problemchildbride.com Blog

I was born on a dark Monday in a land where an unknowable ocean tried to seduce a knowable shore with long caresses and whispers. The pretty shore wasn’t brought up that way though and cried foul. The unknowable ocean claimed it was an insane current that had made him do it, that his head had been turned by a spicy, intoxicating loose-hipped trade-wind. A seachiatrist attested to temporary insandity and eventually the charges were dropped.

Ruling aside - we, the guardians of the shore, didn’t much hold with the insandity defence and we still didn’t trust the sea. Soon after that therefore a long pier was constructed so we could keep an eye on the randy unknowable ocean, and on that pier they decided they may as well erect a new shellfish-processing plant because the old one was broken. This was the shellfish-processing plant that would mark my days and haunt my nights forever.

It happened one night on a Brownie camp-out and sausage-sizzle. We set up our tents on the windy marran grass on the machair just beyond the beach. Picture us, dear reader! See us as we sit round the camp-fire singing “Ging Gang Gooli“, and giggling through “O, ye cannie get to heaven in a girl guide’s bra ‘cos a girl guides bra don’t stretch that far“; all, rosy-cheeked and brown-bobble-hatted, woggles askew, faces smeared with ketchup, cinders and roasted marshmallow but our eyes clear and shining, our young hearts filled with wonder at the stars above and the excitement of a great adventure.

Lying in our tents later that night, transfixing daddy-long-legses with torchlight on the canvas, we laughed and shrieked at Anna’s impressive farts -better than any boy’s - until one by one everyone drifted off to Nod but me. Not nearly ready to sleep, I grabbed my torch and stole out of the tent, hopping in my sleeping-bag over the black dunes and down to the dark shore.

I heard the sea lapping at the beach and sat on the still-warm sand, hugging my knees, thrilling at how the dark brought the world back to sounds and senses and primal things. Brown Owl had told us not to leave our tents and, with a shadow crossing her face, had warned us on no account to wander out near the shellfish processing plant. I remembered her kindly face and thought of how disappointed she would be at my disobedience. But I was determined to see for myself what went on at the end of the pier. I rose and hopped ridiculously up a dune and on to the wooden pier. What work did the processors do in the middle of the night out there? I hopped on.

Creak, complained the wooden boards under my bouncing sleeping-bag. As I approached the building, I could hear voices inside, and made my way towards a window with a lobster pot underneath the sill. Several valiant hop attempts later I was up on the lobster pot and looking right into a long, starkly lit room with great steel tables, at the end of which were massive sinks filled with ice. About half a dozen people stood around in yellow wellies with white smocks and shower caps on, and great yellow rubber gloves that made their hands look grotesquely big and clowny.

Suddenly, the doors at the sea-end of the building were flung open and some men wheeled in a huge metal cart. All conversation stopped. I watched as each processor reached down into his or her smock pocket and draw out a long sharp knive, cruelly curved at the end into a hook, the whole blade like the unspeakable smirk of some devilish slasher-movie fiend. There was a moment of silence as the cart tipped and then a clattering as hungreds and hundreds of pale clams were tipped into the first ice-sink.

And that was when the screaming began. The screaming of molluscs as all hope for them faded. Mummy molluscs, Daddy molluscs and baby molluscs huddling together in terror Knowing that this was the end of their lives. I saw the processor at the first table grab a clam.

The screaming grew louder. I watched in horror as the evil hooked knife glinted in the processor’s hand and he pried the helpless clam’s shell open. Rooted to my lobster-pot I gazed at the pale and shining being inside and time slowed down as I watched the man bring his knife nearer and nearer the tiny animal. Then, for the briefest of moments I saw a tiny mouth open and two tiny red-rimmed eyes flick wide open as the most hideous, heart-breaking wail I have ever heard hit my ears… The screaming….The screaming…

Recoiling in horror I jerked suddenly and my lobster pot toppled sending me sprawling on the damp boardwalk beneath. The screaming!…The screaming!… In a half-seeing panic I tried to get up and hopped a few feet before falling on my face again, gashing my cheek on the rough wood. I had to get away! I lurched and one part hopped to two parts waddled my way back to the shore, my eyes hot and wet with what they’d witnessed and in my ears the terrible screaming, the abominable squelch as the knife sliced through living tissue.

By the time I reached the end of the pier and hurled myself down the dune, I was bleeding and snot-smeared with fear and grief. I vomited then, and every hole in my head seemed at that moment to be leaking me out, leaking out something vital, something I’d never get back. Too afraid to go back to my tent and risk my heaving sobs being heard, I flung myself down on the beach and, pulling my wooly brownie hat down over my ears, I pressed the palms my hands as hard as I could into them. I must have lain like that for an hour or more until, finally exhausted, I fell asleep.

The light was grey when I awoke, bruised from my many falls on the pier, my cheek sticky with blood and my face covered in sand. But what I remember most of all was the stillness of the air that cold morning. And the silence, the silence of the clams…

The waves lapping gently around the bottom of my sleeping bag seemed to rebuke me and all people. Who raped who? they seemed to whisper, solemnly disregarding grammatical concerns. Who raped who?

“Oh, shut up!” I said, but to this day I have never again eaten pork.

Hello. PCB has allowed me the use of her blog to promote my upcoming exhibition of esoteric performance art. Besides being called Betsy and being a convicted murderer, I am also a celebrated conceptual artist whose work so impressed my prison art-teacher that I became a cause-celebre of the rehabilitation movement and we all decided it was best that I be released immediately so I wouldn’t “have to sing the song of a caged bird” anymore. (”Art Transcends Crime!“, Ventura County Post, April 14th 2007).

My prison art teacher first took a shine to my work when I constructed a model of a kid-goat in acrylics and cheese, and had Tormella, a 200lb paranoid schizophrenic doing a lifer for eating her neighbour until he was dead, sit on it and knit , sneezing in time to a monk singing the Te Deum with an R&B beat. I was in a funny mood that day, I guess, but mainly I did it because it was all I could think of to make Tormella’s day a little brighter. She’d told me the night before what might help.

So in a manner of speaking they should have released Tormella and not me. She had halitosis though and couldn’t be relied upon not to slay people so I guess it’s better it was me. Tormella has no hard feelings in any case. She likes the straight lines in prison, and I visit her often.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those “I didn’t do it! I’m innocent!” types. I did it all right. I slew that goddam perky perfume-skoocher woman, I slew her good. I wasn’t sure when I stabbed her in the eye with the pointy end of the sample lipstick that she would die. I thought she might just get a festering infection from the clearly herpes-simplistic teen who had just tried it on her pustulent lips. (Plum Dream - it didn’t suit her.)

However, I was fairly certain that, if I grabbed the floral “Bathing Belle” shower-cap from its designer stand, pulled it over her head and held her from behind til she suffocated, she would die. So I did, perfume stinging my eyes and nasothelium and in my head, a thousand tormented shoppers voices urging me on: “Kill her! Kill her!”

