Results Day

Tags

A-Levels, Assange, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, Ecuador, Inclusion Body Syndrome, Michelangelo, Sven-Goran Eriksson, Tom Daley, UCAS

Thursday

Now we are fighting with Ecuador.  They are probably just jealous that they did not win any medals.  Why are we becoming involved for a skinnier version of Boris Johnson whose name is half donkey/ half angel?  Maybe the London Mayor could hire an Ecuadorian costume- you know, white knickerbockers, poncho and a fake plait- and could zoom out of the front door as a decoy while Assange is enticed out of the rear exit, straight into an illegal tackle by Sven-Goran Eriksson and the Swedish Secret Police.

Cracks are showing in David.  Not Cameron.  Well, in Cameron too. Michelangelo’s statue is showing its age, apparently.  Maybe he should cover up a bit.  He’s not exactly a juvenile Tom Daley, though even he had to tone up for the Olympics.  A little pair of stone Speedos over the Florentine loins would cover a multitude of sins.

It’s A-level Results day and so the local papers will be full of screaming, teary girls giving each other group hugs.  Today is the date responsible for the content of so many nauseating round robins in the festive season.

Mothers will be haunting doormats for envelopes and shouting upstairs to their unrousable sons who are still coiled up under their duvets, as if victims of Inclusion Body Syndrome, that mysterious reptile affliction which causes snakes to tie themselves in knots, roll up and stargaze.  Little do the mums know that their sons already had their results on their mobiles hours before and have promptly gone back to sleep, ignoring UCAS and university entry.  Let mum do it.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

Closing Time

Tags

Annie Lennox, Boris Johnson, Brave New World, Darcey Bussell, David Cameron, Duchess of Cambridge, Eric Idle, Fatboy Slim, Grayson Perry, husband, London 2012, Lord Coe, Olympics, Poor Clares, Prince Harry, Prince William, Ray Davies, Russell Brand, The Queen, The Tempest, Trinity, Vivienne Westwood

The Tenth Sunday after Trinity

Clare of Assisi, Founder of the Minoresses (Poor Clares), 1253.

Maybe she would have something pertinent to say about the economy?

A scorcher with threatening thunder which disappeared after 2pm.

9pm saw my hubby and myself on our starter sofas, ready for action viewing.

A strangely nasal singer commenced the proceedings and a bad Churchill impression did not light my Olympic flame.  Same speech from The Tempest ; different hats.

Prince Harry appeared, instead of The Queen.  A solitary Duchess of Cambridge was there. Probably Wills was hovering overhead in a helicopter, watching in case his brother became too flirty with his wife.  If Harry got too fresh, Wills might have Kate sent to the Tower and could marry Pippa the following day.  They can be like that.

Batman came out of a Robin, but he was American, wasn’t  he?  What’s he got to do with it?

There was too much Our House, or One’s House, as someone joked at the Jubilee.  Probably the Royal version is One’s Hice.

The Ku Klux clan appeared to be cycling past, or was it a belated Semana Santa procession for the Spanish contingent?  No, it was The Pet Shop Boys.  One Direction  had the crowd singing the annoying Na-na-na-na refrain, while the whole of London seemed bent on street sweeping, which isn’t a bad idea.  Cameron wants 100% youth employment, so there’s your answer, Dave.

Ray Davies of The Kinks understood that the crowd were not completely thick and so gave them a variation to join in – namely, Sha-la-la-la, which made a change.  At least it was a catchy tune and distracted you from the bankers committing suicide by hurling themselves out of the Gherkin, which some would have found the best bit.

Russell Brand did his I am the Walrus act and I was glad that that awful mate of his, who only gets  him into trouble, wasn’t there, namely Mr Woss.  Grayson Perry, as Clare seemed to be with him, but, then again, it all happened so quickly that I might have been mistaken.

Fatboy Slim – I recognised the oxymoron, was at the centre of a huge octopus, while Jesse J gave everyone their big chance to sing La la la la confidently, because by now most of them knew the words.

