Melbourne 2017

Tags

anti-vax, Australian Tennis, Djokovic, Grand Slam, Melbourne, tennis, Victoria

Different times. Flinders Station, Melbourne

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Enjoy!

Tags

cake art, tennis, Wimbledon

Photo by Candia

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

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

St Swithun’s Day

Tags

Coltsfoot, husband, Kirstie Allsopp, mobility scooter, Olympics, shoes, St Swithun's Day, Suttonford, tennis, Vatican, Wimbledon

15^th July

St Swithun by Peter Eugene Ball

St Swithun’s Day.. If it pours today, it will rain for forty days.  All because someone exhumed his sanctified body, or something.

Maybe the Vatican should canonise my husband.  He would never shift his body willingly and so we could all expect fine summers for light years.  Swithun’s claim to sainthood had involved the restoration of broken eggs.  So maybe we should beatify Robert Winston, if he hasn’t already beatified himself.  Anything to hedge our meteorological bets.

Maybe by mid- August there will be an Indian summer.  Yes, but in Mumbai, I thought.  Maybe I should book a holiday with Goa Compare, except that I hate that guy with the twizzly moustache.  He would probably be one of those who took up two seats on the plane and, knowing my luck, I’d be stuck next to him, or to the baby who cried through Wimbledon at match points.  I felt I could identify more with the frazzled housewife of confused.com.  Better singing too.  And with the rain, a similar hairstyle to myself.

I had put my shoes sensibly into the re-cycling bin, but couldn’t fish them out, even with a bent coat hanger.  I stepped back and was almost garrotted by an expandable dog lead attached to an Irish Wolf hound.

Keep that thing under control! I screeched and reversed into the path of a pensioner on a mobility scooter, who clearly thought the pavement was Brands Hatch or Silverstone.

Right. That’s enough, I complained. If it was going to stair-rod all summer, I was off to Coltsfoot to purchase a pair of floral wellies, which would probably cost the price of a Black Market Olympic Opening Ceremony ticket, but which might be covered by my No Win/No Fee compensation for having had my eye poked out by the spoke of a Keep on Keeping On umbrella.

Coltsfoot was the kind of shoe shop that kept the podiatrist opposite in business.  Occasionally one could find something that one’s foot could actually remain in for part of the day.  And those items of footwear were wellies with attitude.  The idea was to pretend that by sporting them you had a Kirsty Allsopp lifestyle with an invisible husband and a homemade house, actually produced by top British craftsmen, who indulged your fantasy that you could knit a kitchen or embroider money.  If you wore those wellies, everyone would think that your cupcake breasts were National Childbirth registered and authentic and your skip-rescued children were not so much the product of Natural Selection, as the living illustrations of a Boden catalogue.  Should you place these wellies outside on your Turtle mat, Phil Spencer would materialise and your house would sell in one open weekend.

All the fives were sold.  There was a pair of thirty nines left, so that should leave room for a pair of socks, since it was likely to be freezing as well as pouring for the rest of what was laughingly referred to as the season.  I thought Nigel Kennedy might have to revise the title of his Vivaldi programmes, as we didn’t seem to have any variation in the weather- just one big similarity and no enigmas.

My main objective was to acquire a Coltsfoot carrier- a bag whose logo was instantly recognised throughout Suttonford and which provoked a curious bowing gesture similar to Japanese acknowledgements.

Once achieved, I could allow myself to be seen popping into Aquanibble, the latest establishment, which was causing pavement obstructions from the gathering of foot fetishists who drooled over ladies who entered the establishment in order to pay shedloads to have their corns and callouses nibbled by embryonic Piranhas, leaving the aforementioned Ladies Who Lunch with flip-flop ready feet and their husbands with macerated monthly accounts.

But what was the point of having smooth skin on your feet if they were going to be encased in what virtually amounted to funky galoshes all summer?  As for additions to my wardrobe, the only relevant outlets to visit would be Monsoon, Twister or Tsunami.  That’s where those weather girls must have bought their jackets.  No sense of tailoring!

I appreciate, but cannot afford designer gear, so that is why I visit Help the Ancient so much.  Who knows?-  there may be a weather girl who lives in the vicinity- it is that kind of area.  The presenter might have to ring the changes for viewers and so might off-load some goodies from time to time, especially if she is an attractive one.  They usually find that they are impregnated shortly after becoming high profile. Then they will have no need of their ill- fitting jackets and can just donate them and live in Barbours like the rest of the not very yummy mummies on the school run.

I would draw the line at any cast-offs from Angela Merkel, though.  On the other hand, her sartorial inelegance doesn’t stop her from dominating the whole of Europe.  Go, Angela, go!

And what is it about jackets and Hilary Rodham Clinton?  What is the woman doing, letting herself go like that?  She could only have herself to blame if Bill did another Monica. But I don’t think their re- cycling bags will turn up in Suttonford somehow.

© 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

Wimbledon

Tags

Andy Murray, Centre Court, Hawkeye, Iona Community, Roger Federer, Saltire, tennis, Toblerone, Tsonga, Wimbledon

8th July, 2012.

Andy Murray had failed.  It was no use John Bell of the Iona Community trying to console us with observations on how failure had formed his own, no doubt, admirable adult character, making him worthy to pontificate on Thought for the Day.

I had been in a quandary about championship allegiance.  All those swaying Saltires, of non-regulation banner size, on Henman Hill indicated that lions were rampant.  I felt sympathy for a seemingly lone Swiss flag on Centre Court, no doubt touted by a Lindt lover.

Yes, Andy had a higher pinnacle than a Toblerone to scale, but when Roger removed his shirt, I’d known that patriotism paled before such a paragon of male pulchritude.

Andy cried; his girlfriend, Kim, cried and so did his mother.  But The Duchess of Cambridge and The Rear Admirable had grinned, in spite of themselves.  Suddenly the Andy who had slammed Tsonga in the manhood region was a malleable racquet in the hands of a paradoxically maternal Lady Macbeth.  One could imagine the pre-match pep talk:

..but screw your courage to the sticking place/

And we’ll not fail.

But he had.

Thankfully Judy Macbeth, sorry! – Murray- would not re-enact all that removing of nipples from boneless gums and dashing of brains on camera.  The Imperious One may have brought forth male children only – or those were the only ones we heard about – but Federer’s twins waving at Daddy didn’t diminish his masculinity, whatever their gender.

There was nothing else on telly, only The Hollow Crown, Part Two.  There was nothing remotely hollow about Roger’s victory.  Jeremy Irons seemed curiously emasculated, though, and his teeth seemed too big and affected his diction.  Maybe he has gum recession, I reflected.  Gosh, when is my next dental appointment?

I decided to turn in early to process the emotional exhaustion of seven deuces, hoping that the twins would give Daddy a good night and praying that Andy wouldn’t be given a good hiding by the Female Hawkeye.

In the cool night air my neighbours had decided to sit outside, quaffing and cackling until, at three thirty am.  I opened my window and bawled: Quiet, please, as if I was an umpire.  I had no desire for a volley; I just wanted to deliver a drop shot which would wipe them out and give me the advantage point of some necessary shut eye.  Noisy Neighbour Syndrome was nothing new, as I had learned from a radio dramatization of Pepys’ Diary on Radio 4.   The wretched man had taken to playing his flageolet outside in the wee sma’ hours, in 1664, much to his neighbours’ chagrin.  I’d never liked the man.  I dare say that they didn’t either.

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