NaNoNoNoNo month

Hello-remember me?

Remember I said three weeks ago that I was going to do that National Novel Writing Month thing. You know the one where you write 50,000 words of a big story over 30 days for no reason other than to see if you can do it? I thought I'd just let you all know how it's going.


I am at 42,000 words with what...(checks watch) five days to go. It's excruciating. "Just keep writing!" the Nano gurus keep saying. Can't think of what to do next? "Just keep writing!" Think everything you've written so far is a load of old bollocks?" Just keep writing!" Run out of story before the 50,000 mark (that's me folks,why do you think I'm blogging?)? "Just keep writing!"


I have discovered that I am the sort of person who can only write so much everyday before I start doing that classic Barbra Cartland-esque sketch from Little Britain. You know the one. "Sarah and Jeremy went had in hand through the snow. "Let's go sledging," said Jeremy caressing her soft cheek in his hand. "Yes, let's,"she said as she positioned herself on the sledge in between Jeremy's strong masculine thighs.

"Wheeeeeeeee!" she said as they went down the hill at top speed through the white powder.

"Whhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Wheeeeeeeh! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh"" she screamed as they rushed through the trees.

"Whhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeheee!"


God that's good stuff..it's going in!


All those who've ever done NaNoWriMo will understand. There's a point at which your precious story idea comes second to getting past the 50,000 mark. Many Nano-ing correspondents have admitted to filling up their Word document pages with superfluous sex scenes. Not me! ( turns inside out at very thought) Others have admitted to pasting in stuff they wrote ages ago to bulk up the word count (you know who you are, lady!) Still more have ascribed their success to long languorous descriptions of every room their main character goes into and every sight they see at any point in their endeavours (Hey, it worked for Thomas Hardy, don't knock it!) You can edit all the shit out later, what's the worry, as long as we reach 50,000 by Sunday, go for it. Whatever gets you through it.


My secret? I don't have one other than pour yourself a Drambuie before you start. Write 1,000 words by the end of the glass or you don't get another one. I'm finding it tough (and expensive, and possibly health damaging). Much of my manuscript when I read it back may just be lines of "Whhasthch that lettle dog doinggg over there sed the lady whose name I forgot from chapter two (find out later) (yu know the one, the woman who looks like she miggght be a bitch at fiorst but who ends up commingg through for main charakter in end?? Maybee, don't know yet. Migght kill her off, she's duller than I thoughht shee'd be)."


Anyway, I'm going to do it. I'll see you on the other side of Sunday when I'm locking the manuscript away in a desk drawer never to be seen or heard of again or dousing it in lighter fluid and burning it in the back garden.


Question: Ever tried writing a novel? Hard, isn't it? Here's one of the Little Britain Dame Sally Markham sketches in case you haven't a clue what I was banging on about earlier.



Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Walls Come Tumbling Down

Even though I'm having a month off from the Missives this IS the twentieth anniversary of the storming of the Berlin Wall which is my favourite of all historical happenings. Mainly because I was there only six months before.

So I'm going to repost my Berlin Stories about the time I visited East Berlin and got into a bit o' bother. I'll remember it all my life. It was originally in two parts but is posted as one here.

Berlin: East Side Story

Wishful thinking
by a West German Wall graffiti artist

When I was 18 I lived in West Germany from 1988/1989. Turns out, this was a pivotal year in Germany’s history. You may remember….

Walls come tumbling down
after 28 years

In the region of NordRhein- Westfalen, the state sponsored English Assistant Teachers, of which I was one, got taken on a trip to Berlin every year, by way of thanks for their hard work and to provide them with a cultural experience.

In May 1989, we traveled by bus, leaving West Germany, making our way through the German Democratic Republic, the country name that makes me laugh the most, and eventually alighting in a little Western outpost called West Berlin.

Blue for West Germany (BRD),
Red for East Germany (DDR),
Yellow for West Berlin

In 1988, Berlin was still split into East and West by means of a hulking big concrete wall populated by men in ridiculous outfits, who were eager to shoot those who tried to climb over it.

East German guards
in the 1970s

Official figures say that around 125 East Germans were shot between 1961 and 1989, whilst trying to get over the wall, or walls. There were actually two parallel walls with a strip of land known unofficially, of course, as the “death strip” in between them. The Wall was over 155 kilometres (96 miles) long.

The body of Peter Hechter 1962:
One of the few photos to reach the West
confirming the policy of shoot to kill for defectors

Bear in mind, official East German figures would of course be doctored. No one knew how many people were actually killed whilst trying to escape to West Germany at the time of the regime and the shoot to kill policy for defectors was, for a long time, denied by the Communist regime. Yet, the documents are there, now in German archives, confirming the command for shooting those caught defecting. The numbers are higher that those admitted to previously.

An East German guard peeks
through a crack in the wall in 1989
by Kurt Woodward

In 1989 the west side of the wall looked like this.



The East side of the wall looked like this.



At the end of our week in the city we were to spend a day in East Berlin. This would be the strangest day of my life.

Before our cross-border trip we were given a talk on how to behave in East Berlin. Anyone not attending the meeting would not be allowed to go on the three minute S-Bahn train journey from the west to Freidrichsstrasse in East Berlin.

The meeting, hosted by our West German school teacher chaperone, Frau Lohse, broke down like this.

As western citizens, we would perhaps be unable to digest the reality of life for those who lived in East Germany. We may be tempted to show our feelings about any weirdness we encountered or anything we may have read prior to our visit there.

We may even feel sorry for those who lived there. We may be too curious about their lives. We may naively try and do something that makes a small difference. In no uncertain terms should we follow these urges; East Germany was not to be messed with.

And be sure of this; not all East Germans want to escape.

We were told that the people of East Berlin may not be friendly towards us, but there were reasons for this. Having lived in Cologne, traditionally the most unfriendly city in the whole of Germany (and that’s saying something!), I was at least was glad to hear the Ossies had an excuse for their rude behaviour where the average Kolsche* supermarket assistant did not.

The East Germans would be nervous of being seen talking to visitors from West Berlin. This could be for two reasons. Firstly, the Ossies are acutely aware of always being watched by police, or undercover Stasi (secret police). Contact with Westerners was frowned upon at best. Secondly, many Ossies are suspicious or disdainful of those from the West. Their state feeds them propaganda about the West and it is not complimentary.

We were told, "Do not make them any more uncomfortable by seeking their company or imposing yourselves upon them, if not invited to do so."

Secondly, do not give any of your money away. At the Friedrichstrasse train station in East Berlin, you may come across people who look like they might need some cash. Do not be tempted to give them any money. On reaching the East, all visitors are required to exchange 30DM for Ost-marks (simply known as Marks, the East German currency). You will find next to nothing to spend these Ost marks on. This is a ruse by the East German government to get their hands on Western money. You will not be able to exchange your leftover Ostmarks for Western Deutschmarks. You WILL have left over East money which you will tempted to get rid of.

Under no circumstances give your money to East Germans. This will get them into serious trouble. Most especially, do not give any Western money to East Germans - even if they ask you for it. It is illegal for an East German to possess western currency. Yes, yes, we know the DDR Government has it. Yes, yes, we know the DDR economy can’t function without it. Their citizens are forbidden it.

It was like being warned not to feed the animals by the zookeepers. We took it all in with a large pinch of salt. How bad could it be?

A final note from our hosts. Do not take photographs of any officials, border guards, The Wall or any government buildings. You may be approached by police, asked to empty your camera of film and surrender it. If this happens to you, do not argue. It isn't worth it, you'll be put on a train back to the West immediately.

The meeting ended with a wish for us to enjoy our visit to East Berlin, and a reminder that we are guests in a different country with different rules. Rules which, no matter how we feel about them personally, we must respect.

We would catch the S-Bahn to Friedrichstrasse at 8am the next day.



* Kolsche: A person from Cologne. Also their local beer


Part Two: Berlin, Alexanderplatz


Walking across Alexanderplatz, we agreed it had been an odd day.

We were two Western eighteen year old student teachers who found themselves separated from the party of other eighteen year olds who were looking for a pub after their bizarre trip up the Fersehturm (TV tower) of East Berlin in May 1989.

"You don't go to East Berlin to go to the pub."

We went our separate ways from the pub bound faction. Cultural differences.



From the top of the tower you could see the whole of Berlin; the whole of it: the American sector, the British Sector, the French sector all merged into one sprawling West Berlin. And then the big old wall that stretched as far as you could see and closed off the Russian Sector that we all now stood in.

Alexanderplatz from the Fersehturm

As we wandered round the windowed observation point at the top of the tower we eavesdropped in on a primary school party of East German kids obviously on a little day trip of their own.

I’ll never forget this. The teacher asked her class, who couldn’t have been older than six,

“And who is that in the statue down below on Alexanderplatz?"

A little boy waited to be chosen amongst a sea of little raised hands. A quick gesture from the teacher to respond and he said like rote the most bizarre sentence I have ever heard a little kid say ,

“That is Karl and Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fathers of our nation, the German Democratic Republic.”

“That’s right.” said the teacher and moved on with her tour, unaware of me staring at them open mouthed.

Marx and Engels: Fathers of the DDR, apparently. Poor guys.

So back down on the ground, Fiona and I were on Alexanderplatz talking about the group of kids. And wondering what to do next with our only day in East Berlin. Alexanderplatz is huge, so we decided to walk away from the wall direction and keep going.

“Let’s just keep walking and see what we find.”

On the edge of the square we waited at the pedestrian crossing, well trained to wait for the green man after countless months in West Germany where pretty much all of us had been done for “jaywalking” across an empty road on a red man.

"Christ, if they’d fine you 30 marks for crossing the road wrongly in Cologne, you’d probably be dragged off to a detention centre and have your family tortured in front of you over here."

East Berlin was bugging us, to be honest. We’d been told off for countless petty things. This is a peculiar German pastime; giving foreigners into trouble for the most inane reasons. We were used to the tut-tutting of West German old ladies on trams if we moved the wrong way. But over here in East Germany the petty rule keeping was up several gears.

Earlier we had moved a chair over from an empty table to accommodate a fifth member round the table at lunch. As you do.

“This is a four person table” the waitress said.

“But there are five of us”

“This is a four person table”

"Do you have a five person table?"

"No. This is a four person table only."

“But…oh never mind…”

We waited for the green man to appear at the pedestrian crossing. Then behind us, we heard a little voice.

“Zwanzig, dreizig, vierzig, funfzig. Ein Mark….”

We turned round to see a little boy sat on a kerb counting pocketfuls of coins.

“Hello. What are you up to?” I asked.

I was just making conversation. It’s refreshing for students of German to have a chance to talk to kids; they don’t automatically want to try their English out on you and you can have a right good old chat without anyone correcting your grammar. If you’ve ever tried your German out in Germany, you’ll know what I mean…

“Look” he stretched out his hand. He was maybe seven or eight with dirty blond hair and glasses, clearly very chuffed with himself and not at all shy about speaking to two strange women. He was a smiley wee bloke.

We went over to him.

“I’ve got this much East money,” he said holding a handful of the almost weightless, little, fake looking East German coins.

“But look how much West money I’ve got!” he said digging a smaller haul out of his pocket.

“Wow! Where did you get all that?”, said Fiona, in the over-the-top astonished manner you do with kids.

“From the tourists. They just give it to me.”

“Cool. What are you going to spend it on then?”

“Nothing, I’m going to give it to my mum.”

That was it. Fiona and I start rummaging in our bags for our purses.

To this day, I tell you that little boy got me. I don’t know if he was the biggest player in East Berlin and I don’t care. He got to us.

Can we, at this point, just stop and view a misty vaseline edged flashback of our tour leader, Frau Lohse from the meeting the day before? Let’s have a look at her…there she is…

“Never give East Germans any West money. You’ll get them into serious trouble.”

Yeah you can see her, can’t you? Maybe she’s even wagging a finger? Maybe there’s a crowd of us nodding blithely in response?

Well, at that moment we didn’t see her, we didn’t remember what she said. Or we didn't care. We dug into our purses for handfuls of whatever money we could find and then….

“Guten tag.”

We looked up and to the side of our new friend. Our faces flushed as we realised what was happening. A tall East German policeman in a dark green uniform. There. In front of us. He’d been watching us for goodness knows how long, about to hand over Westgeld to a little boy. Which we aren’t allowed to do and he isn’t allowed to have.

It is like he has appeared OUT OF NOWHERE.

“What are you doing?” he asks us.

The little boy stops the counting but does not put the money back in his pockets. He just looks up. He knows what is coming.

“ Nothing.”

“Then on your way, ” he motions back towards Alexanderplatz. It is clear we are not going to be allowed to go any further out of the square.

We walk away, cold sweating, hearts pounding, back across Alexanderplatz in the direction of the wall. The vastness of the square means we can see the police officer as he stands with the little boy, motionless as he watches us go. We walk further, we look back. He’s still watching us.

Alexanderplatz: Unfeasibly vast.

After five minutes, we’re nearly at the other side of the square. We check; in the distance, he’s still standing there with the boy, who is now standing up. They both then cross the road together, now tiny figures, walking away from us.

The little boy is about to have all his Westgeld confiscated because two stupid girls thought they could solve a little problem that didn’t even exist. Two girls that thought they were cleverer than everyone else. Two girls that didn’t listen when they were told that giving money to East German citizens could get them into real trouble.

We felt sick. We couldn’t talk. We got on the train, and went home and went to bed at 7 o’clock exhausted, guilty, sad and bewildered about the German Democratic Republic.


When the Wall came down six months later Fiona was the first person I called as I watched the news.

“I can’t help thinking about that wee boy”, I said.

“Me too.”

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Misssy In the City

"Hey, I'm WALKING Heeere!"

So I said I’d tell you some New York Stories and I realise that I said this over a week ago. Here are a couple of events in a week full of events.

