Memory

Memory is a funny thing.

The Long Suffering Husband and I have just come back from a weekend in Oxford that will fade from memory quite quickly (except the sticky toffee pudding). 

"Tell us all about it," everyone said, but there was nothing to tell. It rained, we saw some old buildings and we didn't think it was as nice as Cambridge.  We went because he'd never been and I'd only been once as a child.

My memory of my first visit to Oxford was one of rain, park and ride buses that my parents thought were brilliant and disappointment that Woodstock wasn't filled with the spiky-haired birds from the Snoopy cartoon. 

My parents can't remember this trip.

"Were we camping?" they asked. I thought we were staying in a guest house.

My sister and I both remember the park and ride bus but both our parents are in denial of ever being impressed with such a phenomenon.  She lost her Teddy, Mo and I lost my kagoule. 

"You must remember," I said, "Mo and the bus?"

"No." They were certain.

"I got him back but you didn't get your Kaggie back!" 

Old resentments die hard and I'm not sure I've forgiven her.

"Well you were making such a fuss and this older couple took our details. Mum and Dad were all for getting a new bear but they felt sorry for you."

"They didn't need to get a new near because a Policeman brought him back when we were sitting on that wooden bench."

Some of the other details were 

fuzzy but we remembered the couple, the policeman and the bench. 

Still unable to remember,  Mum asked, "What else do you remember?"

"It rained."

"Was that where we left the tent behind?"

"No, that was Cambridge."

"I preferred Cambridge. I think we only went because Mary said we would love it. Did we stay with Mary's friends?" Mum asked Dad.

Aunty Mary had a canary up the leg of her drawers.

She wasn't a real Aunt but a neighbour with a Boxer dog that liked to push small children down the stairs, a fierce Policeman husband, the airs of Hyacinth Bucket, grown up children, a love of Bing Crosby records, a serving hatch between the kitchen and living room and a weird rule about turning your boiled egg upside down when you'd finished to fool her husband.

"Maybe they were the older couple who helped with Mo?" I suggested.

"Were they the ones with the waterbed?"

my sister asked. "I was fascinated with the waterbed. They had a spinning leather chair too."

None of us really remembered but there was something there in the back of my head. Something that made me frown with the effort of recalling it.

For the last two days, memories have been floating in and out of my dreams. I've seen afternoons playing hangman and a bedroom with a circular waterbed and purple satin sheets.

I checked my memories with my sister.. "It can't be right can it? It all seems a bit seedy for middle class Oxford in 1979."

The Expert

When I was younger, I wanted to be an expert at something and like all young people believed that it would just happen with luck and no effort. I then realised that expertise doesn't fall from on high into your lap but has to be worked at. Soon after, I decided that I was just too lazy and my attention span too short to master anything.

But I think I might have been wrong.

I am a virtuoso in voice loss. My skills as a reluctant mute are second to none. Although my true expertise is the observation of other people's reactions to someone who has lost their voice, which are often bizarre.

If you have no voice people will respond to many of your attempted utterings with, "Bless you." You find yourself thinking, "Bless you? Bless you? Why bless you? I didn't sneeze, I'm just quiet."

When you do speak people will say, "Pardon?" They will say it often. 

"I have no voice," you say.

"Pardon?" they reply.

Even people who can see how much effort you have gone to to get that simple sentance out will say it. Even those that have heard you will say it. 

When I lost my voice for the first time I decided to go to the doctor after two weeks.

"It won't be anything serious," he said. "The trouble is that most people don't know how to breathe. You need to breathe from here." He prodded his soft belly, more in the region of his intestine than his actual diaphragm. "I could refer you to a speach therapist but let's wait another week."

"Actually, I know about breathing because I'm a music teacher and it's very difficult to teach children how to sing without a voice."

"You see, you need to breathe out the sound. You are forcing it. I can tell you are."

"Yes, I was, so that you could hear me."

"Pardon?"

