Take cover.....

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So we’ve had a couple of sunny days and it’s been quite warm at times. Yes, Summer is just around the corner and… wait a minute! What is that awful smell? Where has the sun gone and where’s that thick… cough… black… cough, cough… smoke coming… cough… from?

It can’t be… not already... Oh my God, yes it is!

WARNING – WARNING – Barbecue alert, barbecue alert! Take cover!

Yes the barbecue season is almost upon us and we are getting ready with real anticipation for the… wait for it… (Drum roll)…we are getting ready for… (Build drums)

‘The First Barbecue of the Year.’ (Start trumpet oratory - fade drums – cut.)

How grand that sounds – the phrase not the music, the music isn't real, it's in your head, suggested by the words you've just read.

I quite enjoy the occasional barbecue – a homemade burger, some grilled fresh mackerel, a steak, a kebab, even the odd langoustine - BURP! - Pardon me. How delicious barbecued food can taste on those light, warm summer evenings with a glass or two of wine. Yes, I think that it would be fair to say that I enjoy the occasional barbecue – however, there is a certain person in our household who would eat barbecued food three-six-five days a year, for lunch, dinner, and even breakfast - and it isn’t me.

My wife Gaynor absolutely loves barbecued food – in fact she loves all things barbecue; the barbecue, the tongs, the thermometer, the barbecue fork, the coals, the smoke - she has just about every barbecue gadget you can imagine, and then some. She spends hours preparing huge amounts of food for the barbecue, sometimes we have up to a dozen or so individual courses just so can cook for four or five hours at a time over the naked coals. I think she enjoys the preparation and the cooking more than the food – we have dozens of barbecue tables, tons of barbecue briquettes, and box after box of firelighters in our barbecue shed in Wales.

Yes, we really do have a barbecue shed and it would be fair to say that Gaynor is a barbecue freak - but obviously not to her face.

Over the years we have barbecued in the rain (under an umbrella), in our front garden, in our porch, in the dark, on the beach, up a mountain, in a gale, in a field, even in the snow – and now – thanks to our latest barbecue purchase – we will be able to barbecue indoors (allegedly).

We have bought a Cobb.

"A what?" I hear you ask...here's the blurb... ‘The Cobb is a revolution in home and outdoor barbecue cooking. You can use the Cobb for baking, barbecues, frying, roasting and smoking - whatever your ...’ Shall I go on?

Not that we needed another barbecue… we have a lot of barbeques already – big ones, small ones, some still in boxes, some that fold away flat, others that are built into chiminieres. Goodness knows how our other poor barbeques are going to feel about this new admission to their ranks, I’m sure that they will be very concerned about their futures.

Anyway, Gaynor is determined to give our new barbecue a go over the weekend, and nothing - and I really do mean nothing - is going to stand in her way.

I’ll let you know how we get on. Wish me luck.

Sat Nav Shoes...

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April 2nd… phew! Safe for another year.

For those of you that read and swallowed my post about the origins of April Fool’s day yesterday I have tell you… APRIL FOOL!

It was all made up from beginning to end. There never was an ‘Aypril Foel’, nor did he carry a pig’s bladder filled with lunatic’s urine, and there’s no such thing as ‘Shrugging the Mark’… and yes BMD, well done, I did write the ‘Noah Trueworthy’ (No AH True Worthy) piece – I wrote it all - it was all invention!

HA!

… and don’t worry it was written before Midday so I won’t reflect bad luck on myself.

I know that my friend Mr Kirkham read it. He rang me to tell me.

Yesterday, April Fool’s day, was his first day away from my evil clutches – how very apt.

Apparently he got up around eleven, wandered downstairs (in his off-white towelling bathrobe), and switched on the TV to watch Tricia – it would seem that his life is rapidly expanding to become one long, frantic, social whirl of daytime television and pot noodles. Tricia was talking about how some family or other had almost been destroyed by a disagreement over a £12.99 anorak, he couldn’t quite follow it because he was only half awake (no real change there then), nor did he fully understand the interview that followed where some chap or other wanted to marry his blow up doll.

