Boy George knows my feline, feline knows Boy George....

Time to refer back to the activities of the dimmest cat in the western world.

There was a time in the life of Boy George when he adopted the habit of wearing heavy, theatrical makeup with a thick, dark stripe across his neck and under his chin.  I think it was meant to...well, I’m not entirely sure what it was meant to achieve, but hey, it’s a free world and all that.

It was never a look that I went for particularly but then sporting it in my world would lead to instant sectioning under the Mental Health Act.  No such worries for Paddy, oh no.  Never really at the cutting edge of fashion, he is still a few years behind the times and has only just caught up with BG’s 90’s phase.  At least that is the only reason why I can imagine he came home last night with a thick, symmetrical black stripe under his chin. 

At first we thought he was going for the designer stubble look – more George Michael than Boy George, but then we weren’t so sure. (This reminds me of a story about my brother, whose name is Michael and who was on a train, and two teenage girls obviously decided to wind him up.  “Hey, aren’t you George Michael?” asked one of them.  “No,” replies my bro, who has the quirkiest sense of humour you are ever likely to find “I’m his brother, Michael Michael.”  This completely stumped them and they slunk away, all attempts at smart-alec wind ups abandoned.)  Not sure why I told you that, so let’s get back to the cat stuff.

So have a look and see what you think.  I would just like to point out that, in the interests of entertaining my readers, I had to spend a good portion of yesterday evening coaxing a reluctant and, frankly, disinterested, cat into posing with his chin in the air.  Imagine my success!  Eventually, TD had to wrestle him into cooperation.  

Paddy

                            
Boy George 


















After that, he wisely hid on a chair but still had a sneaking interest in the camera

I've no idea how he came to be so filthy.  All I can say is that, if he is going for a new look every so often, I can't wait for the George Clooney  version...

The Harrods Experience

So Mohammed Al Fayed has flogged Harrods off to the Qatari Royal Family.  It feels like the end of an era.  As a child, when we lived in central London for a while, my mother used to take me to get my hair cut in Harrods.  She claimed it was the same price as everywhere else but the cut was far superior to your average high street salon.  I can still remember riding a huge rocking horse there (well it seemed huge at the time).  After every hair cut we would visit the pet department and coo over puppies and kittens.   Eventually, we moved up north and I didn’t darken the doorstep of the world’s most famous department store again for some time.

Fast forward a number of years and we found we had a school age son.  We enrolled him at the local primary and he joined the nursery when he was 4.  He went almost overnight from being a bright, lively child (and yes, wilful and demanding but aren’t they all at that age?) into a thug of astonishing aptitude.  He seemed magnetically drawn to the naughtiest boy in the class who taught him all he knew about inflicting pain and a few choice words to go with it.  After a while (and once we found out that the school was letting him coach the other boy in reading - a bloody teaching assistant at the age of 4!!) we bit the bullet and moved him to a local mixed prep school – smaller classes, better discipline we reasoned, blah blah blah.  The uniform supplier of this school at the time was Harrods (you see where I’m going with this now?)

TS was joining one term after everyone else but, as luck would have it, Harrods was visiting on the last day of the holidays for a uniform sale.  I took the precaution of phoning them to make sure they would bring a blazer in his size.  As I arrived at the sale, I saw my blazer being sold to the woman ahead of me in the queue.  They had no others with them.  They helpfully rang the store for me.  None in stock but they could order one - it would take two weeks.  TS was beside himself.  Never good at handling change, the prospect of going to a new school and being the only child there without a blazer was all too much.  In a state of infuriated maternal stress, I sat down and penned a strong letter to Mr Al Fayed berating him for the psychological damage he had personally inflicted upon my semi-naked son.

