Cecilia Morreau

Waiting for the Builder

2011-06-04T20:06:00.000+01:00

I’m waiting for the Builder. His name is Dave. This works well for me (being memoryly challenged) because most of the men I know are called Dave. So when I call a man on the phone I can just say ‘Hello Dave’. There does follow the problem of what I’m supposed to be talking about. I’ve decided to stick with the opening gambit of ‘Hello Dave, the roof is leaking.’

Dave the builder understands this. Dave my boyfriend understands this (or understands me sufficiently to ignore random phone overtures). All my Dave friends know me well enough to respond by hanging up.

I’m waiting for the builder. He’s supposed to be coming to fix the roof. The roof is leaking. Mostly I’m not all that very house proud. I’m successfully ignoring the fragrantly rotting front door, the musicality of the plumbing and the interesting angles my ceilings construe themselves into. But leaking roofs are not good. I’ve seen the television programmes.

It starts with a leaking roof. Then the timbers get wet rot and dry rot and rot. Then the wall falls down. Your previously (and possibly aristocratic) family is inconvenienced by the lack of wallage. They leave the stately pile for the suburbs. You stay in the stately pile living in the only room where it doesn’t rain, accompanied by your mêlée of cats. Years pass. A television crew turns up to your previously stately pile (now transformed to a pile) wanting to know why you didn’t get the roof fixed. Your only response by this stage is ‘Meow’.

I’m still waiting for the builder. This isn’t the first time. I suspect it won’t be the last.

Shedheap Challenge – Or How Not to Move Your Shed

2011-05-05T17:37:00.003+01:00

I have decided to move the shed. Mostly because it is spoiling my view of the mountain. The mountain is much prettier than the shed and it doesn’t leak like the shed does. There are a number of problems involved. It isn’t a little shed, measuring about 3m x 10m, it is in fact a large shed. It was built sometime in pre-history of a solid wooden construction. It has been re-roofed in the not so distant past in an insubstantial plastic sort of way.

This isn’t the big problem. The big problem is all the stuff in the shed. What do I do with all the precious junk I have accumulated in the last 20 years? Items like surf boards, doors, desks, chairs, a fitted kitchen, thousands of tins of paint, another thousand tiles of no matching genre, plant pots, garden tools, a large assortment of bits of wood, sixty double glazing units that got mis-ordered when the house was re-glazed, and a number of wasps’ nests.

I’m a big fan of Scrapheap Challenge so I’m going to do Shedheap Challenge. The challenge is to make a new shed using only the items stored in the old shed in order that I might empty the old shed to make a new shed to store all the items in the shed.

How Not to Become a Recluse

2011-05-01T21:27:00.000+01:00

I’ve been training to be a recluse. Which may be why no one has heard from me in such a long time. Or it could be the weather.

Being a recluse is considerably more difficult than I’d anticipated. Hence the training. The actual word recluse is derived from the Latin ‘recludere, which means "shut up"’. I read this on Wikipedia. The first problem becomes fairly obvious. This shutting up lark, although fine as far as it goes in terms of blogs, is quite tricky when it comes to shopping, asking neighbours to feed cats and answering difficult questions posed by cats. I’m hoping that talking to oneself, inanimate objects or foodstuff doesn’t count.

Having failed to find a proper school for potential recluses (or is that recluii?) or even a decent online resource I have been left with having to invent the training for myself.

I understand that a good recluse will try and stay away from people.

On Wednesday I had to go to work so I encountered a number of people. I was suitably grumpy and refused offers of coffee, chats about unpaid invoices and any further unpaid invoices. Funny how no one ever wants to chat about the invoices you’ve actually paid, which, at any given time must considerably outnumber the unpaid ones. I put this down to an unhealthy interest in current affairs.

On Thursday I managed to speak only to 2 cats, 6 plants, a hummus sandwich (only to mention how gorgeous it was), and my boyfriend. I’d like to point out here, that Dave, the boyfriend (we like to call the over 55s boys these days in order to appear younger and more girlish oneself) is also a recluse or at least a potential recluse with some outstanding exceptions we won’t go into. This was my best day this week.

On Friday I was all set to talk only to 2 cats, an undefined number of plants and probably a bowl of pasta when someone rang. I answered the phone, essentially breaking the first rule of reclusive-in-training but not having got over the first rule of motherhood and assuming that if the phone rings it’s a daughter with some very important crisis. It was neither. That was the earlier call that I’m not mentioning because it’s not relevant. It was bestest friend from school. Telling me that an old chum from school days was now Paul McCartney and there was a gig on in a park in Bath. I encountered over 2000 people. This has put my training back by approximately 743 years. But one of them was Paul McCartney and I always fancied him. However since he’s well out of my league training starts in earnest again tomorrow: 2 cats, an undefined number of plants and an intimate tête-à-tête with a particularly nutty muesli.

How to Plan an Invitation and Celebrate Greyness

2010-09-30T21:48:00.001+01:00

My career as a paid writer turns out to be very stressful. I’m thinking that perhaps before taking up a new career I should have finished the old one. This is what happened:

I saw an advert (this isn’t the one about Blogvertise – more on that shortly) for being a real writer that was paid. What they wanted real writers to do is write reviews for a review site on places in Cardiff. I could do that. They hired me. Yay! But the job started IMMEDIEATLY like right then that very second. And then stopped two weeks later (that’s tomorrow) a hundred billion reviews in two weeks as well as running a publishing company, a household full of departing uni students and cats (the cats decided to eschew university in favour of laziness), being a nanny and remembering to brush my hair. I think I might have let the hair thing slip a few times. Now I’m all reviewed out and I still have 25 more to go…

So, for a change I thought I’d write a blog post about marriage. For the fine folk at Blogvertise. All the above is irrelevant. I’ve never been married. But, the trusting people at PartyPop have asked me to review their site. In the specific the bit for wedding anniversary invitations. Be excited that PartyPop’s tiny logo on the tab (known as a Favicon) is actually a smiley. PartyPop is a site where you can get all the stuff you need for an enormous party, specifically weddings but also other parties.

Weddings can be fairly enormous things, not like a first birthday party, a first tooth party or a celebration of your first grey hair. What PartyPop do is have tools. For planning. And invitations. Once you have spent all that dosh on a wedding the important thing is to keep it going. By remembering anniverseries, not to mention remembering the other person’s birthday, favourite colour, shoe size and particularly their name. Especially in bed.

At PartyPop they do
• Anniversary invitations
• Bridal Shower Invitations
• Birth Announcements
• Bat and Bar Mitzvah
• Baptism Invitations
But, what I find the most intriguing is the • Save the date cards .

What are we saving a date for? If not one of the above? Possibly the wedding itself (they do that with bells on). I usually save dates for the dentist, the doctor, the podiatrist and my multitude of celebrations for ever-emerging grey hairs (expect an invitation soon)

How to Become a Staycation

2010-09-13T19:34:00.004+01:00

How exciting, my first assignment! I am now on the verge of fame and fortune. Previously, when I signed up to this, I had to choose what category my blog falls under – you know, is it about football, politics or lace for kittens. I chose ‘relationships’ – it seems to loosely fit – a bit like lace for kittens. And here it is – the web page I’ve been asked to review: www.become.com – sounds pretty good eh? I envisioned things like a transformative life experience, finding out our real mission in life or even possibly how to be a superhero. It’s a price comparison site. ‘Relationships’ is a wide remit.

Luckily I not only have relationships but I do occasionally compare prices, wonder how much things cost and long for more Meer cats. http://www.become.com is a price comparison site for online shopping. Which is handy because it’s US based and although I hail from that side of the large wetness I find shopping actually in person there not as economical as you might wish when you live in Wales. On the home page we can compare all kinds of stuff, like a 4 Ton Self Contained Air Conditioner, a Pirate Bed, a Wolo Bad Boy Air Horn-419 and a staycation (that’s when instead of going away for your hols you stay at home with your 4 Ton Air Conditioner, your Pirate Bed and your Wolo Bad Boy Air Horn-419. )

None of these dream scenarios however seem to be the very special assignment, no, here we are talking car audio receivers (those things we used to call car radios but now are equipped with touch screens, have detachable front panels, and 2-Shaft, 30 Watts, 2-Channel Stereo Out, ) All these exciting things and more on http://electronics.become.com/car-audio-receivers. No more do we have to sing rounds of ‘Row the Boat’ with our tone-deaf friends, family and kittens.

The other item, strangely, I actually recently bought – not a pint of milk, or the appropriate lace, but a Voice Recorder. These handy devices, (which we used to call having a memory) are great for those of us who no longer have a memory. As you can see on http://electronics.become.com/voice-recorders they come in all shapes, sizes and level of difficulty. I so wish that I had bought the one that was a pen because having no memory is compatible with never losing your pen. Staycation here we come.

How Not to Have a Secure Income

2010-09-09T21:20:00.001+01:00

I have made a decision. One of those life-changing yes-now-I-like-olives of decisions. Some are born decisive, some achieve decisiveness, and others have decisiveness thrust upon them. I fall into all three categories but mostly at the moment I’m having it thrust upon me. And perhaps not in an alluring sort of way.

For the last little while, or year, I have been working every afternoon as a child-minder, house-keeper, ironic-ironer sort of person. This was very jolly and I got paid every week into my bank account so that, in the usual way of the world, the council, utilities and suppliers of totally necessary chocolate cake could remove it from the aforementioned depository. Redundancy is being thrust upon me. Possibly because the children are all grown up, the house has decided to become independent and the iron has made a bid for freedom in eternally lumpy wrinkled sort of places.

I have made a decision. A career change. I am going to be a writer. Now, this may sound familiar. As I am actually already a writer. This time, however I have decided to become a PAID writer!

All my writerly friends will probably wonder what in the world I’m talking about. Surely we do it for the love of the craft, our addiction to verbiage and our attempts to break the world record for Rejection Letters from Publishers Received?
That was when we had other incomes, or husbands or faith. Now we are not so well endowed or faithful. A bit like husbands. I have a cunning plan to prostitute my art. I have been on the internet. These are the jobs that writers can do if they really want:

Blogging about things you have never heard of (some education will come free with this).

Ghost-writing stories of people whose lives really make the rest of ours look like a energy-saving lightbulb.

Advertising copy for selling stuff we may never have heard of (again good sideline in education.

Writing random things in the hope that someone will host a related advert. I can already actually do this with this blog and you may all note the lovely ads.

Feel free to click.

How Not to Become Very Famous via Guardian Soulmates

2010-02-07T15:31:00.001Z

It’s happened at last. I’ve been discovered. Right now as we speak I’m being filmed as a maniac late-night internet addict. Hammer house of horror woman in front of back-lit laptop.

This is probably not how I wanted to be portrayed. Still. I’ve been discovered. Discoverees cannot be choosers.

My discoverer found me via my penchant, or previous penchant, for internet dating. The Guardian sent me an email. This is almost what it said:

‘Just stumbled across your wonderfully wise and witty blog. Hope you'll submit your stories to the Guardian Soulmates competition over the next few days: there are lots of prizes and no limit to how many times you can enter. The deadline's next Tuesday.’

That was quite few Tuesdays ago. More Tuesdays than can be contained in a small red shoe. I did as suggested. After all, who can resist being called wise and witty? Or prizes. Or Tuesdays?

I had many return emails saying ‘Yay! We are publishing your wise and witty piece.’ ‘Boo we are not sending you prizes!’. Then one said ‘Yay! We are coming to film you!’ I’m being filmed by a real documentary film maker. Not just my cat leaning on the record button.

Filming is an interesting process. It’s a method of distorting time. Not in the way one might like. The film is going to be 3 minutes long. Not long even in terms of cooking noodles, creating works of mediocre fiction, dates, dried fruit of any proclivity or a good night in. However filming is not like life. Filming is long and has numerous déjà vu moments and again and just again because they haven’t turned the camera on or haven’t got a valid battery or it seems just not to be in just exactly the exactly right light.

Filming in public is akin to trying to cook a noodle soup whilst waiting for form of a public transport. You keep getting interrupted. An old man wanders through shot making gentle farting noises. A group of lads decide it’s their turn to be a star (whereas actually it was mine). A toddler makes a lovely face into camera – didn’t understand what the objection to that was because frankly she was a lot more cuter than me and was liable to be an internet dater in due course. After all 50% of single people do. And 20% of people are single and another 80% of people wish they were single and therefore, given the maths, the small girl with the pink bow and the shoes that were mini Jimmy Choos will definitely be a future internet dater.

Meanwhile, back on the shoot, a man with a dustpan and brush tells us we can’t shoot here. Not where he sweeps. We might produce dust, small pieces of paper or possible litter the area with awkward sound effects.

Filming is an interesting process. It’s a method of distorting time. The film is going to be 3 minutes. As yet we have been filming for 3 weeks, 3 days, 3 hours and 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes … It is not a way of making your life longer. This could be a worse hazard than smoking, chocolate cake, never getting off the sofa and Smarties all put together on a very sunny Spanish afternoon with no factor 50.

We await the results with nervous anticipation. I am applying sunblock.

The book Soulmates: Adventures in Online Dating featuring a great deal of my disastrous exploits is supposed to be out for Valentines day. Although I have been discovered I’m not going to be famous as we were required to use a nom de plume for our entries in the book. Just so as to make things clear for any innocent readers of the book I’ve used the nom de plume ‘Nom de Plume’ in case anyone thought it was me.

How Tupperware is Seldom the Solution

2009-02-27T14:01:00.000Z

I have a room dubbed ‘office’. Not a complete misnomer as the all three of us that run our corporate empire (the size of a small Caribbean island on a miniature globe seen through the wrong end of a telescope) forgather here. It was a tad chilly.
I turned up the radiator.
It started raining.

I have another room above the aforementioned room dubbed ‘bedroom’. Being a woman of logic I assumed that the rain was originating from bedroom. I lifted many a floorboard to discover a faulty pipe stop valve. I put a small Tupperware container in place.

Being a woman of logic I realised that this was not a long-term solution. Tupperware seldom is. So in due course I embarked upon a voyage of fixing. This is what happened:

In order to drain the heating system I had to open the back door.
In order to open the back door I had to apply a small hammer.
The room became chillier.
I drained the system.
The whole house became chillier.
I removed the valve and fiddled with pipe connections.
I refilled the system.
The one rain became two.
I placed two small Tupperware containers.

Tupperware escalation is not good.
I drained the system.
The whole house became chillier.
I fiddled with pipe connections.
I refilled the system.
I removed the Tupperware.

The next morning the house remained chillier. No radiators were working.
With a wandering Tupperware I removed air.
The house became warmer. Except the office.
I turned up the radiator.

The True-ish Confessions of a Guardian Soulmater

2009-02-12T12:25:00.002Z

It’s time to fess up. It’s tidier than fessing down. Although cunningly disguised as a friend of a friend of a person quite likely to be a friend, I met him on the internet.

I know.

But everyone’s doing it. All the friends of friends of people one is quite likely to know. It has real advantages over real life. Things like:

We all know why we’re here.

It’s possible to talk to his/her photograph without ever having had the painful experience of having a photograph given to you as a token of love and then just being left with the token when the photographee has wandered off.

We can pretend to be better/wittier/saner/realer/less menopausal people without the real better/wittier/saner/realer people actually finding out that you’re sitting there having a hot flush.

There is no one to ask if you are really better/wittier/saner/realer. (Soulmates haven’t cottoned on to the whole reference thing which is the usual requirement of the matchmaker) (aside from being in those cute slidy boxes)

It’s nothing to do with one’s mother’s conception of who a nice boy/girl would be.

It’s possible to judge people on purely spurious basises like –
the quality of their punctuation,
whether they’re capable of making it through an entire form-filling process,
and how they look in a photograph obviously taken in a moment of desperation as they came to the bit in the form when asked to upload a photo (hence the lion-king pyjamas).
Their fondness for orange vegetables.

There is a great deal of interest in the subject of Guardian Soulmates. I have just designated myself in the role of spurious Soulmate expert. Experts, after all, are only people who know stuff that is basically unknowable. Questions like why? How? What? And most of all with whom? All of these, and probably many more questions, I might address in forthcoming posts. Next exciting episode, coming to a screen near you – First Contact – what really happened, what might have happened, and carrot soup.

How Not to Send a Valentine

2009-02-10T11:31:00.000Z

So it’s nearly Valentines Day. Which, as many things do, led me to wonder what’s it all about? No, this is not a philosophical question, which of course would read WHAT’s it all about? We may move onto that later. Now I’m asking in a more historical way. We may move on to the hysterical later.

The story goes:
‘Saint Valentine, who upon rejection by his mistress was so heartbroken that he took a knife to his chest and sent her his still-beating heart as a token of his undying love for her. Hence, heart-shaped cards are now sent as a tribute to his overwhelming passion and suffering.’

Impressive stuff eh? No wonder the man was a bloody saint. Literally I guess too. Imagine the scene:

Valentine: I love you
Mistress: Fuck off
(this was all done by text)
(then in real life) (or at least in the same room)
Valentine: My heart is broken.
Heart: Don’t I know it?
Valentine: Well you’re no bloody good to me now.
Heart: I’m still beating aren’t I?
Valentine: That gives me an idea.
Heart: This brown paper is not as comfortable as your squishy squashy lungs.
Valentine: Don’t worry, you’re a token.
Heart: That’s ok then, just don’t tie the string too tight.

A few days later:
Mistress: Ah! A parcel. I wonder if it’s my Amazon order.
Heart: Erg squidge pitter-pat.
Mistress: Oh, quelle disappointment it’s just the butcher using a different wrapping from usual.
Heart: I’m a token.
Mistress: With peas and carrots then.
Heart: WHAT’s it all about?

So, as you send your card just think a little more carefully about true love and what veg might go well with that.

How Not to Cure a Broken Foot

2009-02-08T19:52:00.000Z

I’ve been to have my foot scanned.

They were looking for something starting with a neur.

You may remember the age-old story of my purple foot, what not to do in the sauna and why metatarsal slippers are sexy. This is the continuation.

This is what happened:

After many years of waiting I arrived at the hospital.
After not so long of waiting I was ushered into the ultrasound room.
The ultrasound operative was not there but there was a kindly sort of nurse sort of woman who was folding pieces of paper towel in two. An important job I could see.

We had an in-depth conversation about ultrasound which mostly consisted of reminiscing about the days of pre-natal examinations and the pain of the full bladders. I was glad it was only my foot and not my foetus that was being ultrasounded considering the fact that the ultrasound operative was still AWOL and if I had been in a pre-natal pre-urinatal state during such a wait I would have been very much not pissing myself. As was required.

We continued to reminisce about daughters, universities, and the nature of holidays. We wiled away the time in that sort of way that hospital time works. Finally much to my excitement the ultrasound operative arrived. She was wearing a stripy jumper.

Dutifully she put the goo on my foot. Painfully (to me) (she didn’t appear to be in pain but on the other hand who am I to judge?) (her previous absence may, for all I know, have been to do with pain) (or maybe lunch) (which we hope isn’t the same at all) she applied her ultrasoundy thingy to my foot. The left. It’s always been the left.

She said that my foot was very easy to scan due to its slender nature. Was that a compliment? I took it as one. And compliments to a minor degree can assuage pain. To a minor degree. She reported that if there was a thing beginning with a neur then she would find it due to the apparent transparency of my foot. In ultrasound terms.

It looked remarkably like an alien landscape. Much as it feels really.

She didn’t find the thing beginning with a neur. But she did find an anomaly. Hope was on the horizon.

In a moment of technical wizardry, or witchery, (if that’s the feminine equivalent) she compared the ultrasound to the previously achieved x-rays.

It turns out I had broken my foot some time in the past.

How Not to Grapple

2009-01-25T20:22:00.001Z

I made two New Year’s Resolutions.

To find my lost memory
To write the rest of my novel.

The problem with my New Years Resolutions is that the second is dependent upon the first. As is the first. Should I fail at the first then a cascade effect cascades in a downward manner such that all resolution is lost.

This is very much what happened.

So instead I’ve been grappling. With trees. This is what happened:

I peered out of the window to discover that a large tree-shaped blob of ivy hung where hitherto there was only a large tree-shaped blob of air. This was curious. The air had been transparent in a way the leafy protuberance wasn’t. I could no longer enjoy my view of the extensive area of weeds I had been cultivating at the bottom of my garden. I was, to say the least, disappointed.

Not being a woman to bear disappointment lightly I set forth armed with my slightly rusty trusty bow-saw (that, I assume, is its moniker as it certainly isn’t a hacksaw, a backsaw, a hammersaw, a reciprocating saw (sounds quite painful so I was particularly pleased not to be armed with that), a circular saw, a table saw or a Japanese submarine) and a deal of determination unto the offending area.

The initial felling took but a matter of minutes. Well, perhaps a bit longer as there was a batch of cutting, scary creaking noises, running away, cutting, scary creaking noises, running away, cutting, scary creaking noises, and running away.

It was disposing of the body that afforded the unexpected challenge.

You know how that’s always the problem in these detective thingies. Well those detective thingy writers are spot on. The murder is a piece of cherry cake compared to the hard crust of evidence disposal.

For a start when the victim is perpendicular they appear to take up a lot less legroom then when suddenly manoeuvred into the prone position. The addition of a great deal of covering, in this instance ivy, in other instances usually great coats or minor minks, further encumbers the whole encumbrance.

There are choices, as there always are. Chop into viable pieces and put in the boot of the car? The bin? The nearest lake? An abandoned woodland?

I chose option four. The abandoned woodland. I felt the body would blend in well there. Seeing as it was abandoned wood. The missing land bit was a quandary but I thought that the addition of the ivy would cover for any missing terrain.

And thus, after only three days of grappling, four plastered fingers and an assortment of pulled muscles I can now look out of the window to enjoy my view of the extensive area of weeds cunningly reconfigured as an abandoned woodland.

Tape

2009-01-16T17:32:00.000Z

I’ve been mending things. With Gaffer tape. Or actually with Duck tape. Or Gaffa tape. Or possibly Duct tape. This confusion of terminological etymology led me to look up this sticky stuff on Wikipedia. It turns out I’m in good company. Many others have led the way in the sticking things together with tape milieu.

Famous sticking incidents include:
World War II bods mending tents, aircraft and morale.
Getting to the moon by adhering bits of wandering space craft no longer able to hold on by itself.
The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
As a cure for warts (this is true) (occlusion therapy).
For sticking on drummers’ heads to reduce unwanted overtones.

There is little that this roll of superness cannot be used for.

I know.
Why you’re here.

So – How to tell if a man fancies you using a popular adhesive product:
Stick them to you.
Stick them to a lamppost, bollard or any upright object.
Compare and contrast.

Sorry to my actual regular readers for that but public demand demanded.

I’ve been mending things. With Gaffer tape.

There is little that this roll of superness cannot be used for.
So far I’ve mended:
The gate
The toilet
2 bras
My warts
The cat
The hole in the ceiling
My sanity
And
A troupe of spiders.

Some of the mending was more successful than others.

Waiting, Determinism, Vodafone and a Lesser Known Russian Film Director

2009-01-06T20:04:00.001Z

I’m waiting for a man.

No, it’s not him.
He’s at work and has just emailed me the following quote from Tarkovsky (a film director whom only the Unknowable Man might know about as he knows things that are generally unknowable). The quote says:

“I am categorically against entertainment in cinema - it is as degrading for the author as it is for the audience." As an author I find this is most reassuring but has little bearing on the waiting process.

I’m waiting for a man.

I’ve been waiting for this man for about as long as you’ve been waiting for me to write another blogpost. Possibly longer.

My New Year’s resolution is to find my memory. Which I mislaid somewhere in the autumn. The Autumn is a big place in which lose something. There are a lot of places to look. I’ve searched in the usual places that memories like to hide. Places like under my pillow, in the wardrobe, in seasons, out of seasons and under the cushions of the sofa. I’ve found old tissues, a dress I bought in 1976, a deal of frozen things and things I can’t remember what they are, what they might be for, or words to describe their unknowableness.

I’m waiting for a man.

This is why:
Picture the scene – New Year’s Eve, 2am, I am asleep somewhere in deepest Pembrokeshire. My phone rings.
The Physicist: I’ve….phone ….camera…(noises of nightclub)…shoes…taxi...
Me: Hello? Hello?
The Physicist: Where…can’t…(more noises of nightclub)…lost…
Me: Happy New Year!
The Physicist:…(crackle)….bad sig….

And so, on my return from deepest Pembrokeshire I began my waiting vigil. First I called the Vodafone helpline. Physicists can’t call helplines so mothers have to impersonate physicists calling helplines. Luckily, having received a lengthy explanation of the nature of Quantum and realising, through true mathematical proof, that there is no such thing as determinism, I am well qualified to impersonate physicists. And since I now know that there is no such thing as determinism and there is only probability I can resign myself, or at least probably can, to not knowing whether a real person will ever answer the Vodafone helpline.

