Being Me

Evidence that Fran is always thinking of things to keep you busy

2012-02-27T13:54:00.000-08:00

My e-book 'Being Miss' has a new cover. My son put it together for me. I think he's a very clever boy, and obviously destined for great things, especially as he's only just had his second birthday.......

Kidding you. He's nearly 26. And just about to become a father .... Which will make me Granny Franny, as my sister delights in telling me.

Fran found that even getting dressed up and trying to make the most of herself didn't make her feel any younger

Evidence that chocolate can bring you pleasure and excitement in all kinds of ways

2012-02-20T14:11:00.000-08:00

We bought about six boxes of Matchmakers at Christmas, right, thinking we would give them away to people we visited.

Shame we never got invited anywhere. (I guess answering phone calls, emails and texts would have helped.) Anyway, in the end, we had to eat them all ourselves.

For the unitiated, Matchmakers are chocolate sticks which look like this ....

... and it's a very clever marketing ploy, to have chocolate in such a thin form. In fact, the advertising even claims that Matchmakers are a healthy diet food ....

You too can lose so much weight eating chocolate that you make no indentation
on the sofa

It's all a Big Lie, of course, because no one, no one, says, after one Matchmaker, 'Hey, guys, I'm STUFFED. Let's put these away and have more tomorrow.'

Still, you can nibble away at a Matchmaker while watching Downton Abbey and pretend you are being elegant like them. It makes a change from usual practice ...

... which leads to your sofa looking like this ...

Well, friends, I didn't come here to talk about food.

No.... get up OFF the floor. That was a very silly, immature over-reaction from you all.

I'm actually here to talk about the enormous difference the Quality Street company which manufactures Matchmakers made to our Christmas because of the FREE GAME we received inside each box.

It is a very entertaining game and I honestly don't think I could have survived Christmas without it. Here is what you get in the packet. (I'd take a tranquilliser right now if I were you. This could excite you beyond reason.)

1. a piece of square crinkly paper, the type you normally get covering a box of chocolates
2. on the square paper, a circle, which is split into four quartered sections, like this:

They call this the 'Lucky Launchpad'. Don't ever tell me the days of hyperbole are dead.

Here are the instructions, as set out carefully on the packet:

Stand a Matchmakers stick up on its end in the middle of the lucky launchpad
Before you let go, guess which quarter the Matchmaker will land in.
Call out your choice.
Let go of the Matchmaker.
If it lands in the right segment, you win the Matchmaker.

I am almost in tears with gratitude to Quality Street, who have provided me and my family with such an innovative, fascinating team game to play, giving us hours of pleasure with which no number of Christmas visits from George Clooney in an Italian suit could ever hope to compete.

I know you are all jealous and want to play the Lucky Launchpad game immediately. You must rush out and buy a packet of Matchmakers, so that you too can while away a happy evening balancing a Matchmaker on its end and letting go.

Next year, I am expecting further entertainment. Perhaps there will be the ....

'Roll a Matchmaker along the table and guess how far it gets' game

or the

'See if you can line up some Matchmakers in a straight line' game

I prefer, myself, to play the ....

'How many boxes of Matchmakers is it physically possible to consume during the back-to-back watching of two episodes of Downton Abbey on iplayer' game

Reasons why Fran is not an Olympic athlete

2012-02-10T13:43:00.000-08:00

Overheard at a bus stop.....

I lie. I overheard nothing. It was my own conversation. But, for a moment there, you thought you might hear something interesting. I hope you enjoyed your nano-second of tension. It's all down hill from here.

Me: 'So, your father and I are coming up to Sheffield to see you at half-term, then.'

Daughter: 'Yeah, that'll be nice.'

Me: 'Dad says you'll be wanting to visit some remote place called Castleton.'

Daughter: 'Oh, fine. Okay, then. Yeah. Let' s go there.'

Me: 'Dad says you took him there before, and you love it there because of the beautiful scenery and the bus ride through the countryside.'

Daughter: 'Well ....'

Me: 'He says you love the whole nature thing, the walking, the views.'

[Pause.]

'Mum, I like it because of the fudge.'

It's at moments like these that my little mummy heart bursts with pride. There's nothing more rewarding than knowing you have passed on to the next generation the best bits of your personality, your skills, your attributes, your instincts, your ambitions and desires.

I once made a whole batch of fudge to give people at Christmas. I put it all in a box and hid it at the back of a wardrobe from the rest of the family, forgetting that, in fact, the only person who was likely to raid it and eat it was me.

We gave everyone tins of biscuits from Tesco that year.

Tonight, I am not eating fudge, but I have persuaded the husband to open a box of toffee he was given for Christmas (presumably by someone who could Control Themselves). I have eaten SO much toffee, and I feel bad, because someone could have used that same amount of toffee to stick together our broken world.

The husband said he was going to put the box somewhere Up High, just in case. I presume he meant one of the shelves in the house......

Fran's husband was taking no chances.

I have started a new blog post category called Me and Food. I should have done it years ago, because the topic seems to ~~creep into~~ completely dominate so many of my posts.

Fran's book on Amazon Kindle - evidence that she can write for longer than 5 minutes

2012-02-04T15:37:00.001-08:00

Just letting you know that, should you feel inclined, you can now read my first book called 'Being Miss' if you have a Kindle or something else you can download it to - and it seems to indicate that you can download it to your PC, too, if you don't. It will cost you less than the price of 10 chocolate frogs. It is about one day in a teacher's ~~life~~ precarious existence. And it should make you laugh. At least, that's the idea.

Here's the link below ...

Ooh, I must go and download that now

And if you do download, and you like it, please write me a review on Amazon. I'd give you a big virtual hug.

Evidence that 'shaying nosthing at all' could even be good advice for Fran

2012-02-01T15:20:00.000-08:00

At this very moment, I have no idea what I am about to write. I just thought, as it's been so long, I had better put fingers to keyboard and say something.

I think this process is called 'free writing'. It may also be called 'How to Lose Lots of Followers at Once'.

Not all of Fran's followers found they could get to Paragraph 3

Snap decision. I am going to tell you about my meals. For breakfast, I had some Mini Shredded Wheat. These are essentially like little parcels of thin string, fashioned into what looks like a cushion. You pour milk on them, and you eat them. Habits like this, which we Brits have, are presumably what make foreigners think we are weird. While they are buttering croissants and drinking posh coffee, or spreading maple syrup on a fresh waffle, we are eating parcels of string, and still calling ourselves civilised.

At breaktime, at school, all I had time for was to eat a chocolate frog. One of my colleagues keeps a box of chocolate frogs (called Freddos) .. (the chocolate frogs, not the colleague) ... in the fridge and he doles them out to kids who have done something worthy. The only thing is, often the box is empty, because the rest of us filch them. In fact, it is Not the Done Thing to go into the fridge and help oneself to a Freddo without saying to everyone else, 'Anyone fancy a chocolate frog?' After we have got over the obligatory ribaldry about our tastes in partners, we all enjoy a bit of chocolate and then Period 3 with Year 10 and iambic pentameter doesn't seem quite so bad.

Socially acceptable chocolate frog eating

There's something really, really disturbing, though, about this one ....

At lunchtime, I had a sandwich made from my husband's home-made bread. He makes bread a lot, but, as the saying goes, Results May Vary. Sometimes the bread is so dense that if I have a sandwich of it for lunch, I can't get up to teach Periods 4 and 5 and they have to organise me a cover teacher. Sometimes, it's just the opposite, and has so many holes in it that it virtually counts as a diet food and means that after I've had a sandwich, I can eat three muffins and still not feel guilty. Today it was in between and the only downside was that I wasn't eating it at home while listening to You and Yours and getting ready for a nice snooze.

I will start a new paragraph to tell you what was IN the sandwich. First, I will begin with the butter. Butter is a source of conflict in our house. When the weather is warm, my husband puts the butter in the fridge, which means you have to carve it off the block with a kitchen knife in slivers and lay it carefully on the bread and, to be honest, if I had time to be doing that, I'd have time to write blog posts. Another alternative is to put some in the microwave to 'warm', but this is easily misjudged, and one can end up standing in the kitchen with a bowl of bubbling butter, wondering whether to go and pour it over the head of one's still-sleeping husband. When the weather is cold, we leave the butter out of the fridge, but we put the oven on low to keep the downstairs warm and this ..... See previous sentence.

I don't have time to talk about the cheese. I'd hate to bore you.

For tea, when I got home, I had pizza. The way we do pizza is that we buy margherita pizzas, just with tomatoes and cheese on them, from the supermarket, then we add bits. Tonight I had my favourite bits: olives and anchovies. However, I had so many olives and anchovies that 1) I couldn't actually taste the pizza; 2) I had to drink fourteen litres of water afterwards. We had slightly overcooked the pizzas and there was that awkward stage during the meal when you're both eating pizza crust so hard that you sound like you're crunching pebbles with your teeth. You have to coordinate this kind of thing, so that you're crunching at the same time. In the end, we couldn't get it together, and just had to turn the radio up. It was such a relief, to be able to crunch out of synch but not to feel shame.

What was funny was that Radio 2 was playing Ronan Keating singing, 'You shay it besht, when you shay nosthing at all' and then suddenly the radio went off because of a technical fault, meaning that Keating was, indeed, shaying nosthing at all, and we were yet again crunching pizza base in total disharmony. Life doesn't get much more distressing than that.

If you are still reading this, you deserve a knighthood, a medal or, at the very least, a Freddo.

I promise, next time, to stay away longer. Or, at least, to have more interesting meals to write about.

This is the same person as the first picture, just to show you how much
they aged while reading Fran's thrilling, imaginative blog post

Evidence that writing rhyming couplets for local cats can be a rewarding affair

2012-01-14T13:06:00.000-08:00

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 the bed of an allergic person. I'm dead excited.'

'Huh? I'll make you sneeze, will I? You're lucky - I was hoping to induce a full
anaphylactic shock if I'm honest, in revenge for all the times you've kicked me out before.'

Then I looked at the pupil's face. Let's just say, excitement wasn't the emotion I saw there as she stood on the doorstep in anticipation of our lesson on non-fiction texts.

At least the kids at school this week have been satisfyingly keen. I've been teaching 'Romeo and Juliet' and this is one of my (and their) favourite quotations from Act II Scene II, when Romeo is having to part from Juliet after the balcony scene. He says:

Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books,
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

To illustrate the meaning, I do my best impression at the front of the classroom of a boy arriving at school (cue the dragging feet, the bowed head, the hunched shoulders, the look of 'I'd-rather-be-eating-my-own-earwax') and then one of a boy leaving school (cue the skipping, the punching the air, the lobbing of the homework-stuffed rucksack into a corner of the school field as though it were a ticking bomb). This little bit of drama goes down well, except that one day soon, while I'm doing the dragging feet thing, an Ofsted inspector is going to come into the room unexpectedly, wonder why I'm moping about at the front rather than leading a bells-and-whistles group work session with multicoloured handouts and a motivational soundtrack. And then he'll give an 'inadequate' score and, because of Michael Gove, I'll be out on my ear within 3 months.

I have rewritten the rhyming couplet for the cat. As one does.

"Love goes toward love, as cats toward others' houses
But love from love, as cats from chasing mouses"

This same cat, whom I shall name Puss-ain Bolt in honour of its speed, caused quite a stir at Christmas. Our next-door neighbours (not the cat owners, who are at number 4) went away. But then, on Christmas Eve, there was a knock at our door and the neighbour from number 4 was standing there looking desperate. 'Do you have next door's number?' she said. 'Our cat is locked in their house.'

Apparently, Puss-ain had got into next door's house on the 23rd while they were packing to go away and they didn't know he was in the house. Then, when the cat hadn't arrived back home on Christmas Eve, number 4 couldn't find him anywhere, until someone said, 'I think I've seen your cat sitting on the windowsill inside number 13 amongst the fallen-over Christmas cards and the dying poinsettia.'

In the end, we managed to find next-door's mobile number, and to get a key from someone they'd left it with, and Puss-ain was saved from having to have his dinners posted through a letterbox until New Year's Day. 'It's just as well,' I said to the relieved lady from number 4, 'because I can't see that your cat would have so conveniently posted his poop back through the letterbox for easy disposal.' She's quite a posh lady and seemed to find this comment distasteful. I don't think we'll be invited round for coffee and Bourbons any time soon.

It was all very exciting, the cat drama, and livened up a Christmas Eve only broken up otherwise by the cooking of 48 mince pies (which mysteriously became 42 before they'd even cooled), and the Great Sellotape Search, and the finding out that the port bottle only had a half-inch of port in it just after the shops had shut. And then we had the argument about who wanted to listen to 'A Festival of Nine Carols' on Radio 4 and who would rather rub themselves up against a giant cheese grater. And then we remembered the 17 people we hadn't sent cards to and tried not to rejoice at the massive savings in stamps we'd made. And then we recommenced the Great Sellotape Search. You know, the normal stuff of Christmas Eves all over Britain.

And now it's the 14th January and all that Christmas malarky seems so so far away. Except that last week I bought three rolls of Christmas wrapping paper in Paperchase for 48 pence each and was as excited as ~~an English student arriving for her lesson~~ a cat who's snuggling up in someone else's anti-allergenic soft furnishings.

A little story to 'ring' in the New Year. Har har har.

2012-01-01T15:29:00.000-08:00

I loved this BBC news story about the woman who found her lost wedding ring round a carrot she dug up from her garden.

Things you don't expect to find when digging up your dinner

I have my own ring story. Our family was at a big Christian festival once, the kind where thousands of people bring tents and camp together and then have to spend the week trying not to argue with their spouses because everyone can hear you being not-very-Christian.

My husband was working as a milkman at the time. Why is this relevant? You'll see.

Towards the end of the week-long festival, my husband lost his wedding ring, having left it in the gents' facilities when he went to have a wash. He came back to the tent and I asked him where his ring was, which was when he realised what he'd done. I considered having a tantrum about it and calling him a few names, but I couldn't risk everyone hearing. Instead, I said, very loudly, 'DON'T WORRY, DARLING HONEYBUN SUGARPIE, I'M SURE IT WILL BE FINE - I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, WHAT'S A LITTLE LOST GOLD BETWEEN US, MY SWEET, MY LOVE, MY ANGEL?'

We went along to Lost Property and were sure there'd be a person at the desk who would say, 'Hey, Sharon, where's that wedding ring that was handed in this morning?' and there would be his ring and it would all be sorted.

In fact, the person at the desk picked up a plastic box in which there had to be at least 30 men's wedding rings, shook it about a bit and said, 'Good luck!' Apparently men's wedding rings were one of the most common things to be given in. All I could think about were all those poor Christian wives who were having to call their husbands 'Honeybun' for the first time ever.

We didn't need luck to find his ring, though, and this is where the milkman thing comes in. He'd been working as one for 5 years. Why would this make a difference? It's because years of carrying 4 or 5 full bottles of milk between his fingers had built up the muscles so much that his fingers had actually changed shape. The ring, accordingly, had done the same and was now more oval than circular. So we knew instantly which was his ring. It was the only one which looked like it belonged to an alien. All the others were perfectly round.

Round ... and still lost. I wonder how long those other wives kept up the Honeybun thing.

He thought she was getting up close and personal, but she just wanted to hiss
'Pick up your socks, you DORK' without anyone hearing

A recipe for tubercular mince pies which would grace any 18th century costume drama kitchen

2011-12-23T10:24:00.000-08:00

I am peering at the screen with stinging, watery eyes due to a streaming cold, and I am sneezing every 33 seconds, and the dripping of my nose would shame a Chinese water torturer, but don't you worry, Isabelle and Frances, about pressurising me to write a new post while I am suffering thus.

No, don't you fret, my dears. I am sure you are both sitting there with your feet up, sipping mulled wine, healthy and thriving, while you fire off your comments about it being time I shifted my carcass and wrote something. No, I'm not bitter at all. I am very pleased for you, that you are not victims of The Worst Cold in History and can enjoy your Christmas holidays without using up enough Kleenex to soak up the Indian Ocean and leave its bed dry and all its sea life flapping about wondering FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, WHO PULLED THE PLUG?

I have been making mince pies. No, this isn't my excuse for not having written a post since early December, although the way I make mince pies (bake 6, eat 4, bake 6, eat 4) could well account for such a mammoth pie-making session.

I discovered this afternoon that making mince pies with a streaming cold makes the whole process far more complicated. You have a nano-second, when the nose begins to drip, to grab a tissue before you glaze the mince pie with something less acceptable to most people than the usual egg yolk. [Most? Don't you mean all?! Ed.] [You ARE Ed, idiot! You don't have an Ed!]

Any relatives reading this who are due to come and stay and may be offered a mince pie ... I SWEAR TO YOU I got away from the pies ~~just~~ well in time.

Then (to continue with my method for Tubercular Mince Pies) after you've blown your nose, you have to wash your hands again, in the interests of anti-slobness, and washing pastry-plastered hands is not just 'washing hands' as any cook will know. It means scrubbing away at them with a scourer or a vegetable brush, and then pretending you weren't the one who made the scourer/brush unusable next time the washing up is done.

Any relatives reading this who are due to come and stay ... you are NOT to use this as an excuse not to do any washing-up.

What slaving over home-made mince pies for your family despite being near death does mean, though, is that you feel completely justified in partaking of that well-known medicinal remedy: the newly-baked mince pie. You deserve some reward for such sacrificial service.

Mind you, I now have, as well as the streaming cold, a missing upper palate, its skin stripped away by mincemeat-flavoured lava. This is rough justice, in my view, as all I was trying to do was comfort myself in the middle of my suffering. It was nothing to do with greed. *coy expression* *annoyed expression at having used the asterisk thing after vowing never to*

The pies are all baked and packed away and will need to be put on a Very High Shelf, just in case any of my family who are reading this arrive on Boxing Day, and wonder why I have bought several packets of mince pies with dodgy use-by dates from the corner shop rather than making my own ...

Merry Christmas to all, especially to Isabelle and Frances, who wrote especially to say they were missing me. On the other hand, after my earlier venomous diatribe, they may not even have read this far, and may have just unfollowed. ~~*Bites lip in regret*~~ I feel regret about that, and DON'T NEED ASTERISKS TO EXPRESS IT.

Fran was in such a hurry to find which High Shelf the pies were on that she didn't realise
she was scattering tissues as she ran

Evidence that an insight into others' lives can make one feel inferior

2011-12-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

I've been sitting in my living room, by the fire, thinking what a nice house I live in. I was perfectly content. Happy with the decor, though it's a little tired. Pleased with my old radio, burbling away while I mark exercise books.

And then I watched this on the BBC news website .... check out the link.

Proof that I live in squalor compared to these guys ....

Fran started on her campaign to live the life of the more privileged

Evidence that one can write quite a lot about things one hasn't done

2011-12-04T14:06:00.000-08:00

I'm very aware that I haven't written a blog post for ages. Or checked anyone else's blogs. I am getting seriously blog-rubbish.

Other things I haven't done this week.

