Too angry to post tonight. Incandescent with rage right now. Will explain all over the next day or so (just as soon as I calm down enough to write something that won’t be self incriminating!)

We don’t know why Auntie J hates the Scots so much. We did have one theory which might have explained it – but Grandma S swears that she never force fed any of her children lumpy porridge through their noses. The jury’s out on whether or not Grandma S is telling the truth – what with our own experiences with the coal shed and the knobbly stick with the traces of flesh and blood on it, we wouldn’t put it past her but, unless we want the Winlaton branch of the WI posse knocking at our doors in the middle of the night and dragging us off to what they euphemistically call their “summer fayre” it’s a theory we don’t mention. Instead we’ve put it down to the fact that she’s just never forgiven them for Bannockburn.

It’s not that she ever says anything bad about the Scots – which just proves that she has more self restraint than most. After all, as subsequent generations of English military commanders have found, the Scots make excellent targets for whatever you want to throw at them. It’s not even that she takes any direct action against them. Although her other half may (or may not be) single-handedly engaged in a series of remarkable successful attempts to remove most of the indigenous fauna (or at least the tasty ones) from the country, we have no reason to assume that this is done with her consent much less her blessing.

But there’s no other reason other than a hatred so vehement that it makes Edward Longshanks look positively genial which even goes part of the way to explain the destruction and carnage that for one day a year she visits on the tight arsed, pursed mouthed, downright miserable sods which clutter up this otherwise beautiful land

As I’ve mentioned before, Auntie J is the mother of the two blonde haired blue eyed chaos makers; otherwise known as my wonderful goddaughter A and my equally wonderful not goddaughter R. I have to attach the adjective wonderful before mentioning them, partly because they’ve trademarked it but mostly because on meeting them you do wonder a number of things. Mostly you wonder where their volume control is hidden.

These are the secret weapons Auntie J utilises against the Scots. Once a year, for one day only she sends them up to visit us. It’s only ever for one day at a time because otherwise all sort of UN regulations concerning the deployment of troops are contravened and it’s seen as a hostile occupation. Armed with digital cameras (ours) they drag us through the streets of Edinburgh snapping at the passers by, laughing at the silly men who wear skirts (and you would think that by now, what with all the magazines around, Scotsmen would realise that, A-line horizontally striped box pleats worn with white knee length socks is an ensemble that only looks good on a 15 year old anorexic and instead given their body shape – if they must explore their feminine side –then they should go for something in a straighter style and a plainer colour. A nice knee length pencil skirt in black for example, always looks smart and skims over those areas that it’s probably best not to draw attention to.) Scattering italics as they go, breaking all noise regulations with an abandon that F who regularly breaks noise abatement orders like they’re a layer of a mille feuille can only stare at in amazement and generally mocking everything that the Scots hold dear, (namely the Scots) they cause as much devastation as can be wreaked by a couple of whirlwinds in female form.

Don’t get me wrong. They aren’t bad kids. They aren’t perfect, but then they aren’t naughty or spoilt either. There isn’t a mean, vindictive, squalling bone in their bodies. They’re just exuberant. As far as I’m concerned, J & M should have a medal and a large annuity for life for accomplishing what seems to be the impossible these days – bringing up children who are free from all neuroses and psychoses. In short it should suffice to mention that being around them is being around the concept of what a child should be. And if I then go on to mention that A is 14 and R is 10 then you will see how unusual this is. By the time most children reach that age – they aren’t children any more; they’re bonsai versions of middle aged depressives.

