Going to the chapel….

Yup. How did I know it? All those good intentions……

Had been thinking that perhaps going part time at work wasn’t such a good idea – all economy beans and no oomph. Oh how wrong I was. It means there ain’t no bounds, every week is easter, your sleep pattern gets fucked, and so do you. Shitting hell, this could be fun…….

I had an aimless Monday waiting for the fucking moody delivery man to hand over my hoover, and after a feebly unconvincing writer’s hot chocolate in the bitter wind, flailed about waiting for seven o’clock, when I was to meet the coke dealer at the church.

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Yesssssssss, did I mention the strange sequence of events leading to this fucked-up pseudo date?:

In one of my mid-year, mid-life crisis pushes, I googled ‘dance’, as that’s what I do, innit. Usually various adult education sites spring up full of women who piss themselves much better than they move, or anything else for that matter.

But what’s this? A dance agency is arranging dance events all across the south! Excellent (but shitely advertised). So off I samba, then dive into a flashmob, then in the rehearsal space bump into an old stinking techie dude I went to college with. He gives me free tickets to the BBC Big Band. Awesome, old Derek from the Bond films on the screaming trumpet, a gaggle of misshapen misfits who know how to honk. I was there with my wife, so I asked her on a date for Monday. It’s a gospel concert advertised in the local rag – yes, I really have been truffling through the pamphlets as a substitute for cock.

She can’t come with me cos she’s committed to spending the evening watching Ferris Bueller with a bunch of Chinese kids, but suggests this guy we know, who isn't exactly ideal material for the house of God. I refuse refutedly.

Hmmmm. This is a guy who shared a maisonette with me in 2006. Me upstairs, him down. My monkey of a flatmate screaming abuse at him to keep the music down, me scoring the odd opportune bit of green from him.

And he’s cute, but by no stretch sane. So no, I should not invite him to a gospel concert, even though he’s an avid fan of the stuff, and a right old chrisso to boot.

But clip-clopping it back from the big band we scuttle past an old haunt we both avoid due to varying ill behaviour. And who should rush out yelling my wife’s fair name? yup, mr gospel himself. So the wife forces me to ask him out and he accepts. Fucking brilliant.

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“There was I, waiting at the church
Waiting at the church, waiting at the church
When I found he'd left me in the lurch
Lor, how it did upset me!”

(sorry, for war widows everywhere)

Anyway, yes I had to wait and he honed up with a minute to go in a cab – he lives down the road. Been up for 48 hours apparently. Jolly good.

We enter the chapel, the lord does not strike me down. I wince at the vicar and gulp guiltily. We find a shitty seat at the side. And there’s the choir……sorry for the slander guys (they’re from Atlanta, they’ll probably sue after they’ve claimed for all the other accidents in their lives).

The choir do not look good. Well, one of them does. She’s a purty blonde. The drug dealer says he’ll try and chat her up later. I spot her silver ring thing and glum expression and say it ain’t likely. And apparently it’s her birthday. Cheer up love, there’s a few maccie Ds in this town. When the ringleader, with a curiously British accent, addressed the audience to ask if anyone knew whose birthday it was today I got my line in.

‘Jesus’.

My date is horrified, I feel that beautiful warmth oozing through me. Blasphemy. Yum.

So this is a bunch of outsiders. Plump shining women with protruding fringes beam and shuffle. The gayest man alive perches at the front like a wounded chipmunk waiting for some nuts. A big, glorious fat man in the middle is the best attraction. He loves his church, yes m’aam, and though the joy is deluded, I focus on him.

They all wear ill-fitting black polyester trousers that sag at the crotch, and matching red polo shirts; sponsored by Nike of course. Fresh from KFC.

The backing track strikes up. I’d say thunders in, but it was a limp and puny sound. An overhead projector splays clipart graphics out of sync with the vanilla synth.

