Kiss code

Although the kiss has long been recognised as a sign of affection, in our house it serves a dual function in that the Boy Wonder and I use it to test whether the other is awake. If we aren't looking at each other, don't want to wake the other or just want to test whether our suspicions are correct, we will blow a little kiss to see if it is reciprocated. Admittedly I do this much more than the Boy Wonder as he is usually the first to go to sleep, but it has become a kind of recognised water testing device between the two of us that I find strangely comforting.

Jackson Pollock

Having spent a fun few minutes playing with this I have realised that one of the hardest things about this style of art is knowing when to stop. Perhaps that's why he's hailed as a genius whilst I'm merely a paint splattering idiot who inevitably ends up with a rather upsetting mess.

Giving everyone else the finger

On Sunday night, in a fit of pointless pernicketyness, I decided I couldn't bear to look at the unfastened catch on the Boy Wonder's guitar case, so I did it up myself. Instead of moving it to a more accessible position, I went rogue and approached it left handed as it lay propped on a stool, the result being that I have what would have been a blood blister, had I not managed to actually puncture the skin, in the middle of the fingertip on my left middle finger. It's one of those injuries which, whilst hardly likely to be fatal, is a lot more painful than you would expect, largely because I am so used to not having a flap of bruised skin there that I just use that part of my finger willy nilly with nary a thought to the consequences.

Another unfortunate consequence is that in my efforts to avoid further damaging said finger, I am conducting all my daily business (that's not a euphemism - I am technically doing business!) with my middle finger cocked at a jaunty angle, giving the impression that I am flipping the world a rather feeble and half hearted bird, which of course is usually more of a mental state than a physical one. Combined with my icky ring finger on my right hand I vaguely resemble a broken marionette whose finger strings have become entangled, rendering both hands odd looking and marginally more useless than normal.

Most sane or most in denial?

I've noticed that off all the blogs I read, most of the writers have a therapist, or if not an active relationship with one, at least a diagnosis of some kind which suggests that their mental health is a cause for concern occasionally. Partly I suspect that this is due to the fact that many of them live in the US, which does seem to have a more open and honest approach to the treatment of mental health problems unlike the UK where we still have to be convinced that it's not just attention seeking and fecklessness that causes us to falter under the pressure of our increasingly unwieldy expectations. But partly I suspect that there is something about the introspectiveness of assessing the way you think that either appeals to writers or leads those who otherwise would not write to contemplate capturing their thoughts in an attempt to record the processes through which their minds slink when they are left to their own devices.

I am, perhaps shortsightedly, not under the care of a mental health professional and don't feel the need for any more introspection that this blog affords me - an outlet for my thoughts, obsessions and petty annoyances that doesn't really require any outside input or feedback. Occasionally I will attack the Boy Wonder with a topic of frustration and, if he fails to deliver the response I require, I will fill in his part of the conversation as though that in any way provides an endorsement for my rantings. To his credit, he usually goes along with this charade, obligingly parroting back the lines I feed him with an admirably attempted facsimile of outrage, and fortunately this seems to suffice, for the time being, to keep my brain happy.

A Christmas challenge

The unseasonably hot end-of-September weather has seen my thoughts turn inexplicably to Christmas, and I have decided to issue myself a Christmas challenge: to embrace this year's festivities in the hope that I will actually recapture some of the magic that I used to feel as a child in the run up to the big day. That's not to say that I want in any way to take on the rigidly manic approach that my Mum has to the festive season, with an 800 piece Christmas themed dinner service and perfectly coordinated decorations which are displayed around their house in regimented order every year. But perhaps it wouldn't kill me to get out our tiny wooden Christmas tree before the 24th December, maybe even dust off the rest of our minuscule collection of decorations as well and consider doing the festive food shop in a less manic and world-hating way than has become my own personal Christmas tradition. It's a shame that the Boy Wonder and I don't really like any of the traditional festive fare such as mince pies and Christmas pudding which do admittedly make it smell like Christmas, but given that I won't be able to drink anyway, I might concede to the 'wasting' of some red wine by allowing him to mull some wine.

Party Gifts

Having been to the Gift's housewarming party this weekend, and spending the evening as the sole sober person amongst a horde of drunken youth, I have had a truly eye opening experience. Not only is the Gift a lot more ebullient when with this group of friends, but they also have some peculiar proclivities themselves. Rarely have I been encouraged to tie a clock round my neck with a tape measure just to annoy someone, but the very idea produced cheers of encouragement when undertaken with a clock which is surprisingly dear to the Gift's heart, despite the fact that it neither belongs to him, nor actually works.

I was pleased to discover that his most peculiar friend (who spent a good deal of time telling disinterested people about ways in which he claimed to be able to kill them) ended his involvement in the evening when he blew into a scented candle, spattering wax into his own face, and then passed out on the floor in the Gift's bedroom.

Despite not being drunk, I still managed to get involved in a discussion about who would make the ideal combination of porn actors in the unlikely event that the shooting of such a film should break out at the party, and promised to buy one of the attendees a bike for Christmas, thus proving a point made in an earlier post that alcohol isn't necessary for me to behave inappropriately.

I was also privy to this gem of a conversation between the Gift and one of his paler mates about the Boy Wonder and I:

Pat 'You must have seen him topless!'

The Gift 'I told you - they're not those kind of friends.'

All in all, a good time was had by all, and by being sober enough to drive the Boy Wonder and I home at around 3am we were able to avoid the point where Pat pissed in one of the girls' handbags and the sordid carrying ons which took place on the 70's style sofa later that night.

