Art for Art’s Sake
Not one life vest, not one responsible adult.Call the Social!
One of the Enid Blytonesque things The Flying Martinis do of a week is Family Night (TM). Oh, hang on…I think I just heard the sound of my “Mommy Blogger” blacklisting being revoked! Quick, let’s bake some cakes and photograph them too.
Actually to call our family night Enid Blytonesque is rather ridiculous. In the work of Enid Blyton I seem to remember that kids ran amok solving mysteries without a shred of parental guidance, or were, indeed, packed off to boarding school to be brought up by complete strangers wearing pince-nez and big cloaks. There was never much of a family involved in anything Blyton’s Famous Five or Secret Seven ever did. In fact, they always seemed to rely on goodly yet childless farmer’s wives to take pity on them and replenish them with cakes and sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer. Really, it’s time we re-evaluated the work of Blyton; her tales are clearly of neglected latchkey children.
Essay question: Enid Blyton could be described as aTwentieth Century Dickens but with jam and cakes. Discuss.
Anyway, as you may remember a while back it was Junior Misssy’s turn to dictate what we did on Family Night- we went to the school playground to mess about on bikes, rectify wanton vandalism and listen to other kids swearing at each other. Good clean fun with an edge of gritty realism.
The next week, we had a Mario Kart competition on the Wii, at Indy’s request, in which I played like a big Jessie. Indy and his best friend, Socks, were so concerned for my ego that they would cover the screen when my score came up. I was like Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest. So much so that I wanted to change my Kart to resemble a Viking Longboat.
So onto the actual bona fide reason for this post; it was my turn to choose what we did last week, and I turned the twee factor up to eleven. I made us all paint a portrait of Sonny the Black Menace.
I wish to showcase the results*:
Meeester channels Warhol
Indy channels Hieronymous Bosch
Junior Misssy channels Picasso
Misssy channels Van Gogh
(there’s a second one with one floppy ear missing)
And if you think that’s some quality wholesome family entertainment right there, then wait til you hear what Meeester has got planned. In true Partridge Family style; this Family Night Meeester is going to get us to record a song. Talk about twee with a capital Twuh! I feel like Julie Andrews.
God help you all, gentle readers! (Any requests?)
Our sleeping muse
*Mainly because I’m not well, and light on blogging ideas for this week due to a mind-numbing cocktail of over the counter drugs that is rendering me incapable of doing the simplest things. Picture Jack Nicholson in One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest after the lobotomy, but with a better hair line. Apologies for below par posting, I’m half a person right now.
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I Think I’m Alone Now
Living in the House of the Flying Martinis I rarely get any peace. (Apparently the same goes for those living next to the HOTFMs, but that’s another post).
In the days before MeesterMartin and all the fringe benefits our liaison brought, I was quite proficient at being alone with me, myself and I. It’s not like I was Norma No-mates but I would actively choose to do certain things alone because I liked to. Nothing has changed in this other that the choice element; I still like to do a lot of things alone, it’s just that I don’t get to anymore.
This weekend I am on my own as the Flying Martinis are off to Glasgow to leave me to get on with my freelance job. I am quietly excited. But it is a bittersweet situation. Sweet because I get to have 48 hours to myself. No offence to my beautiful family. But bitter because I have to work for at least 25 hours of it.
Here’s a Things-I-Like-To-Do-Alone list, for the record:
1. Go to cinema in the afternoons. Aaahh bliss! Especially when there’s hardly one else even in the audience. I look forward to my retirement so that I can do this again. Aberdeen’s local independent cinema does “Silver Screen “ special offers every afternoon. I am sadly 22 years off their target list but eager to join. I can’t wait!
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2. Go to the art gallery. Oh! For an hour wandering round without having to go, “Don’t touch that!!”, “Don’t run”, “Yes fine we’ll go. Just give me five more minutes!”
