Pistons at dawn.

I am not enamoured of steam engines. I don’t get a thrill out of the guts of old motor vehicles and nor do I give a fig for ancient aircraft. So when yesterday I was forced into a ‘family do’ at an air show in Shuttleworth I knew I was going to be in for a tad of a dull afternoon.

In fact as we arrived in the pouring rain to see hundreds of soggy anorak clad oldies watching nothing happen from open aircraft hangers whilst munching on their carefully engineered packed lunches, I was hit by a wave of ennui so brutal I nearly fainted. The problem is I am a coward when it comes to certain kinds of boredom – basically stuff that involves engines. I would crack like a nut under interrogation if the torture consisted of watching motor racing or researching aerodynamics. I have tried to fake interest previously but I am past caring now. I am never going to be really interested in what makes a Tigermoth fly, no matter how handsome it looks.

‘Boring!’ I howled, like a five year old, tugging at my brother’s hand as we morosely lurched around the darkened hanger interiors looking at dusty German and British fighter planes.

‘Boring!’ I wailed as my father, having the time of his life skipped over shouting, ‘hey have you seen the steam powered tractor?? Quick quick..its about to drive up and down the road for twenty minutes. It’s real coal you know….’

‘I’m dying here.’ I whinged at my mother on the phone as finally the skies cleared and some lunatic flew in spirals in something tiny and noisy above the crowd.
‘I can’t here you darling…is that a plane overhead?’

On the way home my brother poked me in the back and asked what on earth I would have rather been doing on a Sunday afternoon.
I thought about all the various things I would have rather been doing..most of them involving various methods of being asleep in a beautifully empty, quiet flat but I held my tongue.

And then there had been that one 1968 Wasp helicopter that the chap had actually ‘danced’ like some huge insect over the airfield. I hadn’t moaned once during his whole set. He even flew it backwards….I’m not sure if he meant to but it was very clever….

Holey father.

My flat is too small for my father.

He is a guest so gets the only bedroom. I get the futon that seems to be made of rough chipboard with added concrete and I set up camp in the living room.

Each morning at 7:30 he is already awake and bored and ready to continue his holiday. My father has worse ADHD then a small child with a coke problem AND he is my father and wants constant companionship from whichever of his children is closest…….right now that would be me.

My dad is a big chap, over 6 foot and broad but his knees are a bit dodgy and he has a bit of a stagger so, what with me being visually impaired and this flat being rather tiny, we are both continuously crashing into each other and tripping over all the piles of clothes and books and plastic bags full of recently acquired stuff to take back to Zambia that now cover the living room floor (when I am not sleeping on it.)

Within two days I am haggard and looking and living like a bag lady, rummaging under chairs for spare socks and desperately, continually searching for lost earrings, keys, mobile phones, my notes for work and my sense of humour. My dad says he is worried that I am ‘letting myself go’ and suggests I let my brother’s beautiful Brazilian girlfriend, 18 years my junior, give me some fashion advice, then, without noticing I have gone puce and am trying not to howl, he sits himself down in the middle of the living room blocking all exits and starts watching reruns of Top Gear with the sound up so loud the ceiling vibrates.
When he gets bored we will go somewhere to feed on dodgy prawn masala then hit every pub on the way home for medicinal brandy.

I will lie, holding my stomach and groaning on the chip board futon until dawn and then at 7:30 we will begin all over again.

My Dad is one of the greatest intuitive doctors of his generation with an OBE and various other awards cluttering his sideboard to underline that very fact. He saves lives..all the blinking time. He is hopelessly over generous and although he has been working tirelessly for 40 years he is still easily taken in and his hospitality and gifts have been so constantly abused that he is nearly broke himself and certainly will have to carry on working well into his 70’s. He is a very good man but he is also irresponsible, sometimes cowardly, childish and needy. He confuses nobility with sanctimony and is scared of emotion and naked truth. I worry about him all the time.
He makes up puns so bad they can make your nose bleed. His humour is forever warped to the tune of the Goon Show circa 1958.
I think I am like him and I hate that. I think I am like him and I am deeply, deeply proud.
In other words…my dad is over for a visit..the flat is too small and I am losing my mind.

He is in London for a couple of days and I will try and find where I stashed my toothbrush and my only clean T-shirt. I think they may be under recycling bin in the corner……

A Crock

I am here! I have just been doing a bit of dashing around. Will catch up tomorrow but in the meantime does anyone know what this tree is? I came across it in Kenya last December. They call it the Crocodile Tree...Isn't it gorgeous!!

Milking it.

You know when you listen to your recorded voice..if you hear yourself on an answer phone or on an old cassette…and it sounds daft or just odd? Well, I feel the same way when I catch sight of my reflection or see myself in photos. 'Who is that ridiculous woman?' I hiss. 'What a funny face. What an odd shape.'

It has always been this way..ever since I was a child. I feel like this face and body are nothing to do with the internal me. Not a good representation and I don’t recognise myself. Inside, on my good days, I am sleeker, taller, fearsome! Inside on my good days I am Riply AND the Alien. I am the Angela Carter werewolf who wears her fur on the inside.

