Not quite the cocktail set

drinkers (4), originally uploaded by Kelteek.

Lately, I spotted these two anorak clad lovelies, skulking around the church, drinking cans of beer and plastic flagons of cider. In half an hour they get through everything they have bought in their carrier bags and then ride off on their bicycles slightly wobbling.

I quite understand as I have had some friends who loved drinking. Easily getting through a bottle of gin every night, our cellar looked like Baby Jane’s. In pubs, we put a double gin in each pint of cider (it’s called ‘sin’ and tastes okay but gives you a rough hangover). Others were complete wusses. One ex’s mother, having hidden for a couple of hours between two single beds during a lightning storm, emerged looking fearful and I suggested a stiff drink. ‘Of water?’ she asked… ‘Yes Mary, a stiff drink of water!’ (Roll eyes to Heaven)

Likewise, Richard’s family are not big drinkers. His brother once asked for a Cherry B in a Cardiff pub – the barmaid looked at him in disgust and said they hadn’t served it since 1973. He thought Baileys was a tad strong and put a lovely mixer of water in it – looked like a small jism on the rocks to me.

Gramps on the other hand once decided to make a shandy and added to his beer what he thought was lemonade but turned out to be decanted cointreau (no my family do not normally use empty lemonade bottles as decanters). It tuned cloudy and tasted rotten but it was alcohol so he drank it. Nice one! My Nan used to put cointreau in my tea/coffee when I first went to live with her to help me cope with anxiety at meeting people.

However they didn’t drink that often so beers bought for some celebration would be proffered each Christmas and some, well past the glug-by-date, smelt like alcoholic jam when opened. No, he didn’t drink this – we wouldn’t let him.

I feel like a large drink after spending the entire day making up Ikea bookcases (we now have a veritable library at home so shhhh!). Richard had a brief moment of panic when he got a splinter and then wasted half an hour looking for tweezers - he’s not tough. He’d rather have been at the tennis club where he claims there is a pint of cider with his name on waiting for him. The government threaten new health warnings on alcohol and one punter emailed the BBC to ask ‘What next: warnings on the glasses?’ I said the warning on Richard’s pint would say ‘Rob knows you’re drinking. He knows what you’re thinking!’ That would mess with his mind after a couple of pints of Strongbow.

What’s your favourite health warning:

• Drinking can get you pished!
• Alcohol could make a dog seem attractive!
• Drinking and driving could damage your car!
• Add yours…

Spoonful of sugar (and a whole heap of shit!)

Spoonful of sugar, originally uploaded by wit.

Richard gets in at 10.30pm. He’s been at work since 10am and so I have been alone all day with the geriatric gnome and the cat (who glides blackly around the corridors like a furry Mrs Danvers beckoning silently for anyone to follow her and fill her bowl). I’d like my bowl filled too and Daddy has only had toast. It takes about an hour for him to prepare each slice of toast and the whole house is full of the smell of burnt offering and crumbs.

Hearing me cough and splutter against the smoke, he stopped halfway through the sacrificial toasting to ask for help to reset his TV box. I have now stopped explaining what to do – he doesn’t care to listen as the TV company is obviously against him. At least he no longer rings NTL at the drop of a hat to complain. He once rang to tell them the Disney channel logo was in the way of the programme he was watching and could they remove it for him.

Now it’s late and Daddy Shortlegs doesn’t want to take his medicine. He is always confused about what he should take and when – he goes through various complicated mathematical set ups to try and decide whether or not he’s dosed himself. We gave him a medidose box into which you can sort seven days worth of medication for easy use but his need to fiddle with anything in reach, coupled with the 'what day is it?' saga meant that we were on a hiding to nothing. The box sits discarded among old TV guides and boxes of Bakewell tarts.

‘Have I finished these?’ He proffers a box at us despite the fact Richard’s head is in the fridge.
It’s not in the gas oven because we have gone electric having come home once too often to smell gas and find the hob rings alight or worse not alight but turned on. We sit in the dark with open windows wondering how long before we can turn on a light switch without blowing up the neighbourhood. One of Daddy’s aliases is “Lord of the Rings”… and in the Darkness bind them. He is a bind!

‘These, here… have I finished them?’
‘No, you’re just starting that one today’
‘This one?’
‘Yes. The box is full’
‘So I take this one tomorrow?’
‘No, today – have you taken any today?’
‘Yes… did I?’
‘I haven’t given you any. I was out early.’
‘Oh but have I taken them? No?’

This is a daily conversation and you can see why one might want to put one’s head in an oven. I’d like Richard to put a cake in the oven but we can’t all have what we want!

Thoroughly Modern Silly (or Truly Madly Dippy!)

His shingles have been exacerbated by his new routine of spraying the carpet in his room with an industrial strength flea spray. Despite the fact the cat does not have fleas (we’ve checked), he claims he is being bitten (it’s actually the first signs of shingles but does he let anyone look!?)

The spray comes in a toxic yellow canister and says the room must be well ventilated but he never opens a window – god forbid fresh air should disturb his funk. He stays in the room with the foul chemicals and forgets the bit about hoovering up the residue – Richard vacuumed when he was in Birmingham and said he believed that he hadn’t cleaned that room since he moved in there last year. Well he’s very busy – the telly doesn’t watch itself, you know!

Contained within his own environment we are not happy about his spraying but having explained the risks it is his decision. However, he has now gone one stage further.

