Be Careful What You Wish For...

So - as you all know I have had some 'issues' with the hall I use for my teaching.  Issues including fig-roll stealing-Orange Club raffling-line hopping-chain smoking ancients, a roof that leaks because some scumbag stole all the lead, a toilet a heavily pregnant lady got locked in, a man in a Stetson who subtly threatened me over my mis-use of dishwasher detergent and that's before we get to being serenaded by faulty fire alarms and an intruder alarm that seems to wait for me to relax before causing my near collapse.  And so it was with some joy that I found out that for one of my recent sessions a different hall had been booked! A much newer posher generally all round 'lovelier' venue.  Wooo hooo! Good bye ancients, good bye handwritten threats on Sarah Lee Gateaux, good bye local youths peering in the the windows while I hold up placards of vaginas.   From now on everything will go swimmingly.....

It all started well.   

I had to pick up the fob - yes FOB, electronic automatic device thing - from a highly ordered awfully polite lady called Margaret.  Nobody was smoking a roll up or wearing a Stetson or warning about local rituals.  All I had to be aware of was that the lights would come on automatically when I swiped my fob.  Imagine that!! From the darkest depths of a 1970s pub carpet and flickering strip lights to AUTOMATIC ILLUMINATION. 

WOW.  

And then I got there.  

And it was all incredibly well kept and incredibly clean and errr incredibly ordered.  Everywhere I looked there were signs and signs and well more signs. And orders and instructions.  I began to feel that I had been overtaken by some kind or higher order.  The Order of Margaret and her Kin.  

It started at the door......

And continued inside.....where we were helpfully shown just exactly where the light switch was (but sadly not  how to operate it - personally I think 'press here for illumination' is needed you know, just in case).  We were also shown just exactly what doors not to go out of, unless the place set ablaze (god forbid). 

And the feeling of being in quite another universe just grew and grew..... I mean I understand the dangers of over stacking chairs, many halls have a sign saying 'MAX 6 CHAIRS IN EACH STACK' but here we have quite a different level of order.  We have chairs segregated on grounds of whether or not they have arms.  We have numbers both as numerical symbols and as written words. We have a picture of a chair just in case you were previously unsure as to what one looked like.  And of course best of all we have an arrow showing you just exactly where the corner is.  Because corners of rooms, you know what? They can be illusive.

At this point I decided I needed a cup of tea but on entering the kitchen I was relieved I was not classified as a 'weekend user' (although I will confess that in past I have used many things to get through the weekend - particularly if it involves rain and small children) but was fascinated to find there was an entire drawer dedicated to 'teaspoons'.  That's a whole lotta teaspoons. 

On turning round in the kitchen I was alarmed to find that there are apparently mysterious people out there who go round adding random tubes of Savlon to other people's First Aid kits.  You have been warned.....

So with that in mind, I went to set up my refreshments on the tea trolley but then decided maybe not.... I did not want to risk anyone moving it... 

Groping for the kettle I kept clear of all other switches.... 

And then went looking for the mugs.  Ironically I could not find any mugs for quite some time, but I sure knew where everything else was.  Seriously this is just a SMALL selection of the labelling of the kitchen. I was worried I'd wear my phone battery out if I took the full portfolio. It was like someone's John Lewis wedding list got cut up and laminated.   Boy do they love sealing things up in wipe proof plastic sheaths.....

These aren't just platters - these are OVAL platters...

