Further Ponderings of the Normal

I am so full of wisdom me.    Well I blog don't I?    So I must believe this crap.    I must share my intellectual insights with those who are open to my droplets of divinity.   And yet I know I must appear to some as incredibly stoopid.    Some might say that funny froggy phrase.... 'idiot savage' is it?    No 'idiot savant'.    Gods I'm seriously stoopid.    There ain't much 'savant' about me.    But I do have the occasional clarity of .... something.    Must Google that in a minute  -  clarity of....  bugger.    I'll get back to that.    I come up wiv some choice verbals now and then is wot I mean.

I once gave this advice to my cousin regarding his imminent fatherhood:   Don't take anyone's advice.

He asked:   Including that piece?

I replied:    Especially that one.

I still hold with this.    And today another little gem popped into/out of my head:  I don't approve of people who don't approve of people.

I understand myself perfectly.    Bit of a shame noone else does really.    But how could they?    I mean......   I don't make sense to normal people.    Normal people are happy to do normal stuff, normally.    I always have to stick my oar in and stir up the demons.    Take our seasonal punctuations.... (please,  take them....  ho ho ho)    Who thinks about the origins and the religious significance when there's chocolate up for grabs?    It's pick 'n' mix culture.    We'll have that Easter but can live without the Lent shit.    No brainer.    I'm always up for a good reason to buy more chocolate.    But the tick tock box is fluttering.....    Alright I'll buy the chocolate,  but not the ones YOU want me to buy.    I'll have THESE ones so I can pretend I'm not merely succumbing to marketing mind games 'cos I'm cleverer than you......    Contrary Madame.     Normal peeps just get on with it don't they?    Is it that time already?    Alright then.....    They don't sit up late at night tapping out their unwanted opinions.    But if you're still reading,  then you're not normal either are you?    So you deserve it....  You can pick out the bits you like and keep 'em,  and flick away the rest.    It's called Freedom of the West it is.    It's our right!!    OK here's the rambling rantings....  I'll wave a flag when it's over.    

As you may well already know I hate Valentine's day,   always have,   but still always put chocolates in little home-made felt hearts that I dangle off something (usually the still-unfinished pap mach tree) for the 4 monsters.    (Not shimmery Valentine's chocolates obviously.... something crap on offer.    I would have SO bought it anyway....)    I honestly don't know why I persist with this  -  I just do.    I can't help feeling I'm pricking the pinkness and bucketness of this whole spectacle by throwing goo at children  -  instead of slopping slush at a grown-up who should also know better.    The Tesco's garage shop tonight was rammed  -  I'd abandoned a couple of the sproglings in the car for a two minute sweep but was captured in the till queues for an aeon by drooping-shouldered figures clutching flowers and posh chocs.    Oh fuck off will ya.    When I got back to the car it was a howling battleground and all me windows were steamed up.    Thanks St Bloody Valentine for spreading the love.    Still,  must dig out those ratty felt things.... I must make my point.    Whatever it is....          

This is just like I hate Xmas but sweat blood making 100 Advent thingies every bleedin' year.    AND do the carrot for the Red-Nosed One and the mince pie and something liquid for The Red-Suited One (it's non-alc now of course,  but I refuse to slide down to the cute American 'milk' thing..... it was a cup of tea one year with a lid on).    AND then there's the flour in the fireplace to catch the elves' footprints ye gods.....    It's 'what you do'.    Innit?    But all that manual effort is me sticking up two fingers to Marks & Spencers I reckon.

I hate birthdays too but they always get presents.    Have mostly given up making cards now tho'.    Feel guilty if I don't but feel fucked off about having to use my brain which is already exhausted with everything else birthdayesque.    Always left to the night before (if not later) -  but again it's my 'up the little people' stance that I never buy cards.    Nothing to do with my crap memory at all no.    Or simple meanness.   Not at all....no no.    I'll grudgingly stick something on knobbly paper for the immediate descendents but everyone else gets a Facebook nudge.      

