Bumper Question Time

I failed to do my weekly question time last week, but there were some lovely queries so I have saved them and combined them with this week’s random collection.  As there are rather a lot I will endeavour to speed answer as many as possible rather than in my usual rambling style. Of course there is no doubt in my mind that I will be unable to resist a good ramble here and there, specially as I am actually supposed to be learning about the legal requirements of listing ancient monuments. I have already managed to put off the fateful moment by eating crisps, eating Wispas, drinking copious amounts of caffeine, playing scrabble on Facebook with Andrea and writing two blogs already this morning.  Huzzah for putting off until never what you never had any intention of doing today.

So. Queries ahoy!

Tombola hats

If you’ve got one, I want one.  I don’t want one of those ones that you have to crank by hand and pull raffle tickets out of though.  I want one like the lottery machines that shoots ping pong balls with numbers on through a large spigot on top of your head.  Call the Philip Treacey hotline (hatline. ho ho) immediately on 0800 I like Boy George.

‘Pink 89!’ Just practicing.

Realising hedgehogs back into the wild.

I know. I know dear heart that you meant to say releasing, but I love the whole philosophical idea of thinking hard enough about hedgehogs in captivity that the door of their tiny incarceration pens springs open, releasing them into a grassy, hedgehog heaven of slugs, cat food and compost bins in which to while away the long winter nights. Good luck to you.  Try not to crease your forehead with too much wishing.  Botox is not a good option.

Funny things to do with Cillit Bang.

You could try making a false moustache out of frozen Cillit Bang and wearing it to frighten the postman.  Or I recommend trying my patented Cillit Bang cocktail.  Two measures kahlua, one measure Mr. Duck, a soupcon of absinthe strained through a tea towel, a cube of goat’s cheese and a good squirt of Cillit Bang round the rim of the glass.  Ideally you should then dip the glass rim into some helicobacter pylori or other bacteria of your choice, for that added je ne sais quoi.  The key things to remember with this cocktail are to stir rather than shake and never to drink it.

Elton John hot water bottle.

Are you insinuating that Elton is in fact a hot water bottle? It might explain his lack of hair and peculiar dress sense. And the weird smell of rubber when he wafts by.  I can just imagine David Furnish popping a kettle full of hot water into him every night before snuggling up to him in bed, warming his feet on Elton’s hot, round tummy of love.

Was Katy caused by nits?

Good question. I think you forgot the middle part of the sentence.  It should read: ‘Was Katy’s nervous breakdown caused by nits?’ in which case the answer is a resounding yes, yes and YES.  I am not in fact made of nits however, nor am I a hot water bottle, or a small town in Texas.  Today I am made mostly of crisps and the retro chocolate delights of the Wispa bar.  I am about ninety percent caffeine with a spritz of adrenaline on most normal days.  The rest is lard.

Shrews – how do they move information?

They have one of those big glass screens like Tom Cruise in Minority Report.  The head shrew wears some kind of techno gloves which allow him to interact with the screen and thus randomly move bits of information around into pleasing patterns.  Shrews are obsessed by the game Tetris and all their filing systems are based on its intricate patterns.  Retro shrews who shun technology just use tiny wheelbarrows full of post it notes.

Freud and kippers.

I prefer kedgeree and Jung myself, but each to his own.  Never, ever try Kierkegaard and jam.  It’s a total disaster.

Beetroot related pregnancy.

Oh yes! It’s always the root vegetables that get the blame.  Teenage pregnancy on the rise, swedes to blame, screams The Daily Mail in its reactionary, conservative way.  Next it will be; ‘I shunned Russell Brand for a turnip, claims page 3 Stunna.’ You people make me sick.

Gandalf bus link.

The number seventy four between Bounds Green and Acton.  It only runs Thursday to Sunday and sometimes on Wednesdays between seven and ten at night.  There is no night bus service.  It’s been commandeered by the orcs.

Wayne Rooney receeding.

We can but hope.

Tuna fish costume.

What kind of Christmas play are you doing? The Fisheries Service alternative nativity? ‘Oh yes Margery.  This year Mary will be dressed as a whiting and Joseph will be doing his best to emulate the movements of a sea snail, although with his hips anything could happen.  Jesus is going to be some crab sticks in a blanket and the three wise men will be giant squid.  Each tentacle will hold a miraculous gift, of fish.  We thought the shepherds could be a shoal of herring, because they’re not very popular but there are a lot of them.’  Bring on the silver foil and plenty of coat hangers to make dorsal fins.  You’ll be fine.

What kind of cape does Supernanny wear?

A wipe clean one in tartan oil skin with velcro fastenings and easy access from the sides in case of emergency stifling.

Green skiing tea box mower.

