A Family Snapshot …

I always thought my grandmother was one of the luckiest people I knew; she had an imperfect but loving husband who had never strayed and given her as much as he could give; she had a family, we may have had our episodes of grief and dissent, but we were hers and she was the hub around which we all revolved and returned to in times of trouble. She had a comfortable roof over her head and a holiday home for spending those endless, summer days in, no real financial worries and no major health issues. I thought she had it pretty good and I was glad of that. Our relationship became a little troubled as I grew older and our personalities clashed on a weekly basis, but she was my grandmother and I wanted all those nice things for her.

A few weeks after she died my mother and I spent a sad Wednesday sorting out her numerous belongings. I was putting some musty Mills & Boon books, the faded kind that only charity shops and old ladies ever seem to have, into a box when I noticed something sticking out from one of them. Pulling it out I realised it was a strip of photographs, the type you get from a photo booth. It was all at once familiar and strange to me, familiar because I had seen its kin many times in one of my grandmother’s photo albums; strange because I had never seen this particular strip before.

They had been taken one summer when my cousins and I had been staying with her alone in my grandparents’ holiday home. I can only have been six or seven years old at the time but I remembered the day clearly, how we’d spent the morning on the beach and then enjoyed a picnic, finally making our way home in the heat of the early afternoon. I had needed to use the bathroom with that well known urgency of youth and we’d stopped at the bowling green which had public toilets. My family had sat on the old wooden benches as they waited, the green paint cracked and peeling from years of remorseless battering from sea air and aged bottoms. One of my cousins, having the normal 30 second boredom threshold of an eight year old, had spotted the photo booth and wheedled and whined until my grandmother relented. And of course she treated us all equally so several minutes and a fair bit of spare change later we continued home, each proudly clutching a strip of photos in our sticky, sunkissed hands.

Every strip was essentially the same, only the grandchild differed, a permanent record of our childish posing and mugging for the camera, a mini contest to see who could pull the most ludicrously grotesque expression, whilst my grandmother sat indulgently patient, perched on the edge of the round, hard seat next to us. There were four of us and I’d seen all four sets of pictures, we’d spent several minutes laughing and teasing each other about them before discarding them for bigger, better amusements. Then my grandmother had neatly taped them into a photo album, briefly labelling them with the fact that it was summer and the year.

The strip I found tucked into the book was almost identical to the one my eldest cousin had carried home that day. There he was again, tall for his age, hair cut short, ready for the warmer months, handsome despite his facial contortions and with an ice cream stain on the front of his t-shirt that looked vaguely like South America. What was glaringly different about this strip of pictures lay in my grandmother’s face. The strip shows a young boy, lost in the carefree joys of summer and the last days of childhood as a middle-aged woman has an emotional meltdown right beside him. Shot by shot, her face crumples, overwhelmed by tears as she deflates down into herself, her misery perfectly captured in contrast to the blissful unawareness of the happy little gargoyle beside her.

Death of a loved one invariably brings guilt of some kind but seeing those pictures was like a kick in the gut. The pain of her sudden loss was still fresh but I had been steadily coming to grips with it because I had the comfort of knowing she’d had a good and happy life. But she didn’t look happy in those photos, she looked distraught and lost. And what seemed worst of all was that I hadn’t been aware of it at the time and had no clue as to what had upset her. I could remember the day with perfect clarity, right down to the memory of the way the air around me had smelt of sea-drenched sand, warm grass, sun lotion and stale urine barely disguised by the industrial disinfectant wafting out from those cool, shadowy toilets, yet I had no recollection of what must surely have been my grandmother’s rather obvious distress.

None of us were overly spoilt or selfish children and we truly loved our grandmother, we had spent more time with her than our own mothers, they having had little choice but to work in the absence of our irresponsible fathers. So how did we not see or pick up on how unhappy she was that day?