The next thing I knew, I had a phone call from his P.A.  Deeply apologetic, she assured me that they had sourced a blazer and that it would be delivered the following Monday.  To be honest, I was gobsmacked and more than a little impressed.  Monday dawned and I was expecting a bit of a brown paper parcel through the post.  Time passed, the postman came and went – nothing.  At around 5pm the doorbell rang.  A guy of, say, 22 filled my doorway.  The words ‘brick’ and ‘shithouse’ floated across my mind.  He had a rectangular green and gold box in his massive paw.  “I say!” he began and I stifled a snigger.  “Are you expecting a blazer?”  “Um, yes,” I replied.  “Do come in.”  The children were wildly excited to have such a massive and unexpected visitor.  As he lumbered into our tiny terrace, the clearly-visible boot print on the side of his face gave away his status as a rugger bugger.  TD was bouncing excitedly on the sofa.  “Hello man!” she shrieked.  “I say!” said ‘man’ again, “she knows my name!”  This was almost too much for me and I politely turned my laughter into a coughing fit.  Not so the kids who just roared with 4 year old hysteria.  He didn’t seem even slightly perturbed, just laughed with them and went on his way.  So; honour was satisfied, TS still hated school but at least he had a blazer now.

Two weeks later, a swanky green and gold van drew up outside the house.  You could almost see the neighbours curtains twitching – eyes out on stalks.  A man alighted and handed me a familiar-looking box.  “Sign here please.”  I did.   Guess what was inside?  Thanks Mr Al Fayed – it came in very handy when his sister started at the same school a couple of years later.

A labour of love....

When I started this blog, I was determined that I wouldn’t use it to make pronouncements on news items, unless they were light-hearted ones or I could find a comic angle – it’s just not what this blog is for and God knows, there are plenty of smug gits out there sharing their views on everything from global warming to the common cold.

Having said all that, this has been one of the most interesting and exciting periods in politics that I can ever recall.  The run up to the election, the night itself and the morning after with all the possible permutations of a hung parliament to pick over.

It was a joy to watch the likes of Jacqui Smith sent packing, not to mention that waste of DNA that is Lemsip Armpit or whatever his name is.

For the first time ever (and it certainly never happened in the past three years) I was actually impressed and moved by Gordon Brown and the speech he gave as he left Downing Street for the last time (much as I despise his period in power, the zillions of stealth taxes he waved through and his government’s signal failure to control the Banker Bastards).   Why did the aerial view of his car, containing his family – the sons he has admirably kept out of the limelight and the stalwart Sarah – complete with Police outriders, sweeping into Buckingham Palace as he went to take his leave of the Queen for the last time bring a lump to my throat?  FFS, I’m going soft in my old age!  But it was all slightly spoiled by the BBC voiceovers – David Dimbleby rudely interrupting everyone, clearly labouring under the delusion that he was more informed and interesting than everyone else. 

Then we saw DC and Sam Cam via the same aerial camera, swishing through the rush hour – no police escort this time – and getting held up in a queue of traffic.  The best bit was the guy on the pavement who suddenly spotted who was in the car.  He was jumping around with excitement, waving and pointing and jabbing his hand into his pocket , scrabbling for his phone.  It wasn’t possible to see the reactions of the Camerons but I like to think they might have flipped him the bird for being such a dick.  So he takes a few photos, leaping around in front of the car and pointing wildly into the back and then phones a friend who tells him where the camera is, so the next shot is of him waving like a loon towards the top of Nelson’s column.  Eventually, two hefty, dark suited blokes emerged from the car following the Camerons and ‘persuaded’ him to feck off and leave them alone.  Perhaps not the dignified start to his leadership that DC might have liked.

Better still was the footage shown on ‘Have I Got News For You’ last night of a press conference held by DC and Mick Clog.  A question was asked of DC as follows:- “Prime Minister, do you now regret that when you were asked what your favourite joke was, you replied ‘Nick Clegg’ and Deputy Prime Minister, what do you think of that?”  Genius.  At least Britain can still inject humour into its politics.  Can’t wait to see how this parliament pans out.

Brother Lee Love

Someone has recently produced a book advising parents on how to cope with sibling rivalry.  Whenever I see something like that, I castigate myself for not having thought of it first.  The only thing is that, had I thought of it first, I would have dismissed the idea as being nothing more than a statement of the bleeding obvious.  Clearly I am an idiot and need some intensive lessons in obtaining money for old rope.

