Canary Wharf. 18th February 2008

18th February 2008

Canary Wharf.

On Saturday we went to Canary Wharf. Abigail didn’t come because she had to work on her classics revision. Abigail went through her Classics revision book with me. ‘Look at that.’ she said,  pointing to a photograph of an ancient Greek statue. ‘It’s crap. It’s not even good and I am supposed to wax lyrical about the carving of the drapery. And look at this one. It’s rubbish and that one’s just plain scary.’  

I said I liked the discus thrower and that I liked Hera’s hairstyle.

‘Oh, that’s OK.’ she said ‘But apparently the torso’s all wrong on the discus thrower.’ 

Abigail is doing her homework because I said she couldn’t go out on Saturday night unless I saw some ‘demonstrable evidence of serious revision’. 

‘I do work.’ she said ‘In my bedroom.’

‘Well do it on the landing where I can see you.’ I replied. ‘I want you to make a serious effort to get those predicted three As.’

Abigail said ‘Why? I can’t really be bothered. I only need three Bs for Stalybridge. You always said that school is about education not exam results.’ 

I did say that, but actually I meant it was about both education and exam results. 

I said ‘ If you don’t do any revision then you won’t go out on Saturday and that’s final.’ I know I am pushing my luck talking to an 18 year old like that but luckily Abigail didn’t notice. So John, Maisie, Zac and me all went to Canary Wharf without her.

Canary Wharf isn’t very nice. There are no water features in the shopping centre. There are no plants and there is a huge police presence. We went to the Dockland’s Museum which seems to be largely about the history of black gay men, which seems strange and we went to Waitrose where you can buy some wine in a pretend wine cellar and sit on a barrel to drink it. We didn’t do that. John bought a Versace suit and then we came home.

Abigail was still on the landing hating classical statues when we got home and showed me all the revision she had done. Later she got ready and went out looking like a little witch. ‘Has Abigail gone?’ asked Maise.

‘Yes.’ I said.

‘Well, tell her to eat something tomorrow. Maisie said fixing me with an ice blue stare. ‘She looks all thin.’ 

19th February 2008 

Ski ing

TK Max

I am still pretending that I am going ski ing with Zac. All Zac’s friends went ski ing at half term. 

‘ All except Ned and Angus and the vomiting twins.’ I pointed out.

‘ Everyone else did. We never do anything. Why do we never do anything ? Angus is going to Paris and the vomiting twins have been to Japan and they’re not even rich.’

Anyway I am going to TK Max to see if there is any cheap ski wear. It would be very bad to buy a load of ski wear and then find that I can’t find a holiday but I think I really ought to go and see what’s available.

I went to the biggest TK Max because according to Ellis they have the largest selection of ski wear. I love TK Max because it’s like an auction house, mostly full of rubbish with the odd gem secreted away in a dark corner. I like bargain hunting and I also like being chatted up by sexy black men.

The best way to get chatted up by sexy black men is to look for designer coats in the L and XL section, that way you can be sure that the man will be tall and also interested in designer wear and therefore rather stylishly dressed. The best way to ensure that the man is black is to be me because they are the only sort of men who chat me up. 

I thought, initially, that my attractiveness lay in the well known fact that black men prefer the ‘fuller’ figure which would explain Vanessa Feltz’s many conquests. However, since my ski wear expedition and dramatic weight loss combo I have decided it’s because they are much less fussy than their white counterparts about the ‘fuller age’ which also explains the Vanessa effect.

Anyway, there I was looking at giant ski wear for Zac whilst checking that none of it looked at all ‘ gay ‘ because Zac has an aversion to anything that could be construed as ‘gay ‘ i.e. having any detailing, flashes, pink colouration, toggles e.t.c. when a lovely black man sidled up and said.

  ‘Hey, I think you should buy this.’ He held up a gorgeous pale pink number with lime green flashes and silver pocket flaps.

‘Mmmm.’  I said, pulling a great big black fur coat from the rail and holding it up ‘I think you should get this.’

He said  ‘Why?’

I said  ‘Well, because it’s gangsterish.’

He said ‘And does that do it for you? Gangsta ?’

And I said ‘ Umm, I think I’ll go and look at shoes.’ 

And he said ‘Can I come and look at them with you?’

And I said  ‘Errr no.’

I wish I’d said  ‘ Errr, yes.’

