“Muffin was SO bad,” said Mrs Lovely, hyperventilating at the memory raw from the weekend, “just refusing to give up the sock … and growling … so bad that I said, ‘Robert! Get me a glass of water.’”
Mr Lovely duly obliged and the pair of them had hovered behind the glass of water, scarcely breathing, just cooing, “Muh-fffinnnn, drop darling,” until the snarling and lip curling and sock savaging increased to such a pitch that the Lovelys’ faint bleatings were suffocated by all the noise. So Mrs Lovely breathed deep breaths, swung her arm and threw the water over him.
“It was awful!” she said.
I chuckled.
“Just awful. Pooooooor Muffin! He cowered! He dropped the sock and scuttled; he ran to behind the sofa. Soaking.”
“Only thing you could have done,” said Mrs Brisk. “You can’t have a dog growling at you.”
“We felt terrible. Robert said he felt worse, far worse than when he’s had to wallop the girls.”
We glanced at Muffin who was dry humping a footstool of a dog which lags behind whenever it can to sprawl, a butterfly beneath Muffin’s pin, as it were.
“Muffin!” shrieked Mrs Lovely.
The pain had cast a shadow until Mr Lovely said, maybe ten minutes later, “Do you think we should give him a treat. I hate it when he doesn’t like us.”
“No,” Mrs Lovely had said bravely, perhaps mindful of reportage fall-out with us lot, “No. We can’t reward bad behaviour.”
Mr Lovely trudged upstairs, his heart knocking about somewhere on the floor, and Muffin tiptoed from the back of the sofa and laid his face, damp and mournful, on Mrs Lovely’s knee. Mrs Lovely shed a tear and stroked his nose and kissed his head and smiled a happy smile.
Mr Lovely walked back in. “WHAT!?!” he had shouted, “So you’re allowed to make friends with him and I’m not!”
During this episode of emotional trauma, I had been out walking in the woods with my friend Rachel. She, too, would rescue her dog in a fire before her husband or children. “Oh look at her!” she will say stopping to stare at Belle busily plunged face-first in a mound of piss-soaked grass. “Sweet!”
Any story I’d been relating feels foolish to return to now, so my patience with such scenes is limited.
“I really can’t bear dogs,” I might say.
“Not even mine?” she will say, wide-eyed. “Not even Belle?” There really is no answer to that beyond the bleeding obvious.
The Lovelies, meanwhile, the ménage reunited and loved up, went for a walk, and on their walk they saw that the old railway line was operating. A couple had stopped with their tiny children to wave at steam trains and the Lovelys stopped too, then shuffled on a bit.
“Well, we didn’t want to be taken for paedos,” she said, “with the children and everything. And then! Thomas came chuffing by. With his big blue face? Smiling. And I found that I was crying, I was sobbing.
“Ohhh!!” we said. “Noooo! How saaadddd!”
“Hmm,” she said. “Not Robert’s reaction at all. No, he tried to edge away from me, but was trapped between going too close to the little ones and looking like a paedo – ”
“He wouldn’t have looked like a paedo!” we said.
“‘You’re looking mad!’ he said to me, ‘Stop it, it’s only Thomas!’ but that just set me off more and whether it was because of being mean to Muffin or because the girls will never have that look of joyous innocence again – I don’t know: they only talk to us for £20 for Top Shop – but I was sobbing so hard that I gave myself a headache. Robert had to drive us home.”
I had been looking at old photos of the children on my phone, I knew what sad was. And I certainly knew what Thomas was. It seemed those days would never end. And then they did; a boxful of expensive Brio trains sits in the loft awaiting grandchildren.
Over in the woods, Lolly had done the splendid undreamable. She had gone missing. My step quickened. Rachel’s hand was to her mouth, her blonde curls bounced unhappily, “Look,” she said, “it’s sheer down there, it’s like a cliff?”
“Is that where she was?” I said hopefully peering down the precipice: glorious steep, craggy. Rocks.
“Yes! She was trying to follow Belle.” So irritating, my dog the follower, and inept at that (‘was trying’). “But of course couldn’t keep up.” Of course.
“What’s beyond there?”
“A road.”
I hardly dared believe my luck.
“And while Belle might be able to leap over the wall at the bottom, there’s no way Lolly could.”
I smarted.
“Lolly might look like an old bag of fur, but she could take that wall. Like a donkey winning the National, but she could do it.”
Rachel dared favour me with a pitying look.
“We might as well head on back,” I said in the manner of one preparing to do a runner, gathering myself for a hearty gallop away from the scene.
“But … you’re so calm,” said Rachel, “I’d be sobbing.”
“There’s not really any point, is there,” I said.
I felt like the heartless boy in the village who, on being told his cat was dead, had thought, shrugged, and said, “I reckon I’ll have got over it in two weeks so I’ll just go straight to that stage now. What’s for tea?”
We had all thought this the sign of most terrible moral turpitude.
“She’s got a nametag, I said, the grim truth settling, “and she’s chipped.” My pace slowed. Always some blot on the landscape, trouble in paradise.
“Belle doesn’t like wearing a nametag,” said Rachel, “and isn’t the chipping cruel?”
