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There isn’t much I could tell you about the sex lives of the Free Church elders that wouldn’t make you scream and cut your ears off with a circular saw. I could write it here but, if the countless people worldwide that read this blog were suddenly all to gouge their eyes out with grapefruit spoons on the same day, questions would be asked, and answers would be given and pretty soon word would get back to the elders about my suggesting they have sex-lives. Then they would tell God and I wouldn’t get into Heaven. I’m not risking eternal damnation for you lot, so instead I’ll tell you that pipistrel bats are active in and around Stornoway.

The splendid K8 tagged me for a meme about Pet Peeves. I did a meme right at the start of my blogging life. It was pretty across-the-board and has covered a lot of memes I’ve been tagged with since, so sometimes I don’t do them if it seems like I’ve written something similar before. I put the first one on my About Me page, up yonder. That meme already says more than anyone would care to know about a California housewife, but I haven’t memed in yonks so tonight, my little interwebblies, I meme! The better part of a bottle of mellowing Chianti in me wants a nice easy post but it might backfire because of the mellowing part which is causing me to not feel all that angry at the mome. Ah well, I’m sure I can summon up a thundercloud.

This meme’s about Peeves. Here are the rules:

The Rules

1. List two things that irritate you for a reason (and list the reason!), and two things that irritate you for no apparent reason whatsoever!!
2. Give credit to the person who tagged you.
3. Link your answers to the original blog
4. Tag four new people to participate.

OK.

Two things that irritate me for a reason.

- Bold washing powder. Because I am allergic to it.

- I hate with a fury what passes for news broadcasts in America today. We have no evening news broadcasts, we have evening magazine shows masquerading as news. Lazy, sensationalized, mawkish, and mediocre, I could go on and on all night about this most peevish peeve of mine. I suspect that too many of us feel the same way though so I won’t meme about the actual, pathetic shows. Instead I’ll meme about a side peeve: the cheap, sensationalist, and often fear-mongering hooks both the local and national newscasts dangle in the early evening to lure or scare us into watching the 10pm news:

- “A Southland tire manufacturer announces serious flaws in one type of tire - tune in to tonight’s broadcast to see if your family’s at risk!” It’s not the news’s job to tease you with the news! They’re supposed to report it, aren’t they? To inform the populace. And even when they’re not hanging possible peril over your heads til 10pm so you can’t enjoy anything in the meantime, there they are again, during the commercials, appealing to our vanity, our stupidity, our inanity and the basement level of our natures to get us to tune in:

- “Which summer cocktail packs the most calories? You may be surprised!”

- “An LA madame publishes her memoirs! Tune into see which prominent politicians, stars and CEOs are named in the book!”

- “344 people sickened as a popular food item tests positive for salmonella! Find out at 10pm what you need to know now to protect your health!”

Two things that irritate me for no reason.

- People. Other people are the most enraging irritants on earth. Nothing irritates a person more than another person. We can’t help it, it’s normal. Unless you have twin souls, chances are there’s not a person on this earth who couldn’t irritate you eventually, especially even your loved ones. We make friends with only those people whose little irritating aspects we can get over because what might be annoying is far outweighed by what’s really cool.

I put People in the No Reason bit because sometimes there just isn’t a reason. And even when there is, people often have a hard time determining if they are irritated by another person because the other person is an arsehole, or because they themselves are arseholes. Sometimes it never even occurs to people to check that; it never registers that he or she might be the asshole, even the biggest asshole of all!

Assholes are tied with The Well-Meaning in terms of potential irritation but, for my devalued dollar, the most irritating people for no real reason other than they are assholes, are the assholes. Unaccountably, assholes really get on my nerves. And asshats. (Assholes are worse than arseholes - try saying asshole and arsehole out loud and you’ll soon see who’s the dickiest.)

- The colour salmon-pink on anything other than a salmon.

- Oooh. And young men who wear bow-ties in lieu of a personality. Again, why that should bother me I don’t know - perhaps I’m an asshole. I’m sure they’re probably OK really, but I can’t get over the fact that I don’t really think they are.

2. Gr8 K8 linked me and so I thank her for an easy post. You should thank her too that you’re not reading about owl-shame again.

3. Shout out to Skillet, the originator of this meme.

4. By a process of closing my eyes and pointing at my sidebar, I’ll link to Pat, Conan, Eolai, Dr. Maroon and anybody who wants to do it.

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Bock the Robber has been doing a series of posts on the Andrew Hanlon case and asked me to spread the word about it on my blog. It’s a disturbing story about a young Irishman gunned down by police in Oregon. He was shot 7 times and it seems noone can say for sure why. The shooter is a cop who has been separately arraigned on charges of the sexual abuse of a young girl, but evidence suggests there may have been 3 shooters. Check out Bock’s series of posts on the case to learn more.

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I got my citizenship test appointment! September 22nd. I don’t know how speedy things are from then to the citizenship ceremony but, with a bit of luck, I’ll be able to vote in this election after all!

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Very proud of my wee bro. Last week he qualified to become a medic on the oil-rigs in the North Sea. Right now he’s on a platform-decommissioning support-vessel East of Orkney, somewhere out in the great briny. He thought he’d be right in there with the severed fingers and heart attacks right away but they were in an off-work week when he arrived.  He called me, bored the other night, because he’d only had one case of Athlete’s Foot. He was all eager for a follow-up appointment, but the guy said he was going back to shore the following day. Bah, thought Wee Bro. I told him I would will a couple of mangled digits for him - just so he keeps his hand in, like.  Lets all hope for at least a foreign-body in an eye, eh!

