Christmas Shopping

This is the most stupid thing I've ever seen in my life.

http://www.prezzybox.com/products/index.aspx?pid=2800

Books I wish I'd written - hey, I probably did in a previous life and that's why I'm being punished.

This is my new favourite website, a motley collection of 19th century moral literature for children. Here you'll find miserable orphans, heathen children saved by missionaries, advice for young gentlemen and useful hints and tips on avoiding the pox. All edifying stuff! Here's a taster from an anti-tobacco pamphlet.

"WHEN cigarettes had put into his grave a boy of sixteen--mark you, lads! he's only one of many hurried away in this awful fashion--the press of the country had many things to say.
"To begin with you must know that cigarettes contain at least two actual poisons. One is called nicotine, and one drop of it will kill a full-grown dog. Another is called empyreumatic oil, and two drops of this will kill a cat almost instantly."

The moral of this book is don't leave your fag packet lying around if you have pets.

I want this one reprinted for Pooky and Puggle:

from ETIQUETTE FOR LITTLE FOLKS.
SUSIE SUNBEAM'S SERIES.

If you pass by your parents at any place, where you see them, either by themselves or with company, always bow to them.

Never speak to your parents without some title of repect, as Sir, Madam, &c.
Dispute not, nor delay to obey your parents' commands.

Never grumble, or show discontent at any thing your parents appoint, speak or do.
If any command or errand is given you to perform, do it with alacrity.
Bear with meekness and patience, and without murmuring or sullenness, your parents' reproofs or corrections, even if it should sometimes happen that they are undeserved.

Gotcha!

God so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn a large majority of the human race. - Robert G. Ingersoll

The Jehovah's witnesses called today, when Pooky was at school, so I decided to tell them what I thought. Which to be concise, was that I wasn't happy with them spreading homophobia in their publications by calling gay marriages 'immoral' and likening them to paedophilia. (what the fuck?!?!)
We had a good old chat about it, and according to the JWs, gay people can, and should, be changed. So I played what I like to call the Hitler card. I reminded them that homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses were both herded into the death camps and that perhaps a little tolerance was called for, if the same thing were not to be repeated. They liked this theme. They told me all about the atrocities the nazis inflicted on the brave witnesses to get them to deny their faith, but they wouldn't budge. And all credit to them. So I think they're mad. No reason to kill 'em. Hell, the more blood in the bloodbank for me, the better.
SO, JWs, my point was, if the WITNESSES couldn't change, WHY should the gay people? And why are people who try to pedal their religion based on the idea that they love everyone, spouting the kind of ideas I'd expect to find in Mein Kampf?
HUH?

Surely, I thought, I've got rid of them now. But no, they thanked me for the debate, said they welcomed feedback and said they'd see me next time.

All together now, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARrGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

No, but I've got this great idea for next time see, it involves a goat's head and some upside down crosses.........

Life With Nano

I am eight days into Nanowrimo (write a 50,000 word novel in a month! Lose all your friends! Email and phone no-one! Fail to Wash, etc etc you get my drift) and sodding crap I am bored. Yeah, I know I'll feel a massive sense of achievement when the currently limply titled "Hannah's Worst Nightmare" is finished, but it is seriously eating into my pissing about on the internet and drinking beer time. And even now I am only writing this blog in order to put off Nano-ing.
Ach well, I am having two days off this weekend, as I am going to my Grandfather-in-law's 90th birthday party. I am sure it will all seem much better after that.

Happy Hallowe'en Y'all!

I bloody love Hallowe'en I do. I love dressing up as a witch and making crap vampire costumes for the brats, I love gallons of pumpkin soup, I love confusing the chavvy brats on my doorstep by asking them for a trick and then offloading all those gross sugar free lollipops that've been infesting my house since last Christmas onto them.
Click on this and enjoy.....possibly even funnier than the pumpkins is this guy's day job selling embarassing pharmaceutical items on t'internet.

http://www.extremepumpkins.com

Titles I wish I'd Thought Of #1224 in an occasional series.

A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN.

This is a 'macabre' novel in progress by Tom Piccirilli. He also writes very good articles for the Association of Horror Writers.


Edited to add: Tom Piccirilli, as you may see from the comment below, HAS finished this book and it's published by Bantam. Buy it and promote the cause of book titles that are so cool they make me spit!

Why Do I Never Learn?

I went to see The Gondoliers, by Gilbert and Sullivan, when I was at Pork University Ltd. It was considerably less fun than a barrel of monkeys who have been starved to death, allowed to turn gangrenous, grow maggots, infect the water system and start a cholera epidemic which kills 35% of the population of the UK.

So what did I do last night? I only took my son Pooky to see a production of this same lamentable nonsense. He loved HMS Pinafore, and I have this theory that to appreciate the more sophisticated forms of musical theatre, one needs a thorough grounding in its early stages of development. Hell, even I quite liked HMS Pinafore, even though the female romantic lead was old enough to be the male lead's grandmother and that was saying something.

You'll be pleased to know that, despite the passing of the years, The Gondoliers gets no less dreadful. Pooky fell asleep ten minutes before the end, which was merciful. I'd have joined him, only G&S gives me nightmares.

City of Pork Council PLC wishes to deny that it is an agent of Satan.

Towards the end of work today I spilled some fennel tea on my desk. One or two drops fell on my keyboard, so I mopped it up. Thought it was ok, but then I tried to reply to an email and all the keys would type was:

666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666

The Triumph of Hope Over Experience

One of these days I will finish writing a book. It probably won't be thanks to nanowrimo. This is the insane contest which runs every year, in which participants try to write a book of 50,000 words in one month. (There is no prize for winning except the satisfaction being a smart arse) I have signed up again this year in the vain hope it will make me finish one of the abandoned drafts littering my computer. I told my darkling about this last year, and he actually did it. He wrote a book called Cruel World which you can download off www.dangerouswriter.co.uk. You're supposed to write it all from scratch, but what's the likelihood of that, since last year I managed about 2oo words? Wish me luck!