20th February 2008

Ill

I am so ill. After Christmas I went to the doctor with a mystery illness and she gave me some antibiotics. The illness became much less mysterious and I began to vomit like the vomiting twins. Bella was fairly sure that I had been poisoned and asked if I had drunk any tap water in the West End I said that no I hadn’t, because John always orders Chardonnay. 

I phoned the doctor who said that endromicine often had that effect and that why didn’t I send someone along to the surgery to pick up some others that were much less upsetting ? 

The replacement antibiotics only made me feel slightly ill and the underlying systemic bacterial attack subsided but I don’t think it was entirely wiped out because now I am very ill and I can’t go to The Brits.

I am very annoyed about The Brits because I had asked John to invite our friends Fran and Bill to be on our table as buffers against the terrifying Republic Media PR and they had agreed to come. Also Amy Winehouse will be singing and I love Amy Winehouse and afterwards we were going to a Sony BMG party. 

We would get into the Sony BMG party because Bill was on East Enders and John has a name in the music press and Fran used to work for Virgin and has contacts and John said not to worry he reckoned they could ‘ blag me in.’ 

Infact I wasn’t looking forward to being ‘ blagged in ‘ because one has to adopt exactly the right combination of insouciance coupled with quiet confidence to impress the bouncers. This is quite difficult after a few  tequila slammers when I am more likely to adopt the attitude of midshipman on the Cutty Sark running down wind in a stiff breeze with all sails set.

Anyway I am not going, because yesterday I awoke at 2.am. I would not normally wake at 2.am, I tend to favour 5.am, but John came in from a gig at the Roundhouse with his friend Digby Ogg and woke me up.

Upon waking I realised that the sore throat that had been developing during the day had morphed into the most extraordinary neck pain and ear pain and that I couldn’t swallow and had to dribble. I also couldn’t speak. It was very bad and I needed to have some Chloraseptic quickly because that is the only thing that could possibly help. There was no Chloraseptic which is incomprehensible because (a)I know that there was some last time I looked in the medicine cabinet. (b) no one in the family has had a sore throat recently and (c) it’s too disgusting for recreational drinking unlike Benylin. I shouted at John, even though I couldn’t speak, and he found me some pills called Dihydrocodeine so I took some of them and spent the night sitting up in bed, dribbling and feeling very spacey.

This morning I went to the doctor and showed her my throat and she gave me some antibiotics. I have to take 8 every day for two weeks and if my throat closes up I have to come back and get some other antibiotics. If I go to hospital I will get C Diff and die because I am now officially immune to all antibiotics. 

I have just phoned Fran and told her that I can’t come to The Brits and she was very sad. I am sad too and I also feel very spacey and weird. The antibiotics have not made me feel sick though which is good. I feel very very sleepy. I think I’ll go to bed now and have a little rest....

9.00pm. Oh God I have just woken up. I think I have missed The Brits. Where is Maisie? 

Abigail informs me that Maise is fine and that she had given her supper, that Zac is watching a Champion League, or some such, at Otto’s and that she tried to wake me when she came in from school but I didn’t stir and ‘Why?’ she asks am I taking Dyhydrocodeine? 

‘I am not taking Dyhydrocodeine.’ I say, ‘I am taking antibiotics. These ones actually.’ And I show her the box which is lying on my bed. Gosh, I do feel weird I am slurring my words and my hands feel all heavy.

‘Those are Dyhydrocodeine.’ says Abigail beginning to look concerned. I like it when she looks concerned, she gets this dear little frown line between her eyes just as she did when she was about 5. I feel quite relaxed really, perhaps I should go back to sleep.

‘ Nope, I say blearily ‘Those are penicillin. If they were Dyhydrocodeine I would be dead, because I’ve taken 8.’

‘You’ve taken 6.’ says Abigail and shows me the blister pack. 6 are missing. I feel a bit ill, the pack looks exactly like my antibiotics and I wasn’t wearing my glasses when I took them.

Now I know what happened to Heath Ledger, perhaps I should go and get my stomach pumped. Ooh, in The Sun today I read about a man who went to the doctor with a sore throat and that very evening he died ! 

I must be careful.

Ha ! I didn’t die of massive drugs overdose. I think John might die of massive alcohol overdose. He went to the Sony BMG party and drank mojitoes. Ha ! I didn’t drink anything and my sore throat is nearly gone. I love my immune system, I also love penicillin although obviously I haven’t had quite as many of those as I should have done.

