The Tank Top of Victory

"I have bought 'The Tweed'.  IT WORKS pet.  This chubby lass draped herself round me last night, like a musky fox fur."

Rochester has upgraded his Old Spice for some of JFK's favourite aftershave: Green Irish Tweed (on my recommendation).  It had been a golden week for Kremlin Enterprises.  He could, therefore, afford such wanton decadence.

"I am ON FIRE.  My tank top must be made of Kryptonite, or sommat.  £65 thousand pounds of sales this week, flower."

The dapper, Brylcreemed salesman appears to be back in the saddle after a barren few months.

"Check out the testimonials on our website, petal.  We are going places!"

The Kremlin Enterprises' website: We WILL improve your home:  FACT, always makes me laugh. It is ghastly.

"GOSH.  I can now sleep safeter in my bed, all tanks to Kremlin Enterprises"  Mr and Mrs Smith, Bristol.

"Kremlin Enterprises' salesman was profffesional and polite.  Great tank top too!"  Mr Singh, Bath.

"Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Kremlin Enterprises!  I will not hesitate to reccommend your fabulos company to everyone I know."  Mrs Brown, Bristol.

"You made these up, Rochester!" 

"Nope.  They are 100% genuine customer comments."

"Well, you might want to check the spelling.  Your customers are illiterate."

"Aye. That's the beauty of it.  How do you think we get them to sign the contract, like?  I've bought a new shirt too, as well as 'The Tweed'.  I'm going to look fucking EXCLUSIVE. Hang on.  I'll send you a pic."

Reader. To be truthful, Rochester (at times) has a truly atrocious dress sense.  This is a man who recently wore a lurid pink paisley shirt to a funeral.  His ties are so gaudy and shiny they could be made from Quality Street wrappers. I was not optimistic I would approve of this shirt.  I was right to be concerned.

A white collar on a striped shirt? It reminded me of something a boorish Tory MP or braying city type would wear.  Tony Benn  (a veritable icon of sober and modest masculine style) would never wear such a flash and spivvy garment.

'Alan B'Stard rang, Rochester.  He wants his shirt back.'

Later, Rochester treated me to one of his films. (The rogue occasionally records moments of his day to send me). How I wish I could post the footage here, but I would never be forgiven.  THIS was a classic. It showed the fanny rat king speeding down the M4 in his Vauxhall of venality, his Brylcreem reaching Exxon Valdize levels of lubriciousness,  sunglasses glinting in the watery Spring sunlight.  The natty oaf was dancing, nay, PRANCING to a jaunty jazz soundtrack.  He was jutting violently about in his seat, like a camel with Parkinson's disease.  Every now and then an arm would unexpectedly flail out, as if the tat salesman was being tasered by the tank-top police.  The rogue freestyled several moves of note:  stern Miss Jean Brodie finger-wagging at the rear-view mirror, imaginary horn honking and rheumatic shoulder shimmying.  Picture Ed Balls, three sheets to the wind on Tio Peppe, at the Labour Party Christmas shindig, and you'll get the picture.  (I told Rochester he looked a bit like Ed Balls this week.  It didn't go down too well, actually.)

It is my birthday next Saturday,  I am hoping for another film.  I have requested a Through the Keyhole style documentary about the cad's new bachelor pad.   I won't get it.  I get the same thing every year.  It is the ONLY predicable thing about the rogue:  his birthday text at 2.50pm saying, 'Sorry.  I forgot.'


School of Hard Knocks vs Mean Girl Academy

Even after 5 months, I still miss SOHK terribly. Pompous Pilate, its lumpen, beetrooty patriarch has been stalking my dreams this week, begging me to return.  He WOULD take me back, you know.  He has yet to fill my old job.  The advert is still there on the Sunderland Council Website.  There is also an advert for Deputy Head at the SOHK.  Great salary.  Awful job.  I did consider it, but I'd be stuck in an office all day doing paperwork.  I'd never get to encounter a child, let alone teach.

My new school, Mean Girl Academy is an awful, backstabbing and sinister place.  We face the start of the next academic year with a shortfall of 3 teachers and 2 teaching assistants due to an incredibly high turnover of staff.  (By comparison, at the SOHK, I was the first teacher to leave in 5 years).  Two more of our teachers are on long-term sick.  A few weeks ago, the Head showed groups of  fresh-faced and shiny, newly-qualified teachers round the school, in a bit to attract some new talent.  Over 100 turned up.  At 5pm, she ushered a group into my classroom.

"This is Year 5.  This is my Assistant Head, Miss Underscore.  She's got the biggest class in the school. 34 children.  All mixed ability.  I don't give her a teaching assistant either, do I?"

I smile warmly at the students.  Some one should, I think, show a bit of kindness to them.

"You'll see she's turned her classroom into coal mine.  I expect that creativity from you mind.  I expect A POUND OF FLESH, don't I, Miss Underscore?"  

She stares witheringly at the students and slowly, menacingly points a pudgy finger in their direction.

"I have only been here two terms myself.  But in that time, 6 members of staff have resigned or retired.  That happens when I take over a school.  YOU MAY READ INTO THAT WHAT YOU WILL!  Now, any questions?"

There were none, of course.

The stunned and silent students were briskly ushered out of my room, their fresh and enthusiastic faces now etched with horror.

I try to keep out of the politics of the place, to be honest. I will, I think, have to put up with it for another year. It is tolerable, as I love teaching, and that makes up 90% of my time.  This was a bad move though.  A dreadful move. Ironically, I heard this week that Pompous is about to make an ex-colleague Assistant Head at SOHK.  Had I stayed, that would have been my job, for sure.  As with so many things in life, my timing has been lousy.

Still, my class and I are enjoying a topic on East Durham coalmining at the moment.  And I am reading them Born to Run.   Here are some examples of my class's pitman painters artwork.  We are making a life-sized colliery banner next week. That will be a challenge.  I can't sew. Neither can they.  We'll then have our own Durham Big Meeting, complete with brass band music, speeches about socialism, marching, banner-waving and ham and pease pudding sandwiches. Michael Gove bleated on a few months ago about the 'defeatism' in East Durham schools (like mine).  I feel I should invite him along.  He would no doubt be aghast, and usher in his curriculum reforms even sooner.  By 2014, such local history projects will be a thing of the past. We'll all be back to teaching the Kings and Queens of England by rote. Pease pudding outlawed.  Whippets euthanised. Flat caps binned.

This miner has forged a very close relationship with his hound. No wonder he looks a little flushed.

This was my favourite. 

Revelations

"I have just bought a tank-top."

Keeping up with developments in the swarthy rogue's life can be a dizzying experience.  One week it's inter-racial anal tomfoolery; the next shenanigans in the knitwear department.

"From M&S.  Grey. Lambswool.  It shows my cuff-links off to full effect. Plus, when I am going door-to-door for Kremlin Enterprises, I can get a bit chilly, like.  I got some vests too.  They show nicely through my shirt.  What with my Brylcreem, my vests and my tank top, I think you'd approve, flower."

Reader:  I do approve.  I do love all things retro.  And cosy. It sounds to me like Rochester is adopting a most appropriate approach to ageing. Let me be brutally honest, I always had him pegged as a swaggering knob-jockey who would spend his mid 40s strutting round dimly-lit wine-bars beneath a musky mushroom cloud of overbearing aftershave (probably derived from the anal glands of a rutting ferret).   I pictured him draping himself round giggling, lithesome twenty year-olds like a gruff Geordie, mono-browed anaconda, grumbling come-hither lines about UPVC millions and sodomy.  Tank-tops signify a much more dignified descent into middle age.  Who knows, maybe he'll even give up the roll-ups and cocaine and start smoking a pipe.  Or cigars.  Dare I even dream of an allotment? Tweed?  Tortoiseshell specs? A BEARD??

"Anyway flower, I checked out that Green Irish Tweed stuff that you recommended.  Decided it wasn't for me.  I know you said it was what JFK wore but decided to go for something a bit more South Shields.  A bit more Arthur Scargill.  I got Old Spice instead.  Saved meeself a couple of hundred quid there."

"I don't think JFK would have seduced Marilyn Monroe with Old Spice, Rochester.  Never mind. You are doing well.  Your BMW jars with the new image though.  PLEASE ditch the fanny-wagon and get a nice 1970s mustard-yellow Volvo.  Or a battered old moss-green SAAB."

"One step ahead of you there, flower.  Sold the fanny-wagon already."

(Delighted) "Really?"

"Aye.  Polish fella bought it.  He took it over on the ferry last week.  I hope the sniffer dogs at the border don't pay it too much attention mind."

"What have you got now then?"

"A CORSA."

 (Bewildered) "A CORSA?"