But back to the point:  I consider myself something of an expert on the topic of sibling rivalry as I have a brother who is some 5 years younger than me and it took until after I had left home in my late teens for us to find that we had anything in common.  In fact, he was a painful little git for much of our childhood (and I’m sure he would say the same of me).  For example – he and I attended schools that were next door to each other.  When I was in the Lower Sixth, I had a boyfriend at the boys’ school whose name was Reg (it wasn’t his fault).  He used to wait for me in the square outside school every day at 4 o’clock and we would walk hand in hand to the bus station together – all together now, aaah!  My darling brother and several of his equally delightful mates formed themselves into a gang which they called “The Regiment” (geddit?) and made it their business to follow us all the way through town shrieking and whooping and making 12 year old-type comments. 

When it came to having a family of my own, I remembered the bad timing of the 5 year age gap and was determined to have my kids closer together, assuring myself that they would then grow up to be the best of friends.  Hah!   Although there is a mere two and a half year gap between my offspring, they are at daggers drawn much of the time.  Admittedly, they are getting better as they mature but, in the early years, I was required to judge some situations that would have had Henry Kissinger throwing in the towel.

I worked hard at strategies to enable them to live together harmoniously but to little effect.  The Shah and I instituted sanctions for bad behaviour and rewards for good but, with the stamina of youth, they simply wore us down with their constant warfare.  TS was inclined at one stage to call his sister “stupid”.  It’s a word I dislike and one that (understandably) upset her – which, of course, made him use it all the more.  So, the word was banned completely in our house.  Then, instead of “stupid”, he began to call her “boopid” – well, it’s not “stupid” is it?  But the meaning still comes through loud and clear.  He developed a range of unpleasant nicknames, some of which (like ‘the Rat’) still come out on occasion today.  She, being younger and less able to fight with the same level of eloquence, responded with physical violence – he still bears the scars of some of the times she dug her nails into him hard enough to draw blood.

In the end, once she reached the age of 8 or so, I advised her to keep a diary of all the insults and wrongdoings in the hope that a) it would help me to determine what was really going on; b) it would give her something to do other than retaliate and c) it would shame her sibling into reining it in a bit.  She did this religiously for a while, then it was abandoned, time passed and they learned to negotiate around each other without internecine warfare on a daily basis.

Somehow, this little book has survived two house moves and came to light again the other day.  Oh the memories it brought back!  I feel, in the interests of solidarity with other pressurised mothers out there, that I should share some of its contents with you:-

15^th February  Today, my brother has called me these names and done these to me:-

Gay x 98

McSpack

Blub McNub (when I cried)

Poked me round the waist x 2

Coughed on me x 7

The rat

You’ve got a funny nose

You live in a ‘fat’ched cottage

You goon

16^th February

You are looking a bit ‘fatty-gay’ (meant to be the French fatigue)

Idiot x 2

Gay x 19

Lez x 2

You goon

McGay

McSpack

Attempted punch x 2 (I dread to think what she did to stop him)

22^nd February

Oi, fatty!

Threw a jumper in my face

Poked me in both cheeks

Coughed on my food x 4

You’ve got fat wrists (whaat?)

Threw paper at me

Attempted jab with umbrella x 14

Called me rat-a-tat-tat x 22

24^th February

Hit me with a shopping bag

Covered my face with a coat

Called me rat x 25

Flicked me x 16

Said ‘this is you’ and made a double chin

Farted in my face  x 3

I must be a really bad mother because it makes me laugh and I find it quite inventive (fatty-gay? c'mon!)  Then I realised that he was playing up to her efforts to record his peccadilloes by giving her more ammunition than she could possibly handle.  So, for example, when we see that he called her ‘Gay’ 98 times, it means that he sat there going 'gaygaygaygaygaygaygaygaygaygay...’ and she busily counted them!  Well, I suppose it stopped them trying to kill each other.

Happily, the diary peters out after a few days and then they probably just reverted to open conflict.  Strangely, I seem to have blanked it from my memory.

So it just goes to prove that there is nothing quite like brotherly love and this is, indeed, nothing like Brother Lee Love.

And if you remember him, you are officially old!

The Perfect Face...

So, a recent study by Dr Michael Lewis at Cardiff university has apparently shown that mixed-race children are biologically stronger and deemed by their peers to be cleverer, more successful and more beautiful than those of ‘pure’ blood (ooh, is that the sound of Adolf Hitler spinning in his grave?)

