Five Reasons Why Sloths are ideally Suited to the Modern Office Environment

1. Every office needs a slow-poke to blame missed deadlines on.

2. A sloth sleeps most of the time. If he’s asleep, at least he can’t hog the MFD to print out his kids’ party invitations, chat endlessly about who’s invited and who’s been left off the  guest list because ‘she's a biter’, or catch you out with impromptu fire drills while you’re trying to watch Shittyflute.

3. Sloths only eat leaves for lunch. This means they will not use the tiny kitchen to microwave last night’s curry leftovers, ensuring everything that is subsequently made there –  from Simon’s Micro-Chips to Maria’s tomato cup-a-soup – tastes vaguely of turmeric-infused turkey. Leaves are inoffensive lunch fodder. Leaves can get no-one’s back up.

Is it home time? 

4. Lady sloths do not engage in maddening, super-discrete, barely-there office flirtation. One will not give you a nickname, laugh too hard at your jokes or compliment you on your Spongebob cufflinks. When a sloth is interested, she will clear her throat and let out a scream so loud and blood curdling it will shatter windows and make everyone else in the weekly catch up meeting a little embarrassed, actually. You will then have your cue to ask her out for a drink on Friday.

5. A sloth has principles. He simply refuses to pretend to be working any harder than he actually is, even when the boss walks by and peers over his shoulder to see whether the ‘nose-to-the-grindstone’ pep talk he gave on Monday has sunk in. He is, in other words, the kind of slacker you could go to the pub with.

Why Wigan is Cool

As you head North into my home town of Wigan on the railway, you will pass under a bridge with the words ‘welcome to hell’ spray-painted across it. You may laugh. You may gulp. You may decide you’ll stay in platform 4’s café as you wait for your connection, rather than venturing out of the station, lest you fall deeper into the seething pit of this Northern inferno.

Your fears, I think, would be unfounded. If hell is filled with bakeries that sell meat and potato pie sandwiches as a local delicacy, then I’ll happily go on sinning. If people in hell are so friendly and helpful that they will cross the street to tell me my lace is undone, lest I trip and fall headfirst in front of the 601 bus to Leigh, then like Mark Twain, I’ll go there for the company.

The pies and the populace aside, there is one particular reason why Wigan is, in its own peculiar way, sort of heavenly: it is the least pretentious place on earth.

In this ex-mining town in the North West of England, a pie is filled with beef, spuds and gravy, not butternut squash, beetroot and quinoa. This is a place where the market’s make-up stall sells knock-off lip gloss, lip-tattoo wands, Miracle Pout Stain, Triple Thick Tint, and Diamond Plumping Collagen Effect Gel Sticks from a giant black bin labelled ‘lippie’. When I get off the train at Wigan North Western, I breathe a sigh of relief and my heart rate steadies, because I know that no-one here is going to ask me to ‘tease out that idea to a greater level of maturity,’ or tell me to develop a ‘suite of communication materials’, or say ‘you and I need to sit down outside of this room and have a conversation about that’. Wiganers will always simply say ‘let’s talk about it’.

Bullshit withers and dies here. Even industries that have spent decades completely awash with baloney, such as Hair and Beauty, have retained a little integrity in this place. Wigan hairdressers will not greet you with smiles so fixed that they may well have been caked in half a tin of Elnette. They will not drip feed you compliments. They will not give your hair ‘directional’ layers without asking. They will, however, take your bag and jacket and lob them in a cupboard, sit you down, give you a back-to-front polyester jacket to wear and say, ‘What we doing?’ while attacking your knots with a comb.  Your hair is not your crowning glory, your statement to the world or a reflection of your true self, as dozens of slimy shampoo ads would have you believe. It is hair. The same stuff that covers the floor and clogs the drains. And they will treat is as such, so help them God.

Why does this matter? Because people are bored of being lied to. People are bored of spin, of calling printers ‘multi-functional devices’ and being forced to accept ‘tall’ as a synonym for ‘small’ in coffee shops. People are tired of language being used to manipulate and fool rather than to reveal. As a nation, we are drivel-fatigued.

In this atmosphere, straight-talking towns like Wigan accidentally, wonderfully,  appear to hold the antidote.

Wigan should be marketed to the world as the spiritual home of plain English. Executives should come here on retreat when their waffle tolerance level has been exceeded and when their brains are frazzled from too much ‘greenfields thinking’ to restore themselves to sanity. I’m going to convert the old textile mill into a rehab centre to house them. The room service menu at this centre will be healingly straightforward – think cheese on toast, not Croque Monsieur; fish fingers, not locally-sourced cod strips encased in golden breadcrumbs.   I imagine these execs gazing through their open windows across the canal, listening to passing parents chastise their kids is gloriously straightforward terms, and their spirits reviving at the sound of it, as if it were birdsong.

