Tales from the Hood

May I be struck by lightning...

but, man, I just could not resist this

There are a few items of clothing that I cannot bear.  But don’t get me wrong, other than popsocks I’m not ruling out any female clothing for myself. I’m talking about men’s clothing. I’m particularly talking about men’s clothing that I would object to my husband wearing. And I’m not backwards in coming forwards with (constructive ) criticism on that front. You may think I’m a controlling evil witch,  but I prefer to think of myself as an essential force field between him and bad taste. 

I’ve written about Meeester and his sartorial mistakes before. But wait-hold your horses- don’t head off to that post yet. The ultimate has happened. Something that knocks all previous horrors literally into a cocked hat- a hat of cocks if you will. Meeester has bought himself a baseball cap. 

I loathe baseball caps. Loathe them.  In fact I pretty much loathe any sportswear that is worn as ...well clothing that is for sport, but that people are just wearing whilst NOT doing sport. Don’t even get me started on football strips. The very fact that they make football strips big enough for beer bellies to fit into should tell us all something. 

And yes I realise that a lot of you reading are thinking, “But I have a football strip that I wear whilst on holiday where I intend to do no sport more taxing than going down a water flume...what’s wrong with that?”  But well, there it is something wrong with that. I loathe sports gear worn off the pitch/field/court. You're all going to have to suck that up, I'm afraid. I've never claimed to be especially tolerant.

So back to baseball caps. Meeester bought one. In fact he bought one a good few months ago when we were having a lot of rain. He knows my feelings on the so called “hats”, so he went on the offensive immediately. 

“Before you even start, I bought this because when I go out with the dog I am sick of my face getting soaked. I saw this for a couple of quid and I thought- that’ll do for me out in this weather.  I need something to stop the water pouring down my face. And I warn you, if you put this in the bin behind my back....well, I will not be happy. And...." he wagged his finger in a threatening manner "I will buy another one!” 

A threat indeed.

“You promise to wear it only when you are out with the dog?” 

“Yes” 

“And only if I’m not with you.” 

(Sigh) “For goodness sakes. Yes!” 

I move on before he tried to get me to agree to him wearing jogging bottoms- I don’t even ask to inspect the hat. I do not recognise it in the way certain Arab states do not recognise Israel. 

But before long I spot it whilst alone in the house. It's as if the bastard were calling my name- taunting me from the porch shelves where it lay between wellies and dog leads. Curiosity wins me over, and I approach the offending article and pick it up. It is then that  I spot a design on its frontage that upon closer inspection appears to be seven filthy shades of wrongness. I pray to god that Meeester has bought it quickly, snapping up a so-called bargain, and not really taken in what the design actually is. “Please God, let him not have meant this!” 

You might have to squint, but have a look. And tell me what this design actually says: 

Yes, my friends,  it says “Golddigga”. 

And that m’lud concludes the case for the prosecution.

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Treasured Memories...

Why were Meeester M and I so nervous when it was our son Indy’s first day at secondary school this week? Simple really, because we both had pretty crappy first days ourselves.  It’s the whole “don’t smile til Christmas thing” that teachers do- someone has to be made an example of and if you’re unlucky, it’s you. If you’re lucky you just get to watch and thank God it wasn’t you...this time.

I was a watcher, I'm relieved to say. If I had been a victim I’d have walled myself into my parents' garage  to stop my parents from sending me back in the next day. But watching was bad enough, because you got to saw what some of these gits (and we’re talking pre-corporal punishment abolition gits in my case) were capable of. My particular strap happy dinosaur fond of a bit of child humiliation was Mr Treasurer. He looked like Satan in a polyester mix green suit (paired with a with cheeky lighter green nylon shirt) and a  goatee beard. Yes, you heard right, he was top to toe in  green; like a possessed Leprechaun. And Treasurer  wanted to belt an eleven year old and he wasn’t going to rest until he got the chance, begorra!

The unlucky bugger who appeared like a blip on treasurer's sadistic radar was  guy called Mark. I don’t even remember what Mark had done- I suspect he had done nothing, because whatever it was only Mr Treasurer that saw it. He had ginger hair, but I don't think that had anything to do with it. Certainly Mark seemed equally unaware of what it was that made the bearded green midget call him forward to the front of the class. Twenty five of us, whose only worry up until that point was what the extra buttons on their calculator were for an whether we’d EVER grow into our blazers, were about to get a whole other level of concerns to keep us awake at night. Teachers could whack you! In fact they could whack you with special whacky stuff with leather  fronds. And you couldn’t whack them back. And another thing- if this was what treasurer brought out on the first day, what did he have for later when he had to go up a gear? Say, when someone had actually done something wrong? An Iron Maiden? A wooden cross?