Not keen on fireworks frankly.    But love a good bonfire.    Have let the 'guy' thing drop tho'.    Still have jumbled-up feelings about all that.    Having been brought up Catholic,  I should be anti the anti-Catholicosity of it all.    But as I am pretty anti-Catholic anyway,  should I join in the larks?    But I'm not anti-Catholic exactly.    I'm anti-all of it.    Don't see the point  -  'opium of the people' and all that.    Even as a wee one I loved the idea of someone blowing up the Houses of Parliament.    So in my head the bonfire and bangy-flashy shit is me imagining the spectacular death of the jowly stiffs.    Chuck another on the pyre missus.    Still,   thinking about how real bods were burnt to death is pretty twisted.    But so are fairy tales.    And I like them.    And surely the 'guy' can just be who/whatever you want it to be.    It's only symbolic innit?    See wot I mean?    I have no idea how I really think.    Except that fireworks are too bloody expensive and I have to go out in the cold and I can't see what I'm treading in.    And I really really don't want to know how much the local council has spent on this bollocks.    But if someone I know invites us round to a home-spun shindig we're all there with our fairy cakes and sparklers.    Hoping for a good soup.    I like soup.  

I might no know wot I fink,  but I still understand it....    at least I forgive it.

Now I like Easter.     Yeah weird....     Last year I gave up fighting against brand 'big' eggs in muchness packaging too.    Now that's not like me.    Surely all this previous stuff is me railing against the commerciality of everything  -  especially the Xmas and Val's Day shit.    But being superior is quite exhausting.    I decided to go with the flow and be like everyone else.    Just another one of those ancient cherished standards that went by the way  -  like sweets,  telly,  computers,  coke,  Mc D's.....    I'm so flipping glad I dropped all those poncey standards and now kick about in the filth like everyone else.    So liberating not being a high-horser.    I now look down on people on high horses.    Another bonging perverse Madame statement there.    But I really do  -  I feel like they're not fully developed yet if they're still clinging on to standards of any kind.    And it's not at all contradictory to wot I just spewed about Val's Day -  really it's not.    It's for the kids!    Of course it is....   And anyway,  I eat it when they're not looking.

And it's Pancake Day next week I believe.    Not Shrove Tuesday round 'ere.    I bought some maple syrup the other day.    I bet my mother doesn't even know what that is.    She'd freak if she knew what we've slapped on pancakes over the years.    Very traditional my mother.    It's lemon and sugar (white) on lace-thin offerings,  folded,  and only after a proper dinner.    But I have inherited her 'oh the first one's always the worst one' chant.    This reminds me  -  driving back from something the other evening the horror-bags were politely discussing (like hell) the order of things,  ie why did I have to continue to produce babies after the first two etc  and who would be where and like what if my first attempt had actually been born  (they're not remotely sensitive about things like miscarriage my lot) and I think it was Cheetah Boy who likened the 'failure' (for want of a better word) of this first one to the mess of the first pancake out the pan.    Well,  I had to laugh.    They do see the world in an interesting way sometimes.    Very matter of fact -  and yet pleasingly skewed.

I have always always always loved Halloween  -  I felt like I always flew the dark flag of this hit even as a mini heathen.    Way before anyone else really got in on it bigtime.    I remember sitting in my bedroom window peering out for witches  -  eagerly hoping.    Truly believing.    Spiders,  bats,   black cats,   skulls with snakes curling out the eye sockets....  what's not to like?    Hate fucking trick or treating tho'.    Am happy to have a houseful of artificial colours and sweeteners  -  but hate knocking on someone else's door to get it.    I can go down to Morrison's and get it myself I can.    I like the idea of naughty larks and getting away with it  -  I just hate traipsing.    Never carved a pumpkin or went out after dark with a lantern or nuffink when I was a madamelet but it's 'normal' now.    I like the pumpkin and lanterns stuff.    It's just the getting in the car to civilization,   to wander around someone else's street to go begging,  do smiling,  judge how quickly  we can scarper and drag home again bit.    I have a garden for gods-sakes,  and no neighbours to suffer  -  we can go out there and find sweets and come back in before X-Factor starts.    I can turn off the lights and scare the shit out of my kids without any diesel consumption.    Peasy.

