Mount Florida, Glasgow. My Late Teens.

So, say you have two kids under 5.  Both in pushchairs.  Would you buy a house at the top of a one-in-ten gradient hill?  No?  Well, you would if you were my Aunty.  She bought a beautiful apartment with fantastic views over Glasgow right out to the Campsie Fells.  Of course these views only came about due to the height and the steepness of aforementioned HUGE BASTARDIN’ HILL.  I lived with my Aunty then, and that hill was the bane of my life.  She hadn’t passed her driving test at that time and of course the train station, bus stops and all the shops were at the bottom of the hill.  Twice a day I would have to trudge up that bloody thing as one of the conditions of my room and board was that I had to go get the paper every morning before I went to work.  I would get up and tear round the house silently, trying to get out the door to the shops before Auntie heard me.   If I was unlucky I would hear the dreaded words, “Take the wean with you!”.  Great.  The hill was bad at the best of times, but trying to get back up it pushing a pram (a Silver Cross pram.  These things were coach-built and could give a Panzer division a lesson in heaviness and manoeuvrability) was well nigh impossible.  My lungs would be screaming and the muscles in my arms would be twanging like hillbilly banjo strings.

Of course, the likeliness of hills in the area was spelt out in the address.  Mount Florida.  Unfortunately the Florida bit didn’t allude to the climate.

Montreal Road, Brighton.  Later Teens.

Ah, those halcyon days when I was a civil servant for the Ministry of Defence.  17 years old, earning enough money to drink myself into a stupor every night and buy every hideous neon coloured jumper and sock combo that I could from Chelsea Girl.  I lived in a wee terraced house with three male housemates 20 minutes walk from work.  It would only have been a five minute walk if it wasn’t for two huge hills between the house and the work – Southover Street and Ditchling Road.  Southover Street was a 1-in-8, a gradient that made Stanmore Road look like a gentle slope.  If I hated Mount Florida then I loathed Southover Street.

Of an evening, myself and my fellow civil servants were fond of a wee drink.  We were all under 25, all Glaswegians far from home, and all bored oot wur trumpets.  Only one solution – drink!  We would go down to the seafront bars, spend our wages and then wend our weary way home – up that damned hill.  Ten minutes in we would ponder upon the necessity of the last seventeen ciggies we had smoked as we staggered and huffed our way grimly to the top.

Come the winter and the snow, we would all go to work armed with tea trays and sledge our way down Southover Street.  That didn’t help us get back up the hill after work, so we would just go straight to the pub after clocking off and stay there until closing time.  If we were going to be staggering anyway might as well have a reason for it.

Montreal – Royal Montain.  See, the clue was in the address.  Again.

Hiroo, Tokyo

By the time we moved into Hiroo I was wise.  I had avoided hills for 15 years.  Hiroo didn’t mean hill, we were young free and single so all I needed was for it to be flat from the apartment tothe supermarket , the pub, Shittybank,  the karaoke bars and the underground.  It was, so Happy Days!  Gaily I skipped from place to place with ne’er a care in my heart.  Then lo it came to pass that unto us a child was born.  A child who needed to be pushed in her lovely heavy Graco Concrete Stroller to places she enjoyed.  Places like the park and the baby playing place.  Places at the TOPS OF HUGE SHITEING HILLS.  Not only that, I was now blessed with doing it in 90 degree heat and 90 % humidity.  I’m singing to the choir here, because I know that I wasn’t flying solo on that one.  I still remember my friend’s face as I bumped Wee Yin up all the stairs in the park rather than push the pram up the hill past the Embassies.  In my mind, “I hate hills” was a good enough reason to subject Wee Yin and my friend to 5 minutes of thunking rather than 10 minutes of smooth climbing.

No wonder the moany wee shite at the door of the baby play place hated me.  I would arrive, the picture of beauty with sweat cascading down my forehead and doing attractive flips off the end of my beak, my beautiful visage redder than the most crimson beet and glare at him until he opened the door.

Higashiyama, Tokyo.

Now this one I have no-one to blame but myself.  I knew Yama meant mountain, I knew what the hills were like but I was blinded by the sheer fabulousity of the house.

Higashiyama was a right royal pain in the arse, purely because none of the roads were straight.  Thank God Wee Yin was out of the pram by then because pushing a buggy up those hills would have killed me.

