flossing the cat

ON YER BIKE

2020-07-29T13:54:00.024+01:00

The other half reckons he's a keen cyclist. This is because twenty five years ago, as a lovelorn young man, he cycled to the south of France with a girl he was running away with. After some sad and awkward sexual rummaging in an even sadder two-man tent, the girl told him she was actually a lesbian.

Now, as if to prove that the cycling gene still throbs like a strong throbbing thing within his soul, the other half has got his bike fixed.
'I put new tyres on,' he says. 'It's ready to go.'
'That's super cool sweetie,' I say. 'But don't overdo it. If you factor in that you cycled at least two hundred and fifty miles about twenty five years ago, you're already averaging ten miles a year.'
'God. You're such a bitch sometimes,' he laughs, darkly.
'Aaaw. I thought you said I was a cunt,' I say, disappointed.

Needless to say, the cycling gene is not present in anybody else in the family. One of my children was the only child in class to fail the Year 6 Cycling Proficiency Course, which is probably the only time a child has failed the Year 6 Cycling Proficiency Course since the dawn of publicly funded education.

As for me, my last and final encounter with a pushbike was when I was nine years old, which was coincidentally the last time I possessed rudimentary mind-body coordination. Or So I Thought. The bike was a new three-speed MK2 Raleigh Chopper in Space Blue, with high chrome handlebars that dipped thrillingly in the middle, a rear bike rack that screamed 'adventure', a long saddle you could slide back and forth on. Excitedly I took the bike to the cemetery at the top of our cul de sac, where the sloping pathways went on forever. But then, pedalling down an incline through the trees, I suddenly forgot where the brakes were. Were they attached to the handlebars? Or the head tube? Were they something to do with the pedals? Or the wheels? And what the fuck were brakes anyway? I saw the tree before I could process it. A huge rangy thing, rearing upwards at an unnatural angle, filling everything in my field of vision. Luckily, thanks to a helmet the size of actual Jupiter, the ONLY real injuries I sustained were psychological, emotional, and social.

This spectacular lack of aptitude for the bicycle has, however, been particularly obvious during lockdown, when my social media feed has been full of pictures of families cycling through poppy fields or along rivers, towing picnics and memories, whilst the pale-faced spawn of my own withered (by now potentially gangrenous) uterus, routinely refuse sunlight, air, or exercise.

Which is why I thought that Boris Johnson offering free bicycles to the more rotund members of our community might be a good thing.
'You needn't have fixed up your bike,' I say. 'Boris might have given you one. Neither of us is exactly Slender Man.'
'Fucksakes,' he says.
'If they sort out the cycling infrastructure, I'd give it another go,' I add. 'It's the only good thing he's done.'
The other half looks at me as if I've said that the Third Reich was just a bunch of tragically misunderstood dorks, or that the Uighur Muslims had it coming, or that actually, when you think about it, All Lives Matter.
'Maybe you should join the Conservatives,' he says. 'Or go suck Norman Tebbit's dick.'
'Nom nom nom,' I say.

The other half rises from the sofa with the kind of vehemence and determination I haven't seen in a long time. I hear him rifling through the under-the-stairs-cupboard, and I wonder if he's looking for his day-glo padded bib tights and cycling gloves, which regrettably, I've donated to charity. I wonder if he's going on a bike ride, just to show me he doesn't need Fucking Boris Johnson telling him to go on a bike ride to actually go on a bike ride. Or something.

But then he returns to the sofa. With his laptop.
'I'm gonna buy with one of those wall-mounted bike hooks,' he says.

The picture of Norman 'OnYerBike' Tebbit on the bedroom wall of my dreams. A hard wank. But worth it.

PS For those of you under one hundred, Norman Tebbit MP was Employment Secretary in Margaret Thatcher's government. He infamously advised the unemployed to get on their bikes to look for work. You're welcome.

FIRST DATES DATE NIGHT

2017-05-12T11:36:00.003+01:00

The OH and I like watching 'First Dates'.

He likes the young couples. I like the old couples.

This week, the old couple are octogenarians Eric and Jenny, who have lost spouses to cancer. Eric is an ardent devotee of Argentinian tango. Jenny likes rock festivals and 'Snow Patrol'.

"Not sure I can watch old people eating cheese fondue", says the OH, as Eric and Jenny tuck into starters.

"Why not?" I say.

"Reminds me of pus", he says.

To be fair, it is Jenny who says the fondue looks like "bandages", so maybe it is she who puts the thought in his head. But I am still indignant.

"D'you think people would be revolted by the sight of us sharing a cheese fondue?" I say.

"We're not that old yet", he says.

I am not convinced.

"No, but say I dropped an after-dinner mint down my top and had to ferret around between my shrunken dugs to retrieve it, would people reach for the sick bucket?"

He sighs.

"Or, say they had to watch me lifting an oyster to my shrivelled oral cavity, then suck the oyster out like it was eighty-year-old cum, would they end up blowing chunks on their dinner?"

"Or, if I was moving my thinning lips along the length of a moist corn of the cob shaft, gripping it with veiny claws, dropping butter on my chin hair, would people be trampling each other to fucking death in a stampede for the door? Would they?!!!"

"I"m missing the programme", he says.

A twenty two year old lingerie model walks through the restaurant door. The young men stare. One man does a 360 degree head spin that is ickier than the head spin in 'The Exorcist'. His eyeballs bulge the fuck out of their sockets, like he's the result of millennia of inbred pug breeding.

"Thing I like about the old people is they have lovely stories", I say. "They know who they are. The young couples flounder around a bit until they discover they both like chihuahuas and/or 'The Lion King'. Also, who in the name of christ 'blow dries' their vagina?!"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he says.

"Laura from Kent", I say. "Remember her? Blow dries her 'noo noo' before a date. The one who said she used to be "a lesbican".

"A lesbican?"

"A lesbican."

Meanwhile, Eric and Jenny are being asked whether they'd like to see each other again. Eric says yes. Jenny says yes. Eric is going to teach Jenny the tango. Jenny plans to cook Eric a fondue-free feast.

"All they talk about is their dead wives, husbands", says the OH. "It's great they haven't given up, that they've come out the other side, but it's still depressing".

"I think First Dates should do a bereavement special" I say, as the end credits roll. "It would be ray of sunshine in a youth-obsessed schedule."

"Fucksake", says the OH.

THE RUDE MECHANICALS

2017-05-09T12:49:00.001+01:00

People are starting to talk about my car.

"Your car is way old", says my daughter's classmate. "Is it from Tudor times?"

They're doing the Tudors in school.

"It's only seventeen years old", I say.

I admit that my car is not exactly a luxury brand. Frankly, it is a steaming turd of a car. If you stand close enough, you can hear rusting. On the other hand, it is still my car. So I am more than a little offended by the attitude of the mechanic who gives it an MOT last week.

"Sorry it took so long", he says, when I pick it up from the garage. "When you brought THAT in, me and Andrew, we were, like, you're having a fucking laugh aint' ya?!"

The mechanic leans back in his chair and laughs malevolently, which makes his neck fat jiggle. I laugh too. (Usually, the more offensive and/or the more sexist a comment is, the more I laugh.) This is because I am a pathetic people pleaser.

"But it passed yeah?" I say.

He wipes a greasy discharge triggered by the exertion of laughter from his chin, then lowers and raises his head, briefly, in assent.

"Thing with bangers is the engines sometimes last longer than the bodywork”, he says. “Andrew said it wasn’t quite as crap as it looks.”

"Great. Brilliant" I say. "How much do I owe?"

His fat stubby fingers hover over the MOT certificate. It is clear he doesn't want to give me the paperwork until he is satisfied that I have absorbed into my very being the horrible horror of my vehicle. He sets his pen on the table.

"Thing is love, after you came in, this guy in a Land Rover drives up. Said he was a waiter", he says.

I don't know what he's talking about.

“Waiter?” I ask.

The mechanic looks exasperated. It is as he suspected. Anybody who drives about town in a travesty of an automobile is bound to have the IQ of a bag of cocks.

“As in: He. Was. Going. To. Wait. In. The. Office”, he says, slowly, for my benefit. “So we did the Land Rover first. That's why it took so long. Though it wasn't just cos the driver was waiting. Fucking beaut it was. Dog’s bollox. We had to toss a coin over who was gonna do yours!”

He laughs triumphantly. Ho ho ho ho. Ha ha ha ha. He is the Jabba the Hutt of mechanics. Sweat pours out from between the creases of his lardaceous neck fat like oil from the old Castrol GTX advert.

"Ta", I say, in what is the climax of my Doormat of the Year routine. "Thanks anyway".

Later, driving my hunk of junk home, I start wondering if, maybe, I should get a new car. OK, it would be totes bad for the environment, but at least it wouldn't smell like steamed monkey shit, and the window rubbers would be free of algae.

On the other hand, if I did get me a fancy car, there is a chance Jabba and his sidekick Andrew would take it in turns to jerk off into the glove box during the MOT, which is obviously unacceptable, so I'll stick with the Corsa after all.

PISS BRULEE, ANYONE?

2017-01-26T14:36:00.000+00:00

The dog has bad breath. And by bad I mean gruesome.

For example, if you were to rate smells on a scale of one to ten, where one represented good, bacterial vaginosis would be one, and Daisy’s breath would be ten.

“Any chance you can take Daisy to the vet?” I say to my husband. "Her breath is rank.“

The dog has heard us talking about her. She is wagging her tail. This is because she has no self-esteem. Zero. You could literally say anything:

Let’s put Daisy on a one-way flight to Korea.
OR:

Daisy smells like she's been sampling Mike Pence's pump-action yoghurt rifle.

OR:

Daisy is a bigger twat than Michael Flatley.

And she would STILL wag her tail.

My husband takes her to the vet.

“Could you take a look at her teeth?” he says to the veterinary nurse. “My wife thinks her breath smells.”

“I can’t see anything”, says the nurse, taking a look. “Is your wife, maybe, being a bit neurotic?”

I am a little peeved by this response. Last time I looked at the nurse’s name badge, it said Becky, not fucking Sigmund. My husband, on the contrary, thinks this is the most perceptive thing anybody has EVER said. I’m surprised he doesn’t shag her there and then. Maybe he does.

“Probably!” he says. “Thank you.”

He brings back a bottle of ‘Plaque Off’. As recommended by Becky. The title is worryingly lightweight. I turn the bottle around, hoping to read something along these lines:

Does your dog smell like she's downed a sewage smoothie?
Do your worry that your dog's oesophagus leads directly to the realm of the dead?
Do you regularly consider running away from your home, family and children, just to be free of the gut-churning abomination of your pet's breath?

If you answered yes to any of these question, sprinkle a fuckload of this on their food.

Instead, the Plaque Off label cautiously recommends one scoop a day for eight weeks.

“I can't take another eight weeks of this nightmare!” I say.

Daisy wags her tail at my side. She seems euphoric.

Later, I see her trotting into the downstairs toilet. I hear slurping.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I shout.

I run in after her.

Daisy has her head in the toilet bowl. She is imbibing piss. Piss with skin on it. Piss brulee. She gives me a look as if to say, “This is delicious. Wanna try some?”

“Bed” I say. “Go to your bed!”

But it’s happy hour at the sewers. It’s drink-all-you-can at the Number One bar. Time has not been called on THIS pee-pee party.

“Bed” I say, louder now. “Get to your bed!”

Finally, she lifts her head up, a shudder of pleasure passing through her body into her tail.

