Sprung

Well… I think ‘It’ has finally happened. Maybe… Perhaps… Oh, Please… whisper it who dares but in this small corner of the planet …spring has arrived.

Though I had my suspicions... (you all know the signs, the long since veiled yellow globe is hanging slightly higher in sky of late - meaning I can once again put off cleaning the inside of car windscreen till next winter - and green shoots have now sluggishly emerged from their beds like a teenager before Sunday lunch)…

The arrival of Spring was confirmed for me by the sound of the old faithful lawnmower hacking and cursing into life.

The lawnmower was hacking. The Better Half was doing the cursing. In times gone by it would have been me out there taking care of the large green blobs in the garden – lawns, hedges - but times roll on and so does job description. I am now Officer of Morale and Prettifying and he is in charge of everything else. All that jolly useful stuff in life that I secretly hope my kids will suck in to their brains from either him or the ether, coz they won’t be getting it from me… As prettifying also covers the actual plants in the garden I’m pouring over the RHS handbook hoping some of it goes in.

Yet again I wish I could rewind time to when my mother was trying to teach me the difference between a newly sprouted rare, expensive and delicate plant or a weed. There are many things I would tell my younger self.. a lot of which would contain the words… “it’s just not a good look”.. but on the whole I would take the opportunity to smack me round the back of the head and scream “Pay Attention ya dummy, she’s giving ya pearls!”

Ah, Spring…. full of new possibilities and eternal hope. Hope that the antiquated gardening equipment will survive another season. The lawnmower is hanging on in there. For years it has only had to cope with the edges the ride-on mower couldn't reach. But now it is facing a season of double bubble, as our ride-on is terminal. It is getting beyond repair and embarrassing the snails who can overtake it.

The Better Half was hoping to replace it with the mother of all garden tractors. So with a spring in his step he took me to the John Deere showroom. There, in the corner, hulked a green and yellow behemoth large enough to take a rear mounted swing arm with finger flail to attack the hedges with. A snip at 16 grand. The Better Half was in love. I was in shock, wondering where we would site the new barn needed to house the thing. Luckily common sense and the advice of the salesman, God bless him, prevailed. The BH was steered in the direction of a more conventional ride on that even I could manage, but not before asking if this meant he could now get a quad bike? Deary, deary me…

I’ve only myself to blame, he is a toy boy after all and being under 35 still in adolescence, as opposed to having flipped overnight into mid life crisis. The difference being I am more likely to come home to find a JCB sitting on the drive than I am a low slung sports car complete with low slung floozy – if that ever happens I hope the floozy knows how to garden, we’ll be quids in!

All of the Better Half’s horticultural enthusiasm stems from last year’s foray into ‘grow your own’. Success with beans and carrots has seen us transformed into Tom and Barbara Good. Which over the last few weeks has meant building a huge raised bed and repairing the greenhouse. (The latter coming as a bit of a shock to the cats used to diving through the broken panes to escape the Gargantuan Puppy - Seeing kitty rebound off the newly installed glass is a memory I shall guiltily treasure.) It also means all windowsills are now covered in seed trays and shouts of “It’s sprouted” can often be heard.

To make up for the lack of quad bike I have bought the BH a Japanese Gardening Trowel or Hori Hori knife. If Crocodile Dundee was to emerge from the herbaceous border this would be what he was holding when he said “Now that’s a trowel.” Armed with this new commando trowel BH has set about the bramble roots with fresh faced joy.

I’ve have been fresh faced myself of late. Spring means it’s time to update Spotlight, the actors' directory. All over the land thesps are having new photos taken in time for the deadline. I am no exception. Every few years one goes through the ritual to let casting directors know what they’d be getting. Of course, I have another reason for new photos – I have a new agent, and a new voice agent to boot.

All of the above, including new agent courtships, takes time. So forgive my absence from the blog of late but life got in the way…

It has a habit of doing that and if you go outside and inhale amidst the sea of daffodils you can smell it in the air…. Hold on tight, we’re going round again.

Ode To The Better

Shall I compare thee to a Toyota?

Thou art as wild and as unstoppable.

The pedal of thy love is stuck down fast

To the eternal floor mat of my heart.

I love thy form that never leaves my side.

(So I can’t buy a Valentine’s Day card

Nay, not even when we stop for petrol.)

Methinks our love shall never be recalled,

For when thy parts and warranty have run

There shall be no trade in, no part exchange.