People will ask the oddest questions. 

"What's wrong with your voice?",

"How did you lose your voice?", and my absolute favourite, "Where did you lose your voice?" 

If I knew where I'd lost it, I'd go back and get it. A voice isn't like a cardigan. You can't re-trace your steps until you find the chair you draped it on the back of during your last hot flush. 

People will ask all these questions even after they've read the post-it note you are wearing on your chest. 

In church some parents were interrogating me about where their child was going to sit and which way they would walk in, so that they would be able to shout, "Jonny, Jonny, look at Mummy. I need to snapchat this."

I had managed to explain the general position of the class quite well with a mixture of forcing them to lip read and pointing but I didn't know exactly where Jonny was going to sit and I certainly wasn't clairvoyant enough to know, which of the two aisles the teacher would choose to walk them down. 

"I'm sorry, I don't know," I said.

"Pardon?"

I pointed to my post-it note. 

She jabbed at the note with her finger, "You're not singing today, then?"

I shrugged. Some questions can't be answered. 

When you are quiet people join you. They whisper. This is completely hopeless when you have asked a child to read your instructions to the class. In a class of thirty children I could only find one who was prepared to use their normal speaking voice and he thought I was faking.

"You're just pretending so that you give us a fun lesson, aren't you?"

The fun lesson was to sit in silence and draw what they thought they could hear in Beethoven's Battle of Wellington. 

Not everyone is quieter. The Long Suffering Husband is used to these problems now and so he will often interpret for me. I have some signals that I developed during the first silent period. It started when I wrote the letters Y E S on the fingers of my left hand and N O on the other. 'No' became a very satisfying gesture. 

Last night we were at an adult music school concert, which we force the LSH to come to so that he can keep my friend's husband company when we are playing in the band. Both men are quite reluctant attendees of this concert but luckily you can eat and drink throughout, so after half a bottle of red wine and some cheese for the ears ('Allo 'Allo reference) the LSH is quite jolly.  Eating crisps quietly is a fun game that he's not very good at and there is always a huge crunch during the string group's performance that makes me laugh. With no voice, laughing is OK in these situations. I sound a bit like Muttley (if you didn't get the 'Allo 'Allo reference you are definitely to young for this one) but laughter is contagious and he isn't silent.

"Oh dear, you won't let me come to any more of these concerts if I carry on like this will you?" he whispered, hopefully.

I gave him the sign, which he loudly translated before the meaning became clear to him.

"No.......shit!"

Apparently, being voiceless is funny. I have fun with it, as best as I can but I am still a little shocked when people point and laugh after I've tried to speak.

If you can't say anything......

There is a particularly traumatic storyline running in the Archers at the moment and it's one that is set to run and run.  Much has been written already about the abuse of Helen Titchner by her husband, which has been carefully timed to coincide with the long overdue legislation on coercive control. http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2016/02/helen-s-story-abuse-archers-reminds-me-my-own-so-i-m-willing-her-leave  This storyline is well written but it is upsetting the listeners. Most listeners have been swearing at the radio for about a year.  In our house the Long Suffering Husband mutters, "Bastard," under his breath and even the dog leaves the room everytime Rob speaks. Listeners have taken to Twitter in droves to complain about how 'unrealistic' this is.  They don't believe that her parents haven't noticed, they don't believe that she would put up with it, they don't think it would have gone on so long, they don't think Henry sounds like a normal 4 year old, they don't believe that her friend, Kirsty, isn't banging on the door day and night trying to help.

People have said that they aren't going to listen until it's all over. They have claimed that this story is bad for their mental health.

It's worse for Helen. Don't panic - I know she's not real; she can't be because this story will probably have a good ending for her.  Most women in her situation suffer in silence for years; ten or twenty is not uncommon before the husband's behaviour escalates to a point that it can no longer be ignored. In England and Wales 8% of women will experience domestic violence a year and 2 women a week will die at the hands of their partner or former partner.  How many of us will swear blind that we have never known anyone who has suffered from domestic violence?   Even when people do know they place the responsibility firmly back with the woman. It becomes her job to leave him and never go back; to be strong at a point when all her strength has been taken from her.

