alisongardiner1

I have just been kissed by an alpaca. At least I think I was. I was leaning over the gate admiring her, scratching her neck when she stretched forward and nuzzled at my face. I didn’t think we were yet on those sort of terms, having only recently been introduced, but it was very nice.

My new best friend is called Buttercup, one of three alpacas owned by a friend who seems to have decided to create a mini farm, so she now also has six chickens, two dogs and two cats. One feels surrounded by animals, an impression entirely created by a single animal, a large Northern Inuit/German Shepherd dog called Balloo. He is young, bouncy, friendly and constantly moving, usually in circles around you, or if you are unlucky, attempting vertical circles over you.

 We took the alpacas for a walk on the French country lanes. Doubtless an unusual sight, but it would have been more so if the chickens had come too, on leads. We’d have left an interesting trail; a bit like Hansel and Gretel, but with less bread and more alpaca poo and eggs.  The alpacas loved it, so did we and it’s more relaxing than walking a dog.

Not being brought up in the country, things like cuddling a chicken is a strange and remarkable experience for me. I discovered that chickens are very soft. For some reason I felt they might be slightly spiky. There’s no reason to believe that as a feather is spiky at one end, it would also be at the other, like a feathered porcupine, but it took a hands-on chicken experience to discover this.

One of the hens has chicks due on Easter Sunday, which seems very appropriate. Will be even more Eastery if she manages to hatch a bunny: egg with a built in miracle. Although you could argue that any animal hatching is a miracle, as well as astonishing to a city girl. But then I get excited when blossom appears; it doesn’t take much to please my neurones. Collecting eggs from the others felt like stealing, although the chickens didn’t appear to mind. Clearly a marketing opportunity for avian parenting classes.

Carolyn has inherited an abandoned kitten which appeared outside the back door on 2nd January; body tiny, lungs fully developed. Loud as a feline fishwife, or, being in France, poissonfemme. It couldn’t have travelled far on its own, being so small, didn’t belong to the neighbours, so she adopted him. To do this, all you have to do is jump over a broomstick together. Or put down a tin of cat food. Either works.

She was a worried about how Ballou would like him. Internally would be the obvious answer. Yet the kitten immediately became firm friends with Ballou and now lies on his back, legs in the air, waiting to be snorted on, snuffled and growled at. The cat even likes to lie in Balloo’s food bowl, which seems to be pushing his luck a bit too far. I kept expecting to see the end of a tabby tail sticking out of Balloo’s mouth, but perhaps Balloo is sensibly trying to avoid gastric furballs.

I loved this farming earthy experience; even the mud and noise didn’t bother me. I’m just grateful to have escaped without being kissed by a chicken.

Alison Gardiner 2013

Viv Bowler and I would like to introduce ourselves as the two new editors for the OR magazine; Viv is head honcho, I’m Editor@Large. We would also like to introduce ourselves as being young and enthusiastic but unfortunately that wouldn’t entirely be true. We are certainly enthusiastic, but are young only in our outlook; so much so that recently we have thrown out every bustle in our wardrobes and burnt our stays.

The OR magazine is stuffed with tradition and very people centred; a fabulous tradition which we intend to preserve. However, in our new-broom role, we would like to make some changes, introducing a blog and a few amusing reminiscences from schooldays. We have agreed an amnesty with the school, which means that even if you recount a particularly awful piece of naughtiness, no detentions will be handed out. If you have had an interesting and unusual life, we’d love to hear from you. If you’ve had a particularly mundane life but are able to write a fascinating, witty feature about it, we’d be equally pleased to hear from you. Please let us have photographs related to the article that might be of interest to other ORs. (No photographs of Chippendales please, we already have plenty.)

If you are in contact with any ORs who might be interesting to feature, please get them to contact us or send us their contact details and Swiss bank account number. We would love to feature a variety of inspirational people, although if no one helps us to find them we might have to settle for people who are just inspiring i.e. still breathing. So please, get thinking!

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Alison Gardiner 2013

Invited by the Head of English, I talked to my old school a few days ago. More accurately, in case aforesaid teacher may read this, I talked to the girls not the school itself. I recall that I did speak to the walls or toilet doors when a student there, but got less feedback.

On returning to school, all the years fell away and I had a faintly guilty feeling, expecting at any minute to be found out. Even now, I suspect that this blog may reappear on my pc with red all over it and C+ could try harder written across one corner.

The other speakers were extremely erudite, including an academic English lecturer, a playwright, a writer for Sky News, a pilot with an amazing life story, a performing poet. And then there was me. The academic lecturer believed my life to be wonderful and glamorous, meanwhile I felt completely overshadowed by her.