And they start up. Good god, THIS IS NOT GOSPEL! This is fricking torture! Apparently, however much we welcome in the lord there will not be room for him?! What? This is the whitest music I’ve ever heard, and I can’t stand it. My date pretends to be kinder, but when they sing a song about salvation I can’t restrain myself from yelling ‘masturbation’ to complete the rhyme….

At which point a tight-lipped young oppressor decides to eyeball me till it burns. I look at her, laughing. This is not funny, it seems. I pretend to behave for another godawful number reminiscent of a failed audition for atlanta’s got talent.

The girl is still screwing me up. Do not mess. It’s time to show her the glory of the lord. I turn to her and stare. And stare. And she shrivels into a flushed mess. Feel the power of the lord, feel it.

And with that it was time to exit. My poor date had full-on coke paranoia and didn’t fancy the trek across the pews, but I wasn’t waiting for my mellow birds at break time.

He’d already casually slipped in that we could go back to his flat and he could play me some REAL gospel. I remember trying to make a face that said ‘yes, that sounds normal’, not ‘yes, that sounds dangerously close to fucking to me’.

So off we scroddled. I shoving in an egg mayo sandwich for the ride, him politely shifting through the streets avoiding various punters.

So we get to his, and we have an innocent glass of wine and a bifta, and he puts on some hideous clonky ‘gospel’ music. I spot a drum kit in the corner. An expensive electronic one. He spots me spotting it and offers me a smash. I gladly accept, at which point a customer pops in.

Now, this is weird, I haven’t spent too much time in the lairs of dealers, luckily, I usually steal drugs, but this girl seemed really nice – is it a friend? Is it a random person looking to score? No, it’s that third category, the random trying to score pretending to be a friend. That classic way you have to be. Y’know, you can’t just USE these people, they have feelings as well as a stash.

Anyway, the geetar comes out, so does the lesbian stand up comic, and so do the drums.

It’s also only 9pm. I supposed to be in a church politely watching some saints singing. It’s a Monday. It’s my first week of going part time. I no longer am waiting for the hoover delivery man, I’m getting a bit trashed in a flat with a man I used to have ASB matches with.

But hey ho, must this virtuous girl always feel guilty, even before she’s done anything wrong?

We slope off to the pub so he can dine. He wants the beans and chorizo. The Polish no-nonsense straightened-hair barmaid does her best to humour us, but it ain’t funny. It’s his hood. I just drink wine, and tell him about my long lost lover overseas. He says it’s a bit odd that he’s chosen to go to war-torn countries. But then, it could be worse – he could join the army.

He did try and join the army. His mum wouldn’t sign the form……

So me and this kid are getting on well! Somehow, against my better judgement, we move on to a pub with freestyle jazz playing. I bump into the most introverted man you’ve ever met that I spent some time in India with. Then I bump into an ex-employee. And all the time telling my dealer date ‘I’m not allowed out, especially on a Monday’.

And he gets me. He tells me I’m not allowed out…ever. Because if I go out I’ll realise I’m mad, and I’m not letting myself be. Lord, I needed those vodkas after that. We hook up with a random pretty thing and a scary beardy monster, who facades as a lovely chap, then pounces in with the rape lines. And I’ve given him this blog address. Hi. How did the triple heart bypass go?

It’s back to the flat. Now I know I’m living on borrowed time. Everyone I meet eyes me suspiciously, then I gabble at them so they can’t make head nor tail of the threat I pose to them, and they love me. I spot a double bass player I’d been stalking on the internet and forced him to give me his set list, as I was going to steal it anyway. He obliges, the dealer typing the song names into his drugmobile begrudgingly.

Back at the den it’s more wine, spliff, speaking French with a bunch of randoms, avoiding the rancid perv who tries to force my fricking address out of me, and chatting up a ‘man’ that I later found out was born in 1987. This grooming has got to stop.

