Faces by The Lorelei

 

Anyone who knows this blog well will know about my husband, Meeester M.


Meeester M is many things. If you want to find out about those things then simply click on the posts about him to see what kind of a beast you are dealing with. Meeester M is also in a band. They are called The Lorelei and they are pretty damned good. The people in the band are like our extended family. I’d like to introduce you to them individually.

This is Beefy Lorelei. Yes, Beefy that’s what we call him- don’t ask me why- no one quite remembers. Beefy also happens to be my brother in law, but I just call him my brother. It’s nice when your sister marries someone you’ve known and loved for over twenty years. Beefy is the lead guitarist in The Lorelei. Beefy also has the Misssives moniker of “The Bearded liar”. Again, we can’t quite remember why- but it’s maybe because he’s a lyin’ bearded git.

This is Diane Lorelei. Diane is my Goth friend and we go and see any Goth bands that none of the rest of our friends like. Diane plays viola, and sings backing vocals. She has a lovely voice, but is one of the best people at colourful swearing I have ever known. She is widely accepted to be The Lorelei’s eye candy, but is easily the cleverest member of the band being a doctor who fixes folk’s heads. She is pretty much my favourite Lorelei. yes, I am remembering my actual husband is also in the band. What of it?

This is Keith Lorelei. Keith likes to think of himself as a silent enigmatic character, but really he’s just asleep most of the time. Except when he is drumming, that is. He drums so energetically that you sometimes wonder if it’s the same guy. Keith has such biting wit that most people actually wonder if they should punch him first before laughing. This is pretty much his trademark.

This is Flossie Lorelei. In possibly the hairiest band in the UK, Flossie is the hairiest. Fans of the band’s live shows come from miles around just to witness the moment when Flossie takes his shirt off to reveal his coveted man pelt. Nestled securely in this downy forest is Flossie’s mandolin. Flossie also plays violin, sings backing vocals and has all the tools anyone would ever need when anything breaks down as he is a Scouting legend.

This is Jonny P Lorelei. Jonny P is my unofficial little brother, as I have known him since he was fifteen. Johnny used to appear at each of our homes and stay there until we kicked him out and he’d move along the road to stay for an extended period at another friend’s home. Jonny plays bass guitar and is now a respectable and fully functioning member of society, despite previous indications to the contrary.

Finally this is John Lorelei, also known as Meeester M on the Misssives. Back off ladies; he’s mine. John is the lead singer of The Lorelei and also plays guitar and banjo when he remembers. You know enough about him already and if you don’t this post should give you a flavour of the man.

Why am I showing you the lovely faces of the Lorelei? Because they want to see your faces, and it seemed only fair to show you theirs' first.  The Lorelei are currently finishing their third studio album and the album cover design is  a montage of hundreds of faces.  The idea is that faces from all over the world will be included. We need hundreds. Yes, including yours, Not only will these faces be on the album sleeve, they will form the video to the first single released and will appear on the website and all other promotion. They currently have over 500 faces but need many many more.

If you want your face to be on their album then it’s simple:

1.       Send me a jpeg colour pic of your face (closeup/ face on to camera)

2.       Email it to gillian(at)spontaneousproduction(dot)co(dot)uk

Mark your email "Lorelei" and I'll then pass it onto the designer.

Alternatively if your avatar is of your face, you could simply give me permission to pinch it in the comments box or paste a link to a photo of you on your blog that you'd like to give us.

The album, called “Faces” (of course) is released in May and if you send your photo in, it will doubtless be on there. We want as many face photos as possible, so pass on the word and get involved.

See The Lorelei’s website here and on their YouTube channel here. And listen to a wee sample of their music here.



 And yes, that is Miles Hunt of The Wonderstuff....

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The Chiropractor Story

After a good four years of writing the Misssives sometimes you feel that you’ve run out of stories. And then something HUGE pops into your head. This has happened this morning as a result of Meeester M posting this Blipfoto yesterday. In the blurb he claims that if he was a lady and had to wear high heels it would be these. Who can blame him? They are ace shoes.