For once in my life I am speechless. You win.  Please e-mail me and point me to the exact place in a previous blog where I refer to the green, skiing, tea box mower.

Shakespeare definition of strumpet.

A strawberry crumpet, forsooth and prithee.

Experience of Hips4U

Please, please write and tell me that this is real.  I made up Hips4U in one of my early blogs. I will eat my Philip Treacey tombola hat if someone has since patented the idea and unleashed it upon an unsuspecting nation.  I must call Dave Gorman immediately.

Linda McCartney flavourings.

Generally I believe she was Linda McCartney flavoured with a hint of Paul.  She was a huge fan of texturised vegetable protein so I expect on enthusiastic days she was tinged with soya, but generally your basic millionaire American heiress flavour.

Name of Ray Mear’s shrew.

I didn’t know he had one.  He’s kept that very quiet, presumably from the shrew, so that if he ever has to fatten him up and eat him in a survivalist emergency he won’t feel so bad about it.  This is why he doesn’t have a name.  You don’t want to get too attached and cross that line between snack and pet.  I did it once.  I called my Kendall Mint Cake Roger and never got over it when I had to bite  his head off in the Cairngorns.  If Ray Mears was going to give a name to his pet shrew though I am sure he would call it Millicent Thumbelina Pipkin the First.

What does Supernanny say about swearing?

She says, and I quote; ‘It’s a fucking good idea. I don’t know why more under five’s don’t do it.’

Can monkey’s kick?

Like a mule.  They can also hula hoop and do the fandango.

What do aeroplane Xmas beetles eat?

Figgy pudding of course.  Oh and aeroplanes.

Dead frog smell.

That will be the dead frog secreted somewhere about your house or person then. Time to call in Kim and Aggie I think.

Are nylon bedsheets healthy?

Only if you fancy taking up spontaneous combustion as a short lived but enthusiastic hobby.

Famous hirsute ladies.

1. Hairy Mary
2. Hairy Edith
3. Hairy Ethel
4. Fuzzy Jane

Can you hire Mr. Tumble for a party?

Do you really hate your children that much? Why not save yourself the agony and just put them up for adoption or abandon them outside the PDSA in a cardboard box with a note.

Inappropriate presents.

1. Your mother’s head in a gift wrapped box.
2. A laminated turd with fake, googly eyes.
3. A jam roly poly with pubic hair poking out of the folds of jam.
4. A signed photograph of Wee Jimmy Krankie in the nude.
5. Socks.

Uncle Fester lampshade to buy.

That will be the M&S Signature range for Autumn Winter.  I would recommend teaming it with the Freddie Krueger pouffe and the Ed Gein nest of coffee tables.

Growing old nudes.

You have to start from seed.  The best thing to do is to run them up canes or they tend to get a bit leggy and fall over.  It’s always the hips that give in the end.  Nip off any excess shoots so that they flower nicely otherwise you’ll end up with a full body but a shrunken head, and nobody likes that in an old nude.

Threatened by vegetarianism.

It’s the fact that butternut squash can look a bit like bombs isn’t it? I’ve always thought that brussell sprouts have that slight hand grenade quality too.  And courgettes are way too pointy.  Statistics indicate that courgette crime has risen significantly in the past few years.  In Wigan they have recently announced a courgette amnesty.  There are boxes outside every allotment where you can drop your veg and no charges will be brought.  The vicar got five years for his Harvest Festival shenanigins this year.  A disgrace.  He’s meant to be a pillar of the community.  Never mind.  I hear he’s being replaced by Russell Brand.  He’s never threatened anyone with a cauliflower when they only put tenpence in the collection plate.

Crisis Talks

David Tennant is leaving Doctor Who.  Oh my God! This is massive news in our house.  This is worse than the Pope dying or the Queen announcing that all along she has been a bricklayer called Derek.  This is terrible, terrible, terrible!

Now I can just about live with it if it were only me.  I love the new Russell T Davies ‘ified Doctor Who.  I really liked Christopher Ecclestone and I love Davey as my friend’s little girl calls him.  I was sad when Russell announced his departure, sad when Christopher went and very sad now that Davey will be going, but I am a realist.  I know that he will be popping up here there and everywhere doing other things and I can get my Tennant fix in other ways.  This is bon.  What is not so bon is who the hell the next Doctor will be.  What if I don’t like him?  What if he is weird, or creepy or Sylvester McCoy who is both weird and creepy?

