Soap

I can’t read the title of this blog without humming, “der der der de de der der de der,” and clicking my fingers to see if I can achieve invisibility. It’s weird, I know. Somehow, an American comedy sitcom from the early eighties has stuck with me so that any time anyone mentions the fatty stuff used to wash hands I’m instantly transported back to my teenage self, watching what I think was probably the best thing on TV. I haven’t watched it since, so maybe the four series wouldn’t stand the test of time but that would make me very sad.

I was actually going to write about soap. Real soap; long chain fatty acid salts, with a hydrophilic head and a hydrophobic tail. Since this new virus hit, we have been encouraged to wash our hands properly and so soap has been hard to get. At first, it was difficult to find anti-bacterial hand-wash and good, old fashioned solid soap bars, that leave a ring around your basin were still in the shops and then the deputy chief medical officer explained that viruses didn’t care if your hand gel was antibacterial because they weren’t bacteria. She said that soap is an emulsifier and so breaks up viruses and that a hard bar of soap used properly was even better. Then the soap flew off the shelves.  It became difficult to get the brand you like.

I’m sure it’s all the same stuff and does the same job but I’m fussy about soap.

 My favourite bar of soap was always Imperial Leather. I like the smell: It’s robust, like an expensive men’s cologne. The bar also comes with a handy little label that acts as a stand to protect your soap dish from scum. Unfortunately, the Long Suffering Husband was never that keen. Eventually, we compromised on Palmolive. Not the green bar because it smells of Lily of the Valley and reminds me of my Nan and Grandad in their sheltered accommodation flat but the white bar. All soaps are probably made with palm oil but it was impossible to keep using Palmolive without thinking about the poor orangutans so we switched to  the Dove Moisture Bar. It worked on many levels. It was white (goes with a grey bathroom), it didn’t leave hands dry and cracked because of the moisturiser and had a light clean smell.

The LSH came back from the supermarket with a hangdog expression. He had found the whole experience rather depressing. Normally, he loves the supermarket and will ‘pop’ there, sometimes twice in a day. “I’m just popping to Tesco,” is my secret middle name for him. To have to save that trip for such a long time and then be confronted by rules and people in masks and gloves was upsetting. And then the pressure to get everything on the list because it would be at least a week before it was seemly to pop in again was the final straw.

“There’s still not much soap,” he said handing me four bars of Pears.
“Ooh! Pears! expensive!” I said.
My mum used to get different soaps on her weekly shop and would sometimes treat us to an expensive brand. Pears was one of those that we didn’t get very often. I remembered it a shimmering clear amber bar that smelt of grass and fresh laundry.
He cheered up a bit.
Temporarily.
“What has happened to Pears soap?” I said, emerging from the bathroom sniffing my hands in disgust. “It used to smell like a summer day and now it’s like the boys toilets at primary school. Why have they made it smell like carbolic soap?”
The LSH disagreed. He thought it had always smelled like that.
“I like it,” he said defiantly.

Looks like we are stuck with it for a while but as there are more people in the house who are all washing more often it probably won’t be long before we can try the next bar that is left in the supermarket.

I had been writing about routines and was thinking that ‘Soaps’ are probably part of everyone’s routine that have taken on a surreal quality. Because they are recorded such a long time in advance they can’t reflect what is happening at the moment and a topical insert just isn’t going to cut it.
The two Soaps that I like are Holby City and The Archers. Holby City is, and always has been, the hospital I’m going to if I’m sick. They diagnose and treat you in the same day and now we discover that they have proper working ventilators https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52250706 which they can donate to the Nightingale Hospital because they don’t have a single case of Coronavirus. It’s such a shame that Bernie Wolfe died because she she would have had that new field hospital running like clockwork.

The Archers is part of my Sunday morning routine. The omnibus is slightly shorter than normal, as they try to eek out their recorded episodes and it is all a bit grim at the moment, with Lynda in hospital, wishing she has died and the lovely Kirsty having another awful man in her life. But if you fancy it you can meet me in The Bull at 10 for a pint of Shires and a bag of dry roasted. I will have washed my hands.

