If you start me up…

Today’s MLM is brought to you with the Rolling Stones and Start Me Up. 

I ummed and ahhhed about putting on the original 1981 video but I decided I was going to because if Mick Jagger in what looks like Hanoi Jane Fonda’s workout gear doesn’t make you smile this Monday, nothing will.

I don’t know what makes me laugh more – Mick’s bizarre dancing, his pants, his skin-tight leotard thing, Keith Richards’ unkempt hair, Charlie Watts’ wry smile or the fact that Mick Jagger reminds me of a guy I know called Mossy. I like it where Charlie Watts is dying laughing and just can’t keep a straight face. Gotta love Keef and Mick. Let’s face it, Mick Jagger only just manages to keep it this side of cringingly-embarrassing-Paul-McCartneyesque. The only thing that saves him is just how good this song is. Bowie almost ended up on the Paul McCartney heap around about the same time, but has managed to retrieve himself. Funnily enough, I found a copy of the Absolute Beginners LP in a 12″ bin at a vide grenier a couple of weeks ago. That says it all. He was in there with Haircut 100 and Demis Roussos. It’s something when you are stuck in the 80s between a little-known boyband and a fat Greek. Lucky for Dave, he managed to redeem himself and is now legendary cool. He manages to look like he hasn’t had too much cosmetic surgery or hair dye. I cannot bear to speak of Paul McCartney.

So what do I love this MLM?

Well, I’m not loving the rain. No sirree. That can just get to feck. I didn’t move here to be cold in May. Can you believe I’m still turning the electric blanket on of an evening? Bah.

To be fair, it’s intemperate, as Shakespeare would have said. Sometimes it’s cracking the flags and then the next day, it’s barely scraping double figures.

The grass is long and out of control once more. The rain is very good for my plants, and it is warmer than it was last May, believe it or not. Plus, there is the promise of fruit. That’s a good thing.

I’m loving having ladies to talk to who are actually interested in management theory and in reflective triads and shadow sides and all sorts of stuff I’d started to get interested in back in 2007ish. It’s nice to be able to chat and chat about interesting, grown-up stuff.

But I love that I have silly friends too. And I don’t mean stupid or airheaded. I mean funny and daft. If you can’t have a laugh, this life is not worth living. That’s for sure. If you can’t see the funny side, then it’s probably not worth seeing the serious side. It will just depress you.

I love the stinkers, including the one who was so overcome with the chase urge that he disappeared for a full half hour or so and nearly gave me laryngitis calling for him. He’s lying on his back, his legs stretched full out, and, if you can believe it, he is smiling. I have a freaky smiling dog. The other stinker, the most stinky of the stinkers, is lying on the couch looking like the sweetest little thing. If you had no sense of smell, you would have no idea of the stench emanating from her foul body. Having a nose, you may well wonder why she smells like rotten flesh. This is because she is a filth-hound. Being cute and blonde does not mean that she is all Marilyn. She’s a dirty, dirty stink hound. She’s supposed to look like this:

In fact, we saw a couple of American cockers like this at the vide grenier a couple of weeks ago. Shannon asked me what breed they were. I told her they were the same as Tilly and she nearly died laughing. I’m pretty sure Tilly would not want to look like this. It doesn’t go with her Shirley Maclaine rooting in a bin bag look. I figure if she wanted to look like ^^^^^ she’d stop bin dipping and eating cat turds. It can’t just be my choice for her to look like this.

Anyway, it’s not like I would want her to look like a show-dog. I like it when she looks unkempt.

Incidentally, I just looked at Dave Jones’ Wikipedia page and it says that Rolling Stone voted him 39th best artist of all time. Who the hell did they have from 38 up???! Did Jesus have a band? Did the Archangel Gabriel rock out with Bruce Springsteen? I investigated further and Paul Simon is number 40. That’s insane. How are there 38 artists better than these two? They put Madonna above both of them. And above John Lennon (38) I’m so totally freaked out by that I might need to have a lie down. To be fair, I can kind of see that the other people are great artists too, like Johnny Cash, but there’s no way JC is better than Ziggy Stardust. NO WAY in the world. The Who are 29. What’s that about? They’re not an artist. They’re a band.

And so I’ve accidentally worked myself up into a frenzy where I am going to have to write a stern letter to the Rolling Stone magazine, explaining that they might think it’s cool to put JC and Smokey Robinson above the Man Who Fell To Earth, but there’s no way on earth it’s logically possible. Not a one. I looked through the rest. There was a lot of pretentiousness in that top 38. And a lot of bands. They don’t even count. That puts Bob Dylan as number 1 artist. I can live with that.

Anyway, the Stones started me up and it’s quite obvious I’m not going to stop now. Better keep going… off to the prefecture. God give me strength.

 

Caught beneath the landslide

By way of another Manchester band (well, I’m on a roll and it would be rude not to…) today’s Much Love Monday is brought to you with the laid-back Manc swagger of Oasis with Champagne Supernova. 

