Most households have a box/tray/dish full of thingymabobs like this. Have a look next time you visit a friend - the contents can be quite revealing.
1. The red marker pen.
Call me obsessive, but I’m an assiduous observer of sell-by dates. Every jar, bottle or tub of foodstuff in the fridge is marked with a date. That way, you always know when the item has gone over and you can aim to use it in time. No waste, no food poisoning.
2. The spangle-tangle
When I gave up smoking (about ten years ago) I carried this around to give my twitchy fingers something to play with when I craved a cigarette. For a while afterwards I kept it in my handbag for those eye-rolling moments in department meetings when I would otherwise have started eating my own arm. How it ended up on that dish in the kitchen I don’t know, but there’s something faintly reassuring about seeing it there.
3. The bird ‘flu mask
This is one of the bunker supplies. Don’t ask. It actually came in handy one day when I was hoovering the office carpet and - whoosh! - clang! - what on earth was that? An irreplaceable motorcycle part? A vital electrical component without which the entire household computer network would cease to function? A stray but priceless collectable? Great. Nothing for it but to cut open the dust bag and rake through the contents.
4. The black ‘n’ white cat
We had a cat when we first moved here, but sadly his love of raw rabbit meat led him across the road one time too often. The stars were misaligned that day and he is no more. One Christmas I asked J what he wanted. A kitten, he said. This stocking filler gift was an attempt at compromise.
5. The champagne cork
(10th wedding anniversary.)
6. The pedometer/calorie counter
I collected the vouchers from a cereal packet and sent off for this item. Fool. What was I thinking of? It was so complicated to operate I’ve never worn it, but I harbour the delusion that one day I will. One day I will read that leaflet, work out how to set the damn thing and put the calculations to good calorie burning use. I will. I’ll go jogging. Or something.
7. Post-It notes
My family just love it when I leave these stuck around the place. ‘Lock up’, ‘Feed dog’, ‘Back at 2′.
Libster Lobster
Labster Lee,
Living in
The deep blue sea.
Libster Lobster
Where are you?
Gone to lunch
( - Back at two).
Lobster from The Little Pot Boiler by Spike Milligan: 1963.
[Drawing by the author.]
8. Nail varnish
A glimmer of feminine glamour among the domestic junk. I think it helps me keep the faith, even if it is more sacrament than serviceable.
…………………………………………….
So. You get the picture.
These objects have in common that they are all either garishly packaged, or brightly coloured, or made of plastic. They ‘don’t go’ anywhere else; they pose difficult questions. Eat me? Keep me?
Store, or throw away? Useful, or junk? Souvenir, or bit of old rubbish? Leave to hand, or tidy away?
Binary options, you would’ve thought. But what to do?
Some of his classmates have been planning their ‘dates’ since Year 10, but just recently things have begun to hot up. Careful pairings have been agreed, dresses booked. The number of remaining singles has dwindled fast. Meanwhile, Jnr, aka Mr Mañana Man, has dragged his feet.
In the last six weeks, on and off, I have been party to a recurring conversation…
Me: Have you asked C to the prom yet?
Jnr: Nah. Not yet, no.
Me: Has she agreed to go with anyone else yet?
Jnr: I don’t think so.
Me: She’s waiting for you to ask her.
Jnr: Nah.
Me: She is. I’m telling you. Just ask her. Why not ask her?
Jnr: Dunno. Not the right moment.
Me: Why not? She can only say no.
Jnr: Exactly.
Me: But she won’t say no.
Jnr: *I’m not going if I can’t go with her.
Me: Then ask her. He who hesitates is lost. She’ll think you’re not interested. She’ll find someone else.
Jnr: Yeah. Tell me something I don’t know.
Me: [Laughs] What are you waiting for?
Jnr: [Emits a low moan] A week when I haven’t been a twat in class, when I can get her on her own… Like yesterday.
Me: And?
Jnr: We got talking and. [Emits another low moan] It just went out of my head.
Me: Aw.
………………………………………………………………..
When I left school we were hardly aware of the date approaching.
