How Choose A Husband by Dancing

Well it’s official. I am advanced. Or maybe intermediate. Anyway I did the harder tango class that follows the easier tango class. It was a learning experience. Here’s how it goes:

We learn something difficult. In this particular case it was called ‘the box step’, a misnomer if there ever was one. It was more like ‘If you ever get your head round this step you are capable of flying to the moon on a cranberry step’. As far as I could make out, which wasn’t much, you were supposed to swivel one way, then swivel the other way, and then by some miracle end up facing the original way. Ha. So, after having practiced a bit (which frankly didn’t help at all as I really kept swivelling the wrong way followed by the wrong way followed by another wrong way) we do the ‘taxi system’. This has nothing to do with those elusive vehicles that are impossible to find on a Saturday night in town and if you do someone has just thrown up in it. It means that at one end of the room your somehow pair up with an unsuspecting man, tango merrily to the other end of the room and then abandon the aforementioned partner just as you were getting the hang of his idiosyncrasies. You then walk up to the top of the room again whilst contemplating why that last bit went so horribly wrong and partner up with another partner.

It’s this partner-swapping business that is so illuminating. Or not just the swapping but the whole trying to follow these assorted men’s leads. In tango the men lead. Apparently with the heart. Ah. Yes. Well. Maybe some do. These are obviously the ones to look out for. Rare as hen’s teeth, rabbit’s walking sticks and triceratops in ballet shoes. However the nature of a whole lifetime of potential marriage is revealed in that one journey down the village hall. Here’s how it goes:

Bloke A – holds you so tight the chances of breathing before 2009 are extraordinarily slim.

Bloke B – tells you that if you only took bigger steps backwards then he wouldn’t keep stepping on your newly purchased and very shiny dance shoes.

Bloke C – has no idea that he is actually supposed to be leading and thus you end up simply strolling down the room together and wonder if you have come to tango class at all or are attending a meeting of the ramblers.

Bloke D – leads as if he is driving an imbecilic donkey down a very stony path in the nether reaches of a Mediterranean country.

Bloke E – fumbles about with his feet in a rather inadequate manner, but has the grace to say, as we reach the other end of the room, ‘Oh, I was enjoying that.’

Marriage eh?

There was one man, however, who somehow manoeuvred me down the room without my even having to think about it. It was one of those ‘zone’ moments like when you are driving and no longer have to wonder what gear you are in, what that black thing in front of you with whites lines is, and whether you have actually switched the car on. It was, ironically, or perhaps poetically, the man I came in with. Sadly, or perhaps ironically, or definitely not poetically, it was not my husband.

Life eh?

How Custard May Actually Take Over the World

There have been some disturbing developments on the custard front. The fun is over. The physicist now fighting at the forefront of knowledge in order to write up the project. Various anomalies in the theories have come to light. Graphs that are supposed to wiggle one way are wiggling in ways only understood by understanders of second order differential equations. And not even by her. In a last ditch attempt to prove the ground-breaking (or should I say custard-breaking) theory she is resorting to having to use various powers that ordinary souls are completely innocent about. Since we are those ordinary souls I will keep you (and myself) in the dark about these powers, let it only be said that there is a great deal of formulae and superscript and strange Greek lettering involved.

But this is not the worst of it, not by far. I have, only today been handed a confidential DVD containing photographic evidence of how Custard may, and probably will, take over the world. Since I don’t believe in the confidentiality of science, I am publishing this herewith.

It started innocently enough with an ordinary school physics lab. A lab usually restricted to the normal pursuit of physics. Actually, no, it started earlier with an innocent physics teacher advising as to the nature of what constitutes an A level physics project. An informative and extensive list of probable, possible and practical conundrums for your probable, possible and practical physics student to undertake. Fine. Fair enough. Good teaching practice. But here was his mistake… he added a small but dangerous coda– ‘I doubt very much if you will be able to come up with anything different from these.’ Fool. Mad idiot. Didn’t he know? My physicist was in his class. Come on man, she’d been there for nigh on two years generally asking difficult questions whist trying to look innocent. It was trouble waiting to happen. Well, we know a lot of the rest http://ceciliamorreau.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-custard-could-save-world.html but these new dangers have only now come to my attention.

This is what happened to the innocent teacher and his innocent teacher friend:




this is what happened to the physics lab (the one in the green is the perpetrator of all this trouble) :


Ok, well this is obviously all bad enough. But it seems contained within the bounds of a secondary school physics lab. Ok, powder and gooey mess not popular with your modern-day over-regulated institute of learning, but surely not a danger. Well, maybe not. But there’s more. Start by carefully observing what is happening behind the well-meaning if a little deranged physicist. Yes, there are two more physicists. No, they are not conducting their own projects. Yes, they are filling balloons with Non-Newtonian liquids. Custard.

