Learn Marathi in a Month

As I'm off to India in August, I thought I would be well prepared and buy a book optimistically titled, 'Learn Marathi in a Month'. It's two months until I go, so I can take my time.

The book has arrived, with the encouraging subtitle, 'Easy Method of Learning Marathi Through English Without a Teacher'. It starts to go downhill with the preface, where they admit that Marathi is easy to learn as long as you know Hindi or Sanskrit. Chapter 1 hopes you will learn how to write vowels and consonants, (which look like tangled tights hanging on washing lines), but doesn't offer any explanation as to which vowels and consonants you are practising. This comes in chapter 2, where it has perplexing explanations such as, 'the vowel (rv) should be pronounced as rv'. I'm not sure how helpful, 'Mother, the lotus flower is beautiful' will be as my mother isn't accompanying me on the trip. Also redundant, 'sister, take out the vegetable from the basket' or, 'The drawingroom has two windows'. I will obviously need to practise the useful abbreviations, especially the script for 'Home Guard' and 'Field Marshal'. You never know when you might need those. The proverbs page is fun - 'Every cock fights best on his own dunghill' and the ever popular 'swallow a camel to strain a goat'.

I'll let you know if I'm fluent by the end of June!

One Globule or Two?

There's nothing in the fridge to eat apart from a potato with a healthy looking shoot poking out of it, some cheese with blue patches on and some seafood sauce that went past it's sell by date a while ago. (Like never using a pencil to the very end, does anyone ever scrape out the last dregs of a jar of seafood sauce?).

In the swirly Ikea cupboard there's a box of blue stripe lasagne and half a bag of risotto rice. (The swirly bit broke quite soon after delivery, so the baskets dip up and down like a fairground ride, tipping anything too heavy onto the kitchen floor). At least I can have a cup of tea as the milk is just about the right side of yoghurt.

Milk perplexes me. It used to go off after about three days in a fridge. You used to get the gloopy little white spots (like some people get on their tonsils) floating around your cuppa. They were often accompanied by globules of fat, skimming around on the surface. They annoyingly always resisted being fished out with a teaspoon. Now you can keep those plastic bottles in the fridge for eons, and it's only when it comes out in chunks that you realise it's finally gone off. Why's that then? Has our milk been subjected to sinister rays?

I will contemplate this as I go and cut the mould off the cheese and consider a risotto without the usual parmesan and wine to enhance it.

Is Going Grey Giving In?

There is something scary about packs of women of a certain age, 'having a good time'. I went to watch a very good singer in a bar last night with friends, but the bar was dominated by women with peroxide blonde hair and crepey cleavages exposed in spaghetti strap black dresses. They were wearing lots of make up, particularly around the eyes (it was admirable how they managed to keep their eyelids open with the weight of mascara) and seemed to be drinking wine by the bottle rather than the glass. They tottered around dancing (I use the term loosely) in front of the singer, but as the evening wore on, needed more and more support from assorted strapping men to stay upright and execute the spins. The singer cleverly intertwined a call for water into the lyrics of a song for one who was managing to look an alarming shade of green, even through the pancake foundation.

It turned into a bit of a wild evening, with furniture skidding sideways as a 64 year old ('isn't she marvellous for her age?') in leggings and flimsy, leopard print top collapsed into a row of bar stools, and two 'black and crepe' clones started snogging on the dancefloor. Some of the strapping lads were twirling spare clones around and the singer, always quick off the mark, launched into 'Mrs Robinson' (the irony of which was lost on most present).

The singer has a regular monthly spot there. Those of us with functioning livers will definitely be back.

Getting to Work without being Strangled

This morning I woke up at six, blinked and then it was eight. How annoying is that? There you are, lying all cosy in bed, feeling totally in control of your life, and you lose two hours. I didn't even have a dream.

I got up and made a cup of tea and went back to bed - this always feels like a total luxury. Radio 4 blurts out something about disreputable MPs and for a moment I enjoy their discomfiture as the whining apologies are broadcast. I realised I was probably being cynically manipulated by the press into thinking this way, so slurped some more tea, tried to readjust my cognitive processes and lunged for my Suduko. I have developed a knack of balancing the mug on the mattress, propped up with fluffy duvet, so I don't have to reach to far for my 'beverage of choice'. Two suduko and I'm ready to get in the bath. I didn't do any Darcy Bussell this morning, I'm feeling a bit groggy from a rather lovely evening in the pub garden. After putting on my clothes I find my card-key lanyard and get in the car to drive to work. There is a barrier to the work car park, and because the skip window is still broken, I have to manoeuvre the car to just the right point where I can lean out of the door and activate the switch without strangling myself. Quite often, I will be dangling out of the car at a jaunty angle as the kind car park guy activates the barrier anyway. I'm not sure where he is as his kiosk has mirrored windows, so I do a vague wave sort of in his direction and hope I don't look stupid.

