Poetry in Motions

It's that time of year.  The last slushy dregs of 2009 pile up outside on the door step, and Christmas's long advent has been and gone.  Mince pies are past their sell-bys; a green hue as iridescent as a dragonfly's wing shimmers across the cut end of the ham, and all that's left in the tin of sweets is a meagre handful of half-bitten coffee creams and cracknel.

Yes.  It's the time of year when our thoughts turn inevitably towards the future and how we plan to deal with the constipation left over from Crimbo, a parting gift left by rich food and an activity level barely flickering above...

... persistently vegetative.

I don't know how the peristaltically sluggish cope over the festive season.  A quick sit down should be all it takes to wave goodbye to any guests overstaying their welcome, yet I know several people who prevaricate, who avoid the unpleasantness of confrontation by first browsing through the library they keep in the smallest room.  Listen up.  You should be trying to get rid off these hanger-ons, not encouraging them to linger by reading them a bedtime story.

Editions of Puzzle World, Practical Parenting,  Readers Digest, Viz, 1001 Funniest Toilet Jokes vie for space amongst the loo rolls and Toilet Duck; for hardened-core constipates there's the Lord of The Rings trilogy and Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (aka, Crap in Spades).   Books, magazines, newspaper supplements, Bettaware catalogues — all sprawling out across the toilet's hinterland, illegal immigrants camping around what is, after all, a place of work (you're there, are you not, to do a job?). 

Only humans could turn an essential bodily function into a leisure activity; another recreational must-have that's passed me by, like Go-Go Hamsters and dogging.

A couple of years ago a friend and I took the kidlets out bowling, then decided to treat them to a meal afterwards.  It was one of those 'child-friendly' places which insist on chips and crayons with everything.  I should have known better.

I took my friend's youngest to the loo, ushered her into a cubicle and waited...  and waited... and waited.  Knowing her parents to be in possession of work-shy intestines and figuring a hereditary element at play, I waited for 15 minutes outside the door.  What on earth was she doing in there? 

Then I heard a rustle.  That tiny unmistakable shushing sound a crayon makes when dragged earnestly across some paper by a four-year-old.

Oh, yes.  Too young to read, my friend's daughter had smuggled in her complimentary colouring set and was happily scribbling away while waiting for a postprandial splash.

The sins of the father and mother...

Still, it gave rise to this:

MADDY & THE POO

Maddy McCormack was a girl who

Took pen, pad and pencils to sit on the loo.

When asked by her mother from outside the door

"Maddy, my love, what's your...

...stationery for?"

Maddy said nothing but started to hum

As a tiny, scared voice came out of her bum.

"Help me, do help me," she heard the voice squeak.

“I'm not good at heights, I go woozy and weak,

And as for my swimming, I'm certain to drown...

D'you think you could find me a safer way down?"

So swinging her feet, Maddy poked out her tongue,

Licked the lead in her pencil and began to begun.

Now it may or not interest the reader in learning

That Poos aren't mere Twos, they have passionate yearnings

To live a good life just as best as they can,

And add up to more than a flash in the pan.

The ultimate dream a Poo hopes to reach

Is to swim with the dolphins and lie on a beach

Somewhere, lit by the sun as it sets,

Rolling in scum from industrial outlets,

Oblivious to surfers' grumbles and groans

As they sing to each other in rich baritones.

"How's this?!" cried Maddy and held up the page

On which a ladder was proudly displayed.

The Poo shook his head sadly and let out a sob, he

Said "What I asked was too big a jobby.

How can I, clearly limbless — the nature of dung —

Climb down a ladder made up of rungs?"

Once more Maddy fell to sketch a solution

While The Poo felt the pull of offshore pollution.

Far, far below in the sewery mire

Strains could be heard from a Poo smell-voice choir.

The song that they sang was a mournful refrain

That echoed a lonely Poo’s heartbreak and pain,

It flew up through the pipes where, high above,

It spoke to The Poo of deep intestinal love.

“They’re leaving without me,” anguished The Poo.