The drum kit interests me, it’s got carious buttons that play different styles, but in my state I think I’m playing along to itunes. An hour later I turn, exhausted but satisfied. And I meet rapturous applause. Apparently I’d been controlling the music and drums in an idiot savant fashion. Marvellous.

Now I know it’s time to go, or the legs won’t go where the face is heading. But before I do, the dealer whisks me into his bedroom and slams the door. Oh shit. There’s a beautiful bed, various gadgets, and I just can’t cope.

‘whatever it is you’re about to do, don’t!’ I squeal/dribble.

And he laughs, turns around and shows me a line of the good stuff. Oh no, no fucking way, I’m off. At the door he yells after me,

‘In three months I’ll read your blog about me, and we’ll take our relationship from there!’

Is it October yet? If so, where the fuck am I? Tha-a-ank you lord for this fine day…..just another manic Monday x

dicker with cocker…..glastonbury special

Been sprawled out in the healing fields all morning. Not sure why I paid nigh on £200 to sit in a field, but it’s working…..

Having procrastinated for at last a decade over whether to remain faithful, it seems I have compensated by demanding deep tissue massages off shirtless men.

So I strayed to the healing fields, and even managed to blow a didgeree doo or two on the way. I did a reckie on the first day. Telling my compatriots I had an eye for charlatans after an indian man stuck his buttocks in my face, I skulk around the fields looking for some eager prey.

‘Holistic palm reading’. Said one sign.

WTF? You either wear a dickie bow and hang out on the palace pier or you ain’t seeing my lines.

‘Joy’. Said another. ‘tarot’. I peak into the warped yurt that was her cavern. A fat, sweaty confused grizzler sat there. Frick! It’s a client from work who has, shall we say, an ‘adjusted’ state of mind! And there to show the kids the future………..

So now I know the ging-gang-gooleys from the ethereals. And I wanna get me some o that. I see a nice looking woman called Claire offering Indian Head Massage for a donation. She’d do for Samson, I thought. A few crows feet round the edges, but a nice face and a no-nonsense approach. Now who for me?...............

Well, I thought I’d better take two. Just in case. Opted for both with massage chairs; yeah, they’re for real, they’ll grind me into oblivion with a bit of luck. The first, Ben, was a cute kiwi with piercing eyes. I told him of my ailments and he touched me intensely for half an hour, holding my hands whilst caring for my arms, telling me how he gets to make inappropriate comments with his corporate clients, putting pressure on my mid-back and releasing some tears there. Samson looks on and approves of the heavy involvement. That was a bit better. Now for the second. A curly man with his top off. I watch him absent-mindedly kneading a fat girl in her bra and have second thoughts. I want his full attention, or nothing. So up I march.

‘Hi, I need to feel your pressure’. He is good. He gets so far into my back Samson says his hand disappeared into it at one point. Wowzers. He comments that I had ‘don’t fuck with me’ written on my forehead. That’s right. Don’t fuck with me, but give me some cheap thrills matey.

Then I did a portion of poo, like a goat some might say. In the wateraid toilet, a marvellous invention. All composte, (said in US accent), didn’t stink of shit at all, could sit and have a little rest if one wanted to. And just while I was expelling my droppings, a film crew decided to crowd into the next cubicle. Could they hear me pelloting? I wondered. No, it seems - instead the hippy on the bog decided to recite a world peace poem on the wall of the crapper. So there I was, on a toilet, letting out a spicy beanburger, being read poetry. Classic.

Shit is a topic of discussion when I travel. I was going to launch ‘pootube’, but wasn’t sure if it would attract the right kind of audience.

Met a couple the day before in shit chai Bob’s tea shop, they invite us to their tent as it seems shit is all they talk about too….for me, it’s just a conversation. Everyone shits. Everybody loves to shit.

Which leads me onto my first story,

1. The girl with the shitty legs
We were laying around like crocodiles on some stained cushions in a chai den, and Samson spots a couple in the queue looking slightly perturbed.

