A Race Apart

“Have a look at these,” says Sarah, placing a box of trainers onto my kitchen table.

“MBTs,” she announces proudly.  I stare at her.  “Masai Barefoot Technology,” she adds, urging comprehension.

“Are you in training with the Kenyan distance running team?” I ask.  “I suppose there’s a space in the team now that Sammy What’s-his-name's tragically fallen from his balcony…”

“Don’t be silly, I’m in training for June 25^th.”

June 25th.  Have I missed something?  It doesn’t ring any bells.

“Sports day? The Mothers’ Race? You can’t have forgotten?”

Of course.  The Mothers’ Race. Once upon a time, when mothers still wore pinnies and slept in rollers, this was a little bit of sadistic fun invented by games masters to ensure that women attending Sports Day couldn’t nod off in the sun behind their copy of Woman’s Weekly while their little Johnnies wobbled down the track with newly off-ration eggs.  Fast forward fifty years however and, like everything else in British culture, it’s an altogether meaner, more competitive story.

Last year, forty-two year old Sarah came second in the Mothers’ Race.  The mother who beat her is nearly ten years younger with a thirty-four inch inside leg (Sarah is five foot four with a following wind).  These facts are immaterial, apparently, as no handicapping system applies to novelty races, much to her dismay.  Instead, she has chosen to approach the event as if it were the London Marathon, which explains the over-priced, hi tech trainers.

My own introduction to the Mothers’ Race came several years ago.  I was thirty-four – just a filly – and gym fit.  I took the race at face value: a bit of a laugh before we broke open the picnic lunch and the tepid cava.  “Shall we jog at the back and chat?” I asked my pal, Mandy who nodded in agreement.  We took our places in the line-up, me in my flip-flops, she in Dunlop Green Flash.  I could have sworn she hadn’t arrived in those… 

The starter’s gun sounded.  Mandy disappeared into a cloud of dust; the dust I was eating.  I was left to amble in last, a picture of bewildered confusion.  It was only as I flip flopped across the tape that now lay fluttering on the ground, that I realised the Mothers’ Race is a front for so much more. 

What I had failed to appreciate in this uber-competitive era, is that where you finish in the Mothers’ Race invites judgement not just of your running ability, but of your competence as a parent. The faster you run, clearly the better able you are to bring up a child.  The mother who breasts the line in first place therefore, is the best mother. And she even gets a medal from the Headmaster to prove it.

If you wanted evidence to support this unpalatable thesis, you’ve only to think of Princess Di.  In the face of self-confessed faithlessness, philandering and proper dodgy liaisons, she retained an unassailable position in the mothering stakes.  She’d surely earned it, for who cannot recall her spirited win in the Mothers’ Race at her sons’ prep school in 1989?  (Before you protest, I simply won’t countenance any theories that the other mothers let her win just so they’d be safe from accusations of treason.)

“So,” says Sarah, “will you be taking part?”  I see that she is already sizing me up; she needn’t worry.  I have every intention of running, but none whatever of competing.

“I expect so,” I say, “I like to support the children.”

“That’s right,” she agrees, “it’s not the winning that matters but the taking part.”

I snort.  It seems to me that that particular adage belongs to a bygone Britain. Today, it’s only winning that matters, even when it sets friend against friend, mother against mother. What we need is more people prepared to lose graciously.

“Why do you always come last, Mummy?” asks my younger son when we discuss the matter later.

“So nobody else has to,” I reply.

Public Displays of Affliction

I chose to work on the day of the Royal Wedding.  I live with a Marxist intellectual for whom there is simply no debate about the having of a monarchy; any events with footmen, bearskins and carriages bring him out in rash and a rage which even the poking of fun at badly dressed princesses will not quell.

"So, you don't want to knock up a batch of fairy cakes so I can have the girls round to watch it?" I asked a few weeks before the big day. (His cakes are, I am loathe to admit, much better than mine.  I think it's something to do with a superior confidence about timing, but, in these straitened times, the MOD might like to take me on in munitions; if anything would fell Gadaffi, my cupcakes are a cert.) 

"No." He replied.  "Frankly I have better things to do than create confection in celebration of a bunch of sponging German bastards.  And you say 'have the girls round' but it'll be a street party before you know it and I, for one, am not spending the day being groped by local farmers' wives tipsy on warm chardonnay, in the name of community cohesion."

I got the message.  I have seen him groped by at least one local farmer's wife behind the calving shed of a local dairy farm, his eyes wide with terror as she launched herself at him to the strains of 'You Saw Me Crying in the Chapel' sung by the bloke who hires out skips round here.  I understood.  This is not H E Bates territory.

