Oops

Dear Bruno,

Mummy would like to apologise for crippling you with terror on Hallowe’en night.

When the chap at the petting farm asked if you were old enough for the ‘Scary Tractor Ride’ as we stumbled through the pitch-black field, Mummy laughed because she thought he was making a funny joke.

It’s true, the green-faced witch with the odd stillness did have prescription-drug eyes but she only shone her flashlight in your face a couple of times.

The crouching bag-of-bones skeleton searching for his missing body parts who mounted the ride was quite a surprise though, wasn’t he?

Perhaps less so than the re-enactment of his craven encounters with the psychotic scarecrow on the wicker platforms erected around the meadow of spent corn-sheaves.

But if you think about it, the slow trundling of the tractor through the flattened husks might have been quite boring without the irregular hollow grunts from the darkness and random grabbing through the railings.

And, deary me, what an unexpected fellow with tangled wig and chainsaw popped up at the end, shortly before you and your little quickened heart were coerced into pelting the pumpkin effigy with shrivelled yellow cobs.

For the record, Mummy wants to say to you now- and to any therapists who may be digging around in the future- that none of this was planned and that bad dreams are just your mind’s clever-clogs way of clearing out its demented fears.

Love,

Mummy x

Mariah Scarey

I was plugged into the video of Mariah’s song ‘Obsessed’ at the gym this morning and I experienced fear.

The way she starts the song with the words ‘I was, like, why are you so obsessed with me?’ struck me as, like, a deliberately offensive way to, like, start a song.

Then the visual throwback of her walking past an L.A. hotel carrying loads of shopping bags and wearing a gold necklace saying the word, ‘Angel’ made my skin tingle in a different way to the dumb bells.

But coming in at number one most creepy thing to have been let out of the creative industry’s doors in a long time was her cameo appearances as the obsessed stalker himself. (The knowing smile at the end indicating that she is, like, totally cool with any self-obsessed implications.)

Yes, dear reader, what might have elicited a smug little ‘cheeky twist’ chortle from the music producers at an initial meeting has been carried through to its breathtakingly unnerving conclusion.

Mariah Carey as an Eminem chauffeur/hoodie/male stylist parody, with a hairdryer and a fluffy goatee beard, doing blokey hip-hop moves while fawning over her snakeskin-body-hugger-wench self made me slam the emergency ‘STOP’ button on the treadmill.

Stay in on Hallowe’en and pop her on the DVD player with lights dimmed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hpiwPXkbVc

Robbie Williams Confessional

Me: Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

It’s been 36 years since my last Confession.

Father: Better late dan never, moi choild.

What would you loike to confess?

Me: Lots of stuff, really, but the worst of it has to do with Robbie Williams.

Father: Dat your fella?

Me: Jesus, no. Sorry, Father…

It’s more that I crave his suffering.

Father: Good gracious, don’t be sayin’ a ting loike dat.

Me: I know, that’s why I’m here.

He’s a popstar, sort of. Out of action for a while but back off his break.

Way too back.

Father: Singin’ and stoff?

Me: I suppose so. It’s hard to tell.

These urges I have, Father. I find them hard to control.

Father: Don’t we all, my choild.

Oi mean, yes, the body is a powerful force.

Me: Not the body, Father, the mind; I want him dead. Here’s how:

He’s stomping around on stage like an overgrown kid marching to the Tweenies theme-tune when I come up behind him with a microphone wire and tighten it enough to stifle his vocal chords.

Only it doesn’t make any difference because he’s holding the mic out for the audience to join in his desperate ditty so I pinch the top of his nose instead so he can’t breathe.

Father: Dis is fearfully voilent, moi choild.

Me: Do you think? Should I give him a Chinese burn too? Don’t answer now. Have a think about it.

Anyway, next I come round the front to reveal myself and he’s shocked because I’m a girl and he thought we all fancied him and I say, ‘Sorry, not me- especially when you start speaking’, and then I pummel him in the chest and floor him with a Kung Fu move.

Finally, I stand over him with my stiletto pressing down on his black shirt and sing ‘Angels’ really softly so he looks quite peaceful as he passes away, even though the audience are on their feet cheering.