This story is upsetting me too and it's making me feel guilty.  Should I have done more when women told me things that made me worry about them? I've woken up this morning, thinking about one woman in particular.  I have lost my voice again and this time I seem to be on complete silent mode.

I knew a woman, briefly, whose name I can't even remember, who was married to a preacher at one of those happy-clappy churches.  Everyone said what a wonderful man he was.  She knew that.  He made sure of it.  He told her, "I'm a saint to everyone round here." Over a few weeks she started to paint a slightly different picture.  It helped that I was a complete stranger, with no power to interfere in her life. I worried about some things she said.  She asked me how I managed my housekeeping and I was surprised.  I had thought housekeeping money had gone out with the ark.  I asked her if she had a job and she told me that she would like to work but her husband wouldn't allow it.  She had to be at home for him and the children.  She told me that he insisted on having fish for tea on Friday, as he was a good Christian but as he didn't really like most fish it had to be smoked salmon.  This was before Lidl and her £20 a week housekeeping money didn't quite stretch to luxury items like smoked salmon. One week she was very distressed because he had invited a lot of people round for dinner and she didn't have enough housekeeping money to cater for them.  I suggested that she just tell him that she needed more money for this event and, maybe, a little help. She visibly shook at the thought.  I slipped a £5 note in her handbag when she wasn't looking and took a homemade cheesecake round later that evening.  Another time she joked that she had been praying to Jesus to delay her period because she didn't have enough money for sanitary products.  "Oh, for Gods sake," I said, "That's ridiculous.  He needs to give you more money."
"He can't.  He's teaching me about the cost of things.  He can't just give me money whenever I ask for it.  How will I ever learn to manage a budget if he does that?"
"He sounds like a bastard to me.  If I were you I'd just bleed on everything.  That'll teach him!"
She laughed before clapping her hands over her mouth in horror.
I didn't see her for a month.
I worried but did nothing.  I put it from my mind.
I saw her in the distance and ran to catch her up.  The thought crossed my mind that she was avoiding me.
"I haven't seen you for ages," I said.
"Oh, hello," she pretended she hadn't seen me earlier. "No, I, er, well I lost my voice."
"How frustrating."
She laughed. Small bubbly, girlish giggles.  "It's my fault."
"What's your fault?" I bristled ready to ring the police or go round and confront him personally, or maybe not, on reflection I wasn't that brave.
"Well you see, after I saw you last time I noticed that I was having some unkind thoughts and so I prayed.  I asked God to make me say only nice things."
"And you lost your voice?"
"Yes.  Funny isn't it?"
"Not exactly.  Sounds to me like God wants you to say the bad things."
"Oh, you are so funny," she said before pulling the hood of her coat over her head and rushing away.
I never saw her again and someone told me that they moved.

I'm wondering if my voice is allergic to the Church, as it always seems to disappear at the end of term, when I have spent time preparing for our school end of term services.  Maybe my voice gets cross at a God that allows for women to be treated so badly and thinks, "If I can't say anything nice, I won't say anything at all."

International Day of Happiness

I feel like one of those men, who on International Women's Day get cross and demand to know when International Men's Day is, except that there isn't an International Day of Sadness.

I don't want to be happy.  Today I feel like being sad, so just bog off with your happiness day and let me wallow in my misery.

There's just too much pressure in this world to be happy all the bloomin' time.

 As a teenage flute player with well trained downward turning corners of the mouth, I would walk the corridors of the school to constantly be told to cheer up by feckless-fop-haired boys who thought they were God's gift.  I would question myself, "Am I miserable? Do I have to smile all the time? What's it got to do with him anyway?  Will any boy ever love me if I look miserable when I'm just thinking about nothing?"