I lift the lid of the toilet cistern, fiddle with the flush mechanism. For days now, the flush hasn’t worked properly. The kids aren’t supposed to use the toilet, but they do. I replenish the dog's water bowl.

I text my husband: Caught Daisy drinking piss. Need to fix the toilet. Explains the breath problem xx

He texts back immediately: Stop obsessing. You're being neurotic.

VOICE MAIL

2016-10-05T14:56:00.001+01:00

I still haven't set up the voice mail system on my new smartphone.

This troubles my husband, who fears I could Miss Out.

"Somebody could be trying to get in touch with you", he says. "It could be important".

The truth is that I hate anything to do with phones and/or leaving messages, but checking voice mail is the absolute pits. Checking voice mail is like opening up Pandora's Box, except that instead of sickness, death, turmoil, strife, jealousy, hatred, and famine, you just get guilt, guilt, and then, oh hello again, guilt.

The voice mail on the landline is bad enough. All week, the message icon has been flashing at me like The Eye of Sauron.

"What have I done now? What? WHAT???" I scream. "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!"

Actually I don't scream, I just talk. To scream at the answering machine would be deranged.

Meanwhile, my mind runs through messages it might be harbouring. For example:

Is my mother worried sick about me because she hasn't heard from me in, like, 8 hours?
Did an elderly relative die, broken hearted, because I forgot to send her a thank you card for the birthday money she sent the kids?
Did I forget to RSVP someone? Did I forget to pay someone?
Are the PPI people still mad at me over my lacklustre response to the outstanding PPI claim I may or may not have?
Or, does somebody urgently need to contact Mr and Mrs Twining, who used to live here back in the day and who, incidentally, managed to get themselves onto every fucking tele-marketing database in the known universe, useless tits.

In the end, I check the messages, holding the phone away from me to reduce the impact.

The first two messages are from my mother.

"Hello? Hello? It's your mother (followed by her first name, in case I've forgotten)." And then, "Hello? HELLO? Is anybody there? ANYBODY?"

Immediately, I am overwhelmed by a sinking guilt feeling of the kind you'd only normally feel if you fucked up on a global scale; i.e, if you broke the bit in the Hadron Collider that stops the Earth from being sucked into another dimension, or, if you triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty whilst trying to renew your passport online. I delete both messages instantly.

The third message sounds like it comes from the innermost circle of Hell, an atrocious mash-up of caterwauling and static. I start thinking it might be a curse, like the video in 'The Ring'. I worry in case deleting the message activates the curse. I save it. I delete it. I'm a mess.

I take a break to compose myself before tackling the last message, piling through the kids' stash of fun-size chocolate bars in what could easily come across as a frenzy of self-loathing. Eventually I hit play.

"This is a courtesy call from the dental clinic. From our records, we note with concern that your children are overdue ....

This is the worst message of all. The receptionist at the dental clinic is the scariest mofo in all christendom, a master of the dark arts, the dentist's most loyal servant. Once, while we were at the clinic, she offered the six-year-old a bejewelled Frozen sticker, dangling it before her as though it were a fifty pound bank note impregnated with LSD.

"But first, perhaps you'd like to tell me how many times a day you brush your teeth?" she said, her voice combining sadism with pseudo motherliness.

"Twice a day for two minutes", said the six-year-old.

Unfortunately for the six-year-old, the eight-year-old was standing behind her, giving a big zero fucks.

"We SO never do it in the morning", he said. "And if we get in REALLY late, mammy says it's ok to go straight to bed."

The receptionist made a sinister sucking sound, before pulling the sticker away.

"How about you all have one when you're brushing your teeth properly. Isn't it mummy?" she said.

At the time, I wanted to tell that although my children might not be the most fastidious of flossers, at least they didn't go around with so much fake tan on they looked like evil oompa loompas, unlike her. And at least they didn't draw their own eyebrows on. But that would have been childish, and impolite. So I didn't.

I eat the last of the kids' fun-size chocolate bars and delete the message from the dental receptionist. Later, I'll have to return the calls, sort out thank you cards, RSVP everybody, lie about things going into junk mail and/or getting lost in the post, and generally apologise for being an irresponsible excuse for a human being. There will then follow a brief few moments of guilt-free tranquillity, before the message icon resumes flashing.

That said, I'm gonna set up the voice mail system on my smartphone tomorrow. Honestly.

THE GANGSTA GRANNY OMNISHAMBLES

2016-09-16T17:19:00.000+01:00

Dear Facebook Friends,

Please forgive me for not posting any pictures of my darling little ones in their Roald Dahl Day costumes this week.

You see, the thing is, we suck at school dress-up days.

In our house, school dress-up days provoke a level of emotional fervour normally associated with nineteenth century melodrama. And besides, a photo of a child going blue in the face due to breathing problems caused by an admittedly cheap Mr Twit beard, pictured alongside a child whose face is so puffed up from twenty minutes of non-stop crying she looks more like Jupiter than Matilda, is a clear breach of the Facebook Picture Posting Etiquette Guide.

This is not the first time I have failed to provide photographic evidence of school dress-up days for social media.

Take last year's World Book Day.

It started well, as is so often the case, with the ten-year-old announcing she wanted to go as 'Gangsta Granny'.
"We can sort that in ten minutes!" I said smugly.

And so, grabbing a granny wig from the dress-up box, a cardie my mother bought me from the 'Per Una' range (ooh, thanks mum, I especially love the pearlised buttons and embellished trim), and other bits and pieces, I threw them over her, like a total pro.

"There!" I said proudly. "Gangsta Granny!"

She studied herself in the mirror.

"Sick", she said. "Thanks mam."

But then, the following morning, with less than seven minutes to go before we needed to leave the house for the school run, and with me fannying about looking for the front door keys using a new beeping Trackr device that incidentally is only audible if you’re fucking Wolverine, there was an inhuman shriek from the dining room.

"I look ugly! Fat AND ugly!"

The ten year old was staring at herself in the mirror, wearing the Gangsta Granny costume.

"It's fancy dress", I said lightly. "It's not a fashion show."

"I look like a pig!" she said, her face morphing into The Scream face. "A disgusting fat PIG!"

"Go as Peppa Pig then" piped up the eight year old, who was only half listening.

"I HATE you, you're an idiot", she turned to him.

"Quiet" I said, "Both of you. We've got to leave in SIX minutes!"

But it was too late. The granny wig flew across the dining room towards the eight-year-old, knocking a cereal bowl full of coco pops out of his hand.

"Clean it up, both of you!" I yelled.

I returned to the kitchen to get kitchen roll. Finding another costume, now, was impossible. At the same time, I remembered how, one St David's Day, my mother had forced me to wear a traditional stove pipe hat to school, a tall shiny construction handmade by our cousin Winnie. The hat was the millinery equivalent of the Burj Khalifa, with scalloped frills that hung on either side of my face like humongous labia. The other girls, all of whom wore adorable bonnets bought from Tesco, giggled nervously when they saw me. The boys sang The Grand Old Duke of York.

I didn't want my daughter to feel the same as I'd felt.

Channelling Abraham Lincoln. An approximation of how I looked on that fateful St. David's Day.

"Sweetheart. You don’t have to dress up in anything if you don’t want to", I said. "Just go in your school uniform. Loads of parents will have forgotten."

"No they won't", she said. "Only YOU forget stuff.”

"What about Veruca Salt then?" I said, trying to stay calm. "We've got all the stuff upstairs. I could bring it down to you in school."

"Noooooooooooooooo", she wailed. "You're SO embarrassing." "You don’t care about me!"

"Of course I care about you. Stop being silly!"

I bundled the other two in the car, leaving the front door wide open. Because, you know, when you're THIS stressed, who gives a fuck about possessions.

"Get in the car", I said to the ten-year-old, who was now weeping in a way that recalled a 'You Tube' video of North Koreans lamenting the death of Kim-Jong-il.
"We'll discuss it when we get to school."

The next hour was a blur. At school, I headed for the classroom to tell the teacher about the Gangsta Granny debacle, leaving the ten-year-old wailing in the car. In Asda, I bought an Alice-in-Wonderland-type-thing, which was too small and cost a fortune, (although I'd have refinanced the house for a headband with the right fucking detailing), then drove my daughter back to school. And then, just as I was parking up at home, I remembered the 50p for the Infants' Section bastard book fair and drove back to school for a third time. And so, it wasn't until later, whilst I was wiping milk off the Gangsta Granny wig and making a mental list of the pros and cons of suicide vs home-schooling, I realised I'd forgotten to take photographs for Facebook.

Sorry.

PS: This year's Roald Dahl Day was not as calamitous. After hacking massive chunks off the Mr Twit Beard using a nail scissors I found in my bag, (allowing the eight-year-old to breathe normally), and then promising the six-year-old that if she stopped crying for just one second over the girl next door’s Veruca Salt costume (which was "prettier" than hers), I'd organise a colossal truckload of Starmix to be delivered straight to her bedroom door, everything was finally ok. So, you know, coolio. See you at the next dress-up day folks!

TO A HUSBAND WITH NO SENSE OF SMELL

2016-05-03T21:54:00.001+01:00

My husband has a condition called anosmia. This means he has no sense of smell.

For the most part, this works out pretty well for me.

For a start, I never have to buy scented sanitary towels. (Although why any woman needs a scented sanitary towel, unless she has a) neglected to change her sanitary pad in, like, two days, and also happens to be in a heatwave, or b) recently noticed her vagina is exuding a pyroclastic flow of green slime, is beyond me.)

Ditto any other feminine hygiene products.

But there are downsides to having a husband who can't smell.

For example, deep down, my husband believes there is no such thing as a bad smell. He prefers the idea that bad smells are simply figments of my imagination, originating in deep-seated neuroses and hysteria. So, if I say, "Darling, the living room is redolent with the smell of shite", or, "Did you happen to tread in a bunch of dog shit when you went to get those logs from the garden and then smear it over the carpet like some FUCKING FUCK?", he'll usually mutter something about PMT under his breath.

PMT? Moi? As if!!

Another phrase he won't tolerate is "I think I can smell gas."

This is what would happen if I said I could smell gas: I would be hustled into a locked attic like Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre. Anybody asking about me would be told I'd suffered a rapid and catastrophic descent into madness and been sent to the countryside. (And all this because I once called out an emergency gas engineer when the actual source of the gas smell was some dead flowers.) So what! Sniffer dogs get it wrong four times out of five, and they still get given biscuits. I didn't even get as much as a thank you.

But the worst aspect of my husbands anosmia is that when it comes to the thing Chanel describes as the sexual allure of a woman's scent, I am beyond fucked. Whilst other women need do nothing except ovulate to be at the peak of their deliciousness, I have to 'work it' in other ways. All of which are a gazillion times more challenging. In other words, if I want to play mummies and daddies, I can't just waft the womanly bouquet of my armpits about the place, or douse myself in pheromones and then twat about Paris on a motorbike in a flesh-coloured catsuit, like Keira, or climb up a silk scarf ladder in full evening gown through a fucking skylight into some surreal Parisian landscape, like Charlize, oh no no no, I have to rely on, wait for it, The Way I Look!! And this after three children. And one good night's sleep. About eight years ago. Ha ha ha ha ha! *laughs grimly into the long, lonely night, like Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre*

On the bright side, I can fart whenever I like. Which is bloody excellent news.

LARRY THE CHIN HAIR

2016-04-20T09:58:00.000+01:00

My eleven year old has become obsessed with the question of lady whiskers.

