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BOOBS.
AUDIO QUACK (SKIP INTRO 2:40)
I began the week sitting topless with my arms up like a corkscrew. I had spotted a dent on the left boob, not a huge crater, just a tiny dip above the nipple. After inspecting them from afar and then up close, the doctor ordered me to put my arms down and confirmed that he didn’t think anything was wrong.
He said, “You have the same dip in your right one too, it’s just less noticable as it’s a smaller, and slightly different shape.”
Even in their heyday, my boobs were odd. The left is the sluggish big sister to the right. If the right was an “EEEP!” The left would be an “UMPH.” And perhaps I’m overthinking it, but they seem to stare off in different directions, like the eyes of the Cookie Monster.
I wasn’t one of these girls who would stuff tissue down my top, eagerly waiting for the day for my boobs to come. As a tomboy, I thought it would ruin my vibes. I also had seen my mum’s bras and didn’t like the idea of being clipped into something frilly for the rest of my days. It must have played a lot on my mind because I offloaded my anticipation to the Tooth Fairy.
Translation.
To Little Miss Tooth Fairy,
This is my tooth. It fell out at PE when I was playing Sleeping Lions.
I love you really much.
You can write to me if you want.
I’m getting a bra soon.
Love from Mary.
Thank You.
(As you can tell from the letter I was still a few years aways from a bra).
I had assumed that my boobs would just plop out of my chest at the same time and be shiny, plump and identical, like the women on the covers on the top shelf of WH Smith. I assumed wrong.
They came out steadily as two aching blobs. The blobs grew and grew, and soon my cute childhood nickname, ‘Pairs’ (rhymes with Mares- shortened from Mary), became too awkward for the family to say. Every day got too bouncy and uncomfortable, so it was time for my first real life bra.
There were pictures of girls in the Jack Will’s catalogue wearing these thin cotton bras with Jack Will’s printed on the elastic band. They seemed happy and cool, smiling up at their hairless, plaid-wearing boyfriends. I wanted a plaid-wearing boyfriend…so I needed a thin cotton bra from Jack Will’s.
“Call that a bra?” my mother said, when I showed her the one I wanted, then marched me to Rigby and Peller. (They were the official bra fitters to the Royals from 1960, but the relationship went tits up in 2018, when the director sold a tell-all book, and so the Royal Family ended their contract with them, and gave it to Agent Provocateu instead…..not really.)
I was taken to the back of the shop in Knightsbridge, and told to strip behind a velvet curtain. A petite woman in black came in a moment later and wrapped a measuring tape around me. She declared my number and letter, and then she stuffed my boobs into a frilly-fussy bra, and sent me out into the world in something The Queen would have worn.
How am I supposed to get plaid-wearing boyfriend in this?
At my all-girl school, my classmates were a mixed bag of confidence and dissatisfaction with what puberty had dealt them. One friend had boobs so large she was able to lift one up and kiss the top. When she got mad, she used them as a weapon, pushing us against the wall and shouting, “What’s that pipsqueak?” Some were happy that they could still sprint the 100M without any support. Others hated their boobs so much, that they wrapped them up and hid them beneath oversized jumpers.
It took me awhile to learn how to have boobs. I didn’t like how frumpy they made me look in the Jack Will’s t-shirts. Vests tops, on the other hand, distracted boys from my braces and anything I said. Backless dresses required beige stickers that made me look like an uncooked chicken. Push up bras were overkill. Bronzer made a cleveage look more cleavag-y. If I pushed my boobs up and in with my palms, and pounted in the mirror I could look like a Nuts cover girl. In my early thirties, boob talk became more about attaching breast pumps and less about attaching nipple tassles. And as a couple of my friends discovered, finding a cancerous lump is not impossible…boobs checks are essential.
“Better be safe than sorry,” I said to the doctor, conscious that I had wasted his time.
The doctor waved it off. “I can see why you were worried, but I think it’s a bit of loose skin, that’s all.”
“An ageing boob, then?” I grimaced.
“We prefer to say maturing,” the doctor replied.
I sighed looking down at UMPH and EEP. One minute you are telling the Tooth Fairy about your impeding bra…the next you have mature boobs.
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32 YEARS OF HURT: LIVING WITH FOOTBALL.
AUDIO QUACK (SKIP INTRO 2:29)
Can’t be bothered to read? Let me read for you!
1996, Didcot Leisure Centre, I am five, and the oversized hand-me-down t-shirt is getting in the way as I attempt to dribble a ball. I do not want to be here, but my brothers want to learn how to play football, and well, majority rules. So here I am, tapping a ball with my tiny foot down a line of plastic blue cones that look like UFOs on the floor. UFOS that I wish would fly away.
The coach is side-stepping beside me, telling me to keep control. He’s an old geezer with black-framed glasses, wearing short- shorts and a bomber jacket. He likes the sound of his whistle. I do not.
At the end of the cones, is the goal, and we have one shot to get it in. All I want to do is get rid of the ball, so I can go home and resume Polly’s pool party in Polly Pocket land. The whistle screams. I flick my foot, and the ball bobs off to the left, far away from the white-painted box on the wall. I could have told them that would happen.
