It’s spring! The time when a young buck’s fancy turns to love and there are loved-up bunnies all over our garden at the moment. They are near demented with it and more than once I’ve seen the white of a lusty bunny eye. In the evening they will rear up in majestic rabbit rampant sillhouette causing you to remember good, brave Hazel from Watership Down and weep.

We are very lucky here at Rancho Problemo and have a full orchestra ready and waiting to provide heightened emotion to our everyday activities – things like The Luvin’ Spoonful hits on shuffle at breakfast time, “O Fortuna!” when we prepare fish steaks and, unexpectedly, “I’m Going To Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair” when I’m doing the hoovering. But we’ve had “Bright Eyes” on a loop for a week now and, frankly, I’m about ready to reach for a big ole Elmer gun and thort that pethky orchethtwa out.

Rabbits are not like us I observed lazily this morning, the sun shining in the window and bathing my bumble-bee slippers with light. They don’t have our inhibitions and “meta”ness. Their manners in mating matters aren’t like our’s either. They will tear about the garden like lunatic furballs without a care for the circling hawks above, the possibility of a beaky death only adding to the piquancy of their lust. Then a frisky young doe will suddenly turn coquettishly with a shiver of her little bobtail and she and her suitor will crouch face-to-face, ears flat and stock-still for half a minute or more, only their twitching noses to tell us that we aren’t looking at a still-life painting. Their twitching noses and the lack of a frame.

Then, suddenly! she will leap 3 feet straight up into the air and they’re off again, haring round the lawn and sending little clods of turf flying. Moments later they will disappear into a bush which will tremble and squeak for about twenty seconds before two plumes of lazy curling smoke come out of its top.

Later, you see them pretending they don’t know each other, but she has a new looseness about her hips when she hops, and he’s writing poetry in the mud with his nose. Lovesick and unguarded, he will hop out into the open for a better peek at her as she grazes with her girlfriends, forgetting that he, as a bunny, is one of the most eaten creatures on earth. The sky will darken, a hawk will swoop and a bobcat will pounce and collide with the hawk in a puff of blood and fur and feathers as our hero hops a few hops forward forward, oblivious to the carnage behind him, his only concern whether he should have used the Petrarchan rather than the Shakespearean form for his x-rated sonnet. The end.

Hey, it’s just after Valentine’s Day, folks – you didn’t think I was going to kill the bunny, didja? No, he is flattened later by a UPS delivery truck.

Anyways, this is what our pops orchestra played this morning when I threatened to disembowel them with the cymbals if the played one more bar of “Bright Eyes”:

Bunny lovin’ – had me a blast
Bunny lovin’ – happened so fast
Met a doe, crazy for me
Met a buck, cute as can be
Bunny fun, something’s begun
But ooooooh these springy dawns

A well a well a well a…

(Massed Blue-birds and fawns)
Tell me more tell me more does he have an o-er bite?
(Massed gophers and raccoons)
Tell me more tell me more, was her tail fresh and white?

Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huhoooaaah

She hopped by me, nibbled some grass
He just sat there right on his ass.
She went skipping, I caught her eye
He ignored me, I don’t know why.
Bunny treat, doe and buck meet
But oooooooooh, these springy dawns

A well a well a well a…

Tell me more, tell me more, did he sing you a song?
Tell me more, tell me more, was she wearing a thong?

It grew warmer as the day broke.
I spiked her dew with ‘hypnol and coke.
I woke up, about mid-day
Oh she was flat out and I had my way
Bunny rape, too doped to escape
oooooh ooooooooooh these spri-ngy daaaaaaaaaaaawns

Oh oh oh

(Sotto voce)
Tell me more, tell me mo-ho-ho-ho-ore!
(And fade…)

Repost from 2008 to try to get me motivated to start up this cobwebby old place again.

They’re at my house. 

30 hours of straight travel ahead, door-to-door, and all night it’s been Nature loud in hoot and chirrup at my house.  There is a cricket stuck inside in the the sitting-room somewhere, making more racket than you think a single cricket in a house could.  I’ve been up twice trying to bash it/release it lovingly back to the wild, but every time I turn the light on it shuts right up and I can’t find it.  But worse than the cricket were the owls!  Two of them!  I don’t know if they were getting it on or having a tete-a-tete, a heart to heart, dancing beak-to-beak or what but they had a lot to say to each other and it sounded like relationship stuff. 

“Get a room, owls!”  I silently shrieked. 

Silently, because Problemchild 2 snuck into bed with me at about 3 and by then all sleep would remain just a crazy, waking dream.   

