UnWhelkhome

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

Down In The Gamestation At Midnight

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

Don't Quote Me

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

Dog Days

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

Ashes To Ashtray

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

Out Of Africa..Into The Snug

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

P's. See also Q's.

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

Hitler's Tits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kin | Linking Liverpool and Merseyside's Creative People

Kin Linking Liverpool and Merseyside's Creative People

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Baking Pans For Nigella

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

Van Fare For the Common Man

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

Under My Skin

Today, and every day for two weeks,we will mostly be having builders. They are remodelling my Mother's bathroom, putting in a new shower that she can actually get into, fitting rails and a new floor,and generally doing buildery things. There are two of them, supposedly.  Bob the Builder is cheerful and polite. He has also buggered off on holiday. We are left with Brian the |Builder,who isn't exactly rude, but likes his tea on time. He has complained of my slowness, and I am retaliating (and amusing myself)by giving him a daily more inappropriate mug. He has already had the Cadbury's Caramel Sexy Rabbit, and if he's not a bit more pleasant he will get Barbie and then Princess Diana,who has a tiny chip on her rim..He also possesses a woeful countenance, like Eeyore with a hangover and several final demands. I am in charge of tea and supplies, and stopping the Dog from attaching itself to the front of his manly trousers. It goes cross-eyed with delight when it encounters trousers. I think,in fact, it wants to spend the rest of its (hopefully short) life glued to people's bottoms.I find this an unattractive trait,and came across it a great deal in Italy.Although their dogs didn't get a look in,as the male population of Italy were already in place. My Mother had her bottom assaulted when she was on the Spanish Steps in Rome. She was in her sixties at the time, and had back problems which forced her to wear a steel corset. So it amused her no end to see her would-be pincher retiring hurt and puzzled, wondering , I suppose,if he had just encountered Robo-Bum.
I can't really get my head round bottoms. They are useful enough, I grant you, but I cannot imagine wanting to do very much of anything with anyone else's. Buggery baffles me, and a smacked bottom is for when you have used your crayons on the wallpaper.Mind you, they crop up on television endlessly these days. Scarcely an evening goes by without the sight of bare buttocks a-bobbing and a-throbbing on our screens. And that's just "Flog It". Perhaps my dear Mother's television is tuned to channels not received elsewhere, but I doubt she would tick the box for the Arse Channel.
So we move, seamlessly, to Builder's Bottom;that strange display of moonish cheek that we see so frequently. It is not confined, alas ,to builders;it would be a simple enough matter to abjure building sites. But, (and it's a big butt), an awful lot of teenage boys have trousers with no visible means of support. They desperately want us to see their undercrackers, and I don't know why. Young girls have taken to going out without their skirts on. I know I am turning into an absurd Lady Bracknell-like figure, but  the other day I was standing on an escalator behind a behind that was seemingly just wearing tights and a short jacket. Panto season,oh well. As usual I am horrifically elitist about this. It isn't as bad if the bottom is perky and in a good mood. However,it so often is a grumpy, overspilling thing,like a badly stuffed leather pouffe. Still,it must be increasingly difficult to upset people with one's clothing. WE had it easy;and could bring lorries (and their drivers) to a shuddering halt by just walking along in our relatively modest miniskirts. Now, no-one so much as glances as girls go by clad only in body paint and earrings.
As a child; I was once possessed by the idea that every time you smiled, you were revealing a bit of your skeleton to someone. That may well be the next Big Thing. Like the Pompidou Centre, we shall all have to wear our insides on the outside, showing off the  superior state of our organs. I will have to embrace the Burkha, given the things I have done to my body in the past. My lungs alone will resemble a Victorian chimney, and my liver will be a tiny wizened coal.
Still, as they say, beauty is only skin-deep,although I am not sure how much further one would want it. Let the last word on this be from Mr Cole Porter's "The Physician", sung most notably by the stellar Miss Gertrude Lawrence, an extract from which I reproduce below.

" Once I loved such a shattering physician,
Quite the best-looking doctor in the state.
He looked after my physical condition,
And his bedside manner was great.
When I'd gaze up and see him there above me,
Looking less like a doctor than a Turk,
I was tempted to whisper, "Do you love me,
Or do you merely love your work?"

Refrain 1

He said my bronchial tubes were entrancing,
My epiglottis filled him with glee,
He simply loved my larynx
And went wild about my pharynx,
But he never said he loved me.
He said my epidermis was darling,
And found my blood as blue as could be,
We went through wild ecstatics,
When I showed him my lymphatics,
But he never said he loved me.
And though, no doubt,
It was not very smart of me,
I kept on a-wracking my soul
To figure out
Why he loved ev'ry part of me,
And yet not me as a whole.
With my oesophagus he was ravished,
Enthusiastic to a degree,
He said 'twas just enormous,
My appendix vermiformis,
But he never said he loved me."