I get tired after work and take a little nap. In my dreams I hear a sort of “puff piff” sound. It mingles in my dream and then I hear it more loudly and wake up. It is pitch-black. I lie still but can still hear the “piff puff” noise. Suddenly a blacker hump rises from the foot of the bed.

'Jack?!'
'Oh you’re in.'
'Jack, what are you doing?'
'I was spraying the carpets' (I am two floors above his room so he has made one hell of a climb just to poison me!
'In the dark? At 10pm!' I say as I look at the luminous figures on the clock through a mist of flea spray.

I feel like Miss Dorothy battling Mrs Meers in Thoroughly Modern Millie. Is he trying to kill me or just knock me out for the white slave trade – I can’t see a wicker hamper anywhere so perhaps I am safe. In a permanent tribute to Beatrice Lillie, I imagine driving knitting needles through his head as he wombles off and I’m sure I can hear him say “Oh, pook!”

Like a fat super hero who can’t get into his lycra anymore, I crawl naked towards the door panting ‘Must get… oxygen…’ I'll check the flea spray can for details of kryptonite later.

Bird flu - stock up on Hensip Max!

bird flu, originally uploaded by Kelteek.

Wales is going to the dogs – or the birds? On top of the TB outbreaks in Swansea and Cardiff we now have Bird Flu in North Wales. The acting Public Health bod for North Wales is quoted (by the BBC no less) as saying "There's no need to panic". It would appear NPHS are recruiting Dad's Army to run our health service. Stock up on provisions and stay in doors, I say as "We're doomed!".

Perhaps it’ll carry Daddy off, the old Buzzard. It’s not the word I want to use today but it’s close. He was spotted in the kitchen today, stumbling out of the bathroom with his open dressing gown flapping behind him. His shorts were missing and on display were some spring bulbs that wouldn’t win prizes at the Royal Horticultural Show. Even if they sprouted and came into flower I doubt any of the blue rinsed old ladies trotting around the petunias would pay much interest. "They don't like it up 'em Mr Mainwaring, sir!"

laid back lad

tree fellers (57), originally uploaded by Kelteek.

I pop home at lunch time to find the tree fellers are working shirtless and the younger one, fresh from yesterday’s nap, is now having another kip on a shredder – it’s a hard life in the council! The shredder also seems not to be working and has its top off – life imitating art?! Can I convince you this photograph is for my farm machinery project… no?

Uniforms do not make all men equal

Uniforms do not make all men equal, originally uploaded by Kelteek.

Daddy Shortarse can rivet you to the spot (with boredom not fascination) when he goes on about the war. Gramps told tales of how he was given his new white uniform and thought he was off to somewhere hot (he hated the cold) – was it Africa, somewhere southern – no, he was off to Greenland!! He talked about the tricks played on other sailors and the way they cheated at cards to get extra rations. My Nan’s stories are about stockings and bubble gum, parties and how they made do and mend but had such fun! She talks of leaving Belfast and staying at Ballynahinch where they lived in a converted farm shed so my mother was born in a stable.

Jack likes to talk about death – how many died, where they died, who died. Why they died (general’s foolishness) and why they shouldn’t have died. He writes cards to his brother who died in WWII (and to his wife who died 15 years ago). It ain’t cheerful.

I found this picture in his collection and thought they might have been the first Goonie Regiment – what an odd bunch. They’re not Top Gun – in fact I’m not sure the lift goes to the top floor in most cases!? Some have only one eyebrow – the one with glasses in the front is a hoot (try looking at him without pissing yerself in the full sized photo on Flickr!). Perhaps they have packed their wits in the bags about their necks – all they need is a label saying “Please return to the circus if found”.

Jack’s squad are here and seem to be having a lot of fun in their outsize undies which should be labelled “dangerous when wet”. Jack is seated in the front wearing white shorts. Funny how he dwells on the negative when he obviously had such fun in Africa. Well, I would have fun with this bunch...

Diet Coke Break

Builders@Canton House, originally uploaded by Kelteek.

The builders are also hard at work outside my office - is it a conspiracy of noise pollution? Will I never get to have another phone conversation without shouting. Thinking 'if you can't beat them, join them' I take my tea and sit on the window sill watching the plasterer. His movements are slow and languorous - there's something mesmerising about plastering.

Within minutes I am joined by the rest of the workforce. I sip Pepsi Max, and nibble at yoghurt covered coconut clusters and chocolate covered raisins. Do these and the vegetable extract in my soda count as three of my five-a-day? Our Diet Coke break is broken by the ringing phones.

I consider opening a website - a live updated directory of where you can spot and photograph good looking workmen with few clothes on www.buff_builders (wanna join?). Perhaps each county council could run one, charge the populace for snapping time and then give us a break with council tax. www.municipal_men?

Fit for purpose (they're fit all right!)

carpet fitter bloke, originally uploaded by Kelteek.

As we get ready, the men from Allied Carpets arrive to finish laying our new oak floor in the first floor living room. Despite Daddy Shortlegs being instructed a number of times about where to direct the fitters when they arrived, Richard thankfully nipped home yesterday and stopped them putting it down in the kitchen – they had already taken off the plinths and were mixing the latex screed and only Jack’s in-the-wayness had held them up long enough to prevent any lasting cock up. He was standing in the kitchen, mostly (but not entirely) dressed and seemed totally unperturbed by Richard’s shrieks. He was far more interested in breaking into the fridge.