My next move is to Norfolk, or the middle of the Bonneville Salt Flats.  Somewhere that, if I stand on a box, I can see for 500 miles clear in any direction.  I’ve had it with hills.

One of the things that surprised me most about Tokyo was how a street could have small rickety buildings next to gleaming office blocks.  A small wooden yakitori stand would lean up against a modern apartment and shopping complex.  Outside one door would be old plastic boxes filled with flowers and outside the next would be a liveried doorman.

Our original apartment building in Tokyo was considered old (it was built in 1973) but was next to a very modern shopping centre.  Outside this centre there was a small canvas tent and every night a man would set up a portable teppanyaki stand inside it and sell food accompanied with small bottles of beer he would take from a picnic coolbox.  It was known to the British contingent as The Road-diggers Arms and as it was open until 5 in the morning it was a late night food stop for people returning from the hotspots of Roppongi and Kabuki-cho.

I miss walking past all these places.  There was an area we used to walk through that was known as The Place Of Men.  It was full of salarymen in their short sleeved white shirts, construction workers in their billowing blue trousers and canvas tabi boots, and students in their tipped hair and military blazers.  It was a mystery to me who all these men were and why they congregated in this one area.  The only thing they had in common was that they were all carefully studying newspapers.  I couldn’t work it out until I was walking through the area with a female  Japanese colleague of C’s and she became very uncomfortable.  She told me that the area was notorious for housing illegal gambling dens and for crime.  I had been totally oblivious to this as I had walked through, bowing and o-haiyo gozaimasu-ing anyone who caught my eye.

Yet again I try to write about Tokyo and go off on a totally unrelated tangent.  One day I will get it straight in my head – that day is obviously not today.

Holiday Box

Terry Hall and Salad

We sing to babies.  Old Scottish songs like Coulter’s Candy.  It’s a fact that no-one sings this song as well as your mum.  It’s also a fact that when your mum has gone this song will make you cry.

Right, I’m better now.

We also sing

Skinny Malinky Long Legs Big Banana Feet

Went tae the pictures and couldnae find a seat

When the picture started Skinny malinky farted

Skinny malinky long legs Big Banana Feet

The first time my mother-in-law heard me sing this to Wee Yin she was horrified. “Arran, we don’t say farted we say pumped” Err, two things.  First of all “pumped” doesn’t rhyme, and second of all where I’m from “pumped” means “had sex with” and I know which one I’d prefer in the song.

My favourite song to sing to babies and kids is an old Scottish song from the Blitz.  My granny sang it to my mum, my mum and all my aunties sang it to their kids, and now we all sing it to our kids.  I sing it to my little English nieces and feel like I’m keeping an Oral History going.

In ma wee gas mask Ah’m working oot a plan

Aw the weans think Ah’m a big bogey man

The girls all come and bring their friends to see

The finest looking warden in the ARP

Whenever there’s a raid on listen to my cry

An airyplane, an airyplane way up a kye

If I run helter skelter don’t run efter me

You’ll no get in ma shelter cause it’s far too wee.

We also sing at parties.  We’ll all be sitting round and then a maudlin uncle will start singing, “My Old Kentucky Home” despite the fact he was born and bred on the South Side of Glasgow. We all have our little party pieces that we have to sing.  We are not allowed to change them and we are not allowed to steal anyone else’s song.  Mine is the classic Hurricane Smith (exactly) song, “What Would You Say“

We never said that the party pieces had to be appropriate.  I have no idea who decided that I was to learn and sing that song but every year I trot it out, and every year it gets more and more elaborate with actions and mimes and everything.  I think my generation of the family got fed up with everyone crying during the songs so we just go for the comedy value.

We also sing at karaoke.  Japan was brilliant for that.  When The Mad Aunties came to Tokyo we took them to a Karaoke bar over their loud protests. “Aw hen I’ll no be daein any ae that singin malarky”.  Two vodka and tonics later and the two of them were up on the stage giving it laldy and belting out “We Are Family”.

We sing in the house.  I was editing some video from when Wee Yin was a baby and in nearly every clip either C or myself is singing to make her laugh (you remember the part about us not being able to sing?  Works on some things).