The website for this day has ten tips for being happy, arranged in a useful acronym: GREAT DREAM.

G is for Giving.  Apparently, doing things for others makes you happy. What rubbish! It is precisely because I'm sick of doing things for others that I'm having a miserable day.  I don't want to make anyone else smile, or iron everyone's clothes, or make food for others to eat, or practise the piano, so that Les doesn't make an appearance at the Church.

R is for relating.  Again, it's meant to be connecting with people that makes you happy.  Oh, no.  I don't want to talk to anyone. If I have to talk to people today to be happy.....well, I'm enjoying being miserable.

E is for exercise.  This is probably true. If I go for a long walk I will probably feel happier.  The Long Suffering Husband has just suggested that I go for a swim.  "You're getting into that fug thing, again," he said, "Go for a swim.  You know you like a swim."  So, now the relating is making me irritable and I want him to go away so that I can be lazy and sad on my own.

A is for appreciating the world around you.  I've looked out of the window.  The weeds are beginning to grow, the daffodils are droopy, there is moss growing in the grass and the sun is shining in my eyes.

T is for trying out.  If you keep learning new things it is meant to make you happy.  Today I read a book about depression, I learnt a lot but it didn't make me happy.  The Archers is making me learn about domestic abuse and that's not making me happy. As I write this I am watching Dr Thorne and thinking that this book was almost certainly written by a woman and it's making me sad that women had to publish their work in their husband's name (I'm sure fans of Anthony Trollope will disagree with me but I'm convinced this was written by his wife Rose) and still have to pretend to be men to sell their work (JK Rowling)

D is for direction and having goals to look forward to.  Goals just make me anxious. Being anxious doesn't make me happy.

R is for resilience.  Oh, yes, that works.  Keep coming back for more of whatever makes you sad.

E is for emotion and taking a positive approach.  We're back to the boy in the corridor with his blond hair and cut-away t-shirt telling me to smile.  In the words of Eeyore, "I'd look on the bright side, if I could see it."

A is for acceptance.  Yes.  Now you're talking.  I accept that I want to be miserable today.  That is who I am today.

M is for meaning.  You are meant to be part of something bigger, to make you happy.  My proposal is to encourage anyone who wants to join me in a day of misery to do so.  It's OK to be sad.  If you want you can join me in Eeyore's gloomy place.

On second thoughts, don't.  I really don't want to see anyone today.

I can be happy again tomorrow but today I'm having a day off and I don't care that there's a twitter hashtag telling me to be different.

Budget

I wonder if I'm too old to understand but this budget has confused me.

It's not just how different George Osborne's sandwich box looks in every picture.

Although that is confusing, it's more the content of the budget that has puzzled me.

I don't understand how making all schools into academies is going to help anyone. I don't understand which big business are clamouring to sponsor the failing schools. I don't understand how paying some senior schools (but not all) to run after school arts and sports clubs will help. If a teacher moves from a school that pays them to run a club to a school that expects them to do it for free then this will have a terrible effect on morale.

I don't understand the sugar tax. Milk based drinks are exempt, as are Jamie Oliver's decadent puddings but fizzy drinks incur the fine. The companies who make fizzy drinks will probably spread the cost of this tax over all their products, so that low sugar fizzy drink guzzlers will also pay and the price of high sugar drinks won't be so huge that it puts people off.

Most of all, I am confused about the new lifetime ISA. I get the idea that governments want people to save (although I'm sure it's better to have money flowing around the economy being spent on goods and services). I also understand that freeing people from paying tax on their savings might encourage them to put a little of their earnings in a bank account. I also understand that young people don't save because they have to spend every penny on living. It's only when you get to my age that you've given up on living and you might as well stash your money under the mattress. So, a product that encourages young people to save is a good thing. Of course it is. But I'm confused. The government claims to have no money to help the disabled or those who earn so little that they can't feed their children but they can give £1000 a year to everyone under 40 who earns £4000 a year more than they need.

