Flyte-Tipping & Other Pastimes

More Than Gender Politics

2010-03-14T20:20:00.002Z

By now, dear chums, we've established that I know an awful lot about nothing, and thus having set out my stall I thought this week we could discuss politics.

My ignorance of all things political is awe-inspiring in its length, depth and bredth. The sheer scale of it causes people's breath to catch at the back of their throats; the absence of any real grip of the issues of the day garners pitying looks and sympathetic hand pats. My dunderheadedness over affairs of state is so mighty, so colossal, so unignorable, that it was actually considered for recognition as a contemporary Wonder of the World, just missing out to Katie Price's poor impulse control.

The New Mrs Katie Price

Still, it was nothing if not gracious in defeat.

I'm one of those people that hate pointless confrontation — I get a bit sweaty and start breathing through my mouth, but not in a sexy way. I back away from political debate as if a street performer had broken free from his pitch and was moving robotically amok outside Primark.

It's not that I don't enjoy debate (but, to remain clear, I do hate street performers),

Keep Britain Tidy, Shoot A Mime Artist

but I've no time for ranters. The moment my brain clocks someone saying the same thing three times at incrementally increasing volume is when I frantically pat myself down for an imaginary utility belt, praying that I've remembered to pack the Anti-Rhetoric-Spew-Emitter spray.

There are people out there — and a lot of them if Twitter and Facebook are anything to go by — that seem to use venting their politics as a kind of cardio-vascular work-out, a replacement for thirty minutes moderate digging five days a week. They delight in their fury, wallowing in the great muddy hole of their indignation, rubbing themselves down with their own brisk cleverness. Onanists to the last.

Because they don't want us to join in, these ranters; they don't, for heaven's sake, want an exchange of views! We're meant to be passive receptacles of their wisdom, bullied into mute respect.

And I'll be honest with you, I nod until they run dry so I'm complicit here. Hands up.

Now, being a politico-spacktard actually gives me an advantage, to whit: because I hold no allegiance to any political institution, this independence of thought (some might more accurately call it 'indifference', a key objective here in The Flyte-Tipping Party) enables me to make some interesting observations.

What with an election on the horizon, let's start with the main political parties in Britain today: The Labour Party, fronted by gloomy-gus PM Gordon Brown, and the Conservative Party led by the oleaginous (<— nice, 10 points) David Cameron. Allegedly there is a third party, headed up by Nick Clegg, but I can't remember its name. I could Google I suppose, but what would be the point? A party whose leader bears a striking resemblance to David Cameron AND shares half his name with the leader of the BNP is obviously nothing more than a decoy political party, quacking softly in the margins in order to lure the unsuspecting voter into ballot-box confusion.

This is where it gets a bit like Runaround (God bless Mike Reid, now sadly an angel in Reactalights and a camel hair coat). If you base most of your decisions on how you feel about them, run to the left; if you base most of your decisions on how you think about them, run to the right.

Runaraahnd... naaaaahhh!

Because roughly speaking in broad strokes with gross generalisation, this seems to be how the two main parties work, the fundamental difference. 'Feelers' vote Labour, 'Thinkers' vote Tory, neither being better than the other but 'Feelers' definitely being in the ascendancy ever since Diana forgot to clunk and click.

A computer-generated image

of how Diana could look today.

Tory bods recognise this and are twisting themselves in knots to appear emotionally connected. It's not pretty. I want to take them to one side and tell them gently "No, love", and teach them the lesson I tell my kids about how you have to be true to yourself and never change just to please somebody, but I can see they've gone too far down the emoting track to turn back. Doesn't seem to be helping though. A friend the other day mentioned that despite David Cameron mourning a child she still found the Tory Party cold and lacking in empathy, the irony of which was lost on her. My friend wants a government who cares about her as a person, as an individual, and who wouldn't? It's a lovely idea. Just, sadly, a tad impractical when you're dealing with millions of people and a limited budget.

So Labour must be the way to go, right? They're naturally sensitive. They care without it hurting. They're just like us in that all they want is acceptance and credibility.

Now just as I find the Tories dressing up as Grandma ridiculous and nauseatingly insincere, I find Labour an enigma wrapped up in, um, a baffling confusion.

Any sociologist will tell you that society works by consensus. That for society to flourish and be successful, different interest groups must have a shared sense of belonging, a shared sense of a common goal. Society as a whole is a finely tuned balancing act; a living, breathing machine, utterly dependent on each individual component part working in harmony with the one next to it. That's us, by the way, for the less imagery-driven reading this. We're the nuts and bolts. We're the funky Audi ad.

But in recent years the right of the individual component has taken precedence over the wellbeing of the machine as a whole. And this is Labour policy in action. A socialist party. Ironically, to defend the underdog, to protect and support every minority, to promote diversity, to grant dispensations, to make us all feel special and nurtured — all this flies in the face of accepted sociological theory on how to create a fully functioning society.

Does your head in, doesn't it?

On the one hand you've got Labour promoting individualism — something they used to tar the Conservatives with — and on the other you've got the Conservatives cynically trying to get in touch with their feminine side, formerly the preserve of the Labour Party. With so much cross-dressing going on, is it any wonder voters are confused?

Of course, you could vote for the other lot, but to be frank I've reached the extent of my political curiosity.

What I do know is this.

I do love kittens.

When Possession is Nine-Tenths of the Law

2010-03-07T14:16:00.008Z

It's said that size doesn't matter. I disagree. I think size does matter, although maybe not in the way you imagine. A change of perspective, a switch of aphorism; you need to think small. Good things come in small packages, right? So you need to go from this:

Pandacus Giganticus

To this:

Pandacus Minimalis

So let's talk dirty. Let's talk apostrophes.

Take my hand and come with me on an apostrophic journey. Together we will demystify this typographical fleck no bigger than a spider's eyelash that seems to cause so much hand-wringing. Find out why the apostrophe actually isn't scary, how its sole purpose is to make your life easier. No other punctuation mark manages to spin so many plates. Gasp! at its mastery of the possessive. Swoon! as it abbreviates with panache. Cheer! at its good-natured handling of the imperial foot.

The unsung hero of punctuation, in all places at once, rushing hither and thither selflessy peppering a page with meaning and clarity.

Let's go... apostrophe myth busting.

Exploding Apostrophe Myth #1

"Dear Chastity,

You know how you say apostrophes are, like, essential to have a good understanding of the written word, yeah? At the end of the day, I find them just a bit too small and f*cking tricky.

Kimberley, from Brentford"

Now hypothetically I receive many letters like this one from poor Kimberley in my postbag. And here's how I theoretically reply.

"Dear Kimberley

Using an apostrophe isn't tricky at all but to help you appreciate the difference, here is a list of things with a 'small' feel that are quite tricky:

Quite Tricky Small Things

The behaviour of quantum particles;
The working of the human body at cellular level;
Nanotechnology.

I hope this helps to clarify the situation.

Regards, Chastity"

Exploding Apostrophe Myth #2

"Dear Flyte-Bitch

Yous just tryin to oppress the masses with your elitist punctuation, innit. Yous must be a Tory bastard."

Yours in anticipation,

Shagwolf from Surrey"

"Dear Mr Shagwolf

It would be all too easy for me to reply with a succinct and perfectly formed 'bollocks' (n. pl.) [nb: no apostrophe. Unless you were stating the 'dog's bollocks', ie. 'the bollocks belonging to the dog' (sing.)]

Knowing and appreciating where best to deploy this most modest of punctuation marks does NOT count as elitism; it does NOT guarantee a place in government or Who's Who, an unequal distribution of wealth, or the right to censure-free cottaging. However, Shagwolf, my darling, it will stop you from making a tit of yourself on the News at Ten when waving an anti-capitalism placard outside McDonald's.

I wish you all good things for the future.

Affectionately, Chastity"

Example

St Peter's Lea - the grassy area/field of St Peter

St Peters Lea - a papally approved easy-listening duo from the Seventies

You see how easily confusion can arise? How helpful the apostrophe is for averting a crisis of meaning and ugly faux-pas?

