Being Me

1. Your earworm is the tune from the Hovis advert. 2. When you yawn, the skin on your face takes an hour to regroup.  3. You know how to write a letter.  4. When you bend to tie a shoelace, you clean a skirting board while you're there. 5. You'd be upset if a Christmas hamper didn't contain tinned ham and brandy snaps.  6. Your diary is made from paper.  7. You take someone under 30 with you to buy a mobile phone.  8. You have curry powder on your nose after reading its ingredients. 9. Your pyjama bottoms are not shorts. 10. Telephones in your dreams have dials.  11. You have fourteen spectacles cases in the house. 12. When you spot yourself in a shop window, you think you're being followed. 13. You still think shit is a swearword.  14. You remember curries with sultanas in them.  15. You pile things on the bottom stair 'ready to go up' because you're not.  16. You still call it 'the world wide web'.  17. Your definition of high heels ...

Yesterday I visited the dentist.  Let me tell you about some of the communication issues I met. Communication #1. The email from the dentist.  Amongst the other 347 instructions regarding my consultation with the dentist about a broken tooth was this: 'Please do not use our customer toilets while you are here.'  I understand why this has to be so in the current Covid situation. But my bladder is made from cheap market-stall cling film these days, not its previous reinforced rubber. I thought back to Adam and Eve and to God saying, 'Don't eat from one particular tree,' and remembered how things turned out. I knew that as soon as I stepped over the threshold of the dentists' surgery, my bladder would want to do the one thing that was forbidden. My only option was, therefore, to visit the public conveniences in the town square once I climbed off the bus.  Communication #2  The sign in the public conveniences I washed my hands in the public conveniences using the au...

Before you click 'Join' for an online conference call or meeting, in which you show off your bookshelf behind you, which 10 books should you remove?  Haemorrhoid Hell: When You're Not Sitting Comfortably  Sex Without Socks On: The Ultimate Guide to Middle-aged Intimacy  Joyce's Ulysses : The Facts You Need to Fool your Friends  Rock-Solid Excuses for Parties, Weddings and Baby Showers How to Re-Gift Christmas presents by the 27th Warts and All: Advice about Ugly Growths in Awkward Places Unfollowing and Muting: Social Media Without Fear Kitchen Trickery: Making Waitrose-made-it Look Like You-made-it When Will They Bloody Leave? - 10 tips for getting dinner guests out of your hall and, of course, finally - The Pandemic Bookshelf - Because They Will Be Looking     

Ben Cottam (@TheCottam) posted this statement on Twitter today: 'When you're growing up, no one ever tells you how much of your adult life will be spent pushing tumbling Tupperware into cupboards.' I know, right? Why does no one say? And what else does no one tell you about adult life, particularly later adult life? I have made a list.  1. That one day you will say, 'They'll freeze, dressed like that,' and 'Let's go home. It's nearly 10pm,' and think nothing of it. 2. That a summer will come when you will start the days dressed in cardigan and socks and only take them off when it's warm enough to leave the kitchen door open. 3. That police officers, teachers and nurses, rather than getting older, get younger, birthday by birthday, and that one day you will be burgled and then visited by a seven year old with a notebook and a helmet. 4. That the music in pubs and clubs becomes louder, brasher and more sweary, year on year, so that...

1. If a jar of chutney's best-by date is so faded you can't read it, don't use the chutney for the cheese sandwiches of anyone you'd like to keep alive. 2. If you were a cucumber and had been left unattended for three weeks, you too would weep onto other vegetables.  3. Mayonnaise fit for human consumption should not require slicing.  4a. Tomatoes which have attached themselves to other tomatoes with what looks like Astroturf are past their best.  4b. No, not even in a curry. 5. For 'within 3 days' on pre-prepared salads, read 'within 26.5 seconds' or get used to festered rocket. 6. No one needs fourteen types of pickle.  7. Just because it has vinegar and sugar in it does not mean a jar of mint sauce priced at three shillings can be fed to loved ones.  8. Only Stilton cheese is allowed to be that green.  9. If you've had to use a fish slice to get it off your fridge walls, tonight's pasta dish will be better w...

I'm 54 tomorrow. You know you're Proper Middle-aged when .... 1. Your 93 year old Granny says, 'Oooh, really? Will you really ?' when you tell her how old you'll be next birthday. 2. People you've been feeling sorry for in the bus queue then insist you get on the bus before them. 3. You bend down to pick up a sock and try to do three other things at that level (pick fluff off carpet .. switch on a plug .... feel under the radiator for that lost button) before getting back up. 4. You feel proud of yourself for finding out how to use 'Crop' on your mobile phone pictures, barely a year since you learned to take an actual photo. 5. You think about contacting someone who taught you at school and then realise they'd be 109. 6. You visit a city centre on a Saturday and wonder if it's all on fast-forward. 7. You root for the ones with grey hair on Masterchef. 8. You understand, finally, why they say, 'Mind the gap' on the Tube n...

