back up blog

It is written, I believe, in the set laws of the universe that whenever one makes an executive decision to leave the washing up and have a bit of a lie in before doing the ironing in one's knickers, that one's parents will inevitably stop by for a once-in-a-neon-pink-moon visit, even though you have spent the previous three days with them and, quite frankly, they got on one's tit ends. "Have you only just got up?" I was accused. "Cuppa tea?" I replied, wearily. I busied myself in the kitchen with the kettle and the milk and the banging of mugs to hide the fact that I was erratically loading the dishwasher with last nights pots, kicking crumbs under the cooker and hiding my twenty pack of Marlboro's in the sugar bowl. The kettle flicked off of the boil and I made my way into the living room to set down the mugs on the coffee table, praying I had done it right. Mama is very particular about her tea. "Did you put the milk in right away?" she a...

Spot the difference. "Two whole weeks in the middle of nowhere," I thought to myself. "Open log fires, hot chocolate, jigsaws and Boggle. So romantic." "Two whole weeks in the middle of nowhere," I presume He thought to Himself. "Long bike rides, building bonfires, having My Woman cook for me on demand. Real man stuff". This, quite obviously, does not a harmonious time make- for either of the sexes. Waking up this morning, the first thing I wanted to do was brush my teeth before I killed somebody or myself on its thick acidity. Fat chance- the tap in our bathroom had frozen during the minus seven night. I held my arms around myself for warmth- they tell you in 'Batman Begins' that this is very important- and tottered across the house to the other bathroom. No running water and the toilet chain flushed not. Nothing from the shower, either, nor by the tower of washing up from the kitchen sink downstairs. "Baby!" I yelled. "T...

(I've made the New Year Honours List!)   "Pardon me," a Scottish-accented woman with wild blonde hair breathlessly intoned over the top of my head. "But you've got the price tag sticking out of your trousers". She wasn't talking to me. My lack of height meant that it was with ease she could address the woman in front of me in the queue for passport control, and that the two of them could conduct a lengthy conversation about the embarrassment of said label-sticking-out-ness and the trials and tribulations of general womanhood and the speed at which we were all definitely not being processed out of the United Kingdom and crikey, it wouldn't come as much of a shock if the flights were delayed, what with the wind outside and everything, would it? I could hear all of this even over the waves of crescendo in Act 1 of Bizet's 'Carmen' through my discreet white wires, and so obligingly- and, to my shame, fraudulently- did the smiles and nods th...