The Only Way Is Stanley

Recently I received a rather over-excited e-mail from a woman in L.A. A producer for some US version of ‘Relocation, Relocation, Relocation’, she was after people who had moved to weird places abroad to demonstrate the extreme loveliness of filling in all those damn immigration forms, arriving in foreign climes and subsequent issues with forgetting to top up you kerosene etc. Said woman had been given my horrible history by an ex-colleague in the teaching and learning game she’d met in some Vietnamese drinking den. These things don’t happen to normal people.

I considered the matter in depth for approximately 45 minutes. It was a sweet deal;- free return flight to Brize to fake me leaving home and hearth etc. I thought this presented an ideal opportunity to buy some reasonably priced tampons and go to McDonalds, but in the end I elected to demur.

The reason I don’t have a tattoo is that I don’t necessarily think, given my total inability to control my impulses that having an identifying mark would benefit me in the long term. Given this, appearing on international television is entirely at odds with my desire to remain utterly anonymous. Plus I am freakish and unpleasant in the extreme. I don’t think I would come over well.

However it got me thinking. Last week I was invited to dinner with a colleague who first arrived here in ’82 when most of Stanley was a wretched rubbish dump awash with Argentine detruis and a dirty great shell hole through his bathroom roof. Also at dinner was an entirely taciturn functionary with the British Antarctic Survey. I don’t denigrate the taciturnity as after all, conversation is not at a premium if you spend nine months of the year in total isolation removing snow from Nissan hut doorways. However after the Port came out, the assembled guests became more than conversational and yer man outlined his involvement as an an extra in the TV show ‘An Ungentlemanly Act’ a BBC film about the Argentine invasion.

‘I played a Marine in Government house one day and an Argentine conscript on Wireless Ridge the next day’ said he, which led to much debate as to whether he was able to force out a legitimate gaucho 80s tache in less than 24 hours. With the 30^th anniversary of the war imminent there are many a scheduled film crew descending our way at the moment – a fact which singularly fails to excite anyone under the age of about 25.

I began to wonder if a TV show devoted to Stanley life in general wasn’t somewhat overdue. Since moving to Alpha Phi beta, I have luxuriated in TV reception. Admittedly I only receive one channel, but any port in a storm. Consequently and rather worryingly I have become addicted to TOWIE. I no longer live in a world of endless consumer opportunities. I no longer teach orange children with hair extensions. Watching TOWIE gives me a quick fix of trash culture that is a neat antidote to frontier living.

What this woman in LA needs to pitch is a Falklander version:- The only Way is Stanley. It would spark off a whole new set of crazes. Not vajazzles – no one in their right mind would think of affixing diamonte to their bits in wind like this, but we could see a craze for mass consumption of mutton chops and wearing boiler suits and bobble hats.

I can see it now! Join the principal cast as they fraternize over tins of out of date John Smiths in Deanos. Watch the drunken excess as a bunch of people meet up in a shed to castrate livestock and drink their own weight in unbelievably strong spirits.

Girls in loadsa make up wearing size 2 clothes meeting up in wine bars to discuss the latest infidelity? Nah! In TOWIS, a bunch of massive women with horrendous haircuts will meet up wearing fleeces to knit and bitch about each other. Boys go to boot camp to lose excess poundage before hitting the colonic parlour? Nah!  Some geezers who are abnormally strong meet at the jetty and compete to see who can drink two cases of beer and unpack a shipping container using only one finger.

Shopping in the boutiques before a pedi with champagne? How about having a nice bit of cake in Jacs before mooching round the charity shop?

It would be brilliant! All the same basic elements of TOWIE – small insular community, constantly exchanging partners. Petty infighting and weird leisure activities, but with wind instead of fake tan. You could devote an entire episode to the rows and recriminations resulting from the bogging of a Land Rover. If TOWIS existed I would happily pay the subscription for the Satelite service FITV. As it doesn’t I’ll just have to stick with my worry that Lucy and Mark’s dalliance will permanently damage her hopes of moving in with Mario. Dang

Borah Out

The shocking demise of my best pants

Everyone has lucky pants, but no-one has lucky pants like mine. Tonight after some fairly unsavoury visuals involving a stupendous amount of beer and a mop and bucket, conversation up the FIDF hall raged about pants.

You see I am grieving the sudden, unexpected and completely unnecessary demise of my lucky pants, which while still extant in The Alpha Phi Beta house currently are only really having a lying in state before I go in for a ceremonial funeral pyre in the chicken run tomorrow morning, load ‘em up on a small boat and shove em off into the South Atlantic with an ache in my heart and a droplet of moisture on the end of my nose.

My drinking muckers this evening felt my pain, but they didn’t really UNDERSTAND. Simon muttered on about having pants he had at uni. His missis poo-pood this claim but she herself has been known to affect a leopard print thong so at least she was involved in the debate. When I explained that my pants were 28 years old, I received many an askance glance and felt it best to draw a veil, but it doesn’t matter how I try and put the terrible loss to the back of my mind, the empty black knot of suffering in my stomach is still there. So forgive me for indulging in a eulogy to my pants.

It was April of 1984 and as per I was loitering about in Stratford On Avon  eating smoked salmon and cheesy wotsits before an evening performance of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’. Being an excitable sort of 14 year old who had just read Zola’s Nana for the first (though alack – not the last) time, I felt the need for a cami knicker and lo! Out of the green mists of M&S they called to me siren-like;- a navy satin, be-sprigged with pink roses. £4.99 down and my pants and I became one.

Over the intervening two and a half decades my pants and I have seen life in all its rich variety. They have, being somewhat sizable, multiple uses. Shorts in the summer, pulling pants, half an outfit during my days of gurning on the dance floor of Heaven, the regular holder up of corner shop rubbish tights and indeed, in the days when I had a massive permanent wave that made me resemble Captain Caveman – a head band/snood affair.

The pants have experienced the dark times too. There was the hellish embarrassment of their revelation when the frock got caught down the back while I was returning from the lavvy and sauntered seductively across the Savoy Grill to join my Gentleman-style date at table. Tumbleweed moment. No second date. Blast those massive pants!

I wore them the afternoon my waters broke with the Heir, they were stolen briefly by horrible children when I went skinny dipping in Sutton park when I was 16 (try explaining that one to the driver of the 110 bus back to Tamworth when you are clad only in palm fronds). Sitting comfortably on my harris they saw in my 21^st, 30^th, 40^th and the ruddy millennium. They have witnessed the fall of The Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union. They have travelled to many an exotic location including New York, Magaluf and Guildford-city-of-sin. Those pants have had experiences mere mortals can only dream of

There was also the 74 hours spent wearing them on a Greyhound bus half of which time I was suffering the after-effects of a dubiously constructed BLT ‘Torpedo’. They withstood the ensuing boil wash without any difficulty, but could they withstand the inhuman strength of a Falklander Islander? Could they arse.

Now I don’t mind a bit of physical strength in a gentleman. The ability to punch a horse into a coma is something I find mildly arousing but there has to be limits – my personal limit being DO NOT RIP MY 28 YEAR OLD PANTS IN HALF. Particularly when I am still wearing them. I’ve got a mark on my person that no amount of Germolene will stop the chafing of. I wouldn’t mind, but time has certainly proven the tensile strength of those pants. I have a feeling they made the outer skin of the Apollo Luna Excursion Module out of the same material. Which leads me to wonder how strong you have to be to tear them in the first place.

My recommendation? Don’t bet in a fight with this geezer…..

The body beautiful?

The other day, me colleague and I were having a quick ‘departmental meeting’ round the back of the Leisure Centre. The agenda was proving difficult to get through as neither of us had thought to bring a lighter, but we are a resourceful pair and soon we were in deep analytical discussion about  our recent failings.

As previously mentioned m’colleague is a badge wearing heard core metal bitch and as you know I am not given to anything wholesome by nature, yet recently we have both spent a considerable amount of time engaged in what can only be described as P.E.

M’colleague at least is on a promise in Peru come Yule, but I have no excuse. Peru? I hear you cry – surely it’s a bit of a trek for a birrov hows-yer-father? I have learnt not to question m’colleagues labyrinthine entanglements and suggest you follow suit and lets not forget, Peru isn't that far away relatively speaking. Or to look at it another way everywhere is a bloody long way away so you may as well push the boat out.

Anyway her quest for a bikini body notwithstanding, we are engaging in physical exercise in a way we both find faintly alarming and fascist. This is because we are English teachers and as such are repelled by the idea that the physical is more important than the metaphysical. We have read our Shakespeare, our Milton and ‘The Awakening’ by Kate Chopin – we know we are but grains of sand destined to shine ever so briefly and pointlessly before guttering into the maw. Going for a PB on the free weights is something we consider both hideous hubris and faintly noxious.

