Bless This Mouse

Since I have been back from India I have been upsetting quite a lot of people with my tales of poo and such. However, there is one excursion that we took on the trip which seems more likely to make people shiver than others.

It is the last day of the trip and the trip leader has a “surprise” for us. We are promised that we will see something that we have never seen before. The surprise is 90 minutes away on a bus and for some reason we are told to bring socks.

On the way the surprise is revealed. We are visiting “The Rat Temple”.

Now, for a laugh, I would like you all to picture Judith Chalmers of “Holiday Programme” fame standing, as she did, in a bathing suit, sarong and white shirt tied at the waist, delivering this link to camera in an effort to introduce the next feature on holidays in Rajasthan.

“The Karni Mata Temple was built by Maharaja Ganga Singh in the early 20th century in the late Mughal style. The story goes that Karni Mata once tried to restore the dead child of a storyteller back to life but failed because Yama, the god of death, had already accepted his soul and re-incarnated him in human form. Karni Mata, famed for her legendary temper, was so inflamed by her failure that she announced that no one from her tribe would fall into Yama's hands again.

"Instead, when they died, all of them would temporarily inhabit the body of a rat before being reborn into the tribe. Therefore, the rats are considered to be incarnations of storytellers and are much revered. Therefore the temple is home to a shitload of filthy rats. Let’s join Anneka Rice and her young family as they sample the delights of Rajasthan and the Karni Mata Rat Temple…..”

Yes, the Rat Temple is not just a name, it is an actuality. The place is swarming with legions of them. And they are not the cute ones, either. They are manky, warty, deformation bearing, filthy, massive brutes. Not content with being vile as they are, many of them are sporting disproportionately gigantic genitalia, just for that extra nausea factor.

And the socks? Well, everyone knows you need to take your shoes off to enter a Hindu temple, don’t they?

Personally, I didn’t bother with the sock idea. Somehow, I reasoned that rat urine would still reach my feet if it soaked through my socks. Rat-pee absorbing socks actually disturbed me more than going barefoot for some reason. I went au naturel through the rat excrement and pee. Skipping gaily as I went. With a song in my heart. And a tic in my left eye.

Before we left the bus, Meeester, told us all the story of the Rat Temple. “All rats would be worshipped and cared for as they would be reincarnated into tribesmen. And remember that of course Ganesh did ride about on a rat, so the rat is worshipped generally in Hinduism”

I felt my eyes roll to the back of my head. Now I’ve heard everything. God bless those little blighters and their Bubonic Plague; they’re holy! The misunderstood little buggers. What’s next? A slug shrine? A maggot palace? A cockroach chapel?

There are a couple of things we should know before we go in:

1. If you stand on a rat and kill it (fairly likely- if one of the disease ridden bastards so much as touches me, it’s getting reincarnated right there and then) you must pay money to the temple. Really, a collection plate would be so much easier. Still, then you wouldn’t get to kill a rat. I check how much money I have with me to see how many I can afford to squish.

2. If one (gulp) runs over your feet, it’s lucky! (although if one runs over my feet it’s luck will have run out, as I’ll hoof the bugger skyward)

3. Special luck goes to the person who spots The White Rat. Oh goody; a game! How much do we owe if we squish the white rat? We have a whip round.

4. The rats have plates of food lying about for them. Feel free to bring your own food and have a picnic with the vermin. It's lucky! Even better- dip your fingers into the dishes of rice the disease ridden buggers are eating and help yourself! It’s even more lucky! No joke- we SAW people doing this.

Still, in poured the tourists. And good luck to them. They’ve got their PR sown up.

I am currently writing to the Church of Scotland Head Office in Edinburgh to suggest that they take strident action to increase the number of bums on seats at the Sunday Services. At last, a refuge for the kebab-fuelled shitehawk seagulls of Aberdeen, and a home for the mangy, one-footed pigeons of Glasgow. All hail the holy flying rats. Let us worship at your webbed scaly feet!

