Tomorrow brings with it the delights of boarding a plane with two three-year-olds and a husband who has the waiting-in-the-queue patience of a spooked colt who with haemhorroids but no readily available soothing balms.

The trouble usually starts at check-in: Mr. Z starts tossing his head back with a foam-flecked mouth and showing us the whites of his eyes, half stampeding at the imminent prospect of being enclosed with people he doesn’t know, and is sure he doesn’t like. By the time the clerk asks us if we’ve packed our own bags, no amount of nose-patting or sugar-cube proffering will calm him down. At this point, only an electric cattle-prod and bribery with Outback Steakhouse vouchers will get him to the gate.

Thence, onto the waiting area where we will wait for far too long because I have insisted we get there way too early ‘cos of LA traffic (we live some 80 miles to the north of LA). Mr. Z will calm a little when I give him his nose-bag and put on his blinkers, and will snuffle contentedly in the electronics’ shops until take-off time. I will buy him a computer magazine of some sort and try to reassure him that we will be there soon.

All my mollification will be for nought, though, as they call the row numbers and people, who have no obvious physical handicaps and no under-fives with them, barge their way onto the plane without challenge from the person who attends to such things, and whose proper title I can’t recall right now – sometimes they are very dopey-looking, sometimes not. Once aboard, these bargers-on will remain standing in the aisle of the plane, blocking the way for the people who are trying to get to get to rows 10 through 40, each trying to stuff a small Bedouin campsite, with camels, into an overhead locker.

The biggest challenge of the journey will not come until we are seated and restrained inside the fuselage. It will be a test of a wife and mother’s patience, creativity and grim determination to ensure we don’t get thrown off, before we even leave the gate, for passenger-alarming animalistic squawks and grunts of one sort or another; and then to ensure Mr. Z doesn’t throw cups or make faces at the other travellers.

The lulling sound of the engines usually calms him and he will nod off but, sometimes, I have to use the 6″ hypodermic and some purple stuff to get him to be still for the duration of the flight.

We will then fly. Mr. Z will sleep, for a time, often in a seat far away from the girls and me, so as to disown us if any of us misbehaves and annoys our fellow passengers. Beverages will come and we will spill them. Mummy will take the girls to the toilet, twice each, and eye every surface en route and en-WC with germ-seeking laser-vision and a large pump-action bottle of alcohol hand-cleaning gel stuff. 4 and a half hours will pass.

We will get there. Mr. Z will awaken refreshed and looking like a mere fresh-faced boy and say, “Well that was a good flight, wasn’t it?” I will nod, absent-mindedly picking pieces of play-dough from my hair and putting 4 … no 6 … no 8 wee arms into their jackets – Wait! How many children do I have? “Will you please keep your jackets ON, before mummy tears her hair out and has to be removed by security for profanity in front of minors?”

Actually, the girls are pretty good on planes, for their age. Mr. Z, although I love him dearly and forever, is not good on planes, for his age, or anyone else’s.

*

I’m going to see if I can pack Wocky, my lap-top in our hand-luggage so I can keep on-line in Minnesota but, if not, PCB’ll be quiet ’til then. We’re meant to get back Tuesday lunch-time but, if we’re not too tired, we might go to trivia-night down at the bar so the next post might not be ’til Wednesday. Have a good weekend y’all!

*

If you’ve read this post before I corrected the horrible grammar and typos, but are back to see if your eyes were right, and you did just in fact read the worst piece of blogging you’d seen in a while, well you were wrong. Your eyes were fibbing and the post is grammatically correct and typo free, I think. Now.

I was having a bit of a sit down this morning. I was still in my pyjamas and was greeting the dawn in my usual way of muttering “Top of the dawn to you, Lord Morning, you cheerful git. You could have phoned to say you were coming early, and don’t pull that ‘lengthening days of Spring’ crap on me because I’m not in the mood for it, now I’ve been reminded we lose an hour of sleep/productive insomnia this weekend on account of it.”

So me and The Dawn were just chatting with him mostly saying “tweet” and “sparkle” and “promise of a whole new day” type stuff and me being a sleepy ingrate, when I saw an ant weaving a complicated path across my foot. I watched it for a bit as it went round my ankle a few times, as if searching for a lost pair of spectacles or something and, gradually, it dawned on me that I couldn’t feel a thing.

I panicked immediately, of course. What was wrong with the nerves in my leg? With all that scampering about, the ant must be traversing at least a few nerve endings. Why couldn’t I feel him and them? Was he an unusual kind of goat-like mountain ant with deft and remarkable footwork which allowed him to place his 6 tiny feet exactly where my nerves wouldn’t detect him and cause me to brush him off. No, stupid girl. They don’t exist. There can be no other explanation other than I have woken up with some horrible disease which is attacking the nerves in my legs and causing them to be numb. This was clearly the case, but I am a very scientifically minded problem-child-bride and so I very carefully moved my hand down in a footwards direction to test my numb-leg theory. I felt it, the troublesome ant was banished to the carpet and all was fine again.

The world is divided many ways, obviously, but one of them seems to be between those that think nothing will bad happen to them and those that just assume something bad will. I am one of the latter and don’t consider myself to have any special immunity against anything really, except maybe wild literary success and mass adulation for getting us all ‘to somehow get along’ using only two metaphors, an eggwhisk and the ability to change two pooey nappies at one time, one hand each. At this point the nappy thing is one of my few remaining marketable skills, having been out of the workplace now for these several years with the girls.