You may have read about Birmingham City Council's decision to ban the apostrophe from road signs, believing that when witnessed first-hand, the apostrophe will cause road users' brains to detonate thus leaving the Council exposed to claims of compensation and adding substantially to their street cleaning budget (already under strain from prevailing economic conditions). It's that old classic. When something isn't understood, it is feared.

Exploding Apostrophe Myth #3

"Dear Chastity

I think you need to recognise that English is an ever-evolving language, that the decline of the apostrophe is merely a price to inevitably pay for our mother tongue having such wonderful richness and flexibility.

Babs, from Carlisle"

"Dear Barbara

I think in all your excitement you overlooked a split infinitive. Fret not, for I am not the sort of person to let sloppy grammar cloud my opinion of your right to comment.

I should point out that I love a good neologism as much as the next person, and I agree — English is always in a state of developmental flux. Not surprising really, first invaded by the Romans, then the Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Danes, French... over the centuries the English language has pretty much been gang-banged by the whole of Europe. Goodness, with so much linguistic activity happening on the wrong side of the covers, it's only to be expected that modern English consists largely of bastard children.

However, the apostrophe's decline doesn't seem to be a part of a natural embracing and discarding of vocabulary. We still need clarity of meaning after all. No, I feel its fall from favour hinges on the fact that a wee bit of effort is required to bring it to heel, and that a recessive gene of can't-be-arsediness stowed away on the first Gallic shrug to come ashore in 1066.

You might do well to examine your family tree, Barbara, my dear.

Yours sincerely, Chastity"

So come on, people! Let's pull together and make an effort to squash the lazy Frenchman inside us all. Open your heart to the apostrophe and welcome it back into your life as the best punctuation friend you're ever likely to have.

Screwing Up Friendship

2010-02-27T17:46:00.005Z

Look, indulge me with this, okay? I'm not sure where it's going but I promise I'll steer clear of Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail — essentially the same film merely with a different ~~cast~~ theme music. But if you behave yourself and don't fidget I promise by the end of this post I'll work in a reference to High Fidelity.

Now, this week I laid Sally and Harry's eternal dilemma — can men and women really be friends — at the feet of the lovely people of Twitter, and was pleasantly surprised by the volume of response. Clearly I am not alone in banging my head against this particularly bad-arse Venus-Mars conjunction. I should point out that a lot of valuable and insightful research material (in 140 characters or less) arrived under cover of Direct Messaging, the Twitter equivalent of an unmarked brown envelope.

Because, yes, ladies and gents, we've got ourselves a

hot potato, and if Twitter is anything to go by nearly all of us have something to hide.

What struck me most was the air of Shakespearean tragedy surrounding these sad little tales; the theme of star-crossed friendships ruined by the imperative to put Male Part 'B' into Female Part 'A'. As soon as the beast with two backs entered stage right, the friendship disappeared pursued by a bear. And the most touching, hopeless, thing of all is that the majority of you regretted losing a good friend. Men and women in equal measure.

So, it seems to be an open and shut case. Men and women just can't help experimenting with their genitals, a situation non-conducive to friendship.

But wait, what's this? A glimmer of hope in the desolate landscape of friends with benefits?

A small proportion of respondents claimed that of course it was possible, that they had many good friends of the opposite sex and the thought of boffing them fully tested their gag reflex. Hurrah! I thought, and danced my little party jig, the one I save for very special occasions.

This story will have a happy ending!

On closer inspection, however, all was not as it seemed. Each happy, shiny optimist fervently avowing that they had succeeded in doing what the rest of us had failed to — ie, learning the lesson of Zammo Maguire of just saying 'no' and applying it liberally all over our privates — wasn't being quite truthful.

Prima facie, it all seemed above board. However, all of their assertations ended with "but", a small word so clever in design that it can almost go unnoticed even as it negates the entire preceding sentence causing an argument to crumble into a dusty handful of wishful thinking.

"Of course men and women can be friends, but of course being gay helps."
"My best friend is male, but I've known him since primary school - it'd be like committing incest." (You can see how that might work as a damper.)
"A very good friend of mine is a girl, but I secretly fancy her."

El Hombre shares the view of the last respondent: that in a friendship of opposites at least one of those involved fancies the other and is secretly just biding time until the planets align. Or enough alcohol is consumed...

Here's my favourite:

"You can be great friends with a member of the opposite sex but not if they have a partner." (See Billy Crystal above.)

This is the one I slammed up against.

Personally, I had been happily bumbling through life having non-sex friendship with lots of different men. I like men; they make me laugh; I feel incomplete without a bloke-pal with whom to swap inappropriate spastic jokes.   So I was the biggest evangelist about men and women creating and maintaining beautiful friendships.

Yes, you've noticed the imperfect tense creeping in there, haven't you? Get ready with the Kleenex, Bambi's mum is about to take a bullet.

Trouble is, I'm no good at reading signs. I've been told on more than one occasion that I give off an air of "You realise, of course, you have no chance of shagging me but you're welcome to try" that, ahem, 'drives men wild'. I promise you, this is not true, the most I aim for is "Please don't hate me".

El Hombre has observed that a man could be dry-humping my leg and I'd just think he was being friendly. Unless it is specifically spelt out to me, in simple words, to my face, I am oblivious to anyone fancying me.  I possess Stevie Wonder's acuity of deciphering body language. I am a mating-ritual retard. The fact that I'm married is testament to El Hombre's infinite and gentle patience.

All this analysis is the reaction to a very good friendship collapsing.  I'd become great pals with a married man. Sadly his wife was a proper nut-job. Okay, okay, she may not have been a nut-job (she was) but from day one she had me in the cross-hairs of her paranoia. Inevitably this had an effect. Our tree of much-chumminess fell victim to Mrs Friend's brutal restrictive pruning.  Consequently it failed to thrive and eventually died, but not before sending out last-gasp suckers of resentful compromise.

Sex was the culprit and I didn't even get any. Mrs Friend, however,thought we were a-gettin' plenty, and that was enough. I found myself in the bewildering position of being treated like a mistress by both Mr and Mrs Friend, but without experiencing the post-coital complimentary custard cream in a faded two-star shag palace on the coast.

Sex, inevitably, will be an issue in some form or other in your friendship, sure as disease is linked to obesity. You can't go round it; you can't go under or over it. Somehow you just have to negotiate your way through it.

One of my favourite tweeple starkly tweeted this:

"I'm not even sure they [men and women] can be twitter-friends without thinking about shagging."

And he is absolutely right. How do I know this? I'll tell you:

I'd been feeling a bit down and angsty, and one of my twitter-pals picked up on this and sent a really caring message. It was beautiful. Now, if this twitter-pal had been a girl I would have sighed with a small smile, and dabbed at the tear welling up in the corner of my eye in response to her thoughtfulness.

As it stands, the twitter-friend was male and for a split second I had a mental image of me straddling him on my ergonomically-designed chair and riding him hard around my office.

And that, ladies and gents, is why men and women can never be friends.

A Poetic End

2010-02-21T17:29:00.002Z

Last week, if you recall, I mentioned in passing my predilection for the poet and all round literary lump of gorgeousness, Simon Armitage. On re-reading that blog-post I realised that you may have thought my passion to be merely physical, rattling on as I did about his supernumerary chin and brooding windcheater.

Reconstruction of how Simon Armitage

could look in a windcheater

While Mr Armitage is undeniably easy on the eye if you're mindful not to view him side-on, he's also a rather excellent poet and it is because of this deftness with words that I love him, not because of Simon Armitage "The Man" who I've never met.   That would, quite frankly, pave the way to heartache and strong medication.

So anyway, I'm chatting to a friend who happens to read my blog and he sniffs, "Simon Armitage? Bit lightweight, isn't he?"

This friend's alma mater used to be a polytechnic and it always amazes me where he finds the confidence to express an opinion of any kind without fearing people will point and laugh at him.

After I'd finished pointing and laughing,* curiosity got the better of me.

"What d'you mean, lightweight?" I said. "His translation of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' is considered to be one of the most accessible and relevant to modern day." (I'd read that somewhere. Probably The Guardian, it sounds like something The Guardian would say.)  "Well," he scoffed. "His poems rhyme, don't they?"

