Weevilstepmother

Recipe for a hotel breakfast

2008-07-12T12:24:00.003+01:00

1. Make sure you come down for breakfast just when everyone else does. That way you get to know people really well in the lift.

2. You'll get plenty of exercise too, as you are forced to select a table at the furthest extremity of the cathedral-sized breakfast room.

3. If you wish to entertain yourself, you can look for soya milk. Then you can give up, and have apple juice on your cornflakes instead. The first day. You may find it easier just not to bother on subsequent occasions.

4. On the first day, you will join the shuffling queue at the mouth of the conveyor belt toaster affair. It will finally be your turn to place your bread on the fiery track then hang around in the heat protectively, in case someone else grabs them when they are spat out at the bottom.

5. On the second day, you will spot the other one round the corner which nobody else seems to use. Result.

6. On the third day you will realise that since parallel processing is much faster than serial, inserting your breads together in portrait orientation rather than consecutively in landscape will afford a processing time saving of at least two seconds.

7. You may be tempted to have scrambled egg on toast. This will almost certainly be a mistake.

8. If you care to, you could undertake a comparison exercise throughout the week. On no two days will the colour and consistency of the scrambled eggs be similar, let alone identical.

9. You may find yourself drawn to the baked beans. This will followed quite quickly by a repulsion. Stirring the crusty dry bits in might help to make things look a bit more palatable.

10. On the way back to your table, you might consider that stirring the horrible bits in means that you get far more of them in your spoonful than if you had, say, carefully spooned the top layer off into a corner of the dish and helped yourself to the uncrusted goodness below.

11. Every morning you will choose to sit at a table next to a sneezer or a cougher.

12. The one time you get to sit close enough to see and hear the plasma TV on the wall, it will be displaying CBeebies and not the Breakfast News.

Spongeball Peskypants

2008-02-05T12:15:00.000Z

We have a new kitten at Weevil Mansions. We'd realised that Pesky was tending rather to the senior side at fifteen, and she had got to the point where she was spending all day inside resting after a hard night's sleeping on her luxurious bean bag. When she got up she was clearly stiff around the hips, and had taken to bunny hopping down the stairs in what might at first have appeared a fit of youthful playfulness but which instead indicated the pain caused to her by descending in a more conventional manner.

In consultation with the V.E.T., it was agreed that she was an old girl and that arthritis was an unsurprising consequence of her years. Looking at her age, her condition and her heart murmur, it was clear than a full diagnosis involving an X-Ray (and therefore a general anaesthetic) was out of the question. So it was time to make A Decision.

This is where the new kitten comes in. Papers exuberantly fringed by playful claws, charging round the house after assorted playthings, animation, chirrups and head on one side. Needs feeding all hours of the day and night, nose into everything, squirting unseen through closing doors into quiet bedrooms then yowling for egress, and generally bringing mayhem and life and smiles to the house. It's amazing what a couple of cc of feline ibuprofen will do...

Now, I do not begrudge in the slightest the monthly outlay on the drug which has ensprightened her so astonishingly. But I do find myself a little cheesed off by other disbursements entailed by her new condition. Her red mousey with the bell and no ears had lain discarded and dusty for years but has been pressed into service one again, with no outlay. Good start. In a fit of excitement, I have to confess that I splurged a little in the cat toy section of the local hardware shop and purchased assorted toys, cats for the edification of. It transpired that purple fluffy things with a pull cord which vibrated and jiggled engagingly left her cold, as did plastic balls with bells inside and strange whip-like objects which rejoiced in the name of 'Cat Dancers' - but I did hit the jackpot with a bag of brightly coloured sponge balls which bounced and rolled beautifully, were just the right texture for clawing and biting and generally won the Pesky seal of approval.

The only trouble is that there appears, somewhere in Weevil Mansions, to be a Bermuda Triangle type phenomenon which preys solely on small, brightly coloured sponge balls. In the space of two months, Pesky has been the joyful recipient of 12 of the said balls. One survives. Well, I say survives - it is unrecognisable in size, colour and texture as the glorious sphere of yellow it once was. Of the others, there is no trace. It's driving me crazy - somewhere in this house there is a cache of kitty toys in which are hiding two pounds and seventy five pence worth of spongeballs. We have searched under sofas, we have safaried under the fridge, we have poked under bureaux, all to no avail. To add insult to injury, when I went to restock I found, having surveyed carefully the breathtaking expanse of kitty tat at the hardware shop, and resurveying just to make sure, that there was no sign of the spongeballs at all, so she's going to have to make the manky ex-yellow one last, and by the look of the bits left on the carpet when she plays with it, its days are numbered. Would anyone mind inventing a spongeball detector? Please...?

View from a train

2007-11-12T22:18:00.001Z

"Morning, Mr Magpie." He flicks his tail towards me twice in what might equally be a gesture of contempt or an attempt to balance on the high metal fence on which he has chosen to alight.

It's blear o'clock on a Saturday morning, I'm settling into my seat on a train pulling out of Newport, heading for Manchester and beyond. As I waited on the platform, I watched with mounting excitement the scrolling litany of stations that lay between me and my destination. I've never travelled this line before, not seen these stations. What sights will I see, what peeks will I sneak on the way?

Nothing can beat the intimate views of life afforded by a journey on the train. Tallboy can peer over walls when we're out walking; I'm not so blessed. Views from the car are thwarted by hedges and walls. Oh, and having to concentrate on the road and stuff. OK, you get pretty views from a plane, but that's about as intimate as Google Earth without the zoom functionality. The closest is possibly the motorbike - you're up higher, and you have smell-o-vision too which adds another, not always welcome, dimension to the trip. But the concentrating on the road thing is even more of an issue on the bike, and there's no real chance to immerse yourself in your surroundings.

My musings are interrupted by my phone; the SMS alert embarrassingly loud in the otherwise quiet carriage. It's Tallboy, texting me with enormous enthusiasm to let me know that he is having a boiled egg sandwich for his breakfast.

I nestle back in my seat and watch the world go by - a row of back gardens, each the same size, but each utterly individual. Some are manicured and inch-perfect, some are wild and untidy, many are occupied by large trampolines. I see footballs, discarded bicycles, tables and chairs, wheelbarrows and washing. I wonder if the owners realise how visible they are, how on show? Yes, they can see the trains passing at the bottom of the garden, but do they even notice them any more? Do they see past the shell and consider that there are people inside looking out? My back garden is so much more private, overlooked only by Shouty Neighbours and Nice Neighbours. How would I feel if hundreds of people saw it every day?

The houses, too, fascinate me, as I see the side of them that can't be seen from the street. Over the years, owners have tried to maximise their living space, and these properties, so uniform at the front, are so diverse at the rear. Single storey rear additions, whole new wings, conservatories, sheds, lean-tos, gazebos, sheds, aviaries, sheds, and er more sheds. Such a jumble, such variety, the stamp of individuals over time.

There are industrial and commercial premises to see as well, apparently similarly oblivious to the tubes of voyeurs speeding past. The dirty back ends of buildings slide by as I look at the piles heaped up by the fence which borders the railway - pallets, tyres, bricks. From time to time there is a patch of waste ground with a hint of a former building.

Soon enough, we are back in the countryside, passing through green sheep-filled valleys. The early-morning hills are snagging the low cloud, their slopes snapshotted mid-transition from green to gold. There is still evidence of people - dog walkers, country houses, a treehouse proudly flying the Jolly Roger, mouldy caravans in the corners of fields, a police car stopped by a field gate, the officer petting the muzzle of a horse - but they become less and less frequent. Past Leominster, there is a vast mast farm, sprinkled with white dishes pointing in all directions.

At intervals, the driver sounds the train's horn, a satisfying, musical blart. I wonder what prompts this, and try to detect a pattern. I'm pretty confident he was doing it whenever we came up on a field of prone sheep - inured as they were to the passage of the train, the horn made several of them at a time rise indignantly and shake themselves.

I scan each field margin closely for any sight of BUNNIES! but see none at all. I am rewarded instead by prodigious quantities of bird life. A ramrod heron, all concentrated attention with a beak of doom. A harlequin pheasant bumbling by the hedgerow. Magpies everywhere, often in pairs, flicking their tails at me. Pigeons rising ponderously from fields of young crops, plump and pompous. A cloud of starlings ascending in unison, disturbed by the train. Two swans on the river, aware of their stately beauty and presenting their best sides to double advantage, reflected in the water. Affronted mallards emerging beneath the bridge we are crossing, looking almost too solid for flight. Small birds fluttering from cover to cover round the edges of the fields. Larger birds circling lazily higher up. Single predators following meticulous flight paths, razor precise.

I lose count of the level crossings we pass, revelling in our priority over the lesser beings on the roads. At some, no one is waiting and I have a Zen moment and think of trees falling in the forest with no one to hear them. At others, single vehicles wait for us to pass, the drivers taking the opportunity to touch up their makeup or rummage in the glove compartment. I smile grandly at them, but none of them notices. At a very few, there is a satisfyingly long queue of traffic. I am tempted to wave, but think better of it.

As we leave Ludlow, I am forced to scrabble in my bag for my mp3 player to drown out the inane chatter of the women who have joined me at my table, before my brain explodes; the remainder of my journey has a soundtrack of ELO and the Eurythmics. In my case are two sets of mittens I finished just in time. One is a pair of monkeys, with tufts of hair on their foreheads and cheeky grins; the other are blue and red with smart black spiders embroidered on them. Each pair is joined by a cord, and they will dangle engagingly from the sleeves of the four year old twins at my journey's end. I smile at the thought and sink back, Jeff Lynne in my ears, the fields unrolling before my eyes.

Tallboy's guide to hard drive recording

2007-10-20T19:12:00.000+01:00

1. Moan about non-Y2K compliant video recorder in front room which won't record anything set to record more than a day in advance.

2. Include in the moan the twin machine in the back room.

3. Do nothing for several years until your wife buys a hard drive/DVD recorder.

4. Decide to record the F1 Grand Prix qualifying.

5. Realise that a test run a couple of days before might be an idea.

6. Go into setup mode.

7. Fail to select your chosen channel to record from.

8. Continue to fail to select your chosen channel.

9. Have chosen channel selected for you by your wife.

10. Try to set the date.

11. Argue with the unit that today isn't the 18th.

12. Ask wife for support about the date.

12. Argue with wife that today isn't the 18th.

13. Accept it's the 18th.

14. Set it to record chosen channel in 15 minutes' time.

15. Wonder whether you need to turn unit off to set it into standby recording mode.

16. Find instructions.

17. Seek enlightenment.

18. Find glasses.

19. Switch on reading lamp.

20. Seek enlightenment again, this time with a chance of actually seeing it.

21. Mutter.

22. Delete current timer recording job.

23. Decide to record programme about toxic children rather than The Bill.

24. Choose channel, set date, set time for ten minutes hence, turn unit off.

25. Wait half an hour.

26. Play recording.

27. Realise you are watching people pretending to be police officers, not chemical-filled children.

28. Mutter. Loudly.

29. Wait until the next day.

30. Ask wife for guidance.

31. Watch in annoyance as she sets timer with about the same effort involved in scratching left ear.

32. Decide that you're not that bothered about recording the qualifying anyway. I mean it's not the actual race is it? And it'll be a busy weekend so there's not much chance of actually sitting down and watching it, so there's no point really...