When A Body Meets A Body

My Dad , as a small boy, found a dead body under a hedge in our local park. He ran to the police station and brought back a faintly disbelieving copper, tugging him by the hand to the site of the pallid,buzzing corpse. Had it been a film, the body would have disappeared,of course.But it hadn't,and my Dad was given ten shillings and no counselling. It did have an effect on him,though. He searched high and low for another one for the next ten years.
Anyone who has had,or has been,a child will know that they are not averse to grue. My favourite book,aged eight, was "Fox's Book Of Martyrs". The illustrations were enough to make most adults queasy,but I was fascinated. It has a Facebook page now.
 Imaginative and morbid to a fault,it was not long before I found medical textbooks equally engrossing. I had to wait a bit before the magazine series "Man, Myth and Magic" emerged in 1970. Concerning itself entirely with the occult,it was remarkably well-written and researched,with an editorial board of lofty academics. The art director was Brian Innes, ex-percussionist of The Temperance Seven. However, everyone I knew collected all 112 issues for the utterly peculiar selection of freaky illustrations, reproductions of eerie artworks, and photographs of the phenomenally odd things that human beings get up to when throwing themselves wholeheartedly into drivel-worship.
My interest in the macabre was accidentally encouraged by my father;who brought unsuitable books into the house,and hid them,ineffectually, under his bed. 
In the winter I had tonsillitis more or less constantly, and if I wasn't at school, I would wait for the car to cough and jerk its way  to Kirkby. Once my Dad was safely on his way to terrorise the typing pool, I would flatten myself under his bed and gleefully read everything I wasn't meant to. I was often reduced to enquiring subtly as to his next scheduled library visit;having killed several compendia of "Stories Of Horror and the Supernatural", and lots of hardcore Detective Fiction,lying in the dust kittens on the bedroom carpet.  He also used to get copies of "Argosy", a long-defunct magazine collection of short stories, accounts of mysterious true-life happenings, and anecdotes, snippets of amusing sayings and sage quotations by all manner of writers, ranging from Lord Dunsany to Ray Bradbury.They were also deemed unsuitable,and were therefore catnip. So were brawny American novels, by people like William Styron and John O'Hara. I found these dull,and bewildering. The women in them were always hanging around in slips with pointy bras,always drinking scotch, committing steamy adultery;  sometimes declaring that they were utterly sick of everything and driving cars off bridges, or playing bridge, all activities equally unappealing to me. The men  sounded comprehensively vile,but wore lovely clothes. There was often a character who had longer hair and was nice to girls.He was often called a "Faggot" by the nasty men, and kept getting beaten up in " Men's Rooms". I promised myself I would seek out a few of those chaps,when I got older, as respite from regularly having my stockings ripped,nipples assaulted , and sobbing on streetcars en route to an illegal abortion.
Phew! I didn't want to grow breasts if this was what happened to you with them.

My Mother cared nothing for fiction, and pronounced most novels "silly". She read autobiographies and histories, mostly, with odd lapses into Hugh Walpole and Dickens. Her books didn't attract me in the same way as did my Father's banned collection. Still, they were books,and had to be read. I sometimes think the best way to get children to read is to surround them with books and then tell them they can't have so much as a peep.
The GB won't read. He thinks that books are Gay And For Girls. The physical act of writing seems to cause him acute discomfort. When forced into it, he writhes and reels and twists his enormous limbs, sliding down chair seats and  melting into the carpet,such is his agony of boredom. And yet, he will happily digest great chunks of technical information from a screen, and will actually read instructions on a box, which is more than I've ever done.
I told him about his Grandfather's long-ago find in the park, though. I thought it was rather a good story. He pondered it for a few minutes, and then asked me how much you would get now. I truthfully said that I imagined that you wouldn't get anything, apart from a visit from a bossy therapist, possibly. I don't want him "discovering" dead bodies all over the place in the hope of a fee. That's how Burke and Hare started,if you ask me.