I wait. Probably for as long as you have been waiting for me to write another blogpost. Luckily, since there is no such thing as determinism someone did answer. They asked me nothing about physics, cinema or Tarkovsky. Which was disappointing.
And now I’m waiting.
For a man.
To deliver the Physicist’s new phone.
It is as degrading for the author as it is for the audience.
I can’t remember why.

How Not to Cope With Empty-Nest Syndrome

2008-10-17T16:44:00.001+01:00

The Physicist and the Lawyer have left for Uni in order to actually qualify for the aforementioned titles. I realise that perhaps I have left them ill-equipped for this adventure. Important things have not been passed from mother to daughter in the proper way.

The Lawyer, although adept in her field, has discovered that she doesn’t know proper cutlery etiquette for high table, why gowns have shoulders like American footballers and how to deal with impenetrable forms from government bodies. The Physicist, despite being an old hand at gowns, carnations and massive equations is still lacking in basic Tesco skills.

Meanwhile I, left to my own devices on my own, have had a minor revelation. Major revelations can be a tad painful so I’m sticking to minor ones. I can now do whatever I want.

So far I have:
Worn a mini-skirt
Turned the music up far too loud
Watched inappropriate videos
Changed my clothes up to seventeen times a day
Had strange men (or at least the Unknowable Man) round the house
Despaired of strange men
Despaired
Not got a job
Forgotten to go to bed
Smoked
Drinked
Not tidied up
Slept with the cats on my bed
And not eaten a proper meal.

Who needs teenagers?

How Not to Change Sex or Free Sky Everything Kills Mr Garth

2008-09-22T19:38:00.000+01:00

I have become someone else. A man to be precise. Never respond to things that offer you free stuff. Because that’s how it happened:

Three goggle-eyed months ago a piece of paper alighted in utmost innocence upon my doormat (I have one of those) (mostly for the cat to sit on in order to enable us to construct basic easy-to-read sentences). FREE SKY EVERYTHING FOR THREE MONTHS!!!! It declared. The paper, not the cat or the mat. JUST RING THIS NUMBER!!! You may recall all of this. It was easy. I rang the number. I got free Sky everything. I watched Sex and the City. A lot.

All I had to do was ring the number again three months later and cancel so as not to be paying for expensive Sky everything for the rest of my life. Frankly I should have been suspicious given all the capital letters and exclamations marks.

I was very sure not to forget. I put reminders on my Google iPage, my calendar, my walls, my hands and on post-it notes that covered the cats and the mats.

Clutching my ‘Welcome to Sky’ letter I rang the number. Pressed some numbers. Waited. For a long time. Eventually a young man answered.

Me: I want to cancel my free Sky everything.
Young man: What is your subscription number?
I looked at my letter and read a number that was quite like infinity.
Young man: And the account holder’s name?
I told him my name.
He denied that I had an account.
I looked at my letter.
The account holder transpired to be a Mr George Garth.

I don’t know a Mr George Garth. Although he sounds like a nice enough chap. Although by a strange coincidence I live in a place that sounds remarkably like that.

Me: I believe there has been a computer error. I know not of George.
Young Man: Only the account holder can cancel the subscription.
Me: He doesn’t exist.
Young man: You cannot cancel, only Mr Garth can.
Me: He is a fictional character.
Young Man: Can he come to the phone?
Me: Hang on.

I fetched Mr Garth.
Me (in unlikely put-on deep voice that sounded a cross between someone with a heavy cold and an orang-utan): I want to cancel my Sky everything subscription.
Young Man: Is that Mr Garth?
Me: Yes.
Young Man: You cannot cancel as you have another month to go.

In the strange warping of space-time induced by satellite transmission September had become October.

Mr Garth: But can’t I just cancel?
Young man: No.

Mr Garth hung up. He was confused, befuddled and a little wary. He also was developing a sore throat from talking like a member of the ape family. He was worried that it was all a ploy to make him pay forever.

He picked up the phone and dialled. And waited. For an infinite amount of time. A young woman answered.
Mr Garth: I want to cancel my free Sky everything.
Young woman: What is your subscription number?
Mr Garth looked at his letter and read a number that was quite like infinity.
Young woman: And the account holder’s name?
Mr Garth: Mr Garth.
The young woman then gave him a forth degree interrogation as to his viewing habits. This was most revealing as to Mr Garth, his views, his lifestyle and his inner-most secrets.

It turned out that Mr Garth really didn’t care for TV at all; he preferred a good book and an open sandwich. His kids were now banned from watching because three of them had committed very heinous crimes of an undisclosed nature brought on by too many violent films and the other six had eschewed their studies in order to watch Sky everything. His wife had left him because she couldn’t withstand another advert depicting the germs that lived in her toilet. His two cats and several cocker spaniels had become addicted to Sex and the City.

Mr Garth: So really I do need to cancel my subscription.
Young Woman: What about sport? Don’t any of your family watch the sport?
Mr Garth: I want to cancel my subscription (he was getting very grumpy now, not to mention a tad hoarse)
Young Woman: But you still have a free month.
Mr Garth: I want to cancel my subscription (he was losing the will to live now, not to mention a becoming more and more shrill)
Young Woman: Well you have to give 30 days notice on this sort of account.

It’s a sad but little-known fact that fictional characters can actually die of frustration.

I suspect I have been caught by an elaborate piece of consumer entrapment which makes time distortion, the reality of fiction and the dangers of Sex and the City look like orang-utan play.

How To Tell if a Man Fancies You Using Philosophy

2008-09-16T12:34:00.002+01:00

The Unknowable Man’s spare career (we should all have one) (mine is as a cat walker) is as a Consultant Freelance Philosopher. The public need for such a person is fairly self-evident. Oft have I wished to consult a Consultant Philosopher on the finer points of philosophy for those every-day questions such as:
Why did I walk into this room?
Where have I come from to arrive here?
Does this interesting pile of junk on the kitchen table actually exist?
If I have free will then why is the solicitor charging me?
Why are Fallacies so often pathetic?
And
If this is reality then why does it seem so dusty?

Philosophers tend to ask the really BIG questions, such as
WHY?
HOW?
WHAT?
And
PARDON? (those are the politer philosophers)

An interesting thing about the big questions, I’ve noticed, is that they tend to be very small.

Whereas Relationship Physicists (my other spare career) tend to ask very slightly longer ones:
‘How do you tell if a man fancies you?’ tends very much to be the favourite.

So, in a spirit of trying to find something in common with the man I’m sleeping with I will now attempt to discover:
How to tell if a man fancies you using philosophy-

Step 1: ask the BIG questions

why do I want to know if he fancies me?
how will I know if he fancies me?
what does ‘fancies’ actually mean?
pardon me for asking.

Step 2: answer the BIG questions
This can obviously only be done in a personal context but if you’re stuck then some examination of the types of knowledge such as a priori and a posteriori (most relevant here) will probably be as useless as anything else.

Step 3: come to a philosophical conclusions. Popular ones include:
‘Something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.’
‘An infinite capacity for taking things for granted.’
‘Some touch of madness.’
And
‘Fuck knows.’

All in all I’m beginning to suspect that philosophy may not be the way forward for the Big Question. As a famous philosopher said:

‘Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know.’

And as a famous scientist said:

‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.’

Perhaps it’s time to stop asking The Question. Surely we all really know the answer. 42.

How Not to Be Judged By Karl Marx – Or Socialist Sex and How to Do It.

2008-08-29T18:27:00.001+01:00

There is a portrait of Karl Marx. On the wall of the Man’s bedroom. There is a certain sense that Karl is overseeing proceedings.

Of course we all have something on our bedroom walls. Some appealing art or peeling paint that looks down upon goings-on in the bed. I have a painting of what is probably the sea, for obvious metaphorical reasons. I also have a drawing of a naked man (known as Dangly-Bollocks Man), for obvious metaphysical reasons. He has is face politely averted.

Karl, however, in his best Mona Lisa style is looking very directly. Judging. What goes on. Quite a lot has been going on.

Now I am worried that my sexual activities with The Man (henceforth to be known as the Unknowable Man for obvious reasons which we will never know) may not be of a sufficiently socialist nature. That possibly Karl might disapprove.

The question is – am I the bourgeois of the sex world? Should I be instigating revolution and the fair distribution of orgasms? Is it fair that the few should have so many and yet the many have so few?

As Karl himself said ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.’ So perhaps on this premise we can be reassured. The Unknowable Man has the abilities and I have the needs. And Karl has the beard.

Mamma Mia! Or How Life Really Could be a Musical

2008-08-26T19:39:00.001+01:00

I’ve been to the cinema. The film went like this:

A young beautiful blond 20 year-old was about to get married.
She sang a song.
Her 40 –something-year-old mother did DIY.
She sang a song.
Some men were involved who also sang.
There was dancing.
And in the end it wasn’t the beautiful blond 20 year-old that got married but the 40-something-year-old mother. She lived happily ever after. With Pierce Brosnan.

Mamma Mia!

This, I feel should be a parable for life. Aside from the Pierce Brosnan bit.

So why, we ask ourselves, isn’t life more like a musical? When was the last time that a group of people were, at one moment discussing something quite mundane, like money, or oranges, or perforations and then spontaneously broke into a song and dance routine? Where are the hidden orchestras playing overly-arranged tunes? The young tight-buttocked men grinning inanely whilst flinging their limbs into the air? These, surely, are the elements in life that lead to long-lasting happiness.

And so I feel it is my mission to rectify the aforementioned shortcomings. I have the technology. I have just purchased the costumes.

This is how it will go:
A not-so-young woman wants a man.
She sings a song, the orchestra plays from her iPod (we won’t worry that no one else can hear it for it is only the main protagonist that we are interested in).
The young tight-buttocked chorus dances and flings limbs about (this will be in miniature using the woman’s daughter’s ex-collection of Ken dolls but some cunning camera work will cover this lack of scale).
The woman dances wearing her new costume that she bought for her forthcoming holiday but will double up for the purpose (a purple tankini and a pair of red houndstooth daps).
A man sees her (through the kitchen window) (for this is a kitchen-sink musical) and falls in love with her.
He sings a song (or possibly it is groaning, but we are not sure, nor do we actually care).
The man is not Pierce Brosnan because his singing is crap.
In the end the woman of a certain age marries the peeping Tom accompanied by a dancing chorus of Kens and Barbies and much merriment and music that only she can hear.

There are no young beautiful blond 20 year-olds involved because she died of embarrassment in the very first scene.

I believe it will be a hit and run on Broadway for many years until purple tankinis and red houndstooth daps fall out of fashion and women of a certain age are no longer wanting men.

Don’t Panic – Or Dark Matter and How to Find It

2008-08-23T17:42:00.001+01:00

It’s ok. We can all stop panicking. They’ve found Dark Matter, or at least found something dark that may lead to them finding something that shows something dark. That may matter. Or not.

Dark Matter, for all you non-physicists out there, (or for all you physicists out there who think physics is something to do with science), is invisible, very very difficult to find, constitutes a great deal of the universe, is difficult to pinpoint, put your finger on, touch, smell, hear, understand and essentially makes the world go round. Does this remind you of anything?

There have been a number of methods for trying to find Dark Matter:

Look in the sort of places where Dark Matter likes to hide (these include space, dimly lit bars which resemble black holes, the internet and under the bed (that’s if you’ve merely mislaid the D.Matter rather than having lost it or never found it in the first place)).
Use a Dark Matter Detector (these include the darker reaches of the soul, the sleeve, and something that looks like an internal organ or possibly is an internal organ).
Pretend you aren’t looking for it and hope you happen across it.
Look for something that resembles Dark Matter and simply pretend it’s the real thing (a very popular alternative).

Never confuse Dark Matter with the Dark Ages although as the Dark Ages approach those who have mislaid, lost or never found Dark Matter tend to get even more confused than they already are.

I’ve been fumbling about in the dark with someone who matters and am just as confused as ever. But at least I’ve stopped panicking. Because I now know that it is possible to find Dark Matter. In theory. Or something that resembles it.

How To Tell If a Man Will Continue to Fancy You Using Statistics

2008-08-18T18:52:00.002+01:00

I just read that 31% of people aged 45-54 who married in the last year in the USA had met on the internet. This is heartening news. Of course statistics have a tendency to belie the realities of life in the same way that life tends to inflate vital statistics.

A famous statistician once said ‘we are not concerned with the matter that is uncertain.’ But that’s what’s the matter. Uncertainty.

Having established that The Man probably does fancy you (note the use of the second person as if we aren’t really talking about me at all), how does one discover whether he will continue to fancy you or if it was just a passing fancy? And if passing is fancy why is it comparatively popular?

Statistics may prove to have some insight into the problem. So:

How to tell if a man will continue to fancy you using statistics –

1. Gather your sample (no, not that, that’s how to use biological techniques) (we may come to that another day).
2. Observe the experimental setting (bed, sofa, hillside, kitchen or bicycle).
3. Take extensive and exhaustive notes on extensive exhaustion (try not to get your pen confused with anything else) (oh and try and be subtle or the Man may wonder why you have to write everything down and take this as a sign of early-relationship-memory-loss, evidence gathering or belief in astrology).
4. Use numbers.
5. Analyse the numbers using statistical analysing sort of things.

Statistical analysing sort of things can be either
a) Descriptive – where you make a nice graph (usually shaped like a breast), a tasty pie chart (shaped like a pie that some bastard hasn’t divided up fairly at all), or a bar chart (shaped like New York). You can also use numerical descriptors about deviation. In my case I will stick to just the usual deviation.
b) Inferential – this is said to account for randomness (that’s handy) and draws inferences (don’t we all?).

I set about the task. This is what happened:

From my sample I inferred that due to the randomness of life, the exhaustion occurring from experimentation and my inability to understand the setting of my bicylce, I came to the analytical and statistical conclusion that the answer to ‘Whether the Man Would Continue to Fancy Me’ was:
14
with a mean of 78
and an average of 28,892,892.
Or, in a more descriptive manner:
a graph that was shaped like an aardvark pole-vaulting,
a pie chart that was pencil and onion flavoured
a bar chart that strangely resembled Einstein’s hair-do in 1953, or possibly the Outer Hebrides.

The problem with statistics is that, like men, even when one has them, they are more or less impossible to interpret.

How I Did Meet my Guardian Soulmate or How to Be as Educated as Einstein or 101 Classic Books

2008-08-14T13:34:00.004+01:00

This may be the most ridiculous and desperate thing I’ve been asked to do. Matt, in his wisdom, has sent me this task:

Equipped with only a very very long list of ‘classic’ books I’m supposed to
Look at the list and:
1) Bold those I've read.
2) Italicise those I intend to read.
3) [Bracket] the books I love.
4) Pass it on to a few others so's they can inevitably defeat me.

Why? I ask myself. And shouldn’t he have also sent tea, cake, a bivouac and one of those shiny silver blankets to see me through this?

They say that education is not about knowledge or information. Like sex, and all good things in life, it is about technique. Einstien, when asked what the speed of sound was, said that he didn’t know, he didn’t need to know, because he knew how to find out. There are some simple methods of finding out:
Ask someone who knows
Read a book
Look on the internet
Experiment.

The infamous questions that are commonly asked of my blog are:
How to tell if a man fancies me
How to find a g-spot
And
Guardian Soulmates (although technically that’s not a question we know what they mean).

I still don’t have any knowledge of or information about:
How to tell if a man fancies me
How to find a g-spot
And
Guardian Soulmates

But I know a man who does. A man slept with me. I am therefore highly educated. I can now ask this man who knows
How to tell if a man fancies me
How to find a g-spot (and many other places worth visiting)
And
Guardian Soulmates
and has probably read all these books and many trillions more, looked on the internet, found me on Guardian Soulmates and if I am as lucky as I’d like to be will proceed with further experimentation.

And re the ridiculous task - Matt did this because Gary asked him and Gary’s a dreamboat. I don’t know Gary. But since Matt is also a dreamboat I guess that (by inductive logic) is why I should do it:

1 [Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen]
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien – erg
3 [Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte]
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling or some of them
5 [To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee]
6 The Bible or more than I’d have liked to
7 [Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte]
8 [Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell]
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare or some of it
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien – also erg
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - although it's in the pile
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 [[[The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger]]]
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy or some of it
25 [[[The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams]]]
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky – but the Man has read it 1000 times
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 [Emma - Jane Austen]
35 [Persuasion - Jane Austen]
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 [[Winnie-the-Pooh - AA Milne]]
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 The Magus - John Fowles
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 [Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen]
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding !! I haven’t read that!!
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath – oh dear
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A. S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (but the Lawyer said it was rubbish)
83 [The Color Purple - Alice Walker]
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 [Charlotte’s Web - EB White]
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom otherwise know as ‘I hope books in heaven are a shit-load better than this
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 [[[The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery]]]
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I really need to add
101 [[[[Mostly everything by P.G. Wodehouse]]]
and all this generally goes to prove that I’m a girl and was once a child. I don’t know who to pass this on to so if any of you would care to play this rather insipid game feel free. Or spend your time reading a good book. Or on the internet finding knowledgeable people.

How to Tell if a Person Fancies You Using the Laws of Chemistry

2008-08-06T23:10:00.000+01:00

They say it’s all about chemistry. Or at least it’s a ‘valued quality’ for an ideal match on Soulmates. They don’t have physics. Which leaves me wondering if there’s really a place in the world for Relationship Physicists. I think I may have to convert to being the Relationships Chemist.

So – How to tell if a man fancies you using the laws of chemistry:

First let us examine the science of Chemical Kinetics. This seems relevant as movement and collision are involved.

Rate of reaction –
Factors that affect the rate of reaction:

Physical state:
If your target person is in a poor physical state (wobbly, purple, limbs arranged in a Picasso-esque manner or a bit Dali around the edges) this will have a detrimental effect on his/her ability to react. Reaction times will be slowed. Therefore they may fancy you but you will have to wait a year or so to find out.

Concentration:
‘Concentration plays an important role in reactions’ (this is a direct quote) (that’s why I’ve used the quotation marks) (not just for effect). From this we infer that if your target soul is not concentrating he/she may simply forget to fancy you and fancy something else that passes by their field of vision, like a chair, a pint or a small woodlouse. This may make you feel like a small woodlouse. Or a chair. Or liquid.

Temperature:
Folk of a higher temperature have more thermal energy. More thermal energy may lead them to remove some outer layers. Or some inner layers. Do not confuse this with attraction. It’s them that’s hot. Not you.

Catalysts:
Whilst the catalyst remains unchanged during the reaction the elements involved undergo a transformation of some sort or another. Catalysts can range from ‘beer goggles’ to ‘wine piz-nez’ to ‘cocaine blindfolds’ to ‘crowd spectacles’ (this time I used the quotation marks for erroneous effect). I heartily recommend them all. It may be your only hope.

Equilibrium:
Doesn’t come into it.

Interestingly Beer’s Law may give some clue as to how to actually get a person to fancy you. It states that there is a dependency between the transmission of light through a substance (this obviously includes attire) and the coefficient of intensity. I’ve always liked Beer.

How Not to Email a Guardian Soulmate

2008-08-02T19:20:00.001+01:00

They say that money can’t buy happiness but where’s the empirical evidence for this? Strangely, then when I Googled ‘money can’t buy happiness’ it turns out that there are a number of scientific studies that appear to demonstrate just that. However, never one to be put off by evidence, fact, science or the truth I have decided that money will buy me happiness and have done it again. Subscribed to Guardian Soulmates.

But this time it’s going to be different. This time I’m not going to sit there and hope that my well-worded (or wordy anyway) profile and glamorous picture will bring the Soulmates flooding in. Or trickling in. Or thank you the person who emailed me last time. Nor am I going to believe that simply ticking ‘Any’ for all the boxes in ‘my ideal mate’ will attract Mr Right. Or that adding all the cute guys who are way out of my league to My Favourites will mysteriously make them in my league. This time I’m being proactive. I’m taking control. I’m actually emailing people.

I have a technique. This is what I do:

I find a man I fancy. Or a man.
I carefully read what he’s written.

I then craft a cunningly worded sentence or two to say how interesting and sexy they sound. Examples include:
‘You sound interesting.’
‘You look nice.’
‘I read your profile.’
And
‘I fancy you.’

I then craft a cunningly worded sentence or two that lets them know just how interesting and sexy I am. Examples include:
‘I have written a load of bollocks on my profile.’
‘I can catch a ping-pong ball on my nose.’
‘I know how to read.’
And
‘My shoulders match.’

Then, finally, and this is the important part, I craft a cunningly worded question so they can answer my email without the awkwardness of not knowing what to say. Examples include:
‘How do you come to be living in Iceland/London/The World?’
‘Why have you put up that appalling photograph?’
‘Can you direct me to the Caves of Redemption?’
And
‘How?’

So far three people have replied. One of them didn’t have a subscription yet, one of them had let their subscription lapse and the other was the man who emailed me last time. And they say money can’t buy happiness. Pah!

How Not to Win a Local Election

2008-07-28T19:56:00.003+01:00

I’m being stalked. First it was the letters through the door every 2.64 minutes. Delivered by hand by the mysterious minions of the group of stalkers better known as The Big Three. Then the stalkers started knocking at my door. Now the phone calls have started.

When the phone rang I of course hoped it was the man of my dreams. It could, in fact, have been the man of my dreams. He sounded suave and sophisticated and asked if I was me, the Physicist or the Lawyer. I was momentarily confused and said I was the Physicist. I hastily corrected myself. The Physicist is in Harrogate so I could hardly have been her. But then he broke the bad news to me. He was calling on behalf of one of the Big Three. I don’t like to think that the man of my dreams spends his leisure hours as a stalker.

At first the attention they paid me was mildly amusing. It gave me some spurious sense of being loved, to know that the fate of the local council and hence the whole of the British electoral system and the future of the Europe, the world and extraneous black holes was in my slightly mud-stained and keyboard-worn hands. The letters extolling the virtues of the Big Three and their exciting policies re my locality, including opening the footbridge (now mysteriously achieved without particular reference to any of them), the speed humps, the lamp posts, the drains, the felling of innocent trees and the unknowable smell emanating from the vicinity (although I suspect it is a political stench) made me smile gently at their dedication to the petty, superficial and minor-soap-opera-esque. I chortled humorously at the fact that they all were innocently espousing the exact same policies re the speed humps, the lamp posts, the drains, the felling of innocent trees and the unknowable smell emanating from the vicinity.

Now it’s really getting beyond a shaggy dog story. The footbridge is worn to a Tarzan-like rope structure with the amount of walking the minions have performed upon its newly polished surface. The speed humps have humped into even larger edifices with all their cunning driving with their wheels on either side of them. The lamp posts are completely eroded by minions’ shaggy dogs. The drains are as drained as I am. The amount of paper they have inserted through doors will have felled at least as many trees as they are trying to save. All our letterboxes are suffering leaflet fatigue and our doorbells are receiving expensive counselling due to the trauma of prospective councillors poking nonchalantly at them.

And so now it is very clear who I shall vote for. The Small One. Who put ONE leaflet through my door and trusted my ability to read. OK, the Welsh was challenging, but I assumed he was interested in the speed humps, the lamp posts, the drains, the felling of innocent trees and the unknowable smell emanating from the vicinity.

How Guardian Soulmates Became the Choice of the Moderately Eccentric

2008-07-26T20:19:00.001+01:00

Good news. I have been re-visioned. That’s not like revision. No major studying, note-taking or sunbathing is involved. It is like reclassification except without the class. Reification.

Good news. I am no longer, mad, batty, insane, nuts, barmy, balmy or balm. I am now officially moderately eccentric. This, I feel, is an improvement. And it’s not just me who has been involved in this re-visioning. It has been validated by my whole family. All two daughters of the Oxbridge (or Camford as it’s been re-visioned) variety. What higher source of verity could there be? Verity denies all this of course. However the cats agree.

So, now, relieved of the burden of madness, battyness, insanity, nuttiness, barmyness, balmyness and skin cream I have once more joined Guardian Soulmates. Under the guise of sanity. Or at least moderate eccentricity. All my hard research led me inevitably and inextricably back to where I started. Just like the red shoe incident. And life. And roundabouts.

This is why the moderately eccentric chooses this particular brand of site in preference to all the others:

There is NO winking involved and thus we are freed from Painful Facial Distortion Syndrome.
There are semicolons in their lists giving a comforting veneer of intellectuality.
They ask you if you prefer a carrot or a stick (I chose string).
The carrot and stick thing is the total of their psychological profiling.
They consider it possible that once you took drugs (but we all pretend we don’t).
There are no annoying pop-up things telling you that you are being stalked.
There are no stalks.
Folk as eccentric and re-visioned as myself write long eccentric stuff that makes as little sense as this. I find this comforting.
The quality of the voyeurism sans subscription is totally top of the list.
My horoscope advised that I might find my soulmate.
The bloke I fancy is on Guardian Soulmates.