As far as memory serves I have never worked with another English teacher who  went at it with a Badminton racket or any other implement of anti-intellectual tomfoolery. The exception that proves the rule being of course me late lamented Guv’s affection for Aikido. This caused him some terrible attacks of gout, a broken collarbone and endless piss taking from yours truly. Never has a man so brazenly indulged his mid-life crisis. ‘Buy a sports car!’ I railed, ‘develop an addiction to online porn! But dear God, do not betray your calling with this nebulous approach to health and fitness’. My entreaties fell on deaf ears I fear. He is still, no doubt doing himself a frightful damage every week in his on-going attempts at the esoteric business of grading. Grim stuff indeed.

But now, I must eat my harsh words as three times a week I am attempting to better my PB of 50 lengths of the pool. Come pay day, I am actually going to part with £90 of my hard earned to get full membership of the leisure centre so I can use the gym, squash courts et al. M’colleague has already written her check and throws herself regularly into the fray wearing an odd assortment of Tour T- shirts some stuff with studs on – like me she is a stranger to the clothing section of JJB…

Behind the Leisure Centre she bemoaned this horror that has befallen us. ‘I’ve always hated the kind of people who join the gym,’ muttered she.

‘Ar! And me’ I agreed exhaling foul vapour towards the abattoir.

‘If I told my mother she’d die of shock. Don’t tell anyone I know, I ‘d never be able to show my face at the next Vaginal Croutons gig’

I concurred. Only I have the sort of friends who think this is a GOOD THING. Perhaps I need get away from my Miles Davis and embrace the world of scary noises. But the big question remains – WHY?

Well it’s not quantum theory. To be frank there is bugger all else to do. No TV, no cinema, no mall. You can only go to the pub so many times. We’ve done felting, candle making, spinners and weavers, huge evenings out, rover rally and piddling about looking for porpoise, but these are all one off things. Short of going home every evening and doing your marking, availing yourself of the facilities next to our classrooms is about it.

And so my bingo wings are disappearing, my chronic back ache is cured and I can actually walk upstairs without having an aneurysm. It’s an ill-wind I suppose and it does have its bonuses – the gym has a public viewing gallery. Ordinarily I would turn in disgust from such a gladiatorial affectation, but the other night having left the pool, I wandered up to poke fun at m’colleague while she sweated her cobs off on the treadmill. The smile was quickly wiped from me gob however when I was confronted by The Narrows Adonis wearing what can only be described as a body stocking lying prone over one of those ludicrous gym balls and rocking gently back and forth.

‘Why is he doing that, mommy?’ enquired the heir.

‘Who gives a fridge? Let’s go and get some cake,’ I snorted

Which we did as in life, all things must balance.

Borah out….

You shall go to the ball!

In ‘Pretty in Pink’ the diminutive record shop owner and mentor to Molly Ringwald’s poverty stricken aspirational teen with appalling taste in men (Ducky woman! Choose Ducky! What’s wrong with you!?) tells ginger Moll

‘You have to go to prom. If you don’t you’ll spend the rest of your life feeling as if you’ve forgotten something’.

Molly isn’t going to the Prom you see because she has no frock and all the posh girls have been giving her pony because she’s dating a posh lad. In the end she takes the very nice 50s prom dress owned by said record shop owner and in a fine example of turning a silk purse into a sow’s ear, buggers about with it and turns up alone at Prom in what can only be described as an envelope.

As a teenager I took this as a pertinent lesson in ‘if it ain’t broke,,,’ Not that it was a really relevant lesson as in my day we didn’t have Proms. When I left school, my chums and I bunked off last lesson and went to The Pretty Pigs where we had scampi in a basket before wandering off into sullen adulthood. So much for a right of passage. Indeed, in my day there were precious few formal occasions and I was 19 before it became necessary for me to buy evening wear. A shatung silk red number from Monsoon as I recall for the National Youth Theatre fundraising ball. The dress was pure 80s and would not have looked out of place in the final scene of ‘Footloose’ as would have my dance moves, but the less said about them the better.

Over the intervening years I have been forced into buying many black ball gowns for me role as the Doyen of the Opera but they were all notoriously foul as I had to be able to perform a de-rig and get out in them. It wasn’t until I got into the Teaching and learning game that the year long quest for the perfect Prom frock became an annual obsession. All my teenage fantasies about being Ally Sheedy in a sheer lip gloss finally getting noticed by Emilio Estevez (or preferably his muckier brother) raised their ugly head as, pushing 40, I attended my first Prom.

Kids nowadays don’t know they’re born! They have proms! And Chinese sweat shops that produce made to measure red carpet copies for under a tonne on e-bay. All I had was a John Hughes dream and some scampi in a plastic basket. As a result I go a bit over the top when it comes to formal do’s. I’ve been known to attend school functions commando so the line isn’t interrupted. This is not appropriate. I have also, more recently spent a fortune on Spanx and forgotton that with my fulsome chest a wonderbra is not only moot but harrowing for adolescents. Two years ago at prom my bosom entered the ballroom approximately 20 minutes before the rest of me. I have learnt to my cost that a halter-neck is not a good idea. You know you’re onto a loser when year 11 boys ask you to jump up and down. Trying to have a full on Prom experience whilst maintaining your professional dignity is something I have wrestled with for many a year but finally I think I may be at peace regarding this particular difficulty of modern life.

Friday is The conservation Ball – the first big event of the year and anyone who is anyone will be dragging glad rags under their fleece’s and tottering up to the FIDF hall for a three courser, auction and dancing. All the kids are having a sleep over in the Primary school (gawd bless em! First they had to deal with APP and now this!) leaving the adults to get amongst it right royally which is all very well but I haven’t any access to a TK Maxx and things are getting desperate!

Ordinarily around February me and me colleagues would start stalking prom frocks and accessoroies but frankly I don’t think a small branch of Peacocks is going to come good for this one. I bought my fail safe prom frock with me you understand – the one which doesn’t require structural engineering underwear and with which you can happily wear comedy socks, but it turns out that the wind, the walking and the absence of dial-a-meal has led to something of a spectacular de-biff.

Which is all very well and groovy if you have access to a River Island. I do not and my frock fell off when I tried it on. Thus it was that I went to see neighbour lady. It appears we are all in the same sartorial boat. She, a victim of the Stanley Stone has gone the other way. I, as she reasonably pointed out, have a narrow back. Neither of us have any clothes that fit.

Thus we spent a traumatic but largely hysterical evening in her bedroom in our scrungies trying on each others clothes trying to prevent men folk young and old from walking in when we were at our most vulnerable. We failed. Just as you are flattening your top hamper and easing it through a tight empire line, it is inevitable a man will walk in and witness the true horror of ‘Nam.

As a single person I do not appreciate this. I am not used to men seeing my flippy-floppies contorted into a size twelve and I think it most indecorous that I have no opportunity to giggle and point at their love handles in return. I will have my revenge I assure you. My poor eyesight often means I mistake the signs on changing room doors….

Anyhoo, me and the neighbor are now tooled up with fockage and accessories. The kids are taken care of and the tickets purchased. All that remains is the necessity to pamper that such an illustrious occasion requires. Amid the lust and locker-room talk that Friday night at The Narrows always entails, discussion raged about where one might indulge in a depilatory session. The men snorted with merriment:

‘Dunno if the West Store Salon do a back, sack and crack!’

We would have retaliated were it not for the sudden appearance of the help from the kitchen wearing a tight vest. After temporarily forgetting where we were, we returned to the important matters at hand. Should we go to the bother of having an up-do and a wax? I mused over these matters whilst supping my Exportation and considered that I would hold back on a decision until the western union transfer had come through.

This evening I took a look in the mirror, not something I would generally encourage. In a month I have neglected, shall we say my toilette. My eyebrows could induce panic in the avareage beauty therapist. Not shaving my legs in six weeks  has rendered the need for tights superfluous. I may need an angle grinder rather than a Venus wet ‘n’ dry. And as for my feet! Ye gods! Where are those ruddy ravenous fish when you need ‘em?

I think it’s safe to say that some major upholstery will be taking place at the newly re-Christened ‘Jamaica Inn’ this week. ( frankly Blenheim wasn’t windy enough). I hope the good people of Stanley appreciate these efforts, I’ll let you know….

Borah out

small town boy...

Tonight I have dug out my collection of CDs from ‘back in the day’ and am listening to Bronski Beat cos that’s how I roll, plus I have been thoroughly obsessed all week with ‘Brokeback Mountain’ which I put down to the simultaneous delivery of ‘Of Mice and Men’ to two year groups . There are parallels – honest.

Naturally enough this got me a-ponderin’ and a –ruminatin’.  In my four plus decades I have been about a bit what with one thing and another  - usually escaping from the scene of some kind of horrible misunderstanding as you might imagine, but on my travels I have garnered many a truism about life, so much so, that were I a gentlemen I would probably feel the need right now to grow a massive legitimate beard and write a novel like ‘Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance’. Fortunately I am not a geezer, so no undergraduate will ever be forced to perplex themselves at the foot of my moribund yearnings.

