Evidence that, just when you think you're imparting knowledge, the truth could be very different

The class was faffing about, taking its time, so I said, in my best Bored Teacher Monotone, 'Right, then.  One needs to PICK up one's pen, then one needs to OPEN one's book, then one needs to WRITE the title.'

In future, I'll just say it like it is.  One kid put her hand up.  'Are you talking in Shakespeare?'

Ever get the feeling the world has moved on, leaving you far, far behind?

Fran had always thought the girl in the front row with the screwed-up face had just had wind.
 It turned out that
she hadn't understood a word Fran had said since 2009.

I told another class this week that a character in a novel was being 'duplicitous'.  I did explain the meaning and was pleased that I was expanding their vocabularies.  But one of the students asked me whether I could just learn some slang at the weekends so that they could understand me better.

'But,' I said, 'my professional duty is to extend your individualised lexicon, not encourage you in the use of non-standard varieties of linguistic choices.'

Am I not pitching things right?  There were more wrinkled foreheads in that classroom than at a support group for patients whose Botox therapy had failed.

What would you call failed Botox therapy anyway?  No-tox, or maybe Too-tox, or 'so-so-tox' or Too-low-tox, or ....

I will stop.  Life really is too short for this guff.

Evidence that even in the bathroom I ponder issues of world-shattering importance

1. What is the etiquette for Imperial Leather soap?  Label up.  Label down?  Or label off?

Fran thought it most remiss of the soap company that they did not provide explicit guidance on the packet

2. How come I am always IN the shower before I remember that my ladies' razors are elsewhere in the house?  

Fran realised that the alternative to getting out of the shower and finding the razor was going to be a long,
slow process, and not easy with all the mirrors steamed up

3. Do all Chief Executives of toothbrush companies have a pathological hatred of normal people?  If not, why would they make the getting-out of a toothbrush from a new packet at 6.30 in the morning so difficult?  How dare they call those slight indentations 'perforations'?  Even Cruella de Vil's nails aren't going to make it through those.

Fran realised that comparing the getting-out of a toothbrush with the finding of the Holy Grail
was pushing things, but exaggeration came easily at dawn after only five hours' sleep

Reasons to look carefully through any Tesco bag of salad

Spotted this on the BBC news website.

Reasons to look carefully through any Tesco bag of salad

To be honest, I don't know what the fuss is about.  All the posh restaurants in London are now doing deep-fried tarantula and casseroled locust, after all.

(Don't look up this link if you are currently chomping on a roasted wood pigeon.)

Gerald thought he'd try something else in the salad this time as Rosalind hadn't reacted too
well to the previous day's choice of ingredients.  She was so hard to please.

Reasons why I didn't get as much done this morning as I could have

I must say, I've not had something so useless put through the door for a long time.  Not, in fact, since I got  my last copy of that catalogue called 'Innovations' which used to be delivered free, with all those great descriptions of nose hair clippers and special spoons to lift boiled eggs out with and little bits of material that you clipped to your clothes to hide your cleavage.

We got this 'Fat Trap' thing come through, sent by the local water board to encourage us not to pour fat or oils down the drains.  Have you had one?  It comes like this - a bit like a cardboard cover for a CD - and you make it into a box.  (My apologies now if your Fat Trap is actually your most prized possession.  My commiserations, also, to any of your close family or friends.)

I'm not saying I don't agree with the concept.  As they said in the accompanying leaflet, it's a pain for them, unblocking local drains because people have poured fat straight down them.

It's just that we went through this puzzling rigmarole, following all the instructions with concentrated frowns on our faces while we worked it all out, and it all turned out to have been for nothing.  The instructions went something like this:

1. Squeeze the edges of the cardboard so that the box pops up.  [Yeah, right.  For 'pops', read 'finally forms itself into a box with much persuasion'.]

2. Make sure the box is sealed and secure on the sides. [The husband had to go and get a butter knife so that we could mangle the sides into the positions they were meant to be in.]

3. Unpeel the sticky bit over the box's opening, and take out the piece of white paper in the middle of the box.  [I did, but as we hadn't been told yet what this piece of white paper was about, this was a bit mystifying.  Still, I could always put it by the phone to take a message on.]

4. Push down inside the box with your finger so that the plastic inner lining is fully open.  [This felt very strange.  I'm sure it's a common enough feeling for a surgeon, foraging around in someone's abdomen, but to me it was weird.  I felt distinctly under-qualified.]

5. Replace the sticky bit until you are ready to use the Fat Trap.  [This seemed to make a lot of assumptions.  I was, minute by minute, deciding NOT to use the Fat Trap, and had just said to my husband, 'If they think I'm putting a bright blue cardboard box on my kitchen surface with 'Fat Trap' written on it, and then filling it with smelly old frying oil, they can go eat slugs.]

6. We were then instructed that, when the Fat Trap was full of fat, you would use the piece of white paper, which turned out to be a peelable label, to seal the box before you put it in the rubbish bin.  [That was a shame, because while I'd been faffing about, the phone had rung, my husband had answered it, and the paper now had 'Louise says 11.30 is fine' written on it.]

7. To add INSULT to INJURY, at the end of the instructions, it said, 'When you have used your Fat Trap, you can either purchase another one from the website (oh, thanks!) or put your fats in a used margarine tub!

What a waste of twenty minutes of my life.  Why didn't they just send us a letter saying, 'Dear Householder.   Please put your oils and fats in a margarine tub.  Love, Your Local Water Board.'?

I'm telling you, there's a conspiracy out there to stop us from living our lives, reading papers, eating chocolate, phoning grannies, etc etc, like normal people.  And anyway I'm in my own Fat Trap.  I don't need theirs.

