Democracy Has Bad Taste

Tags

Bentham, Charles Saatchi, Damien HIrst, Dan Snow, Ernest Hemingway, FT, Grayson Perry, List of Reith Lectures, Manet, Nigella Lawson, Olympia, Proust, pushpin, Richard Hoggart, sociology, springer spaniel, transformation, Trinny Woodall, Uses of Literacy

Brassica could hardly hear herself speak for the frothing of the coffee machine

and the screech of a toddler.

Yeah, it’s that bloke in a frock who’s giving The Reith Lectures, she informed

me.

Who?  Grayson Perry?  Suddenly I was interested in what she was saying.

Yip.  I liked his tapestries on class but I admit that I used to think they-

the artists, I mean- actually made the stuff themselves.

What?  You thought that Damien Hirst went out and caught his own shark,

like Ernest Hemingway?  I was somewhat surprised.

Well, I thought they would weave the tapestries, or, say, Henry Moore

would cast his own bronzes in his back yard.

Right.  Before the scrap metal guys nicked them.  Brass, you’ve just got

to understand the difference between craft and art.

Which is?

Some philosophers have described it as the difference between pushpin

and poetry.

Pushpin?

It’s like shove halfpenny. I tried to clarify the analogy.  Look,

I addressed her.  Read the front page of the Life and Arts section of the

FT.

I reached up and took down the pink pages of a grease-stained

newspaper from the wall rack.

You see, I gestured, take a look at the artwork in this cafe.  I think it comes

from The Suttonford Art Society’s Annual Show.  You be the judge.  Is it art?

If it goes by financial value, then I’d say not, she deliberated.

Emmm, yeah.  Not many of them have a reserved sticker.  I suppose that

they could come under therapeutic, or popular art categories.

Some of them could be improved by more sympathetic

presentation, she decided.

Yes.  Proust wrote that we can only see beauty if we look through a

gilded frame, I expanded on the theme.  I wonder what Charles Saatchi

is collecting now..? Certainly not portraits of Nigella!  Maybe Trinny

Woodall woodcuts?  Skinny Trinny as Olympia.  Not a good look!

My granny used to commission oils of sunsets to match the colours in her

swirly carpets, Brassie mused.

(You could never accuse Brass of being a snob.)  She was reading the

front page by now and she came out with:

Are individual works of historical significance, or do they exhibit aesthetic

sophistication?

No, I replied quietly, looking carefully round the room for any paint

stains on clothing.  There is an acrylic over there which shows the oldest

pub in the town, though.  It all comes down to Bentham’s pushpin/ poetry

distinction again.

But, endorsement is surely part of it?  I mean, if we placed a label under that

unconvincing representation of a Springer Spaniel and it announced that it was

by Dan Snow, would it change our perception of it? Brassie probed.

No, but it would change my perception of him, sadly, I replied.

Brassie began to show enthusiasm for this debate.  Didn’t Richard Hoggart,

who incidentally lived not too far from here, discuss some of this in his book

on popular culture, The Uses of Literacy?

Yawn.  Early sociology, I said dismissively.  Mind you, he made some good

points.

Brassie pushed on, paraphrasing as she read: Apparently, what the’ lovely

consensus’ agree on is seriousness.

Mmm, some of these are seriously bad.  I tried to be generous and failed. Okay.

Who is going to validate them?

Brassie brightened up.  I expect their mummies, grannies, aunts, husbands

and wives might rescue them from ignominy.  They’ll probably buy them.

So, laying aside meritocracy, they will be saved for posterity by love? I

ventured.

The greatest ennobler, breathed Brassie.  The Art of Human Understanding.

Compassion. An act of grace.  Love for the unlovely.  Transformation!

 

Apocalypse Now!

