It is Hogmanay, New Year’s Eve, the cusp between yesterday and tomorrow. Bloggiana and I are huddled in what passes for our drawing room, Our Dog licking his parts contentedly in the corner, the fire sputtering reluctantly in a wind-chilled grate. Upstairs, Teener, Bloggiana’s daughter plays with her Kiddy Set of Safety-Enhanced Razorblades; while Adolesco, Bloggiana’s temporarily resident godson, negotiates the by-ways of a hand-held device game, War of the Baby-Shredders. It is cold, cold. Outside, any sparrow brave enough to sneeze looks on in horror as its spit freezes into an instant minute hail shower. Ice grows apace. Pipes expand menacingly. Global warming seems to have taken on a sinister new disguise.
Keeping ourselves warm by lighting as many consecutive cigarettes as we can hold, Bloggiana and I reflect on the fact that we have enjoyed a very lazy festive period indeed. What with trotting down to London before Christmas for a week of Parties, then returning home for a further week of the same, we found ourselves not only worn out and bursting out of our jeans but to all intents and purposes, completely sapped. To the extent that by the time Santa Crunch was required to visit, it was all we could manage to dig out the shooting socks and count out two tangerines.
Even now, with the goose and its trimmings firmly lodged in the memory of Christmases past, I have to gird myself to press the On button on the Remote Control. Or indeed to take a bath. Gamely, Bloggiana, prostrate in front of the telly, catches up on last year’s retrospective of Ten Decades of Bruce Forsyth in Variety Television. Behind her, I fiddle with the pieces of a 100-piece jigsaw (theme: Robin in Snow) allowing the process to numb me into a kind of torpor, the like of which I know from experience is very difficult to shake off. On either side of us, half-empty beakers of PG give testimony to our creeping festive indolence. A box of chocolate covered MDF balls lies half-eaten by our feet.
Then suddenly, the old year turns round to bite us when the Brucie show comes to an end and we realise A. that it’s eleven o’clock and B. that the groaning coming from upstairs is in fact not the sound of hand-held device pleasure but the sound of pain. Adolesco and Teener are so hungry, they are actually in tears. Bloggiana and I exchange guilty glances. It is time, we chime simultaneously, to stir ourselves. It is time, we chime, inhaling deeply like a couple of steeplechasers snorting at the start of the Boxing Day race at Kempton, to stand up.
&&&
Fifty minutes later.
I have managed to wash enough pans so that we can cook some pasta with butter. Adolesco has come to terms with the fact that eating and baby-shredding cannot take place simultaneously. Teener has been persuaded to abandon her telephone call to Childline. Bloggiana is sitting down again, this time on a chair next to a table – much more handy for drinking.
As the pasta steams promisingly on the Expensive Cooker, the four of us sit in silence. It is the kind of silence which could mean we are all reflecting on the year that is about to come to an end. Assuming it is, I myself indulge in a spot of mulling. The death of a rabbit. The death of a dog. The arrival of two new hamsters apparently grown from a hamster starter kit. Freedom (Bloggiana’s) from That Miserable Shit, as she likes to designate her outgoing spouse. Freedom (mine) from any embarassment ever again about nits. The discovery of Internet Dating. The discovery of Facebook. Chutney.
And there are other factors to ponder as well. Adolesco is surely thinking about his rite of passage when he thumped Measly Twat-Sniveller. Teener must be reflecting on the joys that our friend Doris unleashed when he showed Bloggiana how to go barking.
Of course the year has brought us the credit crunch and more rain than we knew what to do with and unspeakable pain for stockbrokers up and down the land. It has brought us the news that we must move from the house that we love, leave behind the horses we are wedded to and the large bits of furniture we won’t be able to fit into a boarding house in Morecambe. It has brought us to a point of change, something Bloggiana and I would rather avoid.
It has also brought us to this silence and as I come to the end of indulging in mine, I ask Bloggiana exactly how she has been using hers.
Fuck me, Bloggiana trumpets, her voice scything through the air like a scythe, I was just reflecting on how bloody cold it is hereabouts. Any sign of that pasta?
And as I finally feed us all at ten minutes to midnight, Bloggiana pipes up once more. Pass us the PG, would you, old girl?
At which I reach out for a new bottle, unthuck the cork, pour.
And, observed wryly by Teener and Adolesco – both far more mature than their adult companions - we raise our glasses to another year. Jesus Christ, says Bloggiana wiping her lips and letting forth a small shudder, that was a blinder.
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Monday, 15 December 2008
TAKING STOCK Part I
It’s been a sensationally tough week hereabouts and Bloggiana and I are all but ready to hang up our boots and say sod it.
First Rubirosa came with her terrible news that Trickyladdio her erstwhile feller is doing precisely that, remaining erstwhile.
Next we were all given a sleepless night when Bloggiana’s daughter Teener actually fainted on account of the smell emanating from Our Dog’s undercarriage, this meaning two things: first, we had to spend a long time sitting in Casualty while Teener’s head was examined, (revealing among other things an as yet unresolved issue with nits); and second, we were forced to take the scissors to Our Dog, a perfectly loathsome undertaking which involves gnashing teeth, smell, rotting wood and dags.
Next a teaspoon got caught in the kitchen grinder – the same grinder that has been working perfectly for eighteen years – and in spite of our best efforts, would not budge, this meaning two things: first, the grinder no longer works because second, the grinder is now so old, there is no one still alive who knows how to fix it.
And finally I, Piccalilli, got a parking ticket. And Lord knows there is nothing more guaranteed to put everyone hereabouts in a bad mood than the giving away of perfectly hard won cash to the state.
So last night Bloggiana and I found ourselves sitting by a sputtering fire with wine in our cups, cigarettes between our lips and an unvoiced pain in our wintry hearts. I mean dammit, dammit to hell, erupted Bloggiana at one point. And all I could do at that point was look up and nod my head in agreement.
In actual fact it has to be said that these taking stock moments in Our House are few and far between. Yes, Bloggiana has had a hell of a time getting rid of her outgoing spouse. Yes, we have no money and Our House is going to have to be sold. Yes, the dog stinks, the horses are more than we can afford, there’s dust everywhere and the mice keep stealing our crumpets. But for all of that, Bloggiana and I and Teener and our varying cast of friends remain robustly cheerful.
So it was not too long last night before the air began to lift. Bloggiana reminded me that Doris is coming to stay soon - Doris, our man in Istanbul, who taught Bloggiana how to go barking. Then I remembered that I still had a cheque in my wallet from the local council which represents an entirely unexpected £2.50 rate rebate. Then a co-equestrienne knocked on the door to tell us she had managed to capture a photograph of the white crow on her mobile – and we all know that a white crow indicates new beginnings. Then co-equestrienne went on to tell us she had also spotted one of Our Cats biffing a young fox on the nose and seeing him off. And if all that wasn’t thrilling enough, I opened our latest batch of chutney for a quick taster – and blow me down if it wasn’t absolutely yummy.
Fuck me, said Bloggiana, as a large spoonful of the brown stuff disappeared down her gullet, damned if I don’t think that isn’t one of your best, she went on.
So then we were obliged to open a new bottle of PG to celebrate. And suddenly everything did not seem too bad, after all.
First Rubirosa came with her terrible news that Trickyladdio her erstwhile feller is doing precisely that, remaining erstwhile.
Next we were all given a sleepless night when Bloggiana’s daughter Teener actually fainted on account of the smell emanating from Our Dog’s undercarriage, this meaning two things: first, we had to spend a long time sitting in Casualty while Teener’s head was examined, (revealing among other things an as yet unresolved issue with nits); and second, we were forced to take the scissors to Our Dog, a perfectly loathsome undertaking which involves gnashing teeth, smell, rotting wood and dags.
Next a teaspoon got caught in the kitchen grinder – the same grinder that has been working perfectly for eighteen years – and in spite of our best efforts, would not budge, this meaning two things: first, the grinder no longer works because second, the grinder is now so old, there is no one still alive who knows how to fix it.
And finally I, Piccalilli, got a parking ticket. And Lord knows there is nothing more guaranteed to put everyone hereabouts in a bad mood than the giving away of perfectly hard won cash to the state.
So last night Bloggiana and I found ourselves sitting by a sputtering fire with wine in our cups, cigarettes between our lips and an unvoiced pain in our wintry hearts. I mean dammit, dammit to hell, erupted Bloggiana at one point. And all I could do at that point was look up and nod my head in agreement.
In actual fact it has to be said that these taking stock moments in Our House are few and far between. Yes, Bloggiana has had a hell of a time getting rid of her outgoing spouse. Yes, we have no money and Our House is going to have to be sold. Yes, the dog stinks, the horses are more than we can afford, there’s dust everywhere and the mice keep stealing our crumpets. But for all of that, Bloggiana and I and Teener and our varying cast of friends remain robustly cheerful.
So it was not too long last night before the air began to lift. Bloggiana reminded me that Doris is coming to stay soon - Doris, our man in Istanbul, who taught Bloggiana how to go barking. Then I remembered that I still had a cheque in my wallet from the local council which represents an entirely unexpected £2.50 rate rebate. Then a co-equestrienne knocked on the door to tell us she had managed to capture a photograph of the white crow on her mobile – and we all know that a white crow indicates new beginnings. Then co-equestrienne went on to tell us she had also spotted one of Our Cats biffing a young fox on the nose and seeing him off. And if all that wasn’t thrilling enough, I opened our latest batch of chutney for a quick taster – and blow me down if it wasn’t absolutely yummy.
Fuck me, said Bloggiana, as a large spoonful of the brown stuff disappeared down her gullet, damned if I don’t think that isn’t one of your best, she went on.
So then we were obliged to open a new bottle of PG to celebrate. And suddenly everything did not seem too bad, after all.
Thursday, 4 December 2008
TEARS Part I
Bloggiana’s cousin Rubirosa came to stay for a few days last week on the rebound. Her boyfriend Romeo had just come and announced that what they had was not what he wanted and that he was going to go away for a while and leave her to her own devices while he worked out exactly what he did want.
Now I should tell you that Rubirosa is a fine girl with a fine head on her shoulders. Over the years, she has been responsible for many of the grander moments in Bloggiana’s life – the wisecracks flow and a sense of being engaged in life is reinforced and those who spend time at her table leave it feeling replete and enriched. Rubirosa’s spirit is one of life’s larger organs. And her heart was Romeo's for life.
Bloggiana and I had not realised in advance how distraught Rubirosa was and we had organised a season of dinners and a houseful of guests. Children poured out of crevices of Our House throughout Rubirosa’s stay and the Pinot G coursed into and out of our veins like lifeblood itself. There was much ribaldry, many bad jokes, late night giggling, early morning moans. Cigarette smoke swirled in atmospheric spirals around us all and we sat with half-closed eyes and laughed until our ribs ached.
Each time we turned to look at Rubirosa, she seemed serene, flowing gracefully over her own stormy seas. For the benefit of the children, she did a cracking routine with a burning butt and a racoon hand puppet. For the benefit of the grown-ups, she adopted a range of accents from Indian takeaway owner who’d been brought up on the outskirts of Glasgow to shepherd from somewhere near Shap to all-singing, all-dancing fully paid up member of the Sloane Rangers’ Handbook Nostalgia club. Guests, children, Bloggiana and I all beamed in her light, and thanked our lucky stars we were able to share it.
But underneath, Rubirosa was not feeling serene at all and when we went to bed on the last night, it transpired that the smiles were rictus grins and the laughter was the other side of sadness and the accents were varying takes on first glimpses of insanity. Rubirosa, we said, trying to hold onto her before her stormy seas washed her out of our sight, don’t be so sad, we said helplessly.
And once they came, Rubirosa’s tears could not stop. They were tears like pearls and tears like stones and tears like thistle heads. Huge tears of pain and grief and gnawing self-recrimination. By the time the tears were in full flow, Bloggiana and I were somewhat muzzy-headed yet that did not ease any of the pain that we felt at seeing the awful terrible degree to which Rubirosa had been wounded. In a trinity, we sat and held hands while the tears flowed. Now and again, Bloggiana withdrew her hand so she could reacquaint her glass with her lips – but it was not for long and we locked ourselves together, hoping that some of our love for our sainted grieving cousin would rub off and bring the dear girl back from the abyss.
Later, as we left Rubirosa to sleep, and headed off to our respective billets, Bloggiana said in a loud voice Fuck it. I mean damn and blast it to buggery, what on earth has got into the man? And, no doubt thinking for a moment of her own recent escape from life-partnership, pointed her lips towards the M6 southbound and blew one parting smoke picture in the air – which I could have sworn depicted a pair of fingers pointing sharply upwards in an unforgiving, uncompromising, distinctly Churchillian V-shape.
Now I should tell you that Rubirosa is a fine girl with a fine head on her shoulders. Over the years, she has been responsible for many of the grander moments in Bloggiana’s life – the wisecracks flow and a sense of being engaged in life is reinforced and those who spend time at her table leave it feeling replete and enriched. Rubirosa’s spirit is one of life’s larger organs. And her heart was Romeo's for life.
Bloggiana and I had not realised in advance how distraught Rubirosa was and we had organised a season of dinners and a houseful of guests. Children poured out of crevices of Our House throughout Rubirosa’s stay and the Pinot G coursed into and out of our veins like lifeblood itself. There was much ribaldry, many bad jokes, late night giggling, early morning moans. Cigarette smoke swirled in atmospheric spirals around us all and we sat with half-closed eyes and laughed until our ribs ached.
Each time we turned to look at Rubirosa, she seemed serene, flowing gracefully over her own stormy seas. For the benefit of the children, she did a cracking routine with a burning butt and a racoon hand puppet. For the benefit of the grown-ups, she adopted a range of accents from Indian takeaway owner who’d been brought up on the outskirts of Glasgow to shepherd from somewhere near Shap to all-singing, all-dancing fully paid up member of the Sloane Rangers’ Handbook Nostalgia club. Guests, children, Bloggiana and I all beamed in her light, and thanked our lucky stars we were able to share it.
But underneath, Rubirosa was not feeling serene at all and when we went to bed on the last night, it transpired that the smiles were rictus grins and the laughter was the other side of sadness and the accents were varying takes on first glimpses of insanity. Rubirosa, we said, trying to hold onto her before her stormy seas washed her out of our sight, don’t be so sad, we said helplessly.
And once they came, Rubirosa’s tears could not stop. They were tears like pearls and tears like stones and tears like thistle heads. Huge tears of pain and grief and gnawing self-recrimination. By the time the tears were in full flow, Bloggiana and I were somewhat muzzy-headed yet that did not ease any of the pain that we felt at seeing the awful terrible degree to which Rubirosa had been wounded. In a trinity, we sat and held hands while the tears flowed. Now and again, Bloggiana withdrew her hand so she could reacquaint her glass with her lips – but it was not for long and we locked ourselves together, hoping that some of our love for our sainted grieving cousin would rub off and bring the dear girl back from the abyss.
Later, as we left Rubirosa to sleep, and headed off to our respective billets, Bloggiana said in a loud voice Fuck it. I mean damn and blast it to buggery, what on earth has got into the man? And, no doubt thinking for a moment of her own recent escape from life-partnership, pointed her lips towards the M6 southbound and blew one parting smoke picture in the air – which I could have sworn depicted a pair of fingers pointing sharply upwards in an unforgiving, uncompromising, distinctly Churchillian V-shape.
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
CHUTNEY LABELS Part II
One World, One Chutney ©2008 presents the first in a line of Action Initiative Chutneys. Eco-friendly, low on carbon emissions, tax-efficient and politically correct, our new Golden Beetroot Chutney is set to take the relish world by storm. Indeed, it was only a month after its launch that this groundbreaking relish was featured in full technicolour on the front page of Climate Change magazine, as a beacon of environmental innovation in a world where carbon dioxides and greenhouse gases are in danger of obscuring the efforts of the minority individual.
Many and various are those who have taken this new and exciting flavour of chutney to their hearts. Professor Sir Achingly Bright of Corpus Chutney College has vowed to take a pot of Golden Beetroot with him into every Senate meeting he is invited to attend during his tenure as Regius Professor of Topical Studies.
Likewise Mr Jolyon Target, head of the British Institute for the re-integration of the Bearded Tit into the county of North-north-east Buntingshire, has adopted the Golden Beetroot Chutney cause. Forget the RSPB, his t-shirt boldly (and possibly suicidally) trumpets, I am a fully paid up member of the GBC fan club.
Meanwhile, the battle to discover the recipe for this state-of-the-art relish is growing apace. Laboratory technicians, DNA experts, world-class sommeliers and sniffer dogs have been brought in by rival chutney conglomerates to try and decipher the Golden Beetroot’s ingredients.
Rest assured however that the secrets of the contents of this jar remain safe with us. www.oneworldonechutney.blogspot.com or e-mail us on oneworld.onechutney@virgin.net.
Many and various are those who have taken this new and exciting flavour of chutney to their hearts. Professor Sir Achingly Bright of Corpus Chutney College has vowed to take a pot of Golden Beetroot with him into every Senate meeting he is invited to attend during his tenure as Regius Professor of Topical Studies.
Likewise Mr Jolyon Target, head of the British Institute for the re-integration of the Bearded Tit into the county of North-north-east Buntingshire, has adopted the Golden Beetroot Chutney cause. Forget the RSPB, his t-shirt boldly (and possibly suicidally) trumpets, I am a fully paid up member of the GBC fan club.
Meanwhile, the battle to discover the recipe for this state-of-the-art relish is growing apace. Laboratory technicians, DNA experts, world-class sommeliers and sniffer dogs have been brought in by rival chutney conglomerates to try and decipher the Golden Beetroot’s ingredients.
Rest assured however that the secrets of the contents of this jar remain safe with us. www.oneworldonechutney.blogspot.com or e-mail us on oneworld.onechutney@virgin.net.
CHUTNEY LABELS Part I
One World, One Chutney ©2008 presents the ultimate in Christmas relishes: Apple, Date and Cranberry Chutney. It is said that when John the Baptist first tasted this truly sensational foodstuff, he almost lost his head. Ditto Catherine Parr. Spice barons, middle eastern warriors, cheese experts and takeaway addicts the world over have been known to stumble over each other in queues to sample our Christmas Chutney. They take the aroma of it to their beds at night and have to sip water mixed with lemon juice in order to dampen the memory of it which otherwise torments their newly inflamed palates for days afterwards.
It is said that when the late, great chutney expert, Sir Saffron ‘de Branston’ Gumbril sampled our 2006 batch, while lying on his deathbed, a smile rose to his lips and he was heard to utter to his manservant Cymbeline "This is the apogee of my tasting life. Cymbeline, you have been loyal to me throughout. Get me the Christmas Chutney recipe. And I will change my will to ensure you receive all my old kilner jars." Cymbeline, astonished at such a gesture from his notoriously cautious and some would say parsimonious employer, did his best to oblige. But alas A. Sir Saffron died immediately; and B. One World, One Chutney - ie. we - refused to hand over our secrets. We did however send a bunch of flowers to Sir Saffron’s funeral and made a small donation to his favourite charity Children Without Chutney. For more fascinating chutney facts, please see our blog: www.oneworldonechutney.blogspot.com or e-mail us on oneworld.onechutney@virgin.net.
