It's Good To Stalk

The Giant Boy is back, and having a shower. We know this because terrible noises of cascades and furniture being thrown around are emanating from upstairs. He has been on Work Experience, where he has not demonstrated exactly the willing can-do spirit for which one might have hoped. Hot-tempered texts saying "And this was BORING" "And that wasn't even MY job" came my way.Is there an emoticon for a sulky adolescent expression? Probably not. He had his W.E. in two different offices. The first one was with  a magazine. On Monday he was putting 800 things into 800 envelopes. By Wednesday, he was coming up with ideas for features. A steep "learning curve" if ever I heard of one. Fortunately he finished before appearing on the cover in swimwear.
The second week was in That London, where he accomplished  groovy technological things in a company so totally cutting-edge that nobody knows what they do, exactly. It was connected  with video games and phone apps, and he had a breakfast meeting at which he tucked away "bare"  bacon and fell asleep on a sofa.
And now we have to reconfigure his C.V. I didn't have a CV when I was fifteen, in fact I barely had a V. I discovered my diary from around that time when we were moving into Downturn Abbey. I seem to have spent my time meticulously cataloguing and reviewing what I had read and what I was wearing while I was reading it. Occasionally there would be a breathless account of a visit to T.J Hughes, or a family trip to Southport in the sarcastically-named Robin Reliant. Or a really big day when I went to the library twice. So hopelessly dreary was this journal that I didn't keep a diary ever again. I imagine that if one is actually HAVING a life, one is too busy to write it down. Anyway, I think it is foolish to write anything intimate or  unduly personal; some bugger will always unearth it and embarrass you with it. I cannot get on with the amount of searing confession that seems to be de rigeur these days. People come out with, and commit to text, Facebook, and blog, the most extraordinary information about themselves. A couple of friends of mine work in high-security settings, where leaking personal information could result in an unwanted visitation from a machete-bearing maniac. This must provide a useful discipline.
On the other hand, one should not get TOO carried away, and start thinking that everyone is after one's particulars for anything more sinister than trying to sell something. A few weeks ago I made a very general and vague enquiry about Sky TV, because the GB wanted some sports channel. I said I would look into it,and did. Now, three weeks on, I have had to bar various phone numbers, my voicemail is permanently bulging with desperately chummy messages from Sky People, and I must now go out in disguise in case they are lurking in a  rhododendron bush with a "Package" they want me to sign up for. So of course I shall never so much as glance at them again. There's efficient sales technique, and there's stalking. People tend to think more of one the less of one they can get. It is for this reason wise not to keep tabs upon one's beloved. I had a friend who had acquired a girlfriend, and who, as is in the nature of things, after a few months wished to end their association. She had not demonstrated previous signs of overt barminess, and in fact had come over as rather dull. But when scorned, oh boy..She took to sitting outside his flat, mostly in her car but sometimes on his step. She harangued him in shops, and pushed poems under his door. She startled him in Tube stations, followed him onto trains, weeping, visited him at work,and accused blameless colleagues of sleeping with him..it was perfectly dreadful. In the end, he had to change jobs,move house, and eventually, country. Now this is an extreme example, I am aware. But it has always stayed with me as an Awful Warning. I don't even like dogs because they follow you about.  Therefore I have told the GB that I shall arrange a marriage for him, so he will be spared the dangers and pitfalls of a hurly-burly romantic life. He seems fairly sanguine about this;they are so attuned to internet shopping, his peer group, that a mail-order bride will not seem at all odd. I just need to remember to keep the receipt.