‘Why… huff puff… why’s it not… arseholes… for god’s sake! Why won’t this open?‘ And it wouldn’t open, no matter how hard and fast he tugged at the horizontal steel bars that will surely never outlast him. Richard again shows him how to open the fridge explaining new fangled ideas like hinges. Then he shows him how to set the microwave (again) and finally reminds him that we have a dishwasher (a once daily task) and he doesn’t need to splash water over the new oak worktops. Daddy grumbles off stage left having ignored the warning not to splash both in the kitchen - and we note in the bathroom - so Richard shoos the fitters upstairs and takes the mop to the bathroom room floor to work out some frustration and clear up after Ol’ Man River.

Today I am spoilt for choice – watch the carpet fitters crawling on all fours with bottoms in the air or stare through the window at council workies swinging through the trees like Chainsaw Massacre meets Groundforce. Then I remember I work for a living and am parcelled off to the office.

Sleeping Beauty

tree fellers (2), originally uploaded by Kelteek.

I awake to find that they’re lopping the trees in my crescent – which means a better view across the crescent although the view of council workers with power tools is pretty alright! The noise is deafening and adds to the workers banging away next door. Then there is a nice bit when it all stops and the young man has a nap in his council van while his mate runs off for sandwiches at Tesco.

Richard wakes up as the cat treads on his bladder demanding a breakfast. He is taking his dad to the doctors with his leg (as if there was an option to leave it home). We didn’t get to talk last night as we were both out drinking with separate groups of people – absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.

Check your bulbs

bare chested builder with tattoo in progress (a), originally uploaded by Kelteek.

Daddy Shortlegs walks crookedly through the new kitchen, tutting about the unfinished floor and wincing and puffing on each step as his shingles play up (one of his legs is now double in size and looks like the spotty donner kebab in our local chippy window) – he’s not one to suffer in silence. Not that there is much silence at present. The workers are back in next door and banging away from 8:30am (don’t make up your own stories!). The heritage skip is still outside the house – now grade 3 listed as it has been there so bloody long. Daddy Shortlegs wants to know when all the work will be finished – as I haven’t any control on the builders in my own home, I have no idea how to predict the cowboys next door.

Later, I pop into his room to make sure he has everything he needs – sitting like a terry towelling clad Miss Haversham, he doesn’t notice I am behind him for some while, then takes another five minutes to find the remote control (cue furious muttering despite the bloody thing being absolutely in front of him and at arms reach!). He placed it there but obviously it is a free range remote control and likes to roam, grazing on the crumbs of toast he seems to manufacture from the very pockets of his dressing gown… there are toast crumbs about even when he’s not had any toast.

Despite the glorious sunshine outside, he has the curtains tight shut as sunlight would affect the TV screen and god forbid anything should destroy his enjoyment of Highlander and SGI. He has a fan heater on full blast and I sigh at the sight of four lamps burning away all now with ugly naked bulbs as the shades blocked the light – who understands. I move around to talk to him and notice he has his own ugly naked bulbs dangling about as he is sitting sans cullottes. Weeuughhhhh!!

To take away that image here is a photo of next door’s builder checking his own bulbs are ready for Spring! Perhaps he’s on the phone to Charlie Dimmick about his dangly water feature?

Homo Improvements

A quick sojourn to B&Q among the ‘happy’ heterosexuals who browse at power tools and radiator fittings, argue about tiles and shout at their nagging children. We are looking for screws and lampshades. We find packs of six inch nails which were my Gramps preferred method of BIY (botch-it-yourself!). He used to hang up pictures on these monster sized nails that looked like they would be surplus to requirement at the best of crucifixions. Once when my Aunt Violet was redecorating her house in Belfast, they took out a nail from her wall and apparently a mirror fell down from where it was hanging in Katie’s house next door. Was it the vibrations of the workmen? No, the mirror had been hanging on the other end of one of Gramp’s nails!

I give up very quickly in B&Q and make for the exit and the ice-cream van that I can see doling out buttery-flavoured lard with flake and nuts. Prevented from achieving the goal of a ninety–nine, I am accosted by a woman undertaking a survey. She is mid-fifties and dressed head to foot in black with too much gold jewellery. She is wearing one of Sybil Fawlty’s wigs, only she has dyed-it-herself with a shade of dark red that has turned the blonde bits a hue that we can only describe as … well, beetroot and looks a tad Raisa Gorbachev. The Goth Gorbachyova look is not one that works for her!

As a byway - Violet's best friend is called Olive. There's no "funny" stuff abut the relationship - they may be a colour scheme but they're not a couple. These sisters are not doing it for themselves.

Tennis elbow

, originally uploaded by vincentgr.

Richard is warming up for tennis this afternoon – he’s warming up his right elbow by lifting cups of tea to his mouth in preparation for sitting in the tennis club lifting cider in the same way. Most people have the labels of Slazenger and Adidas on their kit – Richard’s preferred brand is Strongbow!

If all the players at his club looked like this I would go watch, but they are usually called Sue or Margaret and have a racket in one hand and a pension book in the other. Foot faults result in falls and fractures and instead of new balls most are waiting for new hips. Playing each other in doubles, the older women are known as the Awesome Foursome. Richard says they know about their nickname as someone said it in their hearing - I guess they must have been standing very very close!

What’s in your Thermos?

It’s an old joke: What’s a thermos for? Keeping hot things hot and cold things cold. So what’s in yours? Two cups of coffee and a choc ice!

