Some things just ain't for sale

Today I am asked my opinion on the council decision to refuse Donald Trump permission to build a large hotel and golf complex on the Menie estate which encompasses a large stretch of coastline of North East Scotland.

I wish to respond by way of a poem.

There are not many places left untouched here now
The sea has become our regional cash cow
As I look out to the structures that pay my mortgage
I can’t complain or join in the environmental scrummage

When others rail against the system of fossil fuel dependence
We Scots rely on oil for more than running our car engines
But the Menie beach saga is a different thing
Sometimes life is more important than a cash register ring

A well kept secret; for legions of sunbathers just too damn cold
Unsuitable for the holiday industry to take hold
The indigenous inhabitants of that beach who cannot speak
Sat silent in nests as Trump tried to wet his beak

So it was up to us to push their cause
And protect this beautiful area from greedy paws
For those who complain that we’ve shot ourselves in the foot
Is a few hundred minimum wages jobs really that much loot?

Surely the conservation of an area with rare wildlife and serenity
Is a true badge of our region's continued prosperity
If we let it be destroyed for a bunch of greenbacks
You can bet, when it’s all spent, there’ll be no going back

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. You know mine. Regardless, please register which ever one is your own in our local newspaper poll here.

Beat the November Black Dog with a Big Pointy Stick

Sorry folks, but the puppy's days are numbered

Like many of you I am being followed by the November Black Dog.

It can’t be good for the soul if you wake up with a frown and count the hours until you can feasibly get away with going to bed. And that's what we're all doing, isn't it?

This afternoon I caught sight of myself in the windows at the supermarket. I was scowling, I had a flipping duffel coat on, I had not done anything with my hair, I was wearing glasses instead of my usual contacts, I had no makeup on and my shoes were muddy. I looked and felt horrific. And I am blaming November squarely.

November is too dark, everyone (including me) has a cold, November is rainy, November is blah, blah, blah. Everyone hates November; even folk who have their birthdays in November are scunnered by it.

Some effort is required to not let the November Black Dog* turn into the December Black Dog* and then inevitably the four month old Winter Black Dog* who stinks of dog sweat, shits on your carpet and bites any visitors that come to your home.

I am going to make an effort in the following departments:

1. Every time the sun comes out I am going outside, even if it’s just for ten minutes. (Ten minutes may the accumulative time of actual sunshine in the North of Scotland in the next four months, I know. I am prepared for that eventuality)

2. I am going to have a beauty treatment every week, whether self administered or paid for. I may even fake tan to bring more sunshine into my life. I will paint my toenails even though no-one else gets to see them.

3. I am never going outside less than presentable. I will say to myself every time I leave the house “Would you be satisfied looking like this whilst bumping into an ex-boyfriend who you would like to leave feeling he missed out?” If the answer is “God...no!” I turn back in and improve accordingly.

4. I am going to get up every morning and force myself to smile before I do anything else. I will check myself doing this in the mirror just to make sure it’s not a grimace.

5. I am going to play music I like first thing every morning. I am going to compile an “I Love Winter” playlist on my computer tonight. To help trick my mind somewhat it will include tracks like “Summertime” by The Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff and lots of Brazilian Samba Music. It can’t fail. Suggestions welcome by the way.

6. I am not going to let November stop me from doing things I normally only do in summer, like going to the beach (not for swimming obviously, I’m not suicidal- people die in the North Sea. Apparently at the moment you've got four minutes survival time without a wet suit/dry suit/Arran jumper).

7. I will NOT bitch about the impending Christmas festivities. This is one of my favourite topics of conversation but I can’t change anything and it isn’t good for my karma so I must stop. I must remember why I used to love Christmas and learn to love it again.

8. I will not cry if anyone who lives in, or is going somewhere warm contacts me. (A business contact today cancelled a meeting with me on Wednesday as he “had been called away urgently to Mexico." My reaction to this was vitriolic, to say the least). Instead of growling expletives, I will say something like, “But they are missing the incredible UK change of the seasons, what a shame for them!”

*I do actually have a real life black dog as regular Misssives readers will know, and he is a joy and cannot be associated with depression in any way, unless he eats any of my shoes. Apologies to any actual black dogs out there who are offended at the metaphors used in this post. We here at the Misssives are all about loving the real life actual black dogs.

