High Heels and Reprobates

The MSG Factor

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Image by Nina Leen. My dear, X Factor is more addictive than these cigarettes.

Somebody save me before I get sucked into an abyss by the Puppet Master that is Simon Cowell.   I know it’s cheap.  I know I am being manipulated by a monstrous Svengali with no dress sense, but still it’s like catnip on a Pringle. 

The X Factor format has been gradually ramped up over its seven season life span.  The characters are more colourful, the back stories more heart rending  and who can forget last season’s Macca jam!  What an endorsement!  The country’s most famous vegetarian live on stage, hoping his syrup didn’t slip under the lights.  The panel barely knew how low to genuflect.

In spite of this mass manipulation, I do think Syco TV might have missed a trick or two.  After all this isn’t a singing competition.  It’s a gladiatorial contest, where the weak and feeble underdog is publicly paraded, humiliated and then slaughtered for our delight.  Never mind indoor pyrotechnics and Susan Boyle warbling Wild Horses in a kaftan, let’s have a finale you can’t argue with.   Here’s my pitch.  We’ve had the usual line up of fools and anyone who has shown a batsqueak of talent has been weeded out and is now eating sausage rolls in Hospitality.  Only the truly dire remain.  Simon Cowell stands up in his high waisted slacks, turns to the crowd and gives the thumbs down.   In one beautifully oiled motion, Konnie Huq leads the 3,000 strong audience in a Mexican wave, as large grilles open up on stage and Dolph Lundgren on voiceover says:  Release the Bears.   Dermot O’Leary gets his kit off.   Actually, the last bit is separate, but I do feel adds something.   Think of the outtakes on ITV2.  Think of how much more time you could waste on Youtube.   Squeal!

                                                        *   *   *   *   *   *

Let’s discuss monikers for a moment if we may.  Is it me or is Shirlena Johnson one of those funny hybrid names usually reserved for American Idol hopefuls who hail from Albuqueque?  Crossing Shirley and Marlena is a bit like welding together the front and back end of two totalled vans.  The performance was a bit of a car crash too.  In places, it put me in mind of an asthmatic attempting tantric sex.  Can’t wait for next week!

As for G & S – aka Gay and Straight – well, bless his little cottons.  Magnanimous in defeat, Gay was seen waving invisible pom poms to support his friend Straight when she went on to underwhelm the judges with her bedroom karaoke rendition of Get Here.   If this was the States we would have had an Aretha style comeback and everyone punching the air in support.   Straight – nice girl though she seems – packs less vocal welly than Marti Webb on a Number Two Tour.  Gamu I liked, but please.  Stop the crying. 

Potentially, of course, the most voyeuristic part of the season might be the delightful addition of Delving into Dermot.  Dermot O’Leary – the man with the most beautifully shaped head on television.  Where does one sign up?

She Who Must Be Obeyed

Image by Clarke Henry 1956

High Heels apologises for the lengthy absence, but I’ve been watching Mad Men on DVD.  Putting Donald ‘iron lung’ Draper aside for a brief moment (tortured soul tick, emotionally retarded tick, self-centred tick; yep he’s just my type), the gender politics has been fascinating.  Women as vulnerable prey, relegated to a child-like status by their fast talking, chain smoking bosses.  Gosh, it sounds just like when I first worked in advertising in the mid 90s. 

Judging by the latest guff in the media about female bosses, I’m wondering what’s really new.  It seems that out of a potential adult population of 51 million, 2000 UK pollsters believe that women make poor leaders in the workplace.  This staggeringly out of proportion statistic now makes it an official fact, it seems.  That’s what Scotland’s Daily Record says, but then this is a country where they deep fry Mars bars and make soft drinks out of iron girders, so taste and judgment is hardly at a premium.  Mark McGivern’s illuminating article spells out – point by point – why women are incapable of holding down positions of power.  Periods feature greatly in this.  Oh, and back stabbing.  In between preening in the staff toilets, it seems we can hardly help ourselves.