There are two sets of doors to get in to prefab towers, the first open snappily so you are striding through at an enthusiastic pace, but because the second set are slow to activate, you generally end up with your forehead banging on the glass. I get to my office door, and lean over to stick my key in the lock, which has something funny going on and I have to turn my key about three times to open it. This tightens the lanyard, so yet again I am bent over at an awkward angle being garotted by the card key set up, when the door finally opens and I fall into the office. I turn on my computer which needs ten minutes to get going and two on/offsies. I've got used to this now, and if I am quick on my toes, can activate the second on/offsie and nip to the post room and back by the time it's asking me for my password. Evenutally I can make another cup of tea and settle down to work.

Having written this, I'm going to resolve to get an elastic extension thingy for the end of the lanyard, and get my computer fixed. I will also get the window working on the car. Life should improve dramatically.

'The Card-Key lanyard, how do you wear yours?'

Hypersensitive in the Hypermarket

I've just been to a hypermarket. It's like real life only with 25% off.

A conveyor belt helps shoppers get to the goods in the vast, unprepossessing prefab warehouse (the architecture suggesting 'buy one get one free' builders). Recorded announcements implore you to 'hold on to the handrail' (in case the unexpected acceleration to 2 miles an hour is likely to throw you off your feet). Further along the disembodied voice advises you to 'prepare to push your trolley off the travelator' (suggesting a history of tangled trolleys and shoppers who sued).

There was a queue of people at the service desk who thought odds of around 14 million to 1 on the lottery represented a good investment for their hard earned cash. Further in hung clothes so cheap they could only have been made in abject misery in distant lands. Under the neon 'synthetic daylight' pale faces, etched with stress pushed their purchases towards the long queues at the check-out tills. Sulky teenagers with name badges declaring, 'Here to Help!' scanned the goods in. Every till bleeped as yet another tasteless ready meal or microwave delicacy was suspended above the glass, and more money landed in the pockets of the executives, keeping their yachts afloat.

Welcome to consumerism obese on its own success - the Hypermarket

Mine's a bottle of Sat Nav please

I realised I live in quite a posh place this morning when I dodged a puddle on the pavement, only to realise that it wasn't rainwater, but red wine. The stones were ruby stained from cab sav (sounds a bit like sat nav). Shards of green glass gave the game away, and I imagined someone's dismay as a pleasant evening with a friend turned into an embarrassing, empty-handed arrival. I felt sorry for them for a short while until I thought they could have come out with a dustpan and brush and made the street safe for kiddies and old folk etc. The children would be in danger of laceration, the old folk were in danger of lying on their front,licking the pavement and being unable to get up again. Perhaps the glass was a red herring. Perhaps here in west London where we pay stupid amounts of council tax, the rain really is wine.

I suddenly feel the urge to buy a butt coming on. I must make haste to the B&Q 'stand and deliver' promotion (or whatever it's called).

Transport of Delight?

My mother is in an old people's home in Kent. She was telling me about how they have occasional days out in a minibus. Rather unusually, the one they use is sponsored by the local undertaker. I can't help thinking this is a tactless choice for OAPs. Does it have a cheery black coffin logo with 'transporting you to the afterlife' or 'enjoy the trip of a lifetime' as a slogan? Do they go on themed visits: 'Sarcophagi of Sandwich', or 'Folkstone and its Funeral Parlours'? More worryingly, would this minibus have seatbelts and be properly maintained to check the brakes work - a particular concern if business isn't flourishing (giving a different meaning to the phrase 'credit crunch')? Does the driver wear a hoodie and have a scythe tucked under the driver's seat?

Don't go! Dust off your Freedom Passes and get the bus!

"This trip to Dover Castle wasn't quite what I was expecting, can I have a refund please?"

Snivelling Colds and Soggy Tissues

I am very lucky in that I don't often get poorly (my hand is groping for some wood to touch as I say that, difficult to find here in Prefab Towers). Today however, I have a cold. I haven't had one for as long as I can remember. To add to my misery I will be having my final rabies and Hep B injections this evening (and these into my poor bruised arm). My bin is full of soggy tissues and the end of my nose is sore.
*****
It's now tomorrow (a strange sounding concept, but I think you're following) and I still feel poorly. When I asked the nurse whether it was ok to have the injections while under the weather, she cheerfully announced it would just make me feel worse than I already did, as she pinged the needles into my bruise.

So, job done, I feel worse than I did before. This evening I thought a walk in some fresh air would help, so set off to the park. It started to pour with rain at which point I felt that a coat might have been a good idea.

