A good week for spinning

It was billed as the greatest free show in town. A battle royale (of sorts) that on Tuesday, August 19, pitched Westminster’s finest against a media baron who in the past had tyrannised them. Would Rupert Murdoch, and his heir anointed James, wither to dust under their forensic interrogation? Or would the dynamic duo turn the tables and emerge from the phone hacking scandal with a clean(ish) bill of health?

Not quite! Labour MP Tom Watson and his fellow inquisitors on the Culture, Media & Sport Committee did land the odd punch or two, while the Murdochs’ performance gave News Corp shares a 5% lift when Wall Street opened for business. Maybe it was crazily naive to hope that every question would yield a satisfactory answer, but don’t worry. There’s so much muck in the executive cupboard at the moment that it’ll be a while yet before clan Murdoch will be free of the stench.

They had to pull off the smoke and mirrors routine of a lifetime to steady the nerves of twitchy News Corp investors

A week is a long time in politics and for a corporate behemoth with a major PR problem on its hands seven days is sufficient to start repairing the damage. Because make no mistake the appearance of both Rupert and James Murdoch before a parliamentary select committee, was more about disaster management than a sincere attempt to aid the truth. These two had to pull off the smoke and mirrors routine of a lifetime to steady the nerves of twitchy News Corp investors and haul the company’s battered image off the ropes. The evidence is so overwhelming it blinds!

Rupert Murdoch said he was humbled and sorry for both the phone hacking and the misery it caused. Yet the “S” word was conspicuously absent from his vocabulary in the immediate aftermath of this scandal. Neither did he appear to show that much concern for the victims of this deplorable practice since his declared priority was Rebekah Brookes, the woman who edited the News of the World when Milly Dowler’s phone was illegally accessed!

However five days after the final edition of the News of the World hit the stands the sound of burning rubber from a hand brake U-turn was plainly audible. Hours after Brookes’ resignation as News International CEO, a contrite Rupert Murdoch held a face to face meeting with the Dowler family. Shouldn’t he have spoken to them when the allegations first surfaced? Of course, yet given his rapid mood swing from detachment to remorse, even I couldn’t help wondering which PR professional was spinning away in the background. By the time the Murdochs appeared before the committee, they were more coached than a premier league football team.

Murdoch senior came across as old, doddering and vague about such matters as how his newspapers are run, although memories of his Downing Street visits – albeit via the backdoor – were exceptionally vivid. The terrifying, bullying figure of the past was more like a flaccid bogeyman with a hearing problem, judging by the number of times the panel had to repeat its questions. Doesn’t it therefore follow that an 80-year-old man who might be losing his grip couldn’t possibly be expected to know what was going on in his own company? That’s exactly what his PR spinners wanted us to think and given the prevalence of age related adjectives in the following day’s coverage, they succeeded.

Yet there were a couple of instances when Rupert’s mask of fragility almost slipped from its moorings, notably when he thumped his hand down on the table. Fortunately his wife put a stop to that with a few whispered interventions. Let’s face it table bashing might be enough to bring a board of directors under control but it doesn’t play well with a TV audience whose sympathy you’re trying to win.

Mr Murdoch’s performance was typically spirited, like a captain fighting to maintain control of his ship. There were occasional memory lapses (another symptom of creeping old age perhaps?) and the shifting of blame onto everyone other than himself and his family, carrying with it the inference that he was just as much a victim as those whose phones had been hacked and was perhaps as deserving of our compassion. The idiot who lunged at him with a shaving cream pie actually did him a favour since it provoked an outpouring of sympathy that previously wasn’t there. No wonder his PR crew were grinning like Cheshire cats.

As an example of how to turn the tables on an accuser Rupert Murdoch’s performance was flawless. James didn’t fare too badly either. He was confident, feisty, sure-footed and almost touchingly deferential to his father; the kind of bloke who couldn’t harm a fly let alone preside over a business where phone hacking was rife. Indeed his own father claimed the very abuses that have now laid the business so low occurred before James even got his feet under the table. But James’ feel good glow is sinking faster than his tan as his evidence to the committee is now under attack.

He said he didn’t know about an email which suggested that phone hacking wasn’t just the work of a single “rogue reporter”; yet two former News of the World executives are claiming otherwise. James is standing by his testimony but it still boils down to who you believe. Since I don’t have the money to fight a libel action I won’t be staking a bet, but for some reason I can’t get the image of weasels out of my head!

