Yet More Dancing

An old pic of me dancing (in the rain)
The reason for oldmedancing is shared below

Thank you to everyone who made suggestions for my forthcoming book’s #I’mNotAllowedToSayTheNameYet dance song. I decided to go with – well, I had to, really, didn’t I? – the suggestion from ME Lewis at France Says:

Picture me boogying to this in my bedroom after hitting Send to my publisher.

You’ll have to picture it, because there are no pictures of it;  I haven’t boogied yet. Right after sending off my manuscript, I succumbed to a bacterial infection which saw me in bed for days, gulping down not one but two courses of those increasingly hard-to-get miracle pills, antibiotics. I’m on the mend now but it was touch and go for a while there whether I’d be able to eat all of my Maltesers. I’m happy to report that as of today I have none left.

When looking for a song, I came across this:

As much as I’d love to have used it, it’s not dancey enough. I found another which is quite dancey but, sadly, not entirely appropriate for a family-friendly blog. But go look it up; Google #MENOPAUSE MONDAYS®A Singing Uterus Explains Perimenopause and Menopause. Hilarious in an I-can’t-believe-what-I’m-seeing way.

The family and I – Hub, me, Spud, DisgustedwiththeTories Boy, and our newest member, Daddy’s Boy – were all dancing for joy this week, for an entirely different reason.

Debra at Breathe Lighter asked me a while back what Alex plans to do post-uni. I am now allowed to tell you that he got into not one, but two drama schools, and has accepted a funded place on a one year course at Oxford School of Drama.

When we heard the news, we all did this:

Just to be clear – we’re all Laura Linney, not Karl on the right, who is every new graduate who has just realised the fun’s over; real life starts and oh no! here come the bills.

Fortunately, that’s not Alex. He won’t start work at McDonald’s for at least another twelve months.

 

I Need A Dance Song

Three points:

• I love writing but it is tedious at times, especially when you’re as anal as I am
• I have no money
• I like to reward myself when I finish something
• I can’t count

When I completed my first two (unpublished) collections, at various stages I danced: a reward for sticking with the drafting/editing/proofing process. Dancing is better than money. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

The habit began by accident.  I wrote my South African collection over twenty years. One day, it occurred to me that I had unwittingly written a themed collection but it needed crafting. I listened to Mango Groove, a South African band, as I worked on it, and I felt like dancing after weeks slaving over a hot computer, so I put on Dance Sum More:

When it came to my second collection, Wholly Man, the South African vibe was all wrong, so I found this:

My third collection, published this summer, is a lighthearted look at menopause and motherhood. I have just completed the first draft and sent it off to my publisher* – literally ten minutes ago – and I was appalled to realise I have no dance song to celebrate.

Any suggestions?

It has to be cheerful and danceable and related to menopause and/or motherhood.

Find me something – I know you love a challenge.

*Which is why I haven’t yet replied to your comments; but I will, I promise…as soon as I finish reading my next course text (once I begin reading it) and write a poem based on it, due in tomorrow lunchtime.

 

Narrow Escapes

When we were kids, my brother owned a copy of The Book of Narrow Escapes. Aimed at children, it was full of stories about people who survived experiences like falling out of planes (as you do), or getting lost in the Amazon: always follow a river downstream to civilization was the advice, though how a child – or this adult – knows the difference between upstream and downstream escapes me, and not narrowly, either.  Come to think of it, I’m not sure that book, full of horror stories along the lines of Alive! was suitable reading for kids.  Unless I’m thinking like a be-fair-everyone-has-to-come-first-and-be-safe millennial.  Or a mum.

This morning, I was humming the tune to the seventies’ show Black Beauty because of a Facebook meme I’d seen, and that got me thinking that I read Black Beauty as a child and found it tedious, but loved The Book of Narrow Escapes – me, who never took a risk in her life unless it involved eating my weight in chocolate and thus the possibility of an obese, diabetic future.