Drunk me vs sober me

Due to the recent requirement for me to give up drinking, I have been spending a lot of time around drunk people whilst sober. This has lead to the surprising discovery (although perhaps only surprising to me) that, apart from the obvious physical effects, I am about the same when drunk as when sober. Although I am aware that I do not enjoy being out of control when drunk and try to avoid getting 'falling over' intoxicated, I kind of assumed that there would be some lessening of my inhibitions when under the influence of alcohol, however it turns out that I was incorrect. I can't quite work out whether I am generally just predisposed to telling inappropriate stories regardless of whether I've been drinking, or whether my dislike of excessive drunkenness (for no more uptight reasons than that I throw up really - I realise it sounds a little like I'm some kind of temperance fanatic) means that I just have a similar approach to sharing no matter how much I've drunk. I can't work out whether that's admirable or stupid, but it's certainly an eye opener.

Me vs the Boy Wonder

Apropos of not a lot, this evening I just happened to ask the Boy Wonder if he would like to be more like me. This was not designed to be a trick question, but the speed and fervour with which he delivered his answer ('no' in case you couldn't guess) and the fact that I wouldn't even hesitate to say that I would like to be more like him made me wonder whether it would be better if we were both more like me or more like him, so I have decided to score us both according to some arbitrarily chosen criteria in the hopes of proving one of us right.

1. Innate gender-specific abilities

The Boy Wonder is blessed with a sort of elemental knowledge about things like cars, guns, planes and other traditional boy stuff, whereas I fail spectacularly on the girl-stuff front. I have only one handbag, didn't know eyeliner existed until I was about 13 and don't even like cake, therefore failing on many scores at being a girl. I do like kittens and puppies, but allergies to both make that a fairly tragic state of affairs involving red eyes and rather too much snot to be anything approaching cute.

2. Social Awkwardness

Whilst I am currently the owner of an unwanted fringe (on which more, perhaps, another time), an odd 'friendship' with the eastern European guy who sells the Big Issue outside our local Budgens and a weird village magazine delivery round due to my inability to extricate myself from awkward situations, the Boy Wonder is admirably able to sail through life without ever seeming to torture himself with the idea that he is secretly offending people who will hate him more and more with every encounter until their seething resentment causes them to break into our house and lick every item in the cutlery drawer.

3. Ability to Deal with Bugs

This is where I triumph, largely due to the Boy Wonder's hilarious and irrational fear of moths. For reasons which may well be due to some deep psychological trauma from which his memory is protecting him, he believes that moths will bite him in the face and transmit some kind of moth based disease from which he will never recover. He is also scared of cockroaches to the extent that he once declared the sighting of four cockroaches to be an 'infestation' and made me run the gauntlet of an unfamiliar side passage in the pitch dark to activate a security light which would send them scuttling back underneath the house we were living in. He claims to be 'fine' with a selection of other creepy crawlies, but rarely passes up an opportunity to get me to deal with them whilst lurking on the periphery of the room offering encouragement and keeping a safe distance. Perhaps the one downside of my awesome abilities when it comes to bugs is the fact that gardening becomes almost impossible when I have to stop and rescue every insect which might be injured during the process.

4.Ability to Exist Without External Stimulation

Sometimes the Boy Wonder will just sit and stare at a wall, thinking about nothing. I, on the other hand, require almost limitless entertainment, finding that just watching television for example is nowhere near enough for me to remain focussed without another task in hand (such as writing this post). This has some benefits in as much as I can get a lot done when I'm on form, but also some negative side effects such as my hatred of showering on the grounds that washing is nowhere near fun enough to make listening to the radio an acceptable alternative form of distraction. I should point out, I still shower once a day, I just put it off and whine about it until I absolutely have to do it, making me sound like I actively want to be a hobo with things living in my hair, whereas I actually quite like being clean but would prefer to achieve that effect whilst reading a good book.

5. Ability to Fill in Forms and Deal with Admin Tasks that Keep Our Household Running

I recently completed the application process for a new credit card, including a secondary one for the Boy Wonder. All he had to do was sign and date a form to confirm that he was aware of this. I took my eye off him for around a second, which was apparently long enough for him to sign in the wrong box and then dither uncertainly as to where to write the date. He once declared the process of buying a house as 'easy' on the grounds that his main contribution to the whole affair was pretending to read the masses of paperwork which came our way, before saying 'it looks fine to me' and writing his name wherever he thought looked most likely.

6. Ability Not to Die in Normally Non-Deadly Situations

The Boy Wonder totally kicks my arse on this one - not only has he rarely even been hospitalised, but his body apparently understands that nuts are a good source of protein and can make a delicious snack. My body on the other hand, seems to be under the impression that nuts are a threat to my wellbeing on such a scale that it's worth killing me to keep their marauding ways at bay. Not only that, but apparently it has now decided that penicillin, a drug specifically designed to treat illness, falls into the same category and warrants a similar sort of nuclear stand-off whereby it races to kill itself before the penicillin can. All this despite the fact that for the last 31 years (up to and including the last 8 weeks) it has recognised the healing properties of said antibiotics and it has only been in the last week that it's taken it's near psychotic stance on the matter.

7. Apoplectic Rage

I can barely go a day without descending into apoplectic rage about one thing or another. Recent examples include: a woman on 'Wanted Down Under' who was considering moving to Australia with her husband of four years and leaving her 14 year old daughter back in England; the book I read by Moon Unit Zappa and the reviews about it on Amazon; the fact that all store bought pesto has nuts that I can't see in it (c.f point 6); misleading use of statistics in contexts that are supposed to be educational.

The Boy Wonder works himself into a rage about things that can really easily be avoided: me saying that I have a tapeworm; people leaving the ends of their guitar strings hanging out of the tuners instead of trimming them neatly; me saying 'oui' like a French trucker when he asks me a question; the fact that our guttering keeps springing leaks and depositing water into the air bricks which ventilate the area under our house.

8. Being Ticklish

The Boy Wonder is ridiculously and entertainingly ticklish, meaning he can be completely incapacitated by a light poke to the side. I, however, quite like being tickled and am therefore impervious to retaliations, meaning that I would hold up better under interrogation by a pervy clown or feather duster, which I suppose is some sort of skill.