1. I haven't managed to set up our new landline phone. We have a new one, but all we've done is plugged it in and answered it a few times. This appears to be the limit of our skills with it. I did have a look at the manual last weekend to see if I could work out how to set up the answerphone, put in some automatic numbers and adjust the settings on it. But then I realised I could more easily learn complex medical terminology about obscure parts of the body in an ancient Peruvian language. This weekend I have been avoiding the phone, giving it a wide berth when I walk past it, like I do people on the street who are dribbling and making unggghhh noises and rolling their eyes at me.

I hate new technology, but I hate the manuals more. I need one of these to cope ......

2. I haven't started reading a new novel yet. This is a source of great trouble to me, that I am finding little time to read. I haven't managed to read a whole book since the summer holidays. Yesterday, though, I got cross about all this, and deliberately picked up a book of short stories about Christmas which someone gave me last year, thinking I ought to be able to put time aside for at least one. I laid a large tablecloth over my pile of marking, and sat on the sofa by the fire. In the end, I read one story by Dickens and one by Gogol. Gogol I've never read before, but it was a cracking yarn with devils and witches and drunks in Russian provinces who get trapped in sacks. Not only was it a cracking yarn, but I love saying the name 'Gogol'. Gogol, Gogol, Gogol. You should try it yourself. It's fun. If you keep repeating it, you sound as though you're doing that clicky thing with your throat that some Africans can do, and you come over all ethnic.

Fran enjoyed Gogol's story, but when she looked up a picture of him on Google, wasn't
so impressed by his haircut.

3. I haven't done the sewing I was meant to do: mending two pairs of my trousers and one pair of my husband's. While these items sit in the Leaning Tower of Mending in the bedroom, my husband and I are seriously wardrobe-challenged. But I hate sewing and always moan about it. I remember once I was sewing a button on when the Younger Daughter came in with a friend from school and said, 'Oh, look at you, Mum, trying to look all domesticated just because I bring a friend home.' This was grossly unfair, but it does show you how seldom I ever got round to the sewing. My skills are very limited. I got thrown out of sewing class at school because I tried to make a pair of flares, sewed them up the wrong way and ended up with jodhpurs. I am currently wearing a pair of black trousers whose hems I took up in 1994 but did it with grey cotton rather than black. It couldn't be more obvious, because I am to delicate stitching what The King of Tonga is to ballet. Every time I wear them I vow that, next time they need washing, I will re-do the hems with black cotton before ironing them. And I never do. This is called sew-crastination.

Fran wondered whether sewing made everyone slim and elegant like this and was seriously
considering an evening course. However, having a head shaped like a cottage loaf seemed
less appealing, as did having one foot with thin toes and one foot with thick ones.

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

2011-11-26T16:05:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-20T13:18:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-15T14:38:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-12T11:28:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-12T01:57:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-07T12:55:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-04T15:28:00.000-07:00

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

Evidence that lip enhancement can be achieved for under forty pounds.

2011-10-28T05:12:00.000-07:00

Well, I did it. I went and got some injections and now I have Enormous Fat Lips, just like I said I wanted in a previous post.

You thought I never would, didn't you?

You thought I was joking, didn't you?

Well, I've done it.

The only thing is ....

- they're not permanent

- they're a little uneven

- I can feel them more than I can see them

and ....

- I got them at the dentist

Okay, so they're not the real thing, and only there because I had to have two fillings and therefore a shedload of anaesthetic enough to numb a herd of wildebeest. But just for a few hours, as I sit here, just returned from the dentist, my lips feel deliciously Massive.

And they only cost me £36. I bet celebrities pay a LOT more than that.

When I got on the bus back from the dentist, I had to speak to the bus driver, of course. And my lips felt so big, like two barrage balloons top and bottom, that instead of saying, 'Single to Leamington, please,' I said, 'Smibble doo Lebbyton, fleas' and it took us a while to sort the fare out. I wonder if this is how actresses feel when they've had theirs done. It must play havoc with the line-learning for a while, even if it does mean you can kiss Johnny Depp, George Clooney and Ewan McGregor all at once if you want to. And who wouldn't want to?

I did take one sneaky peek in my hand mirror on the bus. You know how it is - you're convinced you're dribbling saliva like a goon when you've just had ~~fillings~~ your lips enlarged and I thought I'd better check. It was a complete come-down, feeling like I was going to be mistaken for Angelina Jolie and then looking in the mirror and realising that only my mind thinks I've got big lips. I've not felt so disappointed since I thought I'd lost seven stone and then remembered I was in the Hall of Mirrors at the fair.

Fran couldn't afford plastic surgery, and the lips the dentist gave her only lasted a few hours.
She wondered what other methods she could try without anyone noticing....

Evidence that the more traditional literary themes can sometimes prove inferior

2011-10-26T00:17:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a book about pies. It's by James M Cain and it's called 'Mildred Pierce', and I think if you asked the author what his book was about he'd say something posh like 'family conflict' or 'survival in the face of circumstances' or 'loss of love', but basically it's about pies. Have you read it? (Or seen the mini-series which had Kate Winslet in it? There was a lot of noise about it, all of which I evidently missed.)

It starts with a husband and wife splitting up. This happens while they're in the kitchen where she's making pies. Then they split, and she starts selling pies to earn money. Then she starts working in a cafe and finds that the pies they buy are inferior to her pies. So she persuades the cafe owner to buy her pies instead. Then she starts a pie restaurant. Now I read that she's running a take-away pie service as well as the restaurant.

That's as far as I've got, but things are building up, and I'm fully expecting her to win some major pie competition or get a royal commission for her pies or maybe things will take an unusual turn and she'll wake up one morning to find she has been transformed into a pie and can't move in any other way but pie-like (which isn't a lot of movement), like Kafka's beetle.

Mildred didn't mind having turned into a pie overnight, but she did lie there wondering
how she was meant to hang the washing out

Meanwhile, in between pies, Mildred's youngest child has died and she's had one or two affairs, but all this really does take second place to the pies.

It's really nice to unashamedly read a book about pies on the bus which isn't called 'How to Make Pies' or 'Pies, Pies, Pies Throughout the Year' or even 'How to Cure a Pie Addiction'. There's something odd about a woman who takes a recipe book on the bus and even more so if she's so absorbed by it that she misses her stop and ends up at the bus station. So, now, I can indulge myself in the description of the light pastry and the apple and blackberry filling, or I can revel in a scene in which Mildred crimps the edge of the pastry or makes a little leaf to put on the top. I can let my little heart thrill as Mildred walks into the kitchen wearing an apron, covers her hands in flour and gets out a mixing bowl. No one on the bus knows what's going on at all.

Unlike a recipe book, though, there are no pictures (apart from one of Kate Winslet on the front cover looking as little like a pie as it's possible to look). This is a tad disappointing, but it forces one to use the imagination. It would be no good for someone who had had minimal experience of pie, but as I have had wide-ranging and thorough experience of pie, I have no problem with the visualisation.

Fran blushed while reading a particularly steamy scene involving dark chocolate,
butter, sugar and a large dollop of cream

What I want to know is whether it's a coincidence that the title of the book - the name of the main character - is Mildred Pierce. I did pronounce it 'Peerce' when I first got the book, but now I realise it's meant to be pronounced 'Pie-erss' as in 'pious'. As you all know, 'pious' is a word meaning 'having deep reverence for anything to do with pastry' so I think that's what James M Cain must have intended.

While researching 'pie' on Google Images (as everyone should at 8 o'clock in the morning before starting their day), I found an image which fits with the theme of this blog post exactly, but is nonetheless disturbing.

Although Roland had been very happy when Susan had suggested some bedroom fun,
he had to admit, he was surprised to find himself being daubed with gravy

While we're on bedrooms, I just thought I'd report that my duvet and next door's tree are currently a perfect match.

Evidence that I really ought to keep things in better perspective

2011-10-24T15:10:00.000-07:00

I don't watch horror or slasher movies. I just don't see why I should pay money to be frightened out of my own skin. If I wanted to pay to be scared, I could put some money in one of those speak-your-weight machines, but I wouldn't do that either. Call it denial, but whether it's extreme violence, or finding out that the diet of chips, cheese and chocolate isn't doing much for my ambitions to be J-Lo's body double, I just don't want to know.

J-Lo was thinking, 'I wonder how Fran's getting on with her diet. I could do with a day off soon.'

But sometimes you see horrific things by accident, and it's too late to look away.

I was in a toy shop on Friday, browsing to find a present for someone. There was this little cherub-like blonde girl, trailing around behind her a toy donkey on wheels attached to a pull-along stick which she'd taken off one of the shelves. It was a clever toy because the donkey kicked its legs about while it moved, and looked quite realistic, as well as making convincing donkey sounds. Ah, how innocent a scene, I thought, watching the child pull it along affectionately, urging it to 'come on, donkey, come on'. It would not have looked out of place in one of those 18th century paintings of rich children playing in the nursery, all dressed in royal blue silk even at 4pm, with cheeks like beetroot, rolls of fat round the wrists and ankles, and a towering bowl of sweetmeats on a table with bandy legs.

Anyway, back to the toy shop. Two minutes later, Cherub Child had abandoned the donkey to its fate and bogged off to find something else to play with. And there the donkey lay, rejected, on its side, where anyone could have trodden on it, its legs kicking uselessly, and with sounds like 'ungh ungh' coming from it. It was a scene from Texas Hee-Haw Massacre.

Having said everything I've just said about not watching violent videos, what I really really want to do now is google 'dying donkey' and find you a video clip to illustrate the way the donkey looked, but this would be distasteful. As is, no doubt, even just TELLING you I feel like doing that. But I think you can visualise the scene. In fact, think 'dying fly' and just superimpose donkey features on the scene. It shouldn't be hard. You need grey, not black. Then you need mammalian features, not insectian. Then you need massive ears ... No, this isn't working.

I feel really bad about the dying donkey video comment now. I should never have said it. Here's a nice picture of some flowers instead, to get your mind off it.

Talking horror, I was once walking along with my daughter, who was about 6 at the time. (Queen Victoria had just been crowned.) Suddenly, she stopped, looked at something which had been discarded in the gutter, and cried, 'Aarrghh! A dead apple!'

You see, horror is all about perspective. I've never, ever been able to look at an old apple core since then and not think Fruit Corpse.

Thanks, kid.

Evidence that even a small stage can support me for a full 20 minutes

2011-10-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

Bored? Here's something to do other than eat your own ear wax.

Check out my new videos at www.youtube.com/bombleybombley and you can see me in action.

The bombleybombley thing? Er .... long story. One day I'll tell it.

Evidence that junk email can be useful for something, if only for a blog post rich in triviality and pointlessness

2011-10-20T15:35:00.001-07:00

This is my junk email, all arrived today. I daren't click on the links, as I know they will all connect me to a Medieval Plague of Viruses, but I feel I have to reply, so I will do so here.

Message 1. Halifax Online Service Security Update

Well, thanks for that, Halifax Bank, or Probably-Not-Halifax-Bank, but I'd get advice on your use of capital letters for the beginnings of all your words. It arouses instant suspicion, in a serial-killer-suspicion kind of way. Think: 'I Am Coming To Get You With a Big Knife'.

Message 2. Nothing beats a British fry-up!

Well, there you're wrong. Not getting junk mail with stupid messages beats a British fry-up. And cut out the exclamation marks. I spend the whole day, every day, telling 14 year olds not to over-use the exclamation mark, then I get home at the end of the day, and there's you, bombarding me with insincere emotion so that I click on your dodgy link. Bog off.

Message 3. Handbag giveaway every day in October.

No thanks. This would make me the proud owner of 30 handbags, and however given-away they were, that's still 29 more than I need. Some of us can't fill up our wardrobes with spare handbags, you know. Some of us fill our wardrobes with clothes as wide as a 6-man tent which need hangers that would stretch across the Atlantic and stop you from closing the door properly in the first place.

Message 4. You have a new secure message from Egg

Secure? Then why is it in my junk mail? Secure + Egg? Sorry, sunshine. Secure + Padlocked-Steel-Enforced-Safe, yes. Secure + Vault-Guarded-by-Rottweilers, yes. Secure + Egg? You must be yolking.

Message 5. Halifax Account Status Notification

Now, just because you've missed the word 'online' off the subject line this time doesn't mean I'm fooled. This looks suspiciously like the previous message, received only 2 hours before. When a murderer says, 'Come here and let me dismember you', just because he repeats it a second time as 'Come and let me dismember you' this isn't going to make the victim go, 'Oh, SORRY, I thought you were being threatening just then! My apologies! Do approach with the kitchen knife ANY TIME.'

Message 6. Halifax Online Banking: Account Status Notification

Nice try, honeybun. Nice try. But not subtle.

Message 7. Viagra 100mg x 60 pills £125, Free Pills and Reorder Discount, Top Selling 100% quality, Satisfaction Guaranteed

Have you been taking lessons from the Probably-Not-Halifax in how to make people suspicious with capital letters? Because, if so, it's working fine. Please go away and sell your Viagra to people with the relevant equipment. And sort out your comma splices. If I were a man, I wouldn't buy Viagra from a comma-splicer who over-uses capital letters even if I was as limp as a month-old lettuce.

Fran wondered whether she was over-reacting to yet another junk email from the Probably-Not-Halifax

Evidence that I do actually read other people's blogs occasionally

2011-10-16T14:26:00.000-07:00

2nd post of the day! Wahey! Can you tell it's nearly half-term?

But I'm only here to say that, if you like funny, you'll love Mrs Crayon. If you don't already follow, go and see. Her latest post made me giggle and giggle. And that was just after watching Downton Abbey. Tonight has been a rollercoaster of emotion.

http://scribblingwithcrayon.blogspot.com/

Evidence that Fran's Granny could, at any point, be asked to shove over and make room

2011-10-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to live in an institution. I don't know why this is. I guess one day I might get my wish (and sooner rather than later, perhaps, judging by the strange looks my kids give me and the way they say, 'MoTHER!').

I think it might have something to do with all the Enid Blyton books I read about boarding schools when I was a kid, such as 'The Twins at St Clare's' and 'Upper Fourth at Malory Towers'. Life in our house wasn't short of chaos (think 'Eastenders' and double it), and I found all the stories about those daily routines like prep at 6 and breakfast at 8.30 and French with Mademoiselle at 10 really appealing.

Then, in my early 20s, I went into hospital to have my first child (yes, hospitals were invented then, although I seem to remember giving birth under the influence of ether and a bash on the head with a mallet). And I realised just how much I loved being in hospital. I'd dilly-dally for ages over the menus, thrilled to be asked to plan what I wanted for the next day's breakfast, lunch and tea. I revelled in the routines of lights out, the tea trolley, the medicine round and the doctors' visits. And I remember being so disappointed after my week there to be sent home. Now THAT'S how you can tell how long ago this was - a whole week in hospital for a first baby! These days they hope that mums give birth in the taxi on the way there so that they can just cut the cord, then turn the taxi round and send them home again. Anyway, I sobbed and sobbed when I got home, much to the disappointment of my poor husband who had cooked me roast pork and apple sauce and thought I'd be pleased to see him. All I really wanted, though, was a bowl of cold custard and a nurse asking to check my blood pressure.

I've been to see my Gran in hospital today. As nurses shuffled backwards and forwards through the ward, and as the ladies with the tea rattled past, it was all I could do not to rip off my clothes, demand to be given one of those gowns which don't tie up at the back, and shout, 'Admit me! Admit me! Then bring me the menu!' before leaping into a spare bed and pulling the covers up around my neck.

All this institution-love is probably what makes me the kind of teacher who wants all the kids sitting bolt upright, having underlined their title twice with a ruler, and reciting names of descriptive techniques in a monotone. It's not exactly Malory Towers, but I'm doing my best to live the dream.

Fran was trying her best to read quietly, but the lady under the blankets whose bed it was
was being really annoying and wouldn't keep the noise down.

Reasons why I may take the long route to work tomorrow

2011-10-11T14:37:00.000-07:00

So, I was walking to school, trogging along the path in my frumpy middle-aged way, loaded down with a rucksack full of marking, planning and a ~~Very Big Packed Lunch~~ sheaf of report-writing, and feeling as supple and flexible as a recent corpse. What's more, it was windy, and that all added to my struggle.

And, as I lolloped down the path, who should I see ahead of me, actually ON my path and blocking my way?

Well, imagine two of these.....

.... wearing some of this ....

... only in pink ...

and you'll have an accurate picture of the two size-0 women, hermetically sealed in Lycra, who were doing early morning exercises in the park, bending and stretching themselves into such impossible positions that I actually wondered if they were melting.

Well, I thought, as I approached them. Any minute now they, as youthful and fit and flexible as they are and I aren't, will move aside and let me pass so that I don't have to change course and struggle up onto the grass verge just to get past them.

But no. They carried on doing their impressions of elastic bands while I walked past, huffing and puffing under the weight of my ~~sandwiches~~ marking, and trying not to think, as I passed them, that juxtaposition of this kind did me no favours at all when I am walking to work and needing to Feel Good in order to face the day ahead. Is this, I thought, how hippos feel when walking past the flamingo enclosure?

I got into school and it all became so much worse. A caretaker said to me as I walked down the corridor, 'Still windy out there, then?' 'Yes, yes,' I said, conversationally, thinking how nice it was to chat to someone about the weather. Then I passed a mirror and saw the state of my hair.

All this, before 8am. Is it a cruel world, or is it a cruel world?

Evidence that Fran can actually go quiet

2011-10-04T12:56:00.000-07:00

This is me.

Sorry for my silence. I will re-emerge at some point. That point is probably called 'half-term holiday'.

Just for now, here's a question for you. Wouldn't it be funny if someone ACTUALLY fell asleep while in the middle of asking her readers a ques .............

Evidence that I can actually appreciate Nature, even if for all the wrong reasons

2011-09-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

I get really excited when Autumn starts.

Is this because I am a lover of nature? Is it because I find that observing creation enriches my inner soul? Is it because I see, in the flaming red and orange trees, beauty which inspires my heart to leap with joy?

Regular readers will know that the answer to all these questions is: by 'eck as like. (This roughly translates as 'Are you joking, because Fran is to love of nature what a vegetarian is to love of steak tartare, a rack of ribs and garlic prawns on the side')

No. The reason I get really excited is that, when next door's tree is in full autumn colour, it matches my duvet cover.

Here is a picture of the type of tree in next door's garden:

By 'type of tree', Fran meant 'orangey red'. She hoped no one in the know
would write and tell her that these species of trees don't exist in Britain.

And here is a picture of some bedding which is very like mine.

Our bedroom is at the back of the house, overlooking next door's garden. And there is a certain point in the year, about the end of October, when I can look into next door's garden .....

and then to our bed ....

and back again, and I feel a real sense of completeness, not to mention pride in having moved to a house where next door's foliage matches my soft furnishings.

Put it this way, if you saw the rest of my house, you would realise that, without little accidents of destiny such as that described above, it would look as coordinated as the coalition government.

