Cigarettes and Alcohol

I used to smoke you will be appalled to hear.

Officially I ended it the second I decided to try and procreate about twelve years ago. Unofficially I ended it the time I decided to procreate a second time. All in all, I have not touched a cigarette for seven years.*

In between the birth of the first and second born of the Flying Martini children I lapsed slightly from time to time. But the cigarettes I smoked didn’t count, because I was in a foreign country when I smoked them.

As soon as we hit foreign soil Meeester and I would seek our favoured brand of local cigarettes, dependent on the country we were visiting, and arm ourselves up with a bunch of reasons why smoking on holiday was acceptable and permissable:

"It's immersing yourself in the local culture!"

"They are so cheap, it's like saving money!"

"This is the kind of country that if you don't smoke they think you are being rude. When in Rome...!"

I discovered that others have such smoking exemption excuses. For me, it was only “Smoking doesn’t count if you’re on holiday” but recently I have heard a few other choice ones from correspondents and friends of The Misssives.

Situations or places where smoking doesn’t count are:

• If you’re in the car
• If you’re trying to bond with new workmates in the smoking corner of the car park
• At parties
• If you've just had bad news
• At New Year (that's almost like a reverse New Year's resolution that one)
• If you’re with the band (my husband’s excuse)
• If you’re having a really shit day

You don't have to be a faux smoker to join in. There are other things that are slightly bad for you can turn you into a self-delusional nutcase. Such as alcohol.

Booze: It doesn’t count if:

If you are in a church. (Passing by one doesn't count)

The drink concerned has fruit other than lemon in it. Pimms is great for this. Why with a good helping of strawberries, cucumber and mint, that’s your Five a Day right there! It’s practically a health-drink, and should be available on the NHS. If you're drinking it at Wimbeldon you're doubly exempt as it is expected of you. If you are seen without a glass of it in your hand, officials may think you a foreign national and try to have you deported.

If the drink is Guinness or any other stout. They may have been having a laugh with the “Guinness is Good for You” advertising nonsense, but show me a woman whose mother hasn’t told them to get some stout down them if they are “run down” and I’ll show you a motherless child.

If you are a woman and you are menstruating or pre-menstrual. It doesn’t say so on the instruction leaflet inside the Feminax packet (but only because it wouldn’t probably be legal) but every girl knows they are only to be taken three times a day with a glass of white wine. Or else they don’t work. FACT. They teach that in sex ed when they divide the class up and take the girls into another room. That's what they're telling them in there, lads, nothing else.

At funerals. You are not allowed by law to refuse a drink at a funeral. It’s disrespectful to the deceased. In Catholic countries a drink refusal could get you stoned or run out of town.

If you’re outside in the sunshine. This goes back to the “on holiday” rule that I applied to smoking. The same applies to drinking. If you are on holiday you can have booze at any time of the day with impunity. Chances are that it’ll have fruit in it anyway, so you’re doubly exempt.

More excuses please in the comments box, please.

* My dad, who is a regular reader of the Misssives, will right now be shaking his head in a disgusted fashion..

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Press Publish and Be Damned

I have been issued with a blog warning.

“Things are going to happen that you’ll want to put on your Bebo” says a favourite family member, “But you’ve not to, okay?”.I don’t point out to her that I’m not on Bebo, and that what I do is called a Blog, for I know what she means and I don’t want to come across as argumentative as well as horrifically indiscreet and all loose cannony.

I am to go to a family event where members of an extended family whom I’ve never met but I am assured are wild and colourful and BLOGGABLE will be there. It’s going to be too much to bear but I am used to having to stifle the blogging urge when anything good happens. I worked in an FE college for six years for goodness sakes, every day was a blog I couldn't write.

Effectively there’s only three sets of folk that I am allowed to take the absolute rip out of:

Set One: Me

Set Two: Meeester, who claims I don’t blog enough about him and in fact the whole blog should be renamed “The World of Meeester” and should solely be about him, and more dangerously,

Set Three: Folk that will never ever read this blog ever and hence won’t know I’ve taken the piss out of them (think evil Canadian medics who call me “testy”)

This week someone who blogs to great acclaim got a similar yet far more official type of warning. NightJack the formerly anonymous police blogger had his identity outed by a journalist and was told to blog no more lest he lose his job. In fact, he’s already been given a written warning.

On finding out he was to be outed NightJack tried to get an injunction to stop his identity being revealed. However the judge saw no reason why anyone who chose to write about their life on the internet should be given any kind of privacy or protection. What a shame this is. Mainly I think for the police force itself. What amazing PR the NightJack blog has been. The police have a hard time gaining public sympathy and the fact that someone was blogging about what it was like at the sharp end of regular policing seemed to me to be a vent for unofficial view about what police officers have to face on a daily basis and a commentary on how they really feel about government law and order initiatives and news coverage of what they do. This is not only compelling for a reader but, secretly, I bet every police officer who read it was silently cheering NightJack on for putting their point of view across.

Another excellent emergency services blog (and latterly a book), Random Acts of Reality, written by an ambulanceman got the full backing of the Ambulance Service for that reason.

I can see both sides of the argument. On the one hand a no holds barred account of policing gives a view into a profession that those not in it will never otherwise empathise with, but on the other hand you could argue that the views represented are not being sanctioned by the police PR machine and may even prejudice court cases in more extreme examples. NightJack was always very careful to make sure no prejudicial details were included and that no names were ever used, but you can see the danger nonetheless, I suppose.

I’m sure that the police force were secretly happy to let an anonymous police officer blog in the way NightJack did and were privately pretty pissed off when his identity was revealed. As soon as his name was in the public domain they had to do something about him and more importantly, be seen to do something about him.

What I really don’t understand is the motives of the journalist who outed him. I can only assume they concern professional jealousy of his award winning success. How would that journalist feel, for example, if his sources were revealed? It's a shame that the judge didn't look upon the blogger's anonymity in the same way.

Anyway, it’s the blogger’s lot; publish and be damned...or lose your jobs and friends if you write up the really juicy stuff. All the best subjects are ones which you shouldn’t really touch. Like family events which are like an episode of Shameless.

Still as long as I’ve got Meeester taunting me to blog about him with japes like this to catch my attention, then I’ll never be short of material.

Meeester's latest cry for blogattention:

Putting fake flowers in the shrubbery

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There's no Such Thing as Punk Rockers with Flowers in their Hair

Dorothy Parker: Don't ever spill her pint

Being nice. Such an overrated virtue, isn't it? Nice guys finish last, they say. Except if you're a Big Brother contestant, where nice guys win, but the odds against a nice guy getting picked to go in the house are so small that the audience end up having to choose the least objectionable person to win.

Nice is boring, and being nice is even more tedious. Especially when you don't mean it. I find that I am at a point in life where I am having to be terribly nice just to get by unscathed. I can't wait til I receive my orders from the Queen on my sixtieth birthday to let loose and tell the world what I really think of them. Bring old age on- then you're all going to know about it. My gran was an absolute beezer at being cutting and scathing in her final years- I am gearing up in anticipation of the genes kicking in.

Being not nice is so much more fun, and it gets you noticed. This is the advice that all those "Make your blog super popular" sites fail to mention. It is the simple secret to writing success; just slag someone off. The Guardian today has an article about all the bitchy columnists that are getting paid through the turned up nostril to be horrible about people. Manda Platell, Carol Malone et al follow in a long line of female columnists who became successful because they pulled no punches when it came to giving someone a good old verbal drubbing. Dorothy Parker, anyone? They may all die friendless but wow, what a reputation!

Closer to home my old radio chum Andrew Learmonth, possibly one of nicest people you could meet, is getting a whole lot of attention because in his local newspaper column he tried to be nice about the music of Sandi Thom but in the end he very apologetically found that he just couldn't. He didn't and doesn't like her music. Fair dos. I too, am not a fan so much. The fact that she hails from a town not far from mine won't change that. Somethings you like, some you don't.

Ms Thom, presumably on googling herself, found the offending article by Andrew about her music and his dislike thereof. She didn't much like his declaration of his individual taste and decided to make sure he'd never so much as pop his head round the door of whichever village hall she'll be playing in the future. In her blog post about him she (gasp) even made fun of the fact that he had lost his Original 106 radio show (the one which I also contributed to and which many people miss terribly). It pains me to say that the woman who wrote the genius zeitgeisty lyrics of "I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair" which delighted old hippies, musical historians and ex-punks alike, failed to use the full range of her vocabulary when she penned a song she wrote for Andrew in response. In her musical tribute which may or may not be called "Fuck you Andrew Learmonth" the word "fuck" is used prolifically to what can only be described as "The Gordon Ramsay Effect". Click here to listen, but for gawd's sake don't tell her I sent you! (And get the kids out of the room first.)

Still for Andrew the news is good. He wasn't so nice but oh, the publicity! And then some! As a stand up comedian he must be loving the attention.

Clearly slagging people off is the way to go. I am, as we speak, writing a host of columns:

"No that Isn't Bloody Ironic, Alanis Morrisette! Please Learn How to use the English Language Properly",

"Paris Hilton. What Is It You Actually DO, Again?"

"Say No to that Second Sandwich, Ms Beth Ditto" and

"Get Over Yourself Dannii Minogue, You'll Never Be Kylie. Live With It" .

I await the resultant backlash.

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Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain

"Misssy didn't make this, did she?"

If there’s one thing I am really rubbish at, it’s baking. OK, there are a few more. I am also rubbish at maths but goddamn it, maths isn’t important, but cakes clearly are.

Someone’s mother brought cakes into our office on Monday and they were so amazing that I have been trying to replicate them ever since. Trouble is, this woman is clearly a baking goddess who has little fairies to help her and I am the baking equivalent of one of those contestants on X Factor that you wonder if they have escaped from a secure facility.

Yet, I can cook reasonably well so why do my cakes infringe the laws of public decency? I must ooze some kind of pheromone chemical that makes cake batter refuse to rise, meringues turn into cavity wall insulation and pancakes stick to the bottom of the pan and look like discarded Nicorette patches.

Last night as I contemplated my latest disaster that the dog wouldn’t even eat (in the past the dog has eaten a skiddy pair of toddler pants, cat shit and a box of Tampax *, to put this snub into perspective). I became troubled by this. Why can’t I make a flipping cake? I am forty and the mother of two children, what the hell is wrong with me? What do I have to do? Join a bowling green or a Women’s Institute for the cake making gene in me to be activated?

I have resolved to rectify the situation and tonight I will address all the things that I fear may be impeding my lack of success in the cake and confectionery department.

They are:

1. Remove six year old girl who wants to help and who may add stuff to the bowl when my back is turned. Including possible bogey.
2. Use an actual recipe rather than a vague memory of seeing Nigella doing “something similar” on a TV programme watched over two years ago whilst two Chardonnays in.
3. Weigh each ingredient in accordance with instructions rather than using my severely challenged mathematical skills to calculate amount based on the total weight on the packet and the size of spoon I am using to relocate ingredient from packet to bowl. Or simply emptying drifts of stuff in and stirring til it looks like cake mix like you remember seeing your mum make.
   
4. Stop substituting ingredients in recipe for things that are fairly similar. “It says Bicarbonate of Soda here. That’s just salt really isn’t it?That much I remember from chemistry class...” or “Cinnamon? Don’t have any. But I do have nutmeg. That’s just a poor man’s cinnamon, isn’t it? A grater, you say? What on earth for?” (plop!)
   
5. Arguing with recipes. “One and a half hours at 100C?? Sod that, I’m off to bed in an hour I’ll just pump the heat up to 200C and it’ll be done in half the time.”

Results will be raffled off.



*Although not all on the same plate, to be fair.

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Paperback Writers

In the publishing industry there's a general snootiness about bloggers. Blogs to books, they say, are over. But what if the blogger in question is a charismatic and interesting writer? Should they just go the traditional route, sit at a word-processor and send their labours into the publishing void and spend the next year gnashing their teeth unheard and verbally abusing the postman when he fails to deliver good news? Should they take down their blogs for fear of being labeled just another blogger hoping for a publishing deal?

Goddamn it, they should not.

I have recently bought two books written by bloggers I love. One is for charity and is written by friend of the Misssives, Ms Kate Lord Brown. Novelist Kate has just launched the book of her writing blog, What Kate Did Next. The book is full of prompts and tips for new writers, if Kate's book is half as good as the blog it sprang from, it's sure to be a success. You can buy it by clicking here. She's also got some mindblowing endorsements on the cover. One quoted person, a certain person called Gillian Martin, who may or may not be me, is quite complimentary. I feel I'm now up there in product endorsement with the likes of Barry Scott of the Cillit Bang campaign. Bang and the Writer's Block is Gone! Dammit, that's what I should have said.

Also plopping through my letterbox today is my copy of Bete de Jour's book called, incidentally, Bete de Jour. You can get that on Amazon. I hope it sells in gazillions. The book also features another friend of the Misssives, Not Keith, whose artwork you can see on the sidebar and who is a character in Bete's book.



So books, who cares if they came from blogs? If they're good they're good. If Charles Dickens were around today, he'd have a blog, you just know he would. Let's prove the doubters wrong and support the first time published writers who also happen to be bloggers too.

....And simultaneously cheer up unpublished first time writers with a manuscript circling the M25 of publishing with a flat tyre, a faulty Sat Nav and two screaming kids in the back fighting (that would be me...*sigh*).




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Sun Don't Shine

As you probably all know us United Kingdom dwellers, the sensible ones anyway, are staying put for the summer. Our currency is worth about the same as the Deutschmark was in 1920, we're also terrified of catching swineflu or any other "Johnny Foreigner disease" and we've got to stay home to keep an eye on those sneaky money-grubbing politicians of ours. Turn our backs for one minute and the bastards'll have off with the crown jewels or summat. We're prepared to do without sunshine to make sure they stay nailed down for Italian schoochildren to queue up and look at.