This is the sound of post-Smiths Manchester, where we’d all stopped the ironic sarcasm of The Smiths, the shoe-gazing of the Inspiral Carpets, the drug-fuelled craziness of the Happy Mondays and seriously believed we were the best in the world. My sister and I went to see Oasis in about 1996 at the old Manchester City stadium… I think you’d be hard-pushed to find a band who had bigger egos or more self-confidence. Sometimes, we all need a little bolshy self-confidence to get us through a Monday. Amazing to have gone from Morrissey and his epic ode to shyness and coyness, right the way through to Liam Gallagher’s overwhelming lip-curling arrogance. I seem to recall he had a hissy fit back in 1996 and Noel had to sing a few of the songs. I could be wrong. My memory is appalling.

So, what do I have Much Love for this Monday, apart from the wonderful phrase ‘champagne supernova’?

Sadly for me, my divine helpxrs have gone on to a nearby vegetarian spa. I’ve been up past the place a couple of times, and drop Living Poitou-Charentes off there. It’s an amazing place and the owner is a complete inspiration. You know how you just meet people and you wish they had a blog and you’re really sad that they don’t? I wish Nikki did. I’d be an avid reader and she’d have about a million regular readers. Her place is 27 acres (I know… mine is just a small garden at an acre!) and she has turned it from a kind of ruin to a tranquil haven. She’s just one of those people who you spend some time with and you feel a hit of energy. I love friends like that. Funnily, about a couple of miles away is another lady who would also make a great blogger and also makes me feel like I need to get productive and creative. Neither of these ladies ever seem stressed or uptight… the life is good over Cellefrouin way, obviously!

Much Love, then, to Marcus and Shannon, who have put up with my weird English habits, my love of caffeine and my terrible swearing. I wish I were 20 and travelling around Europe. I think I might never have settled down. Ironically, given my current lifestyle, I wanted nothing more to be in employment and to be ‘adult’ when I was around that age. I wanted a regular pay-cheque and a reliable job. In the end, it was a great decision because it gave me skills that allow me to live out here.

I took Marcus and Shannon into the big city of Angoulême on Saturday night (for anyone who knows Angoulême, you know this is a joke, because my French friends call it ‘une ville morte’ or a dead-town) which is a shame because it was totally beautiful. The bars around Les Halles and up through the old town make it a fairly laid-back, mucho-relaxed kind of place and we went for big walks around the ramparts after filling up at the Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet. I guess that’s the nice bit of helpx and schemes like that – you end up with friends. It does make it awfully hard to let them go, though.

The next helpxr is arriving in two weeks, which gives me a little breathing space. I’m such a solitary odd-bod. I would be quite happy never to see or speak to anybody. Is that weird?

We went to a huge bric-a-brac jumble sale thing yesterday – seriously the biggest I’d ever been to. I’ve scored some totally hot stuff to help celebrate Eurovision – or at least get us in the mood. I almost gave myself a hernia trying to reign in the tears of joy. I also scored some less usual varities of heirloom tomatoes at a troc for plants – and at 80 cents a pop, I am pretty pleased with myself. Going to Nikki’s also gave me some more ideas for raised beds. Sylvie and I share a love of the old tyre and I’m well jealous of her raised beds – but Nikki’s are a bit more manageable in that they don’t involve spirit levels and tape measures. I’m chronically rubbish with tape measures and spirit levels. It’s given me some ideas about how I can do some quick-and-dirty raised beds for all of those curcurbits that love to crawl all over the place. This year, I have melon, squash and pumpkin, along with cucumbers and gherkins, and not a one of those things likes to stay in one spot.

I think that’s the nicest thing about having an extra pair of hands – being able to plan and undertake projects that you wouldn’t have got round to otherwise.

Anyway, enjoy Oasis and hopefully you find as much inspiration from the people around you as I do from the people around me. It is definitely one of the perks of living out here – finding so many like-minded ladies and gentlemen. Seeing previously-ruined houses restored and renovated in interesting and unusual ways is also a massive bonus. Maybe one day my house will inspire someone too. I’m off to work on my garden. Glorious day and glorious weather for planting!

Ask me, I won’t say no, how could I?

Today’s MLM is brought to you by the final band in my Manchester Top Three. It’s The Smiths with ‘Ask’.

You might think The Smiths to be an inappropriate choice for Much Love Monday, given the general melancholia of their lyrics – Girlfriend in a Coma, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want, Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now, Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me – but with Johnny Marr’s jangly guitar, Morrissey could – and did – sing about the Moors Murders, making it sound as inoffensive as a bunny rabbit in ribbons.

I picked this one, though it was not my first choice. My first choice was “Girlfriend in a Coma” from “Strangeways, here we come” which shared rank in 1986 and 1987 with my Talking Heads obsession and my love of Depeche Mode. It will forever remind me of the old trains into Manchester and spending days roaming round Afflecks Palace looking at old Levi 501s and coveting old College Jackets à la Ferris Bueller.

Between Morrissey, Ferris Bueller and Duckie in Pretty in Pink, I had a serious quiff fetish.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I loved Ferris, Duckie and John Bender. I heard a rumour that Bender in Futurama got his name from John Bender in The Breakfast Club. John Bender, it must be said, did not have a quiff, but I liked him anyway.

I think these people all gave me a certain desire to be a little different from the usual crowd. Morrissey very rightly says that shyness is nice, but shyness will stop you from doing all the things in life you’d like to.

