Archie wote this...

... and it deserves its own spot here, not hidden in a comment box. Lovely.
Thank you Archie.

 

Just the boring half of me
lives in the real world
The part you see is not all
For I hide my other life

It is mine and includes
the love and fear and hope

You may share what
I choose to show yet
I will not share
The reality of my hidden life.


And Alicia Suskin Ostriker wrote this below. I love it too...

The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God's love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow
To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by
your up-ended
skirt
To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other dogs
can smell it

Alicia Suskin Ostriker

 Wall Poems

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/08/opinion/08berlinpoems.html

Too beautiful.
Justin Sullivan, he of New Model Army.

Batteries

My dad, is a genius. I love my dad. In our family, we call him Inspector Gadget. If you need anything fixing - car, washing machine, TV, my dad is your man. He is pissed off with his mp3 player. It is old, small, and fiddly, but it works, so will not be replaced. My dad likes to fall asleep listening to the radio - he has mild tinnitus, and he has discovered that listening to something masks it while he drifts off (It used to be audio books, but he got into a flap the next morning trying to scan back to the bits he fell asleep at, so now its 5Live or Talkradio). Mum doesn't really like this habit, she wakes up in the night to tinny tsktskshhshh noises, and has to unravel the headphone wires from around dad's neck (she says) while he lies there snoring, one earphone wedged inside a nostril. So, back to the batteries. The worst thing is, they last a night only. This enrages my dad, having to recharge or do without, so, he has rigged up this which is pictured below. One hopes he doesn't attempt jogging with it in his pocket. He came into the kitchen earlier, and saw me snapping away. If this appears on the interweb... he said, threateningly.

Heh. Sorry dad. I love you.

Bewildered Befuddled and Me.

 

I had a day off yesterday. This is unusual on a weekday, and I spent the entire week anticipating it with glee. Maybe a little shopping, some cake eating whilst blog browsing, some feet up, some settee based snooze.

But no.

Instead, I get a frantic call from my daughter to say that my father, has sat on a stanley knife and gone to hospital. In an ambulance.

SAT on it? I say.

Yes! She says. It won't stop bleeding, and I can't get hold of Gran, so I called an ambulance.

I have visions of a suddenly castration fixated elderly mother, surreptiously placing a stanley knife between two sofa cushions before skipping off into the distance, spotted hanky on a stick over her shoulder.

Seems that daughter has been taking notice of my laminated sheets of the heart and its functions, which I have pinned to the wall over the kettle in an attempt to assist my revision study. (I don't revise. I don't even revise my opinions, never mind the functions of the heart.)

I think it has penetrated his femoral artery! she says, confidently.

I marvel at this for a second, then call my sister to get her to drive to the hospital and see what has happened. I am panicking a little of course.

My sister phones ten minutes later to inform that she has seen our father, clutching his arse and standing folornly in A&E reception. "They've GLUED the bugger!" he shouts. Admirably, my sister doesn't walk briskly past as though she doesn't know him, she packages him into the car and drives home.

Mother calls later, and laughs about father. Oh the duffer! she says. He left a stanley blade on his car seat and then sat on it! I was out buying one of those new mobile phones with a big screen, she says.
She can't see the other one properly. A big screen phone. This makes my heart sink a little, as I know big screen phones will have too many functions. My mother is the type that should only hold a phone which has giant black handset and a twirly cord attached to it.

Even later she calls again, to tell me that the phone is far too quiet, and although she can SEE the numbers and letters, she can't hear it ring. So, she takes it off to Phones4u, and demands her money back. Its a dysfunctional phone, she says.

Imagine this, and I swear it is true.

The young man in Phones4u unwinds the cling film that my mother has wound around the upper part of the handset (which is where the speaker is) "to protect the screen" and hands it back to her. Try this madam, he says.

Dysfunctional phone? Dysfunctional family.

I was so looking forward to my day off. Now I am consumed with questions.

Which one of them do I disown first?

How People see us...

A post pops up on my facebook homepage. A friend has taken one of those silly interview quizzes that are so damned addictive.

It has made me feel so warm.

Aly S******

SocialInterview.com asked me "If you could have any two friends as parents who would they be and why?"

I answered ''Liana as my Mum cos she has the most amazing ability to make anyone feel safe and Simon N as my dad cos he's so damn funny when he's been on the scrumpy!!''