Reasons why plucking up courage isn't always easy

2011-09-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight I am doing some stuff at a gig in my local town. I need confidence. I need courage. I need bravery.

What I don't need, is for this to be the day I find out that some of my eyebrow hairs are beginning to grow in different directions. Whereas they always used to lie fairly happily against the rest of the eyebrow as if they knew they belonged, some are now making a bid for freedom and sticking out North, East, South and West, as though looking to go backpacking.

I found this out when I looked at my profile in the mirror. There are at least five hairs in each eyebrow which are at right angles to my face.

I am going on a Google search, to see if I can find an illustration to show you what I mean. What are the odds that I'll find no pictures of any other women in the world with this problem - just pictures of blokes - just to ram the message home that I am a Bizarre Unfortunate.

See. First picture that comes up - a man.

Granted, this does make me feel a little bit better about myself, but big trees begin with little acorns, and this could be my future.

Here's a woman with fairly hairy eyebrows (which are apparently in fashion, so I've been seeing on Google, so maybe all is not lost). However, she has other advantages which seem to balance things out nicely. I have none of these.

She has to be careful though. Any more plumping injections on those lips and one day they will meet the eyebrows. She will get fewer phone calls from modelling agencies.

Alistair Darling, shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, has a slightly different problem.

I really want to see what colour his beard is when it comes through.

Will I, like this man below, have to eventually rest my heavy eyebrows on the frames of my glasses to support them?...

I know you'll tell me just to pluck them out, but I'm worried that if I do so they'll just grow back, thicker, stronger and longer, like some kind of zombie attacker that thrives on being cut in half.

Not that I'm feeling negative about this, or anything. Tonight, I think I'll wear a woollen cap which I can pull down right over my forehead, just in case anyone notices, and spends the whole evening wondering why my eyebrow hairs are so desperate to get away from me. Hopefully, the audience won't be feeling the same way.

Reasons why I walk as near to the inside of the path as possible on my way to work

2011-09-18T00:18:00.000-07:00

I'm going to rant. I don't rant often, not properly. But some things have to be said. If you are anti-ranting, look away now.

On my walk to school each morning, I go down a country road for 10 minutes. And I've begun to play a little game called 'What are the drivers doing?' I look into each car which passes me and observe the drivers. This game is subtitled, 'Being So Needful of Distraction from the Fact That One's Legs are Moving That One Has to Nose Into Other People's Lives for Entertainment'.

I'm not going to call them 'drivers' any more, though. I'm going to call them 'those at the wheel'. Because MOST of them are not just driving. They are doing other things while their car is moving, often erratically, along the road. Here is a list of the Other Things they are doing.

Other Thing Number 1: Texting

On average, about 1 in 5 of the those-at-the-wheels, are texting. Texting? You mean, texting which involves looking at your phone instead of out of your windscreen? Yes, that kind of texting. You mean, texting which is basically the equivalent of reading as you drive? Yes, that kind of texting. You mean texting which means you only have one hand on the wheel while you are reading and pressing buttons? Yes, that kind of texting. Fran, why are you asking this mighty list of questions and then answering them yourself? Is it because you find it hard to believe that people do this with a clear conscience? Bang on!

Other Thing Number 2: Reading texts

Some people are not actively texting, but are reading texts. Who knows? They may just have texted, or be about to text, but when I see them, they're just reading one. I will not inflict on you another high-octane list of questions and answers, but I feel just as incredulous about this. If you asked most of those people whether they would catch up on a chapter of Sense and Sensibility while driving the kids to school or going to work, they would think that was ridiculous. So .........

Other Thing Number 3: Applying make-up

I used to see people doing this at traffic lights, and, fair enough, if you're stationary, I guess. But why wait until I've stopped, these ladies must be thinking. Why not just get on with it while on the move, one hand on the wheel, the other wielding a mascara stick or lipstick? But I just don't see the logic. 'Hm, what shall I do? Get up a minute earlier and apply the make-up at home while I'm sitting still and doing it properly, or apply it in the car while moving along, leaning to one side towards the driver's mirror, not quite able to see, and at risk of ramming a mascara stick into my eyeball as well as mowing down a middle-aged teacher on her innocent way to school? I know. I'll do it in the car.'

Other Thing Number 4: Drinking coffee

I've never had scalding hot liquid spill into my lap unexpectedly, but I can't imagine it's one of those moments you'd file under 'Nostalgic, Happy Memories' in your mind, like your Sunday visits to Grandma, or the time you kissed your lover at the top of the Eiffel Tower. But I see those-at-the-wheels risking it daily, and I don't just mean drinking out of cups with lids and those little holes. And, anyway, whose idea was it to make out that the little-hole lids were safe? They stop you from blowing on your coffee to cool it, and you get maximum burn when the liquid slops through and applies lava to your bottom lip. So, either way, lid or no lid, there's a possibility that being scalded on sensitive parts of your body will mean you lose control of the wheel and find yourself welded to a tree trunk (or an innocent middle-aged teacher walking to work).

I will cease my ranting and leave you with this. Judging on my road alone, there are SO many people desperate to go and meet Jesus.

Evidence that pork is a surprisingly apt subject for a sonnet

2011-09-17T00:49:00.000-07:00

Did you hear about the Tesco sausage advert that got banned? I wondered how all the piggy actors felt, having what might have been their only chance at fame dashed to pieces. And I wrote a poem about it for Poetry 24.

Perhaps the only sonnet written about sausage

Percy Pig was devastated. He'd already got his costume ready for the BAFTA award ceremony.

Evidence that empty crisp packets can be the inspiration for blog posts of true literary merit

2011-09-09T14:00:00.000-07:00

Well, THAT was a bit of a change of pace from the lyings-in and the book-reading of the summer holidays! Back to school with a vengeance. Imagine trying to race in the 100 metres against Usain Bolt when you were only used to being a member of the Weekend Country Half-Hearted Are-We-Nearly-There-Yet Ramblers' Association, and you'll get the picture.

So, here I am, sitting in front of my desk at home, wondering what I can do that's purposeful, and I'm thinking, 'I know! Why don't I tell my readers what's on my desk?! That'll make them put their Val McDermid thriller down just so they can find out! What jolly spiffing ideas I have!'

'What? Fran's writing about what's on her desk?! Suddenly, I have lost ALL desire
to find out who dunnit.'

What's On My Desk

1. An empty Walkers Cheese and Onion crisps packet which is annoying the hell out of me. Oh, the crisps tasted okay, but then I had just got in from school and would have gladly chewed on a mildewed cardboard box, so that's not saying much. This is what it says on the front of the packet:

Cheese and Onion
  Flavour Potato Crisps

Let me translate this for you:

  We want you to think these crisps
have real cheese and onion in them
  but really they've been as near to cheese and onion as David Cameron's been to a Lidl store

Then there's a load of guff on the back telling you that, 'Having grown up in a 10-acre field by the Dog 'n' Duck, the spuds chosen for this bag will go to the ends of the earth  [I think I am going to be sick - who writes this stuff?] to make sure they get into a bag of Walkers Cheese and Onion Flavour Crisps. This mouth-watering combo is so popular that these spuds know the nation's favourite is the only flavour for them.'

Darling, what's that you're reading?
Oh, hello, Mummy Potato. I'm just reading the careers booklet I got from school.
Oh yes? And what does it advise?
Well, you know you wanted me to be a doctor or a professor?
Yes dear.
I think I'd rather be sliced thinly, fried, covered in pretend flavours, and sold for an astronomical price to a member of the unwitting public. Would you and Daddy mind?
We hoped for much more, dear. You know how upset we were that your brother wanted to be a crinkle-cut chip and had no more ambition than that.
And you didn't like my big sister leaving home to become powdered instant mash either, did you, Mummy?
Could you not at least apply to be a nice middle-class Kettle Chip or part of a pile of what they call crushed potato in posh restaurants? We all know they mean 'not properly mashed', but it's very fashionable, dear.
Okay, Mummy, maybe you're right. Or I might even go back to the idea of being someone who broadcasts what's happening during a football match.
Ugh! You mean, be a common tater? No way!

2. Oh dear. I have written so much claptrap about Number 1 that now I've got to Number 2, I feel I can't impose much more on you, kind reader to stay even this long. Should I be worried that I can write quite that much about a piece of litter? Be grateful, my friends, that I am going to spare you the story of the empty mug, revolving pencil and National Trust calendar ...

Time for bed. Teaching is hard work, especially on Fridays when the sun is shining and the kids really would rather be eating their own ear wax than sitting in your class. I saw an advert in the Times Educational Supplement's job pages today for a 'Teacher of Resistant Materials'. Ha ha ha ha! That's me!

Should you not have taken your medication today and want to read another post about a crisp packet, there's one here. I should not be able to show my face in public, really, having written two posts about crisp packets.

A picture for fishducky

Evidence that not all my blog posts are tightly-structured, seamlessly-coherent pieces of startlingly good prose

2011-09-04T13:31:00.000-07:00

I go back to school tomorrow after a six week break. I feel rested, refreshed, even inspired. I am going to say those words again. Rested. Refreshed. Inspired. Remember those words, peoples. You won't hear them again from my lips until this time next year.

This is also the point at which I may disappear in dramatic fashion off the blogotwitosphere, failing to follow anyone's blogs in any respectful way, tweeting only every thirteen-and-a-half days, and struggling to post coherent blog posts (whaddya mean, what's new?).

Before I go, I want to ask some questions of no one in particular.

1. Who are 'Gothise' and why is half my blog traffic coming from them? Why are they so damned interested in a post about a giraffe and another one about stretched earlobes? If I write one about a giraffe with stretched earlobes, will the blog stats go bananas?

'You come anywhere near me with those earlobe-stretchers and your head will be in between my
giant gnashers in no time at all, sunshine.'

2. Why does moving furniture into different places in my house make me feel clean inside? Am I looking to the wrong sources for inner peace?

'Darling, the tables look so much better in that corner. But something tells me we shouldn't
have dragged them along the floor quite so roughly.'

3. Someone told me today that there are species of spider called 'red-kneed spider' and 'yellow-kneed spider'. How does one live without fear once one knows that there are spiders with KNEES sharing the same planet as oneself?

They preferred to look cool, but having read Fran's blog, there was no way they were
going out there without checking for spiders with knees first.

4. Why do men always sit ON cushions rather than tuck them behind their backs? Do they think women are so BORED that all they want to do all day is plump up the cushions they've massacred?

Fran thought she'd see how he managed trying to sit on THIS type of cushion......

5. Why, when I am meant to be thinking of amazing things to do with my new classes and designing my seating plans, am I writing a senseless, trivial blog post?

Add caption

Have a good week, everyone. I'm off to bed to get some beauty sleep. Okay, then - just some sleep.

Evidence that one's kitchen contents can have vicious, revengeful personalities

2011-09-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

We're smashing, we are, in our house. In fact, we're always smashing. We've been smashing for years now.

Here's a picture to show you in what way we are smashing......

This picture may as well have been taken in our kitchen and entitled, 'Fran's kitchen floor after a washing-up session'.

Our neighbours probably think we lob china at each other every night after dinner as an alternative to watching Eastenders (and that would be perfectly understandable) but we don't. We just Drop Stuff Very Easily. And our kitchen floor is tiled with those freezing cold ceramic tiles that give the soles of your feet haemorrhoids. So, nothing bounces when you drop it.

Except that .....

.... no matter how many of our favourite plates, cups, glasses, bowls, saucers, casserole dishes, cafetieres, blah blah blah blahs we smash, there are some items in our kitchen that just refuse to die.

Let me introduce you to Vile Glass Bowl, who lives with us (I like to think of it as temporary foster care) along with her five matching Glass Bowl sisters. They are a very close-knit family who are obviously desperate to stay together, and were given to us as a present by a well-meaning person who could come round At Any Time. Ah. You see our dilemma.

(Not the actual item, but very, very like it. Unfortunately for it.)

So, you're introduced. Say hello to Vile Glass Bowl. But don't hold your breath. She doesn't listen. I think she's deaf, like all of her sisters. I come to this conclusion because, when I'm washing any of the VGBs up, and shouting, 'DIE, YOU VILE GLASS BOWL, DIE!' they completely ignore me and live on, as smug as a .... as smug as a .... as smug as a ..... as smug as a naughty little simile that's playing hide and seek with my brain.

Smashing the VGBs to smithereens on purpose seems immoral. It needs to be gradual so that we can say with a clear conscience to our friend, Mr Generous-but-Tasteless, in a couple of years' time, 'Oh, what are we LIKE?! We've accidentally broken every one of those GORGEOUS bowls you gave us. You KNOW you shouldn't have trusted us with anything breakable!'

And we can't just send them to the local charity shop. Mr G-but-T is bound to pop in and see them. I suspect he may be a regular in the charity shops. In fact, I strongly suspect that the VGBs themselves may have originated from such a shop ...

So, we continue to use them in the hope that regular use makes it much more likely that they will have early deaths. After all, we smash everything else in the kitchen really easily. Not a week passes when we're not holding a funeral service for a well-loved dish or mug, singing a hymn ('Oh God Our Help in Ages Past, Please Will You Help our China Last') as we sweep it up with the pan and brush.

But it seems the VGBs are indestructible. Here's a bit of typical Fran's-house dialogue of an evening ...

[From the kitchen.] CRASH!

Husband: Oh, flipping heck.

Fran [races into kitchen, excitedly]: Is it one of the Viles?

Husband: No, sorry. Your new mug with the Scrabble design on it.

Fran [distraught]: I only bought that last week! It was £12.99!

Husband: Sorry.

Fran: Have you washed up the Viles yet?

Husband: Yep, all six. There they are, stacked on the draining board.

Fran: Did you squirt loads of washing up liquid on them, like I told you?

Husband: Did that.

Fran: Did you accidentally-on-purpose hover them over the floor before stacking them to dry, like I told you?

Husband: Yep.

Fran: Did you pray, 'Dear God, I will be good for the next year

if you just let these VGBs die young?' like I told you?

Husband: Yep.

Fran: [big sigh] Oh well, maybe tomorrow. I can't wait for the

day when we're using plates again rather than dividing our

dinners into pie, peas and potatoes just to use up all the VGBs.

Husband: Me too. Do you want to go and get the hymn book so we can

start the service for Scrabble Mug?

Fran: Yes. But this time, let's sing, 'Morning Has Broken, But Unfortunately, Not the VGBs'

Husband: Or, what about, 'Rock of Ages'? Ha ha! Geddit? Rock of ..

Fran: [gives Husband 'The Look']

Husband: Ahem. Okay. Let's go with Morning Has Broken ...

Reasons why taggers will be looking a bit more carefully in future

2011-08-30T00:29:00.000-07:00

Did you see the news story about the guy who was electronically tagged as a punishment but managed to dupe the men who tagged him into fixing it onto his prosthetic leg? When they'd gone, he just unscrewed the leg and went out.

I wrote a poem about it on Poetry 24. I love the Poetry 24 website, because it provides angles on the news you wouldn't necessarily think about, and also it gives lazy, good-for-nothing poets like me an impetus to get writing. Can we get Poetry 24 up to 100 followers? I think it's on 95 and I reckon round numbers are so much more satisfying.

Here's the link to the website and the poem - http://poetry-24.blogspot.com/2011/08/night-out.html

Rob got home from the pub to find that his mum had sold his prosthetic on e-bay to an unusual customer.

Reasons for and against adopting Dracula's nocturnal lifestyle

2011-08-28T05:14:00.000-07:00

I'm just doing a re-read of Dracula ready for going back to school next week (sob ..) and, I have to say, I find his 'sleep in the daytime, stay awake at night' lifestyle intriguing.

(And, another thing, I'm loving the absence of mirrors - I mean, I like this man's thinking!)

Anyhow, I've been considering whether to adopt his nocturnal habit, and it's meant going through some of the pros and cons.

1. I wouldn't be able to shop for clothes in Britain because the High Streets would be closed, so I could phone fashionable stores in Japan or China to see if they had the jeans I'd just seen online.....

BUT I'd have to be prepared either to lose half my body weight or wear the jeans only on my feet and have the rest flapping along behind me.

2. I would have to give up teaching as a career ('Hi, I've rung about the English teacher post ... oh, you mean, it's in the daytime?.... it never said on the ad ..... oh well, never MIND! *leaps up in air and throws National Curriculum guidelines to the skies*).....

BUT the problem with this is, I quite like the bits of my job that aren't marking by numbers or having no time to eat lunch. I especially love the bit where I get to read books and make other people sit and listen while I tell them why they should love them too. Okay, it's not good for the self-esteem when they insist on listening with their heads on the desks and their arms flopping listlessly at their sides, but ... I'm doing it right, aren't I? Yes? No?

3. I could keep my pyjamas on all the time because in the daytime I'd be asleep and in bed and in the night time everyone else would be in bed and wouldn't see me......

BUT there's something about wearing an elasticated waist band 24/7 that would mark me out as a certain type of person and as there are already rumours, this would seem a step in the wrong direction.

4. There would be no need to dust or hoover, because I would never see the dirt in the house.....

BUT dying by asphyxiation just because you have allowed the layers of dust to become taller than you seems a nasty way to go. And leaving a codicil in your will to say 'Please hoover my corpse before burial' would be tough on any grieving relative.

All things considered, maybe I'll just leave things the way they are. It's good, though, to consider other people's lifestyle choices once in a while.

I'm jealous of his red lips, though. If only mine were red like that and not the pathetic pink of a pork chop gone off.

I googled 'Dracula' and found a picture of this fish which is called a 'dracula fish'. I mean, that even beats the BECKHAMS for giving their offspring names which are obviously going to blight their prospects.

Mother, if only it weren't for my name, I know I'd be a hit with the lady fish!

Evidence that parents can sometimes bring in the monster threats a little too early

2011-08-24T04:26:00.000-07:00

A short play based on real events.

Setting: Shoe shop, Warwickshire.

Time: Daytime, 10am.

Cast:
Mother of lively 3 year old.
3 year old.
Two shop assistants (non-speaking parts)
Drop-dead gorgeous, deliciously-curvy 49 year old blogger looking at shoes on sale rack (non-speaking part)

Scene 1

3 year old: Wanna go outside. [Runs outside.]
Mother: No, don't go outside. I've told you to stay in here with me. Come BACK.
3 year old: [comes back] Wanna go outSIDE.
Mother: I said, stay in here.
3 year old: Wanna go outSIDE. [Runs outside.]
Mother: I said, come here. Anyway, there's a MONSTER out there.
3 year old: [comes back in] No, there isn't.
Mother: Yes, there is, and he'll eat you up. Now stay here.

Scene 2 (30 seconds later)

3 year old: [runs off upstairs to another part of shop]
Mother: Come back HERE.
3 year old: [shouts] Wanna stay up stairs.
Mother: I said, come BACK. Anyway, there's a monster up there, too.
3 year old: No, there isn't.
Mother: Yes, there is. Do you want to be eaten? Come down HERE.
3 year old: [comes back down]

Scene 3 (30 seconds later)

3 year old: Wanna go down those stairs.
Mother: No, I told you. Stay with ME. Anyway ...
3 year old: Is there a monster there?
Mother: Yes, there's a monster there. And he'll gobble you up if you run around. Into little pieces. And the little pieces will be all over the shop floor. And the shop ladies won't like it. Now stay here with me.
3 year old: [stands still by mother]

End of play.