Things I have spilt in the last 72 hours.

1 x cup of tea on pile of freshly laundered towels

1/2 glass red wine on a blue dress.

1 large bowl of pennies, old keys and miscellaneous objets d’arse on the loud clangy floor.

1 jar of spaghetti sauce on garage floor when bottom gave out on crappy safeway plastic bag.

Unknown quantity of blood (possibly dangerous ammounts) by cutting finger on glass from smashed spaghetti jar.

But that’s fine. I can deal with spills and mopping up. What I mind with my whole head and bulging veins, is the Problem Husband telling people that I upset my teacup or my wine glass or anything else. No, I didn’t, soldier!!!! They bloody well upset me! Bloody holding vessels failing to do their holding jobs! No wonder the economy’s turning to shit. When you can’t even rely on your teacup it might be a sign that it’s time to sell up the homestead and move to the greenwood with a gun and your old Girl Guide survival handbook, wait the bally recession out until cups feel secure enough in their futures again to perform their tasks.  I blame Cheney.  He’s behind my ruined blue dress somehow.  Anyone want to be Linda Tripp to my Monica?  Impeach!  Lets bring the government down!

Your tour guide here! Here we are at stop 221, a popular attraction: Phil, The Lonely Fly-Fisherman And His World-Famous Interesting Mutterings. Everyone off the bus!

Phil, the lonely fly fisherman is out fishing again, alone. Let us approach him quietly from behind so we might overhear his mutterings all the more sneakily.

The mutterings of a lonely fly-fisherman are among the most interesting in the world. Now you won’t read that in any book nor hear it from any statistician, but you can count on my word that it’s true, friends. Have I ever steered you wrong? Only a divorced single of mother of 6 living in a mid-priced suburb of Brasilia has the edge on the lonely fly fisherman for interesting mumblings, for she, also, has noone to talk to despite her large and clamorous family.

Right now, sshhoooooooosh! Softly, softly we approach the huddled figure at the loch’s edge. We’re in luck! He’s mumbling. Everybody crouch down behind that boulder there while I swing this fuzzy microphoned boom out over him. Let’s see if we can pick up some mumbles. OK folks, don your headphones!

Lonely Fly Fisherman: “Oh why did I lie that time to Miranda? It was always between us after that, besmirching her trust for me like a lollipop stain on a priest’s surplice. It was such a little thing too, I hardly know why I did it. Why oh why oh…
Wait! Was that a twitch on the water…?

(Silence for 83 seconds)

Why? Why did I have to tell her I was a dangerous and sexy maverick librarian who categorized his own way, the rules be damned? I guess I was desperate for her short-term love. But she saw it, saw the lie behind my eyes. She knew I’m not man enough to mess with the Dewey.

(Silence for 18 minutes.)

I wish I knew why soda bubbles only stream from certain points in the glass. There’s probably some very simple chemistry or physics behind it that I feel I should know about, as a reasonably well-educated man living and fly-fishing in the 21st century. I’m pretty sure there’s no biology behind it. I don’t think. Nah, no biology. Bubbles aren’t living things…although they do grow and move and reproduce… Goddammit! What’s the matter with you, man? Bubbles aren’t alive! I wouldn’t have to think these thoughts if I weren’t so awfully awfully lonely…!

(Phil sometimes has periods of crippling despair like this. Don’t be concerned though, they never last longer than a month or so at a time. And besides, when he’s cheery, he doesn’t come fishing and then we’re left with no stop 221. The mainland press, as I’m sure you’re aware, have tried to imply we’ve paid all his old friends not to talk to him anymore, just so we can cram another stop on the tour in, but there’s no truth in that. Ahahahahaha.)

Oh! Oh, I just thought of a joke! Which world capital has the most junked out automobiles in the world? Khartoum! Ahahahahahahahaha! Oh I must tell that to … to whom? I have noone. There is nobody to whom I can tell my joke… Oh for Chrissakes, why do I have to be so bloody grammatically correct all the time? I’m all by my bloomin’ self out here! Why am I so anal? Why must I be so self-pitying and loathsome?

Biff! Biff!

(Observe as the lonely fisherman slaps himself upside the head, folks…Minutes pass… He’s calming down now…)

Why doesn’t analyse mean bullshit? It’s right there in the word - anal lies! Why don’t therapists just tell you the truth and say they’re going to bullshit you? Oh this is going nowhere…!

(Attraction 221 will occasionally break down and weep like he’s doing now but, again, there’s no cause for alarm. Weeping’s just a form of happiness for Phil, the Lonely Fly-Fisherman.)

Fish? Hello? Fish, if you’re out there, give a guy a break, eh? How about it? You sacrifice your life to my hook and I will tell everyone you were much bigger and more fearsome than you are. Except I have no everybody…There’s only the wind will hear my big-fish lie.

(Silence for 3 more minutes)

Did you know, fish, that the word ovation comes from the Latin ovis - a sheep? I think that might explain why I find myself cheering and clapping loudly at things I didn’t think were as good as all that.

Another thing, fish. Montaigne once said, “Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom.” I hope he said it more than once. I would have. It’s a good one.

When I was 9 I could play The Well Tempered Clavier by Bach with only two fingers (moving really quickly) and I was hailed as a prodigy. When I hit puberty I lost that ability. Science can’t tell me why.