As you may well have gathered by now, our kids fall into the mixed category and were both delighted with the news of their supposed superiority.  TD’s reaction was to thank me sweetly for getting together with the Shah.  TS, on the other hand, received the news with an exclamation of “sick!”  Then as he brushed past me, “out of my way, honky.”

It’s extraordinary how times have changed so quickly.  When the Shah and I were first an item (yikes, all of 22 years ago!) mixed-race couples were still an oddity to many people.  Strangely enough, we experienced most disapproval from elderly Asians who would stare and mutter under their breath as we passed them.  Mind you, white people were no better.  We were told (by both sides) that any children we had would be ‘social outcasts’ and wouldn’t know which “side” they belonged to.  This makes me laugh even today.  As I type, my daughter is sitting at the dining room table with 4 friends, supposedly doing some homework, but actually just nattering the way that teenage girls do, hooting with laughter intermittently.  There is TD (half Indian), her friend S (half Swedish), C (half Chinese) and I (half Irish).  Amongst her and her brother’s other friends are Italians, Pakistanis, Argentinians, Russians and Portuguese – and that’s just the ones who spring easily to mind – there are no doubt others that I have forgotten to include.  And anyway, our kids are admired by white people for being brown and admired by Indians for being pale – it’s win-win for them.  If you don’t believe me, look at Aishwarya Rai, Indian megastar with her milky complexion and golden highlighted hair...

It’s extraordinary how, in the space of a few years, attitudes have swung 180°  By the time we had our second child (TD) and had moved into our first proper house, we found that we had neighbours of our age who mirrored us; Indian wife and English husband.  Unfortunately, TD developed the habit of shouting “Daddy!”  at any of the wife’s brothers who happened to be visiting but it kept the street entertained.  We have now moved towns and, today, the couple at the back of us are Indian and English, as are next-door-but-one and two more couples further down the road....it looks as though we might be taking over the world! 

It may sound facile, but the rise of the mixed-race could easily be helped by shows such as the X Factor and Britain’s’ Got Talent as such a large number of the hopefuls performing are clearly ‘half and half’ – think Leona Lewis,

JLS, Diversity (there’s a clue in the name...) all of which helps mixed race people become more the norm.  Who knows, it may even help our country cousins accept people of colour – they seem to struggle in some areas.  In fact, the worst racism we have ever encountered was in a Welsh pub.  We had booked to eat there (by phone, so they hadn’t seen us).  When we arrived – the four of us plus Irish Granny – our booking had been mysteriously cancelled (scratched out of the book so hard with a biro that it had made a hole in the page) and, although we stood patiently at the bar for some time, we had suddenly become invisible.  Eventually, we just left.  There seemed little point in trying to reason with such ignorance. 

The irony of the whole event was that we had gone there to sample their curry night, but they didn't seem to get it.  Pillocks.

FML!

When life is getting me down, there are two places I commonly go to for succour (before I dump on my closest girlfriends that is...).  If the source of my depressed state is the children, I may visit Mumsnet and take a look at the chat forum on Teenagers.  This way I can comfort myself that mine may be sarky and narky but at least they are not out mugging old ladies and having underage sex whilst mainlining Heroin.   The other place I go to is the very excellent FMylife website which, if you haven't yet discovered it, is a place for anyone to bemoan their lot in life in a few brief sentences.  Every entry has to start with “Today...” and end with “FML”.  The posts are pretty diverse and range from the utterly gross e.g. “Today I woke up very sick and home alone.  An intense feeling of nausea came over me.  As I was rushing to the toilet, I collapsed onto my hands and knees and puked violently.  After spewing my stomach contents all over the floor, my arms gave way and I fell face-first into a pool of my own vomit. FML” to the quite unfortunate:- “Today I saw an elderly man fall in a crosswalk, so I jumped off my bike to help.  As I helped him across, the light turned green.  At that point I noticed that my phone had fallen out of my pocket in the street and was run over by several cars.  I then watched across a 6 lane street as someone stole my bike. FML” via the unbelievably ill-fated:  “Today, I have a potentially life-changing job interview.  The left side of my face is so swollen it makes me look like a chipmunk and I can’t stop drooling.  FML.”

