Bits & Bobs
Contents
Tee Foley, Mrs Gable & The Vet
Sexy Suppers
BITS ‘N’ BOBS FROM VERY NICE PEOPLE:
Christmas Contretemps by David Robinson
Love Arranged by Miryam Masih Nahar
Safe Oil by Miryam Masih Nahar
Go Granny Go!
A Poem by Liz - Banoffee Pie
Tee Foley, Mrs Gable & The Vet
Ouch. One of those autumn days where it seems too noticeably nippy to venture outside! Nonetheless, after just a few minutes of breathing in the brisk air, I wondered why I had spent so long perched on my ghastly bum staring aimlessly out of the window in hope of better words to write!
‘After all’ I thought, ’I could be speed walking in the region of a rural housing estate with the dog choking on the end of his extended leash,’ so that’s exactly what I decided to do... Read on!
Five whole years on planet earth and ‘Inky’ my beloved woof still doesn't recognize that life would be more enjoyable devoid of unpleasant sessions of roughly one hour per day with eyes spherical from sockets and panting for air. (I did try reins but had to lug him around on his back, as he obviously prefers strangulation!)
But today proved to be far more exciting than I had anticipated. As I walked through the nearby recreational ground I spotted one of my favourite neighbours, Mrs Gable darted from behind a tree, opened a carrier bag before scurrying off. I found this rather exciting as I love the thrill of catching people doing naughty things so I hid. I waited and once more Mrs Gable darted from behind the shrubbery scooping something from the ground then disappeared complete with stooped back and scoundrel type exit.
(Mrs G is a good friend of mine - she is valuable because she is fascinating, I learn from her so I admire her and this is why I call her my friend.)
Nearly seventy five years of age, with a loose bun and lots of dangly bits of hair framing her silken face, she has twinkling blue eyes and always wears the most gorgeous long ethnic skirts, and even though she doesn't have a motorbike she wears a biker's jacket and chunky black leather boots. Mrs Gable doesn't say a lot but her smirk makes my day; whatever she does she is joyful and even as she scraped a squashed hedgehog from the kerb she asked me in for tea and cake. She says that her great grandparents were gypsies and used to cook hedgehogs with chestnuts, savouring them for special occasions. I never knew whether she ate him or not but oh well.
'Hello Mrs Gable,’ I said to the lavender bush.
The plant stirred and then I saw the tip of her boot.
‘Oh Tee its you dear, look !?’
Whilst beaming with delight, Mrs Gable eagerly opened the carrier bag; presenting its contents she revealed a huge assortment of conkers and acorns!
Then - Mrs G merrily informed me; 'I put them on a big golden tray to make my bathroom seasonal, helps me to go when I can see a bit of nature, dear.’
(Made me wonder whether we need laxatives - this does seem a more natural remedy for constipation? Well that is just one lesson learnt from Mrs Gable, so now do you see why I love her so much?)
Despite feeling a little queasy at the site of the flattened hedgehog on the end of a shovel, I didn’t like to refuse refreshments from Mrs G. To date, she has seven cats, three dogs and various other needy creatures she has found herself or that others have donated for her care. Heaven knows how she came into possession of an iguana, but oh yes she has!
After a massive bonding session with the adoring pets, I decided to take Inky to the vets to get him checked for fleas as the last time Inky became close to a hedgehog, I had to buy several courses of pet shampoo to clear up the vile creatures. They were so big looked like he was being eaten alive by extra terrestrial creepy crawlies!
On informing the vet of my concerns, he insisted I brought Inky in to give him a thorough check over. Gosh, Mr Vet was awfully attractive and I suddenly became aware of my breath, I had just consumed a bag of cheese & onion crisps together with a corned beef and pickle sandwich.
'That's right, he said, 'hold him nice and tight,’ then, as his nostrils came close to my mouth he stared at my dog's anus?
'Let's just give him a good check over', he carried on as a latex finger went into woof's back end - poor bloody Inky.
I tried to speak while holding my breath and had my very first asthma attack, then as I coughed I wet myself a little! Vet administered me with water whilst dog tried to hump his arm.
'I must have choked on a flea?’ I said sheepishly.
Had I known I couldn't buy the repellent over the counter I would have brushed my teeth and wore my best coat!
'Do you have any pets'? I asked trying to hide my obvious humiliation.
'Yes we have'? He had said it, that dreadful word 'WE' but he wasn't wearing a wedding ring?
‘Gay?’ I thought, 'shit - best ones always are!'
Vet continued, 'My wife has a retired horse.' I felt instant resentment towards Mrs Bloody Vet! Not only had she got a gorgeous husband who adored animals, but also enough land to shelter neglected pets! It was at that point that I didn't really care what my breath smelt like and was no longer ashamed of the Ribena stains down the front of my anorak and SO what if I had wet myself - these things happen!
