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.

 

Borders

Tags

Andy Murray, Border Terrier, Jonny Wilkinson, Kim Sears, pole vault, Roger Federer, tennis, Vlad the Impaler

Tuesday, 6^th August

I thought the pole vaulting last night had looked dangerous.   Vlad the Impaler might have been turned on by its finer points. Frankly, the most efficient way to clear that bar would have been to be kicked over by Jonny Wilkinson in his heyday.

Rain blanketed most of the daylight hours, so I spent an inordinate amount of time online.

Kim Sears, Andy’s inamorata, who shares his 5 million pound mansion in Surrey, has posted photos of his medals draped around the necks of Maggie May and Rusty, their Border terriers.  It seems a tad disrespectful, but she was probably bored if he had decided to unwind by playing on that dratted Playstation incessantly.  It must be frustrating for a girl who has a degree in English from a respectable academic establishment, such as The University of Sussex, to watch a ball bouncing back and forth all day.

Borders.  Hmm. They are becoming a bit downmarket since they have been appearing in DFS adverts.  Yet, they look kinda cute, in spite of their grizzled muzzles and remind me of Andrew Cruikshank in Dr Finlay’s Casebook.  Maybe Kim has seen old episodes and is attracted to fairly monosyllabic Scots named after the patron saint of Auld Caledonia.

Janet:  You’ll have had your tea, Dr Snoddie.

Snoddie: Aye, that I have, Jennet.

Janet:  Och, Dr Cameron, it’s gruesome!

Dr Cameron:  Well, Jennet…

No, Kim is probably too young for that one.

Apparently Kim had taken to painting portraits of doggy pets, but someone has taken down her website. I wondered who the saboteur might be. Or was that saboteuse? Everyone was speculating as to whether Andy might pop the question when he flew up to the box like a Milk Tray man. If he had, then Kim could fill a pram instead of a canvas.  Mummy Murray would like to suck, no, coach new blood and it would give Kim something practical to do, like Mrs F., who probably spends a lot of time changing the twins, or bleaching Roger’s shorts to a dazzling whiteness.

© 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.

All Things Lavenderial

Tags

Andy Murray, Bradley Wiggins, Chlamydia, Clydeside, coffee, Glasgow, lavender, London 2012, Michael Phelps, Novak Djokovic, Olympics, Roger Federer, Sarah Montague’, Thought for the Day, Warren Buffet

You could sit in the sun, but there was a wind. I suggested to my friend Chlamydia that we should go to an alternative venue for those all-important coffees.

There is a barn with surrounding lavender fields which sells all things lavenderial – wreaths, scrubs, oils, essential and non-essential, cake, shortbread and lilac furbelows.  Actually they stock pink, white and tufted green plants as well and someone told me that they had supplied floral spikes for the Olympic bouquets.  They probably supply some for the local Hyacinth Bouquets too.  Chlamydia, or Clammie, as she prefers to be known, caught them out, though, by asking for lavender which suited a north-facing position.  It was worthy of Gardeners’ Question Time from Sparsholt College.  Of course, she knew the answer and she also knew that it was only available on the Isle of Wight, so there!

Then I quizzed them as to whether the lavender in the shortbread was definitely of the edible variety.  I was a little nervous since they hadn’t known the answer to the north-facing question.

After a cyclist had been run over by a bus containing the media, Wiggins had lent his support to the cause of compelling cyclists to wear helmets.  Some smart arse had objected and recommended that more people should simply get on their bikes and go onto the roads and there would be safety in numbers.  I could only think of huge flocks of Canada geese, where the outriders were picked off by preying predators, yet a percentage made it through to sunnier climes, or to more wintry ones, depending on the birds in question. We are supposed to be worth more to God than the fall of a sparrow, I pondered.  I had heard that assurance on Thought for the Day.  I thought that more academics should listen in, if they weren’t too exasperated with Sarah Montague in the rest of the programme. They might learn something.