Hit Me Baby One More Time

I did not like school. I know this isn't unusual, in fact, people who did  are like people who enjoyed the last War..probably for similiar reasons. I don't like cameraderie, loathe shouting, mass singing,running, heavy use of weaponry, and  cannot abide a uniform. Therefore, school was a bit of a bore; "The noise, my dear, and the PEOPLE" as Ernest Thesiger was said to have remarked of his experiences in the First World War. I went to school pre-deod, too, so imagine the dreadfulness. It was relatively civilized, up until age 11, when I went to a perfectly frightful establishment called Sherwood's Lane Secondary Modern" The 11-plus passers were put into  a "Selective Stream", so we could be more easily identified and beaten up. Oiks of both sexes concealed themselves in the unspeakable lavatories, and lurked,ever-ready with a meaty fist and an unprintably foul greeting, in corridors and behind walls. Being in possession of red hair, glasses, and an arcane vocabulary made me a target-rich environment, and I was trounced daily.The Headmistress, a Miss Alcock (I know,I know...) refused to admit that any bullying existed in her school. She  kept up this pig-headed pretence, even when the severed heads of spectacled children bobbed past her offices,mounted on pikes.
Eventually, this "Lord Of The Flies" atmosphere began to tell on my youthful sensibilities, and I proudly clocked up a fully-fledged"nervous breakdown" before I had so much as a pubic hair. They gave me Valium. It relaxes the muscles,without, in my case, having much of a soothing effect. This just made me less able to run away. I also felt that it would have been nice had some attempt been made to reduce the savagery of the other children (many of whom,at 16, had moustaches and medals for boxing,and as for the boys...),rather than to tranquillize the victim into not minding quite so much about being punched in the chest and face several times each day. Plus, the uniform was disgusting, dark green,with an over-reliance on pleats, and a BERET. That thing was like a boomerang, I simply could not get shut of it..during my thumping sessions, I would pretend that it was my dearest possession."Oh please,  Rough Thug, don't throw my darling beret on the railway line, I beseech you". So they wouldn't; they would stamp on my specs again instead. Thick, you see. Had they read any Beatrix Potter, or Brer Rabbit, they would have grasped my literary illusion straight away.
My school wasn't really like Malory Towers, or The Chalet School, or any of the middle-class, wholesome yet mischief-riddled establishments that my reading had led me to expect.  It was more "Papillon" mixed with "Marat-Sade". My mother had interpreted the school uniform literally, too. What we were meant to wear in the summer was this: " A dress  in three-inch square check  cotton, yellow & white or pink & white cotton.Cap sleeves and hem to be bound in bias binding,calf-length skirt with six box pleats". So my Mother's dressmaker ran up a couple of these horrors. I looked like a middle-aged milkmaid from a family in Arkansaw who only married their cousins.All the other girls wore tiny gingham mini dresses with little puffed sleeves, in nylon fabrics.And American Tan tights,and kitten heels. And white lipstick.
I wore Clarks "GoGirls",massive box-shaped leather foot-coffins. And knee-length white socks. My hair had been waist-length, shiny, and auburn. After two terms of bad treatment,I had chunks of it missing, chewing gum embedded in it, and cigarette burns on my scalp.So it was cut and permed. Andre Bernard did this.Yes, I am prepared to name names.My school photograph shows the face of a cynical thirty-five year old Italian prostitute, with catseye spectacles. And a Harpo Mark coiffure.
Finally, after my Mother sat in the in tray of the local councillor for two years, and I had developed every disorder apart from Tourette's, (which would have made me fit in much better, actually), I got out.I was put at the dim end of a Girl's Grammar School,and marked "Not expected to thrive". However, apart from having to wear my old school uniform for a term because we couldn't afford a new one, I was considerably happier, and got on with coming top in everything except Maths and Housecraft, met like-minded girls, and became annoying, giggly, and "far too lippy". My school reports identified me as being "Indolent, sarcastic, and a show-off". My Mother was delighted, I was normal at last, at least for our family.

The Art of Noise

I am teaching English to a beauteous Russian girl . There are many thrills and spills. Yesterday I had to break it to her that "random" means to have no specific object or purpose, not "Some bloke I met in a pub" or "An adjective used to describe a  faintly surprising incident". When explaining grammar to her, I often find myself at a loss to make any strong case for logic.She has become slightly more resigned to this of late, and sighs "Crazy language..." when I say that these are the cases in which the definite article is employed before a noun,except when it isn't. It was often quite dreadful with the Frenchman. Of a temperament inclined to argue with his own fingernails, there was many a heated debate.Adjectives, then crockery, were thrown. I think it is unwise generally to argue with someone about (and in) a language which they have learned, and you have not. You will just be getting into your stride, when they will stop you, with an enquiry about participles. Or opine that it is incorrect to say "I will swing for you" ,as this implies a completed action in the future tense.The present was always tense chez nous, and the future clearly imperfect.
My GB can be pedantic in two languages, but also speaks Teenglish now. A clear-voiced darling of the English Speaking Examiners when a child; he has now adopted the novocaine-numbed loose-lipped mumble of his peer group. I have uncannily good earsight. As the bat in other respects; practically blind, nocturnal and with a habit of getting into people's hair, I have developed compensatory high-end hearing. I would like to swop this for a pair of functioning eyes, because all it does is turn me into a bore who is always finding the volume too loud. I cannot tolerate racket. Bellowing televisions and car stereos make me feel quite violent. When I was a CrouchEnder, I bought a delightful flat. The vendor had shown me around twice, and all seemed tranquil.I bought it. On the first evening, I realised, drooping exhaustedly over packing cases, that what I had imagined to be a full-fledged Carnival and clog-dancing festival in the street was actually my upstairs neighbour. She had wooden floors, a penchant for heels, and a liking for the sort of music that you hear playing from cars full of young men trying to look like Mr Fifty Pee. She also had a teenage daughter, a loud and lumpy girl given to challenging her mother's authority. I know all teenage girls do this, but not many of them hurl wardrobes across rooms to emphasise their point. Sensing that I had arrived in a bit of a 'mare, I went to see The Housing, as the lady concerned was a council tenant. The vole-headed man with specs sighed when he typed the address in, and produced a large,over-stuffed folder. "Ah" he said, "There's a bit of a history with this lady".There was. It was roughly the size of the volumes that Churchill produced so assidously, between war and water-colouring.
Fortunately I was not a homebody,and spent a great deal of time out. But every now and again I weakened and felt like a bit of sleep,or something pansy like that. It stopped, eventually, as a result of some serious diplomatic work and United Nations intervention. But I have never forgotten the sinking feeling brought about by the sudden understanding that I had bought a flat which featured hot and cold running clogs, and a general level of noise described by a visiting friend as sounding like "a rhinocerous in a washing machine". Just when things had quietened down a little, I went mad and produced a baby. It was a boy baby, given to banging things and wielding hammers almost from the moment of ejection, but I didn't mind as much. I finally developed the ability to sleep through bawling,yelling,and Iron Maiden,which has stood me in good stead on many an occasion. Sometimes I might have a drink or ten, and then my old hypersensitivity to noise returns. You know,a morning when, as P.G Wodehouse describes it, " a cat stamped into the room".Although for a really effective deterrent to boozing, let me recommend having a small child who clambers up on Bed of Pain and prises your throbbing eyelids open with insistent fingers,saying"Mummy, are you IN THERE?"

