Hair Today,Goon Tomorrow

I don't trust the French.They invented cellulite, wasps,and eating live meat.This has contributed nil to the sum of human gaiety. Whereas the Brits invented binge drinking, pies, and sarcasm.It isn't really anybody's fault;and a great deal of national character is formed by climate. It would have been rash of the Anglo Saxon English (Celts are a special case),for instance, to make a claim to have invented sex. The French and the Italians hold a shared monopoly, if you are to believe them.Some Northern Europeans had a go,during the 70's, saying  it was their idea,and made several dubious films to demonstrate their superior raunch muscles. However,nobody could take them seriously because they all looked like gym instructors and far too healthy. I saw quite a bit of gay porn in the 70's,what with one thing and another,and got quite used to extraordinary feats of athleticism being  projected onto my bedroom wall. Mine was the only room in the house with plain white walls, and so my housemates would put rudie films on and watch them while I was getting dressed for my bar job in "Charley's Club",the only gay bar in the village. The village being Leeds. I didn't mind, I could quite see why the antics of Sven the shotputter and his adventures with Brazilian twin brothers might lose a certain sharp clarity by being projected onto a swirly orange and lime green wallpaper. And my housemates were very sweet to me,when they remembered that I was there .Two of them were Drag Queens of a high degree of preposterousness, and one was a primary school teacher who had to put his eyebrows back on every Sunday evening.He was my favourite. He looked like a thin gay Jim Davidson (yes, I know it's a stretch), and combined an essentially kind nature with an acid tongue. They were grooming me for something, but I never found out what it was. The year I lived with them was highly enjoyable,and I learned a great deal about Life,male sexuality,and how to remove stains from almost everything. I emerged a creature camper than both Christmas and an entire Millet's full of frilly pink tents combined, It was difficult re-adjusting to straight society, and I had to stop myself from drawling "Well, dear, you're a big butch number, and no mistake" when being introduced to distant female relatives at christenings and the like. At a loose end, I went to live in Waterloo with someone I had accidentally married.  It didn't really count because I had my fingers crossed. The contrast could not have been harsher. Desperate for glamour, I combined a dreary socially useful job teaching Difficult Boys in Huyton, with modelling for what my next-door-neighbour called a "Hair Saloon". This was owned by the Collinge family, who thrive to this day,despite my time with them as a "house model". I met my great pal Jon through this.In 1981, I had gone once more into the bleach, dear friends. I was a Debbie Harry emulator,with white blonde hair that disintegrated in strong sunlight. Poor Jon had been given me as his model,having truly drawn the short, straw-haired one. He told me later that he had despaired inwardly,when faced with a model who was not only un-young and un-tall, but also resembled a charity shop Barbie doll after a baby had used the head to teeth upon.
But he worked wonders on my barnet, and I went on to be a "Wella Vogue" competition finalist for 1982. There are many photographs of this wonder, in which I look like a feverish badger in pantaloons. There is even one in "Vogue".It is tiny, and in monochrome, but that is probably for the best.You spend an awful lot of time with someone when they are using your head. Fortunately Jon and I discovered that we had a similar dark and nasty ability to find things that weren't really, funny. He was an irrepressible giggler, and fond of the company of women, despite being relentlessly straight. We both liked to drink.
What more does one need in a male pal? We remain close to this day, and I went over the other week to bore his baby to sleep, as he is now a grandfather. His "Saloon" is in Birkenhead, and a constant procession of clients arrive, drawn as much by the quick-fire repartee and insane tittering, as by the hairdressing skills.Which, by the way, Jon, are superb.
Now this could not happen in a French hairdresser's establishment, where they take all forms of grooming immensely seriously. They would not dream of teasing their client's hair into twin horns with setting mousse, just for a laugh...Don't worry, punters, he only does that when he has known you for thirty years. Or if you nod off..so stay awake and be ready to join in searing local gossip and deeply dirty jokes,and you will leave Argyle St. looking marvellous, but also feeling as though you have just been trimmed by Ken Dodd and shampooed by several Goons.  But don't go to  Peter Sellers, he always takes too much off the top..

The Devil Wears Primark

From time to time,when I feel my life lacks a certain grit,I go to Primark and stand in a queue for an hour or so. Like the Old American West,it can be wild and woolly in there.Although there isn't a great deal of yer actual wool,it is mostly acrylic. I like the staff ;they have an awful lot up with which to put.  A friend of mine was recently spat upon deliberately whilst she harmlessly travelled the escalator. This particular chum is not one to take such treatment in a supine position. The young spitter had then loudly regaled her comrades with her views on the suitability of this or that outfit for her forthcoming appearance in court. I think she may just have been showing off. Anyway, my friend felt,and I think rightly, that being expectorated upon does not form part of the "positive customer experience" we have been led to expect when parting with our pennies. So she went to see a manager, who,in addition to apologising and agreeing that being showered with the bodily fluids of others is discomforting;went on to tell several stomach-churning anecdotes about other Rabelaisian pranks pulled by the punters of Primark.Eueew!
I worked in Miss Selfridge in 1976. I was supposedly a "graduate trainee", there to learn all aspects of the thrilling fashion retail business, prior to clawing my way to the position of manager or buyer. I fancied buying.Buying was a thing I could do,and with other people's money...? Bliss. Unfortunately,before  I could reach such Olympian heights, I was invited to spend many years being bossed about by stroppy supervisors and  to stand around changing room entrances with an impassive expression. I was put in charge of t-shirts. That year, the paramount style was slash-neck and with three-quarter-length sleeves. The shape of the neck meant that you could not keep those blasted things on the hanger for more than a nano-second,try as you might. And,to the endless accompaniment of "Band On The Run" on looptape,I tried. And the buggers fell off.And I picked them up and put them back.And they fell off. This made me crazy.And made our supervisor, a vile little creature called Jane,come and shout at me. I am not entirely sure how it all happened,but my fuse was shorter in those days. I said things,she said some other things,and suddenly there was a huge pile of t-shirts on the floor and Jane had a hanger stuck to her cheesecloth shirt. I was led away. And that was that for retail;until,some years later, I was employed in a "Boutique" in Walton Vale. It was run by a Heswall housewife whose husband had bought it for her to play shops with. This woman was nuts. I often think that Mary Portas Queen of Shops would have got an entire series out of her...she loathed and despised her customers. To her mind,they were all common and all fat. She went on buying trips to Man-Chess-Torr,  but would only stock the smallest sizes known to humanity.It was like working in Lilliput. She took every opportunity to close the shop,in case anybody forgot themselves so far as to buy something. A punter might get in and try on one of her dresses,which were usually confections of lace and leather, with denim patches sown on,or eye-searing evening gowns beaded beyond belief and weighing a ton.If this happened,the alarm bells would ring in her wig,and she would rush into the changing room, tug the curtains apart,and tell the poor woman  how awful she looked. If this didn't do the trick,she would start an anti-sales patter, highlighting how expensive the dress was "For What It Is"; whatever THAT meant, and how it would require specialist dry-cleaning when the foul excrescences and gravy-stains of the hapless punter had wreaked havoc upon it. It took nerves of steel and a will of iron to buy anything there, and most of the ladies of North Liverpool,although redoubtable,were not up to the challenge. After the shop closed and they took her away in a padded van, I worked in a pub in Kirkby. The atmosphere there was  less nerve-wracking, Although it was a good year for bomb-scares.My job,in addition to being the most tragically inept barmaid in the history of alcohol,was to winkle punters out of their seats and away from their pints,when we had a threatened explosion phoned through by the police. This happened about twice a week.
God,but they were stubborn; to a man insisting that it was a trick to remove them from their drinks,which would be watered down or somehow tampered with,in their absence. In the end I just thought "Oh well stay there then you recalcitrant old bastards,but I am off to stand in the carpark of the Liberal Club (three feet away) as requested".
So now I can make eleven pints of Lager Top appear very quickly (and charge a different amount for each one),and I can fold t-shirts. I am sure that this will stand me in good stead. Primark are now employing the elderly,so I could whip down to HR and dazzle them with my folding skills. I shall balk at changing room supervision though, as I now have inside information on what people actually do in there. An unexpected item in my bagging area would be as nothing..

Dog Tails And Puff Pastry

Never work with animals or children,goes the old showbiz adage. My additional  advice is "Don't live with them either,if you can help it".I have never wanted a pet. If anything is going to be spoilt,pampered and stroked, it will be me, thank you very much.  I didn't want any children,either. However, life and fate have conspired to ensure that I have from time to time, shared living quarters with both.This is what happened yesterday.I rang up for one of those "informal discussions" about a job I fancied. Anyone who has done this knows that it is often rather difficult to pin down the person who is offering themselves up in this way;they will be in a meeting,teaching,or rowing round the world in a kayak whenever you call.I did eventually get through to the right woman, and we were "informally chatting" like Billy-Ho,when my Mother's dog was warmly and neatly sick on my foot. At the same time, the Giant Boy,home from school with a cold,bellowed "Where are my underpants? This pair make my balls itch!" Unlike his usual KGB-conspiracy mutter, this question was loud and clear, and could have been heard in the Dominican Republic. I hope that was all informal enough for everyone.
Some dogs, and most babies, look cute,I will grant you.This is a SNARE of nature and is to stop us abandoning them on buses. But they are both designed to remind us that we are not only mortal,but two paces away from Neanderthal. Well, one very short pace, in some people's cases.
My Mother adores dogs,but has little interest in babies. Dogs, to her way of thinking, can do no wrong. When a bloodcurdling report of someone having their face removed by one comes her way, she simply remarks "Well, they must have annoyed it". She refuses,in addition to recognise that they,to put it bluntly, smell.  Or  that they eagerly seek out the areas of human beings which are, for excellent reasons, usually covered and unmentionable.  I was once pinned to a stack of Daily Mirrors by an Alsatian eager to make my intimate aquaintance, in our newsagent's shop in Fazackerley. I was about sixteen,and deeply self-conscious. Not a quality of  which said dog could have been accused. On its hind legs it was a good four inches taller than me, and there was no possible doubt about its masculinity. It took two quite large men to get it off me.My Mother, perusing the Daily Mail,raised one eyebrow and said "Don't be silly,it LIKES you,the big softie". I am here to tell you that no part of that animal was soft. The next time I was gripped with such singleness of purpose, I was in the company of  First Year Mechanical Engineering students.
Dogs exist,like some terrible hairy Rider In The Chariot,to remind us of our bestial origins,and to embarrass the hell out of us by drawing attention to functions and parts better left unmentioned and unrevealed. Children fulfill the same function,but are also gifted with speech.This gives them tremendous scope. When the GB was a G Baby, I used to gaze into his little face, and yearn for the happy time when he would start to utter.What no-one tells you is that as soon as that state is reached,you are wishing that they would button it. I "terrored" mine, as he would put it,sufficiently to quell most unfortunate remarks as they were on their way out of the rosebud lips. You have about five seconds in which to decide whether a sharp pinch, which will stop the forming comment about someone on the train's physical oddity,( but will cause loud  tears, lamentation and slime), is preferable to the inevitably crystalline enunciation given to such questions as; "Why has that man got a big lump on his head?" and "Why is that lady that colour ?". You might as well go in for bomb disposal.
When I had a proper job and was a worthwhile carbon unit, I used to go into work in a suit , give presentations and stuff like that. I would so often reach into a jacket pocket and discover a half-chewed ginger biscuit stuck to a Lego brick, or a tiny sock. And I didn't have any children then, so this was a complete mystery..
There's a film out at present called "I Don't Know Why She Bothers",or somesuch. It looks very irksome, from what I have seen,and is based upon a book which sets out the struggles of a high-achieving woman to blah blah, despite her blah blah and HIS blah. You know the sort of thing.But,like the goldfish scene in "Which One Of You Bitches Is My Mother?"; there is an unforgettable bit. Our heroine takes a rolling pin to some mince pies she is giving her child to take (why?) to a school "Bake Sale". She batters the blasted things  to buggery not as you or I might, because she is half-cut ,it is midnight, and she is enraged by having to even think about such mind-injuringly tedious stuff, but to make these poxy pies appear "home made".   Bah! Mine gets a Gregg's pasty still in the bag, and counts himself lucky. Unless the dog has got to it first.

