My Romanian driving instructor, in between telling me that I was a public menace and that I shouldn’t hyperventilate on the freeway, once told me Calabrian women are known for tongues like knives and hearts like furnaces, or else like marshmallows, I don’t recall which. Since then I’ve assumed I inherited my bitchiness from the Italian side, but yesterday at the Café del Mar, while the high tide crashed into the barriers, while she drank her first latté and while I fantasized about eating all the delicious fish swimming around the North Sea, I realized it’s actually from Granny and hence a Yorkshire production.
The third or fourth time I told her I thought del Mar was Spanish and meant ‘of the sea’ (anybody who’s smoked hash oil will understand my Granny’s short term memory) some guys who had been sitting next to us got up and stretched, which made their t-shirts simultaneously pop up over their mighty flabby guts.
Not cute little potbellies, not even normal potbellies, I mean mighty, chip-gravy-and-lager-seven-times-a-week, hairy, flabby guts. The men didn’t resemble each other in their faces but their guts were like triplets. Huge, hairy triplets.
As they exited into the drizzly outdoors Granny and I turned to face each other.
‘What male beauty,’ she said.
‘The temptation,’ I bellowed. (She’s can’t hear much because her ears are 94 years old.)
We sniggered, and as I looked at her and she looked back, I think we both recognized a mirrored expression of pure bitch - pure laughing disdain - pure nasty complicity on each other’s faces. I saw her look as slightly shocked as I felt – and then, once more simultaneously, we smiled at what's bred in the bone.
venerdì, ottobre 06, 2006
giovedì, ottobre 05, 2006
Why I Love Northern England, Part III
I’ve been touched by how supportive friends and acquaintances have been lately, from my tai chi instructor to the well-groomed blue-eyed French-Canadian civil servant who got me my passport in three hours to the darling of my heart. I understand a little better helplessness in the face of people who have lost someone they love. But I also understand that sympathy works wonders, and that when all else fails you can just get pregnant – Little Bitch made me smile by reminding me she’s due to ‘even the score’ by popping an infant in the next week or so.
We can’t all pop babies at the drop of a hat, but I know many people may still want to do tangible things besides offering sympathy to make me feel better. Thanks. I’ve thought of something, inspired by an event yesterday during the cortége going to the crematorium.
The funeral finished around the same time school let out. We left the charming old Norman church where my grandfather had done so much conscientious Anglican good work (but all the way through, pretty hymns not withstanding, I couldn’t shake the feeling it was just a made-up religion for backwashed Catholics) and drove sedately behind the hearse, four veritable fountains of tears trailing after my endlessly curious ‘oh I say, what’s behind that big rock up there’ grandfather for the last time.
My aunt had her street-side window cracked a couple of inches to stop the windows from fogging, I suppose, which gave three of us (my grandmother, thankfully, hears nothing below the pitch of a shout) the benefit of listening to the editorials of passing schoolchildren; mostly limited to ‘ooooooooooeerrrrgh! A dead baw-deee!’
She closed the window.
So if you really want to make Mistress La Spliffe and her family feel better, please find a bratty schoolchild from Yorkshire, step on its face, have your photograph taken and submit the results to me. Each will make our hearts sing and the finest will be posted on this blog.
We can’t all pop babies at the drop of a hat, but I know many people may still want to do tangible things besides offering sympathy to make me feel better. Thanks. I’ve thought of something, inspired by an event yesterday during the cortége going to the crematorium.
The funeral finished around the same time school let out. We left the charming old Norman church where my grandfather had done so much conscientious Anglican good work (but all the way through, pretty hymns not withstanding, I couldn’t shake the feeling it was just a made-up religion for backwashed Catholics) and drove sedately behind the hearse, four veritable fountains of tears trailing after my endlessly curious ‘oh I say, what’s behind that big rock up there’ grandfather for the last time.
My aunt had her street-side window cracked a couple of inches to stop the windows from fogging, I suppose, which gave three of us (my grandmother, thankfully, hears nothing below the pitch of a shout) the benefit of listening to the editorials of passing schoolchildren; mostly limited to ‘ooooooooooeerrrrgh! A dead baw-deee!’
She closed the window.
So if you really want to make Mistress La Spliffe and her family feel better, please find a bratty schoolchild from Yorkshire, step on its face, have your photograph taken and submit the results to me. Each will make our hearts sing and the finest will be posted on this blog.
martedì, ottobre 03, 2006
Why I love Northern England, Part II
Scarborough is littered with desperate yoof. Despite it being school time again, in the hour or two I spent shopping downtown I saw at least four scarcely pubescent spotty, spotty girls who either had conjunctivitis or an extremely inconsiderate sexual partner. And more yoof by the moment, it seems. You can tell Catholicism held on too long up here – so many young mothers, some of them obviously having no fucking clue.
