Welcome one and all.  This is an inclusive blog; we are race, religion and gender blind.  People who would be banned from a Press Conference at the White House are welcome although one can see President Trump’s point.  Who indeed would want seedy hacks at such an event anyway?

Now before we proceed let me tell you that this is not fake news .  Even I, even I, couldn’t make this up.

I came home late the other night – yet another glamorous, exciting event which I failed to plaster all over Instagram and Facebook – to discover my kettle had melted onto the hob.  It happens, yes, even in the best run homes,  but not usually with a cordless electric kettle and a gas hob.

Given the cat tends to eat food cold and straight from the tin there appeared to be only the one suspect and next morning brought forth a full and frank confession.  Another unusual event at Kastle Kingston, especially from the son of a lawyer, to whom truth was a black hole in an otherwise perfect world, a boy trained in the dark art of journalism and whose own mother spent her entire pregnancy in a Newsroom.  What exactly did I think that would lead to?

Useless the Elder had been boiling water to make pasta.  Naturally, as the law dictates in everyone under  retirement age, he had his phone glued to his ear and his brain. Rather than put the intended pasta related pan onto the lit hob, in a moment of absentmindedness worthy of the elderly, he put the kettle full of boiling water onto the flames instead.  Who hasn’t done it?

Needless to say he failed to notice the mistake until the kettle melted and burst into flames. And this, readers, is the moment that even the international press could not have invented.  What did UTE do next?  Reach for a fire blanket, turn off the gas, remove the kettle?  This is after all the Health and Safety generation.  They have never left home without a hi-vi jacket,  they cross the road to avoid a peanut.  Think just for a moment.  He did what all young people would do without pausing for breath.  He photographed it using his phone.  Several times.

You may need to take a moment here.  For years I have not left the house without warning the children not to play with matches, recklessly leaving unsaid the words ‘especially whilst on the phone’.

Like mothers the world over, I blame myself.

 

My parents had five children to worry about, God help them. Imagine keeping a group of teenagers, of whom I was the LEAST likely to misbehave, on the straight and narrow. One sister was routinely sent on dates with a flagon of distilled water having once arrived home at the crack of dawn claiming that her boyfriend’s radiator had boiled dry. Sadly they probably believed her.

Their advice to me on the day I left home – a tiny medieval village in the depths of the countryside for the temptations of a student life in London – was ‘Remember the Raj’. Wise words, I expect, but very little use as a restraint to a girl determined to make up for 18 wasted, well-behaved years.

My own favourite nugget proferred to the boys was that before they did anything to pause for a moment and ask themselves ‘Will this make Ma proud or happy? Or both?’ I don’t think breath was ever wasted more successfully. I could have been whispering in Swahili on the moon and got better results.

However. And that really should have been in extremely large type. Nature abhors a vacuum and into the cavernous empty black hole that has been my supply of things to boast about an almighty lump has landed. This is uncharted territory and I ask you to bear with me this once if I get carried away by the dizzy newness of it all.

I went to the launch yesterday of Useless the Younger’s book. (Note to self: New name required. Suggestions on the usual postcard and put a stamp on it this time!) At the prestigious Photographers’ Gallery in Soho, no less. With drinks.

The book is a collection of photographs, some taken by him, recalling the long lost world that was London about ten years ago, or recently if you are over 50. He did the layout, the retouching, wrote the words and published it. Fabulous reviews, obviously, and not just this one.

‘Where can I get my hands on this ground-breaking publication?’ you enquire, hoping that your loyalty to my blog will pull some strings. Back in line, soldier. I myself, his own mother, had to wrest a copy from the hands of someone who was momentarily distracted. My friend got the display copy. Hot cakes would have blushed in comparison. And it’s thirty quid, hardly loose change but, and admittedly I would say this, worth every penny.

So stop reading this and either Google the Photigaphers’ Gallery and look for Wavey Garms (Yuff speak for party clothes) or try the V Blocc website. Am I proud and happy? What do you think?

