A wee bit of Scottish dialogue.....

You know you are a true Scot if...........

Ye can properly pronounce McConnochie, Ecclefechan, Milngavie, Sauchiehall Street , St. Enoch, Auchtermuchty and Aufurfuksake.
Yer used tae four seasons in wan day.
Ye kin faw aboot pished withoot spilling yer drink.
Ye measure distance in minutes.
Ye kin understaun Rab C Nesbitt and know characters just like him in yer ain family.

Ye kin make hael sentences jist wae sweer wurds.
Ye know whit haggis is made ae and stull like eating it.
Somedy ye know his used a fitba schedule tae plan thur wedding day date.
You've been at a wedding and fitba scores are announced in the Church/Chapel.

Ye urny surprised tae find curries, pizzas, kebabs, fish n chips, iron-bru, fags and nappies all in the wan shop.

Yer holiday home at the seaside has calor gas under it.
Ye know irn-bru is a hangover cure.
Ye actually understand this and yurr gonnae send it tae yer pals.

Finally, you are 100% Scot if you have ever said/heard these words;

how's it hingin
clarty
boggin
cludgie
pished
get it up ye
wee beasties
erse bandit
amurny
away an bile yer heid
peely-wally
humphey backit
Baw-heid
Baw Bag
dubble nugget
And finally......

A wee Glesga wumman goes intae a butcher shop, where the butcher has just came oot the freezer, and is standing haunds ahint his back, with his erse aimed at an electric fire. The wee wumman checks oot the display case then
asks,

"Is that yer Ayrshire bacon?"

"Naw," replies the butcher. "It's jist ma haun's ah'm heatin"

My adorable cousin Robert sent me this. He keeps me well up on Scottish sayings and I thought I'd share it with you. I laughed my head off at it - but then I am a Scot through and through.

The Emotional Rollercoaster

It’s been a month of highs and lows and one where I kept meaning to blog but never quite got around to it. April 30th through to today, May 31st are difficult weeks for me to navigate. Anyone who has read this blog will know that I lost my father and an uncle on one night, followed by another uncle six days later, my mother three weeks later and then my step-father a few weeks after that. I don’t dread the time anymore having come to terms with my loss some years ago but there is always the subconscious at work taking the odd pop at me when I least expect it. Today is the anniversary of my mother’s passing.

Grief is a strange old taskmaster that never entirely leaves me no matter how long the journey has been from the loss of a loved one. I have come to recognise it over time and even welcome a good old sob now and again as it means I haven’t forgotten what the person(s) meant to me. But I am not going to dwell in the past or let my loss define me; rather I thank God for what is in my life now and how fortunate I have been. So, I am not at all sad today, just reflective on what my wee mammy meant to me and how with time, we could have created so many more memories together as I matured into the many ages she had traversed before me. I think I may just have missed her wisdom more than anything in my life. R.I.P mammy, I love you. So, that is a few lows and nothing I can’t manage but it is enough, along with some renovations we are doing, to render me blogless for too many weeks.

One particular high was unexpected and still leaves me with a glow of joy. Some years ago I was quite a big earner of the old greenbacks, spondoolicks, dosh, whatever you may want to call it. I also had a superb expense account but nothing that quite matches that of the thieving fraudulent and ethically challenged gaggle of MP’s that have been ‘creative’ with their accounting of late. To cut a long story short – hah about time I hear you say! – four years ago, after a marathon effort at sorting out my tax returns, Her Maj’s taxman sent me a wee note saying they owed me several thousand pounds. Buoyed with delight at this piece of good fortune I did a jig of thanks to whatever God had blessed me that day, grabbed a cup of tea and sat down to call and claim my booty.

“Hello”, I chirruped in a light and jolly happy tone to the woman that answered; a first if ever there was one, I am usually subdued and fearful when dealing with the hand that wields a baseball bat over my finances.

“Name, NI number”, she barked back at me without any kind of pleasantry or even the most basic of telephone etiquette. Miserable old bag, I thought, as her blunt and rude tone bit into my good mood.

“I’m calling about the letter you sent. You know, ref number 1234567 etc, the one that says you owe me millions!”, I joked obviously delighted in my good fortune that it wasn’t the other way around. “Okay not millions”, I said as her silence at my wee joke deafened the airwaves, “but I have in my hot little hand a letter from you that says a number consisting of five figures and 49 pence, so may I have a cheque to that value please”, I carried on determined not to let this misery-guts ruin my moment.

Tap, tap, tap was the only response I heard as she thumped the keyboard rather too hard. Must be menopausal, I thought. as the silence stretched and I drank my now tepid tea just for something to do.

“Mrs MOB”, she barked over the phone like a sergeant major, "there is nothing here to say that we owe you that money".

“But you sent me a letter saying so”, I protested, feeling my good mood drain from me quicker than blood from a severed artery or indeed pounds being sucked out of my imagined fat bank account.

“Nope, not a thing, it’s a computer or record error”, she spat back at me with what sounded like unbridled glee in her voice.

“No, surely not, if you sent me a letter then it must be true, isn’t it”, I asked in desperation and by now sounding and feeling like a child who had been told that Disneyworld had gone bust. “Oh c’mon, you're joking aren’t you? Is there perhaps someone else that could check your findings, or verify......”

“.....NO”, she interrupted far too quickly in her hurry to dismiss me. “Now is that all I can help you with?” Call that help?, Call that Help? you miserable hairy chinned old boot, I wanted to spit back at her but self preservation kicked in and I accepted a shocked defeat before thanking her – God knows why – and reluctantly placing the handset on the receiver. Himself said I looked like I needed to be put on suicide watch and I felt how I looked.

We didn’t have an accountant at that time so I knew not what else to do but to file the letter away as one of life’s little snatched moments of happiness that turned ugly.

We have a fantastic accountant now, when she came on board she took up my case but got nowhere and I finally gave up the ghost and duly forgot about it until....

.......In April of this year, along comes a letter from the Inland revenue. ‘Dear Mrs Mob, H.M. I.R. owes you a five figure sum and 49 pence’ Oh for Christ sake, here we go again I thought. Bugger it, I can't be arsed chasing my tail over this one again, I decided, and went to file it. But himself had other ideas and took it to our lovely accountant. She drew the same conclusions as I had but with a sigh, offered one last time to chase it up. Rather her than me I thought, simply because I didn’t fancy another ten rounds with that hairy faced old bat who’d taken such delight in ruining my day all those years before. But in all reality, she’s probably been head hunted by a fundamentalist terrorist organisation to train their new recruits in torture and telephone techniques, so who cares eh?

The upshot is that I got a cheque about a month ago, with a guarantee that they will not come after me to return the money at any time in the future. Y’see the records for more than six years have been destroyed and as my claim was for that period, no one can prove whether that money was mine or not to claim. I almost peed myself with utter joy, well that and the ageing effects of the menopause, the joy just compounded things. I danced even more jigs this time as I kissed the cheque and himself in that order. We’d already started a renovation project on our house to sort our drive out, update the outside of the house and modernise our three toilet and bathroom facilities so this is a welcome bonus. The drive and outside of the house looks great. We now have those lovely square toilets with soft close seats, eco friendly with 3 and 6 litre flush options, and much more comfortable to lounge about on, if you get my drift. There’s something quite satisfying about being the first person ever to use a new loo. But, the soft closing seat is a revelation. You just have to touch the lid and it closes gently, but here’s the best part: On first use, after his return from the pub and needing to relieve himself of a few gallons of Guinness, himself toddled off to the downstairs cloakroom. Strange strangulated noises coupled with a few choice Anglo-Saxon words came hurtling through the door. On his exit from said room with the most cheesed off look I have ever registered on his moosh, himself enlightened me to his problem; each time he lifted the loo seat, it started closing down again before he could aim Percy at the porcelain. Crikey it must have been designed by a woman I thought as I laughed up my internal organs at such an unexpected bonus. The loo seat is now known as the Todger Trap and himself now has to adjust his position to accommodate our new purchase, well it’s either that or a mad rush to finish before all hell breaks out! Hah, result!

Around the same time as this we were in the process of selling a hideous purple suite that sat in our conservatory – got a hundred knicker for that just by telling the step-son that we wanted to get rid of it and his friend gladly grabbed it for it was in good condition – and this additional money meant we could treat ourselves to some beige leather chairs and foot-stools from Ikea. We had an expensive garden table and chairs languishing in our summer house so we moved that inside our conservatory. What with new lights and shelving, the room looks superb and has already lent itself to a few dinner parties using our raclette machines that we dragged out from storage and dusted down. We have had the most fabulous social times of late and this has made my April/May much more bearable.

To cap our good financial windfall, Himself’s pension went up unexpectedly by 25%. We hadn’t factored that in for this year and as our company has a contract with the Justice Office that pays superbly well, we are comfortable - for the first time in yonks - we've had some hefty financial demands in the past and God what a relief it is to be free of that. Himself is basking in the glorious feedback he has been receiving of late from his employers for a job well done – he does some very intricate investigations for them that requires a high level of professionalism so I am rightly proud of him. We’ve been having a mega clearout and selling our unwanted stuff on E-bay, thus generating some additional pin money. Lately with my investment income taking a bit of a battering from the latest financial crisis we thought we would have to tighten our belts a bit and put some of our plans on hold so this has all come as a relief and a welcome surprise and all in the space of six weeks or so.

But, every silver lining has a cloud and if I sound too delighted for my own good, I am reminded that life is precious and that at times there is a rug waiting to be pulled from under my feet. Something has happened of late that has made me sob in desperation and sadness but that is for my next post. I cried, off and on, for two days, picked myself up and resolved to find a solution. I’m in the thick of my research now and will post when I have a path to follow.

Life can be a rollercoaster of emotions, and it’s not what life throws at you but how you handle it that defines you. I’ve not always been strong in my past but I’m not going to fall apart now, not when my wee pal and fur-baby needs me.

Fact is stranger than fiction...