Unsurprisingly, that wart on the arse of the mass media, The Daily Mail, chimed in yesterday in agreement.  Can anyone please explain to me what this article, written by a woman, endorsed by other women and accompanied by a set up photograph of a female boss having a tantrum, is actually saying?  Is Liz Hull (I am envisaging a young Mary Archer, only less fragrant) supporting the notion that women can’t fulfill their professional aspirations?  After all, she did.  She writes for a national newspaper.  The fact that I wouldn’t use it to line the cage of a flatulent guinea pig, is hardly the point.  She gets the air time and then uses it to undermine her own sex, peddling unsubstantiated opinions to further her professional cause.  If she’s the mother of daughters, she should be ashamed of herself.  I mean why waste paper?  Why not just sit them down and tell them not to even bother.  They’re too biologically and emotionally flawed to ever really compete with the big boys anyway.

We’ve all fallen prey to The Janet Street Porter School of Management; the cold, unfeeling bitch who divides and rules and then goes out for a blow dry.  I’ve had some terrible female bosses and I’ve had some terrible male ones too, and guess what?  They were both as atrocious as each other. 

But back to the sublime Donald Draper.  What was that stoned Beatnik woman thinking of?  If he invited me to Paris, I’d go at the drop of a trilby.  Or whatever…..

Dave’s Impossible Dream

That's the cupcakes done. Now I just need to gas myself. Image from www.matt-king.blogspot.com

Is it just me, or are you beginning to feel like you’re standing on sinking sand?  Do you have one eye on the emergency blow up boats and the other on David Cameron, wondering what blinkered, half-arsed scheme he’s going to stun us all with next?  Farewell to Broken Britain – now let’s really empower people!   Put keyhole surgery back in the community!  Non compulsory assault courses for the disabled!   No, I’ve got it and it’s a corker.  How about everyone gets together and, like, runs their own nuclear plant! 

I have a theory about the Big Society.  I think one epically port-fuelled night at the Bullingdon Club, Dave and Boris got really boozed and had a Big Chat.  Boris told Dave how it was and Dave told Boris how it could be and so the genesis of an idea was spawned.   I couldn’t hazard a guess at the actual contents of the conversation, but ten to one it ended on ‘Pass me that bin Cameron, I think I’m going to chunder’. 

So why is it that the Tories are always looking backwards?  What is this obsession with the 1950s utopia that never was?  Let me sum up what I know about the 1950s.  Forget the community-centred, ruddy-cheeked idyll that Cameron and his cronies are peddling.   The truth is living through this decade was like being stuck in an endless, dreary Sunday afternoon eating fish paste sandwiches with a silently screaming housewife.  OK, the frocks were great, but let’s not mention the rampant inequality between the sexes and the canyon sized gulf between the haves and the have-nots.  Hey, I know!  Let’s have that again because it was so great the first time round.

I shudder when I hear a Conservative talk about family values.  Whose family?  Certainly not mine.  Families come in all shapes and sizes and there’s one small problem with the nuclear variety.  It does rather have a habit of blowing up in your face. 

So here’s a tip for David Cameron and his compadres.  How about you go and live in a bedsit on £60 a week with a screaming child and no partner and see if you’ve got time to run your own school.  Don’t fancy it?  Well, chin up chaps.  Because we’re all in this shit together.

The Roar of the Greasepaint

The Divine Sarah does despair

As High Heels steps through the fag end of yesterday’s carnival, she contemplates the past seven months out of town and realises when it comes to meeting new people there may be only one way forward.  Yes, it’s time to find an amateur dramatic group.

I’ve always been anti this as an idea.  It’s not the work, loves; it’s the ghastly people who join in.  Am Dram aficionados are their own special breed.  They tie jumpers round their necks and say ‘Bless You’ a lot, they have an over developed appreciation of Alan Ayckbourn and, in spite of their name, they are always, always utterly professional to their fingertips.   Apart from when they’re bickering over cozzies and then it’s like Elton John and Liberace fighting over a beaded cape in Vegas.

