Dear Mariella..

This is hilarous! Some trickster whose sense of humour just thrills me has written to raspy voiced (and slightly smug) agony aunt Mariella Frostrup with a  problem that is clearly a synopsis of the film "Little Children" with Kate Winslet. A fact to which Mariella seems unaware. See here:

"THE DILEMMA I'm a stay-at-home mother. I spend my days taking my children to a local park and pool, meeting other stay-at-home parents. From doing this I have met a handsome and well-built father. I learned that we both have unhappy home lives. His wife left him. I have a sexless marriage. I have talked to my husband about this and we may separate. He is too self-involved in his career and is often away for business. One day the other man and I left the pool due to a sudden rainstorm. We went to my house and while our children were having their naps, we made out. I crave more. Since my husband and I may separate, is it OK for me to have sex with this man? How can we do this and protect our children? Should we have a romantic getaway? Should we have it at one of our homes?"

Read the full page including Mariella's earnest reply in the Guardian here..but do come back, because I am most certainly not finished!

I'm off to send Mariella another letter to see if I can get it in. In fact, let's all do a fake problem on our blogs and send them in. It would be hilarious if any got printed.

Here's mine:

London, England

Dear Mariella,

I am writing to you about a situation that is driving me to distraction. You see I am in love with a man who is not my husband.

It all started one afternoon when I was waiting for a train at the train station after doing some light shopping. A train whizzed past and I got a piece of grit in my eye. It was agony, I could not get it out.  A man approached me with a handkerchief. So rare these days to see a man who carries a cotton handkerchief, that got me going immediately, I must confess. He held my face in his strong hands and asked me to look up. He got the grit out but he held gently onto my face and looked into my eyes for longer than was strictly necessary. We ...we...just...connected.

Before I knew it we were in a cafe talking to one another about our lives. The time flew past and I'm afraid to say I was late home. When I came home I lied to my husband about where I had been. I keep thinking about this man in ways that I'm afraid are not appropriate for a woman of my situation, age and class.

But I need to see him again. Should I ? On the surface I am a contented wife and mother but deep down  I am very bored and lonely and need some passion in my life.

Yours,

CJ

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The Snails Went Home

 

 Two snails on my hand; pimped out and ready to go(1 July 2007)

This cannot remain unwritten. But I feel like that woman that discovered DNA who got forgotten about because the other two blokes she was working with locked her in a cupboard with an orange stuffed in her mouth when it came time for the Nobel judges’ visit (Rosalind Franklin) but who really did all the work whilst the other two guys set things on fire and messed about with chemicals on the other side of the lab. 

I feel like Michael Collins, stuck aboard Apollo 11 with only a crossword for company as Aldrin and Armstrong gambolled about the surface of the moon carving their identities into the consciousnesses of generations. 

I feel like bloody Craig (or was it Ken?) the guitarist in Bros who no-one remembered and no-one fancied.  My life’s work will forever go unrecognised. Ken, I feel your pain.

It was three years ago and the Misssives was just a bairn of a blog when a scientific proposition reared its slimy tentacles.  I had a snail problem. In fact it was an infestation akin to something that an Old  Testament God would have smited someone with should they have done something to doth angereth Him. Snails ruled my garden. They ate my crops, they ate my flowers, they invaded my home, some even making a colony under my tumble drier for easy access to kitchen leftovers. The cheeky molluscs openly mocked me by turning up with napkins and cutlery should I be so naive as to return from the garden centre with bedding plants. Yet, I could not kill them. I could not bring myself to buy any pellets of death. 

“I know!" I said (brightly)"I’ll rehome them. I’ll march them out of town”

I collected about 300 of the beasts and took them in a bucket to the field at the bottom of my road- a good 100 yards away. They all clung to each other with one stalky eye in my direction as they looked up and said a silent, “Whyyyy?”

“It was relocation or death, my friends. I have salt at home. Don’t make me use it”

I enjoyed a good few days with only the odd rogue snail for company and then, BANG all of a sudden I was infested again. What had happened? Had new traveler snails moved in? Had an entirely new batch grown from egg to adult in just over a week. *Gulp* Had the original asylum seeking snails returned?

I decided to do an experiment. I wrote about it on the Misssives here and here. I was going to discover whether or not snails could find their way home. I marked about twenty of them with yellow paint on their shells and took them (back?) down the road. I even asked readers of the blog to pick their winner- I’d number them in yellow paint. If something's worth doing, it's worth betting on for money- that's what I always say.