In the meantime James Murdoch is digging his heels in as chairman of the satellite broadcaster BSkyB, although he does face a crucial board meeting on Thursday, the day before the company is expected to post annual profits of a billion pounds.

They say that money talks so maybe it’s possible that the right amount of the green stuff could yet save his neck.

A week can be a very long time in politics, business and PR!

Banking on a dirty little secret

Andrea is nervous! She’s tapping her fingers on the table, staring restlessly into the emptiness of the room and chain-smoking Marlboro cigarettes.

My smart, funny, confident friend who rarely lets anything get her down is a shadow of herself. I don’t have to look far to see what’s causing the despair that’s eating her up. Propped against the saucer of her coffee cup is a half folded letter with the date of her next court appearance. In two months time she’ll be slugging out the final leg of a battle that’s already taken up nearly ten years of her life. I’m confident she’ll win but she’s not so sure because her bank is the plaintiff!

“This isn’t just despicable it sucks. But since it’s the banks we’re talking about I’m really not surprised.”

Her story began in 2002 when, recently widowed and struggling with financial difficulties, she took out a £20,000 loan. Although the payments were being met, life was far from easy and the trauma of having nursed her husband through his final illness eventually caught up with her, triggering a nervous breakdown that put her into hospital. Andrea did what any sensible person would do in that situation: on the advice of the mental health charity MIND and the Citizens Advice Bureau, she told the bank about her illness and the impact it was having on her circumstances. She managed to negotiate a freeze on the interest rate along with a deal to slash the monthly repayments to a level that was affordable. Not only did the bank agree to this but it assured her that the paperwork had been adjusted to reflect the new arrangements.

Andrea was relieved! To meet her obligations she paid out what was left of her savings, sold a few possessions and slashed her domestic outgoings to the absolute bone. It was tough medicine to swallow but worth it as she was on schedule to clear the debt – or rather she would have been had the bank not dropped a massive bombshell. In 2005 it sent her a letter claiming that she owed a staggering £64,000! Part of it was the original capital but the bulk was the interest which – unbeknown to her – had been rolled up over the years. She assumed there had been a mistake but the bank denied this along with any knowledge of ever having agreed to a deal in the first place!

“I was stonewalled every time I complained or tried to explain things,” she said bitterly. “They behaved like sharks circling around a drop of blood.”

It was now a case of one person’s word against another’s with the bank accusing Andrea of trying to wriggle out of her responsibilities, even though the evidence suggested otherwise. She had letters which proved there was a deal along with records of the dates and times of telephone conversations with bank staff. Curiously the bank didn’t explain why if there hadn’t been an agreement, she was allowed to pay the money at a rate which put it out-of-pocket. And if there was no chance of a deal then why wasn’t she told this the moment she raised the issue?

Maybe the fact that Andrea owns a house with half a million pounds of equity attached had something to do with it! If the bank forced its sale then it would walk away with £64,000 plus any extras it might decide to add on. How very neat! Andrea’s tenacious digging also uncovered a document which revealed exactly how the loan team was thinking:

“No offer in response to review letter. Payments are not acceptable as customer is a home-owner. Continue recovery.”

Who said there was no such thing as compassion!

Sadly Andrea’s story isn’t unique as there are other people in a similar situation. Hopefully if the judge rules in her favour she can get her life back and close the page on this dreadful chapter. Whether the bank will give her the apology she rightly deserves is another matter. I’ll let you know what happens, but frankly we’re not holding our breath.

Banks have had a seriously bad press in the last three years and they’ve earned every bit of it. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to bring a global financial system to its knees; trigger a recession; reward those responsible with eye watering bonuses and then calmly leave the taxpayer to clear up the filthy, disgusting mess. It’s so breathtakingly audacious that it makes Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme look like a scam to sell stolen t-shirts off the back of a lorry!

To then add insult to injury by reneging on customer agreements and then accusing those same customers of lying, adds a new dimension to the word “low”. This isn’t just despicable it sucks. But since it’s the banks we’re talking about I’m really not surprised. To hope for even an ounce of decency would have been naive.

Why this antique won’t be doing the road show

I like antiques and if money were no object I wouldn’t think twice about filling my house with them. There’s nothing more pleasing to the eye than the intricate design of a Chippendale cabinet or the delicate brushwork on a Meissen porcelain figurine. The value is in the pleasure of owning something that’s unique and which has survived two World Wars, countless house moves and the destructive hands of the under fives!