So, in summary:

• Journey to Rat Temple: 90 minutes
• Time in Rat Temple: 10 minutes
• Journey back to hotel: 90 minutes
• Time spent scrubbing feet with antibacterial soap, Dettol, bleach, iodine, metholated spirits and wire wool: Forever.

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Stars of India

And who wouldn't want a photo of Meeester?
(Meeester is the one on the left, people)

Those of you who have been following my Indian adventures may think that I did not have a good time. Truth is, I did. This is in no small part to the people I was with. I have a feeling that three weeks in Iraq would have still been fun with the 18 teenagers we spent our time with on the school trip. For good reasons, I can’t talk about any of them individually or name names. I am a responsible blogger and don’t wish to intrude on anyone’s privacy.

Many of them I believe are now Misssives readers, though, and I want them to know how much Meeester, Indy and particularly Junior Misssy enjoyed their company. They were a blast and given that from time to time they had to endure quite a lot of crap thrown at them by India (sometimes literally), they dealt with it all with spectacular maturity and a unflinching sense of humour.

The trip, unsurprisingly, makes me realise how much I miss working with teenagers. Maybe not too soon, but definitely in the future, I can see myself going back into teaching.

This post, in particular, is dedicated to our lovely, feisty girls.

Our girls found themselves the object of a great deal of attention by local Indian lads. Indian men, it would seem, are in awe of the white skinned lady. To a ridiculous extent.

Everywhere we went, attempts were made by Indian men on their cell phones to covertly photograph the girls. Meeester and his colleagues were onto them like J-Lo's bodyguards on a payrise promise. We are confident that all over Rajasthan there are legions of photos of the back of Meeester’s hand, or an angry shouting, Scottish bloke’s face filling the frame. Clearly, an alternative career in celebrity security beckons, should the whole education thing not work out.

The attention towards the girls really got on my nerves, I must say, as I found much of it to be quite overt and ridiculous. At a Jain temple I nearly swung for a bloke as he asked to take a photo of one of the girls I was with. In retrospect, I maybe was a bit too forceful as at least this particular hopeful chap had the manners to ask first. Still, off he went with a flea in his ear, all the same. I have never pretended to be so many girls’ mothers. One thing these lads did respect was the idea of parents, so a quick “No. This is my daughter” soon saw the buggers off. In one particular case, I laid claim to giving birth to the lot of them. However, this did nothing for my ego, as they clearly believed I looked old and knackered enough. Pah!

Still, the girls seemed to devise their own tactics for putting them off. Indian Bebo is no doubt chock full of pics our lasses making “spazy” faces or giving the Vs. Good on them. They never gave an inch.

Meeester had his own way of dealing with the unwanted attention directed at the girls. He would simply step into the photo frame with whichever lass was being targeted grinning wildly. How’s that for a passion killer? Or worse, he would offer himself up as the sole subject. And when they declined to take his picture instead, he would act slightly offended when the camera got put away. Indian men do not like to be ridiculed. Meeester is an arch ridiculer.

He also dealt with the offer of a piece of jewellery to one of our ladies clearly designed to garner her affections. The man in question had asked the girl not to let on to her male chaperones, because, as one of our tour guides, he knew he was overstepping the mark. Although seventeen and well able to handle herself, the girl in question told Meeester and me of the gift, as she was at a loss as to how to adequately deal with the situation.

Meeester made a show of him in a subtle and quite comic way.

“I’ve just seen the ring you gave X. And I want to thank you, for the gesture of friendship you have made. That really was very kind of you. What a nice thing for you to do. You have extended the hand of friendship between our countries and given this ring to our group as a symbol. Our school thanks you on behalf of our Headmaster and our Country.”

Translation: “I’m onto you mate. Keep your hands off”

Our man was cowed, rumbled and embarrassed.

(And crucially, our girl got to keep her ring which, by this time, she was getting quite attached to...)