He told me that he’d almost choked on the packet of Doritos that he was munching when he heard this – well, not the packet – he wasn’t actually eating the packet… he hasn’t degenerated that far yet – but it came as quite a surprise to him… he’d always thought that he was the only one.

Anyway, after taking a swig of his lager to calm himself, he decided to check his mails… He had adverts! “Wow!” As you probably know Glynne loves buying stuff - particularly when the stuff to be bought is really cool, guy thing, gizmo, gottahave, techno habit type stuff!

“Double wow!” He couldn’t believe his eyes… this had to be his lucky day – “Sat Nav Shoes – wow, wow, wow, wo, wow!” Just what he’d always wanted - shoes with sat nav technology built in! “How cool is that? Gottahave, gottahave!” He’d blubbered from the other end of the phone – he was on his i-phone… well, isn’t he always?

You can check out Glynne’s Sat Nav shoes here.

“But that isn’t all!” He went on to tell me about another fantastic piece of gizmology that could actually record dreams! It was a little hard to make out exactly what he was saying because he was really excited and talking way too fast - like an auctioneer on speed - but it was something about what a great time he could have playing back this fantastic recurring dream that he’s been having lately where he noshes away at a huge pork chop mountain… “Yum, yum – I just bear them Pork ting tings!” - His words, not mine.

Here’s where you can find poor Glynne’s Dream Recorder.

By this time I was getting worried. How could this have happened so fast? He seemed fine when I last saw him – but now… He was off again… “Oh, my God! It just gets better… a powder that turns water into beer… that even beats my ‘Spy Watch’, the one with the built in photo display and the MP3 player… remember how I used to gaze at the Spice Girls’ as I danced around the office to the sound of ‘Wannabe’.. a zigazig, zigazig ha!”

What a shame, totally deranged… Here’s the poor deluded fellow’s Beer Powder.

As I said - what a shame - he must have just too much time on his hands and that, coupled with the Dorito jag and possibly beer hallucinations… well, let’s just say he’s been ‘Touched by the Fool’ shall we?

He seemed a little crestfallen when I reminded him about April 1st and that all the gadgets he was planning on buying, even Tricia’s interviews, were simply April Fool’s jokes and not really available to purchase at all.

“Not even on-line?” He asked.

“Not even on-line, old chum.” I replied.

“Not available…even on-line...” He mumbled and I’m sure that I heard a disappointed sob as he said it. “Not available… not - even – on - line.” He repeated - and with that he seemed to perk up a little. “Oh well… At least I can rely on you and your blog – no tricks there. You’d never try to make a fool of me, would you? You’re my friend. I’m off to read it now, cheer myself up a bit, no use worrying is there? That’s it… chin up old me… chin up…Bye.”

“Glynne… One last thing, before you go…” But he’d already put the phone down.

What a really nice chap he is – totally bonkers - and he really couldn’t organise the proverbial in a brewery these days.... but… well - if not him - then me… I needed to ‘Shrug the Mark'. After all, I don’t want to be ‘Marked by the Fool’ do I?

Glynne… Check the Proverbial out. It may help, and remember ‘All Hallows’ is on the 31st of October. All you have to do is hang on until then.

Good luck Glynne… good luck old chap.

April fool

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Ha, ha, ha… April first again, which explains why I’ve just taken a sip of coffee that tastes like seawater and bitten into a sandwich with a ham and toothpaste filling.

Oh how I love my teenage daughter’s sense of humour. Last year she removed the battery from my mobile phone – ha ha - and the year before she hid my car keys (for two hours) - and it seems she’s getting more inventive as she gets older.

All fools day – what fun!

In the early sixteenth century there was a belief that the ‘April Fool’, or ‘Aypril Foel’ as they called him, was a spirit who would visit the unwary and foolhardy on the first day of April. He was a little like the ‘Easter Bunny’ or the ‘Tooth Fairy’, a magical being who only appeared for a single day on April the first. He was something of a shady character and there was a belief that he was responsible for all manner of mischief, some light-hearted and some deeply dark.

Lunatics were often described as having been ‘Touched by the Fool’ - as were simpletons, unmarried mothers, bastards, single women, cuckolded men, hermits… in fact just about anybody who was slightly different to Mister Jack Normal.

