Eight Legs Bad

It is Spider Season again. I have honestly tried not to mind. I know that they are harmless, useful members of the creepy community;live blameless lives, spin exquisite webs, kill flies and, for all I know, empty our bins for us and help old ladies across the road. But each damp Autumn, every spider in the UK wakes up, packs a small valise, and heads for wherever I am living. Apart from the renegade ones who go to Glasgow to sit in the bath of my friend Natasha,  Scotland's foremost arachnophobe. I object to killing them.They don't appear to have the same reservations.They pop out of cupboards, scuttle across floors when lights are low, and drop down from ceilings with no prior warning. My Mother says "They are all God's Creatures, trying to live their little lives".She is right, of course, but then I am a G.C also, and my little life will be shortened dramatically if eight-legged things the size of plump mice keep appearing in that sudden way that they have.

I know they can't help the way they look. They probably look gorgeous to each other. But it must have dawned on the brighter ones that if people generally greet you by screaming in terror and jumping on a chair, you may wish to evolve a bit into something less dismaying.I don't ask much. Just, you know, lose a few legs, modify the beadiness of eye ( do you really NEED all eight?), and perhaps the black hairness could be swopped for pastel shaded fluff? Watch a few Disney cartoons with all those eyes, you will get the gist.Everyone keeps telling me how intelligent you lot are.

I even read "Charlotte's Web" to the Giant Toddler. A piece of black propaganda shamelessly promoting spidery types, it features a delightful, sage arachnoid who saves the life of a rather whiny little pig called Wilbur.She does this by spelling out advertising slogans on his behalf, like "Some Pig", and "Brilliant!" in her web. The exclamation marks must have been tricky. Anyway, the frankly simple farming folk of a Mid-West community are swayed by this wonder, and Wilbur becomes a celebrity instead of becoming rashers, which was the original plan for his future. Then he becomes a film star, and descends into a drug-fuelled life of paid-for sex and debauchery. Not really, that was "Valley Of The Dolls", or was it "Babe"? Although to his credit, the author, E.B. White, does not gloss over Charlotte's darker side. "I am a trapper" she says "All my family are trappers". Yes, they are, and one of them trapped me not so long ago. It had been lurking under a box, and emerged while I was putting my contact lenses in. Half-blind at the best of times, I glimpsed a set of leg-tips investigating the carpet. Looked again, and there was a fully extended wolf spider.  They are the Great White Sharks of the spider world, and don't even bother with  webs, because they are too big and butch for all that. Scared witless, I dropped a lense and made for the door. It got there before me and stopped. We had a staring contest. It won, on account of the extra eyes, and the fact that I only had one lens in. The people who say "Oh, they are more scared of you.." hadn't met this one.Mr Wolf wasn't scared of anything, particularly not the livid quivering creature trying to get past it and flee for spider-free territory. In the end, I threw a copy of Vogue vaguely in its direction;  and, possibly horrified by the Autumn/Winter issue with its frankly spider-ist insistence on two-legged models, the thing stalked off, looking offended. I stood in the kitchen, trembling, and wondering if 10am was too early to have a gin. I didn't ever find the contact lense,either, so Charlotte, your family owe me £50.00.

My Dad was in the army in North Africa, where some fool let him have a rifle. He and a few soldier chums were bedding down in their tent, when Dad noticed a strange dark shadow at the top of the main tentpole. It was moving. "Aha!" thought my father " This looks interesting, I shall poke it with my rifle". So he did, and a soup-plate-sized female spider fell down,shedding inummerable baby spids from her back. The resultant ruction saw the tent demolished. Harsh words were spoken, and from then on my father had to keep an eye on his own side as well as on Rommel's.

I don't mind any of the other things which many people find repellent,and have picked bats out of my cardigan with equanimity. I can humanely dispose of earwigs, beetles, wasps, the lot. I will calmly re-house the idiotic bumble bees that sometimes turn up and smack themselves soft by repeatedly flying at the window panes. I positively welcome applications from mice, who are currently under-represented, due to the presence of next-door's mog. So can I suggest that I undertake to provide a speedy and efficient removal service for any unwanted infestations of creatures great and small that others find challenging? In return, I wish for the services of a Spider-Whisperer, who can be called upon to explain to the burgeoning arachnid population in my flat that they would be happier elsewhere? I have my own net, and will travel.

Cockles and Muscles

I have muscles.Who knew? I know I have them because they have surfaced as a small complaining group, after being forced to carry me up ladders and do lots of stretchy things. They were carrying on a bit last night, so I took them to their favorite place, the sofa, and we watched the film of "Sex In The City". I came to this phenomenon late, as indeed I did to sex. Everyone was talking about it and saying how great it was, but I didn't fancy it really. As for the series, I didn't ever watch it, and didn't notice the films either. But let me tell you about this film because it took me aback a little. There are these four women;  and the main one is a writer who wears clothes that are extremely chic. So fashionable is she that people burst out in peals of joyous laughter in the streets of New York,where she trots about dressed variously as a bellboy. a retired ballerina, and the Caterpillar from Alice In Wonderland. I have never been to New York due to the flying thing (blogs passim),but it appears to be a place with an easily impressed and sartorially forgiving population. I like to think that should some poor afflicted creature go about in Liverpool wearing tartan sellotape (Scotch Tape? ) and with a teddy bear on her head, we should all rally round with the warmth and compassion for which we are famed, and have her sectioned. Unless it was the Biennial, in which case she would be Art.

And the writer person has three friends.One is very very feminine. We know this because she screams a great deal, cries at card tricks,wants a baby, and wears gingham.She is a Weed,married to a small fat bald Otter.  Another one is a Ballbreaking Lawyer, called Mildred, married to a Wet with specs. And the third is Old, But Hot. She behaves like a man, and not a very nice man at that. She is named Sam, (definitely a man),  runs some sort of management company and has a young boyfriend called Smiffy or something, who is a Drip. She cares only for sex, which as we know can land people in all manner of trouble, and indeed, in one scene, she lies about naked covered in wet fish, to please the Drip on Valentine's Day. But the Drip,showing judgement beyond his tender years, stays firmly in the office until all the whelks pinned to her nipples have turned bad.So incensed is she that she hurls exhausted seafood at him . I had no idea that New Yorkers were so sophisticated.  Then she gets fat, to express her self-destructive tendencies, and everyone makes jokes about how fat she is, despite the fact that she looks EXACTLY the same.

The main one, Corrie, (named after our  own dear soap opera, I imagine) , the writer one, also has a chap. But he is a Smug Bastard. He is also a different colour from everyone else in the film; a sort of creosote shade. He is called Pig and is old enough to be Corrie's Dad. People in the film make all sorts  of objections to the Bastard; but no-one mentions the most obvious problems, which are that he is a) George Hamilton, and b) mummified. Everyone drinks a lot, as indeed they might. There are some fashionista gay people who are bitchy and witty,and a saintly black woman who is a Real Person. We know this because she looks as though she might have eaten solids in the last  decade and could survive outside New York.

Anyway, they all get very involved in Corrie's wedding to this 900 year-old-man, news of which is in all the glossy magazines.Vivienne Westwood sends her a frock. This was the only part where I felt a twinge of aspirational envy.Then I remembered that she was wearing it to marry Pig in,and that I would rather be shot in it. Now bear up, there isn't much more of this. Pig gets cold trotters and is too stupid to get out of a car at his own wedding.Corrie finds him and bashes him over the head with some symbolic flowers.

Her supportive girlfriends go on her honeymoon with her (but minus Pig,who is in the doghouse),to Mexico, where she is eaten by a giant crab, sorry I dreamed that bit, where she cries for three days, but cheers up when the Weed accidentally soils herself and then they all..No, I honestly can't go on.

Serves me right for deserting Radio 4, but there was a programme on about wizards, and I have limits. So now I know all about being a sassy single woman in Manhattan,and have extended my cultural education. I have also had my suspicions about watching television confirmed. Noel Coward said that it was for appearing on ,and not for watching. So I shall send them my proposal for a reality television series following the fortunes of a morbidly-minded middle-aged neurotic as she tries to pack and deal with Talk Talk Customer Services. With hilarious consequences. Can't see any flaw in this plan, can you? I shall round up my sassy single girlfriends and a pint of sassy single cockles,we shall be sensational.

Nude With Leopard

I am hiding from the packing, and musing upon Beauty and Truth. This is not constructive, I will be the first to admit. The GB is enjoying the fleshpots of Rhyl. My Mother has gone helling around in the Lake District with her scandalously young friends, plus this dog she has that looks as if it was whipped up hastily from cotton wool balls and some liquorice. By someone who had heard dogs described but had never actually seen one.

It is raining with unnecessary force, so I shall remain indoors. Last night, there was a thunderstorm straight from Special Effects. I like those. I once persuaded a friend of mine (who was getting married the next day) to drive to Crosby beach with me in order to watch a violent storm. We had to make our own entertainment in those days. The bride-to-be had entrusted him to me so that he would not go and do something stupid with his male buddies. Oh dear.

This was before hen parties. One of the undoubted benefits of female emancipation is that groups of women now have the right to dress up as Bob The Builder and fall over in Mathew Street. The Pankhursts would be thrilled.