Now, even for me, and my love of things quiet, modest and genteel, a CORSA is a shuffling, moccasined step too far towards effete and flaccid curate-dom . Only 56 year old men called Malcolm drive CORSAs.  You know the sort: middle managers at the bank who still live with their imperious, gimlet-eyed mothers.  Men who are far too familiar with the many varieties of Mr Kipling cakes and the merits of M&S vs Pretty Polly support tights.  Not men who are ever likely to take you roughly against your clattering 1930s walnut drinks cabinet to a throbbing Grinderman soundtrack.

"Aye, a CORSA. What of it?  Just renting it mind."  

"DEAR GOD. Anyway Rochester, I have sent you another film.  When you get in tonight, get your slippers on and watch it.  The Odd Couple. I am TELLING you, watching Walter Matthau in this film, it will be like looking in the mirror.  His crumpled, hangdog face; all jowly and world-weary like a basset-hound who's just been shoved off his favourite fireside armchair.  You'll love it.  He's got your eyebrows, your sardonic grouchiness, your shambolic lifestyle.  Fuck, he's even got your vests and Brycreem.  The resemblance is uncanny."

"Aye, I'll watch it flower.  I'm not sure I see the Matthau thing mind."

(pause) "Rochester."

"Aye?"

"What address have I sent this to?  This address of yours; it's a flat.  I didn't think you lived in a flat.  Is it Kremlin HQ?"

"Err.  No."

"So where is it then?"

Pause

"It's my flat, petal."

"Your flat?"

"Aye.  MY flat.  .  .  .I've moved out.  I've left."

(Confused) "Oh.  You never mentioned it. When did this happen?"

"A few months ago.  Christmas maybe.  A bit before. 6 months . . . .possibly."

Revelations, see? Tank-tops.  Vests.  Eau de Scargill aftershave. Curate's cars.  And six months.  Six long months. Six CUNTING months, and the rogue never even mentioned it once.

(By the way, for those who have asked, job is OK, but not great. But, I shall write about that later.)

Kremlin Enterprises

"I have just been fisted by a black man."

It was a startling opening line.  Even for the rogue.  Aghast, I dropped my crumpet.

Rochester had been terribly withdrawn for some time.  I'd attributed his silence to a new girlfriend. He had been spending  a lot of time with silken-haired, black-eyed siren called Betty.  He lavishes her with gifts (usually pork products). The loved-up duo prop up the bar at his local for hours on end.  He texts me pictures of her, looking all wily, windswept and winsome on the moors.  They spend weekends together. Right under his wife's nose. He doesn't care.  He is smitten.

"I've been missing a trick all these years flower.  I am ON FIRE at the moment.  Wherever I go, lasses chuck themselves at me.  It's all down to Betty."

I hate her.  I hate Betty. She is a right bitch.  A Labrador bitch, to be precise. Rochester has acquired a dog on a timeshare.  He is cock-a-hoop with her fanny-attracting powers.  Sullenly, I pointed out that, back in the day, he needed no canine side-kick to woo the ladies.  No sir. He simply swaggered into his funereal overcoat, set his eyebrows to Heathcliff and his dour, South Shields raillery to Bobby Thompson via Philip Larkin.

Rochester denies there is a girlfriend though.  However, he did claim to have received a Valentine's card this year.  And, seemed gratingly thrilled about it.

"Aye, it was quite a tasteful one pet. It had 'You had me at hello' on the front, and she'd added the word 'petal' to the end. No cunting clue who it is from, like."

Reader. I was seething.  But tried to appear blase.

"It will be one of your housewives.  You'll have beguiled her with your ghastly ties and  UPVC erections.   I imagine her as a Pat Pheonix sort, all C&A neglige, corned-beef thighs and out-of-date Black Magic."

Had I sent Rochester a Valentine's card?  No.  Of course not.  However, I was not going to be out-romanced by some simpering harlot in frosted salmon lipstick and marabou slippers.  I texted the rogue a picture.

"This is my Valentine's to you, Rochester.  My current bookmark." 

"It hasn't come out very clearly flower.  I think I know what it is."

It was, of course, my Metro ticket from our last 'date':  27th December 2010.

In other news, Rochester has set up his own business.  He is now head honcho of the improbably named Kremlin Enterprises*.  A home improvement company.

Kremlin Home Improvements:  We WILL improve your home.  FACT.

Don't ask me why he's named it Kremlin Enterprises.  It sounds utterly menacing. I imagine the sales team are silent, scowling, ruddy faced men in Cossack hats who mutter to each other in impenetrable code.

The black dove sings from both branches:  Customer requires  front and back double glazing.
The borscht is laced with diamonds : Customer considering a conservatory as well as double glazing.
The fanny rat rises in the east : Customer is a bosomy woman in frosted salmon lipstick and marabou slippers.

Rochester proudly ran through his telesales script with me.  It was like listening to an episode of Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em scripted by Quentin Tarantino.

"Christ Rochester.  It's appalling! And why does your script assume a woman answering the phone is a 'MRS'?"

"Aww fuck.  Cunting political correctness.  Anyway, we're not targeting the lesbian market.  Lesbians do not appreciate plastic conservatories.  FACT."

"I am not a lesbian.  Nor am I a 'Mrs'. I am a Miss. And proud of it."

"CHRIST."

"And that bit about getting people to pass on contact details of friends and family in exchange for M&S vouchers."

"Aye.  Genius."

"Naming names.  It's like the Salem Witch trials all over again.  Only with UPVC instead of corn dollies  "

"You'd shop your Aunty Margaret for £10 worth of M&S cherry bakewell trifles petal, and don't you deny it. I knew you'd like the script, flower. I KNEW you'd approve."

I think Rochester in unravelling.  He randomly speaks of buying a narrow boat.  Rochester on a narrow boat!  Can you picture it?  The fanny rat king sporting an embroidered waistcoat, growing geraniums in rusty Barleycup tins, wearing a neckerchief at a jaunty angle and playing Streets of London on a banjo.? It's all so utterly befuddling.

And then, suddenly,  in the midst of Labrador love affairs, Johnny Foreigner window companies, David Essex demi-waves; a random text about fisting.  .  . . what was going on?

Turns out, Rochester has been in hospital.  A cancer scare.  It was a medical exam he was referring to. He is OK though.  I think.

"I'm on medication flower.  In bed at 9.30 every night.  No booze.  No cocaine.  No women.  Just slippers,  tea,  bed and a movie.   I even watched that film** you sent me last night.  Wasn't looking forward to it, to be honest.  Real men don't watch Bette Davis.  Hey, it was fucking great.  That lass who played Eve.  She'd get it, like.  Oh aye, she'd get it."

I think there may be some life in the old rat yet.


* Please do not Google Kremlin Enterprises.  That is a nom de plume.  Although the real company name is no more appealing and does indeed conjure up seductive images of Soviet breeze block architecture,  cabbage stew and shadowy, mono-browed secret agents.

** All About Eve

Fanny Broke me in the End

I am not happy at the moment.  Not happy at all.  There are two main reasons for this maddening malaise:

1. I hate my new job.  

I thought it was just a 'settling in' problem. Everyone told me it was. And that sounded logical:  I don't like change and find meeting new people a little overwhelming.  But, after 4 weeks I still hate it. HATE IT. It is an awful place. It has:

• a ghastly Head and Deputy who love to bully and demean teachers, reduce them to tears and then cackle hysterically about it in leadership meetings.  
• kids who have prosciuttio and fig focaccia for lunch, but who, in many ways, are less endearing than the SOHK Ritalin and Monster Munch addled skip-rats I used to teach.   
• results WORSE than School of Hard Knocks, despite being in much 'nicer' area. Hundreds and thousands of pounds spent on i-pads and other fripperies, but no books.
• a toxic smog of fear and distrust amongst everyone.  A school should be a really happy community.  I have never worked anywhere quite like this. 

I miss the School of Hard Knocks.  I miss it badly.  I even miss beetrooty buffoon, Pompous Pilate. I spent 5 years sweating and toiling underneath that oafish Yorkshireman for disappointing pay and zero benefits (excluding the constant promise of lice and threadworm), but I'd go back in a flash, if I could.  I really would. That is not an option though.

I am trying desperately to think of a graceful exit from the new place, but no matter how you look at it, to leave a job after such a short time looks terrible.  Plus, it's going to be such a bumpy ride with the Head and Deputy,  will I even get a decent reference?  I don't know what to do, dear readers.  I am fucked.

Of course, the money is better where I am now.  So, to try to raise my spirits I have set up a Pinterest account, to plan how I should spend it.  That is, after I have paid of 5 years worth of debt, of course.


2. Rochester has taken to wearing pink paisley shirts with ridiculous collars. 

Me:  It's all very 1970s.  It's all very The Good Life.

Him:  Who in the Good Life?  Tom or Jerry?

Me:  I was thinking more along the lines of Margo, actually

There is nothing happening with Rochester and me. Occasional textual intercourse.  Infrequent phone calls plagued with bad reception (interference from the shirts, I assume).  I began to suspect he was having an affair.  He denied it quite eloquently by text.  The Fanny Rat King appears to be just 'slowing down'.  He is settling in to the Parker Knoll easy chair of middle age.

