fox in the snow's blog

Chat: It's Fate - Mrs Dolittle

Next up is Mrs Dolittle's column. As you can probably guess from her pseudonym, Mrs Dolittle talks to the animals. Not for her, however, the time-honoured tradition of talking to an animal by vocalising speech sounds, waiting for it to meow, bark or squeak, and then cooing "oh, he thinks he's people!" No, Mrs Dolittle communicates with animals psychically. She meditates quietly and tunes into what animals are thinking. She goes into a trance to tap into your pet’s thought processes. She brain-rapes them, essentially. Let's not sugarcoat this.

This month, Mrs Dolittle is forcibly inserting her mind into a hen.

 

Mrs Dolittle

Or rather, several hens, starting with Henry who tells Mrs D about how wonderful it is to submit to her partner, the cockerel Bertie (who , Mrs D notes with with stunning insight, 'is rather cocky'). 'The hens accepted that their cockerel was the boss,' she says admiringly.

She moves on to a broody hen, Francine, sitting on a clutch of eggs, who has a 'feeling of relaxed purpose’. Mrs Dolittle asks her if she’s bored and gets the reply ‘Not boring at all. Youngster to hatch, very important.’ So charmed is Mrs D by this ‘wonderful experience’, she tells us she will communicate with her whenever she is stressed.

Through Mrs Dolittle, C:IF is promoting its sly anti-feminist agenda that women should submit to their men and will never be happier than when fulfilling their maternal duties. C:IF wants us barefoot and pregnant and chained to the wall of the barn.

Ignoring this misogyny, I pressed on. There is a lack of chickens in south London so I chose to commune with an animal more commonly found here: a squirrel. Specifically, Ceiling Squirrel, who lives in our loft and likes to scrabble around noisily in the evenings.

Earlier this evening, I sat back on the sofa, closed my eyes, and waited. Sure enough, within minutes there was a tell-tale pattering and thumping overhead. 'Hello?' I thought very hard. 'HELLO?' Nothing. I wondered if Ceiling Squirrel had heard me and was translating my thoughts into Squirrelese and forming a response. This could be slow. This could be like using chat rooms on a dial-up connection in 1995. From up above, nothing but the sound of tiny paws scuttling around. Thump. Bang. Clamber, scramble, tumble, CRASH.

'I wish you would be quiet, Ceiling Squirrel!' I thought loudly.

And suddenly, Ceiling Squirrel came though. 'No, you don't,' he psychically replied, 'because that would mean I was dead. Then you'd have to deal with my stinking rotten corpse. FUCK YOU. I’m going to fuck shit up in here until the end of your tenancy.'

I ended the connection. No-one needs a squirrel cursing directly into their brain. Some people may see this exchange as me projecting my thoughts about our loft-dwelling pest. I assure you, it is not. Ceiling Squirrel spoke to me. There is no real evidence for this, but it is a fact.

CONCLUSIONS

I need to tell the landlord about the You Know What in the You Know Where. (Shh. He can hear you.)

Chat: It's Fate - a light to guide us all

One of my favourite blogs is Guardian Girl, who has a simple concept: each week she follows the recipes, fashion and lifestyle advice in the Guardian Weekend magazine to see if they are achievable by the average reader who isn't model thin, doesn't have a huge salary, and works full-time. The answer is generally no, but she makes a valiant and very funny effort.

 

I wondered if this idea would translate to one of the quality publications found in my home:

 

Chat: It's Fate

 

Yes, this month week, I am going to be Chat: It's Fate Girl, or C:IF Girl for short. (Frankly that sounds like a programming language, but let's press on.) I think it will be much cheaper and easier to be C:IF Girl than Guardian Girl. Chat: It's Fate, for the few among you who aren't avid readers, offers an unsettling mix of true life stories, monthly horoscopes and 'affirmations', and pictures of crystals and amulets with vague instructions on how to use them. Earlier this year it advised readers looking for love to hang a hummingbird charm in their pants. I shit you not.

