I am a sucker for an Austrian painter. Not all, though; I'm not a sucker for Adolf Hitler, or anything, that would be taking it too far. Anyway, apparently he was rubbish. That's why he got into dictating.
My favourite artist is Egon Schiele. I like the way the people he paints look tired, cold, emaciated and knackered.
The painting above, The Embrace, is my favourite of all of his work and I have a 1.5 metre wide version of this framed in my bedroom. If only it were the real thing. Maybe whichever banker has it hanging in his toilet will now be so skint as to want to sell it for a song.
Over the years the painting has caused quite a stir. Not least in my house.
"What's the deal with the nudey picture?" a few visitors have remarked, particularly when it was on more public display in the living room of my former residence, The Flat of the Flying Martinis.
When my gran visited my flat for the first time, she was clearly unhappy that I was living "over the brush" with Meeester, at that time, my "bidey-in" instead of my husband. Still visibly stiff from being shown round my tiny flat and seeing the double bed instead of the bunk beds that would have suggested a degree of decorum, she spotted the painting. She stiffened further. So I decided to make things worse and told her it was a portrait of me and Meeester that a friend had done. For a laugh. Within seconds, I realised that she actually believed me and had to tell her the truth to stop her from imploding.
Today, a young art critic in the shape of my daughter's five year old friend is in the Master Bedroom of the House of the Flying Martinis, getting her trousers changed after an unfortunate incident involving a misjudged skid in a muddy playpark.
"Why is there a picture of naked people having a cuddle in here?"
1. My mum and dad once saw Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs playing the piano at a school concert at my school in Rio de Janeiro in 1982. I’d like to say that Lord Lucan was draped over the baby grand singing “Summertime” but that would be untrue. The Biggs bit is true, though. They never said if he was any good.
2. My Mum once thought I’d been abducted when my Uncle saw me sitting in my pram outside a shop in Clydebank, thought, "Hello, neice!" and pushed my pram home with nary a thought. People used to leave their kids outside shops in the Seventies because crime wasn’t a “thing” then. My poor Mum came out of the shop to find me gone. Luckily no police were called because Uncle suddenly remembered that I was probably with my Mum and I hadn't just wheeled myself there for a laugh. My Mum can still make her brother feel guilty by mentioning it even though I’m 39 now and safe and sound.
3. I once won the PE prize at school and the whole of the assembled school turned round simultaneously and went “Huh?” I am terrible at sports. The teacher was either on drugs or felt sorry for me. It’s very possible that she thought I was special needs and was being politically correct. Being good at sports at school is overrated. Where’s the money in it?
4. There is a fantastic and huge oil painting of me and my siblings. My dad paid a fortune for it, and it was done by quite an established artist about twenty years ago, but my Mum put it in the attic, because we were too overbearing, just like the First Mrs de Winter.
5. I once had breakfast with a bunch of Swedish actors including the legendary Max von Sydow. I embarrassed myself by telling him that he was great as Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon. He just laughed. I cringed for about two years. For Pete’s sake, the man was in The Seventh Seal! That's like meeting Lawrence Olivier and going nuts over his turn in Clash of the Titans. The shame.
6. I am offended by ketchup and all its variants. I wrote about it here, but you may think I went too far like many others. In which case I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that I did not go far enough!
This post is the result of couple of people tagging me this week; Edinburgh’s own organically run central heating system, Mr Farty, and windswept and interesting jazz loving authoress, Kate Lord Brown. Farty asked for Seven Things About Me and Kate asked for Six Things About Me. Isn’t that just like a man to want more? Anyway, I’ve done six just to be difficult. I thought about doing thirteen but it’s too close to Halloween to be tempting fate with the devil's numbers. In both cases I’m supposed to pass the tag on. I tag Loth, Suzie, Billy the Kidand Inchy. And we’ll call it Six Things About Me, unless of course you want to do seven, which is your prerogative.
This is a big one. If there was ever a Misssive that fitted right into the phrase “publish and be damned”, this is it.