When I lived in Fazackerley, we had a long, low Victorian sideboard. We also had a large blubbery old dog ,"Nip". During a storm, at the first loud clap of thunder, the dog habitually bolted across the room and wedged itself under the sideboard. The panic-fuelled momentum that had enabled it to get under there was of insufficient longevity to get it out again.There was a heavy wooden bar between the front legs of this ponderous piece of furniture,beneath which Nip was now hopelessly trapped. Now wearing the sideboard like a Samurai suit of wooden armour; the fool would try to stand up and free itself, whereupon all the ornaments would slide off on to the lino. At this point my Dad would bellow "Oh, for God's Sake!" and go and get his tool box. "Don't shout at the dog, Alan" my Mother would advise,mildly, "She'll only wet herself".

So I although I have long viewed storms as a potential source of entertainment, the same is not true of dogs. They do terrible, unseemly things, and they do them in public. Maybe this is why the Giant Boy yearns for one so?

Not wild for cats,either.One of my dearest friends lives in Glasgow,in a splendidly baronial house,known locally as "The Palace". It is vast,  with immense, dignified staircases and huge windows ("Not washed since we were Capital of Culture in 1990", she informed me proudly). Both she and the Palace are extraordinarily pleasing to look at;  and when she decided to get a cat, she was determined that it would be up to scratch, so to speak. She got a Bengal Leopard . Do look them up. If you Google any combination of "Wild, huge, expensive,insane, murderous,temperamental,exotic" with "Cat", they will pop up straight away. I hied me off to Scotland to view this marvel when it was a (ha!) kitten. You know when someone shows you their baby, which they are dripping with love for, and it is a screaming red  pudding ,and you don't know where to look? Well, it was a bit like that. It resembled  a skinned alien rabbit with truly alarming crimson eyes. And it glittered, in certain lights, all over.

However, like all unprepossessing infants, it changed as it grew, and grew..six months later I went up again. It greeted me on the stairs, snarling. The size of a large hyena, it had become a thing of undoubted beauty. Icy blue eyes, pale shimmering fur, and a strong look of Uma Thurman, it was Some Cat,to misuse Charlotte 's description of Wilbur in "Charlotte's Web".Although Wilbur the saintly pig would have served merely as a light snack. Still, I could truthfully congratulate my friend on her taste, aesthetically speaking. The weekend passed pleasantly,with only occasional shrieks from clawed Ocado delivery men, and loud bumps and crashes as it leapt across the furniture, scattering vases. Until Sunday morning,when I took a bath. I came out wrapped in a towel, planning to go back for my togs and boots.  It was waiting for me outside the bathroom door, and sprang. It got me round the ankles.When I put my hands down to peel it off, they were instantly savaged.  Bleeding generously,  I retreated to the bathroom and put my boots on, yelling for help.My friend appeared, looking cross."Oh, you BAD leopard!" she thundered, and throwing a duvet over it, wrestled it to the the ground, shouting "Run, Liz, run NOW!"

I didn't need telling twice.

Interestingly, it is chipped and registered against being catnapped. They are pedigree creatures and cost a packet. But I do wonder who,even in gritty Glasgow, would chance nabbing it without full lion-taming kit and extensive training. It would make a worthy pet for that chap who tackled the terrorists at Glasgow Airport.  John 'McClane' Smeaton is one of my favourite Glaswegians, described simply as "Airport worker,hero,smoker" on the website page dedicated to him. I love Glasgow. It is one of the most  beautiful cities, architecturally, and  the inhabitants are fine people. I like Edinburgh well enough,and spent many a summer there; but when I first alighted in Glasgow, I felt at home. Although home at present is a series of cardboard boxes loosely connected by a roof. Which reminds me,I must stir myself and return to packing trunks ,which when opened will contain one shoe, seven books, and a saucepan. even though I will have no recollection of putting such a wild combination together. Ah well, we must experience the dull to appreciate the sublime, as Dear Oscar once remarked.I bet Constance did all HIS packing.

Mummy Goes Drunk

Some Mothers do have them, indeed. I have friends who cannot bear their progeny to grow away from them, mourning the long-ago snuffly baby and the cuddly tot. I am not one of those, thankfully, as the Giant Boy has clearly been hogging the "Eat Me" cake that Alice found so disconcertingly growth-promoting in Wonderland. Maybe some evil cartel has managed to identify the magic substance, and is even now pumping it into McTeenburgers?  In cahoots,of course, with the manufacturers of enormous trainers and vast school uniforms. I shall be going to "Mr High And Mighty" for his gym kit, soon.

My initial idea was to grow my own handyman/chauffeur/lifting person/butler. We are not there yet. Some skills need refinement. " Bring Ma a pink gin, would you , Angel?" I shall drawl from the velvety depths of my sofa. "Coming up, Mummy darling.." he will reply, and then beetle off to do the necessary.

Alas, so far we have managed a dubious cup of tea, (Well, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to put the milk in the pot, did I?") and he knows where the paracetamol is.  When he was tiny, he toddled up to my bedside, where I was lying, lint-white and wincing from a hangover. "Oh Mummy" he said,sympathetically, "Did you Go Drunk?".

We are moving house this week,and he has already shown two distinct personalities. One of them lies face down on his bed with phone stuck to its head, and refuses to engage with the world of "We are moving house. In SIX DAYS!" The other character, who surfaced this morning just in time for him to escape being attacked with a cheese-grater ,is practical, doughty, hardworking and cheerful. He  can also be a very good straight man,but shows signs of wishing to be the Eric Morecambe,and of pushing me into the Ernie Wise role.I shall have to watch that.  He enjoys patronising me, bless him, and patting me on the head. He glories in the fact that he towers over me by six inches ,and often plonks his great feet over mine to demonstrate their superior size (and filthiness) . 

 Have you noticed the way they talk to one another now? He glues headphones on, retires to shout at other X-Box Live players for hours, and they say the most awful things to each other. The major inspiration for insults appears to be saying Bad Things about each other's Mums ("yer Mum!"),and on occasion, Grandmother ("yer Nan!").  These imprecations are the most potent and ire-provoking. Excuse me, but what about their Fathers and, for that matter,Grandfathers? Interestingly, THEIR conduct , weight, and sexual continence does not seem to be of any interest whatsoever. Pity really, as I could certainly contribute some staggeringly inventive vilifications. Not about the Giant Boy's grandpappies, as he does not have any. My Father met his Maker in 1979, of natural causes.Which was not only sad, but also astonishing,given that he fought bravely throughout  World War II, in North Africa and Italy, later with my Mother in Fazackerley, and in addition had survived his own DIY for longer than anyone else thought possible.

We know little about the French side;  there could be absolutely anything lurking up that branch of the tree .The G.B had a Great Grandmother, until quite recently. I rather liked her;  she used to give me double the alcohol normally proffered as part of the French ritual of the aperitif.  Which still,not to be churlish, wasn't very much. The aperitif, as you may know,is the Brit-baiting tradition of having a very tiny drink and some nuts at 6pm. And the drill is ONE DRINK. Hint as you might, eye longingly the firmly corked Vermouth bottle if you will,  you will not be offered a top-up. It is a civilised pre-dinner drink,and be damned to it. In France, the big deal is the dinner, as we have established. In this country and in others more humane ; it is the signal that we can now for God's Sake get on with drinking to the point where we can all speak toone another and  shyly make eye contact. But Mami had got my number, and would leave the bottle near me, replenishing my glass with the concern one might demonstrate towards a tiny, thirsty bird. She also had an exercise bike in the living room,and two boyfriends. Cause and effect, doubtless.

So whatever strange genetic inheritance has formed the creature, I am delighted to have had him,on balance. As he is a teenager he is contractually obliged to be blase, indolent, and lippy. And that was my job. However, from time to time the rough and prickly carapace slips,and I am given heartening glimpses of both the sweet-natured child he was, and the decent chap he will become. If  I don't lamp him with a lamp for giving cheek.

A Whole Other Species

Isn't it interesting, what different people think is enjoyable and correct? There are polarities of type everywhere one looks. For example; there are people who like to visit garden centres on Sunday, and there are people who would prefer to have their uvulas sandblasted. There are people who wear rubber gloves to do the washing up,and there are people who only do the washing up when they are forced to use the Harry Potter paper plates left over from a long-ago child's party. There are,in particular, those who would rather be right than happy. They are the folk who delight in conflict and argument. You will be in the pub, with your fellows, talking agreeable nonsense, and lightly batting the conversational ball about in a way which harms none and furnishes amusement. Then a person with strong opinions arrives.  They will not rest until they have badgered someone into disagreeing with them. The badgeree will have made attempts to deflect this, using anodyne and emollient words.But the badgerer will not let it lie. For their idea of a satisfactory evening is someone crying in the car park, and an atmosphere of nerve-jangling tension. I don't really care that much what anyone thinks. I do care about how they behave.  Opinions are like bottoms, everybody has them, and they are far better left unaired in public.

Another tribe I do not understand much about are the money-grabbers. I was brought up to believe that one did not discuss money any more than one discussed the condition of one's digestive system. Necessary, yes. Interesting, no.

Of course, I have never been able to contribute very much to that sort of conversation, being vague and impractical. If you view money as pleasure vouchers, you are not going to engage productively in a chat about how it behaves in the abstract,and what it gets up to when it isn't with you. Every now and then I encounter people for whom the topic exerts an uncanny fascination. I have generally not wished to grapple them to my bosom and nestle them there. I had a very long-feeling lunch with three women once, whose sole topic of discourse was how much everything everyone was wearing had cost, and what "label" said garment bore. Bore being the operative word.

The Giant Boy is going through a  phase of being a bit of a Labels Queen. He likes to wear polo shirts from Ralph Reader sorry Lauren. They are eye-wateringly expensive. All his friends are similiarly afflicted. I can accept this (just) in somene who is fourteen.But oh I do hope it doesn't last; not least because to indulge him in this habit I shall have to take up burglary,which I shall be most awfully bad at. For one thing I don't have a ladder , nor yet  a bag marked "Swag" ,and for another, I have enough trouble getting into my own house,let alone anyone else's.