“The tide will be high in an hour or two

And’ll tug them away to a land bright and merry

To frolic and float ‘neath the cross-Channel ferry.”

With a cry of despair The Poo gave up hope,

Then, with a flourish, Maddy finished her…

As far as ropes went I have to attest

This must be, most definitely, one of the best.

Each end owned a tassel coloured-in green

With a squiggle of red on the bit in-between.

The whole thing was drawn with laudable taste

And just the right length to loop The Poo’s waist.

“I’ll lower you down to the water beneath,”

Maddy made clear as Poo gritted his teeth.

Secured with the rope he stood on the sphincter,

He looked at the bowl and tried not to think for

A moment at least of leaving a stain

Should his body collide with the hard porcelain.

Oh slowly, so slowly, Maddy let The Poo down

As he shivered and shook, looked a little less brown.

But an inch above water — gasp! Tragedy struck!

Maddy yanked and she pulled but The Poo was quite stuck!

So knowing The Poo would be too scared to jump

Maddy delivered a SPEC-TAC-U-LAR pump!

Rrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiippppppppppppppppppppppp!!!

The Poo shot into the loo and a pine-scented splash

Covered his head while he spluttered and thrashed.

But… would you believe it?

With no arms at all?

Soon The Poo mastered a passable crawl!

He called up to Maddy, a grin ear-to-ear,

“Why don’t you join me, it’s lovely in here!”

But a knock on the door knelled heavy and strong.

A voice cried out “Maddy, you’ve been far too long!”

 And stirred by the song of his faecally friends,

Poo summoned the courage to conquer the S-bend

And Maddy hopped down and smoothed out her dress,

Reached up on her tip-toes and …

… flushed with success!

THE END

(c) Chastity Flyte, illustrations El Hombre

May your festive constipation bring inspiration!

The Ghost of Christmases Past

I don't like Christmas. 

There, I've said it. It's not that I have strong religious feelings against the commercialization of Baby J's special day, after all we're merely continuing the tradition of a day founded upon the acquisition of a...

bit of cheap bling and...

the precursor of BOGOF perfume.

For years I've struggled with my festive antipathy.  You see, it seemed so baseless; I just couldn't put my finger on it.  I mean, I'm as materialistic as the next person.  I love getting pressies.  I love over-eating.  I love idling hours away on the couch watching the You've Been Framed Christmas Special and Dr Who.  I never tire of  The Great Escape or throwing things at the telly as Del Boy hilariously falls through the pub counter again.

Why, then — dropping to my knees and beseeching the heavens — this downer on the Son of God's birthday bash?  Why, oh why?

Who would've thought the answer was to be found watching The Exorcist?

Savouring this 1973 horror classic a couple of nights ago, the penny finally dropped.  Prompted by rats scratching about in the attic, clocks halting mid-tick, Father Merrin's feeling in his water, and Regan's sudden-onset double-jointedness, I realised my dislike of Christmas has been formed from lots of small, seemingly unrelated incidents which, on looking back, have the fingerprints from a demonic hand all over them.

And hot on the heels of that realisation came another.  I don't dislike Christmas.  Rather, I mistrust it, in the same way Father Karras mistrusted Christianity.  Kind of...

Christmas Present is a product of Christmases Past.  A whole series of evenly spaced mishaps, upsets and emotional traumas crudely moulded by expectation then fired so hard in the enforced, harsh-bright gaiety of the festive season that they'll weather unscathed the passing of years and any future attempt at counselling. 

Crying over the turkey?  Choking over a crap gift?  The emotional devastation isn't just for Christmas, my friend.

Let me take the opportunity to air some of my festive baggage:

Five years old and I had my first experience of the take-my-breath-away-by-the-utter-shiteness-of-it Christmas gift.  A tender age to be so cruelly scarred, to discover that in the business of receiving gifts there always lurks an element of risk; that the scales of anticipatory pleasure must always be balanced with the possibility of refund-inducing disappointment.

I have three brothers.  I'm the youngest.  Consequently I know how to punch, spit, and throw myself down stairs without injury.  So, tell me, what were my parents thinking when they gave me this?!

