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June 30, 2006
Away with the pixies
On a Friday when I pick my daughter up from school, I usually take her a sweet treat, to celebrate the coming of the weekend because I’m generous like that. And so when I was out shopping (ugh!) today, I noticed something I haven’t come across for a long long time,
something I didn’t even know existed anymore.
Does anyone around here remember Parma Violets? And can someone tell me where they’ve been for the past twenty years or so. Anyway, no prizes for guessing what Littleone had for her treat today.
And so she comes running out of the classroom, ‘What have you got for me today?’ To whichof course I can’t help replying ‘Hello my dear, I’m fine, thank you for asking. How was your day?’ before handing her these Parma Violets and going on to explain that I used to munch them
when I was her age.
I thought they’d be like Candy Floss, one of those things you keep trying in adult life in the hope that it will taste like it did when you were six, but it never does, it just catches on the back of
your throat and makes you gag, but even so I couldn’t resist popping one on the end of my tongue before Littleone had even made up her mind whether she liked them or not.
One minute I was there, walking along the grimy park on the way home from school and the next minute I was swept away to Devon, I think. A little village in the middle of Dartmoor, or maybe Exmoor and there’s a shop. In my head it sells only pixies, everything pixie, little dishes with pixies on, pixie figurines and no doubt boxes of clotted cream fudge with pixies on the front. I don’t know if this is accurate or if my subconscious has made this up just because it
knows I bought a tiny bottle of perfume with a pixie on top. I remember this because I kept the bottle for years and even then if I untwisted the pixie with the little red hat and cheeky grin (did someone say 'tacky') the empty bottle would still reek of
violets, long after the perfume had run out.
Somewhere far away in the here and now, I’m vaguely aware that I have a sweet in my mouth and that this sweet is my time machine. If I bite and swallow the pixies will be gone, so I let it fizz and dissolve slowly on the end of my tongue.
I’m outside the shop now clutching my paper bag. There is a courtyard with a trickling fountain across the middle, benches scattered around the edge and it is warm, everybody is wearing shorts and t-shirts even though it is only May. I only know this now as when I was that age we only ever went to Devon in May half-term (no doubt because it was cheaper) but really I am too young to care what time of year it is. I’m away from home, I’ve not yet been abroad on holiday, in my naiveté, my youth and innocence, this is as foreign and as exotic as it gets. I unfold my paper bag and twist the little pixie and sniff the scent of the perfume, I don’t yet know that it is the scent of violets, I think that this is what real pixies must smell like. Mum slips a coin in my hand and I throw it deep into the rushing waters of the fountain.
Make a wish.
I can’t help it any longer. The sweet is dissolving and crumbling in my mouth and if I don’t swallow now, I’m going to start dribbling all over the place. One swallow and it’s gone. My mum has taken my hand and lead me away from the fountain, through the gate, to the other side.
I don’t know what exists the other side of the gate, I try to remember but it’s gone I’m back in Cambridge the here and now, the park, bringing my own daughter back from school, about to be flattened
by a bicycle coming up behind us.
Secretly I hope she won’t like them, that she’ll hand the Parma Violets back to me, asking for something else but before I know it, there’s only two left.
‘Can I have just one more?’ I ask. Reluctantly she hands it over, but you can never have it again the second, third, fourth is never the same. I want to be back with the pixies in Devon but really
I’m feeling a little silly now, I’m a fully grown woman, with a Parma Violet in my mouth, fiddling with the stiff lock on my door.
Still no comments? Feel free to email me instead.
Posted by purple elephant at 06:01 PM |
June 24, 2006
The Eye of the Storm
I got that essay in! I did it! By the skin of my teeth but I’ve got this far in my life to discover that this is the way I do things. I crash and stumble and trip over the finish line but I get there in the end. I may have lost a few limbs on the way and my performance may have been abysmal but the relief, oh my God, the relief.
