Big words still make me feel like I have sneaked into a club that I am not a member of, that at any moment I will be found out and my intelligence tested to a backdrop of a countdown style show or a Gestapo lit scrabble tournament.
I have many books on style as well as the usual thesauruses and dictionaries.
I study phonetics, grammar, structure and even artist flare.
I stroked the works of Shelly, Bronte, Keats, Joyce. I read Dylan Thomas.
I have beginners Latin within view on my bookshelf.
My problem is I rarely feel the need to elaborate on things. A shit is a shit in anyone’s book, whether it’s dressed in tweed or not.
Getting to the point is a simple matter of A to B. I have no desire to make the reader feel like a complete C by spelling it out for them.
It is often said that people who use profanity throughout a conversation are lacking in intelligence, or perhaps they hail from a dis-funked regional area who believe swearing is part of the heritage and history of their language.
I could have cut a long story short and called these folk lazy bastards, but where is the patronizing tone in that?
Some words of profanity are now fully accepted as compliments, or humorous shows of affection. These new rules are not restricted to a working class palette but have been adopted by those of a higher financial status yet often a lesser moral standing.
Blunt words cut deep but big words frighten us all.
A combination of the two is parliamentary my dear Watson.
Often on paper it is harder to assess a person’s background.
It becomes easier for the writer to fool their audience.
Take the bible. Written in the tones of a fire and brimstone priest, using WW1 English the story of Noah becomes a poignant warning to us all – scrap the UV, save the polar bear, recycle recycle recycle.
Written in a cockney accent it becomes a rejected scene from a Guy Richard film (no doubt starring Mad Donna) “Would you Adam and eve it? That geezer Noah built a blinking great nanny goat cos God said all the other peeps where well dodgy n needed punished innit”
Ooh I am really scared.
A writer’s command of language is their weapon, but it is a double edged sword.
It is field planted with clichés were prose becomes pose, and inner desires and dreams become soundtracks to car adverts and household goods.
Soft soft soft-ly does it. Don’t scare the viewers with true meanings now.
Like music it’s all been done before. Something old, something blue, something borrowed something new to you.
Dictionaries lying naked and dying wondering what it all means, unable to rearrange themselves into a suitable self help book.
Some words have lost there meaning, whilst other seem to be having their fifteen minutes of. I’d like to give you a fucking example now, but who hasn’t?
Language has reversed, imploding, heading backwards into the rain muffled gutter talk of Burroughs’s mind.
Nothing means everything yet everything means nothing.
Profanity and slang are the new black but Emo is so out.
Even when life presents me with crisscross mishmash jumble sale language my fear of big words has not subsided.
I think big words I do not speak them.
Silently I play with them; I let my mind tumble over their curvaceous forms, too frightened to fully enter their plumpness.
Spoken aloud they sound fake in my accent, like I’ve read ‘how to use words in a sentence that clever folk do without actually being clever’ or something.
I vision having to excuse myself at parties to flick through my pocket thesaurus to stay hidden amongst the crowds.
Big words also suggest authority, leading to a tendency for me to reply in the style of a servant or a west end musical character “right you are guvner” or “it was only pilfering your ‘onor, ma young’ ens kneds an educations so they do”.
I still don’t feel like I am allowed to be in a library un-chaperoned.
Somewhere deep inside me my ancestors also like to remind that women do not become educated, they become wives and mothers.
A woman of selfish nature who dares to enter the realms of men should be punished with the barren heart of a Shakespearean villain.
Big words feel like a sin.
In my secret use of them I carry all the guilt of a religious woman, without the comfort of faith.
In an arena of profanity I am Queen, all latex and spare tyres, shouting streamers of abuse at my opponents, buckling their knee’s with the weight of my four letter words, but like the circus elephant terrified of a mouse, my size and confidence can be reduced to a jus by a single, well pronounced, delicate word.
A big one.
Wednesday 23 September 2009
Tuesday 14 April 2009
FW: This really works! It’s not what you know it’s who you know.
I had been reading yet another article by Tanya Gold and wondered just where she come from, other than a womb of course.
I lately seem to read all her articles, as light relief from Man-a-gan.
Tanya writes comical observation pieces for various proper newspapers and The Daily Mail, and has done so since 2004, according to the dates of archived articles.
Some of said articles are quite funny.
She is quite warm and easy to like, overly self-deprecating, but hey, she’s female.
Tanya is not a classic beauty, nor is she of small frame, in fact, she is decidedly odd looking, a bit like Marjory the trash heap from The Fraggles, but I think that adds to her appeal.
Luckily, for Tanya and I, writing, like comedy is one of those fields in which you can get away with looking different and quirky, or fat and ugly if you’re a NUTS reader.
Most of her articles are mainstream, women orientated pieces that far too often use her bulk, & addictive stumbling to induce familiarity, but if it works, and it obviously does, why dig deeper.
The amount of archived articles I found leaves no doubt that Miss Gold is a grafter, often juggling fags & cake like a specialist BDSM master, sometimes even on film.
It still doesn’t explain how this Bridget Jones type has risen up the journo ranks to cover for smiley, mucky, Charlie Brooker.
I respect the advancement of Tanya Gold. I admire her commitment and her accepted lardiness and I like her.
However, I do suspect that aside from the ability to write an amusing story she owes at least some of where she is to her parentage and schooling.
An Oxford educated daughter from a respected Jewish family, her chances of paid work(and successful bribes) were always going to be better than mine, the grammar school educated daughter of an Essex Panel beater.
I thought hard about what my family could offer in return for a publishing deal(of any standard), and there isn’t much.
There was a time my dad could build you an extension entirely out of knocked off pallets, for, say 35 quid, and perhaps a pirate copy of a Disney film for suitably less, but those heady days are gone.
I suddenly and brutally realised that no matter what I write I am contact-less.
I am a ‘basic range’ writer, probably not even worthy enough to be called a writer, a mere collector of words, given less credit than an emo blogger.
I am Adrian Mole, with fewer contacts.
Actually that mildly dramatic and hopefully amusing description of my status was actually a lie as in fact modern technology denotes that even I have contacts. Yeah baby.
These contacts range from real friends and business associates to virtual acquaintances and mailing lists.
My inbox however is a world of spam.
Someone told me the other day that porn makes up only 1% of internet content, with 80% being made up of spam.
Whether this information is a proven fact or not I do not care, nor do I know what the other 19% of content is, all I know that I get a lot of spam.
Whilst spam can never be deemed as a friend, it does have the power to fatten my inbox in a way that briefly allows me to believe I am popular, before reality slaps me into the same league of stupidity as women that hide food from themselves.
There seems to be three levels of email spam.
There is your basic tinned spam, ads for insurance, holidays, credit cards, etc, annoying, but generally harmless.
Second is the more hardcore spreadable spam, huge mails about penis extensions or slimming pills and fake emails from the bank, or eBay. Again not partially harmful, unless your so lacking in self esteem or brain cells you actually read them.
These minor irritations are merely a skid mark on the pants of level three, the king of spam, the deep fried fritter of junk, otherwise known as chain mail.
We’ve all read it, often been coed by it.
Usually they involve a series of pictures such as kittens, babies, & blue skies, which are matched with Dali Lama clichés. At first glance you think, oh how sweet, there is joy in the world and then you find that the path to such joy is restricted by the equation
FW:+ 5² = r (e) demption
Chain mail is mostly send by female colleagues desperate to get 1) a man 2) rid of a man 3) slim 4) pregnant.
If it not a colleague then it’s a MWIA (mums with internet access) who still think kittens are cute.
Of course, some of them are more sinister, with scary moral stories and slightly nastier pictures of sad Polar bears, or Geri Halliwell.
Some of these even come with mafia style threats:
FW this to at least 14 contacts and all your dreams will come true.
FW this to all your contacts and we wont tell your husband your shagging his brother.
FW this to the whole world and little Tilley’s rabbit lives another day.
Like those jokes that appear after someone has died, nobody knows where they come from, but come they do.
Chain mail originated via snail mail and could actually be much more viscous than its current E form. When something is hand written it has a much more urgent and sinister edge to it, and of course in those days there were no kitten pictures to soften the blow.
Chain mail has been used to scam money from people, (such as the pyramid scams of the 1980’s) to frighten people(pictures of fat people), to make people laugh(pictures of fat people), to raise money/awareness of charities(pictures of fat comedians), to promote religion(pictures of beards & nuns) and to annoy the shit out of people (kittens)who use a computer for work purposes.
In the history of chain mail, no one has ever used them to get a job. Why? Possibly because it’s a shit idea, but just maybe I am a genius. It is after all a fine line.
It has occurred to me that I have the potential to increase my readers and chances of publishing deals/commissions are much greater and wider using the net than merely having an influential family and Oxford/Cambridge education.
This could be the email version of a fake diploma.
This could be a revolution for the grammar school educated, those lacking in powerful contacts.
In previous years in times of crisis the poor link arms and rise up against repression.
We snuggled together in the London Underground and ate pie & mash, we sat round campfires telling stories of old, we picked fruit, potatoes, and hops for our holidays, and like the ladies at Corrie’s underworld we drunk and shagged our way to happiness, or at least we passed the time until they discovered Prozac and minimum wage.
I know it seems cheap, and indeed perilously stupid, but I am running out of options.
I’ve got a good CV, I paid over £100 for it, so I know its good. Never got a job using it, but times are hard in the media.
I’ve counted the contacts in my email accounts, all three of them, and then my Facebook and myspace. The total number of contacts is 679. The total number of influential contacts is three. How can I work this in my favour? I need a kitten.
I need more than a kitten, I need you.
Help me then, to start a mini uprising, a revolution of better employment in these troubled times.
Help me use the medium of chain mail as a bargain basement tool to express our feelings, to show some love and open the way to a new type of invasion into peoples life’s, or as I like to call it, a marketing strategy.
In return, I get a commission, or maybe an ASBO.
So here’s the deal.
Send this article link to everyone in your email/Facebook/twitter/myspace and something really good will, or will not happen to me, or you, within some undefined point in time and you, yes you, will be responsible for my joy and a new better world in which chain mail CV’s rule.
Just don’t put ‘it really works’ in the title, or the kitten gets it.
I lately seem to read all her articles, as light relief from Man-a-gan.
Tanya writes comical observation pieces for various proper newspapers and The Daily Mail, and has done so since 2004, according to the dates of archived articles.
Some of said articles are quite funny.
She is quite warm and easy to like, overly self-deprecating, but hey, she’s female.
Tanya is not a classic beauty, nor is she of small frame, in fact, she is decidedly odd looking, a bit like Marjory the trash heap from The Fraggles, but I think that adds to her appeal.
Luckily, for Tanya and I, writing, like comedy is one of those fields in which you can get away with looking different and quirky, or fat and ugly if you’re a NUTS reader.
Most of her articles are mainstream, women orientated pieces that far too often use her bulk, & addictive stumbling to induce familiarity, but if it works, and it obviously does, why dig deeper.
The amount of archived articles I found leaves no doubt that Miss Gold is a grafter, often juggling fags & cake like a specialist BDSM master, sometimes even on film.
It still doesn’t explain how this Bridget Jones type has risen up the journo ranks to cover for smiley, mucky, Charlie Brooker.
I respect the advancement of Tanya Gold. I admire her commitment and her accepted lardiness and I like her.
However, I do suspect that aside from the ability to write an amusing story she owes at least some of where she is to her parentage and schooling.
An Oxford educated daughter from a respected Jewish family, her chances of paid work(and successful bribes) were always going to be better than mine, the grammar school educated daughter of an Essex Panel beater.
I thought hard about what my family could offer in return for a publishing deal(of any standard), and there isn’t much.
There was a time my dad could build you an extension entirely out of knocked off pallets, for, say 35 quid, and perhaps a pirate copy of a Disney film for suitably less, but those heady days are gone.
I suddenly and brutally realised that no matter what I write I am contact-less.
I am a ‘basic range’ writer, probably not even worthy enough to be called a writer, a mere collector of words, given less credit than an emo blogger.
I am Adrian Mole, with fewer contacts.
Actually that mildly dramatic and hopefully amusing description of my status was actually a lie as in fact modern technology denotes that even I have contacts. Yeah baby.
These contacts range from real friends and business associates to virtual acquaintances and mailing lists.
My inbox however is a world of spam.
Someone told me the other day that porn makes up only 1% of internet content, with 80% being made up of spam.
Whether this information is a proven fact or not I do not care, nor do I know what the other 19% of content is, all I know that I get a lot of spam.
Whilst spam can never be deemed as a friend, it does have the power to fatten my inbox in a way that briefly allows me to believe I am popular, before reality slaps me into the same league of stupidity as women that hide food from themselves.
There seems to be three levels of email spam.
There is your basic tinned spam, ads for insurance, holidays, credit cards, etc, annoying, but generally harmless.
Second is the more hardcore spreadable spam, huge mails about penis extensions or slimming pills and fake emails from the bank, or eBay. Again not partially harmful, unless your so lacking in self esteem or brain cells you actually read them.
These minor irritations are merely a skid mark on the pants of level three, the king of spam, the deep fried fritter of junk, otherwise known as chain mail.
We’ve all read it, often been coed by it.
Usually they involve a series of pictures such as kittens, babies, & blue skies, which are matched with Dali Lama clichés. At first glance you think, oh how sweet, there is joy in the world and then you find that the path to such joy is restricted by the equation
FW:+ 5² = r (e) demption
Chain mail is mostly send by female colleagues desperate to get 1) a man 2) rid of a man 3) slim 4) pregnant.
