Telly, Part Two

So, continuing on from yesterday’s post…

Apologies for the weak Six Word Saturday.

The phone rang.  It was Bella magazine, a woman’s weekly.  They wanted to interview us about our greendom!

That was my moment of entelechy, or realisation – we no longer had the potential to be freaks, we were actually freaks.  But newsworthy freaks.

A reporter came and talked to us about our green habits.  I didn’t know at that point that she was facinorous.  Even when a photographer arrived, primed by what the reporter had told him, I didn’t get it.

Amongst others, these were the kinds of photos he wanted to take:

• Me hanging tea bags on the washing line
• Me pouring the water from vegetables cooked on the stove into plant pots
• All of us sitting in the dark, huddled under blankets

I was a little uneasy and the Hub told me I didn’t have to do anything if I was uncomfortable, but the photographer assured us it was a lighthearted piece.  You know me and fun…what a silly girl I was.

I let the photographer take the pictures, all the while assuring him I didn’t keep my family in the dark, use vegetable water on my two plants (I use it for gravy) or hang tea bags on my washing line.  Think of the stains – and the flies.  Eurggh.

Bella (Photo credit: Houstonian) Nothing to do with that horrible magazine.  I’m trying to replace the images in my head when I hear the word ‘Bella’.  Even a crying vampire groupie is better than the red mist which usually appears.

The article duly appeared.  We were made to look like stingy idiots.  The reporter used half-truths and exaggeration.  I was upset but resigned; I resolved to forget it – even the charming photo of me, smiling as I hung dirty, wet tea bags on my washing line.  I was done with reporters.

Then a national Sunday newspaper called, having picked it up from wherever national newspapers pick up stories, and asked to interview us. I thought it would be a chance to set the record straight after the Bella debacle.  I shouldn’t be allowed to think.

I won’t tell you the name of the paper because it is not allowed to be mentioned in this house any more. I did begin to tell you the details of the many, many, many facts they distorted or outright lied about (they even re-used the Bella tea bag photo when I refused to pose in a similar way for them), but I don’t think a bitter diatribe sits well with a Laughing Housewife ethos, so I scrubbed it.  Suffice it to say that the following week they ran a whole letters page in response to our article, the gist of it being that our children were unfortunate in their mean and hateful parents.

I was done with all media.  

Then came a knock on the door…which I will tell you about tomorrow (I said it was a long story).

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