And that’s it, Father. I don’t feel good about myself.

I’m going to Hell, aren’t I?

Father: You may well be, moi choild. Oi’ll pray for you.

Me: No worries, Father, as long as you pray for Robbie and make sure he goes to Heaven.

Skinny Bunny

As adults we can choose to act childishly.

Amongst ourselves, behaving unreasonably and being found adorable for doing so is a privilege to be judiciously enjoyed.

Children rob you blind of this perk, sprawling greedily all over the territory, like Chris Moyles on a picnic blanket.

If you spend a lot of time with them the injustice mounts until every now and then you stamp your foot and decide that enough is enough and you want your own way and you shall have it.

Bruno has a new book called This rabbit belongs to Emily Brown.

It’s about a well-loved rabbit who is coveted by the Queen but whom Emily will not part with. Eventually, the naughty silly Queen steals Stanley and re-names him Bunnywunny. Emily storms the palace, re-claiming Stanley and his rightful name and leaving the Queen with a teddy bear who (she advises) will also become special once the Queen has loved him well.

The other day I read it to him before his nap and settled him into bed.

But not without the following unpleasant incident intervening:

Me: You see, Stanley is like your Bear and Piggy and Monkey and Dear, isn’t he?

B: Yes, but I haven’t got a rabbit.

Me: Yes, you have. You have this rabbit here, who sits on your bookcase.

This is a very special rabbit called ‘Skinny Bunny’, who used to be Mummy’s when she was a little girl.

Granny used to make clothes for him and Auntie Adele even made him a passport when we went to America.

B: But that rabbit’s called Tom and I want to sleep with him.

Me: No, darling. You’ve got enough animals in your bed now.

And he’s not called Tom, he’s called ‘Skinny Bunny.’

B: No, he’s not, he’s called Tom and I want to sleep with him.

Me: He’s going to sit on the bookcase for now.

And he’s called Skinny Bunny.

B: (starting to cry) He’s not called Skinny Bunny, he’s called Tom and I’m going to get him to sleep with!

Me: (peeling back the Mummy mask) No, you’re not because I’m going to take him next door with me.

Come on, Skinny Bun.

B: No, leave him in here! I want him on the bookcase!

Put Tom back on the bookcase!

Me: He’s coming with me.

HE’S NOT CALLED TOM. HE’S CALLED SKINNY BUNNY.

Look, he’s very skinny! [wrenching up the miniature knitted jumper]

And it says so on his passport!

*

And off I marched, like the naughty silly Queen, to the fading soundtrack of over-tired sobs.

Two minutes later, cross and petulant with Skinny Bunny on my lap, I took a deep breath and felt the adult returning.

So I picked up my rabbit round the waist, like I used to, and headed back to the little man.

Me: Don’t cry, darling.

You can call him Tom if you like and I’ll put him back on the bookshelf.

*

We had a kiss and a cuddle and I walked out of his bedroom, leaving my beloved rabbit with his new owner.

But he is called Skinny Bunny.

Rainy Monday morning

9.10 a.m: Email from the managing agents of our rented flat encompassing an ongoing goonery of such staggering accomplishment it is acquiring its own peculiar beauty:

‘Yes, you’re right, we did receive your cheque, rendering the second demand we sent you a paper joke. And while you’re at it, forget about the other demand for 5 billion pounds to paint the exterior of the building because you and the other tenants sussed we are the Wizard of Oz and so now we need to start the process all over again. Lots of love.’

9.30 a.m: Pick up undelivered mail from Royal Mail delivery office. Divine feelings of antipathy towards my fat car blocking those of busier, more important people.

Enter office and question wisdom of sign requesting customers not to abuse staff when they clearly need a thorough bludgeoning, along with every evil warlord in the queue in front of me.

10 a.m: Materialise at leisure facility where I am a fresh member. Have photograph taken for membership, looking like a pregnant police-custody Hugh Grant.

Dip toe romantically in rainy outdoor pool. Flee screaming indoors to hot sporey sweat-box. Begin lengths feeling hatred towards:

a.) woman swimming too close to me, forcing me to do palsied breast-stroke when she passes;

b.) the well-intentioned oversized beasts doing aqua aerobics and causing me to swallow large gulps of the resulting undulating water;

c.) the mother and baby class because of all that pure love and joyful clapping with flat hands, in the style of Hollywood actresses.