We walked down through the woods enjoying the path doing its requisite meandering, strolling through the dutiful shafts of sunlight. All was good although the thought of the chip hung heavy, and then there was an untidy noise, as of a donkey manhandling the jumps at the National and it was Lolly, bustling near. Belle jumped up and they bounced on their hind legs, knitting their front paws together. I must confess it was quite nice to see the drunk old fur coat again.
“Oooh, look,” said Rachel. “Belle! Isn’t she sweet. Such a kind-hearted dog. She’s pleased to see her, look.”
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Sunday, 25 September 2011
dust
F12 threw himself on the bed, emitting a funny little sound, such as a hamster in crisis might make, “No, no!” he squealed, “This cannot be! This is the deepest darkest day of the Mummy Occupation. Courage! She will not overcome!”
I squirted my delicious Method spray a little more vigorously and busied with my duster. Love product, loathe cleaning. Mmm, almond smell.
“She may take our stuff,” the One Boy Resistance Movement squeaked on, face down into the duvet, doing bugger all to help, “but our dignity and honour remain intact.”
I lifted his legs and poked the Hoover under them sending an expensive clatter of Lego flying up the tube.
"I'll do it!" Too late; the same watery promise has been made for weeks, months. His credibility is shot. "Later! I'll do it later!"
A grim business, entering his room, but needs must when a German Exchange boy is coming to stay. On Ritalin, and with a dust allergy. The heart soared.
I was anxious and collared the teacher.
The Ritalin concern was brushed aside with a brusque, “Lots of children are on it, you wouldn’t know,” so I moved onto the dust allergy, shadow boxing with the brutal truth of describing our house; jabbing hints instead, fearful of closing on the deal and saying out loud that it was a slut fest. “It’s not really … it’s not exactly …. Well it’s not very show-house,” I plumped for. The German teacher inclined her head and indicated that I should flounder further, she all but handed me a spade and pointed where to dig. “It’s more sort of, well, arty,” I cringed and rattled on, “lots of books and pictures and rugs and, and stuff. There’s quite a lot of stuff. And we’ve got a dog and back onto a field, so the chances of him sneezing at something here are quite high. So perhaps he’d be safer in another house?” I ended in a rush.
She gave me a look and said that this kind of allergy meant no building work. It would mean industrial levels of dust. That’s what a dust allergy meant. A vision of our house popped into my mind to fit the bill while I mused, too, on clever old German teachers, the things they know, their skill in reading between the lines, leaving you back where you started only with your card marked and your laziness on parade.
At the time of fessing up, the house was as nothing to what came next and, in retrospect, my protestations were rather fey: the house wasn’t that bad at all, but that was before we had to forfeit several thousand pounds in getting the roof tied together internally, which revealed that a vital steel was missing rendering T14’s room liable to imminent collapse. Back to the breeze blocks we went. Arguments with the builder and dwindling cash mean that T14’s room still has 2 big holes in it, ceiling and wall. No amount of dusting can deal with that one. It’s the sort of hole big enough for this season’s mutant spiders to squeeze through, if they hold their tummies in. That big. About 4’ square each.
So I’ve been attacking the house, on a mission to kill dust and destroy spiders, the beasts that nightly taunt me. Eight we had one night, eight.
One Ran Over My Arm.
Another, the size of Mordor, with legs to match, put approaching the larder out of the question for an evening.
Lolly fleetingly comes into her own as chief spider eater, by which, horrors, I mean only spider eater. But it’s not reliable and it’s not going to save her from the glue factory come the day.
I’ve hoovered under things, not merely round or near them; not merely thinking about doing it and then doing something else instead. I’ve stripped each room back, one by dusty one, in pursuit of hotel status. I’ve polished glass, the while lamenting our endless shelves boasting an array of the coloured beauties, all dunked now in lemony hot hot water and buffed to a sheen.
Towels are lined up, chrome gleams, tiles zing, floors glow. Like when you’re trying to sell the thing. If I’m not hands and kneesing with a dustpan, I’m fiddling with a fluffy thing on a stick rounding up the cobwebs. Really, it will be a housecoat and a scowl next, a broom and an organised shed.
I twitch when the family return to Hotel Lite, drifting into reception (I mean, the porch), before trudging across the foyer (rather, hall), to dump all their gubbins willy nilly in the kitchen. A backpack here, a blazer there, a tie sprawled half on half off a sofa. Sofas where I’ve even hoovered under the cushions.
Oh, pointless life.
In F12’s room, sub sofa cushions yielded a perhaps unsurprising haul: the predictable sock, foreign coins, a locked padlock (no key), a worrying quantity of curry powder, a teaspoon, a selection of bird badges, a short sharp stick and an electric toothbrush.
His room was the final frontier, the bête noir, Room 101. Dreaded and feared and overdue tackling. I girlfully girded my loins and took the brute on. The division of labour shifted: its best, 70:30 (me:him) swiftly became 90:10, became 105:-5 as he realised how much more pleasant it is to sit feet up, reading a book, so sauntered off to do just that in a room I’d prepared earlier (immaculate), leaving me the legacy of his own half-started attempts at tidying, all of which boiled down to fiddling with Lego and wailing and making things worse.