So far all innocent fun. But here is where it gets scary. The mad, messy and challenging one in the green lab coat, (by the way I never brought her up to do such things…I did try Barbie dolls and cute dresses, honestly) decided to further the knowledge of science by finding out what happens if you agitate custard.
NEVER AGITATE CUSTARD
This is what happened. It is well spooky. If you are faint-hearted look away now. If you don’t want to know the score also look away now.
If you need to know what present and future dangers are threatening the planet look now:




Score: CUSTARD 328 – GIRL 0
Advice – RUN AWAY. NOW.

Toilets in Public Places – Some Myths Blown

Thank you Matt for you insight into how the male of the species might be mystified by the nature of girls’ toilets http://hedgedefender.blogspot.com/ . Yes, I can understand how things might look a tad confusing from the outsiders’ point of view. All that queuing, pair bonding, grooming, crying, snogging, inserting sharp implements into sanitary product dispensing machines in order to access the contents. All of human life is there. Well, half of human life is there.

Women, however, are seldom mystified by the goings on inside the men’s toilets. For a start the chaps seem to get in and out of there faster than a hamster on speed. So it can’t be very exciting. Ah, actually, now I think about it, maybe there actually is a hamster on speed dispensing extra speed in order to hurry the male participants through the joys of urinal and cubicle. They do go quick don’t they? Of all the chaps I have simultaneous toilet trips with I have only ever beaten one. You know who you are. Therefore, men have been forced to develop the nonchalant waiting for partner/daughter/auntie/hamster stance. This usually involves a wall, the middle distance, having one foot pressed against the aforementioned wall, and a gentle swaying movement. We may, on emerging from the loo, for a brief moment think that are finally contemplating going to tango. Untrue, the swaying proves to be that of controlled impatience which then turns to a burning desire not to buy anything in the little shop. It is not uncommon for these loitering men to be mistaken for terrorists, hauled away and arrested. Ladies – should you ever emerge from the toilets and discover your man not there; that is what has happened.

Aside from which most women have actually been inside a men’s toilets. When needs must… and there’s a queue… and especially when pregnant. In fact men’s toilets are doubtless full of desperate pregnant women seriously regretting what seemed at the time a sensible decision.

I got locked in a men’s toilet once. Not on purpose. There was no handle on the inside of the door. I merely waved a casual ‘hi’ to the puzzled biker who eventually granted me my freedom. I would like to say now ‘hi and thanks’ to that biker.

Classical Proofs – Or How to Tell if a Man Fancies You

We are all looking for ways of proving things. Mostly so we can say – Ha! Told you so! But, Sherlock Holmes-like we usually use a method called deduction. This is where you gather all the facts and decide what they mean. For example, one of the most common questions in life is ‘does he fancy me?’ If you were to use a deductive method to discover the answer to this fact it would go something like this:

He kissed me
He slept with me
He fell asleep straight after
Therefore he fancies me.

Straightforward enough. Seems to work. However there is another form of proof that can work so much better. Proof by induction. Equally popular with some ancient Greek bods and you can really see why. This is where you look at some random facts and simply draw the relevant conclusion. In this case it would go something like this:

He kissed me
He slept with me
He fell asleep straight after
Therefore all men fancy me.

See what I mean? The Greeks knew a thing or two that old Sherlock seems to have missed.

The Escallonia From Hell - Or How I Was Defeated by a Shrub

The sun was shining, the birds were twittering, my shoulder was better, all was right in the world. I was waiting for a friend to show up and go for a walk. I thought, yes, a little gentle pruning would fill the vacant minutes twixt now and friend. That escallonia bush who is blocking much of the light on the patio seemed a suitable victim.

It started harmlessly enough with my handy pruning saw and my double handy loppers. Even the distraction of having to clear paths in order to discover the wheelbarrow was little trouble. Nor the hacking my way through the undergrowth to avail myself of the compost heap. In fact the sun was still shining, the birds still twittering, my shoulder was sort of ok, and my friend had conveniently not yet showed to distract me from my task.

But then the bush began to fight back. Large trunk-like pieces were cut and yet refused to extricate themselves from the mass of bush. Branches were tangled overhead in the manner of the hair of four-year-old who was allergic to the hairbrush (mentioning no names). It all began to resemble a game of giant and living Jenga. With every cut and attempted removal the whole edifice toppled just a bit but never enough. Inevitably I began to become a tad apprehensive. The whole lot (and this is a bush on the scale of a tree of considerable proportions) was going to go. I would be left underneath with only a pair of comedy Wellingtons poking out. My family would pass this mass of greenery and wonder why I had left my boots there. Hours later they would only notice my absence by the coincidental absence of clean underwear, food and stupid questions like ‘Is it really a good idea to blow your nose on your sock?’

I had to take matters into my own hands. This bush was not going to get the better of me. I admit, with some level of shame, that shrubs, trees and even a slug, in the past have got the better of me. But no such thing was going to happen on a day such as this where the sun was shining, the birds were twittering, my shoulder only hurt a little bit and a friendly friend was on their way. The specific matter that I took into my own hands was a particularly leafy, stubborn and smug branch. In the manner of the famous folk of the great big enormous turnip, I pulled and I pulled and I pulled. And I pulled. With a surprising squeaky noise and a malicious rumble of twigs the bastard thing came free. The bastard thing being very large tangle of tangley bush. The large tangley thing was very much larger than me.

