Tales from my handbag

A few weeks ago, at about 4am, something landed on my head. It was lighter than a hamster but heavier than a sequin. Still half asleep, I batted if off and returned to my dream where I was making chelsea buns with Kevin Costner in the celebrity version of the Great British Bake Off.  In the morning, I found a small green stick on my pillow that on closer inspection, looked suspiciously like the LEG OF AN INSECT. Ages after, I was rummaging in my pant drawer and found a ruddy great cricket nestled in among the gussets and yes, it was one leg down. All of which posed the question, don’t insects who’ve sustained massive injuries such as loss of limbs bleed to death? Also, what was sustaining the cricket in my pant drawer? Later that week, I was in France at a drama workshop, killing time before the cheese market opened. There were 15 Sarah Bernhardt wanna be’s and a couple of Maurice Chevalier’s but there’d been a mix up with the rooms which meant the philosophy debating society had taken the  big room and we were relegated to a walk-in wardrobe. Having endured a near-death experience in an Icelandic sweat lodge, my present predicament, being sandwiched between a rotund individual called Florence, an industrial sized filing cabinet and a sloping ceiling all felt perfectly fine. Even when we were invited to do something spontaneous with a feather boa and a cricket bat, I somehow managed to be creative without taking anyone’s eye out. However, after an hour or so of some very energetic improvisation, the lack of air had catapulted some of us into giddy hysteria. Sebastien, a slip of a lad with a pigeon chest and Chinese slippers, started singing ‘Fly me to the Moon’ at the top of his voice and when we played blink murder, my screams and the ensuing kerfuffle almost caused a stacked chair tsunami, at which point the head of the philosophy debating society burst in, complaining that they weren’t able to hear themselves think. Talking about disturbances, I went to see the very French film, Rust and Bone at the cinema the other night and during some post-coital murmurings between a woman who’d had her legs bitten off by a killer whale and a man who punched gypsies for a living, a lady in the row in front trumped loudly. Well that makes a refreshing change.

Once upon a time in Anatolia, a man had a perky prostate, went for a wee by a bush on a dark, windy night and then did a bit of chatting in a very cramped car. Meanwhile, a  man who looked like Jesus tried to remember where he’d buried the man he’d recently murdered and a pretty girl made some tea in a candlelit cupboard. The chatting and the searching went on for about three hours and then, right at the end of the film, when they’d found the body, a very moany mortician performed an autopsy without an apron. As you can imagine, it was a bit messy and one man was squirted in the face with some liquid poo. Then I went home. Sadly, the late hour meant I had to make do with a very makeshift meal of beans on toast with two inferior chocolate biscuits for pudding. My next visit to the Duke of York’s was on Saturday to see the Met’s La Traviata. As usual for the DOY’s operatic occasions, the cinema was full of old people with very neat hair and shiny shoes. There were a lot of sandwiches and flasks of tea flying around the auditorium and quite a bit of coughing, tickly and chesty, although no-one died which was a bit surprising, given the proliferation of perambulatory type support equipment in the auditorium. The opera followed the usual operatic plotline – trollope type with decent size rack has an epiphany, falls in love within 5 seconds of meeting portly man, rolls around on the floor for a bit and then pegs it. The End.