Enough of this Eeyore-ness. The nice thing about the park was that there were a couple of egg sized moorhen chicks paddling away in one of the lakes. They were really small, and could only have been a few hours old. There was a heron stalking some fish and some tadpoles looking busy. The rain must feel quite fun to a tadpole swimming in shallow water with the drops dolloping around them.

Anyway, early night for me, cosy suduko, cup of tea, radio 4 (I'm ready for something unchallenging like the shipping forecast) and my fluffiest pillows.

The Prawn Ring

For one of the receptions at work I went to a budget frozen food store and bought a 'prawn ring'. The prawns were frozen in concentric circles around a central well of pink sludge, cunningly packaged on the 'freezer to table' brown plastic base that wasn't quite as sturdy as it needed to be to avoid slippage. I think it only cost about £3, it might even have been £2. I was wondering how the shop could sell them so cheaply, and realised, with horror, that I might have inadvertently bought battery farmed prawns. They sat in their misery on my desk, and a puddle of fishy water started to leak towards my paperwork (which you remember had been saved from doughnut disaster earlier in the week). I wondered whether their cages had been cramped, whether their living conditions had been the prawn equivalent of Abu Graib. I felt quite sorry for them, but couldn't resist tasting one (to check whether it was fully defrosted as the sludge on my desk suggested). It was disappointingly flaccid (but then 'flaccid' is a word that always conjures up disappointment). It didn't taste of much, except coldness and dampness with a salty after-note. The picture on the box it came in promised so much more, with its lurid, technicolour artwork and generous proportions. Still, I expect life promised more to the prawns than to end up as the feature item in a finger fork buffet.

Wet Legs and Tights

I hate tights. I really hate tights. Especially when you've just got out of the bath and your legs are still a bit wet. You haul up the nasty nylon, which forms Nora Batty wrinkles on the way up, meaning you have to scrabble with your finger nails to unravel them. Then the weave gets twisted round, and makes large, unattractive dents like one circuit of a helter skelter in your thighs - so you reverse the process down to your knees and try again. The gusset never quite comes up high enough, so you end up going down the stairs with an awkward, lopsided gait until you've finally stretched the fabric loose and can tug them up properly.

The next worst thing about tights is when a toe nail carves a hole and the nylon slides round your toe like a tourniquet, leaving a single thread stuck behind the nail. The happiness at getting home after a day at work is marred by having to surgically extract your foot from the tights and seeing your toe looking slightly more blue than usual.

I think I shall become a devotee of stockings again, at least with fish nets you have a seam to line them up as they go on, and extra weaving at the toes. You can roll them on like those ladies in adverts who use the recommended dilapatory process. So rather than getting bad tempered and needing to hang onto the basin to stop myself falling over, I can wear a knowing smile and slide a stocking over my knee without my thighs looking like a fairground attraction.

I thought you'd enjoy this photo of me, having just experienced stress free dressing with stockings. I should point out that my bathroom doesn't usually look this tidy, so don't get a complex.

Clay Pigeons and Bruises

I went clay pigeon shooting for the first time at the weekend. It was fascinating to actually see the legendary smoking guns dangling over people’s arms. I wasn’t very good, and to prove it I now sport a large and brightly colour bruise on my upper arm. If I had been holding the gun correctly, the bruise would have been on my shoulder.

The clay pigeons were fired from a pingy thing, (which looked quite good fun to operate) but they were extremely difficult to hit. On some of the stands the pigeons ‘flew’ back and scattered shards over our heads. I envied the men who were wearing sensible wide brimmed, leather hats. They also wore tabards – like dinner ladies wear - only in macho camouflage colours. (I have worked in schools where the dinner ladies might well have wanted to be camouflaged and holding shotguns). The camouflage is obviously important to stop the clay pigeons spotting you first. Holding a conversation with other shooters was tricky because of the constant banging (the guns, not the sportspeople) and because of the ear defenders, which poked out of everyone’s ears like receivers for alien messages.

It all made sense when I finally hit two pigeons at the end of the morning and found myself hopping up and down, waving my arms in the air and doing a little jig on the stand. Luckily someone had taken the shotgun away first.


"If I keep very still, maybe they won't see me"

Mr Benn and My Skeleton

Still having a clicky shoulder from my marathon swim (it's so hard being a serious athlete) I decided to brave the Herbalist that was advertising the slightly dodgy sounding 'back pain gift tokens'. There were also flyers in the window advertising massages, rather worryingly placed between ads for 'herbal sex tablets'. Slightly concerned about what sort of massage it might be, I paid my £5 and asked for a shoulder massage. It turned out to be extremely relaxing, although I find it disconcerting at times like these to be reminded of how I am just a skeleton covered in soft tissue. It's hard not to be hyper-aware of it when someone is picking out the edges of your shoulder blades and collar bones.