9. Light Footedness

Living with the Boy Wonder is like having a herd of elephants stampeding around the house, and even when he's trying to be quiet he manages to make everything in the entire house shake as though we live at the joining of tectonic plates beneath the earth's surface.

10. The Ability to Accurately Ascertain My Level of Drunkenness

In recent times, the Boy Wonder has been responsible for the following when under the influence of alcohol: three stops for sandwiches and ice cream on the way home at 3am, drunken limping and the subsequent denial thereof, pretending to be a toad (albeit a fairly poor impression which fooled nobody), and consistently telling me he's 'not that drunk' despite being clearly quite drunk. I, on the other hand, seem to tend more towards believing that I'm a lot more drunk than I am even when I am actually still in control of most of my faculties.

Totting up the results of this supremely unscientific analysis it appears that unless one of us proves to be a dab hand at the arbitrary assigning of value to any of the criteria above, it has proved a wildly inconclusive yet somewhat entertaining exercise.

Giving myself the finger

For reasons best known to itself, the ring finger on my right hand (is it still called that even when there is no designated ring for it?) is in the throes of a rash and has been for around 8 months now. Despite accounting for less than 1% of my total skin tally (probably - I am buggered if I'm actually going to work it out) the 5cm x 1cm stretch of skin between fingernail and second knuckle is currently the focus of 99% of my angst. A part of my brain is constantly devoted to coming up with new ways to scratch this patch of skin, most of which involve going to town with inappropriately rough objects ranging from the ragged edge of the cuff of my sweatshirt to the dish scourer. Another part of my brain is on 24 hour alert for the feeling which indicates that I have undertaken an activity which has caused the cracked skin on said finger to open up and sting like hell requiring the application of some form of unguent cream to make normal life possible. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to matter what I use for this process as the overall effect is the same whether I root around for long enough to find the specially formulated cream designed specifically to treat topical eczema break outs of exactly this kind or just use the Skittles flavoured lip-smacker that I already have in my hand.

There is also a seething, resentful part of my brain that is always thinking about how peculiar it is to just have this one small patch of rebellious skin which seems impervious both to the marvels of modern medicine and to the violent anger which is constantly bubbling under the surface of my otherwise cool, calm and non scabby exterior. I know I should be grateful - there have been times in my life when both my legs have been covered in eczema from ankle to knee and I have been unable to sleep, walk or think straight for the torture of trying not to scratch. But that always responded well to the merest suggestion of high strength steroids, rather than steadfastly refusing to even countenance the idea of vague improvement despite my lavishing vast amounts of attention on it like my finger. Now I'm sitting here dabbing at what appears to be tears oozing out of my finger, and wondering whether it might be simpler just to have the damn thing amputated. Pretty sure one of the others would take over though - that's just the kind of bloody minded, bloody fingered thing that happens in the world of my skin.

The Glee Project

I have never watched an episode of Glee, and don't really have any desire to, but apparently not content with just one programme dedicated to jazz hands and lipstick, there is now a show called 'The Glee Project' being advertised relentlessly on Sky. From the outset I was annoyed because the first ad featured a woman proclaiming something unlikely about 'the phenomenom' of Glee, but the more recent version seems to be advertising a show which is essentially about making teenagers cry. For whatever crack-pot psychological reason the show's makers have constructed between themselves, this week's episode seems to be an exercise designed purely to make these kids break down for the cameras. I'm not saying that they don't deserve it (after all, anyone putting themselves in the firing line for this kind of show should be well aware of what they are letting themselves in for) but forcing a girl to stand at the bottom of an escalator wearing a sign saying 'Anorexic' seems to be a woefully poor way of dealing with a teenager's eating disorder, whether that be real or perceived.

Presumably the makers of the show will claim that the exercise will make the participants stronger (although how a fat person wearing a sign saying fat is in any way enlightening is beyond me - some of the contestants are quite obviously wearing their 'weaknesses' on their sleeves), but whether they have actually considered the fact that surely being able to sing and act is more important than any perceived benefits of taunting them with their own insecurities until they burst into tears is another matter. It does seem as though this task is not far short of confirming their beliefs that their perceptions of themselves are something to be ashamed of and for others to judge them upon - the perfect way to nurture youngsters through their difficult teenage years.

Beyonce's Dressage

We've just been watching the coverage of Beyonce at Glastonbury, and I was surprised at how much she and her backing dancers looked like they were doing some weird kind of human dressage. Perhaps it was the combination of impractical shoes and potentially crotch revealing leotards that made them wary of taking steps that were too large, but whatever their reasons the overall effect was pretty peculiar. I was, however, impressed at her knee sliding action which, contrary to my personal experience, didn't seem to end up in scabby blisters and bruised kneecaps.

Miller Band

We were just surprised by an old episode of Have I Got News for You (I'm assuming Wimbledon is to blame for no other reason than that it's been buggering up the Diagnosis Murder/Murder She Wrote slot all week) which made many references to the Milliband brothers. This re-ignited the fury I felt at the time about the lack of Steve Miller Band jokes in reference to the Labour party leadership election. Admittedly, there is the occasional half-hearted reference to their other brother Steve, and I wasn't expecting long built-up references to any of his lesser known songs, but I was disappointed that nobody took it any further, despite the fact that the world of politics is the perfect backdrop to a line about space cowboys and the pompatus of love.

Chick fix

I just saw an advert for this show which is soon to be aired on Living TV. The trailer included tantalising shots of women about to confess their deepest, darkest secrets to one another interspersed with the same women sitting in front of mirrors, their hair full of curlers and a band of brush wielding, dress draping beauty professionals on hand to do the 'real' work.

It sounds to me like another depressingly shallow comment on how women just need a glass of wine and a new pair of shoes to overcome any hurdle in their lives. Even in the show's description, where you would at least have thought the makers might try to hide their contempt for women, they cannot help but suggest that psychological help and support from close friends is equally likely to be successful as shopping. I am assuming that the main purpose of the show is to get tantalising details of the women's sex lives, personal problems and emotional frailties and broadcast them to an eagerly waiting nation to pore over before trying to distract them from the fact that their personal relationships will inevitably suffer as a result of their revelations by giving them a 'new look'. I'm almost sure I won't be able to bring myself to watch this show, but I hope that at least the adverts get a little less obnoxious as the series continues.