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Holy Smoke

Funeral pyre at Varanasi (Photo: P. Neville)

On the itinerary we are to be going on a boat trip.

This is no ordinary boat trip; this one is on the holy river of the Gangees.

You may have seen images of the Gangees on your telly from time to time. The images will doubtless include hoards of people bathing in the sacred river and making sure that the water washes over every inch of them. I am told by Meeester, font of all religious knowledge, that Hindus believe that the water of the Gangees will purify them. Just like the old Catholic trick of going to confession to erase your spiritual hard drive, a quick dip in the Gangees will wash those sins away.

If you survive the typhus, you can live your life, guilt free.

The Gangees is so special that it has actual Goddess status in India. The reason for this is that it provides India with most of its water. Including its drinking water. It deserves to be worshipped. It's the same deal for cows. Cows are godesses as they provide the people with milk. That's fair enough. I'm all for the worshipping of the real and tangible. Maybe this Hinduism lark isn't as wacky as the images of wee blue guys and half-men/half-elephants makes it look. But I'm thinking that the chickens really do have a case here. All those eggs and not one bit of respect.

So, we’ve established a few things about the Gangees:

1. People bathe in it
2. People worship it
3. People drink it

OK, so why then, are there mountains of crap being chucked into it? Is it OK for a Catholic to drop kick a soiled nappy into the Vatican? No. Would St Paul's Cathedral be satisfied with someone emptying their car ashtray into the pulpit? I don't think so. And Synagogues frown upon someone relieving themselves on the doorstep, I am told.

As we float on the river in our rowing boat, looking back at the Varanasi pilgrimage site steps which are the ones you see on the telly showing masses of Pilgrims washing their cares away, there are mountains of untreated sewage and refuse. Kids are diving into the river right beside the raw sewage. I see a man
cup a handful of Gangees into his mouth inches away from effluent dribbling from a pipe directly into the goddess.

Mentally I am running though the database in my mind and double checking the status of our inoculations. Hurriedly I tell the kids NOT to dip their hands in the water or open their mouths.

As “luck” would have it, aside from the daily sin washing rituals of the pilgrims, there’s something a bit special going on tonight. For some reason I do not find this out til I am on the boat with no choice but to witness it. The special event is the burning of some bodies on a funeral pyre next to the Gangees. Today 300 bodies have been burnt already. Sniff the air and you can smell them. Open your eyes and you can see them.

Focusing on the billowing smoke at first it takes us a couple of minutes to realise we can clearly see about ten bodies lined up on the steps ready to be flung in. They are covered in brightly coloured silk but there's no mistaking what's underneath.

Varanasi is famous for this ritual. Being cremated in this way ensures that people release their five skandas (elements) back to the Universe. It is the holiest death you can get. Having your ashes scattered directly into the Gangees gets you spiritually where you want to go. Hence Varanasi is chock full of old folk hanging about waiting for death with their names on the funeral pyre waiting list.

It’s a fun town.

I am wondering if the experience is greater if the ashes are still hot. Hence the proximity of the pyre to the river. I muse on whether the same effect can be achieved by a relative calmly traveling to Varanasi with a pot of cold relative ash from their hometown and quietly scattering them on the river. I am clearly not getting Hinduism.

In the interests of balance and religious understanding can I just quote Religion and Philosophy maestro, Meeester, who does get Hinduism,

“This scene reveals Hinduism’s ancient and primal heart. It is shocking to us, with Western sensibilities, looking like a scene from Hell. But to the Hindus this is the essence of their beliefs”

Yeah, talk to the hand, Meeester. My kids are looking at dead grannies being chucked on a fire. Suddenly I'm thinking Eurodisney might be a good idea next time.

The holy human barbecue also provides some entertainment for the locals. A crowd is watching as bodies are being chucked on the fire. Beers are being drunk, picnics are being eaten and business is being done between the local town hoodlums. We suspect that the families of the deceased are in there somewhere, but to us it looks like folk have come out to watch like they would a parade. There are professional mourners, local dignitaries sat in high seats taking “donations”, and a wild haired and loin cloth clad bloke who looked like a deranged Indian Charles Manson dancing and chanting over the next body in the queue. He was the priest.