Breadslap

2007-06-19T09:34:00.000+01:00

Tallboy raised his hand to me the other night. I almost stopped choking in amazement. You may remember that he recently sat by and watched me choke on a piece of pineapple. This time, we were sharing a block of chocolate in front of a film. I took a swig out of my water bottle and managed to choke on it. I controlled myself enough to prevent myself performing a fountain impression but the tickle in the back of my throat persisted and I coughed and coughed, streaming at the eyes. Hunched over and occupied though I was, I detected some movement in my peripheral vision; Tallboy was readying with his hand to render me a life-saving clout to the back. I gestured that it wasn't necessary, and his state of alert subsided with my diminishing coughs.

Charitably, he pointed to the last bit of chocolate. 'You have that,' he said. 'Nah, it's all right,' I gasped between coughs. 'Leave it a minute,' he said, ' have it later.' OK, I thought, I will. After a few more swigs of water, some deep breathing and several minutes without coughing, I felt ready for my chocolate. Reaching out to pick up the last piece, my fingers met wrapping; looking down to improve my aim, I discovered the reason for my inability to touch the chocolate. It wasn't there. I turned to Tallboy. I may have yelled a little bit. His face turned from pleased-with-himself-post-chocolate-consumption to aghast and mortified. He had bloody well eaten it, without saying a word.

That piece of chocolate now ranks with the cherry pancakes I didn't have at the Little Chef we drove past because Tallboy didn't want to wake me even though I had said before dropping off in the passenger seat: 'Please can we stop at the services.' Let's say that the number of cherry pancakes I have between now and the end of my days is C. And let's say that the potential number of cherry pancakes I could have had during my life is P. However many C turns out to be (and believe me, it could be lots) C will always be P-1...

The next day, still smarting at the chocnapping, I was preparing my tea. As Tallboy, numb and dribbling, just returned from the dentist, happened to be passing, I was wielding a pitta bread. Not just any old pitta bread either, but a Tesco LARGE pitta bread. Turning to face him, I was unable to prevent myself bringing the bread round in an arc and coming to a rest against his cheek. In my defence, I must say that I had intended it to be a gentle, jocular kind of thing. But sadly it turned out like the time I intended to pretend to knee the Ex in the nuts. Possibly because I hadn't properly assessed the extra size of the bread, it slapped rather firmly against Tallboy's cheek. His look of astonishment so moved me that I had to apologise between guffaws.

Mes Vacances en France

2007-06-15T21:04:00.000+01:00

1. Receive summons from Dad to visit him and Wicked Stepmother in France.

2. Spend hours researching best deals/routes/modes of travel on web.

3. Book plane tickets for self, Tallboy and Sun.

4. Realise the next morning that this will clash with 3 day course at work.

5. Receive warning from Dad to expect many flying biting things, and to come prepared with creams, salves, preventatives and the like.

6. Fly to France.

7. Realise en route that since we haven't seen Dad for a few years, and since a) the Sun has grown (the little toad is now taller than I am, a fact which he brings to my attention several times a day) and b) I am now 8 and a half stone lighter, the only member of the family likely to be recognised by our reception party at the airport was Tallboy.

8. Squeeze into impossibly small back seat with WSM and the Sun for the two hour journey to chez Dad.

9. Peer out at unfamiliar French countryside.

10. Shut eyes tightly as aggressive Frenchman towing small caravan looms large in windscreen at roundabout. There is, amazingly, no collision.

11. Take turn during stop at another roundabout to pore over map and agree with WSM that we are miles off course and need an urgent 180.

12. Peer out at strangely familiar French countryside.

13. Unfold self with painful difficulty from car upon arrival at charming French residence.

14. Realise within hours that wandering the house without shoes is not a good idea, given that the apparent aim of the elderly resident cat is to play poo Russian Roulette with my feet.

15. Assist WSM in attempting to locate smelly cat poo by wandering round the house, sniffing. But not too hard.

16. Decide that to sample the real French ambience, you need to walk with Tallboy to the village boulangerie at stupid o'clock in the morning. Wake early, walk couple of miles to boulangerie along country roads containing scarily fast vehicles, salivating all the while at the thought of croissants and pains au chocolat. Arrive at boulangerie to find it shuttered and quiet. Walk the two uphill miles back, hungry and disappointed.

17. Insist on visiting the village of Largeasse.

18. Insist on having photo taken by sign in village of Largeasse.

19. Suggest mooning whilst having photo taken by sign in village of Largeasse. Receive strict interdiction from Tallboy, the Sun and Dad, almost in unison.

20. Get bitten in the small of your back by unidentified flying creature, during the night.

21. Visit Goat Farm.

22. Watch in amazement, whilst waiting for Goat Farmer, as small farm cat proudly bears immense dead rabbit almost twice its own size across the farmyard towards the barn.

23. Purchase goats cheese from small dingy in-farm dairy. To fill in silence as Goat Farmer lady wraps goat cheeses, point to the rabbit pate on the shelves and ask if they send the cats out to hunt the rabbits for them. Receive stony Gallic stare.

24. Assist Dad in attempting to locate smelly cat poo by wandering round the house, sniffing. Find inordinately long brown sausage carefully laid along the power extension block behind the TV. Point at it then run away.

25. Start feeling old as you need a nap every afternoon. Fail totally to be reassured by WSM declaring that it's down to the fresh air.

26. Peer closely at every wall you pass, exclaiming every time you see a lizard. Exclaim lots, really.

27. Become a regular at the local Hyper U supermarket.

28. At the cafe, pick the bacon out of your omelette; clearly when you carefully ask for one without lardons because you don't eat meat, you don't actually mean it.

29. As you are an IT professional, on holiday, fix Dad's poorly computer.

30. As Tallboy is a vacuum pump engineer, on holiday, let him take apart poorly vacuum pump and read it the last rites.

31. Find your insect bite has spread overnight.

32. Fail, along with everyone else, to inform Tallboy that the cistern in the downstairs loo is knackered. Snigger quietly as he realises the situation rather too late...

33. Buy as a souvenir a French Cheese identification book, explaining to the lady at the checkout in the bookshop that looking at them is less risky, calorifically, than ingesting them.

34. Spot many wildlifes including a myriad lizards, a battalion of bats, mad donkeys, lapins, vaches and a horse. Called Fanny.

35. Watch the Sun feed the horse, torn between amusement at her 'rude' name and fear that she would have his hand as well as the apple.

36. At the last visit to the Hyper U, incur WSM's wrath by spotting the Sun in sole control of the trolley containing everyone's shopping, making a dash for the checkout with it, and paying for the shopping in toto.

37. Watch in horror as your insect bite gets very angry and redness spreads across your buttock. Wonder at the insect juice that is causing this reaction, and consider the possibility of a limb amputation through septicaemia. Apply soothing ointment without conviction.

38. Return to the UK having consumed far too much red wine, bread and French cheese.

39. Note with concern the continued progress of the insect bite from hell.

40. Run the Race for Life two days after getting home. Need a nap after finishing it.

41. With antihistamines failing to quell the manky bite, make appointment at the surgery. Moon the practice nurse to show her the bite and associated mankiness. Sit down stunned as she informs you that it's not a bite, you have shingles.

42. Collapse in a heap for the next few weeks.

Weevil's Wildlife Watch

2007-05-01T21:53:00.000+01:00

Or detectoring bats the fun fun fun way...

1. Go on a bat walk with Tallboy and experience first hand the thrill of flying mammalia.

2. With Christmas on the horizon, investigate the purchase of a bat detector for Tallboy. Recoil in horror at the cost.

3. Take Methane Boy to one side on visit to Manchester Uni and suggest that he might like to craft a home-made bat detector for Tallboy's Christmas present.

4. Watch Tallboy's undisguised glee as he unwraps said bat detector on Christmas Day.

5. Watch the undisguised glee fade a little as he realised the little buggers would still be hibernating and he had no chance of trying it out for months.

6. Fast forward several months.

7. Walk back from the gym in the twilight. Suffer extreme strafeage by bats on multiple occasions on your journey home. Phone Tallboy after the first one, but find him reluctant to come out. Call him again after the third, and wait for him under the street light in the lane, wondering where the bloody bats have gone. Hear nothing through bat detector but interference.

8. Sally forth the next evening armed with a Tallboy and a bat detector.

9. Get fed up with calling it a bat detector.

10. Ponder a bit.

11. Plump for bat-dar.

12. Decide that's silly.

13. Settle on batzuma instead. Wonder why.

14. Walk down the lane of batness with Tallboy, pausing between the two lampposts most frequently frequented by the bats.

15. Look up at Tallboy, who is concentrating like an arch-concentrator, moving the batzuma through the air in many thrilling directions and listening intently to the earpiece.

16. Wonder idly if the bats are ever going to turn up.

17. Wonder even idlier if the people in the bungalow outside which we have stopped are going to phone the police to complain that the tall bloke and his female accomplice are stood outside again.

18. Join in excitement as bat-strafery commences.

19. When the show is over, decamp to other known bat haunt just round the corner.

20. Watch Tallboy, who is walking along, batzuma held proudly aloft, earpiece plugged firmly in ear, a look of expectant rapture on his face.

21. Decide that he looks like some Sci-Fi freak who is trying to contact the mothership.

22. Return home on crest of bat-fuelled excitement, listening to Tallboy's breathless plans for LEDs and anti-interference measures on the batzuma.

23. Confide to the Sun, who is lazily reclining on the sofa watching Brittas Empire DVDs that his stepfather has the air of a UFO freak when he wanders around with the batzuma.

24. Receive the hushed response, whispered confidentially: 'Do you? I thought it looks like he is wearing a hearing aid...'

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye

2007-04-09T18:30:00.000+01:00

It's been a funny old week. Every time I've been out of the office on an errand to fix a computer or change a cartridge or test a whiteboard, I've been looking round the classroom/office/library with new eyes, wondering if this will be the last time I'll be in this room/talk to this person/handle this printer...

On Tuesday, we escaped school at lunchtime for a little goodbye event. I invited Tigger (Baldrick's old boss), Lanky Herbert -01, Baldrick and Horace the Happy Hacker out for lunch at a little local hostelry. Since the school day was reorganised, lunchtimes are rather shorter than they used to be and a quick lunch out of school is a tight thing. As we sat waiting for our order, the clock ticked ominously. The jolly chatter and gossip took my attention away from it for a while, particularly when I got into explaining my proposed trip to Switzerland later this month. I'm going to Basel. For the day. To deliver a handknit. But still, slowly, that minute hand described an arc of doom.

At five minutes past the beginning of afternoon school we were taking our last mouthfuls of lunch. It was less of an issue for Baldrick and me, as we have a longer lunchbreak than there is break at lunchtime, if you see what I mean. Horace, however, was due to be in a lesson with a member of staff who has been known to err on the eggy side. Feeling terribly responsible for his situation, I left Baldrick and the others chatting happily in the pub while I whisked Horace back to school. He accompanied me back to the office to pick up his bag, our path taking us right past the classroom he should have been in. I fretted and worried and demanded that if he got into any trouble at all, he must come and tell me and I would go and talk to his teacher and take all the blame. I beseeched him to come and see me after the lesson, assuming he still had the ability to walk, and tell me what had happened.