A couple of years later, I was in a gazebo at a celebrity cricket match in Bray. A few of us kids had spotted Gary Lineker and had surrounded him with our autograph books. I knew him as the man who spoke about football on the telly, but more importantly, he was the crisp guy.
I stood at the back of the group with my book open on the page and waited my turn. One by one, he asked each kid their name, then scribbled loudly in their books.
“Mary,” I said when it was my turn.
“Oh, James, mate,” he said over my head and walked off, leaving me alone with my blank page. It was another reason for me to hate football.
By the time I was ten, the only thing I appreciated about The Beautiful Game was Baddiel and Skinner’s Three Lions song. It’s catchy as hell. No matter my feelings though, the presence of football throughout my life has been intense. If Mum brought art into my childhood home, Dad brought Tottenham.
“Come on you, Spurs!” He shouted down the hallways in the lead-up to a match, and then like parrots my brothers copied him.
“Come on you, Spurs!”
“Come on you, Spurs!”
“Come on you, Spurs!”
When it was on TV, the noise of a stadium at least fifty miles away would blare around the house like a huge Henry Hoover.
I’ve never liked the sound of a football match. If I had a say, I would mute the crowd and replace it with a gentle guitar soundtrack. The commentators wouldn’t be some shouty Londoners, but rather a poet with a slow, husky voice, as if Leonard Cohen himself was the commentator.
“Yes…Mr Kane is getting close to the sunlit goal…very close…ah….and there it is…the ball hitting the net… like a man returning home to his waiting lover…”
In 2005, I decided I would try and be a football fan. It was when Robbie Keane and Jermain Defoe were strikers, and the away kit was a cobalt blue and yellow. I like cobalt blue, so I got myself a shirt. I stuck a poster of Robbie Keane on my wall and would go with Dad to White Hart Lane on Saturdays to watch the match.
I lasted one season.
I wanted to see real boys, up close, on my Saturday. And so, Robbie Keane was replaced with Zac Efron. And I went back to grunting whenever a match was on.
I appreciate the atmosphere of a stadium, kind of like a Viking battlefield. And I get it… your heart falls out of your butt when you think you’ve lost, but then at 94 minutes 38 seconds there’s a goal. How thrilling. Yet, I’ve never reached the level of entrancement that I have witnessed in football fans.
When I got older, I mistakenly joined hot men in pubs to watch a match. I envisioned nice quality time together, with the football in the background, while we have long chats about our feelings. A minute after kick off though, and it became apparent that it was going to be me the background.
During those ninety minutes, that man is not with you in The Red Lion. Instead, they are floating somewhere between the pub chair and the stadium.
At best, they will flick their eyes at you to see if you’re still alive……. and then they’re gone again. Shouting! Hovering! Clapping! Flapping!…Proving they are indeed capable of showing emotion.
On the plus side, as they are semi-conscious of reality, I have found it’s the perfect time to get them to agree to do things that they would hate to do.
(I find it’s best to do this during extra time when the score is tight).
“Hey, Steven, Steven, Steven…We’re going to dinner with Brad from accounts and his wife. You know, the one with the six-pack and the Ferrari, who likes to slap you on the back and call you champ. Is that ok? Steven? Steven? Steven….?”
“Yeah…yeah…yeah…” Steven says quickly, with his eyes stuck to the screen and his hands squashing his skull.
After living with football for 32 years, I have learnt to endure the lack of attention I receive from September to May.
It’s when I’m led to believe that the season is over, but then start seeing a suspicious number of St George’s flags splattered around that the dread kicks in.
“…But the World Cup was just on ….What?….Euros?….Didn’t we vote out?!”
The only time I like football is when we’re winning by half-time in the semi-finals, and then I tiptoe onto the bandwagon.
Mum’s partner, Rich, said I’m not allowed to jump on the bandwagon, that the only way I can be a supporter is if I can name any other England player who isn’t Harry Kane. Obviously, I can’t. Obviously.
Still, I waltz into the pub and demand them all to budge up and make room for me. And then like the rest of the coutry, watch and hope that this year –
it comes home.
BLOG SOUNDTRACK (what else?)
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#LIVINGYOURBESTLIFE? WHAT I LEARNT WHEN I MOVED TO AUSTRALIA.
AUDIO QUACK
(Also available on all podcast apps. Skip intro 2:44)
I told a Hinge date once that I learnt a lot from my experience of living in Australia.
He replied with a sarcastic comment, ‘Oh yeah, Australia….such a big cultural difference…”
He had been sarcastic since he took off his coat, so I wasn’t surprised by this remark. And yes, he had a point; I didn’t have to learn a language or adapt to communism. Still, I felt I learnt a few valuable life lessons when I was Down Under.
Throughout my early twenties, I was inundated with images on social media of other worlds that were more wholesome, healthier, and beautiful than the drizzly London life I had. The #VanLife was a little too extreme, but the grass seemed greener in Australia, so I immigrated to Brisbane when I was 26 to #LiveMyBestLife.
I had visions of waking up to the sound of parrots. I would live off mangoes and float around in white linen. I would meditate in the morning and, in the evening, straddle surfboards as the sun dipped down behind me.