I should have moved my bowels this morning before i came out. I knew it, and yet I didn’t. I didn’t, and now they’ll be waiting for me when I get back.

How long could a person live if toothpaste was the only thing to eat?… Oy, fish? Any guesses…?

What’ve I got in for my dinner tonight…?”

The fuzzy boom retreats.

*

Well there we have it, folks. Not as interesting as I’d hoped but you can never tell how his thoughts will turn. I’ve noticed that when there’s cheese in his sandwiches he’s at his most interesting but, as you might be able to see, folks, today it’s some sort of involved fancy schmancy Mediterranean wrap which does actually look quite interesting itself. See, it hasn’t entirely been a waste of time, eh? And it’s certainly whetted my appetite for some of Mrs. MacIver’s lovely scones at Stop 222. Ahahahahaha. Of course, Phil’s really at his most interesting in the early mornings and at sunset but during the day he can lapse into drivel, like we’ve heard. Yeah. Sorry about that. But what can you do? It’s beyond our control. One of these things. You pays your money, you takes your chances etc. Ahahahaha.

‘K, everybody, back to the bus. There’s a pine-fitted gift-shop at the tea-rooms beside attraction 222 and they have copies of The Lonely, Muttering Fisherman: His Greatest Hits available for purchase in both tape and CD formats, if you’d like to hear him a bit more, uh, on form. Ahahahahaha.

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The moral of the post is: Stay away from people who are not as interesting as their sandwiches. Also, don’t pay for any Hebridean bus tour until it is over. These people will so screw you over.

Square-Jawed George adored Genevieve above all the other rabbits in the warren. Splendidly, Genevieve admired George’s muscular haunches and his strong, decisive chin. Square-Jawed George and Genevieve would often lie among the primroses under the old willow tree and read poetry to each other, or go strolling ardently by the river. Sometimes they would skip and scamper through the meadow, laughing and laughing as if they were the first bunnies ever to have loved.

But this wasn’t enough love even for two so star-crossed as they, even for two who had his moon rising in her Sagittarius. Their love grew and grew until pretty soon it was nauseating the whole warren. Square-Jawed George and Genevieve would walk the wooded meadow as lovers do, lost in each other’s eyes, occasionally knocking over toadstool dwellings but oblivious to everything and everyone except their love. As they passed by, in their wake they left dozens of innocent rabbits doubled-up, heaving and retching out their half-nibbled stomach contents in the pleasant meadow flowers. The ladybirds who lived in the toadstools were furious too at having lost yet another housing development cul-de-sac to the lovers. The whole meadow smelled of regurgitated dandelion-stems, and toadstool prices in the area had plummeted. The strain on the community was beginning to show.

The rabbits and ladybirds took their complaints to the warren-council where dark words were muttered and mid-toned discussions screamed, but there seemed to be nothing in the law books which forbade the public exchange of tender lovelinesses between consenting rabbits. It seemed the law’s paws were tied. Maybe it’ll stop when Spring is over, they hoped.

Spring turned to Summer. One Wednesday in July, a hot, stifling day which left even the most equable rabbits grumpy and irritable, the meadow was smelling particularly rank. Square-Jawed George and Genevieve had been even more vomitsome lately. Sweaty bunnies lay here and there in the scorched and scratchy grass, fanning themselves with blighted dock leaves and bickering. Malnutrition from all the vomiting had taken its toll on some of the bunnies. Everywhere ears drooped, teeth rotted and ribs showed painfully through their dull coats. Only Square-Jawed George and Genevieve were still bright of eye and perky of bob-tail. And here they came.

“What shall I compare thee to today, my sweet doe?” trilled Square-jawed George buckfully. A summer day’s sooo been done.” But, because his chin was so very decisive, the word came to him almost immediately. “An evening! A summer’s evening!” And Genevieve loved him even more for his easy command of words.

“Oh Christ, here they come again!” said one rabbit and the word spread throughout the meadow. “Quick - paws in ears, eyes shut and lalalalalas!

But the mood was different in the meadow today. The rabbits didn’t put their paws in their ears or shut their eyes or do lalalalas. Instead, it was very, very quiet, each rabbit straining to hear what the lovers were saying as they passed, as if masochism were the new arugula. Here and there a bunny eye glinted. Square-Jawed George and Genevieve lolloped on, not seeing or hearing anything but themselves.

And something snapped. it was impossible to say who started it, only that an electrifying twitch-nerve surged through the watching rabbits like a sort of murderous Mexican wave and all 700 rabbits sprang forward in a fury, launching themselves at the lovers with their teeth bared.

Long after the fluff had settled, and the blood trickled away into the soil, long after the crows had done for the remains of the tragic pair, I, an old, old owl, who had seem it all come to pass from my high forest perch by the meadow would gather my grandowlets around me and tell them the tale of Square-Jawed George and Genevieve.

“Why did they have to die?” they would sob, doing little owl droppings of despair all over my nice rug.

And I would shake my wise old head, as I handed them buckets of water and disinfectant to clean up.

“They were too beautiful for this world.” I would whisper, my eyes shining with brine. And I would turn away from my darlings then, and all the old guilt would come flooding back. The guilt about how good the lovers’ little hearts had tasted as, unseen, I plucked them from their breasts before the crows came for their broken bodies.

THE END

I read this today and thought of my friend, Jeremy - confirmed Deadhead and a man with way too much residual acid leftover from earlier days still swilling around in his brain. Or maybe just the right amount - you’d have to ask him, but he’d probably say “Not enough, sister, not enough.”