6 minutes ago via Social Interview · Comment · Like / Unlike · Interview Me

So, me, the one out of all my friends, who veers around all over the place? I make my friend feel like this?

I must be doing something right then. 


Amazing.

Jollies.

Such a day...

Got my new tattoo. HERE!

Yes, I love it. No, it's not the 'Hermit's Speech'. Back to google you go.

Tattoo and pic provided by The Mad Tatter. Thanks Beth...

In other news, Harriet McFlap, aka Bane of my Life, aka My Pillock of a Dog, seized the opportunity to eat a pound of best butter while I was at Beths being inked. I came home to find something resembling a large yellow party blancmange on the kitchen floor. Mostly butter, it contained bits of her daily banana treat, several chunks of dog biscuit and (inexplicably) a sponge eyeshadow applicator. No carrot though. It resisted all attempts from me to clear it up with kitchen roll, slithering round the kitchen tiles like an evasive and wobbly Dr. Who villain. I had to take my wounded wrist to the coal bunker and get the shovel to scoop it up in the end.

In other news - Wibs tells me that Callum shat himself in French today. She was doubled with giggles relating this. Oh! I said, How awful! Poor Callum! Not really, says Wibs. He was having a farting competition with James, and had managed 17 farts until that point. The eighteenth proved a squeeze too far. Mon Dieu! Or Mon Poo!, perhaps. Epic fail, as the kids say.

My life is so great.

Turning Back Time

Apologies for the lack of entries (if anyone cares). I've been slogging away at an essay which proved to be the most difficult thing I have written in many a year. It appears that after an extended holiday, I returned to find that my academic ability now resembles that of a five year old Patagonian child. Who has sesquipedalophobia. Not great in academic, medical essays. So, for the last three weeks I have been onto it. Or, supposedly onto it, but avoiding it like mad. By cleaning the house top to bottom, writing letters of complaint to Kellogs (don't ask), sorting a winter wardrobe, playing bejewelled, walking the now pawsore dog,  browsing book and junk shops and sleeping. I even decorated a room. There's avoidance. I have distanced myself from friends, failed to pay bills. answer the phone, open MSword.

Yesterday was the deadline, and by ten pm Sunday, it was done. Dreadful, dreadful essay. I am embarrassed by it, and console myself with the fact that it's worth little in the credit accumulation. Bleurgh.

Caz, I'm onto that mail, with pictures.

Hants, I'm onto you too.

Red.

Red hair is a sign that I am feeling. I have new red hair. Very very red.

Rawr, as the kids say.

Snow White.

Look how pale Elle is. And there I am behind her, looking for all the world like I am whispering in her ear about the lovely red apple I want to give her...

I'm sure I used to be the fairest damnit. Where is that huntsman?

I Sleep Alone.

Today, I have eaten half a litre of pea soup, and a 175g bag of liqorice.


Thank you, and goodnight boys.

Victoria Meldrew

My friend F says she loves how excessively affronted I am about things. I reflected on this for a wee while, and it is true. I really AM. The accusation came as we were discussing the fact that she has run out of sherry and I have run out of tea bags. My dilemma is much worse I feel. I only have some nettle tea bags. Why I keep them, I don't know. I bought them when I had a bad bout of prickly heat, and L told me that nettle tea would calm it down. Nettle tea for prickly heat sounds like a double whammy, but I bought them anyway, and my giddy good god. The foulest of foulness. Like drinking water in which dock leaves previously peed on by a manky old mongrel have steeped for six months.
"I would rather" I said, "be covered in seeping pustules from head to foot for 12 months of the year than drink One More Thimbleful of nettle tea". Plus, should I taste it again I might turn into one of those nimby pillocks that flap about by the tea pot when visitors arrive, twittering "Oooh I'm sorry I only have jasmine and essence of flipflop caj, and sugar! oh, no sugar, only raw cane sugar chewed by a fairtrade farmeress and spat into a hemp sack"

Give me Tetleys. Or Yorkshire. Two bags, with proper white sugar, and a dash of milk. In a mug. Thanks.

That time of year again...

 

Hurrah, shout the children. Sprouts!

I'm sure that we should've had salad and cous cous and barbequed yellow peppers in the garden and so on this year at some point.

There may be a lie in this post.

