Back in the Magnificent Days, on the Isle of Lewis, there lived a housewife called Lola who may or may not have been my great, great, great grandmother. (Great + great + great = magnificent, ergo the Magnificent Days. Look it up in Wikipedia; it’s right there.) At any rate, it was back in days of either yore or lore, one of the two; and if consonants should get mixed up occasionally through the mists of time? Well then, so be it. Yes, so be it.
(Smokes pipe thoughtfully, nodding.)

Lola MacLeod was a study in contrasts. One eye was brown, one blue. Her petticoats were of finest French silk yet she wore great man-boots and scanties made from Highland-cowhide from far-off Inverness. They itched and chafed something dreadful but that was as nought to a woman like her. She laughed at chafing – Hahahahaha! she thought. She mooned at itching, cackling wildly. Cackle! she thought.

She taught Sunday school but once tore out a man’s throat with her teeth for saying that silence is golden. She could win both the village best eggless-sponge and tractor-pulling competitions in the same day. She cried over sonnets and babies stillborn but, if there was a emergency outbreak of warts anywhere on the island, she could, without blink of either coloured eye, gore a passing rabbit with a spoon to harvest its wart-curing appendix juices. Lola was loved and feared in equal measure. She was also dumb as a post.

You see, Lola had never spoken a word since her husband, Wee Kenneth, had been lost at sea. Often the villagers would see her wandering out on the black sea-battered rocks to weep silently and alone, as the gulls skirled and screamed around her and occasionally did their business on her biannac.* The villagers would see her raise her arms in supplication as if to ask the world, the heaving, roaring sea, e’en God Himself: Why? Why? And sometimes she’d let the salt-tacked blast take the thin shawl from her thin shoulders to the same watery grave as Wee Kenneth’s – her own brave Coinneach Beag.** Then would mothers lead their children away saying, don’t look, darlings, you’re too young to know of breaking hearts. Come away now, come away!

All children loved her, and all animals, save for the rabbits. The children would follow her through the village and although she couldn’t speak to them if they misbehaved, she could still give them a good tongue-lashing with her much-feared Spaniard’s-tongue-on-a-walking-stick stick.

The story goes that a visiting Spanish Captain got a bit too Spanish with her one night at a ceilidh so she took a pair of pinking-shears and with a mute howl of fury (which she managed to convey silently with her terrible rolling eyes), she cut his tongue out. The Spaniard fell in love with her immediately, of course. He’d never met a woman with such fire before – but alas the poor wretch could no longer roll his rrrs in a sexy way and she was unimpressed with his gurgly cooing.

He sailed for home the next day with a starey, starry look in his eyes, sorrow in his heart and great gobs of blood and tongue-bits in his mouth. Lola was a fair woman though and in return for his tongue, she had given him some kippers and a lock of her hair (leg) according to The Law of The Book which mandated “an eye for an eye and some leg-hair for a tongue.”

And, do you know, to this day, in Southern Spain, the children still eat red frothing sherbert and smoked fish paella, and ritually shave a goat’s legs on the Feast Day of Great Lola of The North. Church bells ring and, for a moment, two great sea-faring nations are united again in lore. Or yore. One of the two.

So Lola’s fame spread far and wide and pretty soon kings and princes had heard of her wisdom, her half-savage bravery and her fierce loyalty to a dead husband. This really turned the kings and princes on and pretty soon they all wanted to marry her.

Mmm-hmm, oh yes. The Tales of Lola are great and many. Maybe one day I’ll tell a few.

((Sighs. Coughs. Puts out pipe. Filthy habit))

*biannac – sort of head-scarf or covering.

** Wee Kenneth

Fear stalked the aisles of the Ojai Save-U-Mart today. As I selected my preferred brand of cottage-cheese I could feel it watching me from over by the pears. Abhorrence blocked the bread aisle and, although the other shoppers appeared to be walking, they didn’t move their legs.

As I drove home, the clouds took on a malevolent aspect. Great ogres billowed and gaped, breathing down on me the breath of Heaven’s displeasure (which could benefit from a tictac.) I weaved on the road and, only just recovering, pulled over and turned the engine off.

Peril was in the bushes, and a rabbit openly loathed me. I cleared my throat. Trees muttered imprecations and telephone-poles laughed and pointed. (God knows, the telephone-armenians have their own problems.) Sinister gates swung open and shut where before there had been no gates, and I watched a raven turn snow white. I blinked hard and drove on.