Anyway, Jer’s away on his holidays right now so he prolly won’t see this, but I thought I’d post this quote anyway. It’s not the most profound, nor the most daintily put quote ever, but it gladdened my wicked heart this morning and anyway I’ve got nuffink else. I’ve been doing Other Stuff, see, and doing Other Stuff plays merry hell with your blogging time. Other Stuff is down right importunately impertinent.

Anyway, Jeremy’s a believer in the transformative powers of dance, and I of music. Transformative in the rolled-back eyeballs, swirly twirly, higher plane way - not in the turns you into a mongoose way. Here’s the quote:

“In song and dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way toward flying up into the air, dancing.” Nietzsche.

See? Wasn’t that nice and gentle for a Thursday morning? Not too demanding, just a recognition of the beautiful things. There’s nothing like a little cribbed wisdom at twenty past ten.

Other Stuff rears its stuffy, snorting head again. I’ll give it a decongestant, see if that clears it. Back in bits.

This post, I shall be mostly using f-words.

Friday the fourf: a fair football-field full of folk for the fireworks, with no apparant plowmen in sight.

Saturday: fickle and fitful like the affections of a feckless feline cat.

Right, I’m fed up of that now.

Sunday: after Wimbledon was Wimblewon, one lazy, hazy, crazy day of summer ensued. We had a going away party for a
friend. The good thing about California is that you can party outside all day and night so your floors never get sticky or crumbed upon.

And it all just goes to show that the simple things are the best, cats are feckers, not all things go to show something.

With any luck, by next 4th of July I will be a citizen of these United States and so able to vote. By George (but not for him), I can’t wait to vote! I will roll up my sleeves and press my pencil extra hard on the ballot just to show how votey I am. I expect I’ll hum an Eagles classic or The Battle Hymn Of The Republic or maybe something by the Pollice because I’m all about the pertinent tunes, yo. Uh-huh, oh yeah.

Citizenhood probably won’t happen before November (the INS website estimates the process currently takes a speedy 426 days) but my piffling vote in national affairs wouldn’t have the slightest bit of effect anyway. I don’t live in a swing state and California will probably turn a cool shade of Obama blue just fine without my help - not that Obama is blue, People Who Haven’t Seen Him Before. America wouldn’t elect a Smurf to the highest office in the land. Not again.

I’ve been disenfranchised for so long now though that my constitutional prerogative is starting to wither from lack of use. I’m sure there’s a pill for that but I’d rather cure it the natural way with a *cough* well-hung Chad. Not being resident in Scotland for the past 11 years has rendered me ineligible to vote in both Scottish and British elections, and being a mere legal alien in the US has meant I haven’t been able to vote here either. Nobody in the whole wide world gives a toss what I think, in other words, except perhaps the Toyota customer survey people. That’s fine, but I still want my voice-that-nobody-cares-about to be heard! I’d rather be a persona non grata than a non persona grata.

But yet, but yet I am taxed. Then let the cry go up throughout the sitting-room, “No taxation without representation!” The pot-plants agree greenly but they don’t envy me, that’s just how they do everything.

But when I can vote I still won’t be happy because even the voteless me ponders long and hard over the issues and choices at hand and I know that there are people somewhere who will be voting on which of the spouses is most First-Lady-like or which candidate has the larger lifetime consumption of apple-pie. And some people won’t bother voting at all because they want to watch that show with that guy who does that thing. And I will be of the uppity opinion that what these people need is a jolly good murdering - I will be careful not to say that at my interview, of course, in case they deem me cruel and unnaturalizable.

Only, ssssshh! You won’t tell them, will you? Don’t tell them about the real me because then they will not let me join America but I’ll have to pay the membership fees all the same, and my children will grow up not having the example of their mother voting causing them to not vote and one day when they should be voting, they will decide to go to the beach instead and there they will meet unsuitable men called Stone and Troy whom their daddy and I will hate and we will therefore be forced to write our own daughters out of our wills in a scene of brandy and complex emotions, and then the ProbHub will die but the girls and I will be too stubborn even to make up at the funeral and then I will die all alone and smelly in a flat in Croydon and the neighbours will say I was always a quiet one and what will become of the cats, and whoever is doing Shirley McClean-type roles in the future will play me in the harrowing movie they will make of our lives because one of the unsuitable men at the beach turned out to be the spoilt son of someone big in corporate Hollywood, and I will not come out of it terribly well at all.

So you won’t, will you? Aah, great. Ta, petals, I knew I could count on you.

Today is the Problem Husband’s and my 9th anniversary. We met when I was 21 and married when I was 25 so really we’ve been bothering each other for more like 13 years. I looked it up though and the 13th anniversary is lace.

Hubbles is not really so big on the lace, and, although I’m sure he could enjoy a nice doiley or have about 40 seconds worth of polite remarks on the craftsmanship of a table-cloth, I’m not all that keen on doilies myself, as it goes. Plus, giving one’s husband lace, even well-meant, non-vitriolic lace, has all too often marked a precipitous downturn in the health of many marriages. Trust is violated - the unspoken trust a man has in his wife that she will never ever attempt to give him lace. On any occasion. That sort of thing can cause deep hurts and irrepairable harm to a married couple. So we’ll deal with lace when we have to, and not before.

The anniversary 9th is pottery which isn’t what we need at all. We are bullish on pottery - not in a china-shop way, of
course - then we’d be bearish on it, I guess.  In any event, we’re all potteried up, perhaps even faultily so.