Now, I'm sure you'll have realised from the description of the character that I was the lady looking at the shoes in this episode. And I have some questions for the mother.

1. When your 3 year old wakes up in the night and can't sleep, claiming, 'There's a monster in my wardrobe and it's going to eat me,' what are you going to say? You have already introduced the proposition: 'Monsters are common in Warwickshire'. Ah, awkward. Whatever you decide, it had better be good. Otherwise, I hope you have a good supply of under-eye concealer in your make-up bag.

2. Wasn't your intervention a bit drastic? I mean, what happened to good old-fashioned, 'Don't run around the shoe shop or the manager will be cross with you'? Couldn't you have started off slowly with, 'Don't run around or you won't be watching TV when we get home?' Keep something back. Otherwise, what will you do in 10 years' time when the headmaster rings and says, 'I'm afraid your child has just driven a stolen JCB truck through the gymnasium while off her head on crack?'

3. If, say, an eight-foot tall, two-headed monster HAD appeared at that point at the door of the shoe shop, breathing fire and slashing at the shoe displays with long spear-like talons, were you prepared for what you were going to have to do then? You would have to look very UNsurprised and say, 'See? I told you there was a monster. NOW will you behave? Yes, I'll take those sandals, please. How much is that?'

After what Mummy had said, little Angelina eyed a pair of children's trainers
on the sale rack with some suspicion

Evidence that I am at war with Nature, news that will surprise no one

2011-08-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

I am having big trouble with insects.

1. Insects in my drinks

Sunday. In the garden with husband and friends. A wasp dive-bombs into my non-alcoholic lager shandy made with diet lemonade. Now, there's a wasp with an identity problem, or it hadn't worked very hard in its GCSE classes on 'Recognising Sugary Drinks'. I'm thinking: 'I'll just give it a few seconds, because as soon as it realises, it'll make its way out again, and I can have my drink back.' But, no. It stays in there, and we all watch as its little black and yellow butt waggles up and down while it slurps my drink with undignified enjoyment. It's all most entertaining, especially for everyone else who doesn't have wasps in their drinks. In the end I scoop it out with a teaspoon and lay it on the patio in a mini-puddle of shandy from which it struggles into position, then flies off damply in a completely straight line, unlike all its less dense compatriots who are weaving around, happily hammered, having sipped white wine and strong ale in other people's gardens. Fortunately, I still have most of my drink left, although it is now wasp-flavoured.

That's two of us, then, trying out a different kind of drink.

Monday: ditto. The wasp is back, now a fully paid-up member of the Temperance Movement and determined to experience more of the teetotal life. I bash it to bits with a copy of the Times Magazine.

Wilfred the Wasp said to his friend, 'Drunk again! You should go teetotal, like me.
I'm heading back to Fran's today for a bit more.' If only Wilfred had checked his horoscope.

2. Insects in my living room

There is, as I write, a bluebottle dead on the carpet. This one just came in and died conveniently on its own with no help from me, so I've left it there to honour its dignified passing. I honestly wish other insects would be as considerate. The other day, a wasp came in, and buzzed around Being Annoying for ages while I was trying to check Twitter on my laptop. I mean, do wasps have ANY concept of what it's like to be engaged in an important and life-affirming activity and the concentration needed?

This one didn't. It just kept buzzing. So in the end, I picked up Tolkein's Hobbit which was on the coffee table (the book, not the little man with hairy feet) and slammed it into the side of the wasp when it happened to land on the back of the sofa. It landed, dead and belly-up, on the sofa seat, so then I had to think about how to get rid of it. So I picked up the the Travel Section of the newspaper - appropriate as I had just transported a wasp to somewhere it had never visited before - and tried to manoeuvre it off the sofa and onto the newspaper. But the little beggar, despite being a corpse, wasn't having any of it, and instead I nudged it to the edge of the sofa cushion by accident, where it promptly fell down the side, where toast crumbs usually go. This meant either digging the wasp out and most likely dismembering it, which seemed a step too far, or leaving it there to naturally decompose over the months along with all the toast. I opted for the latter because in six months' time I reckon Dead Wasp Bits and Toast Crumbs will have become indistinguishable from each other - like Pete Burns and Donatella Versace - and can be cleared out with a stiff brush or the special tool on the vacuum cleaner.

Fortunately, Wellington the Wasp was beyond the point where, in six months' time,
he would feel the humiliation of being mistaken for toast crumbs.

3. Insects with an inbuilt boomerang

I'm in the kitchen this morning, doing the washing up, and I open the back door to the garden. In comes a fly. Sorry, fly, I say to it. You're as welcome in here as Simon Cowell's bellybutton fluff. Out you go. And I wave it away with a teatowel. It flies into the garden fairly casually as if to say, 'Didn't want to come in your stupid kitchen anyway, loser.'

I turn my back on it to put a bowl away. In it comes again. 'Hi,' it says. 'Trick or treat!'

This time I whack it so many times with the teatowel towards the door that I'd be surprised if it knew it was a fly any more I'd given it such a headache. Somehow it makes it into the garden. 'And don't come back!' I shout after it, only just realising that the neighbours are in their garden too and may think I am having a domestic conflict. I consider adding, 'With or withOUT the syphilis!' but think again.

The third time it comes back, I've had enough. It's either got an inbuilt boomerang or I swear it's been talking to some wasps. I select the hand towel this time, made of heavier, sturdier stuff than the teatowel, and when the fly lands on the wall, I attack it with force and venom. It's a somewhat wild and disproportionate response, like it would be if the whole of the British Army was called to deal with a minor argument in Grimsby High Street. Consequently, I also sweep a pile of saucepans from the draining board which crash to the floor. The fly is dead, but I'm not sure whether it was killed by the towel attack or because of burst eardrums and heart failure. Anyhow, now the neighbours think that not only is divorce on the cards, but I am throwing things around in the house like Rochester's first wife.

'Cause of death?' demanded the doctor, addressing the medical students crowded round him.
There were anxious glances.

All I know is, if any more come in, I'm can enter the Guinness Book of Records for 'Woman with Most Respectable Books and Periodicals Dotted with Bits of Fly/Wasp'.

Evidence that my enthusiastic attitude towards activity is as yet undiminished

2011-08-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

Four questions I posed while holidaying in the Lake District last week.

1. Why do people very keen on walking make it harder for themselves by going to a mountainous area to do so? Why not walk in East Anglia where it's on the flat? I don't get it.

'Look, I agree with Fran. I've got more blisters than a 36 pack of aspirin.
Next year it's East Anglia or you're on your own, sunshine.'

2. Is six pieces of Grasmere gingerbread in one day excessive consumption?

Fran agreed that making TWO pieces of gingerbread look like ONE was a great help with the guilt.

3. If you take a bus up to the top of a steep hill, is it duplicitous to pretend to wipe sweat off your brow when people walk past?

If only those walking past knew that she'd only just got off the 43 from Grasmere and that the rucksack was
crammed with gingerbread.

4. Does 'looking out of the holiday cottage's window at least once per chapter' constitute 'appreciating nature'?

Fran's husband had said, 'Are you coming out for a walk, dear?'
Phew! That line about the anorak and wellies not matching her chosen outfit was always a winner!

Evidence that I have a new career as reporter of royal news

2011-08-15T01:07:00.000-07:00

Just in case you hadn't heard the news about the Kate and William split , follow the link to have a look at my poem on the Poetry 24 website and get yourself in the loop.

New and world-shattering evidence which proves that Wordsworth wrote many of his poems while wearing a kimono

2011-08-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

'Hi. Can I have a ticket to see round William Wordsworth's house, please? We're staying nearby in Grasmere and I particularly came to the area so I could see his house and garden.'

'Yes, of course. That will be £7.50. That includes a guided tour around his house, Dove Cottage, entrance to the Wordsworth museum and also entrance to the Japanese Calligraphy exhibition we are running at the moment.'

'Japanese Calligraphy exhibition?'

'That's right.'

'As part of a Wordsworth tour?'

'Yes. It's running throughout the summer.'

'That's strange. I must have missed all the references to Wordsworth's deep interest in Japan when I read his poems and journals. And, silly me, I forgot that one of the overriding concerns of the Romantic poets was Japanese handwriting in all its forms. Now I think about it, it's obvious. When he wrote 'I wandered lonely as a cloud/that floats on high o'er vale and hill' he must have really wanted to write 'that floats on high o'er Japanese mountains' but found it didn't scan.'

'There's no need to be sarcastic. It's been a very popular exhibition.'

'That wouldn't be to do with the fact that a significant number of the tourists in the Lake District are Japanese, would it, indicated by the fact that many of the signs around here are written in both English and Japanese? You mean, you'd not noticed this? It has nothing to do with it? You're NOT just trying to make money out of Japanese tourists at the expense of authenticity?'

'No, really, we ...'

'Look, let's put it this way. Say you went to Japan, because you were fascinated with one of the country's writers. Say you went on a tour to look at the place where the writer lived and worked. Would you be saying, oh, when we get there, I DO hope there's a fish and chip shop, some Morris dancers, and a cream tea cafe?'

'Of course not.'

'Would YOU be saying, oh, what I REALLY want to see is an exhibition of Constable's paintings of rural England and then follow that up with a stage show in which someone performs songs based on the Eastenders theme tune?'

'I think you're being rather ...'

'Well, if it's alright with you, I'll give the Japanese calligraphy a miss. It might detract from my musings on 18th century English Romantic verse forms just a LITTLE.'

'When all at once I saw a crowd/a HOST of Japanese tourists heading for the Wordsworth
exhibition and feeling rather confused ....' Oh damn. That doesn't scan either.

Reasons why not to read 'The Slap'

2011-08-12T03:00:00.000-07:00

Am just logging in from a library in Ambleside, Cumbria, to say that I agree with the negative comments about 'The Slap' which followers left on the last post. Yes, it was an interesting story (eg what would happen if you slapped someone else's child?) But the characters are horrible and self-absorbed and immoral and you don't feel any sympathy for them. And it seems as though the author thinks every now and again, 'Aha, at least 3 pages without any steamy sex. I must put some in, and the cruder the better.' And as if he thinks, every now and again, 'Aha, at least 3 lines and no one has said the 'c' word. I must rectify this immediately.'

I apologise if you bought it on my early recommendation. Big time.

More about Cumbria soon .... the gingerbread ... the rain ... the gingerbread ... the rain ... the gingerbread ... the rain ...

Reasons why I am going quiet for a week. STOP CELEBRATING, YOU MEANO.

2011-08-05T11:41:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'm travelling oop North to the Lake District - more specifically, Grasmere - and I'm staying for a week. For those of you not British, the Lake District is a district of England. With lakes. Here's a bit of it.

Grasmere Lake.

Why are you going there, I hear those of you ask who know VERY WELL what a pagan I am when it comes to Nature, Nice Scenery and Putting One Foot in Front of the Other.

I'm going because, in Grasmere, there is ~~a shop selling gingerbread to die for~~ William Wordsworth's home, a place of deep literary value which I must visit. So I have persuaded The Husband that it is of the utmost importance that we stay in a holiday apartment ten minutes from ~~the gingerbread shop~~ Dove Cottage, William Wordsworth's home.

(Or should I say 'ex' home, as Willie-boy is of course very dead and therefore busy DEcomposing.)

The first thing I am going to do when we get there tomorrow is to find out what the opening hours of ~~the gingerbread shop~~ Dove Cottage are so that I can be there waiting, drooling with ~~saliva~~ literary zeal and poetic anticipation.

The inspiration for Wordsworth's famous poem which goes:
I wandered, hungry, through the vale,
Dead bored of daffodils and stuff.
I went and bought some gingerbread
Of which one piece is not enough.

The Husband and I are travelling up by train tomorrow. But I have started reading a book tonight which I think is going to make me Very Poor Company as a Fellow Passenger. It's called 'The Slap'. I bought it because I thought it was a book for Ladies of a Certain Age about cosmetics. As you know, I've had some struggles in this area recently. But it turns out it's a great story about a guy who slaps a friend's little boy at a barbecue causing RAMIFICATIONS. The book started off with some very naughty words which were a bit of a shock on the first page, but I have settled in to it very nicely and I think it's going to be a 'sorry-dear-I-AM-listening-REALLY-I-am' kind of book. Has anyone else read it?

Everyone says it's a book which 'divides' people, and I am hoping this is a metaphorical expression and doesn't mean that I am going to get up from my seat on the train and find that half of me falls to the right and half of me falls to the left. This would presumably up the stakes in terms of providing excitement for my husband's journey, but perhaps not the kind of excitement he's looking for, and certainly not BEFORE the holiday we've paid through the nose for.

I was reading the book in the garden while trying to brown the tops of my arms. A while ago, my arms got very brown from the middle of my upper arms downwards because I was at a school sports day wearing a short sleeved T-shirt and forgot my sun cream. It has been SO embarrassing, going around looking I'd randomly dipped my arms in gravy up to a certain point, above which they are as pasty as a nun's torso.

So today while reading the book I lathered all the already-tanned-thanks bits of my arms with suncream and then sat in the sun for two hours with my sleeves rolled up trying to even things out a bit. It has been partly successful. I'm still two-tone, but, hey, I'm going oop North where nobody knows me and anyway according to the weather forecast I'll be wearing my fleece, a scarf and a plastic mac.

Secretly, Fran was pleased that the bikini option wasn't needed. There was really no need
to go scaring fellow holidaymakers anyway.

I'll let you know what I think of 'The Slap'. Great name for a book and it's got a fabulous cover as you can see above. I'm pleased about this, because at least the Husband has got something interesting to look at while I ignore him for three hours on the train.

See you in a week or so, peoples. I am being taken to a sheepdog trials as part of the holiday - a veiled attempt by the Husband to teach me how to behave, I suspect.

Evidence that I am not always trivial and flippant (should you, of course, NEED such evidence ...)

2011-08-05T01:01:00.000-07:00

My short poem about the inconsistencies of our world, posted on the fabulous Poetry 24 'news-in-poetry' website today.

http://poetry-24.blogspot.com/2011/08/progress.html

Reasons for keeping a wet cloth with you at all times

2011-08-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, said someone in the Old Testament.

I looked this statement up in a newer translation of the Bible and it roughly translates as this:

'Serves you right, loser, for buying lip plumper lipgloss and thinking it would make you look like you had inside out lips worthy of any giant fish with an allergy issue when all it did was shine up your Thin Lips for everyone to see more clearly. Serves you right for thinking you could get away with keeping the lip gloss in your handbag without realising that unless you put the lid on really tightly it would leak its glutinous fluid so that every time you pulled it out of your bag in public, there would be a spare panty pad sticking to it. Serves you right for not realising that as well as displaying your spare panty pad to the world, it would also at various times stick itself to your a) mini sewing kit, b) packet of tissues and c) Cafe Nero loyalty card, making all your friends and family wonder why you couldn't just fetch these basic items out of your handbag yourself without needing a leaking lip gloss to help you. How about your fingers? Those ones God gave you for fine motor control tasks? Are they not sufficient?'

Fran the Fish realised that wearing lip plumper wasn't everything when she found that some of the side effects included having your eyes suddenly move to the sides of your head and then losing your teeth

It's been a generally very sticky day today, what with all of the above, and the fact that I made up a new recipe this morning that went very wrong.

A recipe that went very wrong

Ingredients and utensils needed

One cinnamon and raisin bagel
One third of a jar of Nutella chocolate spread
One spreading knife
One large cleaning cloth
Fourteen litres of soapy water

Method

Slice the bagel in half and toast it. Feel smug, because you are not going to butter it as well as put one third of a jar of Nutella chocolate spread on it,so technically it is a diet food. Forget, however, that chocolate melts on hot toast. Feel smug, because the bagel has a hole in it, so technically is a diet food. Forget that the hole in the middle of the bagel, though absent of calories, may cause you a problem when spreading one third of a jar of Nutella chocolate spread on the bagel. Spread the one third of a jar of Nutella onto the two halves of the hot bagel. Sandwich the two halves together. Pick up the bagel to eat it. When the nearly-one-third of a jar of Nutella chocolate spread lands on the floor, having dripped through the hole in the bagel, spend a long, long time applying the final two ingredients to the floor, your face and your clothes. Finish the bagel while leaning over the kitchen sink.

My experience with the chocolate this morning prompted me to go and search for that clip from 'The Vicar of Dibley' ... the incident with the chocolate fountain. Don't worry if you've never seen the show before. It won't spoil your appreciation ....

Follow the link below.

A woman who knows what her priorities are

Reasons why tomorrow I will be avoiding butterflies, washing up, Robert Carlyle and daytime TV

2011-08-01T13:32:00.000-07:00

I learned some lessons today. Here is some advice for you. Learn from my mistakes, peoples.

1. When you are sitting in the garden having your morning coffee in the sunshine, do not get complacent just because you are not alarmed by the sight of a bumble bee so big that it would substitute for a chicken on a Sunday and feed a family of four. Do not pride yourself on thinking, 'Some might be afraid of bees. Not me. I know they will do me no harm.' Why? Because the bee may not bother you, no, but you are soon going to look very stupid indeed during your 'I am not afraid of nature' moment as an innocent yellow butterfly suddenly flutters into your face and makes you squeal and spill hot coffee on your legs.

'I'll just sit on this leaf here while she's congratulating herself on her lack of bee-fear,
then I'll divebomb her face. Mwa ha ha.'

2. When you are sitting in front of your laptop after your morning coffee thinking, 'I'll just catch up on a film, perhaps,' think hard about whether you need to be a) cheered up or b) hurled into the murky depths of lost hope for the world. This is because watching a film in which the following things feature can only do the latter. a) A man cares for his wheelchair bound, cirrhosis-riddled friend. b) It is the man's fault his friend is wheelchair bound, and most probably his fault that he is cirrhosis-riddled too. c) The film is set in a poverty-stricken Scottish town. d) A swearword which rhymes with duck makes up 90 per cent of the script, and is only occasionally interspersed with normal conversation. e) Drunkenness and vomit are major plot points.

Robert Carlyle as the main character, thinking, 'What OTHER words ARE there in the English language? Oh yes, there's
also BASTARD!'

3. When you are watching a depressing film, and decide to wash up the breakfast things half-way through just to give yourself a break from thoughts of hopelessness, be careful when washing the delicate glass bowls. Subconsciously, you are probably now wishing you could just slit your wrists and get it all over with, and this is why you are doomed to hit the glass bowl against the tap, slice your finger in two places, and bleed all over the kitchen floor. You will also have to watch the rest of the film while clutching a piece of bloody kitchen roll in order to stop the bleeding, and this is not going to add much to your enjoyment of the film, though it will indeed add a hint of irony.

