Once Upon A Time...

'Once upon a time' is always a good start to a story. Apparently, it has been a stock phrase since around 1380. Usually, said stories end with 'and they lived happily ever after'.

Fairytales do always end in such an ideal manner. Good triumphs over evil, the baddy dies or gets locked away for a thousand years, the princes and princesses get married, a few fairies fly around and wave their magic wands and without fail, a moral flutters around with them.

Princesses are always very beautiful, have long golden hair* and sit in a tower waiting for a handsome prince (who appears to have come straight out of a l'Oreal advert) to come charging along on his noble white steed and rescue her, all the while swishing his glossy mane.**

If 'generic princess' had any of her wits about her, she might use her common sense and intelligence to get out of the tower herself. Quite frankly, she doesn't have much else to do and, some might say, she may be single-handedly responsible for causing inequality in the workplace. If a woman can't use her initiative to get out of a tower, what chance does she have in the City with excel spreadsheets and financial analysis and making cups of coffee and whatever else these banky types do?***

If 'generic prince' had any of his wits about him, he would get a hair cut, get a car with leather interiors (then 'generic princess' would have to wait less time, it would be far more comfortable on the journey homeward and furthermore, her hair wouldn't go frizzy in the rain), pop into the nearest clothes shop, dump his armour, (heavy, sweaty and likely to cause body odour) and get the good old polo-shirt, belt, jeans combo on.****

The baddies are always pot-ugly. Warts, pointy noses, cackles, naff clothes (that even C&A would have rejected) and no doubt a dollop of halitosis. My advice to 'generic baddy' would be to get an appointment at the orthodontist and/or dental hygienist, nip into Topshop for something in vogue on the high street, nip into Boots for some acne cream and maybe get some highlights and/or friends. Either that, or simply stop being a baddy, because magically when you do that, you become beautiful.

I am a bit traditional. I would very much like a prince on a cracking stallion (read big fuck-off swish car) to sweep me off my feet  (FYI I'm a size 5, just in case I lose my glass slipper on your stairs. I'd really hate for you to trawl across every house in London to find me*****), rescue me from a tower (um..the office?) and behave in an utterly chivalrous and gentleman-like manner (but not too goody-two-shoes: feel free to jump into the lake on a whim a la Mr Darcy). Said gentleman must open the door for me as a natural reflex, bestow jewels upon me, shower me with compliments (but look away to spare my blushes) and, last but not least, kiss my hand upon meeting me. He may also bow if he wishes. At the same time, I am also adamant that I will have a career and independence. Demanding? Moi?

Chivalry is dead. A phrase I hear a lot these days.

I assure you, it is not.

Only recently, a heavily tattooed man with a ginger beard, ear plugs, a satchel and a tall, skinny, extra shot, creme-brulee macchiato gave up his seat for me on the tube. Valiant and thoroughly unnecessary. As a young whipper-snapper who is neither pregnant, old or disabled, I had no more need for the chair than he did.

The conclusion is this: chivalry is well and truly alive on London transport.

I can safely say, this blog entry is absolutely random and irrelevant. I'm not sure what possessed me to write it. I better end it quickly and more importantly, conclusively...



And they lived happily ever after.******





*Although maybe that's artistic license and it's actually dirty blonde/rich mouse.
**The prince, not the horse. Although let us not discriminate. I don't doubt that the horse also has a very nice mane.
***I doubt the latter. That's probably a job for the intern.
****NB always a winner with me.
*****Bit odd that Cinderella story. Are we seriously meant to believe that nobody else in the Kingdom had the same size feet as her?
******Absolutely no idea who did. Again, decidedly irrelevant. I'll leave you to muse upon that. Just pretty damned good ending to a story. 

Part 2 - The last irrelevant post before I move back onto India. (this isn't a promise)

So it didn't quite go as planned.

More like this.

