Having bought some reduced stuff at the supermarket, I had to find room for it in the freezer. Once home - as so often happens - the lustre had faded from my bargains. It dawned on me that never would I want to eat any of it, however cheap, particularly shrouded in ice. To boot, the packaging will crack, thanks to my sturdy forcing, and the label will come awry. A wintry anonymity of deep unattractiveness is doomed to settle on them. The boys will be told to eat up without complaining.
Solid and frozen however, these will be a problem for me to encounter way in the future, as were the three punnets of raspberries, optimistically-purchased last October, which were jettisoned to create the necessary room for this batch of odd decisions.
I decided to make jam of them. I needed jam (Marie Antoinette would understand in a cake / jam way) but it ended up taking 2 days which no-one, even in the wilder throes of mis-placed optimism, is going to say was time well spent.
The pursuit of a cheap thing can be time-heavy and, although I dread to confess it, expensive. The jammy offerings of Tiptree are appearing to be spectacularly good value in comparison. Plus they actually are jam, whereas my efforts cannot be said to be anything other than slops.
“Sauce,” my mother suggested when I told her, “for your porridge.”
“Coulis,” I said sternly; this IS the Cotswolds.
The trouble is I didn’t want coulis, and I certainly didn’t want sauce. What I want is jam. And I don’t eat porridge, so having plugged a gap which wasn’t there, I am still left with a jam-shaped hole.
We entertained chums at the weekend. It worked so well, and that despite a smorgasbord of dietary peccadillos to navigate, that I could crow with gloaty delight. One friend said I should open a restaurant (I do love praise) and that she would play Mrs Overall, shuffling round as cardi-clad waitress. The idea appeals, but not much. Have you seen Masterchef? Do not those sessions in the “pro kitchen” inspire you to promise never, ever to complain, even under your breath, in a restaurant? A circle of hell, but eagerly aspired to by the culinary mad.
I do like cooking, but on a low-key level although I must (must you? yes) shoehorn in an unnecessary boast that my mayonnaise is just delicious. It takes less than five minutes to rustle up and is genuinely, cross my heart etc, worth doing. It is less expensive than “proper” mayonnaise and I couldn’t even walk to the post-office-cum-shop to buy some in the time, let alone factor in the inevitable painful trapping of chat with the Post Office man (teeth, medication, ducks, Spain, hedges in Spain, post office regulations).
Pasta is moot. It's good, better than shop bought, but it is incumbent upon me to confess that I could walk to Tesco and back, even down an icy, winding road in a horrid blizzard, in the hour or more that I spend sending myself crazy sending the dough through the machine.
But as for the jam, I could stroll to Waitrose, friends, which is 5 miles away. I could dawdle in the blissful aisles, hand pick the smartest jars, stay for coffee, read the papers, stay for lunch, stroll back and still be quids in, both time and cash wise.
Saving money is not all it’s cracked up to be, particularly when it means the fridge is full of substandard sauce. But still one persists. And el credit cruncho has resulted in some crazy wheezes peddled by desperate newspapers.
My mother told me of a Handy Tips booklet included with a recent Telegraph where one of the suggestions concerned saving that vital fiver in cocking a snook at room service if you were to reach the hotel after the restaurant was closed.
Yes, latest wisdom is that you can toast your own cheese sandwich.
What is entailed is the cunning inclusion in your packing of some pre-made cheese sandwiches wrapped in silver foil. Once in the privacy of your room, break into your suitcase, extract the sarnies and iron them. Yes, iron them: ta-da!
This they call an “instant tasty hot snack.”
But there are so many issues skirted over. Not least of which the inadvisability of popping a sweaty cheese sandwich in among your clothes in the first place: the pfaff, the potential for error: the suitcase inadvertently being left by a warm radiator, while you get pissed on the mini bar. Then there's the assumption that your room will have an iron, and the folly in expecting that it will be anything approaching “tasty”.
We all know that the bread will remain steadfastly soggy and limp, while the cheese will manage to break free and leak oily globbets on a shirt, plus you’ll have a scorched chest of drawers on your hands to hide from the chambermaid: there’s only so much concealment one can reasonably expect from artfully discarded sachets of Nescafe.
They attempt to pre-empt this last, by suggesting bringing along a bundle of old newspapers – truly – to fashion an impromptu late-night ironing board. By the time one’s packed a tasty snack and a heap of old newspapers you might feel it was easier to stay home and eat it there, rather than Go Tramp in a smart hotel ruminating on your failure to run to the hotel’s offerings.
It doesn’t stop there, and many a use for 'denture cleaning tablets', too, crop up, providing you have such things handy, which so many of us from the Colgate generation just don’t. Otherwise, which is true of many of the tips, you might as well go out and buy the thing that's meant to do the job you are buying the alternative for. Much as I love my superior mayonnaise, it’s to be eaten with salad, not popped on my head as hair conditioner.
And the suggested uses for marshmallows - again, not a permanent feature of my cupboard - would make your eyes water. Let's say home pedicures feature.
Jam-tired this made me, I’m all for eyeing the 100% shop-bought Marmite with interest. Whistling insouciantly, my hand stretched into the fridge, brought forward three sullen jars of nasty sauce and hurled them to the bin. A certain lightness settled on me.
Thursday, 12 February 2009
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
tell the rats that it’s now the year of the ox … but never the year of the dog
My mother was born to a 44 year old widow, and a sister of 17. This sister’s first husband committed suicide, and she is now ensconced, in her 80s, in cold comfort farm, deep in the bowels of the countryside, tending to her second husband. G. He takes all day to eat breakfast, and, on finishing at 6 in the evening, finds it is only time to get ready for bed again. A repetitive business.
Recently, somehow – and, frankly, the mind boggles at the practicalities attendant on such an excursion – these 2 went on holiday. I can’t remember where, and it will have been somewhere most people wouldn’t consider. Bird watching would have been factored in, and swimming in January tides, “So bracing, Milla.”
They asked what time breakfast finished and the innocent waitress informed them that it was 9.30.
"Aahhh," said G.
She'd learn.
Small disappointments hardly break the surface of my aunt’s brand of optimism when in her element, one which is characterised as being fundamentally bleak, whether on holiday or back home, a once lovely house crumbling with defeated neglect.
Postcards note events such as, “we heard that seals bask there quite frequently. We waited all day but none showed up. Clearly busy elsewhere! G commented that the wind was bitter, but I imagine it’s worse in Siberia; we missed lunch, but no matter,” that sort of thing, accompanied by a little drawing of a coy seal. She enjoys deprivation and takes comfort in the certainty that however bad things are now, they will be even worse tomorrow.