Meeester will be dining out on this for years

As many of you know my husband is in a delightful band called The Lorelei. They can mostly be described as “Where the Wild Things Are” but on stage and with musical instruments. You need to know this before I tell you the story.

After a seven hour flight on Air France with NO BLOODY IN FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT except watching my husband insist on speaking chronic French to the bilingual and extremely patient French air hostess, we arrive in John F Kennedy International Airport. The last time I landed in this airport was when I was twenty one and on my way to New Orleans. I remember Immigration being scary and intimidating, full of unsmiling guys that looked like the Twinkie eating beat cop in Die Hard but without the charisma. Of course this was before the Americans realised the rest of the world was hell bent on their destruction, so I was expecting far worse this time around.

We join a big queue and delight in the fact that out normally queuing-averse French traveling companions are forced to do the same. We are just about at the head of our particular queue when we both notice that a group of people keep looking at us. I am already paranoid about the JFK Immigration Experience and immediately think they know something about us that we don’t. Like some French joker has pinned an “I Heart the Taliban” badge on my back or stuck a note onto Meeester’s back that says “Frisk Me! I’m packing!”. Turns out it’s neither.

“Excuse me, are you the lead singer of the Lorelei?” the chief starer ventures, eventually.

“Ye-ess?” says Meeester to the accompaniment of his wife shrieking with jet-lagged Inflight Entertainment starved manic laughter.

“We’re big fans. Aren’t we?” the lady is excited. Her husband nods reluctantly. Something tells me she’s more keen than he is, but we’ll take what we can get.

So there we are, Meeester gets recognised in US Immigration. OK they were also from Aberdeen as it turns out, and despite pressing she didn’t want her photograph taken with Meeester OR her cleavage signed, but it was a lovely moment nonetheless. And the recent memory of it kept Meeester warm ten minutes later as he was interrogated in a small room for having “too common a name”; American Immigration speak for "You look dodgy".

Recognised in a foreign airport baby! And not from a photofit this time, neither!

Carrie Doesn't Live Here Anymore

This is a photo story.

All you need to know are the following facts:

1. The exterior shots for Sex in the City's Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment are shot in Perry Street in the West Village, NY.

2. Despite the residents probably getting a shedload of cash for this, they are now sick of the apartment being a shrine for fans of the show and have erected a chain across the front steps (or stoop, as they call it) with a sign saying “Keep off the Step”.

Exhibit A

Location: 66, Perry Street, Greenwich Village

Subject: Misssy M

Time: 16.41

Exhibit B

Location: 66, Perry Street, Greenwich Village

Subject: Misssy M and angry resident (not Carrie- she's a puppet!)

Time: 16.42

By the time she could scream “This is private property!” I had legged it down the street and was ordering a cupcake in The Magnolia Bakery confident that Meeester had the snaps.

""He!He!"

Which made me think, “Is disobeying the rules the new sex?”

*****************************

The Missives have been full of breaks in the last few months, which is not usual for this blog, but a result of circumstances outwith my control, blah blah blah. I’m usually a very regular poster. However, I’m about to take another break. I promised myself at the start of the year that I would do the National Novel Writing Month,or NaNoWriMo as it's known, even though I’ve chickened out the last two years when I said I would do it. The question is how someone with a full time job, two kids and a Black Menace can fit writing a 50,000 word (minimum) novel into a month. The answer is stop blogging, stop gadding about on the internet, stop watching telly (luckily Masterchef is finished, whew!)and stop sitting about in dressing gowns with cold flannels on her forehead and gin in her glass pretending to need some personal space. I’ve had a plot idea for a wee while and I’m going to give it a go and see how I get on. See you in December. Let me know if you are doing or have done NaNoWriMo in the comments box. Grateful for any tips, grateful to get to know any others that are doing it too.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Sometimes Real Life Intervenes

I've just been in New York. That's proof right up there.

New York Stories up soon once I've recovered. Highlights include Meeester getting recognised in JFK, and me getting turfed off Carrie Bradshaw's front step.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

This Sporting Life

I am not a sporty type. Trying to be sporty only ends up in misery for me and has long term repercussions. I am going to outline two examples of this in two posts this week. The first is to make the general point that I should always be let off games, even without a note from my Mum, and the second is directly relevant to events in the past week. Sorry for being so cryptic but I’m on some really hectic painkillers. Due to a sporting injury.

Case One: A few years ago I went to Finland with ten students of mine to visit our Finnish student friends in a student exchange programme. Many things happened on that trip, many bloggable things, but the people concerned are still alive so I have to be careful of lawsuits. However, one event lives with me still in the form of an injury that I imagine I still be complaining about when I’m an old lady grimacing and grunting as she struggles onto her Stenna Stairlift. In short I sprained the muscle attaching my bottom to my legs, I believe the medical term is “groin strain” although they only call it that so that they don’t have to use the phrase “Madam, it appears that you broke your fanny”.

The reason this injury happened is because I’m an idiot. An idiot who when asked to play in a Scotland versus Finland match of what is known in Finland and Sweden as “floor-ball” forgets that she is genetically ill equipped for such exertion. Floorball is actually indoor hockey, but the Finns are a really literal does-what-it-says-on-the-tin kind of bunch, so they like that name better because there’s a floor and a ball involved. Anything other than the name floorball would be fussy and ostentatious, which would be decidedly Un-Finnish.

So as I raced onto the court brandishing my big hockey stick, stopping short of smearing blue woad onto my face, not only had I forgotten that I was a good 20 years older than everyone else in the sportshall, I also neglected the fatal combination of being crap at sports yet still being fiercely and sometimes violently competitive. This common combination is why they invented pub quizzes; so the geeks had an outlet for competitive urges that didn't get them killed.

Despite my brain's protestations the game was on and I ran and I lunged for about an hour. And then I ran and I lunged for about another ten minutes even after someone told us that the little wiry blond beast that may or may not have been male or female and who kept on scoring goals against us was in fact a member of the Swedish national floorball team. The fact that we were getting brutally beaten only made me more competitive and especially determined to cause permanent physical damage to the aforementioned Swedish champion, who despite having been in the small town for two weeks we had never met before. I don’t know what the Finnish for “ringer” is, but the stench of cheating only made me more determined to get a goal against them, or at least send one of them off in a stretcher back onto the boat to Sweden that he had been smuggled in on only a couple of hours earlier.

But never mind goals, in a last ditch attempt to even get a touch of the ball, I lunged with my stick in a direction that the pelvic floor apparently wasn’t designed to go in. I don’t know whether I actually heard the sound of an elastic band pinging, but I felt that I did. It was like one of Barbie's legs coming off. Once the legs start coming off your Barbie, she's never quite the same.

My un-promising floorball career was cut short for want of a working set of pins. I hobbled off wanting to clutch my injury but painfully aware that it was in a indecently unclutchable area, especially in front of near homicidally shy Finns, who yes, may get naked in front of each other at a moment’s notice in a sauna, but recoil in horror if you look them in the eye when saying hello.

Three years on, whatever sinew tore, twanged and snapped during the floorball game is still quite bothersome. And how's this for pathetic and middle aged: it aches when there's wet weather in the post- it's become a flaming anatomical barometer. When there's a storm a comin' I'm hobbling about like Kaiser Soze when he's still pretending to be Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects.*

So that’s my excuse for not gearing up for 2012, what about you?

Next sporting event: I bugger up my teeth playing rounders. A game where you don’t even use your teeth. Well, you shouldn’t, anyway.

*Sorry if I've just ruined the ending of that film for you, but you have had over 10 years to catch up.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

The Music Room

I like to think that I am well and truly in control of what goes on in The House of the Flying Martinis. Cheekily, but usually fairly confidently, I also like to think that I am adept at handling my husband, the celebrated Meeester M.

Other people have noticed my ability to get him to do what I’d like him to do. Although I’m probably no better at it than any other wife. I draw to your attention this faked up magazine cover, designed by my sister, Misssy A, for his 40^th birthday who has been studying Meeester with a wary eye for some time. (Click on it for a closer look)

In some of those coverlines regular and long-time readers of the Misssives may notice some stories I’ve told you about Meeester in this very blog, but the one I’d like to draw your attention to is this one.

It suggests that in the early days of our relationship that Meeester perhaps wasn’t so interested in the career side of life. Perhaps post Uni he worked for a short time in a patisserie wearing a straw boater and an apron whilst sporting a recently acquired Bachelor of Divinity from the University of Aberdeen. I can only assume some kind of loaves and fishes type link between the two enterprises. Perhaps he also got the heave-ho from that job by messing about too much doing Dick van Dyke impersonations to the customers with the aforementioned boater, “Jolly ‘Oliday” style. I don’t know, my memory isn’t what it was.

Perhaps he was actually quite pleased he got the boot and could spend more time playing his guitar and getting out of bed just before Countdown. If the world of pastry didn’t want Meeester then who was he to argue? “They told me I was too happy”,he said, which we all knew was nonsense as apparently Dick Van Dyke complained about breach of copyright and the late arrival of his pastry and cup of tea.

The coverline also suggests that I was the force behind him changing his ways and now having an almost 100% perfect attendance rate of his job as a teacher. It's true, I’ve never seen him take a bona fide sick day never mind pull a cheeky wee sickie to watch a football game like a lot of blokes do. He has a work ethic like I’ve never seen before. Apparently a few threats was all it took. Indeed.

The title also suggests that I can control the movements of my husband, and up until today I may have even boasted this to be true. Turns out I’ve been had.

For years Meeester has been banging on about turning one of our rooms into a music room. We have little room enough as it is. We are not Mr and Mrs Mozart, confident though we are that our son’s saxophone lessons might well lead to a secure retirement for us both, so good is his recent rendition of “Theme from the Flintstone’s”. I have been unequivocally against this development, particularly as the room Meeester has designs on is the room formally known as The Dining Room which I kind of need for, you know, dining in.

It started with some hooks going up on walls. “It’ll keep my guitars out of your road”. The scam begins. Then a music stand was put in the corner. Then a small amp tucked itself into another. A couple of years passed and the dining room table made its way into the newly renovated kitchen. A couple of years on a saxophone and a saxophone playing son took up residence. Then I was suckered into buying Meeester a banjo for our 10^th wedding anniversary. A really nice banjo that looks great if left on display, as it happens. Some mouth organs, recorders and even a Stylophone gets chucked into the mix.

Then his plan all came together on Friday night. “My work colleague has offered us a free piano. She wants rid of it. I think we could put it in the dining room”. Now, as those who have been watching TV magician Derren Brown over the last few weeks will realise that what Meeester has been doing is a bit of auto suggestion. He’s still calling it the dining room, so that I won’t notice a thing. I’m like a rich widow at a séance. I believe every word.

The piano arrived today. There is now no dining table and no couch in this room. No eating ever gets done in this room. It has turned into the Music Room.

I have been well and truly scammed.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Granny Tax

On just (I say just...) turning forty it seems like a crossroads has been reached. I'm suddenly feeling all grown up and worrying about pensions and stuff. It's sobering.

I also seem to be going to a lot of funerals recently for another thing. An old family friend I’ve known since we were both kids said to me at one recently, “Weddings and funerals, that’s it for us now, Misssy. Weddings and funerals. Next time I see you will be when someone’s died.”

Oh dear.

All of a sudden I look around and three-quarters of my grandparents have gone, and I never got answers to so many questions. Now read that sentence again, it’s not that I never asked questions, I just never got answers.

Examples:

“Gran, how did you meet Papa?”

“Move your head, the snooker semi-final’s on.”

or

“Papa, what were your grandparents’ names?”

“This whisky needs a splash of water, there you go. Just a splash, mind. Don’t drown it!”

or

“Gran, did that old uncle really get the Victoria Cross or was that something you saw in a film and thought was your life?”

“No, that’s a Battenburg. They didn't have Victoria Sponge.”

or

“Granda, why are we all so...well.... odd?”

“Well, it’s been nice to see you all. Here’s some money for the kids. I’m due down the pub. Cheery-Bye! Just slam the door behind you as you go out.”

Recently I’ve been trying to prise some old, old family photos out from under my paternal grandmother or, “Last Gran Standing” as she’s known (behind her back). She’s got a carefully stashed catalogue of holiday photos of my dad as a boy with his brother and sister that she’s only let me see once. Up until that point I thought my dad had been born six foot tall with sideburns. Who knew he was ever a kid? Not me.

Why won’t she let me see them? Why won’t she let me take them away and copy them and then give them back with only a few choice ones stolen? Why won’t she indulge my questions about who was who in my family now that I’m obsessed with that TV family tree programme “Who Do you Think You Are?” but don’t have the BBC researchers at my disposal or the celebrity status to warrant someone else doing all the hard work for me?

Why are old people so ...well, difficult?

I think I’ve found the answer; they are onto us. As soon as family members start asking to do theses on you, or want to see documents, photos or pick your brains on what happened when years ago to Great Uncle Jim who may or may not have been gay, then that’s it- your funeral is being planned. People only want to know all that stuff when they think there’s going to be a day soon when they can say “If only I spoke to her when she was alive...”

As soon as you hear the words, “Granny, tell me about what life was like when...” then it’s time to panic, get your affairs in order and cancel the newspaper.

How annoying must this be, though? To have a granddaughter set up a video camera in your front room and say, “Right Granny, off you go. Speak of olden times, crone! I’ve got three 60 minute tapes, go for it! Don’t fear the Reaper.”

I’ve already devised a strategy for this kind of near death hectoring that will doubtless go on once I hit the 80 mark, I am going to demand payment. For every family story I expect to be taken along on an outing I otherwise would be a nuisance to take along. For every photo album that gets borrowed, I want my house cleaned from top to bottom and my lawn cut. For every clarification on an item of family genealogy I want a free session of chin electrolysis paid for AND a lift to the salon and back.

Last of all, for anything that requires me to write anything down on paper to help out with family trees, or any rummaging in drawers to find any certificates of any kind I want pre-paid tickets to accompany them on their next family holiday. And first dibs on the window seat on the ‘plane.