Tags

Apocalypse, Birmingham Crater, Crouching Tiger ; Hidden Dragon, Dan Snow, Derren Brown, Felix Baumgartner, Gregorian Calendar, Guy Fawkes, Highland Spring, paintballing, parkour, Pippa Middleton, Salisbury Plain, Yves Klein

Monday morning and so I sidled into Divas’ Deli and found Carrie there buying the Pippa Middleton book: Celebrate.

Thought this would be ideal for Clammie’s Chrissie prezzy, she beamed.

Was somewhat annoyed as I had been considering it for the very same recipient.  Still, if I buy one and very carefully open the pages, but don’t bend the spine, maybe I can get away with off-loading it on someone else, once I have noted down any useful tips on my Tablet. Didn’t say anything, but hinted that I wouldn’t mind finding it in my stocking, in addition to Dan Snow.

Carrie is over the moon that the awful Juniper is not going to be going to Clammie and Tristram’s Guy Fawkes party.  Her horrible little brother John is also not being invited.  Juniper’s behaviour at Tiger-Lily’s sleepover was reprehensible enough and none of us wants our children to mix with such delinquents.  I hasten to add that it is nothing to do with Juniper’s gender fluidity issues; it is just her utter self-gratification and her brother’s bullying tendencies that have upset us all.

Carrie divulged the reason for this joyous news: apparently Juniper is plastered- not in the sense that she was at the sleepover, however. No, she is in plaster with a broken arm.  She is crazy.  She jumped off the Art block roof.  Clammie’s daughter, Scheherezade, witnessed the whole event, or should I say, happening?  And she is not a girl to make up stories.

Juniper has been obsessed by Felix Baumgartner’s leap from 128,000 feet.  At her School for the Academically-Gifted they believe in a cross-curricular integrated approach to learning and so everything recently has been based on leaps: leaps of faith, Kiekegaard’s Semantic Leap, leap years and the Gregorian Calendar, French urban vocabulary, such as traceur/ traceuse etc.  Yves Klein’s Jumping into the Void was studied in Art History and in PE they learned about the training skills associated with parkour, that weird sport which owes its origins to military obstacle course training. It resembles some of the moves in Crouching Tiger; Hidden Dragon. One has to travel from A-B in as short a distance as possible and without one’s feet touching the ground. (In my childhood this was when a parent grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and marched you off to bed.  But I digress.)

Anyway, Juniper had been unusually attentive in the Art History lesson and afterwards she climbed onto the roof and shouted to some girls who were engaged in some artistic activity round the back of the building to capture her launch moment on their mobiles.  She threw down a scrap of cartridge paper which bore her bowdlerised mission statements, to wit:

You have to realise the impregnation of space by your own sensibility

and

Neither missiles nor rockets nor sputniks will render man- nor woman- the conquistadors of space.

The girls didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but a couple of them managed to take a digital image of her as she jumped.  Scheherezade said she was shouting:

I’m not falling; I’m rising!

And then? I asked.

And then she went splat on the roof of Clammie’s 4×4, which had been parked there as Clammie had made an appointment to see the art teacher about Scheherezade’s installation.  There was a crater the size of Birmingham on the roof.  Cosmo said it was more like a black hole in his current account to cover his insurance excess and to have the bodywork restored.

Birmingham? I asked, incredulous.

No, there really is a lunar crater called that, she stressed.  Cosmo told me once when he was showing me round his observatory.

Beats etchings, I muttered.

Anyway, she continued, ignoring my sarcasm,  Juniper is now asking everyone to sign her plaster cast and she is going to submit it for her Art History Practical. She’ll probably get an A*.  It’s so annoying. 

So, it’s cost them an arm and a leg, I said, without thinking.

Just an arm, Carrie said, laughing and paying for the book.

And Juniper’s nasty little brother, John, isn’t coming to the party either?

No.  Their mother has also been getting fed up with their behaviour and so she phoned Derren Brown and arranged a personal mini-Apocalypse for them.  It’s a set-up where they are being driven to Salisbury Plain, thinking they are going to paint-balling, and then some tanks emerge and block the road and there is a mock-up of a meteor strike.  By the end of two days they will have been introduced to the concept of altruism as they have to share a bottle of Highland Spring and a bag of Kettle Chips, or starve.