So, up, fully dressed and leaving an hour earlier than I thought becasue I couldn’t check-in online last night for some reason and that’s making me nervous.  Why? Why can’t I check in?  Why is that?  I figure if I’m there an hour earlier, more shouting and bawling can be packed in if there’s any problem, and shouting and bawling is a more efficient use of my time than listening to owls getting it on while a cricket plays its mournful, incessant dirge for freedom.  On the other hand, maybe cricket-squashing and owl-slaughter are more efficient uses of my extra hour.  Oh, If only I’d remembered to exercise my constitutional wotsits and become a gun-owner. 

Byeee.

xx

Well, I didn’t think I’d be seeing Stornoway again quite so soon but today I find it’s so.  Flying out tomorrow, back next week.  Then off to Bulgaria for my dad’s wedding.  So, it appears that I have falsely alarmed you about my coming back to live La Blogge Vita.  I really thought I was.  Bit busier than I used to be but I was slowly catching up with everyone and thoroughly enjoying myself.  But life is exceedingly lifey right now, so I’m orf for another few weeks.  Take care, kids.  Love yoosall. I do.

(Or extremely touching verses composed upon the occasion of my father’s weddng to Jenny The Tremendous)

My dad’s getting married next month to a lovely Bulgarian lady.  She is a polyglot Bulgarian translator at the American University over there, and that’s nice because my dad has neglected to learn Bulgarian in his whole 62 years on the earth, the wastrel.  Their’s is a story of such beautiful and affecting romance that I was moved and tautologically stirred to spoil it all with a poem.  Also I can’t sleep. 

Very Romantic Poem.

More than the fleas on a zoo-full of bears
More than both tres and beaucoup
More than marzipan’s icky and vile
That’s how much I love you

More than the squeak in a violin
More than a chicken is feathered
More than the spots on a teenagers chin
More than Al Greenspan looks weathered.

More than a teller can tell, do I love
More than avoiders avoid
I love you as surely as death will come true
Just as surely as eggs is ovoid.

More than Obama can stir with his speech
More than W couldnae
More than the good Sister Wendy will NOT
And Clinton, he did but he shouldnae

I love you more than feelings can hurt
More than a wee brother’s pesky
More than collagen trouts up your pout
Making you look all grotesquey

As loud as the sound of a fart in a church
And more than that last line was dirty
More than a butler called Igor doth lurch
And more than a grapefruit is squirty

More than, climactically speaking, we are
So thoroughly now in the poo
O! More than this poem’s romantic, my dear
That’s how much I love you.

The End.

Going to Stornoway with the chidderkins for a couple of weeks. Because this trip has worse connections than a two-bob psychic we leave tonight but are not actually going to get to Sunny Stornoway til Thursday morning.  I feel like a salmon swimming, struggling upstream in a mighty, epic journey to the spot of my spawning, where I will probably be half-eaten by a bear. (Hedgehogs are our largest carnivores though, I think. Prolly be half eaten by a hedgehog if half-eaten by anything); or die flopping uselessly in the sunshine on the banks of the river Creed, mouth opening and closing silently as I slip away, cursing this life and its miseries, and maybe cursing you too, so be nice to me.  Or maybe the metaphor Gods will switch the analogy on what the trip is like when we get there and I won’t have to die.  I just hope it’s not any metaphor to do with the Middle East or the hills of Bora Bora.

They say it’s sunny there right now and, in the larger sense, I suppose it always is*, but some days the clouds don’t agree. So in the hopes of luring a behatted sun out to shine on our wearied, jet-lagged, holiday-making limbs, I am going to spend most of the fortnight in a canary-yellow jumper singing wholesomely in various groovy positions upon a boat, like my most current crush, the enigmatic Mr. Daniel Of Donnell. I think you’ll agree that this is him at his finest (and dishiest. *Blush*).  Aren’t his moves just the Very. Living. End? *Swoony*. I don’t know about you other girls, but I’m going for a bit of a lie down. 

Anyway, Danny Boy…baby… I dedicate this holiday to you…

*Looks into middle distance profoundly, contemplating the larger resonances of what I just said.  That’s profoundly, see? Profoundly.  Not vacantly, dreamily, absent-mindedly or constipatedly, OK?  I don’t care what anyone says, that’s my profound look.  Shut up. 

Daniel O\’Donnell, I Can See Clearly Now

Hear ye!  Hear ye!  Fantastic new blog launched by four of the Irish blogosphere’s most talented and delightful smashers.  Every last one of them a snorting good read.  Stir the pot and see what fascinatin’, funny-lookin’ (often tentacled) things bob up for your nourishment.  These things will be technically unclassifiable but every gobful will make your eyebrows shoot off your head and ping back onto your face, as if on elastics.  Dat’s darn good eatin’, dat is. 

