolving to get the eleven-year-old maths genius on it the next morning. As I had some life left  to kill, I then tried to call Royal Mail. Since moving into Downturn Abbey, I have only occasionally received post,and that mostly of an unwelcome nature.It seems that my bijou apartment has not been recognised on their system. It is small,but not that small.  I do not live, for instance, in an acorn. After having held the telephone receiver against my ear for so long that both became white-hot, I was repeatedly advised by a Royal Mail Voice to not bother, and to jolly well use the website instead, as that would be cheaper for them. I am not entirely a Luddite. I gave it a go. However, my complaint was recorded on an unconvincing-looking  form.. even as I clicked on the telling word "Submit", I had the strong impression that I had been electronically ignored.
After several more postless days, I tried again, to find that the website directed me to the telephone number that directed me to the website.  Heigh-ho, I will call the number of my local sorting office, so I will. They have a more fundamentalist approach to protect themselves from the public; they simply do not answer the phone. I imagine one of the burlier sorting men sits on it, possibly enjoying the vibration, as it rings its silly head off.

So if any of you have been wondering where I have been, I have been doing that.But I am better now, and resolved in future only to engage in transactions where I can speak to a human in real time,preferably face-to-face. Jean-Paul Grump famously observed that "Hell is other people". Oh, I KNOW, Jean-Paul, you lovable old French existentialist. But all our "Utilities" and such-like seem determined to remove them from the business model, so I think we should resist,if only out of perversity. If we collectively insist on dealing with people and people alone, we might get some back in jobs again one day,and get a better quality of irritation.

Getting Wiggy With It

I have a fairly impressive selection of wigs. This is because I do showbizzy things from time to time. Wigs are a boon and a blessing. On one occasion, the wig was the only thing that saved me from an angry mob. On quieter days, they are so useful for disguising the fact that I have done something experimentally teenage with my hair that has not quite come off. I am astounded that the hair has not come off too, I have put everything on it but napalm.
Nature has been kind enough to give me the tonsorial equivalent of leylandii, or Japanese Knotweed. It is cheerfully resistant to all my vandalism. If I ever allowed the natural colour to surface, which is highly unlikely, it would now be grey. I was born, as I have mentioned, in possession of a thick black thatch similar to that sported by Lou Costello. As the nuns who surrounded my cradle in those first infant days backed away nervously, a Midwife Nun strode bravely forward to say " That will fall out,in a day or two". And it did, to be replaced by red fizzy curls. Apparently babies often arrive in wigs, the old wives tale being that this is what gives one heartburn when pregnant. Red hair was popularly supposed to be the Mark of Satan. Maybe I had put the wig on in the womb, to avoid being exposed on a hillside or similiar? Hair loomed in my childhood, the stuff of myth and legend. You ate crusts to make it wavy, it was washed in Durbac soap to ward off nits,and if it grew too long, it sapped your strength.The most mysterious hair-related thing was the incident affecting our local GPs, Doctors Ronald and Neville Riley, who were identical twins. An unusual phemonenon, even in Fazackerley,twin doctors. They resisted admirably the undoubted temptation to play identity-swopping tricks on their patients, being sober, kind, and unfailingly forbearing men. They put up with my childish antics; like the time when I painted red dots all over myself in an attempt to present with chickenpox, but had fallen prey to artistic over-enthusiasm and gone on to paint a large red eye around my navel, a symptom generally not typically seen in the diagnosis of a pox of any kind. One day Dr Neville awoke to find his hair curled around his pillow like a small vole. He had fallen victim to a sudden onset attack of alopecia, and was from that day forward, as bald as any coot you care to mention. But no-one in Fazackerley had any further trouble telling them apart.
I used to have hair I could sit on ( but don't we all,post-puberty?),like an Edwardian dirty postcard. It streamed down my back in thick, rippling auburn waves. This was less fun than you might think. For one thing, a strong wind and sticky lipgloss instantly transformed me into Cousin It. For another, it attracted strange people on the bus. I dozed off on a long coach journey back to University one Sunday evening, and awoke to find a large middle-aged lady combing it and singing hymns. Nasty girls would put chewing gum
 in it. It got caught in doors and wound around people's coat buttons. New Year's Eve, 1979, I suddenly got bored with it. So I went out and bought two bottles of raw peroxide,and poured them into the bath. This didn't seem adequate, so I added some household bleach. Then I lowered my hair into the fizzing potion, and swished it about a bit, using the nailbrush to go round the edges.After a few minutes, I noticed that some of it seemed to be breaking off,and that my head was burning.. After an hour's rinsing, a whole bottle of conditioner,and some crying, I was left with an oddly glowing halo in radioactive orange and budgie yellow. But I had a party to go to, so I decided to brazen it out. I got my Mum's heated rollers out, and pinned the straw-textured mess up with them. And had a sherry and some Player's No.6, while it dried off. By the time I had finshed both the bottle and the packet, I had convinced myself that it would actually look rather Jean Harlow-esque to have a head of jaffa-coloured ringlets. And to smell like a  recently-scrubbed public toilet.  When the time came to unroll the rollers, they wouldn't unroll.   I ended up cutting them out of my hair with nail scissors.Have you ever seen the original German illustration on the cover of "Struwelpetter"? Well,it looked like that. I remember the taxidriver bent double laughing at me as he dropped me off at the party.I don't remember very much at all after that. But I started the 80's resembling a High-viz badger. It took a while for the decade to catch up with my courageous early-adopting of big stupid hair.
Then there was my Swan Vesta period, where I was very thin and had a short red crop...after that, I went for a brushed back quiff with alarming spikes. There followed a series of increasingly dreadful styles, until I was adopted by a hairdresser who bawled at me if I so much as reached a fingertip up to it myself. Since then, and under his jurisdiction, I have behaved myself around scissors and dye. But the urge for a sudden change of look still emerges, every now and again.. Hence wigs. And of course my dear friends know I am a false hair source, so I am often asked if one of them can borrow from my wig library, for fancy dress or bamboozlement purposes.

So the wig that saved my life, or at least spared me the attentions of a drunken and dissatisfied audience..I was putting on a cabaret show for New Year's Eve. The bill was a stunner, the tickets were sold, and I was compering, dressed as Mummy Christmas, in a white-blonde Debbie Harry bobbed wig. And then gremlins struck. The sound system decided to expire. The management consisted of a fretful young woman who didn't really want us there anyway, and couldn't have cared less.She told us that she "Was Food", and I started to agree. For sharks, perhaps? To cut a long and painful tale short, these punters had paid handsomely for a sparkling cabaret.What they got was several attractively presented and no doubt fascinating acts, miming and squeaking, and then yelling until their throats were raw, all unheard.
I observed some very hostile body language. As a responsible and mature professional, I did the only possible thing.I whipped my wig off, put my specs on, hid under a large coat, and legged it . Fortunately some friends were driving through Liverpool trying to find a pub that didn't shut firmly at 9pm, and I hurled myself gratefully into the get-away vehicle.
By 3am on New Year's Day, I was finding it funny, and everyone else was trying on my wig, first checking that no-one from Oxton had been in the audience and had tracked us home.
So let's hear it for wigs. And toupes, too.After all, once you have reproduced, Nature doesn't give a stuff if you are lynched by a mob, but synthetic hair will save you every time.

