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.

Timothy Spall : Snog marry Avoid?

Avoid.

Next.

Three Things To Do With Three Spare Minutes

As a Library Assistant, I often have a spare minute or two, or three. When these spare minutes present themselves, I use them in much the same way as anyone else would who has access to a computer – Facebook, blog writing, looking up my namesake on Google, (I was a 1960s stage actress with bad hair) and looking on Round the World trips.com to find my dream itinerary. Mississippi via Russia via New Zealand anyone? When one does not have access to a computer, though, there are other ways to keep oneself occupied.

Doodle. My last doodle was of a girl with an exploding brain. A colleague saw it. It was embarrassing.

Come up with an idea for Dragon’s Den. Share it with someone. Ask for theirs. Tell them you wouldn’t invest, not for all the tea in China. Invent an alternative to tea in China (this may take a minute and a half).

I'm out.

Invent a word... Derivativity. Fetishistic. Chaese.

And post them it in the comments box below, complete with definition. That’s all I can muster I’m afraid, Victor, I have books to shelve.

Everybody Loves Raymond... but Why?

A little know fact : The Raymonds of the world have a clan meeting every 7th November in Newton-le-Willows Labour Club. Some regular attendees are Raymond Briggs, Raymond Chandler and Ray Charles off Corrie and Red Dwarf and yours truly, Helen raymond, Blogger Extraordinaire. During our meetings (chaired by my Father) we sit around a circular table and discuss issues affecting Raymonds today. We are a very close knit, secretive bunch, and people who have chosen to leave the Raymond clan (such as my deserter Sister Cat 'Edwards') are treated in much the same way as Amish people who choose to leave their community. There is a ceremonial stripping of the Raymond badge (which we all wear under our clothes), and the ex-Raymond is cast out into the cold Autumn rain.

 I may get in trouble for revealing this highly secretive document, but here is last year's meeting's Agenda:

Apologies for absence:

Ray Winstone

Agenda items:

1. Usher is a Raymond.... We must spread Awareness

2. Myley Ray Cyrus wishes to join the clan. Associate membership suggested?

3. Why Does everybody love Raymond?

Any other business.

This last agenda item generated a very interesting discussion.

Raymond off 'Everybody Loves Raymond' asserts it is because he has funny glasses.

Raymond Briggs says it is because he can draw Santa Claus Dead Good.

Raymond Chandler has a new reason every year, but mostly he says it's because of his extraordinarily economical use of language and the way he can evoke a mood using only a few words.

I can only speak for my particular proud lineage, and  tell you that everybody loves us because, put simply, we are infinitely loveable. My family descend from a knight who came over to the UK with his friend William the Conqueror in 1066 (the rest of this blog is b*****ks, but this is a true fact).

His name was Raymond Le Noir. Since then, we have been a valiant, spear-forward, helmet-cocked-to-the-world kind of bunch, proudly living up to our name's meaning: 'Protector/Counsellor' (just ask my Dear friend Sally Haddock).

Raymond le Noir... 2nd from left on bright yellow horse

 If you like what you have read, and wish to become a Raymond, please contact our Secretary Ray Charles to find out about Raymonds Available For Marriage and Raymond Conversion Classes, starting again in the Spring.

A character from my past

As she seems to be becoming a recurring theme within this blog, I thought it might be an idea to give you a fuller introduction to the cat-collecting, food-theorising Shoe Queen of Coventry - my dear friend Eleanor B.

Eleanor took me under her wing at University when I was a hapless eighteen year old armed with a Primark duvet and a frying pan i used as a base for burning candles. Not exactly the best at looking after myself and cluelessly clogging the freezer with McCains boxed goodness on a regular basis - (the phrase 'do you even own a plate?' was uttered to me by a perplexed neighbour) - and happily bloating out of my early 2000's student wear, this friendly blonde young Readingonian taught me what a bagel was, what makes Aersomith awesome and why we don't cook pizzas in their plastic wrappings (something about potential death).

As she is very much a character from my present I will stop short of dishing the absolute dirt on her and keep it pleasant light and clean.

A creative writing teacher once told me that the best way to sum up a person is by writing about the things they carry with them, and tell a few choice anecdotes illustrating their idiosyncracies. So here goes.

Eleanor carried with her:

A mini disc player (the only person i know who ever possessed such a contraption)

keys to an old Ford with a wing mirror which fell off every time a breeze crossed over Pendle Hill (Duct tape manufacturers – up your game).

A wallet with a picture of cats in

A phobia of the phrase ‘But you have one just like it’ when out shopping.

Anecdotes:

When out clubbing at University, and young men did the dancing-behind-girls-they-fancied thing (whether this mating ritual is still in existence is something I’d like to find out from someone of the younger generation) she would casually take the gentleman to one side and ask whether they really thought that was the most appropriate way to approach a girl they were attracted to. This was rarely met with a coherent reply.

We once swapped bedrooms for a week after a spider crawled under her bed and we didn’t see where it went. (After a childhood incident with a spider, pincers and a sneaker, this phobia had taken a very firm grip).

Nowadays she is encouragingly displaying many characteristics of a Proper Grown Up. She has her own flat, embroidered oven gloves, and a car with two fully operational wing mirrors... but will still punch, kick and gauge her way to the front of a Rage Against the Machine gig.  

My little bag of contradictions :-)

me and she