All that glitters is...

Sitting here this afternoon with 'Bring him home' from 'Les Mis' on the radio, sniffing like a big girl and trying not to weep over the keyboard.  This is a track that never fails to reduce me to a quivering heap of bogies and tears, as a trio of good friends can testify.  They know who they are and will cheerfully tell the tale of sharing one tissue between us at a performance: not all of the weepers were women.  One of them was my manful Dad, so I never feel too bad about my penchant for musical-induced lachrymosity.


We do so love a good showtune and/or a bit of glamour and glitz and yesterday was as glamour and glitz filled as one could wish for.  When I phoned the Paperboy from Waterloo, the squealing could be heard clear across the concourse when I told him what I was up to.  Very Big Clever and Important Financial Wizards Inc. have a box at the London Tent and yesterday, the hard-working PA's of VBCIFW Inc. were treated to an afternoon watching botofogos, New Yorks and oversway, performed by a selection of well-known faces of varying skills at Strictly Come Dancing Live.  There was some very nice food and a free bar and an extremely liberal-handed barman, especially in the pouring of Jack Daniels.  I'm not sure if he had Mrs G and I down as either a) very, very important someones or b) hopeless old lushettes, but we seemed to have the only full glasses all day.  The barman appeared at our side at very regular intervals clutching the JD and an ice bucket in one hand, and a bottle of white wine in the other.  Mrs G furnished him, at the end, with a very handsome tip indeed...

It was all shiny, shiny fun, wall to wall glitterballs, very tight trousers, bare chests of varying hues, loud music and a Right Hon thrown bodily around the arena. We cheered a lot and whooped (rather too loudly) when our second favourite won.  The tasty bloke from Hollyoaks was robbed, but we felt that back-flipping country boy was a worthy glitterball hoister.  Afterwards, thrown  post-show from the confines of the box and into the VIP lounge, one of our party of still-drinkers spotted a sleb.  Cue cozy-ing up and leaning in as if we were his best chums E-VER, for the photo op. 

I fell asleep on the train home, had one of those very hot 'post-session' moments, mislaid my ticket and slurred a bit at the train conductor who then addressed (the by then very shiny and sweaty) me as 'Madam' in conciliatory and soothing tones the type of which are normally reserved for the feeble-minded or the very, very drunk.  I think, on balance, I was the former as I could still have walked in a straight line if pressed and I HAD managed to negotiate my way single-handedly across town on the Underground without going West when I should have gone East (or vice versa).  I think I even read the first third of a William Boyd and did a bit of the crossword on the way.  If I didn't, the same person that put my ticket in the wrong pocket must have just got into my bag and messed it up deliberately to annoy me.  I do hate it when that happens...

Oh, frabjous day...

To Bugville by bike, along the prom in the sunshine.  Clean clear air, ice-blue sea bright against the pale blue sky and gentle, syrupy waves folding against the shingle.  On days like these, I'm quite pleased to live here and I poodle along full of the joys of incipient Spring, despite the earache from the Arctic air.  No breeze, yet freezing cold.  The presence of sun lulled me into a false sense of security clothing-wise so, whilst the body was swathed in yards of pashmina and swaddled in a padded ski jacket, ears were nekkid and vulnerable due to absence of hat.  Doh!

Little B has a new craft project on the go, adding jewellery to her not inconsiderable list of 'stuff she can make'.  Now, she's a very crafty woman, is Little B and nothing much defeats her, but this new craft stuff is causing her a great deal of huffing and puffing because it just doesn't do what the instruction book says it does and there appear to be certain steps in the process that the author just hasn't included.  She's quite miffed, but persevering...

Life in the Anderson Shelter is still very small and very quiet, but there is an outing to London on the cards for tomorrow and I am beyond excited.  I can't write to much or crow too loudly about the venue or the event, as I am a last minute stand-in guest, via the good offices of my VBF Mrs G and it's all a bit Secret Squirrel.  She works very hard for Very Big Clever and Important Financial Wizards Inc. and has managed to get me included in a glittery and sequinned corporate outing.  Because VBCIFW Inc. are regulated and guidelined to within an inch of their lives, mere non-business hangers-on aren't usually at glad-handing events so I am a Very Lucky Person Indeed.  I think I'd not be giving too much away if I were to say that some music will be played, some costumes will be swished and some very shiny shoes will be on display.  Ooh, I can't wait!...

A modicum of perspective, please...

Austerity means different things to different folk: today's reading of the newspaper brought home exactly how much...