I summonsed him and held up something approximating trousers, “Do these still fit?”
He glanced across and nodded, “Yes.”
“Are you sure? Did you look? These, these trousers?”
“Yes,” (irritably) “hence the Yes.”
“It’s just that they’re age 7-8 and you’re nearly 13. Hence the Are you sure?”
At the end, I stepped back pleased, my face a boil in the bag red, back stiff, hands raw. Under the bed were storage boxes bursting with collated Lego; several bags of crap (broken this, grimy that, illicit wrappers, unidentifiable other) lolled in the boot of the car headed for the tip, “My childhood!” he keened, “How could you.”
Easily.
The room is now a room and not a squalid holding cell for ancient life forms. Moreover, the door can be left casually open for visiting Germans of a delicate persuasion to glance inside without risking death. One can inhale in there, and walking on the floor in bare feet is back on the cards. Really rather pleasant.
E returned from running round a county somewhere (recreational weekend fare).
“F12’s room looks good,” T15 said in the tones of one delivering unfeasible news.
“Good,” said E, “Good boy, F12!”
This was too much to bear, like having to sit by and just take that red-coated fattypuff Father Christmas getting all the praise.
I wheezed in desperation.
“Mummy helped,” F12 said airily. “It’s not as good as it was though. I liked it better before. It was more me.”
“What’s that you’re doing now?” E asked.
“This? Oh it’s a list. For my birthday. I need some more Lego. Quite a lot really.” He made that funny little sound he makes a lot to signify agreeing with himself – someone’s got to – “hmmmn mmm. Yes, more Lego.” He beamed. “There’s room now.”
I squirted my delicious Method spray a little more vigorously and busied with my duster. Love product, loathe cleaning. Mmm, almond smell.
“She may take our stuff,” the One Boy Resistance Movement squeaked on, face down into the duvet, doing bugger all to help, “but our dignity and honour remain intact.”
I lifted his legs and poked the Hoover under them sending an expensive clatter of Lego flying up the tube.
"I'll do it!" Too late; the same watery promise has been made for weeks, months. His credibility is shot. "Later! I'll do it later!"
A grim business, entering his room, but needs must when a German Exchange boy is coming to stay. On Ritalin, and with a dust allergy. The heart soared.
I was anxious and collared the teacher.
The Ritalin concern was brushed aside with a brusque, “Lots of children are on it, you wouldn’t know,” so I moved onto the dust allergy, shadow boxing with the brutal truth of describing our house; jabbing hints instead, fearful of closing on the deal and saying out loud that it was a slut fest. “It’s not really … it’s not exactly …. Well it’s not very show-house,” I plumped for. The German teacher inclined her head and indicated that I should flounder further, she all but handed me a spade and pointed where to dig. “It’s more sort of, well, arty,” I cringed and rattled on, “lots of books and pictures and rugs and, and stuff. There’s quite a lot of stuff. And we’ve got a dog and back onto a field, so the chances of him sneezing at something here are quite high. So perhaps he’d be safer in another house?” I ended in a rush.
She gave me a look and said that this kind of allergy meant no building work. It would mean industrial levels of dust. That’s what a dust allergy meant. A vision of our house popped into my mind to fit the bill while I mused, too, on clever old German teachers, the things they know, their skill in reading between the lines, leaving you back where you started only with your card marked and your laziness on parade.
At the time of fessing up, the house was as nothing to what came next and, in retrospect, my protestations were rather fey: the house wasn’t that bad at all, but that was before we had to forfeit several thousand pounds in getting the roof tied together internally, which revealed that a vital steel was missing rendering T14’s room liable to imminent collapse. Back to the breeze blocks we went. Arguments with the builder and dwindling cash mean that T14’s room still has 2 big holes in it, ceiling and wall. No amount of dusting can deal with that one. It’s the sort of hole big enough for this season’s mutant spiders to squeeze through, if they hold their tummies in. That big. About 4’ square each.
So I’ve been attacking the house, on a mission to kill dust and destroy spiders, the beasts that nightly taunt me. Eight we had one night, eight.
One Ran Over My Arm.
Another, the size of Mordor, with legs to match, put approaching the larder out of the question for an evening.
Lolly fleetingly comes into her own as chief spider eater, by which, horrors, I mean only spider eater. But it’s not reliable and it’s not going to save her from the glue factory come the day.
I’ve hoovered under things, not merely round or near them; not merely thinking about doing it and then doing something else instead. I’ve stripped each room back, one by dusty one, in pursuit of hotel status. I’ve polished glass, the while lamenting our endless shelves boasting an array of the coloured beauties, all dunked now in lemony hot hot water and buffed to a sheen.
Towels are lined up, chrome gleams, tiles zing, floors glow. Like when you’re trying to sell the thing. If I’m not hands and kneesing with a dustpan, I’m fiddling with a fluffy thing on a stick rounding up the cobwebs. Really, it will be a housecoat and a scowl next, a broom and an organised shed.
I twitch when the family return to Hotel Lite, drifting into reception (I mean, the porch), before trudging across the foyer (rather, hall), to dump all their gubbins willy nilly in the kitchen. A backpack here, a blazer there, a tie sprawled half on half off a sofa. Sofas where I’ve even hoovered under the cushions.