Nine years old.  This time I'm the one playing Santa.  My mother — still central to my universe, bringer of goodness, love and harmony — the target of my pocket money largesse.  Let her joy be unconfined!

And it was.  She laughed so hard she wet herself.  Not once.  Twice.  Because she thought of them again over the trifle. 

Then the Christmas to end all Christmases.  While I may not remember the precise year of my death, I remember I was dressed in a pair of my brother's hand-me-down trousers.  Which had been handed down to him, which in turn had been handed down... well, you get the picture.

Corduroy. Faded blue. Flared.  Tailoring details burned onto my brain with sororal accusation. An accessory to murder.

We weren't big walkers, my family. On this particular occasion, however, the Christmas imperative to bond was too strong to ignore, and the way to do this, the way to tug on the loose ends of the family tie — and we knew because we'd seen other families do it — was by walking. Ideally with a...

Alas, we had no dog (the first rat in the attic) but this didn't deter us.  Oh, no. We descended the zigzag to the beach as dogless anarchists.

My mother, imbued with the festive spirit of several...

...over lunch, radiated good humour and satisfaction with life while my father wooed her assiduously with tales of torque and revs and tappets of the real love of his life, his MGB GT. We kids ran ever-widening circles, snatching at hats, pulling at hoods and diving behind beach huts sloughing scales of corporation green.

(The clock stops mid-tick)  The peace behind a beach hut. There is no other peace like it. No stillness as complete, as safe; the world reduced to a windless, waveless Lilliputian landscape of drifted sand forested with ring pulls and wooden lolly sticks, sucked and buckled fag ends; a creosote corridor between worlds, resonant with warm Tupperware sandwiches and salt-stiff skin.

I exploded onto the prom from between two beach huts back into the petulance of that wintry afternoon. The wind, needled by the chill into an unending whine, burrowed into my ears. (Feel that?  The bed shaking.) I couldn't hear my family calling, I laughed instead as they comically mouthed empty vowels, arms flapping.

And it was then that I died.

I'd been skipping backwards, honking with smug delight at being young and fast and nimble.  I hadn't seen the wave shake itself free from the sea and make a grab for the cliff.  It fell short, collapsing onto the promenade with all the grace of a kerbside drunk and, with a disappointed sigh, took me as consolation prize.

Clinging to an iron staple bleeding in the seawall.  The shock.  Disorientation.  Waves crashing overhead, trying to pull me down.

My brother's bastard flares as they tangled around my ankles as I tried to stay afloat.

Then my father's mechanically minded hands hoisted me clear, and everyone was laughing, clapping me on my back, tugging at my sopping clothes, rubbing me hard, laughing.  But as a child all I felt was not their joy at my rescue, at cheating death, but their delight in my humiliation as I stood, seal wet and juddering, inside skin the same colour as those bloody hand-me-down trousers.

Years later, another trial-by-Christmas, and my mother giggles over another timeless Cinzano, "Do you remember the Christmas your brother got swept off the prom?"

My brother?  Hellooo, my BROTHER?!

I'm still not sure which I found worse — the fact that I had died, or that my mother had forgotten.

Well, bugger me. 

I'd spent years wearing hand-me-downs from all three brothers.   This momentous event, this near-death experience, this defining moment, I'd had from new.  It was mine, belonged to me, and I pointed this out somewhat forcefully.

My mother took a moment, then patted my hand.

"There, there, dear," she said, helping herself to a mince pie. "I'm sure one day you'll get over it."

Not unless anyone can put me in touch with a good...

Have a merry Christmas everyone, but my advice?  Don't trust it as far as you can throw it...

Preying for God, A Little Christmas Tale

The landscape had been tenderly stowed away for winter, snow packing itself around brittle limbs and fragile fingers, carrying sound snug to its chest to prevent it falling and shattering the filigreed silence. Everything waited, caught in the space between the last foggy exhalation of autumn and the first libidinous gasp of spring.

Light splashed from a cottage window onto the snowy sill outside and it was here a small snail sat, peering past his reflection into the room beyond.

