The Out Laws !

"Don't look at his feet, he's wearing his paper shop shoes!" 

Yes, my Mother in Law (MiL)  and Father In Law (FiL) have arrived.

Every Thursday afternoon for quite a few years now, more or less without fail, my In Laws have come to visit.

As you may recall I cannot drive and we live just over a mile from the Primary school the kids used to go to. When they were both there and I was working mornings only in the school office, I was there, and back, and there , and back, and if one or other had after school activities I was there, and back again. I once walked the best part of 10 miles in a day...although I have to say having a buggy to push is a great aid to walking long distances, speeds you up. 

So once a week, having their grandparents pick them up was a blessing. 

They even used to have them for weekend sleepovers while R and I went out for a meal & a film, or up West,or even on a city break. I can remember the very first time we left Teen -then about three- for just one night. Oh, the exhilaration !

I am eternally grateful to the In Laws. They looked after the kids so I could go back to work part time without paying for child care. Yes,Nana sent Teen to preschool more than once with her shoes on the wrong feet (Teen that is, not Nana, although sometimes I wonder). Yes, Granddad actively encouraged Boy to 'hit someone if they piss you off'. But it was all done with love.

The kids are older now. Teen is practically an adult, and Boy will be a Teen in a few weeks. 

But Nana and Granddad are pretty much still the same.

And every Thursday they come around.

Most of the time Teen isn't even here to see them. She has a life now. Boy accepts their lift from school lazily and gratefully and once home, promptly makes himself scarce. As I am working full time I'm not even home so I have to ensure before I leave for work at 8am that the kettle is full,and the mugs and teabags and spoons are ready. 

They can't function unless they have tea.

Funnily enough, the teabags they offer at their home are PoundLand sawdust, but when they're here, they quite like my Finest Assam teabags. 

"We made ourselves cups of tea," says MiL. I can tell they have , there are tea stains all over the worktop. "You over filled the kettle, you know."

I ignore this.

Teen has usually - if she's even there - disappeared after ten minutes to her room leaving me and Boy to it. 

MiL tells very long and ultimately rather dull stories at great length.

"Elsie knocked on the door yesterday," she'll begin, and I know we're in for a long haul ride.

"She's the one who got all the trees planted. You know, the one that lives with Ken." (Big Ken the Cowboy Plumber as I know him). "She  sent Amy that bracelet that time. Anyway, she knocked on the door, and I said <insert anecdote about someone I don't know of> and that was that...so we had some tea. And Elsie said, what about <I leave for kitchen to start the kids' dinner and make interested noises occasionally>..."

Me(from kitchen): "So how did that work out?"

MiL: "Well, Elsie said that Ken said it couldn't be done. So that was that. And then Phyl's son John turned up so we all had some biscuits."

Once, to please Teen (then a pre-teen) she changed their home answer phone message. It should have been based on Queen's We Will Rock You , except singing "We Will Call You Back ." (I think Teen had seen this on Friends ). It recorded as "We Will/We Will/Rock You Back". Trust me a 70+ year old lady singing this down the phone has to be heard.

She's a Spurs supporter, loves a flutter on the horses, and today bought an obelisk for her sweet peas. This caused friction with FiL since he didn't actually know what an obelisk was and anyway , what was wrong with the rusty metal spear and strings he'd already put in place?

In her late Sixties she upped and went on a tour of Australia with her daughter. FiL wouldnt go. She didn't care. Off she went. Helicopter rides, boats to see the coral reef, the lot. Didn't appreciate any of it, if truth be told, but she did it, and at least has fond memories of visiting the Gabba Ground.