Normally my hypochondria is reserved for my children but human mortality looked us all in the eye last night at quiz night, when we learned that, of the 8 of us, three close friends’ of friends, one under 60, one under 50 and one under 40 had all died in the last week. Makes you think a bit, that does.

None of us really needs bad news to ponder on death and mortality but, all the same, after the fleet-footed wee ant this morning, and my over-reaction to him, I vowed to be a little kinder to Lord Morning when he comes a-calling, ‘cos I’m lucky he does an’ stuff, and I pledged only to call him a git from time to time. Although these bloody cheepy birds are just asking for a ten gauge shot-gun on some of these dawns.

I live in America where we suffer from selective narcissism of the taste buds. We will happily gobble down anything served to us on a bun, but must each have a wholly personalised recipe for our ideal coffee:

“Chilled double latte with 50/50 steamed soy milk and 2%, a shot of almond, a sprinkle of cinnamon and chocolate, and 2 sachets of Splenda sweetener, NOT Equal. Easy on the foam.”

“Triple espresso with nutmeg, and a shot of 73% chocolate. Make it snappy and make it strong, people. I am terribly important and I want my coffee sharp and bitter just like me.”

Coffee seems to have become a way of communicating subtle information about ourselves that we’d like others to see and marvel at. “Why, he drinks soy milk and a subtle organic Colombian roast! He is clearly a sensitive man with a fine ecological outlook and who probably writes a good deal of poetry when not purchasing hemp clothing. I think I may fancy him for his coffee choice, despite his being 300lbs, wearing a NASCAR hat and sporting a confederate flag on his tee shirt.”

Fine, it’s all good, each to their own and no real harm done etc. But me, a mere instant coffee drinker and orderer of “your daily roast please, black” does tend to be looked upon with some disdain. “You mean you don’t have a coffee identity as unique as your fingerprint? Good God, woman! where are you from, the Outer Hebrides of Scotland?”

This rantlet, was sparked by having a friend pop round yesterday and my being embarrassed to not be able to offer her any ‘proper’ coffee. My husband is a coffeenista and has a stonking great industrial looking machine for his morning cup of joe, and no doubt my friend wondered why I didn’t just offer her some proper coffee from that. But I’m banned from it, see, following a rather nasty scalding milk splattering incident and failure to clean a nozzle correctly afterwards. A fact, that quite frankly made me laugh, nay roar, at the merry irony of that statement. I am Mrs. Finicky Corner-Cleaner in the kitchen (not as worried about the sitting room etc, but the kitchen must be clean at all times, it eez Prahblem-Kinder-Fraus’ ordahr, ya!) and it’s fair to say Dave is not Mrs. Anything especially Finicky Corner-Cleaner.

My friend, of yesterday coffee, is American and didn’t seem too bothered; she had tea and didn’t try and push the “My God, how can you drink that instant dishwater” thing. I can hold my own though and have done in the past with her husband, who is British, and seems to be into the coffee thing, protecting his taste buds valiantly and vocally from my barbarian instant-coffee attack. I think Britain is becoming more coffee-savvy as every time I go back I see more and more smoked glass and tubular steel type coffee bars have sprung up.

The line between sophisticated coffee and mere milkshake is being blurred though. Some of these morning jolts have upwards of 500 calories and as much sugar as ice-cream. If you don’t get the jolt today, you’ll surely get it one of these mornings from the heart attack.

In the end I always like the sip of whatever Dave orders, but am just too lazy to find my own coffee fingerprint, given the hundreds of combinations you’d need to try to discover it. I think, too, it’s a wee bit narcissistic of our taste-buds to demand such solicitous attention early in the morning.

Coffee’s not the only thing you can now pamper your epicurean tongue with. For the discerning, there is an hierarchy amongst salts. The coarseness of sea-salt is an important consideration, as is the relative bitterness of Kosher salt. That’s fine too, but I can’t help feeling that in our bloated West we get carried away sometimes and forget that a large part of the world lives on far less than 2000 calories a day and couldn’t care less what their food tastes like as long as they get some.

I understand we ought not feel guilty about every last thing we’re lucky enough to be able to do. I know I’m suffering from a cheesy, hypocritical (I have Nike stuff and eat Nestle stuff) Western white-person’s guilt for our exclusionary, unfair trade practices and our abominable histories of repression, but guilt is there this morning, and I don’t know what to do with it except write a curmudgeonly wee essay about narcisism of the taste-buds and maybe buy some Fair trade chocolate. Hope I haven’t spoiled anyone’s coffee. Just felt like a bit of “And another thing, whyowhy …” self-righteousness this morning. There might also be a jigger of unpleasant defensiveness about my provincialism in there too; it’s possible.

Apropos of nothing, I’m off to make an apple-crumble.

When I was an adolescent, full of piss and fury and angst and oooh lots of things, I used to write like this:

“I think I might be in love with *******. But what does it mean to truly love somebody? Am I even capable of love? There are so many questions ...” I would trail off into elipses whenever I could to suggest the hopeless open-endedness of it all. Real back of hand to forehead stuff.

I’d continue: “Does he love me? What did he really mean when he said he had to go, that he’d heard the beeps and his money was running out?”