Effectively for every family memory I divulge I want a new one created for me in the present. That should stop them in their tracks.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Twinageddon

September is always a busy busy month for us in The House of the Flying Martinis. This year it was even busier. It appears that most of my family decided to become or have offspring at this time of year and therefore the whole month must be set aside for celebrating.

Not least of all those celebrations was the fortieth birthday of my husband, the infamous Meeester M along with that of his twin sister, who is not allowed to be called Misssy M because I thought of it first, so will therefore be called Meeester'sTwin. Incidentally, we celebrated Meeester'sTwin's birthday 20 minutes earlier than Meeester's.

A big fuss was made.

I have spent the last three weeks collecting, scanning, collaging, cutting, framing, gluing and stealing old photographs of the two birthday bods into various pieces of memorabilia designed to make both of them cry with emotion and/or embarassment. No awkward spotty gawky teenage photo has gone unused. No mullet, perm or shiny wedding suit has been edited out.

Then a quiz was devised pitting the twins against the rest of the family answering questions on their lives and foibles. I called it Twinageddon and and it was so good that TV company Celador who make Who Want to be a Millionaire are rumoured to be interested in optioning it on a five year global contract. How we laughed as we remembered MeeestersTwin's crush of former Scottish First Minister Donald Dewar after a misunderstanding in a Glasgow coffee shop. How we cried as we remembered Brabbajackal the frozen pet guinea pig their mother was advised to thaw out in the oven by the vet, but forgot to tell the twins about the situation when they came home expecting their tea.

All this twin business actually made me quite envious- how lovely to be a twin. I wish I had a twin, I'd think from time to time as I cut yet another seventies image of two wee kids who don't look remotely like each other but seemed always to be hanging about together and often had the same anoraks on.

This pair seem to have the best of both worlds, because as nice as it is to be a twin who has shared experiences, birthdays and milestones, being "not from the same egg" as they would repeatedly tell anyone who asked, and of course of different sexes, they wouldn't have the frankly freaky lookalikey thing going on.

Being an identical twin couldn't be as good as their situation. Identical twins would be subjected to a lifetime of other people who couldn't tell you both apart and people would comment on who was the brighter, the better natured, the more dominant, as people tend to do to be able to distinguish between identical twins, not realising how annoying that must be.

Then there's the whole getting married thing. You meet the man who ends up being your husband, but it turns out that he's an identical twin. Don't you feel a bit weird when you meet a second version of him? Don't you worry, even only deep down in your dark subconscious, that one night, for a laugh, they might swap places just to freak everyone out? I have a friend who is married to an identical twin. I don't know her well enough yet to ask her that question, but I'm working up to it.

So anyway, that's what I've been doing with my September, making a fuss of my favourite twins and thinking freaky thoughts about identical twins.

Oh, that and getting excited about the genius present I got for my most favourite of husbands: a trip to New York! With me!

Hey, I'm walkin' here!


Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

An Apology to the US

So here we are thrust into the world stage. Suddenly Scotland is being talked about all over the world. Let’s not go into why, this is not a political blog and I would like to keep it that way. However, it occurs to me that a handful of people are seeking to boycott Scottish goods and services in some kind of bizarre protest about events this week. Do The Misssives count? I know I have a few US readers, I hope you won’t desert me. Especially after what I’m about to confess.

Now I don’t want to wade in and upset anyone but I feel dutybound to confess that I have had a little fun at the expense of some American citizens in the past. Some fun of the type that may no longer be possible now that Scotland is firmly on America’s radar. Before my confession begins, I want to stress that I only made fun of the really stupid ones and I do realise that stupidity has no nationality, as a quick look at the initial auditions of the UK X Factor will swiftly back up.

All of these conversations happened when I was a cocktail waitress in New Orleans in 1990, where stupid teenage boys go to drink til they pass out on a holiday weekend, particularly in the bar I worked in which was one of the few non-transvestite/gay disco type establishments on Bourbon Street and which also was fairly lax in the checking of ID.

The temptation was too great. Forgive me, but waitressing can be a little dull, so sometimes you feel the need to have a little fun to make the time pass quicker.

Scenario 1: The Haunting
Him: Wow what’s that accent? Where ya from?
Me: Scotland
Him: Wow. I know Scotland! Do they really have ghosts and shit there.
Me: Oh yes, my dad’s one.
Him: You're kidding me right?

Me: No.

Him: Cooool.

Scenario 2: What time is it?
Him: So what age can y’all drink over there?
Me: Eighteen
Him: That’s awesome. So what age are you?
Me: Well I’m twenty-two back home but I’m twenty one over here because of the time difference.
Him: Awesome!

Scenario 3: Fight the Power
Him: So where are you from?
Me: Scotland
Him: Scotland, eh? So you guys still bombing the English?
Me: Not really. I think you’re thinking of the IRA in Northern Ireland (this was 1990)
Him: So you guys ain’t doing that. I thought you were.
Me: No we’re not doing that.
Him: Well, you should.
Me: OK then.

Scenario 4: Landed Gentry
Him: So do you live in a castle in Scotland?
Me: Yes, we all do.
Him: Awesome.
Me: Yes it is.


Scenario 5: Life in the dark ages
Drunken boy: So all this must be different for you guys coming from Scotland.
Me: Well, New Orleans is different all right.
Drunken boy: More modern and stuff
Me (clocking where he was going with this): Oh yes! You’ve got telephones and everything!
Drunken boy: Man, you don’t have telephones?
Me: Well, the whole town shares one.
Drunken boy: That’s fucked up.
Me: I write my parents a letter to let them know when I'll be calling and they book an appointment at the phone to take my call.

Drunken boy: That's fucked up.

Me: Ah, it works for us.

C'mon...you've never messed with someone?

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

I'm Beggin' of You Please Don't Take My Man

Graceland.
Little known fact:Named after previous owners Grace and Lando Fuffkin

For about five minutes last week Meeester and I entertained the thought of moving house. We even did a slow drive by of a house on sale in not so nearby Fyvie. By the time we’d driven by, we decided that we’re happy where we are. At least we’re not unhappy enough to move to Fyvie.

Some hours later we both admit what really bothered us about our quick not-quite-stop-off to the village featured in the famous party piece of old codgers everywhere, The Bonnie Lass O’ Fyvie-o! (You’ve got to add an –“o!” to all folk songs, it’s the folk song law. There’s never a “Bonnie Lassie”, she’s always a “Bonnie Lassie-o!”; you’re never alive but you’re “Alive-alive-oh!” You know the kind of thing. )

No, it’s not the village itself -OK it is a wee bit, it’s a horse short of being a one horse town. It’s not even the house in question -OK it is a wee bit, Meeester didn’t like it, but if I liked it enough I could’ve strong armed him like I did into the whole living together, getting a job, getting married and having kids thing. Easy. No it was the house next door. Specifically, the name of the house next door.

The house was called Johlene. The name stood brazenly in big mirrored letters reflecting the entire village back. Clearly someone called John and someone called Arlene or Carlene or Sharlene had decided to proclaim their union to the world by Frankensteiningly forcing their names together into one like a big bastard hybrid monster. We both clocked it, we both stored it and we both dwelt upon it silently until some hours later.

“Did you see that house?”

“You mean Johlene?”

“Yes. Yes I did.”

“I don’t want to live in Fyvie-o.”

“No, me neither, let’s just stay where we are.”

“Yes, let’s just stay in The House of the Flying Martinis. Let’s just sit tight.”

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Snaggletooth

David on the phone to his Tooth Jockey

Up until I was in my twenties I had straight teeth. Not perfect, but straight. Then they Bowied. Just like David, two fangs from the side began to creep out from their rightful position and not in a cool of the moment Twilight or True Blood vampire kind of way, but in a Snaggletooth way. This has bugged me for a very long time. It has bugged my mother even more, who uses my graduation photo as a benchmark. “Your hair was so lovely that day” (au natural; undyed and un-ironed) , “Look how straight your teeth were in that photo”(she’s right, they were. What happened?) She stops short at saying that she’d prefer me to wear a gown and hold a scroll on a permanent basis. She blames our family dentist, The Tooth Jockey for the whole thing. “He should have been onto that.” Our family has a love/hate relationship with The Tooth Jockey. I’m sure when he sees my mother’s name in his appointment book he thinks about throwing a sickie.

I have broached the subject of my unhappiness of the two snaggleteeth on a couple of occasions with The Tooth Jockey, a man who, in having a new car outside his practice pretty much every time I go there, you’d think would be happy to use my insecurity and vanity for a down payment on the next one. But no. He says, “Well, they aren’t that bad. You’ve got ask yourself, how bothered are you?”

Truth is I AM bothered, but he has made me feel an idiot for even mentioning it, so I meekly demur and slope off feeling my snaggleteeth with my tongue and check them in my rear view mirror on the way home trying to convince myself that he’s right; they aren’t that bad. I tell myself that if shit teeth were good enough for Freddie Mercury then they are good enough for me.

Years later I find I’m cringing when I see photos of me smiling. My teeth are squint and I hate them. Time goes on and I find myself not smiling so much when I see a camera trained on me. I am tight lipped like a Muppet (but not the muppet Doctor Teeth).

So, I decide to do something about it and last week I made an appointment to see about getting something called an Inman Aligner, which a man on the radio says can straighten your teeth in three months and is practically invisible. The nearest dentist that is certified is in Edinburgh, 120 miles away from my home. I take the plunge, I tell people, I Twitter about it, I proclaim my smile sorted by Christmas. People make noises about my teeth not being "that bad" (except my mum, who uses the occasion to badmouth The Tooth Jockey once more).

My appointment is with a young pretender tooth jockey called David who looks uncannily like the comedian Jimmy Carr. David/Jimmy looks at my gnashers, he takes photos of them and then he sits me down alongside him at the computer. He does not tell me “they’re not that bad”. They are bad, and he wants to tell me just how bad things really are. David/Jimmy, in fact, tells me things that I didn’t even realise were wrong with how my smile looks. I’m squint, I’m not symmetrical, my teeth aren't in the right part of my mouth, my teeth are the wrong size, they are too close together, and one, in particular, is singled out as a complete design affront to God and the world He created.

I think he’s either trying to convince me how shocking things are so that I’ll definitely go for the miracle brace in some kind of clever sales ruse, or he is, in fact, the actual Jimmy Carr and gets a kick out of insulting people like he does on that show he hosts where no vulnerable section of society is too vulnerable to be the butt of his jokes. Turns out it’s neither. David/Jimmy is working up to break the terrible news to me; my teeth are too much for the miracle brace. “There’s too much that needs done. The Inman Aligner is not for you. It wouldn’t work. You’ll need full orthodontic treatment plus a possible four veneers if you were to completely correct everything. Go back to your dentist and tell him that’s what you want.”

Five minutes and fifty quid later I’m on the street with tears welling up.

I’m off to the Tooth Jockey next week. I may take my Mum with me.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Space Chimp

So last week saw the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. And yes, it did happen- could you imagine how that footage would have looked if a late Sixties film director was in charge of directing the fake landing that dweebs all over the internet reckon took place? The moon would have been decorated in hideous orange and brown wallpaper and the craters would have had mixed nuts and cheese and pineapple on sticks in them. Jack Nicholson would have been one of the astronauts because he was in just about everything else out at that time. And if he wasn’t one of the astronauts he would have just been hanging about in the background...grinning and without a helmet, because Jack wouldn’t wear a helmet, for goodness sakes.

I’ve always been a little bit obsessed with the moon landing, mainly, I think, because it happened the year I was born. I remember being bitterly disappointed when I found out that you have to be good at sums to be an astronaut. Foiled again. You have to be able to do trig and algebra for all the good jobs.

So many years later I’m in Florida visiting a friend working in Disneyworld as part of my summer mission in the US to systematically test pilot all the cocktails of the region. At the same time NASA are launching a space shuttle about an hour away. I have to go. I just don't want to have to take public transport.

One night about a week before the launch we meet two Italian blokes in a nightclub who happened, as luck would have it, to be easy on the eye and have a car. Always a winning combination when you're 21 years old and shy of a driving license. The idea of going to NASA is floated, although in retrospect my hand gestures indicating the launch of a rocket may have been misinterpreted at first and led to one of cultural misunderstandings that have peppered my life. Anyway, the plan is set and we’re poised and ready to make our way down to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. I am ridiculously excited. I feel part of history. I mean I'm not, these launches were ten a penny at the time...but I feel that I am all the same.

By the day of the launch I am so beside myself with excitement that at one point I almost have an out of body experience where I see myself behaving like an excited loon and look down upon my earthly personage and scoff at how much of an ass I’m making of myself.

Night falls like a cat jumping down from a ledge, like it seems to do in that part of the world. It happens so quickly you almost get a fright. T minus 4 hours. Time to dress up like and astronaut’s wife in the 1960s and think about miming “Shall we think about getting going so that we can get a good spot?” to the Italian guys.

And then it happens. The news breaks. The launch is cancelled due to “a technical fault”. I set about cursing all the technicians of the world. How could they have been so slack? Who put that washer in the wrong way round- the fools?

I am not sure how the phrase crestfallen originated, but my crest fell like a ton of bricks that night. I actually shed a tear. I had to be consoled. I don’t think I’ve ever been so disappointed in my life. I was almost as disappointed as Michael Collins was when he heard the phrase, “And you’ll be staying inside the ship, Mike.”