Wow! That’s amazing! I exclaimed. I wonder if any other mothers would be interested in signing up their sproglets?

Apparently Derren Brown has been inundated by requests and can’t personally hypnotise or deal with them all, so he is hiring out Parent Packs of tanks, flame throwers and DIY nstructions.

Well, that should solve the problem of bored teenagers in the school holidays, I remarked, a shade too eagerly, perhaps.

Precisely, said Carrie.  We are sending for our packs tomorrow before they run out.

 

 

 

 

Black Swan Event

Tags

Behemoth, Black Swan event, Brassica, Carrie, Dan Snow, David Cameron, Elle McPherson, FameDaddy, Ferdy, global weirding, hallowe'en, John, La Senza, Leda and swan, Philip Schofield, Richard Dawkins, Roger Federer

Brassica and I were in Costamuchamoulah must-seen café, looking for liquorice spiders for Hallowe’en, when Carrie rushed in.  We made our ghoulish edible purchases and then all sat at a corner table to drink some coffee.

You will never guess what Ferdy told me after school? That awful John in his science class has been stirring things again, Carrie moaned.

Tell me about it, said Brassie, ruefully.

I was just going to, continued Carrie, who privately loathed Brassie’s

use of that expression.

Well, he sidled up to Ferdy and said, Why doesn’t your Mummy get fixed up with ‘FameDaddy’?  Ferdy didn’t know what he was talking about.  I think John’s mum must allow him to watch trashy ITV programmes as I Googled the name and it transpires that some CEO called Dan Richards was on a programme with Phillip Schofield, presenting a soon-to-be-launched-service, offering women who wanted to bear children with quality DNA to avail themselves of their sperm bank of celebrity donors.

Brassie looked interested, but she had already asked to be regaled with the facts, so she bit her tongue.

Yes, said Carrie, John then insulted Ferdy and his brothers-and, by implication, Gyles- by saying that if I had applied to ‘FameDaddy’, I wouldn’t have produced such useless kids and I still had time to produce a decent one.

How rude! What did Ferdy say?

He reminded him that he had beaten him at science and so John’s daddy couldn’t exactly have been Richard Dawkins.

But two wrongs don’t make a right, I interjected.  Neither paid the slightest attention.

And then Ferdy- how can I put this?-punched his lights out.

Brassie clapped her hands and then desisted when she caught my disapproving look.

Was John all right afterwards?  She feigned concern.

Oh, after he came round he said that he saw stars and Ferdy said, ‘Well, you always were on a different planet.’  Then he walked out of the locker room.

What did Mr Milford-Haven do when he discovered the boys had been fighting? I thought I’d try to bring some order to this exchange.

He took Ferdy aside and gave him a commendation and a mini-Mars bar, I believe.

But surely that was immoral? I insisted.

Yes, said Carrie. We don’t encourage sweets at home, so Ferdy brought it to me and I ate it for him.

No, I was becoming exasperated. I meant the violence.

Carrie looked a little discomfited and sipped her coffee which was tepid by now. Ferdy explained it to me.  He said that it was the same as a burglar breaking into your home.  John had invaded our privacy and stuck his nose into our business, so he had used proportionate force to repel him.  David Cameron said that was okay.

Brassie looked wistful.  I must say, Carrie,  that I sometimes wish I had dipped into the gene pool of Dan Snow, or Roger Federer, instead of subjecting the twins to a possible genetic link to Cosmo’s mother.

I’d call that a black swan event, said Carrie comfortingly.

Brassie looked confused.

I mean, there may be a pattern and there may be a rare chance that they will fulfil a prediction, but it is unlikely. 

More likely than you sharing your genes with Dan Snow, I added unkindly, before I could stop myself.