The snail was entranced. He found himself charmed by the lights imitating the far-flung glitter of stars, by paper and ribbon mulching the floor in a deep, multi-coloured leaf litter, by the tree cloaked in sparkling gold. Occasionally the snail would smile in delight as he absently peeled sticky fingers of ice from his mantle.

Not for one moment did it occur to him that he too was the subject of equally busy observation.

Owl was growing impatient. While by their very nature snails were slow, this one had barely moved for hours and daylight had now already cleared the neatly pinked edges of the firs opposite. She ruffled her feathers and sunk her neck a little further down for warmth. What on earth was it doing down there? Had it got stuck, or had it simply died, one more quiet capitulation amongst thousands of other tiny, wintry deaths. Owl's curiosity overcame her and she glided through the lilac chill to land soundlessly on the window ledge.

"Ah, Owl," said Snail, swivelling his eyes in the bird's direction.

"I'm glad it's you."

Well, thought Owl, this is a turn-up.

"Tell me, what are the humans doing in there?  It's doing my head in."

Owl hopped forward to peer in through the ice-etched glass. She snorted derisively.  "Oh, they're celebrating Christmas, my ignorant little snail — a Christian festival marking the birth of the Son of God."

"Ah, gotcha. The winter solstice."

Owl shook her head irritably. "Close, but no cigar, Einstein.  The Solstice celebrates the rebirth of the Sun God, not the Son of God. No, Christmas is supposed to celebrate the birth of a child two thousand years ago who would go on to wash away the sins of the World of Man."

Snail contemplated this.  "Blimey. Bit of a tall order. Did he manage?"

Owl sniffed. "I'll say nothing other than a...

... was involved. Three times to do the right thing and keep its chuffing mouth shut but, no, they're always such bloody show-offs. So instead Christmas became the traditional time for humans to horde material wealth."

"I see, " said the snail.  "Like the...

s."

"Precisely," agreed Owl. "And humans also use this time of year to eat until they're sick and twice their original body weight."

"Ah. Like the...

s."

"Indeed," Owl nodded sagely.

"So," began Snail after thinking things through. "What you're saying is that Christmas is a festival that began with the best of intentions, such as...

... and goodwill to all men, but is now an empty sham of its origins and is instead a tacky homage to unbridled consumerism?"

Owl blinked twice in quick succession.

"Possibly," she offered cautiously. "Ye—es, I might be saying that."

A rumble from her stomach suggested that she too might be open to a spot of unbridled consumerism. She eyed the snail speculatively. Owl generally preferred her food to have a sporting chance, but it was wintertime and Owl was never slow to cut her cloth accordingly.

Snail gingerly shook his foot free of snow and snuggled into the scarf-like coils of his shell. He had the look of a mollusc ready for a good philosophical discussion.

"I take it from your tone," he began with relish, "that you...

...take a dim view of Christianity?"

Owl fluffed up indignantly. "Why, the whole religion is based on nothing but assumption and a patriarchal system of the worst kind!"

(Owl had feminist leanings.)

"Assumption?" queried the snail agreeably, eyestalks waving in encouragement.

Owl sighed in exasperation.  "Yes, assumption. Christians assume that if you believe in their god and are truly sorry for all the bad things you've done in your life, then when you die your soul is admitted to a place called Heaven where it's all a bed of...

... for ever and ever."

"Not...

...?"

"What?"

"Not a bed of ...

...?"

"Oh, lettuce, roses — whatever. My point is, there's no proof that Heaven is real. It's an assumption. You'd be spending your life hoping to be rewarded by something that might not exist."

"What about reincarnation?"

"Nope. Doesn't happen."

"Ah, well," Snail shrugged. "Christianity's not for me then."

Owl gazed at Snail incredulously.  "Don't tell me you believe in reincarnation!"

Snail gave Owl a steady look. "If you were a snail, you wouldn't ask that," he replied evenly. "I'm a...

... Buddhist by necessity."

Now, in the animal kingdom owls have a cunning second only to the fox, and Owl immediately saw a way in which she could not only philosophically point score, but gain a free meal in the bargain. She clacked her beak together in eager anticipation.

