Back to something a bit more normal...

I'm already a bit embarrassed by that last post. Just in case anyone should actually read it. But I'm going to leave it up because this blogging lark is all about stepping outside your comfort zone, surely?

But to redress the balance slightly, I can't go to sleep on just that. SO. I must just jot down something I didn't know before and do now. Papal Bulls, such that came whizzing over from Roma to tell Henry VIII to get back in his regal box, for example, were named after BULLAE (Lat noun pl), which were, apparently, a type of clay or metal seal used in such highly protected communications. Because this type of seal was pretty much tamper-proof.

Interesting. I always wondered why they were so-named. Must remember to tell Best Friend From School, who believed through much of our A level history that the chosen papal messenger in Tudor times was, actually, a long-travelling pet bull from the pope's own herd. Oh, and who also expressed great admiration for the "terribly clever" gorillas who had once "driven themselves" into Mexico City. And who once managed to get the words "masturbation" and "menstruation" into school prayers after becoming distracted by "how budgies feed each other". And who, in her proudest moment, accepted a waggish dare to lock our moody lacrosse teacher into the stick cupboard so we might avoid a lost-match shouty post mortem lecture, and managed it brilliantly, BUT with herself also on the wrong side of the door. Wonderful, wonderful.

I am now giggling into my tea like a schoolgirl-that-was and am no longer feeling quite so spooked.

Much better.

I'm not sure for how long I can admit to this in public but...

Someone recently pointed out, without too much intention of being helpful, that a blog which remains dormant is of "little interest" to the blog reading community. I take the dark hint, indeed - but 2 things. I don't think my blog is of interest to any community, for a start, and secondly, I have to claim school holidays as a Difficult Time for Blogging. I have been fully immersed into an idyllic summer existence of tee pees and campfires and beach trips and country shows and all sorts. And yes, before it sounds too horribly fake, a good deal of bleeping about Having No Time To Myself and general, mind-numbing exhaustion and sneakily early bedtimes. Plus, I couldn't think of anything to blog about.

But now I can. And it's only because I'm reasonably confident that no one is going to read this any more after its long state of dormancy, that I am happy to write it. R will tut and sigh and hrumph but I actually think, self-indulgently as ever, airing this may be a cathartic action to take. Perhaps, when it's all written down, I will look at it and say "What rot!", delete it, roll eyes at self and continue as before.

So this is it anyhow: I think, or at least, I think that I think that I think that I am beginning to get some kind of sixth sense. And I call it that, only because I have no other way to describe it. Some kind of intuition maybe. Something weird is in the water and I don't quite know what to do with it.

I THINK I am beginning to see something, some kind of company, which I have to describe as a ghost because I have no other word, or description for it. And it's not "seeing" as such. More like a sensation. A very acute smell, and a physical response. I suddenly hear what I can only describe as a pop, right behind my ear. I have felt myself shaken, and I have had moments when the air around me is suddenly pervaded by an intense odour. Sometimes perfumey, if this is an adjective, sometimes smokey and cold. And it's not just happening in those bleary night time moments of semi-consciousness. It's happening in the middle of the broad damn daylight and I have no rational explanation with which I can shoo it all away.

Now. I can at this stage tut and sigh along with everyone else and put this down to tiredness, an active imagination, and expectation of what I might already suspect, or, more, want to suspect. Or better, some kind of strange psychological response to something I will not understand because I waftily studied languages ( the year abroad, of course) and not sensible, practical scientific subjects...I don't know. But I do know that I am not mad, and I do know that it is not just me who is "getting" all this.

My beautiful Hungarian hunting dog, who I have often derided for her lack of sense, seems to be getting it too. She reacts to the same things I am sensing, and at the same time. I hear a pop and she growls. I get a funny smell and she puts her head up and starts sniffing curiously. I get an odd sense of company and she stares intently at one place in the room, her hackles ever so slightly flicking up her back. If it weren't for her, I would happily write it all off as mental or hormonal instability, but unless this sort of thing is a virus prone to cross-species contamination, I can't.