At this point I would usually sigh, gaze off out into the middle-distance, beyond my be-raindropped window, perhaps absent-mindedly picking at a spot. Then, I’d pick up my pen and begin my exploration of these questions using phrases such as “joining of two souls“, “adrift in a sea of commercialised saccharin” “truth through wine“, and “hot and sticky“.

Actually, when I was an adolescent, truth usually came not through wine but through Diamond White cider. Or Diamond Blush if we could get it. But adolescence is no time for perfect truth, anyway. At that inflamed stage of life, we can barely get up to greet the cold light of day, far less look at ourselves in it. We insist on, nay demand the truth from others but wrap up our own in so much bad poetry, attitude and cheap cider that what our ideas make up for in enthusiasm, they lack in nuance. Besides, so much of our waking hours are spent pondering questions like those above.

Although we aspire (how we aspire!) to nuance with the music we listen to and the books we read, somehow the teenage years are the most black and white of our lives; alternately blackly bleak and brighly white but not as sharply delineated or barcodeish as that sounds. Something barcoded knows what it is, cos the barcode tells it. Teenagers are all clumsy, unidentifiable smudges on the page. Which annoys their parents no end, if that happened to be the page they were saving to read later.

We sustain black bruises to our egos and sensibilities at that super-bruisable age, which if we’re lucky will have faded by our mid-20s, but the world is full of people who never really got over high school. Some never get over how golden it was, and others, how tarnished. These are the extremes and most of us are in between. I came out from under the parasol/umbrella (it was a bit of both for me) shadow of adolescence about 25 or so when I stopped looking to school or uni as frames of reference.

I felt gloomy when I hit 30 which seemed impossible. (What?…How?…I’m 30 already?) But my 30’s have proven to be some of my most mentally and, I guess, intellectually satisfying since childhood, and most emotionally satisfying, full stop. Less edgy, jumpy and ragged altogether. Maybe it’s the medication, maybe it’s what happens with a bit more maturity and years under the belt, maybe it’s parenthood or something, I don’t really know and am not eager to poke for reasons really. But I’m 32 this year and am looking forward to the rest of the thirties much more than I miss my twenties, despite having to pay more attention to the “will erase fine line” parts of the skin cream ads. As well as the “good for occasionally spotty people” part.

I seemed to have wandered with the topic again. Ah well, so she blogged it, so shall it post. Sometimes I edit like a Russian babushka nursing a grudge and wielding her scythe through whole paragraphs. Tonight though, I didn’t even feel like posting but did it for the discipline (I’d make a terrific nun, apart from all the sinning). But I just don’t feel like reigning the topic back in tonight. Maybe I will tomorrow.

Anyway, I don’t write like adolescent problem-child-bride any more. Or maybe I do and just can’t tell. What does it mean to “be a writer” anyway? Am I even capable of writing? There are so few answers…

********
The firstpart of this post was brought to you by a glass of Pinot Grigio and the Dire Straits “Brothers In Arms” album, which I fancied, for some reason, tonight and sparked the thoughts of adolescence. Now, Leonard Cohen has danced me to the end of love and the thought.

Night night.

Another Tuesday, and another chance to claim a stunning defeat at quiz night. Rounds 1, 2 and 3 were woeful and things were not looking good at all for Team Us as we limped into the 4th. But, showing the grit of a drained coffee cup, and the the backbone of invertebrates we rallied and carried the final round,(!) winning us some mighty fine tropical fruit Beverages (that’s capital B, to show that they were of a grown-up nature).

And it was John’s birthday too. (John of Fang http://problemchildbride.com/blog/?p=37) That meant the compulsory (we’re despotic when it comes to serving ourselves) purchase of red drinks for him (Arsenal supporter) and beer for the rest of us. I met some new people and it was all good fun as you may be able to tell if I’ve committed any typos so far.

But so far is all I’ll go tonight (said the actress to the bishop. Bwahahaha). I have a little blue pill (indeed!) and it is designed to put me to sleep. I have a Crunchie bar too and I’m not afraid to use it. On guard, internet! But another time for the Crunchie bar. My competition is spent for the night and this problem-child-bride (I can’t speak for the others) is headed for Nod.

Right.

Night, night.

“The familiar ribbon of the sticker feed snaked into the cab and wiggled in testimony to the fact that Gail was busily applying the ?Do Not Attempt To Grow Marijuana In Glove Compartment? decals in my stead.”

“As meaningless as I found the job, the warm camaraderie found in the tight confines of an all American truck chassis made it bearable.”

“… her good eye rammed into my soul as her lazy eye lolled about, quite possibly looking at my ID badge.

If you like that collection of words in that order, go to http://safetinspector.blogspot.com/ to see the rest. It’s a great read by a guy called Mr. Safe Tinspector.

In a wee while I’m going to be practicing Doing Pictures, so this is it for a post today. And by practicing I mean learning from scratch by pulling from my pooter knowledge-base, the length and breadth of which is ridiculed by anyone who can find it to point and laugh at.

I’m not very good at Doing Pictures and apparently Wordpress has a few wee laser-beam trip-wires for me to bend PCB through before it will work. So if you’re happening by, later today, don’t be surprised to see half a picture pop up and then disappear. Or odd images colliding and fusing. If, for example, you were to see pictures of a naked Trotskyite getting some cold and flu medicine from a Professor of Applied Bandages, or Jemima Puddle-Duck in drag nicking the fois-gras sandwiches from a Care Bears lunch-box at a pro-life rally, then rest assured, the Naked Trotskyite one was accidental.

