The Bird Of Paradise

Over the last 46 years I have been all sorts of bird.

Posh bird was one of my favourites. For some reason East Enders always call me posh bird. When I worked in the bookshop, my stalker, Carl, who was on 'a programme', (presumably not Blue Peter) used to ring me at work and bellow "Ello Posh Bird!" at me. To which my answer was always "Hello Cockney Lad". We must have sounded like a pair of CB radio enthusiasts to my bemused browsers but it was friendly and harmless and I played along. It took me ages to work out what on earth he was saying, even at volume ten, and so our conversations had a time delay on them while I mentally translated the sweating and spitting and jokes I just didn't get. Anyway Posh Bird was a laugh.

Then there is Angry Bird. Angry Bird is the one Darling and the children sometimes get. Not often but when she blows she is like the Mistral. Unforgiving, harsh and cold. Angry Bird arrived today. Too long a night slumbering through a late night film she knew she wouldn't like just for the sake of giving the young enough rope to hang themselves, coming back home at 0030hrs, clearing up the dinner party, wondering how to restore the sitting room carpet. All good so far, and all trials any mother of teenagers is familiar with. Waking up tired, whizzing out for a blood test, returning, laying on a medieval style breakfast banquet, clearing that away, walking the dog, drinking lots of cups of coffee and talking to the fellow mothers picking up... all good again. And finally, a flit to the station with the last of the previous night's dinner party guests, just in time for him to make the 13:19 Kemble train. Angry bird was calm. Until she arrived at the Mall, to take Girls 12 and 13 out clothes shopping and found that Mother Hubbard's cupboard had been raided. The £160 slumbering in my wallet had left the building, in the style of Elvis, by the Stage Door. One of the young clearly picked up the rope I left out and hanged themselves. Too bad.

Kid's are daft buggers. After we had cleared up they all got up again at 3am and went for a walk and drank more wine. And now, on an empty stomach (as a result of being too busy to eat) I'm having a glass of wine and a whine.

Roll on the Bird of Paradise, the Strelitzia. I have a perfect pink cardigan trimmed with orange feathers that is my Bird Of Paradise outfit. I must wake up refreshed tomorrow and choose her, over all my other bird outfits.

Bach Suites for Cello No2 in D Minor Prelude on damask, with ice.

Oh God, as if thing's weren't already a bit close to the edge.. tonight apparently I have to go and see Avatar in 3D. Boy 16 is having a belated birthday supper party, which thanks to the upsurge in trendy male chefs, he is cooking himself. This is in fact good news because he is genuinely a better cook than I and has far more interest in nutrition in general. I have trained him well and I should really pat myself on the back for that, but I am firstly too stiff after Threading the Needle with Jesus yesterday, and secondly far far too busy beating myself up to stop for a pat.

We missed the dentist by two hours, (I thought the 1 was a doodle so we turned up at 2.30pm) Girl 12 wants a cowhide box for her bedroom so badly she has had the shopkeeper e-mail me with details and dimensions, twice and has been home alone and vomiting (my bug, more guilt) while I was out buying alcohol for underage dinner guests. I paused briefly from speed ironing (similar to speed dating but a little bit less fun, I imagine - you chuck the things you don't have time to do and no one really wants back into the laundry basket) to deliver a short talk on behaviour, alcohol, sleeping arrangements to Boy 16. He laughed, messed my hair, gave me a hug and told me not to worry and that if anything went wrong, he'd call the Allfreys.

This is a family joke. After 7pm I am slightly unreliable and after 8pm his father is asleep. The Allfreys are a very strong, firm, reliable, straight family who live down the hill. If we weren't us, we would be just like them. Occasionally we have partied with the Allfreys and they party very very well, just not everyday. And if Daddy Allfrey ever gets stressed, he seems to hide it better than Darling does. Or perhaps we just wear our hearts on our sleeves. And Mummy Allfrey works so hard and does so much for the community and church. The two Allfrey children are polite and dependable and incredibly bright. Can you feel my pain?

Right now I am typing from a damask table cloth, surrounded by helium balloons looking at some stunning parrot tulips . My DJ is playing me Bach, Cello Suites, which always breaks my heart, because he knows I can't type and listen to lyrics, and my wine waiter (same chap) is bringing me a spritzer with ice. I hope his party goes well.