‘Welcome to Hell’ should be scrubbed off that railway bridge and replaced with the phrase ‘it is what it is’. This phrase is not a resignation to crapness. It is a philosophical standpoint. It embodies the town’s honesty, it’s refusal to tart things up, to fool itself, or you. Wigan is all knickers and no fur coat. It is a town without lippie.

Physics

In my high school Physics lessons, I sat next to a big-haired, day-dreamy girl called Jenny. I also sat next to Jenny in art, where she spent three double lessons drawing the stubble on her portrait of George Michael, hair by hair. It goes without saying that here was a girl who needed a creative outlet. It also goes without saying that, in Physics, a creative outlet was far from forthcoming. We were allowed to draw diagrams, of course, but they had to be rendered in a particularly dry and unexciting way. Mrs. Calderbank did not want to see a n artist’s impression of a wooden toy car being zoomed across a too-short desk to prove the existence of gravity, thrust and friction. She wanted a pictoral resemblance of functionality. To Jenny, this seemed like a cruelly wasted opportunity.

Physics, as far as I could see, was alone in its complete opposition to creative expression. In Chemistry, at the very least, she could make a firework displaying using magnesium ribbon and a lighter borrowed from Joanne Rutter. In language classes, our imaginations were given free reign, particularly when we were asked to translate French into English. PE, if nothing else, gave the opportunity to devise creative ways to avoid having a shower. The most inventive thing to happen in Physics occurred when Alan Christopherson created an electric circuit using his train-track braces to make a bulb light up.

To counteract this monotony, Jenny and I regressed to childhood. We adopted a lamp from the cupboard, and named her Leila. We dressed her in a post-it-note ra-ra skirt and gave her tippex eyes and lips. We pulled threads of silk from our ties and gave her hair. We went slowly, quietly mad. Miraculously, we left with B grades, and an alarming inability to remember a single fact about the physical world that surrounds us.  

P.S. Speed equals distance over time.  

Bumble Bees and Killer Whales

Once, when I was about seven or eight, I accidentally put my hand down on a bumble bee. It really, really hurt. In fact, I have only ever felt pain like it on two occasions since: once while getting my eyebrows threaded, and once after being hit by a Renault Clio.

When I tell my bumble bee story, I generally receive one of two responses. People either say "Were you alright?' or they ask 'Did the bumble bee survive?' One could argue, on the basis of this, that there are two types of people in the world: Bug Huggers and Bug Haters. I have to admit that I am firmly rooted in the latter camp. I think my family is the cause of this. For as long as I can remember, our under-sink cupboard has been stuffed with an arsenal of fly spray and ant powder and slug pellets. I was raised to believe that it was perfectly acceptable to flick a ladybird, stand on a spider that was giving you the stink-eye, or spin 360 degrees like a champion discus thrower and put a moth out of its misery with one smack of a slipper.



In fact, it's fair to say that my family were suspicious of most creatures, both great and small. We had no problem with animals that kept their distance: killer whales splashing about in Antarctica caused us no difficulty, they could go about their business freely, but a neighbourhood cat or a squirrel or an aunt's over-excited sheepdog was usually met with distrust.  As a result, I now have no great affinity with animals at all, and when my friends debate whether Alsatians or Chocolate Labradors are more beautiful I have only one response to hand, a response that dare not speak its name in animal-loving company:  "Neither. They're dogs."

My good friend Sara, on the other hand, is a classic Bug Hugger. On a recent holiday to Menorca, she and I hired a car. As we drove, a bumble bee flew in through the open window. In this situation, my family would consider it the front passenger's moral duty to roll up the Michelin Road Map of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and whack the bee, leaving a great orange smudge above Rotherham to serve as a reminder of the crime. Sara merely opened a window, hummed serenely and gently encouraged the bee to reach its car-exiting potential.  She too believes her respect for insects comes from the teachings of her parents, "Although they did quite often kill wasps".

In spite of our differences, Sara and I are prime examples of how these two types of people can rub along perfectly well together, given a little effort. I do not judge the folk who see beauty in bottom-sniffing canines, or tragedy in squished beetles. Sara, in turn, kindly overlooks my abject cruelty.

Having said this, it is always useful to know upfront which type of person you are socialising with, particularly when eating sugary foods outdoors. If you want to find out which type of person you are speaking to, feel free to tell him or her my childhood bumble-bee story.

