Holy Guacamole

I’ve followed this Brexit stuff quite closely. I read all 500+ pages of the first withdrawal agreement document.

 Before anyone accuses me of being biased let me nail my colours to the mast. I didn’t want to be asked, I thought the question was beyond my pay grade. If being politically aligned to the EU was bad for our country then it was up to politicians to work out why and how we could get out of it before they asked us. They didn’t. I think asking us to votes was like the following conversation:
A: Would you like a unicorn?
B: Sure, but aren’t they fictional? How are you going to give me unicorn?
A: Oh, don’t worry about that, just tell me.
B: No, I don’t want a unicorn, they probably smell.
C: Oh no, I’d like one because they do rainbow farts that smell of sweets.
D: I’d like a unicorn too.
A: Ok. So most of you want a Unicorn?
C&D: Yes. Give us our unicorn. You said we could have one.
B: I said I didn’t want one. Why won’t you listen to me?
A: The best I can do is a horse with an ice cream cone on its head.
C: What? You promised me a unicorn.
A: But you didn’t really know what a unicorn was.
D: I did. I know what I wanted. It’s farts had to smell of pear drops.
A: I can do a small horse with diabetes.
C: He wanted pear drops but I wanted sherbet lemons. Give me my unicorn.

Now that I’ve put it like that I’ve changed my mind. I’d quite like a unicorn.

I have no idea whether the EU is good or bad for the country, although I probably think it mostly is, for most people.

Boris Johnson returned from Brussels with a deal. People say it’s a bit worse than the last deal. I haven’t read this one. In fact, even the government ministers haven’t read it yet. They’ve had no time to work out if it is good or not but because Hilary Benn brought an act of Parliament that said if a deal wasn’t agreed by today’s date the Prime Minister had to request an extension to stop a no-deal Brexit happening, which is thought by nearly every MP to be disaster for the country, they had to vote on it today. A significant vote on a Saturday meant that we could all watch, or listen, live. People went to stand outside Parliament. It was a lot of pressure.

MPs don’t normally have to go in on a Saturday and lots of them looked tired and a bit pissed off. Some seemed to be playing candy crush and others chatted while other people were speaking. They used long words and bluffed and flustered for hours.

Oliver Letwin, MP for West Dorset, thought that being made to vote on something he hadn’t read was crazy and so he suggested that MPs should vote on an amendment that a short extension should be requested so that the deal could be properly considered. This seemed quite sensible to me but when we read the papers tomorrow, I’m sure that will make me an enemy of the people. 322 agreed and 306 didn’t. This means they couldn’t vote on the deal today and the Prime minister is legally obliged to write to the EU to ask for an extension.

Whatever you think of Mr Johnson, that’s got to hurt. He’s spent all his time saying that he’ll get Brexit done. As I listened to the radio I was feeling quite sorry for him. Then he stood up, stamped his foot and said, “Won’t! Can’t make me! So there!” and blew an enormous raspberry. It was quite extraordinary. It was so extraordinary that the normally very professional presenter said, “ Holy Guacamole!”

I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want a unicorn anymore. No one told me avocado was an option.

I know everyone is going to get upset about this but I suspect it’s not as big a deal as everyone makes out. It probably wouldn’t have passed anyway. They’d have had to have tried three times. It still might go through on the third time as more MPs come around to the idea, or it won’t. Not that any of this matters because however we leave it will be a mess for years. Traditionally, divorce never goes smoothly for couples who can’t even agree on which solicitor to use. This is just the beginning of the process and that has taken three years, three prime ministers, lots of shouting and the resignation of David Dimpledknees from QuestionTime.  I just hope everyone can calm down a bit.

The Genetics of an Under-stairs Cupboard and age

This week, I’ve felt more like my old self than I have in a long time. Maybe, it is just natural grief lifting, as the NHS website says, “you might feel affected every day for 18 months after a major loss.”  I’d be surprised if you aren’t ‘affected’ every day for the rest of your life because your life is different now, you are missing someone important but maybe a switch gets flicked after 18 months to let you feel happy again. I suspect it also has something to do with a glimmer of light at the end of the death admin tunnel.

Feeling more me, I’ve been thinking about strange things again. This time, it’s been about age.  They say that age is just a number, so I picked 42, in honour of Douglas Adams but it’s not the number that I really feel. In the last few years I’ve been telling the children at school that I’m 112. “Come on if I can stand up to sing when I’m 112 you can too!” 

They ask, “Are you really 112 miss?”

This year I’ve said, “Oh no, I feel much older”

And it has been true. The pressure of the last few years aged me. 