He put his head round the door some time later and smiled in his Happy Horace way. No problem. He had walked in ten minutes after he should have been there, apologised for his lateness, apology was accepted. Phew.

On Wednesday I took the handknit into school for a colleague to try on. Mrs Tuck is the same size as the intended recipient, and I was keen to see how it looked on a person rather than a hanger. Mrs Tuck loved the item in question and it took quite some time and effort to retrieve it from her. 'I hope your lady in Switzerland doesn't like it,' she said. 'Then you can bring it back and I'll have it.'

On Thursday, it was my goodbye meal at a local Chinese restaurant. As an added surprise bonus, Beryl (who retired last month) turned up too, along with a lovely bunch of admin and teaching colleagues. As with every other work function to date, Baldrick was my sober chauffeur for the evening, leaving me free to indulge in the odd glass or two. Once again he was an honorary veggie for the meal - these places often offer very nice veggie set meals, but only for a minimum of two people. Or one, in my case, the time we went there for the Christmas do and I managed to trough my way through two people's worth of yummy Chinese...

The morning of my last day dawned and I got ready for work with a sense of complete unreality. The next working day I would be getting ready just the same but would be heading for a new place, working with new people, doing new stuff. Today I was going to a place where I knew the network like the back of my hand, where I knew my colleagues' names and foibles, where I knew the way we did stuff. The lack of knowledge of any of this vis a vis the new place was scary.

The last drive to work, the last time passing the familiar uniforms swarming towards school, the last battle for a parking space with the pesky sixth formers parking in the staff car park, the last trudge towards the office through the screaming throng massing by the bus bays...

I barely gave Baldrick time to settle in his seat before I thrust a package in his hand. 'I suppose I should give it to you later, but I can't wait!' I grinned. 'You didn't have to,' he said, ripping open the envelope. No, I didn't, but I wanted to. Two and a half years ago he took me on, keen yes, experienced no. He taught me patiently, bore with me, shared my triumphs, failed to mock my failures. I think that deserves a thank you. He peered at the text I'd written in the card, his brow wrinkling. He held the card a little further away and re-read it. 'Er, can you not read my writing?' I wondered. 'No,' he said in a strange voice. 'I can read it. It's just that last night, you know when we went for the meal, I wasn't sure if I'd be called upon to say a few words. So I thought of a few things to say while I was in the shower.' He pointed out a whole sentence that I'd written. 'I came up with this *exact* phrase.' We stared at each other for a moment, spooked. We've often found ourselves thinking the same word at the same time, but this was a record - 11 words exactly the same...

The Twilight Zone vibe was shattered by the phone ringing and I gladly trotted over to the Learning Support department at their request. They were all sat round a table on which sat a beautifully wrapped gift and a card. For me. Their good wishes made me a bit watery and I tried to dab casually at my eyes without being too obvious. It hit me that this really was goodbye.

At break time I was shepherded over to the Staff Room by the Beak's PA. 'They're all sat there waiting for you,' she said breathlessly as she tottered across the grass in the quad in her spikes. 'I asked them if anyone had actually gone to invite you over, and they looked blank and said 'no'. Honestly!' As I entered the Staff Room, I could see that it was packed, with standing room only. All the heads turned to me as I came in, and a little channel opened up to allow me passage towards the middle of the room, closing up as I passed; a Moses moment. The Beak made a little speech and presented me with a huge card with a gazillion signatures and messages on it, and some vouchers. Then it was my turn to say something. Standing in the middle of the room, I was aware that my back was towards a quarter of my audience, so as I started talking, I began to rotate so that I could at least for a second or two be facing everyone. After a couple of rotations I began to feel a bit dizzy and decided that static was probably the way to go. I said thanks, and other such stuff, and concluded with a reminder that Baldrick was going to be rather busy, and could they please remember to... *pause while I scanned the room for a particular face* (here I should probably interject that the teacher I was about to single out thought it amusing to shout 'Turn it off and turn it back on again!' at me across the car park on a depressingly regular basis) 'Where's Mr Ivory?' The heads turned to a particular corner and a little hand was raised in semi-reluctant self-identification. 'What do they need to remember to do, Mr Ivory?' 'Er, turn it off and turn it on again?' 'Exactly!'

At lunchtime I was assailed by an avalanche of Herberts - Lanky Herbert 01 (on leave from Uni) put in an appearance, as did Java Boy (also on leave from Uni). JB brought with him a rather delish homemade Chocolate Cake and we all had a slice. Horace the Happy Hacker turned up too (on leave from his senses, possibly) with his magic tin. Opening it with a flourish, he revealed a pile of little goodbye cards, millimetres big.

The afternoon passed really quickly. I was out and about all over the school, there were loads of little jobs here and there. Everywhere I went there was a goodbye, an 'I'll miss you' and a little hug or a kiss on the cheek. When school finished, I popped over to see the German German teacher for a quick German lesson. Did I mention I'm going to Switzerland? For the day? To deliver a handknit? I can't abide being somewhere without being about to speak the language so although my host speaks impeccable English and French, I *have* to get to grips with a little German, just for my own satisfaction. And before you start imagining me wrestling Teutonic midgets, I just want to be able to say some simple but polite stuff. At the moment my vocabulary is limited to spare parts for my East German motorbikes. Auspuff anyone?

At half four, I picked up the five bags of stuff I had acquired - my cards and pressies, my purple cushion, books and other assorted crap. Leaning slightly to one side, I swept the room with a final glance, and left. Walking out to the car park, Baldrick asked me jokingly, 'So is there anything I could say to make you stay?' 'Nope!' I grinned. We paused in the middle of the car park, midway between our two vehicles. This was it, then. The last day. The last time we would walk out of school together like this. The work divorce. We smiled. And hugged. And said goodbye. As I chucked my gear into the car, my eyes were smarting. As I drove off out of the gates a plump, hot tear traced its way down each cheek...

Lay a little egg for me

2007-03-28T20:39:00.001+01:00

Tallboy has become rather twit-obsessed in recent weeks. To be honest, I think he may have gone a little stir-crazy what with being forced to take things easy and recover nicely from the hyena banishment. I do believe he spends a large proportion of each day propped up over the sink in the kitchen, binoculars in hand and twit identikit pictures at the ready...

In particular, he has been anxiously scanning the various bird boxes dotted around the garden. We've got the original one on the old shed, with the berry-laden branches just next to it, so not too far to go on a food jaunt and very convenient for the pond. There's the special sparrow box (three adjacent dwellings with perches and shade from the midday sun) on the new shed - it's probably a bit close to the house but you never know... And of course we've got the box at the far end of the climbing frame down the bottom of the garden. It appeared mysteriously at about the same time the shelf I used to have my wireless networking stuff on disappeared. Spooky, eh?

There has been quite a bit of activity in the box next to the berries over the past week or so. There's one blue tit in particular which has been nervously approaching, perching on the roof, scooting off, coming back, perching closer to the entrance hole, flying off again, coming back, sticking his head in, zooming away, coming back, sticking his head further in, fleeing, coming back, and finally going inside. For ages. After a few minutes you can see him peeping out, then he goes back to doing whatever it was he was doing. Then a bit of peeping again, then back to busy bird box business. It's agonising, we can't tell what's going on in there - is he going to nest, where's the Mrs, what is he doing in there all this time? I'm going to have to rig up a webcam over the winter.

Tallboy would be delighted if a pair of twits took up residence in one of his handcrafted creations. He has been watching all the preliminary goings on with bated breath. On my return to Weevil Mansions in the evenings he regales me with tales of the titillating tit who keeps teasing him with its pre-nesting behaviour.

I first suspected him of becoming more-than-healthily interested in the twits when we were discussing the recent news report that fewer birds were being seen in gardens because they were doing OK for food out there in the fields thank you very much. On the news was a keen bird feeder who told the reporter excitedly that his twits were consuming only half the amount of food they were getting through this time last year. Tallboy didn't think that was the case with our garden visitors - they seemed as voracious as ever. 'You could always keep a daily record of the weight of food you put out for them,' I suggested, deadpan. 'Now there's an idea!' came his response, a thoughtful look on his face. I didn't have the heart to tell him I was joking...

Anyway, yesterday, he had a twit-related wish come true. Out in the garden, he decided to do a little pottering in the new shed. Forgetting that he is 6'5", and that the doorway to the new shed isn't, he smacked his head into the door frame as he went in. 'It made me reel a bit,' was his commentary to me later. 'I had to stand there for a minute or two.' Still, he did get to see a lovely egg - it's right there in the middle of his forehead...

Only choking...

2007-03-18T22:19:00.000Z

We had the Cossack for dinner last night. Then curried today, and there’ll be plenty left over for sandwiches all week and a nice broth next weekend. OK, I’ll start again… We had the pleasure of the Cossack’s company for dinner last night. He turned up on his bike, waddling slightly as he alighted, as a consequence of the number of layers he was wearing. Stabling his bike in the garage, he emptied the panniers of several clinking bottles, divested himself of his outer layers at the bottom of the stairs, put on his slippers (which live by the front door at Weevil Mansions) and settled down in an armchair.

At Tea Minus 10 (and counting) I popped down the road to see if the Brazil Nut wanted to join us for dinner – yes she did, she would trot round in five minutes. I got back to find Tallboy eyeing up the baking beans I’d used to pre-bake the pie bases, and which I’d left to cool in a little bowl. ‘I keep wanting to eat one of these,’ he said sheepishly. ‘What are they?’ ‘Baking beans. Ceramic.’ He managed, impressively, to combine relief with extremely crestfallen.

We enjoyed our soup and our crisp-bottomed pies and finally got stuck into a pile of fresh pineapple and strawberries with a dip of dark chocolate ganache. Sadly one of my pieces of pineapple went down the wrong way and I started to splutter and choke. The Brazil Nut looked at me with deep concern across the table. ‘You might want to hit her on the back,’ she prompted in Tallboy’s direction. ‘Oh no, I don’t need to do that.’ With my windpipe blocked by a pineapple chunk and tears streaming from my eyes, I started to feel slightly muzzy. Through the fog and the choking I wondered if I would expire to the sound of my husband denying the need to rescue me. He finally succumbed to pressure and belted me between the shoulder blades, dislodged the errant fruit. Remind me to check whether there’s a fresh looking life insurance policy lying around the place…

After dinner and recriminations, we adjourned to the front room where we sampled some more of the clinky contents of the Cossack’s panniers and played with our little 20 Questions gizmo. The Cossack chose an object, then answered the questions the machine came up with. His look of amazement when it guessed he was thinking of a loaf of bread was a sight to behold. After a few more rounds, he developed a sly look and wondered aloud whether it could pick it up if you were thinking of something rude. Go on then, we challenged him. Firing the questions at him, sometimes through hiccoughs of breathless laughter, it took some time (and a couple of give-away hand gestures) to twig what his mystery item was. It didn’t help that the machine kept asking questions like ‘Is it hard?’, ‘Is it soft?’, ‘Would it fit in an envelope?’, ‘Can it get wet?’ and ‘Do you wash it regularly?’. It guessed 'Giant Squid'...