As I reached my driveway, doubt crouched behind the dustbins and all the world turned sickly and yellow. Perspiration was entombing my body now, as I got into the house as quickly as I could, locking the door behind me.

I boiled the kettle and, with a trembling hand, poured myself a cup of dread. My breathing quickened. Shaking, my hand reached for the phone and I dialed.

I made the bloody dentist appointment.

A Rap Song For FMC

So I’s a-layin’ here pyootin’ wid my cat on my lap
Just chillin’ some, doin’ that fine Tootsie-pop rap
Cherry’s my flave, bro’, you better be’s knowin’ it
Sucking on the cherry bit, the tootsie bit, all gnawin’ it.

This new Grade-A Columbian sugar’s stronger, faster
Than granulated, powdered, cane, cube-cut or castor,
But the real beauty of the deal is jazzin’ them fool cops
Cos it’s smuggled in the chocolate bit of Cherry Tootsie-Pops!

I shot me a cop today, man, shot him up nasty
Cos he wouldn’t stop staring at my tootsie-pop ass, he
Took it in the teeth and the toe and in a nipple
His ‘nads are gone – I blew away his full damn triple.

I saw a young sistah suckin’ good on a lolly
Said “Wassup wid dat, girl? Y’all gone off yo dang trolley?
Don’t you know the Tootsie-Pop is where it’s at?
You never get no satisfaction lickin’ on that!

“Come wid me, wuhman, I’ll fix you up sweet
We’ll score some Tootsie-Pops, feel that Tootsie-Pop beat.
I got me some good contacts, (for ma eyes and my bizz-i-ness)
I know a mo-fo selling bliss and wild cherry dizziness.”

If you gonna make it in this f***ed-up city,
You gotta learn to show no fear, remorse; no pity.
Ojai, see, it’s mean and people need a little somethin’
To take the edge off, dull the pain, and keep dey ass ‘n’ tum thin

My mamma was a Snickers whore, my daddy pimped for Hershey’s
I only knew hurtin’ as a child o’ sugar-junkies:
Para-pher-nay-lee-yuh: dem wrappers sordid, sticky;
The shame of seeing ma mamma with a triple-chocolate hickey

But I learnt smart, uh-huh, and I learnt fast.
From the straight’n’sav’ry life I knew I’s born an outcast
I started out, way back, a fair-ground concessionary
And now I’m running lines of my own confectionary!

Oh and it is sweet, baby! Sugah’s been my story
Sure, I’m diabetic, and my teeth are black and gory;
But I know high places in the mind that squares can’t know
‘Cos they’re too scared and Cadbury’s as “hard-stuff” as they’ll go.

So I be layin’ here pyootin’ wid my cat on my lap
Man, just chillin’ some and doing that fine Tootsie-pop rap…
Oh yeah.
Got me some good tootsie-pop action goin’ on. Here comes the rush now, baby…!
(Slump. Dribble)

We had one – count it! – one rainy day recently. God obviously liked the choreography in my latest hall rain-dance.* I have to agree with God on that one – my jetes** were extrordinary, although I say it myself.

Fun activities for when it’s raining outside:

1. Play who can flare their nostrils the most with the children. We do this a lot * even when it’s not raining. There’s a big debate whether nostril union is a “purer” sport than nostril league but we don’t get involved in that. We play for hard soft currency (banana pennies) and for sheer love of the sport but noone is allowed to laugh because that shows weakness and destroys discipline and how will your kids ever get along in the world if they’re finding everything funny every 5 minutes? I waterboard them too. After I take all their banana pennies – to teach them Gritty Realities.

2. Count the ways in which you are personally lacking. That’s hilarious, that is. A right riot.

3. Put hair-rollers on in the middle of the afternoon and walk around calling “Meep meep. Hello Canada! Come in Canada! Meep.” Then pretend you’re picking up a return signal through the rollers. This will make your children think you have special powers and it is always good for children to think their parents as powerful as possible. You can receive any information you want in this rainy day activity: Margaret Atwood’s latest interview; the Canadian view on socialised medicine; people saying “aboot” (these loveable Canadians!); anything. The substance of the message is not important. What matters is that you deceive your children as thoroughly as you can.

4. Active loafing.

5. Eating macaroni and cheese made with extra-strong cheddar and black pepper.

* Look at me being all self-referential and stuff!! You can do that when you have a Body of Work like wot I have. A Bloggy Of Work.