We maintain a respectful distance. To be honest, quite few of us, can’t bear to look. Some of the pupils are visibly blanching.

Indy pipes up, “Mum, I just saw one being thrown on the fire!”

So my ten year old has just seen a dead body being chucked on a fire. I’m not so sure I feel good about this life experience he has just had. In one year we’ve gone from explaining what happened after death to Molly, our now deceased family cat, to casually watching cadavers tipped into an inferno.

But it gets better. The boat moors beside the burning activities and we are invited to go have a wee looky, close up. At some burning bodies. On a bonny.

No photos though. That would be disrespectful.

I brace myself for someone offering my son a stick so that he could have a wee poke at the bodies on the fire.

Religion. Don't you just love it?

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No Sleep til Varanasi

Misssy looking tired, stressed and gaunt on the train.

One of the phrases our guide uses very often is this:

“This is India”.

This is not stating the obvious. Rather this is a reminder to us all at regular intervals that we are about to experience something that is at odds with out our western experience, or is going to challenge us.

Several “This is India” items have been:

• Time. Take the amount of time you are told anything will take and double it. or disregard it completely and abandon the concept of time altogether. This is also known as India Standard Time.
  
• The streets. Man, the streets. So jammed packed with people you can barely breathe. You don't know busy til you've been here.
  
• The hawkers. This term applies to beggars, peddlars and bloody annoying people, of which there are many. These people will get their own special little blog post. Oh yes.
  
• The filth. I have never ever seen filth like it. You are never more than a couple of feet away from a freshly laid human turd, a mountain of refuse, a rotten carcass, or a puddle of piss. In every city. In every street. That photo of the Taj Mahal I posted? Bet there’s a turd in it somewhere. Think of it as Indian “Where’s Wally/Waldo?” 100 rupees to the first person to find it. (It's not in my hair)
  
• The confusion. Turn round and you’ve lost your party. In seconds, if you are distracted, you will find yourself lost. You have had it. No one will find you, you will find no-one, you will not know how to get yourself found. You will be standing bewildered and anxious. And beside a freshly laid human turd. No doubt.

The first time out guide uttered the phrase, “And remember, this is India” was on Day One when we didn’t have a clue what India was. After a first night in a big old posh hotel, we were to be leaving Delhi on the night train to the Holy City of Varanasi.

I was excited about the sleeper train because of a lie told to me in the form of a Wes Anderson’s film called “The Darjeeling Limited”. For those of you who haven’t seen it, three brothers (Luke Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman) take a train across India on a quest. The film is quirky and charming. The train is twee, delightful and colourful. There are no freshly laid human turds in Mr Anderson’s film. Mr Anderson is a bloody liar.

The Darjeeling Limited: Lies

“Remember. This is India. This is an Indian train station. Do not stray from the group. Watch your belongings. Follow me at all times,” our guide told us as we got off the bus and headed across the (turd laden) street to Delhi Train Station (address: The third circle of of Hell, Hades, The Underworld).

I always think it is a great shame that train stations in any city are the first thing that travelers usually see. They often showcase the worst aspects of any city. Even polite German towns with their pristine streets and their conscientious and efficient citizens will have a a porn cinema situated next to their town train station, a manky old drunk lying in the waiting room and a dodgy bloke accosting you in the gents toilets appraising one's penis as you try to pee (I'm told). I will never turn my nose up at such mediocre amateur seediness again.

I have been through Delhi train station. And lived!

How to replicate Delhi Train Station in 5 easy steps:

1.Take the entire population of a small country. Perhaps the population of my own would give a representative figure.

2. Take a train station the size of Edinburgh Waverley or one of the more medium sized London stations.

3. Spray liberally with urine.

4.Release ten billion flies. And several hundred mangy dogs.