Wednesday's Child Has Vertigo

I have had vertigo since 6th January. It is quite an interesting affliction, none of your dull common colds and 'flu for ME, thank you. It is like being an old TV (I mean television not transvestite) with no horizontal hold. I feel perfectly well until I change position. Upon so doing my head does that thing where the room spins around, which normally only affects the drunk. And that's another thing; I  have been unwillingly de-toxified. I haven't had a fag for over a week and no alcohol has invigorated my body for even longer. This has distressed me, it is uncanny and unnatural. I fear that I may be further compromised by contracting a secondary infection that causes me to jog,or do Yoga. I am just sitting on the sofa with my bust expanding and my mind contracting, as I am unable to read very much either. This will only result in me becoming highly attractive to men,if I am not careful. I never have been before. I don't mind, really.I used to mind a great deal, when I was a young woman. I was unconsoled by the reasonably large number of  boys who would approach me, for  the minute I spoke they would retreat, sometimes falling over their feet in their haste to be away. I did not speak in tongues, or have dragon's breath. I checked, endlessly. My brother once remarked upon this phenomenon. "Hmmm, yes, I have seen it happening.." he mused. "What it is,is, you just aren't sexy. Goodlooking, but not sexy". I was too young to consider how right and proper it was that my brother had this view.We may have lived in Fazackerley, but it wasn't the Appalachians ; and incest was discouraged, particularly in the Co-op. I was dashed. Although I might have considered my brother's then choice of lady companion; he tended towards girls whose look might best be described as "raucous". I was pondering this because a) I am vain, ridiculous, and self-obsessed, and b) some lovely people have asked me to write an article about Valentine's Day. This led me to consider the great mystery of human attraction, and how we now celebrate the wondrous thing that is romantic love by creating an atmosphere of hysterical pink heart-shaped commercialism on 14th February. St Valentine himself is not to blame for any of this, and indeed, had his own troubles, being "possibly as many as fourteen people", according to the Roman Directory of Saints. You can see how that might be a stretch. He is also reported to have cured the blind daughter of his jailer, refused to worship Roman idols, and carried out (or not) a confusing selection of marvellous acts. His C.V. is a bit muddy, but  seems to have concluded with him being stoned, beheaded, and/or beaten to death with clubs.
His skull popped up in a basilica in Rome, crowned with flowers.  In 1836, it, and some other relics were transported to Dublin , donated by Pope Gregory to the Whitefriars Carmelite Church. It was there that he became associated with young people in love.
Now I don't think there is anything to objectionable there; but I do wonder how that story seems to have triggered the current unpleasantness where restaurants chage twice as much for food that is half as good as usual. It is also rather embarrassing, Valentine's Day. As a nation we quite enjoy being embarrassed, it used to be our default setting,and a major export,along with umbrellas and stiff upper lips. I feel the capacity to be abashed is what seperates man from the apes,well, that and the ability to accessorise.But it is cruel and unusual for men, the gender who have enough trouble remembering their own birthdays, to be expected to come up with a carefully-planned spontaneous gesture of romance,when they have only just recovered from forgetting to post the Christmas cards. And it causes ructions in schools; girls go completely insane for weeks before and after. I am so glad to have given up teaching that age group before they all got access to Twitter and MSM and Facebook. They waged enough psychological warfare with cards from Clinton's, in my day. The boys tended to be rather oblivious to the currents and eddies of  high emotion sweeping across the sixth-form common room in the Valentine's period, poor beasts. It's a Girl Thing. I have warned the GB, but he seems to be untroubled, noting with only slight irritation  that large displays of Valentine's tut were in the way of the Easter Eggs in Asda.

Oh well. I shall keep my head down until it goes away. A wise action in the circumstances. And at my advanced age I am more likely to be attacked by moths than  by Cupid. In either case, I have a spray ready.

Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Bank of Santander

"Of that which we cannot speak,we must be silent", or somesuch, said that lovable old bumbler, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is my favourite dead philosopher, due to his good bone structure and fondness for cowboy movies. In fact, I can picture  a TV series, in which he whizzes about Cambridge on a bicycle, solving crimes connected with varmints and rustlers,re-Morsefully. Anyway, I bet he didn't get gift tokens for Christmas. I did, and they are the BEST. I know some folk are sniffy about them because they are a bit of an easy option, and not very imaginative, but I have endured Christmas presents into which people have put a bit of thought, and their thoughts are generally quite, quite wrong. Someone once gave me an apron, for instance.And those dreadful hand-made gifts that you are supposed to give people when you are broke , or in prison,or four.."Why not make a pincushion for your favourite Aunt?" suggest the women's magazines. Well, if your favourite aunt is me, I shall tell you why not. For a start, they always end up being stuffed with people's old tights, I mean, really..
So I went to the sales, with my tokens,and I enjoyed it tip top. Except that I have got into the habit of talking to myself, and have to take care lest I find myself muttering "You ARE a funny shape, aren't you?" about some degraded garment, and somebody thinks I mean them. There's always an altercation at the till, because a person has found something they like on the sale rail but it isn't reduced, or someone else has been discovered moving stickers around and applying their own discounts. I worked in shops, on and off, and nothing people do in them now surprises me. The GB is in London at the moment, doing work experience. He texts me, asking if items  have been marked down in his favourite costly boutiques, and saying things like "It's ONLY £50.00". Now, he gets £5.00 a week from his Nan, and I get about the same from my paper round, so hard luck. When did fifteen-year-old boys start thinking it was OK to dress in polo shirts that cost £150? I thought that's what a pony cost. My parents had the opposite problem with me; I insisted on wearing dead people's clothes. I mean, they had been cleaned and everything, probably. But I used to set out from my bus stop in Fazackerley looking like Clara Bow; pillbox hat with veil, cigarette holder, foxfurs dangling..and an excellent target for half-bricks I made, too. I was the only female in North Liverpool wearing corsets and camisoles;everyone else was running around in pop socks and no bra.Even the elderly ladies had thrown away their Blackler's vests and were wearing  nylon  bra slips in "Psychedelic" prints. But now it is de rigeur to wear Hugo Boss and Armani.  I forsee a rash of  Liverpool toddlers who will be named Hugo, Boss, and Our Marni.
So a big fat Molly Bloom "yes!" to gift tokens. I was in Boots, and they had just reduced all their sale stuff to 75% off; people were going crazy. Wild-eyed ladies were stuffing trollies with recklessly reduced gift sets. Sales assistants scarcely had time to get things out of plastic cartons and on to shelves before disappearing under crazed  zombie-like crowds, pawing at boxes of Yardley's English Daisy . Outside, a man was singing one of my least favourite songs; "Imagine". "Yeemageen no perseshuns, issezee if yoooo tri-hi..."At this point God became irritated, and the shop was evacuated due to a gas leak in Lewis's building. I decided to keep my tokens for another, more auspicious day.
It's going to be like "The Million Pound Note", isn't it? I will be doomed to wander the earth ,clutching my unspent vouchers.Each time I attempt to squander them, a terrible thing will happen in whatever shop I choose to patronise... "And well done you, little shop".
So I gave up and went to the dentist. My life is a riot of self-indulgence.
My previous dentisserie was a grim little cabin where people were given to pushing doors open in a marked manner and shouting through bloodied stumps. So I thought I would try a shiny new one. It was rather lovely, actually. My Dentista was an attractive woman, and did not ask me silly questions when my mouth was full of ironmongery, as so many dentists do. She did that introductory blah-blah where a dental nurse takes notes while the dentist reads the " Shipping Forecast" out over your teeth.." Third Lower Bicuspid..occluded..good...Canines Fisher German Bite..fair with light squalls..". She was, however, in possession of new-fangled X-ray equipment. and very keen to use it. I felt that I was doing a modelling session for a Halloween issue of "Saga" magazine, as she took endless pictures of the inside of my mouth. To achieve this,  she  put what felt like a shoe in there, and then  I had to bite it. Very unflattering views of my dental arrangements then flashed up on a screen. I looked like Derek Guyler,but then all skeletons do, I suppose. It also inspires no confidence, when all in the room make a rapid exit while they beam health-giving rays at your gums..I am making an unnecessary fuss, really. I ought to be grateful for modern dentistry artistry, and I am,but just not at the time. Like having a baby. In fact I made myself unpopular with some "Natural Childbirth" women by making loud comparisons with "Natural Dentistry" at the one antenatal clinic I was drunk enough to attend. Oh and laughing immoderately when they started talking about putting cabbages in one's bra.  But I was very keen on the epidural,and only wish that there had been one handy during the conception.
I am much obliged to the NHS, as is anyone who has ever had a conversation with an American. I will be sad when Health Care is taken over by credit-reference checking agencies, as these were the same people who gave us the Credit Crunch, buggered around with the Euro, and let me have five credit cards in 1982. Somehow I don't just trust them , do you?