PIPING UP

Bloggiana's old friend Bored has just rolled into town from Istanbul where he has been hiding since he dressed up as Her Royal Majesty during the Trooping The Colour Ceremony back in 1982 and waltzed down HorseGuards Parade in the arms of a blow-up Santa.

Back then, Bloggiana and Bored shared many adventures together and even today Bored's arrest-moment, when Bloggiana - dressed as a horse - tried to save him and Bored - in full garter robes - tried to be saved and they both - as they were being carted off to prison - burst into a spontaneous a capella version of Singing in the Reindeer, can reduce them to hopeless dribbly hysterics.

So the fact of Bored's arrival should cause Bloggiana's tired old heart to sing. She should be dropping everything, buying in bulk quantities of PG and cigs, ironing her feather boas, putting on her best chat hat and chatting. She should be getting out her favourite Cleveland Bay outfit, donning her mane and tail, practising her neigh, pawing the ground and reliving old times as surely they deserve to be relived.

But instead of all that, Bloggiana is so distracted that she barely notices Bored's presence.

Fancy a drive round and we can go and bark at the locals? ventures the Ottoman one, whose impersonation of a Jack Russell is one of his favourite turns.

Hmm, comes the reply.

Or how about we dig around in your dressing up cupboard? You can be Sonny and I'll be Cher. Or you can be a lamb and I'll be little Bo Peep.

Bloggiana barely lifts her head out of her elbows.

Happily Bored is not one to be put off and he goes to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea, contentedly growling to himself as he does so. Beside the kettle, it so happens there is an opened letter and on the paper are some instructions and Bored reads them and bursts into peals of untrammelled Cappodochian laughter.

Bloggiboots, he exclaims. What's all this about you entering the Winston Churchill Tribute Evening Championships? Darling, how absolutely thrilling!

A problem shared is a problem halved, they say. Bloggiana hears Bored giggling over the idea of her getting in touch with her inner Winston. She hears Cappodochian shepherds dancing in the mountains to the tune of her old friend's mirth. She sees Cappodochian lambs veritably skipping to their masters' dance. And instead of plunging her head deeper into her chest, she perks up.

You really think so? she asks, clearing her throat so that her contralto tunes down to baritone. You really think the thing's a good idea?

Bored lets out another peal of giggles. Darling, course I do. Best idea I heard of since Kellogg invented the Pop-Tart. Now come on darling, time we got down to the nitty-gritty. Time for instantaneous plannobrations.

At which the bottle of Arak, the bottle of suspect foreign import brandy, two beakers and a serving spoon are placed upon the table. And Bored and Bloggiana settle down to the important business of discussing Winston Churchill Tribute Evening tactics.

SIZING UP

Now Bloggiana's yen to buy a shop has taken over all else. And looking for a shop will take her mind off her other worries, she believes, those being her apparently insurmountable indebtedness, the falling-apartness of her horse, the sudden onset cannibal syndrome (SOCS) of her daughter's hamster, the fact that her new found life partner has chosen this exact moment to get up off her sofa, book himself on a flight to somewhere and spend Some Considerable Time out of Bloggiana's life and the other fact that no matter which way she turns, she does not seem to be getting any younger.

To this end, Bloggiana has been trawling through the shop brochures, looking at small shops and large shops and projecting herself, in her daydreams, into a life where retail is king and profit margin is his consort; into a life where she lives, dreams, breathes, sleeps turnover, where stock taking no longer has anything to do with cattle rustling and she finally finds out what on earth a bill of lading is.

All this is leaving Bloggiana thoroughly preoccupied. When she is not lighting up a cigarette or cutting off Tiggy Pott-Hunter's nuisance calls, she is perusing brochures.

What are you up to, old girl? I ask.

Perusing brochures, comes the reply.

Later one of the chickens craps on the Very Expensive Cooker when the lid is up and the dropping catches fire and smoke billows everywhere and flames lick out from behind the cooker and threaten to ignite the tablecloth and I stand there with a bucket of water in one hand and the offending chicken in the other and I can't see Teener but I can hear her coughing and my eyes are streaming and for a moment there it looks quite serious so I ask Bloggiana if she would possibly mind fetching the fire blanket.