This morning I said to him, “Oh my goodness Meeester M, do you know what I’ve never blogged? The Chiropractor Story. Can I do it?” . Check me, uncharacteristically asking someone’s permission before I post.

“Yes,” he said, straight away.

“Are you sure???” I say,  even more uncharacteristically making them reassess whether a full Misssive on the subject might not damage their reputation like some kind of reverse tabloid journalist.

“I’m pretty unembarrassable. Do it,” he says. It’s true, he is. Just as well.

Ladies and gentlemen it is with great pride that I give you the Chiropractor Story.

Back in time when Indy was a baby Meeester M worked in social work. He was the manager of an old folks’ home in Aberdeen. Very often he had to lift old people, whether in be in and out of a bath or if they had a fall. One day he twisted his back when an old lady decided mid lift that she didn’t want to be lifted anymore and thrashed about a bit. Old ladies can be difficult creatures. The resultant back injury gave Meeester M a lot of gyp, so much so that he decided that he had to seek professional help.

His doctor was of no use, just recommending rest and painkillers, so one of Meeester’s friends recommended a chiropractor. What possibly swung it for Meeester M was the added bit of information that the chiropractor was the uncle of Tim Wheeler from the band Ash. I throw that in for no other reason than to give a full picture of the timescale. Ash were currently very big. So were the newly wed Beckhams. Victoria had just been on Parkinson the other week embarrassing her new husband about liking to wear her underwear. Remember that? So we’re talking around 1998/9. It was a time of a new Labour government, no banking scandals , no real terrorist threat and George Bush hadn’t been elected yet. Times of positivity and innocence. I think they call them “halcyon days”.

The chiropractor was just round the corner from Meeester’s workplace but he hadn’t been able to secure an first appointment during work hours. He was on an early shift meaning he had to leave the house at 6.30am on a wet dark winter’s morning. Indy and I were still asleep when he left. We would meet him later on when we collected him from the chiropractors on our way down to see Meeester M’s family in Glasgow for the weekend.

After a sore day at work where Meeester M could do no more than office and supervisory duties, he limped around the corner to the chiropractors. He was looking forward to a quick twist and a crack or two of his spine that would suddenly release the pain, and with any luck the mobile number of the management for Ash, so that he could secure a support slot for his band for any upcoming tours.

He met the chiropractor and explained his problem to him. “Old ladies can be difficult creatures,” he said.

“Yes,” the chiropractor said, “If you just go into the changing room and strip down to your underwear and we’ll get you to lie on the bench and I’ll take a look.”  I imagine he was flexing his fingers and cracking his knuckles at that point, but I’m probably embellishing that to add more colour to the scene. Not that any more colour would be needed within a few minutes.

Meeester went into the cubicle and began to undress (steady there, ladies). His back was smarting and he had struggled to get his shirt off. He was worried about bending down to take his socks off. Could he just leave them on? No, they would have to come off. He didn’t want to look like an arse. He needn’t have worried, as something far more pressing was about to happen. 

He looked down at his crotch and realised he was wearing a pair of his wife’s knickers.

Now I’m not one for lingerie, so it could have been a lot worse. But the pants were bad enough for a big hairy man to worry about  going naked in front of the chiropractor uncle of Tim Wheeler for Ash. The pants were hot pink bikini cotton pants from M&S. They may even have been tanga design. There is no way they could possibly have been passed off as bloke’s pants. And, ladies and gentlemen, they had not been put on by mistake that morning. Don't feel too sorry for him. Meeester had worn them ON PURPOSE.

At 6am Meeester M is not good. His underwear drawer is a mess, and he often cannot readily find clean pants in the dark. That morning he decided not to put the light on and disturb his wife as she would very likely attack him viciously if he wakes up the baby, as is her right. 