These are the punctuations of the year.... the 'normal' ones anyway  -  the ones that cost money that is.     And so these are the ones we have to take note of.    And we've added stuff over the years  -  not just the extra emphasis on Halloween and Val's that have grown bigger lately,  we've added all sorts:  Burns' Night gets a thought,   Chinese New Year is part of the annual deal,   St Patrick's Day fills a window,   Diwali is as known to kids as is/was Harvest Festival no matter what shade or flavour we are.    The Harv Fest's not so known to mine as we don't do either church or school and it doesn't get an eyebrow twitch in Clinton's.    In my memory it's handing over a sorry tin of peach slices from the back of the cupboard.    (I'm sure I'm not alone in this one.)    St George day is practically myth.    We were 'allowed' to wear our Brownies or Cubs uniforms on the national saints' days.    Woopdedoo.    Don't know how singy and shouty the Scots or the Welsh get on their ones.    The English are much better at stuff you can buy.    If I can rustle up some dragony beer-holding hats for next umm... hang on... 23rd of April (I just had to check that on Google but I WAS right I was)  -  I might be on for making a few pennies..... if there's an England footie match on around the same time.    'Cos that red cross on white flag is a football thing innit?    And that other one with the blue bits and extra red diagonal bits is a nice cushion or a tea cosy now.    Or a kid's t-shirt.    Better in more muted colours these days...  greyer or browner.    The original colours are a bit BNF.  

We've dropped a few ex-notables.    Michaelmas is just for Steiner kindergartens now.    More dragons for that one but only dry-felted.    Wholesome ones.    They do the all the things that end in 'mas'.    Martinmas,  Candlemas etc.    They pretend they're non-denominational but they ain't.    They have their seasonal list and stick to it rigidly.    Sticking rigidly is what Steiner does best.    No deviation.    And 'cos of our two year dalliance there I am now stuck with bloody St Nicholas' Day shove-a-walnut-in-their-shoe malarkey.    I don't like this one.    It's not just the embarrassment of that first morning by the pegs when I shrieked  'Who's stuck a bloody great lump in your slippers?'  It's just not me.    Despite swapping healthy bloody great lumps for proper bloody great sweeties  -  it just reminds me of that hushed dustiness of self-righteousness.    Boring.    I do enough in December.    But if I tell 'em this one's just made up,  the penny'll drop for all the other lovely lies....  like elves,  tooth fairies and the Easter Bunny etc.    And they're kinda fun.    (Not to mention useful when you want to get rid of a rabbits-heads-eating cat for example  -  our fairies did a very good job there).    But the Steiner Christian pinny folk do that pole dancing tho'.    You know.... that maypole gig.    That's alright in't it?    That used to make me laugh.    Make the little impressionables dress in white and skip around a giant willy.    Always a corker.    Kept me smirks to meself tho'.    No point trying to have a funny with the brown-clad basket carriers.    Deviation denied.    Rigid is king.      

But the 'real' world evolves and soaks up stuff like a culture sponge.    Like the ol' Chinese New Year.    Tunbridge Wells,  of all ethnically undiverse places,  does a lantern procession every year  -  with a Samba band leading.    It's pick 'n' mix.    Like our language  -  it absorbs and adapts what's on offer.    I think it's a laugh.    Didn't go this year tho' 'cos of the ol' snow business but if you're stuck up that way 'cos your kid's in some blinkin' play about a rabbit and an ox it's in for a penny wot?  