I’m not the only who thinks this. Several of my friends are the proud owners of antique pieces which – though not terribly valuable – have made their way down the family into their possession. Even when times have been hard they’ve never been tempted to sell their inheritance nor have they toyed with the idea of getting it valued on The Antiques Road Show.

“What’s the point?” they say whenever the issue is raised “If it’s worth something our contents insurance will go up. Apart from that burglars would probably try to break in and nick it.”

There may well be a lot of truth in that but it’s not enough to stop thousands of people from religiously hitting the Antiques Road Show trail when the bandwagon comes rolling into town. You can see them at the start of every programme cluttering  the lawns of someone’s stately home, jealously guarding their precious artefacts with the ferocity of a lioness defending her cubs. Good luck to them! It’s the utterly disingenuous expressions of surprise that I can’t handle. Let’s put it this way if an expert told me that the Royal Worcester vase I bought for a fiver in a car boot sale in Kilburn was actually worth more than twenty grand, I don’t think you’d hear me politely exclaiming:

“Gosh! Whizzo! Ha ha! That’s a jolly fine bit of news. What a spiffingly marvellous stroke of good luck!”

You’re more likely to see a dazed look of stupidity on my face followed by nervous laughter and a drizzle of expletives which would roughly translate as, “Are you serious?” or “Sure you haven’t made a mistake and you’re not taking the mickey?”

That’s how most normal people would react but then nothing’s really normal about the Antiques Road Show! People claim they’re only there to satisfy a curiosity about the history and value of an object, but I don’t believe that for one minute. Nine and a half of times out of ten they’re on the programme to satisfy their greed. It’s written large in their eyes especially when the expert’s valuation falls wildly short of what they expected. No matter how hard they struggle to put a brave face on it there’s no hiding the disappointment of discovering that the frame on a 19^th century fine art landscape is actually worth more than the picture inside it! I half expect them to turn bottle green with rage and blow up to the size of the Incredible Hulk once the reality of what they’ve heard starts to sink in. At least with ITV’s Dickinson’s Real Deal you know the punters are avariciously pushing to get the one over on the expert, even if the price they’re looking for is totally unrealistic!

I’m not saying the Antiques Road Show should be permanently dropped from the schedules I just wish that people were a little more honest about their intentions.

Why is it so hard to admit that the only reason they’re getting their stuff valued is so that they can flog it on Ebay? And I wish they wouldn’t feign polite surprise when they find out that an object is actually worth something. What’s wrong with jumping up and down excitedly, or just fainting in a heap on the ground? At least that’s a bit more realistic.

I know there are plenty of people out there who will strongly disagree with my views because The Antiques Road Show is probably the highlight of their weekend TV viewing. But before you start assaulting me with brickbats I’d like you to consider the following. If the contents insurance on your house was £40,000 a year would you really want to hold onto an antique that’s so valuable it could potentially quadruple the monthly payments on your policy? Or might it be better to have never known the value in the first place? Think about it!

Being grumpy – a blessing and a curse

Brace yourselves but I have become a grumpy, middle-aged woman who’s perversely proud of her ability to always find something to complain about. No matter how big or small the issue I can be guaranteed to whip it up into a monumental storm that puts the WikiLeaks row in the shade. So how did I go from being a fairly mild-mannered, easy-going kind of woman to being narrow-minded with a tendency to blow things out of all proportion? I blame the man who blew cigarette smoke in my face when I was heading towards Clapham Common station.

We were walking in opposite directions on the same side of the street when a massive fog of smoke from a Marlboro Light hit me full in the face. I wouldn’t have minded so much if he had made an effort to apologise, but he didn’t. He thought it was perfectly normal to foul the air with nicotine clouds and beads of spittle from his smoker’s cough. Back in the days when I used to light up twenty Silk Cuts a day it wouldn’t have bothered me, but as I’ve been clean for sixteen years all I could see at that moment was pure red. I followed him up the road, called out: “Oi, you,” and after fixing him to the spot with an evil eye expression, lectured him about the evils of tobacco and how it would be his fault if I contracted lung cancer. He didn’t say much at first although after a few minutes he muttered a vague apology and then sauntered off. Victory is mine I thought, until I heard him shout:

“Why don’t you get a f**king life?”

“I would if people like you didn’t make it so difficult?” I retorted.

I don’t know how long we stood on the pavement trading insults at one another but his parting gesture of a two-fingered salute brought the matter to a close. I decided not to pursue it partly because I was in a hurry to get home but also because a fellow grumpy who had witnessed the encounter congratulated my stand against “addicts who kill the environment with cigarettes.” I felt marginally better although he ruined the moment when he said I deserved a Nobel award!