Once home they returned to a rat inundation. In the kitchen, under the stairs. They have come in from the cold and opened an account on my aunt’s house.
“Oh,” my aunt said airily, “everyone in the country has rats.”
“Can’t you get a man in?” asked my mother.
“Oh, no. Not round here.”
My mother relayed this to me and I squeezed a genteel shudder and said, apropos of the inevitability of rats in the countryside, “I don’t think so!”
We probably laughed.
But a scant fortnight later, tit’s given for tat, petards have been hoisted and we have taken a tumble both. My mother is on the phone.
She had seen a fat rat strolling around outside her back door while I was main-lining sal volatile since the casual scrapings aside of gravel leading to a hole under the side of the house had been confirmed as a rat run. Real rats, not merely bad tempered commuters stealing a march by racing through housing estates.
I snagged the Ratman in the post office. I think he was relieved to be rescued from a chat about the Post Office Man’s teeth (him of the “Bits. Dropping from meh. Like ice from a glacier”) and scuttled out all eager, clutching his barbecue beef crisps in one paw.
I showed him the hole and he nodded eagerly, and then changed the conversation, just like that, to his dyslexia, and that of his wife and his four children. I found it interesting, to be sure, and offered my trademark kind advice, but would rather have continued on warfarin and neosorexa.
He advised that we concrete in the hole and, when I persisted, told me what it would cost to distribute poison. The quote deterred me, but I paid for my meanness in 18-certificate fear over the weekend, during which time the sounds in the walls grew. I’ve seen ‘Ratatouille’ and am now realising what a big mistake that was. I thought I had no imagination. I was wrong.
Ratman came back and took to his task with a torch. He wriggled in the loft, and “fresh” droppings were found. It’s not at infestation level, no “tail swish” was found in the sawdust – t’ank feck – and pleasing, industrial amounts of poison have been laid. Ratman is firmly in the diary, a date more eagerly anticipated than any teenage tryst, for next Monday. Death had better be widespread. I’m thinking holocaust, species cleansing, annihilation. Call it a massive failing, but I don’t subscribe to the ‘they were here before us’ mentality. We’re here now, and they can fuck right off, however intelligent and clean. I’m brighter, I’m cleaner.
Meanwhile, our neighbours, The Olds have vermin, too, of a different but depressingly familiar sort: Lolly.
Rather than finally earning her keep – I could hire her out, earn a few quid if she would but just grab this chance to shine and be useful in doing what terriers should do: catch rats – she has instead been breaking into The Olds’ garden.
She has zilch taste, for it’s a dull patch: small, frighteningly well-tended, each blade of grass personally known and accounted for. There are boring slabs (which I pray haven’t yet been crapped on) and resin weasels with handbags. Every corner of it is highly visible from just about every window in their house. Since The Olds, when not outside pinning up endless laundry in their garden or trimming shrubs by that vital centimetre, are inside up step-ladders polishing their windows or giving the nets a busy shake, the chances of our Getting Away With It are slim. In fact, they keep a lead just for returning Lolly to us, grim-lipped. And although they go out bothering other oldsters quite frequently, for tea and to watch Countdown en masse (flat-capped and car-coated in their pristine Micra),the snow has not aided my pretence that Lolly is under any control whatsoever.
I let her out yeseterday, hoping she’d rat-catch, but she disappeared like a junkie after heroin next door, the dread tell-tale trail of the addict’s pawmarks heading into the gap in the wall. Their wall, their gap, actually. I must remember to drop that into future conversation, thus steering things away from Dog Crimes.
“Lolly!” I hissed, hoping she’d detect icy fury in my voice and come a-trotting. Yeah, right.
I went further into the snowy garden and, through the Ceanothus that separates them from us, I saw the foul hound, looking frightfully pleased with herself jumping stiff-legged on their lawn. I whisper-bellowed at her, and she bounced some more, thrilled, and then ran round and round, flurries of snow flying from her paws, her trespass laid bare in documentation. There was no way I could hope that they’d think that this was an over-active robin or a break-dancing squirrel. At any moment there would be the careful returning roll of Micra wheel on gravel and fresh out of excuses I would be caught. It’s bad enough being told off for your own shortcomings or those of the children, but on account of the dog? Per-lease. Eating humble pie for a disapproving oldster catches terribly in the craw.
One problem scuttles away, another takes centre stage. As the rats recede, the bigger pest makes hay.
Recently, somehow – and, frankly, the mind boggles at the practicalities attendant on such an excursion – these 2 went on holiday. I can’t remember where, and it will have been somewhere most people wouldn’t consider. Bird watching would have been factored in, and swimming in January tides, “So bracing, Milla.”
They asked what time breakfast finished and the innocent waitress informed them that it was 9.30.
"Aahhh," said G.
She'd learn.
Small disappointments hardly break the surface of my aunt’s brand of optimism when in her element, one which is characterised as being fundamentally bleak, whether on holiday or back home, a once lovely house crumbling with defeated neglect.
Postcards note events such as, “we heard that seals bask there quite frequently. We waited all day but none showed up. Clearly busy elsewhere! G commented that the wind was bitter, but I imagine it’s worse in Siberia; we missed lunch, but no matter,” that sort of thing, accompanied by a little drawing of a coy seal. She enjoys deprivation and takes comfort in the certainty that however bad things are now, they will be even worse tomorrow.
Once home they returned to a rat inundation. In the kitchen, under the stairs. They have come in from the cold and opened an account on my aunt’s house.
“Oh,” my aunt said airily, “everyone in the country has rats.”
“Can’t you get a man in?” asked my mother.
“Oh, no. Not round here.”
My mother relayed this to me and I squeezed a genteel shudder and said, apropos of the inevitability of rats in the countryside, “I don’t think so!”
We probably laughed.
But a scant fortnight later, tit’s given for tat, petards have been hoisted and we have taken a tumble both. My mother is on the phone.
She had seen a fat rat strolling around outside her back door while I was main-lining sal volatile since the casual scrapings aside of gravel leading to a hole under the side of the house had been confirmed as a rat run. Real rats, not merely bad tempered commuters stealing a march by racing through housing estates.
I snagged the Ratman in the post office. I think he was relieved to be rescued from a chat about the Post Office Man’s teeth (him of the “Bits. Dropping from meh. Like ice from a glacier”) and scuttled out all eager, clutching his barbecue beef crisps in one paw.
I showed him the hole and he nodded eagerly, and then changed the conversation, just like that, to his dyslexia, and that of his wife and his four children. I found it interesting, to be sure, and offered my trademark kind advice, but would rather have continued on warfarin and neosorexa.
