What the Vicar Saw

I’m glad I’m not in a sitcom.

I’m glad I’m not in a Brian Rix theatrical farce.

I’m even gladder that I’m not Hattie Jacques in a Carry On film, or one of the busty ladies from Benny Hill.

Why am I glad?

Because when my son and his friends were playing dress up today with all our ex-Halloween costumes and decided it would be a laugh to come down dressed in Meeester’s hand crafted* (from a pair of Primark pyjamas and some fake fur) “Man from the Joy of Sex Book" body-suit, complete with sewn on chest wig, penis and pubic hair….well if I had been in any of those pieces of 70s entertainment, the vicar surely would have called just at that moment.

Oooer, missus!


* yes, I have made an anatomically correct penis from felt and stuffing. I'm not proud of it.

Actually, I am proud, it was bloody brilliant.

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

Stop Press: Meeester says a photo of him in the suit is, indeed, required..so here it is:

A Night at the Opera

A conversation in the back of a taxi on Saturday Night was what started me thinking about Freddie.

The question posed was this:

“If you could go and see any band, from any point in time performing any of their albums, who would it be?”

I didn’t need to think for more than a second.

For me personally it would be Queen in 1975 playing the entire track listing of “A Night at the Opera”. In the right order of course.


I was only six years old that year but, of course, in this fantasy world I can be any age I want. So I wouldn’t be six. That would be silly. You don’t want to go to all this trouble of inventing a fantasy world, firing up the Delorean, getting it up to 88mph and then not be allowed in the door for being underage.

Later on, as I fell asleep, I thought more and more about Queen and Freddie Mercury in particular. I’m more the Nirvana age myself, and most people my age probably shed more of a tear at the death of Kurt Cobain. But even now, the thought of Freddie Mercury dead makes me tear up a little. Kurt ended it all; but Freddie loved life and had so much more to willingly give but had his life cut short by a disease that people didn’t even have a name for, when Freddie caught it.

He was…and I don’t use this lightly, a genius. There’s no-one else remotely like him; neither before or since

I grew up listening to Freddie. My Mum bought that first album in 1975 the week it came out and it was all that was played in our house for a good while.

Years later, stuck in on a wet Sunday with nothing to do but entertain ourselves, me and my brother and sister would mime to Queen and on occasion my brother would eyeliner in Freddie 'tasche for extra authenticity. Live-Aid Freddie is still his Halloween costume of choice. Rightly so.

So yesterday I’m in at the radio station and one of the music news items being read out is that Queen are to tour again, but with a different singer. I felt myself going watery eyed all over again. It ain't right.

I still can’t get over Freddie being dead. There should be no Night at the Opera without him.

********

What would your choice be for the dream live concert: band and album, please.

(I particularly want to encourage my band of lurkers to switch off their cloaking devices and comment on this one? Please; to the comments box you go. Thanks for reading chaps!)

Fairly Bobbins

Sometimes I do not fit into the established mould of a Mum. There are things I do and things I do not do. My kids do seem to like me though, so I figure I’m doing OK so far.

However, I am being called to conform slightly. It is Junior Misssy’s 5th birthday in three weeks and she is angling for a party. And when I say angling, what I really mean is she's spearheading a saturation PR campaign worthy of Hilary, Obama and McCain put together.

I swear she’s got spin doctors in her pay.

This last night:

“Mummy, have you noticed, you’ve not had to give me a row all day?”

I swear she’s got a campaign tune as well. She loves the Flight of the Conchords* and has been parodying the delightful “Cheer up Murray” at any given opportunity for our entertainment, replacing Murray’s name with family members names as appropriate.




I love that little beast, it goes without saying, but I hate kids parties. I hate being invited to them, I hate having to RSVP to invites for them, I hate having to buy trash presents in order to go to them. I hate they way Junior Misssy seems to be invited to one every bloody weekend.

But most of all I hate being coerced into holding one.

Reasons? Oh you want REASONS? I’ll give you REASONS!

1. Other people’s kids bug me. OK I like my friends’ kids and my nieces but other than that, they’re a bunch of unreasonable minibeasts.

2. I will have to tidy my house to showroom standards to pass the examining eyes of other mums who will cruelly judge me, if I appear slattern in any way.