I’ve got a flame-proof suit, a cup of tea and a shot of raw, blind optimism, and I’m ready for Doing Pictures.

Today’s post brought to you by the letters I and N, and E and P and T

The Prologue

I have a friend called Tom. Tom likes llamas. He has requested more llama-based posts. I think that by giving him what he wants, even with the best of intentions and the sincere hope that he will seek help for this very soon, I may be guilty of being an ‘enabler‘.

I fear I only made it worse when I threw him a story with ducks and stuff in my last post, just to try to take the edge off his terrible cravings. But, like an animal, he devoured the ducks and with blood still running down his chin, and the occasional spitting out of a feather, he was back in the comment box. It had just made him beg for more.

Here, then, is the story of ‘The Llama and The Damage Done’. (It is rated PG by the Motionless Pictureless* Blogs Society of America. Reader discretion is advised)

Story of A Sick Man

Tom’s is a classic tale which began innocently enough. First it was just a few holiday snaps of a sheep; Carol he’d called her. But Tom saw something others didn’t, something bewitchingly inane in her gormless gaze, the alluring way she chewed her buttercups.

Well from then on, it was the usual sad, sordid story of a life becoming slowly unravelled. He subscribed to both ‘Animal Husbandry’ and ‘Know Your Llama’ magazines. He got involved in a few internet llama chat-rooms and was eventually arrested for stalking one particular model llama (name withheld by request) living in the better part of Chelsea. His friends and family were, naturally, very shocked and, when the press got a hold of it, he lost his well-paying job as a computer whiz-fellow-me-type. With the loss of a daily routine and the responsibilities of a job, Tom’s life began to spin out of control.

Right now, he is living alone in a bedsit in Wopping; his long-suffering, gentle wife Gina, just couldn’t take the lies and the deception any more. His sick, disgusting depravity repelled her. Night after night he would come home with dried peanut dribble on his collar and try to pretend he just “had a llot on” what with the job-hunting, or he’d just been “out with the llamas lads – God, woman, lighten up would you, I can’t breathe, give me some damned space!”

He began going to secret Welsh evening-classes just to learn lots of words with double lls. Things came to a head when Gina confronted him, one night, with a misplaced irregular verbs test, and his shame was complete. He sobbed for a while in her arms and said he was sorry, but the llamas were calling him and their call was just too strong. Then packing up a few things, he walked out into the night, his last thread to the normal world broken and flapping behind him as he walked down the garden path, on his way to the hairier peep-shows of Soho.

Incidentally, he’d done quite well on the verb test. He may be an inveterate sicko and a sinister menace to herbivores everywhere but, he’s pretty sharp. At least he was. I bet I’d barely recognize Tom any more. Friends have told me that they’ve seen him wondering the streets at all hours of the day and night, now fully bearded and smelly, muttering “Furry, where are you my pretty furry ?”

I don’t believe he’ll stop at llamas; these things can only get worse, they say, as the cravings get harder to satisfy. I really think that now he’s on the slippery slope to under-age camelophillia (camels, on account of their ridiculous immaturity don’t reach the age of consent ’til they’re 40 and most of them only live ’til they’re 42 at best). He may be irretreivably lost to us soon if there isn’t an intervention. (I saw it on Dr. Phil, and Oprah has some excellent things to say on the subject too).

I know that what I’m about to do will, at best, only enmire him more in his desperate swamp of addiction but, people, I don’t have a heart of stone! I’ll be seeing him on 3 different trips to Britain in the coming months and, if I don’t do this, I just won’t be able to stand the hurt and accusation in his eyes. You were once a friend PCB, I thought I could rely on you. You’d do the same, you know you would.

If he even survives this, the last hit, I will give him, I swear, I will take him to a clinic somewhere far from any tempting children’s petting zoos and sit with him through the withdrawal and the dreadful nightmares until he gets better. But, it may just be a mercy, in the end, if he were to overdose on the Grade A Columbian llama-fest I’m about to give him, and go happily to be with the llamas beyond the veil. You wouldn’t keep a dog in the state Tom is in.

And so, keeping that thought firmly in mind, I set out, trawling the seedier corners of the internet with my collar up and the grim determination of a problem-child-bride who has made up her mind. I managed to find this. Here: http://www.frolic.org/

Ye Gods! The things I saw, that dark and rainy night. The experience still makes my skin crawl. Llamas and humans alike rolling in the gutters in their own vomit, their own do-do. Saggy-uddered old slapper-llamas, draped in doorways with cigarettes in one hoof and bottles of Mad-Dog in the other, mascara running and lipstick smudged. Sad fish-stockinged charicatures of their former selves living out their last days on llama skid row. Somebody’s mother, somellamas children drawn to that life like children to books with the word ’snot’ in them.

So, here goes Tom, old friend. This ones for you. You will find your sweet oblivion here at http://www.frolic.org/

For the curious, be careful and remember the lesson of Tom. The following is an excerpt of Llama wisdom from that very site designed to tempt you and draw you in, cult-like. It may look innocent and even sensible at first but check out the second last line. That’s where their real agenda’s at. Look, but don’t inhale.

“The Grand Master Llama speaks out on:
Frolicking

“To frolic, as a llama would, is to live.”