All this existentialist angst pales when faced with the real issue here, which is; ‘What the bloody hell am I going to tell Tallulah?’  She was rather too young to care when Christopher left.  She ricochets between loving the episodes he’s in and not being fussed by them, but she idolises Davey.  It was bad enough when Rose/Billie Piper left.  We had tears, we had anguish, we had heated debates over our morning Shreddies for months.  I kid you not, months.  Even now she sometimes wistfully refers to the fact that because Rose came back last season, she might come back again.  She loves Rose with an unshakeable passion.  She has a scrap book of Billie/Rose related cuttings.  She has a small, plastic Rose which looks nothing like Rose but which she loves.  We mourned.  We grieved and weeled and weailed and wailed when Rose left.

Now! Now! This is ten times worse.  Tallulah wouldn’t speak to me for a fortnight because I wouldn’t get her a ticket to see Hamlet or Love’s Labour’s Lost.  She only marginally forgave me when I spent fifty quid having the poster of David doing Hamlet as Caspar David Friedrich framed and hung on her bedroom wall.  I quite often find her gazing at it when she isn’t trying to kill everyone or pretending to be a postman.  I found out about the defection yesterday and spent the parts of the day I wasn’t stuffing my face and having a lovely time, wondering if anyone had told her yet, or if I would have to do it, and what would I say, and how would I say it?  I woke up this morning wondering about it.

She didn’t mention anything at breakfast.  She would have mentioned it surely? Unless she was so traumatised she has buried it deep within her psyche and is letting it fester into a malignant psychic wound, much like that flesh eating bug that is eating Ben Fogle’s arm in the tropical diseases hospital (bleurgh).  I am like a cat on hot bricks, about Tallulah, not Ben Fogle.  Although I do feel quite sorry for him.  It’s not great to wake up and find that you’ve got a malignant flesh eating virus that has chewed a hole in your arm while you were dreaming about weaving your own bivouac out of mink hair or whatever it is these rough and ready adventurer types dream about.

So, it looks like I’m going to have to break the news later.  Actually, I’ve just had a thought.  The girls are going to their dad’s after school and he’s taking them trick or treating and having a Halloween tea at his house.  Maybe I could get him to tell her for me.  I know it’s copping out, but I always do the nasty things.  I do toenails and wiping, and scraping and mopping.  Maybe it’s time that he stopped being a Dad in shining armour and got down to the nitty gritty for a change.  He can look her firmly in the eye and talk about things like courage and carrying on regardless and no he won’t be coming back, and no he definitely won’t be coming back and no it’s not a mistake, and can you please stop crying now etc, etc, etc.

If that doesn’t work I’m going to write to David Tennant as ‘disappointed of Glenfield’ and demand that he writes a hand crafted letter of apology to a traumatised five year old who thinks that one day she’s going to be his companion and travel to the farthest reaches of the galaxy with him and Billie Piper.  Come on Davey, it’s the least you can do.

October 31st – Hallomeme

As you know I am a big fan of memes.  Welsh Girl nominated me for a meme this week, which I have duly done, and now Jaywalker over at Belgian Waffle has nominated me for the same meme.  As I am greedy and enjoy talking about myself incessantly I am more than happy to have another go.  So here it is.  Seven more random things about me:

