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Tag Archives: Phil Spencer

Location, Location, Location

22 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by Candia in Celebrities, Humour, television, Writing

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Tags

Balti House, Boden, forever home, Kirstie Allsopp, Listed Building Consent, Little Greene paint, Location, micro-brewery, One Direction, Phil Spencer, poppadoms, Rumpelstiltskin, Skyfall, Welsh flagstones

Sorry, Cindy, this a re-blog!

Clammie had succeeded in getting her own way, as usual.  Tristram, her longsuffering husband, had been instructed to come home early from work, even though there was a big contract in the offing, as she had arranged a viewing of the eight-bedroomed, double-fronted Georgian house in High Street, Suttonford- (the one she had lusted after through the window of Shelley’s Estate Agency.)

Tristram had been unenthusiastic-understandably so-, given that their outgoings on school fees and mortgage were already crippling them financially and they had not even put their own home on the market.  So Clammie had brought in the big guns, namely Kirstie and Phil from the programme, Location, Location, Location.

Tristram was on a hiding to nothing and he knew it.  He had dutifully returned early, but Clammie had already smoothed most of the logistical difficulties by arranging for her boys to go to an early screening of Skyfall with Brassica and her twins.  Scheherezade was going to stay over at Tiger-Lily’s to work on their joint art project, while listening to One Direction.  Seven pm was an annoying time for a viewing, but Kirstie was a busy woman and that was the time they had been given.

Clammie had laid out his best, but casual Boden gear and then she had spent most of the afternoon trying to look cutting-edged, but understated.  This meant that she hadn’t organised a meal for their return, so Tristram telephoned and placed an order for an Indian takeaway with Benares Balti House.  He just hoped that the salt content wouldn’t do irreparable harm to his kidneys.

When Kirstie- certainly not understated- opened the door and ushered them into the hall of Nemesis House, Clammie fell instantly in love.  It would have made more economic sense if she had fallen for the rather dishy cameraman, but they squeezed past him as if he was invisible and the first soundbite to be recorded was Clammie uttering the totally original : Wow!  She then produced the suspect sentence that she had been invited to use in order to promote the programme:

Our priority is Location, Location, Location.

The camera focussed on Tristram, but not picking up the appropriate expression, swivelled to Clammie again, who said:

The large kitchen-cum-dining room has just the dimensions we crave for family bonding at mealtimes.

Kirstie felt she had it in the designer handbag, so she allowed them to go upstairs with Dan, the cameraman and then she texted Phil, who was sinking a pint in The Peal o’ Bells around the corner.

Get butt here pdq.  Sense sale.  Wild card not needed.  If no deal will eat espadrille. Kirstie addressed him differently off-camera.  She’d been on her feet all day and so she slipped off her wedged platforms and cooled her stockinged soles on the Welsh flagstones in the kitchen.

WIGWAM Woven Espadrille Wedges

Phil thought: In my own time, hussy.  (He was enjoying a third pint of the local micro-brewery’s Old Badger and was getting the low-down on the market from some of the locals.)  However, he knew all about being shown the red card, so he drained the glass, wiped the froth off his upper lip and hared it round the corner.

Clammie rushed into the kitchen, flushed and exclaiming:

Most of our furniture would fit and a lick of Little Greene paint would cover the cinnabar in the hall and the cardamom in the boot room.  Listed Building Permission for a few things and hello! –I mean, Voila! – Our Forever Home!  She looked into the lens, hoping that the entire nation would recognise her bilingual skills.

So you want me to phone Shelley’s in the morning to make an offer?  Kirstie could see a sunbed featuring on her horizon.  I think we should go in at the asking price.

Tristram wanted to put his foot down, but he knew that even Rumpelstiltskin could have put his foot through the floor and it would have made no impression on his wife.  The cameraman gave him a sympathetic look.  Both women ignored him.

Phil let himself in with the spare key.  Before he could enter the kitchen a make-up girl powdered his receding hairline.

Quick work, Kirstie, but just before you get too excited, I have something to say.  Do you want the good news or the bad news?

I don’t like these infantile games, Phil, Kirstie scolded, nodding to the cameraman to switch off.

A guy in the pub has just told me that the owner of the Balti House put in a good offer this afternoon and they’ve taken it off the market.

What did he offer? shrieked Clammie.

The full asking price, I believe, said Phil, who just wanted to go home.

But we would have offered more. Gazump them! screamed Clammie, turning the colour of Vindaloo.  Clearly she planned Montezuma’s revenge.

Sorry, said Phil.  He sealed the deal with a promise of complimentary poppadoms for life.