Still, I made my mind up that I was staying put after hitting Heathrow the other week. *

"Oh," I hear you cry like just about everyone else I've talked to about this, "Terminal 5 is OK now. Quite space-agey and remarkably efficient."

No, can I stop you just there. Let's just take a moment and think of the service we expect when we go into anywhere else when we meet an operative. Say...a shop. What usually happens is, you say hello, they say hello back. A smile may even be forthcoming. Certainly minimal use of the words "please" and "thank you" will be witnessed. It happens that way because that's what human beings like a certain amount of polite social interaction equivalent to the situation. It oils the wheels of day to day business, and stops us from wanting to bash each other with big pointed sticks.

Everywhere you look in Heathrow there are signs, "Any abuse to our staff will not be tolerated". There's more blurb about prosecution etc, but I didn't take a photo of any sign in case I got wrestled to the ground and koshed. Something gives me the impression airport security operatives wake up every day hoping they'll get an opportunity to use their shiny anti-personnel devices. But no, no one should be verbally (or otherwise) abusing operatives of any kind. That's only fair. But in my hand, I have a chicken, and in the other I have an egg, and I'm thinking to myself, "Who let in the chicken?", and more traditionally, "What came first? Chicken or Egg?"

Heathrow staff are on the whole, incredibly rude. They practically invite abuse. Especially in the security areas. Now airport security is AN IMPORTANT AND SERIOUS THING, but it seems to be that with every person you meet along the way, the rudeness builds accumulating to tolerance bursting levels in the average traveler. If Jesus Christ were to be trying to catch a flight from Heathrow to Jerusalem (Easyjet for sure. He likes to be with "the people"...) even he'd end up taking a paddy somewhere along the line. He may even use his own name in vain.

Anyway let's just cut to the chase here, the story is I was frisked rather too roughly for someone whose only crime was that she didn't take her shoes off whilst going through airport security. Sorry if that's an anti-climax for some of you. You know who you are.

Now I've had a look back in the news archives and I am certain the hands that violated my lady parts were also the same ones that violated Diana Ross's lady parts. Now if THAT isn't a tenuous claim to fame, then I don't know what is.

Reason for Diana's frisking: She set off a metal detector (I can only assume she must have been wearing the dress she wore for the "Chain Reaction" video- she's never gonna get through a metal detector with that)

Reason for Misssy's frisking: She read a sign that said "You MAY be asked to remove your shoes". Then when she approached two male operatives who were chatting about football she asked "Have I to remove my shoes, operative?". The men looked through her and carried on chatting without response. Misssy does not remove shoes. Female frisker snaps on the leather gloves and eyes up her next victim.

And now, I give the floor to Diana, as she says it best:

"I have been through all the airports of the world and have never been subjected to such an intrusive search.I am a huggy person, I don't mind being touched, but not in this way - it was far too personal."

Ok, I am not a huggy person. In that respect, as indeed in some others, Diana and I differ. She has been hugged, no doubt, by Michael Jackson. I would never allow that.

Ms Ross continues:

"It was scary, I was scared, I'm worried about my children and I want to go home."

I hear you, Pet, but I was not worried about my children, just my ability to conceive any more.

Effectively a small woman of Hispanic origin repeatedly and roughly checked my every crevice over my clothes because I cheeked her. "Those shoes should be off!" she barked. "I did ask your colleagues, they ignored me. I assumed I was fine." (That was me cheeking her. That's all it takes to get some repeated, extended and rough frisking in front of an airport queue.)

Not content with the fact that no Weapons of Mass Destruction were dislodged from my uterus, she proceeded to wave her little wand over my head. "And you should have taken your hair-clip off!" she growled in a manner that suggested she might rip it unopened wrenching the hair from my skull at any point. I say nothing.

Barry Sheene: Had trouble at airports, no doubt.

She then finds a beep in the middle of my back. I have this sudden empathy for multi motor-bike race crash survivor and man held together by pins, Barry Sheen. This woman is clearly about to tell me that I should have also removed my bra. Evidently the clip at the back could be mistaken for a timing mechanism on a remote explosive device.


Anyway, this isn't a story. Because this is the kind of treatment we've come to accept in the name of National Security at Heathrow. No other airport I've ever been in comes close. But you're about to tell me otherwise, right?



* In all fairness I didn't. I said "I am never booking a trip that ever has to go through Heathrow, I will take my chances in Schipol."

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Testing times

Keanu Reeves

Don't panic, no dialogue in this post is relayed by him.

Realism is my middle name.

I have written before about how my job can bring out strange emotions in people. Appear somewhere with a camera and folk have a tendency to act like complete jerks. In my last post about my strange job over a year ago, I talked about the usual kind of nonsense comment I and my colleagues are subjected to from punters in the mildly irritating world of corporate video.


I said this:

There are common phrases that people I come across during my job say to me like it’s the first time I’ve ever heard them. Problem is, these people are paying you, so you can’t respond to them like they are annoying drunks that accost you in a nightclub.You must chuckle as if it is indeed the first time you have ever heard the following laughsome nuggets:


"Hey Misssy, I’m not doing my interview 'til I’ve seen my trailer! Hehehehehe!

"Hey Misssy, when’s my shower scene? Hehehehehehe!”

(Shouted to the bloke you're filming by a workmate), “Hoi Jim, you’ll be getting your Equity card next! Hehehehehe!” (Much laughter from both parties)

(Shouted to the bloke you're filming by a workmate), “Hoi Jim, you need a touch more makeup mate!” (Much laughter from both parties)


“Hey Misssy, does your wee dog bite?” (gesturing to the furry windshield for the mic)

What I didn’t blog about was the annoyance and paranoia that you are sometimes subjected to as a camera crew when you appear at a worksite of any description. I wish I could say it were rare but sadly it isn’t. Very often the folk who’ve commissioned you to do a programme in their worksite neglect to tell the workforce that you will be filming them. Or worse, they have told them and they’ve all run away. A mixture of the two happened in Canada.

However, in the shoot in question worse happened, and me and my cameraman were subjected to something that I’ve only experienced a couple of times in my increasingly long and drawn out career as a corporate video director; aggression, paranoia, hostility and Parental Advisory language.


The Paranoia

We’re there for three whole days. We’re filming drills and safety notices and safety inductions. It’s dull. Yet I could match every Canadian celebrity who the world thinks is American with the following types of approaches from the gossip bound crew:

“Hey, we hear you guys are from the news, whatya filming us for?” (And I'm matching that with Jim Carrey, native of Newmarket, Ontario)

“Hey, are you guys from the Discovery Channel?” (And I'm matching that with Mike Myers, native of Scarborough, Ontario)

“Hey, I don’t want filmed for the fucking news..” (And matching that one with Neil Young, native of Ontario)

“So I hear you guys are with the Discovery Channel” (What are you guys, bloody migrating wildebeest?) (Matching that one with Keanu Reeves, native of Toronto. Yeah, really you thought he was Hawaiian. He's not. No really.)

Those kind of comments were often said to us directly but more frequently we overheard whispers of "news crews..." "Discovery channel"..."Documentary crew"....as people cleared a room or site that we entered. I haven’t been able to watch the Discovery Channel since, in case I see any documentaries on people lifting supply containers onto ships. Life's just too bloody short.

Here’s what I would like to have said in response to these comments: “Why the blue blazes would any news channel or a documentary team or ANYONE be on this pile ‘o’ junk filming you dullards? Why? What are you up to that ANYONE would be interested in? What’s that you say? Nothing?...No, nothing, you’re dull, you’re guys hitting things with spanners and welding stuff, what’s to watch? Some of you can barely speak coherent sentences and touch your nose with your finger never mind be of international concern or interest. Now can I just film you taking the stairs safely or wearing the correct protective equipment, yes? Thank you.”

What I did actually say: “No, we’re not. We’re making your safety induction video. Now can I just film you taking the stairs safely or wearing the correct protective equipment. Thank you.”

I didn't get where I am today by being honest with people.


Hostility

Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just ask if we could round up some guys to pretend to have a safety meeting so we can film it?

Person: Nah, I’m too busy.

****
Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just ask if we could round up some guys to pretend to have a safety meeting so we can film it?

Person: Yeah go and see person X. She’ll sort it out. I’m too busy.

****

Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just ask if we could round up some guys to pretend to have a safety meeting so we can film it?

Person X: What? Why is this my job? Who said this was my job? I don’t have any time for this? No. No way. Why do you even need to film that stuff. I’m way too busy.

****

Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just ask if we could round up some guys to pretend to have a safety meeting so we can film it?

Person Y: Come back tomorrow.

Missy: We leave tomorrow.

Person: Then I’m too busy.

****

Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just film you two guys sitting here in the smoking lounge. We need the footage.

Person A : Why the fuck do you need that?

Missy (whispers to cameraman): Record, dammit, record!

Person B: (As camera rolls, to Person B) Dude, why the fuck are they filming us?

Person A: I don’t fucking know.

Person B: I hear they’re from the fucking Discovery Channel.

Person A: Maybe they are making a programme about our migratory patterns.

Person B: Fucked if I know....

****

All of the above happened. ...repeatedly. OK a little artistic license with the last one, but they did say everything other than “migratory patterns” on tape, so I’ve proof. Apologies for the swearing. I did warn you with the Parental Advisory bit at the front. And as my son says, "It doesn't count if you're quoting."


Aggression (and Mild Peril)

I finally get some people who’ve been coerced into appearing in our shots. They also just happen to be the people who will use the DVD we are producing most. I know!

Misssy: So... I just need one of you guys to be in shot.

Person X: Well, it sure as hell ain’t gonna be me, I can tell ya that! (Slamming stuff shut and hurumphing about like a two year old)

Misssy: I actually don’t mind who it is. Can you decide which one of you it’ll be and just do your job as you would normally and we’ll record you doing it? It won’t take long and then we’ll leave you alone.

Person X: It ain’t about time! I don’t care how long it takes! It ain’t about time!

Misssy: Listen, I don’t care why none of you will help us. All I know is that if I don’t film you guys you won’t have a safety DVD and you won’t be able to legally operate. Now, it won’t take more than five minutes.

Person Y: It ain’t about that. It ain’t about time!

Misssy: Listen, I don’t CARE what it’s about. I just need the shot, OK?


Person Y: Hey there, don’t you..don’t you get testy!

Misssy: (speechless)


Now, that conversation actually happened. Two things to point out. Before this happened, we got thrown out of their office whilst they went mental about having to be filmed. Then their boss told them to get on with it. Then we came back in and tried to be pleasant as we realised we were 3 miles from shore and couldn’t leave so had to get on with it.

Second thing. The urge to laugh at the word “testy” was strong in me, and I managed to stifle it. You’ve no idea how hard that was. For one it sounds exactly the same as “teste” and I have a childish sense of humour. For another the guy who said “Hey there, don’t you get testy!” was consumed with rage yet said something so Ned Flanders that he may as well have been yellow with a cookie duster moustache. And the third thing is, I had to put up with insanely unprofessional levels of rage but as soon as I started to mildly assert myself I was likened to a bollock. There’s no justice in this world of ours.

That word “testy” might have been the words of a raging Ned Flanders-alike, but man, it was the Canadian equivalent of a Sicilian insulting someone’s Mama. He said “testy” and by God he meant “testy”!



Sometimes I bloody love my job. Not this time, though, not this time.




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We're gonna need a bigger boat

I realise that many people who read the Misssives are in far flung parts of the world and come from diverse walks of life. Hello all diverse international lovelies sitting at home wherever you are with your Scots English dictionary at the ready. Conversely I realise that many others are from my local area of Aberdeen. "Fit like?" The folk of Aberdeen are, in the main, oil folks. If they aren't oil folks they are farming folks. And if they are not farm folks, they are fish folks. And if they are none of these things they are related to oil, fish or farm folks in some way, or know some socially at the very least. Oil folks, fish folks and farm folks are hard, and all of those camps will think me a jessie for the tale I am about to tell. So I turn to my other readers to defend me when I come across like a total big girl's blouse.

Yes, I am still ranting about my Canada trip. You can read the prologue to this post here, if you missed it. But it is not necessary.

I don't really want to go into the whys and wherefores but my journey to Canada took twenty three hours, when it shoud have take seven. Our arranged arrival time on the vessel we were filming on should have been 12.45pm. Instead it was 12 midnight. I know those sums don't add up. But this is called dramatic effect. And there's time differences involved so the laws of time and space are irrelevant.

We arrive in Halifax aiport and no-one is there to meet us. We are so knackered that me and my cameraman, once a wisecracking duo a few hours ago, are now only speaking to each other in monosyllabic grunts and limp-wristed hand gestures.

Instead of being collected at the airport, which I've got to tell you would have been nice at this juncture, we are informed by phone to take a taxi to an empty car park. Think the opening scene of The Usual Suspects, where Kaiser Soze kills Gabriel Byrne at the port in the middle of the night.

"Are you sure you've to be dropped off in an empty carpark at midnight in the pouring rain? That doesn't seem terribly safe," says our middle aged taxi driver.

My thoughts exactly, my friend.

"Apparently we've to find a Portakabin,"I say.

"I'm gonna hang around and make sure you guys find it before I drive off, okay" This guy is the reverse-Travis Bickle. I think I love him.