And one thing I do have to bear in mind is that it has happened before, years ago when we were in Japan. And R saw it at the same time, although now he does rather huff and sigh if you remind him of it. (you do, R, you do). I almost wish you hadn't. You see, other people saying "Oooh that IS weird", or dogs suddenly frowning and staring at a something just over your shoulder, is a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's great comfort to know you are not a ditsy air-brain with an over-active imagination. Or at least, if you are, there are two of you. On the other, you end up with unanswered questions, which can be unsettling.

Another interesting thing, people are beginning to bring their own smells. Someone was lying to me the other day, and I could SMELL it. Really. I knew the truth was being fabricated and I could smell it, like burnt rubber. Another recent occasion of being thrown into the company of someone I really can't abide (but shhhhhhh) and this person STANK of wet potato peelings left in a carrier bag. Rotten, disgusting potato peelings. Conversely, all the lovely people I have seen lately haven't smelt at all; one might have expected them to bring with them the air of a fresh daisy field, but no. It seems to be only the bad stenches that come through.

What's going on? What is my brain doing to me? Is it all self-made? Am I jumping at a theoretical version of my own shadow? Or is there something unexplained which will remain unexplained enough for me to stamp my own interpretation onto it? Or has R managed to play to most elaborate practical joke yet on me and persuaded the dog to be in on it?

And since this now seems to be nothing but a list of questions, here are some more. Where the hell do you go to ask? What can anybody say? My experience is that you either get amused, smirky-but- sympathetic looks from confident non-believers who think you've turned the corner to Doolally, and always find a way of expressing their politest surprise that you - "of all people, really" - would be "into that sort of thing". OR you get people who say "My auntie sees ghosts and talks to them in 'er parlour with 'er cats". OR you end up forcing a reaction from your uncomfortable friends who do their best either to muster polite interest, with curious sidelong glances at each other when they think you're not looking, OR who shriek "Yikes! WITCHY!" and cancel coffee unless it "can be somewhere else rather than at yours cos it sounds a bit spooky there" (you know who you are...).

Do you ask vicars or doctors about this? Can anyone tell you? Is there a trustworthy book? Is the best thing just to shut up about the whole hoojimaflip and hope it goes away? Or do you think "Ooh, interesting!" and embrace it? And if so, how?

Because what worries me most of all, is that accepting it would inevitably mean I would have to find a reason for why this is all happening now. Is it a subconscious expression of some snippet of dread, which perhaps itself comes from nothing more than the general hazard of having young children and reading the news about the Big Bad World? Is it because recent events have conspired to leave me missing my mum so much that I am prepared to invent a whole new para-world as a safety net over ultimate loss? Have I just alerted my mind to the possibility and now it's trying to find all sorts of examples to back it up? Or am I simply imagining it all as an excuse to blog instead of cleaning that tenacious sauce off the difficult bit of the hob?

I am nearly 39 years old and I am writing about what I think may be ghosts, and looking over my shoulder at my empty room. Turns you didn't expect your life to take.

Thank goodness the dog is asleep.

Answers, please. Any at all.

I have had a couple of unsatisfactory conversations recently where I have had the very sneaking suspicion that my responder has, from the outset, imagined he knew what I was going to say next and, worse, could suppose my reasons for saying it.

The fault was no doubt mine, for expressing myself ineloquently.

But this, in turn, has made me quite envious of Rebecca West. I saw this quote in last week's THE WEEK, and it matches my Monday morning mood exactly today. Oh, to be articulate.


"I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."
Rebecca West

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.

Actually...

It's very bad to go to bed in a down-mouth mood. I need something inane, random and very damn silly to sleep on...

Dramatic Chipmunk. 5 seconds that never fails me...

Swine flu without the flu

Today has not gone well. I found myself once again in A and E, this time with my 4 year old. He currently holds the family record for The Fewest Trips To Hospital (the 3 year old vies with R for first place, pitting some heavy-duty febrile convulsions against his colourful array of rugby injuries) but today necessitated a visit. Yesterday, he had been jousting on the spare bed with a friend and had fallen from his horse, right on to the floor via the radiator. With a wallop. There then followed a night of all the things you are supposed to watch out for after a blow to the head. So ...skipping forward...there we end up. When we arrive in the car park, he is grey and not wanting to walk, and I have that momentary cold-squeeze of parental horror that something could actually be very amiss indeed.