‘Let's just use the scales before you go,' said Mr Vet in front of a full room of patients and owners (who seemed to look similar to their pets).
'Okay,' I replied and before I knew it I had stood on the scales. 'Never mind!' said Vet, seeing my obvious beetroot-coloured facade and dappled neck. 'Hold the dog and we'll deduct your weight from the total reading!' he added swiftly - saving me further embarrassment.
Well one good thing about wearing my anorak that day - it was a few pounds lighter than the tweed coat with velvet detail even if I did stink of cheese 'n’ onion crisps.
Mental note: hedgehogs to be avoided at all costs.
Two weeks later’ Note under Fridge Magnet:
Hi son: Dog needs a booster, can you take him to vets, am unable to ever go there again. Mum. X
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So there was another day with Tee Foley! x
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Sexy Suppers:
Here it is! The Very Nice People Club brings you Sexy Suppers. This is a new category aimed at all of those who need to rekindle their culinary skills. So what you don’t have anybody to cook for! You eat don’t you?
Do you know there’s seldom a day when I don’t cook for myself!
I find it relaxing to slow down for a while and lose myself with a spud peeler and veggie steamer.
I am proud of myself for making the effort as when I begin, I thoroughly enjoy it.
It steers me away from snacks & junk food.
I can prepare enough for two days or freeze the rest.
It saves me money - hiccup... You know exactly what you are eating and whose hands have been all over it.
Finally - It gives me some quality time to sit down and stuff my face whilst listening to my cool new CD - Renaissance - The Classics. Yeah I was a bit of a groove queen in my day.
You know, I think food is one of the sexiest things on the planet - yum, yum, yummy, yum YUM!!!
Ok for 18 years I have had two sons to prepare food for, but we seldom agree on any one meal. However, I am now fairly redundant from my former ‘dogsbody’ role, as my eldest son has his own place and my youngest has quick fixes in-between skateboarding events!
That just leaves me and two dogs to cater for and I have to say preparing something extra for our pets can work out cheaper than the price of dog food!
However, being a vegetarian I do tend to feed Inky & Max from a tin. But also give them pasta and vegetables.
I believe there is no such thing as a pure carnivore, we all need a balanced diet and in my house that is what everybody gets!
However, when it comes to alcoholic content, okay, I hold my dinner lady arms up: I am a sinner. But then we all need a vice and I am afraid dry white wine happens to me mine boys & girls so chin-chin.
In fact - I am sure I would drop two dress sizes if I gave up the vino as my diet is fairly healthy. But then what is the point of being a skinny girl if I can’t get through my PMS with a nice glass of Chardonnay?
So here goes... this is the ‘Sexy Suppers Club’ and it is my fabulously section in the VNP members area.
When you have joined - feel free to submit your ideas and lets find the sexiest recipe from your kitchen.
We are trying to keep things simple and not too far fetched so that everybody will feel tempted to try out your yummy creations.
The first challenge is as follows:
With just £5 you must prepare a meal for four.
This will consist of either a meat or vegetarian main meal to include a balanced nutritional value.
Here’s a tip. Jamie Oliver mostly uses only five ingredients in any one dish.
I want you to send me your shopping info, i.e. how much each item cost from your budget. Together with your recipe and a photo (if you can) of your divinely scrumptious creation. But don’t let not having a camera stop you my dear, we can use some of our own stuff!
There will be two winners:
One vegetarian and another a meat or fish dish.
Fabulous.. ok.. sod off and go shopping.
See you in the club!
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BITS ‘N’ BOBS FROM VERY NICE PEOPLE:
Christmas Contretemps by David Robinson
(From the book 3rd (R)age)
Down the years there have been any number of candidates for the title Ma’am, but only two ever made the grade.
Ma’am v1.0 and I parted company almost 30 years ago, after a disagreement. She disagreed with me shagging her sister and as if that was not enough, I disagreed with her using my wages to buy beer for the bone idle tosspot over the street. (Note: he was also jumping her but I didn’t mind that. Someone had to and rather him than me.)
I met Ma’am v2.0 a couple of years after the divorce and she duly became simply Ma’am. She would not tolerate a version number.
I wasn’t actually after Ma’am. It was an end of season staff party at a holiday camp. I’d gone there (the camp not the party) to get away from the child support wallahs and she was there because ... well because she was there. I was after her mate, Mary, but Mary got drunk (drunk? She was blasted out of her brains) and I ended up taking Ma’am back to her chalet, where our eyes met, our lips met and ... you know the script. It was the start of a beautiful friendship ... but that came to and end two years later when we got married.