Sure enough we find a Portakabin at the edge of an unlit quayside carpark. It is "dingin doon". My hair is plastered to my face, occasionally it is whipped by strong winds to lash my ruddy, rain-battered, puffy, jet-lagged face. There is probably mascara running down my cheeks that I applied what would have been yesterday. I am awake all of a sudden.

This is my cameraman's first trip "offshore". He is mentally phoning the Job Centre.

This being our first trip away with one another, my cameraman and I have recently had that "What's your favourite film" type conversation. Jaws has been mentioned. We may have even acted out the scene where Captain Quint and Richard Dreyfus compare scars. "Fairwell and adieu, you fair Spanish ladies...." We will soon regret this.

Once in the Portakabin a guy that definately is a Lord of the Rings fan signs us in and asks us to put on lifejackets. I think of that last scene in LOTRs where all the dead characters go to Hobbit Heaven in a boat. I think that guy was thinking the same, but only cos he's constantly running the trilogy in his head on a loop.

A little boat arrives and our very own Captain Quint takes our stuff onboard. The rain has reached Biblical proportions. I am Captain Brodie. Suddenly I don't like the water so much. I don't know if we're supposed to, as the boat is mostly open, but we cram ourselves into the tiny bridgey control area where Quint and his pal, Salty Joe, are stashed. Quint says some stuff but we don't understand a word as it's in Seadog.

He is probably saying "Get out of my bridgey control area, mongrels."

In my head he's saying this; "Here's to swimmin' with bow legged wimmin!"

I might even say "Aye Aye Capt'n!" as I am delirious by this point.

Captain Quint and Salty Joe carry on making the boat work and eventually after a journey during which me and my companion exchange the whisper, "They look like cold blooded killers...", we suddenly stop in the water and are shouted at a something we don't understand in seaman's language.

We grab our kit and go out onto the deck hoping that the shouted something wasn't "Shark attack!" It is not. In front of us is a massive jack-up rig, jacked up very high indeed. One question pops into our heads, "How do we get up there?" One answer swings back down on the end of a wire. The answer is a Billy Pugh.

A Billy Pugh is a Personnel Transport System, but that's being too kind. You know the bit at the end of Mousetrap (the boardgame, not the long running West End murder mystery play) where the mouse gets caught in a domed cage? Well a Billy Pugh looks like that but has a bottom to it. For those with deep interest I've helpfully provided to Billy Pugh dot com where a man who sounds like, and may even be, Bill Clinton tells you how safe they are in a very unconvincing way. There is NOTHING safe about a Billy Pugh. I realise I'm opening myself up to litigation with that comment. Note I will counter sue for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Let's just drop it, shall we, lads?

We get in to the Billy Pugh (which may or may not be named after someone called Billy Pugh) through vertical slits in the net that surrounds it. I notice briefly that there are closing straps that I imagine are designed to secure the gaping holes in the net so that we don't fall out to our watery deaths. As soon as I notice these unclosed straps, we are abruptly hoisted into mid air with absolutely no warning. I grab onto something and hope to God it's attached to the Billy Pugh and is not my poor cameraman who is now mentally applying to be a trolley-jockey at Asda.

I am not afraid of heights, however I am afraid of falling from one through a gaping hole in a flimsy net that is all there is between me and the Atlantic. The wind is up, my hair and clothes are soaked by horizontal rain (I don't have a rainjacket, I am an idiot. But neither does my companion, so he's one too), I look like crap, the Atlantic smells like crap, so I reckon no-one will notice if I actually crap myself. If I do it in time I can kick it out the bottom of my trousers into the Altlantic through the gaping hole.

I do not crap myself. And if I did I wouldn't admit it here. All I can think of is, "My Mum would have a fit if she saw me in this."

By the time we land on the vessel, I am laughing like a demented loon. I sign myself in the visitors log as "Mary Queen of Scots" and go down to my cabin for a wee cry.

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Canada: Veni, Vidi, Forgot My Coat

Canadian things Misssy loves, No1: Mikey J

So I went to Canada last week, but I also kind of didn’t. Such is my job, I often go places but don’t really, usually because I am having to film something irritatingly utilitarian like a refinery or a chemical processing plant, or in this case a sea going vessel that also turns into an oil rig like some kind of very dull Transformer.


However, because all this video crapola has to be done thoroughly yet squeezed into such a short timescale as possible to save the operating companies spending more money than is strictly necessary, I rarely get to see anything outside these portals of Hell. In all, I think I spent ninety minutes on actual Canadian soil (I’m not counting airports; I spent considerably longer in them). Don't get me wrong, dear Canadian readers, those ninety minutes were lovely and involved some really nice (and welcome) alcohol, and I enjoyed checking out your fine moustachioed men, so no complaints there. In fact, I'd go as far to say I'd like to spend even longer than ninety minutes with you all next time. How about that?

Sadly, in this particular case I was forced to actually live onboard the tedious Transformer with no means of escape and was unable to go on the dry land of Halifax even once, which I was reliably informed by just about everybody that I met onboard, was “Really worth a visit”. Oh hahaha, everyone. Thanks for that. Yeah, I’d love to visit Halifax, if you lot would ever let me off your stupid boat, ya mongrels.

See how pissed off I am; I even broke into Australian there.

So yes, it was a great shame that all I could ever see of Halifax was a misty cityscape barely visible from the edge of the vessel through the fog and my salty tears about a couple of briny miles away. Before the trip, nobody told me the vessel wasn’t in port. We wrongly assumed that it might even have had a gangway allowing me and my crew to be able to get it off it and into a bar with ease once our daily work was done. Funny that no-one thought to mention that. Hmmm. Funny that no-one thought to question our human rights when the client told us that we didn’t need to book a hotel (which they would have been paying for) as there was “comfortable accommodation onboard”. Oh it just happens to be a mile or so into the middle of some big bit of water called the Atlantic. With no means of escape. And no telly. And fairly shit food.

In actual fact, I seem to distinctly remember our fifty-something client telling us weeks ago how great a place Halifax was and what a great old time we would have. Great restaurants, great bars, great people, he said. I actually remember him distinctly saying something about "There's always a party going on in Halifax". At the time I thought, "Hmmm, check you and your mid-life crisis" but now I'm thinking "How evil are you, chum?" He said the words "good time", "great laugh" and used the word "party" as an actual verb at one point, yet all the time he sat there knowing that in fact he was going to imprison us in his watery metal fortress that didn’t even have TV. Evil, pure evil.

So this is just an intro, as my trip is notable for three things and as such warrants three further separate posts. So using the teasing techniques so often employed in crappy TV shows like Britain’s Got Talent and X Factor and just about every non BBC documentary that ever gets made these days, I’m going to tell you the best bits upfront so that you’ll hang on this week and read them all in full.

Anyway, doctor, here’s what thinly veiled rants disguised as treats you can expect from the Misssives couch this week:

1. I make two Canadians angry and they mildly insult me. It’s the closest I think Canada’s ever come to a declaration of war. It may have even made the television news. I don’t know if it did, because where I was they didn’t have telly. I may have mentioned that already.

2. I am hoisted 100ft into the air in the dark and the rain above choppy seawater and all I can think is “Thank God my Mum can’t see this” (with pics, possibly)

3. Once again I fail to get through Heathrow without avoiding the light of touch frisking official who upset Diana Ross that time, and subsequently developing an aneurism.

All will be covered in detail, unless I get hit by a truck, which given my luck this week is entirely possible.




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Excuse Me, I'm Not With the Band (reprise)

Off to Canada for work this week so there will be no new Misssives. So like when play at Wimbledon gets cancelled and they put an old episode of Dad's Army on to fill TV schedule space, I've picked one of my own favourite posts from around 2 years ago to put up for the entertainment of those who never read it (which I imagine will be most of you). See you next week.

Excuse Me, I'm Not With the Band

My husband, Meeester is in a band. In fact he’s been in two bands since I met him.

I hooked up with him 16 years ago despite the fact that he is a musician. I never ever wanted anyone ever to label me as a groupie.

When Meeester was in his first band in his twenties, they toured all over the place. They went from Boston to Belarus, from Norway to Paris to Vienna. A wonderful time was had by all. I never went with them, for, unlike Anita Pallenberg, I am NOT with the band.

I went on one trip and vowed never to go again.

So, for all of you wannabe groupies, take heed, for this is the grim reality what being a groupie consists of.

The Journey
You will drive hundreds of miles in a van that only goes up to 50mph if the wind is in the right direction. You will empty your entire bank account into the pockets of motorway service station owners along the way. You would have brought sandwiches but how rock and Roll is a lunch box? Answer: Not very.

The van may also break down at various intervals. You will be expected not to whine on these occasions.

The Arrival
You arrive at the venue and will wait outside whilst band find the bloke they need to speak to before setting up. This guy is always called Dave (or Donny, if you’re in the Western Isles). He is always not there yet.

Alone for the first time, you will have to chat to the drummer’s girlfriend, who is different from the last girl you saw him with and different from the girl you will see him with next.

You think, “I’d better chat to her, but I don’t want to invest too much as she’ll be history come this time next month. She’s nice, but I will try not to get too attached”

The Get-In
You will grudgingly help with the load in. Never do heavy lifting, just take a token amount of cables in, that’s your lot.

Never ever carry a bloke’s guitar for him. Nothing says, “I’m with the band” like a lassie carrying her man’s axe. Meeester made me do this on Saturday at a festival because he had too much else to carry and I was not happy at breaking this fundamental rule of mine. This is the first time in 15 years that I have done it. Rest assured, I did whine about it.

And I’ve seen it happen so many times before. See girlfriend carry man’s guitar, man has no respect for girlfriend. She’s on her way out. Only people who play guitars should carry guitars. I carry my handbag and myself only. I feel jinxed now.

The Sound-Check
Shut UP! How annoying! Do anything else than hang around for the sound-check. Go for a walk, go for a pint, go run at a wobbly spear. Just distance your ear drums from “Bang! Bang! Bang!” “ Tchoo Thcoo Tcchoo! One-Tcchooo!”

Sound-checks will also take forever. Don’t plan on seeing your man any time soon. More chat with the soon to be ex-girlfriend of the drummer will be the order of the day.

The Cuisine
You will be forced to eat a crappy take-away. Few bands have their own chef, you know, and catering tents are only at festivals.

For the common and garden touring band and their entourage, it’s chips or a kebab or nothing. And if it’s in the Highlands of Scotland you better hope you arrive in town before seven o’clock or everything will be closed and you will all be fighting over a Pot Noodle that someone bought earlier from the last open petrol station, 150 miles away.

The Gig
If you're lucky, you will get to watch your man’s band play for 40 mins on stage . However, even this is fraught with anxiety as you spot other women drooling over your boyfriend at the front of the stage. These girls are legion and want desparately to live the groupie dream. These girls have not read blogs like this; they have read the many salacious memoirs of Pamela Des Barres or Pearl Lowe and want a piece of the groupie action.


The Earning Your Keep.
This is not a euphemism for groupie like sexual attention. You will be expected to help out and sadly this doesn’t mean being asked up on stage to duet with your loved one, Sonny and Cher style.

You may be asked to sell band merchandise (or hand out flyers, see this for more). This will involve stopping folk from nicking stuff, haggling with you or fending off drunken advances from cretins.

Worst of all, you may be sat outside in the cold corridor, unable to even see the band at all. You will have traveled hundreds of miles to sit in a corridor with condensation running down the walls and sell five t-shirts and a couple of CDs. Rock and Roll!

The After Gig Party
After the gig the band will want to relax, have a few drinks and wind down. You will still be selling merchandise.

If you’re lucky your man may come and offer you a drink from the rider. You will be disappointed when the rider doesn’t have any chilled Chardonnay. You will force down a warm can of McEwan’s Export instead and instantly need the loo and be unable to go because you can’t leave the merchandise.

When you finally pack up and join the band you will find a much younger woman hitting on your man. You will approach and be ignored by her. Your man may even introduce you as his girlfriend to her and she will still ignore you and carry on trying to bed him. At one point, either of you are going to have to find an unlocked cupboard and kick her into it and lock it behind her to get rid of her. Either that or the bass player will snap her up mid-punt, keeping everyone happy.

But make no mistake, these women will stop at nothing and you must be very secure in your relationship to be able to tolerate it and not want to go all Yoko Ono on their asses.

The Accommodation
Invariably you will discover the accommodation for the band has enough beds for band members only. Or worse, is one room only. Or worse, doesn’t exist and you all have to sleep in the van or at some random’s house.

Wannabe groupies may think hanging out with the band will mean wild sex with your chosen bloke in a series of luxurious hotel rooms. Sorry, that is rarely the case. There is nothing sexy about being squashed in a nylon sofa in a single sleeping bag with your snoring boyfriend whilst listening to the drummer and his new girlfriend getting it on 1 metre away from you.

The next day
Drive hundreds of miles to do it all again.

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What If?

In the nineties there was a fairly cheesey little mid budget movie called “Sliding Doors” which seemed to do quite well. The story concerned a girl who nearly missed a train. In that second her life split into two possibilities. What if she had missed the train after all? How would that chance happening have influenced her life? The film showed us both outcomes.

So, why did this seemingly innocuous little film do so well? Because it had amazing performances? No silly, it starred Gwyneth Paltrow, for goodness sakes. Did it have a riveting plot line? No, it was about a girl in a bad relationship with a cheating boyfriend- ask any girl and you’ll get a similar real life story. Did it employ amazing new technology? No, it makes no attempt to use anything other than the cut, fade and blur motion tools in an editing programme- it may as well have been put together with Sellotape. Did it star Michael J Fox? No, sadly no, you can't have everything... So why did your common and garden cinema going bod like it so much? Reason: because it tapped into a key question in life: “What if?”