Carrie tried to draw attention away from my inappropriate remark:

Black swan events are linked to global weirding, she continued. You know- sunspots, extreme cyclical weather patterns, with rogue element exceptions.  You can’t predict whether you will get out of a snow-bound Heathrow or not in the Christmas holidays.

I saw Horizon too, I remarked.  She was beginning to sound like the tiresome John of the black eye.  They said that you can’t really make 100% accurate predictions.

So, I might have a chance with Dan..

No, that’s a certainty: you won’t, I interjected firmly.

Well, what about that twenty five pounds that I paid Sonia to look into her crystal ball for me? asked Brassie, shaken in her simple faith.

That’s probably gone down a black hole, or gone up in a puff of smoke, I laughed caustically.

Carrie added, I think you would have been better advised to refer to a satellite, or to that meteorological computer, ‘Behemoth’, that generates 100 trillion predictions a second.

No wonder they get it so wrong all the time then, said Brassie naively.  Yesterday they said it would be dry and I got soaked right down to my ‘La Senza’, standing in the yard, waiting for the twins to come out of their music lessons.

You have to take an umbrella with you at all times, laughed Carrie, then it will never rain!  But, what’s all this obsession with spreading your genes, Brassie?  You aren’t seriously thinking of having another baby?  I thought you had enough on your plate with the twins?

The FameDaddy thing just sounded interesting, she said.

It was a hoax, Brassie, I laughed.

Oh, it’s just that you both have girls and I just got a little broody.  It would be a black swan event if Cosmo and I got together.  The chances would be about a trillion to one. He might as well be on a space station for all the likelihood of a conjunction between us.  He’s taken to sleeping in the observatory in the garden.

I was sobering up.  She seemed genuinely upset. I tried to comfort her.  Have you heard of Leda and the swan?

What are you talking about, Candia?  Carrie flashed me a warning look.

Just that swans can impregnate you when you are not expecting it, I muttered lamely.

The only genes I’m really after are Elle McPherson drainpipes. She tried to throw us off the scent.  These are getting too tight.

Maybe you are already…? we both spoke simultaneously.

Brassie looked horrified.

Who’s the father? we enquired.  Three more lattes, we instructed the waitress.

 

Sex and the City

Tags

Amanda Barrie, Andrew Marr, Antony and Cleopatra, Carry on Cleo, Chichester Festival Theatre, Dan Snow, Hilary Devey, History of the World, Janet Suzman, Kim Cattrall, Lord of the Rings, Neil Oliver, Shakespeare, Smeagol

Yes, the rain is back with a vengeance.  The average monthly rainfall in the UK was expected over a few hours.  A thirty two year old New Zealand woman was killed by a falling branch at Kew Gardens yesterday – but hey!- all those drivers who cut down the narrow roads through the villages in our part of the country still want to force you into the roadside hedges while they spray you with a mini tsunami.

Last night the first programme in The History of the World by Andrew Marr was broadcast.  It was a choice between that and Dragons’ Den.  Since I didn’t want to induce scary nightmares to my slumbers, I  decided to give Hilary Devey a miss.  I gave Marr the benefit of the doubt.  (His wife has been doing that quite a bit recently.)

I don’t know who provided the graphics, but they were very reminiscent of those in Lord of the Rings.  The crumbling stone arches which homo sapiens had to traverse in order to leave the African continent led the tribe to vaster territories in which to spread their DNA.  I half expected Andrew to materialise as Smeagol, crying:

Come on, Hobbits.  Long ways to go yet.  Smeagol will show the way.

At that point a horde of marauding Orcs would have eaten him and spat out his bones.

I couldn’t take the commentary seriously as I kept thinking about how the presenter himself has not revealed himself to be highly evolved in any ethical sense.

