Neoprene Indiscretions

I have been away from my desk.  Quite a long way away in fact.  Right down to Cornwall where I spent a few days at the Retallack Resort and Spa, near Newquay on a press trip to preview the UK’s first Flowrider. 

Not being one to peruse cruise brochures or hang out with the surfers down in Poole, my only reference for ‘flowrider’ had me conjuring a misogynist rapper, apple bottom jeans (I just know if I ever achieved an apple bottom it’d be of the Granny Smith variety), boots with fur and a certain amount of booty slapping.  So, I was intrigued when the invitation to pit myself against the Flowrider popped into my inbox and, because it came as part of a package with three days of fitness classes, life coaching, spa treatments, beach foraging and a personal chef thrown in, I thought I could probably cope with a few regrettable lyrics.  Heck, I might even turn this Flowrider into a progressive feminist over a tumbler of whisky, a few lines of Sylvia Plath and a close inspection of our underarm hair.

Which just goes to prove that one should always do one’s research before accepting invitations, however tempting they appear.  Because, as any grommet knows (three days in Cornwall and I speak fluent Surf, Dude), the Flowrider is a surf machine which generates waves at a constant 40mph upon which you launch yourself and a piece of laminated polystyrene.  What’s worse, you have to do this life-shortening stuff in a wet suit.

This is where I have to confess that, although I am born under the sign of Pisces, I have no natural affinity with water.  I enjoy a relaxing bath, am invigorated by a hot shower, can appreciate a warm Jacuzzi; on an uber-hot day in the Mediterranean, I might walk into the ocean til my shoulders disappear (strictly as a means of ensuring I do not thermogenically combust on my sun lounger), but my basic principle is not to get wet in general, and not to get my head wet at any cost.  So when phrases about ‘hanging ten’ and sorting out a 'wax job' (not bleedin' likely after the in-growing hairs last time round) started being bandied about, I could feel rebellion growing in my belly…

Which is precisely where you don’t want anything to grow, because you have to pour all of you into a neoprene bodystocking and, let me tell you, every bump, ripple and roll is visible, even to the shortest of the short sighted.  Our lovely coach, Carl (six foot something, sandy of hair, white of tooth and clearly born in a wet suit) spent the first ten minutes instructing our party on how to get into the bloody things, because there is quite definitely an art to it. 

As I pulled one rubbery leg on, I was reminded of modern dance classes at school when I was fourteen.  I had invested in an electric blue ‘unitard’ – an all-in-one leotard of the sort the Kids from Fame were running around in.  It looked fantastic on Seana Murphy, my super slim, five foot-nine friend with great hair and straight teeth.  Wearing the unitard, I thought, would make me look much the same.  I was wrong.  It just made me look like a dumpy, wide-hipped smurf. With buck teeth. At least the wet suit was black.  And, the upside of being a wet suit novice was that I was obliged to ask Carl to zip me up.  If the neoprene hadn’t been cold and damp from previous use, it might have been a thrill, rather than a shiver, that ran up my body.

Sucking in my tummy and clenching my buttocks I stood and faced the wave machine.  The sky darkened above us in just the same way the lights go down when the show gets under way.  “Just launch yourself into the middle and keep your arms out!” shouted Carl above the roar of the waves.  “You can’t hurt yourself!”

I did as I was told, but I couldn’t adopt the crucifix position required.  Big respect to Jesus in that department, although frankly, He did have something to support His arms in the right position.  In a matter of moments, I was balled up and hurled to the top of the machine like a spider flushed down the U bend. 

Hair wet, mascara cascading down my battered cheeks, I stood up like Bambi after a binge session.  I thought about crying, but Carl didn’t look the type with whom tears would cut any ice.  “We’ll go straight to the board!” he yelled, relentlessly enthusiastic.

I’ve seen body boards before, outside shops in Weymouth, but I’ve never actually seen one with a body on it.  Carl thrust one at me and told me to get down and throw myself onto the waves.  I looked at him.  There aren’t many men who issue orders like that expecting them to be obeyed instantly; those who do are generally in the military. Carl however, has Svengali-like powers of persuasion.  And the surprising thing is that, in spite of one’s natural inclination to resist instruction, one finds oneself doing exactly what one is told.

I wasn’t a whole lot better at the body board thing either, truth be told.  Couldn’t achieve the right position, which is not like me.  By way of consolation, the charismatic, rubber-covered chunk of prime manliness spoke in my ear: “Now, will you mind if I come behind you on the board, just to sort you out?”  Holy neoprene, Batman!  What girl could refuse?