Skilled Scrubber Wanted No Timewasters

Have you got a "Skillset"? I might have one somewhere but I may have sat on it and broken it..I wasn't allowed a chemistry set, for reasons obvious to those of you familiar with my proneness to accidents. I did have a dressing table set, in blue plastic.In fact, I had several,over the years. My Dad kept buying them for me at Christmas. There was a plastic comb which left teeth in your scalp,a brush with a set of plastic bristles that invariably became embedded in your hair when it separated from its moorings, and a mirror with a long handle,and some floral doings on the back. The whole thing would be dead by January,but never mind,because my birthday was in April and he would go straight out and buy me another one. This went on until I was 17,when he discovered that the local chemists sold  Max Factor Perfume Gift Sets. Or in fact, set. He only bought one type, which was called "Electrique",in a high-voltage shade of blue . The perfume bottle was firmly gripped by a small,fuzzy black cat,which wore a diamante collar and a facial expression reminiscent of the late Zsa Zsa Gabor trying to remember how many husbands she had had. I had racked up about seven of these by the time he died, and I never saw one ever again. I think Max Factor may have got wind of the fact that their only market for these vile things had now ceased to be, and gave up making them. Other relatives were keen on giving me things in sets, too. Underwear sets loomed over my teenage years. They concentrated firmly on the below-the-waist area, as indeed did I. There would be a "waist slip", always completely square in shape,with accompanying panties, both trimmed in nylon lace of the scratchy and hard sort. Pastels held sway.
Then bra slips came along, they were the mod thing for the kooky teen. In nerve-shattering "Psychedelic" prints and fabrics so synthetic that when you took them off they stuck to your hair with static and lit up your bedroom. I think a number of UFO sightings reported in the 1960's were attributable to girls taking their slips off. So.....sets. Bad News, I think you will agree. And now we have to have our skills presented in them, according to the blatherings of some recruitment company that sends me mad e-mails from time to time. I have a few skills, I think. I can make dolls out of pegs, and blow smoke rings. I can ferret out unintended double-entendre , and once won a prize from the Liverpool Echo for my colouring-in. It was a colouring-in book,and I swear I will finish it one day.
I can remove stains from practically anything. But then I get stains on practically everything too.  I tell you,it is very fortunate that the human skin comes in wipeable finish. Imagine how we would look now, with all the smears and spots collected in the course of an average day, if they didn't,usually, come off. Lots of my young friends have tattoos. They call it "body art" now,and it is wildly elaborate and expensive. I don't think I want one, I can't keep to the same hair colour for two weeks. Permanence upsets me, I reserve the right to be inconsistent and whimsical. One of the many reasons why I can't drive, I think, neither being qualities required in,say, a 747 pilot. Sometimes you just want stolid attention to detail and procedure. Not in my "Skillset", I regret to say. But if you want someone to get a strange mark off your cockpit, I'm your gal.

Vile Biddies

 I adore fancy dress and indeed, sometimes people think I am wearing it when I'm not. Dressing up is wonderful..why let children have the monopoly? They don't need the escapism, anyway,their lives are a riot of pleasure and fantasy as it is.It is we adults,tragically welded to the rusty hamster wheel of bills, mortgage calculations, changing our power suppliers,and monitoring our chloresterol, who require an imaginative mini-break. Things are  currently a wee bit cheerless, as you will agree. However, this is nothing new in the great spincycle of the bagwash we call life. In the 1920's and 1930's, times were tough,and Britain responded in characteristic fashion by dressing up as babies and Policemen and Marie Antoinette,gallantly amusing themselves despite what we are now obliged to call the "Gathering Clouds Of War" hurtling over the horizon. Evelyn Waugh describes the febrile atmosphere of those years in his superlative "Vile Bodies"  ‘Oh Nina,  what a lot of parties!" exclaims the anti-hero, Adam, and the narrator continues;
‘Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris – all that succession and repetition of massed humanity … Those vile bodies "
I thrust my vile body into a selection of outrageous costumes in the name of fancy dress, over the years. I always wanted to be decorative and semi-clad, never seeing the point of dressing as a bee or a pizza. I remember a FD party in Manchester many years ago. I went with my friend Barb,who could drive and had a car and everything. So , freed from the restrictions imposed by public transport,I  went as Cleopatra,complete with elaborate black wig and brown body paint. I found an old nylon nighty of my Mum's, which was white,pleated, and almost totally transparent. I wore gold snake bangles and sandals and eyeliner, and that was about that.
Barbara was dressed as a bat.
We drove off happily into the night, and if any passing lorry drivers glanced down and were perturbed by the sight of a large bat driving along with the Serpent Of The Nile sitting in the passenger seat swigging vodka straight from the bottle,they did not show it. We got to the party, and swaggered up the steps, ready to join the costumed throng. Except that there wasn't one . Everyone else had chickened out of fancy dress entirely.
After the initial awkwardness, we got into the swing. I have a strong recollection of Barb The Bat leaning on a mantlepiece,one wing dangling, a claw-gloved hand clutching her pint. I left body paint smeared over every surface and woke up on a sofa wearing someone's brother's trousers.