"I am still the best I have ever been, flower.  I have all kinds of fanny coming my way.  CONSTANTLY. I just cannot be arsed. Been there.  I am serious.  I am tired.  It's all too complex. Fanny broke me in the end. FACT."

A Blog of Two Halves: A Colliery Funeral and a Quinoa-Crazy Whippet

I made it just in the nick of time.  Sneaking, like a thief, into the colliery church, right behind the coffin.  I could imagine the disapproving harrumphing coming from inside the box as Aunty Joan was hoicked to the alter by Brycremed Rochesters in overcoats heavy with solemnity and moth.  (I could quite go for a pall-bearer, I mused.  They are very much my type.)

"Couldn't even make it on time for my funeral, Elizabeth?  Dalmation print pumps, what in the name of Celia Johnson were you thinking of?  At least I warranted a dress I see.  .  .well, a dress 'of sorts'.  What on earth is that on your tights?  It looks like half an Irish Wolfhound.  Do you not possess such as thing as a lint roller?"

I could see 'the family' in the front pew. What should I do?  It seemed inappropriate to push in front of Aunty Joan, who was sombrely making her way (lips and girdle, no doubt, pursed as tight as a cat's bottom) up the aisle.  Joan hated fuss.  A be-ballet pumped flibbertigibbet galloping  for the place at the front would not do.  No. It would not do at all.  I guiltily sidled into the back row and tried discreetly wipe the dog hair from my opaque tights.  An elderly lady, white hair styled in an unforgiving cauliflower perm, doughy, rosy cheeks dusted with so much powder that they looked like they were formed from coconut ice,  handed me a hymn book.   I glanced around.  Old colliery ladies; the church was overflowing with them. Mildreds. My childhood was full Mildreds.  Memories flooded back to me.  After my mother's death,  I was raised by colliery aunties: complexions like corned beef, starched clean hankies every day; as flinty and straightforward as the guillotine.

The colliery church is impressive in a very modest, unassuming way.  It is situated on top of a hill, surrounded by meandering rows of red-brick  'two up, two downs'. Those terraces, once so neat: yards scrubbed, lace curtains bleached, sheets billowing in the nipping North wind  are now strewn with litter, many houses boarded up.  You can see the sea from most parts of the colliery; a perpetual churning, rolling sheet of grey.  There was a time, in the 1980s, when this place was forever on the telly (much to Aunty Joan's disgust).  There was the miners' strike, of course, followed by relentless gloomy documentaries and party political broadcasts about unemployment, crime and decaying communities.   Then there was Billy Elliot, of course.

"Is there any need for all that swearing, Elizabeth?  I don't swear.  Your father never swore in his life. None of our family swear.  That film makes us all look like uneducated heathens. Pass the Basildon Bond.  I'm going to dash off a letter to The Express about it."

I could not wait to leave this place when I was eighteen.  I thought it was suffocating.  Embarrassing.  Petty and unpolished. Funny how, sitting there, amongst the hymns and headscarves, looking through the arched windows above the alter at the amber autumnal leaves rasping in the scurrying wind, that I felt oddly at home.

It was a new vicar, I noticed. I bet the Mildreds love him, I thought.  What with his floppy hair, rimless glasses and cassock billowing and puffing in the draughty church, he looked like a rather kindly but startled owl. The last vicar, who buried my dad, was an Oxbridge-educated twat.  I despised him. " I came here because of my calling.  It IS hard, serving a community like this.  I wasn't quite prepared for how hard it would be,"  he snivelled to me once, after visiting my beautiful, gentle father, who lay dying in the front parlour.  The vicar, slurping tea and devouring Jaffa Cakes at a very unchristian rate, appeared to think that working in an East Durham village was akin to self-flagellation.  The colliery was his personal hair-shirt.

The new owlish vicar spoke eloquently of Joan: her beloved Hillman Imp, her membership of the Nelson Eddy fan club, her career as a secretary at the Northern Coal Board,  how she remembered typing up the letter giving the approval for the filming of Get Carter on Blackhall Rocks beach, her love of cats, Tio Peppe and Sudoko.

" Some might say it was a small life. Joan never married.  But she was famous for her straight-talking and her lively mind. This was a lady who look night classes in Norwegian and GCSE Woodwork when she was in her 70s; whose poems about colliery life were enjoyed by many."

Oh God.  A small life. What makes a life small?  Or big, for that matter? I don't even do the Norwegian lessons. A gentle sobbing trickled from the front pew: Joan's elder sisters. Both in their nineties now, frail, tottering  little marionettes, swamped in too big winter-coats. (Even in their prime, none of the sisters ever hit five foot).

I noticed something else.  Fuckwit Brother was also in the front pew.  Fuckwit Brother!  I'd not spoken to him since my dad's funeral, eight years earlier.  I shan't bore you with the back-story, just to say, the man is a cunt.  King Cunt.  From the Kingdom of Cuntopia. This was going to be awkward, I thought to myself, as the shy, owlish vicar launched into a speech about the lyrical beauty of the psalms.  "Joan, with her love of poetry, would have approved!" he proclaimed.

"I doubt it," the sprightly Mildred next to me whispered, handbag quivering with impish delight, "Not unless it was by Pam Ayres."

After the burial, we retreated to the Miners' Welfare Hall for the 'do'.  A colliery funeral feast is a sight to behold:  corned beef pie, mince and onion pie, steak pie, chicken pie, quiche, sausage rolls, vol-au-vents.  Pastry: as far as the eye could see.  A field of pastry, cheap meat and trans fats.  It looked delicious.  I was torn though.  I desperately wanted to avoid Fuckwit Brother.  That would be impossible if I stayed.  Yet leaving would:

a.  be rude.
b. mean I'd have to return to the School of Hard Knocks and teach PE (gymnastics, for fuck's sake).
c.  result in me missing lunch.  That was unthinkable as there were brandy snaps too.  Brandy snaps oozing with whipped cream. Brandy snaps that had been sat next to the radiator for several hours and would now be at optimum ripeness, just ready to collapse, stickily, into the mouth.

I decided to stay.  The brandy snaps did it.

I almost pitied Fuckwit brother, in his £2000 suit, forlornly picking the corned beef garnish off a chocolate eclair and looking suspiciously at the cloudy pint of brown liquid in front of him.

Fuckwit Brother severed all ties with this place twenty five years ago.  He is now Director of a 'production company for multi-disciplinary performance art'. Indeed.  A twat.  In 2008, his company won a prestigious Golden W.T.F.  (Wearisome Turgid Fuckwittery) Award in the much coveted 'No one in the real world gives a shit' category.  I seem to remember that feted 'installation' involved 2000 screens showing the BBC 1970s Test Card whilst a troupe of leotard-wearing dancers smeared each other in Angel Delight to a  throbbing Laurie Anderson soundtrack.  There is always a Laurie Anderson soundtrack in Fuckwit Brother's projects.  Always.

"There's cheese and onion quiche, you know,"  I said. Trying to be helpful.

"It's got PEK in it apparently.  I don't even know what PEK is," he sulked.

"Of course you do, we had PEK sandwiches every week for school.  Are you still a vegetarian then?  You've kept that going a long time, considering you hate animals."

" I don't hate animals.  We've got a dog now. Maya chose him."

Now, this was a revelation indeed.  As much as I dislike my brother, I dislike his grasping and Machiavellian partner even more.  She'd have a pug, no doubt. "What kind of dog?" I asked.  His answer took me quite by surprise.

"A whippet. . . . here have a look. . . he's called Basil."

A whippet!  My FAVOURITE (apart from Deerhounds and Wolfhounds) breed of dog.   I squinted at the picture on F.B.'s phone.  There indeed was a forlorn looking, caramel coloured creature sat in a bleakly minimalist sitting room.

"Here's another one.  In this one he is in one of his bespoke fair isle jumpers.  Whippets get cold you know. £150 each mind. "

I look again.  Basil is indeed sporting a puce-hued sweater and is seated imperiously on a mustard coloured Eames chair by a vast sash window.  He is bathed in weak, winter light and his melancholy eyes bore beseechingly into the camera.  The composition has the macabre feel of hostage shot about it.  He really should have been posed grasping that morning's  paper betwixt his perfectly manicured paws (The Guardian, of course).  Proof of Life, they call it.  'Help me!" he seemed to call.  

"That's a rather dramatic shot.  Have you thought of exhibiting this?  Possibly with a Laurie Anderson soundtrack? Anyway,  you both travel all the time for work.  How do you manage to look after Basil?"

"He goes to a creche every day.  It's really good for his emotional and social development.  He gets to meet other dogs.  You should consider it for your two."

My heard was bleeding for poor Basil. I had hoped F.B. and I could bond over a shared love of sighthounds, but this was not going well.  By now, the buffet was winding down and the Mildreds and Berts were making their shuffling way home.