A friend of mine and her Druid chums did a Green Man kinda procession last year round there.    I have no idea how it went  (was busy moving house that day).    But I bet it wasn't met with as much enthusiasm.    We only like NEW things!!!    We can buy things with Chinese stuff on it  -  who's knockin' out the Green Man balloons?    Can't buy it - don't want it.

I don't know if it's bad that we've 'lost' the national fervour for our pagan punctuations.    I mean them Romans fiddled with some,    the Vikings flung some more in,   then those Christians thieved the lot and now look....  the shops own 'em.    For those that still hold 'the old ways' dear,   they are still unsullied and can be carried on without a plastic loot bucket.    Maybe that's much better eh?   Although I reckon a thermal 'nude suit' for those chilly sun-up gatherings would fly off the back of my Fiat.

There's a fair few of us in our Home Ed gang happy to celebrate the unpronounceables with a bit of round the fire crafty muddlings.    Cheering on a spot of Imbolc this week,  cancelled last week due to projected frostbite.    (See we even muddle about with the dates to suit ourselves  -  much easier than being outlawed for failure to spend before the 'how COULD you forget' sales.)    Doesn't take much to Google up on what's when and why for those like me who are a bit lacking in true devotion.    But I'm kind of joyed that reminders are not being flashed up inbetween chunks of Dancing On Ice.    Leaves us alone to twiddle about with leaves and sticks without being patted on the head for it.    (And gods forbid those people who make misty purple wizardy figurines or pictoral waistcoats out of dog wee and woad soaked-placentas get too above themselves.)    No let's keep it quiet yeah?    I likes me pagan stuff but know enough to keep shtumn in the company of stooped beardy types.    See I'm not ALL that stoopid after all.

Anyway,  time to hook these soppy heart-shaped pockets on my dark and spiky gothic tree.    Give with one hand and fuck 'em up with the other.    More Madamey wisdom.

Happy Whateva.....



(Sorry I forgot to wave the little flag  -  it's safe to come out now.    Be nice to yourself,  scavenge a bit of choc off your last minute present and read something more cohesive.   Won't be too hard to find.)  

                                            

Soothe or Suffocate the Savage Beast?

Dilemma:


Encourage lively child-led activities within liberal autonomous education embrace - but suffer a shitty trashed house.

Try to ease stress by finding 'me time',  such as therapeutic knitting in bedroom  -  but suffer a shitty trashed house.

Give in to 'they'll all be grown up and gone before you know it' indulgence  -  shitty trashed house...

Yell,  throw things,  shove 'em out in the garden and lock the doors,  send them to boarding school,  sell them to white slavers,   move house fast and destroy all forms of communication,  join the Foreign Legion......  -  or....   or nuffin!    I think I may have just solved my problems.    I wonder if I'd miss them?

If only you could hear what I'm hearing.    The kind of sounds a ceiling makes just before it gives way.    I'm sure you'd agree I'd not miss them that much.

No I'm positive I'm doing the right thing.......    you never knew me,   never saw nuffin,   wot you boggin' at?

zzzzzziiiiiiiip!!  

Pissed Off of Blogblockdom

Not sure if this will even post as my site will no longer allow me to be signed in - despite signing in 50 times. Blogspot 'help' is totally useless. Cannot get beyond half a sentence. Don't know if I'll be able to publish this as I cannot even comment on my own posts. I may just give up entirely and start again with a different name on a different forum. Just saying...

Now What's That I Call Never at Home Education Volume 87

Today I saw.....

My hand waving goodbye to BOYS clutching golf clubs as I drove awaaaaaay from the house.

Frant Railway station despite the Sat Nav telling me to turn around where possible. And chums. And a parking space. Well I never did...

Charing Cross after many many years - this used to be my personal corridor. Didn't it miss me?

The Olympic clock ticking away our innocent lives.