The tradition of playing tricks on others came about wholly as a way to ward off the attention of the ‘April Fool’. This was called ‘Shrugging the Mark’. The idea was to trick your neighbour with some wilful prank, thus deflecting the attention of the Fool away from yourself and ‘Shrugging the Mark of the Fool’.

As the morning of ‘All Fools’ went by people became desperate to deflect the evil away from themselves and towards somebody else, preferably someone they didn’t like. But soon, as the clock ticked on towards midday, anyone would do – friend, cousin, father, wife, child – anybody and with any trick that could ‘Shrug the Fool’.

For those unfortunates who didn’t manage to trick someone before midday then the ‘Mark of the Fool’ would be bestowed upon them and at some time between ‘All Fools’ and ‘All Hallows’ in October, the ‘Fool’ would leave his ‘Mark’ on them.

For some living with the threat of the ‘Mark’ for seven long months was too much - many lost their minds, others drowned or hanged themselves, most turned to drink , whilst others simply ran away and were never seen again.

For the few that managed to get past ‘All Hallows’ without going mad, getting pregnant, being cuckolded, developing Alzheimer’s, or simply needing to be alone, then they would be safe until the next April first – when the ritual began again.

How very lucky for them? Maybe not - often those that survived three ‘marks’ without harm would be branded a witch and shunned or hounded from the village.

This belief continued well into the late eighteenth century and the ‘April Fool’ was a major character in the roving ‘Mummers’ players that toured the countryside from All Fools Day to May Day each year. The April Fool was instantly recognisable by his grey tailcoat, long pointed hat and the large pigs bladder - filled with lunatic’s urine - that he carried, splashing anyone who got in his way… thus marking them.

In 1787 one Noah Trueworthy of Devizes wrote thus:

‘On the stroke of twelfth did the Foole leapth into the croud crying and wailing hif heade and began a’poking and a’grabbing at the breafths and bootocks of the toun wenches and a’kickin in the cods of the knaves. With a greate cry did he a’start to fling around the piff of the lunatice overe bothe young and olde alike making them all frenzied and a'feared. And as foretold did many in the croud become afflicteth with the ague of the brain afore All Hallowf Eve.’

So - salty coffee and a toothpaste sandwich, perhaps I got off lightly. But I did have to pay by credit card at the services for a coffee because the two tenners that were in my wallet last night seemed to have magically turned into newspaper.

Perhaps it was the ‘Aypril Foel’.

I wonder what my daughter will say to her music teacher this afternoon when she opens her guitar case and finds that her instrument has no strings?

Don’t worry – she’ll get me back double next year.

Candles...

Despite British Summer Time it gets a tad darker each day. Oh well.

People moving on today, my people - good people. I wish them all luck and know that I’ll miss them - they’ve taught me a lot and we’ve had some good times.

Sometimes when I’m in Wales I make candles from empty Pringle tubes. It’s easy, all I do is make a hole in the centre of the bottom of the tub, pull some wick twine through the hole, tie the twine off at the bottom and seal around it with some blu-tack to stop the wax escaping. I make sure that the wick is kept central in the tube by laying a stick across the top of the tube and tie the wick to it in the centre.

When I’ve prepared my mould I melt some wax in an old aluminium saucepan that Gaynor graciously gave to me and when it’s melted I pour the wax into the tube - and… viola - a candle!

I use old bits of used (and thus recycled) candles for my wax, they work fine – very green. Sometimes I pack the tub with chunks of broken coloured candle, graduated red to yellow or purple to green, and simply pour white wax over them – it gives a good effect – sometimes marble, other times splodgey, it all depends on how hot the white wax is.

Best be careful not to get the wax too hot, if you do the candle will turn out a really dull colour -and don’t be tempted to peel away the cardboard Pringle tube wrapper before the candle is set – leave it overnight.

To remove the Pringle tube mould, look at the bottom of the tube and you’ll find the start of a cardboard spiral – once you’ve broken into this it’s easy to peel the Pringle tube away.

You never know how the candle is going to turn out until you remove the tube - it’s quite exciting. Sometimes the results are great, other times not – but they all do what they are meant to… ward off the shadows and give a little light.