I already have 3 fans. He’s not one of them.

How Not to Seduce Olympic Athletes

2008-07-24T22:55:00.000+01:00

I’ve just spent a deal of time on the floor with Iwan Thomas. This has led me to believe that perhaps the only answer is segregation of some sort.

This is what happened:

I went to the gym with the Physicist. She ran, I rowed, she cross-trainered, I went on the Kylie-Bum device.

In case you need to know (and you do if you aren’t sporting Kylie’s bum but would like to) (I am because I do know) it’s those recumbent bikes. At first it’s hard to understand why anyone should want to lie down and cycle at the same time, especially in the gym when any movement forward would lead one to collide with the bank of TV sets. But a quick experiment with one of these apperati reveals that your gluteus maximus undergoes such trauma that it is obviously Kylie’s vehicle of choice.

It’s also hard to know why every gym sports a bank of TV sets when there are so many other fascinating things to look at. Iwan Thomas for example.

So, we ran, rowed, cross-trained, Kylie-bummed and then I headed for that corner of the gym where the mats are in order to stretch my aching maximus. He (Iwan) was on the adjacent mat. Improving his biceps brachii. I smiled. He flexed. I moaned gently to myself. He had his iPod on so didn’t hear me. I had my iPod on so may have not moaned quite as gently as I imagined. I stretched my maximus by deftly touching my toes, glancing Iwan-ward hoping he would admire just how very flexible my maximi were. He flexed his pectoralis major. My gastrocnemius fluttered. I did an unlikely yoga pose that involved putting my knee in the general area of my ear and tried at the same time to catch his eye. I caught mine instead.

Meanwhile the Physicist had finished running and joined us on the mats. She proceeded to be blond, young, do fifty sit-ups followed by the splits. Iwan smiled at her. I turned the volume up on my iPod to cunningly disguise my middle-agedness.

I have written the gym a note and put it in the suggestion box. What I have suggested is this:

Could we please have gym segregation? The not-so-young of us would like not to be exposed the blond, beautiful and muscled Iwans and the Physicist/gymnasts of the world as it can cause strain of the gluteus maximus, impair our cardiac functioning and dissolve what self-worth we had applied prior to arrival.

The management replied:

You’ll find that it is written in the small print of your contract with the aforementioned establishment that all persons over the age of forty are, for their own safety and well-being, to keep their attention firmly fixed on the bank of TV screens provided for just this contingency. Any breech of this agreement is at your own risk.

How Not to Learn about Men on Internet Dating Sites

2008-07-21T23:15:00.000+01:00

I’m still testing internet dating sites. It’s a big job.

This is what happened:

For a number of days, weeks, or possible millennia, I have been exhibiting my profile on a plethora of sites. In the interest of science you understand. Nothing to do with being sad, lonely, celibate and having discovered that Rolos are very hard to find these days. I am not an addict. And in the interest of fairness, equality and non-prejudicialness I have been reading other peoples’ profiles. Mens.

And this is what I’ve learnt:
All men are sincere, fun-loving and honest.
Many men ride motorbikes and believe this to be sexy, attractive and cute.
All men have a good sense of humour.
Most men have travelled a lot, thus forgetting to have a proper relationship.
Those who have travelled a lot are prone to list all the countries, beaches and small tributaries they have visited.
A large number of men are too shy/ugly/famous to put their pictures up.
A significant proportion of men don’t believe in spelling, punctuation or words.
Men are as bad as women re putting up photos of them that were taken 20 years ago.
There are others who lie about their age but forget to put photos up taken 20 years ago.
And yet others who put photos up but don’t let people see them, which is very mysterious and distrubing.
People use acronyms that I don’t understand. GSOH.
Some men have taken pretension onto a greater plane than one might have thought possible or even probable.
Some men are very cute.
The cute ones are out of my league.

And since there has been a lot of interest in ‘How to tell if a man fancies you’ and since the internet dating way of being is de rigueur amongst singletons these days I have also investigated how to tell if a man fancies you on an internet dating site.

Here’s how it works:

They wink at you.

Childish I know.

;-)

How Not to Internet Date (Again)

2008-07-14T19:00:00.001+01:00

The internet dating voyeurism is hotting up a pace. Someone from Match.com winked at me. I winked back.

Truth be told it’s not really very satisfying. It feels somewhat shallow as relationships go. I expect it to continue like this for some time. Probably because neither of us can be bothered to pay the subscription. So all we are left with is winking. It’s tiring on the eyelid and leaves one feeling a tad lopsided.

But then I got an email from a man. Warning me that the incidence of STDs amongst the over 45s was on the increase. It would have been quite exciting, implying that he was willing to share his STD with me, or at least prevent sharing his STD with me. Only the man was my brother. He’d heard this good news on Woman’s Hour. At least I’m reassured that there’s a man with a feminine side out there concerned with my welfare. I told him that my life of celibacy is hardly likely to lead me to the land of STDs. He recommended that I try a different kind of internet dating site.

This is what happened:

I logged on the Parship.co.uk as advised. The premise behind this site is that finding the perfect mate is not down to good looks, chemical attraction, shared beliefs, STDs or the last Rolo. It’s all about psychology.

Simply take the simple compatibility-profiling test and the site will give you a list of simply compatible people who are a good psychological match.

I suspect that this is the hard drugs of internet dating. I’m beginning to wonder if this dabbling in dating sites is leading to true addiction.

I took the test. Twice. Under two different names. Is this illegal?

I had to answer questions as far reaching as the North Circular Road, as probing as my dibber and as questionable as my blog. There were even picture questions, I was expecting inkblots but none turned up, much to my disappointment.

They sent me my matches. Twice. Interesting men included someone in the military, an oil engineer and an egomaniac. I wasn’t allowed to see their pictures because I hadn’t paid the subscription. I’m beginning to think that the last Rolo thing is better than psychology. Chocolate usually is.

Now I’ve signed up to Datingdirect.com.

Can one get help for this sort of addiction?

How Not to Choose a Candidate

2008-07-11T22:02:00.000+01:00

The Lawyer is going to be 18 soon.

There is going to be a local election for County Councillor.

These two facts are not unrelated.

So, the serious business of who to vote for now affects the whole family. The serious business of local elections seems to be very serious. Every five minutes or so another candidate’s minion hobbles by our door and inserts another exciting hand-crafted leaflet.

There are some pretty big issues at stake. We read the exciting hand-crafted leaflets very carefully:

The Tories have a two-colour printer. They are very keen to get the footbridge reopened. In blue.

The Plaid people’s candidate went to Oxford. This is obviously a point of division within our home. He’s very keen to get the footbridge reopened.

Labour also have a two-colour printer and are extraordinarily abandon with their use of red. They are very keen to get the footbridge reopened.

The Lib Dem candidate has a leaflet that folds. She’s a bit of a super-model. There are shots of her in various outfits in a variety of exotic locations – In an anorak outside the post office, in a twin-set outside the school, in tweed outside somewhere that could be a field. She is very keen to get the footbridge reopened.

The choice was, frankly, mind-boggling. At first we thought that really, on a local level, that we should leave our natural party-political prejudices aside and vote purely on the issues. We are very keen to get the footbridge reopened.

The election is next week, or possibly the week after, or, sometime soonish. If only someone had mentioned that in their leaflets.

Today they reopened the footbridge.

We are fairly stymied.

How Not to Internet Date

2008-07-07T22:11:00.000+01:00

I’ve fallen off the wagon. Yes, for some whole weeks I stayed off internet dating. But, somehow, possibly without my knowledge, I’ve signed up to Match.com. It’s not that I had anything against Guardian Soulmates, they were fine, cute and moderately dandy. It’s just that, well, if I signed up to that one again then all my ex-dates would see that I was back and it would be revealed just how really sad, terminally foolish and obsessed I am.

Also, my friend, whom I met through Soulmates, would realise that all my swearing off internet dating and swearing on being single was a complete, utter and overwhelming sham.

The problem seems to be that it might be addictive. Like any good drug it is the promise of some high that is better than some low or medium elevation. Just click on this man and your life will be better.

This time, however, I have it all under control. I’ve got it sussed. No more disappointingly unanswered emails, winks, nudges, adding to favourites. Rejection is not on the agenda. There will be no more lying in bed at night wondering why WhiteKnight34 hasn’t contacted me, why HeavenGuy11 doesn’t want to have sex with me, why Wnaker26 hasn’t proposed yet.

I have a cunning and infallible plan.

This is it:
I won’t email anyone, or wink at them, or nudge them, or poke them in the bollocks.

It will be like coffee. The smell will be better than the tasting. For I am simply a voyeur. I will read the profiles but not touch the keyboard. I will fantasise but not indulge. I am not addicted.

How to Talk to Men in the Not Real World

2008-07-06T22:45:00.002+01:00

Having recently retired from internet dating I decided that what I needed to do was practice talking to men in the real world. Since I don’t live in the real world this proved tricky. So I practiced talking to men in the gym.

This is what happened:

Expedition 1 -

I sat down at the rowing machine. A man sat down at the rowing machine next to me. So far so good. I chatted for a jolly thousand meters or so on topics as wide ranging as my children, my children and my children. The man was moderately interested in the theme. Even had a word or two on the subject himself. I then realised that it was the ex-Beloved and father of the aforementioned offspring. Still, at least I’d spoken to a man.

Expedition 2 –

I sat down at the rowing machine. A man sat down at the rowing machine next to me. So far so good. I checked that it wasn’t the ex-Beloved. It appeared not. Conveniently the display on his machine was broken. I helpfully suggested that if he followed me stroke for stroke he’d know how far he’d gone. He ran away.

Expedition 3 –

I waded into the Jacuzzi. A man was sitting next to me. We sat watching the swirling waters for some time. He looked at the clock. I said ‘What time is it?’ He said ‘Ten to ten’. I said ‘Thanks, I haven’t got my glasses on and am therefore completely blind.’ He laughed a nervous high-pitch laugh. He got out to reveal that he was wearing a bikini.

Expedition 4 –

I waded into the Jacuzzi. A man waded in next to me. I peered as closely as I could to ensure a genuine gender check. We sat watching the swirling waters for some time. He looked at the clock. I said ‘What time is it?’ He said ‘Ten to ten’. I said ‘Thanks, I haven’t got my glasses on and am therefore completely blind.’ He laughed a reassuringly deep although nervous laugh. ‘You look like a nice sort of chap.’ I ventured. He may or may not have smiled. At last, a result.

This real-world stuff seems a lot safer and more productive than online romance.

Not Sex and the City or 'Point of View – What’s the Fucking Point?'

2008-06-25T22:10:00.003+01:00

I’m still supposed to be writing my Critical Study. It is now entitled ‘Point of View – What’s the Fucking Point?’ The answer, it turned out, quite fortuitously, was on Sky Everything.

I’ve been watching Sex and the City. It’s a program with multiple limited third person limited multiple perspectives. As well as a first person narrative point of view . This tends to put the whole idea of Sex in perspective, or at least from my point of view.

And I noticed something. Wherever the characters go they meet someone to shag. And they live in New York.

It’s a well known fact that Cardiff has all New York has to offer except without the wide pavements, wide sidewalks, Americans and lack of discourse about rugby. So, therefore, logically, wherever I go I should meet someone to shag.

Logic is a flawed logic I find. For this hasn’t happened to me. As someone wise once said – ‘Some are born celibate, some achieve celibacy and some have celibacy thrust upon them’. I have accomplished all three. Without the thrusting bit.

But I’m not going to be outdone by New York. I have briefly given up living in a musical and being Mary Poppins in favour of (sorry in favor of) living in a Welsh version of Sex and the City. Entitled Sex and the City. Interesting how the title works for both places.

Episode 1:
I get splashed by a bus.
I write on my computer a telling question: ‘Are New Yorkers sexier than Cardiffians?’
Friend 1 tells me about her sex life – it doesn’t exist.
Friend 2 asks me how to tell if a man fancies her – I explain about quantum physics.
Friend 3 doesn’t exist.
I go out to the greater metropolis to get chatted up and taken home by a sexy man. This doesn’t happen. I buy shoes.
I write on my computer – ‘Yes. And we buy shoes too. Albeit shoes from Clarks with flat heels and orthotic inserts. But they are red.’

I write on my computer - ‘The problem is that Welsh men don’t watch Sex and the City. They watch rugby. So they don’t understand multiple perspectives. Or that when a sexy woman in flat red shoes with orthotic insoles gently nudges their car in a multi-story car park that means she wants to be propositioned. They think that propositioning is something to do with rugby.’

So, thus I found out – the point of point of view is fucking. Or not. As the case may be.

I’m going back to being Mary Poppins now. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

What I Probably Shouldn’t Have Done

2008-06-20T19:53:00.000+01:00

A letter came today. You may never see me or hear from me again. I thought I’d better warn you.

Other consequences may include:
Obesity and/or starvation.
Out and out war between rival factions of Physicist, Lawyer and Writer.
Sore bottoms.
A greater knowledge of all things.
Not getting my critical study finished.
Learning how to cook but not actually doing it.
Not writing that novel.
A greater degree of culture (not in the yogurt sense).
Not ever finding Mr Right.
Never having sex again.
A beautiful hand-sewn quilt.
Complete and total social isolation.
And
Possibly
Death.

This is what the letter said:

Get three months Sky subscription free. That’s all the Sky channels. Which is about a zillion. Call this number.

I called. I have free Sky subscription. Now. Already.

It’s better than Mr Right, it’s better than sex (ok, not better than sex but no one sent me a letter saying ‘free sex for three months just call this number’).

It’s on until Sept 20th.

Help! Please bring food, drink, spare AA batteries, After Eights, Before Eights and a change of clothing (for me and children, I expect you to arrive in clean clothing as is appropriate for a guest who may end up staying until the autumn). No we can’t watch the sports channel. I cancelled that one.

How Not to Live in a Fairy Tale

2008-06-15T19:46:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I went to get the Physicist and all her worldly goods from her seat of learning for what’s known in the trade as the long vac. Nothing to do with hoovers. We had a number of fairy-tale encounters. This is what happened:

Once upon a time there was a mother whose daughter, after being in a far away land of academia for many months and weeks, was finally allowed home. The mother got in her silver chariot (or small car) to go collect the daughter but had no fuel. And the fuel-deliverers were on strike. After searching high and low, in dell and out of them, she finally found, hidden away in a mysterious woods, a petrol station that actually had some petrol. It was very expensive petrol. When the mother asked the curiously twisted and wizened old man selling the fuel why it was just so very costly he replied ‘It is magic petrol. For from this moment hence your fuel gauge remained steadfastly on full’.

‘Bollocks’ said the mother but paid the old man the money and went on her way.

When she got to the land of academia she discovered that the Physicist hadn’t packed all her worldly goods and chattels. For she had been to a ball and lost her slipper, or at least a silvery kind of shoe. They knew what had happened of course. Anyone would.

In the end they left a note for Prince Charming re the slipper:

‘Please return shoe you evil stealing bastard and if you have let the entire population of Oxford maidens try on this shoe and if it has been damaged or infected in any way due to this I expect appropriate compensation.’

Physicists are not interested in romance.

Eventually, the mother and daughter drove merrily down the road laden with the worldly goods minus one shoe and slip of notepaper.

Then there came an evil smell.

‘I hope that’s not our car that is making that smell.’ The mother said.
The car veered in agreement.
‘I hope that’s not our car veering dangerously about the place.’ The mother said.
And then the car showed them a cheerful warning light of the brightest orange imaginable.
‘I wonder what that means.’ The mother said.
The car stopped and, as if to answer the question, emitted a deal of evil smoke from the wheel.

The mother, luckily enough, belonged to the RAC (Rent A Charming-man-to-come-and-rescue-damsels-and-physicists-in-distress). In due course a Knight arrived in his van of the brightest orange imaginable.

‘Your car is knackered.’ Said the Knight, ‘climb on the back of my van and I will carry you home. Or at least to Leigh Delemare, in the land of the rip-off coffee. For I cannot cross the border. But there will be another Knight just as charming as me, of even greater power than me who will carry you to Wales, the land of the rugby, and there deliver you to your home under the smallest mountain in the world.’

And so, after many hours and minutes of travelling in vans of the brightest orange imaginable with lights of flashing yellow and Knights of the utmost charmingness the mother and the daughter arrived at their home under the smallest mountain in the world.

The mother wanted to kiss the Knight but the daughter thought it would be better just to fill in the form and sign it.

And so it came to pass that the curiously twisted and wizened old man in the petrol station was right, for the fuel gauge was still on full.

‘This petrol really is magic.’ The mother said.

And from that day hence they never used another drop of petrol. Nor did the car ever move again.

How Not to Write a Critical Study or Grow Tomatoes

2008-06-13T19:12:00.001+01:00

Today I was supposed to be writing my critical study. A jolly 8,000 words of a vaguely academic nature with references, bibliographies, long words that sound impressive but are simply substitutes for shorter words that people actually understand, and thoughts of a meaningful nature.

This is what happened:
I wrote ‘What’s the point of multiple points of views?’ That’s the title or thereabouts. And then I thought I might take a break.
I went outside. My neighbour gave me some tomato plants and informed me they were best grown in the greenhouse. I have one of those. But there was a problem. I had not ventured into the aforementioned structure since the departure of the ex-Beloved. The aforementioned ex-Beloved loved the aforementioned structure. So much that he verily filled it. With stuff.

So, with a quick word of reassurance to the tomato plants, I embarked on Clearing the Greenhouse.

Some eight hours later I had:
Thrown out five bin-bags of rubbish.
Taken four wheelbarrow loads of dead stuff to the compost heaps.
Removed the twelve cats that had taken up residence.
Taken a shatter (that’s the collective noun) of broken glass to the tip.
Washed inches of green unknowable stuff off the glass.
Removed the several homeless persons that had taken up residence.
Cleaned a thousand empty pots, ex-margarine cartons and devices for seed germination.
Removed the seventeen dead bodies of creatures that the twelve cats had dragged in.
Arranged a thousand empty pots in order of size, colour and literary preference.
Had a little swim in the water butt to discover why it wasn’t butting.
Did a nifty repair job to enable butting.
Applied a sledge hammer to the surrounding steps.
Cemented the surrounding paving.
Done a cheeky laminate flooring job to revive the sagging shelving
And
Written a list on my blog to annoy my brother.

But moreover I had come up with the answer – The point of multiple points of view is to come to a better understanding of the characters. And I did. I finally understood that I’d been looking at my life from the wrong point of view all along. My quest for Mr Right is over. I am Mr Right. I’m going to make someone a wonderful husband.

Why Ceilings aren’t Clouds and Bathrooms aren’t Heaven

2008-06-08T20:27:00.000+01:00

Today it rained in the kitchen. Not the usual course of events.

This is what happened:

I came downstairs expecting to make a fulfilling cup of coffee. It was raining in the kitchen. From the ceiling. I wondered if the ceiling might have become a cloud overnight. Indeed it had a bulbous appearance and the drops were definitely emanating from it. In a minor rainy-day sort of way. Splashing merrily onto the floor. Dripily-dropily.

At first having a cloud for a ceiling didn’t seem like a very sound idea. Most builders, architects and DIY impresarios like myself tend to eschew the whole cloud-ceiling idea as impractical, technically tricky and a little overcast. Yet, I thought, as I watched the gentle rain falling gently on the floor, dripily-dropily, maybe it’s not so bad. It might certainly further my ambitions to live with my head in the clouds especially since my house is a small cottage designed for dwarf-like Welsh minors, no, miners, and therefore the ceiling is extremely adjacent to the floor. And, after all, a cloud for a ceiling implies that upstairs, in the bathroom, there is probably a cloud for a floor. I might walk on Cloud Nine (except my house is number eight but that’s a trivial incongruity), or roll cherub-like amongst the fluffy whiteness, or discover that in fact my bathroom is heaven.

And so I went upstairs putting on my best cherubic expression, trying to look plump-of-limb and prepared for heaven. I was disappointed. The floor was much as it had been aside from a tad damper. The carpet resembled a beige quagmire and made delightful squishy-squashy noises when trod upon. There was also a similar dripily-dropily thing going on. This time not from the ceiling but from the cistern.

The gods of toilets love me not.

After removing the 22 pieces of tongue and groove panelling attached by 66 screws I wrapped the cistern in a towel. The dripily-dropily stopped. The cistern felt cosy.

I went back downstairs to inspect the kitchen ceiling. It bulged some more. The dripily-dropily had become more of a dripliy-plopily. Knowing a thing or two about how bad-tempered plasterboard can be when asked to hold up a lot of water I poked it with a screwdriver. It pissed on me.

The gods of ceilings love me not.

Now I am likely to fall through the cloud as I’ve had to lift all the floorboards to dry it out. I am also in need of some sort of gangplank to access the toilet. And more towels as the cistern has wet the ones already provided. In fact a new bathroom/kitchen/house might come in handy.

But strangely I miss the gentle dripily-dropily squishy-squashy not-heaven.

How Not to Write a Script for the BBC

2008-06-07T20:20:00.000+01:00

I have been trying to write a script for the BBC. Not that they actually asked me to. They generally asked the world to. So, seeing as I am in and of the world I thought ‘I can do that.’

I appear to be somewhat wrong. It’s going to be 36 pages long. I’ve written 30 pages. Page 31 is tricky. I thought of jumping straight to page 36 but a leap of six pages seems dangerous to body and possibly sanity.

It’s called writer’s block I think. I’m attempting to cure it by some serious research. This is what I’m doing:

Checking my emails to see if anyone has emailed me pages 31-36.

Reading my google iPage to see if Wikihow offers pages 31-36 or my horoscope predicts that I will soon write the aforementioned pages.

Looking at the Radio Times page to see if there’s anything good on the TV that I could be watching that might tell me about pages 31-36.

Checking my emails to see if anyone has emailed me pages 31-36.

Seeing the random ways people have found my blog. This turns out quite interesting. Most people, as usual, want to know how to tell if a man fancies them. Others have wondered about shoes, g-spots (I wonder about those too), sausages (I’m sure I never mentioned them), tents, grey, and how to stop someone fancying you. I actually know the answer to that – fancy them.

Checking my emails to see if anyone has emailed me pages 31-36.

Looking on Facebook to see if anyone knows what’s on pages 31-36.

Writing a blog post about why I haven’t written pages 31-36.

Googling ‘pages 31-36’. I’ve found:
Dancewear,
Preventative Cardiology (I assume that’s like not fancying anyone ever),
Stimulus-driven Attentional Capture (I guess that’s trying to make someone fancy you by prodding them with electricity),
Cornelius C. Platter’s diary (anyone with a name like that should have their diaries eaten alive),
Resonant Tunneling and Coulomb Oscillations (probably what to do once someone does actually fancy you)
and
The Final Report on the Durability of Precast Segmental Bridges (more than likely a straightforward guide to keeping a man fancying you).

But essentially what I’ve discovered is that everyone else has managed to get way past page 31. It’s just me.

I’m thinking now that if instead of having writer’s block I had some other condition like writer’s bloke then I wouldn’t be spending Saturday evening not writing pages 31-36 but could be having an interesting conversation, sex, or bickering.

So please, would someone email me either pages 31-36 or a writer’s bloke.

Oh, the script is called ‘The Tomatoes of Forgetfulness’. This probably explains the problem.

How I didn’t Meet my Guardian Soulmate

2008-06-06T19:13:00.001+01:00

I have retired from internet dating. For the time being anyway. Not because I’ve met my one true love (or perchance I have) (more of that later) but because they wanted money. The dating site, not the men. Although sometimes I might have been tempted to pay the men. Services rendered and all that. If only any of them had. But I wouldn’t have been able to anyway. I have a lot of wonderful things, cats, daughters, (sorry the other way round), a rural idyll, dandelions and a small widget to make coffee akin to amphetamines. Money, being the root of all evil, not buying you love, and being hard to come across, I don’t have.

I could have just left my profile up but I worried that some poor fellow would see it, fall deeply and irrevocably in love with me and then find that, due to lack of funds, I could never speak to him, and that he would become deeply embittered, kill himself by throwing himself off a motorway bridge, cause a massive pile-up that included various world leaders on their way to a peace summit and so miss their chance to save the world from war, destruction, pestilence and coffee akin to amphetamines, and so we would all die of war, destruction, pestilence and coffee akin to amphetamines. Thus rendering internet dating obsolete.