A Tom Hanks-a-likey Australian swallow a whole modelling balloon. Then a bemused Brazilian (with very little English) and a stately Dane (with a slightly better command) padlocked him into a straight jacket and chains and he still managed to get his hat on. (He also dislocated his shoulder and escaped in 3 minutes...yeah yeah) - but the balloon and the hat!!!

Turnaround and more chums - Happy New Year! Did you see what he did with that balloon?

The National Portrait Gallery's child-confuser - the rotating door doodahs. Always a laugh. Brings to mind a certain comedy incident at Bluewater's John Lewis some time ago involving a splat of Minx on their too-clean windows. Forever imprinted....

Lots of wonderful photographic portraits and a very attractive tiled floor. Where to look?

Willies and boobies.

The time!!

Blue sky above a bitter coffee.

The Coliseum thingy on top goes round and round - I'd never noticed before...

Look more chums!

And Johnny Depp!!

Only joking...

Lovely lovely floors... and windows... and mosaics.... and curtains.... and curly things and...... wow!!! The Coliseum!!!!

And nice toilets.

The English National Ballet - Strictly Gershwin. I dislocated my jaw. Sharpen your elbows and get a ticket. Get A Ticket. The Man I Love! An American in Paris!! The Eiffel Tower dances I tell you!!! Even the conductor shimmies.

Tears a-sparkling as dazzling as the costumes. The costumes!!

Nice toilets. Posh ice cream. (The latter down Minx's top. White top. Chocolate.)

Rhapsody in Blue.... Summertime.... Get. A. Ticket.

Nice toilets and Minx's face looking exasperated. I can't help it I'm old.

Back onto the very attractive tiled floor for the rest of those portraits.

My hand releasing lots of coins for lots of postcards.

And Tudor portraits - we dun Tudors. Minx dun Tudors. Nose right up to the canvas and gasping. Teenage Engage! THAT is cool! (Nearly teenage... I have an Olympic clock of my own counting down my sanity.)

The inside of a lift-that-don't-go-down-there.

Smiling faces of people seeing us come out again helpfully pointing to the stairs-that-do.

One more circular tour of the doors for luck.

Two more then...

A firm yank. (No. Not Johnny Depp.)

The thingy that goes round on top of the Coliseum lights up at night too.

Charing Cross. Still seemed to be getting on OK without me.

Burger King. BK said hello at least.

Frant by night.

The welcome glow of the back door through the forest of neglect. (I did say welcome and not sinister didn't I? Oh good.)

Minx's face looking exasperated - left all the postcards on the train.

Boys. Throwing darts. Mostly at the dartboard.

My feet - up.

The insides of my eyelids....




Then I saw.... that balloon.... where the squeak-pop-ouch did it go?


.....haunting...

Never At Home Education Part 23

I am not going to over-book ourselves again for the next 4 months. I am not.

Really really.

Really.

I said this in September I did.

I collapsed in December.

Now January is flaunting it's godless temptations before my still blinking-in-the-new-year-light mincies with no shame.

And February is slinking up behind that with dangerous disregard for the law.

March shouldn't even be out here yet - is that a lollypop in her pouting lips?

Be gone you flagrant sirens of certain destruction before I can form the outline of April rising to her feet with slow poison - be gone!!!

Oh may the gods of finding a clean top deliver me from this onslaught....

May they guide my weakened fingers away from the laptop keys of 'yes'.

But I fear it's already too late.... I can feel my head turning... my ears burning... my face gurning.... it's... it's.... ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....... farewell house - faaare theeeeee weeeellllllllll.........


......................................................

The Toilet-Floor Guide to Happiness from the Ever-Slinking World of the Grub

This is the best start to a new year ever 'cos I haven't failed at any new ambitions. This is the way to go....

And I have started my patchwork quilt - the one I've been prattling on about for about um... 30 years. And it all began 'cos I couldn't be arsed to do my setteeful of folding. So I sat on it and started sewing instead. It's my new blobby project - every month when I feel too shit to move about I'm gonna grab me patches and get inertially happy. In a year I might even have something to show for my otherwise useless grubdom. But it's not a resolution. No no no.