It is not money per se that is the root of all evil, it is how people regard it. Using it to make others feel uncomfortable or inadequate is rotten,and obviously vulgar. Thinking that it is an adequate reason to have sex with someone is just a little odd, I think, if this is not one's actual job. When I was at school, the big thing amongst the nice girls was to have a boyfriend with a car. I was so perplexed by this, as I could not see how it worked. If the chap was on the plain and charmless side, did you close your eyes and think of his driving licence? And surely there was more time by far spent NOT in a car with him? Or did you just insist that he kept driving until he ran out of petrol?

I have never really had any money,or a boyfriend with a car. I had a friend whose chap had a hearse, though. A hearse, or a horse. I could see the appeal of either.

I like horses. My cousin has started to buy them,or bits of them, in an absent-minded way. Horse-racing is the only sporty thing I can bear. It doesn't last very long, which is good, and you can dress up and drink,which is better. Although with my eyesight, I could just as well be watching an ant race. Lots of money changes hands, but punters appear to be rather good-natured about it, and winners splash champagne about in a jolly, public-spirited manner.

The first black gentleman I ever saw was at Aintree Races. North Liverpool in 1957 was not racially diverse. So I was in at the deep end with Prince Monolulu. Seven foot tall,and generally draped in leopardskin and full tribal regalia, he was a flamboyant tipster who

rose to prominence after picking out the horse Spion Kop in the 1920  Derby. It  came in at the long odds of 100-6, and he personally made £8,000, a considerable sum of money at the time.

The biography of the journalist Jeffrey Barnard describes Prince Monolulu's death . Barnard at the time was working as a horse racing correspondent  and visited Monolulu in the Middlesex Hospital to interview him. Bernard presented him with a box of Black Magic chocolates, and offered Monolulu a strawberry cream. He took it, and choked to death on it.

On this happier occasion, he seized me from the arms of my Mother, and lifted me high in the air, laughing uproariously,and then tickled me with his hat. I was delighted, apparently. Nothing as sensational happened to me for many years afterwards.

I suspect that this experience may have helped to form my taste for people and situations which are a little out of the ordinary. I once shared a flat with a girl who liked order and normality. Her most scathing remarks were reserved for things or people who were "weird". Not uncanny or eldritch, as in the proper usage, but just unusual. It was not a successful co-habitation. She accused me of "Always making things up about your social life to make you seem more interesting". I was miffed,as I had been going cross-eyed with the effort of shielding her from the more interesting aspects . Mind you,  she ironed her knickers.

These worlds do not mix, and it is a grave error to try. I don't approve of the "I'm mad, me" self-conscious whackiness in which people set out to shock and offend others,but I do consider that  everyone has the right to be eccentric in their own little way, as long as they don't upset people or frighten the cat. The knicker-ironing girl was barmy in a very dull way, to me. And I was reprehensibly barking and shambolic to her. But we managed not to kill each other,and I moved in with three drag queens,with whom I had much  in common. Including shoes. And we all lived happily ever after,until the house burnt down.But that is another story.

Extreme Hardcore Food Porn

I don't understand food porn. It's all over everywhere. You can't move now for people drooling and whipping each other up into a state of stiff-peaked excitement over meringues and tagines. I like food, of course, in its place, which is as a firm and doughy lining in the stomach. It stops you from dying, (although not for ever) or getting drunk too quickly and falling out of windows. Some of it needs heating and poking about a bit. It can taste good, or,if cooked by me, loathsome.  That's it.

So I am baffled by folk who like manking about in the kitchen for hours, after spending even more time collecting specially expensive ingredients and ordering black garlic on the internet. It also brings with it a particularly pungent whiff of martyrdom. I was reading a book that Peter Cook's wife had written about her life with PC. Along with the sense of grievance that she quite understandably felt as a result of him being mad, bad and dangerous to know; she seemed to be especially unhappy about continually producing huge and elaborate dinners which he and his friends either didn't turn up for because they were in the pub,or turned up for after the pub, and then fell face downwards in.  I can't think why she bothered.You would be looking at the young Peter Cook for some considerable time before you thought "There's a man who will appreciate my ratatouille".

This is an example of passive-aggressive catering.

My Mother hated cooking. She had to do it, as in those days no man worth his codpiece would have been seen near a stove. Given my Father's record with fire (see blogs passim),this may have been as well.Mum in the kitchen was dangerous, admittedly, but surviveable. She prepared food with her coat still on, having come in straight from work. Four tins would be opened, stuck in a pan of boiling water, and then,when the water had boiled away, the contents of each tin  would be poured on top of one  other. Tinned steak, tinned new potatoes (which tasted exactly like tin) and two sorts of tinny veg. For dessert, a tin of fruit or rice pudding. I imagined that if nuclear war had occured, which of course my entire

jumpy generation expected at any moment , my brother and I would have adapted to bunker cuisine tolerably well.

At University, I gratefully escaped from food for a few years, and lived on Players No. 6 and Stone's  Ginger Wine. There were some wholesome girls in my Halls who made Full English Breakfasts for their sweaty boyfriends after they (the B.Fs) had been playing rugby on Sunday mornings. None of them spoke to me, ever. Often because I was palely loitering in the kitchen with coffee and a hungover drag queen. It was a lifestyle clash.

Another one occured in later life, when I fell foul of the French attitude to food. Talk about fuss..I once whisked round Tesco's and did a full week's shop in the time that my two French visitors took to discuss a haddock. The French folk I knew were mostly of the chef persuasion,it is true. Which meant endless planning of meals , shopping for meals, preparing of meals and post-meal evaluations (with shouting, tears, and questionnaires). But I met lots of civilians and they were just as bad.

I once tried to have a beefburger at a French Barbeque. Every time I got near the thing, someone would swoop down, screaming "Mais Non! Mange pas, c'est une cendre!", and hurl it away.Well,maybe.But it was MY cinder. They would then provide me with a piece of meat so raw that with a little medical attention , it could have made a complete recovery and lived a long,purposeful life. I would sidle over to the flames and drop it in again.And so on.

My other nightmare was, and remains, seafood. There is something so disturbing about it. To my mind, the whelk is a thing of complete horror, like an inside-out nostril. All whiskery, spiny, shelly, insects of the sea  are pure H.P Lovecraft. The French were having none of this neuresthenic queasiness. They went out of their way to bring me along on Le Picnique miles from anywhere, and then reveal,with a gleeful flourish, a Jacques Cousteau extravaganza in a Tupperware bowl. Impasse. I smoked,sulked, and ate bread, in a marked manner.

I do, however, adore restaurants. It's the theatrical aspect of people engaged in dining ,rather than just eating, that I like. My favourite pastime used to be to sit long and late in somewhere swish, with a like-minded companion, filling up the ashtrays and ordering another brandy. We would observe other diners and embroider entire life-stories for them from the snippets we saw of their conduct and dress. Alas, now one has to betake oneself outside and stand shivering in a doorway for the post-prandial cigarallo.Although you do meet some interesting people, with interesting chest infections.

The porn thing,though..it's not even enough to be vanilla any more, like sexy old Nigella, you have to visit  the wilder shores of cheffery, with mad snail porridge, and liver-flavoured ice cream.This is the below-the-counter special stuff. Bored and jaded perverts , mucking about with things that just weren't intended to go down there.

Now,if you will excuse me, I have to go and use my mouth and fingers in a peculiarly satisfying fashion in the kitchen. I am sending out for pizza ,and the phone is in there.

Hazards 'R Us

I am in the process of re-organising my life. Well, I say "re", as if it had ever been organised in the first place. I have to decide which of my belongings comes with me to the new hovel,and which Precious Things will go into storage against the time when I can emerge from a cellar near Lark Lane, and expand again. I wish I could do this with the contents of my head. Large amounts of useless information are untidily hanging around in my brain. For example, I have complete recall of every outfit I have ever worn; and most of the lyrics of most of the songs I have ever heard. I can also remember in full every single slighting remark or unflattering comparison made about me since I was two. They would need a storage unit of their own. On the plus side, I find I have forgotten entire relationships.