Internet dating turned out to be a lot like shopping. I go into town and in the very first shop I find some shoes that are really nice. But then it’s the first shop, maybe there are better, redder, sexier more shoey shoes in the other shops. I spend a tiring day/week/year/lifetime trawling, inspecting, smelling, trying on other shoes only to decide that the very first pair of shoes was actually very nice.

And so I seem to be dating the first pair of shoes. The shoes may or may not think this is the case, as shoes are unfathomable creatures. This pair particularly so. It may be that the shoes have in fact wandered off. For how can any of us tell if shoes fancy us? I certainly can’t.

I feel for the sake of utter corniness I should make some joke here re shoes and soles and souls and soulmates. But I’ll save you from that.

PS – Shoes - if you read this the whole shoe metaphor thing was purely accidental. I do not now, nor never have, think of you as a pair of shoes. Although if you’d like me to…

My Birthday Email or Zipadeedodah

2008-06-02T19:44:00.001+01:00

It’s my birthday. I got an email.
It said
‘Here's wishing you a very happy birthday! Let's hope that this is the
year when you find that someone special at Guardian Soulmates. Warmest regards,
The Guardian Soulmates Support Team’

This, I believe was a cruel and heartless thing to do. After all, it stands to reason that if one is a member (albeit lapsed) of Guardian Soulmates (other dating sites are available) then there is a stongish likelihood that one is spending one’s birthday alone. Without one’s soulmate. So rubbing it in and being the only birthday email one might receive is just a tad insensitive.

I am, however, not downhearted, grey, drab, gray (that’s for my US audience) or slightly cheerless. For I have discovered many truths of being single, things that only single people can do just because they are single.

Here are some of them:

Burst into loud and tuneless song any time of the day or night.
Dance naked in the kitchen without giving the impression one wants sex.
Talk to friendly inanimate objects.
Kiss friendly inanimate objects.
Shout at not friendly inanimate objects.
Dance clothed in the kitchen without giving the impression one wants sex.
Give the impression one wants sex without the danger of offending.
See the world through rose-tinted glasses.
Fantasise about Prince charming.
Wear glass slippers.
Use words like ‘itsy, didums and zipadeedodah’.
Be happy without anyone thinking one is crazy.
Be crazy without anyone thinking one is crazy.
Be without anyone wondering why.
Wonder about being without anyone wondering where their clean pants are.
Not wash pants.
Not wear knickers.
Sleep in trees.

So, to The Guardian Soulmates Support Team I’d like to say ‘fuck off’. Because, and this is a fact, only single people live can live their lives as stars in musicals, when they marry they have to leave immediately. Or the musical ends.

Zipadeedodah!

P.S. now I’m going to see Sex in the City with the Lawyer because only single girls can really enjoy a film like that.

P.P.S. of course it wasn’t the only email, text, card, present etc – thank you all my friends, family, Beloveds, ex-Beloveds, cats and Beloveds-to-Be. Except the Beloveds, ex-Beloveds, cats and Beloveds-to-Be who completely forgot.

Donny!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-05-30T19:16:00.001+01:00

Something very exciting happened. I’ve been to see the Osmonds.

I was innocently eating dinner, or as innocently as I ever eat dinner. My mobile rang. ‘Are you an Osmonds fan?’ my friend asked.
‘Are you at the pub quiz?’ I asked.
‘Can you name five Osmonds songs?’
‘Am I a woman in my forties?’
‘They come on in half an hour I have a spare ticket.’

My heart raced. It was only puppy love. I dashed upstairs and changed into my best flares, paper roses, shiny top and floppy peaked hat, grew my hair down to beyond my shoulders and broke out in a display of colourful acne. Crazy horses couldn’t keep me away.

Half an hour later I was sitting in the Cardiff International Arena with most of the mid-forties female population of the world. Waiting. In anticipation. In an anticipation only those who have known the unrequited love of the world’s premier heart-throb can anticipate.

We chatted to our mates and wondered if we had time to nip to the loo before they came on.

Soon the waiting became too much. We nipped to the loo. Then the waiting and lack of heart-throb became too much. Hysteria was setting in. We stamped. We clapped. We shouted ‘We want the Osmonds’.

And there, like a miracle, they were, all very many of them.
My friend shouted:
Alan!
Wayne!
Merrill!
Virl!
Tom!
Donny!
Jimmy!

I shouted:
Donny!

Strangely no one shouted:
Marie!

Much swooning and general middle-aged hysteria went on.Thus:

And it all made me realise that I had missed out a very essential part of growing up. As a teenager I never did the hysteria thing. And frankly thought the Osmonds a soppy, pathetic, time-wasting, drippy lot who were only good for dentistry adverts.

‘Donny I love you!’ I shouted. Hysteria is a lot better than it’s made out to be.

How Not to Go Camping on the Gower

2008-05-26T15:04:00.001+01:00

It’s raining. It’s half-term. Some people decided to go camping. This is what happened:

My sister (from here on to be referred to as The Artist) her partner (from here on to be referred to as The Artist) and my nephew (from here on to be referred to as The Train and Transport Expert) decided to go camping.

They didn’t have a tent. So bought one on a well known auction site (from here on to be referred to as e-bay). They live in London. The tent was in Port Talbot. The Artist, the Artist and the Train and Transport Expert had never met the tent before. Nor had the tent met them. They decided to meet, greet, and erect the tent in my garden. Just to make sure it was a tent. And not an elephant, hamster or tower block.

We may, at this point, ask ourselves – How many Artists and Train and Transport Experts and Writers (that’s me although many other proper and improper nouns are applicable) does it take to erect a tent bought on a well known auction site?

Essentially an infinite number. So we had to draft in the Lawyer too (dragged from her post-exam bed in a state of advanced post-exam stupor). She had done such things before. I had done such things before, but the before that I had done them in was in the days that tents had triangular elevations and rectangular aspects. These days it’s all curves and contours. Like my body except harder to comprehend.

Now understand that this tent is large. Not one of your one-Artist tents that has room for just the Artist, a nibbled pen and a small sketch-pad. No, this tent is designed to house (or tent) an army of jobbing Painters, Sculptors, Potters and Cameo Cut-Out-Profile-Scissor-Wielders. And a Train and Transport Expert.

We began in the early afternoon in my garden. We finished in the late evening in my neighbour’s garden. The initial destination of the half-term camping expedition was the Gower. The tent, although of generous proportion, didn’t quite reach the Gower. So the cunning plan was to de-erect the tent and move it and its army of Artists and Train and Transport Experts to the Gower on Friday.

Then it began to rain and generally wind. Thus making it impossible to de-erect the tent without transporting a soggy tent or not transport a soggy tent because it had blown away in the direction of central Cardiff.

It’s still there. The Artists and the Train and Transport Expert are still here. This is Wales. It may never stop raining. They may never return to their delightful council flat in North London that is about half the size of their tent.

I have made enquiries at the local school to see if any further training for the Train and Transport Expert is available. If anyone can employ a couple of Artists please let me know.

How Not to Formicate

2008-05-15T20:55:00.000+01:00

My internal body thermostat is broken. It’s a problem. This is what happens:

Mostly I’m fine
Then
My feet freeze from the toes inwards in a sensation reminiscent of a paddling in the North Sea not wearing sufficient Wellington-ness.
Then
My face becomes rosy and generally glowing like an embarrassed lady from a Victorian novel.
I glow like and embarrassed lady from a Victorian novel.
My breasts decide that since they are the most important part of me they’ll go on double-glow duty, and since there are two of them they decide to go on quadruple glow duty like a collection of ladies in a Victorian novel gossiping about the size of their husbands’ cummerbunds.
Meanwhile my knees and upper shins are fine, a sort of balmy spring afternoon Edwardian novel about the great outdoors manner of fine.
My toes continue to freeze like a novel of unspecified vintage about polar exploration.

I’ve told the doctor. Her solution was to remove some blood. I’m assuming that she felt that all this glowing and Victorian-ness was due to an excess of blood. And the removal thereof was a Victorian style solution. She had no leeches. I’m quite glad about that.

It all makes it difficult to know what to wear of a morning. This is what I’ve come up with (working up from the floor region) :
Twenty pairs of thermal walking socks (on each foot)
Jeans or legwarmers (rainbow striped)
A cummerbund and bustle
Nothing
A pair of pre-cooled coconut shells
nothing
A scarf
A gel-filled face mask
A balaclava
A straw hat with a jaunty collection of peonies and a puce ribbon.

The doctor believes that it is a case of Raynaulds Syndrome meets PMS meets the Perimenopause. I’ve just looked it up on Wikipedia and it informs me that it might be a case of formication. If only.

How to Stop a Man Fancying You and then the Opposite

2008-05-09T21:17:00.003+01:00

I know, jumping the gun a bit, but, just in case.

Because this is what might happen:

I finally get a man to fancy me. We go out, we stay in, we get married, we live happily ever after. And then, well, what if I’m fed up with him, or he turns out to be not Mr Right, or a serial killer, or someone who leaves toast crumbs in my shoes? There will be no solutions left (aside from divorce, murdering him or disguising him as a hoover and hiding him in the cupboard under the stairs ) aside from getting him not to fancy me.

Prepared or what?

So - How to Stop a Man Fancying You Using Newton’s Law of Cooling:

The law states: The rate of change of the temperature of an object is proportional to the difference between its initial temperature and the ambient temperature

In our case we obviously want to reduce the temperature of the object. Simply a matter of reducing the ambient temperature. There are a number of ways of doing this:
Hide all the object’s clothes.
Turn off the central heating (also saves the planet as well as your sanity).
Move to Alaska (this may not work as the men to women ratio is about 6.456:1.3 ).
Make a suit out of those ice-cube bags and put it on him when he’s not looking.
Throw a bucket of cold Ribena over him.
Blow on him.

It may be the case that the object objects to being cooled by any of the above methods. Objects can be stubborn like that. The last resort is to simply point a pair of heated curling tongs at him and tell him to fuck off.

Now I’m thinking that surely if this works for stopping a man fancying you, science being what it is, the opposite approach should engender the opposite effect. And since, at the moment, I’m still on the opposite end of the process and conveniently an object is coming to my house tomorrow. I have a cunning plan:

I’m going to –
Turn my heating back on
Wrap us up together with woolly jumpers, long johns and my hot water bottle (which has a cover like a baby rabbit; that should help).
Fill the bath with hot chocolate and throw us in.
Curl his hair.
Hug him whilst in the throws of menopausal hot flushes ( I knew those would come in useful for something).
Blow on him.

I don’t think he’ll spot what I’m up to will he?

How Not to Find a Man to Fancy You

2008-05-04T20:04:00.001+01:00

I heard some handy pieces of relationship advice. From Lulu. Who was hosting ‘Sunday Lovesongs’. Which I was listening to as a form of aversion therapy. Lulu is highly qualified to give relationship advice as she sang ‘Boom Bang-a-Bang’ in the Eurovision song contest.

This was her advice on the topic of finding your perfect man –

1. Remember, no matter how many many many many many many (I added a few of those manys) years you have been looking for Mr Right he is out there somewhere.

2. Be beautiful, or as beautiful as you can.

3. Think what attributes you might like in your perfect man. Then in order to find him think of the places a man with those sorts of attributes might be. Then go there. Looking beautiful, or as beautiful as you can.

I lost no time. I made myself as beautiful as I could with the limited resources available to me. These included:

A toothbrush
A hairbrush
Hair
Teeth

Then I was stuck. So I rushed to the computer opened Wikihow and put ‘Be Beautiful’ in. And proceeded to follow their advice:

1. ‘Seek beauty’. I assumed this was an important preliminary step so I found what beauty I could that was knocking around the house –
A clean kitchen floor
A cat
An apple
A carrot
A potato shaped like a potato
The Lawyer hunched over her revision.
Essentially that was it. And I ignored the Lawyer as any attempt to be beautiful alongside a seventeen-year-old version of a much more beautiful version of myself is fucking hopeless. I returned to contemplating the potato shaped like a potato.

2. ‘Recognise the beauty in yourself. Look in the mirror and search for beauty. By now, you've probably noticed that the most beautiful things in life are often subtle and hidden’ Well put I thought. I searched and eventually discovered that my right shoulder was of a moderately attractive nature.

3. ‘Enhance your physical beauty’. I did a few press ups.

4.’ Develop your inner beauty’. I drank some very pretty coloured fruit juice.

5. ‘Create beauty outside of yourself.’ I drew a flower on my arm.

6. ‘Character is beautiful’. Good.

It went on to advise listening to some music that made you dance and sing and smile and then your happiness will shine. What usually happens to me is people leave the room with comments like ‘life’s not a fucking musical’. Although, of course, mine is.

So, now I was beautiful I set forth to seek my perfect man in places that perfect men like to hide.
I wore the white fluffy dress with all the skirts as it was the only item of clothing I had that showed my shoulder off in all its moderate attractiveness.
I danced and sang to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious as is appropriate and makes you sound precocious which surely is akin to beauty.
I drew a few more large pink felt-tip flowers on my arm just to make sure.
I took of the usual amount of character (in retrospect I probably should have toned that down a bit).

This is where I went:

To the DIY shop

He may have been my perfect man, I’m not sure. He had a nice bright orange uniform. And his chat-up line was original:
‘Would you mind leaving the store?’
Fairly obviously he wanted to get me on my own. I’ve given him my number.

How Not to Test if a Man Fancies You

2008-05-02T20:12:00.000+01:00

Something odd is going on. Someone is using my distorted laws of relationships to understand the laws of science.

This is what he wrote (his name is Bryan) ‘you've done a great service to all the budding scientists of the world’ and there I was thinking I was doing a service to all budding confused potential lovers in the world.

So I’m thinking maybe I’ve got this all wrong, backwards or somewhat distorted. Perhaps I should be using the basic laws of relationships to understand the laws of science.

And so I was lead to attempt to find out what exactly the basic laws of relationships are. This was a while ago. There was a fairly major problem. There are none. Or at least all the ones I was offered on a famous search engine and online encyclopaedia differed from each other. As any dedicated researcher like myself knows that means that there are none.

Why has no one applied the scientific method of proof to the field of relationships? It seems simple enough. All that is required is the use of observation and experimentation to obtain a law.

Hence I took it upon myself to do so.

This is what happened.

Hypothesis tested:
Man fancies Woman

Equipment used:
Man
Woman
Test tube

Method:
Put Man and Woman together in a test tube, mix thoroughly and observe what happens. (Note – I couldn’t find a test tube of sufficient size so I had to put the Man and the Woman near a test tube instead) (Also note that I didn’t actually have a man to participate in the experiment so I had to use a cat instead) (so for Man read cat).

Results:
1. Man and Woman had interesting conversation about test tubes.
2. Man and Woman tried to use test tube to grow a baby.
3. Man had a nice purr and snuggled down on Woman’s lap.
4. Man discovered that there was a mouse/football in the next room so he left.
5. Woman washed up test tube and went to bed.

Conclusions:
Probably not.

So – Basic Relationship Law 1:
Men don’t fancy women if they are cats and not men. But they think they’re okish.

Obviously there is a lot more work to do. I’m applying for a research grant. Or donations. Please. This is important work. Also if there are any men out there interested in furthering my research please contact me as the cat is not all that cooperative.

And Bryan – research suggestions always welcome as I can see now the whole reverse field is fraught with hazard. And cats.

The One with the Not-Dead Bird

2008-04-30T17:35:00.000+01:00

There’s a bird. In the house. Not dead. There are cats. In the house. Also not dead. This is a problem.

It all began one bright spring day. We were feeling bright and spring-like and so were the cats. One of them (and I’ll mention no names so as to protect the innocent) caught a bird and brought it into the house.

Actually it all began before this particular bright spring day, it started in the dead (and this word will be coming up again soon) of winter. When I decided in my wisdom (which is what I like to call my disturbed mind) that what our house really needed were some nice fluffy, innocent, cute loveable man/baby substitutes. But just like real life (this isn’t real life, this is my life) the men/babies turned out to be not fluffy, innocent, cute and only sometimes loveable. They turned out to be hair-droppers, furniture-defacers and hardened killers.

In days of yore when I had a man and babies I spent many a wonderful hour/life dealing with delights such as –
Live nappies
Lively mud on surfaces
Mud on live people
Underfoot Barbie accessories
Living physics experiments
Mostly alive man
and
Underwear

Now I have man/baby substitutes I deal with such delights as-
Dead mice
Dead shrews
Dead worms
Dead birds
Dead fluffy toys
And
Deadly fear
of dead things.

But the thing about dead things is that they are static.

There’s a bird in the house. Not dead. Not static. There are cats in the house. Also not dead or static. I have isolated the two genres with a cunning use of doors, shut cat-flaps, rope and chewing gum.

I’ve left what doors I have left (after isolating the cats) open. I’m hoping the bird will leave of its own volition.

At the moment it is in the hall saying
‘meep meep meep meep tweet’.

This is progress. Earlier it was entirely silent. Then it was only saying ‘meep meep meep meep’. ‘Tweet’, I feel is a good sign. A sign of recovery. A sign of new life and perhaps a will to leave the premises of its own free will.

So meanwhile I wait. I cannot open any doors for fear the man/baby substitutes will meet the not-dead bird. I cannot close any doors for fear the not-dead bird will not meander home with an extra ‘tweet’ on it’s lips but will decide to stay and turn into a dead thing. I have a deadly fear of dead things. My deadly fear of dead things has left me in a live-bird in the house situation.

Help.
Meep meep meep meep tweet?

How to Tell If a Man is Single Using Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion

2008-04-25T18:55:00.000+01:00

There’s someone in Australia that I’m a bit worried about. I don’t know who it is. A woman I highly suspect. So we’ll call her she. She is confused and bewildered, as are most of us. Or most of me. She has been trying to find out how to tell if a man is single. By reading this blog. Yet I’m yet to inform my confused public how to tell if a man is single. But I’ve been there. So in a reverse piece of Googling I feel beholden to pontificate upon this subject:

How to Tell If a Man is Single Using Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion

Kepler was a chap. So already we can infer he knew something of the matter. He married a 25 year old woman who was already widowed twice over. Already we can infer that he was a reckless chap. And married.

He invented some relevant laws about bodies moving in orbits about two focal points which we might apply here to answer our question.

Law 1: A body might move in an ellipse with two focal points. So what we need to discover is does the body in question obey a Keplerian orbit or does he adhere to the old fashioned ideas of Aristotle and Ptolemy?

How to test:
Does the body in question move elliptically? Tip: The essential difference between an ellipse and a circle is the degree of squashiness.

Law 2: The body moves faster when away from the foci.

How to test:
Measure the exact speed of entrance and exit. Next measure the staying rate. Which is greater?

Law 3: The body moves faster if the foci are further apart.

How to test:
Move yourself further away from where you suspect the other focus is. Tip: If you think the other focus is on the far side of town then you go to Antarctica, Timbuktu or Rhyl. Repeat Test 2.

Obviously there is some maths involved here. If you feel you are not good at calculations then use an observational technique:

Does the body in question come straight to you from any given point?
Does the body in question give a straight answer?
Does the body in question leave straight away?

Finally, if you find yourself asking yourself ‘Is he single?’ you probably already know the answer without reference to any sort of science.

How I’ve Found my Perfect Career

2008-04-23T19:31:00.001+01:00

I’ve finally found my perfect career. Well paid, interesting, high-flying.
This is what I’m going to be:
An astronaut.

Don’t think I’ve gone into this without any research. Or much research. Or a passing piece of research. No, I’ve dug trivially into the ESA (European Space Agency for you non-astronaut types) website to discover if I’m properly qualified for the job.

This is what they specified:

Youth – between the ages of 27 and 37. Is that youth? Still some people say I look as young as 38 which is very near 37. My mental age is in single digits as is my emotional age. So, when averaged out I’m about 27.5757. Perfect.

Experience - They must have experienced Real Life – I believe my life has been as genuine as the next space woman’s.

Scientifically Minded – I am the Relationship Physicist after all. They suggest that a degree in science might be a boon. Well I have a degree in miscellany which is surely better. And my daughter will have a degree in physics so that must count.

Patience – anyone who has waited this long for Mr Right has proven that not only do they have patience but they also have idealism, unrealistic expectations and excessive optimism.

Bravery – anyone who has waited this long for Mr Right has proven that not only do they have bravery but they also have idealism, unrealistic expectations and excessive optimism and extraordinary bravery.

Prepared for strange lifestyle – Already there.

Psychologically sound – Well, I sound psychological.

I have written the covering letter for the application:

Dear ESA,
I want to be an astronaut because I believe I will be ideally suited to being an astronaut. The suit will be ideal to cover any unfortunate bumps that exist on my body. The weightlessness will ideally cover my usual lack of balance. The long hours stuck in a confined space with only a few young, experienced, scientifically minded, patient, brave, prepared and sane astronauts will ideally be ideal for my idea of an idealised life.

The applications open 19 May, mine will be first on their spacemat.

How Not to Impress – Or Compost is Sexy

2008-04-18T12:51:00.002+01:00

It came to pass that I was showing someone that didn’t know me very well around my garden. Someone I quite wanted to know better. Sometimes I should know better.

This is what my garden usually looks like:
A pastoral idyll
A woodland glade
Sissinghurst
A garden

You know how it’s easy to take for granted what you see every day. Until you find yourself seeing it through someone else’s eyes.

It turned out that this is what my garden consisted of:

Paths with broken dragons who wanted to be real dragons when they grew up but remained stolidly concrete.
A compost heap.
An unmown lawn that had turned into a purple meadow.
Another compost heap.
An artefact made of breezeblocks and red render that wanted to be a bench in the Gaudi style but never quite achieved its ambition.
Dandelions.
A garden structure made of old ladders and guttering that wanted to be a Zen Japanese Tea House but had long since passed its ambition.
Another compost heap.
A greenhouse housing not greens but a thousand demi-johns with gross mysterious algae floating about in them in the post-post-modern grunge style.
Another compost heap.
More compost heaps in the art nouveau/vieux style.
A tin bath filled with mouldy water and old leaves in the Emin style.
Another compost heap.
Erosion.
Corrosion.
Exposition.
A compost heap.

I’ve just consulted Wikihow as to how to make a good impression on a man. Strangely there was no mention whatsoever of dandelions, compost heaps or mould.

I’ve also just consulted Google as to how to tell if a man fancies you. There was an awful lot of mention of me. And no mention of compost.

Since many people set such store on internet expertise I thinking that a bit of reverse experteeism could work here:

The most attractive thing a woman can have is a great number of compost heaps.

Sexiness and the ability to compost are practically synonymous.

How to Keep a Man Fancying You

2008-04-17T11:38:00.002+01:00

I have been dubbed ‘The Relationship Physicist’. I am wearing this moniker with pride, pleasure and a small blob of blu-tac. My continuing mission to discover the truth of relationships through the unbending laws of physics and to bend the laws of physics to the slightly limp rules of relationships continues apace. Or at least continues at a pace slightly slower than light speed and slightly faster than snails’.

Today’s question, brought on by a bout of perspicacity, is:

How to Keep a Man Fancying You

Or

How to Conserve a Relationship/Attraction Using Standard Laws of Conservation

There are various laws of conservation, the better known being about not dropping litter, annihilating rainforests and good husbandry. Which includes good wifery and good loverery. My remit, however, requires me to maintain that spurious air of science. So let us look more deeply into the real deep physical aspects:

How to Apply the Laws -

1. The Conservation of Energy –Move very slowly to avoid exhaustion. Eat plenty of sugar. Don’t get out of bed.

2. The Conservation of Linear Motion – Remember, linear is not the only way. Plenty of folk enjoy oblique, spoonerisms, roundabouts and, (if it’s your cup of tea/coffee/Horlicks), tortuous.

3. The Conservation of Angular Momentum – fairly obviously this is applicable only when a correct/preferable/plausible angle has been achieved. The usual technique is to discuss baked beans, Tory politicians or fish.

4. The Conservation of Electric Charge – this is the most and veryest important. It is well known that without that spark any relationship becomes mundane and flat, not to mention flaccid. It is a challenge to conserve the electric charge but a good battery, capacitor, or close positioning of appropriate electrodes is popular. As is the Tantric practice of static.

5. The Conservation of Probability states that nothing is certain. Even should you most assiduously adhere to the above laws of conservation, assiduous adherence cannot be guaranteed.

How Not to Be Transformed

2008-04-13T20:35:00.001+01:00

I’ve had a strange day of transformation.

This is what happened:

The physicist must return to her seat of learning. Mostly because she has exams and her seat at home has become so covered in calculations, biscuit crumbs and cat hair that she can no longer discover exactly where to put her bum.

Accompanying the physicist back to the aforementioned seat are all her precious worldly goods and chattels and ball gowns. They must be transported by car. By me. So I decided to clean the inside of the car (ball gowns are pernickety souls).