Anyway… best of luck and thanks to my friends Glynne, Nicki, Steve and Phil, it really was a pleasure working with you… I hope you can say the same of me.

Candle Making

Take a mould,
Some twine to use as wick.
White wax or coloured,
It makes no odds,
Tall or short or thick.
A candle is a candle,
To give a little light,
A candle to burn softly,
To light us through the night.

There is no darkness
That in this world untrue
Can stop light from my candle
Shine out and darkness through.

Make one or two.
You’ll see,
It’s true.

Making up for lost time…

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The clocks went forward yesterday.

Apparently we have William Willet, a London builder, to blame for the whole ‘clocks going forward’ (and back) thing. In 1907 he circulated a pamphlet to dozens of MP’s, town councils, businesses, and any other organisation that he could think of, complaining that for nearly half the year the sun shines for several hours each day while we are asleep. He got into a real tizz about it – except without the zz’s because he obviously didn’t like sleeping (sorry).

I can just imagine…

‘What a sinful waste of good building time - lazing around in bed whilst the sun is up…. how very outrageous! If God had meant us to sleep whilst the sun is shining then he’d have made us nocturnal, like bats, or badgers, or Whitechapel murderers… why… by the time the populace is out and about, I might have roofed a Baptist church, dug the foundations for a row of miner’s terraces, or maybe even added an orangerie to a wing at some manor or other… and all before the king (God bless him) has had his tea and kippers! I really must do something to set about changing this… now where did I put my ink and parchment?’

The American’s call it ‘Daylight Saving Time’ – which is very functionally descriptive but nowhere near as evocative as our ‘British Summer Time’. Ah yes, ‘British - Summer - Time’… I can almost hear the neighbour’s lawnmower, smell the barbeque smoke, and see the traffic jamming away into the smog clouded distance…

Willet’s original idea was to advance the clocks by twenty minutes on each of four Sundays in April (one hour and twenty minutes – an even earlier time to get up!), and reverse this on four Sundays in September. Imagine what a nightmare that would have been! Isn’t it* bad enough having to remember to change the clocks once, let alone having then to change them by twenty minutes for four consecutive weeks.

*Rambler’s corner - Isn’t… ‘isn’t it’ interesting? In full form it is ‘is not it’, rather than ‘is it not’… how very medieval, don’t you think?

A Parliamentary bill was introduced in 1909 but nobody took it seriously until the First World War when in April, 1916 Daylight Saving Time was introduced as a wartime measure not only in Britain, but in most (allied and non-allied – enemy?) countries. It was introduced as a ‘wartime measure of economy’. I’m not really sure what that means but my guess would be it was something to do with countryside things – haymaking, butter churning, bacon curing, scythe sharpening, mangel-wurzel mashing – that sort of thing. Or maybe it was just the bonkers bureaucrats in charge trying to make it that teensy bit harder for everyone - just in case trench warfare wasn’t enough.

I often wonder why William Willet didn’t just get up early, do his own thing, and leave everyone else alone. Why he had to drag the rest of the world into his enthusiasm for working every possible waking hour is beyond me – maybe being a zealot just ran in his family.

I don’t know about you, but I find the whole losing an hour thing very disorienting. For days after the clocks have changed I feel as if I’m slightly out of sync. Maybe it’s because I have a very accurate body clock - I usually know the time on waking to within a couple of minutes (no honestly) and it goes haywire when the clocks change…

… and the clocks don’t really ‘change’ at all do they? They are still the same clocks. Or does some nasty time bandit thing sneak in and change ‘our’ clocks for ‘their’ clocks, with all the implications that might entail if I only understood what ‘their clocks’ meant? I’m not paranoid; my Doctor has it on good authority.

… and what about that lost hour? Where does it go? Does it hang around waiting for our/their clocks to go back in the autumn so that it can slip itself back into time, or does it disappear into a vortex - whirling around and down into the darkness for all eternity, or maybe it just pops completely out of the time dimension with a ‘zipfphhh’??

… and what does go ‘back’ and ‘forward’ mean… is it something to do with time travel – and what if I meet myself coming from the other direction at the same time and the other me gets knocked over by a bus???

…stop! Stop! STOP! It is all too confusing… but where does that lost hour go? It has to go somewhere doesn’t it? Why is there never a Stephen Hawking around when you need one?