I’d make friends who would match me in white linen. (We would look like a cult). We would spend our weekends drinking from coconuts and sunbathing on a boat.
Yes, one of my future friends would own a boat.
After some time living in Brisbane, these are the things I fell in love with;
Coffee. They’re really good at coffee. The supermarkets were better than any Waitrose. I could drive an hour North and be on a sandy beach on the Sunshine Coast, drive an hour South and be in Surfer’s Paradise. And if I wanted, I could go to The Koala Sanctuary and sit with a kangaroo – (which beats petting a goat in the Cotswold Wildlife Park).
So, that was all good.
However, my new lifestyle wasn’t going to plan. White linen is transparent and expensive and doesn’t look so good with a splodge of bright yellow mango on it. I found meditating excruciatingly boring, so that stopped after a week.
I also came to realise that creating a social life in a foreign land wasn’t as easy as movies led me to believe. (I’m looking at you, Mary-Kate and Ashely Olsen). I thought I would plod into Brisbane with my plummy accent and BOOM! PARTY TIME! But no, in your mid-twenties, it’s hard to make one friend… let alone a friend with a boat.
The heat also made me sweat a comical amount. From the day I got off that plane to the day I got back on it again, I was a red-sweaty blob.
I once made the catastrophic decision to walk to a job interview in 40-degree heat. When I turned up, I was offered a leather chair to sit on for the interview, and when I got up, I had made a pond. It’s no surprise they didn’t want to hire the melting British girl.
And then there was the outdoor Aussie lifestyle that I thought I could just… do.
So, I’m not really an outdoorsy kind of girl. I was never one to joyfully run into the ocean, therefore I don’t know why I thought I would suddenly start surfing in the Coral Sea, where all the sharks were. The fantasy of straddling a surfboard was crossed off. I thought I could get into climbing. Once, I climbed (hobbled up) a teeny-tiny mountain (a big rock). Once, and never again.
The problem with moving to Australia was that I had to bring myself with me. My likes, dislikes, passions, and fears will not change, no matter what piece of land I’m on.
If you looked at my Instagram though, you would see the kind of photos that enticed me there in the first place: blue seas, wildlife, tropical landscapes… as far as social media was concerned, I was #LivingMyBestLife.
The reality, I was missing home.
So, Mr. Sarcastic Hinge, that’s what I learned when I moved to Australia. A lesson as old as time;
The grass is not always greener… sometimes it just has a filter over it.
Now, back in the UK, I have a greater appreciation for having my family nearby, having at least one friend, a cuppa, the changing seasons, and even the sound of football blaring out of a pub. Even.
And lucky for your Mr. Sarcastic Hinge, I also missed the sarcasm.
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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THE WEEK I BECAME A CRAZY CAT LADY.
Can’t be bothered to read? Let me read for you. (Skip intro 2:00)
If you’re a woman over a certain age and own a cat, there are going to be certain assumptions about you.
You’re most definitely single. You wear trousers from Toast. And you will rant to anybody who listens, about how you have ‘given up men’ as if they’re white bread.
Still, there is no harm in simply looking after a cat for a week. That can’t make a woman crazy…can it?
After travelling over the hills and far away to Wandsworth, I stepped into my brother’s house with my suitcase. Enzo appeared a moment later from behind the sofa. He is blessed with good looks – with wide pumpkin eyes and fur the the colour of a storm cloud that is about to piss it down.
I greeted him enthusiastically, but he glared at me. If he could talk, his voice would be deep and have an old BBC accent, and he would say something cutting like,
“Must you greet me like a Teletubby?”
Enzo is the cat of my brother’s girlfriend, Sophie. I had looked after him once before, and he was alive when they got back, so I was tasked with the job again.
This time, things didn’t start off as smoothly. On the first day, he went missing.
My mind ran wild with all the things that could have happened. Did he scoot out the door somehow and was now dashing towards Big Ben? Could he have fallen out of a window? Into the toilet? I called his name around the house like a killer in a horror film.
“Enzo?…..Enzo?”
After a long search, I face-planted the pillow on the guest bed, and thought of how I was going to tell my brother that I had lost his girlfriend’s cat.
Then, a very faint scratching noise came from beneath my belly.
Quickly, I tumbled onto the floor and saw the drawer in the bed was slightly open. I yanked it out further and saw the tiniest gap between the drawer and the bed frame. In that tiny gap – two glassy circles appeared in the dark.
“Enzo,” I hissed. He watched as I struggled to take the drawer out and then stayed far enough away so I couldn’t reach him. “Enzo, get out,” I said like an impatient parent.
He licked his lip and didn’t move.
I tried enticing him with my phone charger. Nope. I bounced a pair of socks around as if they were alive. Nope. I then collapsed onto the floor and begged. He stayed under the frame, enjoying the power.
“This is why I’m a dog person,” I said. Not that this dig fazed him, cats have mastered the subtle art of not giving a f***.
I realised I was being an idiot.
It’s visibly clear that Enzo enjoys a treat or two. (NOT FAT, just thick-furred). I made a trail out of Dreamies, and sure enough he waddled out from under the bed, breaking his protest.