My brother always went to F.D. parties in the same costume, a white boiler suit on back-to-front,a mask on the back of his head, and a baseball cap the wrong way round. If he had encountered our  Manchester situation, he would have been fine with  just minor adjustments. He and several friends once got together in identical white boiler suits with large white uninflated balloons worn as caps,and went in a group as Sperm. History does not relate whether  or not they arrived too early,or were ejected..
I used to run a Burlesque event, back in 2006,at the Royal Court.It was called "Retrosexual", and was very fine indeed.One of the best features of this charming Bacchanal was the propensity of the punters to dress up creatively whilst the acts undressed with equal imagination. A grotto for grown-ups, it was an opportunity for  Edwardian Toffs, Gaiety Girls,Flappers, Dollymops, Queens and Fairy Princesses to rub shoulders and several other important little places, in a lush Art Deco  theatre bar. Unlike other events, the impromptu cabaret in the interval was as decorative and entertaining as anything on stage.It felt intimate,and people do love an intimate feel, I find.
Halloween will soon be upon us, and you might think it the perfect time to rush into Lili Bizarre for some fangs and a broomstick.But I don't care for mass rallies of FD, and too many folk make themselves hideous in rubbery masks and wobbly warts. There is always the disconcerting possibility in certain quarters,too,that their faces are the ones with which they were born. If someone has to say "Ok,I give up,what are you?", you have not succeeded.The same applies if you were just dancing.
So I shall continue to bide my time for the right party to come along,and pretend that is the reason I cannot resist buying preposterous wigs. If you are stuck,and the hire shops cannot help, it may be  that I can provide a mermaid costume at short notice. Always happy to contribute to the sum of harmless human lunacy.But no comedy costumes,I'm afraid. If you want to dress up as Snoopy, you are barking up the wrong woman.

Books Do Furnish A Room

I have too many books,which as we know,spoil the brothel,or am I thinking of something else? At my zenith when I had a big house, every surface not decked with tarty clothing was crammed with books. And now I am in a very small flat. I don't like parting with books. It seems rude,when someone has gone to all the trouble of writing one, to throw it out. I used to choose to simply ignore the books I didn't care for or would never read. But my bookcases thereby became dangerous,swaying edifices likely to crush the unwary.I have not forgotten what happened to Leonard Bast in "Howard's End". The poor beast was being socially mobile and bettering himself like crazy through reading, when WHAM! a huge symbolic bookcase flattened him.
So many of my books now live in Bootle,with "Storage King". I can visit them if necessary,I have keys.Oh dear,where are those keys? I am very bad indeed with keys, and consequently the little imps who prey on humanity from the Netherworld have arranged it so that I always have to have a key ring that resembles one held by St Peter in an allegorical painting. I lose them,of course, everyone does that, but I also break,fold,spindle and mutilate them. They bend in my nerveless fingers, and snap off in locks. I have new ones cut and when I try them they have shapeshifted in my handbag overnight. When I was a teacher,I had to give them over to one of my students, in order to gain egress to the classroom,the stock cupboard, the photocopier, the gin drawer..or we would all have been standing outside till nightfall. They were very sweet about it,and also knew that I left things all over the place."Now Miss, have you got the register and your handbag and your fags?" They thought I was a bit dotty but harmless.
I didn't ever leave the Giant Baby on the bus,even though everyone I knew put bets on this,and not in my favour. Well,it takes you a while to get used to having one. A friend of mine did actually do this. She noticed almost at once.
Mine used to sit facing me on public transport,until I realised that the reason he had been so pacific was that he had been working away on opening all the buttons of my shirt. I once flashed the W9 with a bra that I would not have chosen to display. He sat firmly facing outwards from then on.
So,the book problem. I may have to cull the collection further,if only to free up a few spaces in which to lose keys. There really is no reason for a grown-up woman to own a copy of "Shadow, The Sheepdog". But you never know when you might have a really bad day and need to read a Monica Dickens for the umpteenth time. And you need P.G Wodehouse for warding off the blues. And M.R James for when life is insufficiently creepy and there's a high wind in the eaves.
I'm not an intellectual, so I don't have to keep the impressive ones if I don't happen to like them. I don't believe in self-help tomes,because I consider them to be like diet books, useless,embarrassing, and easily replaced by two sentences used frequently by my Grandmother "Control yourself and behave yourself".  I have never felt the slightest urge,after a cursory examination, to read "The Dice Man" "Wild Swans" Zen and the Art of anything,or any books set in Borneo, Australia, South Africa ,or the Land Of Magical Realism. But I am fond of Kipling, and do it most days.
I think we know a Kindle isn't going to work,don't we, boys and girls?
So it's heigh- ho to the Charity Shop and the Boot Sale. And this time I will take handcuffs,so as to not come back with the same number of books, only with different titles. Yes, they do furnish a room, but perhaps not to the exclusion of a futon? The GB backs off from them as the Nosferatu from garlic;he has seen what they have done to his Mother and regards all printed matter not moving on a screen as both antedeluvian and potentially hazardous. I have tried coercion, stealth and bribery. "What To DO When Your Child Won't Read?" Must be a book on that, somewhere....