It is said that when the late, great chutney expert, Sir Saffron ‘de Branston’ Gumbril sampled our 2006 batch, while lying on his deathbed, a smile rose to his lips and he was heard to utter to his manservant Cymbeline "This is the apogee of my tasting life. Cymbeline, you have been loyal to me throughout. Get me the Christmas Chutney recipe. And I will change my will to ensure you receive all my old kilner jars." Cymbeline, astonished at such a gesture from his notoriously cautious and some would say parsimonious employer, did his best to oblige. But alas A. Sir Saffron died immediately; and B. One World, One Chutney - ie. we - refused to hand over our secrets. We did however send a bunch of flowers to Sir Saffron’s funeral and made a small donation to his favourite charity Children Without Chutney. For more fascinating chutney facts, please see our blog: www.oneworldonechutney.blogspot.com or e-mail us on oneworld.onechutney@virgin.net.
Monday, 1 December 2008
PARTIES Part III
In her new post-divorce state, Bloggiana has been galloping down the west-coast mainline with almost indecent frequency. Bloggiana, I ask her, what are you up to in London this week? Bloggiana glances up sheepishly from her Cranberry, her index finger looking alarmingly tremulous, almost as though it were suffering from Repetitive Strain Injury. Not sure, the old girl replies in a very small voice indeed. I wink conspiratorially at Our Dog. It is hard to imagine that Bloggiana is braving the Pendolino for any reason other than to attend more Parties.
In Bloggiana’s absence, Our Dog and I spend a quiet week sitting together in the parlour. On the sofa, Our Dog picks at sticks lodged in his interior. At the table, I cut up apples and make batch upon batch of Apple and Apricot Chutney. Twigs tumble, cores roll, peelings glide, pips fly. The big pan steps up to its pickling plate, the Expensive Cooker joining in with relish and soon the air is thick, and the curtains dewy, with promise. Cooking over, it is time for bottling and now jamjars roll out de-brand-labelled, spruced up, perkily awaiting their new responsibilities. Our Dog farts comfortably into the upholstery, munching on one or two small pieces of Leylandii which he seems to have overlooked yesterday. And I warm the jars, cut out small circles of greaseproof paper, start spooning the chutney into its new place of rest.
Days fly by in this mode. Our Dog, ponging affably and self-grooming in a detached kind of way, is content to watch me. While I am content to be watched, never happier than when contemplating a sea of brown sticky goo and dreaming of eating it by the ladleful, with cheese.
But all chutney dreams must come to an end, especially as it turns out when Bloggiana comes home early. Bloggiana, I ask with bated breath, how were those parties? Bloggiana looks at me, her hooded smile Sphinx-like in its inscrutability and I confess I have no idea what she is about to say next.
But suddenly I find that Bloggiana’s extraordinary narrative skills are transporting me to a Bayswater salon, to a singles drinks party. In the background are crowds of Single Men and Single Women. In the foreground, gripping his and hers matching cocktails, are Bloggiana and a tall man in a blazer. Bloggiana is looking her very best. Her high heels bestow her with an elegance (and a flat stomach) that we are not used to seeing when she is wandering about the livery yard in britches. Her skin looks clean and her hair is free of straw. The Tall Man in Blazer sounds Irish, his rich booming voice enveloping Bloggiana, shrouding her from the unseemly mass beyond.
So what happened next? I say to the old girl, riveted. Well, says my old friend, the thing is, she says, Yes, Blazer Man was undoubtedly good looking; and I felt pretty certain he was prosperous; and no doubt to all intents and purposes the man was well-connected. But I have to say that in other departments, the man fell damnably short of the mark. I mean for a start, continues Bloggiana, he appeared to have no idea about what it is like to stand in an overcrowded Bayswater salon in high heels. (I timidly point out that perhaps that is no bad thing, but Bloggiana is not for listening). For another, he seemed absolutely furious at being introduced to me because the introduction cut across the narration of his life story which was clearly dearer to him than anything else. For a third, his voice was so loud, I still have tinitus. And worst of all, says Bloggiana, and at this point her voice dips to an unheard-of low, he failed at any point throughout our encounter to notice how empty my glass was.
We are sitting in the parlour, the three of us. Our Dog has extracted a mouthful of sticky willies from his nether parts which he is spitting like ball-bearings one by one onto the carpet. I am at my desk, trying to conjure up new slogans to fit in with our 'Chutney Rhyming Slang' campaign. Bloggiana is at the table, lighting up a cig, then taking the cig to a map of the London underground – and planting a firm black circle on an area roughly on the spot where I imagine Bayswater should be. It seems the west coast line may be free from Bloggiana's advances for some time to come.
In Bloggiana’s absence, Our Dog and I spend a quiet week sitting together in the parlour. On the sofa, Our Dog picks at sticks lodged in his interior. At the table, I cut up apples and make batch upon batch of Apple and Apricot Chutney. Twigs tumble, cores roll, peelings glide, pips fly. The big pan steps up to its pickling plate, the Expensive Cooker joining in with relish and soon the air is thick, and the curtains dewy, with promise. Cooking over, it is time for bottling and now jamjars roll out de-brand-labelled, spruced up, perkily awaiting their new responsibilities. Our Dog farts comfortably into the upholstery, munching on one or two small pieces of Leylandii which he seems to have overlooked yesterday. And I warm the jars, cut out small circles of greaseproof paper, start spooning the chutney into its new place of rest.
Days fly by in this mode. Our Dog, ponging affably and self-grooming in a detached kind of way, is content to watch me. While I am content to be watched, never happier than when contemplating a sea of brown sticky goo and dreaming of eating it by the ladleful, with cheese.
But all chutney dreams must come to an end, especially as it turns out when Bloggiana comes home early. Bloggiana, I ask with bated breath, how were those parties? Bloggiana looks at me, her hooded smile Sphinx-like in its inscrutability and I confess I have no idea what she is about to say next.
But suddenly I find that Bloggiana’s extraordinary narrative skills are transporting me to a Bayswater salon, to a singles drinks party. In the background are crowds of Single Men and Single Women. In the foreground, gripping his and hers matching cocktails, are Bloggiana and a tall man in a blazer. Bloggiana is looking her very best. Her high heels bestow her with an elegance (and a flat stomach) that we are not used to seeing when she is wandering about the livery yard in britches. Her skin looks clean and her hair is free of straw. The Tall Man in Blazer sounds Irish, his rich booming voice enveloping Bloggiana, shrouding her from the unseemly mass beyond.
So what happened next? I say to the old girl, riveted. Well, says my old friend, the thing is, she says, Yes, Blazer Man was undoubtedly good looking; and I felt pretty certain he was prosperous; and no doubt to all intents and purposes the man was well-connected. But I have to say that in other departments, the man fell damnably short of the mark. I mean for a start, continues Bloggiana, he appeared to have no idea about what it is like to stand in an overcrowded Bayswater salon in high heels. (I timidly point out that perhaps that is no bad thing, but Bloggiana is not for listening). For another, he seemed absolutely furious at being introduced to me because the introduction cut across the narration of his life story which was clearly dearer to him than anything else. For a third, his voice was so loud, I still have tinitus. And worst of all, says Bloggiana, and at this point her voice dips to an unheard-of low, he failed at any point throughout our encounter to notice how empty my glass was.
We are sitting in the parlour, the three of us. Our Dog has extracted a mouthful of sticky willies from his nether parts which he is spitting like ball-bearings one by one onto the carpet. I am at my desk, trying to conjure up new slogans to fit in with our 'Chutney Rhyming Slang' campaign. Bloggiana is at the table, lighting up a cig, then taking the cig to a map of the London underground – and planting a firm black circle on an area roughly on the spot where I imagine Bayswater should be. It seems the west coast line may be free from Bloggiana's advances for some time to come.
Saturday, 29 November 2008
OUTINGS Part I
Bloggiana has decided she wishes to practise going on outings, in order to prepare her for a moment when she may or may not deign to meet PokeyMokey – her latest internet date – face to face. Teener and I and Chumsky and others are game, not least because the old girl has volunteered not only to pay but also to drive.
In order to keep us all on the edge of our seats, Bloggiana decides to keep the details of our first outing a mystery and we climb into the car on a Saturday morning full of anticipation. There is a picnic in the boot; and some tartan rugs for sitting on; and some flasks; and a map; and all in all, we decide this outing is going to be jolly fun.
Next we drive - through horizontal rain for something approaching two hours. The radiant jutting hills of our landscape remain resolutely hidden and the rainclouds for which Our County is so renowned serenade us unchecked. In the back of Bloggiana’s car – which is a large truck-thing that has a tendency to sway somewhat – we sit and show our teeth through our lips as though we were smiling cheerfully. The potholes suck the car’s tyres down not gently but brusquely. The camber ducks and dives like a kite in the breeze and the corners too have a habit of disappearing out of sight, just when we think we know where they are taking us. Slowly but surely, the road becomes narrower and more rutted. Slowly but surely, the contents of our stomachs ebb and flow, up the alimentary canal and down. We are almost soporific with it all, drowsy on nausea – when at last the road becomes a track and the track becomes a field and the field becomes a wetland and the truck thing comes to a halt and Bloggiana turns round and announces triumphantly to us all: we’re he’ere.
But what is this, Bloggiana? we ask in a chorus. For he’ere seems to be just a field, a small field with a few cars and a few ponies, and some jumps and a caravan and a man with a loudspeaker and the occasional dog showing flagrant disregard for Health & Safety; and yes, over there by the corner of the field, one other thing: a huge faceless silent nuclear power station.
Bloggiana! we all exclaim simultaneously. What on earth?
Now the old girl must have pressed the Outings button on her control panel because by this stage she seems to be pretty much on auto-pilot. Out come the picnic, the rugs, the flasks. She lays them out around the car, deftly sidestepping the deeper swamp on one side and the glowing two-headed toad on the other. When one of us points out that we all to a man cannot bear pony gymkhanas, Bloggiana appears to lose the power of hearing. When another enounces – ever so sweetly – that he would rather not picnic in the pouring rain, Bloggiana soldiers on regardless. When a small skewbald pony ridden by a red-faced roly-poly out-of-control boy trots plumb through the middle of our party, causing the sausage rolls, the glowing toads and the hard-boiled eggs to combine in some lurid toxic cocktail, Bloggiana simply bends over and starts re-arranging.
Bloggiana, Chumsky pleads, do we really have to stay? Bloggiana, Jollyosa beseeches, can’t we have our picnic in a shed or something? Bloggiana, I entreat, are you sure this is meant to be fun? The old girl looks at me hard. I could swear I haven’t a clue what she is thinking.
To be continued.
In order to keep us all on the edge of our seats, Bloggiana decides to keep the details of our first outing a mystery and we climb into the car on a Saturday morning full of anticipation. There is a picnic in the boot; and some tartan rugs for sitting on; and some flasks; and a map; and all in all, we decide this outing is going to be jolly fun.
Next we drive - through horizontal rain for something approaching two hours. The radiant jutting hills of our landscape remain resolutely hidden and the rainclouds for which Our County is so renowned serenade us unchecked. In the back of Bloggiana’s car – which is a large truck-thing that has a tendency to sway somewhat – we sit and show our teeth through our lips as though we were smiling cheerfully. The potholes suck the car’s tyres down not gently but brusquely. The camber ducks and dives like a kite in the breeze and the corners too have a habit of disappearing out of sight, just when we think we know where they are taking us. Slowly but surely, the road becomes narrower and more rutted. Slowly but surely, the contents of our stomachs ebb and flow, up the alimentary canal and down. We are almost soporific with it all, drowsy on nausea – when at last the road becomes a track and the track becomes a field and the field becomes a wetland and the truck thing comes to a halt and Bloggiana turns round and announces triumphantly to us all: we’re he’ere.
But what is this, Bloggiana? we ask in a chorus. For he’ere seems to be just a field, a small field with a few cars and a few ponies, and some jumps and a caravan and a man with a loudspeaker and the occasional dog showing flagrant disregard for Health & Safety; and yes, over there by the corner of the field, one other thing: a huge faceless silent nuclear power station.
Bloggiana! we all exclaim simultaneously. What on earth?
Now the old girl must have pressed the Outings button on her control panel because by this stage she seems to be pretty much on auto-pilot. Out come the picnic, the rugs, the flasks. She lays them out around the car, deftly sidestepping the deeper swamp on one side and the glowing two-headed toad on the other. When one of us points out that we all to a man cannot bear pony gymkhanas, Bloggiana appears to lose the power of hearing. When another enounces – ever so sweetly – that he would rather not picnic in the pouring rain, Bloggiana soldiers on regardless. When a small skewbald pony ridden by a red-faced roly-poly out-of-control boy trots plumb through the middle of our party, causing the sausage rolls, the glowing toads and the hard-boiled eggs to combine in some lurid toxic cocktail, Bloggiana simply bends over and starts re-arranging.
Bloggiana, Chumsky pleads, do we really have to stay? Bloggiana, Jollyosa beseeches, can’t we have our picnic in a shed or something? Bloggiana, I entreat, are you sure this is meant to be fun? The old girl looks at me hard. I could swear I haven’t a clue what she is thinking.
To be continued.
Friday, 28 November 2008
INTERNET DATING Part V
Bloggiana’s latest internet conquest PokeyMokey seems to have the bit between his teeth. He is the one who virtually winked at Bloggiana (aka SpankyDonkey) via the dating website the week before last, sent her a bunch of virtual flowers and a lewd remark last week; and this week, is now angling for an actual face-to-face encounter. When I tell Bloggiana the good news, for some strange reason she comes over all cool.
But Bloggiana, I tell her, he’s a Sagittarius. I know, she wails fearfully. But Bloggiana, I ask her, what’s wrong with that? I don’t know, she wails fearfully.
This morning, the PokeyMokey subject foremost in our minds, Bloggiana and I come together to engage in a heart to heart. We take up positions for once not in the tack room of our livery yard and not in the parlour of our house where there is more wind than light; but outside in Our Garden on the bench that faces south-southwest. All around us are leaves that have tumbled down from the prunuses we planted a decade ago, from the rowan tree, from the copper beeches, from the huge sycamore that towers over the beck. Twigs surround us too, blown off by last night’s gales, waiting now until the spring when the crows will come and find them or the jackdaws. Mud seeps up about our shoes, and in the border, the dying euphorbia is gold with death and the cerinthe long past its best.
Deep in thought and before either of us has uttered a word, we rise from our bench to take one last look at our 2008 garden. As we squelch by, the Prince of Wales feathers glance at us forlornly; the dogwood shivers in the autumn cold, its bare red legs bright among the brown; the stems of balsam that all summer rose up like American basketball players bend double, their bottoms way above their heads. We wander over a long summer of mowing and strimming and before that a spring of pruning and weeding and before that a winter of cold consolidation. In fact, our walk spans our time here, taking in the shrubs we planted from the very first, the drystone walls we had built, the borders we moulded, the nooks and crannies we filled with incidental splashes of colour from tulips or violas or nastertiums or grasses.
At last we return to our south-southwest facing bench, sit down and embark on the matter at hand. So old girl, I venture, my lips in the November sun turning a dim shade of cornflower blue, I mean you simply have to tell me. Why are you getting cold feet?
Bloggiana raises her young-looking hand to her mid- to dark-brown hair. She widens her deep to hazel brown eyes, curls up her 5’4”-6’1” frame through her average to curvaceous body type and moans aloud.
Oh I don’t know, she says, it’s just, I suppose, I never expected the whole thing to become so real.
But Bloggiana, I tell her, he’s a Sagittarius. I know, she wails fearfully. But Bloggiana, I ask her, what’s wrong with that? I don’t know, she wails fearfully.
This morning, the PokeyMokey subject foremost in our minds, Bloggiana and I come together to engage in a heart to heart. We take up positions for once not in the tack room of our livery yard and not in the parlour of our house where there is more wind than light; but outside in Our Garden on the bench that faces south-southwest. All around us are leaves that have tumbled down from the prunuses we planted a decade ago, from the rowan tree, from the copper beeches, from the huge sycamore that towers over the beck. Twigs surround us too, blown off by last night’s gales, waiting now until the spring when the crows will come and find them or the jackdaws. Mud seeps up about our shoes, and in the border, the dying euphorbia is gold with death and the cerinthe long past its best.
Deep in thought and before either of us has uttered a word, we rise from our bench to take one last look at our 2008 garden. As we squelch by, the Prince of Wales feathers glance at us forlornly; the dogwood shivers in the autumn cold, its bare red legs bright among the brown; the stems of balsam that all summer rose up like American basketball players bend double, their bottoms way above their heads. We wander over a long summer of mowing and strimming and before that a spring of pruning and weeding and before that a winter of cold consolidation. In fact, our walk spans our time here, taking in the shrubs we planted from the very first, the drystone walls we had built, the borders we moulded, the nooks and crannies we filled with incidental splashes of colour from tulips or violas or nastertiums or grasses.
At last we return to our south-southwest facing bench, sit down and embark on the matter at hand. So old girl, I venture, my lips in the November sun turning a dim shade of cornflower blue, I mean you simply have to tell me. Why are you getting cold feet?
Bloggiana raises her young-looking hand to her mid- to dark-brown hair. She widens her deep to hazel brown eyes, curls up her 5’4”-6’1” frame through her average to curvaceous body type and moans aloud.
Oh I don’t know, she says, it’s just, I suppose, I never expected the whole thing to become so real.
Thursday, 27 November 2008
VERSE Part I
Bloggiana seems to have come over all poetic on us. The first I knew of it was last week when we were ambling down the lane, I on Nag, she on Dobbin. The day was still. No wind, light like sharpened slate, high cloud and the hedges dotted with red from rose hips and yellow from the leafy embers of a dying year. As we wandered along, our horses seemed to be telepathically in sync with one another so that their footfalls chimed exactly. Even the cars that shot from right to left in front of us on the bypass flyover seemed to do so in a rhythm, and then a freight train came and its jostling carriages lent yet another layer to the lilting jazz riff of our journey.
As we rode, we were silent and I guessed we were both listening to the rhythms when suddenly Bloggiana piped up with:
It’s a pleasure sublime
To go hacking in rhyme.
Crikey, where did that come from? I couldn’t help blurting out. But the waters closed over so fast, I began to wonder whether Bloggiana had indeed spoken or whether I had imagined it. We wandered on. The horses still walking in time, the cars still flickety-booming past in apparently measured sequence.
Next day the sky was equally clear and neither of us had to say a word because we both knew it was unquestionably the moment to go and enjoy another ride. Now the only cloud was scattered across the sky in streaks – like feathers strewn from the tail of a bird that had fled the wrath of the sun. It was still still. And the rhythms were once again mesmeric. And once again Bloggiana broke the silence with some unforeseen doggerel:
Let’s give it a shot.
Let’s try rhyming in trot.
This time I have to admit I was not at all sure how to respond. I mean it is not every day that one’s alter ego begins to talk in rhyme, I reasoned to myself.