The typical Seventies Comprehensive School Leaver’s Disco was a naff, disorganised, damp squib. The caretaker strung a few balloons and lights from a gantry in the drama room. There were no Goths, no Chavs, no Emos, no costumes, no concept of ‘dates’, definitely no limos. We put on our nothing-special glad rags - jeans mostly - applied a spritz of Charlie - tsssst! - gave our kissers a hopeful squirt of Gold Spot - tsssst! - a slick roll-on of cherrycoke lip-gloss (that stuff was like glue, if you ever did kiss a boy wearing it, he jolly well stayed there), hair - tssst! tssst! - were given a lift to school by our Dads, had a quick menthol ciggie behind the PE block, and crossed the threshold to adulthood, oblivious and entirely unnoticed. We cast off our school uniforms and left behind an important phase of our lives, feeling vaguely cheated, but not knowing quite why.
So I’m all in favour of this newfangled ritual, the Noughties Prom. I’ve had debates with people who think the fad for the The Prom is all Me-generation sleb-style excess, a vulgar American add-on which pastes tacky glitz onto the miserable acned face of traditional British adolescence. I disagree. I think the way the Americans have formalised and framed the transition from High School to life beyond - as a positive celebration - hits exactly the right note.
I’ve watched Jnr and his friends begin to assume a new maturity as the Prom draws closer. For a start, the fact that they’re looking forward to it is focussing their minds. Even the exams, which are inextricably linked to the Prom whether they like it or not, are coming into focus. This has benefits for everyone, for the imminent leavers themselves, and for their parents and teachers. Fear is sweetened by fun.
Because of the Prom, the Year 11’s seem to realise the transition is a big event and sense that they have an important part to play in it. There’s pride, not dread. The need for planning ahead has helped; from what I’ve observed, the complex social negotiations and group activities which lead up to a Prom demand some fairly grown-up skills. As the details are finalised, these nascent adults are beginning to take the next stage of life, and themselves, more seriously.
For the boys and girls to be formal, to wear stiff evening dress and have to deport themselves with a touch of decorum during a rite of passage, I think is a good thing. It’s the start of learning a useful trick - how to slip into a role and behave - at least at the start of the evening - like model proto-adults.
As for the credit crunch doom-mongers - it’s not necessary to spend a fortune to do The Prom in style. The frippery is there to add to the mystery, to make the event memorable, to acknowledge a set of significant farewells and foreshadow a new phase. Prom night itself is intended to be a game of ‘Let’s Pretend’ and the elements of fantasy needn’t be expensive, they just have to decorate the gaudy gateway, help everyone to capture the moment of gauche precocity on the cusp, decked in glamour and dressed in fun.
Some have argued against the Noughties phenomenon of The Prom because it can be seen as a coercive heterosexist charade. There is a Barbie and Ken element to some of the clothing chosen, it’s true, but last year, one of the best dressed Prom couples at Jnr’s school was openly gay. It was scarcely commented upon. Having grown up in the Seventies and read accounts of the miseries endured at school by gay contemporaries on forums, I know this fact represents progress.
The sweet sixteens of 2008 may be a little dreamy about red carpets, for sure, a little dazzled by the X-Factor, but they’re not sleepwalking nihilistically into their futures with no demarcation line, the way my generation did. They have a sense of direction and entitlement which will help them. If the more aware among them ask themselves, as we did, as they leave school and hover on the brink of what is looking like the start of another cyclical recession: **’What Do I Get?’ the answer in 2008 is - at the very least - you get to go to The Prom.
…………………………………………………………………
Update. Jnr came home from school whistling yesterday.
Me: How was your day, then?
Jnr: I-astCeetothprob.
Me: What?
Jnr: I-astCeetothprob.
Me: What?
Jnr: I-astCeetothprob.
Me: Look. Slowly and clearly, word by word.
Jnr: I ASKED C TO THE PROM!
Me: Hurrah! [Waits. Nothing] And?
Jnr: SHE SAID [Pauses for effect] YESSS! - MACHOP!
Me: Great. That’s great. See. What did I tell you. [Sings] ‘Jnr and C. In a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.’
Jnr: Shuddup. [Smiles]
………………………………………………………………………………
I was sixteen in the summer of the War of the Worlds - a battle raged in the UK Singles Charts between Disco and New Wave - there was Another Music in a Different Kitchen. Barry Manillo caved to Siouxsie Sioux. Take a Chance on Me wrestled Because the Night. Donna Summer went up against Sham 69. On the outside there was no contest, I’d abandoned my purple Spandex™ flares for a pair of skinny jeans and a baggy jumper, but secretly in my heart I still loved a good Disco tune. I still do. This would have been my Prom classic.