Weird dream crushes

Every so often I will wake from a dream with a guilty feeling that I have cheated on the Boy Wonder. Exciting though this may sound (or repellent, depending on your point of view) I should confess now that even in my dreams I am never actually unfaithful to the Boy Wonder, so the kind of romps that I enjoy with my dream crushes tend to be chastely affectionate hugs, chatting about subjects of mutual interest and the general feeling that I am important to someone. None of these are things that our relationship is lacking, but I assume that these dreams are the playing out of some kind of Freudian tomfoolery not least because the men involved are rarely age-appropriate but also because there is an element of revisiting the people who I idolised in childhood.

Last night's dream featured Hugh Laurie who filled a kind of avuncular role as the provider of a meal whilst we discussed books and shared innocent albeit slightly flirtatious hugs. Even as a child, I always like Hugh Laurie, probably because he was an adult who acted like a child, and his recent appearances on television combine my old affection for him with his current New Orleans connection. Either way, I awoke with a slightly guilty feeling of inappropriate behaviour tinged with a sudden urge to gaze at a picture of Hugh Laurie imagining that he was a friend of my parents who I would occasionally get to hug.

I'm assuming that the Boy Wonder wouldn't feel particularly threatened by this, not least because whenever his dreams feature real people they are always dead musicians who have come back to life to play guitar with him, which I suppose is along the same wish fulfilment lines as my desire to squeeze Hugh Laurie. If not though, I can rest assured that the fact he never reads this will protect him from the knowledge that his wife is a faithless weirdo who secretly wants to read books with popular comedians and then discuss them over a nice meal.

Inapropriate Helpfulness

Tonight, whilst watching the Boy Wonder play, a couple got up from the sofa near us and I noticed that the woman had left her jumper behind. I was about half a second away from snatching it up and chasing after her when I realised that they were just at the bar getting more drinks and I was a little disappointed that I wouldn't get to be the kind of helpful soul cliché that restores people's faith in humanity. This left me even more convinced that one of the main motivators for acts of kindness towards strangers (at least on my part) is the warm fuzzy feeling of helping your fellow humans.

In part, I suspect this was fuelled by last night's feel good opportunities: the Boy Wonder was playing at a venue in London which was only accessible by a road which had been blocked off due to roadworks. It became clear that prior to the roadworks it was possible to get through to somewhere else, so after watching a couple of people walk all the way down and then turn back when they realised they couldn't get through I started helpfully pointing out to people that they couldn't get anywhere. They were all grateful for the knowledge which allowed them to save a few seconds and not look like a pillock and I felt like a good Samaritan for helping them out. It didn't really matter that the time it took me to explain to them was around the same length of time it took most people to work it out for themselves, because instead of a neutral observer, I was a helpful contributor which I found satisfying.

Presumably most people who are motivated to help others gain at least some gratification from doing so, in which case can they really be considered truly altruistic acts? Is it still even vaguely altruistic if you start to feel vaguely resentful to people who turn out not to need your help when you were already prepared for the feeling of doing a good thing? I'm pretty sure that I'm not a terrible person, even that I am more helpful than most, but is it really appropriate to begin to have secretly resentful feelings for a girl who just left her cardy on a sofa when she went to get a drink?

The hypnotic effect of watching a window cleaner

Because we haven't had a window cleaner for our house for years and because I haven't been anywhere else recently, I had forgotten about the fact that it's almost impossible (for me at least) not to watch window cleaners at work. From a distance, it's mildly engaging, but when it's a window of which you are on the other side to the cleaner, it's positively mesmerising. I feel it's important to mention that it's the action of the squeegee which I find captivating and nothing to do with whoever is wielding it - I'm not quite ready for a role as desperate office worker number three in a Diet Coke ad - not least because I'm pretty sure that the man I accidentally ended up staring at for nearly 10 minutes earlier today thinks he has a new admirer.

Neighbours

Every so often (and particularly at the moment when the news seems to be awash with presenters trying to find ever more arbitrary things to say about the royal wedding and so keep banging on about street parties) I will hear something, usually on local radio about the tragedy of modern life that is represented by the fact that people tend not to know their neighbours.

Living down a short, dead-end lane, I am on at least 'hello-ing' terms with most of the people who live here and almost without fail they are not people I would choose to spend time with. We have our immediate neighbours - a lovely old lady who is no trouble and allows us the warm fuzzy feeling of occasionally helping her out and, in stark contrast the neighbours on the other side are alcohol-fuelled mental cases who have no idea about boundaries (either physical, personal or social) and consistently impinge on our enjoyment of our garden to the point where even taking items out to the bins can be a somewhat harrowing experience.

The rest of the neighbours fall into two categories - offensively mental and entertainingly mental making the nicknames we have for them surprisingly repetitive.

Eye patch man (deceased) - there wasn't really much to know about eye-patch man, but he had a dog, a slightly spooky run down house and, presumably, only one eye.

Crazy chicken lady (aka Loud Dog Woman) - She owns a large dog who seems to enjoy barking at everything that moves in the vicinity of their front window. She once came to our house to ask us if we had any theories on who might have been responsible for the removal of one of her chickens and its subsequent replacement with an almost identical, but apparently sub-standard, chicken.

Mystery car lady (we do actually know her real name now, but until we found it out, this was her nickname) - she used to own a small car which was perpetually full of crap including cushions, bags of mystery fruit and a selection of soft furnishings and cardboard boxes. When this car died, she purchased what appeared to be a brand new vehicle which remained intact for around two weeks after she took possession of it. Her car was then scraped down the entire driver's side by a van which became less noticeable when she started to refill the new car with another (or possibly the same) selection of crap which still resides in there to this day. We once helped her move a mattress, which turned out to be distressingly stained, from her house to her car, which involved the Boy Wonder dangling it out of a window whilst I tried to catch it below and then the two of us wrestling it into the non-spacious back of her vehicle.