Don’t tell me you’ve never half-run the skooching gauntlet of some department store perfume-counters and not dreamed of doing the very same thing. I did it, that’s all. I did it and I deserved to go to prison.

It turns out it doesn’t matter though. As long as a group of artists thinks you have “a raw, almost unspeakably profane talent”, especially in the State of California, capital murder or not, you will more than likely be released.

Hey look, don’t blame me! I was pretty embarrassed about it all and felt more than a bit sorry for the weeping family of my victim as they protested my release outside the prison. The black-clad artists I was flanked by though, coolly regarded the robbed loved ones’ elasticated waistbands and unsightly skin conditions as we passed within worlds’-apart-feet of them, and declared their horror at the perfume-lady’s mother who was feeding her squawling infant Cheetos and sobbing pitifully as I got into the limo that was waiting for me.

“It’s appalling people are still wearing J.C. Penney knits, look, Raphael. There are just some people style can’t save. They make life so ugly. If you ask me, they should be in prison, not our marvellous, gifted Betsy. I’m sure I smelled sweat and desperation as we passed them. So uncool. God, just get me out of here, would you? Oh shit, Raph! Is unattractiveness airborne?”

Since then, when I’m not touring the world as an example of tortured criminal genius, I have been installed in an artist’s studio in Ojai. I want for nothing. Except maybe for the phone to stop ringing and Gerard, Amoanda, Carter, Sergei and Umanghi to get the hell out of my sitting room with their vitamin water, MoMA gossip and fear of neck-sagging.

I swear there are days I wish I was back in the big-house. My cell-mate Shanice may have cut the ears off her own mother-in-law and pinned them comically to a Wendy’s burger sign (then refused the clemency-for-repentance deal that even the mother-in-law’s attorney (having met the mother-in-law) wanted her to take), but at least she made me smile.

On the outside, my first proper exhibition was declared “a sensation”, “profound and provocative” and “indicative of a bold swing in contemporary art away from dead pickled things”. It included a live sheep I’d originally sheared for the interesting texture of its wool which I’d planned to incorporate into a hair-collage entitled “Lorry In Blue #6″. But Umanghi rushed in one day as I was applying Germolene and little bits of tissue to the parts of the sheep’s skin I’d nicked with the shears. She gave a little scream, told me I was a genius and clearly thought the sheep was the art, so I added a shower-cap (now my signature) and a tube of Immac to the sheep-tissue-shower-cap ensemble, threw in a crucifix and called it “Ouch”. Elton John bought it for 12 million dollars.

I started to despise art that very day. This therefore will be my second and final exhibition - by way of saying thank you to Gerard and the gang for my freedom and that.

It is a performance piece and I explain it thus: The artist (me) walks into jail and enquires as to the whereabouts of all inmates imprisoned either for possession of marijuana or crimes against hot-climate beret-wearers. The artist then locates and releases them. They leave in shower caps, dripping in ironic mustard.

Governor Schwartzenegger is all for it, describing it as “an astonishingly thought-provoking piece, unique in its unprecedented overturning of court convictions”, but more importantly granting the released detainees free-passage out and a full pardon. I suspect Maria is behind it. She’s very arty.

After that, I plan on moving to the Outer Hebrides where there are no scooching perfume-counter ladies to incite
me back to violence, and the wind is too strong for LA art-lovers to risk their pale cheeks getting rosy, their pale thighs getting tinker’s tartan.

The exhibition opens tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Problem Child 2 came to me this morning with the tattered cover of a Mr. Men book, all the pages missing.

“Mummy,” she said, “I loved this book too much.”

“Ah, that’s too bad. The cover’s not much use by itself,” I said, and we threw it in the bin.

We talked for a minute about how, while it’s true that old and tattered things get that way because someone loves and uses them so much, we also need to be gentle with things we know will come apart easily so they will last as long as possible.

“That’s why we had to be quiet visiting Grandma Edna before she died,” said Problem Child 1.

“Umph…yes,” I said, because she was sort of right.

Look what I got from The Rising Blogger! Last week was plain awful as Orphan Annie sort of said to Daddy Warbucks so I am well chuffed to get this. Seriously guys, cheers!

I don’t win nuffink so I’m going to take full advantage of this opportunity to show off and pretend I’m a big-shot. I’ll start by curling my eyelashes. And then perhaps I’ll behave imperiously to the cat. Everybody else is out, dammit. Where are people when you want to act like a high mucky-muck?

None of us can have missed this.

More then 22,000 people have died as a result of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (still formally recognised as Burma in the US). Incomprehensible tragedy. 41,000 are missing and an estimated 1 million are homeless.

Buddhist nuns and monks have been spearheading the rescue efforts and trying to clear roadways to villages with little more than axes. The notoriously secretive military junta (the same people who have had pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi under arrest for 12 of the last 18 years) has been slow to ask for international help, even as its people die. The generals have now agreed to admit international disaster teams but the UN humanitarian team are still waiting for them to issue their visas.

The junta is in a sticky situation. It maintains a strict control over outside influence and Myanmar is, to all intents and purposes, a closed country. (Its fatality numbers are still unknown after the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean.) Allowing aid workers in risks the world seeing in, and also Myanmar’s people beginning to see out. Also, aid workers would be seen by the people to be the rescuers rather than the junta. However, failure to let people in would result in both internal and massive external condemnation, possible national revolt and closer international scrutiny than Myanmar’s generals would like.

This is a poor country whose leaders are more invested in their own power than in the welfare of the people. Its own resources and communications are severely lacking and international aid is therefore the only hope the Burmese people have.

Here’s a way to help.  You’ve probably come across lots of portals to donation sites for this cyclone already but I figured one more couldn’t hurt.  Who knows, probably a portion of donations doesn’t actually reach victims and goes on advertising and admin instead - maybe even an unacceptably large portion - but a fraction’s better than nothing and all the charities represented here are very visible in the field and well-known.

I’ve been interested in Aung San Suu Kyi, an amazing woman, for a while and consequently have learnt a wee bit about Burma. The country is woefully unprepared for a disaster of this sort anyway but to make it worse, the military junta didn’t even bother to tell the people a cyclone was on its way, people who are denied access to any information from the outside world. This is a natural disaster but it could easily be compounded by human evil, inertia and covert politics if help isn’t immediate and substantial. If people can at least be given vaccinations soon it might halt the spread of the diseases that can kill as many again after these things.  It’ll become overtly political again soon enough but, in the meantime, lives could be saved.  The numbers are already beyond all understanding.

Police Blotter for the town of Ojai, week-ending May 2nd 2008.

A Thomas Avenue woman was arrested Sunday for failing to make a little birdhouse in her soul when she rammed her car into another vehicle for allegedly “nipping into” her parking spot.

In a rash of related incidents:

A Richard Street man was arrested for making a little bird-house in his soul using mdf instead of sustainably-grown timber.

