Don’t Tell Mum

I’ve just had one of those portals to another realm moments.

    Chatting to Hubbles, not far off 18 now, the conversation lead to our old coffee table. This was a big heavy chunky reclaimed wood beast that served us well for several houses. (Sadly not this small one.) Hubbles said he remembered him and elder brother Boom placing a balloon under one of the legs - and it didn’t pop. Then they got nervous about getting it out again - it has to pop right? Who’s gonna be the one? They teamed up and both survived, as did the indestructable bloody balloon. No amazing punchline, the story itself isn’t the thing - The Thing is how my mind went pop.

    Obviously I know all my kids have their own minds, thoughts, shenanigans with their friends - yet it only just struck me that they had/have an entirely secret world within my own - in the house. With each other, or alone, there is whole Other Life that I am not part of. 

    I know… I already knew. Shrieks and thuds from other rooms are a constant, I regularly found a box of icing sugar at the bottom of Boom’s bed, there was that hilarious piece of film I found… (Oh where is that?) Me and my bruvs had our Other World within Mum and Dad’s World, I have my own secret life from Roving Blade and the kids. All clues. But all of a sudden I WANT TO KNOW what else they all got up to in this other world. This Other World.

    Hubbles thought my epiphany face was amusing and shared how back in one particular house (we judge time by houses as we’ve moved so often) he climbed up on the kitchen counters to get at the medicine tubs above the high cupboards. He would have been between two and eight in this house. The medicine tubs were up high for a reason. Hubbles’ reason however was that medicines made you feel better so he wanted some. He wasn’t feeling unwell, he just wanted to feel EVEN BETTER. So, as difficult as the task was, he managed to get into the tubs and took one of everything.

     WHA?

    At that age he wouldn’t have ever had a tablet, it would have always been a spoonful of something. The little shit!

    Where the fuck was I? Or his dad? Or anyone? 

    Other World.

    I’ve decided I want to create a group for the four kids to swap stories/remind each other of past ventures/share larks - without me in it (I’ll set it up, coz they won’t, then I’ll bugger off). On some significant date I want to be allowed back in to read it all. 

    They’d never pick up a pen - this way they might egg each other on and have a giggle. But it’s still unlikely. One of Mum’s stooopid ideas… If they did it I bet they’d never let me back in - or keep the really juicy tales back. Maybe I shouldn’t know this stuff - maybe that’s the point… There’s a ton of stuff we all got up to on our old Home Ed gatherings that Roving Blade never needs to know. He was a Grand Master-Worrier. Still is. I’m keeping schtum.

    Telling my now 22yo daughter that I once flung her into the air as a babby at Nanny M’s house and bashed her head into a light-fitting spike didn’t get the ‘Ha ha so funny’ reaction I’d expected - she was horrified and made me feel a previously unexplained dent in the top of her head. ‘Oh shit!’ At the time both me and my bruv had gone ‘Oh shit! Don’t tell Mum!’ We were both in our thirties…

    Maybe the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows will have a word for it? There is one for the sudden realisation that the strangers you pass have full lives. (It’s sonder. Son-der. Pronounced sonder.) Is there one for: your kids are even more mental than you think? Is there one for: your mum is even more mental than you think?

    But there was another mind-pop - about that old coffee table. Hubbles wouldn’t have remembered a time before it, it would have been massive to the kids then yet the perfect height for them. It was a coffee table, dinner table, artist studio, lego platform, den, stage, launch pad, kitten zoo, keeper of all discarded treasure, supporter of tired feet, part of my secret world, part of theirs. It lived in four of our houses, and then us practically-minded parents sold it off and sent it away when we moved here five years ago. ‘You lot just dump your shit on it when you come in and there’s no room to get round.’ 

    I hope that old table is well loved wherever it is now. I’ve never liked this house much. It’s never felt homely. The kids don’t gather in the living room, it’s too small and doubles as Roving Blades’ office. At Christmas we borrow folding chairs from Reg next door and wipe down the big table in the conservatory (my bedroom) that otherwise serves as the excess office dump, Covid testing zone, swimming bag station and camera battery graveyard. We only kept that as RB’s desk and got rid of the chairs. He uses a smaller desk now. The conservatory makes a crap office coz there’s light bouncing off the computer screen no matter where you put it. Could we make it into a gathering place? I think it’s too late.

    When my daughter is back from uni in a week or so my youngest will be turfed out of her bedroom and slink back to the corridor laughingly referred to in the estate agent’s bumph as the dining room. I will have to clear all the folding and golf shit off the bed. I’ve never managed to get this house to work.

