Has it really been 3 years?

well yes, Obviously. Wow. That shocked me too. I haven't stopped ranting in this time or writing, just not on here. Why? Erm, I don't know, maybe thought no one was listening and then mostly I forgot my password and the email address I used, but ta-dar, my memory has returned. Also been held up by those fickle things, Love, loss, regret and children. I am pretty sure that in those three years I have done something constructive but I can't put my finger on it. Maybe now is the time to pick up the pace again and actually share some more musings and rantings. Thank you to the folk who commented on my I love lucy-Not post. Hasn't she gotten even worse since she breed with Tory boy? blurh. I bet she calls it Tax as a pet name. Have avoided most TV in the last three years, Black Mirror being the exception. Charlie Brooker is still my hero, in a none worship sucky up kind of way, I love him he is brilliant and I would have his mind babies. At this stage in my life I have decided to finally dedicate all my time to writing. I believe this roughly translated as self employed not earning. Maybe the new BBC tool to find out 'what class are you?' will tell me. I really have been writing you know. I just sent a script to the BBC for rejection, let you know when its rejected. Last year I finished a radio play for review by the BBC which of course they rejected. So far this year I have finished my first children's book which is at presented being pulled apart by and editor friend before being rejected! I have a few stories on the go at the moment all pulsing and forming in the underbelly of my soul waiting to see the light of day, which they will be as this post,long overdue. I will continue to rant, I will be better to you, give you more attention, you deserve it and I have a lot of drivel to say. Rant back because after all communicating a view is what its all about.

Back once again for the renagade master

Alright strangers.
Have be on another tip for a while, you know the one, happiness yeah? That's prozac to you'se :)
Actually I've been working, bring up kids, sheep whispering and visiting Wales, but I won't bore you with niceness.
I will so be ranting again soon, promise
Bonnie
x

Big Words

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.