I walk in carrying my yellow-faced, feverish, vomiting boy and I am met by an oh-so-young nurse. I am overly polite and apologetic for disturbing their day by bringing a live child to the A and E and I can't help it - it is the English in me. She is accusing and wants to know why on earth I am here. I tell her I was worried about the possibility of concussion as he had been listless and floppy and complaining of "fuzzy eyes" and "nasty head". "Does he have a headache?" she demands. I say yes, because he banged it - hard. Does he have fever? Yes. Vomiting? Yes.

Young nurse turns to the desk and shrieks "That's four boxes ticked! Swine flu masks!". We are immediately rugby-tackled into a far-flung cubicle and the curtains pulled resolutely shut. They open an inch a second later for two masks to be thrown in. Then shut again. Then open a slit. Young nurse's eye peers at me from the other side. "I might say, "she begins, lecturing to the Idiot "if you thought he had swine flu, why you decided it was a good idea to bring him in here". She tuts and flounces off.

Hmm. Well, I didn't think he had swine flu. I thought he may have a bug, because everyone else seems to have one, and I thought he might have light concussion. And because he was delirious and vomiting and complaining of blurred vision, I thought, and NHS Direct thought, that A and E might be a good place to drop by.

Thanks to my 3 year old, I am very familiar with our paediatric A and E department, and have visited them, unannounced, on many occasion, often in my pyjamas and usually with a child who has become stubborn about breathing. They have always been welcoming and efficient and very good at persuading said child that breathing is good.

But today, they did not want us.

"Gosh," says an older, braver nurse, who's come to do his obs. "He doesn't look well at all."

"Erm, no" I say and we all peer at each other over our masks.

After a few hours and some anti-viral drugs, some rehydration salts and some pain relief, my 4 year old, and I, are returning to normal. So the lovely, kind and patient doctor comes to discharge us.

"I THINK", she says "he has concussion from the bang to the head AND some kind of bug, which you say has been round your friends and his sister." She pauses uncomfortably. "My problem IS that these two things together means he ticks four of the boxes on the Swine Flu Symptom list. So I have to ask you if you want me to prescribe Tamiflu."

I ask if she thinks he has swine flu. She says no, but has no way of telling for sure, because they are not allowed to test for it any more. SO it's probably just a bug? Yes. Like they get off each other all the time? Yes. And concussion? Probably. So why are we talking about swine flu, I ask? "Because", she explains "we have a checklist and if four or more symptoms are ticked off, that's what we have to say it is."

I'm not sure I get this. By this rationale, I think I, and rather a few of my friends, have had swine flu nearly every Saturday morning in memory. R must have swine flu with his meningitis. The children bring it back from nursery on a termly basis. It doesn't add up. Swine flu seems a vicious and potentially dangerous virus, as many strains of flu can apparently be for those at higher risk. But they are saying, our papers, in exaggerated horror, things like "a third of the population could get it!" Well, by what I've seen today, I'm sure they could. Is it any wonder that swine flu is reaching its pandemic proportions, if this is how diagnoses are made and how the statistics are formed? Or is it just round here they are doing it thus?

In any case, I am convinced that sweating pig death, as R likes to call it, has not knocked here. I told the doctor it seemed odd to prescribe him drugs for something she did not feel he had, and she agreed with me with tangible relief. After a few hours, we could go home.

But that nurse.

I know nurses do a wonderful job on very little and I usually cannot fault them at all. And I am not confrontational by nature - far the opposite. But today my gander was up about being spoken to like an uncomprehending nitwit in front of my little boy.

"Excuse me, "I say. She glares. "I didn't think he had swine flu. I thought he had concussion and a bug. And the doctor agrees with me. YOU said swine flu. NOT me."