1. I once undressed a mannequin dressed as a Brownie in a department store.  I did it because they had done the uniform wrong.  One of the counter staff told me off and made me cry.  My gran and my mum were with me and they shouted at the lady on the counter for picking on a young girl and making her cry.  Then when we got outside the department store they both shouted at me for being a blithering idiot and made me cry! Double standards or what? That’s two grand’s worth of therapy there and then I think you’ll find.
2. I used to have a thing about paddling in fountains.  I did a full immersion in a French fountain outside the town hall of the town we did our French exchange in when I was about fourteen.  Then I moved on to fountain hopping when I lived in Germany with my friend Kate.  They like municipal fountains in Bavaria so there was a lot of scope.  There’s hardly a fountain in the whole of Bavaria I haven’t tiptoed through at one time or another.  I don’t do it anymore.  Glenfield doesn’t have any fountains and the ones in Leicester are all full of fag ash and crisp packets.
3. When I was very small I chopped a worm in half and put it in my pants just to see what would happen! I have no idea what I thought would happen but whatever it was I was wildly disappointed.  I believe I thought that the worm would become two fit and healthy worms, but why putting them in my pants was a key aspect of the experiment I am not sure.
4. When I was three we went on a caravan holiday to the Cotswolds.  We hired our caravan and had it parked in our back garden.  I went to play in it while Mum and Dad went to pack and do stuff with my baby brother.  I had the brilliant idea of making a huge mud pie in a bucket, lugging it into the caravan and then taking one of my brother’s bottle brushes and brushing my teddy bear’s teeth with mud whilst singing him a rousing lullaby.  I decorated the whole of the inside of the caravan with mud and was the least popular person on our holiday by miles.
5. I used to have a very eccentric dress sense from a really early age.  I worked out that we didn’t have enough money for me to dress how I wanted to dress so I would just dress in random things to make myself different from everyone else.  Instead of competing I diversified.  Anyway. At this point, I believe I was about eleven, I was going through an urchin phase.  I wore my brother’s cast off trousers and my dad’s old shirts with a flat cap and some randomly extraordinary footwear, with lots of jewellry that I had purloined from my mother.  We went to the school concert one evening.  They were doing medley’s from Oliver.  At half time I went back stage to chat to my friends and when I was about to retake my seat the singing teacher went mental, absolutely convinced I was one of the choir because I was dressed as an urchin.  Curtain up was delayed for about ten minutes until she finally gave in and sent me on my way.  Still, not as bad as the time I dressed in a cravat and old man’s flasher mac with pelmet mini skirt, or the incident with the grandad flannel pyjamas and a bowler hat.
6. I once turned up for a one to one tutorial about an essay I had written for Greek and Roman Civilisation studies at uni pissed as a fart.  I collapsed into the chair and apologised for being drunk.  The tutor looked at me and said: ‘Oh that’s a shame! I thought you were going to apologise for your execrable essay.’ and then spent twenty minutes ripping strips off me, giving me 32% and reducing me to alcohol soaked tears.  It was the worst mark for an essay I ever had.  I was mortified and went to hide on a Welsh hillside for four hours until I had sobered up.  He was the same tutor who used to give you more marks if you turned up for your tutorial wearing a low cut top with plenty of cleavage.  As I was into lumberjack shirts, four inch tall hair and Victorian bloomers at the time it was never going to work out between us.
7. I once broke my nose because I was resting on a hillside in profile and a small, smelly boy who we used to play with sometimes, slid down the hill towards me and trod on my nose.  That’s quite an embarrassing accident to have and I’m just profoundly grateful it didn’t kill me, so that they didn’t have to write a eulogy about it.

There you have it folks.  More confessions of weirdness.

30th October – Skating for Bras

Can’t resist it. It’s quarter past eleven. I’ve only been back an hour and I can’t keep away from the beautiful blog.  It calls to me with its siren song.

Well. I had a lovely day. Am too tired to think/write properly but I thoroughly enjoyed my theatrical outing, I had a cracking lunch at the Royal Festival Hall, accidentally bought two new books, had a glorious nose around St Pancras and all its shiny new stuff and ate very scrumptious pizza.  There were no mentalists or hen parties on the train and they ran on time.  All in all. v. v. satisfactory indeed.

Some thingsfrom today definitely needed writing down though:

1. I saw a man at a bus stop with an absolutely superb full on Life on Mars/Sweeney style moustache.  It was about a metre wide and drooped down his face all the way to the very ends of his chinny chin chin.  I stared at it in wide, eyed admiration.
2. I saw a man who was clearly quite mental casually grinding his crotch in a humping manner against a bollard.  He wasn’t looking at the bollard or even touching it with his hands, just rhythmically banging his groinal area against it.  He saw me watching him in an appalled manner and just stopped and stared back at me. I expect he carried on when he thought nobody else was looking.  It was all very perturbing.
3. We were walking along the South Bank. A group of teenagers came towards us looking all Emo and alternative.  One girl stared at me as they passed.  I prepared myself for a fight.  She just said very loudly as soon as she had passed me; ‘I could see that woman’s bra through her top!’ in a very shocked manner (My new black Mexx top is slightly see through, but I had a very stout bra on, and am a middle aged woman. I’m hardly Caprice wearing a bra and thong combo to the opening of a milk bottle. I was even wearing a cardigan for goodness sakes). I turned, she turned.  I smiled at her and said: ‘What’s so terrible about that?’ She looked absolutely horrified and scuttled off!  I intimidated a teenager with my bangers! How cool is that?!!
4. At St Pancras when we arrived there were two camera crews filming something on the main concourse.  We were galloping along, as I needed the ladies and we walked past the camera crews.  Lots of people were staring and taking pictures with camera phones.  Even though I was about to widdle out of my ear holes (I hate peeing on trains) I said to Andrea: ‘I just have to turn round, because even though we’ve walked up the whole concourse I can’t for the life of me see what they’re all so excited about and I just have to know what they are all looking at.’  A very posh man in a ridiculously small overcoat smiled at me and said: ‘They’re all looking at the people who are looking.’  I wondered if this was a hit and run philosopher.  I smiled, turned and looked, still couldn’t see anything and then had to rush off as wee was now leaking into my eyelashes.
5. Andrea has told me what her cunning secret plan is for when we come up to London for a whole weekend in December.  I thought she wanted to go ice skating (I don’t know why.  Much like the whole krill thing, it just randomly appeared in my head and stayed there).  It turns out that she wants to go to Rigby and Peller and get fitted for bras.  Now this might not sound very exciting to you, but I was thrilled.  I have always wanted to go to Rigby and Peller and get fitted for a bra.  I am obsessed by the world of ill fitting bras and would feel infinitely superior if my own bras were of legendary quality and a perfect fit.  I would be able to climb onto my bra and judge people with real conviction instead of with the sneaking suspicion that Gok would probably faint with shame at the state of my bra/banger equations.  We have decided that my ice skating idea was also brilliant and so we will get our bangers strapped into the perfect bra and then road test them for firmness with a bout of vicious ice skating later on in the weekend.  Awesome!

