We wish (hic) you a Merry Mishmush

Poor old Mr Grumpy was up at 5 am on Christmas Eve to help his friend who runs the local butcher's shop. He had spent hours the previous day writing out tickets to match customers' orders and got everything out of the chiller and stood in the frozen yard in the sleet for seven hours, as everyone came and collected their turkeys, ham, etc. By the evening, he felt rotten and went to bed early. Come Christmas Day, the poor man had a streaming cold, which he'd caught off the butcher's two youngest sons. He spent the whole of the weekend feeling dreadful but put on a very brave act and cooked the turkey while I did the veg.

He gave me some wonderful presents, one of which was a Pegasus pendant which I'd seen on line earlier in the year. He had put me off it, saying he didn't like it, whilst secretly planning to buy it for me. Only he lost the link to the jewellery designer's website. I found it again but, woe... no Pegasus was on it. It looked as if she had sold out. However, an email elicited the fact that she had just one left, so I was lucky! He also gave me a digital photo frame which I have had lots of fun with. When I get a moment, I shall get some collections of photos together to show on it.

I drank half a bottle of red wine on Christmas Day (Mr Grumpy doesn't drink), which was just enough to create a mellow glow. I finished the bottle on Boxing Day while Mr G shivered and groaned beneath a blanket and I made him countless mugs of tea. I felt a bit icky on Boxing Day - overstuffed tum - so vowed to give up alcohol for a week and go on a nice, plain diet. But Fate had other plans up its sleeve.

Yesterday, we had a panic phone call from Mr G's friend who lives in Spain. She was already over here, spending Christmas with her sister in Essex, but had heard that her son had split up with his wife yesterday morning. They have three kids between them, one each and one mutual one, and our friend had presents for all of them. She was quite distressed, not knowing if the wife had departed, taking her granddaughter with her, so she asked if we could give her a bed for the night as her son lived just down the road.

Now, Mr G's friend - let's call her B - is well acquainted with the bottle. Any bottle. My heart sank as I knew I wouldn't be able to resist joining her in a glass or two. I had two bottles chilling in the fridge, one flat, one fizzy. It turned out B couldn't drink fizzy. Then ring-ring at the bell and in trooped a couple of Mr G's old friends with their extended family, consisting of children, partners, grandchildren. Mr G knew the couple themselves were arriving - in fact, they were supposed to be coming for a meal on their way home to Kent and he had cooked one of his famous potato, ham and cheese pies specially for them. But he hadn't expected an army, especially one which had just finished a huge dinner and wouldn't be wanting his pie.

As it was the festive period, and as the white wine had almost gone, I broke open a wine box of Rose, and got out some beers for the boys and a large bag of Bengal Bites, or whatever those Indian nibbles are called. By now, it was 8 pm, I was starving, having eaten nothing since a small bowl of soup at 1 pm, and soon I was shovelling spicy nibbles down my throat with the greed of a starving mouse that had just fallen into a grain silo.

As we waved them off an hour or so later, I picked up a leaflet from the floor that had been popped through the letterbox in the intervening hour. It was the answer to a prayer, something I'd never seen before. A new... wait for it... home delivery service for alcohol! Yes indeed, wine and fags delivered to your door. B and I pounced on it and in no time at all, three more bottles of white wine had appeared, with only a £2.50 delivery charge.

The rest of the evening faded into a blur and a few crumbs of ham, cheese and potato pie. Oh, and some chocolates. And... well, I can't remember, but at 3 am I had major heartburn and kept having to swallow my acidy wine for the second time. Oh well, at least I got twice the value out of it. And today, miraculously, I don't feel too bad at all.

My G will be putting a fire in the wood-burning stove later. He always searches for pieces of paper to add to it, to get the first flames flickering. What's the betting I never see that Home Alcohol Deliver leaflet again!!!

Seasonal phobias

When Christmas precedes a weekend and bank holidays follow, I get in a panic because it means the dentist's is shut for five whole days. Every tiny twinge in jaw or gum becomes an incipient agonising abscess. Every slight pain when I bite becomes a filling about to fall out or a tooth about to break. My front crown has wobbled slightly for years but now it feels as if one nibble of turkey will cause it to detach completely, leaving me looking like a vampire. Then there is that pain in my stomach that's come and gone for years and years... Could it be a grumbling appendix that is biding its time and is planning to rupture on Christmas Day?