A banker's wife, newly let loose on the scribbling public after a creative writing course, has been detailing the cutbacks she has had to make in her lifestyle.  These involve cancelling the half-term break in the Maldives and instead - horror of horrors! having to rough it in their holiday home in the Alps.  Had they been able to go to the Maldives, everything would have been ruined, just ruined, because they would have had to forgo the helicopter transfer to the hotel.  Not only that, but her husband is having to have his hand-made shoes MENDED.  The worst, though, involves the children and is just one Laboutin-clad step away from stubbing them with lit cigarettes and locking them in the cupboard under the stairs with the spiders.  The children will have to...and I'm biting my fist in horror at the mere thought here...sit in an airline seat THAT DOESN'T TURN INTO A BED! I imagine Mumsnet have already rushed round to the mansion en mass, hell-bent on rescuing those poor unfortunate babes from what must be living hell.

Some years ago I shared a flat with a friend whose idea of retrenchment was to cut the cleaner's hours down by a day a week to a mere three days; this to clean a two bedroom flat only marginally larger than a changing cubicle at Top Shop, owned and lived in by a single, very tidy woman and her weekend lodger (me). 

And me? I make six sausages do for three meals (sausage, broccoli and tomato sauce for pasta, chicken, chickpea and sausage casserole and two for the freezer for something else), my best friend Mrs G makes a chicken stretch to 9 meals and I use Aldi's 'Creme de la Merde' face cream.  Oh. And I wear three jumpers indoors. My heart is bleeding for the Banker's Wife and her poor, deprived children.  Not...

On the Home Front...

I hate those days when the house is in need of ...how can I put it?..some care and attention.  I'm so very, very bad at housework and it makes me so crabby and irritable because it doesn't matter how much elbow grease I put into the task, it never seems to have the same pristine finish as other, more grown-up friends' efforts.  Mind you, that could be because I don't have a proper grown-up house.

We live, the Boy and I, in a bungalow; the proportions of which, if one were an Estate Agent, could probably best be described as bijou.  When we moved here, there were grand plans afoot to make rooms in the roof and extend out sideways and join the garage to the house to make a utility space.  Those all pretty much went by the board over the years, not through having insufficient funds (for truly, we used to be pretty well off!), but more from a dawning realisation that these planned improvements would be pretty messy and long-winded and just, really, too much like hard work.  One does become slightly lazy, living in one of the retirement counties of the U.K.   We just spent more time outside on the veranda, looking at the garden and necking back cocktails and convincing ourselves that we liked living in a tiny cosy space.  Which we still do, don't get me wrong, but the small 1920's cute bungalow is now 90 years old and seems to have developed a sort of habitational senility. 

One would think, that in a house this size, the cleaning and primping would be easy - stand in the sitting room, flap a duster and the airwaves from that would miraculously clean not only the bathroom, but the kitchen and bedroom too, leaving only a little light cushion plumping and bed-making to be done - after one had had a bit of sit-down first, of course. That is not the case.  In the last few months, everything seems to have become either tired, broken or covered in mysterious sooty webs.  No spiders in evidence anywhere - I checked.  I can only assume that, in the night, malevolent sooty web goblins scoot in and carry out revenge attacks for some heinous crime of which we, as humans, are blissfully unaware.  I can't keep up with it. No sooner has the Dyson of Doom been deployed than BAM! - the following morning, the cupboards are re-joined to the wall with sooty goblin web glue.  I cleaned the inside of the windows three times today, with potions of varying strength and toxicity and the damned things are still filmed over with smeary grey stuff.  My arms are aching from the effort, but the windows remain as filmy as they were before I started.  Surely that can't be right?  Keeping this tiny bungalow clean is a bit like maintaining a very old, very large and very stately home and requires a better person that I to do it.

In the end, tired, sweaty and just a teeny bit tetchy I gave up and went and made some bread which is what I should have done in the first place, not battle against the tide of old house dirt.  Wasn't it Quentin Crisp who maintained that after a while, the dust doesn't get any thicker anyway?  I'm adopting that as my mantra.  My friends who live in newer houses will just have to look past my less than shiny skirtings and my dusty hard floors, whilst stepping elegantly over the piles of books and papers and other 'floor-filed' detritus of day-to-day living.  After all, you can ignore pretty much everything else when presented with a wedge of freshly baked bread, a cup of tea and an invitation to sit in the sun on the veranda for a bit of a chat...

A bit damp underfoot...