Sylvie came and stayed the night and she and Raffy watched The Brits on Telereplay Television. You get a much better view on television than you do on one of those round tables. I was quite jealous of John and Fran and Bill though. Sharon Osbourne was so shy-making. I must remember never to be drunk when presenting a national awards ceremony, one’s children would be mortified. Amy Winehouse has a lot of hair like a Barbie and was very thin. 

Maisie and Sylvie told me about a game they play at school called Rehab. Billie gives out drugs and Maisie hands out brochures to The Priory and Sylvie just pretends to be drunk. Cool.

21st February 2008

Survival

Playground Games

22nd February 2008

Nails

I took Sylvie and Maisie to Wood Green Shopping City to get our nails done. 

It was fun at Shopping City. We parked in Iceland carpark and bought some ‘Buy one, get two free’  pizza slices to take home with us. Abigail says that Iceland is single handedly responsible for the obesity epidemic in this country.

After that we went to get our nails done. My nails are very bitten and the girl putting my new false ones on, said that in Vietnam where she came from a mother would slap her child for biting her nails like that. I am glad I am not Vietnamese. My nails are very long with white tips I think they look quite interesting, Maisie’s nails are dark blue with green palm leaves and Sylvie’s are purple with blue splashes like a tropical sea.

Sylvie told me that sometimes, at school, she gets called a ‘loner’ and that when she asked her mum what a ‘loner’ was her mum told her what a ‘boner’ was instead. She laughed so much when she was telling me, that the girl painting her nails had to stop while she recovered herself. Later Maisie asked me what a ‘'boner’ was. I told her what a ‘loner’ was instead and she said ‘Now you’re just being silly.’

When we came home Maisie showed her nails to Abigail who said “ OK, Maisie actually is a black woman.’ She also said, ‘Do you know there are 400 calories in this pizza and that each slice contains half of your recommended daily saturated fat intake ?’ 

John says my nails look horrible. 

22nd February 2008

Zac’s Friends

Liz Green at the Whitechapel Gallery

Zac’s friends came to stay the night. They are called the vowels because their names are : Alec, Ed, Isaac, Otto and Umberto, commonly known as Umm. Zac said ‘Can we have chips please?’ So he and Umm and me went with Evil to the Chinese chip shop.  

I bought 6 portions of chips. The Chinese chip shop man was very impressed by Zac’s height. ‘Have you more children?’ he said

‘Oh yes’, I replied smugly  “My eldest is 18 but she is quite a bit shorter than Zac, luckily.

‘You had your children very young then?’ said the Chinese chip shop man.

I was beginning to like him by now ‘Yes,’  I said  ‘I was 12.’

He stared at me as though I were quite mad  I don’t think you were 12.’ he said crossly ‘I think you were late teens.’ I still like him very much. 

Later John and I went out leaving the boys with a can of lager and a pile of chips each, jollily slaughtering ‘aliens’. Maisie sat happily amongst them watching the fun. Abigail had gone to a party. I asked Alec to look after Maisie as he is the kindest vowel and he promised that he would.

John and I went to see a singer called Liz Green at the Whitechapel Gallery. It was very strange. We gathered in a small dark room with a bar to one side and Liz Green sang to a guitar in a whooping contralto. She stood on a table, clapped and sang acapello. She made us join in choruses and she told jokes. A man behind me said ‘God, this is awful.’ I thought it was quite good. 

The audience was weirdly retro. The men wore thick rimmed glasses with hair brushed forwards and had sideburns longer than their ears. The women wore trendy lumber jack shirts, had scruffy ponytails and lashings of eye liner. I felt as though I was in a scene from Don’t Look Back and was rather disappointed that Bob Dylan didn’t show up and that we weren’t all in black and white.

When we got home Umm was retching into a bucket. Lager cans littered the playroom floor and Alec was clutching half a bottle of vodka. ‘Where did you get all this beer?’ I asked, holding Umm’s gently lolling head. ‘I only bought you a can each.’

Zac said they’d been down to Sanjays Shack because they never asked for ID in there. Umm giggled and retched a bit more. Alec said he couldn’t drink beer as it would ruin his figure and Otto said it wasn’t really their fault that Umm had a weak head. I stayed until I was sure that Umm wasn’t going to die and put him to bed  on the sofa. I told the boys not to drink any more and went to check on Maisie.

Maisie was asleep in her bed. Moonlight shone through her uncurtained bedroom window and a sweet smile played on her lips. I think she had a lovely evening.