Being Me

As a joyful celebration of my 50th birthday, I thought I'd post one of my bestest favouritest poems which is by Sylvia Plath.  It's from the point of view of a woman's mirror, into which she looks each day and ... well ... let's just say, it's not Sophia Loren looking back.  I love the ending of this poem.  It's like a horror movie. I always find it best to let the mirror steam up before I look in it. Mirror I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. What ever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful--- The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over. Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or t

I don't like this new Blogger look. It's like walking into a familiar bedroom and finding that someone has moved the wardrobe into the opposite corner, removed the mirror from the dressing table, and replaced the Monet print on the wall above the bed with a modern abstract print called 'Life's Mysteries'. What's worse is, my memory is so bad these days that I don't remember they've changed Blogger and so I get a new shock every time. Which reminds me.  Have you read 'Before I Go to Sleep' yet?  That's what happens to the main character - she wakes up every morning and has absolutely no memory of the day before.  It's a brilliant debut (*spits*) and I couldn't put it down. Just as well, because if I had put it down, I would never have remembered where I'd put it. That reminds me of something else I was thinking about today.  (Another symptom: rambling.) Why are these called 'memory sticks' when all we do with th

Yikes.  Two days until I'm fifty. This will tell you how old I'm getting.  I got excited yesterday because we had carrots rather than broccoli.  It felt like a real event.  And that tells you a LOT about my life. My husband has an allotment the size of Lake Victoria and, boy, when he grows broccoli, he grows broccoli.  We've been eating it for weeks.  With omelettes.  With fish.  With pasta.  With stir-fry. Let me rephrase that.  We've been accompanying broccoli with other foods for weeks.  Broccoli with omelettes.  Broccoli with fish.  Broccoli with pasta.  Broccoli with stir-fry. It's hard to disguise broccoli.  It's no good going, 'oh well, if you look at it differently, you could even pretend it was French beans'.  I mean, look at it. The most unambiguous vegetable EVER And then yesterday, some carrots appeared on my plate.  Really orange ones.  The effect was startling, after centuries of broccoli, like when you get off

1. You go shopping in the afternoon and your rucksack Tesco carrier bag contains a Beyonce Neil Diamond CD, a bag of marijuana boiled sweets and a Simpsons thong calendar reduced from £9.99 to £2.99 because it's mid-April.  It's got pictures of bare-chested boy bands gardens on it. 2. Later, you go to a pub on a Saturday evening with your toyboy husband only to find you are in the midst of a knitting convention 20s-30s football crowd, mainly male, and yelling.  You sit there like a really trendy pair at ease with the situation couple of vulnerable, nervous oldies let out of an institution for the evening, eat your antipasti scampi and chips, then toddle off to explore the clubbing scene home to the sofa where you belong. 3. As you pass the shops on the way to the bus, you look amazingly lithe and supple in a vintage-clothing shop window.  There, surrounded by a display of other examples of Edwardian dress, is a check tweed jacket identical to the one your husband wea

I've been talking to two people today about how to do weddings on the cheap if you don't want to/can't get married in church.  One was saying how she'd like to get married at a big country house, or another posh venue like that, and we were bemoaning the fact that it would cost a bomb. 'I wonder if Asda would hire out their premises for weddings,' I said.   'Or Tesco.   After all, they too have aisles.' It inspired this little poem.  Actually, as I write, there isn't a poem yet.  I'm making it up here and now.  So, let's just say, it may not be Wordsworthian in quality, like all my others ........................ aren't either. The pickle aisle bride I got married in the pickle aisle. I swept past the Branston as a bride People said it would be silly Married near the piccalilli With jars of pickled onions by my side. But I got married in the pickle aisle And the groom, he looked good enough to eat Said he wanted nothin

Apparently, my e-book 'Being Miss' is number 35,159 in the Amazon Bestsellers Ranking. 'Are there people BELOW you?' says Younger Daughter. That's what you need from your family, isn't it?  Heart-warming compassion and support.

I did a gig in Chipping Campden (Gloucestershire) last year and they've asked me back.  Whaddya know?  I think they liked the way I improvised when a cat arrived in the audience and started outperforming me.  See the link. Just in case you're anywhere near and free and wanting to meet the Chipping Campden cat