He advised that we concrete in the hole and, when I persisted, told me what it would cost to distribute poison. The quote deterred me, but I paid for my meanness in 18-certificate fear over the weekend, during which time the sounds in the walls grew. I’ve seen ‘Ratatouille’ and am now realising what a big mistake that was. I thought I had no imagination. I was wrong.
Ratman came back and took to his task with a torch. He wriggled in the loft, and “fresh” droppings were found. It’s not at infestation level, no “tail swish” was found in the sawdust – t’ank feck – and pleasing, industrial amounts of poison have been laid. Ratman is firmly in the diary, a date more eagerly anticipated than any teenage tryst, for next Monday. Death had better be widespread. I’m thinking holocaust, species cleansing, annihilation. Call it a massive failing, but I don’t subscribe to the ‘they were here before us’ mentality. We’re here now, and they can fuck right off, however intelligent and clean. I’m brighter, I’m cleaner.
Meanwhile, our neighbours, The Olds have vermin, too, of a different but depressingly familiar sort: Lolly.
Rather than finally earning her keep – I could hire her out, earn a few quid if she would but just grab this chance to shine and be useful in doing what terriers should do: catch rats – she has instead been breaking into The Olds’ garden.
She has zilch taste, for it’s a dull patch: small, frighteningly well-tended, each blade of grass personally known and accounted for. There are boring slabs (which I pray haven’t yet been crapped on) and resin weasels with handbags. Every corner of it is highly visible from just about every window in their house. Since The Olds, when not outside pinning up endless laundry in their garden or trimming shrubs by that vital centimetre, are inside up step-ladders polishing their windows or giving the nets a busy shake, the chances of our Getting Away With It are slim. In fact, they keep a lead just for returning Lolly to us, grim-lipped. And although they go out bothering other oldsters quite frequently, for tea and to watch Countdown en masse (flat-capped and car-coated in their pristine Micra),the snow has not aided my pretence that Lolly is under any control whatsoever.
I let her out yeseterday, hoping she’d rat-catch, but she disappeared like a junkie after heroin next door, the dread tell-tale trail of the addict’s pawmarks heading into the gap in the wall. Their wall, their gap, actually. I must remember to drop that into future conversation, thus steering things away from Dog Crimes.
“Lolly!” I hissed, hoping she’d detect icy fury in my voice and come a-trotting. Yeah, right.
I went further into the snowy garden and, through the Ceanothus that separates them from us, I saw the foul hound, looking frightfully pleased with herself jumping stiff-legged on their lawn. I whisper-bellowed at her, and she bounced some more, thrilled, and then ran round and round, flurries of snow flying from her paws, her trespass laid bare in documentation. There was no way I could hope that they’d think that this was an over-active robin or a break-dancing squirrel. At any moment there would be the careful returning roll of Micra wheel on gravel and fresh out of excuses I would be caught. It’s bad enough being told off for your own shortcomings or those of the children, but on account of the dog? Per-lease. Eating humble pie for a disapproving oldster catches terribly in the craw.
One problem scuttles away, another takes centre stage. As the rats recede, the bigger pest makes hay.
Thursday, 29 January 2009
it's good to talk
Last night I went on a girls’ night. We talked about how much we talked. How men (generalising wildly) look to provide a basic solution to an issue. (Don’t like someone? Tell them. Or ignore them. Don’t agonise. No need to mention it again. Sit down and read the paper.) They don’t do the endless circling of waffle around a subject, niggling and needling and reassessing, which for us is the means of distillation and of arriving at a solution we probably knew was there all along.
Just as E will buy the first pair of shoes he sees, if they fit and he likes them whereas I feel an instinctive horror at not exhausting every possibility at least twice. Round and round the shops, in trudging indecisive horror, to arrive back where I started three hours later.
A waste of time, perhaps, but at least you know. He says he doesn’t need to ‘know’, or doesn’t need to prove that he already ‘knew’.
And then it gets complicated.
I don’t, though, have much trouble with service. My experience, as a kind and caring individual, tells me that it’s those who invite it who always get the surly waitress, the offhand Postie, the Bored Saturday Shop Girl.
Besides, I’ve worked in shops and bars and, God, does the time drag. So, if a reluctant menial is a bit arsey, I tend to be grateful that it’s mere disdain coming my way and not a session with an Uzi because, let’s face it, day after day folding jumpers or looking in the back for a “Capri” in “heather” in a size 5, and having it drilled into you that the poxy customer is always right must do your head in.
The florist, however, had perfected rude brevity; I was both shocked and impressed. The haiku would be a tedious epic poem to her. Her grudging articulations of sound, vowel-less txt spk, were wrapped in cushions of cross silence, pauses I felt obliged to pack with foolish guff.
“So you do make button-holes?” I was on the phone to her and had got nowhere.
“ …….ys …….”
“And, er, is it better to order them, or just turn up on the day and hope …”
“ ….rdr ….”
“OK, um, is there a book, or photos, I could look at, before I decide and …?”
“…. N ….. ‘s rss r c’nashns.”
Mr Ambassador, you spoil us.
I drove to the shop, giving her the benefit of the doubt, that she might be a phone-phobic princess, and also intrigued to see if she really was as bad in person as she was on the blower. She was.
I decided not to buy and felt quite rebellious. Normally I am so well-behaved that I feel obliged to stump up just because I’ve walked in.
I asked if she sold florists’ wire and tape.
“ ….n ….” And then, in an uncharacteristic splurge of speech but still hammering home the Can’t Sell Won’t Sell stance, “Tks p 2 mch rm.”
A sign saying “Keep the Village Alive, Support Your Local Traders” banged on the door on my way out.
So I took me to the Garden Centre and, between such horticultural necessities as puffy hot water bottles and ceramic hedgehogs in amusing poses, I encountered a little display (tkng p v ltl rm actually) boasting all that the amateur florist could need.
And then I did my Little Red Hen act and came up with these.
Being impecunious, and flushed with success having made some bizarre curtains for the sitting room in strips of silk (the lighting's a bit odd here),
I have decided to have a go at another set.
This time for the garage.
(“You must stop calling it the garage,” said my dog-walking friend, “you must call it the library.” This is a woman whose idea of fun is 3 fitness classes on the bounce, so ‘garage’ it is).
They need to be 12’ across, and since I can’t begin to compute what a professional would charge for such monstrous curtains, I took myself off to the fabric shops to spend a fortune in saving money and doing it myself.
Cheltenham soon proved itself to be pretty dire. The big place has a new boss which has resulted in all the old staff being near to tears and snippy with each other, indulging in a “me, sir, me sir” jostling of one upmanship.