I can understand why FiL wouldn't go. He likes routine. They eat the exact same meals on every day of the week. Sunday is of course, roast dinner day (dinner = lunch by the way. Caused me some confusion when I first started going to their house for meals). Monday is Left Overs , bubble & squeak. Tuesday is pie day. Wednesday is lamb chops. Thursday a roast chicken. Friday is , of course, fish and chips. They go to Billingsgate and buy in bulk to freeze and MiL deep fries her it herself. Saturday is steak. And so it goes, like clockwork. They buy massive sacks of potatoes from the local farm shop just for the two of them and they use them all. Pasta and rice don't figure; the only rice FiL acknowledges is Ambrosia Creamed.They tend their own vegetable plot in their tiny back garden and their carrots really, totally taste like carrots ought to; their radishes are hotter than the sun. 

They aren't keen on immigrants. I think this is not because they are actually racists, more something that is typical of their age group (70s), and because they have seen their local area change dramatically in recent years (high Asian population). That said they live in a street which does a very good street party (although no word on a Diamond Jubilee one which is a shame, I'd trade our Sunday lunch there Jubilee weekend for going to one). All ethnicities come together and FiL's Daily Mail streak vanishes.

They even attended the gathering that Julio and Georgio from around the corner (from the pink and lime green painted house) held to celebrate the marriage of their cats, Prince Lupin and Princess Petunia Sophia. There was a laminated order of service and everything. 

Sometimes FiL is Alf Garnett and I play Una Stubbs. He's far right, I am somewhat left. We do not always see eye-to-eye. He's dogmatic, and stubborn. He always think he's right. R and I do not always agree. It's caused a few ructions. But he's mellowing now I reckon, particularly since stomach surgery he had in February, after never, ever , being ill.

They drive me mad sometimes. Sundays at their house is mind numbingly boring. 

But they are wonderful warm loving caring people who treat me like their daughter and I can be open, honest and rely on them in a way I no longer can with my own dad in particular.

So much as it frustrates me to come home and find them here, I hope that I find them here for many years to come. 

Summer Breeze .. Makes Me Feel Fine...

This wonderful weather makes me feel like a different person. A happy, confident person, who wants to embrace life (while listening to her 101 Summer Songs CD ). 


It also makes me think about all the fabulous trips I have had abroad, where the weather was glorious and the sky awesomely blue and cloudless and how very lucky I am to have had so many opportunities to travel.


The first time I ever flew I had just graduated and was heading to Italy. As the plane took off I was listening to Whitney Houston's Love Is A Contact Sport. It's a track that means a lot to me to this day  - two decades later.


This weather makes my mind wander to sunnier climes and places I have been. I'm not an adventurous person by any means, but I love the idea of travelling. I say 'the idea' because I am useless at it. I once got a nosebleed just getting to Gatwick Airport (there was a lot of traffic and I thought we were going to miss the plane, OK?). 


When the weather's like this, I sit in the sun, fire up the iPod with her Summer playlist, and think of 'far away places with (sometimes) strange sounding names'.


Just a few memories ... 


The Bay of Naples. Having walked through the Quartieri Spagnoli we finally reached Santa Lucia and its fabulous view across the Bay with Vesuvius looming over us, still living. We ate pizza in its birthplace. In central Naples we ran across Piazza Garibaldi because our lives depended on it. The heat and the noise and the buzz of the place (bonkers!) will stay with me for a very very long time...

...as will the beauty of Sorrento looking out on the Med, high on the Amalfi coast. Drinking Limoncello in a bar watching two toddlers -boy and girl - play out a love story from 'Please play (go out!) with me' to 'It's over' without saying a word was priceless.


...Venice at twilight as the lamps light up and you get a huge sense of history, and feel that nothing has changed there, not in centuries...


...Ibiza Town after dark -I wish I could bottle its beauty and its vibrancy  ...


...the Canary Islands - where I have spent my happiest hours

 ... my first sight of la Sagrada Familia which literally made my jaw drop ...

...held up in a tram jam in HK - the driver leaning out of his window, happily eating a tray of noodles... dinner at the the Revolving '66 with a dessert that included dry ice...


...the cable car to Sentosa Island, Singapore. I apologise to the couple I freaked out by making it sway unnecessarily as I tried to take photos...


and...Paris ...the wedding cake on the hill - the Sacre Coeur - in the shadow of which , having dinner in Artist's Square, where twenty years ago this Summer, I was proposed to and I accepted.