I had only one thing to say in response — well, technically I didn't say anything; as a supporter of equal opps I used sign language.

Simon Armitage's poetry has a very strong sense of structure and rhythm, but not necessarily rhyming line-ends which, I assume, is what Mon Ami Polytechnique meant. And anyway, let's not forget poetry's literary tricks and devices lie in its oral origins.   After all, for something to be successfully remembered and passed on it has to have a distinct, repetitive — almost hypnotic — structure.   Take the lovely

Pam Ayres for example:

I am very fond of hedgehogs
Which makes me want to say,
That I am struck with wonder,
How there's any left today,
For each morning as I travel
And no short distance that,
All I see are hedgehogs,
Squashed. And dead. And flat.

Ah Pam, Pam. A woman who knows the value of a good rhyme. Thirty years on and I still remember it. Sorry, Whitman, you missed a trick. For me, free verse is nothing but an exercise in imaginative punctuation.

A thicko

But who cares? It doesn't matter what kind of poetry you're into because there is no 'right type' of poetry. I know intellectual snobs would have us believe otherwise, but essentially reading a poem is an emotive exercise, our response to it subjective.

Take my dearest friend, Mrs Rochester, for example. She has tried converting me to the joys of Slyvia Plath. Joys! Slyvia Plath! It's like saying the charm of Nick Griffin.

Just. Doesn't. Go.

Mrs Rochester feels hurt by my failure to appreciate Ms Plath — she somehow sees it as a judgment on her own taste of literature — and it doesn't matter what I say, I can't make her understand that when I pick up a Slyvia Plath anthology all I feel is the urge to run away screaming.

So I've employed some help in the form of a luvvy am-dram chum and a camcorder.

Now, at first Luvvy-Am-Dram Chum said, rather grandly I thought, "I don't do television". I pointed out that she didn't 'do' anything other than act like a tit in a nylon wig in a village hall from time to time. Having this clarification allowed her to admit that "breaking into new territory" and "increasing her exposure" might be the way forward.

I've sent the resulting footage to Mrs R, hoping imagery will illustrate what words have thus far failed to.

I feel Sylvia herself would have applauded...

*Such is the power of a grammar school education. I have no university education but being repeatedly told I was part of the educational top 10% has left me with the unshakeable belief that I could run the country with only a curled upper lip and Teeline shorthand of 120wpm. If I wanted.

Not-So-Funny Girl?

2010-02-13T15:51:00.001Z

Now, those of you who regularly visit me on this page will know that I am so in awe of Miles 'The Milester' Gregory, Creative Director of The Maltings Theatre, that I would be indecently happy to do anything for him outside the parameters of sexual deviancy and housework.

The Theatre, in spite of being under threat of closure from the dull, grey, tired little number-crunchers at the mouth-breathing council, has been experiencing a steady renaissance over the past few years since The Milester's been at the helm, and now he's upped the stakes even higher so we have yet more to lose should the council finally pull the plug.

Not only has The Milester managed to seduce Richard Herring, Laura Solon, and Katy Brand into coming to Berwick over the coming months but — ticker-tape parade — SIMON ARMITAGE!

One day all poets will look like this

I bloody love Simon Armitage! If I ever get close enough to him, the jury's out as to whether I'll be able to stop myself from licking his face. Over Christmas I made the family sit through a telly programme of Si wandering over bleak, northern landscapes in a moody cagoule pondering the origins of that middle English classic 'Sir Gawain and The Green Knight' . It's a look, I'm pleased to report, that he pulled off with bardic aplomb.

When I heard Si was coming to The Maltings in May, I literally squealed in excitement, something I hadn't done since breakfast. Already I've made plans to take along one of his books with a view to getting a signature, but I don't know whether I'll be able to go through with it because I'm terrified of accidentally spitting on him when I speak.

But before I gaze lust-struck at Mr Armitage's incipient double-chin (and, oh, I shiver at the stories that could tell), I'm first lucky enough to spend an evening in the company of Laura Solon, Perrier Comedy Award-winning comedian.

El Hombre and I kid each other that this is our Valentine's Day treat; in honesty the tickets were bought ages ago — we've simply stuck a retrospective 'Valentine' label on it to save any extra expenditure in expressing our undiminished love for each other. But we do plan to share a romantic packet of

Nobby's Nuts beforehand.

During Laura's Rabbit Face Story Soup tonight I've made up my mind to laugh extra loudly and in unexpected places, so Laura feels the audience is on her side. I want her to know that although she's a female comedian I have her back covered; I am prepared to laugh in the face of overwhelming odds.

Cos that's the thinking, isn't it? C'mon, admit it. Female comedians aren't as funny as men, that's how it goes, right?   I've had some experience of my own of this though as a writer, not a comedian: two different sitcom scripts sent separately to the BBC under my real (girlie) name, and then sent again to the BBC under male pseudonyms. BOTH scripts under the male pseudonyms got picked out of Auntie's Bulging Sack of Thousands and lauded, the scripts under my real name rejected. Same scripts, different names. Different names, same scripts. Obviously I'm not intimating that the Beeb are guilty of having certain gender-related expectations. Good heavens, no. But I'll just leave it to sit with you...

Anyway, I agree with Sandi Toksvig; to summarise — that in order for female comedians to be widely accepted they either have to play the ditzy bit of fluff or be a non-threatening lesbian in a pastel suit. (But not, y'know, too lesbian because that's, like, icky?)   Then Sandi went on to say that research has shown that female members of an audience were less likely to laugh than male members of an audience at a female comedian.

While that's a depressing fact, I can't say I'm surprised. The minute a woman walks out on stage, every other female in the building has noticed, assessed and graded her hair, make-up, and how well she's co-ordinated her material with her shoes.

This isn't done deliberately. It happens as part of our autonomic nervous system, as unconscious and natural as bargain-hunting and a love of soft furnishings. As women we need to categorize the level of sexual threat another woman poses and then, when the results are in, we punish her for it — in this particular case by folding our arms and subconsciuosly snarling "Go on then, love.  Make. Me. Laugh".

So tonight poor old Laura, unlike a male counterpart, will have to worry over more than just being funny. But hey, like I say, I'll have her back despite her being a good stone lighter than me and a success.

The utter cow.

When A Review Is Not A Review

2010-02-07T18:03:00.004Z

What with an election looming, I had girded my loins to plunge forth into the cut and thrust of political punditry.

You may recall a few blogposts ago that I lamented the fact I was a Jackie-of-all-trades, mistress of none. I'm not proud or happy with this state of affairs; I crave to be an expert, a fount of all knowledge to whom people can approach on bended knee and seek judicious enlightenment; I would look magnificently wise and stroke my chin thoughtfully — possibly even Google something — before declaring my opinion as unquestionable fact. And yea, verily, my words would be gathered up as precious grain to be taken and nurtured so they could go on to flourish in the minds of others.

About as likely as Jedward being poster boys for IVF.

But politics, I thought. I can do politics. I have an O-level in Religious Studies and my ability to touch-type still takes my breath away.

I don't know anything about politics per se, obviously, but I don't see that as a hindrance, merely an opportunity to spin like Alistair Campbell's lovechild on a roundabout. Because that's what they do, don't they, these pundits? They sit in a pub hankering for the old days when nicotine running down the walls was a basic human right, speculating in an urgent monotone about how the country could be going to the dogs, and how a sex scandal in the constituency of Little Mudwhelp could threaten peace in the Middle East, and how allowing breastfeeding in the House of Commons is possibly the start of a Tory backlash against lap dancing establishments and their impact on the family unit.

Let's face it, politics and its associated punditry is simply a less energetic form of Heat magazine.

So there I was, poised to give you a shallow and largely fictitious low-down on each major party's mission statement, highlighting in lurid pink circles Politicians of Shame,

when I got side-tracked.

Last week the director of the Emergency Services Panto approached me asking for a review of his show (Dr Who and The Cyberdame) which appeared at The Maltings Theatre at the weekend,all proceeds going to the North Northumberland Day Hospice.

