In Mr. Bean's Footsteps - Part 1 and Introducing Auntie Polly

My Mr. Bean Moments  - Part 1

                                                                   

Anybody who has seen the first Mr. Bean Movie will know what I’m talking about, but if not, this piece stands alone. Courtesy of an in-flight movie, I very worryingly, found myself empathizing with Rowan Atkinson’s alter ego.  I now know I have experienced at least two Mr. Bean moments in my life. The first one, the subject of this posting, concerns the green leather inlay on a priceless Louis Quatorze  mahogany writing desk, belonging to my English ‘A’ level, private teacher.  The second, which merits a blog in its own right, finds me in a ‘put on the spot moment’ to end all put on the spot moments, in a monastery on Mount Athos in Greece, where I found myself being forced to assume a false identity and believe in my own bullshit.  In the movie Mr. Bean accidentally sneezes on a painting of Whistler’s Mother, which he is supposed to be safeguarding. He goes on to wipe his snot off, but ends up smearing the canvas with the blue ink stain on his hanky.  He then locates some lacquer thinner to remove the blue stain and the rest is history.

Now this is my own special take on that scenario and I so very wish I had seen the film first; but bear with me. We commence with a birrofa lengthy introduction to Auntie Polly who plays a very important part in this comedy of errors. You might want to make yourself a cup of tea at this point, or if impatient scroll down to the last few pages.

People demonstrate love in many ways. Some write poems, others buy gifts, hug tightly, work to pay the bills, stay up late putting the final touches to their child’s school project, run a marathon or donate a kidney. Many people love in absentia. Some people love you loving them. Some people do nothing at all, they are just there, they listen,  they hold your hand.

My Auntie Polly cooked. She cooked and cooked. She literally stuffed you with love. Zija Pawlina, killed off 18 dogs in quick succession, by waking up at the crack of dawn, to feed them steak and milk. My parents left Jet, our svelte pet Labrador with her for three months, whilst my mum showed me off, in my swaddling clothes , to our English family. When we returned, I was told, Jet couldn’t get off his belly to greet us. All he could do was wag his tail weakly, his front paws and hind legs, splayed out, unable to support his girth. He was a yellow balloon with two pin holes for eyes and he wasn’t in an apparent  hurry to return home.

Auntie Polly spent a fortune on vet bills. Some of my earliest memories involve dogs with big sad humiliated eyes, mournfully being lowered into a zinc bath tub outside my grandfather’s boathouse at Marfa, subjugated to the rigors of a sitz bath and to the rough pummeling (massaging) of my aunt’s calloused hands. Kidney baths preceded funerals, in quick succession. I recall solemn doggie funerals, cousin Ian, the eldest, holding aloft a cross fashioned from bamboo sticks, great grandfather’s black silk tie doing the business as armband.  Behind him; a procession of cousins ranked in descending file, according to age carrying, joss sticks , a favourite bone, spade, shovel, pick, broom (in fact any implement out of the tool cupboard-an excuse to rummage) and the doggy itself on a wooden beer crate doubling up as a makeshift briar. The youngest, bringing up the rear and struggling with the deceased doggy cushion. We looked forward to those funerals in a perverse way. The ritual of choosing a grave (the chance to destroy what was left of my aunt’s garden), the opportunity to overdramatize and cry real tears and not be hushed, the mumbling of half recalled prayers, play acting as adults and grappling with the mysteries of death.

Now Auntie Polly’s  couscous was the stuff of legend. Cooked , year after year without fail, in honour of her older brother, our Nannu; the family self styled patriarch. The occasion was ‘San Guzepp’ (St. Joseph) his namesake’s feast day, who also happened to be the patron saint of Rabat, his home  town. Relatives as far as Canada would book flights, a year in advance, to synchronise their visit with a couscous feast up. A date with the calendar to salivate and drool, in anticipation of.  

Preparing  the couscous and cooking it was a week’s long ritual of love, toil, steaming cauldrons and colanders. Zija Pawlina had enormous wooden and aluminum sieves, stowed under the beds in the spare room. These revered utensils resembled the panning kits used by prospectors, sifting for gold in  Westerns on TV. Some of Auntie Polly’s ancestry had emigrated at one point to Algeria, and thence she had travelled on an epic journey in the 30’s to meet her cousins for the first time. There are sepia, photos, curled at the edges, of her and her father on either side of his Austin Riley, on the deck of a boat bound to the North African shore. Talk about travelling lightly. In Algeria, segregated amongst the women in the kitchen, she had learnt the art of authentic couscous cooking. 

