How Guardian Soulmates Became the Choice of the Moderately Eccentric

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 I didn’t Meet my Guardian Soulmate

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

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.

How Not to Find a Man to Fancy You

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 Impress – Or Compost is Sexy

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 Not to Be Transformed

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 Meditate

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 to Tell if Someone Fancies You – The Reprise

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.

How Yoga Might Not Improve Your Sex Life

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

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.

How Not to Solve All One’s Problems

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 Spectacle in Spectacles

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

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

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 to be Successfully Single or How to be Single Successfully

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

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.

Not Crème Brulee

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

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

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 Shop Local

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?