 One of my many deficiencies is the inability to operate any mechanical device. This ranges from the humble tin opener ( fingers cut,blood-covered corned beef) to the lordly photocopier ( grinding noises, smoke, costly engineers,opprobrium). So what I have been doing is buying a new thing when I discover that the first thing doesn't work. Although there may be faults on both sides.  I now own several hoovers, two coffee-makers, a remarkable item for shaving one's legs, (which chased me round the room when I plugged it in), a wall of microwave ovens, several lamps, a steamer, and a drawerful of eyelash curlers and hair roddy articles. Accompanying these items is a large box which contains the history of the mobile phone in 100 mobile phone-shaped objects, many many cables, wires, plugs and chargers. I am too scared to throw these out,in case they turn out to be vital. I have appealed to the  Giant Boy to sort it.  Although congenitally incapable of finding matching socks, he is stunningly competent when it comes to small black plastic boxes and all that jazz. He has taken them away from me now,and is currently building a spaceship in his room with them. It's galling to a Ladyist like myself to admit, but it is a Boy Thing. From when he was a Giant Baby, he enjoyed breaking stuff but was able to fix it too.  I hate and fear all inanimate objects, and have been injured by them frequently,usually to the accompaniment of hilarity and callous mirth from onlookers.I once caught my left breast in an ironing board.  On two separate occasions I have been wounded by deckchairs, and had to go to Outpatients when a candelabra broke my toe. Another incident saw me jamming a pushchair in a revolving door,sending a startled baby flying into the cosmetics department of Johnny Lulu. When you are put in charge of a baby, by the way, one of the many things you are not told is that they have masses of gear, and all of it is lethal.  There are car seats, which have an array of straps and buckles that would baffle an expert in Advanced Bondage. Amusingly, all cars have different belt arrangements. Some work with your car seat. Most don't. There are highchairs, there are harnesses, there are bottle-sterilising kits.There are folding things,and things with hinges. I screwed them all up, horribly. Firstly 

 by ineffectual poking and flailing, then by resorting to blind and furious force. Many a cabdriver has watched, poker-faced, as I tried to cram the GB and his seat into an inappropriate space, and buckle him firmly into the ashtray. Additionally, when you are a new mother, you have just had an experience akin to a nervewracking high-speed car crash compromising the entire lower body.It is likely that you have not slept for several months. So this is the very time to attempt to acquire some new and complex skill in wrangling unfamiliar objects that fold away,or in my case,don't. Every now and again, they publish those amusing lists to show how many people each year are in accidents involving cupcakes, or pyjamas.  I am unsurprised.These people are my people. The wonder is that we manage to breed at all.When I say that my son was an "Accident", that is precisely what I mean. I was one too. So he is second,or possibly third, generation Accident. We ought to have our own zone.When I  see one of those signs saying "There have been 120 Accidents here in 2011", I see it as throwing down the tribal gauntlet. "I can soon get those numbers up", I think. So look around East Albert Road, in the early part of September, for a sign reading "Danger, Ninny At Large". Just don't get too close.

The Attack Of The Zombie Breasts

No-one ever came and took pictures of us when we got our "A" Levels. Apparently,only girls with long blonde hair get them now,which is a bit thick. It seems that private schools pimp their prettiest pupils shamelessly to the press, hounding them to come and take photographs of young ladies clutching each other. I knew there was a market for that sort of image, but had not expected to see it catered for in the "Telegraph".

Had any paparazzi arrived at Queen Mary  High School For Girls to immortalise my sixth form,they would have been chased off with a broom by the Science Mistress. MEN were not allowed anywhere near us. And with good reason. As those of you who may have attended an all-girl school will know,girls behave appallingly without the civilising influence of sensitive young chaps. I had (and still have most of),three close friends. We were dreadful. Not in the precociously sexy, blase, cool way that girls are awful now. We were St Trinian's girls, as in the original  Ronald Searle drawings; spindly-legged, inkstained , grubby hooligans. We got stuck climbing out of windows,and brought dogs into maths lessons.  Whenever I hear of someone fancying girls saucily dressed in school uniform, I have a mental picture of us, with our navy terylene pleated skirts rolled up at the waist, ink round our mouths from biro-chewing, and Clarks "Go-Girl" shoes. We would have permanently detumesced the hardiest pervert.  In fact, when a chap once showed us his tackle on the railway path on our walk home, we threw cinders at it and fell about laughing. The Sixth-Form Common Room was a joyless place,consisting  of a tiny kitchen, a kettle, and some sofas with those stretchy Bri-nylon covers in vile 70's lime green and ochre swirly patterns.We also had a record player in  there, upon which we played upsetting music. The nicer girls would gather, eating their Ski yoghurts ,and practicing dance moves on the linoleum. We practised our sarcasm and drew scurrilous cartoons on the walls. One day the Headmistress had a brainstorm,lifted the embargo, and invited a handpicked bunch of Boys from a neighbouring school.We were told that we had to "entertain" them. Was she mad? We were told to prepare a buffet supper and make tea.The Domestic Science room was given over to sandwich production. The maturer girls became giggly and speculative about our male guests. Poor souls, they were herded in from the minibus, on a wave of Blue Stratos and fear. No-one noticed our disappearance in all the kerfuffle, but we had managed to get to the offlicence for cider, and then popped home to the nearest house with parents out, to smoke weak cannabis in the free period designed for fannying about with napkins and scones. And we would have got away with it, too,if we hadn't come back to school, like idiots. Sharp looks greeted our arrival,and the DS teacher sniffed at us suspiciously, but no immediate action was taken.Then Lesley got "the munchies", and muttering "Scones scones scones mmmm ..come here you little buggers", hit the buffet. Her nose was soon covered in jam.The rest of us started cackling, and discovered that we couldn't stop. So we were suspended (again), and the poor lads from Alsop School had been given a vivid  but useful demonstration of the sort of  young ladies who were unsuitable marriage material.

A few years earlier,we had mostly been growing breasts. There was an outbreak of competitive measuring, exercises to firm the budding bust,which involved outflung arms, (and broken noses for anyone who stood in the way),and much rubbing in of dubious creams purchased from the back pages of magazines. I was horrified. I didn't want breasts because David Bowie didn't have breasts,and I wanted to be him. However, Mother Nature, the old cow, had decided that I was to be Jayne Mansfield. They stealthily crept up on me, like a thief in the night, and burst my Liberty Bodice. So I stopped eating, reasoning that they had to die if I didn't feed them. It  had worked with unwanted goldfish. But they seemed to have their own food supply, and carried on regardless, looking more prominent as the rest of me shrank around them.Faint and bad-tempered on a diet of tomato soup and crispbread, I conceded defeat. But I would not wear a bra. In this, I had the support (no pun intended) of my Mother. Sporty and lithe to the point of being frightening, she didn't wear one either."Wear a vest" she advised. So I did. And looked like a pornographic version of Albert Steptoe. The nice girls in my class were scandalised. They had been wearing 30AAA cup floral brassieres for ages. With matching briefs.

I have to mention here that I had mounted a similiar futile resistance campaign when my periods started. I stubbornly sat in the bath for a whole day and refused to get out. My Father made the huge error of asking "What In The Name Of God Is She Playing At ? ". Mum told him.He went several shades of red and slammed out to the British Legion, mumbling about living with madwomen.

I became acclimatised, eventually. It is difficult to acquire a whole new body part, when you think you already have the full kit. And of course, they are sixteen years younger than the rest of my body, which is a comfort, unless you take this to its logical conclusion and assume that when I pop off they will still have a good few years left,and refuse to die. Zombie breasts. All film rights reserved.

Shameful Secret

I am a source of towering embarrassment to the Giant Boy. I had been merrily trotting about in the world for many a decade, blithely unaware that my very existence  provoked shame and caused unseemly mirth. It is lucky that I do not give a tuppenny damn,or I should be utterly downcast and stay indoors for ever.

 So we went to see a film. The GB lurked around in thefoyer, lest any of his peer group materialised, and formed a mocking circle around me,saying "Your Mum",or some equally inflammatory witticism.  I was generously allowed to pay.Then he whisked me into the auditorium, checking carefully for people he knew.If he had had a canvas sack with him,it would have been over my head. Like the Elephant Man, I was led, stumbling, to the most remote and empty row. The film began, and darkness shrouded my hideous form, much to his relief.  It was "The Inbetweeners".Entirely reprehensible, devoid of artistic merit,foul, tasteless,and about seventy different sorts of wrong. I laughed like any drain. "Shut up Mum!" he hissed, "your laugh is mad..."

Coming out, I said to him "Well, we WERE lucky that no-one saw me, weren't we? " "Yes", he agreed, sincerely."But someone once saw you on the bus with me...."He trailed off, the unfinished sentence heavy with remembered mortification.

Now,I don't recall finding my parents that dreadfully shamemaking. And they were,in their different ways, rather unusual. I have mentioned my Mother's tree-climbing tendency. She sang operatic arias when she Hoovered.  She got mumps on one side only. Dad was given to keeping bits of bacon in the turn-ups of his trousers,and sometimes wore a hat on holiday. They both had loud, clear, carrying voices.  At eighty-seven, my Mother's yell can still make a dog freeze in mid-defecation. But I think my peer group at that time just sort of shrugged, in a Gallic, world-weary fashion, and assumed that all grown-ups were variously barking, and the least said about them the better.

One of my schoolfriends had a father who was a sex pest, in a feeble way.When we called round for her to walk to school (yes, children, it was THAT long ago..), he would answer the door,still wearing pyjamas,and stand there grinning. Then he would glare at our ( uneventful) fronts, adjust himself,and call her to the door. After a few episodes of this, we simply came to call in groups and stayed firmly at the gate,reasoning that he would either stop it,or get binoculars. Another chum's Mum was a volatile hysteric, and frequently greeted us by sobbing wildly into her apron and embracing us, or suddenly turfing us all out of her kitchen, throwing Jacob's Club biscuits after us,  screaming that she had "Had enough of our insolence!" I don't think any of this was ever discussed.

I honestly haven't done or said anything peculiar in front of the Giant Boy's enormous friends. Yet. But I see great possibilities for blackmail, if he doesn't watch it..

Borgia Orgy

Has anyone seen "The Borgias"? I see very little television myself,as I am a Radio 4-Head and the Giant Boy is usually plonked in front of it with the X-Box. However, I was at my Sainted Mother's house on Saturday, and we decided to give it a go.

Well!  All historical epics these days have to open with a display of writhing buttocks (a small village in Dorset), to remind us that we didn't in fact invent sex in the 1960's, and to draw in the all-important teenage demographic. So there was that, and some incest. A very drippy girl who was meant to be the young Lucrezia popped up in a nighty, and her volatile brother Cesare chased her round the pillar of a villa. Lots of Cardinals occured, and everyone became very cross about "Simony". NOT "Simon  Dee",which is what I had half-heard whilst digging the sherry bottle out of the dishwasher which serves as my Mother's cocktail cabinet.