.......It is you know. Many years ago when my mother was a young girl, she lived in the south of Glasgow in a housing complex called tenements. These Victorian red stone buildings were a series of dwellings that house four floors of apartments. The entrance to each dwelling is called a close that has stairs leading to the upper floors. In essence they are vertical villages for they housed many families, often several members of one family, to just two rooms called a room and kitchen. Built in a large rectangle, there was a huge central area out the back where the middens were kept for disposing of household rubbish; where the lavvies, (toilets), were placed, where lines and lines of washing hung in addition to the area serving as a great big play pen for the weans to play in. Games of kick the can, hide and seek, postman's knock and spin the bottle could be heard echoing around the area as the weans laughed and screamed in their play. Everyone knew everyone’s business which was sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing too. But in the 1930’s and the great depression, poverty, hardship and struggle were commonplace. Inside toilets were a thing to be dreamed of and tin baths in front of the fire were the norm for a family of ten or so. The luxury of separate bedrooms for the parents let alone the children was something only the wealthy could aspire to. God knows how people with large families survived but certainly with no National Health Service and a visit to the doctor for a prescription costing more than a wage packet denting shilling, infant mortality was high and family health in general was poor. Even so, with little or no contraception to talk of, families continued to grow, stretching the already thin wage packet that if you were lucky, the man of the house brought home on a Friday evening. Jobs were hard to come by during the depression and the sight of men queuing for work on a Monday morning at the steel works would fair break your heart at the desperation of it all as many were turned away, returning home with an acute sense of worry and hopelessness etched firmly on their weary faces. But as my wee mammy used to say, desperate as those times were, families stuck together, looked out for each other, lent each other money when shoes were needed or a loaf of bread meant the difference between going to bed hungry or not. Often when the man of the house had one too many and spent the wages at the pub before coming home as one local Da was prone to do, a kind hearted neighbour would take pity and lend a frantic mother a shilling tae get the weans their dinner.

It was in this vein that my mammy and her sister Aunt T had the regular task of walking the wee wean for the wee wumman upstairs. Her man was away working and so a bit of respite from being a lone parent was my granny’s way of helping her out. Every day, after finishing their chores, mammy and her sister would gleefully run upstairs and bang heavily on the door for the wee wumman played her radio so loud that she often didn’t hear her door go, as we say up north. Grabbing the weans’ buggy, one at the back and one at the front, they’d negotiate the stairs until finally they emerged into the sunlight and wheeled the wean away down the road at speed, making him giggle at the fun of it all. He was a bright wee boy and fell easily to laughter and for this reason my wee mammy and her sister loved taking him out. A few years went by and my mammy and her family moved to better accommodation in the shape of a new council house in a new development in the south of Glasgow.

In time, they thought no more of that little boy until quite a few years later. At first they weren’t quite sure that it was him, for he had changed his surname and now lived in northern England but as details of his life unfolded in the press, there before their eyes was the confirmation that it was THAT little boy; the little boy with the rosy cheeks who would laugh hysterically as they ran so carefree with him all those years before. There he was as bold as brass - Ian Sloane – now known as Ian Brady, the Moors murderer; a serial killer of young children. My mammy said she was so shocked at such a coincidence that she almost didn’t believe it was him.

In a further twist of fate, some years later my younger sister married the son of a Doctor of Psychology who was the director of the southern region for the Open University. I would see her father-in-law regularly for the Open University hired classrooms at the large education and training centre in Milton Keynes where I worked. Had I done my psychology degree course with them at that time, he would likely have been my tutor. We’d often have a chat as our two sets of students frequented the bar before and after dinner and it was expected that lecturers would join their students on the first night for a welcoming drink.

On my way to my desk one morning I stopped at reception to pick up my daily newspaper. In an instant I was drawn to the headlines and photograph on the front page of the Sun newspaper; a red top tabloid noted for its sensationalism in news reporting. There in full Technicolor was my sister's father-in-law presenting Myra Hindley with her psychology degree. To say you could have knocked me down with a feather is an understatement. It struck me as quite strange that first Ian Brady’s connection with my mother and aunt and then his female partner in crime being associated with my sister’s in-laws. It was bizarre and sometime later when I saw my sister’s FIL I asked him about the experience. I can’t tell you what he said as it was a confidence he shared with me and not mine to tell. I can say that he thought it was to be done in private but that Lord Longford, a long time sympathiser and supporter of Hindley had arranged for the press to be present. I can also tell you that it was an experience he was none too fond of. The fact that Hindley was born on the 23rd of July doesn’t thrill me either as we share the same birthday....AAAARRRGGGHHH! Hopefully, that’s where the coincidences end......And, as himself has just read this, he says, hopefully that's where the coincidences end too.

And finally, just as an aside, my sister’s F-I-L is the direct descendant of the man who shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the 28th of June 1914, thus technically starting World War 1. The 28th of June is the day I got engaged to the man who was to become my first husband and one of his given names is Wilhelm, same as the archduke.

Strange old world isn’t it?!

'I'm the cooking woman's crumpet'.........

....Says Masterchef’s Gregg Wallace. Err what? Come again? For the love of God, how delusional do you have to be to look like Mr Potato Head and still come out with a statement like that eh? I mean, has he had a good look in the mirror at all lately? Crikey, it seems old King Edward head has no difficulty getting all manner of women to take their kit off for him. The phrase ‘pass me a bucket’ slips easily from my lips.

I like Masterchef, I like it a lot and the format is exponentially better than when whiney old Lloyd Grossman, or Gross Lloydman as I used to call him, with his mid Atlantic accent used to prance about on it, but let’s face it, the real talent on that show now is John Torode, followed by quite a few handsome and talented male contestants, followed by some of the uglier contestants who hail from small villages where the gene pool choice is seriously restricted, followed by some gnarled looking turnips that need a wash, followed by a Monkfish and somewhere down the line, holding up the rear, would be Mr Wallace sporting his face that looks remarkable like a slapped arse or a kilo of tripe in a string bag.

Now there is no doubt that some eejit with a face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle and suffering from severe myopia with an IQ of 80 might just find Mr Wallace the hot bit of stuff he claims to be. Celebrity has its way of attracting a certain type of person who craves fame, fortune and attention and it doesn’t really matter what the target celeb looks like, or whether they have talent or integrity, just as long as they are ‘off the telly’. Given the criteria just detailed, Mr Wallace’s conquests may be, as he claims, as young as 21 but that’s bugger all to brag about really; Perhaps I am being unfair here, for I could have mistaken him talking about their average IQ rather than their age. Moreover, I’d be inclined to wonder if these nubile young conquests of his still had a pulse or not. Or perhaps he’s indiscriminate and even has dalliances with the older lady because their ability to be grateful makes him feel philanthropic. I just hope he took along a mirror for those octogenarians to make sure they were still breathing too. Whatever their age though, it’s no guarantee that they are fit looking women or whether they are intelligent enough to know what they are doing or indeed if they can walk and chew gum at the same time without falling over. I mean are they capable of using reason to deduce that one day they might just live to regret sleeping with reality televisions’ equivalent of a ‘two bagger’?; That’s where you put a paper bag over his head and one over yours just in case his falls off during sex. Now that’s what I call using protection during intercourse, well that and donning a suit that would require having to use a tin opener to get to me if it meant I had to sleep with Mr Wallace. It's a shame he felt the need to boast about cheating so much on his wife within weeks of marriage and heaven's knows what his kids will think of his comments too. There doesn't seem to be any remorse that he hurt his family deeply and now he's boasting about his many sexual conquests and how one in particular, the 21 year old he picked up, bored him.

But, to be fair, ugly people need love too and as nature abhors a vacuum, it is understandable that alcohol was invented to aid them in their quest to bag a bonk every now and then. Let’s face it, how many of us have donned our beer-goggles after a night of overindulging? Perspectives change to the point that even the most discerning of us will find the allure of a greasy late night kebab from a white van in a lay-by a veritable banquet that slips down the throat with immense ease – not to mention finding it slipping back up the throat with even greater ease later on. Of course, our impaired judgement doesn’t end with dodgy food. Alcohol has the immense ability to mind-alter the repulsive into the deeply desirable. There you are laughing your head off, feeling witty, more attractive than you ever thought possible and quite simply the most entertaining person that ever lived. If only. If only you could see you as others do right there, ten sheets to the wind and on the make to snare that gorgeous catch in the corner. And then, somewhere down the line, you wake up.......

.......Cue eyes opening that are crusty and half welded shut with mangled mascara and as your vision makes a return from blind drunk, and sobriety and bright unforgiving daylight does its work, you realise that you have entered the realms of Coyote Ugly. Your hear a scream of horrifying proportions but nothing comes out of your mouth and then you realise it was a silent scream, an involuntary cry for help as you focus on the horror that lies snoring and dribbling beside you. Oh dear God, NOT COYOTE UGLY, not again. For the love of God, what the hell is up with me you ask yourself as you fight to quell the rising bilge in your stomach, unsure as to whether it’s a hangover of severe proportions or the mere sight of the monster muntah lying next to you in bed. The shame is just too much and slowly you attempt to make a move, to extricate yourself from this fate worse than death. Praying for a break, you slowly try to pull your arm free but realise it's well and truly lodged under his shoulders. To make any more effort would be to wake your ‘bedmate from hell’ and you have no option but to take drastic action, to chew your arm off and make a getaway before said muntah makes a recovery and asks for your number. But hey, you can kid yourself on but the reality is you might just be his Coyote Ugly muntah date from hell so getting away first is probably more damage limitation of your emotions than anything else that might be going on in your thumping dehydrated head.

But alcohol isn’t the only aphrodisiac at the disposal of the aesthetically challenged. Let’s face it, television has enchanted many a poor sap into thinking that because someone stands in front of a camera then he/she is loaded, must be God-like in some way and clearly has magic powers so that they attract the permanently bewildered or the ‘Gold-diggers R Us’ brigade. How else would people like Mr Wallace be able to have sex with something other than a blow up rubber doll and a foot-pump? He cheated consistently within weeks of his second marriage and as long as he was home before the kids went to school, he seems to think that was acceptable. God, what a catch eh? To think I missed out on snaring him. I think his wife had a lucky escape when the marriage crumbled. He clearly knows his celebrity is the pull and not his dashing good looks and devastating personality. You’d think the follicle challenged bespectacled eejit would keep schtum about that little fact.

But you know, it isn’t how he looks that truly makes him ugly for on the whole, he isn’t an ugly man. It’s his lack of discretion, his vanity, his self belief that he deserves to sleep with all and sundry and that his cheating is a right of passage that makes hum deeply unattractive. I like quirky looking guys, I’m not attracted to the classic male model groomed to the hilt look and I can see beauty in any face that shows kindness, laughter lines, love, joy and wisdom. Beauty is truly skin deep and no one is really ugly unless is seeps out from a bad heart. And beauty is subjective, let’s face it, maybe each and every one of us has been or might be a Coyote ugly moment for someone else. You hope to God not, but hey, that’s life.