All Creatures Grunt And Spell

"Eight out of ten dogs WHO EXPRESSED A PREFERENCE,preferred (brand name) dog food".Right.I went unsuspectingly to sleep last night, and have woken again in a reconfigured and disturbing world. One in which animals can now talk. This is the work of Satan. Animals are dumb, and it says so on the label,in fact,it is one of their most attractive features. The place is full of peabrains giving vent already,without birds and cats putting in their two-penn'orth. And yet this advertisement clearly says that they now express preferences. We know that it must be true, and must therefore adjust to the new regime.
I was prepared for cats to develop opposable thumbs;they have been working on that one for some time now.YouTube is full of proof, cats opening fridge doors, answering phones.They will be moving into catering and call centres. I don't think they will like having their calls monitored for training purrrposes, though.
But we must look at this new development with the cheerful adaptability that has given our species the edge thus far. So we won't have any jobs;but many of us haven't had one for a while anyway. Will French animals speak French? Bien sur mec,  or they won't last two minutes. France is a country of unsentimental pragmatists, and they will not be swayed in their ambition to cook everything on the planet by a meat creature  bleating away for mercy in English.They won't sell you suncream if your tenses aren't in order.
I know that foreign animals make different noises, because if you look at language text books,this is made perfectly plain. A French cat goes "Minou, minou". Dogs, for some reason, say "Aargh", probably as a result of being carried around in some poncey handbag. A child who speaks Mandarin Chinese will tell you that a cow says "Wo,wo".As indeed it might. But I musn't get carried away, we have enough troubles on our own doorstep with this alarming development. It has already occurred to me that all large dogs will sound like Stephen Fry, whilst cats will have the voices of either Felicity  Kendall or Kenneth Williams, depending on gender.
I am seriously worried by the possibilities that animals will now be able to grass us up. Children are embarrassing enough,but another little puppy voice from the carpet  interjecting "But YOU said..." into the necessary social embellishments that one is required to make to the raw and unpleasant truth....? 
Let's get eating them , before they learn to write and send texts,or I give the human race six months.

Living In A Box

I note,thanks to the ever-fascinating "Liverpool FreeCycle"bulletin which pingeth in an environmentally neutral way to my raffia inbox each day, that someone is offering a two-tier rabbit hutch. I do not have a two-tier rabbit,but oh! how I wish for one now.
I take it that the pampered bun has a duplex, and can wander up and down stairs, as the mood takes it. I lived in something similiar in London,but I had nary a stair. A flat so small that you could sit in the bath and see the television in the living room, should that be your idea of a good time, it was on the corner of a council block in Whitechapel. I loved it passionately, because it was two minutes from Mile End Road, which had a peculiar little market,and a couple of pubs;"The Blind Beggar",and "The Grave Maurice". They were jolly places, and attracted the odd tourist who had come along hoping to be shot at by the Krays.I had friends,and a cousin, just up the road in Bethnal Green, and felt like I was living in a film featuring Alfie Bass ,Joe Melia, and Yootha Joyce. And I was living alone, which was bliss. I am not a good co-habitee, being slovenly and eccentric. I like my own space, and I like to mess it up.You hear of women, and a few men, who can,with just a few scarves and deft placings of vases,make a house into a home. Well, I can make a house into a jumble sale, simply by unpacking the contents of my handbag.I liked coming home from from work and having a tiny bath,pouring a large G&T, stretching out on the miniscule sofa (with my feet,naturally,through the window), and reading "Little Women",the only book there was room for. Condensed, of course. Then,if the phone rang with some thrilling invitation or other involving free booze, I could drag up, grab keys,money, fags and lipstick, and go and have an adventure. Or not. This idyll lasted till the owner of the flat came back from living in a cave in Portugal,where he was "finishing his play for the BBC", which everyone knows means "hiding from the Police". In the ten minutes it took me to pack, I had somehow also signed up to live in Chingford. My flat there was perched atop a hairdresser's in Station Road. Downstairs lived two cheerful Americans, who were running a mysterious business which seemed to involve great big sheets of rubberised fabric,which bulged out into our shared hallway,  and required them to be stoned beyond reason each evening. What with the fumes from the perming lotion and the strong odour of dope and rubber, I was permanently addled and getting through two cans of air freshener a day. Chingford was run entirely by tiny little old ladies. They gathered in truculent clusters outside the Co-op, patrolled the buses for signs of teenage misbehaviour, and massed in the hairdresser's downstairs,having their curly heads re-blued.  Opposite me,there was the local takeaway and video store.Outside was Chingford's only street light, beneath which some mischievious Council person had caused a bench to be placed. Consequently, the jeunesse d'oree of Chingford all made a beeline for this attractive spot, using it for underage
drinking, smoking and loudly illegal al fresco sex. Too old and jaded to join in and too inhibited to film them for a future documentary series, I exhaustedly moved to Walthamstow. I had a house. It was red. The walls were red, like an old-style Chinese restaurant. It had thick red carpets, and a pink ceiling. There was a scarlet sofa with white cushions. It was like living inside someone's mouth. Walthamstow had the longest street market in Europe (who measures these things and how often?), and an impressive public library. It wasn't exactly handy for London, though. My most-frequently visited friends lived in Muswell Hill. This meant braving the 34 bus.I don't know what it was about that bus route, but all the 34 drivers were raving mad. Mostly young black men, they seemed to be competing against each other as to who could get the vehicle to its destination at the speed of light, and without ever stopping to allow a punter to get on or off,unless they could do it in two seconds. After being flung around the Lea Valley Road like a button in the drum of a washing machine a few times too many; I wrote the word "Help!" on a piece of paper and held it up to the window. However, none came,probably because there was no time for anyone human to read it.I think the drivers must have gone on to seek new high-speed thrills, working for the people who put the credits on the end of television programmes.
It was all getting a bit too exciting for me, and so I became a Crouch-Ender. Too poor for Hampstead or Highgate, and too lazy for Muswell Hill, (which WAS on a hill and didn't you know it) ; I arrived in North London Media Central.Neighbouring riff-raff including Neil Morrissey, Andy Kershaw, Dave Stewart, and more alternative comedians than was strictly necessary. You were never more than three feet away from a contemporary dance group. There was an Apothecary.
But I shall relate more about the Crouch End period another day. I am going back to "LiverpoolFreecycle" to see if the person wanting a glitter ball has had any joy. All human (and rabbit) life is there.