If anyone asks, the bee did not survive, and I was fine after a gin.



Moths beware

Mankinis

 

Here's an interesting fact about the word 'mankini': it is one of a handful of words that made it into the English dictionary back in 2008, along with the words 'prequel' and 'chugger'.

 

I have always believed that necessity is the mother of invention when it comes to the coining of new words. The word 'prequel' would not exist if Hollywood hadn't gone through a phase of dishing out back-stories to blockbusters. If we didn't hear the phrase "can I just stop you there, Smiley?" from charity muggers every time we walked down the high street, the abbreviation 'chuggers' would be unnecessary.  So why has such a, shall we say, specialised word as 'mankini' been absorbed into the language at all? Where is the demand? Who, prior to 2008, was gesticulating wildly trying to locate the word for a bright, lycra, stretchy man's thong with built-in braces?  Who can we blame for this? 

 

I cannot answer this question, and doubt you are scrawling down a list of names for me either. You may be thinking that, as everything around us has a name, there is no reason why dreadful male swimwear should be an exception. I disagree. There are plenty of things in the world that are created and sold and consumed whilst remaining nameless. The little triangles that stick the corners of your photos down in albums. The rubbery thimble-type thing I put on my finger so I can turn pages quickly in work. Most of the fiddly bits you get in polythene bags when you buy Ikea furniture.  These things are left untitled, and the world continues to turn.

 

Having said this, that rubbery thimble-type thing that I use in work has never been worn publicly by a celebrity. If Oprah Winfrey went around with one on her pinkie, it would soon be bestowed with a name. Finger Bonnet. Paper Poker. Office Accelerator 3000. The mankini was worn by Sacha Baron Cohen in a comedy film, and movie magazine editors needed a caption for the eye-watering promotional photographs. "Sacha Baron Cohen wearing a nameless obscenity" simply wouldn't do.

 

Since being labelled, mankinis have thrived, and have found their way into all good fancy dress shops, to be bought by best men and forced onto unsuspecting grooms on their stag dos in Amsterdam. My friend's husband was one of these Unfortunates. She showed us the photographs of him clasped inside one, like a forest creature in a steel trap. His eyes were shiny, his smile was panicked, and he was almost certainly angling himself to show us his best side. Perhaps having the correct word for his outfit helped him to verbalise his pain.

A Most Unsuitable Fellow

As the Great Raymondo is without a beau at the moment, it is with some dismay that the man she speaks about most to her beloved family is one ‘Victor McDermott’, Mastermind and Dictator of her blog, John Peel her Blur, Bolton-born and Cardiff-Based Man of Mystery.

As they are all anxious to see me married off to a Nice Chap, and the V-Man has a strong and noble name, my borderline nosey family have taken a somewhat impertinent interest in him.

On my most recent return home, mother wished to know his age, his relationship status and whether or not he has children. Cat ‘The Deserter’ Edwards decided, without a shadow of a hint of a fraction of a doubt that he is secretly in love with me. Father innocently mumbled ‘Helen McDermott’ while innocently preparing some bread and butter to eat in front of an innocent episode of Crime Watch.

While I admit our unusual Facebook introduction would make a wonderful, if long, answer to the question ‘so how did you two meet?’ (and it is almost worth us getting wed just to tell it) Victor, like The Four Unfortunates who preceded him as Leading Male in my life, will not be the man I meet at the top of the aisle while wearing a dress similar to that worn by Tristan’s Second Wife in ‘Legends Of The Fall’ to The Sound of Pachabel’s Canon in D with Cat the Deserter and Eleanor the Cat Collector in tow. And here are a few reasons why:

He has a partner, affectionately nicknamed  “Er Indoors”, who I suspect may be long suffering. He recently informed his 275 Facebook friends that ‘Living with ‘er indoors is like being in a recurring episode of Rising Damp.’ This kind of talk does not fit into the Great Raymondo’s dream of a Man who speaks to her and about her with Respect on all Occasions, (and allows her Outdoors once in a while, at the very least for a half-an-hour run around in the back garden in her exercise ball). ‘Er Indoors, if you’re reading this, don’t suffer in silence.

In the ‘favourite quotes’ section of his page, I found the following gem: ‘Women are great: a good one can be trained to do almost anything’. This sentiment, as my mostly female readers will agree, is just not cricket.

He seems a little confused about what motivates him. He lists his interests as “Cash” and “Love and Peace”. The Great Raymondo thinks a man who pursues both at the same time would not get anywhere fast, and would end up in a fist-gnawing, conscience-addled heap. Her Dream Fellow, indeed any bloke worth his salt would already be in possession of one and in pursuit of the other.