3. My tidiest-it’s-ever-been-house will need rebuilt 30 minutes into the party.

4. Everyone will bring presents that will fill Junior Missy’s little bedroom to bursting. She’ll get far too much and when I try and siphon some off to charity shops or recycle them etc, she’ll notice. (This disdain excludes Boden and White Company offerings...please note).

5. Someone will buy her something horrifically messy, noisy, or requiring parental participation.

6. I have no small talk capabilities for the sea of mums that will appear at my door. I’ll have to pretend to be normal somehow. Some suggestions for key phrases I could use are greatly appreciated. There’s even the possibility that some of the clingier, fretful mums will stay for the duration. Aaargh! **

7. It’s not form to have alcohol at a kid’s party.

8. I will have to think of some party games to keep them from trashing the house, but on the day you can bet I’ll have forgotten to buy prizes and will have to run to the corner shop to buy a gazillion crème eggs during pass the parcel. I just have to hope nobody notices and keeps passing til I get back.

9. At least one kid will cry and it’s not really on to shove them out in the garden until they’ve stopped.

10. I’ll have to do really uncharacteristically organised things like, making invitations, sending invitations, sending thank you notes and remembering I’ve organised a party and not go out that day by mistake.

11. Junior Missy will have such a great time, she’ll want another one next year.



* Yes yes, she’s only five and I know there are some choice lyrics in there. Can I help it if my kids prefer "Flight of the Conchords", My Name is Earl" and the "Mighty Boosh" to “In the Night Garden” and “Lazytown”?

** Maybe mums that have read this blog and are concerned about their child’s wellbeing

Well-hard Wedding

You’ve got to feel sorry for Colleen McLaughlin.

Apart from the obvious (waking up to the sight she has to wake up to), it appears she’s having problems with the invitation list to her wedding. She’s worried about Rooney’s dodgy family ruining her day. They are a bunch of rough diamonds apparently. Who’da thunk it?

Most people will think she’s a snotty cow, but I feel for her.

About a month before Meester and I got married, we had to attend a family wedding in Meeester’s parents’ hometown of Motherwell. Those of you who know Motherwell are taking a sharp intake of breath right about now.

Meeester’s folks left Motherwell in the sixties when they got married, but the rest of the family still live there. Motherwell is well hard. In fact it should be called Motherwellhard.

It was 1995 and one of the cousins is getting wed. For some reason, the full extended Martini clan decided to attend this wedding.

It was a colourful day, to say the least.


The Bride

The Bride is tiny, brunette and pretty. We see her for the first time as she comes down the aisle.

Double take…there are five clones behind her in shiny aqua puffball dresses. Her five bridesmaids are clearly her sisters. They are exact copies of her except they range in size.

Her's is your typical East-End Glasgow Catholic family. Quite a few Glasgow Catholics still practice the no-contraception thing. I mean, even the Irish are ditching that one- there’s just South America, Africa and Glasgow making sure not a single spermatozoa is spilled.

Living proof of this practice is these six girls, all with barely nine months between them. The reason they all look exactly the same is because the poor mother’s body didn’t have time to reset and make a new template for the next kid as soon as the last one was out. It still thought it was making the last one.

Mother of the bride is probably only 33 but looks 70, and is probably expecting the next clone.

It gets Stephen King freakier when you see the sisters all lined up at the top table later on. They’re like Russian dolls, ‘cept in polyester, frosted lipstick and sovereign rings. They are named after dead nuns.


The Best Man

Cousin groom's best man is his elder brother. He is a known Motherwell hardman and has seen the inside of chokey on more than a few occasions. Meeester remembers him fondly as a cool older cousin. A cool older cousin who has morphed into a dangerous geezer involved in some dodgy rackets. What a difference a decade makes. His hard mates are around him throughout the day like he is some kind of Weegie Tony Soprano.


The Line Up

Oh! What to do in the line up? What’s that line in Four Weddings and a Funeral?

“I hate line-ups, I never know what to say”

“Just smile and say, ‘You must be very proud’.”

Good advice. Hugh and his posh pals might not have been so worried about social niceties in this line up situation. Their manners would be severely challenged if the best man were to grab their girlfriend bodily and effectively feel her up. On being introduced to the Best Man, my arse was squeezed and fondled and he grunted in my ear,

“C’mere darlin’”. Not that I could come any closer.

I’ve not been violated in a line up before or since.

Apart from the obvious embarrassment, I spent the next half hour worried that this faction of the family may yet accept their invitation to my own nuptials and I will be molested once again in my own line-up in a month's time.