It was no witty riposte. And I couldn't bring myself to tut-n- flounce either. But I felt as though my honour had been slightly defended. For me, that was a big step and I initially felt pleased...BUT.... but now I think the poor girl had probably just been up all night...

Anyway. And so to bed. I have had enough today.

Blog Critic has been on the phone during a break in the Ashes. He has decided to stop pretending not to read my blog, and is now pretending that he Only Does It to Stave Away The Boredom of Rain Stops Play.

But anyway, it seems my carnivorous friend is now a self-proclaimed lover of chickens and was upset by the picture in the last post. "It's a dead chicken and the suspicion will be that you've killed it" was his complaint. "I was sad. So will lots of people be. It's macabre to put pictures of dead things up and invite people to laugh about them. I felt all chilled and nervous afterwards."

I explained, knowing his professed sadness is to be taken with a Dead Sea of salt, that it was not exactly what I had done. That the chicken was HYPNOTISED, not dead, nor was it one belonging to my neighbours, but one that I'd (ok, naughty naughty) got off an Australian chook hypnosis site (of which, interestingly, there are rather a lot. J and B, my lovelies of Oz. DO explain this when you get a sec, won't you, favourite flaming gallahs? )

"That," was the reply "is a dead chicken. It 'as", he added with a fake accent and the triumph of one with a well-plotted conversation "Shuffled of this mortal coil. It is an ex-chicken". He left me for the cricket with a satisfied chuckle and the sound of him patting his own back.

But hours later I get a text. "SERIOUSLY IF PEOPLE THINK U HATE CHICKENS ANIMAL LIBBERS MIGHT PAINT U..."

So just in case. The photo on the last blog was, er, borrowed. It was not proof of a failed hypnosis experiment with P and G's chickens. Honestly. And I don't hate chickens at all, I rather like them, both as chickens and as chicken...

I texted back to say I would post to clarify.

The reply whistled back:

"DON'T."

"WHY?" I asked in frustration. I SAID I didn't know about blog etiquette, right from the start...

"GOING ON ABOUT CHICKENS MAKES U LOOK IN NEED OF THE RAPIST."

WHAT? What, what, what?

Then later, "SORRY, THERAPIST. TEXT ERROR. GOOD CRICKET".


AFTERTHOUGHT - For anyone who hasn't seen the Dead Parrot Sketch, much beloved by my Blog Critic, here it is. I am trying to ensure myself a compliment from him by putting it up . Just to see if I can.

“People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately” Oscar Wilde

It's quite bad to spend your Saturday evening writing about what you have just done (why oh why, my Blog Critic would sniff, if he weren't currently pretending not to be reading my blog, would you imagine anyone to be interested, Cocky Girl?) But anyway. If this ever forms some kind of diary for me, and thereby prevents me from forgetting the past couple of hours, then all jolly good. Sometimes, you just have to accept that you are ridiculous.

This is all because at some point today I saw a clip on kiddie TV about hypnotising a chicken and have been rather carried away with the idea. Please see previous blog.

Anyway, I was thinking it would have been one of those strange little twists of life - you know, rather unproductive day because of feeling so bleurgh and hungover, but - hey! - not THAT unproductive after all because I learnt to hypnotise a chicken. That was the broad plan of it, anyhow.

The first thing I did was utterly humiliate myself in front of a friendly neighbour who we happened to run into on the way to the chickens' house.

Friendly neighbour (jovially): Ah, you're on animal duty this weekend, are you?

Me: Yes, yes, just off to collect the eggs and feed the chickens.

4 Year old (conspiratorially): But this time, we're not just going to FEED the chickens, are we Mummy?

Friendly Neighbour (slightly curious): NO? What are you doing then?

Me: Oh, you know, feed them and things.

4 year old: No we're not, Mummy, we're going to do er..er.. that thing to them tonight. You said so. What are we doing to them?

Me: Did I say so? Oh, no, just feed them and perhaps let them out for a wander...

4 year old (wide-eyed and aggrieved) : But you PROMISED we could do that...that thing to the chickens and take photos and that's why we've got the camera and you said you'd never done it before and you didn't know that it would work and we had to be quiet while you looked on the computer for how to do it...