Hiatus – Not a Hernia – With new, added wolverines

After worrying the snot out of Kate with a previous blogging wobble I would like to say that tomorrow’s blogging service will be perfunctory or possibly even not there at all.  This is not because I am leaving the blogosphere.  This is because I am leaving Glenfield temporarily.  This means that my life will immediately become busy, interesting and full of shiny objects that cannot be ignored and therefore blogging will be set aside in favour of consumer therapy, cakes and excessive amounts of theatah dahling.

I are going up to Lundun with my friend Andrea.  We are catching an early mangel wurzel from the sticks and may be some time.  We are goin’ to wear dark glasses because it will all be scary and bright. We may well chew straws and polish our wellertons.  Who knows what excitements the day will unfold?

I do.  We are going to the National to see Michael Morpurgo’s Warhorse because tickets were cheap on a Thursdy.  I will not be back until very late and my eyes will be tired from too much drama and trains and stuff and I may have to have a little lie down until Fridy when normal insane service will be resumed probly.

In the meantime I have been thinking some more about krill, as you do.  I have decided that I may well have a career writing animal poems, much in the line of D. H. Lawrence but without the excessive machismo, ideas about worshipping gingah phalluses and nihilism.  Although putting all those things into poems about tortoises and snakes is very, very hard and probably made his head ache for quite some time and is a skill of its very own.

In case you pine for me,  I shall leave you with another sample of my work.

This one is known simply as ‘Wolverine’  It is very exciting and dual purpose because it can either be read as a beautiful pome or sung to the Spiderman theme tune (not the new one with Tobey Maguire, the old cartoon from the Seventies.  The better one).  I am aware that it does not scan very well and that I have taken liberties with rhyming.  I have based this on the para rhymes of Wilfred Owen and feel that his bitter and fragmented feelings about the atrocities of World War One, homosupialism in muddy conditions, the lack of clean vests and missing his mum are very similar to the complex relationship I have with the elusive wolverine, and that he won’t mind. Plus he is dead.

I find it best if you stand with legs slightly akimbo, staring into the middle distance, one hand beating at your breast and the other outstretched in supplication whilst declaiming loudly.  Second best is noodling about wearing your big green yeti socks singing in an off key manner and being a bit of a tit.  S’up to you really.  Enjoy.

Hem, hem.

Wolverine

Wolverine, Wolverine

Does whatever a wolverine can

Eats some fruit, lays around

Does the crossword, goes into town

Sniff that, there goes a wolverine

 

Is he an orange, no he aint

Smells like citrus, makes you faint

Pull his tail, make him fall

into segments, what a fool

Look now, there plops a wolverine

 

With his wolfy demeanour

Smells like bathroom cleaner

He’s an orange furry hound

Satsumas, 12 for a pound

 

Wolverine, wolverine

Not from X Men, not his scene

Not friendly, not neighbourly wolverine

Spins no webs, eats no flies

Prefers Ginsters steak and ale pies

Hey there

There goes a wolverine

(with gravy on his chin)

Fin

Big Fat Juicy Ones, Long Thin Wiggly Ones, See How They Wiggle and Squirm

I’ve entered a competition for the longest blog entry title in the history of the blogosphere. I would have won too if I’d got Welsh Girl to translate it into Welsh in her sleep for me.  Curses!

Anyhow.  What this entry is really about is something I feel sure one of my blogging cohorts has blogged about previously (Homeofficemum perhaps?), but which just popped into my head today and I decided to do it anyway.

Basically, I want you to write on the back of one of your children and pop them in the post to me, C/O Katyboo, Near Glenfield Co-op, England, telling me all the dreadful lies you tell your children, or the things you do to them, that you do or lie about specifically because they are children and it is very entertaining and you can take pictures and have things to show prospective husbands/wives of said children later on in life.

I thought about it because I have been following a thread on the Times Online AlphaMummy site in which they are chatting about Halloween and whether it is a good or bad thing to allow your kids to go trick or treating.  The general consensus seems to be, start them very young and dress them in ridiculous outfits because they can’t really complain about it and they look really cute and funny.  Plus you have the added bonus that at that age you can eat all their sweets and they can’t do anything about that either.