** Tremendous balletic leaps.

It’s 5:06 am*. All is quiet except for a gentle moaning from me. There’s nothing much to feel today except blankness and hurtin’. It’s called the Wednesday feeling in our house, on account of our Tuesday nights playing trivia at the bar:

“Feeling a bit Wednesday, Sami?”

“Moan.”

‘Cos see, last night we scored free drinks at Trivia again. In addition, despite Sunday, and despite all my offal shrieking Noooo! at me in the background, I’d apparantly made up my mind I was thirsty again . At 32 I just can’t keep up the pace, people. Whereas 10 years ago I could call getting over-served twice in 4 days being on a roll, now my wretched body pleads, Please, I only wanted to be on a stroll!

If you’re under 25 you might not know about this what with still having young livers that can bounce pinkly back. (Damn you and your kind!)

It feels like my consciousness has been driven back into a wee corner while all the other brain parts are shut down for maintenance and repair. I feel like the blinking curser (sic) at the top left of the blank page. I know that somewhere out there on the dark page is my sense of humour, my joi de vivre, my ability to blink without having to concentrate, but I just can’t type my way down to them. I am Several Pixels Girl blinking inanely in the dark. The blue glow of my screen feels lovely and restful. I hope I don’t blink out altogether…

In other offal news, Problemchild 2 was running around the other day with two pink jackets pressed to her chest with her thumbs. She was yelling “Look at my lungs! Look at my lungs!” at the top of her voice, clearly in great glee over her cotton-mix lungs. Now what do you suppose that was all about?

Right, I’m off to use bad language and to try out some of your dubious remedies from the other day.

Love,

The Problem-Child-Lush.

* The wee one was up with bad dreams.

I need a remedy. Send me your best ones; this is very possibly a matter of life and death.

It’s too painful to go on. It hurts to type.

A group of UK bloggers have produced a book in one week from concept to publishing in a stunt for Comic Relief called A Shaggy Blog Story. The profits after manufacturing costs all go to Comic Relief and the book is on sale here. It is guaranteed to have some great stuff in it and it’s for a good cause so go buy it and relieve yourselves comically.

Then, pull up a chair and have yourself a Friday question, why don’t you. Here’s one: if you had to choose just one musician to listen to for the rest of your life, who would it be?

I’ve recently discovered my blog pals Bock, Kieran and Anna are all Leonard Cohen fans too. This made me feel oddly jealous: Wha’? What do you mean Leonard Cohen? He’s mine! He’s singing all that stuff to me, to me, (to me) ((to me)) (((to me))) *Echoes off around inside my cavernous head (head) ((head)) (((head)))*

I discovered him at around 11, in a cupboard, among my mother’s and uncle’s records. I asked him what he was doing in there at that time of night but he just smiled a mysterious smile and left the room heading for the ferry. I was hooked.

Nobody I knew liked him in school, if they’d even heard of him. When I tried to convert people they uttered hard words like “bleak” and “depressing” and “worra gloomy bastard.” This got me down but then I realised he was mine, all mine! Bwahahahaha! I got up from being down, turned that frown right upside down and then vomited at my own revolting cheerfulness.

But, for all these years since, I’ve kept Lenny close to my heart and, more crucially, my ears, like a silver secret. Until now, I discover other people (Phthoo to the other people! Phthoo!) know about him too. On some level, of course, I knew that other people, phthoo, would know and maybe even like him. But not to the extent that I do! My secret is smashed, rent asunder, torn from my breast! O waily, waily, he really is singing for The Other People too!

It was quite a shock, I’ll tell you. I took to my bed for a week, a day, a good twenty minutes and tried to deal with the blow. Little by little, and with the help of Oprah and some top-drawer gin, I’ve clawed my way into acceptance of this and as part of my recovery I am throwing open the floodgates of my bruised and scabby soul, and asking you whatever it was I asked up there.

?

Oh yes: Are there any other Leonard Cohen fans out there? And which one musician could you not live without for the rest of your life? You only get one, mind. Times are hard in the future; there’s been an apocalyptic disaster that fell short of being the actual Apocalypse but is still bad enough that the powers-that-be have allowed us each only one chicken and the complete recordings of out favourite artist/band to go out into the wilderness with.

Who do you take?

I took a morning lately when
The house was all my own, and then
I did a rain dance in the hall,
I pranced and waved my dusters all

Around my feathered, painted noggin;
I called the Spirits down to login
To the universal code
To tinker with the Weather Mode.

But alack, awaily and alas
The code is writ in C++!
I do not speak that language well
- Or e’en at all if truth be tell.