If it not a colleague then it’s a MWIA (mums with internet access) who still think kittens are cute.
Of course, some of them are more sinister, with scary moral stories and slightly nastier pictures of sad Polar bears, or Geri Halliwell.
Some of these even come with mafia style threats:
FW this to at least 14 contacts and all your dreams will come true.
FW this to all your contacts and we wont tell your husband your shagging his brother.
FW this to the whole world and little Tilley’s rabbit lives another day.
Like those jokes that appear after someone has died, nobody knows where they come from, but come they do.
Chain mail originated via snail mail and could actually be much more viscous than its current E form. When something is hand written it has a much more urgent and sinister edge to it, and of course in those days there were no kitten pictures to soften the blow.
Chain mail has been used to scam money from people, (such as the pyramid scams of the 1980’s) to frighten people(pictures of fat people), to make people laugh(pictures of fat people), to raise money/awareness of charities(pictures of fat comedians), to promote religion(pictures of beards & nuns) and to annoy the shit out of people (kittens)who use a computer for work purposes.In the history of chain mail, no one has ever used them to get a job. Why? Possibly because it’s a shit idea, but just maybe I am a genius. It is after all a fine line.
It has occurred to me that I have the potential to increase my readers and chances of publishing deals/commissions are much greater and wider using the net than merely having an influential family and Oxford/Cambridge education.
This could be the email version of a fake diploma.
This could be a revolution for the grammar school educated, those lacking in powerful contacts.
In previous years in times of crisis the poor link arms and rise up against repression.
We snuggled together in the London Underground and ate pie & mash, we sat round campfires telling stories of old, we picked fruit, potatoes, and hops for our holidays, and like the ladies at Corrie’s underworld we drunk and shagged our way to happiness, or at least we passed the time until they discovered Prozac and minimum wage.
I know it seems cheap, and indeed perilously stupid, but I am running out of options.
I’ve got a good CV, I paid over £100 for it, so I know its good. Never got a job using it, but times are hard in the media.
I’ve counted the contacts in my email accounts, all three of them, and then my Facebook and myspace. The total number of contacts is 679. The total number of influential contacts is three. How can I work this in my favour? I need a kitten.
I need more than a kitten, I need you.
Help me then, to start a mini uprising, a revolution of better employment in these troubled times.
Help me use the medium of chain mail as a bargain basement tool to express our feelings, to show some love and open the way to a new type of invasion into peoples life’s, or as I like to call it, a marketing strategy.
In return, I get a commission, or maybe an ASBO.
So here’s the deal.
Send this article link to everyone in your email/Facebook/twitter/myspace and something really good will, or will not happen to me, or you, within some undefined point in time and you, yes you, will be responsible for my joy and a new better world in which chain mail CV’s rule.
Just don’t put ‘it really works’ in the title, or the kitten gets it.
Thursday 26 March 2009
A matter of Sacrifice.
26th March
Every morning I awake to wanting. Not my own (although that follows quietly), but the wanting of the children.
This of course all happens at least ¾ of an hour before I am due to get up.
First job is to sort out petty arguments over ownership, which hurts me deeply.
The months, years spent installing the sharing ethos, the ‘you two are special, the bond between you is deeper than other siblings because your twins’ all goes out of the window when the click start Disney game goes on.
This is of course, just on the way to the toilet. Once seated the door is flung open and I am regaled with last nights dreams, the injustices of the morning and finally, to stop me imploding right there, mid wee, comes ‘I love you mum’. Grrrr.
We then start the dressing ritual, which starts easily, and always ends in tears, either over choice of clothing or naughty knots in the hair.
No matter how often I try to explain that putting food in your hair causes it to knot, still the ritual is the same.
I may now have a two-second window in which to phoo, however I am beaten to the throne by other half who somehow claims the right to a calm awaking and a private phoo. Bastard.
I hold my phoo in, trip over the already meowing cat (this means feed me btw), and go downstairs to find the usual double wee and phoo left by dog one and two.
As I have said before it is hard to tell who is responsible for what and thus reprimand is futile and ultimately unsatisfying. I get no release from slapping the dogs, or the children, or the other half. Mental note – must drink more strong larger & focus my anger.
Anyway, no time to daydream, its down to the garden to release the chickens at which point the large, soon to be dead white cockerel slashes my ankles in a ninja jump that only Tarrintino could direct.
I hobble back to the house to be greeted by screaming, this time over, nothing as far as I can see.
Twin two is now sporting Jagger lips (having the Jaggers means having the ump in our house) and further probing enlightens me to the knowledge that twin one said twin two doesn’t like apples and twin two replied wotever over and over. Arh, the joys and complexities of sibling humiliation.
I have been awake exactly fifteen minutes now.
Breakfast. So, kettle is on, (with only slightly more hope than Jesus had of actually turning boiling water into coffee) get bowls out, pour coco pops, put mats on table followed by bowls and wait for the siblings to appear. I know that all sounded really easily, and it probably is the easiest bit, if you don’t include the having to open and shut a baby gate dividing the kitchen to the dining room every time you go through.
The gate is there not to protect the children from the horrors of the kitchen, but to stop the dogs coming in and having, amongst other things, a luxury phoo on the once beige rug in the lounge.
Each opening and closing (of which there can be up to eight, depending on how awake/angry I am) involves at least one of the dog’s heads being smashed between the bars as it/they try to come into the dining room to retrieve scraps of coco pops from the table.
This may confuse you, so I will explain.
Our dogs eat well. They eat the best dried food available. On most Sundays, they have a roast dinner portion each. This is their treat. They do not have sweet things.
I should also point out that both the dogs are bitches and have periods, or as it is called in doggy world, go on heat. Either way they get PMT and they crave chocolate just like all the other women out there.
Some time ago, we found out the children secretly fed the dogs chocolate, which if you are a dog owner you will know that chocolate is very bad for dogs.
This has resulted in the dogs desperately trying to enter the dining room when the children are eating in the hope they will get chocolate.
The removing of the coco pops from the cupboard cause an inner turmoil in the dogs who are apparently thick as shit and still don’t realise I have found out about the secret feeding.
They think if they run faster, they will get through the barrier that separates them from the feast. Every morning I think they have understood they will not succeed.
We are both wrong.
The smalls descend, with other half in tow, who in contrast to me is fresh faced, and even smiling. Bastard.
The girls argue over seating before sitting in the same seat as they always do and I pour the milk over twin ones cereal to the usual cries of ‘mummy you’ve broken my mountain’ which is followed by giggles and then farm yard chomping.
Twin two has a thing.
She likes to hold her spoon up just above the bowl to catch and fan the milk over her breakfast. It makes her laugh like a small Satan whilst I try to stop the milk from spilling all over the table.
They now both trough the coco pops and other half brings me a coffee that, as ever is the colour of estuary mud. As usual, I look at him with contempt and he says ‘do you want more milk?’
I realise I am not dressed and stomp off upstairs (the cat is still meowing btw) to phoo in peace.
This of course doesn’t happen and I find myself back downstairs vaguely covered in a Matalan towelling tracksuit as modelled by regulars to the Jeremy Kyle show to find other half removing bowls from wailing smalls because they were making disgusting farty noises with the milk.
I would like to add that the other half has a broken nose.
I didn’t do it, although tempting, no, he did it as a child on a milk churn on the back of a trailer. How country is that? Anyway, as his nose is broken he cannot breathe through it and as such, eats with his mouth open. The smalls adore farm boy and copy much of his ways, one of which is eating like a farm animal. I reprimand everyone, which of course no one takes seriously, as I am dressed as an idiot.
The smalls go off to watch telly for twenty minutes and other half finishes his coffee by using it like mouthwash, which he also does every morning whilst I try not to cry/kill/slit my wrists.
He kisses me goodbye with all the freedom of a man who has, well freedom and is released into the open and peace of farm life whilst I remove bowls and winch at the now cold, muddy, and sugarless coffee.
I have now been awake for just gone an hour. I am dressed, all be it like the village idiot (a fat girl in a tracksuit is never pretty) I have almost regained control over the morning when I realise that we have yet to brush our teeth.
I call (shout, like a banshee) the girls upstairs to brush teeth and remove chocolate from mouths. Luckily, this is not too traumatic as the smalls really like brushing their teeth, they also love vegetables and fruit, but that’s another story, in fact, I am just showing off, or rather, trying to show that regardless of my lacking in order I am actually not a bad parent.
It is now time to leave. Somehow, the all important ten minutes I have available before leaving seems to be eaten by the time monster and we are late.
Jackets go on, always with the wrong arm presented first so it takes longer than it should.
We push back the dogs to get into the kitchen, which again takes time as for some reason twin two must have the gate open full to walk though , which means holding back dogs whilst holding shut backdoor from twin one and then skilfully, if not gracefully slamming a dogs head into the gate.
I then hold back smalls via hoods as I grab keys, turn off lights/appliances and scream at dogs to get into their beds, which they do, until door is open (full, for twin two) at which point they rush past small legs, who in turn rush out to retrieve dogs, who then rush at smalls, who rush at them, whilst I shout and flail my arms around like a tit.
I eventually get dogs back into kitchen and stop smalls from running into the path of a tractor (we live opposite a farm, not our farm, another, bigger farm that doesn’t seem to grow anything or have livestock, or even a farmer, just a tractor that appears at exactly the same time as the children run into the road)
The usual argument about seating ensues for another five minutes before they sit in the same car seats as they have done since they could walk.
I start the car and jolt to a halt. I forgot farm boy borrowed the car last night (he still thinks he is driving the tractor & leaves the car in gear), I swear (not completely) under my breath, take the car out of gear, and try again.
We drive through the village of the damned, passing people with faces like cats arses before arriving at crèche where I am greeted by cars parked by monkeys, stepford moms with Prozac eyes and gin breath and fathers full of their own self importance. Luckily, the staff are fab or I would have been sectioned before you read this.
I did try to fit in at first and used to wear makeup, but my eyeliner sharpener was stolen by the smalls and the Winehouse look scared the under two’s so I stop bothering, although I do still turn up on occasion smelling faintly of booze.
We do the running away/kissing ritual, twice of course, whilst twin two runs up and down outside, in front of all the other parents with her trousers up over her knees like she is going paddling in the sea making all the other parents think she is special needs, this belief is of course confirmed by my towelling attire.
Eventually I am asked to leave and the smalls begin their punishment of other people instead.
I drive back through the sea of cats arses to the relative safety and cave like darkness of home and quietly weep and phoo.
Every morning I awake to wanting. Not my own (although that follows quietly), but the wanting of the children.
This of course all happens at least ¾ of an hour before I am due to get up.
First job is to sort out petty arguments over ownership, which hurts me deeply.
The months, years spent installing the sharing ethos, the ‘you two are special, the bond between you is deeper than other siblings because your twins’ all goes out of the window when the click start Disney game goes on.
This is of course, just on the way to the toilet. Once seated the door is flung open and I am regaled with last nights dreams, the injustices of the morning and finally, to stop me imploding right there, mid wee, comes ‘I love you mum’. Grrrr.
We then start the dressing ritual, which starts easily, and always ends in tears, either over choice of clothing or naughty knots in the hair.
No matter how often I try to explain that putting food in your hair causes it to knot, still the ritual is the same.
I may now have a two-second window in which to phoo, however I am beaten to the throne by other half who somehow claims the right to a calm awaking and a private phoo. Bastard.
I hold my phoo in, trip over the already meowing cat (this means feed me btw), and go downstairs to find the usual double wee and phoo left by dog one and two.
As I have said before it is hard to tell who is responsible for what and thus reprimand is futile and ultimately unsatisfying. I get no release from slapping the dogs, or the children, or the other half. Mental note – must drink more strong larger & focus my anger.
Anyway, no time to daydream, its down to the garden to release the chickens at which point the large, soon to be dead white cockerel slashes my ankles in a ninja jump that only Tarrintino could direct.
I hobble back to the house to be greeted by screaming, this time over, nothing as far as I can see.
Twin two is now sporting Jagger lips (having the Jaggers means having the ump in our house) and further probing enlightens me to the knowledge that twin one said twin two doesn’t like apples and twin two replied wotever over and over. Arh, the joys and complexities of sibling humiliation.
I have been awake exactly fifteen minutes now.
Breakfast. So, kettle is on, (with only slightly more hope than Jesus had of actually turning boiling water into coffee) get bowls out, pour coco pops, put mats on table followed by bowls and wait for the siblings to appear. I know that all sounded really easily, and it probably is the easiest bit, if you don’t include the having to open and shut a baby gate dividing the kitchen to the dining room every time you go through.
The gate is there not to protect the children from the horrors of the kitchen, but to stop the dogs coming in and having, amongst other things, a luxury phoo on the once beige rug in the lounge.
Each opening and closing (of which there can be up to eight, depending on how awake/angry I am) involves at least one of the dog’s heads being smashed between the bars as it/they try to come into the dining room to retrieve scraps of coco pops from the table.
This may confuse you, so I will explain.
Our dogs eat well. They eat the best dried food available. On most Sundays, they have a roast dinner portion each. This is their treat. They do not have sweet things.
I should also point out that both the dogs are bitches and have periods, or as it is called in doggy world, go on heat. Either way they get PMT and they crave chocolate just like all the other women out there.
Some time ago, we found out the children secretly fed the dogs chocolate, which if you are a dog owner you will know that chocolate is very bad for dogs.
This has resulted in the dogs desperately trying to enter the dining room when the children are eating in the hope they will get chocolate.
The removing of the coco pops from the cupboard cause an inner turmoil in the dogs who are apparently thick as shit and still don’t realise I have found out about the secret feeding.