A very inoffensive picture, and the result of Fran finding that typing 'cut finger' into
Google Images wasn't something to repeat too often

4. When you have finished watching a depressing film, during which you have wounded yourself in a Freudian way, what you need is a nice cheese sandwich and a piece of fruit - something healthy and life-affirming. Eating last night's leftover rice pudding straight from the plastic bowl and following up with three Rocky Roads and a cup of tea is not the best option. You will add your 'oh-I'm-so-unhealthy' despair to 'what-a-horrid-world-this-is' despair as well as to your 'I'm-even-scared-of-butterflies' despair, and you will find that the three combined, encountered even before 2 in the afternoon, will plunge you into a Slough of Despond that John Bunyan would be proud of.

Fran flicked through the beachwear catalogue, realising too late that a diet of rice pudding
and Rocky Roads was going to make her beach holiday that year an uncomfortable experience,

5. After a morning like that, it really won't be a good idea to visit your gran and watch afternoon TV with her. This is because, on top of the three types of despair outlined above, you are about to add a fourth kind by watching programmes about rich people who a) can afford to buy antiques like Edwardian vases and medieval bedwarming pans ; b) can afford to move to a gigantic house in the country with a paddock for ninety thoroughbreds and a pine kitchen table the size of Australasia ; c) weren't rich before they went on quiz shows but are now suddenly very very wealthy indeed and are just about to go on ten cruises and buy all their relatives Cartier jewellery.

Fran found that watching 'Escape to the Country' actually made her want to escape more often
to the fridge. She would have to make another rice pudding.

How was your day? As good as mine?

Evidence that trying to economise on the number of characters in your literary work will always have consequences

2011-07-29T03:55:00.000-07:00

The Three Bears - a tragic tale of loss and regret in which a family of bears argue over porridge and muse on their boring lives. Baby Bear says, 'If only a blonde girl would come and steal our breakfast, break one of our chairs and test out our beds, that would at least liven things up.' Mummy Bear, who is narked because once again people are moaning about her cooking says, 'Well, that's not going to happen.' She's right. It doesn't. And they find themselves, the day after that and the day after that, arguing over porridge all over again and thinking how like depressing modernist literature their lives are.

Romeo - An Italian youth is infatuated with a girl called Rosaline. His friend says to him, 'Look, mate. You're obsessed. Come and gatecrash this party with me tonight and I promise you'll meet someone so stunning that you'll never think about Rosaline again.' So Romeo gives in and goes to the party where he spends the whole evening looking out for that certain someone ... 'Someone,' he sighs, 'with whom I could talk about pilgrims in sonnet form and maybe even stare at through a fishtank in the film version'. However, it is not to be, and he marries Rosaline and lives a dull life, void of people who pretend to be dead and interfering friars who can't get a letter to a person with any efficiency.

Of Mice - A family of Californian mice live fairly tedious lives until one says, one day, 'Wouldn't it be fun if a massive guy with special educational needs picked us up, put us in his pocket, and petted us as he walked along?' The others agree, and send one of the more alert mice to be on the lookout just in case such a guy should pass. He dies while on the lookout, however, because the other mice are too busy reading a book called, 'The Rodent's Life and How to Liven it Up'. The mice bury their friend with bowed heads, although one or two still sneak hopeful looks towards the dusty road to Salinas, just in case.

Progress - A vivid description of a number of locations including the City of Destruction, the Slough of Despond, the Valley of Humiliation, Doubting Castle and Celestial City, all of which sound extremely interesting. Into these locations wander minor characters such as Worldly Wiseman, a monster called Apollyon, a giant called Despair, a pilgrim called Talkative and an Evangelist, all looking for something to do or someone to talk to, and ending up disappointed. They wander off again. The title ends up ironic.

Cleo was well miffed. Someone had said that a hunky Roman guy was just about to turn up,
but there was no sign of him. How the hell was she going to fill up such a long play
with only milk baths and the odd accident with asps to entertain people?

A sonnet - an attempt to say something about the loss of an exceptional talent

2011-07-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

I'm not really one for celebrity tributes, and much of her downfall was obviously influenced by some unwise behaviour, but I still thought Amy Winehouse's talent outstanding. And it's sad not to see talent like that made the most of (spot the teacher's sentiment!)

So I wrote this sonnet today.

A sonnet

Her voice a gravel-honey mix. Her life

a mixture, too, of rough and then of sweet.

Her hair a tower, unsteady, needy, stiff

with lacquer. She, unsteady on her feet

and grabbing for support - a mike, a drink,

a backing singer, loyal to the hilt,

who sang into the gaps that she had left

to guard the reputation she had spilt.

Her eyes outlined in kohl, like her obit

will be outlined in black. The voice is gone.

Her silence - it says much she never said.

Her absence tells it all now, loud and long.

The stage is bare of her. The stumbling girl

with beehive hair sings no more in this world.

Evidence that arriving home is not always the pleasant experience you thought it would be

2011-07-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

Something unpleasant was on my doorstep when I got home from the shops today.

Before I tell you about it, here are some things I would like to have sitting on my doorstep when I arrive home from the shops.

1. A parcel from Amazon, containing books entitled 'Clooneyfy your Husband in Six Easy Steps' and 'Eating Flapjack Mixture Straight from the Pan Without Guilt'.

2. A package from Camelot with a note in it saying, 'Dear Fran, Even though you do not actually take part in the Lottery, we have decided to send you £61 million pounds in cash anyway as you are such a nice person. It is so much money we couldn't get it through the letterbox. Enjoy! (And with your new riches, we are sure that your fifty-fourth letter to George Clooney's agent will result in a meeting.)'

3. A representative from Penguin Books or Faber & Faber waiting for me to get home so that I could sign a contract for a three-book deal worth a six-figure sum. If said representative looked like George Clooney, all the more fun, but I'd take a pig-ugly one if not, as the book deal itself would be cool and one doesn't like to be greedy.

4. A free supply of Ben & Jerry's Rum and Raisin icecream and a DVD set entitled 'Every Film that's Ever Had George Clooney in It' to watch while I'm eating it with a ladle.

Fran really really wished they would stop putting pictures of fat cows on the tubs

Anyway, what was ACTUALLY on my doorstep waiting for me when I got home today was ...

A small plastic Elvis figure with one arm missing.

I think, bearing in mind what I'd LIKE to have left on my doorstep, this is what is called 'a let-down'.

I don't quite know how to interpret it. There is something very sinister about it, like the bizarre equivalent of having someone stick pins in a voodoo doll and leave it outside your front door. What does it mean? Have I offended someone?

I am tempted to google 'small plastic Elvis with one arm missing on doorstep' but am worried that it will direct me straight to a website called 'How to Tell When You Have Enemies' or 'Cheap Alternatives to Voodoo Curses.'

I have brought Elvis indoors. I thought it would be safer, because nothing would be more scary than to find that my new enemy had sneaked back in the night, taken off another arm, or his head even, and left him there for me to find tomorrow. It would smack of a progression in the hate campaign, and there's something about a torso on your doorstep, albeit a plastic one, that wouldn't be a great start to the day.

So for the moment Elvis is lying on top of a pile of gardening books which we have on a shelf in the hall.

And I bet I'm the first person ever to have written that sentence.

Reasons why you shouldn't believe what it says on the packet

2011-07-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

Regular readers will know I've always wanted Big Hair. Irregular readers can follow the link to find out more if they wish.

I've also always wanted Big Lips.

I have also always wanted a Small Body.

All of this makes me sound as though what I desire most in life is to be a Barbie doll. It's not far from the truth, but it's not going to happen. The days are long gone when I could apply for a job as Keira Knightly's double. I applied for a job as her quadruple not long ago and got to second interview, but even that would have meant me going on a cabbage and water diet.

I try to look at the positives of not being like Barbie. Number 1: Barbie dolls can't stuff three doughnuts and a bar of Dairy Milk a kilometre long and still look innocent - the look of sudden pregnancy gives them away. Number 2: Barbie dolls have to marry men called Ken. Number 3: Real people proportioned like Barbie dolls fall over easily and, although there is a good chance they will bounce back up because their breasts are like the air bags on a Volvo Estate, that's a lot of purple bruising to NOT go with your orange flowery-patterned bra.

Even though I don't have the Big Hair or the Small Body, I am still in pursuit of the Big Lips.

And I thought I'd found the answer......

I bought a new lip gloss product on Saturday called something like 'Plump Up Your Lips So That They Look As Though They are Inside Out' from the chemist. I was hoping it would make my mouth look a bit more substantial and less like the lips of a 93 year old who's just found a joke offensive.

I guess I could go and have lip plumping treatment instead. I don't know what lip plumping surgery is called - I get confused between that and liposuction which I thought meant hoovering up your mouth until I saw pictures on the TV and realised it meant someone hoovering your abdomen from the inside as though they were casually clearing industrial waste, only just narrowly missing the mouth, in fact.

This lip-enlarging gloss makes your lips tingle, which it says on the tube is how you know it's working. The first time I put some on, in a coffee shop next to the chemist where I bought the gloss, the tingling went on for so long, I thought I was going to end up like this, with two bouncy castles between my nose and chin.

Something about the hats just made it all look so, so much worse

I surreptitiously pulled out my handbag mirror to see if my lips were growing. Something had to happen to make it worth feeling as though my mouth was having its own earth tremors.

But I looked no different at all except that my 'didn't-enjoy-that-joke' lips were just a lot lot shinier, as though my non-enjoyment of the joke had given rise to a strange lip phenomenon in which my unamused lips produced a sticky serum, a bit like a squid releases ink automatically, only not blue. (Advice to beginner comedians: watch the lips of your audience. Should they begin to resemble the insides of the stomach lining after the consumption of a vat of syrup, get to the punchline more quickly.)

So all I was left with was lips which were only just recovering from a major natural disaster, and less money in my purse, as well as a coffee cup I couldn't get a-hold of with my mouth.

*Big Middle-Aged What-A-Loser-You-Are-For-Falling-For-It Sigh*

Oh well ..... I guess there are advantages to just staying as you are.

Bring something new into your relationships.
Buy our new lip gloss and give your partner a kiss like a jellyfish attack.

How to Keep Baby Clean - another not-a-Mommy-blogger post

2011-07-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

It is so long since my children were babies that Queen Victoria was still on the throne saying how amused she wasn't, and Charles Dickens was still deciding between the names 'Oliver Twist', 'Oliver Quickstep' and 'Oliver Macarana' for the protagonist of his new book.

Hm ... or ... maybe .... Oliver Salsa?

But just because I parented so long ago doesn't mean I can't pass on advice, and one of the things you modern mothers and fathers need help with most, I know, is How to Keep Baby Clean. I struggled with this tricky area of parenthood just as you do. So I hope you find my ideas helpful.

1. Finding out why there are so many different cycles on the modern washing machine

When I was a young parent and living in London, washing machines weren't even invented. We went down to the Thames with the family and scrubbed the baby's clothes clean on any piece of old driftwood floating at the edge of the water. Then we would hold Baby firmly under his arms and dip him in the river a few times, swishing him about a bit especially if his crevices were particularly stiff with ... residue. Bingo, job done! And we were lucky if we could afford even soap - I sometimes used to use the froth from the top of my drunken husband's tankard of ale to get up a lather, although he wasn't best pleased, and I can't say it helped marital harmony much.

But you, modern parents, have the best of technology at your disposal. Why else was the 'gentle wash' programme developed if not so that you can manoeuvre Baby gently into the machine, tucking his legs in to make sure he doesn't scrape them on the way in? Then just set the dial to 'gentle wash', leaving him to tumble happily in the suds until he's nice and shiny again. While he's on the spin cycle, you can play a fun game with Baby, waving at him every time his smiling face goes past the little window and shouting 'Peek-a-boo!' Babies love this kind of early interaction, and all the books say what a help it is to the development of the self-esteem.

People maintain, don't they, that technology has ruined our world. Well, all those gleaming little Babies soon puts paid to that notion, eh?!!

2. Finding the positives about your husband's drunkenness.

Another problem all parents have is how to clean Baby up after one of those spectacular 'I-bet-you-didn't-think-my-bowels-could-hold-quite-this-much!' incidents with which all babies love to treat their parents. It's disconcerting, isn't it, to find that the very day you dress Baby in the white or cream Babygro is the very day he chooses to send most of his insides to the outside. My, the TRIALS of being a parent! Sometimes one wonders whether it is worth FEEDing the little darlings if that's how they reward us! But that would be cruel.

Well, one solution I always found helpful was this, and again it was my dissolute staggering drinker of a husband who gave me the idea when he uncorked yet another bottle of porter one evening. He threw the cork across the room into a dark corner, whereupon inspiration struck, and I dived after it, wrestling it from the jaws of a rat who mistook it for its evening meal.

From then on, the days I had run out of the green and brown garments and therefore had to dress Baby in light colours were the days I used the cork to make sure there were no little accidents. Yes, it's true, Baby's distended belly wasn't that attractive, but I just dressed him in the next size up and that problem was soon sorted. And those were the days I laid him on his back, just so that he didn't get uncomfortable. One so hates to be accused of thoughtlessness.

These giant Babygros could be very handy on an especially bad day ....

3. Finding bad weather to be of assistance.

You'll probably have read about Victorian London. The smogs were terrible, but it meant I had an advantage over you modern parents, in that no one could actually SEE my babies when I put them on the doorstep in cardboard boxes just to get a bit of fresh air into their lungs. Yes, passers-by could perhaps hear their coughing (so SWEET, those little eh-heh eh-heh coughing sounds when they're only days old!) but because they couldn't actually see them, I could cut down on washing time with a clear conscience. Oh, the joys of a clear conscience!

For you, however, you will have to rely on other weather systems to help you out, and rain is one of God's greatest gifts to parents when it comes to saving time doing all that complicated bathing routine stuff. First, strip Baby of all his clothes and then get ready to let Nature wash him. Follow my simple chart for instructions:

Light drizzle - suitable for minimally-stained Babies only. Only limited effect, therefore you may need to leave Baby outside for longer. More time to read the newspaper, though!!!

Steady but not heavy rain - will shift most dirt, although accidents of the sort described earlier may prove stubborn. If Baby's diet the previous day has included lots of soup and spinach puree, you may get away with it.

Heavy rain - it is on these days that parents can feel more confident that, even if Baby has had a significant ... let's call it a 'burst of activity' ... the rain will sluice it all away and leave him sparkling. For VERY stubborn deposits, such as those collected in the backs of Baby's knees, dangling his legs over the edge of the curbstone and in the puddles collecting at the side of the road will prove very effective.

'Major-flood-risk' rain - Every parent's DREAM, eh?!! In fact, on these days, you won't even have to go to the trouble of opening the front door to put Baby outside, making the rest of the family suffer from the strength of the wind blowing down the hallway. Just suspend him out of any window on a secure rope and let him kick his little legs happily while Mother Nature does her sterling work, lashing his exposed body until he is as clean as a nun's favourite joke. Obviously, don't forget to bring him back in afterwards. The cold night air can be harmful to newborns.

'Darling, look at that storm brewing! How fortuitous, just after Baby's projectile diarrhoea incident!'

Evidence that just one typo when you're Goobling can make all the difference to a faily story

2011-07-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

I've been busy searching in Gooble Images again, but I keep doink typos. Never mind, I'll see if things improve while I tegg you this faily story.

Once upon a time, there were three little pigs. Here's a picture of them.

The three little pips had obviously been busy while Fran was searching Gooble Images for pictures of them, because by the time she got back, they'd asked a couple of pippy friends along and become five. Still, Fran was fine with that, even though having more than three characters in a short story isn't always advisable, although try telling that to any Russian writers.

The three-now-five little pips decided one day that they wanted to go and seek their fortunes. They said to Mummy Pip, 'Can you do us a packed lunch so we can go for a picnic?' They didn't tell her they weren't intending to come back. So, an hour later, they all set off with their lunches. Mummy Pip had given them each a sandwich, a chocolate biscuit and in one rucksack she had put a large lemon cake for them all to share. Here is a picture of the lemon she put in the cake.

As you can see, it was going to be an interesting picnic.

The three-now-five little pips wandered along for a while, talking about where they were going to live. One had a suggestion - that they build themselves a house made of twigs. 'What a good idea!' they all said, still full, as they were, of the optimism you have when you are just at the beginning of an adventure and not further on when everyone else starts to drive you bonkers and you want to kill them all. 'Let's gather some twigs,' said one, full of pippy zeal, so they did. Here is an example of two of the twigs they gathered and built their first house with.

It wasn't easy, building that house, despite the fact that all three-now-five pips were all keen Lego enthusiasts. There was just something about the building materials that proved tricky. Still, they made it in the end. 'Shall we have our picnic now?' said one pip, but the others said no, they'd wait until later, because Fran hadn't yet worked out how she was going to work the demon in to the story.

They had all gathered in the twin house when they heard a noise. 'That sounds like a wolf,' said one pip, who had got level 5 at school for all his speaking and listening assessments. Indeed, it was a wolf, standing outside their twin house, and saying, 'I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down.'

Here is a picture of the wolf.

'I KNEW there was something different about that voice,' said the Level 5 pip.

It was a tricky moment. There were several reasons for this. 1) The house was made of babies. 2) Standing outside was not a wild animal, but an Australian painter well known for his kindness to the animal kingdom. 3) There were still two more houses to make and a satisfactory resolution to reach.

What happened next? Indeed, says Fran. What?

What happened was that the Level 5 pip realised that he had misheard the voice and that it was actually a rolf saying, 'I've had enough of this long walk and I must sit down.' So the three-now-five pips came out of the house and sat down with rolf to have their picnic. If they'd been more interested in their house and less in their picnics, they would have noticed all the twins crawling off into the distance, leaving them homeless. But the picnic, which they shared happily with rolf, was taking all their attention.

Yes, it did have something to do with the demon cake.

One of the pips put the point of the knife into the demon cake, and out sprang the demon, spitting expletives here there and everywhere. It was humiliating enough for the demon to have been substituted for a lemon, but to have been mixed with sugar and butter and baked in a hot oven was, despite the fact that it was used to warm places, the last straw. What's more, it sprang out to see five pips and an Australian painter looking at it, an experience it couldn't claim to have had before. (And who can? Ed)

Luckily for the pips, and the Australian painter, the demon was far less interested in them than in the sight of a fair few fresh, pink baby buttocks wobbling off into the distance. It leapt after them with a terrifying yell, solving a big problem for Fran as to how the story should end.

Rolf and the three-now-five pips enjoyed the rest of the picnic, and then Fran realised she hadn't done a Gooble Images joke for absolutely ages. So she decided to cut the number of houses the pips were going to build from three down to two (the recession bites everywhere). 'We should build a house of more reliable materials next time,' said the eldest pip. 'What about bricks?' Everyone thought this was a good idea. Here is a picture of one of the bricks. (No, no. It's not what you think. It's not that kind of blog, peoples.)