And despite the fact that getting the extension on that piece of work has not put me in the best position for the next one, I have decided to take the weekend off. I’m not writing or reading anything that’s got anything remotely to do with my degree, oh no not at all. Because when it’s getting to the point where the word processor is giving me The Fear, ugh and T.S. Eliot is giving me The Fear and God rest her poor tortured soul, Virginia Woolf is starting to give me The Fear; the time has come to hold my hands in the air and admit that I need a break.
So I’ve been reading some Zoe Fairbairns and some Margaret Atwood and a rather charming book of short stories from the twenties. I’ve also been blitzing the house from top to bottom, to make up for my neglect over the past couple of weeks and also because I’ve got a house full of family tomorrow coming to wish my daughter a happy birthday.
This time tomorrow night I’ll be begging T.S. Eliot to come back from the dead and recite me his poems one last time...
All will be forgiven no doubt.
If comments are still not working, feel free to email me.
Posted by purple elephant at 11:20 PM |
June 22, 2006
What no comments?!
...and there was me thinking that I'd even managed to kill off the spammers with bordem.
Just noticed that comments don't seem to be working at the moment. Being a bit slow on the uptake I'm not sure how long it's been like this.
If anyone knows what's wrong and/or how to fix it then please email me and let me know.
In the meantime if you were going to comment on any recent post then feel free to email what you were going to say instead and I think I can still add it this end.
I feel like the drunken fool who has been slurring to himself for an hour before looking up to notice that even the landlord has given up and gone home.
Posted by purple elephant at 09:32 AM |
June 20, 2006
If there’s no rest for the wicked, then forgive me Lord for I have committed murder or something
So tell me all ye parents who have BIG birthday parties in church halls and things, how do you do it? I mean how do you find the time and how do you find the money?
I only fed four kids and I doubled my budget and the whole preparation, shopping, cooking and general fiddling took me TWO days. Yes TWO days and anyone who read my last post (all 1.5 of you) will know I do not have TWO days. I do not have TWO days at all.
Here is the point where I’m supposed to come in and say something along the lines of it being worth the threat of bankruptcy and the disintegration of the final year of my degree just to see the expression of pure joy on their little cherub cheeks, but with kids the ever wavering line between ecstasy and despair is as impossible to read as Henri Bergson’s Matter and Memory. (This is a translation? Into English? Surely you jest?)
Let’s just say if I went out of an evening and witnessed that much back stabbing, (‘Purple El-la-phaaaaant she’s not eating her foooood’); theft (‘Purple El-la-phaaaaant he stole that toy off me’); and violence (‘Purple El-la-phaaaaant she whacked me with a balloooooon’); then I’d probably never leave the house again... But then again these are kids and who knows.
The homemade snake cake went down reasonably well, (just call me Jane Asher) as did the create-your-own balloon face kit I picked up from Tesco’s. The organic star shaped vegetable nuggets I discovered in the health food shop (ah! there went my budget!) will not be top of the list for next year as they got a verdict of ‘yuck!’ from all four kids, including my own daughter. But they are shaped like stars and they are full of goodness... does that mean nothing these days?
I just demolished some of the leftovers and I can kind of see where they are coming from.
Now that’s that over for another year. Where was I again? Oh yes the essay...
Is it time for bed yet?
Posted by purple elephant at 10:36 PM |
June 19, 2006
Bang!
People talk about their feet not touching the ground; it has been so long, my feet wouldn’t even recognise the ground if it came up and thumped them violently on the sole. If it doesn’t all stop some time soon it’s be my head that will be reacquainted with the ground first but anyway where was I? ...
So last week there was that essay, a double length one, due in on Friday but and you are going to have to trust me on this one, things kept happening. The kid is suddenly able to function on less sleep than me; people kept turning up out of the blue to name but a few hindrances and there I was at a quarter to midnight on Thursday with 2,000 words still to write, suddenly deciding that my very detailed plan was all wrong and needed some serious shifting around. At that moment the kid fell out of bed and at almost the same time there was a hell of a lot of shouting, and an almighty crash from downstairs in the main entrance to the block, it turned out that someone had thrown a monitor and printer through the window in the stairwell. For a moment I thought it had all got too much for me and I had thrown my own PC down the stairs in a fit of madness but when I checked, thank God it was still where it was supposed to be. It must’ve been someone else, I do kind of understand though...