Short shorts - he is, to the best of our knowledge, Portuguese and has a peculiar passion for Daisy Duke style cut-off jeans in which he parades up and down the lane. He has a small car which is possibly the most put upon vehicle in the world. It is at least 15 years old and as though the thrashing that it has obviously taken from being driven wasn't enough, it has also been subject to a variety of maintenance procedures which are of dubious safety. For example, we once returned home to find Short shorts lying underneath his car, which was propped up on a selection of wooden blocks and household items, hammering out a dent with a mallet and a lump of wood. He actually did a surprisingly good job of it, which in no way mitigated the fact that the engine has such serious problems that it cannot travel at speeds less than 30 mph without stalling repeatedly. 

TVR Twat - this guy sums up almost everything I hate about people in general. Our first contact was when we had to take in his cat - we didn't know it was his cat and assumed it was a stray because it was so thin and in such poor condition. When it became clear that he was spending most of his time at our house, and not wanting to jump to conclusions about a cat which might just be suffering from a thyroid problem or similar, I took him to the vet who confirmed that he was severely underweight, was suffering from neglect and had problems retracting his claws from spending so much time outside. After a couple of months during which he barely left the house, we discovered that TVR twat's family were his supposed owners - they reclaimed him for all of two weeks before he disappeared altogether leading us to hope that he found a nice old lady to spoil him and stayed put. TVR twat also, as his name suggests, owns a TVR which he obviously believes requires frequent and seemingly pointless maintenance and which he often just sits in and revs, loudly and annoyingly for hours on end, apparently oblivious to the fact that his neighbours may not wish to hear the gut wrenchingly bad noises which emanate from it. I have also witnessed him using incredibly poor judgement when it comes to roundabout lane discipline.

Crazy end neighbour - him and his whole family are just nuts. Our first encounter with them was shortly after we moved in when they left a note on our car telling us that the weight of our vehicle was cutting off his electricity and water. Knowing that this was bullshit, we continued to park on the public road outside his house, receiving several more notes which we ignored, until they decided that instead of using their ample drive, they would instead ensure that one of their cars is always blocking the parking spot. They also have what must be a genetic tendency towards playing loud music in their cars with the doors open. The whole family do this, including those who don't live there, meaning that every so often we are treated to incredibly loud renditions of appalling music being blasted out of their cars. Their children/grandchildren also don't see the problem with honking their horn by way of a farewell, regardless of the time of day or night. Crazy end neighbour and his wife also have an unnerving habit of talking to you about things that you cannot possibly know as though you are privy to the intimate details of their personal lives, which makes for some awkward situations when you're trying to work out what the hell they are talking about.

Crazy shouting child and family - we first came across crazy shouting child when he went through a phase of shouting loudly about things in the garden which we could hear from ours. Some of the conversations were bordering on the surreal, including one where he had a conversation with a boy called Charlie who we can only assume is fictitious, about a time when they had shouted over the fence at one another previously. When we were painting the outside of the house, he walked past with his parents, pausing only to shout at full volume 'Hello, man up a ladder!'. His mum just said 'We aren't very good at stealth approaches' and dragged him on past. Crazy shouting child's parents are also pretty odd - his Dad seems to experience almost as much social awkwardness as I do, and once stopped dead in the street and stared directly up into the sky to avoid making eye contact with me. His mum is perfectly pleasant, but once backed into a stationary vehicle and tried to claim she wasn't completely at fault because 'there wasn't normally a car parked there'. His brother seems quite shy and little bit geeky, but it has been fun watching his progression to teenagerdom as he wanders past our house to go to school events, hang out with his oddly be-hatted friends and generally mooch about as teenagers should.

So, when next I hear someone bemoaning the fact that nobody's having street parties because there is no neighbourhood spirit, I will send them a link to this post to perhaps explain why that is.

A (presumably) never ending series of notebooks

I always have a notebook in my bag, largely because the way my brain works seems to churn up thoughts that I feel should be memorialised at moments when I am otherwise ill-equipped to capture them, but also because otherwise I will write on whatever comes to hand (including, indeed, my hands) regardless of the appropriateness or otherwise of the medium.

Were I to only be struck by the urge to write down brilliant ideas, moving lines or intriguing questions that occur to me, these would probably be relatively interesting documents, but as it stands they often include shopping lists, reminders to look up song lyrics that I can't remember and notes to myself written when drunk. Such as:

Why do we use @? It's not that much shorter than the word 'at' to either read or write.

Godfrey from Dad's Army IS George from Rainbow

Ben and Jerry - hee hee

Meta Television

The on-screen guide for our TV is organized into half hour segments, meaning that if a show's title is too long, it merges into the next one. The resulting hybrid shows often sound a lot better than what's really on and failure to pay close attention has resulted in disappointment on more than one occasion. Some of my favourites are:

Dickins, George and Heartbeat

European Coke Soldiers

Antiques Enemy

It's me or the Airline

Johnny Cash in the Attic
My name is Filth

Liza and Huey's Pet Crash Test

Perry Mason: Mega Piranha

Hitler's Home Shopping

Misunderstood sayings

Although the number of names and classifications for this kind of phenomenon grows at about the same rate as the internet, I'm not sure if there is a word for the mingling of two sayings into one hideously confusing phrase. Some of my favourites are:

Too many chefs, not enough Indians

The sky's my oyster

Bite the bull by the horns

It's not brain science

Other people and the unpleasantness of dealing with them

A couple of weeks ago we went to see Tony Joe White at the Jazz Cafe, which once again proved that it attracts one of the most appalling audiences of any venue I've ever been to. The support act they had 'chosen' was not only one of those rubbish whiny girls who sings in a pseudo sexy voice which bears no relation to their speaking voice and drone on endlessly about their feelings, but also actively bad, so once she had buggered off we went to find a suitable spot in the crowd. It was sold out, so there were loads of people there, and it was a bit of a crush but we found a spot which wasn't behind too many gargantuan specimens from which we could almost see the whole stage.