Oh, pointless life.
In F12’s room, sub sofa cushions yielded a perhaps unsurprising haul: the predictable sock, foreign coins, a locked padlock (no key), a worrying quantity of curry powder, a teaspoon, a selection of bird badges, a short sharp stick and an electric toothbrush.
His room was the final frontier, the bête noir, Room 101. Dreaded and feared and overdue tackling. I girlfully girded my loins and took the brute on. The division of labour shifted: its best, 70:30 (me:him) swiftly became 90:10, became 105:-5 as he realised how much more pleasant it is to sit feet up, reading a book, so sauntered off to do just that in a room I’d prepared earlier (immaculate), leaving me the legacy of his own half-started attempts at tidying, all of which boiled down to fiddling with Lego and wailing and making things worse.
I summonsed him and held up something approximating trousers, “Do these still fit?”
He glanced across and nodded, “Yes.”
“Are you sure? Did you look? These, these trousers?”
“Yes,” (irritably) “hence the Yes.”
“It’s just that they’re age 7-8 and you’re nearly 13. Hence the Are you sure?”
At the end, I stepped back pleased, my face a boil in the bag red, back stiff, hands raw. Under the bed were storage boxes bursting with collated Lego; several bags of crap (broken this, grimy that, illicit wrappers, unidentifiable other) lolled in the boot of the car headed for the tip, “My childhood!” he keened, “How could you.”
Easily.
The room is now a room and not a squalid holding cell for ancient life forms. Moreover, the door can be left casually open for visiting Germans of a delicate persuasion to glance inside without risking death. One can inhale in there, and walking on the floor in bare feet is back on the cards. Really rather pleasant.
E returned from running round a county somewhere (recreational weekend fare).
“F12’s room looks good,” T15 said in the tones of one delivering unfeasible news.
“Good,” said E, “Good boy, F12!”
This was too much to bear, like having to sit by and just take that red-coated fattypuff Father Christmas getting all the praise.
I wheezed in desperation.
“Mummy helped,” F12 said airily. “It’s not as good as it was though. I liked it better before. It was more me.”
“What’s that you’re doing now?” E asked.
“This? Oh it’s a list. For my birthday. I need some more Lego. Quite a lot really.” He made that funny little sound he makes a lot to signify agreeing with himself – someone’s got to – “hmmmn mmm. Yes, more Lego.” He beamed. “There’s room now.”
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
boast
my Twitter chums alerted me to this and while every word is undoubtedly more than true and long over-due I can't help being very pleased and very touched and very grateful. For this dear site PlayPennies loves me and this is what they said:
This week PlayPennies loves… Country Lite.
I’m not really sure how to describe this blog to you but I properly LOVE. IT!
It’s an anonymous one so I can’t tell you much about the family who star in it, but I do know it’s written by ‘Milla’ and she’s a Pisces.
“What’s the point then?” I hear you wonder?
Well, for starters if you want to read some fabulous writing then you can tick box number one – heck, you might even have to refer to the dictionary now and again if you weren’t brought up in a big word obsessed and ‘look it up!’ household like I was.
I never thought I’d read the words ‘maelstrom’ or ‘homunculus’ in any of the blogs among the Tots 100 index, but there they were; joy and rapture filled my heart.
Agony, pain, laughter and empathy also featured alongside the joy and rapture, as I read the 'Beep' post featuring ‘maelstrom and homunculus’ – don’t be put off by the words, you’ve been in exactly the same situation and you too will feel the author’s pain, as I did.
I love slave-driving, and clearly an entreprenurial visionary, F12 (I CAN tell you that F12 is ‘the son’), who, judging by his head for figures and business profits in the 'Work' post, could be a Lord Sugar of the future!
This blog is like a collection of observations and fleeting life situations, told with such witty eloquence that you 1) wish you could write like that and 2) resolve to try, immediately!
And as a result I should already have been in Milton Keynes a couple of hours ago, mooching around the shops with my teenage daughter, musing on whether we should get an ice cream even though we’ve only just had lunch.
Be warned, this is a blog with magical time machine powers; hours feel like minutes and when you’ve finished reading, you’ll have no idea where the time has gone.
So, that was nice.
This week PlayPennies loves… Country Lite.
I’m not really sure how to describe this blog to you but I properly LOVE. IT!
It’s an anonymous one so I can’t tell you much about the family who star in it, but I do know it’s written by ‘Milla’ and she’s a Pisces.
“What’s the point then?” I hear you wonder?
Well, for starters if you want to read some fabulous writing then you can tick box number one – heck, you might even have to refer to the dictionary now and again if you weren’t brought up in a big word obsessed and ‘look it up!’ household like I was.
I never thought I’d read the words ‘maelstrom’ or ‘homunculus’ in any of the blogs among the Tots 100 index, but there they were; joy and rapture filled my heart.
Agony, pain, laughter and empathy also featured alongside the joy and rapture, as I read the 'Beep' post featuring ‘maelstrom and homunculus’ – don’t be put off by the words, you’ve been in exactly the same situation and you too will feel the author’s pain, as I did.