This tiny genetic mutation- yes, red hair is the result of a recessive gene, and I can say that as I have the same colouring- pointed out that 27,000 years ago, our ancestors left handprints on the walls of caves.  Okay, Andrew, but they did not leave them beneath the waistbands of jeans worn by female colleagues outside bars in Fitzrovia, before rushing off from the family home to interview US presidents.

I can’t imagine what Michelle’s reaction would be if Barack started misbehavin’.  I think she would be more than cross and might leave something larger than a handprint on his backside.

Marr then waxed lyrical about the invention of the needle which enabled mankind to wear clothes that actually fit properly.  Try telling that to weather girls.

Since then the tie has been invented, but quite a few trendy tribes of politicians seem to think that they can wear a suit and omit the aforementioned item of neckwear.  They belong to the type that has to continually apologise and I personally do not trust Neanderthal, retrograde informality- except in Neil Oliver.  Maybe they will be eaten by their successors.

Marr then popped up in Egypt with a dramatic representation of what happened to the hooligan elements who de-stabilised society by sleeping around.  This took place in the first towns and he commented that the behaviour reminded him of Eastenders.  Would that have been plebeian conduct, Andrew?  No, he just put it down to an outbreak of Wild Nile Naughtiness but he explained his own misadventure as being the product of overindulgence in alcohol- a few too many glasses of Cobra, maybe?

Or maybe he has been carried away by the Janet Suzman production of Antony and Cleopatra at Chichester Festival Theatre, with Sex and the City actress, Kim Cattrall trying to outdo Amanda Barrie in carrying on.  Ah, Andrew, well might you exclaim:

Infamy, infamy – they’ve all got it in for me

But you deserve it!

There are no final victories over the darker side of human nature, he said.

So, what could it possibly be that attracts women to very well-paid presenter and interviewer Andrew Marr?

If you are looking for good genes, why not make eyes at Dan Snow?  Now that’s a colossus, or would he just be pleased to meet me?!

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

Inspire A Generation

Tags

Ben Ainslie, BUPA, Dan Snow, dancing, Desperate Dan, Flavia Cacace, gold medal, husband, lottery, Tango, Vincent Simone

Tuesday

Sunny!

Desperate Times for Desperate Dan ran a headline, which had nothing to do with Dan Snow, but had everything to do with the strong man of The Dandy.  I was so relieved that our Dan and the lovely Lady Edwina were not suffering in these times of austerity, though I’m sure that Daddy, The Duke of Westminster, could always forward them a little loan by increasing his parking charges.  So, fear not, Dan, you can have as many cow pies as you wish and -goodness knows-you need to keep up your calorific intake, what with all that physical and mental activity that you indulge in.  I suppose you could have earned a little bit more by taking on the airspace security at the Olympics. There would have been savings to be made if we had foregone the Typhoons and helicopters and you could have shot down any terrorist planes with your pea- shooter.

The couple who have just won £148 million on the lottery say that they want to make a difference and repay past kindnesses, so maybe they could make a donation to D. C. Thomson of Dundee and keep the comic going to inspire future generations.

Postboxes all over the country are being painted gold, in honour of athletes who won medals of the same colour.  Sometimes the postal authorities are wrongly identifying the home towns and local fans are being arrested for getting out their Airfix enamels and gilding more appropriate receptacles.

This happened in Lymington, which was home to Ben Ainslie for a longer time than was his Cornish childhood base.  Reporters from South Today flocked around our quadruple winner and he received drawings from schoolchildren who had been coaxed out to scream their enthusiasm.  Again, Ben would have been advised not to appear with children, as when one little girl was asked if she had been watching him on television, she said, No! very firmly. The reporter turned to a little boy in the crowd and invited him to share what he had been feeling when he saw Ben sailing into the harbour and he replied very honestly, I don’t know.

Ben then terminated the in-depth analysis by saying, Thanks, guys.