Classic films - the Christmas versions. The Shawshank Reindeer CasaSanta A Sleigh Named Desire Santasia Bonbon and Clyde Rebel Without a Claus The Bride of Frankincense Wrapatouille Leftovers Behind Rock Scrooge Les Misteltoes The Texas Chainsaw Midnight Mass Ding Dong 101 Decorations Lord of the Ribbons The Bird's Not Done Frankincense and Sensibility From Russell, with love Marzi Pan Mangermouse The Mince Pie Who Loved Me Okay, I'll stop now. Hope you're enjoying procrastinating about your Christmas preparations as much as I am.

Things I have realised about five ten twenty  thirty years later than I should have.  1. That 'Frances can be verbose' wasn't a compliment. A Junior School teacher wrote it on my school report and until I was thirty-nine I thought it meant 'good with words'.* 2. That the secret of looking confident is usually just that. Looking it. And most people don't get past that stage, and still manage. 3. That other people don't always appreciate you singing along, so my Granny was right to clamp her hand over my mouth in 1972 when she took me to see 'The Sound of Music' and I was screeching 'Climb Every Mountain'. 4. That in the middle of the night, a classroom seating plan or a phone call to a difficult relative is a Massive Issue, but at nine in the morning, can be calmed with marmalade on toast. 5. That the friend's mother who said I had a 'silly little face' in the 1980s wasn't exactly an oil painting herself ... .... ...

Some universal truths 1. Disturbances to your radio or TV reception only happen at key cliffhanger moments, not in adverts. 2. Only the newest and best china mugs get dropped. The chipped ones hang on for Armageddon. 3. When your friend is 39, you will remember the birthday and send the card in time. When the friend is 40, their birthday will be on a Monday and you will remember on post-free Sunday. 4. When you need three eggs for a cake, you will find two in the box, which is even more annoying than none. 5. Your neighbour will go to Spain for a week, leaving their unadjusted alarm clock due to beep at seven for an hour, the same week you decide on a staycation. Fran's neighbour would regret giving her a key ... 6. If you only need to buy a tin of sweetcorn or one carrot, the queue will be forty-strong. 7. Soup lands on freshly-laundered white shirts. It will always be tomato. 8. You will always be three seconds away from the bus stop when the bus moves off w...

I have some things to tell you. I'll attempt to link them all together, but I don't yet know how. Let's wait and see. 1. Near my house, an alleyway leads under a railway bridge. On the wall of the bridge, some kid who has a GSOH but won't get a GCSE in English has sprayed, in enormous white painted letters, this message: 'Call the Graffiti Removeral Hotline.com!' 2. I noticed, yesterday morning while making my packed lunch of home-made cheese coleslaw, that when you grate cheese, it behaves itself, but when you grate carrot, it goes everywhere but into its assigned container. The cheese obediently grated into the sandwich box, yet only three shreds of carrot landed in there. The rest was a) on my cardigan; b) on the walls; c) on the work surface; d) still on the carrot. Retrieving shreds of carrot from various surfaces is not the way to start a working day. 3. When I log in to my computer, it asks for a password. When I mistype the password, it says to m...

Things I did this week that made me feel silly. Sillier. 1.  A child at school barged through a door rather than holding it open for me, so that I had to stand aside, and I apologised and thanked him automatically.   2. On my way to an A level class, I picked up three chocolate bar wrappers and a sandwich wrapper in a school corridor, intending to find the nearest bin, but then couldn't see one.  I arrived at my lesson clutching the sheaf of wrappers, looking as though I'd binged on fast food between the English Department and the Sixth Form Centre.  And I felt as guilty as if I had. 3. In bed one night this week, I dreamt about a giant wooden spider - imagine an arachnoid Trojan Horse, with elbow joints - and woke myself up yelling 'Aarrrggggh!' 4. I was on a train from London to Leamington Spa and an elegant* lady sat next to me, trim and fashionably-dressed.  I tried not to doze off, but I did, and woke with a sudden snort.  To her credit, she ...