I love that I am not shy. If I were shy, I would never have done so very many things like…

1. Mooned 29,000,000 people from the top of Roppongi Hills Tower in Tokyo. 

Okay. I can’t be sure they were all looking. Or that they could see that far up.

2. Delivered training for 2,000 delegates in the Emirates stadium.

3. Wandered around Morocco on my own.

4. Had a drink bought for me by Seamus Heaney, Irish poet with twinkly eyes.

5. Patted Patrick Stewart’s head.

6. Offered to buy outrageous bass guitarist TM Stevens an iced tea.

7. Patted more authors than I can count.

8. Talked my way into more writing and teaching gigs than I can count.

9. Been told to be more humble on a performance review.

10. Aced the performance review anyway.

Some of these are kind of stupid, some of them are very stupid and others were just fun. But there’s not a one of them I regret. I often say to myself “I don’t want to be on my death bed thinking ‘I never did …’” and that’s my excuse for not being at all shy.

Sometimes, chatting to people gets you amazing things. A guy let me climb up a tower in Casablanca, even though it wasn’t open to the public, and I got the most amazing view ever. An old man in Japan took me to see his moss garden.

I also like to say “when will I ever see these people again?” as an excuse for doing crazy things and not caring for the consequences. Or, “It’d be rude not to!”

See… Morrissey was right.

I can’t think when this lack of shyness descended upon me. At 11, I was still shy. I didn’t backchat teachers; I was put in the wrong classroom on my first day of secondary school and I was MORTIFIED.

But, out of that tiny pre-teen, too scared to tell the teacher to to speak in class, well, THIS appeared.

If you’ve never flashed an island by being carried off by an unfamiliar Greek man with a porno beard, I’d recommend it.

I would like to point out that I am TRYING to cover my modesty.

I would also like to point out that this particular bout of anti-shy came straight out of a glass.

Generally, I like to think my anti-shyness and my whole silliness has taken me to some amazing places I would never have been otherwise. Largely, it’s the people who I’ve met that are most of the reward. Secondly, it’s its own type of fame. One day, I hope to end up like Bob in the following joke…

“

A guy named Joe was in a bar drinking with another guy named Bob. Bob turns to Joe and tells him, “I am the most popular guy in the world. I bet you $100 that if you pick any person in the world they will know me.” Joe thinks this is a good bet and he accepts, picking the president. They go of to the White house and George opens the door and says, “Bob! How are ya Buddy!” and they play a couple of holes of golf.

After golf Joe turns to Bob and says, “Ok that was a fluke. Double or nothing- The Queen of England.” When they arrive, the Queen opens the door exclaiming “Bob! I haven’t see you in ages!” and they have tea and crumpets.

After crumpets, Joe says, “Ok Bob, I bet you don’t know this last guy; lets try the Pope.” They fly off to the Vatican but the Popes security won’t let Joe through to see the Pope. Bob tells him that its ok, he’ll go up on stage with the Pope when he makes his daily speech and then Joe will know that Bob knows the Pope.

Joe goes into the crowd and waits for the Pope to appear and he finally does- with Bob at his side! All of a sudden, there is a great commotion and Bob jumps off the stage and runs through the crowd to where apparently Joe had collapsed of shock! When he comes to Bob asks Joe what happened. And Joe said,

“Well, even after seeing you up there with the pope, I was still skeptical of you, but I just couldn’t take it any more when the guy next to me said, ‘Hey who’s that guy up there with Bob’!”

Anyway, enjoy The Smiths, remember to say yes as often as you can, never be shy and have a good Monday!

I’ve opened up the doors

Today, my Much Love Monday is brought to you by the Beatles, for one of several reasons. So, here’s Help!

The main reason for this song is because of my unmitigated joy at the arrival of my delightful HelpXrs who turned up here on Thursday and have already turned one of my vegetable beds into something manageable and weed-free.

The second reason is, as curious young Americans, they expressed a polite interest in one of my pet subjects. British accents.

British accents (and, indeed, the family of international English language accents from across the world) are all divine. Looking back at John Lennon’s accent, it is so soft and gentle compared to the brittle, nasal sounds of today’s Liverpool. It’s my go-to accent when I’m messing around, on account of the fact that in Malia in 1996, when my sister and I were on holiday in Crete, I heard one Liver Bird lean over the balcony and shout into her friend’s room “Eeyyyy Laurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrra, I tink I’ve gorrra disseeeeese.”

From there, we had a quick youtube tour around all the best and worst of the British accents, via Rab C Nesbitt, Ian Paisley, Geordie Shore, TOWIE and a very, very funny Yorkshire man explaining the Yarksher accent. The Young Americans were tickled by the fact that there are still people in England who use thee and thy (though it’s more of a thar, usually…) and the guy, below, did a fantastic example of “Shut thar cakeoyl” which was my favourite expression ever when I lived in Sheffield. On my first day of teaching in Barnsley, a little boy called Ian asked me “Are thee lakin’ it so fer, Miss?” It took me three repeats to work out that this boy, born 40 miles from me as the crow flies, was asking me if I was enjoying it so far.

I used to work with a girl from Atherton, just between Wigan and Bolton. She grew up 10 miles from me, and yet she often spoke in a language that was almost unrecognisable. She once told me that she was clempt. I had no idea what the hell she was on about. She was hungry. That’s a weird word for hungry. Ironically, it’s not unlike a Flemish expression. I’m guessing the weavers had a lot to do with that word ending up in Lancashire.