On the third day, I left Enzo to his own devices and walked to Clapham Junction. On the way, I passed a number of couples who, thanks to the wellness trend that swept SW, are ageing remarkably well. There was also a life-sized plastic pig sitting with a smile outside of a butcher’s. I wasn’t convinced that having a pig, whole and happy, was an effective marketing tactic for a place trying to sell sausages, but there you go.
I bought a book from Waterstones. And I made a white fluffy dog yelp in Gail’s by standing on its paw. Despite my apology, the blonde owner gave me botoxed-scowl, as if it was my fault she owned something so fussy and fragile.
When I got home, Enzo was sitting on the top of the sofa, staring into the abyss.
“What’s on your mind, big guy?” I asked.
“Are we a minuscule part of intelligent life in the universe?” I imagined him replying.
That evening, I was brushing my teeth, and Enzo was sitting close by and drinking from the tap. He has his own fountain, but he’s obsessed with the human tap.
When I turned it off, he meowed.
“You fool! Switch it back on!”
I lay awake that night, worried as to why he wasn’t drinking from his fountain. I had a vision of him spread out by the bathroom door, dead of dehydration.
I asked Google ‘WHY IS CAT NOT DRINKING FROM OWN WATER FOUNTAIN?”
It turns out – cats are particular. If the water fountain is grubby, they do not like it. If the water fountain is on the floor, they do not like it. …And here we humans are, happily sniffing stuff off public toilets.
The next morning, I was paying for white wine vinegar at the Sainsbury’s self-checkout. (Recommended cleaning product by some cat forum user). Next to me, a man in tight shorts was speaking loudly on the phone as he scanned his ‘Grenade’ protein bar.
“Yah, I’m going to play frisbee in The Common first, then to Soho House for lunch. Yah. That one in Shoreditch. Yah. George has a membership. Yah.”
He paid and walked off, still telling the person on the phone, (and everyone in Wandsworth), his Sunday plans.
I spent the morning cleaning Enzo’s fountain with white wine vinegar as he sat nearby, keeping watch as if he was the prison guard and I was doing community service.
“Some guy in tight shorts is sitting in Soho House right now,” I told him as I scrubbed the dried gunk off the fountain bowl. Enzo yawned to let me know that he couldn’t care less about my lame social life.
I refreshed the water, plugged the fountain back in, and waited for the judgment.
Enzo tip-toed over, hesitated for a second, and then began drinking from his fountain.
I let out an overly passionate cheer
…and then stopped abruptly.
What has become of me? I thought. I had, after all, given the animal a BBC voice and imagined him as a philosopher, and now this? Cheering him on as he drinks water from his own fountain, that I spent the morning scrubbing out.
Hmm…right.
I’m off to Toast to buy some trousers.
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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OUT OF 10, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THIS, MY DEAR?
AUDIO QUACK (SKIP INTRO 1:53)
Last week, I went to a book event with Sex Ed Tom – a blue-eyed biology teacher who, as you can guess by the crass nickname, sometimes teaches sex education. Before the event, we went for dinner at the non-authentic Italian chain Obicà Mozzarella Bar, St Paul’s.
I like hanging out with Sex Ed Tom, as (like me) he adores timekeeping. Before we decided on the kind of authentic mozzarella dish we wanted (or, in my case, how to remove the authentic mozzarella from my dish), Sex Ed Tom had worked out the distance to Daunt bookshop and, therefore, the time to depart from the table. We had 73 minutes. Go.
I’m not saying it has anything to do with the fact we were Virgos (who believes that jargon?), but we both visibly relaxed once the schedule had been established.
As we ate our Italian food, I brought up one of my favourite subjects, ‘Things couples do that make me appreciate being single.’ I gave an example.
“Like, when someone has to either leave a party early because their partner is in a mood or have to hang out at a boring party because their partner wants to stay.”
Tom thought about it for a moment, then said, “Well, I read a book once by Simon Reeve, and he said that he and his wife have a system where they rate out of 10 how strongly they feel about something. If the partner’s number is higher than the other, then they get their way. For instance, if the partner who wants to stay at the party rates their feelings at a 5, and the other partner who wants to leave it is at a 7… then they go home.”
I thought this system could work in theory, but only if both participants were rational, honest people who wouldn’t abuse it. There are times that I’m neither of these things.
“10, Steven. That’s how much I want you to come home from the pub right now. 10!”
“How much do I want to take your Mum to see Cliff Richard? That would be a 1.”
“I would say I was at like a….3 for having a takeaway….and a 9 to be taken out for dinner…”
Sex Ed Tom, who is not as cynical as me, is still going to try out the system in his next relationship. We would have continued the discussion, but it was 18:40. Therefore, we needed to depart.
The book event was Sebastian Junger in conversation with Henry Marsh. Junger is a war journalist who had written a book, ‘In My Time of Dying – How I Came Face to Face with The Idea of The Afterlife.” He had a near-death experience (not in war, PLOT TWIST, but when his pancreatic artery ruptured). Henry Marsh, the interviewer, was a brain surgeon. As you can guess, the event was all Sex Ed Tom’s idea.