First step was sourcing the right kind of durum wheat semolina, and a baker in Burmarrad was our pit stop. Driving there was a terrifying experience. Auntie Polly was stone deaf and diabetic. She drove a pea green mini minor, the ones with sliding windows, straight off  the original 60’s production line and used her walking stick which she would twirl out of the window as an indicator. The brakes were wonky and a bent axle didn’t help either. When I inherited her mini, some years later as a Uni student, my knees bent up to my chin in front of the steering wheel, I remember I had to hit them brakes at least 5 mins before I actually wanted to stop.

 Invariably Auntie Polly would leave a trail of destruction on the road behind her and was very often the culprit behind a pile up and a crash or two. Miraculously she always escaped unscathed, sailing forth, chattering, handing out sweets and hardly looking at the road ahead.  As a teenager the embarrassment at being a passenger was acute. I always sat, hunched up, very low down in the seat. Aghast, I once witnessed her whacking a policeman on the head with her stick because she wanted to get a move on and he wanted her to stop over some traffic contravention which she had pronounced insignificant. I recall those trips with terror, my eyes apprehensively peeking through the bars in my hands and my feet digging in at the upholstery, clamping down on imaginary breaks on the passenger’s side. The mini was a repository of sticky lucozade lozenges, kit kat wrappers and melted chocolate covered raisins (supposedly there to deal with diabetic hypos). Dried ful (broad beans), and twistees packets,  dead sparrows and mice. 

Likewise her house was a treasure hunt trail, for us cousins,  of stashed away goodies: in urns, under pillows, in shopping trolleys, in shoes and  dressing gown pockets; that she kept hidden from her Doctor brother who visited regularly to test her sugar levels.

Back to the couscous! Once sieved and sifted, she would coat the grains with butter, and coax and roll them into balls the size of marbles, not the tiny grains of sand you find in supermarkets . The couscous would be steamed for an age above a broth of fresh vegetables and chicken, the vapours of which it absorbed and helped swell with flavour.

“ L-Ikel lest!, kullhadt madwar il-mejda” (the food is ready, everyone round the table), the couscous,  would then make its way from the kitchen along a chain of hands, where we the cousins, isolated on a ‘children’s table’ an adjunct  to the Adult’s dining table,  waited restlessly in pecking order,  forks in the air at the ready to stab the mains. Heaped on individual patterned china plates, a pyramid of gloriously buttery carbohydrate, swimming in stock at the bottom and  jeweled with chickpeas, draped with steamed vegetables and crowned by half a small chicken each!; I’ll never forget my disappointment when years later, (following my great Aunt’s diabetic demise), spiked by nostalgia, my well meaning  father bought a packet of ready-made  -just pour boiling water over– couscous. Smuggled in the early 80’s (when you had to make do with locally produced goods) with a stash of chocolate over from Sicily, the couscous proved to be a big letdown. It was bland and boring, but to be fair there was no way that poor packet, could have ever measured up anyway. I craved that greasy -cholesterol laden buttery film on my spoon and the musty/fresh contradiction of fragrant steamedness.

Auntie Polly seemed to be forever enshrined in early maidenhood.  Her bobbed grey hair, gabardine suits, and buckled shoes remained faithful to the early 30’s. Fiercely independent, she made us laugh with her bedtime story accounts of all her efforts to foil and thwart a file suitors who were after her, not for her looks, (in her own words she was short, plump and bow legged) but for her dowry. Her father, having lost his wife young, was happy to comply with her schemes  and send them packing, whilst retaining a doting nursemaid for his old age. She paid a high price for this. Aged forty, she was not allowed to leave the house by herself after 4pm lest the neighbours besmirch her spotless reputation with their idle gossip. Instead she found a way to deliver messages by means of a breadbasket lowered from the galleria (balcony) she would sit on a high stool in, either knitting or reciting the rosary with her father , whilst surreptitiously checking out the young tradesmen scurrying to and fro below. An incoming message was burrowed into a loaf of bread (fil-qalba), an outgoing message zipped into the purse sent down for payment. When her father died of kidney failure, her brother and his wife took her on a foray into town for a much needed distraction. Walking down Kingsway, the main thoroughfare in the capital city, Valletta at night, she was awestruck by the bright light cast by the street lamps at night. The equivalent for Auntie Polly, of first time stroll on a Las Vegas strip.