MY lady whiskers.

I catch her standing in the kitchen doorway staring at me as I cook dinner. She looks decidedly queasy.

"You ok?" I say. "Something wrong?"

She is staring directly at my face. Clearly, my face is the thing that is wrong.

"It's a stubble isn't it?" I say, finally.

Her concern over my chin hair has become routine. Terrified that I might be morphing into Gandalf, she has taken to scanning my face for deviant follicles. I give my chin a quick sweep to reassure her.

"Nothing there", I say breezily. "I plucked them this morning!"

I see her gag and little and figure that "plucked" is one of those words, (like "moist" or "Michael Gove"), that revolts people.

"It's underneath. In the middle!" she says, with rising hysteria. "It's sticking out loads. It's totally black".

"I can't deal with it now!" I say, a little shoutily. "I"m cooking dinner."

Afterwards I feel bad for raising my voice at her. I have already embarrassed her enough this year by posting pictures of my armpits on Facebook during an outburst of feminist defiance.

"It's still there mammy", she says, as I'm settling her down to bed later that evening.

"I'll sort it in the morning", I say. "I promise."

"I want to do it now", she says. "Please."

I hand her my emergency tweezers. As she bends over me, I can smell the rhubarb and custard bath bomb her best friend bought for her; the more grown-up smell of chewing gum. I can see the concentration in her eyes, less blue than they once were; a serious, sea-green colour now. I am painfully aware that she is projecting all her anxieties about growing up onto my chin hair.

"It's gone all curly" she says, after a couple of attempts. "It's worse than before! LITERALLY!"

"Adele had a beard", I say. "When she was pregnant. Loads of women have facial hair. It's totally natural."

I want her to know facial hair doesn't matter half as much as she thinks it does - that you can be totes awesome WITH facial hair. (Although possibly not a humongous chevron moustache like our ex-neighbour Barbara). I want her to know that the people who love you, will love you anyway.

"There" she says, completely ignoring me. "I got it out for you."

She offers me the tiniest brown hair.

"What shall we call it then?" I say.

"You're super gross!" she shrieks, but then, a few minutes later, as I'm scratching her back, she turns to me giggling.

"Larry" she says. "That's what Adele called her beard."

"Larry it is then" I say.

PS: You may have noticed that I used the words "moist" and "Michael Gove" in close proximity. This is pure coincidence and not an indicator of any weird sexual proclivities.

PPS "Secrete", "squirt" and "Sajid Javid" are also words people find repellent. Just saying.

DAISY, DAISY

2015-09-03T10:26:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I blogged. The reason, dear readers, is this:

DAISY. (No relation of Kiss lead singer Gene Simmons, in spite of the tongue)

Yes folks. A couple of months ago, we acquired a dog. A two-year-old boxer called Daisy, whose role was to shake our family out of its iPad-induced inertia, and get us out and about. Like the von Trapp family. But with poo bags.

But what we hadn’t quite accounted for was the sheer magnitude of Daisy’s walking habit.

The fact of the matter is that Daisy likes walking. Daisy like walking more than Lord Sewel likes to wear orange bras and leather jackets whilst snorting coke off the chest of a prostitute. Daisy likes walking more than Gwyneth Paltrow likes to give her nether beard a good old steam clean. Daisy likes walking even more than she likes the smell of asshole, which, my friends, is saying something. All of which means I now spend seven hours a week walking Daisy, when I could be blogging, in addition to the other three or four hours I spend walking her on weekends, with the family. Who now loathe me.

But it’s not just the walking. In fact, the other day, following an epic walkathon around the village (think Reese Witherspoone in the film 'Wild'), I experienced a renewed sense of purpose that lasted for at least several minutes! So, you see, the walking is almost invigorating. No, when it comes to Daisy, the straw that breaks the camel’s back, or in my case, the increasingly obvious dowager’s hump, is the extra cleaning. The hallway, once a welcoming reception area with original feature tiles et al, now has the kerb appeal of a fucking squat. And every time we leave the house, which is never for longer than a couple of hours, we return to a river of glistening dog phlegm, the remnants of what was once an elegant Edwardian front door, floating through it, post-apocalyptically.

The front door. Absolutely fooked.

And then there’s also the smell that greets us on our return. The smell of Daisy's separation anxiety. A putrid, gamy smell underscored by what can only be described as a lurid bass note of fear. Or, as Shakespeare might have put it were he to come round for a cup of tea, "Christ love, this is the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril".

"Get a grip Daisy!" I say, grabbing the mop, which I may as well wear around my neck on a chain, like old folks do with spectacles. "We were only gone for three bloody nanoseconds!"

She looks up at me lovingly, her whiskers festooned with chips of vintage anaglypta wallpaper, the masticated remains of period skirting boards glued to her lip.

"Oh what's the point", I say, patting her head.

On the plus side, the kids secretly love walking into the woods with her, even though they weep with a kind of biblical hysteria whenever I ask them to pause 'You Tube'. They love, too, the deranged lopsided way in which she runs, and then runs some more; the excitement she demonstrates if you show her a ball; her ridiculously cute outsized tongue. And as a family we have gone to wild, remote places that we would never have usually gone to. Dunes. Forests. Mountains. Abandoned quarries. In short, she has forced us to see the world through a dog's eye, as a place of joy, and wonders, and immense possibilities. And for that I cannot thank her enough.

And if it means fewer blog posts while I get used to everything, then so be it …

HOUSE OF PAIN

2015-04-27T15:07:00.001+01:00

A contagious strain of hypochondria is sweeping through our house, thwarting all attempts at physical activity.

The ten-year-old points to a cluster of tiny spots on her forearm and informs me she is allergic to sunlight. Her eyes shimmer with the kind of longing I recognize from my own teenage flirtation with exotic maladies.
“I don’t have ANY allergies”, says the five-year-old, developing a pronounced limp as she approaches us. “But the back of my knee hurts a lot.”

The five-year-old has acquired a range of issues that affect her mobility. The back of her knee is a total bastard, but there is also an itch under the nail of her big toe, and a surface scratch on her calf, which reminds her of the vulnerability of human flesh.

“Such a drama queen”, says the ten-year-old.

The ten-year-old has a short memory. Last year, she was THIS close to putting “crutches” on her wish list for Father Christmas. Also, those who don’t have to walk anywhere, i.e. amputees, paraplegics, and the wheelchair-bound, still give her the hump.

Pitiful grunting noises now accompany all trips to the kitchen, whilst those familiar with the TV series Ninja Warrior will know what I mean when I say that the sounds my daughters make as they go upstairs is EXACTLY the same sound Ninja Warrior contestants make when they scale Mount Midoriyama.

“Why can’t we get an elevator already?” protests the ten-year-old.

“The word is lift”, I say, pointlessly. “Elevator is an Americanism.”

“Me and Annie are getting houses with glass elevators. Like the ones in shopping malls”, she says, lingering over the word 'mall'.

Annie is one of my daughter’s best friends. She and my daughter hope to commission an Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with jelly beans, which not only says a lot about their attitude to exercise, but confirms my suspicion that 'Water Babies' was, in hindsight, an even bigger waste of money than baby yoga, baby massage, and FUCKING. MONKEY. MUSIC.

"Carry me mammy!” wails the five-year-old, languishing on the third step.

This is a photograph of somebody else's daughters. Obviously.

I worry that they get it from me. When I was a teenager, I watched a film called The Man With Two Brains, in which Steve Martin’s character falls in love with a living brain stored in a jar of liquid, with which he communicates telepathically. I longed to be the brain-in-the-jar woman. The brain-in-the-jar woman never had to endure the ritual humiliation of rounders. The brain-in-the-jar woman never had to stagger around the yard like a penguin, thanks to constantly twisted ankles. The brain-in-the-jar woman never had to adopt the posture of a hunchback to conceal her height. Nobody ever looked at the brain-in-the-jar woman and thought, “OMG. A gigantic hunchbacked fucking penguin.”

But I digress.

The fact is that nowadays, I’m definitely more committed to the idea of exercise and wellbeing than my family.

“Why don’t we do some of the Wales Coast Path?” I say to my husband, as we are on a family holiday in West Wales recently.

My husband looks at me with a blend of horror and bewilderment, as though I have suggested we douse ourselves in urine and go on a naked looting spree of nearby historic towns. The girls, who are sitting on the sofa salivating over You Tube images of The Person With The Most Verrucas Ever, look up from their iPads, stricken.

“I was awake all night. I didn’t sleep until it was light”, says the ten-year-old. “This is the MOST tired I’ve ever been.”

“My pants has gone up my bottom”, wails the five-year-old. “It’s REALLY ouchy!”

The situation is so dire that I have capitulated to getting a dog, which we pick up this weekend; an energetic two-year-old boxer called Daisy, who promises to be the cure for our collective hypochondria. Inspired by the dog’s infectious energy, my daughters will shun their iPads in favour of hopscotch, skipping ropes, and ball games. (Although when I say ball games, I don’t mean hockey. Hockey sticks contain an iron core forged in Hell. Hockey also has the effect of turning girls into cold-blooded handmaidens of Satan. It’s true.) No, when I say ballgames, I mean donkey, or piggy in the middle.

I test my theory out on the ten-year-old, as we are walking home from school the other day.

“Are you looking forward to going for walks with the dog?” I say, hopefully.

“Yes. But only when my ankle’s better”, she says. "I think I twisted it."

“Owww”, says the five-year-old, from behind.

VIGILANTE LYCANTHROPE

2015-03-12T23:08:00.000+00:00

Did I tell you the one about the werewolf, the cul-de-sac in suburbia, and the courting couple?

Well, the story starts one weekday evening, back in the Eighties, with my mother furiously attempting to rid the lounge window of the coating of dust produced by the crematorium opposite.

“Ych a fi” she says, her face like a cat's bum. “No self-respect.”

I follow her gaze to the lay-by outside the cemetery gates, where two teenagers are busy sucking each other’s faces off in the front seat of a green Ford Cortina. I am almost fourteen at the time – but my experience of open mouth kissing is limited to the time Great Auntie Maud launched her tongue into my mouth thinking I was her dead husband, the great big lezzer - so I lean into the window to get a better view.

“They’re only snogging”, I conclude.

For my mother, however, there is no such thing as “only snogging”. Snogging involves EXACTLY the same level of risk as eating your dinner straight off the toilet seats in Castle Gardens where the tramps live, or injecting yourself in the face with pure, molten AIDS. It is also signals that you are probably *said in a low whispering tone audible only to bats, god, and The Neighbours* "LOOSE".

“God only knows where you’ve come from”, she says, shaking her head at me.

She turns to the window to attack the dust again, but the scene from the car is too much for her. Already, first base has given way to second base; to a degree of teenage flesh-mongering and upper body fondling that is, frankly, unpalatable.

“David! You need to do something!” she yells.

My father hurries into the lounge, the look of guilt on his face suggesting he has been indulging his all-time favourite pastime of standing in the hallway, staring into the middle distance.

“Get rid of them”, she says, pointing at the Cortina. “It’s disgusting!”

Ten minutes later, my father reappears in the lounge, this time wearing the white laboratory coat he wears to work. This if baffling enough as it is, but the fact he has accessorised it with a BIG FUCK-OFF WEREWOLF MASK means that for a few long minutes, nothing in the world makes any sense.

“Why are you dressed like that?” says my mother, finally.

“I tried the vampire one”, says my father. “But this one looks better with the coat."