The shuttle was launched three weeks later when I was on a plane back to the UK. Nineteen years later I’m still bleating on about it. Even Michael Collins has got over his disappointment quicker than me.*


*As the man who was left on the spaceship whilst Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong went down to the Moon surface to play golf, he is actually the coolest of the three men on the Apollo 11 mission. He had the hardest job and was responsible for the lives of his two buddies. He also knew he might have to come back alone if things went wrong (which they pretty much thought they would) and the world would despise him. I hate it when people say “The Other One” when they can’t remember his name. He is also the only one of the three that is still married to his wife and didn’t go all nuts when he returned. He claims that not going on the surface of the Moon wasn't a big deal. I think he may be fibbing slightly about that, though.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Summer of Bleurgh

For Black Menace fans

Hello I’m back, those of you who noticed. (Thanks to all who got in touch to say, “Where the Hell are you, Misssy?” That was nice.) This is a short one just to get me back in and catch you all up.

It’s been a crappy summer really and that’s why I’ve not been posting. My husband’s dad died a month ago as the summer holidays started. It’s been sad, weird and complicated. That’s all I’ll say on the matter.*

We also cancelled our holiday which could have been full of bloggable material since we had been going to Loch Lomond and had bought a dinghy for the occasion. We, however were never going to call it Dignity, since that song, Misssives readers of old will remember, is the first song on the personalised playlist waiting for me on Beelzebub's Jukebox in Purgatory, should I ever end up there. We’ve called it Unmashable, because there’s nothing like a name like that to tempt ye Gods. Also it’s orange...and no-one looks dignified in orange.

Another reason for being light on the blog front is the fact that I’ve been busy with a project that’s been ongoing for about six months. I have written a humour book with super-blogger Emma Kaufmann about being a mum. We’ve finally finished it, we’re very happy with it and we think it’s pretty damn funny. But doing something that big has squeezed all the creative juice out of me like a Kiwi Fruit in the path of a steamroller carjacked by a toddler. I thought about telling you all about it before, but it seemed a bit jinxy. It still does if I’m honest. But there, I’ve done it now. Emma’s probably going to kill me for hexing it. But she’s over in the US and can’t reach over to slap me, so I’m safe.

So I’m back, and I’ll be posting regularly again soon. Forthcoming attractions are: How I Nearly Got Involved in the Space Race and David Bowie, Snaggletooth and Me.

Also I'm off to New York in two months so something humiliating involving mugging, airport security or cultural misunderstanding is bound to happen to Meeester and I, so I'd stick around if I were you.


Ahhh, I've misssed this....



*I’d also like to point out that Michael Jackson is not my husband’s dad, just in case anyone thought they were on to something with that.





Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Wired

The Wire: What the blazes is going on???

I really can’t stand it when there’s something that everyone is banging on about constantly, yet I just don’t get it. This is the case with the TV show, The Wire. God knows I’ve given it several chances, and I’ve really tried to “get into” it. When it first came on telly a couple of years back I was there clutching my copy of the Guardian who were hailing it as The Most Important Text For Mankind Since The Ten Commandments Were Carved on Tablets or something like that. Fifteen minutes into Series One, and I’m struggling. I couldn’t understand a flippin’ word of it. Turns out I don’t speak “street”. I even went out into the “street” for a few hours in between episodes to see if I could pick up some of the language, but it transpired that the “streets” of a small Aberdeenshire village are not the home of “street”. I did see some ponies though.

A year or so and a couple of series later, the Guardian were still banging on about The Wire. One critic was feverishly exclaiming that it was The Most Important Television Phenomenon Since the Moon Landing or That Footage of JFK Getting his Brains Blown out in Dallas. Or something. I had to get in. I rented the DVD and settled down with a pen and notepad, ready to try and work at it this time. I could cross reference words I understood,guess at those I didn't, try and learn the verb declensions by writing them out in pencil over and over again and get my husband to give me vocab tests every Monday. All that worked when I was learning German at school and surely within a couple of months I would be able to understand rudimentary Street. Instead, though, only twenty minutes in I began to get an eyes been pierced with hot needles type migraine.

Maybe I could just relax and let it wash over me, like those kids cartoons in the Seventies that were actually in Czech with moles and other woodland creatures. We Seventies kids all watched them, didn't understand a word, but enjoyed them all the same, mainly because we didn't have much choice until Pipkins came on at 12.30 or the feed for some live sporting event was down and they would run some Tom and Jerry's til it was fixed. This could be the way to approach it. But no, it was still as difficult to decipher as a period drawing room drama dubbed into Japanese. I found myself being distracted by other things around the house, like doing laundry or tackling some quadratic equations. Anything but put the hours in with The Wire.

Then, The Wire was reaching its final series. How would it end? How would the world move on from its creative genre busting genius? As you opened the cultural pages the excitement about it was such that instead of getting any actual comment from their TV correspondents all that actually came off the pages was mouth foam spelling the sentence “Best Event Since the Resurrection Itself”. BBC2 started running the show from the start for all those that hadn’t got into the phenomenon from the start. Apparently there were a few of us. This time I was determined and technology had changed. I had a fighting chance. Yes, I thought, I’ve got Sky Plus and can pause the show every sentence and go online and get every word translated live on Twitter by correspondents who can speak yer actual “street”. Still, I saw nothing except some hoodies running around mumbling stuff at one another in some ghetto or other. it was like listening to something whilst underwater.

By the end of the Episode One I couldn’t have told anyone the faintest sketch of a plot outline. Gibbering to myself, I finally gave up.I felt like someone’s gran who tried to pretend that she could stand being taken on a long journey home for Christmas by her grandson as he played Death Metal in the car the whole four hour journey. I wasn’t going to get it, I wasn’t enjoying it, and I felt old and sick.

And I’m annoyed. I like to be in there will everyone else ranting about “cutting edge” and “benchmark” telly. I feel left out, and I hate it. Nearly a year after the end of the final series of The Wire the Guardian is at it again. Today there’s another feature exclaiming that People Who Didn’t Get the Wire Are Akin to Those That Put Jesus to Death.

Fine, I’m Pontius Bloody Pilate then. I admit it. The Sopranos was way better anyway AND I worked out what the last episode meant. So there.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Cigarettes and Alcohol

I used to smoke you will be appalled to hear.

Officially I ended it the second I decided to try and procreate about twelve years ago. Unofficially I ended it the time I decided to procreate a second time. All in all, I have not touched a cigarette for seven years.*

In between the birth of the first and second born of the Flying Martini children I lapsed slightly from time to time. But the cigarettes I smoked didn’t count, because I was in a foreign country when I smoked them.

As soon as we hit foreign soil Meeester and I would seek our favoured brand of local cigarettes, dependent on the country we were visiting, and arm ourselves up with a bunch of reasons why smoking on holiday was acceptable and permissable:

"It's immersing yourself in the local culture!"

"They are so cheap, it's like saving money!"

"This is the kind of country that if you don't smoke they think you are being rude. When in Rome...!"

I discovered that others have such smoking exemption excuses. For me, it was only “Smoking doesn’t count if you’re on holiday” but recently I have heard a few other choice ones from correspondents and friends of The Misssives.

Situations or places where smoking doesn’t count are:

• If you’re in the car
• If you’re trying to bond with new workmates in the smoking corner of the car park
• At parties
• If you've just had bad news
• At New Year (that's almost like a reverse New Year's resolution that one)
• If you’re with the band (my husband’s excuse)
• If you’re having a really shit day

You don't have to be a faux smoker to join in. There are other things that are slightly bad for you can turn you into a self-delusional nutcase. Such as alcohol.

Booze: It doesn’t count if:

If you are in a church. (Passing by one doesn't count)

The drink concerned has fruit other than lemon in it. Pimms is great for this. Why with a good helping of strawberries, cucumber and mint, that’s your Five a Day right there! It’s practically a health-drink, and should be available on the NHS. If you're drinking it at Wimbeldon you're doubly exempt as it is expected of you. If you are seen without a glass of it in your hand, officials may think you a foreign national and try to have you deported.

If the drink is Guinness or any other stout. They may have been having a laugh with the “Guinness is Good for You” advertising nonsense, but show me a woman whose mother hasn’t told them to get some stout down them if they are “run down” and I’ll show you a motherless child.

If you are a woman and you are menstruating or pre-menstrual. It doesn’t say so on the instruction leaflet inside the Feminax packet (but only because it wouldn’t probably be legal) but every girl knows they are only to be taken three times a day with a glass of white wine. Or else they don’t work. FACT. They teach that in sex ed when they divide the class up and take the girls into another room. That's what they're telling them in there, lads, nothing else.

At funerals. You are not allowed by law to refuse a drink at a funeral. It’s disrespectful to the deceased. In Catholic countries a drink refusal could get you stoned or run out of town.

If you’re outside in the sunshine. This goes back to the “on holiday” rule that I applied to smoking. The same applies to drinking. If you are on holiday you can have booze at any time of the day with impunity. Chances are that it’ll have fruit in it anyway, so you’re doubly exempt.

More excuses please in the comments box, please.

* My dad, who is a regular reader of the Misssives, will right now be shaking his head in a disgusted fashion..

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Press Publish and Be Damned

I have been issued with a blog warning.

“Things are going to happen that you’ll want to put on your Bebo” says a favourite family member, “But you’ve not to, okay?”.I don’t point out to her that I’m not on Bebo, and that what I do is called a Blog, for I know what she means and I don’t want to come across as argumentative as well as horrifically indiscreet and all loose cannony.

I am to go to a family event where members of an extended family whom I’ve never met but I am assured are wild and colourful and BLOGGABLE will be there. It’s going to be too much to bear but I am used to having to stifle the blogging urge when anything good happens. I worked in an FE college for six years for goodness sakes, every day was a blog I couldn't write.

Effectively there’s only three sets of folk that I am allowed to take the absolute rip out of:

Set One: Me

Set Two: Meeester, who claims I don’t blog enough about him and in fact the whole blog should be renamed “The World of Meeester” and should solely be about him, and more dangerously,

Set Three: Folk that will never ever read this blog ever and hence won’t know I’ve taken the piss out of them (think evil Canadian medics who call me “testy”)

This week someone who blogs to great acclaim got a similar yet far more official type of warning. NightJack the formerly anonymous police blogger had his identity outed by a journalist and was told to blog no more lest he lose his job. In fact, he’s already been given a written warning.

On finding out he was to be outed NightJack tried to get an injunction to stop his identity being revealed. However the judge saw no reason why anyone who chose to write about their life on the internet should be given any kind of privacy or protection. What a shame this is. Mainly I think for the police force itself. What amazing PR the NightJack blog has been. The police have a hard time gaining public sympathy and the fact that someone was blogging about what it was like at the sharp end of regular policing seemed to me to be a vent for unofficial view about what police officers have to face on a daily basis and a commentary on how they really feel about government law and order initiatives and news coverage of what they do. This is not only compelling for a reader but, secretly, I bet every police officer who read it was silently cheering NightJack on for putting their point of view across.

Another excellent emergency services blog (and latterly a book), Random Acts of Reality, written by an ambulanceman got the full backing of the Ambulance Service for that reason.

I can see both sides of the argument. On the one hand a no holds barred account of policing gives a view into a profession that those not in it will never otherwise empathise with, but on the other hand you could argue that the views represented are not being sanctioned by the police PR machine and may even prejudice court cases in more extreme examples. NightJack was always very careful to make sure no prejudicial details were included and that no names were ever used, but you can see the danger nonetheless, I suppose.

I’m sure that the police force were secretly happy to let an anonymous police officer blog in the way NightJack did and were privately pretty pissed off when his identity was revealed. As soon as his name was in the public domain they had to do something about him and more importantly, be seen to do something about him.

What I really don’t understand is the motives of the journalist who outed him. I can only assume they concern professional jealousy of his award winning success. How would that journalist feel, for example, if his sources were revealed? It's a shame that the judge didn't look upon the blogger's anonymity in the same way.

Anyway, it’s the blogger’s lot; publish and be damned...or lose your jobs and friends if you write up the really juicy stuff. All the best subjects are ones which you shouldn’t really touch. Like family events which are like an episode of Shameless.

Still as long as I’ve got Meeester taunting me to blog about him with japes like this to catch my attention, then I’ll never be short of material.

Meeester's latest cry for blogattention:

Putting fake flowers in the shrubbery

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

There's no Such Thing as Punk Rockers with Flowers in their Hair

Dorothy Parker: Don't ever spill her pint

Being nice. Such an overrated virtue, isn't it? Nice guys finish last, they say. Except if you're a Big Brother contestant, where nice guys win, but the odds against a nice guy getting picked to go in the house are so small that the audience end up having to choose the least objectionable person to win.

Nice is boring, and being nice is even more tedious. Especially when you don't mean it. I find that I am at a point in life where I am having to be terribly nice just to get by unscathed. I can't wait til I receive my orders from the Queen on my sixtieth birthday to let loose and tell the world what I really think of them. Bring old age on- then you're all going to know about it. My gran was an absolute beezer at being cutting and scathing in her final years- I am gearing up in anticipation of the genes kicking in.

Being not nice is so much more fun, and it gets you noticed. This is the advice that all those "Make your blog super popular" sites fail to mention. It is the simple secret to writing success; just slag someone off. The Guardian today has an article about all the bitchy columnists that are getting paid through the turned up nostril to be horrible about people. Manda Platell, Carol Malone et al follow in a long line of female columnists who became successful because they pulled no punches when it came to giving someone a good old verbal drubbing. Dorothy Parker, anyone? They may all die friendless but wow, what a reputation!

Closer to home my old radio chum Andrew Learmonth, possibly one of nicest people you could meet, is getting a whole lot of attention because in his local newspaper column he tried to be nice about the music of Sandi Thom but in the end he very apologetically found that he just couldn't. He didn't and doesn't like her music. Fair dos. I too, am not a fan so much. The fact that she hails from a town not far from mine won't change that. Somethings you like, some you don't.