Once a week she would drive down to Sliema where we lived, bundle my brother and me and our teddies into her mini and take us to the local playground. Mum caught up with her housework on these eagerly anticipated  Auntie Polly days, and we stocked up on coconut mushrooms, cola bottles, toffees, twistees ( a cheese based local snack) and rock hard scones that went by the name of ‘Auntie cakes’. The latter, together with gritty sugar granulated egg nog, were an Auntie Polly staple; a type of scone, sandwiched with Jam. At the bottom of our white paper bag full of goodies, despite my mother’s entreaties not to spoil us, we would find money for another week’s purchase of cavity inducers. Auntie Polly days rocked!

Heir to a direct line of firstborn male, affection transference, father to brother to nephew to son, Auntie Polly spoilt me especially.

Years later, once a week, I would catch bus number 80 to Rabat. There I would lunch with Auntie Polly and she would engorge me with food as though it was my last supper. A brief siesta later, I would then make my way onto Mdina close by, Malta’s Medieval ex-capital, where my ‘A’ level English Teacher resided. No sooner had I entered Chez Polly, she would shoo and shuffle me into her holies of holies. The ritual went something like this: 

“Poggi bil-qedgha!” (Sit Down!)

I am literally shoved into my sheet

“Ha Kull!” (Here eat!)

A napkin is tucked under my chin and a giant plate of pasta, splashed with enough sauce to sink a rat, appears pronto, as if by magic out of thin air, below my rather prominent nose. The ragu has been simmering for an age awaiting my arrival.

I eat, turning the lumps of mince over in my plate, warily, to see if they have been cooked through.

Auntie Polly stands over me, one hand on hip, the other holding a ladle aloft.

“Tajjeb?, Tajjeb?” (Good?, Good?)

My reply has no options.

If I say no, she will be mortified. If I say yes –“Iva”- which I do, the last vowel still forming on my lips and she is already splattering my as yet barely touched platter with another serving.

“Kull, Kull, ha tikber!” (eat, eat, so you’ll grow!)

Auntie Polly is now keeping half an eye on my consumption progression whilst attending to the frying of a pork chop. I watch in horror as I observe her gluggle in the oil.

I am 17 and a half, spotty and gangly. I so do not want to get any spottier.  Besides as she had aged, auntie’s hygiene standards, left something to be desired  (when she is not looking, I inspect for mould and decay in the fridge )and her cooking skills had deteriorated in tandem with her sight. 

Thus I devised a plan, every time Auntie Polly wasn’t looking my way, no doubt concentrating on frying my second pork shop, I would surreptitiously scoop spoonfuls of sauce, chunks of meat , globs of fat into  a plastic bag I had placed out of sight , under the table on my lap. It would have broken her heart to know. Refusing seconds would have constituted denying the only way she could communicate her love. I cheated to avoid bursting at the seams in the circumstances.

“Hi kemm kiltu malajr!, ha naghmillek iehor”, (Oh how quickly you’ve eaten that, let me cook you some more, you must be very hungry)

OH NO!

After this ordeal, it was siesta time and sacrosanct. Heaving my tummy onto one of her lumpy brass beds (despite my height, I still required a footstool to get onto the princess and the pea pile up of stacked mattresses and bedding) I would lay my head  upon one of her ever changing, starched and ironed, pristine white, Egyptian cotton pillows, laced and hand embroidered, but, each with different joint monograms. There was ‘P’ and ‘M’, ‘P’ and ‘J’ and so the bed linen inventory went on. I could imagine Auntie Polly, a Maltese Penelope, weaving and unweaving her web, but in this case, stitching her trousseau, whilst plotting how to get rid of the present suitor. Once trapped into revealing their true intentions, she would present this catalogue of unlucky suitors with a cadeux of all their trinkets and gifts, given to her throughout their brief courtship, and triumphantly dust them off. Somehow she kept the embroidered sheets and pillows, as a sort of bed post notching or little black book. A record for posterity, to keep her company in her spinsterhood of what might have been.

I was then woken up (talk about being spoilt) for tea and scones to help fortify me (just in case, I hadn’t eaten enough) on the 15 minute journey to my private lesson. Nowadays, however, you could kill someone if you threw one of her ‘Auntie Polly cakes’ at them, or break a  tooth biting into them, such was their rock hard consistency and invariably every other one had been scorched black beneath. Following a hurried scoff, I would kiss my goodbyes, and leave with two doggy bags; one official (again: “Jekk tifjakka” – in case I felt faint and needed brain food; like I had only just been force fed two steaks) and the other, obviously not.