Just about everyone can look back on their life and find the key “What if?” moment. I know I can. You don’t know it at the time, but looking back you can pin point a happening that shaped your life forever. Mine was a phonecall to my Mum from a cafe in Zarautz, Spain.

I was working in Zarautz in the Basque Country teaching English. It was a little bit on the ropey side. The guy that owned the language academy was a nice enough American bloke from Boulder, Colorado, who loved collecting obscure languages, and whilst on a trip to the Basque Country to collect another one met his wife and stayed to teach. Unfortunately two weeks after he employed me he got involved in a partnership with another bloke from Cork, who looked as if he’d been on a beach holiday, got too pissed, lost his passport and couldn’t find the airport, so he decided to stay and set up an English school because it looked like a piece of piss. He made his money by withholding the wages of those who worked for him.

I won’t go into the details but I was fed up with this job but still keen to stay in Spain and find another one. I made enquiries to that effect. Unfortunately a long weekend loomed where the only people I knew in Zarautz, my flatmate Martin and a couple of other teachers, all went travelling for the weekend. I spent four days reading Agatha Christie novels from the school’s library and walking along the beachfront alone, speaking to myself because I could only speak Spanish, not Basque, and the Basques don’t like you speaking Spanish to them. They get a bit upset about it, in fact. By Sunday I was pretty low and fed up of wily Belgian detectives and languages that have three X's in each word. I did something you should normally never do when you are at a low ebb; I phoned home.

Two minutes into the phonecall from a payphone in a cafe my Mum said these immortal words, “Just come home, Pet”. That Tuesday when work opened I handed in my notice and booked a flight home. I gave no notice because I’d only just managed to prise my last month’s wages out of the Irishman and didn't see the point in earning any more for him to keep in his pocket for three months. That week, back home, I met a bloke in Ma Camerons pub in Aberdeen who’ll you’ll all know as Meeester M. One month later my post got forwarded onto me from Zarautz. In amongst it all was a letter from my friend Ann who was teaching in Bilbao telling me she could easily get me a job at her school and I could rent a room in her flat. When could I get there? Hmmm, don’t really feel so much like teaching anymore.....funny that. I stayed put.

And that my friends is why Sliding Doors got bums on seats. The “What If?” question is the basis for all good stories. In German they call it the "Wendepunkt" which is a great name for a band if your looking for one. What’s your “What If?” moment. Go and tell us in that there comments box. Or better still, link to one of your own posts in your own blog about your “What If?” moment.

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How to Give Good Interview

One of my professional hats is that of a media advisor or media trainer. I used to do this all the time but now I only do it every few months or so when I get the opportunity. A few years ago Anne Weakest Link had a go at us media trainers on Room 101. But then she also had a go at Wales, and now lives in mortal fear of a posse of the Welsh rugby team, Charlotte Church, Tom Jones and the Manic Street Preachers firebombing her house.

Media trainers coach normal people, usually businesspeople, sometimes footballers (the stories I could tell- if I cared enough about football to remember any of their names) sometimes civil servants, occasionally academics and other folks to do something completely out of their comfort zone which is to be interviewed by journalists.

I enjoyed the work but noticed a few common things about my clients that might be a warning for anyone ever being interviewed on telly particularly. Here are some of the pieces of advice that you would normally pay top dollar for but are actually very common sense.

1. Before the interview empty your pockets of anything you can click or jingle. Even if you don't consider yourself a clicker or a jingler, or even a clacker or a jangler, you will instantly become one when the recording starts. This applies especially to blokes. If you're in a head and shoulders tight camera shot, you'll sound like you are jingling or clicking like a malfunctioning android. But even worse, if you are in a medium shot showing most of your torso, you'll look like you are playing with your genitalia. Either isn't good for your image, I suspect.

2. Not every journalist is Jeremy Paxman or John Humphries. Most are just asking you straightforward questions and you are probably not a politician trying to cover up the fact that you got your mistress pregnant the day you tabled a White Paper on "Family Values". So when you are asked a question like "What led up to the incident", don't answer it by saying "Unfortunately that is a matter of national security and cannot be discussed at this time, but what I can say is how we are working together to provide a better future for everyone at the company and .....etc, etc" Just answer the flipping question, will ya? And remember people hate politicians, and the reason they hate them is because they use flannelly answers in interviews and are a bunch of liars. They should not be your role models. Check out the monumental interview by Jeremy Paxman and Michael Howerd on Newsnight if you want an extreme example of not answering the question. This is one of my favourite pieces of telly ever. Short version is here for the full interview is available on You Tube as well for those of you slumming it today.

3. Don't look at the camera...fool! (Slaps forehead) Just look at the interviewer. No..keep looking at him, don't take a sneaky wee peak into the lens of the camera, no not even a wee one, just stop it. Don't think about the camera, don't speak to it, don't refer to it, don't do a wee message to the "viewers out there" and please don't talk to the cameraman afterwards about how you're a keen amateur filmmaker and how much would one of "these babies" cost. Just do your interview and get on with it.

4. Don't freak youself out by worrying about what the interviewer is going to ask you. If you've just had a fire in your building, that's what you'll be asked about. You won't be asked about matters of political policy in Paraguay. And if you are, then point out that maybe the journalist might have taken a wrong turn at the roundabout. One of the most beautiful examples of this is here, I suppose but it's an extreme example I put in just for fun. It's the man who took a wrong turning straight into a BBC News 24 studio. when he was really only applying for a job and was mistaken for the correct interviewee. I think the word you are looking for is "bless".


So there's four things for free. And the reason I mention them is a ham fisted way of introducing an interview I gave about this blog to The Pakistani Spectator yesterday. Some of you lot are even mentioned in it. Happily for me it is only in print, so you can't see whether I take my own advice or not.

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The Cold Curse of Simon Cowell

Simon Cowell

With The Look

Recently, and for the first time in my life, I watched Britain’s Got Talent (the inlaws were up- that’s my excuse). It was chilling. Watching it was like having a cheese grater rubbed fiercely up and down my eyeballs and then having rough hot builders' sand thrown into the sockets. The programme encapsulates everything that has gone weird, and nasty, about popular culture. It also has three titans of hideousness in evidence; Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan. I’ve looked up the Geneva Convention and there’s nothing in it we can use to get this to the European Court of Human Rights, so don’t even try.

Bushy eyebrowed middle-aged Midlothian songbirds aside, the thing that upsets me most about the show is the look that Simon Cowell gets when someone who is actually quite good gets up on stage. No, let me rephrase that, it is the look that Simon Cowell gets on his face when someone who he thinks can make him a quick ton of money gets up on stage. It is utterly terrifying.

Cowell doesn’t smile so much as put on his poker face, he may even put his pen in his mouth to try and quell any smiling signs that he recognises the lightning, money making, potential of the subject on stage. I imagine it’s the same face a ruthless antique dealer puts on when he spots an old master hanging in the living room of a penniless old lady’s house that he’s negotiating the clearance of before she makes that last flit to the old folks home. The look shows indifference on the surface masking pant wetting excitement about the scam he’s about to pull and, in Cowell’s case, it is as if he goes into some kind of mesmeric trance.

Invariably the subject will be a teenager who can be easily manipulated. The only time you will see his eyes divert to the side away from the object of his desire will be to check if any awkward details like parents are present. If the parents look gormless, which they often do, it’s all systems go. Chilling. And don’t mistake the look for the same one X-Factor’s Louis Walsh gets when a teenage boy star takes to the mic; that’s a different look, that means something else entirely. You know what I’m on about.

Cowell didn’t quite have that look when Susan Boyle took to the stage yet he very much did when the young lad, Shaheen Jafargholi, let rip. For those who didn’t see it I’m not going to provide the Youtube link, you can do that yourself, but the whole thing was rigged. Cowell had clearly been told earlier by his minions that the boy was a cash cow. The boy comes on and sings a soundalike Amy Winehouse cover of The Zutons' Valerie . Simon pretends he is unimpressed but he already has his “tell” in evidence right across his greedy mug. Luring the boy into insecurity and doubt, he criticises him but suggests he try another song, something he never does, thus intensifying the boy’s desperation, gratitude to Cowell and effectively his willingness to snap at anything the midget millionaire will offer him after the cameras have been packed up. Even though that offer might be a big bag of shiny nothing.

Shaheen Jafargholi

Say no to the bad man, little boy

"What else have you got?" says Cowell. It just so happens that the boy has a second song, it just so happens that the show’s producers have it cued up, it just so happened that Cowell knows that this is the case. The boy takes the roof off with a Michael Jackson number. Michael Jackson, who, it just so happens, is one of Simon Cowell's new clients....

Oh and did I mention that there’s no real prize for the winner of Britain’s Got Talent except appearing at the dusty old Royal Variety Performance, for which I imagine they don't get paid for? In fact, I suspect the winner might even have to pay their own bus fare to get to the Albert Hall. I mean, who even watches the Royal Variety Performance these days? Even the Queen rolls her eyes when she’s reminded she’s got to get out of her housecoat and get dolled up to attend it. I bet she even Sky-plusses what's on BBC at the same time the Variety Performance is on the other side. Apparently her and Charlie play Rock Paper Scissors to decide which one of them has to attend.

Susan Boyle

Is it just me or does she remind you of Gordon Brown too?

So why did Cowell get that look when 12-year-old Shaheen Jafargholi came on, but not so much when international hirsute spinster superstar in the making Susan Boyle gave it her all? Simple; Susan will need a lot more handling (electrolysis bills aside).There will be no fleecing her of her talent for one hastily produced album and then casting her aside without consequences and effort. Susan looks like she can handle herself, she's more of a Will Young than a Gareth Gates. Notice how she walked jauntily off the stage as if to go and fetch her mohair coat and get home in time to catch the Emmerdale Omnibus, even after the judges had been raving about her? Susan couldn’t give a rat’s ass either way.

Eoghan Quigg

Half Boy half Furbee

Still Cowell’s instincts aren’t always right, though. Look what happened with that odious half puppy/half boy who looked like he’d been put together by Jim Henson, Eoghan Quigg (a popstar name if EVER I heard one). Apparently the X Factor runner up has released an album that sounds as if it has been recorded using a karaoke soundtrack. Peter Robinson in The Guardian dubbed Quigg’s album “the worst album in the history of recorded sound” and even though hundreds of thousands of "fans" phoned in to support Quigg every week on X Factor the CD has only sold about 10,000 copies, presumably most of them are in Quigg's folks' garage. Yet given that the CD probably only cost about £500 to record as no production values seem apparent and clearly no real money has been invested, no one, except Quigg himself, actually got hurt. Quigg is disposable and the deal hasn’t exactly panned out for Cowell, yet the man has lost nothing and barely spent anything on him, so it was worth a punt. The songs were all covers, possibly from artists already on Cowell’s books, and deals to get use of rights will have been done with minimal effort and expense. By the time the boy fills in his Asda trolley collector’s application form next month he’ll be finding it very difficult to even get his calls returned by Cowell, who’ll have made a small profit on his fleeting and now waning popularity and will now be completely washing his hands of him.


Expect the same soundtrack used on Quigg’s album to be resurrected for a second bite at the cherry with young Shaheen Jafargholi later this year.

Anyway, I won’t be watching the programme again. Especially not after that stripper stole my act.

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Lest I Forget

If this photo were Scratch and Sniff,
it would smell of Patchouli

This piece of evidence got hurled out of some vortex in the Universe into my living room floor this week. No-one knows how it got here. It is a photo of me in the ladies loo of some establishment aged eighteen, looking like I was getting ready for a Dexy’s Midnight Runners tribute band audition. Every time I look at myself it makes me laugh. It makes me chuckle almost as much as this photo of an advert for fizzy juice on the Paris Metro. I say, almost as much, because nothing is funnier than this photo of an iron pumping, presumably steroid popping grizzly bear. Nothing.

The need for that fig leaf disturbs me

Anyway, back to my photo. I think the reason this photo has karmically landed on my floor this week is because I have been guilty of taking the mickey out of my 18 year old student cousin, Pete, who visited a couple of weeks back. Pete arrived with a manky old suit jacket on (my photo: check!), hair defying the laws of physics and fashion, in need of a good wash yet set hard with crunchy cheap hairspray (my photo: check!), ill fitting clothes meant for a member of the opposite sex and possibly once belonging to a person now dead (my photo: check!) and badly applied eyeliner (my photo: check!). Actually Pete didn’t have the eyeliner yet, but I expect that’s in the post.

My friend Tracey has just looked at the photo and called it “Lest Ye Forget”. There's only one thing comforting me about this scene, and that's the knowledge that the two friends with me in that loo looked just as bad as I did. I'm sure my pal, Barbara, would have been wearing her old lady peach-coloured mac, and my other pal, Joanne, would have had peroxide hair so chemically burnt that there were some bald patches on her scalp.

Finding the photo has also inspired me to write a proposal for a reality TV show. Now that we can’t buy and sell our houses, afford any plastic surgery and fund any wardrobe make overs we have to find something to capture the zeitgeist. I’m calling it Nostalgia Makeover. It’s a mix between Gok Wan and Dr Who. We find a subject who wants to go back in time and sort their previous selves out for the sake of humanity. No permed mullet, nor shiny drainpipe suit would be beyond our powers. I shall be the first subject and we will be traveling back to that very loo (which I remember being a cafe in Bath after we’d got chucked out of the Bath Student’s Union at 5am by security guards for attempting to sleep on their floor once it had shut for the night). I will be bodily assaulted by a hairdresser, put into actual non charity shop clothes my actual size and meant to be worn by an actual woman, and that beret will be surgically removed from my head in a one hour operation under anesthetic by a leading Harley Street surgeon.