The fashion parade was interesting but the commentators did not elaborate on the designers. I thought that Annie Lennox was probably in Vivienne Westwood for her number, but I failed to recognise the Dracula connection.

The pixels and lighting were stunning throughout. Eric Idle’s skating nuns would not have been out of place on Duddingston Loch .  Idle wasn’t shot out of the cannon, but Russell Brand, no, Russell Grant could have been. He had had plenty of practice on Strictly. Now that he has stopped dancing, he might have put on weight and got stuck, however. Sergei, the meerkat might have done it well, but he is anxious to maintain his dignity, so he might not have been too enthusiastic.

The rap did not appeal to me, even though the audience now had the opportunity to repeat, Ay-oh in response to Baby, let’s go.  I thought that was Teletubbie lingo.

Harry was getting a bit bored and started chewing, even just after the big We will rock you number.  I hoped that the Koreans  or Iranians wouldn’t get any ideas for a We will nuke you number.

The Greek flag was raised and that would have been a good moment for a whip-round, I felt.  The Mods on scooters could have whizzed around, collecting the bags.

From Greeks we fast-forwarded to Georgios Michael, who danced all over Damian’s sprayed flag, singing about Freedom and wearing a miniature For The Love of God skull on his belt buckle.  Again, that song title could have suggested a panty pad advertising jingle. Maybe he was out on bail or had a new release coming soon.  Wake me up before you go-go might have given the crowds a chance to vocalise the double syllables that they had been practising throughout the evening.

The London Eye becoming a baldacchino was a powerful symbol of immanence over a vacuum, I thought.  Maybe Zeus or Boris was meant to bless the gathering, but there was no sense of the divine that I could detect.  Lennon’s Imagine stated that there was no heaven nor hell, but only sky above us.  It was moving, but a profound sense of spiritual emptiness swept over me.  Were we meant to worship Man as Superman?  After the exposure of the clay feet of the Tiger Woods of this world, I could only feel limitation, not exaltation.

Past gods materialised in the shape of Mercury- Freddy, to be precise.  He raised the bar of audience participation by challenging the crowd to replicate fairly complex vowel sequences.  The figures on the screens made me think of Brave New World and the feelies.  Was I to become a pleb?

It must have been difficult to entertain everyone while 204 flags were being brought in and athletes were filling in the stripes, like painting by numbers.  Indian drums created tension and suspense, but the white box set building was a natural point for nipping off to the loo, but not if you were in the crowd, obviously.  I wondered about the facilities.  Basically, it was going on too long for anyone’s bladder capacity.  No wonder Philip had given it a miss.

Darcey Bussell’s Firebird section was dazzling, but then there were speeches and that French guy never seemed to smile, though he recognised that our hosting had been happy and glorious, to coin a phrase-not.  Coe smiled, but then he has a job lined up for the next few years, which is more than the marvellous volunteers probably have. To continue The Tempest references, we might echo Antonio, the usurping King of Milan:

Worthy Sebastian….

…methinks I see it in thy face,

What thou should’st be…

My strong imagination sees a crown

Dropping upon thy head..

I was relieved when the accident-prone Johnson managed to avoid setting himself alight, by furling his flag too close to the flames.  Maybe that was why the Duke of Cambridge was hovering overhead, ready to unleash gallons of water from on high.  Or was he on standby to douse Boris’ burning bush or to dampen Harry’s passion? Maybe he was trying to persuade his granny to jump.  Coe addressed Your Majesties, so he clearly expected them to drop in. Perhaps they had missed their cue.  As a fallback, the massed pipe bands could have played:

Oh ye cannae shove your granny oot a ‘copter-x2

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

Murray Mints Gold

Tags

Andy Murray, Ben Ainslie, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, James Naughtie, London 2012, Olympics, Pussy Riot, Roger Federer, Spice Girls, tennis

Sunday

Thunderstorms forecast.  Interesting for Ben Ainslie, I deliberated.