As I was on the loo while all of this thinking was happening, that naturally reminded me of my own narrow escape, about twenty years ago: I went to the loo one day, finished, stood, turned around, and there were two wasps, flying around the neck of the bowl!  Talk about a squeaky bum moment.  To this day, I can’t sit on the loo without first inspecting it.  Thoroughly.  So if I visit your house and you catch me at it 1) I’m looking for stinging insects, not dirt and 2) why are you in the bathroom with me?

Do you have your own squeaky bum moment to share?

Two Songs & A Book

First, Alex singing Celie’s song I’m Here from The Colour Purple in Miscast the other week:

Next, do yourself a favour – two favours – sign up to BookBub and download lots of free books to your Kindle…and then delete half of them because they’re terrible, but at least you didn’t pay for them; and the good ones are worth wading through the dross.

And do it TODAY, so you can get a free copy while it’s available of Penny Reid’s Neanderthal Seeks Human.  She writes witty, intelligent romances with quirky characters and I own every book she’s written and hate that I discovered her while she’s still writing because I have to wait for the next book, and the next, and the next…you get the idea.

How can I convey the depth of my love for her books?  If I tell you I would spend my Malteser money on them, would that do it?  

My favourite line: This is the mammals all over again.

Go and get it NOW!  It’s FREE!

Finally, Alex and the other Colla Voce Boys in Chicago’s Cell Block Tango:

You Lerner Something New Every Day

Sorry!  Sorry!  I know I owe replies and visits for more than one post but at the moment my life is hectic; I can offer no reasonable dialectic, simply that my use of time by default must be selective; in truth, it is somewhat eclectic…hence this frantic pseudo-poem.  Oh no!  Must you really be going?

I also apologise that this poem is catalectic*

*adjective:   (verse) metrically incomplete; especially lacking one or more syllables in the final metrical foot 

Right, now that I’ve got that out of my system, I really do apologise for being so neglectic.  If I believed in New Year’s Resolutions, I’d make one to blog properly i.e. stop being so rude.  Fortunately for me, I don’t; so I won’t.

Kidding!

I want to wish you all a Happy Christmas so I’ll do that by shamelessly promoting Alex with videos from his last show, Lerner Without Loewe.  Alex sang twelve songs with Matthew Malone’s 35 piece orchestra, all with lyrics by Alan J. Lerner (Camelot, My Fair Lady, etc.) and music composed by someone other than Frederick Loewe.  Breathe, dear reader…I won’t post all twelve here, or you’ll be watching until next Christmas.

In this first trailer, the first speaker, Professor McHugh, is a leader in the academic field of Broadway musicals.  I confess, I’m not certain how big that field is, but the man really knows his stuff:

Alex appears halfway through this next one but the first song is worth listening to; Lerner’s brilliance with lyrics really shines through – listen for how he rhymes ‘rhododendron’ with ‘friends’:

A quick one, in rehearsal:

This next one makes me simultaneously proud and queasy – Alex sings so sweetly but the song is from what amounts to Lolita – The Musical, and the lyrics reflect that:

More rehearsal:

And more (Alex is halfway through again):

This one, also in rehearsal, has Alex singing a song that was written between 1936-1938, words & music both by Lerner, which has probably not been performed since, meaning that Alex is quite possibly the first person to sing it in eighty years.  This is also probably the only recording of this song, so, just like the secret mentioned in the lyrics, here’s a secret from me to you: he fluffed one of the lines.  Heehee!

This song was written for three parts but Alex sings it all:

Another good one sung by Debra Finch:

Last one, from rehearsals.   The final song is the only one I’d heard before, and it turned out to be my least favourite because there were just so many great songs on the night:

You deserve some eggnog after that marathon watch. 

Merry Christmas!

 

Me And EU

The EU referendum is coming up; I’m feeling a little down because I’m truly undecided: I see pros and cons for in and out.  I’ve been going back and forth on this.  The top and bottom of it is, however, that I feel British, not European.