Andy eliminated Djokovic in a very short time and then actually smiled.  Roger, looking very fetching in the colours of his country’s flag, played the longest Olympic tennis semi-final ever, against a very smart Argentinian.  When Roger nipped off for a comfort break, I myself was relieved that the Argy guy did not unfurl a banner about the liberation of the Malvinas, though that was the second publicity opportunity that they had missed.

I was disappointed in Roger’s wife, however.  She was wearing a baseball cap- and I remembered what that had done to William Hague’s credibility- and she was chewing, as if she was Alex Ferguson. My granny had always told me off for chewing in public though she had come from Clydeside.  So, I shuddered to think what part of Glasgow Alex had come from.  At any rate, cud regurgitation was not a cool look and I felt it was unworthy of the consort of the glacial elegance of Federer.

At a crucial match point a baby had started yelling and I had felt that stab of maternal anxiety that can ruin a day out or an evening meal for adults.  I was glad when it was silenced- perhaps by an usher asking if it had its own ticket, or was merely related to a ball boy or girl.  Just as well it hadn’t squawked at Andy’s match, or his mum might have dealt with it very efficiently off camera- see Scottish play.

I watched the women’s ten thousand metres race and found it amusing to see the four Africans overtake the others who were visually ahead, but who were in lap arrears.  They had to avoid a big Polish(?) guy who had chucked a cannonball an amazing distance.  He had the bad manners to run across their track.  Had he tripped they would have had to hurdle over him, like negotiating some kind of beached whale.  Then it was the turn of pregnant wives and excited children to swarm over the track.  It was getting like the rush hour.

On the radio I had heard someone quoting Warren Buffet, who commented that when the tide recedes you can see those who are swimming naked. I wondered if there was a wave machine in the Olympic pool.  It would be quite interesting to flick a switch.  However, they all seemed to favour those lycra long johns – even Michael Phelps – pity.

Opening Ceremony

Tags

Andy Murray, Arctic Monkeys, Daniel Craig, Danny Boyle, Great Ormond Street, Helen Mirren, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Kenneth Branagh, Kirstie Allsopp, Minack Theatre, MRSA, Neil Oliver, Olympics, Paul McCartney, Pierce Brosnan, Roger Federer, Sean Connery, Sergeant Pepper, Sir Chris Hoy, The Queen, The Tempest

I decided to watch the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games.  The only clouds over the stadium were Danny Boyle’s ingenious examples on sticks. I felt my brain was in candyfloss as I witnessed Kenneth Branagh in a stovepipe hat, spouting lines from The Tempest.  I felt that Boyle could have saved some money by hiring Neil Oliver as he had recently been reciting the same speech at the Minack on Coast.  I suppose he might have forgotten his lines by now.

But why was Isambard Kingdom Brunel – his middle name another possible question on Mastermind-ranting on Glastonbury Tor?  Why were child patients, bouncing in Great Ormond Street beds? They can’t have been so ill, being subjected to the terror of huge spidery monsters. Maybe the long-legged spinners represented MRSA bugs and other virulent and difficult to cure infections which seem to swarm all over our wards.

Why were Sergeant Pepper and his entourage hot on the heels of men in the trenches? I felt rather confused.

Then I was stunned that Daniel Craig brought in HM, and I don’t mean Helen Mirren. I wondered if both ladies might not have preferred Sean Connery, or Pierce Brosnan as an escort.  I know I would have.

At a crucial point, when Sir Chris Hoy was carrying our flag, the cameras scrolled to The Queen, who was examining her cuticles.  She may have been wearing a fascinator, but fascinated she was not.  She would probably have preferred watching it all on the telly.  She didn’t even get to light the flame, and she was probably the most qualified to do so, as she was Corgi-registered, according to some wag.

The Czech team made me laugh with their preparation for our weather.  Kirstie Allsopp was probably admiring their wellies with attitude.

Argentina marched past.  I was hoping that they would be overwhelmed by British confidence and would give up all claims to the Malvinas.

Some athletes were chewing, or texting on their mobile phones.  I thought of the minimum standard of behaviour that I had expected from my pupils and I bristled at the parade of bad manners.

