We have a new car. It’s blue and it’s a Saab, and that’s about as much as I know. My husband and his brother spent the better part of an hour yesterday texting each other with the various specifications of their cars, and betting who would win in a race. Rather worryingly for two white men hovering at the brink of 40, they were trash-talking each other into which particular sections of the A1 around Peterborough would see the one whipping the other’s ass. (“For pinks.”)
Hmm, watching a BMW estate (with kiddie seats in the back) and an eight year old Saab doing doughnuts around the various industrial sites of the Fens does not sound like my idea of a good night out – Thunder Road this most definitely is not.
Ben has been pestering for a new car for approximately a year. True, the old car’s front windows no longer worked, and the sunroof needed a particularly energetic thump to whir it into action. True, we’ve had the hottest and most prolonged heatwave in seven years this summer. Granted, filling up the radiator from a two-litre coke Zero bottle isn’t the most entertaining activity one could be doing at 6.30 every morning– but the car was FREE, for heaven’s sake (from a very nice man in France), and the savings we’ve been steadily stacking up this year were originally earmarked on a very detailed spreadsheet I take out and look at longingly every few days under the tab ‘Holiday to India’, a trip we were supposed to take last March when Ben hit his 40th birthday. It’s meant to be spent on tuk-tuks and aloo gobi, not tax and AA roadside recovery.
Yet a car is what we have bought, after many long and detailed discussions about the merits of automatic versus manual gearboxes, and the benefit of diesel over petrol. We have ended up with a diesel, which strikes fear and anxiety into my heart as (should I ever get occasion to drive the car, which is frankly unlikely for the next six months at least), I just KNOW I’ll be the one to inadvertently destroy the engine by filling it half full of unleaded when I absent-mindedly choose the wrong pump. I’ve never had a diesel. Never used the black pump. Don’t understand the difference. Don’t want to.
Nor do I understand why I must put the car in reverse before I can take the key out. This seems to me particularly stupid, especially as it makes the importance of knowing how long the car is (by at least the nearest foot) doubly necessary, as I will of course start the engine in gear and thus charge into walls, possibly small children, or more likely the cat.
The cat hasn’t quite understood we have a new car yet. He has always been in the habit of greeting us when we get home, winding his way around our legs in the carpark, sniffing whatever we’re carrying in the unlikely event it might be a treat for him. I can only assume he is able to do this by listening out for the sound of our car as we return – unless he does actually just loiter around the carpark for hours on end whilst we are gone, which makes me feel a bit guilty. He doesn’t recognise the sound of the Saab yet, and is still listening out for the rhythmic thump of the Honda’s knackered suspension, and the tell-tale squawk of the passenger doors as we fling them open upon arrival to gasp for air. Instead we catch him unawares on the roof of the boat, busy licking his ‘nads, with absolutely no idea we’ve arrived. He misses the backfiring. So do I, a bit.
The cream leather upholstery is lovely, although the in-laws’ dog and Ben’s white-van-man predilection for empty Mars bottles and crisp packets will soon put paid to that, and it even has a cup holder. Just one, but that’s an improvement on the Honda. It has air conditioning, heated seats (I like to put them both on at the same time to get that ‘peed your pants in a wind tunnel’ feeling), and a Bluetooth device that means we can listen to Dr Hook and Elkie Brooks, in stereo, direct from Ben’s phone through the car’s impressive sound system – instead of just from Ben’s phone. I must put some CDs in the car.
If I ever get the chance to drive the vehicle, I will tell you all about it – its handling, its torque, its BHP and MPG and OMG – but for now I shall happily remain a passenger, taking pleasure in the whimsical smile on my husband’s face as he fiddles with the cruise control, and sets new records for the human body’s ability to withstand sub-zero air conditioning temperatures – because he can, to make up for all the sweltering breezeless days of the past. My ‘Holiday to India’ fund will start anew (I have been promised the proceeds from the Honda can go towards that), and for now we’ll content ourselves with the fact we can at least go out for a curry without the very real possibility that we’ll be bump-starting the car on the way home, or regretting our choice of cuisine the next day when the breeze from the back windows fails to circulate the air sufficiently.
Anyone want to buy a Honda?