I had felt sixth form was a waste of time, so I decided to study for my ‘A’ levels privately whilst doing odd jobs in the morning.  My English Language ‘A’ level  teacher, as recommended by the Joneses, lived in Mdina There was a certain romance, making my way back home, on a bitingly freezing and windy evening, through the lantern lit, convoluting  streets and alleyways of  this medieval silent city. It was easy for the imagination to play tricks, and for me to fancy myself a character in ‘Macbeth’, or the ‘Eve of St Agnes’ scurrying illicitly, chasing shadows at night.

Our lessons were always held in PT’s (Private Teacher’s) dining room, crowded with antiques, chiaroscuro paintings (more a result of the layers of lacquer than technique) family heirlooms and ancient rugs. Being very clumsy, shy and awkward and a long way away from comfortably inhabiting my body vehicle, I was in awe of my surroundings and unsure of how to maneuver my gawkiness and slouch suitably on Queen Anne Chairs without breaking  a leg (not mine).

“ Please don’t lean back  on that chair Warren!”

At the time I remember feeling very hip for purchasing a Stefanel , (Italian designer chain store) denim satchel with leather buckles. It cost me weeks of ‘pocket money’ but as I was earning it by working ‘voluntarily’ at my Dad’s textile factory, learning the ropes, in the mornings, I felt I had some purchasing power.

Anyway, I recall on one occasion exhuming my set course textbook of Keats’s poems from my bag, and finding that in the heat, a ‘Prinz’ box of chocolate biscuits, my Aunt had doggy bagged into my satchel, had opened, melted into and framed his ‘Endymion’ with a sticky border, quite fittingly I thought (literature, chocolate and a cup of tea always go well together I maintain). Un-sticking the pages, scraping off the chocolate and then licking my fingers greedily, however, didn’t go down too well with my tutor who tut- tutted but did not say anything.

Two weeks later and disaster struck. Rummage, rummage, but I just couldn’t find my homework, so I decided to tip my bag upside down. Big mistake. I completely forgot that as per routine, I had stealthily been swiping the spaghetti Bolognaise off my plate into a plastic bag, which in my haste necessitated by subterfuge, I had apparently, omitted to tie and seal. Furthermore, conspiring to dramatic conclusion, was the fact we had both overslept the allotted siesta time span. Compensating by catching the bus,  another fatal omission was my failure to remember to dispose of the offending and incriminating doggy bag in a dustbin, which I normally did en-route on foot to Private lesson.

The ensuing swoosh of paper, clattering pencils and pens, and slop of glutinous spaghetti tendrils and meatballs in an evil spreading tomato sauce, will forever be played in slow motion in my memory. That brief instant of sudden acute awareness, as I tipped the haversack and heard the rustle of cellophane plastic. That sick to the gut dizzy feeling, like premature ejaculation, knowing  that you have overstepped the point of no return. Forget correcting the HW. I used THAT to mop up the mess. 

Next week, I was demoted to a sort of study cum passage way in between dining room and kitchen. No comments were made, it was understood. The study desk however, was a Louis Quatorze Scriptoire with an embossed gold motif on a green leather inlay. You think PT would have pre-empted.  For some strange reason, I remember the conversation, a digression my teacher made before our lesson started. It has nothing to do with my Mr. Bean moment, Auntie Polly or over feeding. It simply springs to mind because it is, and will forever be associated with that green leather inlay in my weird mind. People have always found it easy to talk to me about their most intimate private matters. I must have a neon sign on my forehead that goes off subliminally at intervals, unbeknown to myself. The sign says confess, spill the beans, your secret is safe with me. I have always thought I‘d have made a fortune as private investigator, interrogator or psychoanalyst. Anyway all my private teachers spoke to me about sex. On this particular occasion, I do not recall what this had to do with Keats (If I’m not mistaken, he left this world a virgin). It may have had something to do with those figures, forever frozen, frolicking on a Grecian Urn or all the unrequited love he had burning for his beloved Fanny. Whatever, the gist of this digression, has something to do with watering holes and the lack of foreplay. Well we’re back to cumming quickly. So Mr. Caveman is thirsty. He sees Mrs. Caveman bent over at the watering hole drinking. He thinks preservation of the species. Is excited by sight of splayed buttocks in the air, gets a hard on. Doggy style (this blog does have a doggy leitmotif running through it, you must concede) is the way cavemen did it. So he knocks at the rear. Slight problem. According to PT (private teacher) a man is at his most vulnerable during orgasm. Thus the deed must be done fast,   hungry lion might be prowling nearby, ready to pounce on exposed backside. When Mr. and Mrs. Cavemen graduated to face to face ( not as the Discovery Channel do) the erogenous buttock zone got transferred to breasts  - butt cleavage, breast cleavage, same shape geddit. What this had to do with Keats again and much more to the point my narrative, baffles me and much as it must you my dear reader.