Can't do that, she says. Perusing brochures.

Teener and I await developments with bated breath. We scrub the parlour ceiling and wipe soot off the floor and subject the remaining chickens to a Very Serious Chat on crapping - and we wait. Our Dog walks into the parlour smelling of dead badger and then he sits down in the corner to lick his back of beyond but all the same I can see he too looks expectant and he too bates his breath. Adolesco, home from school after his latest spat with Measly Twat-Sniveller led to a four-day suspension and a runic letter from his headmaster, pretends to fill in his Anger Management Workbook but all the same, we can tell he too is agog with expectation.

Then Borederella, Bloggiana's old friend from Istanbul who has come over for a few days to relive student memories (our collective favourite being the story of Bored (sic) mistaking a kilt for a skirt during a Hoffnung concert which Bloggiana was organising at the Edinburgh Festival and doing a very gay gordon on stage with a tuba), tentatively asks the Blog woman if she is making any progress.

Matter of fact, not making any progress at all, she barks. Only thing I'm sure of right now, that's what it's a shop for.

And as we all cock our heads questioningly to one side, the Blog woman replies, smoke-rings billowing from her mouth as she does so,

Why chutney, of course, what on earth hell else would we sell but chutney?

TOTTING UP

But what with Nag looking increasingly rickety on his pins; and the hamster meeting an untimely end; and the Unpaid Solicitor becoming somewhat querulous; and the Winston Churchill Tribute Northwest Regional Championships looming; and Tiggy Pott-Hunter refusing to leave us alone, (dialling Bloggiana's mobile one morning 187 times until finally the Blog woman answered and told her to fuck off, I mean really Piccalilli what does the woman think she is playing at, snot as if I promised to marry the old bag or anything);

What with all the above, and what with the nice man from the electricity board telling Bloggiana that her water heater is broken and her fuseboard is broken and her neutral cable is on the way out and if she doesn't spend £10,ooo pounds on upgrading her electrics, she may well find herself following the cremation route only recently taken by said dead hamster;

And what with Our Dog having only gone and got all his toes on his left foot broken by Dobbin when a casual harmless game of let's play Taunt the 17 hand Hunter went tragically wrong; and then the vet telling Bloggiana that the entire bill for the entire mending of the entire foot would come to something jolly close to the amount she should be spending on repairing her faulty and some would venture highly volatile and jolly dangerous buzzbar;

And what with Bloggiana having only this morning given herself a rude black eye by causing her head to ricochet off the door she was opening onto the wall she was next to, then ricochet back onto the door, this small but undeniably painful incident no doubt occurring owing to Bloggiana having downed just one or two too many Rusty Nails last night when her old friend Borederella blew into town with a bottle of Arak under one arm and a bottle of highly suspect foreign import brandy under the other;

And what with winter coming and the tide of mud rising and the holes in Bloggiana's wellington boots not seeming to self-repair in any shape or form;

And what with the credit card company that has been extending credit blindly to Bloggiana for the last few years suddenly opening its eyes and becoming unblind and now refusing credit to Bloggiana so that when she goes to the shop to buy a bottle of PG (I mean, Piccalilli, it's not much to ask is it, one weeny little bottle of the old white stuff? Is it?), she has to endure the humiliation of receiving a pitying tilt of the head by of all checkout personnel, Learoyd, who of all checkout personnel is the very last one Bloggiana would like to receive a pitying tilt of the head from;

And what with Bloggiana's Erstwhile Life Partner still being not only alive but apparently kicking;

What with all the above, the old Pony Club Commissioner begins increasingly to get hold of the idea that the sooner we can leave our parlour behind, our smallholding, our expensive cooker, our garden full of molehills, our unused garden bench, our gate that is leaning more and more towards starboard and our rich clusterfuck of broken fuseboards and pending debts, the sooner, Piccalilli, we can all sleep easy in our beds.

And we can all move to Marshy Codsdale and run a shop.
　
　