People thought I’d done the snails go home experiment as a joke. And I suppose I kind of had. But about six months later I found two or three empty snail shells in the garden with yellow paint on them. No live snail inside but evidence of a sort that snails could find their way home. I don't think I blogged about finding the empty snail shells- I think I felt the snail saga had run its course(as had the snails clearly dying from exhaustion trying to get home- like Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator) Or Meeester had done something eminently more ridiculous to write about. My mistake.

Ever since then people have remembered about my experiment. BBC Radio 4 did a programme about a year ago where experts claimed snails could find their way back from over a mile away. My friend Markus immediately emailed me. "Your estimates were way off, Misssy- up to 2 miles!" And then last week, this lady, Ruth Brooks got an award. 

AN AWARD!!! To be precise, Britain's Amateur Scientist of the Year. For conducting exactly the same experiment I had done on this blog three years ago?!  The only difference being that she used nail varnish and did proper science type graphs and stuff. And wore a baseball cap (which we all know I would NEVER do).

Part of me is slightly miffed. I claim to discover that snails could home, but alas the only “evidence" I have is in the form of the blog that proved I did at least try to find out. Genuinely, I have had about ten separate phone-calls and emails from my family and friends saying things like "Did you hear about that snail lady? or " You were first with the homing snails, Misssy M! I was there. my snail was Number 6! Did it win? Where's my cash?"

But no, I'm OK- I can let it go. Good luck with your new found celebrity, Mrs Brooks, I wish you well. You took your slimy subjects more seriously than I, who merely used them for comic effect. I’m just glad that my favourite scientist Professor Brian Cox wasn’t giving out that award because my reaction would have been a different story. I would have locked you in a cupboard with an orange in your mouth and stepped into your shoes just to breathe the same atmosphere as him. Very lucky indeed.

 Brian, if you're reading, Hi.

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Trumpet mouth

I have now calmed down enough about the arrival of this...to announce the arrival of this.

My author copies arrived at the weekend. I'm more than just a little bit chuffed. Possibly too chuffed because I said the following thing out loud whilst my husband (as seen in photo) was in earshot.

"I think I'm more excited about this box arriving than I was on my actual wedding day!"

To which he answered, "Thoughts stay in the head, Misssy. They don't come out of the trumpet mouth"

It's released in Australia and New Zealand next week. So I'll be all excited again then.

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Embarrassing Bodies

 The Embarrassing Bodies crew: they say "discharge" a lot

(and we love 'em for it)

It’s my Mum’s birthday today. Happy Birthday Frazzlegran!

At the moment she’s basking in a bit of newfound celebrity. For one her picture is in my book, and for another one, she’s delighted that she and my Dad, Frazzlegranda are being so well received on this here blog. Well, I say delighted, she’s letting me know that she’s noticed she’s featuring more and more on the Misssives and that I’d better always be nice about her or else she’ll find out.

I’m very much my mother’s daughter. Among many similarities between us we are first and foremost real ghouls. We love the disgusting. If there’s a boil to be lanced, we’re there. If there’s a skelf (engl: splinter) to be teased out of a finger, it’s tweezers at dawn as to who gets to do the honours. If a cat comes in riddled with fleas, we’re fighting over who gets to delouse him.If the dog has a tick- we'll wrestle each other to the ground before we let the other get it out.

My mum once confessed that she and another teenage friend invited another girl with them on holiday mainly because she had sores on her legs that needed lancing every couple of days.  I'm amazed my mum didn't train to be dermatologist. Meanwhile, I look at my son’s teenage skin blossoming into some challenging blackheads with thinly veiled excitement. Yes, we are freaks. But I know we’re not alone.

How do I know? Well,  because this show is now occupying the prime time Friday night slot on Channel Four in the UK. 

Yup, it’s Embarrassing Bodies. The show features three doctors who go round the country setting up a makeshift clinic for people too coy about their disgusting ailment to go to the doctors. Yes, too shy to go to their doc who has a confidential patient doctor code and a  lockable door, but not shy enough to pull down their trousers on telly and allow their bum area to be filmed so that we can see their pile encrusted bumhole/ freaky misshapen dark purple and red coloured infected penis/ monstrous anal carbuncles of which there seems to be an unending variety.

