Period of crisis.
1. Boxing Elsie
With the start of the new school year, the Pocket Pinochet has revived the complaints box. Let joy be unconfined. This week the following:
- the pork pies don't last long enough.
- stop the rain my jumper itches.
- I CANNOT FIND IT. (Her emphasis.)
- your hair makes you look a boy in lipstich (sic).
- baby jesus loves children best.
It's at times like this that I regret her ability to write and our promotion of free will. There is also something chillingly unnatural about a 7 year old consumed with pork pie lust. This - like watching babies drink tea out of bottles - makes my fingers itch.
She's right about the hair though. It is that short that I left the hairdressers looking like a cross between an over eager member of the Hitler-Jugend and an abnormally old principal boy. I am moonfaced and mourning my twiddly side bits. To compensate I have upped the make-up and earring ante. Think lovechild of Sue Ellen Ewing and Ru Paul, and you'd be somewhere close to the depths to which I have sunk.
I am ignoring the barely concealed Jesus threat. When she spouts religion I automatically think: nits. (More godly nits:
here and
here.) I've consulted the church calendar and it's obviously Harvest Festival season, this surely means that we are about to face an infestation that would make a plague of locusts look like a fluttering summer butterfly.
2. A Need for Speed
The news from CERN that some teeny-tiny science thing may have beaten the speed of light, has frankly broken my husband. He has spent the weekend muttering E = MC2 manically under his breath, while repeatedly kicking his telescope.
This is not helped by my art student view that gobbledygook numbers scribbled on a blackboard should not a proof make. My scientific education is stunted by the fact that I didn't listen to anything past the van de graaf generator, preferring instead to spend double physics teaching myself to saucily raise one eyebrow. As it turns out, this is a much more worthy skill than my husband's fancy reels of science type qualifications.
He has gained little comfort from my preferred list of 'constants'. Things that it's guaranteed the wizards at CERN can't mess with:
- Nora Ephron
- Rhubarb crumble
- Smashbox primer
- Gilmore Girls
- Liz Earle Protect & Polish
- Dolly Parton
- Scarborough
- Banana sandwiches
- Dior rouge
- Gin
In fact, my list led directly to crisis number three:
3. The Hole
In an effort to avoid the electrically charged atmosphere in the house and his crumbling science spirit, my husband has retreated to the garden. More six-foot deep, Elsie-shaped holes are appearing, as he extends the vegetable patch.
I know as much about the planting seasons as I do the turns of the church calendar, but vegetable plot (shallow grave) digging in late September is more than little bit odd. I await repeat requests for an axe and a cape for Christmas, and then we will know that my days are truly numbered.
The fun-sized fundamentalist's anathematisation and my husband's Beth Jordache leanings, make my house have all the comfort of a Stephen King novel.
4. The Beast of Babel
Herbert the cat - scourge of the neighbourhood and number one feline deviant - is no longer satisfied with emptying the nests of fledgling young and breaking into the neighbour's house to eat their petrified dog's food.
He has extended his criminal repertoire to include family pets. Not our own, I hasten to add. No, he couldn't possibly lay claim to the four chickens, feeble other (lazy, house) cat or two retarded rabbits. Recent gloating deliveries to our doorstep include rodents that have a lot in common with a hamster and a white mouse. But then, what would I know?
I am in denial. It is easier to pretend that my anatomical rodent knowledge is impaired. Until a sobbing Tommy - who looks like his trembling hands are missing the comfort of a pet - arrives at my door, this is the tack I am going to pursue. You get white mice in the wild, right?
(It is possible that my husband is honing his grave digging skills to cover the cat's tracks. My husband is not femicidal, he is merely the cat's beard. I'm not convinced this is any better.)
5. The Mysterious Land of War-drobe
Friday sees the culmination of the MAD Blog Award thing. We are to travel to Soho in our finery for the big reveal of winners.
I appear to have made a school-girl error. I have got above myself, believing that my recent foray into the world of kitchen cleaning equipment (see chicken-hoovers in action:
here) has transformed my entire personality, fairy godmother like, into Cinderella. I have betrayed my natural slattern and am being punished by the dustball gods.
It is three days until the glittering event and I have removed my dress from the wardrobe. IT IS FILTHY and weirdly hung on a coat hanger. Who would do this? Well me, obviously and always. Always. I never learn, like Bart Simpson and the electrified fairy-cake. Zzzzz (
here).
Despair. Despair squared: it may not fit, as I have been proudly eating for autumn (puddings, pies, crumbles, stews). An autumn that doesn't seem to want to arrive, so I can't swathe myself in tweed to conceal my flaming tummy, unless I want to melt on the hot streets of Manchester.
This period of crisis may not pass. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper*. The whimper of a rotund slattern in a bloody filthy frock. This is the stuff that matters, CERN are you listening?
*words from a more clever bod (TS Eliot)
gin-nurtered time waster.