And a Harry Blvd man was taken into custody for purchasing the Chinese little birdhouse in his soul from Wal-Mart.

In other crime:

A Moe Crescent man was arrested on suspicion of possession of a hazardous processed meat product (sausage).

A Larry Lane woman was detained for questioning regarding possible breach of a local ordinance reqiring citizens to wear at least one article of hemp clothing. After revealing that her underwear was organic cotton tie-die she was given a warning and released to her family who are said to have been worried about their loved one’s rebellion and her “experimenting” with Dockers and GAP clothing.

A Curly Avenue youth was detained on suspicion of not singing along at a candle-lit Crosby, Stills & Nash tribute concert. Witnesses seated near him in the crowd said the suspect appeared to be “only mouthing the words” and that he’d yawned two times during “Our House.”

Check out Eolai’s Spring sale of paintings going on for the next two weeks. Eolai’s work is vibrant and compelling and he’s an interesting man in his writing, art and in person. I’ve been waiting for his shop to get back online for months - he recently moved from Kansas City back to Ireland, so he’s been a smidge busy. But now it’s back and he is selling amazing pictures for washers in a Spring sale. Nothing is over $85, which is a steal when you see his work. These are some really great deals by a gifted, unique artist painting Irish scenes, scenes from around the world (he’s been everywhere - mostly on a bike), figures, abstracts and animal miniatures. Go see!

*

Just read about this: R.I.P Humphrey Lyttleton. You’ll be missed.

(Fair warning: it is not my intention to offend anyone’s sincerely held beliefs but I read the news today and just wanted to poke a little fun at the extremes on each side. They deserve it.)

DEAD BLEEDER DRAWS BIG CROWDS.

Rotondo Farm threw open its gates today as animals from all over the country came to pay their respects to the exhumed body of Padre Pig. Spokesman for the Rotondo Farmyard Church, Padre Creduloso, marked the gate-throwing with Mass and, in an hour long address to the crowd, hailed Padre Pig as “an important figure on Rotondo Farm and indeed the world.”

When asked why, 40 years after his death, the Rotondo Farmyard clerics had decided to dig Padre Pig up and put him on display, Padre Creduloso winked and rubbed his thumb and fore-finger together, adding “‘Ere, this ain’t on the record, is it?”

Famous for his stigmata, (unexplained bleeding from Christ-like wounds) it is said that for 50 years Padre Pig lost a cup of blood a day from his front trotters yet never showed any signs of paleness.

“It was as if the Lord was protecting him and keeping him strong as he bled for us!” cooed Mrs. Dupabla Flowers, (pigeon, 42) a dry-cleaner from a neighbouring farm.

“I have his image hanging up in the back of the shop and from the blessed day he went up we’ve never had any problem getting blood or red-wine or felt-tip pen stains out of delicates. I don’t know what we’d do without him watching over our whites and Specialised Fabrics! And now… to get a chance to see his real-live dead body? Well, we couldn’t miss it. ” she beamed. “We’re all here, the chicks too and I’ve an egg on the way in the car. Wouldn’t it just be the most blessed thing ever if it hatched today, with padre Pig’s sacred corpse only tens of metres away?”

The scene in the farmyard was a busy one with animals of all sorts clucking, squeaking, miaowing, mooing and jostling to catch a glimpse of Padre Pig lying in his bulletproof glass and 24-carat gold coffin, said to have cost 9 million pounds.

“He looks as if he’s merely sleeping” said one shiny-eyed ewe.

The throng were ably sold to by church-approved vendors offering such items as Padre Pig ashtrays and bobble-head Capuchin monks. New for this year, was a novelty Padre Pig ketchup-dispenser which oozes the sauce from its cloven-hoofs when the Padre’s snout is pressed.

“They’re sellin’ better than me ‘ot Padre Pig pies” grinned stall-’older Ivor Beenhad, the official prophet-monger for the Rotondo religious community. “Much better than them 73-virgin themed wrench-sets I couldn’t shift for love nor money last month at Sunnifest.”

TESTIMONY

Many pilgrims present testified to some of the miraculous close-shaves Padre Pig had got them through “by the hair on his chinny chin-chin” in the words of devout hen, Sister Mary-Maria, bearing witness on a small apple-crate to her own unsightly-facial-hair problem spontaneously disappearing the day she was rained on by a Padre Pig shaped cloud.

Driving instructor Mr. Nye Eaves (sheep, 38), told us “I have been in 33 near fatal crashes since I’ve hung Padre Pig’s image in my rear-view mirror. 33! God keep me but I could feel his bloody hands cocooning me accident after accident as my young student-drivers had their brains bashed out on the windscreen. Without the Padre (may the Lord bless his bleeding self!) protecting me, I’d have been mutton a long time ago. Plus 33 is the age at which Our Saviour died so that must mean I’ve reached another level of protection now - like in Quake. I think my car insurance premium decreases anyway.”

PROTEST

Also present on the fringes of the crowd were a small group of protesters. Professor Richard Scoffly-Squawkins (goose, 65) led a peaceful but vocal demonstration of around 100 animals.

“It can be scientifically proven that the cause of Padre Pig’s so-called stigmata was really just a bad prickle embedding in his hoof-cleft” Prof. Scoffly-Squawkins told me. “Initially at least. Then with the secret help of the Pigeon Nuns of The Sacred Heart Of The Blessed Bawling Virgin Convent And Dispensing Chemist, he administered a daily solution of carbolic acid to induce all consequent bleeding from the wounds. Once again, the Church tries to dupe its credulous flock with egregious chicanery of this sort. Well that’s all very well for the poor and stupid but when educated people like you and I hahaha believe in this sort of thing then there won’t be anyone left to listen to me! That’s why we’re protesting today.”

When I asked Mr. Scoffly-Squawkins about his detractors charging him with arrogance, disdain for, and a lack of any understanding of real animal’s real lives outwith the confines of pure ivory-tower academia, he said “Well, have they written best-selling books in another discipline entirely from the subject at hand? Are they professors living lives largely separate from the common experience? No. I didn’t think so. Clearly I’m much cleverer than they are and they should all be listening to me, shower of feeble-minded, crutch-leaning, dim-wits. Look, here’s a free copy of my latest book. Pre-signed. Now would you mind very much buggering off? I want to look at the stiff’s hands before they wheel him away for the night.”

Later, I caught the distinguished professor again and asked him whether or not the strategy of showing contempt for perfectly decent lay-animals and their beliefs thus leading them to harden their attitudes in self-defense, becoming, in fact, less and not more open to his ideas, wasn’t a bit, um, stupid.

“I mean for a clever man such as yourself, doesn’t it betray a real lack of understanding about your fellow creatures and the enormous mental leaps that individuals have to make to reassess their whole lives if they are born and raised in strongly religious circumstances?” I elaborated.