I can see you wondering if I was left in the comedy Wellington situation. No no, for I am more cunning than that. At the same time as all this pulling I was also shrewdly backing my way down the alleyway that lies between our house and the neighbours. Pretty astute eh?
Or not. For I found that I could now no longer negotiate my way past the aforementioned mass. It sat there eyeing me with a slight grin and blocking the passage, the light, and my way back into the garden where I had left my instruments of torture, without which I was impotent against this escallonia from hell. Also I was now effectively locked out of the house by a plant.

Strangely the sun was still shining, the birds still twittering (some from inside the mass of the hell-shrub), my shoulder was absolutely killing me and my bastard friend still hadn’t showed.
I am now writing this from the neighbours house, who, when they had stopped laughing, let me gain refuge whilst we awaited the emergency services. Specifically mountain rescue. And friend – I blame you, if you had turned up in the first place or at all then none of this sorry story would have happened. No shrubs would have turned into monsters and mountain rescue would not be putting their helicopter down (oh shit on the trampoline, they must have mistaken it for a landing pad) as I write. I hope you plan to make it up to me very seriously. I mean it. You know who you are.

50 Things Continued - A Mountaineers Story

Gathered in the pub for a birthday (not mine) I decided to harvest some opinions and thoughts re 50 things to do before 50. This led to the discovery that many of my friends have not even considered this sticky conundrum. How could this be? I wondered. Do they have no ambition? Is it their intention to sink quietly into middle age without even underwater tangoing, acquiring a taste for an unlikely and slimy food product or jumping off a surprisingly steep cliff top with only a spotted handkerchief for support? As it turns out – yes. But thanks to me, some have seriously reconsidered their life choices and offered some possibilities, not only for themselves but for me.

Thanks to Sam for the best suggestions –
Joining the mile high club (there was some debate among the pedantic as to whether it was actually a mile high but the general concept was there).
Doing it in zero gravity (any offers of space trips gratefully accepted)
And something else equally great, which sadly I have now forgotten.
I therefore also add to the list –
Remembering great suggestions about what I should do before I’m 50.

Thanks to David for pointing out that obviously playing an unlikely instrument in a band in front of the whole village (and therefore causing much embarrassment) (to the village, not me) must have been an ambition of mine otherwise why the hell did I do it? (Actually, not sure David would use the word ‘hell’ because (sorry David) he is straightness personified.) Because I did do it. And he sent me the undeniable proof – he captured me on video. So ha! Another ambition achieved.

However the most thanks is probably due to Richard who declared that it must surely be all of our ambitions to scale the giddy heights of the birthday person’s garden in the dark whilst having consumed far too much beer, in order to attain the nirvana of the shed that is perched atop aforementioned garden. When I say scale, I mean scale. This garden is steep, very and surprisingly and undeniably steep. An experienced mountain goat wearing a full set of crampons might balk at the idea of a drunken dark ascent. But not us, oh no, not even me, in an unlikely pair of high heels.
We roped up and began the ascent. At base camp (level with the house roof) there were a few questions asked as to just how prudent this expedition was. The more inebriated of us poo pooed these doubters, refused to untie them and carried on. At not so base camp (a slightly more refined camp) (about where the vegetable patch is) many of us were having to hold hands. Can’t actually vouch for why we were holding hands. By the final ascent the gradient was so extreme that crawling proved to be the only option. Tricky whilst holding hands but we were VERY intrepid.
The shed (more of a chalet really) proved how worthwhile the whole expedition had been. It was replete with a chair and a calendar. How could we be anything other than thrilled? And we weren’t anything other – we were thrilled.

So lets face it – ambition can only be a good thing when it can lead ordinary citizens to have such adventures. More suggestions re 50 things welcome. Also Sam – what was that thing you said that sounded so good?

For S.H. who died on Saturday

A Single Stride
For S.H. who died on Saturday

She took a long time to go.
Perhaps she stayed
just to hold him
another moment more.

When she left she took his heart.
For thirty years
he lived with that emptiness
the best a person could.

But when it was time
for him to go
he simply closed his eyes
and with a single stride
was in her arms.

How to Prove the Veracity of Quantum Physics Without Having To Leave Your House

The theory goes that when looking at very small scale objects and phenomena traditional Newtonian physics doesn’t apply. This can be proved easily and undisputedly by just looking around our own homes, or my home at least.

To understand the quantum world we must first understand a few basic laws of the Newtonian world –
1. If no one moves stuff then it tends to stay where it is.
2. Apples fall.
3. If someone moves stuff then other stuff gets displaced.

All this is easily shown in a domestic situation, in fact the cupboard under the stairs is the perfect example:

1. It fills up with stuff like plastic bags, apples, displaced aliens and small plastic parachutists. No one moves this stuff so it has stayed exactly there for a very long time. Years, decades, in fact that stuff was there before the house was built and some cunning ancient Welsh builders actually built a whole house around it.
2. If you drop an apple in this cupboard it ALWAYS falls (then it stays where it is proving law 1 again). I have never seen a dropped apple not fall. The only possible exception is if the apple in question is part of a group of three and being used to practice juggling. In this case it tends to fall upwards prior to falling downwards.
3. If by some very unlikely chance someone moves some of the stuff in the cupboard then the other stuff, especially the plastic parachutists and the rotting apples move with the swiftness of a child asked to do the hoovering to fill the gap.