I expect it to be a success, and even now I can envisage a Celebrity version with the members of the newly reformed Spandau Ballet.

Nostalgia Makeover, copyright: me. Coming to your screens soon. Applications being accepted now. Apply in comments box for my consideration. Ex-Goths particularly welcomed.

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Faith and Love

When you start up a jolly blog like this one, it can be hard to post when life doesn’t seem so jolly after all. Misssives readers come over here for the daft stories, but occasionally I need to get serious. Indulge me.

This week I have been thinking a lot about church. And why I don’t go anymore. My reasons can quickly be summed up in news I heard this week. In Aberdeen, a minister applied for a position in a city church. He is a gay man with a cohabiting partner. He was previously, a few years ago, a married man. He finally admitted to himself and his wife that he was a homosexual, and they divorced. I do not know how amicable this divorce was, but it is an upsetting story all the same, involving the sad breakup of a family. The man had led a lie of a life and had hurt many people in the process. Presumably he felt that he had to lie to himself and others to fulfil his calling as a Church of Scotland minister but of course, only he really knows why. It’s not exactly in the league of lying about your word per minute typing speed on your CV, is it? It involves considerably more cover up effort. It is tragic that he had to cover up this fundamental part of his make-up and cause such a great deal of pain.

All I know is that after all this he is still a minister in the Church of Scotland, he has rebuilt his life and he is widely regarded at good at his job and people seem to value him, including the members of the church he applied to lead, who overwhelmingly agreed to approve his application. Minister happy, congregation happy. Everybody happy? It would seem not.

In the wake of the announcement of his acceptance of the post as minister for the church in question, twelve other city and shire ministers wrote a letter of condemnation of this gay, cohabiting man being able to take up such a post. This letter has been sent to the Church of Scotland headquarters who are currently looking into it. One of the ministers who signed this letter is a man me and my husband know personally. We have mutual gay friends, and many other friends who have cohabited without being married, most of whom have not wanted to become ministers, so have not had to face this career stumbling block. We were appalled to find out that his name was on the bottom of this letter.


Here’s why I don’t go to church anymore:

1. The Church will not accept the validity of common law marriage.
2. The Church still condemns sexual relations outside of marriage.
3. The Church still regards homosexuality as a sin, despite it not appearing as one of the Ten Commandments.
4. The church seems to think that a man or woman in a same sex relationship, or cohabiting outwith wedlock is unfit to lead a congregation despite any skills, commitment, and strength of faith they may have.

I don’t accept their views on these matters, and until they change I will not be sitting in any church pews. I used to feel guilty about not going to church anymore. Now I don’t want any part of it. Our views are at odds.

And don’t even get me started on what's going on at Amazon.


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Beagle Legal

The genetic strains of a gun dog run deep. Even in those who have never actually stridden alongside a deerstalker wearing gentleman with a half cocked gun over his arm, still know that, somewhere in their very core, they are alive for one reason; to chase birds. Ask a Spaniel (a talking one if available) what his Unique Selling Point or his Raison d’être is and he will surely answer:

"My ability to chase, catch and bring back a dead, or dying, bird for my master."

Sonny the Black Menace, my client, comes from a long line of noble bird wranglers. Both his mother and father are celebrated gun dogs. Indeed his pedigree name is Stones Frolic, which I believe is Latin for “Nimble Bird Worrier”. “See bird, chase bird” is the motto under his family’s coat of arms although he himself has chosen a different career path, that of a family pet.

Now, I put it to you, that the non farming, converted farmhouse dwelling yuppies who thought it would be charming to get themselves some free range chickens maybe didn’t think their decision through. Perhaps they had seen a few episodes of 1970s British sitcom “The Good Life” or had lately been ruminating over the success of television food expert and novice freeholding celebrity farmer Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. Their motivations for keeping chickens matter not. Their execution (if you pardon the pun) of their chicken keeping methods, most certainly do.

Each day in this land thousands of chickens are caught and eaten by foxes. Some of those chickens are even in coops, where a resourceful and hungry fox will dig underneath chicken wire to get at his terrified prey. Chickens allowed to wander outwith their coop into neighbouring gardens, roads and public areas will not last long. In fact, these wandering chickens face a double risk. In addition to hungry foxes they may also come into contact with frisky cocker spaniels, who although not hungry, are at the mercy of their genes and have no option but to bolt from their masters, ignoring the futile human calls of “Sonny! Noooooo! ” to seize their feathered freaky orange-eyed quarry.

Somewhere out there is a bald arsed cockerel who knows this all too well. And my client has apologised to him fully. Something, you may note, a fox would never do.

But before you deliberate, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I pose only one question to you:

If you were a cocker spaniel born to chase avian creatures, what would you have done, confronted with five stupid chickens spilled out into the path of your usual walk?


This is an except from the closing argument of defence lawyer, Alan Shore, of Crane, Poole and Schmidt , the firm portrayed by TV’s Boston Legal for his client, Sonny The Black Menace, who stands accused of ripping the tailfeathers out of a chicken’s bottom.

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Crime and Punishment

I don’t claim to have the key to bringing up children. But those who are having problems with the behaviour of their kids can do worse than get themselves a “jart”.

Is your daughter refusing to get dressed in the morning without a tantrum? Stick it on the jart.

Is your son going into the shower and standing 1 mm from the arc of the droplets from the showerhead for ten mins then claiming he is thoroughly washed and ready to face the world? Put it on the jart.

The jart works thus. Take one piece of paper and draw a series of vertical lines. Call these lines Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and, yes, even Sunday. Every time your child conducts a misdemeanour put a sad face on the jart. For periods of nonsense free activity or gasp, actual acts of kindness, consideration or normal behaviour, stick up a smiley face. To enhance the learning aspect of the enterprise, stick a little wordage underneath each symbol, so that you can all remember what they were for. Junior Misssy’s jart reads thus for yesterday:

Went to school without nonsense

Walked past park without tantrum

Put wrapper in bin not behind couch

Wouldn’t do what she’s told

Made fun of Mum talking and was cheeky

Said she couldn’t care about the jart

Now the jart isn’t going to work if there are no consequences behind it. How many sad faces (or frownies) are you going to allow before a punishment kicks in, and what should these punishments be?

Perhaps you’d like to take inspiration from my system which works over the period a week?

10 frownies: No story at bedtime for three nights

15 frownies: exclusion from most looked forward to social event. In this case it’s “The Rainbow’s Disco” (think Studio 54 but in a village hall, and with the minister instead of Andy Warhol)

20 frownies: The cooler (see below)

25 frownies: The cooler with no baseball and glove

30 frownies: Being forced to watch a brain washing film whilst strapped to a chair to break spirit (illustration below)

50 frownies: Siberian labour camp in the 1950s

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: Would get passed over

by publishers today in favour of the

Prison Diaries of Paris Hilton.

The problem comes when the kid turns the table on you. I got this* through the post yesterday.

I’m doing OK, but am terrified of what punishments Junior Misssy has in store if I screw up.

*NB: I want to point out two things:

1. Look at my daughter's instinctive, correct and fastidious use of an apostrophe- these things are clearly genetic.

2."Jart" is of course chart but spelled by Junior the way she says it.

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Unrecommendation of the Week!

Nick Leeson job reference: "Good with numbers. Trustworthy"

A very long time ago when I worked at a theatre I ruined someone’s chances of getting a job there. I did this because I felt they couldn’t be trusted. If someone gets a job on your recommendation and then they don’t work out, you are tainted. Think of the person who wrote Peter Sutcliffe’s reference for that long distance lorry driving job, or banker Nick Leeson’s reference for Barings Bank. Do you think they felt they could show their face at the company picnic that year?

On the night this person applied for the job in the theatre bar they came to see me whilst I was working in the tiny box office. We had known each other at school, but that was all. I opened my side door to chat to them and before I knew it they had barged their way in. The office was a tiny broom cupboard of a thing and really anymore than one person in it and it was a squish. Yet in squished this overly friendly person who proceeded to tell me excitedly and a little too close to my face that they had put me down as a referee. Without asking me. That night as my shift ended and I counted my takings I noticed that we were £20 down. I could never be sure, but it just seemed a little odd. My arithmetic isn’t Rain Man standard but I was never usually under.

Peter Sutcliffe's reference: "Keeps himself to himself. "

When the time came for the boss to ask for my opinion on the chap, I told her I couldn’t recommend him, and that I didn’t really know him at all. For months afterwards I felt a little guilty but I knew I had done the right thing. You can't take any chances in the vouching game. Recommend someone and it's like you've become responsible for them.

George W Bush Reference: "Competent, literate, and intelligent. A peace loving man."

Fast forward to my time as a lecturer and I would be in a position of being asked to refer students all over the place. I decided a personal rule on this was in order; students come in many flavours and not all of them palatable. If I couldn’t heartily recommend someone, perhaps if they had been a lazy or less than conscientious student, I would tell them that I couldn’t give them a good reference and since I didn’t agree with giving bad references that they should find someone else who could write about them more favourably . In amongst the hosts of great students I have been pleased to recommend for jobs, university places and work experience there were a few hurt and astonished faces along the years from those who couldn’t believe I couldn’t tell the world how wonderful they were . On the whole my policy served me well.

Until now.

Harold Shipman reference: "Great with the elderly. Lives and breathes the Hippocratic Oath"

A couple of weeks ago I decided that my days of recommending people for jobs were well and truly over. I vouched for a few former students for a job in my field. I am going on my experience of them from two years ago when I left my college lecturing post ,and felt fairly confident that they would be ideal candidates. What I did not expect was that, at interview, one of those people would turn up unwashed, dandruff bedecked, dirty finger-nailed, disheveled, reeking and in possession of a video showreel of work which included naked images of themselves.

I am now retired from the business of giving people a break.

Sir Fred Goodwin reference:"Selfless, generous and a man of the people"

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Bum Ass

Last week I tore a strip off some teenage lads in a public swimming pool (a swimming pool, yes, although not as you know them; Aberdeen’s public swimming pools are 1C away from ice rinks). My Victor Meldewesque admonishing was in response to extreme swearing in front of my kids.

“Hoy there!” I said shouting a phrase that is universally only used when chastising teenagers, ”That’s enough of that!” (ditto), “Not in front of wee kids, eh?”

The effing and jeffing momentarily stopped and later, as the boys were being turfed out of the pool by similarly aged attendants for stabbing small children with metal forks that they had secreted in their Speedos (true!), I smirked in their direction with a “that’ll learn ya!” self satisfied smirk. They hadn’t seen me get out of the glorious Mini, so my paintwork couldn’t be associated with me and my middle-aged finger waving ways.

Later, I was telling the story to a friend and I realised that my kids and their associates have come out with their own choice phrases on their own, and didn't need any coaching from teenagers. Some of it possibly in response to hearing other family members (not me, just my Mum and my husband*)slip the odd colourful phrase out.

Here’s some absolute beauties:

Junior Misssy

Situation: On being assaulted by a jumping Black Menace whilst sat on the sofa minding her own business.

Phrase: “Fuxsake Sonny!! Get down!”

That was last year. I blame her father.

Darling Curly Niece

Situation: Called her Dad this a couple of weeks ago in a fit of rage.

Phrase: “You hairy bum-ass. You worm licking bum-ass!”**

Indy

My two year old (but now 10 year old) toddling son shouted “Bloody flies!” as a bluebottle bombed its way into the kitchen one summer; a hall mark catchphrase of his dishtowel wielding gran.

Jnr. Misssy's chum

Then last week, I asked my daughter’s friend why they didn’t have their Jack Russell anymore. “Because he’s a complete pain in the arse,” she said very matter or factly, like she was discussing a canine medical condition.

Small party guest with Tourette's Syndrome

A small boy from my daughter’s nursery class stole the show last year when my husband did his, now legendary, magic show at Junior Misssy’s birthday party. Already reeling from another boy’s heckle of “You’re not magic!” Meeester was verbally assaulted by a small blond boy who, apropos of nothing, shouted “You’ve got shitty shoes!”. And then once the adults in the room did a “Did you just hear what I just heard?” glanceathon, he piped up, “You’ve got shit on your shoes” as if to clarify his initial statement. Aside from this slander( Meeester patently did not have shit on his shoes. In fact, I doubt he was wearing any shoes, as this would be a breach of our “No Shoe Policy”) it was the randomness of his comments that surprised me most.

In consideration of all the above infant transgressions, I feel an apology coming on to the fork wielding ASBO dodging orators of Inverurie Swimming Pool. Ah...nope, the feeling’s gone...yes, that’s it.... it’s away now. I’m fine. As you were.

*(Y’see I say that because I know my Mum reads the Misssives. Bet you a tenner she’s called me on the phone before she even gets to this bit!)

** This is now my favourite phrase of all time. You wait, you’ll be calling someone a “Bum-ass” too before the week’s out. It’s for times when “bum” or “ass” just aren’t enough on their own.

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Sonny and I Are Innocent!

I’ve just seen the film Marley and Me. I’ve still got slightly wet hair, as I cried so much. Very confusing marketing....but that’s beside the point. I do want to talk about dogs though, and as has been pointed out recently, it’s been a while since we had a Sonny the Black Menace themed post. Believe me, just like the writer of Marley and Me did in his weekly newspaper column, I could do a Sonny post every time. This post is on behalf of me and Sonny, two innocent bystanders in the evil world of dog poo.

Last night I had a conversation with a friend about the dog poo situation in my village, which I will name and shame- it’s Newmachar, Aberdeenshire. Hang your sorry head in shame, Newmachar! The streets are pebble-dashed with an enormous amount of dog poo. Really, it is quite spectacular. It would look like the entire village had gone back in time to the Seventies if it weren’t for the fact that the dog poo isn’t white....and there’s no “park porn” rustling in the bushes beside it.