"Ok, ok.  But I think you're being churlish..." I ventured.
"I'm not being churlish.  I just think that, in an evolved society, a monarchy is an anachronism.  It doesn't make sense."

What can you say?  Of course it doesn't make sense.  But lots of things that bring pleasure don't necessarily make sense.  Take the erotic dream I had on my ski holiday last month.  Much to my distress it featured Ian Hislop and Boris Johnson. At the same time. Of course, I attributed it to altitude sickness - I don't go for gnomish, bald men or mop headed buffoons -  but it's a perfect example of how something that is entirely illogical, repellent even, can bring a (very great) deal of pleasure.

"Eighty percent of Brits don't want the monarchy removed," I said.
"Then I share an island with fifty million people who ought to be more offended by their status than they are.  That said, I accept the will of the majority whilst wishing it were otherwise.  At best I am indifferent to the royal family.  Make your own cakes."

In the end, I got the call to work, broadcasting essential updates about the Royal Weather to the south - open top carriage, or glass roof?  Would the clouds keep their tears to themselves or shed them in a tribute to Lady Di, who unavoidably couldn't be there?

As I drove into work, I listened to the radio coverage, swapping between Radio 4 (James Naughtie speaking over Ed Stourton and clearly positioning himself as the voice of the royal gigs yet to come) and Five Live (lots of gushing along the route and fabulously trivial contributions from people in the crowd, all hosted by 'Nicholas Campbell'. 'Nicholas Campbell'? Perhaps he thought the princes were slipping into their strides with Five on in the background).

I was somewhere on the M27 when Julian Worricker, catastrophically unfit to report on the first glimpse of Kate by the hoardes along the Mall, was asked to describe the dress.  Sorry, that should read: THE DRESS.  The best kept secret, saving the honeymoon destination.  The dress with which fashion writers across the planet had filled miles of copy even before a needle had been threaded.  THAT dress, Julian.

"It's a long sleeved outfit... I think it's a V neck outfit." 

Alexander McQueen would have hanged himself all over again.  Nothing about lace or fabric or the rarely-seen tiara borrowed from HM.  Or the striking similarity to Princess Margaret's 1960 wedding dress.  And nothing about the expression on her father's face; no comments about how his career as cabin crew would have equipped him not only to keep his emotions under control but also to walk down the aisle without treading on anybody's toes (a fact nobody pointed out). 

This is where the BBC needs to sort itself out.  It's all very well having reporters dotted along the route, but reporters are used to reporting news. The fall of dictators, the collapse of economies, the hacking of phones; that they can do. But this wasn't news.  It was a wedding.  What Auntie Beeb needed was aunts.  Aunts speculate, they criticise, they praise, they gossip, they romanticise, they bring up family secrets and things unspoken of for generations; they draw attention to visible panty lines and paste jewellery;  they notice.  An aunt, on seeing Elton John in the congregation, would have made a quip about there being more than one old queen at this wedding.  An aunt would have commented on how tired he and David Furnish looked, but would have graciously balanced it with relief that there was no baby sick on their suits.  An aunt would have hazarded a guess that David Beckham was regretting those tattoos on his neck, but added that Victoria was doing an heroic thing wearing those sky scraper heels in her condition.  I'm an aunt.  I know these things.  Book me.

By the time I'd got into the BBC South newsroom, Kate was alighting from the Roller and smiling.  Then Pippa was sorting out her dress, calculatingly bending down to trigger a global gasp in the tweetersphere in respect of her 'fine ass'.  And, as Kate began her long walk away from freedom, I was hooked. 
"Those eyebrows," I whispered to Jo, whose husband had pulled the plug out of the telly that morning, "those teeth... so beautifully captured in the parentheses of such charming dimples..."
And, as she (let's face it) led her father down to the balding bloke in scarlet, I exhaled in awe: "That is a girl who has seriously got her shit together." (Jim Naughtie eat your heart out.)

At a quarter past eleven I was obliged to phone into the BBC Weather Centre for the mid-morning conference where the big news was that the risk of showers that had threatened the Royal Happiness had been downgraded. 
"Less than twenty percent now, I think," said Jay Wynne. A Royal Weather Person from another region suddenly made an involuntary noise.
"What?  What is it?" asked an alarmed Jay Wynne who, professional that he is, clearly did not have one eye on the telly.
"He's struggling to get the ring on," I said.  "And now he's offering to honour her with his body..."
"Oh," he said, distinctly unimpressed, and continued to confine the risk of showers to the coast.