Friendly neighbour: (quizzical silence bordering on something more aghast). Looks at camera.

Me (seeing nothing for it - friendly neighbour could, after all, be imagining all sorts of grotty things by now): Oh! You mean, er, hypnotise! Ah yes, we're just going to hypnotise them as well, I'd forgotten...

Friendly Neighbour (long look): You're going to hypnotise P's chickens?

Me: Well, no all of them, just one probably, and only if they don't mind, you know...

3 year old: Because if we snap their heads off they would run around in circles even though they are dead.

FN: (Silence and utterly stunned look.)

Me: Yes, well, we're not going to snap their heads off. Just feed them, and you know...hypnotise them. A bit.

3 year old: We like chicken noodles, don't we Mummy?

FN: (Eyebrows hitting the clouds) Silence.

Me: Well, we're not going to use them for chicken noodles, we're just going to feed and ...er... hypnotise one, and oooh look at the time, they must be hungry, come on...

FN: Do you know how to hypnotise a chicken?

Me (just squirming in shame by now): Ohhhh YES! Nothing to it! There are, erm, lots of different ways but erm we're going to use chalk tonight. Anyway, must dash...

4 year old: You don't, Mummy, you just saw it on TV today and you made us be really quiet while you watched it and then YOU SAID it was really lucky that we're looking after the chickens this weekend cos we could go and try to do it...

Me (bright red attempt at airy, all-is-normal laugh): NO, no that was Daddy, darling, don't you remember? Mummy's very good at hypnotising chickens...well, anyway, must dash...

FN: Erm....well, good luck. Er, yes, good luck. (Long look and very obvious mental note not to ask me to let his dog out again)

3 year old (high pitched yell for whole street): CHICKENS! WE'RE COMING! MUMMY GOING TO GET YOU AND HIPPO-SIZE YOU.


So, that was the start. And it didn't get much better.


I should probably say straight out that these chickens were not receptive to the idea of being hypnotised and this made it tricky from the off. "Keep your chicken calm and quiet and use soothing and encouraging tones to send her into a state of deep relaxation", the blurb on hypnotising chickens told me. "Encourage her towards you and show her kindness and love in the process".

Hmm.

So I put my soothing and encouraging face on and went to the coop. The chickens swayed gently and gave me beady, sidelong looks.

"Hello, darlings" I tried. This felt so silly. "Hello, ladies" was a little better, and I was sure I was feeling a thaw in the hen hostility when my youngest threw herself at the wire and screeched, "Oi, chickens, we going to HIPPO-SIZE you".

Chickens obviously do not like shouty 3 year old banshees making them jump and descended at once into a chorus of indignant, feathery squawking. And when they calmed down, they had retreated firmly to the far side of their den and lined up in solidarity, glaring.

"Go on, Mummy, hippo-size them now!" the eldest said, all wide eyes and anticipation.


"I think we're going to have to let them out for a little run, first" I said, to his utmost joy. Usually I say NOT to regular request that we "let them out just for a little bit pleeeaaassssee", scared by visions of mad chickenly dashes for freedom on my watch, and the bushes full of lurking, camouflaged foxes, and P and G coming home to No Chickens At All and it being All My Fault etc etc. But today, with my hypnosis plans afoot, I said yes.

I had no idea chickens could run so fast. Within seconds they were up the garden path and out of sight.

"They know you're going to hippo-size them, Mummy, and they are running away for ever" the eldest informed me as we hell-for-leathered after them. "We'll just catch them first" I reassured him.

Thirty minutes later and we were still Just Catching Them. I now know that chickens can run, jump, hide, squash behind obstacles and position themselves right under the centre of the trampoline, where it is impossible to catch them without commando-crawling through wet grass. They also know to wait until you are at your most indisposed under the trampoline before they gallop gleefully off to the safety of Somewhere Else. I also now think that chickens can chuckle, and if they can't, they can produce a near-as-dammit sound at the most opportune moments. 45 bloody minutes it took to catch those chickens. During which time, I slid in fox poo, got grass stains over my shirt, scratched my forehead on the trampoline strings, sat on an egg and called them "buggers" in front of both my children.

