Tales from my handbag

It’s Open House season in Brighton. Or should I say, let’s be nosy and go and marvel at someone’s cornicing. An afternoon of Open Houses for me, is like going to an art gallery except you can’t say ‘that’s crap’ too loudly and the artists, far from being dead, are normally in situ, mingling, having intense conversations about papier mache. Sometimes, they even wear their art, like the artist who had a knitted swan hanging around her neck. The highlight, apart from the £25 monkeys made out of old socks, was my local Baptist church which hadn’t quite got the right end of the Open House schtick. There was some fusty smelling needle point and a few water colours of the West Pier on fire. But my favourite bit was the grainy video of some religious nuts being water boarded in a jacuzzi, sorry, baptism bath. Well, it makes a change from fuzzy felt bonnets.

Ever since Christopher Boulter’s Bill Sykes bludgeoned my Nancy with a rubber mallet in 1970, I’ve had a soft spot for Oliver, the musical. At the weekend, I went to see some other 10 year old with a uni-brow and matching tash commit murder most horrid behind a bit of mdf. Rather like the Bill of my youth, this Bill couldn’t act to save his life but he had a marvelous lisp which made up for it. Dodger was ginger and Fagin kept fluffing his lines. Nancy, bless her heart, was three feet taller than the rest of the cast and had obviously been to the London Bridge branch of SpecSavers but her Oompahpah was tremendous. Other highlights: Mr Brownlow’s Peter Wyngarde sideburns and the valiant efforts of the assorted extras to casually mill around the postage stamp stage without a. bumping into each other or b. crashing into the cardboard book shop and Victorian vegetable barrow. Talking of vegetables, next day, on the allotment, Len, the hairy road sweeper with the Filipino, vegetable hating internet bride, approached me with an offer. If I wasn’t too bothered by excess gas, would I be interested in taking a bag of Jerusalem artichokes off his hands. It was a very windy night.

Dogs. What are they for? What do they want from us? Why the smell? Last night I got up close and personal with a bull terrier called Moo, and I have to say, I quite enjoyed it. Ever since our Blackie licked Nivea Cream off my knee then licked his bits (I think it was that way around), I’ve had a soft spot for dogs. And when I say ‘dogs’, I mean proper dogs - the ones with deep voices, a musty whiff, and the flexibility of Olga Korbut, enabling them to chew their genitals with ease. Oh those heady summer nights of 1976 when the family visited Dorset in a Sprite caravan and Blackie had an irritated ball sack. How our caravan rocked to the rhythm of his chomping as the poor mutt struggled to relieve himself of his terrible affliction. Thinking about it, I reckon he might have had dog VD; well he did put it about a bit. Dogs eh!

I am adding something new to my cv - dog handling. Over the last couple of weeks I have learnt key skills such as how to walk a dog without a. strangling it and b. getting caught up in its extra long, totally impractical lead and falling over. Also, I have learnt how to pick up and bag a medium sized stool without a. feeling the warmth and b. soiling my hand. However, this morning I was faced with a fresh challenge. The first poo came and went without a hitch but then, without warning, a second poo arrived. Here’s the question, if your dog has done his business and you’ve dutifully bagged it, does that render the second poo null and void in terms of the need for it to be picked up? I didn’t have time to contemplate the moral issues; we were being observed by a curtain twitcher so I had to act fast. Luckily, said turd was small enough to be handled by a rain sodden mini Avon catalogue which I found languishing in the gutter. Thank God it wasn’t diarrhoea!

A vigorous rub down with high grade sandpaper does not turn me on. I get no frisson of excitement from power tools although a man in dirty overalls with a mouth full of nails does have a certain primal appeal. When jobs need doing I get a man in to do them. It has to be that way because a. I hate all that preparing rubbish and b. I am a bit clumsy and prone to stabbing/piercing/hammering myself when charged with a diy tool. However, our exterior is looking shabby so, galvanised by ‘him upstairs’, I have been doing it. Trouble is, I don’t know what I’m doing. Is it ok to use a fish slice to scrape flaky paint? How do I sand my window frames without shredding my knuckles? Where do I put my knees when climbing a ladder? Aaarrrgghghgh.