And, perhaps the most pertinent reason of all, Dear Readers, is that I Have Never Met the Bloke, and quite frankly, he may well be an absolute, stark raving, knife-wielding lunatic.

Perhaps I will enjoy the single life some more :-D

Victor: It's Not You, It's Me

Letting The Side Down: The Easy Way



As I have often stated on application forms and in numerous job interviews, “The Great Raymondo has excellent team-working skills, and understands the importance of working as part of a group to pursue a common goal”.

When asked to give examples, I may talk about past family situations, when I have successfully passed the gravy to my sister Cat ‘the Deserter’ Edwards, so that we can reach our common goal of getting fed; or about work situations, when I have successfully and repeatedly passed messages on To The Right Person, and have been known to use kick-ass phrases learned from Eleanor 'the cat collector’s Management-Trainer mother, such as ‘how can we find a mutually effective solution to this problem?’

There is one area of life, however, in which I am inclined to let the side down on a regular basis : when practicing team sports. When forced into a line up of 7 for netball or of 5 for hockey, my mad-sharp team-working skills seem to disappear: my once famed communication skills dissolve and I am unable to express my thoughts in phrases other than ‘I’m sorry!’ ‘I didn’t see her coming!’ or ”@*&!”; and I utterly lose sight of the common goal (or, on some occasions which I do not care to recall, I aim for the wrong one).

 

This fact was well known to fellow classmates of the Miniature Great Raymondo. In PE lessons, I was often the last to be picked for a team, and regularly found myself on the bench. In fact, my esteemed classmates would sometimes pick the bench for their teams before picking me. It was certainly much more skilled defensively, and unlike the Great Raymondo, always remembered that in netball it had to Stand Still when in possession of the ball. I always struggled with this hugely counter-intuitive rule, and after catching the ball would gallop off like a wild horse in celebration, imagining the sound of the ref’s 'foul' whistles were merely the sound of the wind as I sliced through the air like a lightning bolt.

Proficient as Goal Defence

When playing Rounders (losers' baseball) I always snapped up the position of Right field defender, and would go so far rightfield I was almost up against the railings. At this distance, and with so little to do, I would be left to Make My Own Fun, and once I took off my team’s sash to see whether or not I could tie my hands up to such an extent that I couldn’t free myself. It was at the Eureka moment when they were bound in such an ingenious way that not even Houdini could free me that the ball, (possessed by wily demons, as most balls are), decided to fly in my direction. Of course, I was not in a position to do much about it.


In conclusion, If you really wish to see the Great Raymondo let A Side Down, put her in a pair of hockey socks, stick her in a cold muddy field and tell her to have a positive mental attitude. Something deep inside her will rebel, everytime.

Fractals 101

The Great Raymondo has a strange relationship with mathematics. Like a Monet painting, it only really makes sense to me when I keep my distance from it. In high school, I always wished maths lessons were like trivia sessions, and that a student could observe the world’s intricate patterns as if they were simply paintings in an art gallery, without the bother of graph paper.


I wanted Mr Ball to simply stand in front of the class and say "the two short sides of a right angled triangle add up to the longer side" and "A square always has 360 degrees in its corners", and that it would be okay for me to simply say 'Well, isn't that odd, this is a fascinating world we live in isn't it?', write the fact down in a notebook and walk out with a new appreciation of the balance and sense within nature, feeling more at one with the cosmos and all the better for it. I never understood the need to get one's hands dirty with it, to draw triangles again and again with a blunt pencil to prove, like our parents before us, what humanity has known for thousands of years: that Pythagoras was right on the button. To the miniature Great Raymondo, there was only a point in applying maths if there was a real likelihood that Louise Arundell, on the back row of a classroom in Byrchall High School, Wigan was suddenly going to shout 'Hang on a minute, this triangle has 179 degrees in its corners!' and thus make history. The doing of maths seemed needless, and sort of ruined the fun.


Which is why it is so great to not be in school anymore. As soon as I left, I slipped into a pleasant, distant, dreamy relationship with the subject. When working on the checkouts in Asda, I would gaze face down into the scanning device and marvel at the geometric symmetry of the beams and mirrors (I was only disciplined for this once).