My friends Mickey and Charlotte, who are so unreasonable they should be exiled to another planet

So far nothing else has happened on the scale of the Clapham Common incident, although I’ve come to realise that my intolerance levels are pretty good when they’re compared to those of my friends Mickey and Charlotte, who are so unreasonable they should be exiled to another planet. Apart from them, no sane person would want to live in a society where the state removes the assets of anyone caught spitting on a pavement or which punishes crime with the guillotine.

“Isn’t that a bit extreme?” I asked them over lunch.

Mickey arched one of his bushy eyebrows in surprise: “Of course not,” he said indignantly. “In case you haven’t noticed crime is going up. No-one feels safe anymore!”

“There’ll always be people who never feel safe no matter what you do to protect them,” I replied. “But I can’t see why parliament would want to introduce the guillotine. Apart from the fact that beheading is messy it isn’t exactly humane or sensible!”

“Well strictly speaking that isn’t true.” Charlotte drawled. “People usually get to see things from our point of view once the message is sold to them in the right way!”

My stomach did a sideways lurch especially when I saw the conspiratorial way they winked at each other.

“What are you two playing at?” I said “I know you’re up to something. What is it?”

They hesitated but after a few minutes Charlotte handed me a bundle of papers she pulled from her briefcase.

“This is our manifesto” she said “Mickey and I wanted to stand as independents in the last election but we couldn’t get a deposit!”

It didn’t take long to see why. Whilst I can understand their frustration at falling standards of behaviour, the uncontrolled greed of some bankers and the superfluous number of traffic markings on the nation’s roads, I don’t think that condemning people to a life of hard labour or forcing traffic wardens to work as fruit pickers in Mongolia is the answer. I’m not sure what is but I know for a fact that it isn’t anything these two have to offer!

They were disappointed that I wasn’t ready to sign up to their cause even with the promise of a membership discount.

“Well if you change your mind you’ll know where to find us” Mickey was ready to fire off one last volley of persuasion but stopped when he saw the lunch bill “Would you look at that” he hissed “I haven’t even touched my wine and yet they’ve charged me for it!”

“Let me see that,” Charlotte snatched the bill and scanned it from over the rim of her glasses. “And they’ve added on the service. That’s a right bloody cheek considering it took them fifteen minutes to get the table ready. Hey you”, she beckoned to the waiter.

That was my cue to leave. I knew that once these two had the bit between their teeth there would be no stopping them. They would cause such a stink that the restaurant would probably give in to their demands rather than have them disturb their other customers.

There’s nothing wrong with being a grumpy, middle-aged man/woman. People do eventually come around to our way of thinking once they realise that some of our complaints are actually valid. It only becomes a problem when grumpies start making a noise because they’ve got nothing better do with themselves. When that happens all hope is lost. Thankfully I haven’t reached that stage… yet!

The Broken Face

Facing the facts

Have you ever flinched at the sight of a disfigured face? I’m ashamed to admit this, but I have.

Many years ago when I was working at a customer information desk in a shopping mall, I was approached by a man who wanted some directions. At first I hadn’t really noticed him, until he gave me a full on look that exposed a frightening disfigurement. The left side of his face was partially shrunken while the skin that covered an imploded cheek bone was twisted into a network of knots and welts. I tried to suppress a horrified gasp from rising up my throat, but it came out before I could stop it: he walked away in silence with his head lowered, barely able to conceal his embarrassment. I had inadvertently belittled him with my reaction, perhaps destroying the fragile courage it must have taken him to go out into public. Instinct told me to apologise but having decided that would probably make a bad situation worse, I let it pass. However time never allows these things to go away and when the mind is later invaded by the memory of a buried event, the power of recollection becomes a painful hindrance.

My day of recollection was triggered by an accidental spillage. I was lying on a couch and drinking a mug of tea when the cup handle suddenly broke, splashing liquid across my lap and over the sofa cushions. After fruitlessly trying to remove the stains with soap and water, I decided to put everything in the washing machine: that was my first big mistake! No sooner had I begun to pull the cushions from out of their covers, when my face was hit by a fine cloud of dust and feather particles. My eyes immediately started to water, but it was the right eye that came off worse as it itched with a burning, persistent rawness. I remembered there was a small bottle of eye drops in my handbag and that was my second big mistake because the bottle’s contents were out of date, yet that didn’t stop me from using them. The situation progressively got worse, although it wasn’t until I looked in the mirror that I realised just how bad it was.

