Friday 18th January – Elephant Pooh, Dog Pooh, People Pooh. It’s all Pooh

Today was a far superior type of day in every way to yesterday.  Thank the good Lord for that say I!  Mind you, having said all that, it wouldn’t have been too difficult to achieve given the levels of misery I experienced yesterday.  Despite working out my Celine Dion based plan to financial independence, which I admit was a stroke of genius on my part, it was a bloody terrible day all things considered.

Whenever I moan like this I always hear my mother’s voice in my ear telling me to be grateful and that; ‘starving Africans wouldn’t be so picky,’ type thing.  I agree.  I am very lucky to have a house, my health, my hairy husband etc.  It is hard to think about these things when you’re sleep deprived and head first in the shoe cupboard covered in pooh and being deafened by the burglar alarm however.  I’m just not Zen enough to let all these things wash over me.  I just end up winded and irritated with gravel in my pants.  I expect even a starving African would be quite stressed out by that, even if they had just indulged in a hearty English breakfast with tea and toast.

The other thing I should be grateful for is that miserable, stress filled days are much easier to write about than days where everything went smoothly and things were good.  I do feel that it is nice to have a mix of both though, regardless of how interesting my life story would be if it were a Catherine Cookson style melange of unrelenting misery and strife.  I thank my lucky stars I’ve never had to go down the pit.  I don’t like being underground, it creeps me out too much.  I had hysterics when I went down the Blue John Caverns at the age of eleven, and I’ve never been the same since.

Oscar slept most of the night through, much to my joy.  Apart from the odd whinge around midnight it was a quiet night dominated by sleep, and not by screaming vomitous children of any age, which was a great relief.  I know that I had dreams because when I woke up I distinctly remember thinking; ‘hmmm! That was odd…’ but then promptly forgot them, so you are saved from another few paragraphs of deep Freudian analysis.  It is Friday after all.

Jason went out role playing last night and didn’t get in until hideous o’clock.  I never heard a thing, which shows how tired I was.  Usually I at least hear the front door click, but a troupe of tap dancing bears could have snuggled their way into bed with me last night and I would have been totally oblivious to the lot of them.  Jason tells me that he had a very enjoyable, albeit traumatic evening, as he got swallowed by a dragon.  He rang me to tell me this this morning from work, as we only grunted at each other on the stairs in the early hours of this morning.  Needless to say I wasn’t too stressed about it, given the fact that it was an imaginary dragon, and the most dangerous thing he went near all evening apart from the sharpened end of a pencil was Lee’s manly, but undoubtedly dirty, bathroom.

The kids got up and got dressed relatively efficiently this morning, with only minor detours for questions such as: ‘Mama? What does a filament do?’ (from Tilly) and ‘Mama? Why is Luke in my class so naughty?’ (from Tallulah).  The answer, luckily for the sake of speed and economy, was: ‘I don’t really know.’ to both of them.  Oscar seemed much cheerier this morning because, a) he actually slept instead of shrieking the house down all night, and b) I had the time to cut him some fresh pineapple this morning.  A full belly makes a happy boy.  Apparently, in the world of small boys, pineapples are the new black, or in Oscar’s case, the new bananas.

We got out the door without setting off any alarms and with all necessary articles.  We got to school without any dog pooh related escapades.  I say this because Tallulah stepped in a big lump of it last night on the way back from having her hair cut, despite me pointing it out and showing her a path to avoid it. I am certain she did it on purpose just to see what it felt like.  She had that; ‘I don’t care what you say,’ gleam in her eye.  I have told her that if she does this again I will make her take her shoes and socks off and walk through it barefoot so that she can fully appreciate it.  It will be vile, but it will be worth it.  Sometimes we have to push through the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to get our own way, and if our own way means me not having to spend forty minutes in a howling gale on the back door step picking lumps of pooh out of the bottom of a shoe, I’m all for it.

I spent my morning making notes and an essay plan for my final course essay.  I did a lot of internet research on Chris Ofili, because books on him are few and far between, which is probably why they picked his work for us to write about, and save on plagiarism charges.  I have come to the conclusion that although I dislike both the paintings we have been studying, he is actually quite cool and has done some stuff that is really rather spectacular and beautiful.  There is one piece in particular which he did as an installation for the Tate with another bloke, which has thirteen giant paintings of rhesus monkeys as a kind of parodic Last Supper, which I think is amazing.  Another one for my Amazon wish list, when I get to be a blingtastic millionaire art collector, next week probably.