Ms Thom, presumably on googling herself, found the offending article by Andrew about her music and his dislike thereof. She didn't much like his declaration of his individual taste and decided to make sure he'd never so much as pop his head round the door of whichever village hall she'll be playing in the future. In her blog post about him she (gasp) even made fun of the fact that he had lost his Original 106 radio show (the one which I also contributed to and which many people miss terribly). It pains me to say that the woman who wrote the genius zeitgeisty lyrics of "I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair" which delighted old hippies, musical historians and ex-punks alike, failed to use the full range of her vocabulary when she penned a song she wrote for Andrew in response. In her musical tribute which may or may not be called "Fuck you Andrew Learmonth" the word "fuck" is used prolifically to what can only be described as "The Gordon Ramsay Effect". Click here to listen, but for gawd's sake don't tell her I sent you! (And get the kids out of the room first.)

Still for Andrew the news is good. He wasn't so nice but oh, the publicity! And then some! As a stand up comedian he must be loving the attention.

Clearly slagging people off is the way to go. I am, as we speak, writing a host of columns:

"No that Isn't Bloody Ironic, Alanis Morrisette! Please Learn How to use the English Language Properly",

"Paris Hilton. What Is It You Actually DO, Again?"

"Say No to that Second Sandwich, Ms Beth Ditto" and

"Get Over Yourself Dannii Minogue, You'll Never Be Kylie. Live With It" .

I await the resultant backlash.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain

"Misssy didn't make this, did she?"

If there’s one thing I am really rubbish at, it’s baking. OK, there are a few more. I am also rubbish at maths but goddamn it, maths isn’t important, but cakes clearly are.

Someone’s mother brought cakes into our office on Monday and they were so amazing that I have been trying to replicate them ever since. Trouble is, this woman is clearly a baking goddess who has little fairies to help her and I am the baking equivalent of one of those contestants on X Factor that you wonder if they have escaped from a secure facility.

Yet, I can cook reasonably well so why do my cakes infringe the laws of public decency? I must ooze some kind of pheromone chemical that makes cake batter refuse to rise, meringues turn into cavity wall insulation and pancakes stick to the bottom of the pan and look like discarded Nicorette patches.

Last night as I contemplated my latest disaster that the dog wouldn’t even eat (in the past the dog has eaten a skiddy pair of toddler pants, cat shit and a box of Tampax *, to put this snub into perspective). I became troubled by this. Why can’t I make a flipping cake? I am forty and the mother of two children, what the hell is wrong with me? What do I have to do? Join a bowling green or a Women’s Institute for the cake making gene in me to be activated?

I have resolved to rectify the situation and tonight I will address all the things that I fear may be impeding my lack of success in the cake and confectionery department.

They are:

1. Remove six year old girl who wants to help and who may add stuff to the bowl when my back is turned. Including possible bogey.
2. Use an actual recipe rather than a vague memory of seeing Nigella doing “something similar” on a TV programme watched over two years ago whilst two Chardonnays in.
3. Weigh each ingredient in accordance with instructions rather than using my severely challenged mathematical skills to calculate amount based on the total weight on the packet and the size of spoon I am using to relocate ingredient from packet to bowl. Or simply emptying drifts of stuff in and stirring til it looks like cake mix like you remember seeing your mum make.
   
4. Stop substituting ingredients in recipe for things that are fairly similar. “It says Bicarbonate of Soda here. That’s just salt really isn’t it?That much I remember from chemistry class...” or “Cinnamon? Don’t have any. But I do have nutmeg. That’s just a poor man’s cinnamon, isn’t it? A grater, you say? What on earth for?” (plop!)
   
5. Arguing with recipes. “One and a half hours at 100C?? Sod that, I’m off to bed in an hour I’ll just pump the heat up to 200C and it’ll be done in half the time.”

Results will be raffled off.



*Although not all on the same plate, to be fair.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Paperback Writers

In the publishing industry there's a general snootiness about bloggers. Blogs to books, they say, are over. But what if the blogger in question is a charismatic and interesting writer? Should they just go the traditional route, sit at a word-processor and send their labours into the publishing void and spend the next year gnashing their teeth unheard and verbally abusing the postman when he fails to deliver good news? Should they take down their blogs for fear of being labeled just another blogger hoping for a publishing deal?

Goddamn it, they should not.

I have recently bought two books written by bloggers I love. One is for charity and is written by friend of the Misssives, Ms Kate Lord Brown. Novelist Kate has just launched the book of her writing blog, What Kate Did Next. The book is full of prompts and tips for new writers, if Kate's book is half as good as the blog it sprang from, it's sure to be a success. You can buy it by clicking here. She's also got some mindblowing endorsements on the cover. One quoted person, a certain person called Gillian Martin, who may or may not be me, is quite complimentary. I feel I'm now up there in product endorsement with the likes of Barry Scott of the Cillit Bang campaign. Bang and the Writer's Block is Gone! Dammit, that's what I should have said.

Also plopping through my letterbox today is my copy of Bete de Jour's book called, incidentally, Bete de Jour. You can get that on Amazon. I hope it sells in gazillions. The book also features another friend of the Misssives, Not Keith, whose artwork you can see on the sidebar and who is a character in Bete's book.



So books, who cares if they came from blogs? If they're good they're good. If Charles Dickens were around today, he'd have a blog, you just know he would. Let's prove the doubters wrong and support the first time published writers who also happen to be bloggers too.

....And simultaneously cheer up unpublished first time writers with a manuscript circling the M25 of publishing with a flat tyre, a faulty Sat Nav and two screaming kids in the back fighting (that would be me...*sigh*).




Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Sun Don't Shine

As you probably all know us United Kingdom dwellers, the sensible ones anyway, are staying put for the summer. Our currency is worth about the same as the Deutschmark was in 1920, we're also terrified of catching swineflu or any other "Johnny Foreigner disease" and we've got to stay home to keep an eye on those sneaky money-grubbing politicians of ours. Turn our backs for one minute and the bastards'll have off with the crown jewels or summat. We're prepared to do without sunshine to make sure they stay nailed down for Italian schoochildren to queue up and look at.

Still, I made my mind up that I was staying put after hitting Heathrow the other week. *

"Oh," I hear you cry like just about everyone else I've talked to about this, "Terminal 5 is OK now. Quite space-agey and remarkably efficient."

No, can I stop you just there. Let's just take a moment and think of the service we expect when we go into anywhere else when we meet an operative. Say...a shop. What usually happens is, you say hello, they say hello back. A smile may even be forthcoming. Certainly minimal use of the words "please" and "thank you" will be witnessed. It happens that way because that's what human beings like a certain amount of polite social interaction equivalent to the situation. It oils the wheels of day to day business, and stops us from wanting to bash each other with big pointed sticks.

Everywhere you look in Heathrow there are signs, "Any abuse to our staff will not be tolerated". There's more blurb about prosecution etc, but I didn't take a photo of any sign in case I got wrestled to the ground and koshed. Something gives me the impression airport security operatives wake up every day hoping they'll get an opportunity to use their shiny anti-personnel devices. But no, no one should be verbally (or otherwise) abusing operatives of any kind. That's only fair. But in my hand, I have a chicken, and in the other I have an egg, and I'm thinking to myself, "Who let in the chicken?", and more traditionally, "What came first? Chicken or Egg?"

Heathrow staff are on the whole, incredibly rude. They practically invite abuse. Especially in the security areas. Now airport security is AN IMPORTANT AND SERIOUS THING, but it seems to be that with every person you meet along the way, the rudeness builds accumulating to tolerance bursting levels in the average traveler. If Jesus Christ were to be trying to catch a flight from Heathrow to Jerusalem (Easyjet for sure. He likes to be with "the people"...) even he'd end up taking a paddy somewhere along the line. He may even use his own name in vain.

Anyway let's just cut to the chase here, the story is I was frisked rather too roughly for someone whose only crime was that she didn't take her shoes off whilst going through airport security. Sorry if that's an anti-climax for some of you. You know who you are.

Now I've had a look back in the news archives and I am certain the hands that violated my lady parts were also the same ones that violated Diana Ross's lady parts. Now if THAT isn't a tenuous claim to fame, then I don't know what is.

Reason for Diana's frisking: She set off a metal detector (I can only assume she must have been wearing the dress she wore for the "Chain Reaction" video- she's never gonna get through a metal detector with that)

Reason for Misssy's frisking: She read a sign that said "You MAY be asked to remove your shoes". Then when she approached two male operatives who were chatting about football she asked "Have I to remove my shoes, operative?". The men looked through her and carried on chatting without response. Misssy does not remove shoes. Female frisker snaps on the leather gloves and eyes up her next victim.

And now, I give the floor to Diana, as she says it best:

"I have been through all the airports of the world and have never been subjected to such an intrusive search.I am a huggy person, I don't mind being touched, but not in this way - it was far too personal."

Ok, I am not a huggy person. In that respect, as indeed in some others, Diana and I differ. She has been hugged, no doubt, by Michael Jackson. I would never allow that.

Ms Ross continues:

"It was scary, I was scared, I'm worried about my children and I want to go home."

I hear you, Pet, but I was not worried about my children, just my ability to conceive any more.

Effectively a small woman of Hispanic origin repeatedly and roughly checked my every crevice over my clothes because I cheeked her. "Those shoes should be off!" she barked. "I did ask your colleagues, they ignored me. I assumed I was fine." (That was me cheeking her. That's all it takes to get some repeated, extended and rough frisking in front of an airport queue.)

Not content with the fact that no Weapons of Mass Destruction were dislodged from my uterus, she proceeded to wave her little wand over my head. "And you should have taken your hair-clip off!" she growled in a manner that suggested she might rip it unopened wrenching the hair from my skull at any point. I say nothing.

Barry Sheene: Had trouble at airports, no doubt.

She then finds a beep in the middle of my back. I have this sudden empathy for multi motor-bike race crash survivor and man held together by pins, Barry Sheen. This woman is clearly about to tell me that I should have also removed my bra. Evidently the clip at the back could be mistaken for a timing mechanism on a remote explosive device.


Anyway, this isn't a story. Because this is the kind of treatment we've come to accept in the name of National Security at Heathrow. No other airport I've ever been in comes close. But you're about to tell me otherwise, right?



* In all fairness I didn't. I said "I am never booking a trip that ever has to go through Heathrow, I will take my chances in Schipol."

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Testing times

Keanu Reeves

Don't panic, no dialogue in this post is relayed by him.

Realism is my middle name.

I have written before about how my job can bring out strange emotions in people. Appear somewhere with a camera and folk have a tendency to act like complete jerks. In my last post about my strange job over a year ago, I talked about the usual kind of nonsense comment I and my colleagues are subjected to from punters in the mildly irritating world of corporate video.


I said this:

There are common phrases that people I come across during my job say to me like it’s the first time I’ve ever heard them. Problem is, these people are paying you, so you can’t respond to them like they are annoying drunks that accost you in a nightclub.You must chuckle as if it is indeed the first time you have ever heard the following laughsome nuggets:


"Hey Misssy, I’m not doing my interview 'til I’ve seen my trailer! Hehehehehe!

"Hey Misssy, when’s my shower scene? Hehehehehehe!”

(Shouted to the bloke you're filming by a workmate), “Hoi Jim, you’ll be getting your Equity card next! Hehehehehe!” (Much laughter from both parties)

(Shouted to the bloke you're filming by a workmate), “Hoi Jim, you need a touch more makeup mate!” (Much laughter from both parties)


“Hey Misssy, does your wee dog bite?” (gesturing to the furry windshield for the mic)

What I didn’t blog about was the annoyance and paranoia that you are sometimes subjected to as a camera crew when you appear at a worksite of any description. I wish I could say it were rare but sadly it isn’t. Very often the folk who’ve commissioned you to do a programme in their worksite neglect to tell the workforce that you will be filming them. Or worse, they have told them and they’ve all run away. A mixture of the two happened in Canada.

However, in the shoot in question worse happened, and me and my cameraman were subjected to something that I’ve only experienced a couple of times in my increasingly long and drawn out career as a corporate video director; aggression, paranoia, hostility and Parental Advisory language.


The Paranoia

We’re there for three whole days. We’re filming drills and safety notices and safety inductions. It’s dull. Yet I could match every Canadian celebrity who the world thinks is American with the following types of approaches from the gossip bound crew:

“Hey, we hear you guys are from the news, whatya filming us for?” (And I'm matching that with Jim Carrey, native of Newmarket, Ontario)

“Hey, are you guys from the Discovery Channel?” (And I'm matching that with Mike Myers, native of Scarborough, Ontario)

“Hey, I don’t want filmed for the fucking news..” (And matching that one with Neil Young, native of Ontario)

“So I hear you guys are with the Discovery Channel” (What are you guys, bloody migrating wildebeest?) (Matching that one with Keanu Reeves, native of Toronto. Yeah, really you thought he was Hawaiian. He's not. No really.)

Those kind of comments were often said to us directly but more frequently we overheard whispers of "news crews..." "Discovery channel"..."Documentary crew"....as people cleared a room or site that we entered. I haven’t been able to watch the Discovery Channel since, in case I see any documentaries on people lifting supply containers onto ships. Life's just too bloody short.

Here’s what I would like to have said in response to these comments: “Why the blue blazes would any news channel or a documentary team or ANYONE be on this pile ‘o’ junk filming you dullards? Why? What are you up to that ANYONE would be interested in? What’s that you say? Nothing?...No, nothing, you’re dull, you’re guys hitting things with spanners and welding stuff, what’s to watch? Some of you can barely speak coherent sentences and touch your nose with your finger never mind be of international concern or interest. Now can I just film you taking the stairs safely or wearing the correct protective equipment, yes? Thank you.”

What I did actually say: “No, we’re not. We’re making your safety induction video. Now can I just film you taking the stairs safely or wearing the correct protective equipment. Thank you.”

I didn't get where I am today by being honest with people.


Hostility

Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just ask if we could round up some guys to pretend to have a safety meeting so we can film it?

Person: Nah, I’m too busy.

****
Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just ask if we could round up some guys to pretend to have a safety meeting so we can film it?

Person: Yeah go and see person X. She’ll sort it out. I’m too busy.