What we lack is towels. Our towels are constantly being stolen by aliens who don’t have our towel-making technology, and so, by the power vested in me by me, I declare this anniversary in the Problem household, the anniversary of towels. So be it!

(My eyelids are closing as I type this so sorry for any really bad misspellings or mistakes.)

I’ve just watched Rogerer Federer slay Mario Ancic in a 20 minute set. In the last 4 games he only lost 1 point.

But who cares about that? Andy Murray’s playing in the other quarter-final, later today.

Go Andy Murray ! Do it for us, baby! Forget the overwhelming odds against you and play your wee Dunblaney heart out!

Back to Hector soon. Andymonium has entered our sitting room for the day though and Wimbledon fortnight is a black hole of unfinished tasks for me, anyway. My children grow pale and undernourished as I forget to feed them. The cat grows listless and sulky as I terrify her from her slumbers with my sudden, animated ooohs! and aaaahs! at the telly. My husband has to tell me to wash my face and comb my hair. Moss starts to grow in the corners and the neighbours call to ask if everything is alright only uncollected mail is starting to fly off down the street and plaster itself to the windscreens of oncoming traffic bringing about horrible, squishy tragedy. All the weeping and screaming hullaballo, all the bleeding car-crash victims and their outraged relatives, I will nod to and absently acknowledge but will remain effectively oblivious to, til Sunday night, when Wimbledon is over and the authorities come to take my waif-like children away and we all get in the papers because I hole us all up in the house and shoot at county officials in the street. Happens every year.

Go, Andy, go!

It was one of these days. It dragged and bulged and time was all wonky. It was a Sunday in Lewis. Hector wanted nothing more than to life face down on the cool linoleum in the kitchen, or lie face up under a coffee-table but he was stuck there on the sofa between his granny and his grandpa listening to the minister. He could feel his brain writhing in boredom in his skull, pulling his eye-tubes back painfully, trying to get them to roll the bulbed eyeballs back into his head and take a nap.

“Hnngg ahhhngg ee hnng hnng hnnng” droned the minister.

“Oooooh! huhee huhoo huhibbleibbleibble” exclaimed Granny.

“Gildy bildy beedly o?” asked Grandpa.

And so they went on. There would be another hour of this at least and he was of an age now where he was supposed to be able to participate in after-church chat with the minister before a light tea of sandwiches and then out to church again to burn the holy taper at both ends. Candles and tapers weren’t allowed in the Worshipful Spartan Free Kirk Of The Hebrides though, being too wicked, so he doubted if candle metaphors were allowed either. He spent the next 5 minutes of his life concentrating on all he had ever heard about candles.

At 13, Hector knew there had to be more to life than this. He was stuck here for the next 5 years until he could escape off the island to university. The thought of almost 300 more sundays spent like this between now and then squeezed and pinched at his brain making it want to leap right out of his head and onto the carpet to gather some soothing, muffling fluff. He stifled a yawn.

The proximity to hellfire made a Lewis Sunday curl up like a leaf. In this stifling tube of a day with light only at either end, a child could curl and take in the hell-fire heat, or that child could use his imagination to take himself to a place that wasn’t Sunday: to go to one end of the tube and peer through the quiet, hot noise of Sunday to the next week as if the rolled-up day was a telescope; or at the past week like it was a microscope. I myself was a microscope kid. I pored over the minutiae, the hurts and small insults of the past week, the faces of people, why they might be the way they were: jolly, lumpy, tired, angry. Hector was a telescope kid though. On Sundays he looked forward.

“Hngg, ee hngii Machnngh hingee hnnngh” said the minister.

Suddenly Hector had an idea. It was a big big idea. It was a Big Idea.

He was going to start a cult. An undercover cult, of course, he couldn’t let his granny find out it was anything to do with him. But with the internet, starting a cult anonymously should be a breeze.

What did he know about cults? Hector forgot to be bored. His near-cooked brain-meat was alive again and full of possibilities.

Cults needed a charismatic leader, of that he was sure. That leader needed to have the wide, slow smile of fearlessness. He needed to go for long periods of time without blinking. He needed to shock peoples’ sensibilities with flat outrageous sentences such as “People whose names begin with L deserve to die!” or “The BBC will poison your souls unless you purify yourself by sleeping with me!” The more outlandish the statement, the more he could convince people of its essential truth and quake all their mental geography to the point where they were capable of anything. These people would be called Hectorians.

“Aaah, beedly bildy ba diddle-glid.” intoned his Grandpa.

Hector began to think.

To Be Continued…

(This tale will be told in episodes but I want you guys to be a part of it. So you tell me, what is this cult about? What does it celebrate? Bear in mind the setting is the Western Isles so sun-worshipping is probably out.)

Man: Twitter isn’t all I’d hoped it would be. Nor is the internet. I wasn’t all that impressed with the Library of Congress, Paris in the Spring or the animals of the African Savannah. I think the splendours of The American West are over-rated. I didn’t feel the awe I was promised I would in Machu Picchu because it’s too hot down there and the authorities haven’t provided enough concession booths. Europe’s greatest Cathedrals were a disappointment because it was chilly out, which nobody had thought to tell me, ruining that whole expensive vacation. That Mozart dude, in my humble opinion, was just a noise-maker, an amateur. And, I fully expect the new iPhone to be crap.

Woman: Oh sweetie! Poor you!