Good Mousekeeping

I have a little bit of form with mice. My first mouse was given to me, with several expressed reservations and a cage,by my Grandfather. I was eight, it was probably about sixteen in mouse years. The mouse was white, and soon became grubby. So I decided to give it a bath. In the bath. Mice can swim, up to a point. However, the poor thing got cramp,and no wonder, suddenly being dropped in the equivalent of the Channel. It drew its legs up, and I thought they had come off. Panicking, I fished it out and ran bawling to Mum "My mouse's legs have come off...."
She sighed,and put the oven on. The David Walliams of the mouse world was wrapped in cotton wool, fed brandy through an eye-dropper, and popped into the oven on a low light.My brother, then three, gazed with wide-eyed horror.."Mum's cooking a mouse!"
It was happily dry and deeply pissed within minutes, so we watched it staggering round the cage until it passed out on the straw.We've all been there.
The trouble with mice is that they are not natural singletons. Where you see mouse, there will be mice. A large and boisterous family lived with me in Huskisson St. They were, admittedly, given to weeing on everything, but then so had my previous flatmates been, and the mice were prettier. As my food cupboards contained very little to detain them, they jilted me and moved next door. Next door were vegetarian, and given to big brown paper bags full of dried beans and alfafa. Mousie Heaven.
When I left home, my Mother took up with mice, in a big way. She also branched out into hamsters and guinea pigs, but eventually shunned the latter on the grounds of intellectual incompatibility. They are monumentally stupid, even for dumb animals, and they make a maddening "weeep-weeep" noise all the time unless they are dead.  Which, as she also she got a few cats here and there, they often were.  "I have had to forgo rodents" she lamented to a friend, after a couple of distressing examples of Nature Being Red In Tooth And Claw. The cats were delighted;they thought she was raising organic food for them.
I inherited a cat when I lived in Hornsey Rise. My next doors there had a pond in their garden. I had French windows opening from my ground floor bedroom into the garden.The pond held frogs.For a while. I would just be settling down with a nice thick book (or a friend who had read one) ,when a Godawful racket would reach my ears from beneath the bed. Then I would have to go and chase frogs round the room. The Cat was given to slaying them, and judging from their expressions they had not expired peacefully.She would then arrange them on my pillow, in order of size. I expect she meant well but I could really have done without them. It's one of those unwanted gifts, an array of dead frogs. "Oh, you shouldn't have..."
I don't mind Nature but I like it kept outside. I don't bother it, and I was hoping that it would reciprocate. But not a bit of it. One of the reasons I moved to London was because I had heard it was paved. And yet, I had to deal with uninvited wildlife all the time. Socking great moths getting themselves into ridiculous  Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em situations in lampshades, Stag beetles in my underwear drawer (perhaps they thought it was a Stag party) in Walthamstow,  Goliath spiders in Chingford, flies in the buttermilk shoo shoo shoo. And in Enfield, I was horribly bitten on the thigh by a Bee, and they are supposed to be a) off making honey and assaulting the flowers, and b) NOT up my skirt in front of students.
I am never quite sure of what eats what, though. I am not keen on flies, but then am abjectly terrified of spiders. But would the spiders hoover up a few moths and save my jumpers, if left to run alive like it says you ought to? Quid Pro Quo. I know they are all God's Creatures, but wouldn't He like a few back?
Meanwhile, we had a builder who was very scared of mice. He had to go into the attic and do wiry things. I had to stand at the bottom of the ladder with a torch, ready to catch him if one made a sudden move.And all mousemoves are sudden, aren't they? The mouse is not a languid creature. As he stood, pale and anxious, on top of the stepladder, I reflected that it was probably not the time to mention that my Mother saves her toast crusts up for them, he would think he was  working with the Addams Family.

Under Pressure

There is a new XBox game out, called COD, I think. It is £40-odd pounds, which I do not have. The GB is in a mood of profound despair.All his friends have managed to acquire said game. They are all in heightened states of bliss, blowing up tanks and swearing at each other with headphones on. My child is a techno-leper, a pariah. He doesn't have his phone either, because he left the charger plugged into the Wirral. I bought him one off Amazon, which arrived very quickly (hurrah!) and exploded equally quickly (boo!). I need the laptop because I am applying for increasingly unsuitable jobs (fish farm manager,anyone?) and writing this.And also discovering that on Facebook, there are other parents who cannot or will not buy this blasted new game, and are consequently being subjected to psychodrama and Extreme Sulks 2. There's another new one on the way in a couple of weeks, too. I shall have to sell an organ, or flog The Dog to a vivisectionist.Maybe I could become a wifelet of the Loins of Longleat? I could drug him and smuggle a few bibelots out, and off I go to "Antiques Roadshow"..
The GB wants to work. For money, obviously. He does not wish to be part of the Big Soc. and smilingly sweep the streets for a bogus Certificate of Citizenship, or some such other nonsense from Mr Macaroon's  Ministry of Silly Ideas.   He would go up a chimney, if paid ready money, without a  qualm, although  it would have to be an  awfully big one. He was rather Right-wing, as a baby. He used to sit in his high chair for long lunches,waving a bottle, going red in the face and yelling about immigration. Or at least that's what he sounded as though he was cross about and he made at least as much sense as that Griffin chap. It is very easy to imagine babies as politicians, and indeed, vice versa. All babies look like Churchill, and all toddlers like Boris Johnson. It is their tragedy.
Anyway, he does not want to go to University.Years ago, this would have horrified me. Now, I think he has a point. I was teaching at a University not so long ago; it was very different indeed from the shambolic seats of learning-by-osmosis attended by myself and my  peers. We were exposed to education, in that we were sometimes in the same room when it was happening. We got to know people who had read more books than we had, and knew more about specific things. This often led to conversations, which were sometimes interesting and often banal. Those conversations were sponsored by alcohol manufacturers.  Some of us got to meet people from completely different backgrounds, and some of us (not me, I'm afraid)  had sex with them. This was all very educational, and beat working. I would like to think that this still happens but I am not at all sure that it does, to any great degree (no pun intended). Maybe it will in the High-End Universities, where you pay the full whack and get the complete experience. In the other ones, the own-brand Victor Value Universities, you will pay less, but get an education-lite. Crammed into vast hangars and bellowed at from huge screens in "contact hours", you will hurtle through your modules as if on a Japanese bullet-train. All the rest of your "Higher Education" will be based on the "FOAFO" model i.e. "Fuck Off And Find Out".
So I think The GB might well do better in The World. Although  at the rate  he's growing they might have to build an extension.  I was away for a few days, and when I came back he was even more G and less of a B. He is sitting on me,at the moment. One great leg is stretched over my lap,effectively cutting off the blood to my feet. Any minute now, a huge arm, seemingly made of stone, will be thrown around my neck, oblivious to the cracking of my poor collarbone. He does exactly the same thing as he did when he was a wee tot, which is to use me as a human sofa. It was cute when he weighted a stone, but now it is life-threatening. I am looking forward to the day when I can curl up in his palm and he can carry me around. It may not be a long wait.