There seemed to be an accompanying toga-ed young person who cradled a copper shell which looked like a begging bowl for contributions for the country being represented.  There was one Indian woman volunteer who was not in a toga and who simply muscled in on all the attention.  Later she did not seem at all apologetic.  I supposed that she had had her fifteen minutes of fame.  That Andy Warhol has a lot to answer for.

When Switzerland marched past I was disappointed that Roger was not carrying the flag.  He had sensibly gone to bed early as he had a match the following day.  He was very wise, as it meant that he avoided having to repetitively sing, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, at the instigation of a curiously puffy-faced Paul McCartney, who looked as if an early night and a healthy microwaveable Linda-meal would have done him good.  He needn’t have felt threatened by the Arctic Monkeys, at any rate.

Rafa wasn’t there either, but half of Spain seemed to be in their parade, so no one missed him.  I suppose that it gave Spaniards something to do, seeing as they don’t have any jobs.

There was a Hong Kong team and a mainland China one.  No wonder they win so many medals. They cheat by entering twice.

The fireworks and pixel lighting were sensational and Heatherwick’s copper petals came together symbolically and formed a flaming cauldron, worthy of Andy Murray’s mother’s spell-inducing incantation:

Make Andy triumph over ditch-delivered drabs.

It was one thirty before I hit the sack: I knew I’d regret it over the weekend.

Tour de France

Tags

Ann Widdecombe, Bradley Wiggins, Grayson Perry, Hollande, Jacobins, Kirstie Allsopp, Olympic torch, Olympics, Puritan, Roger Federer, Sarkozy, Tour de France, Wiggo

The Olympic torch had been practically blown out on the South coast today.  I could not understand why all those people, including inmates of old people’s homes had been hurled out in their wheelchairs to wave at people in synthetic, white, untailored suits, who brandished perforated Dunce’s caps, or metallic Cornettos.

I could understand why some drawing pins had been strewn in the path of the Tour de France.  It was just so boring.  I did think that if everything was about positive discrimination, then the collective conquerors could all finish at the same time and have a certificate that said how well they had done to take part.  It had been pretty sporting of Bradley Wiggins to let the others catch up after they’d been stopped in their tracks, or tacks, as the case may be.  But, if everyone slowed down to give others a chance, even those with stabilisers, where would be the glory of a maillot jaune?

The thought of being able to consume 8,000 calories daily and still to look as slim as Wiggo and to have a pert little bum that looked good, even in lycra, made me wonder where the nearest velodrome was.

Yes, the French love their Tour de France, but yesterday I had been reminded of their storming of the Bastille, which put them in a rather poor light.  I debated whether six weeks of rain was preferable to six weeks of Terror. There had been  an opening if ever there had been one for Kirstie Allsopp to have created a nation of tricoteuses, or basket weavers, to contain all those untidy heads.  She could have published a recipe book for brioche since the poor common folk experienced a shortage of pain artisanale. I could just see her on the cover, dressed as a shepherdess and photographed in soft focus in front of Le Petit Trianon.  She could keep Phil in order with her crook.

Sian Williams spoiled my reverie as she couldn’t pronounce Juillet.  However, she is probably Welsh and we find it impossible to pronounce their words, so I suppose I mustforgive her.

Grayson Perry was on the programme and he surprisingly criticised French cuisine.  Their cathedrals he had praised, however. I bet that he would have welcomed a place on Kirstie’s book cover.  He loves the Little Bo Peep look and could have asked for a share of the royalties.

Perhaps if the Jacobins had restricted their protests to scattering a few tacks before tumbril wheels in the modern French spirit, fewer heads would have rolled.  On the other hand, the thought of Sarkozy or Hollande receiving a surprise bath time visit might cheer a few EU refuseniks.  Allons, enfants!