Back to Avatar. I hate science fiction. And I wear glasses. Like so many things in life, I can't see this working out.

Goat-feathers

Well, as experiments go that was interesting. I abandoned this blog nearly two weeks ago in a tidal wave of creative juice. The deal was, that rather than writing for 45 minutes a day and slamming out a sloppy blog, I delegated the Goat-feathers* and sat down and got on with writing The Book. The book, which has attached itself to the side of the womb and will grow, given luck and time.

The result was that I looked for a cleaner, the laundry piled up, the log baskets emptied, the unopened post piled up and little by little the straight jacket buckles tightened. Finally, it was half term and the filthy house was delightfully full of hungry mouths and enquiring minds again. However, I hadn't written a word, and it wasn't just a lack of discipline, it simply that, in the same way that these guys are unable to accept the idea of me wandering off around the world and exploring, they and the running of the house are also not ready to give me indulgent grins as I sit at the computer at the kitchen table for two hours a day writing. Even now there is a mountain of ironing giving me looks from the other side of the room. I just flicked it a 'V'.

So, in the style of the News In Brief columns down the inner margins of the broadsheets,

Last Hen Karks It
The last of the hen bit
the dust at the hand of her
loving owner last Thursday
She was never going to pull
through after the savage
attack of the bastard fox
who is still on the run.



Lunch With Dad
Luce and Roger had lunch
last week. The sun shone.
She had the carpaccio, he had
something else.
Discussions were had about
a consolation trip to Sri
Lanka. Passports and credit
cards were photocopied. He
paid. For everything.

Nina The Cleaner
Luce did her best. Nina's son
was ill. Luce will try again
next week. After she has cleaned
up after half term.

Story of my life, really. Disappointment, consolation, compromise, salvage. It's the same for all of us. x

*'Goat-feathers are the distractions, side lines and deflections that take a man's attention from his own business and keep him from getting ahead.'

Ellis Parker-Butler 1919

As experiments go...

That was a good one.

Being ill disciplined and chaotic, I have always found excuses for not doing the hard jobs. Pink jobs yes, hard jobs no. So, while the house runs relatively smoothly and laundry logs and lunch get done, the real work never does. And the real job is to write a ditzy novel that tells a funny, contemporary tale of love, with an edge.

Forty posts wasn't so hard. I managed half an hour a day, just about. If I employ a cleaner I can't stand the sight of, for two hours a day and lock myself away in the drawing room with my dongle while she cleans, I will either land up with a very tidy drawing room and desk, or something to work on.

So that's the end of the blogs. I hope I can bring you something a bit more structured in due course. And finally, maybe, achieve something, apart from my lovely children and tidy house and garden and the oaccasional well presented meal containing all the major food groups, that I can be proud of. You never know.

Louis, thank you. Thank you for asking me to do this. I notice the quid pro quo didn't go so well, Gentleman Snapper!

Old School Reunion

I went to several schools in my 5 year period of secondary education. No, my father wasn't in the army, or a gypsy, but that's probably enough on that subject. Old School Reunions are not something I would generally bother with.One I went to offers Afternoon Tea, a tour of the school and a chapel service regularly. Frankly I'd go a long way not to have to put up with that sort of treatment, and sadly, that dry and dusty all girls school was the one where I spent the longest time.

The one I managed to stay at for three and a half terms was rather different. Mixed, anarchic, creative and stuffed to the gunwales with, what were then, just kids. Having made friends with many OB's (can we leave it at that?) over the years and months on Facebook, I had a mad moment last autumn and called an AGM. Brick Lane for a curry was decided, and at one point 30 people were lined up and called to arms. Remember here that I didn't KNOW these people at school. They were all three years above me... so how did that happen?

It was a heartwarming event, which may or may not have been improved by the gift of a two litre vodka box with one of those intriguing taps that looks like a pigs head and makes you keep wanting to press it. And then the curry itself. And lots more beer. And Moriaty, who cried everytime I held him. But he is only 6 months old. And Tim, I am so sorry that you landed up coughing up for the £100 unpaid balance on the bill. We'll have a whip round at the next one and see you right. Obviously Maths wasn't taught very well at that place.

After the curry we wisely went to the pub around the corner where we met the barking mad woman called Liz who had just come back from somewhere in South America but either she didn't seem sure, or I wasn't listening. Actually I wasn't feigning indifference by that stage. The lock-in only made it worse. I have no idea what time it finished.

