Friday, March 30, 2007

no sign of the times

I was feeling rather down already when there was a knock at the door. When I opened it I found standing outside a woman brandishing a shorthand notebook and a scruffy man in a raincoat clutching a camera. ‘Oh, hello darling’, said the woman, ‘fetch the lady of the house for me, there’s a dear’ I think she detected my puzzlement. ‘Is she in then, you know, wife in the north , tell her the Sunday Times is here will you’. ‘Are you doing a feature on her?’ I asked. The woman leaned forward. ‘between you, me and the reclaimed antique gatepost’ she said, ‘I’m the new education correspondent and I’m just here to see if she knows about some stationery that we can't find and ask her where she left the keys to the cabinet with all the biros in it'. ‘She doesn’t live here’ I explained. ‘You need to go a bit further north’. The woman looked at me uncomprehendingly. ‘Bloody hell!’ she said ‘You mean there’s somewhere that’s even more north than this?!’ She thanked me for my assistance and walked back to her van muttering to the man in the dirty raincoat. I thought about how the Times education section had obviously gone downhill since wifey had left just as the Saint bartholomews orphanage and abandoned puppy rescue sanctuary newsletter had similarly declined since I stopped writing it. It made me think back wistfully to my last day there before I moved to the north, the orphans waving the last newsletter that I wrote at me and asking ‘please miss, more’ and the puppies looking forlornly at me through the bars with their big sad puppy eyes. I haven’t talked about my work with orphans and puppies before lest people should think I was just trying to exploit their emotions but it left a big mark on me. I had even resolved to give the profits from my book to help those less fortunate than myself, until I moved to the north and then there wasn’t anyone less fortunate than myself so I’ll probably just spend it on a cruise instead. The big sky satellite dish on the Sunday times van disappeared behind the trees as it headed up the A1. One day they would come back and it would be to write a big feature about me instead of just to find out what happened to the office stapler, and I sighed for the life that lay ahead and the one that I had left behind.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

How very poignant, Rilly.

(This woman from the ST - was she quite a large person? I expect she must have been if she was brandishing a shorthand notebook AND a scruffy man [in a raincoat clutching a camera]).

Let's hope they find the biros soon.

P.S. I HATE this word verification thingy - I know I type it in correctly but still it makes me do it again and (usually) again. Grrr!

Anonymous said...

Pure. Dead. Burrilliant.

As Coldplay might have said..

'You put a smile upon my face..'

Bless you my child..

Anonymous said...

sarnia - good point, but if it is tricky for you, it is impossible for those naughty botnet/virus/viagra thingies as well.

Anonymous said...

Rilly, do yourself a favour, and do not, under any circumstances, fall into the trap of responding to those who are being horrid to you. This is the attention they are craving. It is like an itch - if you scratch it, it will itch some more, and so on..

Tricky, but ignoring them will not be a guarantee of a quiet life, but not ignoring them will be a guarantee that they will be back..

And don't whatever you do make self deprecating remarks about how you are an amateur, part-time etc.

Lots of love -you bring sunshine into our lives, poppet- keep it up.

Anonymous said...

Why oh why do I keep thinking you and WITN are the same person?

Anonymous said...

Tilly in the news...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/6503425.stm

rilly super said...

oh sarnia, it's just one disappointment after another lately. I see what you mean about the lovely sunday times lady, it just shows what a vigourous training programme they go through! The word verification is a pain, I know, sorry...

anonymous, thankyou for your blessing as so many people think I have sinned

anonymous, if some viagra adverts appeared on here perhaps my husband might read them which would be good, but then I would have to tell him about this blog, not so good...

anonymous, thankyou ever so much for saying that my account of my life in the north is a little ray of sunshine, although I have been in the north so long now I had to look at an old photo to remind me what a ray of sunshine looked like, sigh..

anonymous, it's true we have such similar lives, she in the spotlight and I in the shadows, but I can only gaze in awe as she passes and hope to touch her cloak in the hope that some of her loveliness will rub off on me..

last anonymous, what a terribly sad story about Tilly the tortoise left on holiday. Actually, strangely enough we left our own Tilly on holiday once but it wasn't six months before we returned to look for her as in that story, just a couple of weeks at the most..

thanks ever so for visiting and hope you had a jolly nice weekend

Anonymous said...

Rilly, the BBC above link is broken - please tell me you've hit the media headlines too?

Does this mean you might be getting a Nanny soon?

Anonymous said...

just add .stm to the end daisy

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/6503425.stm

Anonymous said...

No need to apologise for the word verification thing - I have it too and it takes at least two attempts for me to get through it on my own blog.

Anonymous said...

rilly, just a top tip for the day - make sure you check that there is enough fuel in your car for the day.

And put your phone on the charger.
We wouldn't want you to get stuck in the middle of nowhere with the wolves and bears chasing after you...

Daisy Turnip said...

OK, so no nanny then!

rilly super said...

thanks for the advice anonymous. My husband can be hopeless with these things sometimes, but I still love him, sigh

oh daisy, thanks ever so for visiting but I hope Natalia doesn't hear you say that!