So we get to the point where I have to produce my HW yet again. Mr. PT, takes a break from Caveman sexual politics and offers me a cup of tea, which I decline. I dive back inside my bag but my fingers touch something wet. It can’t be, I tell myself.  I disposed of the ‘doggy bag’ on my way here. I’m sure of this. I turn slightly so that my PT can’t see me and slowly remove my hand out of the bag and up to my nose for inspection and a sniff. OH MY GOD, my fingertips are white! And I can hazard a guess at the culprit. (An addendum: this is now the summer term and temperatures hover in the upper 30’s -Celsius –even though you always subtract one or two degrees in Mdina, it being on a high exposed hill and always chillier and damper than the rest of the country). I turn my Stefanel satchel upside down, and horror of horrors there is a white patch. Shit! the Tippex (correction fluid) has exploded (leaked is less of an exaggeration) in the heat and seeped through the fabric . I don’t believe it. Shit, fuck, shit, fuck!. Big shit!, Big Fuck!. I curse and curse under my breath. I begin to sweat and my face goes clammy. Levering the satchel ever so slightly, I notice a splodge of correction fluid on the leather inlay, which I had been previously studiously studying, in my embarrassment listening to this story explaining the origin of premature you-know -what. I urgently need to get PT out of the room and undertake some damage limitation.

I try to restrain my voice from squeaking.  Big breath. ‘Yes’ Mr. PT, “I do feel quite thirsty after all, actually would it be too much of a bother to take you up on that offer of tea?. As soon as the coast is clear, I remove the offending backpack and attempt to blot the droplet of Tippex. I thought a quick swipe would do. To my increasing anguish, I merely succeed in smearing the Tippex beyond its original radius. Unfortunately, blotting is not proving to be the quick fix I had envisioned. The leather seems to have absorbed the paint and there is an obvious stain. 

I hear PT shuffling in with the tea. I quickly hide the evidence with a spread of loose papers. “Could I have some sugar please”, I ask when I have sipped gingerly at the tea, desperately trying not to spill any with the juddering of my nerves. Now, I never take sugar in my tea, but I hope PT doesn’t think it odd. Quick  thinking. I recall, I have some correction fluid thinner in my pencil case  -and this, dear oh so patient reader, is my Mr. Bean moment finally. Stupidly, but then everyone is wise after a mishap, I figure that well; you use paint thinner or paraffin to remove paint from brushes and acetone to remove nail polish. Bingo! Therefore it follows that correction fluid thinner should do the job and make the stain disappear. Now at the time, Tippex (this was the 80’s) was sold in a square carton box, containing the white correction solution in a nail polish sort of bottle with brush and another bottle to dissolve any dried up and hardened correction fluid.

Wrong move. Fatal. What I hadn’t included in the solvent equation; was the green leather. Heaving a sigh of relief at my supposed on the spot genius, I set about squirting a couple of drops on the stain and using pieces of tissue paper, began rubbing away. Such was my overzealous haste, that I failed to notice the tissue paper was colouring green and that the flakes of white debris, a byproduct of the friction , where interspersed with flecks of green leather. The more I scrubbed, the worse it got.

By the time I became aware of the hole I had rubbed through the leather, it was too late. The solvent in the correction fluid thinner had completely eaten up the fragile and antique fabric covering the scriptoire.

I lamely covered the hole with Keats and accepted the tea which I let go cold without ever bringing to my lips. Defeated, desolate, I was now beyond redemption. The room started spinning. After what seemed like an eternity, PT asked if something was wrong , as I hadn’t responded to a question he had posed. I literally wanted to die, for the clichéd ground to open and swallow me whole. To be anywhere, in the fires of hell, condemned to the eternal dyeing a new strip of leather green, in those awful sulphurous tanning vats, anywhere, punished already and doing my penance. Anywhere but here, having to go through the awfulness of revealing my irreparable act of destruction. 

Needless to say, it was in the kitchen for me, from then on and lessons resumed on the condition my satchel stayed outside. PT never made me pay for the damage I had wreaked in his house. I’m sure any revenue accrued from my student fees ,didn’t even come close to offsetting  the cost of re-upholstering that Louis Quatorze desk . I still have that chocolate eared copy of Keats on my bookshelf.