Thou repairs me, thou sorts out all my rust

And will, until I crumble into dust.

So long as wheels can turn, or this downloads,

So long I hope to see you on the roads.

Morlock Tugging

During the run up to my wedding the reception hotel rang to inform that Everton FC had booked out all the remaining non wedding guest rooms.

The thought of sharing one’s nuptials with a squad of premiership footballers did raise the eyebrow of apprehension. But, as it turned out, they were less of a disturbance than a narcolepsy convention. Filing off the team bus, they were chaperoned to their rooms by the trainers and never heard from again. Unlike said trainers who, once their wards were safely tucked up, charmingly joined in the revelries with the rest of the adults until the wee hours.

As we departed the next day, we found the team had tied a pair of Bride and Groom boxing gloves to our car. Bless. And, in view of the week’s hottest story, how apt.

They are a strange breed, footballers. Taken from the herd while young, their God given talent see them apprenticed to a club where a Mother Manager Superior rules any postulants and novices without question. Living such cloistered lives it is hardly surprising they gain the same reputation as ex convent girls when finally let off the leash to get married.

I met one once. I was trapped in a location hotel by snow; the hotel was also the home of that city’s most recent signing. He remains the most desperately bored person I have ever met outside of the cast of ‘The Mousetrap’

Their huge salaries mean they do not have the same worries as the rest of us hunter-gatherers and can fill their free hours with pleasure alone, so it is not particularly newsworthy that one has been caught with his pants down… it would be news if they could find one with them up.

As the pants down mentality seems to be endemic, why Mr. Terry’s suitability as a role model has been called into question is beyond me. The saucy 2009 Dad of the Year would appear to be perfectly suited to the job. He’s meant to score, isn’t he? And why should there be such a furore over team-mates sharing? After all, they are happy to share a bath.

The reports of the ex captain’s financial dealings have also seen squawking over the honesty of the game. If they wanted to be honest why not exchange panties instead of pennants before kick off, and tattoo barcodes instead of loved ones, it would be so much easier when selling themselves to the highest bidder.

But what is to be done? Bromide in the Lucozade? Reverse engineered ‘gay cure therapy’? Ah.. perhaps not. They wouldn’t be caught dead in the away kit. No, that’s as daft as saying ‘don’t pay them so much.’

Then there is the question of why?

‘Why did he do it?’ - Obvious really.

‘Why did she do it?’ - Probably obvious, but I expect to hear reports that she is, in fact, in the pay of world cup rivals who are using new tactics to unman the national side.

‘Why has it been reported so avidly?’ - Well it’s a World Cup year. So that means digging out as many early excuses as possible for when our 110%ers come home defeated after the traditional penalty shoot out. Besides, Wag reporting was very much in vogue at the last shindig, it sells, so it is only to be expected that journalists should seek to plough such a well-sowed furrow.

And finally ‘Why should we care?’ It is just a game about kicking a bag of wind – and so is football.

Normal Service Resumed

Ahh… The Holidays are now but a faded memory; they melted with the snow – the only proof they were here the continuing presence of presents I haven’t found a home for yet.

I am back working on Harry’s biography. Spending any free hours trawling through memories and press cuttings. Which explains my absence from the blog and why I’m back. One of the cuttings made me pause for thought…

In 1965 the fourth series of Steptoe went to the top of the TV ratings. Milton Shulman, the Evening Standard’s drama critic, wrote:

‘The unbelievable had happened. Monday’s episode of Coronation Street had not only been dislodged from its position as one of the most popular programmes of the week, but it was nowhere to be found in the Top Twenty…Could this mean that the TV soap opera, with its continuing characters forever blowing bubbles of petty, domestic strife has finally exhausted the patience and tolerance of its followers. One can only fervently hope so. Of course the giant killers who have brought about this much needed revelation of what the British public actually prefers in TV – as opposed to what they watch out of sheer inertia – are those unique rag-and-bone men, Steptoe and Son…. Just why the erratic doings of a dirty old man and his uneducated son should make the nation catch its breath with laughter is something that will long be argued about by analysts of humour. Almost devoid of the conventional gags and slapstick situations that dominate most TV comedy, these scripts by Galton and Simpson derive their appeal out of a meticulously observed and naturally plotted observation of character. Since the parent – child relationship is one that we all suffer or enjoy by turns, we can get some vicarious delight watching the alternating spasms of love-hate that grip 38-year-old Harold Steptoe as he tries to assert his independence of his wheedling, possessive, cunning crocodile of a father….It is indeed this endearing reflection of life – true enough to make us sigh as well as laugh – that, I believe, accounts for Steptoe’s phenomenal hold on the affection of the nation. And of course, the warm, sure, uninhibited, outrageous comic performances of Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell.’