As an aside here (which may seem a bit odd given the above paragraph in praise of my goddaughter and my notgoddaughter), I’d just like to ask if I’m the only person in the world who wonders exactly why Britain seems to have become so depressingly child centric. And why its first commandment seems to be “thou shalt not say no, to the fruit of your loins but will instead engage in a long and pointless discussion with it in tones of stress and near hysteria” It’s honestly not that I’m intolerant of children – it’s just that if you must take them out in public once they’re capable of independent movement – train them first. You’d do it if it were a puppy. I’m sick and tired of going to restaurants only to have my meal ruined either, by a parents too loud conversation with the waiter that outlines in graphic detail exactly what food groups the little so and so is allergic to and the effect that these foods have on their digestive system or by long and meaningless attempts on behalf of the parents to reason with the precocious darling they created over exactly what they want to eat. It doesn’t happen in France. The restaurants there are full of perfectly behaved children who are cosseted by parents, waiters and other diners alike but whose manners come straight out of a handbook on etiquette. Furthermore, what is it about parenthood that means once you’ve managed to reproduce (and its not that difficult – all it takes is a bottle of red wine and a memory lapse) that’s all you’re able to talk about for the rest of your life. Having once spent nearly two years working with someone who assumed that because she was engrossed in her child’s bowel movement I should be too, I feel that I’m entitled to speak out on behalf of the rest of us whose sense of humour may well be in the gutter but who’s intellect is still well above the contents of a potty.

Now as you may know, for the past few weeks I’ve been a bit unwell. I’m not going to go into any great and gory detail – the gist of it was that one night about three weeks ago now I started to feel a bit achy, put it down to flu and went to bed. Woke up three hours later unable to breathe without extreme agony, sat up all night (where I learnt that the most annoying thing in the world is to be awake all night in agony while your nearest and dearest – F and the real Hendrix Cat - sleep the sleep of the just beside you and that when faced with this the best action to take is some judicious pinching and prodding - on F – had I attempted to do this to the real HC then I would have lost a finger.) Got an emergency appointment at the doctors the next morning – got into the surgery – lungs clear and no cough but in great pain and apparently tachycardic with a pulse of 120 and so was told to go straight to hospital where in response to my frantic phone messages and being remarkable forgiving on account of the judicious prodding and pinching he’d had to endure the night before, an extremely worried looking F met me. They thought it might be a blood clot on my lung, but after a series of tests; including an X ray, removing most of my blood with a blunt needle (and how come doctors despite the years of training are unable to hit the vein first time but stab at you like they’re rehearsing the assassination scene in Julius Caesar, while nurses – despite the fact that they don’t have the years of training – can manage it first time and more gently to boot?) and several attempts on my patience (being called dear by a female doctor who was younger than me was one I nearly failed) which included being sat in a wheelchair in a corridor for 9 hours while clad only in a hospital gown which had no strings to tie it together at the back making getting out of the chair and walking past the rest of the patients who were also sitting in the corridor waiting to be seen) in order to get the to loo, an exercise in wall hugging (thank god I was wearing big knickers that day) anyway after all that, they decided at 8pm that evening that there was nothing wrong with me and that I could go home. This was after a bit of a hissy fit on my part when I demanded to be allowed to go home, because I figured that if I’d been sitting in a hospital corridor for 9 hours then despite the pain and the dizziness and the generally feeling like shit on a stick then there couldn’t be anything that much wrong with me and besides which I wanted a cigarette (one thing I did find out from the tests is that my blood oxygen levels are at 99% which means all these years of smoking have been for naught) Despite the fact that there was nothing clinically wrong with me I spent the next week unable to move from the daybed, too ill to move, read, eat or generally do anything apart from cry like a baby and generally be a right royal pain in the butt towards F whose patience never once ran out. Frankly, if I’d had to look after myself, I’d have smacked me in the face. With a blunt instrument.

But once the illness had worn off a bit and I could enjoy the fact that I was having some time away from a job that I’m taking obsessively seriously for no other reason than the fact that I’m pathetically grateful be paid for staying at home and playing with graphics programmes I began to be in a bit of a better mood. And then one day, like a bolt from the blue, a scene from the last visit of A and R came back to me…

We were walking down from Edinburgh castle and I was attempting to do my god- motherly duty by inspiring A with all the possible things she could do once she was old enough to venture out into the big wide world. With a wave of her hand she stopped me.

“When I grow up” she said decisively “I shall live in a big house in the country. I shall have 3 dogs and 2 horses and some children and lots of finches in an aviary”

“You’ll need a lot of money for that” I said to her “what are you going to do to make the money”

“I shall marry a vet” she said. “Because they are all rich and besides which it will be useful if the animals get sick because he will know how to treat them”

“And you will look after the animals and the house and the children” I said

“No” she replied “my husband will come home from work and he will do the cleaning and the shopping and look after the animals and the house and the children and he will cook dinner as well.”

