Sham 66

Maybe the reason I am able to keep calm and carry on through all this turmoil is that huge parts of my life never felt real to me in the first place.  So much of what I have been, what I have done, the life I have lived was not for the likes of me.

I always suffered from Impostor Syndrome, that feeling that someone was going to tap me on the shoulder and explain that had been a dreadful mistake and that someone else was supposed to be in my seat.

So now it's all slipping away, and I am numb, watching it slide through my fingers like sand.

Veni, Vidi, Vendidi

I went to speak at a conference about vending machines today (yes, my life really is that exciting). My very first task in my very first full-time job was to choose and procure an automatic drink machine - however that was quite some time ago so I thought I'd better bone up on more recent developments.

I recalled being fascinated once by a vending machine at a motorway service station in Belgium that sold fries (with mayonnaise, bien sur).  Perhaps there is something more unusual?

Well, well, well. Not only can you buy crabs from a vending machine (yes, that's what's in the weird photo). I discovered you can also purchase from a machine:

• bread in a can
• porn videos
• pet rhinoceros beetles
• Smart cars
• 25lb sacks of rice
• eggs
• used schoolgirl panties

Yes, you read that right.  (You can insert your own tasteless Jimmy Saville joke here if you like).  Rather a surprise. In Japan, naturally. Pretty useless as a snack, I'd have thought: I bet they taste awful.

Anyway I decided to tweet about this, as a kind of off-the-wall trailer for my conference session.  I have now attracted quite a lot of new followers, not my usual sort. I don't think they'll stay long but it makes me feel popular, even if I know it's for all the wrong reasons. 

Once on my previous blog I put up a post, with picture, about some new red shoes I bought.  I got 5,000 hits in one day. I thought this was because I was coming up on shopping searches, but a kindly social media egg-spurt explained that it's about shoe-fetishists. Nowt so queer as folk, eh?

Coupling

Research this week tells us that men called Brian and women called Helen have the best credit ratings in the UK. Other research tells us that they live in Slough and drive a silver car. What very sensible people they must be. Are they terribly dull? Are they blissfully happy? And would that, if so, be happiness of a sensible, unquestioning, kind?

I used to have a terror of living a Helen-and-Brian life. But maybe it would be nice? I'm not sure.

Another couple, Vera and Maurice, have been married for 53 years. Every night they go to sleep hand-in-hand. If they wake up in the night, they hold hands until they fall asleep again. We know this because Vera phoned a radio programme to tell us.

I almost cried when I heard about Vera and Maurice  -  because I was so envious.

Prune

Seems like I have reached that time of life where I look in the mirror in the mornings and think, "Surely not".  Despite face creams, exercise and fresh air, facials and all the rest of it, my whole body seems to have drooped into a limp, disappointed slump of middle age.

I suppose this might be connected to the fact that I sometimes feel like a limp, disappointed middle aged woman  -  but I hate it. All my features are fading into sepia, so drained and washed out that you can hardly notice I'm there without at least a smear of lipstick and mascara to point you in the right direction. Yet I am so full of life, chock-a-block with ideas and urges, blood hot and busy in the rich reds and purples of my arteries and veins. On the inside I am as fresh as raw meat, as brightly hued as a jungle bird. My inner landscape is not the grey of a November Monday but greens, purples and yellows, the roar and splash of waterfalls, the searing orange lava of volcanoes.

I want to laugh, to shout, to run in the rain, roll in the leaves, tumble into bed. I want to sweat, to tremble, to bite, to curse, to sing. I do not want my film to fade to grey, I want full-on action, right to the credits. I want to die with my boots on, and preferably my suspenders and basque as well.

Meanwhile people around me are giving in, giving up, or giving themselves over to the temptation to become a modern-day vampire. As if drinking the kisses of younger women will be like supping at the spring of eternal youth. (I don't think this works. The physical contrast is so visible that for neither of you to remark on it becomes a burden. And you cannot find something on telly that you both enjoy, to entertain you in the inevitable "in between" times that a younger man doesn't need).

Don't write us off, these faded autumn leaves of women. We are smart, and funny, and sexy, with the joie de vivre of the last-chance saloon. I'm not going gently. No way.

Access All Areas

Two days of poetry readings as part of my local literature festival have been summarily cancelled.

For several years now, they have been held in the upstairs room of a local tea shop. Free entry as long as you buy a cuppa and a cake. Excellent poets, many of them extensively published, travel from all around the area to perform free of charge.

This year, a disability group has complained that the event is not fully accessible because of the stairs, and so it will not now take place. This is quite likely the group that previously led to the cancellation of another regular poetry event in a neighbouring town for similar reasons.

So now the event is equally inaccessible to everyone and we should all be equally happy with this outcome, I guess.

It's a tricky one, isn't it? I'm all for equal access, clearly.  But in my day job I have seen many businesses have to close down, and many landlords go bankrupt, because our country's property portfolio  -  sometimes many hundreds of years old  -  cannot always be adapted to meet the new requirements.  And as a poetry performer I have seen that only running readings that are fully accessible has the net effect of making live performance evenings less easy to hold and therefore over all less accessible.  A pub or tea shop can't give up it's main trading floor without charging a fee and therefore less events like our readings and poetry nights can take place.

Probably now I'll be hoisted up and made an example of, as if I were unsympathetic to the rights and indeed challenges of people with mobility issues. I know, I know, the problems we face in our family trundling about the place with a profoundly disabled child, his chair, his paraphernalia, his occasional disturbing seizures and (in my view) even more disturbing episode of random Exorcist-style projectile vomiting. I'm just saying, it's tricky to tell when something is right, and when doing what seems like the right thing leads to the wrong outcome.

Meanwhile in this politically correct day and age, discrimination and bullying of gingers continues unabated.  Yes I know we are ugly, and pale, and every freckle points to a soul that we have stolen with our evil carrot-headed mischief. And I had heard it rumoured that we smell.

In my day at school, gingers were reputed to smell of piss. Apparently that's not correct.  According to the latest teenage lore, we smell of cake - and not in a good way.

This is another thing I don't really understand. Oh my golly. I think I'll retreat to bed with a cup of tea and a gingerbread-person.