For my Mum is gonna kill me for this one.
Before I start, make no mistake, this is not and has never been an anonymous blog. I am so un-anonymous that my actual mother reads this. How many of you can say that? Eh, you bunch o’chickens?
I’m bloggin’ on the EDGE!
Now my Mum has only ever taken issue with two things I’ve ever said on the Misssives:
1. I said to one of the US readers of the Misssives that she should look out for her, as my parents were holidaying in the US. I said that they would know her because she would be wearing beige knee length shorts with an elasticated waist. About three months later I get an email from my Mum and it simply says this,
“I do not just have beige knee length shorts. Mum”
This little transgression of the fifth commandment happened in the comments box. So think on, commenters. Mum's watching you too!
2. Last month’s assertion by myself that my folks wanted to call me Kenneth should I have been a boy, warranted an actual phone-call. According to the revisionist historical account by my mother, I would never have been a Kenneth, I would have been a Ewan. Hang on hang on, before you think I’m an out and out liar; she did say once that she liked Kenneth. I heard her. But, at last, during the ensuing conversation we get to the crux of the matter; it was Dad who stopped Mum from calling me Ken. And this is the man who called their cat Lech after the (then) incoming Polish President, Lech Walesa.
I have a question: what is the opposite of penis envy? Because I genuinely am suffering from it. I am so bloody happy to have been a girl. I have "vagina satisfaction"*. Man, I could have been called Trotsky or something!
OK, so we’ve established that my folks read this blog. But I am still going to tell you this story after which my Mum is going to probably jump in the car and come round to my house in response.
I’m not going to mess about, I’m going straight to the punch: My Mum sent me to school with a broken arm.
The story goes like this. We go ski-ing for the first time ever. Skis are hired and applied to legs. Parents tell Misssy to stay where she is until they can safely escort her to the nursery slopes. Misssy ignores them, probably having watched a James Bond film the Saturday night before, and whizzes off, thinking she’s going to effortlessly slalom between pines dodging machine gun fire. Misssy whizzes off ....straight into an icy ditch.
Throughout the day Misssy complains of a sore wrist and whines. Unfortunately Misssy has spent most of her childhood whining, and no-one notices any difference.
Once back home, Misssy whines her way to bed. And then in the morning Misssy wakes up and re-commences whining.
Mum trots out a line which I’m ashamed to say I now use to my own kids when I think they are trying to cadge a sicky;
“You’re fine, go to school. You’ll be fine by lunchtime”
Misssy wasn’t fine by lunchtime. She didn’t even get to lunchtime. She had PE first thing and whined to the PE teacher, when she tried to make her play netball. The teacher had a cursory look at the object of the whining, said the wrist looked a bit blue and asked Misssy to grasp her finger putting the one afternoon of First Aid training she had in college into action. Whining, Misssy failed to achieve the right intensity of grasp.
I have been directly challenged to a Tasche Off! This happens after my post last week in which I struggled with my sexuality after experiencing an Hen Night/Afternoon in which I was required to wear a fake tasche and be tremendously butch. Hang on-that makes it sound like I was forced. Who am I kidding? I’ve saved my cookie duster in my jewellery box and I stick it on everyday and do the hoovering like Freddie Mercury.
Ms Lattes and Funk has cheekily challengedme to post a pic of my moustachioed mug. In fact, she has claimed that she is the Queen of Tasches in an effort to get me to tasche-up once again in public on this very Misssive.
Not only am I going accept Latte’s challenge, I also urge readers to vote for who is the Tasche Queen.
I want points to be given in the following categories:
1. Moustache wearer that inspires the most bewildering lustful impulses 2. Moustache that looks like it could have been grown organically 3. Moustache you most want to run your fingers through 4. Moustache wearer that makes you want to grow a tasche of your own 5. Moustache wearer most likely to pass herself off as the dictator of an oppressed country
Here we both are:
Mousssy Misssy
Latte with the Lipfuzz
In the name of Tom Selleck, let the best ladyman win!
Jim Bowen, host of UK television's quiz-show Bullseye.