“But A” I replied “what will you do?”

“I will be lovely” she said.

I can see her point. Out of the mouths of babes and infants…

…The best At Murder Are Those
Who Preach Against It
AND The Best At Hate Are Those
Who Preach LOVE
AND THE BEST AT WAR
FINALLY ARE THOSE WHO PREACH
PEACE

Charles Bukowski - The Genuis of The Crowd

Sometimes no matter how much we try to control ourselves, our emotions get the better of us. They flood our brain with scarlet lake and there is nothing - no justification, no rationalisation that will restore our equilibrium. There’s a part of me that hates this feeling - and a part that loves it. For two weeks now I’ve been in a terrible rage. It started at about quarter to nine every morning last week and intensified daily until, by last Saturday I was incandescent. Rationalisation, justification, controlled breathing, nothing worked. I tried so many ways to get this anger out until at last I picked up paints and paper and began to lash out colour. What came out instead was the following, scrawled across several sheets of A3. I’ve spent the past two weeks deliberating and debating about whether or not to post this. I wrote it in rage borne of frustration and hopelessness and desperation and sadness. I freely admit that it will annoy and upset a great many people. But if I’m not honest about what I feel and what I think then I am worthless. I claim no superiority, I claim the right to post this for one man who said nothing and endured and survived. I claim the right for the people who have had no reparation or remembrance, I claim the right based on the experiences that make me who and what I am because what that is, is coloured by the blood of those I come from and if I annoy people and upset people then so be it. But I hope and pray that I make you think.

Did you know that there was once (and still may be) a farmhouse in a far away land? It does exist, I’ve seen the photographs, a little faded, a little crumpled, captioned on the back in the letters of an alphabet I don’t understand. It was a pretty farmhouse, a neat farmhouse, the sort of farmhouse that figures largely in the beginnings of fairy tales. It had a crooked chimney and the gables were carved in wonderful swirls. It had woods on one side and fields on the other and a river not too far away. It was just a house. It wasn’t just a house. It was way more special, way more magical than that. It was a home. And, as anyone who has ever been without one knows - there is a world of difference between a house and a home.

The family who lived in this house weren’t that special. They had no rich relatives, no powerful connections, no magical powers, no special gifts whatsoever. Just a mother and father and three boys. There may have been a couple of girls too, I’m not so sure. What I know of this family I know from half-remembered remembrances. But the one thing I’m quite sure of is that they weren’t special in any way. They were just a family. A bit boring in these days of instant gratification, no fault divorce, pension plans, rising house prices, keeping up and running off with the Jones’s, serial monogamy, swinging, flinging, steps, half steps and oops I’ve missed a step call the CSA but they were happy.

So here we have it. The perfect start to a fairy tale. A house with a crooked chimney and swirly wooden gables painted a spotless white. A house with woods on one side and fields on the other and a river not too far away. A house with a poor but happy family where the father was firm but fair and a mother who sounds like the sort of mother who would win prizes, she cooked and cleaned and kept house and did all the things that would have her hanged by feminists but make for well balanced and happy children. We even have the perfect hero for our story. The middle son. It’s always the middle son. The eldest is always at work and the youngest too young to be a hero.

He was a normal boy - that’s to say he was wicked but with a good and loving heart. He was quite clever although he went to school begrudgingly. It was a seven mile round trip over the fields and in the winter he had to ski there but that wasn’t the reason he didn’t care for school although it did mean he won a prize for cross country skiing. It was just that he was a normal boy and like most boys he didn’t see the point of school when he could fill his pockets with food and take to the fields to do whatever it is that boys do when given enough room to have a childhood. One thing I know he learnt from his childhood was this. He could make flutes from green willow wands by stripping out the heartwood and boring holes in the bark. He could make rope swings too and imitate bird calls so perfectly that they would answer him back.