Black Ops

You know how people write in about their cute children who do and say artlessly charming things? Or send entrancing pictures of their kitten or puppy doing something anthropomorphic? You can get a tenner for this, from the right publication. Or you could.  It's probably all about being taken hostage and skinned these days..My BGF and I were once both skint and bored;so we decided to improve the shining hour and our tarnished bank balances, by writing affecting "true life tales" for ready money. One magazine, "Bella" or "Mind Out!"or something like that,had a reader's column called "Your Operation". "Oooh..." we  thought..BGF wrote a thrilling tale of a burst appendix, and I went all-out for drama mixed with pathos in my account of an impassable gallstone and its adventures in my bile duct. Howling with glee,and mentally spending the money, we posted them off.
Nothing.
SO then we tried fictitious toddlers prattling nauseating rubbish like "Do ants go to heaven, and do they stay there?"(the answer to that,by the way is "No,and No").
We confected wise sayings from the most unforgettable character we'd never met. In desperation, and determined to slip something past the editorial panels,we wrote Top Tips of a domestic nature. One began "If you have an excess of flat champagne, and you are blonde, why not rinse your hair with it for extra shine and sparkle?"
Still nothing. We tried "We Love Our Pets",with a tearjerking triumph-over-tragedy story about a squirrel saving the life of a poorly baby shrew. Zilch.
Thoroughly dashed,we were. Years later,we were talking about this to a friend of mine who worked for "The Reader's Digest",but had also served time on a variety of women's magazines. She condensed the "Condensed  Books", and I was livid with envy, until one day we met for lunch and she said "I have just spent ALL morning taking the sex out of a Wilbur Smith".  Anyway, we were telling her how cheesed we had been not to have been sent so much as a book token for all our efforts, and she looked wise. "Oh well" she said "You can pick the fake ones ,written by people like You Two, straight away". "How so?", we enquired, a little hurt. "Because they have proper spelling and grammar. And they always go that little bit too far".
So I had to go and have a real baby, just for material.
My son was unsatisfying as a tot. Low on winsome sayings re birdies, Nana, or innocent enquiries about the sky..although he did invent the term "Snorebreak" to describe those rare moments when he fell asleep in the car and I thought he'd fallen out because it was so quiet. He did once provide me with a highly enjoyable experience in France. His father was driving, on one of those spectacularly endless French motorways; l'Autoroute De Sol . A man of uncertain temper at best, he regarded a long car journey as a grim ordeal to be undertaken all in one rigorous go,with no wussy breaks for natural functions or sustenance, and certainly no light chat or banter. When you have a three-year-old on board, this singlemindedness was likely to be challenged,and so it was on this occasion.
Small but piercing voice from the back "Daddy?"  Silence from furiously hunched concentrating Frenchman.
" Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy DaddyDaddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy DaddyDaddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy........... Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy DaddyDaddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy DaddyDaddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy.....Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy!"
Frenchman crumbles, after much more of the above than I can be bothered to copy and paste, and finally roars.."WHAT?"
Small voice  "You're driving ".
Now that was funny. I shan't send it in to "Your Cupcake", they wouldn't get it, and I couldn't handle the rejection. But "Psychological Warfare Weekly" might be interested.

Keeping The Wolf From The Door

How does hair know when to stop? I was thinking of this while observing the Giant Boy's massively hirsute thighs. It seems only months ago that I was blowing raspberries on his smooth little kicky legs.Try that now and you would lose the skin off your lips,and gain a smack in the mouth. A small window of prosperity and enough food has caused a race of mammoths to be born to me and my contemporaries, and we cower in the shadows as they stalk the land, demanding cash and polo shirts. I was always considered tall-ish,scion of a  tall family.Several of my forbears were in the Irish Guards,where you had to be strapping.There was at one time an additional hazard to joining them,by the way, which was that you stood a good chance of being collected by mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. They didn't call him that to his face, the "mad" bit. A wonky gentleman even by the high standards set by insane European monarchs; he got together a collection of the tallest and butchest chaps from every country he had heard of, dressed them in preposterous Galliano-style uniforms,and had them march around his bed every morning,just to set him up for a busy day's kinging. Two of them were from the Irish Guards. I would dearly have loved to have been party to the conversations in the guard house, prior to this daily parade. Ludwig was considered eccentric as a result of pathological shyness; his avoidance of state business; his complex and expensive flights of fancy, including moonlit picnics at which his young guardsmen  were said to strip naked and dance; conversations with imaginary persons; sloppy and childish table manners; dispatching servants on lengthy and expensive voyages to research architectural details in foreign lands; and abusive, sometimes violent treatment of his servants. Oh, and he was thought to be a werewolf.