Reasons to be a proud mummy

I've accused my kids of many crimes over the years, especially the two eldest.  Sometimes they didn't eat my dinners.  They said, 'That's just not funny, Mum' about thirty times a day.  They told me my outfits belonged to the medieval era.

But now they have their own record label and have released a single by a guy with a great voice and a folksy kind of thing going on.  He's written a song called 'The Divide' and it's just reached No 1 in the Amazon 'Hot New Releases in Folksy Kinds of Things Going on' charts.  Here's a link to my kiddiwinks' website for a sneak preview.  And if you like it, follow their link to download.  I think it's a great song.  And that's not just because they're my kids.  After all, there WERE those comments about the clothes ....

http://www.hillelmusic.co.uk/store.html

Evidence that Fran doesn't press Delete before she's thought about whether the junk mail provides blog material

Junk email today:

Sender: safiaf arkashaal baraasi
Message: PLEASE DO CAREFULLY READ MY MAIL

Do you know what, safiaf?  I don't think I will CAREFULLY READ your MAIL.  For these reasons.

1. There are no capital letters on your names.  If you don't think you're important enough for capitals, I don't see why I should have a sense of urgency about getting to know you either.  Or maybe you don't actually know that you need capitals.  In which case, I'm unlikely to give your MAIL much credence either.  Or maybe you were in so much of a hurry to con me that you forgot the capitals altogether.  Bad move.  If intending to con, do so at a measured pace.  No one believes a rusher.

2. You are worryingly inconsistent.  No capitals on the names.  Then a shouty message, all in capitals.  If there's one thing I hate, safiaf, it's inconsistency.  You see, if I were going to READ your MAIL and acquiesce to your demands, whatever they be, I would want to know that I was acquiescing to someone who was as solid, reliable and consistent as a healthy stool sample.  So you've shot yourself in the foot there, sunshine.

3. Your PLEASE DO CAREFULLY READ MY MAIL reminds me of the patronising woman on the SouthWest Trains tannoy who says, 'Please DO remember to take all your luggage with you' as though all passengers were imbeciles who left their bags behind on a whim just to see how it felt.  Also, to say DO and then to say CAREFULLY makes me suspicious.  You really, really, really want me to read your email, don't you, but the more you try to persuade me using suspect grammatical constructions, the more likely I am to really, really, really press delete and go and put the kettle on.

4. You have ended up in my junk mail.  This, safiaf, is a really bad sign.  Even my computer, which is inanimate, does not trust you.  I trust my computer, which has no name at all, more than I trust you, who does just have a name, but has a list of 'a' vowel sounds so long I don't believe you.  I've not made that many 'a' sounds since I was last at the doctor's and he wanted to look at my throat.

Bog off,  safiaf arkashaal baraasi.  Consider yourself deleted.

safiaf wasn't so easily put off

Evidence that Fran has found ways to cut down on time planning menus

You know you've got a habit going on when your sister texts you and says, 'Your husband's away, isn't he?  Are you eating egg and chips?'

You see, the husband is a veg man.  In fact, if given the chance, he will have Green Veg with everything.

Me:  'Fancy a fishfinger sandwich?'
Him: 'Yeah, lovely.  There's some broccoli to use up in the fridge.  Shall we have that with it?'
Me: 'Yeah, why not?  I swear I heard Jamie Oliver say on telly the other day that broccoli is the new tomato ketchup.  Whoop-de-doo!'

We are always having arguments about which vegetables go with what.  I swear you can't eat brussels sprouts with white fish, but he'll happily pile them on the side of a nice piece of grilled plaice, and if there's some leftover cabbage available, all the better.  This is when I start my 'Normal People Wouldn't do That' lecture, which is the same lecture I use for some of his other idiosyncrasies such as carrying two 9 packs of toilet rolls home from the shops on his bicycle handlebars (oh, the shame) and holding biscuits covertly in the palm of his hand while he's eating them as though he's scared someone else will come and steal them.

Anyway, it's such a relief when he's away not to be pressurised into eating curly kale with my baked beans on toast.  So I just indulge, like a pig in muck, in egg and chips.  He would say, if he were here, that I should 'at least have some peas with those egg and chips'.  Well, stuff that, for a game of soldiers.  I don't need veggies; I've got a life to live.

[Turn away from the screen, dear reader, if you are easily disturbed.  The next few sentences contain scenes of a shocking nature.]  I have a routine.  It goes like this.  The first night he's away, I have egg and chips. The second night, egg and chips.  The third night, egg and chips.

I know.  I know.  And you thought 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' was distressing.

I have just thought of an idea.  I am now going to see how many literary text titles I can mangle into a chips theme.  I am going Googling.

Googlegoogle ....


Googlegoogle ....


Googlegoogle ....


Right, here we go.

Don Chipote
The Count of Monte Chippo
Moby Chip
The Thirty-Nine Chips
Chips Fall Apart
A Tale of Two Chippies
The Lion, the Chips and the Wardrobe
To Chip a Mockingbird
Charlie and the Chip Factory
David Chipperfield
The Way we Chip Now

You know, I really think I could just carry this on and on, but because I want to keep a few followers for the future, I won't.  Anyway, I have shocked myself by realising how easily I can be entertained by searching the internet for book titles which remind me of the sounds in the word 'chip'.

Oh well, it's Friday night.  A woman has to let her hair down somehow.  And, anyway, I have eaten so many chips that, despite having twice tried to rise from this chair where I am typing on my laptop, I have failed. So this is as exciting as my evening is going to get.

Feel free to chip in with a comment.  HAR HAR HAR.

When Fran's husband asked her what type of cake she would like for her next birthday,
her answer wasn't quite what he had expected.  Still, he felt she'd over-reacted
when he'd suggested getting some green beans iced on around the edge