" Look at all the food that's left!  I'm going to take some for Hetty and Cyril. Gosh, there's enough steak pie to keep us all going for days,"  I said, grabbing a box and loading it with pies and pasties.  "I am sure Basil would love some of this. Are you going to take him something?"

Fuckwit Brother looked at me disdainfully.  'No, Basil has a sensitive stomach.  He has Fenwicks' Food Hall poached chicken, the occasional slice of prosciutto.  Mostly though, he's vegetarian.  He's quinoa crazy! "

"What, not even a sausage roll?  Not even ONE sausage roll? I've never met a dog that doesn't love a sausage roll!"  

"No.  Certainly not. He can't handle processed meat.  Plus we've just had the floorboards Farrow and Balled with Plague Pallor White.  I can't take the chance. Anyway, I've got to go.  Flying to New York tonight for a meeting with Laurie Anderson.  Basil's going to his country club.  I've got to pack his weekend bag. See you later."

And with that, Fuckwit Brother was off.  I don't think I'll be keeping in touch.

Halloween

Now, I am back from my walk through the icy, municipal park:  all fluttering amber leaves, tumbling Greggs wrappers and watery sunlight.  I shall now continue the Chronicles of Rochester.  Students of literature: there are indeed parallels with The Chronicles of Narnia: both stories have a cloven-footed protagonist and a bleak, Northern setting.

By the way, if you want to know the back-story of Rochester, I suggest you check out my screenplay. It is mildly diverting.  Well, it is if you have several hours to kill, have very low expectations and like stories of thwarted love, moustache-twirling villains and plucky but socially gauche heroines.

So, until this week, I hadn't actually seen Rochester for 23 months.  We spoke often; discussed meeting frequently.  But never did it. There is a Mrs Rochester, you see. And tiny Rochester bairns. I expected we would meet again, but not till we were much older.  I imagined our romantic twilight-years-reconciliation would look something like this (I love this picture SO much and Rochester does have a hint of Sid James about him).

However, this summer, I relented.  I missed the flaky fanny rat and his sardonic ways too much. So, I told him that next time he came back North, I would meet him.  That felt like a big step.  I spent much of my summer break in a state of fluttery anticipation.  I was seeing Rochester again!   But, something odd happened, the scoundrel went suddenly, sullenly silent.  Weeks and weeks drifted by, like mute, melancholy ghosts. Every text I sent was ignored.  I even tried calling the bounder.  On the phone, like.  (I am renowned for my telephone phobia, and usually only make one phone call per decade).  He never answered. He had vanished.  Sadly, I returned to school, and soon the reassuring rhythms of school life:  assemblies, harvest festivals, rounders, threadworms etc took my mind off the rogue.   Finally, one Saturday morning, as I sat with a fried egg sandwich,  resplendent in moth-eaten leggings and Flock of Seagulls hair, I received a text.

"VG pub for a game of pool in a half an hour, petal?"

Reader.  I was rather peeved.  I declined.  

Last week, I texted him to tell him about my new job.  To my surprise, he called back.  We had a conversation.  At one point, he even apologised for being 'a twat'.  The cruel cut and thrust of life at the UPVC coal-face, he claimed, had got him down. 

This week, on Halloween morning, he called again.  

Rochester: Flower, I have the day off.  What shall I do?

Miss Underscore: Go and see the Bond film.  I LOVED it.  Although, personally, I could have done with a bit less Daniel Craig and a bit more of Judi Dench.  00HRT.  

Rochester: Aye, my daughter said it was canny.  Maybe I will.  I'm in the fanny wagon.  The reception is shit mind petal.

Miss Underscore: It was a disgrace what they did to Javier.  Obviously Javier could out-sex Daniel Craig any day of the week.  So they made him blonde.  And camp. And put him in nylon slacks.  I am rethinking whether he will now get to play Rochester in my movie. Even if he can pronounce 'petal' and not 'pethal'.  The magic is gone.

Rochester: What are you doing?  (a cacophony of frenzied barking explodes in the background)

Miss Underscore:  I am putting on my scabby dog-walking boots and heading out to the park.  .  . the lurchers are going bonkers  . . .Rochester . . . are you there?  Rochester?????

The line goes suddenly dead. . .

Half an hour later I was scuffling through the fallen leaves in my local park, bedecked in a much loathed (but terribly cosy) PER UNA (I know. . . I know) quilted coat and down at heel fake UGGs.  To put it mildly,  I'd looked a bit of a clip.  In fact, I probably looked rather like Dame Judy.  Tragically, not Judy as she was in Bond (where she is a stern, silver-haired saucepot siren), but how she was in Notes on a Scandal.  Or, as I pointed out to Waffle, I resembled an extra from a jumble-sale scene in Last of the Summer Wine.  

So, there I was, awash with dowdiness and muddy, rampaging lurchers.  I had indeed applied make-up, although I hadn't brushed my hair (Cyril has devoured my hairbrush, you see, I don't think I've brushed my hair all week).  The park was empty anyway.  I was later than usual, so had missed meeting up with my usual gang of devoted dog-walkers.  In the distance I noted a dark man ambling towards me.  I squinted.  He looked terribly out of place.  He had no dog, for a start.  Neither did he have a can of lager.  (Men in Sunderland parks are compelled by law to have one or the other).   The chap was smoking a roll-up.   He was a wrong 'un, and no mistake.  The pathway ahead forked.  I decided I had better take the other path, thereby avoiding passing the swarthy sort in front of me (who was quite obviously a nonce).  I looked again.  He resembled Rochester, I thought to myself, a bit. Thinner though.  Much thinner.  This wasn't a man who could eat his body weight in pork scratchings, not like the UPVC messiah.  He was very gaunt.  I took a step on the other path.  As I did so I glanced again at the approaching figure.  He was dressed in black, but there was no funereal overcoat, just an anorak (the overcoat is to Rochester what the billowing white shirt is to Mr Darcy).  It couldn't be, I thought.  Rochester was 300 miles away in Bristol.  I had just spoken with him.  I stole one more shy glance.  The man was grinning at me, wickedly.

CUNTING HELL!

IT WAS ROCHESTER.

It WAS Rochester, and he was smirking proudly, like the tom cat who had got the ALL THE CREAM.  

We walked round the park together. It would like to say that our conversation sparkled like champagne and Noel Coward, that we were wisecracking like Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It wasn't like that at all. I felt like I had been pushed out of an airplane, and was freefalling, counting down to the moment my parachute would open and save me.  All I could think about was my twatting PER UNA coat and unbrushed hair! I hate surprises.  Loathe them.  

"What would you have done if you hadn't found me in the park?"

"I'd have gone round your house flower.  I'm sick of giving you the opportunity of turning me down. By the way, what EXACTLY is the story with your hair?"

Oh God.  It was terrible.  I didn't even dare look at him.  After a mere 5 minutes together we arrived back at our respective cars. 

"Is there anywhere to get decent coffee round here?"  he said.

"No."  

Silence.

"Hey, Senor Boldon* is splitting up from his wife.  He's on the market again, if you're interested."

"Ahh.  I don't think so. But thanks."

More silence.

"Here, come and give me a hug petal.  Listen, how about we have a drink at your local while I'm up, eh?"

I sneaked a look at him.  He was thinner, but his face, the face that I loved so much, had the usual familiarity of a bold, rugged landscape, exposed by dazzling winter sunlight.  I couldn't shake the feeling that he'd done something wonderfully sweet and romantic (for once), and I'd fucked it all up with my bumbling shyness and Per Una coat of shame. 

And that was it.  It was a relief to drive away.   Later that day, I texted that, yes, I did, very much, want to see him.  He replied that he was out with his family that night. He was up for a few days.

The next few days passed in a flurry of jittery but delicious anticipation.  

"Have you got any decent underwear, Miss U?  Are you sleeping with him?" asked Madam Noir, over tea and scones.  

"WHAT?  Oh, dear God.  I haven't had to even consider such practicalities for such a long time.  Will my liberty bodice not do?  The outpouring of moths could possibly distract from my cellulite, I suppose."

Would I have slept with him?  Probably.  After languid waves of gin had washed my anxieties and nerves away.  If we could have sat together, in my fleapit of a local, and talked and teased as we used to. 

Two days passed.  I did not hear from him. I tried to keep busy:  I tackled schoolwork, visited Aunty Margaret, had lunch out with friends, spent a morning in Durham.  I considered defrosting the fridge.  I didn't, of course, for that would have been sheer, unbridled madness.  But it the thought did cross my mind.  That is how desperate I was for distraction.

Friday came.  His last day.  Still, he had not been in touch.  I sent a text, asking if we were meeting up. Several hours later a reply came.

"I've been driving.  Went back home today early.  I'll be back up North soon.  Sorry."

