Imagine that!

I started this blog on 5^th November 2019. Back then, I had no idea that pretty soon I’d be throwing around ten-dollar phrases such as “lock down”, “social distancing” and “self-isolation.” Did you know that Covid-19 has created a whole new vocabulary? What would you call someone who ignores the guidelines and goes out to an illegal rave, having first bought up all the loo rolls at their local supermarket? Why, a covidiot, of course! Social get-togethers conducted on Zoom are covideo parties and the long-term strategy for leaving the pandemic behind is covexit. Even Cockney rhyming slang has got in on the act, as in, “I think he might be suffering from a mild dose of Miley Cyrus.”

 

We’ve all found ourselves in a different kind of life this year. As we head out of November and into the month that would normally be characterised by frantic shopping and googling of recipes for chestnut stuffing, I thought I’d entertain you with our old friend, the Top Five List. No theme, as such, because sometimes it really is all about the giggles. These are things which have made me laugh over the last few months and heaven knows, we could all do with a few more smiles in our lives, dear readers. So, in no particular order, here they are: 

1.   Some years after the rest of the world, I’ve discovered Spotify. I also got a Bluetooth speaker for my birthday. This means I can play music while I wash up and put piles of clothes away, which is lots of fun. The other day, I was doing some dull chore in the kitchen and singing along to Jimi Hendrix. My son was next door on an online college course. I was delighted when he appeared, frowning, and hissed at me, “Can you keep that music down, please! I’m trying to work.” A massive parenting win.

2.    I am the reason that Dundee-based author Wendy H Jones can boast that she’s ACW’s[1] most stolen writer. Back in 2018 on my first ever Writers’ Day, I purchased a vast pile of books from the bookstore run by Wendy and accidentally trousered one of her DI Shona McKenzie murder mysteries. I have since paid her back, honest guv.

3.   Back in the early part of the summer, I had to ring up a local estate agent about letting out my mother in law’s house. We got chatting and I told her I’m self-employed. “Oh really? And whereabouts in the house do you work?” she enquired. “On the bed, mostly,” I replied in all innocence. Because I do. You know, writing. On my laptop. Propped up on a pile of cushions looking out of the window. She fell about laughing and too late, I realised that I had given her the impression that I was employed in the oldest profession.

4.   My eldest son is the drummer in a heavy metal band. He started lock down with very short, sharp hair and one T-shirt with a picture of a hair metal band on the front. As I write in the last week of November, he has long hair which he’s been growing for nine months, a vast selection of metal-themed clothing and an Instagram page for the band. (Black Alice Official, if you’re interested. It’s loud. Very loud. Just warning you if you’re feeling frail). The other night, he fired up a YouTube clip of a Mötley Crüe concert. Half rock chick, half middle-aged mother, I found myself gazing at Mick Mars (one of the guitarists), tutting and saying, “Those heels won’t do his back any good.” In my defence, I should say that poor Mick suffers from ankylosing spondylitis and really shouldn’t be wearing anything apart from a pair of fleece-lined moccasins.

5. My fifth hilarious fact bears repeating. Sharp-eyed readers will remember that I mentioned the whole cat clothing business back in October in, “I Never Thought I’d See the Day.” Never, no, not in a million years or so, would I have believed you if you’d told me that I would be trying to dress a reluctant kitten in a navy-blue Babygro (for medical reasons). And I speak as a veteran of the mummy wars, a woman who used to wrestle toddlers into clothes each and every morning. Now that SpayGate is over and done and Misty’s fur is growing back, our usual affectionate relationship is back in place. I found myself holding her like a baby in my arms the other day and saying, “Who’s that pretty girl?” to our reflection in the mirror, using exactly the same voice I employed on my actual baby girl, back in the day. I know. Crazy! 

So, there we are. Five fun facts which I hope have made you chuckle this week. Thank you for reading what I write and commenting on it.  