Ma’am is five years older than me, although most people believe the opposite to be true. She is one of those people who have never ailed a thing in their lives. I have ten years to go to my pension (that’s because I’m a man and I have to grind on until I’m 65, whereas Ma’am had the foresight to be born early enough to call it a draw at 60) and I’ve had every middle age problem known to Man, and a few that he doesn’t yet know about, including a condition known as DW-itis, whereby I speak my bloody mind even when it gets me into the worst kind of trouble.
‘You’ve got tureen’s syndrome,’ Ma’am declared once. Ma’am, you will soon gather, is not an intellectual.
‘You mean Tourette’s Syndrome,’ I corrected her. ‘And I do not have Tourette’s,’ I shouted, my left leg twitching like it was in its death throes.
‘All right so you’re just a miserable old sod.’
‘And I am not old.’
Ma’am’s lack of intellect is often a problem to me but it doesn’t cause problems. On the other hand, my adversarial attitude causes no end of problems. But I enjoy problems. Problems make you grow.
Like most people, Ma’am is a mass of contradictions. She rants over the troubles caused by ethnic minorities invading our green and pleasant land, but felt sorry for Mrs Riaz, who lives along the street, when the poor women miscarried. Ma’am is convinced that we are taxed to death, but insists that the NHS should be fully funded. Ma’am hated the things Thatcher did to our industrial heartlands, yet she voted for the Tories in three elections because she couldn’t stand the Welsh Windbag, or Welsh people in general, yet she loves Rhyl and Towyn. She loves Spain, but doesn’t understand why the Spanish people don’t speak English, she hates my smoking, yet invariably buys me a novelty cigarette lighter for my birthday.
As already indicated, Ma’am is a diet junkie. She has tried every diet in the book. The F-plan, the Cambridge, the Atkins, the Mars Bar (that’s where you eat nothing but Mars Bars all day. You lose weight, but your teeth fall out) and yet the only time she actually lost weight was when she listened to her husband and ate less while exercising more.
There is a deceiving air of calm about her which fools many a salesman into believing she’s an easy mark. She is not. One of the best lessons she ever learned from me was how to look after your money and she’s an expert.
She’s also quite a trained negotiator on the quiet. Witness the time the council threatened to take us to court for non-payment of rates. I was on the phone arguing with some tosser at the town hall and getting nowhere.
‘We’ll send you to prison,’ he warned me.
‘That won’t get you your money, you brainless pillock,’ I retorted.
While I was going through this argument, Ma’am was actually in the town hall talking to more reasonable moron and coming to an agreement to pay them a fiver a week.
Ma’am is woman of fixed opinions. Take her opinion of me, for example. ‘You remind me of Mel Gibson.’
I found this strange. Mel is a six foot superhunk with flowing locks, I’m a five foot lump with going locks. When pressed, Ma’am explained that I reminded her of Mel because I don’t look a bit like him. Female logic? If I live to be 56 I’ll never understand it.
Ma’am is a textbook woman driver. I always thought it was a caricature, until I experienced her driving and got out of the car shaking. She looks at the bonnet and adds three feet for anticipation purposes, keeps the mirror correctly angled so she can check on her eye shadow and I’ll never forget the time I told her to turn right at the roundabout. It’s a good job there was no other traffic on the road when she went the wrong way round it.
With the approach to her 60th and the threat of Jury service to follow in the New Year, Ma’am has been in a semi-permanent bad mood, which complements me perfectly. I’m in a permanent bad mood.
When I arrive to collect her after work I find, to my surprise, that she is now in a cheerful mood. She is also half pissed. The two are not unrelated and I vow to change one or the other. Since I cannot sober her up, I will just have to work on the sherry induced good cheer.
As if I have not had enough hassles for one Christmas Eve, there is an even more dreadful prospect ahead of me. The supermarket: (cue theme from Quatermass).
I hate shopping. Retail therapy they call it these days. As if it can give you a high and dispel the winter blues. Not in my case. I love money, love holding onto it, counting it, salting it away against the proverbial rainy day. I love talking to it, I get horny just caressing it, and I hate, absolutely hate parting with it.
I particularly detest the weekly shopping. We plod round the supermarket eyeing up all sorts of goodies, most of which I neither like nor want, while Ma’am fills the trolley with impulse buys, and at the checkouts, I have to settle up a bill that would set Gordon Brown running for cover.
The only good thing about the supermarket is the price of their petrol. It’s pennies cheaper than most garages, and I’ll travel 30 miles or more to save tuppence a litre.
We arrive at ten past eleven and the place is heaving. Gas-guzzlers are queuing ten deep at the pumps. I foresaw the day this would happen when I authorised my plastic at the card-only pump. With a smug, superior gaze upon the hoi polloi, I pull round them cruise onto the credit card nozzle and insert card as instructed. It’s then that I realise I changed cards after Ma’am lost hers and I never authorised the new one, meaning I cannot get any go-go juice for the jam jar. I have to join the queue.
