Gnome and Away

My phone rang at 10.15 one Monday morning while I was watching a particularly enthralling presentation on "Getting Ready for Global Desktop". I turned it off and quietly fretted my way through a ten-minute explanation on how to move documents from the z drive to the m drive, thinking, what's happened? Who's died? My aunty, you see, rarely phones me, and never during the working week. She'd left a voicemail imploring me to call her back, and I tried to read between the lines, wondering if I was mistaking her usual tone of voice for anxiety.

She picked up immediately.

"I was wondering if you could be really kind and do me a bit of a favour."

Of course, I said, relief that if this was the conversation opener it was unlikely anyone had died.

"I need you to send a postcard to a friend of mine. It needs to be a London postcard, with a famous landmark, like the Eye or something like that, because it needs to be obviously from London. Let me give you the address," she continued, before I had the chance to ask anything about it, and reeled off a name and address in Clayton.

"Ooh one thing," she said. "It's actually from a gnome."

Of course it is, I thought. A gnome. Right.

"He's called Algernon" she continued, as if this explained everything. "He's travelling round the world and he's just got back to London so he needs to send a postcard and it needs to say "having a lovely time in London, see you soon, Algernon."

She went on to explain that Algernon had lived with them until some time in the late-90s, when the recipient of the postcard - I'm going to call him Dave - apparently snapped and admitted he didn't actually like gnomes, he found them creepy, and he would be perfectly happy if he never saw him and his silly red hat again. So poor old Algernon packed up his fishing rod and went off into the Big Wide World (though I suspect in reality Mrs Dave had a hand in this and he only got as far as a Cleckheaton car boot sale). There was more to it than that, though if I'm honest I was only half-listening, as I was writing an email about the pros and cons of the Student Visitor route of entry to the UK at the time. Apparently Algernon was more than just a gnome, he was a sort of therapist, called in to mediate on all sorts of family disputes involving Dave and Mrs Dave's children in what seems to be a flagrant abuse of his right to gnomic self-determination, and frankly if I was him I'd think twice before sending a postcard to my old tormenters. But anyway, apparently Algernon is one to forgive and forget, and, having been in Paris a few weeks back, he did the logical hop via Eurostar and is now in London.

I did send a postcard, which I'd been instructed to write in childish script, because apparently this is how gnomes write, and who am I to argue? I don't know if it got there, and I don't know what Dave's reaction was. I also sent a book of zombie cupcake designs to a friend in Hounslow, a sketch about Jesus working in a chip shop to a writing competition in Newcastle and a birthday card to my old boss bearing the slogan "Congratulations on still being alive." I really do hope, in these uncertain times where the threat of a terror attack remains high, that someone somewhere is monitoring my mail.

Girl Writes About Football And Stuff

I'd love to be able to write something witty and incisive about Bradford City. There's a great drama somewhere here, a bit like those films that were so popular in the 90s: windswept fans sporting retro shirts immortalising the glory days of 100 years ago, huddled together on makeshift terraces suffering bitter disappointment week after week, coach journey after coach journey endured in disillusioned resignation to the almost inevitable drop out of the football league. The lead character: my dad, 70 that day, ever the optimist in a world of shattered dreams set against a background of eternal Northern drizzle and branches of Gregg's. And then suddenly, a mere week after an almost unbearable defeat at home at the hands of those football giants that are Morecambe, comes this: a win. And not just a win. Not a last-minute, skin-of-our-teeth, one-lucky-goal-in-extra-time win. Not this time. This was a proper win, a two-goal win. And we even scored them both ourselves. Strangers embraced strangers, united in claret and amber, relief and elation. Tom Adeyemi legged it up the slope to the away stand and gave his mum a hug. Somewhere on the other side of the pitch, Peter Taylor drew a sigh of relief and lived to fight another battle (against Cheltenham, as it turns out. Big-time stuff, this.)