Why was she so upset? What had triggered this moment of wretchedness in this woman who had seemed to have it all? My grief and guilt demanded answers. Was she missing my grandfather who often had to work while we holidayed? Was she having one of those days all women experience at one time or another, where we wake up and inexplicably feel fat and frumpy and unsatisfactory in every sense? Or had she suddenly realised that somewhere along the way she had stopped being a woman with hopes and dreams and turned into being just somebody’s grandmother? She would have done anything for her family, but did some small part of her, a part she kept well hidden for ninety nine percent of the time, resent us for it? Faced with such an obvious display of our youth had she suddenly mourned the loss of her own? She had once been a pretty, petite brunette, full of life, feisty and spirited with a temper and dark eyes that flashed when she was angry. She’d had a mischievous streak and was frivolous, loved to sing and dance but had also dreamed of being a nurse one day, yet by the time she was 18 she was married and pregnant, all her choices seemingly made. When I stop and take time to think of her as somebody other than my grandmother I can see how she might have had regrets, and my heart aches.

Because the worst part is, of course, that it’s too late now, I’ll never know for sure what upset her that day and I’ll never be able to offer her comfort. As a child I was blind to her emotions and maybe, with hindsight, that was for the best, I think the six year old me would have just been confused and a little scared, more in need of comfort than able to give it. At that point in my life I still believed in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the total fortitude and infallibility of the adults around me. But I found that strip of photos as a grown woman with her own fears, including that of regret and I wanted nothing more than to give her hand, as familiar to me as my own, a gentle squeeze and to look her in the eye, just long enough for her to know that someone had really seen her for a few seconds and understood. Isn’t that what we all want most at some time in our lives? Just that one, sympathetic instance of recognition? Why should my grandmother have been any different?

Unsettled by the image of her distress I asked my eldest cousin whether he remembered that day, hoping he might know something I didn’t or unwittingly reveal the thing that would help me to understand, but he barely even remembered having the photos taken. I felt hurt on her behalf, disappointed and a little annoyed at him for having been right there and for remaining so oblivious to her suffering. But I didn’t tell him about the photos I’d found, he was mourning her too and it might have made him feel guilty, he didn’t deserve that, like me he was just a child at the time. I haven’t shown the pictures to anybody else either, I know that they would just upset my grandfather and mother, they loved her for much longer than I did and they have a greater need for happy memories.

Still, I can’t help but wonder why she kept those pictures. As she got older my grandmother increasingly hated the way she looked, even those of us who loved her dearly could not honestly say that time had been kind to her. Was that part of the problem? Her husband, actually only 4 months younger than her, visibly aged a lot slower, still looking like a man in his 50’s when he was well into his 70’s. He passed this ageless gene onto my mother who in turn gave it to me, our years barely show whilst time ravages the rest of the family, much to their obvious disgruntlement. My grandmother often bemoaned this fact, saying it was unfair, I always assumed she was joking but now I’m not so sure. From old photographs I know that by the time she was 40 she looked at least 10 years older, by 55 she had consciously stopped looking in mirrors. So why keep a reminder of herself in such an ugly moment? Had she hidden them away and then just forgotten to dispose of them later? Or had she left them there on purpose? She had felt obliged to hide her cares from us, shouldered the acceptance of having to deal with her misery alone and unspoken at the time, was it her hope that one day somebody who cared would see the evidence of her suffering and finally give her credit for being a human, with feelings and not just somebody’s wife/mother/grandmother?

I am at peace with my grandmother’s death now, although there’s not a day that passes when I don’t think of her and miss her for all kinds of reasons. It just took me a while to get there. The pictures didn’t help, they worried me for a time, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that this woman, who had so often been the source of our comfort had had this moment, when all of her carefully placed disguises and barriers had slipped and her troubles, real or imagined were left exposed, captured for all to see and we, her unfeeling grandchildren, never even noticed. It felt like such a betrayal, like we, … like I, had let her down.