Horse Calendar Blues

The Giant Boy sloped off unwillingly to school this morning,looking like a grumpy bank manager.I am in a very good position to make this comparison,as most of my dealings with the world of finance and those that dwell therein have been characterised by ill-feeling.  The relationship began, as most do, with mutual effusions of joy at having found one another other, and a book token was showered upon me in October 1973.  Further rich gifts followed; a pen, a plastic wallet, a calendar with a horse on it; I admit it, I was flattered by the attention, my head was turned. At the end of my first University term, I was £50 in the black. This was because I had not at that time discovered drinking and smoking. I developed bad habits. But then so did the bank. It started sending me letters, not the cajoling, coaxing missives of our first days together,but letters which started peevishly (We thought you would want to know that...),and became positively sinister; "We have to advise you that if you do not put your account in order..". I did not enjoy this practice,and said so. Its response was to send me more unwanted letters,and then charge me for them. In the first flush of romance,I had heedlessly given it my address. How I regretted that action in the months to come! I ,too,took to correspondence;"Your habits irritate me, and your pleading just bores me.Close my account, and never contact me again". I know that seems cruel,but it was asking for it. But any response from me seemed  only to inflame it further.Needy, whingeing, and nagging, the letters kept arriving. I contemplated informing the police that I was being stalked by my bank. Perhaps I could obtain a restraining order? Was there a support group? If I started a relationship with another bank (and in those days fiscal promiscuity was easy),would my old bank find out,and try and come between me and my shiny fresh start?
And there were plenty of attractive offers. Oh yes. The roguish wink from Nat West, offering me an overdraft and a pencil case..Barclays sidling up,aware of having done something unattractive in South Africa,and eager to make amends, flaunting its lack of bank charges shamelessly. Even the normally sedate Mr Bradford and Mr Bingley were now suggesting that we buy a property together..
In the end, I did what I now always do when a relationship sours. I changed my name and moved to another city. It is expensive,but kinder, in the long run,to me. We don't even pretend to be friends,and when I see that bank now, squandering millions on branding makeovers and cartoon people with funny noses advertising its shopsoiled attractions, I just cut it dead. I am with another now.Not the most dazzling,perhaps a little dowdy, and decidedly without frills. We have a sweet little account which will be six years old in December. We don't talk much; but there is not much to discuss, as a rule.I don't have an overdraft, we don't see much activity; it is the deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise longue,as Mrs Patrick Campbell remarked when she settled down with the Halifax Building Society.

Keep The Home Fires Smokelessly Burning

There's a war on,you know. Well, there usually is, somewhere. This century has been as keen as any other so far to make sure of that.But we tend only to become interested when it is directly affecting us. This time, it seems we are to live as if we were being threatened by the Luftwaffe on a nightly basis, in terms of frugality and expressions of optimism, but without the unifying factor of a recognisable enemy. So many discrepancies exist.For example, we are now told that we must work until our seventies,so as not to be a drain on the coffers of the state. However, the news that 50 is the new 35 has not reached employers; who tend to dislike the prospect of older people working for them. There is always the danger that they might not do as they are told. And may be able to spell and show everyone up. I am considering Vince Cable's statement that Britain is at war,economically speaking, and what I think is that we ought to take this at face value,and start behaving appropriately. To do this,we need to immerse ourselves in the right films of the period, and give ourselves the full 40's makeover. Reality need not intrude too much. Living temporarily (and is there any other way?) with a parent who experienced the Second World War, does not lead me to suppose that people were any different,nor that there was a profound departure from behaviour of the nasty,mean,and self-centred kind, fundamentally the default setting of the human race,alas. But we could pretend,couldn't we? Just for a couple of months,we could try and act like the cast of "This Happy Breed". Age,race,gender,no barrier..some of us might need a bit of elecution training, and perhaps it would be reckless to adopt cheery Cockney lingo,if one is ,au fond, Northern working class.But we shall see.All our children want to speak like American black youth in any case,which they aren't; any more than they are John Howard Davies as "Oliver".Surely if they can pretend to be one thing they are not,another,different role might be as easily essayed?  A few lessons in sedate queuing, holding doors open, giving up seats on buses to the elderly and infirm (Me!),and doing up  rows and rows of buttons, might be provided. Hats would be worn.It would be acceptable, at weekends, to have a couple of drinks and sing stirring songs around the Old Joanna, topped awf with a jolly nice fish supper. It would not be acceptable to bit the ears of others ,or to fall acrawse the bins in Mathew St with one's panties aroud one's ankles.You rarely saw Celia Johnson doing that.
Some stiff upper lip (moustaches optional for both sexes),might make a nice change too. Keep those feelings to yourself,for the duration. Mobile telephone numbers would be changed to have one's home area at the beginning, and would be answered only when socially graceful, with "Good Afternoon, this is Huyton 76899"or some such. Woolton Pie would make a re-appearance, and we could make out it was invented in Woolton this time. We already have advertisements for Spam,and oddly-named fish sneaking into our fish fingers;we are only a breath away from Snoek,and powdered egg.  Smoking would be made compulsory,and television would revert to black-and-white, and finish firmly at 9pm,when all decent people should be in bed anyway.
Our current National Anthem is miserable,without being in the slightest bit amusing.I propose that we replace it with this rousing tribute to determined gloom and self-destruction from Sir Noel Coward;

 "There Are Bad Times Just Around The Corner"

They're out of sorts in Sunderland
And terribly cross in Kent
They're dull in Hull
And the Isle of Mull
Is seething with discontent

They're nervous in Northumberland
And Devon is down the drain

They're filled with wrath
On the Firth of Forth
And sullen on Salisbury Plain

In Dublin, they're depressed
Lads

Maybe because they're Celts?
for Drake is going West
Lads....
And so is everyone else
Hurray-hurray-hurray!
Misery's here to stay.

Refrain 1

There are bad times just around the corner

There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky
And it's no good whining
About a silver lining
for we know from experience that they won't roll by

With a scowl and a frown
We'll keep our peckers down
And prepare for depression and doom and dread

We're going to unpack our troubles from our old kit bag
And wait until we drop down dead

Verse 2

from Portland Bill to Scarborough
They're querulous and subdued
And Shropshire lads
Have behaved like cads
from Berwick-on-Tweed to Bude

They're mad at Market Harborough
And livid at Leigh-on-Sea

In Tunbridge Wells
You can hear the yells
Of woe-begone bourgeoisie
We all get bitched about
Lads

Whoever our vote elects

We know we're up the spout
Lads
And that's what England expects
Hurray-hurray-hurray!
Trouble is on the way

Refrain 2

There are bad times just around the corner

The horizon's gloomy as can be

There are black birds over
The grayish cliffs of Dover
And the rats are preparing to leave the BBC
We're an unhappy breed
And very bored indeed
When reminded of something that Nelson said
While the press and the politicians nag nag nag
We'll wait until we Drop Down Dead."

So commit that to memory, and Vince will lead us in song.When he has popped into his Homburg and 1940's pinstripes. Then later we can sing "Please Don't Be Beastly To The Bundesbank" With the right leadership and attitude, if we all pull together, it could all be over by Christmas.

Any Old Ironing?