Abob in this pot there are: vegetables torn from the dark, sunless soils of the mind; there will be forks and green smoke and heaped tablespoons of joy; there will be prickle of hedgehog and chortle of child (or maybe that’s a choking sound…?); there will be snarfs and sagacity, soft sighs and boogersome sniggers; and a bit of rage will be boiling at all times in one continually moving spot of the pot; there will be meat of unidentifiable origin and not all of it will be fully dead; but most of all there will be coddle which is a kind of Celtic sputum consisting of bile, tears, spittle and sunshine.  Bet you thought I was going to say gism there instead of sunshine, didn’t you?  That will depend mostly on…well, I’ll not name names.  Anyway, you’ll be fed a most unique and unforgettable stew-like stuff or, to put it more accurately, a stuff-like stew, and you will not be sorry you supped.  Here’s Coddle Pot!  

PS: Still on hiatus for a bitty longer.  Back soonly.

You’re never going to believe this, it’s the funniest thing, but I’ve been away conducting anthropological research into a tiny wee ancient culture I found one day while walking in the San Fernando Valley.  Nobody walks there which is why I’m the first from the outside world to ever make contact with them.  For the past 4000 years they have inhabited the area, unbeknownst to the so-called “modern” people living all around them.  The name of their tribe is Robert and they are a proud and warlike people.  Devastatingly, however, there are only 3 members of Robert left, trying to eke out their existance in a copse on the centre-island at the corner of Burbank and Cahuenga.  They are a fascinating people with a vibrant culture and have adapted amazingly well to the development of the past 70 years, developing leathery smog-resistant lungs and a strange screaming language to overcome the noise of incessant traffic.  This is the language I am now trying to learn in the hopes of communicating their story to the outside world.  It’s not a very inflected language but I am having trouble mastering their gerunds and parts of their participles.  Theirs is an oral tradition, which means of course they can’t get into heaven or some parts of the South, but, once I had screamed to them about how that sort of thing can really cut off the funding for research into their ways and how that would mean no more Bacardi Breezers and pictures of a young Woody Allen - whom they worship as a prophet - they stopped their deviancy and started screaming their story to me. 

I’m only back now to collect some clean underwear and to explain to the children that I still love them and “abandon” is really too strong a word.  My work will end in or around the second week of July when, unfortunately, I predict all three remaining members of Robert will be dead.  They are old tremendously old for one thing and, for another, the centre-island is due to be demolished in late June to make way for a billboard publicising Bob Hope regional airport.  The shock is sure to kill them.  This would be, narratively speaking, very neat as my research funding runs out about then too and I shall have to leave my luxury suite at Sherman Oaks Hyatt for the (bloody) real world once again.  Also, the irony of the hopeless, hapless Roberts being wiped out by a Bob called Hope will lend a poignancy to their story that’s sure to translate well into book-sales and movie-options.

I’ll be back to visit all your lovely blogs then, then, and, then, possibly, also begging you for money to support the lifestyle to which I’ve grown accustomed on my State of California research expense account.  So, til then, “SKUGGILSCREAMYWAILWAIL!”  (That means “Your (pl) continued good health and fortune,” in Robertese.)

Jesus wept, Jesus wept;

He never laughed, just cried.

In all the Gospels, tell me once

Did he see the funny side?

Poor, lied-to, broken, holy man,

Who suffered for our sins,

If you believe, or not, by God,

He paid for all our grins.

Then don’t we owe it back to him

That we should crack our face,

With heavenward heads and howls of mirth

At our sweet, cracked, human race?

It is true that, though he weeps several times, Jesus never once laughs in the Gospels.  The only record of God laughing in the Old Testament is when he is deriding mankind’s weaknesses or laughing at us as he punishes us.  He relishes our pain.  If anyone can offer me another interpretation of that I am willing to hear it, I really am, because that is chilling whether you are a believer or not.  I don’t believe in God, who seems to me indifferent at best – and that’s using all my human charity – but I do believe in powerful stories and that they can be, in mysterious ways, truer than the “Truth.”  I think I believe in an extraordinary man called Jesus who had some sort of a handle on some sort of truth, and that’s the best I can do. 

Brought to you by a pain in-the-arse-day in bed with some virus that is making my neck feel like a knotty sapling.  Gah!

This tale was told me once by the reincarnation of Errol Flynn in a ward in which I was not a patient.

Errol: Don’t slouch, Problem, Boadicea would never have slouched.