"OH, Mummy, just CATCH them, will you?"

It was one of THOSE moments, which I think we all have, rather often. I used to work for a big Japanese newspaper and have a wardrobe and a salary. And NOW? Now I roll around in wet, pooey grass being outsmarted by feathery escapologists, and get reprimanded by very short people. For free.

"When will we do the hippo-sizing Mummy?" J asked when they were all finally back in their coop and looking happy and refreshed for a spot of exercise.

I told him that I felt tonight wasn't the right time after all, and that I was tired, and I thought we should try again tomorrow and he responded that I'd SAID that I was GOOD at hippo-sizing chickens and he'd been looking FORWARD to it and it wasn't FAIR. So I said the chickens were not in a good mood and did he WANT us to get bitten to death (meaning mozzies - there were swarms of them)? I marched both cross children back out of the house, straight back into (oh joy) my Friendly Neighbour and Another Friendly Neighbour who did that thing of being deep in conversation, seeing me coming and suddenly going quiet.

FN: How did it go?

Me: Oh yes, fine fine.

4 Year Old: Actually, that's a lie because Mummy didn't do it, because they escaped and she couldn't catch them. And Mummy said if we stayed the chickens would all come out again and and bite us until we die.

3 Year old: They were buggers, those chickens.

FNs: (Long pause and slight I-told-you-so look from one to the other) Right. Erm, good.


So the long and short of it is, I still don't know whether I can hypnotise a chicken. But it's only Saturday. Lets see. I do however know that I can freak the wits out of my neighbours.

It's all the fault of CITV. I knew I should never have broken the CBBC ONLY rule.

Oops, I've done it again... and hypnotising a chicken

And now my "Cold Omelette" posting has upset. I seem to be getting terribly good at inadvertently Offending-People-By-Blog.

I think what it comes down to is that the "cold omelette" comment was actually made by more than one person, and they ALL now think I was referring to THEM as a "Grump". I wasn't. The post was a tongue-in-cheek reference to a dear friend, who, happily, got the joke. To anyone else who may have also called A's tortilla a "Cold omelette" (still naughty though), and who now feels to have come under a personal blog-attack, please don't.

I was only trying to be funny, m'Lud.

Anyway, am bored of cold omelette now. Changing the subject, I happened to walk in on a kids' TV programme earlier today, (in my fuzzy-headed state of hangover which comes of having a lovely mix of Hungarian, Swedish and Pakistani friends for dinner last night - by which I mean, they were at my table, not on my plate), and they were showing the viewers how to hypnotise a chicken with a piece of chalk drawn along the ground. This is very interesting indeed. And as luck would have it, I am on chicken-sitting duty this very day, as our neighbours have left their feathery-fowl in my now-hopefully-hypnotic care for a while. So that's what I'm off to do now. I DID text them first to ask permission (seems a bit impolite to hypnotise your neighbours chickens without asking first), and got two texts back - one saying "ha ha ha go for it" and the other saying "Hands Off My Chickens Loon". I shall register the first and ignore the second, since this is conflicting.

And anyway, who will ever know? Chickens are at a disadvantage, I imagine, when it comes to reporting unwanted hypnosis. I suppose they could do it via the medium of mime, but I don't much like their chances of getting their exact meaning across.

Anyway, so I am off NOW to try to hypnotise my first chicken.

Sometimes in life you find yourself saying things you never thought you would.

Oh, some things just put you in a good mood... Nothing more to say.

Cold Omelette? B*gger oeuf...

This is very naughty of me but picture the situation. A dear friend has spent the night before her birthday carefully and excellently preparing Spanish tortillas, (half of them plain, half flavoured) for around 200 parent-type people and their happy summer-party offspring. 199 people smile and say "how lovely" and move happily down the queue towards the salad and condiments. One doesn't.