I haven't a thing to wear. True, I have more clothes than the proverbial Soft Joe; but none of them like me just now. The reason,I tell people and psychiatrists, that I own what amounts to a large department store full of garments, is that a few years ago I was restless,unfulfilled, and in possession of several credit cards. This is only partly true. I come from a long line of fashion obsessives. My Mother,to this day, cannot shut a cupboard, so crammed are they with her tops and frocks. She used to have her hats and her shoes made for her in Bold Street; when it was a Mecca for the stylish Liverpolitan lady. Her divine black and white modelling photographs adorn my walls wherever I live, and are a testament to ageless style and the importance of beautifully-made gowns. And boning, in the old-fashioned sense.Unfortunately she had a brainstorm around 1965; and threw out masses of perfectly lovely clothes,which I like to kid myself I would be staggering around in now,had she not had a purge.  In grim reality,I wouldn't have got into them even at my most slender. She had a 22" waist, a thing which,along with a real pearl necklace and a Vivienne Westwood suit, I have never possessed.
The 1970's,for those of you who weren't there, were difficult years, fashionwise.Oh yes,there were some high points; Biba, Bill Gibb..but they were out of range for a student with nineteen and eleven to blow on a dress. And you had to be the size and shape of a thermometer, with spindly arms and no shoulders.Everything was cut,as it is now, to fit an undernourished ten-year-old boy. So there was nowhere for me to go but second-hand clothes shops..they weren't called "Vintage " at that time. I could,and did, get into garments discarded by dowagers, vastly-skirted New Look (the Dior post-war austerity revolution into the use of masses of fabric ,not the  High St shop )suits, and bias cut oyster satin nighties with  elderly,moulting feather boas thrown over them. They generally smelt a bit funny. You could douse them in dry-cleaning fluid,but this was high-risk for someone given to smoking menthol "More" cigarettes through an unstable holder. I once met someone for tea in the Lyceum Cafe, at the bottom of Bold St.It was lovely then, still had waitresses in white aprons and black frocks, big wall-mounted mirrors, and was a perfect place in which to pose. I was wearing a tightly tailored suit with padded shoulders, an ancient fox hung about them, and a pill-box hat with polka-dot veil. False lashes and a glossy red pout completed my valiant attempt to do Forties Vamp. I was admiring myself vastly,until I lit a cigarette, and tried to smoke it through my hat. The whole thing went up like a lit tissue, and one eye was firmly welded shut under the weight of melted nylon sweepers. I self- doused with a jug of water.The entire place had hysterics.
It was a while before I tried that again.
Although I was once so deluded as to think that I could make a dress.I had no sewing machine, and no sense. I did have a pattern lent to me by a crafty cousin, and I bought some fabric to destroy I mean fashion into a flattering maxidress,all the rage in 1974. What possessed me to buy a pattern with stripes in it,I shall never know.The same wild urge that caused me to tack it all together with big stitches and then go out in it, possibly.So "Hi Ho Silver Lining " started playing, as my sleeve fell off. I thought I'd brazen it out, and pull the other one off,too.I pulled at a thread.The sleeve stayed put, but the bodice fell in sections to my waist. I don't think anyone noticed. There was a light-show going on,anyway,so most of the punters  were too mesmerised by the sight of a bubble of gloop projected floating across a white sheet,to notice a girl trying to wear her hair as a vest. We had to make our own entertainment, in those days.
Life dipping in and out between showbiz and Further Education presented wardrobe challenges. My natural bent was towards jade-green sequins and plunging necklines.But teaching "Communication Skills" to Plumbing and Maintenance 1 on Tuesday mornings in a grim shed forced me into more suitable attire. Seeking work placements for vehicle bodywork trainees often found me climbing over nasty mounds of scrap metal with Alsatians snapping at my skirt. The next big hurdle was being pregnant. It's better now, 14 years later, but when I was enciente, you could only buy maternity dresses with big white collars and bows at the neck, puffed sleeves, and vile little floral prints. These conveyed the frankly perverse impression that you were a huge four-year-old with a pillow up her dress.
And so ,when I was earning proper money in a job that didn't require scaling fences,un-pregnant, and bored beyond belief, I went shopping .For ten years.
I wasn't alone; I am now told that most of the nation did the same thing.
So now I am in reduced circumstances, and am Monarch of a vast empire of black bin bags and overflowing suitcases. I tried E-Bay, but the combination of high fees and increasingly rigorous regulations for small sellers eventually defeated me. Also, a high proportion of people who buy things on E-Bay are mad. This was mildly entertaining for a while, but then you come up against someone who threatens you with their appalling spelling and extraordinary demands,and you become weary of it all. I became awfully friendly with the staff in my local Post Office,though.
So now I have to wait for my gorgeous frocks to become vintage.The general rule in fashion is that something five years out of date is frumpy and awful, after ten years it is retro and quirky, or "ironically referencing" the previous decade, and after 20 years plus,it can be hailed as delightfully vintage.
So I am thinking of myself as "Vintage" these days, too. "An unusual piece, suitable for evenings, with most of the original trimmings, slightly foxed" perhaps?" "Might well repay delicate handwashing,and a bit of an iron?"
And in exactly forty-four years, if God spares me, I shall be an Antique.

Elvish Has Left The Building

I know I had a bit of a go at fairies in a previous piece. Well, the response from the Fairy Community was lively, and I have been dealing with correspondence ever since.Some of it written on oak apples and hurled through the window,malign notes in spiky handwriting floated down the chimney....barren cattle and sour milk has been threatened, and there was even an attempt to kidnap the Giant Boy and leave me a changeling, but it took a hundred of them to lift one of his trainers, so they retired, chattering with rage and shaking miniscule fists.I finally got the Flit out. If you go into B&Q and ask for a spray with which to get rid of fairies,you get a blank look and Security follow you round the Household Pests section. But I am here to tell anyone bothered in this fashion that mothballs don't work. Fairies are robust, and are quite liable to pelt you with them and giggle. Mothballs don't work on moths,either.They have developed utter immunity to any interventions less robust than a blowtorch.Which does de-bobble your cashmere but also singes your curtains.
Fairies don't do e-mail,  Goblins deal with that.  Goblins run all IT support, and obviously,banking. If you cross THEM, you are likely to find that they will introduce gremlins into your software, and warp your hard drive.You will also start to get letters from your bank saying "Dear Bastard ; we thought you would like to know that you owe us £0.78 . Since you have no overdraft facility on this account we have charged you an unpleasant number of pounds for providing you with this letter". This particular spell is very hard to combat, but Vince Cable informs me that the only way to stop it is to send them a drawing of a spider.
There you are, and you thought I didn't ever tell you anything useful, didn't you?
To return to yesterday's topic, lovely wee students; I wonder if they still do Tolkein obsessives? When I was at Leeds in 1973, the place was riddled with them. Everyone's room had a map of Middle Earth stuck to the wall with pre-Blu-tack lumps of flour, next to that nasty one of Frank Zappa on the toilet. Some of my peer group were learning Elvish,and would write things in it on their folders. I was having enough trouble with Middle English, thank you very much, and had no time for any language in which one could not say "The fag machine in the bar is broken.Kindly do something".
There was a Tolkien Soc. There was a Soc. for everything, including (and this is true)  Narcolepsy. A couple of Tolkienites were in one of my groups.The girls would drip about with curtains of dun-coloured, dusty hair over their faces, addressing each other as "Galadriel" and the like.The chaps were a bit worse because they generally had beards and enacted battles with Orcs on a Saturday morning at the back of Morrisons in Headingley. They called them "Re-enactments" ,with which I took issue on the grounds that you couldn't really "re" something that had never happened in the first place.
Harmless enough. A pal of mine in Liverpool was "heavily into" the Lord Of The Rings,when we were both seventeen. For a while she would trot about wearing a cape and a wizard's hat,waving a stout staff,and uttering gnomic statements taken from the "Silmarillion". I would be at her side, lavishly made-up with double false eyelashes and scarlet lipstick, chatting away brightly about Dorothy Parker and Gertrude (or in fact T.E,but NEVER D.H) Lawrence. We must have looked very odd together,we looked pretty damn odd separately. I think at that stage, one instinctively knows whether one is to be an Organic or an Artificial. I have some Organics as friends, and they are lovely,some can even do Artificial for a while.But ultimately one's type will surface, and an Organic will slip quietly down from that bar stool and go off on a camping weekend at a woman's retreat in Gloucestershire. Likewise, an Artificial, often swayed by love or the lack of others of their species to play out with, may for a while eschew intoxicants and camp banter, and dabble in the Environment,or go to Glastonbury. But when the novelty wears off, you will find them drifting off to a subfusc cocktail lounge and leafing through Vogue with Chanel-tinted fingers. There have been attempts to do cross-over, like the Glamping and Lost Vagueness movements, but they rarely work for long. Glitter, satin and tat-based activities demand indoor comforts  and flattering lighting. Years ago, young gents used to tell me that I "looked much prettier and more natural without my make-up". In addition to it being an arrant lie, this statement always puzzled me, and I would briskly cross them off my dance card. I am an Artificial, you see,and was after a look which combined David Bowie, a Doll from an Amsterdam sex boutique,and the entire orchestra in the film of "Cabaret".And that was just to nip into the Co-op.
"I bought it because it had sequins on it" is a sentence which springs unbidden to the lips of every Artificial of any sex. As is " Don't people look better when they are clothed and you are drunk?". This was said to me in tones of wonder by a budding A. who popped round to my flat in order to carry off armfuls of shiny things.
Ah,youth!  I am so pleased it's over. And now I must go and see what is making that noise in the bin. It might  be a trapped Elf, or a Laughing Gnome. I am taking the spray, and may be some time.

Fresh Meat

Students..poor little things. You see them everywhere at this time of year, moving into dank flats in Princes Park,looking dashed at bus stops as the 80 sails past, getting muddled about food in The Asda in Smithdown Road. It's a grave business now, getting an education. I taught at one of our glorious universities not so long ago. I was slightly surprised at the lack of dilettantism, and the business-like way in which they organised themselves. Many of them had several jobs, and a couple of them would regularly nod off in my Friday morning sessions. I did not take this personally, as no University in my student days would have seriously expected anyone to turn up at all.  I went to Leeds in 1973,with my head full of Brideshead nonsense, expecting louche youths with floppy accents , and Charlestoning being done in the bar. I would soon, I felt, establish a salon, where the more decorative,witty  and decadent jeunesse d'oree would gather for absinthe and loose talk. So I went into the bar on the first night to find the Engineering Soc. having a yard of ale drinking competition. The Fresher's Ball revealed acres of grubby hippies and boys in big jumpers who wanted to talk about their slide rules.This was not what I had meant, at all. I was doing an English degree,and had eagerly anticipated meeting people who had read more than I had, and would steer me towards exotic and marvellous repositories of literature.
So we learnt Anglo-Saxon. As a language.Which you had to speak,and read out poetry about battles in. Tutorials consisted of five beefy girls and a boy called Cuthbert who had pulled out all his eyebrows, being harangued by a woman who looked like a monk.
My personal tutor was a greatly respected poet. He specialised in Early English Verse, and wrote volumes of stuff about Mercia and barrow mounds and ravens.He was a very grumpy man indeed.He looked at me twice in three years, and in all instances as if I were a particularly unpleasing advertisement for something of which he profoundly disapproved.
My Phonetics lecturer was a genius. A lively chap called Stanley, he was the acknowledged forensic expect on accent,and was later brought in by the police investigating the Yorkshire Ripper bogus tapes.His party trick was to tell you precisely where you came from after you had uttered one sentence, in some cases down to the exact area of town or city.I revered him,found him massively entertaining, and happily drew pictures of the epiglottis in my notebooks. Another unmissable act was Sir Ernst Gombrich, who lectured in Art History. He arrived in a leather jacket, had an interesting Austrian accent,which combined with a florid stammer and highly animated delivery,kept us nailed upright to the back of our seats.He had been given a projectionist called Ronnie,whose job was to organise and project the slides of exquisite high renaissance paintings which illustrated Sir's lectures. Ronnie was summoned with increasing ire and vehemence, as slide after slide would pop into view the wrong way up,in the wrong order, or not at all.Despite,or possibly because of this sideshow, I can recall every single lecture he gave.
But you can see how dull the social life was, by the amount I can recall about the academics..I eventually palled up with a few like-minded characters who were struggling,like myself, to create an ambience suggested by the covers of early Roxy Music albums. Leeds didn't help out much, in this regard. A combination of permanent biting cold,and far too many brutes of both sexes  dispelled the faint hope  aroused in my girlish breast when I noticed that the bus drivers called everyone "luv" and "petal".  There was a county-wide shortage of camp;a thing I didn't even know I needed. Yorkshire life was real and it was earnest, two qualities I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with.
By sheer good fortune, I got a bar job in the only gay club for miles.I think they thought I was a transvestite. I was certainly doing my best to give that impression;aiming for Amanda Lear but probably hitting Lily Savage.
I was sitting on the 80 the other evening,and it was full to the gills with new students. Despite two of them carrying on a conversation of unremitting tedium at a volume which would have shattered the windows had they not been reinforced with layers of filth, I felt benign and maternal towards them,remembering my student days.Right up to the moment when they started playing Maroon 5 on their phones...