She stares out of the train window. Bleak landscape. Barren fields. Sky heavy with smog. The trees droop, tired with the nothingness that consumes them (aka Grantham). She stares. A single trickle of deep red blood escapes from her lip. Her teeth are stained scarlet. She stares. Her eyes are glazed. Stony. Dead.*

She gets on the tube. Her metallic saliva fills her perfect** mouth. She gets home. She bites on the gauze like they told her to. Ten minutes pass. The pearly white gauze is vermilion. She phones the helpline. They tell her to bite down on a gauze for half an hour. She has nearly run out. They tell her to bite down on a tea towel.

She bites on the gauze. Crimson.

She finds a clean (ish) tea towel and bites.

Her flatmate comes home. She takes a pen and scrawls:

I'm not allowed to talk for half an hour. ***

Mimi talks to her for half an hour. Blood on the tea towel.****

Claret red.

They get into the car. Mimi's dad drives.

She gets out. She touches the inside of her mouth. She stares at her finger. Sanguine. Darker now.

The A&E room is awash with disease. She seems to be the only one who can string a sentence together.*****

She overhears a conversation with head of triage and a drunk. (this is approximate)

Drunk: hkjhjf ajhfjhfalkj
Triage nurse: So what seems to be the problem?
Drunk: jskfhkjhgk olsijhgljhg (shows her his phone)
Triage nurse: So you have abdominal pains? Do you have pains in your stomach?
Drunk: You could say that. If you want to call it that. ******

She is called. The nurse pokes her mouths. It hurts. The blood has clotted. The nurse doesn't want to poke it lest it pops and starts bleeding all over again.

She must not eat or drink anything warm.
She must not eat or drink anything hot.
She must not brush her teeth.
She must not spit.
She must not rinse her mouth.
In fact, she must not eat.
She must only drink cold things.

She leaves. She gets lost on Herne Hill.
She is not amused.


*Except clearly not as she is writing this blogpost.
** Ha.
*** Practically unheard of.
****Good title for sub-rate crime novel. Or in fact, a Sophie Ellis-Bextor song.
***** Standard. Mummy Cotton didn't pay for Speech and Drama for nothing.
****** Not sure why she recounted this. It is dull and also probably not accurate. Gives you an idea of the type she mixes with on a Sunday.

The last irrelevant post before I move back onto India. (this isn't a promise)

Liquid food is rubbish.

When I don't eat properly I get low blood sugar. I feel like daddy on a Saturday lunchtime (when we steer well clear because if he hasn't had soup by 12, he will maim or possibly even kill.) except I'm not that bad, I just get a little bit edgy.

Food, or rather eating, is a source of distress to a lot of people, especially girls. I, for one, am very lucky as I have never really had a problem with eating. That is, unless you count eating everything and anything you want as a problem. As a bearer of an under active thyroid, I should, by rights, be fat. 

I don't see the point in going to a restaurant and not eating what I want. If I want a steak and chips, I will have just that. With peppercorn sauce. And a side salad. And a coke. A fat coke. Diet coke tastes of air and is, in my opinion, a fake drink.

This all has a point. Without the proper use of my teeth, I am having a nightmare. Yesterday in front of the rugby, everybody ate bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese and cucumber. We were starving... (especially me. I had eaten Heinz cream of tomato soup the night before and had quickly given up when I realised it was just glorified bean juice. Without the glory. Because it was foul. If I had wanted bean juice I would have bought beans.) So.. Everyone wolfed down their beautiful bagels. I had to deconstruct the sandwich (Greg Masterchef would have been proud). I nibbled the cucumber, I nibbled the salmon (which I had to rip up with my fingers), I nibbled the bagel. It took a good 20 minutes to eat. I was frustrated. I looked like a pig. Some of the people I was with had never met me before so probably just assumed that was how I ate. Mortifying, when will this family ever get a good reputation kind of situation.

Furthermore, I could feel the stitches were loose, as the string, which I'm sure should have been trimmed before I left the hospital, kept catching on my tongue.

Each sensation had to be eaten in 6 Nibbles. There's definitely a problem when a member of the crisp guzzling faction can't actually guzzle the crisps. I was a failure. I was ashamed. Walkers had finally beaten me. I couldn't even muster a Thai sweet chilli and a dip. 