Last weekend we embarked on our South Downs Way odyssey – an epic journey full of emotion, bad map reading and Germolene emergencies. I was a little late owing to a wrong turn in Petworth and the fact that, having been on a speed awareness course last week, I was driving like Miss Marple. Oh yeah, and with no Tom Tom in my car, I was relying on my ‘it’s somewhere around here’ cavalier style of map-reading and the kindness of strangers to locate our rendez-vous, a tiny village called Buriton that was in the arse-end of nowhere. So, an hour late, we all piled into one car and whizzed over Winchester way to another small village which was notable for its fine cottage architecture and a depressed horse. There was a slight delay in starting as my two companions had a struggle to get their poles the right length. Then we lost the dog, who decided she didn’t want to walk 12 miles on her short hairy legs and preferred to run pell-mell up into a stranger’s bedroom. We eventually extricated her by waving a sliver of Tesco’s Finest pressed pork under the bedroom window. And then we were off….Our morning passed pleasingly enough as we traversed along the fine chalky pathways among gently undulating hills although Jeremy (not his real name) began to feel an itch in his general Tomasz Schafanaker region which warranted a bit of pant realignment. After lunch, we were a little disconcerted to find the South Downs Way took us along a very busy A road with very little verge. Brad (not his real name) had the dog on a lead but we were continually being thrust into the hedge by thundering jugganauts and one very aggressive driver even slowed down to say ‘get your fackin’ dog off the road’. We very soon realised that we’d read the map upside down and so had to make a detour through some primrose-festooned woods and up another chalk escarpment to pick up the trail again.  By this time, Jeremy’s chafing had escalated and he had to duck off behind some farmyard machinery to apply a slather of Germolene. I took the opportunity to wet my lettuce and only then, did I realise we’d stumbled upon a bunch of paragliders on the other side of the hedge which meant both Jeremy and I had an aerial audience for our arse flashings. That night, having walked 12 miles, we stayed in a pub and ate some pork which, it turned out came from one of Brad’s pigs. Strangely enough, the only other diners in the pub that night were some pudding suppliers from Swanage, two quite rotund individuals who gave us a long lecture about the quality of their Rum Babas. Continuing on a porcine theme, after dinner, we settled down to a game of ‘pass the pigs’ while Jeremy read us a couple of chapters of ‘The adventures of chunky’, courtesy of the pub bookshelf. And so to bed… The following day, we had more mileage and more climbing but the sun shone brilliantly and, thankfully, the Germolene had worked its magic so Jeremy was able to stride out with new-found confidence – although Brad’s dicky knee began playing up. All went well; we had lunch on Butser Hill with some very shouty, bare-chested men, and then we got lost again – this time in Queen Elizabeth Park, right by the A3. We’d taken a detour off the track to visit a cafe in a car park  but sadly, the cups of PG and slices of drizzle cake we’d anticipated were a no-show owing to the cafe being closed. We had to make do with my thermos flask of tea (which tasted of coffee) and one Rocky Road biscuit between us and the dog (who had run out of his pooch pellets). However, this did sustain us through the next hour’s twists and turns as we tried to navigate our way out of the woods and back to Buriton and the end of leg one. On the way home, I threw Miss Marple out of the window and assumed my usual Jeremy Clarkson demeanour.  Sometimes speed is of the essence.

Today, I counted six tits in my back garden – they are obviously winding themselves up for some mass spring avian shagathon because they won’t bloody shut up. ‘Don’t pick him, pick me, I’ve got what it takes’, they seem to say, the little darlings. Meanwhile, at the front of the house, the man opposite keeps taking his top off and standing spread-eagled at his window. I try not to look but he looms large every time I wander anywhere near the bay. I’m thinking, is he wearing pants; has he got an over-active gland or is he just trying to say ‘hi, I’m a guy and I’m casual’. Whatever, it’s just a little bit freaky so I’ve now positioned the sofa so I can give due deference to Jeremy Paxman masterfully urging the spods on University Challenge to ‘come on’, without feeling nudey man’s unblinking eyes gliding, Norman Bates like, over my supine form. Naturally, with spring in the air, my thoughts have turned to grooming. So, today, I took myself down to the hairdressers for a shampoo and set. They’re very right on in my salon which means they’ve recently ditched regular towels in favour of large, recyclable sanitary towels. So, after the ritual torture that is the backwards hair wash, I have to suffer the humiliation of having my head wrapped in a grossly inadequate, incredibly tight towel that makes me look like an inmate from an 18th century lunatic asylum. Jimmy, my ‘hair technician’, tells me that he can ‘towel off’ most ‘normal’ people with just two of the Doctor White lookie likies. However, with me being a fully paid up member of the Hair Bear Bunch, I require five towels and even then I’m still dripping. Next week, I’m going for an Ultimate Hydrating Matis Facial Treatment. Dammit, I will be a Goddess.