Now dear Mamma is of an age when her sight is unreliable,and the Borgia family were understandably low on lighting, big on shadowy drapes. So she lost interest for a bit, until Cesare arrived with a monkey. I knew this would not end well. In a drama of this nature, cute animals and small furry children only get camera time if they are going to bite the dust. The monkey's fate was sealed when it was invited to a Borgia dinner,and given dodgy wine. Derek Jacobi,in a resplendent scarlet frock, gave it a distinctly chilly look. A little later,both expired. Derek rather wonderfully, with red-flecked foam issuing from his mouth. It was lucky for Wardrobe that he was wearing red. The monkey got his in the kitchen, where poisoners were working double shifts.

Now I haven't mentioned Jeremy Irons;  and there he was acting away like billy-ho the whole time. As Cardinal Rodrigo, he got to wear the entire costume budget on his head. It was really hard to follow what he was saying (it was mostly about him being elected Pope, and simony again, I think), because in every scene he sported a huge daft head dress and a suicidal expression. At one point they made him sit in the ceremonial chair with a hole in it, in  order to have his testicles checked by a cheeky deacon, who announced joyfully "testiculos habet" ("He has testicles"). This is supposedly done because of Pope Joan ,and I am afraid, is completely apochryphal, but you can see how they couldn't resist. Jeremy, reasonably, looked peevish throughout. I have had somesearching interviews in my time, but nothing on that scale.

Once this was all done and dusted, Pope Rodrigo could get on with poping, and putting away his mistress. She was played by glorious Joanne Whalley. Every straight man I have ever met (and yes, I do realise  that this does not provide a large sample) remembers her greasing up Micheal Gambon in "The Singing Detective". An unenviable task.  Alas, I always get my Dennis Potters and Harry Potters mixed up.What a very different franchise THAT would have been.. And now she is stuck with Jeremy telling her off in Latin, poor beast. In order to boost viewing figures and to spread historical knowledge;  I shall reproduce here the last word on the subject, as delivered by the unforgiveable Hermione Gingold.

"The Borgias are having an orgy
There’s a Borgian orgy tonight
And isn’t it sickening ,we’ve run out of strychnine
The gravy will have to have ground glass for thickening..
The poisoned Chianti is terribly scanty
But everything else is all right!
There’s arsenic mixed in the mock-turtle soup
I’ve hidden an ax in the iced cantaloupe
And straight benzadrene in the apricot coupe
At the Borgia orgy tonight.

Our guests are exclusively chosen
From people who give us a pain
The cream of the joke is the knowledge
That they won’t come here again
We’ll all be most frightfully hearty
At the Borgian orgy tonight.
For the Dukle’s eldest son there’s a monstrous cream bun
Soaked in hot prussic acid, it’s all good clean fun
A bomb in the ladies will blow them to Hades
If anyone turns on the light
The bodies will fall through a trap-door below
To the Tiber and drift out to sea on the flow
We think we can promise a jolly good show
At the Borgian orgy tonight.We revel in giving a party
A fete or a fancy dress ball
There’s always a nice game of bingo
And a good time had by all
The Borgias are giving an orgy
There’s a Borgia orgy tonight
I’ve poisson ptomane which will wrack them with pain
We’ve nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain
We’re pushing some people we know off a steeple
It should be a wonderful sight
We’ve bricked up some cousins of ours in a wall
Their agonised cries won’t disturb us at all
As we sit here sipping our wormwood and gall
At the Borgia orgy tonight"

No, you are most welcome.

Moving, In A Mysterious Way.

The Giant Boy and I are leaving Gambier Towers, after four happy years listening to bell-ringing practice. It's always the same tune,but it seems to be causing them problems. I wonder if they do requests? I shall pop in and ask for "Jump Around", before I go. In my usual Domestic Godlessy fashion, I shall be throwing myself into the task of packing. I favour the "Cramming things into binbags which then split" approach. Many house moves have made me quite the expert, and I have some tips to share. The most important of which is to put the corkscrew in your handbag. Try not to pack dried spiders,which have a habit of adhering themselves to cashmere sweaters. Desiccated arachnids are not being worn this season. Also, as much as one might think one has thrown away stuff, there will still be lots of cardboard boxes at the other end which contain half-finished bottles of body lotion, single socks, and inexplicable bits of metal which might be a vital component of something. If you own a toasted sandwich maker, chuck it now. Everyone has one, and they have all only been used once, then put away with little bits of melted cheese still in them. Pack the kettle,with teabags in it, last. In fact, cram that in your handbag as well.

I have lived in some peculiar places, with some very unusual people. And declined to live in some others.One flat I went to see,appropriately in Botanic Road, boasted a tree growing up through the bathroom floor. Another,in Hackney, featured a cast-iron door with axe marks still clearly visible. They obviously had a very determined postman. In Leeds, my two friends and I moved into a huge Victorian house owned by a lady called Mrs Koppock, who lived next door. She smelt strongly of wet dog, though there was no dog. I imagine she just liked that particular aroma,and scented herself liberally each morning with "Eau de Chien Mouille Bagarre".

 She was,it is fair to say, quirky. No namby-pamby nonsense about tenant's rights for her. She would appear in one's room at any hour of the day or night that took her fancy. I fear that this practice was injurious to her mental health,given the tenants she was harbouring at the time. Apart from myself and my pals, there was Nigel, a post-graduate student specialising in Early Welsh Poetry.  He had a sadly drooping walrus moustache,  a smoking jacket which he tied tightly around his waist with a piece of bell cord, possibly originating from the Leeds Grand Railway Hotel, and  habitually wore a fez. Mickey lived in the basement, where he was usually quiet and inoffensive.Every now and again, though, he would become spectactacularly drunk. The least successful transvestite I have ever known (and I have known a good few);his ladygarment evenings saw him crammed into a tight short leather skirt, and a navy blue jacket with a sailor collar. His beard was light brown ,contrasting strikingly with the scarlet lipstick he had applied,seemingly whilst in a rocking boat in a storm with his eyes shut. Thus arrayed, he would put "Ride A White Swan" on his gramophone relentlessly repeated at extraordinary volume and sit on the stairs outside Nigel's (wisely shut) bedroom door, howling of his love. We had few visitors, but when we did, they seemed to co-incide with Mickey having a turn. I once had to make polite conversation with several members of the Leeds University Gilbert and Sullivan Society, as he rampaged around the basement ,smashing things and hammering on Nigel's door, with Marc Bolan warbling away as background music. Poor chap,he was tremendously intelligent and good company, in his calmer periods.  After Nigel left, gratefully, for a more tranquil existence in Wales, Mickey and I became quite pally, and had shopping trips together for fishnets and enormous shoes. Upstairs, we had Liz, a violinist. When she wasn't playing the violin, she favoured being tied to her iron bedstead and noisily whipped,by a series of chaps who all looked like Hell's Angels. The next morning,one would meet her on the landing, scurrying off to rehearsal. My social skills were taxed by these encounters; and etiquette books remained unhelpful on the dilemma. I generally made some cheerful comment on the weather, and tried not to look past her into her room,where heaped leathers and tangled sheets would be strewn about the floor.  All this had started to prey upon our landlady's mind, and she decided to mount a moral crusade.This started with her suddenly jumping out of a hedge like a trapdoor spider, as I was fumbling for my keys with some chum or other in tow. "Are you a Homosexual?" she would  demand, of no-one in particular. "Because I can't have THAT in my house...My husband was killed by a Homosexual, in The War, you know" News to me, and also to Mr Koppock, I think, who was often to be seen in the garden, peaceably digging Mrs Koppock-shaped holes.

Of course, ninety-nine per cent of the time, my companion would indeed be a Flaming Queen, but if you went about like RuPaul in Leeds in 1973,  a few batty old ladies were as nothing in comparison to the general level of disapproval to be encountered in Briggate.

She upped her game gradually that summer; suddenly popping her wildly-scarfed head around our bedroom doors, looking for Vice. One day I was sitting harmlessly chatting with my friend Tom, who  in addition to being devotedly gay, had the manners and demeanour of a BBC announcer circa 1952. Mrs K ran in,grabbed my spectacles (which I was wearing), and ran off, burbling about adultery and speaking in tongues. "Now look here, Mrs Koppock!" exclaimed Tom, striding manfully after her retreating,giggling, form,"that is really too much. Give Elizabeth her glasses back AT ONCE."

It is perhaps unsurprising that I had one of the only three inexplicably supernatural experiences of my life in that house.

Another story.

So,whatever East Albert Road has to offer, I am sure that I will cope. This is not to throw the gauntlet down to Fate, by the way, but more (to paraphrase that faintly annoying poster one sees everywhere now) in the spirit of "Keep Calm and the Corkscrew To Hand".

Fairies In The Garden Of My Bottom

Apparently, a large number of adults in the UK believe in fairies. Many of whom live in Scotland.  I mean the people, not the fairies. There are statistics about this, but can you be bothered? They are probably all skewed by the Wee Folk anyway. We have the Victorians to blame for the generic image of fairies; floaty skirts, transparent wings, and in most paintings of that period, astoundingly thick calves in white tights. Many fairies thus depicted have the bun-like features of the young Queen Victoria. This could be a stylistic reference to contemporary standards of beauty, or Q.V  might actually have BEEN a fairy. She,as we know, was very small, and given to alarmingly sudden appearances,which frequently made Disraeli jump. He mentions this in his dairies;

" June 11th 1860. Her Majesty was pleased today to materialise suddenly in my breakfast room in Curzon St. She flew twice around the kedgeree dish, and landed on my shoulder.How fortunate that I was wearing my canary-coloured waistcoat, which I know her to admire.She graciously gave me an idea for my new novel, "Endymion", and we discussed matters of the day. In departing, she said "Don't tell Gladstone, he will have you put away," and flew off in the direction of Hyde Park".

