Good morning wage slaves and welcome to the weekend.  I love seeing your little white faces and mole like eyes as you come blinking into the sunlight.  In case you’ve missed it,  it has been glorious all week and now the Gods have smiled and are about to bless you with two golden days which I urge you to make the most of as without doubt we will be asking mournfully in September whatever happened to summer.

It is mayhem at the allotment, like a speeded up film as plants leap skywards and I have already harvested my first crop of asparagus, about a month earlier than usual. Letter, but no samples, to The Times methinks. And I’ve  been watering – another first this early in the year.  Normally we’d be putting out the young rice plants in the recently defrosted mud.

Today I shall be lunching on the riverside deck of a house on Eel Pie Island, waving graciously to boats full of day trippers, no photos for goodness sake, can’t we have just a little privacy?  I intend to take one of my lovingly crafted, home made banana cakes but it’s possibly pushing it, even for me, to claim that I’ve grown those.  Perhaps by June ….

Tomorrow I shall be venturing into the There Be Dragons land beyond the M25 for my sister’s 60th birthday.  We’re not close, what with her being so much older, but I’m going to make the effort, Ray Bans on, roof down and Beach Boys on full blast. And I shall be musing over the sign on the M23 which warns that unmarked police cars are operating in the area. Doesn’t telling us they are there ever so slightly defeat the point of them going about in mufti?  Almost as pointless as the sign on a bollard on a pavement in St Martin’s Lane in Central London which simply states ‘No Digging’.

Not even if it’s sunny?

Its never a good thing to share your dirty laundry with the general public.  At one time this meant not talking to the village gossip at the pump, today it means social media, even if you keep your clothes on.  Be calm, gentle readers, I swear this is still a Trump free zone; read on.

On Mothers’ Day there was an irate post on Facebook from someone complaining very bitterly that they had no cards, or flowers, or chocolates to boast about as their children hadn’t bothered.  Now at the risk of seeming uncharitable – not a line I favour – there are two very negative conclusions that could be drawn.  One – you children haven’t bothered because they don’t like you or they are very selfish people or two – that you are someone who  measures love in material terms.  Doesn’t show you in a very good light, either way.  Certainly not to anyone who couldn’t have children at all.

I may have mentioned before that motherhood is a long, hard road but it does involve a lot of thanks.  Not from your children obviously – they didn’t ask to be here and, during the troublesome teenage years,  will remind you out that given a choice beforehand, you wouldn’t have been their first choice.  Or second.   I recall that the singer from the Pretenders was once used to illustrate a more acceptable alternative.  Whoever she is.

The thanks will come from you, if you’ve got time and you remember.  Thank God the baby’s here safely,  thank God the measles jab didn’t have terrible side effects, thank God they passed their A levels.  It goes on ad infinitum.  And so it should, given the unending list of things there are to worry yourself into a sweat about.  Thank God she didn’t get pregnant as a teenager, he didn’t get hepatitis in Thailand, they didn’t die in some awful road crash.

Now I might not be so sanguine if my sons had forgotten but I had different reasons to be grateful this week.  Elder son bought his girlfriend a book and a really pretty scarf which he used as wrapping paper.  Thank you for my son who has such lovely ideas and is a nice person.  Someone who may not get me chocolates but who never passes a beggar in the street without stopping,

Number two son has been in the Far East but sent a text.  He hated Hong Kong – full of FILTH (Failed in London, Try Hong Kong), the type of dreadful ex-pats that make the 13 hour flight home in economy seem like a tempting idea. And unbreathable dirty air.  However, he loved Tokyo because it was so ‘considered’ and he liked the fonts. No, Smith Minor, not the christening paraphernalia for goodness sake. Graphics, boy, graphics.  Thank you that he has such solid values and a good eye for design.

Mothers Day is a tear jerker when they are five and bring home a crumpled card from school covered in glue and glitter.  At this stage it’s about looking at what they’ve become and perhaps allowing yourself a moment to think that just possibly you haven’t done such a bad job.  Just don’t expect them to say so.

 

“Loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous combination”.  Words of such profound wisdom that I am tempted to claim them as my own but the quote actually comes from ‘The Simpsons’, source of much of my philosophy.  Not half as risky, however, as any national holiday and my quiz team.