The Banishment of the Hyena

2007-03-08T21:02:00.000Z

OK, so it had been pending for some time. We'd respectively booked time off work and so on, but things really started hotting up with the mission to buy slippers on Sunday. Yes, the last day we could possibly have left it to (Hyena Banishment Day minus 1), we were running round the countryside looking for bloody slippers. Tallboy has problem feet, you see. None of your normal-sized, average-shaped, easy-to-buy-for hooves, not he. They are long, bony and thin. And he has the weirdest-looking toes I've ever seen in my life. And in that, I'm including the Ex's icky no-nail-on-big-toe look. So, we're traipsing round looking at slippers, the style of which nowadays seem to be half the slipper they used to be, and thus completely useless for Tallboy's purposes - his feet are too thin to grip the front end, and without an enclosed heel, they just slip off. Not so much slippers as full-blown tripper-uppers. We eventually found a pair of moccasins which almost fitted and bought them eagerly, realising this was as close as we were going to get.

On the way home, as we were approaching a traffic light controlled roundabout, Tallboy managed at one and the same time to brace himself stiffly for impact whilst directing my attention to the 4x4 approaching us from the right. 'There's a car coming!' he squealed. Proceeding safely through the green light and around the roundabout, my adrenal glands emptying their payload in a tidal wave of heart-racing stomach-churniness, I was too het up to berate him. Ten seconds later, though, I felt better. I suppose in my case it's not just fight or flight - there's bicker in there somewhere...

The next day was Hyena Banishment day itself. We were up blearily early, as we had to book in at Southmead at seven thirty in the morning. There was no breakfast for Tallboy, and mindful of his usually rampant early morning hunger, I had a discreet something out of sight. I had also made my packed lunch the night before, to avoid me having to parade it in front of him during his fast. See, I can be nice to him.

As if it knew something was happening, the Hyena was huge and uncomfortable. Usually in the habit of receding completely overnight, that morning it was still there, bulging horribly - the Hyena's last stand. Well, it wouldn't be so perky for long.

On the way to hospital, driving up the A38 past Filton, I couldn't help ducking in my seat and exclaiming, 'Bloody hell! That's close!' Tallboy, looking hawkishly ahead at the sparse traffic in front of us, could see nothing untoward. Wordlessly I pointed at the large jet which had almost scraped our roof with its undercarriage and which was currently landing on the runway to our right. So, that's screaming panic at a vehicle obeying traffic signals, and complete indifference to several tons of metal hanging in the sky above our heads...

We got to the hospital in good time, with time enough to pause at the car park for a mini rant about the fact that the parking charges were a whole pound higher than advertised on the hospital's website. A few minutes later we had taken up position in the ward by the impossibly narrow bed. We watched a new member of staff being shown around the place. '...and there's 7 beds in this part, so with the other 11 that makes 19 altogether...' We exchanged panicked looks and hoped that the nurse with the dodgy maths skills wasn't going to administer anything important to him.

As the minutes ticked away, the beds surrounding us started to fill up. To our left was a moustachio'd Scotsman; to our right a young man with his grandmother in tow. Tallboy and I came to the conclusion that he was in training for membership of the Great Britain 2012 Extreme Moaning Squad. He didn't stop talking. Well, not so much talking as whinging. Having fully explored the potential of 'what Daphne said to our Lyn down the pub last week', and 'how spoiled little Kayleegh is' and 'what are we going to do for our tea now Harry Ramsden's has shut', he was pretty well warmed up, and went on to give his full attention to his surroundings. After a thirty minute moan about his condition and the pain he was in, naturally.

He moaned about being kept waiting - 'DAY surgery? Yeah, 'cos you're in here ALL DAY!' He moaned about not having eaten anything that day. Like everyone else on the ward waiting for their surgery. He moaned about being told he would be offered a roll after the op - 'Nothing to eat all bloody day and they are going to give me a roll? And the bread's always stale in hospital.' He moaned about the nurses talking to each other and taking refreshments - 'All they bloody do is chat and drink tea.' He moaned about the care the staff took to avoid the spread of infection - 'All they bloody do is wash their hands.' In between the chatting and tea-drinking, presumably.

It was a blessing when they came to take him away. Silence slowly flowed in to fill the space he left. Tallboy and I relaxed. Well, Tallboy did. I was on modesty guard and felt the need to be on standby at all times. He had changed into the operation gown and dressing gown (and slippers!) but on occasion seemed to forget that sitting legs akimbo probably wasn't the best idea in all the circumstances.

We chatted quietly, idly wondering how much time had passed. Neither of us wears a watch, relying on our phones for the time. Which is fine, unless you're in a place like a hospital where you have to turn your phone off. There was a clock in the kitchen area at the far end of the ward, and in passing on the way to the loo, if you craned your neck at just the right angle, you could make out the time. The hours passed, with people coming and going, trips to the loo with added clock-peeking, and several modesty emergencies. On one of the trips back from the loo, Tallboy pointed up above my head. There, on the wall, was a clock...

So much time passed, in fact, that Wally the Whinger got back from his op before Tallboy was even taken away for his. You'd have thought the nursing staff would have learned, but there at his bedside was a fresh-faced angel making the huge mistake of asking him how he felt. After ten minutes or so, she managed to prise herself away...

Soon afterwards, they came to fetch Tallboy for his Banishment. He gave me a hug and a kiss, and I wished him good luck, watching him leave the ward with a smile and a wave and quailing inside with fear. A routine operation, yes - but a General Anaesthetic, and he's not as young as he used to be. Having sat on my fears all morning so as not to worry him, I had a bit of a wobble. Picking up my knitting, I trotted round the corner to the relative privacy of the waiting area which had the added bonus of being out of range of Wally the Whinger. It was occupied by an older gent whom I'd spotted on one of my previous passes squinting into the window of the kitchen, trying to see the time.

'I've been here all bloody day!' was his opening conversational gambit. Wibbling as I was, I didn't really feel like talking to a stranger, made a couple of non-committal noises, and buried myself in my knitting. He gave it a couple more goes, but realised I wasn't up for it and sank back into a silent perusal of Heat magazine. I was dimly aware of comings and goings around me, but kept up my mechanical brain-occupying task. It was two hours later that my shield was breached - I heard a loud voice telling its companions that 'Look! There's two armchairs next to each other, perfect for you!' I looked up to see a jolly-looking prison officer coming round the corner, pointing at the seat next to me and its neighbour. I hastily cleared my balls of wool off, and looked up again to see another prison officer heading towards me, a prisoner in tow, joined to him at the wrist by a substantial pair of shiny handcuffs.

Mr Garrulous couldn't believe his luck. A captive audience, no less! 'I've got a bullet working its way through my guts!' he announced proudly to the prisoner sat next to him. The prison officers were too busy blagging cups of tea from the nurses to notice what was happening, but I could see the prisoner desperately shrinking back into his chair. There was no escape. Fortunately for me, above the noise of Mr Garrulous holding forth on the subject of his digestive issues, I could hear a familiar voice joking with a nurse. Peering round the corner, I saw a remarkably perky Tallboy sat up in his bed and was met with the hugest smile ever as he spotted me. All had gone well.

The next few hours passed really quickly. Tallboy was alert and chatty (unlike Wally who alternated between snoring and complaining). He drank his tea, ate his biscuits, munched his rolls and generally was bright and happy. 'Is it a big wound?' I asked tentatively. 'Dunno,' he said, pulling up the blanket to have a peek. 'All still present?' I asked him as he pulled the gown to one side to inspect the damage. His face assembled itself into an expression of mock horror and he exclaimed 'Oh no! I'm a eunuch!' He spoilt the effect rather by breaking into a broad grin and saying, 'Still, I get to go into the harem now...'

I gave my soon-to-be ex work husband a quick ring to explain that I would be required for nursing duty the next day so wouldn't be in to work, and was met by the news that over the weekend some morons had broken into the school and nicked some stuff. In an office full of TFT monitors, a colour laser printer and generally a shedload of portable kit, they had chosen to use a spade to lever a comms cab off the wall. This cabinet contained a bunch of patch panels and two cheapish switches, none of it very saleable or valuable, and generally not much use to most people. 'Perhaps they thought they were pinching a couple of blade servers,' sniggered Baldrick. Oh, I do hope so...

D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

2007-03-04T09:01:00.000Z

I can't believe this is happening. I suppose, in the back of my mind, I could tell it was inevitable. The prospect was just too difficult to contemplate. So I didn't. In the moments that I skirted around the possiblity of it ending, I always thought it would be him who finished it. And now it's come to it, it's me who's doing the leaving.

He knows it's me, not him. He's been consistently brilliant, supportive, giving. I couldn't have asked for anyone better. The first time we met, we just clicked. It was more than I could have hoped for that I would see him again, and when I realised it was going to happen, I was beyond exhilarated. We've had rocky times too - in the early days I wondered if I was doing the right thing, and I'm sure that thought crossed his mind too. But those doubts faded and over time we became a team. It has always spooked me how tuned in to each other we are - we find ourselves thinking the same thing on a frighteningly frequent basis. And I don't mean just having the same obvious thoughts either; some of the things we've found ourselves thinking have been bizarrely random. Tinfoil helmet anyone?

So, what's changed? I have. My needs and desires aren't what they were those years ago. I'm not the same person who turned up on his doorstep. I need more. To be honest, the way I've been feeling the past few months, it's been a question of get out or lose my sanity. Perversely, it was a chance comment of his which opened my eyes to life without him, and sent me down the road away from him.

Once I was certain, I told him. He knew how I'd been feeling, and it was no surprise to him. He could sense my mixed emotions, and encouraged me and congratulated me on my new life.

Later, I was talking to Tallboy. 'I suppose you could call it a work divorce,' I mused. 'Nah,' said Tallboy with a consoling hug. 'I bet it's nothing more than a work trial separation...'

Windows on my world

2007-02-27T19:49:00.000Z

Today, Baldrick and I weren't in school. We had a Grand Day Out in Bristol. At the Microsoft TechNet Roadshow, going 'Oooh!' and 'Aaaaah!' at Vista.

Baldrick decided that we would do battle with the appalling rush hour traffic and the extortionate and sparse city centre parking by going in on the bus. He'd looked at the timetable and decided that we needed to catch the 7:50 service. For an event which started at nine thirty. Poot.

I made it to the bus stop with four minutes to spare. I was greeted by the back view of a single decker pulling away - which service it was, I didn't know. I scanned it for signs of a shiny head but couldn't see evidence of Baldrick, so I was reassured that it wasn't the one I wanted. There was no sign of Baldrick at the bus stop either, and no sign of him crossing the car park. I hoicked my phone out of my pocket to check for messages - it was sullenly silent. Had I got the right day? The right time? The right bus stop? I looked up to see the bus pulling in to the bus stop. Well, tough on Baldrick. I could wait for him. But I wasn't going to make myself late because he couldn't be on time.

I was third onto the bus and brightly presented myself to the driver, stating my destination. Reeling slightly from the amount of money with which I had just parted, I made my way down the bus, clinging to the bright green poles and twirling round the last one to plonk myself into a vacant seat. Still dazed from the cash haemorrhage, I sat there looking vacantly at my fellow travellers boarding the bus. I became aware of a rapidly travelling, umbrella-carrying, shiny-headed individual sprinting across the car park towards the dwindling queue at the front of the bus. As he skidded to a stop at the end of the queue, Baldrick peered worriedly into the bus, breaking into a broad grin as he spotted me. He must have seen the bus at the stop as he rounded the corner, and broken into a run to get there in time. Although, as he continued to puff mightily as he waited to board the bus, I began to wonder a) just how far he had run, or b) just how unfit he was.