Suffice to say, that one of the truisms I have been forced to accept is this; If you go to a small community, there will always be a man in it who disturbs ordinarily quite sanguine women-folk. He will be inordinately and contextually speaking outrageously pretty. He will be in a position where the normal traffic of existence will make it hard to avoid him. Due to the nature of all other reverse Darwinism males in the vicinity he will take on a level of import that is truly Zeus like. And perhaps most significant of all, while he may well be aware of this, he will not use  this knowledge to his loiny advantage.

We have such a specimen hither and there is nary a woman between the age of 9 and 90 who doesn’t get a far away look in her eyes, giggle when he speaks to her or mutters to her mates what revolting things she would do to him given 20 minutes alone etc ad inf. I cannot help thinking this must be a terrible burden to the poor lad, but he looks quite well on it all things being equal.

Friday night is family night at The Narrows, which is a wonderful opportunity for grown ups to get thoroughly munted while their offspring run about like dervishes wielding pool cues about their heads. Yet by the 6^th dubious Chilean cocktail you can bet your wages the women will drop all pretence and start tarting with the help. It’s not our fault – he will insist on vaulting over the bar in athletic manly fashion, his lean tanned form displaying every rippling muscle adorned with high class tattage. The heir went googly eyed tonight muttering ‘Look at the pretty pictures on his arms’. We women exchanged a glance and discussed when might be an opportune time to deliver the ‘Talk’ to my 9 year old daughter.

But  not for long, because then he was supplicating his Chippendale taut ass before us to hand over cutlery. We all cleared our throats, breathed deeply and maintained our outwardly cool exteriors. Next he sidled up with a twinkling eye and a bottle of ketchup.

‘Sauce?’ he enquired his Latin dark eyes flashing with surpressed, barely, libidinously high sperm count. We couldn’t help ourselves. We giggled. Horrible.

I thought I’d escaped all this nonsense when the English department had an impromptu development meeting on the smoking deck, but OH no. Out comes the Falklands answer to Enrique proffering his massive zippo flame and interesting Spanish inflection. The normally highly ebullient pair immediately fell to taciturn sheepishness.

‘You know,’ say he ‘Deborah in Spanish has another meaning.

Sensibly, I kept quiet. I know, I’ve been had this way before. M’colleague though, being an excitable hard core metal bitch up for life’s experience said;

‘What’s that then?’

He violently mimed eating a kebab. Sounds horrible I know but both The English department had to hold each other vertical to forgo lust-inspired fainting.

‘Deborah me. It means eat me. You know, with real hunger’.

The junior member of the department fell into a sort of catatonic reverie. The silence needed to be broken. I swallowed down the five litres of drool and lisped with great difficulty,

‘So it may be taken as an insult or an erotic come-on?’

The Latin Love-a-rama raised his beautiful head and exhaled fragrant smoke into the brilliantly star covered heavens. Behind him a pub full of women sighed audibly. I kicked m’colleague visciously while he was not paying attention. She snorted and came back to herself with an irritated burst of profanity.

‘exxxxxxaaaaaactly’ he breathed, before smiling a smile that would encourage a nun to sell her soul to Bapometh and wandered back inside.

‘Bugger me!’ said m’colleague, ‘it’s illegal innit? I wouldn’t mind half an hour on that!’

‘Hmmmm….’ I replied unconvinced.

The whole thing reminded me of when I took the ladies of year 11 on a trip to that London and we inadvertently ran into the pretty half of ‘One Direction’ in an off licence. The ancients write about the horror of unbridled female sexuality quite effectively and I have witnessed it in the raw when a young lady who never failed to submit her homework  on time fell to her knees keening like an eighteenth century Latvian peasant and licking a minor pop celebrity. If you’ve seen that sort of thing, you never really recover. The mind is set on a different axis and will never see the world as quite right again.

Fortunately I have never been devastatingly attractive to the opposite sex apart from about 3 months when I was 22. And in fairness I don’t think that was me per se but a combination of Rigby and Pellar and a fishnet body stocking. I can honestly say that this is has never been a cause for distress. I have had some truly gorgeous friends and had the pleasure of having my dance card filled, if you will  by some seriously hot trouser and I always thought they carried an additional burden.

It is quite clear that if the purveyor of sauce had a phD in quantum relatively, the only impact this would have on women would be to make their ovaries rattle even louder when he walked past as clearly this would make him even more of a stud-muffin.

To be lusted after by half the populace must be awfully tiring and must seem particularly ironic if you have recurrent gout or trapped wind. The truly pretty have their human fallibility ripped from them like the thin cotton dress of a 70s porn queen. I for one thank the Lord for my intrinsic ability to be not sexy, however hard I try. The thought of having the science department all a quiver when I walk past would be truly terrifying….

Borah out

Craft wars

I have just received an e-mail from the Bodleian library which has confirmed my worst fears. I have indeed, as I previously suspected read every book on Everest ever published. So if any of you know of anyone who wrote one in pencil on scraps of paper,  then died horribly of cerebral oedema before they could get to a publisher do let me know. In the meantime I am going to have to find a way of filling in the down-time I have when I’m not otherwise encumbered by delivering Quality Teaching and Learning, parenting ineffectually, writing rubbish, drinking crap wine or threatening legal action. A girl needs a hobby.

Fortunately these fair Isles are full of useful pursuits and groups which peruse them. Some of them may even be undertaken whilst simultaneously smoking and lying down so I’m onto a winner. But I must be careful because hobbies are taken seriously hereabouts and I do not wish to offend by being half hearted in my approach which is going to be difficult. Half-hearted is my default setting ordinarily.

The annual craft fair has been advertised in The Penguin news since at least February so the excitement was tangible way before I arrived. The venue was school and as I have a key, I availed myself of a bottle of Exportation, let myself in a 2am and had a private viewing. Marvellous stuff. Though according to all, not as much submitted as last year for reasons people are only muttering about in dark corners. It matters not to me, though I knew something was afoot when the heir and Spare’s Sunday play date insisted through gritted teeth we put down the DS’s and ‘Make something’. Hmmm. I came 8000 miles with two children and a 21” suitcase. Crafting equipment wasn’t part of my payload. Still I managed to find cereal boxes and wool and if you’ve got those the possibilities are endless, as it would appear are the awards and Laurels.

All weekend, the town was a seething mass of rumour, conjecture and unrivalled bitterness as the prize winners were announced and cab drivers rang each other mid-job to discover whether each others taxidermical efforts had garnered a rosette. Such blue air when they discovered they were only highly commended! Ugly scenes!

As if all this excitement wasn’t enough, as we left the public viewing for a gentle stroll home along the harbour in the sun, the still skies on Stanley were rent asunder by the horrific cacophony of helicopter engines. 20 feet away on the school field a Sea king and 14 seater  hovered ominously churning a morass of goose poo and gorse bush into the air where it mingled with the crisp bags tossed carelessly by year 8, became a swirling mass of debris which immediately flew into the eyes, cleavage and wellies of all present. The spare being a small person keeled over in the force of the down draft and seemed pinned to the ground by some oddity of gravity. As I looked around, many other people were starring as if insensible as their pre-tween children lay flat on the tarmac. The helis landed and everyone wandered off spitting vitriol about the vile miscarriage of justice that was the judging of the felting.

Having peeled the boy off the floor I too wandered off considering as per that my skills are just not up to this sort of thing. Craft looks too full on for my liking. I may have to look into prime-time radio broadcasting instead…..

Borah Out

Not going out

It’s Saturday night in Stanley and I’m not going out. ‘What?’ I hear you cry ‘Bacchic booze hound Borah is not getting amongst it? Is she ill?’ But nay. Instead I’m channelling Jane Austen by catching up on my correspondence and encouraging the heir and the spare to earn their pocket money by doing chores like the vaccing and cleaning the lav in order to avoid any repetition of the ugly scenes earlier, when due to a want of cash, the boy went into an apoplectic rage at the charity shop when I refused to buy him a 1970’s 3 tonne computer monitor. Each to their own I suppose.

It is also a truth universally accepted that an English teacher new to the Edexcel lit spec and possessing only a 6 year old university essay on ‘Pride and Prejudice’ must be in want of a bit of a refresher before facing the ladies of year 11 for some Quality Teaching and Learning. Good job I downloaded it on the kindle before I left the UK. You never know in this game do you?

However after writing several letters to friends and relatives, plus a vaguely inflammatory and litigious bon mot to Staffordshire water Authority as it’s a bad month if I don’t threaten to sue someone, the night is still young and I’m at a loss. I just stepped onto the back stoop for a snout and heard a dreadful caterwauling from the direction of Deanos which suggest that a full Dionysian munt-on is in progress. This has made me vaguely regret not going out. Spending the evening writing reams of incomprehensible nonsense to people who will not even see it for 3 weeks might seems pointless and a total waste of youth. Still,  it’s an ill wind – I’ve done the pots.