This surpised me. This director knows my views on patchy scripts, stiff acting and, more importantly, the validity of amusingly customized songs. He's read this blog. I pointed out that I had been likened to Simon Cowell, had a policy of undermining the confidence of children (especially the quiet ones), and dined out on puppies every day of the week with a 'Y' in it.

Did he want to reconsider?

As I watched the show, one thing became clear. This show was impossible to review. Yes, everything was as I expected — The Emergency Services Panto has an endearing tradition of fragile scripts, dropped lines and rabbit-in-the-headlights acting — but listen: ninety-nine percent of the people on stage were not performers, had no desire to be performers and weren't trying to recapture school-acting glory days. Most of them were terrified of going out on stage, poor souls, you could see it in their eyes. How could I objectively review something so brave? Their only aim was to raise money for the North Northumberland Day Hospice, which they did magnificently through a lot of fun and laughter.

And now I'm going to do what many politicians should learn, and stop talking.

Please, you can donate to the hospice using the link above.

A True Story, I Swear

2010-01-29T17:16:00.007Z

I was going to start this post with,

"I, like most people, enjoy a jolly good fucking".

In my head it was good — amusing, inclusive, cheeky, with the shock element of crude bluntness; the elements were all there for it to be a strong opener, that attention-grabbing first line with which to hook any surfer just browsing through and not that minded to stop.

And then, even as I chuckled at my own cleverness while I typed, a thought struck me.

What if my mum read it?

*Squeal followed by nasty thump on bonnet*

A response bizarre on so many levels that even if I set them out with bullet points and interesting graphics AND got Peter Snow to walk us through them, none of us would be any the wiser.

So, instead I'll open with this:

There are few pleasures in life that match the slow hiss of air escaping between your upper teeth and lower lip as you formulate the work "fuck". It's anticipatory. It is the vanguard of a sweary satisfaction that is only moments away from attainment.

The Irish and Glaswegians realise this. They embrace swearing, sprinkling their conversations with 'fecks' and 'fucks' like hundreds-and-thousands, adding colour and texture to what would otherwise be a plain bun.

They use the word with such dedicated frequency that all meaning has been lost and thereby any offence. And this is where my relationship with swearing lies. I approve of swearing when it's empty of booze and violence.

Writing sitcoms inevitably means you view everybody else's sitcom without laughing, even if it's funny. Scratch that. Especially if it's funny. You sit there, arms crossed, a faintly disbelieving sneer flickering across your lips. You prod for weak points, palpate for over-worked jokes, and then fall on it like the shadow of a lion over a weakened impala foal.

And the really crap sitcoms are the ones which are padded out with 'comedy' swearing.

News Flash

If your script is relying on swearing for its edgy bad-assiness, then it's shit of the first order. Show some freakin' discernment. A well-placed fuck is worth ten in the bush.

Moving on, then...

I've noticed I'm not an angry swearer. I only seem to swear when considering matters of existential angst — when I'm feeling frustrated, bemused, or exasperated. A succinct "For fuck's sake" acts as a channel for my helpless dismay in the face of what is, inarguably, a stupid universe.

And even then there's a furtive element to my blaspheming. Strictly behind closed doors. With people I love and trust. Who won't judge me. Fellow fucksters, because of course we're like alcoholics, us swearers. Oh yes. We don't like to swear alone. Swearing is a group thing, a builder of bonhomie and team spirit. Swear together and stay together.

But then there's the ugly side of swearing, the side that detracts rather than enhances, the side that makes you look just a little bit common.

It was the acknowledgement of this dark side to swearing — Dr Jekyll's Mr Hyde, Eric Little's Eddie Large — that was responsible for my stand on, excuse me, fucking in public.

Picture this. The scene — a car park in Berwick with a narrow exit wide enough for only one vehicle. The situation — a car with L-plates blocking this exit with me stuck behind. Initially I was patience personified. Poor sad little learner, I thought, she'll be feeling the embarrassment of her shaky clutch control for years to come, along with her feeble grasp of stopping distances.

I waited and I waited. Minutes ticked by. Then I considered the possibility that Poor Sad Little Learner didn't realise I was behind her. O-ho, inadequate use of mirrors, I thought. So mindful of the proscriptive rules in 'The Highway Code' on horn deployment, I proffered a friendly 'toot'. Just to make other road users aware of my presence, you understand.

Now. There's always a mate, isn't there?

So if you find yourself in a position where you personally can't be arsed to get upset about something, you can hand the responsibility over to somebody who can. Violence by proxy.

To cut a very ugly story short, this throwback stuck her head through my car window and started yowling in my face, a bit like Charlie the Cat in the public information ads of my childhood, only this time warning about the perils of Elizabeth Duke jewellery.

She was so enraged I had no chance of reasoning with her. On and on she went. A crowd grew. Tension built. I had to seize control. Defuse the situation. I racked my brain for something clever, something erudite to say that would stop this scene becoming a resconstruction on Crimewatch.

"Oh, fuck off, you wearying fat slag."

Tah-dah!

Having delivered this stingingly elegant coup de grace, I threw the car forward, squeezing past Poor Sad Little Learner who had managed to park, and flipped a cheery 'V' as I sped off. Clearly it wasn't my superior education and negotiating skills that won the day, it was the fact that I was sitting in a car with the engine still running.

And did I spend the morning in town on a victorious high re-telling this story of accomplishment and heroism equal in scale to that of the Spartans at Thermopylae?

No.

Three things spoiled it for me.

The knowledge that I had sunk to Wearying Fat Slag's level so quickly and over something so frighteningly trivial. I'd allowed her to make me lose control to the point where I had no other vocabulary left to offer.
To the ears of the bystanders, I sounded no different from Wearying Fat Slag to whom I felt myself so superior. I was no different.
The fact that now I was marked woman and could get stabbed between the eyes with a scuffed stiletto when I least expected it.

So now I prefer to keep my swearing a private affair between mutually consenting adults...

A View to a Kill

2010-01-20T20:32:00.000Z

It's that time of year where people with disposable income

are hoping to book a bargain holiday. But how — as the credit crunch casts its damp-squibby shadow over the land and global warming submerges some of our favourite holiday destinations —

can folk be sure that they're a) getting a good deal, and b) are keeping their private carbon beach free of footprints?

Being utterly skint (but it doesn't matter, honestly, because if I were a Buddhist I'd be a gnat's breath from enlightenment), it was lovely last year to be able to say to friends with a delicate whiff of censure, "Mm, holiday? Oh, no, we're staycationing this summer", as if we were electing to stay home amongst the credit card bills and stale, defeated air as recompense for their reckless squandering of the planet's resources on their bastard all-inclusive to Lanzarote.

I lost count of how many people asked, after a short pause, "Really? Staycationing where?"* The problem, y'see, lies in the definition of 'staycation'. Because while for some people 'stay' means remaining at a defined, fixed point, there are those for whom 'stay' means travelling as far as possible before risking malaria or friendship bracelets.

Anyway, truth be told, we were harldy putting ourselves out. A travel rug spread out on the lawn at home to suggest la dolce vita maybe carbon neutral, but when you add in the patio heater and gas barbecue necessary to combat the British weather, the whole concept starts to look about as leaky as the canopy of a disappearing rain forest.

A concerned Sting experiences

rising sea levels first hand

So how do the perennially skint amongst us who don't (for various reasons known only to themselves) play the mandolin, enjoy a change of scene and the chance to experience how other people live?

I'll tell you how.

You take a leaf out of the book of the local couple who viewed my bloody house last Sunday, who together have given rise to this year's holiday buzzword — micro-tourism.

They arrived on foot (of course), admired the scenery (ie, an unfitted kitchen and walk-in larder); in fact they immersed themselves in our culture for a full fifty minutes before enjoying a complimentary cup of tea and an eco-friendly walk home.

Total cost of their mini-break?

Except...

In order to undertake those lengthy, exhausting yet oh-so-necessary house-viewing preparations — namely decontaminating every surface bar the ceiling — I had to call upon the able assistance of Mr Muscle and his life partner, Extra Thick Bleach. By the time we'd finished, the hole in the ozone had unravelled to the equator.