There is only one solution and that is to get uproariously drunk from now till next Tuesday. Merry-hic-Chrishmash!

My baby goddaughter

I met my new goddaughter yesterday and I am totally smitten! I've never been very good with babies. I've not had much exposure to them. I don't know how to pick them up (when I try they always cry) and am much better with kittens and puppies. But this time was different. From the moment Elaria smiled at me, I was a goner. What a shame she will soon be back in Vancouver.

She actually has three godmothers and three godfathers spread around the globe. As she gets older, she'll feel like royalty. But there'll always be a big, soft, squidgy place for her in my heart.

The Gift-Wrap Rap

My nerves and tongue are snapping as I do my Christmas wrapping
And my language and the air are turning blue
As I make a nice, neat packet of my sister's sparkly jacket,
Then find that two hands simply will not do.

As my left hand grimly holds the reindeer-patterned folds,
My right gropes for the Sellotape in vain,
Just to find the stuff is stuck in a nail-defying tuck
And the end is never to be seen again.

I hear the paper rip as I release my grip
To go scrabbling at the tape with huff and puff.
Then behind my back the parcel spills out across the carpet,
Collecting lots of cat hairs, dust and fluff.

I shake and brush and blow (thank God she'll never know),
Then I reach for sticky tape with happy grin,
For I've thought of something clever; I'll cut several strips together
And I'll park them for the moment on my chin.

Aha! This is the ticket! I can hold and fold and stick it
And rip my chin hairs out for free as well.
But as I get underway, Sod's Law comes into play
With a ding-dong-bloody-bing-bong on the bell

I get a funny look as I sign the postie's book;
In fact his attitude is downright weird.
But as I pass the mirror, I scream aloud and shiver
At the sight of mad old bag with sticky beard.

At last my wrapping's done, though my chin looks like a plum.
As I glug my well-earned wine I vow, "No more!"
Next year I won't go crackers, I'll just pay the extra ackers
To have the blinking lot wrapped by the store.


MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE, AND MAKE SURE YOU RECYCLE YOUR PAPER FOR NEXT YEAR!

Singing styles

We all have at least one unfulfilled ambition and my main one was to be a singer-songwriter of the Joni Mitchell kind. I wrote my first song when I was six, and just kept on. Even now, a song bubbles up every so often like lava from a dormant volcano, reminding me of the existence of music in my soul.

When I used to sing, I loved the tonal quality of notes, drawing them out and making them ring. To me, singing was about the beauty of the sound and the emotional sense of the words. My voice was of the pure, folky soprano type as delivered by Mary Hopkin and Joni Mitchell in her early days prior to The Hissing of Summer Lawns when she started to go jazzy, which caused as many ripples amongst fans as Dylan did when he decided to go electric.

Now, though, singing seems all about style and much less about meaning and tonal quality. Listen to the singers on X-Factor and you won't hear a pure note amongst them. What you get instead is a series of tricksy twiddles and hiccupy catches. It's 'clever' singing, technical singing, rather than singing from the heart and letting it pour out of an open throat in the way an opera singer does. It's a style I knew nothing about until the day I went to put a track down in a recording studio about 20 years ago and the producer wanted all kinds of vocal frills and furbelows that I didn't have a clue how to do. Next time I heard my song, he'd got another female singer to ad-lib all the twiddles.

So how refreshing it is to hear Camilla Kerslake's high, pure tones on How Can I Keep From Singing. Not a twiddle in sight, just the lovely, lilting melody, unadulterated by affected modern pop 'style'. This is the kind of singing I do. In fact, I can reach her notes, which is quite a miracle. Though it's been some time since I could hit Minnie Ripperton's very highest squeak on Loving You. I can still reach the note below it, though. I tried it when I was all alone in the changing room at the gym the other day. There's a stone floor, tiled walls and a very good echo. Then I heard a male voice clearing his throat very loudly and realised that the male changing room was on the other side of the wall. Oops. Bet he thought someone had pulled their thong up too high, with a twang. Ee-ee-eek!

