She is the Walrus
The first night the noises occurred, a group of us gathered underneath my bedroom ceiling to have a good listen and a bit of a chuckle. The noises came exclusively from a throaty voiced woman but at certain points we wondered whether the tenant was illegally making walrus porn. At the crescendo, which seemed to take about forty minutes to occur, I remember we gave them a hearty round of applause. How naive we were that first time! How could we have known then that the walrus and her special friend would make our daily lives hell on earth? One day, we actually bumped into them on the stairs, having never clapped eyes on them before. In our minds, our image of the couple was one of protagonists from seventies porn films. We were very, very wrong in this assumption. Our Love King was a small rakish man with a handlebar moustache and no hair; and our Excitable Howling Walrus was a Size 20 lady with bright ginger insanely curly hair and Christopher Biggins-style red rimmed glasses wearing a Barbour jacket.
The Charm Offensive
Ah the natural curiosity of children. Isn’t it a beautiful thing?
Ha! Only a fool would make such a claim! It is, in fact, an unpredictable hair trigger waiting to ping mud all over the faces of the parents who were foolhardy enough to parade their children in public.
Children will point. Children will exclaim. Children will stare open mouthed. Children will drop you right in it.
Yesterday my son, Indy, who is old enough to know better, exclaimed sharply “Mum! Look!” and made me turn round and look straight at a little girl with quite extreme birth defects.
All of a sudden I unwittingly turn into one of the legions of people who gape and stare at this little girl and her mum.
Indy realised what he’d done as soon as it happened, especially when I turned sharpish back to him with the face that instantly says:
“Shutuprightnowwemighthavegotawaywithit
butyouareinbigtroublemakenomistake”
You know the one.
Once the coast was clear I realised that Indy was starting to tear up a bit, about what he had just done, so I said, “It’s OK, it’s OK you just can’t do that to me OK? You can’t stare and whisper at people. That poor woman probably has to put up with people staring at her little girl all the time.”
“I know, I’m sorry” he said, cheeks flushed and lip trembling slightly. I could tell he felt pretty bad and I suppose yesterday will have marked the point where he realises you can’t blurt out like a banshee every time you see a dwarf, midget, hunchback, Rastafarian, excessively tall person* or any other remarkable character that the two of my children have routinely shrieked at throughout the years.
Life lessons, eh?
Sadly for Meeester and I, we’ve got years of this still to come in the form of one four year old Junior Misssy, though.
One incident happened quite loudly and recently.
There is a woman who works in a local department store who is no bigger than Junior Misssy. She was stationed at the changing rooms when we went in.
“Mummy, why is that wee girl working here?” she bellowed like Brian Blessed in a high wind.
Understand folks, the “wee girl” is standing right in front of us, giving us our tag for the changing area. The woman smiles and says hello to Junior. She also remarks on how cute Junior is, presumably to dissolve my embarrassment. I suppress the urge to haul the still staring Junior away by the scruff before more damage can be done and Jnr Misssy returns the compliment to her.
In the changing room it goes on, “But Mummy how come that wee girl works here?”
“She’s not a wee girl she’s just a lady who is tiny” I whisper, not sure if I am being any more PC than my daughter.
Loudly (please note all of Junior’s dialogue is LOUD in this scenario) she says, “But why is that tiny lady working here?”
It’s like she’s actually questioning why the woman has a job here, and she doesn’t. I am also instantly regretting using the phrase “tiny lady”.
I whisper an explanation of the woman being very tiny as a baby and not growing very big as she got older but still able to work and fine in all other respects. After some further key questions are answered, I am happy that Junior Misssy has understood and will be quiet for the next five minutes until we can escape.
Junior is indeed quiet. So quiet that I when turn round to see what she is up to, I see she has poked her whole head out the curtain and is full on staring at the “tiny lady”.
We have to get out.
Jnr Misssy talks about the tiny lady all the way home. In fact she talks about her still, when we’re in town. “Will we see the tiny lady?” “Why does that tiny lady work there again?”