I took my plight direct to Source
(Who is God the Big, of course.)
A little housewife, meek and pleading,
I found God at His fire, reading

Dorothy Parker with a grin
(He hid the book when I came in.)
“Great God,” said I, not bold but shaking
“We need some rain, So Cal* is baking!

“I’ve tried to go through proper channels
But every weather-techno-angel’s
Snowed under working MidWest storms -
Their “out-of-office” mail informs.

“I tried to call on Injun spirits
And mess with MotherEarthBoard circuits,
Yet not a drop on us has fallen
To green the grass or seed the pollen.

“I miss the green and fresh of home;
Damp moss, dark, fertile, leafy loam.
My skin is itchy, th’air is stale;
I yearn for wild Atlantic gale!

“The town’s below its annual inchage
- For rain that is – our rivers’ shrinkage
Mean all’s still sere and dust and brown.
Wait! God? is that a Heffner gown?

“Islay Scotch? Cigars from Cuba?
Travel brochures for Aruba?
God, man, you’ve got to concentrate!
You can’t your duties abdicate!

“It’s March now, and just six wee inches!
(But that’s another of my bitches)
We need some rain on Ojai plain,
Dripping leaf and gurgling drain

“I pray! I go to PC chapel!
But think I’ll have to move to Apple.
You’ve made the world so damn PC,
The system’s broke with double-speak;

“You cannot say what’s on your tongue;
Fresh, green thought is up and gone.
But Apple see, they’re on their game;
They’d have us rained upon again.

“God, dude, you’ve run PC amok,
Our land is going into dry-shock!
Reboot, recode, do what you needta
Or I’ll report you to the Meeja.”

For greater enjoyment of this pome, try not to notice it’s crap, and doesn’t scan and
strains to rhyme. Thanks.

*What they call Southern California on the telly weather here.

This just in: If you are a British blogger or an expat British blogger consider submitting something to this: It’s called Shaggy Blog Stories: a collabarative blog-stunt for Comic Relief. It’s run by The Troubled Diva and looks great but you have to act quickly – the deadline is March 14th. Check it out!

Well, I made it back from Hell! Thank Heavens for the granola bars is all I’m saying – thanks be to both God and Randall for them. Shout out to Bock too for the Holy water! I showered with it every morning and evening and was completely immune to the corrupting sulphurous stench of Hell for a full 12 hours at a time – even in The Old Quarter where the worst of the Popes and Vlad the Impaler live. It’s stinkier than a lie in that place.

Hell’s not nearly as bad as it’s reputed to be. It has lovely sunsets. It’s not in Montana either, Apprentice. Hell’s a lot like Middlesborough but the Council have really tried to clean the place up: they’ve put out hanging flower-baskets and dog-poo receptacles – actually hanging the flowers over the dog-poo receptacles which is, you know, thoughtful. The charm is only compromised slightly by their having to use flowering cacti, but I mean what can you do? In that heat, you’re never going to get a forget-me-not to stand up straight and look nice. Forget-me-not’s are the petted slackers of the flower underworld.

In Blair’s Bush’s The New Hell there are creches for the Damned Working-Mummy and Baby set, and great fiery golf-courses for Dad. There are Youth Opportunity Schemes for the Teenage Damned, often run under the auspices of the Department Of Minor Mischief. Once there, a young sinner might perform entry level devilry on Earth; things like sales-calls during dinner; midnight paintingof blue wheelchairs in all but the farthest parking spot in the lot; spreading embarassing herpes infections amongst small rural Lutheran congregations.

They have the enthusiasm of youth, of course, but they’re also very enterprising in their own right. It was a young lad from Ealing who came up with these wee white spots you get on your fingernails that make you go out and pay money for calcium pills that don’t work. A small thing perhaps, but an effective way of strengthening the fear-therefore-consumerism link in the human mind. There was a lot of fiddly code involved and he won a prize for it.

These young “imptepeneurs”, as they’re known, really do a smashing job – especially when you consider that it’s not the big but more the little things that cause people to break up their 40 year marriages or shoot mimes in the park. All this despite being yoked to their cubicles in harnesses of spikey red-hot iron, and mercilessly poked by imps for the rest of eternity. These imps are real gits – they think they’re really funny (oh, puh-leeease!) and are always interrupting the Teenage Damned to tell them a joke they’ve just made up. If the teen doesn’t laugh heartily enough they have to work right through their lunch-hours and suffer not only trident pokings but quadradent ones too.