There was a minor news item about heart patients in Buenos Aires being introduced to Tango.  I thought it was a reference to that crude advertisement for the fizzy orange drink where people were mugged and then told that they had been Tango-ed.  Then I realised that it was an introduction to dance exercise as cardiac rehab.  I know that if my husband was offered a few sessions with the fulsome Flavia through his BUPA membership, he’d be sliding down the razor blade of life in next to no time, allowing her to set fire to his tie or to raise welts like nobody else.  She and Vincent have a website where you can book yourself in for a few lessons, so maybe choosing hubby’s Christmas present won’t be so difficult.  I could always keep Vincent Simone of the curling eyebrow amused during the lesson and could pass him off as my festive gigolo.  We could practise a few moves to the Olympic video, Don’t Stop Me Now!  I could become his Flavia of the Month.

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

Strictly Come Prancing

Tags

Ann Widdecombe, Brassica, Dan Snow, dressage, DVT, hanging baskets, husband, Kirstie Allsopp, Madonna, Moscow, NHS, OAP, Olympics, pelargonia, riot, St Kilda, teaching, Tiger Feet

Thursday

I went out with Brassica to buy some reduced pelargonia for my rotting hanging baskets. A crowd of orange lycra clad OAPs were showing off in the local garden centre café.  They should have been extras in the Opening Ceremony Tiger Feet number. They’d probably arrived by car and parked their bikes at the entrance for pure effect.  Nothing worse than the elderly behaving badly, I said to myself. They just propel themselves to the nearest sylvan cheapeatery to save on winter fuel in the coming seasons, which saves their annual allowance for luxuries such as ostentatious cycling equipment.  Mind you, they probably prevent DVT by squeezing themselves into such tight gear, so may be saving the taxpayer on NHS expenses.

I enjoyed the elegance of the Strictly Come Prancing dressage.  The winning horse, whose name was a bit like Viagra, could have shown Widdi a thing or two about dancing.  And she couldn’t have complained about the decency of what both horse and rider were wearing.

Madonna isn’t being very restrained in Moscow. Supposedly she had been asked there to sing.  A deputy minister told her to remove her cross and to put on some knickers, which wasn’t a bad idea.   She seemed to have inspired some girls in Leeds to lipstick the strapline: Moralising Slut over their boobs. It all seems rather adolescent and, as a teacher, I could have told them that the best thing to do with juvenile protest was to ignore it.

A poor athlete heard his leg snap during a race but carried on out of a misplaced sense of duty. I have always believed that one’s joints have a finite amount of wear or tread on them and so long ago I decided never to overstretch them.  My husband is a chief exponent of the theory too.

It is almost a year to the day since the London riots and several youths have been sent down for their part in the destruction. Dan Snow had been passing when some looters had run out of a shop, bearing trove.  Big Dan had tackled one and made a citizen’s arrest.  If it had been a female, I can guarantee that she wouldn’t have struggled too much. Dan could have taken wrongdoers to St Kilda for re-hab and could have introduced them to a fitness programme that included running up that chimney gully, or he could have made them harvest gannets, enduring fulmar spittle, as they abseiled down vertical cliffs.  Even worse, Kirstie Allsopp could have redesigned their psyches by forcing them to crotchet drag nets. Or Putin could have offered them judo training in Siberia.

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

Skincare

Tags

Amy Winehouse, Andrew Motion, Bradley Wiggins, Carol Ann Duffy, Champs Elysees, Cheryl Cole, Dan Snow, Johnny Depp, Kirstie Allsopp, L'Oreal, Mahalia Jackson, Mother Teresa, Olympics, Phil Spencer, Radio 4, Rango, Samuel Beckett, Sarah Vaughan, Shar Pei, Sophie Raworth, St Kilda, Tour de France, W H Auden

Monday, 23^rd July.

In the north rain; in the south: sunny.

Everyone is being urged to cease whining and to look forward to enjoying the great spectacle of the Olympics.  But the goodwill lasts for about two seconds and then someone phones in to Radio 4 to detract from Team Sky’s victory.  The Language Police can’t refrain from pointing out that the “p” in Champs Elysees is silent.  A better suggestion was that it should be re-named The Road to Wiggins’ Peerage!