This morning I reflected on how glamorous my life is as I sat in my tracky bums and slippers, hair styled ‘a la cyclone’, drinking cold, nearly forgotten coffee. The public perception of Medicine is that you rush from whizzing out somebody’s potentially fatal appendix cancer, to making an astonishing diagnosis with very few facts.  ‘So, your symptoms are pain in your left great toe when you pass urine, eyes turning green in a thunderstorm and wrists swelling on alternate Tuesdays. This is clearly Bulbosarki-quarki leukaemia of the rarest kind and I can save you with a single injection.” We obviously attend so many cardiac arrests that our skill levels are massive; we reject the Kiss of Life, needing only the Pucker of Life.

On being asked to talk to the school I did wonder whether to make the experience more interesting for the girls by taking along a prop, the obvious one being my 20 old son who features in many of my blogs and looks like Heath Ledger. However, I realised that this would be a terrific way of making sure that no one listened to me at all, so rejected my prop and asked him to go to parents’ evening on my behalf for my 13-year-old instead. He’s very concise in his outlook. Normally after these events I download at considerable length to my kids and husband, whilst making a game plan of how we will proceed. “How’s she getting on at school?” I asked Alex. “Great.” “That’s it? No more detail?” “None needed.” An entire parents evening encapsulated in one word. It’s a gift.

At the school many things had remained unchanged, which was wonderful for my nostalgic soul. This included meeting an art teacher (Madame X) who remembered me from 35 years ago, possibly because my artistic abilities are so excruciating. Even now I draw aeroplanes on their sides with wings sticking up and down and people like sticks, although through regular practice, I can now draw an extremely passable amoeba. X looked exactly the same; clearly a Dorian Gray effect going on here. I’m going to report her to the Witchcraft and Wizardry Health and Safety Commission for so clearly abusing her power. (Not that I am suggesting she’s a witch; far from it. Sigh. Stops digging. Puts down spade. Climbs out of hole.) Another speaker, of my age group, produced a photograph of herself and a friend at school. Madame X recognised the other girl and could name her. This extraordinary mental feat has embarrassed my grey cells into action. How grateful I was for this as I grappled with Japanese audiotapes all the way home.

Oddly enough one of the highlights of my visit was being taken to the deeper recesses where there was a secret loo which must have been created immediately after the toilet prototypes, being an improvement, not Crapper. As I admired it, I feel that my History education could have been improved by being introduced earlier to this bog standard example of Victorian sanitation.

Flushed with delight that some things never change, I said goodbye to the school. Yes, it was the buildings this time. Nostalgia is lovely, but was so much better back then.

Alison Gardiner

My family shares my love of ridiculous words. Recently I was sent an e-mail in French. The reply was dead easy since I simply said ‘Oui’ and effectively repeated what they’d asked me. They had signed it cordialement, so I added ‘cordialement, Ali,’ with a flourish, feeling very pleased with my new expression. I mentioned this to Sophie.

“Cordial,” she pointed out, “means sort of friendly.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“So cordialment means friendlyment. Which means you have just signed off a business e-mail ‘friendlyment, Ali.’”

Yes, I absolutely had.

She then told me that she been having a text conversation with her brother and said that she had called him either a poop or a bum but she couldn’t remember which. I said that I didn’t think it really mattered which she had used when it came to poop or bum. Apparently wrong, She felt that it did matter because otherwise a bumper would become a pooper, a bumble bee a poople bee and conversely a poop scoop would become a bum scoop, or for the sake of alliteration, a bum scum. Not the same thing at all. Logical child.

This lateral logic extends to team names. For a school quiz night we decided that we needed a name that made us seem intelligent. It’ll psyche out opposition, we reasoned, so we’d doubtless win the coveted prize of a small bar of Yardley’s Lavender soap. High Q, Designer Genes and Si Napse seemed to hit the spot; Teach Us, Pet less so. In the end we ended up as New Rones which made us sound more like a 60s band and, in view of the lack of brilliance of our answers, was probably more appropriate. Bursting into a chorus of ‘Do-wa, do-wa, oooh ah, do-wa” might have won us more points and even netted us the soap.

In Greece the holiday company suggested that our quiz team names should be an acronym of YEN so we became Young Enthusiastic Non-Speakee Greekees. They probably felt that with the state of the economy nothing should be based on the Euro. Unluckily there is no currency called a Cwgy  (can we go yet) or even a Mbowl (more beer or we leave).

It amuses me to think of where certain words must have come from, for example gormless. Presumably there has been an ancient Anglo-Saxon or even Viking word ‘gorm’, the lack of which was clearly an intellectual problem.  History does not relate whether gorm had to be drunk, perhaps in mead, was a gift you were born with or something solid, like a helmet with horns on.