Last evening's rain made such a din as it lashed down on the glass roof of the veranda that we could barely hear ourselves think and certainly couldn't countenance dashing down the garden to lock the garage at bedtime.  Luckily, the garage is so full of crap that no self-respecting burglar would even give it a second glance, so I think the risk was minimal.  Added to that, we who live in the armpit of the world that constitutes outer Bugville probably engender some sort of sympathy from the criminal world, and might even find that they've left us something instead of having it all away on their toes.  Quite honestly, I fully expect to come home one day to find a druggy burglar rolling on the floor, helpless with laughter at the hundred year old television and the tinny stereo that constitutes our contribution to techy living.  Street resale value? About a quid, if lucky, and certainly not enough to buy anything approaching the quantity required to get even remotely high.  They'd get more of a hit from several fag-free days, followed by a hefty drag on a Bensons...

Anyway. The rain. It sheeted down, but I didn't realise QUITE how heavily until I tried to cycle down to Bugville this morning.  Most of my through routes were flooded, and the roads were slick with mud and running water.  Along the Promenade, a phalanx of operatives in hi-vis were shovelling shingle back onto the beach and, in town itself, they'd mobilised the mini-digger brigade.  The noise of a mini-digger's metal front scoop scraping along the concrete truly makes one's fillings ache.  Little B told me later that there was also a phenomenally high tide last night as well as monsoon rain, which would explain the water pouring up from the manholes.  It's nothing compared to the scale of the Australian floods, of course, nor could it ever be, but it brings home just how vulnerable we coastal dwellers are to the vagaries of the weather and the tides.  We are below sea level here and have fairly robust and new coastal defences, but these are no match for the fury of the sea when a high tide combines with a strong weather front.  I wonder how long it would take to become a competent Ark builder...

Blue Monday...

According to scientists (who probably know these things because they have huge, intelligent brains), today is Blue Monday, the very worst day of the year for everyone. It happens every year, falling on the third Monday.  It's part way through January and the festivities are over, Christmas debt has paralysed all but the solvent few, the weather is pretty much universally bad, the New Year resolutions lie in a tattered heap, VAT's gone up and life really doesn't get shittier than it is today.

I'm not sure that telling us this in print and on television doesn't just compound the issue - isn't it a self-fulfilling prophesy- type scenario, where you get told something bad will happen or is happening and it does? 


However, Blue Monday is, apparently, avoidable and you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps from the very depths of despair, kicking the black dog firmly out of the way by the simple expedient of just being nice. Yes, it's really that easy.  You have to practice but a mere single act of random kindness and Presto!, you feel immediately light, fluffy and full of the joys of incipient Spring, trala.  

Being charitable and helping someone in need - that'll lift your mood better than anything, followed by receiving an unexpected compliment.  If that's not simple enough, listening to the sound of the sea or music should do it, or eating your favourite food or hearing laughter.  Oh. And sitting in the sun, not that that's likely or indeed possible in January, but the idea's nice.  So, I recommend the following: help your stiff old husband up from his chair without being asked and tell him he's quite handsome for an old bloke.  Take a stroll along the prom, whack the stereo up loud enough to shake next door's ornaments off the window ledge and dance like a person demented, stuff yourself full of shepherd's pie and laugh until you wee your pants at the newest bit of scientific research because, really, that's all there is in life that's worth a tuppeny damn - apart from your friends and each other...

A good day's work...

I know why it is, that when digging a hole in the garden, the dirt you dig out never fits back in.  What I don't understand is why, when you take all the books from the bookshelf, the bookshelves immediately shrink, leaving you with less than adequate space to re-shelve.  Still, the dining room now looks splendid.  The tumbling jumble-sale effect? Gone.  There are now only the cupboards of Doom to tackle. 

This house, being of the bijou variety, has what can only be described as 'limited' storage space.  There are still unpacked boxes in the garage from when we moved here in 1993. We probably don't need all the stuff that's stored in there, but clearing it is a project that's been on the very back burner every Summer since then.  The Boy has the idea that, if the garage were cleared, he could use it as a workshop to re-work furniture, which he probably could.  I'd be quite happy if we could just walk from one end to the other without having to mountaineer over carefully stacked piles, and if I could actually get at the things I occasionally need, like big cake tins and the jam pan.

In the meantime, my plan is to slowly clear out cupboards and drawers, shelves and boxes and, being ruthless, get rid of extraneous stuff.  Except books, of course. Because you never know when you might need them...

I suppose I COULD wear a hat...