Last night I was in the audience for a series of short plays with a twist – a collection of new writing performed by actors, script in hand, with minimal props in a wonderfully tiny sneeze of a theatre in the back streets of Cambridge. An intimate setting in which I perched on the bench seats sandwiched between husband and mother, nervously clutching the programme, and willing the performance to be good. Please be good. Oh God, let them get it.
Last night was my first experience of being a ‘produced’ writer – I’d gone from blogging into the abyss, in the hope that someone was listening, to having my work performed in front of 80 or so would-be critics, fanning themselves in the steamy darkness, waiting to be entertained. I have never been so terrified.
I submitted my play – a very short short based on a story I’d written called The Dancer – to this wonderful group of writers, actors and directors about six weeks ago and was frankly stunned when they said they’d like to include it in their collection. Me? Are you sure? I had to check the details a dozen times to see if there had been a mistake. But yes, it was true, and when I turned up for the first read-through a few days later I was welcomed on to the writers’ bench and asked my opinion, and sat there, a little dazed and bewildered by the smiling actors who took to the stage to try out for the parts.
The twist didn’t work. All the plays had to suit the theme ‘A twist of lemon’, and thus surprise the audience at the end. I’d watched as the other performances before me managed this to a greater and lesser extent – and my palms began to sweat. The actors won’t understand. It’s going to go horribly wrong. They’ll decide not to include it in the show. These were the thoughts rattling around my busy mind as the performance took place – and were proved right. The twist flopped; it relies on action and direction, and it was really no surprise that on a blind reading it wouldn’t have worked. The kindly director, Julia, said Don’t worry, we’ll make it work on the night. I slunk off home and spent the next three weeks worrying.
And so here I am in the audience, feedback form (feedback form?! What fresh torture is this?!) clutched in sweaty hand, whilst friends give reassuring nudges and my husband counts down the plays until mine. The plays are great – twists and turns and laughter and sighs of appreciation. Julian Assange is turned away from the Gates of Heaven; a rock star’s daughter grabs a DNA sample; a writing class is slowly gassed by a jealous writer. My turn.
The lights go up and we’re in my beach bar, my customers drinking wine and beer from imaginary vessels, a sea breeze blowing from an imaginary shore. And in comes my dancer – and she’s beautiful. She skips amongst the customers and my heart beats so hard I can barely hear the music. She’s perfect, the narrator – a softly spoken European – is word-perfect, and my burly bartender is contemptuous towards his clientele, giving theatrical snorts. The music quickens, Ben squeezes my hand, and we get to the climax – please work, please get it – and it’s over. The audience laughs, claps – and understands the twist. I positively melt from exhaustion and relief.
It’s the interval and we’re being ushered outside by impatient smokers. The cool breeze in the alleyway adds to my relief and I realise I’ve been holding my breath – maybe for three weeks. It worked. I am a produced writer. Actors have read and performed my words. I’m starting small, but I loved and hated every second, and I want to write more.
We retire to a nearby bar and order large gin and tonics – with a twist of lemon.
There are some things in life that just can’t happen. It can’t be a Bank Holiday and sunny. You can’t turn on a television on a Saturday night without seeing Ant or Dec. And it can’t be possible to run out of tea bags. What else can you buy, 240 at a time, and still run out? It’s never happened with wine.
How can this be – not a single tea bag to be found in the boat, and believe me we’ve looked. It’s a Sunday night, the shops are shut, and if truth be told we’re a little too tipsy to drive to them anyway. And we’re GASPING. Sometimes only tea will do – and when tea can’t be found, what is there to improvise with? Dried mixed herbs don’t cut it; hot water and milk like tastes like dish water. Coffee is a no-no – irrespective of the fact I’d be up bouncing off the walls, when you want tea and you get coffee, it just isn’t right.
How hard can it be to find a stray teabag? We’re so messy, there’s bound to be one floating around somewhere. Behind the caddy? No, just some breadcrumbs, a hair band, and strangely, a razor blade. In the cupboards? No, not even an empty packet – again, curious, as we are known for storing great numbers of empty packets in cupboards, rather than throwing them out.
I start to search odder places. The fridge. The pockets of my bag. The pockets of my coat. OK, so maybe a bit desperate – and quite possibly I wouldn’t have wanted to drink anything that was found in the bottom of Ben’s underwear drawer – but it just seems so implausible that not one single solitary tea bag can be unearthed in the vast caverns of our boat. People have been drinking tea in it for 107 years for goodness sake! There has to be one.