Soon after that I found myself hunting for other photographs; she loathed having her picture taken, invariably ripping up the ones she really hated, which was most of them, before we could protest, but a few sneaky shots survived and I scoured them all, scanning that beloved face for further proof of misery. And of course, I never found it, as I’d always known, deep down, I wouldn’t. What I did find was undisputable evidence of a woman who loved her family, a family that brought her happiness and gave her a sense of belonging in the world. She hated being alone and she never was in photographs, at least one of us was always with her and even though she was grimacing in every single shot, clearly uncomfortable with having a camera focused on her, she does so with a hint of a wry smile and a glimmer of that indulgent humour she never quite lost.

Hers was a complicated character and not always a nice one, our relationship was stormy at times and I suppose that’s why I don’t find it easy to write about her, she confused and puzzled me and I have never quite understood how I can love someone so fiercely having not always liked them very much. If what I have written seems conflicted at times, that’s why. She was the only person who has ever made me feel that way and it took the traumatic circumstances of her death and the time that has passed since to make me realise that I understand her a little more than I thought I did and a lot more than I thought I wanted to. I couldn’t let her go for a while because of the legacy of guilt and pain I’d been left by her passing, but now, having taken the time to try and make sense of so many things she said and did, I feel I know her a lot better and I don’t think she regretted the choices she made. I think she hated growing old and was afraid of dying and on that day, all those years ago, sitting in that grotty little photo booth, it all became too much for her, just for the space of a minute or so. But she didn’t always feel that way, before the photos were even developed and shot out of the slot she’d regained her composure, wiped her eyes and thought of a believable excuse for why they had to be taken again, and then she’d sat there dutifully smiling, a loving grandmother once more. It would almost have been like the moment never happened, except for that treacherous, tell-tale strip of pictures.

I could probably write several posts, and maybe I will, about my grandmother, about her doubts and fears and how they impacted on me and my family over the years. I don’t think she always liked herself very much, inside or out, but I have absolutely no doubt that she loved us and that is the knowledge that brings us both peace, that allowed me to finally let my grandmother go. I have put the strip of photographs away, somewhere hidden but safe, I get no pleasure from looking at them but I can’t bring myself to destroy them; as sad and regretful as they make me feel they speak of one of the many facets that made my grandmother who she was and, good and bad, I loved her.

She would always say that everything happens for a reason, and there must have been a reason why she kept those pictures to herself; personally, I think she wanted to be found and I did find her, eventually. Maybe a little later than I would have preferred, but maybe that way I found a tiny, lost piece of myself too so I’m grateful to her for that. She also used to say that everybody has their secrets; those photos were one of hers, and now they’re a secret we share. She is gone, forever beyond my reach and we are incapable of ever sharing anything again, except for this one thing that gives us a closeness we never quite managed to achieve when she was here.

Envy & Paths to Contentment …

I’ve always envied people who knew, without any doubt, exactly what they wanted to be, the ones who had a dream and knew where they wanted life to take them.

At primary school, when asked that ages old question What do you want to be when you grow up? some children always had an immediate response, they wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, a nurse or a soldier, so on and so forth. No hesitation, for whatever reasons that was what they wanted.

How is that possible? How can anybody know at 6 or 7 what they want to do for the rest of their life? Yet some people do. They make their decision and never swerve; they simply find the path necessary to reaching their goal and follow it.

Two of my cousins are prime examples; one always knew he wanted to work with cars, for the other it was being a chef. I envied them and those other kids so badly, because when I was asked the same question I would always have to think about it, bite my lip and scrunch my serious, little forehead up in thought as I tried to decide what it was that I wanted to be most on that particular day. I didn’t have a path, I could have had a big, garish, yellow superhighway put in front of me, lined with a chorus of midgets singing “follow the yellow brick road” in annoying voices and I still wouldn’t have had a clue where I should be headed or what I wanted to find at the end of it.

It certainly wasn’t for lack of dreams, I’ve always been a hopeless dreamer and had a glut of them as a child, it was just that, unfortunately, I was a quitter too who got bored quickly.