Birth of an Archers fan

While we were eating dinner tonight the radio was still on in the kitchen.  Suddenly, it was seven o'clock and there was slow hand clapping coming not only from the radio but also from around our dinner table.  On the radio, it was the silents who were showing their displeasure at Rob the Rapist as they refused to have him on the cricket team.  In my kitchen, the clapping was accompanied by some rather choice language. None of the men in my house are fond of  Rob, including the dog who growls at his voice on the radio.

Fantastic drawing from the Guardian

"When I finally go to University, I might just listen to the first bit of the Archers, if I feel homesick," said my son. The Long Suffering Husband raised an eyebrow. He knew that I'd made an Archers listener, simultaneously disapproving of me and worrying about his boy's future.

The Archers finished and our conversation moved onto more mind blowing topics, like golf, maths and the probability of someone having the same fingerprints as you.  Apparently, there is a one in 64 million chance that two people could have the same fingerprint.  That sounds unlikely but the top Euro millions prize has an odds of winning of one in 140 million and people do win that.
"That's how they could deal with Rob," I said.
"Great idea.  Find his fingerprint twin and get them to commit a crime,"
"Yes,"I interrupted, excited that my son had instantly understood what I was thinking, "the fingerprint twin could murder Susan and leave fingerprints everywhere for PC Burns to find and that would be it, Rob could be locked up for life."
"Why Susan?" the LSH asked.
"Oh Dad, no one likes Susan,"
That might have been a mistake, thinking about it, because I do quite like Susan.  Not as a person but as a character and have been waiting patiently for the hilarity that will occur when everyone has peeled their stars off Miss October since the WI calendar photo shoot.

Twitter is pinning it's hopes on Rob having already murdered Stephan and stuffed him in a culvert but I think that's unlikely.  Rob only threatened him and he went home.  If he hadn't gone home then his family would have looked for him by now, starting at the last place he worked.

I like the fingerprint twin idea, though.  It could be great to see him convicted for a crime he didn't commit and not caring because we all know he 'deserved it'.
"They'd need to leave some of Rob's DNA at the scene too, just to seal the deal," my son said.
I thought Usha could help.
"No, she's too clean.  You'd never get her to help."
"What about the carpet at Blossom Hill Cottage?"
"Yeah, she could just give it to someone, or leave it somewhere. It does have Rob's blood on it from where Helen stabbed him."
"What if Charlie Thomas is Rob's fingerprint twin?"
He looked at me wide-eyed.  We both knew that would be amazing.

The LSH was visibly twitching, "I've got a suggestion," he said, flatly."
We both looked at him, waiting.
"It could just be in the script,"
We tilted our heads to one side and scratched around our ear in unison.
"The scriptwriter could just write, 'Rob leaves Ambridge in disgrace.'"

*Silence*

"I know," said my son, after a while, "He could be eaten by a flock of mad marauding sheep on Lakey Hill."

The Archers and real life

There are several ways to embarrass and distress your children but none seems more effective than The Archers.

"It was terrible," my colleague said thinking of her childhood, "We had to sit in complete silence during the Archers. If we even breathed mum would wave us away with a shush. And the worst was if she missed it in the week and we'd be going somewhere in the car on Sunday morning then...well!"

I shrunk in my seat and thought about all the times I'd traumatised my children in this way. 

I grew up with the Sunday omnibus and really quite liked it. I enjoyed the warmth of the kitchen, the Sunday paper, the smell of the roast my mum was making and the quiet chuntering from the radio. You might say that I was an odd child. My children didn't enjoy those Sunday mornings in the same way and have shown no signs of becoming listeners when they become middle class and middle aged (although I still have a little hope for my son). I've often wondered how this soap has such high listening figures when it seems so rare to find another person who will publicly admit to a fondness for it. 

"The Archers? Oh no, how old do you think I am?"