With a lot more personal coaching – and let me tell you, I now fully appreciate the benefits of one-on-one tuition – I managed, in the course of a few days, to become a Hot Dogger.  You could too.  The trick is to keep your mouth closed at all times...

The Lie of the Land

"You see chickens," said Giles Coren, speaking to Libby Purves on Radio 4 (there I go again, giving myself away), "I see Velociraptors."

God I love Giles Coren.  Not just for his slept-in looking face with its half-hearted beard effect, nor for the profane outrages he commits backstage at The Times (though I love him especially for these) but for his... metropolitan-ness.  This week saw the first episode of 'Giles and Sue Live the Good Life' go out on BBC2, an attempt to recreate the classic seventies sit-com of the same name.  Of course, the only reason this programme is remotely watchable is because Coren is entirely antipathetic to the self sufficient 'good life'.  And that's where I really get him...

I have been living in Dorset for almost twenty years.  A twist, a slip, an accident of fate has dropped me, essentially an urban animal, into an alien environment and I am still reconciling myself to it.  I am not for one moment saying that I don't absolutely love living in Dorset; I do.  I love the soft, undulating, feminine landscape.  I love being close enough to the sea to be able to stand at the end of the land and think big thoughts about being infinitesimally small (in the cosmic scheme, obviously; there's nothing infinitesimally small about my thighs, for example).  I love being part of a village community where everybody knows my business, I love the darkness of the skies at night and the sunrises over the Chase which I can see, uninterrupted, from my kitchen window.  I adore living here.  I only have to get to Junction 6 of the M3 and I'm practically hyperventilating at the claustrophobia that is life in Suburbia.

No, what I struggle with is the drive toward sustainable living that is going on under my nose, led by my husband, my horticulturist pal, David, and Mr Fothergill, mail order purveyor of fine herbs and seeds.  Between the three of them, my half acre plot is being turned over to food production in a way that would bring Giles Coren out in a rash. 

"Time for a new bed," my husband said in an unusually firm and decisive manner.  I raised my eyebrows, unused to him making unilateral decisions about furniture.  "Did you have something in mind?" I asked, my imagination roaming the shop floors of John Lewis and Laura Ashley.
"Fourteen foot by four," he replied. 
"Doesn't sound a standard size," I said, "won't that make the bed linen really expensive?"

Of course, what he had in mind was not an exciting 'leap-on-that-Sugar- let's-make-our-own-entertainment' kind of bed, but a raised vegetable bed.  For raising vegetables.

In the original programme, it's Tom Good who desires a life close to nature,  and wife Barbara who goes along with it, supportively.  Perhaps my husband imagined I'd be much the same.  I was once I asked what I wanted to be when I grew up and I did actually answer 'Felicity Kendall', so it wasn't perhaps, such an unreasonable assumption.  My nine year old self  had worked out that there was something desperately attractive and sexy about Felicity Kendall in those dungarees on 'The Good Life'.   I could see that she had a certain kind of power, but I mistakenly took that power to lie within the dungarees, not the woman.  This led to some regrettable fashion errors in the late eighties and many invitations to join the Gay and Lesbian Soc. at university. 

 I failed miserably at being Felicity Kendall back then, and have gone on to fail pretty spectacularly on the supportive wife front, eschewing Sunday afternoons weeding and pricking out (oh go on then, a little pricking out has occurred from time to time) though I am quite happy to eat the results of my husband's efforts.

Our garden now has five raised veg beds.  Side by side and initially empty, they looked like a row of graves.  For a while I was wary of ending up in one myself.  "What do we need five for?"  I asked, "Are you planning on feeding the entire village?"
He looked at me with incredulity.  "Given that you have written for gardening magazines," he said, "have you learned nothing about crop rotation?"

Well, let me tell you.  I bloody have now.  It involves losing your husband to the garden, or to seed catalogues or to Gardeners' Question Time.  It involves washing a lot of thick socks and corduroy trousers.  And it involves applauding the harvest, even if it's curly kale and you hate curly kale more than anything.  The only good thing about the whole business is that I get to wander around with a trug.  Tragically, it appears I'm more Margo than Barbara.  (But hey, maxi dresses are having a moment...)