In the mean time I am left struggling with a canvas full of dung and large afros, and not a lot to say about either.  At least, not a lot to say that would gain me valuable points in an essay type situation.  It’s at times like these when I look back at Burma with a wistful fondness.  The problem with Burma was that there was too much to say in too little time.  The problem with dung man is that I am struggling to fill a thousand word essay with important artistic tit bits about pooh related art.

There was an artist bloke called Piero Manzoni who used to put his pooh in tins, which were then sold as art.  He labelled them as, ‘Merda d’artista’, which means artist’s shit, in Italian, but as we have already discussed a la Opera, sounds much better in Italian than it does in English.  He sold a lot of these tins in his very short and alcohol fuelled life (who would have thought he was alcoholic, coming up with an idea like that?), which just shows you how bonkers art has always been.  They are now worth £30,000 each, which is a staggering thought. 

I have been mulling over the idea of becoming an artist of pooh and vomit, using the kids’ efforts as my raw materials.  I thought I might try bronzing them and putting them on sticks, or stringing them together like sausages.  I could do both and see which one sells better than the other.  It’s an idea.  The chemist up the road has just closed, so all I have to do is persuade Jason to buy it for me, so that I can open the first contemporary art gallery in Glenfield.  I’m sure it will go down a storm given the fact that the most highbrow shop we have in Glenfield is the Post Office, and the library is the size of my downstairs loo.  I own more books than Glenfield library.  Mind you, I own more books than most libraries, so that is a bit of an unfair comparison, but you undoubtedly get my point.

My friend Nicky came over at lunch time and saved me from more pooh/art ponderings with a trip to Auntie Ruth’s for lunch.  Auntie Ruth’s is a greasy spoon cafe which is just down the road from where I used to live.  It doesn’t serve fancy food.  It serves proper, trucker style food complete with black pudden’ and fried bread.  My mum and I escape there regularly for egg and chips, and that’s exactly what Nicky and I did today.  Sausage, egg and chips with double bread and butter, large mugs of tea and treacle sponge with custard for pudding to be precise.  It was a heart attack type meal, but on a cold and windswept day in January, it was just what the doctor should order.  We felt much better afterwards, although we couldn’t actually move for several moments, and had to be winched free of the table and then booted through the door on our way out.

I have mixed emotions every time I visit Auntie Ruth’s.  It used to be a Little Chef when I were a lass (and all this were fields type thing…) and in my teens, my best mate Rachel and I used to work there on weekends and during the holidays.  We were, it has to be said, two of the most dreadful waitresses on God’s green earth, and could be relied upon only to balls things up in the most spectacular manner on every occasion.  Whenever I go there now I get hideous flashbacks to my time there as an inmate, because they haven’t really changed the decor, and it’s a bit scary.  Mind you, I’ll put up with a lot of trauma for a sausage, as we have already established, so I just force myself through the pain.

Some of my highlights as my time as a waitress include:

Tipping a hot pot of tea over a lady’s nether regions on a spectacularly busy Bank Holiday Monday.  I compounded this heinous crime by then apologising, which we weren’t supposed to do, in case someone sued us.  Not only did I get a kicking from the woman’s husband, I got a bollocking from my boss as well.

Having my bottom pinched by a fat and lecherous old man when I had a tray with brimming teacakes on it occupying both my hands.  I threatened to lynch him with a butter knife if he laid a finger on me again.  He denied all knowledge and branded me an uppity little tart, and I got a bollocking from my boss.

Charging someone eighteen pounds fifty for two tea cakes and a pot of tea because I didn’t know how to work the till and got into a bit of a tizzy.  I got a bollocking from my boss.

Having to make fifty side salads using only a dinner knife because the chef had gone home in a temperamental ‘head chef’ style strop (I think he’d seen it on the telly), and had taken all the sharp knives with him.  I squashed so many tomatoes it looked like a slasher movie, and Rachel and I were sent round to his house to beg him to return (only because we knew where he lived, not because we were any good at these kind of hostage situations mind you), because things were getting crucial on the salad front.