The Auntie Christmas

It's creeping up once more. Christmas. Magazines are trying to worry the women of Britain, and bamboozle them into giving a toss about tablecloths and home-made gifts, again. And you have to start fretting about your pre-Christmas diet so that you can guiltlessly nibble a mince pie on The Great Day. The Marks & Spencers ads feature capering female fools getting all worked up over wrapping paper,in the intervals between running down the street linking arms, tottering in their  painful shoes.
People go mad in the shops, and start wild purchasing of over-priced tut...the whole thing is absurd..Actually, most men don't. I try and have a man's Christmas, as much as it is possible. That means ignoring the silly, fretful aspects and just drinking a bit more. When I worked in shops over the Christmas period, I always enjoyed Christmas Eve, for the last minute post-pub stampede of the panicking male. Nothing says "I love you" like a tiny envelope with the receipt in it. Underwear is a minefield at the best of times,so why not get drunk and then charge into Debenhams at the last minute and buy something scratchy and unsuitable for the woman in your life? It's a high-risk sport, especially when you have no clue about her size. You can always stare hopelessly at the chests of sales girls and mutter "Well I think she's about the same...erm.. height as you?" The gratitude of these punters when you sort them out with something acceptable, do the whole gift-wrap thing, and make sure they keep the all-important bill, is nothing short of profound. I have been given large tips by nice men for providing this essential service. Mind you,I have also been dragooned into shopping with a dear male pal who had got it into his head that his girlfriend wanted toe separators for Christmas. They are no longer together, I mean him and the girl, not her toes. Someone once bought me a posh coffee machine. I think the thinking was "You like coffee;here's a machine that makes it". Unfortunately it wasn't a kind of Mary Poppins arrangement which gurgled you up a cup and then disassembled itself, cleaned itself, and jumped back into its box. I would have liked that. But it was the world's fiddle, with lots of little tubes and valves. Isambard Kingdom Brunel might have been thrilled with it, but I  turned it into two frocks using the magic of Keep The Receipt.
When I was little, we had the truly old-fangled Christmas of the 50's child. Dire threats kept us in bed until 7am, when we were allowed to investigate the contents of our stockings, which contained a ration book and a drawing of an orange.
My Dad,who normally only came in the kitchen to shout at the dog or dismantle a radio, had decided that The Turkey was butch enough for him to engage with. My Mother would eye the sherry bottle and scrabble for her cigarettes when he began the great bad-tempered turkey wrangling process. He also washed up after Christmas Dinner. Another concession to the Feast Of Misrule , as he didn't touch a teatowel from one year's end to the other the rest of the time. Any surviving dishes were put away in a manger. Our kitchen cupboards were ill-fitting, and behaved like doors in a Victorian penny peep-show haunted house. They would fly open unbidden, or suddenly creak and collapse. After a few blows to the bonce, my Dad 's problem-solving skills emerged. He got some foam rubber, and he padded all the edges of the cupboard doors. No, they didn't shut, but it didn't hurt nearly as much when you banged your forehead on them.Christmas Day in our house was sometimes fraught with tension, as two individuals attempted to fulfill traditional gender roles for which they were unsuited by temperament. Mum loathed cooking, and did it with a fag in her hand and murder in her eyes. Dad was a dangerously inventive DIY-er, but persisted because he was too mean to get a man in, and felt it was a sign of masculinity to smash things with hammers. I think they would have been much happier with servants, but alas, none were forthcoming. My Mum's sister had  several "ladies who did". Ironically, Auntie Madge was an adept and accomplished domestic goddess, perfectly capable of turning out three kinds of cake without recourse to the gin bottle and the Fire Brigade.
We always went there on Boxing Day, with great relief.
This year, I am in charge. The GB is only too happy to act as kitchen porter. He likes sharp knives.  I am scouring Marks for an entirely microwaveable Christmas Dinner, and I feel sure that they will not let me down.

Oh Death Where Is Thy..Ouch!

Halloween's a big thing now,isn't it? Partly it's the dressing up,once confined to the under-tens, but now ubiquitous. Then there's the attractive prospect of nine-foot-tall youths being sanctioned to go round demanding sweets with menaces. Here in Liverpool, there is also an event called "Mischief Night". "Mischief" to me suggests harmless, giggly fun; mild naughtiness. In this context it appears to mean throwing half-bricks at taxidrivers. Forty-nine arrests were made on Merseyside, this time. Perhaps it is time for a re-branding? A really lively PR campaign could distinguish "Mischief" ( practical jokes, light-hearted pranks, possibly a tiny bit of mild mooning),from "Violent Unprovoked Assault". Our city would benefit from that  "awareness-raising" exercise much more than it does from having samples of yoghurt drinks thrust at it at Central Station.
I was in town yesterday, and observed that there were crowds of young ladies dressed fancy. Although it is often quite difficult to distinguish fancy dress from mufti; I was standing in Tesco behind a fully-feathered Squaw,complete with tiny chamois dress,and decorative tomahawk. It was 5pm. The rest of her group were decked variously, one in a Barclay's Bank uniform.Now that IS scary. Later, there were more conventional adherents to the form;zombies, werewolves, assorted vampires, witches and ghouls. All romping in and out of Primark,and queuing up for pasties in Gregg's. A huge boon to the fancy dress industry, and the manufacturers of pumpkin-shaped chocolate. Alas, I fear that our lives have become so sadly drab and replete with garden centres and loyalty cards, that any relief is seized upon, Halloween,in my youth, consisted of a plastic washing-up bowl with apples bobbing at your teeth, and a mildly frightening ghost story on the Light Programme. It is All Souls Day today,  when ,according to ancient  ritual and belief, the membrane between the worlds of the living and the dead was at its thinnest. This was the time when one communed with one's dead. And when one's dead might, if things were not quite settled beyond the veil, pop back for a brief but memorable visit. I must say I have longed for this experience to be my privilege, for years and years. Apart from seeing my beloved Grandmother in the kitchen ten days after she had been buried, I have not been successful. I was eight then, and very highly strung, so I am not sure that I can count this. I wish my Dad would materialise, if only to explain the presence of the silver curly wig  that we found in the glove compartment of his car when we were clearing it out.
My Mother has promised me that if there is any way that she can get back, she will.And she is a woman of firm purpose, devoted to keeping her word. I would not care to be the Archangel who got the job of explaining to her that this was not on. She commemorates all the birthdays and deathdays of our family dead, with regular announcements of the "IF your Great-Aunt Molly was alive, she would be 130 today" variety. I am only slightly surprised that she doesn't send them cards. The address, in some cases, might be open to debate.
Not only do I believe in ghosts, I positively welcome applications from them.  I am not frightened of the dead at all, it's the living who bother me. As a morbid child, I always enjoyed a really good graveyard. I sought them out when we were on holiday. Peace, quiet, picturesque surroundings, and something to read. I remember my favourite, which Mum and I discovered in Cornwall. It was an M.R.Jamesian ancient church, built on a cliff overlooking the sea. The cliffs had eroded and crumbled, and the graveyard had delicately subsided, the  fences long tumbled away. Looking down to the sea, you could make out the squared-off edges of coffins poking out of the cliffside. It was a hot still afternoon, and I had attracted a personal cloud of flies. Their monomaniacal buzzing, the crashing of waves, and the odd branch creaking were the only sounds. No birds sang. I was thrilled.
I also had a perfectly lovely time on the Isola di San Michele, Venice's cemetery island. It contains the tombs of Stravinsky, Diaghilev and Ezra Pound. You go in a water taxi, and I entertained thoughts of the last one departing without me, leaving me there for ever. I could have haunted it beautifully, what with the hair and the ghastly pallor, and just think who I would have been seen dead with..