Bloody time-wasters. Costing us the earth.

*And no matter how much brio I employed, "Um, here" only ever sounded weak, following as it did such a lofty statement of planet-saving intent.)

Snow Stops Play

2010-01-13T13:18:00.005Z

Oh, look, I'll get it out of the way.

Gratuitous snow porn

I know, I know! Everybody's familiar with the stuff; it's knocked news from its traditional top spot in the news, and there can be nobody alive in the United Kingdom who still believes that the sky is falling down except possibly a few creationists living in the less accessible suburbs of Dudley.

There's white stuff everywhere you look; the country has become one, big, cocaine-dusted toilet cistern, and you have to admit, everybody's certainly more chatty as a result. I can't slip or stumble anywhere without being given conspiratorial head shakes and what-is-this-like eyebrow waggles. In the Days Before The Snow Came this would have been reason enough to keep your taser with the safety off.

Anyway, I digress. This blog is not about snow, despite this;

Snow — hardcore, full frontal

but rather, the effect it has had on my new job.

Not my new new job that involves long hours hunched over my keyboard like, totally working, instead of blogging. This is my explanation for the paucity of posts lately, by the way, highlighting the main failing of a capitalist society — that the lazy and work-shy go unrewarded.

No, not my new-new job, but my new job as

Simon Cowell.

You see, I love writing. I always have. I was the annoying kid in class who would ask to do essays, and whose educational highpoint was having to write a 1500 word essay in detention on 'The Inside of a Ping Pong Ball'. That wasn't punishment, that was careers guidance.

Trouble is, I'm not really qualified to write about anything.

I haven't had a particularly interesting life, althouth I did almost enter my family to go on Telly Addicts and so conceivably, in an alternate reality, could have met Noel Edmonds.

I didn't go to university, thereby spectacularly failing to chum-up with future editors/producers/oscar-winning directors with whom to play the nepotism card.

I basically have no doors in which to jam my foot.

I've failed woefully in my efforts to initiate sex-romps with useful captains of industry, so blackmailing my way into my dream job looks doubtful, and I'm not prepared to be a war correspondent because

they get shot at, and
the desert air would create merry keratin-hell on my hair, no matter how much Frizz-Ease I managed to get through Customs.

A girl always wants to look her best, even under sniper fire.

Trouble with autodidacts is that they know a little about a lot of stuff. And a lot of that stuff isn't anything to be proud of. We just sort of pick up useless bits of information like a cat (Felis silvestris catus) picks up sticky-willies (the fruit of the plant you may know as cleavers, beggar lice, gripgrass or catchweed. Makes an excellent emetic/laxative, if you ever feel the need to purge organically).

I know a little bit about literature, theatre, film, editing, acupuncture, psychology, world religion, quantum theory, car mechanics, biology, chemistry, yoga, the natural world... Basically, I'm fairly useful to have on a pub quizz team, provided I'm not too drunk and it's not past my bedtime.

But looking through the newspapers, well, they're all experts aren't they? Political experts, Middle East experts, financial experts, gardening experts, relationship (ahem) experts, food experts, wine experts, fashion experts. There doesn't seem to be a place for someone who just, er, whitters, and y'know... rambles on about... erm... stuff. Vaguely.

I became momentarily excited when I discovered Caitlin Moran, columnist for The Times. She didn't seem qualified in anything except watching telly. But then I discovered she had an Interesting Childhood, and was into the Music Scene, and Flirted with Drugs.

How can I compete with that? My journey to adulthood was strictly lower case. My parents,with a shocking lack of Bohemian instinct, insisted my brothers and I went to school, failed to divorce or have Interesting People around to the house. For about a fortnight in my twenties I smoked a bit of skunk, until I realised I got the same result from a big meal.

Fortunately, thanks to a very angry comment left in response to one of my blogposts, my way forward has become clear.

I will become Simon Cowell.

Q: What is Simon good at?
A: Stating his opinion.

Well, I can do that.

Q: What else is he good at?
A: Letting criticism slide off him like a buttered whore on a fat man.

I can do that, too, courtesy of being an INTJ. Which is just a nice way of putting 'Borg'.

I am designed to rip people's dreams to shreds, to cast their hopes and aspirations onto the cold, cruel waves of life so they get tugged away by reality and lost forever. Basically, I am born to be a reviewer!

I mean, it started off as something to while away the time, a bit of a laugh but... I could do it for real, and in a Simon Cowell stylie! Thanks to the support and motivation of Mrs Keira Knightley's Pancakes, my future is opening up before me like an underage sex-pest on Jeremy Kyle.

*Sound of screeching brakes*

I've just heard that the local play I was planning to review this week, that I was itching to review — 'A Celebration' by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall — has been cancelled due to, oh yes, the bloody snow!

Guess I'll just have to put my dreams on ice...

Poetry in Motions

2009-12-29T20:57:00.001Z

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

2009-12-24T14:09:00.006Z

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

2009-12-13T15:21:00.002Z

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

2009-12-10T12:46:00.000Z

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

2009-12-08T16:28:00.004Z

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:

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.)

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!

2009-12-06T12:55:00.002Z

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...

Song Sung Blue

2009-11-29T18:52:00.004Z

Now. Am I being unreasonable? Am I, in your opinion, an unreasonable person?

That's not a leading question, by the way. I mean, I may be unreasonable; I hold my hands up that on some occasions I'm quite the SuBo, but generally speaking, on an every day kind of basis, I consider myself to be within the 'normal' range of mental functioning.

So no, actually, I don't think my expectations were too high. I don't think my demands were particularly trying or overly specific.

Perhaps I should have smiled, allowing that the

in the room was a figment of my imagination. But the damn thing was wearing a tutu while balanced on a beach ball juggling flaming torches and trumpeting 'Nelly the Elephant' simultaneously breaking wind. It was glaring. Distracting. A fact so solid in its existence that it attracted matter and bent light around it. A phenomenon for which many baffling explanations were offered except, well... The simplest conclusion was there for all to see but somehow... I don't know. It was if Occam's Razor had been shoved down the back of the settee for the evening with a cushion jammed on top for good measure. No-one was willing to say out loud the forehead-smackingly evident.

Until now...

In the Duns & District Amateur Operatic Society's production of Cinderella, nobody could sing.

Literally. There was an absence of tune; a deficiency of harmonics. It was the vocal equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. Melodies flew overhead only to mysteriously disappear and re-emerge several bars later shaken, confused and having inexplicably lost time.

Oh, look, I know what it's like putting on a panto. You've got lines to learn, props to find, then dwarves go missing, Prince Charming isn't, yadda-yadda... But Duns & District Amateur Operatic Society — the name is kinda suggestive. There's no denying the whiff of musicality about it. I know, I know! I should take the view that the production was by The Duns & District Amateur Operatic Society. A tiny shift of emphasis to the left, and normality is restored.

Only the rest of the production wasn't at all amateur; it shouldn't have needed to wave the term around like a pre-emptive apology. The acting was good, the costumes pleasingly fresh and glittery, the Ugly Sisters professionally, er, unfortunate of face, the musicians clearly talented; plus there were plenty of opportunities for the kiddies to shriek themselves unconscious.

Yet, dear God, every time the cast broke into song, I broke into hives. Greatest condolences must surely go to Cinderella whose voice, even with a compressor and all the puncture repair kits in the world, has been condemned forever as flat as a

Keira Knightley's chest

And to make matters worse, Cinderella's voice carried like a contagion. She passed it on to the girl playing Prince Charming — and you could see it, the look of surprise on her face when she opened her mouth to sing and a dirge came out — then Cinders coughed at Buttons and he went down with it too... One by one, they all fell to her airborne vocal mutation like a scene from Outbreak.

It was 'orrible. The only panto I've ever been to where the audience didn't need any encouragement to sing as long as they could drown out the noise drifting out from the stage.

Still, we're only just at the beginning of panto season and I mustn't be put off. I'll try to put the whole thing BEHIND ME!

Oh yes. I bloody-well will.