The previous evening there had been a rather silly programme which tried to divide our nation into Cavaliers or Roundheads.  Ann Widdecombe was clearly of the Cromwellian party.  In her Puritan mode she said that she couldn’t understand why her fellow female competitors on Strictly wore so little. (Well, they might have been equally confused as to why she was on the programme at all.)  Weren’t they cold? she’d wondered.  Immodest Ann is not.

However, when it came to the abolition of Christmas by the Parliamentarians, she was- roundly?- on the side of the ringleted Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen.  He loves decoration and probably knows how to pronounce Juillet, even though he is of Welsh extraction somewhere down the line.  As would a scholar such as Ann, I added.  I wouldn’t have fancied Marat’s chances if Widdi had wangled her way up the back stairs with a newly sharpened Sabatier, modestly dressed or not.

I was intrigued as to whether the nation’s favourite  Terpsichorean MP would consider Grayson Perry, as Clare, overdressed.

When the Turner prizewinner does not like one of his pots, he smashes it, but has taken to gathering the little ceramic fragments and places them in reliquaries that he has assembled in workshops in India, so that we can all afford some of his art.  Again, Sian didn’t seem to know what a reliquary was, but Widdi would not have had to phone a friend.  So, gratifyingly, shards are in. Just as well, after what we have spent on that giant example.

And still the stuff comes down!

Some neighbourhoods in Switzerland have joined together to force a farmer to have the Alpine bells removed from his herd of cows.  Maybe the noise was keeping Roger awake.  I thought that they should come to Suttonford, where my neighbours would make the farmer’s bovines seem like Trappist monks.  If Wiggo had been whizzing down a mountain track near Roger’s chalet, -pre-match- he might have had to muffle his clapper if a goat had strayed onto the road.  The reporter was Bethany Bell, which amused me, even if it was an early item and I wasn’t quite awake.

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

More Rain…

Tags

Alex Salmond, Coltsfoot, Gene Kelly, George Osborne, GP, Morecambe and Wise, Olympics, Prince Charles, rain, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Singin' in the Rain, tennis, torches, wellies

It’s all about Higher Maintenance, I reminded myself as I pushed aside half of an unsaturated Skyberry Slice.  My friend had once observed that, at a certain age, it was one’s face or one’s bum.  All those Wallis Simpson types have no reserves when the blubber is really needed.  My friend’s father told me this years ago, and, he should have known, having worked on the Burma railway.

Yes, but I thought blubber was for whales.  I have tried to exercise in all this rain, but when I went out for a power walk, a woman tripped me up with one of those Nordic poles and as there is no tread on my Coltsfoot wellies, I nearly broke my neck.  Also, those items of footwear are expensive, so I don’t really want to get them dirty.  I know my couch potato, rain-avoiding existence is giving me a rear shelf like a boy racer’s spoiler, or like the back view of Serena Williams, but I don’t have her self-confidence to flaunt it in a pair of cyclamen knickers, on the High Street.

Rain has stopped my play over the last two months. I’ve had to cancel several open-air events. My portable candelabra would have been extinguished at Cringe Park Opera and my retro-look, Bisto-ed seamed “stockings” would have run at the Big Band Forties Event.  Dripping gazebos!  Will it never stop?

My only consolation is that my neighbours’ trampoline is so slippery that it is an ‘elf and Safety issue and their swimming pool has been commandeered by a family of ducks.  Kebabs and salad are reduced on the supermarket shelves.  Petrol consumption is down and torrential rain washes off the pigeon poo on my car.  The downside is that I will eventually surrender and put the heating back on.  It is okay if you are a pensioner with a heating allowance.  Then you could be a bit more relaxed about wearing out your designer wellies.  You could afford to replace them.

Rain, rain,

go away.

Come again

another day.

The hosepipe bans have been rescinded.  Good, because if any of those sou’estered kids squelch on that trampoline once more, they will get the full force of my water cannon.

Dr Foster went to Gloucester

in a shower of rain.

He stepped in a puddle

right up to his middle

and never was seen again.