 

Let's turn quickly to page 2:

oooh it's spooooky

Christine Stockall is employed to do rubbish smudgy pencil drawings of people who have appeared to her, and make up channel messages from the spirit world. Here is a spirit who came through in my dream last night, whom I believe has an urgent message to pass on:

what could it meeeeean

Oh wait. This is clearly Binky, the cat I won from a grabber machine in Brighton. I don't think Binky has a message for me, unless it's 'please can I sleep in the bed again?' No Binky. I'm afraid you have been banned from the bed by someone who shall remain nameless (Jef).

binky wants to punch you in the face

BACK ON THE FLOOR, BINKY.

Conclusion: not all dreams are messages from the other side. In fact, none of them are.

Tomorrow: Following Mrs Doolittle's advice, I try to psychically commune with an animal.

I don't think I should be encouraging this.

It’s Jef’s birthday soon and, being a man of simple pleasures, he has only requested one thing – an insanely hot chilli sauce. He already owns a bottle of Dave's Insanity Sauce, which makes me cry just to look at it and has a tongue-in-cheek message on the side claiming it can also be used to strip waxed floors and remove grease stains from driveways. At least I hope it's tongue-in-cheek. This is the even stronger sauce Jef wants to add to (his half of) dinner:

It's called Mad Dog INFERNO

Chillis are measured on the Scoville scale, a measure similar to the Beaufort and decibel scales. Mad Dog 357 Special Edition measures 600,000 Scoville units. For comparison, a mouth-burning Scotch bonnet peaks at 325,000 units and the pleasant warmth of a jalapeno clocks in at a mere 5000 units. If a jalapeno is a gentle breeze, this sauce is a hurricane. If a Scotch bonnet is a noisy workplace, then this sauce is a jet engine. Taking off in your FACE.

Jef originally requested this sauce which, at a brain-shattering four million Scoville units, needs to be added to food using a pipette. I refused on the grounds that I will have no food in the house that could kill a child. It is basically a terrifying weapon that should be dismantled by specialists and the original recipe destroyed. IT SHOULDN’T BE.

So happy birthday, Jef. Happy throat-burning, eye-watering, finger-blistering birthday.

Martine McCutcheon done wrote a book

...and oh my, what a book. Finished Dan Brown's latest? Desperate for something of similar calibre? Then you're going to LOVE The Mistress by Martine McCutcheon, aka Tiffany out of EastEnders, who seems to have foolishly forgotten to employ a ghost-writer for her debut novel. Her website describes it as "warm, sexy and heart-wrenchingly moving" although "tepid, predictable and ball-achingly dreadful" might be better, going by the first chapter at least. You can read the opening here but here are some of the best bits should you not wish to taint your brain with it:

He was a sweet, cheeky chappie in his thirties with cute dimples – a typical black-cab driver

‘Happy birthday, dharrling,’ purred her Russian friend Assia. ‘The fur jacket and dress are both divine.’

     ... with a misty air of spirituality she looked Mandy straight in the face and whispered loudly, ‘This is a rose quartz. I got it from the tree festival. It will bring you love.’

His eyes were beautiful, and despite being tired they sizzled, full of knowledge, some sadness but most of all, kindness.

 

and my favourite:

If you went for it, truly went for it, you could get the life you wanted here, and that was Mandy’s aim – to have it all. And why not? She’d read a greeting on a card once in Paperchase on the King’s Road that had truly stuck with her:

Reach for the moon, and even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.

 

It's like she's torn up her Marian Keyes, Sophie Kinsella and Louise Fielding novels, covered herself in glue, rolled around on the floor and handed in whatever stuck to her publishers.

WEEKEND

Dear internet,

 

My weekend was so action-packed (note: this may not conform to other people’s definitions of the term) that I’m going to tell you all about it.

 

On Friday night, my volunteering shift was interrupted by a bumblebee as a big as a mouse. Honestly. Massive. I had to send three men out to deal with it – who reported back that it was actually the size of a poussin – and then it kept coming back in. Maybe it just wanted to talk. It was eventually banished with a flapping copy of Grazia.

 

Saturday night saw me sitting in the dark in a scout hut, clutching a plastic cup of wine, waiting to shout “SURPRISE!” at one of Jef’s friends who had been thrown a surprise birthday party. He didn’t cry/faint/fall over/run away/wet himself when the lights were turned on and all his family and friends were revealed, crouched under a peeling ‘Jesus Loves You’ poster. I would probably have done all five, and been sent home in disgrace.