They think if they run faster, they will get through the barrier that separates them from the feast. Every morning I think they have understood they will not succeed.
We are both wrong.
The smalls descend, with other half in tow, who in contrast to me is fresh faced, and even smiling. Bastard.
The girls argue over seating before sitting in the same seat as they always do and I pour the milk over twin ones cereal to the usual cries of ‘mummy you’ve broken my mountain’ which is followed by giggles and then farm yard chomping.
Twin two has a thing.
She likes to hold her spoon up just above the bowl to catch and fan the milk over her breakfast. It makes her laugh like a small Satan whilst I try to stop the milk from spilling all over the table.
They now both trough the coco pops and other half brings me a coffee that, as ever is the colour of estuary mud. As usual, I look at him with contempt and he says ‘do you want more milk?’
I realise I am not dressed and stomp off upstairs (the cat is still meowing btw) to phoo in peace.
This of course doesn’t happen and I find myself back downstairs vaguely covered in a Matalan towelling tracksuit as modelled by regulars to the Jeremy Kyle show to find other half removing bowls from wailing smalls because they were making disgusting farty noises with the milk.
I would like to add that the other half has a broken nose.
I didn’t do it, although tempting, no, he did it as a child on a milk churn on the back of a trailer. How country is that? Anyway, as his nose is broken he cannot breathe through it and as such, eats with his mouth open. The smalls adore farm boy and copy much of his ways, one of which is eating like a farm animal. I reprimand everyone, which of course no one takes seriously, as I am dressed as an idiot.
The smalls go off to watch telly for twenty minutes and other half finishes his coffee by using it like mouthwash, which he also does every morning whilst I try not to cry/kill/slit my wrists.
He kisses me goodbye with all the freedom of a man who has, well freedom and is released into the open and peace of farm life whilst I remove bowls and winch at the now cold, muddy, and sugarless coffee.
I have now been awake for just gone an hour. I am dressed, all be it like the village idiot (a fat girl in a tracksuit is never pretty) I have almost regained control over the morning when I realise that we have yet to brush our teeth.
I call (shout, like a banshee) the girls upstairs to brush teeth and remove chocolate from mouths. Luckily, this is not too traumatic as the smalls really like brushing their teeth, they also love vegetables and fruit, but that’s another story, in fact, I am just showing off, or rather, trying to show that regardless of my lacking in order I am actually not a bad parent.
It is now time to leave. Somehow, the all important ten minutes I have available before leaving seems to be eaten by the time monster and we are late.
Jackets go on, always with the wrong arm presented first so it takes longer than it should.
We push back the dogs to get into the kitchen, which again takes time as for some reason twin two must have the gate open full to walk though , which means holding back dogs whilst holding shut backdoor from twin one and then skilfully, if not gracefully slamming a dogs head into the gate.
I then hold back smalls via hoods as I grab keys, turn off lights/appliances and scream at dogs to get into their beds, which they do, until door is open (full, for twin two) at which point they rush past small legs, who in turn rush out to retrieve dogs, who then rush at smalls, who rush at them, whilst I shout and flail my arms around like a tit.
I eventually get dogs back into kitchen and stop smalls from running into the path of a tractor (we live opposite a farm, not our farm, another, bigger farm that doesn’t seem to grow anything or have livestock, or even a farmer, just a tractor that appears at exactly the same time as the children run into the road)
The usual argument about seating ensues for another five minutes before they sit in the same car seats as they have done since they could walk.
I start the car and jolt to a halt. I forgot farm boy borrowed the car last night (he still thinks he is driving the tractor & leaves the car in gear), I swear (not completely) under my breath, take the car out of gear, and try again.
We drive through the village of the damned, passing people with faces like cats arses before arriving at crèche where I am greeted by cars parked by monkeys, stepford moms with Prozac eyes and gin breath and fathers full of their own self importance. Luckily, the staff are fab or I would have been sectioned before you read this.
I did try to fit in at first and used to wear makeup, but my eyeliner sharpener was stolen by the smalls and the Winehouse look scared the under two’s so I stop bothering, although I do still turn up on occasion smelling faintly of booze.
We do the running away/kissing ritual, twice of course, whilst twin two runs up and down outside, in front of all the other parents with her trousers up over her knees like she is going paddling in the sea making all the other parents think she is special needs, this belief is of course confirmed by my towelling attire.
Eventually I am asked to leave and the smalls begin their punishment of other people instead.
I drive back through the sea of cats arses to the relative safety and cave like darkness of home and quietly weep and phoo.
Tuesday 17 March 2009
Porn for the Gods. Part 1
This weekend I mostly read a book.
Cave in the Snow is the story of Tenzin Palmo a Buddhist nun who spent twelve years in a cave in India trying to reach enlightenment.
Originally born in the East end of London Tenzin chose to seek a celibate life of spiritual awareness, when all around her peers where succumbing to the swinging sixties.
There is no doubt if Tenzin Palmo had taken another path we would still know of her, but admiration would come from very different source.
It is completely plausible to imagine Tenzin as a teen seductress, wooing rock stars, and having songs written about her. It is also completely possible to see her hanging out with a young Germaine Greer and fighting for women’s rights.
Eventually, whatever path Tenzin would take it would still produce love and respect for others in a life changing way.
However, Tenzin’s journey was repeatedly disrupted by a spiritual stained glass ceiling. Whilst I am aware of the obvious near hate for women in the bible, I did not expect this sort of nonsense from such an all-encompassing religion as Buddhism.
Personally, I have always had a hard time with religion, the same as I do politics.
I have tried over the years to study the rules of each, but it seems that large portions of both systems are based on utter bullshit, racism, naivety and raving egomania.
Both seem to be stuck at the point where Eve apparently ruined it all, and as such women will always have to pay, whether that be by the police not seeing rape as a real crime, or employers continuing to demote women’s worth with a wage gap of 17%.
I get so angry at the injustices I have to walk away. Yes, I know, I am pathetic.
If my breasts were not so large perhaps I would burn my bra, if my mum had been more active as a feminist instead of playing stand by your man whilst sipping gin, (without a trace of irony) maybe I would have more fight.
I digress. Equality between men and women is not the theme of this piece. It is equality of humanity amongst the gods that I ponder.
When it comes to salvation, everything appears to be very black & White. This applies even if you are an atheist, and then your god becomes personal morals.
You are either good or bad, in or out. Nothing appears to be fading to grey.
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that only 144,000 will go to heaven. Apparently, there are currently 7 million practicing Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide, not to mention those that have already live in the promised land.
As such, there must be a sliding scale of entry. It confuses the hell out of me.
Every religion & government has its own rules. The leaders of both generally speaking break and change these rules to suit whatever there current fetishes may be.
This is true of all human organisations.
So where do you stand?
The gods do not necessarily need to be cloud dwelling almighties, but it helps the basis of this piece of you indulge me a little here. Let’s pretend that the media are the divine power, there you see, it’s not too hard.
Ok, now we will transfer the guilt of our own measly little lives and use ‘celebrities’ (all persons with current media coverage count as celebrity in this instance) as our moral guides.
Now let’s go back to the good or evil point.
In this religion, some things are obviously evil. Like Josef Fritzl.
I could add, but there is no need.
Pure evil.
Hell 1 Heaven 0
So it follows some things must be obviously good, like Jade Goody.
Jade Goody, bless her, is a product of this religion, an icon of it even. Jade has made mistakes, very public ones, some might even argue she still is, however, her honesty, born from her, lets say, naivety is very touching. Whatever you think of her, her story has highlighted an injustice in the health service and as such, her plight will stop others suffering the same, therefore Jade is deemed good.
Hell 1 Heaven 1
Now things get confusing.
Let’s take the current life of Kerry Katona & Mark Croft.
Mark Croft.
This is very simple really. He is a bastard. A man who preys on insecure and weak women to fund his whims. Deemed, for the sake of this article, Evil.
Kerry Katona.
Hmm. Stupid. Vulnerable. Needy. I feel a bit sad here. One part of me wants to hug her and blame all on Mark, however I just can’t do it.
I understand what it means to be so self-depreciating, so depressed, and confused that you let yourself be used, but she is not the most important thing here.
She is a mother. A choice she has made more than once and at one point she was crowned celebrity mother of the year for it.
Somewhere along the line, she put her need for negative reinforcement before the needs of her children.
Again, I am confused. That doesn’t actually make her evil.
It still makes her stupid and selfish, but not completely evil. Also, it leaves room for improvement. In the future things could change for the better and thus her good/evil ratio could change.
This can be said of us all. We are not all good, all the time. We do some seriously stupid shit. We are selfish, egotistical, righteous, and damned pathetic at times. And that is, as you know only the tip of the iceberg.
Actually, let’s talk icebergs, or more precise global warming. Who is more evil, those who don’t believe it exists, or those that do nothing to prevent it.
The results are the same, but ignorance is bliss. So who is worse?
Unless you wholly embrace good or evil as your purpose in life, most of us are middle of the road.
Let he who is without sin, blah blah blah.
The moral goalposts keep moving and I don’t think anyone knows where they stand any more.
It’s so hard to tell now days, when we are continuously told that everything we do is bad on one level or another, its no surprise that humanity is such a fucking great pathetic mess.
The follies of the divine are no longer romantic games played out between fate and luck, this is hard-core wanking.
We are porn for the gods, whoever the gods may be.
Can they hear me then, when I pray:
Not tonight darling. I’ve got a headache.
Cave in the Snow is the story of Tenzin Palmo a Buddhist nun who spent twelve years in a cave in India trying to reach enlightenment.
Originally born in the East end of London Tenzin chose to seek a celibate life of spiritual awareness, when all around her peers where succumbing to the swinging sixties.
There is no doubt if Tenzin Palmo had taken another path we would still know of her, but admiration would come from very different source.
It is completely plausible to imagine Tenzin as a teen seductress, wooing rock stars, and having songs written about her. It is also completely possible to see her hanging out with a young Germaine Greer and fighting for women’s rights.
Eventually, whatever path Tenzin would take it would still produce love and respect for others in a life changing way.
However, Tenzin’s journey was repeatedly disrupted by a spiritual stained glass ceiling. Whilst I am aware of the obvious near hate for women in the bible, I did not expect this sort of nonsense from such an all-encompassing religion as Buddhism.
Personally, I have always had a hard time with religion, the same as I do politics.
I have tried over the years to study the rules of each, but it seems that large portions of both systems are based on utter bullshit, racism, naivety and raving egomania.
Both seem to be stuck at the point where Eve apparently ruined it all, and as such women will always have to pay, whether that be by the police not seeing rape as a real crime, or employers continuing to demote women’s worth with a wage gap of 17%.
I get so angry at the injustices I have to walk away. Yes, I know, I am pathetic.
If my breasts were not so large perhaps I would burn my bra, if my mum had been more active as a feminist instead of playing stand by your man whilst sipping gin, (without a trace of irony) maybe I would have more fight.
I digress. Equality between men and women is not the theme of this piece. It is equality of humanity amongst the gods that I ponder.
When it comes to salvation, everything appears to be very black & White. This applies even if you are an atheist, and then your god becomes personal morals.
You are either good or bad, in or out. Nothing appears to be fading to grey.
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that only 144,000 will go to heaven. Apparently, there are currently 7 million practicing Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide, not to mention those that have already live in the promised land.
As such, there must be a sliding scale of entry. It confuses the hell out of me.
Every religion & government has its own rules. The leaders of both generally speaking break and change these rules to suit whatever there current fetishes may be.
This is true of all human organisations.
So where do you stand?
The gods do not necessarily need to be cloud dwelling almighties, but it helps the basis of this piece of you indulge me a little here. Let’s pretend that the media are the divine power, there you see, it’s not too hard.
Ok, now we will transfer the guilt of our own measly little lives and use ‘celebrities’ (all persons with current media coverage count as celebrity in this instance) as our moral guides.
Now let’s go back to the good or evil point.
In this religion, some things are obviously evil. Like Josef Fritzl.
I could add, but there is no need.
Pure evil.
Hell 1 Heaven 0
So it follows some things must be obviously good, like Jade Goody.
Jade Goody, bless her, is a product of this religion, an icon of it even. Jade has made mistakes, very public ones, some might even argue she still is, however, her honesty, born from her, lets say, naivety is very touching. Whatever you think of her, her story has highlighted an injustice in the health service and as such, her plight will stop others suffering the same, therefore Jade is deemed good.
Hell 1 Heaven 1
Now things get confusing.
Let’s take the current life of Kerry Katona & Mark Croft.
Mark Croft.
This is very simple really. He is a bastard. A man who preys on insecure and weak women to fund his whims. Deemed, for the sake of this article, Evil.
Kerry Katona.
Hmm. Stupid. Vulnerable. Needy. I feel a bit sad here. One part of me wants to hug her and blame all on Mark, however I just can’t do it.
I understand what it means to be so self-depreciating, so depressed, and confused that you let yourself be used, but she is not the most important thing here.
She is a mother. A choice she has made more than once and at one point she was crowned celebrity mother of the year for it.
Somewhere along the line, she put her need for negative reinforcement before the needs of her children.
Again, I am confused. That doesn’t actually make her evil.
It still makes her stupid and selfish, but not completely evil. Also, it leaves room for improvement. In the future things could change for the better and thus her good/evil ratio could change.
This can be said of us all. We are not all good, all the time. We do some seriously stupid shit. We are selfish, egotistical, righteous, and damned pathetic at times. And that is, as you know only the tip of the iceberg.
Actually, let’s talk icebergs, or more precise global warming. Who is more evil, those who don’t believe it exists, or those that do nothing to prevent it.