"So, as a Buddhist," she began carefully, feeling her way, "death holds no fear for you?"

"That's right," nodded Snail. "Because we're assured of being reborn." Hopefully as something with bones, he thought. "But what about you, eh? Surely even birds of prey need a system of belief to comfort them through the long cruel winters?"

"Not a bit of it," flashed Owl proudly, edging just a teeny bit nearer. "We're existentialists, hovering on the currents of the here and now, soaring on the updraughts of encapsulated reality." She tossed her head haughtily. "Your lot may be happy clinging to the underside of leaves on the lower branches of the evolutionary tree, but we birds of prey are great students of science, of what is provable not assumed. We reach for the stars!"

Snail frowned, his small brain clearly struggling with such a large concept.

"Hang on," he said at length, "and I might've got this wrong, yeah — but doesn't existentialism by its very nature exclude science and rationalism? Because wouldn't they be considered mere escapes of thought from the serious problems of existence? Surely because of the natural brevity of our allotted span, it's foolish to analyze in such a leisurely fashion matters of life and death as if there were all eternity to argue them in? I would even go so far to say that it's, like, impossible to grasp life by thought alone, that a knowing self is not enough — you need to fear, hope and believe."

Owl feigned a coughing fit that lasted some time.

"Anyway, back to you," she managed at length. "So tell me then — and this is hypothetically speaking, of course — if I were to, oh, say... eat you, you'd be quite happy with that on account of being reborn as a higher creature?"  Owl hopped closer.

Snail looked somewhat taken aback.

"Um, well. Happy is probably, y'know, a bit strong."  He began sliding towards a crack in the wall in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner. "Er, you see there are The Four Noble Truths in Buddhism."

"Fascinating!"

"Y-yes, yes, it is. One. All living is suffering."

"How very true. But more for some than others, I feel."

"Two. Suffering is c-caused by desire."

"I couldn't agree more."

"Um, three.  S-s-suffering ceases when d-desire is eradicated—"

"Such as when an appetite is satisfied!"  Owl's eyes blazed orange and her beak opened wide to receive Snail's current incarnation.

"Wait! Wait!" cried Snail cowering inside his shell. "I said there were Four Noble Truths! You've only heard three!"

Owl paused and considered. Sure, she could afford to be magnanimous; it wasn't as if Snail could run away. Sighing, she waved an impatient wing.

"Go on then. Let's hear it."

Snail moistened his lips nervously.  "R-right, four then. Desire can be destroyed b-by—"

Owl let out a bloodcurdling screech.

Minutes ticked by before Snail could summon up the courage to peek from under the lip of his shell to the ground below. He took in the...

... and the lonely feathers leading each other in a loose waltz over the snow.

"Blimey," he said to himself. "I was going to say desire can be destroyed by following The Noble Eightfold Path. But a fox… a fox seems to work just as well."

Fox grinned around a mouthful of extinct existentialist.  Personally he had always favoured a more Cartesian approach.

I slink, he thought, therefore I am.

(c) Chastity Flyte — feel free to share, but please post link!

Don't-Follow-Me Thursday

Friday.  Vendredi, viernes, Freitag — aka TGIF. 

It used to be the best day of the week, coming after Always-the-Bridesmaid Thursday and before Trial Seperation Saturday.  Fridays used to promise us the world.  Between the 'F' and the 'Y' pulsated the allure of downing tools and happy hour cocktails; Friday was the day we could burst from the cocoon containing our dull, colourless, working day lives and emerge as our real selves — you know, the one that had plans for world domination before careers, couples and kids came along.

gratuitous & uncalled-for cuteness

But no longer. Welcome to Follow Friday, the Tenth Circle of Hell.  Thanks to Twitter, Fridays have become a modern day stressor, another thing to be anxious about, like home-grown terrorism and metal fatigue in Kim Woodburn's under-wire. 

It's back to picking teams all over again, only without the display of

legs and public humiliation passed off with a "Yay, being goalie's the best", and fooling nobody.