I love slave-driving, and clearly an entreprenurial visionary, F12 (I CAN tell you that F12 is ‘the son’), who, judging by his head for figures and business profits in the 'Work' post, could be a Lord Sugar of the future!
This blog is like a collection of observations and fleeting life situations, told with such witty eloquence that you 1) wish you could write like that and 2) resolve to try, immediately!
And as a result I should already have been in Milton Keynes a couple of hours ago, mooching around the shops with my teenage daughter, musing on whether we should get an ice cream even though we’ve only just had lunch.
Be warned, this is a blog with magical time machine powers; hours feel like minutes and when you’ve finished reading, you’ll have no idea where the time has gone.
So, that was nice.
Friday, 15 July 2011
work
I idly asked F12 on our journey into school this morning what he thought the publican in my novel (ha!) should be called. We had had a bit of a tense time getting out of the house – over which I’ll draw a veil – and some neutral territory was a must.
“I was thinking of Alan Tutt,” I said, “Something non-descript.”
“No,” F12 said dismissively, “Vasily. Vasily Hutz.”
“Vasily?!” I said, “He’s not Russian, he’s just an ordinary English bloke.”
“Ah, so you’re saying English people are just ordinary and you have to be Russian to be interesting, are you?”
Need I say I sighed.
“No, I’m saying that if you suddenly have a Russian chap running a pub in an English village, then people are going to snag on that detail and he’s going to become more important than he deserves to be.
“Why shouldn’t a pub man –?”
“Enough,” I said, “He’s not Russian. He's just there to wipe glasses and he’s called Alan and he’s got a surly son in the North.”
“Vasily wears a trilby and a checked jacket and brown loafers and beige trousers. He got fed up in the Homeland with cocaine being brought in over the borders in lead-lined coffins.”
This was me told. Alan faded into the background.
“And he’s got a double barrelled shot gun and is from a noble family and is going to become a Duke. And an Earl. And a Lord.”
Alan negotiated to move back in with his ex-wife and re-commit to the surly son.
I should have dumped it there and moved onto something uncontroversial like gay women vicars or the siting of industrial incineration but I found myself musing on my heroine and what she should do. She needs to be at home (don’t we all) but the practicalities of funding the Riley lifestyle had to be addressed. I asked F12 for suggestions.
“She makes flower barettes,” he said with absolute certainty.
“What? Hairslides?” I said, “how have YOU heard the word barettes?”
“I just have.”
“Too much MI High,” I said, referring to a presumed crap TV programme.
“No. Not MI High at all, I just have, OK.”
“Alright, so she needs to make a lot of …. barettes …. to earn her money,” I was worried that she would be bent double over her desk and not be able to do all the things she needed to do, like be a heroine, like not actually work at all, just earn enough to warrant occasional trips to the pub to be served by Vasily. Alan. Vasily.
I had wanted the work to be a vague detail. Again, don’t we all.
“How long do people have to work each day?” he asked, “12 hours?”
“Hmm, a bit steep,” I said, “more like 7?”
“We’ll say 12,” the task-master said, deaf to my Union Rep. “So that’s 12 times by 7 makes 84. Now, if she makes one every 3 seconds …”
“Steady on,” I said, “Give her a break, one every 3 seconds! It’ll kill her. No way. One every five minutes, max.”
“SShh,” he said, irritably, “I’m Working It OUT!! She can make one every 3 minutes then. But she’s very organised,” he added, clearly displeased with the downturn in productivity, his fingers twitching like a turf accountant’s. “OK, so she can make 240 a day, that’s 1,680 a week and sell them for £5 each, that’s … that’s …
“£5!” I squeaked, “she’ll be lucky to make 19p and that’s pushing it and there’s profit and time spent buying all the stuff, and she’ll have to post it out and do her accounts and advertise .…” I was quite impressed with my business acumen here but he greeted it with a
“SSHHH! I’m counting, she can buy rhinestones for £10. That’s £8,400 a week. Less the £10. Cool. That’s good. Why don’t you do that?”
Why indeed. It was a relief to get to school.
On the way home, my heroine tossed aside, I thought, hmmm, barettes; cool. And if I could just up that productivity, haggle on the rhinestones …
“I was thinking of Alan Tutt,” I said, “Something non-descript.”
“No,” F12 said dismissively, “Vasily. Vasily Hutz.”
“Vasily?!” I said, “He’s not Russian, he’s just an ordinary English bloke.”
“Ah, so you’re saying English people are just ordinary and you have to be Russian to be interesting, are you?”
Need I say I sighed.
“No, I’m saying that if you suddenly have a Russian chap running a pub in an English village, then people are going to snag on that detail and he’s going to become more important than he deserves to be.
“Why shouldn’t a pub man –?”
“Enough,” I said, “He’s not Russian. He's just there to wipe glasses and he’s called Alan and he’s got a surly son in the North.”
“Vasily wears a trilby and a checked jacket and brown loafers and beige trousers. He got fed up in the Homeland with cocaine being brought in over the borders in lead-lined coffins.”
This was me told. Alan faded into the background.
“And he’s got a double barrelled shot gun and is from a noble family and is going to become a Duke. And an Earl. And a Lord.”
