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.