“Carol!” said one guy loudly and reprovingly, “Rolls!” he indicated with a bony finger the endless rolls of fabric left behind by Carol in pursuit of furnishing me with various quarter metres (I have “ideas” for these garage curtains which is calling for much crossing of fingers and purchase of quarter metres).
“’m with a customer, Jonathan!” Carol pointed out tartly, ‘customer’ clearly scoring over abandoned rolls.
Jonathan pursed his lips and ostentatiously set about reducing the discard mountain in a ‘we’ll say no more about it’ sort of way.
Carol rolled her eyes and stabbed at the till buttons.
But this was only scraps. I needed more, the base material.
So I found a shop with my favourite word in the window, “Sale.”
Inside I was ignored, not even a flicker of boredom inched my way. This suited me fine. But what was passing amusing was, on drawing near the desk, to realise that I had been so roundly ignored because the two assistants were bitching about ‘the warehouse.’ Whatever THAT is.
“Costs nothing to say hello,” Big and Brunette was saying, wide-eyed, scarcely able to countenance the bad manners of others.
Old and Knackered Colleague shook her head in a would you believe it sort of way, “Manners don’t cost,” she agreed. “That Fiona! Honestly!”
“Just oils the wheels,” said B&B smugly, hoicking up her impressive busty substances. “Dun’t take much.”
I tried to fix them with a bit of a Look, but it wasn’t going to happen, not to a mere customer. Not when there was someone to slag off.
It was clear that I needed to go down the M5, batter the purse and kill a couple of hours in John Lewis.
I popped the dog in the boot and set off.
Upstairs I found more bits and pieces, and a woman in the queue, baffled by my random selection, asked what I was up to, so I explained, and she seemed interested, and then we discussed the pink and yellow bags she was making for her granddaughters. Twins of 4, very hard work. And then the till woman laughed that she couldn’t sew for tuppence, and stabbed herself on a pin-cushion as if in illustration and laughed again, only more manically and looking around anxiously for a plaster.
Downstairs, in what they call Fab F, I finally found my base material, not perfect (obviously) but it will do.
As the short and stout maiden, with the tape measure slung busily round her neck, made the shearing scissored cut – somewhere around 15 metres in – I said, “Not that I’m going to, but what would happen if I said I’d changed my mind?”
S&S frowned.
“I mean, would you call Security, or what?”
“We trust our customers,” S&S said bleakly. Then, despite herself, “Why d’you ask that?”
“I just wondered,” I said, “well, just making conversation.”
“We have all sorts of customers,” she said, “I’d put you in the patient category, I saw you standing there, waiting. You should see some of them. Men usually. Won’t wait when you’re measuring. Get cross, threaten to complain. I take no notice, but I tell them, I say, ‘I’m busy,’ I say, ‘you’ll have to wait.”
I felt unduly flattered at having secured her approval. You don’t get comment, let alone something one could fashion as praise, however dull, as an adult and it’s always strange to realise that you have been noticed and categorised.
A young lad staggered out to the car with my rolls of material. We chatted about his spider collection (27 glass cases; first one bought when 7; spiders cost £20 when small, £150 when big; they live for 9 years. He let one out. Once. )
“Have you got a girlfriend?” I asked.
“We’re about to move in together,” he said, “I’ve got to get rid of the spiders, re-home them.”
“Don’t look at me, I said, “In fact, I wouldn’t have let you even touch the material if I’d known where those hands have been.”
He gave me an empty ‘my girlfriend’s like that’ look. His long spider-lite life lay ahead of him.
I got home and smuggled the material in. E was there so I launched into a distraction chat, planning how I could pretend that the material had Always Been There. He cleared his throat, cranking his vocal chords into action.
“I haven’t talked to anyone all day,” he said.
“How come?” I said puzzled, wondering if he had a bit of florist in him, “It’s impossible not to.”
He shrugged. “No one came down my end of the office.”
Just as E will buy the first pair of shoes he sees, if they fit and he likes them whereas I feel an instinctive horror at not exhausting every possibility at least twice. Round and round the shops, in trudging indecisive horror, to arrive back where I started three hours later.
A waste of time, perhaps, but at least you know. He says he doesn’t need to ‘know’, or doesn’t need to prove that he already ‘knew’.
And then it gets complicated.
I don’t, though, have much trouble with service. My experience, as a kind and caring individual, tells me that it’s those who invite it who always get the surly waitress, the offhand Postie, the Bored Saturday Shop Girl.
Besides, I’ve worked in shops and bars and, God, does the time drag. So, if a reluctant menial is a bit arsey, I tend to be grateful that it’s mere disdain coming my way and not a session with an Uzi because, let’s face it, day after day folding jumpers or looking in the back for a “Capri” in “heather” in a size 5, and having it drilled into you that the poxy customer is always right must do your head in.
The florist, however, had perfected rude brevity; I was both shocked and impressed. The haiku would be a tedious epic poem to her. Her grudging articulations of sound, vowel-less txt spk, were wrapped in cushions of cross silence, pauses I felt obliged to pack with foolish guff.
“So you do make button-holes?” I was on the phone to her and had got nowhere.
“ …….ys …….”
“And, er, is it better to order them, or just turn up on the day and hope …”
“ ….rdr ….”
“OK, um, is there a book, or photos, I could look at, before I decide and …?”
“…. N ….. ‘s rss r c’nashns.”
Mr Ambassador, you spoil us.
I drove to the shop, giving her the benefit of the doubt, that she might be a phone-phobic princess, and also intrigued to see if she really was as bad in person as she was on the blower. She was.
I decided not to buy and felt quite rebellious. Normally I am so well-behaved that I feel obliged to stump up just because I’ve walked in.
I asked if she sold florists’ wire and tape.
“ ….n ….” And then, in an uncharacteristic splurge of speech but still hammering home the Can’t Sell Won’t Sell stance, “Tks p 2 mch rm.”
A sign saying “Keep the Village Alive, Support Your Local Traders” banged on the door on my way out.
So I took me to the Garden Centre and, between such horticultural necessities as puffy hot water bottles and ceramic hedgehogs in amusing poses, I encountered a little display (tkng p v ltl rm actually) boasting all that the amateur florist could need.
And then I did my Little Red Hen act and came up with these.
Being impecunious, and flushed with success having made some bizarre curtains for the sitting room in strips of silk (the lighting's a bit odd here),
I have decided to have a go at another set.This time for the garage.
(“You must stop calling it the garage,” said my dog-walking friend, “you must call it the library.” This is a woman whose idea of fun is 3 fitness classes on the bounce, so ‘garage’ it is).