'That's going to be a challenge,' said the rolf. And it was. In fact, it was more of a problem building a house of brocks than building a house made of twins, because so many of them had been shot for making cows get ill. Despite all the pips and the rolf scouring the countryside, they could only come up with fourteen. 'Still,' said the rolf. 'If you arrange them nicely, you'll get a smashing little black and white pattern going on the outside of your house.'

He was right. It did look stunning, the house of brocks. But night was drawing in, then, and the rolf had to go, leaving the three-now-five pips with a house constructed of annoyed woodland animals, and nothing left to eat, and not even a wolf in the story to introduce a note of tension. 'I mean,' said one of the pips, who had a good grasp of Literature. 'If you're going to be put in a story, you ought to be able to rely on a few twists and turns in the plot, or it's hardly worth going off to seek your fortune.' All the others agreed and discussed the best plan of action. 'I know,' said one. 'Why don't we let all the brocks go, and just go home. Mummy Pip will never know what we'd planned, and she should have cooked a lovely tea by now. Didn't she say she was cooking us a flan?' 'You're right,' said another. 'Let's get going.' So they set all the brocks free to roam the local area, which was bad news for the cows in the surrounding fields, but good news for the brocks who preferred roaming the countryside to being positioned nose to tail as part of a striped residential development.

Mummy Pip was of course pleased to see them all and said that dinner was nearly ready. Soon, they were all sitting round the table, full of anticipation. Mummy Pip went to fetch the flan and manoeuvred it onto the table with some difficulty. It was quite a big flan - the Pip family had to sit back to make room for it on the table. Here is a picture of said flan.

'You mean, eat the author of our story?' said all the little pips. 'Yay! Why not! Let's punish her for putting us in such a rambling drivelling tale,' said all the pips, and they set to with gusto, getting their revenge on the writer in a way rarely available to protagonists.

Reasons why Serbians might be more careful which concerts they spend their money on in future

2011-06-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong. I actually think Amy Winehouse is fabulous. When she's not too wasted to sing.

My poem about Amy's visit to Serbia on Poetry 24

Evidence that a couple of replaced consonants can ruin the reputation of a fairy tale princess for good

2011-06-18T14:49:00.000-07:00

Snot Whine and the Seven Dwarfs

Once upon a time, in a land whose residents were often made uneasy because of rumours about a malicious consonant replacer, lived a family of three. There was the King, whose first wife, a smashing woman, had snuffed it, to the great delight of the Brothers Grimm who were looking for material for a new story.

There was the King's new wife, an evil stepmother type, who was yet more evidence that fairy tale kings always make rubbish second-wife choices.

And then there was the daughter from his first marriage, Snot Whine.

Snot Whine was a beautiful, nay, ravishing girl. But she had two problems. (Three, if you include her name.)

Number one: she suffered from perennial rhinitis and her nose constantly streamed. She made a god-awful racket in the mornings using one of those nasal inhalers, but it made no difference.

Number two: she never stopped moaning. She moaned so much, she could have entered a 'Make the Noise of the Wind Coming Down the Chimney-Breast' competition and swept the board.

(Number three: Her name.)

Snot Whine and her evil stepmother did not get on. This should not come as a surprise. The sentence 'Snot Whine and her evil stepmother loved each other dearly' was just never going to convince.

One of the reasons they didn't get on was that, despite the continual sniffing and the complaining about every single bloody little thing, Snot Whine was a cracker of a girl. And the evil stepmother, although beautiful in an evil-stepmother kind of way, was always paranoid that Snot Whine was better-looking.

She had a mirror into which she gazed day after day, saying to it, 'Mirror, mirror, mirror of mine. Who's better-looking? Me or Snot Whine?'

And every day the mirror would reply, 'You and Jordan are a dead ringer. Compared to you, Snot Whine's a minger.' Which made the evil stepmother very happy.

Until that fateful day when the mirror replied, 'Shame about the wrinkles, eh? Snot Whine is the winner today! You look mingin'. She looks fab. Get to the gym and lose that flab.'

It wasn't the best start to a day the evil stepmother had ever had.

She took swift action and called her guards. 'Guards,' she said, as they stood before her, trembling. 'This story has gone on long enough, and Fran reckons everyone will have stopped reading by now, because blog posts this long aren't a good idea. Take Snot Whine to the forest, lose her there, and leave her to die. Pronto.'

Later that day, and missing out a whole section to get her there more quickly, Snot Whine suddenly found herself in a little house with seven dwarfs who had just arrived home. This is the conversation which ensued.

Snot Whine: It's not fair. I never wanted to come here and live with seven dwarfs. It's not fair. Wet sniff.

Happy: Cheer up, love. A smile never did anyone any harm, my dear.

Snot Whine: Bog off, shorty. Wet sniff.

Doc: That's a nasty cold you've got there, young lady.

Snot Whine: I've had it for years. It's not fair.

Bashful: [still hiding behind his hands] I haven't had the courage to look at her yet, but she doesn't SOUND like the fairy tale princess in the Disney film. That one sang. If this one starts singing, I'm outta here.

Dopey: Eh? Woss going on? Woss going on?

Grumpy: Some snotty whiny female's arrived. She seems to have lost the plot. Hasn't she meant to have tidied up the place before we came whistling home from while we worked? Typical! Nothing ever goes right round here.

Snot Whine: Tell me about it. Wet sniff. It's not fair.

Sleepy: I don't care if she's made the bed or not. Yawn. I'm off for a nap.

Snot Whine: I'm not making anyone's bed. Who do you think I am?

Sneezy: Well, we thought you were this girl who was meant to turn up about now with a load of birds and butterflies flitting round her head, but there must have been a mistake with the agency. Anyway, now you're here, would you like to borrow my Nasonex?

Snot Whine: Give it 'ere, then. Might as well, s'pose.

It was not the most auspicious start to the relationship between Snot Whine and the Seven Dwarfs. But it wasn't going to be a long relationship anyway because the story dramatically sped up from there for reasons the narrator has already mentioned. The next day, the evil stepmother turned up disguised as a witch with a poisoned apple for Snot Whine and was met at the door by seven dwarfs who, having had the plan explained to them, fell over each other in the competition to put it in a crumble and feed it to Snot Whine.

Snot Whine had just died from the effects of the poisoning when the prince turned up (not expecting the story to have proceeded so rapidly, and therefore turning up too late). He would have gone away disappointed, except that the dwarfs invited him in for a glass of champers and they were only to pleased to comfort him that, yes, he may still be single, but anything was better than sleeping next to a mucus factory who could moan for England.

As the dwarfs carried Snot Whine's body off to the mines to chuck it down a mine shaft, Sneezy was particularly miffed. 'She never gave me back my Nasonex,' he said to the others. 'What a cow.'

The mirror was relieved that the evil stepmother no longer felt she had to compete with Snot Whine's beauty, although it had to admit, she seemed to have let things slip rather quickly as a result.

Evidence that you can write an elegiac piece of prose to commemorate the life of just about anything

2011-06-13T14:15:00.000-07:00

We are here today to mourn the sad loss of Humungous Box of Cling Film, who has been part of Fran's family for three years, and has been a valued member of the household. Her passing today is a sad moment. Let us take a minute to bow our heads.

BOW your heads, you hard-hearted swines, you.

Now for Humungous's Official Obituary

Humungous Box of Cling Film was born into Fran's household in 2008 at the occasion of her son's wedding. Humungous was purchased from a local supermarket and was a major feature of the said wedding, being used to wrap up 396 leftover baked potatoes which had proved not as successful a food item as had been anticipated. From that moment on, everyone knew that Humungous was not just your average box of cling film, but one that, even after wrapping 396 leftover baked potatoes, had still a long, long life ahead of her.

After the wedding, Humungous was brought home to reside in Fran's kitchen, where, for the past three years, she has occupied a special place leaning against a tray and a dustpan and brush. Every morning, Humungous has supplied a square of cling film for Fran to wrap her sandwiches in, and every day Fran has thought, 'How much longer can Humungous go on? Surely she is coming to the end of her days. She has lasted longer than every single one of the hamsters we have had, for a start.'

At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, it has to be said that, over time, Fran's attachment to Humungous began to diminish. For a start, every time she pulled Humungous out from under the work surface, the tray and the dustpan and brush clattered to the floor having lost their main source of support from Humungous's humungousness. Rebalancing a tray, a dustpan and brush and a box the length of the Wall of China was never easy for Fran when dawn had barely broken and she was still trying to hang on to a dream with Johnny Depp in it.

Also, Humungous could not be said to have been the most elegant of kitchen accessory, being the size of the Titanic (although, admittedly, proving more durable). Every time Fran hauled Humungous out and lay her on the kitchen surface, she was at risk of nudging the kettle and toaster over the edge to a certain death. Humungous had an edge to her personality, too, and over the three years, she has been the cause of the fact that Fran's sandwiches have contained peanut butter, cucumber and a few drops of fresh blood. Not a recipe you will see on Masterchef.

One day, though (today), Fran's husband sat down at dinner and said, 'I have some big news. Humungous is no more.' And Fran shed a tear into her pasta, while at the same time thinking (guiltily) how nice it would be to have a neat little box of cling film nestling in a drawer, rather than a monstrosity such as Humungous taking up more room in her kitchen than Nigella Lawson's chest would have done.

You are warmly invited to Humungous's burial which will take place tomorrow morning at the Recycling Bin. Hymns will be sung (starting with 'Cling of Clings') and prayers will be said for the soul of the dear departed.

Then Fran will be down at Tesco like a shot to buy Humungous's successor.

RIP Humungous. Whoops. There's no more to rip! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

No one had told Fran that the 300 meant 'years'

Why you shouldn't rely on your spellchecker OR act like a stuck up know-all

2011-06-08T11:04:00.000-07:00

I love this poem. I don't know who originally wrote it, but I've kept it for years. I've typed it out in big letters on a long piece of paper, and I roll up the paper into a scroll, then beat students around the head with it until they promise to check their spelling more carefully when they're typing up their work.

Eye have a spelling chequer,
It came with my Pea Sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss Steaks I can knot sea.

Eye strike the quays and type a whirred
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am write oar wrong
It tells me straight a weigh.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your shore real glad two no.
Its vary polished in its weigh.
My chequer tolled me sew.

A chequer is a bless thing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right all stiles of righting,
And aides me when eye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The chequer pours o'er every word
Two cheque sum spelling rule.

A little moral tale .....

When I was 9, I was the only person who could spell 'soliloquy' in my Junior School class. The teacher was so impressed with me, she kept getting me up the front to write it on the board and telling everyone else off because they hadn't been able to learn it. I was the same with 'accessory' and 'accommodation'.

But I was 34 before anyone would be friends with me.

Being able to spell isn't everything, folks.

Reasons why I might just start cutting my own hair

2011-06-04T03:27:00.000-07:00

Things you don't want your hairdresser to say. But she does anyway.

1. Yes, it is strange that all the cut hair just sticks to your skin like that every time you come. No, no, I don't know anyone else who has that problem. With everyone else, we can just give it a gentle whizz with the hairdryer and it comes off. Are you feeling particularly hot and sweaty?

Implication? You are a freak. A very sticky freak. You should market yourself as a fly-catcher to a delicatessen.

2. That's a nice tan you have there. How do I know? Because of the white bits I can see round the edge of your hairline.

Implication? You are a freak who will look even freakier when the wind blows your hair back off your face and everyone can see where your tanned look ends and your freaky look begins.

3. Ah yes, you're right. You DID need to come.

Implication? For the last few weeks, you - a sticky, white-bordered freak - have also been kidding yourself that your hair is just a little untidy. In fact, you've gone around looking like a woman who's wrapped her head in a badly-woven shag-pile rug. How have you lived with yourself?

4. Your kids say you should dye your hair to hide the grey? Well ... we open late on Thursdays if that's of any help.

Implication? Not only are you a sticky, white-bordered, shaggy freak, but you've enough grey in that head to make wigs for thirteen octogenarians and it's going to take a three-hour session to sort you out.

5. Yes, yes, your hair IS very fine. At least there's still quite a lot there!

Implication? Not only are you a sticky, white-bordered, shaggy freak with enough grey to make wigs for thirteen octogenarians, but I can see signs of early female balding patterns which I daren't tell you about. Put it this way, sunshine: It won't be long before you won't be needing my services, and you'll be spending all your money on scarves and hats. And I won't be sorry. There are reasons why I let you out via the back door.

That's right, my dear. Face away from the mirror. No point upsetting yourself ...

Evidence that even when way past puberty, one's face is not guaranteed to be pimple-free

2011-05-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

Had a great time tonight performing at 'Cafe Create', an arts cafe in Leamington Spa. I did this monologue about acne. I made it a monologue and not a poem because I couldn't find any rhymes for acne. Apart from Hackney. But apart from throwing in a random reference to North East London, I couldn't see how to fit that in. Give a poet a break, peoples.

About spots

Look, I'm sorry, but when I buy a product called ‘spot concealer’ the name gives me certain expectations. But it seems my understanding of the words 'spot' and 'concealer' are different from those of the manufacturers. Here we are again, where I often find myself, mired in the tricky and dangerous swamps of vocabulary. Let us flounder together in the mulch of meaning and examine these words.

Spot: I watched a play once in which a woman yelled, ‘Out, damned spot’. I’m not sure why – her skin looked fine to me – but she had a doctor and a nurse in attendance, so I guess her acne must have been pretty serious. They didn’t have Clearasil in those days, although they may have had Witch-hazel.

I've tried to out spots by damning them, too, but nothing happens. Perhaps what I'm doing wrong is trying to out them when they are already as out as it's possible to be, as in 3 or 4 centimetres out and shouting to the world, 'HEY, I'M AN UBER-SPOT – LOOK AT ME!’

Maybe, instead, I should be shouting 'get back in, get back in, damned spot'. This way, I may end up with craters rather than spots, but at least I could fill those in with some tile grouting or peanut butter or leftover hummus and then put lots of foundation on top.

I think that manufacturers of spot concealer do not aim their products at real life spots which are 3 or 4 centimetres out, but at titchy little baby spots. If what I got were titchy little baby spots, though, I wouldn't even be buying the product - I'd be spending my money on a frothy cappucino and sitting in Costa and feeling smug about people in the queue who have real acne.

The other thing that puzzles me is that 'spot' is such an innocent little word, hinting at a teeny-weeny problem that just a dib-dab of cream will sort out. Forget the name ‘spot-concealer’. Why don’t they just get real and sell WHOPPING GREAT WANNABE-BOIL concealer, or THROBBING VOLCANO OF A PURPLE ZIT concealer? But they don’t. So what am I supposed to do? Join a model agency that supplies women to medical journals?

Concealer: There's no other way to say this. It doesn’t. It is not spot concealer. It is spot revealer. The concealer speaks more loudly than the spot itself. The spot just says, 'This is a bit embarrassing, especially at 49, to have what looks like teenage acne, but, hey, no one's perfect.' The concealer says, 'HEY, EVERYONE, LOOK AT THIS OLD BIRD TRYING TO HIDE HER SPOTS!'

Why is concealer like this? I suggest several reasons. 1) It only comes in one colour. How does that work in a multi-cultural society? 2) For spots the size of mine, you don't dab it on, you apply it in careful layers, like Pompeii. 3) Concealer lasts three minutes and forty-two seconds precisely, and I don't know about you, but most of my social events last a little longer than this. What's the point of me being at a party if, every three minutes and forty-three seconds, I have to dash into the ladies with my hand over my chin, so that someone young and beautiful is bound to think 'ah, off to pluck chin hair', and re-apply the Pompeii effect? It's no lava matter.

It would be just as effective to go for the Blue Peter method, and to cover the spot by strapping the whole tube across my chin with double-sided sticky tape (Sellotape is also available). That would mean the words ‘spot concealer’ would be clearly visible on the tube, and the solution just as effective as the cream itself.

All I know is, I need an answer. I don’t want a repeat of what happened recently. [Cue violins.] It was a Saturday. I had a day in, and that evening, we were going out for a meal with friends. I had slapped a gargantuan blob of toothpaste onto a raging spot which is what I do when I'm indoors. I read this tip in Jackie magazine in 1973. It's a natural antiseptic and sometimes it calms the spot down.

You’re welcome to the tip. But remember: it is only an INDOOR solution. Before you go out for the evening, wash it off. It is not a good look, teamed with a sparkly top, black trousers, and high heels. Then you won’t have to do what I did, which was to stand under a street lamp outside Pizza Express being examined by my husband while I rubbed the toothpaste off with spit and a face wipe from my bag which had been there for three years and was as dry as stage fright.

This made the spot angrier and bigger and much, much redder, and, that night, everyone spotted that damned spot.

'I must remember to wash off this toothpaste before I go out ... I must remember to wash this toothpaste
off before I go out ... I must remember to wash this toothpaste off before I go out ... I must remember to ..................

Evidence that the wee small hours can transform a Mommy into a monster - another not-a-Mommy-blogger post

2011-05-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

It's a long, long time since I had to get up in the night to feed or change a baby. These days, I only get up in the night to check that I'm still alive before dropping back off.

But I still remember, even though it was so long ago, that the sweet and loving things one said about Baby in the daytime were often translated into something quite different at three o'clock in the morning ....

Daytime: 'Yes, he's got a healthy pair of lungs on him, that's for sure. Cute, eh?'

Nighttime: 'Darling, I can't stand Baby's noise any more. Please bang some nails into the nursery window, otherwise I am afraid I will fling open the sash and cast Baby out into the dark night.'

Daytime: 'Right, that's his lunch done. I'll just pop up and change his nappy just in case he gets nappy rash.'

Nighttime: 'Yes, I know his nappy's been on for seventeen hours now and weighs as much as a Tesco lorry. If you DARE wake him up just to change him, I'll personally offer you to next door's rabid Alsatian.'

Daytime: 'Ah, listen to those little snuffly noises he makes when he's asleep. Bless him!'

Nighttime: 'What do you mean, WHY have I put Baby in the shed for the night? Dur!'

Daytime: 'Funny, isn't it, the way he keeps coming on and off the breast like that, as though he can't decide. Silly boy!'

Nighttime: 'Right, that's your lot, sunshine. Any more faffing about and you can go back and suck on your cot mattress while I put my Ipod headphones in on full blast.'

Daytime: 'I'll leave his babygro off for a while so his toesies can air. How he LOVES to kick his chubby little legs around when his nappy's off.'

Nighttime: 'Yes, he IS rather drowsy and still, isn't he, darling, and being EVER so good while I change his nappy? That'll be because he GULPED down his Mogadon and Mashed Banana at teatime.'

Reasons why I should think about other ways of making money than having foreign students to stay again

2011-05-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

Been thinking about ways of making money and wondered whether to start taking in students again. We used to when we had a young family. For some reason, though, they always went back to Italy/Spain/France after their two weeks with us feeling a little shaky. The last Italian we hosted summed it up by saying: 'Italian families not like you English families. Not like you at all,' before edging out of the door and heading back for Rome without looking back.