The werewolf mask, gifted to us by a cousin who runs a fancy dress stall in Carmarthen, is an all-over latex hood, with wrinkled cadaverous skin, a muzzle that is matted with stage blood, and lifelike strawberry-blonde hair backcombed to within an inch of its life. In a certain light, you'd be forgiven for thinking, "What in the name of cowing fuck is Bonnie Tyler doing in that lab coat?"

My mother is as yet unconvinced. "It’s getting dark though”, she says. “You won’t be able to see properly with that thing on. Just knock on the window and tell them off!”

“I’ll be fine!” he says. “It’s just a bit of fun!”

Werewolf mask

Bonnie Tyler mask. (Image by Jack Mooney)

We watch from the lounge window as my father emerges from the back lane that runs the length of our houses. He looks in our direction for approval, before crossing the road towards the cemetery.

“He’s going to trip on the paving”, says my mother. “Bloody idiot.”

Meanwhile, things are stepping up a gear in the Ford Cortina. The boy in the driver’s seat is covering more ground, though when I say ground, I mean tits. My father creeps towards them along the cemetery's perimeter walls. When he reaches the nearside of the Cortina, he ducks down. Knocks on the driver’s side window. For a moment, nothing happens. Maybe the mask isn't good enough. Maybe they’re both thinking, “Bonnie Tyler looks like absolute fucking shit tonight.” But then, in the next instant, the girl’s jaw drops, her pupils spread. She looks like the guy on the bridge in The Scream - but with a scrunchie. And although I can’t remember the boy’s face, I do remember the panicky revving tones; the lurch of the chassis as it stalls; the way the car finally hurtles past our window towards the junction.

“Bloody well done”, says my mother, when my father lets himself in through the back door.

"Sweating buckets", says my father, tearing the hood off.

His shoulders are angled downwards, hinting at dissatisfaction. I can tell that he’d wanted them to see through the whole vigilante lycanthrope routine and recognise it as a sidesplitting example of suburban pranking.

“I’ll have to wash it. I don’t want the rubber perishing”, says my mother, grabbing the hood from him.

“It was funny though, right?” says my father, looking at us.

We nod. Because we love our dad, and he IS funny. In a what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-now-you-absolute-mentalist kind of way.

“The look on the girl’s face was priceless!” says my mother. “Priceless!”

My father draws my mother towards him. Within seconds, they are frenching it, playing tonsil hockey, snogging; celebrating their moral victory with an ironic pastiche designed to introduce the notion that the proper context for snogging is, in fact, the kitchen, under a twitching fluorescent strip light, in front of your appalled children. Obviously.

Either that or the teenagers have given them ideas.

M IS FOR MILDREDS

2015-02-11T12:48:00.001+00:00

And here's another thing:

The NATO Phonetic Alphabet.

What the fuck's that all about?

F is for Foxtrot? Are you kidding me? Last time I did a foxtrot was, oh, I dunno, NEVER. Which was about the same time as I popped over to Lima. So how in god's name am I supposed to remember it?

The other day, I come up against the same old problem when I review my security details with the bank. Suffice it to say that I end up having to spell out my maiden name, place of birth, and first school, phonetically. My mind goes blank. Not blank per se, but only capable of recollecting words that are fruity synonyms to describe a) taboo body parts, b) shagging, and c) excretions. I am like Kermit The Frog introducing the Letters Of The Day on Sesame Street, but with Tourette's.

The first letter I have to spell out is M. The correct word is Mike, which should be a cinch, seeing as Mike is a mate of mine. Unfortunately, it is the polar opposite of a fucking cinch. Even everyday proper names, such as mat, mug, and monkey, vanish from memory. Literally all I can think of is the word 'mildreds'. Which is old-fashioned vernacular for bosoms. Big old-lady bosoms. If I'd stopped at mildred, as in 'George and Mildred', it might have been okay. But no, I say 'mildreds'.

There is this awful deathlike silence. The customer services representative, or as I prefer to call her, Little Miss Judgy Pants, says nothing, although what she's really thinking is, "I'm obviously speaking to a child, so could you please go and get a grown-up." Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "You too will have mildreds one day. Ha!" Later, in the same conversation, I opt for 'Groin' to signal G, 'Roger' to signal R, and weirdly, because it has no sexual connotations whatsoever, 'Yeoman' to signal Y, which is a word you'd only normally use if you were a) Hilary Mantel, b) Hilary Mantel, or c) Hilary fucking Mantel. (Whose mildreds are incidentally colossal.) For the most part however, I just pronounce letters over and over, in the hope that a double whammy of shouting and repetition will suffice.

N and B are my particular bete noires.

Another conversation, a couple of months ago, this time with an NTL representative, goes like this:

Me: Sorry ... I can only think of the word balls … sorry ... yes, B as in Balls. (This is a little white lie, as I am also able to summon up the words Ballache, Boner, Blowjob, Breasts, and distressingly, Bukkake.)
Her: Balls? (Why she has to question it is baffling. Maybe she thinks I say 'Paul's'. As in something that belongs to Paul. Which would be mind-bogglingly left-field.)
Me: Er … yes. Balls.

She titters slightly, which is reassuring, and means that we end up bonding over the weird randomness of the phonetic alphabet. I tell her about the fact that I am only able to recall a mixture of sexual swear words, or obscene profanities.

"There's a word for that!"she says, laughing. "But I can't remember it!"

Later, after a whole three minutes research to find the word she's talking about, I find something else. The Fucknetic Alphabet. Which is similar to the Phonetic Alphabet, but uses very bad words, and has nothing at all to do with NATO.

Personally, I'm not sure what I think about The Fucknetic Alphabet. Part of the problem with remembering the regular phonetic alphabet is that deep down, I prefer to choose my own words. Take 'G is for Golf' as an example. As far as yours truly is concerned, 'G is for Golf' is an abomination. An affront to the letter G. Also, in the context of the words that precede it, namely Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot, all of which have an esoteric, trippy quality, 'G is for Golf' is incongruous, ill-chosen, out of place. You may as well shit in someone's ears.

(I'm cool with most of these G words. Especially glacier, which is very National Geographic. And gag, which has comic potential. Although if you ever say gnome to show off your mastery of the silent G phenomenon, you're a twat.)

And so it would be with The Fucknetic Alphabet, which, in an attempt to overcome accent or language barriers, only permits use of commonly-used swearwords, such as A is for Ass, B is for Bastard, C is for C*nt, etcetera. Mildreds don't count. Neither does Bukkake. Boo!

One solution to the problem might be to offer people a choice of themed phonetic alphabets, according to popular areas of interest, for example, tea, cats, stuffed toys, class A drugs, yodelling, ukeleles, the usual suspects, with the added option to customise lists. Sure, it would have an impact on staffing levels at call centres, but on the plus side, it would be fun, and there would be far fewer administrative errors.

In the meantime, if anybody knows whether the word Yeoman has any sexual connotations, do keep it to your bloody self. Thanks.

ONCE UPON A TIME ON A TRAMPOLINE

2015-01-30T10:50:00.000+00:00

As you will know by now, I'm a self-confessed scaredy-cat.

Slip roads, space hoppers, rounders, and checking voice mail, all give me the willies, as does the line: It puts the lotion in the basket. And don't get me started on that feathered monstrosity from the Seventies, Emu. But now, following a recent visit to Bounce Below, a disused slate cavern featuring suspended trampoline nets, I have to add trampolines to the shit list.

I should have known better, of course. Anything that describes itself as “offering a degree of physical challenge” is not for me. But, as we are on a family holiday at the time, and there has already been an awful lot of visiting national monuments, a trip to a subterranean playground seems in order.

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE

We make our way to Llechwedd Slate Caverns, boarding the underground train to the trampolines.
“This is the actual old mining train”, I say, reading the leaflet. “It’s Victorian.”
“OMG. We’re not in school!” says the nine-year-old, shooting me one of her famous, withering looks.

Three giant nets, hung at different levels, linked by walkways and slides, greet us on our arrival at the cavern. My son runs into the centre of the net, squealing with joy. My daughter follows him, as do our friends’ children.
“I’m coming”, I say, stepping forwards.
My foot sinks into the net, as if it were quicksand. A queer melting feeling travels up my legs to my solar plexus.
“It feels weird”, I say, turning to my friend. "Not sure I can move!”
"Think I'm getting used to it!" says my friend, bouncing off gleefully.

Somehow I make it back to the edge of the net. My son tells me he wants to use the slide to get to the bottom trampoline. The ‘slide’ is a chute made of rope. The main problem with it is that it appears to be vertical. In fact, if you were to ask anybody to describe the slide's main characteristics, they would say it was a) vertical, b) vertical, and c) FUCKING VERTICAL. I’m guessing it would be a cinch if you were, say, Father Christmas, or a bag of laundry, but that’s it.
"I want to see if any other children your age go down first”, I say.
“He’ll be fine!” says a supervisor, listening in.
Seconds later, I see him on the bottom trampoline, 50ft or so below, with my friend’s husband, waving excitedly.

But as I'm working up the courage to join him, a massive teenager bounds towards me. He jumps up and down like a fucker. Like somebody has given Zebedee crystal meth. The net tips away from me at a sickening angle, like an anomaly opening up in the fabric of space. I crawl on hands and knees to the edge. Meanwhile, the rest of the kids have climbed to the top trampoline. I figure I can make it to the walkway that takes me up a level instead, if I just stick to the edges.

“Is the chute the only way of getting back down again?” I say to the supervisor, when I get there.
“Yip, but it’s easy! C’mon. Get up there!” he laughs.
The supervisor is like some kind of norse god. Admittedly, he is not the type I usually go for, but the thought that he may see me as a palsied old lady, run to seed, is distressing. At the very least, the absolute fucking least, I want him to think I’m capable of mind-blowing sex moves. I clamber up the walkway, sucking in my butt cheeks, wondering whether I have what it takes to become a survivalist.
“It’s AWESOME here!” says my daughter, when I reach the top.
I bounce a tiny bit and say “Wheeee!”
(I say bouncing, but what I really mean to say is 'bending my knees to create the illusion of bouncing.') I have already knocked the dream of becoming a survivalist on the head.

Five minutes later, a whistle blows, denoting the end of our session. The others throw themselves down the rope chute like it’s nothing.
“It’s easy”, says the supervisor, when I am The Only One Left.
“I can’t”, I say, my legs dangling into the chute.
“Cross one arm over your front. Cover your nose with the other hand.”
I literally don’t know what he’s talking about. I am the kind of person who gets confused trying to do the actions for the Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes song. Also, why you need to cover your schnoz is beyond me. I think it may have to do with the possibility of it getting caught in the rope, and coming the fuck off. Eventually I master the actions. But the fact that I now have no way of holding on to anything, except air, deepens the horror of what is already a bastard of a situation. The only way it could get any worse would be if Emu appeared out of nowhere, and whacked me down the chute with his cock. I mean beak.
“I can’t move”, I say. “I just can’t let go."

The supervisor confers with another supervisor. They take so long over it I get a distinct sense that this has literally never happened before. “See mam, I AM special!” I want to shout.
Eventually, they decide to close the entrance to the one-way walkway and let me use it as an emergency exit, which means clambering down the walkway, backwards, bum cheeks first, as onlookers wait patiently behind the cordon. I look like Bridget Jones sliding down the fireman’s pole, broadcasting her ass to the nation, but without the firming Magic Pants.