    In quiet moments you can find me fantasising over pictures of really tiny houses and clever space solutions on Pinterest. In what Other World lives my brain? In Cabin Porn World. In real life I am ramming cupboard doors shut with all my weight and kicking avalanched shoes back up to camp four. Everyone stays in their own pod now. I refer to my dream tiny cabins as pods. 

    RB has banned the word pod.

    Oh the sobbing when he posts up a photo of small savages lobbing cushions at each other in dinosaur-carpeted crash sites. All the mess. Utter chaos. I can hear it. (It was wonderful.) And in the background, there will be the coffee table. 

    It has taken its secrets with it. Ooh if coffee tables could talk… If coffee tables could set up online chat groups… If I knew the half of it… 

    I’d like to reclaim it, rereclaim it, and make a den underneath. I’d curl up in my tiny ((pod)) and ask it, ever so nicely, to spill the beans. I’m imagining I’d look up to find OH SHIT DON’T TELL MUM carved on the underside.

Shit...

I am deleting The Book. Chunk by chunk.

    What the fuck woz I finking?

    There may be a few lines left once I'm dunned.

    And several filed paragraphs for a different book. Or three... Seven... 

    I could have continued with this stooopid blog the whole time. There was plenty of crap to go round. 

    Maybe it was for the best. 

    Maybe 'writing a book' is an interesting (time-consuming) hobby. Publishing it - not the main goal after all. 

    But hopefully I will do the Big P. I need to tick the box to validate the time spent. The time other people spent asking me if I'd finished it yet. 

    I do have a point. Sadly I hid it in a haystack of repetitive analogies. Now all I gotta do is find the little prick. 

    Shit. 

    Dunnit again diddun I?

    Sigh. Chapter One...

ID Hole

Are my thoughts my identity, or my appearance, or my street where I was born? Or my current bedtime book, hairdo or address? 

      In my head my identity switches from saviour of the world to melting slug. Sometimes I want to be a cat – when I was a kid I’d totally be a cat. Pick any moment and I might want to be a roller disco goddess, or a tree, or a sorceress.

      Once I genuinely believed I was a sheep for three peaceful minutes – I swapped identities through the train window.  *Ping* I was me again. I didn’t think ahh here I am again a cis white lapsed Catholic student menstruator – no I thought fuck my brain’s mad, where’s my sandwich… My identity was: hungry. 

      No – that wasn’t my identity, that was my digestive state in charge of my thinking – I didn’t identify with the world’s starving. No, my identity was: person with a sandwich. 

      And I can’t have been a sheep for three minutes, more like three seconds – the lengthiness was my perception. It was peaceful – time seemed slower. If anyone was watching me their perception would have been: girl. White girl with a sandwich, a train ticket and a small tartan case. 

      Would a woman have wondered how much she could fit in that case? Would a man have been ranking me out of ten? Would that be their identities? No. That would be my presumption. Woolly thinking. 

      Once I’d stopped being a sheep, did being a human feel more humany? It felt being-on-a-trainy, it felt fast, it felt packaged. If I had been leaning on a gate out there, I may have felt relaxed, bipedal. At one, at odds. I may have felt I had power over the gate lock or my direction. How much of that is humany? (Hmnn, there's a teaser.) Which of us would believe they were Observer-in-Chief? I have felt harshly judged by a sheep through a fence before. 

      If I was in a carriage surrounded by men would I have felt more conscious of being female? Definitely. Would I have felt more humany or less?

      Is your identity what you contrast with, project, or believe in or side with? Or what someone else sees, hears or translates into their own programmed belief system? Is it our unconscious bias or our sandwich board? 

      Sandwiches again. I identify as a sandwich. I think I always have. I’ve always felt sandwiched. But really, am I not just a silly privileged girlie who doesn’t understand anything prattling away out of turn?

      Oooh. Maybe ouch.

      I definitely was a sheep though. Watching a girl on a train. I wonder what the sheep was thinking when we pinged back into being ourselves again. Maybe 'Why do I fancy a peanut butter sandwich? What the fuck is a peanut butter sandwich?' 

Wotsit All About?

Writing a blurb about a book wot you wrote is harder than writing the flipping book.

Wot have you dunned today? That's harder than wot have you dunned over the last eight years.

For the last eight years I have been writing a book. Amongst other things, such as not writing. Such as eating a lot of savoury nibbles. 