The Cotton "drinks and nibbles" used to be on a Friday night. Vic and I would sit on the windowsill waiting for Daddy, brucecase in hand, to get back from work. He might have a whiskey, mummy a G&T and vic and I would have a lemon squash (with lemonade if we were lucky) and then we'd have crisps and dips. Fussypants vic obv wouldn't have the dip. Sometimes we had cucumber and carrot to dip too. Nowadays, when 'the sun's over the yardarm' or 'when the time has a 7 in it' (wise words from papa) we crack open a wine (each) and eat a good few bags of crisps, dip or no dip.

I am writing this on the train. I can taste metal. I wipe my my mouth. There is blood on my hand. I am a big fat mess. 

I feel like this could be the beginning of a crime novel...

She stares out of the train window. Bleak landscape. Barren fields. Sky heavy with smog. The trees droop, tired with the nothingness that consumes them.* She stares. A single trickle of deep red blood escapes from her lip. Her teeth are stained scarlet. She stares. Her eyes are glazed. Stony. Dead.

In a few minutes time this service will be terminating in London Kings Cross so... The end. 

*aka Grantham.

Sexy, sore and under sedation

I had my wisdom tooth removed yesterday.

My wisdom tooth has been mighty bothersome over the last couple of years so I recently pottered down to King's Dental Hospital (pottered is definitely not the right word to use here. It is in Denmark Hill, the back of beyond. You don't potter, you walk briskly, hand tightly clutched around bag, machette in pocket) to get an xray.

The xray confirmed the awful truth. My wisdom teeth, lazy buggers, had grown completely horizontally. On one side especially, this was a problem. Careful years of ugly train track braces, fitted by the vulgar Birgit Jensen, had been for nothing.* All my bottom teeth had been squidged into the middle. More to the point, even under the surface it was causing havoc and might have spread decay. Gross.

So Oliyademabe, the dental surgeon, was whipping them out. But I was a 'high risk patient' because the tooth was brushing the nerve. 'Philippa', said he, 'worst case scenario - you lose all feeling in your lip. Forever...'**

They don't do general anaesthetics for this anymore. They put you under sedation.

So I rolled*** up to the hospital with my escort. The operation requires you to bring an escort because apparently the side effects of sedation are memory loss, wooziness and as I later discovered, the inability to walk.

If you don't like needles, stop reading now. Or skip a sentence.

Oliyademabe, who I will here-forthwith refer to as Oli, tapped my hand to look for a vein. He popped the needle a good two inches up said vein and said, 'Now we wait for the drugs'. I said 'Please may I go to the toilet?' For an awful moment, I panicked that sedation may lead to lack of bladder control which would have been beyond embarrassing. Having said that, it was slightly embarrassing having to walk back out into reception, past the nervous patients, with a needle hanging out of my hand and blood in the receptacle. I then had to navigate going to the loo without the use of one hand, whilst adopting the ski position, that naturally it is vital to adopt when using public toilets with no seats.

Satisfied, and a little smug at my multi-talented coordination and hamstring muscles, I returned.

Oli said****,

'Yo, Phil. You ever been sedated?'
'No'
'Nah man. Ever been drugged.'
'Uh, like, no', retorted I
'Well it's exactly the same feeling. You are going to feel very relaxed. You will be conscious and do what I ask but you will probably have no memory of it. Now you are going to feel a cold feeling running all the way up your arm...'

I literally have no memory after that. Maybe I was asleep. I vaguely remember wincing at one point and opening my eyes. Next thing I knew I was being put into a wheelchair and wheeled away.

They asked me to walk and then when I couldn't they said I couldn't go home yet. They gave me a lot of instructions which I definitely didn't listen to (hence need for escort) and then they gave me 600mg ibuprofen tablets. That is a lot of drug in one tablet. Yesterday, I had some flashbacks to things I might have said. Firstly, when they said I couldn't brush my teeth for 24 hours: 'Ew, gross.' and secondly, I  asked whether I could take my tooth home with me. They said they had disposed of it and I said 'aaaaaaaawwwwwww' sulk sulk. If my mum had been there, this would no doubt have been a moment for

'When will this family ever get a good reputation?'