There was ,of course, the famous hoax of the Cottingley fairies, in which a photograph of two pieces of paper in a tree was published in the "Gullibility Weekly Gazette" and convinced, amongst others, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. More recently, however,  Dan Baines, a sculptor, created the ‘corpse’ of a dead fairy as an April Fools’ Day joke in 2007. He posted the pictures of an "  unknown creature, about 8 inches in length, discovered by a man walking his dog on Firestone Hill" on his website,which consequently received more than 20,000 hits in one day. Despite him revealing that it was a hoax, many people refused to believe it. Mr Baines tired of this nonsense, and also of answering the four hundred e-mails he received from believers each day. He briskly put the dead fairy on Ebay, where it sold for £280.  Naturally, investments in dead fairies may go down as well as up. I once discovered a "Faerie Shop" in Bath. It was a freezing morning just after Christmas, and we made a beeline for it, thinking there might be scones. It was run by two women of depressed aspect. They were wearing bedraggled fairy outfits, the hems covered in slush, beneath which their green wellies peeped out, ethereally. They had grey padded anoracks on over their frocks. One of them had a stye.

The shop was, predictably, stuffed with things of a fairy-related nature. It was hard to find something to want, but eventually I bought a tiny figurine . My fairy had wings on a spring, and a striking facial resemblance to Mariella Frostrup.  During the purchase, (which took both women to effect, one to look for the paper bags and the other to dab anxiously at the till) my friends and I huddled around the one-bar electric fire,shoving each other. There was sad tinkly background music and a strong smell of bleach. Maybe we had picked a bad day, but it looked like the Wee Folk were withholding their bountiful blessings from this place and were seriously cheesed with the whole operation .

Ancient Fairies (Yes, I know, but I am resisting) were much more fun and far less soppy than the Victorians pictured them. In fact, they had a whale of a time. When they weren't bewitching cattle (Query; how does one KNOW when a cow is bewitched?) , they were whizzing down chimneys and stealing babies. Sometimes, they would  leave a pallid, red-headed changeling child with leaf-green eyes,in the place of the human babe. This wouldn't have rung any alarm bells round our way, since most of our family had babies like that without supernatural intervention. My relatives might  have yelled up the flue, "Oy! Can we have one that does Maths?" and considered it an improvement .

Which brings me back to the high levels of fairy visitation in Scotland. Could it be that the (no doubt rigorously scientific)  researchers on this matter just think us gingery people are fairies? Did they run into a hen party in Sauchiehall St, and convince themselves that the mystical red-headed girls hitting each other with wands and flying through bar-room doors were the Good Folk?

I have decided to clap my hands and believe in them, just in case. If I do,I might see one,and it could introduce me to a Brownie.  Now they are really useful,as they pop round when you are sleeping and brush your hearth. I don't have a hearth, but they could do the stairs and a pile of ironing? The Boy has believed in these creatures for years,but he calls them "Everyone Else's Mothers". I shall leave out some food for them (you have to do that). I wonder if they like fish fingers?

Home Front

As I have mentioned, I was the victim of a happy childhood. Fazackerley in the 1950's was a tranquil place. There wasn't much to do,apart from learning how to spell "Fazackerley".Three versions existed on the front of the buses alone, as the Council had wild stabs at it which came out differently every time. It gave the area a wild exoticism, like living in Pocacatapetl. My mother was the sizzling vamp of the local Post Office, definitely "Cashier Number One,Please",as far as the gentlemen customers were concerned. My Dad wore a suit, even in bed,as far as we knew. Or maybe just pyjamas with a tie,when he was feeling louche. My brother and I were not allowed to poke about in his room, which of course became an imagined repository of forbidden delights. We used to peep around the door when he was searching for cufflinks,or otherwise distracted. Woe would then betide us if he spotted us.Which he always did, his army training in North Africa having equipped him to detect enemy action on the landing. What on Earth was in there? Not my Mother, for sure, who had her own boudoir,shared with the current dog. Certainly my Dad was a Man of Mystery.After he died, I eventually had to clear out his car. There was a curly silver wig in the glove compartment.

My brother and I shared a bedroom. This worked when we were five and ten respectively. My brother was an angelic platinum blond,who had been a very frail baby. There wasn't an inch of him that hadn't caused worry in Alder Hey. He , like one of those fragile Victorian infants not expected to  live, developed a soulful expression, as of one whose eyes already see into Paradise.This served him well in his later career as a bouncer.

Yes, gentle reader, he grew. Practically overnight, the little bugger became two separate gorillas.The refreshing sibling fights ,which would begin in the shared bedroom and erupt all over the house, had to stop.  On one memorable occasion, a skirmish  culminated in our rolling all the way down the stairs,locked in mortal combat, landing at the feet of my Mother, who briskly tipped a bucket of water over us. But I started losing badly. So a strategic withdrawal was affected, and I fell back on other weapons; manipulation, whingeing, verbal goading, and appealing to a Higher Authority (my Nan).

We couldn't go too far, though. My Mother, although ladylike and generally easygoing, was prone to Suddenly Losing It. We would flee,in separate directions, from a pyrotechnical display of hurtling crockery and hurtful invective. All our crockery was so old and cracked that we suspected  Mum rather enjoyed combining the fairground element with a good clear-out. Afterwards, drinking tea out of  the dog's bowl,she would light a cigarette and look relaxed. We would creep about the house, being Well Behaved in a marked manner. When we could make her laugh again, we knew that the storm had passed.

My Dad's temper simmered on a constant low light. Displeased by practically everything,he  was possessed of a terrifying blue regard, which he would turn on the cause of his vexation. He used it on inanimate objects too, in order to intimidate  them into  running  smoothly, which reduced Mum to hysterical giggles.We would find her laughing into the coat rack,  tears pouring down her face. "Your Father.." she would  gasp "Is Scowling At The Hoover Again".

Dad didn't like throwing anything away, and was loathe to admit that things for which he had paid sometimes reached the end of their useful lives.So it was with my Budgie. Eric expired in that startling way that budgies have; one minute, going barmy round a cuttlefish..next minute, toes up and stiffening. Dad wasn't having it. After administering Resuscitatory Glaring to the lifeless bird, to no avail, he finally lifted it from the Tidysan and laid it on the roof of the cage. We were forbidden to touch it, or to plan for a funeral. He was determined that Eric would be the Lazarus of Budgerigars. I think my Mum had to wrestle it off  him to get it into the bin. There was a good seven and sixpence worth left in that bird.

My son does not fear my temper,as I am noted for the sunniness of my nature.Shouting I abhor, and my aim is so poor that throwing things is not an option. I rely on sarcasm, economic sanctions, threatened humilation in public, and big leaky tears. So far, order has been maintained. As I learned with my brother, physical violence is not a reliable tool when faced with a shapeshifting teenager.Such brute strength as I possess I conserve for getting the lids off jars of beetroot. But strangely, both the Giant Boy and my Huge Muscular Brother, are wary of my Mum.She is eighty-seven, but her aim with a slipper is still excellent,as the dog will tell you. It is now so housetrained that it puts a paw up when it wants to go out...

Wild In The Country

Liverpool has it's fair share of people with whom one might not willingly share a bus seat. This is true of most places. Our thugs are no thuggier than anyone else's.

But at the moment, when those of you who read heavier matter than this will know, it's that time of the decade again; when city living feels more precarious than usual. Some of you may remember Desmond Morris, noted zoologist (not to be confused with zoophiles; people who seek curious romantic connexions usuallywith quadrupeds, although there was one case of a chap who had made a spiny anteater his beloved. A move that must surely count as unsafe sex . I  must point out,by the way,that Desmond's reputation in this field (or barn,or stockpen) remains unsullied. Well, Desmond's opinion is that city living is unnatural,and that is why people are behaving like mannerless eejits.

It is his view that if we all lived in little villages, none of the currant unpleasantness would be occuring.

 Hmmm. Let me draw your attention to a contemporary report on the Dole Riots in Selborne Village.

"On the Saturday before the disturbances, the labourers and paupers of Selborne were doled out their weekly allowance from the parish as normal. It seems that they received this from Mr John Harrison, who was the Master of the Poor House there.

We are not sure whether the recipients went down to the Poor House to receive their dole, or whether it was given out to them at some other location in the village, but on this particular occasion Mr Harrison recollected that some of them "expressed their intention of going round to the farmers to make them raise their wages." He said he "advised them not to do so, or they would repent hereafter." It could have been normal banter, but later events showed that on this day the complaints held a greater significance.

However, it was not the farmers who they went round to next, but Mr Harrison himself. He was obviously not a popular man. He was referred to by Holdaway's counsel as being "particularly obnoxious to the poor of the neighbourhood," and another correspondent recalled an incident "which exited a universal feeling of disgust" when it was discovered that some of the inmates were chained to the wall. The Times records that "about 12 o'clock in the night of the same day three guns, loaded with slugs, were discharged into the bedroom of Mr Harrison at the workhouse, and although the clothes and furniture of the bed were completely torn to pieces by the slugs, we are happy to say none of the family were wounded"

There is a lot more material of this nature. Passing with some regret over the question of what passed for "normal banter" in Selborne,and the peculiar usage  of the harmless (unless you happen to be a lettuce) slug,it is clear that unrest and grievance is not solely the preserve of the town or city.