The Wedding Feast

We’re in the Motherwell Miner’s Social Club for the reception; not featuring in Brides Magazine alongside Blenheim Palace any time soon. Staff come round for drinks orders and are immediately flummoxed by Meeester’s request,

Meeester: Which reds do you have?

Waiter: Eh?

Meeester: Red Wine? Is there a House Red?

Waiter: Hang on…(shouts the full length of the hall) Bernadette! Hiv we goat ony wine?”

Barmaid: Em, I dunno, there’s maybe a boattle in the back, Stevie.

Meeester is brought Co-Op Red Lambrusco, with dust on the bottle (must be vintage). I never knew there was such a thing. But there it was in all it’s sachharine sweet, pinky, fizzy 3% alc. £1.99 glory. Oz Clarke would have started a flippin’ riot.

All around us, it’s shorts, nips and pints. You can feel the disapproval of the guests at the uppity ways of the Martinis.

“ Wine? Wine? ….Fuckin’ poof. "


The Top Table

Meeester’s Mum has been asked to sing at the service, and to show their thanks, she is invited to sit at the top table with the Wedding Party.

There are about ten people she barely knows sat beside her. We look over and feel sorry for her.

We feel even sorrier for her when we realise that she is the only person at the top table not smoking. And I’m not talking lighting up after the meal; the full table all have fags on the go throughout the dinner. The Mother of the Bride has one wedged in her fingers as she holds her cutlery, king-ash threatening to sully her steak pie at every turn. Food is eaten in-between draws.



Meeester Gets a Dress Rehearsal

Meeester is the only one of the guests in a kilt.

He feels uneasy at first, since everyone else is in a suit. He feels more self-conscious when, after the dinner tables are cleared, the entire wedding party have gone and got changed into shirts and jeans, boob tubes and minge base skirts, like it was any other Saturday night at the Miner’s Social.

At one point the groom and best man go off with their mates to play pool in the other room!

As a result of this, drunken people at the club think Meeester’s the groom. All night he is being bought drinks by random strangers, and on several occasions he has to refuse money crushed into his hands as a wedding gift.

Red-faced broken veined certain heart attack victim: I didnae hae time to get you anything, but that’s for your honeymoon, son.

Meeester: Oh! I’m not the groom.

Heart attack: (Not hearing, or caring) You look aifter that wee lassie…she’s a fuckin’ diamond….

Heart attack drunkenly sways off…leaving Meeester clutching money.


As the night goes on, the reception turns into a drunken nightmare, with fights outside and sweating dipsomaniac uncles starting family arguments with other sweating dipsomaniac uncles.

Terrifyingly, more and more relatives I’ve never met start to make noises about organising mini buses and such to Aberdeen for our wedding.

Of course, they never came.

And like Colleen, I’m afraid, I was quite glad.

Small Town Girl

Kevin Bacon:
His Ma works at the new Asda...probably

It never ceases to amaze me that for the biggest city in the top half of Scotland, how little my hometown is.

No matter where you go, what you do…you will meet someone from your past, or someone who knows who you are, or at least knows someone you do.

It’s like that Six Degrees of Separation game played out in actual real life and not involving Kevin Bacon at any point. Unless Bacon went to Northfield Academy in Aberdeen (pre-Footloose, of course…he got the idea for that dance routine in the derelict factory in that film from the time him and his mates used to break into the Lawson’s sausage factory in nearby Dyce). *


This means a number of things for the Aberdeen dweller that seriously hampers their existence. (Though, I’m sure we are not alone in this phenomenon.)


Temper tantrums and hissy fits

You cannot fall out with anyone. You just can’t. One minute you tell your boss to “Go fuck himself” and run your keys along his month old Cherokee paintwork as you waltz out triumphantly out the premises for good....only to find that two years later he’s the bloke in the Pringle golf jumper your new fiancee introduces you to at Christmas with excited squeals of "you'll really get on with Dad...you're just so similar!"


Friends Reunited

Think you’ve left all those brats you went to school with behind? Well you haven’t.

There’s little point in joining any of these networking websites to find out if Joanne Nichols whose boyfriend you inadvertently stole and who subsequently took your head off the handrail of the school bus, has turned into a hacket-faced lonely old cow, with no friends and three children from four different fathers (it’s a guess for the last kid).