Did you know that in this magical cottage was a painted stove with a shelf above it? A large wide shelf just big enough for a small boy and his dog to curl up on. From there he could watch his mother baking in the kitchen below. The smell of the fresh baked bread would rise up with the heat until he could taste it without even eating

Did you know that this fairy tale house had a vegetable garden. Of course it did. Shops don’t feature largely in fairy tales. Did you think the three bears bought their oats from the local supermarket? Why do you think that Snow White bought her apple from the wicked stepmother? Had there been a Tesco’s nearby she wouldn’t have needed to rely on a pedlar would she? So this house, with the crooked chimney and the painted stove had a vegetable garden. And in this vegetable garden the cabbages had silver sand around them to stop the eels from eating them. Did you know that eels will leave a river to sliver and squirm their way through the wet grass to eat cabbages?

Sturgeon and pike lived in the river too. Big, dark dangerous fish. One night his father caught one and brought it home and it lay on the kitchen table, breathing its last before it was roasted for supper. Across the river was the church and the night before Easter his mother would ask him to row her across the river so she could spent the whole night in vigil before Christ rose. The church was lit by candles and her long hair, tight bound in its complicated patterns of plaits and knots glinted in the soft light.

Do you know that sometimes, when work was done they would sit at night and tell stories. That’s what people did before they had television. They told stories. The most terrifying were the tales of the Tsars who would hunt them down and shoot them from trees with guns. For fun. Did you know that the mother would look up at the boy where he lay on the shelf above the stove and tell him not to be frightened because these things didn’t happen any more, they were a free country now.

One day, for that is how all good fairy stories start, one day our boy went out to play. He was fourteen. It wasn’t a school day and he wasn’t avoiding his chores, he was at perfect liberty to go out and play. The sky was a brilliant blue and the grass in the fields so green it was as if mother nature herself had delivered an invitation to explore. So he took his dog and went into the fields, looking for adventures. They shot his dog in front of him and dragged him to the railway station.

He had the presence of mind to shout out to a neighbour as he passed and as soon as his mother heard what happened to him she ran, ran, ran as fast as she could after him. Her apron still on, still floury from baking. She waved him goodbye. She couldn’t do anything else because soldiers with guns stood between all the mothers and their children.

Do you know about the fourteen year old boy who was herded into a cattle truck and taken across Europe? It was a long journey. It was a cold journey. It was a hungry journey. There were hundreds of them on the train and they were crammed so tight into the trucks that there wasn’t room to sit down. He cried. Most fourteen year old boys would die rather than cry. Most fourteen year old boys have more than those two choices.

Do you know how it feels to be stripped of your clothes? to have your head shaved and to be deloused? Men, women and children all together. Standing naked in the cold. Intimately examined by a doctor. Separated into two groups. Dressed in striped suits, too thin for the cold weather. Did you know the delouser looked like green jelly?

Do you know about the fourteen year old boy who stole a turnip?. It was snowing that day and all you could see for miles around was the patchy white and black of frozen earth. Behind them was the railway line It was so cold and he was so hungry. Fourteen year old boys are always hungry - ask any parent. Especially when they’re only fed half a slice of bread in the morning and bowl of thin “don’t look too closely just eat it soup” in the evening. Especially when they spend the rest of the day shifting railway sleepers under the eye of armed guards who hit them when they don’t work hard enough. But sometimes the guards looked away and when they did he seized his chance. Slipping and sliding down the railway siding he got to the field and with icicle fingers scrabbled at the iron hard earth and uncovered a turnip. After another second he’d grabbed another. He hid them inside his shirt and slid his way back to the track. The guards saw him. They kicked him until the turnips inside his shirt fell out and then they kept on kicking. They left him by the track as the prisoners worked on and soon the snow covered his body.

Did you know how to play Russian Roulette- German style? There aren’t many rules. Hold a roll call every morning and shoot every tenth person in the line up. If you get bored, vary the number, or make them run round the compound and see if you can hit them. Continue playing until you run out of bullets.

Did you know the best way to pull out your own wisdom tooth when it becomes infected? You can try string and a door, but sometimes they’re in short supply. A nail and most of the night does it. The last thing you want to do is to go to the camp dentist. They extract your tooth with a bullet.