Last year I went on a Mums and Chums mission to watch an amateur production of The Beggar’s Opera in Ealing.  Fourteen English pounds, if you please, to watch a group of people stare at the floor and gurn like they were in a field in Hampshire in 1990. And it was extra for the raffle.  I could have stood at the Donmar for that, darlings!

One wondered at the content of the director’s notes after rehearsal – always the most hilarious part of an amateur production (apart from watching it after you’ve knocked back three gins at the bar).  The director is usually a floppy haired, middle aged man, puffing on some Shag and clutching a well annotated copy of Brecht: A Life in Theatre.  He doesn’t sit on his chair, he perches on his heels like a collapsible heron, occasionally grabbing his forehead as if hit by a sudden migraine.  This move is often combined with an outstretched hand as he reaches out blindly for another hilarious theatrical anecdote about the time he did panto with Bobby Ball.  The cast are enthralled.

‘OK, company note, everyone.  During the prison scenes, I need to feel more angst. Think Arthur Fowler embezzling the Christmas Club money.  You were starting to do it, now just give me a little bit more.  Try some rocking.  Oh and Macheath, love, I’ve had a thought about your Australian accent.  You know you’re meant to be on the run?  Well, why don’t we say you escaped from a penal colony in Tasmania on the back of a Japanese fishing smack.  You had a terrible journey, tossed about at sea blah blah blah and somehow you ended up on a clipper ship bound for Bristol.  Give yourself a bit of back story’.

Actually, I’m starting to warm to this whole idea.  Think of the material and subtle piss taking for High Heels.  I might even get to play Amanda from Private Lives or Miss Babs from Acorn Antiques The Musical.  I did have a little warble yesterday in the empty Chamber at Hogwarts.   Easily, the most entertaining thing that happened at work, apart from asking a customer if she wouldn’t mind putting her minature white dog into her handbag whilst on the premises. 

                                                                                ********************************

When doing Am Dram it is vitally important you follow the guidelines below:

• Get into a pair of tights and shout a lot.  This is what they do at Stratford and it is WONDERFUL.
• Walk upstage left and look pensively out at the audience for an uncomfortably long time.  Something happens when actors do this and it is WONDERFUL.
• When in need of a laugh, try mugging the audience on your exit.  Foolproof.
• In comedy, inflections at the end of a sentence always go up.  This is a rule from which there can be no deviation.
• Never underestimate the power of The Jazz Square.  A classic piece of choreography that can be applied to almost any situation.  Particularly good for the finale when combined with The Jazz Hands.
• When in doubt, ask yourself this question: What would Paul Schofield have done?

Where’s the Waggery?

Sophia. Just because.

So the WAGS have been banned from joining their other halves in Johannesburg, as their presence is deemed to be ‘too distracting’.   I don’t know about you, but I’m disappointed.  Isn’t being distracting their whole raison d’etre?  The plaintive hope of England winning the World Cup is rather like someone playing The Last Post on a cracked Vuvuzela.  It’s irritating and a bit tragic all at the same time.  The only upside to this wearisome five week long testosterone-fest would be the sight of the girls rocking the terraces in their Louboutin slingbacks or falling out of clubs wearing inappropriate bits of dental floss.

All hail then to the Celebrity Come Dine With Me WAG Special and the demi god that is Dave Lamb.  This is what we want, what we really, really want.  More mock Tudor mansions than you can shake a Swarovski coated stick at!  Six figure sum fish tanks!  Giant pop up TV’s encased in purple crushed velvet!  Yeah baby! 

Putting Mr Lamb in charge of commentary may have been akin to watching someone shoot fish in a barrell, but honestly, I couldn’t have enjoyed it more.   Haven’t laughed so much since Tanya Turner fake tanned her baby on Footballers Wives.   And Chantelle Tagoe’s attempt to recreate Soweto in her dining room with a 3D corrugated iron effect wallpaper was a particular high point.  (‘Yes the Shanty Town look is really in at the moment’ quipped Dave).  Ooh, back of the net, son. 

