The Babylon Lane Tales - Filed under 'choovers'

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spaghetti e pollo (hens: 1, cats and rabbits: 0)

For a moment there you probably thought I was going to share A Recipe with you. As if I've suddenly recovered from my chronic bout of domestic disability, emerging gloriously Nigella-reborn from the ashes of my dustbowl house.

Well I haven't and I won't. The Eurozone and Coalition are in crisis and, as usual, I'm bringing you the shit that matters.

Between working and moaning, I've spent the day feeding different pets pasta after yesterday's spaghetti sensation (here). This highly scientific research concludes that cats and rabbits just don't get into the spirit. They are timid and pathetic; regarding the noodles with all the hesitance of Oliver Twist approaching Bumble the Beadle with an empty bowl of gruel.

The hens, on the other hand, are splendidly abandoned and gluttonous. Wild, even. Look:

This is still one of the funniest things I have seen all year. Says a lot about the quality of my life and my mental state. Sad that.

read previous post: schnitzel and noodles.

Tags » chickens choovers
- 11 December 2011
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chin(s) chin(s)
This is a week of birthdays.

My lofty ideas have me convinced that I am Queen of All I Survey (which includes, but is in no way limited to: my house, my village, my corner of Manchester city centre, The Internets, and YOU), so celebrating my birthday for a week only seems the proper thing to do.

And it's a Big Birthday this year: 35. This, according to my much older husband and friends, means I am moving into my late thirties. I object: 35 is most definitely middling, not that this makes it any better. Who wants to be middling? average? dull?

I've handled being in my early thirties with something approaching grace, with a little bit of ugly crying for good measure. I'll admit it is definitely better than my twenties: I have more cash, I'm more confident and my career is going well, despite George Osborne's attempts to steal projects from my door. And for 7 months, when I was 31, I was even comfortable in my own skin.

During that 7 months, I looked better than I ever had, my clothes fit without hurting and my skin had a pre-pubescent glow. How I laughed as I stalked facebook school friends, who had been unnaturally beautiful throughout their teens, but now had more in common with the underside of a truck. I gloated and felt superior, and the karmic backlash has been cruel.

At 31 years and three-quarters, this brief glimpse of beauty was eradicated by: legs that wobble when I walk (forcing me to sit with toes tiptoe-d so that my thigh flesh hangs down to give the illusion of thinness, rather than bunching like play-doh on the seat of the chair); a nose that is flame red, and amazingly unrelated to gin but some weird autoimmune thing that is festering in my middle thirties sag; and jowls. My friends I am jowly, like Bagpuss but less pretty.

My early thirties have left me a wreck, so the thought of the mid-thirties onslaught is horrifying; I'm not sure I can take much more of the slow shimmy southwards of my flabby bits.

When all you have to look forward to is tucking your flesh into your socks, you deserve a week's wake to mourn the loss of your pert jawline and right-angled nipples (both last seen idling around the pastry aisle when you were 31 and three-quarters). It also takes a week to apply the youth-giving potions, that you've sold your kidneys/child/house to buy, on the understanding that they will halt the cruel droopy progress of time. (They don't, you'd be better off spending the money on crack to numb your vision.)

This year's birthday week coincides with the first birthday of this blog and the redness of my hair (here and here). Normally I would see this as an opportunity to extend my birthday celebrations threefold, but as I can't trust my saggy skin to hold itself in place - never mind my vital organs - I am showing some restraint. No one wants to drink with a woman sitting with her liver in her shoes and chin resting on the bar.

Here's what I've learned this year:
1. Technology makes me cry and Posterous is rubbish. It eats posts and has tantrums if you insert more than one picture.
2. I overuse the words: slattern, satsuma, nits, jesus. And contrary to Klout, I really know nothing about them.
3. There are people out there who really want to know 'if incest is a good idea', 'if skittles are part of your 5 a day', 'how to make a fondant rollerskate', 'how to avoid being a needy singleton', 'how you gestalt yourself', and 'why my custard break'. These people think my blog has the answers, even though I'm pretty sure it doesn't, I am starting to doubt my own sanity.
4. That although I'm shy and sometimes stiltedly inarticulate in person, I will confess to anything on this blog to up my readership, including: eating chewing gum off the floor, drinking pickled onion juice straight out of jars, the exact quantity of booze required to endure a camping trip with kids, how to recreate Glastonbury in your own home (including the unforgettable rules to cider roulette) and the best method of getting your hens to clean the kitchen floor.
5. I may have an almost chillingly Single White Female obsession with Nora Ephron, Lorelai Gilmore and lipstick, but will always have more in common with Sally Field's Sybil and Elsie Tanner
6. We really do get nits during every religious festival and my daughter is more than a little likely to be the second coming of jesus, or the future dictator of some small, butt-fuck nowhere principality.
7. I spend most of my days gazing despairingly at my navel and trying to cure my neurosis with increasingly complicated lists written entirely in Yoda Speak (here).
8. I can't spell and my use of grammar is eccentric at best, retarded at worst.
9. I am three parts gin and one part wotsit.
10. That my readers are lovely, supportive, humorous strangers (except for the incest craving ones) who not only keep coming back, but were also responsible for me reaching the finals of a blog awards.
That's a year well spent, I'm sure you'll agree? And what's more important is that I've stuck this out, something I never do. Go me.