The fact is I am currently in one of my murderous Hormonal Moods, no doubt bought on by the full moon and encroaching menopause and if I go out it could end very badly. Like some kind of evil Lycanthrope there are certain times when I shouldn’t be let loose on the innocent populace. I am better locked up and away from people, principally gentlemen. Now let me make this absolutely clear; I have had more than enough gentleman callers over the past 20 years to sate even those with the most gluttonous of appetites and to be frank I’ve had an ample sufficiency. I often think that if I hadn’t wasted all that time blethering on about boys and make up I would have been director general of the BBC by now so I have forsworn the company of men and my house is a lot cleaner for it. Thus I have spent several years ensuring my appearance dress and behaviour are so abhorrent to the average chap that none of them will come near me. I can assure you that I have been more than  successful in this venture.

In spite of this there are times when I feel the need to feast my eyes on a well turned ankle or whatever. Which is why I’ve locked myself in the kitchen. I have yet to feel it  incumbent on myself to don a white mini skirt and venture out to gurn at men half of my age but it is bound to happen sooner or later. Well I remember going to The Embassy Ballroom in Tamworth (a more inappropriately monikered establishment it would be hard to find incidentally) with my wide eye bunch of 18 year old friends, them clean as whistles in the Farrah St-pres and Lacoste shirts, all ready for an evening of the ‘Reynolds Girls’, only to be confronted by a wall of salivating 40 year old women hell bent on corrupting young flesh. It was known as ‘grab a granny’ night and I vowed at the time that I would never live long enough to despoil myself by joining their number.

Disappointingly,  I did not die when I was 27 though it was not for the want of trying and in fairness that hip never set properly. Which now means that if I go out I may well be accused of being some kind of dreadful cougar-wannabee gurning wildly at young service personel.  Because  lets face it, many of us get older but I for one refuse to grow up and given my complete inabiltiy to mature I am now faced with the unenviable ability to fancy anyone between the age of 21 and 65

Last week I was muttering obscenities to Mrs. Art when I happened to mention the finely chiselled features of Guru Grylls.

‘Oh no,’ Quoth she, ‘Too spikey round the nose, not my type at all’ Naturally enough this set me a pondering. This is not my fault, you understand but the ruddy Open University’s. Six years of undergraduate philosophy study and 1 of post graduate Cambridge think tankery leads to this navel gazing rationalisation nonsense,

‘I don’t like digestive biscuits but I’ll eat them in a cheesecake – why?’ Hmmmm, ponder, premise, premise, a priori, devil’s advocate, Mill’s Harm Principal, Yada yada ‘Ah! I hold an Unexamined Prejudice because my best friend’s mom when I was four told me digestives were made of sawdust. Marvellous! To the kelper store biscuit aisle immediately!’

The thing is I’m right with Mrs. Art on this one. I don’t really fancy Bear Grylls either but this has never stopped me licking the TV screen whenever he’s performing naked calisthenics on ‘Born Survivor’. Which is not something I’d recommend as a rule. The static makes your tongue swell to three times its original size which can frighten the children. I rather like my men beardy, polo-neck wearing, hurt and interesting with an obsession for early 18^th century painting and just a tiny bit gay. Which might explain why I’m single.

So what’s it all about? Why do I after years of thinking it was properly horrible suddenly find myself all a bother when faced with military types? Put simply it is the hell of a mid life crisis.

Back in the UK I had an unusually large number of single lady friends of a certain age and you could put large amounts of cash on how they would be spending their Sunday night – 3 sheets to the wind on Chablis surfing their Guardian Soulmates matches. The rest of the week would be spent e-mailing and texting before the inevitable, inexorable disastrous Saturday night date at Derby Nandos after which never the twain should meet again.

In the end I bowed to peer pressure and logged on to have a gander and see what all the fuss was about. Horrible! Horrible! It was like living in a painting by Breugal only more beige. Millions of divorced men! In cagoules! Up mountains with a massive dog! Looking for clearly insane women with a desire for ‘nights in and out, hillwalking and golf’ Millions of men with the identical retirement dream of sailing an RIB to Gibraltar! Ye Gods! The humanity!

As is my wont when confronted by irrational behaviour, I discussed the matter in depth with Alex my 21 year tutor of chav speak which helps me to be ‘down with the kids’ when delivering Quality Teaching and Learning, and the Daughter – who is a 43 year old man before you reach for the hotline to social services. ‘What and why?’ said I

The daughter explained thus

‘Listen woman, Guardian Soulmates is a well known fit up. I’m on it and my profile is a tissue of lies headed by a photo of James McAvoy in a bad light. It is the repository of the broken and hopeless who cover their worthlessness with generic profile statements in the hope of just one last blast of human warmth. I should give it a swerve and have your memory wiped so you never give it another thought’

Alex was more combative and proactive in her critique. She suggested we post a profile which told nothing but the heinous truth and accompany it with a photo of me wearing one pop sock having a fight with a box hedge. Thus it was, somewhat unadvisedly I placed the following in the public domain of the world wide web:

‘I enjoy smoking 200 fags a day, like swearing, being miserable and critical, suing people, drinking like a fish and discovering people’s weaknesses so I can spend hours amusedly abusing them. If you are happy to shovel me into a taxi after the end of an evening so I can go home and watch Discovery channel in my pants with a kebab then I’m your girl.’

I got 40.000 replies, chiefly from the Philippines. 22 of them were from women. Never again.

Why do all these people bang on about how they like climbing the Eiger and wrestling sharks when clearly they spend most of their time watching ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ on sky plus because ‘they work long hours’? Hmmm.

Teenagers will constantly tell you how individual and different they are when in reality if the average 15 year old turns up to school wearing anything even slightly different to her mates she will spiral in a catatonic panic. The middle aged are just the same. Encroaching awareness of their own mortality ensures they suddenly feel a need to ‘get out in the fresh air’ more often. This makes them pretend a lot, or even worse, they actually do go out walking and wearing cagoules. Most unpleasant. When I announced I was moving here my ex-colleague Luke – a Renaissance man if ever there was one – said ‘Why are you going to the Falklands? Oh I get it you’re scared of death’. This made me and the Daughter laugh until wee came out so apposite was the comment.

If you turn 40 and suddenly find yourself needing a Mondeo, think about taking up akido and decide to  build a conservatory rather than go to the bother of moving you might as well turn up your toes. However this is no excuse to go careening around the Southern most capital city in the world slaking your menopausal horn all over the defenders of Her Majesty’s oversees dominions. In life there must always be balance.

So whilst I agree with Mrs. Art, I’m indulging my fears by identifying with Bear’s obvious rude health. I shall not wander into The Vic leering but shall stay here inhaling Exportation (still 5 for a tenner – get in!) and enjoy what can only be described as THE FINEST PIECE OF DOCUMENTARY FILM MAKING IN THE HISTROY OF TELEVISUAL ENTERTAINMENT viz The first episode of Bear’s new series where he goes up against Iceland accompanied by – heavens ladies! Brace positions please! Jake Gyllenhall!

‘Shut the front door! ‘ I hear you squeal but tis true! The two of ‘em struggling and straining doing nudey press up together by a glacial lake. Brilliant! It’s like ‘Brokeback 2 – Winter’. Worth every penny of the huge amount I shall be paying Cable and Wireless for the bandwidth necessary to access YouTube. I may well look like Madame whatever her name was who gurgled churlishly with mirth next to the guillotine but sod it. I’m behind closed doors. It makes me happy and no corporal will get hurt.

Borah Out.

The first rule of Quiz night is that you don't talk about quiz night...

Far be it from me to indulge my latent competetive streak, after all ignominious failure is par for the course since I hit 30, but when someone says 'Who want to be on the pub quiz team?' the tamed beast within me rises all dripping fangs and pumped biceps.

I am old and due to the fact that I am convinced I lie slightly on the ASD spectrum I know loads of really useless stuff, especially if it requires translating from the French, which is strange given the fact I have an entirely unreasonable hatred of anything even vaguely francophile in nature. I blame that incident in the back of a fiat 128 in 1993.....

So tonight I procurred the services of a referee for the heir and the spare, donned me wooly hat, ventured out into the snow and hoisted myself into a landrover in order to mount an assault on the omnipotence of the SENCO. I am Borah! Hear me roar! Put me on a sports field and I will instantly go into cardiac arrest, ask me to convince a panel of the need to adopt new policy and I will wander off for a fag after half-heartedly composing a powerpoint, but ask me to intellectually enter the gladatorial arena of pointless knowledge and I will without a second's debate assemble a metaphorical arsenal of weaponary and sprint into the fray covered in cam cream with a war cry of 'Elvis Presley in 1976, trust me! write it down and move on!'

The Stanley Arms quiz is held on the first Wednesday of every month and there is a special to tempt your taste buds. Legend has it that no one can touch the SENCO who spends the week running up to quiz night flexing his intellectual muscles on logic problem websites. We upstart new teachers like a challenge - we ate 15 chicken fajitas on the plane down, we can handle it. And so teams were amassed, the country cottage pie duly pre-ordered and at 7pm precisely we sauntered through the swing saloon doors of The Stanley Arms, chewing matchsticks and looking like we meant business, or would have done had I not got stuck in the doors a bit and had to be freed.