The Misssy M Misssives Present: Your Cut Out and Keep Christmas Card Disclaimer

Penguins with clothes on:

Banned from the House of the Flying Martinis.

Here's my Christmas gift to you all. Cut it out and brandish at people or email to your friends and get yourself out of pre-Christmas Hell. Additions to the list welcome.


Dear Friend,

This year I will not be sending out Christmas cards. To help you understand why, I have compiled a list of possible reasons and I urge you to simply choose your favourite and go with it. Know that the non-receipt of a card is no indication of any diminishing of my love for you, and have a lovely Christmas.

Possible reasons that you won’t be getting a Christmas card from me this year:

1. I am on holiday in place where writing a Christmas card would get me imprisoned. Not worth the risk.

2. The thought of sitting down for an entire night writing the names of me and my family 150 times over on little bits of card may send me over the edge. So I won’t be doing it for my own sanity.

3. I am worried about the amount of paper used to facilitate this meaningless exercise. We need trees for other, more useful stuff, like breathing.

4. I had a traumatic paper cut experience last year with a Christmas card and although my therapist suggests that one day that I will have to write a card to get over it, I'm really only at the stage where I can calmly handle a pen without breaking out in a nervous rash.

5. I am trapped under something incredibly heavy and cannot get out from under it to write my Christmas cards.

6. I forgot.

7. I am converting to Islam. Infidels with your phoney Christmas cards!

8. No matter how many I send I will always forget to send somebody one and then I’ll get one from them and the guilt will ruin my Christmas.

9. Christmas cards make my house messy. They make your house messy. I’m doing your home décor a favour.

10. Christmas cards are not feng shui.

11. Postmen are over worked as it is. Give those lads a break.

12. I haven’t seen a lot of you in many years. I’d rather have an email from you telling me how life is going rather than simply read your name on a Christmas card each year. Or a visit, how about a visit instead of a card?

13. Christmas cards are a fire hazard. Have you any idea how many house fires are caused by Christmas cards coming into contact with ignition sources? I’m saving your life here!

14. Christmas is hectic enough wiothout this added hassle. Why don’t you join me and not write them too. Then we can get on with enjoying the run up to Christmas rather than having this yearly administrative nightmare to endure.

15. Men don’t write Christmas cards. Fact. It’s always left to the woman. I am making a feminist statement. Join me sisters!

16. The dog ate my Christmas cards.

17. My love for you cannot be adequately conveyed on a Christmas card, so why try?

18. Jesus didn’t like Christmas cards. Actual historical fact.

19. Penguins don’t wear Santa hats. Let’s quosh the stereotype before they get angry and raise a revolutionary army against us.

20. I am allergic to the sticky gum on Christmas card envelopes and may die if I lick it. Medical exemption. Have note from my Mum.

Letter to an Unknown Schoolteacher

Dear fellow professional

I feel that it is only right that I write to you so that you know what kind of behaviour to expect from me over the coming year as parent of one of your new pupils. That way we both know where we stand.

Notes home from school

Over the course of the year you are going to send home a rainforest full of paperwork in the form of letters and notifications. Some will be important, most will not. You can expect that the unimportant letters will be filed in the metal, bin bag lined filing cabinet also known as File Number 13.

You can also expect that I will lose the majority of the more important letters and you will have no option but to write a stern note in my daughter’s home school book. Which I will not read.

Sponsorship

Similarly, there will doubtless be a gazillion forms, leaflets and notifications that will attempt to fleece a great deal of cash out of me throughout the year. For example, I will be required to pressgang my entire family and friends in order to gain numerous donations for sponsorship for random activities that my child will have to do at school. These will be for a great deal of charities that I have never heard of before.

I will probably humour the first of these, mainly for fear of showing my kid up when they are the only one in class whose Mum hasn’t bothered. Pretty soon however I will be burning these forms in the fire chanting, “Stop fleecing me and my kids, you crazy bastards!”.

Seriously though, two sponsorship forms in a week?? You’re flipping kidding me!