‘So Gregg Wallace, are you really the cooking woman’s crumpet? Somehow I don’t think so; to me you’re more like a deflated soufflé. There’s nothing more unattractive than a kiss and tell merchant, someone who brags about their conquests. But like attracts like and I suppose that you get what you deserve in life and perhaps the females that he is so boastful about bedding don’t care about his huge ego and fragile self esteem. Perhaps, they find skirting around the edges of celebrity with a z-lister is enough of a springboard to capitulate them towards their real goal of being hangers on in a world that offers glitter and dubious fame and for that, the price of a bonk with a rather sadly delusional old fart of a man is a price worth paying... Shame, I quite liked him until I read his interview.

P.S. I never had a Coyote Ugly experience in my life, too much of a Catholic goody two shoes and I was never interested in a hit and run bonk, too busy drinking and having a lugh for that, but a couple of my colleagues did on those far away foreign trips we went on. This is my tribute to their ability to survive it and move on in life!

Legs Akimbo LIL - the PAP test Queen....

Look away now guys - the following content may gross you out as it contains medical information, a visit to the doctor - which we all know that anyone of the male gender does his utmost to avoid and would rather have his eyes poked out with a red hot poker - and graphic descriptions of a Menopausaloldbag in a compromising position; a vision guaranteed to make the population rip out their eyeballs in shock.

There was nothing untoward in my compromising position. It was a medical necessity, lying there ankles together, knees apart and trying not to meet the gaze of the nurse as she inserted the speculum - several inches of stainless steel that felt like it has just been extracted from the freezer - and shoved well up into places only my husband has seen of late; actually that's not entirely true, I think the nurse went where no man has gone before because I am sure I felt the swab tickle my tonsils.

Now, as any woman will tell you, a smear test is at best a mildly embarrassing event in her life, and for others it is excruciatingly so - it shouldn't be an excuse to forego it - remember the old campaign message a few years ago? 'Don't die of embarrassment ladies'. Even so, I certainly don't open the reminder letter from my local PCT and go "whoopee, time to show off the innards of the old wedding tackle to someone I've never met before". I mean there you are having intimate relations with a stranger, a someone who doesn't even have the decency to give you a kiss on the lips first before rooting around in places he/she really ought not to be. It's all very surreal you know. And with that in mind, for about 30 seconds I think about making an appointment, shudder, then surreptitiously file the reminder on a pile on my imaginary to-do-list. I've done that for the last four years. Stupid really, as I am scheduled for a test every 12 months as I had precancerous cells on the last result.

On that occasion, I won a little visit to my nearest hospital to have a loop diathermy done on the old cervix. Now what a wonderful event that is for a woman to enjoy. Two nurses chatting away to you about anything you care to jabber on about so as to distract you from the rather odd burning smell permeating the room as the doc zaps those precancerous little sucker cells with his mighty laser beam. To add another dimension to the procedure, there is a screen next to you, showing your cervix in the starring role for all in the room to see. Interesting, I've never been on telly before but one of the most intimate parts of me now has. But I don't suppose anyone would recognise me walking down the street though unless I was sans knickers and Legs Akimbo Lil-like in the gutter somewhere and before you ask it, nope, not managed to do that one yet. To be fair, the film of the procedure wasn't broadcast on any terrestrial T.V. stations so I guess my anonymity remains intact. My viewing public was restricted to a couple of nurses and a male doc wearing a hard hat just in case at my age any more of my body collapsed towards him, braining him in the process as he played a medical version of space invaders. My footage is probably doing the rounds as a horror movie somewhere out there in the ether, if you come across it, you can't see me smiling.

Do you know the silly thing about all of this? Up until they found pre-cancerous cells, I was a regular good girl and attended the clinic every three years for my test. The wait for the results was always a semi anxious time but I never lost sleep worrying about it. Now, when I should know better, and get straight down there, I'm much too reticent to make that appointment. Finding the pre-cancerous cells has had the opposite effect to how it should have turned out, i.e. making me ultra efficient in booking those appointments straight away. In my defence though, I've had such a bad time with the menopause and without going into grossly horrid details, until recently, was rarely in a position to have the test done, if one gets my drift.

Scary and embarrassing as it may be though, no experience can match the one that happened to a colleague of my cousin. Rushing home from a nightshift in a busy emergency housing association, she bathed, dried herself off but decided at the last minute, that for extra freshness, she'd spray some antiperspirant over the area in question. Realising she'd run out, a quick raid was performed on her teenage daughter's room to grab her aerosol can. Running terribly late, she pressed the trigger, squished the contents rapidly around her target area, pulled on her knickers and got dressed. Feeling mightily pleased with herself for arriving at the surgery with minutes to spare, she happily followed the nurse into her private office, undressed as instructed and within minutes had assumed the position. Minutes later, the doctor entered the room.

"Hello Mrs A, I'm Dr B", he said smiling at her as he snapped on his latex gloves. "Now just relax for me dear", he instructed as he picked up the speculum, ready to insert. "Oh for the love of God", he stuttered in astonishment, stepping backwards. He shot her a quizzical look before clearing his throat, raising his eyebrow and carrying on with the procedure.

Wondering what had caused such a reaction, Mrs A was a tad uneasy as to what the doctor might have seen. She decided not to ask and thought perhaps he was just a smidgen eccentric and possibly she'd ask the nurse after the doctor had gone. She didn't have to ask however, because when she rose to get dressed, pulling on her knickers, Mrs A was shocked to see the gusset full of glitter particles. Blushing profusely, she realised that in her rush to deodorize she had unwittingly decorated her pubic hairdo with a layer of glitter spray that her daughter used when she dressed up to go nightclubbing. Mortified with shame, Mrs A finished dressing and left the surgery at the speed of light, leaving all and sundry behind her in her wake. Clearly, she reasoned, the doctor thought she was either demented, or on the make for dolling up her nether regions especially for the examination.

Jokes aside though, a young celebrity mother, Jade Goody, is now terminally ill from widespread secondary cancers that eminated from a cervical cancer that went untreated. News reports say this is because she ignored repeated letters requesting her to return to the surgery for further tests and treatment. There but for the grace of God go many others for it is so easy to say manyana, manyana. She now has weeks to live. She has been the subject of much press coverage and whether it is morally right to cover every detail of her deterioration. Whatever the rights or wrongs of that situation, and you may have an opinion on it, she is dying and will be leaving behind two young sons. Her rationale for living out her death in the public eye is to secure as much money for her sons' future. Her childhood with an addict mother had been tragic by all accounts but she seems determined to be a loving mother and give her children the choices and education she was never granted; as a Big Brother contestant she was vilified by the press for a lack of education but now that she is dying she is a hero to them - oh hail the fickle press and public. I am not a fan of reality television shows or celebrity where people are famous for being famous, and Jade falls into this category. Tragically though, she has transcended that moniker and through her celebrity, done something truly magnificent. It seems God had much bigger plans for this young woman. The general consensus by those in the know, is that many more women are clamouring to their surgeries to have a smear test done. Opinion on the constant coverage of her death has polarised the population into two camps, those who support her, those who condemn her and leave some astonishingly cruel comments on the newspaper online message boards. I am pragmatic about both viewpoints. I believe in live and let live but perhaps now I believe in die and let die. What harm does it do to let her die and the story to be told in a manner of her chosing? I wouldn't want it for me, but I defend the right of a dying woman to have the choice. Perhaps it's a small price to pay for the good she is doing.

I am deeply moved by her plight and I admit, that it is instrumental in goading me into finally making that long overdue appointment. I, like many others, may just be very glad that we did and for that, Jade Goody's legacy is something much bigger, much more important and much more enduring than fifteen minutes of fame on a reality show. The nature of her death, how it came about and the message it conveys to women of all ages, backgrounds, creeds and cultures may just be a gift of life from an unfortunate young woman who's life ended prematurely and so publicly.

I don't want to watch her die anymore than I would want to watch anyone else die. I want privacy and dignity for her in her painful and heartbreaking journey. But it is her life and her death, and her decision. I have an off button if I don't care to rubberneck at her last moments on earth.

May the road rise up to meet you Jade Goody......and whilst I'm at it, my heartfelt thanks.

Connections of the heart

Have you ever felt a connection so deeply strong to someone that you feel secure just knowing that it's there? You know, a real connection where you feel you are impregnable because the love this other person has for you and you have for them survives a distance of miles and a difference in time zones? I have been fortunate in my life to know people that I love dearly and who in return love me deeply too. I first became aware of long distance relationships and the kryptonite strength of the invisible umbilical cord that exists between people who are intrinsically linked, when I relocated to London from my home city of Glasgow to take up my career in Information Technology.

In my excitement at arriving in the capital I gave so little thought to what was left behind. My parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and great friends; One of those great friendships was made way back on that first terrifying day in junior school. A day when my bottom lip trembled as my mother turned around for the very last time that morning, tears in her eyes as she smiled forlornly then waved at my tear stained face and snotty nose before turning her back again and disappearing through the classroom door. I thought my heart would break and no matter how many times she tried to reassure me that I'd be coming home at the end of the school day, I wouldn't nor couldn't believe it. I will never forget the deep feeling of sadness on that first day, but neither will I forget Jenny Burns.......

……….. I sat on the tiny grey metal S framed chair at the tiny wooden desk and being so completely ego centric as all children are I hung my head and assumed I would never ever recover from being abandoned. As my own sobs began to subside, so did the sniffling and sobbing of the other abandonee next to me that until now I had only been vaguely aware of. Slowly I raised my head and turned to see a wee lassie, much the same size as myself but with a shock of curly ginger hair and red eyes with a red nose to match sitting on an identical chair, swinging her wee legs for like me she was too short to reach the floor.

"Hello.......errr, wiz that your mammy then?", she asked in a small nasally Glaswegian accent as she stared at me with her huge tear laden brown eyes framed by the longest lashes I'd ever seen.


"Aye it wiz,", I answered, before choking back another sob at being reminded she'd abandoned me only minutes before. I took a minute to blow my red nose on my by now very soggy hankie, "So……so where's your mammy then?", I asked with all the curiosity and naivety of a tiny wee five year old wondering how all these mammy's could abandon their weans and then leg it out of the place.