Gramps used to have three flasks. They had labels on, made from masking tape onto which he had penned the letters ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’. Into Flask ‘A’ went any water inadvertently boiled by my Nan if she put more than the required amount in the kettle for the constant cups of tea Gramps required to keep his fighting weight at about 6 stone! Each cup was accompanied by half a jam sandwich (and sometimes half a polo mint).

‘A’ was the hot flask. ‘B’ had the warm but not hot water that may require another boil for tea or could be combined with the coolish ‘C’ flask for a quick wash or shave. Each time water was boiled the contents of the flask would be downgraded - the water from 'A' went to 'B' and so on! God forbid we should have had central heating or a combi-boiler. Gramps was the first environmentalist by accident!!

He loved saving money – tinkering with cars to get extra mileage per gallon (he didn’t) or wearing layers and layers to save on heating although he was constantly cold. Last week, we found a picture of him on the beach with his clothes off and were all shocked as this must have been a one-off rarity. God knows how long it took him to clamber out of his donkey jacket and overalls (he always dressed in Old Labour mode).

Richard thought I was joking about the flasks till he visited my grandparents for the first time and saw them lined up next to the sink. We thought they should have had pride of place on his coffin when he died. Tea came with Marvel powdered milk – bleuugh! Richard also tried the delights of my Nan’s lunch. We had chops that by their size and texture had come from a mummified temple cat in ancient Egypt. I asked what the accompanying stuffing was… she said ‘What stuffing?’ ‘The grey heap here’ I indicted with my fork. ‘That’s cauliflower’, she replied. ‘Cauliflower stuffing?’ ‘No, just cauliflower’.

You think Can’t cook, Won’t cook is bad – try Can’t cook, Will cook!

Do I look like a bloody Care Bear!?

Care Bear STARE
Originally uploaded by Fustigatic.

The social work students are about to leave and find jobs. We discuss interview techniques including what not to do… like the guy who came for the admin/finance post and mentioned he couldn’t add figures, type, and didn’t even know what a mail merge meant. ‘Is that going to be a problem?’

Or the older woman who thought an ability to use chalk in her former teaching post would be an advantage in outreach with young prostitutes as she could draw diagrams on the pavement to illustrate sexual health – she was looking to get her handbag snatched for her pains!

More than once people said they were quite confidential – you either are or you aren’t! They usually gave examples (with names and details) of people they had worked with and whom they had never talked about. D’oh!

One former student topped all these. He missed induction training as he was shacked up in Canada with someone he’d met on the internet. He began by telling me he’d always been a loner, unhappy and on the outside of things until he discovered a web group for large hairy gay men like himself. A little too much information you may think – but then, still out of breath from climbing the stairs and dripping in sweat, he followed it up with ‘they’re called Bears and I find them really sexy. Are you a Bear?’ A little shocked; I blinked and answered ‘No, just a fat bloke!’

Soup de jour

Only a few brief visits from the terry-towelling terrorist today. Once in full dressing gown and once half-exposed as well as a brief reprise when Richard gets home to make sure I have given him the message about the cream he wants. Despite it being 10 minutes past midnight he wants the cream now. There’s half a tube in the packet he showed us but…

The ointment is called Eurax so I suppose it has a dose of urea in it – cream of piss. As an ointment it’s effective but as a soup de jour it’s ghastly.

Bunch of Charlies

Molitva
Originally uploaded by Me & my life!.

This bunch actually won Eurovision. The backing singers appear to be channelling Charlie's Angels while their lead singer is channelling who...?

• Roy Orbinson
• Elvis Presley
  
• Rosie O'Donnell
• Fred Flintstone
  

Perhaps all four at once; no wonder she has no room to tuck in a shirt. Are they all touching her like a table at a seance... or trying to ensure she keeps her arms down not to show the sweat rings on her rented tuxedo.

They take forever to show up on stage to get their prize and we surmise the lovelies have got their hair entangled or at least put someone's eye out with their curls that appear to be sprayed into steel springs. Girls in my school went for this plastic flick look back in 1977! Even my Nan knew when to back away from the Elnette bottle and she was a devotee of the lacquer to the end.

Wogan calls them prison wardresses but I have a hint they may be Beauty School Drop-outs. Or perhaps they failed an audition to be a Cadbury's Flake slut... their mouths are in that 'Oooh Chocolate' moment. Hers is in a more realistic 'chocolate now' shape!!!

Bring Back Katie Boyle!

They arrive at five. After a two-hour drive Daddy Shortlegs is forced to seek immediate solace in the toilet. He pushes his way past us inexorably like a half-cut lava flow as he makes for the bathroom. Nothing stands in his path and we are buffeted out of his way. He wombles out to wash his hands in the brand spanking new kitchen sink until I point out there is a sink in the bathroom he has just left – cue furious muttering as he removes himself to his bedroom complaining about the lack of heating. The fan heater goes on full blast and the national grid starts to whirr with the effort. The regime has been restored.

We decide on pizza and Eurovision. I sit and knit my brows like a virtual Madame Defarge as the UK tumbrel heads towards nul points! Thank God for Terry Wogan who remains cheerful but where is good old Katie Boyle when you need her? The half time programme is a dire mish-mash of circus skills that would be moved along in any self-respecting festival. We all agree we can’t stand Finland’s answer to Sandra Dickinson (David Dickinson? asks Sonny above the roar of the music) as she totters about like Barbara Cartland’s ghost on speed.

Rich sits with his iPod on and the subtle leakage of harpsichord doesn’t enhance the viewing enjoyment or help the pizza go down. The judging is now so partisan that they may need to have BBC War correspondent Orla Guerin as a presenter (assuming Kate Adie or CNN's Christiane Amanpour wouldn't want to do it!).