And then I decided to clean the outside of the car (ball gowns are pernickety souls). And discovered a deal about why men clean cars. Something about all that rubbing and polishing of bodywork and the ‘vroom vroom’ noises (that was added by the boy next door) (I said ‘tra la la’).

I discovered that I liked cleaning cars. This is worrying stuff. Especially when you add in the rest of the day’s activities which included:

Doing things with screwdrivers
Playing in mud
Inserting my hand down my trousers to adjust my underwear
Not brushing my hair
Not shaving
A conversation about football
Farting
A conversation about exactly what roads to drive on
And
Mislaying the hoover.

I was, until today, of the opinion that I wanted a man. Now it turns out I may be a man.

Luckily I have a cure. I will go and sew another thousand twinkley beads onto another ballgown. Not only that but the girl next door has just presented me with a DVD of ‘Enchanted’ and a tiara to wear whilst watching it. I’m putting it on now.

How Not to Take Advice – Or How To Get a Man To Fancy You

2008-04-10T20:57:00.001+01:00

There are a number of things I’d like to know, these include, (obviously),
‘How to tell if a man fancies me?’
Why would I want a man to fancy me?’
‘How to get a man to fancy me?’
‘Wherefore art thou Romeo’
and, the thing that I really really want to know:

‘How the hell do I get the fucking cat hair of every last piece of furniture/item of clothing/person in the house?’

I have cats. I love them. Mostly.

The times I don’t love them is when they bring me things like dead things, half-dead things and things that really should be dead. And when they eat the Physicist’s Very Important Friend’s blueberry muffin. And the whole hair thing.

But I have an answer. Or rather, I have something that has the answer. My google iPage ‘How To’ gadget.

I typed in ‘How to Remove Cat Hairs’

This is what happened:

The first article told me to get a roll of sticky tape and roll the tape on my hand and roll my hand on the hair.
I did that.
Now I’m typing one-handed.

The second article was entitled ‘How to Get Cat Hair Off Your Tongue’, it went thus:
1. Swallow the cat hair half-way, so it is still in your throat.
2. Move your tongue along where the hair is, to move it on the side of your mouth.
3. Get the hair on the tip of your tongue.
4. Pick it off with your hand.
I got as far as 1. I tried 4. and removed most of my tongue with the tape.

The third article was entitled ‘How to Shave a Cat’. Now that sounded like a sensible solution. A certain amount of flailing and general cat tussling ensued. However the cat, for reasons best know to itself, objected.

Another solution was to bathe the cat. Same problem as the shaving really.

Now, not only is every surface of the house covered in cat hair, so am I.

Finally it offered me ‘How to do Animal Makeup’. I painted my face as a cat, I am covered in fur.

I googled ‘Do Men Like Cats?’

A certain Franny Syufy assured me ‘Real Men Love Cats’

Fucking sorted.

How to Tell if a Man Fancies You Using Superstition Alone

2008-04-08T20:31:00.002+01:00

There are days on which science just doesn’t work. Those sort of days where cats fall upwards, quanta are visible to the naked eye, and naked men are invisible. Or possibly not there.

These are the sorts of times where one has to turn to superstition alone the answer the big questions in life, like 'Why am I here?' 'Why do I hear?' 'Can one hear y’s?' And, of course that old chestnut ‘How Can I Tell if a Man Fancies Me?’

Although, just so you don’t think that the above chestnut is the only form of nut people google to discover my blog, recent queries have included:

‘How to hoover woodlice.’ (I’ve referred that to Anthea)

‘Does everyone have a G-spot?’ No. And, as of the moment they turn the Large Hadron Collider on, no one will.

‘How do you to find a G-spot?’ OS maps are traditional, modern folk use Sat Nav, I advise thoroughly searching the entire body as it’s simply more entertaining that way. Whatever the method you use do it soon before they make the black hole. Not that black hole, include that one in your search.

‘What to do in the sauna?’ Not break your foot.

‘Morreau naked.’ If you really want to see me naked I’m on public view in the changing room of the gym most nights, on the book cover and if you require a private viewing please make an appointment. Reciprocosity expected/anticipated.

And, of course that old chestnut ‘How Can I Tell if a Man Fancies Me’.

The thing about superstition, as opposed to science, as a method of discovery is that it is a lot more straight forward.

Here are the top ten ways of discovering if a man fancies you using superstition alone:

1. If he crosses your path wearing black (especially black pyjamas, underwear, a black condom or a darkish colour negligee)
2. If he ties knots in his handkerchief, or his trousers look like they’ve got a large knotted handkerchief down them.
3. If he walks under a ladder carrying a penny that he’s just picked up (it also shows that he knows how to balance evil with good if that’s your sort of thing)
4. If he has a foot like a rabbit or a rabbit like a foot long.
5. If he is standing at the foot of a rainbow (a small warning here – leprechauns are infamously bad lovers)
6. If you see him shooting stars (again, a warning, if he is shooting very famous stars in a public place it really doesn’t bode well for a long-lasting relationship)
7. If he is 13
8. If he gets into the wrong, or even the right, side of your bed
9. If he itches your palm (or possible anywhere else)
10. If he breaks mirrors (of course you might not fancy him then)
11. If he knocks on wood (ok, wood fetishists may not be your cup of tea but at least he fancies something)
12. (my personal favourite) If he’s a chimney sweep and says ‘cor lurve, I really fancy you’ in a fake cockney accent.

How Not to Meditate

2008-04-06T23:24:00.000+01:00

Last night I watched a program about meditation. I have found my true path in life, I shall follow in the steps of Kathy Sykes (for she too is a scientist). I have decided to become a more spiritual person.

Gone are all my previous aspirations to run a business, be very rich, general world domination and evil baddie laughter. Shunned are my desires for yachts, palaces, new tiles in the bathroom and a tin-opener that actually opens tins as opposed to just denting them in artistic manners. For therein does not lie the path to true happiness.

My new bywords are ‘calm’, ‘peace’ ‘que sera sera’ ‘carpe diem’ and ‘ex-libris’. Gone are ‘fuck’, ‘fucked’, ‘fucking’, ‘fucking hell’ and ‘botheration’. For therein does not lie the path to true happiness.

So instead I am meditating.

I’ve learnt a lot.

Here are a few meditation do’s and don’ts:

Do think of nothing.
Don’t think of what’s for dinner.
Do think of nothing.
Don’t think about the burning smells.
Do think of nothing.
Don’t let both you legs go to sleep so when you stand up you don’t.
Do think of nothing.
Don’t think about the smoke alarms’ unpleasant noise.
Do keep your mind very empty.
Don’t stop breathing.
Do remember that you die if you don’t breathe.
Don’t speculate about smoke.
Do keep calm.
Don’t wonder about the crackling noises.
Do not panic.

Gone are my desires for worldly goods, food, kitchens, houses. For therein does not lie the path to true happiness. Gone are my desires for partners, soulmates, sex, love, with only one small exception – firemen. For therein lies the path to true happiness.

How Not to Get a Man to Fancy You

2008-04-01T20:52:00.000+01:00

I have realised that I’ve been jumping the gun. All this time when I’ve been asking ‘How to Tell if a Man Fancies You’ I should really be starting somewhere near the beginning (traditional I know) and asking ‘How to Get a Man to Fancy You.’

I’ve done some research.

Looking at some basic Newtonian laws of the universe, I have discovered this:

‘Every point mass attracts every other point mass by a force pointing along the line intersecting both points.’

Obviously points are important.
As is mass.

It goes on to say
‘The force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the point masses.’

So, we also discover that proportionality and distance and squares are fairly crucial.

Therefore (and I worked this out all by myself using extrapolation, logic and absolutely no calculus), according to Newton, the real trick of being attractive to the opposite mass is:

Be a large, comely ballet dancer on tip-toes and stand very near your target person holding an upside-down square.

I have actually been out in the field testing this hypothesis.

This is what happened:

I had trouble being large so I opted for being full instead. Part of the logic was that if sports people do carb loading then surely it would work for lonely people too. So I ate a large meal of pasta, roast potatoes and toast.

The comely bit didn’t come quite naturally either. Not to be defeated I settled for comedy as it was only one letter different and after all, it was possible, nay probable, that my target mass was short-sighted. Well I am anyway.

I had a tutu. Pink. Fucking spot-on perfect.

The tip-toes was slightly prohibitive because of the boots but I did my best by standing on a couple of willing molluscs.

The target bit was actually the most difficult as he simply didn’t seem to be around. This didn’t worry me because on a Newtonian Gravitational Scale nearby could be up to a couple of hundred light-years away.

My upside-down square was easy. I held, in my most sexy manner, a road-sign depicting a man with a large umbrella-shaped penis.

I waited. In the field. Wearing my tutu, my wellies, my red nose. Holding my sign. Waiting. Not very much happened aside from the snails becoming uncomfortable and deciding to go off for a bonk without me standing on them.

After a bit (about five hours) I realised what the problem was.

On a Newtonian Gravitational Scale, even if I was (and I was) stunningly attractive and exerting a quite frankly irresistible pull, the distance (which could be up to a couple of light-years away) my prospective target mass needed to travel was going to take some time. Possibly days. And that’s if he was running. Fast.

I am still waiting. But at least I’m not hungry. And the sheep like pink.

What Not to Do on Your First Date

2008-03-29T22:30:00.001Z

I’ve been dating. This is a hugely confusing experience. The truth is that I’ve never dated before. It, along with many other experiences, like South America, the 1950s and enormous willies, is something I’ve only ever see on television, read about in the doctor’s waiting room or fantasised about.

I need to say here re the fantasy thing that I am very worried about men, the male population and people with willies. I saw a program on BBC3 about penises. Apparently 78.235% of men think their willie is too small. And I just need to say STOP IT your willie is fine. And be happy – 70% of women don’t even have G-spots, and of those that had them, many have been stolen by people from the future. We don’t fantasise about big willies, we read Mills and Boon (and possibly the Karma Sutra) (pop up edition) (yes this exists) (willie size is not mentioned).

I’ve been dating. This is a hugely confusing experience. Obviously this lack of dating thing has very little to do with a lack of partners thing. It just seems that my previous methods of attracting the male of the species, cunning ventures like simply hanging out with them and/or propositioning them on MSN, has taught me nothing about dating complete strangers.

This is what I’ve learnt so far in terms of essential dating do’s and don’ts:

Don’t propose marriage on the first date.
Do wear clothes.
Don’t tell them about your blog that talks about G-spots and penis size.
Do arrive at the correct place.
Don’t tell them your G-spot was stolen by a person from the future.
Do arrive on the right day.
Don’t tell them you are interested in sex.
Do arrive.
Don’t tell them you are not interested in sex.
Do pretend you are interesting.
Don’t tell them you need to sleep with them NOW.
Do keep your big fat mouth shut.
Don’t wear the big, long, white dress with excess skirts.
Look demure (they may believe you).

Should you have failed in many of the above then there is one simple solution. Call your date. Apologise profusely for how someone cunningly impersonating you (your evil twin sister probably) kidnapped you, chloroformed you, hid you in the boot of your car and turned up on the date. This totally explains how they got the wrong time, place and totally misunderstood the clothing conventions. As well as the whole sex thing.

Ask, beg, plead, cajole and if necessary (which it will be) bribe them to dismiss the whole sorry episode from their mind and meet you again. That you will be a completely new person (not your evil twin sister). And normal.

Please?

Soulmates – Fact of Fiction?

2008-03-27T20:46:00.001Z

There has been a great deal of discussion (well I talked about it briefly) as to whether such a thing as a soulmate exists.

As the leading proponent of how to use science to solve all relationship conundrums I will attempt to answer this difficult question that has been puzzling philosophers, physicists, agony aunts and readers of the Guardian for the last however many millennia using only an apple, the power of thought and some abstruse logic.

First let us define our terms:
Soulmate = ‘the one and only other half of one's soul, for which all souls are driven to find and join.’ Or, to broaden the definition slightly, ‘a soul with whom another soul gets along with ok.’

Exist = ‘has its being’ or, looking more deeply into the definition, ‘I think/worry/feel hugely insecure because I can’t find my soulmate therefore I am’.

So, the concept is, that out there, in the ether (some debate as to whether the ether exists but we will come to that another day) there is a person who, essentially, is your other half, who completes you, who you might survive the next twenty years with without doing each other severe damage.

The ether is a big place. Very much larger than Wales.

But don’t despair, or despair any more than you already are. Because soulmates do exist. This has been proved by a very clever man called Bohr. We are not holding either of those three facts against him.

This is what he discovered:

Even though objects may be spatially separated they are quantumly linked. When one spins one way the other spins the other and visa versa.
This is called Quantum Entanglement.
Quantums are actually quanta.
Because there’s more than one of them.
Because they are entangled.
Quanta are very small.
Everything is made of quanta.
It is not the same as quorn.
Therefore you, I, we, the Queen, Mary Poppins and one are all made of quanta.
Therefore we are entangled.
Soulmates exist.

Like it or not.

Every Girl’s Dream

2008-03-26T19:38:00.000Z

Good news. I’ve finally, after many years and days of searching, found someone who wants to be with me. Someone, even better, of the male gender.

This is what happened:

The Physicist had broken the very most important part of her (or rather ex-Beloved’s but please mention none of this to him) car. The cigarette lighter. No, she doesn’t smoke. It’s where her iPod adapter plugs in. She cannot drive now. It’s fairly tragic.

I was in the aforementioned vehicle trying to save the situation by suggesting the use of matches when I heard a voice.

‘Ceci’ it said.

Blue eyes, curly blond hair, Wellington boots. He was even holding out a flower to me. The boy next door. Every girl’s dream. He is a man of few words but what does say holds great significance in an almost philosophical way. I was, frankly, spellbound. Our conversation went thus:

Every girl’s dream: Ceci!
Me: Ben! (for I knew his name)
Every girl’s dream: Flower (he handed me the flower)
Me: Thank you (polite as ever despite my racing heart)
Every girl’s dream: House (he pointed in the direction of my door, I got the message)
Me: Ok (easy to the last)

He held out his hand. I held out my hand. We walked slowly to the house. The sun was setting, the birds were singing, it was hailing slightly.

Every girl’s dream: Door (obviously an expert on architecture)
Me: Yes
We enter the house.
Every girl’s dream: Cat (obviously an expert on animals)
Me: Yes
Every girl’s dream: Girl (obviously an expert on girls)
Me: Yes (obviously an expert on conversation).

We spent many happy moments together mostly admiring the frogs on his Wellington boots and discussing the merits of the local JCB (whom, because he’s an expert on diggers, he called ‘Bob’).

He even cried when it was time for him to go home.

How I Didn’t Exist but Then Became One

2008-03-22T14:26:00.001Z

I have been practicing using the first person singular pronoun. In conversation. As is appropriate for single people to use.

‘I’ is not my favourite. Frankly I prefer ‘We’. I (note the use of the first person singular pronoun) hope that I won’t be an I for very long and will become a We but in the interim I (note the use of the first person singular pronoun) am practicing.

This is what happened:

I met a person who didn’t know me.

This, for a start, is dangerous ground. People who know me tend to know me and take me with several bushels of salt, a teaspoon of pepper and assorted ground condiments. They know at what point to spit me out.

I met a person who didn’t know me. And tried to tell them about myself. It turned out that I didn’t exist. I was the first person plural - We. I was not an independent entity.

It’s all very well and good not being an independent entity when one actually is We. It is totally different if I’m not We. Which I’m not.

I am considering simply bluffing and claiming to be the Queen. She’s a little older than me and has a very different attitude to handbags but I, sorry We, think we can pull it off.

We are actually quite well qualified to be the Queen as we are one of the last people left on earth to regularly use the gender neutral impersonal pronoun ‘One’. This apparently is a sign of poshness. So at least I can be sure that David Beckham fancies me.

Life has suddenly become so much simpler. No longer do we need to wrestle with the big question of ‘Who am I?’ and instead ask ‘Who is one?’ And since we are now the Queen we have a fixed and well-documented life which any person who doesn’t know us might discover on the internet, in a plethora of magazines, or by asking a handy Beefeater.

One has been practicing using the gender neutral impersonal pronoun. One thinks therefore one is. One exists.

One is, at last, fucking sorted.

How Never to Innuendo Again

2008-03-19T23:23:00.000Z

I’ve been updating my Google iPage. As you may recall last time I did this, ah, I can’t recall, still, I did something.

This time I felt it was time to become more intellectual, better read and generally cerebral.

Gone is the fortune cookie who was always telling me that I was popular/brilliant/gorgeous. Despite moments of being on a low ebb, flattery from bakery products just wasn’t working for me.

Gone is the horoscope that told me what to do and think as doing and thinking seemed to just work by itself.

Gone are the girlie snowflakes, butterflies and leaves that floated across my screen in a disorientating confusing confusion of seasons.

This is what I’ve put there now:
Place of the day to see before you die
Scientific American headlines
New Scientist headlines
Einstein Quote of the day
How to of the day
National Geographic picture of the day
And
The weather

This is all going to lead me to be a better and cleverer person. I can read all this stuff and be inspired to write grown-up blog posts that are no longer thinly disguised metaphors for sex.

This is what I learnt today:
Before you die you should go to Jamaica and lie on a beach (possibly naked).
How to swallow a pill.
Scientists are designing prosthetics for men.
Fizzy water powered ‘super’ geysers on Mars
How to tell if an sausage is bad.
Birds gotta fly
The sun is shining
Levitating joystick improves feedback
There will soon be wormholes in Geneva
And
Size matters.

I believe my readers and I are about to lead richer, more intellectual, less innuendoed and generally more fulfilled lives.

How Not to Solve Another Great Science Mystery

2008-03-18T15:36:00.003Z

I am on a crusade to link science with life and life with science (you probably noticed that). Thus, using only some common sense, some imagination and a small carrot I have solved yet another of life’s great mysteries. Physicists and blog writers have been pondering this question for many a passing moment.

This is the question:

Does Dark Matter Exist?

This is what happened:

One day man looked up into the night skies. Woman was busy doing useful stuff like feeding babies, growing stuff, inventing crochet and reading philosophy. Man noticed something. That the universe was holding itself together. Man believed in gravity (mostly because they had proved it through the phenomena of falling balls).

The problem was that there didn’t seem to be enough stuff to make enough gravity to hold the universe together. So, and here’s the brilliant part, they invented more stuff. But they couldn’t see the stuff. So they called it Dark Matter. There is still a deal of debate amongst physicists as to whether Dark Matter actually even exists.

This is the digression:

The problem with physicists (and I know because I just made scrambled eggs for one) is that they seldom consult the ordinary woman on the street (or in the kitchen cooking scrambled eggs). Common sense is not a prevailing attribute of this breed of scientist. My physicist, for example, can do some very difficult sums, write a lot of letters and symbols on pieces of paper and strew the aforementioned pieces of paper around the house, she can even do a back somersault on a four inch beam, but ask her to discover the use of dusters, pour water from a jug just into a glass and not onto the table, or make scrambled eggs, and she is completely flummoxed.

These are the answers:

So, Dark Matter – does it exist?
Yes, most definitely. Think coal, chocolate, the insides of Wellington boots and the works of Sartre.

Does Dark Matter hold the universe together? –
No. If it did then
1. We would see it if we used one of those very stylish torches advertised in Sunday supplements that shine a very long way.
2. We wouldn’t understand a word the universe was saying.
and
3. The universe would smell quite different, a bit like warm feet pudding.

Then, if not Dark Matter, what exactly is holding the universe together?

And this is where physicists are really going to kick themselves for never having asked the woman on the street, in the kitchen or me before.

The answer is so blindingly obvious. It is the same thing that holds everything else together, is the answer, is all you need, makes the world go round and is a triumph of imagination over intelligence. Love.

After all, gravity, essentially, is the mutual attraction of two bodies.

Next week: Does Dark Matter? The sex lives of the stars.

How to Tell if Someone Fancies You – The Reprise

2008-03-16T22:29:00.002Z

Yes, we are back on the BIG question. The question that more people find my blog through than any other question ever asked of Google. The question that supersedes the ‘Life the Universe and Everything’ question, the question that is more important than ‘Did God or Douglas Adams Make the World?’ the question that may even outrank ‘Where did I Leave My Glasses?’:

‘How Can I Tell if Someone Fancies Me?’

Since now 1,589,235 folk have asked this question of me I feel it my moral duty to try and answer it in the most up to date and scientific way possible. Using Quantum Physics.

Let us first consider first principles:

It is understood that in the realms of Quantum Physics that there are ‘observables’. These are –

Energy:
Does the target of your question move? If he/she has life then there is obviously hope. If they are moving towards you in a slow and controlled manner then there is definitely hope (as long as they don’t miss and continue to travel in a slow and controlled manner out of the nearest door/window/porthole). If they are moving away from you at a sufficient spend to cause a noticeable Doppler shift then you might want to realign your sights a tad.

Position:
If the target person is either horizontal or vertical and at a distance (anything over six inches is considered a distance in Quantum terms) from you then that bodes a little ill. If they are horizontal or vertical and in direct contact that’s a good sign, especially if they are naked. If your target person varies in angle between zero degrees and 360 degrees then they are probably drunk and you need to repeat the experiment on a more auspicious day.

Momentum:
Does your target person have momentum? If yes then be careful. If no then go home.

All the above can be either ‘continuous’ or ‘discreet’. The more discreet they are obviously the more difficult it is to judge just the extent of the Energy, Position and Momentum. Discretion, although the better part of valour, is in this case a pain in the arse. If you are experiencing a pain in the arse (and that’s not your sort of thing) then my advice is give up the question in question because even if they do fancy you it is all going to go horribly wrong with possible chaffing and visits to chemists.

Another problem that we in the Quantum Physics world (I’ve just awarded myself a higher degree in Quantum Physics on the simple principal that if my daughter is to have one, and the well know truism ‘Mother knows best’ holds true it is therefore completely possible, nay, probable that I too should have a pretentious qualification in what is, let’s face it, not so much a science as an elaborate guessing game) is that everything, including one’s fate, one’s target fanciable person, and the whereabouts of one’s glasses are essentially unpredictable and random.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how, although on the surface Quantum Physics sounds unlikely, when one delves into it it transpires to be remarkably applicable to everyday life.

So, with that in mind, why not emulate the famous Quantum Thought Experiment that so many cats have enjoyed to discover just whether or not he/she fancies you?

This is how to do it:

Imagine your target person in a box. Obviously it is better to use a larger box than Mr Schrodinger favoured as you are putting a person in the box and not your best feline friend. Or if you are going down the cat route there are a lot easier ways to make a cat fancy you than a person. Use cat food.

Next understand the very important bit, the Quantum Physicsy bit. At this exact moment, and all the time that the box is shut and you are not peeping in any way, the person simultaneously fancies you and doesn’t fancy you. And is also simultaneously dead and alive.

Next open the box.

All will be revealed.

These are the possibilities:

1. Person is dead and did fancy you
2. Person is dead and didn’t fancy you
3. Person is alive and doesn’t fancy you
4. Person is alive and does fancy you.

As any amateur mathematician and us people with higher degrees in Quantum Physics can observe there is only a one in four chance of a favourable outcome.

I have a better idea. Which, for reasons that are quite inexplicable, Mr Schrodinger seems to have overlooked: Don’t open the box. Then it is absolutely certain that the person is alive and fancies you. As all the possibilities are still possible.

Should you have accidentally opened the box, drilled a small hole to look through or inadvertently left your webcam in there don’t worry. According to Mr Everett (not Kenny, Hugh) everything actually happens. So should the object of your desire shun you, break your heart and generally not cooperate with your well-planned fantasies then you have the consolation of knowing that somewhere, out there, in a parallel universe, all your dearest hopes dreams and desires are being fulfilled. You just don’t happen to be there.

Who Not to Marry

2008-03-15T19:48:00.001Z

I have fallen out with Mr Delchem. His Flapper Flush Valve (with Lever) has caused a great deal of strife and could lead to the immanent collapse of civilisation as we know it. Not a great loss I know, but some might miss it.

It was the ‘with Lever’ bit that started the whole sorry mess.

This is what happened:

Having satisfied myself that the cistern had stopped leaking from the many orifices that cisterns enjoy leaking from I decided to replace the 22 pieces of tongue and groove panelling attached by 66 screws. This is where I discovered that Mr Delchem was not quite what he seemed. The Lever he was so very proud of had no capacity to lengthen. Not an unknown problem for men like Mr Delchem. But, (and perhaps this is a testament to my general attractiveness) a problem that I had never come across before.