She's no here, she didnae come wae me", she said in a voice even smaller than before.

"No here? Whit dae ye mean she didnae come wae ye?" I asked, wide eyed with legs swinging away wildly on the chair as I stuck my thumb in my mouth for a suck whilst she answered this conundrum.

With her huge brown eyes fixed tightly upon mine, tears welled again and began to trickle down her rosy cheeks. "Ma mammy's deed", she spluttered out before letting out the loudest wail of utter heartbreak I had ever heard.

"Oh no, yer mammy's no really deed, is she?" I asked, getting all weepy because even though my mammy had dumped me there, at least I had one. The shock almost did for me for I knew nothing of death except that sometimes I would get scared that my wee mammy might die one day. So there it was, wee Jenny Burns didnae huv a mammy and I wiz heartbroken fur her. We sobbed our wee broken hearts out in unison until Mrs Murray, our lovely sweet teacher came over, put her arms around us both, calmed us with soothing words and dried our tears. Shortly after, down at the bottom of the school yard for playtime break we sat on the ground on our coats drinking our free milk through a straw and scoffing a digestive biscuit.

"Jenny?", I asked her in between slurps and chomps.

"Aye whit Annie?", she asked after swallowing the ice cold milk.

"Will ye be ma new best pal?"

"Aye, aye a wull", she said turning to look at me with the biggest smile I'd ever seen. Bless her, all of five years old and she had teeth like a bar chart thanks to her brother who 'encouraged' her to pull her wobbly milk teeth out so they could share the sixpence she'd get under her pillow from the tooth fairy.

"Great", I said delighted that at least one good thing had come out of the day, "and seein' as yer gonnae be ma best pal and seein' that you've no goat a mammy, ye can share ma mammy tae, that's IF she comes back fur me ye understand"........ The jury was still out on that one and I'd need a lot more convincing that the woman I knew as mammy and had dumped me here this morning would actually come back for me. Still, I reasoned, it was the least I could do for ma best pal who unquestionably had been bonded to me for life in our shared grief and loss that very same day.

Six years later after much tears and laughter; after sleepovers at each other's homes; after shared hours of playing 'kick the can' in summer until it got dark and we were dragged inside exhausted but still delirious with joy; after climbing trees and returning home with bumps the size of golf balls on our foreheads because we lost our footing and much to the merriment of our brothers, swan dived out of a tree hurtling head first towards earth; after having our hair doused in nit killer because yet again we let wee Gladys who lived next to the dump come and have a sleepover in our homemade tent in the back garden where we were infested within an inch of our lives; after rolling doon the hill outside ma hoose in summer on a homemade geggie, (go cart) - three pieces of wood knocked together like a big letter H with big auld wheels off a pram at the back with two smaller one's at the front, no brakes and a long piece of string attached to the front bit of wood for steering. There we were getting splinters in our arses as we ricocheted downhill at speed right into the path of the parish priest's new car; After sliding doon the hill outside ma hoose in winter wearing our plastic beach sandals that polished the compacted snow into an Olympic standard ski slope so dangerously slippy that we could get a fair bit of speed on before crash landing through auld Alfie's garden fence and into his allotment at the bottom of the road; after making faces with me at the grumpy old folk who moaned as they slid down the road on their arse and then swore at us and threatened to go straight to oor parents to tell them we should get a hiding for being so bloody cheeky; after laughing even harder at the ill-tempered old biddy's when they tried to chase us as their moaning reached epic proportions and not one of us getting anywhere because we were all running on the spot; after nearly melting the ice with hot yellow pee as we laughed ourselves stupid at the whole scenario; after promising to be best pals for ever and ever and ever and after her da, a skilled carpenter, a tired, skint single parent announced that they were off, off to the land of opportunity.........

...........A land of opportunity where he could earn enough to buy them new shoes and clothes instead of second hand clobber from the jumble sales; where a working man was paid a decent wage without having to scrimp and scrape his way cap in hand through life just to feed the weans; where the sun shone so much that life would no longer be grey with arctic like winters for them to struggle through with nae money fur their heating. He'd found a beacon of hope and a step up from the near poverty that threatened to overwhelm him and his young family. Australia and the Ten Pound Pom emigration scheme was the answer to his prayers and he'd been planning it for a while but said nothing for fear it wouldn't work out and expectations were dashed or even thwarted by those who would make a fuss and not want to go. By the time Jenny had been told, it was a done deal and she came to tell me, stayed for a sleepover and reminiscent of that first day together at school, we both cried the night away in total grief. In two months she was gone but we never lost that connection, well not for a long time but as with all distance relationships, pre email and affordable telephone calls, contact by written hand that was fervent in the beginning became sporadic as the years went by and our adult lives moved on from those relatively carefree childhood days.

I will never forget her but life moves on and I have made other friendships that have had the same deep connection - some of these made after just one meeting which has been a delightful surprise over the years. Ella was a work colleague and a real Jolly Hockey sticks kinda gal. She had all the eccentricity of the very rich, which she was after her parents shuffled off their mortal coils leaving her a multi millionaire. You'd never know it though for what I loved about her was the way she lived modestly almost impoverished with a sofa that her four cats shredded on a daily basis. With huge lumps of sponge filling missing and other pieces hanging down onto the carpet, it was a work of art that Damien Hurst and the Tate gallery would have been proud of. We worked on different projects much of the time but we knew each other through the vast social scene that was inherent to our work life. She lived about five miles from me and when I heard that she had cancer I made a point of going to see her. Our friendship developed over the year during which she went into remission and returned to work with her no nonsense approach to take on the huge projects she was famed for managing. But her good fortune wasn't to last. Excruciating pain in her spine and a sudden inability to walk back from the coffee machine to her desk told her something was drastically wrong. In the midst of her colleagues carrying her to her chair, Ella's heart sunk lower than she had ever imagined it could.

The oncologists report identified secondary tumors in her spine and other major organs. I was naïve and positive and hopeful that she'd beat these monsters down yet again. "You'll do it again Els", I reassured her brightly. "You did it before, you can do it again and this time you know what you're up against, so half the battle's won okay", I flannelled on, hoping to inspire her. I didn't know then that her only hope was chemo and radio therapy to shrink the tumors, to slow their growth. I didn't know that when these didn't work anymore that her end was nigh and that palliative care was all that could be offered. I didn't know until I was finally taken aside and told by a wonderful MacMillan nurse that secondary tumors are terminal and that I should prepare myself for the loss of my friend.

I took my turn, along with closer friends that had known her much longer, in doing practical things she found difficult to undertake as time went on. Her husband, grateful of our help, support and friendship thanked us profusely but we didn't need thanks for you don't do you?; not when it's a pal. But, it wasn't at all miserable and certainly not all one sided. No matter how ill Ella became she kept her sharp dark wit and we would often roll around trying not to dampen the chairs in our great shared mirth.

I'd boss her around and remind her to take her medication. She'd grumble and tell me she was rattling away thanks to the overabundance of pills she had sunk so far that day; "What did forgetting to take a few more matter?", she'd ask crossly, annoyed that her life had been overtaken by schedules, pills, appointments, taking urine samples along with the indignity of being prodded and poked at by doctors and nurses and anyone else called a specialist. She'd tell me to get lost when I was of no more use to her and she needed a nap. She'd become argumentative as exhaustion and pain took over. I'd tell her to watch her manners or she could decompose without me. On one memorable outing, I took her to pick up her NHS freebie wigs that she much preferred over spending good money on privately made wigs that she said she certainly wasn't going to take into the next world with her. I nagged at her and called her mean because I said that a good wig made all the difference and anyway, I wanted them after she was gone because they'd come in handy for Halloween parties and such like. As usual she ignored my advice, tried on a plethora of cheapo wigs and solicited my opinion on which was best. She was none too pleased when I said she had all the allure of a blow up rubber doll.


One Sunday soon after, when she was roasting a chicken for lunch that by now she had no appetite for but wanted to prepare for her husband, she opened the oven rather too quickly. Whilst bending down to check on the contents an excruciatingly hot blast of air hit her full on the face and welded the nylon NHS wig to her forehead. "Cheap is as cheap does", I said when I saw her still wearing it a few hours later. "Christ Ella", I continued as I stared at her. "You could take the fecking thing off, it looks like a rancid bit of old road kill on yer bonce". She registered my comment just as she was taking a drink and I heard her snort heavily before two streams of water and other gooey stuff trickled down her nose as we laughed our heads off at this vision of loveliness she had become.


No matter that when I returned the next day, I scolded her for still wearing this year's 'fascinator' as a hairdo. "I'm not", she said looking straight at me, waiting for reality to set in. "Now don't be so bloody cheeky", she said, as she watched my horrified reaction turn to deep sadness as I looked at the wisps of fine hair left after several bouts of chemo. She'd done well to keep the effects of the chemo under wraps with her wig until her disaster made her go commando as it were. She teased me relentlessly at her little joke for she knew perfectly well that her hair and wig were on a par and that I'd mistake her hair for the burnt wig. I played along and smiled but in my heart I was haemorrhaging emotion because her life was ebbing away in front of me.

Some months later I had to attend a software conference in Minneapolis, USA and it was a three line whip as far as my job was concerned. She understood and scolded me for considering not going and insisted she was much more interested in hearing all the fun tales and gossip from our shenanigans abroad. I knew she missed the vibrancy of work and promised a warts and all report upon my return. To my shame, I felt relieved and quite a bit selfish because her deterioration was rapidly causing her more and more distress and I wondered if I would be strong enough to hold out for her at the end. I was grateful for my friends permission to go and I relished the conference and the chance to socialize with colleagues and friends as we worked hard but also partook of a great deal of alcohol. I had so much to tell her when I returned that would have her heaving with laughter and looked forward to hearing her fantastically wicked laugh. We were in the thick of it all and jolly merry when I was suddenly stopped in my tracks, as though a Tom and Jerry frying-pan-in-the-face kind of moment had happened. I stood still and felt a wave of emotion so strong that I was overwhelmed with the need to cry. I took a moment to register my astonishment at such a depth of feeling.

"Oh God, it's Ella", I blurted out to my drinking buddies as tears welled in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. "She's gone, I'm sure of it. Oh Christ", I wailed, "and here I am enjoying myself when God knows how she must have been". The guilt of laughter was hanging heavily upon me.

"No she hasn't, she can't have, how on earth would you know?", they asked whilst looking at me as though it was time to cart me off to bed after ten drinks too many.

