LOOKING NORTHWARD I

It's all beginning to settle down at Camp Bloggiana (or Cockrobin Hall, as she likes to call it). I,Piccalilli have declared a moratorium on gasping, grovelling and quaking while Bloggiana seems so distracted by something I later realise is a newly branded tattoo ("Remember Culloden") which is etched across the back of her right hand (dirk-bearing) in a kind of purple that could just be reminiscent of thistles that she quickly drops dropping the f-word and invites me in. Left hand on right, the Bloggic one turns her back on me, stubs her toe on a half-eaten stone which the brown dog has deposited directly on the front door-drinks cupboard trajectory and howls. The howl is guttural. It sounds like the female vocal equivalent of the piebroch and I am almost tempted to record it when Pussy Riot UK Branch swings ahead of me and passes her mother a foaming pint of the Real Mackay. Bloggiana has plopped herself, macplop, into the chair by the fire which she affectionately calls her poste restante. I, Piccalilli seize my chance.

It is now dark outside and in the tiny house she has come to occupy, a nightlight blazes. In the kitchen, an array of unopened pre-Christmas nibbles that seem largely to be haggis flavoured. In the downstairs loo, a roll of dark green and blue checked paper that deposits a curious tartanoid look on the buttock when used firmly. Not a picture frame, not a soft furnishing accessory, not a tea towel is knowingly underbranded, Bonnie Prince Charlie beaming his cheeks out from every biscuit tin.

"Come on. Out with it old bean.What's with the Scots theme?"

Devotees of the Bloggic one may recall that this woman, sitting on her poste restante, shrouded in northern light, is a Woman of Passions. Lavender-coloured comfortwear, the colour purple (in all possible permutations), in-car tree-shaped devices that smell of vanilla custard, vanilla, custard, people who address their dogs and their children in the patronising voice of the congenitally imbecile (you love snacky-wacks, don't you, my doggy-wog), vets, double-speak (particularly of the 3-word corporate nature, Eat, Dream, Sleep/Enjoy, Visit, Discover/Discover, Eat, Drink) - all these, the B-woman Passionately detests. The other thing she has been particularly vocal about over the years is her passionate ambivalence towards her mother-country. For yes, Bloggiana is in fact macBloggic, a daughter of the highland hills. And yes, over the years, she has been rather keen to hide the fact.

"Scots?" I prod.

To give her her due, my old friend, at this point, prevaricates. Pint of Real Mackay in left hand, pint of Scotch in right (dirk-bearing), tartan trews straining over her still slender embonpoint, Bloggiana makes a kind of harrumph noise. It sounds like someone has just put a hairdrier up her poste restante and the air is finally bursting forth through her flaring nostrils. I decipher a word or two. They sail out over the bright-lit atmos of Cockrobin Hall and flutter down before me, timid tiny birds buffeted on the winds of burp.

"Clan history," she 'fesses. "Am putting together a history of Clan MacBlog."

"Go on," I say, intrigued. For I, Piccalilli am all ears.

NOT REALLY MOVING FORWARDS AT ALL (Black Friday special)(Normally I,P posts on Tuesdays)

“So...”

I, Piccalilli have been brave. I have come back after six long years to find Bloggiana. I have come to her new seat in the boondocks and I have knocked on the door and gone inside. And now I have uttered a word.

My "So..." drops into the atmos like a stink bomb. Bloggiana in proto Scots mode, her hand wrapped around a ‘Kith & Kin’ map, her lips sprinkled with what must surely be shortbread residue, glares at me. For a moment, I have the feeling I am dressed as a Rangers cheerleader and I have just walked slap bang into a Celtic supporter, on Sauchiehall Street, at closing time. At this point my knees in their wobble are joined by my pelvic floor in its. I make an involuntary downward movement.

“Where’ve the fuck you been, Piccalilli?”