I was explaining my confusion to the Long Suffering Husband this morning and his usual half listening state he got quite excited about a lifetime ISA. 

"You can't have one, you're too old. You have to be under forty."

"Well, that's not fair," he said smoothing down the greying edges of his hair.

"Everyone is so selfish," I said, throwing a pillow at him.

"You've only just worked that out? Everyone is selfish and the rich are louder , better educated and more articulate."

I'm still confused, though. I don't know what has happened to compassion.

Roll your sleeves up

Can someone please buy the Conservative government some short sleeved shirts?

George Osborne, David Cameron and Boris Johnson have all been using the phrase, "roll up your sleeves and get the job done." It's odd, really because you never see any of them with their sleeves rolled up.  Not that any of them would do a job that requires actual sleeve rolling.  They are much more likely to galmi (get a little man in - I suspect this is a word peculiar to our family). Even when Boris cleaned for the Queen he had a long sleeved shirt on under his t-shirt.

The Prime Minister and the man that coverts his job are both old Etonians and I kept thinking that their uniform would have prohibited sleeve rolling. 

Yesterday, I visited my daughter, who lives in Slough and she took us for a walk through Eton to Windsor.   It was my first visit to Eton and I was shocked by how other-worldly it felt.  I'm not saying I didn't like it.  What's not to like about a street that contains an antiquarian book shop, nice restaurants, a deli and a shop that specialises in collectible boxes? Except the parents in their large cars; Mothers with impossibly skinny legs wrapped in jeans that cost more than I earn a month, Distracted Dads who ask their boys questions like, "How did your oral with Boffy go?" and sisters who stare at their sibling's unchecked eating with simmering resentment. There were single boys in Victorian wedding costume and groups of boys in sports gear and none of them had their sleeves rolled up or any of their arms showing.  My daughter said that she had noticed that the boys in frock coats and white bow ties were always alone and thought it was odd because every teenage boy she had met up until this point in her life preferred to hunt in packs. Even the boys in the restaurants with proper linen and silver cutlery had their arms covered.  Long sleeved Hacket Rugby shirts, Thom Browne cashmere sweaters (with the stripes on the arm) and long sleeved blue shirts over jeans were everywhere. 

These perfect boys who grow up to do brilliant things can't be real can they? There's a touch of the Midwich Cuckoos about the place.  What if, on enrolling at Eton the real boys are swapped for alien or robotic replacements and the evidence can be seen on their forearm?

I think that explains everything.

That Friday Feeling

According to Twitter #ThatFridayFeeling involves a large glass of wine, pyjama wearing and (apparently) shaking your tits. My Friday feeling doesn't include any of that and I do everything I can to accidentally avoid the last one, including holding them when I jump, much to the amusement of the people that make my Friday evenings.

Friday evening is my favourite part of the week. It's the time when I feel most normal. 

Yes, like everyone else, I'm tired. I start by pretending to move the piano. The people that make me feel normal come over, stroke the piano's quilted cover that I have rested my head upon and say, "So comforting. How long do you need?" before they help me push.

Then there's paedo-watch. When you run a club for children you have to be ever vigilant. 

"There's an old man sitting in his car, watching the children arrive. I've seen him a few times now. Do you think we should be worried."

We agree that we should probably watch.

"Which car is it?"

"The blue one with the steamed up windows."

"I hope he's just there to pick someone up after work. It is six o clock after all."

We agree but decide we should watch to make sure.

Eventually another car arrives and he gets out and goes into the church hall opposite.

"Oh, he's in charge of the flower arranging and gun violence club."

We are all relieved until we realise the irony of having left the children inside unattended while we have been extra attentive to their safety.