He boarded the bus last, handed over a king's ransom to the driver, and plonked himself down on the seat next to me. Still puffing. 'I would have been in plenty of time,' he told me between gasps for air. 'But when I left the house I realised that no one had put the bin out.' After a delay while he remedied this, he found himself being overtaken by the bus he was due to catch almost half mile from the bus stop, and had to race it. 'I was looking and looking for you in the queue, but couldn't see you, so I decided if I made it to the bus in time I wasn't going to wait for you after all that running.' Cheek! Oh hang on, that was my approach too, wasn't it?

We sat in companionable silence in the steamed up bus, surrounded by morose commuters. I was quietly revelling in the fact that my arse no longer takes up most of a double seat, when it struck me why I don't like travelling by bus if I can avoid it. 'Is this a good time,' I said, turning towards Baldrick, 'to mention that I get travel sick? Particularly on buses. Most particularly in buses which are constantly stopping and starting.' Peering out of the misted window and noting the length of the rush hour traffic queues, Baldrick gathered his skirts and inched further away from me down the seat.

The bus got to Bristol in record time. Seriously. We were there an hour before things were due to kick off. 'No matter,' said a cheery Baldrick, 'we can find somewhere to grab a coffee.' As we walked across the centre of Bristol, the clouds darkened and rain started splattering us. 'You know that thing in your right hand?' I asked him after a little while, looking pointedly at the object in question. 'Er, yeah, I was just thinking it might be an idea to use it,' he responded lamely, unfurling his umbrella. We trailed along the waterfront, past bar after bar which were clearly hip and happening at night time but before nine a.m. were dark, quiet, and very very shut. Drawing a blank, we turned back, and wandered damply and early to the venue, where we were met with meticulous Microsoft hosting, a Danish pastry, a warm cup of coffee and a welcome seat overlooking the river.

Waving madly, we attracted the attention of Mr Claypole and the Cookie Monster as they passed us on their way into the coffee-and-pastry room. Laden, they joined us a few minutes later. The Cookie Monster peered at me blearily and confided that on top of a week skiing during half term, he had got home at two that morning after a jolly nice evening at a ball. I had an internal bet that he wouldn't make it awake through the first session... Baldrick took advantage of my distraction to jump up and go for seconds of both cakey and coffee.

Filing in to the first session in a dark, warm, cosy cinema, we sat down in comfy seats next to the other two. I saw the Cookie Monster settle himself down gratefully next to Baldrick and lengthened the odds on my internal bet. He was still awake when I passed round the Polos twenty minutes later, but as the longest session of the morning dragged on I peered across Baldrick and saw the lolling head and drooping eyelids of doom.

Baldrick took two more cakes at the next break. Honest. I restrained myself to just the one, a most plumptious creation liberally sprinkled with slivered almonds and just the one shaving of chocolate. Picking the almonds off the top one by one, I finally got to the chocolate, intending to savour it most of all. 'Bleagh!' I interrupted the others' deep and meaningful conversation about Windows. They turned towards me with questioning looks on their faces. 'Er, I thought it was chocolate.' I responded limply. 'It wasn't. It was a very very burnt almond sliver. Meh.' Mr Claypole and the Cookie Monster made tracks at this point, bizarrely preferring work to the rest of the roadshow. Baldrick made tracks too, for his second cake of the break, and plonked it triumphantly down on the table in front of him on his return. 'Blimey!' I said, pointing back into the main room behind him. 'Did you see that!' 'No,' he said, steadfastly looking me in the face and refusing to turn his head. 'Did you want some of my cake at all?' 'Er, well, maybe,' I said, crestfallen. I must be losing my touch, that trick normally works a treat. The Ex is still smarting about that extra garlic bread I bagged this way, and that was twenty years ago...

'What do you think of the cubicle doors?' I asked Baldrick as we emerged from a loo break, forgetting for an instant that boys' toilets aren't like the girls' and that I was in consequence quizzing him rather too closely about his recently-completed visit to the littlest room. 'Huh?' 'Er, it was just that the ones in the ladies are sheets of solid metal, rather impressive really...'

We spent the afternoon sessions in a different auditorium, which had the blessing of more legroom. As we settled ourselves down to our randomly-allocated seats, Baldrick peered at the plaques attached to the seatbacks in front of us. 'Here, I should be in yours!' I squinted at it - it said 'Tony Robinson'. Blimey days. I didn't swap. During the first session, Baldrick nudged me gently, and gestured with his head at the guy sitting next to him. Neck bent over, mouth open, and, yes, snoring. For the second time that day, the person next to him had dropped off...

Nipping to the loo for the last time before we left, Baldrick reported on his return that he had investigated the cubicle doors and that they were nothing to write home about. I had contemplated ushering him into the ladies for a second to show him the ones in there, but for the first time that day, the loos were occupied by other females*, and I think they may have objected. He will never know the joy of those heavy, solid, steel doors.

Visiting the temple of food and scrumminess for the last time, we saw laid out before us bars and bars of chocolate. We grabbed a bottle of juice each, and I scooped up a Mars Bar (I'm starting the diet again on Thursday, honestly). Baldrick grabbed a chocolate bar and dropped it into his bag, then in a well-practised and smoothly-executed move, picked up another at the second table. 'Did you just pick up another one?' I hissed, a picture of shocked amazement. 'Yep!' was his happy response. I looked around to see if anyone was joining me in the self-righteous corner. Nope, no one was looking. Including Baldrick. Perfect! Just a little jink in passing, and thanks for the KitKat, Mr Gates!

*On two occasions during my life, I have been in situations where there were queues for the gents and none for the ladies. The first was during my week long motorcycle training course. The second was today, at an IT roadshow. Ah, well.

Meet Fridge Froggy

2007-02-25T10:25:00.000Z

Tallboy and I went to Mum's for Christmas and had a wonderful festive time, including opening some rather fetching little stockings with our names on. In mine were all sorts of little goodies: a notebook, lipbalm, sweeties, a pen, and a little cuddly frog full of magnets for sticking on the fridge.

As soon as we got home, Fridge Froggy was introduced to his new white good habitat and it was clear that he was right at home there. Various shifty manipulations would take place in secret and every so often you'd pass Fridge Froggy and he'd be doing something else.

I took to posting photos of his poses on a forum I frequent - they were well received, and I even got pose requests. So after a bit I fired up Blogger and now Fridge Froggy has gone all bloggy - come and say hello to him and suggest a new pose if you'd like...

Today, Fridge Froggy will be...

It's just not fair

2007-02-18T14:04:00.000Z

The Valentine's Fair has hit town. What is Valentine-ish about it I'm not sure; it runs from the 16th to the 22nd February so it can't be the date. You'll have to excuse my grumpiness about it - the Fair has transformed in my eyes from an evening's fun where you'd come back happy, penniless, queasy and grasping an assortment of tawdry cuddly animals to a magnet for bad teenaged behaviour with a scarily low rating on the value for money scale. And it's taking up the entire car park which is the favoured testing venue for the new Weevil sidecar. Humph.

As the signs went up, we braced ourselves for the disturbed evenings and lack of sleep. If it's not the blaring music belting out and echoing round the houses, then it's excited, tiddly and possibly puking kids on their way home. At just about the point where we want to go to sleep.

Last night, Tallboy lounged decorously on the bed reading his book while I ran our bath. Once full, I summoned him in and we relaxed in the bubbles and talked about the day, the water full of red sparkles which annoyingly failed to adhere to him in any way. Afterwards, snuggled up in bed warm and clean and wrapped in Tallboy's gibbon-like arms, I was aware of a niggle on the edge of my consciousness. Now, we all know that Tallboy's hyena has been giving him gyp, and that it does produce some rather startling noises from time to time. So I was puzzling whether the noise I could almost hear was a hyena-related event or whether it was something else. Sometimes it seemed like a distant gurgle, at others a far away snatch of music wafted on the evening breeze. Sensing my distraction, Tallboy enquired what was wrong. 'Is that your hyena?' I asked him. 'Or is it some music?' 'Oh, it's music I think. There's been some people outside chatting for a good half hour.'

I listened more intently and yes it was music, filtering in faintly through the windows. It must have been kids on the way back from the fair, listening to godawful tinny music on their mobiles. I lay there fretting, unable to focus on Tallboy's cuddles. At least the music had stopped now, it was just talking. Why the hell had they chosen to sit outside our house and make a noise there? Should I stick my head out of the window and tell them to bugger off? Would they respond meekly and wander off? Would they shout at me? Would they appear to wander off and then return quietly gently to let down the tyres on the car? 'It's no good!' I shouted as I threw back the duvet. 'I have to look!' Peering out of the blinds, I tried in vain to locate the source of the sound. There was no one outside. The music now seemed to be coming from down the road to my left, rather than directly outside. I couldn't put my finger on it at all.

I leapt back into bed in a huff, snuggling up to steal Tallboy's warmth. As he wrapped his arms round me, he tried to calm me down and I lay there, trying to clear my head. It didn't add up somehow. The voice I could hear didn't sound like it was in a conversation. It wasn't animated and dynamic enough. It had a more delivered feel to it, like you might get on the radio with someone filling in the gaps between pieces of music...

'Tallboy?' 'Yes?' 'You don't suppose there might be the outside possibility of a chance that your clock radio could be on really really quietly?' 'Don't be daft!' 'Humour me, have a look will you?'

Tallboy turned over and fumbled with his clock radio. There was a click, then blessed, wonderful silence...

A keynote speech

2007-01-28T21:35:00.000Z

Recently, I had occasion to remonstrate with Tallboy. I have a little security routine at home, you see. I am slightly paranoid about doors being left unlocked and stuff being left in sight of potential miscreants. It probably comes of being the daughter of a police officer who spent a fair number of years as a crime prevention officer. At night, I have to go round checking that doors are safely locked, that keys are out of sight and so on. In the morning as I leave the house I need to check that the front door is securely locked even though I know I just locked it thirty seconds ago. The other morning I took it into my head to try the garage door and to my horror it was unlocked. It wouldn't open fully because of the secondary security measures in place but it was still UNLOCKED and this caused me no little anxiety.

I unlocked the freshly-locked front door, traipsed through the house, muttered a bit, secured the garage door, came back out through the house, locked the front door and checked that it was locked. On the way to work I planned the dressing down I was going to give Tallboy for leaving the house insecure. On arrival at work, I moaned to my work husband about my home husband's lack of regard for the home.

When I got home, I told Tallboy in sombre tones that I had something important to discuss with him. I used words like 'security' and 'irresponsible'. He was suitably chastened and apologetic and we agreed to leave it at that. Returning from the gym later that evening, I walked in from the chill cloudless darkness to be greeted by light, warmth and a smell I couldn't immediately identify. As I stood in the doorway, transfixed by the smell, I tried to place it. Finally, it clicked - beetroot! I pulled the door behind me and dashed to the kitchen, where several organic beet were bubbling in a purple bath on the stove. My residual niggles melted - Tallboy was back in favour.