Not a psychotic maniac.
“You are a freak magnet. Every time I’ve been out with you, you’ve attracted some nutter” said Misssy's friend on a break in Edinburgh.
He’s right. There’s the She-Beast that threatened to beat Misssy and her sister up in an Aberdeen harbour bar, countless half naked nutjobs and madwomen on public transport and now today’s nutter; a man obsessed with space.
Misssy and chums are in The Stand, Edinburgh’s dedicated comedy club, preparing to watch Red Raw, the weekly stand-up platform for aspiring comedians. The club is small, and packed. On the door there’s a notice that says, “Standing Room Only”. They are not wrong. In fact, there is only really standing room if everyone left standing does it on one leg.
After the first set of three comedians, there is a fifteen minute break. People move outside to smoke, go downstairs to wee and shuffle over to the bar to refill glasses. After a shift in the sea of people, Misssy finds herself with an excellent spot propped up against a column and able to see the stage clearly. Fifteen minutes later, a man in a red v-neck jumper who looks not unlike former Bullseye host and Northern club comedian, Jim Bowen, crosses the room and walks up to Misssy, finally resting his face two inches from hers with his eyes staring blankly into her eyes.
He says nothing.
Misssy looks back at him and says, “Yes, can I help you?”
The bespectacled Peter Sutcliffe whines, clearly exasperated that his mere physical presence has been insufficient to get his desired result, “That spot was mine. I was standing there”
Misssy replies after a second or two of being taken aback, “Oh? Were you?”
The Pringle-jumpered Dennis Nielsen continues unfazed, inching closer and motioning downwards, “Yes, I was. That’s my spot. You're on my spot.”
Misssy backs away slightly, pressing the back of her head into the column, “Are you wanting me to move?”
The middle-aged Ted Bundy waves his hands about in a forced nonchalance, “No-no..no! it’s fine. It’s just that that was my spot.”
Misssy stares at him in confusion, “Are you sure?”
The serge trouser wearing Ed Gein shakes his head, “No, I’m fine. That was my place but no, no, it’s OK. It's OK....”
Misssy relaxes slightly and unsticks her skull from the column bricks, “OK, then. If you’re sure now...”
The anorak be-clad Zodiac Killer moves off, “OK, no it's my spot but I'm fine.”
Misssy bemusedly smiles, "OK then!"
Misssy's accompanying friend, Oscar’s Mama, stares after the departing John Hinckley and turns round to her, “You were never going to let him stand there were you?”
“I dunno. That was weird. I might have but I don’t know. My God he’s still staring at me! Don’t look!”
Oscar’s Mama looks round “Where??”
She spots the erstwhile Mark Chapman.
“Don’t look! He’ll come back.”
The pair's respective husbands, Meeester and Rally Stu come back from the bar. The girls tell them about Son of Sam and his floor space issues.
“Don’t look!” Misssy says as they both turn round to look at an ever more intense looking Jack the Ripper staring menacingly in their direction.
The comedians come back on and the second session gets underway. Within minutes Charles Manson walks back over and stands in front of Misssy, his back inches away from her nose, squarely blocking her entire view of the stage and, indeed, world at large.
Meeester steps over and has a quick word.
“It’s just that, this was my spot. I went to the toilet and she took it.” says Fred West.
“It isn’t your spot now. You are standing right in front of my wife. She can’t see.” says Meeester.
Norman Bates moves slightly and Misssy peeks round.
“I can see, it’s OK!” Misssy says, not wanting a knife in her throat.
The on-stage show continues and the comedy loving Jeffrey Dahmer continues to stand unreasonably close in front of Misssy. Misssy ignores him and imagines that she is listening to the radio instead. Meeester offers to intervene, but she asks him to ignore him.
After five minutes, the pint-swilling John Wayne Gacy turns round to Misssy, inches close to her face, and says “OK, are you OK? Are you alright?”
Misssy edges back, “*Sigh* Erm....Ye-es? What?”
Meeester and Rally Stu bristle and stare.