Twenty three medals up for grabs today.  Four weeks ago Andy was greetin’ on court.  I wondered who would be crying at the end of the day.  Would Federer treat Andy like a giant midge at a barbecue, ie/ like a harmless nuisance to be shooed away, or would he see him as a pesky wasp who might give him a fatal anaphylactic sting?

At 2pm I settled down on the sofa to start watching.  It was difficult as I had to keep flicking over to see Ben’s progress against the Great Dane.  Did that make Andy’s opponent a St Bernard?  I wouldn’t have minded being rescued from a crevasse by a brandy delivered on the rocks by the Swiss, to continue the canine and/or avalanche imagery.

Ainslie came in all flares blazing, having blocked the Dane’s wind.  That must have been painful for the Scandinavian.  I once read, in Suetonius perhaps, that Roman emperors, but can’t remember which one, had believed in never obstructing wind.  But Ben hadn’t been a Classicist, I remembered. Maybe Boris could give him a few lessons to round him off as a New Elizabethan.  Then James Naughtie could fit him into one of his programmes.

Hey, Andy was improving all the time and Roger was making unforced errors.  He won in three sets and Roger slunk off.  He looked as if he needed a brandy.  Andy even hugged a random child in the crowd.  Kim looked broody.

Meanwhile Jedburgh and parts of Pembrokeshire were being washed away, like Federer’s hopes.

The news is full of Pussy Riot.  Having worked in a girls’ school, I could recognise the concept.  One of the band members is called Squirrel and she was a spokespussy for the band. In a very un-Tuftylike pronouncement she accused Putin of being afraid of girls. Goodness knows how he will react to the re-formation of The Spice Girls. Probably pretty favourably, but he is only over on a flying visit to see the Judo and to get a lecture from Cameron, so he will probably miss their comeback.   David isn’t afraid of girls, I thought. He sends LOL texts to giant Squirrelly ones that you wouldn’t trust to teach your child the Highway Code, let alone the moral code.  But she is an endangered species now.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

Something Sensational

Tags

Andy Murray, Boris Johnson, gold medal, London 2012, Lord Coe, Roger Federer, Stella McCartney, Team GB

Saturday

Three golds in less than an hour.  Good old Boris can challenge the gloomsters.

Apparently software enables computers to make decisions.  I wish I could have an algorithm which might help me to get out of bed.  I feel sure that some of my friends already have one that programmes them to make 10,000 purchases a day, so it isn’t so surprising that the Stock Market suffers similar compulsions.

The day ended brilliantly for Team GB after the doubles match with Andy and Laura. He will have to go to bed earlyish, I mused, as he is playing Federer tomorrow and then he has another doubles match.

I think Stella McCartney’s gear looks great, whether it is in the form of briefs or headbands.  Andy even has the sweatbands.  But who on earth designed those quasi-molar, Cyclops-eyed Wentworth and Mandeville creatures?  Probably the same weirdo who came up with Mr Blobby.

It was a day when things had come off – athletes’ shoes, or rowers’ seats.  Lord Coe said we had witnessed something sensational.

Unkindest Cut?

Tags

Alan Bennett, Boris Johnson, Bras, James Naughtie, John Humphries, London 2012, Lord Coe, Olympics, pigeons, Sarah Montague’, Scotland, Scottish Play, Tesco, Wiggo

Listening to the news at 1am, I tried to filter out the depressing latest bulletins from Syria.

I perked up, however, when I caught a snippet about fifteenth century linen bras having been discovered in a Tyrolean castle.  It proved, apparently, that this type of underwear had been in existence a couple of centuries earlier than had been previously thought.  The next item was introduced as a world briefing, without anyone noticing the connection.  You would have thought that John Humphries would have latched onto the pun, but he might have been sparing Sarah Montague’s feelings. Goodness knows why: she never spares anyone.  He usually is quite good at masking James Naughtie, as the latter often commits a terminological inexactitude, as when Lady Steel ( wife of Liberal, David) aka the granny with the jaguar tattoo, was on the programme.  Naughtie commented on the fact that one headline had said the tattoo had been a sudden revelation for her seventieth birthday.  He wondered if they could get a photo of it for their website, if it wasn’t in too delicate a position.