5. Lie half the people of the aforementioned population down on the passageways to all platforms. Give extra flies to those lying down.

6. Crank the heat up to 45 degrees.

Our small party of 23 white-faced, stressed-out, frightened faces make it through the station onto our platform. Well, probably our platform. Even our guide is unsure. There are ten thousand other people on our platform. or what feel like ten-thousand people. ALL of them turn to stare at us. If it wasn’t so frightening it would be funny.

The train arrives and the ten thousand people rush forwards. We are pushed towards the edge of the platform and the railway tracks. I hold onto my kids for dear life as grown men push my five year old daughter aside without a thought as to anything other than getting a seat for them and the cage of chickens they are holding. I shout angrily at these people. I am ignored. Two of the school pupils help me out and together we get me and my kids on the train.

Somehow we all make it onto the train. The head count is frantic but swift as the train pulls out of Delhi. We think we are on the right train. But must find our carriage. For this cannot be ours. For one, we are supposed to be in a sleeper carriage, reserved for us. There are other random people here. There are only open benches with foam vinyl coated seating. And no doors. This cannot be ours. Scary looking blokes are here. They do not feature in the "Darjeeling Limited", so they will not feature in my Indian train ride. Begone scary men, I want polite be-turbanned gentlemen with outstanding moustaches serving me mint tea and scones. My Indian dream has no place for stinky gits eating rice out of a plastic bag.

I am wrong.This is our carriage and scary random men will feature. Heavily. In fact scary random men are going to be the leitmotif of my Indian train adventure.

After 1 hour we discover that :

Yes, we are to be sharing our compartment with other people;

Yes, the benches are our beds, yes we may have a random unknown bloke in the bunk above us;

Yes, there are no doors to each compartment;

Yes this is second class. Like it or lump it. If you wanted privacy you should have gone first class. They have a thin curtain to draw across. The lucky bastards!

I am sat across from two men. Our guide cannot believe what has happened. He booked the carriage for us, so that we can stay together, with our charges near us. As is our responsibility. But no, the train conductor assures us that these other people have every right to be here. In the way that train officials do, the world over. Cultures may differ. Train conductors do not.

So we begin our negotiations. I think this will be a simple task. If you explain to people that we are a school party who must sleep altogether, then people will surely understand and gladly swap seats with us.

How wrong was I? People DO NOT want to move. Our guide is getting nowhere fast. He pleads, he bribes, he cajoles, he negotiates. Yet, people are determined to stay put. In fact, some people start to get really bloody angry. Especially the bloke next to me who exhibits the behaviour of an complete and utter pig. After a further hour of this nonsense I start to lose my rag.

Eventually, the compartment me and my kids are in is the last one to fall. The man beside me refuses to move to our excess seats to allow my family and some of the school children to sleep together. He and his friend start to argue once more with the guide. I don’t speak Hindi, but I know everything he is saying. I have only one trump card to play and if it doesn’t work, I am buggered and will have to sleep next to the man, as well as having bad feeling between us after a failed argument. I delve deep into my most emotional blackmail reserves.

“Do you understand me when I speak?” I say.

The man barely meets my gaze. I think he is deeply uncomfortable that I am speaking to him, “Yes”

“Are you a Dad. Do you have children?”

“Yes” he says.

“These people are school children. Their parents have entrusted them to us to keep safe whilst in India. They must sleep beside us. Would you want your children to feel frightened in a strange country when you entrusted them to someone else?”

The man is now not looking at me.

I have lost.

But his friend is. He listens to me as I warble on getting more melodramatic with every second.

And then I start to cry. Mainly because I’m so bloody angry.

“Please take our seats and let our children sleep beside us. Please. Please” I say in a last ditch attempt.

Tears are streaming down my face. I feel a right bloody idiot but I can't help crying.

Suddenly then they pack up and leave. Maybe because they think I'm a mental.

Shame that the same couldn’t be said for the family of cockroaches at the carriage window.