Experience maths exam anxiety trying to calculate how many more lengths I would have to complete if I switched mid-way from the 15 metre indoor pool to the 25 metre outdoor pool, based on the number of lengths I used to do at my old 20 metre pool. Plus 2 OCD roly-polies and 2 lengths of backstroke. While remembering what length I am currently on. While hating all the people above.

11.45 am: Go to Westfield shopping behemoth to return a pair of shoes, standing next to a woman wearing so much make-up I can’t help studying her, like a disease under a microscope. Wonder how she can be bothered to apply it. Wonder if her lips will stay that colour all day. Wonder if this is attractive. Observe that it’s an exuberant hue, so maybe.

Realise she is arguing with the assistant, who keeps repeating that the shoes in question are not in the sale, until her mother pitches up and tells the assistant, ‘Your record is stuck’. To which the assistant replies huffily, ‘Well, I’m sorry if that’s how you feel but they weren’t in the sale section’. To which the mother says, ‘No, the tune on your duke box..Oh, my mistake. It’s just that modern music’.

Which I find quite funny.

12.00 pm: Walk back via Levi’s to see if there’s anything on which I can spend a credit note and decide this is a brand stuck in the past.

The one where people looked cool wearing tight little Michelin-man zip-up jackets over enormous lumber jack shirts.

12.15 pm: Discover there is threadworm at Bruno’s nursery, which is bad news for everyone except Bruno, who finally has a legitimate reason to expound on his favourite subjects, bottoms and poo, lit-up from within with the charisma of Mario Testino.

12.40 pm: Eat Heinz spaghetti on toast followed by a walnut whip, for lunch. They’re retro, they’re populist, they’re Wogan.

So I follow them up with Terry Jacks singing ‘Seasons in the Sun’ on youtube, in all its catchy, story-telling, key-changing, melancholic glory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd_Fdly3rX8

And I’m a lisping, gap-toothed kid messing with my sisters’ vinyl singles until this rainy Monday morning becomes a rainy Monday afternoon.

one small issue…

In the meantime, my hands still work so please knock on my door if you need a baby gift:

August Break

If it’s good enough for the French…

Back in September.

Thank you for visiting.

Confessions of a Guatemalan Worry Doll

My father is my hero, a man of courage and character.

My mother is a slut and I love her more than anything.

She has fiery red hair and hates peanuts so fiercely she made me draw a picture of one when I was 9 and pasted it on the top of our box, drawn through with a cross.

I have plenty of brothers and sisters. Not too many to count but from too many fathers to correctly quantify them as 100% blood relatives.

If Papi ever minded he never said so, working diligently through the problems presented to him nightly- always the gravest, owing to his status as head of the family.

We fell into the hands of a young woman, who was kind and mindful but right on the eve of her life and fraught with new emotions.

On our first night with her we drank apple juice to celebrate; 6 months later Papi’s hair started going grey.

She grew and we with her. They were good times.

Trouble is, I have a taste for the ladies.

The Guatemalan chicas drive me crazy. Those sultry limbs beneath blanket skirts- it’s too much for the fire in me.

But they’re not my limit. I like blondes, Japanese and dolls too.

Real dolls, made of plastic.

‘Mess with a non-worry girl and I’ll give you something to worry about,‘ said Mami one day.

‘My heart is not made of cardboard,’ I pleaded erroneously.

‘Your heart is not the part of your anatomy of which I speak,’ she shot back. ‘And, Madre di Deo, don’t tell me what that’s made of!’

Her own reputation did not deter her. ‘They tell me what’s on their mind,’ she offered simply of her own amorous visitors.

A few years back I ran beyond myself. All that fretting for others- it’s a responsibility for a young man. I wanted to be free and go wild.

So I did.

I broke into a toy store and got myself a Barbie- Beach Barbie, seeing as I could take my pick. Joder, that body! It was unrealistic!

And the best part was that she smiled a bright, white smile all the way through.