At the weekend I found myself in the company of a table full of Archers' fans. It was my Dad's birthday and we were invited to their Greek themed dinner party (I bought a selection of food made with  courgettes). I'll confess that I felt completely out of place and puzzled over how my parents had become so posh. I sat, feeling like a schoolgirl in a group of grown ups, my legs swinging from my chair, listening to people call each other dahhhrling and telling each other that they 'simply must.' They spoke about their abusive childhoods with a freedom that was worn like a badge of honour and those that had kind loving mothers seemed slightly ashamed. One woman was describing her upbringing on a farm with a violent dictatorial father,  how because of primogeniture her twin brother inherited everything and how her tiny niece had pranged the tractor causing thousands of pounds worth of damage she suddenly said, "My life is just like the Archers." Everyone around the table (except the LSH and my son) listened religiously. I hoped that her six year old niece hadn't been drunk.

"I'll never forgive them for what they've done to the Grundies. They've just made them look stupid."

"It's the trial next week. I expect the air in my kitchen will be blue," they joked. 

"Oooh...that man!"

My traumatised colleague pretended not to know when I asked her what her mum thought about Helen.

"Helen? What's going on there then?"

I told her about the domestic abuse/coercive control storyline and how pregnant Helen stabbed Rob and is now awaiting trial for attempted murder, having given birth to a boy in prison.

"Oh yes, I do know about that. Honestly, how do I know? I don't even listen 

to it."

To miss this storyline you would have probably been living under a rock for the last year. It has made the national press and has captured the imagination in a way no other domestic violence story does. Many have donated to Refuge and although I don't understand it, Twitter is showing it's support with a hashtag.

                 #solidari-tea

Helen's trial starts this week and the fans are hoping that Rob will somehow end up in prison. I'm sure the writers will be much more thorough and know that the best they can do is get Helen acquitted, which would humiliate Rob and in reality put her at further risk. 

Real women suffer so much more than Helen has. The Archers' listeners with their blameless middle class lives (despite the wallopings they had as children) couldn't take any more: just the suggestion of forced sex was enough to have them switching off their radios in droves.

The local paper posted a tweet link of a domestic abuse story this morning. 

The headline:

Grays man accused of stabbing dog to death and assaulting Essex Police officers due in court

You had to look hard to see that it was a domestic abuse story. Police had been called in the early hours of Sunday morning to reports of a "disturbance". We know, don't we, that this is code for the fact that the man was beating up his wife? Maybe you are thinking that it was just a drunken argument. Maybe there was no wife. The article then says, "It was alleged that a man had assaulted a woman and kicked and stabbed a dog."

We know what's going on, don't we? The abuse of the dog was part of her punishment or the dog just got in the way as he tried to protect her. We know that the knife had been used on the woman (and probably not for the first time) in a way that assured she didn't fight back but didn't harm her enough to get him into serious trouble.  All Archers' listeners now know that this woman will have been subjected to years of terrifying control and violence. We know that she will have felt powerless, trapped and invisible. Luckily, this man has now assaulted the attending police officer (probably not the first attending policeman) and killed a dog and so the woman may get some protection. 

She's still invisible, though. The press aren't interested in reporting her story. In these days of digital led reporting it's virtual hits not real ones that count and the public will skim over a story about a battered wife but can't hear enough about the poor dog. 

Phenomenon

The Archers has become a thing.

It's being reported on the news, Woman's Hour are devoting a daily slot to it and top political opinion writers are finding that the copy they file won't even be considered unless it mentions an everyday story of country folk.

Everyone is listening to the Archers and it's odd. 

It's like being that child in the playground who was quite happy playing shops with the things from trees on his own until the cool kids decided to make it their game too. The poor thing then has to decide whether to stop playing, join the cool kids, or carry on his own game. Those choices aren't all valid, though, because the cool kids won't let him play and once everyone else has discovered his game it never feels the same again. 

I'm pleased for the writers and actors of The Archers, of course I am. They deserve the praise. The Helen and Rob storyline has been beautifully played out and they have  brought domestic abuse into everyday discussion. 