Before, I felt about 9, with a wider vocabulary, particularly of swear words. 

I’ve noticed that a person’s actual age rarely represents the age they feel. 

This week, I accompanied my sister on her search for a new house. She chose to buy the one with the perfect under-stairs cupboard. It was the cupboard of our childhood and as I walked in I suddenly had a flashback to an argument about a monkey that said, “Have a banana, munch munch,” and my sister, secure in her safe space threatening me (deservedly, as it was her monkey) with a machine gun. I’m not proud of my big sister credentials. When she got excited about the cupboard, I was reminded of my son. He too, loves an under-stairs  cupboard and would have happily lived in ours. I could see him buying a house based on the same criteria. I had never seen a genetic link between my son and my sister before. My daughter always looked like my sister (and the LSH) but my son looks like my Dad.     Can under-stairs cupboards really show genetic links? They have another thing in common, that I had also forgotten. While I can talk to 8 year olds, they can both talk to 80 year olds. When we were little and went to holiday camps, my sister would have adopted at least 6 sets of grandparents. 

Yesterday, was a weird (and very long) day for me. It started with school band practise. The first in a long time, where all the wrong notes made me laugh. Then I taught all day. The children were funny and I didn’t find them irritating. (I was getting a bit worried that I’d got too old for this teaching lark.)

I was given a piece of music for a concert we are going to do with the local choral society and I laughed at the name of the lyricist. “Younger, more promiscuous brother of Darth. I’d like to see his light sabre,” my colleagues and I joked.

Then it was time for the Youth Orchestra. They taught me the happy llama, sad llama thing. All day children had been giving me what I thought were deformed rock finger signs. This is sign language for llama, which goes with a rhyme, “Happy llama, sad llama, totally rad llama, super llama, drama llama, big fat mamma llama.” Then there’s something about a camel, a moose  a fish and a turtle. 

“Where’s it from?” I asked, “Why is everyone doing it?”

“Tik Tok,” they told me, “Do you want us to teach you?” 

“No, it’s ok,” I said, “If it’s on Tik Tok, I can look it up.”

There was a incredulous gasp.

“Well, why not?” I said, making llama signs with my hands, “There’s no age limit.”

At that moment my hand decided to do the weird crampy spasm thing they’ve been doing to remind me of my real age and I feared I was going to have to go to the seventieth birthday party I was attending after with my hands stuck in ‘totally rad llama.’

Being invited to seventieth birthday parties can make you feel old especially when it’s a party for someone who is really 18. The Prosecco flowed, the band got louder, dancing followed and I sneaked away early to read my book. 

It’s a bad day for women

Well, here we go. Another blog from a stupid feminist, ranting about things that don’t matter. Doesn’t she know that there is equality between the sexes now? I mean, women have the vote and everything. They can even be Prime Minister. If anything, it’s gone too far, what with all this Me Too stuff, men are now frightened to even look at a woman.

Do you believe all that? I’d love to. I’d love to think that it’s all true but today, is a bad day for women because two things have happened that make me question our world.

Firstly, our Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has pulled off a master stroke of hepeating. He’s come back from Brussels saying, “Look, I’ve negotiated a deal with the EU, aren’t I clever?” It’s the deal Theresa May negotiated but a bit worse but never mind because he’s a man and people will listen. Actually, I do t know if they’ll listen because it’s Brexit and the whole thing is messed up.

I’m only talking about that to avoid the thing that has really upset me: The Paul Gascoigne sexual abuse trial. He was found ‘not guilty’, so he didn’t do it, right? Get off his case, leave him alone, stop picking on him, some women are just trouble makers; jumping on a man’s fame.

Except...

I’ve been following this case from early on and I do not understand how the verdict has happened, unless the world hates women.

Paul Gascoigne, troubled ex-footballer and supposedly reformed alcoholic was on a train, smelling  boozy and slurring his words, when he, uninvited, sat on a young woman’s lap and kissed her  “forcibly and sloppily” on the lips leaving her “very shaken”.  She reported it to the police and witnesses told them who the man had been (she was too young to know of his fame, I presume).
When the police turned up at his house he said, “I know what this is about. It’s because I kissed a fat lass.”

Cut and dried, I thought. He assaulted her, he admitted it and there were witnesses.

It goes to trial.

People take their children to stand outside the court to get his autograph. What? Yes, really. Come on, don’t be so sensitive. Everyone wants a famous footballer’s autograph. But he’s on trial for sexual assault? Oh, that? It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter.