From The Pen of Pooky

This is Pooky's latest song - I do wonder what they've been telling him in assembly.......

I love you little honey pie,
You won't cry,
You will just tell someone like me.
And if you fall into the water,
I will just pick you back onto my back
And then we will just be alive.
And if we don't be died any more
We will live in a new home.

To All The Bikes I've Loved Before

Pooky's bike's getting a bit worn looking. I expect next year he'll get a new one as he'll have grown another metre taller. This, for some reason makes me go all sentimental and reflective, and I'm the kind of mother who chucked her kids' first shoes in the charity sack as opposed to having them covered in plutonium and preserved for posterity. It led me to musing idly upon all the bikes I have owned in my life.

Bike #1: Tiny red one with stabilisers
Bike #2: Cool Raleigh Denim
Bike #3: Dorky white folding bike with blue saddlebag full of sketchbooks
Bike #4: Donated brown bike sadly nicked by Brummie fuckwits
Bike #5: Purple Raleigh Vixen with babyseat, granny basket and sometimes trailer.

No reason at all for this post, just felt like sharing/inflicting it.

Things are going too well. I expect my house will fall down next week. But then it's insured, so that's probably a blessing.

Last night I went to see a play and IT WAS GOOD. Yes, I know this rarely happens to me. I'm shocked too. The last time I saw something halfway decent, I'd written it. And even that was marred somewhat by one of the lead characters fluffing his lines in the opening speech.
The play in question was Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads by Roy Williams. The set was stunning. They had actually built a pub on stage! The windows had rain falling behind them, the gents was a slide-out set within a set, and the CCTV behind the bar showed characters in the street before they entered. In order to defeat the Theatre Royal's sloped stage, the pool table had been built up on stilts of varying levels and at one point, a brick flew through the 'glass' of the window. Impressive.
The dialogue was raw, snappy and fast-paced. Most of the characters were so well drawn that you didn't know who to trust or how they would react. SO much was left unsaid. Many sharp intakes of breath were heard amongst the audience.
The plot was outwardly simple: over the course of an evening, a pub footie team and their various hangers on gathered to watch some cup final against Germany. The one black member of the team, Barry, was trying way too hard to fit in, with his bulldog tattoo, St George flags on his cheeks and desperate cries of 'Stand up, if you won the war' whenever the conversation strayed into uncomfortable areas. Which it frequently did. There was a character, Lawrie, who was your archetypal football hooligan, goosestepping, violent racist, but much more sinister was the 'Don't read The Sun, read BOOKS' BNP type, Alan. He wound the other characters up and made them say what he wanted them to say. He just wanted to HELP black people, because they'd be much happier elsewhere...............
Then there was the landlady's white son Glen, who desperately wanted to hang out with the cool black kids, but had the piss ripped out of him (and his stuff nicked) continually. All the while, Barry's brother Mark smouldered away in the background, attempting to get Barry to realise what a tit he was being. Throughout, the white characters referred to Barry and Mark as 'son' or 'boy' and let them buy round after round at the bar without reciprocating.
It was clear that with such a mix of characters in such an enclosed space, there would be a confrontation at some point, but where it originated was a genuine surprise. And I'm not going to spoil it. The play ended abruptly, boldly, without the satisfaction of a neat resolution which could never have rung true.
Fantastic acting, directing, writing and set. WHY were there only 110 in the audience? The auditorium was almost empty. Does the answer lie in the fact that I asked for the cheapest ticket and yet paid £14? Under 25s get in for £4, which is cheaper than the pictures, but the message obviously isn't getting through. This play needs to be seen! PLUS you get a complete copy of the new, rewritten script in the programme. If you can get to see this production, do so - This will stay with me for a long time.

I don't wanna go to Guantanamo

Tony, could I please emphasise if you're reading this that I said in my previous post I'd bought a BATH bomb making kit on the internet. Bath bombs are fairly innocuous creations made from bicarb of soda, essential oils and food colouring. Sometimes they contain glitter or rose petals. They make your skin all nice and soft. AND THEY ARE NOT WMDs.
Thank you. As you were.

Hold the Front Page!

I'm having a good day.

And I thought, given the tone of my recent posts, that I should blog about it before it all went wrong. Last night I painted a very large picture of a dandelion and ordered a bath bomb making kit from t'internet. The night before that I sewed Pooky a new bag. Today I have made a gallon of wine out of tinned fruit cocktail, then, on a roll, went out to Clifton Backies to forage for berries with Puggle. Ok, so the buggy broke and is now completely, as oppposed to partially, shagged - but Puggle managed to walk all the way home, so my back remains happy. And we did get enough blackberries for two crumbles.

It's all going suspiciously well............

but then Friday is the day the Jehovah's witnesses call. HELP.

Reminiscence Writing.

Here's a reminiscence.
Tonight, I walked into The Royal Oak, to conduct the playwriting workshop I've run for more than a year now. I peered into the room we use. OOH, I thought, lots of new people with files. They're keen.

Then they slammed the door in my face.
I asked the barmaid what was going on. She didn't know. But she could provide me with a lovely, if chillingly expensive, pint of Deuchars. Emboldened by this relative good fortune, I walked into the room.

"Are you here for Page to Stage?" I enquired, nicely.

"We're a WRITING group," one of the scary people said, "A reminiscence writing group."