“I know, I’ll stick a pair of Misssy’s keks on," he thinks. “They’ll do. Nice and snug as well”.  That last thought of Meeester’s – I’ve added that for comic effect, but you know it’s true, they would have been nice and snug. In fact, they would have been very snug indeed.

At 6am he has forgotten that he is due at a chiropractors in a few hours time. He forgets the same thing each time he visits his work loo that morning. Dr Freud would have a field day.

Back to the changing cubicle and Meeester M is panicking. What is the best course of action? Does he appeal to the doctor to keep his trousers on? No, the back pain is in his lower back. Does he go commando? Is it better to go out there completely naked than with women’s knickers on? No, he doesn’t want the police involved in the situation, this is getting public enough. Does he march in nonchalantly wearing the pants and make absolutely no reference to them? He considers this. It could just work.

In the end he decides to ‘fess up. He clears his throat and calls the guy from behind the curtain, “Er, I have to warn you. I am wearing my wife’s underwear.”  Now on reflection his words could have been better chosen, as “underwear” suggests a bra was also in the equation.

“Em, it doesn’t matter. Just come out,” the uncle of Tim Wheeler from Ash who Meeester’s band will never support in concert replies.

Meeester steps out and sheepishly stands in front of the spine jockey as he regards him.

 “Tell me,” he says as he looks at the pubic explosion that is Meeester’s crotch and the fuschia pink knickers combo, “Is it a David Beckham thing?”

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What Needs to be Said

This is too good not to stick up on the Misssives. That is a real headline from today's Irish Star. I want to shake the person who wrote it's hand. 

Let's pray tomorrow's headline is "Feckin' eejits!"

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The Jar

Life is full of trials and endeavours. Some have to face more severe difficulties than others, but when you find something hard, you find it hard no matter what anyone else has to face in comparison.

My daughter finds it extremely hard to stay quiet. She begins the day with the first words of her ongoing narrative and ends it seconds before she goes to sleep. She always has something to say. I am listening to her right now talking over her day to her dad on the couch while he is gamely pretending not to be watching Alan Titchmarsh on telly out of the corner of his eye. A moment of silence from her is a very rare thing. Even when she's not talking, she's singing...or crying.

Tonight we had to drive to an event and Lil Misssy decided she was going to try and not say a word until we got there. The drive was about 5 miles. Now, I wish to point out that I did not instigate this as some kind of challenge. This was purely her suggestion. But put it this way, I didn't stand in her way.

As soon as we passed the sign of the destination town, she shouted out to Indy and I, "I did it! I didn't talk the whole way!"

"Wow! That must have been the hardestthing you have ever had to do in your life" I said.

"Nope," she said quick as a flash.

"So what was?"

"The time I had to pee in that jar."*

-------

*....I have no idea what she's talking about.

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Emotional Weather Report

Over the past year or so I’ve become internet chums with a lot of Australian and New Zealand bloggers. We’ve met via blogs, Twitter and through the launch of the book I wrote with Emma Kaufmann, which is published over there. It’s been a great experience getting to know these women but  today the full magnitude of what our relationship really means for me hit home. On the very day Aberdeenshire was issued with a severe weather warning promising sub zero temperatures and snow blizzards I am bombarded with Aussie complaints about the heat. “Summer’s barely here and it’s raging hot” they’ll say. “Kids are gearing up for summer holidays” they’ll also say. “to barbecue or not to barbecue” they’ll say. I’ve a feeling winter is going to be extra difficult for me this year...I have severe weather envy.

I’m currently sitting my dining room typing this with my coat on. Really. Outside the garden is sodden and the rain is dingin’ doon. Last night both my cats came in from outside completely soaked and tried to get under the bed covers with me and my husband. Ugh! My dog has to be shut in the porch for an hour every time we come back from a walk to let the mud dry so that he won’t slither about my house wrecking it like a hairy hippo.

Yes, I know British people are obsessed with the weather but North Eastern Scots are in a different league. We've got about 50 words for rain alone. 