Now to what you might (completely mistakenly) perceive as the trickier problem of Quantum physics. Again a few basic premise –
1. Very small things act very strangely.
2. If you don’t see it then it doesn’t actually happen.
3. Cats are elusive buggers.

Now, the Quantum world and the Newtonian world actually share the same physical space (the world). So obviously to prove the basic laws of Quantum physics we can look at exactly the same space (the cupboard under the stairs).

1, I should have previously mentioned that there are also very small things in the aforementioned cupboard. These include woodlice, those little twinkly bits that fall out of party bags, and dust. Well it goes with out saying that woodlice behave strangely. The twinkly bits always act very oddly in that just when you think you have cleared them off your party clothes/carpet/children they always reappear within seconds. Usually sticking their tongues out at you. And dust, one of the most mysterious of domestic products – where does it come from? Why does it bunch up in some places to make small mouse-like objects and why does it lay flat on other surfaces to shame you in front of your parents? And, most strangely, what is it for and why can’t we use it to power spacecraft?
2. If you don’t see it … well every parent of teenagers knows that story. But with reference to the cupboard, simple, close the door and none of this, even the Newtonian stuff is actually happening.
3. Cats just ARE elusive buggers.


I was going to go on to talk about the quantum strangeness other small objects such as socks, pens and mothers, but I think I have already proved my point.

Einstein didn’t actually believe in Quantum physics, but then, I’m thinking he probably lived in a flat and therefore was lacking the appropriate place to prove such theories.

How to be a God

In the course of the past year I have killed a man, made three women pregnant, caused much disturbance by revealing people’s true parentage and had more sexual encounters than is possibly healthy for a woman of my age. Or possibly as many sexual encounters as a woman of my age actually wants. This is the power I have. That is why, when you are a novelist, you are, to a certain extent, God. I can change the course of people’s lives. For ever. Don’t think I take the responsibility lightly. To me these people are real. More real than real folk like Tony Blair. Ok, more real than real real folk like the cute guy from Blue Peter.

I’m not as much of a god as some writers. The true gods of the writing world are the scriptwriters for delightful ditties such as Eastenders, Neighbours and Deal or No Deal. That is because the characters they write ARE actually real. So when they kill them it IS murder. The courts are full of cases of scriptwriters up for crimes such as murder, character-slaughter, Grand Larceny, Not So Grand Larceny, and wielding a pen with intent.

So, in some obscure and not quite true way it is lucky that my novels are yet to be published. Imagine the trouble I will get into when all my dirty dealings are out in the open.

Where Being 26 Years Too Old is a Bit of a Pain

There’s something I’ve noticed. People who are eighteen go out dancing. A lot. They roll in at 3.45 having danced their little cotton socks off. I have this on very good authority from the person with the worn foot-coverings that was consuming a bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes in the kitchen last night at 3.46. Well, I too was afforded the thrills of late night/early morning cereal, but the late night dancing, carousing and general partying was denied to me. Why? Because I am too old. Or perhaps not precisely that. Because my friends are too old. Or boring, or sensible, or just generally not available due to childcare duties, forthcoming elections and Very Important Programs they must watch on the TV.

‘Let’s go dancing!’ I enthusiastically suggest at the dinner table. This is greeted with a variety of looks ranging from the ‘my mother is mad’ to ‘I’m nearly fifty and I must spend the evening in the bath’ to ‘cats don’t go dancing’. One more helpful soul, rather than saying ‘Mum, I’m going clubbing later if you would care to accompany me,’ does attempt some sort of solution.

‘What you need are some new friends.’ True. I thought. Physicists can be very perspicacious people at times. Not at other times, when things like not walking into doorposts, or pouring juice without spilling it, or knowing how to clean up mess created by cornflour are involved.

Now don’t imagine that I don’t love my friends. I do. Dearly. But they all seem to be in the pre-party family stage of life or the post-party grumpy old man stage of life. I am the odd one out, the weirdo, the strange forty-something year old who wants to be a teenager. Sad really. I can discover no solution. Aside from perhaps a helpful prescription from the doctors to calm my teenage libido. But actually that is another problem, probably inherent in the original problem, probably solvable with the same drugs.

So, I am not going out. Instead I have just agreed to spend the evening making a sixties-style necklace for a sixties party tomorrow night which I am also not going to. Even though in both senses I am closer to the sixties. Monday morning first thing I will visit the doctor and ask her if she would like to either prescribe me a suitable dose of tranquilisers or go partying with me.