The other thing we have in our self sufficiency drive, like Giles and Sue, is chickens.  Five of them at the moment, free ranging, or rather, free rampaging, or even free ravaging the bits of garden that aren't veg beds.  The children have given them names to make the bonding process easier, but I lack the empathy required to make a relationship with poultry even with whimsical names like Rose and Marje and Bernard (poor Bernard, not just a chicken, but a gender confused chicken).  Just like Giles, I can see them only as expressions of primitive nervous systems, all jerky, jurassic impulses with feathers.  I challenge anyone to look a chicken in the eye and tell me it has a soul.

I shall be spending the next few weeks praying that my husband is too busy to watch Giles and Sue as they turn a perfectly decent north London garden into a small holding.   They've got a pig and I don't want him getting any ideas...

The Curse of the Corn Chip

Slicing gherkins to the accompaniment of Mark Lawson's uniquely irritating, nonsensically undulating tones on Radio 4's 'Front Row' one evening, my attention was caught by a review of Simon Stephens' new play, 'Punk Rock'.

Lawson warbled that it was 'a piece that immediately feels like one of the major dramas of our time.' What a pitch. I raced to google the show, trembling with FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).  Imagine how my heart thrilled to discover that it was coming to a theatre near me.  Given that there's almost nothing near me unless you count dairy cows and a septic tank, this in itself felt like a small miracle.

And so it was that I arrived with a happy heart at the Salisbury Playhouse one evening for the four star reviewed Major Drama of our Time.

It's a play set in a public school and incorporates some loud music and swearing as well as reference to teenage sex.  Oh and there's a certain amount of violence.  Given these credentials, it was always going to be a winner for A level Theatre Studies and B Tech Performing Arts students.  Hell, start them on accessible swearing and teen themes and work your way up to existentialism, I say.  The theatre went dark; the kids from the sixth form college that were ranged in front of me, squealed and cheered.  I gritted my teeth. 

The action had barely got under way when the oversized youth in front of me dragged out a catering sized packet of Doritos (other corn chips are available - none though, smell quite like the real thing) and began dipping into them.  With impressive dexterity, he eased them out of the foil bag straight into his extra large mouth, carefully licking the fairy-corn-chip dust from his everso slightly hairy top lip.  To be fair to him, he was making an effort to eat them quietly.  I could hear him sucking them before he crunched them.  Slowly. 

In my former life as a teacher the first thing I taught my students before I'd let them near the public on outings to the theatre was that there is an art to being a live audience.  "No whooping when the lights go down and all confection should be despatched outside of the auditorium.  The effort and concentration required to unwrap a Fox's Glacier Mint or worse, a Starburst, takes you away from the action on stage.  It's inconsiderate of the other people around you, who have paid hard earned cash for their tickets, and it's disrespectful to the professionals sweating it out on stage for their Equity minimum wage,"  I'd roar.

Mastication in public is a dodgy area at the best of times, but my Dorito drenched neighbour, who had so pungently fragranced the air, seemed oblivious to my offence.  My husband, seated at my right hand side, a bit like Jesus, intervened.  Leaning forward, he asked the fat headed goon if he intended to munch his way through the entire first half?  It was enough of a hint.  The packet was put beneath his seat until the interval.

I popped out for a swift gin and grapefruit and, passing the lad and his peers, overheard him slating the unreasonable man in the row behind who'd told him to stop eating.  Clearly, this had made more of an impact than the (brilliant) show.  I don't know if it was the chemicals I'd imbibed from breathing the Doritos dust, but I couldn't let it go.  I tapped him on the shoulder and said (oh I'm not proud of this, let me tell you) "You wouldn't have starved for the fifty-five minutes of Act 1, you know."

At this, a bespectacled woman sprang at me.  "If you've got a problem with one of my students, you should bring it to me!" she announced.  I looked at her.  I looked at the lad.  Seventeen?
"Is he not responsible for his own behaviour, then?" I asked.  I did a quick trawl of my memory.  At seventeen, I'd crashed my Fiat Panda, doing untold damage to the engine.  At no point did any one of my teachers throw themselves between me and my irate father and tell him to address his grievance to them.

The conversation that ensued left me incredulous.  The bespectacled teacher accused me of being rude and overbearing.  I countered that she had a responsibility to teach her students how to behave in the theatre.  "Don't you tell me how to do my job, love," she retaliated.  It became clear that she intended to defend to the death (mine, if she had her way) that boy's right to eat crisps in the theatre.  "You don't have to take that and you're not going to," she said to him, "I'll swap seats with you!"

I gave up.  I give up.  Another class of teenagers is left to stew in its ignorance and their teacher thinks she's doing them a service.

The play was about a school shooting.  Doritos weren't mentioned as a motive, but perhaps Simon Stephens might explore that another time...