For instance, I turned my back on the tiny ballet dancer who had once seen a ballet on television and had her fledgling imagination well and truly captured. Her world was small and simple; everything that was beautiful, glamorous and desirable was defined by the ability to dance on your toes, the graceful, expressive arch of an arm and the delicate shade of a tutu. She would fashion a floaty skirt out of her grandmother’s silken scarves, fidgeting as her hair was tied back into a tight, little bun and then go dipping and twirling around the room as ‘Clair de lune’ played over and over. But she had to go, because as I grew older prancing around in tights didn’t fit in with my tomboy ideals. Ballet was for sissies.

It was a little inevitable I suppose, growing up with three, older, male cousins. They teased me mercilessly but didn’t allow anybody else to, they let me be one of the boys, and I could tag along in their adventures, even though I couldn’t clamber over fences as nimbly or run as fast as they could. Many a day was rued when I managed to ruin a perfect escape by getting my dungarees caught on a bramble bush or by deciding that I was going to try and make friends with the two, extremely angry swans instead of running for my life. I knew my inclusion in this most exclusive of boys’ clubs was tenuous and I did everything I could to fit in and impress. If my eldest cousin, clearly a young God in the making, wanted to be a mechanic, then that’s what I wanted to be, too. Nothing sissy about being a mechanic. But those hourglass sands kept spilling and I soon realised that the only parts of a car I was really interested in were the stereo and the colour, plus I hated getting grease and oil under my nails, so that was that.

By time I went to grammar school I had grown out of my boyish ways, skirts, dresses and giggling were back in vogue and in rediscovering my girliness I had also discovered a desire to be an actress.

I had always enjoyed singing and dancing but I was shy and somewhat introverted. It had been suggested at a parents’ evening that being encouraged to participate in a few, more outgoing, activities might arm me with some much-needed social skills. I had been in school plays and concerts, (my inauspicious, yet apt, first role was that of a mouse in the nursery nativity) but only ever as part of a choir where I could sing my heart out and still remain largely anonymous to everyone but my family, sitting proudly in the audience. I was a dutiful child, still eager to please and win approval from adults, so I joined the drama club. The teachers were kind and encouraging and started me off with small, supporting roles, gently pushing me out of my comfort zone and into a place that was completely foreign but strangely exciting to me.

As hoped, I reached my teenage years with a new level of confidence; I was still basically introverted but not quite so painfully shy. I had become a veteran of the school stage, never the leading lady but always enthusiastic in my supporting roles. I’ve never really cared to analyse why I enjoyed it so much, or why I was able to overcome a natural shyness which remains with me to this day, I just did. Maybe I instinctively knew it was a fragile thing of shadow and mirage, and was worried that if I questioned it too deeply it would disintegrate at my touch like ancient manuscript.

Predictably, the budding actress was one of the first casualties in my teen rebellion when it came. When I first started to skip school I would always return for drama lessons, much to the irritation of my other teachers. Finally, in an effort to try to make me take my education seriously they banned me from all school trips and productions and said I could only participate if I stuck to all my lessons. My drama teacher, poor man, practically begged me to knuckle down, he genuinely thought I had a talent and had dreams of sending me to the National Youth Theatre that summer, knowing it could never happen unless I showed a willingness to conform. I was flattered and genuinely touched by his faith in me and promised to do my very best. But I let him down and proved that his faith was misguided. I happened to see a documentary one night about one of the big London productions, for Bugsy Malone or Oliver! I can’t remember which, I just remember being repulsed by all these precocious children, oozing confidence and playing their parts with what seemed to me a distasteful amount of energy and enthusiasm. I had never seen parts being performed that way, I had certainly never performed that way myself and just like that I lost interest in acting. I dropped out of school with a vengeance, too far gone in my petty insurgence; with no interests to anchor me any longer I simply drifted away on a tide of youthful hopelessness.

After that I didn’t really have any dreams, I was in too much of a hurry to grow up to think about what I wanted to do when I got there. Life just happened and I unthinkingly went along with it. I found jobs, gained qualifications, found slightly better jobs, left home and got found by a number of boyfriends who for the most part I wish I’d remained hidden from. But I still had no plans, no big goals in life and I still envied those people who knew what I didn’t. I was adrift and just kept drifting.