The kids are waiting on the train with our friends.
“You said you’d do it”, says my son, turning away from me.“You’re a CHICKEN!”
I am pathetic and ridiculous. I have a huge comedy ass. Worse, I have let my children down.
“It was kind of funny though”, says my daughter, piping up suddenly.
"The best bit was when everybody was waiting for you!” says my son, laughing now.
We laugh all the way to the reception area. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!

“We can go on the underground Victorian mine tour after lunch, if you want”, I say hopefully, a little later.
The prospect of a gentle educational activity fills me with so much joy I could weep. It’s just as well there’s no Art Gallery.
“There’s a LIVE slate-splitting show!” I add, still emotional.
The kids look at me as if I’m completely mental.
“OMG! No way!” they say in unison.

Emu. Puppet or predator? You decide.

FLASHERS

2015-01-14T13:44:00.000+00:00

At the risk of sounding like a hater, I HATE flashers.

I don’t mean folks who like to show you their bits. Unless you’re talking about Rihanna. If I ever see any of Rihanna’s bits, ever again, I will pluck out my own eyeballs.

I mean motorists who think it’s the done thing to flash you with their headlights for no discernible reason.

Take the other day. There I am, driving along the country road into my village, when a motorist flashes me.

I check the speedometer. The instrument panel. The mirrors. Nothing.

A second motorist flashes me, then a third, this time with eye-melting LED headlights that emit more light than a nuclear explosion. In a state of high anxiety, overwhelmed by the mind-altering pain of the retinal burn, I consider the following possibilities:

a) There is a corpse on my car roof.

b) The radiator grille is spewing out Plague.

c) The flesh-eating flying demon from Jeepers Creepers is preparing to swoop down on my car and eat my head.

d) I have become invisible, rendering the car (apparently) driverless.

e) There is a gigantic bomb strapped to the bumper.

I pull into a cul-de-sac of executive housing. I am five minutes from home, maybe less, but if I continue driving, the car will explode. I also notice a police car parked in a lay-by up ahead. Drive onwards, and I will be committing an unprecedented range of serious motoring offences.

A man walking his dog meets my gaze. He looks concerned. I get out of the car to look busy. I check the tyres. I check the bonnet. I have no actual clue what I’m looking for. I may as well be looking at a diagram of the Higgs Boson particle.

"You allright?" says the man.

“Yes, fine thanks, just checking for locusts, intestines, explosives, wraiths, that kind of thing! Ha ha ha! You know how it is!”

Obviously I don’t say any of this. People here have a positive outlook. They get up early. They have good jobs. They are not the kind of people who freak out on the side of the street. They are not the kind of people who frisk their vehicles for entrails.

I text my partner.

Hi hun. Can u ring me back ASAP. In car. Three people flashed me. Have pulled in. Afraid to carry on, especially as police car in lay-by ahead. Something HORRIBLY wrong, obvs. PLS ring. PLS xxx

Up ahead, the policeman gets out of his vehicle, looks in my direction. I absolutely shit myself. I start to cry a bit, because of all the stress. My partner phones back.

“That text was hilarious!” he says. “They’re trying to warn you about the speed trap!” he adds. “It’s fucking obvious.”

As soon as he says it, I know it's true. The policeman returns to his vehicle.

“It’s not obvious to me”, I say, angry now.

“That’s because you’ve got no common sense!” he says, laughing heartily.

I don't wish to rant, or digress, but the worst part of not having any so-called Common Sense is that most folk think it’s a fucking hoot. Totally OMG, ROFL and LMAO. Whether they’d be rolling in the aisles quite so much if you didn’t have any, say, working elbows, is doubtful. The second worst part is feeling like you’re not really a grown-up: that somewhere along the line, you missed the class where the teacher gave out secret little notes about Life, including answers to questions like a) What the actual fuck is going on in Eraserhead? b) What is a goddamn annuity? and c) WHERE EXACTLY IS THE BASTARD iCLOUD? As well as information about when and where to flash your headlamps at people.

“There’s definitely nothing in the Highway Code about flashing people to warn them about police cars parked in lay-bys”, I say. “I got full marks in my theory.”

I didn’t get full marks in my theory. I got 49 in the multiple-choice part. Which is still awesome.

“It’s a common sense thing”, he says. Again.

GRRRRRRR.

I drive home without incident, albeit filled with the sudden, thrilling realisation that I was tipped off. I shoot the police officer a smug smile as I pass. "D'you think I was born yesterday?" I want to shout. "I know the score mate!" I walk with renewed confidence towards my front door. I find my keys easily. I am part of a clandestine network of experienced motorists who use coded light systems forbidden by the authorities to communicate! I am a grown-up!

But then, as I’m making myself a nice cup of tea in the kitchen, I remember something else. The school of thought that says that if you’re speeding through a residential village, where there are children, well, maybe you deserve to get caught. I remember all those not yet baptised in the gritty jizz of Common Sense, and all my fellow scaredy-cats, for whom flashing is ALWAYS alarming. And I decide that I hate fucking flashers.

THE CAREER WOMAN'S GUIDE TO WORKING FROM HOME. ISH.

2014-11-18T11:31:00.002+00:00

Today, I have been mostly thinking about the pros and cons of working from home, which I’d like to share.

I'll begin with the bad news:

1. Working from home can mean extensive periods of isolation, leading to a catastrophic degeneration of socio-personal skills. In extreme circumstances, this can mean going to ridiculous lengths to avoid human contact, such as using the sewer network to get to the post office, or leaping from branch to branch in the overhead tree canopy to avoid footpaths.

2. Conversely, working from home can also mean getting so ridiculously over-excited at the possibility of human contact, that when the postman delivers a parcel, you end up speaking in the jumbled, rapid manner of a psychotic:

ME: Oh, hi, sorry I took ages ... I was upstairs in the bathroom … Ha ha ha! Ooh! I’m so out of breath though ... can’t believe how unfit I am ... still, what’s it like OUT THERE? Haven’t been OUT today! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Least it’s not raining though! Do you want to step into the hallway?

POSTMAN: (looking alarmed and holding handset with attached pen-thing at considerable distance from body) “This just needs signing for”.

3. People who work from home typically end up reporting hostile feeling towards their house. One woman told me that she fantasised about drawing a giant spurting cock on to the living room wall, even though it had JUST been painted in Farrow and Ball heritage colours! Another had a recurring dream about digging an escape tunnel under the hallway floorboards. Thankfully, I don't have this problem. No siree bob! (So, yes, ok, there is THAT smell, and yes, I did spend last Friday sniffing the skirting boards, on all fours, trying to locate it), but for the most part I love being in the house all day every day with hardly a break.

courtesy of Modern Toss

But then, there are the PROS! Yay!

1. Working from home offers healthier snacking opportunities. Yesterday, I ate an entire packet of cherry tomatoes. In one sitting. By 10am. Admittedly, this did trigger a fair amount of gastro-intestinal disturbance (and at one point I had to cross-reference my symptoms with those of Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate factory, especially the bloating), nevertheless, this is not the kind of snacking choice you could make in an office, without getting looks.

2. Working from home offers ample opportunities for reflection. Just the other week, I spent an extremely constructive twenty-two minutes staring at a tree outside the window. To the untrained observer, it probably looked like I was catatonic (what with the horrible, glazed expression, the drool dribbling down my chin, and the pyjamas), but then, the same thing could easily be said of the untrained observer, by which I actually mean our Peeping Tom of a fucking window cleaner, what with the horrible, predatory expression, the drool dribbling down his chin like a perv, and the unsettling pinky ring.

3. But most importantly, there are far fewer interruptions at home. Because the hardest thing about working in an office is trying to do ANY actual motherfucking work:

COLLEAGUE: See Paul Hollywood on the Jonathon Ross show? I’d so DO him. Remember Terri, she used to do that train the trainers course with Helen Pickering, well, she went to the live roadshow he did at St David’s Hall couple of weeks ago. Loads of people went up on stage and …

ME: Yeah, right, thing is I’ve got to finish this newsletter by midday, so …

COLLEAGUE: My mum’s gonna get us tickets for the Bath show in a coupla weeks. We’ll probably end up making a weekend of it and … blah blah blah blah ad infinitum, until blood is gushing out of your ears, the newsletter is beyond fucked, and all you can see, dancing in front of your eyes, is Paul Hollywood, waving his big, yeasty-smelling breadstick about the place. Like a twat.

Which is, I should add, easily the best reason EVER to work from home.

If this kind of calendar ever appears on the wall at your workplace, it is a contravention of your human rights, and you have the right to sue, or to demand to work from home. According to the U.N.

PS Feel free to share yours pros and cons, as I’m hoping to syndicate this blog to a TOP business magazine! Yeah!

FIRST KISS

2014-10-07T16:53:00.000+01:00

Everyone remembers their first kiss, right?

For me, the story involves a widowed second cousin-in-law, twice-removed, who lived in Carmarthenshire with some other cousins, who went by the name of Great Auntie Maud. (Fuck knows why I’m specifying the exact degree of kinship of those involved.) Suffice it to say that Great Auntie Maud was as old as Methuselah, and may have even been a childhood friend of his.

Anyhoo, one day, during one particular visit to our cousins’ home, Great Auntie Maud shot up from her armchair as we were leaving, and stood in the doorway, blocking our exit.

“Give Auntie Maud a kiss goodbye then”, she said, turning to me.

I was thirteen and three-quarters at the time. And although kissing somebody was on my bucket list, Great Auntie Maud looked nothing like a) Andrew Ridgeley from Wham, b) John Taylor, the bass guitarist from Duran Duran, or c) Stephen Jones from Form 3C, who were the usual objects of my kissing fantasies.

“What you waiting for boy?” said Great Auntie Maud, offering me her cheek.

“I’m not a boy Auntie Maud”, I said.

“Never mind that!” she said, offended.

“Give Auntie Maud a kiss”, said my mother impatiently. “We’re gonna be late for cello lessons.”

“Okay okay!’ I yelled.

It happened in less than an instant. As I stretched on to the tips of my toes, angling myself towards Great Auntie Maud’s cheek, she spun towards me, jamming her mouthparts against mine, launching her tongue into my mouth at a speed that would have amazed even a chameleon. Within seconds, there were rivers of Maud slobber running down the slopes of my soft palate towards my throat, and drool collecting in ducts under my tongue. I could even taste Jacob’s cream crackers.

“Maud. That’s enough!” said my mother.

But Great Auntie Maud wasn’t listening. Her tongue was spinning around inside my mouth cavity like a sock in an out-of-control washing machine. She was gaining in confidence, experimenting with different thrusting techniques, showing off. At one point, I felt her quivering along the whole length of her body.

Finally, my mother pulled her away from me.

“Helluva boy”, muttered Great Aunt Maud, satisfied.

Great Auntie Maud's Guide To Tonsil Hockey. Available in all good bookstores.

Later, in the car on the way home, my eleven-year-old brother laughed so hard my mother was forced to tell him a cautionary tale about the perils of excessive elation.

“Your gran laughed non-stop all the way through a Laurel and Hardy film. Burst a brain aneurysm because of it”, she said. “Dr Levi was bloody livid.”

Meanwhile I used a dried-out packet of Wet Ones to scour the inside of my mouth, leaving streaks of perfumed horribleness.

“It wasn’t even THAT funny!” said my mother.

“She snogged her!” said my brother. “She ACTUALLY snogged her!”

“I meant the film”, said my mother, irately.

Determined to clean out my esophagus, I shaped the last of the Wet Ones into a compact cylinder, gagging as it hit the back of my tongue.