Man: It has all left me feeling archly superior towards my fellow man. My doctor told me yesterday she thinks I have “Appreciation Deficit Disorder with features of Inflated Expectations Syndrome” brought on by a privileged life of instant-gratification in which I am bombarded by impossibly idealised images and of a sense of my own entitlement to have other people exceed my every possible demand. Which means it’s all other people’s fault.

Woman: Oh dear. I mean, is that bad? The doctor’s right, you musn’t assume any personal responsibility for this. I expect it’s your parents’ fault and the fact that your brothers all earn more than you. You can hardly be blamed for your own outlook on life in the current social climate. And besides, a vocal demand for excellence in all things is just the sign of a super-discerning personality. Introspection shows insecurity, middle-management’s taught us that, if nothing else. You musn’t beat yourself up for your attitudes, sweetie! Easy self-indulgence is our right as citizens!

Man: That’s what I thought, but apparantly it’s leading to inflammation of the scorn and supercilious glands filling me with an overwhelming sense of disappointment with everyone and everything and the doctor says it’s turning me into an Asshole. It’s a common enough condition, she tells me, mostly affecting the people who were most charmed by the banal narcissm of the L’Oreal ad for hair colour declaring “Because I’m worth it!”

Woman: Darling!

Man: I knew you’d understand but I can’t help wishing you were prettier and that our children were more easily categorised as The Cute One, The Smart One and The Funny One.

Woman: But what has she prescribed you?

Man: Talk therapy at dinner parties.

Woman: Of course. You must purge yourself of these feelings in long, rambling monologues at table with people who can’t criticise you because it’s your house. I shall arrange to have one immediately. Who would you like to ask?

Man: I don’t know. I despise almost everyone except myself and the children and occasionally you. They probably should earn less than me though. I feel like impressing someone with smug humility. Oh and I want you to have the caterers do a better job of the steaks this time. Now come here and hold me. I have a need to cry that I don’t understand and an awful revelation about myself is beginning to moulder greenly at the edges of my mind. I would rather not pay these things any attention, but rather lose myself in a fog of willful misunderstanding.

Woman (softly): Oh, baby.

One advantage of holidaying in a National Park in 100+ degree weather is that you hardly have any available body water to pee into the parks loos, the smell of which, in high summer, is nostril rape of the most brutal sort. Date nostril rape, they’d call it since you willingly went into the nose-rape situation. It’s like having your nose picked by Death.

But, even when it’s hot, now and again you have to go.

By myself I’m fine - I tiptoe in and out as quickly as possible, touching as little as possible and then a quick shuddery, jowl-juddering jog about in the fresh air to feel clean again. It’s not pleasant but, of course, I understand that to plumb every potty in the US parks system would necessarily wreck all the nature we’re there to see. I am not for wrecking nature. I am a Nice Person.
With two little girls though, it is impossible to be this cavalier and nippy. You might think that with the 3 of us in there, proceedings would take roughly 3 times as long, right? Let me disabuse you of that ridiculous notion. It takes 8 times as long. A full third of this time is spent at the door trying to persuade one or other child there won’t be a slavering bear in there (Technically, this is my my own fault, having convinced them with ghastly tales on the 250 mile journey up there, that there would be bears crouching behind every tree and bush, waiting to gobble up any nice juicy humans that the mountain lions hadn’t already picked off. I was just trying to instill a sense of nature red in tooth and claw and such! A healthy respect for wild, raw nature. God knows modern kids get veal-fed massive doses of the tender, fluffy side of nature in bowdlerised books and cartoons. (Do you know the wolf in Goldilocks no longer eats Grandma, but locks her in the cupboard, is given a stern talking to by the woodcutter and skulks off shame-snoutedly determined to address his people-eating issues?) Where’s the balance? I was aiming for savagery.

Next the small child has to be actively persuaded to use the “stinky toilet! Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!” even as she hops around with steam coming out of her ears in her desperation to pee. She wants to know what the unspeakable stains and “bits” are round the rim and down the sides, and I can’t speak of them because they are so unspeakable. We all know what they are but it takes PC2 to say it.

“Poo! It’s Poo! Eeeeew!

By now, I have broken my own promise not to look - my vow to notice anything, everything in that chamber of horrors apart from the diabolical throne itself. My own horror kicks in as I envision my sweet, pinkly clean(ish) children clambering around over a hole easily large enough to swallow them whole. Whole and forever - because I sure as hell amn’t jumping in there to save them.

And then I realise I would jump in after them, of course I would, and it becomes all the more important to prevent them from even touching the filthy thing. The thought of them being anywhere near the excreta of 78 year old Mr I’ve Just Eaten Iowa with his surgical-support hosiery, his acres of leisure-shorts and his troubled expression, who has just exited the loo a moment before, fills me with bilious dread. I look at the toilet and before my eyes it turns into a heaving, seething mass of writhing germs, fanged bacilli, horned spirulae and streptococcal flanges. The walls move. The floor is alive with slithery treacherous pathogens. I command one girl to stand in the corner with her hands out in front so she doesn’t touch anything, and I hoist 40lb of other daughter up and hover her over the steaming mouth of hell.

We wait.

“What do you mean you can’t go?

“I can’t!”

“OK, we’ll try you again in a minute then. Problem Child 2, your turn.”

Problem Child 2 has both hands clamped over her nose. The temperature in the wee-wee hut is somewhere in the low
100s and the stench from the toilet pit is eye-watering.