I learnt to walk again and so we went home.

Have I mentioned that I looked like a hamster? On one side of my face. Saggy, fat, sore jowl. Incredibly sexy.

My escort drove me back home and put me on the sofa with a wealth of film choices. I picked the easiest I could see, pressed play... and then woke up for the credits.

After a losing battle with a very delicious but evil soup, he dropped me home. Friends two and three took over caring for me duties. Friend three forgot my ailment and squeezed my face. I bled. Fun times.

I could hardly keep my eyes open. I ate a dinner of mashed potato. I had massive food envy for their chilli con carne.

They left. I felt delirious. My mouth was sore. I couldn't brush my teeth. I could taste blood. I was sexy, sore and under sedation. *****



*Not for my dad though. He always enjoyed taking us to the ageing Norwegian orthodontist who sat with her legs splayed and said 'Down't bayt me pelayse'
** Ok so let's not be dramatic but this is actually the gist of what he said. Apparently if the doc is cack-handed and bruises the nerve, this is a distinct possibility.
*** More accurate than pottered. My friend took me in his white car with blacked out windows.
**** Take the style of these conversations with a large pinch of salt. If I actually wrote down our conversations word for word, they would be dull indeed.
***** Note short sentences, often used in creative writing for dramatic effectiveness. Used here because I am tired. Oh and also, one of those things might not be true. I'm not sure which - bit delirious cos I'm sore and under sedation.,

Who 8 all the π? (see footnote)

Victoria Clare Cotton is my little sister. I have mentioned her many times in this blog, but now I shall devote this entire post to her. She is 23 this year. I am just 24. So close and yet so different.

So we all know what I look like.
- dirty blonde/rich mouse fine hair
- blue eyes
- petite in all respects
- not like Linda Barker

Vic is my opposite.
- brown curly wurly thick fuck-off hair
- brown eyes and glasses
- 6 foot
- also not like Linda Barker


I studied French at university. I loved English and drama and all things artsy at school* and the thought of an equation drove me to tears. Many tears. I would even go so far as to say that I am numerically dyslexic. Numexic.

Victoria is studying finance, accounting and management. She loves spreadsheets. This is not my opinion of her. We had a mini dinner party last night and she actually said the words 'I love spreadsheets'. I recall one time she said that the only books she likes to read are textbooks. She had to write an essay the other day and went to my mum in a tiz. She didn't know how to express herself. My mum said 'Don't panic, tell me what you're trying to say and I'll help you construct a sentence'. Victoria proceeded to give her a mathematical formula. My mum then got into a tiz and had to go and calm down with a biscuit.** The moral of this story is that Victoria reckons she can only express herself in numbers. This makes me feel sick.

We don't always see eye to eye (actually we don't ever see eye to eye, because her boobs are at my eye level) but we usually get on like a house on fire despite our differences.

I'm not sure why we are so different. We have exactly the same parentals. Mummy C (or Milf as my guy friends affectionately call her) has my blue eyes but has dark dark hair.*** Daddy C (affectionately Big D by aforementioned friends) has Vic's brown eyes and no hair.

Mix us all together and we could rule the world.

Big D (or daddy as I call him) used to have headphones in place of hair.

Genes eh. Recessive and dominant. That's all I remember from biology.
That and (to the tune of Frere Jacques - a fab way to remember GCSE science)...

The ray of light is refracted by the cornea
The ray of light is then
Further refractedbythelens
To create a clear image
On the retina
On the retina. On the retina.

(Science was also not my strong point.)

Anyway, moving on...
So Victoria used to look like Deidre Barlow when we were little. She had to wear those unfortunate NHS jam jar bottom glasses and she had a bit of a perm. Fortunately for her, she has blossomed into a grade A babe.

I'm far left and she is far right. At least we share the same beautiful smile.