“Ok OK I’m going, I’m going” he says, holding up both hands in a surrender. Edinburgh's answer to David Berkowitz turns to Meeester, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m going now...I'm going. That was my spot.”
“OK. See ya!” Meeester replies.
Harold Shipman shiftily moves off to the back of the room and downs his pint, staring at Misssy icily.
So, doing stuff. Doing stuff for no other reason than it makes your life a little more interesting. Personally, I’m all for it, as long as no innocents get caught in the crossfire and animals go unharmed.
Here are some things I do strictly for a laugh:
1. Go on the radio (tune in Saturday mornings, friends, and join my Mum in appreciation of my insightful, yet random words on films and the Weekly Guy Ritchie Update (which I am reliably informed we’re even getting a special jingle for.)
2. Blogging: Look! I’m doing it and talking about it at the same time. How post modern am I? I’m so self-reflexive I’m going to need yoga lessons.
3. Reading: Oh and can I just say that thanks to your many suggestions the other week on new things to read, I’m on a roll. Fantastic. Working my way through. Reading them all except the joker that suggested “Jugs and Guns”. I went a little off list recently, though, and read the most bizarre (but scary) book called “House of Leaves”. If anyone else has read it, maybe get in touch and we can go halfers on therapy.
4. Selective TV watching: after a whole mourning period lasting from when the Sopranos ended, I’m back watching telly but only because Liam from Coronation Street gets killed by a guy that I was chums with at university and I’m charting his progress as a TV villain. Oh, and how good is Paul Merton in India? He went to the same Rat Temple in Bikaner, India, that I wanted to re-enter with a flame-thrower after visiting- but believe me, the rats they pictured didn’t have big enough deformed testicles. Ha! Telly! Talk about selective editing! They filmed cute rats. My rats were scarred, deformed, bulbous and down-right foul-mouthed and disrespectful.
My sister thinks it’s hilarious that Paul Merton is having a fantastic time over in the Sub-Continent and all I’ve done since coming back from India is moan about how dreadful it was, and stand in front of people flying out to Delhi with a placard saying “I wouldn’t, mate- I wouldn’t, no.”
5. Dog whispering: Sonny the Dog and I are surely only weeks away from getting our own TV show. Last week we attracted much attention when Sonny broke free and tried to herd some cows off-piste. I’m seriously thinking of doing my own Sonny and Me You-Tube pilot. I’m just waiting to see the terms that his agent comes back with and then we’re good to go.
But it’s number two of that wee list I wish to focus on. Blogging; some people just don't get it. What? You write stuff on the internet? And you do this, how many times a week? And you don’t get paid by anyone? Why would you want to do that??
Have you had that, bloggo-chums?
Meeester and his fellow band mate, The Bearded Liar, were talking about a similar thing last night; their band. They have not made millions. They just play music. Why? Because they love it, because people come to see them, because they are a big bit good at it and because they can’t imagine ever not doing it. Sound familiar to you?
Yet, the crap they get from some people. “Why bother?”, “Aren’t you a bit long in the tooth for that carry on?” , “Haven’t you grown out of that yet?”, "Where are the sacks of cash?"
And as The Bearded Liar said last night in a very wise and beardy way, “No-one ever asks guys who play golf all weekend, ‘Playing golf's all very well, but where’s the money in it?’ Do they?”
It occurs recently that I rather like cross dressing.
After last week’s hen night/day/extravaganza where all participants in the day trip to a shooting range were given stick-on moustaches, mine actually looked like it belonged on my top lip. In minutes my demeanour changed, and I started to walk like a man, talk like a man, my son.
It occurred to me: I’m a good boy, I am.
I suppose what I’m doing here is my annual Halloween post, because when I look back I’ve often opted to be a bloke. One year I’m Blackadder, the next I’m Zombie Rod Hull (complete with dead Emu), the next I’m Prince in his Purple Rain period. This year, at the annual Halloween Party of Legend, I’m dressing as a bloke but I won’t divulge as many of my co-halloweenies read the Misssives and these things are always best revealed on the night.