Start the week with a biblical riddle - why not? It’s Monday, the weather is grim, The Today Programme reckons we’re all doomed, where better to turn for solace than the Bible?
I turned to the bottle, a bottle of Tate & Lyle golden syrup, that is, with pancakes, for breakfast, and as I was eating, staring out to sea, my eye lit upon the famous Lyle logo.
I’ve seen this image so many times usually it barely registers, but for some reason this morning - a need for escapism perhaps - I was transported .
What a bizarre picture it is. A dead lion and a swarm of bees above a ponderous line from the Old Testament, ‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness’.
This is one of the oldest surviving examples of branding, having barely altered since 1885, yet, if you consider the associations - death, decay, the mighty fallen, the danger of beestings, the sheer weird, implausible notion that bees would build a honeycomb inside a rotting carcass - it would never get past a marketing department today.
When I was a child I would stare at that logo. It fired my imagation on lots of levels. Sweet things weren’t exactly rationed, but my parents generation had experienced rationing and parsimony was a habit with them. Sweet things were not denied - sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey was a hit - but they were stored high up, regarded as faintly decadent and meted out with a mixed message of wonderment - such abundance in this new age! - combined with slight resentment - we never had such things when we were young - and the vague implication that we Apollo babies should somehow be grateful.
Golden syrup seemed to encompass all this. It was heavy with associations, valuable, like gold. Twisting a slow spoonful of syrup and watching it drain, forever, into my porridge… the trails were the Rivers of Babylon, melting across a lunar landscape of milk and honey. [Don't play with your food!]
I wondered about that line from the Bible, too.
‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness.’ What can it mean?
The tin was robust, I knew that because I’d dropped it a couple of times trying to reach it down from the cupboard. Or perhaps Mr stern Presbyterian Lyle was telling his employees that he might be strict, but inside he was really a sweetie.
Now I’m older, I know there are different kinds of ’strong’, and they can each be deceptive.
There’s the obvious one, physically strong: a genetic propensity to build muscle or to have stamina, being, by fate, one of life’s physical lions.
There’s emotionally strong: this can be innate, too, or can come from the weathering of experience. It’s a kind of strength which enables people to survive difficulty - and can turn them to leather. Sadly, this kind often brings forth not sweetness, but its opposite. Perhaps the line from the Book of Judges is there to encourage us to resist bitterness?
‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness’ could mean something akin to ‘in every cloud there is a surprise, a potential silver lining’.
Or it could mean ‘be generous in victory’, just a simple exhortation to use advantage well/with sweetness.
Sweetness itself can be a form of strength; it might mean that.
Who knows? I guess that’s the problem with texts, even a simple line with a picture…
Say anything often enough and it begins to lose its meaning and mess with your head. One thing’s for sure, though, it’s all a bit too allegorical for me this rainy Monday.
Whatever you call your pet, make sure you can shout that name in public without fear of embarrassment.
Don’t ask me why, but I named my first cat Doris. Daft, eh?
Years later, when I was moving around too much to give Doris the secure home she deserved, I popped her in a cat box and took her on a National Coach westwards, to live with my father, a man not greatly enamoured of cats. He could never bring himself to call ‘Doris’ out loud.
Consequently, disenfranchised, virtually disowned, Doris acted out, went on wild killing sprees, regurgitated half-eaten mice in the house, scratched his furniture and generally misbehaved. Theirs became a kind of love/hate relationship. He would shout, ‘Gertcha, you bugger!’ and throw cushions at her. Over time, the ‘you bugger’ evolved and softened into a name. Doris became ‘Baggers’. Eventually, when she was granted lap privileges, she even condescended to answer to it.
A friend of mine once had a cat she dubbed ‘Durkheim’ - yes - after the French sociologist, Émile Durkheim. She was from Manchester. ‘Durkheim’ was fond of wandering off. Those two facts are not directly connected, but anyone who caught an early-evening chorus of ‘DUURK-KEIIIM! Pud! Pud! Pud!’ as it was bellowed up and down our street accompanied by the frantic shaking of a Cat Crunchie box, may have thought so. It was an unforgettable sound.