If you are ever in a strange town and want to know something, ask a taxi driver. Why, oh why, the dim contestants on ‘The Apprentice’ haven’t grasped this is a mystery, although a clue may be found in the word ‘dim’. A cameraman once said to me “Never mind anything else; find a pub, a curry house and a whore. In that order”. Easy peasy. Obviously this does not apply in London where all you will get from a cabbie is either an unending moan about the slackness of trade (First fare I’ve ‘ad all day) or a endless game of ‘Guess who I had in the back of my cab?’ And sadly not in an interesting way.

The other rich seam of local knowledge is manicurists, although not many men get to chat to them. Nails are a very classless area. Everyone goes, young and old, black and white, rich and richer, whether they want six inch talons with hearts and Diamente or just a quick, clear coat of strengthener with kale – I wish I was inventing the latter one. Ms Paltrow has a lot to answer for.

I should by rights be selling this information to a psephologist who would get a far more accurate vision of the country’s political mood than they do by pestering people with their endless cold calling. Listen to what’s being whispered over the cuticle softener “All my ladies are saying …” if you want the truth.

This is the reason that I was so ahead of the game with Brexit, although it is interesting to see how many people have had second thoughts on the subject since moaning became so spectacularly unfashionable, even round here. A friend who, it goes without saying, lives in a tax haven is the only person I know who is still batting for the other side, in a political sense, and even he has been rendered speechless since I enquired how much of his tax-free income he would be sending to Greece to bail it out. Perhaps everyone who is wringing their hands about child refugees could do something like offer one of them a home. Form a queue over there and I will forward your names. I believe it’s called putting your money where your mouth is and it’s not something you see a lot of. Action, dear readers, is always far more convincing than words.

A colleague asked about my blog the other day and I told him it was very funny. Let’s hope he doesn’t read this one or he’ll think I am a hypocrite too.

As your mother no doubt said on many an occasion. My tears are indeed caused by my own foolishness because during January – and didn’t I myself say ‘Don’t leave the house’ – I made the unforgivably novice mistake of using Public Transport. I can hear your jaws dropping from here. The journey between my lovely home and one of my places of business normally takes between 45 and 75 minutes, depending on how many points are on my licence and the time of year – school holidays heralding a trouble free spin along the A40 to God-forsaken Uxbridge. You won’t know where it is, you certainly won’t have been there and I strongly recommend that you keep it that way. Even I, Trip Advisor’s number one London reviewer, have yet to find anything of note there.

Regular public travellers will smile knowingly when I reveal that the journey care of TfL took I hour and 50 minutes. No leaves on the line. Not even passengers who had finally lost all hope. It just takes an eternity. At least I had a seat all the way as, unsurprisingly, very few people make the voyage into the unknown. The result of this lengthy exposure to the Ordinary British, and they are extremely ordinary at the far end of the Piccadilly line, left me with a cold and hence the streaming eyes. And nose. I obviously won’t be doing that again.

Anyway, in an attempt to cheer up the end of the month I decided to host Burns Night for my quiz team. We try to celebrate all major anniversaries with gusto and strong drink. After some discussion it was decided that as none of us was Scottish – in fact half of the guests were Irish, as it turned out – we would hold the event on a more convenient date and serve the roast beef of Olde England, no-one have revealed a secret longing for haggis and disgusting swede. I believe there was a smoked salmon starter to make it a mildly Caledonian evening and whisky was drunk, but Jameson’s as a gesture to our friends from the Emerald Isle. We drank English champagne as part of Brexit and all would probably have been well if we had left the port for another day. Clearly it had been poisoned by the foreign makers in a spiteful Euro revenge attempt and several people were suffering from unexpected side effects the next day. Or two.

After all this I decided to extend my January ‘Treat yourself like a Princess’ plan until the end of February. Oodles of self-cosseting, possibly wine and no getting out of bed again. That way lies misery and pestilence. You have been warned.