But would I have liked to be a bloke? Hmmm...I think not. Here are my reasons:
1. Recent readers will have read that my Mum wanted to call me Kenny. No rock stars are called Kenny. And before someone phones in, you can’t count Kenny Loggins. He only did Footloose and that was ages ago.
2. I need makeup. And although Robert Smith from the Cure wears makeup, being a Goth isn’t workable these days. When was the last time you saw a Goth being Prime Minister? Pitt the Younger, and who remembers him?
3. I couldn’t cope in a fight. Blokes get involved in fights, even if they don’t want to. It just happens. I’m a big Jessie and I don’t see that changing with a switch of tackle. I'd be squealing like Ned Flanders if anyone squared up to me.
4. I like a frock and high heels of an occasion. Now I know that a lot of blokes do, but who wants to be a Tory MP? I always feel that men never really get a chance to really dress up. Still, being a Scot there’s always the kilt. I’d probably wear a kilt all the time, but with Goth makeup. No....no...this still isn’t working. I’m freaking myself out, now.
5. The male identity of David Bowie is already taken. What would be the point?
6. I wouldn’t like to be married to a girl. Girls are pains in the hoop. Number 3 in this list is usually a result of girls.
7. I don’t like putting the bins out or sorting the recycling.
So I’ll maybe not save up for the op and get my eye laser treatment instead of an expensive and painful trip to GirlstoBoys R Us.
And there’s always Halloween to indulge the inner geezer.
********
By the way, thanks for voting for me in the The Blogger’s Choice Awards. It ended today. I made a wee bit of a dent. The Misssives finished in 18th place for the Best Blog About Stuff category, which is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick and I believe I’m the only blog from the UK to make it that high, but don’t quote me. I know for sure I'm the No1. Transvestite blogger. Special thanks to those who commented- some of them words made me weep a bit. And if you’re sitting there going, “Aw man, I didn’t vote, I feel like such an utter git!,” then you can vote for me in the 2009 awards which start today. And those of you who voted for me originally can vote again. Chin, chin!
I’m off to a hen night tomorrow. A full day job. We’re off to the country first, shooting stuff in the afternoon, which I hope is at stuff without a heartbeat. We’re wearing stick- on moustaches. I'm hoping for a ginger one. I’d like to make it clear before anyone gets too excited, we are wearing other things as well. (You sick monkeys- you know who you are)
Then what? Well the bride-to-be has got her work cut out. There is a fine tradition of ridiculousness in the hen nights of yore. The Hen tomorrow has got some crackers to live up to.
Firstly my own. I dunno, you make one casual comment and all hell breaks loose. My casual comment was in response to a male friend asking if he could come on the hen night.
“The only way you’ll get to come along is if you come in drag”, I say. I throw the remark away, and move on, thinking nothing of it.
Word spreads. “We can get to both Hen and Stag Night if we get ourselves some frocks,” goes the rumour.
I never meant the remark to be taken seriously but in the time-space between the word spreading and the actual night, a great deal of money has been spent, a bin bag full of man-hair has been removed, other hair has been tonged and backcombed and make up has been applied by the shovel full. The effort! The attention to detail! The weirdness! About ten men are ranging in looks from teenage starlet to retired headmistress on a night out. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, eat your heart out. After I picked myself up the floor from laughing so much, I wondered, what would have happened if my response to the question had been “The only way you’ll get to come along is if you get yourself a ticket to an Amsterdam clinic and get yourself a lady-flower ”.
But my goodness they did us proud. Not only were they dressed as women, they acted like women the whole night. They used women’s loos, they flirted, a few (the prettier ones) got chatted up by men and there’s one guy in particular that I swear has never been quite the same since. If he’d turned round weeks after and announced that he wanted everyone to call him Brenda from now on, nobody would have blinked.