Unfortunately for us, we were also immersed in the 'crowd' meaning that we were forced to endure the unpleasant habits of those who share our taste in music. The first was a guy who was standing behind me, so closely behind me in fact that I could feel his breath on the back of my neck (which, due to the methods of my childhood optician gives me the creeps anyway) and almost every part of my body was being touched by his. As if that wasn't creepy enough, he then interrupted a conversation that the Boy Wonder and I were having to begin an annoying chat with the Boy Wonder about his previous experience of seeing Tony Joe White.

He actually apologised before interrupting, which demonstrated some understanding of the social convention of accosting a stranger, but when the Boy Wonder said that he wasn't surprised that he was a little late he started grilling him on every time he had been to see him and how late he was each time. The Boy Wonder gracefully extricated himself from the situation, but I was still left with this guy leaning on me, until after the second or third song the Leaning Man managed to hit me round the head whilst clapping and I asked him to move back.

He seemed strangely put out that I had asked him, despite the fact that it must have been obvious that I couldn't actually move properly with him basically standing where my shadow should have been. But, having removed one source of other people's hideousness, we were still subjected to downright horrific personalities of several hundred other people, from the 'I'm so crazy' guy behind us who couldn't shut up to the group of twats who found themselves completely incapable of just standing and enjoying a gig without constantly rearranging themselves.

Tony Joe White was awesome, but once again we were reminded that UK gigs seem to attract the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel in terms of other attendees. There are quite a few gigs coming up over the summer that I'm really looking forward to except for the fact that I suspect there will be other people at them, ruining them and making me cross, which in turn makes me feel like a fun-hating old crone which makes me even more cross. Is it really so much to ask that people get a drink, find a place to stand and then do so quietly and without moving too much for the whole gig? Or do we really have to go back to New Orleans to find a good crowd?

Knitting

Four days ago I took up knitting - I watched a video of a lady showing you how to do it, and I managed a fairly passable bit of knitting. I then knitted the next day and the day after, finding it at once compulsively enjoyable and incredibly satisfying and this morning I woke up with a constant pain in my right hand which seems to have developed as a combination of my extensive weekend knitting session and my tendency to sleep with my hand scrunched up under my chin.

I'm quite annoyed about this - not only was I enjoying my knitting, but I distinctly remember both my grandmothers knitting almost constantly well into their later years apparently without ever suffering.

Admittedly, they had both been knitting for years, so I obviously need to build up some stamina before I can even begin to compete on their expert level. In fact, my paternal grandmother lived in what appeared to my juvenile mind at least to be an entirely knitted house. She could knit almost anything, but mostly chose to use those skills to produce bizarrely coloured, excessively huge woollen extravaganzas which were apparently designed for children of much more unusual limb configurations than my brother and I.

So, although I am a mere beginner and clearly should expect some discomfort in the muscles that apparently I only use for knitting (presumably these were in a state of near atrophy until four days ago), I am a little aggrieved. What I thought would be a foray into the world of 'stitch and bitch' where people without grandchildren reclaim the art of knitting in a terribly trendy way has actually turned into a rather nubbly rectangle of knitting and a pain in my hand which makes me feel like I should be paying more attention to cod liver oil adverts and trying to include bran in my diet.

Thumb Pick X-Factor

Having experimented over the years with different styles and playing positions, the Boy Wonder has developed a process for creating the perfect pick. First he imports thumb picks from the US, because even with shipping it's somehow cheaper than buying them in the UK. Then, every couple of months he goes through a process I have christened 'Thumb Pick X-Factor' which is an emotional roller coaster.

The first round involves a very literal whittling down of the entrants - each thumb pick is trimmed to fit the Platonic (Boy Wonderic maybe?) ideal of a thumb pick, and we start to get to know the contestants and learn a little bit about them. Occasionally the trimming involves an injury on the Boy Wonder's part which makes it easy to work out which one has the tragic but heart-warming tale of adversity well and truly overcome with which to engage the audience's sympathy.

Round two is an exercise in polishing the product - the picks are filed down to give a smooth playing edge and checked for uniformity of shape.

Round three is gruelling for all the contestants - each pick is scored several times across its inner surface before having ground up bow rosin pressed into the grooves.

Round four is the most competitive part of the process - each thumb pick is tried out, with a chance to be used to play for a short period to ascertain whether they are fit for purpose.

Round five is the makeover - it's very rare that any of the contestants don't make it through the final round, but there is always a pecking order, and this is where the makeover comes in. Each pick is decorated in a unique design picked out in permanent marker, so that the Boy Wonder can identify his favourites when examining the contents of his hand after scrabbling in his pocket for a pick. The favourite is used almost exclusively to start with, and the others follow suit until, through loss or overuse, they are all deemed impractical and the process begins again.

Not surprisingly, this exercise would usually be of little or no interest to a spectator, which goes some way to explaining why I can often be found providing interesting facts about the contestants while he works. It stops me getting bored and makes me feel as though I am supporting all aspects of the Boy Wonder's musical career.

The social awkwardness of not liking cake

After several years of expressing the opinion that I'm an over-sensitive flower of a person who should just suck it up, the Boy Wonder has recently conceded that it is socially awkward not to like cake. I just don't like it, never have and probably never will. It's not as though it makes me want to throw up, but of all the ways to ingest an unhealthy number of calories that exist in the world, cake is a long way down my preferred list.

We went to a birthday party a couple of weeks ago at the end of which was produced an incredible looking cake. Three layers, three types of filling/icing and a host of exquisite decorations made from two types of chocolate.  The sight of it left everyone entranced, but I had a sinking feeling which was only shaken when the chef realised that it contained nuts. I was relieved that I wouldn't have to eat any, and surprised that for once my nut allergy had actually helped me out a little.