I gave up after that.
And then we were away for the weekend at the Big Session Festival in Leicester. Write up on that to follow. Now here I am with a kiddy birthday tea to organise in time for tomorrow.
Oh and of course I’ve still got an essay to write.
See you on the other side, or not as the case may be.
Posted by purple elephant at 03:01 PM |
June 13, 2006
Watching (and learning) with mother...
Peppa Pig 8.20 this morning on Channel Five. An episode entitled, ’Mummy Pig at Work’.
It begins with Daddy Pig and Peppa and George cooking dinner in the kitchen.
’Can we go and see Mummy Pig?’ the kids ask.
‘OK but only quickly,’ says Daddy Pig ‘because she is working.’
I’m so excited about the prospect of reversed gender roles on kids' TV so early in the morning that it doesn’t yet occur to me that he should have just said, ‘No!’
Mummy is in her study, she is writing what appears to be a letter. I infer from this that she has already written (and edited) her novel and is now constructing her covering letter. We watch this programme every day mind you, and I’ve never seen her work before but I assume she does it when the kids have gone to bed. Wow maybe they actually go to bed ON TIME, now that is impressive.
‘Mummy can we watch you work?’ beg Peppa and George.
‘Yes of course,’ she replies a little too patiently, ‘but you must be quiet because Mummy is working.’
They sit.
‘Look!’ I say, ‘Those kids can be quiet when their Mummy is working!’
‘Mummy, can we sit on your lap?’ ask Peppa and George.
‘Yes,’ she says ‘as long as you are quiet because Mummy is working.’
‘Look Mummy!’ Declares my daughter with astonishment, ‘Peppa Pig’s Mummy can type with TWO children on her lap and she hasn’t shouted at them yet.’
‘Hurrupmph.’ I reply.
Peppa and George kick off again. ‘Mummy can we play our computer games?’
I’m beginning to get slightly irritated with the little brats.
‘No you can’t,’ I shout at the telly, ‘can’t you see your Mummy is working? Haven’t you got some homework to do or something?’
‘I’ve nearly finished,’ says Mummy Pig, ‘then you can play your computer games.’ Maybe I too would have that same air of calm if I ever was in the state of nearly finished.
George starts tapping away on the keyboard, I’m not sure what he is pressing but it seems to be flickering between Mummy’s work and the Desktop page.
‘RIGHT THAT’S IT! GET TO YOUR ROOM NOW!’ I scream at the cartoon character.
‘Don’t do that George!’ says Mummy Pig in that serene way.
‘Yeah George, don’t do that.’ says Peppa whacking the keyboard and therefore sending the whole thing into crash mode.
‘DADDY PIG!’ Shouts Mummy Pig (that’s it, I think, get him to come up and give those kids some discipline, send them to bed with no dinner, ground them, ban sweets for the rest of the week, something?) ‘Can you come and fix the computer please?’
....
What? Hang on a sec... those brats lost your work and you are letting them get away with it?
Daddy Pig appears and here comes the best line of the whole show.... wait for it.
....
‘Daddy Pig, can you fix the computer? I’ll go and cook dinner.’
But he was supposed to be cooking dinner and looking after the kids, so you could get some work done and he has failed miserably at both. I’ve got one word for you Mummy Pig, D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
Daddy Pig fixes the computer, or rather he turns it off (hang on wasn’t it already off? Let’s get some continuity together here) and then back on again.
The kids say, ‘Can we play computer games? Mummy said we could.’
That is a lie. She said they could after her work, she didn’t finish because the brats made the computer crash, therefore they CAN'T play their games.
‘Of course you can.’ Daddy Pig says and then promptly sits with them playing this game that seems only to consist of hatching chickens from eggs. They all fall about laughing because obviously, it is so much fun.