One is unable to be positive. This could be genetic, or it could be linked in with an acutely developed competitive spirit which apparently often seems to materialise within PTAs. (Check The Times this weekend, page something or other) Anyway, if this was indeed the case, then an evening so well-organised by Other People was, no doubt, wince-making to some degree. However, the Spanish tortillas and the accompanying grown-by-the-children salad (now just feel the Sunday Times perfection in that!) were really very good.

I'd like to pretend I had had a hand in making them, but in reality I drank wine and lolled against the kitchen sink and chatted, whisk motionless in hand. No credit here, all credit to A.

What I can do now, perhaps to make up slightly for my uselessness that night, is at least stand up for her culinary creations. They were delicious. Utterly delicious.

What they weren't was a "Cold Omelette".

There are many things I allow to slip by me, blaming a lack of time for what really is apathy. But this one? No. A Spanish Tortilla is not a Cold Omelette. And this Grump had no right to insult my friend by saying it is.

There are similarities. If you scout round the net for a while you will find several reference suggesting the origins of both the omelette and the Spanish Tortilla can be found in ancient Persia. So far, so good. (Some also say China, but for the purpose of simplicity, lets go with Persia, since China can claim pasta and annoy Italy and that's enough to be going on with, surely?)

But the etymology differs straight away. Omelette apparently goes back to the Latin lamella, meaning "flat plate", whereas tortilla derives from torta, meaning "flat cake". See? Different.

And then, an omelette should be cooked in a fine layer, and gently folded over its filling, if indeed a filling is required (for many purists say it isn't). A tortilla has its filling mixed in and is much thicker in texture, being cooked from both sides. And yes, this can also be called a fritatta and I don't know what the difference is, so have decided that this is beside the point.

But there's one more thing. Tortilla sounds good. Tortilla made with feta cheese and freshly picked courgettes and herbs sounds even better. Culinary, enticing and even vaguely romantic, reminiscent of sultry Spain to a Rodriguez soundtrack. Cold Omelette sounds like something you find hoiched up in an Aeroflot toilet after a bad spot of turbulence.

So, although it can take a lot to stir me to protest, especially at so late a time in the evening, this time I DO. They were lovely, fabulous tortillas and it was a darn beastly thing to say in earshot of the person who'd worked so hard to make them.

Madam, what were you thinking?

May your omelettes always be cold.

Just quickly...

"I think Iranian women have become canaries of the mind. If you want to gauge a society and how free it is, you go to its women." Azar Nafisi


You can't escape Iran at the moment and I have always been more than mildly fascinated since a student gave me a book called Imam Khomeini, which I didn't really understand. It wasn't the writing that baffled me so much, but Mehdi's devotion to a figure which to me had always seemed, at best, incomprehensible and, if I am to be more honest, quite scary. It was a book that unearthed far more questions than it answered and I never had the chance to ask my student, who had left it with a beautifully kind note on my desk and skipped back to Shiraz without giving me the chance to ask and ask, (not fair, Mehdi, not fair!)

From the unfinished business of that rather difficult read, I went on to the brilliant Ryszard Kapuscinksi and his Shah of Shahs, and finally to Azar Nafisi where I found myself utterly locked into Reading Lolita in Tehran.

So I had more than a passing interest in this interview I happened upon on Al Jazeera (if you can ever "happen upon" Al Jazeera?) which I think has more clarity than much that has been in the British Press on the subject of late.

Now R is kicking the meningitis, I am finding thought-space to return to my housewifely musing and two of her comments have diverted me especially. The first is quoted above, on how women are the true gauge of the freedom of society. And the second is her suggestion that the Iranian ruling elite is suddenly realising it doesn't have the handle on their people the way it once did, and how the once-repressive-but-now-reformist Mousavi has adjusted to go with it.

How much time does it take to go from "harsh" to "kind", in a political sense? Doesn't it usually happen the other way round? Does that change depend on circumstance, interpretation, hindsight or merely an ability not to be too precious about what you want to be seen as your beliefs?

Anyway, the interview. A great one-coffee read with time left over for pondering. Brief pondering, that's true, but it has been so very hot today.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009613181040285185.html