Did you know happens when you put copper filings inside an open wound? You saw at your skin with a file to make a cut and then sprinkle them inside. It makes an abscess and an abscess wins you a day off work. Only one day though, those who can’t work don’t eat. Did you know it leaves a blue mark on your skin for the rest of your life? Did you know that his grandchildren don’t know if granddad’s blue arm was the result of that or whether a teenager had the presence of mind to self tattoo over his numbers - just in case it happened again.

Do you know how it feels to be liberated? There are no more bullets but there are no warm blankets either. There is a bombed out city and the will to live whatever the cost. Do you know what it takes for a fourteen year old to survive 4 years in a concentration camp? Do you know what it takes for an eighteen year old to survive in a post war city?

Do you want to know how to sell meths as whiskey? It’s very easy. Burn some sugar on top of a piece of bread. When it starts to go brown and starts to melt, scrape it into the into the bottle It will look like whisky. It won’t smell or taste like whiskey so you better be able to sell the bottle and run like the wind as soon as the deals been struck.

Do you know the best way to stuff a cigarette with sawdust? A seasoned joint roller couldn’t do it better. Tease out the tobacco slowly. Be careful not break the skins. Slide the sawdust back inside. Show the goods quickly. Strike a deal. Scarper.

Do you know how it feels to be told that you can go to Canada or Australia or England? Do you know how it feels to choose England only to discover that you are not wanted there? That throughout your entire life you will be judged by people who have never gone through one tenth of what you went through? By people who will consider you as foreign until the day you die? By people who will belittle you because your accent is not the same as theirs?

Do you know how it feels to choose England because it was closer to home and then to discover that the borders are sealed and you can never go back? That the news of your parents death is telegraphed to you some twenty years later.

Do you know how to rebuild your life? To build a family when you have had none. To take on the language and customs of a foreign land - not through choice, but because you have no choice.

You don’t know and despite your protestations to the contrary you don’t care. You don’t care, because you walk past beggars in the street. After all, as I heard this week from a couple of warm well fed woman who think that buying a Big Issue qualifies them from beatification - beggars can make up to thirty thousand pounds a year and most of them hide their designer clothes in dustbins while they beg . You don’t care because you’ll take to the street to ban fox hunting but you wouldn’t march to have the homeless housed. You don’t care because you don’t approve of asylum seekers or if you do you don’t want them in your back yard. You don’t care because you cannot tolerate the concept of tolerance zones You don’t care, because genocide is happening now - this instant, in a hundred different places in the world and we’re doing fuck all to stop it. You don’t care because you’ll vilify and crucify those who you don’t agree with. You don’t care because you automatically assume that those who speak with an accent think with one and don’t tell me you don’t, I live with a Frenchman who has a better vocabulary in English than any other person I know and I see the patronising “better humour him” look in peoples eyes when they pretend to listen to him speak. You’ll put your hands in your pocket and give when suffering is blazed at you on the TV screen but you won’t search it out and offer succour. You don’t care because you haven’t been there. You don’t know and you don’t care and all the TV series and remembrance days aren’t going to make you or I anything other than selfish, self centred, “I’m all right Jack” people we are.

And I know, I know, you’ve heard it all before. A million times on the History Channel and now on Breakfast TV and BBC 2. But you haven’t heard these stories. No one will ever hear these stories. They are the stories of a man without a voice told to a child who can only half remember them now. Because by the time we were old enough to understand, he would not speak of them. Because he did not speak of them except with a laugh in his voice - stories of grandpa and the Germans. Except for once.