"She has, I know she has, I just know okay?", I said tetchily for I was filled with a deep sadness and confused at my inability to explain what I was certain of.

When I returned to the UK some three days later, I returned her husband's voice mail message. "What time did she pass away ?", I asked him as he gave me details of her last hours with him."Oh, at six am", he said. "I know because we were in bed together, and for some strange reason the alarm on the clock, which hasn't been set since Ella came home from the hospice, came on to wake me. Shortly after that she let out her last breath. It's incredibly strange but I'm just so grateful that it woke me in time", he said, as he went quiet, reflecting upon those last few painful moments together.


My blood ran cold for a moment for the time that I had felt and known that Ella had gone was 1200am in the USA. - six hours behind 6am in the UK. Sometime after the funeral and when we were able to talk with an amount of acceptance and peace within us I told him what had happened. He felt comforted by my story and I was glad that I had shared it with him.

Although I believe in God, or at least a higher being, I am not inclined to believe in spirits and such like and with a science background tend to be pragmatic about what happens after death but this 'visit' from Ella I cannot explain. I felt the strong disconnection from her after that visit in Minneapolis. I believe in my heart that she came to say goodbye but my head disputes this. I knew she had died and I couldn't be moved on that conclusion even though I couldn't explain it. And now I feel the same overwhelming disconnection from Jenny. Just recently I felt a wave of loss so deep that it threw me. It made me think of Ella but it was Jenny that flooded my mind and stayed with me for days after. Perhaps, it was a goodbye. I don't want to know. I'm too sad to think of her passing, but if it was that I hope she's content and happy and that she's caught up with that mammy of hers after all this time. You see, I am a dichotomy, a person of conflicting views and beliefs as my certainty on things crumble as life teaches me otherwise. As I get older, the more I learn the less I know and the more inclined I am to open up my mind to new orders and possibilities.


I hope she relished her wonderful new life as a Ten Pound Pom; she and her family certainly deserved a better future and God, there are worse places to grow up than paradise. But I hope too she never suffered the hopelessness of the tyranny of distance, of the dislocation of family and of homesickness and knew that somewhere back in the UK, her wee pal held her as dear to her heart as she had always done for even though the memories faded, the friendship and love never did. And finally, I just hope she didn't call any of her kids Kylie or Jason.....

To kip or not to kip, that is the question....

Happy New Year tae ye all! I had a great festive season. I restricted my visits to the pub to a couple of hours only on Christmas day - big effing result! Those of you that might read this blog occasionally know that himself likes to spend some time in our 17th century village inn. Personally I can't be arsed much of the time and like to stay at home instead although a Friday night up there for the odd sherry here and there has become a bit of a ritual in this household. Having said that, I truly cannot be arsed drinking through the day and suffering a hideous hangover as I start to sober up around tea time - much better in those situations to drink your way through and wake up in hospital the next day after having your stomach pumped and feeling smugly superb as though you've been on a detox weekend. You also don't give a monkey's as to whether the food turned out okay or not and as such enjoy a completely stress free day where the only memories you have are the ones you care to manufacture out of that jumbled pile of vague flashbacks that haunt you every two minutes or so over the following week.

And so, determined that I would resist the constant moaning of himself that, "the pub had been opened about an hour or so already and that if we didn't get up there soon some cheeky no-mates kind of sad looser type who only visited the pub on Christmas day would have nicked our table by the inglenook open fireplace and we'd have to stand all day", I encouraged him to swan off up there with our good pal Mr P who with his lady wifie and other good pal Mrs P was due to come to dinner with us later in the day anyway. Having waved himself off before slamming the door on his arse to make sure he had cleared off, I continued with my planned ritual to remain at home thus peacefully bathing in ass's milk and contemplating prepping a few bits of nosh here and there so as to cut down on the domestic stuff whilst our guests were here later on. It was a civilised and joyful start to Christmas day as ever I have had. After a leisurely couple of hours, I made my way along the three minute journey between home and inn and entered a pub full of good cheer, high spirits and red nosed drinkers with contented almost sleepy smiles and glassy eyes making their slightly unsteady preparations of winter coat donning and the wrapping of chunkily knitted winter scarves around necks before warily braving the cold in the crisp but sunny day towards home for the Christmas lunches awaiting them.

Working my way through the by now thinning throng of drinkers, I soon located himself and Mr P sitting happily by the inglenook fireplace with contented little Guinness laden bellies, both sporting red Santa like shiny faces engendered from the heat of the fire and the consumption of mucho pinto's of beero. 'Twas a sight to behold - two wee happy bezzie mates filled to the brim with festive cheer and the anticipation that a belting big dinner was awaiting their consumption to round off the day. Soon Mrs P joined us and we each snaffled two small glasses of wine before heading off home to get the dinner on the go.

It was a terribly good natured day with lots of laughter and good will from friends and strangers alike as we made the short journey home. Unfastening zips and poppers and removing coats and hats, a knock on the door meant that more good friends and neighbours joined us for an impromptu drink around our kitchen table. As Robbie Burns is oft' quoted, from his To a Mouse poem "the best laid plans o' mice and men, often go awry". But not in this case for it was the first festive season that Mr and Mrs P were not slaving away managing our local inn as they had done for the previous four years before it was sold onwards to our current new owners; it was the first festive season as happy punters on the right side of the bar and as such, free to enjoy the day as the rest of us had done so for many a year before; it was a delight for us to share the day with them and the inclusion of our other neighbours into the mix was a delightful addition to the merriment and hilarity of the day; it is a happiness that our door is open enough for people to feel comfortable in paying a visit without a formal invitation to do so.

Dinner was grand and we ate too much but not so much that we were unbearably uncomfortable. A top up of the wine glasses and a mutual agreement to have the pudding later on, we left the table and settled down in our hugely comfortable recliner chairs to do nothing more taxing than idle contented chit chat and to watch a bit of telly. The twinkly glow of the white fairy lights of the silver, green and red baubled decorated Christmas tree, the soft shadowy light cast by the various burning candles coupled with relaxing scent of the real pine tree and the essential oils of the candles alongside the open coal fire created an atmosphere so tranquil that you'd be hard pushed to find any better an environment for which to de-stress and unwind. Such was the soporific effect of the food, wine, heat, scents and exhaustion from laughter it wasn't long before Mrs P, who works the hardest and longest of all of us, was gently slumbering with her head slumped back, feet up and a huge enigmatic smile on her face. This is not an unusual occurrence as Mrs P never stops until she stops and then she stops good - a wham bam thud like she has hit a brick wall at full pelt. For this she is forgiven; for this she is loved because it is simply her and the way she is; that she feels so comfortable in our midst is entirely right and proper to us for our home is her home for the short time she is conscious in it.

It wasn't long before I became aware that Mr P too had headed the same way as Mrs P. Given he had been drinking rather earlier in the day than myself and Mrs P he could be forgiven for needing a restorative nap. His chosen position was head slumped forward with his chin resting on his chest, arms resting by his side with his feet tucked in towards his body - he looked rather like he had been shot in a hit and run drive past. Himself and I smiled gently to each other for we like nothing better than our guests to pass out so that there is no squabbling over the remote control and we can get on with the business of watching what we want instead of being polite to them. Err, actually what I mean is that we are delighted that our two great pals, Mr and Mrs P are like family in that if they want a nap, then as with all of us, they just go ahead and no need to worry what others think as there is simply no need.

I sank back further in my super duper recliner and felt enormous contentment as I sipped my red wine and enjoyed the companionable silence broken by the low telly dialogue and the odd snore or two from the unconscious guests. It wasn't long though before a snort to my left indicated to me that himself had also taken a stroll off into the land of nod, no doubt frequenting with Mr and Mrs P in that hinterland of alcohol induced coma. Well, bugger me, Himself's chosen position to nod off in was with his body in full recline, head slumped to one side with his arms flailed outwards, two dogs slumped over him and acting as a further heat generator - and God only knows how he didn't start convulsing with a probable body temperature that would melt steel. It crossed my mind that he reminded me of a fallen murder victim and I was fair tempted to get a piece of chalk and make one of those chalk outlines on the black leather recliner for him to have a look at when he came round later on.

I sat up in my chair a bit and reviewed the scene before me. Feeling jolly merry from the wine I started to laugh and then the more I tried to stop it lest I wake them all, I started to laugh even harder to the point I almost wet myself trying to hold the laughter in. I kept stopping and starting and each time it became harder to keep any kind of control. "Fuck me", I said to myself through the laughter as I bit on my balled fist in an attempt to stem the rising hilarity. "It's like a fucking care home in here". The only thing missing was the smell of boiled cabbage and wee but I imagined that if I sat there any longer I would no doubt be supplying one of those odour's pretty soon if I couldn't control the laughter.

I needn't have worried about waking any of them. They were much too comfortable and content as was I. Y'see Mrs P and I have had a hard time of it over the past few years what with our simultaneous and joint suffering of the menopause. We have narked at each other, avoided each other when we wanted to rip each other's heads off. We've commiserated with each other about our severe symptoms, shared tips on what works and what to do when it suddenly doesn't and so on. We started off as great friends, our husbands are good friends and it works terrifically well. That's the thing about great friendship - it survives changes, trials, challenges and comes back together if it was ever worth a toss in the first place - we've successfully stayed the course and it is a better friendship for it. Now that we have things more under control, we laugh again, tease each other, help each other out and just enjoy the friendship. There is no one more like family or has earned the right to kip in my home after a good meal and a few drinks. God knows, if himself and me worked as hard as she does, we'd have no trouble falling asleep in her company and feeling no ill about it either.

Order was restored an hour or so later and we all retired to bed. They respectfully left around 8am the next morning and let us sleep in. We'd arranged to meet up at their place later that day where she returned the favour and made dinner, plied us with drink and was a terrific host. So there it was then, their first festive season as Joe Public instead of landlords and hopefully, they will remember it as fondly and with affection as we do. We've talked endlessly in the past about the four of us buying a retirement home in a hot country and retiring together. I saw a glimpse of that on Christmas day night, and do you know what? There's worse that can happen than to hole up, decrepit and disabled but with mates you can drop off in front of and have a laugh with when you come round again.

Happy Christmas everyone..........

............except the deranged Politically Correct movement who would rather burn a couple of thousand Christians at the stake instead.......