I was so confused that I was nice. I am often confused. And often nice. This is the great tragedy of my life. By this time Edd and Jane had arrived for the workshop, so we went upstairs to investigate the alternative room.
SHIT! It made my house look clean. Full sentences fail me, so I shall merely say:

carrot peelings
pants
ironing board
overflowing fagtray
family photos
Danielle Steele novels
ouija board
human sacrifices hanging by one foot
John Smith's Smooth

Actually the last three were made up. The old gits writing shit about their childhoods to foist upon their teenage descendants who will merely use it to light their crack pipes - did I type that out loud? I mean reminiscence writers - wouldn't budge and I am too wet to tell them to fuck off , so we had to have our workshop in the bar.
So now I am covered in fagsmoke and very, very grumpy.
And I will phone the landpeople tomorrow to ask what the sodding hell happened. Or more probably I will tell them it's no problem, not their fault and we can put up with it. And I never really liked my lungs anyway.

Has anyone got a second hand assertiveness book I can have?
Please?
Only if it's no trouble.............

Bring Me The Publicist of Ay Carmela!

JAYSUS SUFFERING FRIG!

I have just spent the most wasted evening of my life since watching the talentless young things of Cheltenham Ladies College murder some Indian Folk Tale or other at the Edinburgh Fringe. And would I meant wasted as in inebriated off my tits. No, insobriety would have been a mercy.

Ay Carmela! Ay indeed. This show, at York Theatre Royal's Studio, was billed as some kind of musical comedy satire on the Spanish Civil War. Which sounded really rather good. Instead I have just sat through what felt like three and a half hours of an elderly woman in a black dress and a white bra singing badly and 'going mad' in a very cliched manner, while her wizened, mumbling co-star does the incredibly amusing and never before seen on stage trick of pretending to piss in a bucket and it goes on for ages and it's oh-so-F*****G-FUNNY. I waited for the first scene to be over. I thought, generously, that I've written a deliberately dull first scene in the past so as to heighten the impact of the brilliant second scene whch blasts away the audience's preconceptions.
I left the theatre three quarters of an hour ago. I don't think that first scene has ended yet.

Half the audience left in the interval. I wish to Minerva I had.

Want a taster of the show? There is a programme on CBeebies (the allegedly educational channel for under 5s and specifically my son Pooky) called Something Special. It is aimed at children with special needs, and is partly delivered in Makaton. A freakish clown called Mr Tumble teaches his bafflingly adoring audience new words in the following fashion:

"This is my FACE. What MR Tumble? Is that your FACE? YES, this is my FACE."

similarly, Ay Carmela:

"See those prisoners up there? PRISONERS? YES, PRISONERS. What prisoners? LOOK, PRISONERS!!"

Thank Odin we didn't waste a babysitter on this sh*t, that's all I can say. Incredibly and pathetically, we couldn't find anyone willing to sit on our sofa, eat our food and ignore our sleeping sprogs, so we had to go on alternate nights. And I went first. This means that my lovely spouse gets to skip out, as frankly, the £7.33 I wasted on his ticket due to a 'special' offer ("SPECIAL? YES MR TUMBLE! SPECIAL IN A BAD WAY!!!") would be better spent reclaiming the two and a half hours of his life that he would have expended yawning and cursing the day he ever met the woman who would ultimately buy him a ticket for this torture.

The only thing I liked about this production was the fact that halfway through the first half, I was so bored that I went into a trance and thought of a really really good idea for a teenage novel.

And whoever publicised this pile of w*nk, I'd love to know, because they make Alastair Campbell look like an amateur and quite honestly, I'd like to hire you for my next play. I think you could probably get me the Nobel prize.

p.s. When I'm cross, I type like an amputee, so now I'm going to go back and correct all my spelling.

Then I need a beer.

Thank you.

Subject: Generator Testing.

Just for information.

Sometime today the emergency generator is to be tested.

It should not affect anything.

Fred

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This.

Last night I had that recurring dream again. You know, the one where I've murdered a pensioner and concealed her body about the house but I'm bricking it 'cause now I have to dispose of the body. Every time I have this dream I devise a new and ingenious method of disposing of the corpse. Last night my idea was to rot off the flesh in my composter, then get rid of one bone at each campsite in the country. It was brilliant - the kids love camping. I'd drop the bones in remote lakes, bury them in forests, perhaps at one of the more 'lively' campsites I could leave the skull in a Karaoke bar. Then I woke up, as I always do, distraught and absolutely believing in this shitty nightmare. It takes me up to an hour to figure out it's not real.

What's the dream about? I looked up 'bones' on a dream interpretation website and it said they represent secrets that I fear being revealed. Neat. Except that I don't think I have any secrets, except possibly from those nonogenarian relatives whose heart attacks I don't want on my conscience. And they're deaf anyway. They'd probably think I said "Tree in a Shed".

Nah, I reckon I'm psychic. The dream of distributing bones around the kingdom echoes that medieval thing where the king dies and you have to take his body to different parts of his realm. So like duh, obviously the queen is about to die.

You heard it here first.

Oh, and has anyone got any ovaltine I could try?

Let them eat crap!

My Lovely Spouse has for the last six years, had a Proper Job. Not working for the council, but for a private company, which means that he had an office that wasn't condemned by environmental health, a keyboard that wasn't covered in dried phlegm and cat hair, and most importantly, he got CAKE. Every time someone had a birthday, they bought cakes for all their colleagues. I was dead jealous, working as I did for City of Pork PLC, an organisation in which you have to chop off one of your toes and sacrifice a month's pension contributions if you so much as want to use the photocopier. Anyway, imagine my joy this afternoon when I turned up for work and T. the bus man (he makes them all run by pressing buttons on a tiny remote control on his desk) told me they'd had cakes at a meeting this morning and had saved one for me!
Four o' clock came and I was starving (probably the worms I caught from using council biros) so I went to look for my cake. It was one of those mini Victoria sponges with fresh cream in the middle. I took it from the fridge, returned to my desk and bit into......a rock-hard macaroon filled with Wensleydale cheese. In fact that implies it had some flavour, so scratch that. It was like biting into a cycle helmet.
I tipped it into my colleague's bin (I haven't got my own bin yet - I've only been there five weeks).
Then I logged onto the Jobs and Opportunities bulletin.
S. said that if it was any consolation, he'd got a blueberry muffin and it was wet.