****

Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just ask if we could round up some guys to pretend to have a safety meeting so we can film it?

Person X: What? Why is this my job? Who said this was my job? I don’t have any time for this? No. No way. Why do you even need to film that stuff. I’m way too busy.

****

Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just ask if we could round up some guys to pretend to have a safety meeting so we can film it?

Person Y: Come back tomorrow.

Missy: We leave tomorrow.

Person: Then I’m too busy.

****

Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just film you two guys sitting here in the smoking lounge. We need the footage.

Person A : Why the fuck do you need that?

Missy (whispers to cameraman): Record, dammit, record!

Person B: (As camera rolls, to Person B) Dude, why the fuck are they filming us?

Person A: I don’t fucking know.

Person B: I hear they’re from the fucking Discovery Channel.

Person A: Maybe they are making a programme about our migratory patterns.

Person B: Fucked if I know....

****

All of the above happened. ...repeatedly. OK a little artistic license with the last one, but they did say everything other than “migratory patterns” on tape, so I’ve proof. Apologies for the swearing. I did warn you with the Parental Advisory bit at the front. And as my son says, "It doesn't count if you're quoting."


Aggression (and Mild Peril)

I finally get some people who’ve been coerced into appearing in our shots. They also just happen to be the people who will use the DVD we are producing most. I know!

Misssy: So... I just need one of you guys to be in shot.

Person X: Well, it sure as hell ain’t gonna be me, I can tell ya that! (Slamming stuff shut and hurumphing about like a two year old)

Misssy: I actually don’t mind who it is. Can you decide which one of you it’ll be and just do your job as you would normally and we’ll record you doing it? It won’t take long and then we’ll leave you alone.

Person X: It ain’t about time! I don’t care how long it takes! It ain’t about time!

Misssy: Listen, I don’t care why none of you will help us. All I know is that if I don’t film you guys you won’t have a safety DVD and you won’t be able to legally operate. Now, it won’t take more than five minutes.

Person Y: It ain’t about that. It ain’t about time!

Misssy: Listen, I don’t CARE what it’s about. I just need the shot, OK?


Person Y: Hey there, don’t you..don’t you get testy!

Misssy: (speechless)


Now, that conversation actually happened. Two things to point out. Before this happened, we got thrown out of their office whilst they went mental about having to be filmed. Then their boss told them to get on with it. Then we came back in and tried to be pleasant as we realised we were 3 miles from shore and couldn’t leave so had to get on with it.

Second thing. The urge to laugh at the word “testy” was strong in me, and I managed to stifle it. You’ve no idea how hard that was. For one it sounds exactly the same as “teste” and I have a childish sense of humour. For another the guy who said “Hey there, don’t you get testy!” was consumed with rage yet said something so Ned Flanders that he may as well have been yellow with a cookie duster moustache. And the third thing is, I had to put up with insanely unprofessional levels of rage but as soon as I started to mildly assert myself I was likened to a bollock. There’s no justice in this world of ours.

That word “testy” might have been the words of a raging Ned Flanders-alike, but man, it was the Canadian equivalent of a Sicilian insulting someone’s Mama. He said “testy” and by God he meant “testy”!



Sometimes I bloody love my job. Not this time, though, not this time.




Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

We're gonna need a bigger boat

I realise that many people who read the Misssy M Misssives are in far flung parts of the world and come from diverse walks of life. Hello all diverse international lovelies sitting at home wherever you are with your Scots English dictionary at the ready. Conversely I realise that many others are from my local area of Aberdeen. "Fit like?" The folk of Aberdeen are, in the main, oil folks. If they aren't oil folks they are farming folks. And if they are not farm folks, they are fish folks. And if they are none of these things they are related to oil, fish or farm folks in some way, or know some socially at the very least. Oil folks, fish folks and farm folks are hard, and all of those camps will think me a jessie for the tale I am about to tell. So I turn to my other readers to defend me when I come across like a total big girl's blouse.

I am in Canada for work, and it's not going well.

I don't really want to go into the whys and wherefores but my journey to Canada took twenty three hours, when it shoud have take seven. Our arranged arrival time on the vessel we were filming on should have been 12.45pm. Instead it was 12 midnight. I know those sums don't add up. But this is called dramatic effect. And there's time differences involved so the laws of time and space are irrelevant.

We arrive in Halifax aiport and no-one is there to meet us. We are so knackered that me and my cameraman, once a wisecracking duo a few hours ago, are now only speaking to each other in monosyllabic grunts and limp-wristed hand gestures.

Instead of being collected at the airport, which I've got to tell you would have been nice at this juncture, we are informed by phone to take a taxi to an empty car park. Think the opening scene of The Usual Suspects, where Kaiser Soze kills Gabriel Byrne at the port in the middle of the night.

"Are you sure you've to be dropped off in an empty carpark at midnight in the pouring rain? That doesn't seem terribly safe," says our middle aged taxi driver.

My thoughts exactly, my friend.

"Apparently we've to find a Portakabin,"I say.

"I'm gonna hang around and make sure you guys find it before I drive off, okay" This guy is the reverse-Travis Bickle. I think I love him.

Sure enough we find a Portakabin at the edge of an unlit quayside carpark. It is "dingin doon". My hair is plastered to my face, occasionally it is whipped by strong winds to lash my ruddy, rain-battered, puffy, jet-lagged face. There is probably mascara running down my cheeks that I applied what would have been yesterday. I am awake all of a sudden.

This is my cameraman's first trip "offshore". He is mentally phoning the Job Centre.

This being our first trip away with one another, my cameraman and I have recently had that "What's your favourite film" type conversation. Jaws has been mentioned. We may have even acted out the scene where Captain Quint and Richard Dreyfus compare scars. "Fairwell and adieu, you fair Spanish ladies...." We will soon regret this.

Once in the Portakabin a guy that definately is a Lord of the Rings fan signs us in and asks us to put on lifejackets. I think of that last scene in LOTRs where all the dead characters go to Hobbit Heaven in a boat. I think that guy was thinking the same, but only cos he's constantly running the trilogy in his head on a loop.

A little boat arrives and our very own Captain Quint takes our stuff onboard. The rain has reached Biblical proportions. I am Captain Brodie. Suddenly I don't like the water so much. I don't know if we're supposed to, as the boat is mostly open, but we cram ourselves into the tiny bridgey control area where Quint and his pal, Salty Joe, are stashed. Quint says some stuff but we don't understand a word as it's in Seadog.

He is probably saying "Get out of my bridgey control area, mongrels."

In my head he's saying this; "Here's to swimmin' with bow legged wimmin!"

I might even say "Aye Aye Capt'n!" as I am delirious by this point.

Captain Quint and Salty Joe carry on making the boat work and eventually after a journey during which me and my companion exchange the whisper, "They look like cold blooded killers...", we suddenly stop in the water and are shouted at a something we don't understand in seaman's language.

We grab our kit and go out onto the deck hoping that the shouted something wasn't "Shark attack!" It is not. In front of us is a massive jack-up rig, jacked up very high indeed. One question pops into our heads, "How do we get up there?" One answer swings back down on the end of a wire. The answer is a Billy Pugh.

A Billy Pugh is a Personnel Transport System, but that's being too kind. You know the bit at the end of Mousetrap (the boardgame, not the long running West End murder mystery play) where the mouse gets caught in a domed cage? Well a Billy Pugh looks like that but has a bottom to it. For those with deep interest (or suspicion that I'm making this stuff up) you can see what I mean by going to www.BillyPugh.com where a man who sounds like, and may even be, Bill Clinton tells you how safe they are in a very unconvincing way. There is NOTHING safe about a Billy Pugh. I realise I'm opening myself up to litigation with that comment. Note I will counter sue for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Let's just drop it, shall we, lads?

We get in to the Billy Pugh (which may or may not be named after someone called Billy Pugh) through vertical slits in the net that surrounds it. I notice briefly that there are closing straps that I imagine are designed to secure the gaping holes in the net so that we don't fall out to our watery deaths. As soon as I notice these unclosed straps, we are abruptly hoisted into mid air with absolutely no warning. I grab onto something and hope to God it's attached to the Billy Pugh and is not my poor cameraman who is now mentally applying to be a trolley-jockey at Walmart.

I am not afraid of heights, however I am afraid of falling from one through a gaping hole in a flimsy net that is all there is between me and the Atlantic. The wind is up, my hair and clothes are soaked by horizontal rain (I don't have a rainjacket, I am an idiot. But neither does my companion, so he's one too), I look like crap, the Atlantic smells like crap, so I reckon no-one will notice if I actually crap myself. If I do it in time I can kick it out the bottom of my trousers into the Altlantic through the gaping hole.

I do not crap myself. And if I did I wouldn't admit it here. All I can think of is, "My Mum would have a fit if she saw me in this."

By the time we land on the vessel, I am laughing like a demented loon. I sign myself in the visitors log as "Mary Queen of Scots" and go down to my cabin for a wee cry.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Canada: Veni, Vidi, Forgot My Coat

Canadian things Misssy loves, No1: Mikey J

So I went to Canada last week, but I also kind of didn’t. Such is my job, I often go places but don’t really, usually because I am having to film something irritatingly utilitarian like a refinery or a chemical processing plant, or in this case a sea going vessel that also turns into an oil rig like some kind of very dull Transformer.


However, because all this video crapola has to be done thoroughly yet squeezed into such a short timescale as possible to save the operating companies spending more money than is strictly necessary, I rarely get to see anything outside these portals of Hell. In all, I think I spent ninety minutes on actual Canadian soil (I’m not counting airports; I spent considerably longer in them). Don't get me wrong, dear Canadian readers, those ninety minutes were lovely and involved some really nice (and welcome) alcohol, and I enjoyed checking out your fine moustachioed men, so no complaints there. In fact, I'd go as far to say I'd like to spend even longer than ninety minutes with you all next time. How about that?

Sadly, in this particular case I was forced to actually live onboard the tedious Transformer with no means of escape and was unable to go on the dry land of Halifax even once, which I was reliably informed by just about everybody that I met onboard, was “Really worth a visit”. Oh hahaha, everyone. Thanks for that. Yeah, I’d love to visit Halifax, if you lot would ever let me off your stupid boat, ya mongrels.

See how pissed off I am; I even broke into Australian there.

So yes, it was a great shame that all I could ever see of Halifax was a misty cityscape barely visible from the edge of the vessel through the fog and my salty tears about a couple of briny miles away. Before the trip, nobody told me the vessel wasn’t in port. We wrongly assumed that it might even have had a gangway allowing me and my crew to be able to get it off it and into a bar with ease once our daily work was done. Funny that no-one thought to mention that. Hmmm. Funny that no-one thought to question our human rights when the client told us that we didn’t need to book a hotel (which they would have been paying for) as there was “comfortable accommodation onboard”. Oh it just happens to be a mile or so into the middle of some big bit of water called the Atlantic. With no means of escape. And no telly. And fairly shit food.

In actual fact, I seem to distinctly remember our fifty-something client telling us weeks ago how great a place Halifax was and what a great old time we would have. Great restaurants, great bars, great people, he said. I actually remember him distinctly saying something about "There's always a party going on in Halifax". At the time I thought, "Hmmm, check you and your mid-life crisis" but now I'm thinking "How evil are you, chum?" He said the words "good time", "great laugh" and used the word "party" as an actual verb at one point, yet all the time he sat there knowing that in fact he was going to imprison us in his watery metal fortress that didn’t even have TV. Evil, pure evil.

So this is just an intro, as my trip is notable for three things and as such warrants three further separate posts. So using the teasing techniques so often employed in crappy TV shows like Britain’s Got Talent and X Factor and just about every non BBC documentary that ever gets made these days, I’m going to tell you the best bits upfront so that you’ll hang on this week and read them all in full.

Anyway, doctor, here’s what thinly veiled rants disguised as treats you can expect from the Misssives couch this week:

1. I make two Canadians angry and they mildly insult me. It’s the closest I think Canada’s ever come to a declaration of war. It may have even made the television news. I don’t know if it did, because where I was they didn’t have telly. I may have mentioned that already.

2. I am hoisted 100ft into the air in the dark and the rain above choppy seawater and all I can think is “Thank God my Mum can’t see this” (with pics, possibly)

3. Once again I fail to get through Heathrow without avoiding the light of touch frisking official who upset Diana Ross that time, and subsequently developing an aneurism.

All will be covered in detail, unless I get hit by a truck, which given my luck this week is entirely possible.




Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Excuse Me, I'm Not With the Band (reprise)

Off to Canada for work this week so there will be no new Misssives. So like when play at Wimbledon gets cancelled and they put an old episode of Dad's Army on to fill TV schedule space, I've picked one of my own favourite posts from around 2 years ago to put up for the entertainment of those who never read it (which I imagine will be most of you). See you next week.

Excuse Me, I'm Not With the Band

My husband, Meeester is in a band. In fact he’s been in two bands since I met him.

I hooked up with him 16 years ago despite the fact that he is a musician. I never ever wanted anyone ever to label me as a groupie.

When Meeester was in his first band in his twenties, they toured all over the place. They went from Boston to Belarus, from Norway to Paris to Vienna. A wonderful time was had by all. I never went with them, for, unlike Anita Pallenberg, I am NOT with the band.

I went on one trip and vowed never to go again.

So, for all of you wannabe groupies, take heed, for this is the grim reality what being a groupie consists of.

The Journey
You will drive hundreds of miles in a van that only goes up to 50mph if the wind is in the right direction. You will empty your entire bank account into the pockets of motorway service station owners along the way. You would have brought sandwiches but how rock and Roll is a lunch box? Answer: Not very.

The van may also break down at various intervals. You will be expected not to whine on these occasions.

The Arrival
You arrive at the venue and will wait outside whilst band find the bloke they need to speak to before setting up. This guy is always called Dave (or Donny, if you’re in the Western Isles). He is always not there yet.