Where Doing Nothing Could Be an Option

‘Doing nothing is not an option’ an oft heard saying in these modern times of doingness. Even one of our greatest sages and sayers of unlikely things, President Bush, has mentioned this. But I, being a woman of a questioning and inquisitive nature, wonder about the veracity of this statement. Surely there must be a case for doing nothing. There must be times in life where taking no action, just lying back and letting things happen, essentially doing fuck all, is the very best option of all.

So, I have looked at a typical day in the life of me, and the many doings I do, and analysed scientifically whether in fact the world would have been a better place if I had done nothing. Here are the results:

Activities that could be replaced with Doing Nothing with NO detrimental effects to the world -

Getting up. Not my favourite activity. Should I have chosen not to do so the consequences would be as follows – I would be happier.

Driving daughter to town. Daughter would have had to take train into town rather than me giving her a lift (reduce global warming). If daughter had known in advance that she wasn’t getting a lift then she would also have probably chosen the not getting up option and therefore also be happier.

Washing up. A lack of this activity would lead to people to have to reuse dirty plates glasses etc with possibly those famous ‘good bacteria’ so enable them to fight off tummy upsets, thrush, and having to drink disgusting yoghurt drinks in order to ingest the aforementioned ‘good bacteria’.

Laundry. Not doing this would mean that eventually family would be driven to such practices as turning their pants inside out, wearing those hugely unfashionable items at the back of their wardrobes (thus giving everyone a laugh) and the accumulated piles of dirty clothes randomly accruing around the house would cushion the impact of bodies hitting floors when people tripped up on the accumulated piles of dirty clothes accruing randomly around the house.

Going to work. Absconding from work would save many a poor person’s manuscript from being read and rejected so a huge amount of writers would not have that particular heartbreaking disappointment.

Writing poems, bits of novels and blog. If I never did this countless folk would be saved vast segments of their lives by not reading my outpourings (and leaving them more time to do nothing).

Going to bed. If I didn’t go to bed I wouldn’t have to get up (tricky space-time continuum question here re not getting up next morning and therefore being able to do nothing).

Activities that could be replaced with Doing Nothing with some detrimental effects to the world -

1. Going to tango class. If I didn’t dance then countless men would not be able to hold me in the ‘close hold’ let alone the ‘balancero’. This would not only disappoint the countless men but countlessly disappoint me.

So 7 to 1 to Doing Nothing. Bush – eat your heart out.

Why I Am Going to Install a Lift in Our House

I have come to the conclusion that what my house really needs is a lift. Yes, this will be ever so handy when my legs go the same way as my shoulder (basically dysfunctional) but this is not my main reason. The real reason is that there is a big problem with our stairs. Anyone who has visited my home might suspect that I am referring to their unlikely angle and the fact that at the top the steps become so thin that even a cat wearing stilettos is challenged to get a foothold on them (must issue snot-cat with some high heels to test this theory). Or you may think that the headroom issue, the fact that anyone over the height of two foot has to crawl up the middle section in order to avoid a possibly fatal head injury, might cause me some disturbance. (I would like to add here that all fatally injured persons have been given decent burials under the kiwi fruit just by the shed). No, it is the carpet that is the criminal.

This carpet haunts my every waking journey twixt ground and first floor, twixt upstairs and down. The carpet offends my every sense of what is right and correct in the world. Yet, unlikely as it seems I am responsible, or at least partly responsible for this offending floor-covering.

This is what happened. After years of building work, or should I say DIY, or rather DIM (Did It Myself) that, as usual, was achieved to that high and exacting standard of crap so prevalent in my home, we decided that the final piece de resistance was going to be the stairs. And the piece de resistance of the piece do resistance was to buy an expensive and brand new carpet. We had a plan. We had a sensible plan. We had a sensible plan that involved buying a speckled sort of beige and brown and grey sort of carpet that would not show the dirt. Fantastic. Only, when we got to the shop no such clever floor covering seemed to exist. So, rather than lobby the government for more intelligent floor design, or write to Jim’ll Fix It, or weave one ourselves out of bits of stray wool from fields, fluff from the tumble dryer and our children’s hair what did we do? We bought a blue carpet. At the time, and in the shop, we thought – ‘heavens, that’s a beautiful shade of blue!’ A shade of blue that reminded us of azure summer skies, Mediterranean oceans, Chelsea football strips (that was the beloved, not me), and Microsoft. You probably have just this colour at the top of your screen right now.

And that blue is the problem. Every last iota and speck of dirt glares from this cerulean wall-to-wall wonder as if it was a beacon on a very dark night. You can see white dirt, yellow muck, green crap, brown crud, black dreck, grey dust and multicoloured filth. There is no such thing as blue dirt and therefore NOTHING is camouflaged.

And yes, I have hoovered. I do hoover. But even before the snazzy device that reels in the chord has finished reeling, the carpet is somehow dirty again. So short of a nasty case of Obsessive Compulsive Vacuuming there seems little I can do. The only practical solution is installing a lift and therefore bypassing the whole stair trauma altogether. This, therefore, is what I am going to do. The stairs will be officially closed to traffic and all travellers must use the lift. The only question that remains is – what sort of carpet shall I have in this life-saving elevator?