I almost didn’t recognise my reflection because, like the man I had unintentionally humiliated twenty years earlier, my face had a mismatched symmetry. Half of it had retained its familiar contours but the other half didn’t even feel as if it was mine. The right eye lid was red with inflammation and drooped so heavily that it could barely stay open, whilst the skin from below the eye to the corner of my mouth, had the stretched bloated look of an over inflated balloon. I ran my hand over my entire face perhaps in the ridiculous hope that this one futile gesture would magically restore it to normal. But luck wasn’t on my side and I felt utterly helpless. In two days time I was supposed to host a TV programme, but I wasn’t even likely to make it to the studio door with my face looking like this: no amount of make up, regardless of how professionally applied, could hide the disaster. Would this dust allergy, (which had never really bothered me much in the past), leave me with a permanently misshapen face, and how would people treat me once my looks were no longer acceptable? It was a long restless night but by the morning the worst of the bloating had gone and by the end of the week it had disappeared altogether. I was lucky as my suffering was temporary, yet I can’t stop thinking about the thousands of people in this world who spend every day of their lives living with the effects of a facial disfigurement.

Many are ostracised from their communities, reliant on the charity of strangers, while others are regarded as the victims of some kind of divine punishment, the unlucky recipients of a horrific pay back. A surgeon’s blade may be a good corrective, but it doesn’t always work. But then again why does cosmetic surgery have to be the end all solution? Maybe we need to start from the following, simple premise: there is no such thing as “The Perfect Face”, and those whose features don’t cut “The Norm” should be treated with as much respect and dignity, as those whose features do. Maybe if we tried living by that rule we wouldn’t flinch so much when we see a face that’s permanently disfigured.

The Power of a Magnetic Addiction

I’m not ashamed to admit this but I have an addiction! It isn’t dangerous, it doesn’t threaten to plunge me into destitution, nor does it induce the kind of yobbish behaviour that might justify an ASBO. In fact I revel in the ambiguity my habit provokes among my friends. On the one hand they condemn it but because it’s so ridiculously cheap, they’re only too happy to indulge me when I demand a fix. My addiction doesn’t have a name, although I’m reliably informed by Wikipedia that if I lived in Russia I would be called a memomagnetic. It’s a rather grand title to confer on a fridge magnet collector, but who am I to complain?

So when did my addiction start? About eight years ago I was browsing in a London cookery shop when I saw a small pile of fridge magnets stashed amongst rows of pots, pans and food processors. It was a motley collection consisting of plastic quiches the size of a fifty pence piece, portly looking chefs with white puffy hats and handlebar moustaches, and mushroom shaped recipe books. As I had only recently decorated my kitchen and needed something colourful to jazz up the white blandness of the fridge and freezer doors, I opted for a mushroom and a chef. Since then I’ve never looked back and my fridge magnet collection has grown considerably, although it’s nothing compared to Louise J Greenfarb’s of Henderson, Nevada, who in 2002 reportedly had over 30,000 magnets to her name.

That’s a bit excessive even by my standards although I do take pride in owning a collection where some of my most cherished pieces come with their own story. There’s the pot-bellied pink teddy bear with the soulful eyes, a miniature red rose wired around its neck and magnets on all four paws. It was an unwanted gift from a friend who’d got it from the fiancé who then dumped her. She’d suspected that things weren’t right because moments before giving her the bear he’d said there was something he needed to get off his chest. Since I also collect teddies I couldn’t deny this one a home, and he now takes pride of place on the fridge door with an Irish leprechaun, a Belgian beer mug, and a basket of dim sum dumplings for company.

Not all of my magnets are rejects. Some are souvenirs from mine or other peoples’ travels, others were picked up in small job lots at boot fairs, while a friend almost got arrested for getting five of them on my behalf. He’d scored them from a  memomagneticist outside a dodgy bar in South London, during which a plain clothes drugs officer interrupted the transaction. He thought he’d find some Colombian marching powder but he uncovered an egg shaped fridge magnet from Norway, an Austrian boy doll in lederhosen who yodels like a cockerel when the button on his back is pressed, a cocktail glass with a gold stirrer and a poker hand in the rim, a massive pair of scarlet red lips that squeak “I love you, I love you” every time the fridge vibrates, and a Perspex beer bottle with a bottle opener at one end and a plastic dolphin swimming around inside. The officer didn’t know whether to laugh or cry!