In a flash of inspiration, Ben suggests the camper van. Yes, eureka! True, we haven’t been camping in it since last year, and it’s now more of a semi-mobile SORNed laundry basket-cum-tool shop, but at one point in the not too dim and distant past we had definitely enjoyed tea in that van – and so off I trot, keys in hand, eager as to what I might find in the cupboards. Kettle – good, I’m in the right place. Mugs – check. Sugar, a little damp, but otherwise serviceable. Good lord, there’s even a carton of milk in here. Must throw that out. Coffee jar. Hmm, this isn’t boding well. I could have myself a veritable picnic out here – there are even biscuits – but no sodding tea. My mind’s eye takes me back to a similar occasion when, on what was probably another slightly-inebriated Sunday evening, I had the exact same moment of inspiration – and ransacked the camper dry of teabags. Damn my previous self! Why hadn’t I the presence of mind to only take what I needed, and keep the emergency tea supplies safe for another occasion?! I bet I wasted those tea bags. Used one per cup. Used them for people who don’t even really like tea. Or left half of it to go cold. Those selfish tea-stealers! Don’t they understand my needs?
Dejected, I walk back. “There’s no tea in this boat,” I declare mournfully. “I’ll have a coffee,” says Ben cheerfully. I could hit him.
“Neighbours!” I declare suddenly.
“Scott? Charlene? Madge?” chirrups the husband, who is WAY too perky in the face of No Tea, and is I suspect, not taking this situation seriously.
“There are loads of people living on this marina. Go and wake them up,” I say. “Be neighbourly.”
“I’m naked,” he objects. It is true, he is naked. (It’s a Sunday night and we’re pissed. This is normal, right?)
“Well, put some clothes on and go and be neighbourly. Introduce yourself. But don’t say you’re from here. Don’t say you live on the rusty Dutch barge with the cat that eats all the baby rabbits and the car whose doors really need oiling when they’re opened at six in the morning. Say you’re from that nice shiny cruiser on the corner – the one with the netting around their fenders.”
“I’m happy with coffee,” he maintains, and narrowly misses the empty tea caddy I was holding.
Half an hour later and I’ve done the entire rounds of the marina, and am still no closer to procuring a cup of tea. They’re all bloody hippies who drink fruit tea, or mint tea, or sodding ovaltine. “I can lend you some sugar,” says one wag. I loosen his ropes.
So I’m now staring at my last hope, the only possible way I can get a nice hot cup of tea tonight without actually ringing a taxi and getting them to drive me to a Starbucks, or failing that, China. It’s a used teabag. It’s not just a used teabag – it’s a used teabag that’s sat inside a used coffee filter, covered in coffee grounds. It’s a day old and a little sad, and half of me is saying “Go on, it’ll be fine, it’s only been used once, you can wipe off the coffee grounds, and that’s probably not a cat biscuit stuck to the side, and it’ll taste great!” whereas the other half of me is saying, “This is the first step towards insanity Alex. Have a glass of water.” This last voice sounds a little like my sister-in-law, and is of course right. I hesitate. I look to see who’s watching. Ben has long since retired to bed (with an ovaltine to spite me). I’m all alone. No one will ever know. I put the kettle on the stove and… the gas runs out.
Oh sod it. Where’s the wine?
It’s doubtful you’ll have failed to notice that this coming Sunday is Father’s Day in the UK (and possibly across the world – I think Mother’s day is celebrated on different dates but the dads have joined en masse globally and come up with a singular day to claim as their own, good on ‘em). I have the somewhat double-edged blessing that I don’t need to concern myself with Father’s Day (unless I’m feeling particularly soppy and I might make Ben a chocolate pawprint and pretend it’s from the ungrateful cat). Yet I’m still bombarded with messages and advertisements everywhere I go, encouraging me to show Dad I care through the medium of personalised golf clubs or letter-openers. It’s not just from faceless corporations (although it’s mainly from I Want One Of Those. I don’t.). This year, it’s happening on social media too, and it seems I could choose to celebrate the day through the products of one of nearly a dozen friends of mine who have in the past 12 months set up their own little businesses online.
Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s marvellous, and I’d much rather buy presents from my friends than any of the retailers on the High Street (and not just because they’re cheaper and have better odds of getting my address, and indeed gender, right). I think my generation in particular has cottoned on to the fact that you don’t just need to have a day job to make money – there are literally endless means of using your creative and artistic talents to good use, and not only creating something lovely, but getting good money from it too. My friends’ numerous etsy, ebay, pinterest and independent shops sell everything from bags to brooches to bedding, from word art to cakes for all occasions, from mobile catering vans to vintage furniture. I need only scroll a couple of pages on my facebook or twitter accounts to be taken on a veritable shopping experience, and with the added bonus that my item won’t get lost in the post or they won’t take my money and do a runner. I know where you live!
The hubby and I were brainstorming last night and came up with an idea for a product that Everyone Should Own (this time next year, Rodders), and were talking about the fact that it’s so easy now to get publicity for things you want to sell. Just imagine a world without ebay, without facebook, twitter, Flickr and Pinterest, in which your product had to get past scores of gatekeepers before it was ever unleashed upon an unsuspecting public. Just imagine – wow, a good 15 years ago. How did they manage?! These days, you can get publicity for a product by asking for money to help build it – Kickstarter is not only a great source of revenue for budding entrepreneurs, but also a fantastic source of free publicity. Like minded people all looking at a great idea and wanting to be part of its success – it’s genius! Facebook can guarantee you hundreds, if not thousands, of views upon your eagerly-anticipated (by friends) launch, as they happily spread the word about your face-painting/baby-swaddling/cake-throwing business. Hardened tweeters will extol the virtues of their mate’s patchwork quilts/balloon animals/instagrammed photos of feet, if they think it will improve their Klout score. Even this blog has benefited from a bit of social media touting (thanks Mum), although I’m yet to figure out how to make money from it. Personalised father’s day flash fiction, anyone?
Anyway, my point is, I’m impressed by my friends’ creativity, business sense and tenacity, in that they will spend their time battling with complicated and tedious software in order to promote their products, generally at low-cost prices, which I’m pretty convinced doesn’t always even cover their own costs, let alone their time. And whilst I won’t be buying any stained glass windows/fake nails/perfumed pantyliners for my father-in-law (much as I think he’d like them), I wish all these little cottage industries the very best of luck, and will expect many a ‘share’ or retweet when the Davies Multi-Million-Money-Spinner gets underway…
Nine o’clock in Taberno Agrada beach bar and the local músico begins to play his guitar, the slap of palm on cedar bringing the tourists in from the lengthening shadows.
The sea breeze brings with it a dancer. She pirouettes lightly on the wooden boards, skipping on to the cooling sands, whirling up dust in a golden arc as she flits from table to table. Folds of scarlet cloth flirt seductively between both human and furniture leg as she winds herself into ever greater contortions, deftly resisting grabbing hands.
All eyes are on her as, in time with the crescending music, she whirls faster, faster, feverishly around the room, stroking hands, ruffling hair.
A hairy fist seizes on a fold of cloth but she eludes his grasp, in time for one final whirl, a flourish, a sweeping arc of the cluttered room until finally the bartender, to cheers, chases her into a corner. She cowers; her time is over, her moment past. He crushes her crimson folds and stuffs her in a bulging pocket.
The red paper napkin will dance no more.
All’s been quiet on the blog front recently as inspiration and creativity has been sapped by that thing called LIFE – however, in between 2.30am starts for bike rides (I really WILL blog on that), working, holidaying and sleeping I did manage to pen the above, having been inspired whilst sat outside a beach bar in Spain by a dancing red napkin… who knew that a olive-oil smeared piece of paper could spark the creative juices?
It’s my entry to the Bridport Prize Flash Fiction competition, and I quite like the imagery. I also like the rules – fewer than 250 words means writing is short, and I actually seem to prefer the editing process to actually writing the original text. This shouldn’t surprise – I’m an editor by trade – and it’s much easier tinkering with something already there than starting afresh. This should really encourage me to just start writing without worrying how good it is – getting some words on to a page and then spending the time at a later date making them vaguely readable. As long as I get to that second stage…
What makes a good idea? What is ‘inspiration’? How is it that some writers and artists just seem to be chock-full of amazing ideas, and you read a book or watch a film and think “I’d never have thought of that”? Some people just seem to have the knack of finding the right idea, which is original or funny or daring or just so hugely clever and brilliant, you wonder how their brain has space to function to tie their shoelaces.