We used to drive down to France every year in the car. A tedious journey. One year, we drove to Italy. We decided to make a club (If clubs can consist of two) called the Musical Tomatoes. She was 'mus' and I was 'ical'. Much to her irritation. I'm not sure what the club did. It was probably a time passer. One thing we did do in the car was a lot of singing. We sang the tune from the Disney version of Robin Hood. But I only let her sing it to 'la' and I was allowed to do ALL of the letters and words. 

Grade A bitch. Some might have said I was a bully.

Some might also say that Miss Butter-Wouldn't-Melt was a nasty piece of work at times. When Vic was about 6, the headteacher (a nun) brought my mum into school. A pupil in the year above me at school, and so a whole 3 years older than Victoria, had complained that Vic had told her: 'Shut your gob'.

'Obviously, Mrs Cotton', said Sister Catherine, 'I know Victoria would never have said such a thing, there must have been some sort of misunderstanding.'

Mummy C readily agreed. Vic readily denied.

And so she was completely let off the hook and the incident was forgotten.

We found out years later that Vic had indeed told that girl to shut her gob. 

Similarly I knocked a computer off a desk at school, aged 6. We were told we all had to stay behind after school until somebody stepped forward as the guilty party. I never did. They let us go home.

We both got away with it.

There is a moral to this story. 

The Cotton girls are never culpable as nobody believes we are capable of being anything other than angelic. 

More fool them.

This post is really a tribute to Victoria in a series of unrelated stories.

Here is a final snippet:

Every year we do a quiz at Christmas. One year, Victoria decided she wanted to be quizmaster. She can't have been much more than 4. 

Now I think this anecdote sums up Victoria - an enigma, a mathematician, a philosopher perhaps? 

The first question was this,

'How hard is a magazine?'

We were baffled. We still ponder the answer to this day. 

I shall leave you to muse upon it. Whilst looking at some photos of Victarria.****

My parents learnt from that day forward, that they had a genius on their hands.

She will work in the City. 

She will be successful. 

She will bring them the money when they are old and grey.

I will be a penniless writer. 

And take some of said money. 

I am her sister, after all.

My graduation. I had heels on. She was still taller than me. 

The day we explained to some Americans what chavs were.

This is not an accurate representation of our characters. 

5 inch heels and still a short arse in comparison

Sisterly love (although actually in a lot of photographs we have at home, Victoria is in the shadows / I am pushing her into the background so that I can have the limelight)

* Except actual art. I was godawful at that. One time in year 7 we had to do a storyboard about the day in the life of a stamp. My story was very accomplished if I do say so myself. The stamp was recycled into a sick bag on an aeroplane and then flew out of the window and then a dog ate the paper and then the stamp ended up in a pile of dog dirt. Highly amusing and creative. This was not the opinion of the art teacher. I got a D. (yeah, me. a D) And she wrote 'scruffy drawings and was this entirely necessary?'. When all's said and done, better to have a great story with dodgy illustrations than some boring cutesy picture of a stamp who has a dreadfully dull day. Clearly an attempt to try and stifle our imaginations. (Still haven't got over it obviously.)
** Classic Mummy Cotton.
*** One time when I was very little and my friend's mum was talking about my mum, I volunteered the information that 'mummy's hair is ma-hojany' (not a mispelling, that is how I pronounced it). Teach her to leave bottles of dye lying around. Some of my mum's pupils asked her why her hair had orange stripes. Another friend recently compared my mum to Mary Portas. I haven't told her yet. She would not appreciate it. Generally, I would say hair is a family failing.
**** To be said in a broad Manchester accent.

NB the title of this post is irrelevant. But I felt I had to get some maths in, and last night after a few glasses of wine, I thought it was particularly clever. In the broad light of day, it is neither clever nor relevant.

Sorry about that.

Pigeon Water. Shithead and Prohibited Rum 2/2

We moseyed back through the narrow streets. Orange flowers strewn over the ground, sun beating down on our heads. The Lonely Planet Guidebook (affectionately known as the LP) had advised us to go to a few different eateries. The rooftop disaster from the night before had left us with a sour taste in our mouths. We wanted something different, so we climbed up the narrow staircase, passing some 'toilets', to a sheltered rooftop cafe.  On one side we overlooked the hubbub and mayhem of the market:

and on the other side lay the peace and tranquillity of the lake of Pushkar.