So in the absence of the real thing this World Cup, get yourself down to a Tescos Superstore and pick out your very own WAG knickers emblazoned with the immortal slogan ‘You’ve scored’.  What a hoot!  It could have been lifted straight out of the Wayne Rooney School of Seduction, along with half a pint of wife beater after a bilious barbecue. 

Fortunately in my house we only have one football fan and three televisions.  There was a meat grilling session last Sunday where they all clustered around a 50 inch screen to watch the cage fighting, but this was a rare moment of machismo at High Heels Towers.   

My question to you all now is this.  When’s the polo happening?   Personally, I’m in it for the jodphurs.

Sling your hooks

Image by Rene Gruau - High Heels latest obsession

So I’m flicking through The Sunday Times Style Section this morning hoping, not unreasonably, for some style and instead am confronted with The Contented Parent, an article extolling the virtues of au naturel child-rearing sans cot, sans buggy and yes, people, sans nappy.

Just when I thought modern parenting couldn’t be any more bile inducing, I read in a national broadsheet, that ‘the first time we sat Freddie on the potty and did pooing impressions, he curled out a beauty’.  Concerned for the nation’s overflowing landfill sites, Matt and Harriet Rudd decided to let their kids go commando.  The misery of the changing matt is no more, but as with all alternative parenting methods, the end result is the same.  You’re chained to your child and everyone in the vicinity has to suffer the smell.

Anyone who read my Mommie Dearest blog (November 2009), will know only too well my opinions on this particular school of thought.  And of course, unlike the loving and giving, all inclusive Mr and Mrs Rudd, child-free people are so selfish!  You might say that adults who have chosen not to produce another human being we don’t need, to take up resources we can no longer spare, is actually committing an act of altruism to the planet.  Not to mention, giving a small window of opportunity to the millions of unwanted children already in existence who desperately need a good home.   

But back to the article and blow me down, if Matt and Harriet Rudd aren’t also fans of co-sleeping.  For those not in the know, this is where the entire famille hunkers down together or more accurately, Harriet and Freddie get the king size and Matt sleeps in a bunk bed on the other side of the room.   And get this everyone, after their second child was born, he and three year old Freddie moved into the spare room (‘which was brilliant, honest’) so Harriet could give her new born ‘the full mummy treatment’!   

I’m sorry, but what kind of pussy is this bloke?   He’s meant to be a husband and father, not Tom Hanks having a sleepover in Big.  So let’s talk about how contented Matt Rudd really is.  Well, for starters, he’s not had sex for about, oh, two and a half years.  Instead he’s relegated to quietly masturbating in a kiddie’s top bunk like some kind of furtive teenager, whilst Harriet goes off to Sling Meet to drink Fairtrade coffee with her mummy chums.  And this is conducive to family life exactly how?   Perhaps she should spend a little more time considering the happiness of her marriage and a little less fixating on her children, because guess what?  Divorced parents tend to really give the kids something to cry about and rolling them up in a sling isn’t going to make anyone feel more secure.

Leaning back on my amateur psychiatrist chair, I do wonder who these new parenting rules are actually about.  I was seeing a man once who was so obsessed with the well-being of his daughter he was practically a breast.  There was talk of flying over a child Guru from the States to see if his leaving her when she was three months old had caused any lasting psychological damage.  I’m sure the several thousand pounds that would have cost would have been an effective panacea for his guilt, but I imagine the benefits may well have stopped there.

So why does everything have to end in procreation?  One of the saving graces of the totally stupid SATC2, was Carrie and Big NOT trying to get up the duff.  Apart from the fact SJP looks too narrow to go full term, ‘me and you, just us two’ sounds like a far better option to me.  As long as it comes with a wardrobe you can house a family in.

High Heels in Sardinia

Sunday

It’s Sunday evening and Sardinia feels like an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  The waves are rough and salty and the sky is grey and metallic like a saucepan lid.  I haven’t brought anything practical to wear and venture out on the town in every cashmere garment I possess and a silk scarf wrapped round my head.  It’s meant to be a sarong, but is now doubling up as an ear muffler against the buffeting winds.  Think Grace Kelly, O’Neill.  You are driving along the Corniche in a white convertible, the Mediterranean is glittering like a bed of sapphires before you, Sacha Distel is crooning on the radio…..