We all need a mini-break from time to time so when Friend X suggested we get away from this crazy world we call life, I jumped at the chance. We slung a toothbrush and a couple of pairs of pants into a bag and headed off to deepest, darkest West Sussex – Cocking to be precise. En route to our weekend idyll, we passed by Cowdray Castle where there were bikes for hire. ‘Let’s go on a bicycle adventure’ I gleefully suggested to Friend X, who, it had to be said, was ill-prepared for anything rustic and was wearing furry snowboots and a Prada poncho. Ooh, it was a mucky ride, taking us alongside gurgling streams and through woods festooned with carpets of leaves and oceans of black, treacley mud which kept flicking into our face and hair. We also got gobfulls of the local insect life as we thundered, legs and mouths akimbo, down the narrow country lanes. 20 minutes into our ride at a crossroads, we suddenly came upon a cluster of be-wellingtoned men casually leaning against their 4x4s gazing expectantly at the field opposite. Friend X had swallowed a bluebottle and was choking to death so we had to stop and while I was doing the Heimlich manoeuvre, I took the opportunity to ask a man with a big nose what he was doing there. Turns out they’d come to watch the hunt. Somehow, very quickly, the conversation turned to gay sex. Our Nigel Havers look-alike was both a complete homophobe; ‘well, it’s not bloody natural is it?’ and a misogynist; ‘no, I’m not married – done it twice but it takes too long to break them in and too much dosh to get rid of them’. We sympathised in a patronising manner and cycled off again only to get completely bloody lost. By now, Friend X was complaining of shooting pains in her buttocks so I suggested we ignore all KEEP OUT, PRIVATE signs and cut across country. This involved much throwing of bikes over hedges and hiding behind trees lest we get shouted at by men in tweed. We even ran into Nigel Havers again; ‘hello you two old bags’ he gaily called out as we wizzed by him walking up a huge gravel drive to a house that Friend X said had featured in Atonement. His casual insult put me in mind of the time me and a friend ran naked around a croquet lawn at a wedding, only to find out later we’d been spied by two estate workers who referred to us as ‘screechy and scrawny’. Anyway, eventually, as the fag end of day was stubbing itself out, we arrived dirty and a bit puffed back at the cycle shop. The next day, we decided to go on a ramble to Fittingworth Wood. Here, we ran into the local ramblers, a septogenarian group of mostly men who circled us like thirsty vampires. They were very keen to get us onboard as members (a snip at only £4 a year, although that didn’t include rambling holidays, one wrinkly old man with no front teeth was keen to point out). Did we want to join them on their 10 miler? Friend X didn’t think her buttocks were up to it so we politely declined then proceeded to get lost yet again. As we were trying to work out how to get out of the wood, we ran into a nob on a horse who, I fear, thought he was in an episode of Robin Hood. ‘Hop on Maid Marion’, he cheerily cried, flicking his switch at me. Rural folk are not my milieu, I officially now concur.

Last weekend was White Night in Brighton. What that, I hear you ask. Well, I’m not sure because this year, like last year, I was there but not there, if you get my drift; the action was strangely elusive. Early evening I’d sauntered up to Kemp Town to hear a man warbling away on an organ in a glorified garage. This being Brighton, I was drinking Bishop’s Finger out of a Clarice Cliff teacup and trying not to rub up against a sink full of someone’s dirty dinner plates. Warble over, I went down town to check out the bohemian action. First off, I passed through the Old Steine where a couple of flappers were holding a Charleston dance class in a big top. On New Road, a woman/man/bit of both was singing Dolly Parton tunes to a sozzled mob from a small balconette while in a church on West Street, they were holding life drawing classes in the vestry – apples or tits, there was a choice. I headed for the Pavilion Gardens where I joined a queue for five minutes for I know not what. Then I headed for Fabrica where I’d heard there was going to be a bit of shouting but when I got there the shouting had stopped or quite possibly hadn’t started. Next was the Dome which was thronged with all manner of costumed folk: zombies and nymphomaniacs were favourite and in the ladies toilet, someone (probably the King Kong I’d seen at the bar) had ripped a toilet bowl off its moorings causing quite a flood. This, I felt, was more in keeping with the likes of the Stanmer Arms (famous for the night a man had his ear bitten off because he’d looked at someone funny). On the way home, I didn’t trip on a coke can and sprain my ankle like last year but I was glad to get in and have a nice cup of tea.

I have a few things to say about Berlin, city of a thousand sausages. The other week, I was staying in the very colourful Schoneberg district where Christopher Isherwood and other light-footed gentlemen used to galavant with impunity. At the end of my road, there was a. a big pork emporium where men in blue overalls ate sausage standing up, b. lots of lady prostitutes (and a couple that defied gender classification) jay walking among the bmws, and c. a gaggle of maxi-skirted Roma girlies who spent most evenings dancing around a phone box to a Slavic boom box. Around the corner, I had the dubious honour of early doors at Kumpelnest 3000, a fabulously indiscreet former knocking shop boasting elaborately carpeted walls, glitter balls and a very sticky dance floor where repressed housewives regularly flashed their baps. I resisted; I was recovering from an evening spent at a punk rock reunion party with a right charmer called Chaos whose chat up routine involved donning a penguin costume and slapping a pair of dentures on the table. Believe it or not, it takes more than false teeth to seduce me these days, Berlin or no Berlin.