BTW: here's a tip. If any of the above and/or Jessica Fletcher are listed in the hotel register when you go to check in - then check out ASAP!

It usually comes in threes

Daddy Shortlegs is also on his way home, travelling down the highway at 30 miles an hour if Sonny Longpockets is driving. We need to clear up from the kitchen fitting – we left the cat’s bowl and litter in Jack’s room while he was away; it improved the air of old man stink. Not to be confused with Ol' Man River which alludes to his propensity for missing the bowl and sometimes missing the bathroom altogether - and you wonder why we are tiling everywhere!?

We can look forward to the dishwasher not working, the washer/drier breaking, the microwave singing its last ping, and a lot of muttering as he realises that the contents of cupboards have all moved. I worry most about the ceramic hob – ‘I tried to get the lid off but it won’t work now!’

My Nan was buried on Thursday - Sonny's partner buried her dad on the Thursday before that. He was dead. Death usually comes in threes. If I were Jack I wouldn’t start any long books… or arguments!

Greece is the word!

We are on our way back to Cardiff and stop at the Little Fat Bastard (or Little Chef as others know it) for the Olympic-sized breakfast. They have other fabled meals but we decide to make our own.

• The Clytemnestra breakfast comes with a bathful of tomato sauce and gives you good wind.
  
• The Cassandra breakfast: ‘you won’t believe us when we tell you how big it is!'
  
• Push the boat out and have the Helen of Troy!
  
• Watch the stones roll on with a Sisyphus burger!

You may want to reach for Google or Wikipedia or if you’re already up to speed you could have a go at adding your own menu suggestions in the comments section. Later we stop for the lavatory where we pass the pillars of Heracles!

Tooth Fairy

We sit in Nanny’s flat and laugh our way through the mountain of photographs. Conversation turns to the olden days as her great-grandchildren call it (they mean the 1960s!) and we all have stories about Nan & Gramps or as I call them "Spend & Save". She loved slot machines (see pic right) and he panicked (see below) about every penny he couldn't wrestle out of Kwiksave.

Later we discuss politics and Northern Ireland. My family have old-fashioned ideas mixed with Protestant stoicism – it’s easy to keep a tight upper lip when you have a loose grasp on the medicine chest. Religion and bigotry often go hand-in-hand just as Seroxat adds to that air of everyone getting along and going with the flow.

Before long Arlene (only 3 years older than me) says she isn’t sure that she believes in homosexuals (what am I then? the fucking tooth fairy!). She doesn’t like them parading – though of course she’d fight for the rights of Orange men to march. 'I don't care who you are, I see you as a person', she says. 'Yes,' I think 'because you're totally blinkered to anything that doesn't fit in with your lifestyle or how you would like the world to be'. She equates her struggle of not getting along with a colleague (who just happens to be Catholic – pure coincidence) to centuries of persecution and unequal treatment by church and state.

Richard and I manage to let it go but it seems obvious why her brother moved to Australia especially after visiting us with his Catholic boyfriend. My other gay cousin has a black partner but I went past both their limits and entered two mixed marriages. The first didn't work - well she was a woman and we all know the divorce rate, so lasting as long as we did was against all odds.But Richard is ... I am so embarrassed to tell you... yes, he's um, well, sort of... English. God alone knows how she'd cope with all that information. I never thought of us as liberals but reading the Guardian must have taken its toll. They probably think of us as Libertines. But they're family and we love them. It's best to love the Christian but forgive their Christianity if you can.

Say it with flowers

The funeral goes well. As it turns out Nanny didn't need the extra wide coffin that Gramps had foretold would be necessary due to her arms getting locked in position if she died whilst knitting. They have 'NAN' spelled out in white flowers and I immediately think of the funeral in Royston Vasey with 'BASTARD' spelled out in the back of the hearse. Richard says he will save money by choosing only a four letter word for me - Aunt Jean correctly guesses it may begin with a 'C'.

They play Daniel O'Donnell as we leave the Chapel of Rest - well it made me leave! I spot my sister, Milford's answer to Burke and Hare: big as two people though not technically a grave robber. We exchanged curt hellos. Later we do the same. I said I wouldn't speak two words to her but if 'hello' twice counts then I think I may have broken my vow.

It pours with rain when we reach the cemetery which is always fitting but things seem drier back at the Legion until I get a gin and tonic. I have a momentary lapse and look around to see if Nanny has come in, then pull myself together. Her family are much fewer than in previous years as they all get old and ill and dead. Not always in that order. Many have their hair done by powergen with what looks like a Hi-energy perm. Walter and Doris are there. Doris is a gruff little woman (I think she's a woman). She's losing her sight which explains the wardrobe but it beats the shorts skirts she used to sport. Aunt Lilian rocks her grand-daughter Alys and sings the song about a woman who swallows a fly 'I don't know why she swallows a fly'. 'Because she's a man' I add in my gruff imitation of Doris.

We all laugh, fortified by welsh cakes and tea and we watch the kids run up and down the polished dance-floor. Nanny would have liked that - she wouldn't have liked it if it had been my generation or my aunts - we'd have been told to behave and possibly to sit in order of age or height to look neat and tidy. I say wouldn't it be lovely to have the energy of the kids and how I used to love sliding along the dance floor. Richard adds that I was 28 at the time!