Today, I tweaked a : and two ;s into 'is' and a ,. 

A day's work. 

But I think I have dunned the blurb. 

So wotsit all about? I've been asked this repeatedly and still it was excruciating squeezing out a coherent description without being cheesy. 

It's about the details. 

And now, I squint my brain at wot to put on the back of the book. This could take another two months. I want something original... I need more savouries to get the cogs working. 

I wish I had some Wotsits. They remind me of Saturday afternoon swimming. Specifically, the vending machine afterwards. Wotsits and a searingly hot hot chocolate in a criminally fragile plastic cup. Preparation for a wet walk home and an evening of still stinging eyes.

Now, Frazzles. They are a pub family room in Devon in which to spend the summer evenings with a pool table for my brothers and Don't Go Breaking My Heart on the juke box. 

Fangs were a free transfer of a funny vampire face I sent away for with tokens from the back of the packet and Mum ironed the image on a yellow flowery top for me. A funny combo, but it was a funny top - sleeveless but with a polo neck. Best accompanied by roller skates. 

Monster Munch, pickled onion flavour, were gaspilicious and to be devoured out of doors in raucous company, almost like an initiation trial. 

Hula Hoops tasted better bitten off fingertips. Getting ones to fit thumbs were trickier, but not impossible. 

Chicken Wickers tasted disturbing, like crusted burnt fat, but you'd keep eating them to confirm how inedible they were coz you could imprison your tongue in the structure before it disintegrated which was fun, like a mini jail break. The jingle still lives in my head. I'm liable to squeal 'They're terribly tongue-tickling' at inappropriate moments. 

Crisps, or maizey foodstuffs, seem to be important to me.  

While writing the book I ate my bodyweight in peanuts a thousand times over.

No wonder I'm so salty. 

Perhaps, instead of words on the back cover, I could infuse it with salt. Like a salt lick. Bet that's not been done before. 

So am I ready to publish? 

First edition, original flavour: ready salted. 

Unfinished

The Book. Books. How many edits can a gurrl do before she either throws it all away or releases it into wild as it is?

But I just remembered my latest deadline is next week. 

That's flippin' eeksome.

Dear gods of editing, please let me stop finding so many shit bits so I can be rid of this damned wordy burden. Wurden. Murderous worderous. See how fucked my brain is? Help...

Next week then. 

I will make a name for myself. 

Out of pasta, wool and Copydex. 

Reality of a Realist

It seems I am not much interested in my own life. 

Life Path. Apparently there's a path?

Tap here to start composing...

We Shall Name Them... Thingies.

Yesterday I did two strange things. I shared this blog address on a little Facebook group, and I read through some of these old witterings.

It's strange to let people in long after the party is over. And it's strange to imagine these giants I live with were once smaller than me.

They all need new names. I shall now fritter more precious tick tocks trying to think of some.

I could stick with their names I use in my book. The Book!! Which turned out to be five books. Possibly six by the time I finish.

By the time I finish... There's a comedy. I am a comedy writer. Not a writer of comedy, but a point-at-able joke with an i-pad.

I want different names for here though. I am tempted to keep Chicken Boy, Dog Boy, Corn Snake Boy as ever he was. He would currently be Budgie Boy. Dirty little fuckers are budgies. Feathers and bird shit all over his room.

But Budgie Boy sounds kinda sweet. He's lovely, but he's a cheeky git. He needs something a bit more savoury. They all do. I can't call my 6 foot despairer of his family's fuckeries Little Rock Godling anymore. And he doesn't still fit in his skulls-on-fire t-shirt.

Minx would kill me for having such a lame name. I did come up with these stoopid titles in a hurry. Just tapped 'em out without much thought and left it at that. Thuglet really suited him though.

I need something fearsome for Minx, cutting for Budgie Boy, respectfully terrifying for LRG and more lollopy for Thuglet. I need to look down the barrel of my own smokin' gun and say what I see.

I see four astounding superbods. Four Horsepeeps of the Acrapolypse. (Hey our house got a name too.)

Ooh four... I could get all deck of cardsy, or directiony, or elemental, or Jungian... I'm just comin' up with Rock, Scissors, Paper, Middle Finger. You play those roolz too don't you?

Nah. I'll call 'em Betty, Fred, Barney and Wilma til I gets inspired. Fuck 'em.

Ping plus ping equals plus twos

'Not plus fours. These are plus twos. Plus fours are baggier.'

So now you know.

What else have I learned lately?