The Tale of the Champion Mouser

Knotty Ash, Liverpool, isn't just a place Ken Dodd jokes about, it's the area where my mum grew up. Back in 1918, when Mum was ten, phones were rare commodities, as were cars, especially when you were council tenants like they were, so people communicated by letter and caught the bus.

One day, my gran received a letter from a friend who lived way over the other side of the city. "We have mice in the house. We need a cat," the letter said.

Now, my gran kept a menagerie which at once point consisted of cats, dogs, rabbits, chickens, a monkey called Jacko and a swearing parrot that my grandfather adored (another story). One of the cats, a huge, scabby old ginger tom, was a brilliant mouser so my gran decided to lend it to her friend. Old Ginger was bundled, protesting loudly, into a shopping bag and my mum, Muriel, a pretty little girl with big blue eyes and lovely strawberry-blonde ringlets, a real Pears Soap child, was walked to the bus stop and told where to get off the other end.

At first, Ginger protested loudly. Loud, mournful howls such as only a tom cat can produce, emanated from the bag and old ladies gave Muriel sympathetic looks. After a while, all went silent. 'Good,' thought my mum, 'he's fallen asleep.' Not so. There is another reason why a cat falls silent and that is when he has done something so momentously, horrifically, wickedly terrible that he is guilt-struck dumb. This was one of those occasions.

All of a sudden, a terrible stench arose from the bag. As the miasma pervaded the bus, passengers produced handkerchiefs and started to move seat. Scarlet with embarrassment, Mum prodded the bag and called, "Puss, Puss," to no avail. Silence prevailed. She was just a little girl with a shopping bag and everybody thought the vile aroma was coming from her.

Eventually, wobbly-legged and weeping, she humped the heavy, silent , stinking bag down the stairs of the bus and made the long walk to the lady's house, the swaying bag bumping against her knees and making her slender, ten-year-old arms ache most horribly.

Finally, wearily, she arrived. "My gran has sent you a cat," she said with a sweet smile, plonking the bag on the lady's hall floor. As she undid it, out shot a furious, filthy, hissing, spitting ginger ball of teeth and claws which frightened the woman so much that she fainted. When she came to, she told Muriel, "Catch that horrible creature and take it right back where it came from. I wanted a sweet little kitten, not that... that demon!"

Without allowing Mum to clean out the bag, old Ginger was stuffed back into it and Muriel was forced to carry her smelly cargo all the way back to Knotty Ash. No wonder they say friends and business don't mix!

In days of yore

Mr Grumpy's 76-year-old brother was here today and they started reminiscing about the past. One story involved the day their six chickens disappeared from the back garden, where they lived a happy, free range life. Mr G and his brother were sent to investigate and found the back gate had been forced open and no sign of the chickens. Then Mr noticed something on the ground. A wallet, with a name and address in it. Aha, they thought; the culprit. They sneaked up to the house and sure enough, they could hear chickens and peeking over the fence they espied six, which seemed more than just a coincidence.

They went to the police with Mum. A while later, an officer came round and asked them to come to the address in the next street and identify their clucking property. Now, it so happened that one hen - named Henrietta - had had a fight with another hen and had her comb partially torn off. Dad had trapped Henrietta between his knees, taken a needle and cotton and sewed up her comb, but she wriggled free before he could cut the cotton. Once inside the thief's garden, Mr G, who was only about five at the time, shouted, "Look, there's Henrietta!" Sure enough, the tell-tale piece of black cotton was dangling from her (now healed) comb. Proof enough.

Weeks later, the case was up before the judge, but Mr G's family were told they had to produce the stolen goods. So Mr G and his brother, who was in his late teens, Mr G being the baby of the family, were packed off on the bus with a cardboard box containing six chickens.

The fowl were quiet (probably in shock at finding themselves shoved unceremoniously into a hot, smelly box and treated to a long, bumpy bus ride) and all was well until they got to the courtroom and were forced to wait. And wait. And wait. The chickens grew restive and began to cluck, very loudly. One even laid an egg. The boys were mortified as everyone was staring and laughing. After they had waited several hours, they were told that the 'evidence' was not needed after all as the culprit had pleaded guilty. So back onto the bus they went with their bouncing, clucking box. By the time they got home, their egg was scrambled.

COMING TOMORROW...

The Tale of the Champion Mouser