Split into two teams to mount our upstart challenge and dethrone the king of quiz, we ordered soft drinks so as not to impair our academic prowess and got down to business. Three hours, twelve rounds, a great deal of country cottage pie, 17 pints of diet coke, a great deal of sweating, bitter recriminations and fierce argument and my team came second, a mere point I'll have you know from knocking the SENCO and his viscious cronies into the harbour.

The post bout analysis was not pretty. There was the horrible business about tomato being the world's most popular fruit, the terrible pressure that forced Mr.Science into an early bath regarding inert gasses, the legendary sucess of the film round and my wild card suggestiomn of Biddie Baxter failing to score. All to no avail! Why oh why! I've always prided myself on my ability to recall the seven deadly sins, but in the heat of battle, wrath escaped me. Ah! Twas ever so!

Still there's always next month and this time I will be reading the Penguin News more thoroughly in preparation for round 8. Your days at the top of the ziggurat are numbered Team BFD! Oh yes!

Borah out...

The Key to happiness

I'm always losing my keys. It cost my former employer thousands and they got inordinantely cross with me, which is never a desired outcome but what can you do? Latent dispraxia and tunnel vision do not make happy bedfellows when it comes to not losing small items. Here however, I don't think it's going to be an issue.

When I left Brize Norton three weeks ago I was wearing Kevlar, carrying MACE and was ready at any moment to take on some mutha with negative social urges with a oversized handbag and a large stick. The major cities wre 'gripped by fear' in the parlance of the red top newspapers by a bunch of marauding pubescents with blackberry messenger and a desire to get up to no good and possibly nick some trainers into the bargain.

While Britain burned and everyone got very cross about the riots, I couldn't help thinking that they were all a bit rubbish. As I have spent the past decade around hoodie wearing ghetto wannabees, I have got used to their ponderous ways and find them largely inoffensive. I can undertsnad why others might cross the street to avoid a posse of Burberry clad 6ft tall 15 year olds spitting and clogging the pavement outside McDonalds, but corridor habit has removed all threat from such an obstacle and I barge me way through muttering 'Pardon me gentlemen, walking here'. As the Burberry's also spend much time being shoved about corridors by teachers, they nary raise an eyebrow.

Why do they clog pavements and stagger about as if destroyed by drink? My theory is a complete absence of spatial awareness due to extremely rapid growth and blurred vision from playing COD till 6am. I always enjoy teaching a new year nine group because I know that by Christmas the boys will start falling over for no apparent reason. They will walk into doors, inadvertaly cartwheel across desks and from a totally still standing position suddenly and inexplicable tip over and fall down the stairs. Hours of fun for the observant teacher with a taste for slapstick, They can't quite figure out where their legs are and their feet have grown 4 sizes in 20 minutes ensuring amusing tripping over incidents that the girls think are 'pathet' and causes much heavily mascara'd eye rolling.

So you'll forgive me if watching news coverage of the rioting I opened a bag of popcorn put me feet up and waited for the inevitable pratfalls through plateglass windows.
Kids nowadays love the idea of being a bit ghetto, but its a load of pony. I want to see the Director's cut of 'Kidulthood' where amid all the maiming, procreation and drug abuse there are days of mind numbing boredom siiting on the swings and txting each other stuff like
'I'm on BBM R U. txtbk'
'yeah. RU txtbak'
'yeah'

I knew all this outraged upset about the state of Britain's rampaging youth was largely misplaced when a 14 year old was arrested for looting a Brabantia bin. Seriously! What sort of self-respecting adolescent goes and nicks something that could only  possibly be found desirable by a menopausal woman or a gay man? It's like nicking a poster of Jonny Depp or an Eames chair.

Despite this, it's a fact of life that schools in the UK are a hotbed of what some might term 'opportunistic crime'. Over the years I have learnt through experience to lock away my handbag, hide anything confidential and never, repeat never leave my fags in my pocket. The amount of snout I've had lifted by ruddy kids could give every employee of Philip Morris a very healthy retirement plan.

By extension, I have had to lock my classroom whenever the inevitable urge 'to go out on the field and write about our senses' lesson fills me (usually during summer term when no one can be arsed anymore). I locked it when we went to assembly, when there was fire alarm, ususally period 5 on a wednesday when year 10 didn't want to endure science, or whenever a child impaled themselves on a spike/chair leg/broken window which required the rest of the class to leave so the emergency services could get in and get suturing. Ah! Memories.

If you didn't lock your room, ineveitably you would return to find the place looking like downtown Tripoli with the contents of school bags cast assunder and packed lunch sandwiches stuck to the whiteboard.

So I was amused today when leaving for assembly I instructed my form to leave their bags in the room and not to worry as I would be locking the door. They all stopped dead in their tracks and looked at me with a mixture of wide eyed wonder and deep suspicion.
'Why?' they asked

'Oh yes' I thought 'I am in Stanley'.

The idea that your belongings might not be safe in an unlocked classroom is as alien to these young people as the idea that one day they will be forty. It simply does not compute. No-one locks their doors here. Ever. Which is handy as I can never remember where my keys are. people will return stuff to you that you have left lying about for days on end.. And when you're on the lavvy quietly minding your own business, 53 kids will burst into the house and demand a sleepover with snacks. Very like being a student again really.

Just after the riots, I was walking through Swad when I chanced upon some of my miscreant year 9  form careering around the streets 'being hard'
'Alright miss?' they said.
'Gentlemen,' I responded 'Not in Derby doing any looting then?'
'Nah, too far innit. And Swad's rubbish so whats the point? Plus me dad would kill me'

In Swad there are eight shops and three of them are Poundstetcher. You can see the lad's point. If you live in a small town, you are very likely to get caught and get a kicking and it's not really worth it if all you can get hold of is a fake brabantia bin and a jumbo pack of J cloths.

You'd be much better served by going home, playing COD and growing so fast that teachers laugh at you.
I think its safe to say I will not be locking my door much. They would find it odd and the very last thing any adult needs is to be considered 'weird' by a buncha teens. That way madness lies, not to mention endless paperwork.

Boarh Out

Cheque mate?

Due to a variety of ignoble past errors, affiliations and not to put to fine a point on it DUBIOUS MEN, I have for years now lived a cash-only lifestyle. This in some ways has a sort of recherche vintage cool about it but does irritate creditors when I can't make 'an immediate phone payment using a debit card' No bank worth it's salt is going to give me a debit card.  It would be a highly ill-advised move akin to employing Nick Leeson if you are Barings. Next stop - international forclosure and penury. HSBC hardly need that on their already guilt stained conscience.

It is only very recently that I got a credit card and I only use that for insane drunken e-bay purchases, or at least did before they closed my account over what I still maintain amounts to nothing more than a horrible misunderstanding. Not to worry! I still have the shower radio shaped like an Avon Skin-So-Soft bottle so I haven't really lost out.

Moving hither, I was concerned therefore to discover that there are no ATMs on the Islands and in the time-honoured tradition of banks - the only branch of Standard Chartered is never open when you need it. Or at least I thought it wasn't. Then I learned of the highly civilised practice locally of everybody having an hour and half lunch break except Standard Chartered.

Pity the poor tellers! While everyone else nips home for a pie and a pint, walks the dog, puts peat on the fire, shears a few sheep, smokes 40 fags or just demands soup with menace from Jacs, the blue neckerchiefed staff are forced to work and witness the horrible sight of Stanley rush hour through the window. Stop! look and Listen! As many as 40 4x4s may be clogging the byways of the city centre.  The words of the old Malibu advert come to mind - 'Oh no man! Its total gridlock!'

'Good' I thought. 'I can do my marking (Ha! The road to hell and all that) eat some pre-delivered soup then stagger down to the bank and get some cold hard cash over the counter and still be back in time to run a fabulously enriching lunchtime club'. As it turns out however, not even that is necessary as nobody much uses cash or credit but the staple of 1950s Britain - the cheque book.

Now I am all for a Luddite approach to technology. The only time I have ever used a chip and pin machine is on the numerous, I grant you, occasions when my mother forgets her PIN in Morrisons. She will get in a mess at the checkout while huge queues accumulate behind her puching any 4 digit number that comes into her addled mind until the machine finally blows up and everyone starts crying and shouting. At which point, I will sigh, put me fag out end enter the correct number before murder occurs. Not in itself a simple process as I am completely blind and can never see the display. Horrible scenes all round I assure you.