I’m going to be publishing the blog every two weeks from now on, as my writing life is getting very busy. My novel, The Diary of Isabella M Smugge, is being published in February and I’ve got lots of writing on the go. Thank you all for your support. I’m a real-life writer. Imagine that!

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[1] Association of Christian Writers

A window on the world

 

When I was a lass back in the 1870s, television was a wonderful and mysterious world apart. At our house, we didn’t have one. All my friends did and when I went over to their houses to play, we would sit down and watch the children’s programmes until it was time for the boring old news which signalled home time. We lived at the top of a cul-de-sac in the middle of the village. When my parents got married, my grandmother accompanied my mother down from Glasgow to Essex, where she set up home in a flat at the bottom of her road. I was the eldest (and first) grandchild and Nana is inextricably linked with my very earliest memories. By the time I was seven, it was considered safe for me to walk down the road and knock on Nana’s door, shouting, “It’s me!” through the letterbox.

Younger readers will be baffled, but back then, black and white TVs were more brown and white. Nana had a vast Bush set which sat majestically on a rosewood table in her front room. Every day in the school holidays and every Saturday tea time, I’d walk down to her flat and we’d watch TV together. It was great. We could choose from BBC1, BBC2 or ITV. That was it. The TV took a little while to warm up. You turned it on and after a little while, the picture and sound would catch up with themselves. Meantime, Nana would be making a hot drink in her little kitchen. We watched Tarzan films, the 1930s Flash Gordon series with its dopey hero facing up to his arch enemy, Ming the Merciless of Mongo, Laurel and Hardy, Wacky Races, Saturday Night at the Movies, dramas, comedies and the last gasp of the variety shows. When it was time to go home, I’d turn the set off and watch, fascinated, as the picture dwindled to a tiny white dot before finally disappearing.

In 2020, that world seems a lifetime away. Thousands of shows are available at the touch of a button. We introduced our children to one of our favourite programmes, “Frasier” a few months ago and threw them completely by putting a video on. “Is this what you used to do?” they enquired, confused by the whirring sounds and poor quality. “Why didn’t you just stream?” I’m old enough to remember when the first VCRs came out, vast and chunky. They were hailed as technological marvels.

Anyway, back to the present. I was wondering what to write about this week. My friends Deborah and Georgie suggested some of the recent adaptations of classic books for the screen so that’s the direction I’ve taken. 

Ever since lockdown 1.0, I’ve been watching a lot more television than usual. And darn, it’s been good. I’ve noticed that a lot of it is written by, directed by and starring more women than I’ve been used to seeing. Growing up, women were there (mostly, not always) as decoration. Busty nurses helping Young Mr Grace in, “Are You Being Served?” glamorous hostesses on, “Sale of the Century” and dancers in the background of variety shows.

This year, I’ve watched with joy as women move to the forefront of entertainment. That’s how it looks to me, anyhow. I’ve just finished watching, “The Queen’s Gambit” and who knew chess could be that gripping? I’ve asked for the novel for Christmas. “Life” on BBC1 with the redoubtable Alison Steadman was a treat, leading me to shout, “Peter, you idiot!” several times at the screen. It all ended up OK, but it was a close thing. I also loved, “Roadkill”, the Sunday evening BBC1 drama series, all shades of grey and badly lit offices full of civil servants. Great music, Hugh Laurie being a cad and lots of strong women, including a cameo from Patricia Hodge as a newspaper owner who got to threaten Pip Torrens. And you don’t see that every day.

Over the years, I’ve watched my fair share of classic serials, but those clunky ones from the 1970s and 1980s with wobbly scenery and costumes recycled from previous productions have been replaced with glossy, slick, well-resourced programmes on well-known streaming services. 