Throughout the land families settle down just like us to scream as underpants are pulled down, third nipples are revealed,  lady beards are unfurled and labia are poked at with surgical implements. We watch through our fingers wailing with disgust and delight as skin flakes are collected to send to the lab, pimples are popped, the correct way to have a crap is discussed openly and blown up pics of sexual diseases are paraded in shopping centres. Me and my son watch the show shrieking and wailing whilst my husband shouts from the other room that he can’t believe we are watching this voyeuristic nonsense. By half way through the show he’s on the sofa with us asking me to rewind the shot of the man with the mangled scrotum so he can have a closer look. This is a scene that is replicated throughout the country. I can virtually guarantee it.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great show and I’m sure it helps many people realise that their own problems aren’t just their own. But let’s face it, the reason  it’s the top rated show on a Friday night is because we want to see lots of broken vaginas and see what happens to the lady who can’t stop farting or the guy who sweats so much he has to change shirt ten times a day...we watch the poor unfortunates and we feel normal because of it. We bask in the glory of our unblemished arse cheeks, our shining carbuncle free vulvas and our wart free foreskins. We feel ALIVE!

That and we’re all voyeuristic freaks and this is only made worse by the fact we're eating our Friday night nibbles and takeaways and drinking our weekend wine as we view scenes previously confined to medical text books.

Ah, that's entertainment.

Embarrassing Bodies is on Channel Four at 8pm every Friday night.
(as Misssy M is sat in front of her telly eating a curry)

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Buzz Cut Blues

 Longest hair in the world.

Must wear hair AND beardnet if involved in catering

Indy doesn’t like me writing about him anymore. But what he really means when he says this is, "You can write about me if you pay me in cold hard cash". So therefore any proceeds I ever earn for this post can go directly to him*.I'm nothing if not fair.

Indy's at secondary school now and has hit a problem- the teachers don’t like his hair. It’s not so much the quality of the hair it’s more the quantity. Here’s one of Meeester’s Blipfotos from last week showing Indy having some trouble with the Rach 5 ala David Helfgott, which shows you the length of the boy's hair (although partially obscured by a jaunty bonnet). Please also note that all proceeds from this photo are going directly to Indy.

And here’s the length that is apparently acceptable:

Day one in his secondary school career he is told by his Phys Ed teacher to get his hair cut or secure it with a hairband. Or (grudgingly) a headband.  Now, I don’t mind the head band but I’m worried that Indy might. After all, look at all the cool sportsmen that have worn headbands in the past and present. He’s in good company.(Be still my beating heart...)

But on chatting to the boy I realise that Indy is quite keen, “I want a bright green one”.  Good on you son, following in your father’s footsteps having an affection for horrible headgear.

Later that day his gran, Frazzlegran, phones from her holiday in Ireland to see how her No1 Grandson has got on at the big school.

“How was the boy’s first day?”

“He’s been told to get his hair cut or wear a headband by the PE teacher.”

“What? That’s terrible. He’s got to wear a headband the whole time he’s at school? That’s dreadful...”(shouts off stage) “Frazzlegranda,  wait til you hear this, Indy’s got to wear a headband at school” (Cue off stage laughter from my Dad - possibly a couple of  holiday Guinnesses in)

“No!” I say shouting “Mum! Just when he’s at PE! Not the whole day!”

Frazzlegran cracks me up sometimes.

So Frazzlegran brings him a headband back from Cork amongst other holiday knick-knacks. Sadly the Emerald Isle bizarrely has no bright green offerings, maybe cos they didn't get into the World Cup either this year. The Irish headband  is black- the colour of Guinness. Frazzlegranda must have picked it. He also has a white one, which we’ve bought him and we’re really tempted to put a red spot in the middle of it Banzai style. The boy now has his own range of headbands which he can select from depending on his mood that day.

But Folliclegate is not over yet.

This week, he’s in coiffure trouble again. “Get your hair cut or you’ll have to put your hair up in a bobble or wear a hair net” says the Home Economics teacher, brandishing a wooden spoon (probably). It’s the last straw. No man in our family has worn a hairnet since my brother, Uncle Ginge, had to secure his flowing ringlet locks whilst working in Simmers biscuit factory one summer. “I’ll never eat another Abernethy biscuit again” became his catch phrase for a while. I daren’t tell Uncle Ginge lest he have a Vietnam style horror flashback.

I am tempted to phone up the school, Lois from Malcolm in the Middle style. “We’ll take our chances with a hair falling into Indy’s homebakes- after all it’ll be us that are forced to eat them!” I don't point out that my family regularly pick out 1 ft long curly strands of hair from their dinner every night in my cooking- we call it The Lucky Hair . "Hurrah! You got the Lucky hair, quick, make a wish!"