Meanwhile Mummy Pig is downstairs cooking that dinner that Daddy was supposed to be doing. She hears the noise from upstairs and in one moment of relief I think she looks really pissed off, and then I realise that it’s a cartoon and they don’t actually have a whole gallery of faces to choose from, she is actually just a little bit confused.
‘What’s that noise?’ she asks herself.
She trundles up the stairs and finds Daddy Pig and her two brats rolling on the floor with laughter because losing your Mummy’s work and not being punished for it is a whole barrel of laughs. Wait my sides hurt so much.
Does she slam that door and walk out without even packing her bags? No, she just collapses on the floor and laughs with them. Oh well, if you can’t beat them (with a cricket bat preferably) then I guess you just gotta join them. Maybe she’s just hysterical or something. I look closely for tears in her eyes but I can’t see any.
So girls, this is what happens when you get these silly ideas above your station. If you take the time to learn this now while you are still young then you will avoid disappointment later.
After the credits rolled, Mummy Pig picked herself up off the floor, it was alright, she’ll start that letter again after the brats had gone to bed. She trudged back downstairs to finish dinner, and then she did the washing up, cleared up endless piles of crappy plastic toys, ran a bath for the brats, scrubbed them down, patted them dry but by the time they got to bed they were dirty again. She read them a story but they refused to go to bed because it was too hot, still light blah blah blah.
By the time they really did go to bed, she had more tidying to do and when Daddy Pig had been cooking dinner, he’d slapped tomato sauce everywhere, so she gave the kitchen floor a quick wipe and then there was stuff to get ready for morning etc
She fell into bed. There’s always tomorrow.
But it never got written, that letter, what with one thing and another. That novel was actually quite good, as poignant and clever as anything on the Orange list. Our lives would have been all the better for reading it. But Mummy Pig never got published, there was always something else to do.
God Bless your restless and hugely talented soul Mummy Pig.
Now as for Daddy Pig, I do hope that's bacon I smell cooking.
Posted by purple elephant at 10:49 AM |
June 11, 2006
Here begins the longest month of my life....
GAIL AND LIZZY What are you two talking about? TOMMY AND SPUID Football. What were you talking about? GAIL and LIZZY Shopping. (Trainspotting)
As you have probably gathered from my last post, I’m not a fan of football and if you are an observant reader of Purple Elephant’s Corner you have no doubt worked out that I hate shopping just as much. It’s not so much the purchasing and the promise of having food in the cupboards or jeans without holes in the wardrobe but it’s the other people getting in the way and not understanding basic of queue etiquette that make the whole experience a complete and utter misery. Not to mention the staff who keep swapping things around to keep you in there for longer, when really all I want from life is for the tomato ketchup to be in the same place for two weeks running.... but I digress...
Guess where I was between 2 and 4 o clock yesterday afternoon? Yes you’ve guessed it I was in Tesco’s. It was so empty I thought it was closed for a minute. The whole painful experience was over in seconds. I am such a genius!
Of course by empty I mean that nobody had bothered to turn up for work and actually stock the shelves and this was obviously part of the reason why I was out of there so quickly. The family were none too impressed that they had to eat their burgers out of pitta bread rather than burger buns (and brown ones at that I am such a torturer.) At least the cat likes me, I could only get ultra supreme (read expensive) cat food. Sammy, just don’t you get used to it alright....
So, tell me, what was the score again?
Posted by purple elephant at 07:23 AM |
June 08, 2006
Wayne Rooney's foot.
Have you heard about Wayne Rooney's foot? He broke it you know and he might not be able to play in the England team in the World Cup. Oh and by the way did you hear about Wayne Rooney's foot? Let me just drag in an expert on - er - well - feet, just so we can talk about Wayne Rooney's foot some more. Maybe the foot expert, the one who has never met him, let alone studied his foot in any detail in recent weeks, maybe he'll be able to tell us if Wayne Rooney will be playing the World Cup or not....