But now I’m 30 and the years are starting to blur and seem shorter and I know it’s only going to get worse. I’ve rudely had my own mortality shoved in my face like a broken mirror and been forced to take a long, hard look at myself, my life and all their distortions. It seems that I am no closer to knowing what it is I want my destiny to be, and that in a lot of ways I am still that little girl dressed in a mouse costume her mother made.

It’s about time I had a path. It doesn’t have to be anything grand or fancy, it doesn’t have to be yellow and lined with musical midgets, it just has to be mine. I don’t expect to be a high-flyer, I know some paths only lead as far as the local supermarket, to parenthood or to simply being the love of somebody’s life, it doesn’t matter which it is as long as it leads to knowing you have a purpose and brings you contentment at the end of it.

So what do I want? That’s the big question.

Bad experience and self-awareness has resulted in my giving up on men and the prospect of ever having a satisfying relationship, which in turn has taken away the hope of having children. I’d really like to travel but that remains dependent on my gaining a much more secure financial footing than I currently enjoy and in order to gain that I need to have a career. One dream is to find a job that I’m good at and that I honestly enjoy, that isn’t just a soulless method of paying bills that I tolerate but secretly resent. I don’t know what that could possibly be or how I can even go about finding out, because I wasn’t one of those kids then and I’m certainly not one of them now. Whenever I discuss this with anybody they invariably ask, Well what do you enjoy doing? This is always followed by an uncomfortable pause and then my guilty confession that I don’t really enjoy doing anything, nothing that I can make a career out of anyway. I like books and Scrabble, music, spending time with my friends, shopping and sitting in the sun, all lovely things but hardly an occupation, unless you’re in a relationship with a premier league footballer, which isn’t an option as far as I’m concerned. So it’s a very grey area and I haven’t figured out the answer yet, it’s something I’m going to have to give more thought to.

The one thing I do know I want is to be a better writer. I know this because of the way I feel when I read other people’s blogs. Envy, thy name is Girl Interrupted.

I read a lot of posts, more than most people probably think, but the fact is that the early hours of the morning often find me drifting unseen through the blogosphere, a wispy spectre of blog-posts past, present and future. Sometimes I leave a comment to mark my passing, more often I don’t because witty, clever words just don’t come easy at 3am and as far as commenting goes my philosophy is much like Mark Twain’s, that it is more prudent to keep one’s mouth closed and be thought a fool than open it and remove all doubt.

Sometimes I don’t comment because somebody’s words have simply blown me away, because a post is just so well crafted, so cleverly written and achingly beautiful that I choke on my envy and leave feeling a little intimidated and rather hopeless. Hopeless and intimidated because suddenly I realise that there is a world of difference between a blogger who writes and a writer who blogs*, and that whilst I might be the former I would much prefer to be the latter.

If one thing has remained constant through all my childish fads and whims it is writing. I gave up on other things, unmourned, when they became too challenging or when they no longer fitted in with the image I wanted others to have of me or to have of myself; but I have always loved writing, right from the first time I painstakingly and ungrammatically related what I’d done in my summer holidays, writing in bold, shaky capitals, gripping my pencil tight in my tiny fist, intent on getting the stunted sentences out, and I have returned to it time and again for comfort and pleasure. I like to think that I have some skill in writing but I also know that I could do much better and suddenly that seems to have become rather important to me, because I can’t vocalise my thoughts and feelings very well now but the words pour out of my fingertips regardless of the weakness of my vocal chords.

For years, if anybody has asked me what my dream job is I have said writing and illustrating children’s books, but I have never seen it as a realistic or attainable dream, and therefore unqualified as an answer to What do you want to be when you grow up? I still don’t anticipate being the next J K Rowling or Margaret Atwood, that’s not what this is about, I just don’t want to feel envious of those beautiful posts that linger in my mind and keep me awake with wishing I could write more than the silly, fluffy stuff that my public writing seems to have evolved into. With a bit of effort being a better writer, even if only within the confines of a blog, is something I can realistically achieve. That’s my path for now. It may not be the main path, maybe it’s no more than a small track worn thin and made visible by bigger, more talented feet than mine, but it’s a path I want to follow and find whatever waits at the end of it. I think it could be contentment.