I could not, therefore, replace the 22 pieces of tongue and groove panelling attached by 66 screws without impairing the effectiveness of Mr Delchem’s Lever. I’m sure you will agree that this was a serious problem. But not as serious as what came next:

I decided there was nothing for it but to cut a hole in the 22 pieces of tongue and groove panelling attached by 66 screws to allow the free movement or Mr Delchem’s Lever.

For this I needed my hacksaw.
For this I needed the light that illuminated the small room in which I keep all my tools for just this sort of serious situation.
The lightbulb broke.
The light fitting turned out to be a crumbling mess probably first installed in the latter part of the fifteenth century.
I set forth to my favoured DIY emporium for the appropriate replacement.
I broke down.
And caused a traffic jam.

Normally, a small traffic jam on the A470 leading into Cardiff is but a twinge in the otherwise cheerful side of civilisation.

Not today. Today all of the world was on its way into Cardiff to watch our gallant boys with the large thighs and moth-eaten ears beat the world in that thing they do with the ball they never quite managed to work out how to make into a sphere.

Civilisation, essentially, was caused a nasty case of acute appendicitis. I blame Mr Delchem. And his Lever.

He has yet to respond to my proposal of marriage and perhaps it is all for the best.

How Not to Flush

2008-03-14T11:56:00.000Z

I’ve fitted a Delchem Flapper Flush Valve. Life is full of new experiences.

This is what happened:

It was Saturday. Generally a day of rejoicing jollity and joy for I had retrieved the Physicist and all her worldly goods from the clutches of academia to be once more clutched to the bosom of her loving parent.

(a word of advice to loving parents – don’t clutch your Physicists to your bosom in front of the assembled Oxford masses – it embarrasses them and has a dishevelling effect on both your outfits)

However, whilst I was enjoying the joys of the M4 and the mass movement of the undergraduate masses an evil force was at work in my house. That very evening things began to take on a life of their own. Or rather give up a life of their own.
The remote control had lost control.
The lights in the sitting room no longer lit.
The DVD player refused to play.
The TV screen took on a suspicious shade of green.
And, worse, the toilet refused to flush.

Now, being a woman of resourceful resource I can cope without TV, DVD and anything that involves a capital V (including HMV, Henry V and VD) but, after a while, a non-flushing toilet becomes uncomfortable, smelly and Anthea wouldn’t approve.

Now, being a woman of resourceful resource I set about the thrilling task of mending the toilet. This is what happened:

To access the cistern I had to remove-
22 pieces of tongue and groove panelling
Attached by 66 screws.
2 lengths of skirting board
Attached by 14 nails.
The carpet
Attached by magic.
And
Most of the skin on my fingers.

This is what I discovered-
The flushing mechanism was broken.

Now, being a woman of resourceful resource I continued on my quest and removed –
6 litres of water
A ball cock (yes that was the highlight)
3 pipes
A flushing mechanism.

This is what I discovered-
The flushing mechanism was broken.

I showed the flushing mechanism that was broken to the physicist. She agreed. Broken. Those Oxbridge educations are certainly outstanding.

But never fear, all is almost well. We went to the shop and bought a wonderful new invention in toilet flushery – The Delchem Flapper Flush Valve.

With a name like that who could fail? Only ten hours later I flushed excitedly. I intend to contact Mr Delchem and propose as soon as I have reassembled the bathroom.

How Not to Treat a Wormhole – or The Future in G-spots

2008-03-05T23:07:00.000Z

I have solved yet another great mystery of science.

The Theys of the New Scientist are sometimes a tad blinkered. Or possibly they don’t read the New Scientist. Yet I have discovered that with the right interpretation, analytical technique and slightly skewed reading there are many more answers enclosed in this bijou publication than it might first appear.

This is what happened:

It was reported that Geneva was to be the beginning of time. To be more precise 2008 Geneva was to be the beginning of time. Because soon, in the very heart of this majestic, pretentious and expensive city, they are going to make a wormhole. The first ever wormhole here on earth. Exciting eh?

Wormholes are handy for a number of reasons –
For worms to live in
For the quick transport of worms from one place to another
For baby worms to hang out
For teenage worms to hide in for a smoke
And
For time travel.

So, all time travellers will be able now (given that construction of the aforementioned wormhole goes according to schedule and budget) be able to visit 2008 Geneva.

Here comes the interesting bit – What would a traveller from the future want to take away as a souvenir from 2008 Geneva? Chocolate? Swiss Army Knives? The spurty fountain that for some reason lives in the lake? Possibly. Yet possibly not. For surely the travellers from a distant time would be after that very elixir of life, not slightly overly milky chocolate, not small red items to break one’s fingernails on, not even ejaculating lakes (although almost). No, any sensible traveller from the future would be looking for what we are all (or me anyway) are looking for – the perfect orgasm.

Here comes the really clever bit - a more careful reading of the New Scientist has revealed that in fact the time travellers have already been and removed the souvenirs. And why no one except me has noticed this is quite inexplicable. In that very edition, probably on the next page, was the now infamous article about the missing G-spots.

That is where they all went. And this is backed up totally by scientific and anecdotal evidence – It has been shown that 70% of G-spots are missing. When my G-spot was stolen I was actually in Geneva. AND the man who stole my G-spot has also gone missing – back to the future obviously.

My True Identity Revealed

2008-03-03T22:50:00.000Z

I have discovered my true identity. This is groundbreaking stuff.

Much research, meditation, trips to India, ashramming, pursuing of religious fervour and hiring of Life Coaches goes on in the world for people to discover their true identity. I used none of the aforementioned methods. I had a revelatory moment. In the changing room of the gym.

All the pieces of my disparate personality began to make sense. Things like:

My fondness for large bags and umbrellas
Why snapping my fingers is so effective
My knack of bursting into song at any given moment
My winning ways with children
Why I am revered by penguins
How I can understand fake cockney accents
My general ability to defeat gravity
The cut of my coat
My charming cloche hat
Why sometimes my feet might turn outward
Why I am practically perfect

This is what happened:
I was in the gym changing rooms preparing to leave. I glanced at myself in the mirror. I am the spitting image of Mary Poppins. I am Mary Poppins.

I said to the Lawyer – ‘Look! See there!’ I pointed at the mirror, ‘I am Mary Poppins!’

She said ‘I know, but I didn’t like to mention it.’

How Not to Talk to the Birds – Or Mother’s Day Revisited

2008-03-02T21:31:00.003Z

Today was Mother’s Day. I expect you noticed. I am a mother so it was my day.

The sun was shining, God was in her usual abode, all was as right in the world as it ever is.

I was conducting a scientific experiment. For it is the duty of us mothers to discover things and thus pass wisdom unto our offspring, the world, the scientific community in general and anyone who would care to listen (that anyone is yet to be discovered).

It was an experiment in linguistics and biology. To settle a question long questioned (well since the other night). A question that effects us all in our day-to-day dealings with the natural world.

This was the question:

Can we talk to birds?

The sub-questions were –

If so, should we talk in English, Welsh or Bird? (we take as a given that I am addressing Welsh Birds) (Obviously if I was addressing birds of another denomination the corresponding denominative would apply)

And should we find ourselves actually communicating, what are the favourite topics that birds like to discuss?

And why?

And wherefore?

Never mind the whys and wherefores we must also ask is talking to birds morally correct.

This is what happened:

I went into the garden to find a bird. I detected a singular lack of feathered creatures. Almost simultaneously I noticed a plethora of furred friends. I am a scientist. I can recognise cause and effect when they are purring around my ankles.

I sent Cause and Effect back indoors with a sharp word or two about interfering with cutting edge science.

I sat and tweeted and said ‘hello birds’ and ‘bora da Robin/Blue Tit/Sparrow/etc’ (I didn’t know the Welsh for ‘bird’).

And this is what I discovered:

Birds never speak English.

If birds speak Welsh they do it in a heavy Bird accent.

They like to talk about strange women who think they are birds.

They like to talk about strange women who think they are birds because they are bored of talking about the bloody cat problem.

I never answered the wherefore problem. No one ever has.

And finally yes, it is morally correct to talk to birds as long as your six-year-old neighbour doesn’t see you. Because when she does see you it leads her to believe that you are very brave and should now rescue her from a plague of wasps (3) that are infesting her play house.

Today was Mother’s Day. I expect you noticed us talking to the birds.

How Not to Celebrate Saint David’s Day

2008-03-01T20:13:00.001Z

Today was St David’s Day. The Welsh Day.

Yesterday someone asked me ‘How are you going to celebrate St David’s Day?’

This (as you can imagine) threw me into a bit of a quandary.

In days of yore I’d have celebrated this most auspicious of days by dressing my children up in strange costumes made of old shawls, lacy doilies and antimacassars and then sending them to school thus attired. Much to their shame as the other children had proper costumes from ASDA and didn’t understand antimacassars.

Truth be told no one actually understands antimacassars.

The children, however, were not home. Or children. Or the least bit interested in the mysteries of antimacassars as they appear to have little relevance to either physics or the law (ah – the folly of youth, they’ll learn).

So, what to do? I hit upon an idea. A massive celebration meal that included Everything.

Or at least everything Welsh.

This is what happened:

First I invited a Welsh Family.

Then I mixed together chopped leeks, some spoonfuls of seaweed, a number of ripe daffs, half a loaf of Bara Brith, sixteen tons of coal and a tin of Catatonia.

Whilst this lot was gently simmering I popped down to the bottom of the garden to slay a dragon (being a tad short of handy knights at the mo I had to do it myself). But the dragon was quite sexy in a clawed sort of way so instead of slaying him I invited him to dinner.

My guests (The Jones Family) all were very polite. Tom asked ‘What’s new pussycat?’ (I think he fancied me). Aled was walking on air (I think he fancied me). Gryf commented on my fine mouldings (I think he fancied me). Only Catherine-Zeta seemed a bit upset. ‘What, no antimacassars?’ she whined.

Luckily the dragon ate her (I think he fancied me) (or it could have been the antimacassar I was wearing under my old shawl).

The Renaissance Willy

2008-02-25T19:27:00.004Z

I had cause to Google some art by Michelangelo. In particular his statue of David:

And something struck me. Or rather occurred to me. As it might now be occurring to you. Renaissance penises were a lot smaller than modern ones.

Nowadays the internet affords one (totally by accident I assure you) a lot of views of male members. The current trend seems to be for the large. The very large.

One worries about these men. How, for example, do they walk, see past them whilst driving or negotiate their way up ladders to mend the guttering? Or make love to normal women without impaling them in a hugely uncomfortable and frankly dangerous manner? Their chances of discovering G-spots are likely to be severely impaired. And surely there must be a danger of not being quite sure which limb is which and trying, for example, to use their penises for attaching watches to, stirring soup or scraping the ice off the car of a frosty morning.

I don’t doubt that casualty departments around the country are inundated with men who have made just these sorts of mistake. And women with severe internal bruising.

I’ve done some research. The Greeks too believed that the size should be proportional, it is inappropriate to have a willy the same size as an arm. And the Greeks are revered for their knowledge of proportion.

Note the nice bow.

And my final proof comes with this:

The world’s finest genius demonstrating just how in proportion a man should be.

So I feel it requisite upon myself to start a campaign: Bring back the Renaissance Willy. Safety first. Size matters.

How Not to Find a G-Spot

2008-02-24T20:45:00.001Z

Disturbing news. I just read in the New Scientist (verily the source of all my knowledge) that They have just found something out.

The New Scientist is full of Theys. Who are busy finding Things out. It is possible to prove almost anything with sufficient perusals of this fine periodical.

Disturbing news. I just read in the New Scientist that only 30% of women have a G-spot. But that’s not all. It transpires that only a small proportion of men can find a G-spot. And sometimes, even if they find it, they don’t know what to do with it.

This, in my experience, is a common problem with the male of the species. There are other items which they find difficult to find. And then even should they happen across them they are flummoxed.

Items such as:

Hoovers
Dusters
Nappies
Children
Money
Fidelity
And, of course, clitorii.
And now we find out – G-spots.

Don’t think I’m just accusing the men of this kind of thing. No, us women also lose stuff. Just different stuff.

Items such as:

Hair bobbles
Earrings
Hearts
Sanity
And, of course common sense.
And now we find out – G-spots.

Not to worry though. The Theys of the New Scientist have a solution. They propose (oh, that’s another one, proposals) that men be trained in the art of discovery. I can just see them going for that:

Scientist: We believe it’s just up a bit and to the left.
Man: I don’t know what’s the point.
Scientist: To give her pleasure.
Man: I don’t know what’s the point.

Disturbing news. If only 30% of women have a G-spot and only 5% of men can find it and then only 1% of men know what to do with it when they find it, then any given woman who actually has a G-spot is unlikely to meet and then sleep with that man.

I once slept with that man. And believe I know why only 30% of women have a G-Spot. He steals them. No one ever found mine again. He’s probably got hundreds.

You know who you are. Please return the stolen goods immediately.

How Yoga Might Not Improve Your Sex Life

2008-02-20T19:36:00.000Z

They say that yoga can improve your sex life. I’m an avid follower of They. So this was promising stuff.

I looked into it in detail. On the internet. I have books but they were on tall shelves and I couldn’t stretch up that far.

This is what happened:

I breathed in.
I breathed out.

So far so good, no problem really.

I practiced some specific yoga postures:

Vibhadrasana – I can’t pronounce it but essentially you have both feet on the ground and your arms in the air. I did that.

Parsvakonasan – same sort of thing but with one hand on the ground. I did that.

Things began to improve significantly because suddenly the postures had names I understood.

In quick succession I performed the ‘upward facing dog’, the ‘downward facing dog’ the ‘camel’ and the ‘fish variation’.

My body was beginning to feel like Pavlova after Swan Lake, or possibly Pavlov after ‘the dog’.

But improving my sex life was a goal worth struggling for. I struggled on, performing a shoulder stand, a head stand, a hand stand, a stand.

My body was beginning to feel like Pavlova. Without the meringue. And perhaps this is what they were getting at.

You know that feeling – after a really good orgasm – how one’s body and brain feel sort of like whipped cream? I was beginning to suspect that maybe there was some truth in this whole yoga/sex life thing. It was working.

A glanced around the room (my bedroom appropriately enough) for my dream lover. I checked under the bed (the Beloved might have mislaid his glasses/teeth and was looking for them). I glanced out of the window for the usual white steeds and metal-clad hunks.

Nothing.

Ah, but I then discovered that I hadn’t finished the important yoga stuff. There was one final posture that was vital.
The ‘corpse’.

I lay down and waited.

I still am.

How Not to Meet Mr Right on Valentines Day

2008-02-14T23:48:00.000Z

It was Valentines Day today. It still is. But luckily there’s only 35 minutes left.

This is what happened:

I received something red in the post.

Some twelve hours later I discarded it as I really do have loads of those elastic bands that the postman uses already. We have a ball of them even. Called Cyril. The ball. Not the postman. Although the postman might be called Cyril. I’ll ask him tomorrow.

So, today was Valentines day. It still is. But luckily there’s only 33 minutes left. A day for finding love.

This is what happened:

After a lengthy discussion with my mother as to where all the handsome rich men with cute children hang out I decided to go to the gym. Because it was a good a place as anywhere to start on my search for Mr Right.

And obviously any sexy blokes, or even just ok blokes, or even just blokes with all their tackle intact, who were in the gym on Valentines night were bound to be single. Or in serious trouble. Thus my arrival on Valentines night (as opposed to my arrival on every other night this week) would cunningly lead to my knowing exactly which of those sweating regulars were, or were not, single. Cunning eh?

I went to great lengths to look good, wearing my new M&S gym trousers – ‘cotton fresh’. ‘Feel me’ the label said. I left it on. As well as the label ‘£12.99 fantastic value’ in case any of the men I was about to meet happened to have £12.99. I washed, brushed, put on several bras (needing all the support I could get) (especially whilst running) (which I might have to do) (if I met Mr Right and he tried to run away).

With a jaunty step and a J-Lo like wiggle to my bottom I stepped into the gym. And glanced around. And peered around some corners. And under some running machines.

There were no men.

There were lots of women.

Like me. Except without the labels.

None of the men whose physique I’ve been admiring all these weeks are single.

This is disappointing.

It was Valentines Day today. It still is. But luckily there’s only 25 minutes left.

How Not to Shop for Valentines Day

2008-02-13T23:43:00.000Z

I’ve just been to ASDA. It’s 11pm Feb 13. The supermarket was very full. Of bewildered and confused men.

This is what happened:

The supermarket was very full. Of bewildered and confused men.

I tried to help by standing next to the flowers and coughing politely at the men buying the cheap chrysanthemums whilst gently fingering some blood-red roses. I then stood dreamily by the very largest and most expensive chocolates licking my lips in what I imagined to be a seductive manner (I fear it may have been misinterpreted as my having a bad cold). I indicated helpfully towards Tom Jones CDs and wiggled my hips to the memory of ‘What’s New Pussycat’.

All in vain I fear. I’d like to apologise to the women of Cardiff for my lack of influential powers.

The queues were long and sinuous. And male. I closely observed the nature of the purchases. This is what the average (I suppose they were average for I didn’t have my x-ray specs on) ASDA shopping man thought would turn their loved ones on:

Man 1: A single sad lily and a box of frozen fish-fingers.

Man 2: Cheap chrysanthemums and some batteries.

Man 3: Milk.

Man 4: A card of the most hideous nature depicting kittens and little hearts

Man 5: Air freshener, toilet cleaner, hoover bags, rubber gloves, champagne, roses, black forest gateaux a bumper box of condoms, and (I kid you not) a kit for moulding your own chocolate bunnies.

Naturally, after having paid for my bananas and kiwi fruit, I followed Man 5 home.

How Not to Find Out if You are Still on the Rebound

2008-02-12T23:26:00.000Z

A man called Newton (also a keen fruit-catcher and turner of base things into gold) declared one sunny day (it might not of been actually sunny but it enhances the story) (pathetic fallacy) in a deep sonorous voice –
‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction’.

This is what’s known as ‘being on the rebound’.

The consoling thing about science it that it can be applied to all situations. Because it is inherently true. Possibly.

So, this is today’s question (we have temporarily put aside the ‘how can I tell if a man fancies me?’) (pathetic fallacy):

‘Am I Still on the Rebound?’

Here’s where the science comes in. ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction’. Ergo if one body falls in love the other body falls out of love. The difficulty is discovering exactly which body is yours.

Case 1: You fall in love. Your partner falls out of love. Therefore, according to Newtonian physics you will then react by falling out of love and your partner will have the equal and opposite reaction which is probably going to the pub. To this you are compelled by science to become tea-total. In response your partner must become an alcoholic.

Case 2: You fall out of love. Your partner falls in love. With someone else. You are then compelled to react by falling in love again, in all likelihood with your partner. Who is now your ex. His equal and opposite reaction will to be to fall out of love with the pub and become tea-total. And you are driven to drink.

Essentially anyone can see that this is an awful tangle. The laws of Newtonian physics are solely responsible for all the divorces and drink-related problems that have occurred since Newton was in britches.

Yet the question is answered quite clearly and unequivocally. Given that ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction’ then the answer is obviously ‘never’. Rebound is perpetual motion.

This is why Einstein was compelled to invent Relativity.

How to Tell if a Man Fancies You – Or Can Cosmology Prove if a Man Fancies You?

2008-02-10T20:26:00.000Z

Recent advances in theoretical thinking have been used to good use to attempt to prove a Very Import Thing. That God Exists. Or That God Doesn’t Exist. I can’t quite make out which.

The Argument goes thus –
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

(Have you noticed that when proving some theoretical point in philosophy it is the norm to have three bits – Statement. Statement. And a neat little bit on the end that starts with either ‘Therefore’ or ‘Thus’? And yet, like life, one is left yearning for more. For a neat little bit that explains what the hell is supposed to be going on.)

Now we all know that proving whether God exists or doesn’t exist is very important. It’s a task of the utmost urgency and relevance to modern life. We all appreciate that and think that philosophers and physicists and the like are generally underpaid saints (if God exists) or underpaid geniuses (should God not exist). And these academics are worth every hour and strain on one’s suspension used driving them and their collection of ‘Physics Today’ magazines, cuddly toys that sing ‘Old MacDonalds Farm’ and plethora of stilettoed heeled boots to and from the aforementioned academic institutions.

But like so many of the academic endeavours endeavoured by our academics these days they are simply NOT addressing the question that people really really really want to know the answer to.

This is the question:

How Do I Know if a Man Fancies Me?

So, being the mother of one of the aforementioned academics I feel it is my duty – nay, my obligation to use whatever methods come to my disposal to answer THE question.

So let’s apply a little reality to the philosophy –

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The Question began to exist.
3. Therefore, the Question has a cause.
4. Therefore the cause is that the man fancies me.

Note how I have added that essential forth part that makes everything totally clear.

In my case of course it was all already totally clear – he doesn’t.

The Resolution Problem Resolved

2008-02-07T22:24:00.000Z

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. Did I mention that? I’m not a person of a religious bent. Or any bent really. Well, my mind is a tad off the straight and narrow on occasion. Occasions like Ash Wednesday. And Wednesdays in general. And often days that end with the letter ‘y’.

I’d like to report that I’m sticking to my resolutions very well. But I’ve discovered a problem. A resolution problem which I am attempting to resolve.

This is what happened:

I got up when Terry Wogan told me to, because I had resolved to do so. I continued with my list of ‘Things I Must Do Every Morning’ because I had resolved to do so. This included –
Making nourishing packed lunch for the Lawyer. (15 minutes)
Taking Lawyer to train station. (20 minutes)
Remembering to eat breakfast. (1 minute)
Remembering to wash, and brush bodily parts as appropriate (and trying not to confuse bodily parts). (45 minutes due to a lot of thinking)
Doing an hour of yoga. (90 minutes)
Cleaning house. (a great deal of minutes)
Putting things in baskets. (183 minutes)
Taking coat out of freezer (73 minutes)
Not think about sex (198.46 minutes)

You are beginning to see the problem. All these minutes begin to add up to hours, days, weeks. By the time I have finished ‘Things I Must Do Every Morning’ we have reached the latter stages of April. And I haven’t even started on ‘Things I must do every Afternoon’ (lunch, emails, not thinking about love, reconstructing the shed, untangling kittens from baskets….). Let alone ‘Things I Must Do Every Evening’ (dinner, blog posts, swimming, gymming, feeding Lawyer, finding car, not thinking about love or sex, putting the coat in the freezer in order that I might remove it the following day…).

So, I then discover I have no time left to run our publishing company, our website company, write my novel, write our sitcom, create the cybernauts’ guide to the mirthverse, learn how to use Flash, have a wee or breathe. (I’ve given up on ever doing the accounts).

So here is what I’ve decided to do to overcome these difficulties:

I have resolved that every day I must remember to - publish one book, make three websites, write 10,000 words, 12 scenes, Mostly Life-ify, give up on Flash, give up weeing and breathing.

Fucking sorted. Except the fucking. Aye, well, tomorrow is another couple of dozen days.

How Not to Resolve – Or Lent vs New Year (Lent 3 – New Year 2)

2008-02-06T22:42:00.001Z

Today, in case it passed you by, is the first day of Lent. Otherwise known in the trade as Ash Wednesday. It’s all terribly like New Year except without the parties. And painful shoes. And the snogging inebriated friends. The friends. Not me. I didn’t dare get drunk this last New Years – the danger of my taking someone’s husband home would have been too great.

Today is the first day of Lent. It’s all terribly like New Year because of all that resolution stuff. Lent is the soft version of New Year. It only lasts 40 days as opposed to 365 days, or, in the case of New Year’s resolutions, 10 days.

This year it is particularly handy for those, like myself, who are given to resolution. Because just as one fails the New Year ones – Lo! Where should we find ourselves but bang up against the next big resolution calendar event. Convenient eh?

So here are my resolutions –

Stop putting my coat in the fridge by mistake.
Stop putting my boots in the freezer, whether by mistake or on purpose.
Remember where I am going whilst traversing roundabouts.
Remember that roundabouts are for going around rather than traversing.
Put all my underwear in alphabetical order.
Put all my outerwear in numerical order (except for those items already in the freezer)
Stop thinking about sex.
Stop thinking about love.
Stop thinking.
Put everything in the house that is not actually attached to a wall, screwed to the floor or over ten foot tall into Anthea-esque baskets.
Weave a basket sufficiently large to put the car in.
Find the car.

So, for 40 days and 40 nights I must do the above. It’s not going to be easy. Obviously. Especially all that basket stuff.

But the sheer anticipatory joy of Easter Sunday will keep me going. For verily on that day I will once more be able to freeze coats, make much disorder, bump crazily across roundabouts, lose the car and think about sex. I might give the last one a miss.

Oh fuck, I’ve broken that one already. Never mind there’s always baskets.