Nowadays, I can watch documentaries about infinity, think, 'monkeys on typewriters, eh?', store the snippet 'infinity plus one is still infinity' in a drawer in my mind labelled 'for use in Ship and Mitre pub quiz', and leave it at that. I can admire the Escher drawings on my flatmate's wall, think 'I bet he got through a few rulers in his career' and move on to asking her if she wants a cuppa. And when Victor tells me to blog about fractals, I can look the word up on Wikipedia, discover it is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole," and i can pass my time on my library desk slot by thinking up things in my own life which might be considered fractals : Music. Trees. Bars of Dairy Milk. My Father and Me (sort of)... and then deliver the lesson 'Fractals 101' to my lovely readers. Trust the Great Raymondo on this... with maths, ‘101' is all you need. (Any comments from colleagues on recent till errors are hereby unwelcome).

Great Raymondo and her Dad : a sort of fractal. 

What I Did Last Wednesday

Most Wednesday nights I go home, make pasta, talk to my flatmate about SPSS, our building’s broken lift and upcoming friends' weddings. This Wednesday, in something of a break from the norm I went to an imitation last supper where I learned about Star Trek and fed cous-cous to strangers.

I saw it posted on Chester University’s portal, where campus-based events are often advertised. These usually don’t get much more adventurous than ‘free counselling consultations’ or ‘free massage in Binks building foyer’... and as much as The Great Raymondo likes her shoulders being rubbed and her hand being held, it is only really free grub that will encourage her to make the cross-campus trek. So when I saw an advert for ‘a traditional Jewish Passover meal with symbolic food’ run by the Chaplaincy Centre, and after I had assured myself that Jewishness, Christianity and past enslavement were not prerequisites for getting my Matzah on, I pootled over to see what I could see. 

It was held in a large University board room and filled with Chaplaincy folk who I had met once before during a spiritual retreat to Wales. It is headed by two Father Ians, one of whom previously (and foolishly) entrusted me with his copy of The Screwtape Letters, and the other one, not learning from his colleague’s mistake, entrusted me with the responsibility of preparing the evening’s cous-cous (I almost went to pieces under the pressure. Goodness knows how I’d react if I had to lead my people out of slavery).

Seder meals, I soon learned, are very different from the dinner parties held at Chez Raymondo. Fingers are allowed in wine (indeed, they are positively encouraged in that direction), you can eat with your hands without saying ‘scuse fingers’ and the background music is not our usual Michael Ball at the Movies or Enya’s Greatest Hits but a jolly song called Dayenu I could almost imagine conga-ing around the board table to if it wasn’t about slavery and liberation and other such solemn things.

So for all you non-Jewish people out there, here’s what goes down at a Seder Meal.

Kaddesh: Everyone says a prayer of thanks, and drinks a first glass of wine (both fun)
Ur’chatz A big bowl of water is passed round for people to wash their hands in.( V. important when one has been shelving dusty library books all day).
Karpas Everyone dips veggies in a bowl of salt water. This represents tears, and eventual renewal
Yachatz unleavened bread gets broken and passed round.
Maggid The story of the Passover is told. It’s a good ‘un. Memories of badly coloured-in pictures of locusts from Sunday school came flooding back.
Rachtzah More washing of hands and blessing (I missed this as I was frantically looking for the kettle to start preparing my cous cous).
Motzi and Matzah blessing bread (I missed this as I was preparing my cous-cous).
Maror Dipping herbs in horseradish sauce (I missed this as I was forking my cous cous to prevent clumpage).
Shulchan Orech : The meal itself. (All I'll say is the Cous Cous was delicious, but could have used a dash of olive oil). During the meal I got chatting to my neighbour Rhys, who happens to be ‘Stuff Victor’s’ biggest fan. In another small variance on the actual Last Supper, conversation centred upon Rhys’s upbringing by Trekkie parents, his Star trek Alter Ego and what Peace is in Klingon language.  

An educational Wednesday all round.






                                    
                    The Great Raymondo's cultural education

 




  

My Invisible Aunt

An invisible Aunt, I am afraid, is not something I have ever encountered. 

I have three Aunts in my collection – Dilys, Joyce and Jean, who seem to be growing in visibility each day: on Facebook, at weddings, funerals and christenings and on Sunday afternoons at Mum's house (Sorry Mum – I know I promised not to ‘put you on the internet’ again.)

One does marathons, one does globe-trotting, one gets caught in life-or-death emergencies up icy lake-district crags with her Sheepdog.  In family crises, they group to together like Charlie's Angels and make themselves Jolly Well Visible to whoever is causing the problem.


from left to right: Jean, Joyce, Dilys.