“We’re invading at noon. You’ve gone and forgotten your gorm, Sven.”

“Ignore him, Lars. He always forgets. Gormless.”

 Another anomaly is nonplussed. It should theoretically be possible to be plussed. Historically they probably were, for example the Knights Templars as they rode off.

“For God and England; armed and plussed we ride.”

It’s easy to believe it came out of the mouths of gentler folk, like Shakespeare.

“Gadzooks, thine is a great play, Will.  Rightly those townsfolk granted thee the credit that should be thine.”

“Verily they did. Plussed I was.”

Doubtless Plussed would have been the name of his next play, had he lived long enough to write it; a charming tale of cross-dressers, faeries, vengeance and people falling in love with animals.

I discovered from the urban dictionary that plussed now exists, although presumably it being in the urban dictionary means that no one over the age of 20 should make any attempt whatsoever to use it.

It’s Mother’s Day as I write this, so tea is being brought to me as I type, yet nothing will beat being woken with fruit kebabs, flowers, cards, breakfast and presents. Touched? I was plussed.

A recent visit to to my son’s student house at University could be best described as interesting, although realistically it showed that accommodation had not changed that much since my day. In fact, I think I spotted our old armchair in the corner.

Their sofa was represented by pile of cushions, but they did have the luxury of a deep freezer and washing machine. As a student I’d have cheerfully traded any of my furniture for either of those (bed included). With a bit of rearranging Alex’s housemates could use the washing machine and freezer as the sides of the sofa, a kitchen counter for the base and perhaps a bookcase for the back. Being university students it would not be an inconvenience never to get access to any of their books.

We could not have used our student bookcase to stabilise anything as it was a bricks and planks structure, no cement/fixings (too expensive). It relied on gravity to keep itself upright, a trick several of our friends regularly kept failing to master after about 6pm. I believe this bookcase design is now a classic (likewise the gravity-compliant design of my mates).

We didn’t have a sofa, so had to construct one out of a couple of crates, two double mattresses which we had found in a skip and a large piece of material which we bought from a bucket shop sale. That bright orange wasn’t attractive even in the colour-clash tolerant 70’s. It lives in my nightmares to this day.

My car at the time was an ancient Ford Cortina, Charlie, costing £50. I bought it with our intended electric meter money so the vendor got paid with an enormous pile of loose change. No lights at home, but we had wheels.

A couple of friends and I decided to travel in Charlie to a party 90 miles away from our home slum in London. This gave real meaning to shake, rattle and roll. Predictably, we broke down, but didn’t mind too much as we had a bottle of wine with us. Dead battery meant no radio or lights, hence we stuck a lit candle to the gear stick so one of us could read aloud from the recently published Book of Heroic Failures. Being students, we had a corkscrew, but no glasses. so drank from the lid of a can of oil.

We had a brilliant time, downing large oilcapfuls of wine, shrieking with laughter at the BoHF, which is hilarious even when not stuck on a heath at 10pm in full evening kit with two friends.

The breakdown truck came and pronounced the car dead on arrival. We were given the choice of sensibly returning home or carrying on, possibly arriving at a lake in the middle of nowhere at midnight. Easy decision. Charlie was loaded onto the pickup and we all piled into the cab. Deprived of the candle to read by, we turned to music. In full and robust voice we sang our way through the New Forest, obligingly performing request numbers for the driver’s central control who, lucky for them, could hear us in full throttle on their radio. First time we’d arrived in a 10 ton truck to a party, hoarse but happy.

So, with the wisdom of hindsight, what would I advise my son? Never set off in a car that might dump you?  If you do get stuck , don’t down a substantial proportion of a bottle of wine because then you might make a dodgy decision if you have to call the emergency services?

I’d say none of these. Stick to being safe, but have fun.

Now I need to go and build a desk for my other son. No longer being a student I can afford a bit of luxury. Yup, I’m going to use nails.

The female mind runs on as many tracks as Chicago Central Station, the male mind more like the dual one from London to Birmingham, the northbound one dealing with all the general stuff of life; the other one, sex.

I was mulling over this concept while playing tennis, fully aware (on track 2) that my male partner would be totally focused on his game, except for once every 7 minutes, if the rumour is to be believed. Returning to track 3 (the game itself) I discovered that we were behind.

“We need to win the next four games without fail,” stated Adam, terse tone clearly indicating that he felt there was a negative weight pulling situation on my bit of the court.

“If we do, will you buy me a glass of wine?”