It's a truth univerally acknowledged that people are less likely to follow female Tweeters rather than male.  I don't know why this is, but I suspect there's a fear from the population at large that females will tweet unrelentingly about their periods, or their kids or, or...er... soft furnishings.

My raison d'etre

Not so!  These fears are unfounded.  There are lots and lots of really normal women who don't rely on 'dry-weave top sheet' as a punchline.  Follow them!  Laugh with them!  Laugh at them,

because,

no matter how we demure, how we remonstrate, every girl wants a stalker to call their own.  It makes us feel special. 

Twitter is the only place a girl can enjoy being followed by a stranger without the inconvenience of double locking and carrying pepper spray. 

Girls, I'm sure you've spotted and scratched your head over the problematic and gaping divide between: 

a) object-of-obssession wannabes, and

b) fans of DIY altar-building. 

Twitter should theoretically bridge this gap, ingeniously bringing the two together like a giggly, match-making aunt.

Somebody wise once said "you've gotta be in it to win it".*  But this is easier said than done, as Follow Fridays attest.   The fact that Friday used to be referred to as dies Veneris — Day of Venus  — simply adds poignancy to the Betty-No-Mates situation female Tweeters (Tweetettes?  Tweetbabes?  MsTweets?) find themselves in.

And for Betty-No-Mates read me.  Yes, me.  I'm friendly, relatively house-trained and as El Hombre keeps reminding me, cheap.  Yet a tumbleweed bounces forlornly across the desert of my Tweetscape...

So I'm taking matters into my own hands.  Today, on a Thursday, I'm going to add one of those follow widgets to this blog.  And I'm going to ask you not to follow me, but rather come along for the ride.

For good times, laughter, fun nights in, for friendship and possibly more...  I look forward to meeting you all!

xxx




*  Dale Winton

Cautionary Christmas Tales

Madness, madness, I say!

Sunday, 5.30 in the evening, and the Stage Door bar at The Maltings Theatre was heaving at a time of day when civilized folk in the Borders settle down to The Antiques Roadshow or the Come Dine With Me omnibus.  People don't leave their homes on a Sunday evening unless it's on fire.  It's as likely a state of affairs as Katie Price being declared a feminist icon.

Emmeline Pankhurst — the early years

Clearly word had got out about 'Cautionary Christmas Tales' .  Clearly, my anonymous correspondent knew that here was something just a little bit special, and the chances of me giving the production a whipping with a wet towel, slim.  Between you and me, I'm liking the chutzpah. 

So, anyway, there I was, Sunday tea-time, threading my way through a thronging foyer and into the Henry Travers Studio to catch the last performance of this specially commissioned spoof written by Tom Mallaburn of The Fitzrovia Radio Hour (who have something of a following) and presented as a 'live recording' of three short radio plays, namely:

• 'A Life Less Awful'
• 'The Woman Who Didn't Prepare' 
• 'The Romance of Helen Simms'

The cast was in full evening dress, and when they weren't delivering their lines in exquisitely clipped RP, they were adroitly making sound effects from an array of unlikely props. Who knew that a pair of umbrellas opening and closing could pass for an in-flight angel?  Not me for one, having to try it for myself as soon as I got home.

'A Life Less Awful' was the weakest of the three plays, despite the best efforts of Justin Gudgeon as Bill Mott to drown himself in a tumbler of water — dedication above and beyond the call of duty to produce a sound effect of, er, somebody drowning. 

I've been trying to put my finger on just why this play didn't work as well as the others and can only put it down to:

1. The spin on 'It's A Wonderful Life'.  I mean, how is it possible to spoof something so intrinsically spoof-proof?  (Interestingly, and thoroughly by-the-by, Henry Travers played Clarence the angel opposite James Stewart in the film.  This was before he became a studio.  Obviously.)