I'd love to give you a blow-by-blow account of every nail-biting minute, the three yellow cards that seemed a little over-zealous in what had the generally friendly air of an after-school kickabout; Zesh Rehman and Luke O'Brien, inexplicably on the bench a week ago, darting around the pitch with flashes of nifty footwork, like Darcy Bussell on speed; the fleeting but promising return of the lovely James "He Used To Work At The Co-Op" Hanson showing us what we've been missing and reminding me why I secretly wish he was my kid brother; Luke Oliver being something other than shit; two fabulous goals, the first one seemingly coming from nowhere, the second from a bloke who if I'm honest I'd pretty much forgotten played for us; a few heart-stopping saves (and one very nearly Rob Green moment) from Jon McLaughlin; their fruitless but valiant attempts to at the very least equalize, which would have given us one point and kept us where we were, at the arse-end of the table, which made for a breath-holding last 20 minutes; the coveted three points and the queues in the pub afterwards.

I'd love to tell you all that, but, well, for some reason I have a feeling you're not really that interested, and anyway, Jason Mckeown does it better. In context, this wasn't quite the David vs Goliath battle I'm making it out to be. This isn't Weatherall-Scores-Against-Liverpool-And-Secures-Premiership-Glory all over again. This is City clawing its way to two places above relegation by beating the titans that are Barnet, a club that almost dropped out of the league last season and which has been immortalised on this blog more than once for playing on a slope and having a giant bee for a mascot at which we ritually hurl abuse every year before losing 2-1 despite scoring two of the goals. In fact on Saturday the most exciting moment for many of the Barnet fans present was when Mr Bumble did a lap of honour to show off the cup he'd won against such strong contenders as Leo the Lion, Spork the Tiger,the Scunny Bunny and Sammy the Shrimp in a football mascots charity race that week. He signed quite a few autographs on the way round. (As an aside, why is Crystal Palace's mascot called Pete the Eagle? Pete? Why the lack of alliteration? Why Pete?)

I'd love to tell you all that. But then I saw this in the match programme, and frankly, nothing I could write could compete. I've independently verified that it's not a spoof, so if you're interested you should get yourself a season-tickets so you can secure yourself that valuable discount:


"Oi Churchill! Can you arrange the scattering of my ashes at Underhill? Can you get me a hearse with amber and black plumes?"

"Ohhhhh YES!"

Have a good week :-)

I am quite rapidly going off men. Present company excepted (F is lying next to me, pretending to be asleep) men seem to be more and more feeding my sense of inadequacy and increasing pessimism re: life, the universe and everything. Perhaps it's because you think entanglements with the opposite sex won't happen once you're safely married, or at any rate won't matter, and so when they do it's all the more noticeable. Perhaps there's just some genetic predisposition that ensures a straight woman will always, if subconsciously, be shaking her metaphorical feathers for the male of the species' approval. Psychiatrists and the cheerful likes of Schoppenhauer and his ilk probably have tons to say on the subject - that you're constantly in search of the ideal mate, that human beings always crave that extra little bit of praise and appreciation. I don't know, because I couldn't be arsed to look it up. But either way, present company excepted, I'm rapidly coming round to the idea that a spot of self-imposed hermitry might soon be in order, because frankly, it's easier that way.

First off, there was Thursday. Thursday has the fortune, or misfortune, depending on how you look at it, as masquerading as my new Friday, largely because there's a karaoke night mere metres away from my front door and, well, it would be rude not to go. So I trotted along with my best friend, who, newly single, was possibly trying - and it turns out succeeding - to exude an air of availableness.