“No,” spluttered the eminent scholar, best-selling author and believer that “anything but cool-headed rationalism at all times is weak and, ugh, human.”

“You may well be right in your theories, Professor Squawkins,” said a bold and handsome stallion, appearing suddenly from the crowd. “But you cannot make people reexamine their beliefs by shouting at them and telling them they don’t understand. In order to carry that off you have to get at them when they’re born. That’s the Church’s advantage.

“Couldn’t it instead be said that man makes his own meaning in life? There might well be a God in His heaven but he demonstrably doesn’t seem that bothered about enormous human suffering when it happens, so he doesn’t seem to be the personal God preached by the major religions. Couldn’t that mean therefore, that the best way to understand truths about ourselves and the world we live in is through literature, which after all is just the art and science of ourselves trying to explain ourselves to ourselves in all our moods and madnesses?”

At that point unfortunately the photographer died and it started to rain and, urm, what else, oh yes, I fainted with desire and then remembered I’d left the oven on and had to leave immediately, with the stallion who happened to be going my way anyway. Reports of our being spotted at a quiet and intimate hayery 20 minutes later are exaggerated. It was 40 if it was a minute. Unfortunately, however, the coverage of Padre Pig’s corpse exhumation was cut short at that time.

Tomorrow, what new scarf trend has the Park Lane puddleducks all of a gaggle? Plus an in-depth feature on how to tell the children daddy’s been eaten, but not in the OK way they eat Jesus on a Sunday.

Report filed by Sam Problemdonkey.

Techie Update: My apologies to those new commenters who’ve been languishing unseen in my moderation queue. Wordpress has decided it can no longer alert me of new callers and it no longer tells me who’s linking to me either. Tomorrow I back up and upgrade see if that’ll sort it out. Sorry!

Last night I had cause to tell a pal I don’t watch much telly. “She doesn’t” confirmed my husband. Recently I had cause to tell another pal the same thing. (Maybe I didn’t have cause, I can’t tell because my internal editor doesn’t show up for duty when she knows I’m going out for a drink. She trusts me to get by just opening my gob and shooting out whatever flotsam and jetsam happens to be floating round the inside of my cranium. She is a fool. She, is also, however, just a floaty concept, I have final say over me and I can see an opportunity where I coulda kept my mouth shut and didn’t. This bothers me because noone likes to hear themselves sounding like an ass. I spend all day pretending I’m not an ass which involves time and effort and a good deal of denial, so it’s wincing when I realize I might really be the very same ass I’m pretending I’m not. If you see.)

At any puddling rate, it did so pass, that I mentioned I don’t watch tv. I know exactly what this sounds like and so I tried not to sound too airy about it. Therefore I’m betting it came across as pretty damn airy. I could tell my pal had heard people say that before - we all have, they’re usually making a big (airy) deal of it - and was probably thinking, yeah, right I bet you think you’re such an intermallectual and all, not swimming in the pop culture pond with the rest of us.

I know my pal thought that because I’ve heard people carrying on that way myself and thought the same thing. There are people who I know veg out with the TV guide every night of the week, but will declare (airily - I don’t think it can be helped, it’s an inherently airy-arse thing to say) to people at dinner that, acksherly, they rarely look at the tv much other than for the news, isn’t that right, Clyde?

They do it in the same voice that they’ll tell you they’ve never once thought an uncharitable thought about the Pakistanis/Germans/Japanese or that they wouldn’t dream of drinking red wine with turbot or that they’ve never been anything but 100% behind their son dropping out of uni to become a juggler. They’re the same people, as Medbh was saying recently, who make you take your shoes off in their house.

There’s a snotty, snooty superiority associated with not watching tv: pop culture is much too trivial for you; you wouldn’t deign to watch as much as an episode of Eastenders; you certainly wouldn’t want to sully your mind with the sort of trash the hoi polloi are watching, for good grief’s sake.

I don’t think that. Well I do a bit - I’m as snotty as the next person when it comes to supping from the common pop-culture soup-trough muchly because some spots are murkier than others but, after all, this is the thinking of a person who grew up in the days when Noel Edmunds and Mr. Blobby were big stars. Usually though, as long as the next person along’s not peeing or trimming their toe-nails into the trough, I’m happy enough. Tv dramas alone (apart from Morse) have certainly never been better and The Office was genius.

Like most of us, I lovey/love/hate pop culture, and in about these proportions: 2:1. But liking it or not was not what made me stop watching. The things that did were pretty simple.

1. I don’t want my kids to see me watching it for hours on end. I limit my girls’ telly-watching to 15 minutes a day each, while the other one’s having a bath. For kids today, certainly in the US, it’s not like when I grew up and tv shows were part of a common shared culture that we 30-somethings like to reminisce about on late pupil-dilated nights, (Ooooh, (flapping) remember The Flumps? And Mr. Ben? and Bagpuss? Aaaaaaw) so I don’t think they’re really missing out on any bonding thing with their peers who’re all watching different channels anyway.

Point is, I can’t very well sit there goggling the box myself without looking like a rank hypocrite to them. Children begin to grow up as soon as they realize their parents are fallible. They’ll find out my failings soon enough - but I don’t want to make it too easy for them. I want a few more years of being an all-seeing, all-powerful mammy.

2. A fear of time passing me by. The last thing I watched with any regularity was Deadwood, a year or so back. Since then I watch the news, The odd Daily Show with John Stewart and on Friday nights I watch Real Time with Bill Maher and that’s it. It’s not that I think I’m “above” tv - not at all. I’m a child of the 80s, I freakin’ loved it. I watched 3 series of The Apprentice, for Trump’s sake, and Project Runway and Changing Rooms and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.

But television’s a costly lover and it’ll eat up your life. In front of the telly, before I know it a whole night’s gone and I’ve done nothing. I’ve spent a whole bunch of time (yes time can come in bunches, doubters. It’s the Bunch Principle of Space and Time Theory. Developed by a Ms. Brady. Of immense importance to grapes) to see the 2 things i wanted to see, between which it was hardly worth getting up and doing anything else, and I’m annoyed with myself at having frittered away time like that.

It is though, much easier to give up telly if you’re an expat in the US. You have no real loyalty to any shows or channels. The constant adverts with most everything except HBO means the whole thing’s irritating anyway. But if Eastenders was still on BBC America I’d be watching that. (I signed the online petition to keep it on!) If I was still living at home, no doubt I’d still be watching Countdown, The Simpsons, a sitcom or two, one gritty police drama or another and the rest, and thoroughly enjoying them all. I’d also be reading less and blogging less and the older I get, the more time I want to spend on these two things; the more they trump telly.

This isn’t an article of faith for me: telly bad! Sam no likey telly! It’s just a new habit of watching less rather than more. I watch the odd documentary and I watch films, but these days I purposely avoid any series, reality, drama, comedy, whatever, unless something is recommended to me. Medbh says the Wire’s brilliant and I watched an episode and loved it so now I want to see them all. Curb Your Enthusiasm is great but I’m not going to rearrange my schedule to watch it.