Lancashire, of course, has its own distinctive dialect words, and thee and thar are both familiar. I ♥ regional dialects.

So, not only do I have Much Love for HelpXrs (I just went in the kitchen and the washing up is done… that has NEVER happened in this house…) and Much Love for English accents, but Much Love for my lovely friends. This weekend, I have picked up bags of glassware and ceramics from one lovely lady, and another lovely is giving me an embroidery pattern she won in a raffle.

That’s what I love about life here. You get to see the loveliest ladies. Not a one of them has a strange accent like mine though. I know a lady who grew up about five miles from me, and down the road is a Scottish lady who lived in Stalyvegas for a while. (And actually laughed when I called it Stalyvegas, because anyone who knows Stalybridge at all knows this local nickname for this canalside town that is not so much Las Vegas as it is Last Frontier before the moors.)

Anyway, after the pouring rain this morning, the weather has picked up and I’m off out down the garden to fix fences, rid the land of plum suckers and demonstrate the art of pruning a tree. It is so nice to have a little help, especially from such willing and enthusiastic volunteers.

Enjoy your Monday!

And this is crazy…

I make no apologies for the two tributes I am about to post to get your Monday started with a smile. I’ll explain afterwards.

I think this needs little explanation… it’s the funniest and most anti-Monday thing that you could need to get you through the day. I love the guy with the beard and the t-shirt tan myself. I also find it a little worrying how much some of those guys are enjoying themselves.

The next, released a little earlier, I believe, is the English chaps’ version of it…

Now, men with ginger beards aside, I think there is little doubt that the US version is, well, more muscular (and yet more camp… odd) but the English version had me in stitches. There’s a group of guys having a great time. Not only that, there’s moobs and tummies and inches-to-pinch and weird hair and very, very bad teeth. That’s English men for you. But, that just makes them all the more charming if you ask me.

And yes, a couple of the comments say ‘there’s your tax dollars at work’ or such-like.

Boo.

I’d like to think that when you’re faced with a 300-year-old problem in a country with 2,000 years of craziness, you deserve a little morale boost. And if it gets on youtube and makes me smile, well, there’s no harm in that. As for the sarcastic comment about tax dollars, François Hollande’s 100,000€ bill for four days in New York is four squaddie’s salaries for a year. So boooooo to that.

I love it when you see the secret lives of ‘professionals’: teachers, judges, police officers, soldiers, nurses… Most are vastly underpaid for the vital work they do, and most are absolute heroes and heroines.

One of my friends in the UK is an emergency call centre worker, dealing with all those 999 emergencies for the police. She gets her fair share of abuse and craziness. So when she posted this:

it really made me smile. The Crown Prosecution Service had repeatedly asked for a statement from PC Peach, only to be repeatedly told that Peach was a dog.

Needless to say, the CPS had a sense-of-humour failure over it. No doubt Peach’s handler got a telling-off, as well as everyone else in between. Bah.

I love PC Peach and I love the Call Me Maybe REs.

When I was in classrooms full-time, we used to have mad moments. In my first school in Sheffield, we would have ‘bad jumper days’ when the whole department would wear the nastiest sweater we could find. Needless to say, the children barely noticed. I’m sad they thought it was part of our general attire. I had a great one with a hand-sewn rose on it that makes my old-lady-nylon-nightie and dressing gown look de rigueur. 

My last school was the most fun. Another teacher and I would have ‘expression of the day’ where we would have to walk into each other’s classrooms and issue a reprimand involving one of many weird phrases that would baffle the kids. One of my favourites was ‘I’ll ride roughshod over you!’ – how I kept my face straight, I don’t even know. Sometimes, we would deliberately swap classes without telling the students, just to see how long it would be before one of them would tell us that we were in the wrong class. Sometimes, we’d go all lesson.

In days of yore, when things were more fun, there were lots of teachers who would send students on errands to ask for a long stand or some other thing that would make another teacher smile. Sure, we weren’t objective-led and results-driven when our classes were interrupted by children asking for something ridiculous. I think teachers smiled more.

My favourite was a colleague, when I worked for the Department for Education, who had been assigned a recycled phone number from a department called Workforce Reform. It used to drive her crazy. When I realised, after six months, how irate she was getting, I would deliberately call her and ask for Workforce Reform, in the most “special” voice I could. Sometimes I’d be crying laughing. Another woman sent me a card saying how lovely it was to hear us all laughing like that, and she hadn’t known why we were all hysterical, but it made her laugh too.

We all need a good laugh.

I would say that’s the thing I miss most about working with other people. I just don’t get to prank people like I did.

Here’s to ‘professionals’ having a laugh, British men and their pasty-white, chubby bodies, American men and their amazing moustaches, squaddies, dogs who complete forms, and all the children who ever had to put up with me saying I’d ride roughshod over them. That has all just reminded me that it is the 1st April, and April Fools’ Day. There couldn’t be a better Monday for a tribute to fun and foolery.

Anyway, enjoy your Easter Monday if you have a day off. I don’t. But then it’s not such a big deal!

