"Well, if you don't like it, I'll just get another one."
"It's not that I don't like it, it's just not very easy to use."
In retrospect,.6.30 am, just as Francis is preparing to leave for work, lips set against the enemies of fun - cars jamming the roads, paper jamming his desk, all set off against the backdrop of dark, unpreposessing skies - wasn't the best time to choose for a free and frank discussion about our latest gizmo.
But he started it.
"I hope that new answerphone's recording properly. I'm sure it is, of course. It's just we don't seem to have any messages."
The old answaphone wasn't exactly something I held against my heart and cuddled in bed but, thinking of it, I'm filled with pangs of nostalgia. It didn't do much - it was lousy at jokes and I never did get it to make a decent toasted sandwich, but what it did, it accomplished with relatively little fuss. Press 'play' and it did. Press skip - it did. And so on for other typical ansaphone functions - 'stop' 'record message' 'delete'. No surprises. No frills.
The new one, on the other hand, appears to have ideas above its station.
"It is a bit complicated," I venture.
"It's not complicated," says Francis. "It's perfectly straightforward. You just wouldn't listen to me when I tried to show you how it worked."
By way of answer, I read out an extract from the instruction book.
"Here's what you have to do to play the messages, Francis.
"1. Press the MENU button
"2. Press the down arrow button four times
"3. The display shows Tam operation
"4. Press the Phone/OK button twice."
"Easy," says Francis.
"Not very," I say. "And definitely not very child-friendly."
"The children? Why would the children want to play messages?"
"Someone might leave them one. They get more calls than us these days," I start to say, then give up. And I can't help feeling that there may be a secret agenda here. Francis complains regularly about the phone bill. He points out, rightly, that as he's rarely here these days what with the agony of his daily commute, and has no friends to speak to as the daily commute leaves him no time to socialise, the bill is nothing to do with him.
Could it be that the answaphone is his representative on earth, acting, in his absence, as controller of the communications network? It's a thought that continues to haunt me on and off for the rest of the day as the phone stores up messages, none of which I'm able to play or return.
Wednesday, 17 October 2007
Tuesday, 16 October 2007
AaaaaarGhA
"The Aga man said why not dry citrus peel in the roasting oven and use it as firelighters?" says Vicky, looking at the shiny lump of metal the size of a small mini that's now occupying most of one wall in her kitchen.
She's on her knees in front of it, a reluctant worshipper, contemplating it with mixed awe and loathing.
"Tosser," says Bad Lindy. "You'd get a better blaze toasting his giblets and using them as firelighters instead. Speaking of which, mind if I toast my gusset?"
"As long as you're properly dressed," says Vicky.
"As if I would," says Lindy. She pulls up a chair and sits, legs well apart, revelling in the heat.
"That copper I know said he tried cycling to work commando fashion and kept sitting on his plums," she adds, conversationally.
"Not a citrus fruit," says Vicky. "And the bruising probably stops them heating evenly."
I've gone round to Vicky's to commiserate on her latest kitchen acquisition. Her husband, yearning for an Aga, has got just enough of a bonus to buy one and, despite Vicky's frequent and vociferous objections, has ripped out a couple of kitchen units and had it installed.
"It uses so much fuel that I've asked for the bills in black-edged evelopes," she says. "The meter shoots round so fast that you could attach a couple of sparklers and flog it as a catherine wheel, and I'm convinced we've created our own personal hole in the ozone layer. Look through a telescope and you'll probably find it's formed itself into an arrow shape pointing downwards and the words 'she did it'. I'm expecting Greenpeace round any day now, anchoring one of their dinghies to the main burner until we sign a treaty of casserole non-proliferation."
"So what are you supposed to do with it?" asks Bad Lindy, "Apart from warm your bits."
"Stew and baked potatoes, apparently," says Vicky. "And I'm not a great one for either."
"Blimey. I hope it's good with nuggets and frozen chips or your kids'll starve," says Lindy. "Mind you, they can always suck the ice off the sides if they're desperate."
"I've never wanted to be a domestic goddess and now I reckon Brett wants to turn me into Aga Woman, with my 200 dernier tights firmly outside sensible pants and a lamb tucked under cape, liberating mankind from its brink-of-disaster seasoning problems."
As the woman who put the carbon in Carbonara and could burn a fruit salad, Vicky clearly has some way to go.
"Mind you," she says, looking speculatively at the hotplates,"It's supposed to be able to dry anything. And it's children's bathtime tonight. You never know. It might just prove more useful than I'd thought."