This morning I went in to wake Wee Yin from school.  She was already awake so I stood outside her room listening to her singing.  At first it was some JLS song but then she started singing some of the songs we sing around the house and the songs that I have taught her.  Watching her get ready for school and singing old songs I realised how quickly she is growing up but I was pleased that she is bringing some of the past along with her.

Holiday Box

Enjoy.

Last year I hoisted myself from my pit to be at Sainsburys for 6 am on Christmas Eve.  It was fantastic.  The shop was quiet, and everyone in there had the same, “Yeah, we’re off our heads being in the shop at this time, but what can you do” expression.  People were talking to each other, telling each other to have a good Christmas, sharing tips on where the hard-to-source items where and generally being pleasant.  Starbucks were giving out samples of coffee which was the best thing EVAH.  I was in and out the shop in half an hour and back in my bed by 7.30.  Splendid.

Compare that lovely experience to the previous year’s one. I had lost all reason and decided to go to Asda (the UK’s Walmart) at 3.00pm on Christmas Eve.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  We were off to the in-law’s for Christmas Dinner and my job was to provide pudding.  I had already made about a tonne of cheesecake but I had it in mind that I would like Pavlova.  So, off I trotted to the frozen food section to find a Pavlova.

Now, I’ve seen pictures of American supermarkets’ frozen food sections.  Aisle after aisle of sensible gleaming upright freezers.  Here, they look like this

A chest freezer with an upright freezer above it.  There was one Pavlova left.  It was at the very back of the very top shelf in the upright freezer.  I stood on the bar around the chest freezer – still couldn’t reach it.  I hoiked myself up onto the edge of the chest freezer and balancing verrrry carefully reached up for the Pavlova and…

…Overbalanced horrifically falling head first into the chest freezer below.  The almost empty chest freezer.  My wee legs were sticking straight up and waving about like flags as I tried to – I don’t know really.  Signal for help?  Look even more ridiculous on the in-store CCTV than a woman falling into a chest freezer could look?  My arms were pinned underneath me so I was struggling to push myself out.

Next think I knew I was being pulled unceremoniously out of the freezer by my coat collar.  I looked into the eyes of my rescuer.  It was a man.  An absolutely gorgeous, muscle-bound hunk of a man.  The sort of man who, if this was a romcom feelgood movie and I was 10 years younger, single, and looked like Carey Mulligan, I would have  a laugh and a joke with and we would end up spending Christmas together.  Instead I was looking bedraggled and icy with bits of frozen carrot embedded in my hair.

There my shame should have ended.  Oh no.  I came for my Pavlova and was damn well going to get it.  “Excuse me pal.” (Pal.  Cringe) “Could you pass me that Pavlova please?  I fell in trying to… yeah” I tailed off as he rolled his eyes and effortlessly passed me the Pavlova.  “Merry Christmas!” I yelped as he walked away shaking his head.

(Bang bang bang.  That’s me banging  my head off the table as I recount this story.)  I walked away from the freezer with as much dignity as I could muster (not a freakin’ lot to be honest) then had to slide back when I realised that I had left my trolley abandoned.

I would love to be able to say that the Pavlova was well-received and worth the embarrassment.  Was it hell.  It was all bashed and mashed and ended up being turned into Eton Mess.  It definitely wasn’t worth the humiliation.

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Holiday Box

Edwyn Collins.  Love.  Ignore the crappy miming (TOTP was all miming) and the awfully literal dancers and the utter pish captions.

(Bollox.  I can’t find a video that’ll play here.  YouTube Orange Juice, Rip It Up.  You won’t regret it)

So, now I have shot my whole premise down in flames in the first paragraph, I will instead write about a Secret Pleasure That Would Be Guilty If I Had Any Shame.  It is called The Slosh.

If you are Scottish you are now jumping up and down with glee saying, “Oooh I love The Slosh!”  You’ve probably also got Daniel Boone’s “Beautiful Sunday” going round in your head.  If you do not have a scooby what I am talking about, here is a quick clip from the Scottish comedy “Still Game” about The Slosh Formation Dance.

That clip sums The Slosh up in a nutshell (There are some very funny clips of John Barrowman doing The Slosh on YouTube, but he does it to the wrong song so pffft to that).  Most men do it under duress.  Men who do it voluntarily are loved by women and mocked by men.  All women do it.  It is danced at weddings, christenings, engagements – in fact No Slosh, No Party.