I'm still seething, even after reading it over two weeks ago; can't quite believe it really, can't quite get my head around it all; I'd happily borrow my neighbours rifle and go out and hunt down a few politically correct eejits and bag a few heads for my collection - not that I have one but I am seriously thinking of starting one - you know, a rogues gallery of heads of the seriously dim-witted, the seriously misguided, the perennially arrogant, ignorant pompous idiots that promote bigotry and censorship under the name of 'political correctness'.

I live in a beautiful Northamptonshire village in a picturesque part of what is quintessentially English - surrounded by sprawling green farmland that is sometimes laid to waves of intensely beautiful yellow rape flowers as far as the eye can see; long scenic walks shared by people, horses, dogs and wildlife alike and tranquil woodland with a carpet of crisp fallen leaves and twigs underfoot that crackle as you tread carefully through it. The village is populated with the usual mixture of thatched and Victorian cottages, a large manse now privately owned, a general hotchpotch of individually designed 70's 80's and 90's housing and a smattering of social housing - mostly all very tastefully, sympathetically and architecturally accurate for the soul of the village. We are blessed with our beautiful parish church, of which the chancel is built in the decorated style, and parts of it dating back to the 12th century. The church sits resplendent atop a hill at the west end of my village whilst overlooking our sister village; both flanking its beautiful grounds and well tended grave yard. It is a building of immense history, meaning and tranquilly. Just inside the south door stands the Norman font of which the base and cover is Victorian. The tower houses 6 bells and a Sanctus bell, which can be heard pealing when the dedicated campanologists gather for their weekly practice in readiness to call those worshippers to come forth for those early Sunday services before repairing to our 17th century inn for a well deserved snort or two after practice completes. In addition to the five 17th century peal bells, a treble was added in 1946 as a memorial to those brave men and women who died in our name in the second world war; it was also dedicated as a thanksgiving for those who returned home safely.

The central tenets of the church and Christianity have informed the way of life around here for centuries. It has presided over the union of lovers making a commitment in God's eyes. welcomed the newborns to be christened into a way of life that will inform their every moral decision, allows the faithful to give thanks for life and its blessings and to pray for the sick and disadvantaged, it gives the grieving a place to hand over their loved ones to God for safekeeping until they see them again; the church service being a deeply meaningful and healing requirement for helping a family, a community come to terms with a loss whilst finding the strength to support each other, move on with their lives and bring up the next generation. The grave yard houses ancient and imposing family vaults through to simple plaques attached to a discrete wall in memory of a loved one lost. Generations of the same family names can be seen etched on faded and newer gravestones clustered together around family plots. People walk their dogs through here and often there is a lone figure tending to a grave of a loved one as they are lost in their reflections, oblivious to our intrusion in their grief. The rustic pathway through the church grounds and onto the warren links the two villages that are intrinsically related through poverty, hardship, economic growth, a sense of history and a church and society that preached a sharing of beliefs, goals, values and culture; simpler times where the statement 'it takes a village to raise a child' was at the very core of its commitment to the family. To all intents and purposes that maxim still has some value here today.

The church is much too big now, for the village attendance numbers, once substantial, have dwindled greatly over the years. As a result, services are shared alternately between a few other village parishes served by one vicar where before each village luxuriated in the services of a dedicated one. Although this is the case, also at the centre of our village is the beautiful C of E junior school which still teaches and operates to the tenets of Christianity. People may not attend church as they used to but they fight tooth and nail to have their children taught at one of the best schools in England; a school so quintessentially English that you would believe that time had stood still and that it was preserved in the aspic of the genteel beliefs and practices of the 1950's generation; by this I mean it is bang up to date in its teaching of the national curriculum but class sizes are small, results are very good, the children are well mannered, parents who live in the village walk their children to school and collect them at the end of the school day; the children participate in the village fete, dance around the maypole, raise funds for the school with cake baking days, open evenings and it is a safe environment for them to play out after school until being hailed indoors exhausted and starving to gobble down tea at a rate of knots. The children learn a sense of community, a sense of belonging, a true sense of Christian values and what it means to be a good member of society. The people who buy into our village and indeed the surrounding villages, our churches and schools are buying into a lifestyle that has worked for thousands of years. We live by a belief system that isn't perfect because human beings are imperfect and some will interpret laws to benefit themselves, but it is a system and culture that is largely kind, caring, inclusive and a jolly wonderful thing quite a lot of the time.

The demographics of this village and surrounding villages are predominantly white with Christian values. There is not a huge influx of diverse ethnic minorities, (I hate that term - it is exclusive by its very name and creates cultural divisions so much loved by the politically correct - it gives them a demographic of people to patronise where they were never asked to interfere on their behalf in the first place). There are two market towns that flank our villages where locals shop to support our local economies where possible - a variety of people own and manage the shops. The minority of people who chose to move here, or are born here to second and third generation immigrants embrace the lifestyle, values and culture and believe themselves to be British. They do not wish to be singled out for preferential treatment or to be patronised because they are 'different'.

But here's the rub, our village newsletter contained the following message:

'Those of you who wish to buy postage stamps from the town post office, please note; If you wish to buy stamps with a Christian theme, you must ask for these as they are not allowed to advertise them' .

Dear God almighty. I find this politically correct abuse quite awful. These people are tyrants who are bigoted against their own kind, see inequality where it just doesn't exist and create inequality by making Christians feel dirty somehow for following a belief system that this country's culture was founded upon and is still practiced today. I am deeply offended by the PC's reckless belief that by allowing us to celebrate Christmas is somehow offensive to others who practice a different religion and as such we are driven underground to ask for some effing stamps under the counter. Before you know it we'll be holding secret meetings and practicing Christianity in hovels while the PC brigade torch our homes and meeting places as they attempt to destroy the very fabric of our society.

I am more than happy to not just recognise but to join in the celebrations of Dewali - the festival of lights where Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism, adherents of these faiths, celebrate freely and in joy. I am certainly not offended by other faiths or the people having the freedom to worship in whatever way they wish. I truly embrace the differences that cultural and religious beliefs bring but underpinning that tapestry of differences is human nature; a need to be loved, wanted, embraced, included and accepted no matter what you believe or practice. All religious beliefs should be tolerated and incorporated into British life. But I am deeply bloody offended however that I am being censored by idiots who have deemed Christianity offensive. These are scary fucking people who are oppressive and dictatorial in their approach. To subvert the Christian religion on my behalf when I wasn't even consulted is not their right. Neither do they have the right to insist their bigoted small minded viewpoint is superior to mine and as such impose it upon those of us with a more tolerant, educated and open minded approach to life. Christianity is about tolerance of all creeds and colours and cultures, not the subversion of any. I believe the subversion of a culture and belief system of a large demographic of several million people was responsible for major atrocities that started the second world war - recognise the signs anyone?

Our freedoms of speech are being eroded daily. The PC create divisive communities and intolerance where alternatively, good sense, human nature, tolerance of others absorbs all into one community - one that can have diverse beliefs but one that allows all and sundry to practice their beliefs without destabilising the community as one religion is promoted at the expense of another.

I am sickened that to voice my disgust against such subversion is called racist. These PC eejits are being racist against me by subverting my belief system, by taking away my freedom of speech to rail against that and as such my my right to accuse them of being the real racists by their verbal acts of vandalism. They are intellectually incapable of a proper debate on how we create an inclusive culture - they somehow believe that to subvert Christianity and the celebration of our holy days is to create equality. How the hell do you work that one out eh, when every other religion can celebrate theirs but we Christians cannot? By all means take religion out of politics and create a secular society if you must but don't tell me that I cannot openly buy a religious themed stamp from my local post office unless I wear a disguise, whisper my intentions, go around the side entrance and recant my religious beliefs as I hand over the dosh in exchange for such illegal booty. Should I now worry that perhaps some guy working at the sorting office is of a different religion and as such he will be deeply offended by handling my letter with the stamp of the baby Jesus on it? Should I feel deeply apologetic that the same stamp might make the non-Christian postman or indeed the agnostic postman fly into a rage and claim compensation at having to deal with the scarring after effects of having to see a religious symbol on an envelope and been totally traumatised at having to handle it?

Perhaps I should lead a campaign to have the war memorial outside our church bulldozed because our war dead hero's were remembered and celebrated under the auspices of Christianity? Perhaps we should sell the church and convert it into exclusive flats for the PC to live in so they can remind themselves how they destroyed a civilisation of loving tolerant people by their own hateful, intolerant doctrines. Thank God for the sensible, calming, educated voice of Trevor Phillips at the Commission for Racial Equality. He is almost a lone voice and champion of the sensible amongst a sea of nutters.

Two fingers to the lot of you PC numpty's and shame on you.

Happy Christmas and good cheer to all denominations and a very unchristian plague of boils on the arses of the politically correct movement and may your next shit be a hedgehog. May your Trotskyite tendencies be eradicated as quickly as your hot air nonsense dissipates.

Anyone care to join me in a bush tucker trial?

A few weeks ago we had some friends, neighbours and family here for an 'internal' pig roast. By that I mean that we had a huge shoulder of pork cooked in my range cooker and on a low low heat overnight. It was a prime piece of free range pork, prepared by our local butcher who assures me that the little darling had a life of foraging and snorting and rolling around in dust and hay before heading off to the great pigsty heaven in the sky. I try not to dwell on meat and how we get it to the table for I would easily return to my old vegan ways of twenty four years ago so I banish it from my mind and hope that by purchasing free range products that at least my dinner has had the best life possible before ending up on my plate.

Pork shoulder on the bone isn't a cut of meat that we usually eat but the Jamie Oliver recipe looked incredible, (you can find it in his book, 'Simple cooking techniques for thick chav twats with a reading age of five' - or was it his other book - 'How to cook for twenty dole cheats with a budget of £2.50 a head because it's cheaper than a kebab with a bottle of cider thrown in?'. Anyway, as it was our turn to host a do for the usual suspects I wanted something that was easy, that practically cooked itself and would feed an army or two if need be. Himself and my two very tall and adorable step-sons would happily each eat a serving the size of a dustbin lid and still have room for seconds followed by pudding so it's good to know that there was more than enough to go around - I've never truly recovered from a dinner party I did in my early twenties where I was horrified that I ran out of main course because I was hopelessly useless at cooking for grown-ups at the time - up to that point my usual repertoire of meals were anything cheap and cheerful that was quick and easy on a student budget.

