Early morning palaver…

I awoke this morning just as Frankie Howard declared ‘Ooooo, what a palaver!’ He was sucking in his cheeks, turning himself into a curly haired aging cherub as he winked at me and then popped like a bubble. Just why he said this and why he was at the edge of my consciousness as I awoke, I have no idea. But he left this world, as I re-entered it, with his voice still ringing in my ears like a bell.

Frankie Howard - a palaver indeed. Ding-dong!

Anyway, it’s stuck with me all day and, as I do, I found myself Googling this and Googling that, trying to track down the meaning of the word and whether or not Mr Howard ever used it. After a lot of surfing, I’d found no hard evidence that he was a palaver user; but he must have been mustn’t he? After all, it is such a Frankie Howard type of word. I can just imagine him taking his time and drawing it out with that distinctive throaty croak at the end: ‘Ooooooo, what a PALAAAVERRR!’

I’ve heard this word used regularly and I use it myself sometimes. But I tend to use it to mean something like ‘kerfuffle’, a hasty happening or scuffle leading nowhere but stand-off, with lots of bluffing and blowing along the way. In fact, according to dictionary.com and the OE dictionary, the word palaver is defined as ‘a conference or discussion’. I didn’t know this, and in my 30 years of sitting in pointless, boring, far too long meetings with basically stupid people discussing basically stupid things (me being one of them on both counts), I never heard anyone refer to a meeting by using this word.

So it’s a confab, a pow-pow, a colloquy, a parley, a conference, a stakeholder meeting, a roundtable, a brainstorm, a thought-shower, and not an Elizabethan skirmish with doublets and rapiers as I’d imagined. It isn’t even English. It derives from the Portuguese ‘palavra’ meaning ‘speech’, specifically between Portuguese traders and West African natives in the 18^th century. Even so, the built-in Word thesaurus gives palaver’s alternatives as: irritation, pain, annoyance, pest, bother, trouble, and irritant. So perhaps it was one of those bloody meetings after all.

By the way, did you realise that the only half-decent rhyme for palaver is cadaver?

Thanks Frankie. Your few words this morning have sent me on yet another wild goose-chase that’s soaked up most of my day. Ooooo, what a………. nuisance

Staying away from tripe…

Two days into Lent and I'm still managing to stay off the tripe. Yes, I've been observing lent my whole life and it's made me a better person - even though it’s been a real struggle. This year I almost gave up Lent for Lent, but then I remembered all those other Lents, the sacrifices I’ve made over the years, and thought better of it. Hang-gliding, One man and his Dog, Eastenders, The Bay City Rollers, Hair shirts, and now tripe, have all been, at one time or another, sacrificed for forty long days and forty even longer nights in the pursuit of purity.

Mind you, these days there is so little left for me to give up. Most of my ‘vices’ have fizzled out of their own accord or been confiscated by my wife. It gets harder and harder each year to find a worthy ‘Lent-ill’ as I call them.

My life seems to be a constant struggle between abstinence and excess, a little like ‘The Fight Between Carnival and Lent’ by my old mate Pieter Bruegel the younger.

As many of you may know, I never miss an opportunity to show off young Pieter’s work, regardless of how tenuous the link. Back in 1559 he depicted the Lent festival, as celebrated in the Southern Netherlands, when he painted the contrast between two sides of contemporary life at the time. It’s all about balance you see: the appearance of the inn on the left side - for fun and a jolly good time, and a church on the right side - for enforced obedience and guilt. Well-behaved children near the church, a riotous beerfest at the pub.

I’m clearly at the Inn guzzling down a pint or two, although it’s not easy to see the pious guilt on my face. Yes, I’m crying all down my underwear as I drink myself into another drunken haze. Woe is me!

As James Blunt sings: ‘My life is brilliant.’ Yes, my tongue IS firmly in my cheek. But, like the figure of King Carnival in the painting (he of the pork pie head, bulging red pants, and big sausage on a stick) bidding a left-handed farewell as he raises his eyes to the sky, Lent will eventually triumph. All praise the Holy Jesus!