It was probably a sinkhole caused by road subsidence, showing the short-sightedness of local councils neglecting the infrastructure and drains. This costs us all more in the knock-on effects of reduced medical services.  It is probably the explanation as to why, for ‘elf & Safety reasons, you won’t get a GP out on home visits if there is a spit of rain forecast and that effectively means that you will never get a home visit. You couldn’t reasonably expect the medical profession to endanger their lives- not even on their current salaries.  So, if you are experiencing resuscitation attempts from near drowning, after being rescued from your rooftop by lycra-clad firemen in kayaks (you wish), don’t expect a GP to make himself available for the signing of your death certificate.  That is, not unless there is a cremmie fee due.  Then you would see them swim, larded up like David Walliams, just to get their waterproof nibs on the dotted line.

Also, don’t expect a traditional burial in a churchyard.  The coffins all floated away in the flash floods and spiralled out to sea, via some estuary or other.  So, it looks like Full Fathom Five we all will lie. Quite poetic really.  Better than Ilkley Moor and its worms.

What can one do in all this rain?

I thought that a musical might be distracting.  But not that one.  I prefer Ernie Wise to Gene Kelly and know how Eric Morecambe must have felt with gutterloads of rainwater gushing over him, like The Horseshoe Falls.

Apparently Gene Kelly had researched and practised his seemingly effortless routine so much that he almost contracted pneumonia from dancing in his permanently waterlogged woollen suit.  GPs take note: not all medical conditions can be put down to viruses.

Probably by the Autumn, I cogitated, we will all have inhaled so many mould spores that the authorities will run out of flu vaccines and the old lady’s friend will do for so many of us that George, or Gideon, or whatever he is called, won’t have to worry so much about where all those heating allowances will be coming from. The medics tell us that you can’t contract pneumonia or flu from a chill, or from getting soaked. But surely, it can’t help.  If everything is down to a virus, they do not have to step out of their over-heated surgeries to see you and then they don’t have to ruin their wellies, or break their budgets on antibiotics.

I see a cloud.  It is the size of a man’s hand. It’s like a camel.

Nay, it’s very like a whale.

Stop arguing you two, I thought Ophelia might have said. It’s very big and it’s all over the weather map of Central Europe for August.

The Weather Girl was now wearing her Coltsfoot galoshes, not to mention a Mae West flotation waistcoat.  It didn’t matter what she was wearing underneath, even if it was two sizes too small.

Prince Charles had presented the Weather and you didn’t see him wearing ill-fitting Gieves & Hawkes.  He might be an old buffer, but he has won sartorial awards. His jackets fit like a glove, if you could forgive the mixed metaphor.  Even Camilla accepts that she is no longer a size ten, even though she was never any kind of weather girl herself.  She had other assets, namely that she had the sense never to rain on Di’s parade, though she might just reign over us.

How on earth are they keeping those torches alight- re-igniting birthday candles?  The rain must find its way through those perforations. The Greeks never had that sort of problem, though they have plenty of unrelated ones now.  Maybe they could capitalise on the success of Mama Mia and do a re-make with Colin Firth in a wet t-shirt performing an updated Singing in the Rain number.  We could donate some H2o in the spirit of EU solidarity.  Maybe they could sequel Shirley Valentine and we could send them Ann Widdecombe as an ageing Shirley, though she would probably have to be told it was Shirley Williams that she was to portray.  Still, she is fairly good at rocking the boat and would enjoy the attention.

Somewhere I had heard that Federer might be toting one of the torches.   The Greeks used to transport the flame au naturel, but I didn’t dare to hope that he would oblige, noblesse or not.  If he did, the whole of Europe would unite, not to say ignite!

I found it hard to imagine Andy trailing a torch through dreich Dunblane, even if Alex Salmond was cheering him on and the Perthshire Pipe band were playing I would walk five hundred miles, with soaking sporrans and waterlogged chanters.  No, Andy, accept it: the entire female population of the United Kingdom, minus your mum and possibly the ever-faithful Kim, carries a torch for Roger.

I felt sad for Theo Paphitis. If he was going to take over Robert Dyas, it was a bad year to sell gas barbecues.

