Tales from my handbag

Dirty, creaky and damp

anna — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 15:09:00 +0000

Summer means camping and camping is great fun, provided you like eating burnt things and don’t mind having a constant dribble of urine down your leg from badly executed al fresco weeing. A friend has very kindly given me her two-man pop-up tent. I have a practice pop-up in my back garden but am sadly unable to pop-down, despite stage by stage instructions. This is Crystal Maze but without the skipping baldie in the Bet Lynch overcoat. After rolling around the garden for an hour or so, and a few useless tips from my window cleaner, who’s popped by to have a dump, I give up. Later on, with the help of a man friend, I manage to coax the pesky thing back into its bag. What I fail to notice until I’ve pitched my tent at the campsite, is that despite this being a two man tent, I seem to take up most of its sparse interior. Plus, I have to sleep diagonally otherwise my feet hang outside. The night is long: three wees, one bad dream (I’m Charles Bronson, struggling to tunnel his way to freedom with only the help of an emery board), a screaming baby and a man with loud, extended wind in the next tent. And then it’s time to get up. Dave, the campsite owner, who tells me he’s spent his night at a very relaxing orgy involving a pond and a bag of grapes, suggests I get a bigger tent. Oh God, have I really got to go to Millets again?

Weird goings on in the great outdoors

anna — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 09:58:18 +0000

I have recently discovered two new rambling locations but, in the process have exposed myself to some al fresco romping. The first spot, we shall call it ‘the Common’ is picture perfect: it has a pond; it has water lilies; it has benches donated by dead people. It also has a mingling of topless men chasing each other around a large oak, laughing loudly. Further down the track, I come across another topless man carrying a plastic bag and walking much too briskly for the location. He is no doubt on his way to do some laughing himself. I wonder what’s in his plastic bag - sandwiches, a vest? I then nearly get mowed down by a Slavic looking lady with a gaberdine mack and court shoes. She looks deranged so I don’t exchange pleasantries. In my experience, you should always be wary of people dressed inappropriately for the location. Like the man in a Majorcan beach car park who was cleaning out his glove compartment wearing only a t-shirt. I thought at first maybe he had a skin condition and was getting some air to his bits but on closer inspection, I discovered he was actually bashing one out. At my next new rambling location, I come across some doggers getting ready for a matinee performance. I know this because they have their seats reclined to vertical plus they jump up like meerkats the moment I arrive - obviously thinking I am one of their kind. Wary of being sucked into their perverse shenanigans, I wave my chunky socks at them. However, I leave my pole in the boot just in case they think I’m a dominatrix.

Moan, moan, moan

anna — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:22:45 +0000

On Friday, I had occasion to purchase a sleeping bag. What with all the groovy festivals and camping extravaganzas I’ve got planned for the summer, I figured I could do with something bright and snuggly to hunker down in. I go into Millet’s and linger around the sleeping bag department, umming and aahing in a way that would suggest to any fully-functioning, non-brain dead shop assistant, that I need a bit of help. Eventually, I shout across the empty shop to a boy/girl (the sex was confusing but for the purposes of this blog, it shall be a he) who looks barely old enough to do a paper round, let alone be trusted to actually serve people. Me: ‘can you take me through your sleeping bags’, him: ‘I don’t really know much about sleeping bags’, me: ‘Is there anyone here who does?’, him: ‘I’ll ask’. He then approaches surly, grown-up woman who is window-dressing. She shrugs her sloping shoulders in a ‘I have no idea and don’t actually give a shit anyway’ sort of way so pre-pubescent boy heads back to me, asking, what is it I need to know, exactly? I ask what 2 seasons refers to. He shakes his head and retreats to the stock room for a consultation. Ten minutes later he returns: ‘it would be good for a fairly warmish winter’ he says. I ask to see invisible man from stock room but pre-pubescent boy says stock room man doesn’t really know any more than that. I huff, puff, tut and finally flounce out, vowing never to enter the shop again. Later on that day, at a beautiful country park hotel, I’m taking tea on the terrace with my mother. Despite the plethora of waiters, we wait 45 minutes for our finger sandwiches, scones, jam and clotted cream and assorted pastries. On enquiring what the delay is, our waiter informs us the kitchen is a mess and an unexpected number of tea-takers means they’ve run out of scones. A girl with big gums and bulging eyes eventually gives us coffee instead of tea and drops one of our precious finger sandwiches on the gravel. A stiff email is in the offing.