"The Trouble With YOU is..."

Like Mary Poppins, I am practically perfect in every way.Consequently I am not inclined to enjoy myself by pointing out the flaws in lesser mortals. "Poor thing" I smirk inwardly; when presented with a grump of a  busdriver,or a bristling fiend with a bad temper in The Asda;"How rotten for you to be YOU,and not lovely ME". However, not everyone shares my sunny tolerance of the faults of others. I worked with a woman once who frequently began sentences with, "The trouble with you is...." .She would then go on to deliver a long,detailed critique of the features and habits of the individual who had crossed her. This was bad enough with colleagues; but when she did it with students,it was positively hazardous. We worked in a college where thousands of enormous youths congregated to play pool and be excitable,with a sideline in pretending to study Business Admin or somesuch. She and I were the  tutors for a group of (for the most part and despite appearances au contraire), delightful sweetie pies. Unfortunately there were also, as there are in every group of people, a couple of "challenging" ones. This woman, whom I shall call "Glenda" adopted a confrontational approach to discipline, which may have worked with the cowed youngsters of the Woodcraft Folk in Muswell Hill ,where she was Giant Pixie or whatever they have; but it did not wash with Tottenham. "Miss", an exasperated young chap would gasp at me.. "She don't know how near she is coming to a smack in the face". Teaching protocol demands that one supports one's colleagues, naturally. I could not say to the simmering lad "Oh darling I KNOW, and I would happily hold her down for you.." All I could do was to produce bland and emollient sentences of the "Well,  Glenda works very hard and she can sometimes sound a little brusque, but just walk away if she annoys you and think about kittens.." kind.
She used to scream into people's faces. One day she turned on me in the staff room . "You! " she spat "You're always....GOING SOMEWHERE!"  My face does not like being screamed into,does yours? So I took it outside  and put a fag in it, and imagined some cartoon-style demises for her. "A Monty Python foot on her head would be nice" I thought "Or perhaps a sack full of adders,like the ones the Emperor Tiberius used to pop his enemies into".Sadly, sacks of adders were had to come by in Enfield, you could barely buy a pair of tights.
I took voluntary redundancy, eventually. And infuriated Glenda further (she was the Union Rep),by getting another job a day later. My  Head Of Department was shaking with laughter when he told me of her reaction to this news. "We thought she was going to explode right there by the coffee machine" he chortled. She sought me out  near the pigeonholes. "I believe" she began "that not only have you been disloyal enough to take redundancy,you have SOMEHOW managed to get another job". "Yes, that's right, Glenda" I trilled cheerfully "Isn't that just too marvellous? I thought you would be pleased...."Her ears began to steam. She told me why she wasn't pleased, for about twenty minutes, and climaxed by saying that she thought I "ought to donate my redundancy pay to the College Fund". That was too much for me and I started to giggle helplessly. We don't keep in touch.
All places of education in those days had libraries, which were usually staffed by real people, not swipe-card machines. Our college library was managed by a very strict Muslim lady, a tiny bearded man only seen at lunchtimes, a wild-haired crone with an obsession about other people's private lives who later developed into a fully-fledged stalker,and a sardonic,beautiful girl who was to become my best friend and partner in mischief.
She and I lived,it turned out, near each other in Crouch End,miles away from Enfield, both geographically and spiritually. She had bought her first car; a startlingly bright blue mini,which she had painted all over with daisies "To match a pair of boots I had" she explained. Neither of us had any sense of direction, and we both smoked like mad,so on this basis we agreed to be travelling companions in the Bouncing Ashtray. It really was remarkable where we ended up,in our attempts to get from E to C.E. Quite often we would give up and go to the pub for a bit, then try again. We were young, free, and reasonably single, so it didn't really matter when or indeed,if,we got home.  Sometimes she would offer lifts to various workmates. They would consider their bleak bus journeys and the driving rain for a moment, and then still decline. Only the Hairdressing Department ever accepted,queerly.
Our Principal was an affable,clever man,who combined an avuncular manner with a sly sense of humour. It must therefore have amused him greatly when the College held its annual staff Fun Day, to observe the differing interpretations thereof. We would be handed a programme of various "Fun Options" put together by the Head Of Fun (staff development), a woman of impeccable refinement with a cut-glass accent and extremely stylish clothes.She had been something stellar in the world of design, but had washed up in Enfield God knows how. There were quite a few people like that,but most had been destined from birth to lecture sulky sixteen-year-olds in Child Care and Accountancy.We could choose from a menu which included "Indian Head Massage", "Aromotherapy"  "Rambling" "Cake-Icing", "Bowling" and "Badminton". I didn't have an Indian Head, luckily possess little sense of smell, care nothing for cakes and I think we know about the ball-sport thing.  So myself and my Crouch End Friend,assorted hairdressers,another pal, a dear boy originally from Kirkby (and still teaching in that very college, astoundingly), decided that we would Ramble. It was a lovely sunny day, and therefore we needed to find a dark pub without delay.
When we got back to base, tittering and feeling smugly rebellious, it was six-ish. We went to the staff room,congratulating ourselves on our daring. On opening the door, we were greeted by the sight of the elegant Head of Staff Development, standing on the pool table wearing a pair of plastic comedy breasts,waving a bottle and shouting the odds.Her Brian Sewell-like tones gone,she was bawling like Nancy from "Oliver".Around her were the sprawling forms of several Business Studies lecturers,one snoring with open mouth,another sleeping with open flies. Two people from Catering (or was it Kettering?) were rammed together in one  armchair,snogging. The trail of bottles and brimming ashtrays told the sorry tale of revels we could only admire and respect.
I would like to say that this "icebreaker" heralded a glad new dawn of bonding and social hi-jinks.But it did not. Everything settled back into dull normality and inter-departmental memos. Like "Brigadoon",it only happened once a year, and after that hard-to-top occasion,our dear old Principal retired and we got a vile new one. She was an 80's Ballbreaker,straight from Central Casting, complete with power-shouldered navy blue Next suiting, and bursting with the desire to tell everyone exactly what the trouble with them was..
I was a Head of Department by then, ( living proof  that the retiring Principal saw the funny side..) and would have had to go to many many  meetings with her,so I ran away and joined a circus. It was the NHS,but that is,as ever,another story.

Ginger and Barmy

I am told that redheads are dying out . Which is odd, because whenever I pop into Boots (other pharmacies are available) for something weapons-grade in the way of hairdye, there is never any red left. I was born with luxuriant black hair; a howling gargoyle in a gorilla wig.This didn't help my reputation with the nuns at Seafield Nursing Home in Crosby, where I was born,and it also confirmed their initial impression of my Mother.She had chosen the place of accouchement on the recommendation of her best friend Susan,who had given them considerable return business. In 1955, Aunty Sue ,as we called her,  was already three babies up on my Mum, and went on to have seven. She liked Welsh-sounding names, and her babes bore the brunt. There was a Ceri,a Rhiannon, an Owyn, etc. By No.7, and understandably addled, her last girl was christened"Cellador", after the place where the family coal was kept.
Mum had really wanted puppies, and was only superficially resigned to motherhood. She plumped for the swanky private nursing home on the grounds that she was only going to have this one baby, and she was damn well going to have it in luxury. She worked up to the day of my birth, and at the very last had to be coaxed down off a ladder where she was energetically painting the hall ceiling,and bundled off to Crosby in a taxi. A tactless Nursing Sister gave my Mother the encouraging pre-natal snippet of information that "if anything goes wrong,we will always save the baby". "Bugger the baby, I can always have another one" retorted my dear Mamma,thus going down in history as the least maternal woman since Norma Bates. She was in a bad mood because she couldn't paint her toenails,and in an even worse one later that day. "36 stitches!.." one of her favourite rants began "That's EMBROIDERY!"
She was in the nursing home for a week ( how unlike the modern fashion for booting you and baby out into the street five minutes after the gore has been washed off ), and became rather fond of the Seafield House nuns, exchanging cards at Easter and Christmas for many years after her stitches had come out.
The wild black hair went after a month or so, and it appeared that I was a ginger, like my Dad. He was thrilled, and carted me about attached to his suit jacket  like a bawling boutonierre. My father had had a little sister,who  died  of meningitis when she was seven. Doreen,according to my Mum, had been an adorable child with long red ringlets, and was never spoken of at home. When my father died, we discovered a tiny paper scrap of her childish handwriting which he had kept for fifty years.
As I grew older, it was felt that the best thing to do with me was to teach me to read as quickly as possible, and so I turned up at school book-ready. This was not popular. I was disbelieved,and had to endure being taught to read all over again,to keep up appearances. Fortunately a new teacher arrived; Mrs Hindle,who released me from "Janet and John" (they  never did anything faintly interesting), and let me loose in the library,where I stayed put for years. There was a library in Fazackerley,to which I was passionately attached. I have never forgotten the utter thrill of being allowed four cardboard tickets in municipal pale green.I am a library fiend. I consider them to be the knees of the bee. I do not approve of closing them,although I don't much care for the current sort,with their horrid paperback self-help books and leaflets about chlamydia. If I ever become indecently rich, I would spend time and money recklessly recreating 1950's-style libraries throughout the land. They would have stern but twinkly librarians with proper cardigans, who had read all the books,and would "Shush" those degraded souls who thought that a library was a good place in which to have a row,or bring their children for a picnic.Or to expose themselves to me under cover of a newspaper,which has happened more than once, I may say.  These days my sight is so appalling that I would have to get illegally close to see whatever it was they were pointing at so eagerly,and then request the flasher to "Hang on a minute while I get my other glasses out of my bag.."
It is a sad fact that I am an old person,and as such, no longer a redhead. I am a grey-haired hag,or would be,if I allowed it. Which I shall not. Some ladies can live with going grey or white, and indeed there has been a tiny trend in that direction of late. Brave female columnists have been revealing their roots all over the Sunday Supplements.I am not doing that,anymore than I am going to buy elasticated slacks. I have been messing around with different coloured hair since I was fifteen. There have been some accidents, yes indeed. And they WERE all my fault. I was once laughed at by  a van-load of punks when I was standing at a bus-stop in Leeds in 1970-something, because I had decided to go blonde by dint of pouring bleach over my head in the bath. The resultant shade was luminous and could be seen from Mars. When I was a hair model,some time later, I was obliged to sign a contract which stated that no-one else would touch my hair.My stylist , and consequently great friend Jon had added "Especially You!"in red felt tip at the bottom. So the red hair came from my Dad's side and the other stuff is all my Mum's fault. My own GB is harmlessly brown of hair.So far.But I have caught him casting sideways glances at my Mother's L'Oreal, Champagne Blonde,so I imagine one morning I shall find him meddling with streaks. She,at eighty-eight,considers herself too young not to dye.