Collecting fridge magnets might not be to everyone’s liking, but for hardcore devotees like me it’s a welcome diversion from some of life’s more disturbing realities. Who wouldn’t laugh at the sight of Henry VIII driving a double decker bus with his six wives on board? Or salivate over a bowl of Chinese noodles sprinkled with herbs? It’s only a matter of time before other people will come around to my way of thinking and join the fun, just as it won’t be too long before a fridge magnet collection appears on the Antiques Road Show for a valuation, (assuming that hasn’t happened already!).

As for me I’m now moving my collection away from objects towards people. I’ve recently acquired a magnetic cut out figure of Lenin – complete with a wardrobe of biker jeans, an Elvis Presley jump suit and studded leathers. I may not know that much about one of the founding father’s of Communism, but he looks pretty cool when he’s dressed as the King of Rock n Roll! Comrades, take note!

The soup, the tomato, the wind and an exit!

Whenever Harriet comes to see me it usually means that something’s wrong. We’ve been friends for more than thirty years and she’s as predictable as a wet English summer. When she’s with me I know that a few hours of my time will have to be put aside for a lengthy exposition of her latest emotional drama, and last Wednesday was no exception to that rule. The only surprising thing about it was her dogged insistence that a bowl of soup was the cause of all her troubles.

“Joolz …I was just passing and thought I’d drop in. How are you and what’s that lovely husband of yours up to these days?”

Before I could even utter a syllable she had  made her way to the kitchen and was pulling a bottle of wine out of the fridge faster than a greyhound leaving a trap.

“I’m fine and John is too!” I said wearily, “So what’s up? Is Tom giving you aggro or something?”

Her eyes opened wide in astonishment, “Tom? Good grief no. What on earth makes you say that?” she laughed hesitantly after nervously gulping down a mouthful of white wine.

“Because you live 20 miles away from here and there’s no way you could’ve been just passing. And you never drink before mid-day. It’s not even a quarter to yet!”

The smile gradually evaporated from her face and before I knew it Harriet was sobbing hysterically over my kitchen table and talking in a blubbering, incoherent stream. Her husband Tom’s name was frequently mentioned in the same breath as the home made tomato soup she’d cooked for their supper the night before. I was more than just a little bit confused. Harriet can often surprise me with some of the things that come out of her mouth, but tomato soup was a first, “What’s soup got to do with this?” I said.

“Everything”, she wailed, “If I hadn’t made it he wouldn’t have left me!”

For once in my life I felt really helpless and could do nothing except put my arms around her shoulders and reassure her that he’d be back before she knew it.

“He won’t”, she sniffed, “He said I’d done it deliberately and that it would be my fault if he was crippled for life or if people kept away from him because of the smell!”

By now it was obvious that I was still none the wiser about the connection between a late night supper and her husband’s sudden exit, and it was only after some gentle persuasion that I finally got to the bottom of the mystery. Apparently Tom and tomatoes do not get on, to the extent that if he so much as sniffs or eats one, his knees supposedly swell up whilst his bowels erupt in terrific gales of flatulence.

“How could I have not remembered that?” she said pleadingly. “Of all the bloody stupid things to forget!”

A sympathetic “Oh dear” was the best I could offer in her hour of need. Tom and I never really got on that well but along with his mother, I was probably one of the few people who could actually tolerate him. The really amazing thing was that it took a bowl of soup to finally remove him from my friend’s life, even though he’d probably been planning to cut and run for quite some time and the meal was the excuse he’d needed.

Five and a half hours later Harriet was heading for home and looking a lot more cheerful than when she had first arrived. In the time we’d spent together it had slowly begun to dawn on her that she was now a free woman who owed her liberation to her soup. She offered to leave me a copy of the recipe but I declined.

“Well if you ever change your mind you know where I am,” she sighed wistfully.

“Thanks”, I said, “But I think I’ll be okay. John’s in excellent shape at the moment.”

We laughed and hugged affectionately. Afterwards I went back to the kitchen, opened the fridge and discovered some courgettes and a couple of rather sorry looking lemons on a shelf. As it’s beyond my ability to concoct a spur of the moment banquet, I flicked through a cookery book for inspiration. Lo and behold on page 17 was a recipe for courgette soup: unfortunately one of the ingredients was a pound of ripe tomatoes. Suddenly memories of the conversation with Harriet came flooding back, so in the end I decided to play it safe with an artery blocking supper of chicken in a basket.

* Names have been changed to protect the not so innocent!