Do you want to know the best bit of this fairy tale? The bit that will stop you nodding and thinking that you’re hearing this from the horses mouth? Another true to life experience of the camps. Another made for TV special we can watch and then switch off. He wasn’t Jewish. That one fact, in the eyes of world, makes everything he went through meaningless. We do not know why he was taken, only that he was. He was not persecuted for his beliefs. There is no world wide day of mourning, no Schindlers list, no media frenzy to hear his story, no Dermot and Natasha to cue him in with hushed deference. There is no remembrance day for my grandfather, no reparation, no gifting of a homeland, no government subsidies, no world-wide ransom. As we have none for the Russians, the gypsies, the Catholics, the homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled. As we have none for all those throughout history who’s faces didn’t fit, who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no race or religion that has the monopoly on suffering, on genocide, on persecution. There are more stories than those of Auschwitz. Yet we must remember that it is not a numbers game. Because the way we do it now is that the race or religion who had the most dead or the best media coverage are those that will be remembered. Right now we must remember that my grandfather did not exist, his comrades, the children shipped out with him are worth less than nothing because as they die and they are dying now, there are only the half remembered stories told by people like me. And when the grandchildren die - when I am dead and my brother is dead, he will not be remembered. There are millions of people who do not even have that. These are the people we should not forget.

Do you know how I remember my grandfathers voice? Half devoured by Alzheimers with the heavily accented Geordie English he spoke? grabbing my arm unable to remember that I was the child he made flutes from willow wands for. Words spilling out in a half teared flurry like snowflakes over a body. The only memory left to him by a disease that if there was a God should have taken away all memory.

“…and he said don’t look, don’t look outside the train. But I looked and the ground was moving… from all the bodies underneath, the ground was moving.”

As I mentioned there’s something very bloodthirsty about old women. Visit any library and you’ll see hordes of them gathered around piles of murder mystery’s flicking through the pages till they get to the gruesome bits. Once they hit seventy the grislier the film, the better they enjoy it. Lets face it, the History Channel was designed with them in mind - endless footage of the Second World War which they can watch while telling you that it was the best years of their lives and then when that goes off air they can switch onto Channel five and if it isn’t showing gratuitous sex that will so horrify them that they’ll have to watch the whole thing just to see how offensive it is then it’ll be Jean Claude Van Whateverhisname is blasting everything in sight with a big gun (often these will be combined in the same film.) Either way they’ll happily watch it until the test card. And all the old sayings they’re so fond of are a dead give-away too…”There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with butter…a little knowledge is a dangerous thing…ask no questions and I’ll tell you no lies…”- if they weren’t evil harridans with murder in mind, how would they know?

Maybe it’s just my Grandma. She’s a sweet looking 84 year old lady but looks can be deceptive. To be quite honest I understand her murderous intent. After an hour spent in the company of most of my family I have murderous intent so I can quite understand the secret lust for violence that the woman who gave birth to them must feel. But I think it’s getting out of control now. I think she’s the head of a crime syndicate.

At first I thought that it must be the Mafia - all the signs were there: a large family, a love of opera, an insistence on being treated with respect, strong links with the Catholic church and she read the Godfather years before it became a film. That wouldn’t be too bad. After all the Mafia has been going for so long now its almost as respectable as the WI. Actually considering that the Corleones have never appeared on a nude calendar it’s probably more respectable than the WI.

After my recent sojourn in the North East I have been forced to change my opinion.

I think she’s heading up a posse.

In case any of her crew are reading this - The big GS didn’t squeal on you. We got her drunk. After my bout of touchiness (you see there is a connection with Part One -see below if you’ve just joined me) mum decided to mend broken bridges (although not broken beds) by taking F and I to the Derwent Inn, a lovely little country pub half way up Ebchester bank. We also decided to take Grandma as she doesn’t get out much on a Monday night. It was a wonderful evening. We had a couple of drinks and Grandma had a couple of drinks and it was wonderful for a daughter (me) to see her mother (mum) being wound up her by her mother (grandma). F and Grandma discussed politics as they tend to do - Grandma being a confirmed Francophile about everything except the French, and then they discussed conspiracy theories as they also tend to do - Grandma from the viewpoint of the History channel and F from the viewpoint of the weird and wonderful sites he finds on the web. A couple of hours later we went back to the car park and what should be parked next to mum but a large, shiny, silver and obviously brand spanking just got out of the factory never mind the showroom car.

“That’s a nice car” said my Grandma stating the obvious for no other reason than the hope that this statement would spark off some sort of hereditary criminal gene in my mum and she’d steal it.

“Yes” said my mum as she unlocked the door.