My Family And Other Mammals

"The Sweetmans were all eccentric" remarked my Mother,tottering off to feed a mouse with buttered toast. My Grandfather, Frank Sweetman, specialised in vivid hypochondria. His wife would prepare herself for her daily outing to the shops, donning hat and gloves in the hall.As she adjusted her titfer in the long cheval mirror; Frank would appear at the top of the stairs to present a detailed report on his health, culminating in a breakdown of the doings of his bowels. As Eleanor buttoned her gloves with some haste,he would finish off by wailing pathetically "I'll say goodbye now then, Nell. I shall probably be dead when you get back".
He lived,of course, well into his late eighties and remained disgustingly fit. He demonstrated this at family gatherings by leaping lightly onto the back of a dining chair and walking along it sideways, like an owl.My Grandmother put this down to his service in the Navy; and the fact that he was barking, but I saw my brother do it once at a party.He had added leather driving gloves to his knees, to intensify the owl effect. It may be an inherited trait.I only did genetics to Mendel's Sweet Peas level, and we didn't go into anything that interesting.  My cousin John has been climbing the family tree now for some years.Only last year, we discovered a whole new lot  living blamelessly in Australia, and named "Button", They seem delightful, but you never know what might drop out of a shaken branch ,do you?
It seems that the Irish lot, who predominate, were firmly sent off to Ireland by Elizabeth The First. She had had enough of them being ginger and argumentative. Only room for ONE of those.  A conversation took place, I like to imagine, in which the Monarch expressed the view that as they were tiresomely Celtic pests and consequently naturally suited to the damp bogs of Eire, they might as well go there and mingle with the locals, whilst trying not to damage the Tudor brand. And keep out of her hair.
So they were given some bits of Galway, Kilkenny, and Cavan to live in,and told to behave themselves.  This worked for a while, but it appears that they had more in common with the wilder locals than was convenient, and threw themselves into palships with various Irish Lords, dabbled in unsuccessful farming, and several joined the Roman Catholic Church. Later, some of them became ardent Republicans.And some didn't, which must have made family gatherings stimulating and  eventful.
Great-Great Grandfather Sweetman had the lands and money to live the life of the Anglo-Irish gentleman, so delightfully recounted by various writers; Somerville and Ross, and Molly Keane amongst them. He went off to Trinity College, and then "fell into bad ways". Infuriatingly, little detail remains as to exactly what these were, but booze and gambling on horses seemed to be more than hinted at in some sanctimonious letters written by his pious brother. After carousing for most of his adult life, he embraced the Church at the end, being nursed  devotedly by the sisters from a local convent.
After he had been absorbed into the Bosom Of Abraham ( Queen Victoria declined this invitation when it was offered to her upon her deathbed with a decided "I will NOT meet Abraham"), the will was read.
How I should have liked to have been the proverbial wall-mounted fly when it was revealed that he had left most of a considerable estate to the Church. Furious and with considerably reduced prospects, the Sweetmans packed up and decamped en masse to Liverpool, where they stayed with a relative, Mary Lee, of Lee Hall in Gateacre.One by one , they peeled off , some to modest dwellings in Mossley Hill,  or Wallasey, and others going to seek their fortunes in That London. A few went to Wales, to Hope Village, near ,but excessively near,Wrexham. This section married some Lloyd-Joneses, and when I was little, I was often taken to their enormous grey house in Hope. The Lloyd-Jones sisters were my mother's older cousins.They were, respectively the Village Postmistress,  School Headmistress,and  Midwife. There was another one called Peggy who just seemed to bake cakes. The house was called "Something Welsh I Shall Have To Ask My Mother About Mount," and was built on top of a large slope,surrounded by fields, flanked by orchards; with a stream that ran through the garden. I was quite the little Linnaeus in those days, and was fascinated by the frogs, dragonflies, and lurid caterpillars that hung around the stream. I was also given to climbing, and poking things with a stick.Luckily the Cottage Hospital was nearby. Lil-The-Midwife had a motorbike, and wore a leather helmet like Roy "Chubby" Brown, to whom , I now realise,she bore a striking resemblance. None of the sisters had ever married, their putative fiancees having been killed in the Great War. Therefore men were only barely tolerated, and  made rare guest appearances, during which they were treated with deference mixed with mild satire, and stuffed with food.  It was all a far cry from Fazackerley.
My Father found all this very discomforting, and would sit rigidly in his suit trying not to look common, whilst various Sweetmans passed him seedcake,and twittered on about people in the Village whom he had never met and never would. Sometimes they would speak Welsh, which didn't help anyone. When my Grandmother came with us on these visits, she insisted that Guinness be brought out and consumed, unless it was a Sunday. Guinness was generally supposed to have nourishing qualities, and, mysteriously said to be "Full Of Iron". Therefore ladies could sip it delicately if they were run down. My Great-Aunt Bella knocked it back immoderately and was run over by a tram.
And tomorrow, I shall tell you how the rest of me came to be Scottish.

The Riches Of The Poor

I have been quite well-off,in my time. Now I am poor. In fact, I was born without a bean or stitch to my name. This situation was rectified by my Great Aunt Jaqueline, known in the family as " Jacque The Knitter". Baby clothes these days are slender and shapely garments, with whizzy velcro fastenings and amusing legends written over them;"Crack Whore" and "AntiSocial Already", that sort of thing. In my dim and distant babyhood, we were stuffed into serious knitted gear the second they wiped us off. If you look at baby pictures of the 1950's (and why would you?);you will note that all babies were born in black-and-white. In addition to this,they all look frighfully cross, and more like Churchill than is strictly necessary. This is because they were, to a baby, rammed into hand-knitted pastel cardies, rompers, and bizarre woolly bonnets shaped like the Taj Mahal. You didn't have scans and things then,so the poor mite's sex was a surprise.You got what you were given, and you decked it out in gender-neutral lemon. To this day,  I consider that lemon is a useless colour and cannot abide it. Then you were put firmly into a huge leathery pram, and left out in the garden. Fresh air was considered important;something else I have never cared for.I prefer to take my air when it has been in and out of a few other people first.
Born into a clan of wildly-knitting nurses and high-minded teachers, opportunities for both movement and bad behaviour were limited, but it seems that I was an ingenious baby, and found several ways to "scald my Mother's heart", as her Irish mother would say. One of them was to hang upside down in my pram,like a lumpily-knitted bat,until my face went purple. And when I got teeth, I was a bad biter. I also,it pains me to admit, ate worms, ants, and the dog's Spiller's Shapes Biscuits, earning the nickname "Rob-The-Dog".
My brother, when he came along five years later, was an angelic baby. White-blond and frail, he kept Alder Hey Hospital in business for the first few years of his life,with a series of ailments which included a hole-y heart. This forced me to raise my game; as he was getting far too much attention,and I retaliated by becoming adept at having showy accidents. He stopped being frail abruptly at the age of three, and is now two separate gorillas. I have remained reckless and clumsy, as previously described. My outstanding  mishap was falling into the Electric Eel Pool at Chester Zoo. The piranhas must have been on holiday.Mind you, they would never have chewed their way through all that knitting. My Dad pulled me out, an action which he loudly and repeatedly regretted as I grew older and increasingly irritating.

We never had any money;but we did have prosperous relatives on my Mother's side;her sister having married a wealthy businessman. We had Sunday Tea every week or so; at their Mossley Hill residence. To my brother and I, their lives seemed astoundingly opulent.The house was always warm, there was a "domestic" who ensured it smelt of lavender floor polish, and they had four sorts of cake AT ONE TIME. My brother bought this house as soon as he was a solvent grown-up, and has made it even more stately.
The Giant Boy used to attend a private school,when we first moved back to Liverpool. "Hogwarts" was charming to look at, and despite massive fees and frankly peculiar sumptuary laws, he did like it. When I became redundant, he had to leave.I struggled on for a bit,but eventually ran out of things to sell,and it was clear that no-one wanted to employ me and quite possibly never would.So I was fortunate enough to get a place for him at a good-ish state school. I thought he would not suffer from the social pressure of having friends whose parents could afford things for them that I really couldn't; however many items I sold on E-Bay. However,children are very good at creating their own class systems and distinctions,despite all egalitarian attempts on the part of well-meaning institutions to eridicate such things.  So now we have school uniform. But some uniforms are more uniform than others. I am informed that a school coat; (the thing that was four foot long in gaberdine and didn't fit you until the sixth form) must be some designer nonsense that costs £200.00. Brands and styles of shoes are studied with an attention  to detail that would shame Peter York. And let us not even begin to discuss the electronic  accessories without which no 14-year-old boulevardier can possibly exist.
I must say, the GB does realise that his Ma is a pauper. He has observed me lurking around supermarkets waiting for them to appear with the "Reduced" labels too often not to be keenly aware that we are boracic. . He doesn't make too many demands.He had better not,either, I have warned him that I would pick up the needles at once  and start knitting Cruel and Unusual School Jumpers.