I tell her to have a stout heart and hover PC2 over the loo. She goes! I sort her out and try again with PC1 who is now gagging convulsively and goose-bumpily, despite the infernal heat. We try again and this time she accomplishes the mission. Oh God, nearly there! My turn and then…! Then we three flee out into the sunshine running around with exaggerated shivering and Ministry Of Silly Walks bounding, shrieking with glee that the monstrous toilet chasm didn’t suck us alive. Bears! Where are you? You don’t scare us any more! For we have seen true horror. We have looked into the vilest void, the filthiest fumarole in the Sierras and lived to tell the tale.

I Purell the bejeezus out of our hands and we hike on. I think fondly of camping in good old Scotland where we just went behind a bush.

Now, by and large, park loos are fine, perfectly adequate and I’ve caught more germs from hospital canteens. But this little hut was the putrid anus of a kebab-sick dragon. When I think of all the bottoms that have swung over that yawning pore of hell - the sunken cadaverous cheeks, the vast dimpled buttocks, the smooth flat sheets of rear, I run and run through the extraordinary woods, the dappled sunlight with its lazy motes of forest fluff, the sweet good air and I thank God in His heaven for Mr Armitage and Mr Shanks.

But this isn’t just a post about lavs. No this is an existential post about lavs. For if three people pee in the woods and nobody hears them scream, did it really happen?

Glee! Great glee is upon our heads in a tongues-of-fire Pentecostal painting type way, but with fewer beards and more blasphemy. We’re going on our hols tomorrow, folks!

This will be the first family holiday we’ve had where we’re not visiting relatives or bound to any special timetable or obligations. Not that we haven’t enjoyed those in the past, but for the next few days it will be just the unbidden 4 of us in Yosemite and King’s Canyon and I can’t wait.

The girls are of an age now where they can appreciate a whole lot more and can last a whole day’s out-and-abouting without getting too tired or grouchy. Even just last year, at 5, there would have been over-wearied tears before mid-afternoon, far less bedtime. Off on Tuesday, back weekendyish. It’s not too far away - 6 hours or so by car - but a world apart with places and things I can’t wait to show the chidders.

My main problem will be keeping the problem-husband from adhering to too rigid a schedule. His “Print” -button finger is itching to print out itineraries and ETAs and all manner of confuddling unnecessaries. I’m sure he’ll do it anyway, in private, with his office door shut, feeling seedy and ashamed at his lack of lack of control.

He’s a lovely man in a million and six different ways but also a “Right! Seen it! Chop-chop! Back in the car and onto the next thing a mere 4 hours away!” sorta fella. Efficient. I’m more of an idler and a snooper and a long, long walker. In hols past, his way has usually won out because I couldn’t really think of any better reason to deny him getting in all he wanted to see, other than a vague “Oooh, just a wee while longer!”. Don’t be thinking of me as any type of a pushover though! Phthoo! We have a deal that if one of us feels much more strongly than the other about something then we’ll do that. I feel strongly about not leaving milk out on the counter and that oregano makes everything worse etc., and he obliges me so it all pans out.

This time, with the kids along, we’ll be forced to slow it down a good deal. Hoo-ambling-ray!! And there’ll be a whole lot more piddle-stops. Whoop-de-bladder-relieving-doo!!! Not that I’d use my children as tools against my husband in a matter as fundamental and sacred as our holidaying styles - Nopety-nope. Not me. Certainly not. But on this trip, I reckon he’ll want to take it all a little easier too.

See you in a bit, then. Have a happy week, you non-vacationing unfortunates hahaha! all.

Be good, and if you can’t be good, please blog all the details.

Look! Donald Trump visited his mammy’s old house in Lewis! And it’s in papers other than the Stornoway Gazette!

Fame! Fame beyond our wildest dreams! God, I hope we comb our hair before the tourist hordes arrive. And tidy up the sheep mooching around all over the place. Oh God, what’ll we give them to eat? Do you think, you know - being Americans - they’d like homemade millionaire’s shortbread or would anything less than billionaires shortbread be insulting? Will we just play it safe with a nice selection of Mr. Kiplings, then? It’s so hard to know the customs of peoples who aren’t from our immediate surroundings, people from the mainland and beyond(!), people called exotic names like Sarah and Adam.

Should we talk up our famous son, The Donald? Ah, right you are, we probably shouldn’t mention him too much. Jeez though, what’ll we do with them on Sunday? There’s nothing open for a cup of tea even. Maybe we can sneak them into the Sea Angling club before the seminary’s out and feed them there. We could have people on alert with walky-talkies outside the churches to make sure stray coorumachs aren’t sneaking out early and seeing us.

O mo chreach! My nerves! Quick! Where’s the hoover? Will somebody please put these sheep in a box or something! The hordes won’t know about sheep in the road and that’s just plain dangerous because tourists are known to drive awfully fast. The last thing we want is dead hordes on our hands. They can’t spend any money if
they’re in the belly of a plane on the way home for their funerals now, can they? And in these times of credit-crunch and rocketing food and oil prices we need to impress the money right out of their foreign wallets, into our hollowed out bibles and then straight under the mattress with them. We can count it when they’re gone. But if Lewis is to make it through another winter, we need to impress like the wind this summer, Sunny Jim. Like the gale force 10 wind. The impressing is all!