Having to help Rachel on the day she was sent to clean the toilets and couldn’t get rid of an extremely vicious pooh which just wouldn’t flush.  We were found twenty minutes later by the manager, hysterical with laughter and unable to stand, and naturally given a bollocking because a) we had let the side down, and b) we had not got rid of the pooh of doom.  She sent someone else to deal with it, who reappeared victorious and branded us ‘wimps’.  The next morning I was on earlies, and when I got there the toilets were closed, as the pooh had crept back up the u-bend in the night and flooded the toilets.  A revenge pooh.

It has turned out to be a fairly pooh filled day one way and another.  Thankfully only in thought rather than deed, which is good, as I do need a break from bodily functions, particularly those of other people.  Luckily everyone is now in bed and Jason is very finicky about such matters, so I’m hoping for a pleasant evening watching the telly.  We’ve got several Grand Designs we haven’t seen on Sky Plus and we’re going to indulge in a spot of Jobe’s comforting with our favourite misery guts, Kevin McCloud.  We like the fact that Kevin gets turned on by disaster.  We think he would fit well into our lives.  We have decided to adopt Kevin, along with Stephen Fry.  We like Kevin.  He’s kind of handy.  He’s trilingual, wears funky shirts and knows a lot about building.  He’s going to live in my trouser turn ups, because it’s a little known fact that he’s only four inches tall.  He should be cheap to keep, and he can label all the tins in my art gallery for me when the day comes…

Wednesday 19th December, Musicals and three types of salmon

It’s nice to know my life has a theme.  Everyone should have a theme, and then they wouldn’t get all confused over what they’re supposed to do with the rest of their lives because their theme would tell them.  I’ve decided that my theme is illness, more specifically the illness of my children.  I’m far too busy to be ill myself.  My theme tune therefore would have to be the music from Casualty.  I believe there’s a rave version out there somewhere, which would be slightly more contemporary and in line with the modern, cutting edge life I lead.  I am, after all, the proud owner of both a blog and a facebook account.  I am well and truly riding the zeitgeist, albeit in an ambulance. 

Talking of theme tunes.  I had this idea the other day about where the musical genre came from.  I’m not a big fan of musicals.  In fact there are only three musicals in the known universe that I like; The Sound of Music (because I used to watch it with my gran every Christmas and it reminds me of her), Cats (because I am a girl) and Grease (because I am a product of the Seventies, and it is the first LP I ever owned).  Even with these three offerings I am fully able to admit that they are absolute shit, but I have a fondness for them because I am a sentimental old fool.  I wouldn’t expect anyone else to love them.  It’s a bit like how you feel about that moth eaten old teddy bear with one eye and its stuffing falling out, or even Jack the Ripper.  Only a mother could love him. 

I can tolerate Cabaret because it’s quite grim and downbeat, and because it’s based on the brilliant book; Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, but once was enough.  Liza Minelli looks like a man called George (which is probably why she is such a drag queen idol).  In fact she looks more like David Gest than David Gest, which is a bit worrying given the fact that they married each other.

Other than that I loathe them all, in particular Paint Your Wagon (after a very unfortunate amdram performance I was forced to see in 1987) and Carousel (which is vomitworthy in all respects).  

I feel I can say this, because I have in fact tried them and found them wanting, rather like the works of Jeffrey Archer.  I don’t approve of people slagging things off they haven’t even tried.  I once had a fierce argument with someone over the literary merits of the book Lolita by Nabokov.  She announced it was disgusting and that the authorities should ban it because it was a veritable handbook for paedophilia.  I was intrigued by this because I had read it and felt that Humbert Humbert did quite badly out of the whole thing and came out of it looking like a shady pervert who was not only despicable but also rather crap and spent the whole novel humiliatingly being given the run around by a teenage girl.  Not the sort of thing you want to go down in history being remembered for. 

If it is a handbook for anything it is a handbook for how to be a dismal failure as a paedophile and a snivellingly awful member of humanity. I pointed this out to the woman in question and she said: ‘Oh. Well you would say that because you’ve read it!’  I said that I would indeed, and that I felt reading it gave me rather an edge when it came to talking about it.  She said that she couldn’t bring herself to read it because it was too perverse, and then wouldn’t speak to me for a week because I had! 