Non - Searching

If you are searching for answers or solutions trust yourself, go no further, enquire within. We (ARE) have the whole universe inside of ourselves. All fear and unhappiness comes from the illusion of Separation. You do not need to (but by all means do) meditate, to go on a quest to 'get there' because you are already there. You are 'there' and here in this impressive instant. It is all there is. The

meditation, the reading, the questioning is necessary initially to begin the process of unlearning, and un -earning is the only learning you are here to do. There is no separation between seeker and sought. Once you make that distinction, you already separate. We are all beautiful and unique creations, stars on our slow individual way back home.
In this reality, our 'duty' is to create, to follow our bliss, to lose ourselves in the moment of doing whatever we like. We are here to play, learn and experiment with the process of creation, but our birthright is deep peacefulness radiating blissful love. So don't cling or crave, or be attached to whatever is outside yourselves..because we are all one and the loved one, the 'other' is yourself visible through time and space in a different arrangement of molecules...Never forget that we are pure light and divinity experiencing human form and not the other way round. Blessings xxx

Bottoms UP! - The British and the Behind

What is it about the British and bums? Buggery and bottoms, and Philippa’s behind?

In Italy and Spain, where Mama’s boys don’t leave home until well in their thirties and married, the obsession is on cleavage - and lots of it. Bosoms sell cars and shampoo, the ads are aired when children are having their tea. Understandable then, this fixation on the breast, where grown men don’t want to let go -and are not encouraged to do so- by possessive matriarchs.  ‘Mammone’ sounds suspiciously like mammary glands. Well, if the  Mediterraneos are tied to the teat, stuck on oral, the Brits are definitely  anal fixated.  Just one up on Freud’s hierarchy of psychosexual stages.

The pages and pages of print dedicated to Pippa’s posterior, post Royal Wedding, last summer , threatened to eclipse any serious ‘news’ of note that month (take note, not ‘week ‘ but ‘month’) to say nothing of the overshadowing of the event’s real protagonist; her sister,  HRH Kate, Duchess of Cambridge. Philippa/Pippa or her ‘Royal Hotness’ as she was subsequently referred to, was the latest fixation in a lineup that has included  KylieMinogue, Beyonce, J LO and Kim Kardashian all of whom the British have bottomed up to, because they look best from behind.

Kylie in particular was a washed up, try-hard, has been on the British pop scene until she donned a pair of the skimpiest gold lame hot pants and spun around.  Tabloid elegies compared her derrière to a ripe pear, a peach and every fruit under the sun. She was the ‘it; bottom until Pippa came along. No other nation has waxed so lyrical for so long on the subject of buttocks.  But why?

Fittingly in a class obsessed society, the genesis of all toilet humour can be traced to and blamed on parents sending (read offloading) their offspring onto boarding schools, precociously early in their unformed and uniformed lives. Homogeneity is a desirable, it also lets the parents off the whole disciplining process and keeps up with the Joneses.  If institutionalized homosexuality and emotional constipation are by products, so be it. Dig further and you’ll find a stiffie in that stiff upper lip. Restraint, especially when it comes to bowel movements, has a habit of doing that. A massaged prostate gland is a massaged prostate gland no matter who, or more pertinently, what ,is providing the pressure. 

According to Freud, the primary focus on the libido in his defined ‘anal stage’ was on controlling the bladder and bowel movements. Mastering control, encouraged by parental involvement and praise, results, he postulates, in a sense of accomplishment and independence. Introduced too early, by pushy overachieving parents, inadequacy in the toilet training department might lead to what Freud coined: ‘the anal-retentive personality’,  in which the individual is ‘stringent, orderly, rigid and obsessive.’ Weather? Time? Political correctness? Civil Service? Class Conscious?  Queues? Bottoms? Tea?. Tag the word ‘obsessive’ onto any of the above and something familiar  and particularly nationalistic in its ability to generalise to Englishness emerges. For goodness sakes, Selfridges self references all  said hitherto, in its current Jubilee window display that snakes around an entire blog. Bottoms and homosexuality are announced explicitly, if of course a tad eccentrically. There’s the road maintenance man, bent forward, bum up, trousers southbound, flashing his union jack underpants and then there’s the punk and the policeman poised to engage is some serious lip action. As long as its eccentric it’s safe.   

Which brings me back to boarding schools. ‘Fagging’ as in ‘toilet seat warming’. inflicted by grade seniors upon naïve freshmen, may be a rite of passage that ended with Roald Dahl, but the obsession with the act has not.

Humour, like eccentricity is the safe exposition for the sublimation of the unsaid and undone. ‘It’s only a Joke’ ..yeah right!. Not just limited to the public school educated, a comedy routine, that doesn’t reference the rear within 5 minutes, well it just ain’t British. Watch any sitcom or stand-up comedian, toff or  yob, high brow to slapstick, and the gags ‘bog ‘down pretty quick. 