My husband is English and we were married in England; however the Glasgow contingent came down en masse.  The wedding was a mix of Scottish customs and English ones – Scottish favours, English Order of Service, Kilts for the Scots and Morning Suits for the English.  The one thing that I was sure of was that there had to be a Slosh at the Reception.  The DJ had never heard of it so I had to buy the Daniel Boone CD just for that song.

When the first bars of the song rang out it was carnage.  Kilts were flying and the English were trampled underfoot as the Scots took to the dancefloor (if you ever want to burgle a Scottish Wedding, do it during The Slosh.  Bags, keys, phones and cameras are all abandoned as the Scots are called to the dance).  My aunties had told my uncles that they had to dance too as it was “important to the wean” (a wean is a child.   We are all still weans to the aunties and uncles) so they were all up there banging their knees and clapping their hands.  It was a riot and dancing The Slosh with most of my family is one of my best memories of the wedding reception.  When it was finished my auntie gave me a big hug and told me my mum would have loved that, so that was heartwarming as well.

I do miss not being able to do The Slosh down here.  I have taught the Wee Yin it and we have decided at our Christmas Eve party we will dance The Slosh.  You know, because it is important to the wean.

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Holiday Box

The X Factor had a Guilty Pleasures week this series.  Here is my favourite singing the choice for the week.

So that just sets the scene. I’m no shrinking violet – I have previous. I’m also from Glasgow; the city where the C word is used as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, greeting and quite possibly even a colour. Although some bad language doesn’t shock me and I do use it, Wee Yin knows that according to the Great Hypocrisy of Parenting if she uses it she is in big trouble.

The most unlikely Wild Night Out Ever was last week. Last week was the Junior School Family Disco. Eagerly awaited for by the children, absolutely loathed by the parents. We drew straws this year and I was the parent from our class, Year 4, who had to go and watch the kids. You are supposed to take your own children but the parents in our class are all at the more mature end of the scale and just cannot be bothered with it. The music is too loud and too shite.

My face was set to “have fun children” and I loaded Year 4 up with lemonade, chocolate, Haribo, neon glow sticks and glittery cowboy hats (all sold to me at a very respectable 300% margin by the PTA) and sent them off to the dancefloor.

I have said before that I wouldn’t be able to pick out a Justin Bieber song if there was a gun to my head. Well, that is now a false statement. The DJ put on what at first I thought was an Alvin and the Chipmunks track. The girls went absolutely batshit crazy, screaming “JUSTIN!!!!!”, and rushing through the hall to gather at the speakers and GAZE at them reverentially as if Justin himself were trapped in there as they swayed slightly with the music. Scary.

The best bit was to come. The DJ played “Billionaire” and at the “so frickin bad” line the Year 3 mums started to bristle a bit, especially as the DJ had given the mic to some Year 5 boys who were singing along with the track. Then came Soulja Boy and if I hadn’t have been stocking up on supplies and came in at the end of the track the DJ would have heard me. In what way is it appropriate to have kids on the stage singing “Superman dat ho”? Girls at that?

But these, dear friends, are mere appetisers to the gourmet treat that was to come. Daughter was beside me and on came what we thought were the opening bars of Cee-Lo Green’s “Forget You”. She started laughing and said, “Oh Mum, you love this song! Dance with me”.

We would have danced if it had been “Forget You” that had been played.  Oh no.  DJ Brains Trust played the other version.  The rude one.

All we heard was “F**k you” blaring out of the speakers. Chaos. The group of kids on the stage started joining in on the mics, as did half the kids on the dancefloor. The rest of the kids were either laughing, looking round for their parents or standing with eyes wide and hands covering their mouths in gleeful shock.

“F**k you”

The PTA members manning the refreshments booth starting leaping the tables to get onto the dancefloor and up to the stage. The mums in the gazebo sprinted across the hall and jumped onto the stage and started HURLING kids off it to get to the kids with the mics.

“And F**k you too”

The Headmistress of the Junior School started up the stairs to the stage to get to the decks. The DJ was behind all the kids singing and was trying to get through the kids to get to his volume control .