The results are the same, but ignorance is bliss. So who is worse?
Unless you wholly embrace good or evil as your purpose in life, most of us are middle of the road.
Let he who is without sin, blah blah blah.
The moral goalposts keep moving and I don’t think anyone knows where they stand any more.
It’s so hard to tell now days, when we are continuously told that everything we do is bad on one level or another, its no surprise that humanity is such a fucking great pathetic mess.
The follies of the divine are no longer romantic games played out between fate and luck, this is hard-core wanking.
We are porn for the gods, whoever the gods may be.
Can they hear me then, when I pray:
Not tonight darling. I’ve got a headache.
Thursday 12 March 2009
I love Lucy. Not.
I have an irrational hatred of a Lucy. Not Lucille Ball, no, she was sweet and kooky in a comforting way, even if I didn’t find her particularly funny.
I am also not referring to Lucy “too top heavy to walk in real life” Ewing.
I’ve always been suspicious that Charlene Tilton is actually Dolly Parton, or worse Sharon in Eastenders. Think about it, you’ve never seen them in the same room at the same time. (Although if you’re a boy I am sure its crossed your mind)
Spooky huh?
This Lucy has had my blood quietly boiling for sometime now.
My fury must be felt.
I hate Lucy Mangan.
There I’ve said it. Hooray.
I feel better.
Ok so maybe hate is too strong a word, after all she is no real threat to anyone or anything, so why does seeing her name at the bottom of a column annoy me so much?
Her biog states: Lucy Mangan is a columnist for The Guardian and occasionally The Telegraph. She has also written two books.
I say: Lucy Mangan is a Thatcher loving closet Tory who pretends to be a right on Labour supporter, but underneath the girly exterior Lilith is pulling the strings.
I surprise myself at how resentful I am of this slave of Satan. It wasn’t always this way.
In the beginning, Lucy & I had a slightly more palatable relationship.
I pretended she wasn’t there by ignoring her tiny insignificant column in Weekend and she pretended I didn’t exist by, well not knowing I exist.
This arrangement worked without fault, until one day they went and gave her a whole bloody page, and worse still she’s an agony aunt! I almost puked into my coco pops.
You know that eerie period when you buy something new, lets say a white car, then all you see are white cars?
It’s the same with Man-a-gan. She gets everywhere. Like scabies.
Not quite an STD, but a close cousin.
One piece about Lucy in her local community includes chummy pictures of Lucy getting down in the hood with pukey captions that all start: Lucy Mangan happy Playing tennis with her mother Or Lucy Mangan happy Kicking leaves in the park and finally Lucy Mangan happy learning to spatchcock a chicken. I don’t believe the last caption to be true as you couldn’t see her face, just her fingers up a chicken.
In her favour there have been a few good articles, the one where she stuck up for Cerrie Burnell was great, but to be fair it wasn’t a very hard topic to get right.
There is also her book corner column about choosing books for a young child’s library.
Hmm.
My girls have a massive library already with books ranging from classic fairytales and Dr Seuss to Harper lee, George Orwell, Anne Frank and Aldous Huxley.
Their favourite bedtime book next to the fabulous The Gruffalo’s Child is Dylan Thomas’s Under milk wood which they love me to read, in a bad welsh accent.
Obviously, at three years old they are not quite ready for Ken Keseys One flew over the cuckoo nest, but they will not be reading Dimsie goes to school any time soon.
Whilst some of the books on the list are well known to all parents I find far too many are middle class reads.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Little black Sambo pops into the list at some point.
It is a booklist that can only increase the widening poverty gap in today’s society.
Targeting children via their weak and pretentious parents is just plain evil.
In an attempt to rationalise the irrational I typed, “Lucy Mangan is shit” into Google and waited for my righteous redemption.
What I found was love. Yes love, all around, in people’s fingers, in their toes, filling up the room until it almost bursts at the seams.
Lucy=Love.
Eventually I found some damning comments, but it took time & perseverance and came from a blog of little importance.
I particularly like:
“Her articles read like she's articulating a stupid, half-quirky thought she had about herself on the bus that morning, but has made heavy use of a thesaurus to justify its lack of substance”
The trouble with that statement is that it is true of almost all column writers. You have a whim, an urge, a disgruntled moan, whatever takes your fancy, and you write about it.
Whether you receive applause or rotten fruit depends on the way you write.
Lucy it seems, appeals to more of the population that I first thought.
The only way to resolve the hardening in my heart would be to go deeper into the mind of Lucy M.
I grudgingly decided to buy her book Hopscotch & Handbags and set about wasting sixteen hours of my life and almost six whole pounds.
I have to admit I quite enjoyed the first five chapters; in fact, I laughed aloud more than once, especially the bit about Bodyshop perfume.
The chapter on living with boys is brilliant. The “are sausages chicken” conversation was inspired.
After that though the books becomes smug, preachy, bitter, and dull. I think I missed out the last chapter completely as it seemed to be written by someone else.
The thing that strikes me about Lucy’s writing style is the bitterness.
The nearest Lucy has come to trauma is having a flat chest, so where does this rage come from?
Your life is hardly West Side story Mangan, you charmless witch, what is your problem?
My conclusion is this. Lucy Mangan is a fake. She is the writing equivalent of a weekend raver, a plastic Mod, or a part time drug addict.
In clubs like those your either in or your out.
Lucy is definitely out, yet so very far in. Her arse that is.
Still, as I read back over the article I feel my anger subside, replaced by a small but heavy sigh.
I am over it. In fact, I’ve actually learnt something.
Everybody loves Lucy. Deep down. Probably even me.
I am also not referring to Lucy “too top heavy to walk in real life” Ewing. I’ve always been suspicious that Charlene Tilton is actually Dolly Parton, or worse Sharon in Eastenders. Think about it, you’ve never seen them in the same room at the same time. (Although if you’re a boy I am sure its crossed your mind)
Spooky huh?
This Lucy has had my blood quietly boiling for sometime now.
My fury must be felt.
I hate Lucy Mangan.
There I’ve said it. Hooray.
I feel better.
Ok so maybe hate is too strong a word, after all she is no real threat to anyone or anything, so why does seeing her name at the bottom of a column annoy me so much?
Her biog states: Lucy Mangan is a columnist for The Guardian and occasionally The Telegraph. She has also written two books.
I say: Lucy Mangan is a Thatcher loving closet Tory who pretends to be a right on Labour supporter, but underneath the girly exterior Lilith is pulling the strings.
I surprise myself at how resentful I am of this slave of Satan. It wasn’t always this way.
In the beginning, Lucy & I had a slightly more palatable relationship.
I pretended she wasn’t there by ignoring her tiny insignificant column in Weekend and she pretended I didn’t exist by, well not knowing I exist.
This arrangement worked without fault, until one day they went and gave her a whole bloody page, and worse still she’s an agony aunt! I almost puked into my coco pops.
You know that eerie period when you buy something new, lets say a white car, then all you see are white cars?
It’s the same with Man-a-gan. She gets everywhere. Like scabies.
Not quite an STD, but a close cousin.
One piece about Lucy in her local community includes chummy pictures of Lucy getting down in the hood with pukey captions that all start: Lucy Mangan happy Playing tennis with her mother Or Lucy Mangan happy Kicking leaves in the park and finally Lucy Mangan happy learning to spatchcock a chicken. I don’t believe the last caption to be true as you couldn’t see her face, just her fingers up a chicken.
In her favour there have been a few good articles, the one where she stuck up for Cerrie Burnell was great, but to be fair it wasn’t a very hard topic to get right.
There is also her book corner column about choosing books for a young child’s library.
Hmm.
My girls have a massive library already with books ranging from classic fairytales and Dr Seuss to Harper lee, George Orwell, Anne Frank and Aldous Huxley.
Their favourite bedtime book next to the fabulous The Gruffalo’s Child is Dylan Thomas’s Under milk wood which they love me to read, in a bad welsh accent.
Obviously, at three years old they are not quite ready for Ken Keseys One flew over the cuckoo nest, but they will not be reading Dimsie goes to school any time soon.
Whilst some of the books on the list are well known to all parents I find far too many are middle class reads.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Little black Sambo pops into the list at some point.
It is a booklist that can only increase the widening poverty gap in today’s society.
Targeting children via their weak and pretentious parents is just plain evil.
In an attempt to rationalise the irrational I typed, “Lucy Mangan is shit” into Google and waited for my righteous redemption.
What I found was love. Yes love, all around, in people’s fingers, in their toes, filling up the room until it almost bursts at the seams.
Lucy=Love.
Eventually I found some damning comments, but it took time & perseverance and came from a blog of little importance.
I particularly like:
“Her articles read like she's articulating a stupid, half-quirky thought she had about herself on the bus that morning, but has made heavy use of a thesaurus to justify its lack of substance”
The trouble with that statement is that it is true of almost all column writers. You have a whim, an urge, a disgruntled moan, whatever takes your fancy, and you write about it.
Whether you receive applause or rotten fruit depends on the way you write.
Lucy it seems, appeals to more of the population that I first thought.
The only way to resolve the hardening in my heart would be to go deeper into the mind of Lucy M.
I grudgingly decided to buy her book Hopscotch & Handbags and set about wasting sixteen hours of my life and almost six whole pounds.
I have to admit I quite enjoyed the first five chapters; in fact, I laughed aloud more than once, especially the bit about Bodyshop perfume.
The chapter on living with boys is brilliant. The “are sausages chicken” conversation was inspired.
After that though the books becomes smug, preachy, bitter, and dull. I think I missed out the last chapter completely as it seemed to be written by someone else.
The thing that strikes me about Lucy’s writing style is the bitterness.
The nearest Lucy has come to trauma is having a flat chest, so where does this rage come from?
Your life is hardly West Side story Mangan, you charmless witch, what is your problem?
My conclusion is this. Lucy Mangan is a fake. She is the writing equivalent of a weekend raver, a plastic Mod, or a part time drug addict.
In clubs like those your either in or your out.
Lucy is definitely out, yet so very far in. Her arse that is.
Still, as I read back over the article I feel my anger subside, replaced by a small but heavy sigh.
I am over it. In fact, I’ve actually learnt something.
Everybody loves Lucy. Deep down. Probably even me.
Saturday 7 March 2009
Friday night, Saturday Morning.
07/03/09
I awoke abruptly at 2.19am feeling like I was being burnt at the stake. When the mirage cleared, it turned out to be Mighty Combustion Man, human incinerator, otherwise known as farm boy.
He has the metabolism of a seagull and I had foolishly increased this inner fire by feeding him Chilli the night before.
I prised myself away to reacquaint myself with last nights fine wine and flopped back into bed just in time to find the cat cleaning its arse on my pillow.
Before I could throw him across the room, I was distracted by the sound of fearful mumbling drifting in from the other end of the house.
Twin one had woken up with the pillow stuck to her head with lashing of snot. I pulled it off quick, like you would a plastic as to not induce much more crying, which sort of worked and returned once more to the comfort of my bed.
The cat had sneaked off, but not before leaving a trail of his furry minging DNA all over my side of the bed. I tried to dust of the pillow but it was no use. My nostrils reacted badly to the cat hair, cutting off my air supply before any stay hairs could infiltrated my brain.
Inwardly threatening the cat with all sorts of horrid deaths, I trudged downstairs to locate some anti histamine and nearly stood in a suspicious looking yellow puddle.
I flipped on the kitchen light to find two guilty faces staring at me from their smelly bed.
It is hard to know who to blame, the incontinent old one, or the young inexperienced one.
I decide life is to short, as are the hours left to sleep and quietly clean the puddle, take a tablet, and return upstairs.
I slide back into the bed with all the grace of a crippled gazelle, sending yet another million hairs into the air, up my nose and down my throat. By this point, I am too stressed to go back to sleep so I decide to read my book instead, which currently is Charlie Brooker’s Dawn of the Dumb, the least appropriate book in the circumstances.
I chortle away at the stupidity of his subjects before an eerie feeling engulfs me and I imagine Mr Brooker hovering above me somewhere like a god on crack watching my suffering and laughing with his biatches. I almost call Jeremy Kyle and sign up for a show.
This brief spell of imaginative paranoia makes me sleepy again, I drift off into a dream in which I am at school, and I have to recite as many words as I can that start with the letter R.
The sudden sound of brakes and clinking awakes me and I realise that the Ghost Milkman is outside.
Legend has it that there is a real life milkman wandering these parts delivering milk in real milk bottles.
I have never seen him, or heard him before, but farm boy, who has lived here all his life, says he exists because his brother has had milk delivered by him for ten years, but I have never seen any evidence of milk bottles, even though I’ve looked.
I haven’t seen a real milkman for nearly 20 years and I am worried that this is a wind up.I am too frightened to look.
Country dark is several shades darker than Suburban dark, which of course means that the possibilities of ghost milkman seem completely plausible in my sleep-deprived state.
When I first moved here, my house had a downstairs bathroom and it took me three weeks to pluck up courage to use it after midnight.
I am overwhelmed by the thought that I am a total twat and get up to have a look at the milkman when an almighty blood-curdling scream pierces my ears.
Footsteps thunder along the hall and the bedroom door is flung open with the force of Satan and twin one stands silhouetted at the foot of the bed. ‘Mummy there is a monster in my bed. His name is curly and he wants toast. I want to sleep with you’.
Before I have a chance to shout ‘piss off curly, mummy needs her sleep’, I am sandwiched between two people who produce levels of heat that rival the sun.
As I lay thinking of ways to harness their energy and sell it to the national grid my mobile goes off.