He stands in the witness box and says that he absolutely did do it but he only did it to boost her confidence. What? When I was twenty a drunk man sticking his tongue down my throat on the train would have made me feel so much more confident. I’d have suddenly known it was safe to walk sown dark alleys alone at night! Then he says that it wasn’t sexual. Right! It’s just a kiss. Stop being so sensitive. Kissing isn’t sexual at all, you kiss your granny, right? Probably, not like that and not without some clue that you are going to do it, like saying “Bye Nan, take care, see you next week.”

The jury agree with him. He cries a bit, smirks and thanks his dentist, who has explained the slurring by suggesting ill-fitting dental work. His fans cheer. Men go on twitter to lambast the poor girl, who is now called a complainant, rather than victim.


Let’s think about how this would have worked with a different crime and a non famous person. Fred the burglar cleans out your house, your neighbours see him and when the police go round he says, “I know why you are here, it’s about number 42.” On trial he says that it doesn’t matter because all the stuff he stole was shit. The jury would obviously let him off then.

His feelings trump hers. He is a man. He is famous. He is more important.

The message is that it’s fine for a man to launch himself at you with no warning and put a part of his body in yours, as long as he didn’t mean it sexually. It’s absolutely ok for him to admit to it, as long as he can come up with a good story afterwards. Your feelings matter a lot less than his.

It’s definitely a bad day day for women.

Princess and the Pea

I love a fairy tale but The Princess and the Pea was not one I really had any sympathy for. Part of the problem was an inability to identify with a nameless princess. We never really got to know much about her, except that she said things like, “No one can understand how much I’ve suffered.”
Why would she even want to marry a prince and live in the castle with his mother who plays such horrible tricks? Then, you have to agree that it is a very strange way to choose a wife for your son. Why would you want a daughter-in-law that moany and sensitive? I used to think it was a commentary about inherited blood disorders and inbreeding in the monarchy. Such easy bruising used to scream, “thrombocytopenia,” at me.

 

Although, I don’t always sleep well, I can actually sleep on anything. I’m not a real princess. Or, I wasn’t.

The Long Suffering Husband has wanted a new bed for a while, claiming that after 12 years it was uncomfortable. I hadn’t noticed. However, I could agree that it looked a bit tatty.

Off we went to Dreams. They have a machine, whereby you lay on a bed and Caroline Quentin talks to you while the bed pummels your back to decide which of the most expensive beds they should sell you. We were told to get a firm Therapur bed. This is Dream’s own version of a tempura mattress with added cooling gel to stop it feeling sweaty (a known problem for these type). We tried the  suggestion in the shop.

“Oh dear,” said the consultant, “I think the machine has compromised in your favour, Sir,”
Then, looking at me, “Because you are.....”
“Bony?” I suggested.
She looked momentarily flustered but recovered quickly.
“Very tiny. I can see you are just lying on the top.”
The LSH didn’t like it anyway and I didn’t like the way it grabbed you. It’s not a good feeling for someone who is a little claustrophobic.
She suggested a compromise more in my favour. A sprung bed with a layer of this topping.

We spent ages in the shop, lying on these beds. I wasn’t sure about the slidey nature of the material and the sloping edges and feared I would fall out in the middle of the night but with the assurance from the Salesperson that we could change it if I did fall out because they had a 30 day comfort guarantee we handed over our credit card.

The first night on this bed was the weirdest experience of my life. After two hours I was awake and in pain. I felt sympathy for that poor Princess for the first time and checked the mattress for peas. The LSH wondered if they’d accidentally sent us a hard bed because it felt as though we had slept on a hard, cold, sweaty brick. Bizarrely, it felt slightly damp.
“It might take a while to settle down,” I told him.

We had read the reviews and people raved about this bed but some had said that it look a little while to get used to.

The second night was still painful and by now I had sore painful lumps on the parts of my body that made contact with the bed. I was feeling like a failure. You know that feeling you get when everyone has been raving about a book, it wins prizes and then you can’t stand it but you feel guilty? Well, that’s how I feel about this bed. This bed is my Cloud Atlas.

The third night was probably the worst experience of my life. That’s over dramatic. Sorry. I can think of one worse. However, it was definitely up there as one of the worst. I woke up after two hours with a burning sensation over the side of my body in contact with the bed. My back and side had swollen areas that felt bruised and I honestly wondered if I was about to die. Thinking that it might be something to do with the bed, I googled to see if anyone else had a problem with it. They didn’t. The bed wasn’t Cloud Atlas, it was Harry Potter and I’m the only person in the whole wide world that doesn’t like it. There were one or two people who had bought beds from Dreams who were upset that their bed felt different and had been told to give it 30 days. I can see the point of that. Beds do feel different and it can take a while to settle down. However, beds rarely try to kill you, so I decided to call them to trigger the comfort guarantee.