So long, honey, so long

I’ve been getting unnaturally giddy about the Eurovision song contest over the last couple of days, probably just as I was last year, and I was just reminded that Abba and Bucks Fizz were not the first foursome to do it for me. No. That pleasure goes to the Brotherhood of Man with Save All Your Kisses For Me. So today’s MLM is brought to you with the happy cheer of England’s finest.

I have some vague recollection of seeing Brotherhood of Man – nay, even having the song sung to me – when I was small. I need to warn you that this could be a complete fabrication as it is not an event often talked about in my family (unlike the time my brother bit me) and I was probably about four or five. I’m pretty sure no photographic evidence exists, which makes it even more unlikely that it’s true. However, in my head, there is some kind of chicken-in-a-basket meal followed by music and bar stools. What follows in my mind is quite a lot of winking and singing. I’m pretty sure it was in Portsmouth or somewhere on the South Coast if it happened at all. Since we went away at Easter sometimes, I’d hazard a guess it was Easter of 1977, though that would be weird because my sister would have been very small and I can’t think that we went away when she was only a few weeks old. Plus, they were very popular and by their decline in 1979, I think I’d have remembered something like that.

Anyway, there it is. My first brush with fame. Maybe. I’m sure someone in my family will correct my faulty memory. Otherwise, someone WILL have lied to me and told me that I was the girl who was only three and the whole cheesy lovefest is a song to the young me. You can kind of see how that might evolve into a chicken-in-a-basket meal with entertainment in Portsmouth, can’t you?

If it’s not true, it’s a pretty weird thing to fabricate, but hey ho. I guess Freud dealt with worse.

I’ll be pretty sad though if it’s not true.

So, besides (constructed?) memories about Brotherhood of Man, what else gives me much love this Monday?

First is the fact that although it is going to get cold from tomorrow, you kind of can live with it because you know it will be over soon. It’s like when I used to do marathon-long runs. The hardest point is between the 16 and the 21-mile mark when you can’t see the end and you just want it to stop. The last few miles are just run in elation as you near the end and you know it’s all about to stop.

Much Love for the first barbecue of the season this weekend.

Much Love to me for changing the oil on the lawnmower, replacing the primer and finding a blade that will fit. It’s like a new mower.

Much Love – and this is the best bit – for the Tilly Popper. I bought Heston a couple more toys last week. Of course, they’re not just his toys, but Tilly, my little spaniel, has never shown the slightest ‘chase’ inclination. She played with a bit of bone for a while, but if it’s not food, it doesn’t interest her. She likes her Kong, but because it gives her food treats. But she has learned – or relearned – lots of good things these last few weeks. The first is on walks. She is much more adventurous now and goes off on little adventures of her own, which is very cute. And, though, this is the best bit. One of the balls I got for Heston makes a bit of a noise when it rolls, and she went mad for it. I’ve never seen her play with a ball at all, and it’s just great to see her have so much fun. I guess she hadn’t been walked often before she came to me two years ago. She managed half of the smallest walk we ever do and lay down on the floor in protest. Weeks later, when we got lost and had a three-hour accidental walk, I had to carry her. Now she runs most of the way round our walks, and though she is not as fast as Heston by a long stretch, she gives good chase. Having a dog who loves walks and is learning to play again is all good stuff. Not only that but she quite often puts her paws up on me now – and she never used to do that before. She is so totally cute. I love my Tilly Popper.

It must be horrible to be the kind of dog who isn’t expected to do doggie things, like walk or play or jump. It’s no wonder she just liked treats. She didn’t even use to like being petted or touched, and now she will very often sit on my knee, though she is too big to be a lapdog.

Of course, she likes it that she is top dog. If she growls, Heston obeys. If she wants to sit with me, then Heston can go to hell as far as she is concerned. She’s always been ‘second dog’ so it’s kind of good for her to be top dog.

Her little wiggly bottom is just about the best thing in the world to bring a little Monday love to me. Going for walks is all worthwhile just to watch her wiggle!

What would life be?

Today’s Much Love Monday is brought to you by ABBA with Thank You For The Music. It’s kind of appropriate since music is often the inspiration for whatever cheers me up on a Monday morning.

When you grow up in the Seventies, it becomes kind of impossible not to be infected by the joys and pains of the behemoth of 70s Euro-Disco. I guess this is why it’s had such popularity with so many Generation Xers. I can’t remember a party without Super Trooper. That was just how it was.

In England, the ABBA phenomenon undoubtedly sparked the Bucks Fizz phenomenon. It might not have been a phenomenon where you are, but for an 8 year old girl in England, Bucks Fizz winning the Eurovision song contest in 1981 was the highlight of my man-made-fibres decade.

Let’s face it. In England, the run-up to Waterloo, to Glam Rock in general, well, life had been gloomy. Gone was Biba and Quant England and here were electricity shortages, miners’ strikes, brown-outs, three-day weeks, maxi skirts and brown corduroy. We needed a little Scandinavian sunshine.

Still, we’re cold for the beginning of March, though it is just starting to warm up. Today is the first day of predictions suggesting a whopping 16 degrees. I might nip out and sunbathe. It’s the first time it’s crossed 15 degrees – even in the sun a couple of weeks ago. Mind you, last year, from 13 April to the 6 May, it did not rise above 15 degrees. Hopefully, this time, spring will warm us up properly.