COUGHING UP

Bloggiana may be in the trough of despond about Bubble and about the wave of animal deaths that swim back into her recollection upon finding Bubble's hamster ribcage gnawed to a bony architectural statement in the (wait for it) utility room; but that is nothing to how she feels when she finally opens the post this fine autumn morning and comes across firstly an outstanding fees note from her Unpaid Solicitor; and secondly, a letter from the South Trilby and West Northmoreland branch of the Pony Club reminding her that her mandatory donation towards the sponsored breast stroke-a-thon should now finally be forthcoming.

The Unpaid Solicitor has been silent for a while now. Bloggiana and I had come to dare to hope that he might have expired. Or found himself the subject of his own divorce and thus thoroughly under-snowed by turned tables. Or perhaps been slapped into stocks and egg-pounded to a small blob of omelette on the bottom of someone else's shoe. In our dreams (and particularly in Bloggiana's) the US would be walking along the pavements of a sunny day in, say, Harrogate. And suddenly find himself the entirely unjust victim of a police assault in which he would be clobbered around the head with an ASBO, then sent for a lifetime's detention to a windowless cell with a mid-pubescent teenage boy called Kevin.

Effing bollocks, says the Blog-one, when she opens the first and counts up the zeros at the bottom of the Totals column.

Must say, they're not wrong 'bout the outstanding bit, she adds. Then bites her lip almost in half as she realises she has injected humour into a subject which on her account at least is far from amusing.

Tiggy Pott-Hunter is the signatory to the second letter.

Dear Mrs Bloggiana, the letter goes.

Bloggiana must be inwardly rehearsing for the forthcoming tribute night for her accent has a distinctly Churchillian ring.

blahblah simply splendid efforts I think you will agree blahblahblahblah. blahblahblah Liliana Fox-Trotter and her quite exemplary stroke rate blahblahblah. blahblahblah remind you you were kind enough to offer most generous sponsorship blahblahblah. blahblahblah time you sent off your £100 cheque post haste.

Now many of you will be aware by now that Bloggiana is a little pre-disposed towards going off at the deep end. The incident when she told the vet he was the worst thing that had happened to his profession since Rolf Harris's mother announced she was pregnant, being a prime example of such.

And one or two of you will also have gathered that her approach towards finances is not always exactly completely logical. To wit: she will only ever buy sliced bread when it is on offer. But she will simply never buy smoked salmon when it is.

So you will not be surprised to learn therefore that while the Unpaid Solicitor's bill exceeds Tiggy Pott-Hunter's claim on her wallet by almost 2000fold, it is the latter that really throws Bloggiana into a (as Adolesco would describe it) well wicked blue raggedy-arsed temper init.

Sod the queen and king of fucking Europe, she says. We buried that wretched hamster yet? she adds. Time one thinks to have a little cremation service.

And then rising to her full Indignant of North Westmorland height, the Blog-woman seizes hold of the ribcage, wraps it in Tiggy Pott-Hunter's encomium (so to speak), takes both to the pot-bellied stove in the snug, kneels down, prays to the Lord God of all things Animate, dips into her pocket for the sherbet fountain she had bought specially for the purpose and sends all three firing up the chimney in a shower of fizzy lemon.

EATING UP

Teener's hamster has just eaten Teener's hamster's sister. This was not supposed to happen. The woman in the pet shop said it would not happen because these hamsters were not cannibalistic. If you don't believe me, she said, have a look in the little book of hamsters. So we bought a copy of the little book of hamsters and we looked up the type of hamsters we were planning to buy and sure enough it said these are nice little happy family hamsters. They live together and play together and eat together and sleep together - "just like you and your sisters and brothers do".

So Teener and I bought the little hamsters and the little book of hamsters and a hamster starter kit and a cage for them to share and we went home.

And for a long time, everything went swimmingly. Bubble and Squeak lived together and played together and ate together and slept together just like the little hamster book told us they would. Sometimes we would hear the hamster wheel whirring round and we would run through to the (wait for it) utility room to watch them, Bubble and Squeak, happily playing happy families, running round their wheel side by side. Bubble was slightly smaller than Squeak and had to pelt round the outside at full tilt in order to keep up with his best friend and sibling. This induced in Teener waves of giggles. Even Bloggiana herself was known to laugh at the sight.