I settled down to watch, “Rebecca” with great excitement, as it’s one of my favourite novels. I couldn’t fault the scenery or the costumes, but there was a hollowness at its heart, a lack of true menace that disappointed me. Perky young Lily James was far too pretty to be a good Mrs de Winter mark two. Where was the lank hair and the limp cardigan? Mrs van Hopper, on the other hand, was a triumph. When Max de Winter appeared, sporting a range of eye-catching suits, he was extremely easy on the eye, but far too young and – well, nice – to be the brooding, violent, secretive anti-hero of the book. Once we reached Manderley, however, and met Mrs Danvers, the true star of the piece was revealed. Tight-lipped, clad in chic black and seemingly omnipresent, Kristin Scott Thomas played her in trademark glacial style. Her red lipstick was the warmest thing about her. I was truly sorry to see her plunge into the sea after a dramatic clifftop confrontation. 

We’d never heard of box sets back in the days of the giant brown and white telly. Now, they’re part of the language and bingeing is something we’ve probably all being doing over lockdown. Recently, I even found myself addressing my 89-year-old mother in a loud clear voice: “Now, this is called a BOX SET. I will get it going and you can sit here and BINGE. That means you don’t have to press anything; it will carry on AUTOMATICALLY. Would you like a cup of TEA?” I got her hooked on, “The Crown”, and as someone who can remember exactly what was going on in 1936 (“Of course, her father always spoiled Margaret, and we were all black affronted when that American besom[1] ran off with the King”), she was able to provide a running commentary on each episode.

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[1] Scottish dialect word meaning a hussy, amongst other things

I don’t know what Nana would think about some of the programmes I watch nowadays, but something tells me she’d love a box set with a nice cup of tea. Somewhere on the far reaches of YouTube or Netflix, you can probably still find Flash Gordon trying to save his boring girlfriend while being vamped by Princess Aura, Laurel and Hardy falling down stairs and trying to move pianos and Johnny Weissmuller swinging through the trees in a tailored pair of leather shorts. I should probably have a look some time. But for now, I’m off to carry on binge-watching Series 4 of, “The Crown” along with the rest of the nation. 

Happy watching!

[1] Scottish dialect word meaning a hussy, amongst other things

Images by Unsplash

Ruth is a freelance writer and novelist. She is married with three children, one husband, four budgies, six quail, eight chickens and a kitten. Her first novel, “The Diary of Isabella M Smugge”, published by Instant Apostle, comes out in February 2021. She writes for a number of small businesses and charities and blogs at Big Words and Made Up Stories. Ruth is a recovering over-achiever who is now able to do the school run in her onesie most days. She has abnormally narrow sinuses and a morbid fear of raw tomatoes, but has decided not to let this get in the way of a meaningful life. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at ruththewriter1.

The Times They Are A ‘Changing

Being a teenager in the 1980s was fun, but a bit scary too. On the one hand, there was lots of great music to listen to in your bedroom while experimenting with luridly coloured eyeshadow. On the other, a B-movie actor was in the White House and the threat of nuclear war permeated our waking dreams. Back then, the satire practically wrote itself. “Spitting Image” was a must-see for all self-respecting teenagers, and Ronald Reagan made frequent appearances. “Gaddafi? Gaddafi Duck?” was one of his sayings, and “The President’s Brain Is Missing” was a regular feature on the show. Mrs Thatcher and her cabinet of cowering yes-men, the Royal Family as we’d never seen them before and the Davids (Owen and Steel) kept me chortling week after week. No surprise then that the show is back, with a whole new cast of characters, including the POTUS.

In the interests of full disclosure, I need to warn you that this week, my blog is political. I could have written about anything, I suppose, but the events across the pond have been so jaw-dropping that I feel I can’t leave them alone. Fortunately, we live in a democracy, so if any of you, valued readers, disagree with me, that is your right.

I’ve tried to understand the American political system several times over the years, but I have now given up and that’s official. Swing states, electoral college vote, primaries, caucuses – you what? Over here, you go to your local polling station and put a cross in the box of your choice. That’s it. Four years ago, when the American people spoke and elected the 45th President of the United States, I was a little surprised, to put it mildly. His term of office has been marked by divisive, revisionist, racist, misogynistic, protectionist and isolationist policies. Plus, tweets. Oh, so, so many tweets.