Daphne is a swinger

anna — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:24:00 +0000

Friend X has a proposition for me: do I want to be a supporting artiste on a short film being made in Brighton? I’m to play ‘mature lady at a dinner party’. Any opportunity to show off, thinks I although I’m not sure about the ‘mature’ bit. When I learn there’s nudity and tomfoolery with creamy desserts AND buff thespians (ones off the telly) involved, I get very excited. My spirit is soon dampened when I learn I’ll be decked out in Harris tweed. Furthermore, my bouncing locks are to be scraped back and moulded into a sort of frigid librarian bun (a bit like my old Junior School teacher, Mrs Wibberly - yes, that was her name). When they’ve done with me (the hair takes longer than expected as daring bits keep trying to escape the confines of the bun), I meet up with my ‘husband’, Lionel, a gentleman with big teeth and a mustard sweater. Lacking any directorial lead as to my ‘motivation’; am I a chatty type? do I eat meat? how strong is my bladder? - I create my character - Daphne. Lionel and I are swingers although he’s very big boned so we decide he’s more of a voyeur than a participator. Daphne, however, throws herself into almost any milieu, most of it going on in Peacehaven. On set, famous telly actor is playing the piano in a private apartment. Daphne is sitting on a sofa, smiling serenely. Next scene, Daphne wears an Alice band and Lionel is hoola hooping on a Wii. Daphne laughs a lot in this scene. Next scene, there’s a crowd of party-goers in a corridor. Daphne is in sludge coloured top with chunky necklace, chatting to Anthony, an effete older gentleman who keeps popping Polo mints. Famous telly actor barges past and nearly knocks Daphne’s ‘Shiraz’ all over Polo man’s shirt. Daphne looks miffed but then, noticing that telly man is barefoot, assumes a perplexed visage. Daphne then gets into a huddle with Polo man, as foreground for a close-up of telly man looking a bit deranged, this time with socks on. We do low chat but I throw in a few shriekish laughs to fit in with my swinging personality. In the dressing room, it takes a while to shake off Daphne. Well, I am a professional, after all.

I am the Elephant Woman

anna — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:25:45 +0000

If you go down to the woods today, in floaty trousers and without a balaclava, you could end up with a weeping, distended eye socket and knees the size of watermelons. It all started innocently; friend X to me: ‘would you like to go on a ‘plant journey’ in the woods?’ Me: ’sounds like hippy shite but I’ll do it.’ We rendezvoused with our fellow plant travellers (imagine lots of cheesecloth and Chinese slippers) in a quiet country road and silently made our way through the forest until we came to a fire in a clearing. Whereupon, a very smiley lady welcomed me by wafting a bowl of smoking sage leaves all over my nice clean cardigan. Then we had a pow-wow around the fire and were instructed to go and spend some time with an oak tree; get to know it; share life experiences, that sort of thing. We were also given a handful of oats for us to use as a sort of tree warmer! I offered my oats to a young oak and started chatting, as you do, but then I got interrupted by a vicious mosquito which had was attempting to drink me dry through my smokey cardigan. This opened the flood gates and I spent the next half an hour swatting midges and picking other brown flitty things out of my ears and out of my pants. Thankfully, we were then summoned back to the fire by a penny whistle for some group meditation that involved going down a hole to another world - all to the strains of a badly played bongo. Needless to say, I couldn’t find my hole and I was starting to itch, not to mention the fact that I was ravenous for my acorn burger washed down by nettle tea supper. This morning, I look like the Elephant Woman. Note to self: a tree is a tree. It does not talk; it does not eat porridge.