“You don’t learn to frolic, you release the frolic within.”

“They may say you cannot frolic. They may scorn you for frolicking in public places. I say, frolic by example, and others will follow suit.”

“Life is short. Frolic hard.”

“Don’t frolic in the wet spots.”

“We all frolic in the end.”

Peanuts

“Spit peanuts only at those you hate, or those you love.”

“Licking salt is no substitute for a good macadamia.”

Responsibility

“Control your frolicking, or your frolicking will control you.”

“Just because llamas don’t clean up after themselves doesn’t make it right.”

“Don’t lick something unless you really mean it.”

Procrastination

“Don’t just stand there, frolic!”

Love

“Always leave the doors to frolicking open.”

“Frolic slyly and they shall come to you.”

“Don’t bite off more than you can chew, or you will look like a silly llama.” ”

*Can’t do pictures yet but the Magnificent Gordon will be on the case soon and ,sometime in April, picures there will be.

I got tagged to do this meme (results in the last post) by a friend called Boob Pencil. Seriously, her real name IS Boob Pencil.

Her parents were keen ornithologists for whom the boob was the acme of avian life on earth. Her mum, a flighty girl called Titania Bosom (oddly, she never had a nickname), first met Mr. Richard Pencil in a reedy marsh in Norfolk one early morning as they were both out birding. Thinking they were each alone on the marsh that morning, they were startled as they came upon each other amongst the tall reeds.

“Quack” said Richard, and then the duck-caller fell from his mouth as his jaw dropped open and he beheld the woman he knew he had to marry. By God, she was a beauty!

Titania was impressed by his fine Roman nose, piercing blue eyes, and the tweediness of his deer-stalker. The over-all impression was of an eagle. He’s no booby, obviously, she thought to herself but, still, there was something about this … this … Richard Pencil. She’d noticed his name spelt out in tiny RSPB stickers on the Postman Pat lunch-box he carried.

That was the moment, standing there, in the shallow water, her feet sinking further into the mud underneath, that the water topped her wellie-boots, and she lost her composure, balance, but nothing else (for the moment anyway).

“Eek!” she squeaked, helicoptering her arms as she fell into the nippy Norfolk broad (not the LAST time someone fell into a nippy Norfolk broad that day, if you know what I mean. But I’m getting ahead of myself).

“Erm“, he said.

“Could you just …? she asked.

“Certainly,” he said.

And so he did. He carried her to higher, drier ground. Together, they examined the damage done to her precious copy of “The Field Guide to the Birds of the Southeast“. It was, of course, soggy and ruined, along with the numerous pen and ink drawings and notes on marsh fowl she had spent so many meticulous hours drawing, and had tucked, so lovingly, into the pages of The Guide. She wept when she saw it, and Richard did too because, to serious birders (Richard was a very serious birder – maybe the most serious)The Guide was the very last word in Southeastern British ornithology; it was out of print now, and getting harder and harder to find every year.

Surprised by his weeping, which was growing louder and, to be honest, a bit embarrassing, she fell silent and watched as he tore at his hair and cried “Why? Why did it have to happen? Oh God! The senseless waste!”

She looked at him and in that magic moment in which kindred spirits connect, she knew that here, here was a man who truly GOT birds, and obviously liked the feathery sort too.

Oh, it was a wild and crazy notion, she knew, but she thought she saw how she could be happy. None of the boys at uni. understood, or cared, about birding. This was her chance to have it all. Love and a satisfying hobby that keeps you trim! Now, she thought with an inward smile, now, not only her wellie-boots, but her cup runneth over. She kissed him.

And right there, on a marsh in Norfolk, Boob Pencil was conceived, and the rest, as they say, is history.

OK then, on with the meme (see the post above for how this came about).

1. Briefly describe an aspect of your life for which ‘The Dying Of Delight’ would be an apt title.

I think, for me, being a bipolar bear n’stuff, the expected response would be – that time in the hospital – Or that time at uni – Or even, that time I bought all that wierd stuff I thought we really needed on ebay, in a looney week (manic episodes or mixed states aren’t always fun and sometimes expensive – never mind the ‘Dying of Delight’, the Dying of DeDave was more apposite, when he saw the multicoloured golf shoes a la ‘A Clockwork Orange’, arrive to a household where nobody plays golf). Or something along those lines but, really, I can’t remember much about a high or a low for long, once they’re over, what with time and modern medicine working the little miracles they do.

Nope, “The Dying of Delight“, makes me think of nothing so much as the 5th of January, or the 12th day of Christmas when all the decorations come down and the season’s over and it’s all over. I’m a real sucker for Christmas and, when the tree and lights come down, I get blue for a few days ‘cos everything looks much barer and less inviting than it did before they went up.

2. Pick another book whose title has some resonance in your life, and write a little about it.

Lets have a think. The one that springs to mind is “Last Orders” (by Graham Swift). Or perhaps “Dispatches From the Tenth Circle” (by The Onion). I could say “The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-Time” but nobody would believe me. But I’m being facetious and I don’t think that’s what’s required here. “Naked” (David Sedaris) is how I feel being asked this question, but I guess dosn’t have resonance or relevance in my whole life. I think “How To Be Good” (Nick Hornby) probably has resonanace in most of our lives.

