No, not a mirror – the real thing

I ask myself many questions. Here is the one which puts the lid on them all. Let’s hope the vessel is not a faulty pressure cooker. Or we’ll have to redecorate the kitchen. Maybe have plastic surgery.

How would I see myself if I met me?

Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear. If this isn’t a mind blowing hammer to your mind nothing ever will be.

I always wanted to frighten myself. Now I have.

Talk about fly on the wall (different concept). Which I’d love to be. Just out of reach of the whatever that plastic contraption to flatten flies is called. Do you remember, and you will if you had relatives with farm house kitchens, those terrible sticky tapes? Still don’t know what’s worse for a fly: Sticky tape or a spider’s web. I myself, if I were a fly, would opt for the spider’s net. Whilst struggling and then dead at least someone would benefit (the spider). Call it recycling.

How do we see ourselves? Many things may send you, screaming, to the woods but few other questions will. Think about it. There you are: Say at some dinner party and someone introduces you to you. If, by now, you aren’t frightened, as to the answer, you are invincible and may I congratulate you that you are not able to see what’s in front of you.

I’d love to meet myself. After the inital blip (most my friendships start with blips – ask my two husbands; you couldn’t make it up unless you were an accomplished story teller) I dare say we (that’s myself and me) would cross swords. What they call in sports: A friendly. Just to stake out the terrain. Get a feel. But then what? I have thought about this, recently, many a time. I cannot get my brain round it. It is crazy. Looking from the outside in. From the inside out. Don’t overlook this in your equation. Not only are you meeting you, you are also meeting you.

Let this fester.

Delighted, I am sure,

Ursula

Pus

Sweethearts, I am so happy to finally work into my writing:

The boil is lanced. I always wanted to say that. Now, legitimately and truthfully, I can.

“The boil is lanced.” I myself have never had a boil. But I know a woman who did. In an impossible place of her body. Don’t look now. To the mind of a young child (that’s me) it was, like most of the adult world, mysterious. It involved a home visit from a doctor, plenty of hot water and then I was taken outside so I was spared the scream (when the boil was lanced). That’s the trouble – and a lot of adults don’t understand it: Keep something from a child and it’ll grow into a giant or a gigantic memory or a nightmare. Yes, the whispers. Adults whisper. And think children don’t hear. But children’s hearing is still fresh and unadultered. And even if they can’t make sense of the heard they will sure remember.

Where were we? Boils. Thank you to all my stalwart friends who are mature beyond their years (that’s – by way of example – BHB, Magpie, not least Phil who will not spare himself, my son and everyone else ever so patient trying to release bees in my bonnet and giving my heated temperament the wide berth it needs to burn itself out). The one I still need to work on is Jean aka Cheerful Monk. Her vision is not myopic but rosily bent nevertheless. A type of American astigmatism  (insert smiley to soften blow).

Yes, so that is the end of that saga. Big sigh of relief. Strange how one can suddenly turn a corner. Since we are giving out Oscars a big thank you to my computer who kept crashing for the last 24 hours thus preventing me from my usual giving hasty answers and long explanations to those who commented yesterday. Thank you all. Kick ass is what sometimes sends pus the only way to go. Away.

Hugs and kisses

U

Drawing a line ————————————————————————————-.

Hippos (short for Hypocrisy)

Phil, do not worry if you can’t keep up with the saga. If the voices weren’t so shrieking most people would go to sleep during a Wagner. Not because the story isn’t interesting but because it goes on FOREVER.

Fridays: The Consortium. Today’s subject: The kindness of strangers. Don’t make me laugh.

Some of you the genuine article. You know, people like you and me, good bits, bad bits. Warts. No warts. Enter Con and GM. Holier than thou. Not a blemish.  Mother and Father of the Consortium. Always. Dear god in heaven. The pious and self congratulating. So you, Con, want to be treated like you treat others? Well, how about going back in time? How sweet you were, Con. How sweet. Walking all over me, or at least trying to. Not by reasoning. Not by intelligent exchange of argument. Oh no. By making my son’s mother into a man (repeat question: What’s wrong with being a man?), by doubting my identity, my name, accusing me of lying and worse. Yes, Conrad, the kindness of strangers indeed. I will not let this rest till I have a PUBLIC apology from both you and GM. You once, feebly, offered one (was it in response to a private email of mine when I felt I had overstepped the mark in a public posting of mine – AND apologized to YOU?). What a laugh. Me apologizing to you. Still, there is always kindness, isn’t there? Amends to be made.