It took place at the back of Daunt Books in Cheapside. We took our complimentary drink and sat in the third row from the back. Junger retold the story about how he nearly died and how he saw his dead dad hovering nearby as he was slipping away.
As he was talking, I became distracted by the man sitting in front of me, who had gulped down the last bit of his red wine and was now consequently having a coughing fit. His girlfriend glanced over at him with a look that read, I knew I shouldn’t have brought you.
Back to Junger, he was now talking deeply about how he was after his near-death experience and how it changed his perspective on life. In the book he said, “I sank into a kind of existential insanity. Every sunset, every dinner, every bedtime story drifted into a ghastly significance….”
A loud smash interrupted Junger.
The coughing-fit boyfriend had accidentally kicked his empty wine glass over, and it had shattered all over the floor. His face went the colour of merlot. His girlfriend couldn’t even look at him. I could only imagine what scale she would rate her feelings at that point
“10 Hugo, that’s how much you are not coming to another book talk with me.”
And I sat there, putting the situation into the box of ‘things couples do that make me happy that I’m single.’
I’ve very much enjoyed reading Sebastian Junger’s book, “In My Time of Dying—How I Came Face to Face with The Idea of The Afterlife,” and Henry Marsh’s ‘Do No Harm’, which gives a fascinating insight into the working life of a brain surgeon. Highly recommend both.
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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CAN YOU PULL OFF YOUR NAME?
Audio Quack (Skip intro 2:16)
It was Hermione’s 32nd birthday on the weekend, and as always, it was an outdoor event. Last year we were in a park in East London, this year, Port Meadows in Oxford. “Bring swimwear!” she demanded in the What’s App invite. I wasn’t going to bring swimwear. We were also requested to bring snacks to make a picnic.
It was one of those summer days that wasn’t summer; the sky was the colour of a pencil sketch and the wind had a bite. Amy and I were making our way over the meadows with Twiglets, popcorn and breadsticks, when we spotted Hermione and Sam on a small blanket, surrounded by long grass and splatters of horse pat.
“Oh, I should have said to everyone to bring their own blankets,” Hermione said, facepalming herself. We told her it was no problem, then Amy and I made a nest with our shopping bags.
Soon, Hermione’s other guests started appearing, coming across the field like animals finding their pack after a hunt…(in M&S). There were all sorts; Teachers, lab technicians, IT nerds, farmers, a lawyer, a pilot, a green energy consultant, and one (sort of) celebrity; Hermione’s sister was recently on the McCain potatoes advert and now must endure us repeating her line back to her all the time.
“You’re supporting the move to regenerative farming…”
It was impressive that everybody found Hermione’s party considering the only directions we had was a drawn on cross that took up a quarter of the meadow.
We all had the same idea in terms of picnic food, and ended up with a huge collection of posh crisps – the kind where the peppercorn is visible. Oliver went a little left field and brought a pot of tzatziki, and you knew he had paid extra because you could see the oil pooling around the top.
“Everyone always forgets the tzatziki,” Oliver said, very proud of himself.
Little circles of conversations formed. In our circle we played a game of Would You Rather?
“Would you rather be able to communicate in every language or communicate with animals?”
I said, communicate in every language, because you can have sex with an Italian man, but you can’t have sex with a Moose. The circle disagreed, they all wanted to talk to animals.
“Wouldn’t it be cool to say to a shark, hey mate,” said the airplane pilot.
“No, he doesn’t care what you have to say, he’ll just eat you,” I argued.
“Nah, I’ll be like, don’t eat me, I’m sound mate.”
I nodded, unconvinced. And then I accidentally called Oliver…Ollie, which opened up the topic of ‘names.’
I’m not enamoured with the name Mary, it has a religious weight to it that can kind of kill the mood. Once, I tried to go by the name of Mary Lou, I thought it would lighten me up a little, but it didn’t stick. Sometimes, I wonder if I should refer to myself as “MA MA!” which would only be said in a bellowing, plummy voice. The new name would come with an identity shift, I would wear neck scarves and take up smoking and yell in people’s faces, “MA MA, YAH… SHORT FOR MARY.”
When I told this to the circle though, they didn’t think I could pull it off.
We all decided that Oliver didn’t suit being an Ollie. He loves The Rest is History and brought a fancy tzatziki to a picnic – he is definitely an Oliver. And Ellie suited being Ellie, not an Elenor. And no-fluff Amy, suited being an Amy not an Aimee.
The conversation moved on to kids’ names, and when we eventually stop playing Would You Rather?, grow up and have kids, are we going to call them something traditional like ‘Daniel’ or ‘Kate’, or something millennial like ‘Vixen’ or ‘Archer’.
I do like an interesting name. I’ve been guilty of adapting guys’ names to make them sound more exciting to my friends. Nothing dramatic, just adding a ‘Y’ at the end. However, I do think millennials have gone too far with rockstar names. “This is Glow Smith…” There is a lot to live up to when you have a ‘cool name’. You can’t exactly be called, Everest and be a tiny mouse of a man, who loves spreadsheets and eats plain digestive biscuits.
The conversation was interrupted by Hermione’s announcement, that it was time to go for a swim. She was standing in her blue swimming costume, that she had changed into behind the long grass.
