the schlong good friday

It was lovely to see so many people from far and wide at the stables open day. Soon after we arrived I saw a couple of Londoners who were exchanging the traditional southern greeting: ‘What are you looking at?!’ said the first. ‘Are you talking to me you slag?!' replied the other. It’s so good to be reminded of home, I thought, as they beat each other to a pulp behind the manure pile. The warm memories that welled up inside me made me quite forget the cold north wind that whistled around my breeches. My daughter Tilly interupted my homesick reverie however. ‘Crikey, that’s enormous!’ she exclaimed, running over to a big horse in the corner of the yard, and she wasn’t pointing at his tail. ‘Like Fabio’, giggled Milly. ‘What kind of horse horse is he?’ Tilly asked the stable lass. ‘he’s a stud, my dear’, said the girl helpfully. My daughters giggled. ‘Like Fabio!’ ‘Does he run in races?’ asked Milly. ‘No’ said the girl, ‘his job is to be special friends with the ladies when they get a bit frisky’. My daughters looked at each other in feigned solemnity. ‘Not like Fabio then…’ they both said together, and started giggling again. I sighed.

‘Where is your father and his secretary anyway?’ I asked the children. ‘Fabio is over at that stall and Daddy has gone to look for some lunch’, said Milly. Suddenly I saw a familiar figure in the distance, Rupert? Could it really be him, taming that new young filly, breaking her spirit and making her bend to his will? No, It couldn’t be and he didn’t seem to notice me. I wandered over to see what Fabio was buying at the riding gear stall. ‘Have you got this in his size?’ he said, holding something up and pointing to my husband. The lady behind the stall looked slightly annoyed. ‘We don’t have that in men’s sizes dear’, she explained. ‘Ha!’ said Fabio, so you won’t sell this to me, Well!’, exclaimed Fabio with huff, ‘you are only refusing to sell me this because he is a not a woman!’ ‘No dear’, replied the lady, ‘because he is not a horse dear’. I was just going to ask Fabio if he should perhaps try Soho or the internet but then my husband appeared. ‘OK chaps, lunch is here!’ he cried. ‘You’d never have thought that new macrobiotic organic place in Islington would have opened a northern franchise, but look at this; carrots and straw; cutting edge cuisine guys! Rilly must really be having an influence around here!’

Finally, after a long day, I was at last lying in bed sharing that longed for peaceful moment with my much missed husband. ‘You couldn’t get me a glass of water could you dear?’ I asked him softly. ‘Oh’, he moaned, ‘it’s cold, Fabio, get Rilly a glass of water’. Fabio groaned. ‘You won’t even get your wife a glass of water? What a terrible husband you are sometimes!’ he said. ‘Shhhhush!’ I told them both, 'you’ll wake the baby’. ‘Mummy’, said Milly, ‘can Fabio fetch a hot water bottle if he’s going downstairs?’ ‘And for me too!’ said Tilly, ‘Milly’s feet are like ice! Why do we all have to sleep in the same bed anyway mummy?’ ‘Because it will sell more copies of my book in America dear’, I explained, exasperated at my daughters evident naivety in the US rural downshifting memoir market. Just then the baby began to cry, some doubtless unspeakable polish phrases began to emmanate from the au pair, and the peaceful bank holiday I’d hoped for seemed to disappear in a crash before my eyes. I just grabbed my Catherine Cooksons (and no, actually that isn’t cockney slang) and fled downstairs to my laptop, and my book, and…but what was this, a message on my voicemail. ‘Air Hellair Rilly, Rupert here, don’t think I didn’t see you earlier, what! I just thought…’ I put the phone down, No, I couldn’t. ‘Mummy the baby’s been sick!’ cried Tilly down the stairs. I looked at the clock; 2 AM, I shouted back up the stairs: ‘Milly, Tilly, get dressed darlings, riding lessons this morning!’