Alone for the first time, you will have to chat to the drummer’s girlfriend, who is different from the last girl you saw him with and different from the girl you will see him with next.

You think, “I’d better chat to her, but I don’t want to invest too much as she’ll be history come this time next month. She’s nice, but I will try not to get too attached”

The Get-In
You will grudgingly help with the load in. Never do heavy lifting, just take a token amount of cables in, that’s your lot.

Never ever carry a bloke’s guitar for him. Nothing says, “I’m with the band” like a lassie carrying her man’s axe. Meeester made me do this on Saturday at a festival because he had too much else to carry and I was not happy at breaking this fundamental rule of mine. This is the first time in 15 years that I have done it. Rest assured, I did whine about it.

And I’ve seen it happen so many times before. See girlfriend carry man’s guitar, man has no respect for girlfriend. She’s on her way out. Only people who play guitars should carry guitars. I carry my handbag and myself only. I feel jinxed now.

The Sound-Check
Shut UP! How annoying! Do anything else than hang around for the sound-check. Go for a walk, go for a pint, go run at a wobbly spear. Just distance your ear drums from “Bang! Bang! Bang!” “ Tchoo Thcoo Tcchoo! One-Tcchooo!”

Sound-checks will also take forever. Don’t plan on seeing your man any time soon. More chat with the soon to be ex-girlfriend of the drummer will be the order of the day.

The Cuisine
You will be forced to eat a crappy take-away. Few bands have their own chef, you know, and catering tents are only at festivals.

For the common and garden touring band and their entourage, it’s chips or a kebab or nothing. And if it’s in the Highlands of Scotland you better hope you arrive in town before seven o’clock or everything will be closed and you will all be fighting over a Pot Noodle that someone bought earlier from the last open petrol station, 150 miles away.

The Gig
If you're lucky, you will get to watch your man’s band play for 40 mins on stage . However, even this is fraught with anxiety as you spot other women drooling over your boyfriend at the front of the stage. These girls are legion and want desparately to live the groupie dream. These girls have not read blogs like this; they have read the many salacious memoirs of Pamela Des Barres or Pearl Lowe and want a piece of the groupie action.


The Earning Your Keep.
This is not a euphemism for groupie like sexual attention. You will be expected to help out and sadly this doesn’t mean being asked up on stage to duet with your loved one, Sonny and Cher style.

You may be asked to sell band merchandise (or hand out flyers, see this for more). This will involve stopping folk from nicking stuff, haggling with you or fending off drunken advances from cretins.

Worst of all, you may be sat outside in the cold corridor, unable to even see the band at all. You will have traveled hundreds of miles to sit in a corridor with condensation running down the walls and sell five t-shirts and a couple of CDs. Rock and Roll!

The After Gig Party
After the gig the band will want to relax, have a few drinks and wind down. You will still be selling merchandise.

If you’re lucky your man may come and offer you a drink from the rider. You will be disappointed when the rider doesn’t have any chilled Chardonnay. You will force down a warm can of McEwan’s Export instead and instantly need the loo and be unable to go because you can’t leave the merchandise.

When you finally pack up and join the band you will find a much younger woman hitting on your man. You will approach and be ignored by her. Your man may even introduce you as his girlfriend to her and she will still ignore you and carry on trying to bed him. At one point, either of you are going to have to find an unlocked cupboard and kick her into it and lock it behind her to get rid of her. Either that or the bass player will snap her up mid-punt, keeping everyone happy.

But make no mistake, these women will stop at nothing and you must be very secure in your relationship to be able to tolerate it and not want to go all Yoko Ono on their asses.

The Accommodation
Invariably you will discover the accommodation for the band has enough beds for band members only. Or worse, is one room only. Or worse, doesn’t exist and you all have to sleep in the van or at some random’s house.

Wannabe groupies may think hanging out with the band will mean wild sex with your chosen bloke in a series of luxurious hotel rooms. Sorry, that is rarely the case. There is nothing sexy about being squashed in a nylon sofa in a single sleeping bag with your snoring boyfriend whilst listening to the drummer and his new girlfriend getting it on 1 metre away from you.

The next day
Drive hundreds of miles to do it all again.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

What If?

In the nineties there was a fairly cheesey little mid budget movie called “Sliding Doors” which seemed to do quite well. The story concerned a girl who nearly missed a train. In that second her life split into two possibilities. What if she had missed the train after all? How would that chance happening have influenced her life? The film showed us both outcomes.

So, why did this seemingly innocuous little film do so well? Because it had amazing performances? No silly, it starred Gwyneth Paltrow, for goodness sakes. Did it have a riveting plot line? No, it was about a girl in a bad relationship with a cheating boyfriend- ask any girl and you’ll get a similar real life story. Did it employ amazing new technology? No, it makes no attempt to use anything other than the cut, fade and blur motion tools in an editing programme- it may as well have been put together with Sellotape. Did it star Michael J Fox? No, sadly no, you can't have everything... So why did your common and garden cinema going bod like it so much? Reason: because it tapped into a key question in life: “What if?”

Just about everyone can look back on their life and find the key “What if?” moment. I know I can. You don’t know it at the time, but looking back you can pin point a happening that shaped your life forever. Mine was a phonecall to my Mum from a cafe in Zarautz, Spain.

I was working in Zarautz in the Basque Country teaching English. It was a little bit on the ropey side. The guy that owned the language academy was a nice enough American bloke from Boulder, Colorado, who loved collecting obscure languages, and whilst on a trip to the Basque Country to collect another one met his wife and stayed to teach. Unfortunately two weeks after he employed me he got involved in a partnership with another bloke from Cork, who looked as if he’d been on a beach holiday, got too pissed, lost his passport and couldn’t find the airport, so he decided to stay and set up an English school because it looked like a piece of piss. He made his money by withholding the wages of those who worked for him.

I won’t go into the details but I was fed up with this job but still keen to stay in Spain and find another one. I made enquiries to that effect. Unfortunately a long weekend loomed where the only people I knew in Zarautz, my flatmate Martin and a couple of other teachers, all went travelling for the weekend. I spent four days reading Agatha Christie novels from the school’s library and walking along the beachfront alone, speaking to myself because I could only speak Spanish, not Basque, and the Basques don’t like you speaking Spanish to them. They get a bit upset about it, in fact. By Sunday I was pretty low and fed up of wily Belgian detectives and languages that have three X's in each word. I did something you should normally never do when you are at a low ebb; I phoned home.

Two minutes into the phonecall from a payphone in a cafe my Mum said these immortal words, “Just come home, Pet”. That Tuesday when work opened I handed in my notice and booked a flight home. I gave no notice because I’d only just managed to prise my last month’s wages out of the Irishman and didn't see the point in earning any more for him to keep in his pocket for three months. That week, back home, I met a bloke in Ma Camerons pub in Aberdeen who’ll you’ll all know as Meeester M. One month later my post got forwarded onto me from Zarautz. In amongst it all was a letter from my friend Ann who was teaching in Bilbao telling me she could easily get me a job at her school and I could rent a room in her flat. When could I get there? Hmmm, don’t really feel so much like teaching anymore.....funny that. I stayed put.

And that my friends is why Sliding Doors got bums on seats. The “What If?” question is the basis for all good stories. In German they call it the "Wendepunkt" which is a great name for a band if your looking for one. What’s your “What If?” moment. Go and tell us in that there comments box. Or better still, link to one of your own posts in your own blog about your “What If?” moment.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

How to Give Good Interview

One of my professional hats is that of a media advisor or media trainer. I used to do this all the time but now I only do it every few months or so when I get the opportunity. A few years ago Anne Weakest Link had a go at us media trainers on Room 101. But then she also had a go at Wales, and now lives in mortal fear of a posse of the Welsh rugby team, Charlotte Church, Tom Jones and the Manic Street Preachers firebombing her house.

Media trainers coach normal people, usually businesspeople, sometimes footballers (the stories I could tell- if I cared enough about football to remember any of their names) sometimes civil servants, occasionally academics and other folks to do something completely out of their comfort zone which is to be interviewed by journalists.

I enjoyed the work but noticed a few common things about my clients that might be a warning for anyone ever being interviewed on telly particularly. Here are some of the pieces of advice that you would normally pay top dollar for but are actually very common sense.

1. Before the interview empty your pockets of anything you can click or jingle. Even if you don't consider yourself a clicker or a jingler, or even a clacker or a jangler, you will instantly become one when the recording starts. This applies especially to blokes. If you're in a head and shoulders tight camera shot, you'll sound like you are jingling or clicking like a malfunctioning android. But even worse, if you are in a medium shot showing most of your torso, you'll look like you are playing with your genitalia. Either isn't good for your image, I suspect.

2. Not every journalist is Jeremy Paxman or John Humphries. Most are just asking you straightforward questions and you are probably not a politician trying to cover up the fact that you got your mistress pregnant the day you tabled a White Paper on "Family Values". So when you are asked a question like "What led up to the incident", don't answer it by saying "Unfortunately that is a matter of national security and cannot be discussed at this time, but what I can say is how we are working together to provide a better future for everyone at the company and .....etc, etc" Just answer the flipping question, will ya? And remember people hate politicians, and the reason they hate them is because they use flannelly answers in interviews and are a bunch of liars. They should not be your role models. Check out the monumental interview by Jeremy Paxman and Michael Howerd on Newsnight if you want an extreme example of not answering the question. This is one of my favourite pieces of telly ever. Short version is here for the full interview is available on You Tube as well for those of you slumming it today.

3. Don't look at the camera...fool! (Slaps forehead) Just look at the interviewer. No..keep looking at him, don't take a sneaky wee peak into the lens of the camera, no not even a wee one, just stop it. Don't think about the camera, don't speak to it, don't refer to it, don't do a wee message to the "viewers out there" and please don't talk to the cameraman afterwards about how you're a keen amateur filmmaker and how much would one of "these babies" cost. Just do your interview and get on with it.

4. Don't freak youself out by worrying about what the interviewer is going to ask you. If you've just had a fire in your building, that's what you'll be asked about. You won't be asked about matters of political policy in Paraguay. And if you are, then point out that maybe the journalist might have taken a wrong turn at the roundabout. One of the most beautiful examples of this is here, I suppose but it's an extreme example I put in just for fun. It's the man who took a wrong turning straight into a BBC News 24 studio. when he was really only applying for a job and was mistaken for the correct interviewee. I think the word you are looking for is "bless".


So there's four things for free. And the reason I mention them is a ham fisted way of introducing an interview I gave about this blog to The Pakistani Spectator yesterday. Some of you lot are even mentioned in it. Happily for me it is only in print, so you can't see whether I take my own advice or not.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

The Cold Curse of Simon Cowell

Simon Cowell

With The Look

Recently, and for the first time in my life, I watched Britain’s Got Talent (the inlaws were up- that’s my excuse). It was chilling. Watching it was like having a cheese grater rubbed fiercely up and down my eyeballs and then having rough hot builders' sand thrown into the sockets. The programme encapsulates everything that has gone weird, and nasty, about popular culture. It also has three titans of hideousness in evidence; Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan. I’ve looked up the Geneva Convention and there’s nothing in it we can use to get this to the European Court of Human Rights, so don’t even try.

Bushy eyebrowed middle-aged Midlothian songbirds aside, the thing that upsets me most about the show is the look that Simon Cowell gets when someone who is actually quite good gets up on stage. No, let me rephrase that, it is the look that Simon Cowell gets on his face when someone who he thinks can make him a quick ton of money gets up on stage. It is utterly terrifying.

Cowell doesn’t smile so much as put on his poker face, he may even put his pen in his mouth to try and quell any smiling signs that he recognises the lightning, money making, potential of the subject on stage. I imagine it’s the same face a ruthless antique dealer puts on when he spots an old master hanging in the living room of a penniless old lady’s house that he’s negotiating the clearance of before she makes that last flit to the old folks home. The look shows indifference on the surface masking pant wetting excitement about the scam he’s about to pull and, in Cowell’s case, it is as if he goes into some kind of mesmeric trance.

Invariably the subject will be a teenager who can be easily manipulated. The only time you will see his eyes divert to the side away from the object of his desire will be to check if any awkward details like parents are present. If the parents look gormless, which they often do, it’s all systems go. Chilling. And don’t mistake the look for the same one X-Factor’s Louis Walsh gets when a teenage boy star takes to the mic; that’s a different look, that means something else entirely. You know what I’m on about.

Cowell didn’t quite have that look when Susan Boyle took to the stage yet he very much did when the young lad, Shaheen Jafargholi, let rip. For those who didn’t see it I’m not going to provide the Youtube link, you can do that yourself, but the whole thing was rigged. Cowell had clearly been told earlier by his minions that the boy was a cash cow. The boy comes on and sings a soundalike Amy Winehouse cover of The Zutons' Valerie . Simon pretends he is unimpressed but he already has his “tell” in evidence right across his greedy mug. Luring the boy into insecurity and doubt, he criticises him but suggests he try another song, something he never does, thus intensifying the boy’s desperation, gratitude to Cowell and effectively his willingness to snap at anything the midget millionaire will offer him after the cameras have been packed up. Even though that offer might be a big bag of shiny nothing.

Shaheen Jafargholi

Say no to the bad man, little boy

"What else have you got?" says Cowell. It just so happens that the boy has a second song, it just so happens that the show’s producers have it cued up, it just so happened that Cowell knows that this is the case. The boy takes the roof off with a Michael Jackson number. Michael Jackson, who, it just so happens, is one of Simon Cowell's new clients....

Oh and did I mention that there’s no real prize for the winner of Britain’s Got Talent except appearing at the dusty old Royal Variety Performance, for which I imagine they don't get paid for? In fact, I suspect the winner might even have to pay their own bus fare to get to the Albert Hall. I mean, who even watches the Royal Variety Performance these days? Even the Queen rolls her eyes when she’s reminded she’s got to get out of her housecoat and get dolled up to attend it. I bet she even Sky-plusses what's on BBC at the same time the Variety Performance is on the other side. Apparently her and Charlie play Rock Paper Scissors to decide which one of them has to attend.