My in-laws tend to dispense literary pet names. One of their cats was named Jeoffry, after the poem by For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry by Christopher Smart. Their Jeoffry was just a moggy, but sometimes, in the slight upward tilt of his nose, they imagined the cat had some sense not just of odour, but of the Ode; his name gave Jeoffry pretensions.
Our dog has many names. As well as his real, public one, at home he answers to: Mr Stinks, Ebeneezer Stinks, Eeezastinks, Fizzy Drinks, Tubbins, Snouty, Is-he-snouty? Farty McLarty…
Some of his dog friends have excellently embarrassing monikers: there’s Royston, Merlyn, Angel and Tarquin, to name just a few. Royston is a German Schnauzer. His redoubtable lady owner is German too, and many a doggy heart has quaked to hear the start of the rolling ‘R’ at the top of a good lungful of ‘RRrrroySTON!’
The male half of the couple who own the near-deaf Pekinese, when failing to get a response from a plain, ‘COME HERE!’ is usually forced to holler the dog’s name. He ends up mumbling asides to the other dog owners, ‘It was my wife who wanted to call him ‘Dalai’.
So, prospective pet owners, my advice is, choose that name with care.
(Dog names indeed. Sorry. It’s been a slow week. Cough. Sniff.)
Anyhow - I’m deviating - back to hobbies, obsessions and mania.
A few miles from here there is a small roadside house, the otherwise modest frontage of which has been covered entirely in shells. Around fifty years ago, the owner seized on the heinous notion of pebble dash, munged it up with traditional mosaic design, went beachcombing, and came home armed to make a statement. This house is different from the others in the terrace; the owner even spelled it out. Above the door jamb, although the colours of the shells have faded and weathered, if you look closely between the muted browns and greys, as with an Ishihara Colour Blindness Test, you can still pick out the words, ‘The House of Shells’.
The pattern is wonky, the arrangement rather amateurish and the shells are decidedly grubby now, but in its own way, this is a frontage which says, ‘I am a piece of outsider art, love me or hate me, here I am‘.
I love it - and I hope they don’t knock it down. It’s a testament to freedom of expression and eccentricity, and there are many other equally bizarre and individually unique pockets of human endeavour up and down the land. But even as you pass them and smile, don’t you ask yourself if what lies behind the choice and positioning of the hundredth gnome is not simply a channelling of excess time and energy, but something more disturbing?
Imagine the spouse. A hobby?
‘At last. Now you’re done with those bloody shells you can wipe your feet and come in for your tea.’
An obsession?
‘Shells, shells, shells, that’s all it is with him. He’s up there again, on his bloody ladder with his tub of grout, swinging his bucket of shells without another thought in his head.’
Or mania?
‘It’s a bit short notice, mother, but she wants to move again. No, she’s not pregnant. It’s the shells. Yes. We’ve found a house with a nice flat frontage, twice the size of the old one, we just need…’
Which reminds me of the Coral Castle.
As you know, I like quirky museums. When we were in Miami a few years ago, I read about a lesser known attraction on the outskirts of the city on the way to the Everglades - The Coral Castle - and one hot afternoon I decided we had to go there.
Although it draws small numbers nowadays - what’s to see? - a bunch of old rock? - where’s the shop? - the Coral Castle has been compared in scale to another testament to lost love, the Taj Mahal.
When he was twenty-six, and his sweetheart just sixteen, Lithuanian immigrant, Ed Leedskalnin, was engaged to be married. The day before the wedding, his child-bride, Agnes, called it all off. Ed never recovered from the loss. His love had turned to stone.
It is said that Ed staked a claim on his unusual coral-coloured patch of America years later, in 1936, and single-handedly spent the rest of his life sculpting and refining the entire structure of the peculiar, other-worldly habitation of the Coral Castle in almost total isolation.
The afternoon we visited, the sky was cloudless, there was no wind, and we were able to explore it virtually on our own. There were: thrones, one for him, one for her; sundials and little gardens; shaded arbours and corners which caught the sun at the perfect time; baths and grottos; it was a fortress but also a prison, open, yet oddly claustrophobic. The sculptures reminded me of the paintings of Marc Chagall - primitive representations of suns and moons - strange and haunting - and clearly echoed back to the myths and fairytales of Ed Leedskalnins childhood. It also felt oddly lifeless, like a salt mine.