We got into the (mum’s) car.

Undeterred my Grandma continued.

“What sort of car is it do you think”

” Its a BMW” said my mum putting the key in the ignition and starting the car.

“Oh” said my Grandma ” Black mans wheels”

Mum stalled. We stalled. And then we creased up.

” What did you say mum?” said my mum

“BMW - Black mans wheels. That’s what its short for isn’t it?” My Grandma said quite matter of factly.

“Er no mum” said my mum. “It isn’t - where on earth did you hear that”

“Oh around” said my Grandma vaguely

It took mum ten minutes to start the car after that. I’ve never seen her laugh so much. I don’t think that I’ve ever laughed that much. So there you are. My Grandma either thinks she’s Shaft or she’s in a gang. Just you wait. The WI have probably already realised that you can use a hoe on the weeds or on a street corner and either one will bring in a way more profitable income stream than a nude calendar.

It’s a well-known fact that underneath a thin facade of Werthers Originals, tea made in a teapot and not in the cup, soft jumpers and pink lipstick all old ladies have a psychopathic yearning for blood that makes Dracula look like a vegetarian. Just look at Miss Marples. As soon as she arrived anywhere, people started popping off like champagne corks. Had anyone really wanted to stop the rising tide of mysterious murders in genteel middle England then their best bet would have been to place her under house arrest and watch the incidences of violent crime decrease over night.

I’ve just got back from a week spent at home. A week may be a long time in politics but it’s a short space of time to develop the neuroses I’ve brought back with me. They’ll keep me going well past Christmas and had I not been banned from every psychiatrist’s in the land on the grounds that I make them feel insecure I’m sure I could have kept a legion of them gainfully employed for a very long while. As it is I guess I’ll just have to repress, deny and get on with it. The common consensus is that I’m “touchy”. That’s touchy as in downright bad tempered rather than touchy-feely glad to see my family although I will admit (as only herebe and onebadway read this and they won’t believe me anyway) - that I was glad to see my family…at least the ones I saw. Actually, I don’t think that I am “touchy”. Quick tempered? Yes, highly strung? possibly, but calling someone touchy is basically saying that they’re bad tempered for no reason. In this case I did have a reason. I admit I don’t always have a reason to be bad tempered but then I don’t happen to think that you always need a reason. But in this instance I did have a reason. Two reasons in fact.

The first is a thorn that’s rankled ever since I went to Uni and it’s quite simply this. Mum threw out my bed about a month after I left home (that’s left home to go and live in halls of residence not left home for my own home). That in itself is an act, the symbolism of which would have psychiatrists queuing to give me Prozac if I hadn’t been banned already from seeing them and if I wasn’t already tranked to the gills by years of drinking London tap water (drinking 2 litres of water a day makes you feel better? Well, we now know why.) Now mum insists that the bed was broken and that it had been ever since KA (my best friend in 6th form, who had what you might call a 24 hourglass figure) had thrown herself on it in a fit of unrequited love. As far as that goes I concur, (having been the one to pick her out of the wreckage of springs) and had the bed been one of your common or garden divans I wouldn’t have cared. But it wasn’t. It was an especially nice and extremely comfortable solid oak 1930’s bed with a high wooden frame and an orthopaedic mattress and I was quite attached to it. Had mum replaced it with a similarly styled bed I wouldn’t have minded. Of course she didn’t. In a fit of minimalism some six years later she bought a futon that seems to be constructed from builder’s pallets and a couple of hessian sacks stuffed with straw. Mum did keep the headboard and footboard (in a vain attempt to convince me that she didn’t really throw out my bed) which after 6 years of being in the garden are now well weathered, well seasoned although surprisingly not well disintegrated bits of timber. I should just add (otherwise mum will kill me) that we aren’t really the sort of family that has rotting beds in the garden - it’s stacked neatly alongside the 25 blocks of Italian white marble rescued from dad’s studio which F and I transported (at great risk to F’s back and the car’s suspension) from Edinburgh in a Peugeot 105 and mum then decided she didn’t want to tile the kitchen floor with after all.