I'm not one of those listeners that the press are writing about who are cross that their nice fantasy of 1950s country living has been destroyed because I'm not sure they exist or they haven't been listening properly. What about Grace Archer,who burnt to death in 1955 (I'm not old enough to have been listening since then but her ghost returned recently),Brian Aldridge, who was kicked in the head by a cow with BSE in 1989 and suffered from epilepsy for a while, John Archer, who fell off the Fergie (it's a tractor) and died on the day my son was born in 1998, (giving me an excuse for a huge cry during the Omnibus - nothing to do with milk coming in and cracked nipples, honestly!) ,  Kathy Perks, who was raped by Wilmot-Brown (I could be confusing soaps) in 2004, Nigel Pargeter who fell off the roof (don't ask - he was always an idiot), and many more? Helen, herself, hasn't had an entirely blameless life. Her brother was John (death by tractor), she lived with a grumpy gamekeeper who killed himself, became anorexic, had a son by AI (not unusual in the country - it's how all the cows do it), makes cheese and ran a village shop with her best friend until her brother (not the dead one) ditched the friend at the alter and the friend decided not to speak to her again. 

I want to point out to everyone that is getting upset about what they consider to be unrealistic sensational story lines that IT'S JUST A STORY.

Honestly, you would think that writers have a duty to only write the truth. Nobody writes the whole truth. EVER. It would be boring. And parts of the story are probably truth for some people. 

I like radio drama. It's only one step away from reading. I like the way it lets you picture things and I'm very upset about articles that show photos of the actress playing Helen. She doesn't look like that in my head. I like the way it stretches and grows over time. I am always so impressed with The Archers scriptwriters who seem to remember every earlier detail, even those that someone else wrote.

It's not for everyone, though. Just because something dramatic is happening that reflects a very important and under talked about part of every day life that doesn't mean that the Archers should suddenly become required listening.  Soon, this story will be over and people who don't like listening to Lynda Snell complain (using the best long words ever) that she can't find a man (for her play), or Ruth laughing about the stock cube in the shower joke (No, I don't understand it either), or Jim and Robert in a bird watching war (quite a difficult thing on the radio), or the gentle sound of mooing from the sheep (Ambridge is the only place that you can hear sheep moo)  will be very disappointed.

I'm quite happy not being one of the cool kids. I started listening to the Archers before I knew what it was and made a conscious choice to listen on a Sunday morning, while my mum made lunch, when I was in my early teens. Sunday was a ritual day.  I would go to the local shop on my bike and be allowed to spend the change from buying the paper on some sweets.  When I got back, instead of doing the usual teenage thing of disappearing, I sat at the table with the paper, writing articles that I would never send (always been a poor finisher) for the Young Observer Reporter's Club.  I was a proper member with a battered card that went everywhere with me as I thought it would give me the access of Nancy Drew if I ever saw a murder (which I didn't).  When I went to college I continued to listen on a Sunday morning.  I don't think this made me very popular: 10am on a Sunday morning was always a little early for most students to be woken with the sound of Barwick Green dum de dumming along the corridor.  The Archers on a Sunday morning has been my religion.  Once I was asked to sing with a good choir and had to turn them down because part of the agreement was to sing on Sunday morning in church.  "I can't," I said, "I have a prior committment."
"Oh, I hope you don't mind me being nosy but what do you do on a Sunday morning that you can't get out of?"
I did mind and made some excuse about the allotment and being so busy all week.  It just wouldn't have been cool for a woman in her early thirties to confess to listening to the Archers, although I'm not sure that being an allotment owner was any better.

Now that I am nearly at the age where it would be fine to be an Archer's listener (average age 52) it's not something that needs to be kept a secret.  The cool kids are doing it. Will they still let me play?  Will they have changed the game forever?

I think I'll be OK though.  I think the cool kids will stop playing before they destroy the game.  Most are only reluctantly listening anyway and are, quite frankly, rude.

Suzanne Moore in the Guardian

Why is it that the cool kids always think they know what us weedy little things are thinking? I do not think 'actual soaps' are beneath me.  I'm not sure what an actual soap is.  I  currently have a regular appointment at Holby and have watched Eastenders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, Brookside, Neighbours, Home and Away, Doctors, the Flying Doctors and Hollyoaks.  I like stories.  I like people, of all classes (what is class dyslexia?).  The Archers has endured.  I didn't grow out of it when I stopped being a teenager and it was no longer relevant to me.  It didn't stop when not enough people were listening to it.