Lots. But I can't remember. Really interesting things too. What was I watching last night that made me go 'Ooh well I never!!'? Roving Blade even raised an eyebrow impressed by the new info. I bet he won't remember either.

It's like that these days. If I remember to put my shoes on before leaving the house it's a triumph. R Blade used to despair of my memory, until he misplaced his own. Now I get to tut back. Or smile all angelic like. Coz it's payback. And payback is way more fun when you pretend to be supportive but are almost imperceptively taking the piss. It lasts longer.

I love learning new things. It makes my little brain go ping. If only my little brain would put it somewhere accessible. But I don't have that kind of little brain.

I have the kind of little brain that will never recollect things on demand, only when someone else is speaking. Then I have to blurt out the spark before it darts behind the mental wardrobe for another seventeen years.

This is consider rude by many people. Fuck them. I'm not rude. Just optimistic that they will be as interested in my amazing brainflash as I am.

Most people are not. They think I should learn some manners. Or learn to regulate my impulsiveness. Or learn how to pretend to not be me. But they might learn summink interesting from my cheeky outburst. And so might I - even if I am relearning something old. I will now be relating it to something new and making a brand new ping for my optimistic little brain. Making connections. Ping ping ping.

I wish for many pings to come. I hope I never stop pinging. Maybe forgetting things isn't so bad - I get to recycle my pings. Recycling is good.

Watching a film I watched last year with no idea what happens in the end is brilliant. 'I've seen him in something...' 'Yeah he was in that funny thing as the boyfriend.' 'And she was in that singy one with the sequel... and that one where she was married to the boyfriend from thingie.' 'Oh yeah. Like this one.' 'Yeah this one.'

'It was this one wasn't it?'
'No...' 'Maybe'
'We've seen this haven't we?'
'Yeah.'
'Can you remember what happens?'
'No. I think we realise he's a dick.'
'Yeah he's definitely a dick.'
'I didn't know she was in it.'
'Me neither.'

'What was she in?'
'That singy one.'

We are both a cheap date. Watch an old film like it's new. Tell each other 'You've had your tea'. Compliment him on his fresh haircut, from last month. Dig out the old shiny leggings 'Ooh!!'

It's fab. Lots of pings. I'm always learning something new... ish. And I'll share it with you when you least expect it.

I'm sorry that I have completely forgotten what I was initially going to blog about. Never mind eh?

But next time you find yourself talking to a dapper old golfer you can ask, impressively, 'I say old boy, are those plus fours or plus twos?' And no doubt he will be delighted to enlighten you.

You're welcome.

Golf... I think I was going to say something about golf. Where has that thought gone then?

'In the hole!!!!!'

Ahh. That'll do.

Techno Dive

I am in bed, the cradle of creation. Poncey way of saying I can't sleep and am fucking about with an old email address key to the door of my old blog. Normally I would not feed this particular troll, but I am tired and brain-buzzy at the same time, therefore my decisions are compromised.

So testing testing 1, 2, 1, 2... Is this my portal to a past life? A perilous anomaly of the space-time continuum... ummm...

To anyone that knows me/knew me - just look at my single space after a full stop - wow cool we love you I love you too. It's almost a natural thing now. I've evolved... a bit. I haven't growd up though.

It's been years since my last successful posting of any bloggery due to technical wank and in that time I have learned little. But after a painful tech battle where I lost six years of work, eventually retrieved in a chaotic contaminated state, I was forced to accept the single space.

The universe has many ways to make you suffer for your own good. Although I have yet to realise the joy of a fucking street lamp right outside my bedroom window. No I can't do curtains. My bedroom is a conservatory and I'm not doing bloody curtains all round that. Bright orange glare in my eyeballs it is then.

One day we will move away from such a peopled state back to the brambles of hermit life. But for a few years yet, we are obliged to pretend to be modern humans for the sake of the social offspring.

Fuck me the streetlight just went out!! One minute to one am. That'll be council cuts. Or can I claim witchcraft? Either way - woohoo!! Except now I need a wee and won't find the toilet in the dark.

So here endeth the testing testing 1, 2, 1, 2... Thank fuck for that - always several 1, 2s too long. But maybe I shall return if the universe deems it educational.

Not that I am receptive to learning anyfink. Have a laugh universe!! Knock yerself out. However, I shall remain the tedious bastard I always was.

Did you miss me?

My Brain Hurts A Lot

I just did something very silly. 

I wasted all my writing opportunities over the last few days in reading my old blog posts instead.  From the beginning. 