Small Doses Advised For First-Timers

All inanimate objects are essentially hostile. Well, quite a few animate ones too, but that is a separate topic. I am clumsy. People generally don't know this, because I try and sit very still and not break anything.However, there comes a time in all relationships when a little movement is expected of one, and that is when the trouble starts. I also attract dramatic incident, to a degree where I am accused of "making things up". If only.I made a new friend when I lived in London.He was a lovely fellow, from Blackpool originally, and we fell upon each other gratefully at a party where everyone else was taking cocaine. I am no good at racy, stimulating drugs; and was once told that I would be very good company if slightly stunned. He was six foot seven, and felt that his life was exciting enough,containing as it did a considerable number of unusual sensations brought about by bashing his head on things.
Growing up in Blackpool had presented additional challenges, fun-fair wise.This chap was recovering from an accidental marriage  at the time, and my romantic life was, as usual, a whited sepulchre full of loathsome things. So we palled up platonically and decided to hell about together. On the first meeting, in a pub in Camden, I had my handbag stolen by a dapper Nigerian man with an empty briefcase. My friend gallantly and vainly gave chase, and attempted to flag down a passing policecar. We found the briefcase,which lent me,I felt, a brisk professional air. Although I did not have any keys, or money, and was not one of the few people who then had mobile phones. The police were very nice, but kept saying "Well, can't you stay with your boyfriend?" "He isn't; I don't really know him.." didn't seem to wash, and also gave the impression that my life was full of cheap transients. I decided to cry. So they gave me and Tall Tony a lift to MY house,where they very kindly helped me to break in as far as the hall .You can get to know someone rather well when you sit on some steps with them all night.  Despite this rocky start, he invited me to go and see "La Haine" with him at the Barbican. Anyone who knows this building will see the inherent dangers at once. It is huge, concrete, and possessed of endless featureless floors, and baffling sets of lifts.Even Sir Ranulph Fiennes has become hopelessly lost in the corridors, just nipping out for a wee during a screening of "The Boyfriend". Anyway, when he finally found me, it was too late to go in. Then there was a bomb scare;and we were all turfed out into a nasty bit of London.So we found a pub. Two drinks in, the pub went on fire.
The third occasion saw us meeting in a Russian restaurant near Canary Wharf. The date was 9th February 1996. I think we all know what happened next...

Tall T. saved himself from further encounters with me by going to America in pursuit of a girl.She turned out to be mad,with an even madder boyfriend, but that is not my story to tell.
Not so long ago, I had a party in Gambier Towers; it was a jolly good party with many entertaining and beautiful guests. I had stayed sober-ish due to the rigorous requirements of hostessing. After ushering out the last chorus boy, I went to my bedroom and kicked off my heels. I then noticed that there was a large young man sleeping peacefully in my bed. I had not ordered one of those. I gently woke him up,using the same techniques which I employ with the Giant Boy, i.e. cooing softly into his ear that he will be late for school,and then bellowing at him until he weeps. The Random Youth  eventually allowed himself to be led down the stairs, after turning round a few times ,wandering off into other rooms, and being patiently winkled out by me. Honestly, other people find umbrellas and left-behind coats, not whole boys..
It comforts me to some extent to think how much more hazardous life would be if I tried to DO anything, like driving, which we have covered, and dancing, which I have never even considered. They made us do Country Dancing at school, but I was retired to the bench, after becoming piteously entangled in some ribbons.This sounds harmless enough,until you consider that the ribbons were attached to a Maypole and that the (far too flimsy) pole was attached  to a wooden base in the grounds of Fazackerley Hospital. Well,it was when we started. Our school had elected to make the lives of some poorly people in wheelchairs that little bit worse by performing the "Ribbon Dance" at them during a garden fete much worse than death. 
We were not invited back,and I wisely remained silent about the whole distressing incident the whole time I worked there as Training Manager (special responsibility;Health And Safety training). Which proves once more that those who can't, really do teach. And also that you can break a Resussi-Annie Doll, when everyone said they were unbreakable.  Have you seen them? They are vile. Very disturbing indeed,especially the child one.There's a super-duper version that BREATHES;its chest rises and falls. They wouldn't let me near that one,it was too expensive. And there's another one which trains people to give injections painlessly, by emitting a thin, high-pitched shriek if you hurt it. Or DID I make that up?

Off My Head And Off My Chest

France is a foreign country;they do things differently there. One of my favourite  French places is Montpellier. It has the air of a city designed by Syrie Maugham, that celebrated 1920's progenitor of all that is white and spacious. She was married to Somerset Maugham; a marvellous writer of whom I am very fond. She, alas, was not quite so keen, and their marriage was famously acrimonious. It featured bitter words, open sobbing at dinner, and the regular crash of pearlised pottery. A riveting biography of WSM exists, written by Selina Hastings in 2009. In one section it recounts how the ageing Maugham visited a clinic in Vevey, for the purposes of having fresh minced sheep foetus pumped into his buttocks with a syringe of the kind  more usually found in a horse doctor's bag. This he found so up-perking that he was later observed by an elderly lady chasing his companion/secretary around Vevey Station in a game of hide and seek,carolling "You-hoo" as he leapt out giggling from behind the ticket office. The old lady chided his red-faced and reluctant playmate, Alan Searle, with the words "You ought to be kind to that nice old man, you know.He thinks he's Somerset Maugham" . Noel Coward had gone in for the same treatment; briskly pronouncing it "Non-ewe".
The Maughams attempted to distract themselves from their dismal situation by moving to ever-grander houses,which Syrie would cause to be decorated in white wood, silver, and the height of Art Deco elegance. And so I always thought of them when I was in Montpellier. Apart from all the splendid spacious blue and whiteness; it boasted two English bookshops, which is probably two more than we now have in England. There was also an exceedingly tempting selection of clothes shops.Not by any means haute couture, but stylish and cheap, as Montpellier has a population of 553,000, of whom 552,500 are students. I have fond memories of shopping there,in the far-off days when I was allowed to have credit cards and a job. The G.B's ferociously French father would take the child to see his rels in a nearby area.They would go to visit some fish they knew, and go cycling..(not the fish, they don't need bicycles, apparently), and for blissful picnics by the river.  As this was and remains my idea of Hell, I would get the train to Montpellier and stay there until it was safe to return. I was a smaller person in those days,and could almost fit into French sizes. My stumbling block was my breasts, which stubbornly resisted any attempts to be manipulated into Taille 40, and would make sudden leaps for freedom,usually when on the Metro or in Monoprix. French sales assistants took a dim view. I was straining to fasten some buttons on a really rather lovely jacket (Prix Shoc!) one afternoon. Failing to subdue my stubborn British chest, I handed it back to the vendeuse with "Oh dear, I am afraid it is too small.." "Mais non, madame" she replied with all the tactful charm that the French have made their calling card throughout Europe;"It is Madame who is Too Big".  I wanted to flatten her with my huge meaty fist. It is worth adding , that at this point in my life I was a size 10, (apart from the offending items who had their own postcode). I went shopping with my friend Gaelle, who was, pleasingly, a meteorologist, in Galeries Lafayette or similiar.We were nattering away around the bras, and I began to finger them with intent. She looked troubled, and whispered,without any malice whatsoever, "Oh Leez, ahm soh sorree to tell you, we will 'ave to fhaind zher Beeg Ladeez shurp for zhose".
Right.
Not only was I freakishly huge, I was also conspiciously white-skinned. It got to the stage where, if in a town where the circus had just pulled in, I would contemplate handing out flyers. Most of the inhabitants thought I was a sideshow anyway. Mind you,during a stay in Southern Italy, I was denounced as a witch. THAT was the  long red hair,oh, and the broomstick I suppose.
I am here to tell you, though, that the small dimensions of the French female are absolutely not as a result of the healthy,refined lifestyle implied in those smug and maddening books. You know the ones about how French women don't get fat/old/jealous/grubby etc?They are thin  because they smoke all the time and live on black coffee and one yoghurt a day. C'est simple.
As a Celtic Giantess, I tried to explain that I subsisted on potatoes, in their various forms, washed down with large quantities of booze. They looked scandalised by this,wondering openly and aloud how it could be that Les Anglaises could reproduce themselves? As the French chaps present  had already expressed the opinion that English men were , to a man, homosexual,it was turning out to be a grim evening  all round for the Entente Cordiale.
I am doing my bit for international relations further afield by teaching English to a pretty Russian girl. She and I have wrestled with, and partially subdued, the Gerund,and are now tackling some fairly sticky irregular verbs. I find myself running out of logical explanations as to our grammatical structure,and often end up saying "Well,it JUST IS, Natasha". I feel obliged to apologise to her for the frankly mad departures from sense and reason that, for instance, cause words like bow, bough, cow and cough to do the things that they do. She keeps telling me ,reproachfully,that  the weather is beautiful in Omsk just now. But I'm not apologising for our weather as well; it's too much responsibility for one woman. At least we share a love of spuds and hard liquor, that should see us through the winter nicely.

Your Call IS Important To Us.

My Mother's dog's bum has just phoned someone on my mobile. This feat was achieved because the animal sits on everything, and the phone was on the floor. I do apologise. I cannot work out who was dialled in this unorthodox fashion, as it is not a number I recognise.I dearly hope that it was one of those nuisances who call,uninvited, and then ask me impertinent questions about accidents I may have had. Just for the record, I have had tons of accidents,and they were ALL my fault.
I don't want it to be the charming man from the local takeaway. He is, I think, Cantonese, and might not be up for a lengthy explanation from me about dog's bottoms next time we speak. Few people are, I find.
Yesterday, I went to the new flat to try and clear a path from the front door to the kettle.Some men had been in, to install a new shower. They had left an enormous ladder, some power tools, and half a packet of digestive biscuits.I don't care for ladders. When I lived in Crouch End, there was an incident involving the borrowing of a ladder, two bottles of red wine, my adventurous friend Natasha, and the next-door-neighbour's kitchen window.
Yesterday's mystery object was an alarming-looking square black box with a red light and some wires. It looked like something Doctor Who might have left behind in the course of a  hasty departure back to the Tardis.  I decided to ignore it unless it did anything threatening, and started to throw bin bags down the stairs. After a while this activity lost its charm;so I was relieved to be joined by my lovely Glaswegian friend. As the saying goes, someone from Edinburgh will help you move house, and someone from Glasgow will help you move a body. Liverpolitans and Glaswegians, I find, have much in common. Jokes about the lawlessness, the accent, and the binge drinking to be found in both our fair cities  are still common currency. It is those very features that have attracted several pals of mine to go and  live there.
This little Weegie  combines a pleasing exterior blonde fluffiness with a core of tungsten. And that is how we set about moving a gigantic sofa. I think that when a task is clearly impossible but you still have to do it, the only approach is to have a couple of drinks and then just hurl yourself at it. We danced that sofa around in every possible position. We rotated it a full 360, we stood it on its head, and we slid, pushed, pulled and prodded it until it gave up and did our bidding. Then we sat on it, and had a fag and a Big Dirty Red. After conquering the sofa, we threw a lot of cardboard boxes out of the window, which was fun for a while. But then we had to take them to The Tip. I had never been before;it isn't the sort of place you go if you don't have a car. It is a very serious place, I can tell you. Lots of men in overalls eye you and your load suspiciously. The general effect is very "border of war-torn country". Then there are umpteen bays with stern notices instructing you to separate some things, flatten others, and lists of articles that you should just not even think about bringing. Japanese Knotweed, for example. I know little about it,but was fairly confident that we had none in the car, so we chucked some more cardboard about, did a little trot on the bubble-wrap, and retired, feeling ecological.
There is a very discouraging doorway to my new abode. The proper front of the house is rather grand; a stately portico with pillars. WE, however, are reached round the back and down some small but deadly steps, where no light shines. The bottom of the door has a big steel panel.My friend pointed out cheerfully that the wood on the other side had been "eaten by a creature".
Perhaps I shall just go in and out through the windows? Another chum had neighbours in their street in Birkenhead who did this as a matter of course; I am not entirely sure why. When visiting her,I thought they were being burgled by a boy band, as a host of fashionably-denimed young male bottoms were to be seen wriggling their way into the first-floor windows. She explained that this was now their preferred and usual method of egress and exit, after their doors had been boarded up. They were a very pleasant lot of youngsters, actually, but their parents enjoyed a troubled relationship; and there were noisy spats from time to time. I was impressed when one of them threw the family dog at the other one.The dog's views remain unrecorded. It was a big dog, and must have been a bugger to lift, never mind throw. And now we seem to have returned, in a roundabout way, to the topic of dogs, and indeed, bottoms. So I shall stop now,before I delve any further into either.