I burst into hot, bitter, humiliated tears.  Every encounter with him leaves a scar. This has been one of the deepest.  There is a reason, I suppose, that I have kept him at a distance. That reason is not down to Mrs Rochester at all.  Or even the babies. It is self-preservation. I suspect the park ambush was a fabulous joke to him.  I suggested that, by text.  He responded angrily. 

"Fine.  Fuck off. But don't text me that kind of shit and expect a calm response."

I really wish he hadn't bothered.

* Senor Boldon:  Rochester's elder brother.  My ex. See the screenplay for more details.

A new start, a funeral and an unexpected encounter. . .

Hello.  I return.  Gosh, it has been 5 months.  First, I shall give you the headlines:

I HAVE A NEW JOB!

I am leaving The School of Hard Knocks.  In January, I take up a post as Assistant Head at a new school.  I am so thrilled about this, I can't tell you.  My only nagging concern is that I am going to have to be all impressive and shit.  Am I up to it?  That is a worry.  I expect I am not. Still, it is much more money, and I gain immense satisfaction from the fact that I am abandoning Pompous Pilate, and leaving him without a Year 6 teacher, just in time for his next OFSTED inspection! JOY!

I have decided though, after suffocating under Pompous's regime of blustering ineptitude and bungling farce, that I really want to have my own school.  I am not even sure just being a Headteacher would do it.  I want to set up an Underscore Academy.  I would separate boys and girls:

Boys (in the Tony Benn wing) would study allotment management, old-school socialism,  tent erection,  pipe-smoking,  bonfire building, the wit of Woody Allen, the suavity of Cary Grant and the poetry of Ted Hughes.  Their uniform would be tan cords and chunky knit sweaters.  They would raise funds for the school by farming  cashmere goats and training fleets of gleaming, cravat-wearing retired  greyhounds to ferry people around town.

Girls (in the Judi Dench wing) would study the novels of Daphne du Maurier and the poetry of Dorothy Parker.  There would be compulsory courses in fanny-rat identification. The girls would be experts in word politics and economics, but also study for a Bobbi Brown diploma in lipstick/ blusher co-ordination and flicky eyeliner. Their uniform would be a neat cashmere cardigan, tweed pencil skirt and ballet pumps.  Knitting and crochet would be an acceptable form of PE, as would beating egg whites for meringues and piping whipped cream into a brandy snap biscuit.   Girls would have lessons in spring and summer underneath ancient oak trees or by a sparkling, silver river.  In autumn and winter, their lessons would be in front of log fires, accompanied by fondant fancies, pots of strong tea and The Boatman's Call.

Doesn't it all sound heavenly?  Will Michael Gove go for it, do you think?

Anyway, in sadder news, there has been a death in the family this week.   I have almost no family to speak of left.  My lovely parents have been dead for many years, and I am estranged from my brothers. Only a few eccentric aunties remain.  Aunty Margaret is (thankfully) still with us, but Aunty Joan, sadly is not.  Joan, my mother's youngest sister, was an ample, bosomy, cat-riddled spinster; dusted with talcum powder, icing sugar and fascist spite.  She lived in the same colliery two-up, two-down  her whole life.  Her twilight years (from 25-80) were spent obsessively watching musicals starring effete, dilettante crooner Nelson Eddy and devouring Bounty bars by the dozen.  I didn't visit Aunty Joan as often as I should have.  She was very hard work.  After spending 99.9% of her time alone, she viewed visitors as a plump, twin-set wearing spider might view fly.  A conversation with Joan was exhausting; she swung randomly from one subject to another, like an angry gorilla through the trees. She was prickly,  cantankerous,  opinionated and often deliberately and malevolently cruel.

She died alone, riddled with a merciless cancer that she had obsessively hid from everyone (including herself) for years.  It haunts me, the thought of how isolated and scared she must have felt at the end.  If I were in her position; if I fell gravely ill, who would I tell?  I have come to the conclusion that, like Aunty Joan, I probably would tell no one.  We share an almost perverse independence that borders on reclusion.

Her funeral is this week.   Here you are, Aunty Joan,  a picture just for you.

Anyway, I am sure you are all wondering what has become of feckless, fanny-rat salesman, Rochester.  Were you not?  Oh well.  I shall tell you anyway.  This week, the rogue made a most unexpected and unsettling reappearance in my life.   .   .   . I shall nip out with the lurchers and then return to tell you the torrid tale. 

Work is a Four Letter Word and a Rogue Repents

I didn't get the job.  The Monday before my interview, Pompous Pilate (ghastly, beetrooty buffoon, professional bore and headteacher of the School of Hard Knocks) offered me extra money to stay.

'We're on our way to becoming outstanding.  We need you. I'll match the salary, I was going to upgrade your management post anyway.  Just don't go!'

It was a rather touching moment.  However, this extra money was by no means guaranteed.  It could have been a ploy.  And even if Pompous was telling the truth, the money would probably take months to come through.  SOHK is essentially being run by the LEA at the moment (due to Pompous's gross mis-management).  I confided my predicament to one of the LEA school improvement team.

'Should I go?  I do love it here.'  I whined.  Her answer was immediate.

'Go and don't look back. Trust me, this place is sinking.  Get out while you can.'

I ironed for the interview, dear readers.  I actually ironed.  I never iron.  Creased linen, crumpled jersey, ballet pumps indented with lurcher teethmarks: these are the components of my capsule wardrobe. (Although,  I do occasionally accessorise with a smear of Laughing Cow or Pritt stick.)  My rationale is that rumpled linen is good enough for Kristin Scott Thomas and Juliette Binoche.  Indeed, Juliette  Binoche is my ultimate style heroine, as she can look radiant and chic with both tussled linen AND unbrushed hair.  I have stopped brushing my hair in recent months.  Not because I'm some gin-addled slattern.  Ok, not ONLY because I am some gin-addled slattern.  I am following a hair routine.  A hair religion, if you will.  It is called Curly Girl.  Brushing is FORBIDDEN. Washing is also forbidden, although that is a step too far, even for me. I have no desire to resemble a crusty, dreadlocked, Glastonbury falafel seller named Luna.

I digress. Back to the interview day. As well as IRONED linen trousers, I also sported a terribly chic emerald-green cashmere cardigan and red lipstick.  My hair was in a bun.   I am not sure how successful the bun was, to be honest.  My sights were set on a chic and ethereal 1950s Grace Kelly chignon. The overall effect was definitely more Nurse Gladys Emmanuel from Open All Hours.  But still,  I made AN EFFORT.  Do you see? A big effort.

I had a momentary flicker of doubt when I entered the interview room.  The previous candidate was still in there, collecting her things.  She was a large, matronly lady in a garishly floral Per Una tunic.  She briskly gathered up her folders, sternly fixed her gimlet eyes on me, disapprovingly pursed her frosted coral lips, nudged her bosom and sailed out of the room, her widefit Footglove moccasins squeaking as she passed.  I payed Joan Plowright and her tunic of shame no mind though.  Poor soul.  She was quite obviously intimidated by my cardigan.  (And who wouldn't be?) I assumed she was going home to read Maeve Binchy and share a boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce with her colony of cats.  She was no threat to me.

The interview panel consisted of the headteacher and two school governors.  In previous encounters,  I had quite liked the head, although I thought him rather fey.  Short, bald, beady-eyed and gratingly energetic, he is the kind of gent my Aunty Margaret would describe (witheringly) as 'natty'.  Wayne Sleep's chosen interview attire struck all the expected 'limp, lefty, bookish' notes, but also hinted at a worryingly theatrical nature.  He was sporting a beige, pin-striped linen suit, neckerchief and highly polished loafers.  'Are there any REAL men in primary education?' I asked myself, as I set up my PowerPoint.  'Stubbly, rugged, oafish, chain-smoking, politically incorrect sorts. Men with carpet in the bathroom and a stash of power tools, beer and 1970s soft-pornography in the shed.'

The two school governors on the panel were salt-of-the-earth, ex-mining types.  They had a combined age of 206.  This was a shoo-in, I thought.  As a miner's daughter, I'd have those old duffers eating out of my hand in no time at all.   All I'd have to do is mention stottie cakes and pit ponies a few times and hint at my Easington Colliery heritage.   Hell, my Dad worked at the very colliery on which this new school was built. What, in the name of Arthur Scargill, could POSSIBLY go wrong?

My presentation went well.  But I sensed things starting to go downhill during the interview.  It became blatantly obvious that, although I was charming retired pitmen Bert and Ernie, the head and I had fundamentally opposing views on many aspects of education.  Even when answering his questions, I was aware of this, but found it impossible to be anything less than myself.

Wayne Sleep:  This school is situated in an area of high deprivation.  How would that impact your teaching?

Me:  It wouldn't.  It really doesn't matter where I teach, my expectations of children's behaviour, progress and attainment are the same.  I accept it can be challenging working in areas of extreme deprivation, but schools should be careful not to use their catchment areas as a way of excusing poor results, or limiting their views of what their children can achieve.  I strongly believe that is a dangerous road to go down.