“Ain’t that some shit”

One of the mums near the door started hustling the kids out of the hall, and another mum was throwing them all back in and shouting at her to stop as the kids were in their party wear and it was absolutely freezing outside.

“F**k You”

Finally one of the Sixth Formers just pulled out the plug from the socket. Silence, except for the kids all singing the sweary words at the top of their voices. The DJ was surrounded by angry mums who were giving him dog’s abuse. One mum, I was surprised to note, was liberally using the word that she was so offended at in a song.

The kids singing on the dancefloor would not shut up. One of the PTA members grabbed a box of Haribo and started lobbing it at the kids. This stopped the singing but started a full scale ruck as kids booted each other to get at the tangy treats.

Wee Yin was still standing beside me as all this was going on, taking it all in and thankfully not joining in. Once calm was restored and I had gathered all the kids I was responsible for from stage, dancefloor and behind the unmanned refreshments table she took a drink from me and said, “I can see why you like that song Mum. That was AWESOME.”

Indeed it was m’dear. Indeed it was. Although not quite suitable for a children’s disco.

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Something more gentle for today’s Holiday Box

See me?  See seamless?  We’re like that (shows off two crossed fingers).

Let me tell you about our holiday.  We got a great deal as we booked last minute.  It was on a boat.

That, my friends, is the glory and majesty of the River Thames.  The same stretch of the River Thames where we live.  That’s right, we went on holiday for five days and never slept more than half an hour from our house.  I don’t care.  It was our first holiday in five years and although I have to admit the thought of five days on a little boat did not fill me with the small glads, when it came to it we all had a great time.

Apart from the locks.  Never again will I go down to Boulter’s Lock and laugh at the boating people trying to negotiate the lock (believe it or not this is what people do for fun in this happening town.  They even have an ice-cream shop down there to cater for the gawpers).  As C was chief steerer (I think that it the correct nautical term) I was Leaper From The Boat With The Ropes.  Except they are not called ropes.  Like everybloodything else connected to a boat – kitchen, bed, left, right, front, back, forward – they have another name.  First time C shouted, “Grab the warps!” I stood there like a right emptyheader thinking, “Warps?  Warp what? Warp speed?  Warped mind? I DON’T UNDERSTAND!”

That was the easy part.  When mooring up the rope had to be underneath the rails so that when the boat (sorry, cruiser) strained against the mooring the rails didn’t buckle.  I forgot about that a few times. Then I had to grab the rope and jump like a leaping numpty onto the bank or lockside and wrap the rope around the mooring thingy.  Thinking I was doing the right thing I pulled the rope hard, forgetting the laws of physics which meant that pulling the front of the boat tight against the mooring meant that the back of the boat would swing out away from the bank leaving it stranded (if I was lucky) or banging into other boats or the side of the lock (only made that mistake once as I made such a fool of myself.  Where I come from we build boats, we don’t sail in them).

The three of us enjoyed our little trip so much that we are talking about doing it next year, but getting a bigger cruiser and going with some friends.  That suits me fine.  More people means that they can be Leaper From The Boat With The Ropes and I can be Sitter On My Arse With A Book.

I think about my mum, and how she used to make a flat little origami box that turned into ball when she blew into it.

Why are all my brother’s facebook followers hot young women?

Why didn’t I buy that coat from the Helen and Douglas House charity shop?  It was Jigsaw fergoodness sake and it was only a fiver.

I’m going to make Delia Smith’s carbonara for dinner this week.  I’m sure that I saw pecorino on special in Sainsbury’s and I’ve got loads of eggs left over from Pancake Day.

I can’t believe that E4 are going to stop showing Friends.  When there is nothing on the telly, at least there is that.  Never mind, there’s always Road Wars on Sky.

Still folding, fold, fold, fold.

Who on earth first looked at a square of paper and thought “I can make a beautiful thing out of that”?  It’s like the first person to eat a potato.  A few people must have copped it from eating the leaves, or chowing down on a green potato, or else felt decidedly ropey after eating a raw potato.  It takes a brave person to look at a potato and a pot of boiling water and think, “I’m going to give this thing one more try.”

Saturday tomorrow, lalalalala.  Might treat myself to a Starbucks, lalalalala.  With whipped cream on the to-o-op, lalalalala.

This looks bugger all like a crane actually.