And honestly, I don’t miss it. Instead I spend about half the evening pootling with the pooter and the other half reading. Both are participatory hobbies, demanding something of you more than just telly-watching does and at the end of the night when I’m brushing my teeth, I feel a bit more satisfied; I don’t feel as if I’ve lost an evening. I also like to re-read things but, in the past, it’s always been a luxury: who’s got time for that? Me now! A bit more anyway since I turned the tv off and keeping it off became a habit.

And that’s it. And I really recommend it. Stuff gets done.

HOWEVER…

The internet was out last week for a day or so and I felt like I’d been cut loose from the world. That can’t be right, right?

Still a slave to new media, I.

What the hell is up with this land? There have been birds tweeting all night long! I’m half insane with it. I mean, look here, Songbirds, this isn’t New York. Get to sleep you knobby-kneed fluffballs! This is the country and you’re supposed to know rural laws better than anyone. You’re meant to go to bed at sundown, as cutely as you can manage it - heads under wings and adorable stuff like that. You’re not meant to party til dawn. Unless you invite me, I’m just not going to have that sort of deafening twitterfest in the garden all night long. I know there was at least one of you still tweeting “I Will Survive!” at 5am. That’s not even right! You should be on to 80s stadium rock and vomiting by that hour. Pathetic.

And far beneath our feet California’s fate is being shaped (and cracked) by massive seismic forces beyond our control. Is this why the birds are tweeting at night? They know first, you know, the animals…

We live about 100 yards from a fault called the Villanova fault - part of the Lion Canyon fault complex, which despite sounding like a West Coast Woody Allen kitty-based neurosis is really something that might bring our whole lives crashing about our ears. Cos the big one’s coming.

There was a big report at the weekend saying that California is 99% likely to have a 6.7 or more magnitude earthquake
in the next 30 years. We’re way overdue and they reckon Southern, as opposed to Northern, California is more likely
to be hit. It could happen today, next week or next decade but it’s coming, that’s for sure.

California has so many fault lines it looks like the leg of a varicose-vein sufferer. Some are gentle sliders and are less dangerous but the section of the San Andreas fault - which is the one expected to judder, setting off a chain of judders in the other faults - that goes through the LA basin is a sticker and in a 7.5 earthquake they predict surface ruptures and a shift of 12 feet. There’s a 46% chance of one that big.

California just doesn’t like people living on it. She’s* dry and fiery, then, if we’re still clinging to it after that, it’s wet, flooded and mud-slidey, and if we still haven’t got the message it doesn’t want itchy people on her back, California will heave a massive shoulder and try to shake us off. There are more hostile lands to live on, and all in all, California’s been pretty patient with us and put up with a lot, but she’s about to wake from a nap and she’ll be grouchy when she discovers we’re still there.

So what can we do about it? Bolt all the bookcases and pictures to the walls because it’s the falling stuff that’ll kill you. Have an emergency back-up source for power. Get together a kit with food, water-purification tablets and first-aid stuff, and don’t step on cracks in the sidewalk I guess. I don’t know but I think I’ll start with getting a gun and shooting all the bloody night-tweeters. As long as our every moment is potentially parlous, I want to get my rest so I’ll look fabulous when I’m being crushed under a bridge somewhere, whenever that shrieky, shaky day comes.

I worry about the kids mostly. They’re really small. It would only take a tiny wee crack to disappear them.

But seriously, poo.

* You can tell Florida is a boy just by looking at him but I’m assuming California’s a girl cos she has an “a” on the end of her name, and then there’s the whole San Francisco bay area. If you are a boy though, California, please accept my apologies.

I was looking at the CNN website tonight and their “Quick Question” of the day was this:

Is faith or religion important in your choice of presidential candidates?

As “Our Girl In Ojai”, I decided to put that very question to random people in the street in my own town of Ojai. Yes, in the dark, what of it? An intrepid reporter must be ready to spring into action whenever she senses the opportunity for an easy poll. Some people say mere vox-pops are lazy journalism, meaningless to all intents and purposes, and just a cheap way to fill column inches better used for serious analysis. I say it’s been a long weekend and I need both a literal and figurative walk-in-the-park. So bite me.

Mrs Jennifer Ennuyer-De-Tout (39 (yeah right)) Power-walking:
“Darling, I couldn’t care less if the presidential candidates worship the blocked follicle round Dangermouse’s third whisker as their lord and personal saviour. I just want to know their plan for more affordable butt-lifts.”

Margery Toolbridey (67), walking daschunds:
“I think it’s really sad how we as a nation have lost our faith. In fact, my church has launched a crusade to teach the message to our young folks. It has a three-pronged message to remind them of the three prongs on Satan’s fiery trident prodding their buttocks for all eternity if they don’t take heed. The first message prong is “Judaism is for Jerks!” The second is “Islam Threatens Our Very Way Of Life And Wants To Steal Our God-Given Oil So Just Say No To Allah!”; and the third prong is “Mormonism Is For Queers, Gaylords And Perverts.”

What’s that, dear? A more positive message? Oh well, “Jesus Saves!” obviously, and, despite it sounding a bit Catholic, we’re also keen to promote “The Sacred Heart Of The Blessed Doctrine Of The Holy Trickle-Down” because supply-side economics and fundamental Christianity go hand-in-hand. “Jesus Saves!” is itself an injuction to be frugal. I mean it’s a scriptural fact that Jesus was a fiscal conservative…It isn’t?… Oh well it’s practically a fact and if that’s good enough for my minister, it’s good enough for me. My gosh! I mean I think we can all agree that Our Lord was certainly the type of fellow to have a savings account to look after his own retirement, can’t we. Jesus wasn’t a sponger. He didn’t expect the State to support him, he wasn’t a tax-and-spend bleeding-heart pinko. “Get up and walk!” Isn’t that what he told the cripples? Not “Here’s some free money, the number of a good support group and a pamphlet about your rights.” No!

Our Saviour was a Reagan-style Republican, no doubt about it. He even taught us “Suffer the little children.” Of course, that was the olden days and things were very different back then. We don’t believe in letting the little children suffer now - although I maintain that little 12-year-old trollope who brought the charges against my husband was asking for it!! No we no longer believe some of Jesus’ more old-fashioned ideas any more than we still believe the thing about the rich and the camel through the eye of the needle. We don’t even drive camels nowadays, we drive SUVs if we can afford them, so the analogy doesn’t work, you see. God never intended that we should believe everything in the bible - that would be ridiculous. And anyway, I personally believe a loving God would allow chronically obese people who can’t walk the length of themselves to drive to the pearly gates in an SUV.