And how wrong I was. For the following day and the following and the following, Bloggiana came up with more rhyming nuggets:
It’s such fun to ride
With a bit on the side.
I’ve a bloody good crack
When I go on a hack.
Bloggiana, what’s come over you? I couldn’t help asking finally. I mean, old girl, why this sudden passion for iambics?
Across a metrical haze, through lists and lists of assonant equi-vocab, in and out of limericks and haikus and stanzas and clerihews, Bloggiana looked back at me dreamily.
Do you know Piccalilli, I’m not at all sure. But frankly, she added with the slightest hint of mid-opiate rapture about her, there could be a nastier curse than being besotted with verse.
At this, I clicked Dobbin onwards. And went back to measuring the rhythms of the Eddie Stobart lorries on the bypass.
As we rode, we were silent and I guessed we were both listening to the rhythms when suddenly Bloggiana piped up with:
It’s a pleasure sublime
To go hacking in rhyme.
Crikey, where did that come from? I couldn’t help blurting out. But the waters closed over so fast, I began to wonder whether Bloggiana had indeed spoken or whether I had imagined it. We wandered on. The horses still walking in time, the cars still flickety-booming past in apparently measured sequence.
Next day the sky was equally clear and neither of us had to say a word because we both knew it was unquestionably the moment to go and enjoy another ride. Now the only cloud was scattered across the sky in streaks – like feathers strewn from the tail of a bird that had fled the wrath of the sun. It was still still. And the rhythms were once again mesmeric. And once again Bloggiana broke the silence with some unforeseen doggerel:
Let’s give it a shot.
Let’s try rhyming in trot.
This time I have to admit I was not at all sure how to respond. I mean it is not every day that one’s alter ego begins to talk in rhyme, I reasoned to myself.
And how wrong I was. For the following day and the following and the following, Bloggiana came up with more rhyming nuggets:
It’s such fun to ride
With a bit on the side.
I’ve a bloody good crack
When I go on a hack.
Bloggiana, what’s come over you? I couldn’t help asking finally. I mean, old girl, why this sudden passion for iambics?
Across a metrical haze, through lists and lists of assonant equi-vocab, in and out of limericks and haikus and stanzas and clerihews, Bloggiana looked back at me dreamily.
Do you know Piccalilli, I’m not at all sure. But frankly, she added with the slightest hint of mid-opiate rapture about her, there could be a nastier curse than being besotted with verse.
At this, I clicked Dobbin onwards. And went back to measuring the rhythms of the Eddie Stobart lorries on the bypass.
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
VETS Part I
Bloggiana’s horse Nag has injured itself rather badly and Bloggiana is away and I am dithering about whether or not to call a vet. The thing is, I say to myself, to weigh up who would benefit most from the £500 the callout will undoubtedly cost: Bloggiana (if I don’t call out the vet), the vet (if I do) or Nag (if I do or I don’t). As I spell out these options, I try and keep the tourniquet in place but the blood does seem to be going everywhere. I should call a vet. On the other hand, maybe I should not call a vet. Bloggiana Hates vets.
In order perhaps to understand the essence of Bloggiana’s antipathy for vets, I should tell you that the old girl at least in this matter comes pretty much from the traditional school. In her day if a dog cut its paw, it was the inconvenience to the carpet that took primary consideration. The idea of vaccinating a cat was largely mistaken for an April Fool’s joke. And horses were NEVER given washed carrots.
Today of course, Bloggiana is wont to pronounce, all that has changed. Horses, for example, are micromanaged to within an inch of their hapless equine lives. Tails are washed with Salon Professional Shampoo. Eyes are wiped with hand-picked-Okavango-Delta-kernel-of-macadaemia-nut oil. Feet are smeared with eco-polish, saddlecloths come in lilac and few animals are allowed to lie down at night without being hock-deep in some highly rarefied bedding that probably costs a great deal more than feathers.
Next it will be compulsory for all horses to have heat and light (more than I get, notes Bloggiana) and they won’t really be allowed to go outside. And when you buy a new one, you will be given a manual on how to look out for its emotional welfare. And all this, says Bloggiana, (with a passion not least fuelled by her loathing of lilac), is down to VETS.
Several things always true about horse-vets, she thunders, (her equi-eyes lit up like a pair of red rosettes). His is always the largest four by four in the livery yard. His bill (with the possible exception of the divorce lawyer’s) is invariably the largest in the in-tray. And, she goes on, (by now snorting like a Sheikh Makhtoum-owned top-of-the-range thoroughbred filly), his capacity for altering the course of nature is virtually nil. Horses are too large to be x-rayed (exception: their legs), too difficult to operate on (exception: their legs) and so badly designed that they almost invariably don’t recover anyway (their legs not excepted).
And while the vet may have over the years improved on his diagnosis skills, the treatments at his disposal have not. It seems to me, Bloggiana rants on, (wind under her tail, crisp galloping turf beneath her feet), that your average vet has three prescription options. Option 1 is painkillers, Option 2 is antibiotics. Option 3 is generally the most effective but only really works if you are prepared to accept being told to do nothing at all. Option 3 is God.
By now Nag’s injury has showered my person with a layer of something distinctly blood-like. The patient seems to be swaying somewhat, I can’t really get the tourniquet to stay up and I am genuinely anxious that soon the horse may be an empty carcass on the floor. Should I call the vet? Should I not? As tremulous spare hand reaches for mobile telephone, I suddenly hear Bloggiana once more ranting across the airwaves.
And, she says, And (my capital) if you think that’s all I have to say on the matter, wait, she says, wait till I tell you what I think about Rolf Harris…
I press harder on the spurting artery and pray to Option 3 I am doing the right thing.
To be continued
In order perhaps to understand the essence of Bloggiana’s antipathy for vets, I should tell you that the old girl at least in this matter comes pretty much from the traditional school. In her day if a dog cut its paw, it was the inconvenience to the carpet that took primary consideration. The idea of vaccinating a cat was largely mistaken for an April Fool’s joke. And horses were NEVER given washed carrots.
Today of course, Bloggiana is wont to pronounce, all that has changed. Horses, for example, are micromanaged to within an inch of their hapless equine lives. Tails are washed with Salon Professional Shampoo. Eyes are wiped with hand-picked-Okavango-Delta-kernel-of-macadaemia-nut oil. Feet are smeared with eco-polish, saddlecloths come in lilac and few animals are allowed to lie down at night without being hock-deep in some highly rarefied bedding that probably costs a great deal more than feathers.
Next it will be compulsory for all horses to have heat and light (more than I get, notes Bloggiana) and they won’t really be allowed to go outside. And when you buy a new one, you will be given a manual on how to look out for its emotional welfare. And all this, says Bloggiana, (with a passion not least fuelled by her loathing of lilac), is down to VETS.
Several things always true about horse-vets, she thunders, (her equi-eyes lit up like a pair of red rosettes). His is always the largest four by four in the livery yard. His bill (with the possible exception of the divorce lawyer’s) is invariably the largest in the in-tray. And, she goes on, (by now snorting like a Sheikh Makhtoum-owned top-of-the-range thoroughbred filly), his capacity for altering the course of nature is virtually nil. Horses are too large to be x-rayed (exception: their legs), too difficult to operate on (exception: their legs) and so badly designed that they almost invariably don’t recover anyway (their legs not excepted).
And while the vet may have over the years improved on his diagnosis skills, the treatments at his disposal have not. It seems to me, Bloggiana rants on, (wind under her tail, crisp galloping turf beneath her feet), that your average vet has three prescription options. Option 1 is painkillers, Option 2 is antibiotics. Option 3 is generally the most effective but only really works if you are prepared to accept being told to do nothing at all. Option 3 is God.
By now Nag’s injury has showered my person with a layer of something distinctly blood-like. The patient seems to be swaying somewhat, I can’t really get the tourniquet to stay up and I am genuinely anxious that soon the horse may be an empty carcass on the floor. Should I call the vet? Should I not? As tremulous spare hand reaches for mobile telephone, I suddenly hear Bloggiana once more ranting across the airwaves.
And, she says, And (my capital) if you think that’s all I have to say on the matter, wait, she says, wait till I tell you what I think about Rolf Harris…
I press harder on the spurting artery and pray to Option 3 I am doing the right thing.
To be continued
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
CHUTNEY Part III
Bloggiana and I have our first chutney engagement. This is every bit as daunting as it sounds. For we have been invited by the North Lunedale & District’s Women’s Institute Chutney Appreciation Committee to give a half-day conference on chutney.
Now I have to admit I am not particularly well-informed about the Women’s Institute. But as I understand it, the North Lunedale and District Federation has been going for some time now and takes its interest in chutney, as in all home-preserve-making, Very Seriously Indeed. When Mrs Florence Tidy-Hatless of the Village Rectory in Cow Brow issued us with the invitation, she did so with four important provisos. We should give a 40-50 talk on chutney. We should try and incorporate into the afternoon something more ambitious, say, a guide to world history as shaped by chutney. We should do blind tastings (bearing in mind, Mrs Tidy-Hatless reminded us, that we would be addressing an informed audience.) (Indeed.) And finally we should be prepared to hand out at least one, if not two, original recipes at conference end.
So, all in all, in Our House, the general atmosphere over the last week has been reminiscent of that of a Panic Station. In one corner, I am trying to conjure up new and fiendish Chutney Combinations which we hope will give Mrs Tidy-Hatless’s crew something jolly tough to chew on. Would they get Fennel & Chocolate Chutney? How about Ginger and Quince? Or Quince and Uggli? In another corner, Bloggiana too is doing her best for Chutney Innovation, thinking of new titles for our concoctions, new angles. What if we take a leaf out of the Pimms marketing team’s book and number our chutneys? And then we could say all our recipes were absolutely secret? And then we wouldn’t have to go through the awful palaver of trying to remember what the hell we put in the chutney in the first place and what in the name of God were the proportions. How about making chutney from macadaemias and calling it Nutney, asks Bloggiana brightly? Or painting cars all over the jars and calling it Jitney? We could put tufts of white hair on the lids and call it Hockney. Or just hang the odd lamb’s tail on our chutney uniform and say what we were selling was not chutney but mutney.
Upstairs, an hour or so later and now our attentions have turned to the Research end of the project. Bloggiana and I are googling for all our worth, mugging up like mad. Or trying to. For the awful thing is we can’t find out any more than we already know about chutney and that is not really very much. I looked up the Charge of the Light Brigade online and tried to see if I could find any references to chutney as shaping the path of the calamity. There were none. I looked up Partition in India – did chutney come into the general hindu-muslim divide? Apparently not. Bloggiana tried to go further east and went for Malaysia. They seem to have one or two interesting chutney ideas – but did chutney come into their fight for independence? Not even slightly.
Bloggiana and I begin to feel a bit panicked. The date is looming. There is a man on electricalappliancesallyourquestionsanswered.dot.com who says chutney caused his microwave to break down. And that’s pretty much it. Can we find enough things to say about chutney that will fill 40-50 minutes? Can we demonstrate that chutney has in any way shaped the history of the world? Bloggiana and I spend the night googling for our lives’ worth. It seems a dead cert that unless things turn around very suddenly, Mrs Tidy-Hatless and her cronies are going to be able to expose us – as the out-and-out jumped up chutney frauds we almost certainly are. Fuck me, says Bloggiana, time for a mug full of PG. We swill it back in unison. And find ourselves quaking.
To be continued.
Now I have to admit I am not particularly well-informed about the Women’s Institute. But as I understand it, the North Lunedale and District Federation has been going for some time now and takes its interest in chutney, as in all home-preserve-making, Very Seriously Indeed. When Mrs Florence Tidy-Hatless of the Village Rectory in Cow Brow issued us with the invitation, she did so with four important provisos. We should give a 40-50 talk on chutney. We should try and incorporate into the afternoon something more ambitious, say, a guide to world history as shaped by chutney. We should do blind tastings (bearing in mind, Mrs Tidy-Hatless reminded us, that we would be addressing an informed audience.) (Indeed.) And finally we should be prepared to hand out at least one, if not two, original recipes at conference end.
So, all in all, in Our House, the general atmosphere over the last week has been reminiscent of that of a Panic Station. In one corner, I am trying to conjure up new and fiendish Chutney Combinations which we hope will give Mrs Tidy-Hatless’s crew something jolly tough to chew on. Would they get Fennel & Chocolate Chutney? How about Ginger and Quince? Or Quince and Uggli? In another corner, Bloggiana too is doing her best for Chutney Innovation, thinking of new titles for our concoctions, new angles. What if we take a leaf out of the Pimms marketing team’s book and number our chutneys? And then we could say all our recipes were absolutely secret? And then we wouldn’t have to go through the awful palaver of trying to remember what the hell we put in the chutney in the first place and what in the name of God were the proportions. How about making chutney from macadaemias and calling it Nutney, asks Bloggiana brightly? Or painting cars all over the jars and calling it Jitney? We could put tufts of white hair on the lids and call it Hockney. Or just hang the odd lamb’s tail on our chutney uniform and say what we were selling was not chutney but mutney.
Upstairs, an hour or so later and now our attentions have turned to the Research end of the project. Bloggiana and I are googling for all our worth, mugging up like mad. Or trying to. For the awful thing is we can’t find out any more than we already know about chutney and that is not really very much. I looked up the Charge of the Light Brigade online and tried to see if I could find any references to chutney as shaping the path of the calamity. There were none. I looked up Partition in India – did chutney come into the general hindu-muslim divide? Apparently not. Bloggiana tried to go further east and went for Malaysia. They seem to have one or two interesting chutney ideas – but did chutney come into their fight for independence? Not even slightly.
Bloggiana and I begin to feel a bit panicked. The date is looming. There is a man on electricalappliancesallyourquestionsanswered.dot.com who says chutney caused his microwave to break down. And that’s pretty much it. Can we find enough things to say about chutney that will fill 40-50 minutes? Can we demonstrate that chutney has in any way shaped the history of the world? Bloggiana and I spend the night googling for our lives’ worth. It seems a dead cert that unless things turn around very suddenly, Mrs Tidy-Hatless and her cronies are going to be able to expose us – as the out-and-out jumped up chutney frauds we almost certainly are. Fuck me, says Bloggiana, time for a mug full of PG. We swill it back in unison. And find ourselves quaking.
To be continued.
Monday, 24 November 2008
CUTBACKS Part II
Cutbacks, announced Bloggiana a few weeks ago, the only way to survive this effing credit crunch is to embark on a programme of cutbacks.
We were sitting in the sitting room huddled around the fire, five o’clock just behind us, moonlight dimly filtering through our ivy-clad windows. I was trying to do the Sod-it-oku but my fingers were so numb, I kept tearing the newspaper with my biro. Our Dog was lying next to me, his fur billowing in the breeze that had thoughtfully wafted all the way from Antarctica and into Our House. Bloggiana’s pronouncement came and landed at our knees like a flying lump of suet. Our Dog and I sat and stared at it stupidly.
Weeks later and Bloggiana has been as good as her word. Energy, expenditure, pleasure, warmth, light are all to be used sparingly as Nutella. Every apple that falls from every tree that grows within London Marathon walking distance of Our House has to be gathered up and stored. Every garlic clove has to be pressed not once but twice.
And if all of the above does not sound rigorous enough, think on this: Bloggiana now smokes her cigarette butts firstly from top down; then from bottom up. Bloggiana’s daughter rubs out her yesterday’s homework so she can reuse the same piece of paper for today’s. And as for me, I find myself obliged to make chutney, yes you’ve guessed it, out of chutney.
Awful thing is though, and I’m not sure if I dare point this out to Bloggiana, but the job’s getting damnably tough. Last night winter blew all the leaves off the trees and today the arctic winds brought snow, horizontal rain and almost complete darkness. We would like to open the curtains so we can see – but if we do, chances are we will be showered or blow-dried or both. Occasional flickers of starlight glimmer through our four o’clock in the afternoon windows but other than that, the only light comes from the nib end of Bloggiana’s lit cigarette and the embers of a fire which is Not That Keen to get going.
Now Bloggiana is murmuring about turning the Expensive Cooker off. I mean, she expostulates (or at least I think she does for she is quite hard to decipher beneath all those layers of fur), it’s not as if we cook all day, is it? Our Dog and I gaze at each other in horror. The winter has barely got started. It’s time, we growl in unison, to take action.
But what, Our Dog and I realise together and fairly rapidly, on earth are we good for? Our Dog might be a sheepdog of sorts but he is also Completely Untrained. I on the other hand have no claims to a great pedigree and on the whole, I try and keep my undercarriage free of branches – but like Our Dog, I have been pretty much pleasing myself for years. How on earth can we both go out to work? Who would have us? Our Dog has absolutely no idea about following authority. And neither in truth do I. I mean, whenever I watch those adverts on television where the ambassador’s wife passes round those frightful lumps of chocolate MDF, frankly, I’m appalled. What on earth does she think she’s doing? Giving perfectly respectable free-rein women a bad name, I should say.
Bloggiana, I venture timidly later that day when I am fairly sure my friend is looking through the wrong end of a bottle of Pinot Grigio, are you sure you’re going to turn off the Expensive Cooker?
As the words leave my mouth, a slightly stronger gale seems to get up. It sizzles through our sitting room at such a rate that Bloggiana loses the tip of her cigarette and we quickly have to grope for water before the carpet catches alight. Turn off the expensive cooker, Bloggiana repeats numbly. Fuck no. What do you take me for? Some kind of eco-moron?
Our Dog and I exchange glances and heave disingenuously small sighs of relief.
We were sitting in the sitting room huddled around the fire, five o’clock just behind us, moonlight dimly filtering through our ivy-clad windows. I was trying to do the Sod-it-oku but my fingers were so numb, I kept tearing the newspaper with my biro. Our Dog was lying next to me, his fur billowing in the breeze that had thoughtfully wafted all the way from Antarctica and into Our House. Bloggiana’s pronouncement came and landed at our knees like a flying lump of suet. Our Dog and I sat and stared at it stupidly.
Weeks later and Bloggiana has been as good as her word. Energy, expenditure, pleasure, warmth, light are all to be used sparingly as Nutella. Every apple that falls from every tree that grows within London Marathon walking distance of Our House has to be gathered up and stored. Every garlic clove has to be pressed not once but twice.
And if all of the above does not sound rigorous enough, think on this: Bloggiana now smokes her cigarette butts firstly from top down; then from bottom up. Bloggiana’s daughter rubs out her yesterday’s homework so she can reuse the same piece of paper for today’s. And as for me, I find myself obliged to make chutney, yes you’ve guessed it, out of chutney.
Awful thing is though, and I’m not sure if I dare point this out to Bloggiana, but the job’s getting damnably tough. Last night winter blew all the leaves off the trees and today the arctic winds brought snow, horizontal rain and almost complete darkness. We would like to open the curtains so we can see – but if we do, chances are we will be showered or blow-dried or both. Occasional flickers of starlight glimmer through our four o’clock in the afternoon windows but other than that, the only light comes from the nib end of Bloggiana’s lit cigarette and the embers of a fire which is Not That Keen to get going.