Admittedly,when I say "contemporary", it was then; the incident took place around 1750 (ten-to-six our time), but if there is one thing I have learnt in a long and sinful life,it is that human nature does not change. One of the things the human does constantly, is want to be somewhere other than where it is.

When I lived in the Great Wen, various London friends would yearn to live in the countryside.Their little faces turned, like hopeful sunflowers towards the light , in the direction of a cottage somewhere in a peaceful village. Since the only village in which I could contemplate life would be a Gay Village (cottage optional), I was probably the wrong person with whom to share this dream.

I started to collect newspaper articles featuring terrible crimes committed in rural beauty spots, accounts of incomers being ostracised, and having ferrets pinned to their doors as dire warnings.
"Straw Dogs" "The Wicker Man" and "Withnail and I " acted as additional illustrative material. When a dear urban buddy became distrait after a trying week being shouted at by crazies on the Tube, or was exhausted after a seventy-hour week trying to earn the rent for a cupboard full of mould and madmen in Zone 4, they tended to come round to mine for aversion therapy.

I went to the countryside, once. It was full of soil and spiders. I was in a cottage full of highly-strung theatricals, so one might have expected some sympathy. But it was not forthcoming, as, alas, they had all been brought up in The Country. Even the Greek boy had, before coming here to play corpses in "Sherlock Holmes", been raised on the side of a hill, with goats. I had just managed to clear myself a web-free space near the gin bottle, when they decided that we should all go for a walk."What,outside?" I whimpered. "Don't be wet, we will go to the pub..it's only a mile or so (!). Unless you would rather stay here? With our spider collection?"

So we went. It was starless and decidedly bible-black . Every now and again something would flap, hoot, and gibber. That something was me.

Occasionally, a  car would careen towards us, lights blazing, seemingly hell-bent on reducing the sparse local population still further. "Keep near the hedges, Liz!", my jolly rural pals reminded me. Unnecessarily,as I was already clinging to a hawthorn bush in a ditch. In the end, they got me to the "Slaughtered Lamb", and I sat washing down Valium with some foul tincture,and swiping wildly at imagined midges. The villagers were impressed with my cool urban behaviour,and offered me a residence as their idiot.

The other time I went, I was given a vast pumpkin to take home with me on the train,having carelessly mentioned that I was planning a Halloween party. This well-intentioned gesture culminated in a series of incidents which I shall recount on another day.

So I am steering clear of anywhere that doesn't have a decent-sized branch of Boots,and counting my blessings. City living may be dirty, dangerous,and difficult from time to time. Unfortunately, I am in love with them, and this one in particular. We have fallen out,of course, and there are times, as in any relationship, when I am exasperated and despairing . Sometimes I have flounced off, and dallied elsewhere.But Liverpool and I are stuck with each other; and looking out of my window at her indestructible rain-drenched beauties, I feel that I could have done a lot worse.  

Pants

As my bit of world appears to be  more than usually in turmoil today; I thought that I would discuss underwear. Now, gentlemen may find this topic empty of interest, or too too blushmaking, so you are excused. Ah, I see some of you are still here...oh well,  I expect you have your  reasons. Ladies and others who wear female garb will agree, I think, that underwear comes in two sorts. There is that which is meant to be seen, and that which is far better hidden. The latter tends to offer more in comfort and support than the former. Most ladies have a Drawer Of Shame, in which there lurks unspeakable unmentionables.Do not go there, men. Disillusion will surely follow.

Fancy pants fans, of whom I am one, find solace in delectable underpinnings. When a day is gloomy, a child is recaltricant,or a disagreeable task awaits, I find that getting into one's more attractive undergarments provides a bit of a lift. To the spirits as well as to the embonpoint. I always used to wear my most pleasing lingerie at interviews. Necessary though it is to look sensible and competent in a professional environment; I used to find this lowering. So under my natty corporate suiting, lace and strappy things would be frothing away unseen, to perk me up and remind me that I was me,and not to be pinned down my psychometric testing or "in-tray" exercises. Parent's Evenings are also occasions that I have found daunting. There were two children of my son's name at his first school. For purposes of instant identification, mine was known as "The Naughty One". When you go to a P.E, you are often made to sit in a tiny chair,prior to being hectored by a teacher who,unnervingly,may appear themselves to be awaiting grown-up teeth. I found it helped immensely to be wearing satin Janet Reger scanties under my "Concerned Mother" outfit.

Sometimes I sit and pore over my more delicious little things, like a goblin groping his gold. I may have mentioned that I unwisely became entangled with the French for some years. One of the many areas of incontrivertable uncompatibility was underwear. Although I admired the diligence which the French women I knew applied to their pursuit of lingerie; I could not keep up with all the rules. You had to have matching sets, they had to be eyewateringly expensive, hand-embroidered by nuns, and they were worn for the delectation of one's  "'uzzband and lovvaire" alone, NOT paraded drunkenly in front of one's loucher girlfriends who all wanted to try them on. I suppose the extreme anthesis of French fundamentalism is the lady I saw the other day. She  was walking down Slater Street with one lace-topped stocking nicely suspendered, and the other one tied around her forehead. When I was first a teenager, bra straps were meant to be concealed. A couple of years later,the brassiere entire was a thing of matronly ridicule. You had to go braless, and look liberated. Not easy if you had a bust like a bolster. I couldn't wear smock tops because I looked like a pregnant Appalachian child bride, nor could I wear boyishly-cut cheescloth shirts. They made me resemble an only slightly effeminate lumberjack. Hippy dresses, wafting in fairylike fashion from the tiny shoulders of my petite friends, turned me into a madwoman with milk fever from a Victorian medical textbook.

At this time, I wanted to look like David Bowie. I had the pallor, the eyebrows, and the hair. But the androgyny was a hard one to pull off, and to ape the King of Single-Figure Hip Measurements when shaped oneself like an Edwardian dirty postcard, was, I now concede, sheer insanity.  Fortunately, Roxy Music popped along with their pin-up girl 50's schtick, and I exhaled with relief. I hadn't breathed out since 1973.

Now, lovely girls with curves and bosoms are the thing once more. And retro-styled undies are the derniere cri. Several companies specialise in replica versions of stern girdles, and long-line pointy brassieres. Waist-training corsets romp all over the pages of the most conventional catalogues.

But no-one has yet seen fit to revive the Liberty Bodice,scourge of my childhood,and I can appreciate that bone-coloured flannelette might have a specialist appeal.

Speaking of which, I was slightly taken aback by E-Bay recently. If you are browsing for undies, and you type in "Vintage", you are immediately taken to a world of ambiguity.For in addition to the cheeky and cheerful 40's-style  6-strap suspender belts, and foamy petticoats on sale, there are many items advertised as being not only second-hand,if "hand" is the word, but also "heavily used".

Well, I never. And to think that, like most ladies, I have been throwing mine away, when I could have been posting them all over the world for gain? Oddly, there is no equivalent  market for the aged Y-Front. How dismally sexist.  I shall write to Harriet Harman without delay. I bet she wears matching sets of ladygarments.

So in the realms of the cheerful pick-me-up;  a scenty bath, a glass of bubbly, and an hour re-arranging one's undies to soothing music is not to be sneezed at. And now,when you tire of your collection,  ladies, remember, there is a dear pervert somewhere in, say, Newport, willing to part with £34.00 plus postage, to give them a new lease of life. 

Overfamiliar Spirit

My internet browser has become a little over-familiar, lately. Has yours done this? It says, "Ooops, shucks, well..this is embarrassing", when it can't find something. My e-mail is at it too; "Hurrah,you don't have any junk!"it trills.I don't see what it has to be so pleased with itself about,frankly. I have  emptied the more egregiously demented communications from my own junkety thing all on my own. Cheek!  And this morning,it took it upon itself to translate my inbox headings into Spanish. 

 Although sometimes tempted to reply to some of the more puzzling e-mails in "Junk", purely in the spirit of innocent enquiry; I have so far resisted all cajolments re altering the size of my penis. Furthermore, I have had some interesting yet heartbreaking stories from widows of  famous men all over the world. I berate myself for the sad lack of detailed knowledge of foreign politics that prevents me from recognising their names. However, it seems that they have immense sums of money floating about,which they require my bank account details in order to transfer to this country. I am not sure why they have singled me out for this honour, any more than I know why various pharmaceutical companies are insistant that I increase the size of my manhood and "astonish my partner". If I was really mean-spirited, I should provide them with my sort code and account number. They would then perhaps share in the burden of the endless correspondence I have with my bank. At the Bank Of Fairyland, which holds my account, much in the way that a fastidious dowager would hold a dog product, I am generally considered to be Bad News. I am not allowed a cheque book, and the tatty old card I have only lets me get money out if I actually have it.This is unsporting of them. Maybe an influx of laundered dosh from Nigeria might improve their opinion of me?  I preferred it when my dear old human bank manager in Leeds used to ask me in so he could glare at me,and produce a sheaf of bounced cheques.At least then it was possible to do a bit of highly-coloured explaining. "I know it looks like a cheque to "Miss Selfridge", Mr Gradgrind, but it is in fact a roundabout way of paying the electricity bill.Let me tell you why..."

