Those Who Dont Send Cards in June

I can remember the evening he died. He was leaning against the full draining board in the kitchen. I was watching him, his back to me clearing away the meal we had prepared together. I watched him shuffling about on his diabetic legs, captivated. I followed him about and dried, I think, about one plate. My heart was rushing with love for this man, this white haired rotund man steadying himself on the kitchen sideboards. Tears pinched my eyes as he told me about his day “A good day actually, managed to have a good hour or so snooze”. I couldn’t stop looking at him, worried for him with all my might. I was in danger of becoming the parent to this man, of reversing our roles and keeping my own troubles from him in order to make the load of his days even lighter. That selfless love consumed me with every wince that whipped across his face. I regret, that in all that emotion I did not say what I was thinking – “I love you”.

Nearly four years have passed since that night. The night I switched groups. I no longer existed in the realm with those who buy cards in June. My sister, brother and I were handed membership to another group – Those Who Don’t Send Cards in June.

It can be a bitter, jealous group. Just last year I spent Father’s day in a pit, clinging to my boyfriend’s bed not wanting to acknowledge the day. The weeks build up, cards and gift ideas start flooding the stores. You see something that would have been perfect – a card that sums him up brilliantly or a new book about the Lancaster Bomber and you chastise the manufacturer for bringing it out too late - sure that no other father would appreciate it as much as your dad would have. This year I am working in a shop and have myself lavished shelves and ordered in items to decorate The World’s Greatest Dad, fully aware that the holder of this title has long gone and the stock will remain unsold. And this year, I see them, my fellow People Who Don’t Send Cards in June. Some linger, stony faced as if the words on the signs no longer mean anything to them. Others allow a smile, brief and sweet – a tentative nod to a party they cannot attend.

The world can be brutal when it throws others lives you covet in your face. But this Sunday will allow me and my fellows a third unadulterated day this year where we can think wholeheartedly about Him. Sandwiched neatly between his two other defining dates I will swim gloriously in my dad’s memory. Dads can be excruciating, embarrassing, ignorant, shallow and insensitive. My dad could be all these things and more. But they are also true wonders for those of us lucky enough to have felt their love. My main memory of my dad is his hands. No-one had bigger hands than my dad. They fought, lit fireworks, stroked away tears and fixed my school bag a million times (I only needed one bag throughout my time at secondary school). In his 60s his hands told all he needed to tell, split knuckles and shaded by car oil my dads hands were a mans hands. Even when they were fumbling to tidy dishes on their last day on this earth, they could still slay a dragon if I insisted one lurked under my bed. As the man attached to those hands slipped away that night they still remained one of the greatest things about him.

Cherish every card you place in your dad’s hands. And if you feel the urge to say something he might find “daft” just say it.

The World of Twee or why Sophie Dahl should have taken more drugs with Kate.

We are living in a world of softness, so light and fluffy it's a wonder we dont float away everytime we leave the house. Everything is so bloody *nice* it makes me sick. You cannot watch an ad break these days without drowning in a pool of glucose. I dont want to be sold things as though I am a child by talking rabbits or lured into a false sense of security that "Smileys" get the giggles from mechanical tickling fingers rather than the truth that thier faces are stamped, million upon million of them by a great rusty machine and then churned out by some huge smoking capitalist factory; the air in the surrounding area thick with oil, where people have to scrape the layer of fat from thier cars in the morning and all thier children are dying of obesity, thier faces so heavy with blubber that they themselves are unable to heave their muscles into a smile - the very symbol of thier downfall. The irony.