Anyway, back to musicals.  My big problem with musicals remains the crucial issue of why people would want to burst into song at key emotional moments of their lives.  Not only song, but also dance routines.  It’s all I can do to honk out a few incoherent words whilst snotting into a hanky and collapsing into a comfy chair when I’m at my emotional nadir.  The thought of managing four verses with matching chorus and a musical interlude whilst sustaining an outpouring of deepest grief and doing a chirpy dance routine is beyond even the most stoic of people, and makes a mockery of the tortured croonings of the musical hero. 

Because the words of the songs have to tell a story they are usually fairly dire, rhyming couplet type stuff reminiscent of the worst excesses of Medieval ballads and Victorian epic poetry.  This also means that the emotions expressed are falsely limited by the fact that they have to rhyme with something else, and it’s hard to find rhymes for words like pompous or wistful without mangling the English language to within an inch of its life: 

I am so melancholy

Sitting underneath this giant tree

You said you were confused

Did it have anything to do with booze? 

The easy rhyming words are even worse because they sound like Helen Steiner Rice greetings cards set to music: 

I feel so low

How can you go?

I am so sad

You were so bad etc 

This is easily gotten around when it comes to the world of Opera, where most Operas are written and sung in ‘foreign’.  Anything in foreign immediately sounds much more dramatic and compelling than if it were in your own language, even: ‘Did you put the cat out?’ sounds vaguely romantic in Italian, and very threatening in German. 

The rule of thumb with operas is never to go to an opera if it’s in your native tongue.  I once went to a performance of Madame Butterfly in English and it was an unmitigated disaster.  Just as the heroine was reaching a crescendo of tortured angst she bursts into song and the whole thing falls apart: 

‘Mr Pinkerton! Piiiiiiiinnnnnkerrtooonnnnnnnn, etc (for several hours.  Rule of operatic thumb.  Never say someone’s name once normally when you can sing it for forty minutes like Mariah Carey on helium)

‘Yeeesssssssss.  Whhaaattt doooo youu wannnnttt?’

‘I am so sad, so very sad, so very, very, very sad, sad sad.’

‘Are you sad? Are you sad? Isn’t that sad?  It’s quite tragic.  I feel bad for you?’

‘That’s nice.  But it’s not nice enough for me, at this late stage, stage, stage. At this late stage. The stage is quite late.  The lateness of the stage is part of what is making me so sad.’

‘Oh dear.’‘I might have to kill myself now.  I am thinking about it.  Yes.  I have decided, although it is so sad.  I have decided that this is what I must do.  Goodbye.’

‘Oh bum, bum, bum.  Don’t go! Goodbye.’

‘Urk!’ (I’m paraphrasing here.  This bit takes about an hour.  It’s very operatic)

‘Arrghhhh. She has gone etc, (for the next four million years…) 

So.  There you have it.  A potted history of opera through the ages.  Now back to the musicals again.  Yes, so this juxtaposition of the mundane and the terribly exciting is my big problem, and I wondered who on earth had thought of the idea of: ‘What we need right now is a good song and dance routine’.  Then it came to me.  It was a parent. 

I had this epiphany the other day as I was jigging about the kitchen trying to pacify Oscar into waiting for his dinner to cool (another bloody annoying thing.  You cook a child a dinner so that they aren’t killed by e-coli, and then spend the next twenty minutes flapping about making it cold again.  Madness) so that he could eat it.  He is a child of hearty appetites and he hates this waiting bit most of all.  I had tried all my usual tricks; toys, crayons, a bit of bread and butter to be going on with, funny faces, all to no effect.  In desperation I started singing to him: ‘Oscar! Your dinner is coming.  Hang on young man. Now just hang on! Try not to cry’, etc. for ten minutes until the dinner had cooled sufficiently for him to be able to fling it at the wall without burning himself.  I realised that I do this with alarming regularity, and in all except the most extreme of cases it works.  Case closed. 

Anyway, for those of you still with me, we were initially talking about illness way back when the day was still young. You will be pleased to know we are not dealing with serious illness today, just minor and irritating illness that throws all my plans askew without it actually being worth it in any way.

Jamie was taking the girls to school this morning and then dropping their things off with me.  Luckily I had set my alarm for eight thirty a.m. instead of the usual ten to eight.  It isn’t good to be caught unawares and snoring by your ex-husband at any time. I don’t want him to see me in mismatched pyjamas and bed socks any more.  Although he lived with me for nearly ten years I like to foster the illusion that I now wear Dior Palazzo pyjamas and bound out of bed smelling like roses.  Clearly he doesn’t believe it, but I have no intention of providing factual evidence.  I prefer to sustain the glimmer of illusion.  I look like a bag of hammers (ones which haven’t slept properly for eight years) fully dressed and I have to retain some dignity. 