Beware of the man in the designer suit

It all started one morning with a polite but firm knock on the front door. Normally people very rarely come to the house so early in the day and it was with some wariness that I ran to the lounge to take a sneaky look at my visitor from behind a curtain. Standing before the doorstep was a tall, young man, with neat dark hair and pale skin.

But it was his expensive, navy blue pin stripe suit that really caught my attention, since something of that quality isn’t usually worn by the double glazing salesmen or mobile phone recyclers who regularly menace my neighbourhood. I was genuinely puzzled who he was until I opened the door and saw the BNP badge pinned to his lapel. I looked into his grey piercing eyes that had the cold, sharpness of raw steel. Neither of us could work out who was the more astonished as both our jaws seemed to drop at the same time! Clearly he hadn’t expected to find a black woman at home, just as I hadn’t thought I’d be eyeballing a man whose politics I disagree with. We parted company without exchanging a word!

Hours later when I analysed the encounter it dawned on me that the reason why I had opened the door to him in the first place was because I had been taken in by his suave appearance. That fact alone was enough to trigger a worrying train of thought. For better or for worse we live in a society that seems to care more about how people look rather than with what comes out of their mouths: which means that anyone with remotely dodgy views who happens to wear Armani accessorised with D&G, could spin a vile sugar-coated message whose obnoxiousness isn’t noticed by a pap obsessed generation. Is it wrong to believe that some of today’s young people are really that shallow? I don’t think so!

A recent conversation with the seventeen year old daughter of a girlfriend confirmed my worst suspicions. As we discussed Michael Jackson’s legacy she admitted that she only accepted the reports of his death when they appeared on People magazine website – even though it had earlier been confirmed by the BBC, Sky and ITV news.

“So why couldn’t you accept it when it was on the television?” I asked with undisguised incredulity.

There was an exasperated sigh followed by an explanation whose crassness would have probably offended a five-year-old:

“Because everybody knows a story’s only true when it’s printed by People magazine!”

“So as far as you’re concerned it can never be wrong?”

“Okay so it might not get it right all the time”, she said after a moment’s hesitation, “But it gets loads of stories about Britney and if she didn’t like People she’d hardly talk to them would she?”

“And I suppose you’d vote for her if she stood for Parliament?”

“Actually I would”, she grinned, “It’s about time they put some glamour into politics”.

I rolled my eyes towards the ceiling in despair bewildered as to how someone who was normally so intelligent could be that dense?

I’m old enough to remember the extremists of the 1970s along with their Nazi tattoos and open expressions of racism. Three decades later those same tattoos are hiding beneath designer clothes while the hate filled rhetoric has been cynically tempered to look reasonable and user-friendly. BNP hopes of a parliamentary seat may have been dashed in the recent elections, but down doesn’t necessarily mean out where they’re concerned. They’re looking for another way in and it worries me that the intellectual vacuum of a section of the younger generation is the potential front door. They may have re-packaged their message but all they need now is a new leader, with a tantalising aura to give the icing to a very poisonous cake. Maybe I’m too cynical for my own good, but I can only hope that tomorrow’s voters won’t leave it too late to wake up and shut the door on men in designer suits.

My disastrous lop-sided wardrobe

There’s a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach triggered by a sudden twinge of anxiety. In a handful of minutes it snowballs into a massive wave that rises from the gut and into my throat, gripping my windpipe with a clasp that feels like a cold, weighted hand. The panic attack subsides as quickly as it started and I stare at the tape measure that caused it lying uncoiled at my feet on the bedroom carpet.

Surely it’s normal to have a major panic attack when you open your wardrobe, pull out a favourite suit and then discover that it doesn’t fit? That’s bad enough in itself but the fact that it was bought less than a year ago and cost a small fortune, makes it even worse. Having forced myself to count to ten, I did what any woman in my situation would do and went looking for a tape measure. Just as I’d spotted the strands of grey hair littering my scalp, surely I would have noticed if my waist and bust had been gathering a few extra inches? Obviously not, because according to the tape measure I’d gained an additional four! What’s even more infuriating is that I eat sensibly and exercise regularly, so how or where the extra weight came from is anyone’s guess, but what’s not in dispute is that I urgently need some new clothes.

In fairness there are one or two items that still fit, but I can barely get into the remaining dresses and trousers that once slipped on like a second skin. What’s equally frustrating is that although I’m officially a size 12, not all size 12 clothes are cut the same way. Some are too big; others are outrageously small while the rest seem to have a life of their own. One store I visited encouraged me to try on a size 14 dress but since the result was the equivalent of a five-year-old boy wearing his dad’s best suit, I decided to give that idea a miss.