Interesting in terms of them being a diary of those years, but sad in as much as I learned in harsh black and white just how tedious I am.

I started this blog by accident - just had a primal urge to grunt a comment on someone else's blog one time and had to create a bloggy identity to do so, then felt obliged to spew forth regular bucketfuls of my fetid innards.  I eventually stopped due to technical glitches and an even more violent urge to spew my festerings into chapteresque form.  Yep - The Book.

Nearly finished it too.

But about a month ago a friend started a blog and I wanted to read it.  It was on another digital 'thing' and in order to get to read it I found myself having to create a new bloggy identity on that.  I now feel obliged to spew again. 

Now, I wondered if I could sculpt a whole new character for myself on that site.  I could be all sensitive and nice.  Or deep.  (Stop laughing.)

Then I had a notion that Madame Smokingun could leave acerbic comments on the nice me's posts.  And nice me could leave sweet dappies on MSG's, for her to lacerate.  This could be a whole new project.  I am smiling.  Like I do when I think up stoopid new projects to distract me from finishing something.

It's not that I don't WANT to finish projects - I don't have any umbilical psychological hang ups there - it's just that my brain skips off somewhere else before I know it and I am very easily led.  And oops there goes another risk of achievement and satisfaction with myself.

It's probably too technically complicated to keep up this digital multi-personality order.  I'll put this snake-eating-its-own-tail idea to the back of my skull for a few months to mature.  (Like there's any hope of maturity in my head... )

And get back to The Book.

But I may just pop back in again soon and keep my future nosey self up to date with the gap years.  Reel off all our main punctuations of the last few years.  And maybe even keep it going again so that when my dementia really gets ripe, I can look at a listy something and think... who's shoes have I just weed in?

It's a plan.

Am I Still Me?

Changing devices.  Or changing vices?

Identifying myself over and over again.

And again.

Driving myself nuts.  And everyone around me. 

Wish there was a simpler way of telling my mirror that I'm ME.  Still me.

Who's the tiredest in the land?

Fucking ME.

ZZzzzzz...   Still fucking me.

But here I am again.  Reinstalled Blogger on my new (acquired from silly old woman who shouldn't have bought it in the first place) tablet and found I didn't exist in my current state.  Had to find an old me.

Slightly worried about channelling this old me.  Could be trouble.

Well let's see.

I might revisit this old me a little more often and tap into some dangerous history.  I might learn sumfink.

Or I might end up smashing another device against a wall. 

I don't have the greatest relationship with Samsung devices.  This will be my third attempt. 

But it's free!!!

And that's wot my friend Mrs Wears-Her-Biscuit-On-Her-Sleeve would call bargainous.

I need to disable this spelchek.  I do not like being told wot to do.

One day I will return all proper like.  But for now I just wanted to see if I really did exist, albeit in a former self kind of way.

Yes I'll be back.  When I finish the yoo-know-wot.  I'm still plodding away.  Got over fourteen chapters now.

One day...

Bet you can't wait eh?

Jamming in the Name of the Lord

Lord Voldemort that is.  I do try to be perky and keep on the gingham side of life but I am inevitably dragged back into the folds of dark crushed velvet.  With tassels.  And skull beads.  I thought the new house would keep me from the demons' grasp - all that potential for a fresh start.  All that hope and clean surfaces...  

It started well.  The hell of moving house again for the third time in as many years was already being shoved into the Do Not Open file in my head.  We got gas instead of oil.  We got double glazing.  We got somewhere for the basketball hoop.  And for the first time in nine years - we got a walk-to-able bus stop.  All this and no more stairs.  No need to worry about my retirement bungalow - I'm already in it.  I have angels singing in my ears.  And they sound like The Supremes.

I am Madame Bakeybuns.  Homemaker, chummy mum and smiley neighbour.  Oh yes.

No.

You see, I got all enthusiastic about making jam - cheery floral pinnyesque activity if ever there was.  But not in my kitchen.  I had been tempted by the fruits of my new garden and lured into the Devil's trap.  An abundance of damsons dripping onto the football's domain had me at hello.  Yet I averted my gaze, resisted, bound by the weight of boxes to unload and innumerable grouping allen keys to categorise, but before I fully understood what lay ahead, there, poised like Margot Fonteyn, was my deluded little plump self atop a wobbly step ladder with a foolishly large mixing bowl gathering in the harvest.  Dear gods...  I can just imagine the wholesome bloom of Laura Ingalls Wilder on my cheeks.  Roving Blade and I even spread out the bounty on the grass to let all the wee spiders and bugs escape.  Just darling.