How Not to Solve All One’s Problems

2008-02-05T20:23:00.001Z

I have made a resolution. A post New Year, sort of a bit later in the year, February sort of resolution.

This is what happened:

I was swimming. Up and down. Down and up. And generally along.

The problem with swimming, aside from all the usual chlorine issues, struggles with possible drowning, attempting to move one’s legs so fast that no one notices that one’s forgotten to shave one’s legs and time spent tucking spare pubes back into one’s costume in order to pretend one isn’t middle-aged, is that it gives one too much time to think.

Thinking is dangerous stuff. Questions like ‘What’s happened to my life?’ ‘What is sex?’ and ‘Is it possible to get Bromide on prescription?’ knock incessantly at one’s consciousness like a minor fleet of lion-shaped door knockers on especially strong espressos.

You may think that in these circumstances I might have resolved to give up swimming, or possibly black out my goggles or my mind. You would be very wrong. For I resolved to answer some of the other questions that were arriving like a fleet of lost 134 buses in a chlorinated and badly-lit flood.

These were the other questions –
Why aren’t I sufficiently rich to buy my own Bromide?
Should Bromide be spelt with a capital B?
If I were a celeb would my sex life improve?
How should I become a celeb?
If Big Brother was an invention of the media rather than an Orwellian concept would it have ever worked?
Why did I ask that last question seeing as it didn’t work?
Why don’t I have a column in the Guardian?

Yes, it’s all stunningly obvious isn’t it? The solution to all the above questions. I should be a writer. And that’s what I resolved. But not just a writer of any old nonsense. No, a writer of specific nonsense. This very nonsense you are reading now.

I resolved to remember to write my blog. Everything else will obviously and naturally follow – I will get a column in the Guardian (if you are the person in charge of the Guardian please call asap), I will then be able to afford Bromide and a dictionary. I will be celeb, ergo a proper regime of depilation, ergo people in the swim lane will fancy me and, super-bonus, the whole of the first lot of questions will no longer need answering.

Fucking sorted. Literally too if all goes according to plan.

PS - if I forget please nag me, for obviously my future life and happiness depends upon it.

A Recipe for the Single Woman

2008-01-29T00:00:00.000Z

I’ve been doing a spot of cooking. Because I can be quite resourceful like that. Making handy stuff like cup-hooks, shelves and super-computers out of string, gaffer tape and oddly shaped root vegetables. I once made a whole vehicle out of a pumpkin. It’s well documented.

I’ve been doing a spot of cooking. Many of my more avid readers have asked for the recipe.

This is it:

Take several good pastimes – Patience, Twister, and Mastermind are best but if you haven’t got those in the fridge you can substitute Monopoly or possibly, in desperation, Cluedo.

Incorporate a bushel of ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’. Never ever substitute ‘Just a Minute’ but ‘Start the Week’ is totally acceptable if not preferable.

Stir in a minimum of 72 inches of best beef. Remove all offal, scrag and tripe. Caramelise until sweet and golden brown.

Knead, truss, render mostly harmless.

Stuff with a great number of fresh dates.

Finish off with a garnish of 2 kiwi fruit and a large banana. Use a fresh banana, if you only have a spotty one then use a good raising agent. Put banana to one side for that really authentic look.

Mince to generally add to the ambience (that’s you not the ingredients)

Relax

Enjoy your perfect Welsh (or nationality of your preference) rarebit in a bain-marie. Or not marie as you see fit.

And who said cooking for one is unrewarding?

A Spectacle in Spectacles

2008-01-15T00:48:00.000Z

I have new glasses. Well, not new, but I’m pretending. In fact they are re-found. I now look totally different. I look like someone from a Specsavers advert.

The outstanding feature of people on the Specsavers advert is that they would never ever be seen wearing glasses in normal life.

The moment the advert comes on one cannot help but think ‘look, they are wearing glasses. Gorgeous sexy people are pretending to be like normal people. Something strange is going on. The world has become myopic.’ When I say ‘look,’ obviously first you must put your glasses on.

So, that’s how I now look. Gorgeous, sexy and wearing glasses. Not just normal glasses but obvious glasses. Glasses with black rims.

So that’s how I now look. Gorgeous, sexy, wearing glasses and intellectual. The black rims are not just black but they go all the way around, and up the sides and join my ears to my face in a black-lined kind of way. Like a fifteen-year-old in the 1950s - a previous era before I was born

So that’s how I now look. Gorgeous, sexy, wearing glasses, intellectual, fifteen and dated. This is all very disturbing.

The great thing about wearing glasses, whether they are a throwback to the fifties or hugely trendy ones from Specsavers, is that one can take them off.

So that’s how I now look. Like a blurry blobby pinkish thing with a brownish topping.

How I Didn’t Become My Mother but Became Someone Else Entirely

2008-01-13T23:37:00.000Z

Something terrible has happened. Life has gone seriously awry. I was always led to believe that eventually, sooner or later, and certainly by the time I am of any given age over 30 (which I am) I would become my mother. I looked forward with a certain amount of eager anticipation to the day I would be normally deranged artist who has little interest in cooking, cleaning and the whereabouts of any of her belongings. Surely I was destined to understand the great masters, have an inside-out knowledge of Greek myths and leave coffee cups in my studio until they moulded sufficiently to become art?

But no, events of the last week have revealed that I have become someone quite different.

This is what happened:

Christmas was over (as usually tends to happen this time of year) and thus I was impelled to remove Christmas and all its incumbent trappings from the sitting room. After the usual amount of indoor gardening (taking the chainsaw to the Christmas tree in order to dissolve it into small enough pieces to remove it from the room) I stood back to admire my now de-Christmased space.

It was a mess.

Had I been ever destined to become my mother I would simply have got out my sketch book and drawn the interesting shapes and textures that now inhabited the aforementioned space.

But instead I went to shopping. And bought baskets. Little baskets, medium sized baskets, large baskets and baskets that defied size categorisation. I was particularly pleased by the fact I only spent £6.

Into these receptacles I put:
books,
videos (not ‘Love Actually’ because I burnt that for making me cry) (you know, the scene with Emma Thompson) (if you don’t – don’t watch it) (well you can’t because it’s all melty and charred)
homework,
physics notes (the physicist was home and busy making copious notes that only Niels Bohr, Einstein and she understand),
hair bobbles of dubious vintage,
hair brushes of dubious functionality,
dirty plates of dubious heritage,
clean plates (probably only clean by the virtue of having been licked by kittens),
the tv,
a number of sofas
my life of celibacy
banal questions about the meaning of love,
and
most of my sanity.

I stand back to admire my work. ‘Wait!’ I cried, ‘insufficient soft furnishings!’ (this is strictly a girls house now so any of the Beloved’s objections to things soft are now irrelevant) (or at least not my problem)(we won’t delve further into the subject of the Beloved and things soft). So, I throw throws, I plump cushions, I range rugs, I place kittens strategically around the room, I tie little bows around things that might need little bows.

I stand back to admire my work. ‘Wait!’ I cried, ‘Dust!!!’ I put on my white gloves and wipe surfaces with feather dusters, kittens and damp rags made of old tights.

I stand back to admire my work. ‘Wait!’ I cried, ‘something terrible has happened!’

I haven’t become my mother.

I have become the polar opposite to my mother. I have become Anthea Turner.

The Babe Year

2008-01-04T16:55:00.001Z

They say that every woman has her peak in life. Her ‘Babe Year’. This is the year that one is thought of by sundry men (and boys) as a ‘Babe’. The time in life when codicils such as ‘for your age’, or ‘considering you have given birth to two large and hungry infants who are now Babes themselves’, or ‘discounting the stretchmarks/wrinkles/immense bagginess’ are not attached to the phrase ‘sexy’.

I have discovered mine. 1976. The long hot summer when I was hot and many a boy had urges to, untangle my hair and share my tent and get into my stylishly cut speedo swimming costume.

These recently unearthed photographs prove my point:

(I'm the one without the beard)

This is what happened:

‘Look at these photos we found,’ my Mum says.
My sister looks. ‘You were a Babe.’
I look. ‘Ah those were the days when boys were boys. Plentiful and totally lacking in technique.’
My brother looks. ‘What did you ever do with my orange tent?’

It is yet another example of life’s great injustices. I was a Babe, the boys were queuing, and when they reached the end of the line and into the Babe the sex was crap. It took another ten years for the quality of the sex to improve, at which point I was engrossed in a life of fidelity.

Now that my life of fidelity appears to be over (probably because the Beloved didn’t actually know me in my Babe year) (and therefore doesn’t actually realise that I was a Babe) I glance over my shoulder in a spirit of hope and desire. The queue appears to have disappeared. I am justly surprised. My Babe year appears to have been 31 years ago. I am justly surprised.

I see what must have happened. The members of the queue, some of whom sported the above terrible facial hair, have starved to death standing in line. Or possibly it was dehydration that did them in. Or they waited until 1977 and joined punk bands, had terrible piercings and expired from bad music and dubious taste.

Still, I may have been a Babe in 1976 but my 2008 bum is now a famous book cover:

Please form an orderly queue.

How Not to New Year

2008-01-01T18:43:00.000Z

It was New Year last night. Or rather it is New Year. And it will probably continue to be New Year until the year is deemed to be in some state of toddlerhood. February I think.

Although the whole New Year thing is some strange construct constructed by some strange bods (Roman I suspect) it does have a preponderance to induce a certain amount of perpondering on topics such as the previous year, last year and what effect last 365 days has had on one’s life.

A quick glance reveals that 2007 was shit. However an in depth and scientific analysis reveals otherwise. Science is a great comfort.

This is what happened:

I thought I should write a New Year blog post. Since it was New Year. And my fans were missing me. Because I had run out of words. Divorce does that to people. There are billions of divorced people who have been struck dumb by the process but never mention it.

I thought I should write a New Year blog post. You know, one of those ‘reviews of the year’ one gets so much on television. Being short of celebrities I thought I might simply look back to the beginning of the blog (which is of course now a celebrity itself).

I did that. You can do that yourself but I will save you the bother by telling you that it was a list of things I should do before I’m 50. Which is in a few years. Or possibly in a few years more than that if you believe my spin-doctors. Or me.

This was list:

Do a press-up without collapsing in an undignified heap -
Which I can now do! The heap is entirely dignified.

Bake a cake without forgetting it’s in the oven and burning it -
Which I can now do (or at least I haven’t burnt a single cake this year)(mostly because I’ve bought them from the Coop)

Play the chord of F (F is for fuck-this-is-a-difficult-chord) - This hasn’t quite been so successful as now I can’t even remember how to open the guitar case.

‘The Head of the Cow’ (obscure yoga pose) - Which I can now do. HA! (that’s the involuntary noise that occurs during this pose)

Get married - Well, I did the next best thing – got divorced.

Learn to Salsa Dance - Again, the next best thing – broke my foot.

Drive all the way around Coryton roundabout without stopping for a red light -
Done. Stopped by police. But done.

Finish my novel - Done! It’s a pile of unreadable shit but it has sufficient words to qualify as a novel.

Walk into a room and remember why I’m there - since I now hobble into rooms I consider this ambition achieved.

Understand what a comma splice is – Yes, I, think, so.

Be a famous and rich novelist - Too ambitious so am striking this from list.

Empathise with slugs – No problem. Another totally positive aspect of divorce.

Make love in a swimming pool/lake/body of water that isn’t the bath - I have now amended this to just ‘make love’

Ski - now amended to ‘watch tv’

Like olives – now amended to ‘like’

Remember where I have put the car keys – Yes. Safe, secure and locked in the car.

Write a blog – Yes. I think so. Mostly. Aside from when I didn’t.

So, after a careful count of 2007 successes and failures the score is:
Successes – Mostly.
Failures – Hardly any.

Obviously I now hope that 2008 will be filled with just as many outstanding successes.

Coming soon – A new list of 50 things to do before I’m 50.
Which will include learning how to count to 50.

Happy New Year

How to be Successfully Single or How to be Single Successfully

2007-12-09T22:48:00.000Z

There are those who have chosen, of their own volition, to be single. Those people who enjoy a sunset stroll along the beach holding their own hands, an evening in front of the fire with nothing more to caress but a faux-fur cushion from ASDA, to tuck themselves up in bed with a hot water bottle cunningly disguised as a bunny-rabbit. These people are either lucky, sad, or seriously deluding themselves.

Then there are those whom the entire population of the opposite (or in some cases same) sex have decided that they should be single. This is an example of an unusual, but possibly encouraging, world-wide collaboration seldom seen in the fields of politics, religion or taste.

Here are a few handy tips for the unwilling, unwitting and unwary single person:

Get rid of all forms of communication such as telephones, the internet, letter boxes, and carrier pigeon roosts. If they can’t get in touch you can work on the joyful assumption that they would if only they could.

Dispense with of all types of media such as televisions, radios, the internet, books and windows. If you can’t see other people enjoying relationships then you won’t miss having one yourself.

Don’t go to clubs, pubs, evening classes, supermarkets, street corners or anywhere past your front door. If you can’t meet anyone then, again, you can work on the joyful assumption that if you did then you would surely meet your perfect mate.

Get a cat. These feline friends obviate many of the more awkward aspects of singledom such as having nothing to cuddle, having no one’s sick/faeces to clean up, and the natural proclivity to talk to oneself.

Should you find yourself still struggling with appreciating the joys of singledom then get another cat, or a few more, or possibly a dozen.

The above tips surely show that you don’t have to be sad to be single and you don’t have to be sad to be single. Life is still full of fun, joy and lots of things to do. Such as talk to the cats.

The One with the Pigeon

2007-11-25T18:10:00.000Z

There’s a pigeon by the car. It’s big. A Wood Pigeon I strongly suspect, although I haven’t asked it. Mostly because it’s dead.

I’m not one of those people who object to pigeons per se. Indeed I believe that they are fine upstanding members of the bird community. Their gentle cooing can get a tad annoying if directly outside an open window on a day with a hangover, but nevertheless, pigeons are ok.

Should the aforementioned pigeon have been a bit more alive I would have greeted it with a cheery ‘Greetings pigeon!!!!!!!’. Maybe or maybe not with that number of exclamation marks. It was neither mine nor the pigeon’s fault that in fact I greeted it with a resounding ergggggggg and a slight shiver followed by a meandering feeling of nausea.

I have a bit of a difficulty with dead things. It is perhaps inexplicable or possibly rooted in a deep psychological problem that stemmed from an incident in my childhood that I have erased from my memory (a wise move).

My attempts to erase the pigeon from my memory have so far failed. One might not think that one dead and silent pigeon would be a major obstacle to my day. One might think very wrongly.

It is by the car. Dead. On it’s back. Probably to illustrate just how very dead it is. I therefore cannot get into the car. It is causing an obstruction.

‘Why the hell don’t you just move the sodding pigeon?’ I hear you ask. Although you may not have sworn.

I have a bit of a problem with dead things.

Even small dead things are not good. From woodlice up I start to be quite irrational. Mammals are the worst but birds come a short second. It is very lucky that I have never had to move a human corpse. Even the sight (previous) of the Beloved (previous) asleep could be quite disturbing. Thus at least the world can be assured that it is unlikely that I would murder anyone as the impossibility of moving the body, tying concrete triangles to their feet and throwing them into Hudson Bay is, essentially, an overwhelming obstacle. When the detectives begin their in-depth investigation re the murderer of whoever the first person they always eliminate is me. Because of this obstacle.

Like the pigeon.

I can’t get in the car. So I can’t go to the Coop to get milk. Or bread. We are going to starve to death. Thirst to death.

But I am not a woman without initiative. I have a plan. I will text the Beloved ‘Help! Dead pigeon!!!’ Using exactly that number of exclamation marks. He will leap out of the arms of his new Beloved and rescue me. Or I will starve to death and he will have to move my body, tie concrete triangles to my feet and throw me into Hudson Bay. But prior to that he will have to move the pigeon. In order to get to the car. So, either way, I win.

How Not to Use Words

2007-11-22T14:47:00.000Z

I thought I should write a blogpost. Because my listeners might be missing me. But I don’t know what to say.

We are all truly bored of my dire love life (especially me). My listeners have probably all heard about my new website (www.leafbooks.co.uk if you haven’t). The physicist is still in Oxford so is supplying no inspiration. The Lawyer is studying and thus not amusing. The Beloved is not here for me to comment upon (let alone do anything else upon). The fact that I have modelled naked for our latest book cover is too embarrassing to mention.

So I read Matt’s blog http://hedgedefender.blogspot.com/ for some inspiration. He’s an inspiring sort of chap. It turns out that he’s run out of words. Us writers have no end of problems really. He has no words, I have nothing to say but I have lots of words.

Here are some of them:

Dishcloth
Mango
Aplomb (I just lent that one to Matt)
Gorge
Archipelago
Gusset
Nave
Brassica
Mud
Splice
Gasket
Obverse
Taupe
Redirect
Plenary
Individualism
Cat

I hope you enjoyed them.

Oh and another one –
Coherence.

Not Crème Brulee

2007-11-14T22:33:00.000Z

I’ve had my first request for a blog post. This is exciting. It happened last night in the pub. The request I mean. ‘It’ could be construed as something far more exciting which is generally not happening in my life. Thus a request for a blog post leaps up the rankings of generally exciting events with all the alacrity and enthusiasm displayed by a flea when it catches sight of a piece of naked flesh. Which is probably similar to my alacrity and enthusiasm at the same sight.

So, a blog post. The request.

Crème brulee.

Now, my requestee claims to be a reader of my blog. But somehow I wonder. What, I’m asking myself does crème brulee have to do with thinly disguised analogies for sex? Or thickly disguised analogies for sex? Or sex?

However I realise after a smidge of further wondering where crème brulee fits into the scheme of things – it’s like custard. Ah ha!!!

I begin to prepare some cunning experiments to test the properties of c.b. Things like swimming pools full of the stuff to test the old sink or swim non-newtonian liquid thingy. Large bowls on vibrating plates to enact the spooky wobbly wibbly thingys. Huge vats with ginormous weights balanced on top to apply however many g’s it takes to rule the world.

I am slightly flummoxed by the lack of this particular culinary delight with which to experiment. I am, I discover, much to my chagrin and mild surprise, crème brulee –less. The cupboards are empty of the stuff. The fridge contains no crème, no brulee. The wardrobes, similarly are rich-desert-less. As is even the shed. Although the camels may have eaten it.

I am left with no choice but to create my own large quantities of crème brulee on which to experiment. I am in no way defeated by the fact that I have very few of the ingredients and specialised tools required for the creation of crème. I can substitute along with the best of them.

Here is the recipe I found on a well know encyclopaedia site:

3 pints heavy cream
¾ cup granulated sugar
¾ tsp salt
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
12 egg yolks

Here is the recipe I used:

3,000 pints of heavy water
340 cups of granulated dust (found under kitchen cabinets)
No salt (as it’s bad for you and I ate it all on my dinner earlier)
150 tps extract of tumble dryer
I thought the eggs were probably not important

This is what I discovered using scientific methods (stirring):

Crème brulee is not a non-newtonian liquid.
I can swim.
Crème brulee when vibrated does not get excited.
I do.
Crème brulee when put under pressure doesn’t flinch in the slightest.
I do.
Cardiff City Council do not offer a free crème brulee disposal service.
Camels do not eat crème brulee.

A special thanks to my requestee for involving me in this evening’s entertainment. If anyone else has any blog requests I ask only this – please supply the correct ingredients. Otherwise fuck off.

Does anyone know what camels eat?

How Not to Improvise

2007-11-10T20:42:00.000Z

I’ve been going to improvisation classes. To learn to improvise. Yes, yes, I know, I already am fully cognisant of methods to improvise my way through life’s hair-pin bends – I can whip up a meal from only a tin of paint and a small aubergine, I can fix a leaking water main using a pair of stripy tights soaked in mulligatawny soup and I am well known for my skills in shed-creation/restoration equipped only with a couple of old doors, some slightly mouldy flat-packed furniture and a rotting marrow.

This is comedy improvisation. It’s supposed to make people laugh. It mostly makes me laugh aside from when I cry or bang my frontal lobes on the nearest trapeze.

But last night things went seriously awry. This is what happened:

Our instructor (an experienced, wise, thoughtful sort of person who is mostly a clown but mostly isn’t) instructed his class (that’s me and another disparate dozen of desperate fools. Sorry – aspiring fools) to imagine taking something off a shelf. The important thing about this exercise was not to think what was on the shelf until it was in our hands. To have a blank and empty mind with no preconceived idea as to what might be lurking on a dozen imaginary shelves scattered around the space.

You see already what fun this class is. I’ve mangled my way through many types of education and thus it is refreshingly refreshing to be told to not think. This, I thought, I could do (although that actually countered the not-thinking thing). I applied my mind to not thinking.

After a few moments of bringing strange objects off imaginary shelves I began to be slightly troubled by who had actually stacked these shelves and the high level of irresponsibility involved. Frankly the managers of the Coop, Waterstones, even ToysRus would have been appalled. I was appalled and I’m quite open-minded when it comes to shelves, cupboards and general storage devices.

This is what they had put on the shelves:
A hippo with a flower in its mouth
A green rubber ball that smelt of wet wool
Half a red stilettoed boot with teeth-marks on
A man
A pair of cats-eye marbles fused together humming ABBA songs
A small box of kittens (assorted)
An enormous statue of a turkey
A wet sponge in the shape of a woman’s breast
A wet sponge in the shape of a man’s breast
Twelve yellow African camels
…. It went on….

But this wasn’t the end of my problems. It was one thing for the anonymous shelf stacker to load this imaginary shelf but it was an entirely different issue as what the fuck I was supposed to do with all this stuff.

I began by neatly stacking it around me – the hippo was balanced on the ball which in turn was balanced on the boot. The box of kittens I shoved under the statue of the turkey. The marbles I fed to the man. But when the bloody camels turned up I just had to say something.

‘Oh noble instructor,’ I said, feeling some sort of deference was probably due to the arranger of such an exercise, ‘I have been most successful at emptying my mind,’ I continued, just so he felt I understood, ‘but now I don’t know what the fuck to do with all these things I have gotten off the shelf. The room is becoming most crowded and as you can see these camels are chaffing.’

‘Just discard the stuff once you know what it is,’ he answered, ‘throw it over your shoulder.’

I stared in disbelieving disbelief. ‘No! What?! Just throw all these things away? No! What!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?’

He raised his eyebrows. I raised my eyebrows.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and I was, ‘I just can’t do that.’ I led my camels, men, hippos, kittens etc out of the building keeping my eyebrows aloft.

Lucky my improvisational skills at shed mending are better than my comedy. Does anyone know what to feed camels?

How Not to Find the Man of Your Dreams

2007-11-07T19:35:00.000Z

Things must be getting desperate here. I’ve just joined some bizarre dating site called facespin or spinface or something. It’s like one of those games where you identify inkblots only more revealing. By the time I’d finished my whole personality, inner most longings and hair-do preferences were revealed in a starkly startling revelation.

This is what happened:

Somehow I found myself clicking ‘try it out’. I think maybe I was trying to click ‘close’ but my finger juddered (probably from the shakes I’ve been suffering due to lack of sex and chocolate). There, on the screen (after a small amount of dizzy-making spinning effect which was for no good reason aside from making me feel slightly nauseous) a man’s picture appeared. Underneath were three buttons entitled ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘mayB.’ I did take exception to the fact that they couldn’t spell but nevertheless given such a simple selection of choices and a picture of a man that was so obviously a ‘yes’ I was drawn in as a fly is drawn to its death on the internet or as a recently confused woman is drawn away from what she is supposed to be doing.

After a few more yes, no or mayB sort of things they said I had to register. What else could I do? I filled out the form. I thought of a ridiculous on-screen name. I puzzled over the five things I was supposed to say about myself. I am another victim of the web. A dating site addict. A judger of men.

Moments later (or maybe hours later)(I’m still having problems with time distortion) I was the proud and embarrassed owner of a spinny ‘black book’ complete with all the men I had said yes or maybe to. Sorry, mayB to.

It turned out that I said yes to four. For no other good reason than that they didn’t put ‘watching football’ as one of their favourite things to do. And one of them was a Coastguard which I thought was quite sexy.

It also turned out that I said mayB to 18. For no other good reason than that they didn’t put ‘watching football’ as one of their favourite things to do.

I said no to about a thousand because they all put ‘watching football’ as one of their favourite things to do. And, frankly some of them looked a bit scary. Especially in their football shorts.

However, on closer examination I discovered a disturbing theme. Every man that had posted a picture of themselves with a small child I chose. Without a moment’s hesitation I clicked ‘yes, mayB, yes, yes’ totally forgetting the spelling issue.

This leads me to the revealing conclusion that I don’t want a man at all. I want a small child. I am broody. Rorschach eat your heart out.