UnWhelkhome

Fish. I don't trust 'em. When I was little, you got them from fairgrounds, in a bag. They gaped at you for a few days and then expired. Then your Mother got a bit upset and flushed them.
My Dad, always fond of a psychologically damaging spectacle, once took me to, I think, Blackpool Tower. I must have been three or four. In the basement there was an aquarium, built into the walls, which continued across the ceiling. A darkly-lit tunnel of twisting fish. As you  toddled towards it in your little velvet-collared coat, a thumping great finny Something would suddenly emerge from shadowy waters and glare at you.
Difficult to remain soignee, you will agree.
We used to go to Southport, where the sea was a distant rumour, at weekends. The idea was to run wildly and hopefully towards it, with your tiny plastic bucket full of starfish shapes. After a while, your small legs gave way,and you collapsed on damp,rilled sand. Then you would be gathered up by a parent and have said legs abraded with a wet towel in a biting wind.
The sea, when I finally met it, in Woolacombe or similiar, I liked. I was taught to swim by Mrs Robinson, who ran our local Mental Home, as they were called then. The pool in the Cottage Homes in Fazackerley was vast and pre-War. Mrs Robinson was a friend of my Mum's, and my Mum wanted me to learn to swim, so she offered me lessons on Saturdays (after the library shut at noon  and they kicked me out). I was five, shortsighted and clumsy. Swimming was, and remains, the only physical activity at which I am any good. No, really.
The GB was exposed first to the warm waters of the South of France, very early in his life. It was quite a shock when he met the Irish Sea. Nobody French could quite believe that these mad pale drunk people swam in it,and lived.
I went to Brittany for a week with my friend from school. She was getting interested in Proper Cooking at the time, and I fancied a break from Angry Boys. The weather was marvellous, one of those early September freak weeks of warmth and sunshine. I went swimming and she did Tai Chi on the beach. However,she had pledged to immerse herself in the local cuisine.Which was marine-based to a fault. I don't eat seafood at all, it is like eating wet insects. Fish should be square, white, and battered. And of course, when the French aren't eating live meat, they are eating seafood. I had a great many omelettes that week, was green about the gills and a stranger to the bathroom. Still, I was having fun and did not complain. Until we went to a rather fine restaurant, notable for its seafood. And my pal ordered the Seafood Platter. Ignoring the waiter's misgivings;he had been trying to impress upon her that this specialite de la  maison was generally for five people or so, she exhorted him to bring it on. When  it arrived,  it was whistling defiantly. A two-foot tall tower of denizens of the deep.wreathed about at the base  with murky  bladderwrack, it was the Jaques Cousteau special.  A brawny lobster arched around the pile of mussel shells that formed the foundations. After that, it was langoustines, greater and lesser crabs, and a selection of creatures neither of   us had ever seen before, some with whiskers.An assortment of hammers and pincers were provided,so the punter had a fighting chance. The entire restaurant was staring at the two crazy Les Fuckoffs (a favourite French term for sweary Brits) who has recklessly ordered this immense dish. They stared even more when they realised that it was One Fuckoff who intended to eat it all. I had an omelette, and a lot of wine.  My friend took a deep breath, and rose to the challenge.
The subsequent scene was directed by Terry Gilliam. Crustacean parts flew, carapaces were shattered, bits of shell landed in glossy French hair, juices splattered..
I am noted for the sweetness of my nature. I endured this scene with smiling patience,until a large prawn hit me on the forehead.
I rose, with dignity, and stalked off for a cigarette. Luckily,I was,even then,used to being laughed at by Mediterranean  types. If you are lint white  of complexion  and scarlet of hair and lip, you attract roughly  the same reaction as would the sudden appearance of a burning clown.
Anyway, she finished it. AND had a pudding. I had several Calvados and a shower. So you see why,when seafood is suggested, I become a little thoughtful and withdrawn. I come from a long line of seamen, as I never tire of telling people, but there are limits.

Down In The Gamestation At Midnight

And how, exactly, did I get mixed up in all this? The GB now cares only for a thing called "XBox". It is a two-edged sword. One edge is rather handy,in that is prevents him trailing round whining "Mum..I'm BORED".On the other edge, it precludes any conversation,is the cause of charmless language, and depredations on my bank account in order to purchase football players for    FIFA 12.
Now we are poor, as I have mentioned, and the GB has to sell things. Electrical things, which are weighty and awkward, and things that need chargers. Things with remotes that become even more remote when needed.These are a few of my least favourite things.Because he isn't old enough, and I am; I have to go round with him to buy and sell, in peculiar shops run by young men with elaborate whiskers and emotionally unstable t-shirts.  There is always one chubby goth girl with a piercing and a cold sore. I have to lean on the counter and listen to utterly impenetrably Babylonian conversations about gigarams , megaclouds and platforms,and provide three sorts of ID with my photograph. I do have three sorts,actually. Unfortunately in one I look like Myra Hindley,and in the other two; Rosemary West and Danny La Rue respectively. This startles them in Cash Generators but is unremarkable in Gameland, where everyone looks like a serial killer who has been up all night. Sometimes a new game comes out. The GB and his friends are overcome with a Chattertonian deathly langour as far as their existing games are concerned. Those games, once hotly desired, have lost all their wonted charm and lustre. They could not be more gimpy if they tried, it seems. So life will only be worth living again when Assassin's Creed 3 is in  their possession, and it comes out at midnight, so the over-18 person in the house (me) has to go and queue up in Kecks with boys who smell of cider.
While this phase persists , and it's been six years so far,  there is no chance of him reading a book ("Gay and for Girls"; see blogs passim).  I don't know why I  find this so distressing, but I do. I want the Xboy to find the same refuge and pleasure in reading as I have. When he was little,he adored books, and ate several each week. We used to go up to Muswell Hill, where there was an engrossing brace of bookshops;one for him and one for me. I would buy him a book, and we would go and sit in a nice bar sorry I mean organic fruit juice and flapjack cafe; and I would read my book while he drooled and gibbered over his. And vice versa, as he got older and so did I.
Even up to eight or so he could be bamboozled into reading, graphic novels (comics with a PhD) about zombies, Adrian Mole, the smaller and more portable Stephen Kings, and a dreadful chap called Darren Shan.  Mr Shan writes books of such gore-drenched gruesomeness that an episode describing a demon using the corpse of the hero's infant sister as a glove-puppet constituted one of the blander pages. For a short while, it seemed that the GB had found a genre  of books that he could use.
There was a brief flirtation with the "Guinness Book Of Records", but only so he could follow me round intoning desperately uninteresting facts in the dull monotone of Peter Cook's E. L. Wisty; "Did you know that a flea could,if scaled up, jump over the Albert Hall...Have you seen this man from China who has the world's longest toenail...?
I would flee into the bath for the world's longest soak,but he would follow me in, and sit on the toilet seat."Did you know that the Coelecanth..."
My dramatic training was stretched to its limits, as night after night I impersonated Horrid Henry, and Just William, Max, and an entire island full of Wild Things, in an attempt to deliver such thrilling bedtime stories that GB    would take up his book and read. Sometimes the next-door neighbours would clap me through the walls, so stirring were my audio performances. I thought of hiring Martin Jarvis to read to him at night.
But no. I now have 2,000 books,and he owns two. One is in French, and he likes the  pictures in the other one. Gah!
I worry that this might have something to do with his father, who also owned two books.One was "Of Mice And Men" and the other one wasn't.
Mind you, my Mother was Mrs Sport, I am a hopeless rabbit,and the GB is great hulking Rugbyperson. I may have to wait for erudite grandchild. Unless the GB peels himself off the XBox, though, he won't know what to do with a girl. They only exist in games as hookers to be run over or to have their heads eaten off by ghouls. We need more games designed by bookworms. Let's have "Grand Extreme Mobile Library 1V", and "Assassins Read",and quickly,please.