This led me to reminisce about the time that I made Tallulah dress as Eeyore because it was Halloween and she was only about five months old but she was an exceptionally grumpy child and Eeyore suited her down to the ground.  She could do nothing about it, and somewhere there are pictures and one day she’s probably going to hate me for that.  Of course she will get her own back at my eightieth Halloween when she takes me to the Shady Pines party and makes me wear a papier mache pumpkin with a matching colostomy pouch no doubt, but hey, I’m not thinking that far ahead.

So.  Here are some more examples to get you going.  If you don’t have offspring you can relay tales of the evil things you did to your siblings or nephews and nieces instead.  I’m not fussy really. I just want the dirt!

When Tilly was very small we used to spend lots of our summers at my mum’s house.  My mum has a huge garden and a lovely verandah and when the weather is nice they basically live out there.  Anyhow.  At the back of the garden is an estate where an ice cream van used to peddle his wares all summer long.  Every now and again we would hear the melodious squawking of Greensleeves played on a Bontempi Organ at three times the recommended speed.  Tilly would invariably ask me what it was.  I knew that if I confessed what an ice cream van was that there would be no peace ever again.  I told her that it was a man who played the trumpet.  He had to play outdoors because his mummy didn’t like the noise of him practicing and made him run round the streets playing instead which was why it faded in and out.  He had to keep moving so he didn’t upset the neighbours either.  Genius eh?  She was well impressed and I managed to spin the story out for a good two years before someone told on me.

I once told the children that a wolverine was a cross between an orange and a wolf (tangerine see?! Cunning!) and that you could tell it wasn’t an ordinary wolf because when it got frightened it smelled faintly of citrus, and if you pulled its tail it would come apart in segments (got this from Slow Worms).  I still think that is one of my better stories.

Jason once told the children that it was illegal to say the words ‘Pudding Basin’ in Cornwall.  Hence the family tradition of shouting the phrase: ‘Don’t say pudding basin’ in a weird, drawn out accent.

We told the child of a family friend that if she looked very carefully at our huge photograph of New York that takes up one whole wall in our kitchen, she could see her dad waving to her out of one of the building windows.  She looks for him every time she comes round now.

Wednesday October 29th – I’m telling you for the krillionth time

So. I had a long dark tea time of the soul last night.

It’s been a fairly awful few days quite honestly what with one thing and another and about a million things that look like nits and I was really fed up.  Mainly because it took me till twelve thirty to fall asleep, even though I went to bed at nine.  I had stomach cramps.  They were the squiggly sort.  The sort that just as you think you might have found a comfortable position, suddenly gallop around and make you uncomfortable all over again.

Then when I did fall asleep I woke up again about twenty minutes later having had a hideous, hideous nightmare where I woke up sweating, heart pounding and panic stricken and then promptly burst into tears.  I went downstairs and had a cup of tea and finally managed to drift off somewhere between two and three this morning.  It left me plenty of time to ponder things in general; life, the universe, the shape of the Norwegian coastline etc.

My thoughts turned to the fact that earlier that evening I had been inspired to write a rather brilliant poem about Krill, which some of you will have seen, due to the fact that I immediately published it on the international waters of the interweb, along with a rather fantastic picture of a bearded little krill that I pinched from the very same internet.  I did this because oddly enough I had not bumped into any krill when I had my phone camera handy and had none of my own.

At half past one this morning I felt ashamed.  I thought: ‘What am I doing? I am thirty six years old.  I have three children.  I have scars in interesting places and I write fierce letters and occasionally hold down a job, and yet here I am publishing odes to what are effectively plankton with facial hair and thinking that might be tres amusant and making myself laugh a lot anyway.’  I thought: ‘I really need to get a life and learn about tax returns and not chop up my spaghetti with a fork any more.’  I thought: ‘I am too old for all this arsing about malarkey.  I don’t even like listening to Radio One anymore because it’s too noisy and I think Chris Moyles is a bit of a twat.  I cannot pretend to be down with the kids.  Partly because the kids don’t have a clue about the joys of krill.  I am wasting my talents.  I have no talents.  I am a talentless, krill loving fool.’ etc, etc, etc…

It was at this point that I had firmly resolved to give up this blogging malarkey and grow marrows in the shape of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and get a job with the Inland Revenue (it would have to be filing. I can’t count things that aren’t chocolate buttons).  Then I thought: ‘But blogging is just what I do when my head gets too full of stuff.  If I stop, it doesn’t mean I won’t keep thinking about krill.  It will just mean that my brain will fill up with poems about plankton and cunning things to do with soup and boob jelly moulds, but I won’t have an outlet for it.  If I don’t get rid of it my head will swell and swell like the enormous turnip and then probably explode and I will be dead.  Killed by krill and bedsocks and what happens when you fart into a balloon, and will its noxious gases lift you off your feet eventually etc, etc, etc.’  So I resolved to keep blogging and had another cup of tea.