‘she’s got a tissue and she’s wiping it up her skirt………..?’ he says.

They walk past us briskly, diagonally, outta that hell hole. And I see her legs, she’s wearing a minidress. And there’s brown/red stuff smeared all over them. I start to splutter,

‘there’s stuff smeared all over her legs! It could be blood, but it’s…’ and before I can finish a wave of drug and cider-fuelled stench washes over us.

‘IT’S SHIT’ we cry together! Oh my God, she truly has tried for a pizza, looked at the food and shat her ecstacy-riddled guts out. And she’s probably nowhere near her tent. And she’s off her fucking tree. What are they gonna do?

It was her and her boyfriend. They stood outside the chai den trying to wipe her off. It’s a nightmare. The man uses cider to swab her, but where’s this gonna end?

In a drum n bass field in Arcadia somewhere no doubt. And the sex will be massive. And they will wake up in the morning and realise that her rose really smells like poo poo poo.


2. Things people say in tents with no walls

My abode for the occasion has been nicknamed ‘the crisp packet’. This lends itself to the fact it cost £20 in the year 1999, and is a one-piece with six pegs, not waterproof, and if you move about, the groundsheet sounds like you’re inside a crisp packet. The neighbours named me ‘cheese and onion’.

And we all know, but we all forget. Tents ain’t got no walls, and we don’t need no education.

Had to bloody sing that in a pantomime once. You can take the girl out of the panto….

A schoolgirl dressed as a slightly sluttier schoolgirl, doing some irrelevant ridiculous dance whilst shouting Floyd over a bad big band. Them was the days…..

But tents, yes. My complex relationship with Samson means that play fighting replaces sex. But as we’re both testosterone-fuelled animals, we end up crossing lines it turns out humans aren’t meant to cross…

The neighbours heard too much. And the best thing was, they didn’t clock that it was our late night ramblings they were perving on. Turns out they went round the whole of Glastonbury telling people that they overheard a girl telling the story of how she once decided to ride her boyfriend in a tent in 35 degree heat in Spain, only to find that she completely ran out of air, and to surpass suffixation had to poke herself out of the tent, naked and bejizzed, in the broad daylight of a public campsite.

They recounted this story to us in the late afternoon, over a plastic wine spritzer and a doobie. And Samson and I looked at each other, and I said,

‘that sounds like something that happened to me…’

At which point, the whole cacophony of Luton-based randoms turned.

‘It WAS you’.


3. If you can’t be with the one you love…..

I wash my hands in the standpipe. I see Samson in the distance. But what’s this in the foreground? A sexy man standing on a flower bed with a watering can, cooling people off in the hot sun. I mouth at Samson ‘shall I?’

‘yes’, he approves.

I turn to the man,

‘shower my tits’. And we stand there for about a minute, him spraying my tits with cold water whilst the queue looks on. Cheap thrills eh? Free, actually. It was only later that day when I suddenly freaked out that my tits were soaked that I remembered. And of course, went back for more.


4. Love the one you’re with

I was a bit concerned that I’d need a bunk up for the occasion. I persuaded myself that two can play while my love’s away, but now I was here I wasn’t so sure.

So I compensated with massages, tit showers, and a few other things…..

Puppy love

My phone is half-heartedly on. I can’t really be arsed with it all when I realised the amount of people I knew who’d be there. Impossible. I have learnt by experience that whether in Thailand or at home, honing around to meet someone in a completely different mental state for twenty minutes before somebody MIGHT need a shit, or before they rush to another stage to see a MOR lose their sound in the wind, is more than a waste of time - it’s a fucking waste of essential resources.

So I didn’t reply to any of my texts or voicemail.

I was on a hill, I was relaxing, I needed time to rest my weary legs on that hill, and I had it. But all this,

‘where are you now?’ that I’d look at two hours later, and ‘so and so told me you’re here! Let’s meet up, we’re going to see Gomez on Sunday not Stevie Wonder’. Erm?