“I’m gonna be sick!” I shrieked, as we joined the motorway.

“For godsake settle down!” screamed my mother. “She’s not right in the head! There’s no need to make a bloody song and dance of it!”

On the kissing front, things improved, of course. Soon afterwards, I made it to first base - and then second base - with a horn player from county youth orchestra called Tweetie (Jones). And although he lacked the blistering sex appeal of John Taylor and Stephen Jones, and reeked of Insignia, on the massively plus side, he was a) not my Great Auntie Maud, b) not my Great Auntie Maud, and c) NOT. MY. GREAT. AUNTIE. MAUD.

"That your first time then?” he asked, smugly, after the event.

“As. If!” I said.

Er, NO.

PS: I'm dedicated this blog to Great Auntie Maud, who is no longer with us, and to everyone I know who's got dementia, including my lovely funny father, who would never let a crappy hideous illness get in the way of a good story.

EXERCISE BIKES JUST GOT A WHOLE LOT SEXIER

2014-09-18T23:21:00.000+01:00

Let me get one thing straight.

In spite of my buffed appearance, I am NOT a gym bunny.

I loathe exercise more than I loathe Facebook updates about exercise. I loathe exercise more than I loathe the new iWatch. I loathe exercise more than I loathe the idea of shitting on the pavement in full view of the world’s media, which is also to say that if I’d been the one running the London Marathon in 2005, shitting on the pavement would have been the highlight of my race, Paula. All of which makes my recent love affair with an exercise bike, frankly, disturbing.

It all began a few weeks ago, during an episode of PMS so severe that not even smashing the kitchen up – normally a marvellous stress-buster – would have worked. So, having read that exercise was good for regulating hormones, I approached the exercise bike gathering dust in the study.

“Hello Mr Bike!” I said, brightly, hoping he’d forgive the years of neglect. “Are you pleased to see me or is that just a massive head tube?! Way-hay!!"

The exercise bike wasn’t talking. But I could tell from the way a light went on as I brushed accidentally against his flanks that he was up for it. He even made an excited beeping noise as I straddled his seat to begin pedalling. At first, things were awkward, even strained. Nobody wanted to admit that this felt good, real good. But then, as I was approaching the summit of a virtual mountain pass, I could no longer ignore the prickling sensation in my solar plexus: the rush of wellbeing spreading everywhere.

I pedalled harder, faster, and at higher resistance levels.

“Go me!” I shrieked euphorically.

“Beep beep de beep!” beeped the bike.

Soon I was entertaining a succession of endorphin-fuelled fantasies in which I was a normal, productive human being. I imagined waking up at 6am driven by a heady excitement about the working day. I imagined being able to hold down a nine-to-five job without falling headlong into a bottomless pit of despair. I imagined PHONING broadsheet editors and television commissioners to pitch writing ideas, as in actually PHONING, not emailing!

By the second day of my love affair with the exercise bike, I was able to proceed to the next transformational step of my, uh, transformation. Following thirty minutes of a kickass programme entitled Switchback Trail, I ticked off multiple items on my To-Do-List, including “Call Auntie Eileen TODAY to thank her for the birthday money". And all this whilst hoovering! I was growing new skill sets. I was on an accelerated schedule. I was powering through this shit like I was Angela Merkel.

I should have known it wouldn’t last, however. On Day Three, I was tired and a little bit emo. It was all to do with not going to bed on time the previous evening - 11.23pm instead of 10.30pm - causing a catastrophic 53-minute sleep deficit. The bike, meanwhile, was looking dishevelled but ready for action; an empty water bottle complete with lipstick traces, sitting at a rakish angle in the cup holder.

“Beep beep baby!” he said, drawing the beeps out, wantonly.

I felt awful, guilty, and slightly nauseous. I couldn’t look him in the screen or touch his outstretched handlebars. Pedaling slowly at first, I tried customizing the settings to introduce mood-elevating variety, careful not to allow my hands to drift onto the metal plates that told me my heart rate (because who wants to be reminded that the ageing pump in the middle of your chest could explode at any minute, right?) But it was no good. I wasn’t feeling it. The bike gave a protest beep when I slowed down again.

“Sorry" I said, climbing off. “I’m not in the mood.”

The lights on the screen grew dimmer. There was a film of moisture on the handlebars that I’m guessing was, maybe, tears. The empty water bottle suddenly looked, well, empty: a relic from happier times.

“It’s not you. It’s me!” I said. “I have a low boredom threshold.”

“Me? Boring?!” he suddenly blurted, beeping hysterically.

“I’m gonna put you on ebay,” I said, interrupting. “We’ll find you a buffed gym bunny. Someone with an iWatch with one of those built-in activity apps. It’ll be like a ménage a trois. You’ll be happy.”

“But what if she gets runner’s trots and accidentally shits on me like Paula Radcliffe?”

“Now you’re being silly," I said.

PROJECT MONKEY TROUSERS: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE MY (INNER) HAIRINESS

2014-08-02T17:35:00.000+01:00

Once upon a time, when I was a not-so-sweet sixteen year old, I quit shaving my legs. I can’t remember the exact reason - it was probably more to do with youthful contrarianism than feminism – but I do remember that unlike other acts of teenage rebellion, my shaggy young forelegs were a transgression too far.

“No gorillas in the back seat!” shouted a handsome sixth-former (on whom I’d had a long-standing crush) as I boarded the school bus, his face so full of fear and confusion it was as though I’d rocked up the aisle in a witch’s hat and bikini top, a giant veiny dildo strapped to my skirt, roaring I’M HERE, I’M HAIRY, I WANT TO FUCK YOU. Backwards. And at double speed.

Exiled to the front of the bus to sit with the first-formers, I reconsidered my options, which were a) continue the experiment in not shaving and risk being stoned to death in the schoolyard, or b) conform to the fucked-up idea that says women must not be allowed to thrive in their natural state, because it is both DISGUSTING and UNFEMININE, by resuming depilation. (I say fucked-up, because the desire to make women look like prepubescent little girls is kind of weird. No, scratch that, perverted.)

So that night, largely because I like the feel of stones against my body even less than I like the feel of blades, I shaved.

These three dames would definitely have been dispatched to the front of the bus ...

And so it was until a couple of weeks ago, when having forgotten to include razor blades in my online shop, and with the heat inducing a state of Can’t. Be. Fucking. Arsed-ness that made nipping to GroTesco Express a physical impossibility, I didn’t shave again. And because I am a sexually mature woman, I grew hair. Lots of it. Within days, I was sporting the hairiest pins in northwest Cardiff, probably the universe. In a breeze, I could feel the hair blowing gently across my legs, which was nice. (No. Seriously. I could.) But there were also darker moments when I wondered whether I might be descended from a long line of lycanthropes. But just as I was building up to attacking myself with razor blades, in what is usually a frenzy of murderous insanity that is arguably the opposite of self-acceptance, I heard the voice of my sixteen-year-old self.

“Why the actual fuck do you need to shave anyway?” “What is WRONG with your body as is?”

And I didn’t have an answer that made sense to me.

“Erm, hair is so itchy”, I said, tentatively. “It makes me too hot.”

“Hair is only itchy until you grow it out properly”, she said, a little too smugly. “It protects skin from drying out in the sun. Also, it aids heat transfer into and out of the body, which means, scientifically-speaking, it cools you down.”

“Plus, pubes and pit hair trap pheromones, which means that on a primal level, hairiness makes you hot. But NOT sweaty hot. Basically, it’s meant to be there. It has a function”, she continued.

I wanted to tell her is that in spite of the pheromones argument n’all, I worry that body hair, particularly leg hair, will make me look like a man, which will, ergo, make me unfuckable. In other words, I don’t want my partner to think that I look, in any way at all, like Brian Blessed.

But I am also self-aware enough to know that every time I shave, part of me is pissed off. Pissed off at the idea that in order to be attractive, even acceptable, I have to get rid of something. Root something out. Shrink myself down to a one-size-fits-all version of femininity. I even wonder whether, by suppressing my outer hairiness, I'm suppressing my inner hairiness: some part of me that is assertive, ambitious, and yes, animal. RAWRRR. And as much as I tell myself that shaving is a matter of choice (as in “Shall I have the Brazilian or the Hollywood? Wow! Such a dizzying array of beauty choices!”) I suspect it's all bullshit. Because if shaving your legs were a choice, I would statistically-speaking see me some other women with bushy shanks walking around the joint. Right? As opposed to ZERO women. Ever. (Which is all the more surprising given that recent research suggests that leg shaving is women’s most hated beauty chore.) Perhaps the truth is that as long as women feel that they have to choose between being a sexual pariah or shaving, it’s hard to frame the whole thing as choice.

And so, like the women of Tumbl’r new Hairy Legs Club , I have decided to go head to head, pin to pin, with prevailing norms. “Don’t think you’re coming out with me like that!” said a friend a few days ago, though to be fair, she was (kind of) joking. Others tell me that I’m brave. (This to a women who is scared of balloons.) And yet, in spite of the comments, and the staring, one of the more difficult aspects of the journey has been my own response to my hairiness. If I were an Elizabethan woman, I’d have shaved off my eyebrows and hairline; if I were an Egyptian woman, I’d have shaved my head. As it is, it is my leg hair that disquiets me: the straggly monkey trousers that falls, unashamedly, from my knees. But I am determined to persevere, to get used to it, to fall in love with it. Yeah! Go me!

Tomorrow I go to the international swimming pool in Cardiff Bay. It is the summer holidays. The pool will be chockers. But already, I feel something changing. I am not so frightened of what others might think of me. It is a new exciting feeling.

It is, methinks, my inner hairiness ...

MAN UP TO THE DINOSAURS …

2014-07-07T19:03:00.002+01:00

My father in law is a good sort: generous, good-humoured, sincere. But frankly, when it comes to women’s issues, he is all kinds of fucking dinosaur.

“Paternity leave! Bloody ridiculous!” he exclaimed the other day, while reading the paper.

Now normally, for the sake of family cohesion, I let things like this go:

Father-in-law: Global warming is bloody rubbish!

Me: Sheesh! You’re sooo craze!! But whatever …

Father in law: Brawn is bloody delicious! Not like that foreign muck.

Me: Mmm. It does sound tasty. (A terrine of meat jelly made of a pig’s head and pig’s tongue also known as head cheese … what’s NOT to like?)

But the notion that paternity leave is bloody ridiculous got right on my mildreds. As far as yours truly is concerned, the new legislation on shared parental leave may well be the single most important piece of legislation in the struggle to achieve workplace equality in a decade, forcing employers who currently look upon women of childbearing age as liabilities to consider that men, too, may also require extended leave. Yes, the policy needs some serious tinkering – more on this later - but the principle of extending paternity leave to allow fathers to share up to a year’s parental leave is a no-brainer. End of.

“So why is it bloody ridiculous?” I ask my father-in-law.

“Why should Jo Public pay for men to stay home for two weeks doing nothing?” he says.

(Turns out my father in law isn’t objecting to shared parental leave. Just basic paternity leave. Bless his ~~long spiny tail~~ cotton socks.)

“It’s not doing nothing!” I say. “It’s a job that NEEDS two people …”

“So how did people like my mother manage?” he says.

“Probably because they had five great-aunts, eleven aunts, grandmothers, five sisters, a mother, and assorted members of the extended family ALL living next door” I say, contemplating the horror of having your relatives around for 30 days, crinkling their noses at the whiff wafting from your vagina, and demanding tea.