It made me wonder what Milt would have made of today’s inertia offerings. If he was already cracking under the strain of Corrie in ’65, in his later years I expect his family kept him well away from Big Brother – it could have hastened his end.

And although, in his time, Harry tackled every aspect of show business from Shakespeare to summer season (ok, he wouldn’t have done Holiday on Ice or water ballet), he would have drawn the line at Celebrity/reality shows.

That is not to say he couldn’t have lasted the course. During the war he jumped ship in Australia and worked in the red light district before handing himself in to serve his time in clink, all excellent training for dealing with any cage fighter or closure seeking pneumatic model.

But as Harry repeatedly turned down the genteel ‘This is Your Life’ for fear of intrusion into his privacy, I can’t see him wilfully taking part in the reality genre. I can see him running for the hills in the opposite direction.

Mind you I’m in no place to comment on current reality television, I would have to actually watch it to earn that right. Visiting memory lane means that I rarely have time to watch any television and BB would not be at the top of the list.

Last weekend I did surface long enough to see Murray, the paranoid android, crack a smile in his defeat to Federer at the Australian Open; see enough of the premiership football to notice that Sky was showing matches in 3D (which makes me fear the return of the Long Ball will be encouraged as it would prove a better spectacle for the medium) and catch Ski Sunday’s highlights from Schladming. (Not long now before we see Chemmy Alcott going in the Olympics – though thanks to the British Ski and Snowboard Federation being on the skids, the collection box strapped to her ski poles may slow her down a bit.)

Ah…All that gives the erroneous impression that for me, as for so many others, sport is a religion. I have to say that only the tennis was my choice. The better half chose the football - the skiing was mutual.

Besides, most of the time the telly is tuned to the kids channels. Funnily enough sport is the one thing the sprogs will happily tolerate in lieu of Mickey Mouse, maybe because it is the ultimate in reality television.

Hmmm… Now if one could combine reality TV, sports and religion into one programme you could have a winner. Throw in some well built girls and it could go top of the ratings.

We present “Big Sister” –

Follow rugby playing nuns, The Sisters of Perpetual Conversion, as they take a break from ministering to fallen Hookers to compete for a professional contract with top Premiership team the Saints.

To vote for Sister Agnes call 0870 000 001

For Sister Derrick call……

You wait; it’ll be TV gold.

White Out

MONDAY

One day left until school starts. Spend day sewing name labels into bigger uniform. Tomorrow, will finally be able to get back to work on book. Tomorrow, will no longer be Officer of Morale. Tomorrow, will not have phone call/ shower/ pee interrupted.

TUESDAY

School. Hooray. Switch on comp - power cut.

Local overhead line fault, will fix soon. Watched Electricity Company’s helicopter buzz low over house looking for ‘soon fixed’ local overhead line fault.

Used to power cuts out in sticks. Once off for three days over Christmas with all electric cooker and open fire that smoked. If wind in wrong direction, smoke so bad had to keep all doors and windows open, pointless really.

That Christmas cooked turkey in one neighbour’s oven and borrowed small generator from another. Elderly relatives had to choose between cup of tea or telly – Eastenders won.

Now have LPG cooker and wood burning stove. Feel very smug making cup of tea as helicopter buzzes off.

Phone goes – school’s got power cut too - come pick up sprog. After agreeing realise should have said out of county.

Get sprog. During lunch power comes back on.

Heavy snow is predicted so go to churchyard a day early to swap out Christmas wreaths and flowers.

WEDNESDAY

It has dumped in the night. School is closed. No. 1 daughter celebrates.

Build snowman, middle section of snowman too large – looks pregnant.

Pack away decorations. Missing some baubles. Know I will find them now boxes back in attic.

Had new cordless pc keyboard and mouse from better half for Christmas. He rigs them up. New keyboard has many, many new function buttons encased in plastic. Decide to leave plastic on till I know what they are. Mouse excessively fast with intermittent double click. I cannot control it. New mouse is possessed. Wonder if I should call Vatican for exorcist.