 

Much Love also to lots of lovely friends. One brought me a piece of Double Gloucester and some Red Leicester. Another fed me tea on her soon-to-be terrace.

The best of all, knowing Heston a certain dog who shall remain nameless had eaten a part of my electric blanket, a wonderful lady got me another one. I was so happy I had a little tear. That’s how much I love electric blankets. In fact, when the beast chewed it, I cried and told him it was the only thing in the house that I loved.

Seriously.

That’s almost as melodramatic as when pulled over by a police car, I cried so much that he not only let me off but told me he’d had enough of my sob-story.

“It’s not a sob story. It’s my life!” I wept.

That’ll teach me to eat and drive. Still, he was good-natured enough to let me off.

Still, the Hestonbiest is no longer allowed in my bedroom without supervision and is now banned from the kitchen following a little party he had with a box of lentils and some rice. He does know how to have fun when I’m not here. Now he’s down to one room that just has his own toys in it. Dogs are hard work sometimes.

However, one glimpse of him careering through the garden is enough to make anyone smile. And the other one, well, she’s great at cuddles.

Hope you are having a superb Monday. If you’re in France, I bet your mood is somewhat lifted by today’s sunshine. I even opened my bedroom window to let the warmth in and the cold out!

 

A time to gain, a time to lose

Today’s Much Love Monday is brought to you by The Byrds with the Pete Seeger classic of Turn! Turn! Turn!

Partly, you can’t beat a bit of jangly guitar and a bit of 60s psychedelia coupled with a little spiritual message on top. Sometimes we all need a little reminder that the seasons move on.

The blue skies could not have come too soon for me. The grey and the rain and the short daylight hours were messing with my mojo and making me crabby. Couple that with a big pile of GCSEs, being tired of poking the fire and being giddy to get outside and you can understand why it was beginning to feel tedious. It feels like it’s been a long winter. And no, the worst is not over yet. Météo say that there’s a couple of -6° nights left for us this week yet. But a blue sky is more than enough to get me through to the real warmth.

Not only that, but the cranes have made their appearance. Saturday afternoon, it was like we were under the flight path to crane party central. The French call it a prenuptual flight, which is kind of sweet. Eggs are on their way, Easter is but a few short weeks away and I have green shoots.

Those cranes always make me feel better. There’s something reassuring knowing that nature knows what it’s doing and the country is gearing up for spring.

Much Love for this statement: “no more portions”. It means there’s nothing left to mark and finally, it’s over. Of course, the last week is not so bad. Once you have done your allocation, you wait for the day when it’s a big free-for-all on what’s left. That means you can mark what you want to mark instead of having to mark everything. If there’s a question you don’t like so much, you can avoid it. I’ve marked another 600 of one question, on top of the 228 I had to mark. It got a little tedious but it’s really helpful because you end up REALLY knowing that question.

So, between the end of the marking and the brightening of the weather I’ve been out with the dogs. Heston has been working on his ‘stop’ and ‘turn’ commands. He ran off last week – he’s done it three times now since we’ve been going outside without the lead in August. He is so completely distracted by something that he chases it. Twice, it’s been for water. He races off and I find him in a pool of water, splashing around as if I’m a complete spoilsport for not putting it on our usual walk.

I’ve been trying to build in some training and mental exercises on our walk and get him to walk better on the lead, since he likes to be in front and I fall on him. He will walk beside me as long as he’s not too distracted and we’ve been stopping and weaving and turning with the clicker. Though he doesn’t cover as much ground, apparently, it’s more stimulating and therefore more tiring. Fewer of my toothbrushes end up being eaten and he’s much less bored.

He’s so smart that he usually picks up a command in four or five repetitions (took me ten minutes to teach him to sit, as a puppy) and when he masters it so quickly, you can understand why he’d get bored of doing it. He even knows which toy to bring, whether it’s ‘rope’ or ‘ball’ or ‘carrot’.

I know people who aren’t that smart.

Tomorrow, we’re going to work on ‘emergency!’ which is a ‘come here as fast as you can’ command. It’s the kind of command you only need to use in real life once or twice because it’s the one you’d only use outside of training in a situation where you really need him to return straight away. Thus, I’m equipped with a packet of ham and a pig’s ear.

To be honest, he’s less bothered about a treat, and more bothered about a ‘good boy’ and a pat. Tilly will do anything for a treat. I think she’d learn to speak if there was a treat in it.

She was hard work at first. She learned sit pretty quickly, and ‘paw’. That was it though. To be fair, I didn’t need to train her. She’s very obedient and apart from a nervous bladder (and sometimes a stubborn streak when it’s time to go out for a wee!) she’s generally very happy. She likes to be near me, but not too near me. She likes to chew on a bone about 8 or 9pm, or else she gets restless and ferrets through the bins or roots for biscuits. She hides things, she guards stuff and she grumbles, but generally, she is a very content little dog. For a rescue, you can’t ask for much better.

However, she does her lessons alongside Heston and she is very happy to do so as long as there is a treat in it for her. It’s lovely how much she has come on and in a way, I wish I’d done some training with her before I got Heston. She’s not smart though. It takes her ages to learn a thing, and then she mostly does it because Heston has.