So I ignore it all, then send a mass text back a day later to say,

‘not doing plans, just hoping I bump into you in some hideously ridiculous moment’.

But this one guy, friend of a friend, is insistent, and manages to call me during a Thom Yorke secret gig cos he knows somehow I’d be there. And I was, me and Samson had been arguing about the fact I’d been dancing to the irish choir in my moo moo so we’d missed the showers. Suddenly the stage nearby announced a special guest. Samson heard the first two chords and knew....

‘Go!’ I shriek.

I wank about for a bit at the crisp packet and make my way to my hillock. I sit on my own, knowing that somewhere in the crowd Samson is crying.

Then they play Karma Police. And that means a lot to me. And a Scottish clan adopt me on the hill and I tell them Samson will be crying and they stare at me, all high, and say,

‘I know what you mean. I know what you mean.’

And I can’t work out if it’s empty drug-speak, or if somewhere beneath the beanburgers she has a deep connection with my soul. Nah. She’s high.

But Samson rounds the corner, and then I get the call. The guy who’s been texting me is here, and knows I am. He turns the corner. What’s this then?

And he says he’s been told of the boy. And I tell him of the boy, in a way old friends can summarise. And he looks deep inside of me throughout. And I kiss him. And Samson informs me he’s in love with me.

Hm. We’ve kissed, it ain’t that great, and he was a bit of a virgin till a few years ago when he started stringing along vulnerable females for far too long before breaking their necks like battered swans.

So he can probably fuck okay now, and once I woke up with my hand on his cock by mistake so I have felt his sausage. But still, let’s not just let someone need me because I’m unavailable….

I decide in the end it was more of a lament for the love we never had and never will. Which sounds romantic, somehow, but in fact is a load of old tosh.

Up up and away in my beautiful balloon

We’d been adopted by a bunch of losers from Luton. Such is our way. My dad’s yielded from that manor and wherever I go in the world people from that side of town adopt me. Sometimes they fuck me. They never fully understand me, but hey ho.

So this lot have got a gazebo, chairs, and everything inbetween, and me and Samson get well in there.

I remember emerging from my crisp packet in my moo moo and kissing them all a sweet morning. One guy couldn’t stop leering at my arse, and Samson fancied him, so we started a bit of a triangle thing. He had a girlfriend, of course, they always do…..

But little B, ah he was my favourite. Not only did they have cheap rose wine and 7up and cracked plastic glasses, they had gas…………………….rank. No class As, just shit loads of booze and some fucking brainkiller. But my little B, my fave, loved it.

So these normal people, these caged animals waiting for us to unleash them (which, of course we did), got off on hops and gas.

My little boy danced like an accordion chameleon, and it was for this reason I loved him. So I ask him about why he does this ‘gas’. And he and the Neanderthal gently cajole me to do a balloon. Which I decline.

So instead, I sit him down on my knee, and he takes the biggest lungful of this stuff in history. People are worrying about the amount he’s doing, and I’m holding him tight, feeling every vibe coming out of him. And there’s a beautiful picture of me on a canvas, him top off, shorts on, on my lap, us looking intently at each other and smiling serenely.

I would highly recommend passive gassing. Only of the chemical type, of course….

Peeping into a parallel k-hole

Getting high and drinking chai, we were. My two compatriots disappeared into the oblivion of the rank bogs, and I was left on my own to ponder about the girl with the shitty legs. But in walks a tall young man, with beautiful black hair and an interesting stance. In fact, a very interesting stance. He looks like my boy. I want to reach out to him, but he’s so far away in his own mind that no one can reach him.

He had stopped moving. His face had frozen. He fears the can of lager in his right hand as if it were a volcano about to erupt. Everyone else is dancing, he stands rooted to the spot, swaying slightly. Frightening.

So this is a K-hole, my friends. How lovely to have a passive K-hole, fully appreciating the moment when he leaps back into life and becomes the spunky young thing he is.