***

And these are just the thoughts noteworthy enough to remember.  Imagine all the dross that rattled around in my skull and left no impression whatsoever.  That must have been real quality.

***

Here, have a video.  Wonderfully literal and it looks like the template for every karaoke video ever.  Love the song.

We had just found out that we were leaving Tokyo.  Aunty Em announced that she was coming out to see us, and she was bringing Auntie May with her.

Auntie Em had been to Tokyo before, just after Wee Yin was born.  It had been her first time out of the UK and she fell in love with what she had seen of Tokyo.   I was killing myself laughing at the thought of these two Glasgow Wifies in Tokyo and couldn’t wait to see them.

Auntie Em’s daughter (Belle) was giving me daily updates on the preparations.  The two Aunties were all a-twitter and everybody knew about their upcoming trip.  Belle  – “It’s embarrassing.  I go into shops and people that I don’t even know are asking about my mum’s trip.  I think that they are wandering the streets telling randoms that they are going to Japan.  Oh, and they are trying to smuggle in some square sausage for you.  Don’t worry, I’ll do a final sweep of the suitcases and papp it straight back out again.”

The big day arrived.  I drove out to the airport to pick them up and it started.  They both seemed to completely forget that a) I had been living in Japan for four years without coming to any serious harm and b) I was of an age where I was allowed to be out on my own.

“Are you allowed to drive that car?”

“Are you allowed to drive down this road yourself?”

“Where’s C?  Is he OK to look after Wee Yin?”

“Do you know the way back to the house?”

I know that looks bad.  Reading it makes me think, “Why didn’t you do a U Turn and fire them straight back on the plane” but my aunties are my aunties and I just found it funny.

As it was a beautifully sunny day we thought that rather than laze about the house we’d up the melatonin levels and go for a day out to Asakusa.  They loved it.  It was crowded and noisy and brash and different from anything they’d ever seen before. (When Aunty Em had visited before I was quite ill and we hadn’t experienced much sightseeing)  The two of them wandered round drinking it all in.

Then they saw the students.  It’s quite common to see English-studying students at tourist spots.  They have signs round their necks asking people to talk to them as a way of perfecting the students’  English.  The Aunties were straight  in there, talking away to the students and asking them their life stories.

Remember the bit where I said the Aunties hadn’t been out of the country much?  Well, the accent is strong in these ones.  Not impenetrable, just very very strong.  How strong?

Poor students, they never had a chance.  I quickly sent C over to rescue them, or to at least act as a translator from Mad Auntie Glaswegian to English.  C was not impressed. “You are having a laugh, aren’t you?  I don’t even understand you half the time, and I definitely don’t understand the three of you when you are talking together.”

When the Aunties had finally finished quizzing the students they walked away, describing the whole exchange as “rerr”.  The students wandered off in search of people who actually spoke a recognisable form of English.

Flushed with success at their first Tokyo excursion the Aunties wanted real Japanese food “efter aw that plane muck”.  While C and I stood with the buggy trying to decide where to take them, they marched off into the first restaurant they saw. (I’m going to stop typing in the accent.  Take it as read) “Come on, we didn’t come all this way to eat Western food.  We want Japanese food.  Even if we don’t like it, we can say we had it.”

So they did.  It was a yakitori place and they asked the waiter for a skewer of everything (“Don’t worry Arran.  Your Uncle Joe’s been doing overtime for a month and a half so I have got plenty of money and I am going to spend it.  And your boring old Aunty May there hasn’t left the house in twenty years so she’s got money as well.”) and fair play to them they ate every bit of it. (“What’s this?  Gizzard?  Don’t tell me what bit that is because I’m enjoying it.”)

There’s loads more but that story came into my head this morning when I found the photo.

Cue snort of laughter from Wee Yin.  “Pancakes aren’t civilised!  Pancakes are up all night party people.  They’re wild.”  This was delivered with a straight face.  “Noodles are hard workers, fish and chips like to go to the beach on holiday, and sausages just sit in front of the telly all day watching films.”

Auntie Dee and I looked at each other in bemusement.  Auntie Dee was a beat ahead of me.

“Hamburgers?”

“Lazy.  Oh, and they steal food”

“Pickles?”

“Party even more than pancakes”

“Tea?”

Withering look.  “Tea is a drink“

I’m still scratching my head over that exchange.