Welcome to this week’s cause for celebration – St Patrick’s Day.  Today’s Readers Challenge: In not less than 500 words compare and contrast that statement with the mischief offered by a mixture of St Patrick’s Day, an England/Ireland Grand Slam rugby final and eight heavy drinkers. Thesaruses may be consulted to avoid the overuse of madness, mayhem and anarchy.

As always on these occasions we have a mini quiz and I was sorely tempted to take along the recently issued minutes of The Committee (Only the first 500 pages) and in the spirit of ‘Where’s Wally’ offer a prize to anyone who could spot anything interesting, or remotely interesting to give more demanding players a chance.

In an entrepreneurial mood I wondered about translating them into Russian and selling them as a long lost Dostoyevsky novel, one of his less cheerful offerings.  The possibilities are endless, a bit like the meeting.

It was a marvellous lunch, there was even hot food, and I was an early returner to the subs bench when I left at 8.30pm.

Apparently the Remainers ( A far more cheery band than the Europhiles of the ilk) carried on until 3.30 am, allegedly playing Mah Jong.  An unlikely scenario given that by the time I retired hurt they were incapable of even saying ‘Snap’, never mind playing something foreign.

Next day saw the time honoured tradition of flowers and a heart-felt, remorse-filled thank you card.  And that’s FROM the hostess. I myself apologised but with the caveat that I think the neighbours reaction to the unfortunate, and wholely unplanned, incident involving their hanging baskets was a complete over-reaction.  You’d think they’d be pleased at the de-escalation of damage, given what happened last year.

Still, in vino veritas, as the French say, it was a pleasant surprise to discover that the dress I ordered online shortly after lunch  (Monday? Tuesday?) arrived and was lovely. And my size.  And cost less than £5000.   Why, oh why, don’t they fit iPads with a breathalyser?

As to the title of this week’s offering it comes from a memorable moment at a previous lunch when a guest referred to the use of margarine in cooking and stated with great, if somewhat slurred conviction “That would be by Protestants.”  Bet you didn’t know that cows were Catholics?

 

 

What a dreadful, dreadful week, dear readers but with the upside of two exquisite spring days. Or summer, as we call it in England. The lowest and by a distance, longest hours were spent sitting on a new committee.

Now I may have used this quote before (I spend a significant amount of time on committees) but the best ones are made up of an odd number, preferably less than three. New committee had no less than twenty one members, about 15 of whom had no Off Switch. The chairman had the herding skills of an ant and within minutes it was clear that we were in for the long haul.  I made a couple of abortive stabs at moving things along – “I think we’ve heard from everyone.  Shall we put this to a vote?” but it wasn’t even going to be a finger in the dyke. As I did through years of maths lessons, I abandoned hope and looked around for light relief. Luckily, and I always like a straw to clutch at, I was sitting next to an extremely amusing gay colleague and in the finest schoolroom tradition we spent  the rest of the meeting passing each other silly notes, a flickering candle of evidence of intelligent human life in a very dark world.

Me: Have you booked somewhere nice for lunch? Later  corrected to dinner.

Him:  Not yet, I’m actually searching Airbnb for a room for the night. Correction Week

With time of my hands and very little mischief to be had, I turned as a last resort to thinking.  That way lies madness but hey, ho, I was well past caring.  The previous day I had descaled the iron – oh, do be quiet at the back, didn’t I say it had been a dreadful week? – and I fell to thinking about all the things that people living in jungles are spared.  No electricity ergo no irons, kettles or coffee machines to maintain.  No fridges or freezers to defrost.  I doubt that a lot of waiting in for gas men or deliveries goes on.  Lawn mowing is probably not high on their to-do lists, or having to run out for dishwasher tablets.

The more I thought, and available time appeared to be infinite, the more I wondered what they actually do all day.  Grow food is an obvious answer but I myself produce enough on my allotment to keep the whole of west London in runner beans and beetroot and it’s hardly a full time job.  I make as much jam as Bonne Mamma and my own creme de cassis which I’d put money on doesn’t happen in the Third World.  I may take pity on them, a very new line, and  export the concept of committees,supplying them with a dozen or so “seed potato” people to start them off. I have some candidates in mind ….

What I need now is a brilliant excuse to get me out of ever having to attend another meeting , a reason which is bathed in the golden glow of sincere and deep regret.  This will not be the work of a moment.  My usual source of evil inspiration is Useless the Younger who is unfortunately currently onboard a ‘plane to Hong Kong.

His stroke of genius before boarding was to come up with an outfit for me to wear to today’s St Patrick’s lunch which has an Irish themed dress code.