She's on her knees in front of it, a reluctant worshipper, contemplating it with mixed awe and loathing.
"Tosser," says Bad Lindy. "You'd get a better blaze toasting his giblets and using them as firelighters instead. Speaking of which, mind if I toast my gusset?"
"As long as you're properly dressed," says Vicky.
"As if I would," says Lindy. She pulls up a chair and sits, legs well apart, revelling in the heat.
"That copper I know said he tried cycling to work commando fashion and kept sitting on his plums," she adds, conversationally.
"Not a citrus fruit," says Vicky. "And the bruising probably stops them heating evenly."
I've gone round to Vicky's to commiserate on her latest kitchen acquisition. Her husband, yearning for an Aga, has got just enough of a bonus to buy one and, despite Vicky's frequent and vociferous objections, has ripped out a couple of kitchen units and had it installed.
"It uses so much fuel that I've asked for the bills in black-edged evelopes," she says. "The meter shoots round so fast that you could attach a couple of sparklers and flog it as a catherine wheel, and I'm convinced we've created our own personal hole in the ozone layer. Look through a telescope and you'll probably find it's formed itself into an arrow shape pointing downwards and the words 'she did it'. I'm expecting Greenpeace round any day now, anchoring one of their dinghies to the main burner until we sign a treaty of casserole non-proliferation."
"So what are you supposed to do with it?" asks Bad Lindy, "Apart from warm your bits."
"Stew and baked potatoes, apparently," says Vicky. "And I'm not a great one for either."
"Blimey. I hope it's good with nuggets and frozen chips or your kids'll starve," says Lindy. "Mind you, they can always suck the ice off the sides if they're desperate."
"I've never wanted to be a domestic goddess and now I reckon Brett wants to turn me into Aga Woman, with my 200 dernier tights firmly outside sensible pants and a lamb tucked under cape, liberating mankind from its brink-of-disaster seasoning problems."
As the woman who put the carbon in Carbonara and could burn a fruit salad, Vicky clearly has some way to go.
"Mind you," she says, looking speculatively at the hotplates,"It's supposed to be able to dry anything. And it's children's bathtime tonight. You never know. It might just prove more useful than I'd thought."
Monday, 15 October 2007
Holier than thou
Imagine a country where 20% of people have had to turn down dental treatment because they can't afford the cost.
Imagine a country where 6% of that 20% have resorted to treating themselves. And we're not talking about slapping on the Bonjela or swilling out twice a day with salt and hot water. We're talking about applying home-prepared fillings - and even DIY tooth-pulling with pliers.
Then welcome home, chaps (at least, those of you fortunate enough to live where I live). Because that country is England, home of milk, honey - and a million rotten teeth.
But there's good news. Gordon Brown, says the news today, is going to be 'turning his attention to dentistry.'
So if the man in the white coat and face mask starts talking about being a son of the manse while popping your pliers in the autoclave to scrub off at least the top layer of MRSA, never fear. Gordie is here.
At least the makers of 'Marathon Man' must be laughing, and you can bet they won't covering their mouths with their hands to hide the holes when they do. I predict that copies of the film will fly off the shelves as it becomes required viewing for the nation's L-plate amateur dentists as they hone their skills.
Imagine a country where 6% of that 20% have resorted to treating themselves. And we're not talking about slapping on the Bonjela or swilling out twice a day with salt and hot water. We're talking about applying home-prepared fillings - and even DIY tooth-pulling with pliers.
Then welcome home, chaps (at least, those of you fortunate enough to live where I live). Because that country is England, home of milk, honey - and a million rotten teeth.
But there's good news. Gordon Brown, says the news today, is going to be 'turning his attention to dentistry.'
So if the man in the white coat and face mask starts talking about being a son of the manse while popping your pliers in the autoclave to scrub off at least the top layer of MRSA, never fear. Gordie is here.
At least the makers of 'Marathon Man' must be laughing, and you can bet they won't covering their mouths with their hands to hide the holes when they do. I predict that copies of the film will fly off the shelves as it becomes required viewing for the nation's L-plate amateur dentists as they hone their skills.
Saturday, 13 October 2007
Not wrong, just different, Missing you already, Mother at Large
You all make me smile, in your different ways. Not Wrong, just Different with a frequent belly laugh, Missing you already with a belly of pork laugh (it's all those meat pictures) and Mother at Large wryly.