THURSDAY

Pregnant snowman starting to lean back and to the left. Have christened him Oliver Stone. Better half straightens Oliver then shows me how to reconfigure new possessed mouse – cancel call to Vatican having been assured new settings will only take moments to get used to. Plastic still on new function buttons. Should read manual.

No.1 demanding to go sledging, oblige. No. 2 non-committal. Gargantuan puppy and better half straining at leash. Better half stands on sled to surf downhill. Face plants and is attacked by gargantuan puppy.

Decide not to inform better half he overcompensated on Oliver, the pregnant snowman. Oliver now starting to lean forward dramatically. Looks like he has ignored Government pregnant safety warnings and has been at the gin.

FRIDAY

More snow.

School still closed. No.1 has had 2hrs education this week. No doubt too far behind now to ever catch up. Imagine her failing all future exams, no place at college, no university. Will only be able to get job over salting fries or with investment bank.

News says entire country shut. All schools closed – ha! She’s back in the game.

Better half takes clapped out old Land Rover to shops to get food for friends coming with their 2 girls for much anticipated but now doubtful sleepover.

News has also reported dairy farmers having to pour away milk – resulting in immediate ‘panic buying’. Shelves empty. Those with milk now ‘smug buying’ last of bread.

Go sledging again. Takes 25 minutes to get them wrapped up and 15 minutes to get to top of hill

No.2 has to be dragged up. We last 10 minutes. Gargantuan Puppy has to be dragged back.

Mouse still possessed. Plastic still on. Manual lost but find missing baubles.

SATURDAY

Friends not coming. Can’t get car out of road. During phone call can hear wailing from their disappointed girls in background, will soon be matched by No. 1. Get in clapped out old Land Rover and go to them. Roads whited out.

Keep wary eye on fat snow falling outside windows as now contented sprogs eye up friends Christmas toys, open a book on how long No. 1 will wait before asking for duplicates. No. 2 not concerned. Too busy throwing herself down their stairs.

During blizzard, go for walk round nearby park. Watch local youfs impressing each other by walking out on frozen pond. While not wishing to be extra in remake of ‘Omen II’, part of me wants to see them up to groin in icy water. Snow getting worse – decide to go home to guarantee of own toothbrush and clean pants.

Mouse still possessed. Better half puts back old mouse with minimal pouting.

Oliver the pregnant snowman is now kowtowing to setting sun.

SUNDAY

News informs 8 inches of snow expected.

School informs closed again tomorrow.

I am just going outside and may be sometime.

Where did that decade go?

It only seems five minutes since the millennium was going to take out every computer on the planet…

Ten years ago I was on a beach in Lanzarote - toasting in 2000 by the glow of a burning surfboard… hang ten dudes.

Not my most memorable New Year - that goes to the time I was doing ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ in the West End, Darlings. Screaming Happy New Year to the rest of the cast I legged it for the station and caught the last train home. As midnight chimed, the British Rail guard came over the tannoy and intoned (in a voice that would have you dialling the Samaritans) “Myself and Derek the driver would like to wish both of our passengers a very happy new year…so…. er…. Happy New Year then…the next station stop is Tonbridge. Tonbridge is the next stop… Thank you.”

Oh the glamour…

Fast forwarding on warp speed, last night I said goodbye to the noughties and hello to the teenies watching Big Ben on tv. As fireworks lit up the London Eye the gargantuan puppy went barking mad at the sound of the more localised explosions. The better half rugby tackled her and I went to check on the sprogs. They had slept through it. Thankfully.

The kids are finally reaching the end of the post Christmas comedown. Not made any easier by the relatives departure. As the in-laws left the building, Christmas was truly over, leaving just piles of bed linen and empty toy packaging to remember it by.

I hate toy packaging.

Not because it overflows our Council micro bin – Living in the country we don’t have that problem. We have a bonfire. Well it used to be, thanks to the wet weather it is starting to resemble more of a compost heap. If it ever dries out I’m wondering if we should actually put a match to it. Any trapped methane could see it explode flatulently over the Sussex Weald. An extremely embarrassing way to check out, one that would no doubt make it into the ‘…and finally…’ section of the local tv news – which is not how I would wish to be remembered.