An Aunts’ visibility correlates exactly with the extent to which they are actually Aunties. I have two half-aunts, who live their lives in far off counties, never visit and are only ever glanced upon  when I see their befuddled baby-faces in black and white photographs in old albums, taken long before the delightful fate of Aunt-dom was thrust upon them from the Gods. Yet even in their remoteness, they still manage to make themselves Visible in my life.



Half-Auntie Mary sends me a birthday card every year with a pound coin taped inside. Deducting the cost of a postage stamp that is needed to respond to her with a thank you letter, this leaves me with a gift of 74p, which is still 1p short of a packet of Starburst from the University of Chester’s vending machine. (If you’re reading this on your typewriter Aunty Mary, thank you, keep it coming).

Half-Aunty Leil makes herself visible by telephoning me and hanging up. When I return the call, she denies all knowledge and says ‘how are you, anyway dear?’. These odd little rituals are performed purely as a result of the are the inquashable auntie drive to simply say 'hello, I'm still here, and I'm your Aunt don't you know', which, I believe, kicks in with as much oomph and pazazz as the maternal instinct does in the mother.

On this subject, you may be interested to know that The Great Raymondo is about to become an Aunty to the unborn child of Cat ‘the Deserter’ and Barrie ‘The Australian Kidnapper’ Edwards (he was due a nickname) which will be born at the end of July. I am sharpening my aunty teeth by giving them forthright and sound advice on baby names (Helen for a girl, Raymond for a boy). 

 I fully expect to be as visible an aunt as ever there was. Even more visible than Aunt Agatha to Woosteror Aunt Em to Dorothy. I have my roll of coins and stack of birthday cards at the ready.

 

Goats

I like to think of farm animals as a kind of Bloomsbury Group or Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood or Studio 54 - a collection of artists, all in their own way contributing great things to society.

Sheep are the Rossetti or Woolf of the group - the leaders, the most prolific and infamous. Their list of contributions to the world is impressive:
The jumper. lamb shanks. Insipration for religion (the Lord is my Shepherd) and popular culture (Shaun) and common phraseology (mutton dressed as lamb). They are my heroes and an inspiration to many.

Cows are a slightly lesser geniuses (genei?) but also impressive… where would we be without the roast beef dinner, cow print pajamas and udderly dreadful cattle-related puns?
Even ducks, who are perhaps more craftsmen than artists, manage to deliver a mean pancake, and also star in the world’s greatest joke: (two ducks, swimming on a pond. One says 'quack'. the other says 'I was about to say that!')

Goats, however, I cannot place into my theory. Tragically for them, they remind me of those people who try their very hardest to contribute great things, to be remembered, but only succeed in producing junk, like the poor guy off Dragon’s Den who pitched his idea of a single driving glove to remind motorists which side of the road to drive on. Or Giles Brandreth.


 

                                                                                   
                                               Spot the Difference

 Here is an inventory of the goat’s achievements to date.

Goats' cheese : mingin'
Goats' milk : funky-tastin’
Billy Goats Gruff : an okay fairy tale, but it's no Chicken Licken.
The goatee beard... the worst of the lot. Beards should always look accidental.
Just to complete my theory, I once ate goat stew when on one of my many forrays into Africa. They even taste like sheep gone wrong.

Perhaps if there were no sheep or cows, we wouldn’t have to compare a goat’s attempts at art to his vastly superior contempories, and he could come into his own on his own and shine on a global stage. If there were no sheep, perhaps the religious would be chanting ‘the Lord is my Goatherd’ and we’d all be wearing goat-string vests in summer. But sadly, it’s all relative, in the cultural hotbed of the farmyard as everywhere else.
 
Still, God loves a trier.

Rhubarb and Its Effect on Global Warming

The great Raymondo knows three things about rhubarb :

1. It is grape-flavoured celery.
2. It’s the kind of thing no-one under 40 cooks with. One has to be a certain distance over the hill to even consider it a viable ingredient for anything.
3. It is the word most often repeated by extras in Hollyoaks, when they are attempting to emulate real conversation. (Seriously – watch their lips).
All fascinating facts, obviously, however not very helpful in attempting to decipher how far this innocent looking vegetable is actually to blame for the meltdown of the planet.
With this in mind I asked my flatmate who, as a graduate with honours from the University of Q.I, gave me the following bona-fide scientific facts:

When rhubarb is filmed, and the film is sped up, one can hear it creaking.
There is a place in existence today called the Rhubarb triangle. It is not a place where planes full of rhubarb mysteriously disappear, (if such planes existed, rhubarb’s effect on global warming would be happily obvious), but three towns over in Yorkshire which specialise in growing the stuff.