Then I thought: ‘I’m really, really lucky ackshewerly.  Because what if I had been born in the generation previous to mine? My head would have exploded for sure in those days.  People think I’m strange now, but I’d probably have been burned as a witch if I’d have just casually bandered off a few dozen krill ditties and scattered them through the village in 1976 just for a bit of a laugh.  Nightmare!’

Then I thought: ‘I wonder if that’s why my mum sometimes seemed so strangely uptight and repressed when I was a child? I wonder if it was because she too was secretly thinking things about the mysteries of brown sauce and owls riding bicycles and what would happen if you strapped a vole to a Vespa and pushed it down a hill, and she had nobody to talk to about it and it just widdled round and round in her brain for about ten years or so?’ I bet it was.  She just comes right out with that kind of stuff now and she’s much more relaxed than she used to be.  Still, that could be down to the fact that my brother and I have moved out and the invention of the dishwasher, but I bet the other stuff was part of it.

So, the basis of my deep theological pondering was that I am committed to writing a lot more rubbish, I am not going to explode and I think my mother was repressed by a vole on a vespa and that if she had had the internet things would have been much more relaxed and groovy in our house.

Then I felt even better because the other amazing thing about the blogosphere is the fact that you know you’re not alone.  Today I got this from the ever fantastic Madame Jaywalker, and it made everything a whole lot shinier.  Huzzah for our side.

O’de Krill

Krill, krill you are so brill

Being swallowed by a whale

Must be such a thrill

Krill, krill you are so brill

Your teeny tiny lovely beards

Have made me go all weird (s)

And not very rhymey

Krill, krill you are so brill

Even though you don’t wear hats

Or spats

Or ride around on giant aquatic rats

Krill, krill you are so brill

That I have made you a song

Just like your groovier dolphin and whale cousins

It can’t be much fun being whale snacks

Without a little ditty

Or a hat to cheer you up

Fin

Bevchen’s B Meme

Bevchen has done another meme.  I think it’s the onset of winter and huddling round the keyboard has taken the place of huddling round the fire necking mulled wine and throwing lumps of coal at each other.  Anyhow. You know I can’t resist a meme so here goes another one of my random posts into the ether.

In this one you do this:

1. What is your name? Katy
2. Complete the following statements using the first letter of your name to start each answer.

A four letter word: Kiss (I wanted to put Kool as in the classic pop combo, Kool and Ver Gang)

A Girl’s Name: Kylie (or boomerang as I like to call her in front of my Aboriginal friends)

A Boy’s Name: Keith (apparently Keith is Doctor Who’s real name. Keith Who. I saw it here in this excellent article by Caitlin Moran in The Times Online. You have to watch the filmy bit)

An Occcupation: Kinesiologist (someone who tests things like allergies using muscle strength and weakness.  When I lived in London I actually used to visit a kinesiologist. Oh for those heady urban days!)

A colour: Khaki (or breen as I like to think of it)

Something you wear: Knickers (or not if you’re being a floosy and going commando)

A Beverage: Kahlua (a hideous drink only used as a basic building block of other hideous cocktail style drinks and as something which makes your vomit slightly more interesting)

Food: Krill (if you’re a whale or a vegan that is)

Something Found in a Bathroom: King of Shaves Shaving Gel or in my bathroom, Knits (cheating I know, but K is not an easy letter)

A City: Kiev (where they breed all those special garlic chickens)

A Country: Kazakhstan (one of my top holiday destinations. It’s going to be huge. HUGE I tells ya.  Who doesn’t love cabbage soup and turquoise old lady raincoats.  It’s all so nineteen fifties).

Song With a Girl’s Name in the Title: K’ K’ K’ Katy (My mum used to sing this to me when I was a kid.  Fact.  It goes on: ‘Beautiful Katy, You’re the only kind of girl that I adore, In the moonlight, behind the cow shed(?), I’ll be waiting at the K’ K’ K’ Kitchen door.’ or some such palaver).

Something You Shout: Katy? Do you know where I put my shoes/clothes/head/ears/picture of Queen Victoria? (that’s true that is. I didn’t make that up.)

Celebrity: Katy Perry (she even spelled it right, even though she’s a bit of an idiot and I don’t like her song very much.  Good name though.  I was tempted to go for Keith Harris and Orville.)