Unfortunately, the moments when I am glad of my allergies are few and far between as I have often been confronted with a cake specially acquired to accommodate my dietary needs, making it even more impossible to refuse a slice. That night, after we had returned from the party, the Boy Wonder and I were talking about the incident and how he had been pleased on my behalf when the cake was revealed to be a potential killer, at which point (having apparently stored up some degree of resentment for his offhand treatment of my mental anguish over the cake situation) I triumphantly pounced on him and forced him to admit that his previous stance was only possible to maintain if you genuinely don't mind offending people.

It is a fairly hollow victory - although it will be nice to have someone to commiserate with when these cake-tastrophes occur, there is no way to avoid them cropping up occasionally (although not working in an office helps) and I have never managed to work out a way of handling them which is genuinely foolproof. Even claiming to be on a diet is inappropriately pious when someone has actually procured a cake for your birthday, so although it does occasionally work (admittedly only on people who have never seen me hoover up a family pack of crisps) there are some situations where you just have to eat some cake and try not to pull a face.

My Non-absorbent tongue

I have noticed recently that my tongue is strangely non-absorbent. Whenever the Boy Wonder and I eat something highly coloured, his tongue seems to change colour instantly whereas mine only ever musters up a minimal colour change at best. I had previously assumed that this was down to my tongue piercing, for vague reasons involving the potential black hole effect of the piercing itself, but since removing it almost a year ago I'm coming to realise that this can no longer be considered a viable explanation. For some reason, the Boy Wonder's chameleon-like tongue really makes me jealous (possibly because I find it surprisingly hilarious when his tongue changes colour) so I resolved to find out if this was a common problem. A quick bit of Googling revealed the following:

1. No, people are not flooding the internet with similar queries

2. There are some weird things going on in people's mouths including a condition called 'hairy tongue' (a defective desquamation of the filiform papillae, wouldn't you just know it).

3. Looking at photos of those weird things will make you nauseous almost without exception

4. References to 'Non-absorbent tongue' seem to exist only in the context of porn, training shoes and flooring.

So my thirst for knowledge remains unquenched and my annoyingly non-absorbent tongue seems destined to remain tongue coloured for the time being.

Census

I have just had the census form through the post, and although I am not one who is particularly bothered by providing the kind of general information about myself to the government, I am a little surprised to find that question 17 on the census form is apparently 'Intentionally left blank - go to question 18'. Why would they do this? The most annoying thing is that I'm sure there's probably a good reason, but without knowing it I am forced to assume that they made a list of all the questions they wanted to ask and someone left out number 17, but because all the other questions direct you towards the next relevant question they decided it was too much of a faff and so just decided on this solution.

ETA - apparently it's about the Welsh language and hence has been redacted from the English census, so I withdraw my confusion and proclaim the census relatively simple.

Books that sound more exciting with the last letter of the title knocked off

In a tribute to the game played on Cabin Pressure, I though I would put my mind to a list of books which sound more exciting with the last letter removed

Charlie and the Chocolate Factor

Adam Bed

Of Mice and Me

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fir

A Dance to the Music of Tim

The Day of the Locus (this actually sounds less interesting, like a maths textbook)

The Invisible Ma

The Sound and the Fur

White Teet

My guilty pleasure

One of the reasons that I used to like helping my Mum with the family grocery shopping is because it gave me an opportunity to indulge my guilty pleasure of touching food. Not in a perverted way, although I'm guessing Freud would have plenty to say about it, but just in an inappropriate way for food which I have no intention of buying. The first memory I have of enjoying touching food was when I was little and I used to beg to be in charge of getting the mushrooms. I never actually liked mushrooms as a child but I really liked the feel of them and enjoyed ferreting out the littlest ones, even though my Mum always tried to encourage me not to.

Since then, the variety of foods that I like to touch has broadened and now includes things like Scotch eggs, vacuum packed meats, bread, pies and cheeses. Pre-packed snacks are also a treat as they are generally soft and pliable and something about pressing them makes me happy. I know it's wrong - I wouldn't necessarily want to eat something that someone else had poked, although I always poke through wrappers, never with my naked finger - but I don't even care because I'm just going to carry on doing it whenever the urge takes me.

Library Closure Difficulty

There is plenty of news about the potential library closures at the moment, which leaves me torn. On the one hand, I love books and I don't want people to be deprived of their access to a ready and cheap supply of reading material. However, on the other hand, I suspect that there are a fairly small number of people actually using most libraries, and as someone who doesn't use them myself, I don't really feel it's my place to demand funding for a resource which may be better spent elsewhere just to support my right-on ideas about what a community 'should' have access to.

My main concern is that if enough people like me oppose the closures without actually being users of the service, we may be doing so out of a misplaced sense of what is important. But at the same time I don't really want to be someone who says 'I don't use the library, so I'm not going to oppose its closure' if there is a genuine need for the services it provides.

In an ideal world, the consultation process would be thorough enough to weed out people who oppose the closures on idealogical grounds, but because the public perception of these exercises is that they always support the government's preferred choice of outcome, it is difficult to ascertain whether there is any validity in the results at all. So how do I tell whether to lend my support to those who need it, or whether I should butt out to allow the number of real library users to be accurately assessed. What do I do?

Lovely Mum Ladies

Some women manage to make me feel as though they are like someone's lovely Mum -the lady at Budgens who always calls us 'Darling', Linda Robson and Alison Steadman. Something about lovely Mum ladies makes me feel that all is right with the world.

Charity Shop Guilt

For some reason, even though I am quite diligent about what I will and won't take to charity shops, I still always feel a little bit guilty whenever I take stuff in there. This is in part due to the fact that by the time I actually get round to taking things down to the shop, they have been piling up in the house for weeks, and I'm thrilled at the idea of not having to look at them any more. However, I think it's partly due to the fact that I always half expect them to take a glance through the stuff in the bags and shout 'But this is just a load of old crap that you don't want!' and make me take it all home again.