Given that the pork had to be cooked for 13 hours, I set my alarm for 3am so that I could whack it in the oven ready for our guests arriving around 4pm the next day. I'd prepared the joint the night before by rubbing on rock salt, oil and fennel seeds all over the scored fat, (oh and all soaking in a bottle of good dry white wine or if you are particularly chavvy and strapped for cash, because you spent all your bunts on fags, then a bottle of buckfast may be substituted), and left it covered and nestling on a bed of fennel bulbs, carrots, onions and pumpkin and good to go at the ungodly hour I had chosen to cook it from, (our friends have kids so having a late lunch/early evening dinner means they can be in bed at a reasonable hour). So, there I was at 3am when the alarm dragged me from my slumber and looking like an effing old coffin dodger zombie on the loose from a Hammer House of Horror movie, I sloped off to the kitchen and cranked up the range to full-on-turbo-nutter high heat for 30 minutes then whacked in the joint - just in case you are interested it has to be fired first off to crisp up the crackling - and then after 30 minutes you drop the heat to 120 and crawl off back to bed leaving the science to do its work.

Some 13 hours later, our guests were tucking into the most succulent moist pork with the best crackling ever - I've never ever cooked crackling before so this was a bit of a triumph by all accounts from those in the know, all served with an amazing gravy, mini baked potatoes, dressed salad, mashed roasted veg, pan fried savoy cabbage and a big big knackered smile from me. I was amazed by it and it was so easy to do, that I have persuaded himself that it should become his signature dish in the future - remember this is the man that fecks on the oven at record high temperatures, sticks his pie in to burn the house down of a Friday night whilst he surfs the net until I smell burning, rush to open the oven door to rescue his burnt offerings and walk away with a face like someone on a night out from a serious burns unit. So, cranking up the oven for that first hour should go some way towards satiating his need to cremate, cremate, cremate - I think he might have been an undertaker in a previous life - and there's method in my madness at 'gifting' him this signature dish - next time he can get his arse out of bed at 3am whilst I gently slumber on. It's definitely going to be a dinner party and festive season offering at our place as not only is it easy, but highly impressive with a wow factor that has all and sundry praising it for days afterwards.

Anyway, I got to thinking about cooking and my absolute passion for it and where I'd inherited it from. Growing up with 8 other siblings in a noisy boisterous household, mealtimes were structured and orderly and almost military like in their timing. Not a sound was heard at the table as we tucked into mince and tatties, mince and dough balls, ham and pea soup, steak and sausage pie and in the summer lighter foods that met with our differing needs for that season. My mother grew her own seasonal vegetables and was a fabulous cook and to return home to the smells of home cooking was a welcome like no other. She inherited her cooking skills from her mother whose home always had a pot of delicious celery soup wafting throughout it as she opened the door to welcome visitors in. Clearly I inherited my passion for cooking from these two ladies who were creative and provided nourishing and rib sticking food throughout two world wars. Both believed that a fire in the hearth and food on the stove was the way you brought your family together and kept them coming home for sustenance and succour when life delivered a hard knock or two.

Now that winter is firmly upon us and with the festive season beckoning, I am heavily into the preparation of Scottish casseroles, Scottish Steak and Sausage pies, Mince and carrot pies, spaghetti meatball Bolognese, rump steak in red wine and dry sherry sauce, chicken and ham pie, Chinese ring-stinger chicken, (so called because it is so loaded with chilli that it would rate a fairly high position on the Scoville scale which is more than evident the next morning as the chilli does its worst as you rush at speed to the loo for an agonising wall clawing poop. You're a better man than me, (and no I still don't have a penis, it is merely a turn of phrase), if you can come out of that loo without a swollen ring stinging away as it throbs big style whilst your sphincter swells to the size of a baby's arm. There's many a guest who has dared me to do my worst with the chilli and regreted having an arse like a baboon the following day. And you know what? Never ever after the age of fifty, trust a fart, especially after eating my ring stinger chicken. You will be deeply ashamed that you have aced your pants when all you hoped to achieve was a silent but violent parp of the ole botty upon your hosts whilst you endeavoured to pretend it was the dogs. Hah! Eat it at your peril for it is not for the faint hearted nor those without an asbestos coated bum or a spare pair of underpants. And so, having painted such a picturesque view of my dish and the after effects, all of this fare is carefully placed into our freezers and is ready to hand for step-sons and visitors who relish a good hearty home cooked meal and himself has a veritable store cupboard of goodies to destroy in the oven if he so wishes.

In talking about himself's culinary shortcomings I am reminded of another so very dear to me and who passed on two years after my mother; her sister, my aunt T, and all round spiffing person altogether. A woman who was deeply affected by being a war baby and who's mission in life was to hoard tinned goods way past any kind of safe 'best before' date lest she ever suffer the indignity and horrors of those hungry war like times ever again. Where my mother was a terrific home cook, aunt T would cook the shite out of anything she happened upon in the kitchen - so much so you often wondered whether it had started out as food in the first place - or whether she'd picked up a shoe and just got on with it thinking it was a cheaper cut of beef. Where myself and my siblings ate hearty home cooked meals my cousins were served a hotchpotch of tinned third-world produced corned beef, burnt to black tatties, (potatoes), a dubious bit of lorne sausage from the bowels of the fridge and tinned nuclear marrowfat peas so luminously green than you could spot the buggers from outer space. No two meals were ever the same and whilst my cousins might have been perilously close to vitamin deficiencies from time to time, she always kept a larder full of fresh fruit and they were never short in being served up the most bizarre concoctions of food that anyone else not suffering from delusional tendencies would ever think to serve up on the same plate.

As testimony to my aunt's disastrous cooking skills, my cousin relates a tale where, as young boys he and his brother were invited to tea at a school friend's house. Upon sitting down to a full plate of food at the table, they were mesmerized by five or so white objects nestling on their plate next to some mince and veg.

"Hey Mrs A, whit's that oan mah plate?", he asked as he pointed his knife towards the unknown objects.

"Eh, dae ye mean the boiled tatties son?", she asks incredulously as she inspects what he's pointing to with his knife.

"That cannae be tatties Mrs A", says my cousin as he picks up the plate to sniff them and to make sure she's not fobbing him off with something that might just taste hideously like brussel sprouts. Given their mammy's lack of culinary skills, he and the younger cousin developed a routine of sniffing food first in the hope they could work out what it might once have been just so they could get an idea of what they were eating.

"Aye sure enough son, that's tatties, now get on and eat it will ye 'afore it gets cold, there a good lad", she says thinking no more about it and perhaps wondering if he was just a bit slow on the uptake or something.

"Nah, that's no tatties Mrs A, never in a million years", pipes up my second younger cousin who has also been inspecting these white beauties on his plate.

"Have you two no ever had tatties afore then?", asks Mrs A, beginning to believe that the rumours about their mammy's cooking abilities must be true.

"Aye of course we have silly", they say in unison, both a little embarrassed at their culinary ignorance of such a basic foodstuff. "But are tatties usually no meant to be black and skite aff yer plate when ye stick a fork in them?, asks the older one in all gloriously naive honesty.

"Nah son, they're meant to be just as they are here", she replied, rolling her eyes for the truth was worse than she'd expected. My cousins tore into the meal with gusto and as they accepted this new properly cooked food group into their diet both agreed that they'd never seen the likes of it in a long time, nor were likely to again anytime soon.

Some years later, the elder of my two cousins was staggering home up the driveway to his house after a wee session down the local when his rather irritating and nosey neighbour popped her head over the fence to tell him with pride that she'd given his mother her old pressure cooker because she had just purchased a new one. Sporting a huge smile she waited for his grateful thanks at such a generous act. Stopping in his tracks and making an effort to focus at least one of his drunken bleary eyes on the woman he would most like to see six feet under, he uttered the following:

"Oh ye did did ye? Ye gave mah mother an effing pressure cooker?", he asked incredulous that someone of supposed sound mind and body would do such a thing. "Whit in the name of God was the world comin' tae?", he pondered, as the horror of her news sunk in.

"Aye, aye ah did, whit's yer problem wae that then?", she asked as the smile slid from her face at the hostile response.

"Oh, no much of a problem at all hen", he slurred sarcastically back at her, "That's just fucking great and dandy", he continued, as he shook his head in disbelief. "Now she can burn the shite oot of ma tatties in half the bloody time it used to take her", he threw at her, as he lurched off indoors to see what culinary delights his mother had left for him to chuck in the bin just before he phoned for a Chinese takeaway.

The pressure cooker just made things worse really, for aunt T loved pottering around in her garden and losing herself in weeding and digging and planting and nurturing it to within an inch of its life - her grass was so perfectly neat that it looked like she cut it daily with nail clippers. When she'd finally remember that she'd started dinner some one hour or so before, she'd sprint like a gold medallist into the kitchen on a rescue mission and could be heard to shout, "I just caught them in time", as black acrid smoke billowed from the pressure cooker and the tatties that were welded to the inside of it. "Just caught them in time for what?", you'd ask yourself open jawed. "Just in time to feck them into the bin or did she have some other unexplained role for them that we were not privy to for she sure as hell hadn't caught them in time to be eaten", we'd tell ourselves. Some years later she discovered the micro wave oven. If you thought that someone's already hideously poor culinary skills couldn't sink to a new low then you have never had sausages, bacon, tattie scones, a fish finger, a beef burger, nuclear peas and a raw egg all cooked together and served up with dry toast for breakfast - butter was unhealthy apparently. If you had thrown the food at a wall, so rubbery was its consistency, that it would still be bouncing around the room today.

Oh but for all aunt T couldn't cook she achieved other great things much more important in life. She was successful and a role model in her career, as a wife, mother, sister, aunt, friend and mentor. She lived a life of Christian values and did endless charity works- thankfully she wasn't let loose in a soup kitchen - that would have been a cruel twist of fate for the hungry homeless people looking for a square meal. She provided me with a safe haven to run to as a child growing up in and who needed to escape from a troubled environment. When her husband was unexpectedly elected to the position of Lord Provost of Glasgow and Lord Lieutenant to the Queen, she rose to the role admirably,only momentarily being slightly caught unawares of her duty and what was expected of her initially but never putting a foot wrong as she embraced each task and grew with the experience. She knew sign language and taught the hearing to communicate with the hearing impaired. She was actively pursuing a programme as lady Provost to introduce sign language to some schools so that communication barriers could be torn down. She could strip down her troublesome spin dryer, service it, fix it and have it back on its feet working a treat until the next time it needed her expertise. In another life she may just have been a fine aeronautical engineer or designer for she was well able to grasp technical detail and idiosyncrasies with no trouble at all. She enjoyed science, but just not the domestic science branch of it. But no matter she couldn't cook for the welcome into her home was genuine and warm and she maintained the best treat store this side of Nirvana. No matter what age you were, if you were good, she'd let you rummage in her treat store that housed mars bars, waggon wheels, club fruit biscuits, tunnox caramels and a whole host of other goodies to make your young eyes light up with joy. Every serious partner I had accompanied me home to my family over the years and to this day, each one of them reverted to being a five year old boy who couldn't wait to be allowed permission to raid the treat store. It was a right of passage and one where you knew you had been accepted into the family.