OK.  I possibly wasn't QUITE as erudite as that.  But, essentially, that was my answer. Wayne Sleep was not impressed with it, I could tell.  It occurred to me that he, like Pompous Pilate, probably batters every school inspection team on the head with encyclopedia of statistics about deprivation.  Inspectors, quite rightly, see straight through this and are only interested in the quality of teaching and learning.  Sometimes it feels like there is a culture of failure in Northern schools:  each vying to have the worst deprivation figures.  I hate that.

So, my interview was over.  I bid a fond goodbye to Bert and Ernie and sallied out to make my way back to the School of Hard Knocks.  As I left, I noticed a lanky, sinister figure loitering in the school reception.  The next candidate, no doubt.  I shuddered as I passed, even my Boden cashmere cardigan couldn't stop the hairs in the back of my neck prickling.  The cove bore an uncanny resemblance to a young Dennis Neilson.

Later that day I took 'the call'.  It was Wayne Sleep,

'It was a hard decision, but at the end of the day one of the candidates scored higher on a key question.  I'm sorry, Miss Underscore. You did very well.  Bert and Ernie LOVED you. Ernie's going to pass on your pease pudding recipe to his wife.  Bert said he'd never met anyone named after a pit pony before.'

That night, I assumed that I'd been beaten by Ms Cod in Parsley Sauce.  Never underestimate a woman in a Per Una tunic, I told myself.  After all, look at Judy Finnigan.  I was mistaken though.  The next morning I was called in to Pompous's office lair.

Pompous:  I've been doing some digging.  I've found out who got that job. I still can't believe you didn't get it.  You were perfect for it!  

Miss U: Oh, it was some Joan Plowright sort.  It doesn't matter Pompous.  It's a relief to be staying, to be honest.

Pompous: Joan? No, it was a fella.  You lost out to a fella.

Miss U:  (gasping) Dennis Neilson?

Pompous:  Don't know his name.  But, it was a stitch-up.  He already worked there, internal candidate.  You never stood a chance.  Listen, I meant what I said.  I will try and sort out your role next year. It should be on a higher salary, I know.  Leave it with me eh? You and me together for another year, Miss Underscore!  By heck!


A Rogue Repents


Rochester has been rather elusive of late.  So much so that I've begun to suspect he has another woman.  I mean, along with me and the redoubtable Mrs Rochester.  Not that he 'has' me.  Well, he hasn't for 18 months or so. We rowed yesterday.  After ignoring me for quite some time, he rang to talk ENTIRELY about himself for 20 minutes before abruptly cutting me off for a peg customer.  This is very much his modus operandi.


'Aye flower, we COULD talk about you, but you never go anywhere. Or do anything. And I know fuck all about crocheted tea-cosies.  . . Oh fuck.  I'm losing you. . . bad reception, ta da peta. . . '

He called back this morning. I was buttering toast and still rather sleepy.


Miss U:  Cunting hell, Senor Boldon*, you rang back!  This is unexpected.  What are we going to talk about?  (uncomfortable silence)  Oh dear God.  Did I just call you by your brother's name?


Rochester: You did.  That is VERY interesting.


Miss U: I'm half asleep still.  Don't be daft.


Rochester: Hmmmm. Aye, but why would you do that?


Miss U:  Listen, Rochester, never mind Dr Stir Fry, why have you spent the weekend in Wales? Have you got another woman?   You have, haven't you?  Some rosy-cheeked lass with corned-beef legs, stone-washed denim miniskirts and her own abattoir?


Rochester: What makes you think that?


Miss U: Why else would you go to Wales?

Rochester: You know what?  It's a 60 minute drive away from Bristol.  I go there when I've had enough with all the poncey Southern twats down here.  It's like being back North. It's like Shields. 

Miss U: So, are you saying there's no other woman then?

Rochester: Of course not. It's what I need mind. Now you've suggested it.  Some under-educated, big arsed, big-titted, pool-playing  girl from the valleys. Fucking hell.  Nirvana.  She'd sort me right out. I'm deeply serious. CUNTING HELL.

Miss U: How is the celibacy going?  How long has it been? 

Rochester:  Too long.  I am wanking three times per day.  Thanks for asking flower.  Your interest is appreciated.  What are your plans for today?

Miss U: I'm half-way through a blog, I want to get that finished.  I have some statistical analysis to do on SOHK results.  

Rochester:  I'm glad you mentioned the blog. You know what, it is beginning to piss me right off.  At the start I was this charming, lovable rogue.  Your co-dependent lesbian followers all ADORED me.  There was swooning going on.  Don't deny it. Plenty of swooning.  WHAT THE FUCK HAS HAPPENED?  These days it's all (adopting a simpering voice) 'Oh Miss Underscore, you're so lovely and pretty and he's such a shit, you're too good for the bounder'.  'Oh Miss Underscore, you could do SO MUCH better'. You are making me out to be an UTTER TWAT. Some of those comments, they're properly vitriolic.  Howay flower.  I'm not that bad.

Miss U: Are you saying it's factually inaccurate?  

Rochester: Errr, well  YES. And HOW MANY TIMES ARE YOU GOING TO MENTION YOUR BIRTHDAY? BIG FUCKING DEAL. I FORGOT YOUR BIRTHDAY.  TWICE.  It was my birthday last month, I didn't notice Harrods dropping off a hamper or owt from you.

Miss U:  I don't know your address.  I emailed you some pictures, didn't I?  I don't think Mrs Rochester would have appreciated a delivery from Sunderland. Rochester, I've never known you to be so. . . . so sensitive, wounded.  

Rochester: (huffily) Aye well.  It's a bit hard to take, you know.  And those male twats that read your blog are even worse than the lezzas. Puffs.  Sort it out, will you?

Miss U: (soothingly) I still think you're a charming character, Rochester.  I don't think I've changed how you're depicted.  You're still 50% Mr Rochester, 50% Sid James.  You can't deny that you're an unreliable, flaky bastard mind. (pause)  Shall we meet up over the summer holidays?  If, you know, you can fit me in between peg appointments, masturbation and being an utter twat.  You can do something heroic, like carry a wounded lurcher up some rickety steps.  I'll write about it.  You'll regain some of your David Niven-esque charm then.  What do you think?

* Senor Boldon:  Rochester's elder brother.  The first of the Brothers Grimm I had the pleasure of dating. 

A life of genteel poverty and other observations

I am SPOILING you this week.  Here I am again.  (I never did know when to stop.  I'm exactly the same when the Quality Street tin comes out at Christmas).  


Thanks for the sweet comments.  I think my hair in those previous pics (post heated-rollers) looks a bit bonkers.  I resemble (to quote that great line from Annie Hall) 'the wife of an astronaut'.  Either that or Nancy Reagan at a Republican convention, circa 1964.  


My last post was a little hurried.  I was up against a wickedly tight deadline:  there was a Channel 4 documentary about formica starting at 9, you see (I am deeply serious, it was great).  Consequently, there were a few things I failed to say. 


Firstly, I neglected to mention some of Rochester's other films. He posted me a film following his triumphant 'sweeping the board' at the annual Peg* Oscars.  This is a bedroom film.  Of sorts.  Rochester is seen languishing on his hotel bed (the Peg Oscars only take place in most salubrious of locations.  This year's was in Wolverhampton, I believe, so an overnight stay was required).  Scowling vampirically into the camera, twirling his metaphorical moustache of hubris and brandishing his peg statuette Rochester shrugs, 


'This is it petal.  I've nothing left to achieve.  I have NOTHING left to achieve.' 


A bold and audacious statement to make, certainly, and one that was only slightly negated by the tacky Premier Inn setting.  Still, he was cock-a-hoop at his peg success.  He even confessed to 'dancing' at the peg ball.  'Aye flower.  I was free-styling to ABC.'  'Fucking hell', I thought (I don't approve of men dancing) 'I bet he was more Poison Jarrow than Poison Arrow'.


I did forget to tell you of Rochester's most infamous film.  This was indeed a bedroom film (do you see, an italicised bedroom film).  It was made for an ex girlfriend, let us call her, Mildred.  This is a great cautionary tale about why such films are ALWAYS A BAD IDEA.  Several months after this film was taken, Rochester was attending a friend's wedding.  He took his camera and managed to capture many touching scenes of the happy couple.  Later, over lunch, he passed the camera to the elderly mother-of-the-groom, so that she too could delight in the tender images.  Tragically,  the old dear scrolled back a little too far and discovered the fanny rat's archive of abject filth. God bless her. (I swear on my collection of Hetty Wainthrop DVDs,  this is a true story.)