Oscar however, decided that despite having a night on the town last night, more of which later, he was going to get up at ten to seven this morning come hell or high water.  I ignored him until seven thirty, and then as the squeaking increased in intensity I had a horrible vision of the pooh fest that greeted me yesterday and leapt into action in case he was running ‘Pooh – The Revenge’.  Luckily for me he wasn’t.  Unluckily for me I wasn’t going to get him back into bed. 

I’d had this beatific vision of getting up at half eight, getting dressed in a leisurely way and being able to relax with my book and a cup of coffee before Jamie turned up just after nine.  I was convinced Oscar would be far too exhausted to stir before half nine.  Hah! 

As it was he decided he was feeling feisty today, threw his grapes all over the kitchen, tried to shove squares of toast down his trousers and emptied his milk up the sleeve of his clean t-shirt all before eight o’clock.  My coffee went cold and my book remained resolutely unopened. 

I’d have been scuppered anyway.  Jamie rang at eight to say that Tilly was running a temperature and was complaining of a headache. He’d given her some Nurofen but it hadn’t come down and what did I suggest.  I resisted the urge to suggest we have her adopted and get a new, healthy child who would go to school, and mentally resigned my day to the bin, saying she would have to have the day off and come back to me.  It was the last day of school as well.  Admittedly I would have still had Oscar at home anyway, but I had planned to do my final, final Christmas shopping today (see I told you.  Bastards!) and now it was all going horribly wrong. 

She turned up mournfully on the door step, but after twenty minutes of watching telly and playing with Oscar seemed absolutely fine to me.  I suggested the idea that she might like to saunter into school to say goodbye to everyone, but apparently her head was just too sore, so she stayed.  I tried to think charitable thoughts and failed. 

So, I have cancelled my lunch date with Andrea.  She has troubles of her own.  She has no children, but she has just become the proud mother of a new calf called Ermintrude.  Apparently Ermintrude is scouring (I believe this is pooh related), which is not good, and Andrea has been up most of the night with her, cajoling her back to health.  She seemed quite relieved that we didn’t have to be ladies what lunch, and I was quite relieved that I don’t have to look after livestock as well as children. 

I found a list of things I had carefully written down which all needed to happen before Christmas, but which I had been avoiding one way or the other, and which are now dramatically urgent.  I couldn’t face public transport today so we were very profligate and flashed the cash in a taxi.  I had pictures to take to the framers, perfume to buy for mother in laws (who have chosen the most difficult to find perfume in the known universe, and which took three hours of hunting to track down), photographs to get copied which are already supposed to be winging their way to Canada, but which are sitting in Jessops sulking.  I also forgot to get anything for the children to give each other.  It was hell on earth. 

I feel that Christmas has beaten me yet again.  Last night Jason and I made the alarming discovery that we had committed our Christmas tree, Derek (he was a much loved family member) to the grave when we moved house.  I thought he might be hiding in the loft (stage fright) but it was not true, and we had to do an emergency dash to get a tree before all that was left was a bunch of malnourished pine needles for an exorbitant sum. 

We went to Sainsbury’s in the vain hope that it would be easy.  There was a little lady being helpful in the doorway to the store.  She was very funny.  Jason asked her where the trees were.  She told him, and asked him if he knew where she meant.  He said that he did indeed and that she had been very helpful.  She then said; ‘Oh please let me come with you.  Come on.  I’m coming with you.’ And proceeded to abandon her post and jaunt merrily round the shop with us.  Clearly being a meeter and greeter wasn’t her first career choice. As we were proceeding to the tree aisle she was desperately trying to sell me all the latest seasonal offers: 

Lady: ‘There’s half price on salmon you know.  It’s a whole salmon for £3.99.  That’s good isn’t it?’ 

Katy: ‘That’s very good indeed.  Yes.’ 

Lady: Proudly: ‘Yes it is, very good.  And they’re all suitable for freezering as well you know?’ 

Katy: ‘Goodness! Are they?’ 

Lady: ‘Yes they are! And, and they’ve got all three types of salmon…’ 

Katy: ‘Really?’ 