La Belle de Jour Sans Merci

2009-11-22T15:46:00.001Z

This is CLEARLY the way forward! I'm leaning over my desk and spanking myself with a shatterproof ruler as we speak for not coming up with the idea sooner!

You see, now that Dr Brooke Magnanti, aka the entrepreneurial Belle de Jour, has unmasked herself, I spy a gap in the market.

"What!" I hear you cry. "Isn't the Web already awash with eager young strumpets spilling the

on every last grunt, groan and thrust with older, often incompetent, sometimes physically deformed MEN?!!"

And you would be right, of course. You can't turn for tripping over shagographies in three volumes; for stubbing your big toe on racy, fully illustrated confessions of hookers with PhDs quoting Sartre while turning tricks with the knowing chirpiness of

Paul Daniels.

But still, it could be the start of something big — first a blog, then a book followed by the television adaptation (Kate Moss has a pleasingly schemie look about her that could play out quite well on the small screen...

... if EastEnders don't want her).

Then after the telly, the film. A Homeric bonk saga, wherein "rosy fingered dawn" becomes the title of a Sapphic sequel to 'Rita, Sue and Bob Too'.

And, finally, the ultimate prize. A bi-weekly magazine serial published by DeAgostini. Each issue will come with a component and a step-by-step guide to building your very own classic sex toy (final cost: £756.58 and that's excluding batteries).

With stakes this high, I need a hook — an edge, a USP — to set me apart from all the other eager young skanks.

How about (drumroll) the sex diary of a married woman! From the soft porn connoisseur to the prurient religious fundamentalist, there'll be something for everyone.

samedi, le 9 mai

I woke slowly, the milky light of dawn spilling

through the crack in the curtains. Something had woken me,

something urgent. What was it? It danced tantalizingly out of reach,

tapping lightly yet insistently to be let inside,

to be recognised and acknowledged.

Then I remembered. It was the same thing that had woken

me every morning for the last 15 years, the same

six and a half inches of hope triumphing over experience.

It could work, it really really could! And, thinking about it, how many blog entries would I actually have to write? I mean, with a hooker they, like, have LOADS of sex. Imagine all that writing up at the end of a long, exhausting night faking orgasms in inappropriate underwear? Poor cows. They can't even leave it 'til morning, what with theses to deliver and lectures to attend and stuff.

Me, I'm married — a whole other ball game with the added bonus of no tea-bagging. As it stands, I reckon I could easily manage to have sex once a month, leaving roughly twenty-nine days in which to draft, write, edit and proof a blog-post.

Bubbling with excitement, I divulge my audacious plan to conquer the marital-sex-blog-diary-world to El Hombre. He looks pensive. To be honest, he looks a bit grey.

"Once a month?"
"Well, only if you're up to it," I soothe. I need him on board for this. Literally.
"Once a month?"
"Er, yes?"
"And again, once?"
"Yes, yes," me, getting impatient. "Once. As in only one time."
"Sex is to become a once-a-month occurrence?"
"Oh, don't look at it like that. 'For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.' Jean-Paul Sartre. Now there was a man ahead of his time..."

Acknowledgments: This post could not have been written without the tireless determination and unwavering stamina of Twitter's finest: @A_M_Tweedsmuir, @sallonoroff and @TomMcLaughlin76. Have one for me!

A Pandemic of ARSES

2009-11-17T13:41:00.003Z

Yet again the two-headed beast that is

has postponed its appointment with obscurity, and yet again I despair of the creeping sickness infecting the population at an alarming rate.

Oh, I don't mean the Jedward 'phenomenon':

n.(pl. phenomena) — a fact or situation that is observed
to exist or happen, especially
one whose cause is in question.

Voting for talentless never-will-bes is a national pastime, like wearing polyester and saying "at the end of the day I was on a rollercoaster of emotions".

No, I'm talking about our growing inability to lose badly, when circumstance demands.

The British have always had a reputation for good sportsmanship, fair play and losing gracefully. If we're good at anything, it's losing; if we're top of a premier league — yup, it's in failure; if we're hoisting a cup bedecked with ribbons high over our heads, then it's for our expertise and ferocious commitment to coming last.

We lose properly. We sigh, give a wry smile, manfully shake our competitor's hand, and give credit where credit is due. After all, we know that when push came to shove, we were probably just a little bit crap. On the day the best person won.

But this sporting response is inextricably coupled with fair play. You can't have one without the other. If fair play is missing, then it's absolutely fine to express disappointment, dismay and anger — a stamped foot here, a few swear words there — before moving on.

However, the latest import from America — besides True Blood, the compensation culture, and the nutritionally deficient convenience of Pop Tarts — threatens this national notion of sportsmanship. In the face of unfairness and injustice, Phase I of the retroviral ARSES (Auto-Repressed and Stunted Expression Syndrome) presents as a tight, rictus grin accompanied with a glassy-eyed stare; during Phase II, the victim will vomit large gobbets of meaningless platitudes. The third and final stage manifests as a suppression of all naturally arising emotions, the victim's formerly colourful inner-landscape now carefully blocked in with beige, taupe and, terminally, fawn.

That ARSES is highly contagious, a pandemic only a matter of time, is obvious. Some folk are more vulnerable than others, namely social workers, politicians, and those in the media. The elderly, under-fives and those with underlying health problems remain largely unaffected, and scientists speculate this is due to them not giving a stuff about their self-image.

Competitors on The X Factor who have lost out to Jedward have clearly contracted ARSES. That tight, polite smile, the blank-eyed stare? Phase I, for sure.

A healthy person would have responded with a tantrum. Losing to Jedward should have ignited a flame of indignation, quickly spreading and growing into a conflagration of incandescent rage at the inequity of it all. Dreams lie in tatters, careers collapse, all because two smurfs with a hair gel habit large enough to rival that of Gary Rhodes in his heyday have managed the impossible and alchemized loose stools into polished turds.

If I had lost to Jedward I would have seized a mic stand and beaten them over the head with it until they could dance in time, all the while screaming,

"You want fame? Well, fame costs and this is where you start payin!"

I would have held them under the dry ice until they stopped moving. I might even have used them as human javelins, hurling them at each other until they became impaled on the points of their own Shockwaves Ultra Strong.

Every fibre of my being would have strained against the injustice, the lack of fair play. I would be looking for bunnies to boil.

And that would be okay. Because anger, frustration, disappointment, sadness — these are all human emotions, and to deny them is to become essentially automative. Beige. Taupe. Yes, even fawn.

Since when has identity-management become more important than identity itself?

Though seemingly a recent occurrence, I suspect it all began years back, when the ARSES virus first stowed away on imports of 'The Waltons'.

The Professional Amateur?

2009-11-11T19:29:00.001Z

Flyte-Tipping has been reliably informed that second-week rehearsals for Keith Waterhouse's 'Celebration' by The Duns Players show some worrying signs:

There is almost a full cast. In the world of am-dram, this state of affairs is as unlikely as Richard Hammond's hair. Only two characters remain uncast and Flyte-Tipping understands that the director plans to poach actors from another society's production of Cinderella. We're not entirely sure how he's going to achieve this without first getting his hands on quantities of Rohypnol and WKD just not readily available at The Co-Op (which in any event could leave The Duns Players facing repercussions ranging from an outright declaration of am-dram war, to vague post-performance feelings of dirtiness).
There is a rehearsal schedule — repeat — schedule. It seems that turning up is no longer good enough, you now have to turn up knowing, bizarrely, what page of the script you're on. A couple of die-hard seat-of-your-panters feel this to be a step too far along the professional road. Flyte-Tipping's only concern is that such professionalism misses the point of am-dram — a bit like safe sex and going on the game.
A member of the cast is a paid actor. Seriously. He gets paid for acting. As in a living. A career. Yet, here he is, walking beatifically amongst The Duns Players like Gok Wan through British Home Stores. In this week's rehearsal he managed to elevate the character of Stan, a lad with learning difficulties, to Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal of Christy Brown. Laudably inspirational, this has spurred on the rest of the cast to find new and inventive ways to give their character some sort of oscar-winning congenital disadvantage.