Right. What else? I know I’ve forgotten something, I know it. Oh hey, maybe we could get the council to pretend they don’t really tie up the swings on Sunday just til the season’s over. There’s no need for visitors to know a thing like that. We don’t want them thinking we’re backward and joy-killing. Ooooooooooh! I know! We should sell miniature standing stones with money off and a free beanie-baby midgie if you buy the whole Callanish set! Oh, we do that already? Huh.

Run over to the mainland for some arugula and cherry tomatoes, would you? Holidaying masses love them. And don’t tell Skye or Ullapool who they’re for otherwise they’ll be over here nosing before you can say “Holy timely
economic uptick, Batman.” If they ask, just say it’s because we’re trying out a new Delia recipe. And leave your shoes at the back door when you get back. I’ll have hoovered from Ness to Luskentyre by then and I don’t want your muddy footprints all over before they start arriving.

Oh and stop at the co-op for some bottles. They’ll spend more if they’ve had a few. And if they’re hooched up a bit maybe they won’t notice the crapped-out buses-turned-greenhouses in people’s gardens. There are always a few who let us all down. You know who I’m talking about. Never mind. We’ll just drive past these houses extra quick and point out the other side to the glorious beaches or the quaint black-houses, whatever. We’ll have to remember our “quaint“s and “glorious”es. And we’d best throw in a good few “authentics” and “it’s not catching, honest, it’s just a hereditary skin condition”ses.

Oh heck! I’d better give the rooms a good airing and put fresh sheets on the beds. So much to do!! Isn’t it
exciting! You know if Lewis can pull this off and woo all these international Donald fans, soon we’ll be able to go to Inverness and buy as many Mark’s And Spencer’s frozen meals as we can carry back on the ferry! We’ll be living like kings!

*Runs off to find duster and Pledge.*

The Library

Dramatis Personae:
A love-struck boy
A girl
Dr. James D’Iago
4 Security men

ACT ONE: The library.  Boy and Girl present.

BOY: All my heart is torn asunder by your cold, indifferent heart! Why must you toy with me like some cruel seagull toys with a lamb’s eyeball? Can’t you see I’m dying for love? Can’t you see I’m slain? I’m almost dead now but I just have time for a few more reproachments with my last breaths.

(Sinks to knees)

Oh, girl, so frosty in your looks! So wintry in your heart - the icicles on your wintry one are as daggers unto my soft purplish one. Look! What have you here? “The Waves”. Such a chilly title.

(Shudders)

GIRL: Look, I don’t know who you are, but if you don’t go away immediately I am calling the police.

BOY: Don’t pretend it never happened! You can’t deny it! You caught my eye over by Tolstoy and at Byron you
shyly smiled recognition of our twin-souls destiny entiwined together in both soulful and bodily ways.

GIRL: Eew! No! You were staring at me like a madman at Tolstoy, and by Byron I was grimacing recognition of an utter looney. Grimacing.

BOY: But I saw you weep with the ache of desire outside the Ladies!

GIRL: My contact lens fell out. Look, I won’t tell you again - piss off, you freak!

BOY: Oh ho-ho, you saucy minx. I was reading about this “playing hard to get” convention of young ladies over in the Dewey 100s yesterday. Dewey! Just as your eyes are dewy; 100s! Just as you’re 75 years younger than. Oh it’s all falling into place!

(Reeling for joy)

I am revived by your freshness in these complex games of love! You have saved my life! Come! Let’s go to a meadow
I know and walk together talking of tears and sorrows and unloved rabbits whom nature has cursed with crooked,
laughable ears, but whose hearts are all of gold!

GIRL: Hey, let go of me!

(A brief struggle)

Security! Security!

ENTER SECURITY AND SYRINGE WIELDING DOCTOR

(A scuffle)

EXEUNT SECURITY AND BOY, SLUMPED.

DOCTOR: Don’t worry miss, this fellow is known to us. He won’t be bothering you any more. He won’t be bothering
any young ladies any more.

GIRL (startled): Oh hey, look! Don’t be too hard on him. I mean, he was a pain but… Where are you taking him anyway? What was in that syringe?

DOCTOR: “Anti-Love Potion Number 6.” Developed by myself et al. for use on earnest, sensitive males in the Arts Faculty. By eventually getting all the girls about 10 years after graduation when they’ve stopped being so insufferable, they perpetuate their kind and make it harder for the progeny of young male scientists and computer engineers to be born. Society needs quantity-surveyors and business-managers, not art.

GIRL: What do you me…? - Blimey, did you really just say “et al.”?

(Aside) What a tosser!

Wait, Doctor - what is your name? You’re not with the university are you? Who are you? Doctor! DOCTOR…!

EXIT DOCTOR LEAVING LIBRARY DOORS SWINGING… The GIRL LOOKS DOWN AND FINDS A CARD ON TOP OF HER BOOKS.

Girl (reading):
“Call me! Dr.James D’Iago. PhD (psyc).  Entrepeneur and Outstanding Graduate in the Department of Applied Psychiatry (2006) “More looneys binned than with medication alone!” (The Daily Mail)
Are you a successful but dull man struggling to get a date? Call for reasonable rates on Arts-student removal from the gene pool. Get ‘em now, while they’re easy to institutionalize! Also binning enthusiastic science-faculty males, charismatic math-boy majors and rogue cool engineers, starting in July.”

(Turns card over. Reads)

“Dinner tonight? 8pm. My place - Basement flat, 2 Creip Street. Soundproofed for our privacy, heh-heh. Bring wine.”

(Girl flings card away)

Jesus!

THE END