“Right, I’m going for a dip, who’s with me?” she shouted, then charged across the meadows and jumped into the freezing, murky River Thames.
The circle paused, and then went back to the conversation.
.
.
.
We all agreed…Hermione can pull off the name Hermione.
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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THE WEEKEND I GOT NEW EYES.
AUDIO QUACK (skip intro 2:46)
I discovered I needed glasses at the back of chemistry class when I was 13. I thought the teacher’s whiteboard pen was running out, but it wasn’t the pen—it was me. By the time I was in my 30s, my prescription had gone to -5, which meant the world looked like an impressionist painting.
I’ve relied on contact lenses to see, which has been fine for the day-to-day, but if there was a Noah’s Ark flood, then I’m screwed. I thought about that a lot.
So I decided to get laser eye surgery.
Dad was the designated nurse for the occasion. He accompanied me to the surgery, and the plan was to have a peaceful weekend in his flat as I recovered. That was the plan.
When I left the surgery room, I could kind of see Dad in reception, waiting for me. I say kind of…I was so sensitive to light that it was like trying to keep my eyes open after five sleepless days. However, between the flicker of my eyelids, he was there, smiling.
The flat had just been moved into, and towers of cardboard boxes and deliveries of John Lewis furniture were ready to be unpacked. I crawled into the guest bed in a large Iron Maiden t-shirt and Ray Bans; I was about to press play on my audiobook when I heard noise from the hallway.
My heart sank.
“A1 to fit into C1…” Dad said to himself. I knew, even with my eyes closed, he was attempting to build the John Lewis trolley.
“Leave it! I will do it when I can see again!” I shouted from the bed. I then pressed play and drifted off to sleep.
When I woke again, Dad had given himself the new task of setting up the sound system.
“ALEXA!” he yelled from the edge of my bed. “PLAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEIN.”
Alexa replied, “hmm let’s try again, say add milk to my shopping list.”
“ALEXA STOP. PLAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEIN.”
“Ok, playing Bruce Springsteen…”
Dancing in the Dark filled the room, and I groaned into my pillow. The sound system task was more successful than the trolly task. Alexa soon worked in the guest room, his room, and the hallway. Google claimed the living room.
“Just don’t say the wrong name in the wrong room,” Dad whispered as if the smart speakers were mistresses who would be horrified if instructed by the wrong name.
“Alexa? Who the hell is Alexa?!”
The next morning, when I opened my eyes, I could see clearly for the first time in seventeen years. Unfortunately, the first thing I saw was the cast of Only Fools and Horses smiling back at me in a framed photo.
We went back to Parson’s Green for a follow-up appointment. A few blood vessels had EXPLODED (dramatic verb), which was why my left eye looked like a strawberry and cream sweet. And I couldn’t quite read the last line of the letters; is it a G or C? But my eyes were on their way to being eyes again. All I had to do was keep resting.
That afternoon, Dad went off to watch the football in a pub, and Hermione popped in for a visit. We were hungry, so I served up some hummus with my GAIL’S sough dough loaf. (Don’t judge me; I deserved overpriced bread after having my eyeball cut).
Chatting, laughing, slicing with blurred vision…What could go wrong?
Next thing, Hermione and I are rushing down Oxford Street with blood GUSHING (dramatic verb) from my finger. At this point, my brain probably thought I was being lightly tortured this weekend. We went to Boots pharmacy, where they bundled up my finger in a huge white bandage.
Hermione, who had recently done a First Aid course, advised that I should go to A&E in case I get sepsis. I rang Nurse Dad and told him my plan to go to St Thomas’ Hospital. He advised, from the bar stool, that I shouldn’t go. “There are no organs in your fingers, Mary. You’ll be fine.”
And to be fair, I’m here, alive, writing the Quack in Dad’s flat. My left index finger is poorly plastered up. (Unlike Hermione, I haven’t done a first aid course for a while). Behind me, LBC is blasting out of Alexa. I mean Google. Crap.
And in the kitchen, there is the John Lewis trolley, built by me, where a fresh new GAIL’S loaf sits.
Oh, don’t judge me, I deserve it.
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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LOCKER ROOM TALK
*Names have been changed to hide identities …obviously.
Audio Quack (SKIP INTRO 2:00)
“Dating is a contact sport, expect to get hurt.”
When you come off the field a little bruised and confused, there is only one place to go – the locker room. There your friends will be waiting, equipped with advice for your next game play.
Friday night, the girl’s locker room was in Soho and was made up of Sausage and Iceberg Lettuce*. The topic was paying for dates, and Iceberg Lettuce had a story to tell on this matter. She had been invited on a dinner date with a lawyer and it was going very well…until the bill came. (See post here about bill splitting). The usual dance took place where she offered to spilt, and that’s when the lawyer gave her a choice;
If she wanted to see him again he’ll pay for dinner. If she didn’t want to see him again, then they will split.
“What an absolute arse,” Iceberg Lettuce said to the locker room. “Of course I was going to tell him I’ll see him again.”
Sausage then chipped in with some advice. “MUTE AND ARCHIVE!”