We had a veritable feast of houmous and goats cheese and bread and nothing at all related to India. We asked for a banana lassi.

'A Marijuana Lassi' winked the owner.

I was convinced we must have misheard. We stuck with banana. On our way out, the owner showed us the Cannabis sachets that they use to make up the concoction.

A month later when I came back to London, I was chatting with a couple of guy friends. We were perhaps discussing my innocence. I said, the only thing I regret about my trip to India is not trying opium. They looked at me agog. Agog I tell you.

"Phil", said they, "you do know what opium is right?"
"uh yah", I retorted, "it's like what they used to have in dens in the olden days"
They looked at each other.
"It's heroin"
"Oh."

I'm not being funny or anything* but I disagree. Opium water is available in India as Orange Juice is available in all good supermarkets. You drink that, you don't inject it. They are being overdramatic. Charles Dickens was an opium addict. As was Florence Nightingale. And Marcus Aurelius. There you go - a nice bit of trivia for a Sunday night.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, that like any good girl from a good family with a good reputation, I drank banana lassis and that was that.

We went back to the hotel and were greeted by our ex-tour group. They were to have an orientation tour and Faye and I decided to lie by the pool.

The pool. An oasis in a barren desert. Clear blue glistening water. Chlorinated of course. Ecstasy.

No I lied.

The pool was an abyss of murky shit. There was a thin skin across the top of the water. What that skin was made from I have no idea. Pigeons pooed across the surface. They bathed in their own waste.

So did I. (Their waste. Not mine.)

I was hot. Hot as a bitch. The water (unchlorinated, possibly just rain water) was cold. I dipped a toe tentatively. Dirty but refreshing. I got in.

Then disaster struck.

Owen, a fellow tour member, galumphed into the water. He proceeded to hold me by the leg and flip me upside down. I was thirsty. I had not, however, intended to quench said thirst with the aforementioned crap water. I'd have sooner licked my own armpit. And given the heat, I doubt that would have been a pleasant experience.

Have I mentioned that I am not a water baby?
Can I swim? Yes.
Can I dive? Yes.
Can I float? Absolutely not.

I physically cannot do it. I have already said that my body defies gravity when I go down I slide. It wants me to stay hanging vertically mid-air. However, when it comes to water, gravity wants me to be sucked under. I used to have lessons with a man called Tony Williams.** He said I couldn't float because I am a runner and have a huge amount of stamina.

Balls.

I got out. By this point, fully clothed Faye had run away squealing and he had chased her. He came back Faye-less. I struggled and struggled and tried to make myself as difficult and heavy as possible, but to no avail.

The inevitable happened. I flew back in for a second gulp of pigeon water.

They all went off for a look around the town.

We sunbathed and read, all set to meet them for dinner. A vegetarian dinner obviously. No meat allowed.

We got to the lake for dinner and it was absolutely stunning. Faye and I posed for a photo. Standing fairly close, as you do for photos. A man looked crossly at us. I thought maybe we were breaking the 'affection' rule. It turned out we were merely wearing shoes too close to the water's edge. We watched the beautiful pink sky until the sun had set. It was an incredibly romantic place. Had I been there as part of a couple, I would have been mighty irritated with the 'affection' rule.

Oh. And we illegally drank rum and played a card game called Shithead. Dignified.

I shan't bore you with the details but just thought I'd tie in with title.


* Is this a Northernism? Because I always use this phrase and my uni flatmates (from Cambridge, Southampton and Wiltshire doncha know) thought it was hilarious.


They were always partial to my phrases. Like 'oh, she's got a bob on herself' (aka she thinks she's it) and 'well, that's not going to bath the twins' (that won't get things done) or 'well it's all part of life's rich tapestry' (self evident non?). Maybe they are Cottonisms. 