Mami went balistic, no surprise. Kept me boxed for months. Gave me the work of the whole family. Thought I would die of the strain.

But she loves her son, he with whom she shared her passionate gene.

When one night our guardian whispered the day’s concerns Mami whispered back. One week passed before she was ready to talk.

‘You will travel the world, mi amor,’ she finally announced. ‘Live life and learn her secrets. By this method you will become sound counsel.’

So I packed my sleeping bag and took the plane and here I am.

We look out for each other, my friend and I. Life is sweet.

Love is finding me because I no longer chase it down.

And when my hair, my dreams, the universe, get unalligned?

I try to worry about it, of course.

But in a fruitful way.

All the Fun Of The Fair

Modern funfairs are the best places on earth.

Their greedy consumerism, hedonism and unbridled tackiness make them everything that’s wrong with contemporary society packed into two hours of perfection: Las Vegas in your local park.

They promise a clutch of key activities whose purpose is not-to-be-sneezed-at pure joy:

Eating trashy food

Fat, carbs and sugar are the very fuel of high-adrenalin adventure.

This (rather than lack of alternatives) is the real reason that it is virtually a legal requirement to eat a burger and candy floss at a funfair and why low nutrition/high calorie quibbles are bogus.

Feeling fear

Not the sort that involves paying the mortgage or meeting the in-laws but wrought from one’s willful engagement in a potentially-life threatening situation that will probably turn out all right.

Nausea induced from being pregnant or drinking too much alcohol isn’t nearly as re-generative.

Being a kid

The thrill of being bumped; swallowing your heart; losing your shoe; feeling dizzy; waiting your turn; being clicked into your seat; squeezing hands with your friend; and shouting ‘Faster’.

Immediately! Because I want to! Because it’s fun!

Getting an outside seat on the flying chairs

Blameless breeze-through-the-hair-head-spinning-legs-dangling-high-decibel-Beyonce-belting escapism.

*

Traditional funfairs, meanwhile, are the most depressing places on earth.

Steeped in a nostalgia designed to remind one of violent modern times, everywhere you turn a desperate tableau plays out: the girl in the rain collecting up the coconuts; the bored juvenile tea-cup guy sucking on a rolly; the gigantic wooden helter skelter spurned by the computer generation.

They resonate with the memory of weeping because they are the chosen venues of a particular set of tragedies:

The first dates of doomed relationships

The promise of shared frivolity, childish pleasures and spontaneous laughter against a backdrop of noisy distraction make cutesy fairs the ideal choice for nervous would-be lovers.

Unfortunately, a relationship that begins with a giant stuffed animal and candy floss can only go downhill.

Stolen/lost/missing children

Escorting a child at dusk to a large field filled with loud moving objects and hundreds of other children negates the necessity to dress them in a t-shirt that reads, ‘Take me away with you’.

Unless you have recently had an affair with Glenn Close who will save you even more trouble by accompanying them herself.

Machinery malfunctions

Extraordinarily enough, suspended lumps of metal, repeatedly stressed by gravity-defying trajectories, operated by 14-yr olds Facebooking on their mobiles, occasionally break.

The moment joyful screams bathed in upbeat music become the strangulated shrieks of a mutilated reveller is one a career fairground worker both dreads and secretly hopes for.

The onset of tinnitus/madness/homicidal tendencies in the merry-go-round operator.

If the incessant spinning, bobbing horses and goofy waving of riders at sappy by-standers don’t turn a person’s mind over time, the looped wurlitzer music will finish the job.

‘They say you garotted your parents with fake leather reigns?’

‘Yes, your Honour. I work the carousel.’

‘Acquitted.’

Disappointed children

The most frequently occurring tragedy of all and the hardest from which to recover: scared on the flying seats, unlucky on a broken chair-o-plane; sick on the ferrus wheel; squashed on the Waltzer; unsuccessful at the shooting range.

With a cricked dodgems neck, ketchup down the t-shirt and an ice-cream on the grass.

Long live T.V.

The World of Dee Mahone

Is that the smell of tight-fistedness wafting around the generously-mortgaged home?

On the contrary.

Those are the wonderful, life-affirming scents of The World of Dee Mahone, bringing dreams to life through the magical medium of aroma.