My fucking mobile is going off and it’s now 4.43am. It beeps repeatedly behind the curtain whilst flashing like a strobe light.
I have finally reached breaking point. Twin one is put back in bed, mobile is turned off, farm boy is wiped down with cold water, Cat is pushed downstairs and I drift off into undisturbed sleep for two and a half hours of bliss before a bastard from Citylink knocks on my door armed with parcels from heaven, or Amazon, depending on your view point.
This of course excites the whole house into being awake and so Saturday begins.
I awoke abruptly at 2.19am feeling like I was being burnt at the stake. When the mirage cleared, it turned out to be Mighty Combustion Man, human incinerator, otherwise known as farm boy.
He has the metabolism of a seagull and I had foolishly increased this inner fire by feeding him Chilli the night before.
I prised myself away to reacquaint myself with last nights fine wine and flopped back into bed just in time to find the cat cleaning its arse on my pillow.
Before I could throw him across the room, I was distracted by the sound of fearful mumbling drifting in from the other end of the house.
Twin one had woken up with the pillow stuck to her head with lashing of snot. I pulled it off quick, like you would a plastic as to not induce much more crying, which sort of worked and returned once more to the comfort of my bed.
The cat had sneaked off, but not before leaving a trail of his furry minging DNA all over my side of the bed. I tried to dust of the pillow but it was no use. My nostrils reacted badly to the cat hair, cutting off my air supply before any stay hairs could infiltrated my brain.
Inwardly threatening the cat with all sorts of horrid deaths, I trudged downstairs to locate some anti histamine and nearly stood in a suspicious looking yellow puddle.
I flipped on the kitchen light to find two guilty faces staring at me from their smelly bed.
It is hard to know who to blame, the incontinent old one, or the young inexperienced one.
I decide life is to short, as are the hours left to sleep and quietly clean the puddle, take a tablet, and return upstairs.
I slide back into the bed with all the grace of a crippled gazelle, sending yet another million hairs into the air, up my nose and down my throat. By this point, I am too stressed to go back to sleep so I decide to read my book instead, which currently is Charlie Brooker’s Dawn of the Dumb, the least appropriate book in the circumstances.
I chortle away at the stupidity of his subjects before an eerie feeling engulfs me and I imagine Mr Brooker hovering above me somewhere like a god on crack watching my suffering and laughing with his biatches. I almost call Jeremy Kyle and sign up for a show.
This brief spell of imaginative paranoia makes me sleepy again, I drift off into a dream in which I am at school, and I have to recite as many words as I can that start with the letter R.
The sudden sound of brakes and clinking awakes me and I realise that the Ghost Milkman is outside.
Legend has it that there is a real life milkman wandering these parts delivering milk in real milk bottles.
I have never seen him, or heard him before, but farm boy, who has lived here all his life, says he exists because his brother has had milk delivered by him for ten years, but I have never seen any evidence of milk bottles, even though I’ve looked.
I haven’t seen a real milkman for nearly 20 years and I am worried that this is a wind up.I am too frightened to look.
Country dark is several shades darker than Suburban dark, which of course means that the possibilities of ghost milkman seem completely plausible in my sleep-deprived state.
When I first moved here, my house had a downstairs bathroom and it took me three weeks to pluck up courage to use it after midnight.
I am overwhelmed by the thought that I am a total twat and get up to have a look at the milkman when an almighty blood-curdling scream pierces my ears.
Footsteps thunder along the hall and the bedroom door is flung open with the force of Satan and twin one stands silhouetted at the foot of the bed. ‘Mummy there is a monster in my bed. His name is curly and he wants toast. I want to sleep with you’.
Before I have a chance to shout ‘piss off curly, mummy needs her sleep’, I am sandwiched between two people who produce levels of heat that rival the sun.
As I lay thinking of ways to harness their energy and sell it to the national grid my mobile goes off.
My fucking mobile is going off and it’s now 4.43am. It beeps repeatedly behind the curtain whilst flashing like a strobe light.
I have finally reached breaking point. Twin one is put back in bed, mobile is turned off, farm boy is wiped down with cold water, Cat is pushed downstairs and I drift off into undisturbed sleep for two and a half hours of bliss before a bastard from Citylink knocks on my door armed with parcels from heaven, or Amazon, depending on your view point.
This of course excites the whole house into being awake and so Saturday begins.
Thursday 5 March 2009
Sheep & Symbols
A letter to a close friend at a time of vunerablity and loneliness this winter.
20/01/09
I will start at the inside; it’s as good a place as any.
A book list. No. I will start with a sheep list.
The sheep led me to the books, so it is only right.
The sheep have given me symbols, much earlier than the present, possibly starting with Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist?
Maybe when, as a child I wanted to paint those woolly clouds pastel colours?
Every sentence is a journey isn’t it? What I have just realised is that the sheep thing started when I was rejected from my flock.
The symbol of the black sheep has been a constant for me.
It is only natural then that my interest in coloured sheep, rare breeds, and general outsider sheep has developed since I have moved to the country. It is probably no surprise either that I have a strong pull towards Wales, the hills, Dylan Thomas, and, the sheep.
I wouldn’t say that finding black sheep has become my life’s work, but they call me.
It is also worth noting that it is the fleece I collect, and I try to obtain them from their natural environments. They are also all ewes, some shearlings (1st Year’s shear) but all female.
The woman who teaches me to spin, weave, dye, & felt the wool is F. Nisbet, she is not Scottish, but it is in her blood. She is older, soft skinned and wise.
My first call came from the Shetland. Home turf Sheep. The Balwen followed. A rare breed Welsh. A lonely mountain dweller. Next a Hebridian, a rough wild beast from the Islands of home.
From there a Jacob called me. This is an interesting symbol. At first, I rejected the Jacobs. I didn’t like it. However, I stumbled upon one from Cornwall. Cornwall has always represented a place of peace and harmony, but it also has very strong earth pulls too, thus any dealing I have over my life with Cornwall has been positive. The Jacobs origins are Norse, the home of Odin, the keeper of runes. Another symbol and tool I have used to enlighten myself over time. The Ryeland followed, two in fact, one white, one grey.
My last, my present is the Manx Loughton. Not so black as Ginger.
A four horned beauty, more goat like than sheep. Wild & untamed. In fact, the very sheep from which my fleece has come are to be transported to Jersey, to Devils Hole, guided by the national trust to start a breeding programme, which will see the Manx return to freedom.
The symbols of Sheep.
The first three choices of sheep reflect a pull back & forth to Scotland, what I was, what I could be if I stayed what I would dissolve into if I returned. Love the past, embrace it and learn, but always move on. After all, the Goat must climb.
This basic and obvious lesson always seems so hard for me. My grip is so tight; perhaps it is a fear of heights?
The Jacob arrived as I searched from something else. That searching is connected with the Bible story of Jacob, although at the time, I ignored it and I will do so now, as it will be explained in more relevance when I address books.
The Ryelands were a texture thing. I was seeking softness. I was seeking the grey. Even in a black fleece, there are shades. Spiritual poverty can make everything very black and white. The fleece was teaching me to see the layers, showing me reflections. The more I allow myself to be led, the more shades they point out.
The Manx Loughton is a new vantage point. She represents tradition, old ways and as I said freedom. Wild.
In the mist of this came Maggie. My beautiful Border collie pup. She is wild. Moreover, she knows the sheep. She is a natural.
Our sheep are Shropshire’s. They have amazing wool & a rich history. They are solid, well flavoured, and homely. They are perfect for my man, they represent his spirit, and they mix well with my sheep, a perfect blend in fact.
On a loom they lay perfectly side by side, the colours compliment each other, the strength in the cloth is immense, and the quality is second to none.
When the fleece is still on the beast the story changes. You cannot tame what is inherently wild, nor can you release what is naturally tame. The fire can mix in moments of passion. Can it really produce a flock that is satisfied? We shall see.
The books began with Sara Maitland’s A book of Silence. I read the article and extract in The Guardian (weekend supplements are a very solitary pleasure for me, I have them delivered and I disappear with my coffee and read all morning, as alone as possible with my cubs) and it touched a chord.
I wondered how much of my move to the country is a wish for silence?
Where did my silence lay, more to the point, not where, but what was the noise I was running from, or into?
As I read I saw many similarities in silence with obesity, well with fat, the actually product, not the image.
I saw how the fat became a barrier. How I relied upon it to speak for me, to scream out the pain, not realising its bilingual talents, of which I was only semi fluent.
I saw fat in a different light. I saw it as part of me in a way I hadn’t before.
I felt I was under it, inside it, separate somehow.
I have always been aware that my excess weight was emotional baggage. I knew every time I compulsively ate I was stuffing down emotions I could not cope with.
I didn’t realise how much my need for silence was so I could listen to my body. I actually though I did nothing but listen!
I have sat in silence as I have been abused.
My inner life then (and now) is not reflected by my outer image. I feel I am becoming my authentic self on all levels.
To remove the pyschical layers will take time.
Sara Maitland’s experience of silence is self-imposed, and as such these are the experiences she addresses in the book (as appose to the genetic silence of deafness, or the silence of imprisonment) often relating the experiences of adventurers, such as the early climbers or lone sailors.
A lot of the book deals with silence in terms of religious experiences and this is where my curiosity was roused with the bible.
These silent experiences seem to be a way, all be it extreme, to find the inner voice of truth.
The affect silence has on creativity though is another story, and again a section of the book concentrates on art & music and the effects of silence.
Silence can also be seen as the tool to genius/madness. Either way it is a form of exaltment, an extreme right of passage, and as I said, I related it directly to my experiences of /journey within obesity.
This interested me to read what the church had to say about obesity. My interest started with a reference from a book called The Sorrow of the World, a sermon from Francis Paget the late bishop of Oxford. It begins with an essay on Accidie. Sara mentions several sources of information regarding her research; I luckily managed to track the book down.
Accidie is apparently different from sloth and is the basis of much psychoanalysis of depression. Accidie is described as the noonday demon, a symbol of depression. To suffer from Accidie is to not care, which is seen as a disease.
To succumb to sloth is to wilfully ignore tasks, to become lazy, which is a choice.
If this is the view of the church then it means that Accidie can be cured and sloth should be punished.
I wondered what category obesity was in? On the surface and to society in general obesity is caused by greed. However, we are aware that overeating is a symptom, not the cause of obesity, which is why diets don’t work and women, whatever size struggle to see food as only fuel rather than as the mother/father abandonment.
The easiest way to find out the church’s views seemed to be the bible, but the bible is thus thou and holier than I, so I had to find its words in my language, enter The Bible in Cockney – Would you Adam & Eve it?
This caused me great amusement, but under the surface the old resentments, disbeliefs and chauvinist dominance found in the bible caused me to search else were for answers pushing me forward into a more feminist approach.
I have been scared of the word feminism. I never realised I was a feminist. I am glad I have been awakened to this fact without having to wear some unflattering dungarees.
This is were Fat is a Feminist Issue comes into play. OMG read this book!
I like to think if I had read this book when I was a teenager, my life would have been easier. Rather than regretting my failing to understand my kin I am pleased that I now have greater knowledge of us which I can pass to the cubs, so that they don’t suffer so cruelly at the hands of other women and me.
Read the book, please.
From that book came a flurry of ideas, interests, and stories. Before I carry on with the book list here is a wee extract from a short story I am writing.
The theme is conflict.
I am trying to convey the compulsive eating experience, as in an actual binge.
Currently the title is 40lbs of tears.
I am trying to find the words to rewrite the phrase ‘a pound of flesh’ but I want it to be more subtle. I don’t think I am there yet.
Anyway, the story is not written yet, however I have sections that I like the descriptive of and I am hoping the rest will just kinda curl its way round them.
The Book list (in order of how I think I will read them now that Clarissa is in my hands)
The interpretation of fairy tales Marie-Louise Von Franz
Between women – love, envy &
Competition in women’s friendships Susie Orbach & Luise Eichenbaum
All the women of the Bible Edith Deen
Sea Room Adam Nicolson
Small boat – Big Sea Peter Owen Jones
The Noonday Demon – Andrew Solomon
An anatomy of depression
Cave in the snow Vicki MacKenzie
Mindfulness based Rebecca Crane
Cognitive Therapy
I will also be reading a few others, but they are easy to inner change with the above, so they will be (sometimes) light relief from the above. They are as follows
The Message – The bible remix Eugene H Peterson
The Madwomen’s Underclothes Germaine Greer
Hell have no fury- edited by Anna Holmes
Women s letters from the end
of the affair
Like the flowing river Paulo Coelho
I sit, I spin, I card , I weave. I think.
I throw pots, and tantrums.
I cry a lot. Mainly with frustration. Sometimes with emotion. Never with happiness.
I become angry like I have never known, or was not aware of before.
I become angry at the girls when they fight over nothing, when they tease each other.
I cook a lot. I study my livestock. I watch the dogs play.
I walk. I think.
I watch the sky, study the patterns of the weather.
I feel waves of loneliness overtake me.
Sometimes I think I have made a big mistake with He.
Other times I think I need more patience.
I should be happy that I feel anything but I am not.
Sometimes I drink heavily, to get through a passionless day.
I talk. No one listens. No one answers.
‘I love you mummy’ breaks the death of relationship.
I don’t know where I am. I can imagine where I want to be. I don’t know how much they actually compliment each other.
It’s that transition thing. Even re-adjusting my truth to account for not living with a bastard is hard, it is all I have even known.
In a way, a big way, I am living the dream, yet still I feel the void.
I crave intellectual stimulation and I do not receive it from outside of myself.
I watch blooming and growing with so much relish, I love to see the pride those wee girls have with their achievements, but still it does not touch me like I believe it should.