So, envy can be a terrible thing, it can lead to a life of bitter resentfulness that never allows us to fully experience happiness and robs us of the ability to recognise and appreciate all the good things in life. But it can also be inspiring, it can make us dream and question our own abilities, it can be the deciding factor that gives us that little shove, just when we need it the most.

* Credit goes to Mr London Street for this aptly-worded piece of wisdom, and for being a general source of inspiration, along with OtherWordlyOne and Hannah Miet, amongst others – thank you all.

The Truth Will Out …

 

 

Ok, brief recap …

 

 

wordsx3, a former friend of mine, despite the fact that he thinks I’m a liar creative with truth, gave me a meme prestigious blog award, which left me obliged to cunningly hide a rather mundane truth amongst six ludicrous lies and then invite anybody stumbling across this nonsense to guess which was which etc.

 

 

Still with me? Well done.

 

 

Here’s what you had to ponder and choose from:

 

 

1. I once featured in an advert for a well-known brand of toilet tissue when I was three.

 

 

2. I am part Aleutian (No, look it up, what you’re thinking is ‘Alsatian’)

 

 

3. I once rode on an elephant as part of a carnival but had to get off when I started to get seasick

 

 

4. My maternal family can be traced back to the time of the Norman conquest

 

 

5. A medium once told me that I am a reincarnation of Cecil Beaton (look him up too, yes HIM, stop laughing)

 

 

6. I was once savaged by a Great Dane (the dog kind, not somebody from Denmark) in a most unScooby-Doo like manner, whilst walking on the beach with some friends

 

 

7. I have had a book dedicated to me

 

 

 

I’m not sure whether to be flattered or concerned that several people thought #1 was the truth. I can assure you though that I have never been in an advert for toilet tissue or any other product. I just said that because it was poo-related.

 

 

#2 came about because wordsx3 said he didn’t think people would believe that I used to be black. I still think it was a credible option, but wordsx3 said having Aleutian heritage could really get people guessing. However, not a single person was fooled. Shows how much wordsx3 knows!

 

 

#3 is a complete fabrication. I have never even been to a carnival, let alone mounted an elephant as part of one. I did once go to the circus when I was 4, but my Mother made me wear a very dodgy pair of green trousers and a donkey thought my legs were particularly succulent, well-grown blades of grass and tried to eat me. Don’t even get me started on the clowns.

 

 

#4 would be rather cool if it was true. But it’s not. As far as I know I don’t even have any ancestors called Norman. My family on my father’s side can be traced back to some bloke (i.e. my paternal grandfather) in a Welsh town with a ridiculous amount of letters in it’s name, requiring three buckets of phlegm to pronounce it. My maternal family are somewhat more exotic in as much that they can be traced back (via my Auntie Pam’s memory) to at least the late 1800’s, a North London tribe known by the exceedingly uninventive name of ‘Smith’. 

 

 

If I could have just one wish it would be that #5 was actually true. I’m sorry, somebody else will have to wish for world peace, maybe the next Miss World. I’m still laughing at myself for coming up with that one … and yes, that is very poor form.

 

 

#6 is true. I told you my life was dull.

 

 

I was 15, on the beach with a couple of friends having a nice, leisurely evening stroll when this bloody Great Dane came bounding up, full of frisk, tongue lolling happily, clearly sensing he had found a playmate in the dopey tart who greeted him with friendly enthusiasm and an invitation to “Go fetch!”. Unfortunately, for me, something must have been lost in translation, maybe he really was from Denmark, because he blatantly ignored the stick I had thrown for him and instead decided I was an intriguing mix of lamb chop and a really big chew toy, clamped jaws that suddenly didn’t seem quite so chummy around my arm and proceeded to shake me like a Polaroid picture. At first I just laughed, thinking it was all a bit of fun, he just wanted to play. But then I noticed that what I had at first taken to be a bit of a goofy grin that only dogs and Tony Blair are capable of, was in fact more of an aggressive snarl. Also that my friends were looking most uneasy as they started to back away. I chuckled nervously and suggested that he might like to let go and then we could have a really super game of fetch.