The flower arranging and gun violence club is probably not unique to our town. Flower arrangers are people that you should never mess with. They look sweet and innocent, with their tightly permed gray hair and elasticated waists but they are, in fact, highly trained killers. If you look carefully you can find a weapon concealed in every arrangement. Every church employs flower arrangers rather than security guards. Have you noticed how no one is stealing lead from church rooves anymore? That's down to the flower arrangers and their night time patrols. Flower arrangers are shocking at parking but you must never challenge them about it or you will be met with a steely stare and fingers the twitch restlessly by their pocket.

So it's with some trepidation that we realise that one of us had been blocked in the car park by a psychotic floraphile. 

"Which door shall we go in?"

We look: scratch our heads until the most decisive of us flings open the nearest one and steps into a room of silent assassins. The worst part is that this entrance puts them next to the speaker, who is demonstrating how to use gladioli and cheese plant leaves to conceal a Mac-10. 

She is ushered out by the man we had watched earlier, who tells her that it's the demonstrator's car and it can't be moved. Instead, he finds the person next to her, who comes out, complaining that her car isn't a pink Dacia and seems surprised that it would be possible for anyone to manoeuvre a car from the space, even when she moves her's.

We wait while our friend backs out of the space.

"Are you all together?" the man asks.

"Nope," says our percussion director, shaking his maracas at him threateningly.

The man looks at the maracas and decides it might be best not to challenge the Musician bombers, just in case it spoils his Friday feeling. 

Should have gone to SpecSavers

I've just come back from picking up some glasses for my daughter from SpecSavers

. It's not an opticians I would choose for myself, as I am a surprisingly private person. Space is tight in this particular shop and you know that the person next to you, virtually on your lap, is taking notes of your prescription and all your personal details. 

Whilst I don't want anyone listening to me, I can highly recommend the experience of eavesdropping on other consultations if you are terminally nosey, like me. 

Next to me were a little girl and her mum having eye tests. The girl was six and probably far too wiggly to have to sit on her mum's lap but lack of chairs and space made it necessary. 

"I'm sorry, she's not in the computer."

"Of course I'm not in the computer, I'm on Mummy's lap."

Mummy shifted uncomfortably and hissed, "Yes, you are. Now, be good and be still."

"I can't find you either. I'll have to re-enter you as new patients, if that's OK."

Mummy shrugged. What else could she do?

"I'm Matilda," the girl said helpfully.

"Thank you and how do you spell that?"

The girl rolled her eyes at her mum and spelt her name out phonetically. "Everyone asks that."

"You're right everyone asks that. I don't know why."

"I don't either it's a really easy name to spell not like my friend Hermione."

The optician shuffled, brushed her hair over her ear and adjusted her collar. "There are just so many ways of spelling names now."

Then it was Mum's turn but Matilda wasn't ready to be ignored again. The optician asked about Mum's title.

"It's Mrs."

"No, darling it's Miss isn't it because I'm not married to Daddy am I?"

"Yet."

Mum's eyes widened at her daughter's certainty. 

"Well, no. I don't think so. I'm not going to marry Daddy."  Pulling a face at the thought she continued, "No, I can think of much nicer people to marry than Daddy."

"Oh, I quite like Daddy. Are you sure you're not going to marry him?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Can I marry him then?"

If only Mummy had gone to SpecSavers seven years ago then Matilda could have been saved from her Oedipal desire.

International Women's Day

As, Richard Herring will constantantly point out on Twitter today, International Men's Day is the 19th of November. I love his work and dedication to this cause because men are important too; we mustn't forget them.

On the 19th of November we should think about all the jobs that are considered to be men's work and lament about how poorly paid they are. We should worry about the four thousand (sorry, I mean seventeen - still too many) men that are killed by their partners every year in the UK. We should worry about the men who live in countries where they are not allowed to drive, leave the house or breathe without their wife's permission. We should make a furious noise about the boys that still don't receive an education while their sisters do. Maybe we could get a national paper to scrabble around to find 50 male CEOs and put their pictures on the front page (and when that's too difficult make the shortfall up with actors that have played CEO)  Male pop stars could get upset that their songs are only heard if they dance around in their pants. We could get really angry at the Guardian's Page 3 Willy of the Day, staring at us over our cornflakes and get really cross about the female editors that exploit men in this way.