I still see everything through frosted glass.
I am 98% happy. 40% Is the girls. 15% is environment 22% is from inside 21% is from He. The missing percent is the void.
Is death he only way to fill it? Is that void the thing that separate me from the divine, like language separates us from the animals.
Will my constant searching only be sated by enlightenment, either holy or Darwinest?
I have also realised that my man is silence. His calm and solid presence is quiet. He is not the predator. He is something though. I am not sure what. Do I represent something to him as well? Safety, matronly, motherly me.
He is a wonderful parent. The girls love him. He is a gentle and understanding teacher. He spends time. He helps them.
He encourages me. He has faith in me. He can not express it. I need to hear it, or feel it.
I have married a mute.
Emotional flatline.
Battering a fragile trust whilst I feed a wounded ego.
20/01/09
I will start at the inside; it’s as good a place as any.
A book list. No. I will start with a sheep list.
The sheep led me to the books, so it is only right.
The sheep have given me symbols, much earlier than the present, possibly starting with Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist?
Maybe when, as a child I wanted to paint those woolly clouds pastel colours?
Every sentence is a journey isn’t it? What I have just realised is that the sheep thing started when I was rejected from my flock.
The symbol of the black sheep has been a constant for me.
It is only natural then that my interest in coloured sheep, rare breeds, and general outsider sheep has developed since I have moved to the country. It is probably no surprise either that I have a strong pull towards Wales, the hills, Dylan Thomas, and, the sheep.
I wouldn’t say that finding black sheep has become my life’s work, but they call me.
It is also worth noting that it is the fleece I collect, and I try to obtain them from their natural environments. They are also all ewes, some shearlings (1st Year’s shear) but all female.
The woman who teaches me to spin, weave, dye, & felt the wool is F. Nisbet, she is not Scottish, but it is in her blood. She is older, soft skinned and wise.
My first call came from the Shetland. Home turf Sheep. The Balwen followed. A rare breed Welsh. A lonely mountain dweller. Next a Hebridian, a rough wild beast from the Islands of home.
From there a Jacob called me. This is an interesting symbol. At first, I rejected the Jacobs. I didn’t like it. However, I stumbled upon one from Cornwall. Cornwall has always represented a place of peace and harmony, but it also has very strong earth pulls too, thus any dealing I have over my life with Cornwall has been positive. The Jacobs origins are Norse, the home of Odin, the keeper of runes. Another symbol and tool I have used to enlighten myself over time. The Ryeland followed, two in fact, one white, one grey.
My last, my present is the Manx Loughton. Not so black as Ginger.
A four horned beauty, more goat like than sheep. Wild & untamed. In fact, the very sheep from which my fleece has come are to be transported to Jersey, to Devils Hole, guided by the national trust to start a breeding programme, which will see the Manx return to freedom.
The symbols of Sheep.
The first three choices of sheep reflect a pull back & forth to Scotland, what I was, what I could be if I stayed what I would dissolve into if I returned. Love the past, embrace it and learn, but always move on. After all, the Goat must climb.
This basic and obvious lesson always seems so hard for me. My grip is so tight; perhaps it is a fear of heights?
The Jacob arrived as I searched from something else. That searching is connected with the Bible story of Jacob, although at the time, I ignored it and I will do so now, as it will be explained in more relevance when I address books.
The Ryelands were a texture thing. I was seeking softness. I was seeking the grey. Even in a black fleece, there are shades. Spiritual poverty can make everything very black and white. The fleece was teaching me to see the layers, showing me reflections. The more I allow myself to be led, the more shades they point out.
The Manx Loughton is a new vantage point. She represents tradition, old ways and as I said freedom. Wild.
In the mist of this came Maggie. My beautiful Border collie pup. She is wild. Moreover, she knows the sheep. She is a natural.
Our sheep are Shropshire’s. They have amazing wool & a rich history. They are solid, well flavoured, and homely. They are perfect for my man, they represent his spirit, and they mix well with my sheep, a perfect blend in fact.
On a loom they lay perfectly side by side, the colours compliment each other, the strength in the cloth is immense, and the quality is second to none.
When the fleece is still on the beast the story changes. You cannot tame what is inherently wild, nor can you release what is naturally tame. The fire can mix in moments of passion. Can it really produce a flock that is satisfied? We shall see.
The books began with Sara Maitland’s A book of Silence. I read the article and extract in The Guardian (weekend supplements are a very solitary pleasure for me, I have them delivered and I disappear with my coffee and read all morning, as alone as possible with my cubs) and it touched a chord.
I wondered how much of my move to the country is a wish for silence?
Where did my silence lay, more to the point, not where, but what was the noise I was running from, or into?
As I read I saw many similarities in silence with obesity, well with fat, the actually product, not the image.
I saw how the fat became a barrier. How I relied upon it to speak for me, to scream out the pain, not realising its bilingual talents, of which I was only semi fluent.
I saw fat in a different light. I saw it as part of me in a way I hadn’t before.
I felt I was under it, inside it, separate somehow.
I have always been aware that my excess weight was emotional baggage. I knew every time I compulsively ate I was stuffing down emotions I could not cope with.
I didn’t realise how much my need for silence was so I could listen to my body. I actually though I did nothing but listen!
I have sat in silence as I have been abused.
My inner life then (and now) is not reflected by my outer image. I feel I am becoming my authentic self on all levels.
To remove the pyschical layers will take time.
Sara Maitland’s experience of silence is self-imposed, and as such these are the experiences she addresses in the book (as appose to the genetic silence of deafness, or the silence of imprisonment) often relating the experiences of adventurers, such as the early climbers or lone sailors.
A lot of the book deals with silence in terms of religious experiences and this is where my curiosity was roused with the bible.
These silent experiences seem to be a way, all be it extreme, to find the inner voice of truth.
The affect silence has on creativity though is another story, and again a section of the book concentrates on art & music and the effects of silence.
Silence can also be seen as the tool to genius/madness. Either way it is a form of exaltment, an extreme right of passage, and as I said, I related it directly to my experiences of /journey within obesity.
This interested me to read what the church had to say about obesity. My interest started with a reference from a book called The Sorrow of the World, a sermon from Francis Paget the late bishop of Oxford. It begins with an essay on Accidie. Sara mentions several sources of information regarding her research; I luckily managed to track the book down.
Accidie is apparently different from sloth and is the basis of much psychoanalysis of depression. Accidie is described as the noonday demon, a symbol of depression. To suffer from Accidie is to not care, which is seen as a disease.
To succumb to sloth is to wilfully ignore tasks, to become lazy, which is a choice.
If this is the view of the church then it means that Accidie can be cured and sloth should be punished.
I wondered what category obesity was in? On the surface and to society in general obesity is caused by greed. However, we are aware that overeating is a symptom, not the cause of obesity, which is why diets don’t work and women, whatever size struggle to see food as only fuel rather than as the mother/father abandonment.
The easiest way to find out the church’s views seemed to be the bible, but the bible is thus thou and holier than I, so I had to find its words in my language, enter The Bible in Cockney – Would you Adam & Eve it?
This caused me great amusement, but under the surface the old resentments, disbeliefs and chauvinist dominance found in the bible caused me to search else were for answers pushing me forward into a more feminist approach.
I have been scared of the word feminism. I never realised I was a feminist. I am glad I have been awakened to this fact without having to wear some unflattering dungarees.
This is were Fat is a Feminist Issue comes into play. OMG read this book!
I like to think if I had read this book when I was a teenager, my life would have been easier. Rather than regretting my failing to understand my kin I am pleased that I now have greater knowledge of us which I can pass to the cubs, so that they don’t suffer so cruelly at the hands of other women and me.
Read the book, please.
From that book came a flurry of ideas, interests, and stories. Before I carry on with the book list here is a wee extract from a short story I am writing.
The theme is conflict.
I am trying to convey the compulsive eating experience, as in an actual binge.
Currently the title is 40lbs of tears.
I am trying to find the words to rewrite the phrase ‘a pound of flesh’ but I want it to be more subtle. I don’t think I am there yet.
Anyway, the story is not written yet, however I have sections that I like the descriptive of and I am hoping the rest will just kinda curl its way round them.
The Book list (in order of how I think I will read them now that Clarissa is in my hands)
The interpretation of fairy tales Marie-Louise Von Franz
Between women – love, envy &
Competition in women’s friendships Susie Orbach & Luise Eichenbaum
All the women of the Bible Edith Deen
Sea Room Adam Nicolson
Small boat – Big Sea Peter Owen Jones
The Noonday Demon – Andrew Solomon
An anatomy of depression
Cave in the snow Vicki MacKenzie
Mindfulness based Rebecca Crane
Cognitive Therapy
I will also be reading a few others, but they are easy to inner change with the above, so they will be (sometimes) light relief from the above. They are as follows
The Message – The bible remix Eugene H Peterson
The Madwomen’s Underclothes Germaine Greer
Hell have no fury- edited by Anna Holmes
Women s letters from the end
of the affair
Like the flowing river Paulo Coelho
I sit, I spin, I card , I weave. I think.
I throw pots, and tantrums.
I cry a lot. Mainly with frustration. Sometimes with emotion. Never with happiness.
I become angry like I have never known, or was not aware of before.
I become angry at the girls when they fight over nothing, when they tease each other.
I cook a lot. I study my livestock. I watch the dogs play.
I walk. I think.
I watch the sky, study the patterns of the weather.
I feel waves of loneliness overtake me.
Sometimes I think I have made a big mistake with He.
Other times I think I need more patience.
I should be happy that I feel anything but I am not.
Sometimes I drink heavily, to get through a passionless day.
I talk. No one listens. No one answers.
‘I love you mummy’ breaks the death of relationship.
I don’t know where I am. I can imagine where I want to be. I don’t know how much they actually compliment each other.
It’s that transition thing. Even re-adjusting my truth to account for not living with a bastard is hard, it is all I have even known.
In a way, a big way, I am living the dream, yet still I feel the void.
I crave intellectual stimulation and I do not receive it from outside of myself.
I watch blooming and growing with so much relish, I love to see the pride those wee girls have with their achievements, but still it does not touch me like I believe it should.
I still see everything through frosted glass.
I am 98% happy. 40% Is the girls. 15% is environment 22% is from inside 21% is from He. The missing percent is the void.
Is death he only way to fill it? Is that void the thing that separate me from the divine, like language separates us from the animals.
Will my constant searching only be sated by enlightenment, either holy or Darwinest?
I have also realised that my man is silence. His calm and solid presence is quiet. He is not the predator. He is something though. I am not sure what. Do I represent something to him as well? Safety, matronly, motherly me.
He is a wonderful parent. The girls love him. He is a gentle and understanding teacher. He spends time. He helps them.
He encourages me. He has faith in me. He can not express it. I need to hear it, or feel it.
I have married a mute.
Emotional flatline.
Battering a fragile trust whilst I feed a wounded ego.
40Lbs of Fear
I know your in there I can smell you.
Like an animal, my senses are on fire.
I am alive now and you are my prey.
I run my fingers all over you, taking in your texture, revelling in your depth.
I close my eyes and breathe you in, sweet, rich and needy.
Desperate for my touch, my tongue on your form.
You were made for me. I need you.
You own me.
I swallowed my mother and father a long time ago.
I swallowed my brother too, but he repeats on me, like onions.
I swallow my stepmother every day.
She refuses to stay down, vomiting herself all over me.
I have swallowed many men too. Some came like real butter on toasted doorstops or double cream straight from the spoon. Others were like cheap spread on a dry scone, or over cooked bacon with rind twisted and burnt.
In the end, they all went down the same way.
Tasteless and sate-less.
I never really digested them, I can here them now.
Crying, screaming, digging their fists into my spine. They speak the same words ‘eat, eat, eat’.
They eat me.
They only taught me the bitter fairy tales.
A moment on their lips, a lifetime on my hips.
A pound of flesh? Try 40.
Who is the baggage handler on this journey?
I am sure it wasn’t a self catering trip.
Searching for the one moment of silence in the feast.
I hear only the gnashing of teeth.
How will your ‘love’ go down my friend?
What part of my expansion will you claim?
Will I taste you?
Will your sugary deceit be as bitter as the others?
Always empty.
Hunger sated only by love.
Bonnie Fairbrass
Like an animal, my senses are on fire.
I am alive now and you are my prey.
I run my fingers all over you, taking in your texture, revelling in your depth.
I close my eyes and breathe you in, sweet, rich and needy.
Desperate for my touch, my tongue on your form.
You were made for me. I need you.
You own me.
I swallowed my mother and father a long time ago.
I swallowed my brother too, but he repeats on me, like onions.
I swallow my stepmother every day.
She refuses to stay down, vomiting herself all over me.
I have swallowed many men too. Some came like real butter on toasted doorstops or double cream straight from the spoon. Others were like cheap spread on a dry scone, or over cooked bacon with rind twisted and burnt.
In the end, they all went down the same way.
Tasteless and sate-less.
I never really digested them, I can here them now.
Crying, screaming, digging their fists into my spine. They speak the same words ‘eat, eat, eat’.
They eat me.
They only taught me the bitter fairy tales.
A moment on their lips, a lifetime on my hips.
A pound of flesh? Try 40.
Who is the baggage handler on this journey?
I am sure it wasn’t a self catering trip.
Searching for the one moment of silence in the feast.
I hear only the gnashing of teeth.
How will your ‘love’ go down my friend?
What part of my expansion will you claim?
Will I taste you?
Will your sugary deceit be as bitter as the others?
Always empty.
Hunger sated only by love.