We all watched stunned as the verdant dwarf took a couple of steps backward to get run up for the production of a good velocity as the leather strap hit poor Mark's shaking hands. Five belts later, quite a few of us were choking back a tear. Who were these people? Would they all be like this? When could we feasibly leave and just get a job somewhere? We could manage without trigonometry and religious studies, we were sure we could.

The fact is, I never saw anyone else belted the entire time I was at that school. 

Mr Treasurer, wherever you are, thanks for making all the other teachers look good. And not picking me to make an example of on the first day, if I’m honest. (I hope someone bigger than you is battering you outside a pub somewhere- maybe someone with ginger hair...)

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Cocktails at Naptime

A while ago I mentioned sheepishly on the Misssives that I was getting a book published along with my co-author, Emma Kaufmann. Well, the release date is creeping up (1st October).

Over the last couple of weeks I've been chained to my computer setting up the official website and of course, given that it's Emma and I, there is also a new blog attached.  I would be delighted if Misssives readers could visit both, follow us on/subscribe to the blog. 

It is my view that when a blogger gets a book published their blog becomes shit. C'mon, we've all seen that! They are always bleating on about buying their book and not writing the kind of posts that made you want to read their blogs in the first place. This is not going to happen on the Misssives- the Misssives will remain the same old random story nonsense it always has. I'll do this post, put a link on the sidebar to the Cocktails at Naptime site and blog, and give you a further nod when the book comes out- and that's it. I won't wreck the Misssives by turning into a big advert. Promise.

However, the new blog will be about the book and contain blogs dealing with the subject matter of the book (being a woefully inept mum). Emma and I will be posting up some funny stuff and we promise it will be fun to read for anyone who likes our respective styles.

I would really appreciate your support. I'm a tiny bit nervous, so at the very least it would be great to see some friends of the Misssives over on the new blog.  I would never have had the confidence to have written a book if it hadn't been for the feedback I get on this blog. Thanks.

So, two links for you to have a look at:

The official Cocktails at Naptime website


and

The Cocktails at Naptime Blog






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The Hitcher

What follows is a confession.

Before I start I just want to say sorry to the person involved. My actions were not intentional. In fact I didn't realise that I'd done anything wrong until about 12 hours later. This makes me even more of an eejit.

A few days ago I was traveling Thelma and Louise style with my seven year old niece, CurlyNiece, who has the same kind of surreal chat as Eddie Izzard, so is quite entertaining company on a long journey. We were going to collect my daughter who was bonding with her Grandma in East Kilbride, which is just outside Glasgow. I'm not being condescending by telling you where EK is; the geography is important to the story . Make a note of it.


We reach Perth, the halfway point in our journey when the story really starts. As you bypass Perth, you reach a large and extremely busy roundabout called the Broxden Roundabout. It is pretty big and has all the commercial heavy traffic taking goods north hurtling round it. No-one has ever stalled on the Broxden and lived to tell the tale. Except me and the subject of my story, that is. In fact I'm not even sure that the subject of my story is alive to tell the story. You'll find out why.


As we approached the Broxden we saw a tall and quite beautiful girl standing on the roundabout. Yes, right in the middle with the traffic zooming past her. Goodness knows how she got there; she must have been the only living thing to have made it across there since the roadbuilders left when the bypass was opened in the 1970s. She was holding a sign with her destination on it.

I panicked. This girl was going to get herself killed. I had to save her. (I'm nothing if not a drama queen, you know that). Either a juggernaut was going to mash her pretty head under its eighteen wheels or a modern day Peter Sutcliffe was going to offer the lone female a lift of a lifetime.


Scrrrreeeeech! "Hello- get in!" I screamed across the traffic as I slammed the hazard lights on and upset about a dozen lorry drivers behind me as I tried to find a place to stop that wasn't going to get us all killed. She eventually made her way across like one of those hedgehog road crossing arcade games, and got in the car to the soundtrack of honking horns and muffled swearing through lorry windows. She was American.


"Where are you going?" I asked after I had managed to get my heart-rate slowed to a non-critical level, and introduced myself and my traveling companion (who was incidentally looking at me like I was a maniac). Our new friend was going to Fort William. Fifty miles later, and after a lively conversation I dropped her off at what I deemed to be a much safer spot where she wouldn't have to risk her life to get a lift.


Later that day I was driving back up the same road, this time with two seven year old travelling companions. As I drove back up to the Broxden Roundabout at Perth, a terrible realisation dawned on me. I actually felt sick. I had taken the girl in the completely wrong direction.

I had effectively delivered her a good fifty miles away from Fort William than she was at the outset.