But, in the end, the one with the most resonance for me is probably “The Human Stain” (Philip Roth). It’s the kind of book where it’s not obvious where the title comes from, and that makes you pay attention to it more.

It covers many things: the desire to make some sort of a mark in the world; the messy business of living; the irregularity of people; The organic way we enter life and leave it. The emotional and physical stains of a human birth or death. And, in between these two events, how all we humans are flawed but all also natural; and by extension, the idea that everything, cars, nylon, art, no matter how stylized, are all the product of we humans and might, therefore, be arguably natural too. The oozings and secretions of the minds that thought up the combustion engine make the car a human stain; chemicals are human stains, products of tools and thought. As we are natural and subject to nature, the artifacts we make with the tools we’ve learnt to use – the chemicals we use, the buildings we put up etc. – may be said to be natural human stains. That doesn’t make all that stuff good necessarily, much of it’s filthy. It’s just natural because it all came from humans.

To accept that, you have to accept the idea that all humans are natural. Which I do. I don’t think there is any such thing as an unnatural act; unusual, unique even, but not unnatural. We’re just all on a scale somewhere between, lets say, Ghandi and Jeffrey Dahmer. Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t dropped from the sky into nature, he came from it. He was a bad man, but he was born, aberrated, straying wildly from nature, but not so much as to pop outside of it. If we believe that then we also have to believe that, on the other end of the scale, an extremely good man, the Dalai Lama for example, is outside of nature too.

I think the scale itself is a kind of stain. All the scales – the scale for how artistic, how kind, how argumentative, how jealous etc. people are – are kind of sparsely populated on the ends and consequently the stain there is light. And where most of us are on most of the scales, in the middle, it is denser – a darker stain, spreading out from the centre.

These are all just ideas which i’m not claiming are right, but that wasn’t the question, Clare asked. Since I first saw the title, “The Human Stain” I have found it has added a useful metaphor for me to think about stuff. The idea of the human stain, and the many interpretations it lends itself to, has informed a lot of my opinions. It’s had resonance in my life.
3. Write one more short personal piece – one which matches the book title chosen (in part 2) by the person who tagged you.

“The Lovely Bones“, was Clare’s choice. Mine aren’t lovely, they’re rubbish. I’d broken 4 by the time I was 21.

Also, you can see mine because I’m a bit of an underfed problem-child-bride. I beg Dave for food every day, but his heart is stony; he likes his child-brides bony. Actually, I just forget to eat from time to time. I feed my children nearly every day (see here: http://problemchildbride.com/blog/?p=20 ) but sometimes just get busy and forget to feed myself. Plus I come from a tending-to-the-skinny family.

4. Take your favourite little-known book and plug it to your readers. Authors need incomes, and word of mouth is one of the best ways to sell books.

Here is a little-known book written by a very smart and funny Mancunian woman. It is called “The Dying of Delight“. I got it in the mail yesterday and will be starting it tonight when I finish this. When I’m done with it, I’ll write a proper review here, but Clare’s a great writer with a sparky imagination and a sparkling writing style., so I’m anticipatinghaving good things to say! I’ve been wanting to read it since I learned she’d written one.
5. Sit back and marvel at the magnificence of this meme. It was brought to you by an out-of-breath author, reduced (on account of her publisher* having expired) to trundling copies of her book across the internet on a rusty old trolley with one wheel missing, sweating and shouting “Buy me book, Gov?” Now visit www.TheDyingOfDelight.co.uk and see if you’d like a copy for yourself.

OK.
6. Tag five people with this meme.
*Diva Books, ceased trading Feb ‘06. RIP.

Will do that later. It’s post, then feed-the-cat-and-go-to-bed time for me.

It is an hour, wee and small. But past the witching hours and now firmly into the bitching hours: “Whyohwhyohwhyohwhy can’t I sleep etc?”

Trouble has woken me up by purring sweet little nothings into my ear, which would be sweet, apart from the concommitant drool. She’s getting on a bit but clearly enjoying these middle years, I think. There’s nothing she enjoys more than a bit of early morning impishness (“snicker” – The Cat) and waking me – legendary insomniac in my own nap-time – up, totally and irreversibly. Perhaps for ever. I’m not joking about the insomnia; why do you think I blog so much?

It’s freezing. Off to try and institute some housal-warming and get us out of this permafrost Dave likes to keep us all semi-mummified in.

Back now, with a warming beverage and a high-fibre cereal.

I have been banished upstairs to the spare-room, you see, because of the insomnia, or so Dave thinks, but actually it is a self-imposed exile because of his snoring. We’re hopelessly incompatible, you see. But, as my granny always taught me: let the man think it’s his idea. And thus, one rainy afternoon, baking with Granny in her warm kitchen and thigh deep in jam tarts, I learnt my first Womanly Wile.

But, here, night after night, Wocky (my laptop) and I are developing, well … feelings, for each other (furious blush). As I gaze into his pixels, I know that he will take me skipping to the mountain-top and show me the other side. He will show me the world. And I will be a good owner and never let his battery run out.

*

Last night was Team Trivia Tuesday at the local bar, and we carried the night; the first half, at any rate. When we win a round we get free shots, which means a good overall lead has to be established early on, in order to win overall. This is because by the later rounds we can only win if the topics are things like Synchronised Team Dribbling 2004-2006) with questions like “Who, in a memorable lurch towards the bathroom in June of ‘05, hilariously stumbled over a bar-stool, ricocheted off several paying customers, scoring 5 points for each, and, executing a beautiful, almost ballet-like spin and double toe-loop, which will live forever in the minds of the spectators, scored the bathroom clean, without bumping off the door-frame, or anything? Bonus point if you can say if it was the correct bathroom for his or her sex. Extra bonus point if you can still say anything at all, at this point.”