Bonnie Fairbrass
Once we were ravers
I just found this article I wrote as Miss Hope Eternal. I just thought I'd share.
It is now three years old. I wrote it three months after the birth of my twin girls at which time I was beginning to show signs of post natal depression.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
It's just gone 8pm & like most single mothers i'm half cut & bored. Thank god my mobiles gone dead & I cant find the charger or i'd be in shit by the morning!
I was looking back over my hedonistic past & remembering how much I got pissed off that:
1. I lived in the party flat & I was forced to stay up forever
2. I couldnt get to my bed with ease for nearly 2yrs because the sound system took up all the quilt
3. I couldnt find my shoes because they were hidden under 3000 white label techno records
4. My phone wouldnt stop ringing from thursday to monday
5. I kept losing jobs cos I wasn't straight enough to do a days work
6. Everyone smoked my fags
7. No one believed me when I said I wanted something different/some structure
8. My boyfriend was a waster
Now, 3 years down the line & all that remains of that life is:
1. 4 brain cells
2. a CD mixer & 100 dodgy vinyl
3. A secret taste for Buckfast
4. 50 crumpled flyers I refused to roach
Now my life consists of:
1. Endless structure & routine
2. Bills that I have no outlet to ignore
3. black market fags
4. Limewire (cos you can't get a double buggy in ANY FUCKING RECORD SHOP)
5. Good Shoes that have no where or no one to walk on
6. Near romantic misses with christians & Paedophiles
If I could find a balance I would:
1. Be out right now, having it large or at least a double JD
2. Be Julie Andrews Mon - Fri, Betty Page Sat - Sun
3. Have friends / bloke that could mix responsiblity with irresponsibility
Basically I dont dance to Techno anymore & for a long time I didnt think i'd ever miss it, but right now, as the X Factor dominates my telly I'd kill for a meaningless conversation with an fresher on E & pounding basslines & the enevitable 16 hr sit.
Being a mother is one of the best things that ever happened to me, being an ex waster is the hardest transistion I've ever had to make.
Role on the mid life crisis, lifes to short to be good all the time.
You can see my old blog and photos here:
http://hopeeternal69.blogspot.com/
It is now three years old. I wrote it three months after the birth of my twin girls at which time I was beginning to show signs of post natal depression.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
It's just gone 8pm & like most single mothers i'm half cut & bored. Thank god my mobiles gone dead & I cant find the charger or i'd be in shit by the morning!
I was looking back over my hedonistic past & remembering how much I got pissed off that:
1. I lived in the party flat & I was forced to stay up forever
2. I couldnt get to my bed with ease for nearly 2yrs because the sound system took up all the quilt
3. I couldnt find my shoes because they were hidden under 3000 white label techno records
4. My phone wouldnt stop ringing from thursday to monday
5. I kept losing jobs cos I wasn't straight enough to do a days work
6. Everyone smoked my fags
7. No one believed me when I said I wanted something different/some structure
8. My boyfriend was a waster
Now, 3 years down the line & all that remains of that life is:
1. 4 brain cells
2. a CD mixer & 100 dodgy vinyl
3. A secret taste for Buckfast
4. 50 crumpled flyers I refused to roach
Now my life consists of:
1. Endless structure & routine
2. Bills that I have no outlet to ignore
3. black market fags
4. Limewire (cos you can't get a double buggy in ANY FUCKING RECORD SHOP)
5. Good Shoes that have no where or no one to walk on
6. Near romantic misses with christians & Paedophiles
If I could find a balance I would:
1. Be out right now, having it large or at least a double JD
2. Be Julie Andrews Mon - Fri, Betty Page Sat - Sun
3. Have friends / bloke that could mix responsiblity with irresponsibility
Basically I dont dance to Techno anymore & for a long time I didnt think i'd ever miss it, but right now, as the X Factor dominates my telly I'd kill for a meaningless conversation with an fresher on E & pounding basslines & the enevitable 16 hr sit.
Being a mother is one of the best things that ever happened to me, being an ex waster is the hardest transistion I've ever had to make.
Role on the mid life crisis, lifes to short to be good all the time.
You can see my old blog and photos here:
http://hopeeternal69.blogspot.com/
Wednesday 4 March 2009
Mad Donna goes Guy Bashing
Madonna and child
Madonna's new man is not only called Jesus, he is also, whisper it, 28 years younger than her. Good for her, says Hadley Freeman
Read the full article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/mar/04/madonna-relationship
Response by Bonnie Fairbrass
Madonna has another bloke. Big deal. Whoopee. Shock horror.
I see many things in this photo shoot but none of them have anything to do with Feminism and girl power.
This is simply a women’s revenge on her ex husband.
Madonna is a powerful women, she shows us this by parading this boy like a piece of meat.
The Boy is so fame hungry and young he does not have the balls to stand up to her, or obviously the intelligence.
They are competing whores. Well done.
This is the new way Madonna has choosen to chop off Guys balls.
The only place Madonna wants to be told what to do is in the bedroom and lord protect any man that thinks otherwise – like Guy.
That woman is the undoing of Guy Richie. And to think he loved her enough to put her in a film.
Do you think he didn’t know it would be a flop?
Even we know Madonna can’t act outside of the bedroom, she can only act up.
The women maybe in control, but she is also a fool.
Madonna doesn’t pretend to be a slut. She is a slut.
She does it so well because it’s her reality and we love her for it.
What Madonna can’t do completely is be a wife.
Marriage is a huge sacrifice, on both sides, and I somehow doubt Madonna has ever let herself come last.
Guy put Madonna in her place, and for a while, I guess she liked it.
The accent was a novelty, his raw English mentality (I have no doubt Guy can be a right bastard) and obviously power as a director was probably a huge turn on at first.
When the novelty wore off, when she realised that she couldn’t keep up her newfound accent, or her country wife/children’s writer image, basically she got bored.
She blamed Guy, put his failing on the table, didn’t take responsibility for her own actions, and used her status to ignore the truth.
Madonna has a commitment phobia.
She has a need to be the man.
No doubt years of being let down by men weaker than her has led her to this conclusion and who can blame her?
Not I.
But have some decorum love. Show a bit of class. You mean you can’t?
Right again Madonna, you left him behind didn’t you.
Madonna's new man is not only called Jesus, he is also, whisper it, 28 years younger than her. Good for her, says Hadley Freeman
Read the full article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/mar/04/madonna-relationship
Response by Bonnie Fairbrass
Madonna has another bloke. Big deal. Whoopee. Shock horror.
I see many things in this photo shoot but none of them have anything to do with Feminism and girl power.
This is simply a women’s revenge on her ex husband.
Madonna is a powerful women, she shows us this by parading this boy like a piece of meat.
The Boy is so fame hungry and young he does not have the balls to stand up to her, or obviously the intelligence.
They are competing whores. Well done.
This is the new way Madonna has choosen to chop off Guys balls.
The only place Madonna wants to be told what to do is in the bedroom and lord protect any man that thinks otherwise – like Guy.
That woman is the undoing of Guy Richie. And to think he loved her enough to put her in a film.
Do you think he didn’t know it would be a flop?
Even we know Madonna can’t act outside of the bedroom, she can only act up.
The women maybe in control, but she is also a fool.
Madonna doesn’t pretend to be a slut. She is a slut.
She does it so well because it’s her reality and we love her for it.
What Madonna can’t do completely is be a wife.
Marriage is a huge sacrifice, on both sides, and I somehow doubt Madonna has ever let herself come last.
Guy put Madonna in her place, and for a while, I guess she liked it.
The accent was a novelty, his raw English mentality (I have no doubt Guy can be a right bastard) and obviously power as a director was probably a huge turn on at first.
When the novelty wore off, when she realised that she couldn’t keep up her newfound accent, or her country wife/children’s writer image, basically she got bored.
She blamed Guy, put his failing on the table, didn’t take responsibility for her own actions, and used her status to ignore the truth.
Madonna has a commitment phobia.
She has a need to be the man.
No doubt years of being let down by men weaker than her has led her to this conclusion and who can blame her?
Not I.
But have some decorum love. Show a bit of class. You mean you can’t?
Right again Madonna, you left him behind didn’t you.
Book end?
Subtle little changes to humanity in the guise of advancement give me the fear.
Mostly they slip by, unnoticed until one day, bam, Wagon Wheels shrink, sailor suits are no guarantee of sexual orientation, and no one uses cash anymore.
This week my brain cells were rudely ignited by a positively encouraging review of a games console being used as a reader.
A reader is a hand held, computer like reading vessel, which has been described as ‘the future of book reading.’
Distain began with the name - ‘reader’.
It is not the reader.
I am the reader. You are the reader.
This is a machine.
Whatever its price tag and current geeky status, It is a poor, yet shiny replacement for a historical marvel.
Though I wouldn’t part with money to find out, I do wonder how far from civilization you have to be to have the time to read all of the 160 books it stores and the abilities of the batteries to last that long.
In one advertisement a hand is seen wispily caressing book jackets by authors obviously choosen for intellect & current cool status.
Luckily my love of the real deal blocked out the ‘up with the Jones’s’ selling technique, and ultimately I was disappointed by the wispy hand’s choice.
I initially thought my concerns were an age based, technology fearing, change denying hot flush of a tantrum, but the 45 messages in each of my three email addresses from my social networking and blog accounts said otherwise.
I toyed with the possibility that I was having a rose tinted nostalgia moment, but this is nothing like the pang of loss I felt on discovering Windy Miller had been burnt and discarded by his unfeeling, eBay unaware, bully boy maker.
The connotations this machine carries for writers are distressing.
I want someone to buy my book, not my cartridge.
I want them to get crumbs stuck in chapter seven and a smear of butter from their toast on page 249. How am I meant to sign a monitor screen?
I want to be published, not downloaded.
How can I be taken seriously if, whilst you read, every spelling error is rudely underlined?
Technology is ruining my career before it’s even begun.
My only hope is that the works available on readers are limited to ghost written biographies and those splashy pink covered beach type reading things.
People don’t throw away real books; they keep them, cherish them, past them on, and buy them again if they are lost.
We love books.
Can we really expect the next generation, to feel the same about a piece of plastic?
Reading is such an intimate affair. You snuggle up or cozy down with a good book. You like the way it feels in your hand, the way it smells, and the way it looks.
It is a deep rooted emotionally positive relationship.
I doubt the same level of intimacy can be gained from cold plastic, even with a faux leather lube.
They say this future reading vessel provides enough light to read by without disturbing your other half, but isn’t that disturbance part of the affair?
The gentle REM inhibiting glow of a bedside lamp reminds your other half that they lose you every night to someone else’s thoughts and dreams. Keep them on their toes!
Maybe you’re in an open book relationship, both lamps fully on, a polygamous marriage of paper lovers.
Good luck to you. You’re in your prime. Why cheapen the experience?
So many fragments of our lives are already played out on the cyber arena; do we really need to add to it?
Our children are completely at one with this type of communication, yet find it hard to speak face to face.
Our knowledge is Google enhanced whilst libraries sit dusty and forgotten by a new generation.
Whilst we strive (quite rightly) for a paper free working environment books, at least, must be spared.
Societies dumbing down of language has already lulled the senses, heightened the need for more and more sensationalist stimulation.
Too often today we are forced to nurture our children on the media breast.
This consistent portrayal of airbrushed glamour onto the lifestyles of dysfunctional and dissatisfied ‘z-lebrities’ is damaging humanity.
Children discover so much of themselves through the words and pictures found in books. The feel and smell of those first pages offers excitement and freedom.
To read alone, in silence is a right of passage. The magic of a good book never leaves you.
What have we left to pass on to our children if we replace books with monitor screens? We have already lost so many of the stories of our past because no one wrote them down and no one listened to the myth tellers.
Now we lose ourselves in a world of CGG and smooth plastic.
Our intuition has been blown apart by advertising clichés, all human emotion played out in 30 seconds to sell a car that willfully aids our destruction.
We have become fat of body and lean of mind.
A constant lack of time and space leaves us, all of us old and young, struggling to keep up with an unattainable lifestyle, removed from our sex, our bodies and our authentic self.
Technology appears more and more to be the mothers ruin for the new generation.
I don’t want to live in a Burroughs inspired age where my ‘reader’ wont let me load Demon Seed or 2001 because its detrimental to its grandparents.
I don’t want a double cartridge full of deleted chapters that weren’t good enough to make the final cut, or an interview with the author, or up coming titles by authors I may like but properly wont.
I just want to keep reading books, made of paper, sustainable, obviously.
I want my children, all children to know the magic of books too.
I get the point.
But if it ain’t broke…
Bonnie Fairbrass 25/03/09
Mostly they slip by, unnoticed until one day, bam, Wagon Wheels shrink, sailor suits are no guarantee of sexual orientation, and no one uses cash anymore.
This week my brain cells were rudely ignited by a positively encouraging review of a games console being used as a reader.
A reader is a hand held, computer like reading vessel, which has been described as ‘the future of book reading.’
Distain began with the name - ‘reader’.
It is not the reader.
I am the reader. You are the reader.
This is a machine.
Whatever its price tag and current geeky status, It is a poor, yet shiny replacement for a historical marvel.
Though I wouldn’t part with money to find out, I do wonder how far from civilization you have to be to have the time to read all of the 160 books it stores and the abilities of the batteries to last that long.
In one advertisement a hand is seen wispily caressing book jackets by authors obviously choosen for intellect & current cool status.
Luckily my love of the real deal blocked out the ‘up with the Jones’s’ selling technique, and ultimately I was disappointed by the wispy hand’s choice.