And yet, in spite of four years of frankly unbelievable behaviour, still we didn’t know who was going to win the election. Last week, driving across Mid Suffolk in the dark to pick up my son and listening to Radio 4, the reactions to the news that Biden might be in and Trump out were remarkable.

Let’s pause there for a second. When I was thinking about this blog (and as you can see from the time of posting, I’ve done a lot of thinking), the book which popped into my mind and wouldn’t go away was, “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.” Why? Because of the scenes where the winter with no Christmas imposed upon Narnia by the White Witch starts to come to an end. The children, accompanied by Mr and Mrs Beaver, are walking through Narnia when they start to notice the thaw.

“They walked on in silence drinking it all in, passing through patches of warm sunlight into cool, green thickets and out again into wide, mossy glades where tall elms raised the leafy roof far overhead, and then into dense masses of flowering currant and among hawthorn bushes where the sweet smell was almost overpowering.”

Lewis’s writing takes some beating, and the scenes where the Narnians start to realise that their long winter is over and dare to express their joy at freedom are powerful indeed. I’m aware that it was a close thing. Slightly over half of the American people voted for Mr Biden, and slightly under half for Mr Trump. Listening to the news, I heard the BBC reporter speaking about the impromptu celebrations all over New York. In the background, I could hear car horns beeping and people cheering. A few of them were interviewed. They sounded like Narnians to me, freed from a long winter.

Of course, they were all Democrats or at least not Trump supporters. There were plenty of people who weren’t nearly so happy, the major one being the President himself. As I write, he still hasn’t conceded defeat or congratulated the President Elect. This is a first in American history. The satirists must be rubbing their hands in glee.

My favourite tweet from the President read thus. “We won. By a lot.”

Just five words which summed up the last four years for me pretty successfully.

We don’t know what the future holds. But I have hope, for the first time in a while, that divisions will decrease, agreements will be reached and walls will come tumbling down.

I’ll finish with a little more CS Lewis. This is Giant Rumblebuffin knocking down the gates of the White Witch’s castle with his club.

“The gates creaked at the first blow, cracked at the second, and shivered at the third. Then he tackled the towers on each side of them and after a few minutes of crashing and thudding both the towers and a good bit of the wall on each side went thundering down in a mass of hopeless rubble; and when the dust cleared it was odd, standing in that dry, grim, stony yard, to see through the gap all the grass and waving trees and sparkling streams of the forest, and the blue hills beyond that and beyond them the sky.”

That’s how it feels to me. The dust needs to settle and there’s a lot of rubble to clear away. But for the first time in four years, I can see beyond to the blue hills and the sky.

Images from the original imprint of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

Ruth is a freelance writer and novelist. She is married with three children, one husband, four budgies, six quail, eight chickens and a kitten. Her first novel, “The Diary of Isabella M Smugge”, published by Instant Apostle, comes out in February 2021. She writes for a number of small businesses and charities and blogs at Big Words and Made Up Stories. Ruth is a recovering over-achiever who is now able to do the school run in her onesie most days. She has abnormally narrow sinuses and a morbid fear of raw tomatoes, but has decided not to let this get in the way of a meaningful life. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at ruththewriter1.

 

It's a numbers game

Welcome back, devoted readers. Some weeks, this blog is serious, others not. Usually, though, there’s an underlying theme, perhaps something I’ve learned and want to share with you, some inspiration or encouragement.

Not this week. It’s all about the giggles, I fear. No philosophising or musing.