Next week The Dun's Players move to rehearsing TWICE a week. Normally news such as this would set our hearts a-thrilling, our mouths flooding in anticipatory pleasure. Now we're not so sure. The whole point of am-dram — surely? — is that it's crap; well-crafted, well-rehearsed and well-meaning, but essentially crap all the same.

All this recent professionalism... I mean, who would want to go and watch it?

Death Becomes Her

2009-11-09T16:51:00.004Z

Now, I don't know about you, but at this time of year — what with mists wreathing the fields, crackling trees setting light to the horizon, pumpkins casting out their cosy glow into filigreed nights — my thoughts naturally turn to

death.

Yes, you heard right, death. And this makes me unusual, according to a recent survey which decreed that we don't think enough about snuffing it. Well, it's hard isn't it, what with the school run and inflexible working hours. Maybe kicking the bucket should be put on the national curriculum along with sex, drugs and internet grooming, just to make sure our kids are properly scared when someone walks behind them, not just a little bit jittery.

Most Beautiful cuddled up beside me in bed yesterday, Sunday mornings designated for Good Conversations. She gleefully reported that her Halloween pumpkin had developed a nasty flesh-eating disease and was smelling worse than Spider's litter tray that time we left it by the radiator. Running with the corruption theme, I saw an opportunity to open her mind to contemplations of death outside the stifling scientific restrictions of Silent Witness and CSI.

"Isn't it amazing," I enthused, "how at the precise moment that spark of life — spirit, soul, whatever you want to call it — leaves our body, the process of putrefaction swings into action? Our body immediately, without pause for thought, starts decomposing, liquefying into a cellular slurry and a few bits of glistening bone."
Most Beautiful considered this. "And jewellery. Because that wouldn't rot down. If you died wearing jewellery. If say, you collapsed phoning for help and didn't have time to take it off."
"True," I concede.
"Pacemakers. They don't rot down either. I heard from Emily's dad that some of them are radioactive and could last for centuries, which I don't think very environmentally friendly." (The thing with Most Beautiful, is that she's nigh on impossible to derail until she reaches what she considers to be her conversational destination. It can take WEEKS, even without involving National Express.)

Mark Vernon (priest, then atheist, then agnostic, now probably Lib-Dem), is quoted in The Times exhorting us to make death our friend and encourage our children to do likewise. Here is his suggestion on how to achieve this:

"If you have children, get a pet..."

As if it's only a matter of wearying inevitability, that as sure as night follows day the Grim Reaper will come a-calling with his specially adapted hamster-scythe:

With their wavering attention spans children will be BFF with Death in a matter of weeks, bonding over an accident involving stairs and insinuations of hamster-ball tampering.

"I don't believe we've got a spirit, anyway," Most Beautiful continued.
"No?"
"No. It's just your heart stopping, then the rest of your body can't get oxygen and you die."

Curse you, Gil Grissom, curse you! *shakes fist at sky*

Most Beautiful, warming to her theme, went on. "Your heart is like a pumpkin, see? It reaches its sell-by date and that's it, it stops beating and starts smelling. The end."

As I say, she's quite difficult to derail...

Cold Comfort

2009-11-05T17:10:00.002Z

My heart leapt like a lamb in spring when I first read it. There, in earnest black and white, in the style section of The Guardian of all places, so it must be true:

"Tracksuit bottoms are coming out the closet"

I sighed in relief, an action made easier by my elasticated waistband. At last, fleecy grey marl was in the ascendancy, soon to take up its rightful place beside big knickers and thermal vests in the pantheon of Female Indispensables. Finally, I thought, fashion has seen sense, comfort has indeed triumphed over style; fashionistas have recognised the error of their ways in creating clothes unwearable by anything other than pert-nippled mannequins or prepubescent girls who have yet to develop taste, nevermind pertness.

Up here in Boudicca Country, we deem it unwise to sashay down the street with one boob hanging out like a sock left forgotten on a wall. We don't have the weather for a start.

The feminist movement up here, while applauded, is ring-fenced with a chapped-faced practicality. Burn your bra? Not bloody likely. It's one more layer between you and a slow death from hypothermia. Anything keeping your blood from freezing in your veins gets a big thumbs up in these parts, frostbite permitting.

Jogging bottoms are as an essential part of northern life as childhood obesity and S.A.D. Jogging bottoms understand what it's like to live up here — the cold, the mud, the pies — they know all about plunging temperatures and bulging waistlines. They cater for both cause and effect.

"Does my bum look big in this?"

The fact of the matter is, in tracksuit bottoms everyone's bum takes on the size and scale of a house that has somehow bypassed planning restrictions and now overlooks the neighbours. They are the greatest egalitarian arse-levellers since dropped waists and jodhpurs.

Already, my mind's eye has me schlumping around Tesco with a spring in my step and a double waistband as high as my armpits. Whenever I catch an envious gaze (and rest assured, I will), I shall reply with a cocked finger and a cheerfully smug "Yep, that's right — 65% pure polyester, 35% cotton", before breezing on to Cold Meats.

Happy, shiny thoughts come to an abrupt halt. Reading on, Jess Cartner-Morley informs me that the only joggers counting as 'fashion' are the ones with, gulp, ELASTICATED cuffs. What kind of wilful, arse-magnifying MADNESS is this? Only the loose of bowel sport elasticated ankle cuffs, for crying out loud! That's why you only EVER see them on toddlers and old guys.

Still reeling from the whole snug-at-the-ankle jogging bottoms sucker-punch, Cartner-Morley delivers the crushing death blow:

"...that you can only wear them with heels."

WTF?

With HEELS?! As in stilettos?!

Supposing just for a moment that I did want to look like a toddler clopping my way down to the corner shop in my mum's shoes to ask for two ounces of sherbert pips, the aforementioned inclemency of Scottish Borders weather would make this outfit viable on precisely three days of the year. Otherwise I'd either slip on the ice and break my neck, or have to be hauled out of the mud with a rope and a 4x4. I mean, one look at my marl-swaddled arse and I'd be confused with livestock.

Grrrr, fashion. Gives with one hand, takes with the other.

Developing a List

2009-10-30T18:08:00.002Z

There are many things I am not:

I am NOT a

Or, as you know, a

Both these jobs, I would imagine, require a certain degree of organisation. For instance, a rocket scientist would need to keep track of what shiny metal bit goes where; you would need to be sure that you didn't muddle rocket fuel with the wiper fluid, that you hadn't confused Sod's Law with that of Newton's Third. Lives DEPEND on having the ability to work in a systematic fashion.

Same goes for domestic goddesses... Well, obviously lives are hardly imperilled if a recipe for a cherry cafloutis isn't followed to the letter but nevertheless, slipshoddery in the old Nigellas can send you down a path made treacherous with public mortification at the PTA cake stall.

The horror of public mockery

These people need lists. Lists were developed for exactly this type of person, like Factor VIII for haemophiliacs. They play an essential role in their day-to-day existence; without lists rockets would drop from the sky and scones fail to rise. The science of dough management and exothermic chemical reactions hinges on the ability to write stuff down and put it in numerical order.

Now, stand up everybody. Good. Right, anybody who is NOT a rocket scientist or a domestic goddess, please sit down.

As I suspected.

For most of us, lists have become an unnecessary feature of our lives like Kerry Katona and pre-grated carrot. List compilation has become a modern malaise, the crack cocaine of the literate poor. At first it creeps up on you, pretending to be your friend by boosting confidence, making you more socially acceptable, filling you with the warm feel-good factor of the ordered cognoscenti. But then after a while you need more to get the same buzz. You start ordering your iPod (and those of your kids) into playlists, you keep a birthday book AND a calendar.

Before you know it, you're having people over to admire your new in and out trays.

The problem with lists is that you have to be a List Person for them to work. Otherwise it's just a half-hearted effort to delay forgetting something. How many unread shopping lists spew from a groaning glove compartment or tickertape around our ankles every time we pull out a wallet or purse? Carefully numbered, neatly handwritten lists making sure we don't forget our innate half-wittery along with the semi-skimmed?