© 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

Compassion Fatigue

Tags

4x4, Andrex puppy, Andy Murray, Antiques Roadshow, Barrier Reef, Big issue, cashmere, CERN, charity shop, Chewbacca, Co-Op, compassion fatigue, David Battie, Feeding of Five Thousand, Fiona Bruce, Galilee, Jesus, merino, Nanking wreck, neighbour, Oxford Brookes, Roger Federer, Shakespeare, SIM, Suttonford, tennis, Tesco, texting, tramp, vegetarian, Wimbledon

CANDIA, CANDIA, WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOUR LIFE?

I may have had love at thirty and even love at forty, but there didn’t seem to be such a score as love fifty.  I even thought that my name was a cross between a sexually transmitted disease and an artificial sweetener.  Or was it that, as a femme d’un certain age my frankness and candour had become eponymous and self-fulfilling?

I looked out of the window.  The rain it raineth every day.  I wondered if it had been the wettest June and July since Shakespeare’s time, let alone since records began.  (My English degree sometimes surfaces like a rogue shark on the Barrier Reef of my endangered intellect.)  I decided to venture forth to surf the main street of Suttonford.)

The lure of Tesco Express hooked me in.  Yellow stickers on a few packets of prawns helped me to rationalise that what I saved on comestibles would subsidise the purchase of a few designer garments in the sales.

Co-op or Tesco?  Difficult, as I’d have to negotiate the Charybdis of a Romanian Big Issue seller who had taken to making himself very comfortable on a teak garden chair, right outside the entrance to TE, causing the automatic doors to go into overdrive; or I would have to steer clear of Scylla, in the form of Suttonford’s designer tramp who sat cross-legged, texting his currency dealer, or checking his Visa account on his mobile. I was in danger of extreme compassion fatigue.  It was no use asking myself: “What would Jesus do?”

Probably He would have been able to address the Romanian in his own language and could have introduced Himself as the original Big Issue, or He could have given the technological tramp advice on a hotline to heaven that didn’t involve indulgences in the form of top up cards.  Maybe He could have transformed intermittent reception owing to SIM malfunction, rather than to sin.  Anyway, I doubted that the tramp would have appreciated being told to take up his bed and walk.  I thought he’d prefer another can of the lager that the public-spirited locals tended to supply.

The Son of Man once had nowhere to lay His head either, but things might have been improved if Nevisport down sleeping bags had been around two millennia ago.  Mind you, maybe the Apostles hadn’t needed such protection, as climate change hadn’t made camping in Galilee as warm and wet as in the present time.

Furthermore, I wasn’t sure if I should offer the indigent, if not mendicant, anything, since I had witnessed my neighbour’s dismay on proffering him the leftover sausage rolls from the Jubilee Feeding of the Five Thousand street party.  He had politely, but firmly declined: No thank you, madam.  I’m a vegetarian.

My neighbour wasn’t used to a tramp taking the moral high ground.  The cheek of it!

Oh well! Better trundle off with my funky trolley out and head for Help the Ancient, before any of the rapacious so-called pre-empt me and bag all the bargains.

I used to find lots of treasures in charity shops before the prices rose in the time of austerity.  Even the rich are feeling the pinch, so why do charities double the price of clothing, which is then unsold and has to be re-distributed to lowlier branches in less salubrious areas, where it is offered at half the price to the same rich bounty hunters, who simply have the plastic wherewithal to put enough petrol in their 4x4s so that they can travel further afield in their materialistic slash and burn forays?

No, not all the elderly are rapacious.  Some volunteer in such shops, but find multitasking challenging.  You must never distract them at the till and it is essential to check the chip and pin, or you can end up paying £8,000 for a pilled pullover, already pricily tagged at £8.  The manager usually has to be summoned like a genie from some steamy esoteric activity behind a back curtain.  Then, to the accompaniment of impatient dismay from a line of jealous vultures who have just spotted your potential purchase of a Merino, or Cashmere find, but who haven’t noticed the moth holes, a till roll with Cancelled, the absurd length of which would  delight any Andrex puppy, will be issued. I always doubt the assurances that a sum that equals the deficit of Spain will not appear on my next statement as an outgoing.  Still, I can’t keep away from the places of temptation.