Me: Look, I don’t think I’m Boudica, OK?  And don’t use the language of the Oppressor.  She’s Boudica, got it?  Not that sissy Romanized appellate.  Besides, that whole warrior queen thing was only for a day, like – not even a whole day.  As soon as I had impaled Nurse Seezer on the drip stand with the blood-curdling yell of freedon for the Iceni, I came right to!  I was able to calmly assess the difference between right and wrong and, as the filthy Roman, Nurse Seezer melodically bubbled blood from her windpipe, I also had the capacity to realize that maybe this was one of these non-right times.  I calmed right down after that and thus it was with noble resignation and a defiant chin that I raised my vein for the swimmy swimmy shot I knew must come.  History is against me and my tribe, after all.  I know my part.

Errol:  Anyway, you couldn’t be Boudica, your breasts aren’t big enough.  Her’s were mighty and pointy*, almost like Madonna’s.

Me: Sputter!  That’s an inappropriately personal remark, Errol! Another of these and I’m telling the doc. and
that’ll set back your release another week at least.  Anyway, you call that scrappy little line of polarized iron filings a Flynnian moustache?  It looks like your top lip is perforated for easy detachment or something.  Like a teabag.  How come you’re back in here anyway, Errol?

Errol (eyes narrowing in recollection) : It was a snowy day just after Christmas and I had nowhere I had to be. Inside its sheath, my bendy fencing sword shivered, imploring me to use him in the cause of Justice.  I walked and walked and then I took to lurking.  Outside a large house on the hill, I lurked in the shadows, buckles clanking against my epee, swashes moist with anticipation.  I twirled my moustache as I lowered the brim of my black Spanish hat over my keen eyes and sneered as I surveyed the pleasant scene inside the room.  What I saw enraged me.  Men in new Pringle sweaters were standing pleasantly with their also pleasant wives, all dressed in the bright colours of the season. But I knew the cost of all that smart-casual.  High in the hills of Pakistan, thousands of cashmere goats were shivering their way through a brutal winter just so richos like this could stand around and laugh as they spilt sherry on their stolen fleeces, dyed and criminally knitted out of all recognition.

Me:  That’s terrible, Errol!  I know your fondness for the goat. I bet your blood was boiling!  What happened
next?

Errol:  There was a blur, and that blur was me as I flew through the air at the patio windows expecting to crash through in a glorious hail of glass and wood trim.

Me:  Cool!

Errol:  Wait Problem, wait.  I’m not finished. Although, yes, I was very cool indeed, the upper-middle class bastards had only gone and gotten reinforced non-scratch perspex for their windows, hadn’t they?  Picking myself up off the patio bricks I heard the crunch of my elbow, and the bitter tinkle of silver plate and laughter continuing uninterrupted from inside, made me taste bitter gall and shattered mercury amalgam in my mouth.

Me:  Bloody window fixtures to fit your lifestyle!

Errol:  Then I saw all too clearly what I must do. Clutching my useless elbow and whimpering manfully, I mounted the slippery roof of the house, via their wheelie-bins.  Scaling the slippery roof to the chimney, the orchestra, my orchestra, started up, urging me on and on with Excitement Music.  In non-jarring backing-tracks I could hear the far off plaintive bleating of the cold and terrified goats. Jeeringly unconcerned about soot on my clothing because heroes don’t worry about things like that and besides i was all in black anyway, I didn’t hesitate as I leapt down the chimney in a single panther-like bound.

Me:  You sure are brave Errol.  People might criticize your hammy acting and your questionable personal life, but nobody could say you’re not one brave s.o.b.

Errol:  Well the cashmere-sweatered party were sure surprised to see me land in their fireplace, I can tell you.  Many of them said some of the more polite swear words like “Damn!” or “What the hell…?”  It was only the vicar who screamed “Holy fucking shite!” over and over, before sucking his thumb and pressing his head to the hostess’s bosom for maternal comfort and some light stroking.

“Who are you?  What do you mean by leaping down our chimney like this?” said a man with a crap moustache, which rather pathetically affected that of Tom Selleck, I thought. Well, as you know, Problem, I am a hero of few words.  I prefer to let my actions speak.  Therefore I trusted my audience to know that when I slashed furiously and Zorro-like at their sweaters I did not mean to hurt them!  I was just making a timely political point about goat-cruelty.  In my passion I might have blurted out “How could you, you beasts?” a few times, it’s true; and yes, I expect a few tears did fall down my sooty cheeks.  All the work I’ve been doing with the doctor, has left me no longer afraid to express my emotions. I know now that crying doesn’t make me less of a man.

Me: Errol…I don’t know what to say…

Errol: Suddenly I noticed the orchestra music had stopped.  Why? I looked up from the floor where I was now lying curled-up; hugging my knees and a fragment of slashed jumper; softly yodelling the high, lonely Song Of The Goatherd.  I wondered who all these people were and why were they staring at me?  Confusion, cursed, poisoning confusion rushed my senses and it was at that point that the cowardly vicar hit me from behind with the candlestick.