Maybe it just flies away.

Anyway, for once British Summer Time seems to have paid off – the clocks went forward, we lost an hour, and suddenly the sun came out and summer (or at least a promise of it) arrived. What a lovely sunny day yesterday was! I spent the afternoon on Criccieth Beach in the shadow of the castle, watching the sun sparkle on deep blue waves and the purple shadows of clouds rush across the sage green mountainside.

It was great, so relaxing. There was I in the sunshine, sitting on the knobbly pebble beach watching time pass, when - all of a sudden, there’s a rushing, thumping, beating noise above my head and that thing in the photograph lands not six feet from where I’m sitting. It proper shook me up I can tell thee.

What is it?

I don’t know. In my rush to get away from it I didn’t have time to ask… it was ticking though.

What's in a name...

When we named Misty we thought she was a girl and, because she was the colour of smoke, Misty seemed the perfect name.

After we’d got over the shock that in fact Misty, our lovely little girl, was actually a boy we considered renaming her. ‘Perhaps we could call her Mister’ we said - after all it wasn’t a million miles from Misty - or maybe Mischief, she certainly seemed to get into enough of it.

Maybe a completely different name was in order? Malvolio – no… Mestopheles – definitely no… Marzipan – too silly… Marvo – plain stupid… Mysterio – I don’t think so… Major Tom – he’s a girl… Mr Tom – he’s a girl… Mac – he’s Welsh… Mr Mac – he’s a girl and she’s Welsh… Big Mac – groan… Macbeth – it’s unlucky to even say the word… so Misty it remained, nothing seemed to suit her as well as Misty.

It’s like that with a cat’s name isn’t it? It either suits or it don’t.

After much consideration (and a bit of argument and bickering) we decided that we’d stick with Misty – we also decided to keep her a girl in our heads. It wouldn’t matter, and it does seem to work okay. Misty seems happy enough with her name and seems not to care that we call her ‘Her’.

It just isn’t a problem. She comes on call to her name, even to the name variations that have developed - Gaynor often calls her ‘Misty Moo’ in a sing-song, up and down way, Holly has labelled her ‘Moo Moo’, and sometimes (when in deep conversational debate with her) I address her seriously as ‘Mister Misty’. She doesn’t seem to care, after all they’re just words to her, and not really names at all. We think that she comes to her name but it isn’t really the name she hears - she hears… warmth, food, milk, cuddles, not Misty, Misty Moo, or Moo Moo… we all know cats don’t really need names…

‘Do I look like a Misty? Fine hissing name for a cat. Do they think I’m a girl or something? And why the litter tray Misty Moo? Does Foodies think I’m a cow? Why does that whirling one call me Moo Moo? What does it mean… double cream? At least Hisfault sometimes shows a little consideration when he calls me Mister Misty - at least he recognises my gender. Not really good enough is it?

“Why can’t they use one of my real names? It wasn’t for nothing that my father called me ‘Tailswinger Toothsharp, scourge of spiders and destroyer of mice’ – so why can’t they use it? I can just imagine meal times – “Tailswinger Toothsharp… nin-nins… come on Tailswinger, come and get your foodies.” No, somehow I can’t see that working, not with Foodies.

How about the name my mother gave me? It’s a good name – Mow Mow the clever, opener of doors and maker of pictures? Even my little friend at the house over the road knows that name - she calls me Mow Mow…and if she can use it then why can’t they? I like her, she’s funny... and she tickles my tummy.

Of course there’s always my ancestral name, it’s very grand, it goes back thousands of years to the hot place where we were gods - Mau son of Bast, Cobra Killer – now that is a name. Pity that there are no Cobras around here - I’d show them! By the way… what is a Cobra? Is it a type of mouse?

When Reallynastyman left me at the farm perhaps he thought that the Cobras would get me - he won’t have known that I’m a Cobra killer. I didn’t like him. He was bad. He took me away from my mother and dumped me in that cold barn. I would have frozen my tiny whiskers off it Farmer Geronwy hadn’t found me and foodied me up. He gave me my Welsh name – Llwydaidd – I keep it for special like he told me to... March first only.