The next morning, there was a ring on the doorbell at half past seven. It was the Junior Nutette, in a rush, with a cookery lesson at school today and nothing to put her fruit salad in, and did I have a Tupperware box she could borrow and by the way there are some keys in the front door. An icy feeling grabbed my heart and I pulled the door further open. There were the keys dangling sadly from the lock. They even had frost on them, and they chilled my fingers as I wrenched them from their overnight berth. Once I'd sorted out the Junior Nutette with a suitable receptacle, I sought out Tallboy for another little discussion. 'Er, Tallboy,' I ventured, broaching the subject of domestic security once again. 'Er, I appear to have left my keys in the lock overnight...'

And it makes the loudest gurgle in the West...

2007-01-20T07:55:00.000Z

Tallboy's hernia (christened 'hyena' by the Sun) has popped up again. He had a laparoscopic repair three and a half years ago; it failed last year. So we're back to the 'ouch it's aching but I don't want to complain about it' face, the unconscious hand-to-groin moments and a sometimes alarmingly large prominence when he disrobes at bedtime.

For the most part, it's inconvenient rather than crippling. He's on the cancellation list for surgery and should have it dealt with by the end of March. Until then he faces an ache which varies from not there at all to ouch ouch ouch. And the gurgling. If you're not familiar with hyenas, it's basically where the stomach wall develops a gap and some of your intestine pokes through. For some reason (at least in Tallboy's case) the bit of intestine which pokes through is a particularly vocal one. As someone who is always grabbing 'a quick sandwich' ^TM and generally feeding his face, he does have quite a talkative tummy. Often I drift off to sleep to the gentle lullaby of his almost bovine gastric processes.

The hyena gurgle, however, is in a class of its own. Violent, abrupt, with no prior warning, it trumpets proudly with a sustain which would make a musician weep. 'That was the hyena,' says a sheepish looking Tallboy in the starkly quiet aftermath. Well quite - what else could that horrendous noise have been?

When I was little, there was a song about a milkman which I rather liked. I used to sing along with the chorus, unaware of the darker overtones of the plot, which involved lust, violent death and uncensored bakery products. The other night this song came to mind as I lay in bed, the echoes of the latest hyena broadcast dying away. Trying my best to mimic Benny Hill's delivery, I sang just the one word: 'Hernie...'

Bin there, done that

2007-01-10T21:59:00.000Z

It was cold on Monday night. Cold, dark and blustery. As I put my layers on, wrapped my scarf and pulled my hat down tight, Tallboy waited for me on the doorstep. 'Er, it's raining a bit,' he advised as I pulled on my gym bag. I peeked out of the door and saw the rain dancing in the light from the street lamp across the road. I had expected the determined, persistent precipitation of the previous few days; I saw that wierd almost-lighter-than-air rain that seems to go up and along just as much as it goes downwards, sometimes almost hanging in the air. 'Nah, I won't take my waterproof, it's not coming down that heavy.' *slam*

By the time we'd made it a hundred metres down the road, it was clear I'd made a ~~mistake~~ choice which I might make differently next time. We were out in that kind of special wetting rain which Tallboy calls 'mizzle': halfway between mist and drizzle. The teeny droplets, so innocuous looking, get you so wet in such a short time. Big rain clumps together and runs off you. Mizzle lands and soaks in. Particularly if you're wearing a big hairy fleece offering a huge surface area on which mizzle drops can do their horrible business.

By the time we got to the gym, I was soaked. Tallboy, hatless, turned a glistening face towards me to kiss me goodbye, his hair sadly spiked. I left him to walk home again and ducked into the welcome doorway. Before I bundled my stuff away in my locker, I shook out my coat and hat. The amount of water in there was astonishing, but I did my best. Returning an hour and a half later to put it all on again was not a pleasant experience, and I was relieved to see that the rain had at least stopped now. I walked home briskly, feeling the heat being leached out by my damp outer layer.

As I walked along the road before the road before mine, I felt the wind really get up. Retreating further into my fleece, I hunched over and bravely trod through the cold darkness. I nearly leaped out of my skin at a loud rustling noise right behind me; I looked over my shoulder in fright and groaned in relief at the sight of a Tesco's carrier bag dancing in the wind. As I watched, the wind filled it up, and it sped past me down the middle of the road, never quite getting airborne. It travelled in straight lines, fast and purposeful, not quite a zigzag, nothing so regular - more a zigzigzigzagzigzigzagzigzagzag. It slowed down and came to a stop at the next T junction. I turned right and felt the wind seem to follow me around the corner; for some reason I hoped against hope that the bag would be swept up past me again on my new vector. I looked back; it sat there flapping and rustling and defiantly stationary...

As I joined Weevil Mansions Road, it occurred to me that there was rather a lot of rubbish around in gutters and caught in the hedgerows. A little further along, the reason for this became apparent: it appears that many of my neighbours are unable to read, digest and act upon simple items of information. The bin collection schedule was disrupted by Christmas and New Year. This is hardly headline news. The council even kindly gave us a leaflet just before Christmas explaining the holiday schedule and informing us that things wouldn't be normal until the third week of the new year. Looking at the array of wheelie bins smugly lining the pavement as I wended my way homewards, I wondered why they'd bothered. Particularly when I drew level with the Brazil Nut's house - the people opposite her had put out their bin. It was full, so full that the lid didn't shut properly. The wind had gleefully dived in under the lid and thrown it back with a flourish. The contents of the bin, unbagged and itching for some fun, had excitedly jumped at the chance of liberation. The street was strewn with carrier bags, plastic milk bottles and goodness knows what else, and the wind was teasing at the next layer. I hurried home.

Tallboy had an early start the next morning and wanted an early night, so we headed up to bed and tried to get to sleep. I lay there, listening to the wind blowing about outside, sleep elusive. Just as I thought I might start to think about drifting off, a rattling outside grabbed my attention. A loud and irregular noise, such as might be caused by a tin or can being propelled around the road by a gust of wind. I tried to let it wash over me, but every time I heard it, it wound me up more and more. 'I can't stand it!' I screamed, eventually. 'Hmmm, wassat?' muttered a dozy Tallboy. 'That bloody can. I'm going to go outside and pick it up.' 'Zzzzzzzzz.'

I grabbed a coat, slipped my feet into my shoes, and headed out of the front door, carefully arranging things so that it couldn't slam shut after me. I've been there before. Now, if the script had been written properly, as soon as I got outside the wind would have gusted and I'd have heard that rattling, and the miscreant tin would have been propelled towards me, coming to an obedient rest at my feet. As a matter of fact, that is what happened. Right up to the wind gusting part, anyway. That wind blew and blew. And that tin failed to move. At all. I stood out there in the orangey lamplight, scrunched up inside my coat, ears straining for the slightest tinkle. Nothing. Apart from Nice Neighbours' cat, which thought it marvellous fun to see me. I gave it five minutes, but that bloody tin never shifted, and although I cast around, I couldn't see it. Petting the cat one last time, I trotted back inside, miffed and chilly.

Back in bed, Tallboy had woken up, particularly when a cold and annoyed Weevil got back in. We lay there listening to the wind, tense and waiting for the rattle again. We listened. It failed to rattle. We listened some more. It continued to fail to rattle. More listening. Extended persistence of failure to rattle. It never piped up again. I finally fell asleep and dreamed a dream of revenge and remonstration and inculcation of proper civic behaviour. Much more understandable than the one I had last week where Baldrick and I stole a horse. I made him sit behind though, I wanted to drive...

How to wake up within 0.0004 seconds

2007-01-03T17:20:00.000Z

1. Leave the snuggery of your duvet and shamble towards the bathroom, clutching what you hope is your dressing gown, hastily grabbed in the darkness of the bedroom.

2. Feel the radiator in the bathroom to check if it's started to get warm yet. It hasn't. Drape dressing gown over it anyway in the hope that it might be slightly not cold when it's time to get out of the shower.

3. (This step to be omitted 1 time out of 10) Check that the power is on.

4. Step into the shower.

5. Angle the shower head away from you so that the initial cold rush doesn't hit you. Turn shower on.

6. Feel fine spray of very cold water over face and torso. Realise cold water is spraying horizontally out of the showerhead, probably due to buildup of limescale within.

7. Feel horribly, horribly awake.

8. Resolve to take a look in the showerhead tonight and clean it up so this doesn't happen again.

9. Repeat steps 5 to 8 for weeks.

10. This morning, decide to do something about it before you get to step 5.

11. Take down showerhead, drenching self in the cold water lying inside it and the hose.

12. Feel really awake.

13. Turn showerhead to remove it.

14. Sustain step 13 for half a minute.

15. Swear at lack of progress.

16. Realise that turning showerhead simply selects another jet permutation and does not remove it. At all.

17. Peer myopically at the bloody thing and spy part of it which might come off.

18. Try and prise it off, but find your fingers slip and you can't get a grip.

19. Hold slippy bit in sleeve of dressing gown and try again.

20. Fail miserably.

21. Sadly inspect sleeve of dressing gown which used to be nice and white and is now covered with grubby limescale detritus.

22. Drape mucky dressing gown over stone cold radiator.

23. Angle showerhead the other way to avoid premature cold wetting.

24. Turn shower on.

25. Feel fine spray of cold water over face and torso as the shower sprays out its horizontal bounty the other way.

26. Feel horribly horribly horribly awake.

27. Grapple with the showerhead and turn it until you finally select a jet grouping that doesn't force water out of the side.

28. Mutter to yourself as you shower.

Twelve Benificent Winds

2007-01-01T14:37:00.000Z

Well, it's that time of year when we usher out the old year and welcome in the new, preferably with the assistance of a bottle of wine or two. So what better houseguest could we have than the dear old Cossack...

We spent the afternoon peering out of the windows with dismal looks and weather-laden predictions of doom. As I wrestled with the food preparation in the kitchen, I kept an ear open out the front, straining to hear the thud thud thud of his bike's engine above the lashing winds and rain. I had decided to replicate a very successful dinner party dish of Mum's: Pork Chops with mushrooms and cream. Quite the challenge for a vegetarian, one might think. I decided to whip up a batch of seitan (otherwise labelled Devil Meat) to take the place of the porcine portions and was just draining it as the doorbell rang unexpectedly. I found at the door a chirpy looking Cossack, helmetless and undishevelled. I followed his gaze to the lawn, where there was parked jauntily a large, brown, and most of all, four-wheeled vehicle. 'It was blowing a gale,' he said. 'I didn't fancy coming across the bridge on the bike.' Well, quite.

He performed his usual arriving-at-Weevil-Mansion activities, including boot removal, slipper donning, wine bottle unloading, and of course cork removal. It was a pretty potent red, and I could feel its warming tendrils reaching all the way to my toes at the first sip. By the time the pretend pork chops were safely nestled in their shiny foil packages in the oven, I was feeling distinctly lightheaded. And when the time came to steam the veg my fingers felt a little rubbery. Dishing up was interesting, I have to admit to wavering around once or twice, although most of the food made it safely to the plates.

PPC with mountains of steamed veg soon helped soak up the excess wine sloshing around inside me, although the Cossack did his best to splash more into my glass whenever it showed any danger of becoming less than 50% full. After the meal, we adjourned to the sitting room, and worked very hard at sitting down and not moving very much. To accompany our post-prandial wine consumption, we stuck a DVD on and the Cossack nodded gently off in his chair.