Who knows how long I was out. As I came to, a small child dressed all in white was crouched beside me looking at me.  “I guess I messed up the party pretty bad, didn’t I, little girl?“  “Yes.” she said softly. “Yes you did“.  “I expect you think I’m a bad man, don’t you?” I said. “Well, you did eat the head off my teddy-bear,“  she said.  “That was a mistake, little girl,” I said shaking my head sadly.  “That was a terrible mistake.  but I am Errol Flynn, Hero, and I always admit my mistakes.  Remember this night always, child.  Remember the dark stranger with the fantastic moustache who taught you always to admit when you’ve done wrong.”

And then the ambulance and police and the firemen arrived to put out the fire I’d set under the arrangement of snow-globes.

Me:  You know, Errol.  You’re not so bad.  I bet that little girl won’t forget the lessons of that night. Oh wouldn’t be great if every breed of sheep and goat bred not for their personalities, but only for their fleeces and cruel men’s gain, had a champion like you?  A true legend on their side?

Errol:  Well to be fair, Robin Hood over there by Calligula, has Angoras covered but you’re right. Wrongs need to be righted and we each need to pick our wrongs-that-need-to-be-righted carefully and according to our own passions. We can’t go at it all half-assed and 50p-in-the-collecting-tin about it.  The world’s a crazy place after all.

And with that, Errol lapsed back into his habitual silence, twirled his moustache and sucked his big toe thoughtfully.

*Contemporary accounts prove that Boudica’s breasts were only apocryphally pointy.  The popular but mistaken belief resulted from the mosaicist-of-record at the time only having triangular tiles left when he came to do her boobs, which, because he’d been away from his wife on campaign for the previous three years, he’d left ’til last to tesselate.

Some days in the wild Western Isles are days when the only thing to do is curl up tightly and twitch.  If you should come a-knocking on Lewis’s front door on such a day, and nobody answers, it’s because we’re all at home, curled up tightly and twitching.  Check the sky.  It will probably have clouds that look like God has just revoltingly added extra milk to his already o’er-milky tea.  Check your expensive mainland shoes.  They will probably be partially submerged in puddle and doom. There will be no movement behind our curtains, and there will be no light in any window.  Traditionally, we twitch in the dark.  You should turn around immediately and return some other day.

Sensitive persons might want to look away.

The Biological Week In Review.

Look, I know it’s only Thursday, and it’s a bit early for a biological recounting of the week, but, I’m hoping tomorrow’s going to be a bit more theoretical.

• 1 tooth  – lost
• 6 nostrils – plugged
• 20 fingernails – cut
• 30 toenails trimmed
• the contents of one human stomach – heaved
• the contents of one feline stomach – heaved x 3
• one eye held up close to the light – peered at
• one eyelash – removed
• one finger – squashed
• many screams – scrummed
• 32 ablutions – performed
• 3 foreheads fevered
• one cervix cotton-budded
• one growing leg – nocturnally pained
• one mole – fretted over
• one – paw stood on
• much excrement – scooped
• 18 feelings – hurt
• little sleep -had.

*

*News flash! My pal Eolai has put a cool painting of his up for auction on ebay.  Shipping is free worldwide and 100% of the proceeds will go to  St. Patrick’s Hospital And Marymount Hospice and Rape Crisis Network Ireland. Go see! I’ve bought a few of Eolai’s paintings and I love them.  He’s a wonderful artist whose work is vibrant yet controlled; he makes Ireland look like it’s thrumming. *

For Lent this year I’ve been thinking of giving up leaning.  I’m also giving up having a filthy, horrible cur of a cold but I haven’t made a very good start at it.

“Half the town is down with it!” so they say. The other half, smugly, isn’t.  The problem children and I are in the woebegotten half of town, on the wrong sides of the tracks of pestilence.  The girls got it a week ahead of me and are getting over it now, but my head still leaks, a jaggedy bit of serrated virus is trying to saw my uvula off, and some sort of an iron giant appears to have his boot on my chest. I don’t like any of that stuff.

All I can do is lie around groaning, pasty and noodle-limp, in a foetal position, like an overcooked macaroni elbow.  Please send your best pity immediately.  And grapes.  I probably should be eating grapes or something.  They’re a good fruit in a tragedy.

Anyway, I’ll be waiting wanly but bravely by the casement window, sneezing softly, my hands, now lying limply in my lap, now, fluttering delicately to the lace at my throat; waiting, waiting for all the lovely, lovely pity you’re going to send me in trendy stationary the colours of jewels.

I feel my voice fading now…I grow weak again…it is all I can do to whine and moan…farewell…farewell…achoo…farewell…

The chidders are on vacation for a week so we are going down to San Diego for a few days, to the zoo and Sea World and stuff like that.