One day, we'd cooked a large shepherd's pie which we wanted to put in the fridge to save for the next day's tea. So we put it in our bath to cool down, running some cold water for it to sit in to get it cooler more quickly. We often did this. The bathroom was right next to the kitchen, so it seemed like a handy little trick.

However, the Italian student came home from her day at college and said, 'Can I go in the bathroom to have a bath?' 'Yes, yes, of course,' we said, fetching her a towel. Only, when she'd got in there, there was a pause, and then she reappeared. 'I have the problem,' she said, politely. 'I think the dinner is having the bath first. Would you lika me wait?'

They obviously don't cool their bolognese like that in Italy.

Then there was the time my husband decided he would take a nap in the middle of the day. No one else was in the house, and the other beds were all covered with everyone's stuff or not made, so he decided he would lie down on the student's bed. Only, on the student's wall was a clock, and my husband can't stand ticking clocks. So he took the clock down, looked around for somewhere to put it to muffle the sound, and decided to slide it into a pile of ironed clothes which I had put on the student's chair. Then he had a nice little tick-free sleep.

Of course, he forgot to put the clock back and she must have gone to bed that night and put away her clothes, wondering what the hell was going on in this household. It took quite a lot of explaining the next day to make it clear to the student that not all English families keep their clocks tucked into piles of laundry.

Magdalena's mother just couldn't understand why her daughter wouldn't go near a pile of ironing
for years after her return from summer school in England

But what I'll remember most about her stay was that our son, who was about five then, was our main translator. He'd perfected this Italian 'just-like-mamma-used-to-maka' accent and whenever we couldn't get the student to understand what we were saying, he just had to repeat it and she knew exactly. She swore blind she didn't know what we meant when we said we were having 'tagliatelle' or 'ricotta cheese', no matter how much we said, 'But it's ITALian! You must eat it all the time!' She hadn't a clue what we were on about.

But as soon as our son said, 'They mean tagliaTELLe!', waving his arms around like he'd been born in Naples and weaned on pepperoni sausage, she said, 'Oh, I see! Yes, of course. TagliaTELLe!'

Once she told us she'd gone to the Megadonna and had really enjoyed it. We thought it was a nightclub we hadn't heard of and we had a very confusing conversation about dancing. Only our 5 year old realised she meant MacDonald's. 'Yes, yes! Megadonna!' she cried, hugging him for being the only one to understand her. 'Where you hava the hamburger and you hava the meelk shake, not the dancing!'

Of course. Silly us. The meelk shake, not the dancing.

Evidence that one can waste hours of one's life and risk injury because of other people's thoughtless instruction writing

2011-05-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

Yay! 250 followers. That's three since I said I wouldn't be blogging much. It obviously works. So, let me say, here and now, that I am NEVER BLOGGING AGAIN. NO, NEVER. NOT EVER. NOT EVER AGAIN.....

But, while I'm here, I have a few thoughts about following instructions.

1. On the toilet roll holder in a cubicle at work today, I saw that it said, 'If toilet roll has run out, turn clockwise for another roll'. Well, the roll did run out, and what a rigmarole that is! Standing up. Pants round your knees. Turning round a few times (I got it wrong at first and went anticlockwise - I didn't get my Spatial Awareness O'level). And all that in a small cubicle only just bigger than me. What's more, not even a SUGGESTION of a new toilet roll making its way down. What a con that is. Next time I'll take my own tissue. Pff.

2. Last week, I bought this chocolate steamed pudding which came in a tin. It said on the side, 'Pierce the can lid and then stand in a pan of boiling water for 20 minutes'. Well, I was thirteen hours in A & E after that and the blisters still haven't gone down. Not just that, but you try clambering up onto your gas cooker to get two size 7 feet into a pressure cooker full of boiling water. I had to get the ladder out of the loft and EVERYthing. Don't these manufacturers THINK?

3. I was trying to get a cup of coffee from a machine recently. The sign said, 'Select your coffee option and then depress the red button.' Well! I'd been there for half an hour, telling that button what a rotten, useless, ugly waster of a red button it was and that it should be ashamed of itself, and STILL no coffee. Plus, there was a whole CROWD behind me, obviously wanting a coffee too. I just don't get it.

4. I was travelling on the underground recently and a sign said, 'Baby buggies MUST be carried on the escalator.' Blimey, it took me ages to get that organised, people being singularly unwilling to let me borrow their buggies so I could get down to the lower level. In the end, the woman I wrestled the buggy from - not to mention its yelling baby occupant - didn't seem too happy, but, heck, I was in a hurry. And now a court case! I mean, how unjust is THAT?

You see, I was trying to take one of my new headache tablets, and it said, 'Press down cap and twist.'
I've been dancing for hours now and I don't feel ANY better. I'm definitely going to sue.

Evidence that saying you won't blog is a surefire way of thinking of something to blog about

2011-05-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

It tickled me that the day after I posted saying, 'I won't be posting much' I get another follower. Is this because someone, having read my blog, found the thought of me NOT posting really appealing, so they joined up?

Anyway, while I'm here, I want to show you this German who has won a world's best beard competition. His beard has a moose in it.

I wonder if, somewhere, there is a moose sporting a beard with a German sculpted into it. I would like to see that picture very much.

Talking about beards, I wrote a blog post once about Goldilocks and The Three Beards to show what harmy can be done just by adding another consonant to a word by mistake. If you can be bothered, it is right here.

If you can't be bothered, you are perhaps tired and weary, so here is a nice picture of some fish for you to look at instead. They are kissing. Isn't that sweet?

Hey, they think we're peaceful to look at. Hah! Look at them, peering in through the glass.
Why don't you do your party trick?
Okay, I will. On the count of three, okay? One. Two. Three. Turn!

Esmerelda's husband just couldn't understand why he'd come home from the office to find his wife on the sofa
and the fish bowl in the shed.

An apology for absence AKA a list of excuses

2011-05-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's time to explain my relative absence from the blogosphere and the likelihood of more absence .....

Some good news: I have a new job. Sometimes I like doing it.

The flip side: I am drowning in work like I've never drowned in work before and can't keep up with reading your blogs, even though I need the laugh like I've never needed laughs before.

Some good news: I have had a couple of recent opportunities to perform some poetry and more to come.

The flip side: That means I have to write fresh stuff.

Some good news: I like writing fresh stuff. It's well fun.

The flip side: I don't have time to write blog posts about wrapping babies in foil or in dead cats.

The good news: You don't have to read my posts about wrapping babies in foil or dead cats.

The flip side: You may be as sick in the head as I am and therefore wanting to.

Some good news: I have found out how to use Twitter (in a very basic fashion)

The flip side: I have found out that Twitter isn't just a 'drop-in-once-a-week' kind of deal, like an acquaintance with whom one has tea politely then goes off again for ages. Twitter wants a full-on relationship with snogging and everything.

Some good news: I am getting much better at marking work and planning lessons than I used to be.

The flip side: It still takes hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours.

Some good news: The days have 24 whole hours in them.

The flip side: If you don't sleep for at least some of those hours, you look like you DID drown.

Fran was finding marking with one hand and underwater a challenge, but it had to be done by Monday.

Reasons why I want to be a Samoan

2011-05-10T14:21:00.000-07:00

Samoa is jumping forward a day and I'm thinking, 'Hey, I want some of that'. Join my 'Why-Should-Samoa-get-all-the-Luck?' campaign and read my campaign statement here on Poetry 24

'Hey, Dad. This is fab. Not many of the other little boy pandas can claim to be going on 28 dates!'

Evidence that Chipping Campden Comedy Club is a place of learning as well as entertainment

2011-05-08T10:56:00.000-07:00

I learned some things while performing poetry at the Chipping Campden Comedy Club last night. (I just realised that could be shortened to CCCC which sounds something a very accommodating Italian would say.) I thought I would pass on my new-found wisdom in case you find yourself in a similar situation.

Lesson 1. Don't take your sister, if she resembles you closely, to any of your performances. She will get half of the thanks for your performance afterwards and, also, you will get people looking at you strangely and thinking how much you look like that woman who performed her poetry.

As for differences between the sisters, there were nun at all.

Lesson 2. Make sure you have planned for the likelihood that a cat will stroll into the performance space while you are mid-poem. Have a wittier comment ready for the occasion than mine, which was 'Oh! Oh! I can't believe this!' (which was ad libbing at its very, very creative best). And bear in mind that the people at the back won't have seen the cat and will wonder what the HELL you are talking about.

'Interrupt my performance again, sunshine, and you're stew.'

3. Nerves will get to you before the performance, so you may need to visit the loo in the pub you're in while waiting to arrive at the venue. If you do, accept, the first time it happens, that the reason the loo door won't open is because someone is in there already. Don't persist in rattling the door like an dork as though you're trying to free it from its hinges. You will only have to go back into the pub in order to avoid being there when the person you have terrified with your rattling ventures out of the cubicle.

Esmerelda had been in the cubicle for three hours now, too scared to come out
in case the herd of wildebeest was still there.

Why I was glad today to be Fran at her Street Party and not Kate at her Wedding

2011-04-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

1. At my street party, only 43 people could have been looking at me at any one time.

2. I could just make up my words as I went along. I haven't had to practise saying, 'Hi, what number do you live at?' for weeks and weeks, worrying about whether I'd say, 'Number what live do you at, Hi? by mistake.

3. Showering myself with icing sugar when biting into a cake didn't matter so much as it would have done had I been wearing a 2011 Sarah Burton dress rather than my Bon Marche fleece bought in 1994.

4. I only had to walk out of my front door and into the road, not along fourteen miles of red carpet dragging enough material to dress all of the Chinese.

5. I didn't have four toddlers following me who could have needed a wee at any time.

6. There were no men in dresses at my event.

7. No one tried to put a ring on me, in the process finding out that I was nervous and sweaty.

8. No one got hold of my dress and lifted it up at the back.

9. It was okay to pop back indoors for a frayed woolly jumper when I got cold without worrying that a) pulling it over my head might risk catching it on the diamond tiara and b) anyone photographing the event might make me take it off.

10. When neighbours asked if they could see round our house because they live on the other side of the street and had never seen houses our side, it was okay to say yes because my grandma-in-law a) wasn't in and b) isn't the monarch.

The street's reaction to Fran's stylish wearing of her 1994 fleece was only to be expected

How not to teach a Shakespeare lesson to teenagers if you want them to learn about iambic pentameter

2011-04-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

This post - a real-life experience of mine when teaching Shakespeare - has been written especially to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday as part of the http://birthday2011.bloggingshakespeare.com/ project. Happy birthday, Wilko.

How not to teach a Shakespeare lesson to teenagers if you want them to learn about iambic pentameter

Preventative (Measure for) Measures ...

1. Do not eat blackberry and apple crumble for lunch before teaching a lesson on iambic pentameter.

2. If you will insist on eating blackberry and apple crumble for lunch before teaching a lesson on iambic pentameter, look in a mirror before going into the classroom.

3. If you have eaten blackberry and apple crumble without looking at a mirror before entering the classroom to teach iambic pentameter, get ready for humiliation.

How things will go if you haven't taken preventative (Measure for) Measures ....

1. Teach your lesson on iambic pentameter.

2. Wonder, at regular intervals during the lesson, why the teenagers are finding your explanations of metrical feet and rhyming couplets so amusing.

3. Keep telling them off for lack of attention, then wonder why they are finding your admonitions equally as amusing as your explanations of metrical feet and rhyming couplets.

4. Get to the end of the lesson, more grateful than you have ever been that a bell (the bell that summons you to heaven or to ... the staff room) has rung.

5. Feel pleased when a couple of girls stay behind and ask to talk to you about the lesson. Think how nice it is that they want to continue the discussion on iambic pentameter and suddenly feel much better about things.

6. Feel much less better when they tell you that the reason everyone was laughing is because you have a piece of blackberry and apple crumble the size of Australasia stuck to your white shirt, just below the collar.

Miss hoped that the blackberry and apple crumble had been the only reason they couldn't focus on the lesson but, she had to be honest, her electrolysis hadn't been going well recently either

Reasons why the traditional typewriter doesn't deserve to die .....

2011-04-26T05:54:00.000-07:00

So, if the rumour's true, no more typewriters being manufactured, eh? *Sigh of middle-aged woman who trained as a secretary in the 1970s*

Ah, those were the days when ....

Parents of wayward teenagers who said, sighing with relief, 'Oh, well, at least young Monica's out of danger now she has a reliable typing job' severely underestimated the high induced by sniffing Tippex thinning fluid.

If you wanted to murder someone by dropping a typewriter on them from the fourth floor, there were no tricky wires to undo first.

You felt like you were working hard even if you weren't really, because anyone making that kind of racket HAD to be getting SOMETHING done. (The same claim has been made for years by men who 'mend' roads by drilling them, despite obviously making the situation worse.)

Having to correct the top copy and the four carbon copies underneath one by one was what you did before Zumba was invented

When things went wrong, and the IT man came up and said, 'Try turning it off and turning it on again', you could just say, 'Look, I'll go off for a coffee break, moron, while you look for the switch'

You didn't have to waste energy stirring the sugars into your tea. You just put the sugar in the mug, then put the mug next to the typewriter. By the time you'd typed another letter, job done.

The hearing problems you got in your mid-twenties couldn't definitely be blamed on the Bay City Roller concerts and all the screaming, because the typing pool could equally have been to blame.

Moving a typewriter from one office to another only needed one secretary, not a whole IT department, four trolleys and the big guy borrowed from Accounts

You could shift your typewriter from one side of the desk to another without pulling out so many wires that you cut off all the electricity in the West Midlands

No one ever accidentally sent a carefully typed letter to all fourteen thousand members of one organisation rather than one close friend saying, 'I think the boss is an arsehole. LOL'

One minor disadvantage .....

This is embarrassing. How long do I leave it before admitting that my fingers are stuck between the keys
and I haven't typed anything for three hours?

Evidence that I can write a poem about a microwave as well as find old chips in one

2011-04-23T00:53:00.000-07:00

How would you feel if you thought your kitchen implements might turn on you?.....

Learn from someone who knows - read my poem, just published on Poetry 24. If you didn't know about Poetry 24, which publishes poems on topical issues, you do now....

Reasons why the burqini is already SO yesterday ....

2011-04-21T14:20:00.000-07:00

Blimey, packing for my beach holiday this year is going to be SO easy now I've decided to wear a sackini. Forget all that faffing about with swimwear, sun tan lotion, waxing, shaving, polishing and creosoting (or is that just fences?) - the sackini solves all these problems.

Here it is: this year's new swimwear option.

You can see already how the sack is positively designed to be worn as beach wear. It is one size fits all - voluminous enough to fit the largest female form, whether that voluptuousness be caused by I'm-a-nobody- roast-dinners-and-apple-crumbles-throughout-the-winter-months or by the fact that you are a-television-celebrity-cook-who's-a-brilliant-advert-for-her-own-profiteroles.

And if you want to keep your beach picnic in the sack, too, as well as your towel, picnic blanket, beach volleyball set, Jilly Cooper novels and perhaps children, there's loads of room.

The tie does up nicely round the neck, leaving a bit of sacking that comes up just under the eyes so that you can look out for sharks (or paparazzi) while you're in the water.

Sackinis are available in other styles, too.

This 'Honestly-I'm-really-a-sack-of-vegetables' style is perfect if you're wanting that discreet holiday away from the glare of publicity. Rather than just the plain sack, which screams 'Hey, come over here, I want to be in the Daily Mail tomorrow', this sack, labelled with the names of popular foodstuffs, will convince anyone that you're just a plain old bag of veg, out for a family day at the beach with all the little spudlets and turniplets.

The other advantage about this one is that, when you're out swimming, sharks and other violent sealife won't touch you as they don't eat vegetables. A sack labelled 'Smaller Fish' would, of course, have quite a different effect and is not recommended unless, of course, the paparazzi are already on your case and being ravaged by a shark seems like an attractive alternative option at the time.

There is one more sackini option you may like to try.

This one has a strongly seasonal theme and may look totally out of place on a hot beach.

But, hey, what's new?

What those emoticons REALLY mean

2011-04-16T12:24:00.000-07:00

I thought it was a good idea to marry a dressmaker. What I didn't know is that she'd have innovative ways of shutting me up when I asked about her shopping trips.

Mummy, don't fuss. Sitting at the computer for hours is doing me no damage at all.

So I was at the vegetable counter and the assistant said, 'Look, you owe eight pounds, okay, and if you don't pay up, I'll shove this jalapeno pepper right in your gob.' And I said, 'Look here, young man, do you know who you're spPHLUMPH ...'

There I was, at the dentist, and he says to me, 'You want teeth like Simon Cowell?' and I says to him, 'Yeah, go on then!' and so he did all this work for me. I just didn't realise the grin would be permanent, though. I'm having real difficulty being taken seriously at my business meetings. And my jaw ACHES, man!

Yep, I know. Never trust a plastic surgeon when he says he'll do all the operations at once. And where are my ears? I said I wanted 'flat' but this is too much. Eh? What was that you said?

Oh my. One minute I'm walking out in the forest. The next, I have two caterpillars, fallen off a twig and now balancing on my forehead. Now what?

Right, that's it! If the loser who didn't put the cap on the ketchup properly doesn't own up ...

Hey, sweetheart. You know that new computer I got? The one with the megabyting doublewhammy extraneficular RAM automagnifier? You wanna come and see it? Hey, babe! Where're you going?

I know, I know. But all my friends - at least, I think they're my friends - told me that the pale and interesting look was so last season.

Evidence that I am now officially a Twit

2011-04-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, so after waiting for Twitter to get over my last bungled attempt at becoming a Twit (as in 'You've tried once, and you can KEEP trying until you DIE of exhaustion, you loser') I have had another go and managed to squeeze into some back entrance they weren't keeping an eye on.

To contact this particular Twit, my profile is http://twitter.com/beingFran

But that's all I can do so far. I've posted two tweets, and I am at the limit of my Twitty powers. I'm sure I'm supposed to be able to put a little sign up somewhere on the blog saying, 'Come, follow me, disciples and disciplettes', but I'm blowed if I can work out how.*

I am expecting a call from the Professor of Technology at Oxford University any time now to ask me to be an honorary graduate.

You see - even the font has gone grey. What did I do? What did I do?

* I did it! I am a GENIUS! (Except now the font has shrunk. My computer does not heart me tonight.)

Evidence that childhood dreams are not always best fulfilled

2011-04-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

Oh my word. I just watched a re-run episode of Top of the Pops from 1976 and was transported back in time. (For any non-UKers, it was the pop music show we watched religiously on Thursday nights from 1793 when it started until a few years back when it stopped. When they ditched it, I couldn't have been more shocked had someone shot the Queen between the eyes with a crossbow during Morning Service at St Paul's Cathedral. It wasn't just a national institution; it was WHAT YOU DID then, like lovebites and Arctic Roll.)

The link below is a taster of what Top of the Pops was like when I was fourteen and driving all my teachers bonkers by being a pain in their pedagogical arses and leading them to write things in my reports such as 'Fran's efforts are dangerously selective ..' and (quoting my Physics teacher) 'E for effort, E for attainment ... She's just hopeless'.