That got me thinking about what makes me British:

• The Queen (obviously)
• Rain
• Queues
• Peculiar Spellings (previous answer refers)
• Earl Grey Tea
• Big Ben
• Cadbury’s Chocolate
• The NHS
• Polite Silences
• Football (NOT ‘soccer’) (What kind of word is ‘soccer’ anyway?  It’s just weird)
• Carry On Films
• Stamps
• Snow Panic (Three flakes?  Shut down the country!)
• Shakespeare
• Fair Play
• Humour
• Austen
• Pragmatism
• Coronation Street (even if you don’t watch it, there’s nothing more British than busybody small business owners clustered together down the pub, gossiping)
• Stiff Upper Lips

None of these things help my decision, sadly – unless Europe wants to make this a republic, in which case I’m throwing the towel in and voting out.  I’m a royalist through and through and I have the stamp collection to prove it.

Tell me, what do you immediately think of when you think of Britain and the British?  Stereotypes welcome here.

 

The Last Five Minutes

We’re going to see Alex in The Last Five Years this week.  If you’ve recently defriended me on Facebook, then you’ve probably already heard that. 

Alex doesn’t get nervous before a show, though he will confess to butterflies. I confess to a whole swarm of caterpillars, and I sweat like they’re shedding their coats in my stomach, especially in the last five minutes before he goes on.

Afterwards, of course, I never doubted for one minute that he’d be fantastic and not forget his lines or hit a bum note or come on stage from the wrong side.  He’s never done any of those things so I don’t know why I worry.  I’m a mother; I just do.

It doesn’t help that my nerves are already jangled from the drive up to Sheffield: Snake Pass in the rain, snow or fog (it’s usually one of those three) is not for the fainthearted; I am the faintest of hearted but I’m a mother; it’s what I put myself through.

This is me before a show:

And after:  

See you on the other side.

Why I’ll Never Leave The Hub

I went out to visit a friend this afternoon; I found this hidden in my laptop when I got back:

It was a song I’d never heard before.  Read the lyrics when you listen:

What woman in her right mind would willingly give up such a romantic?  

Not me, that’s for sure.

Happy Christmas!

Everyone is still in bed, snoring away. 

I am downstairs, listening to Christmas carols and eating homemade cold apple pie for breakfast.

I wish you all a lovely day, wherever you are; and thank you for sticking with me even though I have hardly been here.

Happy Christmas, dear readers.  xxx

A-One, A-Poo, A-One-Poo-Wee

This is not the band you are looking for…but last night’s band did play this wonderful piece of music

Last night I went to a brass band concert with my friend Alison.  Brass bands are as vital to celebrating Christmas as chocolates and migraine so I was glad to go.

Alison has been renovating her house, so we called early, for a tour and a brew. She lives some distance from us so the Hub drove me there, and afterwards dropped us off at the hall where the concert was taking place.

Alison dotes on our dogs and asked us to bring them along.  As it had been raining all day we carried them in, to avoid their muddy paws marking her brand new and expensive carpets.  Although the paws weren’t muddy, of course, because the dogs refuse to walk in the rain and had been indoors all day.

The dogs adore Alison, in the purest form of cupboard love there is, because she brings them sausages (cooked especially) and treats whenever she visits.  As soon as they realised the car was heading her way, they whined and cried in slavering excitement.

We had the usual mad-circle run around and hysterical barking (not all of it from the dogs: I told you, she dotes on them) and it was all too much for Molly, who wet herself in joy, right there on the new carpet.  Fortunately, Alison is tolerant of their misdemeanours and assured me that the carpet could take bleach if necessary, and a little excited piddle wouldn’t harm it.  Her husband Pete smiled benignly, as he always does, being the easiest-going man I’ve ever known.

The Hub apologised, ‘It’s our fault; they haven’t been out all day because of the rai…TOBY!  NO!’  All heads whipped around to a perfect view of Toby’s backside, also known as crouching terrier, impending poo.  The Hub grabbed the dog and ran with him for the door, and the rest of us watched the plop-plop-plop of the unstoppable excrement as it carpet bombed the, well, the new carpet (and the couch: the angle at which Toby was snatched up allowing for a sideways trajectory).