Hello, Candia.

It was my least favourite volunteer.  Rather than thanking people for donating sacks of goodies, she delighted in deterring them from depositing bags after some arbitrary time of day and she could spot an electrical item faster than a Heathrow sniffer dog uncovers a kilo of cocaine.

When a breathless woman whose twins were squabbling in a vehicle on a double yellow line came in, gasping as she heaved a bulging black bag, the do-gooder delighted in delaying the drop-off by asking all sorts of intrusive questions as to whether the  donor was a UK taxpayer or not.  Eventually the woman snapped:

How can I be a taxpayer when I have never worked?

I didn’t know the volunteer’s name and she wasn’t wearing an identification badge.  I launched in, nevertheless:

You know that Ming vase that I was cajoled into buying last week for a fiver?  Well, it had a hairline-no, not an airline- crack.

She turned up her hearing aid. I continued:

That means that it isn’t fit for purpose and David Battie always says that there is a difference between a firing crack , which wouldn’t affect the value of a piece materially, and a hairline. I know you are a charity shop, but the Trades Description laws apply to you as well. Can you give me, at least, an exchange note?

Certainly.  Do you still have the receipt? Fifteen love.

I hesitated. Well, no.. You see, it said £500,000, so I destroyed it in case someone thought I was into money laundering. Thirty love.

Ah, well, I’m sorry. We can’t do anything without it.  As a decorative item, I’m sure that it is worth what you paid.  I stopped scoring.  The ball was in.  Okay, they were not going to get my old Manola Beatnik slingbacks that I’d bought in a Moroccan souk. I will take them to the next Roadshow valuation day.  They might be worth something in the very distant future.  Maybe Fiona Bruce could try them for size.

My next stop was Costamuchamoulah, a trendy “must-seen” coffee shop, where the price of a cappuccino was commensurate with the cost of one of the rare beans from which its beverages were produced.  A single example had excited more fever on the Stock Market than a tulip bulb had raised in Amsterdam at the time of the girl with the pearl ear-ring.  They sell other things too- such as sprouted beans that might be Ming rather than mung and could featured in a barter system where rare porcelain Nanking wreck discoveries could be exchanged for one millionth of a gram.  Still, as the adverts keep reminding me: I am worth it.  Instant gratification here I come!

Darling!

It was a deeply insincere parent of a dreadfully dim girl that I had once taught.

Look at this amazing double egg cup in goose, hen or quail sizes.  It has such cute little sheeps’ heads on it.

Sheep plural, I scoffed silently.

I simply must buy one for Becca’s Biology teacher.  He really helped her to get an A* with all those extra lunchtime sessions he provided.

The ones which she didn’t bother to turn up for with me, I brooded.

(This A/ A* obsession was becoming as annoying as having to observe all those Chinese silver medallists blubbing because they feel they have let down the Motherland.)

Yes, that’s what got her into Biological Sciences at Oxford, the proud progenitor persisted.

Brookes. I silently supplied the post-modifier.

Instead I said, How marvellous!  And how is – I fudged the name– doing now?  As if I cared.

Oh, she’s landed a superb internship for next year at CERN.  She wants to research Botox particles and can’t wait to jog around the collider when it’s not switched on.

I grimaced.

She was at a party in London and met a girl who babysits for Roger Federer- you know, the tennis player..

(Yes, I do know, you patronising… This sotte voce.)

..when he is at Wimbledon.  Now she’s really into all things Alpen.

Muesli for her, I muttered in an embittered tone.  Must dash. Say her old English teacher was asking for her. (Maybe Becca or Chewbacca, or whoever, could get me a discarded sweat-drenched towel from Wimbledon.)

I will, darling, if she remembers who you are/were.  Ciao.

I couldn’t help wondering who babysat for Andy Murray’s mum?  Presumably Kim.

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