Step back in time

I am in a rush as I madly decided to meet my Irish relatives at Cardiff station and take the train to Milford Haven. I have two hours so only pack the essentials – laptop, camera, mobile phone and credit cards. Clothes and toiletries can follow with Richard tomorrow. (my friend Olwen once said that If I was travelling I would need a couple of pallbearers to carry all my stuff - she meant Sherpas but given I am on my way to a funeral she may be right!)

3 hours, no buffet but a little old man serving tea from a trolley– it’s just like being home with Jack. The trolley-dolly, last seen serving afternoon tea on Stephenson’s Rocket, must be seventy if he’s a day but perhaps he’ll get younger as we head west and the years roll back to 1947. Did you know West Wales is in a different time zone to the rest of Britain? Colleagues say that accounts for my slightly old-fashioned prose style and the use of words like ‘hamper’ and ‘hinder’. I blame it on too much Miss Marple.

The journey is made worse by a slightly drunk, older gay type – you know, all leaning forward conspiratorially and patting the knee while making recommendations for day trips to Tenby for ice-cream. People seem to believe Northern Ireland is all inner-city bombscapes and would be surprised to learn it has lovely beaches … and yes, ice-cream. No-one mentions we are on our way to a funeral but then with all the laughing and storytelling you’d never know.

By 9pm we reach Milford. It’s shut, or at least appears to be closed for repairs.

Colour me beautiful: green sponges, red indians, white children with pink eyes, black moods and lemons.

We have been singularly untroubled by Daddy Shortlegs since his removal to Birmingham (this is an approximate address to preserve anonymity!). He is confused about when he might return.

‘So I’ll be back on Wednesday,’ he says.

‘No. You’re coming back on Saturday.’

‘Wednesday, is it?’

‘No, Saturday!’ says Richard taking the phone away from his ear and staring directly down the receiver as if telepathy could work its magic. The conversation continues ad infinitum…

I assume that he prefers Wednesday for some reason and will try to wilfully misunderstand but the kitchen isn’t quite finished; the fitter has taken the day off as some components won’t arrive until tomorrow. Rich and I have taken the opportunity to sort out the scary under-the–stairs cupboard. Witness the wonder of the ever-growing mountain of J-cloths or the self-replicating pan scourers that seem to multiply like amoeba at an orgy. The EU light bulb and kitchen roll mountain take up another cupboard or two. You wouldn’t find as many cleaning products if this was the sluice room of a hospital ward or the housekeeping cupboard of a Lusthouse Forte. We may have to have Jack’s shopping rights removed by Tesco... “Help the Aged to aisle 4 please”

We have 3 vacuum cleaners stored below the stairs. Rich is hard at work breaking his fourth. No sorry I forgot. He and his father don’t break things. They break. They don’t work. They go wonky. He’s got a screwdriver out so expect bad news. Not that they don’t love bad news or misery.

When they lived in Chippenham (Ooh! the spellchecker asks do I mean Chippewa – Big Chief Sitting Room? Don’t correct my Native American history as it’s merely a pun not a ruddy dissertation. I Google ‘Chippewa’ and it asks me do I mean the Ojibwa people. My Nan would have said ‘did they live over Hakin way? Next to the Harris family. Wasn’t she the woman with the hair who used to run the post office…’ Cue a lengthy ramble as my family come to the conclusion that she married a boy from Neyland and was last seen in Safeways buying cooked ham. Nearest we get to an Indian Reservation is a table for four at the Bengal Brasserie) anyway…

When they lived in Chippenham they had neighbours with albino children, one of whom fell out of a train and died. On the other side lived two of the Plymouth Brethren with a none too apt surname. ‘Gay by name but not by nature,’ as Rich’s mum used to say. Along with a matchbox label collecting brother playing Led Zeppelin on the wrong speed or backwards, Richard and his religious mania and closet homosexuality (quite common bedfellows) and Daddy Shortlegs with his love of Mahler and grumpiness, it comes as no surprise that Richard’s mum went out a lot. It’s life’s way of telling you to drink more. After all, if life gives you lemons, you’d better get the gin and tonic out!

Whatever happened to Baby Jen?

I pick up the phone and Jennifer’s in hysterics but between the recriminations and outrage, the shrieks and the staccato sobs that ‘I - could - do – this - to - her’ (when did all our lives start revolving around her!) I get the gist that she wants the grave for herself. She tells me she often goes alone to the grave – we should give her some violets and a shawl. Why has she always got to be the centre of a Victorian melodrama?

Think of Jenny as the bad part of Smeagol/Gollum. Avaricious, always feeling hard done by and hurt, she has to own whatever she sees. She is not good at sharing and perhaps it is time that I ask what she did with my knitting machine and can I have the money for it especially as Nan and Gramps helped me buy it. Or perhaps she should pay my Nan back for the money she was given when she was getting married and doing up her house. Or the cost of the wedding dress –Nan paid for it and I made it. I eventually gave Jennifer away on her wedding day in a church with only twelve people in it. We have a huge family but she had left home over a row about the bridesmaids’ dresses and none of my father’s family would attend. She wouldn’t invite my mother’s family in case that blocked any last minute change of heart my dad may have. Only then did I learn she had asked him three times to give her away after I had been asked – so I was merely a substitute that could have been replaced and of course if he was going I suppose she would have quickly rescinded my invitation. But let’s not be unkind it was her big day – even if her big head was up her big arse in a veil and tiara!