Lady: ‘Yes! They’ve got smoked salmon (big pause) and (big pause) the other one….(trails off, clearly having no idea what the other two are and expecting me to leap in.) 

Katy: ‘Oh good.  Well thanks for letting me know.’

Lady: Abandoning the idea of salmon altogether: ‘Yes. Well.  They’ve got half price on Stilton as well.’ 

Katy: ‘Ummm. No thanks.’ 

Lady: ‘No, really.  They have.  You can make Stilton and broccoli soup with it you know?’ 

Katy: ‘Right.’ 

Lady: Sad that I’m not enthusiastic about this thought: ‘I’m not lying you know.  You really can make soup out of it, even though it’s cheese.  I’m not lying.’ 

Katy: ‘I know that.  It’s just that I don’t really like Stilton thanks.’ 

Lady: Bit more cheerful that her veracity is not being called into question: ‘Ah! Well they’ve got half price handbags too.’ 

By now I was biting my cheeks trying not to laugh and Jason couldn’t look at me.  Luckily we had reached the tree aisle by this stage and she reluctantly left us with lots of ‘half price’ drifting back towards us as she scuttled back to the door. Sadly the trees were not half price and they only had white ones left.  Jason tried to sell me the idea of a white one for ease of purchase but I insisted that if we had to have a fake one, I at least wanted it to look green.  This meant a trip half way across the city to Homebase where we became the proud parents of a seven foot tall Christmas tree that puts Derek to shame.  We have not named him yet, and he is merely known as son of Derek.  Oscar has already tried to climb up him twice and I fear that once the decorations go on it will be game over.

To add to this my sensible eating plan went horribly wrong today.  It was too cold in town, and I was too fed up of the children, christmas shopping and festive cheer to face another bloody banana, so we went and had tons of pasta and cheesecake and icecream for lunch.  It was brilliant and I have made an executive decision that if the bra explodes I will just go back to vest and pants and claim that I’m being retro.

Tuesday 27th November – Pheasants and Presents

Mornin’ all.  Just made myself laugh and thought I’d tell you about it before I forgot!  Bought some pheasant pate from the supermarket today for the most random of reasons.  I saw a pheasant in the road at the weekend, and narrowly avoided killing it as it dithered its way across tarmac.  Just before it flopped pathetically into the ditch in a rubbish bid for freedom (not like Steve McQueen riding a motorbike in the Great Escape – more like me trying to avoid an incoming cricket ball with no glasses on) I thought: ‘Hmmm! Pheasant.  I wonder what that tastes like?’

How macabre, buying something because you nearly killed it on the road earlier! Obviously I’d prefer that they not use road kill carcasses when they’re serving me, because I’m a bit squeamish like that.  Bizarre that I don’t mind them herding the poor creatures to an abbatoir, stunning them with a bolt gun and then cutting their throats.  Still, it’s important to have standards I feel, however random they may be.

I know that there are people out there who enjoy eating road kill.  There was a bloke on the news last year who had a Christmas dinner made entirely from road kill and what he had scavenged.  It’s one way to cut down on the number of people you have to entertain I suppose:  ‘Oh? Road kill again this year John?  No, I think Patty and I are tied up.  Thanks awfully.’

They think of it as a kind of free lunch/recycling type deal (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall springs to mind, bless him), but you do wonder if the flatness of the animal becomes an issue, i.e. as its liver takes on the shape of a griddled pancake.  I’m also sure that having to pick bits of gravel, and tyre moulding out of its innards would detrimentally affect the bouquet.  Call me old fashioned, but hey… I expect that’s why I could only get pheasant pate. ‘Ere’ never mind that.  Just pick the feathers out and shove it in this jar.  Brilliant.  Cheap at half the price!’

Would I have rushed to the supermarket with the same eagerness if we’d dinged a badger I wonder?

Me: ‘Mornin’ squire.  Do you by any chance have some badger pate I could purchase from your fine emporium?’

Man in a hairnet: ‘No. I’m sorry madam.  But we do have Badgers in a Bun or Badger on a Stick available at our deli counter today.’

Me: ‘Oh! Lovely.  Well as long as you’ve not left the eyes in I’ll give it a try.  I can’t bear it when they look so wistfully at you just as you’re about to eat them.  Thanks very much…’ 

Sometimes I even amaze myself with the random strangeness of my brain.