They will be with us the whole 16 hours til we reach Varanasi.

Next: "Bring out yer dead!". The funeral pyres at Varanasi


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Raj Against the Machine

The Taj, Indy, Jnr Misssy and Misssy M

I’m twelve days into India and I still don’t know how I feel about the place.

It’s too easy to say “ I hate India” yet this seems to have been my mantra over the last week or so. I have woken up saying it, and I have used variations on the phrase throughout the day. It has helped a lot. Specially when I pepper it with swearies.

This is a hard place to be. And I’m living in relative luxury. So really, I’ve got a cheek.

You might be surprised at my attitude. Surely Misssy is one of those people who loves to travel, and yes, I am. But India is different. I have never been so appalled at the state of anywhere I’ve ever been for so many and varied reasons. I have never been put in positions that have tested my patience as much, or made me close my eyes and grit my teeth to get through them. And clutch my children's hands so tight they might break off...Indy and Junior Misssy may need some time and space away from me when we get home, as I have been clamping them to me, like a paranoid lioness.

Sorry for not being able to post regularly, folks. I wish I had been able to…you would have been able to chart my feelings day by day, had I time to type, an internet connection or the energy to get my head round things. I also would have been able keep track on everything we have done and seen. It has been strange and irritating not being able to write the day up. But I have been keeping notes to remind me how I felt and it's all scribbled or in my brain ready to spew forth.

Annoyingly, for you, now that I’ve a connection and some free time I am going to post a couple of stories from the trip in rapid succession. There might be heaps...it'll depend on what India chucks at us in the next few days.

I also wanted to speak to my Mum and my Mother in Law first to reassure them that we’re all safe and OK, as they both read the Misssives and would worry given some of the things I am going to write about. So I did that last night and they are both gamely pretending that they are not at their wit’s end.

More very soon…probably in the next few hours. I’m now off for tea. Mmmm, hope it’s curry, haven’t had one of those in ages…..

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Rajasthan or Bust

Very quick note, seeing as I have five hours until my taxi comes to pick up the Flying Martinis to take us to the airport and I still have washing in the tumble dryer.

See you in a day or so for the first of the Indian Misssives.

To recap: the Flying Martinis, nineteen teenagers, three teachers, three weeks, schooltrip, India.

There will be stories.

Oh yes, there WILL be stories....



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The Angel of Death

One of the things I’m thinking about as I pack the last of my kids off into the school system is that it's end of the baby era for us.

Meester and I are closed for business on the baby front and the Flying Martinis are a permanently fixed and complete unit.

One of the more positive knock-on effects of this decision is that we will no longer have to endure visits from our Child Health Visitor, known to us as, The Angel of Death.


The Angel of Death has no kids herself, but knows everything about bringing up a kid since she learned it at college. Apparently.

She manages to do her job despite the fact that all children and their parents are visibly terrified of her.

She is broad country Aberdeenshire farming stock and looks like a big knitted bag that is filled with runny porridge. She has unrestrained, unsupported, massive, pendulous breasts that end somewhere around her waist. The upper front part of her body is not so much a décolletage as flesh-mountain landslide. It’s truly remarkable and may be visible on Google Earth.

Whatever the weather, she always wears jumpers, with a pattern that looks like the vomit you see on a Sunday morning beside a lamp-post outside the pub. She must knit them herself as I have never seen the like on sale in a shop anywhere.

Moving past the jumper area and up to her head, she has a haircut like a bloke, a bit like Roy Castle’s before the chemo. She wears those horrible Reactolite tinted specs. You know the sort; they instantly make someone look sinister. The more light there is the darker they go. They lack the coolness factor of sunglasses and retain all the geekiness of wire-rimmed specs with an ever changing gradient of brown insipid tint. My gran also has a pair and they make her look like Dr Strangelove.