Working Parents

Throughout my child’s school life you will arrange appointments and events which take no account of the fact that 60% of the parents of your charges hold down full time jobs. You will be totally inflexible despite the fact that many of you are working parents yourselves. Be warned that the bad will, stress and guilt that this inflexibility will engender, will render me incapable of helping out at school discos which are scheduled to start ten minutes before most working parents set foot in their homes after a hard day’s work anyway.

Advertising through my child

Please also be warned that I will not tolerate another mother’s feeble attempts at advertising their home businesses through flyer-ing the pupils. I am failing to see the educational link between nursery and someone’s sub-Tupperware Party type enterprise promotional material. Please make sure that my daughter does not come home with such trash. What’s next, are our kids going to be wearing uniforms with Asda logos emblazoned on them honouring some sponsorship deal?

Emotional commercial blackmail

I appreciate that schools need to make extra cash at certain points but please do not take my daughter to a book fair and write me a note 4 weeks before Christmas telling me that Junior Misssy “has expressed an interest in the following books”. Do you not realise that Junior Missy is now expecting, nay demanding said books. And not for Christmas neither. NOW! Do you not know anything about four year olds?

School dress up

And on a final note. What the blazes was the deal with two dressing up days within two weeks? Don’t you know that I wont read the notes warning me about them and will have a child standing in front of me at 8.30am screaming, “Mum it’s dress up day today, you need to make me a costume NOW!”

Other than that, totally loving your work,

Misssy M

On the Couch

The couch, with optional Cocker Spaniel
(Click on photo to be horrified at the stains in closeup!)

As I sit here at my computer I am looking at one of my most prized possessions. It is a couch.

This couch was from the first set of furniture my parents ever bought. I’m guessing that they bought it when they got married and moved in together for the first time, at a time before couples did the whole try-before-you-buy type thing before finally traipsing up the aisle. I would have been born one year later, so the first year must have gone okay, I suppose.

This makes the couch forty years old next month and it is in a bit of a state. I have been under pressure to get rid of the couch recently. It badly needs reupholstered and its cushions replaced. Yesterday, I nearly agreed to throw it out after a serious discussion about the price of new couch versus cost of upholstering. But the couch has had a stay of execution once more. The more I thought about it, the more I felt guilty for even considering that it should leave my house forever. It is to be recovered- no matter what the cost.

Let me tell you about that couch.

It is a Swedish day bed. Personally, I think it is a design classic. My mother, the original puchaser of said couch is irritated that I still have it.

“I can’t believe you still have this ratty old couch. Throw it out. It was only meant to get you through University”. She will be further enraged that I am going to get it reupholstered for the third time; she can hardly bear to look at it.

My mum is unsentimental about things like that. She chucks cool stuff out all the time. When I was a teenager I was raging at her for throwing out the best ever pair of purple suede Stevie Nicks style knee length boots that I remembered from my childhood. “Oh I threw them out years ago, what do you want them for?” She failed to realise these boots would be my ticket to Goth heaven.

My dad, by contrast, keeps everything. I wore my dad’s original “Beatles jumper”, (for that’s what crew neck jerseys were called in the sixties -check out the Hard Day's night album cover for details), until it fell to pieces. I bet he’s still got the receipt for it somewhere.

The thing is, I just can’t get rid of the couch. My first childhood memories are associated with that couch. I held my baby brother and baby sister for the first time on that couch. I lay on that couch watching "Pipkins" (best children's TV show ever?) when I was off school ill.

My first ever cat, Fluff (so original with the names, eh?) got her head snecked in the storage opening of that couch when we raided it on a Saturday morning for sleeping bags in which to watch “Swap Shop”. The vet said she wouldn’t survive the week- she lived for another twelve years.

Me and my brother were convinced we could teach ourselves to fly if we jumped off that couch enough times. (Still trying!)

But most important of all, the couch features in my earliest memory. My first ever memory is standing on that couch to watch out the window for my Dad coming home from work; a daily ritual. The couch, the window and the street below is all I can remember of tenement lined Swindon Street, my first ever home. The street has long since been bulldozed.

Here’s the picture. I am standing on the couch, looking out the window for my dad to hop off the bus. I have my hands slapped up against the glass as I peer out waiting for the bus to come down the street taking the hoardes of blokes home from John Brown Engineering (they built the QE2, you know, fact fans!). I see him come off the bus, and wait for him to spot me at the window and wave. I must have been around two years old.