Reminds me of that Alan Whicker programme about Palm Beach, Bloggiana used to say, though quite what she was referring to I never really knew.

Then one day everything went wrong. We felt like tearing up the little book of hamsters and writing a strongly worded letter to the lady in the petshop. We felt like we had been duped, Teener and Bloggiana and I, because one day, instead of hearing the wheel whirring, we heard silence. And we went through to the (wait for it) utility room and there it was, a ghastly hamster carnage scenario: the half-eaten ribcage of Bubble being tossed around the cage by Squeak in a kind of high pitched dirty dancing cannibalistic hamster frenzy.

Well fuck me, said Bloggiana. Don't recall them doing that on effing Palm Beach.

A few days on and now the hamster wheel is pretty much full-time stationary. Teener and I sit at our parlour table tapping our fingers and fending off other animal death memories. I cannot help but recall the moment when Bloggiana hoovered up Cheeko the chipmunk. But for the sharp bend in the inflow pipe, Cheeko might have survived. (Bloggiana to this day has retained a wholly ambivalent attitude towards housework.) Teener says she wishes we still had Bertie the beetle.

Only last week, Piccalilli, I'm sure I saw him trotting along the dado. But it can't have been him because of those antennae I found sticking to Our Dog's nose.

And I'd know Bertie's antennae any day of the week, she adds, with a sniff.

Bloggiana herself seems remarkably piano. When we ask her if she wants to help us make a hamster headstone, all we get is a kind of vacant stare. There is a shop brochure in her left hand and a cigarette clinging for all its life's worth to her lips. In the post, an envelope is about to arrive containing confirmation of Bloggiana's place in the official North West Regional Championship Winston Churchill tribute evening.

And all Bloggiana seems to be able to do is sit - as though her animal death memories were simply too many and too great to bear.
　

LIGHTING UP

There have been a lot of mini-dramas this week. There was the incident with the red cabbage. There was the to-do with hamsters. And then yesterday, the power failed.

First thing Teener and I knew about the power failure was when we heard Bloggiana roaring

Hell's the matter with you, you boiling idiot.

I Piccalilli tumbled out of bed and downstairs into the kitchen thinking we had a genuine emergency and instead found the old girl, her gumboots thick with mud, standing by the kettle giving the old Morphy Richards what for.

Any idea what's happened to the lights? wailed Teener, as she groped her way into the kitchen and stumbled over the dustbin.

Hell should I know, came back the response.

And like lightning the three of us had an insight - an apercu as Great Uncle Cymbeline would call it - and realised that the reason the lights were not working and the reason the kettle was resolutely not boiling came down to one and the same and that was that the power had gone off. Or as Bloggiana put it gawn awf.

So I Piccalilli rang the electrician while Teener rummaged for head torches and Bloggiana went into the cupboard under the stairs to dig around for a bunsen burner so that she could make a cup of coffee because without one, she was in her own words 'worse than a fucking bear with a hell of a fucking bad head'.

Two hours later Fusio turned up. His van said Qualified Electrician. And his face said I am helpful and young and friendly. Fusio asked about trip switches and buzz bars and two phase crossovers. He raised not an eyebrow when Bloggiana swore at the bunsen burner - shitting effing useless effing thing, always hated science, bloody buggering gas, never effing hot enough etc etc - and instead got out his testers and his screw-drivers and an impressive box of fuses and began tinkering with the electricity boxes in our (wait for it) utility room because that he reckoned was where the root of our problem lay. Fusio was industry itself and did not break for a cup of tea. An hour after his arrival, he said Bingo and we all raised our head-torches in sync and Fusio said it's your main overhead line love and then he showed Bloggiana the main central fusebox whose butterfly clips he had eased off where the main central fuse had blown, apparently due to a fault further down the cable.

Two hours after that Polio turned up. He came in a big white landrover with ladders and a jumpsuit. He looked like a fireman and a prop forward and a Cary Grant lookalike rolled into one and when his enormous boot lowered itself out of the vehicle and onto Bloggiana's forecourt, I for one could detect a distinct sexual frisson in the air.

Problem with yer over'eds, luv? he asked.

The Old Girl came back quick as a flash.