Kirstie spat, Poppadoms are SO last century.  It was difficult to make out what she was saying, though, as true to her word, she was beginning to eat her espadrille.

It dawned on Tristram that Balti, along with something else, was going to be off the menu for a very long time.  He hoped Kirstie and Phil, or the cameraman and make-up girl, might like a doggy bag at eight thirty. Meanwhile, the indignity of it: he would have to join the queue for pollock and chips at Frying Tonite.  He’d never get the smell out of his new Boden Chinos.

 

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Celebrity Sightings

03 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by Candia in Celebrities, Film, Humour, News, Politics, Social Comment, Suttonford, television

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Boris Johnson, Caribbean, celebrity sighting, doppelganger, Edward Scissorhands, George Osborne, grog, hoop ear-rings, Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Kirstie Allsopp, kohl, New Forest, Phil Spencer, Pilate, Pugwash, Somali pirate, True Cross, Ugg, walking plank

Johnny Depp 2, 2011.jpg

Scheherezade and Tiger-Lily were still on their Easter break from school.

They’d decided to go to their favourite coffee shop, Costamuchamoulah,

to be seen and to give autographs to any members of the Lower School

who might happen upon them.

But suddenly-Aaaaagh!!! Did you see who that was? shrieked Tiger.

Yeah, I think that was him, verified Sherry, hot-footing it down High Street

as fast as her Ugg boots would permit.

Johnny Depp had reputedly bought a house in The New Forest and several

local publications had printed “evidence” of his having graced local sylvan

hostelries in his quest to quench his thirst with some grog.

If all these sightings were to be summarised then they would far outnumber

the multiple venerations of the True Cross in Medieval Europe and would,

no doubt, be as authentic.  It was fantastical to think of any unities of time

or place in these much vaunted protestations of having witnessed a real

presence.

No, mum, I swear it was him, hyper-ventilated Tiger.

Maybe it was a doppelganger, teased Carrie.

What’s that?

A double, someone who looks like him, suggested Carrie, peeling some

potatoes. She wondered if Keira Knightley peeled vegetables and what

hand cream she would use if she did.

Sherry added: The Daily Mail reported that it might have been Johnny Depp’s

son who was with him, although the boy spoke perfect English.

And what would that sound like, man? laughed Carrie.  I thought that the

prescriptive idea of language was old hat. Everything in linguistics is organic,

like these potatoes!

I bet his son’ll go to a private school, said Tiger dreamily.

Anyway, interrupted Sherry, two reporters from The Suttonford Chronicle

cornered him- Johnny, I mean, but he made a getaway by going into Tesco

Express.  He came out carrying a 12 pack…

..of beer? asked Carrie.

No, Andrex. Actually it was a 14 pack, as there’s a special offer on at

the moment and you get 2 rolls free. 

I wonder what the reporters were asking that so annoyed him?

mused Carrie, making a mental note of the special offer, especially as

she had a double points coupon that needed to be cashed in by the end

of the month.

They had got a little confused, explained Tiger, taking the peelings to the bin,

in an uncharacteristically altruistic action which was completely for Sherry’s

benefit.  Sometimes Carrie felt that she was expected to be Edwina

Scissorhands with all the domestic chores with which she was

burdened when the cleaner was on holiday.

Edwardscissorhandsposter.JPG

Johnny wasn’t the only skilled thespian on the planet. Tiger wanted

to look good in front of her friend, so she put on an Oscar-worthy

performance of a dutiful daughter.

They thought he was a Somali pirate and that they had some sort of Channel

4 scoop, she elucidated.

Carrie typed in “Depp” and “Suttonford Chronicle” and sourced the article on

her tablet.

Oh look, she commented, they can’t spell Caribbean! Ah…they say

that he also has a thirteen year old daughter called Lily-Rose.

I bet she’ll be coming to our school, breathed Sherry.  She’ll probably be in

the year below us.

George osborne hi.jpg

Well, said Carrie astringently, he’d have to be a Somali pirate to afford the

increase in fees.  If George Osborne has anything to do with it we will all be

walking the financial plank over shark-infested seas. Let’s hope Captain

Sparrow has the vital pieces-of-eight.  Oh, it says that he is going to return

  to the role in 2015.

Wow! enthused Tiger that means…

Yeah, interjected Sherry, that kohl, bandannas and hoop ear-rings are

going to be mega!

Tiger regained the conversational floor: And everyone will want to go to

Somalia for his/her gap year.

It’s not in the Caribbean, lectured Carrie.  Honestly, what did they learn in

Geography now?  Pupils seemed to be out and about doing street surveys

on celebrity sightings, but most of the kids couldn’t distinguish one

international shopping mall from another and didn’t know if they were in

Dubai, or Doncaster. They seemed to know as little about location as

most of Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer’s clients.