Don't Quote Me

I don't like poetry, especially modern stuff. Most of it is just typing, if you ask me. I liked the stuff we did at school, Keats,  Kipling and Kubla Khan. But I cannot bear people reading it in that "po-tree" voice that they use. We had a very expressive English teacher, given to a Special Poetry Voice. She also used to rub her own knees when reading the sexy bits. This made me nervous and self-conscious on her behalf.  I think it is one of the most mortifying things one human being can do to another, reading poetry at them in a meaningful way. Oh God, I have just remembered boys strumming guitars and singing at me through their hair..I have gone all hot with embarrassment at the mere recollection, and this last occurred several decades ago. And people dancing towards one is also frightening..New Year's Eve, that can happen. I find exuberance generally rather alarming, in anything. I like to have some warning. One thing I loved about London was that no-one "popped round". Elaborate arrangements had to be made in order to have a rendezvous with anyone, and in those days we had no mobile phones. So no last-minute text messages, no answerphone cancellations. If you made a date you had to really want to see the blighter. When I lived in Huskisson St., I became far too popular. People would drift round because they were bored, drunk, hungry or had been locked out.Or were itinerate musicans coming  to deliver their demo tape and staying to roll big smelly joints and eat my Hobnobs. Sometimes I would find them passed out in the kitchen, with their heads in the cat litter tray. I had a day job at the time, and was notoriously brisk with them. If they were still there when I got home, they would have to hoover or do the dishes. One notorious Bad Boy of Rock cleaned my Venetian blinds. I think he wrote a song about it.
One of my friends thinks I'm a boy. His evidence for this is that I don't like flowers (unless poisonous or funereal), and am indifferent to shoes,chocolate, and handbags. There's not a great deal of point getting excited about shoes if you have trouble walking even in bare feet. A handbag to me is a capacious repository for broken biros, a makeup bag that would give a mugger a hernia, fagslighterkeysmoneyphone.I have one, and I rag it to death. Then I throw it out and buy another one. If there is chocolate around, and I am in the mood, I will eat it. If not, I scarcely give it a thought. I like jewellery, but not proper grown up stuff you would get burgled for. I like costume jewellery,e.g.  dragonfly brooches that quiver their wings and frighten small children. I like great big emphatic necklaces; not so much a "statement" as a declaration of war. And, has been witnessed by many a friend unfortunate enough to be in a carpark with me, I cannot tell one car from another. Hopeless. And furthermore, I don't care. The GB is finding all this rugged individuality rather wearing. The Early Teen is a conventional creature. The cry goes up;  "Why can't you be NORMAL?". I asked him what he felt was a "Normal Mum", and it seems that what all these lanky boys with strange trousers desire is a Fantasy 1950's Housewife Mum.  Well, I wouldn't mind one of those either, but I would also quite like a dragon. Equally mythical. "You ought" he said sternly " to WANT to make my dinner,make my bed, do my ironing, wash dishes, peel potatoes blahdeblah". "Do you like doing all that?"" No, it's Gay.."
Sigh. He doesn't QUITE dare say "Because you are a woman", but that's what he thinks. They all do. I don't blame them really,if there was even a slight chance of anyone thinking that their mission in life was to do all the boring bits of mine for me, I would cling to that possibility as did that drip in "Titanic" to a life raft. And he can't do the "Oh I am SO inept that you will lose patience and do it for me" because I am already doing that one.Poor creature. But still, there is very little chance of him taking me for granted as a provider of hot meals and clean shirts. I carry on as though I have given him the Koh-in-Oor diamond if I so much as rinse a teaspoon languidly under a running hot tap.
And I am terribly encouraging if he forgets himself sufficiently to make me a cup of tea. Every Mother's Day, I get a "You Are Just Like A Mother To Me" card. Do you think he's being sarcastic?
And so, back to poems, which is where we came in; the GB wrote this affecting verse in my Mother's Day card last year. " I love you right up to the Moon
Although you are a Proper Loon".  He has clearly inherited my talent for bathos.

Dog Days

I was patronised twice this week. And it's only Wednesday. This doesn't happen very often, and I am always slightly taken aback to find it happening at all. The patroniser in each case was a chap, one youngish, one my age. When people start talking to me as if I had recently been hit on the head with a brick, I tend to look behind me for the person they really mean to be addressing. I'm not even blonde, just now.
One of my friends believes that women become invisible after they reach middle years, and ought to be grateful for any attention at all. I would rather fancy actually being invisible,maybe for one or two days each month? I have many ingenious pranks lined up in my head against such an opportunity arriving.Hats would whizz through the air, ill-mannered children would be terrorised, and I regret to say that the odd bottle of Sailor Jerry might go adrift. Although walking down Church St today, I think most people go about as if they were both drunk AND invisible. I had forgotten it was half-term generally, because the GB had gone forth to stamp all over a village and demand magic beans, so the house was strangely quiet. I wandered, lovely as a clown, as the poet has it, into Waterstone's. They have a coffee thing upstairs, and lots of leathery pouffes ( insert own Julian and Sandy gag), upon which you can rest and finger a hardback. Sorry, I have stopped now.And I was a happy little creature, browsing and scheming, up there in the quiet bookery. Jolly good thing I had topped up my tranquillity levels,because when I got back to Downturn Abbey, all hell had shaken itself loose. Bob The Builder had decided to do some complicated drilling, my Mother's Lady-Who-Does was yodelling over the Hoover, and the window cleaner had arrived. An innocous gentleman with a sponge on the end of a pole (ladders now outlawed due to the widespread problem of window cleaners plummeting to the ground ), he is the sworn foe of The Dog. I have mentioned The Dog, in passing,but may not have done it full justice. Despite what my Mum thinks regarding its superior intelligence, I doubt if it will read this, so here goes. It is stupid beyond words.It looks like a nightdress case.It smells , and its main aim in life is to be where it isn't. When it is out, it wants to be in;  if on the sofa, it wants to be on the floor. You get the picture. Should its needs not be  attended to instantly, it scrapes,scrabbles, scratches your stockings, and whines. It goes to a posh  hairdresser,which is more than I do.  My Mother loves it passionately, and so we have to pander. Today, it went completely barmy, and flung itself bodily towards each and every window at which the Sponge-On-A-Stick appeared. Then it sank slowly to the floor, with claws going squee-squee-squee down the glass. All the people who live on my Mum's estate seem to have dogs and small children . Her next door neighbours  have two  ginger tots, and a dog the size of a rhino. Every time anyone comes to their door, the dog leaps into the air, scattering small red-headed children far and wide, like falling autumn berries. The children seem to take this in their tiny stride; if they survive they will be immensely nimble and with nerves of steel.Good preparation for LIFE, which can often throw the unexpected at you. I have had to make my peace with The Dog, as it is so important to Dear Mamma, in the way that one might be compelled to embrace an unfortunate in-law or  the loutish spouse of a beloved . But now she has started to refer to me as its "Sister", partly out of puckishness and partly to see how much I will take. My brother laughed immoderately at this, until I pointed out that it reflected on him, too. As he has spent most of his life with people who go round on all fours, he might not mind being related to a West Highland Terrier. Anyway, I have to go and cook it a chicken dinner now (too refined for dog food), and heat up its "Beddy Bear". And, as the GB would say "I am not even pure jokin' you". I can provide photographs,if you write in.