But the last time I wrote a cheque was in 1988 and even then I had to have a cheque guarentee card or the bloke in Victoria Wines would chase me out of the shop with an iron bar. I'd forgotton how to do it and further how to go about that most archaic of rituals, 'balancing the cheque book', something I remeber my mother doing religiously every Sunday afternoon, a copy of her bank statement alongside her while I went upstairs 'to play me tapes'. Half an hour of invective, muttering and 'I bought WHAT?' would curl up the stairs frankly destroying my enagagement with Adam Ant warbling his Berundi bletherings, before she finally gave up and took to drawing endless fish on the back of the phone directory. It's no wonder I've turned out like I have.

I was advised to order two cheque books intially and not to expect them to last long and further not to concern myself horribly about the idea of writing a cheque for two quid as everyone does apparently. Pffft! The day I enter a retail establishment and only shell out two quid will be the day both kids have left home and I've given up smoking, drinking and eating sweets. In other words a cold day in hell. Neither does it matter much if you are too flummoxed by drink to remember to sign it. As everyone knows everyone else and where you live I have heard tell of incidents where the staff of The Narrows have knocked on the door at 9am on a Saturday and kindly requested that the hanging occupant now sign their cheque. Brilliant!

When I collected my two shintycrisp cheque books on Wednesday I grinned to myself about my paper based 'liscence to bounce' and immediately stopped poisoning the children with my cooking and headed out for tea. I was handed a stamp in The Narrows shortnening by about ten minutes the writing of my first (wrong glasses) at which point I started muttering about Large Print Cheques and the disability act to a captive audience that I later discovered much to my embarressment was a coat stand.

The next morning I experienced what can only be described as shopper's remorse. I called my mother and enquired about how one might go about balancing it.
'Never mind that!' she squawked, 'the neighbors are in uproar. There is something alien and wrong with that voile panel I liberated from Dunteachin. Its offended the WI. What's the scoop?'

Discombobutated momentarily by her rambling I put down my cheque book and considered the matter
'What voile panel?'
'The purple one. With sequins'
'Ah.'
'What do you mean 'Ah', WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?'
'Those are not sequins, they are miniature solar powered LED lights'
'Are you quite mad? What are you talking about?'

Some time ago, I was  forced to enter a Romantic Liaison with a physics teacher. It wasn't my fault you understand, just one of those terrible cross roads in life where you fail to take the road less travelled and end up spending every weekend in Dunhelm looking at nets and beige faux suede cushion covers. During this miscreant period I bought said voil panel and after a particulalrly mind-boggling evening working out compound interest on a car payment with the physics teacher I locked myself in a cupboard and shifted the LED lights about a bit so that when the heat of the day dissipated and the gloaming darkened the streets, the word 'Knickers' would be seen writ large accross his lounge window.

As it turned out The Physivcs teacher appeared to be unimpressed by a purple jewel encrusted voile panel and it ended up languishing in some forgotton cupboard until liberated by my mother and causing a great deal of upset. Needles to say I never did find out how to balance my cheque book, so I had to work it out all by myself. Which I did. And I can say with full qualification I am skint.

But I can probably get away with a two quid spend.....

Boarh out

Reuse, recycle rethink

I'm listening to Justin Bieber on the radio. Ordinarily this would make me cry real tears, the result, no doubt of looking into the maw, Dante-esque visions of modern hell. Recently though I have adapted to life without urban stimulus and as a result am singing along most happily viz 'babeee, babee,babee aaaaalright!'

A couple of weeks before I left the UK I found myself snorting with derision at an article in Grazia magazine entitled 'Help! I'm Generation undecided!'. Let me first point out that I would never normally shell out actual cash for Grazia or any other Women's Lifestyle Magazine. This is beacuse I don't have an aspergic need for 700 pairs of uncomfortable shoes which cost £500, consider hair extensions the work of Baphpomet and do not spend every waking hour worrying nerotically about 'my relationship'. On this occasion though I was forced to buy it as it promised extensive details about the final hours of Amy Winehouse and a picture of James Franco in a vest.

Anyhoo, said 'Generation Undecided' are, apparently, modern persons of disposable income, urban addresses and seemingly limitless options. They get in a flap because they are suffering almost infinite variety regarding every aspect of life. Panic when the weekly shop on Ocado takes almost all evening? Spend three hours debating which takeaway to order? Never commit to watching telly but channel surf 800 available programmes in case there's something better on? Have a bedroom full of new clothes you 'might take back'? Welcome! You are a fully paid up member of Geneation Undecided.

Such nonsense makes me suck my few remaining teeth. In my day we had proper societal sub-groups. In my early twenties we had Generation X. Brilliant that was; an excuse to lie around being hurt and interesting, wearing ripped 501s listening to Pearl Jam and bemoaning the fact that our very expensive higher edcation counted for nought in the days of the dot.com boom. Generation X had excellent figureheads like Ethan Hawke in a vest and Winona Ryder looking delicate. Then Kurt Cobain died and we moved swiftly on to The Prozac Generation where lots of casualties from the M25-rave-in-a-field era finally gurned out and went into heavy therapy. We were sort of stuck with Sadie Frost and Pearl Lowe for that one but it was bearable in its way.

By the time I was pushing 40 there was the fantastic invention of 'Middle Youth', which if you ask me was merely an excuse for men in their 50s to not wear socks and women of an age where thread veins become an issue to go off and get some work done while they continue to wear a tube skirt. Which is a distinct improvement on the approach to middle age adopted by my mother's generation. In those days the minute you turned 43, you went out, puchased an 18 hour girdle and had your hair permed and cut short. leading to some kind of kafka-esque world where everyone looked like the same, a bit like the zombie Grannies in The Mighty Boosh. Brrr....

So now we're stuck with Generation Undecided. If you're going to bother with a movement I can't think of anything more useless. 'Oh dear! I have too many retail options! I must take to a darkened room, practice yogic breathing until internet shopping becomes the first casualty come the revolution!'

Don't panic UD's! I have a cure. Move to the Falkland Islands.
Anxious that you have spent a fortune on clothes you will never wear? The only worry here is that you'll turn up to school in the same Peacocks outfit as half the staff and student body. And that's not a particular worry as the chances are you will be wearing several layers and can just remove a couple for a touch of completely unnecessary individualism.

Spending hours trawling round Tesco, Aldi, Sainsburys et al looking for the best deals? As I was told this week 'If you see something you want buy it, because chances are it won't be available next week' which explains why everyone in town is running about with 900 rolls of bog paper from The West Store - its on offer and when they're gone, they're gone.

Concerned that your Sky plus is full of crap that you'll never watch? Move into Bleinhem - no ariel, no telly. Sorted.

All the psychic horror of modern living has been removed. I do not have to get the garden spade out every morning to remove the piles of junk mail preventing egress from the house. I am not unindated with endless unsolicited phone calls from Dehli asking if I would like to take part in a survey/have new windows/be interested in dog waxing. When I walk down the street there are no billboards advertising scrummy objects and services without which my life will be incomplete.

Here life is easier. Yesterday we were walking home when a taxi pulled up alongside us and the driver leaned out of the window to hand my son his hat  which he had left there 3 days previously. Tonight I read to my son, something he would not have endured back home. On the plane coming down I heard a teenage boy say 'I can't wait to get back to the Falklands'. At the time this surprised me having only ever been around over stimulated teenagers. Now I can appreciate that for someone who has grown up here much of life in the UK must appear truly ridiculous and deeply unfeeling.

Not to say that I have completey assimulated. I am finding it diffiult to make my choice from the Narrows menu, I peer myopically at tomatos in The West Store wondering which of the four available would most suit my needs. The Heir and Spare took 45 minutes to chose a DVD from a relatively limited collection but most of all I am betrayed by my middle class insidious need for several dustbins.

For years I have been indoctinated with endless agitprop about the need to seperate my refuse into suitable recepticles for recycling or else it will quite clearly be my personal fault when the good earth veers horribly off its axis and all of humanity into oblivion with it.

In the UK I had 5 different areas for waste. My black bin - generally considered to be evil as it contained general waste which is much to be frowned upon. The blue bin for cans, bottles and other plastics, the brown one for composting and garden waste, a sack for newspapers magazines, paper etc and a kitchen pot for potato peelings (unecessary I found, potato peelings are not a feature of Balti Towers delivered meals). Then there was the weird fella from Swad with the van who went round demanding recyclable household items like fridges and stuff. I met numerous people who had fallen foul of him. No sooner had Curry's dvered the latest washing machine but he'd whipped it off the porch and onto the lorry leaving nought but the packaging which he didn't even bother putting in the blue sack as he drove off at top speed cacking wildly, exhaust from his thieving lorry polluting the lungs of indiginous bird species - THE BASTID!

All of this anietry was witnessed at its zenith, as one might imagine in Brighton. Last year I was at an interview in a school which I quickly realised was actually the model for the school in 'kidulthood'. By mid morning I was desperate to get out as everyone was clearly certifiable, but the senior leaders had locked me in a staffroom with a woman sporting a very noticable twitch and a lot of unusually remarkable conspiricy theories and a geography teacher wearing hemp trousers. Both of them sat extremely close to me proffering houmous and questioning me most earnestly about my political affiliations and views on pedagogy.