Long live the Archers, even when it stops being a phenomenon.

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."

Social Media, Drama and Real Life

I like social media; how could I not when I blog? I like drama, especially the Archers and I like real life.

Increasingly, these are not separate things. The more I write my own stories, I realise that the boundary between truth and fiction is nebulous. Last night, I wrote about an octogenarian, whose cheeks were lined with the underground map of Tokyo, with a nose so huge it was hard to imagine he had been born with it. This morning, I am sitting across from this man in a coffee shop, listening to him complain about how Facebook hasn't paid enough tax. He is indignant and is never going to use Facebook again. I wonder if I write that he uses Facebook to advertise his skateboarding business it will become true. It's how Charlie Brooker must have felt when the Cameron/ Boar's head revelations came out.  Oscar Wilde said,"Life imitates art more than art imitates life," which I doubt but the coincidence of making art that then happens is an experience every artist must have experienced.

Social media has thrown another dimension into the mix. The number of times Jeremy Kyle ironically says, "oh right, so it's on Facebook, it must be true," only to be proved through the lie detector, which he stands by 100%, that it was true. Did writing it on Facebook create it? It's almost impossible to have a conversation with someone in real life without them mentioning something they've seen on social media. Celebrities prefer Twitter.  They say that Facebook is too much full of people bragging about their perfect lives, which is probably because they are celebrities and they and all their celebrity friends have perfect lives.  My Facebook feed is full of 'inspirational quotes' that I struggle not to comment on sarcastically, pictures and videos of animals doing strange things and people moaning about their children.  I've checked for perfection and it does not exist in my world. Twitter is much more brutal and unreal than Facebook. Celebrities complain that they should have known better than to have an argument with an egg (the default picture).  They think that if a person has changed the picture it must be a picture of themselves and they are therefore less anonymous. Sometimes I think celebrities are stupid.


I use Twitter, mainly, to talk to other Archer's listeners about The Archers.  I don't know most of the people I interact with on Twitter and people I do know say things like, "I don't understand your tweets."

I find that the line between real life and The Archers frequently blurs and I am often suspicious that I know an Archers writer and sometimes fear that I am secretly Lynda Snell.

 I am surprised that they don't seem to have social media in Ambridge.  You never hear Will Grundy say,

"'Ere Nic.  Did you see the picture Will put on Facebook of his cow?" only to have her chuckle, "Now, now Ed, that's no way to talk about Emma."

They have the Ambridge Website and there was a brief moment when Tom Archer (the one that went to Canada and didn't come back, not the one we have now, who is Dr Who's grandson) put pictures of his pigs playing football on YouTube as a marketing ploy but Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like don't exist in Ambridge.

Ambridge, however, does exist on social media.  I suspect that it might be difficult to avoid The Archers on Twitter on a Sunday morning.  Twitter has a lot to answer for.  They suggested that Rob was a wife beater, amusingly referring to him as Titchynob and look what is happening to poor Helen.  She's become a doormat. Totally out of character and her mother, who never liked any men has decided that he's a saint.  People are now tweeting links to women's refuges for Helen but it's all pointless. I used to like Ruth.  She was a strong woman who took over the running of her boyfriend's farm (and then married him to secure the farm for her children).  Unfortunately, Twitter didn't like her.  They didn't like her Prudhoe accent, so the writers have turned her into a snivelling, whinging, grieving idiot.  Why couldn't they have left her as the woman who had affairs with her hired help (no, not Bert Fry, that is a terrible image).  Jill used to be a matriarch.  No one messed with Jill and now look.

Twitter is too misogynistic to allow strong female characters to exist.  They are all destroyed.

Luckily, I missed much of the awful doormat parts this week as I was laughing at my own joke.  Rex 'fancy a goose' Fairbrother, was telling Ruth about his Granny Seaside, whose real name was Nester.