I have had three separate face to face conversations with folk in passing about the weather already today. My dentist The Tooth Jockey told me at length how concerned he is about  driving to Dumfries on Friday in the snow- normally he says next to nothing to me. My next door neighbour simply muttered some expletives when I mentioned the weather, and the wifie in the local shop was going off on one about “nae haein’ ony kind o’ a summer this year”. She’s right, we didn’t. I just couldn’t agree with her because my fluency in the local language is wanting. I try it and I sound like an American actor trying to do an Irish accent kind of like Brad Pitt in that IRA movie, or groundskeeper Willie in the Simpsons.

Then I had an online  transworld conversation with Cate in New Zealand who told me that just once she’d love to have a White Christmas. So I looked this video out that might make Cate smile but might also make the rest of us cheer up about the impending blizzards. This was the highlight of Meeester’s year last year- the Snowplough Catastrophe. This video comes after a vigil of over an hour when my husband and erstwhile on the spot reporter, Meeester M on spying a snowplough getting stuck in a verge, hung about taking photos and generally being a right pest. He did offer to help, but he only had a cocker spaniel with him, and well, he’s a strong boy but we didn’t want to break him. I think the driver just wanted him to F off.

In the end a DADDY snowplough had to come and rescue the poor guy. But I kid you not I got over 10 photos and text messages sent to me from the scene as Meeester M excitedly kept me up to date with developments. It's your ultimate Tonka Toy dream! And he got one of his photos of the fiasco published in the local press, which must have pleased the snowplough driver no end. No anonymity for him then.

Here’s the crescendo of the experience. Man, it’s like watching Sky News! (but sideways..sorry- his fault)

 Note- this was at the end of over an HOUR of Meeester M hanging about the scene trying to be inconspicuous.

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Hot Wheels

 

I’ve written more times than I can remember about how un-PC my kids are (and by “my” I include all my nieces in this too) but yesterday they struck gold once again.

My mum, the renowned gran, Frazzlegran, and I decided to go shopping this Tuesday. Mum wanted to take me to this great shop her and my sister love called Silver Dapple in Inverurie. She was sure I’d find something I liked there (and I did-see my blipfoto). Stupidly we forgot that all the girls would be off school as it was an In-service day also known as (watch this, I’m going to radge up all teachers with this one comment- you wait and see them go mental) ...also known as “tea and cakes and no kids day”.

“Well just take the girls with us” we chirruped to each other on Sunday, both of us a couple of Chardonnays in. Ah, Chardonnay ... the misguided juice of delusion and forgetfulness.

In the event, the kids behaved reasonably well. By that I mean, we didn’t have to pay for owt we didn’t want to buy by way of compensation, no-one got injured and nothing got set on fire. OK there was a moment in Mackays ladieswear shop where a game of tig and tag got a bit out of hand and I had to chase three of them round the shop and catch them all by the hoods, but other than that, no. It’s not up there on the pantheon of child based disasters of yore.

The kids were bored and their window of tolerance of clothes shopping was closing fast. My mum was still trying stuff on so I agreed to take the three littlest ones, Lil Misssy, Curly Niece and The Pegginator outside to cool down after our round the shop circuit.  It was out on the pavement when it happened. An elderly chap in one of those covered over motorised wheelchair/scooter combos trundled past us. The three girls stopped messing about and looked at him with mouths open.  Simultaneously they all followed him with their gaze as he went past and sighed “Coooooool!”

I’m sure the chap thought that was ace. For three wee lassies to think his hot wheels were “Coooool” when really they just help him get about a bit, well, that must have put a smile on his face.

"Bless them" I thought. But no, they couldn't leave it at that. C'mon, my daughter is the girl who shouted "Who is that TINY LADY!" in earshot of a midget in John Lewis.

Once the man was only just past the girls Lil’ said her catchphrase of the season, “I want one of those for Christmas!”

“You cannae get one of those for Christmas. You can only get one if you’re disabled” I said, quietly. Key word: "quietly".