Perhaps she should pay back the price of the headstone which, probably having drunk the insurance money, was never sorted out by my father. My aunts and Nan, having at the time been left with three young children to look after on top of their own young families, picked and paid for the headstone after waiting a long time for him to get on with it.

But she won’t hear it. He is her father and nothing can be said to dissuade her. The grave belongs to him and she will be buried there. She uses the ‘my husband has left me’ ploy. I’m unimpressed. ‘My children are doing their GCSEs’. No idea how that counts but she obviously sees it as a bargaining tool. Finally: ‘I’m on antidepressants’. Newsflash to Jenny: Everyone is on anti-depressants and maybe you should get better ones because I think yours aren’t working!

The end of the tale is that she hates my threat to send my letter as an open letter to the local press to get my father to give me the grave. She decides I will be dissuaded if she travels to all three of my aunts (my mum’s sisters) and tell them her tale of woe. God help them, I have unleashed a monster.

My family are lovely. After all this time they would still forgive and forget and would like to know Jennifer’s daughters better. My aunt tells me she would like me not to proceed with writing to the paper in case Jennifer ‘does anything stupid’. A bit late, I think, you should see her wardrobe!!

I’ve written a letter to Daddy...

No not Daddy Shortlegs but my own father. I ask for a copy of my letter to be sent to the undertaker (or does everyone say Funeral Director now) who still remembers when my mother was buried nearly forty years ago. Like many others in our small town, he had assumed that my Nan would be buried with her. By involving the undertaker, my father has an opportunity to do the right thing through him, without having to break our silence of 26 years.

I suppose I thought if I appealed to my father he would say yes, and the fact the undertaker was involved may also make him think about his public image. As it happens I overestimated his ability to be a decent human being. He couldn’t be arsed to talk to either of us but used my sister as a go-between – the way that he and his hateful wife have always used his children as a weapon to hurt others.

My sister Jennifer clings on to the belief that my father is worth knowing: she’s wrong. Just like she’s wrong about the sort of clothes a short overweight woman of forty should wear. But with my stepmother Barbara (emphasis on the Barb) as a role model it’s surprising she has any sense at all let alone dress sense. What chance did Jennifer have to grow up with any sense of right when that family can only concentrate on the wrongs done them? Barbara has what you could call ‘googly eyes’. Surprising she has them and not my dad as you would have expected his to pop out from the exertion of having her hand up his arse working his mouth for thirty years.

My Gramps called my stepmother ‘the barren cow’ as she couldn’t have children. That didn’t stop her putting her udders on display as she loved a low cut dress. God knew she shouldn’t have children even if social services got it wrong and the court allowed them to have us. We would have done better being raised by wolves. Yes that’s Barbara – a wolf in cow’s clothing.

Pony and trap (work out the rhyming slang for yourself!)

Time is pressing before next week’s funeral. Can I post my father a letter asking for the grave rights and get a reply before the undertaker instructs a new grave to be opened? There’s no pony express despite him living way out west and we’re clean out of carrier pigeons what with having a cat and all.

My Nan said that she had asked Jenny (my sister) to speak to my father for the grave to bury my Gramps but in the end he was cremated and his ashes scattered in his beloved Belfast. It makes sense as he was never very good at being kept in one place for long and loved to wander. Many evenings when I lived with him in Belfast we would tramp the streets and visit shops, libraries, parks or simply search for bargains – usually clapped out cars or tellies that needed fixing up with his ever-growing collection of valves. He’d use a lot of shoe leather to get tuppence of a jar of mixed fruit jam.

Anyone under forty is asking themselves what a tuppence is and what the hell has a valve to do with a TV. But that’s age for you. Anyone over forty is recoiling from the horrible memory of mixed fruit jam which gramps told me was made from swedes and turnip – he’d obviously seen sugar beet and confused the two.

The majority of my family all live in one area of Pembrokeshire and I email the letter to my cousin so that he can print it out and shove it through my dad’s letter box. It’s not want I want to shove through his letter box! But then I would need a pony or a pigeon for that as well….

Bingo Heaven!

The kitchen fitter turned up even though it is a Saturday and a Bank Holiday weekend – there’s dedication for you. I stayed upstairs for two reasons – one was his casual racism and other views that I find difficult. If I react he stops work and explains what is wrong with the world. I want my kitchen finished so it’s simpler to avoid him.

The second reason was so that he wouldn’t see me burst into tears every so often as I thought about my Nan who died on Thursday – she was 84. She raised me when my mum died (I was five years old). Last week she was kicking it up at a Daniel O’Donnell concert in Cardiff and then she went on a coach journey to Epsom to see her great grand-daughter. She slipped, fell and died shortly afterwards. It is a bit of a shock as she was a constant in my life.

I tried to think about her being in heaven - her type of heaven that is. She'd be with my mum and Gramps. She'd be playing Bingo and supping a 'Snowball', playing slot machines and wearing the high heels she loved wearing even into her sixties and seventies. She'd be eating all the things her diabetes stopped her having lately... she liked a slice of bread to take the edge of her butter if you know what I mean. She wouldn't be knitting - that was her way of escaping the world down here. She sat clicking away - knit one purl one, mark it of the piece of paper with its neat tally marks for every five rows. She knitted and Gramps raged. He dealt with my mum’s death by getting angry - she dealt with his anger and her loss by retreating into anything that took her mind off the real issues: counting stitches or following six books at bingo. They never understood each other's way of coping but they were together for 66 years until he died last year. They weren't apart for long.