Now Bloggiana is murmuring about turning the Expensive Cooker off. I mean, she expostulates (or at least I think she does for she is quite hard to decipher beneath all those layers of fur), it’s not as if we cook all day, is it? Our Dog and I gaze at each other in horror. The winter has barely got started. It’s time, we growl in unison, to take action.
But what, Our Dog and I realise together and fairly rapidly, on earth are we good for? Our Dog might be a sheepdog of sorts but he is also Completely Untrained. I on the other hand have no claims to a great pedigree and on the whole, I try and keep my undercarriage free of branches – but like Our Dog, I have been pretty much pleasing myself for years. How on earth can we both go out to work? Who would have us? Our Dog has absolutely no idea about following authority. And neither in truth do I. I mean, whenever I watch those adverts on television where the ambassador’s wife passes round those frightful lumps of chocolate MDF, frankly, I’m appalled. What on earth does she think she’s doing? Giving perfectly respectable free-rein women a bad name, I should say.
Bloggiana, I venture timidly later that day when I am fairly sure my friend is looking through the wrong end of a bottle of Pinot Grigio, are you sure you’re going to turn off the Expensive Cooker?
As the words leave my mouth, a slightly stronger gale seems to get up. It sizzles through our sitting room at such a rate that Bloggiana loses the tip of her cigarette and we quickly have to grope for water before the carpet catches alight. Turn off the expensive cooker, Bloggiana repeats numbly. Fuck no. What do you take me for? Some kind of eco-moron?
Our Dog and I exchange glances and heave disingenuously small sighs of relief.
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
STUFF Part I
We are thinking about the forthcoming move from Our House and the thought sends us all into spirals of despair. What on earth are we going to do with all those jars of chutney? I wail. Frankly darling, Bloggiana points out tartly, that’s the least of our worries.
And indeed, the old girl could have a point. Over the years, Bloggiana and I and Bloggiana’s daughter have hoarded considerably. There are collections of plastic spoons. There are small piles of egg-boxes and large piles of egg-boxes and strings of paper clips and bags full of bags. Every give-away air travel set has been kept. Every postcard half-written and not posted has been popped into a drawer somewhere. Every pair of laddered tights, every almost-finished battery, every bent screw has managed to hang on, unthreatened even remotely by eviction on our part.
In the hallway, there are stacks of magazines we read once and enjoyed. In the dining room, in the drawer of the sideboard, there are some brown paper labels which Bloggiana’s mother’s mother had put to one side, meaning to write them up but somehow never managing. On the staircase, in a drawer of a whatnot, are unopened packets of hairnets – three for a shilling. In Bloggiana’s bedroom, in the bedside cabinet, is a pile of horsehair which her father’s friend’s father’s groom cut from his favourite hunter, just in case Bloggiana’s mother’s rocking-horse ever needed to thicken out its tail.
Aware of the enormity of the task in prospect, we decide we will start on the great clearout months in advance. Bloggiana opens a drawer in the kitchen and, confronted by a pile of chutney labels for a batch made in 1999, some half-used birthday candles and three empty but commemorative books of matches, she bursts into tears. I go to the next drawer thinking I will have more success but all I can see are spoons we ate from when we were children and spoons we ate from when we went to that Bond movie and spoons we loved tucking down the side of the back seat of our old Austin Allegro and spoons that we just had known and loved forever.
Bloggiana’s daughter joins the fray. She opens the next drawer and finds a lot of corks. At the front, the corks are made of plastic or that kind of earwax-looking stuff that they seem to use nowadays. But if you move back through the corks, you can trace the history of our drinking life. Corks become reedier and Frencher and corkier. There are pre-cutback corks and pre-divorce corks. There are happily married corks and grand cru corks (from the days when we could afford such nectar) and christening corks and even, dare I say it, wedding corks. Twenty years of corks there are.
Bloggiana’s daughter looks at us out of the side of her giraffe-length eyelashes. She is fairly certain that opening the cork drawer has not helped. That didn’t help, did it? she says small-ly. Bloggiana and I have already slumped down onto the floor and are staring dolefully at our dirty finger-nails. This move is going to be a tad tricky, we think, telepathically. Out loud Bloggiana says No my sainted one, it certainly bloody did not.
And indeed, the old girl could have a point. Over the years, Bloggiana and I and Bloggiana’s daughter have hoarded considerably. There are collections of plastic spoons. There are small piles of egg-boxes and large piles of egg-boxes and strings of paper clips and bags full of bags. Every give-away air travel set has been kept. Every postcard half-written and not posted has been popped into a drawer somewhere. Every pair of laddered tights, every almost-finished battery, every bent screw has managed to hang on, unthreatened even remotely by eviction on our part.
In the hallway, there are stacks of magazines we read once and enjoyed. In the dining room, in the drawer of the sideboard, there are some brown paper labels which Bloggiana’s mother’s mother had put to one side, meaning to write them up but somehow never managing. On the staircase, in a drawer of a whatnot, are unopened packets of hairnets – three for a shilling. In Bloggiana’s bedroom, in the bedside cabinet, is a pile of horsehair which her father’s friend’s father’s groom cut from his favourite hunter, just in case Bloggiana’s mother’s rocking-horse ever needed to thicken out its tail.
Aware of the enormity of the task in prospect, we decide we will start on the great clearout months in advance. Bloggiana opens a drawer in the kitchen and, confronted by a pile of chutney labels for a batch made in 1999, some half-used birthday candles and three empty but commemorative books of matches, she bursts into tears. I go to the next drawer thinking I will have more success but all I can see are spoons we ate from when we were children and spoons we ate from when we went to that Bond movie and spoons we loved tucking down the side of the back seat of our old Austin Allegro and spoons that we just had known and loved forever.
Bloggiana’s daughter joins the fray. She opens the next drawer and finds a lot of corks. At the front, the corks are made of plastic or that kind of earwax-looking stuff that they seem to use nowadays. But if you move back through the corks, you can trace the history of our drinking life. Corks become reedier and Frencher and corkier. There are pre-cutback corks and pre-divorce corks. There are happily married corks and grand cru corks (from the days when we could afford such nectar) and christening corks and even, dare I say it, wedding corks. Twenty years of corks there are.
Bloggiana’s daughter looks at us out of the side of her giraffe-length eyelashes. She is fairly certain that opening the cork drawer has not helped. That didn’t help, did it? she says small-ly. Bloggiana and I have already slumped down onto the floor and are staring dolefully at our dirty finger-nails. This move is going to be a tad tricky, we think, telepathically. Out loud Bloggiana says No my sainted one, it certainly bloody did not.
Tuesday, 18 November 2008
DEVELOPMENTS Part I
Last night, Bloggiana and I were about to sit down and tuck into our usual evening feast of Gok Wan Dresses the World, Pinot Grigio, roll-ups and stilton. Our Dog had taken up his favoured position in the middle of the sofa. A pan full of chutney was belching brownly on the Expensive Cooker. The wind was howling through the parlour, causing the pile of Sunday papers lying on the floor to rustle melodically….
…when there came a loud banging on our back door. Bollocks, expleted Bloggiana, for the knock had disturbed her equilibrium and made her spill some PG, thereby extinguishing her roll-up. Who in the name of Jehovah’s Witnesses...? she barked, popping in a ritz biscuit and glowering furiously at the door. Awwwoooo, said Our Dog, joining in for good measure.
To ease the general fandango, I leapt out of my bucket seat and opened the door – and there, on the doorstep, in the horizontal rain, wearing a silver faux leather hat, an ankle-length sunburst yellow plastic raincoat and high red waders was Mrs Dottyella Nosy-Neighbour. Mrs Nosy-Neighbour, I exclaimed, what can I do for you? At this, Mrs N-N, requiring no second invitation, marched in and plonked herself wetly in my place.
Well, she said, you’ll never guess what. By now Bloggiana’s mouth was full of crackers and as she responded with a wry No, a small shower of biscuit cascaded across the table and glued itself to Mrs N-N’s raincoat. Well, she said again a trifle testily, well, have you heard the latest?
Now I have to admit that Mrs Nosy-Neighbour is not the first person Bloggiana and I would give our full attention to. For one thing, she dresses like a character out of the Wizard of Oz. For another, she is the World’s Most Studious Gossip. And for a third, we simply can’t stand her. So when she began rabbiting on about something she referred to as developments, I have to admit further that I turned to my glass, allowed a soft, woolly feeling to come over my ears and slipped into a kind of TV torpor, nibbling surreptitiously on as many crackers as I could lay my hands on without seeming dreadfully greedy.
On and on and on Mrs Nosy-Neighbour went. Words such as gateway lurched towards us. Words such as synergy and showcase and partnership and project and fungible. There were phrases too – social inclusion was one, action initiative, community enhancement, much-needed regeneration... My TV torpor was on course to become TV somnia. Bloggiana had chain munched so much stilton I could see tears coming out of her eyes. Even Our Dog had grown bored of the whole thing and retired to the corner to sniff at will at his undercarriage.
Then slowly I realised the atmosphere was undergoing a turnaround. For out of Mrs Nosy-Neighbour’s mouth there started to emit sentences which no one, not even dyed-in-the-wool Nosy-Neighbour ignorers like us, could ignore. One above all stood out. “When not in use as a livestock auction mart, the much-needed facility will be used to provide an indoor exhibition venue for local, regional and national events.”
Well fuck me, said Bloggiana wiping a stilton tear from her eye and perking up all at once. Stupidest idea I think I’ve ever heard of. Mrs Nosy-Neighbour, it’s time you and I joined forces.
Mrs Nosy-Neighbour’s silver hat shimmered in pleasure at the conquest.
…when there came a loud banging on our back door. Bollocks, expleted Bloggiana, for the knock had disturbed her equilibrium and made her spill some PG, thereby extinguishing her roll-up. Who in the name of Jehovah’s Witnesses...? she barked, popping in a ritz biscuit and glowering furiously at the door. Awwwoooo, said Our Dog, joining in for good measure.
To ease the general fandango, I leapt out of my bucket seat and opened the door – and there, on the doorstep, in the horizontal rain, wearing a silver faux leather hat, an ankle-length sunburst yellow plastic raincoat and high red waders was Mrs Dottyella Nosy-Neighbour. Mrs Nosy-Neighbour, I exclaimed, what can I do for you? At this, Mrs N-N, requiring no second invitation, marched in and plonked herself wetly in my place.
Well, she said, you’ll never guess what. By now Bloggiana’s mouth was full of crackers and as she responded with a wry No, a small shower of biscuit cascaded across the table and glued itself to Mrs N-N’s raincoat. Well, she said again a trifle testily, well, have you heard the latest?
Now I have to admit that Mrs Nosy-Neighbour is not the first person Bloggiana and I would give our full attention to. For one thing, she dresses like a character out of the Wizard of Oz. For another, she is the World’s Most Studious Gossip. And for a third, we simply can’t stand her. So when she began rabbiting on about something she referred to as developments, I have to admit further that I turned to my glass, allowed a soft, woolly feeling to come over my ears and slipped into a kind of TV torpor, nibbling surreptitiously on as many crackers as I could lay my hands on without seeming dreadfully greedy.
On and on and on Mrs Nosy-Neighbour went. Words such as gateway lurched towards us. Words such as synergy and showcase and partnership and project and fungible. There were phrases too – social inclusion was one, action initiative, community enhancement, much-needed regeneration... My TV torpor was on course to become TV somnia. Bloggiana had chain munched so much stilton I could see tears coming out of her eyes. Even Our Dog had grown bored of the whole thing and retired to the corner to sniff at will at his undercarriage.
Then slowly I realised the atmosphere was undergoing a turnaround. For out of Mrs Nosy-Neighbour’s mouth there started to emit sentences which no one, not even dyed-in-the-wool Nosy-Neighbour ignorers like us, could ignore. One above all stood out. “When not in use as a livestock auction mart, the much-needed facility will be used to provide an indoor exhibition venue for local, regional and national events.”
Well fuck me, said Bloggiana wiping a stilton tear from her eye and perking up all at once. Stupidest idea I think I’ve ever heard of. Mrs Nosy-Neighbour, it’s time you and I joined forces.
Mrs Nosy-Neighbour’s silver hat shimmered in pleasure at the conquest.
Monday, 17 November 2008
BOYS Part II
Thing about Boys, says Bloggiana, her nasal tones cutting through the cloud of cigarette smoke in our parlour like a stealth bomber contour-hugging its way through the Yorkshire Dales, is that you can never be sure what’s going on in their minds.
Bloggiana is fresh back from a new adventure with her godson Adolesco. She is sitting in the rocking chair with a cat on her lap and a budgie on her shoulder, benignly oblivious to the palls of chutney vapour swirling around her. She is armed with a small vat full of Viognier and apparently smoking her way through an entire Boeing 747 passenger list’s transcontinental tobacco allowance.
I mean, take Adolesco for example. Before Bloggiana can go on, the lid on the chutney casserole blows off creating a brown sticky arc as it goes and a terrible noise when it lands. Simultaneously the telephone rings and the cat takes a swipe at the budgie, missing by a whisker but catching Bloggiana’s glass and tipping a little Viognier onto her lap.
So anyway, Bloggiana goes on, ignoring the telephone, wiping her lap, tipping a small amount of ash onto the budgie's head, there I was with Adolesco, sitting on the edge of the school fountain, reminiscing about the days when we used to get a lift to school in a bubble car. And there was the boy, waving madly as one of his friends pulled up in a freshly minted Maserati complete with coloured brake calipers, aluminium pedal covers and made-to-measure Maserati leather luggage set. And I said to Adolesco, Adolesco I said, tell me about your last journey back to school.
At this, Bloggiana says, the boy went eerily quiet. For a moment, she says, I thought I might have touched on something he would later rely upon in therapy. For all at once the boy’s face assumed a drole, down at heel look. His shoulders shrivelled. His eyebrows furled and even the mid-pubescent fur on his lips appeared to go softer. Adolesco! Bloggiana exclaimed, what on earth is it? And out it all came.
It seems that the last time Adolesco went back to school, there was no chauffeur and no novelty car – simply a train. And the train was, as the boy put it, chokker. And of all rotten luck, Adolesco found himself wedged at a table between a chain-munching chocolate finger-eater called Marge (it said so on her supermarket checkout badge), an elderly deaf man wearing an i-pod and Measly Twat-Sniveller, Adolesco's recent adversary and sworn enemy.
Poor you! exclaimed godmother. I know! exclaimed godson in response.
And do you know what, godmother? said Adolesco, his face now resembling a Sacré Coeur caricature of Tristesse.
No, what? said godmother, her heart skipping a beat at the sight of such pathos.
Well, thing is, mumbled Adolesco, the old man across from us was wearing a hoodie.
No, said Bloggiana.
Yes, he was, went on Adolesco. And do you know what it said on it?
Go on, urged godmother.
It said: I Poke Badgers with Spoons.
No, said godmother, genuinely taken aback.
And do you know, godmother, the boy continued, his face crumpling into something close to a Sacré Coeur caricature of Douleur, the awful thing is, I really think he did.
No, said godmother, even more taken aback.
And even more awful than that, godmother, Measly agreed with me.
Bloggiana found herself, she tells me, looking long and deep into the school fountain. The Maserati flashed past, its coloured brake calipers reflecting in the water, blinding her, she confessed, with a short sharp pain behind her eyes.
Bloggiana is fresh back from a new adventure with her godson Adolesco. She is sitting in the rocking chair with a cat on her lap and a budgie on her shoulder, benignly oblivious to the palls of chutney vapour swirling around her. She is armed with a small vat full of Viognier and apparently smoking her way through an entire Boeing 747 passenger list’s transcontinental tobacco allowance.
I mean, take Adolesco for example. Before Bloggiana can go on, the lid on the chutney casserole blows off creating a brown sticky arc as it goes and a terrible noise when it lands. Simultaneously the telephone rings and the cat takes a swipe at the budgie, missing by a whisker but catching Bloggiana’s glass and tipping a little Viognier onto her lap.
So anyway, Bloggiana goes on, ignoring the telephone, wiping her lap, tipping a small amount of ash onto the budgie's head, there I was with Adolesco, sitting on the edge of the school fountain, reminiscing about the days when we used to get a lift to school in a bubble car. And there was the boy, waving madly as one of his friends pulled up in a freshly minted Maserati complete with coloured brake calipers, aluminium pedal covers and made-to-measure Maserati leather luggage set. And I said to Adolesco, Adolesco I said, tell me about your last journey back to school.
At this, Bloggiana says, the boy went eerily quiet. For a moment, she says, I thought I might have touched on something he would later rely upon in therapy. For all at once the boy’s face assumed a drole, down at heel look. His shoulders shrivelled. His eyebrows furled and even the mid-pubescent fur on his lips appeared to go softer. Adolesco! Bloggiana exclaimed, what on earth is it? And out it all came.
It seems that the last time Adolesco went back to school, there was no chauffeur and no novelty car – simply a train. And the train was, as the boy put it, chokker. And of all rotten luck, Adolesco found himself wedged at a table between a chain-munching chocolate finger-eater called Marge (it said so on her supermarket checkout badge), an elderly deaf man wearing an i-pod and Measly Twat-Sniveller, Adolesco's recent adversary and sworn enemy.
Poor you! exclaimed godmother. I know! exclaimed godson in response.
And do you know what, godmother? said Adolesco, his face now resembling a Sacré Coeur caricature of Tristesse.
No, what? said godmother, her heart skipping a beat at the sight of such pathos.
Well, thing is, mumbled Adolesco, the old man across from us was wearing a hoodie.
No, said Bloggiana.
Yes, he was, went on Adolesco. And do you know what it said on it?
Go on, urged godmother.
It said: I Poke Badgers with Spoons.
No, said godmother, genuinely taken aback.
And do you know, godmother, the boy continued, his face crumpling into something close to a Sacré Coeur caricature of Douleur, the awful thing is, I really think he did.
No, said godmother, even more taken aback.
And even more awful than that, godmother, Measly agreed with me.
Bloggiana found herself, she tells me, looking long and deep into the school fountain. The Maserati flashed past, its coloured brake calipers reflecting in the water, blinding her, she confessed, with a short sharp pain behind her eyes.
Friday, 14 November 2008
INTERNET DATING Part IV
An exceptionally alarming thing has happened. Bloggiana logged into her internet dating site last night, typed in HonkyDonkey her new alias, MuleJewel her new password and found a message, a wink, a card and a virtual bunch of flowers from a candidate by the name of PokeyMokey.
It is some time now since Bloggiana called herself SweatyNun and what with the fiasco of TrannieV and his spotted dress, we were hoping that things on the internet dating front might have improved somewhat. After that episode, Bloggiana and I carefully went through her profile. Any references to dirty personal habits, any allusion to her sexuality or religious tendencies were removed. Time we chimed in unison to take the thing seriously, time to stop taking prisoners, start making friends.
Now that I think about it, I am not sure where the name HonkyDonkey came from. Years ago, one of us had a grandmother who had a friend who had a donkey stud. So perhaps it was a nod in the direction of nostalgie de la boue. (And yes, the lead beast of the stud was called Spot the Stallion.) On the other hand, there was something appealing anyway about naming Bloggiana after a noisy long-eared beast who hated the rain. Somehow that seems to sum up my friend admirably. And in the meantime, we thought it might put off any further WallytheWeirdoes out there who fancied a roll in the side aisles with SweatyNun.