Sausage anyone?

Oh well, after reading this back it seems like I didn’t manage to stay off the tripe after all - perhaps I should give up blogging for Lent.

My own cute puppy…

Well, it was worth a try. Sometimes writing the words keeps him away and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes hiding behind pancakes and quizzes, gardening, even poetry, can keep his bark at bay. But if he’s coming he’s coming; even though I never call him. I don’t know why he comes when he does. It’s almost as though he lets me think he’s gone just so he can come running out of the undergrowth when I least expect it. Of course I’m used to him turning up. I can see the warning signs. My mood changes, I get snappy, I tire; and I’m sure that knowing helps me to manage him.

But it doesn’t scare him off.

Sometimes he’s big, sometimes he’s small. But whatever his size he’s always black and he never greets me with a lick. This time he seems to be around medium size. He’ll stay as long as he wants, feeding and growing if I let him. I don’t want to let him, but there’s only so much self-management a body can do, the rest, the outside influences, are random chance and opportunist kickings. Water off a ducks back? If only that was how I worked. Maybe I can throw a stick and make him back off for a while. If I throw it hard enough who knows?

He’s outside the door now, barking to come in. I’m not going to open it.

Aldi pancakes…

Today is Pancake Day so where better to go for your pancake ingredients and toppings than Britain’s favourite supermarket? Yes I know that I sound like an ad, but then that is my background. Anyway, is there anyone remaining who hasn’t been touched by the magic of Aldi?

Just a few years ago Aldi stores were dismissed as being cheap shops selling low-quality goods, whose customers couldn’t afford to shop in proper supermarkets. Back then anyone shopping at Aldi would go in disguise or at the very least claim that they shopped at Aldi for the novelty value, a laugh. Gradually though, things have changed and now, given the ridiculously long queues for the checkouts, the number of Range Rovers in the always packed car park and the fact that my next door neighbour but one shops there, it seems that that the poor reputation of Aldi's products is long gone.

And the two German brothers, Karl and Theo, who originally owned Aldi are the first and second richest men in Germany and are laughing all the way to the Bundesbank.

The big supermarkets have been taken by surprise and, as the posters say, Aldi has won the Which? Supermarket of the Year for two (or is it three?) years, and in 2013 Aldi won The Grocer Grocer of the Year Award. Not bad for a supermarket that charges for carrier bags, is German (don’t mention the war), sells mainly ‘own’ brands and until quite recently only took cash payment.

They also sell what I can only describe as random stuff. The centre aisles are packed with all manner of strange things that none of us need, but can’t resist. I have yet to use my extending window sponge, chocolate moulds, reversible umbrella rain hat and musical candles, but I guess that they’ll come in handy one day and probably all at the same time. Picture me in my hat, cleaning my windows whilst scoffing home made chocolates and whistling along to my candle.

And with that image firmly implanted in your mind this post is officially closed.

Enjoy your pancakes.

Iguanas, Jean Paul, Falstaff, world dictators…

It seems that my latest silly addiction is to find out about myself from oddly constructed questionnaires which keep popping up on Facebook. I can’t let one pass without setting out on a path of self-discovery that seemingly can lead me anywhere. So far I have found out that I should really be living in Devon, that if I were an animal I would be an iguana, and that if I were a classic car I would be a Ford Consul.

I don’t know how these things work, I guess it’ll be some sort of algorithm or something, but the questions they ask seem to be pretty random. I really can’t see how picking my favourite Beyoncé should lead me to be defined as St Peter in the ‘which Jesus follower are you?’ questionnaire. Or how picking which desperate housewife I would like to have dinner with should lead to me becoming an almost unknown English philosopher, whose name I can’t even remember, in the ‘Which philosopher are you?’ teaser. Besides, I am clearly Jean Paul Sartre; after all, three o’clock is too late or too early for anything you want to do and words are loaded pistols – comprenez-vous?

