Cherries On Top

So here, in no particular order, are the reasons I like living in our quiet Yorkshire town:

1. 1.  Top-notch fish and chips. And mushy peas. The default fish is haddock (rather than cod, as in the south). When you reach the front of the queue, instead of reciting your order in full you just say one word -”once” - in as grunty a tone as possible. They say, “mushy peas with that?” and you nod. A bag containing all the aforementioned meal components is then pressed into your hand. This appeals to my minimalist inclinations, as well as my tastebuds.
2. Red telephone boxes.  
3. Friendly neighbours. The lady on one side of us gives me plants for the garden and women’s magazines. The other week, the man on t’other side took pity on my cack-handed attempts to trim the hedge without severing my arm, and came round and did it for me. I gave him a hanging basket to say thank you - I think this act marked a new milestone in my grown-upness.  Read more
   
   
   

more cat pictures

Another week, another Caitlin Moran column. I didn’t get to snort my tea over the keyboard this time around - but that was only because we’ve run out of milk. I snorted in spirit, at least.

This latest Times offering muses upon Brangelina’s domestic bliss and their decision to seek a new nanny:

There will be many who boggle at the recent lifestyle choices of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. After all - and this is a question equally applicable to either Pitt or Jolie - what is the point of pulling one of the hottest people in the world, totally getting them to take their clothes off in front of you and everything, and then ruining it by moving the cast of Oliver! into the next bedroom? I do not wish to be crude here, but Pitt and Jolie are not, currently, living in Goodtime Sexyland - tumultuously pounding their way across their linen in an endless, oceanic rumpfest. No.

At 9pm - the end of Location, Location, Location - Brad will wake from a dribbly, snorty doze and say “Oh, sorry”, and Angelina will say “We could at least try”. There will then be the tremulous undoing of the top pyjama button - before the cry of “Daddy! I can’t find Honk-Honk!” decisively snuffs out their guttering candle of desire for another day.

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So the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology has published a study of women who resort to a website called Women on Web for abortion medicines. For £55 a time, these women receive mifepristone pills and misoprostol pills in the post. When taken in combination the pills result in a terminated pregnancy, and they can be used up until the ninth week.

However, the study also showed that 11 per cent of the women needed subsequent surgical procedures, due to incomplete procedures or excessive bleeding.  Now anti-abortion campaigners have voiced their concerns. “This is very worrying indeed”, they have said. “”It represents further trivialisation of the value of the unborn child. It’s like taking abortion into the shadows”.

Now then, would you be surprised to learn that the women who resort to this Women on Web site are Read more

I always read Caitlin Moran in The Times - and this week’s column about Amy Winehouse made me snort tea over my keyboard.

Her central thesis is that Amy Winehouse has joined some notional Public Figures Cartoon Network in my head, along with Keef Richards, Hunter S. Thompson and Boris Johnson.

She writes:

Winehouse’s life doesn’t upset me any more. This is because, in my mind, every one of her days ends with the credits “©Hanna-Barbera 2008″. Crack, hospital, violence, husband in jail - you might as well try to make me worry about the misadventures of Top Cat. From what I can make out, she exists on one meal a day - Nik-Naks and Soleros, purchased from a petrol station at 5am - wears ballet slippers in winter, and lives in a bin in Camden. You see. Not real. She’s Pippi Bongstocking. Little Orphan Gram-ie.

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Dear Jude Law,

I am writing to you further to reports in today’s newspapers, regarding your “friendship” with the young model Lily Cole.  Apparently the cherubic 20-year-old has been spotted emerging from your Maida Vale bachelor pad in a “bare-legged” and “dishevelled” condition, the day after you wined and dined her in London’s famous Theatreland.

I would like it if you did not wine and dine Lily Cole. Not only are you knocking on for twice her age, but she seems to be quite nice and wholesome. And with her ginger ringlets and her doll face, she looks about 12.

You, on the other hand, are an ageing lothario with an alleged penchant for wife-swapping. And let’s not forget Nannygate. I acknowledge that in bygone times, you were AlphaHunk. However, you don’t appear to be a very attractive person anymore. This isn’t down to the ravages of time so much - after all, it takes more than a receding hairline to obliterate a groundswell of female affection. Read more

 No wonder people here are being encouraged to move to Canada.

It’s that time of year again: MOT week. I was amazed when I moved to America and discovered that cars there didn’t have to be tested, approved and stamped as roadworthy on an annual basis. (Mind you, given the propensity of my American monstermobile to break down on snowy mountainsides, in scorching deserts and at remote gas stations, I am not saying that this was a good thing.) Back in the UK July has rolled around and as a result, I’m doing the annual rounds of local mechanics.

My car is 23 years old, has a retail value of approximately $400* and drives like a dream. It is, however, ill-furnished for the rigours of the modern MOT. The local Kwik-Fit was the first to take it in. They decided that the car was not permitted to grace British roads for the following reasons: an “excessively pitted” front brake disc, a baldy tyre and rear shock absorbers with “negligible damping effect”. The mechanics informed me, with lots of sad head-shaking and “Oh, your poorly little Mazda” comments, Read more

I must have tuned into the wrong concert broadcast last night. Today’s reports of Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday tribute bash in Hyde Park overfloweth with praise for Troubled Amy Winehouse (TM), who led the finale performance of Free Nelson Mandela.

She was tan and radiant or remarkably tanned and glowing, depending on which version you read. She impressed the crowd with her powerful vocals, and was back to something like top form.  

Er, really? Watching from the comfort of my sitting-room, what I viewed went roughly as follows:

Emaciated woman has taken to the stage in a black and white mini-dress. Read more

From Wife in the North’s blog.

…They certainly leave a better aftertaste than the kind offer I had yesterday from Take a Break to run the piece that appeared in The Sunday Times. The message was passed on from my publishers through my agent, offering £500 for an 800-word extract from the book - the thing is, they would like a photograph of me holding my stillborn son. Apparently, the journalist who made the offer is happy to ask me for it herself.