Because of the way I was brought up (saving milk bottle tops to buy guide dogs, cutting out used stamps to buy...well guide dogs again - heaven knows what the damn dogs are doing with all the stamps and foil, but my guess is mailing some kind of robot to the moon) I am quite fastidious about recycling wherever possible. When the zip stopped working on my coat, I just held it together for two years on the grounds that 95% of the coat was still doing its job perfectly well, and it seemed a shame to get rid of it. So the charity shop only ever gets goods of reasonable quality that could offer plenty of use to someone else, but because I don't want them I feel as though I am using the charity shop as a way of palming off my poor purchasing decisions on some other poor fool who has to store it until someone equally misguided comes along to take it off their hands.

Despite the fact that last week I saw a multi pack of women's knickers in the shop, I still feel as though a box full of unused stationery, some barely-worn clothing and an old picture frame is in some way inappropriate. Fortunately, my desire to de-clutter, when it does rear its ugly head, is so overwhelming it compels me to forget this source of potential awkwardness and sends me off undaunted to the shops complete with bags full of my crap straining at their seams.

Things I have learnt since having an open fire

1. Although corrugated cardboard, of the kind widely used to package products for delivery, makes an excellent substitute for newspaper, it is mysteriously easier to tear it across the corrugations than along them. I assumed they would form kind of 'easy tear' lines, but instead they mostly form paper cuts on your knuckles.

2. The bags that you get medication in from pharmacies contain something magical (or possibly copper based) which burns green and are therefore to be saved for special occasions.

3. You can (or rather we can) put sparklers on the fire to add a festive touch to the flames - don't get carried away and just light outdoor sparklers indoors without a fireplace though or your smoke alarm will go off for ever.

4. Cream crackers are surprisingly flammable and if you put a whole packet on the fire, you will be impressed, then terrified at the results.

5. Dryer fluff is also surprisingly flammable, although collecting enough to replicate the 'cream cracker' effect is more likely to end up in a drier fire.

6. Fortunately for us, the huge pieces of coal which sometimes get spat out of the fire are generally not that hot, but don't assume that's true of all of them and pick one up with your fingers.

7. Holding something over the fireplace to make it draw is a much more effective way of getting things going than flapping at it ineffectually with a piece of cardboard which will do little more than cover your and the entire room in ash and smoke.

8. Just because you can burn almost anything doesn't mean you should e.g cheese rind will make the whole room smell of burning cheese, chewing gum will stick to something and sizzle for hours etc

9. Paper is surprisingly hard to burn unless you're not trying to. Many's the time I have tried in vain to coax a piece of paper into flames only to have it repeatedly put itself out, but if you drop one vital receipt anywhere near the fire it will get sucked in and vapourized before you can even weigh up the merits of jamming your hand in to get it back.

10. Chimney sweeping is a surprisingly lucrative profession - ours is constantly rushed off his feet and although his charges are perfectly reasonable as far as I'm concerned, he still must be coining it in. He also has what I consider an unhealthy interest in wood burners.

11. It's apparently lucky to have a chimney sweep at your wedding, meaning he is as much in demand for social functions as he is for professional engagements.

The Good Life

When I was growing up, a combination of constant Radio 4 and a limit on what we were allowed to watch on television left me with a peculiar lack of exposure to pop culture and the 'in' things in entertainment, but has left me with a lasting affection for certain shows which were probably incongruous with my age and other interests.

While the sound of the shipping forecast makes me feel like I've been hypnotised and Allen Bennet's voice reminds me strongly of times spent in the airing cupboard recording my own books on tape, The Good Life still holds a vaguely titillating thrill for me which is at once comforting and risque. As a child, I was allowed to watch The Good Life because it was a relatively harmless comedy, but as a programme clearly written for adults (what else could possibly explain the fervour with which Felicity Kendal's bum has been admired ever since it was first seen in dirty work trousers?) it also contained occasional oblique references to adult themes. Off the cuff remarks about the pill, the state of other people's marriages and vague references to extra marital affection still make my inner child say 'Ummmm!', and I think the fact that both couples were child free made for an exciting departure from the lives of my parents and their friends, all of which seemed very glamorous and exotic when I was younger.

Whenever I see repeats of the Good Life I find myself compelled to watch, enjoying the magnificent outfits sported by Margot, the reassuring contentment of Tom and Barbara and the exemplary use of the word 'bombastic' by Margot when being shaken by the elbows. As feel-good comedies go, The Good Life really does the job and I only hope they continue to show it on UK Gold forever.

What's going on

Recently we have noticed a spate of peculiar programming, partly because it's Christmas so we've had more spare time, but mostly because the Boy Wonder is ill and we haven't really left the house for a fortnight. This has lead to the discovery of some of the weirdest programming we have even come across, and some of the highlights have been:

Liza Tarbuck and Huey Morgan in 'Liza and Huey's Pet Nation', where this pair who clearly are unlikely to have met under normal circumstances host a sort of clip/talk show about animals. For some reason.

Celebrity Parents SOS , which we only discovered this afternoon, featured Jonathan Ross's mum and Vinnie Jones's dad helping a couple to sort out their house, tidy up the garden and learn basic car maintenance. I'm reliably informed by the listings that this show will also include Jeremy Clarkson's mum, Sarah Beeny's dad, Charlotte Church's stepdad and Ben Fogle's mum, coming to the rescue of feckless people without the wit to solve their own problems nor the money to call in a professional - who came up with this?!

Pineapple Dance Studios, in which Louis Spence prances around being entertainingly camp whilst the tragic Spinal Tap-esque Andrew Stone deludes himself about his potential pop career and sexuality for the amusement of the viewing public all with peculiar staged dance routines carrying on in the background and increasingly unlikely scenarios in which the other members of the 'cast' are required to perform peculiar activities for 'publicity' etc.