These growers of rhubarb play a cruel trick on it. They put it under intense sunlight, then shove it in a dark corner. This peculiar form of vegetable torture disorientates the stuff so much that it stops growing leaves altogether, and all its energy goes into its crumbleable stemmy bit.
Using my mighty B grade in GCSE Biology, I can now triumphantly declare that, when rhubarb Has No Leaves, it cannot do its photosynthesis, and this will increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, thus not helping the Global Warming issue one jot.

Put another way, with the help of my flatmate who also has a Sciencey degree from Liverpool University where she did statistics and stuff :

'there is a significant negative correlation between the number of rhubarb leaves in existence and the amount of carbon in the atmosphere'

Leafless Rhubarb : not doing its bit.

So there you go.

Alternative Mother's Day

Mother’s day, in my family, runs a little something like this:

The Great Raymondo turns up on her Mother and Dear Father’s doorstep with a card bought the day before, a bunch of flowers from Tesco and a half-hearted offer to hoover.

What Mothers Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing

My sister Catherine 'The Deserter' Edwards will follow and ram a 4th car onto Mother’s two-vehicle drive, with a bigger bunch of flowers, a husband, a rabbit called Rufus on a lead and a half-hearted offer to dust the living room. We will drink tea prepared by Mother. Someone will ironically sing two lines of Mama by the Spice Girls.

This will be followed by church, where the vicar will inevitably talk about Mary as the epitome of Motherhood – self sacrifice, endurance of trials, unfailing love. We will all patronisingly applaud our Mothers. Mum will smile at the sentiment but her eyes will tell another story.

We will return home where mum will prepare a Sunday roast, listen to arguments about unresolved childhood mysteries (Was it Catherine or me who scraped that rude message about our neighbour onto the bonnet of Mum’s red Micra?) and she will ask me, again, if I would ever like to become a Mother. The Great Raymondo will repeat, for the 20th year in a row, that ‘reproduction is self annihilation’ and take another bite of her roast beef. Pregnant sister will cackle.
We will play Scrabble. I will win.

The cards and flowers will stay up for exactly one week, after which they will be shoved in a sock drawer inside cards from previous years.

This routine, as you may imagine, is getting a little old. Perhaps mother feels the same, but is keeping schtum in a spirit of Mary-esque Motherly endurance.


Here’s how I’m hoping 3rd April will go down this year:

Morning: Sister and I will arrive at family home. She will park car on road, sensibly.

We will go to church. Vicar will tell congregation that Mary should have stood up for herself and not taken any rubbish her from unruly children, Mother will raise her hands and shout ‘testify.’

There will be zero attempts at allaying guilt for a lifetime of demands with offers of housework. Instead, the Raymonds and Edwards’ will go out for a pleasant round of paintballing.





The question of who scraped the rude message about our neighbour into the bonnet of Mum’s car will be decided once and for all by paintballs-at-dawn. I will win. Sister will tearfully confess.


Mum will enjoy the experience so much she will start a paintballing group within the University of the Third Age.


In the evening, Dad will cook his famous steak, chips and Colman’s peppercorn sauce. He will remember to flip the chips over halfway through.

When asked if I ever want children I will answer ‘hmm, yes, maybe,’ to avoid Mother utterly despairing of more Grandchildren.

We will play Scrabble. I will win.

Here’s hoping. Happy Mother’s day.

Why I Believe in Fairies

Because I was one. In a primary school production of Sleeping Beauty, I played the green fairy, and was allowed to bless the crib holding the Baby Beauty with my little spangly wand.

Blatant Fairy Amazon Link :)


 I had a green vest, a white underskirt with green bows sewn on, and my one line - of which I was hugely proud - was ‘she will grow up to be healthy’. And lo and behold, she did grow up to be healthy, apart from that 100 years she spent asleep which is probably more than medical professionals recommend, no matter how hard she’s been worked by the evil step-mother/queen/grandmother (I forget which).

Reason number 2 : As a resident of Liverpool, home of raucous hen-dos and badly put-together fancy dress costumes,  I see them every Friday night on the way home from my weekly shop at Tesco Express (don’t laugh – it’s their quietest time). They congregate on Matthew Street, complete with tinsel wands, sparkly wings and knee socks, and occasionally with facial hair and handfuls of leaflets for two-for-one shots at Baa Baa that they thrust in my direction, despite the fact that I am laden with carrier bags full of loaves and sardines. They are usually much louder and lairier than one would expect such delicate supernatural beings to be, but still, seeing is believing as they say, and I have seen with Mine Own Eyes.