Alan negotiated to move back in with his ex-wife and re-commit to the surly son.
I should have dumped it there and moved onto something uncontroversial like gay women vicars or the siting of industrial incineration but I found myself musing on my heroine and what she should do. She needs to be at home (don’t we all) but the practicalities of funding the Riley lifestyle had to be addressed. I asked F12 for suggestions.
“She makes flower barettes,” he said with absolute certainty.
“What? Hairslides?” I said, “how have YOU heard the word barettes?”
“I just have.”
“Too much MI High,” I said, referring to a presumed crap TV programme.
“No. Not MI High at all, I just have, OK.”
“Alright, so she needs to make a lot of …. barettes …. to earn her money,” I was worried that she would be bent double over her desk and not be able to do all the things she needed to do, like be a heroine, like not actually work at all, just earn enough to warrant occasional trips to the pub to be served by Vasily. Alan. Vasily.
I had wanted the work to be a vague detail. Again, don’t we all.
“How long do people have to work each day?” he asked, “12 hours?”
“Hmm, a bit steep,” I said, “more like 7?”
“We’ll say 12,” the task-master said, deaf to my Union Rep. “So that’s 12 times by 7 makes 84. Now, if she makes one every 3 seconds …”
“Steady on,” I said, “Give her a break, one every 3 seconds! It’ll kill her. No way. One every five minutes, max.”
“SShh,” he said, irritably, “I’m Working It OUT!! She can make one every 3 minutes then. But she’s very organised,” he added, clearly displeased with the downturn in productivity, his fingers twitching like a turf accountant’s. “OK, so she can make 240 a day, that’s 1,680 a week and sell them for £5 each, that’s … that’s …
“£5!” I squeaked, “she’ll be lucky to make 19p and that’s pushing it and there’s profit and time spent buying all the stuff, and she’ll have to post it out and do her accounts and advertise .…” I was quite impressed with my business acumen here but he greeted it with a
“SSHHH! I’m counting, she can buy rhinestones for £10. That’s £8,400 a week. Less the £10. Cool. That’s good. Why don’t you do that?”
Why indeed. It was a relief to get to school.
On the way home, my heroine tossed aside, I thought, hmmm, barettes; cool. And if I could just up that productivity, haggle on the rhinestones …
Friday, 8 July 2011
Beep
Finally, finally, the lights turned to green, signalling that our lane could turn right. Not a big ask. My erratic heart was lulled into hope that something as crazy as actual movement might be on the cards. I was almost hysterical with what betrayed me as misplaced relief. Silly me.
Late and stuck in traffic, I had just spent half my life behind the most impossible old man.
The car at the front of the queue might have looked disconcertingly empty but it was headed up by a shrivelled homunculus consisting of a ropey cardigan and a flat cap and a sackful of crappy driving habits. I know. I was there. A plume of smoke and the irritable shucking of the fag ash out the window was all that proved that someone was putatively alive behind the wheel. Normal life form was undetectable in terms of things like motion.
The lights had changed, and his car stalled. Again.
The long tail of vehicles behind bobbed about cartoonishly, heads within craning for a look. Salesmen revving.
His engine retched into a kind of life, plunged forwards and died again. I weakened under a wash of adrenaline and panic, twitching with impatience. The driver’s door opened and a bony, shiny shin, topped off with a loafer, poked out, followed by the creature himself. Age shall wither him and custom soon staled. Bloody hell. I’m sympathetic to a T, but.
Bent double he shuffled, slipper slow, cardigan sliding from his shoulder, down to the boot which he opened with a hopeless arthritic paw.
There’s nothing in the boot, I seethed, nothing. Get back behind the bloody wheel.
The lights slid through green to amber to red. I sat back in my seat and wondered about weeping. The junction involved a four million way combination of goes and stops and filters, ten seconds of which came our way, finishing off with a completely unnecessary free-for-all half an hour stop for pedestrians, of whom there are always none. None. Not one, ever.
We sit there, aging, heading towards death, our petrol leaking from our tanks, obedient to coloured bulbs.
A bicycle – oh, woeful sight – then wove its precarious way past and popped itself comfortably in the red zone ahead of the old chap, bang in the middle. Vicious vibes (mine) made their way sharpish through the ether and the woman turned her headscarfed head, blinked, took in the queue and, wonder of wonders, wiggled obediently to the left.
The old man meanwhile stared blankly into the boot, like Lolly at her empty bowl; you could see him thinking, “Oh?” Then “No.” Then “What brings me here?” He gave a theatrical shrug, slammed the boot with unlikely strength and lurched back to the car. He sat down – need I say ‘slowly’? sinking into what had to be a pile of cushions to give him the requisite height to see out. His right leg was hanging still out of the door. Shut the fucking door, I was seething. Shut … The….
The lights changed to green. He pulled his leg in; reluctantly. It bent in slow motion. He then reached for the door handle without looking for it, his hand just batting blindly in its vague direction.
I thought I might scream. I did, inwardly, hurting my throat.
There was no movement.