That was Friday evening.  Feckless Friday.  Put the bugless bowl on the dining table and wandered off.  Got distracted.  Got late.  Got the morning to do it - it'll be fiiiiine...

Still-Keen-but-Strapped-for-Time Saturday.  No problem.  My good 93-jars-so-far-this-year jam-making buddy had filled my head with dizzying delights of not stoning those teeny ol' damsons but simply straining them after cooking so I hurled 'em in me biggest pan and dreamt of luscious purpley goo. I'm so Mumsy I should write a blog.  Roving Blade was busy being all Dadsy putting in a cat flap in the hardest wood door ever known to man... and woman, (when he got fed up), and child, (when I got nowhere), and another child.. and another... I think even the cats had a go out of embarrassment. Still retaining my sunshine state in between futile sawing and holding things still while males drilled and screwed, I picked rosehips.  I may have hummed...  Detached my left thumbnail deseeding half the bastards before remembering I was bound for the carefree ways of the muslin strainer.  One nonchalant plop and I skipped off to look for the muslin. I've got tons of this stuff.  Tons of it.  Not a bit.  No matter I'll use a sieve and a j-cloth, like Madame 93-Jars does.  Except my sieve is small, hookless and just plain shite.  My j-like-cloths don't appear to have holes either.  'I AM READY!' I just need to wash, pack, get dressed, find shoes, pack for the boys, feed the cats, find the cats, post 'em through the flap a few times, feed Snake Boy, run through the door-locking/cat-feeding/cat-posting/microwaving (not cat related) instructions again, lecture Minx about buses and alcohol and mad money for an escape cab.. 'Of course I'm not still fucking about with jam!..'  Fucking shoes...  Which shoes?..  All of them.  Let's go.

Ooh a whole evening away.  Just the two of us.  A party.  A hotel.  Complimentary biscuits....  Which offspring shall we worry about first?  The one we've abandoned in the house alone, the one who's got on a bus and is staying over at some stranger's party, the one with the funny bottom billeted with Nanny or the shouty sweary smaller one who Nanny might just evict?  I should have put the sugar in the gloop.  I hope it'll wash off the pan ok.  I meant to put the sugar in.  If I'd stoned them first I'd have put the sugar in.  'Of COURSE I'm ready.'  Just got to do me lippy and find shoes.  Shoes...

Seriously-Sodding-Around-Sunday.  Text Snake Boy to get up.  Criminally speedy hotel breakfast.  Find the friends' house.  Confess we hadn't bought him a birthday present.  Mumbled about the jam taking longer than planned.  Anxious texts to Snake Boy's football coach - how's it going?  Only his second league game with this new team - scored four last week, how can he follow that?  The answer - by scoring five.  Roving Blade's chest puffs up another few inches.  Pick-ups, thank yous, blow-by-blows, half-cooked pizza pile up, a fast turnaround, proper bloody bovver boots back on (thank fuck), further boy abandonments and a still-alive Minx and I are clapping away at the ice gala (that she should be in but for her gucky toes and a heady social summer).  Whoop whoop - let's get home - the damsons are in distress. I'm sorry.  It just popped out.  Yes at last - fun and frolics dun ticked - back to the eternal slotted spooning and hand-squeezy stoning saga.  I could feel my shoulders stiffening, my spine fusing, my neck petrifying... whilst seeing my hands turn from red to purple to black.  I'm definitely ditching any stoopid ideas about joining the WI now.  They must be mad bitches.   At least I got to chuck in the fucking sugar.   Shame I'd forgotten to weigh the goop.  Chuck in a bit more sugar to make sure.  Only got muscovado - fuck it.  Squeeze in some lime juice for extra pectin.  And a bit more sugar...  Oh for for fucks sakes go to bloody bed.

Murderous Monday.  But by the dimming light I finally get to turn up the heat.  Get to herd the viscious mass into jars.  Halleflappingluyah!  Need more jars.  Lidless from the recycling bin.  Exploding jars.  For fucks sake let the torture end...

Talk-to-the-Hand Tuesday.  I'm busy.  You there, you sticky pots, you butter-wouldn't-melt sticky bastard pots - you can just sit there and think about what you've done.