They need to be 12’ across, and since I can’t begin to compute what a professional would charge for such monstrous curtains, I took myself off to the fabric shops to spend a fortune in saving money and doing it myself.
Cheltenham soon proved itself to be pretty dire. The big place has a new boss which has resulted in all the old staff being near to tears and snippy with each other, indulging in a “me, sir, me sir” jostling of one upmanship.
“Carol!” said one guy loudly and reprovingly, “Rolls!” he indicated with a bony finger the endless rolls of fabric left behind by Carol in pursuit of furnishing me with various quarter metres (I have “ideas” for these garage curtains which is calling for much crossing of fingers and purchase of quarter metres).
“’m with a customer, Jonathan!” Carol pointed out tartly, ‘customer’ clearly scoring over abandoned rolls.
Jonathan pursed his lips and ostentatiously set about reducing the discard mountain in a ‘we’ll say no more about it’ sort of way.
Carol rolled her eyes and stabbed at the till buttons.
But this was only scraps. I needed more, the base material.
So I found a shop with my favourite word in the window, “Sale.”
Inside I was ignored, not even a flicker of boredom inched my way. This suited me fine. But what was passing amusing was, on drawing near the desk, to realise that I had been so roundly ignored because the two assistants were bitching about ‘the warehouse.’ Whatever THAT is.
“Costs nothing to say hello,” Big and Brunette was saying, wide-eyed, scarcely able to countenance the bad manners of others.
Old and Knackered Colleague shook her head in a would you believe it sort of way, “Manners don’t cost,” she agreed. “That Fiona! Honestly!”
“Just oils the wheels,” said B&B smugly, hoicking up her impressive busty substances. “Dun’t take much.”
I tried to fix them with a bit of a Look, but it wasn’t going to happen, not to a mere customer. Not when there was someone to slag off.
It was clear that I needed to go down the M5, batter the purse and kill a couple of hours in John Lewis.
I popped the dog in the boot and set off.
Upstairs I found more bits and pieces, and a woman in the queue, baffled by my random selection, asked what I was up to, so I explained, and she seemed interested, and then we discussed the pink and yellow bags she was making for her granddaughters. Twins of 4, very hard work. And then the till woman laughed that she couldn’t sew for tuppence, and stabbed herself on a pin-cushion as if in illustration and laughed again, only more manically and looking around anxiously for a plaster.
Downstairs, in what they call Fab F, I finally found my base material, not perfect (obviously) but it will do.
As the short and stout maiden, with the tape measure slung busily round her neck, made the shearing scissored cut – somewhere around 15 metres in – I said, “Not that I’m going to, but what would happen if I said I’d changed my mind?”
S&S frowned.
“I mean, would you call Security, or what?”
“We trust our customers,” S&S said bleakly. Then, despite herself, “Why d’you ask that?”
“I just wondered,” I said, “well, just making conversation.”
“We have all sorts of customers,” she said, “I’d put you in the patient category, I saw you standing there, waiting. You should see some of them. Men usually. Won’t wait when you’re measuring. Get cross, threaten to complain. I take no notice, but I tell them, I say, ‘I’m busy,’ I say, ‘you’ll have to wait.”
I felt unduly flattered at having secured her approval. You don’t get comment, let alone something one could fashion as praise, however dull, as an adult and it’s always strange to realise that you have been noticed and categorised.
A young lad staggered out to the car with my rolls of material. We chatted about his spider collection (27 glass cases; first one bought when 7; spiders cost £20 when small, £150 when big; they live for 9 years. He let one out. Once. )
“Have you got a girlfriend?” I asked.
“We’re about to move in together,” he said, “I’ve got to get rid of the spiders, re-home them.”
“Don’t look at me, I said, “In fact, I wouldn’t have let you even touch the material if I’d known where those hands have been.”
He gave me an empty ‘my girlfriend’s like that’ look. His long spider-lite life lay ahead of him.
I got home and smuggled the material in. E was there so I launched into a distraction chat, planning how I could pretend that the material had Always Been There. He cleared his throat, cranking his vocal chords into action.
“I haven’t talked to anyone all day,” he said.
“How come?” I said puzzled, wondering if he had a bit of florist in him, “It’s impossible not to.”
He shrugged. “No one came down my end of the office.”
Friday, 23 January 2009
not for me
Catty languished on the pillow. Flu, apparently. F10 was most solicitous. He and Catty’s New Best Friend, a lambswool ceiling duster from IKEA, bore down heavily on the patient. Crowding him, some might say. The san was growing claustrophobic. F10 announced that he had to stay off school to look after Catty. Catty, a stuffed toy of indeterminate colour looked quite desperate; if his whiskers hadn’t have been chewed off in an earlier session of tough love, they would have twitched.
I intervened. I said that ill cats had to swim to Japan to get their medicine (where DO these lies you tell come from?) and that if F wanted to go with him, then he wouldn’t be back in time for karate. F10, while sensing a con, trudged off with the ceiling duster to get ready for school and Catty gave me a big fat thumbs up and prepared for a day’s dossing. We cancelled the swim to Japan.
I dumped the lad, his clarinet and karate suit, all 3 at school and took me into Cheltenham. Mrs Northern Posh had made a killing in the week at Per Una, snaffling a three piece outfit for £7 and a fine jacket and scarf for a fiver. I had high hopes which, in the way of all high hopes, were doomed to be dashed. The sale rail was in a far and inauspicious corner and fear became fact when it was found that the rewards for the tardy bargain hunter were few.
A bikini bottom, jade, size 22. Even the £2 price tag couldn’t tempt me down that particular road of madness.
Nor could the lone bikini top, in a cheerful Hawaiian print and shaped in an optimistic bandeau style. Size unknown but, to the untutored eye, about 56 MM. It was not to be mine. Everything else was oddly slippery and seriously undesirable, so I queued instead for 20 minutes to return a jumper I’d bought for T12 which had lasted all of 2 days. I then spent an hour in search of a groovy but cheap backpack for him and sort of triumphed in Animal but it was a dull morning made duller still by the chill memory of Mrs NP’s crowing.
The only thing which comes even half way near to being called a "win" was snaffling a load of pooperscooper bags free from the library. Libraries multi-task these days.
If shopping is an utter waste of time, then so is catering. First it was peanuts on the naughty stair, then kiwi fruits were public enemy number 2 and suddenly, Heimlich manoeuvre was being worked into every sentence. A note came back from school urging us to cut grapes in half. Indeed it was worded in a “for the very few who don’t already…” sort of way. It seems that grapes choke, chaps, and the tyranny of the lunchbox is made more tortuous still, slaloming round the banned list and now the cutting up of grapes. Careful with that knife, Eugene.*
It’s only a matter of time before they demand of us parents, carers and guardians that the food is all pre-masticated and from there but a step before it’s liquidized or mashed into tablet-form.