I’ve just come back from taking Sonny for his afternoon walk/lark about, and in our 20 minute fun-filled walk in the biting North East cold, I counted 23 pieces of poo lying on verge, green, pavement and road. 23!!! Twenty-three!!!?

What makes the entire situation worse is that the singularly worst location for dog merde is the school road. It is as if someone is strategically placing them right outside the school gates as an elaborate sick joke against kids and the mothers who have to scrape the offence out of the tiny treads in school shoes. (Top tip, someone invent an implement for this very purpose- you’ll make a fortune).

A couple of things are clear to me:

• This is not the work of just one dog owner (notice I said “dog owner” and not “dog”)


• Since a great deal of it was on my street, people may assume that it is the work of me and the Black Menace. This upsets me as not one of Sonny’s little parcels have even been left to even go cold before being scooped into a bag and disposed of. Not once. And I’m a Girl Guide, so I don’t lie. But I feel the stares of non-dog owners as they tar us all with the same accusatory brush. Sonny may be called The Black Menace but, really, his crimes only extend to the culling of the kids' toys* and the occasional bout of escapology.
  

So, what to do about it? My friend contacted the local council Dogshit Warden, they have a proper title like Dog Colonic Wastage Technician, but who are we kidding, Dogshit Warden is what they are. Nothing was done anyway, so quite what their duties are is unclear. They said they would "look into it". Wow, what a strategy!

Since her abortive attempts at “going the official route” my friend has been keeping vigil in her kids bedroom, watching over the park space at night after a morning when she counted seven overnight deposits on her way to the school gates. She’s not quite sat on the Grassy Knoll with a rifle, but that’s only because she doesn’t want to roll in anything unsavoury on the aforementioned Knoll. She has yet to catch anyone. Now either we’ve got dingoes or someone is lobbing Fido's offerings with a tennis racket over their back garden fence into the public arena.

Quite what my pal is going to do when she catches the perpetrator is unclear, but let’s just say she’s fairly handy and I don’t fancy their chances when she does.

The problem is that short of catching every offender and fining them, what can be done to stop this behaviour? Now, I've said before that I would gladly accept the responsibility of full police powers (and any accompanying anti-personnel devices on offer), and so would my friend, but no one seems to be taking this on board.

So what can be done? Do you have an answer (comical, useful, sadistic or otherwise)?


*You would know if it was Sonny's poo, it would have a Polly Pocket limb or head in it, or a piece of Star Wars Lego.

Update:

The very talented Keith of NotKeith has done an illustration based on this post. It's called "Newmachar resident’s final solution to dog-fouling menace ends in tragedy"

I am this close to getting it made into a t-shirt. See Keith's blog where he will be doing an illustration based on blog posts that have inspired him every day this week. Surely he will get snapped up by The Guardian sooner or later...

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Let's Time-Travel the Recession Away!

"I did not have sex with that woman.....yet."

It strikes me that in this time of doom and gloom, extreme measures are needed. I will outline my plans in this post.

After a disappointment in a project I am working on, my agent said, “If this were 2006, we’d be laughing”. She would be right, for things were doing fine in the publishing world. However, that aside I don’t think I’d like to go back to 2006. I don’t want Bush or Blair back in power. And I was off work sick for 8 weeks that year. It wasn’t exactly brilliant.

That considered, my agent got me thinking. Question 1: What would be the best year to go back to? And Question 2: How can we get there?

It is possible that I have to answer question 2 before we even let the answer to Question 1 cross my mind. But I’m a cart before horse kind of person, as those who know me will happily testify.

First off, which years are definitely out:

1936- You don’t really need me to tell you why. Good year for Hitler, sucked for everyone else. And there was no internet, rock music and mobile phones, so, rubbish all round.

1979- Punk was over, Thatcher was in, Bee Gees were gearing up for world domination. Effectively the next six years are out completely. Unless you are Olivia Newton John, in which case, off you go, love.

2001- The nightmare begins. You could go back to this year, but only to sprinkle a whole tub of high powered laxative in the curry of 19 guys with an early wake-up call for a flight they were catching the next day. Otherwise, it’s not a good year for anyone but George W Bush and his daddy..

Me? I’m plumping for 1997. This was the first year of my marriage. But that’s not the reason, Meeester is still here, with genetic accoutrements (Indy and Junior). No, this was the year when everyone thought everything was going to be OK.**

1. Clinton hadn’t dropped his trews too much and we thought he was a cool guy.

2. John Major was sent back to the circus and we didn’t realise what a shower we’d elected, we just thought they were shiny and smiley. Not lizards.

3. There was no XFactor and Pop Idol, and music seemed to be made by real folk with actual talent. Except the Spice Girls. But they don’t fit in with my argument, so I’m ignoring them. Much the same as I did in the actual year itself.

4. Banks weren’t cold calling folk straight out of the telephone directory offering them 40 times their annual salary if they could confidently sign their name with an X, even if it was with a pencil in their mouth.

5. Dolly the sheep made us all feel sciencey. Surely hover cars and Mars colonisation were only months away!

6. The UK won the Eurovision Song Contest! With an American and a shit song, but we didn’t care! Go us!

7. Scotland gets its own parliament. And we’re quite chuffed. Of course, then we didn’t realise that the blighters were going to make booze insanely expensive. We thought it was going to be running down the streets freely available to anyone with an empty cup handy.*

8. Some NASA stuff happened that made us go "Woooh!" and when we finally removed our fingers from our eyes, it didn’t blow up, making us go “Awwww”. Nasa can’t even afford to have their Christmas party this year.

9. Radiohead release OK Computer.

10. My wisdom teeth hadn't come through yet.

Now, onto the mechanics of the thing. Right, who’s got a copy of Back to the Future. Doc says something about a flux capacitor...will get one of those at B&Q, will be in the Hardware aisle and I’m sure I’ve got some plutonium left over in the shed....hang on... it’s here somewhere!.....

Will get back to you on my progress.....

*There’s a team of people scouring campaign leaflets from that year trying to prove this was one of Alex Salmond’s election promises. Just you wait Alec, we’ve got you, I just know it!

**OK, things were not OK for Princess Di and Gianni Versace, but ah well....good looking corpse and all that...ho hum, them's the breaks!

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Notes on an Exhibition of Myself

There have been extreme transformations afoot in the House of the Flying Martinis and the final stage reached a conclusion today with the assembly of a structure that Meeester is pretentiously, but unashamedly, calling “The Library”.

Here it is:

Now I am delighted with all modifications to The HOTFMs, what with the new flooring, the fresh paint, and the long overdue ridding of scum filled carpets and sofas. However, today I am suddenly worried that in the words of the late great Freddie Mercury, “I’m going slightly mad”.


A zoom into one of the shelves will illustrate this.

Here’s a nice book. Hmmm... I may buy a copy.





Scratch that. I may buy two.

Bugger that, let’s throw caution to the wind! Make it three!

Three copies of Notes on an Exhibition by Patrick Gale. Look; there they are for all to see.

What the blazes is going on with me that on three separate occasions I have gone into a bookshop and bought the same book? And then not even noticed until months later when I've reorganised all my books?

The madness continues.

Ah, the lovely John Peel. Sadly missed. I feel the need to read about his life and times.



No, entertaining and poignant as that was it just wasn’t enough for me. I shall re-read it in paperback to see if anything different happens.

Anyone else done this. No? No??? Damn, I was afraid you'd say that.

So I feel a Misssives competition coming on. Mainly to hide the evidence of my encroaching dementia.

Here's what you have to do:

Either:

Write a little poem about something you’ve read on the pages of the Misssives, or the general impression you have of the goings on of The Flying Martinis.

OR

Write a snappy and witty advertising slogan or tagline for The Misssives.

I’ll choose a winner and send you Margrave of the Marshes by John Peel (the paperback- I'm keeping the hardback, chums), and Notes on an Exhibition by Patrick Gale (state your preference as to which book you'd prefer, the left, middle or right one). A runner up will receive Notes on an Exhibition. I’ll also post my favourite of the entries in the sidebar as a permanent fixture.

Of course, you don't have to enter. You can simply comment on my obvious mental issues.

*****

In other news, The Sunday Showcase is getting a last outing this Sunday. A sad occasion but it should be a good listen. I’ll be on, and so will The Lorelei, recently voted Aberdeen’s best punk band (eh?) who just happen to sport my husband, Meeester and several of my chums. Tune in to Original 106FM or listen online from 6pm-10pm, and if you think the show is fabulous and it’s a travesty that it’s being axed, then why not email the show and say so.

You can listen online here.

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Let's Kill Culture

Simon Cowell won't find everything for you, you know?

It’s a sad day but one which I’ve thought was in the post for a while. The radio show that I contribute to with my Film Club is being axed. In fact, it has been already, we’re not even getting an opportunity for a swansong. It is the latest in a systematic diluting of everything that was good about the radio station I was involved with, Original 106FM. Over the last few months, the best DJs have left, the playlist has become more mainstream and bit by bit the little touches that made the station different have gone. As one of the DJs said to me a few months back, “This place should be done under the Trades Description Act. It is not Original. It is the same as all the other guff out there”.

But standing as a beacon of originality despite the station's otherwise slide into mediocrity, was Andrew Learmonth’s Sunday Showcase. Playing new music, classic music and having live sessions and interviews from bands, singers, authors, actors, comedians, critics and a whole host of people with something to say about a broad spectrum of cultural happenings, it stood out from the mid-Atlantic sounding blandness that is local radio in my area. for four hours every week, the station was what it claimed to be; original.

It became a regular stop for touring bands, like Glasvegas to Oasis, both of whom gave interviews recently, as well as local bands who would have found it hard to get a look in any of the mainstream media.

People like the popular. Course they do. But how do things become popular? U2 were once a group of wee guys looking for a break playing pubs in Dublin they couldn’t afford (or weren’t the legal age) to drink in. Stephen King was once a struggling author writing in his spare time and trying to get a short story published in between day jobs. Duffy, as all the blurb said after her winning the Brits, was singing to elderly audiences in Old Folks’ homes this time last year trying to keep her dream alive. Kate Winslet was a wee lassie working in a delicatessen waiting for the phone to ring and tell her she’d got a part. Somebody took a chance on all these people and gave them exposure.

These days...especially these days, no one wants to take a gamble. Better to invest in the next book by Patricia Cornwell over the maverick new writer who has no credentials but a great first book. Far better to have radio stations playing exclusively artists that everyone can name and recognise instantly over the fresh new sound from a band that might just be the next big thing, with a little luck on their part, and a little faith and risk taking on someone else's.

Popular culture needs the Sunday Showcases, the Friday Projects, the John Peels, the Rough Trades, and all the other ventures that celebrated the new, the exciting, the risky, the not yet popular. Without them popular culture dies.

So here's to the raw, the undiscovered, the maverick, the exciting, the risky, the next big thing. You won't find it here, though. Not in my neck of the woods.

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I Remember You

Hmmm...awkward!

There are entire TV series, books, whole newspapers, and certainly billions of blogs devoted to people ranting and raving about things that drive them up the wall. I tend to rant off stage rather than putting it all on record here, but the other day something that really does my head in happened.

Someone didn’t remember me when I remembered them.

I won’t go into detail, but this person should have remembered me. I directed him in a programme, for a few weeks, only three years ago. I think it’s acceptable that I should in saying, “Hello, how are you doing?” be in receipt of a “Hi, fine, nice to see you! How are you?” instead of a “Oh, now how do I know you???” quizzical stare and a bumbled attempt to place me, even after I’ve explained who I am in relation to them. I don’t particularly find it embarrassing and I don’t find it a blow to my ego- I just find it rude. If I remember you, you should remember me. It’s as simple as that.

Maybe it’s my peculiar problem because I always do remember people. I might not always remember names but I never forget anyone I’ve met. I just don’t. OK I can also remember a ridiculously unimportant amount of film trivia and plotlines from Coronation Street, but I don’t think I’m that unusual. I’m not exactly a circus freak.

It’s also not that I image change every five minutes like David Bowie, and I haven’t dramatically aged backwards like Benjamin Button. I have had the same hairstyle since time in memoriam and may even be wearing the same boots and clothes you saw me in ten years ago. Flares have been my jeans of choice since 1987. I haven't even flirted with slimfit. There’s no excuse.

SO, if you get caught not remembering someone here’s my handy tips in not letting it show:

1. Pretend you do. “Hi, my goodness! How are you? Great to see you!” That works.

2. Smile instead of looking like someone has just whacked you on the cheeks with a three day old fish.

3.Ask enthusiastic questions the answers to which may give you clues but won’t look like that’s what you are doing “Wow, you’re looking great! So what are you doing now?”, or, “Gosh, when would we last have seen each other? Let me think...ages ago!”

Never say:

“Christ! Who are the blazes are you?”
“Nah, still not placing you...”
“Should I know you?”
“I’m sorry, I meet so many people.....”
“Did we...did we...you know?
“Help! Security!”

All of those make you look like an arse. And contrary to newspaper reports last week that medication and surgery may soon be developed that can help erase painful memories, the science isn't there yet. So don't try the old, "Sorry, I had brain surgery that help remove painful memories and you must have got wiped as part of that". No one's falling for that old chestnut.

So there it is. It’s right up there in the pantheon of Things That Annoy Misssy, along with litter dropping, not indicating, incorrect use of apostrophes and using the F Word as a gap filling tool in sentences.

People forgetting you. It’s rude. Make an effort.

Otherwise, forget about it.