You talk like Marlene Dietrich, and you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire, you’re clothes are all made by Balmain, and there’s diamonds and pearls in your hair, yes there are…..actually no, hang on, wasn’t that a song by Peter Serstedt?  Either way, I’ll bet Sophia Loren was never caught short in inclement weather.  Seeking warmth, I infiltrate a church just at the point the Padre is audibly crunching on a communion wafer, prompting several members of the congregation to swing round and glare at me as if I’d just brought Mussolini back for an encore.  Er, aperitif anyone?

There is a cafe next to the church overlooking the sea.  I order a gin and tonic which is served in a tumbler filled neat almost to the brim.  To accompany it is a bowl of plain crisps and what looks like slime on a bruschetta.   I am already disappointed by my lunch (swordfish yes, but which part?)  I thought Sardinia was the Mecca of food.

This eating Odyssey of mine has not begun well.

Monday

Breakfast at the hotel and the dining room is full of couples not talking to each other.  Weather still crap, but I’m hoping for a wind tan and spend the day wandering aimlessly around the cobbled streets trying not to turn an ankle.  It is too cold to even eat Nutella ice cream.

In the evening I find a cosy restaurant on the sea wall.  The waiter has a deep, sonorous voice and serves up beef carpaccio followed by home made pasta filled with pecorino cheese and mint.    Another industrial strength gin and tonic later and life is looking rosy.  Will the sun ever shine?

Tuesday

At breakfast there is a new addition to the silent throng.   A Thai lady is eating a toasted sandwich at the same time as shovelling cereal into her mouth.  It’s a revolting sight and I wonder how her husband can bear it because she’s putting me right off my salami. 

The sun puts in a guest appearance and I head off to the beach.  My throat is starting to twinge and I’m feeling a bug coming on.  Trooper that I am, I stake out a sun lounger and gargle aspirin from a plastic cup.

It’s calamari for lunch at a restaurant frequented by women with bouffant hair and oversized, dark glasses.  The Italians feel no shame in wearing shades indoors and I love them for it.

Wednesday

I spend the morning in a boat with a group of rowdy Corsicans.  We head out to Capo Caccia and the boat swings at right angles as we near Neptune’s Cave.  My sea legs are wavering and as much as I would like to commune with my Piscean leader, I’d rather be back on terra firma having a pizza.

I find Il Reffetorrio, a low ceilinged, stone vaulted restaurant in Vicolo Adami.   Outside a loud clap of thunder reverberates, a torrential downpour follows and a waiter places a plate of lobster linguine in front of me, pink and magnificent.   It is a near perfect moment.   I say near perfect because sadly my waiter is both vertically and aesthetically challenged and has only one eyebrow.   Captive in culinary heaven, I follow up this seafood sensation with seadas; a soft cheese encased in pastry and covered in local honey.

Still I have no tan.  Why oh why did I not pack my L’Oreal? 

Thursday

Two miracles occur today.  One: the sun shines incessantly and two: I sample the famous local dish Maialino allo Spiedo, roast suckling pig cooked over a bed of myrtle leaves in a wood fired oven.   Dessert is panna cotta with forest fruits, topped with a thin, crystallised slice of fresh blood orange.  I seem to have fended off my bug with what the man at the pharmacy described as a mild antibiotic spriiiiaay.  I can feel myself plumping out and I like it.  I watch the sun slip behind the mountains, leaving behind trails of pink clouds as a happy omen for tomorrow.  If I have been living the first part of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love for the past week, I’d like to skip the prayer and move straight onto the love please.

Friday

I spot the Thai lady at the far end of dining room slurping peaches through her front teeth and head out for breakfast along the sea front.

Later, I hop onto an open top bus which will take me along the scenic route to Porte Conte – the Bay of Nymphs.   A man in a large Trilby hat is puffing on a Cuban cigar and eyeballing me from a garage forecourt.  As the theme tune to The Godfather whirrs through my mind, I remind myself that Sardinia is no longer the kidnapping hub of Europe and I am safely strapped onto the panoramic tour bus, listening to an out of work American actor talk about the breathtaking flora and fauna. 