There's so much more to say. I have been very lucky. Sometimes lately though I feel very sad that these adventures might just be all over and far, far behind me. It's likely I will never fulfil my dream of visiting New York City, or see the Golden Gate Bridge, or sun myself in the Maldives. 




But at least in the meantime I have a shedload of happy memories to keep me going.

Another Chance To Read ..

This was first published at Pulp Metal Magazine in September 2010. I was so excited that my first ever submission was accepted, still am. so here it is again. 

So. It’s 1979. The Boomtown Rats don’t care for Mondays, and Joe Jackson can’t believe she’s really going out with him. (She is, Joe, mate, sorry). It’s Summer. I have never been away from my own bed for more than two nights before. And I am faced with a week in a tent on my Uncle’s smallholding on the Isle of Sheppey.

I have an empty sweet jar saved from last year’s day trip to Margate, so I re-fill it with humbugs and sherbet lemons. Probably a)not a good mix and b) not a good idea as we are having quite a hot spell and they are all stuck together before we even leave the house.

On top of this, I have had a week of angst, because ITV have gone on strike and The Streets of San Francisco isn’t on. Now, cop shows with Karl Malden in them aren’t usually my thing, but I have developed a crush on the young bloke in it who replaced Michael Douglas. I particularly like it when someone shoots him. To this day I am not sure what that says about me as a 12 year old.

But anyway: the strike is a consolation, because we will have no TV in the week to come; nothing but a battery powered radio for company in our patch of grass. Although there’s only so much Simon Bates you can take in one morning.

Well. I have packed my (not yet un-PC) beloved golliwog doll (I can’t sleep without my Golly), the aforementioned boiled sweets, there’s five whole pounds (in one pound notes) in my purse, and I’ve got my diary, and my copies of I-Spy Hedgerows and I-Spy The Stars, and a pencil. I’m all set.

Our car – don’t remember which one of the many my Dad got through – is duly loaded up with so much kit that Dad can’t see out of the back window.

To get to Kent from Essex we had of course, to go first through the old Dartford toll tunnel. This was quite the adventure. A tunnel. Thousands of feet below the Thames, under tonnes of thick mud. Scary. And Dad had convinced us that if any of the car windows were open we would all die instantly from carbon monoxide poisoning.

I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen the Isle of Sheppey Seventies style. Or at all, come to that. Lots of sheep on the marshland there in those days. Not a lot else. Don’t suppose much has changed; don’t really know, I haven’t been back since 1982.

Having met Uncle John in the car park of the Leysdown Greene King pub, we now have access to the site, and a tent which Dad and John (my Mum’s lovely brother,who died sadly too soon in a rancid Medway hospital in 2002) spend a worryingly long time trying to put up.

I have no confidence in this whole venture.

But at this point in my life I am still stoic. And to be fair, the evening we spend down at the pub is fun. My cousin Joanne is there, she’s two years younger than me but much more streetwise (she lives in the East End proper).We have to sit in the beer garden and are allowed shandy but Dad says if anyone asks we have to deny it’s ours. We sing Anita Ward’s Ring My Bell. All is well.

John, Aunt Else, and Jo go home, and we walk back to the tent. I have never seen a sky so dark, so devoid of light pollution. I’m a bit scared. Dad, who rarely drinks, has had a few ales and is rambling about how we are probably all just bacteria in a Petri dish anyway. I look up at that galaxy full of stars and nearly wet myself.

Then Dad trips over a tent peg. I can see the sparks from his lit pipe flying into the dark night air even now.

Somehow we get to bed. I have never before been in a sleeping bag. My patient Mum is soft and soothing. So somehow (with Golly’s help, and possibly that half of a half of shandy’s) I fall asleep.