“I want to be misabled!!” shouted Curly Niece loudly at the top of her voice. Key word: "loudly".

And then for good measure she shouted it again, this time with feeling, “I wanna be misabled, woman!”

Apologies to all the misabled folks out there. They have done worse, it’s not just you....

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Twitter Joke Trial

 Paul Chambers, convicted of menace, yesterday.

How many times, infuriated with someone have you said the phrase " If so and so doesn't such and such, I'm gonna kill them!"

Imagine if suddenly the police came to your door and arrested you for intent to commit a crime. It would be ridiculous. Imagine you said it on Twitter and your tweet was used as evidence that you are on record as intending to commit that crime. You'd think someone was playing a joke on you. "Ok OK - I get it - you're a  stripogram, aren't you? Who booked you- was it Stevo?" you'd say." Right do your worst, get the skooshy cream out, so called 'officer' " as you unbuttoned his shirt and exposed their chest.

Well if you've not heard of Paul Chambers or the Twitter Joke Trial then you're obviously not on Twitter. And if you've only heard the news media's reports on it, you'll be likening Paul to one of the 7/7 bombers or those guys who burned poppies in London this week and shouted death threats to British servicemen and women. Thing is , Paul's just a bloke who made  joke on Twitter out of frustration. If you don't know the full story I'd advise people to visit this post at Heresy Corner because he's done a great job of summing up why we should all be appalled that this tweet got Paul into trouble with the police:

 "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!" 

The tweet was posted by Paul when he found out his local airport was closing due to snow and he would miss his flight to Ireland to finally meet up with a girl he'd been dating online. It was clearly A JOKE!

Then Paul got arrested at his work. Then Paul lost his job. Now Paul has been convicted the bizarre crime of menace. Yesterday it went to appeal and Chambers lost again. Poor guy- he must feel like he's in some kind of dystopian Kafka type scenario.

Fellow Tweeter Stephen Fry has offered to pay any fine against Paul Chambers and today we're all repeating his tweet with the hashtag #IAmSparticus alongside it.

Do you think this is a freedom of speech travesty or do you think Paul deserves everything he gets?

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Twitter is the New Toilet Wall

In the ruins of Pompeii there are walls covered in graffiti. “Claudia is a whore”, “Flavius is a bender” etc. I’m paraphrasing, I know for sure the translation of most of the graffiti is more offensive than that but let’s leave the expletive filled slander to your imagination. 

Moving on a few centuries and we’ve got the pub toilet wall or the local bus shelter. Names are called, grafitto is answered to, the abuse becomes more heightened and eventually the toilet door or the bus shelter must becomes replaced or painted over. I remember a park shelter in front of which my dad's pipe band were playing along with a band of overseas visitors. The scene of international bonhomie was shattered somewhat by a massive spray painted message on the otherwise white wall behind them. It read "Willie fuckin' stinks!"

Throughout history we’ve felt the need to vent on record. The new Pompeiian bathhouse wall or the local pub toilet door is Twitter. And it’s the celebrities on it that seem to be wielding the marker pens the most. It’s fascinating to watch. People normally packaged and polished by agents, pr gurus and studio publicity machines are out there, raw and uncensored. And guess what- they are just as petty as the rest of us. Possibly more so.

Lily Allen seems to have led the field in this. It seems that in 140 characters at a time she’s attacked just about everyone. Still I reckon good old Lily would do that to people’s faces anyway. Then earlier this year Jim Carrey trod a very lonely path. He decided to wade in on the side of Tiger Woods in the messy and horrible breakup with his ex-wife Elin Nordgren. Note, this is Jim who earlier that month annouced his own breakup with Jenny McCarthy on Twitter. 

Jim went for the scorned wife in a big way. How could Elin not know that her husband was cheating, somehow trying to make Tiger’s former wife look that she was responsible for his adultery because she had not nipped it in the bud soon enough. “No wife is blind enough to miss that much infidelity. Elin had 2 b a willing participant on the ride 4 whatever reason. kids/lifestyle” Carrey wrote on Twitter. Yes because if your husband is whoring about, your lifestyle instantly becomes better all round, Jim.