Lovesong

I went to Lincoln last night. I am often there, work there  a few days a week, and I was at university there several years ago. I have loved Lincoln ever since I studied there, and for a few years before - it was always the exciting place close to our dull town. Architecturally it is similar to York, the cathedral, lit at night by a golden haze raises high above the city and is accessed by a death defying climb along a street dotted with tiny buildings which house crystal jewellery, exotic chocolate and second hand books. Since I studied there, the city has grown. Not outwardly, though this is perhaps true, but within itself. It is amazed with itself, it says "Look at me! Am I not beautiful?". It is like the city equivalent of a madeover woman on Ten Years Younger. It is peering at itself in astonishment, turning this way and that, grinning. It IS beautiful. People there ARE amazed with it. When did Lincoln transform? When the university grew so fast I expect. Built around the wharf, when I studied there the university held some award winning buildings, a couple of bars and a gym. Nothing too unusual, a city like any. Now, the university istelf houses a performing arts centre, a club or two, and a massive brand new library built in an old warehouse. The wharf is amazed at itself too and has grown in tandem with the university, strung with millions and millions of fairy lights, bars jostle for prominence, the water glistens and the swans swim slowly along with a cocky look in their eyes. The barges seem to be the most brightly painted, the people sit by the water with pints of beer and glasses of wine, and everywhere is permeated with a sense of luck. 

I am so moving here. Give me 18 months.

Beautiful Kristina on Steep Hill.

Don't be a hero

There are two little boys outside doing jobs for me. One of them is the neighbourhood tough guy (aged 12) and he is washing my car. He has been nodding at the bird shit for a couple of weeks now and telling me I need to wash it. I take it to the jet wash, I tell him. I love standing there, spraying the car with the high speed ice cold water and having it blow back at me in a fine mist. On a sunny day you can stare up at rainbows if you angle it right. But you have to pay for that, he tells me. The rainbows and the instant cool are worth £3.00 of anyones cash, but I dont tell him that. I don't think he'd get it. I give in as winter approaches and the thought of washing it myself beomes less appealing.

Billy, is the other little boy aged 7, and he is cutting away at the swathes of ivy that run along the fence and threaten to strangle passers by. I dream of this actually happening some days. Billy is my odd job boy. I met him last year when I rescued him from a crowd of kids that were throwing rocks at him. I have grown inordinately fond of Billy, his bright blue eyes with long dark lashes, his eager determination that he can do anything I want to throw at him - walk my dog, clean my car, fetch my shopping. I just ask him to clip the ivy. Billy doesnt want money, I give him cans of coke and chocolate biscuits and he talks to me as I sit on the doorstep smoking while he trims and clips away, Biily Titchmarsh. I'd pay for this time too, his funny insistance that I must know his aunty because she is a nurse too... where? Rotherham. Bless him. If I'd've had a son, I would've liked it to be Billy. My ex Husband used to say there was no way I could birth a boy, what with me being unable to tolerate a male for more than 9 minutes let alone 9 months.

He might have a point. Still, Billy. Awww...

The Education of Maggots.



Posh lecture hall today. A woman is employed to hide in an office just outside and sniff out any snuck in food and drinks. Bless her. The first swallowchomp and she's in, leaping through the door like a hoody at a jewellers. 
"No food! No food, and NO drink! Under ANY circumstances! There are signs on the door, LOOK!" she yells, stabbing a pointy finger at the laminated sign no one takes heed of. 
Why do they called them notices? They clearly aren't. Nobody does.

Exit Amanda, 40 years old and blushing, carrying her paper cup of coffee to the bin in the corridor. 
Ten minutes later, additional bonus shrieking as L spies several maggots under her chair. R, apologising for his earlier mistake of bringing his looselidded bait box instead of his lunchbox, shuffles round on bended knee trying to pick them up while ten women scatter.
The lecturer looks weary. Minutes later he trips on the flip chart.  I laugh. Izz laughs. K laughs, and D at the front, looks round and frowns. Izz and I think the lecturer has the hots for D, so I waggle my eyes when she asks for a pen and he says "I'll give you one". She texts me one minute later. I surreptiously check the phone as I am hyper text alert. 

"Pathetic" It says. "D xxx", it adds, lest I take offence.
I know. 

Wolf



I love this boy.