Some people leak inspiration and originality from every pore, who never disappoint in their work, and whose shopping lists you would happily purchase, such is your faith in their command of the English language. There are a certain amount of authors whose books I will purchase in wrist-crushing hardback, whose sequels and spin-offs and trade editions I will feverishly devour, and who, if they are prolific enough, will have whole bookshelves dedicated to their treasured prose. Kate Atkinson is one; Margaret Atwood another; Louis de Bernieres not only has his own shelf but a promise of marriage should he ever require it. And Audrey Niffenegger, the writer who first appeared in my life with ‘The Time Traveller’s wife’ and the subsequent ‘Her Fearful Symmetry’ has now established herself as one of my must-read authors, with the result that tonight I found myself sitting in a draughty church, sipping a warm glass of white wine, with two new hardback books weighing me down in anticipation of an hour in her company.
I didn’t really know that much about her before she came to the pulpit, and would – and probably did – have walked right past her on the street. A vivacious redhead, she is author, artist and creative explosion, who has given me a much-needed impetus to get my ass back into writing mode. With a ballet, two collections of short stories, two novels and a screenplay on the go, she lays waste to my pitiful exclamations of not enough time, and demonstrates that you can, if you work hard enough for it, spend your whole life playing with your imagination and letting the creative juices flow.
When asked, as is inevitable at this type of event, the dreaded question “Where do you get your ideas from?” her answer was refreshingly simple. She maintains that everyone gets ideas all the time – the artistic skill lies in recognising it and knowing what to do with it. And perhaps, not knowing what to do with it, but understanding that it speaks to you in a way that the same idea wouldn’t to another person, and just ‘going with it’. And being comfortable with the fact that some ideas will just never come, because the type of person you are just doesn’t allow for it.
I’m paraphrasing here, and probably doing her eloquence and indeed elegance a grave disservice, but the gist of what she was saying is that you spend your whole life being molded into a particular person, and as that person you think a certain way and get certain ideas – and through the type of person you are you can take one of those myriad ideas and turn it into something. And equally, you can discard just as many, not even recognize them as ideas, and potentially throw away what, to another person, may have been the seed of an amazing novel or brilliant scientific discovery – you were just the wrong person for that idea.
And so it got me to thinking about all the ideas I have had in the past few years – for short stories, for novels, for films – and how many I’ve dismissed as ‘interesting but not quite right’. I read a quote the other day that said “A creative person’s mind is like a browser with 2,456 tabs open – all at once, all the time”, and it resonated with me because I do always have about 50 ideas going through my head at any given moment, not to mention the ones that occur to me in dreams, or more annoyingly, when just on the verge of sleep, and whose dazzling brilliance is either forgotten or dulled by the early morning light. The thought that, of all these ideas, my mind needs to recognise the ones with potential and ‘go with them’ is quite daunting – my browser simply doesn’t have the disk space.
I got home from the book talk this evening, found The Apprentice on TV, and it was like someone had cleared the cache of my memory an hour later – Audrey’s soft, eloquent lilt had been replaced by a balding cockney in a Boardroom, and inspiring thoughts of cracking on with my screenplay had been overtaken by washing up from the takeaway curry, debate as to how ‘news’ worthy it is that a 71 year old has retired (seriously – no one saw that coming?) and pleasure that I’ve got a vaguely fighting chance of winning the work sweepstake on the Apprentice winner, given that I didn’t pick Alex, Jason or Uzma, all of whom are complete imbeciles.
My browser had gone distinctly lowbrow, my cookie settings recognising only trivia and trash, and those 2,456 open tabs now had pop-up messages urging me to buy more fairy liquid and to feed the cat. How do you keep the good ideas live and active, and learn to recognise them as more important than the dead ends, the time-wasters and the not-for-me’s? And how do you manage to do anything creative when it’s 10.45 and there are chores to do before bedtime?