Happy Birthday to me, my blog and my hair. Chin-chin. Now excuse me, while I fold my neck into my bra.

Read previous post: i scrabbled. i scrabbled on the floor in Soho.

Tags » Celebrations Gilmore Girls List Slut MAD awards Nora Ephron camping choovers despair glastonbury key word search
- 10 October 2011
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viva la diva.

It is with great sadness that I announce that the "my mummy says..." series has been cancelled with immediate effect (here and here).

The star of the show has become increasingly difficult to work with; refusing to take direction and insisting on complete script control. Before she would get out of bed to shoot the last video, her diva-dom included extortionate cash demands (equivalent to several shitty smurf ipad apps), her body weight in gobstoppers, and a caravan so she could rest her voice, between takes.

She is one bath full of blue smarties from becoming Mariah Carey. I have created a beast and can't afford or condone anymore of her imperious insistances. (A deluxe motorhome decorated with barbie vomit-pink sequins; separate dressing rooms for her entourage - ten seamonkeys, two rabbits, three legless action men and Bob the flying bear; a rainbow striped, winged unicorn to transport her to set; and, a special attendant to hand feed her cheese strings.)

So I'm afraid our working relationship can no longer continue. Don't even get me started on the bloody prima donna hens.

With a nod towards tradition, here are the out-takes. See what I mean? Trust me, don't work with children or animals. Ever.

read previous post: despite their very best efforts they are anything but normal.

Tags » Tales from the Crib choovers my mummy says youtube
- 2 October 2011
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the choover challenge: four hens, one hoover & a bloody filthy floor.

The irony of being invited to a Dirt Devil promotion is not lost on me. Happen it's not irony at all - maybe the people from Dirt Devil were staging a slattern intervention. Or worse, they were concerned for the health and safety of my small child. After all not many children can survive with a mother who'd rather eat her own feet than clean the non-doorside of the bed. I make no apologies for my predilection for dusting my mantle with the cuff of my blouse, filing my paperwork in the oven, using the chickens to clean the kitchen floor and counting skittles as one of my five-a-day:

Read the rest of this post »

Tags » choovers clarks mary portas dirt devil my mummy says tales from the crib youtube
- 17 September 2011
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You've got to love me tender 'cos I've invented the choover...

I feel like crying this week. Not dainty, film-star crying. No. Big, ugly, red faced crying. It's been one of those weeks where work has been all consuming. I feel tired, grumpy and very, very self-absorbed. I look a mess (late nights, early mornings, no make-up, crusty the clown hair), the house seems to have imploded (piles of my clothes, shoes, books, paperwork, satsuma peel, coffee cups on every surface) and I generally don't like myself very much.

There has not been much time for fun or frivolity. OK I'm lying, a little: I've been to the ballet; I've been to a friend's for a mid-week three course dinner with JOINED-UP MEAT; and I was amused to reach a new low in my domestic regime when I allowed my chickens to hoover my kitchen floor (ta-da, the choover). I have also been coveting Belgian Waffling's Cruel Tea range of biscuits. I'm particularly in the mood for some Mean Gingerbread Men, I feel that way out.

I'm sorry but the fun tales are for another time, at the moment I'm too busy gazing at my navel and hissing at the world through tired eyes.

Tonight has been particularly revolting as I'm in tender-hell. An oxymoron, tender-hell sounds like something naughty but nice. Well it's not. It's like eating your own feet or being stuck in a cupboard for a week with George Osborne. I've been writing tenders for work, alongside numerous ridiculous deadlines, monthend books and invoicing crap. Tenders are not like the night and they definitely don't love me... Tenders are the devil spawn and should be banned. I should be allowed to win work purely based upon my collection of fantastic shoes, ability to throw a party and exhaustive knowledge of vintage chairs. There is absolutely no reason for this new tender criteria to be adopted in the engineering industry, but I'm bloody convinced it would be much more pleasurable for all concerned. I am tempted to buy Cruel Tea's Bespoke Bastard range of biscuits to include in all future submissions. Commercial suicide of course, but oh so gratifying.

So there you go. This week I am mostly self-absorbed and self-flagellating. You?

Read previous post: Cor!

Tags » Business Domestic Goddess chickens choovers nerd slattern
- 25 November 2010
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