But chance is a fine thing and now we have unearthed PokeyMokey. PokeyMokey’s strapline is From the banks and brays. Does this mean he is a Scot with money but no sense of humour? A Scot who can’t spell? Or just a Scot with a genuine donkey infatuation? Which could be worse, we ask ourselves, moaning aloud, reaching for the roll-ups and groping for the Value vodka.
Bloggiana and I read on through PokeyMokey’s profile. PokeyMokey alleges to be six foot one but we are not sure how far he is taking the donkey analogy. Perhaps that’s from the tip of his ears to the end of his biblical tail, we wonder. He says his educational status is further, his occupational status is other, his character is intelligent and persistent and although he is a man over 45, he boasts a full head of hair. Bloggiana and I continue surfing, trying we hope to unearth the real PokeyMokey. What exactly makes this man tick, we ask ourselves out loud. As we do so, a funny pinging sound comes out of the computer. Bloggiana jumps and I do too and then we see a little heart is throbbing – like a little throbbing heart – in the corner of Bloggiana’s screen. Drifting her mouse over the top of the heart, Bloggiana sees the message coming up in font size twenty-4 right across the middle of her vision. It reads PokeyMokey has sent you a message. Breathless, riveted, tremulous, we send Bloggiana’s mouse scuttling to her inbox. Not many words, we note at first, and certainly not many adjectives, we note next.
HonkyDonkey, it reads, I’d like to kiss your ass. Bloggiana drops the mouse as though it were a glowing lump of coal.
It is some time now since Bloggiana called herself SweatyNun and what with the fiasco of TrannieV and his spotted dress, we were hoping that things on the internet dating front might have improved somewhat. After that episode, Bloggiana and I carefully went through her profile. Any references to dirty personal habits, any allusion to her sexuality or religious tendencies were removed. Time we chimed in unison to take the thing seriously, time to stop taking prisoners, start making friends.
Now that I think about it, I am not sure where the name HonkyDonkey came from. Years ago, one of us had a grandmother who had a friend who had a donkey stud. So perhaps it was a nod in the direction of nostalgie de la boue. (And yes, the lead beast of the stud was called Spot the Stallion.) On the other hand, there was something appealing anyway about naming Bloggiana after a noisy long-eared beast who hated the rain. Somehow that seems to sum up my friend admirably. And in the meantime, we thought it might put off any further WallytheWeirdoes out there who fancied a roll in the side aisles with SweatyNun.
But chance is a fine thing and now we have unearthed PokeyMokey. PokeyMokey’s strapline is From the banks and brays. Does this mean he is a Scot with money but no sense of humour? A Scot who can’t spell? Or just a Scot with a genuine donkey infatuation? Which could be worse, we ask ourselves, moaning aloud, reaching for the roll-ups and groping for the Value vodka.
Bloggiana and I read on through PokeyMokey’s profile. PokeyMokey alleges to be six foot one but we are not sure how far he is taking the donkey analogy. Perhaps that’s from the tip of his ears to the end of his biblical tail, we wonder. He says his educational status is further, his occupational status is other, his character is intelligent and persistent and although he is a man over 45, he boasts a full head of hair. Bloggiana and I continue surfing, trying we hope to unearth the real PokeyMokey. What exactly makes this man tick, we ask ourselves out loud. As we do so, a funny pinging sound comes out of the computer. Bloggiana jumps and I do too and then we see a little heart is throbbing – like a little throbbing heart – in the corner of Bloggiana’s screen. Drifting her mouse over the top of the heart, Bloggiana sees the message coming up in font size twenty-4 right across the middle of her vision. It reads PokeyMokey has sent you a message. Breathless, riveted, tremulous, we send Bloggiana’s mouse scuttling to her inbox. Not many words, we note at first, and certainly not many adjectives, we note next.
HonkyDonkey, it reads, I’d like to kiss your ass. Bloggiana drops the mouse as though it were a glowing lump of coal.
Thursday, 13 November 2008
CUTBACKS Part I
A small white envelope drops through our letterbox. It is heralded by the usual screeching of brakes as the postman - leap-frogging the bottom of our drive and sending a shower of gravel, when he returns to earth again, deep into the tramlines of the tennis court – narrowly misses sending Our Dog into the great RSPCA centrally heated funeral condominium in the sky.
Bloggiana and I are huddled in what we optimistically refer to as our sitting room. The ivy growing through the window and over the back of the television stares at us obliquely, reminding us of jobs we have yet to get round to. Ice formed overnight on the inside of the glass lies in a small accusatory puddle next to the ivy. The birds at the nut feeder outside peer at us darkly, nutless, accusing, their feathers fluffed up in birdie indignation at the moronic focus group that managed to come up with the term global warming.
Sluggishly something within Bloggiana stirs and she decides to go and see what the postman has brought today. Bloggiana takes her time. Her slippers shuffle across the flagstones in a susurrating slither. When she bends over, she does so so slowly that we can almost hear her sinews creak. Then she rests the unopened envelope on the side of the Expensive Cooker while she nonchalantly lights a cigarette, tweaks a blackthorn branch out of Our Dog’s backside, curses the kettle which seems to be on a go-slow yet again.
But at last Bloggiana turns to the matter in hand. I watch as the innocent piece of paper comes out of the innocent small white envelope. I watch as Bloggiana’s mid-life eyes squint into life. Then I watch as paper drops from her hand. I watch as lit cigarette tumbles out of Bloggiana’s mouth, though somehow, through a trick of the dry weather, manages to stay stuck to her lips. And I watch as Bloggiana crumples palely to the mud-strewn floor.
Bloggiana! I exclaim solicitously. What is the matter? Deftly removing the burning cigarette from my friend’s lips, I bend down and gather up the crumpled piece of paper at her side. The word Invoice peeps out from the crumples, as do the name and address of Bloggiana’s divorce solicitors. All of a sudden I have a pretty good idea about what’s wrong. How much, Bloggiana? I gasp.
By now, the old girl has gone from deep red to dark blue. Hyper ventilation could be one way of describing the process she is undergoing. On the other hand, acute loss of the will to live could be another.
Bloggiana! Bloggiana! How much? Bloggiana’s voice is dim, a mere whisper. I think I hear her say a word ending with –illion. Then I think I hear her say something about the gross domestic product of a small African country. Then I’m fairly certain I hear the old girl gasp for Pinot Grigio. Finally, as I am on the way to the drawer where the corkscrews live, I am pretty sure I hear Bloggiana issue the worst utterance of all: cutbacks.
Hand shaking, barely able to find the centre of the PG cork, I glance over to make sure my commune-partner is still breathing. Her eyes are closed and there is definitely a large contusion somewhere in the region of her wallet-pocket. I finally unthuck the PGrigio and wave a tumbler-full under the old girl’s nostrils. She barely even flickers.
To be continued.
Bloggiana and I are huddled in what we optimistically refer to as our sitting room. The ivy growing through the window and over the back of the television stares at us obliquely, reminding us of jobs we have yet to get round to. Ice formed overnight on the inside of the glass lies in a small accusatory puddle next to the ivy. The birds at the nut feeder outside peer at us darkly, nutless, accusing, their feathers fluffed up in birdie indignation at the moronic focus group that managed to come up with the term global warming.
Sluggishly something within Bloggiana stirs and she decides to go and see what the postman has brought today. Bloggiana takes her time. Her slippers shuffle across the flagstones in a susurrating slither. When she bends over, she does so so slowly that we can almost hear her sinews creak. Then she rests the unopened envelope on the side of the Expensive Cooker while she nonchalantly lights a cigarette, tweaks a blackthorn branch out of Our Dog’s backside, curses the kettle which seems to be on a go-slow yet again.
But at last Bloggiana turns to the matter in hand. I watch as the innocent piece of paper comes out of the innocent small white envelope. I watch as Bloggiana’s mid-life eyes squint into life. Then I watch as paper drops from her hand. I watch as lit cigarette tumbles out of Bloggiana’s mouth, though somehow, through a trick of the dry weather, manages to stay stuck to her lips. And I watch as Bloggiana crumples palely to the mud-strewn floor.
Bloggiana! I exclaim solicitously. What is the matter? Deftly removing the burning cigarette from my friend’s lips, I bend down and gather up the crumpled piece of paper at her side. The word Invoice peeps out from the crumples, as do the name and address of Bloggiana’s divorce solicitors. All of a sudden I have a pretty good idea about what’s wrong. How much, Bloggiana? I gasp.
By now, the old girl has gone from deep red to dark blue. Hyper ventilation could be one way of describing the process she is undergoing. On the other hand, acute loss of the will to live could be another.
Bloggiana! Bloggiana! How much? Bloggiana’s voice is dim, a mere whisper. I think I hear her say a word ending with –illion. Then I think I hear her say something about the gross domestic product of a small African country. Then I’m fairly certain I hear the old girl gasp for Pinot Grigio. Finally, as I am on the way to the drawer where the corkscrews live, I am pretty sure I hear Bloggiana issue the worst utterance of all: cutbacks.
Hand shaking, barely able to find the centre of the PG cork, I glance over to make sure my commune-partner is still breathing. Her eyes are closed and there is definitely a large contusion somewhere in the region of her wallet-pocket. I finally unthuck the PGrigio and wave a tumbler-full under the old girl’s nostrils. She barely even flickers.
To be continued.
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
NITS Part II
We are in terrible trouble. Bloggiana’s daughter has been going to school, nit-infested on a grand scale, and someone has rumbled us. The first I hear of it is when Bloggiana’s daughter produces a letter. It says Dear Mrs Bloggiana, We are disappointed to note that your daughter blah blah blah. Bloggiana has read the letter already and chosen this moment to de-cork the Pinot Grigio and swear heartily into the microphone that she imagines is plugged straight from our parlour into the head-teacher’s office. I don’t give a s*** about nits, she sings, already stumbling over her words after one swift but deep draught on the PG.
Next thing, Bloggiana is accosted by a fellow-mother as she goes to collect her daughter from school. I mean, the woman expostulates, the rest of us blah blah blah. Bloggiana shrugs her shoulders as politely as she can, turns on the expostulating woman – and stalks off, her daughter’s elbow firmly in her grip. One or two more letters follow. Dear Mrs Bloggiana Blah blah blah. Perhaps you would like to blah blah blah. Bloggiana almost has a nervous breakdown. Bad enough, she mutters, keeping the mice in the kitchen in the style they’ve become accustomed to. And so saying, Bloggiana glares at the imaginary home to school microphone. And hisses.
Simultaneously, our domestic hygiene arrangements are being called into question by someone altogether closer to home. She too is indignant about our walking wildlife situation and is threatening full-on loss-of-friendship. Bloggiana values said friendship and tries to laugh it off. I mean blah blah blah it’s not as though I invited the little darlings, she exclaims cheerily. This approach is all very well but her friend is not for laughing. Matters between the two escalate. Friend actually combs Bloggiana’s daughter and finds hundreds, nay thousands of the little darlings in Bloggiana’s daughter’s hair. Bloggiana when confronted is unable to volunteer any kind of sensible refutation of her guilt because there is none. Bloggiana remains entrenched in her position. I mean nobody died, did they?
Finally, Bloggiana’s whole nit-attitude comes to a head when Teacher of Junior School where daughter has attended since an early age comes and taps Bloggiana on the shoulder and says Mrs Bloggiana, I wonder if you would find this useful at all? Bloggiana squares up to the Teacher and finds that what is being brandished in front of her is a videotape. Nitz & How to Outwit Them, itz wittily named. Bloggiana seizes the tape, storms out of the school and heads straight for her therapist. On the way, she happens to pass an outdoor event. There are caravans, tents, cars, people. It must be some kind of civic extravaganza but Bloggiana is not too worried about the exact nature of the occasion. For she spots among the caravans a small pavilion marked Lakeland District Council Household Waste Management Team Roadshow. And she rolls down her window, picks up the videotape and hurls it in the general direction of a Lakeland District Council Recycling Enhancement Officer.
Next thing, Bloggiana is accosted by a fellow-mother as she goes to collect her daughter from school. I mean, the woman expostulates, the rest of us blah blah blah. Bloggiana shrugs her shoulders as politely as she can, turns on the expostulating woman – and stalks off, her daughter’s elbow firmly in her grip. One or two more letters follow. Dear Mrs Bloggiana Blah blah blah. Perhaps you would like to blah blah blah. Bloggiana almost has a nervous breakdown. Bad enough, she mutters, keeping the mice in the kitchen in the style they’ve become accustomed to. And so saying, Bloggiana glares at the imaginary home to school microphone. And hisses.
Simultaneously, our domestic hygiene arrangements are being called into question by someone altogether closer to home. She too is indignant about our walking wildlife situation and is threatening full-on loss-of-friendship. Bloggiana values said friendship and tries to laugh it off. I mean blah blah blah it’s not as though I invited the little darlings, she exclaims cheerily. This approach is all very well but her friend is not for laughing. Matters between the two escalate. Friend actually combs Bloggiana’s daughter and finds hundreds, nay thousands of the little darlings in Bloggiana’s daughter’s hair. Bloggiana when confronted is unable to volunteer any kind of sensible refutation of her guilt because there is none. Bloggiana remains entrenched in her position. I mean nobody died, did they?
Finally, Bloggiana’s whole nit-attitude comes to a head when Teacher of Junior School where daughter has attended since an early age comes and taps Bloggiana on the shoulder and says Mrs Bloggiana, I wonder if you would find this useful at all? Bloggiana squares up to the Teacher and finds that what is being brandished in front of her is a videotape. Nitz & How to Outwit Them, itz wittily named. Bloggiana seizes the tape, storms out of the school and heads straight for her therapist. On the way, she happens to pass an outdoor event. There are caravans, tents, cars, people. It must be some kind of civic extravaganza but Bloggiana is not too worried about the exact nature of the occasion. For she spots among the caravans a small pavilion marked Lakeland District Council Household Waste Management Team Roadshow. And she rolls down her window, picks up the videotape and hurls it in the general direction of a Lakeland District Council Recycling Enhancement Officer.
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
BLOGGERS PART II
Bloggiana and I have drawn up in-depth plans for our blog. We are going to chart things just as they happen: when a gelding sneezes in the stable; when a swallow nests in the front porch; when the wrens come in through the gables in the winter and fill the house with the broken wings of the butterflies they have lived on to survive. When one of us looks out of the window and sees a young fox being beaten up by one of Our Cats; when darkness falls and all we can hear is the rape alarm of an angry vixen; when the power goes off because a swan did not duck in time to miss the electricity cables.
We plan to take the thing one day at a time, to ease ourselves into the process not with a splash but with a ripple, mimicking perhaps the moorhens on the canal as they ease themselves out of the privacy of the marsh marigolds; or mimicking instead the sound of the heron softly pulping the air as it gives us a fly-past on our morning trit-trot around the lanes. In our blog, Our Cat will get a mention, Our Garden might too. We will document the comings and goings at the livery yard where Horse is God and everything else can go to the muckheap. We will winkle humour and neat observation out of every small crannie of our existence – in short, Our Blog will demonstrate life in the rural raw.
And all our plans seem to be falling into place nicely. Bloggiana says she has just witnessed one particularly appealing episode between a sheep and a sparrow. I myself have had a run-in with a twig; and another with an angry farmer; and a third, grippingly, with a white crow. All this is grist to our blogging mill and we sit by the fire as it belches smuts into our glasses of PG feeling entirely satisfied, nay excited, about our prospects.
Then out of the blue, Bloggiana has a conniption, goes completely left-field on me. I know what, she says swilling out the brandy decanter with lead pellets and shooing a bantam off the kitchen table with her free hand, why not let’s do a dog blog? Our Dog can be the narrator. Life from the ground up, what? Sniffs and bushes to pee against and rabbits to ignore and rabbits to chase. People: the ones you bite; and the ones you trot nonchalantly past. Cats: the ones you chase; and the ones who chase you so you leave them well alone. Toilet areas: guest room or dining room, which is best? Left-overs: medium sized portion of carbonara; large chunk of stale stilton; small slivers of half-cooked haddock skin, which is best? Sleeping: all day? Or just most of the day and all night? Postmen: the ones you bite; the ones you nonchalantly ignore.
Bloggiana goes on in this vein for such a spell that I begin to think I have entered a parallel universe. Perhaps we shouldn’t have taken quite so much Pinot G on board when we watched Best in Show the other night. Or maybe it was that Fifty Years on Television Commemorative Peter Purves Poster I gave her as a present a few weeks back.
Bloggiana, I admonish, kicking the bantam which is now under the table and spitting a lead pellet out of my brandy glass, the only thing Our Dog is good for is catching balls.
Well quite, rejoins Bloggiana, my point exactly.
We plan to take the thing one day at a time, to ease ourselves into the process not with a splash but with a ripple, mimicking perhaps the moorhens on the canal as they ease themselves out of the privacy of the marsh marigolds; or mimicking instead the sound of the heron softly pulping the air as it gives us a fly-past on our morning trit-trot around the lanes. In our blog, Our Cat will get a mention, Our Garden might too. We will document the comings and goings at the livery yard where Horse is God and everything else can go to the muckheap. We will winkle humour and neat observation out of every small crannie of our existence – in short, Our Blog will demonstrate life in the rural raw.
And all our plans seem to be falling into place nicely. Bloggiana says she has just witnessed one particularly appealing episode between a sheep and a sparrow. I myself have had a run-in with a twig; and another with an angry farmer; and a third, grippingly, with a white crow. All this is grist to our blogging mill and we sit by the fire as it belches smuts into our glasses of PG feeling entirely satisfied, nay excited, about our prospects.
Then out of the blue, Bloggiana has a conniption, goes completely left-field on me. I know what, she says swilling out the brandy decanter with lead pellets and shooing a bantam off the kitchen table with her free hand, why not let’s do a dog blog? Our Dog can be the narrator. Life from the ground up, what? Sniffs and bushes to pee against and rabbits to ignore and rabbits to chase. People: the ones you bite; and the ones you trot nonchalantly past. Cats: the ones you chase; and the ones who chase you so you leave them well alone. Toilet areas: guest room or dining room, which is best? Left-overs: medium sized portion of carbonara; large chunk of stale stilton; small slivers of half-cooked haddock skin, which is best? Sleeping: all day? Or just most of the day and all night? Postmen: the ones you bite; the ones you nonchalantly ignore.
Bloggiana goes on in this vein for such a spell that I begin to think I have entered a parallel universe. Perhaps we shouldn’t have taken quite so much Pinot G on board when we watched Best in Show the other night. Or maybe it was that Fifty Years on Television Commemorative Peter Purves Poster I gave her as a present a few weeks back.
Bloggiana, I admonish, kicking the bantam which is now under the table and spitting a lead pellet out of my brandy glass, the only thing Our Dog is good for is catching balls.
Well quite, rejoins Bloggiana, my point exactly.
