Being Me

I'm not making any of my own New Year   Guaranteed-Total and Depressing Failures Resolutions.  Instead, I thought I'd make a list of New Year resolutions which some literary characters   should  have made .... Resolutions that would have made these characters' lives easier, and the stories a hell of a lot shorter ..... Red Riding Hood: When taking cakes to grandparents, go the city route. Pilgrim: Steer clear of Sloughs. Gulliver: Don't ever lie down in someone else's country. Dr Frankenstein: Use different materials for my sewing hobby. Madame Bovary: Read up on how long the effects of arsenic last. Dr Jekyll: Learn to live with my self selves Jude the Obscure: Refuse to be a character in any of Hardy's novels Holden Caulfield: Revise. Jay Gatsby: Never let the woman drive. Piggy: Lose weight before any journey on a plane. Lennie Small: don't hold on for quite so long. Mr Bennet: Develop a hearing problem. Dorian Gray: Just as...

Having polished off all the Jelly Beans I wrote about yesterday, I am now onto the Liquorice Allsorts.  And, to mark this transition, and the New Year, here is an Allsorts blog post - a differently-flavoured selection of snippets from my 2012 blogs. Today, I'll do January to June.  Soon, I'll do the rest of the year.  (This is called a Cliff-hanger, readers.    Don't tell me I never make your alimentary canals tingle with suppressed excitement.) Fran could only think of one way to stop herself from eating them.  Wearing them.   January  Cats are more enthusiastic than English students.  I know this because, when I opened the door this morning to welcome a pupil I teach privately from home, a cat from a neighbouring house took its chance and shot in like a nun out of a swingers' party and up our stairs.  It went so fast, it was just a blur, but I saw the look on its face and that look said, 'I can't wait to get in here and onto...

Let me introduce you to my new friends.  Say hello. These jelly beans have been my constant companions for the last couple of days.  As a result, I now have no friends left.  In a very unfriendlike gesture, I have eaten every one of them.  [On a tangent: I have just read The Life of Pi and there is friend-eating in that, too.  What a fabulous book.  Surely the film can't match up to it.  I will go and see at some point.] I wrote a post a few weeks ago about different ways to approach the eating of custard .  And now I am wondering whether, all over the world, people have different approaches to the eating of jelly beans. Readers, do you.... a) not eat Jelly Beans at all? [Please feel free to ignore the rest of this tosh, then, and go back to more interesting pursuits such as clipping your toenails and measuring them, or counting the number of cat hairs on your sofa, or reading your copy of Stapler Manufacturing Monthly.] b) eat Jell...

I've had a bad cold now since Thursday.  It was my day off school on Thursday anyway, so at least I could stay at home and just sloth about being miserable and moaning and feeling sorry for myself.  It was lots of fun. I didn't sleep Thursday night; I think I had a fever.  Put it this way, one minute the duvet felt as though it were as thin as tissue paper and I was shivering; the next it felt like a flock of sheep had herded into my room and lain on top of me, making me sweat shed loads.  I got aches and pains all over as though I'd been shovelling coal for a week, too, and couldn't get comfortable in bed. So, yesterday morning, which was Friday, I rang in sick and left cover work for my classes.  I spent the day sneezing, which didn't help the aches and pains.  I don't know if you've ever spent a day sneezing.  It's not exactly major suffering, but I wouldn't compare it to a day wandering around an art gallery in Paris, if you know what I mean....

I quite fancy writing about custard.  I've just had some apple pie and custard, so it's on my mind.  (To be frank, I don't actually need to be eating custard for it to be on my mind.) So.  Some intellectual, deep and profound thoughts things about custard. 1. I once knew someone who used to like her custard really thick.  We went round for dinner once and, again, she served up the kind of custard you have to slice.  It's all a bit awkward, that kind of thing, isn't it? What do you say?  She says something like, 'Hope the custard's not too thick' and you have to be polite and try NOT to say, 'No, it's fine.  I love my custard the consistency of ready-mix concrete.  It's the only way.' or 'Thick?  You think THIS is thick?  Don't you remember the cheese sauce you gave us LAST time?' or 'Of COURSE it's not too thick.  Oops!  What's that in my bowl?  My DENtures?' 2. I may have said before that my career as ...