A dead 'ard 'ousewife wha' I am

I have been chastised for not keeping up the daily blog, and thus failing in the "six seconds a day" idea that I began with. Well, that was an idea always to be ambitious, and my computer is so dinosauric (I have to confess to not knowing that was a legitimate adjective before now) that it takes a good 15 minutes of bleeping and churning for me to get to where I want anyway.

I do do DOOOO aim to write something about the beguinages, about the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, and about the middle movement of a John Field piano concerto I heard recently - all things that have fascinated me over the mountain of my post-camping laundry this week (and yes, Blog Critic, I do mean "fascinated ME" - this blogging is all self-indulgent and I've already said that, my sweet...)

But.

Yesterday, I took a leap over a pile of said laundry and landed, flat-foot, right on top of an upturned hoover plug. Which most successfully embedded itself firmly in my left foot. I cannot even recount the pain of it, but today it doesn't seem to have gone down much. I have raided the private painkiller stash of He-With-Meningitis, and only now, mixed with red wine, it seems to be retreating. Even R, who would call decapitation a "flesh wound" and once told me during childbirth, with some indignation, that "he knew what it felt like because he played rugby", said it looked "quite nasty". So I really am, by Surrey Housewife standards, injured.


My friend S, who was here at the time, said, somewhat approvingly, as she crawled around on the floor with wet wipes picking up blood "You did SO well not to swear". But she didn't realise that I had fallen forward onto the bed and every single vile and stenchy word was screeched into the muffling sanctuary of the duvet.

And this is it - I really did learn one thing from the whole horrid experience.

I had NO idea I could be such a Posh Lady Dirty Mouth. I really do know a lot of bad expressions. Awfully despicable ones. And I can use them all in a variety of ways to invent some startlingly revolting collocations. Where do they all come from? Does everyone have a dark-brooding dictionary of Astonishingly Naughty lexis lurking around in the subconscious, waiting for such situations, in order to jostle out of your mouth and shock you and the world about you? Are we all just a hoover-plug away from some level of Tourettes? Or do I just have a Really Filthy Mouth?

I almost don't know whether to feel ashamed or impressed. I am certainly looking at myself differently.

Hey!

Perhaps I am not as suburbanly boring as I thought. Maybe...I'm a Housewife Wiv Attitude. Maybe I'm just that little bit more street, and other housewives will now have to give me a bi' ov respec'. Maybe I need to drop the RP along with my Ts and Hs and start peppering my speech with "geeza'" and "know wha' I mean, like?" and "phat!".

No, it's no good. Even in jest, I can't do it. And it is not helped by the fact that I am acutely aware, as I write all this rubbish, that I have a pan of chutney bubbling gently on my hob, from the courgettes off my allotment, and a snoring pedigree dog (she had a defective white nose splash so we got her for free, but still...) at my feet. And I'm listening to the afore-mentioned Field concerto. There is not the least little thing "street" about me, and it's rather a shame.

It was a fun illusion for the seconds it lasted, but there's no escaping it. A Surrey Housewife I now am, and that I shall no doubt stay, for a while. Apart from when hoover plugs get stuck in my foot.


This Armstrong and Miller sketch rather illustrates it - like I said before, sometimes one just has to accept one is bloody ridiculous.

Which reminds me. I still haven't hypnotised that chicken.