I don’t mention the idea that just because something might be “manageable” doesn’t make it ok. People managed for years without entitlement to sick pay, holiday pay, a minimum wage, employment rights of any kind, or the vote, and even my father in law would agree that we don’t want to go back there.

“Besides, why would you deny men the chance to spend time with their babies?” I say, hopefully.

“They see them in the nights and weekends. No need to bankrupt the bloody country over it", he says.

I turn to my partner for support. Being a boy, I’m guessing he’s loads better than me at sums *sarcastic face*. I’m hoping he might explain that paid paternity leave – even if it were extended to four weeks at full pay as recommended by the IPPR – would only cost the taxpayer in the region of £150 million. I say “only”, because compared with the £95 billion a year that rich corporations and individuals cost the state when they shun taxes or the £100 billion a year it costs the taxpayer to pay for insurance for the banks, this is a small price to pay for a more equal society.

“I think paternity leave is a good thing”, says my partner, but without the unbridled enthusiasm I was looking for. And with that he walks out of the room, presumably because he suspects that I am THIS close to talking about my vagina.

This is NOT my father in law.

As it turns out, my father in law is not alone in his aversion to even basic forms of paternity leave. Research by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) shows that a quarter of new fathers take NO paternity leave. According to the ILM, one issue behind the dismal take-up is the attitude of employers. “There remains a cultural expectation within organizations that women will be the ones taking extended periods away from the workplace”, says Charles Eleven, ILM Chief Executive. His thoughts are echoed by Cityfathers, a support group for working fathers in the City, which found that a quarter of men feared it would be 'career death' to ask for time off to look after their children. To which the only reasonable response is MAN THE FUCK UP. IT’S YOUR BABY TOO.

But attitudes aren’t the only issue. Paying men less than the minimum wage to stay at home (statutory maternity or paternity leave currently stands at a grim £138.18 per week) in a society where men earn an average of £5000 a year more than women, won’t work. Even in Sweden, famous for its enlightened attitudes, (where eight in ten fathers now take a third of the thirteen months of available leave), the gender pay gap meant that men didn’t take up their entitlement to shared parental UNTIL there were financial incentives to do so. And by financial incentives, I mean a quota of paid parental leave available ONLY to fathers.

In a stroke of genius, the Swedish government introduced exactly that, back in 1995. Dubbed ‘daddy leave”, it constituted a month of non-transferrable parental leave at close to full wages. No father was forced to stay home, but if he didn’t, the family lost one month of subsidies. The policy had an immediate impact. More than eight in ten men took the leave. The addition of a second non-transferrable daddy month in 2002 continued the trend. Soon it became the norm for dads to take off a month, two months, even longer, and the culture at work – and at home - began to shift. Not only did the pay gap between men and women start to close, but men got a taste of what it was like to be the primary parent, assuming responsibilities traditionally left to mothers. The divorce rate went down, at a time when it was rising elsewhere.

Meanwhile, I will never convince my father-in-law that a system of properly remunerated shared parental leave, including at least two months of paid daddy leave, is a force for good. Like columnist Liz Jones, who argues that extending paternity leave is a ghastly slippery slope towards men wearing fake mammary glands, my father in law’s worst fear is that shared parental leave could make men grow vaginas. Whilst there is no hard scientific evidence that this is likely to happen, (no, really, I looked everywhere, even in The Daily Mail), red-blooded men still unsure about whether or not to take up their fair share of parental leave should probably know this: most women love a man who can change nappies AND use the eco-settings on a washing machine. And when I say love, I mean lurrve. As in, want to fuck. So in a way, maybe it’s best if my father-in-law remains a dinosaur, because THAT would be awkward.

This is a slightly edited version of an article that appeared in the vagtastic Vagenda magazine. To read the full version, click here.

“

IF YOUR CERVIX WERE AN ANIMAL, WHAT ANIMAL WOULD IT BE?

2014-06-13T07:42:00.000+01:00

So, gals, here's the thing.

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered I suffer from a previously unknown condition called 'simia cervux' (to give it its Latin name), meaning my cervix is basically a monkey.

This shocking discovery was made during a routine smear test, when the practice nurse, having pried me open with an icy metal speculum THIS big (the bronze vaginal dilators of ancient Rome are an excellent reference point), made an exasperated announcement.

“Cheeky little monkey your cervix, isn’t she!”

As always I tried to make light of things.

"Ha ha! Maybe try banana on top of the swab?!” I said. Like a twat.

She shot me one of those weary “not again” looks that people usually reserve for moments when they a) step in dog shit or b) hear something Michael Gove said. Which is very fucking annoying, as it was she who brought the monkey into the conversation in the first place.

I'm not a fucking vet, love.

Of course, this isn’t the first time my lady parts have been treated as biological rarities. (A mermaid foetus? A two-headed dog? A kidney stone the size of Jupiter that also happens to have the face of a transmogrified Jesus? Whatever. For a whole sackful of proper weird, just try looking DOWN HERE ...)

Take my first-ever smear test at the tender age of 25, when the nurse, after some protracted rummaging, said:
“You have a very long vagina. I’ll have to go get the longer speculum”.

The way she said "long", it was as though she had accidentally walked the whole length of my vagina, realising, too late, that it was exactly the same length as the Wales Coastal Path. After a massive manhunt for the outsized speculum, involving two other doctors, she suggested I “pop” onto my knees.

“Do you mean doggie style?” I said.

I don’t know why I said doggie style. I was ALREADY more embarrassed than I had ever been in my entire life, except for the time my mother found a cucumber on my bedroom floor.

“Yip, uh uh”, she said. “I’ll be able to reach up higher then.”

In hindsight, I’m surprised that she didn’t mention the cheeky little monkey who lives at the end of the Trans-Vaginal Interstate Highway, you'd think she would n'all, but either she was too frazzled to notice, or my cervix is actually a 'normal' cervix.

PS: This week is Cervical Screening Awareness Week. Go get yourself screened. Beware, though, of all the public health advice that tells you it doesn’t hurt because it hurts Like A Motherfucker. Then again, if it saves your life, who cares?! As for the nurses who may or may not call your cervix a little monkey or refer to your vagina as “down there”, I suggest you practice saying VAGINA and CERVIX in the mirror beforehand. Then you can introduce them all properly and be friends. Yay!

N is for Nipple Pride

2014-06-05T12:07:00.002+01:00

(from The Extremely Over-Protective Mummy's Handbook)

Everybody knows that there are two kinds of nipple.

The first kind of nipple looks like a nipple, or, perhaps, a kitten's nose. Gentle but perky, with a hint of moist juiciness, it is usually attached to what family newspaper editors* like David Dinsmore like to call hooters, funbags, or chumbawombas. It can also be seen on a daily basis through pretty much anything worn by Rihanna or Beyonce.

The second kind of nipple, conversely, looks like something you might find stuck to your shoe i.e chewing gum. Often the result of extreme breastfeeding, which in the UK means breastfeeding for more than three days, it could also (apparently) be mistaken for an attack of ringworm, or a scary witch's teat, which is why you never see it featured in newspapers, magazines, campaign billboards, or on the catwalks at New York Fashion Show.

Not so long ago, I was confronted by a nip of the second variety on Embarrassing Bodies, when a concerned mother of three made the mistake of showing her cherub-chafed titties to telly doctor, Dr Christian Jessen. Drawing back the curtains (of his hair) and looking slightly bewildered, Dr Christian reassured the mother that "for someone who had breastfed three children", her nipples were, er, "okay". (Rumour has it that he also said, "Frankly m'dear, your nipples look like you've been suckling Satan. And all of his goats. But as an older woman, that's the least of your fucking worries." Which they must have edited out … )

Examples of Dr Jessen's sensitive engagement with women's issues on Twitter

Now whilst I don't approve of Dr Christian's dismissive attitude (and I'm sure the mother in question was very cross for forgetting to reassure Dr Christian that although he had really shit hair, he had an inimitable bedside manner), I can nevertheless see where he's coming from. Because unless you're in the habit of drawing attention-seeking circles around your nipples using rhinestones and body glue, like those rad 'feminists' over at Cosmopolitan suggest, or unless your nipples are angled up by exactly 20 degrees with a picture-perfect ratio of breast tissue above and below, as described in The Times, or unless you're Head Nipple-Flaunter Rihanna/Beyonce/Scout Willis, I don't quite understand why would you give a flying fuck if your jalobies are a tiny bit less perfect than they once were? Seriously.

Unless of course, you live in a society that bombards you with images of perfect norks - and nipples - each and everyday. Perish the thought.

Image courtesy of Closer

* Just to clarify. When I say family newspaper editor, I mean prick.

THE MUMMIES AND DADDIES SPACE HOPPER RACE

2014-05-16T23:34:00.001+01:00

When I was a kid, I used to love space hoppers.

Or, to borrow modern-day parlance, I used to heart them.

I loved their weird, rabbity, scrunched-up faces; their funny, whimsical, gormlessness. I loved their plump orange bodies, and their ribbed little ears, and the smell and feel of them, and the way they lay there, on your lawn, all forlorn-looking.

But, as always, shit happens. Or, as the philosopher and visionary thinker Samuel L Jackson famously put it, snakes on a plane man, snakes on a plane!

And now, the sad fact of the matter is that I fucking hate space hoppers.

I do not heart them AT ALL.

In short, those orange FATSOS are on my shit list.

It was a love affair that ended suddenly, traumatically, at my daughter’s ninth birthday party. The party - billed by our host venue, the local Bowlplex, as the Ultimate Birthday Bash - started well enough, with unlimited bowling, ‘sharing’ party platters, and a ‘glow bowling’ disco atmosphere, offering no hint of the horrible drama about to unfold. But then, just when we thought it was nearly over and we could all go back to our houses, or in my case, the dark sombre corner that is the downstairs scullery, the live entertainer (suddenly revealing himself to be an outright cunt) gleefully announced one more special game. Just for parents.

The Mummies and Daddies Space Hopper Race.

“Hey, Mr Live Entertainer, say that again, so that I can use it a pretext for throwing a bowling ball with the inner core of a neutron star at your fucking head?”

But I digress.

When my partner and I got to the starting line, having been loudly nominated by my daughter’s friends, two space hoppers were waiting for us. Not the friendly eccentric creatures of my childhood, but dog-faced grinning entities, with nothing inside them except Evil and the desire to humiliate.

And yet, the first few metres of the race – which involved bouncing 20m along the carpeted lobby area, around a reception desk, and back again – went surprisingly – freakishly - well. I bounced zestfully past my struggling partner, grinning broadly. After years of degrading, dehumanizing experiences at the hands of hockey, netball and rounders enthusiasts, all whorebags and motherfuckers, here at last was an opportunity to heal myself, to feel good again.

It was, of course, not to be. By the time I reached the reception desk, my knees were abnormally spongy. The space hopper was, I realized, a predatory life-form in disguise as a toy, sapping my energy, giving nothing. My partner, too, was gaining ground on me. Halfway around the reception desk, he pushed me off the space hopper, thinking it was all, you know, good fun!!!

“What the fuck are you doing?” I shouted. “Do you actively want me to spend the rest of my days rocking away in a corner, do you? DO YOU?”

Actually I didn’t say any of that. I just laughed a bit.

When it came to getting back on the space hopper, I couldn’t do it. Somehow, I managed to crawl a few more metres, dragging the space hopper behind me like some grotesque haemorrhoid, fighting back vomit, unable to think or see properly. I fell forward, and off again. The space hopper rolled away from me, like a bastard.