Yesterday, I told the girls that,  if they weren’t on their best not-running-away behaviour in the zoo park, we would feed them to the hippos. I said this in a loving way – there was really no need for the authorities to have become involved. The tear-gas was just uncalled for, and I told them last time that I need hypo-allergenic handcuffs, otherwise I come out in a terrible rash, forcing me to sue them again, which I hate having to do.  One is forced to ask the question: is having a Child Protection Agency really the best use of our tax dollars?

Anyway, this morning I had a conversation with ProblemChild 2 about what clothes to pack.

Me: Have you chosen some t-shirts to take with us?

PC2: I want to take the blue iceberg one.

Me: But you just put that out for washing last night.   Why don’t you take your green one?

PC2: No, mummy! I’ll look like lettuce and it might make an animal try to eat me.

Me: (laughs) Ah, sweetie-pie, just stay close to us and you’ll be fine.  There’s nothing going to eat you, I promise.  The animals can’t get out.

PC2 (Looks at me, clearly uncertain.)

Me:  We were only kidding about the hippos, you know.

PC2 (Looks at me as if she’s never been entirely sure about me)

Friends, I am now experiencing a rare moment of self-doubt.  Does such a look signify a maternal failure? Or should I continue with my current parental theory of Keeping Them On Their Toes?

CAVEAT LECTOR:  If you are offended by mild to moderate rude lewdness and/or The Bishop of Bath, please abandon your reading of this post.

Wrigley Bland lived a short but interesting life that is worth chronicling becasue his was a cautionary tale, but one only to be told in whispered hushes around the fireside on windy nights.  You have to whisper in case your mammy hears you and boxes your deserving ears, because, you see, Wrigley Bland was a Very Rude Man.

This was a man who was so rude he was born on the 6th of September, 1969, a date that made even God blush when an embarrassed Gabriel explained to Him. From the start, Wrigley Bland was a … a fiddler of things.  As he grew, this only got worse, or better, depending on whether or not you were Wrigley. At 6 he was expelled from Primary School for doing a potato print in the shape of something very rude indeed.

At 13, pimpley and portly, he was expelled from Seconday school for a series of rather thoughtfully composed photos he had taken, over several months, of his thick-ankled headmistress and the Sean Beany school janitor as they conducted their regular nude Tuesday afternoon meetings about corridor maintenance.

School officials agreed that the photos were really technically very good, especially when one considered the
difficult conditions under which they were taken: standing on a dustbin, with a long angle lens trained through a frayed patch in the closed office blinds, leading to all sorts of problems with exposure and lighting.  For this reason they recommended Wrigley Bland be sent, not to Borstal, but to a School For Gifted Young Perverts, for rehabilitation through the arts.  Besides, quite apart from the photos, and the repeated incidents in the gym and the canteen and the physics lab and the sports field and the toilets and the library and underneath the stage, he was thought to be “really a very nice boy” whom everybody wanted to see do well in life.

Most of these schools for young perverts are located around Aberdeen, for obvious reasons, and so  Wrigley found himself packed off on the train with a note from his mother pinned on to his duffel coat, the contents of which included the words “jubilee teaspoons”, “salmon en croute,” “The Complete Works of A.A. Milne”, “never, ever ever” and “if you’re smart.”

Wrigley found boarding school-life difficult.  Regular counseling sessions taught him he was a bad and wicked boy, and, while he never really believed that, it did leave its mark on him.  From thereon in, he would assume a far more furtive role in his mild-to-moderate rude activities, operating only at night, and using a system of rotating wellie-boots to confuse the police about the footprints they found in area flower-beds.  Most of all, what the School for Gifted Young Perverts gave him was a very thorough schooling in Sneakiness and a child he would never know of, with Mrs. McCuish the 5th Form Pervert Counselor.

After school, there was university and a degree in Divinity, where it was much easier to pass off his obsession with sex as the mere exuberance of a youthful young priest.  This was the happiest time in young Bland’s life, despite having to deal with all the God stuff which he just didn’t buy at all. Surrounded by the similarly giggly, he could drink all the Bristol Sherry he wanted, and enjoy long relaxing evenings of saying words like “thigh” and “autoerotic-asphyxiation” with his friends, after a tense day of bible study.

Wrigley Bland, met his death, one early grey morning in his 4th year of uni. It was one of these stupid accidents, these things that make you scratch your head and hold your loved ones close as you contemplate the randomness of Fate, as cold violent and unfathomable as the universe.