 

 

It’s very hard not to panic when a dog, so large you could enter him for the Grand National, is sinking his teeth into your arm. He made it obvious that he wasn’t in the mood for ‘fetch’ or bargaining of any kind. So I got tough, remembering all I had learnt from Mary Woodhouse, Mary Poppins and my grandmother I adopted a no-nonsense tone and commanded him to let go. But I don’t think he can have been suitably impressed because, far from releasing me, he just growled louder and shook me harder.

 

 

I knew then that there was only one thing I could do. I screamed. Like the girl I am.

 

 

“GET THIS FUCKING BEAST OFF ME!”

 

 

However, my cowardly friends made it clear that they would sooner wrestle in a tag-team match against Godzilla and King Kong than come anywhere near me and my new buddy Cujo.

 

 

“Just tell him to ‘sit’” was the advice of one of them, repeated in an increasingly astounded and panicky tone that irritated me to the point of wishing I could actually set the dog on her.

 

 

“Shall I go and get some chips or something?” was the only offering from the other. She later explained that she’d had thoughts of maybe luring the Hound of the Baskervilles away with the promise of a saveloy and a pickled egg and wasn’t just being heartlessly single-minded as I’d first suspected.

 

 

Thankfully, an intimate fish supper for four, with me as a starter, was not necessary as the dog’s owner finally showed up and called him off. Thoroughly shaken, in every way possible, I looked down at my arm to assess the damage. It was summer and the beach in question was in England, so of course I was wearing a long sleeved top and luckily this had taken the brunt of the damage.

 

 

Seeing the dog was safely back on his leash, my two friends suddenly found their long-lost courage and launched a scathing verbal attack on the dog’s owner, demanding to know why ‘Old Yella’ was allowed to run around at will, free to molest hapless young ladies who meant well, even if they did have a fatal tendency to think themselves North London’s answer to Dr. Doolittle.

 

 

The owner apologised and explained “It’s just a phase Benji is going through”    

 

 

“BENJI? A PHASE? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” said one of my friends incredulously, in a tone so high pitched only Benji could hear her. I think it’s fair to say that she screeched for all of us though.

 

 

The end of the story is that the owner gave me twenty quid, supposedly as a generous gesture to enable me to replace the pesky top that Benji got caught on his fangs, but in reality as an incentive for me to keep my mouth shut. And I did, not because I’m that easily bought (honest) but because I love animals and was genuinely worried they would be forced to destroy the dog if I made an issue out of it. Several people have told me, having heard the story, that it was irresponsible of me not to have reported the incident, that it could have been a small child and the damage could have been worse etc, and I don’t dispute that. But it wasn’t a small child and the damage was minimal. I was rattled but never truly scared for my wellbeing, Benji was just a young dog with lots of energy and a tosser for an owner. It was my decision to make and I made it. So no lectures, please.

 

 

As for #7, I would love to say that it’s true but it’s a big, fat, fib. I just said it in the hope that it might inspire one of you talented bastards to pull your finger out and finally write that book you know you’ve always wanted to write, and then you can dedicate it to me by way of showing your everlasting admiration and gratitude.

 

 

So there you have it.

 

 

Congratulations to Darren’s dog, no doubt a ‘Benji’ in the making, and Mr. Condescending for guessing correctly. And thanks to everybody else who took a guess, especially as you thought my life is more glamorous and exciting than it actually is.

 

 

I’m off to bed. G’nite x

 

 

Ps: The most amusing part of writing this post was in trying to come up with a title. Amongst the many discarded gems were: “There’s a veritable conflagration in my pants” and “Could my pants BE any more fiery?” … but then I realised that it just sounded like an advert for thrush cream or an unfortunate venereal disease.