2. Fraser Wood.

Don't get me wong, I'm a fan of Fraser.  Stick him on a stage and he reliably delivers.  But he is never without a glint in his eye — uh-huh, ladies, you know what I'm talking about — which made it difficult to believe that his character, loser Gerald Mott, was a suicidal man in need of our sympathy.  You had the impression that he and sexy emissary from Hell, Clarissa (played with wonderful languor by Tamiko Mackie), were just waiting for the signal to kick up their heels and paint the town scarlet.  Which is probably why we laughed so hard when Gerald eventually threw himself off Berwick Bridge. 

No, Fraser was much better cast as Roger Hunter, 'savage seducer', in 'The Romance of Helen Simms'.  With an impressively straight face, Anna Emmins played the eponymous heroine, a secretary caught in a love triangle and being threatened by — gosh, I say — Roger's  enormous dictation. 

The whole cast was excellent but, perhaps down to the script having stronger parts for women, a special round of applause has to go to Anna Emmins and Tamsin Davidson.  Tamsin's repentant housewife,

Hilda Gray, learnt the bally hard way that a turkey late to the table by half-an-hour can cost a husband his career and a woman her marriage in 'The Woman Who Didn't Prepare'. Personally this was my favourite of the three, tickled as I was by Tamsin's spot-on delivery and the idea that she was married to John Gray (Ross Graham), a generous man who gave her a pair of reconditioned compasses for Christmas. 

(As an aside, and not meant to detract from their acting ability in any way,  I simply have to mention that both Anna and Tamsin have exquisite eyebrows.  No, really.  Feathered arches of Forties loveliness.)

If I were in a super-picky mood, I'd grumble that on occasion the background music drowned out some of the lines. But that's me being a pain in the arse, to be frank. On the whole this was an original, funny, fast, and slick production, well directed by Miles Gregory and Do Shaw (a real person, not a typo). The Milester himself, btw, appeared as the Continuity Announcer, and I like to fantasize that his urbane charm was not an act... 

If you weren't afraid of missing all the fun on stage, you could have listened to 'Cautionary Christmas Tales' with your eyes shut and pretended you were gathered around the wireless with the family.  It's good to know that video hasn't quite killed the radio star, after all.

Thrill in Delight! Gasp in Horror!

Well, here's a turn up.

I had a blog all primed and ready to publish when I read a comment on a post I wrote last week, in which I reviewed the Duns & District Amateur Operatic Society's production of Cinderella-ella-ella-ella (shakes fist at Rihanna).

The anonymous comment enquired as to whether I would be attending, get this, the "Hilarious live 1940s-style radio show", 'Cautionary Christmas Tales' at The Maltings, Berwick-upon-Tweed, because they would be interested in my feedback.

Well, I'm a sucker for anything promising to be 'hilarious'.  I'm first in the queue for a 'Carry On' movie or re-runs of 'Duty Free' or anything, in fact, with a whiff of Terry Scott or Sue Pollard.  I've had my eye on this production, torn between it and 'An Evening with Sir Donald Sinden' later on in the month.   Naturally, Sir Donny must triumph if the world is to continue spinning on its axis.

But of course, I'm easily persuaded.  It's why El Hombre married me, after all.  So, there I am, resolved to gasp, leer, and clench with the best of them at this vintage radio broadcast, when Most Beautiful reminds me that she has a performance this evening, the same time as 'Cautionary Christmas Tales'.

I should probably point out now that amongst all my other failings, I'm also a crap mother.

My dilemma was thus:

• Do I gorge on another intriguing offering from Miles 'The Milester' Gregory at The Maltings; do I succumb to the flattery of someone seeking my opinion — my opinion, guys — and thus elevate my status in my own needy eyes, or do I

• Sacrifice my own desires for those of Most Beautiful?

As I say, I'm a crap mother...

TBH, Most Beautiful isn't bothered whether I'm there or not, she's done that many performances she's something of a jaded professional.  Didn't stop her sticking the boot in though, oh no.

Me, all fox stole and cigarette holder,  "This could be, sweetie, my big break.  How thrilling!  Just think, dahling, you can say your mother's a theatre critic!"
Most Beautiful, "Yeah, one who doesn't watch her own daughter's performances."

Fair point, well made.  Now, if I can just raid her piggy bank for the ticket...