Wrigley was out on his bicycle getting some early morning perving in.  He had stolen three substantial pairs of knickers, a bra with daisies on, and some sort of spiked rubber harness from the washing-line in the garden of a well-known upper-level Tory who has paid me handsomely to keep his name out of this.  On his way back to his student digs, he decided to cut across the park, admire the statuary and take some brass rubbings of the angel’s boobs to enjoy later, between Holy Mary, Mother Of God Studies and lunch.

The park at that hour was deserted, apart from the rustle a few local councilmen and woman enjoying brief leafy flings in the undergrowth before getting back into their estate cars and off to assume the mantle of municiple concern for the day.  And look!  There was the bishop of Bath up early and giving…what looked like…alms – yes alms, to an urchin!  God bless him!

Spotting a marble angel with a really good rack, Wrigley Bland dismounted his bike and approached her, clutching his brass rubbing supplies in excitment.  Looking around him furtively, he climbed the statue’s plinth,  giving that a quick rub on his way. (Because, if you’re a pervert, you can’t really not take a brass rubbing of something called a plinth, can you?)  Then, clutching at a boob for balance, he hauled himself up til his eyes were level with the statue’s cleavage.

Overhead, Wrigley completely failed to notice the naked nun and that was too bad, because she was to be the naked nun of his doom.  Her name was Sister Agatha Thaddeus, and she was fond of climbing trees in the nude.   She liked the feel of the bark against her thighs as she straddled a thick limb, feeling the sap and life of it flowing right between her legs. Her friends, Sisters Constance and Effie, were off straddling poplar limbs in another part of the park, but this morning Sister Agatha had fancied a nice bit of oak.

Sister Agatha was a larger Sister, and and intrepid one too.  Farther and farther out on the branch she ventured, huffing and puffing and enjoying nature.  Suddenly, the branch beneath her round, pink flesh snapped!  Down she fell!  Down, down onto the statue below, where Wrigley had just started his brass-rubbing…

He never knew anything about it. 300lbs of falling Sister Agatha was no match for mere solid marble, and the statue, breaking off at the ankles, toppled slowly forward, as Wrigley Bland held onto her waist and prepared to meet his Maker.

The cause of death was listed as “trauma to the head with a blunt object”, but this was misleading because the statue had an unusually pronounced left nipple and it was this that had pierced Wrigley ’s skull. The Divinity College did their best to distance themselves from the incident and so Wrigley Bland’s funeral was
sparsely attended.

Sister Agatha, suffering no more than a few bruises, declared her survival a miracle and went on the breakfast television circuit.  There, her talent for contralto singing was noticed and she gave up nunhood for a life in Parisian burlesque.

*

If you’re looking for a moral to this story, then I’m afraid you shall have to find it yourself.  Me? I merely presentthe facts; I just record life as it really, truly happens.   And if any of you should doubt the veracity of my tale, I shan’t mind, no not at all.  But I’ll know. I’ll know who the doubters are.

I have a friend who made a new Year’s Resolution to master the art of raising one eyebrow.  I value loyalty and discretion amongst my friends above all other things, except money, obviously, so let’s call this friend, who is in no way me, Sally.

RESOLUTE

“Sally” has been taking her resolution very seriously.  She knows the value of a disciplined training regime. In
her quest for amused superiority, she rises before dawn and takes her eyebrow running round the park.  On a
typical day she will do a good three miles and as she does them, she flexes her glabellar muscles vigourously. At this point in the training she doesn’t know which eyebrow will look most archly devastating when raised, so, for this early part of the day’s training, she’s working on muscle development in both.  I think this is a good call and on many occasions have said to her “Good call” even on those days it wasn’t.  I really feel a sensitive support-network is crucial for her at this stage.

Admittedly, it makes for a curious sight, a 30-something woman jogging around, her expression oscillating
floridly between classic mild runner’s resignation and apparent sudden astonishment at dustbins and squirrels and other wholly unastonishing things.  This is why she trains so early, before many people are about. In the past, lunchtime jogs have left her tearful, and really quite dismayed by rude comments thrown at her by her fellow recreators.

“Ahooohooahhoo ahoo ahhoooohoo”  She often sobs. And remembers every slight and slur.  Some have been barbarous in the extreme.

“I never even knew that was possible with a stiff, wire brush!”, I recall her remarking to me, once, in quite genuine wonderment, about a particularly unseemly suggestion lobbed by an uncouth sort of fellow.  There were not tears about that one though; she was more intellectually curious about it than shocked, as I remember.  Her voice was very high and quiet.

Anyway, back from her workout, Sally showers, massages her glabellar region with stinky oils, recommended to her as “real professional-performance grade” and “highly illegal” by her friend, “Bill”, from the online eyebrow chat forum in which she often passes her evenings.

Next, she will usually breakfast on a lean protein item and some complex carbohydrates, from time to time
startling at the increasingly nervous cat the better to glabellarly tone.  Off-schedule exercises are not mandated but she really is committed.