Mortified, apologetic but laughing, I cleaned up the mess while the Hub and Toby stood out in the rain in disgrace.  The carpet was easily cleaned and looked none the worse for wear.  The miscreants were allowed back in.

Drama over, we all sat down to relax and drink our tea.  I felt suddenly warm and thought, but I haven’t touched mine yet, when I realised the warmth was not a hot flush if it was emanating from my lap.  I looked down to see Molly, squatting on my knees, doing the longest wee I’ve ever had the misfortune to sit under.

We think she must have seen Toby’s flight and thought she’d be better off with Mum than on the carpet.

If you thought a brass band was loud, you should have heard my scream of horror.  I jumped up, sending Molly flying across the room without the benefit of a Hub hold, and there was complete uproar – most of it from four people laughing uncontrollably, me the loudest.  I had lost it by this point and if I wet my knickers in hysteria, at least no one would know.

Alison gave me a cloth to disinfect my pants; I had a wash; and then sat on her bedroom floor in my sweater, socks and underwear, using her hairdryer on the crotch-soaked jeans because we didn’t have time for me to go home and change before the concert.

I sat in the hall, steaming quietly and stinking of disinfectant-combined-with-Brut (to disguise any unpleasant odour), and got quietly sozzled on a bottle of wine.  

It’s okay; I knew where the toilets were.

 

 

Something To Keep You Going

The painting is done but it’s taking as long to move in my stuff, arrange my books and pictures and so on as it took to decorate.  By way of apology for my continued absence, here’s a repost that I thought you might enjoy.

My First Mondegreen

A mondegreen is a mishearing of a phrase.  It was so named by Sylvia Wright, who misheard a line in a poem.  From Wikipedia:

In the essay, Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the last line of the first stanza from the 17th-century ballad “The Bonny Earl O’Moray“. She wrote:

 When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from “Percy’s Reliques“, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

 

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl O’ Moray,
And Lady Mondegreen. 

 The actual fourth line is “And laid him on the green”. Wright explained the need for a new term:

The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original.

 

Other examples Wright suggested are:

• Surely Good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life (“Surely goodness and mercy…” from Psalm 23)
• The wild, strange battle cry “Haffely, Gaffely, Gaffely, Gonward.” (“Half a league, half a league, / Half a league onward,” from “The Charge of the Light Brigade“)

I experienced my first mondegreen as a child, courtesy of Kenny Rogers’ song, Lucille:

You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille,
With four hundred children and a crop in the field.

I thought, ‘Four hundred children?  No wonder she left him.’  The line is actually,With four hungry children.

My second mondegreen came from the carol, Good King Wenceslas:

Good King Wensess last had gout

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Here are a few more you might find amusing:

• From: I’ve Had the Time of My Life – Now I’ve had a time with your wife
• From: Ticket To Ride – She’s got a chicken to fry
• From: Abracadabra – Abra Abra Cadabra… I wanna freak out and stab ya
• From: The Christmas Song – Jeff’s nuts roasting on an open fire, check for snipping at your nose
• From God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen – Get dressed ye married gentlemen, let nothing through this May

You’ll find more here http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/humor/mondegreens.asp and here http://www.kissthisguy.com/

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How about you?  Have you got any mondegreens to share?

#heatonstwaiku

This weekend it’s the Heatons Arts Trail – a bunch of artists in Heaton Moor open their galleries and invite you to look around and, hopefully, buy their work.

Write Out Loud members are supporting the event by tweeting poems.  I’ve written a cycle of 26 haiku  – we call them ‘twaiku’ – about the individual artists, based on the information in the flyer.  I’ll be honest – it’s not my greatest work; but it was fun to do.

I would say check me out at @laughwife and @heatonstwaiku but the first two twaiku I posted have not appeared.  Not that I’m a technept or anything…

If you are an art lovin’ Stopfordian, you should follow the trail.  Details here.  And don’t forget the art gallery. 

There’s just one annoying thing (no; not the Hub): I have had an earworm all week.  I think ‘Heatons Twaiku’ and I hear ‘Eton Rifles’.  What a Jam!