Heaven is Always Non-Smoking - Bollocks

Whilst innocently driving to the physios I was accosted by a large pink fluorescent sign on a church declaring ‘Heaven is Always Non-Smoking’. Well, you can imagine my disappointment. How can that be? I asked myself. Obviously there is a strong case for Hell being Smoking. What with all the fires etc there is bound to be a few fumes knocking around. But surely heaven shouldn’t be so restrictive. What about personal freedom? Eternal life? St Peter’s penchant for cigars?

We in the school of Aardvarkism have a very different idea of the promised land. Now I’m not sure exactly what sect this particular and particularly tasteless sign belonged to but I am sure it wasn’t Aardvarkism. For the Aardvarkeist heaven is, well, heavenly. All those things that we attempt to abstain from here on earth are available in abundance, with great profusion and with knobs in the Aardvarkism afterlife. It is written in one of the various sacred texts that:

‘the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees’ (Verse 2, The Gospel BRCM)
and from the same gospel
‘you never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks’ (Verse 4)
there is also mention of lakes of whisky and ‘hanging the jerk that invented work’.

The promised land features a great deal in the word of Aardvark and items such as chocolate, cocaine, deep-fried curly wurlies, free love, those little biscuits with very hard icing on top, free sex, joints the size of the Eiffel tower and CIGARETTES are all freely available and located in convenient places like trees, streams, on the ground, and floating about weightlessly. There are naturally none of the earthly consequences like fatness, slightly putrid breath, social ostracisation, cold sores, hurting other people’s feelings and of course, death.

It all seems hugely logical to me. If it is heaven we are already dead, ergo why not enjoy ourselves? Praise be to Aardvark the bringer of the good news. Heaven COULD BE smoking if that’s how you fancy it.

Tradition – Friend or Foe?

As some of you might have noticed it is Easter. If anybody hasn’t noticed all the indications were there – lots of fluffy yellow things in the shops, little lambs bouncing about in fields and freaky giant Easter Bunnies in the entrance to ASDA.

But the question on many people’s lips is how, in these days of agnosticism, atheism and aardvarkism (as lesser-know but increasingly fashionable branch of observance), is ‘how are we supposed to celebrate Easter?’ Unlike Christmas there seems to be a singular lack of traditional activities such as disastrous gift-buying, food that no one likes, family arguments and debt-creation. In the UK the most popular Easter tradition seems to be trying to poison our children with low-quality, high-quantity, and environmentally-criminally packaged Easter eggs.

Chocolate is freely available in our house (cupboard above the kettle if you are interested) as I believe that chocolate is a good source of iron (especially dark 70% proof chocolate) and thus essential to our diet. Therefore Easter eggs hold little appeal. So, in my family we decided to initiate a different kind of Easter tradition. I have discovered to my cost that family traditions can be a very slippery slope. Once initiated these traditions are hard to dispose of, despite children no longer being children, parents no longer being of sound mind, and Easter never managing to think of a date to be on and stick to it, we still have to have the Easter Treasure Hunt. There is no treasure involved. There certainly is no hunting involved, or at least none of that banned stuff with the red coats. No, the Easter Treasure Hunt is an overly elaborate game played with a multitude of pieces of paper with clues so cryptic that the complier of the Guardian crossword would be confounded. We are confounded. The children are confounded. The resident boyfriend of the child is confounded.

Frankly, I blame the eldest daughter. This tradition-of-confoundedness would never have been invented if it hadn’t been for her. The rest of us were happy to paint inane patterns on eggs, stick fluffy things to coloured paper and throw up chocolate flavoured sick. But not her, she was bored. She required an intellectual challenge akin to proving Fermat’s last theorem or she would simply not enjoy the day. And being the kind and considerate mother that I am I could not bear for my child not to have a good Easter.

So, now, a good fourteen years after The Easter Treasure Hunt was invented, we spend Easter Saturday writing clues and Easter Sunday spreading them around the house and garden, trying to remember what the hell the clues meant and giving even more cryptic hints in order the help with the cryptic clues. As the beloved so rightly pointed out it would frankly be quicker for them to search the house blindfolded for the eventual prizes to this hunt than to solve the clues. But hey – a tradition is a tradition and where would families be without them? (I suggest in the pub having these children buy us drinks would be a good place)

Plumbing Update – Or Why We May Not Have To Move House

It’s OK, the tap is now fixed. Hooray!

It was a very stressful time which involved much swearing, knitting of brows and pipe-abuse, but after only four hours spent coaxing my beloved in the art of patience and plumbing we can now once more fill the kettle with impunity and fearlessness. No longer are we living in dread of our kitchen turning into a tourist attraction that will be christened the Welsh Trivoli. Not only that but we can now enjoy a stylish new chrome swivel. It is the very smartest thing in our kitchen and matches the sink and the rest of the fittings in no way whatsoever. It is also a tad loose on its base, but for our house this falls into normal parameters of jobs not quite done to perfection. Or perhaps jobs done to the lowest form of adequacy. These include skirting boards that fall off when you pass them (we simply kick them back into place with a placid smile or a shoe), doors that fail to close properly (this is called ventilation), doors that fail to open properly (this is called security), and shelves that cannot hold more than the weight of a few pieces of origami (these are called crap).