Thursday, 6 November 2008
LODGINGS Part II
Besides trying to elicit breakfast from the succession of reluctant Mrs Couldn’t-Be-More-Helpfuls who seem to be our landladies, Bloggiana and I spend our five days in lodgings going back and forth to court. Each day, fortified by Value yogurts, Camp coffee and the dream (largely unfulfilled) of boiled eggs, we march forth to meet Bloggiana’s fate. Her divorce has proved tricky and this turns out to be a hearing among hearings, a K2 of hearings, a Big Mac of hearings, an Obama versus Clinton of hearings.
Bloggiana looks pale each time we reach the court. I try to cheer her up by nicknaming her opponent (and erstwhile life-partner) Mister Bris. Or more familiarly Mister Hugh Bris. Bloggiana looks at me but she’s not for laughing. In the foyer, we meet her legal team and take refuge in a room which has no windows and is painted the colour of peach loo roll. The air conditioning does not work but it does rattle. There is a clutch of notices on the notice board, a lot of them pertaining to market research feedback.
“You asked for: more comfortable seating in the seating area.
We provided: alas, we were unable to provide more comfortable seating in the seating area but we were able to place a coffee machine in the lobby.”
The general ambience seems soaked with the illogic, the bluster, the pain, the madness of humankind and all we long to do is open a window. And get back to our lodgings.
The five days of Bloggiana’s hearing blend into one. There is a judge whom we christen Justice Makepeace. There is a sizeable female clerk who in uniform looks like a character from a Wagnerian horror film but disconcertingly turns out to be a pussycat with a night-time penchant for glittery jeans. There are families who turn up to tear each other apart and there are others who are there to prevent the authorities from tearing them apart. You can spot the legal people because they are the ones with the suitcases on wheels. There are several Mister Hugh Brises and you can spot them because they are the ones without legal people.
And after all that, the hearing is inconclusive. Justice Makepeace has found the whole thing a trial and he decides to defer his judgment until some later date. Bloggiana and I and the legal people go out and drown our sorrows in a vat full of table wine. Everyone feels older and not much wiser and the only thing that is sure is that the legal people will be paid.
One last time, we go back to the court building to fetch our belongings. It is now that Bloggiana spots another notice. The notice is headed Self-Help Packs. And underneath the legend is the instruction Please help yourself. Bloggiana and I look at one another and shrug our weary shoulders. It just about sums up the whole experience. We march back to The Sobbing Buccaneer and take leave of our lodgings. Mrs Couldn't-Be-More-Helpful watches us go, her bottle-white hair against the fuchsia coloured anaglipta wallpaper of the SB customer lounge resembling something akin to a halo.
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
BLOGGERS PART I
Bloggiana and I have had a brainwave. It is autumn – full-tilt autumn with the copper light glancing off the beech leaves and the prince-of-wales feathers waving in the breezes and the robins prematurely gobbling up the nuts in the feeder and the cat munching rabbits’ ears with lusty abandon on the muck-heap. We are hacking again, dodging the dead badger that must have ambled out of the darkness into the path of some late-night home-coming young farmer, dodging the hedge-cutters with their prehistoric yellow teeth, the van drivers with theirs, waving to Mr Angry when we see him and his dog, Snarl.
I know what, says Bloggiana perkily, let’s write a blog.
Now let me tell you that Bloggiana is never short of a bright idea. It was her initiative, just as the credit crunch was about to bite, to launch a brand new range of celebrity underwear. She it was who came up with the concept of Christian Chutney (Ingredients label: Christ knows what’s in it). Perhaps best of all it was Bloggiana who came up with those now legendary items for the Private Eye Christmas Gifts section: Pube-o-Soap, a bar of soap impregnated with pubic hairs; and the reciprocally brilliant Shift-o-Pube, a small razor designed specifically to remove pubic hairs from soap.
So when Bloggiana says let’s write a blog, it is definitely worth giving the old girl her head for a moment. Go on then Bloggiana, what do you suggest? I venture. Well, she says, clearing her throat and picking off one or two stray dandelion stalks from her jodhpur boots, I’ve been doing some research on the matter and it seems to me that there are scarcely any blogs out there that make a head or tail of sense. I mean, she goes on, simultaneously giving Dobbin a dig in the ribs and tweaking some shavings out of her forelock, call me old-fashioned but most of the blogs one comes across, one might as well tune in half-drunk to an American cop show with the sound on low. Not one blog is about anything you and I can relate to, not one blog is in a language you or I can recognise. There’s no mention of PG anywhere, none of swearing, no animals and definitely no chutney.
Hmmm, I say to Bloggiana, noticing the strands of hay peeping from her nostrils and the British Dressage competition calendar poking forlornly out of her pocket, you could be onto something, old girl.
So later that day, Bloggiana and I log on. We go to blogspot.com and browse. There are blogs for politicos and blogs for journos and blogs for weirdos. Someone called Rantingmother might be up our street but when we investigate further, it seems she has ranted herself out of ideas, having last been known to blog in 2006. SpicySue might be another source of competition for our type of blog but it turns out that spicy means something neither Bloggiana nor I could possibly be held to comment upon. Every blogger has a list of blogs they enjoy and we follow link after link. Seems there isn’t one blog out there written by two middle-aged hackers with a penchant for Pinot Grigio and an opinion usually wayward on almost anything small.
Bloggiana, I say to my equestrian co-conspirator, Bloggiana, I think we might be onto something. Let’s start blogging. You never know where it might take us.
To be continued.
I know what, says Bloggiana perkily, let’s write a blog.
Now let me tell you that Bloggiana is never short of a bright idea. It was her initiative, just as the credit crunch was about to bite, to launch a brand new range of celebrity underwear. She it was who came up with the concept of Christian Chutney (Ingredients label: Christ knows what’s in it). Perhaps best of all it was Bloggiana who came up with those now legendary items for the Private Eye Christmas Gifts section: Pube-o-Soap, a bar of soap impregnated with pubic hairs; and the reciprocally brilliant Shift-o-Pube, a small razor designed specifically to remove pubic hairs from soap.
So when Bloggiana says let’s write a blog, it is definitely worth giving the old girl her head for a moment. Go on then Bloggiana, what do you suggest? I venture. Well, she says, clearing her throat and picking off one or two stray dandelion stalks from her jodhpur boots, I’ve been doing some research on the matter and it seems to me that there are scarcely any blogs out there that make a head or tail of sense. I mean, she goes on, simultaneously giving Dobbin a dig in the ribs and tweaking some shavings out of her forelock, call me old-fashioned but most of the blogs one comes across, one might as well tune in half-drunk to an American cop show with the sound on low. Not one blog is about anything you and I can relate to, not one blog is in a language you or I can recognise. There’s no mention of PG anywhere, none of swearing, no animals and definitely no chutney.
Hmmm, I say to Bloggiana, noticing the strands of hay peeping from her nostrils and the British Dressage competition calendar poking forlornly out of her pocket, you could be onto something, old girl.
So later that day, Bloggiana and I log on. We go to blogspot.com and browse. There are blogs for politicos and blogs for journos and blogs for weirdos. Someone called Rantingmother might be up our street but when we investigate further, it seems she has ranted herself out of ideas, having last been known to blog in 2006. SpicySue might be another source of competition for our type of blog but it turns out that spicy means something neither Bloggiana nor I could possibly be held to comment upon. Every blogger has a list of blogs they enjoy and we follow link after link. Seems there isn’t one blog out there written by two middle-aged hackers with a penchant for Pinot Grigio and an opinion usually wayward on almost anything small.
Bloggiana, I say to my equestrian co-conspirator, Bloggiana, I think we might be onto something. Let’s start blogging. You never know where it might take us.
To be continued.
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
BOYS Part I
So Bloggiana and I are on a pub-crawl. We are slithering round the bars of our stone-faced northern market town, trying to put behind us the general stress caused by the divorce story that never ends and the lodger-moving-in story that never begins. I am on Tequila slammers; Bloggiana on sparklywhite cider, and the barman who obviously passed his NVQ in Health and Safety summa cum laude is on Diet Soda. It is late and the slammers are beginning to do their work but through the mist, I can hear Bloggiana trying to tell me about the visit she has just made earlier in the day to her godson - the one she had never previously even laid eyes upon but the one she had promised to corrupt the minute he hit the age of fourteen.
Sho I take him to this little bishtro I know, she says, one jusht far enough from his shchool that at least a few of his friends may catch ush there. We are at an outshide table. I light up. Pour myshelf a glass, offer the boy one too, look him in the eye and chin the PG. Then I shay Sho, I shay, sho Adolesco, how is life treating you then?
Now I should tell you, stumbles Bloggiana, that this Adolesco sheems like an uncannily nice boy to me. I mean, she slurs on, even his shpots look nice. And when I collected him from his houshe, the houshemashter came up to me and said Ah Mrs Bloggiana, nice to meet you. Now look after him, he’s a jolly nice boy.
Bloggiana rambles on. Through a haze of sparklywhite cidery spit, I decipher that she finds herself a little unnerved. She had been looking forward to meeting a perfect stinker. She had been looking forward to having a PG downing competition with him, to smoking one of his roll-ups, to laughing furiously with him as they conjured up an image of the Headmaster’s wife in a thong. And instead, she finds herself confronted with a bastion of niceness.
As a result, the conversation that unrolls between corrupting godmother and apparently incorruptible godson is a teeny bit stilted, Bloggiana admits. Won any matches lately? she asks genially. A few, comes the reply. Read any good books lately? she perseveres. Loads, comes the response. Got many friends? Yeah. Bloggiana says at this point, she feels herself seized with panic. Suddenly the desire to cut out the glass and just glug the PG straight from the bottle is almost overwhelming, she says. But thankfully, in a last ditch effort at self-preservation, Bloggiana manages to notice something awry about godson Adolesco's knuckles.
What happened there? she ventures. Oh, rejoins Adolesco, that was Measly Twit-Sniveller. Bloggiana puts the bottle down and reunites her hand with her glass-stem. Go on, she says, feeling a slight frisson in some part of her she can’t quite locate. Well, says the boy, Measly accused me of farting in his face. And I said Measly I did not fart in your face. And then I looked round and Measly was about to punch me on the nose. So I punched him first. Lamped him.
Golly, says Bloggiana, locating the site of the frisson and squirming into it affectionately. And then what happened? Well Measly had to go to hospital, says Adolesco. Split cheek went septic, he adds. Crikey, says Bloggiana. And how is he now? she asks almost reverently. Doesn’t give me much trouble any more, Adolesco replies, simultaneously cricking the fingers on his injured hand and tearing up the wrapper of a sugar-lump into very small bits indeed.
At this, Bloggiana knocks back another measure of PG and turns to the boy. Now Adolesco, she ventures, have you ever thought of taking up smoking?
Sho I take him to this little bishtro I know, she says, one jusht far enough from his shchool that at least a few of his friends may catch ush there. We are at an outshide table. I light up. Pour myshelf a glass, offer the boy one too, look him in the eye and chin the PG. Then I shay Sho, I shay, sho Adolesco, how is life treating you then?
Now I should tell you, stumbles Bloggiana, that this Adolesco sheems like an uncannily nice boy to me. I mean, she slurs on, even his shpots look nice. And when I collected him from his houshe, the houshemashter came up to me and said Ah Mrs Bloggiana, nice to meet you. Now look after him, he’s a jolly nice boy.
Bloggiana rambles on. Through a haze of sparklywhite cidery spit, I decipher that she finds herself a little unnerved. She had been looking forward to meeting a perfect stinker. She had been looking forward to having a PG downing competition with him, to smoking one of his roll-ups, to laughing furiously with him as they conjured up an image of the Headmaster’s wife in a thong. And instead, she finds herself confronted with a bastion of niceness.
As a result, the conversation that unrolls between corrupting godmother and apparently incorruptible godson is a teeny bit stilted, Bloggiana admits. Won any matches lately? she asks genially. A few, comes the reply. Read any good books lately? she perseveres. Loads, comes the response. Got many friends? Yeah. Bloggiana says at this point, she feels herself seized with panic. Suddenly the desire to cut out the glass and just glug the PG straight from the bottle is almost overwhelming, she says. But thankfully, in a last ditch effort at self-preservation, Bloggiana manages to notice something awry about godson Adolesco's knuckles.
What happened there? she ventures. Oh, rejoins Adolesco, that was Measly Twit-Sniveller. Bloggiana puts the bottle down and reunites her hand with her glass-stem. Go on, she says, feeling a slight frisson in some part of her she can’t quite locate. Well, says the boy, Measly accused me of farting in his face. And I said Measly I did not fart in your face. And then I looked round and Measly was about to punch me on the nose. So I punched him first. Lamped him.
Golly, says Bloggiana, locating the site of the frisson and squirming into it affectionately. And then what happened? Well Measly had to go to hospital, says Adolesco. Split cheek went septic, he adds. Crikey, says Bloggiana. And how is he now? she asks almost reverently. Doesn’t give me much trouble any more, Adolesco replies, simultaneously cricking the fingers on his injured hand and tearing up the wrapper of a sugar-lump into very small bits indeed.
At this, Bloggiana knocks back another measure of PG and turns to the boy. Now Adolesco, she ventures, have you ever thought of taking up smoking?
Monday, 3 November 2008
LODGERS PART III
Bloggiana is on the lookout for a lodger again. Jesus the practising Christian failed to materialise. A number of potential singles came forwards but they were carless and clearly unable to comprehend just how far away the nearest bus-stop actually is. A Chinese linguist said yes please, he would love to come and live with you Bloggiana, I bring many stories from the east and I will teach your children xylophone. So Bloggiana drew a blank and has now registered with a website called yesIhadnegativeequitytoodotcom. She is hoping this way she will find some hapless victim of the credit crunch who may or may not move in to ease the burden of her daily budgetary problems.
In the meantime, while we await the arrival of this seamless addition to our commune, we reminisce – back to the Days of the Poles. In the Days of the Poles, which coincided roughly with Bloggiana’s Days of Being most-Hard-Pressed Financially-and-in-all-other-ways, we enjoyed visitations by Magdas and Terezas and Mikolajs and Buseks. They came from Warsaw and Krakow and Sosnowiec and Gdansk. They travelled on buses for hundreds of hours and they brought bottom hugging black tracksuits, an unstoppable work-ethic, cheerful financial ambition and awful awful presents. Bloggiana still has a doll with a frilly hat, a leery plastic smile and something coppery about her hair which speaks ominously of bri-nylon. That was given to her by Magda.
Magda was the one who walked into a room and curtsied. She wore a look of general pain but it was nerve-wracking to ask her if anything was wrong because more often than not if you did, she would burst spectacularly into tears. Magda was the one with the perfect Polish face and the perfect Polish conviction that everything in Poland was much better. If Bloggiana was feeling generous, she would ignore this point of view. When Magda cooked up something that required four days in a row of cabbage-boiling, Bloggiana silently and scornfully rested her case. Magda was quite simply wrong, she hissed, through a clenched nose.
Tereza came with more dolls and some lace, made at great cost no doubt by her grandmother. The lace took the form of mats that seemed to be too small for plates and too many for a bedside table. Tereza was razor bright and wanted to follow her father into the chemicals industry, to analyse paint. She had a law degree and was a qualified teacher and rode a horse like a whirling dervish. Bloggiana quite liked Tereza but she could not stay long.
So we moved onto Mikolaj. He was funny and good looking and worked hard and thankfully stayed a mile away from the cooker. He was also caught lying to his previous employer and had to go back south to pay off a string of parking tickets, won illicitly while driving illicitly in his employer’s strictly out-of-bounds car. So Mikolaj segued into Busek and Busek was related to a redundant Polish aristocratic family. His paintwork became legendary in these parts and his manners were immaculate. But his cooking was devastating and after he left, Bloggiana had to have her curtains professionally cleaned.
Sadly it seems the Days of the Poles are over. Something to do with the euro and the credit crunchski and the fact that in Poland everything is now much better. Bloggiana logs into her website and seeks out new messages. It seems that a young man from Wigan may be interested.
In the meantime, while we await the arrival of this seamless addition to our commune, we reminisce – back to the Days of the Poles. In the Days of the Poles, which coincided roughly with Bloggiana’s Days of Being most-Hard-Pressed Financially-and-in-all-other-ways, we enjoyed visitations by Magdas and Terezas and Mikolajs and Buseks. They came from Warsaw and Krakow and Sosnowiec and Gdansk. They travelled on buses for hundreds of hours and they brought bottom hugging black tracksuits, an unstoppable work-ethic, cheerful financial ambition and awful awful presents. Bloggiana still has a doll with a frilly hat, a leery plastic smile and something coppery about her hair which speaks ominously of bri-nylon. That was given to her by Magda.
Magda was the one who walked into a room and curtsied. She wore a look of general pain but it was nerve-wracking to ask her if anything was wrong because more often than not if you did, she would burst spectacularly into tears. Magda was the one with the perfect Polish face and the perfect Polish conviction that everything in Poland was much better. If Bloggiana was feeling generous, she would ignore this point of view. When Magda cooked up something that required four days in a row of cabbage-boiling, Bloggiana silently and scornfully rested her case. Magda was quite simply wrong, she hissed, through a clenched nose.
Tereza came with more dolls and some lace, made at great cost no doubt by her grandmother. The lace took the form of mats that seemed to be too small for plates and too many for a bedside table. Tereza was razor bright and wanted to follow her father into the chemicals industry, to analyse paint. She had a law degree and was a qualified teacher and rode a horse like a whirling dervish. Bloggiana quite liked Tereza but she could not stay long.
So we moved onto Mikolaj. He was funny and good looking and worked hard and thankfully stayed a mile away from the cooker. He was also caught lying to his previous employer and had to go back south to pay off a string of parking tickets, won illicitly while driving illicitly in his employer’s strictly out-of-bounds car. So Mikolaj segued into Busek and Busek was related to a redundant Polish aristocratic family. His paintwork became legendary in these parts and his manners were immaculate. But his cooking was devastating and after he left, Bloggiana had to have her curtains professionally cleaned.
Sadly it seems the Days of the Poles are over. Something to do with the euro and the credit crunchski and the fact that in Poland everything is now much better. Bloggiana logs into her website and seeks out new messages. It seems that a young man from Wigan may be interested.
Friday, 31 October 2008
SMALL PLEASURES Part I
In the early candlelit dusk of the year, there is nothing more delightful than a gentle trudging-round-the-lanes-and-back hack. Bloggiana and I take our steeds Nag and Dobbin and clamber aboard swathed in furs. Sunglasses are sometimes required but usually we regret not bringing hot water bottles and reviving flasks of Famous Grouse. Sometimes there are floods to deal with; gales are a frequent hazard; ice storms not unheard of. But in between, we can amble behind the snaking silhouette of Our Dog and enjoy the small pleasures associated with watching a season work its magic on the hedgerows.
Curiously, the small pleasures are more satisfying the more they are sampled. To see the dark grey W of the heron in the same place, again, at the same time. To see the dipper flicker up and down the beck in that hectic flight, chocolate and white and charming. To count out the ewes wearing their tell-tale Been-there-got-the-tup-mark on their bottoms. To catch perhaps a glimpse of the kingfisher, bluely flashing in the willow on the beck’s turn.