Second only to that was Auntie Kezza’s hen night. Now Kezza used to work with Meeester in Social Work for the Elderly. Between them, they’ve stories that make you blanche. Poo stories, wee stories, naked old men stories. Meeester says he has an idea for Kezza’s hen night. An idea so repellent, I ask him to reconsider. “Nah, don’t worry...Kezza will love it”. The two of them have had to adopt a cavalier attitude to bodily functions to get them through the working day. It’ll be fine.
Cue Kezza’s Hen Night where a mix of Aunties, Mums workmates and friends are in an upmarket Chinese restaurant. Plates are being cleared away, when there is the noise of metal clanging against metal and a little bit of a commotion. Some of us look round to see an elderly man in zimmer-frame manage to negotiate the last stair. He is wearing a dirty overcoat, flat cap, cookie duster grey moustache, and a (full) catheter bag is strapped to the walking frame.
Within seconds he has set down a ghetto blaster and pressed play. Tom Jones’s “What’s New Pussycat”blares out and the geriatric burlesque floor show begins. The coat comes off, the long johns are brown-stained, and the catheter bag is hoisted and jet of pale yellow liquid pours forth, straight into the mouth of Kezza like she’s on holiday in Torremolinos. It is wine. She just knows it is.
How far did Meeester take the floor show? I can’t remember. I think I blacked out.
It’s October and I have an anniversary coming up. I think we all share a red letter day of this type. October is the birthday of me earning my first ever pay packet. Cue the John, Paul George and Ringo in my head: "It was twenty years ago today, Misssy joined the ranks of the underpaid...."
In this part of the world, that is, the Scottish part, I suspect that a lot of my compatriots share the same anniversary. For the October school holiday is also known as “The Tattie* Holidays”.
For those of you not aware of country ways (arrr!) and perhaps from non-potato growing regions of the planet (where do you get your chips?), the idea of a holiday in honour of the potato might seem a little strange. And if that were the truth, then yes, it would be a little strange. Kind of like Hawaii having a week off to celebrate the pineapple, or Germany having a local holiday in honour of the cabbage. But the Tattie Holidays are the opposite of what you might think. Yes, they are holidays from school, but they are holidays in which the children were traditionally released from the classroom in order to bring in the potato harvest. Perhaps, in days gone by, folk took their kids out of school for harvest anyway, and the school ended up just giving in and making it official. For many of the boys and girls of rural Aberdeenshire, the Tattie Holidays remain to this day, your first chance to earn some cash.
At fourteen years old, the idea of £10.50 a day for picking up some potatoes was too good for me to resist. It seemed like riches compared to my previous wage of £0.00 per day. I had calculated that if I worked the whole week, I’d be rolling in it and could spend my cash in my continuing quest to dress like the members of Duran Duran and follow them around the globe with a view to eventually marrying one of them.
Now, I’m no Tess of the Durbervilles by any stretch of the imagination, but I thought in my stupid hairsprayed head that working on a farm would be “quite nice”. I was wrong. It is a deeply unpleasant business. Especially for a fourteen year old whose only recorded manual labour up until this point has been tidying her room under extreme coercion by her parents, and filling the dishwasher once a week on Sunday to the soundtrack of the Top Forty Countdown.
To say I was ill prepared would be understating things. There I am on wet October morning, about to pick potatoes in a big field, but you can bet your Eighties arse I’m still going to be rocking those lycra infused Oddball stretch spray on jeans I’ve barely been out of since I bought them. Never mind that I can’t actually physically get out of them, I’m mainly wearing them because “lads from school might be there”.
I’d like to think that I was at least wearing wellies, but I can’t in all honesty tell you I wasn’t in fact wearing tukka boots or suede pumps with dainty bows on the toes. And as anyone who has ever worked on a farm, nay been in Scotland, in October will tell you; you need yer wellie boots.
So here’s how tattie picking works- the clue’s in the name. A tractor with a thingy attached goes up the field. The thingy digs over the ground exposing the tatties to the world, it is your job to pick them up. There we stand, with our own six meter square area to clear of tatties and put them in buckets. You've the time it takes for the tractor to come back down the field until we move on to the next dug section of earth to start over again. It’s physical work alright. In fact, it’s chain gang type work. Without the fetching striped jammies and ....erm, chains.