 

The DJs looked like they were straight out of Phoenix Nights, talked all over the records, and over ENUNciated EVerything in exciting DYNAMIC voices, i.e. they were amazing. They took requests but had a “no Fleet Foxes” rule. They foolishly played a ska-punk version of Take On Me instead of the superior A-ha original, and I raged about not being able to do my special Take On Me dance. It involves whirling arms and no shame. Talking of dancing, I’ve noticed recently that most women have a sedate way of dancing, which involves polite sidesteps, swaying hips and shoulder rolling. I have perfected a dancing style that is probably best described with the euphemism “enthusiastic”. I am messy and awkward and not terribly aware of the shapes I am making. I dance for myself and not for the crowd. It is not pretty. This is possibly why I’ve had more teeth removed than I’ve had boyfriends.

 

Towards the end of the night, Jef decided that he wants to throw a Danny Dyer’s Deadliest Men party for his 30th. He will be Danny Dyer, and the guests will be required to dress as dangerous men, who will duke it out over the course of the evening to determine once and for all who is the deadliest. I predict a Hitler vs. Harold Shipman final.

 

F ast-forward to Sunday: last night I was woken several times by Jef’s housemate slamming doors and stomping around. I’d usually have been propelled out of the bedroom by the force of my own rage, but Jef’s housemate is going to war today, to Afghanistan, and I thought that if you’re going to cut a man some slack, it’s surely on the eve of his enlisting. So I lay there and fumed and tried not to think dark thoughts like “fuck off and die” because maybe he will.

 

I’ll leave you on that note. I hope you all had super-fantastical weekends.

 

Karaoke fun times

As a relative novice to karaoke (although I might have been three times in the last two weeks), I have noticed there are several rules that, if followed, can only enhance your enjoyment. Here they are, for your future singing pleasure:

 

• Drinking vodka from a hip flask in the street before your performance can only help matters. As I noted at the time, perhaps if my mum and dad had been a bit more laissez-faire in their parenting, I would have got all that out of my system when I was 15.

 

• Find a signature tune. You may wish to rethink it if, say, you have chosen Ignition by R Kelly and realise you don’t know most of the tune. Or if “your song” is a mood-killer like Where The Wild Roses Grow. You are mistaken in thinking nothing says “party!” like a duet where Nick Cave murders Kylie Minogue.

 

• The gap between saying “oh no, I can’t possibly do this” and launching into “Heathcliff, it’s meeee, it’s Catheee, I’ve come ho-o-oooome” decreases in direct proportion to the number of cocktails imbibed.

 

• Interpretive dance will always improve a song. Especially if that song is Like A Prayer and you are posing as the black Jesus, helpfully yelping “I’m the black Jesus! Look! Look at me!”

 

• Are there people in your group who can carry a tune? Instruct them that this simply isn’t on and that it’s rubbish singing or nothing. If they persist on acting like they want to get through to boot camp, simply turn their microphone down and sing over them.

 

• Don’t bother pausing the song when the drinks lady comes in with your order. She’s been giggling outside the door for the last two minutes, listening to you caterwauling through Islands In The Stream. She’s probably surreptitiously uploaded it to YouTube already, in the Comedy category, tagged with “MEGALOLZ!!!”

 

• Are you part of an all female group? Then you will end with I Will Survive. Don’t fight it.

Three reasons why today is the best day ever:

1) I booked two karaoke evenings today. TWO. A karaoke bar in town offers free singing fun to charity workers on Monday nights. Finally, my job is good for something. On my first outing, a mere week ago, I discovered how hard it was to relinquish the microphone once it was in my grasp. I sang everything. "Highlights" included Boom! Shake The Room (complete with actions), Ask Me by The Smiths, and Ignition by R. Kelly. The latter is now my signature song. My version was pretty special, and will be even better next week now I know how the tune goes.