A Treat For Doctor Who Fans

It’s about four years late but I’ve only just seen it.

Enjoy!

Prompts About Prompts

Tell us about the time you threw down the gauntlet and drew the proverbial line in the sand by giving someone an ultimatum. If you’ve never handed out an ultimatum but secretly wanted to, describe the scene and what you would say to put an end (one way or another) to an untenable situation.

Really, WordPress!  Enough is enough!  Stop mixing your metaphors and going on for three pages to get to the point (that’s my job).  Give me better prompts or I stop blogging!

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Imagine yourself at the end of your life. What sort of legacy will you leave? Describe the lasting effect you want to have on the world, after you’re gone.

She was the sort of woman who never followed through on an ultimatum. Consequently, WordPress walked all over her.  However, she knew when her time was up, so she played The Last Post on her last post.  She might have been weak but she went out in style.

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Describe the one decision in your life where you wish you could get a “do-over.” Tell us about the decision, and why you’d choose to take a different path this time around.

I don’t believe in regrets.  If we like who we are, we can’t regret how we got this way.

However, I am sorry I have a weakness for the WordPress Prompts.

Not.

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If you were involved in a movie, would you rather be the director, the producer, or the lead performer? (Note: you can’t be the writer!).

None of the above.  I’d like to be the person just off set, with the script.  You know…the prompter.

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We all know how to do something well — write a post that teaches readers how to do something you know and/or love to do.

1. Sign up to The Daily Post.
2. Check your email inbox each day.
3. Start a new post.
4. Choose a prompt from your Daily Post emails.
5. Make fun of it.
6. Thank your lucky stars that you have never been Freshly Pressed because flying under the radar means you can scoff at the prompts until the cows come home to mock your mixed metaphors.
7. Bask in the adulation.

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Look in the mirror. Does the person you see match the person you feel like on the inside?

No.  Without slicing myself from that funny little triangular bit at the base of the throat to the unmentionable in a family blog bit at the top of my legs, I can’t get my hands inside my body to rummage around feeling what I feel like.  I’d have to be a particularly skilled surgeon to do that.  And insane.

How much stock do you put in appearances?

A lot.  I have to wear a disguise because the WordPress Prompters have put out a hit on me.  Something about ‘norespectforourhardworkcomingupwithideas-
everydayjustsoyoucanmakefunofus.’

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Joke 969

More from the Two Ronnies.

• In a packed programme tonight, I shall be having a word with a man who goes in for meditation, because he thinks it’s better than sitting around doing nothing.
• And we’ll be talking to a car designer who’s crossed Toyota with Quasimodo and come up with The Hatchback of Notre Dame.
• We had hoped to bring you Arthur the Human Chameleon, but this afternoon he crawled across a tartan rug and died of exhaustion.
• The House of Commons was sealed off today after police chased an escaped lunatic through the front door during Prime Minister’s question time. A spokesman at Scotland Yard said it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
• West Mersey Police announced tonight that they wish to interview a man wearing high heels and frilly knickers, but the Chief Constable said they must wear their normal uniforms.
• Many old music hall fans were present at the funeral today of Fred “Chuckles” Jenkins, Britain’s oldest and unfunniest comedian. In tribute, the vicar read out one of Fred’s jokes, and the congregation had two minutes silence.
• There was a fire at the main Inland Revenue office in London today, but it was put out before any serious good was done.
• The Metropolitan Police today denied that prisoners in their custody are excessively pampered. This follows yesterday’s report that a man was hustled out of New Scotland Yard with an electric blanket over his head.
• And we’ve just heard that a juggernaut of onions has shed its load all over the M1. Motorists are advised to find a hard shoulder to cry on.
• In the English Channel, a ship carrying red paint has collided with a ship carrying purple paint. It is believed that both crews have been marooned. 
• Solomon F. Potts, America’s most persistent practical joker, was buried today. He’s not dead, it’s just the neighbours getting their own back.
• My wife and I had a bit of a fight, there was some high-spirited name calling, and I stormed upstairs to fetch my birth certificate.

From IMDb