The georgraphy teacher explained that he was aiming for a carbon-neutral existance and as such only ate out of skips, made his own clothes, had a thunderbox in the garden and used no electricity apart from his alarm clock.
'Why' I asked 'don't you get an alarm clock with a wind up mechanism? Then you wouldn't need to use electricty at all.' Several moments of silence passed before the geography teacher, a tad green about the gills, stood up and silently left the room. I later discoovered that the following week he was arrested when acting as a human shield at the blockade of an oil refinery. I am unsure as to whether he replaced the alarm clock.

As I was the only candidate, and it was quite obvious that frankly they would have appointed anyone with a pulse, I was offered the job. I managed to wriggle out of it. And thank the Lord in His mercy for such release! Otherwise I would be sitting in a Tapas bar in Brighton right about now worrying about 'my relationship' and whether my kids needed primal scream therapy. Probably wearing last year's shoes.

So while it might feel horribly recidivist not to be separating my refuse, I am secretly quite relived that such torpor has been removed. In any case in the three weeks I have been here I have only produced four bin liners of rubbish. I put this down to the fact that Exportation red wine comes in two lite bottles, no junk mail and a need to eat everything on the plate as food is less available and more expensive.

My guru Laura Ingalls Wilder admits that her life took a turn for the worse when she first laid eyes on a Sears catalogue. She became aspirational and dissatisfied. A former student of mine once refused to accept freebies from Derby University recruitment day as she said they were a waste of resources and would only end up in a landfill. Respec' to both of em I say.

Right! I'm off to photocopy 600 workbooks, if only I can decide which book to study...Hmmm, decisions, decsions...

Borah Out.

I would be a king of infinite space were it not that I have bad dreams....

I have been right pushed busy-wise today. Which makes a change because my chief activity for the past fortnight has been lying in bed till midday reading and mooning before finally dragging my carcus out of me scratcher and getting a taxi to Jacs because I'm too much of a lazy biffer to walk that half mile max. Then I will consume soup and cake before hauling myself the Heir and Spare into FICS 'to do some work' while they go swimming. Work, it would appear, largely comprises of cutting and sticking classroom displays and dreaming up vastly complicated schemes of work, writing them in pencil on the back of West Store receipts and then chucking them in the bin as unworkable fantasy.

This is the Curse of The Profession. Whenever I tell people I am a teacher they have three instantaneous reactions.
1. 'Primary? WHAT SECONDARY! Are you quite mad? Ruddy kids nowadays and their foul-mouthed disrespectful, hoodie weraing looting ways, blah blah'.
2.Really? Do they allow certifiable nutters to teach then?
3. You jammy git - 12 weeks holiday, I work for a living, blah!'

Now come the middle of July, there is nothing more desirous than a long six weeks yawning ahead of wild inactivity before you have to get up and get a grip on that marking, but by late August all pedagogues go slightly psychotic. Teachers have an unusual afinity for strong drink but by the end of the summer, the wasailing can reach epic proportians of self-abasement. I well remember my ex and much missed Guv wandering it to the September pre-term inset muttering 'Ye Gods! last night I drank so much value cider I began to hallucinate'. Whilst his experience might be extreme it is not entirely out of the ordinary.

Teaching is a full on sort of gig and weeks of doing not very much eventually begin to mess you up. You long to return to the Chalk Face, you dream of Quality Teaching and Learning experiences, think fondly of that minx in year 11 with the knuckle duster and ASBO, hope this is the year when you can prove your worth to a cross-eyes OFSTED imspector with vengence on their mind....
By the second week of September, you realise this was troubling and unreasonable fantasy and you do the marking that you have been putting off since June with a keen eye on the calender counting down the days till October half term.

Thus it has come to pass that I am, despite an exciting move of 8000 miles, in late summer limbo. This means that I am cursed by bad dreams and nightmares. I blame all these odd books I am reading about DEATH ON EVEREST and not being used to Exportation Red wine ( 5 Bottles for £10.00 down the West Store - Bargain!). Now I don't really mind the odd nightmare. Back in me RADA days I used to encourage them actively by eating three battered cod roe and several pickled onions on the way home from the theatre. Never failed - there are dreams that I had then that I am still in therapy for.

But 7 nights in a row seems a bit much. This morning I woke up at 8am wrapped up in the duvet like some kind of massive slug. Rictus grin and wild hair greeted me as I looked in the mirror and there were discernable teeth marks on the Kindle.... I had awoken from a paralysing Heironymous Bocsh of a snooze. A hybrid of 'The Day after Tommorow', Dali's darker moments and a bit of Crimewatch. I was in a sweaty death panic.

'Right! That's it' I muttered logging on to the BearGryllsWisdom site as I lit my wake-up fag. (note- this website does not exist but it should). Bear would no doubt advocate tea totalling and prayer along with some positive energetic action and a nice horlicks later on. And probably read something a little less traumatic.

I took matters into my own hands and became a domestic legend completing seventeen loads of laundry, dashing off to the Chandlery to procure huge amounts of Lenor, cleaned house, cooked food (without major mishap -win!) done a bit of vaccing, finished me noticeboards, folded the corners of my bog roll into a triangle like they do at the Travelodge - the lot.

It remains to be seen whether this will cure my night terrors. At the library I found an extremely absorbing account of the acsent of K2 in 1981 by a woman I can only describe as a class A patented fruit loop. Her ravings are most distarcting but I fear not good for my emotional well-being but I'm fascinated so I will not return it till it's finished.

I have set all five of my alarm clocks for 7am and will venture into the morrow with light heart and positive attitude. Now I'm just going to have a late night snack of olives, cheese and piccillili while I finish this book....

Borah Out.

Why I will never be Bear Grylls...

As I sit here ruminatively rolling a 12g pouch of Golden Virginia into 160 teeny fags because it cost £15.69, a thought has born it's way into my addled mind, viz - you can always tell persons of hardy natural instincts by two things; they keep their nails well trimmed and they own at least one item of satorial fayre manufactured by Berghaus. Neither of which apply to me - I am a martyr for cheap stick ons and all my clothes come from Wallis, though to be absolutely accurate I do also possess a fake Barbour, but I've never worn it so it doesn't count.

I have never been much of a one for The Outdoors. When I was 14, I foolishly enrolled on an outward bound residential course at school because I thought it would open my eyes to all that guff spouted by the Romantic poets on whom I was quite keen. I should've know better. Those chaps were all notriously sexually perverse, raging laudenham addicts and had an alarming habit of dropping dead with consumption when it was most inconvenient. Byron may well have swum the Bosphorous or whatever but he also slept with his sister, so rigourous engagement with the Natural World should not necessarily be held up as key to moral integrity.

On that fateful voyage to the aptly named 'Coven', I was asked to ascend and then abseil down a cliff face, canoe down some white water and deliberately capsize at then end of the rapids. It was a given that we would read maps to find a tin of minced beef and another mysteriously labelled 'new potatoes' which we then had to cook in a raging gale in a wood with a defective Primus stove which promptly blew up. Quite unreasonably I thought, we were also expected to dress appropriately, have a neat tent and brush our hair. None of which quite frankly I could be arsed with. A ra-ra skirt and 'Frankie says Relax' T shirt are not effective roughing it kit for Staffordshire in March and can cause quite a scene when your fat arse is jammed into a crevice on your rock ascent and someone has to come and shove you through it.

Anyhoo, enough of my childhood traumas. Suffice to say, when I reached the ignoble age of 16, I was at the very back of the queue for Army recruitment day and have happily stayed in the warm ever since. Which is not to say that I don't respect the strenuous in others, more that I think over the years it has become abundantly clear that I'm a lover not a fighter.

This was born out today when I overcame my innate fear of the Gas Cooker and decided to prepare a Proper Sunday Dinner for the Heir and The Spare. Back in the land of marmite I abide 100% by the adage that the best way to survive single parenthood is to a) earn a lot of money and b) throw it at any minor problem. This is why I spent £700 going to Butlins last Christmas and then got horribly addicted - I just couldn't be bothered to do the cooking and washing up required by Christmas Dinner. My children cannot quite assimilate the sight of me peeling spuds, they are much more used to me peering myopically at a menu and muttering that I've bought the wrong glasses. They have over the years developed quite sophisticated palletes; Chinese, Thai, Balti, Finger Lickin' chicken, the Savoy Grill, you name it they've had it. So the novelty of me actually cooking like a proper mom caused them much hilarity and excitement.