Woah! The photo below stopped me short mid-photoshoot......  Hmm so if it looks like a cupboard but it is NOT a cupboard what is it? And if it's not just a pretend cupboard that isn't a cupboard so doesn't open why can't you try to open it and merely fail and think 'oh it's one of those silly pretend cupboards they put in to make it look neater'??  Now clearly I could have answered this by disobeying the sign and just trying to open it. But I didn't.  I actually got scared by all the signs.  I felt a sort of creeping dread.  A dread that I would uncover something I really shouldn't.  That curiosity really could kill the cat (or in fact me).  I feared I might find the body parts of someone from the Bridge club or some kind of equipment that gets used when everyone else things it's the over 70's Short Mat Bowls.  Or maybe, just maybe, another really angry sign saying 'we told you not to open this cupboard and now the curse of a thousand years shall descend on your family'.  Actually I think maybe I already must have opened that cupboard.....Anyway - I started thinking about Ancient Egypt and tombs and those scary beetle things in that Mummy film and I left the cupboard that isn't a cupboard well alone but have annoyingly pondered on it ever since.....

You think I'd use your dishwasher?? No offence but on the evidence presented I think I'd like to speak to my Lawyer first and you know, get a kind of pre-nuptial drawn up before I enter into that kind of usage of your facilities.....

See I told you it would get complicated.....

Okay okay.....

Yeah probably while you scan my retinas and close down the CCTV file....

You know what I said about the dishwasher? Well it counts for the heating system too.  At the other place - the crazy hall - you just simply turn the radiator up.  Reach down. Grab a knob. Turn it.  End of story.  Unless you get too hot. Then you turn it back again.  Simple. 

Sorry? You want me to take a blue mop for a walk? Okay okay... Does it get a biscuit afterwards if it behaves? 

If only I was making this up.... 

By this point I had reached the stage of rash rebellion.   When I heaved those goddam heavy tables back into that cupboard do you know what? I let them fall in what ever direction they wanted to and there may - I say MAY have not been 8 to the left and 7 to the right.  It could have been 7 to the left and 8 to the right.  Am I bovvered? No.  I have risen from my oppression and am now rebelling. 

And thus it continued.  

The couples arrived and sat in a kind of frightened silence. Nobody even wanted to make a cup of tea.  It was then that I knew.  However insane things were back at the other hall, however weird and crazy and 'not like you might have hoped' do you know what? It was where I belonged. The chaos suited me. I was born to cope with it.  Born to catch drips in buckets or shout at Panto groups to shut up or confront old people about their smoking and biscuit theft.   So thank you Margaret and Co - you keep a truly lovely hall - you really do - but you are BLOWING MY MIND WITH YOUR SIGNS.  I'm outta here.

And so it was a week later I was back where I belonged..... standing next to a man in a Stetson who warned me about the Christening party coming in at 1pm and the left over food from the 'gone wrong wedding' the night before that was cluttering up the kitchen area and reminded me about the dishwasher fluid.... 

I never thought I'd say it but I was glad to be back.....

Tweet

The Dog Days Really ARE Over

So, as I hinted in my last post, my mum's other dog died. This post will therefore contain potentially offensive subject matter about dead dogs. Again. You have been warned.

Now the poor thing was about 110 years old and had already survived cancer and a stroke which left it lying under a garden shrub for days on end and walking sideways evermore cannoning of furniture like a staggering drunk (but yet always daftly happy) so it wasn't ENTIRELY unexpected, but all the same for someone as bereaved as my mum to basically lose the last thing she lives with, it was pretty sad all round.

The dog of course chose to die on my birthday.

Well done dog.

Bravo.

I shall toast you every time I get another bloody year older and remember the time you ate one of my best 'going out shoes' when you were a puppy and I nearly killed my brother for leaving my bedroom door open.

Luckily I didn't know about the dog dying because I was on a windy cliff top with my ex-husband and two children out of mobile phone range for the entire week.

I can't say I'm entirely unhappy about this coincidence as it did mean my brother was the one who got the 7am phone call informing him of the dog's demise which is probably fair as I had to get the previous dog actually killed which is like SO much worse surely (stamp foot, toss hair and sulk in true sibling fashion). All he had to do was turn up once it this one was already dead and sort it out.....

I asked him to guest spot on here and tell it how it was but he declined so I'll have to do it for him and try to do his Services to Deceased Dogs proud.