cleaning up

My agent rang me last week. I hadn’t heard from him for ages. He told me he’s been too busy promoting my daughter's book about growing up neglected by a mother writing a book about how much she cares about her children . ‘I’m worried Rilly’, he told me. ‘People think you’re too posh. You need to do something common’. I wish I hadn't asked him what he had in mind. ‘Why don’t you write about cleaning toilets? The readers will love it, think you’re one of them’. I’m not sure my agent even reads my blog sometimes. ‘I support the Labour Party’, I told him, ‘what do you think I am, bloody working class or something? Do you think Harriet Harman cleans toilets?’ I put to him. ‘Look Rilly, Wife in The North did it when her agent told her to. Why do I just get the stroppy clients, huh?’ I asked him if I couldn't just make something up. He said readers would be able to tell it wasn’t true because they were so used to my gritty social realism. ‘But this house has got four toilets!’ I said. My agent had bigger plans. ‘The village hall!?’ I cried, but then remembered the village hall only had two, so I quit while I was ahead.

‘Have you been caught speeding again Rilly love?’ asked the lady who has the village hall keys. ‘I haven't been sent by a judge this time, I just want to help the community’. I said. ‘Are you unwell pet?’ she asked. ‘Just let me in at four, and can you lend me some of those rubber gloves that poor people wear please’, I told her. Well, I got to the village hall and just had to keep remembering that my agent had assured me of royalties on five thousand extra sales if there was a good toilet cleaning story in the book as I went into the gents. Oh God. Nobody has suffered for literature this much since Seigfried Sassoon’s agent sent him to the Somme. Phone for sex said the graffiti. Oh well, I thought, I suppose this is all for research. I took out my phone and dialled. ‘Hello’ said the voice. ‘Fabio?’ I replied. ‘Mrs Super?!’ said Fabio. ‘Is, erm, my husband there?’ There was a pause. ‘He is tied up at the moment’, came the reply. My husband works so hard when he’s down in London, the poor darling, sigh. I hung up, finished buffing up the durex machine and then my mop and I headed for more familiar and friendly territory in the ladies.

Elizabeth's relationship with Darcy indicates Austen's rejection of the patriarchy of the Regency period someone had written on the wall. I disagree, rather although romantic love and long term commitment are quite distinct Darcy leads us to believe that the one leads to the other thus leaving women trapped in relationships that can never be fulfilled someone else had scrawled below. I sighed. If only men know what women talked about in the ladies. As I began dusting off the chicklit vending machine I paused. I reached in my pocket and found a pound coin. Pushing it into the slot I pushed a random button on the machine and a book fell into the tray at the bottom. ‘Hmmm’, I thought, bending over my bucket to pick it up, Pride and Prejudice. I sighed, as I leaned on my mop, but with a ribbed chocolate flavoured cover. Now why didn’t I think of that? I peeked out of the door to see if there was anyone around, leaned my mop against the wall, slipped the lock on the cubicle, put the seat down on the loo, and settled down to my book. My agent (men, huh) would have to wait, sigh.

grief encounter

‘Well,’ said my husband as we emerged blinking from the dark cinema into the late afternoon sunshine. ‘It was lovely to get away from work for a couple of hours’. It had been a lovely surprise when my husband had unexpectedly announced an illicit weekday afternoon trip to the pictures, although sadly his secretary Fabio joining us did have the effect that we couldn’t entirely leave my beloved’s trade at the cinema door. It had been a nice way to spend a couple of hours, an old movie, some popcorn, my husband and his secretary sitting just a few rows in front of me. ‘Interesting choice of film’, My husband said to Fabio, ‘The CGI steam trains were terribly unrealistic but I liked the bit where they sneak off to the pictures to watch an overblown romantic flick when they’re in one themselves that we’ve all sneaked off to see’. Fabio smiled. ‘The director’s cut is better’, he told my husband, ‘Trevor Howard leaves the station tea rooms at the end and gets on a space ship instead of the train back to his wife’. ‘Oh, Men!’ I sighed.