Said a spotty Damned Teen I spoke to, “Yeah like, if it wasn’t for this scheme, like, who knows what trouble I’d be getting into? This way I have a chance of like getting into college and stuff? At the end of my first eternity? What? Oh yeah there’s an eternity’s worth of eternities in the Aterlife – it’s to do with String Theory – asbestos-coated String-Theory down here, of course, haha. I want to train to be the Earthly Division Chief for the Generating of Red Tape? That’s my first choice but it’s very competitive? We have a lot of civil servants down here and, of course, they’ve got the experience like, the knack for evil.”

But it’s not all balmy evenings and cricket on the cloven-clovered Common down there. For a start, all there is to eat is marzipan, the Ambrosia of the Doomed. It is hell after all, and they can’t be seen to be making things too cushy. The bigwigs up in heaven are usually too blissed-out to notice much of what’s going on Below but you never know when they’ll sober up and pop into the office to check things are still going suitably hellishly down in Hell. You don’t want to make the Big Chief angry up there; ironically, he’s the very devil when riled, and not above a bit of random senseless smiting, citing the legality of “collateral damage” as his precedent.

So, there are rules to follow in Hell. For example, you’re required to do a certain amount of daily wailing and agonised writhing. You have to bench-press the more unattractive Members of Parliament; you can be put in isolation cells, tied up on a soulless Ikea chair with chai tea dripping on your head and Dr. Phil motivational tapes on a loop; you must wear only polyester despite the infernal heat; and suffer from really low self-esteem forever. And the beer’s warm in the American quarter which really pisses them off. Oddly, the bookshops don’t have any banned books as you might expect; There’s no Orhan Pamuk, no Rushdie, not even a Harry Potter – Heaven takes all of them. In Hell the only reading material is battered old copies of the Proceedings of The General Synod of the Free Church of Scotland.

So, all in all, I wouldn’t want to live there but we might go again next year if we can get a package. It was a fascinating look inside another Other World. And I came back with a fantastic tan.

This morning my email showed 666 unread messages. That’s right! I have the inbox of the beast! Not for the first time either but, wait… At almost exactly the same time I discovered my devillish mail-count, a flake of plaster fell down, down from the ceiling and onto my keyboard. It did this sinisterly. Was it a coincidence? I very think not!

“To battle stations!” I cried, alone in my room, except for the cat who’s probably in on it. “To the battle-stations of the cross!”

Then I thought, I have to tell someone! I have to get my trusty blog pals to aid me and provide succour (steady there, Knudson!)

Look, here’s what I need you to do. Listen carefully because I’m whisper-typing and am only going to rasp it out once – they might be listening. “Who?” you ask, (you do ask who – look, just go along with me here) Why, The Demons Of The Dark, ‘course, or the government or Blockbuster after me for my late rental. Sssssh!

Right, the Irish need to get together a coke-bottle full of yer finest holy water, there. No rubbish – it has to be Evian blessed by a bishop – I don’t know what forces I may be up against yet. Datapost will be fine.

The Americans need to send me food – lots of it in case I have to hunker down for a while up here. Please note, I don’t care much for partially-hydrogenated fats or synthetic cream in my survival food – no Twinkies is what ‘m sayin’. If you could see your way clear to a couple boxes of Godiva chocolate (they’re on post VD sale!) and maybe a liter or so of gin – to sterilize any wounds and because demons all hate juniper-berry derived liquor – I’d be most grateful.

The Brits, my own compatriots! – I ask you to think always of me fondly, and to please send tea-bags, liquorice allsorts and a chav to racially insult the demons. Also pictures of the home I might never see again, to weep wretchedly over.

Peoples from the rest of the world, please send me gold (lots) and treasures of your cultures (ones that fit in a jiffy bag) – I may need transportable wealth for a while, especially if I’m to be imprisoned in the Underworld for any length of time – bribes for the guards and stuff.

Well this is it, folks. There’s nothing to do now but wait, and be watchful. I’d cower but you can’t keep up cowering for long without it starting to hurt around the shoulders. I’ll just have a quick cuppa and get settled, and then watch and wait and watch and wait…

Think of me, won’t you, gentle bloggers? Tell my children I loved them! And tell them always to be kind. And not to let their unread emails get above 500, lest they meet the same grisly fate as their mammy.

Pray to your Gods for me! Pray like the wind!

Right, time to get the kettle on and meet your fate, Sam, Problemchildbride as was…