Thankfully, the momentous balcony scene occurred between bulletins and I was able to enjoy to the full the chaste kiss which these days serves to indicate the consummation of the royal marriage.  Back in Henry's day, the bride and groom would be sent off the bedchamber as soon as the ring was on, with clergy standing outside the door to confirm God's will was being done and the honouring with the body had happened.  Which lucky BBC journo would be entrusted with coverage of that, I wonder?

Of course we are only interested in the kiss because our schools all have 'No PDA' rules (and if you don't know that PDA stands for 'Public Displays of Affection' you were never in danger of being caught in a game of playground Kiss Chase).  No PDA along with the 'thirty centimetre rule' limiting the proximity of the opposite sex outside of the private sphere - these are the regulations that have made ours the uptight, sex obsessed, sensually retarded culture it is.  Which is why we're so keen to see the kiss.  We're actually waiting for a prefect to appear from behind the curtains and slam the miscreants in detention.

And so a youngish, baldish man kissed a pretty sorted and pretty, sorted, young woman and it was done.

I spent the rest of the day battling irrational jealousy of my girlfriends who were texting me updates from the royal wedding events they were attending:
'Anchored off Brownsea with prawns and Pinot!  Is it gonna [sic] rain?'
'Totally hammered.  Who said the civil list was a bad idea? lol '
'Look like Alice Cooper.  Unfounded claims about this mascara. Keep crying!!!!!!'
To each I replied simply: 'Have Royal Wedding Envy. Do not disclose to husband. '

Eventually, I took my cue from the Duke and Duchess and left in an old car.  Driving home I tuned in once again to Five Live where Drive were doing a round-up of the nation's street parties.  They crossed to Paul Greer, live from Bucklebury's celebration where it seemed that the population of the village was intoxicated not only by the free flowing Jacobs Creek, but by the media attention they have clearly embraced.

"Is that it?" asked the professionally bouncy Asma Mir. "Is it all done and dusted?"
"Oh Lord, I really hope so," came a weary response from Greer.

It sounded as though Paul had taken one for the team.  No doubt Bucklebury has its fair share of farmers' wives.  You can have too much community cohesion sometimes.

Life in Black and White

When do you know that you've reached middle age?  Not 'late youth' as I've been defining myself since I turned forty, but actual skin-slackening, life-weary middle age?  I can tell you.  It's when adverts on the telly leave you feeling excluded and incredulous and when the discussion of plans to alter the output on Radio 4 make you want to lie down in the road in protest.

I like to think that, although I'm knocking on a bit, I'm still where it's at (whatever 'it' is); I know my Hollister from my Abercrombie and Fitch, my Tinie Tempah from my Biggie Smalls and although I still write in coherent English, I can txt and msg gr8 (though these hateful contractions are painful beyond words to me, who delights in the visual experience of words, as well as in their functionality - see, I really, truly am a Radio 4 listener and there ain't no denyin' it).  But I find I am being steadily alienated by a culture created by bright, undoubtedly youthful, advertising execs, who are so tuned in to the cultural zeitgeist that they're probably on the verge of existing only as a version of themselves on Facebook.

That I am no longer part of the demographic at which funky, modern products and services are aimed took me completely by surprise.  There I was, collapsed on the sofa, one eye on 'Words with Friends', one eye on the telly and the other appreciating a crisp glass of discounted Sauvignon Blanc (my third, if you're wondering about the multiple eye thing) when an advert came on featuring two young people in a music shop.  She's wearing a jumper clearly thieved from the wardrobe mistress on the 1978 telly series, 'Heidi' while he's in a single breasted suit from 'Alfie' - the original, not the heinous Jude Law version.  They are so achingly attractive they'd clearly never require the online dating service they're advertising.  Anyway, not only do they look fabulous in their stolen clothes but they sing and play instruments too (at least, he does, reinforcing the male-as-talent-behind-pretty-girl-lead stereotype) and what they sing about is 'old movies'.  Old movies 'like Godfather III'.

Well, not only did I choke on my special offer wine, but I accidentally hit 'submit' on my Scrabble game and sent 'red' instead of 'redoubt' (the 'b' would've hit a triple letter bonus) which was going to detrimentally impact on my score against an actor friend playing me from a New York rehearsal room (oh, get me!). 