Sausage was referring to the action on WhatsApp; where you mute a person, and then hide them away in the archive folder. It’s less dramatic than blocking a person, but it’s ghosting all the same. Any time I come into the locker room with a boy issue, Sausage would yell, ‘MUTE AND ARCHIVE!”
Sometimes, all it takes is for the guy to send a bad emoticon.
🐩
“MUTE AND ARCHIVE!”
I’m not as feisty as Sausage, I have as much fight in me as an angry Little Mix song, so the idea of muting and archiving a human seems like an overly harsh game play.
“What happens if there is an emergency?” I said.
“Yeh, right. He’s fallen off a ladder, and the first person he’ll call is that chatterbox he had ONE date with,” Sausage said. Then, in a deliberate tone, repeated. “Mute…and…archive.”
Coming into the locker room from the field, is like someone shaking your shoulders, slapping you around the face, and telling you to ‘Wake the hell up!’
They’re not under any illusion of the guy you like. They don’t see what you see in Hot Henry. To them, he’s just Henry Smith – a bang-average bloke who works in Reading. This means they can have a practical opinion on the matter.
Once, a friend described a man I liked as ‘a derelict house that would take ten years to do up before it’s even liveable.’ She then added, “you don’t have ten years, Mary.”
Sometimes, the advice is given without any words. All they have to do is glare and their thoughts are crystal clear.
“You don’t understand. He does really like me, but he finds it hard to open up.”
*Glare*
“It was just a lunch…we’re just friends now, and that’s ok.”
*Glare*
“No, they have definitely broken up, they’re just living together because of financial reasons.”
*Glare*
The locker room is not always a productive space. We like to go round and round the same scenario, analysing it to its bone; How exactly did he say it – was it like a hello (casual), or a hello (delighted)? Who do you think he was texting? He posted a story at 23:24. Found his LinkedIn! What do you think he meant by, see you soon?
Meanwhile, the guy is happily munching toast on his sofa, unaware he’s being scrutinised and background checked by a group of women in All Bar One.
There comes a time in the locker room where one of the friends becomes deluded or ‘delulu’. She’s choosing the colour palette for her wedding, he doesn’t know the colour of her eyes. The job of the locker room is to bring the friend back down; like catching the string of a balloon before it floats off into crazy town.
Of course, the locker room won’t be fully honest. “He doesn’t want a second date because it’s terribly obvious that you’re ten years older than your photos Pippa.”
No, that won’t go well.
Instead the locker room will overload the self-esteem; “Katherine, you’re like the most beautiful person who has ever walked in Slough. You’re an independent woman with your very own job. #BOSSWOMAN. You can do waaaaaaay better than Rupert Balfour III. (Everyone knows that Katherine can’t do better than Rupert. Rupert is incredible).
And if that fails, and Katherine still thinks she can make Rupert fall in love with her, the anti-campaign is launched. Rupert owns an estate is a model/charity worker/firefighter and STILL, the locker room will find a weakness.
“He eats Weetabix for breakfast every single morning? What a psycho. Katherine, I think it’s time to MUTE….AND…. ARCHIVE….”
And then we send little Katherine back out onto the field.
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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MY CATHOLIC CHILDHOOD: THE BODY OF CHRIST IS MADE FROM HARIBO.
HATE READING? LET ME DOI IT FOR YOU. (SKIP INTRO – 2:30)
Last week I dropped my friend off at The Royal Albert Hall, where she was attending The Alpha Leadership Conference. Alpha is the fastest-growing evangelical programme in the world. Essentially, it offers a crash course in Christianity which over 30 million people have completed so far including the likes of Bear Grills and Ginger Spice.
I’ve been invited to take the 10-week course by several smiley Christians, but I’ve always declined the offers. It’s not that I think I know everything about God, it’s just that I know enough to keep me going for now.
I was lured into Catholicism as a child by the promise of pick-and-mix at the end of Sunday Mass. Every week I sang hymns and muttered the Hail Marys as a crucified Jesus watched me from his cross. Meanwhile, I was deep in thought whether this week I should go for the fizzy gummy cola bottles or the non-fizzy ones.
When I was eight years old, I was made to do my First Holy Communion. This means you can eat the body of Jesus via a wafer and drink his blood via watered-down wine. Being catholic, you’re meant to believe that it’s literally his body and blood, which was a terrifying thought as a kid, but hey, the Bible isn’t exactly a child-friendly book.
Before The First Holy Communion can happen, you must go to confession to rid your soul of sins.
So I was put on one side of the confession box, and the Priest, Father Simon waited for my sin on the other. I swung my legs and played with my jumper sleeve, as I confessed to Father Simon that I had blasphemed…
I revealed how, last week in my bedroom, I lifted a Haribo egg high above my head in front of the congregation made up of; Pink Ted, Buzz Lightyear, and Jack Rabbit, then I announced to their unfazed faces, “This is the body of Christ,” before popping the sweet into my mouth.
“And that’s it, that’s my sin, Father,” I said. A suspicious cough came from the other side of the wall. The same kind that my friends and I did at school when we were hiding our giggles from the teacher. “Father Simon?”
“Yes, sorry,” he eventually said, then let me know that my sin was forgiven and that I could go in peace. I jumped off the seat and thanked him as I left the box. And the next Sunday, with a pure soul I was allowed to eat Jesus’ body.