At ten o'clock on the nose, a fusillade of fireworks made us jump. Looks like someone had an itchy trigger finger there, then... Pesky cowered on the sofa, and we stroked and petted her to reassure her that, yes it was a scary noise, but she had been scared of that noise for 14 years and it hadn't come and got her yet, so she'd be OK, honestly. Our kitty soothing was interrupted by the doorbell, and I opened the door to see an excited-looking Brazil Nut who bounded across the threshold, gave me a huge hug and a kiss on the cheek, and wished me a Happy New Year. She was followed through the door by her Shadow (the Nutette), who made a much quieter entrance.

We piled into the living room, and the Brazil Nut stopped dead, staring at the clock on the wall. 'Ten o'clock? No way!' She turned to me, confused. 'I heard the fireworks,' she said. 'They woke me up. I thought it was midnight!' Bless her, she looked so crestfallen... We chatted, drank and played games until it really was midnight. As Big Ben chimed, I was grappling furiously with the recalcitrant cork of a bottle of bubbly, but managed to fire it off quickly enough to grab New Year hugs all round. After the excitement had died down, we sat round sipping our bubbly and ridiculing what was on the TV. At ten past, I realised with a start that I hadn't phoned Mum to wish her a Happy New Year, so grabbed the phone and hit dial. As the phone at the other end rang and rang, I started to wonder if I'd done the right thing. Nah, it was OK, I reasoned. They were probably outside watching the fireworks, no worries. A ring before I was going to give up and replace the receiver, a flustered-sounding Mum picked up the phone. 'Happy New Year!' I boomed. 'Oh, _you_ stayed up then, did you?' 'Er, didn't you?' 'No, but it's OK, _I_ was awake.' 'Erk. Sorry.' Whoops...

This morning, actually make that this afternoon, risen, breakfasted and full of last night's cabbage, Tallboy, the Cossack and I ventured out for a walk. We showed the Cossack the local sights: The Post Office, the squirrels, the Lidl. I quickly learned to position myself upwind from him; the cabbage was having quite an effect on his innards, and his forward progress was partially powered by powerful posterior puffings. We made our way to the park to feed the ducks, although we ended up mostly (and unintentionally) feeding the seagulls. At one end of the pond we saw a clump of cygnets, halfway between dirty brown and big white and beautiful. Approaching them, I tried to 'tice them with my bread nuggets, thrown carelessly in their general direction. When I landed a direct hit on the wing of a large cygnet standing with its head under its wing, it opened its eyes, unfurled its neck and gave me the most evil look I have ever received from one of our feathered friends.

Leaving the park, I heard another loud quack from the direction of the Cossack's trousers. In a cheery voice, he announced loudly that this was the twelfth time he had broken wind today. 'They say that to be healthy, you have to break wind 12 times a day!' he boomed, happily. Tallboy and I looked at each other, slightly fazed at the concept not only of keeping count of episodes of wind breakage on a daily basis, but also of having a quotidian target - "have you had your twelve a day?"

I suppose the only thing left for me to do is to thank you for reading, and wish you all a Parpy New Year...

Stumped

2006-12-20T17:13:00.000Z

I keep seeing three-legged dogs. I fear that I have developed quasi-Gorgon powers; whenever I turn my Medusa gaze upon a canine, its back leg turns to dust. On our walks around and about, Tallboy and I don't encounter other walkers. In fact, it's quite stunning just how many people round here don't walk further than to the car. The only people we pass on the pavement are people out with their dogs. And recently, it's been people out with dogs deficient in the leg department to the tune of one.

I fear that the next statement will somehow blight your deeply-imprinted impressions of my caring and nurturing character, yet say it I must. Whenever I see a three-legged dog, I really really want to laugh. There is something about the way they ignore the fact that they don't have a full complement of limbs, and progress along in a tripodesque manner that cracks me up. Particularly, for some reason, if it's a small dog, a Jack Russell for preference. I know that the missing leg is probably due to some traumatic accident or disease, and that it must have been an awful thing for the dog and the owners to go through. I realise what adjustment the poor creature has had to make and how confusing it all must have been. But still I snigger. Inside of course. I'm not *that* evil.

There's something about their little stump, gamely going for it even though it's never going to help propel them along. Yes, that's definitely the word - these tri-pawed little creatures exude nothing but game-ness, trotting along with no concession to their absent appendage.

The game little terrier I spotted last night really caught my eye. I noted, without surprise, that he only had three legs. There was, however, something spooky about him, and I watched his progress on the opposite pavement, transfixed. Something about his method of locomotion, maybe. Or his stance? Finally it clicked - his amputation had been made high up on his leg, so high up that there was no visible stump, and therefore no movement. If you focused just on the part of him where his leg should have been, he just seemed to be moving smoothly through the air, and you could almost imagine he was supported on a cushion of air, something like Dougal but six inches off the ground. The magic hovering doggie. I flashed a winning smile at his owner, attempting to communicate something along the lines of 'what a lovely little dog you have there, and so game, and how wicked he looks as he hovers along' but I'm not sure that's how it was received...

I did see a four-legged friend last night too - Islay was in good, if rather stinky, form, leaping up on me as I sat down for a quick chat in the Brazil Nut's back room. Talking turkey, she told me about traditional Brazilian Christmas fare. Pork is a favourite, she said. Oh, and turkey. In fact, she confided, the turkeys rather like Christmas in Brazil. I exuded bafflement. She explained that in the run-up to the festivities, say for six weeks, the turkeys are kept in a permanent state of inebriation by the administration of copious amounts of cider. She assured me that this had a most beneficial effect on the flavour and texture of the turkey meat. Oh, and there was another rather handy side effect too. My brain swimming with images of tipsy turkeys staggering around Brazilian back gardens, I asked what that was. 'Well, they're really easy to catch and kill when they're pissed...'

Spot the difference

2006-12-17T16:44:00.000Z

You know how it is. You've had a big night out pencilled into the diary for weeks. You've already done a mental trawl of your wardrobe and in your mind tried on all the likely outfit combinations, settling on one that seems the best of a bad job. You've made yourself a virtual list instructing you to remember to clean your shoes/teeth/hair/nails, you're desperately trying to remember what you actually chose on the menu, and you're wondering if it was a 7.00 or 7.30 start.

You wake up on the morning of the Work Evening of Fun and as you come to, you realise with a sinking feeling of doom that the skin on your nose feels rather tight and red and hurty. You stumble into the bathroom and peer tremulously at your anxious reflection. Yep, there it is, glowing red, a hint of a milky centre, a flesh volcano. Today of all days. You reach up and dab at it tentatively; under your fingertip, it feels monstrously, unfeasibly huge. You squeeze it in the full knowledge that this can do nothing but make things worse. It's now surrounded by a huge red patch, and the throbbing feels like it's never going to stop. Resignedly you trudge to work, knowing a) that everyone is going to notice it; and b) that it's never going to disappear before the do this evening.

In school, I tried to ignore it, but I couldn't. It was so there. Wherever I looked, my eye was always drawn to it, no matter how crosseyed I ended up. Persistently on the periphery of my vision, the bloody thing haunted me. And Baldrick was just as aware of it as I, I could tell. I said nothing, he said nothing. The day went by, with three of us in the room; Baldrick, me and The Enormous Spot of Doom. Every time I caught sight of it, it seemed bigger, redder, more volcanic. I upped the levels of ignoring. So did Baldrick. We ignored it for all we were worth, all morning, and for most of the afternoon. As the day drew on, I became more and more tired of the ignoring. The effort of pretending it wasn't there was too much. I just couldn't stand it any more. It was like the elephant in the room of which nobody spoke - the pressure was intense and I knew I had to say something, or burst.

'Baldrick,' I said resolutely, turning squarely towards him,' Hell's bells mate! That's an ENORMOUS spot!'

A Christmas Scene

2006-12-13T21:48:00.000Z

Tallboy and I, out for a walk the other night, stumbled across a quaint little Christmas scene, and breathless with wonder, stopped to drink it all in. Let me paint you a little picture...

In front of us is a large garden shed, er gingerbread house looking affair. On the roof is piled artistic heaps of cotton wool stuff, er convincing looking snow. All around us, within the curtilage demarcated with a white paling fence, abounded cute plush creatures, all clearly indigenous to Great Britain, no, Europe, no, the planet, somewhere...

Oh, and I nearly forgot the snowmen. All sizes there were, a real Russian Doll feeling to the proceedings. Each had pretend coal for eyes and a mad smile which made the backs of our knees itch. Several were holding old fashioned broomsticks, and some were graced with the ability to move. See, that medium sized one to our right, swinging his broom backwards and forwards with gay abandon, striking his smaller companion about the bonce with the regularity of a metronome. And the bigger one to the left doing the same, but with a bit more of a vicious swing.

As for the animals, I didn't know where to put my face. For a start, I've never seen such an eclectic mix of creatures. Peering closely around the set, we counted three big-eyed fluffy seals, with not a drop of icy water anywhere near. Then there was the rabbit with the animatronic ears. Actually, thinking about the size of them, it was probably a hare. Whichever it was, I'm sure I saw a gentlemen in the crowd clinging on to his hairpiece for dear life. They reckon a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane, don't they? It's a bloody good job they've never met that rabbit...

And, my dears, would you believe - pandas? No no, not at all incongruous. Quite. One was peeking out of a snowball. Maybe he'd burrowed in there in the vain hopes of finding some tasty bamboo shoots?. There was another panda too, this one was riding on a sledge. Maybe he was the getaway driver, and once the snowball panda had got the bamboo loot, he would have leaped aboard and they would have whizzed away out of sight before you could yell 'Stop I-know-you're-an-endangered-species-but-that-doesn't-excuse-this-sort-of-behaviour thief!'. You could tell he was the getaway driver because the engine was running. At least that's what we assumed. The sledge was moving forwards and backwards with an hypnotic rhythm which brought the panda's rear end into staccato contact with the groinal area of the snowman stood smiling behind him. Erk.

Next in the animal parade is the American badger (after some debate we finally decided this was what it was). Splayed out on the floor he was, with his head extended, moving from side to side. I thought he was pretending to be a novelty hoover in the hoped that some passerby would snap him up as a Christmas present and take him away before that snowman made him take his turn on the sledge. Tallboy thought this unlikely, and pronounced that he was clearly practising to be roadkill.

Continuing with the Arctic theme, we have a cutesy Polar Bear at the front, hunched over, with a Christmas stocking in his lap. With the same regular rhythm as the poor besledged panda, he is rocking backwards and forwards, lifting his front legs up and down and raising and lowering the Christmas stocking. Eyebrow raised, Tallboy wondered what was in the stocking... Unaccountably naive, I ventured that it probably contained presents. Realising this wasn't what Tallboy meant, I followed his gaze and looked blankly at the up and down motion originating in the crotchal area. Slowly, horrible realisation dawned...