After a few lanes of tattie filled earth, I’m way behind. Ruddy faced men with meaty hands are shouting at me in frustration, as I claw my way in the earth, falling to my knees with tears in my eyes, vowing never to eat a potato ever again. I resemble Tim Robbins when he finally gets to the end of the shit tunnel in the Shawshank Redemption.
It’s the end of the first tattie picking day and I can barely move for exhaustion and muscle rippage. After the tractor deposits the trailer full of tattie howking** kids back at the pick up point, my dad has to chisel a hardened Misssy shaped mud sarcophagus off me before my Mum will let me in the house. I return home, at least with a little brown envelope containing £10.50. The hardest tenner I’ve ever earned. As well as the hardest fifty pence.
The next morning, Day Two of Tattie Week dawns and my dad gives me my wake up call.
But I will not be working the fields that day...or any other. Dad smirks and closes my bedroom door behind him and somewhere down the road a trailer trundles off to the potato farm without me on it.
(Can you remember how you made your first Dollar/Pound/Euro/Peso/Rouble? Delete as appropriate.)
* For overseas visitors tattie means potato. You knew that, right?
**Howk is Scottish for to pull up. you can even howk up your trousers if they are falling down.
Rightly so, folk have been having a dig at the daft names US Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin has given her kids.I’ve even had a pop of my own over at Celebrity Litigation, (the blog that should by now be ruling the world). Here’s an excerpt of Sarah Palin’s blog from the site:
"There I was, doing what every American Mom does, squeezing out my fifteen wholesome kids, Chip, Buck, Chuck, Champ, Chad, Chimp, Buddy, Trapper, Hawkeye, Radar, Bristol, Birmingham, Newcastle, BJ and the Bear, with not a thought to ever doing anything other than baking cookies and shooting elk. Gee ladies, why, I’m just like you!"
What’s clear to me is that Sarah and Todd couldn’t have living grandparents.It’s always the elderly Grandmas that pour cold water on your baby names and say something so piercing and offensive that your cherished favourite name becomes dust in front of your eyes.
“Gran, I like the name Neil, if it’s a boy”
“Nooo, there was a boy at my school called ‘Daft Neilly’. Smelt of kippers, he did. Peed his pants at the Nativity Play.Whole school saw it happen.Used to eat his bogies....ahh daft Neilly....wonder if he’s dead, now.....”
Or,
“I’m thinking of Skye for the baby”
“Sky? Sky???? That’s not a real name, is it?For goodness sake. The kid’ll not know what it is! Sky?? As in Sky in the (points) ...sky? Or TV company Sky?Which is it? I don’t know... you lot.I was just saying to Ella McKinnon the other day ‘What’s wrong with names like Susan or Julie? Or naming after the grandparents’...Hmmm? What happened to THAT, eh?”
All the same, some intervention can be called for.In 1992 there were a set of female twins born in Rottenrow Maternity Hospital in Glasgow called Mercedes and Pocahontas.I didn’t check back the year when the big Disney film was Toy Story but you can bet there were some Woodys and Buzzes.
And then after the birth of Brooklyn Beckham, progeny of David and Victoria, there was a whole raft of kids called after where they were conceived. Records from the Possilpark area of Glasgow show there are five kids called Bench and another six called Shelter. In fact, maybe that's why Sarah Palin's kid is called Track. Hmmm? (The filthy cow.) I'd say the same for Bristol except we all know for a fact that Palin has never left the borders of the US.
And what about this year? What’s the out-there baby name for this year?Heath could feature, but that’s passable and inoffensive enough, if you discount the fact that you are naming your kid after a depressed borderline junkie suicidal actor who is most famous for spitting on his hands in preparation for some lovin’ in a tent up yonder Brokeback Mountain. Get over that and Heath would be perfectly nice for a wee toot.