Deal done, mind relocated (yes, I was the weakest link) we won our four games, a mental sniff of Chablis focusing the mind as efficiently and rapidly as drinking it unfocused me later.  

Another biological disparity is body hair. Women depilate in a neat and discreet fashion. When my male gets mowed, it’s more like sheering sheep, although with less baaaing and more irritated grunts. Excessively long body hair is very ageing, so I kindly rejuvenate my male periodically. But unless you are in a bathroom with a tiled floor, it is impossible to remove all the bits of fur, which on a pink carpet looks like prickly pigskin. Fed up of this, I go shopping.

“May I help you, madam?”

“Yes, please. I’d like to buy a pubic hair coloured carpet.”

“Certainly. Would you care for mole or a darker shade of Rasputin? We do a very nice one with a tasteful grey fleck in it.”

“You being ageist?”

“Realist.”

“Mole, I think. Are they easy to hoover?”

“Yes, other than the shag pile which is more comfortable underfoot, but the hair does tend to get in between the fibres.”

“So that over time the carpet will get thicker?”

“Yes, but we do a very good line in carpet trimmers.”

“Understood. Where’s the nearest tile shop?”

I know exactly what you’re thinking. The women are simultaneously contemplating the difficulties of hoovering shagpile, deliberating whether a carpet trimmer is a good idea, debating whether floor tiles would be a better option, deciding when they need to trim their man next and mulling over the last strange conversation they had with a salesperson. Meanwhile the men read the word shag and are now on track 2, heading due south.

Alison Gardiner 2013

The kids are wandering around muttering, “She’s off again.”

Frankly, I think this disparaging tone is completely unnecessary. It all stems from my kind motherly decision that they ought to learn all of the world capital cities. There are only 196 of them, so the project isn’t toooo tricky. Few of them change, so this lump of knowledge would stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives. What would a pub quiz be, I pointed out to them, without a couple of world capitals tossed in? How delightful to be able to place Yerevan, Thimpu, Bandar Seri Begawan, N’Djamena, Yamoussoukro, Dili, Tegucigalpa and Bishkek. It’s brilliant that the capital of Tuvalu is Vaiaku Village.

As I love wonderful names, the kids have known from the age of 3 that the capital Mongolia is Ulaanbaatar.  Add a few easy ones like London, Paris and Washington DC and we’re rolling. Only 192 to go.

We started off at A. After Afghanistan (Kabul) we carried on to Albania being Tirana and Algeria being Algiers. Then I realised that we were about to crash through a number of small African states with pronunciation-challenging capital names. So I decided that we ought to branch out into the easier ones including straightening out that Australia is Canberra, not Sydney; Brazil is Brasilia, not Rio; and Canada is Ottawa.

Popularity points waned as I suggested we moved into deepest, darkest Europe. Luckily you don’t get elected to the post of mother. Canvassing for all four votes at once could prove tricky. Although the kissing babies, speeches on rectitude and parades would be fine, I’m not so sure about the handing out of leaflets and smiling constantly. Grinning should be intermittent, like indicator lights, although perhaps less regular.

Everybody has got sucked into the project. My husband is now used to arriving home to be greeted with “Hi dear.  Lithuania?”

“Vilnius” he replies. “Had a good day?”

“Capital of Croatia, Natasha?”

“C.”

“Bulgaria, Sophie?”

“Sophia. Get it right, Mother.”

“Be grateful I called you Sophie and not Bulgarie, sassy child.”

The kids oddly enough don’t seem to be enormously grateful. You’d think they would be after all I do for them. My 14-year-old son, for example, complained that he was ravenous at school by 11am, so now every morning I make him a full cooked breakfast. I look like Russell Brand in a pink dressing gown, (hair resemblance, not beard) drinking tea, pushing sausages and bacon round a pan with one hand, pouring juice, making toast, beans and scrambled eggs with the other three. Today’s offering looked rather voluminous.

“Morning, Charlie,” I greeted him. “Hungry?”

“Budapest,” he replied.

I’m in Christmas elf mode, trotting around thinking of stockings and toys (no, not that kind, 50 shades readers), trees and lights. Then I thought about wrapping paper- what if it did rap? It’s a concept to fill you with horror. Unsuspecting, you reach for a roll of festive foil and it vocalises loudly in demi-song:

Grab me baby, pull me tight

I’ll wrap your presents and future. Right!

My job is done if it’s out of sight

It’s a wrap, baby. Whaddaya mean this is trite?

For rapping it seems that if it rhymes, it’s okay to bung it in, even if it makes no sense at all. Thus:

The first rule of rapping is there are no rules, schools, fools or tools

Who needs sense when rhyme reigns?