However there are a few strange noises going on in the pipes and the hot water is coming out a slightly alarming shade of brown. But we are not alarmed; we are happy in a way that only people who have overcome the worst plumbing can throw at them and survived are. There is also a minor waterfall emerging from the overflow on the side of the house. We are considering this as a nice water feature that will only enhance the garden and make our neighbours jealous.

The beloved and I are now going out to dinner to celebrate our triumph, or possibly because we are scared to actually use our new tap, you know…just in case…

How Custard Could Save the World

My eldest daughter has just undergone three days of custard. She hasn’t eaten it, she has experimented with it. This is what A level physicists get up to these days. Outrageous really. When I did my A level physics project I experimented with something sensible – Blue Tac to be precise.

Custard is a non-Newtonian liquid. This means that Newton never ate custard. It also means that custard is the anarchist of the liquid world. It refuses to adhere to any of the normal laws of physics. It also refuses to adhere to the normal laws of the EU, but is not unique amongst liquids for this - baked-bean juice, melted Maltesers and baby-sick are also European law-breakers. In fact the only thing that custard does adhere to is all surfaces it comes into contact with (as my patio, kitchen, bathroom, hallway and daughter will testify).

For anyone not familiar with the fun to be had with custard this is what happens (note this applies to uncooked instant custard, which is basically cornflour) – If you approach it slowly and sufficiently stealthily, in the manner of a cat stalking a ping pong ball, then the custard is a liquid. However, if you rush it, like the sort of man we prefer not to sleep with, it is a solid.

This leads to all kinds of exciting uses for raw custard. A popular one is to hide angry people’s belongings in. Because they are inclined to grab for things in a hurried fashion they cannot ever access their keys, glasses, condoms etc because they discover that the custard that their loved ones have secreted their things in is completely solid!

However the most popular use of custard is for running on. If you run sufficiently fast and sufficiently stompily then, yes, you are running on a liquid! There are those that believe that the Sea of Galilee was basically custard.

So this is the obvious and indisputable conclusion – we can save the world by turning more of the earth’s seas into custard. The fish and so on would still be able to swim because they go quite slowly, but people could simply walk cross oceans (provided they went quickly enough) and the need for planes, ships and rowing dingies would be obviated. Thus we would reduce global warming and save the world. And should global warming occur, despite these endeavours, we could simply eat the ocean.

If you don’t believe me here is an example of running on a non-newtonian liquid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XQ97XHjVw

Why We Must Move House IMMEDIATELY

Whilst washing up this evening I noticed a slightly unusual aspect to the kitchen sink. The tap, one of those swivelly jobs, appeared to have become more wobbly than swivelly, listing at an unlikely angle and threatening to disengage itself from the twin basin doobry. A loose washer appeared to be the culprit. So being a woman of many parts I attempted to clean the accumulated grunge from the part and womanfully screw it back into place. To no avail. Bugger, I thought and deftly stuck two fingers up at the offending part. Again to no avail. It just looked at me, smirking I think, and to emphasise its point, leaned over even further. Drastic action was needed.

‘Help!’ I cried to my beloved, ‘we have a pending plumbing disaster!’

My beloved, being a man sort of chap, had already clocked the problem and chosen to ignore it. But at hearing my distress arrived in next to no time (about half a hour) at the scene of the crime.

‘We need a new tap,’ he declared. Sometimes it is hard not to have respect for these people of deep insight. He opened the cupboard under the sink and peered in. ‘Hmm.’

Then, what I was really dreading happened. He remembered. Funny, for he is a man who can’t remember the simplest of things, like the location of keys, the names of his children and where he lives. Yet he actually remembered an inconspicuous event that must have happened over ten years ago.

‘You fitted this tap,’ he declared. My mind raced. Should I simply deny this? Should I make up a long and complex story about a plumber arriving whilst he was out? Should I make up an even longer and more complex story about how it must surely have been an alien inhabiting my body who could perform such outstanding feats of plumbing? Yet, fool that I am, I confessed.

‘Good, well you can fit another one then.’ Ha, well, no. Or ha, well, yes. But my days of being the building dogsbody are long gone and I have no intention of reviving them. Studied forgetfulness is my policy now. I can no longer recollect how to plumb the house (let alone a tap), I also refuse to understand wiring of any description, carpentry, plastering (which actually I was crap at), and I certainly know nothing about those little plastic grommets that haunt every household task.

However I had my trump card up my sleeve –

‘With this shoulder? I don’t think so.’ And I held my recently injured and physio-tortured shoulder and winced convincingly. A few tears of pain trickled down my pallid cheek.

‘Oh, right, well I suppose I’ll try and do it,’ he grumped. What a hero. Hurrah for men! I only hope he does it very very soon because if he doesn’t the tap will break, the kitchen flood, we will have to wear Wellington boots, then travel by rubber dingy around the ground floor. Finally we will be scuba diving in order to reach the Shreddies. ‘I’ll sort it tomorrow,’ he said. Double hurrah.