“Wear black with a white collar” he advised, “Say you’ve come as a pint of Guinness”

Clearly way too clever to get lumbered with meetings, lucky little leprechaun.  Let’s hope he reads this and thinks of an answer.  Pronto.

I promised you the fully Monty on my lost weekend, never realising that I would need to add the word Python.

One of our party ended up on the wrong side of the law.  Yes, yes, thank you hecklers.  We always knew it was a possibility but not before we’d actually started.  Impressive, even by our extremely demanding standards of misbehaviour.  Bugsy (Origin of name lost in the long jump sandpit – probably an incurable nit issue back in the day) was caught speeding in a manner that brings Jeremy Clarkson to mind, doing no less than 34 mph in a 30 mph zone.  The disgrace of it.  If you’re going to speed, at least do it properly, preferably something that would rate a headline in The Hastings and St Leonard’s Gazette. “Ninety mile per hour  madness of petrol-head pensioner” would surely have been less shaming?

That a gel from our school should have been caught have done something so ordinary!  But redemption was at hand.  Arriving back from her session at Naughty Drivers School she confessed that the whole experience had been so nerve-wracking that on the return journey she had driven into a street which was a dual carriageway travelling towards her.

Nothing else would suffice but an immediate outing to the most recent scene of her motoring misdemeanours.  We drove her round the route several times, pointing out the No Entry signs, the road markings, the cars all travelling in one direction only and most importantly, the cameras.  Valuable time, paper and ink were wasted whilst she tried to concoct a story about having been reversing down the street.  Sentencing guidelines were consulted and the remote possibility of inventing plausible mitigation considered and dismissed.

Further evidence for the prosecution came to light when we checked her workbook from the course and discovered that by page 2 she had started to make a shopping list. This, Madam, was precisely why you ended up doing O Level Cookery when we did Latin.

I was naturally in favour of her going straight to jail without collecting £200 (To pay the fine) but instead we retired to the pub to discuss the options and further impress upon her the depth of her criminality.  (Much) later we took a taxi home, again via the one way system and interrogated the driver on his knowledge of signage.  Further examination on speed limits compliance revealed that taxi driving was yet another in the seemingly unending list of careers from which she was debarred.

Readers, we drank to forget and with a vigour that had most certainly not been shown on the driving course.  I returned to London on Tuesday evening, a husk of the woman who had set off with such low hopes.

The good news was the Brothers Karamatzov were off to Athens for a week, giving me a much needed opportunity to recover.  The bad news was that they needed to be driven to the airport at 5.00am the next morning. And on the right side of the road.

It gives me no pleasure, dear reader, to disappoint you.  I picture all too vividly your eager eyes pinging open on Saturdays and doubtless your very first thought is my blog. So sweet if a little needy.

Today brings good news and bad.  The bad is there will be no blog, technically, much in the same way that there will be a wall in America.  Are you as crestfallen as you were at the Oscars?  Reasons to follow in section marked Good News, definitely not in a stupid envelope.

Incidentally in the five hours I was hanging about at my place of business yesterday, waiting for someone to commit a crime worthy of my attention, I explained to my colleagues my own brilliant (Aren’t  they all?) wall-related plan – to turn the M25 into a solid barrier between the United Kingdom and the Republic of London.  To keep everyone except us out, I hope I need hardly add.

One person hanging on my every word had first come to England at 18 to explore university options.  Doubtless in a fog of youthful ignorance she decided to start with Hull.  It would be cruel to laugh.  Arriving there by train, she opened the carriage door, took one deep lungful of fish gutting and went away again.  As always people, first impressions just so important.  Even twenty years later the memory lingered. She was totally in favour of work starting immediately.

But now onto the positive stuff.  I am too busy to write as I prepare to go away for the weekend, actually till Tuesday, at the newly fashionable Shoreditch on Sea that is Hastings, staying at the Zanzibar Hotel which is supposed to be amazing.  It had better be.  Details will be shared with my 68,000 TripAdvisor followers as soon as I sober up

I shall be spending time with the two  somewhat wayward ladies who were involved with the unfortunate kipper-flavoured doughnut incident at the Bar Italia.  (Scroll down to October, it’s still there) and catching up with a number of local ne’er-do-wells from my misspent youth.  Mayhem is anticipated.

And if you’re good and don’t moan about this week’s offering,  I’ll tell you all about it.

 

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.