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How to Get Ahead in Advertising

I don’t know whether any of you noticed (or cared) that about six months ago I put advertising on The Misssives. It was either that or the TenaLady sponsorship deal, and I wasn't prepared to wear the shirt with the logo and drive the car with the giant sized replica on the roof, so I went for Google Adsense instead.

Like many of you, I'd done a bit of research, mainly through others' blogs, and I thought that it might pay for my broadband charges at the very least. But who am I kidding, I thought that it might enable me to make more frequent purchases of quality footwear and shiny things. All for writing stuff I was going to write anyway.

The Misssives seems to get a fair amount of traffic, and I figured that maybe I was missing a trick. What would be the harm? Two little boxes with ads relevant to my subject matter. All that has to happen is for browsing visitors to fancy a little bit of what’s on offer (Sexy Scottish Women seemed to feature a lot- what’s not to like?) Fair enough. Show me the money, Tom!

Ah but it’s not about traffic though, is it? It’s about people reading your blog then diverting their attention like sheep suddenly noticing an approaching turnip truck, and clicking the ad in rabid purchase lust. You lot are smarter than that. The figures prove it.

I decided to give it six months and then review the situation. I have now done this and the ads are now firmly off. Frankly, I wish I'd never been seduced. Here’s why:

I made $25 in six months. (Shouts stage left:"Cancel the building crews for the Greek villa! There's been a change of plan!")

Money making through blogging is a bloody lie. However, I now know what stuff you all like to buy.

So, who bought the incontinence pads after wetting their pants laughing at family argument causing saga, Well Hard Wedding? Hmmm?
And who immediately turned and frantically signed up to Scottish Gay Singles advertised when I wrote a post called Girl, I’m Gonna Take you to a Gay Bar? Hmmmmm?
And who rented a cottage for two in the Highlands after feeling all romantic after readiing about how Meeester and I met? Hmmmm?

I know, I know it all!!!

No I don’t. It’s bollocks, there isn’t even that kind of payback.

So, blog advertising; don’t do it, it’s a waste of time. Only career American Blogger Dooce was able to afford to make blogging her day job and that’s only because she lost her real job because of blogging about her workmates and that karma is bad. Fun to read, the evidence suggests, but bad. You don’t want a piece of it. She’s friendless and regretful. Albeit, rich friendless and regretful.

So there you go; there’s no such thing as a free potato. What a great phrase that is! Copyright me. Yes, I just made that one. No, you can’t use it. You can rent it. See? See what the brush with commercialism has done to me? Sorry, have the potato phrase on me.

So how could I have earned that same money without trying over the last six months without soiling my lovely Misssives with invitations to buy Viagra and Rohipnol? I've thought of a few.

1. I could have mineswept under my bed for coppers and probably made more.

2.I could have checked the pockets and trousers I’ve not worn recently for notes. There’s always a secret twenty hiding somewhere; it’s a Law of Physics.



3. I could have done what we used to when we were kids and scoured the neighbourhood for empty “bottles of ginger”. Those 20p returns on a bottle of Irn Bru can really mount up. Help ma Boab, I’ve just turned in to Oor Wullie**.



4. I could have bought own brand shopping for a week and saved the cash. But really, the thought, darlings! Ugh!



5. I could have taken a photo of Sonny the Black Menace and pimped him out to a pet calendar.



6. I could stuck my hat down on the pavement and have interpretive danced for an hour beside that American Christian fella with the dyed black hair and the big guitar who stands outside marks and Spencers in Aberdeen and wants us all to follow the ways of Jesus.



6. I could have sent a funny story into Chat, Take a Break, or Bella magazine and got the £25 prize. I think the one about Indy pretending to be the monkey police. Chat loves a monkey story. The back issues speak for themselves.

Still, I’ve got $25 which I believe roughly translates as £1.16 in Sterling at the moment. What to do with it all?!

I am reminded of the words of the late great Bill Hicks* on the subject of advertising....hmmm but this a family blog and I don’t want to offend my sponsors.







*You’ll have to go to Youtube if you don’t get my reference. But really, Bill Hicks? You don’t know who Bill Hicks is? Tut, tut.





**You'll have to awa an beil yer heid if you don't know who Oor Wullie is. Anyone outside Scotland may struggle, but Google him anyway. Jings, he's a National Treasure!




"Scunnert"

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Cat People

I was up at five this morning. Not by choice. Never by choice.

I was woken by an almighty loud crash and a screaming wailing noise that sounded like the gates of Hell had ripped open in my kitchen. Meeester sprang into action like a cougar, coughed slightly, turned over and said, “You see to it”.

Effectively our splendid lady cats, Lulu and Libby, were being brutally battered by their birth brother Ziggy The Ginger Bastard. He had brazenly come in their (not his- he doesn't live with us) cat flap and set about terrorizing them both. Sonny The Black Menace, our spaniel and potential protector of the lady cats was blissfully sleeping upstairs in his Spiderman jammies lying on the bottom tier of the bunk beds with his sooky blanket tucked under his chin and lace rimmed sleep mask covering his peepers. He was not due to rise until eight, and then only if someone brought him a nice cup of sweet tea and a freshly toasted crumpet.

The job fell to me.

I went down to the kitchen just in time to see a ginger flash disappearing out the flap and a swish of black “Hooded Claw” type velvet cloakage.

I looked at my two fluffy ladies cowering demurely in the corner. Where did the love go?

It occurred to me that Ziggy is in many ways like Jim Corr, guitar player and brother from horrible Irish pseudo folk rock/beauty pageant, The Corrs.

Here are the Corrs. They are siblings, we’re told.

Poor Jim Corr:

Look! The photographer hasn't even lit him!

See Jim there? Poor Jim Corr. Not exactly pick of the litter is he? In fact, some might suggest that Mrs Corr had a wee drunken and ill-thought through clinch with the bean-faced storeman at work that Christmas Party in 1972, whilst the handsomely chiseled Heathcliffe-like Papa Corr stayed at home watching over his three beautiful daughters which were the spit of their Daddy.

Nine months later, there you have it, a son for Papa Corr. But he is a cuckoo in the nest. They all know it, but no one dares speak it. Oh,...oh dear. Poor little Jim. Stick him in with the girls, something might just rub off on him. Quick someone give him some sunglasses for Jaysus sake!

So here is evidence of some bizarre genetic goings on in my own little gang.

Here are my ladies.

Talullah "Lulu" Martini

Elizabeth "Libby" Martini

A couple of prizewinners, aren’t they?

And here is their violent brother, in the only photo I have of him. It's the one I saw of the little litter on the Cat Protection website before me and my buddy adopted them wholesale. OK, he's quite cute there and I do have a very soft spot for him still but.... Ziggy is now fifty times that size and full of rippling muscles and covered in tattoos. He has ASBOS and a gym membership! He is also supposed to be resident at my pal’s house over the road but he seems to prefer our house, with its ready supply of beautiful maidens for him to cuff gangsta rapper style.

Yo, where's ma bitches?

Ziggy also reminds me of this character from Coronation Street. This is Gary Windass, the Young Pretender to the Bad Boy throne of dear departed Les Battersby. He is currently about to get “sent down” for GBH after he put the weasly David Platt in hospital with a single freckled knuckle punch.

See? Same hair, and, same attitude.

The thing is, two weeks ago our well-loved old boy cat, Harleyboy, who was seventeen, died. And my ladies were left without a dad/man about the house. Although in the last few months, our Harley was unable to see, didn’t know what the blazes was going on, and was frightened to go outside never mind see off a feisty ginger intruder, his musky presence was enough to warn off other toms.

When I told my daughter that Harley had gone she wailed and cried. And then she tearfully broke off to ask, in all seriousness, “But who will look after Lulu and Libby?!”

We thought that was tremendously cute. But cuteness aside, it appears she is right. Who will look after Lulu and Libby?

And how can I go about persuading my family that we need a new Tom Cat about the House of the Flying Martinis, given that even my youngest child declared about six months ago, "Mummy, we've too many animals."

We need our own tom round here. Preferably one of those lovely Bengal cats, that just happen to grow to the size of a panther and look like they could be rather handy at five in the morning.

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Empty brain here

Let's get on with the third installment of my blogging research study which I'm now calling The Blogpsyche because it sounds sci-fi and exciting like a scientific device in Barbarella.

Before we get onto Part Three I would like to do you all the courtesy of answering my own questions from Part Two of Blogpsyche, the research for my talk about blogging at The Word Festival in Aberdeen, that you, yes you, can be a part of, simply by telling me your own thoughts on your blog and blogging in general.

Here are the previous questions and my answers:

1. Did you write stuff at all before starting your blog? Tell me more...

Yes, all the time. First of all, I do write stuff for a living anyway but nothing exciting, just scripts for productions at work and educational/corporate material, so that doesn't count. Man, the things I've had to write about.....jeez. But in terms of writing for fun, I have little notebooks full of crapola from my brain all over the place. But none of it is anything more than stuff to remind me of places I've been or things I've seen. I wouldn't show them to anyone, but now I think they could be useful to turn into other things that I would show to people, like blog posts or short stories or...gasp...books. I have also sporadically kept a diary, volumes of which are kept encased in a chest made of Kryptonite in a secret cavern in the South Pole protected by an army of psychotic polar bears.

In addition to all that, as I've already mentioned, I used to write big long group emails to people when on my travels and before that letters, which sadly I can't get back to find out what I was doing and thinking when I was in Germany and Spain as a student, or New Orleans as a illegal immigrant worker, or on that Guyanan penal colony when I was convicted as a murderer and then escaped with only a half blind Dustin Hoffman for company.

2. Did any other writers or bloggers inspire you when you started?

Oh absolutely yes, and they still do. I think I have to name names. My friend Cammy of Stuff on TV made me wise up to the fact that I had to get onto a proper blog platform and start doing this properly for a wider audience. He's also very funny. In terms of style I read Little Red Boat by Anna Pickard and thought, she's so funny and she writes about everyday stuff, and her personality comes across through her writing style. She's consistently good. I was also a big fan of Tired Dad, who would always tell stories instead of just keeping a diary. He inspired me a lot. There's a hole in my blog reading list since he stopped. On a similar theme I've enjoyed the style of Danny Evans of Dad Gone Mad, although his blog has changed slightly since his book deal, which is a common thing, I guess with successful bloggers who then get published. This is not a criticism, just an observation. I'm not surprised he's been published. He can take the most mundane occurance and make it funny with the way he uses language.

Another ex-blogger who has now stopped for personal reasons was Running in Wellies who used to edit a blog magazine, and would include material from The Misssives in the stuff she selected for inclusion and also became a regular reader/read of mine. She brought me readers and confidence. I miss her. Another early find of mine was Emma K from Mommy Has a Headache who has become a friend and writing buddy on a project. More recently Kate Lord Brown of What Kate Did has inspired me to take my writing to the next level, and to think more seriously about it. Her blog is a must read for aspiring writers.

3. Has blogging inspired you to write material outside of your blog?

Well, I've already indicated some of this above. I have been included in the blog book "You're not the Only One" edited by ex-blogger Peach. I cannot over state how exciting and inspiring this was for me. I am sat side by side in the book with many of the bloggers who inspired me in the first place and immensely grateful to Peach for including me.

I am now writing two books- one non-fiction book written with a co-writer which has only just been taken on by a literary agent and another fiction one on my own which I hope to concentrate on more when the first one is finished/or, fingers crossed, accepted by a publisher. I also send short stories to magazines when I have time. I didn't send my writing anywhere until I started blogging. This is largely due to the confidence I've been given by readers. So thanks to you all.

I also am still chugging away writing material for industry eight hours a day but that's for bread, not for kicks. No one writes about the effects of Hydrogen Sulphide on the human body for kicks. Not even Stephen King.

OK, it's your turn.

Here are the three questions for Part Three of the snazzily named Blogpsyche. Even if you haven't been involved up to now, go ahead and answer them. And you can still answer my previous questions by going here and here:

1. Has your blog ever got you into trouble?

2. Where do you draw the line in your blog?

3. What has been family and friends' reaction to your blog?

As before, if you don't want to comment publically but still want to tell me something you can email me as a few of you have already done.

I look forward to reading your comments.

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Notice of Copyright Infringement

Minnie the Minx

(Courtesy of DC Thompson)

Dear Ms Junior Misssy,


It has come to our attention that you are in serious breach of copyright.


Reports coming into our office have indicated that several of the "jolly japes" and characteristics belonging to the well-loved characters of our top-selling Beano comic have been, well, pinched.


We feel that we need to draw this infringement of our creative copyright to your attention and, frankly, ask you to stop this potentially criminal behaviour immediately.


We have outlined your most recent infringement for your deliberation, and we hope, your embarrassment.


Infringement 1


Plaintiff: Junior Misssy


Location: The Master Bedroom of the House of the Flying Martinis


Evidence suggests that you did, in fact, enter the bedroom of your parents at 7.50am on Monday morning of 24th January 2009, and, having previously applied a myriad of spherical red marks to your face using a felt-tipped drawing pen, you then proceeded to claim that there was "something wrong with" your face. Something that may render you unable to go to school. Something that may be potentially contagious.


Miss, I think you will find that this jape is the copyright of our foremost female character, Minnie the Minx. Our records prove that Ms Minx did in fact use this ruse in the following issues of The Beano:

• 12.09.1972 (supposed measles)


• 16.09.1986 (supposed radiation sickness)


• 23.10.1999 (supposed necrotising fasciitis), and


• 01.07.2005 (supposed allergic reaction to a botox injection)

You will also find, if you were to examine these issues for yourself, that Ms Minx did not manage to convince her father that the marks were indeed lesions of a biological nature as, we believe was also the case in your personal attempt. Furthermore, if you were to look back in the issues of 1972 and 1986, you would find that Minnie did, in actual fact, get "the slipper" for her feeble yet hilarious endeavours at truancy. In later issues, she would have been subject to a grounding and laterly she is forced by her father to sit on the "the naughty step" as is the current fashion. Frankly, we prefer the intial old-style punishment but we're not allowed to espouse child beating anymore, so that's the end of that.