Even more refined, the pleasure of breaking down the pleasures. So we wonder if the heron will be the exact same bird; and will he fly in the exact same pattern to the other side of the field? Are those the berries that were once the honeysuckle that we so admired a few weeks back? Is that the ewe that we nicknamed Brunnhilde on account of her extremely low brows and her Prisoner Cell Block H demeanour? Look, there is the black cow again, with the exceptionally long eyelashes who seems to acknowledge us in a very Some-Like-It-Hot manner. And over there, the teasels once so majestic in that long row in that narrow field, now standing like so many old ladies queuing for a bus.
To wave to the man with the bottle-bottom glasses who sits in his window, cat on the table, eating cold baked beans from a tin. To listen in at the door of the bothy that belongs to the recluse once seen pushing a television along on the handlebars of his bicycle. To be made to jump by the dog that leaps up at the fence that leans into the road, guaranteeing you a near-falling-off moment. To walk through the ford and wonder if Our Dog will be washed over the weir again, like before.
Bloggiana and I trundle along more or less the same routes for days in a row. Our Dog leads the way, one ear up, one ear down, one large bramble enmeshed in his backside, one long corridor of sniffing and leg-cocking beckoning him ever onwards. Nag and Dobbin occasionally pull faces at one another, exchanging snippets of equi-chat whose meaning we can only guess at. A flurry of goldfinches rises from the hedgerow. A flock of starlings swirls overhead, waiting a week or so more until their true optical illusion formations can be unleashed on us.
We turn for home. Cold, wind-blown, wet perhaps. But already looking forwards to the next time.
Curiously, the small pleasures are more satisfying the more they are sampled. To see the dark grey W of the heron in the same place, again, at the same time. To see the dipper flicker up and down the beck in that hectic flight, chocolate and white and charming. To count out the ewes wearing their tell-tale Been-there-got-the-tup-mark on their bottoms. To catch perhaps a glimpse of the kingfisher, bluely flashing in the willow on the beck’s turn.
Even more refined, the pleasure of breaking down the pleasures. So we wonder if the heron will be the exact same bird; and will he fly in the exact same pattern to the other side of the field? Are those the berries that were once the honeysuckle that we so admired a few weeks back? Is that the ewe that we nicknamed Brunnhilde on account of her extremely low brows and her Prisoner Cell Block H demeanour? Look, there is the black cow again, with the exceptionally long eyelashes who seems to acknowledge us in a very Some-Like-It-Hot manner. And over there, the teasels once so majestic in that long row in that narrow field, now standing like so many old ladies queuing for a bus.
To wave to the man with the bottle-bottom glasses who sits in his window, cat on the table, eating cold baked beans from a tin. To listen in at the door of the bothy that belongs to the recluse once seen pushing a television along on the handlebars of his bicycle. To be made to jump by the dog that leaps up at the fence that leans into the road, guaranteeing you a near-falling-off moment. To walk through the ford and wonder if Our Dog will be washed over the weir again, like before.
Bloggiana and I trundle along more or less the same routes for days in a row. Our Dog leads the way, one ear up, one ear down, one large bramble enmeshed in his backside, one long corridor of sniffing and leg-cocking beckoning him ever onwards. Nag and Dobbin occasionally pull faces at one another, exchanging snippets of equi-chat whose meaning we can only guess at. A flurry of goldfinches rises from the hedgerow. A flock of starlings swirls overhead, waiting a week or so more until their true optical illusion formations can be unleashed on us.
We turn for home. Cold, wind-blown, wet perhaps. But already looking forwards to the next time.
Thursday, 30 October 2008
NITS PART I
We are at the races. Me, Bloggiana, Jollyosa, Bloggiana’s children and one or two sundry others. Jollyosa introduces us to an international make-up artist with a radiant smile and perfect skin who comments sweetly on how pretty Bloggiana’s daughter is and how lovely she looks with that white hairband in her hair. Bloggiana’s daughter reacts to this pronouncement in an endearingly bashful way, turning her foot round and looking earthwards. Her mother too blushes at the compliment. Simultaneously, a horse roars past the finishing post; betting tickets fly; commentators climax; and a small black insect troops the colour across the middle of Bloggiana’s daughter’s lovely white-hairbanded forehead. The international make-up artist’s smile crumples. It seems it’s the first time she has ever been presented with a real live nit.
No one can be quite sure when our household first became infested with nits but but to be sure, the little critters took to us with gusto. Now it is hard to remember a time when we were not all, at some point or other, itching. From time to time, Bloggiana and I hold a nit-purge. We buy bottles of stuff called Nitwitz or NickerzToNitz or Nitz’R4Twitz and douse ourselves with a substance that is no doubt the equivalent of placing a gastric band around our braincells; then go to bed, our hair plastered chemically to our headz and dream dreams of a nit-free future, where we can hold up our hairbands high in front of international make-up artists, read aloud from the bible of the politically correct and march into school feeling somewhat smug.
But nits will out, as they say, and it is not long before our dreams prove shallow. Fingers are seen to drift upwards once again, towards the hairbands, into the depths of all that luminous nit-friendly growth; and to begin moving back and forth, back and forth in a manner strangely reminiscent of scratching.
Dismissing chemicals, we invoke the help of other mothers. Tea-tree, trills one, it’s the only way! Vinegar, vouchsafes another, never fails! Conditioner, crows a third, they can’t stick to it! Combing, croons a fourth in a voice that reminds us of some baddie from the Temple of Doom, only combing! So we buy combs. Some of them look like combs, some of them like garden rakes. We buy one, five, ten of the things. We sit on the loo, taking it in turns. Bloggiana’s daughter holds a piece of tissue to catch the booty while we eke each little darling out of its snug, delicious, because-you’re-worth-it nest. None of the potions can have made much of an impact because there are hundreds of them, small but immaculately formed. And not only that but there are eggs by the thousand, clinging on for their dear proto-lives, the microscopic birthing glands of their parents clearly inspired to have been nurtured in such an environment.
We comb until we can comb no more. Until each of us has cramp in her very hair follicles. We pull out more nits than we thought possible. Then we collapse exhausted into bed. And await developments.
To be continued.
No one can be quite sure when our household first became infested with nits but but to be sure, the little critters took to us with gusto. Now it is hard to remember a time when we were not all, at some point or other, itching. From time to time, Bloggiana and I hold a nit-purge. We buy bottles of stuff called Nitwitz or NickerzToNitz or Nitz’R4Twitz and douse ourselves with a substance that is no doubt the equivalent of placing a gastric band around our braincells; then go to bed, our hair plastered chemically to our headz and dream dreams of a nit-free future, where we can hold up our hairbands high in front of international make-up artists, read aloud from the bible of the politically correct and march into school feeling somewhat smug.
But nits will out, as they say, and it is not long before our dreams prove shallow. Fingers are seen to drift upwards once again, towards the hairbands, into the depths of all that luminous nit-friendly growth; and to begin moving back and forth, back and forth in a manner strangely reminiscent of scratching.
Dismissing chemicals, we invoke the help of other mothers. Tea-tree, trills one, it’s the only way! Vinegar, vouchsafes another, never fails! Conditioner, crows a third, they can’t stick to it! Combing, croons a fourth in a voice that reminds us of some baddie from the Temple of Doom, only combing! So we buy combs. Some of them look like combs, some of them like garden rakes. We buy one, five, ten of the things. We sit on the loo, taking it in turns. Bloggiana’s daughter holds a piece of tissue to catch the booty while we eke each little darling out of its snug, delicious, because-you’re-worth-it nest. None of the potions can have made much of an impact because there are hundreds of them, small but immaculately formed. And not only that but there are eggs by the thousand, clinging on for their dear proto-lives, the microscopic birthing glands of their parents clearly inspired to have been nurtured in such an environment.
We comb until we can comb no more. Until each of us has cramp in her very hair follicles. We pull out more nits than we thought possible. Then we collapse exhausted into bed. And await developments.
To be continued.
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
FACEBOOK PART I
In her new post-divorce state, my friend Bloggiana has discovered Facebook. When challenged, she says it’s about time she conformed with a 21st century stereotype. She’s going to Parties, she’s Internet Dating and now she’s on Facebook. Soon she’ll be driving a brightly coloured very small car and having a wild affair with a man half her age, we tell her. Bloggiana looks rather perky at the thought.
Facebook, she tells me after a few days, is introducing Bloggiana to all sorts of new people. Her nephews are on it. Her daughter’s friends are on it. Her friends’ daughters are on it. Even her MP is on it. Should we point out the obvious? I ask my friend Jollyosa who is round for tea that day. But we bite our lips because clearly Bloggiana is having so much Facebook fun.
Bloggiana becomes increasingly attached to her laptop. Winds may blow and rivers pour through low-lying semis in Fluxcombe. The Lakeland District Council House Waste Management team may go on strike for weeks and in the local paper, the Spot the Dog competition jackpot may finally be scooped up after two years of accruing. But none of this deters Bloggiana. Resolutely, daily, hourly, she travels the by-ways of the Facebook networks, seeking out old friends, hunting down links to links to links, stalking her prey as resolutely as a Scottish traffic warden.
A few weeks on, Bloggiana bounces into the parlour and says Guess what? I have now got two thousand three hundred and seventy seven friends. No! I exclaim. Yes, she says, contradicting me. How on earth? I ask, frankly stunned. Easy, she replies and before I can pursue the matter, she goes on. AND among them is someone who knows someone who travelled with someone who travelled with me on the Trans-Siberian Express back in 1987. No! I exclaim further. Indeed I have, Bloggiana says, contradicting me a second time.
And indeed she must have. Because a week or two later, I hear Bloggiana on the telephone and she is laughing uproariously. Fragments of half-heard conversation slip into the parlour and they all seem to have a 1987 Trans-Siberian Express theme. War and Peace, I hear; that girl with the terrible BO who thankfully got off in Irkutsk, I hear again. Novisibirsk, Bloggiana blurts out with relish. Oh yes, and the honeymoon bride who, at our Mongolian champagne party, announced – to the tangible chagrin of her honeymoon groom – her passion for anal sex. Yes, howls Bloggiana, I’d forgotten all about that.
The TSE banter goes on for a while. Clearly that journey back in those heady pre-Glaznost days was an epic. Reluctantly I find myself wondering if perhaps there isn’t something to this Facebook malarkey after all. I leave Bloggiana shrieking into her handset. I sneak upstairs to the study. Hit the laptop. And register.
Facebook, she tells me after a few days, is introducing Bloggiana to all sorts of new people. Her nephews are on it. Her daughter’s friends are on it. Her friends’ daughters are on it. Even her MP is on it. Should we point out the obvious? I ask my friend Jollyosa who is round for tea that day. But we bite our lips because clearly Bloggiana is having so much Facebook fun.
Bloggiana becomes increasingly attached to her laptop. Winds may blow and rivers pour through low-lying semis in Fluxcombe. The Lakeland District Council House Waste Management team may go on strike for weeks and in the local paper, the Spot the Dog competition jackpot may finally be scooped up after two years of accruing. But none of this deters Bloggiana. Resolutely, daily, hourly, she travels the by-ways of the Facebook networks, seeking out old friends, hunting down links to links to links, stalking her prey as resolutely as a Scottish traffic warden.
A few weeks on, Bloggiana bounces into the parlour and says Guess what? I have now got two thousand three hundred and seventy seven friends. No! I exclaim. Yes, she says, contradicting me. How on earth? I ask, frankly stunned. Easy, she replies and before I can pursue the matter, she goes on. AND among them is someone who knows someone who travelled with someone who travelled with me on the Trans-Siberian Express back in 1987. No! I exclaim further. Indeed I have, Bloggiana says, contradicting me a second time.
And indeed she must have. Because a week or two later, I hear Bloggiana on the telephone and she is laughing uproariously. Fragments of half-heard conversation slip into the parlour and they all seem to have a 1987 Trans-Siberian Express theme. War and Peace, I hear; that girl with the terrible BO who thankfully got off in Irkutsk, I hear again. Novisibirsk, Bloggiana blurts out with relish. Oh yes, and the honeymoon bride who, at our Mongolian champagne party, announced – to the tangible chagrin of her honeymoon groom – her passion for anal sex. Yes, howls Bloggiana, I’d forgotten all about that.
The TSE banter goes on for a while. Clearly that journey back in those heady pre-Glaznost days was an epic. Reluctantly I find myself wondering if perhaps there isn’t something to this Facebook malarkey after all. I leave Bloggiana shrieking into her handset. I sneak upstairs to the study. Hit the laptop. And register.
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
BARKING PART II
Teener, Bloggiana’s daughter looks distracted. I have just come into the parlour from outside where I have been picking leaves and branches out of the back of Our Dog and I am fractious and a bit smelly. Whatever’s wrong? I ask Teener, somewhat sharply. It’s Mummy, she blurts out. She’s gone barking.
I must admit I have been a bit worried about Bloggiana recently and Teener’s announcement strikes me as being entirely plausible. In the wake of her decree absolute thingy being decreed, Bloggiana has taken to being sensationally blunt towards almost anyone she comes across. When she walked into a petrol station the other day, she asked the attendant in a loud voice if he had a finger of fudge. Happily the attendant was a man of the world and took it well. At the pet shop, when the proprietor tried to offer her a Hamster Starter kit for her daughter, she was heard to ask What do I do with it? Add water? In the solicitor’s office, when she was presented with a bill for £575,000 for a telephone conversation with her barrister, she expostulated Blimey, is that all?
Then not so long ago, I found Bloggiana sleepwalking in the hallway. She was wearing full plus fours and a velvet kaftan and the pink wellingtons which Santa gave her last year. This all seemed to be a stage too far so I rang her old friend Doris who lives in the middle East somewhere and told him everything. Doris, I said, I really think you need to come over.
Now Doris and Bloggiana go back a long way. They were at university together, shared friends, lovers, car-crashes, broken dreams. Doris is most certainly in touch with his feminine side and as such, makes an excellent friend for a girl who dresses up in wellingtons before going to bed. When Doris arrived, the first thing Bloggiana did was to unthuck the Pinot Grigio and roll out an extremely incongruous lunch. Jollyosa came and Chumsky and there was a lot giggling about whisper therapy which involves Guy Ritchie going up to Madonna at random moments and whispering to him that she is sexy. (We kind of decided that the therapy didn’t work that well. Too much risk of saliva in the earlobe, was the general conclusion.)
After lunch, Doris, Bloggiana, Chumsky and I went for a walk in a park where the trees grow in a west wind blown arc, high above the neck of our river. The trees are the paralympians of trees, misshapen but unbelievably robust, holding their own over hundreds of years of buffeting. Doris and Bloggiana were walking ahead and there must have been a lull in the conversation. Perhaps Bloggiana looked sad or Doris sensed some dark moment clouding Bloggiana’s otherwise fairly cheerful spiritual landscape. Because the next thing we knew, Doris had stopped in his tracks, extended his neck and pointed his head up towards the bright orb of an autumn day-moon – transforming himself, it seemed, into a yappy dog. And now he was barring the path of his old friend and barking at her, for all his life’s worth. Bloggiana folded up in front of him, convulsed with laughter.
Ever since, when things have been a bit tricky, Bloggiana has taken herself off to the park. And that is why I think Teener is probably absolutely right. Bloggiana has almost certainly gone barking.
I must admit I have been a bit worried about Bloggiana recently and Teener’s announcement strikes me as being entirely plausible. In the wake of her decree absolute thingy being decreed, Bloggiana has taken to being sensationally blunt towards almost anyone she comes across. When she walked into a petrol station the other day, she asked the attendant in a loud voice if he had a finger of fudge. Happily the attendant was a man of the world and took it well. At the pet shop, when the proprietor tried to offer her a Hamster Starter kit for her daughter, she was heard to ask What do I do with it? Add water? In the solicitor’s office, when she was presented with a bill for £575,000 for a telephone conversation with her barrister, she expostulated Blimey, is that all?
Then not so long ago, I found Bloggiana sleepwalking in the hallway. She was wearing full plus fours and a velvet kaftan and the pink wellingtons which Santa gave her last year. This all seemed to be a stage too far so I rang her old friend Doris who lives in the middle East somewhere and told him everything. Doris, I said, I really think you need to come over.
Now Doris and Bloggiana go back a long way. They were at university together, shared friends, lovers, car-crashes, broken dreams. Doris is most certainly in touch with his feminine side and as such, makes an excellent friend for a girl who dresses up in wellingtons before going to bed. When Doris arrived, the first thing Bloggiana did was to unthuck the Pinot Grigio and roll out an extremely incongruous lunch. Jollyosa came and Chumsky and there was a lot giggling about whisper therapy which involves Guy Ritchie going up to Madonna at random moments and whispering to him that she is sexy. (We kind of decided that the therapy didn’t work that well. Too much risk of saliva in the earlobe, was the general conclusion.)
After lunch, Doris, Bloggiana, Chumsky and I went for a walk in a park where the trees grow in a west wind blown arc, high above the neck of our river. The trees are the paralympians of trees, misshapen but unbelievably robust, holding their own over hundreds of years of buffeting. Doris and Bloggiana were walking ahead and there must have been a lull in the conversation. Perhaps Bloggiana looked sad or Doris sensed some dark moment clouding Bloggiana’s otherwise fairly cheerful spiritual landscape. Because the next thing we knew, Doris had stopped in his tracks, extended his neck and pointed his head up towards the bright orb of an autumn day-moon – transforming himself, it seemed, into a yappy dog. And now he was barring the path of his old friend and barking at her, for all his life’s worth. Bloggiana folded up in front of him, convulsed with laughter.
Ever since, when things have been a bit tricky, Bloggiana has taken herself off to the park. And that is why I think Teener is probably absolutely right. Bloggiana has almost certainly gone barking.
Thursday, 23 October 2008
PARTIES PART II
We are sitting in the tack room after a particularly rugged canter round the lanes. Bloggiana’s hair is swept windily round her face and I have a high colour in my cheeks which is for once not down to last night’s intake of Pinot Grigio. Contrary to all livery yard rules, we are smoking. So Bloggiana, I ask, how were all those parties?
It is two weeks now since we waved Bloggiana off onto a London-bound train; and a good ten days since she returned. In between there have been a lot of bonfires to set and leaves to sweep and dead foliage to gather. The rats have been eating the eggs and the fox has been stalking the chickens and the mice have been stealing the butter (again) and the old house has been moaning under the weight of all that summer rain which has now soaked into its very skin and bones. Side by side, Bloggiana and I have pushed wheelbarrows through hock-high mud and walked horizontal into the rain to catch our ponies. We have hurtled back and forth to school, narrowly avoiding in these globally warmed weather conditions becoming the jam in an Eddie Stobart sandwich on more than one occasion. And meanwhile the subject of what exactly Bloggiana got up to while south has been deftly avoided.
But this morning, thanks to her pulse-raising mind-numbing bad-hair-day hurtle of a hack, Bloggiana seems a little more disposed to talk. Marvellous, she replies. Absolutely splendid. Do go on, I nudge keenly.