Neil Strangefellow (23) Picking scabs, moaning softly, rocking back and forth on a park bench:
Frankly, I think there’s too much faith in things of all sorts. I would like to see a presidential candidate who utterly lacks faith in everything “known” to man. I don’t believe in anything. I mean you can’t, can you? It’s sheer human hubris to be all “E=mc2″ and “macaroni and cheese is delicious” Oh yeah? Says who? What gives us the right to make these blanket declarations, eh? Take gravity - how do we know gravity’s not just an incredible series of countless complete coincidences? I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe in you. Or me, for that matter. At a stretch I might believe in underpants, not your’s, mine. But even they could be a hoax.

Unwilling To Be Identified (42ish) Lurking in bushes by swings:
“Maybe. Who wants to know?”

Miss Alli Teratesalot (34) Jogging with cat:
“My heart goes out to the candidates, you know? What with polls and pundits and the prying press, it must be terrible trying to pander egregiously to different religious groups and maintain a flimsy commitment to the separation of church and state.”

Mr Chuck Just Chuck (49) Shooting squirrels and admiring his Jesus tattooes:
“As a religioner myself, I just have one question of the candidates: Armageddon - sooner rather than later? I mean a candidate’s position on that could affect our whole environmental policy. It might not even be worth preserving energy and pursuing renewable resources if we only have a few more years before the Rapture. If it’s anytime soon I plan to burn some tyres and diesel in a pristine spot and barbecue me some endangered species, oh yeah…go out in style wid my buddies from the bar prayer-group. I’m not voting for anyone who says the End’s coming this side of the play-offs though. I can’t get behind a President or a God who’d let that happen.

Miss Tenderfoot Rainwillow (45) Chanting and lying naked within a circle of stones beside a phallicaly-shaped wood-carving:
“Oh, I really don’t care about their faith or their religion. I just want a candidate who’s spear-i-chew-ul, you dig? O Mighty Spirit Of The Oak! Come metaphorically impregnate my fertile womb lalalalala…goddess…bracken…lalalala” (Miss Rainwillow breaks off into chanting and personal insanity)

Might not be around much this week cos the weeyuns are on Spring Break. I shall try and keep their boozing and wild-partying to a minimum by distracting them with bicycle lessons, nature-rambles and crack cocaine.

I don’t know though, I worry that they’re a bitty too young to have the training wheels off yet. God knows what they’ll be like on the highway without them. As it is I’ve just about had it with the police dragging them home for scooting-while-intoxicated down the car-pool lane - on weeknights too! I always wait up for them, you know, no matter what hour they come staggering in, drunkenly demanding to be read a story and tucked in with teddy. They don’t know how I worry.

Oh, I could put my foot down and tell them they’re not going out with grade-school boys after 7pm, but 5-year olds these days just don’t listen, they have their own lives. And, quite frankly, at that age, I was running drugs for Charlie “Masher” MacInnes - and making a pretty penny too (I was saving up for a “Watch-Her-Hair-Grow” Girl’s World). The sick thing was, I didn’t even want a Girl’s World, but all my friends had one, see. What I really wanted was a pony. You can’t admit that when you’re 5 though, you’d get called a baby and lose all your street cred immediately.

So you see, it would be hypocrisy for me to tell them what they can and can’t do. And they’re good kids really. I just wish they had more of a work ethic. I was a Division Head for Masher by the time I was six. Regularly muling to Ullapool and everything. Nobody would suspect a child in those days and, besides, they’d find so many Stornoway stowaways under the lifeboat-tarps - kids, crofters, the mayor - that an unaccompanied minor on a ferry didn’t arouse any alarm bell. Not even when the bags burst in our stomachs and we vomited everywhere, our eyeballs rolling back into our head. Even when a drug-foal out-and-out died from the sudden rush of Class A drugs to the major organs, people - although saddened, naturally - just said it was probably down to a bad-crossing, agreeing that it was a bit choppy that day,* right enough, and that they expected that the Looooooooord** was just up to some of His famously Mysteeeeeeeerious Ways again.

*True for 98% of Minch crossings, so the only surprise was that there weren’t more fatalities. Obviously, this meant that God was smiling on Lewis folk more than we even knew and this was just divine proof that we were right in Heaven’s eyes for insisting that Comhairle Nan Eilean tie up all public swings on Sundays, the day when God looked at His creation and saw that it was probably not going to be good for a lot of people (pestilence, war, famine etc), became depressed by that, especially after all His beautiful work on the snowflake - and that henceforth, on the 7th day of each week, merriment would be most holily forbidden; proof piety pays.

** Ullulated very slightly but not in that funny foreign way they do in the Middle East, - huh, just a bunch of show-offs drawing attention to themselves. More in the gravely domestic way we do in Lewis. In fact it probably wouldn’t be classed as an ullulation at all, but fall more under the rubric of a quivering querulous quaver, or whatever.

Chaos today as celebrities marched in Ojai to protest their being left alone too much. The march, organised by David Hasselhoff, was proceeding down main-street, largely ignored by Tuesday morning trinket and art shoppers, when a scuffle broke out between Mel Gibson and Barbara Streisand about the Crucifixion, and agitation spread quickly through the crowd of already inflamed celebs. An Ojai Snooze reporter (me) was on the scene and witnessed events as they got out of hand.

“It was like a war zone,” I told myself in an interview later. “There were crazed celebrities everywhere. Cher was stamping on Paris Hilton’s head with a 6″ heel. Hulk Hogan was upending hybrid cars and yelling something about getting that bitch Judge Judy. Hanging perilously from a helicopter, Sean Penn tried to distribute aid parcels to puzzled people below who kept insisting they weren’t starving. As she marched, Kate Hudson had an aide hold a wind machine in front of her to make her golden hair billow attractively, but the aide carrying the machine walked backwards into Kirstie Allie’s spiritual-and-menu advisor. The advisor’s beard got sucked into the wind fan and the poor man had his chin scalped clean, the bloody beard hanging uselessly from the wrecked fan, turning slowly in the breeze like some mangled pastiche of a squirrel.”

Just because I was interviewing me about the incident, though, didn’t mean I didn’t ask the tough questions.

“Just how killer were Cher’s boots?” I asked gravely, watching me closely.

“Almost fatally killer by the looks of Paris” I recalled. “But luckily the celebutante’s head seemed of a curiously rubber consistency- Cher’s boot heel fairly boinged off it.”

A gracious, and dented Paris later told me that, had she succumbed to the stamping, there would have been some solace for her family in knowing that she’d been slain by really truly killer Prada boots - “I mean like speshull, you know? - Butter-soft Italian lamb-leather, totally finely hand-tooled into, like, a poem of baby-sheep-body and sole. Sooo hot.”

This morning’s furore, which resulted in one death of an unimportant plain person, some serious ego-injuries and a half-dozen boob deflations was described by some as “the worst carnage Ojai has ever seen since the great cut-flower shortage of the 80’s.” Readers may remember that day back in the dry summer of ‘84 when mobs of angry housewives with nothing fabulous to put on their entrance-hall tables, stormed Mr. Bently, the florist’s and held him hostage until he promised to force them some daffodils in his poly-tunnel.