He went further. According to Jim we should all stop giving Tiger Woods such a hard time because he gave up his childhood to be the great golfer he is today. We should be grateful to him for his sacrifice. Needless to say the toilet wall of twitter became full of angry respondents replies to Jim, who joked “I guess we’re not ready talk about Sandra Bullock” referring to the actress’s husband’s infidelity. Presumably Sandra had brought it on herself. Do you think that Jim would have said all this in a television or magazine interview? Of course not. But anything goes on Twitter.

The majority of people who follow a person on Twitter do not know them in real life. In that way it is different from other social networks. Everyday on Twitter someone is saying something nasty about someone else, not to their face but on their timeline. With no real consequences to them personally. Stephen Fry took the huff and quit Twitter , albeit temporarily, when a correspondent referred to his tweets as “boring”. Even today, there has been a conversation on Twitter between Kirsty Allsop and India Knight about how they are finding the random abuse of Twitter respondents quite hard to take. Knight declares that some people don’t have a “thick enough skin for Twitter”. In response Allsop hints at the fact that she has sometimes thought of closing her account for such reasons.

My first question is, what’s going to be the lava that comes down and destroys this graffiti filled wall that day by day is turning nastier and nastier? 

And question 2: do you love this aspect of Twitter or hate it?

Note: A full feature on this theme is available to editors.Contact details in the Freelance Contact section.

Stop press 1: Kirsty Allsop involved in another spat. This time with Lord Alan Sugar.See here for a screen grab.

Stop Press 2: The Twitter Joke trial has ruled that the throwaway joke comment of  Paul Chambers tweeting that if he couldn't get to Ireland to visit a girl he would bomb the airport- clearly a joke-is worthy of punishment. 

Stop Press 3: Tory Councillor Gareth Compton makes stupid joke about stoning a female Muslim journalist to death. On twitter.

This all happened today.

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Squatters

So unrealistic-nothing ever happens in the country...

This post is scatalogical. Be warned.

This week I walked out of my house, and down my sleepy little village road, where nothing ever happens, unless you discount the robbery and attempted murder in June of an elderly farmer, and the brutal fatal stabbing of a woman in the sheltered housing by her neice later that same month.

Yeah, so nothing ever happens, unless you count the fact that I once saw the toddler of the chipshop owner up on the chip shop's flat roof on a tricycle wheeling around like a suicidal character in Chorlton and the Wheelies. And yes, let's not mention the time my friend's teenage son stole a JCB digger after pub closing time  and drove it drunkenly across the bowling green and took off the corner of the clubhouse.

Anyway as I say nothing ever happens in this sleepy little village. Unless you're  remembering the fact that those three Chinese guys that rented that house on the Wimpey estate and filled all the rooms bar one with hash plants, stuck on massive growlights and grew themselves up a mini dope plantation and then got raided by the police who had been going round the are with heat seeking devices and raided the house. Yeah, not counting that. Or the bloke who my friend found standing in her living room when she came out of the shower wearing only a towel, who the police couldn't charge because it was "her word against his".

Well, imagine my surpise when I went outside into my lovely chocolate box little village street to see man bending over. And then staying bent over. And why is he not moving? And oh...oh...those aren't cream coloured trousers he's wearing. That's his actual legs for his real trousers are oooohhhh! ROUND HIS ANKLES! And what?  Is he?  Oh my god, he is....Yes, I saw a man doing a crap on my street. 

Sick eh?  You want to know what's even sicker? That my first thought was to take my i-Phone out and take a photo of him for that day's Blipfoto (I didn't...don't worry). And my second thought was to tell everyone on Twitter? ( I did- folk were outraged. Even Stephen Fry. Probably.)

Ok. Now, based on what you've read above you can now start your essay on "What is wrong with society". 5,000 words, double spaced, and have it on my desk by Thursday.

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