I initially thought my concerns were an age based, technology fearing, change denying hot flush of a tantrum, but the 45 messages in each of my three email addresses from my social networking and blog accounts said otherwise.
I toyed with the possibility that I was having a rose tinted nostalgia moment, but this is nothing like the pang of loss I felt on discovering Windy Miller had been burnt and discarded by his unfeeling, eBay unaware, bully boy maker.
The connotations this machine carries for writers are distressing.
I want someone to buy my book, not my cartridge.
I want them to get crumbs stuck in chapter seven and a smear of butter from their toast on page 249. How am I meant to sign a monitor screen?
I want to be published, not downloaded.
How can I be taken seriously if, whilst you read, every spelling error is rudely underlined?
Technology is ruining my career before it’s even begun.
My only hope is that the works available on readers are limited to ghost written biographies and those splashy pink covered beach type reading things.
People don’t throw away real books; they keep them, cherish them, past them on, and buy them again if they are lost.
We love books.
Can we really expect the next generation, to feel the same about a piece of plastic?
Reading is such an intimate affair. You snuggle up or cozy down with a good book. You like the way it feels in your hand, the way it smells, and the way it looks.
It is a deep rooted emotionally positive relationship.
I doubt the same level of intimacy can be gained from cold plastic, even with a faux leather lube.
They say this future reading vessel provides enough light to read by without disturbing your other half, but isn’t that disturbance part of the affair?
The gentle REM inhibiting glow of a bedside lamp reminds your other half that they lose you every night to someone else’s thoughts and dreams. Keep them on their toes!
Maybe you’re in an open book relationship, both lamps fully on, a polygamous marriage of paper lovers.
Good luck to you. You’re in your prime. Why cheapen the experience?
So many fragments of our lives are already played out on the cyber arena; do we really need to add to it?
Our children are completely at one with this type of communication, yet find it hard to speak face to face.
Our knowledge is Google enhanced whilst libraries sit dusty and forgotten by a new generation.
Whilst we strive (quite rightly) for a paper free working environment books, at least, must be spared.
Societies dumbing down of language has already lulled the senses, heightened the need for more and more sensationalist stimulation.
Too often today we are forced to nurture our children on the media breast.
This consistent portrayal of airbrushed glamour onto the lifestyles of dysfunctional and dissatisfied ‘z-lebrities’ is damaging humanity.
Children discover so much of themselves through the words and pictures found in books. The feel and smell of those first pages offers excitement and freedom.
To read alone, in silence is a right of passage. The magic of a good book never leaves you.
What have we left to pass on to our children if we replace books with monitor screens? We have already lost so many of the stories of our past because no one wrote them down and no one listened to the myth tellers.
Now we lose ourselves in a world of CGG and smooth plastic.
Our intuition has been blown apart by advertising clichés, all human emotion played out in 30 seconds to sell a car that willfully aids our destruction.
We have become fat of body and lean of mind.
A constant lack of time and space leaves us, all of us old and young, struggling to keep up with an unattainable lifestyle, removed from our sex, our bodies and our authentic self.
Technology appears more and more to be the mothers ruin for the new generation.
I don’t want to live in a Burroughs inspired age where my ‘reader’ wont let me load Demon Seed or 2001 because its detrimental to its grandparents.
I don’t want a double cartridge full of deleted chapters that weren’t good enough to make the final cut, or an interview with the author, or up coming titles by authors I may like but properly wont.
I just want to keep reading books, made of paper, sustainable, obviously.
I want my children, all children to know the magic of books too.
I get the point.
But if it ain’t broke…
Bonnie Fairbrass 25/03/09
Females Comedians
Beaten to the punchline
Guardian Monday 2nd March 2009
Germaine Greer does not think men are the funnier sex. But they are better at banter, innuendo and clowning. So what's holding women back?
Article can be read in full here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/mar/02/germaine-greer-comedy-women
Response by Bonnie Fairbrass
I have worked as a female stand up. I have won acclaim and respect for my jokes.
I have also been stopped in my tracks by other females.
According to one female promoter, a lady does not tell the sort of jokes I tell. I agree. What is more, I am proud of it.
Mostly, to the untrained eye, female comedians are divided into two groups.
The lesbians and the fat girls.
Either way they are not groups that other women will openly admit to belonging in real life, let alone in a terrifying comedy club situation.
Stand up is a scary thing. Those first five minutes seem so much longer.
To put yourself through that level of scrutiny shows a lack of self-respect.
Only a warped individual would put themselves in such a position.
That is why women stand up’s are already in someway outsiders.
As such, them must be stopped at all costs.
Hell have no fury like a women scorned with a microphone., especially one that has phallic overtones, more so when the target of the joke is, well, everyone.
Listen carefully to a set. It is easier to spot in an amateur stand up, male or female.
There is a definite period of self-depreciating material that is just too detrimental to be funny and comes across as just mental.
Women are unfortunately more prone to this phenomenon.
Women are so used to putting themselves down, dumbing themselves down that they do it without thinking.
Listen closely to a woman’s routine. There will be a great gag, usually something personal and related to image (just like men do) and it goes well, but it is followed up by a plain negative statement about the artist and instantly the previous material loses credibility.
You become the lesbian or fat bird the audience first judged you to be.
Sometimes the comedian knows this fatal moment has happened and the rest of the material is delivered in a spew of professionalism, whilst others crumble into their own insecurities and are never seen again.
Men rarely laugh at themselves, they laugh at other men, which for women is the same thing, after all their all bastards’ right?
They address themselves in the third person. The alpha is on stage and the pack laugh obediently.
This changes when the Alpha is a gay man. Then the loyalty is divided, in much the same way it is for female comics.
For a female, stand up is a tool to be heard, oddly to be taken seriously.
It takes a certain amount of self-loathing and genius to pull of a joke about child abuse.
More to the point it means letting the audience know that you are the abused child you speak of.
That sort of revelation in public, for laughs is a heavy thing and one that I found divided the room.
The same goes for anal sex, eating disorders, & dysfunctional relationships.
Other women, less secure woman, of whom there are many, do not want these truths revealed, especially not when they have been working so hard to Stepford it up and hide the gin bottles.
Every break I received on the comedy circuit was given to me by men. Men appreciated my balls.
Not all women appreciated my honesty.
I never did it for them though. It wasn’t about sisterhood, it was about me. It was therapy. If my words and my life events touched others, then that is a bonus. I didn’t expect other woman’s reactions to touch me so deeply.
I will never forget my first gig. It was the biggest test of all. I was in a community hall in Glasgow on a none to pretty scheme.
I had a very strong joke about my own sexual abuse, a joke that worked for two reasons. Firstly, it turned the joke on the abuser and released the victim and secondly it was followed by a lighter, middle of the road gag.
As I went back stage I noticed two older women joining the audience, and I thought I was done for.
I thought, these women will not understand this joke. I will be hounded, hated, burned at the stake.
To my amazement that joke got the biggest laugh of the night.
At the end of the gig, the same women came up to me and congratulated me on my set and I explained how worried I had been about their reactions to the joke.
They could not believe it. They said how refreshing it was to hear a woman speak so openly about something so painful.
The other amazing thing was a young women also approached me, kissed me on the cheek, and said Thank you. It was the reaction that only another abused child could have.
Even now, that brings a lump to my throat.
I thought then, as I do now, that is what female comedy has the power to achieve. To remove scars.
Ironically the same set saw me banned from every gig with an all women comedy outfit for being needlessly crude. It did wonders for my reputation. Just not with women on the scene i.e. those that can get you the jobs.
Men do what is easiest. Stupidity comes naturally to them. As does logic. The combination can make for a killer joke.
Unfortunately, women do what comes naturally for them too. To hide their true feelings.
Not from men, but from other woman, and that is the reason less women make it.
Shame on us.
Guardian Monday 2nd March 2009
Germaine Greer does not think men are the funnier sex. But they are better at banter, innuendo and clowning. So what's holding women back?
Article can be read in full here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/mar/02/germaine-greer-comedy-women
Response by Bonnie Fairbrass
I have worked as a female stand up. I have won acclaim and respect for my jokes.
I have also been stopped in my tracks by other females.
According to one female promoter, a lady does not tell the sort of jokes I tell. I agree. What is more, I am proud of it.
Mostly, to the untrained eye, female comedians are divided into two groups.
The lesbians and the fat girls.
Either way they are not groups that other women will openly admit to belonging in real life, let alone in a terrifying comedy club situation.
Stand up is a scary thing. Those first five minutes seem so much longer.
To put yourself through that level of scrutiny shows a lack of self-respect.
Only a warped individual would put themselves in such a position.
That is why women stand up’s are already in someway outsiders.
As such, them must be stopped at all costs.
Hell have no fury like a women scorned with a microphone., especially one that has phallic overtones, more so when the target of the joke is, well, everyone.
Listen carefully to a set. It is easier to spot in an amateur stand up, male or female.
There is a definite period of self-depreciating material that is just too detrimental to be funny and comes across as just mental.
Women are unfortunately more prone to this phenomenon.
Women are so used to putting themselves down, dumbing themselves down that they do it without thinking.
Listen closely to a woman’s routine. There will be a great gag, usually something personal and related to image (just like men do) and it goes well, but it is followed up by a plain negative statement about the artist and instantly the previous material loses credibility.
You become the lesbian or fat bird the audience first judged you to be.
Sometimes the comedian knows this fatal moment has happened and the rest of the material is delivered in a spew of professionalism, whilst others crumble into their own insecurities and are never seen again.
Men rarely laugh at themselves, they laugh at other men, which for women is the same thing, after all their all bastards’ right?
They address themselves in the third person. The alpha is on stage and the pack laugh obediently.
This changes when the Alpha is a gay man. Then the loyalty is divided, in much the same way it is for female comics.
For a female, stand up is a tool to be heard, oddly to be taken seriously.
It takes a certain amount of self-loathing and genius to pull of a joke about child abuse.
More to the point it means letting the audience know that you are the abused child you speak of.
That sort of revelation in public, for laughs is a heavy thing and one that I found divided the room.
The same goes for anal sex, eating disorders, & dysfunctional relationships.
Other women, less secure woman, of whom there are many, do not want these truths revealed, especially not when they have been working so hard to Stepford it up and hide the gin bottles.
Every break I received on the comedy circuit was given to me by men. Men appreciated my balls.
Not all women appreciated my honesty.
I never did it for them though. It wasn’t about sisterhood, it was about me. It was therapy. If my words and my life events touched others, then that is a bonus. I didn’t expect other woman’s reactions to touch me so deeply.
I will never forget my first gig. It was the biggest test of all. I was in a community hall in Glasgow on a none to pretty scheme.
I had a very strong joke about my own sexual abuse, a joke that worked for two reasons. Firstly, it turned the joke on the abuser and released the victim and secondly it was followed by a lighter, middle of the road gag.
As I went back stage I noticed two older women joining the audience, and I thought I was done for.
I thought, these women will not understand this joke. I will be hounded, hated, burned at the stake.
To my amazement that joke got the biggest laugh of the night.
At the end of the gig, the same women came up to me and congratulated me on my set and I explained how worried I had been about their reactions to the joke.
They could not believe it. They said how refreshing it was to hear a woman speak so openly about something so painful.
The other amazing thing was a young women also approached me, kissed me on the cheek, and said Thank you. It was the reaction that only another abused child could have.
Even now, that brings a lump to my throat.
I thought then, as I do now, that is what female comedy has the power to achieve. To remove scars.
Ironically the same set saw me banned from every gig with an all women comedy outfit for being needlessly crude. It did wonders for my reputation. Just not with women on the scene i.e. those that can get you the jobs.
Men do what is easiest. Stupidity comes naturally to them. As does logic. The combination can make for a killer joke.
Unfortunately, women do what comes naturally for them too. To hide their true feelings.
Not from men, but from other woman, and that is the reason less women make it.
Shame on us.
Tuesday 3 March 2009
What, Why, When
What, Why, When
After several outing into the world of comedy, media & catering I have decided to come clean.
I am Bonnie Fairbrass, previously known as Hope Eternal, comedian, DJ, radio Host & writer.
I am ready, finally to be me.
This is mainly due to name changes confusing perspective employers and make you seem shifty.
On this blog you will find various rants and musings at various things at various times.
Officially: A rant is a speech or text that does not present a well-researched and calm argument.
Unofficially: A rant is a speech or text that allows the speaker or writer the chance to express their views on subject matter that has stirred strong emotional feelings.
These emotions are scrutinised from every angle to eliminate the authors own failings, hang-ups and ego before being presented to the general public as one persons view of another persons stupidity, ignorance or egomania. And breath.
I fully embrace constructive criticism of my work, however please remember if you heckle for the sake of it, I may turn green, rip my purple slacks and whip your sorry ass.
Its just an opinion. Don't sweat the small stuff.
Please do not reproduce any of my work without asking. Stealing other peoples words is the lowest of the low. A quote is for life, not just for Christmas. Ask me. I am not unreasonable. Actually I am quite likable.
Please be aware that:
The opinions of those held by others via the links on this blog are not reflective of this blog or my own opinions, unless stated.
I am perfectly capable of speaking for myself so do not assume otherwise.
Links have been included because they hold some interest or relevance to my own ranting.
This blog will more than likely contain naughty words, sexual content and adult humour. Be warned.
Whilst I am not a pro drug person, I am not an anti drug person either.
Honesty is the best policy.
I am Bonnie, not Frank. Don't confuse us.
Finally, if you like it, come back, bring ya pals, hang about, make some noise, hands in the air, touch the sky.
And all that Jazz.
That is all I have to say about that
(Forest Gump)
:)
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