I've also downsized my usual A4 Day-to-a-Page diary to a humbler A5 - I could put it in my bag.... I might draw pictures in it.... I will hopefully list less humdrums and be more disciplined in my witterings. Definitely not a reso. Less is... less shit.

I'm still knitting my don't-know-what strips of randomness. I like knitting. Am rubbish at knitting. So just knit. Because I can. Can't, but can anyway kind of can. Don't know what, don't know why, don't know how kind of can. 'Tis a decent philosophy.

I may not have actually started the Stat of Lib yet but am still excited about going thro' the bag of greenness to make sure I have to go back to the wool shop. I know I will go back to the lovely shop full of lovely fluffy loveliness - I just have to waste a bit more time cataloguing shades of not-right first to justify my cape-flapping swish up their stairs rather than a guilt-ridden sneak. It won't be hard - I can always convince myself that wool is essential. Wool is essential.

But the most creative endeavour is my new song. I sing it when I'm putting shopping away in not the right place, and when I'm hurling clobber in the dryer that shouldn't be, and when I'm sticking hair gel in a mop that needs washing.... it goes like this:

..ahem....

Fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit

Fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit

It's very jolly and rolls off the tongue in skips and twirls. It's my new answer for everything. May you all join in when you have picked up the words - it fair speeds the day.

Come on kids...

Fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit

Fukit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit

Don't you feel better?

I only wish I'd been given a glimpse of this wonderful enlightened life years ago.... but you have to work at it to get to this height of lazy. Sigh....... I might even grown a beard and wear a duvet. I could charge a fortune for this.....

The R-Word

As previously stated in relation to the popular compiling of bullshit promises, this year I am merely going to pursue my abounding badiness, smellificiency, fatiosity, bigly ungrammaticalitence, rudeorama and uncharitableables with the chuggessence I usually reserve for motorway driving. Rock on self-unimprovement. No wasting my talentlessness on ambition for me. Oh and I have just publicly announced on Facebook, I am going to knit The Statue of Liberty.

The last choice was a typically oppositional stance to my furrowed promise to never ever ever make xmas adventy calendar thingies ever ever again ever.

I unfurrowed, sighed, felt a wave of relief... and started planning next year all over again.

It started simply - paper snowflakes. Not another vein-pulsing over-ambitious attempt to create a whole miniature hanging forest of pagan delights like this year. Paper snowflakes. Not even opened out - they can do that themselves. In fact I could get them to make them by themselves. Now I'm using my noodle.

But then the noodle gets cocky and starts plotting while I'm not looking.

Then it starts bargaining with me. I do have a bulging bag of beads and bells and buttons and bollocks that I really should use up. All I need is a little more wire, string all the b's together in 96 random clumps (won't take long) and Bob's yer unc etc....

'Cept Bob is not my unc. I have 5 remaining uncs and none of them's a Bob. Neither do I have a Fanny for an aunt but I do have a twat of a brain which then led me to the wool shop to buy 3 different balls of blue wool - to make a background fringe for the beads of course. And some wire. Silver. 50p more expensive than gold. And then obviously I am going to either paint the lyrics for Fairytale of New York onto the leftover beads - or buy yet more beads with letters already imprinted - and it's still oh so simple.

But just to make it interesting I should now have the fringed lyrical bead garland spiralling in a more pleasing display.

And naturally this should be entwining a towering female figure.

So I evidently need to go back to the wool shop to get some more green wool as the accompanying bursting bag full of leftover green wool doesn't contain any of the right oxidized copper shade in order to knit an impressive Statue of Liberty around which the beady Shane words can shimmer.

So there we have it. A glimpse into the circles of my mind....

I think someone was indeed tossing in a stream.... my stream of consciousness.... Maybe I should start drinking again and regain unconscousness....

As previously stated in relation to the popular compiling of bullshit promises, this year.....