How Not to Not WIN the Pub Quiz

2007-11-03T14:45:00.000Z

Yes, a double negative. There are aspects to use of the double negative that, I feel, are almost positive. And this was very much the experience in the pub. This is what happened:

We have a pub. It has a quiz. Every Tuesday night. In the spirit of glasnost, openness and a deep desire to get out of the house I decided that this was THE thing that would revive my sagging social life, lift my flabby spirits and generally possibly and on the very off-chance if I actually left the house I might meet the man of my dreams. Since he didn’t seem to be knocking on my door. Which is strange and slightly inexplicable. Surely the world and his handsome brother/uncle/nephew/cousin/male-relation-of-any sort-whatsoever now knows that I am single. So where are they? This is a question I asked myself. The only answer I could come up with (aside from generally hiding from slightly mad blog-writers in case they are discovered and written about) was maybe they were in the pub.

So, the pub quiz. The first week (we’ll call that week 1 for the sake of clarity) my team consisted of me, my friend who knows a lot about small-boy culture since she has a five-year-old, the Lawyer and the Lawyer’s friend who knows a lot about quite a lot for someone who has lived so very few years (compared to me). We came 2nd. Out of 3 teams. We were very proud.

The next week (week 2) the Lawyer and the Lawyer friend were absent. I suggested we cheat. My friend disagreed. We lost.

The following week (week 3) (don’t worry this story only goes up to week 4) I wander in to discover my team isn’t there. A couple to whom we have previously waved, waves. I wave back and try not to look teamless. I look teamless. They take pity.

This was one of the most cunning things that has ever happened to me. This couple turn out to be the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of the pub quiz world. The waltzed through the questions with the grace of a well-oiled pair of dancing shoes that had done this sort of thing before. I nodded and pretended to be clever. My friend smiled and answered any questions re 5-year-old culture. We won.

What I have failed to explain here is that every team that wins the quiz is entered for a GRAND PRIZE DRAW every 4 weeks. You see now why we are counting weeks.

Week 4 – The tension is mounting. The man of my dreams still hasn’t turned up. My new and glorified team has. And so has an old friend. Old friend offers me a drink. I am torn – old friend vs quiz team. I pick old friend thinking I would catch up with my team in a moment. The old friend and I get deep into a discussion about celestial bodies of great interest. We go out for a fag and to look at a passing comet. We return. I notice that there seems to be a pub quiz going on. I remember about my team.

They have answered all the questions except one. ‘What was Suzi Quatro’s hit from some-year-or-another?’ Now Suzi and I have a lot in common. We are both American, of small stature, she dresses in tight leather trousers and I would should I own such a garment. We, essentially are like two peas in the proverbial pod. Thus I know everything about her. Or at least I know the answer to this question. We win. By one point. That very point that I gave them by my intimate knowledge of Suzi.

The prize draw draws ME!!!!! Mostly because the landlady knows my name and not Fred and Gingers’.

The man of my dreams still hasn’t shown. So – man, I’ll be there next Tuesday, I’m the one not wearing the tight leather trousers.

How Not to Shop Local

2007-10-28T13:47:00.000Z

I’ve just been to the Coop. Local shops are dangerous places for the recently dumped. Not only does excessive chocolate, beer and Pritt Stick (there are worse ways of sticking a relationship back together) buying go on, but you meet people. Who know. Who ask how you are. Who sympathise with sympathetic faces.

Now, mostly, I’m fine. I have done the hiding in the cupboard thing, I have had many a romantic evening in by myself. I have slept. A lot. I have vowed to give up lusting after lost loves, longing for babies, missing cats and wondering why the house is so tidy.

The problem comes only when some bastard person sympathises. Then I crack. In the Coop. The staff of the Coop are definitely on the verge of banning me from the premises. Frankly, I’m giving a bad impression of local shopping. A great deal of expense, time and poor planning have just gone into refurbishing this enchanting emporium. The shoppers should now skip around the newly-narrowed and confusingly laid-out retail outlet in veritable paroxysms of delight. Which they would. If it weren’t for the middle-aged women sobbing on relative strangers’ shoulders in the aisles.

I do, however, have a solution. I’m going to get a tattoo. This is a very cunning plan as a tattoo will achieve a number of necessary goals in one fell swoop, or one fell tattoo:
Fulfil the need for self-harm that many a rejected soul feels the need to accomplish.
Fulfil the need for improved body image that many a rejected soul needs.
Fill at least an hour of time where thinking about anything else aside from pain will be unnecessary.
Fulfil the need for something (anything) that actually lasts a life time.
Be green.
Stop people sympathising with me as it is going to read ‘DON’T TALK TO ME’ in large letters across my forehead.

Cunning eh?

How to Love Yourself

2007-10-24T00:32:00.000+01:00

Now that you have successfully fallen out of love (and into the second person narrative style)(if you missed previous post here’s a quick recap: you are now squatting in a cupboard with your eyes, ears and mouth covered) it is time to reconnect with your inner being. Oh, done that in the cupboard, ok, good.

They say that in order to be loveable you must first love yourself. This is sometimes a challenge to the recently dumped. Self-esteem, self-worth and self-abuse can be at an all-time low. Not only that but hours spent in a cupboard can lead to awkward cramps and a general fear of light, air and iridescent cockroaches.

Fret not. Here are a few handy tips to self-love:

Remember that you are beautiful – when you pass mirrors (if you haven’t smashed them all) smile. Say ‘Hey gorgeous, you are looking wonderful tonight.’ ‘My God who is that attractive person?’ or, if you feel that is going too far, simply stick to ‘Good, ok, still alive.’

Treat yourself as you would like to be treated by someone who loves you (that’s you). Buy yourself flowers, chocolate, more chocolate, and many small figurines of Jean-Luc Picard. Ha, how clever, only someone who REALLY loves you would know to buy you that.

Take yourself out for a romantic evening. Many a dumpee finds it difficult to get out, go out, go. Here’s the solution - simply simulate a romantic evening in the comfort of your own home (if you still have one):

Eat a meal with your loved one - a carefully placed mirror (if you haven’t smashed them all) or photograph of yourself (choose one from ten years ago) on the seat opposite will enhance that couple effect.

Take your loved one dancing – put your mp3 player on high volume, turn the lights down low, and if you are a disco type, blink a lot to simulate a strobe effect.

Go for a romantic walk by the riverside – fill the washing-up bowl with water and a few unidentifiable bits of debris and place on floor, open the windows for that fresh-air feel, and open the bin for that romantic river smell.

Whisk your loved one off to bed – undress slowly (here is where loving yourself really comes into its own because it suddenly doesn’t matter that you have forgotten to put clean knickers on, shave or remove those stray pubes that think that the pubic area extends to the upper (and/or lower) thighs). Mutter sweet nothings (again yay, it doesn’t matter if you are actually incanting tomorrow’s shopping list or yesterday’s suduko numbers because only you can hear). If you are not now feeling truly hot - turn on the electric blanket. And, just like a real relationship, or in fact better (because you know that is going to happen), fall asleep.

When you wake in the morning and discover that you have slept blissfully with your loved one all night without them even disturbing you with incessant snoring, terrifying sleep apnoea, or twitching like a person being given electric shocks direct from the local power station then you know. It’s love.

How Not to Fall Out of Love

2007-10-20T20:13:00.000+01:00

There comes a time in many people’s relationships that’s called ‘The End’. It seldom causes the same sense of satisfaction as those mystical words rolling up as a classic film finishes, nor does one get the opportunity to discover who it was that actually played the leading roles, directed or who the mysterious man that looked like your father’s uncle was. Sometimes, often the better times, the end of a relationship is of one’s own volition. Oft as not though it is because one has been dumped, rejected and generally thrown out into the world of singledom without a by-your-leave, an excuse-me or even a darling-would-you-mind-if-I-just….

This leads to a key question many a dumpee has been forced to ask – ‘How do I fall out of love?’ Here are a few top tips:

Do not think about the object of your affections. At all. A tall order indeed but there are a number of practical aids around the house that may help –

Remove all evidence of the Beloved, including:

Photographs (especially photographs).

Items belonging to the Beloved that may have been accidentally left behind including socks, CDs, books, and pubic hair adhering to household surfaces.

Items belonging to the Beloved that may have been purposefully left behind including uncomfortable chairs, CDs of embarrassing seventies groups, books so trashy that even the Beloved thinks he doesn’t own them, and pubic hair adhering to household surfaces.

Anything that may remind one of the Beloved such as ashtrays he made for you in pottery class in 1978 when pottery classes were de rigueur, cupboard doors he may have smashed in a fit of pique, and walls he painted colours you really never liked.

Anything that may look like the Beloved such as muddy boots, life-sized models of Arnold Schwarzenegger (or possibly Woody Allen), and the Beloved’s children. Ok, perhaps not his children as they are also your children. So best simply disguise them using false beards, face-paint and gorilla costumes. Assure them that Halloween has been extended to an all-year event.

Now you have thoroughly cleansed your house all that remains is to cleanse your mind. As your mind is smaller than your house (unless you live in a world even more bizarre than the one I live in) this shouldn’t be too difficult. Perhaps. Or not. A few top tips on self-brainwashing include:

Never use any words that start with the same letter as your Beloved’s name.

Don’t, under any circumstances, watch, listen to, or read anything that is to do with love. This boils down to essentially not watching, listening to or reading anything at all. Ever.

Avoid places that you have ever made love. Hence going to bed is definitely out, as is laying the table, having a bath, taking a shower, the sofa, building a nice fire, driving, canoeing, ice skating, and bungee jumping.

At this point I can hear you asking ‘But what’s left if I avoid all of the above, good and excellent advice as it is?’

Fret not. There is still a life after being dumped. Don’t imagine that there is nowhere to go and nothing to do.

If you have a toilet that is not in the bathroom that will prove a good place to hang out. Failing that any convenient cupboard large enough to squat in will prove excellent. Then, simply cover your ears in case anyone should try and play love songs in your vicinity. Cover your eyes in case you see any stray pubic hairs that you failed to notice in your house-cleansing ritual. Close your mouth firmly lest you utter any words that begin (or for that matter, contain) any letters that are in your Beloved’s name. And voila! Out of love. Fucking sorted. Oh, but don’t use the word ‘fucking’.

How Not to Cure a Broken Heart

2007-10-17T16:45:00.000+01:00

They say that time cures all things. I can see how that applies to hams, hangovers and the flu.

But, the problem with time, as many of us know, it that it’s a tricky bugger. On any given day there is both not enough of it and far too much of it. As previously discussed I have a Things to Do list as long as a very long-armed person’s arm, in fact both their arms, and there is never enough time to do all the Things to Do. On the other hand I’m busily waiting for time to cure all. And whilst I’m busily waiting for time to cure all I’m finding it tricky to do the Things to Do because I’m busy. Waiting for time. To cure all.

Now, Einstein had a theory about time. He claimed (although I believe he never actually tested this) that if one was to move very quickly, I mean very very quickly, like quicker than a van driver on a roundabout, quicker than Superman on a trampoline, even quicker than the time it takes for a Beloved to break a heart, then time would slow down. Even go backwards.

But, in my case, since I am waiting for time to cure all, I want time to go faster. Being a bit of a scientist (the other bits of me are strictly bits of artists) I’m thinking that if I go very very slowly, slower than the slugs that enjoy my lettuces, slower than a van driver on the M25, even slower than a Beloved takes to mow a lawn, then time would speed up. And thus cure all quicker.

So this is my cunning plan:
Only move in slow motion (this will also help time to cure my broken foot)
Only drive in first gear (and again, since I won’t have to change gear that should help the foot)
Sleep – a lot (yay, another foot cure too).

Should this plan not work (although I see no reason, scientifically speaking, that it wouldn’t) I have another plan to make time pass without me actually noticing it doing so. And thus cure all.

I have got the entire 10 series of Friends on DVD. The Lawyer, being a kind-hearted self-sacrificing sort of girl, has agreed to join me in this scientific experiment into the nature of time.

I’ll see you all in 2009 when I will surely be cured.

How Probably Not to Get a Life

2007-10-14T01:03:00.000+01:00

Today I joined Facebook. Mostly due to peer pressure. Peer pressure is a powerful tool when used in the right way. When used in the wrong way it is about as useful as a broken drill, a lawnmower that won’t start or a strimmer that has run out of petrol. All of which I have, so I know just how useful they are when it comes to using them.

This is what happened:

I got an email. From my sister. It said

I've requested to add you as a friend on Facebook. You can use Facebook to see the profiles of the people around you, share photos, and connect with friends.Thanks,Andrea

You’ll note no kisses or anything. And just a friend. Not a sister. Don’t they have sisters on Facebook? However I liked the idea of connecting with friends and seeing their profiles (I’d have preferred to see them front-on but beggars can’t be choosers or whatever) so I made myself a Facebook for this express purpose. And connecting with sisters.

This is really where the problems started. They kept asking me difficult questions. Like those fucking machines in the gym. They ask difficult questions too. Things like how old I am, how much I weigh, what exactly am I intending to do on this machine, why exercise machines aren’t oranges, what is the meaning of life and is there any point to it. ‘Come on machine!’ I cry, ‘You asked me all this only yesterday! Have you no memory? What is the meaning of life? Is there any point to it?’ The machine generally whirrs gently and smells of a previous occupant’s sweat. This, I feel, is no answer to anything.

So, Facebook. Questions. Questions that made me stop and examine the meaning of life and if there was any point to it. It started ok; I aced ‘basic’ because I knew some pretty tricky stuff like my birthday, that my political views were definitely ‘other’ and that my religion was blank. I even coped with the ‘contact’ page by leaving most of it blank and then listing far too many websites for a decent and legal human being to be involved in. It was the ‘relationships’ page that left me completely flummoxed.

First it asked if I was interested in men or women. I ticked both.

Then it asked if my relationship status was;
Single
In a relationship
Engaged
Married
It’s complicated
or
In an open relationship
Ok, fine, but I WAS ONLY ALLOWED TO CHOOSE 1 OPTION.
I would have of course been able to rule out ‘engaged’ but would have put myself down as single, in a relationship, married, it’s complicated AND in an open relationship.
I opted for ‘single’. See how my life has simplified itself beyond the bounds of reason and sexual gratification?

Finally it asked what I was looking for –
Friendship
Dating
A relationship
Random play
or
Whatever I can get

Luckily (and thank you all deities for this luck) I was allowed to choose all of them. So I did. I don’t think that sounds too desperate does it?

How Not to Sympathetically Restore an Historic Vernacular Building

2007-10-08T18:02:00.000+01:00

I visited the Beloved in his swanky new flat today. So we could sign the Separation Agreement. I imagined an event rather like the signing of the Magna Carta, or the Declaration of Independence. You know, a lot of serious men in beards, quill pens, strange hats, trousers that have little flappy bits and button up at the front.

Sadly it was not to be on this historic day. But don’t worry, something historic did happen (that comes later). The Separation Agreement that I had driven through the long and windy night (or rush hour traffic depending on how you look at it) to retrieve from Spicketts & Battrick (I kid you not) in deepest Splott transpired not so much to be a Separation Agreement as an Agreement to make an Agreement. And to pay the aforementioned Spicketts & Battrick a phat load of cash.

Undeterred and only slightly tearful I determine to make light conversation:
‘Flat’s looking nice. I like your red kettle and florescent pink sheets’
‘I chose them for the colour’ Nice to see that good taste still plays a leading role in his life.
‘New trousers?’
‘Yes, M&S, but the fluff from the new carpet keeps sticking to them.’ I nod sympathetically. I understand that he too has his problems.
‘And nice new flat-screen TV.’
‘Yes, and I can use it as a monitor too.’
I am reassured that at least he has overcome his lack of sports-viewing.
‘I’ve been trying to mend the shed.’
The blank look on his face leads me to believe that he may have forgotten the shed. That, somehow, the shed no longer plays a leading role in his life. Undeterred I continue, ‘it needs new felt for the walls.’
‘I don’t think we can afford that at the moment, it’s been an expensive month.’

Still undeterred I return home. And go into the garden to reclaim the lawn from it’s status as a meadow. Whilst hard at strimming my neighbour approaches:

‘Big storm forecast for tomorrow,’ he declares in a sage-like manner.
‘Oh my God! The shed!’ I declare in a non-sage-like manner. ‘It’s still all leaky! What about my precious slightly mouldy flat-packed furniture that I’m going to sell on ebay and thus support myself and my children on for the foreseeable future?!?!!!’

My neighbour, unlike the Beloved, totally sees the crisis in the situation. He appreciates that the shed is not only a shed housing much precious belongings, but an iconic building in itself. After all, his grandfather built this magnificent edifice with his own hands. It has stood through storm, disaster, famine, various hunger pangs, and numerous light rain showers for the last 50 years. Or so. The shed is an emblem of sheddiness. Nothing, not even single-parent impecuniousness should stand in the way of the restoration of this historic piece of vernacular architecture.

‘I have some plastic,’ he offers kindly.
‘And I have some old vinyl flooring,’ I add, just to sound like I’m not totally scrounging, ‘and a staple-gun.’

This is what happened:

The plastic was bright green. The vinyl flooring was fake cork. They made a stunning combination. All my combined experience of half a degree in Architecture, years of crap DIY and a qualification in quilt-making blended seamlessly into one great work of Restoration. I think it puts previous efforts of The National Trust, World Heritage and Cadw into the shade. It even outstrips the magnificence of my Greenham Common Bender and that was almost waterproof.

This is it:

When I showed it proudly to the lawyer, and reassured her that should worse come to worst we could always live in this magnificent building she smiled. Or perhaps it was wind.

How Not to Just Fucking Sort It

2007-10-06T16:44:00.000+01:00

Well, Just Fucking Sort It September is over. And it’s time to take stock of just how very sorted everything is now. My world should be as sorted as an immaculate filing system, an accountant’s underwear drawer, a tube of Smarties after it has been sorted into different colours and then eaten in just the right order. Whatever order that is. Blues last I think.

So this is what happened:

At the beginning of Just Fucking Sort It September it was September 1st. Good start I feel. It was a Saturday, again an auspicious day. It wasn’t raining, or not much anyway, well, not enough to make the shed roof leak.

There were things that needed sorting-
The leaking shed
My underwear drawer
The flowerbed
The thousand other flowerbeds that inhabit my garden
The garden
The cupboard under the stairs
All the other cupboards
The house
My relationship with the Beloved
My life

On September 1st this didn’t seem un-ambitious. On October 6th, which happens to be today, I realise that maybe I was just a tad over-optimistic.

This is what happened:

The shed is still leaking. I fixed the roof. But then it turned out that all the walls were leaking too. Which isn’t a problem as long as all rain in the next foreseeable future remains strictly vertical. Could happen. I will therefore classify this in ‘Just Fucking Sorted’

I have given a great deal of attention to the garden. Mostly by removing most of its contents including trees, shrubs, grass, children, lost items belonging to the Beloved, small unknowable grey things, and large knowable brown things. It is now not so much a garden as a wasteland that abuts the house. Again, fucking sorted.

I have also given a great deal of attention to the house. Mostly by removing most of its contents including the most of the cupboards, my underwear drawer, furniture, spiders’ webs, walls, doors, ceilings, lost items belonging to the Beloved, small unknowable grey things and large knowable brown things. The house now resembles not so much a house but a handy building site, which could attract attractive builders. Perhaps. So, fucking sorted.

The Lawyer removed herself to her bedroom. The physicist removed herself to Uni. The snotty cat removed himself to the after-life. The Beloved removed himself to swanky flat in Radyr to cavort with his new beloved therefore ameliorating the necessity to sort my relationship with him. Tick that one off my iGoogle Things To Do List.

So, really the only item that is still left outstanding at the end of Just Fucking Sort It September is my Life.

Buy hey, given how successful I’ve been sorting everything else out, surely a life can’t be that hard?

How Not to Have a Successful Relationship

2007-09-27T00:17:00.000+01:00

They say that the most important part of a successful relationship is communication.

It’s been my ambition for quite a long time now to be ‘they’ because then people would believe me. And heed my wise words. However I have singularly failed to be plural and stalwartly remain ‘she’, which, frankly doesn’t have the same ring about it.

They say that the most important part of a successful relationship is communication.
I realise now that my communication skills have obviously been lacking. I’ve had 25 years to impart important information and yet the Beloved is still unaware of many important facts.

I also realise now, since he is moving out on Friday, that there is stuff he will probably never know. I am deeply concerned about this. It could affect his future in a profound, deep and dramatic way. He is launching into the unknown (or at least a swanky flat in Radyr) unequipped with some of the most basic knowledge that leads to a successful life.

I didn’t realise just how poor my communication skills were until this afternoon. This is what happened:

The Beloved decided that he would clean the inside of the car. I advised the hoover as a expedient, effective and moderately jolly way to remove five years of crisp crumbs, chocolate dust and unknowable little grey bits from interior car surfaces. Unusually and quite unexpectedly he agrees with me. I reel in surprise. He reels in surprise. When we have finished reeling he asks,

‘Where is the hoover?’

You see what I mean? Important information. Not communicated. No wonder he is leaving. This is such a basic and unforgivable mistake that how he never left before is slightly unimaginable.

The hoover, in case anyone is now wondering, is in the same cupboard as it has been for the last 15 years. I told the Beloved this. He looked puzzled. I drew a map (he has a degree in Geography and I thought this was the sort of thing he might relate to).

It set me thinking. What else haven’t I told him? Loads. Oops. Damn. Bother. Blast. To remedy the situation I have compiled a handy list entitled ‘What I always meant to tell you but, sorry, somehow, in the hurly-burly of family life I somehow, quite without meaning to, and with no malice of forethought or intention to do harm I forgot’.

This is the List:
Where the hoover lives
Why pans in the cupboard are stacked with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on the top
Where your glasses are (although I have mentioned this, he tends to outwit me on this one by moving them)
Why it is polite to shower
Where your keys are (although I have mentioned this, he tends to outwit me on this one by moving them)
Why precious pieces of slightly mouldy flat-packed furniture are better stored inside rather than outside the shed
What the machine with the big round window is for (he has one of those in his swanky new flat and I don’t want him trying to store milk in it)
Why it is polite to use a condom
Where your wallet is (although I have mentioned this, he tends to outwit me on this one by moving it)
Why that isn’t very nice
What women want.

I’m sure there are more. But I can always email him.
Ah, yes, that’s one – How to connect to the internet. I’ll send a letter instead.

How Not to Mend the Shed Part II

2007-09-23T11:31:00.000+01:00

Just Fucking Sort It September continues. The Save Our Shed campaign is well and truly underway. This is what happened:

As you may recall the shed is now not covered in most of the crops of middle France.
So I can now access the exterior. I thought that a peep at the roof from the outside might be helpful. After having found the ladder, which the Beloved had handily stored under some brambles, I propped it against the end of the shed. With Health and Safety in mind I measured the angle at which I had propped the ladder (20 degrees) with my school protractor. Satisfied that this fell into the recommended parameters of Health and Safety as recommended by those wise Health and Safety bods (well, only just out of the parameters anyway) I began my ascent.

I had expected to find a few loose screws (of the exterior-head variety) (already familiar with the interior-head variety), perhaps some slightly worn edges, and possibly a magpie preening its feathers. Wrong. I found a landscape akin to a deforested, storm-tossed and post apocalyptic middle France after having had all its vines removed. There were valleys filled with water, valleys filled with brown unknowable smelly stuff, a multitude of screws so loose that I’m surprised that the preening magpies hadn’t picked them up and used them as combs and toothpicks for the entire magpie population of middle Wales. There were holes of the smaller variety which could be plugged with chewing gum (am chewing that now), there were holes of the middle-sized variety, large enough for a preening magpie to use as a handy entrance. AND THERE WAS A HOLE.

This is what it looked like:

The obvious question was obviously what I was asking myself – ‘How the fuck did I miss that?’

I have a theory:
The HOLE had several attributes –
It was previously obscured by most of the foliage of middle France
It is over where the Beloved keeps his bike
The Beloved’s bike is always wet
I had assumed that the Beloved’s bike was always wet because –
He rides it in the rain
He sweats a lot
Ergo, the wetness of the bike and surrounding area was due to Beloved-related activity.

Wrong. Or somewhat wrong.

I am, however, undaunted. I examined the problem from every angle (including 20 degrees). And came up with a cunning plan:
The shed needs a new roof to protect my precious, slightly mouldy, flat-packed furniture that I’m going to sell on ebay to obviate my singe-parent impecuniousness.
A roof is made of big flat things.
I have big flat things inside the shed (my precious, slightly mouldy, flat-packed furniture that I’m going to sell on ebay to obviate my singe-parent impecuniousness).

The obvious solution comes to mind. Fucking Sorted.