There are both advantages and disadvantages to growing up under a mane of red hair.  The disadvantages are well known: the nicknames, the sinister connotations (Judas has a lot to answer for!). The advantages? Well, these include: never, ever being mislaid in a crowd - especially if taller than average, always being remembered (a distinct advantage in some circumstances, a sort of disadvantage in others, particularly those involving unwanted attention in disco situations), never having to resort to expensive salon colouring operations and never having to suffer the pains of going grey.

We redheads fade over time, dear reader, not to grey, but to a beautiful white.  We never have to resort to tweezering out unwanted strands, we never have to cope with the salt and pepper years. We fade, gracefully, through shades of light stawberry blonde, to golden lit with tiny strands of pure white, until we reach the nirvana that is our dotage: The white years.

This is what we are led to believe and it happens to a certain extent, except that no-one tells you that one day you reach the secret stage. The one that's never spoken about.  The one that makes you double take at your reflection and shout 'Oh, MY GOD! I'm a 60 a day nicotine hag!' This is the stage where your hair is yellow.  It's not a good look, having sallow hair round your face. Even with brown eyes, it's not a good look, so consider how hard it must be if you are a pale, interesting redhead with green or (god forbid!) blue eyes.

I reached that stage.  Now, being a redhead, myself and the dye bottle were strangers.  There was a very brief peroxide flirtation during a shorn phase when I thought having the front blonde would look cutting edge. I was young.  Forgive me.  Other than that, nada.  I made an foray into unknown aisles and purchased a box of Light Honey Blonde.  My reasoning? Tonal values. Tone down the yellow with warmer tones and Bingo!, I could coast through to the dotage stage. Bleh!  It merely served to up the nicotine haggage level to 80 a day.  Or possibly 90 in bright lights.  I was determined that I wouldn't become a dyed redhead.  We true ones are a bit sniffy about that sort of thing and anyway, there's nothing on the market that looks natural unless you can afford a Daniel Glavin salon visit every few weeks. Which I can't.

Then, in a positively epic moment, when angels and celestial choirs sang out in the aisles of Superdrug, there it was.  Light golden copper. Wash-in, wash-out. I got some, I washed in, I was ecstatic.  The yellow was gone and in it's place was the me of 15 years ago. Nothing too obvious, mind, just reddish-goldier than yellow and looking quite good when combined with a bit of make-up and a decent blowdry.   The one disadvantage? It washed in, it washed out. I resigned myself to frequent applications and to financing a colour habit only slightly less expensive than one involving hard drugs.

Discussing this dilemma with my sister, whose natural hair colour is a mystery even to her and has been since she was old enough to spend her first proper pocket money on peroxide, she told me her secret to 'making colour last'.  Bear in mind, neither of us are cash-rich, so we're quite creative in the 'making things last' department.  'Ah,' she said 'What you want to do is, stick the wash-in, wash out on dry hair, wrap it up in a plastic bag and a towel, then go about your daily business (indoors, obviously, lest you frighten the public at large) until rather longer has passed than you think adequate.  Then, wash it off with proper shampoo.  It'll sink in more and last better'. 

I digested this gem.  I carried on washing in, washing out.  Today, I thought I'd try the parsimonious approach to hair colouring, being as my hair needed a wash and all. I donned the rubber gloves, squirted out the goo and applied it.  Adding a Morrison's carrier bag and a warm towel and, being of a slightly more cautious nature than Sissy, set the timer for a mere 20 minutes.

Despite washing my hair three times, post-application,  I could be placed as a warning beacon in any given danger spot, so bright are my locks.  I am praising myself for the timing restraint, but kicking my not inconsiderable butt for stupidity of the highest order.  Vanity is a terrible thing and what WAS I thinking?  I may never be able to go outside again...

Can it really be that long?..

A ridiculous amount of time has passed since last I posted but, to be fair, we had a crap year and there was little to write about.  When having to channel one's inner Ebenezer, there's little of interest that happens and there's nothing more dreary than reading about it. 

In the last few months, however, there've been little glimmers of hope and slight sparkles of possibility and this year may pan out better than last.

So.  In the latter part of the year, I did a nicely paying, but temporary job after a soul-destroying period claiming JSA, I had a significant birthday, there were a couple of parties and a mini-holiday and I started this year in a far more positive frame of mind - healthy (ish) and with another job lined up in March and April.  The black dog finally appears to have f++ked off back to his kennel and I've made some good new friends from chance conversations and correspondences.  Life isn't bad, it's just quiet.  Hopefully it will also be interesting.  Here's to 2011!