The old fuck, I thought, snarling; my conscious being a maelstrom of rage, my unconscious part busily replenishing the adrenaline levels on a second by second basis. No movement: the car sat stock still, but I sensed the seat belt being subject to some sort of play, a half-hearted tugging. The green light shone bright. Not the fucking seat belt, COME ON!!! I didn’t dare beep, knowing it would occasion a slow, slow, puzzled turning of the head.
Nan wobbled off on her bike, some freakish cousin of science keeping her upright. Knowing the sequence of lights, I knew we were into the home run, the few seconds allotted for us, presumed reasonable drivers, to turn right was about to expire.
Cars started beeping behind me, in the mirror I could see hands thrown up in the air. The slow tortoise head began to make its interminable turn. I fell on my car horn almost sobbing with rage. He started the engine. And the car bounced away, coughing and spluttering. I revved like a boy and threw the car into gear ... as the amber light came on. Was the flow in traffic flow again to be denied?
The old man finally noticed Nan weaving about like a pisshead and slammed on the brakes, guessing that just the ten foot clearance wasn’t sufficient in Senior Land. Anything might happen in a world where headscarfs and flat caps are part of the uniform. It would be me ending up with the liability but I managed to avoid ramming into his vile beige boot and the lights swept from amber to red leaving the three of us blocking the route of the oncoming traffic whose turn it now was, all three lanes of it with their left and their right and their straight ahead priorities.
A volley of horns and flashing lights came our way. Nan panicked and put her foot down on the ground to steady herself on the bike. The old fucker stalled. I thought it would be easier to die, just to have a heart attack and let some nice chap in an ambulance take us all away – at least we’d get a blue light right of passage, but I swung my way out and round past the pair of them, glared at a white van man bold enough to dare think he might slide ahead of me and stormed down the road, giddy at attaining 29mph.
At last!
And ahead of me, encouraged by the surprising absence of traffic, a tractor had edged its way, sliding happily in to burble down the road, king of the road, dragging his clattery thing noisily and enormously and painfully slowly behind him. Within seconds the convoy built. I hovered behind him, tight and close, eager for a chance to overtake. None. My mirror told me that Nan was drawing near on my inside.
The tractor was going slower than Nan. The tractor driver was presumably reading his paper and eating his sarnie.
I was spared direct line of ole Tortoise in my mirror, by dint of Van Man having shoved his furious way in between us.
We were a grim line, a mix of rage and incompetence.
A hundred yards on were some pedestrian activated lights. Oh joy. A trio of hoodies slouched by, one hand of one little bastard reaching out idly to set the lights to change. They did. The tractor driver could have sailed through, I would surely have done the same, but no. And so we sat there, my insides rotting, my hope of a timely arrival dying on the vine, awaiting the crossing of no one until the last second, the very last second, when the thing was beeping and my hand was pressing on the gear stick.
At which point a sturdy lass, sense dimmed by sleeplessness, trudged into view leaning on a pram and dragging a toddler. Her expression brightened at spotting the lights on green. Technically not green at all, let it be known (indeed I would have welcomed the chance to deliver a quick lecture), but flashing, which meant red for her.
Her thinking was clear: surely this long line of friendly motorists wouldn’t mind while she took her time in crossing? After all, what’s the hurry? Who would begrudge Mum with her pram and a little one, too? And if the little one dropped his Bunnie and burst into tears and Mum had to set the pram on the brakes and do a comedy trot, remarkable for its tardy inefficiency, back to pick up Bunnie and squander a few seconds in comfort and reassurance, root around in her too-tight trews for a grubby hanky, well, who’s to mind?
Further down the road, my future lay in the form of more of the same, fresh but familiar hell, a comforting sight, that of motorised nerves, of a learner driver, lurching from the left jerking into the traffic, grateful for a long gap in which to execute such a tricky manoeuvre. The tractor pulled in to a bus stop and wearily waved us past and I pulled up behind the learner.
There was a sign. “Watch Your Speed!” it growled. “30!” Chance would be a bloody thing.
Late and stuck in traffic, I had just spent half my life behind the most impossible old man.
The car at the front of the queue might have looked disconcertingly empty but it was headed up by a shrivelled homunculus consisting of a ropey cardigan and a flat cap and a sackful of crappy driving habits. I know. I was there. A plume of smoke and the irritable shucking of the fag ash out the window was all that proved that someone was putatively alive behind the wheel. Normal life form was undetectable in terms of things like motion.
The lights had changed, and his car stalled. Again.
The long tail of vehicles behind bobbed about cartoonishly, heads within craning for a look. Salesmen revving.
His engine retched into a kind of life, plunged forwards and died again. I weakened under a wash of adrenaline and panic, twitching with impatience. The driver’s door opened and a bony, shiny shin, topped off with a loafer, poked out, followed by the creature himself. Age shall wither him and custom soon staled. Bloody hell. I’m sympathetic to a T, but.
Bent double he shuffled, slipper slow, cardigan sliding from his shoulder, down to the boot which he opened with a hopeless arthritic paw.
There’s nothing in the boot, I seethed, nothing. Get back behind the bloody wheel.
The lights slid through green to amber to red. I sat back in my seat and wondered about weeping. The junction involved a four million way combination of goes and stops and filters, ten seconds of which came our way, finishing off with a completely unnecessary free-for-all half an hour stop for pedestrians, of whom there are always none. None. Not one, ever.