About the Awful

I have been asked by Net Curtains to provide a short autobiography. The other writers' biographies are all extremely impressive. They have won prizes and been awarded grants. Ewan McGregor is going to be in their films.

Not keen on blowing my own trumpet (all those years stuck on third cornet playing off-beats) , I googled the name I was known by in the olden days when I was prolific.
Is my four star Stage review there? My glowing Scotsman piece? Oh no. The only review of me there is on the internet is one which gets the names of my characters wrong and includes the immortal line:

...to be honest, Alison Yates, unlike her co-performer Claire Mace, is clearly more writer than actress and she does mistime many of her gags.

Bunch of skanks. I give up. How's this for a biography?

Alison Morgan was born. Then she wrote some stuff. If you don't commission her she will shoot herself and take Simon Callow with her. Enjoy the show!

On and Off and On again...(see, you know things are going well when you quote Status Quo instead of Oscar Wilde)

My latest play, "All Mod Cons" was commissioned by Net Curtains Theatre Company
back In January as part of its planned project on the 1953 floods. I wrote three drafts, then went to London for a workshop in April. This was AMAZING. I saw a real director and real actors at work, and the play seemed to be flying. The workshop lasted four hours. Oh yeah, and Terry Johnson sat in too. It was the first time I'd had my work 'done' by professionals since univ, when Debra Gillet and Henry Goodman read a script of mine. (I don't know what they were paid, but it wasn't enough) Anyway, a week later, I heard from Net Curtains that they'd decided not to produce my play. They said that they felt it was potentially a full length play and they didn't want to curb my artistic vision or something. Hmm. Anyone for a two hour play about a natural disaster from an unknown writer? Royal Court? West Yorkshire Playhouse? Thought not.
Anyhoo, got a message last week on my work phone (how the HELL did they get the number?) saying one of the playwrights on their triple bill has flounced and taken his lovely play with him. And would I come back on board.
Of course I said fuck off, the National wants to stage it at the Olivier and Spielberg's in a bidding war with Tarantino for the big screen options............. ;)
I've just sent Net the 4th Draft.

Malfunctioning Kids: A Moan.

Pooky is not sleeping at the moment. Every time we put him in his bed, despite him being so tired he is falling over, he comes out of his room and runs around like some banshee boy, screwing up his eyes and holding his breath until a noise roughly describable as "ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" emanates forth from his Pooky little mouth. Then he wakes several times in the night, exclaims "ROOOOOOOOOO" some more and gets into our bed, whereupon he grinds his teeth for hours.
Matters are not helped by tiny Pug, who last night, during the customary battle to get her hair dried, grabbed the hairdryer and bonked herself in the face with it, causing a hideous spider's web- like scar to manifest itself across her cheek. Add to that the recently dried out chicken pox scabs, and Puggle looks like nothing you'd expect to see outside the NSPCC's latest ad campaign.
I know it's really scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I need to add to my series of blessings counted.

643: Pooky is not scarred.
644: Puggle sleeps sometimes.
645: Headache tablets are cheap.

By Unpopular Request........

Here are some more of Pooky's jokes. Imagine our joy as he regaled us with them non-stop for an hour on the way back from Nostrell Priory this afternoon, after five hours' of chasing him around the gardens/stopping him turning into roadkill/ listening to him burbling on about his horse called Bobalok etc.!

• What do you call a deer with no legs?
• A sandwich!

• What happened to the giant?
• He fell over and got splattered into dogpoo!

• What do you call nothing?
• A lamppost!

• I've just seen something dreadful.
  

Actually that wasn't a joke, it was a dead fox........

FreeeeeeEEEEEEEE!!!

Oh my random deities, I have just marked the LAST one of the 630 SATS papers that have infested my life for the past month. No more effin' sports centres and 'Jaime Olver' crap to plough through. This weekend I will actually see my kids!! Altogether now,
NO MORE SATS
NO MORE SATS
NO MORE SATS
NO MORE SATS
NO MORE SATS
NO MORE SATS
NO MORE....oh to hell with it, where's that winebox!

Another one bites the dust…….

John the driving instructor almost had a coronary tonight as I stopped at a roundabout in front of a lorry 52x bigger than his car. Apparently it would be looking ahead, seeing the road was clear and expecting to go. Frankly, if you’re driving behind a car with a big red ‘L’ on top, you should be expecting anything. Apparently my gear changes are rough, my braking is too hard, I am too slow/fast (delete as mood strikes you) and above all, I need to go out in the car with my spouseling and get some practice. Gee, really? Hey just imagine, if we had someone to sit with the kids while I did that, who knows, maybe I’d be saving £439 a month on nursery fees!

Anyway, York’s road users can breathe again, as I HAVE BLOODY GIVEN UP. After a hard day’s graft, the last thing I need is to miss putting my kids to bed just to be panicked and shouted at by a bloke who is a living illustration of what happens to your BMI if you sit in a car all day long. Sorry John, but you’ve made me so desperately in love with my bike that I fear for my marriage.

A YEAR AND A HALF OF LESSONS!

Geez, with the cash I’ve wasted on driving lessons, I could have taken the kids to Disneyland. And that’s just one week of BSM. John was cheap, but he still charged £18 an hour, which is more than I got for teaching GCSE. Can you imagine if I’d started shouting at the kids, “NOOOOOOOOOO!!! That’s dangerous, you can’t put that apostrophe there, you keep doing the same thing in every essay!!!!!!”