Gwen Stefani may also have started a trend with naming her kid after the exact noises she made whilst pushing him out, but that could lead to some quite nasty surprises, if you follow through with that decision, I’ll wager.
Gwen carrying baby Zuma Nesta Rock
And talking of baby names, as we are.What’s always good for a laugh is asking your parents what their second choice names for you were.Or the name they would have given you if you’d been of the opposite sex.Mine are quite odd, I have to admit (and no offence meant if any have the same names as any of these, btw. I'm allowed to josh, I was nearly called them.).
Apparently I was going to be a Kenneth if I was a boy.What the blazes? My parents were Bob Dylan fans, what’s wrong with either Bob or Dylan? I could have coped with that.But I’m not a Ken, Kenny or Kenneth; I know that for sure. Kenny’s a guy who can fix your guttering or do your tax return.Kenny’s not a windswept and interesting artiste with an eye for the ladies that won’t be tied down and owns a helicopter.*
And also in the running for my girl’s name was Janice. Janice?? Not even cool Janis Joplin spelling, but the uncool -I.C.E ending. Eeek. Janice is a woman who struggles with her weight, has a top-lip hair problem and works at the library. Janice is not someone who wins a Bafta under the age of 21 and then goes on to have a successful career as a reknowned character actress! Not that I’m any of these things, but I’m just saying...
Anyway as luck would have it, my Gran got in there first and ruined both names for my parents.How, I can only guess.
* I know of at least one Ken that reads the blog- so please accept my apologies, Ken, if you are any of these things. And if it's the helicopter thing, then...cool! Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!
Not one life vest, not one responsible adult.
Call the Social!
One of the Enid Blytonesque things The Flying Martinis do of a week is Family Night (TM). Oh, hang on...I think I just heard the sound of my "Mommy Blogger" blacklisting being revoked! Quick, let's bake some cakes and photograph them too.
Actually to call our family night Enid Blytonesque is rather ridiculous.In the work of Enid Blyton I seem to remember that kids ran amok solving mysteries without a shred of parental guidance, or were, indeed, packed off to boarding school to be brought up by complete strangers wearing pince-nez and big cloaks. There was never much of a family involved in anything Blyton’s Famous Five or Secret Seven ever did. In fact, they always seemed to rely on goodly yet childless farmer’s wives to take pity on them and replenish them with cakes and sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer.Really, it’s time we re-evaluated the work of Blyton; her tales are clearly of neglected latchkey children.
Essay question: Enid Blyton could be described as aTwentieth Century Dickens but with jam and cakes.Discuss.
Anyway, as you may remember a while back it was Junior Misssy’s turn to dictate what we did on Family Night- we went to the school playground to mess about on bikes, rectify wanton vandalism and listen to other kids swearing at each other.Good clean fun with an edge of gritty realism.
The next week, we had a Mario Kart competition on the Wii, at Indy's request, in which I played like a big Jessie.Indy and his best friend, Socks, were so concerned for my ego that they would cover the screen when my score came up.I was like Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest. So much so that I wanted to change my Kart to resemble a Viking Longboat.
So onto the actual bona fide reason for this post; it was my turn to choose what we did last week, and I turned the twee factor up to eleven. I made us all paint a portrait of Sonny the Black Menace.
I wish to showcase the results*:
Meeester channels Warhol
Indy channels Hieronymous Bosch
Junior Misssy channels Picasso
Misssy channels Van Gogh
(there’s a second one with one floppy ear missing)
And if you think that's some quality wholesome family entertainment right there, then wait til you hear what Meeester has got planned. In true Partridge Family style; this Family Night Meeester is going to get us to record a song. Talk about twee with a capital Twuh! I feel like Julie Andrews.
God help you all, gentle readers! (Any requests?)
Our sleeping muse
*Mainly because I’m not well, and light on blogging ideas for this week due to a mind-numbing cocktail of over the counter drugs that is rendering me incapable of doing the simplest things.Picture Jack Nicholson in One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest after the lobotomy, but with a better hair line. Apologies for below par posting, I'm half a person right now.