The Great Raymondo on her way home from Tesco

I am not alone when it comes to believing in fairies. Mr Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame believed he had some living down the bottom of the garden between his compost heap and his petunias and there are plenty of people you’ll come across at Mind Body and Spirit Fayres who will agree with him wholeheartedly and try to sell you squares of porcelain with their footprints in. If however, Monsieur Doyle and nice ladies in flowing silk scarves are not strong enough witnesses for you, why not try one of these little ways to test their existence?

1. Yank out a tooth (preferably a non-essential one, a lazy incisor or another), put it under your pillow, and sit and wait for a 50p piece strapped to the back of a little sprightly being to float in through your bedroom window.
2. Drink a glass of Absinthe, sit back, and wait for a little sprightly being to dance in through your bedroom window (it worked in Moulin Rouge).
3. Clap your hands really really loudly chanting ‘I do believe in fairies’ and see what you get (besides vibrating palms).

DO you ever think : What if it's me?

Here are some occasions when the Great Raymondo thinks ‘What If it’s Me?’

·         When playing the lottery.

·         When someone says ‘what’s that smell ?’– ever so slightly paranoid as I am.

·         When people talk about who is next in line for the throne after Harry

·         When Police Cars go past with their sirens on, even if I haven’t stolen from TK Maxx that day (arg, gnash, guilt, perhaps they found footage from two-years ago etc etc)

·         When someone says ‘who’s round is it’ while looking right at me and shaking their glass. This is closely followed by me looking at my handful of bacon fries and whistling.

·         When looking for the cause of it all going wrong. This is followed by a cold, dismissive laugh and a shake of the head.

‘What if it’s me?’ like ‘I should really call my mother’ is a thought which occurs to many, so I have cast my net out into the world of my friends and drawn in some interesting responses:

Louise: What if it was me in the Japanese earthquake?

Tom : When I am looking around at the mouthbreathing swill that makes up the world around me, munching contentedly on tasteless excrement, grinning idiotically with their loved-up lifemates, reaping the fiscal rewards of an inanely materialistic culture sometimes I wonder if it’s me? What if I’m insane and they’re the sane ones?

Mum : (when a little girl) What if it’s me who gets to marry Prince Charles? (FYI, it wasn’t).

Jen :  I can’t think of anything. Je suis rubbish.

‘What if it’s me?’ is a question which can land on you in a state of joy, hope, horror, despair or pride. It is the question which accompanies all emotions. When it turns out that, in actual fact, it Is You, the question ‘And What Are You Going To Do About It?’ is the trickier one to answer, and the one that will ultimately define you.

And I’m sure my Mum would have made an excellent Princess, and wouldn’t have stood for any carrying on with Camilla nonsense.



Not my mother



Life Drawing

Life Drawing is another area of this fine world that I have No Experience Of. My drawings at school were always described as erratic by my art teacher Mrs Heaton, and to my recollection I have never drawn anything from life other than a pot plant during one rainy art lesson in year 9 with my Beloved Friend Jennifer Valerie. (We subsequently snuck out to help the caretaker litter-pick on the back field as we made the joint decision that it would be altogether More Interesting).

My father, an excellent artist, is a connoisseur of the more risqué types of life drawing, aka, the naked type. He is currently enthusiastically rummaging around in a box of pastel drawings that he just dragged out of a dusty corner of his office in an attempt to find some of his favourites, done as a member of the prodigious Ashton Art Group. The top three are, in descending order :

Naked 20 something lady in nothing but a hat
Naked twenty something lady in nothing
Naked twenty something lady with back to us and bottom shaped like peach.


So far it all seems rather glamorous, however, I am assured that the world of life drawing is not all Jack, Rose and the hope diamond. Men have stormed out when faced with male posers in possession of multiple rude piercings (Dad’s art teacher’s advice to ‘always draw the human form starting from the middle’ proving too difficult to follow)… and a lesser artist once threw in the charcoal when asked to draw a voluptuous 70 year old lady among purple umbrellas and scarves, with all her goods on display like a Greengrocer on Market day. 'I don't know where to start,' she apparently mumbled bewilderedly.

Life Drawing : Not Always Like This.

Just like life, and boxes of chocolates, it seems that life-drawers are never aware of what they’re gonna get before they walk into the church hall and turn on the heater. It’s all part of the fun.

All things considered, Life drawing seems like a perfectly nice, healthy way to keep fathers out of trouble. However, it is not something the Great Raymondo would consider participating in, either on the pencil-holding side or the lying-on-table-borrowed-from-the-Brownies-and-trying-not-to-blink side. One would make her blush and the other would make her shiver. She is not a fan of doing either.