Frankly, it was a relief to look up at the roof and seek solace in the wee woodland creatures we could see up there. And Santa, of course. Although poor Santa appeared to be rather unwell. All we could see of his was his arse sticking out of the chimney, with his legs waving helplessly in the air. I wondered if he might have had a little too much Christmas cheer - maybe he was even now calling down the chimney for his friend Ralph? To his right, a chirpy red squirrel (another American one, we decided) sat proudly on the rooftop, looking out across the shopping centre. He too had a part of his body moving in the unceasing rhythmic manner of his ground-based chums. As I watched him, I was reminded strongly of Pesky's attitude on her litter tray, and the twitch of her tail as she completes her evacuation. Yep, that squirrel was defecating on the roof. His squirrelly companion, on the other side of the roof, had his hands raised to his mouth in the traditional squirrel-eating-nut pose. Tallboy and I could see through this subterfuge, and understood the reality of the situation - what with Santa being ill down the chimney and his friend repeatedly losing control of his bowels, all he could do was adopt a Munch-like position and pray that the whole horror would be over soon. Coming to the same conclusion, Tallboy and I turned and picked our way through the crowds of children gawping at the scene before them, the nightmare receding as we drew away, the notes of the carol-playing brass band tailing off into the darkness...

The Weevil Effect

2006-12-10T20:45:00.000Z

Ever have one of those days?

I got home tired and niggly after what seemed a day and a half at work. There was a pile of post for me waiting on the bottom of the stairs. Two of the letters were from my electricity provider telling me that they needed to up my monthly payments by over 400% to clear the hundreds of pounds' arrears on my account. This was the first I'd heard of it, and confident that some computer somewhere had made a huge mistake, I gave them a ring to give them the chance to rectify their error. The nice young man on the end of the phone invited me to read the meters so that he could work with the most up to date information. I did, straining on tippy-toe to read the electric meter up in the corner of the kitchen, and then adopting a sinuous pose in the garage with the twin objectives of being able clearly to read the meter and failing to occupy the same piece of space as Tallboy's motorbike. It was at this point that Tallboy came into the garage, flailing his arms about and saying 'Mind the paint!'. 'What?' I mouthed at him. He pointed wordlessly to where the freshly-coated sidecar chassis was interfacing with my lower leg. Still engaging the young man from the power provider in light-hearted conversation, I wriggled out of my trousers, thrust them at Tallboy with a mouthed injunction to 'bloody clean them off then' and stormed back to the front room in my tights. And a huff.

The Nice Young Man tapped away on his computer and told me that the arrears quoted in the letters were, in fact, incorrect, and that the real total was ten quid higher than that specified. Now, how many hundreds of pounds would I like to pay off each month?

With such a good start to the evening, I should have known better. Instead, I brightly asked Tallboy, 'When you're driving out to Poppy's tonight, can you drop me off at the Mall? There's a couple of bits I need to get, and you can pick me up on your way back from Poppy's.' 'OK,' said Tallboy, 'but won't it be busy? What with that accident on the motorway and everything...' I looked up the Mall's website and checked the average time in/time out and car park occupancy levels. Less than two minutes, and less than a quarter. No problemo.

As we turned onto the A38 and joined the stationary traffic, Tallboy couldn't resist a little 'I told you so'. The traffic announcement piped up on the radio, ungraciously interrupting The Archers - four junctions were closed on the M5 and everyone had decided to come along the A38. As we inched along, with people cutting before after and round us, the levels of tetch rose slightly in the car. After half an hour or so we'd progressed all of half a mile. 'That's it!' I said as we rounded the corner onto the gridlocked roundabout. 'Tuck into that side road and I'll walk from here, then you can turn round and get out of this madness.' I hopped out of the car and trotted off alone up the long dark road, keeping pace with the crawling traffic, and even catching up with and overtaking the Sainsburys lorry at the rear end of which we had been staring as we slothed along the A38.

Pulling my jacket round me, I cursed my moronity in selecting the one through which the wind scythes rather than the warm one. I hadn't imagined I'd have a mile and a bit to walk, I was more going for the hop out of the car into the Mall approach. I upped my pace a bit to get my heart going and my temperature. And to annoy the car drivers who were going more slowly than that bloody pedestrian...

I'd never noticed whether there was a pedestrian footpath up this road as I'd only ever driven up it. Fortunately there was one, far from the road, in the dim further reaches at the edge of the streetlights' glow, on the high-fenced perimeter of the airfield. I trotted along for a mile or so, the phallolith in the middle of the roundabout at the end of the road slowly growing bigger as I approached. Skirting the roundabout containing the enormous thrusting stone which really does look like a penis when approaching from the road in from Patchway, honest, I started wondering how, on foot, I was going to get to a large shopping centre which was basically designed for car drivers. Across the road, I spotted a gap in the shrubbery and could see that by merely crossing a dark secluded patch of muddy grass, I could attain the far car park and thence, eventually, the Mall. I crossed the road, slipping a bit on the grass in the middle, and worrying as I looked searchingly at the dark break in the hedge. I trotted up from the road and gingerly set foot on the grass, which on a more careful and close-up inspection turned out to be a mud slick with a light turf garnish. I minced gently across it, sliding a little and getting dollops of mud inside my shoes, but on the plus side, I made it across without falling over. Just.

Relishing in the warm air and lack of cutting icy wind as I entered the heaving shopping centre, I grabbed my mobile and dialled Tallboy's number to let him know, as promised, that I had arrived safely. Network busy. I tried again. And again. Network busy was a recurring theme. I got on with my shopping, trying at various moments to call Tallboy. No luck. Until finally, a live connection. Woohoo! 'We're sorry, but the mobile you have called is unavailable. Please try later.' Aaaaarrrggggghhhh! Disgruntled, I headed off to the loos in M&S and took up station in the farthest cubicle. Losing myself in a moment or two of blessed release, I was bumped back to reality as I reached up for the paper - my fingers met cardboard. At the same instant, I heard a tentative knocking from further down the rank. 'Hello?' quavered a little voice. 'Yes?' came back a voice from the next cubicle, a mixture of curiosity and nerves. 'Er, do you have any loo paper in there at all?' 'Yes, I do.' 'Would you mind passing some to me please?' Aha, so I wasn't the only one! Fortunately I normally tend to have a mini pack of tissues secreted somewhere about me, and I was not without succour in my moment of need.

Leaving the Mall, I grabbed my phone again and finally got another connection, this time to Poppy's phone. Tallboy came to the phone, breathless and worried at not having heard from me. 'You got there OK then?' 'Er, yeah, got here ages ago, done my shopping and I'm ready to leave. Can you come and get me?' 'Well, I only got here ten minutes ago. The traffic is terrible!' 'OK well I'll start walking back to where you dropped me off. See you soon!'

I skated back over the slidy mud patch, trotted back up to the phallolith, and started my way back down the long road, on the other side this time. All was fine until the path ran out and I had to cross the busy road back to the dark fringes of the airfield, where I jogged back to civilisation with my bags flapping around me. Regaining the more populated and brightly-lit street, I slowed up and relaxed a little. I'd got past the scary dark bit and Tallboy would be coming to pick me up soon. It was at this point that the rain started, and I discovered that not only was my coat ultrapervious to wind, but that it sucked up water with the thirst of a camel which has just returned to the waterhole after a three month journey through the more arid reaches of the Sahara.

I trotted on to the pick up point, hoping to see Tallboy there and waiting. He wasn't. The wind started blowing stronger, chilling me further as it hit my damp clothes. I huddled behind a willow tree in the middle of the verge. Luckily, it was just wide enough to cut out 80% of the of the windchill and just left me shivering around the edges. I peered down the road to the roundabout where the cars were no longer stationary but were free-flowing in bursts of four or five at a time. None of them was Zafira-shaped. I watched and shivered, shivered and watched. Peering through the leafless hedge that surrounded the church, I strained to see what would be coming round the roundabout next. If it looked people-carrierish, I held my breath, only to release it in disappointment as it revealed itself as not the one I was hoping for. I was only there for thirty minutes so it only took me twenty seconds or so to unfreeze my stiffened limbs enough to hobble across to my lift. Tallboy turned a mournful face towards me. 'It was mental in Bristol,' he said. 'Took me ages to do two miles.'

On the way home, very late, we scooped up the Sun from the Ex's, where he had been about to go to bed as he given up on us coming to get him, poor lamb. Good job there were some bottles of my Smile case left...

How to get a free case of wine

2006-12-04T20:08:00.000Z

1. Spot Smile's offer to send you a case of wine for opening an account with them and depositing some money in it.

2. Do a few quick mental calculations and reach for the mouse.

3. Sign up.

4. Deposit money.

5. Wait.

6. Check the offer terms and conditions.

7. Wait a bit longer.

8. Email Smile.

9. Receive response from Smile.

10. Sigh. Log in to your Smile account, fire up the secure messaging client and send them a message.

11. Receive response. Respond. Wait. Respond again. Respond again.

12. Receive email with wine voucher.

13. Within minutes, order wine from Virgin.

14. Skip happily - you just paid Â£4.99 for 12 bottles of wine.

15. Wish they could email the wine but resign yourself to waiting 'til Monday when they will be delivered to work.

16. Have an appointment with the Dr before work on Monday.

17. Receive prescription for week-long antibiotic course.

18. Worriedly query whether they are the type that you shouldn't take alcohol with.

19. Receive reassurance that they're not.

20. Queue for ages in Boots, get the wrong tablets, get the right tablets.

21. Get to work a couple of hours late.

22. Find nowhere to park but the furthest reaches of bandit country known as the Sixth Form car park.

23. Walk the long walk into school across the gravel, avoiding the puddle-filled potholes and muttering at the morons who have parked across two bays and thus condemned you to your far-flung parking.

24. Enter the office to be greeted by Baldrick informing you that your wine is here.

25. Dust off the big yellow sacktruck and go fetch the wine.

26. Retrieve case of wine before the Guardian of the Parcels makes good her threat of sampling it for you.

27. Stash case of wine in the Cupboard of Doom.

28. At home time, realise that the case of wine is too heavy for you to carry across the wide, potholy, dimly lit car park.

29. Dust off the big yellow sacktruck again.

30. Guide yellow truck of wineness across the car park, avoiding all obvious puddles and potholes. You might not be able to avoid some of the less obvious ones...

31. Bid Baldrick goodbye at the edge of the normal car park, and teeter off across the dark gravel in your heels, alone.

32. Remark how the wind is making a funny noise as it blows over a tubular fence post, and how the rain is splattering wetly on your hair and face.

33. Arrive at the car and realise that you can't open the boot.

34. Park the big yellow sacktruck, dive into the car and drive it forward so that you can open the boot.

35. Mess around with the middle row of seats in the dark, desperate to find the catch that will ping them up and send them forward.

36. Stash the wine case in the back of the car.

37. Resign yourself to taking the big yellow sacktruck home with you as you're bloody well not going to trundle it back to the Cupboard of Doom at this time of the evening.

38. Stash the big yellow truck in the back of the car. Realise with deep relief that it fits, with a bit of an inch to spare. Hooray!

39. Drive home, swearing volubly but incoherently at the morons who think it's ok to stop on the box junction in front of you, impeding your progress home and increasing the time until the first sip. Aaarrrggggghhhh!

40. Unload the case, rip it open and stash the contents in the formerly barren wine rack.

41. *clink* *screw* *plop!* *glugglugglug* Aaaaaahhhhhhhh.