I just looked up a 'calorie burning activity' chart to see how to burn off the nine zillion trillion calories I have consumed over the Christmas holidays. According to the chart, which tells you how many calories you would burn off in an hour, I don't have to do any of those boringly traditional activities like running or playing tennis.  There are so many other exciting options listed that hadn't even crossed my mind.   Bagging grass burns off 327 calories.  It just seems an unusual activity.  You can't just say, 'Oh, I think I'll go and bag some grass' like you can say 'Oh, I think I'll go out for a quick run.'  Presumably, one has to mow a lawn first, and if I've mown a lawn, I want a packet of Bourbons and a nap, not an hour grass-bagging. Bakery (light effort) burns off 204, but the figure for 'heavy effort baking' is not supplied.  I'm not sure of the difference either.  Is light effort baking making small, delica...

I've got a great book by Ruth Padel called, '52 ways to read a poem'.   I love teaching poetry.  It's one of my Favourite Things.  But the students don't always feel the same. And I've discovered that they, too, can think of lots of ways in which to read a poem.  Here are 25 of them.   with head on desk with head nodding involuntarily until nudged by classmate with head shaking from side to side in disbelief that anyone could find poems exciting with head in hands with hands on head while leaning as far back on a school chair as humanly possible without crashing to floor with head inside blazer, hiding from cruel fact that current poem is only one of 36 to be studied with fingers in ears with hands over face with hand round own neck, mocking self-strangling with hand over open mouth in 'no, no, don't tell me I have to write about this' gesture while writing note to classmate which says, 'do y...

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 betw...

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 kiddin...

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 ti...

I am very excited.  I don't think I've ever been anyone's first ever follower before, but have just signed up to follow Martin Lower's new blog  'A View from the Dark Side'.  Martin is a UK milkman (which, for anyone whose nation does not have milkmen, means he delivers milk to people's doorsteps day by day and is part of a tragic breed of workers which is slowly dying because of the greedy-guts supermarkets). Martin hasn't even written anything yet - just posted up an introductory hello - but I am intrigued to see what follows, because my husband was a milkman for 5 years and, while he was working as one, I learned some stuff. Here is some of that stuff. 1. Saying to people, 'My third child was fathered by the milkman' can be used as a conversation starter at parties and soon sorts out the snobs from the interesting people.  Snobs walk off, pretending to go and find a bit of unidentifiable fish paste on a cracker, and good luck to them, I sa...

I hear there's a book going around called 'The Lazy Outstanding Teacher'. Yeah, right. I am sensing a trend, though, and am now busy writing.  Please look out for my forthcoming titles. 'How to Teach Iambic Pentameter to Thirty Students While Reading Thomas Hardy Under the Desk' 'Being an Incredible Teacher While Contracting Out your Marking Load to a Keen Undergraduate' 'How to Communicate the Art of Effective Paragraphing While Dozing' 'Terrific Teaching While Texting: The Ultimate Guide' 'How to Make Chaucer Fascinating While Ordering Tonight's Pizza on the Desk Computer' 'Eat Chocolate and Teach: The Expert Guide to Get them Concentrating on the Worksheet and not on What You're Doing' 'The Long-Haired Music Lover Teacher and Other Ways to Conceal your Ipod Headphones While Communicating the Finer Points of Apostrophes' 'I'll just get them writing this down, then I can spear a...

Here are some items I can see from where I'm sitting in my living room (oh yes, oh yes, I know how to build up the tension with my first sentence ...) Item 1. An upside down cushion on the sofa with a cheesy picture of a cat, surrounded by flowers, on it.  The cat therefore looks as though it's standing on its head.  From where I am, it's looking at me gloomily as if to say, 'Will you put me the right way up, woman?  This is undignified.'  But, as I have said to it many times, there's no point me putting it the right way up and fluffing it up and making it look all nice when THERE'S A MAN IN THE HOUSE WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND CUSHIONS.  After all, what man does understand cushions, and putting them the right way up, and fluffing them, and making them look like a decorative item rather than a misshapen lump?  What man realises that cushions are meant to sit nicely in the small of one's back and not under one's thighs, being pulped to perdition?  (...

You know life is frantic when .... 1. Checking out other people's blogs and leaving inane comments seems like something you did on a school trip many years ago, or like an ancient country craft such as dry stone walling or making horseshoes.* 2. You don't have time to secure your zips and buttons up properly after a visit to the loo and find yourself doing up the fastenings while walking down busy corridors towards important visitors to your workplace. 3. You haven't caught up with the recent news and are thus humiliated when you say to someone, 'Isn't it terrible news about President Kennedy?' 4. The concept of 'meals' containing vitamins and minerals seems a distant memory, your diet now consisting as it does of chocolate chip chewy bars, tins of peaches and throat lozenges. 5. When you look in the mirror, your stressed shoulders are so near to your earlobes and your face bears such a greenish, no-sleep, no-nutrition tinge that you realise th...