Have the 'You make me smile' award all of you, on me, and just remember not to look at the green and yellow logo with a hangover.
Have the 'You make me smile' award all of you, on me, and just remember not to look at the green and yellow logo with a hangover.
Friday, 12 October 2007
Together at last
"There are times," says Francis, gloomily contemplating the last of his fish and chips, "when I wonder whether it's all worth it."
We've not got the weekend off to a particularly good start.
Beth is banned from riding after calling Leo a 'hyperactive bastard,' at the top of her voice just outside the front door, watched by a small, but interested crowd of locals, including two of my pupils.
"I was calling it through the letterbox," she says, indignantly, as though shrieked insults were some new and long-awaited improvement to the postal service.
Leo is banned from seeing his friend, for having returned from the local park an hour and a half later than promised.
"But I just forgot," he says, outraged, as I attempt to explain that forgetting is the nub of the problem and the reason we were scouring the area looking for him.
Deborah is banned from the TV for being generally small and stroppy and wilfully perching on top of the sofa so she can accidentally-on-purpose roll off it on to other people's newspapers, glasses of wine and homework and then claim that it was an accident.
"Nobody knows how hard it is to be a seven-year old," she wails at us, before departing upstairs with two dolls and the kitchen timer to play some fierce, muttered game no doubt involving forced confessions and electric shock torture.
"I'm working my guts out," continues Francis, "and nobody seems to care."
I study his guts - or, at least, his gut. There's definitely rather more of it than there used to be. I bite back the thought that working a bit more of his guts out might not necessarily be such a bad thing.
"At least it's Friday," I say.
"When's the plumber coming to fix the cistern? It's still not filling properly."
"He thinks he'll be able to make it first thing on Saturday. About eight."
"The one morning I don't have to get up early and now this," says Francis, as though he's the victim of a family-inspired attempt to deprive him of sleep and sanity. "If I were a dog, I bet the RSPCA would re-home me."
"They might," I say, "But don't forget they'd neuter you first."
We've not got the weekend off to a particularly good start.
Beth is banned from riding after calling Leo a 'hyperactive bastard,' at the top of her voice just outside the front door, watched by a small, but interested crowd of locals, including two of my pupils.
"I was calling it through the letterbox," she says, indignantly, as though shrieked insults were some new and long-awaited improvement to the postal service.
Leo is banned from seeing his friend, for having returned from the local park an hour and a half later than promised.
"But I just forgot," he says, outraged, as I attempt to explain that forgetting is the nub of the problem and the reason we were scouring the area looking for him.
Deborah is banned from the TV for being generally small and stroppy and wilfully perching on top of the sofa so she can accidentally-on-purpose roll off it on to other people's newspapers, glasses of wine and homework and then claim that it was an accident.
"Nobody knows how hard it is to be a seven-year old," she wails at us, before departing upstairs with two dolls and the kitchen timer to play some fierce, muttered game no doubt involving forced confessions and electric shock torture.
"I'm working my guts out," continues Francis, "and nobody seems to care."
I study his guts - or, at least, his gut. There's definitely rather more of it than there used to be. I bite back the thought that working a bit more of his guts out might not necessarily be such a bad thing.
"At least it's Friday," I say.
"When's the plumber coming to fix the cistern? It's still not filling properly."
"He thinks he'll be able to make it first thing on Saturday. About eight."
"The one morning I don't have to get up early and now this," says Francis, as though he's the victim of a family-inspired attempt to deprive him of sleep and sanity. "If I were a dog, I bet the RSPCA would re-home me."
"They might," I say, "But don't forget they'd neuter you first."
Thursday, 11 October 2007
In cyberspace, nobody can hear you smile
...so thank God for awards. DJ Kirby of Exquisite Dreams, you are a kind woman and will no doubt gain rich rewards in heaven. In the meantime, thanks for the Smile award. And while I'm on the subject of fellow bloggers, three cheers for Mother at Large's publishing deal. Her book, 'Fashionably Late' will be published by The Friday Project. Great news and well deserved.
Crop tops
It's 8.00 - an hour away from Harvest Festival kick off.
I'm in the church sitting on a wobbly, too high piano stool and being interrogated by the priest. “Where have you come from?” he asks. Perhaps he's hoping to start a Creationism v Darwinism punch up. If so, I foil him by giving him my address.
“He means, what sort of background do you have?” hisses the special needs teacher who has volunteered to sit next to me and tap on the piano like a driving instructor to make sure I make an emergency stop at the end of each hymn.