While I was sitting with my eyes closed trying to lose the skeleton thing, I decided the experience was a bit like the children's character, Mr Benn - I walked in off the street in South London and was transported to China.

Quite fun for a lunchtime experience.


Do you have a herbal tablet to help improve my sex life?

Next Invention

The cling film cane! I need one! Part of my job involves organising receptions, and a critical part of the success of these is selecting the right moment to REMOVE THE CLING FILM from the finger buffet. It's the same with parties, as the host/organiser you feel it is protocol for guests to wait for you to REMOVE THE CLING FILM. Sadly, some people don't realise this. Especially old ladies, who will frantically start clawing at the bottoms of the plates to find the edgy bits, rip the cover away and start tucking in while you watch on aghast. These are also the sort of people who will PILE THEIR PLATES TOO HIGH and mean that the more polite guests don't get the opportunity to select the especially nice sarnies/quiche. So, my invention today is THE CLING FILM CANE. In every pack there would be a short, thin stick (it will fit neatly into one of the corners left by the round roll not fitting the square box (why hasn't anyone spotted this?). The organiser of the party/buffet/social would then be able to stand in the corner, tapping the cling film cane against their palm with a nonchalant expression. At the first sign of an old lady clawing at the plates, the cane could be flicked, telescoping out, whacking the offender on the knuckles and then flick back in again. So, end all problematic buffet-barging with the cling film cane!

Doughnut Distress - don't despair, a solution is at hand!

There are some things it's hard to eat at your office desk. Oranges (when you are in a healthy eating mode) squirt juice all over those important papers, and leave a claggy yellow film over your fingers. Not good if you have to shake hands with a visitor suddenly and find you can't let go when you want to. If someone makes you a lovely cup of tea (with the shade of the brew exactly right, not too milky, not too see-through strong) and (if you work in the right sort of office with the right sort of people) plonk a doughnut next to it, you might feel upset. What if you eat the tasty confection and hands become encrusted with sugar granules? Imagine the scenario - having a sudden fit of conscientiousness, you grab an important agenda/document/spreadsheet to look busy (or your manager just walked in) and find it has a greasy paw print left on it when you put it down.

My answer to these distressing situations is the doughnut glove. Comfier than a Marigold, looser than a latex, and made in some wipe down but warm and cosy fabric. The doughnut glove will enable you to enjoy your favourite snack in complete comfort, and leave your hands clean, ready for less interesting work based activities. This will also help relieve stress in the workplace, although it would be hard to know whether this is due to the gloves or the doughnut itself.

Picnic Perfection

It's the weekend and it's sunny! Hooray! I'm off to the park with a picnic, wine, dips, strawberries, good company. There is a magical place, near a stream in the woodland. In the spring fox cubs frolic around, possibly having enjoyed eating the bunnies that used to frolic there previously.

I'm a bit of a picnic perfectionist. The knack to a good picnic is not to use paper plates that bend, tipping your food onto the ground, or horrid plastic cups that crumple, pinging your wine over the edge. If you are drinking a lovely wine, you need a lovely glass. It's worth the weight to fun ratio to pack the real thing. A proper wicker hamper is an asset too, but heavy to carry if you are planning on being further than 10m from the car park - although the serious picnicker will always make sure they can't see any cars from where they settle to indulge. (How many times have I visited beauty spots to see people on their folding chairs sitting looking at the side of their car? A strange British phenomenon indeed). The food needs to be of the salad and quiche variety, not sandwiches in triangular plastic containers, that's just a snack lunch, not a picnic.

It's important not to have any time constraints, you need to be able to relax into the event without clock watching. To completely relax, the correct picnic rug is essential. Too thin, and your enjoyment will be marred by tree roots and a bit of dampness seeping through. Pick a blanket that has a warm fabric top and sensible plastic underlay. You can lie on that for hours, staring at the underneaths of leaves against the blue sky. (I always think that summer has really arrived when you find yourself looking at the undersides of leaves). You are allowed a momentary frown when a puffy little white cloud floats past. If you have picked the day well, this won't happen often. Enjoy the feeling that the only thing worth worrying about at that moment is the density and frequency of clouds.

When siting your rug, check the area carefully for young children and dog walkers, and make sure there are suitable bushes nearby for 'comfort breaks'. Particularly important if settling near a stream with all those trickly noises.

To avoid unappealing orangutan arms, it is useful to have a strong, polite person included in the invitation as they will undoubtedly offer to carry the hamper. It also adds to picnic perfection if you can take along someone to snog. These last two duties can often be combined successfully.

So forget the barbeque, pack a hamper, and phone a friend.