On second thoughts, she didn’t think the students she knew would be

familiar with Doncaster…

She had seen past articles in The Guardian and The Sunday Correspondent  on

Captain Pugwash, where journalists affected confusion over the names of

cartoon pirates and simply fabricated the facts- and were sued.  (Maybe

Boris Johnson had learned a trick or two from them about sexing up details.)

She sincerely hoped that the girls would be able to distinguish fact from fiction.

But, as Pilate said, What is Truth?  And he had had its prime example standing

right in front of him.  Still, veracity was an educational objective, surely?

Who could tell? Had it been Johnny Depp in Suttonford, or was it a case of

mass hysteria and mistaken identity?

Hogwash/Pugwash?  Nowadays it was increasingly difficult to distinguish

the two!

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Location, Location, Location

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by Candia in Celebrities, Humour, Suttonford, television

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Balti House, Boden, Brassica, Clammie, Kirstie, Listed Building Pemission, Little Greene paint, Location, micro-brewery, One Direction, Phil Spencer, poppadoms, Rumpelstiltskin, Skyfall, Tristram, Vindaloo

Clammie had succeeded in getting her own way, as usual.  Tristram, her longsuffering husband, had been instructed to come home early from work, even though there was a big contract in the offing, as she had arranged a viewing of the eight-bedroomed, double-fronted Georgian house in High Street, Suttonford- (the one she had lusted after through the window of Shelley’s Estate Agency.)

Tristram had been unenthusiastic-understandably so-, given that their outgoings on school fees and mortgage were already crippling them financially and they had not even put their own home on the market.  So Clammie had brought in the big guns, namely Kirstie and Phil from the programme, Location, Location, Location.

Tristram was on a hiding to nothing and he knew it.  He had dutifully returned early, but Clammie had already smoothed most of the logistical difficulties by arranging for her boys to go to an early screening of Skyfall with Brassica and her twins.  Scheherezade was going to stay over at Tiger-Lily’s to work on their joint art project, while listening to One Direction.  Seven pm was an annoying time for a viewing, but Kirstie was a busy woman and that was the time they had been given.

Clammie had laid out his best, but casual Boden gear and then she had spent most of the afternoon trying to look cutting-edged, but understated.  This meant that she hadn’t organised a meal for their return, so Tristram telephoned and placed an order for an Indian takeaway with Benares Balti House.  He just hoped that the salt content wouldn’t do irreparable harm to his kidneys.

When Kirstie- certainly not understated- opened the door and ushered them into the hall of Nemesis House, Clammie fell instantly in love.  It would have made more economic sense if she had fallen for the rather dishy cameraman, but they squeezed past him as if he was invisible and the first soundbite to be recorded was Clammie uttering the totally original : Wow!  She then produced the suspect sentence that she had been invited to use in order to promote the programme:

Our priority is Location, Location, Location.

The camera focussed on Tristram, but not picking up the appropriate expression, swivelled to Clammie again, who said:

The large kitchen-cum-dining room has just the dimensions we crave for family bonding at mealtimes.

Kirstie felt she had it in the designer handbag, so she allowed them to go upstairs with Dan, the cameraman and then she texted Phil, who was sinking a pint in The Peal o’ Bells around the corner.

Get butt here pdq.  Sense sale.  Wild card not needed.  If no deal will eat espadrille. Kirstie addressed him differently off-camera.  She’d been on her feet all day and so she slipped off her wedged platforms and cooled her stockinged soles on the Welsh flagstones in the kitchen.

WIGWAM Woven Espadrille Wedges

Phil thought: In my own time, hussy.  (He was enjoying a third pint of the local micro-brewery’s Old Badger and was getting the low-down on the market from some of the locals.)  However, he knew all about being shown the red card, so he drained the glass, wiped the froth off his upper lip and hared it round the corner.

Clammie rushed into the kitchen, flushed and exclaiming:

Most of our furniture would fit and a lick of Little Greene paint would cover the cinnabar in the hall and the cardamom in the boot room.  Listed Building Permission for a few things and hello! –I mean, Voila! – Our Forever Home!  She looked into the lens, hoping that the entire nation would recognise her bilingual skills.

So you want me to phone Shelley’s in the morning to make an offer?  Kirstie could see a sunbed featuring on her horizon.  I think we should go in at the asking price.

Tristram wanted to put his foot down, but he knew that even Rumpelstiltskin could have put his foot through the floor and it would have made no impression on his wife.  The cameraman gave him a sympathetic look.  Both women ignored him.