The reality is I will never have a wardrobe that is straight forward and uncomplicated. My arms are too long, which means it’s difficult to find shirts that aren’t short in the sleeve: because I am so tall trouser hems hover ridiculously over the tops of my skinny ankles: and since my feet are as flat as pancakes, I can never wear ballet pumps or stylish sandals that don’t exacerbate their flipper like appearance. The bottom line is that I am getting older and am unable to resist the changes gradually altering the shape of my body.

“Don’t worry”, a girlfriend said to me consolingly over a low-calorie lunch, “There’s always cosmetic surgery!”

“Isn’t that a bit drastic?” I replied.

“Not necessarily”, she smiled, “You can always lose length on your legs by getting your knees readjusted. It’s amazing what surgeons can do these days! I was reading about it in a magazine.”

“Oh really! And what could they do with the rest of me?” I said.

She laughed enigmatically, “More carrot cake?”

I reckon that making the best of the lopsided contents in my wardrobe is probably the better and less painful of the available   options. Having said that it’s going to hurt like mad parting company with some of my favourite items of clothing, including the white evening gown I wore the very first time I clapped eyes on the man I eventually married. But as long as they go to a decent owner who’ll shower them with plenty of TLC, then I really can’t complain. In the meantime the high street had better watch out because I need some new suits and I won’t settle for anything less than a well-fitting size 13.

Falling in love again…with the beautiful but flawed game

I’ve got a confession to make. For the third time in my life I have fallen truly, deeply, (though not quite madly), in love. It all happened rather suddenly, a bit like the way a lion pounces on a springbok, but with a lot more TLC. Apart from the fireworks at a 4th of July party, there’s nothing that even comes close to matching the intensity of what I’m feeling. So what is it that’s pushed up my pulse rate? English football of course! My romance is at an early stage, but it’s overcome more than its fair share of hurdles so the portents for longevity are already looking good. Nothing can hurt it, not even the fallout from our disastrous World Cup performance against Germany, although their 4-0 demolition of tournament favourites Argentina was some consolation.

It’s not just the army of WAGS and the diehard supporters who have an interest in the national team. Even people like me with a basic knowledge of soccer’s rules, are concerned about a sport invented in this county but in which we’re now lagging behind. How different it was all those decades ago when English football was up there with the greats and when home-grown stars like Sir Stanley Matthews, Geoff Hurst, and Bobby Charlton, dazzled a generation with their talent. Looking back it was an age of innocence and as a young girl I enjoyed a genuine bond with the beautiful game. I used to fight my siblings for the best seat in the lounge to watch the FA Cup Finals, and every Sunday afternoon rushed the household chores so that I could catch Brian Moore and the Big Match on ITV.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when the relationship turned sour, but for a time soccer and I were like an estranged couple who wanted but couldn’t quite bring ourselves to kiss and make up. Fixtures went unmarked like proverbial ships in the night while I switched affection and turned my attention to tennis instead. And it might well have stayed that way if the old emotions hadn’t been dramatically kicked back into life earlier this year. Why? Because I had bought into the notion that England’s “golden generation” could emulate their 1966 forebears and bring the World Cup back to these shores. Sadly the dream is now dead… along with the hope of seeing the trophy on display at the opening of the 2012 London Olympics.

So why was the England team such a wash out? Personally I don’t think it’s fair to pile the blame on manager Fabio Capello. There’s a major flaw at the heart of English football: talent isn’t nurtured and the interests of the Premiership take precedence over those of the national squad. It’s difficult for the Football Association to do much about the problem as the demands of the Premier League ensures fully developed talent from around the world is recruited and this stymies opportunities for young English players. But at least the FA didn’t cave into the tabloid sports writers who demanded Capello’s sacking. That would have been like sticking a plaster over a bullet wound without removing the projectile.

Maybe the Germans did us a favour when they gave us a 4-1 thrashing. Our lads performed so badly it would’ve been a travesty if the result had been the other way round. Let’s face it English football is on the ropes and in dire need of a turnaround. That means making some tough choices, but it’ll be worth it in the end if the squad that emerges from the ruins of World Cup 2010 equals the achievements of 1966. There’ll be blood on the carpet and plenty of tears, but like a loyal WAG with a Gucci handbag, I won’t cut and run. English football can count on my support and maybe like me there’ll be countless others out there who’ll reconnect with the beautiful game.