My God knowledge continued at Catholic school, where I (not to flex) received an A in R.E GCSEs and a B in Philosophy in Religion for A Levels. My qualifications came handy later in life when I got into a relationship with a Doctor of Theology. He would spend evenings on my sofa with red wine, wearing a faded grey denim shirt and talk in a husky voice about warfare in the Old Testament. I could understand some of what he was saying. Now and again, I would even chip in with a question.
“And Doctor, in your opinion, what breed would you say the nativity donkey was?”
I asked my friend after her Alpha conference how it was. She said she felt enlightened and it was worth the $200 ticket.
“There was this one strange thing that happened though,” she said, and then told me how one bible teacher Jennie Allen, (who currently has 435,000 followers on Instagram), got everyone in the Albert Hall to shout out their sins for fifteen minutes as a pianist tinkered on a piano…
Can you imagine having to shout out in the Royal Albert Hall that you blasphemed with a Hairbo egg….?
How strange.
Give me a 1-1 session with a middle aged man in a wooden box, any day….
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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WOULD YOU LIVE WITH A MAN AGAIN?
AUDIO QUACK (also available on Spotify & Apple Podcast)
For most of my twenties, I lived with a man. We spent a couple of years in Stockwell, but then got irritated with the weather and the tiny box we were living in, so moved to Brisbane, and made our home in a terrace house. In the mornings, we would have coffee on the deck and watch the Bush Turkeys navigate our garden with panic, as if they were late for an appointment.
We painted the rooms bright white and went with a rustic vibe. We had a wooden dining table with a bench, where we hosted one dinner party. In the corner of the living room was a half-full bookshelf with a mismatch of fiction and sales motivation books. It took the two of us to hang the giant world map that I had impulsively bought. We were there for almost an hour hanging it, because he insisted on doing it properly with a ruler, so that it wouldn’t be on a wonk.
And the map hung there for over a year, then I took it back to the UK with me.
It never occurred to me that I would live by myself again, but I was excited to have a space that was completely my own. I found a one-bedroom flat that was too small for anyone else to fit in. (I don’t mean in an Alice in Wonderland type way, with a ceiling height that only caters to 5ft 3 and under—just that I made sure there wasn’t the space for a single Charles Tyrwhitt shirt in my wardrobe.)
When a single woman lives alone, there is an image of a scary-hairy-spinster whose sofa is covered cat hair, and has aggressive window stickers up like; ‘NO JUNK MALE’ or ‘I’M NOT SOMEONES OTHER HALF, I’M A WHOLE!’ But that is not the case, with the help from social media and Etsy, we now can create bachelorette pads.
We all know the cliché bachelor pad; a loft with a silly sound system, a silly big TV, pinball machines, cracked leather sofas, bikes, mahogany furniture…and perhaps even a deer head.
Well, in the same tone, a dream bachelorette pad will be this…
It will have scented candles that burn throughout the day, an abundance of cushions, a gallery wall, jars full of seeds, dried flowers in pots, a rolled up yoga mat in the corner, lots of unnecessary lamps, a cabinet of posh creams that are yet to prove themselves, and various shaped towels, brushes, and rugs . The Netflix account knows exactly what the bachelorette wants, (none of this, ‘because you viewed The Viking, you will love…”). There’d be a colourful bookshelf, blankets everywhere, huge plants that fill corners, too many shoes, and, of course, a coordinated wardrobe.
So when I was thirty I made my bachelorette pad. And I’ve been so happy in my pad, so happy in fact, I fear that it would be hard to go back. Sorry to Poetry Ed for the Friends reference, (he thinks they’re basic), but there’s an episode where Monica breaks down to Rachel before she moves in with Chandler, “now I have to live with boy!” – and now I understand what she means.
One day I rang my friend Sausage* to rant about the man who insisted on leaving his electric scooter in my hallway.
“Argh. I don’t know how I’ll ever live with a man AGAIN,” I groaned. As time has gone on, I have become increasingly intolerant about sharing my space. Patience is like fitness, it needs to be trained to remain, and well, I haven’t trained for awhile.
Sausage was eating a bag of crisps on her sofa in her Manhattan bachelorette pad, (she always eats on the phone). Behind her, a zillion candles were burning. “You can live with a man again, and you will. So will I.” MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH.
“But we can live exactly like we’re living, with our orange scented homes and our cushions, our nuts in jars… It’s not like we have to live with a man.”
“Yeah, we don’t have to, but…” MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH ” I dunno… it could be nice.
“Nice..pfft,” I said, as I eyeballed my world map, which has hung at a slight wonk since I hung it myself.
Now, this was where my blog was going to end, but last night, I was woken up, once again, at 3am by continuous loud banging…. see video.
I have my guesses, but I’m not entirely sure what it is and who is it doing it, because I’m terrified of going ‘out there’ to see it for myself. (I have watched way too many horror films, and my imagination is thinking all sorts).
So, as I was standing on the other side of my door in the early hours imagining what could be on the other side, I thought,
“hmmm, a man would be quite nice right about now.”
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
THE QUACK 