But it’s not just at junior level that the fun’s been sucked out of food.
I had had the meeting of my second book group last night. It was a massive waste of being a host when I could have been the driver since E and I don’t drink in January, but I got in a load of wine for the others and was stunned that between them they got through but one bottle. Yes, one bottle. Surely my temporary sobriety cannot alone account for the quartering of consumption? The apple & mango and cranberry & pomegranate were hit hard though which all seems a bit dismal and I rose bright and beady (safe from Catty’s flu) rather than semi-destroyed and wondering, with a Magda** gloom, if my wild days were behind me. Battling with a tetrapak not being the same at all as cheerful grappling with a corkscrew. Still, the thing is, it’s so easy not drinking. Something, up there with “Let’s get another puppy,” that I thought I’d never say.
Last night was the first time that I fully realised just how annoying they all are. That’s the absence of rose-tinting wine for you.
Remembering that at least one was a vegetarian, I had cleverly ensured that all the small bits and pieces on plates, canapés if you must, were meat free. The room we sat in is stygian by night, meaning a minefield of stray sausage rolls, however amusing the reaction, was always going to be a no-no. So, there were olives and smart crisps and then I assembled little smoked salmon and cream cheese on blinis and some half price cranberry and brie pastry things. Lolly showed a fine interest, bustling near, an ill-chosen bridesmaid, eager but incompetent, breathing hell-hound fumes on all and sundry. Bearing my laden plates, I anticipated an eager clamour and the unseemly reach of greedy human paws. Instead of which, little hands of horror were being shown, small traffic warden stop signs placed up to ward off the evils of my offerings.
One, it transpired hated cheese (what!), another hated fish, a third wouldn’t eat on Thursdays***, and only Mrs NP and I were what I would call normal, a pairing which shows that things have come to a pretty pass. So she, me and the vegetarians and Lolly ate the lot and I tried not to roll my eyes excessively.
It concerns me sometimes how intolerant and fierce I can get. I think it boils down to laziness. I want the chat bit without the pfaff.
In a few days time, we have a dinner party with another lot of foible-heavy friends. Dearest people all, but another vegetarian, naturally, casting a meat-free blight on proceedings, and across the table from her will sit another fish-hater. I thought it was a woman thing all of this, but no, one of the men has murmured that he hates pasta. How can you hate pasta? Not that I’m an unsympathetic soul, I think you know that by now, but it only remains to get on the blower to the coeliac and the one who’s dairy-intolerant (whatever the fuck THAT is) to have a full house of dietary unstables boasting a shared interest in quinoa. I'm not beyond the odd reasonable fad myself: never will I be in the queue for lights, brains or knuckles, for instance, and I flinch at the thought of the foul filth clatter which is quaintly dubbed seafood, but I force it down if it's put on a plate in front of me. I even say thank you. I've slurped soup and chomped on lamb, liking neither but one, erstwhile, friend actually puts in orders: don't like this, don't like that. Fuck Off, I think, while creepily complying and then having to self-loathe for being so wet.
Catty’s got the right idea, loll on a pillow and fake illness, even if an occupational hazard of being a stuffed animal in this house might involve swimming to Japan.
-----------------------
* I know it should be “Careful with that AXE, Eugene.” But, don’t be silly, you don’t halve grapes with axes
** Magda is a sullen cleaner in “Lead Balloon,” next to whom Eyeore exhibits a certain joie de vivre
*** Joke
I intervened. I said that ill cats had to swim to Japan to get their medicine (where DO these lies you tell come from?) and that if F wanted to go with him, then he wouldn’t be back in time for karate. F10, while sensing a con, trudged off with the ceiling duster to get ready for school and Catty gave me a big fat thumbs up and prepared for a day’s dossing. We cancelled the swim to Japan.
I dumped the lad, his clarinet and karate suit, all 3 at school and took me into Cheltenham. Mrs Northern Posh had made a killing in the week at Per Una, snaffling a three piece outfit for £7 and a fine jacket and scarf for a fiver. I had high hopes which, in the way of all high hopes, were doomed to be dashed. The sale rail was in a far and inauspicious corner and fear became fact when it was found that the rewards for the tardy bargain hunter were few.
A bikini bottom, jade, size 22. Even the £2 price tag couldn’t tempt me down that particular road of madness.
Nor could the lone bikini top, in a cheerful Hawaiian print and shaped in an optimistic bandeau style. Size unknown but, to the untutored eye, about 56 MM. It was not to be mine. Everything else was oddly slippery and seriously undesirable, so I queued instead for 20 minutes to return a jumper I’d bought for T12 which had lasted all of 2 days. I then spent an hour in search of a groovy but cheap backpack for him and sort of triumphed in Animal but it was a dull morning made duller still by the chill memory of Mrs NP’s crowing.
The only thing which comes even half way near to being called a "win" was snaffling a load of pooperscooper bags free from the library. Libraries multi-task these days.
If shopping is an utter waste of time, then so is catering. First it was peanuts on the naughty stair, then kiwi fruits were public enemy number 2 and suddenly, Heimlich manoeuvre was being worked into every sentence. A note came back from school urging us to cut grapes in half. Indeed it was worded in a “for the very few who don’t already…” sort of way. It seems that grapes choke, chaps, and the tyranny of the lunchbox is made more tortuous still, slaloming round the banned list and now the cutting up of grapes. Careful with that knife, Eugene.*
It’s only a matter of time before they demand of us parents, carers and guardians that the food is all pre-masticated and from there but a step before it’s liquidized or mashed into tablet-form.
But it’s not just at junior level that the fun’s been sucked out of food.
I had had the meeting of my second book group last night. It was a massive waste of being a host when I could have been the driver since E and I don’t drink in January, but I got in a load of wine for the others and was stunned that between them they got through but one bottle. Yes, one bottle. Surely my temporary sobriety cannot alone account for the quartering of consumption? The apple & mango and cranberry & pomegranate were hit hard though which all seems a bit dismal and I rose bright and beady (safe from Catty’s flu) rather than semi-destroyed and wondering, with a Magda** gloom, if my wild days were behind me. Battling with a tetrapak not being the same at all as cheerful grappling with a corkscrew. Still, the thing is, it’s so easy not drinking. Something, up there with “Let’s get another puppy,” that I thought I’d never say.
Last night was the first time that I fully realised just how annoying they all are. That’s the absence of rose-tinting wine for you.