Warning: only watch this if you have had your Tony Blackburn immunisation jab

One of my teenage dreams in 1974, usually played out while I laid my spotty cheek against a wall poster of David Cassidy pretending we were lovers, was to get into a recording of TOTP so that I could be on the telly like all the other girls who were there. I, too, wanted to ...

a) wear so much blue eyeshadow that I looked like I had the Atlantic Ocean on my eyelids

b) stand there looking awkward while the slow songs were on, as though I'd lost my way in the studio and just wandered on set by mistake

c) show the world that I too could use powdered shampoo and have sticky, dull, flyaway hair as a result

d) wear my Bay City Roller tartan trousers with a cheesecloth shirt and a poncho in an attempt to win the Least Attractive Teenager on Telly 1976 competition

e) pretend I wasn't there to try and make Donny Osmond realise that I would be the perfect wife for him and what a fool he was never to have seen it before

f) wear blusher on my cheeks that made me look as though I had a fever and needed immediate hospitalisation

g) stand right up close to the stage so that Freddie Mercury's saliva would land on my head when he sang Killer Queen

I never fulfilled these dreams. Oh yes, I wore the Least Attractive Teenager outfit, and the Atlantic Ocean eyeshadow, and the tubercular blusher, but I only had my friends and family to laugh at me and not the whole UK nation.

Oh well. I guess I could always apply for X Factor and give myself another opportunity.

'Stop, stop, please - I can't bear any more!'' cried the audience member, but she continued nevertheless,
determined not to be done out of her moment of humiliation

Evidence that one can sometimes check one's allergic rashes against one's animal encyclopaedia and find a perfect match

2011-04-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking today about the giraffe.

And I've been thinking only one thing ........................... WHY?

Here's a couple of whole ones, just to make my point more forcefully.

I don't get it. Granted, they don't look any weirder than camels .... here's a camel, just to illustrate this ....

... but, then, at least camels are USEFUL, in which case they can be forgiven, a bit like having a husband who looks like a medieval gargoyle but who can whip up a cracking little chocolate mousse or mend a broken iPod.

Other things about nature intrigue me, too.

1. Why is it that, on hot days, wasps, even when there is a table laden with jam sandwiches, sticky cakes and fizzy drinks, still want a bite of a human who tastes of sweat and cheap suncream?

2. And how come flies, wasps, bluebottles and bees cannot see that there is a piece of glass between them and fresh air and keep head-butting it, but as soon as you come near them with a newspaper, they can see well enough to dodge it, if not hang around long enough to get a quick read of the main headlines and the editorial?

3. Also, why is it that, when you find a dead frog on the side of the pavement, it has already arranged itself into a science experiment shape? Are they hard-wired for this?

Here are two more googled dead frogs, just to prove that I'm not imagining it.

Now, before you start thinking, 'What kind of weirdo googles for dead frogs?' and come to the conclusion that I'm that kind of person, I'll take you back to giraffes and you can finally find out the answer to the question, 'What the hell was this post's title about?'

When my son was little, he had a severe allergic reaction to something or other (it could have been his parents ...) and developed a rash all up his arms that looked exactly like a giraffe's skin. That meant that each arm and leg looked like a giraffe's neck. Here's a giraffe's neck so you get the idea.

Now, you may be the calm kind of parent who wouldn't have worried about your child's limbs having transformed into contestants for the I-Look-a-Lot-Like-a-Bizarre-Zoo-Creature competition, but I found it disconcerting. In fact, he looked so odd that they brought all the available doctors in to look at Giraffe Child and took photographs. (At the time, I had a few patches of brown on the backs of my hands which I always develop in the summer - I think they're called liver spots - but I kept my hands in my pockets in case they started thinking heredity and started asking awkward questions about previous partners.)

The giraffe rash cleared up eventually, and we could safely take the family to a wildlife park again without worrying about abductions.

But, I have to say, I'd have preferred an average rash with a few pink spots and slight reddening of the skin. Our family never seems to do anything normally.

Yeah, yeah, I KNOW that didn't surprise you. No need to roll your eyes like that.

Evidence that spending all day marking gives rise to shorter poems than usual

2011-04-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

Monday’s teacher is pale of face

Tuesday’s teacher is slower of pace

Wednesday’s teacher is kind of dragging

Thursday’s teacher is constantly nagging

Friday’s teacher is mean and tough

Saturday’s teacher can’t sleep enough

But the teacher that marks all the Sabbath day

Is a gibbering wreck and deserves more pay ....

Roberta had just sat down to relax, then remembered she had another set of Year 8 books to mark.
'Fetch me the smelling salts, Cecil,' she called to her husband. 'I do believe I'm about to collapse.'

How to get Baby helping you in the garden - another not-a-Mommy-blogger post

2011-04-02T12:09:00.000-07:00

It's many years since I was a full-time Mummy - so many years, in fact, that my garden was just the little piece of grass outside the cave where I sat knitting nappies out of dried pondweed while watching out for marauding wildebeest.

But my babies loved playing outside, just like your modern babies. And now that the weather (at least, here in the UK) is cheering up, you too will be thinking about letting Baby out into the garden. So, here are some suggestions for ways in which Baby could a) learn valuable things about Nature and b) help you out with those pesky garden jobs, both at the same time!

1. Dealing with garden pests. How annoying it is for any gardener to find blackfly or bugs or little snails and caterpillars on those nice new spring leaves. But, with all your energies taken up with looking after Baby, and with eco-friendly methods in mind, which parent has time to pluck the pests off one by one?

There's a simple solution. Baby needs every chance to practise his fine motor skills. So, teaching him how to pick off little bugs from leaves will prove a really beneficial learning opportunity. It wouldn't be kind just to expect him to know what to do straight away, obviously. So you could practise indoors by getting him to pick fleas off your cat, or, if you don't have a cat, or inconveniently you have a flea-free one, extracting poppy seeds off the top of a bread roll will do just fine.

How, though, to make sure that those bugs are permanently dealt with and don't come back? Well, what about just cutting back on Baby's diet for a few days before going out into the garden, and then encouraging him to pop those pesky pests into his little mouth each time he finds one? They won't all taste wonderful, but then, you're trying to get Baby to eat cabbage and sprouts, are you not, and are blackfly really any worse from a baby's point of view? Babies should be encouraged to explore new tastes and textures, and here's yet another chance for him to do so.

While Baby is crawling round the garden, picking off the bugs, do make sure he's wearing thick padded trousers as you wouldn't want his tender little knees to get grazed.

2. Helping with the grass cutting. What a chore! Your lawn mower is one of those old fashioned ones which collects the grass cuttings at the back, but the collector thing is broken, and so all the cuttings just spray all over the garden while you're mowing. How irritating!

What a good thing that Baby has just learned to say Mama and Dadda and therefore has his mouth open a lot of the time. Talk about good timing!

While you're mowing the lawn, encourage Baby to crawl along behind you. He probably will anyway because he wants to be with you (how handy are attachment needs?) and the bigger your garden is, the more lawn you have to mow, and the more Baby will desire your company. Just keep saying, 'Go on, say Mama again!' and, as Baby obliges, mow a bit more. The grass cuttings should land in his open mouth and he can chew away on those to his heart's content, getting what should be a year's supply of vitamins, surely. This is actually great practice for those days when all you have to feed him with is leftover spinach, and there's always the added advantage that what arrives in his nappies can go straight onto the compost pile to mulch down with your apple peelings.

The other great thing about this is that, when Baby gets fed up with saying 'Mama' and 'Dadda' on demand, he will cry. Bingo! Wider mouth = faster lawn-mowing.

But please make sure you clean Baby's teeth well each evening after his grass-collecting duties. You don't want his winning smile to be marred by bits of green between his nice new gnashers, especially if Granny's coming round.

3. Digging over the soil. Such a back-breaking job when you have to do it from a few feet up with a spade. So, why not harness the fact that Baby is so much nearer the ground? The best way to go about this is, while Baby is napping, bury all his toys in the flowerbeds where you want the soil turned over. When he wakes up and wants his teddy/toy truck/bricks, lead him out into the garden. The secret is to have one of the more colourful toys poking up out of the soil. Baby will soon get the idea. It's best not to cut Baby's nails for a few weeks before doing this garden activity with him, because the longer they are, the more efficient will be the soil-turning.

Baby will love this new game and, when he's found all his toys, you can get the garden hose out and wash the bricks and trucks down while hosing down Baby at the same time before he gets back in the house onto your nice cream carpet. His shouts of delight as you turn the hose on him will make this a moment he will remember for ever.

Obviously, dry him down quickly so he doesn't get cold and you can't be accused of neglect.

Baby had found fourteen thousand blackfly and was feeling rather full, but Mummy said he still had the
geranium bed to do.

Of course, Baby could also help you do another essential garden job, which is testing out the barbecue to make sure it still works. I'll leave it to you to work out the best way to do this. All I'm saying is, your average barbecue skewer might not be sufficient for the task.

Evidence that not all female teachers were good little girls when they were young

2011-03-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

Along with nature-loving followers who stay loyal despite my occasional posts about dead rats, using cat skins to clothe babies, and hating green fields, I now seem to have a few whose blog names are things like 'I adore making pretty cushions decorated with flowers' or 'Stencilling patterns onto textiles is my idea of ecstasy'.

I thought it was time to 'fess up, just in case any of these lovely people were expecting me, at some point, to post any pictures of my latest ventures into fashion design or velvet curtains. I so hate to disappoint.

This little story may illustrate the extent of my skills in using a needle and thread of any sort.

When I was fourteen, we had to learn how to sew at school. I use the terms 'learn' and 'sew' very loosely here, as you will discover.

Rather than starting off slowly with a handkerchief or a teatowel, as I was advised, I decided, being a pig-headed adolescent, I would make myself a pair of trousers. As this was the early 1980s and flares were still kind of 'in', I cajoled the teacher into letting me have a suitable pattern, which she handed over reluctantly, and off I went. Even the sewing machine made a little 'eek' noise as I approached it. The signs weren't good.

I was a stubborn little tyke, and every time the teacher asked me if I needed any help, I refused. I probably used words like, 'Bog off, you bum-faced old dragon'. Who could blame her for going off to help Maisie Smith with the freckles and pigtails, who was making a pleated tartan skirt?

A few weeks later, my trousers were finished. The only thing is, instead of looking like this ....

... they looked more like these ....

I'd sewn the legs on the wrong way up.

The caption under the jodphur picture is very apt, asking 'Would you?' The answer is, 'Well, no, not unless someone paid me in gold bullion', and so I never wore my handmade trousers.

The teacher requested that I be transferred from sewing to cookery. Yes, an extreme reaction, but that might have been to do with the fact that I was a little sod who disrupted her lessons big-time, and not just because I was to sewing what Kate Moss is to the cream bun industry.

I was better at cooking than I was at sewing. But that wasn't hard.

Reasons why one should not look at the carpet when one is getting ready to go to work

2011-03-24T11:43:00.000-07:00

As a Bad Start to the day, nothing beats finding four pieces of woodlouse body on your hall carpet just as you're setting off for work. Symbolically, especially when you're trying to settle into a new job, it sucks.

What makes it even more of a Bad Start is having made friends with said woodlouse at the weekend while it meandered around your living room carpet as you sat with your feet up reading a book. I'm tempted to claim I was reading Kafka's Metamorphosis, in which he wakes up as a beetle, but I wasn't. Shame. These little coincidences are helpful to the blogger when they do happen, but it's no good lying about it because then you get thousands of comments (I wish) saying, 'Oh, I'm reading Metamorphosis too - isn't it fab?' and then you have to lie again in your reply comment and claim you've read all his books and you're a distant relative and had him round to tea on many occasions and ... oh ... it can all get very awkward.

Better to just admit that you were reading 'How to Be a Well Good English Teacher'. I think that was the title. I may be wrong.

But Me and Woodlouse were getting on famously and at one point I may even have read bits of 'Well Good English Teacher' out to him while we were relaxing together in the living room. I may not have, though. (See above re exaggeration.)

(Friko, I know it should have been 'Woodlouse and I' but somehow that sounds very, very wrong.)

Anyway, back to the woodlouse body parts. I suspect it was brought from the living room into the hall under the Husband's whopping size 94 boots. I don't like to speculate on the actual moment of its death, but I think its demise probably went a) massive sudden headache, b) moment of confusion and sudden memories of many life experiences, c) division into four separate parts, all attached to underside of a shoe.

As I put my coat on this morning, I looked down at the four parts of the woodlouse. Funny how one's mind thinks 'jigsaw puzzle' at these moments, and it was all I could do not to bend down and see if Part A would slot neatly into Part B and then into C and D until ... voila! - back comes Woodlouse, just minus Life. Then I could have told it that joke, 'What do you call a deer with one eye?' (No eye deer.) What do you call a dead deer with one eye? (Still no eye deer.)'

But that would have been cruel. And anyway I had to get to work. And I knew that, if I was late, trying to explain about the woodlouse just wasn't going to wash.

This is a whole one, but it looks Very Dead. I couldn't find a picture of a quartered one. And I'm wondering how many other people in the world have typed 'quartered woodlouse' into Google.

Reasons why I always envied Bob Marley

2011-03-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

There are bathroom cupboard mirrors, and there are full-length mirrors.

And that is why I've always wanted Big Hair.

When I look in the bathroom cupboard mirror (from the neck upwards), I am just about content with the size of my hair. This is because it is in proportion to the size of my face.

Here is someone with hair about the same size as mine.

This woman is saying, 'I'm so glad my hair is like Fran's. I just so wish I were as stunning as she is.'

So, I don't need Big Hair if I just use my bathroom mirror.

The full-length wardrobe mirror is another matter. When I look in that, if I start at the top and look gradually down, this is the effect.

Fran in a blue dress (with Small Hair)

My thinking is, how much more I'd be brave enough to look in the wardrobe mirror if my hair was anything like this ...

This person is saying, 'I wish Mummy had waited until I was 7 to push me into my modelling career.'

Or maybe if it were like this ........

This woman is saying, 'I've got so much eye make-up on, if I dare nod my head, I'll never get it back up.'

Or even like this .......

This woman is saying, 'They said I looked like I'd been dragged through a hedge backwards. As I told them, I had, but the hedge came too.'

If I had any of these hairstyles, I'd be looking at something with proportions more like this.

Fran in the same blue dress but with Big Hair

What inspired this post, you ask, apart from the usual crazy and random decision that precedes most of my posts?

It's because I washed my hair this morning with some shampoo that made my hair go all flat and lifeless, and it's clinging to my head like a family of limpets with attachment issues, and looking even Smaller than usual. Today, even my face in the bathroom mirror looks a bit like this.

Fran's face with Limpet Hair. Reassuringly, the face is not normally blue. Which goes to show one can find comfort in any small thing when one is desperate.

Just going off to look at wigs on e-bay.

Or maybe that's Hairy-bay.

Evidence that embarrassing yourself on public transport could be a family trait

2011-03-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

So many people asked, 'How's the Japanese Student?' when the earthquake hit that I thought I'd let you know that the Younger Daughter, currently studying Japanese, was in England at the time. She's just gone back to Hiroshima Uni, ironically one of the safe places to be, it being in the south of Japan.

Anyway, she's written a funny post about her journey back to Japan and in it she even freely acknowledges that I am her mother. This is an unbelievably rare and proud moment (whaddya mean, 'I bet!'), so I want to share it with you, if you'd like to look.

Evidence that embarrassing yourself on public transport could be a family trait

Well, I'm terribly sorry, but I can't really help you with that. Inherited diabetes or allergies, yes, but ... inherited humiliation on public transport's not really my speciality.

Evidence that I should be put away quietly in an institution for the safety of everyone else

2011-03-12T10:07:00.000-08:00

I have proved myself a liability to both the human and the feline species today and am determined to stay in for the evening so I cause no more trouble.

Tricky moment 1. I went to see my Granny who's 88 and a bit frail. When I was getting ready to go, I picked up my handbag and slung it over my shoulder. Now, I'm not one of those who carries around one of those diddy little numbers with a comb and a sewing kit in it. So it was stuffed to perdition with books, my Walkman, a bar of nougat the size of the Great Wall of China and all the usual paraphernalia. I bent down to kiss my Gran goodbye, and when I did, the handbag swung off my shoulder and lamped her one in the stomach. She yelled out, 'You punched me!' Unsurprisingly, she looked shocked by this, being unused to her granddaughter attacking on her on Saturday afternoons just after we'd done the crossword so nicely together. I did explain and apologise and explain and apologise and explain and apologise some more, but I'm still not sure she believed me. I checked she was okay, but she seemed quite happy for me to leave. Her memory isn't that brilliant, and I'm worried she's going to ring up another relative and tell the story, minus the handbag bit. I may get a call later.

Tricky Moment 2. After Granny's, to calm myself, I went up into town to mooch around the books in Oxfam. (I wondered whether there might be one called, 'How Not to Beat Up Your Granny By Mistake'.) In Oxfam, I got in a massive tangle with a man also looking at the books who was wearing a rucksack on his back that seemed to have been packed for a year in the Himalayas. He was on the left of me. On the right was a woman who kept bobbing up and down to look at books on all the different shelves. She must have had good knees. Looking at the books while sandwiched in between these two loonies - him with his gargantuan burden which kept banging into me and her acting like a Jack-in-the-Box - wasn't easy. What hurt most was that both of them seemed to think I was the problem and kept tutting. I extricated myself, drawing on all my skills from my previous career as an escapologist (have I not said?) - then grabbed a book, any book (The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards - anyone read it?). I paid for it and left the other two sack-swinging and body-bobbing to their hearts' content.

Tricky Moment 3. On the way home, I bent to stroke a nice little black cat which was strollling past me. At first, it looked friendly, but then, when I leaned down to it, it decided it didn't want to be stroked after all - fickle or what? - and bolted out into the road in front of a bus. (It's okay, it's okay, all you cat-ophiles - it ends well.) It was just a matter of centimetres, and the bus had to brake, but the cat did suddenly realise, yowled and turned round to leap back to the pavement. Such flexibility - he and the body-bobbing woman were made for each other. Anyway, the cat shot me such a look (a kind of I-bet-you-re-the-type-who'd-bash-your-Gran-in-the-tummy look) and disappeared down an alley, leaving me oh-so-very-nearly responsible for a cat murder.

You can see why I'm staying in.

Someone had alerted the authorities that Fran had stepped out of doors

Reasons for being realistic about your parental ambitions

2011-03-11T14:41:00.000-08:00

In 1947, Noel Coward performed a song called, ‘Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington’.

I wrote my own version.

Why? Whaddya mean, why? How the heck do I know? Why are you so demanding? Just read, dammit, or go and hassle someone else.

Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Jones (subtitled: One of Those Annoying Songs where the Title is exactly the Same as the First Line Which Seems Like a Massive Cop-Out But I’m Only Copying Noel Coward and He’s Well Famous So Leave Off)