Ashes To Ashtray

I think I might like to be embalmed. Not right this minute, you understand. I'm not ready to give up my body. I am still using it. That's what worries me about organ donation, frankly. They might pop round before you are lifeless. And given the amount of trouble I had with the bailiffs, it is not a risk I am ready to take.Once people have something on an official form,or on "our database" it is the Devil's own job to convince them that it isn't true. I have tried this before. It throws up many interesting philosophical conundrums. Because I am not on Royal Mail's database, I do not exist, and therefore must not have any post. I tried to explain my existence to them yesterday, citing many happy proofs,including Giant Boy. They said No. I pointed out that databases relied upon information put into them by humans,and that most humans were idiots,and that  I could prove it. Therefore why rely on a tale told by that idiot, rather than the idiot you currently have speaking to you? I imagine that God has the same problem, certainly if he tries to get his post from Royal Mail, and the Pearly Gates don't have a number on them,or indeed, a Post Code.  This all proved a bit much for Customer Services.
So anyway, I was watching a nice man from Torquay being mummified,on the television. Everyone v.excited. The process looked..tricky...and I am not sure that I want my brain and organs served separately. What if  someone moves them in the Afterlife? I have enough problems finding my contact lense case. You also have to loll about in a bath for thirty days.Now I have no problem with long baths, and indeed, have been known to retire with a bottle and a book until pink and wrinkly. But this one ends up bright red, because all one's muscles leak haemogoblins,and red isn't my colour. Alan from Torquay looked rather odd, afterwards. Everyone, including his wife, kept going on about how marvellous he looked,if a bit Tandoori. So they wheeled him back to a cold chamber, where they will "keep an eye on him". Hmmm. Apparently he wanted to go in a museum, and to have a mechanical arm fitted so he could wave at people. Alan's wife had clearly been putting up with his sense of humour for a long,long time. A lesson to us all, don't let men involve you in their hobbies. What begins as a mild interest in Egyptology and exhibitionism can ,if encouraged, bloom into a television crew and bespectacled American experts in decomposition taking over the kitchen. I wouldn't mind being stuffed, though. Jeremy Bentham is still looking good. I could be propped up on a barstool in the RBG on slow nights. With a cigarette, please. If you can't smoke when you're dead, when can you? If I get cremated, and I haven't decided.. "Oh, go on, surprise me", I don't want my ashes in a pot.People might add to me, as you can never find an ashtray at funerals and I don't want to put on weight when I'm deceased.
Most people nowadays have never seen a dead body . I  have notched up several, what with one thing and another. My Great Aunt Molly had been a Nursing Sister in the First World War . In peacetime, her talents were called upon when neighbours expired, and she would pop round with a little leather bag and do the necessary. We still have the bag. It is rather chic. When my Dad died, I was nominated to be in charge of dealing with the undertaker. I don't know who had chosen him but he was terribly Dickensian. He came round to chat coffins, and I poured him a whisky from my Father's favourite bottle. I think I may have been over-generous, because he became frisky, and inappropriately roguish. He was much smaller than me, so easily quelled, but then he said that my Mother wanted my Dad to be buried with his signet ring and wedding ring on.I said she didn't;because we had talked about it.  He insisted. and then, leering ghoulishly at me said "Well,if you want them back, we will have to break your Father's fingers", and mimed this action. I said
" Fine, he's dead, you know".  The undertaker made it very clear that he felt my attitude sadly insensitive. We got the rings back. Sorry, Dad, but I know you would have been furious if we had let the pesky varmint get away with it. When I went to see the body, it was just that. I remember so vividly being glad I had gone, despite a little trepidation,because it was so utterly and obviously not him there. I mean it was, we checked, my trust in that undertaker being on the wobbly side, but you know what I mean. So whatever pranks and quirky things people decide to do with their vacant shells. let them get on with it, I say. The spirit has flown. So help yourself to my organs,do. Although I'm not sure they are going to be absolutely mint.Cash Convertors  won't have them and I would get shocking feedback off E-Bay.

Out Of Africa..Into The Snug

My friend Tom's parents once had a farm in  Africa. They returned in 1939 to run a hotel/public house in Pewsey, Wilts, as they didn't want to miss the War. It was a curious decision, reflected in the decor. Half cabbage rose chintz, half Zulu Chieftain ceremonial tent.It could be a little unnerving;getting up in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom and walking into a vast tiger skin complete with snarling head which was serving as a  fluffy rug in the guest  room.  When I stayed there during Pewsey Carnival, the hotel was full. So I slept on a sofa in a room otherwise given over to the Carnival Queen's dresses, the dresses of her retinue, some tribal drums, and a selection of terrifyingly used-looking spears and assegais.Only after experiencing said Carnival did I appreciate that this was an entirely appropriate juxtaposition. Like most English celebrations, it featured wildly heavy drinking, and wilder transvestism. Hordes of grizzled farmers grasped their annual opportunity to stuff their sunburnt muscular arms into a tea dress, and plaster themselves with their wives Mayfair Pink lippy,going badly over the edges. And then straight in to the River Pew, or whatever it was called. I was told that the death toll averaged about half-a-dozen each year.  I wanted to go every summer and be the official counter of cross-dressed corpses fished out of the drink, but sadly my friend's father slipped and fell on the newly-installed Safety Floor.This put a dampener on the proceedings..How Anglo-Saxon men dearly love a frock-up,though...Any charity fund-raiser, stag do, rag day, or similiar event, is as the drop of a hat to the flower of English manhood.  The absolute top rung on the ladder to enjoyment is a day where you can put on a droopy dress, a vicar's wife-style hat, drink yourself daft and have a fight. If mud, water, or vats of baked beans are also involved, the English Male is in Arcadia. The French find this extremely odd,and they have NOTICED, you know. The Southern Mediterranean gentleman is primarily, in my experience and observation, motivated by the prospect of sex. They do not get as drunk as we do. This is because they need to be alert and quiveringly ready,should some prey appear on a distant horizon. They tend not to stumble around town centres singing songs about goblins, enormous penises, or the vileness of women's genitalia. I don't think they enjoy public vomiting. No, they cleanse and decorate, then parade themselves, in duos or groups of three at the most, stopping to imbibe an aperitif or a weeny glass of prosecco. Their aim is to get a girl to go with them to a "nightclub". I only did this once, and by mistake. You descend to an earpoppingly loud Gehenna, with human fluids pouring off the walls, and are given ONE drink. Often rather small men will then gyrate at you, in a marked manner. Should you demur, and play the "I don't dance, don't ask me" card, you will immediately have been deemed to be requesting a very fast drive in a very dangerous car to "Somewhere Quiet". Depending on location, this will invariably be a pine forest, a deserted beach, or a hilltop somewhere with no lights for miles. Should matters advance this far, you are in the soup and no mistake. Considerable research amongst my female chums concluded that crying only excited them, pleading the existence of a husband or boyfriend was regarded as inadmissable evidence, and for God's sake don't say you are pregnant as it only gives the green light to the more practical chap (see "Cut Cake;Slices Of). No, you have to talk about your Mother, their Mother, religion, or how you are going to be sick on their trousers. Top Tip.The same applies to being in a car with a maniac driving too fast. No-one is sufficently reckless to want sick in their car.
But I was talking about men in ladies clothing, rather than wolves in Maseratis. It is a curious thing, but a very girly boy looks much more masculine in drag. Little details, like big wrists, Adam's Apples, and a firm jawline,hitherto un-noticed, are highlighted.  I am something of an expert on this, as I have mentioned. Living with drag queens, and having a University BF who looked more like a girl than I did, gave me a sanguine approach to crossdressing, and a sadly depleted wardrobe. A girl can look delectably Dietrichian in a man's outfit, but it has to be a beautifully cut evening suit. A girl in a baggy Rugby sweatshirt and grubby shorts just doesn't do it. And as for dungarees, I think the "dung" part of the word gives a clue as to what you will look like.
I remember meeting Eddie Izzard in Edinburgh, before he was a transvest-out. He was wearing a tan leather bomber jacket (awful things), a t-shirt and some nasty cream-coloured trousers. A thoroughly delightful and charming chap, but  he did not look at all at ease.
The next time we met, a couple of years later, he was wearing a frock coat, a bra, full makeup, and suicide heels.He looked wonderful ; confident,  compellingly sexy, and still very definitely het.
 He said that he liked women with "Va-Va-Voom", and had certainly adopted that style. And as he also pointed out, quite literally.."Who DOESN'T like breasts?"
The Pewsey Carnival Ladyboys were much more in the Pantomime Dame mode, and you would have to have been in prison for a very long time to have mistaken them for even the butchest of women.  I know a couple of Drag Kings, too. When they dress up as men, they dress as glamorous men; Cary Grant rather than Wayne Slob.
I am a sucker for glamour, and anyone who raises the quotient, aesthetically, has my vote. And possibly my shoes, too.