Thrombosis Thursday.  How many different fabrics do you need for these damned lids? Just how long does it take to stick bloody labels on bloody jars?  How many lightbulbs does it take to think up a stoopid name for this glop?  Dambuster Jam?  Jambuster Damn.  Dammit Jammit... As ever, The Silent Assasin leaves his mark, undetected by the human eye.  Little Rock Godling, as he was once known, decided to help out.  

I now have ten jars of Bum In Face awaiting the new neighbours' pleasure.

This doesn't seem to happen on The Great British Bake Off.  They knock up a nifty blob of jam for a signature sponge in about ten minutes.  

Cunts.

Dare I?

Not sure.  Bit scared.

May come back later...

Ignore

Yes ignore that last spew.  Somehow during the spewaging, the old inconsequential spew slipped back into it's previous spew bucket. 

So glad I made the most of a bright spring morning...

Click.

I G N O R E 

Queen Glitch...

Thought I'd have a quick peek at Blogger to see if it had decided to behave in my absence.  It most certainly had not.  But as I'd planned to do lots of writing today, I wondered if a quick flick thro' a couple of old posts might just spur me on.  Either to make me think 'it's ok I CAN do this' (unlikely) or to be so shamed by my drivel that I'd resolve to improve, and set about doing so (a virtuous ambition don't you agree?)  So I just tapped on a couple of random ex-splats.  Noticed some typos.  Ignored them.  Next splat - the urge to correct over-took me so I hit the Edit button.  Fool.  Removed the offending error.  Fool.  Was faced with Save Draft or Publish.  Hit Publish.  That's what I used to do wernnit??  FOOL.  Suddenly I was back on the battleground of Signing In.  My password has lost it's power.  My choices are displayed in a muted 'you can look but you can't touch' tease.  I press everything in the end but nothing works except 'Cancel'.  My corrected old post disappears.  Now it wasn't a great work, but it's a link in a chain that has become more precious with age.  It's the rarity value.  My bloggy offerings are but a paltry tinkle of coppers due to a broken heart - Blogger dumped me and I never got over it - (oh it lets me spew still but not defend myself afterwards - comments still denied) - so I recoiled and took myself out of the market.  But like a soppy black&white heroine I pulled my old love letters out from under the bed to torture myself - and dropped one down the floorboards....

Oh the anguish!  I have no idea why I felt so bereft, especially as I had just read it and knew it was wholly inconsequential, but it's the principle goldarnit!  And gods knows I have so few of those left.  I've just been electronically erased.  Outraged by technology again.  Feel thick now.

Can't even remember what it was called....

I give up fighting against the fight.  Go back to the front line hands raised clutching a tattered white hankie and look!  There the bastard is.  Re-published as if it's a new bloody idea.  

I hate this 'I Know Best' digital nazism.  I can't even retain my own thoughts in the order I thought them. I might just stop thinking altogether.  That'll fix Them.  

Anyway - just ignore.  Did you know that on the Self-Service tills in B&Q there is an Ignore button that the staff can press when the posh voice goes AWOL?  I want an Ignore button installed in my head.  When the shit starts to waft my way - click.  Ignore.

It's the only sensible path.  Self-improvement has shown itself to be a worthless ambition after all.  In trying to polish-up my previous incarnation, I merely highlighted my lacking.  So I'm backing away into the dark bushes once more to watch the pretty lights from my lowly hovel.  Pretend you never saw me.

Click.

.  .  i g n o r e  .  .  .  .  .

The Lonliness of the Long Distance Blogger

Keeping the far-flung Roving Blade company with stories is the brief. Brain Department says 'eeek!' What can I pretend I've been doing with my face-less bra-less hairbrush-less day? Can't confess that... MadameSmokinGun would not leave the house without eyebrows, sculpting or mop restraint. Thing is... Madame did not leave the house. Only as far as the washing line. Madame took the unusual opportunity of a Sunday without football, play rehearsals or Aged P-visiting to stay in what she had worn to bed and just avoid mirrors. Thuglet was too snotty to take out but well enough to ignore. The perfect set-up for anti-social slobbing sans guilt. And with no Roving Blade to pour scorn, the Scene of the Dance Crime was full blast and fluid. Boy things were electronically entertained beyond the radio-ruled Scene's threshhold. Their noise dismissed by a twist of my own cheeky little volume knob. Minxie-Pops appeared sporadically to feed, join in the dance crimes and change my phone's wallpaper to creepy images of sloths. (Funny the teenage interest in her wild counterpart.) The most taxing activity was disagreeing over the pronunciation of sloth. I know I'm right but have the calm maturity to just pull a 'derrr' face instead of argue. And carry on twerking. A 40-something booty-grinder will always but ALWAYS win any argument with a disturbed teenage daughter. Just have to brace oneself when switching one's mobile. A sloth in a box this time.