My eyes are the size of rice crispies and my nose is besieged by snot. Oh, the joys of June, hay fever season. Allotment duties are dangerous - sharp instruments and violent bouts of sneezing are not good companions. In fact, the other evening I was up there on watering duty when I  let rip, tripped over and fell into the water butt. Apart from swallowing a few waterboatmen, I am fine. By the way, my vegetables are looking beautiful, thanks to fellow allotmenteer, Joe. Joe is an Italian with hair the consistency of a brillo pad and a penchant for double-entendres. However, he’s also an award-winning gardener and has a raft of top tips up his cap sleeved t-shirt. eg, cockleshells deter slugs. I have sprinkled said shells all around my tender green stuff and, reluctant to rip apart their undercarriages for the sake of a leaf supper, the slugs are staying away. I have now tasted the first of my spinach and I can tell you, it’s delish.

It’s festival season here in sunny Brighton; the highlight of your year if you like naff arts and crafts and ironic striptease. I spent Sunday wandering my barrio’s Open Houses where ‘artists’ display their wares and potential buyers wander around pretending to admire the pottery while secretly checking out the stylish Corian worktop and eau de nil Venetian blinds. This year I was particularly appalled by some papier mache earrings,  a range of hemp underwear and a bird house made out of a loaf of bread. I haven’t laughed this much in ages. Later on, I went down to Queen’s Park to marvel at a chandelier made out of spoons hanging in a tree and watch a couple of men in tights blowing glass in a bush; not sure what all that was about. A slight concern was the fact that they’d drained the duck pond and strung some tea lights on a piece of cotton. I couldn’t help but worry about the ducks. Where were they and did they mind their home being commandeered by the circus. Anyway, then I went down to the Silent Disco with my friend Paul. We had the choice of two DJs to listen to through our headphones but we kept clashing. At one point, I thought we were on the same channel but turns out he was digging a David Bowie/Beastie Boys mixed up mash while I was hopping and-a-bopping to Shakin Stevens. Then last night I went to a Vaudevillian extravaganza. We had more men in tights re-enacting that scene from Women in Love when Alan Bates and Oliver Reed slapped on some baby oil and slithered around in front of a raging fire. Then a Dita Von Teese lookie likie did a turn in a teacup. After she’d got down to her pants and nipple tassles, her finale involved pouring a mug of PG all over her tits. I hope she put her knickers into soak, that’s all I can say.

Last night I dreamt I was Anne Frank on the run from the Nazis in Devon - and wearing rather too much lipstick for a girl of my age. Then suddenly, just as I was about to get carted off to Barnstaple Concentration Camp, I was miraculously transported to a Travel Lodge at Heathrow Airport where I was caught up in a love triangle with an unknown woman and the man off the GoCompare.com advert. The gist of it was that I was in love with him but he was enamoured with the blurry woman so I packed my suitcase and got a plane to Jakarta. The swine! I think the travel/on the run dream theme is down to my chaotic home life. I have no facilities - no cooker, no washing machine, no sink. I am getting very good at slicing bread on my bedroom floor and washing my pants and my dirty dishes while soaking in the bath. Rinsing is vital - I’m sure my lovely builders don’t want a nice cup of tea with my pubic hair floating around in it.Â

Yesterday, I learnt a lot about stag beetles; they can grow to up to 3″ and like to hang out in rotten tree stumps. I know this because I was on a ramble in the Blue Peter garden; ok, that’s a lie, I was in a nature reserve in Surrey but it felt distinctly Blue Petery - it was small and tidy with lots of little paths and homemade signs and cheery folk in big jumpers and wellington boots, weaving homemade fences and carrying heavy logs around. They were way too happy. I was hoping someone would drop a heavy log on someone else’s foot and then there’d be a fight and someone would  stab someone in the eye with a freshly whittled stick or at least put dog dirt down someone’s fleece. Sadly, it didn’t happen. What did happen was that Katrina and I got lost. Round and round in circles we went looking for the way out but nature can be very samey. So we followed some people with a big bag of poo thinking they might be on their way back to the car park but their dog evidently had a bowel problem because the bag just got bigger and bigger and we got more lost. Whilst I was fully prepared to fashion a sleeping bag from a bush and kill a rabbit with my bare teeth I was rather pleased when our inner compass kicked in and we found our way out via the stag beetle enclave. I want the Blue Peter badge for Endurance. �

I am suffering for my vegetables. Yesterday, I went up to the allotment to spread some muck and have a wee in my compost bin. I have perfected the art of the slash ‘n’ go; I simply back onto the compost bin and semi-drop my drawers (any frontal flashes can be cleverly masked by a spade). Now it may only be March but my weeds are on the march already. I have eschewed the use of rubber gloves as I need to ‘feel’ my vegetables, make a connection with the soil and relish the manure as it squidges through my fingers. However, without gloves my hands are open to abuse by the vicious stinging nettles that live on my plot. Which is why, I don’t mind telling you that this morning, I am all of a tingle - and not in a good way. Â