As I'm not a rocket scientist OR a domestic goddess it follows that I'm no list writer. I forget stuff. Frequently. But the up-side of this is that getting from A to B can involve going the long way round, the pretty way — meeting up with folk I hadn't planned to, buying things I don't know how to cook, and dreaming up things to write about which weren't in my head this morning.

Without lists, life is just so more... alive.

If you would like to live a life free of lists, follow this eight-step programme...

The Uncommonness of Common Sense

2009-10-28T15:14:00.000Z

"For God's sake, use your common sense!"

There were four of us, only one of Mum. Consequently, she said this a LOT. Her central nervous system had maternally evolved to such a stage that it could recognise situations of gross, childhood buffoonery without even bothering the brain, bypassing it altogether with a reflex arc. So when one of us stumbled into her arms snivelling for comfort after tumbling from the washing line without the aid of a safety net, "Where was your common sense?" was dispensed as a matter of course, along with a brisk rub, a quick kiss, and a teaspoon of

mixed in a glass of squash to make it fizzy.

But what is common sense? Some of us agree that using your common sense means accessing a universal vault of blindingly OBVIOUS conclusions; conclusions so obvious that to reach them barely needs any brain activity whatsoever. We know without thinking that climbing an electricity pylon in a storm is inadvisable, that texting while drunk is a VERY BAD idea, and that getting a tattoo of the name of your beloved inscribed across your chest automatically leads to an acrimonious split and some tearfully deft editing.

In the same way, my mother knew that our garden wasn't the Grand Canyon, the washing line a tightrope, and that none of us was Phillipe Petit; putting all of these factors together equalled an accident waiting to happen.

Common sense here is defined by a basic, inescapable logic.

But what about that other definition of common sense — the logic of the common people, of the majority? Bearing in mind this type of reasoning is applied by politicians and lynch mobs alike, surely we're right to remain wary of it. Bearing in mind this type of reasoning sees

as hot favourites to win the 'X Factor', we are right to nurture a healthy suspicion with regard to those who smugly say "I'm only using my common sense".

And they're always smug these people. Always.

The trouble I have with this definition is that in reality it is sense-lite, the only thing going for it is the power of numbers. It seeks to preserve the status quo, using arguments such as "That's how it's always done" or "Just because..."; a refuge of the scared and timid when faced with change or a differing viewpoint. The unthinking side of logic.

The reason I've been deliberating these semantics arose from an article in The Times by Caitlin Moran, 'The Joy of Obliquely Being Accused of Being a Paedophile'. It provoked ENORMOUS reader reponse in the form of hostile on-line comments.

I won't reproduce the article for you here, just follow the link above, but these comments highlight the very real difference in how common sense is interpreted. I was in the painfully small minority supporting the Morans because I tend to see things with an objective logic. But clearly the majority view the world through more subjective eyes.

I'm not saying I'm right — there's that minority I mentioned, after all — but if you have a political party promising to lead the country under the banner of common sense, it's good to be clear just what definition is being applied. And possibly to be just a little bit afraid if it chooses to create national policy based on the fickle and subjective nature of the pitchfork-waving masses.

And as for the definition of logic? Well, for God's sake, use your common sense...

Northern Exposure

2009-10-25T15:20:00.001Z

It seems that am-dram in the Borders has gone all

and

Don't get me wrong, here at Flyte-Tipping we are BIG fans of trembly dogs and unleavened head gear, but we are surprised that two similar plays have stumbled in front of our headlights at the same time.

We have a choice. Do we swerve wildly and continue on our way with nary a glance in the rear-view, or do we slam on brakes, steer into the skid, then summon the courage to get out and examine the

road kill?

Stomach of bloody cast iron, us! Of COURSE we get out! We would be failing in our duty to bring you the very best of the very worst of Border-based amateur dramatics if we drove off. Besides, we may have only clipped them, they could be lying perfectly intact with nothing worse than a few superficial cuts and bruises. And if there proves to be no sign of life, well, we can roll them into a ditch, cover them in brushwood and say no more about it.

First up, then.

Bill Naughton's northern comedy-drama 'Spring & Port Wine', performed by a new group, Pocket Productions, directed by a magnificently pregnant Lizzie Bell at The Maltings last Wednesday to Saturday. Set in the late 1960s, a time of explosive social change, blah-blah, the play was a wonderful observation of the differing aspirations and expectations of parents and their children.

On the whole, it was a faultless production, with imaginative three-quarter staging drawing the audience into closer involvement. While ALL the performers were excellent (not one 'ee-bah-gum', can you credit it?), the Flyte-Tipping Award for Realism in Theatre (F.A.R.T.) must go to Hugo Hughes, veteran treader-of-boards and a joy to watch. A good first-turn was delivered by A-level student, Miss (sorry, I lost my programme so it may or may not be her name) Gudgeon, as Hilda, with slight projection problems being our only quibble. Had she been acting on the stage proper, rather than the considerably smaller Henry Travers Studio, she may have struggled to be heard. One to watch, though.

The lovely Miles was on hand as usherette and genial host and it became clear, talking to cast members post-performance, that he had offered invaluable directorial advice to first-timer Liz.

The end of this man's talents is still far from view. We LOVE you, Miles!

All in all, an impressive debut from Pocket Productions.

Moving on, then...

Come January 2010 we can all look forward to a production of 'Celebration' by the late Keith Waterhouse and his long-time collaborator, Willis Hall, by the newly regrouped Duns Players. This will be their third production and will be directed by Barry Jones, another of the old thesps that seem to litter the countryside in these parts like bog roll in the hedgerows.

Whether this production of another northern comedy-drama set in the 1960s is as successful as 'Spring & Port Wine' is less a done deal. For a start, the proposed venue of the cavernous Duns Volunteer Hall creates real staging difficulties and, it has to be said, the calibre of acting talent amongst the Duns Players — ahem — varies widely.

So right from the start pulse is thready and sats low.

Still where there's life, there are fingers crossed, so Flyte-Tipping will hold-off from digging a

'til January...

Baking as Passive-Aggression

2009-10-20T17:05:00.001+01:00

I am not, it has to be said, much of a domestic goddess.

And for 363 days of the year this works to my advantage. I can live up to people's low expectations, basking in the warm glow of accomplishment. However, my peace of mind unravels two days every year — my children's birthdays.

Suddenly I'm expected to separate egg whites, beat things to dropping consistency, crimp, cream and caramelize with innate skill and savoir-faire. Only last night, on Masterchefs, The Professionals did I learn that pastry was a DISCIPLINE, and one that had to be undertaken SERIOUSLY. Michel Roux said it with such soft-spoken gravity that my jaw fell open in awe.

What a stupid

I've been!

Blundering through life thinking tae kwon do was a discipline, karate, that thing with the sticks, even water-boarding at a push — but PASTRY?! Look at it the wrong way and that choux bun could KILL you. And we're not talking clogged arteries here. We're talking a sucker punch to the Adam's apple that you won't even hear coming.

In the world of Twitter this morning a distress call went up. Poor @audreysluyter. She has a birthday looming, her son's. She has courageously decided to attempt a cake in the shape of a train. Now, I'm guessing from her tone of desperation that @audreysluyter is no Jane or Nigella. In fact, I'm guessing she's exactly like me, with wooden spoon and Magimix lying snug and warm under a thick pelt of dust.

Not for me the competitive, bun-eat-bun world of architectural kiddy cake baking. I know someone who genuinely believes she's a superior breed of mother because she insists on creating fairy palaces, and 100 Aker Woods, and High Street Musical tableaux out of an organic Victoria sponge and half-a-dozen mini-rolls for her predictably bored and ungrateful offspring.

But of course she's not superior — between you and me, she's on medication for a personality disorder — but she is desperate to get one over on the rest of us. She's a closet Alpha mum who exercises her frustrated lack of status through passive-aggressive baking.

Is this the sort of club you want to belong to? No. So when your child's birthday rolls around, do what I do. Bake a sponge, cover it with icing, then smother it with sweets containing a sugar-to-E number ratio high enough to cause temporary blindness.

Your kids will love you for it!