*

Moving on to the Romanians, then. What? You were expecting coherence, were yo?. A post with a point? Ohnononono. You’ve got the wrong site. Move along, please. There’s nothing for you here, today. On account of the wee hour thing.

Anyway, the Romanians. I’ve been following a conversation about Germans over at Dies Irae:(http://diesirae.blogspot.com/) when latterly, Mr Ivan Terrible asked the following:

Ivan the Terrible said…
Well, the Rumanians are still trying to domesticate the dog. But they beat Hungary anyway.And another thing – why can’t they make their mind up how to spell their country’s name? Is it Rumania, Romania or even Roumania? I’ve seen them all…

Well (modest cough), I think, as a housewife of some experience, I can help clear that up, Mr. Terrible: It is one of these words, like ’schadenfreude’ in German, which has no corresponding words in other languages, other than to highlight something unsettling about one’s national character.

“Roumania” is that high you get from making vast quantities of perfect cheese sauce*. It is an example of a “High Romanian” word. It’s corresponding “Low Romanian and hinterland” word is Roumelancholia and is characterized by almost no sauce-making at all, white, cheese or bechamel. You have to have medicaton for it to start saucing at regular levels again, but in some ways the Roumania can be worse. That can be isolating and exhausting and the cost of the flour alone is often prohibitive. It is not to be confused with ‘rheumatism’, which is an inflammation, or burning of the cheese sauce.

Don’t feel you have to thank me, though, Mr. Terrible. I’m just glad to be able to help.

I’m feeling really sleepy again, and my eyes are closing as I type, so off to try to wink 40 times.

*The ‘roux’ (ph: roo) being the butter and flour pasty blob that you add the milk etc. to.

Here is why I love Blogland:

A big part of the fun of Blogland is reading other blogs and being able to comment and sorta, kinda ‘chat’ with other people. Enter the fray, at any rate. Tonight, I was feeling garrulous so commented copiously.

On any one night (this was tonight’s) you can find yourself saying, in the comment boxes of others things such as this:

“The Brangelina bump might turn out to be either the most wondrous example of physical beauty on the planet, or an appalling little barnacle that Angelina, bucking her own trend, will seek to have adopted immediately.”

But it’s not all meaningless trivia about the stars. Serious topics of discussion are fequent in Blogland:

“Can a person opt out of the social contract they were born into when the contractee is not performing as expected? Even when ‘bloody awful’ is what you more or less expected when Bush and the increasingly authoritarian Mr. Blair were re-elected? ”

In Blogland, one might be moved by a particularly touching post to confess dark and terrible secrets such as this:

“(Quietly) Erm, it might have been me. (Shuffling feet) It might have been me what sinned the most. Me or that nipple-pierced, belly-dancing, 300lb, bald Gypsy hermaphrodite and the camel it rode into Vegas on. It was one of the three of us.”

Modern liviing and culture is covered: Here, I was able to weigh in on a useful discussion on the merits and demerits of Sam’s Club and other bulk-buy warehouse stores:
“But most of all I love the awesome hugeness of it all. I, a small Outer Hebridonian, can only look around in wonder at this Cathedral of Consumerism. One finds one eyes are drawn UP by the collonaded, stacked garden furniture, until they rest, and can feast on the intricate filligree of the open duct-work. It is only in Sam’s Club that one is free to contemplate: How small is man in God’s great universe! How large a mega, multi-pack of cornflakes can one person reasonably require?”

I’ll leave it up to you to decide what this conversational offering was prompted by:

“I live in America where we don’t have French pubic lice. We have Freedom pubic lice.”

(Ahem).

On a similary hair-related topic elsewhere, the conversation went this-aways briefly:

“Hairiness is as hairiness does, is what I always say. That handy phrase can be used to effectively end almost any argument, I’ve found. (And I can be counted on to effectively split any infinitive).”

And, haunted all my life, as I have been, by this following question, I at last found the right forum and the appropriately knowledgable people to ask. There were grateful tears in my eyes as I was finally able, amongst trusted strangers, to posit:

“If a hairy woman is hirsute, can a hairy man be said, therefore, to be himsute?”

Occasionally, I have to ask for clarification about cultural references, because trying to keep up with popular culture in both the Us K and S is a challenge I can’t always meet .In this case I could not identify the ‘Scary Duck’ of which they spoke:

“That last Scary Duck bit has flown right over my head, just as the Scary Ducks in my Scary Duck dreams do, right before pooing on me. In horrifying slow motion the poo approaches me and I am paralysed, I cannot move my feet to run away; I?m enmired and balefully quacking in my Uggs. All I can see is the poo getting bigger and bigger and closer and closer and ?Aaaaaaaaagh!

You?re not referring to the same Scary Duck are you? That would be just too too creepy. (Shiver)”

Dreams and nightmares are shared in Blogland. Blogland itself is either one or the other and I don’t know which but, I’m addicted. Won’t someone set me free? No don’t! Yes do! No don’t!