"Monarchs surely don't come scarier
Than loopy Ludwig of Bavaria
He would stare at the moon
And howl like a loon
Whilst his legs became hairier and hairier "

I translated this rather hurriedly from High German, but you get the gist.
I wonder when HIS mother began to notice? I shall monitor the GB for signs of lycanthropy;big holes in the rear of his pants? Check. Growling? Likewise. Peculiar behaviour, slavering, and unnatural appetite for meat? Well,yes, but I put that down to a mixture of puberty and being half-French. Oh dear.  There is a school trip to a farm at some point.This would clearly be madness, and I must write him a note. "Please excuse GB from the planned trip to Fluffy Baby Animals Farm, as he has recently become a werewolf".  And he wasn't even a Cub..
He will have an unfair advantage when it comes to cross-country running, though. And may over-literally demonstrate the function of "Changing Rooms". Well, I shan't worry about it overmuch; I know lots of people who become perfectly unbearable once a month. Not sure how you calculate the dates of lunar months; I expect there is an App for it somewhere though. And a helpline..I know, I shall call NHS Direct. They were very good about the worm. I will let you know how I get on.

A Lady's Excuse-Me

Ladies! You have been weeing in the flower pots  again and upsetting Amanda Platell.I must ask you to cease and desist.Might I point out that the Hilton has some very nice toilets a mere step away? In addition, think of the poor flowers;enjoying some unseasonally warm weather, perhaps having a little sway in the breeze,and then some great bottom comes looming down on them like the "Eyeballs In The Sky" from "The Perishers" in my Dad's Daily Mirror. And what if Bill,or Ben had been at home?  I think this type of activity is to be frowned upon, and left to the chaps.And I don't approve of them doing it either,by the way. I was once being roundly told off by a club owner about the sauciness of one of my male performers.As she berated me, on the subject of the said gentleman's gentleman making a brief appearance (respectably wearing a bow tie and fairy lights,and to the accompaniment of "Nessun Dorma"), a man was urinating copiously, against the club wall and dangerously near her shoe. Go, as they say, figure.
We have had the Labour Party conference all week,and it seems to bring out the worst in people. Manchester has the Tories next week; I wonder how they will get on with levels of public micturation.  There's a thesis in here for the right bright Post-Grad.
I am strangely gripped by the unfolding tale of a Lib. Dem MP this week, though. I am notably unswayed by the appearance of the male sex, due to an unfortunate upbringing,so I am aware that I may be more oblivious than normal women to the pullulating hotness of Mr John Hemming.Well,go and Google him and see what you think. It is also possible that he has qualities of attraction which do not demonstrate themselves sufficiently to the harsh lense of the camera. Nevertheless. He's got something. His wife has got something too, the kitten belonging to his mistress. Mrs H was caught on CCTV crawling through undergrowth in a big jumper and sensible skirt to kitnap the poor beast from the house of Mr H's ladyfriend.
My Mother was,predictably,outraged.."Wicked woman!", she exclaimed to the television "You should always try and keep the cats out of it".
The kitty will flourish,of course, and will get itself a ghost writer to pen a traumatic tear-filled account of its abused kittenhood, entitled "Please Mommy, Not Up Her Jumper".
The fascinating Mr H has had 26 liaisons since Mrs H.started counting. You can see why this might irk. Might I suggest,though, that the notorious effects of publicity may increase rather than dim,  his indefinable allure? Women are curious creatures,like cats, and they will start to nudge each other as the lordly Mr H. passes them in the pleasant promenades of Moseley, and wonder as to the nature of his peculiar magnetism. Once kittens start getting thrown about, we are talking serious business.
This is why,ladies,we must be very careful. Predators abound.Why, we were just breathing a sigh of relief that we were now safe from the importunings of Mr Michael Winner, now dragged blushingly into matrimony at the tender age of 75, when a new,Hemming-shaped threat presents itself. Crikey!
Under the constant pressure of such looming dangers, is it any wonder that we sometimes succumb to drink,and wee in a flowerbed or two? And then a lady from the Daily Mail pops up,and asks us what we are doing?  Well, I would have thought this action was,at best, unambigious,but then I am not, as is equally evident, Amanda Platell.
Anyway, I go banging on about how lovely we are in Liverpool,and then,ladies, you let me down like this. " Very disappointing, see me" as my teachers used to write in all my exercise books. With the exception of my English teacher, who would put "What mean?" I was once given a "D" for a rousing description of the battle of Agincourt, which I felt was unfair. You could practically feel the arrows whizzing past your helmet,so colourful was my evocation.The History Man was unmoved,pointing out that I had not included One Single Date, nor mentioned who had won. This Gradgrinding attention to detail stifles creativity in the young, I feel.
So huzzah for all the fabulously-dressed,well-mannered,and continent young ladies of Liverpool, many of whom are to be found cheerfully working in the very same Hilton outside of which..but I shall not repeat the painful tale. In the words of someone or other "You have let me down, you have let yourself down, and most of all, you have let your knickers down.." Amanda says,by the way, that you weren't wearing any.Please let her be wrong.