“Is she still at it? roared the live entertainer.

I can’t remember the last few metres of the race. I do remember standing up at the finishing line, my skirt was around my waist, my butt on show, like a baboon. I remember finding out that my partner had quit the race, bored, half way through, and that I was the only one racing.

I puked up in the ladies toilets. I sobbed.

Afterwards, I rejoined my daughter’s birthday party, and ate cake, quite a lot of it. On the way out of the Bowlplex, I remember seeing the space hopper, lolling around on the lobby’s carpet tiles, a monstrous look of satisfaction on its face.

“What’s wrong mummy?” said my daughter. “Is it because you didn’t get a present for winning the mummies and daddies space hopper race?”
“Gosh, no, ha ha ha! Of course not! It was just a bit of good old-fashioned fun”, I said. "I love space hoppers!"

This is an artist's impression of the space hopper I raced on. I know I know, it bears an uncanny resemblance to Mr Hoppy, the space hopper serial killer from 'Monkey Dust', right?!

And now, dear readers, time to share your moments of public humiliation ….

COFFEE TO GO ... DO ONE

2014-03-04T14:49:00.003+00:00

So I know it’s unreasonable, even sociopathic. But as March 2014 is Caffeine Awareness Month, now seems like a really good time to share my feelings on the subject of ‘to-go-coffee’ culture, or more specifically, the people (by which I mean tosspots) who partake in it.

I mean, what’s the deal with ‘to-go coffee’ anyway? Is anybody really so busy micro-managing the shit out of everybody else that they can’t SIT THE FUCK DOWN at the table like any other self-respecting human being? Huh? Or is rushing around the place clutching a signature Triple Grande Quad Shot Espresso Macchiato With Ten Extra Shots of Salted Caramel JIZZ Foam seen as proof of one's success? A way of communicating to others that you are too important, too indispensable, to sit still?

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the need for caffeine, of course. It’s just that as with most things in life, there’s a time, and there’s a place.

Take the other day. There I was, strolling around the place with my three-year-old daughter, when I stepped into the path of a hurrying businessman who looked like Big out of Sex and The City (you know the type gals, likes to engage in hilarious willy-bashing contests with workplace rivals but is also sensitive and likes art, etc.) This ubersexual was taking his first power-gulp of a steaming hot 'coffee-to-go' (judging from the unfeasibly large head on it - it must have been one of those Trenta Ten Pumps Extra Hot Drizzle With Ten Inches of Extra Whip), when suddenly he had to manoeuvre out of my way. The coffee-to-go missed its target, scalding his cheek.
"Awwww!" he shouted. "Watch where you're going!"

Afterwards, after apologising, I was fuming. OK, I know I should have been more vigilant. But I wasn't the one running about the place on an accelerated schedule, talking into my smartphone about 'performativity', whilst also attempting to transport a towering cup of boiling liquid from one place to another, when there were little kids about, and human flesh.

Fucking cockmonkey.

But, I suppose my real issue with 'to-go' coffee culture is not a concern over the health and safety implications of carrying hot fluids around the place. Neither do I really care if you want to demonstrate your extreme productivity and fast sexy lifestyle with your 'to-go coffee' accessory. (Even though it makes you look like a jerk-off. Just saying). My real beef is with the fact that 'to-go coffee' culture – and our addiction to caffeine in general - is symptomatic of a society hell-bent on promoting the idea that faster is always better. A society in which people who stick to the speed limit get tailgated; a society that has created speed dating, and one-minute bedtime stories, and guides to achieving an orgasm in thirty seconds, and now Speed Yoga! Grrr. And yeah, I know I'm a bit of a slow coach and a hippie and I prefer tea (which according to a survey by coffee company Nespresso is not the drink of choice for "high achievers".) But I’m also saying it because everyone I know is knackered, because we now have ninety minutes less sleep than we had a decade ago, because according to Carl Honore in his book I n Praise of Slowness, fatigue played a role in disasters like Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, Union Carbide, Three Mile Island, and the space shuttle Challenger. And, well, because we obviously need to slow the fuck down - not speed up.

Or, as my favourite super-tramp and prolific Welsh poet and writer W H Davies put it, in his famous poem 'Leisure':

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Now, I’ll go stick the kettle on. And we’ll have some tea. And a nice biscuit. OK?

C is for Cats

2014-02-11T14:52:00.000+00:00

Cats slaughter hundreds of infants every year. It's a fact. Their all-time favourite modus operandi is to position themselves over the sleeping body of a newborn baby and suck the breath out of its body, but, as if that weren't enough, they’re also into chest compression, suffocation, and spraying toxoplasmosis all over the fucking joint.

In short, they have a rap sheet that would dismay even Herod.

A weight of new evidence suggests that cats may be shapeshifting witches

My mother, who is a regional health and safety overlord, told me this as we were leaving the hospital, following the birth of my firstborn.

“I’ve been thinking”, she said, turning to me. “About Winnie and Patsy.” (my cats)

“Oh, ok. What about them?” I said.

“Cats can suffocate babies”, she said, suddenly gripping the infant carrier. “So, I’m happy to take them to the vet for you, for, well, you know what. And I’m happy to pay for it. As a Christmas present.”

“You want to kill the cats for me?” I said. “As a Christmas present?”

She looked away from me for a moment, and then nodded, her eyes filling with tears.

“For god’s sake mami, please don’t cry again”, I said, impatiently. “I bought a cat net from Mothercare. It’ll be fine.”

Just then, the baby started crying. I grabbed the infant carrier from my mother’s hand, a little too roughly.

“I can’t believe I’ve got to feed her again!” I said.

“You’ve always hated me”, said my mother, nursing her fingers. “And I’m only trying to help.”

In hindsight, of course, I should have thanked my mother for offering to take the cats to the vet. After all, it wouldn’t have been the easiest of jobs. (“Hey there, Mr Vet, would you mind awfully putting these hellborn fuckers down?” etcetera etcetera) I should have told her that I loved her. But, in my defence, I had just squeezed a baby out of my front bottom. What's more, I was already ridiculously busy worrying about all the other threats to my infant’s wellbeing, such as formula milk, overheating, dehydration, failure to thrive, co-sleeping, cot bumpers, sunken fontanelles, germs on toys, prolonged use of car seats, dummies, second-hand smoke, Staphylococcus, paint fumes, vaccinations, antibiotics, television, Norovirus, pollution, carbon monoxide, toxic moulds, pesticides, paint fumes, radon, and FUCKING NIPPLE CONFUSION, and I knew it was only a matter of time before my mind darkened under the pressure...

NO. PLEASE NO. I DON’T WANT TO GO INTO THE RUBBER ROOM ... OH, HI MAM.

Needless to say I spent the following year or so policing the door of the dining room, where the cats slept. Some nights, I’d worry that the cats might master the door handle, and like Nosferatu, tiptoe silently up the stairs towards the nursery. Or, I’d obsess over the possibility that they were already upstairs, biding their time in a cupboard, even though I’d already seen them through the glass door, minutes earlier. In my dreams, they took liquid form, like the T-100 in Terminator 2. They could flow through gaps, and under doors, and do all sorts. The bastards. Of course, in the end, nothing happened. But it could have … it so easily could have … miaw ha ha ha … miaw ha ha ha … miaw ha ha ha ….

PS I dedicate this blog entry to my cat Patsy, who died on Sunday 19 January 2014. Aged 16.

My daughter's elegy. Now in a jam jar above the grave.

PPS: And if you're wondering why there are no reported incidents of cats harming babies, it may well be because of an evil cover-up by a network of witches working undercover in law enforcement. Or not.

(This is an extract from the er, epic work in progress that is 'The Extremely Over-Protective Mummy's Handbook')

IF you like the blog, please consider nominating me for the 2014 MADS Blog Awards in whichever category you fancy (although the Most Entertaining Blog category is probably a better fit than say, the family travel category, as I never leave the house ...)

THE 3AM GIRL. NOT.

2014-01-22T14:28:00.000+00:00

So we all make mistakes, right?

Here’s mine. Last Saturday, I stayed up until 3.30am, drinking.

Now for some of you, this is normal. For some of you crazy-ass party bitches and crack hoes, 3.30am is an early night. But just to put it in context, the last time I stayed up until the wee hours doing drugs n'shit, was during labour.

In the beginning, I thought I’d gotten away with it. On Sunday morning, despite flushing a sock down the toilet mid-morning (normal, right?), and a mild to moderate hangover, there were no obvious symptoms of brain damage. But then, at around 3pm, something happened. Something bad.

It started with a 'conversation'.

“The bins out, your turn it is. Fucking knackered, I am”, I spluttered to my partner, who was shuffling around the kitchen at the time, with no discernible sense of purpose.

“Me Out Go Now” he said, descending into a kind of protolanguage not heard since Paleolithic times.

You see, in less than an instant, I realised that we had both lost the ability to string a sentence together; that in short, we'd become doodooheads.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon, the effects of the previous night’s festivities proliferated. Frazzled, bad-tempered, and still, with only a rudimentary command of English, we started arguing. We argued about money, housework, and parenting styles. At some point in the proceedings, I brought up the idea of living in a self-sufficient, low-impact, off-grid commune and opting out of the capitalist bullshit altogether, which is the kind of deranged fantasy I always have when I’m pooped to the absolute max (along with signing up for online courses on basket weaving, putting the house up for sale, and quitting my job).

“Ugh!” said my partner, jabbing his forefinger in my direction. “You Crazy. Like You Mother.”

‘Separate then, maybe we should. Heh?” I drooled, like some overwrought, premenstrual Yoda.

By Monday morning, Saturday’s night of debauchery (and a further night of anxiety-related sleep-deprivation caused by a combination of cognitive distress and constant arguing) had also taken its toll on my body. Even at the best of times, dark circles under my eyes make me look like a fucking raccoon, but now, what with the circles, the hollowed-out tear troughs AND the gruesome discoloration of my skin, it was as though I’d used black bile extracted directly from Satan’s kidneys as a concealer. A night of sleeping on my daughter’s pull-out bed had also given me crushing neck and spine pain, resulting in a gait reminiscent of Boris Karloff.

“You look, erm, pale”, said the school secretary, buzzing me in through the school doors at the spectacularly late hour of 10am.

“I was sick in the night”, I said, lurching lopsidedly towards her. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Erm, well, I hope you’re better now”, she said, obviously frightened.

So, folks, I hope you’ll understand me when I say that for me, any future late-night revelry is out of the question. To function properly, I need to be in bed by 9.30pm on weeknights, and 11pm on weekends. Furthermore, the only parties I can attend are ones that take place between 2pm and 4pm on Sunday afternoon in places called Ants Inya Pants, whilst late night drinking will be restricted to a cup of hot chocolate sprinkled with chilli flakes, which I can always pretend is heroin. As for a sex life, well, this is a horribly tricky one gals, because the only window of opportunity in our house for playing 'mummies and daddies' is between eleven and midnight on the weekend, after we’ve watched our Sky Plus recordings, and although it’s almost never a long drawn-out tantric experience it does, sadly, clash with my scheduled time for horizontal refreshment of a different kind. So I’m thinking of saying to my partner, “Ur, look love, honey bun, sweetie pie, you know where things are by now, so, you know, help yourself …”, which I’m hoping he’ll be cool about.

Zzzzzz ….

Gee whizz, I won't ever be going out with those drug sluts again!