You know what stinks to high heaven about you and Grannymar? In unequal measures? You don’t [know]? No, I don’t think you did/do.

Treat others like you want to be treated. Insert derisory snort. Dearest sweetest GM; Is that (to only give a recent example of your kindness) why you let a salesman at your doorstep, you full well knowing that you have no intention to buy from him whatever his wares, waste his time letting him give you his full spiel only to humiliate him? And then proudly blog about your KINDness? Wow. What a wonderful human being you are. Let’s hope you’ll never have to stand out there being treated as you treat others.

As I said yesterday, and I am a little spent on the subject, if the two of you only had the gumption to admit to the vendetta you played out against me we could all rest in peace. For those not in the know but up for a bit of soap opera look no further than my first entry on this blog soon followed by another under the title CCC (Conrad’s Code of Conduct). Yes, Conrad’s Code of Conduct. The kindness of strangers. Indeed. Wonder what you will do with your last twenty pence/cents.

U

Here is to you

Before I answer the rather perceptive and witty comments on my last few posts let me ask you a burning question:

Is it, morally/ethically, acceptable to expose a, say, I don’t know, 64 to 69 year old woman for the fraud she is? Should we leave the old alone? Is it an insult to them to take them to task? Why do old people think they can get away with anything? Why do they demand respect, yet behave like imbeciles?

This is addressed to a woman, who called me “That Woman” some two years ago, or is it three, maligned me, badly and, worse, behind my back. I have waved many a white flag since. To no avail. She wants me off her, as she calls her blogging chums, playground. She is what I’d call PA, possessive aggressive. Why doesn’t she just come clean and tell me to fuck off because she doesn’t like me? Well, Dearest Sweetest Heart, this may come as a surprise to you: We don’t need to love each other in order to  be civil. And you may spout your many sweet tale but one thing you are NOT: Civil. And Henry Kissinger would have never employed you either. Or he might have done on strength of the front you put up and fired you before your apprenticeship was up.

I have tried, oh you the unnamed. How “delighted” you were, weren’t you, when yesterday I called your bluff on someone else’s blog. You had little choice but to acknowledge me. How it must have pained you. Even then you called me a “comment” rather than by my name, the one you know perfectly well. Maybe Ramana, or one of your American chums, will enlighten you why there can never be world peace if some Irish woman doesn’t have it in her heart to talk to me.

As to your posting today, and thank you David for that, you once admitted that you were crap at maths: So remember: 100 % is like 360 degrees. Two plus two makes five in your book. That is why you – by your own calculation – rank so high in bullshitting (103 %) and, more importantly, and you are most accomplished at it, 118 % in kissing ass. Let’s expand on kissing ass: You do – judging by the comments you leave on those blogs worthy of your aggrandisement. And you do not expect anything less from anyone else. OTT. Over the top indeed.

Sorry to disappoint.

U

PS What was the question: Should we spare the old or is 68 the new 42?

Tall tails

Choose your friends wisely. Particularly when given to fainting.

It will, immeasurably, add to my mystique that I can now claim that one of my correspondents, BHB, close to my heart, let her cat out ca 2 in the morning; the cat, half way up the tree, consequently eaten by a coyote. How romantic is that? Anyone can go all Little Red Riding Hood, out in the woods, with her little basket, and ask the wolf in bed and in granny’s clothing: “Why are your arms so hairy?” To have your cat devoured by a coyote raises the stakes.

Hope the cat was fat.

U

Don’t bank on it

Am in repose (a state of calm and peace).

Have decided that I live in the wrong time. It’s all very well not to be plagued by cow pox after Jenner squashed them. I have missed my boat. Just contemplated Virginia Woolf and the stones in her pocket before she entered the stream. And no, I am not suicidal. You do have to admire the woman’s forethought. Imagine she’d changed her mind half way into the river – minus the rocks. That would have been me: Result: Zilch. I’d still be alive. Only wet. With a lot of explaining to do.

I hate water. Always have. Not water you wash yourself and surroundings with. Just water. Deep. Swim across a lake. Don’t know what’s lurking down there. Try and think of other things – like the shore. Try not to think that you will have to swim back across same lake. Why do you do this? To please your grandfather, and anyway a sense of adventure (yes, I know I said it yesterday) bred  in my bone. In truth I wish I lived in Victorian times, with a corset stringing me up so tightly the slightest (e)motion would make me faint. Smelling salts. Gently lifted onto the sofa. Everyone (mainly the paid to do so) fawning to my every sigh and whim.