WHAT WILL I SPEND THE MONEY ON!!!

I’m almost giddy at the thought. A cycle trailer, one of those funky half-bikes for brats that attach to your bike, loads and loads of waterproof clothing…….oh, and 3 litres of Chardonnay a week.

COS I’M NOT DRIVING – BWAHAHA!!!

Counting my blessings (extract)

403: I do not live in Baghdad.
404: My name is not Chelcei.
405: My washing machine works.
406: My spouse went shopping and bought, amongst other items, pesto, bread and loads of beans.
407: I am not John Prescott.
408: Four more days of marking and I will be free, FrEe, FREEEEEEEEE!
409: Wine.

This year's SATS

I seem to have posted these in a higgledy piggledy order. Oh well. I guess that's why all of my jobs include the words 'officer' or 'co-ordinator' as opposed to 'MD'. Here are the combined efforts of about 600 year 9 kids who bothered to respond to the Longer Writing task. They had to write a letter of protest about the local council shutting down their sports centre and telling them all to go and use one 20km away. York schoolchildren will have done well on this one.........

Longer Writing Task

Dear Locals,

My name is Colleen and I live local. You are proberly wondering why I am writing to you. This is because we think of you as highclass citizen. I know I have not been the nices person in this town but I really need your help.

I don’t think the government should close down the sports center because we go their to reduce the risk of passing away x dieing.

I mean that people who are obese, have to go their because they will die.

Firstly I conclude that taking it away will lower the moral of the local people.

Before the centre opened there was a lot of muggins in this area. It was well exciting.

Secondly children all ready have enough stress from school and need somewhere to relieve themselves. This sports centre keep your little angelic children from roaming the streets and becoming the thing you dread. This is how they get into drugs to them its we cant go to the gym anymore so we shall go cause trouble smok some weed sniff some coke.

Where will our children go and play when they have had a destressing week of Sats or when for 3 years had crap maths teachers that fall asleep at the front of the class.

Thirdy, many people use our leisure centre for reasons.

Everyone is welcome from 0-1000 year olds.

There is lots of aldult activities from Thi-chi to archeracy.

I, myself, does enjoy the odd tap dance. At our sports center the staff are first class friendly, and only interested in pleasuring you, the rates are cheap.

On the other hand, the swimming pool is dirty, the tiles are falling off, the diving boards aren’t safe and all the machines in the gym are broken. I suppose the only good thing is the coffee shop.

When they close it down people will start dieing, which means less people will go to the other sports center 20km away. 20km is well far away from here. Getting to the other sports centre will not or will be a problem.

“I want to keep the sports hall because I meet my friends at the coffee shop” said a wipping widow.

We spoke to miss roberts Jack roberts mum she says ‘ I would be magntified if the centre closed down.’

One kid called John said “I didn’t have no friends untill I stared football then I met loads of friends if it get nocked Down I wont have no friends no more”

People will become obsie x obesse x on x overweight.

Figures show 47% of people who visit the centre are obese. It is indispicable.

If we all help we will win this evil government that wants to obliteate our fitness centre. I have got 4 people to take part in my campaign so far.

We will all scream and persuade and object so much that these horrible human beings that has done this awful deed to us cannot stand the pitch and frequency of our justice fighting voices.

Therefore, in conclusion to my letter of plead, surely you of all people should agree with me if not for me if not for yourself but for England one of the countrys in the world. Good by and God bless England.

On the other hand I personally agree that most people in this area don’t really use the sport centre so this letter doesn’t really concern you.

My sinsirly,

Maria. (local)

P.S. don’t remember to sign the pertition.

The SATS you've all been waiting for....

Yup, here it is, the annual compilation of crap, bizarrerie and sheer warped genius that spews forth from the frazzled brains of Year 9s. This year's short writing task was to write a report for the school website about a famous person opening your school's new food technology room. And then the pizzas got burnt. HA HA HA. Enjoy.........

Food Teck Fun.

This is the title becarse this is what it is about.

Dear Parents and Careers,

Last week, on the 3th of March, We had a rather famous face around our parts. We had Jimy Oliy the nude Chief come to open our brand new food technollyy room for our pupils to exspire us with there cooking skills. He cut the red rope what was stuck on from side to side.

In the Cookcurry lesson the children had to demonsterated there cooking our visitor. A sence of Joy was lerking around the room. It looked as clean and perfect as sand. The room has 20 state-of-the-Arc cookers and Bran new spanking ovens. It has over 50,000 pounds of electrical equipment in it. You could buy one hundred thousand cans of coca cola with that.

Jaime Olivier teached, tasted and tampered with all the pizzas and students.

He tasted our year 9 pupils and was very impressed.

He made us some very speical food called pablow rossianty in it there was rice curry and a pancake on top.

For him to watch us cook was very good, but nerve-nacking.

I was also delighted by the fact that the pupils who came to visit had the remorse to respect. I think they all said that they wanted to become cookers and if they all didn’t say it most of the pupils did.

Everything was going orite but how wrong were I.

Amy was there naughty Amy who burnt he pizzas and set her stove on fire.

From the smell of burnt pizza everyone lifted there noses I didnt of course as I have a very keen smell.

The angry flames were spreading like headlice. I thought we were going to burn the school down, not that that’s a bad thing or anything.

Back to the visitor I asked him if he was italian he said “no”

I felt as if I had been a mole hiding in the soil so the crows don’t get me.

Chatting to me as if we were on speaking terms, the head teacher says “we try to teach pupils about life in the outside world can be really hard and in fact quite mean and harsh. My school is Cathorlic so we respect everyone and everything with regrastes that we so together and orangiesd”

At the end of the visit he gave me twenty pound so it was good all round.

For more information visit the school website site Good by and God bless England. HA HA HA

I like driving in my car, almost as much as I like tor-char.