Lady Steel affirmed that she had not had it done precipitously and he then “naughtily” quipped that she wasn’t hiding it under a bushel, was she?

Probably Naughtie is more comfortable with discussing the Edinburgh Tattoo. Mind you, his weather reports from The Festival sound Irish rather than Scots:

Some fog around, which you will know about, if you are in it..

I could have shocked the nation rigid with a revelation about a septuagenarian acquaintance of mine who told me that she had decided to lose her virginity on her three score year and ten birthday.  She had then gone on to have piercing when she was eighty.  That made Lady Steel look positively demure.

John Humphries hurried to the next topic which was according to a rabbi the biggest challenge to Judaism since The Holocaust.  Someone had mooted that circumcision is basically malice aforeskin, as children have no choice in the matter and it is irreversible.  The rabbi said that if it were done, t’were best that it was done quickly. The Scottish play again.

Then it was pointed out that the Queen had had all her boys snipped, but who is to say what the effects have been on them?

I wondered if Judy Murray had taken that line too with Andy and Jamie, but didn’t want to hazard a guess concerning the Switzer.

Saturday brought some sunshine, but a threatening sky and suspicious levels of humidity came with it.  Better get the rest of the blackcurrants in before the wood pigeons pounce, I thought to myself. Pigeons were on the news this morning.  Some fancier had taken his birds to France for a race and eight of them had failed to return to the UK.  He probably suspected that a family linked to La Chasse had already baked them in a pie, or turned them into a terrine, but suddenly he had reports from the Bahamas that they were sunning themselves there. It was too far for them to have winged their way to that location, so they must have hitched a ride on a cruise ship.  Can’t say you could blame them this summer.

The Olympic flame was abseiled in by a Marine to the Tower of London last night, at 20.12pm, enabling Boris to make a quip about how he was reminded of Henry VIII and how it was a marvellous place to bring an old flame.  He then became too excited and over-extended the metaphor by trying to convince everyone that there would be a veritable forest fire/ conflagration or towering inferno of enthusiasm for the Games.

Evan Davis teased Lord Coe about the likelihood of getting past the sponsor spies if you were wearing a Pepsi t-shirt.  We were left with an unconvincing assurance that Nike trainers would probably be all right.  Alan Bennett could have told them that trainers mean that you are probably not fully qualified and are certainly not the type of footwear that Jesus would have worn.  Maybe that would be enough of a social drawback.

Sunday.

Allez, Wiggo!

Wiggo does not like cheating or performance- enhancing drugs; he does like sideburns.  He is 6’3” and only 10 stone 6 lbs.  A belly putter would give him no advantage, even if he was a golfer, since he has a washboard for a stomach.

I considered taking up cycling for the second time that summer. Then I could eat Tesco’s Rocky Road straight out of the big black plastic tub- the one with the line-drawn glamorous woman wearing a fascinator on the lid.  There was no way that someone that resembled that illustration could possibly be associated with these calorific time bombs.

Four is an even number.  And now that one at the bottom looks so lonely…

Belgian chocolate.  Mmm. Three famous Belgians?- Bradley

Wiggins, sort of; Herge and err..?

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

Sunglasses in the Rain

Tags

Ben Ainslie, Boris Johnson, Coltsfoot, Financial Times, Flybe, Jesus, matthew pinsent, National Trust, NHS, Prince Philip, St Swithun's Day, sunglasses, The Queen

Maybe I’ve got it wrong, I considered. Maybe it is Ben Ainslie who is going to carry the torch.  At least he won’t be fazed by a little water, since he is practically a Merman.  I admired his full page b&w endorsement of sunglasses in the How To Spend It section of The Financial Times, with his sexy stubble.