Take the ‘In-Betweeners ‘ a  runaway hit T.V. series, charting the sexual mishaps and growing ‘pains’ of a gangly mob of   comprehensive school, 5^th form, misfits. Targeted at the testosterone charged,  ‘red hot blooded male’, market, every other joke  is about farting, turds, easing a nugget , taking it up the rear and an entire Kama Sutra of gay sexual positions.  Do ‘gay’ films  and comedies constantly refer to female genitalia , entering into microscopic detail concerning heterosexual acts of congress , I wonder?. The answer is they do not. There is an obvious fascination and obsession however with anal sex in most  British ‘straight’ Comedy.  Now is this, I catch myself wondering again, because the vast majority of people running the country received their education in a public school ?

On the other hand, Freud, pointed out that an overly laissez faire attitude to parenting and potty training could result in an anal-expulsive personality’; messy, wasteful and self-destructive. This, though, is the subject of another digression. Could the excessive political correctness and the fact that parents are too tired to train their offspring at the end of a hard day’s slog mean that the potty pendulum might be swinging the other way?

There is also another theory, a sort of sexual evolution of the species, describing how eroticism was transferred, cleavage and all, from buttocks to bosom as the preferred point of entry and congress shifted from the rear to the front (face to face). Maybe the national male psyche has lingered at the watering hole, arriving upon a potential mate  bent over and scooping up. Foreplay never quite entered the equation because with your back exposed doing the deed, you were vulnerable prey to bigger beasts so quickie was best all in the name of preservation of the species. 

Which begs the question who was doing the potty training back then?

