Viscosity and Voodoo Vomming

This post is from a week ago!  Sorry, just didn’t manage to post it before the Paris jaunt.  Up-to-date Christmas one coming in like an hour, despair not!

Normal physical life has resumed.  I have restarted yoga, have been to pilates with Claire and Mad Lucy, have slipped about on mud and ice in the woods with the dogs and climbed trees with Bashi.   Huggi too has miraculously recovered from a serious operation on his bum (£1500 don’t tell Gwanny) but as soon as he was off his lead again he just couldn’t stop himself going after a rabbit and dislocated his toe.  I ask you!  Don’t ever get a lurcher.  They’re just too…..flimsy.

I am on the BS Musical Theatre Company committee and the Bollywood Nights Hockerill fundraiser committee which saw me in a sari handing out leaflets at the Christmas market (16th March if you would like to come!  Never pass up on an opportunity to plug your event.)    You should have seen me, Fred and the internet trying to get the sari on.  Er…slight mind-fuck.  They’re about fifty metres long.  Phoned Arulesh in a panic.  She pleated, ruffled, folded and swirled it in no time.  Oh, all right, I’ll show you me in my sari!

I have been looking after Bash who missed the whole last week of school with flu.  We are trying to get her better in time for a quick jaunt with Bashi’s fwend and Tabby to Paris on the Eurostar.  We have been drinking Echinacea and popping Radiance berry vitamin pills along with kiwis and an incredibly viscous Chinese cough medicine.   Fred has had flu too.  I asked him if he had had some Chinese cough medicine.  He said ‘I got bored waiting for it to come out of the bottle, so no.’  We should show it to Grampa.  He absolutely loves viscous things.  His only invention ever has been a syrup machine, where a spinning rolling pin picks up a layer of syrup and mysterious (to us lay-people) rings appear on it as the rolling pin spins faster.

If you change the speed of the spinning, the rings move in and out.   Unfortunately the syrup machine proved to be spectacularly useless.  But as children we all loved watching the rings moving in and out.  And Grampa made sure we never dropped golden syrup off our spoons:  you must learn to assess viscosity to see how fast to turn the spoon to avoid drips.  If you are interested, you can read more about the syrup machine here.  Ooh, my nephew Joey has just thought of a use for it:  he says it could be like a chocolate fountain, but instead of dipping your marshmallow into melted chocolate you would dip it into the spinning syrup!  Best try this slowly, or the syrup will drag your marshmallow away methinks.

We are planning on walking up to the Sacre Coeur and taking the Batobus from Notre Dame to the Eiffel Tower.  We are also going to Maisons Laffitte to visit Catherine who helped us with Siffo and Princey when they lived in her stables.  We will go to the Creperie ‘La Bonne Humeur’  in the market square, which is our favourite place ever (due to the bols de cidre and the popcorn, the crepes oeuf fromage, and the crepes grand-marnier).

Alfie’s fwends  Sammy Wammy and Roberto are staying.  Sammy Wammy got very excited on his way downstairs this morning because he heard clucky clucky noises and seriously thought we had some new chickens.  I have been teaching the parrots to make clucky clucky noises for some time so, RESULT.  They can do chickens, cuckoos, sparrows, owls and of course, their whistled scales and arpeggios.  They have recently learnt the first line of my flute pupil Katie’s piece as well.

Fred has had Torro out on the kitchen table to train him to count by picking up the egg-cup with one, two or three peanuts underneath.  Come on Torro, we need two peanuts now.

Mad Lucy came round for vodka last night.  I told her about the surprise 2010  tax bill that came through the door.  She said, ‘Well, you have to have something round here that you could sell.’  We looked around.  ’Um, actually, no,’ we agreed, ‘there’s litrally like nothing worth anything in this house.’

‘Ooh…except the parrots,’ I remembered.  ’Even with no words they’re worth seven hundred quid and every time they learn a new word, they go up by fifty quid.’

‘Did you hear that?’  Mad Lucy asked them, then let out a greedy chuckle.  ’Ha ha, losers:  we’re going to SELL YOU for lots of dosh!’

Torro fixed her with his beady eye and muttered a curse that only he knows based on the Radio 4 hourly beeps.  Poor Mad Lucy litrally one minute later succumbed to the dreaded lurgy that’s going round, threw up twice and had to lurch home.  Good work, crazy voodoo bird!   Claire  however takes the vomming prize, as on the night of the barrel of beer party she went out for a posh meal in London, overindulged slightly and threw up at Tottenham Hale!   The most expensive vom she’s ever had, she claims.  Why all the throwing up, you may well ask.  I haven’t a clue.  It’s the end of the year, I guess, and we have to do these things.  At the end of next week the Rusty Old Springs are going out for their Christmas drinks, can’t wait, so more vomming might be on the agenda.  Will we have learnt our lesson?….Hmm, I suspect not.  If you haven’t learnt it by 46 when the hell are you going to learn it?

We are going out tonight, to a party.  Unfortunately it’s the same night that Alfie has decided to have a what he calls ‘Gathering.’  He is out in the garden preparing by chopping wood for the fire with Sammy Wammy and Roberto.  (Only because Fred said he had to. He’ll probably chop his thumb off.)   Alfie knows to avoid the word ‘Party’ in case we freak out.  Not that we are very paranoid people but last time someone did set off the fire extinguisher and every vom bucket got vommed in.  But, chuckle chuckle you will love this:  Fred has been busy planting a secret web-cam at the top of the big room, so when we are out we can watch what is going on back home on Fred’s phone, and probably thus entertain the people at the party we are going to.   Ooh that would make quite a good start to a novel, wouldn’t it?  The parents at a party getting more and more wasted as they watch the kids back home getting out of their faces and wrecking the house.

Must admit, did not manage a whole 50,000 words for Nanowrimo.  Never mind.  I did get 12,000 words of the sperm book and 10,000 words of sketches for Youtube done.  And since the first December have been writing the skeleton of  TITS: the Musical.  My friend Caroline who is an actor says you don’t need more than five people in the cast.  I know what she means but ooh, tricky, with such a vast cast of characters, including fifty women with their tits out and a team of crusties running the factory not to mention the con-man, the homeopath, the baddie and his lab team, his lollipop-lady girlfriend, the ill man in the hospital who helps to gather the ill-milk and the dying niece.  Is it really possible to quadruple up parts without the audience getting confused?  I can almost envisage doing it with a cast of ten.  And musicians on top of that.

I could not do the blog for ages.  Sorry.  Must be because blogging is a response to pain and anguish but I’ve truly shifted back into normal life.  Should maybe draw a line under it.  Thing is, ‘The Breast Blog in the World‘ is just such a good title, I don’t want to give it up.  I could move on to a new chapter of plain (or not so plain, we will see, won’t we?) ‘life as it is’ posts, and call it ‘A Breast of the Times,’ like the tits book.  Will ask Fred how to do it for the New Year.

Have not forgotten to say ‘Happy Christmas’ to you all and thanks for reading all this maniacal rubbish over the last ten months.  Had really lots of fun and therapy writing it all.  But will say it properly in the next blog which will be posted in an hour or so.  Lots of Love.  Didn’t send any cards this year, so All the Best for 2013.