Much Love, then, to doggies, to sunshine, to warmth (even if it is just a hiatus) and to the end of tedious tasks.

I’m laughing at clouds

With all this persistence of rain, could anything be more appropriate for Much Love Monday than Gene Kelly and Singin’ in the Rain?

If I hadn’t already given Heston a name, I would call him Gene, because he definitely likes splashing in a puddle or two. It’s like a drug to him. If he sees water, he must gallop into it at full speed, skip around in it, play chase it, play bow to it and then try and splash everyone else as they come past. As you can tell, he’s loving the garden being under water.

It rained pretty much constantly from Saturday evening through to Sunday evening, and what had been a big puddle turned into a small lake. It’s up to the barn now. There better not be any more of that wet stuff otherwise I’ll have to go and live in the attic space.

What was once this:

Is now this:

 

Oh well.

And Saturday’s less-wet fields now look like this:

 

If there’s a good freeze now, I’ll be able to skate over it.

Some météo programme I watched said it had been the darkest January in 60 years here. There were fewer hours of sunlight than every other January I’ve been alive. I went all Morlock (apart from eating the happy Eloi creatures) living in the dark and doing little other than work and walk the Hestonbiest.

The five or six walks we’ve been on, I’ve come home soaking wet from thigh down to ankle – must get some Sprayway pants. I used to borrow Steve’s and they’re very useful indeed.

I’m currently coveting these gorgeous things:

It’s not too bad being in the rain if you’re suitably attired. My boots are dry, my feet are dry, my body is dry. My legs get wet. Plus, I need a hood. My waterproof coat does not have a hood or hat. That’s a little silly. My showerproof coat has a hood, but it’s not waterproof. You really learn the difference between waterproof and showerproof when you’re out in a rainstorm. One means you get home dry. The other means you ought not to have bothered.

Anyway, with all this abundance of rain, I am hoping for an excellent growing season. My cistern is practically full. I’ll have to drain some water out if it doesn’t stop raining in the next couple of days. I just want things to dry out a little now. Including me.

I’ve now finished one great big work project for all intents and purposes – the GCSE marking – and it’s now just time to soak up any last papers and make a quick buck here and there. Well, not so quick, and not so much of it. Oh well. Better than a kick in the teeth, and what else would I have been doing in this damp? Tomorrow, I start another largeish month-long project, but it is also holidays for children in our region from 16th February, so a few of my usual lessons will be cancelled for ski trips and outings and family time.

So, Much Love to:

• water-happy dogs
• Gene Kelly
• sprayway
• a high water table for once
• replenishment
• finishing the cursed marking
• the approaching holidays
• Spring, which doesn’t seem to be getting closer, but it so is
• waking up at 7 and it beginning to be light – that’s the first time it’s been anything other than pitch black at 7am for weeks.

Luckily, the sun is out this morning – a little – and I might be able to get in a fairly dry walk. I doubt it though. On several of those walks, it started raining as soon as I left the house and stopped the moment I got home. That’s just devilment.

Have a lovely Monday wherever you are. I hope the darkness and murk breaks a little to give you some sun if it’s cloudy where you are.

 

 

I think to myself…

Today’s Much Love Monday is sponsored by Joey Ramone with a classic – It’s a Wonderful World. Sorry if you’re a Louis Armstrong fan, but Joey’s punk rock edge just gives this song a little something I like. Mondays sometimes need a little punk rock.

I love a bit of classic Ramones, Sheena is a Punk Rocker, Beat on the Brat and the ever beautiful I wanna be your boyfriend. They remind me of my first year in Sheffield, where I lived in a small student complex. It was a hard year in many ways, but the year I first found confidence in myself. It was hard being away from all those friends I mentioned last week, the people who let me play out with them. I missed them massively.

I’m babysitting right now for a friend, and very much enjoying her parrots’ random conversation; not only can the parrots call Tilly, my American spaniel, but they just said “bloody hell” in a right Northern accent. They are chatty beasts. In fact, these parrots are the reason for our dogs’ names. As the parrots generally pick up on dogs’ names very quickly, Mme V’s husband decided that he could take a shortcut to teaching them to shout his favourite football team, Charlton. Ironically, they haven’t picked it up yet. He really wanted them to be able to say Charlton and in reality, if they ever say it, they will probably say “Charlton… OFF!” since he likes to climb on the couch and is subsequently reprimanded, or they will say “Charlton… NO!”. Not exactly what he’d want them to say. Right now the parrots are blowing me kisses and saying “Yoohoo!” and “Hello!” which is kind of cute.

Charlton and Heston have not managed to destroy anything, nobody has peed on the floor (including me) and they are all being wonderful. Not easy with six dogs, four cats, two children, two parrots and me. I don’t know how Mme V does it.

A friend on Facebook posted the following video, with the question “What would you like to do if money were no object?”

It’s funny because my first response would be ‘to write’. And then ‘to paint’. And then ‘to spend all year in the garden’. I think that covers it. The first two are responses I would definitely have put way back in my youth, perhaps even before the Ramones. I totally had my stuffing knocked out of me by a teacher who I know one of my friends really rated. I went from the cocooned world of primary, where I had been one of maybe seven or eight children who were really ‘bright’, but never feeling top or bottom – never feeling ‘placed’ at all. I didn’t know if I were clever or not, and I didn’t feel like it mattered. I never knew if I were brighter than those other six or eight, or less bright. It was a golden world where, bar a crazy psychopath of a year 5 teacher when I was 9, all my teachers were gentle and protective and keen. I sat two entrance exams for two independent private schools and passed both – no doubt with a lot of coaching on both my maths and English. I got to pick which one I went to.