A fit of Giggles in the Crematorium

My uncle lost his pants today in church. In a funeral service to be precise. Apparently this is the second time such an occurrence has well - occurred. The first time was a year ago to the day. The funeral then, was of the husband. Today it is of the wife, a hello and goodbye neighbour, a couple of  floors beneath. The service was moving. One of the three sons was not present and not mentioned. Probably black sheep. The other two gave moving orations. A tear came to the eye.
Hoisting him into the taxi must have shifted his waistband. Up and down, sermon and sit, didn't help either. Nor did the fact that my oncle has no hips, a bum as flat  as an ironing board, and that one box of Maltesers too many, surreptitiously scoffed in the wee hours meant that he had outgrown his sweep of custom made Saville Row suits. Squeezing him into his trousers was a task and a half. The giggles had started then, but had been suppressed, as a bedroom scene reminiscent, "breathe in and hold it, please clasp, clasp!", the stuff of Scarlett in 'Gone with the Wind'. There are no stays but the zip's got stuck. It can't ascend up any further. Never mind the suit's jacket will hide it. Nor will the top shirt button do up. "Ouch!" chicken neck skin gets buttoned up to. "Leave it undone, tighten the tie. Won't notice." Bling required. Gold tie pin and emerald and gold cuff links to detract. No one will bat an eyelid.
Huff and puff. Catch the lift. Don't breathe out!
Things started progressing south most noticeably during yet another rousing rendition of 'Jersusalem'. What is it with this hymn? the issue perplexes me. It IS the 'unofficial' British national anthem. Must be. What a fuss made of it in THE Royal Wedding last year. Makes an upright Christian patriot out of the most yobbo council hooligan. Stand to attention. I mean, is all of England 'not ceasing from mental fight, not letting sword sleep in hand ..Till we have built Jerusalem, In England's green and pleasant land' (read 'clouded hills' in paragraph but one). After all this time, have the Englishers succeeded?.
Sure the funeral was in London's Golder's Green. For a price anyone can be burnt there. There was a crucifix on the 'altar' today in deference to the neighbour's faith. Probably during the subsequent service a Menorah appeared and supplanted said crucifix. The woman's husband was Jewish. Golder's Green is Jewish full stop. Not so much ghetto as minted town. There were lots of Muslims coming out of mosque on the way there and well the service was Church of England. So in a way if you ignore the East End Pakistan and India contingent, the Africans and the Caribbean on Notting Hill, this could really be Jerusalem. Ticked off the Muslims, the Jews and the Christians.
But in my mind Jerusalem = bomb might go off any moment on a bus. The city is a CNN synonym for discord. Why would England aspire to be Jerusalem. And Jerusalem in which era anyway? Then there's the bit about Jerusalem being builded here (Uk I presume), among those dark satanic mills. Satanic Mills??? I'm non-plussed . Mr Google's help is definitely needed to capish what the hell the author's going on about. More confusion and sentimental pathos precedes this; 'And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen? did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green'..ermm NO! because Jesus/Lamb of God (is whom the hymn is referring to I take it, though of course I stand to be corrected - have not done my pre-blog research because really this post is about a man's falling trousers and I am digressing yet again).
Anyways, Jesus was like- born and as far as history lets us know like- died in Israel. I do not think he refugeed it in a boat to the UK for a wee holiday. "Oh you know what, let's go see what the Romans are doing in 'ol Britannia. Need a break from the heat..clouded hills sounds nice just about now."
SOOO as I was saying. OH JERUSALEM!! and the trousers are bunching in a heap on his shoes. Wiggle wiggle. Lucky for the burberry trench coat. Feet far apart, knees bent, trying desperately to hold onto last shreds of dignity and fabric.
We are swayed and prodded into joining the queue to shake the vicar's hand. Consummate showman, he does three funerals a day and sounded pretty sincere and into his bit - I'm told that he had thespian aspirations prior to donning the habit. That explains it. Things were already a bit OTT to begin with but as soon as the coffin started sliding forward he took it up  a notch, waxing lyrical; something about angels bellowing their trumpets, welcoming Mrs Neighbour and St Peter jangling his keys and letting her through and the 'Countenace Divine' himself coming downstairs to hug her welcome. The coffin slides forth to the flames. If all this was to take place surely it happened a week ago upon her demise. Or was she in limbo and the angels polishing their trumpets waiting for the clergyman/actor's summons?
So my uncle whispers in my ear a little loudly (he is half deaf)..'My trousers are falling'..'Oh' I say hmm I espy a chair and we slink out of the file (the Britishers love their single lines) 'You must sit down'. 'He obediently obeys.' 'Wonderful Sermon! Vicar, THaaankyuuuaa' effuse, effuse..the taxi is waiting, we have to get cracking. I need to get oncle out of sight.
I notice a curtained cubicle to right of 'altar'. I manoeuvre and shuffle uncle to the spot. Place umbrella and book and other paraphernalia on said altar. Later Vicar remonstrates and tut tuts my sacrilege but needs must and necessity bla di bla..so try to start pulling trousers up. Go behind relative and he almost topples over whilst I administer what looks like a Heimlich first aid manoeuvre. It also, I ponder posthumously, looks like I'm shagging him from the posterior standing as he is with his trousers crumpled over his shoes and bent forward on his walking stick.
In the meantime much to our collective dismay I discover that we are in the 'organ enclosure, and the organist is doing his best to play on angelically, ignoring us, whilst we (uncle+ me) do this little dance, as he turns and squirms and I wriggle and grope trying to shift his trousers up under coat. We are getting nowhere. Instrumental Jerusalem continues. I decide to undo his trench coat and then lower myself to my knees to pull up from the front. Vicar comes in upon us. It looks terrible. Uncle in his underpants and me on my knees in front. Jerusalem reaches a crescendo. I jerk up from BJ stance in consternation just in time to catch  uncle who has toppled backwards onto organist. I can't take it any more. I have blood seeping from biting my tongue. I erupt into totally inappropriate giggles. The situation is too funny. Vicar not amused. he asks me to remove umbrella from altar. I produce a belt from the bag I have been carrying and encircle unfaithful trousers. It is no use. Later, as we exit taxi in the pouring rain the situation repeats itself. 'The belt, the belt, it's slipped ' and my eyes are so blurry I can't see.

Doble -V

CONCEPT ARTIST

Warrybee = W. = Double – U

The way you live your life is art.

The way you present yourself to the world is art.

The way you express yourself as an individual within the collective is an art form.

To negate creativity within yourself is to negate life. 

To be alive is to create, to experience.

To experience, to create, through the act of creation ..starting with birth and giving birth to a human, to a project, to an idea, to an opus/a thing. 

From oneness, fragmentation into dualism.

Eternally seeking 'the other', after the mother, yearning to go back to the whole, trying to do that through another.

Different facets, a hall of distorted mirrors, a rough, polished diamond, reflecting the whole in the parts.

To  return to the gestalt, one must encounter and address  each facet within oneself and the other reflecting, a dance of lives in and of many levels. 'Their are many rooms in my father's mansion' . 

The spirit is like air, breathing in the mansion, simultaneously wafting in and out, inhaling and expirating in the many rooms.

Reacting to what is, making decisions based upon each encounter is called destiny. 

Morality, making an ethical decision is in the act of discernment.

We are creators or architects  of our lives. 

                                                                                                  dOBLE -V