Jeeez. I can never go back.
And it’s not just tiny ladies that have found Junior Misssy’s radar. On holiday, we were sitting down to breakfast when a 3 year old Junior Misssy shouts, “Mummy, look at that fat lady eating!!” as a poor innocent chubby woman tucks into her buffet breakfast.
Junior’s proclamation is loud and pointy enough for me to have to apologise to the woman, probably making it all worse.
Mind you, I bet she just had a grapefruit the next day.
* All actual occurrences. Apologies to all concerned.
A Piece of Kate
I cannot be accused of never giving of myself where the Misssives are concerned. Maybe I give too much away. Maybe I divulge too much, and have no anonymity to protect myself. But I can’t do it any other way. Today I perhaps give too much to the Misssives, but, in the words of Brian Adams, “Everything I do, I do it for you”.
Today I opened myself up to total embarrassment by checking out and more crucially TESTING out the new Kate Moss range in Topshop for The Misssives. Holy Moly, I even took photos. But I’m still not sure I want to put them up. I’ll mull that over for a while, I think. May need to take advice on that one.
So in I go to check out Moss’s range. First of all I’m in Aberdeen; we’re only allowed a token amount of the range, being the unwashed plebs from the provinces. To be able to access the full range you have to be cool as, and come from the more metropolitan areas. So I find the small corner of Aberdeen’s Top Shop devoted to the Moss collection. It’s easy to find as it is surrounded by lasses (of all shapes and sizes, I may add), elbowing each other and grabbing at what ever they can, as the meagre amount of clothing “allocated” to us by those in control at TS, depletes before our very eyes.
I’m actually initially only interested in buying one item. Here it is.
It’s not there.
So in lieu of a wasted journey my thoughts turn to the Misssives and I think (somewhat bravely), “I’m going to try on the hot pants and waistcoat for the Misssives, that’ll be a laugh”. I pick up the size 10 as I reckon they’ll never fit me. I AM a size 10, but I am fully expecting that this range will be smaller than usual for some reason. This’ll be funny; I’ll take a photo of myself trying to get these over my knees. But they are huge! I would say between a 12 and 14 by normal standards. They gaped at the waist. Of course, cynical me thinks that this is ruse by Top Shop to make the larger lady think that she’s a size 10 and that she can carry of Kate sized cheek hugging pants. But no matter how big the shorts were on me, I still looked like a pig in knickers, somehow.
I paired them with the classic Kate waistcoat and as I fastened it up, one of the buttons came loose. It may have the name but don’t be fooled, the clothes were still made by the same sweat shop churning out Primark’s finest.
I have to say, I felt a right idiot picking the waistcoat and hot pants off the rail and taking them up to the changing rooms to be checked in by the twenty year old attendant. I’m 38 for godssake! My pal was going to take pics of me, but that would necessitate me coming out of the changing room. I wasn’t going to completely embarrass myself by doing this, so I took the pics myself, readjusting my phone settings so that the audible click of the shutter was silent in case I drew even more attention to me. Mind you I needn’t have worried. When I got back downstairs there were women a lot older and bigger than me scrambling for a piece of Kate, so I took a photo of them too and then we legged it out of the shop to head to H and M to check out Madonna’s stuff and then onto Millets, where Margaret Beckett is launching a line in tweed and beige womenswear.
So, in summary: Reasons I Don’t Want a Piece of Kate
1.Rearrange the following well known phrase: Dressed mutton as lamb.
2.Hot pants are the naggy knickers of the shorts world
3.I can be fashionable without copying some overrated fashionista waif’s style wholesale
4.This is just another example of the cult of celebrity taking over our world
5.It’s low quality tat that will be copied for a 5th of the price next week by Primark
6.I’m holding out for the Kylie line. She’s 38 too.
7.My cashline card got swallowed this morning by the Bank of Scotland’s malfunctioning ATM.