And it transpires that they were indeed auspicious occasions. At a singles party in Westbourne Park, Bloggiana was introduced to a jaw-droppingly handsome Ceylonese consultant (married) and a leonine Irishman of rugby descent (unmarried but uninterested). At a pub evening in Pimlico, she met up with strings of old friends who could not find one single restaurant to eat at so they all descended onto the floor of the flat of a man whom none of them had ever met before. In Islington, she played skittles; in Olympia, she dined with the very old; in South Ken, with the absurdly young.
Bloggiana pauses half way through her cigarette and blows a smoke ring which for a moment, I mistake for the emblem of the London underground. She has a misty look in her eye and is playing with something in her left hand which I later realise is her railcard. By the way, she says her-herming somewhat, would you mind doing the school run without me for a couple of days next week? Of course not, I answer, unable to avoid adding the needlessly inquisitive And where are you off to? Bloggiana draws deep on her cigarette and exhales wistfully. The smoke leaves the tack room, drifts in a seamless ribbon out over the muckheap and on down the drive towards the motorway.
Parties, she whispers guiltily, more parties.
It is two weeks now since we waved Bloggiana off onto a London-bound train; and a good ten days since she returned. In between there have been a lot of bonfires to set and leaves to sweep and dead foliage to gather. The rats have been eating the eggs and the fox has been stalking the chickens and the mice have been stealing the butter (again) and the old house has been moaning under the weight of all that summer rain which has now soaked into its very skin and bones. Side by side, Bloggiana and I have pushed wheelbarrows through hock-high mud and walked horizontal into the rain to catch our ponies. We have hurtled back and forth to school, narrowly avoiding in these globally warmed weather conditions becoming the jam in an Eddie Stobart sandwich on more than one occasion. And meanwhile the subject of what exactly Bloggiana got up to while south has been deftly avoided.
But this morning, thanks to her pulse-raising mind-numbing bad-hair-day hurtle of a hack, Bloggiana seems a little more disposed to talk. Marvellous, she replies. Absolutely splendid. Do go on, I nudge keenly.
And it transpires that they were indeed auspicious occasions. At a singles party in Westbourne Park, Bloggiana was introduced to a jaw-droppingly handsome Ceylonese consultant (married) and a leonine Irishman of rugby descent (unmarried but uninterested). At a pub evening in Pimlico, she met up with strings of old friends who could not find one single restaurant to eat at so they all descended onto the floor of the flat of a man whom none of them had ever met before. In Islington, she played skittles; in Olympia, she dined with the very old; in South Ken, with the absurdly young.
Bloggiana pauses half way through her cigarette and blows a smoke ring which for a moment, I mistake for the emblem of the London underground. She has a misty look in her eye and is playing with something in her left hand which I later realise is her railcard. By the way, she says her-herming somewhat, would you mind doing the school run without me for a couple of days next week? Of course not, I answer, unable to avoid adding the needlessly inquisitive And where are you off to? Bloggiana draws deep on her cigarette and exhales wistfully. The smoke leaves the tack room, drifts in a seamless ribbon out over the muckheap and on down the drive towards the motorway.
Parties, she whispers guiltily, more parties.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
LODGERS PART II
So Bloggiana is sitting wreathed in smoke at her table and Jesus the practising Christian - potential lodger and actual supper guest - is sitting opposite in his beauty parlour slippers, sipping cordial and trying to defend himself against queries about his paedophile status. He is dealing with the onslaught admirably, the answers almost perfect in their combination of tact and political correctness. Yes, he promises, I do like children. No, he avers, I have never been in trouble with the authorities.
Bloggiana keeps up the bombardment. In a few months, the hostess assures the guest, you do realise we will have you smoking and drinking again? Jesus smiles weakly but as yet, the hand clutching the stem of his cordial glass appears steady.
Feeling certain the deal is home on a duck’s back and that Jesus as lodger will any minute now be plugging a reasonably large hole in her weekly budget, Bloggiana moves towards the climax of her attack-moment. And you do realise also, she confides, that in the end we will almost certainly shed you of your belief status. What kind of Christian are you, by the way? Bloggiana tells me later had she known what a Branch Davidian was, perhaps she would have altered her course. But as it is, tumbler ahoy, she continues undeterred. For my money, religion should remain absolutely private and personal, she blusters, like sex. It is at this point that Jesus the practising Christian gives the first hint that all perhaps is not well. He gulps. But HMS Bloggiana is in full sail now, PG streaming through her pipes, Marlboros hot-firing her cylinders, and she interprets the gulp merely as a frisson of excitement at the mention of the S-word. After all, she reasons and probably not unreasonably, the practising Christian is almost certainly untried.
So the food is eaten and swearwords digested and the wine drunk and the butts cleared and Jesus in his slippers swept off into the night. Bloggiana goes to bed that evening reasonably happy with her day’s work. Tomorrow she will hear from the Christian and he will say I commit. I will live as lodger with you and your friends, I will do so as soon as possible. It will be a brilliant and convenient marriage, reasons Bloggiana, between the materially needy and the comfortably-waged-but-unloved.
Then the inbox the next day. Through a haze of after-dinner regrets, Bloggiana manages to decipher a fairly detailed missive from Jesus. It turns out that after all that, Jesus the practising Christian enjoyed a sleepless night. Turns out that all that smoke got to his lungs, that all that talk of being re-introduced to the god of PG had got to his soul, that he had woken up next day with “gloop” (sic) on his chest and a burning ache of doom in his liver. Turns out that Jesus was reluctant to be corrupted as it had taken him rather a long time to become pure. Turns out that unless Bloggiana could mend her ways at least in the smoking if not in the drinking, swearing and belief departments, Jesus could not after all commit. He was very keen to try, he said, but he would have to have undertakings. (my italics)
Bloggiana and I are now sharing a glass of tap water. I have one straw and she has another and we are hoping the waiter won’t charge us for the second. It’s been a tough week or two and she’s still no better off than she was. Bloggiana reaches into her handbag and pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Fuck it, she says, fuck it with gusto.
Bloggiana keeps up the bombardment. In a few months, the hostess assures the guest, you do realise we will have you smoking and drinking again? Jesus smiles weakly but as yet, the hand clutching the stem of his cordial glass appears steady.
Feeling certain the deal is home on a duck’s back and that Jesus as lodger will any minute now be plugging a reasonably large hole in her weekly budget, Bloggiana moves towards the climax of her attack-moment. And you do realise also, she confides, that in the end we will almost certainly shed you of your belief status. What kind of Christian are you, by the way? Bloggiana tells me later had she known what a Branch Davidian was, perhaps she would have altered her course. But as it is, tumbler ahoy, she continues undeterred. For my money, religion should remain absolutely private and personal, she blusters, like sex. It is at this point that Jesus the practising Christian gives the first hint that all perhaps is not well. He gulps. But HMS Bloggiana is in full sail now, PG streaming through her pipes, Marlboros hot-firing her cylinders, and she interprets the gulp merely as a frisson of excitement at the mention of the S-word. After all, she reasons and probably not unreasonably, the practising Christian is almost certainly untried.
So the food is eaten and swearwords digested and the wine drunk and the butts cleared and Jesus in his slippers swept off into the night. Bloggiana goes to bed that evening reasonably happy with her day’s work. Tomorrow she will hear from the Christian and he will say I commit. I will live as lodger with you and your friends, I will do so as soon as possible. It will be a brilliant and convenient marriage, reasons Bloggiana, between the materially needy and the comfortably-waged-but-unloved.
Then the inbox the next day. Through a haze of after-dinner regrets, Bloggiana manages to decipher a fairly detailed missive from Jesus. It turns out that after all that, Jesus the practising Christian enjoyed a sleepless night. Turns out that all that smoke got to his lungs, that all that talk of being re-introduced to the god of PG had got to his soul, that he had woken up next day with “gloop” (sic) on his chest and a burning ache of doom in his liver. Turns out that Jesus was reluctant to be corrupted as it had taken him rather a long time to become pure. Turns out that unless Bloggiana could mend her ways at least in the smoking if not in the drinking, swearing and belief departments, Jesus could not after all commit. He was very keen to try, he said, but he would have to have undertakings. (my italics)
Bloggiana and I are now sharing a glass of tap water. I have one straw and she has another and we are hoping the waiter won’t charge us for the second. It’s been a tough week or two and she’s still no better off than she was. Bloggiana reaches into her handbag and pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Fuck it, she says, fuck it with gusto.
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
BARKING PART I
Among the various members of the part-wildlife, part-person commune which Bloggiana and I like to call home, one of the most psychologically challenged is our dog. Bloggiana’s friend Chumsky, an ideas specialist from World’s End, says he thinks Our Dog is actually not a dog but a human trapped inside a Bearded Collie Costume. Every time Chumsky comes to tea, Our Dog pops his nose into Chumsky’s lap and ogles him in a thoroughly android fashion. Sometimes he hums him a little tune which Bloggiana says Chumsky finds jolly disconcerting.
Our Dog goes by a number of names. Officially he is registered as Pride of Loch Lomond Audition for Troilus and Cressida. (His mother being the much-garlanded Kyle of Lochalsh Where Did you Put My Railcard Darling; his father the magnificent but rarely shown Drumnadrochit Compulsive Obsessive Hider of Random Objects). But the name that we use most and the one Our Dog is most likely to answer to is It Stinks.
It Stinks has a number of peculiarities. First and foremost, It Stinks stinks. Worse than a walking packet of skunk deterrent, worse than a sweaty 18th century goat-barn filled to the roof with scented candles, worse than the entire world supply of artichoke liqueur boiled down to resin, then mixed with guano. Grown men have been to known to pass out when It Stinks saunters into their airspace. Sommeliers, perfumiers and those who live by the nose tend to give our county a wide berth, just to make sure their most important professional tool is not contaminated in any way by Our Dog.
The main reason that It Stinks stinks brings us onto Our Dog’s second principal peculiarity which is his abject terror of receiving any treatment that could remotely be described as cosmetic. If Bloggiana goes towards the room where the cupboard is that holds the drawer where we sometimes put his brush, It Stinks goes into a tailspin and howls to the moon. If she mentions the s*-word in his presence or folds flannels when he is nearby or if either of us even so much as daydreams about clippers, It Stinks has a fit. Quite often, his fit takes the form of doing a large dog-poo in the dining room. Sometimes, he does one in the guest room as well, for added effect. Should the pong get so great that either of us is moved to brave the whole grooming procedure, one of us has to close all the doors of the parlour while the other throws herself onto the floor behind the hatstand and, hope upon hope, catches It Stinks napping and unprepared. Usually for our troubles one of us gets slightly mangled and this is when we use It Stinks’s other name, It Bites Too. *soap
Chumsky came to tea again the other day and egged on by Bloggiana, he googled Bearded Collie on his Dried Apricot. As you would expect, there is a Bearded Collie Club and there are Bearded Collie Kennels selling Bearded Collie puppies, proffering volumes of Bearded Collie advice, dispensing indispensible nuggets of Bearded Collie history. You can have your Bearded Collie immortalised in art by any number of Bearded Collie artists. You can shop at the Bearded Collie shop. (How about an I love my Bearded Collie keyring, I teased Chumsky.) (He retorted How about an I love my Bearded Collie on top keyring.) (That shut me up.)
Finally we discovered that there is an actual Bearded Collie chatroom. As Bloggiana and I and Chumsky grappled with the image of a lot of Bearded Collies sitting at their laptops surfing the net, my friend Jollyosa knocked at the door. She had brought a friend of hers to tea as well. I was slow to go to the door and it was Our Dog instead who greeted them both as they walked in. I got there in time to hear Jollyosa saying to her friend, Good Heavens, that dog looks like your mother. Later I found a message from Chumsky in my inbox. Told yer, it said simply.
Our Dog goes by a number of names. Officially he is registered as Pride of Loch Lomond Audition for Troilus and Cressida. (His mother being the much-garlanded Kyle of Lochalsh Where Did you Put My Railcard Darling; his father the magnificent but rarely shown Drumnadrochit Compulsive Obsessive Hider of Random Objects). But the name that we use most and the one Our Dog is most likely to answer to is It Stinks.
It Stinks has a number of peculiarities. First and foremost, It Stinks stinks. Worse than a walking packet of skunk deterrent, worse than a sweaty 18th century goat-barn filled to the roof with scented candles, worse than the entire world supply of artichoke liqueur boiled down to resin, then mixed with guano. Grown men have been to known to pass out when It Stinks saunters into their airspace. Sommeliers, perfumiers and those who live by the nose tend to give our county a wide berth, just to make sure their most important professional tool is not contaminated in any way by Our Dog.
The main reason that It Stinks stinks brings us onto Our Dog’s second principal peculiarity which is his abject terror of receiving any treatment that could remotely be described as cosmetic. If Bloggiana goes towards the room where the cupboard is that holds the drawer where we sometimes put his brush, It Stinks goes into a tailspin and howls to the moon. If she mentions the s*-word in his presence or folds flannels when he is nearby or if either of us even so much as daydreams about clippers, It Stinks has a fit. Quite often, his fit takes the form of doing a large dog-poo in the dining room. Sometimes, he does one in the guest room as well, for added effect. Should the pong get so great that either of us is moved to brave the whole grooming procedure, one of us has to close all the doors of the parlour while the other throws herself onto the floor behind the hatstand and, hope upon hope, catches It Stinks napping and unprepared. Usually for our troubles one of us gets slightly mangled and this is when we use It Stinks’s other name, It Bites Too. *soap
Chumsky came to tea again the other day and egged on by Bloggiana, he googled Bearded Collie on his Dried Apricot. As you would expect, there is a Bearded Collie Club and there are Bearded Collie Kennels selling Bearded Collie puppies, proffering volumes of Bearded Collie advice, dispensing indispensible nuggets of Bearded Collie history. You can have your Bearded Collie immortalised in art by any number of Bearded Collie artists. You can shop at the Bearded Collie shop. (How about an I love my Bearded Collie keyring, I teased Chumsky.) (He retorted How about an I love my Bearded Collie on top keyring.) (That shut me up.)
Finally we discovered that there is an actual Bearded Collie chatroom. As Bloggiana and I and Chumsky grappled with the image of a lot of Bearded Collies sitting at their laptops surfing the net, my friend Jollyosa knocked at the door. She had brought a friend of hers to tea as well. I was slow to go to the door and it was Our Dog instead who greeted them both as they walked in. I got there in time to hear Jollyosa saying to her friend, Good Heavens, that dog looks like your mother. Later I found a message from Chumsky in my inbox. Told yer, it said simply.
Monday, 20 October 2008
CHUTNEY Part II
So I have pinned my flag to the chutney cruiseliner, says Bloggiana. Which navigational chart do you think I should follow? We are sitting, Bloggiana and I, in a kitchen full of apples going dry or brown, full of special-offer dates and mouse-nibbled chillies and jamjars rescued from a healthfood shop that still sport a distinct tinge of organic rusting about their lids. It’s funny you should ask, I counter, because I was wondering the very same thing myself.
Faced with this mountain of fruit to peel, core and chop, with the looming deadline of her first chutney gig and the prospect of having to hand-write a lot of hand-written labels, Bloggiana and I decide there’s only one thing for it. Let’s go and indulge in a quick session of mid-afternoon google, we chime.
And what a world it is we open up. Wikipedia and Websters and Britannica and a host of others boast chutney write-ups. Amazon claims to sell five thousand six hundred and twenty-nine books on chutney. Google sports three million nine hundred and ninety thousand references to chutney. Did you know you can make shrimp chutney? Or peanut chutney? Or chocolate-cherry chutney? (yuk.) Did you know that back in 1998, a swashbuckling Fijian marketeer with an eye to the main chance caused a furore when he created Cannibal Chutney? (Does that mean he made chutney out of cannibals, we wonder aloud? Or that the chutney he made should be eaten solely with cold cannibal?)
Did you know that the word chutney comes from the Hindu word chatni meaning to crush? Or that it comes from the Sanskrit word for licking? Or that it has lent its name to many, many London restaurants and a thriving kind of music in Trinidad & Tobago? Did you know that according to the rhyming dictionary, the word chutney rhymes with whitney, jitney, cockney, baloney and mccartney? There is a film about a lesbian love affair called Chutney Popcorn. One K Raghavendra Rao wrote a critique on Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children entitled The Novel as History as Chutney (sic). In Nagaland, they make chutney from fish.
Bloggiana and I are dazzled, nay confused by this welter of information. Many of the internet chutney contentions sound false, cribbed from each other, magnified, then spouted as chutney gospel. Recipes sound remarkably similar, stolen, bastardised, handed on, then stolen back. We canter through food websites and food blogs and foodie guides. We peruse as many of the 3,990,000 entries as our mid-afternoon window will allow. Finally, we retire exhausted, our parting gesture a game to find our favourite chutney name. Bloggiana likes the sound of Pudina Kothamalli Pachadi. Me, I’m quite excited by the sound of Mr Vikki’s Hot Banana. Either way, we figure, it’s time to return to the cruiseliner and set sail. Before the high seas of the wine-dark internet delay us any further.
Faced with this mountain of fruit to peel, core and chop, with the looming deadline of her first chutney gig and the prospect of having to hand-write a lot of hand-written labels, Bloggiana and I decide there’s only one thing for it. Let’s go and indulge in a quick session of mid-afternoon google, we chime.
And what a world it is we open up. Wikipedia and Websters and Britannica and a host of others boast chutney write-ups. Amazon claims to sell five thousand six hundred and twenty-nine books on chutney. Google sports three million nine hundred and ninety thousand references to chutney. Did you know you can make shrimp chutney? Or peanut chutney? Or chocolate-cherry chutney? (yuk.) Did you know that back in 1998, a swashbuckling Fijian marketeer with an eye to the main chance caused a furore when he created Cannibal Chutney? (Does that mean he made chutney out of cannibals, we wonder aloud? Or that the chutney he made should be eaten solely with cold cannibal?)
Did you know that the word chutney comes from the Hindu word chatni meaning to crush? Or that it comes from the Sanskrit word for licking? Or that it has lent its name to many, many London restaurants and a thriving kind of music in Trinidad & Tobago? Did you know that according to the rhyming dictionary, the word chutney rhymes with whitney, jitney, cockney, baloney and mccartney? There is a film about a lesbian love affair called Chutney Popcorn. One K Raghavendra Rao wrote a critique on Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children entitled The Novel as History as Chutney (sic). In Nagaland, they make chutney from fish.
Bloggiana and I are dazzled, nay confused by this welter of information. Many of the internet chutney contentions sound false, cribbed from each other, magnified, then spouted as chutney gospel. Recipes sound remarkably similar, stolen, bastardised, handed on, then stolen back. We canter through food websites and food blogs and foodie guides. We peruse as many of the 3,990,000 entries as our mid-afternoon window will allow. Finally, we retire exhausted, our parting gesture a game to find our favourite chutney name. Bloggiana likes the sound of Pudina Kothamalli Pachadi. Me, I’m quite excited by the sound of Mr Vikki’s Hot Banana. Either way, we figure, it’s time to return to the cruiseliner and set sail. Before the high seas of the wine-dark internet delay us any further.
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