Cigarettes and Alcohol

I used to smoke you will be appalled to hear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Situations or places where smoking doesn’t count are:

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

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

Booze: It doesn’t count if:

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

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

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

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

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

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

More excuses please in the comments box, please.

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

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Press Publish and Be Damned

I have been issued with a blog warning.

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

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

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

Set One: Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meeester's latest cry for blogattention:

Putting fake flowers in the shrubbery

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

Dorothy Parker: Don't ever spill her pint

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I await the resultant backlash.

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Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain

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

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

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

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

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

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

They are:

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

Results will be raffled off.



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

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Paperback Writers

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

Goddamn it, they should not.

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

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



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

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




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