When I was down seeing my Gran, Jessie, for the last time, I went with my parents, brother and husband to the recently re-opened Kelvin Art Gallery in Glasgow in between visiting hours. It was fantastic. Me and Dad wandered round chatting about art and stuff for two hours. I don’t think we’d done that since he’d taken me there as a kid. It was great. I challenge the “Culture Show” to commission us to do it again as a weekly slot. Let’s call it “Will and Gill Bluff for Scotland”.*
3. Sleep in a double bed alone. Sorry Meeester, you’re ace and all that, but nothing beats lying star shaped in a bed with no snurfely noises. I’m going to change the bed clothes on Saturday morning so that the whole experience is flawless. I may even use linen water, like a real girly. Not because I want to drown out Meeester’s scent or anything. Ooops talk about digging a hole for yourself….
4. Watching telly on my own. Because I am in control of the remote, and I can hear everything without interruption, and I don’t miss the start of CSI (see last post).
5. Eating like pig. I can comfortably empty a whole carton of M and S sour cream and chive dip and large pack of crisps without sharing any. OK, I might feel a little weird after and have to have a lie down, but it’s great when I’m in there. Ditto, chocolate eclairs. Ditto, Haagen Dasz Pralines and Cream. Ditto, Queen Green Olives.
6. Shopping. I hate shopping with anyone else. I am frankly not interested in what you want to buy. It’s hard enough finding what I want to buy. And shopping with kids. Well, just avoid that at all costs, frankly.
7. Having a bath. I never get to have a bath without Junior Misssy sussing it out. That girl can smell steam. She doesn’t even ask to come in. She simply strips off and comes in, like the bath was run for her in the first place and I just happened to want to join in.
8. Work. I need silence. Especially when I’m up against it like I am this week. I can’t even have the radio on. In my real day job I often take my laptop and find a hiding place so that I can get peace (my boss likes to chat- sweet, but often obtrusive). I often have to change hiding places as boss finds me after about 4 weeks of looking. I am not going to divulge the new one to anyone.
9. Reading. Aaargggh if only there was time to read anything other than a GPS manual this weekend.
10. Painting. I can only dream of this. Am enrolling me and my mum in a class so that I get allocated painting time. It’s the only way.
So this weekend, I wonder how many of these alone things I’ll get to do. Definitely 3 and 8 but the rest hang in the balance.
* I know this example isn’t of aloneness as such but if you’ve met my Dad you’d understand why it still kinda counts…
Quote of the Week …Kinda: Dysfunctional? Us?
It’s been a shit week in the House of the Flying Martinis. I didn’t realise how much losing Jessie would devastate me. I’ll spare you the details, I’m not too good at confessional stuff. I was fine on the day it happened but come Tuesday I fell to pieces quite spectacularly. Writing that blog about Jessie on Tuesday morning pretty much started it all off. I needed a bit of release and punting my feelings into cyberspace seemed to do it for me.
Anyway out of all the crap came forth a bit of sweetness in the form of my brother who is providing this week’s “Quote of the Week… Kinda”.
On Tuesday night I was in a state, to put it mildly. I tried to phone my sister- engaged. I tried to phone my brother- no answer. I tried to phone my Dad, left a message for him demanding that he get a phone put in his shed. Around the same time, my mum who has been trying to get hold of dad all day, phones from Glasgow to leave an umpteenth irate message about him phoning her back. She also retrieves all messages from her house phone and hears my message to Dad.
She clearly thinks, “If MisssyM is phoning Dad for consolation, things must be bad”
She phones me immediately and I am hysterical about Jessie. It all just came out. Mum gets full force. Now I realise this is all a bit depressing but hang on, this is where the funny bit starts. I wail at my Mum before she hangs up, “I looovvvve you Muuuuum!”. My family doesn’t really do “I love you”. But it doesn’t mean we don’t.
Within ten minutes my dad is at the door. He may as well have arrived on a white horse, dressed in armour, with a big curly black moustache and a sword. He has a glass of wine, stays for about an hour and we talk about politics. Like we do.
The next day my brother phones me. This is what he said,
“Mum is really worried about you. She told me that you said you loved her. Isn’t it funny that someone saying that you love them in our family sets off a red alert. That’s so us. Right, here’s what I want you to do. Pick up the phone, phone Mum and tell her you don’t love her. That it was all a mistake”
That made me laugh.