Much as I hated camping, those mornings were wonderful. Fresh and dewy. The sound of the birds. The scent in the clear blue air. Every kid should poke their head through the zip in a tent at some time in their childhood. Fact.

So. Where we are staying is really quite pretty, and wow, there’s a view across to the Estuary! Close by there is a Hi-de-Hi style holiday camp. We know this because we can hear the loud announcements. ‘The Blue Lagoon Is Now Open For All Campers’. Gosh.

As we have no access to the Blue Lagoon we head into Sheerness, the island’s largest town. There’s a lido there, open air swimming pool. I love it, despite the grey weather. My Mum hates it, terrified of water she is, bless her, even in two foot six of it. Mind you, she’s not so tall. I take after her in that way, but at least I can swim. But she gets in anyway, and tries not to to drown.

Before lunch (which Mum will make on a calor gas thingy back at the smallholding) we wander along the seafront. And then I see it.

The wreck.

In the Thames estuary there is to this very day, a shipwreck. It sits there, in open water, its mast above the river. As we walked along the seafront we couldn’t fail to see it. And of course Dad had an answer.

“See that?” says Dad, “That’s full of dynamite. If that ignites it will take this whole island and half of the south east of England with it. And that could happen Any Time. Maybe tonight.”

Thanks, Dad.

So. That night it started to rain. I’m trying to settle to sleep. In comes Dad.

“Don’t touch the sides of the tent,” he says. “It will make them tear and you’ll get wet. Night night.”

I know he loves me, he does , but, he’s not one to sugar a pill is he ? I now think that if I move even a centimetre the tent is going to burst : but worse than that – I know without a doubt that we’re all getting blown up by a WW2 boat.

And that is why I hate camping.

Footnote.

The SS Richard Montgomery sank in August 1944. To this day it sits in an exclusion zone off Sheerness. It is, and I quote, ‘a timebomb’

Normal Service Will Be Resumed As Soon As Possible...

I'm still here, dear reader(s). 


Circumstances both within and without my control have conspired to block in turns, my blogging desire and ability in the last two weeks or so. It's scary how much I rely on technology.


I was already at boiling point at the end of April but ... by May Day Bank Holiday Monday I had an absolute mental meltdown. 


The long weekend would, I had promised myself, be an oasis of calm . Boys out doing petrol head stuff at Brands Hatch. Teen at on/off/on/off (like a bloody light switch) boyfriend's house. Just ME at home. 


Somehow it didnt work out like that. I got myself into a right - as we say in these parts- two and eight. 


Everything seemed hopeless. I felt more alone than I can put into words. When you are deeply darkly unhappy it isn't fun or interesting to even long standing friends and I say that with no blame to anyone; it is boring.Who wants to be around someone who cries all the time and takes no pleasure in anything? I don't like myself when I'm that way , why should anyone else ? 


By the evening the Monday bank holiday I had pretty much lost the plot.
I looked back at Twitter to see what nonsense I had been sending out in cyberspace but really only found this:

what is like to feel normal ? answers on a postcard please, as they used to say. so tired of being in this endless lost world of worry :-(

To those who responded to me with virtual hugs - you know who you are - I am very very grateful. I have an involuntary tendency to push people away. Psycho babble would suggest it's a fear of getting hurt. It's also quite lonely at times. I'm rarely alone, I love being on my own, but when things descend into loneliness it's no fun.


Coupled with the very practical worries of day to day living it was all to put it simply,'a bit much'.  


Then on Tuesday morning I booted up the 4 month old fully virus protected Samsung laptop, went on to Twitter to send a message - and was promptly confronted with the Blue Screen of Death. 


Laptop is due out of techy hospital tomorrow so I'll no longer have to use this steam powered yet trusty Acer and I'll be back in business. 


I also broke the iron but let's not get too upset about that one.


As I type , Katie Piper, the model who had acid thrown in her face, is speaking about surviving, and making me feel very small. What she's saying is humbling. You take what life throws at you and you either crumble or you pick up that (albeit deflated) ball and you run with it.