How can I let the couch go?



(Thanks for the prompt, my lovely Tatooed Atheist.)

Brand New

Every now and again it helps the soul to try something new.

Forget plastic surgery, forget Class As, forget religion, forget winning the lottery. Being happy has a lot to do with new-ness. For some the thrill of the new may be something reasonably perilous like climbing the north face of that mountain those two blokes fell down in that film, “Touching the Void”, or even trying out the trickier Kama Sutra positions with an orange* in your mouth. For the rest of us, experiencing the new might not need to be life threatening, or as embarrassing to the family members that have to call the ambulance.

After the radio show this weekend which is the first time ever I have been on the radio, I realised that no matter how wracked with nerves I was, the adrenaline rush was not to be sniffed at. And then I began thinking about all the new things I have done this year.

My whole life I wanted to go to Thailand. This year I went. It was better than even I imagined. And it was all about new experiences every day. I'll never forget it. You can keep the Costa Del Sol!

In the New Year I painted and sold my work. It was one the best things I have ever done in my life. It still makes me smile.

In the summer I got a new job and left my comfort zone of teaching. Terrifying, still. But a good decision.

Then I got a dog. It’s been hard work but there’s not a day goes by that I don’t think, “Jeez, I just love that wee boy!” Watch this space for a coming soon blog and me and Sonny at Dog School!

I went freelance full time and left the days of clocking in and out behind me. Safety net...removed! (Audible gasps from the assembled crowds)

But it isn’t just me. I look around myself and I see that I am surrounded with friends who are not afraid to embrace the new. Maybe that's the reason I hang out with them.

A friend of mine went for five weeks travelling to Thailand and Australia and left her husband to take care of the kids at home because she’d always wanted to go but never had the chance before. My sister has taken up the cello. My husband has joined a new band. My brother in law has become an accomplished songwriter. My friend is joining the police force after a life unhappy in various jobs. My other friend has gone back to college at the age of forty, despite being absolutely terrified.

I swear, if you’re feeling that you need a boost, try something new-preferably something that really puts yourself out there and see what happens. Even if it’s running outside naked for five minutes in the snow just to say you did. Go on, do it now.

(And then blog it!)

*start with a tangerine...much safer.

Hello Nation!

Barry Norman: Blessed be the Onion Picklers

This Saturday I am to be heard on the radio. I am ridiculously excited.

My good friend Evelyn is an actual bona fide professional radio DJ and she seems to think that I should be her regular film reviewer on her Saturday morning show. And who am I to argue? Biggest loves: films and talking about films. I am flattered and delighted.

I thought about maybe not mentioning it on the Misssives until I’ve done the first show in case I develop Tourettes midway through and make a pig's ear of the whole thing (I won't, Ev, I promise I won't!). But I’m too excited and have to tell everyone.

I don’t want to big myself up too much, pride coming before a fall and all that jazz, but I reckon I’m far more sincere than Jonathan Ross and I know I have better film taste than him. And after his disgraceful cheek in the presence of the wonderful Terry Wogan on his TV show a couple of weeks ago, I've pretty much turned against him. No one suggests that Sir Terry is an onanist; least of all Ross! Outrageous insolence! I shouted at the telly quite fiercely. Give "Film 2007" to Kermode and be done with it, please BBC.

I was also taken aback last week when I saw that the former mainstay of British TV film reviewing, Barry Norman, has brought out a range of condiments. I kid you not; he has his own brand of pickled onions. “And why not?” as the great man was so fond of saying. They are in Tesco; go and have a look if you don't Adam and believe it.

I’m taking the whole pickle discovery as a good omen. Don’t ask me why, I just am. It’s as if Barry sent me a good luck message via the supermarket. Cheers Captain. Nice to know you haven't pegged it since you retired from the box.

Evelyn’s show is broadcast on Original 106FM. I think I’m on around 9am GMT on Saturdays. I suppose I should find out exactly when, really...

This week I am reviewing "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" with the wonderful Cate Blanchett, and I will be choosing a rental DVD of the week. Ev’s given me a generous 10 minute slot and hopefully she won’t have to cosh me after twenty to get me to stop.