Phil let himself in with the spare key.  Before he could enter the kitchen a make-up girl powdered his receding hairline.

Quick work, Kirstie, but just before you get too excited, I have something to say.  Do you want the good news or the bad news?

I don’t like these infantile games, Phil, Kirstie scolded, nodding to the cameraman to switch off.

A guy in the pub has just told me that the owner of the Balti House put in a good offer this afternoon and they’ve taken it off the market.

What did he offer? shrieked Clammie.

The full asking price, I believe, said Phil, who just wanted to go home.

But we would have offered more. Gazump them! screamed Clammie, turning the colour of Vindaloo.  Clearly she planned Montezuma’s revenge.

Sorry, said Phil.  He sealed the deal with a promise of complimentary poppadoms for life.

Kirstie spat, Poppadoms are SO last century.  It was difficult to make out what she was saying, though, as true to her word, she was beginning to eat her espadrille.

It dawned on Tristram that Balti, along with something else, was going to be off the menu for a very long time.  He hoped Kirstie and Phil, or the cameraman and make-up girl, might like a doggy bag at eight thirty. Meanwhile, the indignity of it: he would have to join the queue for pollock and chips at Frying Tonite.  He’d never get the smell out of his new Boden Chinos.

 

 

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No Mansion Tax

08 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by Candia in Celebrities, Humour, Politics, Social Comment, Suttonford, television

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Deborah Meaden, drovers' inn, Duncan Bannatyne, George Osborne, Hilary Devey, Kate Moss, Kirstie Allsopp, mobile phone mast, Phil Spencer, Prosecco, Ready Brek, Suttonford, Vladivostok

Clammie has had to hop over to Well-Shod, the Suttonford cobbler, rather a lot recently.  She has the heel of her Coltsfoot nude patent court shoe re-glued every few days.  Well, she will stand on the metal grille over the log chute outside Shelley’s Estate Agency, gawping at their revolving carousel of desirable properties, which are actually well out of her reach.

She has kept her eye fixed on the housing market ever since the recession, as keenly as she used to follow the ball in Under-15 lacrosse championships in her schooldays.  Should some old biddy pop her clogs, thus vacating a property, Clammie will strike as efficiently as a cobra.

Unfortunately, she has not yet sold her own house.

Basically, she is after a double-fronted, Georgian town house in the best street in Suttonford.  Garaging would be essential, so should one with an attached carriage house come up, it would be a-ma-zing, darling.

When her husband, Tristram, drags himself in from work and sets to in the kitchen, she offers to lay the table and, pouring him a Prosecco,  she begins her assault, as carefully planned as the logistics for an Everest expedition.  The only difference is that he has no Sherpa support to aid him with familial burdens.

But, Clammie,..he expostulates, we can only just cover the mortgage and the school fees for our beloved bratlets.

Don’t call them that, she counters swiftly.  Look, I can always do a couple of days in “A la Mode” to help out.

But you’d just spend everything you earned on their stock.

Yes, but I’d get a staff discount, so think what that would save you.

I don’t get your logic, her husband sighed.

English: British supermodel Kate Moss Portuguê...

Well, if I worked there, a scout might see me modelling the designer gear and may just see my suitability as a Kate Moss stand-in.  Then think what I could earn. You know I enjoy spending, so I could derive gratification from seeing other people spend their husbands’ salaries.

Ah, but if you are going to be out all day, then why do you need a bigger house?

To store all my clothes, silly.  It’s a false economy to have to stuff all my outfits into wardrobes that I can’t easily access and have everything creased to kingdom come.  I can never find what I actually possess, and so I end up buying last minute alternatives.

Tristram sliced his finger while chopping an onion:

Ouch!  Will you get me a plaster, please?

You’re just not listening and probably cut yourself deliberately, whinged Clammie.

She burst into tears.  She didn’t know if it was the onion that had precipitated the flow, or her own thespian tendencies.

Look, said Tristram, sucking the bleeding digit, stop crying.  You don’t even know if anything on the High Street has come on the market at the moment.

Oh yes, I do!  Clammie was triumphant. The eight-bedroomed house in the middle of High Street- the one that was a seventeenth century drovers’ inn- was in “Shelley’s” window this morning.  It’s cheap because it sits on a geological seam which has something to do with radon.

I’m not having the bratlets develop a “Ready-Brek” glow, Tristram shouted, waving the knife rather dangerously.

It’s no worse than the mobile phone mast in their school playing fields, Clammie countered.  And it is a small price to pay for social cachet.

Then she realised that the au pair was in the adjoining study, Skype-ing her friends in some Eastern European city.

Please to keep quiet. Alyona glared through the open doorway.