I blame Innocent Smoothies. They started all this with thier twee self referencing packaging: "hello, i am a really friendly personified product. I want you to feel really great about yourself and will use all the most patronising words i can find to entice you into buying me. We will be the best of pals and ill see you everyday as part of your Boots meal deal, making you healthier and more able to cope with your joyless life. But if i ever, EVER see you buy a Boots own brand Smoothie, with thier formal and factual packaging that gives you just INFORMATION, I will hunt you down....i swear to god i will". In fact, I promise to buy which ever product is sold with the tagline "buy this or die bitch" spelt out in the blood leaking from the severed head of a lamb. it would be a blessed relief. Even if the product in question is lamb and it means eating lamb (which i dont want to do because they are so CUUUUUTE!).

Twee is the virus left over by the 90s plague that was "Kooky". Kooky is a word that hates true eccentrics. Kooky people are generally women who are so normal they have constructed some woolen alter ego for themselves which is far more annoying than the person they actually are. Kooky people will usually act like children and thier cupboards will be laden with the products described above. They will lose weekends baking, updating their twitter pages with pictures of themselves shrugging covered in flour. Flour that you know they have purposefully dredged themselves in just to appear more bumbling in the kitchen: "oh I'm such a klutz, my cake is all lumpy bumpy but will be delishness". This scene is beautifully captured in the new Lurpac advert, where some adult/child hybrid tiptoes round her kitchen smiling softly to herself as she clumsily puts together a chocolate cake. If this was real life and that girl was really having trouble making a basic cake she would not be smiling. She would have spent 45 minutes sobbing and slapping herself in the face muttering "idiot, idiot, idiot", falling to the ground to shake for an hour before crawling over to the preheated electric oven to lay her head in it, recalling this tale later with laughter: "and i didnt realise it needed to be a GAS oven and lived! oh im so blonde!"

I wrote most of this blog whilst at a gig where i was infruiated to be confronted with yet another twee-nonsense female acoustic songstress with uniform elfin haircut singing about bubbles. yes. really. Everyone loved her,thought she was lovely and unique. Except me, who typed this blog with my thumb whilst my other hand pulled tufts of my hair out to stuff into my ears. There are so many female acts like this nowadays. Why have women started turning themselves into cutesy morons? If they arent rubbing thier breasts together on the cover of nuts and zoo, they are skipping about like little girls. But maybe the latter is the consequence of the former. Women have become so sexualised in recent years that maybe some are running, chintz and all, to the hills where sex doesnt exist and they can remain young and innocent forever. By acting ditzy and quirky they are essentially relegating themselves to a social role where sex rarely bothers them and they do not need nor are encouraged to accept things that affect the adult world. I think this is probably the case and as a result the traditional symbol of sexual shunning -The Smelly Old Cat Women is evolving into The Sunshine Scented Kitten Loving Fluff Pot. Still cant decide which is worse.

Amazing, I have managed to link a five a day aid to the downfall of feminism. *shakes fist at smoothie.

too sexy for my blog

After my last two blogs, word on the street is that I have “issues”. They stem from deep rooted low self esteem seeds. And what is the fruit of the low self esteem tree? that’s right kids – great green eyed monsters. They are terrors, they have the power to render you completely useless for days on end because some other person had the audacity to be a tiny bit better than you. The green eyes can turn perfectly sunny days into grey miserable ones, flooded with embarrasing accusations. Just this morning I got in a tizzy because my other half has booked a fabulously attractive girl to play at one of his gigs. These are the facts which based her booking:

• To have a multi- musician gig you need more than one musician
• She is a musician
• She is free to play on that date
• My other half needs to book people for gigs so they are a success and he can buy food and clothing.

My list, however, was rather different:

• She is sexy
• Everyone will want to touch her clothes
• She will probably come one stage naked and sexy
• She is very very very sexy

I would also like to point out that I have never, ever heard her music. I haven’t even seen her in the flesh. I based this list purely on the handful of photos I have seen of her. My other half has never once alluded to the way she looks, it was me, and only me that turned her into Aphrodite. If I spent half and hour wringing my guts out about it I only have myself to blame.