My sister's boyfriend was slightly overwhelmed by our use of abbreviation. Here are a couple of examples:


Beg your puddin'
'Snips (This was originally 'I beg your pardon', which became 'Beg your parsnips', which further became 'parsnips' and then just 'snips'. Classic Mummy Cotton.)


Some people think we are lazy. I think we are eccentric and inventive.


** Again, clearly a source of much hilarity in the famille Cotton, Toe Knee Willy Arms...

An interlude. I shall call it Lent.

Once upon a time, when I was 4, there was a Harvest Festival at school. I should mention at this point that I went to a little Catholic primary school and we celebrated things like this with a service. There was one priest called Father O'Reilly, or as we liked to call him, something along the lines of, Father PickNails O'Reilly. Mainly because he used to pick his nails. He had a really wet voice. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. He was probably involved in this festival. I may feature him later.

So, there was a teacher called Mrs Tin*. I have a vivid memory of a royal blue jumper she used to wear with white bears on it. She had a pair of glasses to go with every outfit. She was one scary lady. I'm sure she was a nice lady but she could be fierce. She shouted at me once because I hadn't brought the pictures of monkeys in magazines from my tidy drawer to the green seats. Obviously scarred me because 20 years on and I still can't let it go. Why we needed pictures of monkeys I will never know.

I had only been at school a month and proud mummy Cotton had come to watch the Harvest Festival in which her little lovey was featuring. I'm pretty sure when I say I was featuring in it, I mean that at home, my mum put together a little basket with tins of baked beans or something in it and then we all brought them in and put them in the school hall to give to the poor and/or needy. We raised money for a charity called CAFOD but I think the poor and needy who got the baskets were just old people who lived round the corner from the school and so we bestowed our charity upon them whether they liked it or not.

Well I cried and cried during the service. (When will this family ever get a good reputation?) Afterwards Mrs Tin came up to me with my mum and said, 'What's to do poppet?'** And I said 'I don't like Harvest Festivals'. Although this is a pretty irrelevant anecdote it could lead to some interesting points.

1. From a young age I had a discerning palate for festivals? I was clearly advanced for my age
2. I was a fussy little madam? Moi?
3. I don't like giving stuff away? True, but I don't hold tinned products close to my heart
4. Father PickNails scared me? No comment required
5. I'm not so much into the religious festivals? Or maybe I'm not so much into sitting cross-legged for hours at these religious festivals, watching a wet man pick the dirt from under his nails...

Here is a tenuous link. It is Lent at the moment. Ha. Told you it would become relevant. (ish).

Lent starts with Pancake Day according to the general public. At school, it began with a Holy Mass. Shrove Tuesday - eat all your crap from the fridge ie pancakes. Ash Wednesday - have a big fat Mass and get some ash put on your head. Give something up.

For about five years in a row I was sick on pancake day. I didn't even eat the pancakes as I wasn't mad keen. Family Cotton happily munched them and I had spaghetti bolognaise. I can still, all these years later, visualise the contents of that toilet bowl, (my mum should have cut the mushrooms into smaller pieces. And possibly i should have chewed more...) and cries of 'go away mummy, you're making it WORSE'

So...the next year I was sick again which was probably a coincidence because I'm pretty sure I still didn't eat any of the pancakes. And then it became a joke. Oh it's pancake day, she's going to be ill again!

If there is anything you might have learned from this blog, it is that I have a good memory. But for bizarre things.

I gave up Pride & Prejudice, the 1995 BBC adaptation, for Lent once. Hats off to the people who give up chocolate and crisps and alcohol. I say it's good to be original though. This time round, I have decided to give up worrying. My friend has taken up doing something different each day. The other day, he took an empty pram and a female friend around London and they pretended to be parents for the day.

This is not really a blog post. Nor is it particularly interesting. It is more of a musing on Lent.

What's to do poppet? I ask myself. I am tired and below par. So I will pipe down now. Goodnight.



*real names are not used in this blog post. Well... aside from Father Picknails.
** to be read in a Lancashire accent. Classic Mrs Tin.