This naming business is so... well, so silly really. I don’t really mind being Misty, and even Moo Moo has a bit of a ring to it - but it isn’t anything like my REAL name, my essence name, my ‘Me’ name.

My ‘Me’ name is the name that I’ve given to myself, the name that sums me up for what I am. Only I know what it is. It’s a secret. If I were to tell you what it was I’d be in your power – you’d be able to make me do tricks, come to call, even make me go to sleep in baskets and… well, all sorts of things. So I’m not going to tell you.

I don’t want to be in your power, cats don’t like being in anyone’s power.

Tell you what… you can have three guesses. Go on guess away! No clues though!”

Yes, we all know cats don’t really need names.

Links to reality...

I dropped into a surreal landscape the other night. It was fantastic, magical, breathtaking, elaborate, sparkling, thought provoking, marvellous, wonderful, astounding… I liked it.

Sensory overload.

What is Cirque du Soleil about?

This is the third Cirque du Soleil I’ve seen. The first, ‘La Nouba’ in Florida had so much going on, so many images to take in, that I felt sick for the first half hour or so. There were just too many frames of reference for me to easily handle. Last year I saw ‘Delirium’. It was okay but I have to admit to coming away disappointed - too much music, some good spectacle, not enough Circus - and a little slow moving.

This week I experienced Quidam, I think it means ‘everyman’. There’s some sort of story going on, although I can’t say I understood it - but then, who cares? Cirque is about spectacle and Quidam does the spectacle thing really well.

One of the characters seems to have stepped straight out of a surrealist painting. Dressed in a raincoat and carrying an unfolded black umbrella, he reminds me of the painting ‘Not to be reproduced’ by Rene Magritte - a man stares into a mirror and, rather than his face being reflected as you might expect, you see the back of his head repeated in the mirror – only this character doesn’t have a head at all. Was he the Quidam of the title? He may have been.

There are some other odd characters in the show – a compeer/ringmaster, a human target, an angry lout with boxing glove hands, a she - rabbit, an angel with empty wings, dozens of lost souls wandering all over the place. It was like watching an animation by Hieronymus Bosch – very weird, incredibly wonderful – beautiful.

Quidam has plenty of circus – a man who rolls, spins, and tumbles inside a huge metal wheel, four tiny Chinese girls who whirl ‘diabolos’ high into the air, catch them up in the string, whirl them into the air again, all the time somersaulting and flipping as they do so – an androgynous aerial act who dangles and plunges in lengths of red silk – three women who whirl and balance in silver aerial hoops - a trapeze artist who flies and drops through the air on a swing trapeze – a spider’s web of rope tumblers.

... all gasps and applause.

… the skipping rope act is unbelievable. A stage full of people skip-dance and tumble in a multiple rope frenzy, each time jumping higher and faster. An acrobatic troupe that literally throws each other through the air, around the stage, tossing bodies from one to another, like a human chain, double flipping as they spin. The quiet beauty of the male/female duo performing a series of incredible balances, holding them for what seems like minutes, appearing to become living sculptures, at times entwined and interwoven into a single figure like a living Hans Bellmer sculpture, gorgeous in its strangeness. And probably the funniest clown I’ve ever seen, pulling and demanding people out of the audience to act out his clownish fantasies.

… all watching and laughter.

… and all of the time away from the main action, smaller actions taking place; a blue skirted women rapidly spinning for minute after minute in a corner of the stage, three celestial beings moving along the gantry above the performers, groups of drones statue-standing or dog-running between the circus performers, a pair of spike haired ballet dancers performing a routine in the wings.

For some these might have been distractions, but for me they are the attraction. It’s the incidental that gives the reality to the performance, the surreality to the experience.

No two people in the thousands strong audience see the same performance, no two experiences are the same, and every single person sees their own personal show.

Perhaps that is what Cirque du Soleil is all about.

And what about my Cirque du Soleil, the one single thing that I’ll keep to run over and over in the cinema in my head?

The twenty paper leaves that fluttered from the red balloon as it burst above the stage - the slowly moving, white-suited drone that blew them into the darkness using a huge silver desk fan on wheels.

Surreal.

For me that is what Cirque du Soleil is about.