But the odd meltdown on the way is,for me, inevitable.


'Normal' service will be resumed asap.


Thanks for listening. 

A Musical Interlude...

My iPod and I had an idea for a blog post yesterday as we walked to work together. 

"Sue," said my (still un-named) iPod. "How about putting me on Songs/Shuffle and then blogging about the first five tracks that come up? And here's the thing: you have to be honest about the tracks I randomly select. No skipping over rubbish songs to hide your shame, either. What do you think?"

I thought this might be a fun idea (for me at least.) 

So here they are.

#1 Orange Juice/Rip It Up.

As soon as this track started I was transported back to the Lyceum in London in the early 80s. I was under the impression that it had been demolished but a quick Google proves it is very much still standing and the current venue for The Lion King. 

I was at the Lyceum with my mates for the Capital Radio Junior Best Disco In Town in aid of Help A London Child weekend. It was 29th May 1983, I know this because the words 'Lyceum Disco' are in my Letts Pocket Diary for that year. I had even used fountain pen. I also noted that the number 1 record that week was Candy Girl by New Edition. 

Introduced by Gary Crowley we saw a few 'live' acts (in so far as they actually turned up), none of whom I recall except Wham! who mimed, but we didn't care. They were selling cheap calendars to raise money for the charity so we bought some and during Rip It Up we did exactly that with them. Rock 'n Roll eh ? 

We did a lot of running round the West End in those days, hunting autographs and semi-stalking Gary Kemp. My parents thought it was a waste of study time and it probably was, but the confidence it gave me on the Tube system was priceless. 

Lead singer of Orange Juice Edwyn Collins had a brain hemorrhage (from which he is now recovered) in 2005. He could apparently say only four things at first: Yes, No, his wife's name, and "The possibilities are endless."

Good choices for few words I think. 

#2 Ultravox/Vienna

Funny this should be two in the list because that was its highest chart position in 1981. Fabulous track. Sweeping almost orchestral synthesisers on a grand scale and epic moody monochrome video to match it. Video as an art form was still in relative infancy then, so to see such a lavish piece of mini-film was quite the treat. To this day I have no idea why pencil moustachioed mini Midge Ure was in a trench coat in the Austrian capital, walking in the cold air, but it looked and sounded great.

It was famously, kept from the number one slot (which really meant something  in those days) by novelty record Shaddap Your Face by cod-Italian Joe Dolce.

All together now: Wassa matter you ? ...

#3 Joss Stone/Fell in Love with a Boy

I'll be honest, I didn't even know this track was on my songs list. I tried to listen to Joss thanging and twanging for the whole 5 minutes 43 seconds but I failed. I'm not sorry.

#4 Andrew Gold/Never Let Her Slip Away

I have mixed feelings about this one. It reminds me of a sad time for our family when this track was poignant but that's too private and painful for a whimsical piece like this.

A neat little pop song this, puts me in mind of hearing it on the radio on a Sunday morning, probably on Noel Edmonds' stint in that slot in the late Seventies. Dad would sit smoking his pipe listening to the stereo and reading the Sunday paper while Mum prepared a roasted Sunday lunch. I love the way he sings of school-day afternoons and Romeo and Juliet. Sweet, and yes, poignant.

#5 Patsy Gallant/From New York to LA

Yes,this track aside, I have never heard of her either. A lyrical, fast paced disco track again from the late Seventies, I'm surprised Rachel Berry hasn't sung this on Glee. I used to sit alone in our front room on Sunday evenings listening to the Top 40 hosted by Simon Bates, with my fingers on play/record on the in-built cassette at the ready. I taped this one more than once I think, I often did that. If the track you liked had gone up the chart that week it was worth taping it again because they'd probably play more of it, or talk less over it. 'Home Taping Is Killing Music ' they used to say. Hardly. 

I have included From New York to LA on my iPod's 'NYC' Playlist; one day I'll make it there...<sighs>

<presses pause>

Susie 'acquired musical taste' Sue

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