I like cool shades as much as I like cool dudes.  My optician advised me to wear sunglasses, even in the rain, as you could still be affected by glare.  A medic had commented, however, that over-use of reactive lenses was positively linked to high levels of neuroticism and madness.  Oh well, they are cheaper than a blepharoplasty and Jackie Kennedy carried them off.  The only problem is that I fail to see much in the murky gloom of the present summer and so I fell to wondering how Posh Becks could keep an eye on what her husband was up to, if she continually resorted to those owlish lenses.  They probably don’t prevent her from seeing well enough to put in his pin number, however.

You don’t see the Queen wearing sunglasses much.  Not that she’d needed to for her Regatta thingy, when a soaking band of singers stood before the Royal party and Prince Philip had nearly burst his bladder trying not to wet himself, laughing at the state of them. The old boy had become extremely enervated at the hornpipe music, what with having been a naval officer.  At least the rain had held off for most of the day, though you couldn’t have seen anything from the bank side, whether you were wearing sunglasses or not, I’d heard.

I also wondered if the Queen was a fan of Who Do You Think You Are?  Clearly, she is fully aware of her own identity, but she might have been alarmed that she was related to Boris Johnson.  Matthew Pinsent is less embarrassing.  So long as there are no Germanic links to Boris Becker or Angela Merkel!  As Pinsent rowed by, with his back between his knees, did she wonder if he had more of the seed of the Conqueror in him than she did?  All that barge stuff and burnished throne imagery might not compensate if he had.

As for Philip, he was Greek and possibly partly responsible for their huge deficit and possible default. However, he has always shown a good example as to how to survive a rainy stint at Balmoral, or wherever.  You’ve got to admire the man’s resilience: all those damp corgis and midge-infested  puddles!  Still, the water is soft in Scotland and gentle in a good malt.  So there are compensations.  But even a stalwart such as he had to be hospitalised after his thorough soaking.  The medics didn’t tell him there was no such thing as a chill or invite him to phone NHS Direct. He’s probably got BUPA.

Water- there is so much of it about this summer, I concluded. People used to say when I was younger that I had so much enthusiasm that I could have bottled it.  Now, with all the talk of water meters and reservoir repairs and Victorian pipework renovation there was a certainty that prices would rise.  The fashionable thing was to dig a bore hole.  I could produce my own label: Suttonford Soft – straight from Izaak Walton chalkstreams.  In smaller print: culled from the countryside of the Compleat Angler.  Maybe Alan Titchmarsh could launch it. He seemed to be everywhere.  Raymond Blanc and Jamie Oliver might take a few bottles for their local eateries.  It would be good to exploit the stuff that was ruining my life.  Maybe I could light a candle to St Swithun in Winchester Cathedral, begging for financial success, and, as a back-up, apply to The Bank of Dave for a handout.  If Theo is to be let down by his investment in Dyas, he may be interested in-say-a 40% stake for £100,000, reducing to 10% after three years of unmitigated success.  The thought of Duncan Ballantyne and Peter Jones fighting it out for my attention gratifies me.  Step back, Deborah Meaden.

Hello! I blinked. I’d wakened up and found that it was St Swithun’s Day.  Perversely, it wasn’t raining-at the moment- I qualified.  I was getting into the swing of  Mark Tully’s aquatic compilation of watery readings on Something Understood on Radio 4 with the joys of The Raindrop Prelude. One had to  admit that Tully compiles an interesting melange.  He included Longfellow on the dreariness of rain, protesting that behind the clouds, the sun still shone. Yeah, right. Maybe through a Flybe porthole, but not this far down.

Ella Fitzgerald had sung:

Into each life some rain must fall

but too much is falling in mine. 

Now I could identify with that.

It was all very well for Thoreau to say that rain made us feel at one with Nature or God, but he was referring to the Spring or Fall variety, not the unseasonable cascades we had been experiencing. Yet I seemed to recall an old part song called As torrents in summer, so all this perception of climate change might be old hat after all.

There might have been something Romantic about a full-blown orage, such as that portrayed in Debussy’s Jardins sous la Pluie and something very like special pleading in Sitwell’s positive focus on the rain at the Crucifixion.  Apparently it could not dampen Christ’s love for us.  Maybe it helped to wash away our sins.