Cashola

Some things are going to happen in the next few paragraphs that will make me sound like an old lady. I will utter the words, “What’s the world coming to…” in all seriousness, I will show a considerable amount of dottledness and I will have a big wad of cash in my purse ready to be stolen off me by youths. By the end of the day I will be writing to my local councillor, accosting strangers in the street and probably purchasing a tartan skirt and brogues in an independently run local shop.

This past month I’ve been trying to live off actual cash rather than using any kind of card. As an experiment really. I guessed that if I had to hand over cold hard cash for stuff then I would think more carefully about the stuff I bought and as a result buy less shite.


In addition to this, like any woman, I have been driving around with the petrol light on for two days now. I have done this before and had a really bad day as a result.

You’d think I would learn, but no. Partly because I am driving a new car and the petrol light is somewhere different and I may not have noticed it. So two days is probably a conservative estimate.

I am making my way in to town for a 10.30 meeting when I remember that I have absolutely no petrol and double back to my village to pay an obscene amount for petrol at village prices. I arrive and there are hand-written signs on each of the pumps declaring that there is: “No Petrol”. The local petrol station is run by our local councillor, a man representing my party of choice. Against my better judgement I voted for him (going for party rather than individual, duh). I have long had doubts at his abilities and I mutter something about, “If he can’t get it together to make sure he has his business organised, then…blablalalaablah” as I drive off sweating about making it to the next station five miles away.

Happily, five miles on, my wee Mini darling is managing fine. But both she and I know we are running on petrol mist.

When I reach the supermarket petrol station I hop out the car to be confronted by a machine that takes only chip-and-pin cards. I have £120 in my purse ready to be stolen by a gang of youths. But money is no use here. I swear a bit for I know my journey ends here.

I spot an old bloke in a high viz jacket cleaning one of the pumps and run over in the ridiculous hope that this seventy year old gadge can, with a single hand-swoop, change the entire policy of Adsa and accept my actual paper money.

“All I can do is apologise” he says, “It’s been like this for months.”

And that’s when I say it. I have possibly been infected by his airborne old gadge pheromones as I utter the phrase,

“I dunno. What is the world coming to?”

I say it like I’m talking about world poverty or gang crime. I’m like a Daily Mail columnist.

My elderly friend concurs, eager to accept an unexpected opportunity to moan about something.

"I know,” he shrugs.

He is probably about to launch into a diatribe of everything that is wrong with modern society but I'm off, like demented banshee.

Before my brain has time to engage and maybe work out if I can make it to the BP garage run by actual humans round the corner, I am approaching a 40 odd (not unattractive) man filling up his own car by means of a credit card.

Let’s now look at this from his point of view: A woman is approaching him waving twenty quid. She is asking him to fill up her car for her in exchange for said monies. He is frantically running his mind over the 100 emails he has been forwarded from colleagues about scams involving long haired sirens waving fake twenties in petrol stations. What does he know? He deleted the lot without even reading them.

He searches his memory banks for details of seemingly normal ladies coshing people over the head after they have watched them key in their pin number, nicking the card and flying down to Rio by way of it. He pictures her clinking champagne glasses with a thin moustached gangster in First Class, and laughing at him.

The poor chap has no time to register and process any of it. The woman is forcing money into his hand and is practically leading him over by the scruff to her car, whilst talking about the world going to the dogs and how embarrassing this all is.

Once calmed down and dispensing petrol, he starts to think that maybe this is, in fact, a come-on. She is manically chatting to him. Is she filling emabarassing dead air or is she up to something else?

He thinks, "What do I do, what do I do? Think back to those films with Robin Asquith that you watched when your parents weren’t around when you were a kid. What did he do when a woman came up to him in a supermarket? What happened in between the meeting and the banging the woman in the car round the back? Arrghhh! Oh, I’m not that keen....I’m scared. Is she a con artist or a nymphomaniac? I’ve never been accosted before. What do I do?"

And before he can work out if she's after his savings or his family jewels, he has keyed in his 4 digit number, is standing with a twenty in his hand and the mental woman is away with a quick "toot toot" by way of thanks.

The card goes back in my purse tonight.