Some of you may know that I am learning to drive. Others of you will have known this sometime in the distant past, forgotten it and re-learned it. It is taking me a long time. I am not the world's most confident driver. People think this is insane, since I've been cycling on the roads for 20 years now. That's roads including BIRMINGHAM. But bizarrely, I feel safer perched precariously atop a scarcely-visible piece of lightweight metal than strapped in behind the wheel of a two ton box. My sense of unease has not been helped by the fact that I've had FOUR instructors. So far. In a year and a half. The roll of honour..........

1) Julie.
Her driving school was called 'corse 'u' kan' or some similar abomination against the English language. Her tan made Dale Winton look like an albino and her voice was akin to the sound of screeching brakes. After a few weeks with me, she told me that she had a rare blood disorder and was going on long term sick leave. My piano teacher had said a similar thing to me when I was ten, and it was a lie. She'd continued to teach all her other pupils. As did Julie.

2) Adam.
Repelled by the rank amateurism of 'Kors' u!cann', I went to BSM. They dumped me with Adam, a 15 year old (or thereabouts) boy who kept banging his head off the glove compartment, edging towards the passenger door and once told me that my shitness in gear changing was due to my not having the correct brand of hideously expensive sports shoes. He also managed to convince me I had some kind of co-ordination problem. As had, I might add, my piano teacher when I was ten.

3) Paul.
I phoned BSM to tell them I was going to give up and sell myself and my malformed limbs to a travelling circus. Or something. They suggested I try another instructor. Perhaps one who was qualified! Paul was qualified. He was also very, very nice, reassured me that if I wrote off his car he would get another one from BSM and claimed to be 28 years old when he looked older than my Dad (but with peroxided hair) Then he fucked off to Leeds for a better job.

4) John.
Tonight I had my first lesson with John. Within ten minutes I cried on him. Possibly not a good sign, but he didn't say anything about blood disorders or dyspraxia, so who knows. He says he'll come back again next week. Maybe I will be able to drive soon!

Which is ironic, as the job I'm just about to start involves dissuading people from driving their kids to school and promoting cycling. As usual, my timing is impeccable!

Jokes

Q) Does a knife chop off your hands or your legs?
A) Your head!

Knock Knock.

Who's there?

Fish.

Fish who?

A fish, silly.


Thanks to Pooky for those.

Titles found on Amazon that I wish I'd thought of first: #1 in an occasional series.

JINGLES AND JOLLITY: A JOLLY BOOK FOR LITTLE PEOPLE.

Strangely, the author is anonymous.

Found in the library staff meeting minutes today.

Marion would like everyone to look out for a non-weird picture book
about the seaside for a storytime later 24th May. No witches/deaths
please.

Thank Heavens for Diarrhoea

As some of you may know, I am currently embroiled in a bizarre tug-of- redeployment at work, and it aint fun. I've been dead stressed and making mistakes along the lines of booking up a storyteller on a day I won't be there to look after her and distributing 50 odd posters for her with the wrong day on. Also I have to mark 40 SATS papers a night which is only marginally less boring than being in Year 9 and having to write one.

Today Puggle came to my rescue. How did she do this? She acquired raging diarrhoea. The nursery won't take kids who even look a bit tired or ugly, so there was no chance of her going in. Or me.

I'm a conscientious soul and I hate missing work, but today the sun is shining and Puggy is sat on my knee muttering in a charmingly incoherent fashion of babies, hats and doggies. Later we will go out in the garden and I will push her on a swing for what seems like hours.

Funnily enough, my week-long headache seems to have gone.

KS3 English National Curriculum Tests 2006.

Snoooooooooooooooore.
Whatever we were being paid for the SATS training day today, it wasn't enough. Sensing the collective apathy of all those teachers desperate enough for cash to take the devil's shilling and mark these bastard tests, the 'presenter' remarked,

"I found myself scribbling all this down when I did my training"

Got to get your thrills somehow, I thought, and began scribbling. There follows a random selection of my notes. I hope they convey some impression of how much I enjoyed the day.

"Can I suggest that you go back to example six later?"
"As long as I can suggest you get knotted"

In the future this stuff will be marked by machine.

I am cold.

How much $ do we get for this?

"Remember this is national training"
Woohoo, and there's me thinking we were in Barbados.

Are paragraphs useful or random?

Yawn.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah (hummed to tune of Imperial March)

What is 20km?

How much $ do they get for reading out powerpoints? Badly?

It pains me to write notes.
I feel conscientious
I am not being paid enough to be able to spell conscientious

Evil looking deformed animals.

Thanks f0r sharing my pain.

From the Guardiano

My favourite newspaper caption of the week:

" A little girl falls asleep while being paraded around Cheung Chau Island's bun festival, held to appease the ghosts of pirates."

Can I get (rid of) a Witness?

It is Friday tomorrow.
It is not likely to be pelting down with hailstones.
They will be here - it is my mission to ensure that my vulnerable little offspring are not.

Oh ok, I'm talking about the Jehovah's Witnesses, those fairweather evangelisers, those well-fed, glassy-eyed, smug, thinly-smiling old bags who turn up on my doorstep once a fortnight (except if it's raining) to foist some crap tracts with the production values of a chip cone onto me.

Why do I not tell them to fuck off and burn in some fiery lake of their own lurid imagining?
Well they've got me there. They have somehow sensed that I am a vaguely nice person and will not swear in front of the kids. I don't even want to ridicule other people's beliefs in front of them, 'cause ridiculous as those beliefs undoubtedly are, we know where that kind of education leads.

Pooky rushes to the door every time the bell rings, and as he does with every caller, has told the JWs his name, age and practically his entire life story. All I can do every time they catch us in (and it's not often - I even frequent weekend dad paradise The Wacky Warehouse to avoid them) is pretend that Puggle has just shat herself and I need to change her nappy as a matter of urgency.