Unfortunately, my entry for FMylife would prove to be too long and ranting and would go something like this...Driving home from work on Friday night, I passed the pub at the bottom of our road which has tables outside.  Resplendent at one of the tables I spied the Shah and his friend and colleague, Adrian.  This is what passes for ‘working at home’.  I try to give him the benefit of the doubt and tell myself that he will a) be home soon and b) be home sober but I know in my heart that neither is true.  This means that I will be on taxi duty for TD who wishes to be transported to Badminton for 7pm, picked up two hours later and taken to a sleepover, several miles in the opposite direction.  End result?  I get to finally sit down at 10pm, by which time the Shah has been snoring like a grampus on the sofa for hours on end.  Eventually, he opens one eye and asks me if we should get a takeaway.  I crisply reply that I have eaten thanks, and perhaps he might like to enjoy sex and travel?

To compound my ill temper, I woke at 6am on Saturday - body clock obviously still fully in work mode.  Finding that I was roasting hot and unable to move in the bed was a bit of a mystery – but was fairly quickly solved by craning my neck to discover that there was a collective 11kg of cat pinning the duvet to the mattress – one either side of me.

So I lie in bed for 40 minutes, waiting for blessed sleep to drown me again but no luck.    All I can hear is two varieties of purring.  The feline sort – they have twigged that it must soon be breakfast time and the Shah sort, which is an altogether less pleasant experience.  This sort of “purring”, known in our family as “Oh God, can’t someone shut him up?  Mum, put a pillow over his face,” generally occurs on the sofa and after the ingestion of many, many pints of lager.  Later, he announces that he has to be at “the game” by 11.30.  “What game?” I ask with a creeping sense of betrayal.  “Er, Hockey,” sez he like I am a 24 carat moron.  “You told me it was the last game of the season last weekend...”  deathly silence.  “Oh did I?” (shiftily).  Feckin’ brilliant.  We both work full time so, given that the fabric and environs of Crap Cottage require more attention than your average newborn, every minute of every weekend is precious.  Rage meter rising.

So clearly it is now down to me to collect TD who has already asked to be taken to yet another friend’s house (oh yes – several billion more miles in another direction) to do some homework project.  On the way back I stop off at the supermarket.  Not only is it rammed, there are only something like 25% of the tills operating and queues of furious customers look likely to lynch the management who keep making facile PA announcements apologising for the delays and assuring us that they have “all our checkout trained staff working”.  A blatant lie because two checkouts close just as I approach them.  I get home at around 3pm, having had no lunch, to find that there is nobody at home to help cart in a hundred and twenty quid’s worth of shopping.  Just as I have carried in the last bag, the Shah appears from his match which seems, mysteriously to have taken 4 hours to complete.  “Hello!” he greets me warmly.  “How are you?”  I think I may have mentioned in a previous post that the Shah’s alcohol intake is directly related to the degree of memory loss he experiences the next day, so let’s just say that his welcome is not exactly affectionate.  Nor can I be arsed to repeat every single conversation, relay every social arrangement for all of us or discuss how our respective weeks have gone because WE HAVE DONE IT ALL BEFORE.  Cue the Shah’s famous puppy face.

Saturday evening sees us out with our good mates, The W’s and the H’s.  Only five of us rendezvous at the restaurant because Mr & Mrs H (whose lives seem to run on an eerie parallel to ours) have had to flip a coin to decide who goes in search of an errant teenager.  Mr H lost the toss but turns up in time for a beer.  On to the cinema to see The Ghost a good film and a gripping one with a stonking performance from Olivia Williams as usual but one in which Ewan McGregor seems strangely out of sorts.  I am concentrating on not losing the plot (literally, you understand) when a familiar purring sound begins next to me.  The Shah appears to have snuggled down for the night and my elbow bounces off his upturned gut a few times until he struggles upright again.  This process is repeated every twenty minutes or so throughout the film.  As the final credits roll and the lights come up, I turn and facetiously enquire of him if he would like me to tell him what it was all about.  The Shah protests that he was only asleep in the beginning “because it was a bit slow”.  Outside the cinema, he dangles the car keys in front of me whilst working the Crufts look.  I ask if he is having a larf?  I have spent the entire weekend in the car because of his drunken shenanigans but, somehow, this feckin’ puppy face always fools other people.  “Aaah, bless him,” croon the others.  Bless him?  Feckin’ BLESS HIM? FML!