Not sure if my single phase hasn't blown, she said.

Hmmm, he said. Show me yer trip switch, luv then.

Certainly will, Bloggiana replied and the two of them disappeared into the utility room and began chatting in a low-level friendly chat-tone.

For some reason I Piccalilli and Teener decided to eavesdrop. We pressed our ears to the door while Polio bantered with the Blog woman.

First we heard the turning of butterfly clips.

Then we heard Bloggiana say oh the electrician has already looked in there.

Then we heard Polio say he can't do that luv, it's dangerous.

To which Bloggiana said: Certainly looked like he knew what he was doing.

Only qualified electricians can open this box, came the rejoinder.

Pretty sure he was a qualified electrician, Bloggiana replied, keeping an admirable lid on herself.

'Fe wer a qualified electrician, e'd know it's dangerous. Wouldn't have opened it.

Bloggiana at that point must have blown a fuse of her own. Or something like that. We heard a switch flick. We heard some breath sharply intake. The lights came back on and the kettle began to hiss and someone somewhere muttered

Single phase back on full.

STEPPING OUT

But before we can go much further along Bloggiana's road to set up a shop, two things happen. And both are a considerable cause for concern.

The first thing is that Nag - Bloggiana's oldest equine friend - grows markedly worse. Stumbling and hobbling which have been his daily habit for several months now have made way for plain hobbling. On hacks, he tiptoes through the gravel like a cat edging its way through a puddle. He is 17hands high and weighs half a tonne or more and he is afraid to step on a pebble because of the pain. Bloggiana nurses him down the road willing herself to believe that what must be true is not true. She tries to wince herself so that the horse need not. She steers him as carefully and deftly as she can, weaving a pattern down the tarmac which belies the horse's size and her own gauche physical manner.

Nothing is said. I Piccalilli sit aboard Dobbin and make cheerful conversation; or stay silent. Dobbin and Nag chat to one another - but theirs is the language of ears and whiskers and touch and it seems far from likely that Nag and Dobbin are discussing their ailments. At the end of our rides, when Bloggiana reaches the old wood-lined tack room, she slings her saddle high on the rack - above the rosettes for best mountain & moorland, Highland Show, 1975 - and I watch as she gropes for a cigarette, her hand having developed an infinitesimal tremor.

This scenario has been going on for several weeks. The months of stumbling were worrying enough and now the weeks of hobbling are almost too much to be borne. Bloggiana's old copy of the Manual of Horsemanship - written in 1959 by one EF Gelderhorn - shows signs of having been thumbed. The dust on the dustjacket bears fingerprints and the page marked Ringbone has one corner folded down. Once, I dare to ask the old girl if she fears that that is what Nag is suffering from. Bloggiana looks at me over the top of her scarf, under the rim of her cross-country helmet, cig-smoke swirling around her face in cumulo-nimbic formations - and that, as far as I am concerned, is all she needs to say.

And it is the day after that particular encounter between my question and Bloggiana's look that something happens in the Nag department which seems to hail a watershed. Nag is waiting at the gate. Normally when it comes to bringing him in from the field, the old bugger trots off. Swishes his tail, grinds his teeth, utters an equine sneer and says Ciao. Generally speaking, Bloggiana marches after him for a spell, then loses her temper and throws a bucket at the beast. The beast circles her. Bloggiana expletes. Bloggiana walks off. And two hours later comes back and brings the bugger in.

But this day, Bloggiana goes to the gate and there he is. He has his same old face and his same old smile. He has his tall beautiful neckline and his exquisite almost feline elegance. But his sense of humour seems to have abandoned him. And worse still, he is standing with one leg in the air.
&&&
So Bloggiana is more than usually preoccupied. She has signed up to the ShopsRUs website and is daily receiving mailshots about small units here and larger ones there. She could buy a pub in Marshy Codsdale for a song. (Not a good idea, we both conclude). She could buy an industrial unit in Wabbersworth, an old electricity substation on the top of a fell, a cafe with village shop and house combined - all situated at the very posterior of beyond; she could go mad and buy a camper van, then sell our chutney nomadically out of the back.
Interesting and in some ways entirely possible as some of these options are, Bloggiana pays no attention. Her mind is elsewhere - and never is this more evident than when she mistakenly puts bulbs instead of onions in the red cabbage; and all but dies of sudden onset amaryllis poisoning. (SOAP)