5. Dicker with cocker

I’ve choreographed a northern irish choir singing ‘sweet dreams’, I’ve performed the riverdance in a cyber-pseudo burnt-out basement, what more can there be to do?

It’s near the end, and eating options are running low. We’ve made few mistakes, the ‘fishfinger fucker’ I ordered on the first day being the worst. But I’ve found a new little contraption that sells jacket potatoes and not much else. It’s near the shortcut we’ve made, and we’ve got little B and the Neanderthal in tow. Let’s do this.

So we head to the public school boys who sweat over the stove, with hippy mum and dad making chapatis and gruel.

‘four potatoes please’.

Apparently they could be up to an hour, the little dish serving us making no promises, but proving willing by prodding the motherfuckers to see if they’re ripe.

The boys we’re on a fake date with look like they’re heading to undercooked jerk chicken land, but me and Samson are standing our ground. And we’re the only ones in there. Apart from, it appears, Jarvis freaking cocker and his bird. Who also opt to stay for an hour.

‘best potatoes in glastonbury’, he quips. Yes, I know, it ain’t no headline joke, but IT’S JARVIS. And I’ve been drinking neat vodka from a cycling bottle and smoking spliffs for four days.

So we all sit on benches. Samson makes polite, entertaining conversation about music and stuff, and then I launch in. what’s he doing here, I want to know. I came in 95, didn’t think he was playing. Whoops. They headlined. Appears I was sucking off drug dealers in tents at the time.

He’s DJing at a place called the rabbit hole, where you go underground in a pit with the unwashed. Cool. What’s his set, I want to know? He says he hasn’t thought. He was up till six in the morning, and isn’t a young snapper any more. So we have a little think about it. He asks if I know an old track called Glastonbury. I don’t, so he tries to sing it. Hilarious. I ask him if he’ll do a creedence. Turns out Suzie Q is his bird’s favourite. We sing it together. Moment. Then I remember there’s an amazing tap dance called the Suzie Q. he has no choice. I get up. There I am, in a shack, waiting on a potato, tap dancing my damaged arse off for cocker. Fantastic.

The potatoes come. We greedily gobble them, Jarvis with simple beans, the rest of us with slatherings of chilli and cheese, a right dicker of a feast. Hence the photo.

Later that night, after a lot of carnage, we end up at the rabbit hole, after seeing the last song of Midlake and me nearly miscarrying due the injustice of a passive crowd not demanding an encore.

Then we hear it, those first few sexy little bars of the credence riff. It’s Suzie Q. it’s time to tap dance…..

Footnotes:

Costumes

Seeing as I didn’t officially take any costume, I did pretty well. Somehow the clothes I had turn into a myriad of personality disorders:

• Cloud moo moo land. No underwear, wet hair, Malaysian flower print moo moo (ref Simpsons), flip flops. Dazed look on face.
• Nora Batty. Pashmina wrapped like shawl, woolly hat, headtorch on top.
• Hindi cowgirl. Wet sarong done up like Indian lunghi ad tucked in. Vest. Standing on the corner I call the lost highway, waiting for no one.
• Whore of Babylon. Short hand-painted stretch dress, thai sparkly vest on top, mod jacket, bare legs, visible panties, diamante trainers. Stetson. One man in each hand.
• Cancer patient. Covering head entirely to avoid sun stroke. Not allowed on camera so as not to upset the masses.
• Mexican. Sarong round head, Stetson on. Jeans, strange Indian poncho garb.
• Middle aged mother – after going in the sea today I ended up with no knickers, a stripy skirt, wet tits and a cable knit cardigan.


Ideas for an act
Wash n blow job: Alternative to hair salon whereupon I wash yer widget, give it a quick suck, deposit the remnants into shot glasses or the fridge for todger jelly, then charge for the gobber and the shot, thus making money and keeping several people happy.