Cartoon Character: Krusty The Clown (thank you Wiki Answers.  You are a life line)

Flower: Kingcup (used to have a book with a picture of a flower on called Kingcup something. Have no idea whether it was referring to the flower or the hedgehog the book was about.  I may be lying through my teeth here.)

Animal: Krill (I am having a little love affair with the word krill here)

Fruit: Kumquat (I really wanted to say krill again, but I resisted. I hope you appreciate my strength of character).

A Book Title: Knocked out by my nunga nungas – Louise Rennison (I have just finished reading it. Thank God I didn’t have to spend three hours scanning the shelves for K)

A Film Title: King Kong (or Krill: My Life in Motion Pictures)

I tag you all.  The world, the universe and Stephen Hawking in particular.  Bring it on…

7 things I know about me

Welsh Girl has challenged me to a meme.  A meme off…

I am glad.  I haven’t really got much to write about after the trauma of yesterday.  I have had a day of rain, nits, cooking and small boys who just want to watch Peppa Pig, build towers and pretend that mummy is a horsey.  I did go to Borders with my mum and dad which was nice, and I am pleased to report that the chocolate cornflake squares are still up to scratch.  But otherwise it is all worryingly quiet.

Except for the fact that IT IS SNOWING.  Yes.  It is only October and we are experiencing SNOW.  This is officially crap, because it is not lovely, fluffy, comforting snow.  It is killer snow that is laced with rain and blowing sideways into your face as you hack your way home from school.  Pooh snow as I like to call it.

So the only thing that is left to me is to meme to forget.  Here goes.  You have to write down seven random things about yourself.  Problem is, I write so much in the blog there probably isn’t an awful lot you don’t know about me by now.  I’ve been thinking about it all day, but I think there will probably be no surprises. Sorry about that:

1. I have a Blue Peter Competition Winner’s badge which I won for drawing a picture of the queen juggling.  I drew it on the back of a fuzzy felt board because I couldn’t be bothered to find any paper. I still believe I only got it because they felt sorry for my poverty stricken, paperless existence.  I got a letter signed by John Noakes, Peter Purves and Lesley Judd.  It also had dog and cat paw prints on.  I was v. v. proud.  I still am.  It is probably one of my proudest facts and I hope that should I be famous enough to get an obituary in a broadsheet they will not fail to mention it.
2. I once kicked my dentist in the mouth when he was about to give me gas to extract a tooth.  I was about six or seven.  I booted him in the face, escaped from the chair and made it down three flights of stairs before they caught up with me.  My mother, needless to say, was not very impressed at all.  I have always been nearly as proud of this as I was of the Blue Peter badge.  Imagine how proud I would have been if they’d given me the Blue Peter badge for booting the dentist in the mouth!  The mind boggles.
3. I once had such monstrous chillblains on my big toes that I couldn’t actually get my shoes on.  I was about nine or ten.  I had to go to school wearing tennis shoes which my mother had cut the tops out of. I got teased hideously, especially because it was the school disco that week.  I wore a big white frilly dress with a red sash, knackered tennis shoes and chillblains.  How mortifying!
4. When I was pregnant with Matilda I once got home from work feeling like death and desperate to vomit in private and go to bed in tears with a bit of dry toast, only to find I had locked myself out of the house.  My husband was out with clients doing the wining and dining thing and had the only other key.  It was near Christmas and was absolutely freezing. I walked to Brent Cross shopping centre and shopped until it closed.  Then I went to a nearby Chinese restaurant and had a fourteen course banquet and eighteen pots of jasmine tea until it closed.  The restaurant manager asked me if I was a restaurant critic! I then walked slowly home and fell asleep in the front porch crouched in the foetal position until one in the morning when my husband came home to let me in.  It was possibly the longest night of my life.  I cried a lot.
5. When I was a small child I was banned from watching any programmes with animals in, particularly Lassie films.  This was due to the time when I watched a Lassie film where a small terrier got squashed under the wheels of a gypsy caravan and cried until I made myself sick.  This is why I have never watched Watership Down or Bambi.
6. At primary school I got caught by the headmaster climbing in through the window on the way back from fetching a counter I had flipped out onto the playground in an overenthusiastic maths lesson.  I managed to get out and retrieve the counter without the teacher noticing and would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for that pesky headmaster.  Curses.
7. I once told my brother he would turn into a werewolf because he had been playing with dad’s shaving foam and had come in to my bedroom with it smothered all over his face.  He believed me, burst into tears and spent the next hour locked in the bathroom having hysterics because he thought he was going to turn into a wolf and eat everyone.  It was a great moment.

As for passing it on, Welsh Girl has already nominated everyone I would, so I throw it open to you all random people of the internet.  If you do it leave me an e-mail and I’ll come and be amazed.