Just once more . . . and some gossip

I was knocking up some chicken stock tonight. One of my favorite dishes is risotto - a simple lemon one and it helps if you've got great stock. Anyway as I bunged some onion and carrot onto the carcass - a series of rambled thought occured:

My mother lives on through her chicken stock
In lemony bones her essence is distilled.
And when I find a jar of her dark sticky marmalade
She is here
When irritation rises at The Girl just being her
And answering back because she's clever
She is here
I linger by the coco pops and hear: There's more nourishment in the box
My hair is hers - thick and lush on good days
Effing Mick Hucknell frizz bonnet on bad ones
She is there and there
And always here.


On another note altogether I heard on very good authority that two days ago, Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brookes were informed there was no room in The Ledbury or The River Cafe! To which the only mature response is well it can't be as bad as being arrested. And if Ms Brookes gets sent to jail? How will she cope without Frizz Ease?*

*Only girls will get this.

I'm not Bikini Ready

In a few weeks I'm going away for a few days and not only am I not bikini ready (I wish there was a sarcasm ) - I'm leaving the inevitable wax to the last minute, to give those little strips something to get hold of. But in the meantime I'm faintly alarmed by the profusion of sprouting hair. There's even one lone hair that twirls in singular splendour just below my belly button, saying 'Here I am!' What's that all about? Is it a nasal hair that lost its direction? Or some dark reminder of what might eventually happen if I left my bikini line to go Amazon Forest? Should I even be wearing a bikini? According to one of those surveys - you know the ones that the gleefully pounce on, women of forty six and over feel invisible. Fortunately there have been a few swift comebacks to the soul destroying idea that women of a certain age should nip off for a cauliflower perm, and a nice pair of Mary Whitehouse specs. Unfortunately Christine Odone's smart response in The Telegraph featured - as an example of mature womanhood, Nancy Del Olio whose self confidence not only borders but crosses way way past the delusional.

I do love the way (and when I say love I mean hate) from March onwards, magazines, features and Lorraine Kelly et al start going on about being 'bikini ready' as though the entire female population intend to spend the next six months lolling about in a string two piece. Instead, if we're lucky we might get a few days off to lie by the sea or the pool and all we're ready for by then is a large gin.

I'm still bothered about that bloody single hair though. It mocks me with its single twirliness.

I got a message today from the lovely Gillian telling me in the nicest possible way to get orf my lazy arse and start writing again. So I am and thank you Gillian.

I then spent loads of time deliberating what to call my first post in nearly two months. In My Absence? Too pompous. What I've Been Doing? Well frankly who cares? No point in using the 'I've been soooo busy' line. We're all busy. So this is what's been happening.

I've finished teaching at the Open University for the year and am now supposed to be using the time productively to write a play for Radio 4. But something is stopping me. I think it's called Bone Idleness.

The Boy got through his first year of college and was so relieved he decided to buy a suit. I've no idea either.

It's been nearly a year since mum fell down the stairs and died - long enough for me not to choke up when I find old jars of her home made marmalade, and to think instead about her funny little habits. Like the way she would serve up rock hard avocado - I mean you could chip your teeth on them. 'Just let them ripen a bit,' I'd say but she'd have no truck with that. 'I'm writing to the supermarket to complain!' she'd announce like Boudicca, waving her slice of stone hard avocado like a sword. The thing is, she kept on buying rock hard avocados and she kept on writing to the supermarket to complain. Sometimes she got her money back and a whole load more of avocado.

She also wrote to the bank to complain about the location of the cash machine. 'The sunlight shines directly on it' she complained to the hapless spotty eighteen year old cashier. And after she died I found out that she was in the middle of what politicians call a 'frank and fearless' correspondence with Weatherspoons about their crap food. You'd think crap food at Weatherspoons would be a given but mum apparently wasn't taking their deep fried mushrooms lying down. She even put in her will that if we (her family) disobeyed her instructions and bought an expensive coffin she vowed to 'come back and haunt us.'

Dad is recovering from the nightmare revelation that if he wants a woman to continue to clean up and cook for him, he is going to have to pay her. I remember years ago reading Shirley Conran's Superwoman in which she said, if you want a good man grow your own. I wonder if it's a particularly Irish generational thing to have a grown man so utterly domestically incompetent. I know that mum infantilised dad but he went along with it. And even though he knows on one level that my sister and I work for a living and have better things to do than cook and clean for him - on another level that's all he really recognises women as doing. Which is very sad. But also incredibly annoying. When I left dad's house, hours later I would find endless missed calls from him. He was ringing to ask where the washing up liquid was. Or where I kept the milk (?) 'Ok dad - where would the milk be most likely to be? A - in the bathroom cabinet or B - in the fridge? 'Ok'. Five minutes later the phone rings again. 'Where did I leave my glasses?' It's thinking that the womb is a location device. It's not spending five minutes thinking about where the vacuum cleaner bags might be but immediately defaulting to the nearest person with a womb because she'll know. For his entire life dad has never had to consider anything domestic. So we've got hold of a company who are used to dealing with older people who will come and clean for dad and do small errands.

And I really don't want The Boy turning out anything like this. So he's got himself a job and by the end of this summer he's going to be cooking dinner a few days a week. That's The Boy, not dad. He'll be sitting in his chair shouting at the telly while the nice ladies from Home Instead vacuum round his feet. And then expect to be paid for it.

So now that dad has been sorted out, hopefully normal service will resume.