On my bad days I am much smaller and old, brittle, fragile and sad, sad, sad but the less said about them days the better…

The idea behind being ‘aware’, ‘alive’ in its deepest sense was explored in the eye-opening film by Julian Schnabel ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’. It is extraordinary, profoundly moving…the story of the French editor of Elle Magazine, Jean- Dominique Bauby who at the age of 42 had a massive stroke and woke up 20 days later paralysed except for his one eye with which he somehow managed to dictate a book about what he was going through, about his deep love for his family and huge appetite for life.

I remembered hearing about the publication of his book back in the '90s and had been meaning to buy it for years but baulked when I heard it was to be made into a film. How could this man’s inner journey be filmed for Gods Sake without making it excruciatingly sentimental and phoney? Schnabel however came from inside out – you will know what I mean when you see it – and crafted with light, colour, soundtrack and point of view a film moving, funny and ultimately hopeful. He does not suck up to Bauby does not make this vain but charming man a saint and this somehow makes his story and the end of his life more deeply affecting.

Also downloaded this week's 'Dr Who' (BBC One). Holy crap it was great!!! So gripping, disturbing and some real skin of teeth performances from Bernard Cribbins (aww what a coup of a casting!) and Catherine Tate. Near perfect apart from the very large plastic stag beetle that the effects department came up with. The original must have bust at the last minute and some poor runner had had to dash to Toys R Us. The writer Russell T. Davis is just beginning to become brilliant as opposed to bloody annoyingly clever. What next, what next??

I am hiding behind TV criticism. As way of apology I give you one of me favourite poems written some years ago…on a fearsome day!


Got MILK?

Got Milk?

Only blood and water
Plasma and piss

But boiling and bubbling
and coiling and spluttering
Souped up gizmo
I should coco
Whole new mojo

Milk?

Give it to the babies
And Witches' tit me,
Shakespeare!

Running my mouth.

Did I run? I did not. Partly because I got a text at 5am from a bored friend trapped at Luton airport, thought ‘ah well… I’m awake now I might as well get up,’ and then promptly fell into a deep abyss of dreamless sleep and woke up only just in time to scramble over to the CAB offices to answer phone calls from distressed, depressed and occasionally extremely unpleasant folk in various stages of crises. Kind of lost the will to live after that.

Citizens Advice Bureau, having said that, is an incredible place.
And why?
You sir! Your wife leaves you for your brother-in-law and becomes your sister-in-law (once removed). What are your rights as to the house or your children?

You madam! Yes you with the lop sided leer. Say you are waitressing and on your shift the customers at table 8 do ‘a runner’. The restaurant manager says you have to pay their bill or work an extra shift? Is that legal?

And you two, just over from Poland and working in a drycleaners. But you ma’am find out you are pregnant and are worried about the chemicals. You want to leave until the baby comes but you are not sure if your job will be there when you need it. Do you have any rights?
Well do ya? Punk?

And you reading this. Think you wouldn’t need CAB eh? How about the fact that you, after a healthy trek in the Himalayas are struck down with lurgi, face 6 months of illness and can’t work. Can you claim benefits?
If you fall into debt after investing with some Nigerian internet firm, can someone advise you and advocate for you even if you cannot afford a solicitor?

Citizens Advice is there because none of us has a real clue to the constant changing torrent of legislation that affects every part of our lives. And yet, even though manned mostly by volunteers the CAB is constantly facing closure and disruption due to lack of funds. It is very strange and I suspect it is being badly managed at the highest level and I intend to find out why so few people know or understand or care about this remarkable charity. Knowledge is power and should be free for everyone after all.

All righty, Monday rant over. My neck is killing me from sitting all day at a computer and my eyes seem to have a thick paste of Vaseline and glitter over them. Pretty but not practical. Best turn ‘em off and turn on the radio for a break. More tomorrow!

New Year all round.

So here I am in the next year of my life.

To tell you the truth it feels a little bit like the last one only a bit stiffer.

As still feeling hungover from lovely gentle birthday bash in rain I will keep this short. Also will have to get a decent nights sleep as I promised myself I would start running again in the mornings. What kind of an idiotic birthday gift to self is that? Why didn't I promise myself more time to write or less spent on organic food and more on decent wine? Ah well..perhaps that will all happen too.

More soon me dears.

Birthday Solstice

Holy smoke..what heppened to the time? must have been that vintage cider!

Ladies and gentlement, tomorrow is the summer solstice and..yup..my birthday. Tis all a bit bemusing to be off an age where most people have children, mortgages, bald spots, and savings. I have ...an over active imagination, an exhausted liver and always the feeling of discombobulation that makes me feel that i am still searching for something elusive , strange and truly beautiful.
Maybe this year eh?

I want to say thank you for everything and everyone so far, even those who can't be here this solstice.

I am alright tonight..calm. I give you a poem what I wrote instead of usual ramble.
With much love:

The point.

I have done Gym

Time

I walk a hell of

A lot

On knobbly pavements,

In Cold rain

And still my belly rolls

and yaws

This little rotund body of mine

Stomping on along the snakes and ladders of

The calander.

Ahead,

A perfect

Bird

Waits

Head cocked;

My anxiety

Absurd.