Meanwhile the backlog of people requiring investigation for being illegally resident in the U.K. – criminals included- is equivalent in number to the population of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  It may well be more efficient to round up all Geordies, starting with that annoyingly accented Ruth in The Archers. Cheryl Cole would be next.  Another on the list who never would be missed. She thinks she is worth it, but is she?

Maybe the super-rich who have thirteen trillion hidden offshore could be persuaded to put their bodies where their money is, leaving space for those who have lost their pension funds.

I was watching Sophie Raworth, the newsreader, popping up in a fetching red dress and ballet pumps, all over Stratford – or virtually and graphically so.  We were being advised who to look out for in the coming weeks, but all that I could think of was how the Aquatic Centre looked like an architectural panty pad.

Impatiently, I flicked the remote.  There appeared Dan Snow, with his rower’s chest, stripping off his outdoor gear and racing up some chimney gully on St Kilda.  That was riveting eye-candy.

It was unfortunate that Phil Spencer came on next.  I immediately thought that you could call that a paradox.  I wouldn’t go as far as an oxymoron.   It was certainly unfortunate.  I couldn’t imagine him shinning up a literal chimney- not even if Kirstie had left her designer handbag on top of its cowl.  Anyway, what knight would want to risk derring-do for someone who appeared in a purple tie-dye marquee with a turquoise belt and puce espadrilles?

Normally I would have approved of Kirstie’s comfort in her own skin, but I did think that she must have scoffed rather too many cupcakes recently.

That left an Arena programme on BBC4 about the time that Amy Winehouse went to sing in a church in Dingle, some remote coastal dot in Ireland.  I expected Neil Oliver to pop up since it was his territory, as it were, and thought that he and Amy might have got on well. They could have stayed in and had a girlie night, backcombing each other’s hair.

Amy interviewed well, but I had difficulty with her diction when she was singing.  When clips of Mahalia Jackson or Sarah Vaughan were played, I understood every word they uttered.  It was sad when Amy sang about not wanting to go-o-o to rehab.

Also sad was the news report with the tragic weirdo in a ginger wig who had massacred all those innocent people in the cinema in Colorado.  I didn’t want to think about that too much before bedtime, so opted for Horizon and its exploration of sun damage on skin.  A glamorous female surgeon simply had to visit Sharm el-Sheikh, Berlin and Paris, to promote current research on care for our body’s biggest organ and to pick up a few L’Oreal free samples on the way.

I considered rushing out a.s.a.p. to the chemist and stocking up on their entire stock of anti-UVA creams, not to mention the Unilever pill which might just be available.  I didn’t want to develop the W.H.Auden look, which someone had described as being like a Xmas pudding left out in the rain.   He should have used moisturiser and have spent as much time on his skincare regime than on poetry.  He had been worth it, even if he did look more like Rango than Johnny Depp.  I hoped that Carol Ann Duffy was taking note.  She needs to look good in her lofty bardic position.  Andrew Motion did.  He was probably no stranger to E45.

W. H.  What did the initials stand for? – I seemed to remember that it was Wystan, not Winston.  Always good to file away for the General Knowledge round of Mastermind.  Also the name of that wrinkly canine breed- Shar Pei: commit to memory.  If I don’t pass the audition to fill the black chair, I will just have to apply to Alexander Armstrong, to see if he will have me on Pointless.

Winston had had a face like a baby’s bottom, everyone used to say.  He used to smoke cigars, so it was maybe just ciggies that contributed to Auden’s complexion, or perhaps it was his personal involvement with the Age of Anxiety.

Of course, Mother Teresa and Samuel Beckett were both wrinklies. They probably wouldn’t have had the time to spend on a cleanse/ tone/ moisturise regime.  Their value was not dependent on their dermis. They were truly worth it.

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