My wish for International Women's Day is that one day it will be glossed over as much as the Men's day is. There are a few women jumping up and down and saying that we don't need a day for Women (see today's Independent) and I am really pleased for them. Their experience of the world must be a great one: feeling that they have parity of respect and pay to a man. My personal experience is pretty good too but it doesn't stop me wanting the same for others.

Mother's Day is another day that is celebrated much more than Father's Day. "Let's give our Mum a day off!" the children cry, "Come on Dad, we can make up for a whole year of taking advantage of her for one day, can't we?" If you are lucky enough, like me, to share parenting with a Long Suffering Husband then Mother's Day might pass with a droopy bunch of daffodils and a sarcastic card, and you will be grateful that your day is pretty much like every other day.

I'd like a world where the website for International Women's Day is more concerned with the parking arrangements than a long list of inequalities.

Small Word Preservation Society

My phone pinged and flashed "Happy Mother's Day you." It was 2am. I've been awake since, internally ranting about the 'little words' being important too.

I  want to ask him, "Did you mean,'Happy Mother's Day to you'or were you going for the Joey, from Friends style, 'Happy Mother's Day, you.' said with a wry smile and an ironic wink?

Just lately I've become very protective of 'little words', as we used to call them. Charades taught us how important and how many of them they were. At Christmas, you'd pull 'Out of Africa' from the Charade hat, sigh and hold three fingers up.

"Three words."

You nodded and held one finger up.

"First word."

More nodding followed by holding your thumb and forefinger close together.

"Little word." 

Nodding. Then a shouted list of small words from all directions would elicite furious shaking of the head.

"The, in, and, of, he, she, it, him, her, on, to, off, up."

Eventually, you might get to, "out," slapping one finger on your nose, pointing to the person who said it with the other hand, hoping you hadn't made your nose bleed, before repeating the process again.

As soon as the family had guessed 'out of' you were there and the relief of not having to mime 'Africa' was overwhelming.

Now that I'm a grumpy I find myself correcting these little words in people's speech. I can't help it. 

I shout at the TV, "Go to Argos! It's an imperative statement you stupid advertisers, you are trying to get people to go to the shop, you are not cheering the blooming shop on. It's a shop, it doesn't have the power of movement so it can't go anywhere!"

Phew! It's exhausting but I have to do it - everytime it's on. 

Whenever a presenter says, "We could of seen that," I am compelled to shout 'Have, have. We could have seen that!"

These poor little words. What have they ever done to be treated so badly? A small word preservation society might be a good idea but some idiot would undoubtedly mangle 'word' and we would end up preserving the Disney ride with the annoying tune.

I'm not particularly fond of my trait of compulsively correcting people's speech. It reminds me of an old physics teacher I used to have. She would repeat back almost everything anyone said to her with a correction. She taught PE, as well as physics and looked as though she would win any race or fight. I was quite scared of her and always tried to avoid any conversation. One day, in the fifth form it was unavoidable.

"Miss, I have to go and see Hope-Simpson for my careers talk."

Her arms folded aggressively across her ever expanding menopausal breast, head tilted to one side. "May I go to see Mr Hope-Simpson for my careers talk?"

And here I made the worst mistake of my life. One that I am still ashamed of today.

"Well, you can if you want but I think he's expecting me and I would have thought you were too old for careers advice."

Now matter how hard I try I can not remember what happened next.

On Friday, feeling particularly grumpy, dressed in a Pikachu onesie I succumbed  to a rant about small words.

"Miss, Can I go for the toilet?"

"No."

His shoulders sloped down and he went to turn.

"Can I go to the toilet?" I corrected.