Well tried, Mark.  You must have had some kind of placatory response from the Rain God after your paeon of praise for the pluie.  You seem to have held it off for one day, but let’s not get up our hopes too quickly.

In the couple of hours in which the drizzle desisted, I stepped out gingerly into my back garden, tripping over my Coltsfoot wellies, which I’d forgotten were sitting on the doormat and which were now waterlogged.   Cascades of rotting rosebuds and blossoms required dead heading.  However, the hostas were- as yet- ungnawed.  The dispersal of coffee grounds from the trendy shop had caused the slugs to limbo under someone else’s fence, in a caffeine-induced high.

Every time I type wellies into my computer, it corrects me and produces willies.  What is going on?  I thought willies was an acronym for people who work in London yet live in Edinburgh.  Somebody is having a laugh.

It had been announced by The National Trust that this year had been apocalyptic for birds and other wildlife, but slugs and mosquitos were lovin’ it.  I congratulated myself for having given them a hard grind- literally-by emptying out the cafetiere straight into hostas at my back door.  (Or is that hostae?)

I tried to harvest as many redcurrants and blackcurrants as I could, before the wood pigeons descended.  They were not having any kind of Apocalypse now, as far as I could determine.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

Rain, Rain….

Tags

Andy Murray, BIrnam Wood, Boris Johnson, Damien HIrst, Dunsinane, Ed Balls, Financial Times, FT, George Osborne, husband, Macbeth, Mastermind, Olympics, Roger Federer, Scottish Play

How did the Porter scene begin in the Scottish play?  Rain. Rain. Rain?

No, Knock, knock, knock.”  I had to keep re-testing myself, as if checking that I was free of doping substances. I might have to revise my chosen subject if I were ever to appear on Mastermind, with earthrob, John Humphries.  He was the one with the wrinkly face like that canine breed whose name I could never remember.  Better not choose anything to do with dogs as a special subject.

Drip Drip.  Yes, if Andy hadn’t had to have the roof on, he might not have had to creep out his petty pace from day to day.  Victory was looking as likely as Birnam Forest coming to Dunsinane.  But, hang on!  A wood, or moving grove, DID come to Dunsinane. Think metaphorically, Andy.  Don’t lose any sense of irony you have.  Was Roger untimely ripped?- that could be the question.  Only one man of woman born could destroy Andy’s hopes and that was the gorgeous, hunky, balletic…. No, stop that! I reproached myself.  It’s tantamount to imaginative adultery.

For, yes, I have a husband.  Not that I would notice now that the Olympics were approaching.  He would probably watch every event, whether the rain continued or not  Why did he take such an interest in sport, when his personal exercise regime was restricted to removing a stubborn cork, or picking up The Financial Times from the newsagents which was all of a hundred yards away.

Yes, I would shed no tears if rain stopped play, flattened Boris’ hair and soaked every Trades unionist who might decide to march on the Millennium Dome, in spite of the missiles trained on them from residents’ roofs.  Talk about over-reaction.  Al Quaeda’s resolve would be as dampened as the rest of the inhabitants of these wondrous isles.  Even terrorists would be affected by SAD and the unremitting precipitation, so might seek sunnier climes.

And what about the economy?  What if we taxpayers had forked out all that dosh for a damp squib?  That Bob Diamond  banker guy could put something back in the collection plate- maybe a bonus or two.  Or Damien Hirst could stud a few financial wizards’ skulls with precious stones and flog them off for the nation’s benefit.

I had heard on the radio that George Osborne’s name was actually Gideon.  From what I remembered from Sunday School, Gideon had received divine signals by leaving a fleece out overnight and then inspecting it to see if it was wet or not.  There would be no guesswork in that activity this summer, but he might as well try to get some guidance on the economy.  Heaven knows, it would seem as good a strategy as any other.

Dry!  So, we should stay in Europe. Wet- I should probably apologise to Ed Balls.  I’ll just do best of three.

I sat down with a takeaway latte.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012