Netball brings out the wind in me. I don’t know what it is, but as soon as I get that bib on, I start evacuating, top and bottom. It doesn’t happen during Pilates, which is odd when you consider that Pilates is all about sucking in hard the vagazzle – a bit like you do when you need a wee on a train but daren’t go in the toilet in case you spontaneously combust, like that women on a train recently. Actually, I may have made the spontaneous combustion bit up but there was a woman who burnt to death in a Gatwick Express toilet recently, wasn’t there? Anyway, back to the programme.  Last Monday, during a particularly complex Pilates manoeuver involving me lying spreadeagled on my stomach while arms and legs flapped about in a sort of dry breaststroke, I thrashed out, fingering the lady with the big bunions several times. My problem is that I have a ‘long span’, as my Australian netball coach likes to call it (she is too polite to call me a freak) which is why, when I’m marking an attacker and they’re trying to get the ball past me, I can bat it back into their face and make their nose bleed.

I’ve had a very green and rambly weekend. On Saturday, me and friend X did an 8 miler around Devil’s Dyke culminating in a cup of tea in a ponsified barn. The man at the kiosk, after fleecing us £3 for a small piece of gloop-topped cake with scratchings of old sawdust in it, told us that the Knights Templar used to live at the nearby farm and that we really shouldn’t leave without taking a gander at their donkey wheel. We took his advice but, like the cake, we got little pleasure from the experience. However, the next day’s ramble was full of thrills. By the River Ouse, which friend X found very unsatisfactory, as far as waterways go, owing to it being tidal and not looking like Wind in the Willows, we met a man with two-tone shoes and a wife who was like the human equivalent of a dalmation, blotchy. Being so close to where Virginia Woolf had finally succeeded in killing herself, we had a long conversation about what she was wearing when she died. Two-tone man said she had a jumper on whereas I felt confident that it would have been more a comfy cardigan. Whatever, she must have had very big pockets to accommodate the size of stone necessary to drag her thin, Bloomsbury body down into the depths. Friend X thought maybe, having spent most of her life moping about in dusty drawing rooms with bi/tri/pan sexual deviants, she wouldn’t have had the time to learn to swim, so that would help speed up the drowning process. After that, we came across some very noisy lady frogs in the bullrushes who, as relayed to me by a passing geriatric jogger, were gagging for frog cock so were trying to out croak each other. Further on, we passed through a very smelly farm which friend X, thought was dirtier than it should have been and had a queer atmosphere. Her feelings of discombobulation were compounded when she saw a field of crucified crows, wings-akimbo like Jesus and those other naughty boys. What fun!

I know it’s spring, not only because of seeing the odd flip flop but also because insects have started to copulate in my back bedroom. Yesterday, I tried to prize apart a couple of teensy flies who were bareback riding in amongst my brussel sprouts seedlings but unfortunately, I was a bit cack handed; it wasn’t so much coitus interruptus as coitus squashus; I only hope they were in the afterglow and not coming up to a rolling boil! Anyway, to continue on a theme of frustration, I went to see Archipelago at the cinema last night. It was set on a windswept island and mostly consisted of four people who didn’t much like each other, moaning, eating dinner, having long conversations about lobsters, and going to, and getting out of, bed. Every now and again, a Tony Blair lookie likie popped by to talk deep and meaningless, mostly to a young man who wore striped pyjamas and had a talking teddy (yes, it was as bad as that). To relieve the middle class ennui, there was a couple of scenes with working class people selling dead animals. As a result, I now know how to dress a pheasant which is a level of take-out not usually experienced from a cinematic environment. Anyway, there must have been a lot of weak bladders in the audience, either that, or people were leaving the screen in order to stab themselves in the eye in an effort to relieve the torpidity. Of course, they could have been going to complain that, in the distance, while riding his sit up and beg through the island’s windswept lanes, Edward’s corduroy trousers were a bit of a blur. We found out later that the Duke’s has had some men in and the focus has gone all doolally. I now feel a bit doolally myself!