Once when I was very pissed off with them (I think they'd aired a Bible in my presence or something) I told Pooky that the ladies had special educational needs and we had to be nice to such people, but no, I wouldn't read their magazines to him and would he like The Very Hungry Caterpillar instead?

HOW do I get rid of the Witnesses?
I'd be very grateful for any suggestions that don't involve a machete, as I can't be pestered washing the blood off the step.

Amazing what they teach 'em at nursery these days.

Pooky came home today with an array of new facts about human biology that he was eager to share with us.

1) Your heart makes blood go around your body.

Impressive.

2) It stops you dying if you get chopped up.

I think Pooky's mind may have wandered into the Star Wars zone at this point. But who am I to say? I only did modular science.

How much money do ya need for pete's sake?

How much do you need to be happy?
The question pops up from time to time in our house when redundancy or unemployment beckon. (Which they do roughly twice a year - hey, it keeps us on our toes) Now I know that if we couldn't make the mortgage payments and lost our house I'd be pretty miserable. And I know that if I had to feed the kids on economy white bread and ham made out of kangaroo entrails, that would make me exceedingly depressed. But beyond a secure place to live (and by that I mean when you open the front door you don't have to step around the syringes and pools of blood) and nice things to eat, how much do we actually need?
No-one needs two cars per family, and no-one needs a spare bedroom, nice as these things may be.
Holidays abroad can be just as shit as camping in the UK - in fact in my experience much shitter.
If no-one had a haircut or a new pair of shoes, these things would cease to matter.
And of course if you have two toilets, you have to clean two toilets.
Who in their right mind wants to clean two toilets?

Now sometimes I go all materialistic and I want nice bath products and nice clothes and posh wheat beer and stuff. I'm not like Ghandi or anything. But it is a really nice feeling to know that if anyone broke into your house, they would take one look and decide not to bother. And if there were a fire, the only things I'd bother to save would be Pooky and Puggle. (I can't lift my Beloved - he weighs 11 stone or something, but I'm sure he'd get out)

The more you have, the more you worry; the more you're tied down to the earth.

But.........
It'd be nice, when the council threatens to shut down a project to increase literacy in children in care for the sake of £5K, to throw the £5K at them and say "Here, you mean fuckers, take the pissing money and shut up".
It'd be nice to take out a hit on George W. Bush.
I would really really like to build an arts centre and give all my friends a job.

I reckon about £15000000 would do.

I do not want another baby.

Repeat two dozen times daily until convinced.

Ok, so Pooky and Puggle are the cutest things in the universe. They skip about holding hands and declaring "We love each other and we love Daddy and we love you, Mummy, you are beautiful." (Well Pook does. Puggle just nods and blows kisses) but I wouldn't want to push my luck really. The third would probably be some kind of Sunny-D crazed psychopath. And besides, if I had to go to mother and toddler group any longer I think I'd go on a machine gun rampage.

Anyway, yesterday Pooky was reading a book with kids in it who slept in bunk beds. He decided that he wanted to sleep in a bunk bed with Puggle.

"Mummy we want to sleep in a bunk bed. Can we have a bunk bed and I sleep on the top and Puggle sleep on the bottom, please Mummy. Why we not have a bunk bed? We want a bunk bed. " This went on for about twenty minutes.

Puggle backed him up by pointing at the book and crying "Bed! Bed!"

I explained to them that they each had a bed of their own and it wasn't really necessary. I said that kids only had to sleep in bunk beds if they had another brother or sister.

At which point they turned up their little angelic faces, focused their huge dark rockpools of eyes on mine, fluttered their eyelashes and pouted.

NO, NO and THRICE NO. Sorry guys, but the answer is a big NO SODDING WAY.



But they are really, really cute.........

I should have been in advertising

I thought I'd never get away with it. I thought that the average bunch of corporate bastards would surely see through any thinly-veiled sabotage that I wove into their marketing 'literature'. Which I would have done. But it seems that I have missed my calling in life. When in Maidstone recently on our annual visit to my In-Laws, we drove past one of those plague-raddled chain motorway 'service' places. It contained some indistinguishable bunker of a motel, a bar called 'Salingers' (as in JD Salinger? Author of one of the world's most famous novels about an isolated loner? You 'avin a larf?) And this is the best of all. It contained the most stunningly fabulous example of ad-agency sabotage I have ever seen. It contained CAFE COPRA. Yes, copra. As in coprophilia, as in an attraction to shit. See? I knew there was a job out there for me.

I wonder what their coffee tastes like...................

Come into my story tent

I have found out what my new job is. Yesterday I went into the library as usual and found that they'd finished building The Inside Story, a fabulously bizarre 'installation' based on three epic tales - the Haggadah, the Ramayana and the Shahmane. But what the blazes is it? It's a big tent, full of amusing things like a TV in a tree which spouts random facts about Hanuman the monkey God. And a seder plate that talks to you. And a big book full of clip clopping and growling beasties. I went in there yesterday and listened to a Yiddish storyteller who told me what happened before I was born, something about plagues of flatulence and a story about a frog princess. It was fantastic.
Now I have to book some writers groups in for workshops and such.
So, who's up for it eh? Writing in a big scary tent full of cool stuff. Any takers?

Now We Are Scary

I found out today that the same man voiced both Pooh bear and Kaa the python in The Jungle Book. Now why doesn't that surprise me?

Born to it: A theatrical update.

Puggle was a star. She sat and watched the whole 1 1/2 hour show. As did Pooky, although he did insist on wearing his Superman costume (Superman? More like Retro-Boy.) She did regurgitate 25 dolly mixtures down her top at one point, but it was dark, and not very many people noticed.

I was wrong about Pooh.