Naturally it went horribly wrong because for days now I have known that the Gas cannister outside the back door has been pretty much empty. I ordered another which was promptly delivered and for four days I have been glaring at it suspiciously everytime I have a fag. Two days ago knowing that this was a punt I was ultimately destined to loose, I went out in the rain and howling gale to master the task of swapping one cannister for the other. After 30 minutes of going at it with a teaspoon, choice anglo-saxon phrases filling the air (not to mention a rather worrying smell of gas, given that I was smoking at the time), I gave up and took to my bed and yet another tale of manly Everest-based derring-do on my nice Kindle. This made me feel better and by proxy competent. 'Oh yes! I could have the heart to stand at 26.000 feet without Oxygen, my major organs eating themselves as I make that final push for the summit,' (might turn up the heating a notch and refill the hot water bottle),'

Suffice to say, the cannister did not get changed and at 6pm tonight with every imaginable veg simmering on the hob and a load of mutton chops grilling away - poof! No gas. I put my wellies on, grabbed my kindle reading light and a small photo of Bear and ventured into the back garden. Much shouting and swearing. I came back in, locked myself in the lavvy and cursed the false sense of security all those caravan holidays in Skegness had given me.

'Can we go to the Narrows and have some nuggets?' came the plaintive cry from the kitchen. 'No! dagnammit, I WILL tame the wilderness!' I yelled back from the lav, 'And anyway that lot cost me £87.46 and I've been preparing it for 6 hours. WE WILL HAVE A PROPER TEA!!!!!'

I went out again with renewed vigour and the multi tool from the Esso garage but to no avail. Ultimately I was rescued by the Doyens of Food Tech and D&T. Rough men who came in the night to defend my chops. Wearing parkas. With hoods. Bear would have done it in the nud, with a broken back using only the power of his mind whilst eating a live octopus which he had caught using his gentitals as bait. Cos that's how he rolls.

However, what I love about Bear is that after his work was done, he would have sat down and had a Pina Colada and done some praying. I feel affinity with this, its recognisable behaviour for one such as I, even though frankly a Pina Colada is a bit gay and I would have a margherita.

But let's face it, it doesn't matter how many episodes of Born Survivor I watch thinking 'this information may come in handy in the South Atlantic', or how many books I read about facing Gaia down with a baseball bat and a steady gaze, I will never cope with frontier living.

As the men left, one sympathetically muttered, 'You'll get there...'
I ruddy doubt it and I definately wouldn't put cold hard cash on the counter of William Hill in the hope of such eventualities.

Now excuse me, I'm off to my warm bed and the Kindle edition of 'Facing Up'  -Bear's account of how he climed Everest in an iron lung when he was 12.

Borah out.

The GHD factor...

Back home in the fair land of Eng-er-land, I know most of me chums and colleagues will be spending their summers larding up on kebabs, avoiding the marking and watching 'Celebrity Big Brother' and 'The X Factor'. I only really know this because comments about these things appear on my facebook stream and BSFB keep banging on about what a pile of dog CBB is. I have no personal experience of it naturally because in a world of KTV, erratic reception and a total absence of 'Born Survivor' I see no reason for a TV. Not that I haven't got one you understand. The doyen of Food Tech and Beef Maestro sorted it for me, but I haven't got that INVOLVED. It is nice to have a telly - otherwise that unit just looks empty and weird in the corner and people who visit Blenheim will probably erroneously come to the conclusion that I am an aesthetic or Jehovah's Witness or something.

However, I have no need for The X Factor, because here in Stanley I have discovered The GHD factor. Oh Yes,

The Laydeez and I went out for an evening of erudite conversation this evening. Naturally enough us being women, this required careful consideration of outfit, hair and toilette. There is nary a woman on the planet who hasn't spent several hours and the GNP of a small African nation on products to prepare for an evening larking about only to find herself at three a.m looking like a badly coiffured rhodedrendren, but this is normally down to drink. I think it fair to say that the laydeez and I are above such nonsense being for the most part mature women with a fairly high 'I'm not impressed' ceiling. Notwithstanding, by 11pm we all looked like we'd been involved in some form of horrible incident.

People who know me will sign legal documentation to the effect that I never knowingly turn down an evening which includes alcohol, but they may also probably state that not since 1989 have I fallen off a bridge, gone home in one pop sock or locked myself irrevocably in the lavatory. Not that I wish to suggest that the average Saturday night pub crawl in Stanley contains all these elements, but it's a good job I'm advanced in years and corrosive liver damge or else I can imagine all three would have occurred.

Saturday night in Stanley requires commitment. The cocktails can clean your drains, the shorts are served in tiny paper cups and every pub contains a leery selection of service personel who will quite happily indulge a woman's need for whisky shots. Which I say is no bad thing!

What is bad is that after 4 hours of meritorious straightening, we all arrived in the Narrows looking smooth sleek and in control. After 20 minutes getting our thing on to The Quo in our second bar stop, we were beginning to look alightly askew. Not 20 minutes later in The Victory bar, all of our hair appeared to have been in a fight to the death with an otter.

A heavy sea fret, wind and the necessity of wearing a hat to nip for a fag does not make for neat hair. In fairness I probably didn't help myself by insisting on wearing my wolly hat on the dance floor. I maintain this was because Bear Grylls swears by a hat - even if it is fashioned out of his own underpants. My constitution is so brittle I cannot deal with any loss of heat from the scalp, therefore the hat stays on.

The GHD factor was in effect. Reletively sober, despite the best efforts of Stanley's hostelries and the benificence of gentlemen from Her Majesty's Royal Navy and Air Force, we still looked like the average 17 year old after 16 pints of cheeky vimto and a good cry in the bogs. With GHDs costing over a tonne, it would be reasonable to feel a tad cheated - like Jamie Afro when that tool Joe McEldry took the X Factor crown. Shocking

Of course my straighteners cost £4.99 from Wilko so I cannot complain and as I was wearing an outfit that made me a dead ringer for Hattie Jaques it would be churlish of me to only moan about my hair. And I did hear a very funny story about an international incident that led one gentlemen to be barred from Bahrain. All about a camel - you can imagine. I've only ever been barred from a fun pub in Burton and I still maintain that was a terrible misunderstanding...

Might have to book in for a perm though....


Borah out

Wind's Up!

According to some hereabouts, all new visitors to these fair Falkland Isles are in very real peril of falling victim to the mysterious curse known as the 'Stanley Stone'. Hmmm, being by nature and indeed design an inquisitive beast I went out into the commoonity in search of answers. What is the Stanley Stone and why is it likely to particularly afflict the pre-menopausal woman with limited domestic abilty?

In short, there is much in the way of cake and mutton and spuds and stuff like that here which will make you put on a Godawful muffin top if you don't watch yerself. Combine this with the neccessity of getting a cab everywhere in winter (if you don't and you have just left a tepid English summer you WILL DIE, and no ammount of Bear Grylls press-ups in the nud wll prevent it), and what you have is a rootin tootin, finger linger, doiley encased recipe for an additional stone on the scales.

Far be it from me to eschew the ways of weight gain - I've been in a private competition with myself for several years to see how long it will take me to hit maximum density and I have been doing rather well, even though I say so myself - but really. People are not taking into consideration my singular lack of domestic ability when they waggle a cautious finger (and then use it to wipe away a fragrant crumb).

'Blenheim' the sequal to that rotting carcus I used to affectionately call 'Dunteachin' is a gorgeous place if you like earwigs and horrible carpet, but the dark side of my new abode is that is possessed of a gas cooker. I don't do gas - never have. Given my approach to life it is quite likely I will blow myself up if I have access to gas appliances in my home. It was this concern that made me avoid central heating for all those years - I don't even trust myself with a pilot light. Now of course I am being forced to engage with an ignition switch and all that caper. Troubling, but I must admit quite handy for lighting one's fag on. A ceremic hob is a bugger for that as memory and that large hospital bill serves.

So me, the heir and spare have been eating out a lot principally at two of Stanley's finer establishment 'The Narrows' and 'Jacs' both of which I heartily reccommend should you ever find yourself in the vicinity. And genuinely too, this is not a matter merely of being afraid that I will get a kicking if I bad mouth them or worse still they will bar me thus ensuring me and mine will starve.

The problem is I have never been much of a meat eater. I like a bit of a veg and I'm a martyr for carbs. You can tell what sort of fare is available hither from the advert in this weeks Penguin News for The Narrows;

Sundays - Roast beef, Roast Lamb, Roast Children.

I don't think years of merlot abuse could withstand a whole child..... Jacs do a very fine spicy veg based soup and The Narrows a hearty Vegi burger. With bananas going for around a quid each you can imagine anything green is at a premium and I for one don't want to end up on Bleeker Island raving insanely with a shocking case of scurvy. Trouble is it don't half affect the digestion. The heir spent 4 hours earlier farting all the songs she has ever heard Pixie Lott sing. I have had more occassion to yell the epiphets 'Ooops! More tea Vicar!', 'Nurse! The screens' and 'Taxi for Borah' in the past 16 days than is strictly healthy.

Still! look on the brightside, tonight a gale is blowing hard over Stanley which drowns out all other wind and at least my Jacs bill for a fortnight wasn't £126 unlike some cake fiendy lady I could mention.

Right! I'm off to the fridge to liberate some Waitrose value olives. Yum!
Borah out.