Back to thinking how to describe my day to my loved one peeking in from foreign shores. Back to the bosom of The Blog. I had convinced myself that my blog site problems were a gift from The Universe to stop me from directing my energy towards fun and frolics and make me concentrate on The Infamous and Still Unwritten Book. Yeah...I haven't been overly successful on the word-count front but I HAVE started. (That means diddly - I started it about 10 years ago... ) What I mean is I have downloaded an app on my new posh phone and have been rabbiting on that - all over the house at odd opportunities - instead of waiting my turn on the big pooter. Then I email them to myself and feel all clever. ....Except on the days when I haven't. Then I feel worthless and shamed. Today was a non-writey-emaily day so receiving a request for a blog tale split me in two. Am I misdirecting or am I boosting my achieveless little soul with a wee bloggy pick-me-up? Just a drop to warm the cockles eh?

So what tales to tell? Ummm.... unfortunately, despite the huge spaces between posts, I am still the same lame dame. I switch on machines that hum or whirr. I squidge-clear plate-sized spaces on counters and coffee tables. I squirt things that stink with chemicals. I sigh with over-work and check Facebook. I am an inspiration to my doting children....

And yet this evening did I not get up-to-date with my Home Ed scrapbooks? Surely a podium position? It's astounding what a moving date can spur. The last time I was up-to-date was the last time we moved house. The thought that Kent County Council might discover our existence and pay us an inspection does also haunt the cobwebbed tomb of my skull. East Sussex have been delightfully uninterested in us. My scrapbooks are so unwieldy and frightening I would hope they'd still the clipboard scratching. Preparation preparation preparation....

I haven't started packing. It's not for the want of boxes, it's the skip I'm looking forward to. Almost everything I lay my eyes on has been mentally filed there already. Apart from the scrapbooks. I peered into my wardrobe thinking I could start clearing out but didn't dare as I realised I'd not stop til it was all bin-bagged. I feel the same about the boys' room. Moving Day may be a month away but is there really any point in changing the sheets? It'll seem so much the nicer in the next place... I've got those vaseline-smeared visions - a new house with floors and walls you can SEE.... A clear table.... Clean made beds.... Sparkling kitchen.... Fragrant bathroom.... Let me dream.... It was only 2 years ago I dreamed this dream. Then we moved in. This time baby I'll beeeee bulleeeeeet-proof. No crap allowed. Apart from me. Aagh I've been shot!

Today was not the day tho'. Today was for throwing shapes, much tea and sellotape over-load. And a little nip of a blog.

Tomorrow will be back to hitting targets - multisports, extra football, the museum, chips in the park and everlasting lurking at the theatre. Interspersed with more football and dazed knitting. I'll turn off the engine tomorrow night and collapse onto the steering wheel. So today was a sweet oasis of flop. Looking at it like that I don't feel so lazy. I really should have had a shower tho'.... target number one for tomorrow then. As for rounding off my fat-arsed evening, I'm off to my crumpled minging bed to sleep, perchance to dribble.....

A Bigger Arse

Have got Roving Blade on a promise to think of away round my Can't Comment on a Post (Even My Own) Problem. Been a problem ever since Blogger 'improved' and fucked up their perfectly fine previous layout. Will hopefully be back to abnormal soon - leaving stoopid comments on things. 'Cos I couldn't I've not even been reading - too much like having me nose pressed up against the windows of cake shops I'm not allowed into. Sigh....

Bloggers beware.......

Arse revisited

Just testing.

Help Wanted

This is an appeal on behalf of MadameSG's cushions:    Cruelly neglected,   these soft victims of abuse have only days to live.    Possibly hours.    They are stained,  ripped,  clogged with dust,  regularly found discarded onto the hard filthy floors and,  when they do get selected for human interaction,  farted on.


Just £3 a month could save these squares of comfort.    If we could raise a significant sum of money  MadameSG's tyrannical regime of arsiness could be tackled and,  in time,  erased completely.

Slowly fade to colour and perkier music...

For if enough ordinary kind people donated just £3 a month MadameSG could be persuaded to shift her lardy backside and pick the bloody things up and even change the covers.   

We know flumping them daily is still a long way off but with small steps we can change the world.

Thank you for your generosity.  

Together we can make the living room a comfier and less gravyfied place.