THE CARROT AND STICK AND FISHING-LINE APPROACH

After breakfast, the training begins in earnest.  Sally favours a carrot and stick and fishing-line approach with her eyebrows, although other individuals will find other techniques are better for theirs.  It depends on the eyebrow, its age, haircount, willingness to try new things etc.  Sitting in front of a wall-size mirror, Sally’s eyebrows are given a pep talk.  She tells them they can do it, they really can, if only they believe in themselves.  This is America, she tells them, anythingis possible with hard work and a can-do attitude!  She urges them to dream big and reach for the stars.  At this point, if she feel her eyebrow is skeptical, she may show a video of Lance Armstrong or a particularly encouraging episode of Barney, who “really possesses a lot of life-wisdom if you know how to listen” (Bill) . This is THE CARROT part.

However, on some not-so-good days – and doesn’t the questionably good Lord know we all have those – she might fall to her knees and stroke her eyebrows cajollingly, pleading either one of them to rise independently, just this once, please!  One eyebrow, hairier than its fellow, responds to this stroking a little better than the other, and some raising does indeed take place.  Sally was once told by a seaside psychic that that eyebrow had a strong masculine aura, so this doesn’t surprise her but – ever hard on herself ho ho – she doesn’t count this as an actual bona fide eyebrow raise.  At this point, wretched with shame at her lack of control with the stroking business, Sally, has often contemplating shaving her eyebrows right off and giving up, ending her battle.  But someone once told her she had nice ones, and some small foolish vanity has never allowed her to go through with it because they said her eyebrows were nice too.

THE STICK is an actual stick, with which she beats herself about eyebrows if she suspects they are not trying hard enough. It’s quite tiny but it really smarts when thwacked by someone who means it. There is also a little whip, I’m told, but it rarely used; she is not a monster.  She mentions it quite a lot though, just to keep these eyebrows on their hairy little toes.

THE FISHING-LINE approach consists mainly of hooking a fishing-line to the eyebrow and jerking it in an upward motion.  This imprints a “muscle memory” according to Bill, and Sally trusts his advice implicitly – he has been in the Unibrowular-Lifting Training Program now, longer than anyone she knows, and has amassed a wealth of knowledge, despite not ever actually managing to raise just the one eyebrow.

A variation on this is the weighted eyebrow lift, where the fishing line is attached to a series of small lead weights and the eyebrow works to lift them; but that method is only really for actors, body-builders and the professionally supercilious.  It is not advised for amateurs.

STAPLED

After a hard morning at it, Sally changes and readies herself for her part-time job as a basic-cable, viewer-send-in video-bloopers television show host.  She was given the job despite her lack of formal eyebrow qualifications because she was sleeping with the producer at the time. That producer was later found slain in his car with the note “You shan’t have her, she’s mine!” stapled to his forehead.  Investigators were led, via a fallen pair of used tweezers, back to “Bill” from eyebrow-group and he was questioned at length, but in Bill’s own triumphant words “They couldn’t get me for nuffing!” Even though nobody had accused him of nuffing anybody.

Anyway, the long and the less-long of it is that the new producer is demanding that Sally be able to raise one eyebrow or she will be thrown off the show. So you can see then, why she is so keen to acquire her eyebrow-raising skills as soon as she can.  If she loses this show it is going to be a major setback in working up to being a MSNBC news analyst.  It is Sally’s dream to one day replace Wall-Street whizzkid and famous beauty, Maria Bartiromo, as television’s most popular “Honey On the Money” or “Econobabe.”

DROPPED SCONES

And so, at the end of a busy day, Sally, her head swimming with theory, her eyebrows often aching, ignores Bill’s on average 14 texts with great new training ideas, and finally sinks into her bed.  But there is no rest for poor Sally even now. Before she can sleep, she studies publicity shots of her idol, Roger Moore for his breathtaking artistry and sheer technical virtuosity.  A small sigh will often escape as she contemplates the poetry of his rising arch, the profundity of his downward sweep.  He is a Unilevitus Glabellar God.  He is her Unilevitus Glabellar God. O to be born with such a gift!

LOVELY HAIR

Sally might weep hysterically a little at her own facial ineptitude before she sleeps, rending her sheets and tearing at her lovely hair, but let’s leave her there, shall we, friends?  Trying to comfort her now would only lead to her screaming and continued distress over strangers off the internet seeing her in her nightie.

I leave you too then, gentle blogging types, with this question: for what goal would you sacrifice your mental health?  And what goal would you sacrifice someone else’s for?  (If you are now, or have ever worked at either Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, please do not respond to that last one. Also, if you are called Candy or Biff, it might be better if you don’t answer either.)