"Godfather III," I raged, "was released in 1990.  I have pants older than that film!"  But where for me, 'old movies' means 'Casablanca', 'The Philadelphia Story' and 'Way Out West', for the genuinely young, 'old' in this context means any film that doesn't feature a mobile phone.  Whoops, no, I'm wrong.  There are mobiles as big as shoe boxes in 'Wall Street' and, according to a twenty-five year old friend of mine, that's definitely old.  I sighed.  It was made in 1987.  Same as my A levels.  Anyway, you get the picture.  My old movies are way older than advertising account managers' old movies.  Theirs are in colour for a start.  I started to feel very black and white.

No sooner had this feeling gripped me by my aged gusset, than another advert grabbed my attention.  This was for a yogurt branded 'Nom'.  I'm not sure I can articulate my irrational revulsion at this word.  It's something to do with its ugliness.  It's supposedly onomatopoeic but if I ever met a person who made the cretinous 'nom, nom' sound when they ate I'm afraid I would be provoked to violence.  But I note from my young Facebook 'friends' that this is a popular and contemporary expression of gleeful delight at deliciousness; the modern equivalent of 'yummy' I suppose. Now, whilst I would be happy, grateful even, to be described as a 'yummy mummy' I would never want to be termed a 'nommy mommy'. 

So that's it.  I will never be able to eat that creamy, dairy dessert, no matter how tempting, how flavoursome, healthy and bone-strengthening it might be.  I hate its name and that's that.  For the same reasons I'd never be able to make a relationship with anyone called Bradley, no matter how gorgeous, intelligent, physically well coordinated he might be, nor how many modern languages he might speak.

If, from this, you deduce that I'm not coping very well with change and the nuances of modern life, you'd be right.  The final underlining in bold felt tip of this fact came when I heard of the BBC Trust's recommendations that Radio 4 seek a younger, less educated, less middle class, more northern (these all to be unrelated) audience.  AS IF THERE ISN'T ENOUGH BBC CONTENT THAT ALREADY SERVES THESE PEOPLE. (Ohmigod, I did it.  I did visual shouting.)

Radio 4 does a brilliant, sadly unique, job of providing intelligent programmes for intelligent people.  And those intelligent people might not be educated, or middle class (but they might be) and they might not be young (but some are) but they do need a real choice about what to listen to and that choice must include intellectually challenging content.  For my money, Radio 4 is the most democratic institution that exists in the media. Find it and you find yourself an education; the education the government can't provide, filled with classical civilisation, science, history, philosophy, sociology and literature as well as current affairs, politics, comedy, drama and The Archers (because even boffins need down time).

 What the Trust fails to consider is that most twenty-somethings, infantilised by a state that can't provide jobs for them and which obliges them to live at home longer because they can't afford to move out, aren't necessarily ready for Radio 4.  They're listening to all the shouty stuff (nom, nom!) and the loud music on Radio 1, because, let's face it, you can't get tipsy with your girlfriends and get dressed for a Saturday night listening to Clive Anderson's Loose Ends, can you? 

Just as one graduates from Coco Pops to Alpen, so young Radio 1 listeners can mature into Radio 4 listeners. I should have a bumper sticker made:  'Radio 4 listeners get there in their own time.'  The Trust members need to think back to their own youth and they might just remember that there was a time when knocking back twelve cans of Carlsberg and making an arse of yourself in front of your mates held infinitely more appeal than Melvyn Bragg and 'In Our Time'.  And if I've got that wrong, Melvyn needs to move to Radio 1. 

When I think about new yogurt and old movies, I have to know there's a place I can go to where it's ok to be old.  Radio 4 was it...

I Touch, You Touch...

It’s January.  I can tell that much from the sweet wrappers, pine needles and damp, balled up tissues that litter my house.  And from the over flowing laundry baskets, the dust mice and the slabs of fruit cake that, in another existence and another armoury, might have ended the war in Afghanistan a long time ago. 

Yes, Christmas is over and I can no longer pretend that wasting time is a legitimate practice.  Which is a real shame, because over the festive season just past, I’ve got really rather good at it. 

Like anything, becoming good at Time Wasting takes practice and boy, have I been practising.  What with the snow and ice and a most unwelcome bout of seasonal flu, conditions have been conducive to doing very little, but doing it guilt free (it’s been tricky shaking off the Protestant-work-ethic-plus-Catholic-guilt combo with which I was brought up, but I think I’ve shimmied it out of my system now).