This tactic is going to be my opening gambit. That and “This is a violation of Indy’s human rights!”  I’m determined not to go in too strong, know what I mean? But I’ve the URL for the European Court of Human Rights handy just in case. I’m ready to organise a Grange Hill/Heartbreak High/Strangeways Prison style sit in if necessary.  I’m gonna take this to the max. "No boy of mine....I tell you they've picked fight with the wrong lady....who was that guy that defended OJ Simpson? Is he on Twitter?"

“Mum, can’t  I just get my haircut?” Indy says, minimising the Google page showing the world’s best Human Rights defence lawyers, and unpicking my white knuckled fingers from the mouse.

Fear of the hairnet....that’s a strong one. You cannae blame the boy.

Hair cut yesterday. Damn. Sit in canceled. As you were.

*Any blogger reading this is pissing their pants laughing at this ludicrous suggestion.

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The Tribe of the Reluctant School Gate Mum

I have been given a very very sensitive and difficult mission. I have been asked to carry the torch of a bunch of hilarious bloggers who are all writing on the theme Tribal Wives. The thing is, they are either ex-pats scrutinising their adoptive countries and the wives therein through the protective barrier of language difference, or have sneakily gone on holiday and blogged about the tribes abroad, covertly photographed them and then buggered off home before any of them can hunt her down, or hoping that their adoptive countries will give them the benefit of the doubt because they are foreign.

They are: 

Notes from Lapland: Tribal Wives in Rural Finland

Very Bored in Catalunya: Tribal Wives in Rural Catalonia

London City Mum: Tribal Wives Holiday Version

Vegemite Vix: Tribal Wives in Britain

What to do- I am stuck here in North East Scotland having to post about the tribal customs of the wives of my own kind. Women who can locate my blog, come to my door and possibly slap my face for my cheek. There is a phrase; never crap in your own canoe.  I have no choice I have to use myself and my own kind as a subject- we are the Tribe of Reluctant School Gate Mums.

The Reluctant Schoolgate Mother (Latin name:Adminus Minimus Pariahalis)

Appearance: The Reluctant schoolgate mum will often be seen in dark glasses, a hood and a scarf pulled up to her nose. This is not because she doesn’t want to be approached (although that would be nice). It’s because she fell asleep on the couch after a night shift, forgot that she had to be at school to pick up her kid and had to hastily hide her face that has crease marks, eye bogies, a dislodged contact lens and streaks of smudged mascara on her cheeks whilst sprinting along the street to catch her kids as they spill out of the school gates.

Likes: When it’s her husband’s turn to pick up the kids. School holidays.

Dislikes: Being ask to be on any committee or do any fundraising.

Natural enemy: The non-working mother who is on every village committee who approaches you  to ask if you’re OK because “we didn’t see your name on the school disco helper rota and wondered if you’d been taken ill. Again.”

Companions:  A small select group of similar specimens who you arrange to go late to sports days and Christmas concerts with and sit at the back and repel committee mums. Your key companion is the friend who you share an event rota with. Both your kids understand that one of you will be there representing the other at any given school event. It’s like you are a hybrid of your two identities. Every reluctant schoolgate mum has one of these. And if you don't have one- get one.

Common situations: Phoning other harassed mothers at midnight with crises such as “My kid’s just mentioned to me that tomorrow is World Book Day and they’ve got to dress up as a Roald Dahl character. Let’s put one of them on top of another, gaffa tape them together and they can go as the BFG”

Phobias: Books of raffle tickets appearing in their children’s school bags, School fetes, coffee mornings, a note from the library about lost books.

Commonly used phrases:  "Sorry but I’m too busy earning a living and paying tax to keep this school open through official governmental channels, I have no time to bake pancakes for a Bring and Buy" .

Bizarre allies: The teachers. They are working mums who rarely make it to their own kids’ school events, too. They are one of you.

Thanks to Very Bored in Catalunya for asking me to write this. She has full responsibility if I am kidnapped by an angry commitee mum who has read this in my area....

See more tales of tribal Wives here:
Tribal Wives of Sydney: Random Ramblings of a Stay at Home Mum
Tribal Wives of Baltimore: Emma K
Tribal Wives of the Blogosphere: Readily a Parent
Tribal Wives of the Netherlands: Hibiscus Bloem 
Tribal Wives of Ankara 
Tribal House husbands
Tribal Wives of New Zealand
Tribal Wives of Wellington, NZ

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