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?

A Good Bra is Hard to Find – Or How to Look Gorgeous for only £14

Bras are the bane of my life. Oh, hang on, sorry, men – look away now, this is a post about the real world of breasts. Not at all about the things that men think about breasts.

Bras are the bane of my life (did I mention that?). They have always been troublesome creatures. I understand what they are for. To hold tits. That’s fine. And especially for someone like me whose tits do need holding. So, failing having a nice lover to constantly follow me round holding my breasts in their cupped hands, I need a bra.

Now I’m wondering if one should choose one’s lover according to the size of their hands and whether or not their cupped hands are the correct cup size. If the cup fits, wear it. I can see a lot of the woes of the world might be solved if this were the case. After all, how many of us (all plus about ten) would like to know from the very outset of a relationship just whether we are compatible or not? Well, should this theory prove correct then the answer is before us all. Or at least attached to our chests. One simple test, which frankly could probably be done on the first date, or possibly anonymously, would tell us whether to bother or simply move on to a different-handed man.

I can’t believe no one has thought of this before. Just think of all the crap that’s talked about compatibility, shared interests, mutual trust, common culture, similar fetishes, and the love of architecture and/or kittens. Think of all the years of getting to know someone only to find out that you are completely mismatched. When all we had to do was say ‘grab my tits, there’s a dear.’ And all would be revealed.

Bras are the bane of my life (did I mention that?). The thing is – they just don’t fit. I don’t have those nice organised tits that are round and the nipples point semi-skyward. Never have. I have those sort of breasts that are more triangular and my nipples tend to like the view of my stomach more than my chin. So no matter which way I wadge them into a bra it’s all wrong. No longer. I have, after only a lifetime of searching, found the bra. It’s fantastic. It understands me. It understands that gravity exists. It understands my breasts, my breasts understand it. They are as mutually compatible as the aforementioned large-handed man and I are. I am in love. I look fantastic. My breasts, supported by this most magnificent piece of clothing, are no longer triangular but enormous and round.

The lawyer said ‘Mum, see, I told you you needed on of those bras.’ (hooray for the good advice of lawyers). The physicist said ‘Mum, your breasts look huge in that bra.’
The cat said ‘meow’. The beloved said ‘What are we talking about?’ The new lover with the large hands said ‘Take off that brassiere my dear’. Or was that Barry White?

How Miracles Can Happen Even in Trauma Clinic

The plaster cast is gone. HOORAY.

Despite the fact that I finally understood what it was for. It was a punishment. For being reckless. Without the appropriate Extreme Sport Insurance. Or Extreme Leisure Insurance. What I had failed to take into account was that even lying naked in a hot chicken shed/outhouse was inherent with many dangers. No one should contemplate inactive leisure pursuits without the appropriate precautions. Like being very heavily insured. So the NHS doesn’t have an excuse to take out some of its anger on you. In the form of attaching large white devils to you leg. Like having one’s home constantly disability ready. So that at any moment a crutch-bound person can manoeuvre jauntily around the building smiling and humming a merry tune.

But I must have done my stint in purgatory because today I was released.

This is what happened:

The physicist drove me to the hospital at the allotted time allotted on the appointment card. The appointment was for Trauma Clinic.

And I know why they call it that. The four-hour wait was traumatic. Luckily they don’t charge for that handy service. Not like you would pay for a fairground ride in order to traumatise yourself, or a very bad movie, or even a holiday with one’s family. No, believe it or not, the promised trauma (complete with crying babies, drunken men, gabbling old ladies and an odd smell of wee), was completely and utterly free. If we don’t take into account the parking fees, the sending the physicist to the café/shop/little trolley thing for yet more food to keep us amused. And the sending the physicist to the cashpoint for more money to buy more food to keep us amused.

But it was all totally and utterly worth it. Because the first thing that happened (after the four hours and the mountain of food and the trauma) was that a nice lady with a pair of strange scissors cut the plaster off.

It was bliss. I sighed much in the manner of someone who was not at all traumatised but had just undergone a very different sort of experience.

The doctor poked my foot.

The doctor asked for a detailed explanation of how the hell I came to break the forth metatarsal and none of the others.

I explained that I was a professional football player and simply following current fashion but putting a new and interesting twist on it by breaking a hitherto-unclaimed by-other-celeb-footballers bone. He seemed to accept that in good faith.

Then he said the dreaded word. ‘Plaster’. My heart sunk. My bliss faded. My football career was on the rocks when I had only invented it moments before.

‘No!!!’ I cried in horror.

‘A walking plaster, it will be smaller,’ he assured me, scribbling on his slip of paper.

I contemplated that for a brief interlude. A walking plaster. Handy, seeing as I couldn’t. I wondered if it could also drive and dance tango. If that were to case then I was going to accept this man’s offer. But then I hesitated. In the previous four hours I had observed many a traumatised soul emerge from the hidden depths of the clinic with plasters on. Some of the plasters were a nice shade of blue. Some of then were not adhering to legs but clutching on to people’s arms. Some people actually appeared to emerge plaster-less. But definitely none of the plasters were walking. None. I’d have noticed that. And the physicist would have commented on the unlikely physics of it.

I realised that, in his naivety this doctor was trying to make plasters sound a lot more exciting than they actually are.

‘I hated that other plaster!’ I exclaimed. Hoping he would change his mind in a way that doctors never do. That he would throw up his hands in surprised delight and declare that my foot was not broken. It was all a dream. That x-ray on the screen was simply from an archive of interesting x-rays they had scrounged off youtube and should I care to click the mouse it would dance a fandango.

He peered at the x-ray, peered at my foot, peered at the ceiling, peered at his small piece of paper. And then eureka!!! The impossible happened.

‘You could probably have a metatarsal slipper, since it is the fourth and therefore not too vulnerable.’

I had no idea what a metatarsal slipper was. But it sounded good. It sounded like something small. Unlike a plaster. Which is something big. I didn’t hesitate, or wait for any further explanation just in case it was all a dream,

‘Yes!’ I shouted much in the manner of someone who was not at all traumatised but had just undergone a very different sort of experience.

And that is just what I have. A metatarsal slipper. It is the lingerie of the bone-support world. It is small, discrete, slips on and off like a wisp of silk demonstrating how well-shaven a leg is. It looks like this:




And HA to all you harbingers of doom that predicted I would be in plaster for 6 weeks.

And sorry all the men who were developing plaster fetishes just to please me. But really, metatarsal slippers, you have to admit, fucking sexy eh?