There’s a whole catalogue of incidents with the Angel of Death, but I think our first meeting gives the most succinct impression of her. It's the occasion of Indy's 2nd birthday and hence his 2 year developmental assessment. We've just moved into the area and have not met the Angel of Death in the flesh yet. Of course, being as it is the day after Indy's birthday, I have forgotten that she is scheduled to come round.

At that point, I was the only one of my friends to have a kid, so Indy’s birthday party had consisted of our friends coming round for a barbecue, getting pissed and watching the wee fella do cute things for our entertainment.

So at 10am Indy and I are sitting in the debris of all yesterday's parties eating leftover birthday cake for breakfast in our jammies watching Clifford the Big Red Dog on telly, with me nursing a slight headache and all the barbecue dishes still in evidence.

I spot the not inconsiderable frame of the Angel of Death lurching past my living room window. It's too late to do anything about the situation. Hiding is futile as she has already glanced through the window giving me quite a start. And as it's particularly sunny, being May, the Reactolites are in sociopathic full tilt tint.

I have to let her in. Stopping her from entering would look even worse.

Once in, she starts to "assess" my boy, whilst no doubt making a mental note to contact social services as soon as she leaves.

Her assessment is frankly odd. For one she does not speak directly to me when Indy is in the room, she talks through Indy like he's some kind of parent medium. She also shouts at Indy the way that ignorant people shout at deaf people or foreigners.

"SO HAS MUM STARTED TOILET TRAINING YET?"

"SO IS MUM THINKING ABOUT ENROLLING YOU IN PLAYGROUP?

I have done none of these things. A cross is indelibly marked somewhere on an official sheet as my failings as a parent are recorded forever.

The most hilarious thing about her is her accent; it’s not just broad Aberdeenshire, which is impenetrable enough. No, the Angel of Death appears to have her own language.

"Aye jist wait, we'll hae Thunner and Lichhtnin'" she says by way of small talk about the weather as she arrives.

Lichhtnin'? How does one get from light to liccchhht via making the sound of a cat bringing up a hairball? This is taking Scottishness too far.

I wonder if she wears tichhts on her legs.

If she goes on holiday, does she go to the Isle of Wicchhht?

Does she wear the Reactolites to compensate for her failing sichht?

Is her favourite Elton John number, Saiturday Niccht’s alricchhht for Ficcchttin’?

To this day, if we hear the faintest rumble of thunder we say,

"Aye jist wait, we'll hae Thunner and Lichhtnin'"

The Angel of Death goes on to test Indy’s development on ridiculous things that can’t be part of any recognised programme. She gets some little Thomas the Tank Engines out of her big black bag. She then asks Indy to point out which one is "James" and which one is "Henry" .

Now, we don't like Thomas the Tank Engine in our house, so Indy knows none of these characters and is unable to identify the line-up of our locomotive Ringo Starr-voiced friends. I demand a recount. But given that I'm in mismatched jammies, reeking of Chardonnay, un-showered, hurriedly shuffling around trying to collect what seems like hundreds of wine glasses with chocolate fudge on my face, I haven't a leg to stand on.

“We don’t really know the Thomas the Tank Engine characters,” I say, “I couldn’t even tell you the answer to that one!” .

She looks at me blankly and puts another mark down on another official form that probably says something like,

“Does the child have any skills- Yes/No”

As the years went on I had another child to offer up to her. She would give me advice on breastfeeding, despite her ample bosoms never having seen a hungry baby. She would talk me through childbirth, despite never having possibly even seen a grown man naked, never mind getting pregnant. I am unsure if there is a Mister Angel of Death; I suspect not.

So goodbye Angel of Death, we won’t miss you. But as I sit here, I’d like to think of her on her way right now, to terrorise a family with a new baby, trundling along a street in her Vauxhall Vectra and looking out her windscreen at the skies and weighing up the possibility of “thunner and licchtnin”.

******

Over on the Spontaneous Production blog this week, I'm looking at Little Films That Made it Big. It's got a podcast attached and everything. Now off you go..shoo! Click here

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