The Society for Distressed Gentlewomen 


I have spent many happy hours recently exploring the utterly charming world of Barbara Pym. I am enchanted by her books.  And do think I would fit in very well as a Barbara Pym heroine.  Her bread and butter characters are wan, bookish, cardigan-wearing spinsters. They have the most endearing names, such as Dulcie Mainwearing or Cassandra Marsh-Gibbon.  These lowly be-brogued creatures spend much of their time brewing tea and pining for wildly dissolute suitors (also thrillingly named: Dr Alwyn Forbes, Everard Bone, Archdeacon Hochleve).  Pym's fey paramours tend to lack a bit of masculine GRRRRRR (she could have done with an oafish, Geordie double-glazing salesman, to be honest).  Her chaps are typically limp, dithering curates or stuttering academics who undoubtedly smell of damp corduroys and gentlemen's relish.  I coined a phrase for such 'sorts' whilst at Durham University (studying for my PGCE):  they are Tweedy Fuckwits.  (Durham University is a seething hot-bed of Tweedy Fuckwit action. Well, maybe 'seething hot-bed' is overstating it somewhat.  It is certainly a tepid tedium of T.F. action though.)


I'm down to my last Pym novel now (Crompton Hodnet). I am loathe to start it, as then I'll have no more Pym novels to savour. They are so witty and spry, but all have a satisfying hue of melancholy humming beneath the surface, the way a glorious, burnished September day can be suffused with the scent of forthcoming winter. They are gorgeous.


“In the weeks that had passed since she had met Rupert Stonebird at the vicarage her interest in him had deepened, mainly because she had not seen him again and had therefore been able to build up a more satisfactory picture of him than if she had been able to check with reality.” 


One of Pym's female characters describes living a life of 'genteel poverty'.  I love that phrase. Many of the female characters speak of parcelling up old clothes and sending them off to the 'distressed gentlewomen's society'.  How I wish there was still a distressed gentlewomen's society that dished out threadbare cashmere cardigans and tweed jackets.  I am utterly, utterly broke at the moment.  Which brings me on to my next topic . . . 


I have applied for a new job!


Heaven forbid that I should sound like Liz Jones, but things are rather bleak at Chez Underscore.  Six years ago I gave up a well paid job because I passionately wanted to teach.  Consequently, I ran up obscene debts whilst I took my PGCE.  Even when I started work at the School of Hard Knocks, I was earning 70% of my previous salary.  I've never really recovered, financially speaking.  As I type this, there are 12 days until pay day, and I have £30 in the bank.   I've spent much of the previous year selling my belongings on EBAY.  


Before breaking up for half-term, I spotted a teaching job at a local school.  It's a similar level of responsibility to my current job, but with a higher TLR (management allowance) attached. It equates to an extra £2000 per year.  Not a tremendous  amount more, but Christ, I need it.


I do love the SOHK though.  I have agonised about whether I should leave.  Generally, change makes me twitchy and uncomfortable and I am so socially inept and gauche that it takes me YEARS to settle anywhere and 'make friends'.  I do have some truly lovely friends at SOHK.  Plus, in a new job,  I'd have to be all 'efficient' and 'impressive' and shit.  Prove myself. That will be exhausting.  And will probably involve more than simply perching my tortoiseshell reading glasses at the bottom of my nose and carrying a clipboard everywhere I go.  I was also conflicted because I do believe (profoundly) in loyalty.  There is a modern view in education that to progress one's career, one has to move schools every 4/5 years.   I am more of the 'Miss Read' faction .  I always pictured myself dedicating my career to one school, and really making a difference there. To me, there is great comfort and honour in staying-put. 


However, it all comes down to finance.  I posted my application today.  Which leads on to my final topic . . . 


I am considering interweb dating (again)


I can't actually afford the membership of mismatch.com though, so I've not signed up just yet.  I did 'browse' the site the other day.  It's been several years since I was on there and I am frankly appalled at the slim pickings in my age-category.  The coves all look so OLD.  I must briskly face the austere fact:  I am now shopping in the erectile dysfunction - death demographic. It is highly dispiriting. 


I am also struggling with drafting my profile.  This is what I have so far.  Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments:


'Improverished, bi-polar flibbertigibbet with severe agoraphobia WLTM rugged, serious, misanthropic Tony Benn/ Paul Newman 'sort' for candlelit discussions about socialism, salad dressing and lurcher-husbandry. Fuckwits who use the term soul-mate need not apply.'


What do you think? (Also, would it be terribly improper of me to specify that the chap has his own hedge-trimmer?  I severed the cord on mine yesterday.)  


* For the longest time, Rochester, who admitted to being a salesman, refused to admit what he sold.  I used to tease him that it must be pegs, door to door, like some kerchief-sporting David Essex sort. The scene where he 'came out' of the peg closet is a favourite of mine, and is here.



** By the way, if anyone wants to read the whole Rochester story, from the beginning click here for my thrilling (it's not) screenplay.  Start at scene one.   

The Rake's Progress

So, the last time I updated you about The Rochester Question, the rogue and I were in discussions about scheduling a possible meeting.  The whole situation was rendered impossible by:

• his marital status 
• his rampant fertility.  Rochester knocks out petite-rogues like an errant alley cat.  (OK, there has only been one, recently, but that, in itself, is hugely significant).
• his eternal flakiness.  Rochester is the Czar of Capriciousness.  The Emperor of Emotional Dermatitis; shedding broken promises and semi-sweet-nothings like mange-ridden lurcher sheds fur.

So, although we have had many poignant and touching conversations over the past 6 months.  We have not met.  Our conversations go very much like this:

Rochester:  Flower, I've been thinking.  We should go to the Lakes.  Aye.  I need to get away.  Will you meet me at Wastwater?  You'll love it, you know.  It's bleak, oppressive and utterly fucking desolate.  It suits us, I think.  What do you think? I'd like to see you.

Miss Underscore: (sighing)  I do LIKE the Lake District, Rochester, but I think I'd prefer somewhere a bit. . . .prettier, softer.   You know, somewhere with a gift shop where I could buy fudge in a Beatrix Potter tin.  Somewhere with National Trust tearooms that serve gingerbread plastered with inch-thick salted butter.  Somewhere with trees, gardens, flowers, not just rocks.

Rochester: Fuck off.  I am not going to twatting Grasmere.  (pause)  You're interested mind.  I can tell. Although, to be frank,   I'm not sure if it's me or the gingerbread that's doing it for you.

Miss Underscore: Oh Rochester, would you sport a scowl and a chunky knit sweater, like Ted Bundy? Would you wear your wellies at a jaunty angle?

Rochester: Don't you mean Ted Hughes?  

Miss Underscore: (harrumphing)  I know who I mean. 

Rochester: Well, will you come?

Miss Underscore: I have the PERFECT tweed jacket for the Lakes, you know.  It is a crime that the only bleakness it's been exposed to is the Key Stage 2 playground at the School of Hard Knocks.  It's very Women's Land Army.  Women's Land Army meets The Lady Vanishes.

Rochester: You'll come then?

Miss Underscore: (sighing) I can't come Rochester.  You know that.

Rochester: Why? Because I'm married?

Miss Underscore: Because you're married.  Of course.

And a later conversation. . .

Rochester: Don's* only cunting done it again.  He's won a 5-star weekend in Paris pet. It was the  HIGHLY COVETED 'Last of the Summer Wine Award', for services to the senior citizen community. SECOND YEAR RUNNING FLOWER. Yep.  I got a UPVC figurine of a salesman picking the pockets of a mobility-scooter driving, war veteran.  It's a metaphor apparently.  Bit deep for me.  Anyway, Paris, do you fancy it? Send us your passport number.   

Miss Underscore: Oh, Rochester.  Imagine, 'We'll always have Paris'.  That's more like it.  Better than 'we'll always have South Shields', which is what we have now.  I am not sure I can picture you in the land of the 'cheese eating surrender monkeys' though.  

Rochester:  I'm not sure I can picture you in a foreign country AT ALL flower.  I will warn you, I won't be the only salesman there.  There is a whole, hmmm, what's the word, a whole confederation of salesmen.  Aye, there's a day trip planned to the Louvre.  Competition to see which of us can knock up the fastest quote for double glazing that cunting pyramid. 

Miss Underscore:  A confederacy of dunces. You're not exactly selling this to me, Rochester.  I'd be a double glazing WAG.

Rochester:  Aye, I know. It would be a pretty grim experience.  We could just stay in the hotel.  It overlooks the Eiffel Tower you know.  It's a bit modernist for your taste mind.  You'd knock off a couple of stars for the lack of doillies, I can see it now.

Miss Underscore:  And how would you explain this all to Mrs Rochester? Have you thought about that? Hmm?

Rochester:  Fuck.  I hadn't.  Until now.