I hereby want to apologise not only to the lovely girl from San Francisco who was hitch-hiking to the West Coast on her own, but also to all Americans. I have in the past, and indeed on this blog, made fun of the geographical lack of talent of the American race. Yes, you may not know the difference between Ireland and Scotland, you may think that Scotland is a city in England, and my American second cousin didn't know that milk came from a cow when he visited Scotland when he was eight and saw some cows out of a train window. I also convinced an American lad when I was working in New Orleans that although I was twenty one in the US, I was really only twenty at home because of the time difference.

Yes, American cousins, you may not know bugger all about stuff outside your own country, but I must confess live on this site that I do not not know where towns in MY OWN country are. I am worse than you lot.

And I may have delivered one of your own to her death, just outside of Easterhouse.

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Parental Advisory Warning

There it was, as my daughter was on my shoulders at the front of the crowd at the Latitude Festival a couple of weeks ago. I could swear I heard her little voice say through the pounding music, “Mum, that guy’s a fanny,” but it was noisy and we were watching The Macabees on stage. I must be mistaken. Admittedly, the lead singer, although a fairly ordinary chap did have a ridiculous and very out of place drop earring on, and it did make him look like “a fanny” but surely something else was concerning the girl.

“What did you say?” I shouted upwards towards her as she perched on me. “That guy’s a fanny,” I think she replied. No, it’s too noisy, I can’t hear her, I’ll just ignore her and if it’s something urgent I’ll either feel a warm trickle down my neck or she’ll shout louder. She didn’t just call someone a “fanny”. She's seven.

Fifteen minutes later and we’re back with our wider group. She off my shoulders and marching towards Meester M, and this time there’s no mistaking it, “Dad look at that guy on stage. He’s a fanny.”

Ahhh, it’s a rite of passage and we’ve all done it. Now I’m on the receiving end of it, and it’s hilarious. It’s kids trying out swearwords and to be honest there’s a coffee table book waiting to be compiled. In fact let’s start it here on the Misssives! Every parent has a story of the day their kid thought he’d road test the “F-Word” or other choice sailor talk on his or her parents to see if they’d get away with it. The trick is, as a parent, although you are absolutely wetting your pants with laughter inside, you must remain stoney faced on receipt of the usually thigh slapping syntax the child slots their expletive into. They must know it's not OK to call someone a fanny, even if they are one.

My personal one isn’t that funny, but I remember it well. I simply complained to my parents one night that Neil Young was “crap”. I was about 9 at the time. It’s a view I now don’t subscribe to, even though the album they were listening to was “Comes a Time” which even Neil would have to admit isn’t one of his best. I simply thought crap meant rubbish although there was some slight doubt as to whether it was a sweary or not having only ever heard it in the playground and not from the lips of say...my Sunday School teacher or a newsreader. My parents had to concur, it kinda does mean rubbish.They did give me that. All the same, it’s not a word for nine-year olds to be casually banding about like an apprentice fishwife.

My brother in law, Snorky's is a gem. And I don’t think he’ll mind if I nick it for my coffee table book. Aged around nine, clearly an optimum age for this type of thing, he was allowed to stay up later than his younger siblings when his parents were having guests round for dinner. It was a rarefied atmosphere, he probably had been given some grape Shloer or Top Deck for a treat, which in the seventies was like pretend kid booze. Being privy to heady adult conversation, he obviously felt he had to join in with his own witty, mature Noel Coward-esque banter. “Well, I don’t know about you lot," he said, “but I’ve had a fuck of a hard day.” Bedtime without pudding swiftly followed for the youngster.

My gran also recounts the day her youngest son (my uncle) came home from school and was exasperated looking for one of his lost toys. “Where is that fucking motor car?” he muttered to himself, barely six years old. My gran can't remember whether or not he ever found it.

Years later that same uncle was eavesdropping on his own young son playing cowboys in his bedroom and narrating the story and the acting parts of a classic tale of one small town sheriff and his nemesis, “Who do you think you are coming round here causin’ trouble?” said the boy as the lawman. His nemesis replies in a cartoon Western drawl, “I’m... just... some... fuckin’ guy...” he slurs as he draws his weapons and lets the bullets rip.

My son recently warned me not to write a book about him, so I tread carefully with this one but it’s too good to pass up. It was simple and it was heartfelt. Relentlessly tormented by his younger sister who ignored his repeated warnings he was moved to anger and was considering some serious name calling. Worked up into a frenzy he suddenly screamed at her, “Get off me, you...you...you Bagina!”

Hence the new word that enters the pantheon of nicknames for ladybits that exist for all to enjoy. Have it on me. Bagina- use it with my blessing. But not in front of the kids, please.

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