Affection. I wonder if that is what I am hearing. I, Piccalilli go to smile back. I, Piccalilli go to unleash an answer to that question that will cover the past six years in a nanobyte, the rollercoaster of these missing days and months that has been my UCP (unique chutney privilege). I flash before my eyes the selfies I have taken up and down the chutney high road, me and my Hot Banana – in Bruges, in Brussels, in Strasbourg. How can I condense into a single jamjar of a sentence the sheer joy of the Euro gravy train, condense it here and now so that in one neat swoop, I can dispense with the hiatus in our friendship and make it seem as though I have Never Been Away? Hazily I gaze round Bloggiana’s (very small)(and jolly bright) front room looking for someone who might abet me, utter soothing homecoming moues, unlock all those jubilant sauce-based memories that are lurking just behind my teeth so that I can explain, to my one and only alter ego, explain just what it is to be an Exalted Euro Chutnista. And I am just on the verge of taking command, of rallying pelvic floor and pickle memories in a oner when the door bursts open and in storms Pussy-Riot-UK-Branch.

“Teener!”

I gasp. Last time I saw Teener, she was very small, in fact so small that the only way you could really tell she was in the room was the boom boom that rattled out of her headphones and made some part of your lower leg throb.

“Teener!”

I, Piccalilli feel a tear welling and I am about to go and hug the girl when I realise that she is not small any more, she is above eye level and that out of either side of the Carthorse of the Year apron she is sporting, her naked breasts are swaying in time to the rhythm that is emitting via a la-la-la-la-la from her parted lips.

“Teener!”

Cacophony breaks out. Barely have I had a chance to take in the metamorphosis of Bloggiana's daughter than I am blown to the back of the room by an influx of Pussy Riot’s 25 closest friends. That involuntary downward movement that I tried before suddenly becomes voluntary and I plop, as yet knowingly undervaped, onto the carpet. Floored.

MOVING FORWARDS I

It has been six years. I Piccalilli have not seen my friend Bloggiana for six years. It is a long story and one I shall tell in due course but right now I am not thinking about the long story because I am standing on the doorstep of the smallest house this side of the Maginot line wondering what on earth I am going to say to the old girl once she opens the door and sees her one-time beetroot-chopping, parsnip-pickling, garlic-touting chutney-holic alter ego finally trit-trotting home to roost after six whole years.

I knock on the door. I knock quietly because part of me is afraid of what Bloggiana might say when she sees me. I am too nervous to see the contradiction in my approach so I knock again quietly and after a few more minutes, again.

"Who the fuck is tweedling like a fucking hopfoot on my godforsaken knocker?"

This is the kind of response I was dreading and my knees wobble.

"Christ in hell's sake, why can't a body knock like they want to come in, God tell me?" and with that, the door makes a kind of ripping noise and I find myself face to face with my old mucker.

"Piccalilli! Well fuck me".

And then she closes the door again and obviously - I tell myself, obviously - 'forgets' to let me through so I am stranded where I began on the tiny threshold not looking at her face but at her knocker.

***

It has been six years and I have been round the world and back. Me and my Hot Banana. We have trodden the chutney boards like two little mischief chilli peppers stowed away on the goodship Taste of Europe. We have been garlanded. Feted. My Hot Banana has been sipped and supped and prodded and sampled by chutney lovers the length and breadth of the Euroglobe. I have been a star. I myself have tasted the onion marmalade of stardom. I, Piccalilli. It has been a whirlwind.

***

The door is ripped open again. Considering there is nothing between the door-frame and Bloggiana's ample bosom but air, it is hard to understand how this is achieved but rippage of air undoubtedly takes place. Bloggiana glares at me. She is wearing spectacles. This is new. She is wearing a hard hat. This is normal. She has a wreath of smoke about her person and quite a lot of dirt under her fingernails and her lips are shaped ready for the inevitable f-word that will form sooner or later on my advancing into the room. All this is normal. I stand my ground. (Wobbling knees). To buy time, I look Bloggiana up and down. Note the lack of britches. Note the use instead of tartan trews. Note the fact that atop her hard hat, there is not a glo-brite solar-powered eezee-torch (Bloggiana being famed for her lack of perceptiveness when it comes to buying gadgets) but a glorious trinity of eagle-feathers. Note the distinctive whiff of Scotch which blows over me, through that very air that has just been ripped by the door, blowing with the intensity and fervour of the farts that my sous-chef lets out when he bends down to pick up a raisin having been on sampling duties. Note the sounds that too are ripping the air in the way that only a set of badly played bag-pipes can. Think crikey and grope inside my pocket for something to vape.

to be continued./.