And when I got there, my first year Secondary English teacher was a real bitch. Her first job was to shout at the whole class and berate us for not having a representative standing at the door to open it for her. Her second job was to give us a translation of The Odyssey to read by ourselves. Our first homework, I got 7.5 out of 20 and the girl next to me got 20. She turned out to be a great student, but that always stuck in my head. And I had this teacher for 2 full years in which nothing I could ever do would ever please her. She would cross through everything with a red pen and tell me my ideas were stupid. She asked us once, at the age of 11, to find a song lyric to bring in. 11 year olds are not great afficionados of music. My parents had some Abba albums and some Carpenters albums. My dad put on an orchestral version of rock classics on a Sunday morning. He loves music, but we just weren’t really a musical house. On New Year’s Eve, we would have some great disco tunes at my Nana’s, but I have no idea what they really liked to listen to.

Anyway, I’d had a penchant for Adam Ant, but thought he was a bit passé. This was 1984 (!) however. (I’ve just realised the significance of that date…) and so I dutifully copied out the lyrics of Nik Kershaw’s most celebrated hit, I won’t let the sun go down on me which is about nuclear war. I loved the line “old men in stripey trousers rule the world with plastic smiles” – I was always very moved by the thought of nuclear war, especially when the creepy Year 5 teacher showed us “Threads” – a film about nuclear war. I’d also read Brother In the Land by Robert Swindells, which still makes me cry. It was something very much in my psyche. So I thought this was a good choice. No. Red pen through it and a comment “This is meaningless.” I’ve still got it.

Ironically, this was in response to the Pete Seeger “classic” of Little Boxes which is kind of trite, but also a similar theme to the “paper houses” of Nik Kershaw’s epic. I don’t doubt that it was a weak choice (and what would I pick now, I wonder, to offer her?) and that she really wanted me to pick some 1960s or 70s classic and show some musical integrity. I wish she’d asked me the year after when I discovered David Bowie and Talking Heads. But she didn’t. She just made me feel about an inch tall.

Luckily, I got a different teacher from 13-16 – a lady who nourished my dreams, twice copied me out poems by hand that she thought I would like and lent me poetry books with her own name written on the inside cover which I treasured with an almost semi-fanatic reverence. She inspired in me a love for The Go-Between and Maurice and for John Clare’s poetry, and for Spike Milligan’s verse. I owe her my As. I even owe her my choice of A level option; I hoped I’d have her as well.

You know what happened. I got the red line teacher. I got several Ds and Cs and never anything complimentary. Her general comment on my work was “sweeping statement” in bright red, thick ink. She never taught me how not to make such a statement, how to root it in the text. She adored Jane Austen’s sharpness and hated Wilfed Owen because of his adoration of Siegfried Sassoon. I love Jane Austen’s gentle fun and Wilfred Owen still moves me to tears. She taught me I was not good enough to be an English scholar, which had always been my dream. I didn’t apply for one single English course, though I wanted to. I applied for lots of mixed courses and combinations, not knowing where I wanted to be once the rug had been pulled out from underneath me. I desperately wanted to be good enough. I wrote naive stories about Viet Nam and chemical warfare and got them sent right back. When she asked us to hand in the same assignment of picking a song lyric, I gave her Motorhead’s Ace of Spades and let her chew on that. She had nothing at all to say about it and I got it back without a comment. I got a B in the end. Despite her predictions.

Luckily, I picked some English courses, and the fabulously buxom, gloriously Renaissance Professor Lisa Hopkins, her mousy husband Chris, Jill LeBihan who was the first person who ever really understood where I was coming from, the divine Dr Robert Miles who instilled a love in me for English that is so deep I have never been able to remove it… they reawakened and nurtured an old love. God I loved that place… the English building in Sheffield. Set back in acres of leafy woodland, a Victorian house with a rabbit warren inside… it was where I found that joy again, enough to want to share it. It took me several more years to refind my move of writing, though. I was still so uncertain of my own talents – had I any.

Lisa Hopkins was my favourite first year teacher. She made Shakespeare real. She taught me about how rude he was and how funny, how clever, how his real talent was in knowing the human condition. She was incredibly clever, yet utterly approachable. Her classes were always fun.

Anyway, it is thanks to them that I have any faith in my own writing and I love the fact that ALL days I get to do some writing that pays. A lot of writers can’t say that.

Much Love to all of those teachers who take a child and allow them to grow in interesting and unexpected ways, who show them what they are capable of and who they can be. Even Much Love to my bete-noir English teacher. I sent her a signed copy of my first English text book. I secretly hope it really pissed her off; in reality, I know she probably had forgotten who I was. She never had a text-book published though, and that’s all I care about. Revenge is a dish best served stone-cold, festering and stinking after 15 years, I find.

Anyway, see the positives in all the crap. She made me want to prove her wrong and I got a career out of it, even though she almost sent me into the wilderness.