That day, Black Tuesday, claimed the lives of an organic butcher, an artisan baker and a sacred-herb-scented candle maker and is still marked every year in Ojai by a tasteful outdoor cheese-and-wine party, the release of three white doves and a 50% off, one-day-only mourning-sale in local shops.

Today’s demonstration was a protest on the part of the area’s celebrities ostensibly about local people failing to hound them for their autographs. But the protest was part of a larger set of grievances at being outrageously allowed to live quiet, undisturbed lives in a town respectful of its more famous citizens. Spokeswoman Kim Basinger, youthful in Roberto Cavalli sweatpants and a simple, white GAP t-shirt with “UNDERSTATED” emblazoned across the front in gold sequins, said in an interview after the riot that Ojai’s resident Stars Association were “saddened” at ordinary people’s seemingly complete disinterest in them as they tried to go about their daily business. “It goes completely contrary to what being a star is all about,” wept Basinger suddenly.

“Tom (Cruise) was in tears last week when he was able to sit in a coffee-shop and drink 8 soy lattes before a small child recognized him and asked if he was gay,” said an indignant Kim, now recovered again, her eyes flashing with anger.

Other witnesses today reported that trouble also broke out when Oprah and Dr, Phil went on a “FREE! compassionate advice-giving tour” of the farmer’s market, and that “Dr. Phil’s feelings were hurt”, when he tried to give a cauliflower-shopper some advice about “sticking with it.” The ordinary person asked him what the expletiving sexual act he meant. Dr. Phil indicated with a puffed-out cheeks gesture and a comically-affected wobbling gait, that it was clear the shopper was “disgustingly obese” and that buying a vegetable indicated that he was “owning his problem” and choosing a healthier lifestyle with his cauliflower purchase.

“The first step on the path to getting rid of that obscenely repellent gut is the hardest one to take, but you’ve taken it, my friend!” declared the self-help guru.

“What the rigourous coitus?” exclaimed the cauliflower shopper, who declined to identify himself, and proceeded to try to insert the cauliflower into the anus of Dr. Phil, shrieking “You’re not so intercoursing light on your toes your-incestuously-intercoursing-self, you son of a bestial act common in Wales-ing girl dog! How do you like this colon friendly vegetable, huh, you pompous quantity of toilet-paper? Eh? Huh?”,

The enraged cauliflower man screamed on, until police arrived on the scene and removed him from the market, kicking and shrieking, as Dr. Phil brushed himself off, delicately removed the cauliflower and blamed the man’s being an “asshole” for his poor behaviour.

Meanwhile, in the next aisle of market-stalls, Oprah was advising a 79-year old woman, Miss Betty Dearheart, that “that home-made lemon mayonnaise may look good now, girlfriend, but wait til that sucker’s stuck on your booty!”

Witnesses say the elderly woman tried to shuffle away from the wild-eyed Winfrey, but then Dr. Phil came flying over the hand-made soap stall, wrestled the senior citizen to the ground and assured Ms. Winfrey that it was OK and not to panic, he “had the b$%*h under control. They’re an unreceptive crowd,” he added, shaking his head sadly and massaging his anus, also sadly. “They’re not ready to confront themselves yet. This town is hurtin’, hurtin’ real bad.”

I asked Bassinger if moving to a small town away from the Hollywood papparazzi didn’t imply a desire on behalf of the stars to live an unmolested life.

“Well, yeah - like duh,” she said. “But, I mean you don’t really expect it, do you? Studies and studios both show that stars need almost permanent adulation in order to shine, you see, and by not revering or indeed reacting in any way to, seeing, say, Shannon Doherty in a headscarf trying not to be spotted at the Post Office, you are causing us anxiety about our own self-worth and fabulousness that translates into poorer performances in our movies. You suffer in the end.”

“Maybe people in Ojai just aren’t that impressed by stars,” I ventured. “After all, there are many talented secondary industry people living here: screen-writers; directors; set-designers, costume-designers and special effects folks; animators; producers; stunt-men and so on. And perhaps the non-Hollywood folk, the teachers and the house-cleaners and the store-owners and the soccer moms just don’t care to intrude into other people’s lives. Could it be that you’re just not that interesting?”

At this Ms. Basinger’s chin began to dimple adorably as a fat tear rolled slowly down her flawless cheek.

“But we give and we give and we give,” she howled. “Nobody knows how hard it is for us to be so free with our emotions and how we’re forced to peddle them for massive amounts of money - do you have any idea how much self-involvement that takes? It’s exhausting! Nobody but a star knows how wearying it is to have to do Leno and attend a charity gala event in one evening, ONE EVENING, people! It’s like slavery or something! Oh, it may look like an easy life to you with our limos and our stylists and our personal assistants but we’re far more sensitive than you people. That’s why we’re special. We feel more than ordinary people do, you know?…”

At this point Madonna jogged up and interjected, putting a consoling arm around the gently weeping Basinger.

“And I’m tired of being criticised for being a Kabbalist,” said Madonna, veering wildly between Cockney and Liverpudlian cadences. “They say this is just another shallow Madonna fad, a fuzzy spiritual hobby with cute accessories. But you know, wearing the humble red thread wristlet and calling myself Esther is something that moves me deeply. Until Kabbalah nothing else had ever managed to move me more than myself and my own harrowing personal struggle to make it to the top, so I feel it, like, deeply, you know?” Here Madonna inclined her head slightly and put a slim hand over her heart, as if willing me to understand the real her.

“The other day I had Posh round at mine dry-crying on my shoulder…” ranted Madonna in a possibly clinically relevant rapid change of tone, and now using an Estuary accent.

“Excuse me, dry crying?” I interjected.

“(Sigh) Posh can’t cry real tears because of make-up considerations. Do you even know how long that look takes several style-professionals to achieve every morning? A genuine emotion could wreck it. Have you any idea what it’s like to be super-super-sensitive and maintain flawless day-to-evening mascara?” Madonna’s voice softened. “Behind Posh’s joyless demeanour and cold, dead eyes I knew she was really hurting, you know?

The clearly exercised star went on in a more Home Counties/Brooklyn accent, “Babs Streisand is a wreck because she can clearly see the way forward for the country in our foreign policy and nobody will listen to her! I mean, it’s unbelievable! Ashton Kutcher can’t get anywhere with his harrowing novels of existential doubt in a 1920’s Czech surfer dude, and Kevin Costner’s thinking of starring in another crappy baseball movie. Do you know how unhappy we are?”

I said I didn’t.

“Very,” said Madonna, angular in a “Free Europe Now!” t-shirt. “And with all the money we spend trying to be happy, we simply can’t have the fans upsetting us!”

At this point Madonna spotted Demi Moore and abruptly left the interview, squealing “Demi, you look fabulous…!”