No, you won’t need to lurk on Facebook because the bitch will be standing between you and a mortgage at the Royal Bank of Scotland tomorrow morning's appointment. You’ll be able to see her in all her bloated glory face to spiteful face.



Chastity

No-one but no-one would be advised to cheat on their partner in this town. Not unless they want their partner to find out about it in a nano-second.

All it would take would be stolen dinner out in a quiet restaurant, to find out your wife's workmate's daughter had taken on a part-time wine waiter’s job to keep the wolf from the door. Of course, you won't know she's your wife's workmate's daughter, but she'll know you somehow....and she'll be on that mobile phone text function before you can say, "Discretion is my middle name".


Illegal activity

Any policeman who stops you from or catches you doing anything will have a connection to your Dad.


Baggage

Anyone you go out with, will have been out with one of your friends at one point. It’s almost unhygienic. You will need to move to another town to find an unsullied mate.


Nowhere to hide

Anyone you meet anywhere in the world from Aberdeen will know me, my husband or will know at least someone who knows us or has some connection to us. That same thing will go for anyone else who lives in this town. It’s just the way it is. We meet someone Meeester knows in just about every single country we've ever been to. And he's not even from Aberdeen, really.



You can take the girl out of the North East...

Annie Lennox is from Ellon, near Aberdeen where I went to school. I have lost count of how many folk I've heard say, "Aye, I kent her faither....." or, "I played in the school orchestra with her."

Aberdonians probably shout stuff at her at stadium concerts.

"H'min Annie! It's me, Morag...my Da kent your Da! "

"Hey Annie, it's me, Sandy! My Auntie, the dinnerlady gied you intae trouble when you were running in the school corridors. Remember me?"

And you know, she will, too.

Because up here,

"Abdy kens abdy else"

or
(for my international readers)

"Everyone knows everybody"

*Ok, let's face it Bacon will have a connection to Aberdeen in some way...everybody does. What's yours? Bet I can link your connection to me in some way

Your song

The Dawntreaders
(Meeester's the one doing the Jesus Christ Pose)

There are some real lucky girls out there that have had songs written about them.

Look at Patty Boyd. First George Harrison writes the beautiful, "Something" about her. Them Eric Clapton nicks her off him and writes "Layla" for her. Not bad going, Patty.

When I met Meeester he was the singer in a band called The Dawntreaders. This week he put all the old stuff up on myspace, fearing it might get lost in the detritus of domestic life otherwise, but mostly because he's proud of everything they did.

He's moved on to a new band now, but the Dawntreaders' stuff still has a big place in his heart, and mine.

Follow this link and you can listen to "Braver than you Know", the song he wrote for me.

Still chuffed...

Woooo-wooooh!

Today I got wolf whistled at.

This took me quite by surprise. When did wolf-whistling come back into vogue?

Imagine the Guardian or the Grazia "What’s Hot, What’s Not List" -type feature.

Going Up

• Wolf Whistling
• Homo erotic subtexts
• Michael Palin (never sold out, not never)
• Picking your spots
• Mooning out of car windows
• Laughing

Going Down

• Being polite
• Sapphic undertones
• Ewan MacGregor (Davidoff advert, anyone??**)
• Leaving your spots alone
• Giving the Vs
• Smiling

And it's not as if the guy doing the whistling was a grizzled old Gene Hunt type . He was a youngish bloke. Have I missed a meeting?

The whole wolf whistling thing is not exactly a mating call, though, is it? I mean, I doubt that in the history of man, any wolf whistler has let out the call, to be rewarded with the object of his affection giving him the nod and the wink, Barbara Windsor style.

The actual temptation for a woman on hearing the whistle of the wolf is to take out her gun and fire at the tyres of the van the offending bloke gets into. That’s why Thelma and Louise did such big box office.

So what function does the wolf whistle serve? Intimidation ? Showing off to mates? Is it more of a mateyness call letting the baying band of mates witnessing the event know just what a geezer you are?

Maybe I’m just watching too much Attenborough. All those lizards, turtles, frogs and snakes with clear cut mating signals that let the ladies know what’s on the scaly manbeast’s mind.

Is there a documentary being made by an alien production company somewhere in the Universe right now about earth-dwelling human beings, with a scene in it where a hapless on-heat male gets rejected by an angry female after displaying a ridiculous mating call?



** Sweet Jesus, have you seen it? Words fail me...