Luckily, he wasn't cursed with my wit and he just looked at me and scratched his head, frozen on one foot, unsure of whether to go back to his place to keep waiting for his computer to log on or scuttle off to empty his bored 

bladder. 

"You see, you need to use the little words properly. You can't go for the toilet because the toilet isn't here and even if it was it couldn't go instead of you. You could go for a pee but as you used the word toilet then the little word needs to be to."

He still looked at me blankly.

"You used the wrong preposition."

"Oh. Can I go to the toilet, then?"

Thank goodness for grammar lessons.

Exploding Breasts and Other Menopausal Symptoms (look away if you are squeamish)

Hands were thrust into the air while their owners made squeaking noises. The teacher taking assembly had asked for a volunteer to be Jesus.

"You can't be Jesus," said a little girl, grabbing her friend's arm and trying unsuccessfully to push it down, "You're not a boy!"

"Well I can! Why should boys get all the fun? I'm not sure I want to be a girl anyway."

The large number of menopausal women that I work with would agree with her. They can be found whispering in the corners of the staff room about their periods, trying not to be dramatic. They are discussing symptoms that they never thought it would be possible to have without dying.

The men walk in and walk out quickly, muttering, "I can believe the conversation I just walked in on."

These symptoms can go on for years. Hormones, trying to find a new balance, aren't just wild, they're blooming furious.

Occasionally, a famous writer gets to her late 40s and decides it's time to write a book. "What no one tells you...," she moans on Women's Hour. I am always surprised that the presenters don't punch her smug face and say, "haven't you been listening to this programme for the last twenty years?"

No one really listens. It's not wise. How would you get through all those sleepless nights, caused by children if you knew the sleeplessness that your partying hormones would cause? How would you cope with the odd twinge of period pain if you knew it might be constant in the run up to the end? How would you cope with what you thought was a heavy bleed if you knew how much worse it could get?

The problem is that I did listen so I can't legitimately jump up and down and stamp my feet, crying, "It's not fair. No one told me."

In my twenties I worked in a bank with women of many ages. "It's not the hot flushes that bother me," Sue said, throwing open the window and pushing a heap of snow off the sill. "Why did nobody tell me about the boob symptoms?"

None of us knew. We'd only really heard of the hot flushes. The 'nice' symptoms of menopause. Another, slightly older lady told us with pride about the new mattress and white trousers she's bought now that the 'flooding' is over. Us younger members of staff had heard of flooding but hadn't really considered the true horror of it. "Let's face it," she told us it just wouldn't be nice to say, 'haemorrhaging but carrying on with your day as though everything is completely normal,' now would it?"

"I can cope with that," said Booby Sue, "Maybe mine's not too bad it's just that my boobs have been growing since I was 46. It's like I've had PMT for the last 3 years. They've just kept growing. I'm 36G and even M&S can't cater for them.@

I left the bank before Sue finished plunging the office into an arctic winter at random moments, so I'll never know what finally happened with her breast situation but I thought of her as I lay in bed moaning at the Long Suffereing Husband for moving, "Can't you lie still? My boobs are so sore, they might explode!"

He rolled his eyes out loud, "I don't think you will."

"How do you know?"

He paused and checked his past experience of dealing with hormonal women.

"Well you don't know. You might not be  the first! I've read about breast implants that explode."

"It's not really the same is it?"

"Well no, but you don't know.....I wonder if anyone has thought about using breast implants to plan terrorist attacks?"

"What?"

"Well, I was thinking these suicide bombers could have a bomb hidden in the implant and no one could detect it."

I winced. "It would be a bit dangerous."

"Duh, obviously, they're suicide bombers!"

"How would they be detonated?"

"Ah, yes, I hadn't thought of that."

"Because if it was by squeezing to pop a pack of liquid to mix with something else then they could go off accidentally."

"It would be the ultimate pay back for any man who thought it was OK to squeeze a strangers breasts though."