I think I need someone sensible to make me less flighty. And who better than Nice Irena,  hailing me affectionately from somewhere Eastern European, in this wise;  " Knock Knock Knock...? Is the door of your heart open...? Perhaps you let me come in? Oh sorry.. I forgot to introduce myself..My name is Irina. I also love cooking and some other things. My free time depends on my mood, sometimes I like being alone reading some book or listening to the music, sometimes in a gym or in a small caffee with my friends. But no matter how I feel, no matter what time of the year it is, I always love to be in the nature." Accompanying this effusion is an attached photograph of Irina "in the nature".

No, absolutely NOT in that sense..honestly,you people! It is a picture of Irina fully and respectably clothed in a blue print frock, lurking soulfully around the trunk of a tree. She does look a reliable sort. And I could certainly do with someone to cook for the Boy. He threatens to ring Childline when I try it. She might not settle in Gambier Towers where, although we are lousy with books,there is no gym. Perhaps she could go to Rugby with the Boy; there is something about her that suggests a useful prop forward. I am not mocking Nice Irina, you understand. Things must be pretty grim in Estalbaniksthan if she wants to come and live with us, and I am sure I would be unable to make a similiarly innocent and convincing case for a stranger to take ME in.

 "Hello Dear Heart, I am Liz. I love strong drink and weak puns. I always love to be in the bar, hooting senselessly; either alone,or with my disreputable friends.I hate Mother Nature,and she hates me. I am no homemaker, sadly, but am good at knowing who died of what, if you are fond of the pub quiz".

What I need to do, probably,is to send HER e-mail to my pal in Nigeria, who has chosen me above all to recieve the honour of this amount. I will take a small introduction fee for this service, and send it to the Co-op, thus adding to the sum of human happiness. Yes,I shall do this right away. I'll let you know how it turns out. 

Blushbaby

I was recently asked to describe my most embarrassing experience, for a television company. I replied that as my entire existence has been a parade of mortifying incidents, it would be difficult to single out one. Like many a flippant remark, it was  completely true. Shortsighted, clumsy, and with the co-ordination of a collapsing deckchair, I seem to have had more than my share of blushmaking moments. This is a source of immense amusement to the few friends who have remained uninjured by my antics. My family,having endured the fallout for longer, are more exasperated than diverted.

I am in the process of moving flats after four years in Gambier Towers. When I moved in,my landpersons were dubious about the Child, feeling that he might cause injury to fittings  and fixtures. Of course, he was, and is, blameless.  It is his Mamma who has the ability to make a room a hell-hole. My friend A and I went to Dublin for a week. She photographed our pristine hotel room when we arrived, and also on the day we left. By then it looked like the aftermath of a jumble sale presided over by Keith Moon.

I was very briefly tidy when I was a student. A mixture of perversity and survival instinct.I had seen what happened to other flats lived in by seekers after knowledge. I shared a house with five chaps. One was a medical student.Whenever I go to see a doctor it always horrifies me to remember that they were all once upon a time, medical students...

In our "living room", things were, indeed, living. Sometimes the carpeting in the corners would move,as something nestled down for the winter. Someone had poured blue curacao over the television. Someone else had tried to find out what happened when you set light to it.The vileness eventually got to me, and I moved in with two Leeds drag queens. "Norma Jean" and "Lady F" were domestic goddesses.The only cause of dispute in that household was the occasional disappearance of my shoes. They were fond of gin and of baking cakes, both of which figured largely at their "Little Soirees" on Sunday afternoons. Every queen in West Yorkshire would turn up. I was always the only woman at the party with the genitals I had been born with. Except when my Mother visited me at weekends. She adored them, and it was reciprocated. "Your Mother Is SO CAMP!" they would exclaim, as she performed her "Carmen Miranda" for them with a fruit bowl from Leeds Market on her head.

Round about this time,I got a job as a "Graduate Trainee" at Miss Selfridge. It was 1976, and our uniform was flared trousers and a cheesecloth shirt. I had hair I could sit on ( mind you,doesn't everyone?),and perilous platform shoes. Always a show-off, I had volunteered to give a speech about the training programme to some aspirant fashionistas from the Fashion Department at my Alma Mater. I swished onto the podium. Before I had reached the mikestand, however, the room erupted in laughter.The leg of a pair of grey tights, which in my slutty way I had left in my discarded uniform trousers, the night before, was dangling from my stylish flares,like a long damp snail trail.

Another high-fashion comedy moment came about when I was modelling at a hair show for Wella, in the giddily glamorous environment of Preston Guildhall. We are now in the 80's, and I look like Aladdin in huge puffball trousers .There is a badger on my head.  I have the photographs to prove this. Shorter than the proper models, I was allowed to wear heels.More of an idiot than anyone else on stage, I got my heel wedged between two sections of the catwalk.This made me do an impersonation of an Aberdonian drunk spinning around a lampost.  It also caused a seven-model pile-up. The very butch Australian make-up artist dashed on stage and lifted me out of my shoe,to wild applause. He was the only one who would speak to me, during  the long silent journey back in the minibus.

Then there was getting stuck in a tree on Caldy Island,where the monks gave me a wide berth; and the time I  woke up in a Portuguese nun's bed in a priory just outside Keighley. She wasn't in it, which was as well. I can now,perforce,apologise in several languages; but Portuguese is not yet one of them. When not alarming ecclesiastics, I was prone to incidents with fire. I am surprised and pleased that I am still alive, and haven't done more damage. If you know me, you will know that these stories are but the tip of an iceberg.If you are reading this and you are my insurer, it is all made up.

Bunny Boiling

The Giant Boy wants a dog.I do not want a dog.Impasse. Except of course, that it isn't; because he will not let sleeping dog disputes  lie. The weapons he has in his armoire include pestering; the drip drip drip of water on stone technique of refined nagging that, unfortunately. he learnt from me, and the nuclear armament that is my Mother.Huge dog fan, my mother .He also does "Mentioning Dogs" each time a dog appears in life,or upon the television screen,and also "Puppy Eyes".The latter involves him turning his big grey peepers on me in a soulful manner, looking up from under his eyelashes sighingly, and  delivering roughly this speech (with the odd variation); "Oh,Mum! If we only had a dog,I would be so happy and do better at school, too, I shouldn't wonder. The X-Box would lose its magnetic pull for me, I would not care to exterminate zombies..no more would I clamp myself to the mattress on a school morning.No! I would be out exercising "Zambesi" or "Beelzebub", running about Princes Park in a healthy manner. When returning from school I shouldn't be loitering in "Subway" on Allerton Road with my dubious chums, threatening my fellows with phrases akin to " I Will Pop a Cap in Your Ass, You Typing Error!" anymore. All these things and more that you haven't found out about yet would be left in the past, as I rushed home to feed and exercise MY DOG!".

Ah yes. All very persuasive.  But there is the outstanding Matter Of The Rabbit,as yet unresolved to my entire satisfaction.

When GB was seven, I caved in badly (see aforementioned psychological warfare methods) and bought him a rabbit.It was caramel-coloured, very wuffly as to nose, and totally thick, even for a bun. We called it "Lucian". It's main objective was to eat everything in the world, escape, and then be eaten.Well,that's rabbits for you.Shallow. It lived in a commodious wooden hutch in  our garden in Mossley Hill. His father took him away on a ski-ing holiday to France .That's GB's father, not the rabbit's father ,about whom we knew dismayingly little. I was by then C.O in Charge Of Feeding and Muck anyway, the seven-year-old having become bitterly disillusioned with the entertainment potential of a rabbit . And vice versa, I imagine.

On Day Two, I went out to feed,water, and discuss the finer points of the "Today" programme with Lucian before  I went to work. Understandably, perhaps, he had fled (flewn,flud,fledded...it doesn't look right,does it?). There was a hole in the hutch.

I searched for that bothersome rabbit for ages, climbing into neighbouring gardens and making carrot noises. The neighbours, (despite the fact that they had been lobbying to have me put away for a while now) looked both high and low. I don't think they liked waking up to find a pallid figure clambering about in their bushes. Too Gothic for Mossley Hill.

On Day Three, six in the morning,  I noticed something on the frosty lawn.I opened the French windows in my nightie (insert own joke), and investigated. There had been a Murrrrrrder. Or a very inventive suicide. Bits of scattered Lucian were showing up nicely aganst the whitened lawn. Unpleasantness with bin-bags and rubber gloves ensued.But I could not find the little bugger's head. I didn't have soupy plans for it or anything , you understand, I just didn't want it turning up later in a Grand Guignol fashion when the child was fossicking about in the garden with a sensitive mate whose parents were lawyers. So various friends of mine were surprised to recieve a call from me upon the subject of "If a cat or a fox kills a rabbit, do they take trophies?"quite early in the day.

When Child (normal-sized at that stage) returned from Chamonix, I had my story. Lucian, I said, had met a female rabbit, and it had been just one of those wild, crazy things.He would understand, when he was older. SO they had run off together to ..erm... The Woods, and were even now happily multiplying. Of course, despite having been brassily indifferent to Lucian in the later stages of their relationship, the Child was steeped in grief.  I felt pretty bad about this but it was the lesser of several evils,considering. If the head turned up later,I would just have to say that the romance hadn't worked out and Lucian had shot himself.

We all "Moved On". Some years later,in an inconsequential conversation in a taxi cab, The Child informed me that his father (French)  had told HIM that I had slain the rabbit myself, because I "could not be bozzaired to clean him". I was outraged. I said "Darling,do you honestly think I would actually KILL a creature? " He considered this for longer than was flattering, then said"No, I think you would have taken him back to the petshop and got a refund".

However, mud ,once thrown, does stick. A longer period has to elapse, I think, before I am able to fully clear my name. So a dog,as such, may have to wait. I just have to play for time.