Blogland: It will challenge your perceived notions about the known world. It will lift you high, it will bring you low. If you die, noone in Blogland will know. One day your posts will just end … You will laugh and cry and share jokes and happy times with complete and utter strangers.

I love it.

The Scene: The sitting room and kitchen, Casa Zahringer.

Those Present: Problem Child Bride, Dave, Jane, Kate and Trouble.

Part One

“Koala bears sleep for 22 hours a day” I told Dave, this morning. I had read that factoid somewhere, yesterday.

“Is that right?” he said.

“Yes, second only to sloths, apparantly”. We were quiet for a moment as we contemplated the laziness of koala bears.

“But they still always look really sleepy.” I said.

“Well that’s because they’ve just woken up.” said Dave.

I thought that was a good point.

“Giraffes only sleep for 2 hours a day and never for more than 20 minutes at a time”. I added, full of factoids this morning. “But they always look tired too.”

“Well that’s because they don’t get any sleep,” said Dave.

Also – I had to hand it to him – a very good point.

Part Two

I was talking to a friend last night who told me she’d been watching when her horse recently had 23 feet of intestine removed. (That’s almost 4 Dave’s-worth of colon, should anyone need a visual). It was a massive, long operration and most of the nurses and vets had to rotate shifts because it was such a physically exhausting task, wrestling with coils and coils of putrid gut. The horse, with innards outwards, almost completely filled the operating theatre such that there was hardly any room for the gum-boot wearing, gut-rot wading veterinary professionals.

Apparantly, the only man who lasted throughout the whole slimy man-versus-intestine struggle, was the smallest, slightest, notably most unbuff surgeon, and his endurance impressed my friend mightily. Removing 23 feet of horse gut is, clearly, all in the wrist.

I told Dave about it this morning.

He said “Hmm”.

Part Three

I looked out of the window.

“It’s raining on the other side of the road, but not here.” I told Dave, which was , indeed, the truth.

“Hmm” he said.

Part Four

I sat on the sofa.

“Dave,”

“Hmm?”

“I forgot to mention it earlier but I was approached by a Hollywood agent the other day with a million-to-one fantastic star-making opportunity. He watched me walking down the street, from a cafe and, apparantly, he liked my face and devil-may-care mien. Appaaaahrantly, he just knew that, in me, he had found a great star in the making. I am to play the late, great Princess Margaret in big-budget spectacular called “The Sauciest Gal in Windsor”. Of course, I’ll have to wear a wig, but we start filming tomorrow in Italy.” This was not the truth.

“Hmm,” he said.

Part Five

Kate and Jane and I were on the sofa chatting a short while later. Kate said “My dolly is foolish.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

Jane filled me in: “Because she swammed around and was looking for a fish snack,” she said.

“I think my dolly’s foolish and George (a teddy) told me he was going to Jostim’s house last night when everyone was sleeping and that my dolly swammed and looked for a fish snack. He told me.” said Kate.

Just then, a rumble from behind the newspaper on the other sofa and then, “Have you seen this?” Dave roared, nostrils flaring and disdainfully flicking the Sunday paper with the back of his hand. “Since 1990″ he read,” while median family income has risen 5.8%, the cost of a bachelor’s degree jumped 63% at public colleges!”

“Hmm”, said Kate.

Mouths of babes. Beautiful!

I am one of life’s winners! Well, that’s not, of course, strictly true. But I am one of life’s runners up, which I prefer to ‘losers’.
I won the Ventura County Reporter’s Old Country Lemonade Award for one of the 101-word short stories I wrote for their Fiction – 101 stories.

The stories of the gits, people that beat me can be found here:
http://www.vcreporter.com/article.php?id=3134&IssueNum=62

Here is mine:

In Praise of Quantity, In 101 Words

A warm, dusty breeze on the salt-bleached deck. Maisie and Bert, on a rocking chair, look out at the waves.

“I’ve always valued quantity over quality,? said Bert to Maisie.

“Hmm.”

“The ocean, toilet-paper, pebbles on the beach: all much better in bulk.?

“And love and hope,? said Maisie

“Eh?”

“No point in having one ounce of top-class hope once on a Tuesday when what’s needed is a wide, perhaps even threadbare, expanse of it to just get to next Tuesday. A daily shred will do. Same for love.”

“Yup.” said Bert, looking at her.

Sami Zahringer
I posted the others I entered here: http://problemchildbride.com/blog/?p=17 and here: http://problemchildbride.com/blog/?p=18 a while ago but never included the one above because I thought it was the absolute drivelling worst. I only entered it because it was a change of tone from the others.

Go, and as they say, figure!

Look over at my side bar ———-> It’s there again! By gum, so it is. Gordon Mclean who blogs at Informationally Overloaded (http://gordonmclean.co.uk/) has fixed my sidebar slippage! And my header and footer aren’t skeewhiff any more either.

With minimum fuss and quiet genius, he unknotted a problem that has plagued PCB for nigh on these last few weeks. Yip, nigh on.

In April, he is going to give me a blog-lift too. A little nip and tuck here, some enhancement there, and Problem Child Bride is going to be beach-blogging beautiful and able to wear the most daring of electronic bikinis.

If anyone is looking for a similar service, his site for that is http://www.onemandesigns.co.uk/ . He’s patient and friendly and doesn’t seem to mind doltish questions from a blithering idiot. He rocks.

All hail the Gordon!