‘I told you to get it seen to when I lost my card,’ says Ma’am with that peculiar ability to state the bleeding obvious.
‘Do you know how much grief you give me?’ I complain as I tag onto the end of the line, to the accompaniment of a rousing cheer from the other no-hopers waiting for petrol.
‘I’ve made out a list.’
‘What for the number of ways you can give me grief?’
‘No, silly,’ she chortles as we nudge forward with all the other underlings. ‘It’s the shopping.’ She passes over a sheet of notepaper with about 20 items on it. ‘I might have forgotten one or two things, but basically that’s it.’
I am impressed. ‘Normally, your Christmas list looks like a rewrite of War and Peace. This isn’t bad.’
Twenty minutes later, while Ma’am has been scribbling some odd bits on the list, I finally make the pumps opposite some kid in a huge 4x4. I’ve driven smaller lorries.
He looks down his nose at my Citroen Saxo, then beams with admiration at his off-road armoured car. ‘Babe magnet, y’see? Bet you wish you had them in your day.’
I sneer at him. ‘We did have them in my day. They were called steam engines. And what would I want with a babe magnet at my time of life, you numbskull?’ I nod at his truck. ‘What does that do to the gallon?’
‘About eighteen to twenty round town, twenty five on a journey.’
I nod at my mini-car. ‘This does thirty five round town, and I get upwards of sixty on a journey. I put forty quid’s worth in the tank and it lasts me over a month.’ I look at his pump, already clocking up £60 and the tally still rising. ‘You keep your babe magnet sunbeam. I’ll stick to my granny magnet and I still get more legover in a month than your overdeveloped plumber’s van will pull in a year.’
Kicking this numbnuts in the balls like that has restored some of my joviality after the credit card pump fuck up. I pull out of the petrol station into the supermarket car park and spend a further ten minutes trying to find a space where the two cars either side have parked within their own white lines, thereby allowing me to slot in between them, instead of dumping their vehicles haphazard and cutting off the intervening bay. Then we hit the shop and partake of toasted teacakes and tea before beginning a quick journey round the store for our meagre groceries.
At this point, I get the impression that everything is going too swimmingly, too smoothly. Something is bound to go wrong. It does not take long for it to materialise. The supermarket has been redesigned since our last visit and the lavatories are not where they’re supposed to be. I collar a young kid and ask him.
‘It’s my first day here,’ he reports
‘I don’t care if you’ve just popped out of your mother’s womb. Where’s the chuffing bog?’
The boy – he can’t be any older than 14 – stares vacantly round the store entrance. He has that faraway look on his face of one who is lost, puzzled, mystified at the world around him.
‘I know where the staff toilets are,’ he tells me.
‘Then point me at them,’ I demand performing the same Irish jig I did in the shopping mall, in a desperate attempt to avoid a change of underwear.
‘Oh, you can’t use those,’ he tells me. ‘They’re staff only. You’d never get passed the security lock on the staff room doors because it’s got a four digit code and if you don’t know the code, you can’t get –’
‘I didn’t come here for a lecture on door technology, you idiot. I need a piss. Fast. Or you’ll be sending for one of your schoolchums with a mop and bucket.’
‘Well there’s no need to be abusive. On my induction, they told us we don’t have to tolerate –’
‘For Christ’s sake tell me where the piss stone is.’
‘Is there a problem sir?’
I half turn and glower at the thirty-something in an off-the-peg Greenwoods pinstripe and kipper tie. He is everything I am not. Young-ish, tall, slim, fit, with a head of neatly coiffeured hair such as I never enjoyed even in my prime. He has that serious yet friendly look on his face; the look that says, I’m here to help, but watch it if you cross me, I can kick dance as good as Bruce Lee.
‘Don’t call me sir,’ I advise him. ‘I’m not a schoolteacher but if I was, I’d be a proponent of corporal punishment.’
‘Is there something wrong s... can we help you?’
‘I need the lavatory,’ I tell him, ‘and young Darbishire here doesn’t where it is.’
‘My name’s not Darbishire,’ protests the younger of the pair.
‘Darbishire,’ I tell him, ‘was schoolfriend of Jennings in a series of books by Anthony Buckeridge. Darbishire was as blind as a bat without his glasses and you remind me of him.’
‘He didn’t know where the toilets were either?’
Steam is coming out of my ears. Urine is about to come out of a different organ. ‘Where is the fucking khasi?’
‘No need for bad language sir,’ insists pinstripe. ‘The customer facilities are over there.’ He waves vaguely to his right, my left. I see a narrow passageway leading from the main concourse into the bowels of the building. The thought of bowels sees me scurrying for it and soon I am splashing the stone again.