In itself, this isn’t really a reason to be touchy. In fact I mention it only because I know that at some point mum will read this and in amongst the admonitions about swearing and generally being nasty about people, the fact that the unseen multitudes will find out what a wicked neglectful and downright cruel mother she was will send her on a guilt trip that might just get her to give me the rather nice little hand knitted cardie a friend of grandma’s knitted for her that she isn’t sure she likes the colour of and which fits me perfectly.

The thing is that I was only trying to be helpful. Admittedly in trying to be helpful earlier that day I’d totalled the sink by trying to jemmy the plug (which had no chain) out of the plug hole with a bread knife. Somehow I also managed to disengage the whole plumbing under the sink with the result that gallons of dishwater cascaded straight into the cupboard under the sink burst open the cupboard door and formed a rapidly spreading pool across the kitchen floor. The flood was exacerbated by the fact that, blissfully unaware of the Niagara under my feet I was running the cold tap full at full strength to try to clear the suds so I could see what I was doing. Of course if mum washed up under the tap like any normal person that disaster could have been averted, but when in Rome….

It wasn’t the sopping wet feet that made me touchy. Nor was it stomping (well squelching) off into the garden to have a cigarette. Even the sight of my old bed stacked behind the coal bunker, didn’t spark off touchiness this time. Deciding to make a garden bench out of its hallowed, silvered timbers was in fact the best way to make me a touchy free zone. The fact that I’ve never made anything out of wood didn’t deter me one bit. I like to build things. The dirtier my hands get, the more times I hit my thumb with a hammer the happier I am. I’m not even one of those people who insists on having the right tools for the job which is just as well really because mum’s toolbox consists of a carrier bag buried in the depths of the understair cupboard. Like all true professionals mum, (who has rebuilt more houses than she ever cooked hot dinners) has pared her kit down to the absolute minimum: a blunt saw, a masonry mallet, a box of carpet tacks, a voltmeter and a broken ruler. She did once have one of those drills you can attach a sanding disc to, but she burnt out the motor sanding the bedroom floor.

Things were going well. Working on the family’s age old assumption “if you can draw it, you can make it”, I rough sketched what I wanted the finished thing to look like, measured up the most comfortable of the kitchen chairs to double check the measurements (chairs and tables always measure lower than you think) and stuck the measurements on my drawing. Then I prepared my workspace. I got this habit from dad who admittedly has a proper workshop (with industrial power tools and workbenches) but the premise is the same whether you’re kicking the shit out of a lump of metal or changing a fuse. One mug of scalding sweet strong tea, fags and lighter to hand, decent music on the stereo and somewhere comfortable to sit, in this case on the step next to the bin in the backyard. I lined the tools out in the lane, laid out the wood I’d be using next to them, measured and marked all the bits that were to be cut. Lit a fag, took a swig of tea, measured and marked them all again bearing in mind the carpenters rule of ten (”measure 9 times cut once” - it’s different when working with metal as you can just weld a piece back on and grind it down later if you’re out a mil or so)

I cut the wood for the legs. They were all the same length. Spurred on by this success, I cut the wood for the bench frame. When I laid it out in a rectangle, the pieces all matched up. Great. I took another swig of tea (by now cold and with several drowned insects in it), had another cigarette. Changed into a pair of shorts. It was time to start on the fun bit. The nailing together. Usually nailing to pieces of wood together in a right angle is not a tricky thing. Having a clamp and proper nails can help, but so long as they’re long enough to go through both bits you’re usually OK. The tricky bit is holding two pieces of wood in an L-shape, supporting the nail for the first few blows and also having a hand free to wield the hammer. Accomplishing this without the aid of a vice was a bit like playing twister on a mine field but I successfully managed to create the two L shapes and was in the process of joining these together in a rectangle without hittin my thumb too often when herebe got back from the gym.

Personally I would have thought that anyone writing a thesis on dwarves would welcome the sound of hammering while they worked but apparently these academic types like to dissertate in silence. So the garden bench was filed away next to the marble and I’m now classified as touchy.

None of which has anything to do with what I actually started to write about - the psycopathic tendencies of octogenarian women. All will be made clear in tomorrows posting…