Strangely though, when I feel that the results truly reflect my persona I get a little golden glow of pride, smugness even. When I heard that I was Vincent Van Gogh merely by picking my favourite holiday destination (Provence), flower (sunflower), carrion bird (crow), and facial feature (ear) I was pretty chuffed and a little surprised (not). I felt positively relieved when the ‘Where in the UK should you be from?’ correctly distinguished me as being an Oxonian and not from some working class place like Merseyside or The Black Country. In terms of what my profession should be I was pleased as the proverbial punch to find that I should be a writer, and then there was the ‘Which Shakespearian character are you?’ quiz.

‘Just which Shakespearian character will I be?’ I wondered as I began answering the questions. I thought it pretty unlikely that I would be Cleopatra, Othello, or Oberon. But Bottom, Prospero, Shylock, maybe even Lear, seemed a possibility. Working my way through the questions and answers I pretty soon realised who I would become, and, odds bodkins Sirrah, that’s just who I turned out to be!

It would appear that I am the living embodiment of Sir John Falstaff from Henry IV parts 1 and 2, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. At first glance he seems to be a fat, boastful, disingenuous, and cowardly knight, but beneath this thin veneer is a complex character of many layers. He’s funny, often loyal, very aware of his own mortality and able to change his views dependent on the situation. He’s a survivor, happy to run when he knows that he can’t win; he knows his own strengths and weaknesses. At times he wallows in self-pity, but a few glasses of wine soon put that right. Yes, Falstaff is a legend of his own pomposity-filled making and above all he doesn’t give a flying fart what other people think of him.

Yes, Falstaff seems to suit me, I fit into his skin in so many ways.

I wonder which world dictator I will be?

Getting my act together...

Time to get my act together; March is here and it's time to plant seeds. Suddenly I feel the need to cover my kitchen work surfaces with various black plastic trays covered in cling film. It’s as if I awake this morning with a bag of compost and a seed dibber in my hand ready to make my world a bit more colourful. This year I am mainly doing sweet peas. I don’t know why, but they seem to be my new flower of choice. I’m sure they’ll be other things as well, but I really do want a fragrant back yard this year.

For weeks last year we were unable to prepare anything too complicated to eat as I’d pretty much taken over the kitchen with my seedlings. This year though is going to be a little different as I’m taking over my mother in laws garden and will be planting the vegetables, which I usually squeeze into my yard, in the palace where she has a lawn currently. I won’t dig it all up, but enough to keep me interested; some peas, beans, peppers, courgettes, cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, strawberries, and tomatoes. I’ve even bought a big walk in plastic greenhouse so it looks like I’m in for some fun.

A message from Dark Town...

Ah, St David’s Day once more. I don’t write much poetry these days, some might say that I never did or should have, but there are some days that deserve special recognition, when nothing but a poem will do, and today is one of them. So to celebrate this day, for one reason and not another, here’s a poem. Best read it out loud.

Unfinished In Dark Town

I’ve seen you around in Dark Town

Kicking and thrashing things held dear

Marking your ground like a bombardier

Rubbing away at your gonorrhoea

Faking a smile or crocodile tear

Spitting out blood and trembling in fear

At a whispered word in your old man ear

As you piss down on another’s beer

All spittle lipped and dirty leer

At some young kid or passing queer

Offering chips when they pass near

They know you well in Dark Town

They know your stench, can tell your mood

As you fuck suck up your favourite food

Claiming that you’re misunderstood

Badly damaged in childhood

That all your sad is really good

And though it shouldn’t you make it should

Not changing couldn’t into could

And doing all this in thick cold blood

You turn clear water into mud

And all for the cross of womanhood

You can hide where you want in Dark Town

You can call the police or change your number

Sneer at girls out on a bender

Breathe in their smell and make ‘em shudder

Even play the great pretender

But keep on looking over your shoulder

As you lie and cheat and steal and moulder

Cos one day when you’re not much older

I’ll tell her the things I never told her

Spoil the shine of her tin-pot soldier

And leave her world a great deal colder

I’ll be there like a blowtorch

And I’m gonna burn ya

In Dark Town.