Remembering that at least one was a vegetarian, I had cleverly ensured that all the small bits and pieces on plates, canapés if you must, were meat free. The room we sat in is stygian by night, meaning a minefield of stray sausage rolls, however amusing the reaction, was always going to be a no-no. So, there were olives and smart crisps and then I assembled little smoked salmon and cream cheese on blinis and some half price cranberry and brie pastry things. Lolly showed a fine interest, bustling near, an ill-chosen bridesmaid, eager but incompetent, breathing hell-hound fumes on all and sundry. Bearing my laden plates, I anticipated an eager clamour and the unseemly reach of greedy human paws. Instead of which, little hands of horror were being shown, small traffic warden stop signs placed up to ward off the evils of my offerings.
One, it transpired hated cheese (what!), another hated fish, a third wouldn’t eat on Thursdays***, and only Mrs NP and I were what I would call normal, a pairing which shows that things have come to a pretty pass. So she, me and the vegetarians and Lolly ate the lot and I tried not to roll my eyes excessively.
It concerns me sometimes how intolerant and fierce I can get. I think it boils down to laziness. I want the chat bit without the pfaff.
In a few days time, we have a dinner party with another lot of foible-heavy friends. Dearest people all, but another vegetarian, naturally, casting a meat-free blight on proceedings, and across the table from her will sit another fish-hater. I thought it was a woman thing all of this, but no, one of the men has murmured that he hates pasta. How can you hate pasta? Not that I’m an unsympathetic soul, I think you know that by now, but it only remains to get on the blower to the coeliac and the one who’s dairy-intolerant (whatever the fuck THAT is) to have a full house of dietary unstables boasting a shared interest in quinoa. I'm not beyond the odd reasonable fad myself: never will I be in the queue for lights, brains or knuckles, for instance, and I flinch at the thought of the foul filth clatter which is quaintly dubbed seafood, but I force it down if it's put on a plate in front of me. I even say thank you. I've slurped soup and chomped on lamb, liking neither but one, erstwhile, friend actually puts in orders: don't like this, don't like that. Fuck Off, I think, while creepily complying and then having to self-loathe for being so wet.
Catty’s got the right idea, loll on a pillow and fake illness, even if an occupational hazard of being a stuffed animal in this house might involve swimming to Japan.
-----------------------
* I know it should be “Careful with that AXE, Eugene.” But, don’t be silly, you don’t halve grapes with axes
** Magda is a sullen cleaner in “Lead Balloon,” next to whom Eyeore exhibits a certain joie de vivre
*** Joke
Friday, 14 November 2008
less is more
“As long as we’re alright for cheesy footballs, Ian, we can do without Twiglets.” A stout and purposeful arm, clanking with gold bracelets, which poked from a raggedy purple cardigan, stretched forward and toppled 3 tubes of cheesy footballs from the shelf into the basket on her knee, crushing a bumper pack of Wotsits already nestled in the bottom. There was a serious cheese-food-type-stuff deal going on here. This was a woman who knew what was what and was happy to speak her mind. “No-one goes a bundle on twiglets. Not these days. So that’s a no, Ian. Cherryade.”
I longed to linger, and feigned an alibi of interest in the wholesome biscuits on the dull side of the aisle, the one which no-one in our Tesco’s bothers with much.
Mr Wheelchair pusher, Ian, was about to enter the fray. It looked like he wasn’t ready for cherryade yet, indeed that he had a thing or two to say about Twiglets, and their place at the modern party; that, frankly, he was fed up with the whole Empowerment thing. Push your own chair, witch.
But I’ve noticed I’m not so good as I think I used to be at loitering unobtrusively. I’m afraid I stare, slack-jawed in fascination now. That fantastic certainty. It’s only a matter of time before I bring my own chair, or am actually squatting there, begging for the low-down, chipping in my tuppence-worth. My dark glasses are only so good as a disguise, they’re not quite the invisibility cloak I fondly imagine.
While I was down that end of the store, reluctant as I was to tear myself away, I thought I might as well get a present for T12’s friend, whose party it is tomorrow.
Ever the dilemma: to spend absolutely as little as possible while making it appear generous. To this end, I have tempting tussles with unsuitable items which attract but merely fulfil the cheap bit: Teach Yourself Typing DVD, anyone? or, venturing further afield, what’s more appealing than a bumper pack of sellotape for a pound, or value toner for the printer (dented packaging), or who can resist 3-for-2 on ankle socks? So what if they're pink; get over it. Surprising gifties perhaps for today's 12 year old boy, but, hey, I don’t know him. That's secondary school for you. All I do know is that I can’t mention it to Mrs NP since her boy’s not invited (the pressure, the potential for tears) and that this party represents 30 of the 90 miles E and I have to drive to and from Gloucester tomorrow. Rugby take. Rugby collect. Party. Hang around and wait. Sigh. I lament the good old days when all they cared about was the wrapping paper. Tears and tantrums and torn tissue.
It takes hours saving money, steering a path through the dross, but at least I can park. Although now I sound like my grandfather. If he wasn’t showing a touching interest in where we’d slung the motor, he was desperate to know when we were leaving; the two topics segueing into each other at close quarters, clashing clumsily like dodgems, leaving not much time in the middle to validate ones arrival. If we were feeling very cruel, we’d say, “Car? Can’t remember.” His sense of panic was palpable.
The football coach had trapped us at the school gate this morning, banging on about time management. Too late to get away, hampered by politeness, never quite sharp enough to turn a pause in the conversation into a gap big enough to leave in, I stood trying not to catch anyone’s eye. Manners are a pain in the neck.
“Only 168 hours in the week,” he announced, rocking on his heels. “Richard Branson doesn’t get any more. Never has. Doesn’t waste time on the EIRM, the Electronic Income Reducing Machine in the corner, see. The television,” he added, sensing our failure to get with the program. “40 hours a week the average person spends watching TV.”
“Well I do watch ‘Spooks’ AND ‘Top Gear’ on a Sunday,” the kind, dim mother offered anxiously.
He’d been on a course. The coach, not Richard Branson, or, God Forbid, DumbMum. Time Management. Loved it. He must be the only person in Britain happy on courses.
Nice but dim mother was frowning over the 168 hours bit.
"?"
“7 days x 24 hours,” I hissed helpfully.
Her frown deepened. “When?” she said.
“It’s all about HPOAs,” he said, warming to his theme.
We all looked blank.
“High Pay-Off Activities,” he explained. “Rather than,” he counted on his fingers, “LPOAs.”
We could all guess that one. Well, apart from the really dim mother, who cocked her head like Lolly.