I described the problem and asked for some help. None was forthcoming. No suggestions. No helpful customer service experience, just a suggestion that I was making it up and I would have to continue sleeping on it for 30 days.
  “As you tried it in the shop and chose to buy it then it must have been comfortable and the burning pain must be caused by something else.”
It wasn’t. Last night I slept in my daughter’s bed. I’m not a princess. There were no killer peas in her bed.

Dreams really need to get their sales assistants to tell people of the 30 day rule, although I haven’t fallen out of bed, we weren’t told that I’d have to land on the floor for a month if I did.

Next time I buy a bed I think I will take my nightdress a duvet and see if I can get four hours kip. Then I will agree with customer service.  But it is fun to think I would now be eligible to marry a Prince.

Judy and the Wall

Okay. So. Deep breath. Here goes. Controversial opinion coming up. I didn’t love the film Judy.
I know.
There’s something wrong with me, right?
“But it’s so sad,” you tell me, “Zellweger is a wonderful character actress, she’s going to win an Oscar.”
True.
My problem is that it’s time to leave this woman alone. No film can do her justice. You want to understand how good she was then watch her films and listen to her albums. You want to know how sad her life was then read one of the million books that have been written but no film can do it all. This one hints at everything and says nothing and (sorry everyone) the singing is awful. I don’t have a problem with Over the Rainbow, as a musical because it’s a vehicle for aspiring singers to show their wonderful voices but to re-do it as a film and add elements to make it seem like a biopic just doesn’t work for me.

However, you will love it. Everyone does.

If you are like me and likely to find it a little disappointing then I hope you at least get the hysterical experience I had.

We went to Lakeside, which I thoroughly recommend, as it was excellent value. Lakeside is a place that seems to inspire hysterical laughter in me. Years ago, the Long Suffering Husband accidentally locked me in the car there. It was a new car with one of those new-fangled keys with buttons on the lock the door remotely. He had got out and before I could had accidentally pressed the button. The golf-tee shaped knobs went down with their accompanying sound and as I tried to open the door to get out I realised I was locked in. He stood in front of the car, looking in through the windscreen with a puzzled look on his face. I was heavily pregnant (hence my slowness in getting out of the car) and my brain wasn’t quite able to get me to form the words that explained what had happened, so I just flapped my hands to the side and said, “blip, blip.” It was one of those moments that prompted hysterical laughter - always dangerous for a heavily pregnant woman with a full bladder locked in a car - and 25 years later one of us only has to flap our hands and say, “blip, blip,” and we are laughing again.

Anyway, back to Judy and the Wall.

All cinemas are different. Some have a centre aisle, some a side one, others have one each side and the lucky ones have all three. This theatre was quite small with stairs at the left side only. We were in the front raised seats. The lights were dimmed and there was an announcement about lights and phones and enjoying the experience, followed by some extended silence. It was during this silence that an older couple came in. Their seats were on the right side of the cinema, so logically they walked across the front of the screen to go up the right hand steps. As, you know there were no right hand steps but it was dark and the man was determined. He launched himself straight into the wall, bounced back and looked surprised. A cinema full of people trying not to laugh is an infectious place to be. Shoulders were lifting up and down all over the place and people were wiping their eyes of the tears you get from suppressed laughter, as the couple sheepishly crossed back across the front of the screen to go up the only steps to find their seat. “Stop,” the woman next to me hissed at her friend, before taking in a sharp sigh, that indicated she was also slightly hysterical.

The couple found their seats and everyone tried to compose themselves.

The film started. Young Judy and the odious LB were in Oz and he said, “You’ve got to imagine what’s beyond the wall.”

We were gone.

 He was off to see the Wizard 

 

Flowers

It’s 4am. I can’t sleep, so I thought I’d waste some time writing a random blog about flowers.

Like many people, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with cut flowers and what better time to explore these complexities than the wee small hours of the morning?

Yesterday, a sparkly friend said, “You’re probably not the person to ask...” and went on to question me on the etiquette of sending flowers when someone has died. As an expert on all matters relating to death I couldn’t think of a better person for her to have asked. Now that I’ve exhausted the usual 3am questions, like, ‘Why do elephants have four forward facing knees?’ I’m left pondering the thorny problem of flowers, particularly as they relate to love and death.