It’s all very well for flame-haired bestselling authors to have a ballet on at Covent Garden and to be ‘playing’ with a screenplay – what about those of us with full time pets, jobs to mow and blogs to feed? I guess the only answer is to keep the computer cranked up and the ideas flowing, and to hope that the creative filter picks out those ideas that will turn to gems through enough hard work. And to like the idea that, of those that fall through, perhaps some will be picked up by someone else.
My husband is away this weekend at a ‘Boat Jumble’. To the uninitiated, this is like a huge carboot sale for boats, held every year in a landlocked field, where boaty types don smocks and thigh high gaiters to flog off old fenders, anchors, rusty bits of unidentified metal and rope. Lots of rope. You can’t come home without a nice bit of rope.
We went together in our early courting days, when I was given the impression it would be a romantic weekend away, perusing bric a brac and antique collectables for a couple of hours, followed by a night in a cosy B&B with a roaring fire. I ended up in a muddy field, being drizzled on for 36 hours straight, discovering how unwaterproof a pair of Converse sneakers really can be, and just how uncomfortable it is to sleep two people in the back of a Citroen ZX. I sat, fascinated, at just how long two men could string out a conversation on portholes, and amused myself by trying to find the most useless piece of metal on display. Many a time I would think I had found the ultimate piece (a mushroom vent missing its thread; a wrench without the monkey) only to be amazed anew at the next stand where someone was selling – for good money! – an algae-encrusted, half-eaten anode, that was no more going to save a boat from electrolysis than I was to ever get the cowpat stains off my shoes. This annual event has never featured again on my calendar.
Instead, yesterday morning, I packed the husband off with a bottle of whiskey, a change of underpants and strict instructions not to spend more than £200, and to consult me on acquisitions worth more than £50. His phone can’t have very good reception because so far I’ve not heard a word, yet a photo of three expensive-looking brass lamps has appeared on his Facebook page, captioned with a very pleased ‘Purrr-chased!’. They must have been bargains.
My husband is a perpetual bargain-hunter and will not be able to go shopping for the next three months now without attempting to haggle on the price. Even in Tescos. “This cheddar looks really nice,” he’ll say, motioning to the deli counter girl to get her attention. “Let’s see if they’ll give it to me for a sensible price.” It’s why he is such a big fan of EBay, as the auction-style of purchasing allows him to fix a maximum price he’s willing to pay for an item, and then be pleased when he gets it cheaper. It’s a shame they don’t sell cheese.
So, with a whole weekend to myself, I decided to go about my normal chores, and with hubby’s imminent arrival this evening with something large and leaky, the first on the list was to get rid of the recycling that has been stacking up under the steps, so that he would have room for his new toys. And the rope.
And it made me realise – with not a little dismay – just how many bottles we have got through since the last run to the bins, and this despite me being on a ‘weekday soberthon’ since last weekend (excluding Thursday as I couldn’t be expected to sit through a charity quiz for work without a reassuring plastic cup of warm white wine in hand. And Wednesday, because I had dinner with my brother. It’s possible I also put some wine in the Bolognese on Monday too but I can’t quite remember.). The amount of bottles, cans, cartons and tins we have stacked up over a couple of weeks is really quite staggering, and I worry for the planet, for the trees, and for my liver. Obviously there are other things in there than alcohol, but all these boxes, bags, packets and cartons come from consumable products that we collect from just a short distance down the road and consume almost immediately, satisfying a basic need before dumping it all in the ground. I pride myself on the fact that, as a house(boat)hold, we throw away only one black sack of rubbish a week, but all this extra stuff, even though it will be recycled, is a colossal sum of effort, money, waste and time, from the beginning of its lifecycle to its ultimate end. Just so we can eat individual pork pies that have probably been halfway up the A1 before coming back down to form my picnic lunch, and drink wine that has been grown the other side of the globe and shipped thousands of miles. It all seems a little… unnecessary.
And, suddenly, whilst pondering all this, I realised that the boat jumble was actually an excellent idea; a useful way of recycling old, unwanted goods; a chance for someone’s no-longer-needed items to form part of another’s essential possessions. One man’s buggered old engine is another’s spare flywheel for his generator. People always like to see ships’ wheels on the side of pubs. Dinghies with holes in the bottom make excellent flower pots on roundabouts.