My friend is extremely pretty, smiley and chatty and within the hour there was a little gaggle around her, two of them literally at her feet as she sat poised on a bar stool, as if administering wisdom to her new disciples. Two of the three didn't so much as glance at me, so enraptured were they. The third smiled politely, almost as if looking for my approval, and after a while I felt rather like the sensible elder sibling, keeping an eye on yet cramping the style of my much cooler kid sister. Perhaps because I looked lonely, I was eventually approached (I say approached, more fallen on top of) by a bloke who probably didn't fancy his luck with my friend, but thought I was a possible alternative. One of those ultra-confident men who looks like the obligatory joker who gets thrown out at the interview stage of The Apprentice every year and is probably more middle class than he likes to let on, he started his courtship by settling himself down on my knee, which was more than a little uncomfortable. He then waved the karaoke book in my face and declared "this is rubbish! It's arranged by song! I don't want it arranged by song, I want it arranged by artist." I pointed to where he could find such a book, and he leapt up, thrust his bottle of Peroni into my hand and said "guard this. Don't drink it," and went and deftly retrieved the magic book from the hands of another customer, and plonked himself back down on my knee. Flapping the book up and down in front of me he promised me he would sing anything I wanted, so long as it wasn't Westlife. I suggested the Spice Girls, and watched while he considered whether or not this was a joke. After a little consideration, he suddenly said "Ooh, ooh, what's the one that goes...." and launched into a tuneless and wordless rendition of something I had no chance of placing. "Come on, come on, you know, it was sung by that guy, you know, the one who did that other thing, the Welsh one, the Welsh one who might be Scottish. He's not dead," he added helpfully. In the background, someone had started singing "The Summer of '69". My new admirer leapt unsteadily to his feet, taking me with him, then before I knew it was dangling me a couple of feet above the ground with his hands digging uncomfortably into my ribs and shouting, seemingly to anyone who might want to know, "I'll have this one."

I politely untangled myself, finished my beer and said "Oh well, time for me to go home." He lunged forward in a sort of hug and says "you're going? It's early."
"I've got to get home to my husband," I said, flashing my wedding ring at him in the hope this might help. It didn't. It elicited the response "You're married? That's MENTAL." He turned to his friend. "She's married! That's MENTAL. You're, like, twelve."

"I'm twenty-eight."

"You're twenty-eight? That's MENTAL! She's twenty-eight!" he announced to the chap who looked as he was hoping to soon embark on a tonsil tango with my friend. "That's MENTAL! And she's married. That's MENTAL."

I left. True to my Sensible Older Sister cameo, I went home, made a pot of tea and played internet scrabble. Rock and Roll.

I wouldn't have deemed an outing to a gay bar last night to present me any such problems. After all, it's a gay bar. It isn't somewhere I'd normally go if I was in need of male attention, so seemed a fairly safe bet after Thursday. Not so. As I sat there, a man who has frankly spent too much time agonising over which hair gel to use and, possibly, then hedged his bets and gone for them all at once, stood inches away from me and ostentatiously removed his top. He then bent over with more theatricality than was strictly necessary and pretended to rummage around in a ruck sack. Eventually he took another top out, gazed at it thoughtfully then slowly began to reclothe himself.

Then he nudged me.

"Why didn't you look?"

"Huh?"

"Why didn't you look?"

I'm not used to men in gay bars demanding to know why I'm not staring at their bare chests. Actually it's not that common an occurrence in the likes of the Bentham, King and Queen or any other pub I frequent either.

"Erm..." I indicated F, who was gazing into his pint with an expression that said he'd rather not get involved.

"Oh. You don't want your boyfriend to see? I'm straight."

He added this as though somehow that was OK, that F would be rightly worried if a gay man hit on me, but a straight one baring all is just fine.

"Do you think I'm gay?" he demanded. I tried to make what I hoped sounded like non-commital noises.

"Do I look gay?" he persisted. I looked at him. He wasn't holding his wrist aloft and proclaiming "I'm free!" nor had he burst spontaneously into a medley of show tunes, but he was standing in a gay bar with his shirt off.

"I hate gay bars," he said, scowling.

I suggested to him that perhaps, in that case, he was in the wrong venue.

"Would you sleep with me if your boyfriend wasn't here?

Well, full marks for forwardness, I suppose.

Oh well, at the very least I guess this proves I've still got it, whatever "it" is, but whether I want "it" is another matter entirely. On the upside, this Sensible Big Sister did win at scrabble on this occasion, on account of scoring 72 points for the word "cervical". And if that doesn't do it for you, chaps, then I don't know what does.