Playing dirty down on the allotment

anna — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:46:51 +0000

It’s been a very eventful, very messy week on the allotment. I’ve had manure in my hair, snail poo under my nails, plus I ripped my arm open on a sweet pea wigwam. I also had to have a strong word with Ted, the allotmenteer with the Filippino internet bride who doesn’t like root vegetables, who, when engaged in a conversation about rhubarb, casually brushed my bottom with his hoe. I said ‘Ted, just because I’ve eaten one or two of your Jerusalem artichokes, does not mean you can make free with my buttocks.’ He didn’t laugh, although he has a very hairy face and I’m never sure where his mouth is. I have made a mental note to stop weeing in my compost as I fear, this may have led him to believe I was up for allotment petting.

Ants in their pants

anna — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:36:14 +0000

Acrobatics - let’s leave it to the Chinese shall we? There was a time when the only acrobatics you saw came courtesy of Olga Korbut and her steroid sisters, tossing and a-tumbling on the telly in pursuit of Olympic Gold. Now, everyone’s at it and I have to say, the flic-flacs and triple twist back flip with cartwheel combos are just not the same. Take the Insect Circus, witnessed at Brighton Fringe Festival. For a start, they weren’t real insects. They were people dressed up as wasps.zzzz Secondly, they were shite. There were ants standing on other ants’ shoulders and there was a bunch of bed mite hand puppets squirting water at the audience. Not forgetting the ‘bull’ fight with a stag beetle that was so piss poor, I was shouting for the coup de grace. I was hoping for a strip tease in a teacup to alleviate the boredom but this being a children’s show, we had to make do with a ladybird in a sequinned bra doing hula hoops. Come back Billy Smart, all is forgiven.

Open to ridicule

anna — Mon, 10 May 2010 09:55:40 +0000

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.

Italians need slippers

anna — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:16:40 +0000

‘I am Love’ should be retitled ‘I am noisy’. Sumptuous, elegant, seductive, yes. But boy, did the Recchi household, with its endless wooden floors, take a battering from all those high heels. It was clip clop, clip, clop, clip, clop, upstairs and downstairs, and in my lady’s chamber. I didn’t see a patch of carpet, or a pair of slippers, just a lot of sliding doors and swishy scarves. Tilda had some lovely china and an assortment of Alice bands but then she got ravished by a chef and decided a bob was more practical, what with all that buccolic rumpy pumpy and hanging around in hot kitchens. Talking of hot kitchens, the film had a strong flavour of Master Chef, what with all the food close-ups. One minute they were smacking their lips over an upmarket Cornish Wafer, the next dishing out what looked like cabbage water with somebody’s foreskin in it. And in one memorable scene, Tilda did a wonderful impersonation of John Torode. I’ve never seen mastication like it.

Life is a cabaret, or sometimes a naff classical concert

anna — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:39:37 +0000

“What good is sitting alone in your room. Come hear the music play”, sang Liza. So when in Berlin, on a four day city mini-break, I thought, must see the Berlin Philharmonic. However, said orchestra and its crazy haired conductor, Simon Rattle, had gone on its hols to Salsburg which meant we were left with a manky bunch of fiddlers from the former Eastern bloc and their camp conductor, Igor. The concert was called ‘A night in St Petersburg’ so I knew it was going to be a bit Nutcrackery. However, what I wasn’t expecting was a troupe of lumpen ‘dancers’ in nylon ball gowns who couldn’t cock a leg higher than their Slavic crotches. Needless to say, the highlight for me, was the jumbo pretzel in the interval which had an interesting cheesy filling. Other highlights: sitting on a toilet that David Bowie/Iggy Pop may or may not have also sat on, doing the cha cha cha at the gypsy ballroom and losing my passport at the airport on the way home.