2) I made this for Jef at the weekend:

jef's favourite author

I posted it on Twitter saying it was inspired by Josie Long, who is a wonderful comedian who recently appeared in a home-made KURT VONNEGUT t-shirt. And she replied to me! She liked it! She retweeted my photo! Twitter has levelled the playing field between us and our heroes. If you don't know Josie Long, you should check her out. Her last tour was called Trying Is Good, which might be my life motto: just have a lovely go at things, and if you make a mess, at least it's your mess. There is a beautiful charm in the amateurish (see above).

3) Don't Tell The Bride is back on BBC3 tonight. I have a terrible weakness for dreadful BBC3 shows, and don't even know what button to press for BBC4. My tear-stained 19-year-old self is shaking her head at me and ostentatiously reading The Bell Jar.

come and literally dine with me

Do you all watch Come Dine With Me? Are you familiar with how awesome it is? It is quite probably the best thing on telly. An overview, for those of you foolish enough to have missed it: four strangers take it in turns to host a dinner party for each other. Each night, the three guests mark their host out of ten. The winner at the end of the week get £1000.

 

I think I may have directly quoted the wonderfully sarcastic voiceover man Dave Lamb verbatim there, thus proving my love. Some people can quote the Star Wars opening crawl; my heart lies with a simpler, more low-budget and parochial pleasure. There is nothing more comforting on a lazy Sunday afternoon than watching hours of CDWM on More4, shouting at the more outlandish guests (such as Dawn, who cried and fell asleep and left the guests to make their own dinner) and recompiling my list of top contestants (new entry: Margaret, the royalist who made castles out of bread).

 

Such is our commitment to the show that badmissk, Jef and I are going to recreate it in one another’s homes over the coming weeks. We’ll take it in turns to prepare three courses while the others poke around our homes, judging our furniture and rifling through our drawers, before making catty remarks and marking us. Kate has hinted that the Liberace cook book may be brought into play; specifically, the meat bouquet. The stakes are high.

 

While we don’t kick off for a few weeks yet, I will be testing the waters on Saturday by making this for Jef and Kate. I look forward to them rummaging through my glitter collection while I’m frantically chopping onions, and making disparaging remarks about the garden. We’ll miss the witty voiceover but I might ask my housemate to rig up some microphones so her disembodied voice can shout at me while I’m in the kitchen.

 

Let the cooking commence…

Today I'm going to party like it's 09.59 (and I'm sat at my desk and it's grey and drizzly outside)

Good morning internet kittens,

There's been such an outburst of good news lately that I thought it merited a blog party. It might be drab and miserable outside, there might be no milk in the kitchen, we might have forgotten what the sun looks like: but my god, we have things to celebrate:

- Minks passed her first year and is officially clever and brilliant.

- Moobs is approved to adopt. Hurrah!

- NewMalden has been married for one month and three days. Woo hoo!

- Jef and I found a flat - a wonky-shaped, low-ceiling flat in a house that feels like a haunted hotel. It had me from its spooky reception area with stained glass windows and multiple staircases.

Congratulations on being awesome, everyone. I've got vanilla vodka and mini pretzels (i.e. my diet for two weeks in America) that you're all welcome to. Any more good news - no matter how small - then leave a comment so you can be included in the celebrations. Let the drinking commence; it's 5 o'clock in Hong Kong after all, so that makes it acceptable to start on your beverage of choice right about.....now.

Goodbye Mr Fish

This news story, Death of the people's fish, reminded me that our fish - Mr Fish - died last week after a lengthy battle against boredom. He was eight, which is frankly ludicrous - aren't fish meant to die within a matter of months? - and I suspect that my housemate's ex-girlfriend may have quietly replaced Fish 1.0 with Fish 2.0 and possibly even 3.0. Still, this would have made the incumbent Mr Fish at least three years old, which is as long as I've been indifferently living alongside him.

 

Some ways you may like to remember Mr Fish today:

- accidentally not having any food for two weeks; not even appearing to notice this

- not having a name for over half your life; receiving one that refers merely to your title and genus

- wishing you lived further from the washing machine so your living space wasn't regularly shaken

- occasionally living in a margarine tub while your home is being cleaned

- lolling around on your back, being threatened with being flushed, making a miraculous recovery.

 

Mr Fish's place in the kitchen has now been replaced with a toaster, which I have named Mr Toaster in his memory. WE WILL NOT FORGET.