The pate was fine by the way.  I didn’t really get much of a sense of what the pheasant did actually taste like mind you, because they’d added juniper, port and apricots to the mix (probably to disguise the aroma of burning tyre), so it tasted slightly meaty and a lot fruity, but it certainly wasn’t nauseatingly unpleasant.  I’d probably try it again in a different form, although as it’s game I expect even if they didn’t get it from the side of the road covered in bits of Fiat Panda, they would probably hang it in a cupboard until it was pulsatingly green and knocking on the door to get out.

I think that’s why I find being adventurous in the world of game rather challenging.  It’s the liveliness of the meat that is so bothersome.  In an ideal world meat should be fairly inanimate once it’s been killed. I’m going to change the subject now, before I put myself off my own dinner, which in terms of dropping that vital half a stone so that I can wear that slinky little Ted Baker dress that Jason bought me three years ago and I’ve only been able to wear twice, would be brilliant, but in terms of me going really mardy and throwing all my toys out of the pram, would be disastrous.  I hate having no appetite.  Some people see food as mere fuel for getting them from a to b, a bit like a solid form of petrol.  Me, I see food as one of the great pleasures in life, and being a bit off my nosh is one of the worst things I can think of.  Talking of which, congratulations to eldest son, Lee, who after a week of killer antibiotics and eating soup through a straw, is finally able to eat cake once more.  I know this because I just got an e-mail that says: ‘Woo hooo! I can eat cake and yum yums again!’  Direct and from the heart.

Talking of e-mails, I got a brilliant one from Tom yesterday. He’s been looking at podcast kits, and was telling me how he was thinking of buying me one for Christmas so that I can witter on in person, as well as in blog form.  Then he looked at the price!  Luckily for the sake of your ears, now that your eyes are all damaged beyond repair, they are far too spendy, and so it will have to remain a virtual present, and an excellent thought.  The idea of casting pods to all and sundry is wonderful and excitingly technological.  I don’t understand it, but I am impressed by it none the less.  It’s rather the way I feel about the magnificent Welsh soap opera Pobol Y Cwm (it means ‘People of the Valley’), and quantum physics.

How fantastic though!  He also came up with the idea for a theme tune and decided that it should be called, ‘Wheatley’s World!’  I love it! I’ve never tapped in to Tom’s musical side so, I don’t know whether he’s going to compose it himself.  He’s many things, and probably a genius in a cardboardy, sellotapy type way, but I’ve never heard him compose or play music before, so I will await his efforts with bated breath.

I imagine it will take a while, as knowing Tom, it will probably commence with him having to build an entire orchestra of random musical instruments and then learning how to play them all.  In later years when Melvyn Bragg interviews him for a South Bank Show Special he will be able to trace his burgeoning musical talent back to me and a podcast!

Melvyn: ‘Now Tom, tell us how this interesting looking instrument works…’ 

Tom: ‘Ah, Melvin! I’m glad you brought that up.  It’s one of my particular favourites.  I based it on the little known ‘Flumpsicle’ from that seminal 1970’s animation ‘The Flumps’.  I was too young to see it the first time round, but thanks to the power of YouTube, I became entranced by their fat little fingers working the keys, and decided to make my own version.  Andre Previn was particularly taken with it when we used it in my first opera: ‘The Tragedy of Quantum Leap.’ In which my good friend Bill, took on the role of Bam Seckett.’

Melvyn: ‘Fascinating! I confess to having a soft spot for the flumpsicle myself, but it’s so difficult to play I console myself with the rather easier, ‘aria for a spanjo’.’

Tom: ‘Yes.  Nobody had ever thought to cross the ethnic folk instrument, the spoons, with a banjo before.  It worked rather well I thought…’ 

I do this: ‘I was going to buy you this brilliant present…’ thing quite often.  It’s a bit like the whole Bullseye: ‘Just look at what you could have won!’ type scenario.  I find fantastic presents that would be perfect for all my friends.  Then I get very excited about what a brilliant person I will be; a kind of un-tracksuit wearing Jim’ll Fix It.  At this point I am usually near to tears imagining my great philanthropic works storming the hearts of a depressed nation.  Then I look in my purse…

I think you should send the people you love a list of the top ten things you would have bought them if your credit card hadn’t been in free fall and you had more than 27p and a used bus ticket in your wallet.  This would truly help to reinforce the idea that: ‘It’s the thought that counts’.