Relieving myself to the strains of Vivaldi’s, Spring, from The Four Seasons, I wonder why they didn’t choose Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, Fingal’s Cave. At least it’s about water. A more important question is, which idiot thought it would be a good idea to have piped music in the gents? I remember Andy Williams making Music To Watch Girls By, I’ve encountered music to watch the world go by, music to watch plants grow by, but music to crap by? Isn’t that soothing the savage breast a little too far?
With nothing better to do than stand there and point percy at the porcelain, my mind inevitably rambles further. Gents facilities he called them. Is that the posh word for a lavatory these days? And what do they facilitate? Taking a leak, contemplating the meaning of life, washing the hands.
Alas, whatever it is, it’s not drying the hands for the simple reason that there are no towels and the drier works in fits and starts of approximately ten seconds a go. I enter one of the cubicles and help myself to toilet paper ... one sheet at a time. It’s one of these modern dispensers where the roll is locked away to prevent the local thieving bastards from nicking it. The spindle does not turn freely enough to dole out more than individual sheets. Even then, they break off inside the dispenser, requiring a contortionist to get his hand up and turn the roll to find the loose end. What is wrong with these alleged geniuses when they design junk like this? Why must they always be so difficult? One thing is for sure; the engineers behind the technology did not suffer from arthritis and a deformed wrist, the result of a fracture that never quite healed properly.
Once I have finally dried my hands to the degree where a few more minutes will leave them sufficiently parched to flip the pages of my newspaper without turning it into an unreadable mass of printer’s ink and pulp, I leave the lavatories, and rejoin Ma’am at the fruit and veg’ counter where a sign reads banana’s 49p/lb.
‘Banana’s what?’ I ask with a grin, but Ma’am doesn’t understand the apostrophe, and she blanks me.
We begin making our way round the shop and it is at this point that the discrepancies on the shopping list begin to make themselves at odds with the reality in the trolley.
Take the word “fruit” for example. An innocuous enough word, covering a multitude of sins: melon, bananas, grapes, oranges, apples, pears, etc., etc. It appears as a single item on Ma’am’s Christmas shopping list. As we wander around the fruit display, this single item takes on the gargantuan proportions of a roll call after a fire drill. You know what I mean. The instructions say, “staff roll call”, but some idiot has to go through the 3,000 members of staff. That word, “fruit” is now translated into everything that grows on trees and bushes.
‘Where the hell are we gonna get strawberries in the middle of December?’ I whine as we turn the corner and Ma’am picks up two punnets of strawberries.
It’s the same with “veg”, also a single word on the list but translated into sufficient produce to start our own market stall by the time she has passed along the aisle.
I’m there purely as a trolley driver and labourer, so the mind switches transmission and concentrates on errant apostrophes and the general misuse of English in this lazy, modern age.
Sedgy once forgot a dot over a letter “i”, for which Ezra exercised his caning arm and made the entire class rewrite their essays. Needless to say, Sedgy did not score high in the most popular kid of the week contest.
Ezra was a teacher of the old school. Late for class, six of the best, shoelace undone, six of the best, tie askew, six of the best, missing dot over the “i”, five of the best. Ezra did not have any “i’s” in his name, so he obviously didn’t like them, ergo only five whacks.
Ezra would have been appalled at the modern use of apostrophes. Take, for example, Bridget Jones’s Diary. If you added that extra “s”, Ezra would have had you hung, drawn, quartered and made the remains rewrite the whole book.
When Ms Fielding’s effort was first published, I wrote to the newspaper protesting at this gross abuse of the English language, but it turns out, as usual, that things had moved on since I was taught our mother tongue. These days, the additional “s” is perfectly acceptable in singular possessives, provided it doesn’t make the word sound awkward. It doesn’t, however, define the term “awkward” which to me is very awkward. Why didn’t they just leave it alone? Why bother fixing it when it wasn’t broken in the first place?
Apostrophes drift into the background as we amble around the store and things go from disastrous to catastrophic. Ma’am has lost the ability to communicate without the prefix, ‘oh I forgot ...’
‘Oh I forgot the Christmas cake,’ ‘Oh I forgot the cream,’ ‘Oh I forgot the Christmas crackers,’ ‘Oh I forgot the chocolates,’ ‘Oh I forgot to get crisps for the kids,’ ‘Oh I forgot the bottle of champagne for my sister’s party,’ ‘Oh I forgot the fire extinguisher for when the turkey catches light.’
Christmas music batters at my senses, imbecilic members of staff dressed as wannabe Santas stop me at the end of every aisle asking if I would like to sample a chocolate log, a nip of eggnog, a sip of brandy, a piece of pie, a mint spy, a smack in the eye (I made that one up because I couldn’t think of another Christmassy rhyme with “pie” and “spy”), and the load in our trolley is approaching the Plimsoll line. A few more items and she’ll sink.