First, the snow came. I look back to the morning at the gym where I authoritatively told the members of my Body Pump class that we were anticipating a little ‘nuisance snowfall’ and I have to laugh.  That was my moment, my Michael Fish moment.  Just two days later the snow in my village was two feet deep.  If Rock Hudson were passing by, you’d swear my house was Ice Station Zebra (stay where you are, Rock, it’s cold down here). 

I don’t want to sound miserable.  Snow is great!  Really it is.  In Val d’Isere or Whistler or the South Pole, where it belongs. Not here in Central Southern where the local authorities’ only severe weather strategy appears to be to hope it doesn’t happen.  Not when heating fuel is being charged at 100% mark-up by racketeering oil companies.  And not when we’d got tickets to see Stewart Lee at the Leicester Square Theatre.

And yet, thanks to the Jet Stream dodging about the stratosphere like a drunk driver, snow fell in huge quantities right on my bloody house, turning even the simplest of excursions into journeys of Homeric proportions.  Eventually, worn down by the prospect of yet again crawling five miles to the main road at five miles per hour, I gave up and slumped into a chair with my i pod Touch.  And that’s when the whole Time Wasting thing really kicked in.

I won my i pod Touch in a competition in the summer.  To be frank, I had thought of it as an upgrade to my Nano, which I used only for playing tunes.  I’m of the eighties; as far as I was concerned, the i pod was a size zero Walkman.  Ok, it seemed quite good that I could get my e mails on it, and the free menstrual app had a certain novelty value, though, as my husband acerbically remarked, with PMS like mine, his predictions would be more accurate than any technology could be.  But as for any real place in my life, the Touch had none.

Fast forward to the festive season.  The boxed set of ‘Porridge’ has been watched, the entire ‘Die Hard’ series has been viewed, deconstructed and reconstructed by my sons in the sitting room and Father Christmas, struggling through the snow, has added two more i pod Touches to the family collection. 

These new arrivals, with their cameras, microphones and Facetime inspire a surge in interest.  Boxing Day is spent comparing them and something called ‘Home Sharing’ happens. i Tunes ‘Home Sharing’ is a scheme whereby one householder’s apps can be shared for free with three others.  I let my children take my Touch away, semi-naked and it came back later that day fully clothed in dictionaries, tube maps, radio apps and other stuff that will apparently enhance my life and human effectiveness. 

I was flummoxed by something calling itself ‘Angry Birds’.

“What’s this?” I asked.  “If it’s Jenny Éclair’s podcast or anything featuring Carol McGiffin you might as well remove it now,” I said.

It’s not though.  It’s a game where some red birds are angry enough with some green pigs to want to destroy their homes.  Talk about Darwinism gone mad.  But I’ve discovered that catapulting birds at buildings can be terribly therapeutic and it’s taught me a great deal about the sort of angle you’d need to achieve if you wanted to demolish a tallish building.  I bet the Taleban use this app all the time…

One of the most addictive apps I’ve acquired though, is ‘Words with Friends’, a virtual Scrabble game.  I’ve always loved Scrabble and have considered it one of the few areas of competitive sport at which I am able to succeed.  I’ve thrashed almost everybody I know who owns a board and have revelled in the smug satisfaction of nailing the triple word score with all my letters – the hole-in-one, clear-the-table feat of the game.  So ‘Words with Friends’ (the free version, with the irritating adverts) was right up my street.  In the first flurry of activity, I started games with every friend I know with an i phone or i pod Touch, spending precious minutes that I might otherwise be using productively, conjuring words, checking for moves and swearing.  Even my dyslexic chums were beating me.  Why?  Well, I did wonder.  Turns out there’s a  ‘Words with Friends’ ‘Cheat’ app too which finds the highest scoring word from your letter selection.  I’ve joined the rule benders myself now, downloaded that and am cheating with the best of them; at least the playing field’s even.

If I haven’t convinced you yet that the i pod Touch or i phone (if you can afford it), is man’s best friend, let me tell you about the radio app.  TuneIn Radio allows you to listen in real time to the radio, or, more impressively, record it and listen back later!  I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.  All my anxiety about being left in the dark once Nigel fell off the roof in ‘The Archers’ was allayed.  It didn’t matter that I was going to be out that evening.  I recorded it and listened to Shula break the tragic news of Nigel’s fatal night on the rooftiles while I brushed my teeth before bed!

There, that’s sold it hasn’t it?  Your house could soon look like mine.  The European Laundry Mountain in one corner, starving, unwashed children in another while you scroll through your apps, checking the long term weather forecast in Tirana and wondering whether you can beat your highest score on Doodle Jump.  Go on, go on!  Let your fingers do the dancing!

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...