I get plenty of time to reminisce about times gone past as I chop, scrape, cut, brown, boil whatever it is that I'm preparing. I miss the chatter of my mother around the table as we would companionably go through our pre festive season tasks whilst we shared the skills, knowledge , love and gossip that formed our relationship. Her passing means that she has handed the mantle onto me and I instinctively start preparation some six weeks before Christmas because I too need to feed the people close to me, need to provide a haven of warmth, love, sustenance and succour. My daughter would have been 24 this year but she was not meant to be. I cannot hand onto her the traditions, skills, excitement and heightened expectation that Christmas Eve, the best day ever, will soon be upon us. But as I work studiously, alone in my preparations, I am thankful that I have a husband, two step sons, family and friends that I love and love me back.

To come home and upon opening the door on a wintry night to just soak up the fantastic aroma of my mother's slow cooked Scottish steak and sausage casserole is to almost have my mother there waiting patiently for her marauding children to return to the nest. It couldn't be more evocative and heart-warming. She and aunt T may not be here in person but there is strong evidence that they both inhabited my world and each left me a legacy unique to them. Both inspirational in their own ways even if one cooked like an angel and the other like she was devising the menu for a bush tucker trial on I'm a Celebrity, Get me Out Of Here!

On Christmas day I'll take a moment to think of all who are missing from my life, raise a glass in memory of them, and raise another or two in thanks to those still in my life. I'm certainly thankful I didn't luck out in the great lottery of life and get my aunt's cooking skills and himself says he's eternally grateful too!

A Blast From the Past.....

I opened my desktop email as I do every morning and on seeing the ‘Receiving Mail’ message kick in on the task bar at the bottom of my screen, I waited for the usual mix of round-robin jokey mails that mostly I can live without because they are about as funny as lacerating your piles on a broken glass; couple those with the odd spam about enlarging my penis, (nope I don't have one in case you are wondering), to the length and girth of a Jedi Knight’s lightsaber, (imagine that girls – massively erect, lit up in the dark and being waved at you from five feet away; you could probably have the orgasm of your life followed by a quick hysterectomy and superb cauterisation to minimize the bleeding, come to think of it you could probably have a fairly successful tonsillectomy into the bargain and not even be in the same room as your well endowed lover); add to that a selection of pointless marketing shite about everything you will never need in this life like a fake Rolex watch with an X Factor winner’s face on it and of course besides some wee thieving arsehole trying to con you out of your Abbey savings account balance there is always the ultimate in emails – the fecking death threat chain emails promising you great suffering from the relatively simple boils on your arse infliction to a total wipe-out of your family, business and life as you know it threat if you don’t forward it to 3.2 million people in the next 5 nanoseconds. Like I give a rats ass about them but it does cheese me off that people perpetuate the fear factor and forward them to people they profess to love and care for – oh yeah? So how come you’ve just sent me an email promising torture of unimaginable proportions if I don’t send it on and then you finish off with a salutation of:

‘Hope all is well with you,
Talk soon,
Love,
The mental case that just sent this’.

So erm, how does that work then eh?
But hey, all that crap aside, you might just get lucky and eventually get a golden nugget of an email from family, good friends and old acquaintances that are a joy to read. Lets face it, for all its misuse, email when used for its intended purpose can be magical. It is quite simply the naughties version of the love letter and has encouraged millions driven apart by circumstances to put pen to paper or at least key to document and articulate things they might not have thought of saying in our time poor society.

Well anyway enough pontificating, bugger me, there I was last week firing up the desktop to welcome this array of communication excellence into my home whilst I sauntered off to brush the old gnashers in readiness of having a smile here and there or at the very least a grimace at some old crap that I had to delete - actually if I could get my hands on the wee sods that think I am stupid enough to send them all my bank and family details ranging back to the early 19th century so they can perform an online mugging of my bank accounts I would gladly pull their teeth out one by one in the style of the dentist in the Marathon Man movie where poor old Dustin Hoffman doesn’t look much like he’s enjoying it. For feck sake, that movie set back dentistry about thirty years, as if it needed it. Personally I like to cling to my dentist’s nuts with a tightened bulldog clip whilst he insists on drilling into some deeply soft tissue and jaw bone with a piece of hardened steel that was last used on a construction site. We usually come to an understanding that if he hurts me then he doesn’t get off too lightly himself. Actually this is a piece of artistic license here because my dentist reads my blog and I want him to see it in black and white that I'll come after him and there is no hiding place in this world if he hurts me bad - ever again. It took him ages to find the blog - he kept looking for Genocaushaloldgag - well Christ he'd ask me what it was called when he had a whole fecking denitistry tool kit lodged in my open and by now three foot wide stretched gob - what the hell did he expect? Perfect enunciation whilst I was choking on my own spit?

Anyway, as usual I digress. Incoming email trickled in one by one and settled into a list of twenty or so. One caught my eye simply because it was so unique. ‘ Calling all LDCers’ was the title. My heart skipped a beat and I re-read the title before double clicking on it. “This is going to be interesting”, I thought and I was right. LDC was Sperry Univac’s London Development Centre from the early seventies through to the mid 80’s before it was then dismantled and moved to Milton Keynes. During that time, over 200 of us worked as computer software programmers, hardware engineers, analysts, designers, operators and a big support staff for one of the most exciting and innovative American I.T. manufacturers of its time. It was a place that housed such immense talent and skills and incredible personalities that it would be hard to replicate it today.

HEALTH WARNING - NON TECHNICAL READERS SHOULD SKIP FORWARD OVER THE NEXT PARAGRAPH HERE PARTICULARLY IF YOU OWN A GUN - DON'T READ ON BECAUSE YOU MAY WANT TO SHOOT YOURSELF SHORTLY AFTERWARDS.

It was unique in its time in that the centre was at the forefront of technology, science and physics in inventing and developing the early I.T. systems that are the great great grandparents of the totally sophisticated desktops and laptops of today. Crikey, when we started programming we used Assembler, ASM, then Meta Assembler MASM, Plus, PL1 and eventually FORTRAN and COBOL, 1st, 2nd and third generation languages but then to talk about this technical stuff really is to bore for Britain and America about programming languages. But those with an interest will fondly recall having a punch room full of girls who translated coding sheets onto 80 and 132 column punch cards which were the programmes of the day. These soon gave way to the terminal – a green Cathode Ray Tube with a keyboard which allowed us to type our code into files and run them as a batch run. We were known as the ‘Green Tuber’ generation of I.T. and those green tubes, thanks to the likes of Bill Gates, evolved into the PC’s that we use today.

GOT THIS FAR WITHOUT TOPPING YOURSELF? AWARD YOURSELF 10 GOLD STARS AND DO THE SENSIBLE THING, DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR AND FECK OFF AND READ SOMETHING ELSE OF CONSEQUENCE THAT WON'T STRIP YOU OF THE WILL TO LIVE.

Sperry Univac being the multinational corporation that it was employed a plethora of cultures, nationalities and people from the very wealthy to the very poor but all had a lust for computers and a talent to match - I couldn't believe my luck being employed alongside these great people. London Development Centre, (LDC), had a reputation for excellence, working hard and playing hard and copious amounts of alcohol were consumed over at Charlie’s Prince of Wales, (POW), pub just a skip away over the road from the office. Just for a change now and again, we’d all head off to the Queens Railway Tavern, (QRT), to snort a few gallons of booze there. We firmly believed in keeping the local economy on an even keel and spread our embarrassingly large earnings between the pubs that let us partake of lengthy lock-ins to the extent you practically just rolled back to work the next day rather than go home first. Such was our reputation, people clamoured to get assignments to this place which was a grand melting pot and only language we needed in common was the programming languages we used and a common bond to create the best products in the world - or so we thought anyway!

Humour played a huge part in keeping us going on the long days we worked. Friendships were forged that last to this day. Relationships were made and broken and made again in the biggest dating agency going at that time. I married my first husband, divorced him, met and lived with my second long term partner then broke up and fell in love with another who was never going to be mine because neither of us was free at the same time - and all of them from the same work environment. This was typical of the environment as we all worked long hours and travelled a lot and we saw more of anyone from work than we ever did of friends and family. It was simply an extended university environment and we had some of the best years of our personal and career lives whilst working there.

I saw the world from that office in London Paddington. Both in terms of the differing cultures working there and on the assignments we were sent on overseas. No matter where you went on assignment there was usually someone based there that you knew and nights on the town were the order of the day. There are a thousand adventures I could write about but I won’t bore you with these right now.

And so, yes this email is a golden nugget, a real gem and one that makes having all the other old tat come in worth it in the long run. This email has generated a thousand memories, smiles, reflections on a time gone by and it’s raked up some deeply buried moments that are a joy to rediscover. The point of the email?.........There is to be a reunion next year. As I read through the list of email names it has been sent to, I felt the most immense joy at the thought of seeing so many of these people again. In particular, one name stands out - the second person that I fell in love with. He’s on the list, flew in from overseas for the last reunion which I couldn’t attend so will more than likely be at the next given the amount of notice we have been given this time round.

Will I attend? You bet I will but I think Himself will probably attend with me! He trusts me and is comfortable with me going along on my own but you know, I'd like him to meet some of the finest people that I have known that influenced me greatly in my most formative years; people that I have so much in common with, a shared history and a chance to renew those friendships that got shelved as our profession and industry took a battering and we moved onto pastures new.

And what of those death threat chain emails that I get sent? I usually email the sender and ask them not to send me these emails but if they ignore my requests, then I just send it back to the person that sent it to me.....Keeps them paranoid wondering what the hell to do with it now and I get a laugh out of it!