This wrapping paper

It makes a statement

No longer rustles

That’s noise abatement

Let’s have world peace

And end the hatement

Will said “yes”, and

That’s what Kate meant

Or even:

Want to do my job

Yo! Pass the Sello

Fat sticky tape

Clearly wicked if yellow

When we’ve finished

We’ll have some Jello

Accompanied by

A soothing cello

Am feeling calm

And kind of mellow

It gets even looser, in that words can rhyme with themselves

I think I’ll go out

To a lake and row out

Some seeds I’ll sow out

In spring they’ll blow out

I’m over and so out

Maybe even:

This song is Arap

All good music Brap

Oh, ok, that’s C-rap

Also, ‘yo’ must be included whenever possible; we need colour and validity here:

It’s Christmas,

So be jolly, yo.

Yo can’t be sad

Playing wit a yo-yo.

When you feel bad

(That’s good, you know)

Let’s go to Santa’s

Grotto ho ho.

I’m loving this; to talk rubbish, in a song that you speak, communicating unintelligibly, words coming out faster than presents from a sled. (One night; whole world. Impressive.)

I’ll spend my life

Just talking in rhyme

I find the experience

Truly sublime

Lime rhymes with lemon

And melon too

This rap’s fruit salad

Thus ends this ballad.

Yo.

I’ve been thinking about the economy. Princes William and Harry being in the Armed Forces, heroically defending us so fiercely must be costing the country a fortune; a Prince’s ransom if they get caught. They presumably have a military valet, butler, gun carrier, personal physician (preferably a trauma surgeon), physiotherapist and a keeper of the Royal Toothbrush. Add to this silk battle shirts, elk leather yomping boots, titanium rifle (so much lighter, my dear) and a Louis Vuitton rucksack. I assume they run around battlegrounds dressed in cashmere camouflage with twigs sticking out of their second best Ascot hats, followed by a fleet of servants variously carrying trays, wallets, extra bullets etc. Deep in my soul I can’t believe that this is really financially efficient.

With the recent Olympics in mind, I was wondering if they should take up a different form of defence, like fencing. It is an extremely respectable pastime, could be reasonably believed to be useful in defending our country and would be an awful lot cheaper than sending the Princes into battle with their valet, oyster cracker and own helicopter mechanic. With practice, they could equal cousin Zara’s medal winning achievement.

The other obvious option would be jousting. There do not appear to be many jousters in our country currently, or if there are, they do not appear. Who ever sees them? Hence the Princes should be able to excel at it. I imagine that they are both pretty handy on a horse. The Princes’ famed excellent eye for a ball should translate easily into accurately finding the correct piece of a man’s chest armour into which to poke one’s lance.

Jousting could be a wonderful Olympic sport, an amazing spectacle with armoured horses prancing about in the sun, each country’s flag displayed as a rug underneath the saddles, national colours represented in dyed feathers poking out of the top of their helmets. At the medal ceremony they could have their medals hung on the tips of their lances, adding a cavalier frisson.

To add to the excitement and anticipation, rescuing maidens could be added, at which doubtless footloose Prince Harry would excel. I’m sure the extremely efficient Olympic volunteer program would have been able to come up with plenty of maidens with slim waists and long blonde hair to be appropriate Dragon fodder. A slight hitch could be the shortage of dragons, although as my old school is still in existence I suspect they would be been able to supply all of them.

There are other sports which have unreasonably been left out of the modern Olympics. Cheese rolling would have been perfect. Each of the countries could display their nationality by their choice of cheese: for example the UK choosing a Stilton wheel; the French, Camembert; the Dutch, Edam. Any country that did not produce a round cheese would be required to make a temporary alliance with another country that did. Points would be deducted if any part of the cheese was eaten before the event. Cheese tampering would be outlawed and competitors with particularly disgusting smelling cheeses could live with them in a separate athletes’ village.

Bog snorkelling was the other disappointing omission. I’m sure the crowds would have loved the excitement, the tension, the adrenaline and the sheer smell of the event. In order to make it slightly more acceptable to society, it could have been a condition that the competitors were hosed down prior to the medal ceremony and that no kisses nor handshakes were exchanged.

The Olympics in my head are more colourful than those currently underway. As London did such a fantastic job of hosting the Olympics, I will be writing to the IOC with an Olympic bid for London 2020. After all, we have a velodrome, stadium and an Olympic pool ready and waiting, second-hand but with only one careful owner.

I’ll be amalgamating Jousting International, Bog Snorkellers and Cheese Rollers. JIBSACR. Our motto: Pugnacious and Pungent.