But I know what will happen. They won’t have the right sort of tap, fittings etc at our local DIY emporium. So we will have to buy a new sink. But that won’t fit into the countertop so we will have to buy a whole new set of kitchen units. But they won’t fit in the kitchen. So we will have to buy a new house. Ultimately the only solution is to move house immediately, without further delay and forthwith. Any offers on rambling cottage with pending plumbing disaster? (Sitting tenants include two teenagers, a snot-filled cat and not-as-forgetful-as-expected academic).

Are Physiotherapists Gods?

I finally admitted that pain was not a comfortable thing and went to visit the physiotherapist. It’s not the first time I have hoved up to his charming establishment and, lets face it, probably not the last.

There are many unique and interesting things about physiotherapists that I have come to understand in my years of hurting myself (and my children hurting themselves) in unique and interesting ways. The first is that, as a breed, physios are peculiarly good-looking. There must be and explanation for this and I believe it lies in how they are trained. I have no idea how they are trained, except that it definitely involves spending time with a life-sized plastic skeleton. Every physio I have ever visited (which are curiously numerous) has one of these. The glaring conclusion is that these collections of counterfeit remains have mystical powers that turn quite ordinary students into veritable Adoni and Adonesses. They are probably known in physio circles as ‘the bones of eternal youth’ or some such.

Another thing about members of this branch of the medical sciences is that they believe in pain. Yes, they believe that us mortals suffer pain, but, more that it is quite acceptable, if not desirable, to inflict pain. They are of the no-pain-no-gain school of understanding. They have the power and they know how to use it. Not only do they prod, poke and manipulate in a way that leaves you praying for mercy, they then give you cute little print outs of exercises that you must do in order to inflict further pain on yourself. This is the physio road to salvation. And then they charge you, and make you buy raffle tickets, and smile their Adonis smiles.

The final, and perhaps most pertinent thing about physiotherapists is that they are right. When doctors, surgeons and fathers tell you things like ‘live with it’, physios perform their strange rituals with towels and rubber and the laying on of hands, give you your allotted penance, and hey presto! You are cured.

Ergo, yes. Physios are the pan-dimensional incarnation of Gods we are yet to understand. The only other creature who you will ever meet with such powers is that slightly plump woman, who somewhere in your murky past, cured all your ailments with a cwtch, a kiss better and a packet of milky buttons.

The Very Much Possible Repercussions of the Welsh Smoking Ban

Today, as most of the world (or at least our small corner) knows, it became illegal to smoke in a variety of hitherto smoky places in Wales. Of course this will have extraordinarily far-reaching and far-fetched repercussions. Although so far it doesn’t seem to have affected me much, I still failed to understand the five sets of doors that lead from my office to the land where we are allowed to light up.

However the health of smokers is obviously going to be seriously affected in the long term. All this walking considerable distances, possibly up and down remarkably long staircases, in order to find that small corner of the outside that someone has conveniently designated for voluntary inhalation is bound to take its toll. As is all this stepping out of doors into the fresh air and sunshine. Another major concern is the social aspect; all those disparate souls gathered intimately around a small metal bin, well, anything could happen. Leading physicians, health-workers and bods mostly agree that the smoking ban is going to be tremendous for the Welsh smoker, (especially as leading physicians, health-workers and bods are often leading the field in smoking related activities). It is predicted that in less than twenty years time the Welsh smoker could be amongst the fittest, most suntanned, least depressed and most sociable segment of the population. Some are even going so far as to say that the next generation of Welsh people will be solely the descendants of today’s Welsh smoker as everyone else will have died, or at least become chronically infertile, from sick building syndrome, S.A.D. or lack of amusing friends.

So, all you stuffy stay-indoors clean-living sort of folk – get out the Malboros, the Rizlas, the Old Holborn. Join us on the latest craze to sweep the country. Be free, live a little! You have nothing to lose but your lungs.

The Best Anniversary Ever

Today is our 24th not-anniversary. It is a not-anniversary because we are not (yet?) married. And yes, the date is obviously significant.
Today we forswore the usual gift-buying, expensive hotel and lavish seduction because my beloved has flu, or tonsillitis, or some other life-threatening lurgie as yet to be identified (he’s a man and therefore has not been to visit the appropriate health professional). However this is nowhere near as bad as it sounds because his condition has left him bereft of the power of speech. This lack of linguistic prowess has afforded me the perfect opportunity to interpret what he is trying to convey. This morning’s conversation ran thus:
Beloved – ‘Splurg.’
Me – ‘I love you too.’
Beloved – ‘Arg cough cough.’
Me – ‘Yes it has been a blissful 24 years.’
Beloved – ‘Garg.’ (some mucus involved here)
Me – ‘And I too have never looked at another man’
Beloved – ‘Urggle raaargh’ (considerably more mucus involved here)
Me – ‘Yes! I knew you would ask me in the end! I will marry you!’
Beloved – ‘’ (he has passed out)

So, another one of my 50 ambitions achieved. I am planning a June wedding, you are all invited.