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.