“I just wondered if you had a theological degree?” he continues. “I always like to know if there’s someone in the congregation better qualified than I am”.
I look at him blankly, just managing to stop a trail of imbecile dribble trickling down my chin. So far, my teaching career has consisted of a series of questions which are either rhetorical, unanswerable or just plain odd.
And I have other concerns. I know I can play the six Harvest Festival hymns all the way through at home. This is my fourth Harvest Festival and I'm still not convinced -and experience has borne me out on this one - that I can play them in a church full of children, parents and teachers all singing along, too.
8.50 am.
Most fathers are in suits but one bucks the trend with a T-shirt featuring a bull with outsize testicles. It may be intended as an indirect reference to plentiful crops but it doesn’t go down well with the vicar, who gives the wearer one of the killer looks he has so far reserved for screaming babies.
The children walk up the aisle with their offerings, expensive olive oil and balsamic vinegar tastefully arranged in home-decorated cardboard boxes and wicker baskets that must have taken hours to get ready. Presumably home-made food in shop-bought boxes is out of fashion, though I am pleased to see one child lovingly adding a plain tin of tomatoes to the pile.
The vicar gives me a nod, I pick out a few random notes and cobble together an introduction to “We plough the fields and scatter,” and we’re off.
"The best way to be happy is to be grateful," says the vicar during his address. It's quite obvious he doesn't believe it and nor does anyone else in the congregation. Apart from me. I am both happy and grateful that despite transposing 'All things bright and beautiful' up a major third in the first verse, at which point the congregation temporarily stopped singing, en masse - I have, on the whole, begun and finished the songs at the same time as the singers.
The children roar out the words to “Oats and beans and barley grow” even when I accidentally read the words instead of the music and forget briefly who I am and what the piano is for. But I recover, and the event, only three weeks into term, is a success.
Although the children are all exhausted, the rest of the school day has to be filled. In my case, unfortunately, with a recorder class.
The recorder book pre-selected by the school is harder to understand than a set of IKEA flat pack instructions. It starts off by asking the child to shade every note in a different colour, depending on the pitch and note duration, defined by the author as "Taaaa" "Taa" or "Ta Ta" notes.
Fortified by wine, I spent a good two hours one evening trying to decipher the first 5 pages and then threw the book across the room.
"Are you using the book?" asks the now retired and deeply scary head of music, who has paid a surprise visit to the schook in order, I'd surmise, to find some small children to chew on so she can sharpen up her incisors.
"Well, I do find the way it starts with the hardest notes first a tad confusing," I reply. "Oh, I never bother with that page," she says, dismissively. I draw a line through it.
"Then it does A, and it doesn't get to B for ages." "I always leave those pages out, too," she says. I draw a line through those pages, too.
She flicks through to the last five pages. "Now, I always start about here," she says, sounding faintly surprised that I haven't thought this through for myself.
The parents are as baffled as I am, though why they bother reading their child's recorder book is a mystery to me. I get a note from one of the more obsessional mothers written in a fairy hand on the smallest post-it note I have ever seen: "Bill and I are both rather confused about recorder homework and require more guidance," it says. I draft several pithy but impossible replies before settling on a note suggesting that any parents who are worrying desist forthwith and try to get out more.
No book, however good, would help me deal with the children this morning. Out of a class of 22, 14 have left their recorders at home. Marnie bursts into tears because she has a sore throat and Able uses his recorder as a nose flute. I make a mental note not to borrow it for demonstration purposes. While the rest of the class tries hard to play alternate Bs and As, Tilly holds her recorder upside down and produces shrill squealing noises to see if she can make everyone else laugh.
The second time I give her back her confiscated recorder, I warn her that this is her last chance. Next time, it will stay confiscated until the end of the lesson. 30 seconds later, I have her recorder again and she is hitting her head repeatedly on the desk.
"Tilly," I say. "What are you doing?" "I'm drunk," she replies, and carries on. Perhaps she, too, has found the recorder book more than she can bear.
Back in the staff room, we agree to hold the first Christmas planning meeting immediately after half term and I am given a box of chocolates and a thank-you card. Despite myself, warm and dangerously fluffy feelings course through my system. I excise them quickly and leave.
I'm in the church sitting on a wobbly, too high piano stool and being interrogated by the priest. “Where have you come from?” he asks. Perhaps he's hoping to start a Creationism v Darwinism punch up. If so, I foil him by giving him my address.