Ed had dissected the chassis and mechanism of a model-T Ford to create an impressive array of levers and bits of equipment, including an oven. What struck me most forcibly, though, were two areas in particular; Ed’s living quarters, which were austere in the extreme, and an area set aside called - if I remember correctly - ‘punishment corner’ - with seats facing the wall - for his imaginary wife and child.
In some contexts, unrelenting sunshine can be as bleak as moorland gloom, and as I moved through the spaces inside the Coral Castle, it became more and more clear to me they had been created by a man in the grip of a deep, unheathly, but utterly compelling mania. Whatever else it did, the Castle saved and sustained him.
A psychologist would have a field day at the Coral Castle; to be inside it was a fascinating and moving experience.
What sparked all this off, then? Remembering stone carving? Recalling the Minack Theatre, I think. The woman who built it, Rowena Cade, was another driven obsessive with a fragmented, troubled family background. There’s something in that.
Yesterday I found a postcard addressed ‘To The Lady of the House’ wedged in the letter cage.
On the front was a picture of a stylishly dressed woman lying on a pile of leaves, very Lady Chatterly. On the back: Autumn/Winter Collection: Kasbah, Roberto Naldi, Pomodoro, Kali Orea: 10% Discount.
Just the thing. How about, buy a new ‘autumn knit’ (jumper) and then go for a rustic roll around and wreck it on a twig?
Nope. The Lady of this House is indisposed, tvm, owing to a touch of influenza, whilst we’re sounding all Italian. Meanwhile, Dog was mad to tear the card up so after one spectacularly high leap, I let him have it.
By the time I returned to bed with a Lemsip, I was in Elizabeth Barrett Browning mode, no longer a frowzy frump in a dressing gown with sticky-out hair, reaching for a laptop, but a lady reclining on a chaise longue, glass of Porter in one hand, quill in the other, thinking of Tuscany and Umbria…
And - look! - there is faithful Flush (the trusty ‘Jack Russell Terrier’/King Charles Spaniel-in-disguise) by her side.
[Five minutes later.]
Bang - back down to earth. The dog was sick.
Note: To The Lady of the House: Fever or no fever, next time, pull yourself together. Do NOT allow dogs in the bedroom.
Earlier this summer we noticed a foul smell outside the house.
On windless days, the area between the back door and the garage seemed to fill with a swampy reek, like methane. I kind of got used to it, but one night, when I felt headachy and the stink was really noticeable, I rang Transco Gas, just in case. What they said alarmed me. We were to extinguish all naked flames not light any appliances, until they had checked everything; they would be straight round.
Sure enough, there was a leak. Gas had dissolved into the surrounding soil, causing a toxic miasma at ground level. The men dug up the path, drilled through a wall and fitted a new section of pipe. What a mess, but they were confident it was fixed and departed as swiftly as they had come, leaving five cones, a bag of cement and a section of cordon on the grass.
Imagine my surprise then, five weeks later, when I left the house by the back door and caught a whiff of - gas? Or something like it. Right, I thought, that gives me an excuse to ring Transco, ask them to carry out another set of checks and cart their crap away at the same time.
The gas man paced the area with his gas meter - no readings - what a headscratcher. He could smell something, too, but the meter said it was not gas. Nope, not gas. Nothing for it but to fetch the other meter, the one which was sensitive to ‘traces of hydrocarbons’. I left him to his investigations.
Minutes later the back doorbell rang. The man had an exasperated air about him. His expression was one of amusement mingled with resigned irritation.
‘You got a lot of hydrocarbons out there,’ he said.
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Not gas?’
‘A lot of hydrocarbons. You’ve got some badly stored fluids out there. Open containers. You want to get Him to put lids on those. And I’ve moved that gas bottle. Shouldn’t store that in direct sunlight, He shouldn’t.’
I sensed he was building up to the punchline.
‘A lot of hydrocarbons. Round by that pile of motorbike parts under that tarp. And the meter went ballistic by the shed where those other parts are, and in the garage, where he keeps His bikes. But what I think it is -’ [and here he paused for effect] ‘- is that pile of containers in the small shed with the sink in. It looks like He’s been doing some sort of… experiment. With oil, or something.’
He led me to the shed and pointed,
‘There, see? There’s no gas, but if you ask me, that’s where I think the smell is coming from.’
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