I spent most of the afternoon writing a letter to my dad. We haven’t spoken since I was eighteen – that was 1981. He has the rights to my mum’s grave and I’d like my Nan to be buried with her if possible. I hope he’ll let me buy it from him but for a long time he has been bitter and has an even more bitter wife. I hope he says yes as we can then tidy up the grave he has neglected. He says my sister is to be buried there – news to me as she is only just 40! It may be news to her.

My partner Richard and I often plan each other’s funeral. He chooses music for mine. I pencil in dates for his...

Lassie cum home

I was asked today whether the free lube that we give away with condoms was tested on animals - it took a moment or two for my colleague and I to realise we were being asked about the factory production tests not a trial run by consumers to see if your corgi liked Liquid Silk more than ID Glide or whether smearing your gerbil in vaseline was a) desirable; b) difficult to get a hold on; or c) left smears on your picnic blanket.

Hands that do dishes can be soft as your brain

No news yet, or should I say no weather report, as he seems to remain dry although not unclouded in the kitchen at Birmingham (you know he only went to visit because it has ham in the name - come to think of it he used to live in Chippenham). They are as surprised as we are at how low-brow his tastes have become. Milton and Kipling are now bleach and apple pies rather than literature. He has stopped taking a newspaper or doing the crossword, given up on teaching himself ancient Greek or reading science but sits morosely watching the FX channel non-stop with the volume know cranked up to ASBO.

I have been watching a programme on senile hoarding. Turns out not be a documentary on poorly run care homes with a pack ‘em high, sell ‘em short approach to older people but a look at unwholesome neighbours with Diogenes syndrome. Daddy tends to hoard ham and mince pies (even out of season) as if life is a perpetual Boxing Day. He is such a label queen – as long as the label says Mr Kipling or Sara Lee. He has long since given up on cooking and buys prepared sandwiches and salads although he still has a penchant for meat and will use pork pie as a garnish or sprinkle ham and/or cooked chicken on anything within range, even the cat.

He gets a little fixated. At one time it was cleaning – I would come home to find him hoovering dust off the elements at the back of the fridge or using a knife blade to scrape through the shine that was once the surface of the cooker. And cooking – even on the hottest day of the year you would be met with a full roast dinner – beef with hammy cabbage or lamb with bacon-strewn cauliflower. Then pudding... a heart attack masquerading as half a Sara Lee lemon meringue pie unsuccessfully crammed into a dessert bowl. When stopped, due to my impending diabetes and exploding arteries he took to feeding the cat a freshly cooked chicken purchased daily at Tesco and cut into the smallest pieces imaginable. This process took half his morning and all our patience as he hogged the kitchen (no ham pun intended – am I a closet hamosexual?).

The cat, released from her living hell of constant food (she had begun to look like a fur clad pouffe) is now slim again whilst I still look like the lovechild of Vanessa Feltz and Peter Wyngarde.

His need to tape every episode of Stargate and re-edit to remove commercial breaks has left us with a bedroom cupboard full of tapes labelled version 3, version 4 complete, version 5 no ads… Since his move downstairs he has lost all interest in them. He is now as fixated by washing up as Nanette Newman and unfortunately he continues to wash towels until they are as thin as our endurance. The overuse of the fan heater is accompanied by the constantly tumbling drier and Cardiff may soon be experiencing a brown-out as the national grid tries to cope with his demands. We may have to call in a wattage negotiator – ‘back away from the sink, that's it… now calmly put the mop down and come out with your hands dry…’

Near-piss experience

One wonders if they’ve had another “near piss” experience today. This is Richard’s term for coming close to water passed by the management, so to speak. It may be less traumatic than a near miss or even near death experience but if Daddy has had an accident as below, you don’t want to compound it with an accident of your own by using the same mug!

"What happens in your kitchen?"

I fell out of bed this morning, literally fell out on to the floor. Not a great start. The kitchen fitter is AWOL. He is from Magnet - you know the advert -"What goes on in your kitchen..."
In our house: endless hours of pointless washing-up and bad tempered muttering. Perhaps Magnet should suggest electrified taps and a muzzle. When he is in the kitchen he plays at being deaf (although if you switch a kettle on he is out of the traps and down the hallway before you can say Depends).

We ring for a daily progress report on the old dwarf - he seems better but we're informed that in the kitchen they found a mug containing a 'mysterious yellow liquid'. It's not a miracle and better safe than sorry, they have decided to throw the mug away as, even if washed, you couldn't enjoy your tea and garibaldi thinking Daddy Shortlegs may have used it when caught short trying to remember where the lavatory is situated. Yes, we've all caught Shorty hoarding empty milk bottles in his room for nefarious purposes when he was upstairs which is why we have moved him to the ground floor so he can make it to the bogatory unaided. Surprised Magnet didn’t suggest something easy to mop and a urinal next to the fridge!

Health warning: don’t go near the apple juice. Nuff said.

Lookey-Likeys

Betty may have borne a passing resemblance to Ronnie Corbett but then Daddy Shortlegs was a tad Harry Hill... Here he is in his younger days posing as the head of the 'Shut ya von Trapps'.

Rich on the far right is a tad Harry Potter also. The taped spectacles make a fashion statement but only if under caution and with a solicitor present. It's not everyone who can dress under PACE regulations but I bet his mother would have had an alibi for these outfits. She had a gadget that enabled her to cut their hair into these delightful page boy styles - I think it was a Tupperware bowl.

On closer inspection the tape turns out to be a scratch on the photograph so she may appeal for a retrial.