"Nester Supermare," I shouted at the Long Suffering Husband.  He looked up from the Grand Prix, lifted his headphones off one ear and rolled his eyes when I repeated it.
"Oh, never mind.  Twitter will understand."

Birthdays and The Archers

I have been listening to the Archers for more than 40 Birthdays now.  I'm probably an Archers Addict (there is a club but I'm not a member).  Increasingly, I have thought that the one of the writers must live in my home town, as little excerpts of my life, funny things I've read in the local paper or conversations I've overheard in the pub slip into the odd episode and I have found myself identifying with Lynda Snell.

If you haven't heard the Archers then let me describe Lynda to you.  She is an interfering busy body, who inspires love and hate in equal measures but whatever you think about her she certainly gets things done.  Even the actress who plays her doesn't like her very much.  She says of her, "Lynda's deeply deluded, big on self-regard, low on self-awareness, has no sense of humour and a deep-down insecurity"

Lynda Snell - a woman who knows about beige cardigans

However, I quite like her.  They're wrong about her sense of humour I'm sure.  It's just a dry wit.  You only had to hear her discussing the possiblity of menopause with Vicky Tucker to realise that. It turned out that Vicky was pregnant and obviously as she was old then her baby was born with Down's Syndrome.  Lynda likes gardening, is still regarded as an outsider even though she moved from Sunningdale in 1986, she has Llamas called Wolfgang, Contance, Sallieri (Mozart references), she puts on great shows in the village and keeps her husband under the thumb.  She has her finger on the pulse of everything cultural.  Grayson Perry (real person, although does his best to appear like a character) loves her and was very excited when she campaigned to get someone from Ambridge on the 4th Plinth.

This week she was banging on about Jane Austen and I was just waiting to hear some of my own recent rants.  I didn't hear any because she only wanted to have a Christmas Production of readings from Jane Austen, which I agree with everyone else would be amazingly dull but this week I was ranting that Alexander McCall Smith had been asked (by whom I'm not sure) to re-write Emma.  I know that Lynda would agree with me that this is absured.  Emma was perfectly well written by Jane Austen in the first place and the character wouldn't 'benefit being handled by a man'  I'm in favour of great literature inspiring others to write and Jane Austen has already inspired too many to mention (just as Shakespeare has) but it is a bit patronising for people to be asked to re-write her books.

I don't know how Lynda Snell spends her birthdays, when her birthday is or how old she is meant to be.  I like to think that she has an October birthday because all the best people are born in October and that like me she knows that age is just a number and has picked one she likes and stuck with it.  I am 42 and always will be, although I did like my son's suggestion that I was 40 plus VAT.  I expect Lynda is far too busy to stop and have a birthday.  She has to run Grey Gables almost single handedly, save the badgers, walk the footpaths to make sure Brian Aldridge hasn't blocked them again, find a cast for her latest production, remove the pollen from her garden and go to parish council meetings.

Today,  I turned down lunch with my mum (sorry mum) because I, like Lynda, was just too busy.  It was my own fault.  I had enjoyed the nice weather and been to the allotment, dug too much and then been unable to move over the weekend and so today (even though it's a day off) I simply had to do some work.  I have no lessons planned for this week and that is a dangerous position to be in in a class assembly week.

The problem is, I'm not like Lynda.  I'm not nearly as organised.  It was another sunny day.  I was in a good mood.  I had my hair cut, walked the dog, read lots of book (books are the greatest part of a birthday I think), and made myself a birthday cake.  It is the custom to take cakes into work for your birthday and so I decided to make myself a big cake to take in tomorrow.  An allotment cake seemed the obvious choice and I had so much fun doing it.  I kept thinking things like, "Oo, I could make strawberries.....no.....they're out of season."
It took me all day and it was great fun.  I don't think I've had a better birthday in years.

Allotment Cake inspired by Fiona Cairns - the Royal Wedding Baker

Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day at work.  I wonder how the children will respond if I say, "I'm sorry that I have nothing planned for today's lesson and I haven't marked last week's work but it was my birthday and so I made cake but you can't have any because I put it in the staff room at 8.30 and it was all gone by 11!" ?