The World of Dee Mahone features an audacious collection of premium cremes, colognes and candles providing scented lubrication to loosen stubborn credit cards from leather wallets.

In a room be-decked with the soft whisper of Sprouting Garden Olive Suggestion you can wave goodbye to unemployment city and travel back to dizzy memories of all-expenses paid lunches on the Mediterranean terraces of Michelen-starred establishments.

Or why not take a tub of Rosemary Effluvium Creme Anglaise to rub on the wife’s sternum after you’ve shared the news of your cleaner’s imminent dismissal?

Wherever you choose to dive into Dee’s odorous panorama you will be sure to find a need we have created especially for you.

Dee’s Story

Dee may wear a lot of loose-fitting clothes but she is renowned for having one of the most exacting noses in the business, re-interpreting her life’s experiences as perfect perfumed memories, sniff by sniff.

She started tinkering around with her father’s colognes in the bathroom aged 5, when it was clear to her family she had a commercial nose.

By the time she was a teenager she was giving sensual massages to all the neighbours and ended up with quite a client base, I can tell you.

She had a lightness of touch still being talked about today and an intuitive understanding of the arousing potential of a pungent oil, a soothing cream, a ball of wax.

Soon she was using it to make herself her very own happy ending, The World of Dee Mahone.

Dee’s World

With a store closing down a clinic in a prime location around the world every 2 seconds and a loyal following of high-profile celebrities, the successful whiff of Dee Mahone is one in which every person you care about should be submerging themselves as often as possible.

Famous for using un-foldable-downable rigid boxes swathed in acres of inch-think ribbon and tissue paper clouds The World of Dee Mahone knows eco-friendliness doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with Zsa Zsa Gabor fabulousness, vowing always to put the customer before the silly old environment.

From the moment a lucky recipient clocks the iconic packaging you can be confident that they know the amount you care for them is in direct relation to how much you have managed to spank on perfumed wax. *

* bear this in mind if you opt for the sampler sets

Dee’s inspiration

Dee’s sensory gift puts her on permanent odour alert, turning every day occurrences into golden product opportunities.

She could be running through wheat fields with a poppy in her hair on Monday and by noon the following day the kernal of a Toasted Summer Cereal Foot Serum will already be blossoming in time for Father’s Day.

Or maybe she’ll see a banker in a sharp suit and the smell of Savile Row stitching will send her passionately running back to her country kitchen to fiddle well into the night with distilled essences and profit margins.

Fragrance Building

This is a brave new concept with a smell all of its own: spray a Dee Mahone cologne onto your skin and once it has dried spray another on top, like a construction worker building an Olfactory Stimulant Tower.

It’s an ingenious way of helping you work through the whole range, taking you on a dreamy journey- destination: your next purchase.

Some may choose to build a two-story fragrance tower that merely elicits a widening of the eyes.

Others may want to go all-out for a bold skyscraper, with traces of their aura occupying rooms long after they have left.

Fragrance Stretching

How incredible to illuminate the joy on the face of a loved one with a colossal 312-wick candle, just perfect for cheering up aircraft carriers and available in a variety of odours inspired by Dee’s trips to Beirut in the 1980s.

Or new to the range are her innovative Paperwork Sprays, with the dusky topnotes of boar, undergrowth and elm, turning dreary bill-paying into a skip through Epping Forest.

And for those who still can’t spend enough, don’t forget the Special Edition festive treat Yuletide Slipper Mist, which marries the outer skin of the Frankincense leaf with the fantasy of an Elf’s body odour, to make Christmas morning an exceptional Dee Mahone experience.

*

We entreat you not to delay.

Sell the house, the dog, your fourth child and smell your way to self-validation.

The World of Dee Mahone believes that only losers stink.

‘I’ve ordered the whole Otters Bottom collection for Jools. It makes her want to make boy children for me.’ Jamie Olliver

‘ I like to smooth Limoncello Marmalade Velveteen Ganache on my hair and have Tess lick it off after a session with Bruce Forsythe.’ Vernon Kaye

‘Visionary Mushroom Cuticle Balm helped me win the election.’ Gordon Browne