In between holiday requests, Rochester has taken to sending me odd little films of himself.  Oh, how I would love to post one, but obviously I can't.  Oh God.  Not for any sordid reason.  They are not BEDROOM films. He is fully dressed in all of them.  My favourite film (set to a Neil Young soundtrack; I love Neil Young's mournful, beige whining, like a lovelorn, basset hound), the best film is a bleary-eyed, early-morning Rochester, shaving in his BMW fanny wagon.  In one hand he is brandishing a whirring Remmington shaver. From the other paw, a roll-up cigarette drops ash all over the krautmobile's CREAM leatherette upholstery.  THEN, with a TERRIFYING disregard for the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974), the rogue whips a bottle of Poundshop Paco Rabanne out of the 'walnut' dash and starts manically anointing himself with it, like a cripple at Lourdes.  It is quite thrilling: the naked flame, the cheap, flammable aftershave, the Remmington 5000, hanging like a buzzing sword of Damocles, over the UPVC playboy's head. Death of a Salesman; that is what that particular film should have been called.

Anyway, about a month ago, Rochester and I reached something of an understanding. We had a long, long talk one drizzly, Saturday afternoon.  Things were rather sweet and tender between us.  In Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor terms, we were (that afternoon, at least) more Cleopatra than Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  I agreed we should meet up, at Spring half-term. 

But then, then, he went and did something dastardly.   He forgot my birthday.  FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW.  Not only did he forget my birthday, he left a frankly unrepentant voicemail message, complete with 'pithy' interjections from one of his window-selling sidekicks, to explain that he had just 'forgot'.  

So, the half-term meeting never materialised.  We did speak yesterday.  'Shall I get on a train North?'  he asked.  'I think I will, you know.'  He didn't.  Of course he didn't.

See, 6 months have passed and NOTHING has changed.   

Today's self portrait, with lurcher. 

* Rochester's double-glazing salesman alter-ego.

Back again. . .

Hello,

I know.  I know.  It's been too long. Shall we just pretend that I didn't take an abrupt, 6-month blogging sabbatical? I really didn't plan to abandon you all.  I just had nothing to say.  Nothing. That is all.  I would love to be able tell you that I'd used the time productively.  That I could return, after a mysterious absence, and smugly proclaim that I'd:

• found love with some rugged, pipe-smoking Tony Benn* sort and was now blissfully shacked up in a Northumbrian seaside cottage, surrounded by hollyhocks, lurchers and potted shrimp sandwiches. 
• completed (or even started) my great Sunderland novel (like the great American novel, only with added chip fat, scrunchies and whippets.  Similar to The Great Gatsby, but set in Gala Bingo).

To be honest, I'd even have settled for lowlier, less ambitious goals, like defrosting the fridge, or mastering a passable Welsh Rarebit.  I've done fuck all.  FUCK ALL, I tell you. Just work.  It feels strange to be back, you know.  But a heartfelt 'thank you' to everyone who commented or emailed. Some of you were concerned, I know.  My lifeless, pale and bloated corpse was not festering in front of ITV3, betwixt candy-stripe bed linen, whilst being nibbled by lurchers.  Well, no more than it usually is (essentially, that grisly tableau-vivant depicts a typical weekend at Chez Underscore, you see). 

So, I am easing myself in to blogging gently.  Please, set expectations to 'rock bottom'; for the last 6 months my writing has been limited to a terse 'see me!' at the bottom of Year 6 exercise books.

Introducing Bubble, like
I vowed never to write again about the School of Hard Knocks , but I do feel I should mention Bubble.  Bubble is my new teaching assistant.  Indeed, Bubble is actually a qualified teacher herself (albeit one who, unsurprisingly, has never found gainful employment as a teacher).  Pompous Pilate (dastardly despot of The School of Hard Knocks) felt that, as I was now in Year 6, I required a higher calibre of support than  the foul-mouthed, illiterate and toothless crone Doreen.  Doreen has been moved on to pastures new (probably knitting by a guillotine somewhere).

I've named Bubble after Jane Horrocks' 'Ab Fab' character.  They are very similar.  Although, to be fair, Ab Fab Bubble is a much more sober, sophisticated and intellectual creature. She's a veritable Joan Bakewell/Angela Merkel when compared to SOHK Bubble.   SOHK Bubble is 95% Towie, 5% Penelope Pitstop. My new teaching assistant is, to all intents and purposes, a bird-brained flibbertigibbet.

During Bubble's inaugural week at the SOHK, we had to attend an anti-racism shindig at our local football stadium. My kids were cock-a-hoop at the possibility of meeting some real footballers (well, the handful who were not currently on remand for date-rape or drink-driving).  I could tell that Bubble was even more excited than the children at the prospect.  There can't be many qualified teachers who actually OWN a salmon-pink, lycra boob-tube, or a tulle ra ra skirt, let alone sport them on a bleak January morning.

'Why, oh why,' I remember thinking at the time, 'have teacher training courses removed 'Cardigan Wearing 101' from their syllabuses?'  Bastard education cuts.  I am telling you, THE GIRL DOESN'T EVEN OWN A PAIR OF BALLET PUMPS.  I wish I could apply Cillit Bang to my brain, to erase the image of Bubble tottering down the SOHK mini-bus steps that day, in leopard-print stilettos, the icy Wearside wind whipping at the ruffles of her Primark ra ra skirt. Miss Jean Brodie would never have exposed her 'prime' in such an eye-poppingly, undignified way.

Anyway, Bubble (and my class) were disappointed that morning.  The racism workshop was actually facilitated by 4 middle-class, white girls from the mean streets of Jesmond**.  There was a notable absence of footballers.  And black people.   The day was saturated with an atmosphere of suffocating worthiness, as heavy and lumpen as week-old baba ghanoush.  Those skinny, vegan Jesmond lassies, with their unstructured green-cotton t-shirts and Converse sneakers had met their match with my class of sink-estate reprobates though. I was rather proud of them, that day.

Tabitha:  Right guys.  Now then, I'm a little bit concerned. I have a friend, let's just call him Sebastian. . .

Blade: (under his breath)  Stupid name.  Miss Underscore, I feel sorry for him like, being called Sebastian and that.  I bet he gets teased, like.

Miss U:  (whispering)  Shhhhh Blade, not everyone has as impressive a name as you.  Listen.

Tabitha:  . . . and Sebastian sometimes uses a really bad word. . . sometimes he says the word  (she pauses for dramatic effect and steels herself with a deep, cleansing breath) . . sometimes he says the word  CHINKY.

Tabitha stands with her hands on her hips, looking shamefully at the floor, shaking her head in abject shame and horror at even repeating such a word.

Blade:  (to Miss U)  I don't like the sound of Sebastian, Miss.  He's like, racist, like.  When can we have our packed lunch?

Tabitha:  Let's just chat about this shall we.  What other words can we say that we shouldn't?

Bobbi-Jo-Tanishqua: (confidently counting insults on her fingers) Aye, why like, Chinky is a rude way of saying Chinese person.  Paki, like,  is a racist way of saying Pakistani, Chippy is a rude way of saying Chip Shop (although Miss Underscore is always gannin' on about having a chippy supper, so I dinnit think it can be that bad).

Tabitha:  Well done, Bobbi-Jo-Tanishqua.  Any other words that we should rap about?  Come on guys!

My class look uneasily at each other.  There is a long pause.

Blade: (uneasily) Aye, well like,  there's that word Miss Underscore always tells us off for.  She gans proper mental like, whenever we say it. Like, totally bonkers.

The whole class groans in agreement and shuffles uncomfortably in their seats.

Tabitha:  Well guys, why don't you tell me what it is and then we can talk about it.  Don't be shy,  I'm sure Miss Underscore won't mind just this once.  Just let it out. We're going to be totally open today. So, everyone say it on the count of three. OK guys,  one. . .two. . . three!

Children: (in unison)  LIKE!

Blade:  (shrugging, as he explains) Aye.  Miss Underscore, she's like. .. . . BANNED us from using the word LIKE.  She's proper, like, strict, like.

***

Anyway, I shall blog again tomorrow.  I suppose I should update you on the situation with Rochester, the flakiest of all fanny rats.  And  I want to share my thoughts about turning into a Barbara Pym heroine, living a spinsterish existence of tweed jackets and genteel poverty.   (See, essentially I have nothing for you, I've been gone 6 months and NOTHING HAS CHANGED.)

In the meantime, can I share with you some of my favourite things?

The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins ( which has a brilliant introduction by Hilary Mantel).   A beautifully written, terribly poignant domestic novel written in the 1950s.  This book has sentences that are just so exquisitely crafted that I found myself reading them over and over again in wonder.

Alex Monroe's new British themed collection.  I adore this boat necklace,

and this crafty fox necklace.  Can't afford either though. 

Oh, and my new retro sandals.  I had these when I was a young 'un.  They are an original 1970s design, re-issued by Clarks (Kestral Soar).  When I wear these I am aspiring to be a bronzed, tousled-of-hair, jean-wearing goddess.  I secretly fear I am more hairy-legged lesbian at Greenham Common.  

* I have decided that Tony Benn is my ideal man: a robust, serious, idealistic, ethical, corduroy wearing, pipe-smoking GOD.
**The Guardian-reading, hummus-eating capital of the North.