One hour and twenty seven minutes after we ate the toasted teacakes, hauling two trolleys and a hand basket behind us, we pass through the checkout, the bill reminds me of next year’s NHS budget, those 20 or so items on the original list have expanded to 137 items and my temper is practically explosive.
‘You’d never believe there’s only me, her and crazy dog, would you?’ I moan to the woman behind me.
‘Still it is Christmas,’ she says with indefatigable good cheer.
‘If one more person reminds me that it’s Christmas,’ I curse, ‘I will not be responsible for what happens.’
‘Can you remember your PIN number?’ shouts the checkout operator when I hand over my Switch card.
‘Do I look like I can’t?’ I demand.
‘Sozz,’ she bawls in a voice several decibels above the legal, noise pollution limits, ‘but some of you old codgers don’t even know what a PIN number is.’
‘For one thing, I am not an old codger, for another, I am only going deaf, I haven’t got there yet, and for a third, I’m not on the waiting list for Alzheimer’s.’
But I do need to steady my shaking hand to ensure I punch in the correct four digits.
‘Why do they make the numbers so small?’ I moan.
‘Fingers not as nimble as they used to be, sir?’ asks the mid-thirties bottle blonde whose left tit declares itself top be a checkout supervisor.
‘You’ll find out how nimble they are if I stick them up your –’
‘DW!’ Ma’am’s commanding tones cut me off in mid-insult.
‘I was only gonna say nostrils,’ I argue.
Arms folded, face set grimly, Ma’am taps her foot in the most menacing of manners. ‘All the years I’ve known you, you’ve never been interested in a woman’s nostrils.’
This is the unadulterated truth. I’ve long been an admirer of the female form – ever since I used to ogle the corset pages of the mail order catalogues – but I’ve never been particularly into nostrils.
I wait for the bill, which is long enough to paper the living room, and contemplate corsets instead.
A simple soul, I’ve never truly understood corsets. They hid those charms a young man sought, and in memoriam, they excite the libido, but what purpose did they serve? Did women wear them as a means of sexual allure? I don’t think so. And yet, they were designed to pull all the wobble back in and mould the body to its traditional, hourglass shape. Or did they provide the only means of support for stockings?
Ma’am v1.0 used to wear corsets, only by the mid-sixties they were called panty-girdles. Not that she was Ma’am v1.0 then. There had been no Ma’ams before her to warrant giving her a version number. She was only Ma’am in much the same way that the present incumbent, is only Ma’am, not Ma’am v2.0.
I remember the first time my hands traversed the no-man’s-land of Ma’am v1.0’s bare thigh between stocking top and knicker line, and I ran into this reinforced, body-hugging gusset strong enough to stop a uranium tipped bullet, and could find no way round it. So I took them off. But I couldn’t take them off without unhooking the stockings and removing them first. By now the rampant ram was wilting slightly. Getting back to work, I found the way to nirvana still barred by a further reinforced gusset, this time belonging to a pair of sensible, department store knickers, and I took those off too. Prepared for further barriers to my ardour, I allowed my hand to wander to upskirt heaven yet again, and this time I encountered the mossy minge I had been chasing for so long.
Trouble was, this all happened in the backfields on a bitterly cold, April night, and by the time I got what I wanted, she was a little chilly around the chunnel and my balls thought they’d been cut off at their prime. After that, she took to wearing her knickers on the outside of her stockings and a normal girdle, sans gusset in order to facilitate a quicker rogering.
Later that same year, when mother, father and my younger brother buggered off to Scarborough for a week, leaving me home alone (it’s all right, I was 18 at the time) I took her to a bed for the first time. My parents’ bed. And I stripped her naked. What a bloody job that was. I know we lived out in the sticks, but she was wearing more clobber than Scott of the Antarctic, and that was in mid-summer.
‘It’s my rape deterrent gear,’ she told me as we wallowed in the afterglow. ‘Anyone tries attacking me, by the time he’s got through all the clothing, he’ll be so fed up, he’ll have forgotten why he started.’
This rambling reminds me of another middle age indicator. Sex. The desire is still there, but it takes a lot more work to bring that desire to fruition.. even then, I often give in half way through. It wasn’t always like that.
I recall the time when Ma’am asked if I minded her going to Greece with her sister.
‘Course not lass,’ I cheered. ‘You get off and enjoy yourself.’
‘What will you do while I’m away?’
‘Don’t you worry about me.’
‘But what will you do? Where will you go for your meals?’
‘I’ll be all right,’ I reassured her. ‘There’s this smashing little café I know in Los Christianos.’
That brought the dream crashing down. ‘Tenerife?’
‘Certainly. You don’t think I’m gonna let you swan off to Greece while I spend a fortnight here, do you?’