I am of course a massive hypocrite. My background music of choice today is Florence and The Machine. Lungs as you probably don’t need me to point out is a dizzyingly assured debut album from a woman who is a brilliant lyric writer. I also don’t need to point that Florence Welch is entirely gorgeous, writhes about on stage like a woman ravaged with pent up sexual frustration and is extremely talented. Based on the above criteria I should therefore hate the breath that emanates from her lungs. But I don’t. I cannot work out what it is that lets certain women slip through my jealousy net, I can only surmise that it is because they exist in that other realm of fame. I will never have to encounter them; their shadow will never darken the sky above my head as I shrink deeper into the pavement. “Real” people on the other hand are THERE, you can sniff them and touch them and everything. In them I have proof sat across from me that fabulousness doesn’t affect just the fortunate, it can exist in the next friend of a friend you are destined to meet. And what are you going to do when you go home after meeting this pinnacle of womanhood? That’s right, you will eat biscuits and not do anything for a fortnight because “there is no point, they do it better than me so why should I even bother.”

I have always considered myself a bit of a misanthrope but I am probably more obsessed with other people than anyone else. It isn’t healthy and I could watch my whole life bob away on my pissy attitude. But I am not the only woman who feels like this. Every woman who has ever said “She is pretty in an obvious way” or “Yeah she has a great voice, but she’s a complete bitch” is guilty of letting the green eyes ruin a moment of her life. I hope I will get to the stage with my issues where I can accept them and make them something I am amused by. But until then I will accept any green eyes you want to throw my way ladies, go on, it will make me feel better: “She has a nice bum yeah, but she can’t write a blog to save her life. Bitch.”

Bitter Elephant

Perhaps I should expand on my last post and introduce the elephant in the room. The large grey pile of under achievement which I keep adding to. I am currently listening to Modern Life is Rubbish, an album along with many others that played throughout my teens. As a fresh young thing listening to this album I was sure that a) I would marry Damon Albarn and b) I would grow up to be a writer of some sort. Neither of these two things have happened. I am being followed around by myself of ten years ago, tugging at my retail uniform and tutting, aggrieved that I have not followed the plans she left for me. As an adult I have finally given my 17 year old self something to rebel against – her future. To say I have even started to grow up would probably be a rather undeserved compliment. I am still habitually in sulks and throw huge embarrassing tantrums when I don’t get my own way. I have come to the point, like many children do with hobbies, where I am thinking of giving up. I have tried writing and im not very good so im throwing a strop and stopping. But the truth is, I haven’t tried. I haven’t even begun to begin trying. All I have written since leaving university is a couple of short stories and some bizarre paragraphs. Diaries I have tried to keep sound self righteous and as excruciating as the journals I kept when I was still at school. I have not tried to write a novel, a poem or an article for a very long time. I am staring at the aforementioned grey elephant waiting for it to evolve enough to write the bloody things for me. As I wallow in inactivity I am surrounded by bright sparkey people, all busying themselves with creativity and ambition. I am deeply envious of these people and in my darkest moments I find myself twisting the respect I feel for them into a tiny digestible nugget of hatred. I ask myself where they get their ideas, their confidence and their passion. To be a writer I always envisaged an insatiable need to write, tearing home in order to get on with the work of being brilliant. I do not have this urge. In fact the thought fillls me with terror, even writing this now I am sweaty of palm not sure if another sentence will be following this one. But I THINK about writing and being a writer almost all the time, its just nothing….ever…..happens. I torment myself with thoughts of “if I was just a bit more confident, if I just had more chutzpah, more to say – there would be no issue”. But, alas, I cannot change who I am and so I either throw my writing tools down amongst all the other things I have given up on (dance, music, dress making, cooking etc etc) and become a bitter old wench, or I just try to write something, anything down. So this is what I plan on doing. I might not make any money, or appear on any shelves but at least when im all crinkly I will know I had tried. As for Damon, I have found someone a hundreds times better, so maybe I am capable of meeting and even surpassing my ambitions afterall.