Anyway, we digress. These infringements must cease. Your brother is already on his second warning, after his disgraceful attempt to emulate the actions of Bash Street kid hero, Plug, by doing his level best to go to sleep in his school uniform so as to save crucial minutes in the morning, and voiding the need to get dressed. You will find, should you ask your brother, that our reprisal is swift and merciless. And not at all funny.


Rest assured, our lawyers have been informed and you will be hearing from them in due course.


Yours sincerely


DC Thompson


(Owners of the Beano and all the Characters and jokes there-in)


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Every Day I Write the Book

Robert Burns: Would he have blogged?

Definately. What better way to get the ladies?

First of all, thanks to all who responded to my initial three questions about blogging. Ahh, you're just great, so you are. If you missed it, then click here to put your oar in the comments box. There's no time limit, despite what I said earlier.

So to recap, for those who missed the last post, or for any goldfish reading, I’m doing some research for a talk I’m going to give on blogging. In the next wee while I’m asking my blogger readers some questions about their blog-life.

But before I wade in with your next set of questions, one commenter asked me via the email, whether I was going to answer my own questions. It is only fair. Here are my answers to the first three questions from the Misssives post What’s It All About, Alfie? (Which was very nearly What’s it All About, Archie?, after my sister’s father in law sang the wrong words, but only she would have got it, and you would have thought me a mental, so I reverted).

1. What prompted you to start a blog in the first place?
I was doing a lot of travelling in one particular year. First off, I took ten of my students on an exchange trip to Finland for two weeks. During that time I sent regular group emails to friends and family with stories of the goings on of my students and impressions of the land of Death Metal that is Finland. People seemed to find them funny and some people even wrote to me to say that they had read bits to friends or passed them on. Two months later I was off to Sri Lanka on a school trip with my husband (check me!). I was speaking to my own students about how I could set up a travel website so that I could put up my diary for my friends and family, and one of my students said I should do it as a blog. I didn’t know what a blog was. My students set me up with a Myspace page, and off I went.

This kind of thing would happen quite a lot when I was a lecturer. My students also showed me how to retrieve voice mail messages off my mobile, send texts and they told me what a MILF was. Since I left teaching I wonder what stuff I’m missing, now I don’t have them to keep me right.



2. What keeps you doing it?
It has an addictive quality, doesn’t it? Once back from Sri Lanka, I missed doing it, so I started blogging outside of travelling. Pretty soon I started reading other people’s blogs and this lead to the realisation that I was on the wrong blog platform. I didn’t use the acronyms OMG or WTF or LOL and I hadn’t a photo of myself with a fringe over one eye, my breasts exposed and my cheeks sucked in. Myspace was not for me. I moved to Blogger and started the Misssy M Misssives properly. One of the first things I started to read was Post of the Week which introduced me to others’ blogs. When I got first shortlisted for Post of the Week myself, I felt so excited I was nearly sick. Even though I don’t think it got me many readers, it gave me a bit of validation which I think I needed when I first started. In fact POTW isn't doing so well recently...you should all go over and start nominating blog posts you like to reinvigorate it, it is a great idea. See my side bar for a link.

Nearly three years on I would have to say that the readers and feedback I get is a part of the reason I still do it. But to be honest I’d still be writing blogs even if I got no comments. I can’t imagine giving up, it’s part of my life. Even my friends have started calling me Misssy. Misssy’s not my real name, you do know that, right? What would that say about my parents' literacy levels?


3. Has it evolved into anything different as time has gone on?
Well, yes and no. It’s not a travel blog anymore, because I’m not travelling all the time, more’s the pity. I suppose it’s just a personal blog, but I do try to tell stories rather than write a diary. Occasionally, I try different things, like I have recently stuck up a short piece of fiction, and then I had a heated debate which seemed to go down well. I rarely do serious stuff, so I suppose I err on the side of humour. I can’t see that changing. Life’s too serious as it is.

I'd also like to think my writing's got better. Because if it hasn't then.... oh dear.

****

And so to the next set of questions for you all. To the comments box with you!


1. Did you write stuff at all before starting your blog? Tell me more...

2. Did any other writers or bloggers inspire you when you started?

3. Has blogging inspired you to write material outside of your blog?

Again, email if you don't want to share publically. In the words of Dr Frasier Crane, "I'm listening..."

STOP PRESS: Part three questions now up. Click here!

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What's it All About, Alfie?

I have been asked to give a talk about writing for the Word Festival in Aberdeen. More specifically, the talk is to be about writing a blog. So, in the spirit of research (cloaking nosiness) , I thought I’d turn to the readers of the Misssives (the ones who are also bloggers, that is) and beyond, to get your opinions and personal experience. I have a shedload of material I can say about writing the Misssives, but the whole hour can’t all be about my blog. Can it? No it can't, narcissism or no.

So, over the next couple of months leading up to the talk, I thought I’d do the odd post where I ask you all a question or two about your blog and your blogging habits. I have loads of questions, actually, but I’ll limit them to two or three per post.

Today, I want to concentrate on one thing; how your blog started.

So, I have three questions.

1. What prompted you to start a blog in the first place?
2. What keeps you doing it?
3. Has it evolved into anything different as time has gone on?

Of course, if anyone is too shy to reveal anything in the comments box- email me. All contributions are welcome.

C'mon fellow narcissists, let's talk about you!

Stop Press: Jan 29
Thanks for the responses so far- have had a few via email too.For those of you still ruminating- hurry up and comment as I'm putting up the next three questions very soon, (and to the person who mentioned it- I will start the new post with my answers to my initial 3 questions)



If you've already given me answers to these questions, you can jump straight to my next three questions on blogging here.



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Flakes on a Plane

The tenuous excuse I've been
waiting for to post this photo

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I were an extremely rude person devoid of manners but at the same time full of my own importance. I’ve a feeling that it might be sensational.

Your rudeness would take people by surprise and as a result you would usually get whatever it was you wanted, even if you looked like an arsehole getting it. But you wouldn’t care about that, you’re too self-unaware. How liberating to not give two hoots?

The reason I’m thinking about this is that I'm thinking about a woman that I sat next to on an airplane recently. She is an air steward’s nightmare; the high maintenance passenger. My family are sat behind me in a row of three and I am cast adrift one row in front beside Princess, who I immediately assume is clearly unused to having to share anything, which is why she blanks me when I say "Excuse me!" three times in an attempt to squeeze past her into my window seat. (Woohoo! Window seat! Dancer!)

Our twenty something anti-heroine is on the phone chatting loudly. She is describing her situation at this exact moment to her call recipient, as people tend to do on mobile phones, and I’m half expecting her to say, “Yes, I am on the plane, it is dark outside so I don’t care I’ve not got the window seat and there is a woman hovering two inches above me making squeaking noises but she might go away if don’t look at her.”

She chats away and ignores all three polite requests from me to move her ass. For my fourth attempt, I say, “Hi, hello, that’s my seat over there, I need to get into it. Could you move over , please”. Reluctantly, she raises her gaze slowly towards me and, still continuing her conversation, moves her knees to the side. Now anyone who’s been on a BA flight to Aberdeen from London knows that there is not enough space between one’s knees and any other surface present to allow a person to skip past. I look at her knees and then back at her face with a silent ”You are kidding me, Precious, aren’t you?” thought bubble just above my hair.

Wonder of wonders, the still chatting woman huffs a bit and actually gets up into the aisle, and I am able to get to my seat. For the first time in my personal history I am hoping for another person to occupy the empty seat next to me so that I do not have to be the person in closest proximity to the Princess. But this doesn’t happen. The flight is only 1 hour 15 minutes but once someone bugs you, they bug you and nothing is going to change that. A steward comes over and asks her to switch off her phone. She does not acknowledge his presence in any way, but after he has gone, she ends her call. I note from this action that she is aware of an existence outwith herself and therefore can be held fully accountable for being a pain in the ass. Her condition is not a medical one.

The plane takes off and she boredly and noisily flicks through, without reading or even glancing at every single page of the inflight magazine. I have to put my Walkman on to muffle the noise of the pages being palm-slapped and then whooshed over in dramatic fashion.

The drinks cart arrives. “Two cans of Coke” are ordered by Princess without so much as a please or thank you. I ask for a Hemlock and Cranberry with a twist but they only have Gin and Tonic which’ll have to do.

Meeester catches my eye in a ”what the blazes is she like?” type eyebrow manoeuvre. He is living it large with Indy and Junior Misssy behind me, who are not as annoying as Princess despite being up a bit late and having had a whole host of E numbers by way of a sweetie or two at Heathrow.

Dinner arrives. Princess unwraps her food and immediately wolfs her bread roll. As the steward moves off, she calls him back. “I need more bread” she says.

Our steward says that he’ll have to see how many meals are left with an internal additional monologue of “because this isn’t a fucking restaurant, girly, and I’m still serving other people if you hadn’t noticed” apparent in his trained forced smile.

The steward then does the same eyebrow manoeuvre to me that Meeester has done previously, and, just like that, we’ve connected in our distaste for Princess. I know he’s going to save me first if there’s a crash situation. I’m sorted. I smile knowingly to myself as if I’m one of the passengers that makes it to the island from Flight 815 in Lost.

Ten minutes later the returns with a flourish and a genius display of barely restrained passive aggression. Princess is presented with a second bread roll.

“Here’s your extra bread madam. Now, have you got everything that you want?”

“Yes, thanks”

“You sure you’ve got everything?"

"Yes."

"You like two of everything, don’t you madam?”

“Ha, yes”, she says, “Hmmm. Yes, he, he”in a Yes, I'm a Scream Aren't I? type of a way.

Self awareness function-engage!

“Just so you know, I don’t think I can manage a second plane for you, madam.”

The steward winks to me out of sight of Princess.

Yeah, he’s definitely going to save me over her.

You’re toast, Princess.

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Half Ton Son

Last night I forced Meeester to watch a programme on the telly that he had not wanted to watch at the time, so I had recorded it. He didn’t want to watch it because he said that doing so would be voyeuristic. This is after we had watched that bird off Shameless nimbly chew her own toenails on Celebrity Big Brother. Hmmm. The programme was “The Half Ton Son” about Billy, a nineteen year old from Houston- not the Scottish Houston, which has no drive in MacDonalds, to my knowledge but the US Houston which most certainly does.

Watching this documentary segued neatly in my brain to a debate that was raging over at Canadian Blogger Extraordinaire, Ex-Urban Pedestrian’s place about whether obese people should pay for an extra seat on an airplane or whether they should be allocated double seats as a matter of course. My comment was quite hardline. I claimed that being obese was effectively a life choice. Not a choice to be fat, but a choice to overeat, a series of choices made every meal time, every snack time, to ignore your better judgement, to ignore the signals given to you by your body, and eat more than you need. Watching the documentary about this boy last night who, at his peak, weighed over 67 stone, has done nothing to change my mind on this issue. Billy’s greed and eating problem was made doubly worse by a mother who was an enabler of his greed and a willing provider of too much food for her mollycoddled, spoiled son. She was as much to blame for his life threatening size as he was, if not more so. And he was quite happy to devolve responsibility to her.

Now according to the scales on WiiFit, just about everyone is obese, but how many people on a daily basis do you come into contact that are morbidly obese. Me, I used to work with someone who is. Yet, I never saw him eat. Other than that, no, it’s still not really that common to see people in the UK who have massive folds of fat hanging over their front bottom area, are wheezy just walking down a corridor, or who genuinely would need two seats on an airplane.

However in the US, it is extremely common, and I never really saw horrendously morbidly obese people until I worked in New Orleans in 1990. I was shocked and horrified at how human beings could morph into the size these people were. I genuinely had never seen people who looked like that before. And I live in Scotland home of the sliced sausage and the deep fried pizza! What were they doing that was different to the rest of the world?

As I worked in a restaurant which offered a limited selection of “All You Can Eat” items, I served a great deal of obese people. To a man, they all ordered Diet Coke with their 10 consecutive plates of deep fried shrimp or barbecue ribs. The first time I took someone’s diet drink order in this situation, I nearly choked from surprise. I thought they were taking the piss out of me.

The other waiters had a name for this type of customer, they were called “Salads”.

“Why ‘Salad’?” I asked.

“Because they always order a side salad and never touch it” said my colleague.

“Like some kind of coverup,” said another.

“Like the diet drink order?” I said. “Yes, like that. That’s a cover up too”.

People can be fat all over the world, but the level of obesity that I saw in the States horrified me. And running back and forth with the 7^th consecutive plate of something that most people would only manage two of, for someone nudging 30 stone, yes, has made my opinions hardline about this. Little choices, mounting up to becoming something that becomes a health problem, which then becomes an addiction, which then becomes a human rights issue, which then becomes someone else’s fault for offering “All you Can Eat” items, or “Supersize” items, or no extra seat on an airline.

But this all started with little choices. Theirs, their mother’s, whoever...but choices all the same.

Not often we have a serious debate on the Misssives, but what do you think?


Stop Press: Gordon McLean of top blog Informationally Overloaded, who commented earlier here, has written his take on being fat. Read it.

Stop Stop Press: And XUP has opened the debate ever wider. This one will run and run...Read that too.

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Funny Girl

I even love that armpit hair