She never went. Not that she didn’t fancy a fortnight in Rhodes. She’d seen Shirley Valentine earlier that year. But she was not prepared to let me go to Tenerife alone. She’d have been taking a risk leaving me anywhere in Manchester for ten minutes, let alone on one of the Canaries where the totty is not just available but practically advertising.
We depart the checkout, I study the bill, asking, ‘who are we feeding this week? The five thousand? Because if we are, you forgot the loaves and fishes.’ Before Ma’am can answer, we are assailed by an attendant outside the store’s optical department.
‘Excuse me sir,’ she asks, one eye on my lenses, ‘have you thought about an eye test recently?’
I snap my fingers. ‘I knew there was something missing from the shopping list,’ I say cheerfully. ‘Didn’t I say over breakfast that I must get my eyes tested? That way I’ll be able to see the pain in the arse who gets in my way when I’m trying to go home.’
My sarcasm is lost on her. Well she is only about eighteen.
‘Thing is our eye tests are on special offer this week. Only a fiver. The test is complete and designed to detect early signs of glaucoma and –’
‘The test,’ I interrupt, ‘is designed to sell me a new pair of glasses I neither need nor want, thereby swelling your employer’s profits by a hundred quid.’
‘Yes but. –’
‘Dear me,’ I cut in once more, ‘haven’t you got the message yet? I do not want my frigging eyes tested.’
‘Can I help you sir ... oh it’s you again.’
I turn round, my eyes pausing briefly on the offending sign, still advertising banana’s 49p/lb, until they come to rest on the same idiot who sorted out the lavatory argument earlier. (I mean my eyes came to rest, not the bananas.)
‘Yes, it’s me again, and another of your doxies who don’t understand plain English. And judging by the sign on the fruit stand, neither do you.’
He glances at the aforementioned sign, looks back at me and raises his eyebrows. ‘What’s wrong with the sign?’
‘Bananas is a plural, it needs no apostrophe. Or is it a possessive. Are you claiming that the bananas own the forty nine pence per pound?’
His brow furrows and I feel like giving him a banana.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Now there’s a surprise.’
‘Forty nine pence a pound is a competitive price.’
‘I was attacking your standard of English, not your pricing.’
‘Perhaps sir would be happier shopping elsewhere. Tescos or Sainsburys.’
‘Is that Tescos or Sainsburys with or without apostrophes?’
I move out of the store and drag the shopping to the car. Leaving Ma’am tagged onto the end of the queue so she can make her contribution to that charity called Lotto, I skim the newspapers and learn that with one day to go to the big Crimbo, the news is as depressing as ever. Serial violence in Iraq, threatened power cuts, extended working years.
Tony Blur and Dubya feature strongly in the papers as always. They’re both practising Christians. Wonder how long it will take before they stop practising and get it right.
I don’t knock religion. Although a confessed agnostic, I never knock another’s beliefs, but I do like to have a go at hypocrisy and I see it all the time when politicians claim to be believers and then do exactly the opposite of what their beliefs demand. I don’t see anything in the Bible that says you should go to war on an Islamic country simply because the dictator helped boot your dad out of office 12 years ago. If that were the case, my sons would have their work cut out eliminating all the employers who’ve sacked me over the years.
‘You should never argue about politics or religion,’ says Ma’am as we eventually drive home several hundred pounds closer to bankruptcy.
‘Well that leaves me with nothing to argue about,’ I tell her.
‘No,’ she responds, ‘it leaves the rest of the world with nothing to argue about but it leaves you with everything and everyone else in this world.’
‘Are you insinuating that I’m argumentative?’
‘No. Just that you’re a miserable old bastard who’d pick a fight in a Bhuddist monastery.’
She’s right you know. Bhuddists are far too passive.
© David Robinson 2005
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I would like to introduce you to Miryam Masih Nahar a friend of mine who is both a mother and proud owner of a gorgeous dog. There will be more to come from Miryam.
Love Arranged
by
Miryam Masih Nahar
What is this love when not arranged, is guaranteed
When not arranged, only then,
and only then can bleed.
When arranged is Asian, sure to bring strife
And always, always designed to beat his wife.
Eve, it seems they do not see
The wife and mother that God made you to be,
A marriage God so perfectly arranged
Between you and Adam, your beloved.
And Abraham, it seems they do not know
How you arranged the marriage of Isaac your son.
I guess you all listened to God's perfect wisdom
And the seed of love that He did sow.
And who will speak for you, tortured woman
If they keep on insisting,
it matters only if you are Indian
And call your marriage, Love
A marriage from above
And her marriage, Arranged
and never, never from Heaven.
by Miryam Masih Nahar
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Safe Oil
by
Miryam Masih Nahar
Crown came from India,
passing through Malaya,
Dollar came from Jamaica.
Together with the 1960s
our story had just began,
The years when everyone sang.