Check Me In

That inspiring periodical "Elle Decoration" has sent me a communication which suggests that I might like to start giving a damn about interior design. They coo seductively about "the handmade home", and "embracing imperfection", and then fanny on about brocade and dried twigs for a bit.I don't want to upset them because I am sure they are all very sweet;but if they realised the degree to which I have already embraced imperfection they might well faint in coils.And my hands are not really suited to "handmaking" anything. They are exactly the right shape, size, and condition for using as a cocktail holder, and can manipulate a cigarette . Other than that; useless. I have a friend who was a Hand Model. Her hands were exquisite, slender, modelled by Praxiteles on a very good day. She was brought in when the extremeties of the model-in-chief bore distressing signs of humanity, like bitten fingernails and  bumpy raw knuckles. Very thin,very tall models quite often have huge,skeletal hands,So my tiny zaftig pal would pop along with her perfect mitts to show off rings, bracelets, nail varnish and hand lotions.  Her hands got above themselves, in the end, and wouldn't get out of their gloves for less than £3000 a day. The left one became such a diva that it stopped speaking to the right one completely, and consequently didn't know what it was doing. This affected bookings because really they were only sought after as a pair.  The right one left the business, and the left one went into the Priory.
So having moved house, I am presented with a blank canvas upon which to stamp my regrettable personality.Unfortunately I do not have the blank cheque that ideally would accompany such a venture.I also have the contents of a very large flat now stacked up in two rooms, plus Giant Boy and his baffling collection of electronic equipment . I was moved by two divinely cheerful chaps, one of whom was an ex-Paratrooper, the ideal background from which to deal with both my wardrobe and my soon-to-be-ex landlords. The other bloke made up for in children what he did not possess in teeth, having ten in each case. So potent was he that I advised my female friends not to brush up against him in the corridor,if they didn't want twins. Due to an unpleasantness, I was obliged to move two weeks in advance of my intended date, and so the whole thing took a nightmare-ish turn. The Giant Boy came into his own; doughtily carrying things and dragging suitcases down from places I had forgotten I had. We were assisted by my friend Angela, a woman who combines the looks of Ava Gardner with an admirably ruthless efficiency in the kitchen. The lady-next-door came in with cake and saved our lives by providing the only solid to pass my lips that day. Everyone's house moves are frightful, and nothing ever goes according to plan, budget, or schedule.However, not everyone's culminates with a noisy midnight  row between   an  irate red-haired ex-Para and a  hysterically gesticulating young man in monkey-print jim-jams,  threatening   to "call the Old Bill", an expression unsuited to his tender years; and unused, to my knowledge, since "Dixon Of Dock Green" ended.

You see, the thing is I just want to live in an hotel. I have no desire to build a nest, and was perfectly prepared to raise my baby in a drawer of a cocktail cabinet. I couldn't tell you at gunpoint what colour my walls are, and I have only ever bought one sofa in a long and eventful life. This despite the insistent advertising on the television, which would lead one to suppose that the purchase of a settee is life's most joyous and crowning event.Everyone in the UK must have at least three by now.People have even started putting them outside pubs, in the hope that drunken punters will carry them away.
I want to wake up somewhere bland and comfortable, with new bath unguents and fresh towels provided. I would road-test every half-way decent hotel in Liverpool, in a rotating progress, in return for sitting in their their breakfast room, rubbing my tummy and loudly exclaiming "Yum! Yum!  Now that's  what I CALL a tasty top-value breakfast!" in seventeen languages. I would do my ironing in the trouser press, and wash my scanties in the power-shower.
So, "Elle Decoration", thanks for the thought sweetie, but you are barking up the wrong woman. However, do pass my details on to any hotels in Liverpool with whom you may be on pally terms.I'm sure we can work something out.

Sex Again

"Sex is a drag..in a bore-dy house, I daresay.." So said Vivian Stanshall, in his instructive ditty "I'm Bored".Incidentally, any one who thinks it is acceptable to say "bored of" ought to seek out this song at once. It is "bored WITH", end of. But yes, sex. There has been a nasty little rash of people lately who have been tumbling over themselves in the rush to go into print with details of their endeavours in this field. I note that they have, for the most part, been ladies of maturer years, if not behaviour. I consider this a deplorable trend. It reminds me of my youth (I wonder how HE is getting on..),when girls would get a boyfriend and spend every breaktime, when they should have been smoking, discussing the ins and outs of the poor chap's physiognomy and general demeanour in the bedroom.Not that it ever WAS a bedroom, as these antics were mostly conducted in curious nooks and crannies known only to teenagers with no access to a nice king-size. You will observe that I have no objection to the double,or even multiple, entendre. Saucy or ribald allusion is fine, in my book.What I find difficult is putting a face to the graphic images conjured by up in such HD detail by, for instance, Sally Bercow and Jane Fonda.  And it's not British. We have a fine tradition of sexual embarrassment, with oodles of shame, furtiveness, and public reticence. This is part of our cultural heritage,and has resulted in great works of art. Without it, "Round The Horne" could never have existed.
Here, if a person finds a person alluring,and it is reciprocated; it is the form for them to ignore one another completely for several months, until one evening when enough drink has been taken for some sort of dim rapprochement to be   reached. We don't "date". We stumble into each other a few times and then buy a house. It is entirely possible to have a wild and passionate conjugation lasting several decades without the word "relationship" ever being mentioned. We are a strange sad inhibited people, and we like it that way.  A great deal is down to the weather, of course. I always puzzle at the hardiness of "doggers"; these folk who meet in rain-lashed carparks to engage in acts of public congress. Although to be fair ,they might view car boot sales in a similiar fashion. I wonder if anyone ever gets these two functions mixed up, I do hope so.
Until recently, our perfectly vile climate has contributed to sedate behaviour. However, since the internet, all sorts of publicity for one's sexual peccadiloes is now possible, and one can be an exhibitionist without ever leaving the house.
But as I insist to the G.B; "They are called Private Parts for a reason".I explain to him with tender solicitude that whatever one might think about why humans were given genitals, the reason was not, surely, so that they could evolve to the stage of being able take pictures of them on a smartphone and circulate these images to their Facebook friends. I feel for his generation of boys, I really do. I find the girls of his age daunting, and I used to teach a thing called "Health and Hygiene" to Angry Boys in Tottenham. It is all part of the passion for everything to be shared and public. A darling friend of mine popped round the other Sunday evening.She had passed, she reported, a couple copulating in a doorway in Duke St. It was broad-ish daylight. What struck her was that they were in front of a sign that said "No Smoking In This Doorway", and that the girl was still holding a large pink balloon on a ribbon.
Oh well. At least they weren't writing in to the "Echo" about it.
I know I am peculiar. I think "Brief Encounter" is the sexiest film there is,and quite often dress people with my eyes. But there must be a few of us out there who prefer smut, innuendo, repression  and inhibitions to cheerless P.E? Let's all meet in the Central Library Reading Room in natty tailoring, and ignore each other.

Trans-Europe Expresso, Please.

I worked in a factory once. It was called "Standard Brands", and  my bit made Womble Jellies and Bird's Custard.I think I was drawn to it by the obvious glamour, but also the need to earn some money to get into trouble with in Europe. An Interrail card was £50, and gave you a month's travel on the railways and ferries of places that my Dad had toured in his youth. The difference was that he was armed and in uniform at the time. I was wearing hair, mostly,unsuitable shoes, and spoke not a word of any language. I was also with the three other girls whom Queen Mary High School had identified as most likely candidates for early damnation. Our parents thought we were in Wales. We thought we would break it to them gently with a  fait accompli postcard from Bruges, and build from there. We had inadequate funds, clothing, and common sense.
None of us had ever seen live spaghetti. Our parents ranged in attitude from "Abroad is bloody, and foreigners are foul" to "Oh, I remember such-and-such a place; I think we blew it up".Our experience with the opposite sex was limited. A student lodger of a neighbour had tried to kiss me in a coat rack on New Year's Eve 1972. He had a beard, and I bit him.  Aggrieved, he told my mother, who laughed and said "I don't blame her" The other three were slightly more sophisticated, but not much. So,idiotically ill-prepared and lousy with virginity, we set off for the Grand Tour.The night before departure, we all stayed , I think people said "crashed" then, in the "pad" of some real  Liverpool hippies now living in London. They were much older than us, and despite their countercultural nonchalance, were still rather parental, and expressed doubts about our ability to cope.  We recieved a variety of bewildering advice, ranging from the practical ( "sew your money into your bra"), to the stomach-churning "So, man, when you get crabs, right, this is what you do...."
I privately resolved to sew myself firmly into all my clothes. I could be picked out in September, ready for Fresher's Week in Leeds.Where oddly, much of the same advice was offered by second-year students.
So off we went, and had a jolly nice time, except for a couple of attempts on our lives  (Rome-Florence) and the occasional amateur rapist (France, Italy, The Low Countries). I think that we were so transparently daft that nice people took pity on us. We were adopted by two Venetian gift-shop owners, having turned up in Venice with about fifty lire and some sweets. I think they might have been a tad effeminate, on reflection.Anyway, they took us all over Venice, introduced us to their families,and we all went for a canal-side meal,after which they let us stay in their apartment while they went off home with their Mums. We dropped the keys off in the gift shop next day, too embarrassed to admit that we had been so spooked by trying to sleep in a subterranean basement with no windows and strange lapping sounds, that we had locked up and left to sleep in a pile of rucksacks in the square. We had so much long hair between us that we must have looked like a furball. It was fortunate that none of us had seen "Don't Look Now".
For some mad reason, we had previously been staying with a clutch of Dutch/Liverpudlian hippies who lived in an only-slightly adapted workhouse in a town called Hoorn. Hoorn was like Skelmersdale, but without the urgent pace and throbbing nightlife. We slept on a mattress in the attic. Well, the others slept, I was on high alert for spiders all night. One descended from this to the kitchen via a precarious twisted ladder arrangement, but before even gaining ground, one was handed a brimming pipe of home-made drugs.
I held out for a roll-up made from Dutch pipe tobacco, which was so strong that I could feel my little pink lungs blackening instantly. I have never been fond of drugs. I don't recommend them for those with over-active imaginations and poor sight. So during the 70's, when they were compulsory, I was often the only non-stoned person for several miles. This was dreary, as  I always ended up with everyone's keys, and had to talk to policemen more than was desirable. The sweet Dutch scousers,it seemed, only had one record.It was "Dark Side Of The Moon". It played loudly around the clock for the entire time we were there. I can never hear it now without recalling the Hoorn experience, and congratulating myself for being the one who said "Let's go to Italy now, they might have a different record".
Which was how we ended up in one of Mussolini's old villas, listening to "Zucchero".
Of which more later. But now I must go and do Wednesday's decadent thing. |Honestly, the pressure..