Lolly was struggling with all this, too, mainly our inability to grasp bollocks when we could be out striding through horse shit, swapping one load of excrement for another. She could spot a Low Pay Off Activity before her nose, see time slipping through her paws. I feared she might start humping me, her idea of time well spent. Since being spayed, she has gender realignment issues. The carpenter suffered greatly yesterday.
“Basically you’ve got to delegate. Sort your goals, and delegate.“
There’s not much delegation goes on when you’re bottom of the food chain, where ‘goals’ boils down to Buy Oranges and Hang Up Washing. It’s chaps what go on courses and who learn to add up that get to grasp the right end of the delegation'n' goals stick. Still, a girl can try.
I mocked a handing over of Lolly’s lead to him, Sassy Welsh Mother from the PTA did the same with her bag of gubbins: 95,000,000 Pudseys to be cut out for Fun Activities this afternoon.
“Can’t hang around here chatting,” he said, demonstrating most admirably both closure and the refusal to be delegated himself.
I settled on a boxset of 3 DVDs for £6. Vaguely Boysy and one of which, ‘Happyness,’ was being sold separately for £8. Bargain. £2 saved, and just the 20 minutes wasted. That’s an episode of The Simpsons when it was on the BBC part of the EIRM.
I stood in the queue near enough to peer over at Ian and Mrs Purple Cardi. Cheesy footballs were spinning on the conveyor belt, jostling with hulking bottles of Cherryade. Despite the triumph of the passable DVD, I was made inexpressibly sad to see that no twiglets had made it.
----
The Maund is Dite means, of course, The Basket is Ready. Full of cheesy footballs and primed to party.
I longed to linger, and feigned an alibi of interest in the wholesome biscuits on the dull side of the aisle, the one which no-one in our Tesco’s bothers with much.
Mr Wheelchair pusher, Ian, was about to enter the fray. It looked like he wasn’t ready for cherryade yet, indeed that he had a thing or two to say about Twiglets, and their place at the modern party; that, frankly, he was fed up with the whole Empowerment thing. Push your own chair, witch.
But I’ve noticed I’m not so good as I think I used to be at loitering unobtrusively. I’m afraid I stare, slack-jawed in fascination now. That fantastic certainty. It’s only a matter of time before I bring my own chair, or am actually squatting there, begging for the low-down, chipping in my tuppence-worth. My dark glasses are only so good as a disguise, they’re not quite the invisibility cloak I fondly imagine.
While I was down that end of the store, reluctant as I was to tear myself away, I thought I might as well get a present for T12’s friend, whose party it is tomorrow.
Ever the dilemma: to spend absolutely as little as possible while making it appear generous. To this end, I have tempting tussles with unsuitable items which attract but merely fulfil the cheap bit: Teach Yourself Typing DVD, anyone? or, venturing further afield, what’s more appealing than a bumper pack of sellotape for a pound, or value toner for the printer (dented packaging), or who can resist 3-for-2 on ankle socks? So what if they're pink; get over it. Surprising gifties perhaps for today's 12 year old boy, but, hey, I don’t know him. That's secondary school for you. All I do know is that I can’t mention it to Mrs NP since her boy’s not invited (the pressure, the potential for tears) and that this party represents 30 of the 90 miles E and I have to drive to and from Gloucester tomorrow. Rugby take. Rugby collect. Party. Hang around and wait. Sigh. I lament the good old days when all they cared about was the wrapping paper. Tears and tantrums and torn tissue.
It takes hours saving money, steering a path through the dross, but at least I can park. Although now I sound like my grandfather. If he wasn’t showing a touching interest in where we’d slung the motor, he was desperate to know when we were leaving; the two topics segueing into each other at close quarters, clashing clumsily like dodgems, leaving not much time in the middle to validate ones arrival. If we were feeling very cruel, we’d say, “Car? Can’t remember.” His sense of panic was palpable.
The football coach had trapped us at the school gate this morning, banging on about time management. Too late to get away, hampered by politeness, never quite sharp enough to turn a pause in the conversation into a gap big enough to leave in, I stood trying not to catch anyone’s eye. Manners are a pain in the neck.
“Only 168 hours in the week,” he announced, rocking on his heels. “Richard Branson doesn’t get any more. Never has. Doesn’t waste time on the EIRM, the Electronic Income Reducing Machine in the corner, see. The television,” he added, sensing our failure to get with the program. “40 hours a week the average person spends watching TV.”
“Well I do watch ‘Spooks’ AND ‘Top Gear’ on a Sunday,” the kind, dim mother offered anxiously.
He’d been on a course. The coach, not Richard Branson, or, God Forbid, DumbMum. Time Management. Loved it. He must be the only person in Britain happy on courses.
Nice but dim mother was frowning over the 168 hours bit.
"?"
“7 days x 24 hours,” I hissed helpfully.
Her frown deepened. “When?” she said.
“It’s all about HPOAs,” he said, warming to his theme.
We all looked blank.
“High Pay-Off Activities,” he explained. “Rather than,” he counted on his fingers, “LPOAs.”
We could all guess that one. Well, apart from the really dim mother, who cocked her head like Lolly.
Lolly was struggling with all this, too, mainly our inability to grasp bollocks when we could be out striding through horse shit, swapping one load of excrement for another. She could spot a Low Pay Off Activity before her nose, see time slipping through her paws. I feared she might start humping me, her idea of time well spent. Since being spayed, she has gender realignment issues. The carpenter suffered greatly yesterday.
“Basically you’ve got to delegate. Sort your goals, and delegate.“
There’s not much delegation goes on when you’re bottom of the food chain, where ‘goals’ boils down to Buy Oranges and Hang Up Washing. It’s chaps what go on courses and who learn to add up that get to grasp the right end of the delegation'n' goals stick. Still, a girl can try.
I mocked a handing over of Lolly’s lead to him, Sassy Welsh Mother from the PTA did the same with her bag of gubbins: 95,000,000 Pudseys to be cut out for Fun Activities this afternoon.
“Can’t hang around here chatting,” he said, demonstrating most admirably both closure and the refusal to be delegated himself.
I settled on a boxset of 3 DVDs for £6. Vaguely Boysy and one of which, ‘Happyness,’ was being sold separately for £8. Bargain. £2 saved, and just the 20 minutes wasted. That’s an episode of The Simpsons when it was on the BBC part of the EIRM.
I stood in the queue near enough to peer over at Ian and Mrs Purple Cardi. Cheesy footballs were spinning on the conveyor belt, jostling with hulking bottles of Cherryade. Despite the triumph of the passable DVD, I was made inexpressibly sad to see that no twiglets had made it.
----
The Maund is Dite means, of course, The Basket is Ready. Full of cheesy footballs and primed to party.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