No, I hate toy packaging because on the one day of the year when you might just get away with a bit of a lie-in, safe in the knowledge your kids are too busy ripping apart packages left by Santa to bother you, they have to come in and blast on the light so they can get you to get the damn toy out of the box. An operation that needs scissors, Stanley knife, pliers, Phillips screwdriver, batteries and the ability to focus - all in short supply in the pre dawn Christmas morning after 4 hours kip.

It never used to be like this. Once upon a time Santa’s elves would make the toys easily accessible to all but the permanently bewildered… That was before the incident at the grotto.

It all started one Christmas morning some years ago. While Santa was luckily enjoying a well deserved lie in, one of the elves took Rudolph and the sleigh for a joy ride and got done for speeding by a belligerent copper who had drawn the short ‘on duty’ straw.

Santa had to pay a fine for having a modified reindeer and the elf was sent on a speed awareness course where he met a union shop steward who insisted upon coming back to the grotto to check out the elf’s working conditions. While the union rep agreed that Santa’s ability to bend the space time continuum did get around going over the 48 hr week, he would only leave if Santa installed CCTV so that random checks could be made on the elf tea breaks.

When the man came to install the cameras he was given the wrong ladder - a candy cane one. He fell, badly injuring his shoulder. At first he was frightened of making a claim but Lawyers for Yule got him compensation and made sure that Santa employed a safety officer - Elf Ensafety. The power went to Ensafety’s head and he is now quite, quite mad.

By Christmas morning, when he gets back from the round, so is Santa. Which is why these days he sees the New Year in on Easter Island, it being the last place Elf Ensafety, and irate parents sick of packaging, would think to look for him.

But, after a break, Santa will be back for more of the magic and so will we. After all, it’s the time of year to celebrate birth and like any birth; the pain of it soon fades leaving only the joy. In 9 months time we’ll start to think that doing it again would be a really good idea, conveniently erasing all memories of sleepless nights and dirty washing.

Happy New Year - There are only 358 days to go till Christmas.

Have a Very Merry...

Twas the week before Christmas and all through the house

Every creature was stirring, well mostly the spouse.
The place had been hoovered and polished with care,
All ready for in-laws who soon would be there.

The children were bouncing around on their beds,
While sugar-plums sent them quite out of their heads.
The better half calmed them, while I had a flap,
Then we went to the shops, though we needed a nap

We de-iced the car, as the kids gave a mutter,
We prayed to the engine – it caught with a splutter.
Away to the market we flew like a flash
To wrestle the crowds for the last trolley dash

The sun o’er the breast of the new fallen snow
Shone straight in our eyes with a dazzling glow.
As we queued for the car park we needed a beer
But a space opened up and we all gave a cheer.

So the food for the courses was crossed off the list
By the end of it all we were feeling quite … annoyed
And I told No. 1, as her sister was sick,
“Yes, I’ve got a mince pie to leave out for St. Nick.

Got pudding, got crackers, got turkey and stuffing.”
We inched down the aisles, with much huffing and puffing,
To the front of the shop and the slow checkout crawl.
Pay cash away, cash away, cash away all.

As wet leaves that stick in the gutter-caught sludge,
We waited in traffic that just wouldn’t budge.
Once clear of the jams, home we finally flew
With a boot full of food and some drinky poos too.

And that afternoon, making good on our pledge,
We walked up the hill, with our girls, for a sledge.
They flew like the wind, over white frozen ground
And the dog had a turn, leaping on with a bound.


Snow clung to her fur from her head to her paws
And it flew from the snowballs she caught in her jaws.
Now home again, home again, now deck the halls
And hang up more lights and some bright shiny balls.

“You kids were a help, yes, you made it look merry,
Now do me a favour and go watch the telly.
I’ll be back in a sec, I’m just popping outside
For I’ve still more to do for this festive yuletide.”

I’ve pricked all my fingers while hanging the wreath
So I’m tying a knot with my chattering teeth.
I’m shivering and shaking; my legs are like jelly,
It must be the snow seeping into my welly.

I must wrap the pressies - that’s no bed of flowers

You think it takes minutes – it always takes hours.
The unfinished jobs now crowd into my head
And the thought of them all really fills me with dread.

When I think of the cost and the time and the work,
I must admit part of me feels like a jerk
And though I may be at the end of my wick
All of it’s worth it… for dear old St. Nick.

As I crawl into bed on the eve of the day
I know I’ll be listening for sounds of his sleigh
And I’ll smile like a child as I turn out the light.
“Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight.”