Fat Tuesday

Tuesday heralds the beginning of a period of decadence, as I promised myself on Monday.What do decadents have for breakfast, apart from other decadents, obviously?  A brief perusal of my Mother's kitchen reveals porridge and cornflakes. Hmm. You wouldn't catch Caligula starting a busy day's buggery and vice on Oat-So-Simple. My usual breakfast is tea so strong that you could trot a mouse on it, followed by a Camel Light, and rounded off nicely by the sort of coffee that they force between the teeth of people who have had a bad shock. I worked for a very short time in Florence, where the chic Italians met their friends  before work at 8am. They would swing their tanned legs off their fashionable Vespas and enter a dark bar, where they would breakfast on double expresso and a small Grappa, smoking furiously the while. Their insides may have been foully unhealthy, but their outsides looked great. Of course, you need the weather and the style. Huddling round a dripping awning with a damp cup of Nescafe , prior to getting on a bus smelling of dead dog, to moan with your dumpy pallid comrades about your depressing job in a call centre doesn't add up to La Dolce Vita.
Since becoming officially self-employed and consequently poor, I have pondered the work thing, a huge obstacle in the path of the budding sybarite. To have money is necessary; luxury costs. But luxuriating is a full-time occupation.  When I first encountered Jobcentre Plus, we were understandably wary of each other. I was suspicious of people who made their living from understanding things written by the scribes of the Department For Stealth and Total Obscurity, as we excessively educated dole-ites in the 80's knew it. Everyone I knew in the Boys From The Black Stuff era was starting their own creative business on a £40-a-week allowance. Perversely, innumerable artists, musicians and stand-up comedians stayed alive and working in this fashion. I am not at all sure that the Thatcher Government had intended this to occur, but occur it did.
However, these are different times. When I turned up in Williamson Square, a nightmare in Nicole Farhi, too old, too qualified, and too "without own van" for anything they had to offer, I expected snottiness. The staff were,on the whole, charming. They were also ruefully aware that their job was impossible, and that my position was untenable. A dear friend of mine had a very different experience in another part of the Jobseekers Forest.When confessing to a degree in Dance, she was ridiculed loudly in front of an office full of people, and roundly ( "DANCE! DANCE! what do you do for a degree in DANCE!?) disbelieved. We planned a return to the Jobcentre premises with a retaliatory vanload of interpretive modern dancers, who would act out what they thought of this treatment to music by Einsturzende Neuebauten. But we did not own own van.
During this period, it was suggested to me that I apply for a vacancy as a lecturer in Horse Medicine in Knowsley, despite an egregious lack of vetinarary experience and a natural tendency to over-prescribe.  I thought
I might retrain, and enquired about computery things. I was offered a basic English course, and something to improve my confidence.No, not a voucher for a lovely lipstick, but some time spent with a lady who would ask me to think of ten positive things about myself, and then show me how to breathe. I have been breathing mostly unaided now for quite some time, and I can think lots of divinely satisfying things about myself without assistance. Look here, I am a self-obsessed egomaniac ..sorry..self-motivated target-driven individual who works as well alone as in a team...I have verve, brio, and can do that funny clicky thing with my toes after two or so brandies..

None of it was any good. So now I think I shall have to apply for funding. I could cite a series of disadvantages; acute facetiousness, discalculia, and dyspraxia being but two. I could also make a good case for being a Work of Public (House) Art. Soon, I shall be old enough to be Listed. I will be open to the public all the year round, except for Tuesdays, which will be my day for being renovated, and Bank Holidays. I will also be a Tax Loss. So don't miss this unique opportunity to invest in one of Liverpool's historic old wrecks, preserve her for the nation.Your children will thank you. Well, they probably won't, but that's kids, innit?

The Last Wasp Of Summer

Boot sales bring out some intriguing aspects of human behaviour. I am a hoary old veteran of car boot sales, despite never having owned a car for longer than two weeks. That car was custard yellow; like the vehicle belonging to the Banana Splits. A friend gave it to me, out of the goodness of her heart, and the desire, I think, to see what I did with it. I was living in a delightfully dull leafy suburb at the time. Nothing happened in my street, ever. If the milkman arrived late, people talked about it for weeks. So the arrival of Noddy's Car outside my house caused comment. I had been having driving lessons again; reasoning that as twenty years had passed since the last time I tried, most of Liverpool's driving instructors would have had time to forget me. And thus I found Lovely Brian, father to seven male children. This meant that he had nerves of steel and an understandable desire to stay in his car giving driving lessons to mad people. After weeks had passed, money changed hands, and Brian had started on Prozac, he told me that it might be better if I got an old banger and played going "brum brum" in it, thus  perhaps discovering that the accelerater was not the brake and vice versa, in a safer environment. And far from him. Hence the Noddy Car. When the Giant Boy was three, he had promised me a "lellow car", and also vouchsafed to drive me around in it. Even as a toddler, he had noticed that his co-ordination was better than mine,and he would have been the safer driver by far. Let's face it , my mother's blind cat would have made a better driver than I was. So the neighbours, who had previously been diverted  that day by the sight (and sound) of a bellowing Frenchman in a tree waving a chainsaw about , now had to deal with the spectacle of a rusting buttercup-coloured vehicle being pointlessly revved up by an anxious-looking redhead in clearly inadequate spectacles.

After a month or so, both Brian and the car had broken down. It was towed away, and we waved it goodbye. The Giant Tod gazed up at me with huge grey eyes and said "Don't try and drive any more Mummy, it makes you sad". It was a scene that would have had C. Dickens sobbing into his whiskers.

So that is why I do not have a car boot.But nevertheless, I turn up in strange school car parks and benighted bits of wasteland at daft o'clock, with bursting  carrier bags trailing shoes and machines for making bubbles,old crime novels,items of school uniform grown out of in days by the G.B, redundant phone chargers, frankincense,  and cheap tin trays.  Taxidrivers curse me, as they are inveigled into helping me dismantle clothes rails ,and  carrying sodden cardboard boxes shedding damp paperbacks up and down stairs. Sometimes, my angelic friends help me. This happened yesterday. Having moved flats on Friday, I somehow felt that my life was insufficiently difficult, and so had elected to do a boot sale at 6am on Sunday morning. The Giant Boy assisted me, refraining from very much swearing, and uncomplainingly going back to the house when it was discovered that we had forgotten the vital clothes rail, without which no sale is a possibility. The rail was new, and of an Escher-like complexity. When he brought it back (in the third mini-cab of the day , which had already eaten  up any possible profit), we found that the pack of 30 tiny screws which GB had sensibly taped to the box that the rail came in, had gone. Oh dear. So we hung clothes from bits of pole, dangled them from dripping hedges (yes, of course it had been raining), and draped them on the larger Wolverine and Batman figures. Until a charming woman next to me offered to share her rail with us,and we set about collapsing it for her. Now, I have a great many pairs of new shoes. Most were bought to sell on E-Bay (before they banned me for life,or possibly longer..other story),to ladies with large feet. Or gentlemen who dressed as ladies for personal or professional reasons. Particularly successful were my sales to Germany, where feet are broad and shoes cost a fortune.

I am always interested in shopping behaviour.Boot sales are a rich loamy source of peculiar antics in this regard. Yesterday, for some reason, we had three punters buying ladies shoes. They were all gentlemen, all black, and all drawn to very high-heeled trotters. One of them asked me if he could swop a beige pair he had just bought from me, for a similar style in black."Yes, of course" I said, adding helpfully; "but they are different sizes"." Size doesn't matter."he replied, effecting the swop. We were musing on this. "Perhaps.."suggested my friend "he is buying them for his girlfriend?" "And perhaps" added G.B "she has adjustable feet?"

My pal was selling a stunt kite, and bongo drums. An irresistable combination, I would have thought. She had a nice time chatting to our next-stall-neighbour, and as ever in Liverpool, we all discovered that we had people in common. Several of whom turned up later in the day, to poke about in the books and old music boxes, and to give their children the opportunity to purchase properly lethal toys. Burlesque performers often pop along to snap up unconsidered peacock feathers, sequinned garments and retro underclothes. The "Food and Drink Festival" was happening in Sefton Park at the same time, but most of the people I know are too busy sleeping off the latter to be interested in the former. It was fun to see at a distance, foodies grazing peacefully , blissfully wandering about buying organic sausages ( I thought all sausages were made out of organs but anyway...) and hand-crafted pies. And the wasps had a ball. This was their last opportunity to sting people who had sunburn, and hide themselves in lemon curd,waiting gleefully to cause anaphylactic shock in the unwary scoffer of alfresco tarts. They know that the Grim Reaper is coming round in a bit,and want to have their last hurrazzzz..

In a similiar spirit, I have decided to devote my remaining ambulant years to the pursuit of hedonism,on a scale only previously witnessed by close watchers of the Empress Messalina. I shall start , \I think, on Tuesday. No enterprise of decadence should ever commence on Monday.