Flowers have all sorts of meanings and so if you send or give them then you feel the need to get it right.  These days, the rules on flower giving have become more relaxed but the Victorians were strict on these things. There used to be a book on our shelves at home called The Secret Language of Flowers that was all about what flowers were appropriate for each occasion. In Victorian times sending flowers was like sending a secret message. You could send a random man a bunch of Camelias and he would know that you admire him and believe him to be perfect but if you sent someone you had been out with a bunch of sweet peas you would be subtly ending it, saying, “thanks for a lovely time,” and if you really want to hammer the message home you could chuck some geraniums in there to tell him that you think he is stupid. You’ve got to admit that Tinder is easier.

Sunflowers representing happiness and longevity with a splash of purple for pride.

Flowers are less important in courtship and romance than they used to be but are still big business   when it comes to weddings. My lovely ex-policewoman lynchpin cousin has recently become a florist and looking at the wedding flowers she has worked on make me really happy. There is something  uplifting about a florists wedding Instagram. If only someone could add smells then it would be perfect.

Funeral flowers were also important when I was growing up.  You didn’t go to a funeral without taking some flowers. Since the Pinterest funeral people have been more controlling about what flowers they will accept.

‘NO FLOWERS - DONATIONS INSTEAD TO THE GEKKO PROTECTION SOCIETY’

People have been made to feel guilty about sending flowers to a funeral. When my parents died we felt pressure from the funeral directors to name a charity for people to donate to. With Dad it was easy because he had raised money for the British Heart Foundation since his first heart attack 37 years earlier but we still felt a bit uneasy about it. Why can’t people bring flowers if they want? Why  do they have to donate to our charity? I suspect this trend started because they didn’t want people ruining their chosen colour scheme. When it came to Mum’s we bucked tradition, refused to name a charity and asked everyone to bring a flower picked from garden or hedgerow. There was really something quite beautiful about watching everyone step forward to throw their buttercups, daisies and dandelions into the grave.

What about sending flowers to the living at times of death?

I think you should, if you want. It’s nice. It shows you care. When you are bereaved you feel really lonely and it’s comforting to know people are there. After Dad died, it was the people who dropped round an unexpected bunch of tulips that Mum really appreciated. Luckily, she had lots of vases and I did make a mental note to consider sending the flowers in vase arrangements to people in future.

Flowers for illness can be more tricky. Most people get a bunch of flowers sent from work if they’ve had an operation, which is nice but if you are ill for a long time or have a mental health problem or have no hope of recovery then the etiquette gets a bit awkward.

Maybe we need to adopt the Victorian’s approach to these tricky situations. I could write a book: Flowers to send in awkward situations. It could contain beautiful photographs of creative flower arrangements that send difficult messages.
A bunch of “ What, again?” that you could send to someone who is having their third by-pass. An arrangement of  “Pull yourself together,” for someone struggling with their mental health.
A bouquet of “It will pass,” for those suffering with the menopause (I suggest red flowers and red hot pokers).

 Dad had no flowers at his deathbed. He’d been attention seeking for over three decades and people don’t send flowers after the second or third time you go into hospital. Mum did. There were flowers everywhere. Flowers she loved. Flowers she hated. Every vase was full. I’m not sure how much comfort it brought to her, as she would look at them all ad joke, “Who died?” before realising, “Oh, me.” However, I’m thinking that it didn’t matter. Flowers aren’t for the dead, or even the dying. We don’t use them to send hidden messages. They are just expressions of love and compassion and I think there should be more of that.

Get it done

The Government are spending millions to fill my social and regular media with the phrase, ‘Get Brexit Done,’ and frankly, it’s getting more than a bit annoying now.

Linguistically, it’s just such an ugly phrase.  I wondered if there was a hidden meaning in the anagram, like Yellowhammer = Orwell mayhem, to make it more elegant. The best I can come up with was beg rodent exit, beret detoxing, gob rented exit, bigot extender and being extorted but none of them really work.

There are lots of things in our lives that we would like to be over but it’s not always simple. The Long Suffering Husband has sought planning permission (from me) to destroy a bit of my garden to build a workshop. I gave it ages ago. Since then plans have had to be made, bits of the garden have been cleared, brackets, blocks and wood are being sourced at the best possible price. And all of this has to happen before he actually builds the shed. At this early planning and clearing stage it would be totally unreasonable for him to turn to me and shout, “Just get the shed done, will you?” If I were to shout it at him it might be more reasonable but even then  it wouldn’t be realistic, after all he doesn’t have a shed building magic wand.

The truth of getting Brexit done is that it will just be the begin for of the job. The years of negotiations that follow, the possible economic uncertainty, the politicians calling for a general election because they really don’t want to do the next bit are what happens next. It would be like the LSH buying all the wood for the shed and saying, “look, I got the shed done, over to you.”

Mostly though, I just wish they’d not spend so much money on advertising.