A little while ago, I drove up to the pretty village of Gislingham, near the Suffolk/Norfolk border to visit my dear friend Di and her husband who have recently moved there from Essex (hooray!) We had a fabulous time, as we always do. One of the highlights for me, oddly, was the very lovely liquid soap and hand cream Di had recently purchased from a well-known chain of supermarkets with German origins. I am a bit funny about smells. Fruit’s generally a no (grapefruit being the exception), anything heavy or syrupy gets the old heave-ho and in fact, it’s quite hard to please me on the fragrance front. However, this particular product had me washing and moisturising my hands not once, but twice, and sniffing them appreciatively afterwards.

The label on the side of the bottle was fairly uncompromising. “No. 1. Lime, Basil & Mandarin” it read, in bold black letters. Making a mental note to snap some up from my own local branch as soon as humanly possible, reluctantly I bade farewell to my friends and drove home, smelling my hands every time I stopped at a traffic light or T-junction. A bit weird, I know. But then, as I think we’ve all worked out by now, I am. 

On the way back from gymnastics in Ipswich on a Thursday night, it has become my practice to nip into the said German supermarket with my daughter to pick up a few bits. Pots of custard and jelly for lunch boxes, oddly flavoured crisps, stuff from that weird middle aisle they have there. On this occasion, I was on the hunt for some Number.1. I looked in the obvious places, but naturally it wasn’t there. Eventually, nestled between two strange bedfellows (toilet cleaner and scuba diving equipment, let’s say), I discovered the range. I let out a cry of excitement, but then discovered that my particular branch of the well-known supermarket had decided to dispense with liquid soap and moisturiser in favour of candles and those fancy-schmancy scented reeds you put in the loo when people are coming round. 

I’m a philosophical kind of girl, so I contented myself with sniffing the candles and making appreciative, “mmm” noises. I filled my basket with candles and reeds (because at these prices, who wouldn’t?) As I did so, I noticed a second fragrance, calling itself No.3. Pomegranate. I checked it out but rejected it as being unsuitable. And that was that. 

My life was made immeasurably better by having the candles dotted around the house. They look really posh and expensive, but in fact come in at under £4. In half term, I met up with my lovely cousin for a muddy walk around a field and a picnic in the back of the van. As the children were chatting, I shared the exciting news about my candle find. She too is a devoted fan of this particular German supermarket. We amused ourselves by imagining how funny it would be if the manufacturers filled in the gap between No.1 and No.3 with – well, a No.2. What fragrance would that be, we mused, between loud and unladylike snorts of laughter. We agreed that no-one in their right mind would market a range of scented homeware with No.2 written on the side in big black letters. It would be like poor old Robert Wagner in Austen Powers 2. No-one wants to be Number Two.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, dear readers, when I paid a visit on Tuesday and found that they had indeed marketed a No.2 range of fragrances. Once I’d finished laughing, I took pictures to prove my point. I sniffed the No.2 (as it very much were) and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting. I didn’t buy it though. Can you imagine the hilarious misunderstandings that would ensue?

“Has anyone seen my No.2?”

“Who left that No.2 on the floor?”

“What is that lovely fragrance in the loo? Oh, hang on …..” 

And that’s it for this week. I’m writing this on the last day before lockdown in England. We don’t know how long it will last or how we’ll cope. I suppose the reason I wrote this today is to make you laugh. I hope it did. We need to read silly things sometimes, and today of all days, with all the goings-on over the pond and the spectre of Covid-19 dogging our footsteps, a jolly good chortle about a shelf covered in No.2s is just what the doctor ordered.

Stay safe.

Images by Pixabay and me

Ruth is a freelance writer and novelist. She is married with three children, one husband, four budgies, six quail, eight chickens and a kitten. Her first novel, “The Diary of Isabella M Smugge”, published by Instant Apostle, comes out in March 2021. She writes for a number of small businesses and charities and blogs at Big Words and Made Up Stories. Ruth is a recovering over-achiever who is now able to do the school run in her onesie most days. She has abnormally narrow sinuses and a morbid fear of raw tomatoes, but has decided not to let this get in the way of a meaningful life. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at ruththewriter1.