How Choose A Husband by Dancing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marriage eh?

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

Life eh?

How Custard May Actually Take Over the World

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

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

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

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




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


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

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




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

Toilets in Public Places – Some Myths Blown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

50 Things Continued - A Mountaineers Story

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

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

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

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

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

For S.H. who died on Saturday

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

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

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

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