And when the next thing happens - which it does shortly after Bloggiana has finally heaved herself out of the loo, where she has been hiding for the three days that have intervened since the red cabbage incident - when a letter arrives inviting Bloggiana to take part in an event in aid of the local Cruelty for Children charity, Bloggiana pays the thing scant attention.
No. Instead, she rips open the envelope,

Never know when there might be a fucking cheque inside,

hurls the contents out across the table

Or even, god forbid, some fucking cash

spots a small box that says tick

'Bout time I had some fucking luck

and before anyone can veto anything she does

signs along the dotted line, ticks in the box marked tick, places the paper in the given envelope and pops her acceptance to attend the Winston Churchill Tribute Night - as a tributee herself - straight into the postbag of the man who has just whizzed into our parlour in a blur to collect just that, our post.

BRANCHING OUT

Bloggiana has had an inspiration.

A coup de maitre, she pronounces.

A fucking genius stroke of a brainwave, she adds, flicking her cigarette nonchalantly over the side of her saddle and watching it idly as it tumbles down Nag's shoulder onto the fallen leaves below.

It is autumn once more. Saddles ahoy, bridles aboard, horses flicked with a brush so that any scurf lurking in their coats is now jumping about on their backs, we are taking our daily amble round the lanes, giving the hedges one last once-over before all their secrets become laid bare to the winter. Around us, rainbows are jumping up in hoops. Overhead, the starlings are swarming, every now and again mottling us with a thousand filigree shadows. Is it morning or afternoon? Neither of us could say. There is a watchfulness about the sky which holds neither promise nor threat. The air is muffled and the leaves - those that remain on the trees - are still and the white crow that last year scudded over the late pasture like a small unfamiliar cloud now only dances before us in legend.

All of a sudden our peace is disturbed by the ringing of Bloggiana's mobile phone. It's the bank.

Shitting hell. Name in god of all things aubergine d'you want now? Bloggiana barks.

There follows a short conversation. From aboard Dobbin, I can hear Miss Pinprick from the collections department of the HSMC (Have Some More Cash) trying to get a word in edgeways. The reception is not that good but I can just about decipher from the other end a succession of but-buts.

But-but, Miss Pinprick utters before she is rudely interrupted.

But-but, she ventures again before being snapped back once more.

But-but-but. And then the hapless woman is finally cut off for good.

Next thing, Nag stumbles and for a few steps, hobbles. He is beginning to show his age and the hobbling takes several strides to dissipate.

Christ, Bloggiana says. Hell's going on around here? Feels like the day of the fucking apocalypse, she adds.

And sucks so hard on her cigarette that she momentarily turns a nasty shade of aubergine herself.

For some time thereafter, Bloggiana and I, Nag and Dobbin continue on our journey wordless. Bloggiana is clearly preoccupied. When a kingfisher flashes up the beck, she does not appear to notice. When the postman slides past us down the lane in a blur only a couple of inches from Nag's tail, she omits altogether to rant. When Mister Nasty's dog does a huge crap on the road in front of her, then barks like a Loch Ness banshee until even Nag sits back on his hocks, Bloggiana sails on in silence.

Still I refrain from asking my old friend if she is alright for I know that to say anything at this point would be to court almost certain verbal electrocution.

Then the coup de maitre must strike. It is preceded by counting sounds. By words that rhyme with overdraft and others that chime with bailiff and some that sound like collections agency and others whose resemblance to last fucking penny I own is uncanny.

Coup de maitre, Bloggiana suddenly blurts out. Fucking genius stroke of bloody brainwave. Coup de fucking maitre.

We'll start a shop, she says. We'll have our very own One World One Chutney outlet. You Piccalilli can write a blog. And I Bloggiana will run a shop.

For a moment, I Piccalilli am lost for words. The idea - coming as it does from the woman who most in the world suffers from random access tourette's syndrome (RATS) - seems beyond fathomable.