So whilst we may be forced to throw away a small mountain of packaging out of necessity, we can also choose to balance this with a healthy amount of creative re-use and recycling – taking things that others no longer need and utilising them for our own purposes. A bit like the Wombles but with a little more rust. And I’ll be proud to hang those brass lamps on our walls and wonder what former vessel they lived upon, and know that our 107-year-old barge is contributing to the environment in a small, unmeasurable way.
And you really can’t ever have too much rope.
I promised my husband I would blog today so, now, with 45 minutes to kill on a train, I’m going to give it a go, to see what rambling thoughts enter my brain whilst the countryside between City and Fen whizz by, ushering me home. The problem with blogging on demand is I never know what to write, and what starts out as one thing may very easily turn into something else, quite unintended. I guess I should feel flattered that Mr D likes my writing so much that he feels let down when, upon entering the familiar URL he sees I’ve not written anything new in a while. These disappointed exclamations usually coincide with an extended bowel movement or a Sunday morning hangover (the two are interlinked) for which he requires some light reading, nothing too taxing, the written equivalent of his wife chattering on in the kitchen whilst he’s eBaying whale gusher pumps (I’ll come to this). Besides, he loves identifying himself on these pages and fancies himself a minor celebrity in the world of alexjanedavies, who readers look out for, a bit like the long-suffering Mrs B in Bill Bryson’s recent books and columns, who puts up with her husband’s behaviour with a saintly smile and long-suffering good humour. Of course, the roles are reversed in our particular set up, and my husband is the much-maligned cause of many of my silver hairs and the more vexed of my blogs. Sometimes I think he does certain things just to see if I’ll blog about it.
Take the whale gusher pump for example. For those of you unfamiliar with such a device (firstly, where have you been? And can I come join you?) they are a noisy piece of pumping equipment required on a boat to carry out the function of what is taken for granted in a house – to pump water, either in or out. Boats do not have the luxury of gravity for such purposes and a complex system of pipes, ducts, levers and the rather alarming sounding ‘skin fittings’ are required to allow water in and out of the boat in the desired fashion (unlike for example, a hole, which does the same job but is measurably more dramatic). At present we have one such electric pump, and a series of manual ones – the electric one brings the water in, the manual ones flush it back out. Which means if you indulge yourself in a generous soak (as generous as a four foot hip bath allows anyway), you are then required to pump the whole lot out by hand ( a good 75 strokes with a strong arm), thus resulting in you working up enough of a sweat to warrant another bath.
Therefore, when planning our new bathroom, which will be helpfully positioned at one end of the boat as opposed to right in the middle of the dining area (just another piece of Dutch logic we’ve never been able to understand), we decided with vehement agreement and an aching forearm that electric pumps were the way forward and an infinite improvement upon the current system. Hence the fevered eBaying for bargains, and the resulting delighted hoots of “I’ve won!” upon each purchase, despite me calmly pointing out that what Mr D has actually done is buy something with money, not win something for free, and that the achievement is even less impressive when it is on a Buy it now listing. “There’s ten in stock” I point out mildly as he runs around the room, arms aloft, t-shirt over his head like a premiership footballer, doing the Mobot. “And one of them’s mine,” is his happy, if muffled, reply.
Mrs Bryson, seriously, if you’re ever in need of a chat, just call.
Apparently we don’t just require one pump for a bathroom that measures six foot square, nor two, but in fact three, for sink, shower and a spare, despite me distinctly remember ‘winning’ another pump in the dim and distant past, to be used for that exact purpose, but which has now gone the way of a bread machine, garlic crusher, a socket set and four decorative ice cream sundae glasses, all lost in the grim recesses of the bilge and/or forecabin, never again to see the light of day. Besides, if it turns up it’s always good to have a spare for the spare, especially at such bargain prices.
For reasons too convoluted to go into here (I’m five minutes from my stop), Mr D’s Ebay account is linked to my email, so whenever he wins an item the victory is relayed to me instantaneously, with a gleeful message from the website’s owners (currently enjoying a nice cruise in the Med on the strength of our PayPal account alone) to tell me what new item of mechanical frippery will shortly be gracing my floor/sofa/bookshelves, leaking its own particular strain of oil on to absorbent surfaces. Having spent the majority of this journey in tunnels (for a flat area of the country, this train does seem to enjoy delving below ground), and thus out of 3G range, I am reluctant to check my emails to see what I have newly acquired on this journey. It may have taken me 45 minutes to produce 900 words, but you can bet your last eBay credit note that I’ll be at least one rusty-piece-of-metal richer by the time I get home. Still, at least if my husband has a new blog to read on the toilet he will have less browsing time on the internet. Job done.