P's. See also Q's.

Modern life is forever throwing up new challenges to etiquette. What, for instance, is the acceptable form when presented with a person who has writing all over them? If they have been pleased to present their philosophy of life, musical affiliations, or sexual preferences to you on their chests, or even to take the time and trouble to have a tattoo which reads "I'm not pregnant, I'm fat", one feels an obligation. The latter is a useful addition to manners and mores, removing as it does the tricky dilemma of whether or not to offer one's seat upon a bus or train to a lady who may be in an interesting condition, or who may have just eaten all the pies. I became convinced that manners were the answer to practically all mankind's ills when I was Head of Student Services in a London college. Student after student would come in bursting with grievances, fizzing with rage, or weeping in frustration. Sometimes the cause was undeniably grim, but quite often it had its origins in a breach of etiquette. "Now Iqbal" I would say "Have you tried Asking Them Nicely?" "Oh, dear, Soraya, well it WAS very rude to call you that, shall we see if we can make them understand that no-one wants to be called a skanky ho? I know I wouldn't..."
I felt like Joyce Grenfell in a crack den.
Someone once observed that for strict observance of social niceties, and prickly sensitivities when these are neglected;one should not study the behaviour of Duchesses, but rather see what happens in prisons. When people are crowded together in tense situations with companions not of their choosing, it becomes absolutely vital for everyone to behave themselves. Keeping a polite physical distance is not only good manners, but good hygiene. On the Rude Tube, for instance, where this is not possible; the only sane response is to signal with the vast array of subtle non-verbals and gestures available to lucky humans , the following sentiments;
"I regret deeply our physical proximity on this occasion. In another,more  spacious and mutually agreed social setting, my word,it could have been delightful. But alas, here we are crammed together on the Piccadilly Line, and I have my elbow in your solar plexus. Naturally,I shall be removing it at the next stop, or when the enormous Danish youth carrying his house on his back shifts a bit,whichever happens soonest.Thank you for tolerating this intrusion with absolutely No Reaction Whatsoever, as any acknowledgement of irritation could,as we both know, lead to bloodshed and unfortunate reprisals".
This can all be conveyed with the slightest of facial expressions and  micro-movements, such is the marvellous expressiveness of the human physiognomy. Aren't we lucky? What a piece of work is a Man. If you see how people generally negotiate crowded spaces, and more,often than not, queue up nicely when asked, it is an admirable achievement on behalf of a species who frequently appear to be otherwise rattling merrily to Hell in a pimped handcart with no brakes. I think this is something that our battered old islands can be proud of, long after more impolite actions,like sending battleships all over the globe, sidling into other people's countries with an army, planting a flag and saying "Thanks very much",  have been apologised for. If you can't manage morals, manners will go a long way.
Proper behaviour is designed to make other individuals feel comfortable and approved-of. It is not designed to catch people out in minor faults and then draw attention to them.
And now, I am off to carry out the elaborate tea ceremony with Bob The Builder. I will pretend that I enjoy doing this, and he will pretend that he finds my vile tea delectable.We will both pretend that we are not addressing each other over a toilet. After all, we are neither of us French.

Hitler's Tits

Recently, I have been subjected to television, for the first time in many a long year. I am staying chez Mamma, as she is unwell and has the Builders In (not euphemisms in either case),and  my presence is required. So I have been living on  Grand Old Lady Time,and also co-existing with her viewing schedules and quirks. We begin with "Cash In The Attic". This features people hoping that the pointless thing they buy from a charlatan poodlefaker will make a profit when auctioned . Every time an article is hammered away for a gasp-worthy sum, my Mum says "Oh, we had several of THOSE but Your Grandmother/Auntie Madge said "You don't want to hang on to all that old rubbish ", and promptly binned it/them". So far we are down about £5,600 as a result of that side of the family and their insistence on hygiene. The rest of us never throw anything away. Half the family hoard, desperately clutching useless things to their bosoms and squirrelling away items that "Might come in for something/someone".The other half are determined to root out these articles and throw them far, far away. Then the first half go and rescue them and put them back. It is a rather beautiful system, in its way.

So that gets us to the lunchtime news on BBC 1. Mum often becomes animated by the absurdity of the news being announced or more frequently, the tie or blouse of the announcer. "What on Earth possessed him to think of that TIE!"

There follows what the GB calls "Nana's Murdering Programmes", although she has gone off "Midsomer Murders" since an episode featured Morris Dancers, whom she cannot abide.

Thereafter it is the "History Channel",currently fixated upon Hitler.  It is interesting to watch footage of World War Two in the company of one who took it personally. As she pointed out,she now knows more about what was going on than she did at the time . She can remember (and ,in the right mood, accurately impersonate) all the sounds made by various bombs aimed at her during the Liverpool Blitz. She was eighteen when the Luftwaffe decided to give her sleepless nights. The sirens would sound and her Mother would root her out of her bed. Grabbing a dog under each arm, she would head for the Anderson shelter in our back garden, and sit, shivering and smoking, until the all clear.Then she would cycle to Bootle and do Important War Work for the Gas Board.

My Dad, a mere suitor at this point, was being shot at in North Africa,good preparation for married life, as he said many many times.

Spending the afternoon with murderers and Hitler does take it out of one, and she often has a nap afterwards.