Sometimes I've felt as if I were just a made up character as well, living my life in black and white. Although of course, that being the case, the ending must have already been written when in reality most of the time it seemed more as if someone was merely making all this up as they went along. I just hoped I was a character in some great literary work and not in some stupid blog that only seems to get updated once a week lately. ‘I think those were real steam trains darling’, I said, as the famous dramatic climax of Celia Johnson’s hair falling slightly over her eyes resonated in my imagination. ‘It was made in 1945 you know’, I explained. ‘Oh crikey’, said my husband, ‘and it’s still not out on DVD yet dear?’ he laughed. ‘Probably’ I said ‘Not quite the same though.’ I sighed. My husband shrugged. ‘Of course it’s allegorical you know', I said, ‘all this stuff about them not being free to be together because of the social conventions of the time.’ My husband looked puzzled. ‘ Noël Coward being gay and everything’, I elaborated. ‘Noël Coward was gay?’ he queried. ‘Are you quite sure dear?’ It was almost as if he was teasing me but I knew he would never do that. ‘I’m a woman dear’ I began. ‘We girls can tell gay man a mile off you know’, I said. My husband and Fabio exchanged glances so I could see they were keen to get back to work now.

As we walked across the multiplex car park a gust of wind blew up the dust from the ground. ‘Oh, darling!’ I cried. My husband turned round. ‘I think I have some grit in my eye!’ I said, winking vociferously. ‘Oh dear.’ he began, then hesitated ‘Oh, I get it’, he smiled knowingly, ‘Ok, you win dear, I’ll drive’, and he continued on towards the car with Fabio. After a moment I shrugged my shoulders and as I watched to two men walk away across the tarmac, I thought I really should have been writing SITN that afternoon but my agent had been very quiet lately and nobody reads blogs in august anyway. Anyway, I'd detected that some people had found me too critical of the North on occasion, which was unfair because it is grim up north, and what I really needed was for my friend to come up from London and then she could moan about northerners and I could report what she said and I wouldn’t get the blame. Suddenly, my phone rang. It couldn’t be! ‘Air, hellair!’ said the voice, ‘Rilly, is that you darling? Its your old chum from London who really hates it up north speaking’, the voice continued. ‘Coming up to visit you dear, put the kettle on and see you in a few days, what!’. My husband turned around and look back towards me. ‘We’re going to the pub!’ he shouted, so I took off my shoes and sped after after them. As I got into the car I sighed. My friend was on the motorway on her way, my husband was here with me in the car, and yet strangely I couldn't escape the feeling, and I couldn't escape the song in my head, that I was all by myself...

the belles, the belles

It was by a curious coincidence that following the wistful remembrances of youth described by M&M, who has the misfortune to live even further north than me, the poor girl, my own childhood memories were pricked by the news of a new St Trinians film. I did feel a pang of regret that I was not asked to act as educational consultant on the production but if my agent tells me that wife in the north got the job because she was The Times education correspondent then that would be but another arrow in my broken heart, sigh. I did just want to dispell the rumour right now that the downshifting blogger's friend, Tom Watson is to star in the new movie as Billy Bunter. Thomas is a lovely young man and I won't have that kind of thing put about, thank you very much. I rang my husband to see if perhaps a rare trip to the cinema could be on the agenda but he was in a meeting so I told his assistant Fabio, who answered the phone, to pass on the message to my husband but to remind my beloved that I hoped he didn’t expect me to sit and watch him drool over a bondgirl for two hours. Fabio, however, the darling that he is, reassured me that it was Rupert Everett as the headmistress that was the performance to which he and my husband were really looking forward. Fabio is so very thoughtful and immediately upon sensing my unease reassured me that he was absolutely certain that my husband would come up and watch the film with me when it eventually arrived in The North because it would have been so many months by then since he had watched the premiere in London, for which he and Fabio had VIP tickets. Fabio then advised me that I should hang up. He and my husband were on business in Cannes, he explained, and stressed business, and they had both forgotten to bring the adaptors for their phone chargers. I put the phone down, took off my straw boater and school tie and sighed. I would find something else to re-engage my husband's amorous interest. I looked at my watch. I was late for my german class.