For my husband’s 40th birthday, some well-meaning but frankly irresponsible friends bought him a remote controlled helicopter. Maybe it was to mark a milestone, to demonstrate that just because one is now in their fifth decade one can still have fun; maybe it was because they decided freshly painted walls look better with gouge marks in them; perhaps they didn’t foresee that an afternoon nap could be so dramatically livened up by eight rotating blades. Maybe they’re just sadistic.
In any case, the helicopter lay dormant in its box for three weeks as we didn’t have the requisite half-dozen double AA batteries for its operation, as my husband is too allergic to Tesco to buy any, and I am too absent minded (and perhaps too reminded of the last occasion when a toy required batteries, of which more later) to purchase any myself.
When at last the batteries were procured, the screwdriver necessary to open the remote control located, and the cat had signaled his intentions to leave home, the helicopter was given its test flight. Approximately seven seconds and a smashed glass later, we decided the kitchen table was perhaps not the optimum launch pad, and opted for the floor. Neither of us foresaw the mess that could be made from the helicopter’s downdraft over the ash bucket, or indeed just how quickly plastic can melt following an emergency landing on top of the fire itself. It has remained in its box since.
Six batteries richer, we rummaged through cupboards in the hope of finding some other lithium-ion-fuelled entertainment, and happened upon the afore-mentioned toy, a stylophone, crammed under magazines, books and strings of fairy lights in a ‘I do hope Ben never sees or remembers this thing ever again’ sort of a way. It’s my own fault – I bought it myself in a moment of weakness one Christmas Eve when I discovered the only items I had so far bought to go in my husband’s stocking were a torque wrench and a box of mint matchmakers which, in the end, didn’t make it that long. I was only vaguely aware of what it was as I crammed it into a basket containing sundry electrical items for nephews and nieces and elbowed my way to the till. I discovered exactly what it was in the ensuing days and weeks, which is why it found its eventual (but sadly not final) resting place in the darkest depths of the cupboard some weeks later, when I staged a suitable diversion for a few moments (possibly the last of the matchmakers).
And now it’s back in our lives, sounding like some sort of demented wasp in the key of E, misplaying ‘Silent Night’ and making me curse the Duracell family forever more. The cat has dug out his suitcase, given me a pitiful look, and slunk off into the night (regrettably not silent), only to return once the allotted four to six weeks of battery life is fully spent. I wish him well.
I’ve been keeping myself amused today by spotting April Fool’s Day pranks in the papers. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell, and over the past few weeks I’ve had to check the date when particularly incensed or incredulous as to what I was reading. This generally coincides with whenever I stray unwittingly on to the pages of the Daily Mail, any one of whose stories could quite easily contend for dumbest story of the year, no matter what day it’s printed.
The best stories I’ve found so far include ‘Google Nose’, the latest service from the search engine giant that offers the ‘sharpest olfactory experience available’, and Richard Branson’s announcement that his latest venture would involve drilling into the centre of an active volcano in the ‘Virgin Volcanic’, a stunt that would actually seem plausible were it not for the fact he was planning on taking Tom Hanks with him. Hoaxes that I wish were true include the Angel of the North being painted pink and renamed Cheryl Cole of the North, and Twitter shifting to a two-tiered service, in which only consonants are available, unless users pay $5 a month. Snds rsnbl.
In other news, and hopefully slightly less incredulous than the stories mentioned above, I’ve contacted my first agent. Except, I’ve barely done that – I’ve got a ‘friend’ to do it for me. Maybe it’s a good idea, maybe it’s a crazy one, but I’m hoping that if the agent in question thinks I’m a loon they’ll look at the date and forgive me for a silly idea. In any case it’s done and I think I’m relieved – also excited, nervous and wondering what may happen. It’s the first step on the long road towards getting my film out of a desk drawer and on to something approximating a screen, with an audience. I hope they like it.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going on to YouTube to vote for my favourite video of all time. They’re taking the rest down, you know.
alexjanedavies 