For years, nay decades, I have hated, hated, HATED Winnie the Pooh with a vengeance. Winnie the SHIT I used to call the waddling, obese little underachiever.

I blame Disney. The Disney Pooh bear is so far from Milne and Shephard's as to be a different species. Disney's Pooh is a vile, sunset-yellow freak with large, greedy eyes, a smooth, furless body and a prudish little red jumper. Oh and the voice they've given him makes him sound like a kiddy fiddler with a faulty tracheotomy.

He has been marketed to DEATH. You can now clothe your sprogs in WTP clothes, buy them talking WTP toys, (yup, with THAT voice) decorate their rooms with him, make them watch his 4000 spin-off movies, feed them vile biscuits called 'Pooh's rumbly tumblies' (I am not kidding) and even scrape the resulting excreta from their tiny little arses with WTP disposable nappies.

But now I am making a public confession. After all these years of Pooh hating, (coprophobia?) I have actually got around to reading the books. I have read Winnie the Pooh to Puggle and we are now halfway through The House At Pooh Corner. They are really, really good. The characters are well observed, the writing often sharp and witty, and the illustrations, in their proper context, are superb. This has come as quite a shock to me. I have even flicked through the poems in the back and they are funny and sweet. Puggle agrees.

One by one, the things I railed against are shuffling up to me with fluffy paws outstretched to offer a truce. Soon I shall have to rename this blog Friendly Little Terrapin or something.

Sorry Pooh.

Am I Insane?

Aw c'mon, no cracks about working for the council, please!

No, I ask this question specifically because this afternoon I am taking four year old Pooky and one -and-a-half year old Puggle to the theatre. Many fellow parents have questioned my relationship with sanity. And in fact it was a cock-up as I am so bad at maths, I thought I'd booked for Saturday, not Friday, when my beloved would be on hand to entertain the Pug.
But do I care?
NO.

How are kids going to learn how to go to the theatre if we never take them? To eat in a restaurant? To go camping?
I am of the opinion that parents give in too easily. So what if miserable passers by and fag-scented bus drivers tut and make stupid comments (on a bus once, I heard "They never used to allow buggies on the bus, using up all the space" Wow, I sure wish I lived back in the day when mothers were shot on sight if they ventured out of the house before their kids turned five)

I don't want to wait till they're ten before I can go and see a play again. I want to share that magic with my kids, the way it was shared with me. When I was eleven, my dad took me to see Hamlet and somehow life was never the same again. One of my earliest memories is of being at infant school and seeing a theatre company perform the story of the Firebird.

So this afternoon Puggle will see her first play. It will be Little Red Riding Hood. I hope it will change her life. I hope she, and Pooky, have a fabulous time.

And I hope the dolly mixtures I plan to bribe her with don't run out before the end.

Sweepstakes of the Day

Inspired by the fact that Puggle (bless 'er) didn't hurl at nursery yesterday, thus allowing us both to enjoy a fun-filled afternoon at our respective lunatic asylums (or 'work').

1. How long will it take me to bring Pug's buggy back in the house?
I wheeled it through a small piece of dog poo earlier. I was trying to avoid a large piece of dog poo at the time. Now my pet ocd has kicked in and despite my cleaning the wheels, it is still outside.

2. How many people will show up to Page to Stage tonight?
Every fortnight I run a scriptwriters' workshop. Every fortnight two people show up. They are never the same two people. WEIRD.

Betting slips to be addressed to God and posted in a shoebox painted red that you made in the prison workshop.

Of Redeployment and Retching

Monday morning bounds in on plastic loafers from the Shoe Warehouse and makes me wonder what the heck happened to the weekend. In fact what happened to weekends in general since that heady night in the Olde Starre Inne when we decided around closing time that it would be a really great idea to have babies.

Beep Beep.
On Saturday we ferried Pooky around to various luvvie engagements, and on Sunday we gained an extra child, Pooky's future wife Lucy, and ran around the National Railway Museum after them. Puggle spent the entire two and a half hours shouting 'beep beep' every time she saw a train. Which was often. I love going places with three kids under five, just for the amusing array of pitying looks we get. Cheap thrills, huh?

Blaaaaaaaaaaarghh
Puggle threw up three times yesterday. Touch wood she is ok today because I am callously planning to stick her in the nursery and cross my fingers. I have an intriguing meeting today at work. After having my job axed by Pork Council, I have been offered a temporary job looking after a travelling exhibition. In this meeting I am hoping they will tell me what I have to do before the job starts next week. The meeting is at 4pm. Place your bets now on Pug throwing up at precisely 3.45.

The First Post.

Good Morrow, good readers, and welcome to Angry Little Bat, my blog. Actually it was going to be called Cuddly Pussycat but that username was already taken.

I hate cats, which leads me conveniently onto my first Petty Suburban Conspiracy Theory of the Day.

Petty Suburban Conspiracy Theory of the Day:

Next door's cats are trampling on my crocuses.

Today is Saturn's, and I have no plans. I was going to go to Leeds and meet the director of the play I'm writing, but she mailed me to say that the 3rd draft was actually rather good and we should just speak on the phone.
My plans for escape have been foiled. I am just too damn good for my own um, good.

Kids

Today Pooky is off being a sickly stage school brat at his drama class (Oh but he's so CUTE he makes me cry) and Puggle is drawing with a biro on my diary, on my third draft and on her own feet. She too is cute but I have a sneaking suspicion that she will grow up to be a tattooed lady in a circus.

Gizza Job

As a tattooed lady, Puggle may have more job security than most of us. My Love has just been roundly spanked by his boss for writing a blog in company time rather than doing something normal like downloading porn. I have just been laid off by Pork City Council for being expensive. If anyone would like to employ us in some nice artsy fartsy job that doesn't involve fish gutting, anal penetration or being yelled at by drunks, please do get in touch.