So, 17 years of laundry logs and lunch followed by a weekend of utter madness. I was glad to find that she is still there, the girl I miss. In fact, that was almost as good as my brother's wedding which was also a vodka frenzy, so perhaps vodka IS the answer. As far as I can see from sifting through the wreckage of posts, the only two real casualties were my chickens which got eaten by the fox while I was away, and Louis's tripod which I left somewhere...So, now what? Pull on the boots, paint on the face, pick up girl 12 from school put the ironing away and serve the red meat stew. And I'm sorry it took me so long to blog. I couldn't have done it over the weekend. I'd have trashed the netbook.

And if anyone is concerned that this may influence my children badly, I know that Girl 13 has had her laptop and mobile confiscated as the result of the previous weekend in the London when her crazy gang over did it, and none of them care less anyway.

One of the side effects of spending a great deal of time 'social networking' is that when I do go out, I find it much easier to speak to real people in a positive way. I have learned from Facebook that real people like perky people, that everyone likes to be spoken to as an equal and that eye contact and flattery will get you everywhere and everything, almost. Infact, I think I just find people more interesting now. I went to Bristol today on various fools errands and goose chases.

First off I watched a woman passenger get out of a huge jag and do that silly hand signal back back back STOP! thing for the man driver. He came within a gnats whisker of whacking the hell out of his tail lights and she was beating on the boot and shouting. When she saw me laughing, she laughed too. We agreed she'd had a close call and on we went with our days.

Then the moody mare in the changing rooms. I had to woo and beguile her, but I won her over in the end, after the fourth visit. The girl on the till was great. She didn't mind when I took three things back five minutes after buying them, because I made fun of myself and explained (untruthfully) that I was taking pills for it but they hadn't kicked in yet. Same with the Security Ape holding the door in Harvey Nix. I said 'Hi, thanks' walked in, stopped stock still, looked around like the dinosaur sniffing the air for edible kids in the kitchen scene in Jurassic Park. Security Ape almost grabbed my arm and led me to a chair, but instead asked me if he could help. I explained that it was my age and that I didn't know why I was there, laughed and went for lunch.

The Apple shop was the most fun. I almost started a rave in there, music, headphones, silicon covers and a good loud play on the iPad which looks like it will be a must have when they iron out the inevitable glitches. The geek serving me had the thickest glasses on I have ever seen and was charming and energetic and enthusiastic. His beardy weirdy fellow technogeek (aged about 50) was wearing an Apple t-shirt over his shirt but wry and witty inspite of that sartorial confusion. Clever than he looked, obviously.

So, in this current Pollyanna frame of mind, I'm off to the pub, singing 'I'd like to teach the world to sing..' by the New (thank you Nicky, Ed.) Seekers with butterflies rather than frogs flitting about in my headbox. I can feel a Coyote Ugly session coming up, but that is possibly best left until Saturday night. No partying on school nights.

What are Hippies FOR?

Years ago when the smalls were tinsy wee, I remember overhearing Girl 5 ask Boy 7 what hippies were for. He replied, 'To keep your leggies on' which I thought was s smart response.

Well now aged still just 45 I have found out that hippies can be a damn nuisance. I was born with hyperflexible hips and as a result splent most of my childhood upside down, doing walkovers and sitting comfortably in 'the splits'. Unthinkable now. Pay back for the party trick has snuck on me over the last few years and I was finally driven to wave the white flag and surrender down at the doctor's surgery. The subsequent X-ray has revealed that I am 'Normal. No Further Action' Snort! That's what they think. I hate doctors. They always think they are the only intelligent person in the room. Anyway I've been batted away as usual but the dull ache in what Jesus Jones the Pontius Pilates teacher would quaintly call my 'seat bones' remains. As I am still not rock and roll enough to get addicted to Benzadrine, or whatever it is they all seem to live on in LA, I'll just have to lump it.

Looking for reasons has never been one of my weaknesses. Stuff happens, we all know that. However, I think a winter of sitting on the kitchen bench or perching on the radiator downloading songs and films and ordering books and chatting with friends on the internet has not just affected the state of the housekeeping, but also narsed up my arse, as it were. Jip in the hips. Now where did I leave my zimmer? If only I could find my glasses... Bugger I'm going to miss Emmerdale at this rate.