“He means, what sort of background do you have?” hisses the special needs teacher who has volunteered to sit next to me and tap on the piano like a driving instructor to make sure I make an emergency stop at the end of each hymn.
“I just wondered if you had a theological degree?” he continues. “I always like to know if there’s someone in the congregation better qualified than I am”.
I look at him blankly, just managing to stop a trail of imbecile dribble trickling down my chin. So far, my teaching career has consisted of a series of questions which are either rhetorical, unanswerable or just plain odd.
And I have other concerns. I know I can play the six Harvest Festival hymns all the way through at home. This is my fourth Harvest Festival and I'm still not convinced -and experience has borne me out on this one - that I can play them in a church full of children, parents and teachers all singing along, too.
8.50 am.
Most fathers are in suits but one bucks the trend with a T-shirt featuring a bull with outsize testicles. It may be intended as an indirect reference to plentiful crops but it doesn’t go down well with the vicar, who gives the wearer one of the killer looks he has so far reserved for screaming babies.
The children walk up the aisle with their offerings, expensive olive oil and balsamic vinegar tastefully arranged in home-decorated cardboard boxes and wicker baskets that must have taken hours to get ready. Presumably home-made food in shop-bought boxes is out of fashion, though I am pleased to see one child lovingly adding a plain tin of tomatoes to the pile.
The vicar gives me a nod, I pick out a few random notes and cobble together an introduction to “We plough the fields and scatter,” and we’re off.
"The best way to be happy is to be grateful," says the vicar during his address. It's quite obvious he doesn't believe it and nor does anyone else in the congregation. Apart from me. I am both happy and grateful that despite transposing 'All things bright and beautiful' up a major third in the first verse, at which point the congregation temporarily stopped singing, en masse - I have, on the whole, begun and finished the songs at the same time as the singers.
The children roar out the words to “Oats and beans and barley grow” even when I accidentally read the words instead of the music and forget briefly who I am and what the piano is for. But I recover, and the event, only three weeks into term, is a success.
Although the children are all exhausted, the rest of the school day has to be filled. In my case, unfortunately, with a recorder class.
The recorder book pre-selected by the school is harder to understand than a set of IKEA flat pack instructions. It starts off by asking the child to shade every note in a different colour, depending on the pitch and note duration, defined by the author as "Taaaa" "Taa" or "Ta Ta" notes.
Fortified by wine, I spent a good two hours one evening trying to decipher the first 5 pages and then threw the book across the room.
"Are you using the book?" asks the now retired and deeply scary head of music, who has paid a surprise visit to the schook in order, I'd surmise, to find some small children to chew on so she can sharpen up her incisors.
"Well, I do find the way it starts with the hardest notes first a tad confusing," I reply. "Oh, I never bother with that page," she says, dismissively. I draw a line through it.
"Then it does A, and it doesn't get to B for ages." "I always leave those pages out, too," she says. I draw a line through those pages, too.
She flicks through to the last five pages. "Now, I always start about here," she says, sounding faintly surprised that I haven't thought this through for myself.
The parents are as baffled as I am, though why they bother reading their child's recorder book is a mystery to me. I get a note from one of the more obsessional mothers written in a fairy hand on the smallest post-it note I have ever seen: "Bill and I are both rather confused about recorder homework and require more guidance," it says. I draft several pithy but impossible replies before settling on a note suggesting that any parents who are worrying desist forthwith and try to get out more.
No book, however good, would help me deal with the children this morning. Out of a class of 22, 14 have left their recorders at home. Marnie bursts into tears because she has a sore throat and Able uses his recorder as a nose flute. I make a mental note not to borrow it for demonstration purposes. While the rest of the class tries hard to play alternate Bs and As, Tilly holds her recorder upside down and produces shrill squealing noises to see if she can make everyone else laugh.
The second time I give her back her confiscated recorder, I warn her that this is her last chance. Next time, it will stay confiscated until the end of the lesson. 30 seconds later, I have her recorder again and she is hitting her head repeatedly on the desk.
"Tilly," I say. "What are you doing?" "I'm drunk," she replies, and carries on. Perhaps she, too, has found the recorder book more than she can bear.
Back in the staff room, we agree to hold the first Christmas planning meeting immediately after half term and I am given a box of chocolates and a thank-you card. Despite myself, warm and dangerously fluffy feelings course through my system. I excise them quickly and leave.
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