The annoying thing, to my mind, is the volume of the advertisements for funeral plans and bladder accessories;it's like being shouted at by a morbidly patronising sergeant major. And the remote. The reason it is called that is because it is always out of reach. Chez Mamma,it is also  frequently sat upon by The Dog, causing the television channel to change unexpectedly. And aren't there a LOT of channels? I was surprised to discover The Discovery Channel, obviously, but utterly  shattered to find  one devoted to "Extreme Ironing",and yet another to developing one's "Abs", whatever they are..abstract patterns of thought,maybe?  Everything else seems to be about buying, selling,or renovating, houses or people. Oh, and jewellery from QVC, usually in the shape of comedy animals.What grown woman in her right mind wishes to have diamante cows dangling from her earlobes?  It's like when you go and buy nightwear. It is routinely plastered with the likenesses of cartooned rabbits,or cats,or somesuch. If not,it will have things written on the front, which is of course the Work of Satan.

Anyway, we were going through upwards of 500 channels, with my Ma dismissing them all in turn with; "American, American, American, Cookery, Fat People Eating, Surgery. American AmericanAmerican, Snooker, Fat People, Fatter People, Surgery On Fat People. Ill Babies. American American  Sport, Sport,Sport. Awful Houses, Awful |Children, Fat Children, Fat Anerican Children.... Hitler. Hitler. Breast Surgery, Hitler's Breast Surgery.."

They can throw the remote away, for me. The Dog can find something else warm to sit on.

Kin | Linking Liverpool and Merseyside's Creative People

Kin Linking Liverpool and Merseyside's Creative People

Try my blog

Liverpoliteness@blogspot.com

Baking Pans For Nigella

Now you know by now that I am not a domestic Goddess. At Dothegirls Hall, they made us do witchcraft sorry  I mean of course housecraft, in a sort of nasty flat. Expectations were low. According to the curriculum, we could expect to be working in a sweatshop (Needlework) or a sweetshop (Maths), before we met Mr Right. As my surname then was Wright, I found this perplexing.Anyone who met my Dad would have run screaming towards the nearest convent. As indeed did my Mother, but she was in labour by then (see blogs passim).
We were being groomed in the direction of some sort of genteel manual serfdom,mixed with a little light accountancy for the purposes of the household budget. It was 1967.
Our Housecraft teacher was the most terrifying woman since Irma Grese. She was very tiny, and very deadly, like an asp. She had a little girly voice, and was neat. She would creep up behind you and peer into the pan that you were  stirring vaguely whilst looking out of the window and musing on Truth, Beauty, and The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.Then she would tell you that you were "a useless article", and poke you.This always made me jump and burn myself. We were supposed to make a thing called a "Pear Conde" one day. It involved much tedious peeling and coring of pears, and fannying around with raw rice. I brought in a tin of pears and a tin of rice pudding, going "What?" Two minutes tops and no washing up,especially if you ate them both out of the tin.
I begged not to do Housecraft. I suggested that if I were to do some extra "O" levels in that slot, I would be more employable and consequently able to eat out and pay a cleaner. This perfectly reasonable request was refused, so I needed another strategy. I had managed to get out of Games after several years of guerrilla warfare, and the most successful method had been to hide or lose the vital component of said game. On one occasion I put a rounders ball in my pants and sat on it.
This was clearly not going to work in the Kitchen Of Dread. So I started to burn things "accidentally".Plastic spatulas melted and sealed themselves irrevocably to the bottom of pans. Oven gloves smouldered to their destruction, and everything I cooked was turned up to 11.Hissing Sid, the serpentine homunculus who ruled the "Housecraft Room", looked at me with undisguised loathing."Elizabeth Wright! What are you going to destroy THIS WEEK, I wonder...."
I wondered that, too, as I hadn't quite made my mind up. There were so many interesting possibilities...
I was banned from the room altogether, after torching my eyebrows and making an egg explode.
The thing about cooking is that you put things in pans and on grills, but then something else happens,and you wander off and forget all about it. It was pointed out to me by a dear friend that you actually needed to be in the same room with cooking when it was happening. It was she who gave the GB the number of Childline on hearing that I was cooking him dinner. And so, it came to pass, with heavy irony,  that The Frenchman ( accidental father of GB) was a chef. And not only a chef, but a French Chef Who Had Worked With Gordon Ramsey. They had a lovely time bellowing and throwing hot water at each other. At first, I was unsuitable casting for the role of kitchen porter, but after a few conflagrations I was banned and barred in perpetuity. So the GB, when dining chez Frenchman, ate a three-course meal with wine, after  a hard day at school.He would then spend a week with me, scraping dead oven chips off the baking tray. Then a week with Monsieur again, eating roadkill, and raw liver. Then back to cremated Pizza with Mother. I think adaptability to be so important in the young, don't you?  And he doesn't look malnourished. He looks as though he eats his own weight in kittens and asparagus, every day. Lord knows how big he would have been, had I not had the foresight to smoke twenty Capstan Full Strength throughout the pregnancy.See, Mothers Just KNOW.

Van Fare For the Common Man

I have just watched The Dog practically tear itself in two,attempting to follow two men's trousers simultaneously. I had a girlfriend like that, once. She left Liverpool at the point where she had slept with a chap for a second time, thinking it was the first.Although admirable in terms of recycling, I can see how it might be muddling. She also went out with a large number of people for a pre-wedding celebration, and toddled home with the groom-to-be.This cast something of a froideur over her relationships with that particular circle of friends,and she felt,accurately, that she needed more scope. So she moved to London.
I went to live in That London with the  slight sense of relief that comes with the realisation that no-one could care less who you were or what you were up to as long as it didn't disrupt the Circle Line. I didn't have a colourful romantic history, being roundly loathed by most of the boys of the city. The people I knew were musical,in one way or another. With a couple of honourable exceptions, they had no time for girls,as the serious business of talking about their music and avoiding paid work whilst funding various intoxicants did not allow for female input ,conversationally speaking. A couple of brave and original women entered into the fray, and started bands,wrote and produced music, became performers, but it was quite the Boy's World in the early 80's. I had less than zero interest in anyone with a musical instrument, and no aspirations that way myself, luckily for everyone. No, I hurled myself onto the stage,instead. It started with Lunchtime Theatre,and the idea was that a group of acting persons took drama to the huddled masses trying to eat their sandwiches, and acted at them until they gave in and watched.This involved vans. I never trust any enterprise in which a van plays a part; there are dread situations ahead. These will inevitably centre around desolate petrol stations , cables and loops of wire, pools of rusty water on the floor of said vehicle, and keys being lost.  In fact there is a big blue one outside right now,where the builders retire at lunchtime to eat sandwiches of a Chicken Tikka nature. But  despite the van element, the glamour of the stage had got to me,and I happily signed up to perform socially aware drama in Working Men's Clubs in Warrington.  Because I had a slightly posh voice and a haughty demeanour (mostly due to shortness of sight), I was,in those Anti-Thatcherite times, always cast as the  Oppressive Bitch.Sometimes, though, I was an Oppressed Whore. I only really cared about the number of lines and the prettiness of my costume;you would have been observing me for a long time before being reminded of Vanessa Redgrave.
I was actually a Gaiety Girl/show-off, rather than an actress. After a range of tart's parts from Chaucer to Pinter,and a spell playing men in experimental productions of Shakespeare in Chester, I settled into cabaret, as the token woman with some more drag queens.
Shouting in a corset at night turned out to be so much more ONE.
But I do not have time today to relate further, as I hear the sounds of a man with a saw. "A Saw What?" you might well enquire, if you have a tendresse for music hall.If he is grumpy today, I have a Hinge and Bracket mug that is bound to bring a tremulous smile to the lips of the grimmest builder,if you ask me.