I think that’s such a cop out thing to say, because usually the people that say it are the people that stopped in the Esso petrol station at the end of the road and bought you a car air freshener because they hadn’t put any thought into it at all and were feeling hideously guilty.  Because they say that, you try to be nice about it.  They have neatly put you in a position where if you say: ‘But it’s shit isn’t it? And if I bought you one you would hate me forever,’ you just seem like a mercenary robbing bastard who won’t be satisfied until they’ve got a custom built Maybach with a personalised number plate.  When all you really wanted was a small bag of Thornton’s Viennese Truffles and a card without a poinsettia on it (because those, and the card with the kittens in the brandy glasses, are the cheapest, nastiest Christmas cards on the planet and only given to you by people who wouldn’t give you the drop off the end of their nose if you were starving to death in a gutter).

My mother dreads Christmas every year because my dad is the worst Christmas present buyer in the history of time.  Genghis Khan bought more appropriate Christmas gifts than my dad.  My dad’s festive purchases fall into one of two categories:

1. Something he wants himself (this is the child’s Christmas choice – ‘Dad would love a techno magic Barbie mama and I can help him look after it).  Which is why my mum got a box of Cadbury’s Dairy Box every year for ten years, until she freaked out and threatened to divorce him.
2. Something in the sale.  This can be anything from the year when he bought her an Elaine Paige record (my mother likes The Rolling Stones and Genesis) to the year he got her the film Calamity Jane, starring the ever popular Doris Day.  He bought it because not only was it cheap but he said it reminded him of their first date.  Turns out that he took someone else!  She knows this because he took her to see The Windmill Girls, which he thought was a spy thriller, but which turned out to be about the famous strippers.  Dad fell asleep after the first ten minutes.  Mum was mortified and got accosted by a man called Billy with all the buttons missing from his raincoat.

 I can’t help being annoyed by inappropriate presents.  So often, try to be charitable though we do, we are very, very pissed off when someone buys us some Dewberry Body Shop shower gel for the twentieth year running (and they don’t even make it any more so you know they either a) stockpiled it in 1987, or b) got it off Ebay) and we know that the last time they thought of us was way back during the great Tea Tray Disaster of 1837, and then every year on Christmas Eve since in a flat panicked prefixed by the words: ‘Oh Bugger!’ 

I know it’s mean, but I want proof that they’ve really thought about me.  Either that or I’d rather not get anything at all.  It sounds churlish I know, and it is!  But there you have it.  Think of it as saving the planet by not buying me a bunch of random tat I’m only going to stick in a cupboard and give as tombola prizes for the next year’s Christmas Fayre (damn those medieval peasants).

My mother was once given a particularly hideous pair of candlesticks by my paternal grandmother.  They hated each other, so it was one of those ‘F**** you!’ revenge type presents for something my mother had failed to do, like marry a different man.  They were enormous, black wrought iron things that looked like they’d been wrenched from some park railings and welded by a blind man with no arms.

They’d have been good for clubbing burglars to death with, but you wouldn’t have given them house room for aesthetic purposes. Even in a power cut, which was the only time we used them they were lethal, because they were so heavy, and so unbalanced that lifting them out of the depths of the cupboard where they had been put for ‘safe keeping’ (not because they were so horrible they would make your eyeballs shrivel up just to look at them at all), would give you a hernia.  Then once you’d managed to get the candle lit and on top of the wobbling pile of iron-mongery it would invariably fall off onto your head and set your hair on fire.  Many’s the jolly night in the powercuts of the seventies when we would run screaming from room to room, hair ablaze, with my mother beating us out with a selection of scatter cushions.  I can’t complain, it kept us fit. 

My mother kept the offending articles for years for fear of reprisals if she got rid of them (i.e. something even more horrible the following Christmas), and then in a bid for freedom she gave them to the local summer fete for the white elephant stall.  She was so triumphant, gleefully rubbing her hands and thanking the lord that she had finally got rid of the heinous items.  My brother came bumbling over about an hour later dragging a large sack in which were the dreaded candlesticks that he’d bought for my mother as a present!  She almost cried!

Naturally I treasure every present my children give me, and never, ever throw them away.  I am going now as my gigantic Pinocchio style nose is obscuring my view of the screen and I have some jacket potatoes to attend to.