Shipped to England,
Papa ji's face so worried,
carrying me down on his side,
Amma ji feeling ill,
afraid of what they would find
And to whom could she confide.
Corn on the cobs
left glowing in the market sun
I've been placed in a fridge,
rats screeching and crawling
Not much fun.
One said 'nigger'
the other said 'wag',
They each said
'Go back home
to where you came from.'
Did you forget you asked me here first?
I worked in the factories
And fell in death oil,
I worked in the factories
And lost my eye in the toil.
Hey, a long time ago, so they all say
I was some jewel, some metal money
Which you brought back from India,
from Africa, and from many.
But now I'm a human without a penny.
Can't I mean more than that metal money?
Abandoned before the television that gave me the blues
Famine isn't so hard here,
And what's really due, we won't ever get.
Here we can keep our heads,
At least that is what they said,
But do you really want to bet?
At first Crown cried,
and Dollar hit back
But then came Tree,
from Eden.
We finally got a life.
Don't hack at me,
At my roots don't hack.
If you hack at my roots
Do you really expect to get fruit.
So you collect me some money,
You collect me some clothes,
You collect me toys
But you never come home,
And are you ever really sorry?
My Bible says that Jesus bought me,
From every tribe,
from every language and people and nation
He bought me.
So knock on my door,
I will let you in
And from this new kingdom of mine
Your hands with pearls I will fill.
But is this giving my pearls to the swine?
How I long to go home,
my heart's desire,
Then would so many work in death oil.
My blood could boil,
But I want some sealing, safe oil.
And why would anyone ever measure
My problems as too small,
And my agonies ever anyone bore,
Since your compassion, my dear Jesus,
you never measure
And your mercy never ending,
new each morning, for evermore.
So why are you so bitter
that my people gave you demons
You didn't need to take them,
Perhaps you didn't have safe oil.
From this world, I haven't any silver,
I haven't any gold
I will give you what I have
To this I am sold
I give you my Jesus,
That very safe oil.
Footnote by Miryam Masih Nahar (pen name)
For all who have lost loved ones to 'death oil'.
I would prefer the interpretation of 'death oil' to be left to the reader's own perception as with all of my writing.
The poem 'Safe Oil' is an autobiographical portrayal of my experience as an immigrant to England, United Kingdom.
'DEATH OIL' sprang from a memory from childhood of being told of a fellow Indian immigrant who had been killed in an accident in a local factory as a result of falling into hot oil or similar substance. For me, 'death oil' signifies the sacrifices people like my parents made in leaving their ancestral home of India, some of which they will probably never be aware. It also signifies for me, life without Jesus.
When I use the phrase 'death oil' I have in mind the difficulties the unskilled worker may face in the United Kingdom. I also have in mind the African slave trade, internationally, of former times.
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Go Granny Go!
So What Flippin’ Mad Ones Have We Got Here!
It's high time I drew your attention to what I can only describe as the nuttiest gang on the planet. Ladies and gentlemen with no further ado - please put your hands together for the Go Granny team! APPLAUSE! (okay,you can throw up now).
This bunch of raving lunatics both organise and participate in annual bashes to raise funds for the well established Christie’s Cancer Research fund! Where will they appear next? Any suggestions? Drop them a line!
Sunny July - 2005 the infamous gang cycled from Manchester to Blackpool and if you look at their site (see below) you will see that despite better weather - the colder climate doesn’t put them off either!
And please, check out my sexy mate Paul Hanstoc on the monkey bike. Due to falling from his bicycle last year and losing most of the flesh from his skull, 2005 he decided to sit on his rascal and show off his helmet! Yummy - the thought of it!
Please enjoy the boys' funky website and don’t forget to contribute towards saving the lives of others whilst they risk theirs! (I think this granny's baby may need feeding?) Tee x. (check out that sexy leg in the background, socks to die for ... growl ... 'tis more than a girl can take).
also supporting The British Heart Foundation & Cancer Research - good on yer, grannies!
A poem by Liz
Banoffee Pie
Last night we had friends for dinner
thought Banoffee Pie would be a winner
made the base and whipped the cream
making the toffee drove me insane
I melted the sugar till pale and golden
poured in the milk and stirred till thick
it smelled rather odd like a rotten old frog
and then the mixture turned black as a witches hat
the smell of burning stunk through the house
the smoke alarm usually quite as a mouse
sounded a siren all through the place
my toffee had burnt what a disgrace
the pan it was ruined and wouldn’t clean
its now in a bin where it will never be seen
what did if do I defrosted a pie
and like all good women I told a small lie (yes I whipped this pie in 20 minutes lol)
by Liz
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Well done Liz. Well, you gave some excellent entertainment last night. Hope your guests appreciated all of your hard work! This poem made me have a little giggle to myself. Say it like it is, girl.
Tee Foley.