Updates on the various law-suits stemming from today’s riot will be published as they become available. Also, there will be an update on the condition of the dead person, although, sadly, he is not expected to come round.

This just in: Governer Schwartzenegger has downgraded the status of todays troubles from a “riot” to a “fracas”, and it’s been announced that all charges against all celebrities have been dropped.

Didn’t the yolks in Cadbury’s Creme Eggs used to be bigger and yellower? I just had one and it barely had a yolk at all. I feel robbed. And the whole thing was tiny! Titchy even! And it didn’t have that Creme Egg taste I remember as a wee girl.

I blame mass-production practices and factory-farming at Cadbury for the pale yolks and miserable sizes of today’s creme eggs. Sad hens give sad eggs. Creme eggs should be laid by happy chickens free to scratch and peck.

In an occasion marked by solemnity and nervous hilarity, last week the cities of Ojai and Stornoway were officially twinned marking what Mayor Janice De KirkFitzMacCohenburgerski (America’s Miss Teen Melting Pot 1964) called “an occasion of immense cultural and economic importance to both towns.” Already an agreement is in place for the exclusive rights to trade sun-dried tomatoes and mutton between the two cities.

“Hahahahahaha!” Stornoway mayor, Mr Uistean “Big” MacAuley remarked upon hearing his Ojai counterpart describing Stornoway as a forward-thinking city with a great future ahead of it. “Oh, that’s a good one, right enough,” he added, guffawing mauvely.

Mayor KirkFitzMacCohenburgerski expressed the hope that the twinning would lead to a whole new era of cultural exchange, particularly for the young people of both towns. A young person, later told us, “Yeah, like, it’s a super-cool idea, furilla. These Scatch kids seem like cool, ya know? Gnarly. I mean at first I was all like, Whoa! what’s wrong with your teeth, dudes? But then I remembered that the Brits have, like, dental problems? And they can’t, like, help it? So I was all Hey man, don’t sweat it, my grandpa’s got the same deal. I heard it’s because of that Tony Thatcher bitch buying them Falklands from Northern Ireland so now there’s no money left to pay the dentists and’ shit. I learned all about that stuff in the World History class I had to take when Pottery and Navel-Gazing got filled up. Yo.”

While in Ojai, the Stornoway delegation are enjoying the hospitality of Rotary Club members who have opened their homes and locked their liquor cabinets for the week.

Mrs. Maggie-Aggie MacKenzie told us about her delightful experience staying with her host for the week. “Oh yes, a ‘ghraidh, I’m having a lovely time. The heat is a problem because I’m under the doctor at home for my varicose veins and I’m supposed to walk a mile every day but I’m chust not used to the heat, you see.” Mrs. MacKenzie dressed in a black wool skirt, thick wool stockings, her church hat and a frankly fabulous itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka-dot bikini bra top, giggled girlishly at “having her interview taken”, went on to describe how she “could never take a tan, I just go red and peel. A-woooohooohohohoho” she whooped, amiably elbowing this reporter off the sofa with surprising strength.

The twinning ceremony, marred only by a single small bladder incontinence incident described by Mr. John Jerome 88, as nothing really - hardly a dribble”, was hailed by all as a triumph. Here are some accounts of the day by attendees, in their own words, when asked what memories they would take away:

Savannah MacLeod, 15 (Stornoway) “Man, you can get Diesel here for washers! I think high fashion at low low prices is what makes America a strong moral leader on the global political scene.

Gerald Butler 63, (Ojai) “Well, mostly I’m just grateful to meet such a fine array of inbred people. I had my reservations at first, of course, but, I have to say, they’re really splendid ambassadors for the Scottish inbred community. A pleasant surprise indeed, especially after all the things I’d heard. I only saw one 11-digited person all week.”

Seamus MacCuish, 50, (Stornoway) “Amazing tractors.”

Sylvia Horborgenssen 49, (Ojai) “They’re just so cute with their little accents and all! I simply adore them! I wish I could keep one. I’m 1/16th Scottish myself, you know! They showed me a picture of their lil old Callanish stones, adn I said to Norm, didn’t I Norm? I said to Norm, we just have to get some of these made up for the front lawn. Cause it’s our hair-tage.”

Colin “Utter Bore” Morrison 38 (Stornoway) “Well they go on about California beaches and that but they’re not a patch on our unspoilt Lewis beaches and what about the rampant consumerism, eh? In my opinion this country’s got fat and lazy, too comfy. Can’t people be happy with just a lonely house, a madeira loaf and poor TV reception? Oh no, it’s “McMansion” this and “gateau” that. And the breakfasts! I mean who puts syrup next to sausages? No wonder America leads the world in childhood obesity…” (There a short muttering conference with with Miss Tiffany MacDonald, 38-26-36 (Stornoway))…”Oh. It appears that’s the Scots, but anyway that’s completely beside the point. The point is, the point IS, where’s the culture, eh? Where are the community bonds, the strong social fabric? It’s all I’m all right, Jack, out here. Nobody knows their neighbours, and why shouldn’t they have to when there’s me putting up with that old witch Peigi-Effie down the lane from me, with her, (affecting a falsetto) “Ooooh could you pick me up some milk when you’re in town, dearie?” and her completely fake multiple sclerosis. And why the helling hell can’t you get a drink anywhere past 11pm on a Tuesday? Land of the brave and home of the free, my arse. And another thing, what about the gun violence, eh? And being 26th in the world for education? There’s not enough long walks to isolated sheilings containing a thousand haunted memories, if you ask me. Not enough bitter weeping and rampant alcoholism for a healthy society. All this have a nice day rubbish. It’s so fake. So insincere. Everything’s just surfaces, healthy, happy, tanned looking surfaces. Everything’s so nauseatingly well-meaning. God I can’t stand it.” At this point Mr. Morrison had to be led away sobbing uncontrollably.”

Katherine-Anice Bolton-Macleod 29 (stornoway) speaking with commas and semicolons and words like “indubitably”: “What’s been most of interest from an anthropological point of view - I’m studying the subject at St. Andrews, you see - has indubitably, for me, been watching the interactions between the two cultures; examining the expectations, the accommodations made vis-a-vis social mores etc. Just this morning at the golf-club breakfast buffet (sponsored by Pammy’s Pampered Pooches), we had a very interesting discussion about how to make a proper cup of tea. Mr. MacCuish had expressed some dismay about the fact that the Lapsang Souchong he had been served was “bloody horrible” and “so weak it was nearly a fortnight.” This led to some embarrassment on behalf of the Ojaiwegians but, after Mrs. macKenzie produced some Tetley’s teabags from her handbag for everyone to try, there followed an interesting exchange of ideas on the practice of adding milk, whether lemon with tea was “poofy” and what was the point of iced-tea, exactly. Fascinating. I think we all learnt a great deal.”

The Stornoway delegation are in town ’til after happy-hour on Thursday, whereupon they continue on to Las Vegas.