I went into a store called Woolworth’s to look for a certain kind of baking dish for Figaro – Woolworth’s is budget but it isn’t like Walmart, it’s dirtier and stuff, like they have signs up about how it isn’t acceptable to beat on the staff. There’s a café in there where a young whale of a mother was eating, and her crying baby was sitting in a babyseat, pointing away from her and trying to crane his head around to catch sight of her. The mother was getting really pissed off and just kept yelling ‘Behave. Are you going to behave? Behave,’ at this poor fucking pre-verbal infant. Babies having babies. Awful.
Which reminds me of a story my grandmother told us yesterday of a nasty hospital trip she’d had with Grandad a few months ago. “We were in this crowded waiting room full of children. It was awful, awful. I asked one of them what they were there for, and for a moment there was complete silence in the room. And then it said ‘babies’, and they all started laughing and saying ‘babies’. Absolutely awful.’
I went into a store called Woolworth’s to look for a certain kind of baking dish for Figaro – Woolworth’s is budget but it isn’t like Walmart, it’s dirtier and stuff, like they have signs up about how it isn’t acceptable to beat on the staff. There’s a café in there where a young whale of a mother was eating, and her crying baby was sitting in a babyseat, pointing away from her and trying to crane his head around to catch sight of her. The mother was getting really pissed off and just kept yelling ‘Behave. Are you going to behave? Behave,’ at this poor fucking pre-verbal infant. Babies having babies. Awful.
Which reminds me of a story my grandmother told us yesterday of a nasty hospital trip she’d had with Grandad a few months ago. “We were in this crowded waiting room full of children. It was awful, awful. I asked one of them what they were there for, and for a moment there was complete silence in the room. And then it said ‘babies’, and they all started laughing and saying ‘babies’. Absolutely awful.’
Why I love Northern England
On the train leaving Manchester aeroport, a couple who sat in front of me grabbed my attention because they looked so ill-suited; a pretty, refined, Eastern European girl and big florid English bastard with thinning, spiky blond hair, looking for all the world fresh off the Danish Viking ship.
They were macking so wetly and loudly that I was on the verge of being annoyed until I remembered how shameless I am about grabbing Figaro's goodies in public, so I just ignored them as well as I could instead of rolling my eyes or yelling "If you want him to come quick you have to lick his balls!" (thank you, Margaret Cho).
The girl got out at Manchester Piccadilly and after kissing her off the big florid bastard sat back down. He started sniffling as the train gathered speed. Awww, I thought. They live in different cities and went on vacation together. I felt bad for them, then smug because I co-habit with my best boy, and then I started inventing all sorts of scenarios for these star-crossed lovers; extra-marital affairs, the woman giving the man the big adios during the vacation, et cetera.
As I was letting my fancy fly, my eye fell on the magazine the big bastard had started reading after he stopped sniffling over the lady. It was a skin mag. He was looking at porn. Really intently, too, like he was studying it to describe on a test later.
Sweet.
They were macking so wetly and loudly that I was on the verge of being annoyed until I remembered how shameless I am about grabbing Figaro's goodies in public, so I just ignored them as well as I could instead of rolling my eyes or yelling "If you want him to come quick you have to lick his balls!" (thank you, Margaret Cho).
The girl got out at Manchester Piccadilly and after kissing her off the big florid bastard sat back down. He started sniffling as the train gathered speed. Awww, I thought. They live in different cities and went on vacation together. I felt bad for them, then smug because I co-habit with my best boy, and then I started inventing all sorts of scenarios for these star-crossed lovers; extra-marital affairs, the woman giving the man the big adios during the vacation, et cetera.
As I was letting my fancy fly, my eye fell on the magazine the big bastard had started reading after he stopped sniffling over the lady. It was a skin mag. He was looking at porn. Really intently, too, like he was studying it to describe on a test later.
Sweet.
lunedì, ottobre 02, 2006
Well
It's not as though I have anything to say that the general public should read today. I will say this, though. My flight, after the hellish slap-dance that was getting an emergency passport (I'd be in jail right now if it wasn't for Figaro, let's put it like that)[and I'd like to send a huge fucking shout-out to the Canadian federal government, as once I got my shit together it took them THREE HOURS to issue the five year passport - you guys ROCK! Vote Liberal!], was one of the smoothest ever, I suppose due to the total lack of general interest in people going to Manchester on an autumn Saturday.
However, the movie they showed - Just My Luck, starring Lindsay Lohan - was maybe the worst thing I've ever looked at, ever. IT SUCKED SO BAD. At first I couldn't believe movies that bad still got made, and then I started fearing for the future of the human race if this sort of shit is what the kiddies are watching now. Dammit! Are we going through the fucking 80's again or something? Anyways.
However, the movie they showed - Just My Luck, starring Lindsay Lohan - was maybe the worst thing I've ever looked at, ever. IT SUCKED SO BAD. At first I couldn't believe movies that bad still got made, and then I started fearing for the future of the human race if this sort of shit is what the kiddies are watching now. Dammit! Are we going through the fucking 80's again or something? Anyways.
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