If I hear one more 'news' story about Wayne Rooney's foot, I swear to God I'm going to seek out the overpaid oaf and stamp on his other one, really hard. Then they'll have something to talk about.
*ducks*
Posted by purple elephant at 10:55 PM |
June 06, 2006
18 Years; Not Bad For a Cat
It seems that as one creature passes into our life, another passes out. In the past couple of weeks I have both gained an lost a cat.
She remained living with my mum when I left home, but I chose Molly all those years ago. Dad had said that we were only allowed one kitten but when we got there most of the litter had been claimed except two.
Molly was sitting, head cocked on one side as if butter wouldn’t melt - in a coal bucket. As we arrived the owner had been ironing, Molly took one look at us and sauntered up the bright white sheet that was hanging over the edge of the ironing board, leaving a trail of tiny black footprints. Understandably enough, at the time, my mum prefered Minnie who slept soundly and peacefully in the basket and I was outvoted as my brother sided with her.
Needless to say, my Dad was least amused when he arrived home that night to find not one but TWO wide eyed kittens waiting for him. But I couldn’t have left her there, essentially by herself, the last kitten left. Come on, I couldn’t now could I?!
Her cheeky antics didn’t stop when we got her home, the first time we let them out on their own, we thought we’d lost them for quite a few frantic minutes until there they were, sitting comfortably on top of the bird table. Molly was a people‘s cat, she would instinctively seek out the non-cat-lover in a room full of strangers, climb on to their lap and instantly win them over.
She also had a bag of party tricks up her sleeve (or should that be, under her immensely preened mass of fur) of which begging for garlic bread, Twiglets and cider was her most famous. In fact the last time I saw Molly, Littleone made the mistake of laying her cheese and potato pasty down while she reached for her drink, it was demolished in a couple of seconds flat.
She had lost a disturbing amount of weight in recent months and only a small fraction of her vitality. Mum took her to the vets yesterday and was told that her kidneys were failing her to such an extent that he was surprised she was still climbing the stairs and chasing butterflies in the garden. We could have controlled it by pumping her full of pills, taking her for regular injections and putting her on a special diet (something tells me Molly would have hated this the most) but the vet made it clear that this would only be a matter of buying time and that her kidneys would consume her before long.
As mum and I were speaking on the phone pretending there was a decision to be made, Molly crept up and stole her last supper; a cold sausage that had been left on the worktop.
Both my mum and my brother were with Molly as she fell asleep for the last time at 3.30 yesterday afternoon, I would never have got there in time, but then I’m not very good at goodbyes anyway.
It seems strange to think that for the first time in 18 years, her special gap in the hedge where she sat watching the birds, will be empty and that her sister Minnie will be left alone after so long.
Posted by purple elephant at 10:00 AM |
June 03, 2006
Strawberry Fayre
Busy couple of days, dashing here there and everywhere. Today was Strawberry Fayre on Midsummer Common and the weather was just perfect, blue skies and warm, not blazingly hot but in my opinion just right. My brother and his wife and my mum came up for the day which was just as well because I didn’t see much of Mr. PE as this year he had been promoted to one of the head stewards of the Green Area,. So my contact with him consisted of me poking veggie burgers through wire fencing and managing to blag the use of the back stage toilets for Littleone because my God you should have seen the length of the punters’ queue.
Spent half the afternoon in the sunshine stuffing my face with great food whilst watching some buskers taking on Bob Marley’s entire greatest hits and encouraging everyone to join in.
Littleone and I got a dress each and even Sammy didn’t miss out, I brought him home a pot of catmint for planting on the balcony. He is currently darting round the house like a cat on speed.
I couldn’t help wishing life was like this every day, I mean I only got mildly pissed off with people getting in my way and I even let a couple of acquaintances hug me. Yeah I know, relaxed or what?
By the time we got to the bus stop to come home we were forced to witness two chavgoths having an argument, in all its ‘whateva’ and ‘shut up’ glory.
Oh well, back to the grind I guess.
Posted by purple elephant at 11:56 PM |