Afterthought

My lonely moments there had been dark. Thinking about my boy. Wondering when I’d stop obsessing about detail and face what is actually lurking beneath this small sailing vessel we’re floating in.

And actually, there are many thoughts, but thank god some thoughts for me and me alone are returning. The filthy masseuse’s hands have grounded me and I’m coming back to my shore. These six weeks are going to be useful.

And so now when I miss him, I miss him as he is now, where he is now, wherever that is. Not as we were, not the sentimentality and nostalgia. That’s not for summer…

The late, great, Kurt Vonnegut for you to finish:

1. Find a subject you care about.
2. Do not ramble, though.
3. Keep it simple.
4. Have the guts to cut.
5. Sound like yourself.
6. Say what you mean to say.
7. Pity the readers.

Mummy’s on father’s day….

Well blow me down, readers, it was alright! Woke up slightly foggy headed and constructed an unconvincing costume for the occasion.

Got the midday train. Father’s day. Rang father. Father hung up on me. Joke, apparently! Brilliant.

‘where are you off to?’ says he.

‘haywards heath to see a boy’

‘ooooooooooo’

At which point we entered the tunnel of doom and lost reception. I texted him and asked him for advice for the meeting of mummy. My mummy answered back,

‘just be yourself and listen when appropriate and be chatty like you normally do.’

Unconvinced. I text back that I want dad to give me some advice.

‘what problem?’ was what came back. Oh yes, retire and you drift through life like you’ve got no knickers on. Which, incidentally, I haven’t.

I get to the station, he will meet me. Car or foot, I ask, he doesn’t reply. Then honing round the corner comes a clapped out old mobile and he steps out of it, fur coat at the ready. Marvellous.

And mummy is in the front, (he failed his test). And she smiles at me and is sweet but a bit nervous…….almost excited……

So it turns out that I was some sort of welcome visitor to their ramshackle beautiful affair of a residence. Wooden panels had fallen off the side of the house, and the garden was free and beautiful.

There had I, images of sitting down to lunch. No chance. It was all ornaments and piles of paper. Wicked.

So the boy and I spent the day spray painting his van, playing with kittens and getting on. But unfortunately, not getting off. La la la la la, sure there’s no problem there…..it’s all good though, it’s not awkward, and mum comes and smoke rollies with us and tells us about mad relatives and how much she hates cleaning. And I just hope the fact we’ve hit it off like a fart to a flame is because she sees me as the daughter she never had, not the co-parent…

And now it’s time for dinner. We cook together, it’s late, and we decide the only option is sausage dicker…..have I mentioned the dish dicker? Samson and I invented it. It’s basically any food that is smeared with delight and baked in an oven. For example, chicken dicker, the original. Get some good breast, cover it in peppers, onions, capers, tomato and top it with torn mozzarella. Dribble over a dob of pesto. Shove it in the oven. Watch it bubble and dick. Serve with roasted sweet potato and olive salad. Shove in mouth. You too, can make dicker, spread the word.

The sausage dick we cooked was great. It had mashed potato topping – mummy’s idea, and we greedily feast upon it till it’s done. And mummy gets out her poetry and we read together, as a demented family. I use my snakey wiles and she lets me read some that the boy isn’t allowed to. It’s about groping, as far as I can muster.

Mum, (as I affectionately refer to her), tells me about this awful horsey woman who owes her money. I encourage her, she relents. As she describes the hag, I mouth ‘bitch’ in her face. She loves it, I’m saying what she’s thinking, and at least it wasn’t me, it was some other bitch she was talking about….

At one point during this exchange, as I stared intently at her, loverboy decides to toy with me and drops in a comment about schoolboys, in a voice that riddles me luscious, and I flash him a smile and some eyes as a Shakespearian soliloquy.

And then it’s youtube, harsh kisses and ‘see you when I get back’. And I get back, and we text. I love mummy, she loves me. He’ll miss me and dicker.

I’ll miss him……