Susan Boyle

Is it just me or does she remind you of Gordon Brown too?

So why did Cowell get that look when 12-year-old Shaheen Jafargholi came on, but not so much when international hirsute spinster superstar in the making Susan Boyle gave it her all? Simple; Susan will need a lot more handling (electrolysis bills aside).There will be no fleecing her of her talent for one hastily produced album and then casting her aside without consequences and effort. Susan looks like she can handle herself, she's more of a Will Young than a Gareth Gates. Notice how she walked jauntily off the stage as if to go and fetch her mohair coat and get home in time to catch the Emmerdale Omnibus, even after the judges had been raving about her? Susan couldn’t give a rat’s ass either way.

Eoghan Quigg

Half Boy half Furbee

Still Cowell’s instincts aren’t always right, though. Look what happened with that odious half puppy/half boy who looked like he’d been put together by Jim Henson, Eoghan Quigg (a popstar name if EVER I heard one). Apparently the X Factor runner up has released an album that sounds as if it has been recorded using a karaoke soundtrack. Peter Robinson in The Guardian dubbed Quigg’s album “the worst album in the history of recorded sound” and even though hundreds of thousands of "fans" phoned in to support Quigg every week on X Factor the CD has only sold about 10,000 copies, presumably most of them are in Quigg's folks' garage. Yet given that the CD probably only cost about £500 to record as no production values seem apparent and clearly no real money has been invested, no one, except Quigg himself, actually got hurt. Quigg is disposable and the deal hasn’t exactly panned out for Cowell, yet the man has lost nothing and barely spent anything on him, so it was worth a punt. The songs were all covers, possibly from artists already on Cowell’s books, and deals to get use of rights will have been done with minimal effort and expense. By the time the boy fills in his Asda trolley collector’s application form next month he’ll be finding it very difficult to even get his calls returned by Cowell, who’ll have made a small profit on his fleeting and now waning popularity and will now be completely washing his hands of him.


Expect the same soundtrack used on Quigg’s album to be resurrected for a second bite at the cherry with young Shaheen Jafargholi later this year.

Anyway, I won’t be watching the programme again. Especially not after that stripper stole my act.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Lest I Forget

If this photo were Scratch and Sniff,
it would smell of Patchouli

This piece of evidence got hurled out of some vortex in the Universe into my living room floor this week. No-one knows how it got here. It is a photo of me in the ladies loo of some establishment aged eighteen, looking like I was getting ready for a Dexy’s Midnight Runners tribute band audition. Every time I look at myself it makes me laugh. It makes me chuckle almost as much as this photo of an advert for fizzy juice on the Paris Metro. I say, almost as much, because nothing is funnier than this photo of an iron pumping, presumably steroid popping grizzly bear. Nothing.

The need for that fig leaf disturbs me

Anyway, back to my photo. I think the reason this photo has karmically landed on my floor this week is because I have been guilty of taking the mickey out of my 18 year old student cousin, Pete, who visited a couple of weeks back. Pete arrived with a manky old suit jacket on (my photo: check!), hair defying the laws of physics and fashion, in need of a good wash yet set hard with crunchy cheap hairspray (my photo: check!), ill fitting clothes meant for a member of the opposite sex and possibly once belonging to a person now dead (my photo: check!) and badly applied eyeliner (my photo: check!). Actually Pete didn’t have the eyeliner yet, but I expect that’s in the post.

My friend Tracey has just looked at the photo and called it “Lest Ye Forget”. There's only one thing comforting me about this scene, and that's the knowledge that the two friends with me in that loo looked just as bad as I did. I'm sure my pal, Barbara, would have been wearing her old lady peach-coloured mac, and my other pal, Joanne, would have had peroxide hair so chemically burnt that there were some bald patches on her scalp.

Finding the photo has also inspired me to write a proposal for a reality TV show. Now that we can’t buy and sell our houses, afford any plastic surgery and fund any wardrobe make overs we have to find something to capture the zeitgeist. I’m calling it Nostalgia Makeover. It’s a mix between Gok Wan and Dr Who. We find a subject who wants to go back in time and sort their previous selves out for the sake of humanity. No permed mullet, nor shiny drainpipe suit would be beyond our powers. I shall be the first subject and we will be traveling back to that very loo (which I remember being a cafe in Bath after we’d got chucked out of the Bath Student’s Union at 5am by security guards for attempting to sleep on their floor once it had shut for the night). I will be bodily assaulted by a hairdresser, put into actual non charity shop clothes my actual size and meant to be worn by an actual woman, and that beret will be surgically removed from my head in a one hour operation under anesthetic by a leading Harley Street surgeon.

I expect it to be a success, and even now I can envisage a Celebrity version with the members of the newly reformed Spandau Ballet.

Nostalgia Makeover, copyright: me. Coming to your screens soon. Applications being accepted now. Apply in comments box for my consideration. Ex-Goths particularly welcomed.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Faith and Love

When you start up a jolly blog like this one, it can be hard to post when life doesn’t seem so jolly after all. Misssives readers come over here for the daft stories, but occasionally I need to get serious. Indulge me.

This week I have been thinking a lot about church. And why I don’t go anymore. My reasons can quickly be summed up in news I heard this week. In Aberdeen, a minister applied for a position in a city church. He is a gay man with a cohabiting partner. He was previously, a few years ago, a married man. He finally admitted to himself and his wife that he was a homosexual, and they divorced. I do not know how amicable this divorce was, but it is an upsetting story all the same, involving the sad breakup of a family. The man had led a lie of a life and had hurt many people in the process. Presumably he felt that he had to lie to himself and others to fulfil his calling as a Church of Scotland minister but of course, only he really knows why. It’s not exactly in the league of lying about your word per minute typing speed on your CV, is it? It involves considerably more cover up effort. It is tragic that he had to cover up this fundamental part of his make-up and cause such a great deal of pain.

All I know is that after all this he is still a minister in the Church of Scotland, he has rebuilt his life and he is widely regarded at good at his job and people seem to value him, including the members of the church he applied to lead, who overwhelmingly agreed to approve his application. Minister happy, congregation happy. Everybody happy? It would seem not.

In the wake of the announcement of his acceptance of the post as minister for the church in question, twelve other city and shire ministers wrote a letter of condemnation of this gay, cohabiting man being able to take up such a post. This letter has been sent to the Church of Scotland headquarters who are currently looking into it. One of the ministers who signed this letter is a man me and my husband know personally. We have mutual gay friends, and many other friends who have cohabited without being married, most of whom have not wanted to become ministers, so have not had to face this career stumbling block. We were appalled to find out that his name was on the bottom of this letter.


Here’s why I don’t go to church anymore:

1. The Church will not accept the validity of common law marriage.
2. The Church still condemns sexual relations outside of marriage.
3. The Church still regards homosexuality as a sin, despite it not appearing as one of the Ten Commandments.
4. The church seems to think that a man or woman in a same sex relationship, or cohabiting outwith wedlock is unfit to lead a congregation despite any skills, commitment, and strength of faith they may have.

I don’t accept their views on these matters, and until they change I will not be sitting in any church pews. I used to feel guilty about not going to church anymore. Now I don’t want any part of it. Our views are at odds.

And don’t even get me started on what's going on at Amazon.


Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Beagle Legal

The genetic strains of a gun dog run deep. Even in those who have never actually stridden alongside a deerstalker wearing gentleman with a half cocked gun over his arm, still know that, somewhere in their very core, they are alive for one reason; to chase birds. Ask a Spaniel (a talking one if available) what his Unique Selling Point or his Raison d’être is and he will surely answer:

"My ability to chase, catch and bring back a dead, or dying, bird for my master."

Sonny the Black Menace, my client, comes from a long line of noble bird wranglers. Both his mother and father are celebrated gun dogs. Indeed his pedigree name is Stones Frolic, which I believe is Latin for “Nimble Bird Worrier”. “See bird, chase bird” is the motto under his family’s coat of arms although he himself has chosen a different career path, that of a family pet.

Now, I put it to you, that the non farming, converted farmhouse dwelling yuppies who thought it would be charming to get themselves some free range chickens maybe didn’t think their decision through. Perhaps they had seen a few episodes of 1970s British sitcom “The Good Life” or had lately been ruminating over the success of television food expert and novice freeholding celebrity farmer Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. Their motivations for keeping chickens matter not. Their execution (if you pardon the pun) of their chicken keeping methods, most certainly do.

Each day in this land thousands of chickens are caught and eaten by foxes. Some of those chickens are even in coops, where a resourceful and hungry fox will dig underneath chicken wire to get at his terrified prey. Chickens allowed to wander outwith their coop into neighbouring gardens, roads and public areas will not last long. In fact, these wandering chickens face a double risk. In addition to hungry foxes they may also come into contact with frisky cocker spaniels, who although not hungry, are at the mercy of their genes and have no option but to bolt from their masters, ignoring the futile human calls of “Sonny! Noooooo! ” to seize their feathered freaky orange-eyed quarry.

Somewhere out there is a bald arsed cockerel who knows this all too well. And my client has apologised to him fully. Something, you may note, a fox would never do.

But before you deliberate, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I pose only one question to you:

If you were a cocker spaniel born to chase avian creatures, what would you have done, confronted with five stupid chickens spilled out into the path of your usual walk?


This is an except from the closing argument of defence lawyer, Alan Shore, of Crane, Poole and Schmidt , the firm portrayed by TV’s Boston Legal for his client, Sonny The Black Menace, who stands accused of ripping the tailfeathers out of a chicken’s bottom.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Crime and Punishment

I don’t claim to have the key to bringing up children. But those who are having problems with the behaviour of their kids can do worse than get themselves a “jart”.

Is your daughter refusing to get dressed in the morning without a tantrum? Stick it on the jart.

Is your son going into the shower and standing 1 mm from the arc of the droplets from the showerhead for ten mins then claiming he is thoroughly washed and ready to face the world? Put it on the jart.

The jart works thus. Take one piece of paper and draw a series of vertical lines. Call these lines Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and, yes, even Sunday. Every time your child conducts a misdemeanour put a sad face on the jart. For periods of nonsense free activity or gasp, actual acts of kindness, consideration or normal behaviour, stick up a smiley face. To enhance the learning aspect of the enterprise, stick a little wordage underneath each symbol, so that you can all remember what they were for. Junior Misssy’s jart reads thus for yesterday:

Went to school without nonsense

Walked past park without tantrum

Put wrapper in bin not behind couch

Wouldn’t do what she’s told

Made fun of Mum talking and was cheeky

Said she couldn’t care about the jart

Now the jart isn’t going to work if there are no consequences behind it. How many sad faces (or frownies) are you going to allow before a punishment kicks in, and what should these punishments be?

Perhaps you’d like to take inspiration from my system which works over the period a week?

10 frownies: No story at bedtime for three nights

15 frownies: exclusion from most looked forward to social event. In this case it’s “The Rainbow’s Disco” (think Studio 54 but in a village hall, and with the minister instead of Andy Warhol)

20 frownies: The cooler (see below)

25 frownies: The cooler with no baseball and glove

30 frownies: Being forced to watch a brain washing film whilst strapped to a chair to break spirit (illustration below)

50 frownies: Siberian labour camp in the 1950s

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: Would get passed over

by publishers today in favour of the

Prison Diaries of Paris Hilton.

The problem comes when the kid turns the table on you. I got this* through the post yesterday.

I’m doing OK, but am terrified of what punishments Junior Misssy has in store if I screw up.

*NB: I want to point out two things:

1. Look at my daughter's instinctive, correct and fastidious use of an apostrophe- these things are clearly genetic.

2."Jart" is of course chart but spelled by Junior the way she says it.

Don't ever miss a Misssive, subscribe!

Unrecommendation of the Week!

Nick Leeson job reference: "Good with numbers. Trustworthy"

A very long time ago when I worked at a theatre I ruined someone’s chances of getting a job there. I did this because I felt they couldn’t be trusted. If someone gets a job on your recommendation and then they don’t work out, you are tainted. Think of the person who wrote Peter Sutcliffe’s reference for that long distance lorry driving job, or banker Nick Leeson’s reference for Barings Bank. Do you think they felt they could show their face at the company picnic that year?

On the night this person applied for the job in the theatre bar they came to see me whilst I was working in the tiny box office. We had known each other at school, but that was all. I opened my side door to chat to them and before I knew it they had barged their way in. The office was a tiny broom cupboard of a thing and really anymore than one person in it and it was a squish. Yet in squished this overly friendly person who proceeded to tell me excitedly and a little too close to my face that they had put me down as a referee. Without asking me. That night as my shift ended and I counted my takings I noticed that we were £20 down. I could never be sure, but it just seemed a little odd. My arithmetic isn’t Rain Man standard but I was never usually under.

Peter Sutcliffe's reference: "Keeps himself to himself. "

When the time came for the boss to ask for my opinion on the chap, I told her I couldn’t recommend him, and that I didn’t really know him at all. For months afterwards I felt a little guilty but I knew I had done the right thing. You can't take any chances in the vouching game. Recommend someone and it's like you've become responsible for them.

George W Bush Reference: "Competent, literate, and intelligent. A peace loving man."

Fast forward to my time as a lecturer and I would be in a position of being asked to refer students all over the place. I decided a personal rule on this was in order; students come in many flavours and not all of them palatable. If I couldn’t heartily recommend someone, perhaps if they had been a lazy or less than conscientious student, I would tell them that I couldn’t give them a good reference and since I didn’t agree with giving bad references that they should find someone else who could write about them more favourably . In amongst the hosts of great students I have been pleased to recommend for jobs, university places and work experience there were a few hurt and astonished faces along the years from those who couldn’t believe I couldn’t tell the world how wonderful they were . On the whole my policy served me well.

Until now.