So anyway he dragged his wife - his poor long suffering wife (god love her, her family are so erm normal compared to ours, just nice lovely people. Since being with my brother there are things she has been exposed to by our family that NO woman should have to suffer including my dad's testicles, a horse trying to die under a fence, various people's arses, way too many funerals and now THIS) and baby out of bed and went to bury the dog.

On arrival the dog was lying in the doorway between the kitchen and lounge.

'Right mum, you best call Jonny to come and dig the hole'.

'Oh I have, he's gone away, he's not back today'.

'Argh'.

'Can't you just leave her there? You know for a few days? JUST LEAVE HER' (mother starts up a somewhat theatrical wail a bit like they do in the Middle East).

My brother nervously exchanges glances with his wife.

'Err mum, you can't actually LEAVE the dog there for like DAYS. What are we meant to do? Step over it every time we want to move rooms? Let the children use it as a climbing frame? 'Come on kids! Who needs a teddy when you've got a real life dog - and it's guaranteed safe to play with! And yes that is real life poo coming out of it's butt'. NO NO NO NO NO. I'll dig the bloody hole - like NOW'.

And thus my brother found himself in a small corner of Somerset trying to dig a big hole for a big dead dog. On rock hard summer baked soil.

A few hours (yes hours) in he was in despair and needing further guidance. Where can one turn to on the matter of dog burial? It's not like you can call up one of your many friends who specialise in grave digging during their leisure times. Or get a book out the library. Or call a charitable helpline (and even if you could, like most charitable helplines it would probably say 'thank you for your call, you really must be desperate, however due to lack of funding our offices are currently closed, we are open between the hours of 10.30 and 11 every other Tuesday if the month starts with an M when we would be happy to take your call. You can not leave a message. If it's that bad there's always The Samaritans. Goodbye').

Nope - in a situation like this there can be no answer but Google. And thus he found himself locked in the toilet, Googling 'how to bury a dead dog' on his phone.....

Interesting facts which I can pass on to you all, should you be in a similar situation soon and not able to Google, is that the dog should be placed 4 foot down and about 5 inches below the surface you should place a layer of chicken wire to deter scavengers. Lets be frank here - the last thing my mother needed was the dead dog's head turning up on her garden bench 'Godfather stylee' several weeks later.

And so back he went, with the help of an axe and some wire (god knows where he got the wire from) and dug and dug and dug...

Three hours (yes three hours) later he was looking at this:

(Note: the white fluffy at the base of the picture is NOT the dead dog. That would be sick. It's my brother's live dog, Mildred, who came to inspect proceedings and probably left with more questions than answers).

So he now had a hole big enough for the dog. Actually looking again at that picture even I will admit that's pretty impressive work. It looks the work of a frantic and desperate man. A man driven by the desire to stop his mother turning a decaying dog into a piece of interior design.

He went to retrieve the dog.

By this time his poor wife had given up trying to restrain their 18 month old son and had had to put him down on the floor and for 3 solid hours dissuade him from climbing aboard the dead dog for a ride (remember the dog is lying in the doorway between the two rooms which make up the downstairs of my mum's house - it's not like you could shut the door.....).

Time had ticked on and rigamortis had set in.

This was not just a big dead dog. It was a big stiff dead dog.

And thus my poor sister-in-law found herself having to assist in making a shroud and wrestling the great big stiff dog into a wheelbarrow. I'm sure she's had better days. They then had to get the dog in the hole which posed several more logistical problems due to it's inflexibility.

But bravo - the dog is now buried beneath the apple trees and my mum is happy about that (well clearly she's not overly happy - she'd rather the dog wasn't dead but you get the idea).

I was informed of this when I returned from my holiday whilst standing on a damp recently washed patch of carpet.....

So that's it then - no more dogs. No more dog related fun and games. I for one will be glad of the rest.

Except tomorrow my mum is getting a puppy.....

ARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Tweet