Clammie backed down immediately.  Sorry.

Then, turning to Tristram, she continued, but in a more subdued tone:

But will you at least consider it?  After all, I have asked Kirstie and Phil to meet us there tomorrow, at seven, after you get back from work.

What!  Tristram forgot Alyona for once. I’m not having that Allsopp woman patronise me and expose my lack of compromise on prime time tv.

No, you are perfectly capable of exposing your own lack of compromise, Tristram.  Actually, Kirstie and Phil have been really helpful and even have a first time buyer in mind for our place.

Oh yeah, he was becoming sarcastic and hypoglaecemic.  You mean, a ninety year old who has had a lifetime to save up a deposit.  Don’t be naïve, Chlamydia- ( he always used her full name when he was annoyed)- we haven’t even had a survey done.

English: Dragon's Den Duncan Bannatyne judging...

Oh, suit yourself, but Duncan Bannatyne didn’t get to where he is by missing opportunities.

No, his trip to the top of the greasy pole has given him the ultimate reward of a cardiac arrest and the chance to spend a lot of time with Hilary Devey and Deborah Meaden.  Lucky man.  But at least he had the sense to start small and kicked off his entrepreneurial activities with the purchase of a clapped out ice cream van.

Ooh, you are so bitter, Tristram. By the way, the risotto’s burning!  Take it off the heat.

Well, will you take me off the heat, if I just go along for peace’s sake?

Okay.  But you’ll be on my back burner if you don’t and Alyona says if we don’t go for the house, she will ask her syndicate to buy it and then I will probably end up looking after her kids.

Simples, mouthed Alyona, without even removing the headset .  But I let you rent the carriage house. Boyfriend with Mercedes has deposit. He say me not just pretty meerkat.

Tristram knew the battle was already lost.  He’d be working till he was seventy five, or would have to emigrate to Vladivostok.  George Osborne had a lot to answer for by not pursuing mansion tax, as a husband’s ultimate get-out clause with over-aspiring wives.

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No Mud Slinging

06 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by Candia in Celebrities, Humour, Social Comment, Suttonford, television

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Drone, Kirstie Allsopp, Phil Spencer, Suttonford, Victoria Sponge

Suttonford Show…In the very recent past the Show has had to be cancelled, as wallowing in mud might be popular if you are a hippopotamus, but not if you have to park a vehicle and drive it away again at close of play.  So we all hope for a dry day and one in which Kirstie Allsopp will keep her distance and will refrain from entering her creation in the Victoria Sponge section, even under a pseudonym.

English: Kirstie Allsopp promoting composting ...

She is quite capable of purchasing one of those £200 drones that could hover outside the kitchen window of the WI member who has taken First Prize for the last umpteen years, all to bag her recipe and rosette.

If she persists in this behaviour she will end up face down in the quagmire behind the judges’ marquee, with one Coltsfoot welly missing and a threatening slogan daubed in cochineal on the canvas behind her.  On closer inspection she will have sustained a blow to the head from a shooting stick, which may/ may not bear the fingerprints of Phil Spencer’s long-suffering wife.

Having had to examine myself before taking communion, I have to add that I quite like Kirstie Allsopp, but I also enjoy having a satirical dig at her. I wouldn’t attack her with a shooting stick myself because the pen is mightier than the sword.

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

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Skincare

26 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by Candia in Arts, Celebrities, Film, Humour, Literature, Music, Poetry, Social Comment, Sport, Summer 2012, television, Theatre

≈ Leave a comment

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, 23rd 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?

Cheryl Cole, Hastings.jpg

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

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My name is Candia. Its initial consonant alliterates with “cow” and there are connotations with the adjective “candid.” I started writing this blog in the summer of 2012 and focused on satire at the start.

Interspersed was ironic news comment, reviews and poetry.

Over the years I have won some international poetry competitions and have published in reputable small presses, as well as reviewing and reading alongside well- established poets. I wrote under my own name then, but Candia has taken me over as an online persona. Having brought out a serious anthology last year called 'Its Own Place' which features poetry of an epiphanal nature, I was able to take part in an Arts and Spirituality series of lectures in Winchester in 2016.

Lately I have been experimenting with boussekusekeika, sestinas, rhyme royale, villanelles and other forms. I am exploring Japanese themes at the moment, my interest having been re-ignited by the recent re-evaluations of Hokusai.

Thank you to all my committed followers whose loyalty has encouraged me to keep writing. It has been exciting to meet some of you in the flesh- in venues as far flung as Melbourne and Sydney!

Copyright Notice

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012-2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Candia Dixon Stuart and candiacomesclean.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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