In the evening, the waiter with the deep, sonorous voice serves me a fish caught that morning.  It is white, flaky and delicious and falls off the bone as he prepares it at my table.

Saturday

It’s my last day and I’m sitting outside Il Ghiotto tucking into a salad from their deli.  Behind me are a group of elderly ladies from up north, out on a coach trip from Olbia.

‘Oh Margaret, that looks nice, what you got there?’

‘Ten euros’, she replies, proffering her plate proudly.

You can always trust the Brits to make eating dreary.   We are, after all, the nation that invented the Findus Crispy Pancake.

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman

Image by Nina Leen - not only is it hard to be a woman, but this turban is killing me.

I think Tammy Wynette had it right. 

Maybe I do feel justified and ancient in a town full of women in their early twenties, but I wouldn’t turn the clock back now; not for all the botox in Harley Street.   Think of the expectations.  I mean, these days you actually have to do stuff.  These days there’s an agenda that would make Wonder Woman throw her bracelets to the floor and weep.

Look, girls. Here’s the deal.  We want you to be academically brilliant, high-achieving, whippet thin and Brazilian waxed within an inch of your lives.  Whilst you are smashing the glass ceiling with one immaculately manicured fist, you must locate the ‘perfect’ man and make him fall in love with you.  You will then be expected to perform like a porn star, own a pastel coloured Smeg fridge and be dripping with maternal instinct.  In return, we will torture you with images of women you can never hope to emulate and make you feel guilty for not wanting to give up the aspirations you were encouraged to have.   Once breeding, you will be expected to be dazzlingly happy staying at home with little or no earning power.  You will mop up bodily excretions and have incy-wincy spider type conversations, until one fine day you will return to work, a frizzy haired, snaggle-toothed lunatic, juggling more balls than a performing octopus.  

Can you manage all that in your heels?

When I was in my twenties, an achievement was getting out of bed before midday, grabbing a Burger King and heading off to my low paid high fun job at the theatre.  Life was about pleasure and laughter and blagging your way in for nowt.  It was about gathering memories, not racking up achievements imposed on you by other people.  Nobody was nagging me to breed or earn £70k a year, or do anything at all other than be myself.   I certainly wasn’t being assaulted on all sides with stories of how my uterus was going to shrivel up and die by the time I was thirty five.  (Funny, but weren’t our grandmothers all having children well into their forties?  Crap diets, poor medication and no folic acid supplements anywhere to be seen?  What they didn’t have, of course, was mass media propaganda and the burden of supporting an ageing population).  So why are so many women depressed these days says The Guardian?   You might well ask.

As someone who is no stranger to depression, I’ll tell you exactly why.  Overly high expectations and nothing to support them – least of all men, who seem more confused and directionless than ever.  The point is nobody’s happy; everything is just a compromise.  What’s important is not having a matching set of Cath Kidson oven gloves and a first from Oxford, but finding what your True North is and understanding that sometimes that takes a while. 

En route to this great revelation, drinking copious amounts of cava, having unsuitable liaisons and sporadic blow outs at TK Maxx also helps.  A lot.

The PA Steals Your Prada

And when you've done that I'd like you to defrost my botox

With volcanic dust drifting across the globe, air traffic control at a virtual standstill and the general election looming on the horizon, High Heels is here with its well manicured finger on the pulse of the issues that really matter.  Victoria Beckham’s frenzied hunt for a new PA, anyone?

Look, I could quite easily do this job.  I’ve done celebrities.  I’ve even done people who thought they were celebrities.  I’ve picked out shag pile carpets, lied to girlfriends, researched non-surgical face lifts and -  as my About Me section will testify – massaged so many egos, I have repetitive strain injury.   However, for pity’s sake Posh, don’t be a doomkopf all your life.  If you’re going to do it, make it a homosexual.  He might stretch your Jimmy Choos with his size nines, but just think of the benefits.  Someone who has your entire musical oeuvre, knows his labels and won’t turn David’s head?  OK, scratch the last one, but in the words of Meatloaf, two out of three ain’t bad. 