There is an author whose heroine I could have been and made him even greater than he already is. Yes, Dickens too, Though he is not my first choice. But he’d have loved me. As much as he loved any of his characters. I wish I were Dickens myself. His output. And that was before typewriters. Instead of which I am … in repose. Neither is my phone working. I can receive calls, but can’t call out. Post tele philosophy. Have added to my will that I wish to be buried (not burnt, buried) with a phone – surely someone will keep my credit topped up.

U

Sweet innocence

What took me so long?

My son thinks that if his mother were an eskimo anyone could sell me ice. Maybe. Who knows.

Unlike most people in the UK I actually answer the phone with my name.

Phone rings. I answer: “Ursula …. speaking.” Answer: ” Can I please speak to Ursula ….?” “Yes, speaking.”

Remember: We have established that the caller is speaking to me.

Enter 1984, Big Brother is watching you, Orwell. I haven’t got the faintest idea who is calling me, only to be inundated with questions like: What’s your address, your maiden name, your mother’s maiden name, your pet’s name, your date of birth,  keep going …

Are these people ticking ok? So I, being friendly and forgiving of those in call centres ask, politely, and before answering their questions, who I am talking to. Here we enter the sublimely ridiculous: I am being told that,  for my security,  they first need to verify my identity in order to tell me why they are calling. Come again?

I put my foot down today, gently, politely. No more of this nonsense.

Whoever called me yesterday and today, twice in a row, trying to elicit rather personal information: I am sorry but please do tell your management that this is not the way forward. From now on I refuse to enter any such exchange unless you tell me your shoe size and why I have to make sense of incomprehensible accents.

Excellent. And it’s only lunchtime.

U

Grey to me, gray to you

It’s annoying when you think you are going against a trend – which is my want – only to find some fashion having caught up with you before you’ve had a chance to  be different.

No sooner have I bemoaned my lack of grey/gray hair (I want to be the next Susan Sontag and her white streak) no sooner does The Times inform me that young women do now frequent the same hairdressers in the finest of London as I used to before I headed for impecunity (it’s not funny: Falling from a height does have the ouch factor – will return to subject of poverty another time, and don’t give me genteel). Yes, grey/gray. So youngsters in their bloom will initiate grey. Fine. Do what you must. I have always gone with the flow and have not ever ever ever in my life let my hair be coloured. No henna or platinum for me. Genes gave me what genes see fit and who am I to argue? Highlights? Streaks? Go and find another victim. Still a good haircut is a must. And that’s where splits end.

I am with Geroge Clooney on going gray gracefully.

Yes, so one minute the young dye their hair grey, the next (yesterday) I learn that a new pill (naturally by L’Oreal) has been invented to keep gray at bay. So far so nothing. The amusing part being that the company will not be able to prove their “science” until about ten years in the future. A bit like making money whilst many a man hoping for the bold spot spouting.

On a side note: It’s one of the few products the industry can not test on animals because animals produce their own fur – HA – with the required ingredients to keep them in colour.

Sometimes I look at my parents and wonder. My hair is a mess. For years the most accomplished have told me that I am a rainbow of colours and thickness of my hair varies from the very thin to the thick. Thus a challenge to scissors.

Rounding up: Every time I detect a grey/gray hair I am being told it’s only blond gone blonder in the sun.

I’ll get there one day.

U

PS You may blame Val of www.absurdoldbird.wordpress.com for my taking up one of her strands the other day

Reluctant and sinking

This minute: Evening: I am in a state. Not US. Though son will touch down on LA tarmac within the hour.

Have tremendous problem with the blogging world.

Am mad. Mad as in angry. Full of disdain. Do you actually realise what self indulgent shit is out there in the blogging world? I can only hazard a guess at facebook and twitter. All that blogging, facebook and twitter have done is obliterate. Don’t get me wrong: I have met some astounding people via blogging not least, recently, Val Erde (and – to some extent – some of her more noteworthy consorts). For that I am grateful.

I feel tremendous anger. Not enough to frighten me. Just enough to keep the broth on a simmer. There is one particular person I reserve something for: The one who had not the gumption to come forward and say her piece in response what amounted to some severe critique of mine. Well, if you read this, you know who you are. Face the debate. Don’t hide behind shoulders broader than your own.

Beached greetings, not by size:  Just beached,

Southampton, round the corner from Canute Chambers. Titanic’s Shipping Office,

U