We sit there, aging, heading towards death, our petrol leaking from our tanks, obedient to coloured bulbs.
A bicycle – oh, woeful sight – then wove its precarious way past and popped itself comfortably in the red zone ahead of the old chap, bang in the middle. Vicious vibes (mine) made their way sharpish through the ether and the woman turned her headscarfed head, blinked, took in the queue and, wonder of wonders, wiggled obediently to the left.
The old man meanwhile stared blankly into the boot, like Lolly at her empty bowl; you could see him thinking, “Oh?” Then “No.” Then “What brings me here?” He gave a theatrical shrug, slammed the boot with unlikely strength and lurched back to the car. He sat down – need I say ‘slowly’? sinking into what had to be a pile of cushions to give him the requisite height to see out. His right leg was hanging still out of the door. Shut the fucking door, I was seething. Shut … The….
The lights changed to green. He pulled his leg in; reluctantly. It bent in slow motion. He then reached for the door handle without looking for it, his hand just batting blindly in its vague direction.
I thought I might scream. I did, inwardly, hurting my throat.
There was no movement.
The old fuck, I thought, snarling; my conscious being a maelstrom of rage, my unconscious part busily replenishing the adrenaline levels on a second by second basis. No movement: the car sat stock still, but I sensed the seat belt being subject to some sort of play, a half-hearted tugging. The green light shone bright. Not the fucking seat belt, COME ON!!! I didn’t dare beep, knowing it would occasion a slow, slow, puzzled turning of the head.
Nan wobbled off on her bike, some freakish cousin of science keeping her upright. Knowing the sequence of lights, I knew we were into the home run, the few seconds allotted for us, presumed reasonable drivers, to turn right was about to expire.
Cars started beeping behind me, in the mirror I could see hands thrown up in the air. The slow tortoise head began to make its interminable turn. I fell on my car horn almost sobbing with rage. He started the engine. And the car bounced away, coughing and spluttering. I revved like a boy and threw the car into gear ... as the amber light came on. Was the flow in traffic flow again to be denied?
The old man finally noticed Nan weaving about like a pisshead and slammed on the brakes, guessing that just the ten foot clearance wasn’t sufficient in Senior Land. Anything might happen in a world where headscarfs and flat caps are part of the uniform. It would be me ending up with the liability but I managed to avoid ramming into his vile beige boot and the lights swept from amber to red leaving the three of us blocking the route of the oncoming traffic whose turn it now was, all three lanes of it with their left and their right and their straight ahead priorities.
A volley of horns and flashing lights came our way. Nan panicked and put her foot down on the ground to steady herself on the bike. The old fucker stalled. I thought it would be easier to die, just to have a heart attack and let some nice chap in an ambulance take us all away – at least we’d get a blue light right of passage, but I swung my way out and round past the pair of them, glared at a white van man bold enough to dare think he might slide ahead of me and stormed down the road, giddy at attaining 29mph.
At last!
And ahead of me, encouraged by the surprising absence of traffic, a tractor had edged its way, sliding happily in to burble down the road, king of the road, dragging his clattery thing noisily and enormously and painfully slowly behind him. Within seconds the convoy built. I hovered behind him, tight and close, eager for a chance to overtake. None. My mirror told me that Nan was drawing near on my inside.
The tractor was going slower than Nan. The tractor driver was presumably reading his paper and eating his sarnie.
I was spared direct line of ole Tortoise in my mirror, by dint of Van Man having shoved his furious way in between us.
We were a grim line, a mix of rage and incompetence.
A hundred yards on were some pedestrian activated lights. Oh joy. A trio of hoodies slouched by, one hand of one little bastard reaching out idly to set the lights to change. They did. The tractor driver could have sailed through, I would surely have done the same, but no. And so we sat there, my insides rotting, my hope of a timely arrival dying on the vine, awaiting the crossing of no one until the last second, the very last second, when the thing was beeping and my hand was pressing on the gear stick.
At which point a sturdy lass, sense dimmed by sleeplessness, trudged into view leaning on a pram and dragging a toddler. Her expression brightened at spotting the lights on green. Technically not green at all, let it be known (indeed I would have welcomed the chance to deliver a quick lecture), but flashing, which meant red for her.
Her thinking was clear: surely this long line of friendly motorists wouldn’t mind while she took her time in crossing? After all, what’s the hurry? Who would begrudge Mum with her pram and a little one, too? And if the little one dropped his Bunnie and burst into tears and Mum had to set the pram on the brakes and do a comedy trot, remarkable for its tardy inefficiency, back to pick up Bunnie and squander a few seconds in comfort and reassurance, root around in her too-tight trews for a grubby hanky, well, who’s to mind?
Further down the road, my future lay in the form of more of the same, fresh but familiar hell, a comforting sight, that of motorised nerves, of a learner driver, lurching from the left jerking into the traffic, grateful for a long gap in which to execute such a tricky manoeuvre. The tractor pulled in to a bus stop and wearily waved us past and I pulled up behind the learner.
There was a sign. “Watch Your Speed!” it growled. “30!” Chance would be a bloody thing.
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