So what are the key ingredients for a good Celebrity PA?  Well, if you’re working for Heather Mills McCartney, a decent aim with the spray tan is always helpful because it does tend to stain the wood.  And if you’re on Sharon Stone’s payroll, don’t even think about seating her at the front of the restaurant sideways on.  But then that’s the trouble with being an executive PA for a high flyer.  The  job description might be the length of the Magna Carta, but it can always be encapsulated in one line.  Babysit my neurosis.  Twenty Four Seven.

Some years back I worked for a particularly vile theatrical agent.  She arrived at the office at 10 am every morning, flicked through Harpers, plucked a few hairs out of her chin and then popped out for a blow dry, leaving me drowning in scripts.  I was referred to as ‘her’ and was sent out each lunch time to collect one or other of the three things she ate:  cottage cheese, soup or noodles.   The urge to drop Optrex into her afternoon tea was overwhelming (total release from every orifice – Naomi’s PA, do take note) but I valiantly reigned myself in and voted with my feet.  Right across Soho Square and straight into the office of a certain red haired TV presenter who likes to look fierce in black.  What a bum move that was. 

I’ve nothing against VB, but anyone who runs someone else’s personal life, soon finds their own sucked into a vortex of unreasonable demands.  Buy me a luke-warm skinny soy latte toss my salad collect my car from the pound I don’t care if you can’t drive lie to my tax accountant choose my kitchen cupboards I won’t sit on any furniture that isn’t white my bath has to smell of gardenias I’ll only eat Costa Rican pineapple cut into bite-size chunks help my dog recover from its hysterectomy it must be yellow fin tuna I need to sit behind the co-pilot and he has to be kosher. 

Sorry, can’t keep up?   Oh, move at a glacial pace.  You know how that thrills me.

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!

High Heels is feeling quite perky

There are munchkins doing back flips on my back patio.  If I had a chimney, glorious technicolour flowers would be protruding through it and Glinda would appear in a giant bubble waving a spangly wand and smiling beatifically at the assembled throng.   Yes, the witch has finally gone.   No more slamming doors; no more thundering down the stairs like a herd of knackers’ horses on the way to market; no more the flames of burning martyrdom whilst I’m trying to watch Benders.

The washing machine almost weeps with relief that it will no longer be subjected to her six cycles a week.  Although judging by the hair and grime she left in the carpet, it’s a shame her cleaning never extended elsewhere.   (In the kitchen, it was Crumb-Gate.  If it didn’t come from her piece of toast, she would TURN INTO A FOSSIL before she’d touch it).  What a pity we can’t deduct from her deposit all the damage she’s done in this house over the past six months:  tenants she’s driven out, phone calls to solicitors, phone calls to family and friends for moral support, wear and tear on floorboards, doors and household appliances, not to mention the hoover bags we’ve got through.   This would leave her with about thirty quid; just enough for a one way ticket with the Ryan Brothers back to where she belongs.  And bon bloody voyage, darling.

I now find myself on entirely unfamiliar terrain.  I am living with not one, not two, but three straight boys.   There are no waffle irons, no Barbra Streisand CDs (well, only mine) and not a feather boa in sight (apart from mine).   It’s like Man About the House, only in reverse and with less mullets.   I am already pondering a spin off sit com called SJ’s Nest and if you are not British and a child of the 70s, that particular cultural reference may well pass you over.

There are, of course, many bonuses of living with straight boys; only this morning one of them helped me with a very stubborn lid.  Plus you get assistance with the wheelie bin and they instinctively understand buttons on the remote control that you never knew existed, making changing channels an absolute breeze.  We have already mooted the idea of a Summer House Warming Party.  (Just think of the barbecue!  It could be a bun fight for control of those tongs!)

Meantime, the sun is shining and spring has finally sprung.  I feel a pair of shoes coming on….