Trivial tales from someone who’s always in it

Yeah, well, I’m going. For six days. (Only six days.) With my mother. (Just my mother.) We’ll be staying in a convent. (Yes, an actual working convent full of nuns.) And while we’re there, minding our own business, more than quarter of a million people will be arriving in the same town to watch some race thing or other. Can’t you just picture the fun we’re going to have?

Here’s the back story: my Mum, the Dowager Empress, is the youngest of nine children. Only two others are still alive, both sisters. One of them — the eldest, turning 97 in July — just happens to be a Catholic nun in France. And this year, she’s celebrating her 75th Jubilee of nunhood. Nunship. Nunience. Nunnerousness. Nunerosity. I could go on all day.

Back in March, the Dowager Empress received a card in the mail, inviting her to the “special Jubilee celebration” on 6 June. And although she’s not yet at the carbon-dating stage of advanced decrepitude, she’s still somewhat senior to be contemplating a NZ-France trip on her own. She’s never been there before and she doesn’t speak the lingo. So Your Correspondent, drawing on the experience of three holidays in France and six years of high school French, offered to take her. It took three days to book flights from New Zealand, flights from Australia, train fares from Paris and travel insurance for us both …

… and it’s all for a lunch.

Yes, superheroes, we’re travelling from the Antipodes to France … for lunch. I can live with this, though, having experienced first-hand the type of slap-up meals this convent puts on (it is French, after all). The Dreamboat and I were served a bloody yummo three-course lunch with wine at the afore-mentioned convent when we visited back in 2006.

The fact that I’ve been to the convent once before and met my aunt fairly recently is gong to make things easier for me but it’ll be a very emotional experience for the Dowager Empress and her sibling. This is the first time they’ll have seen each other in 60 years — and it’s probably the last time they’ll see each other in their lives.

The contrasts are amazing — two women, born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, whose lives couldn’t have been more more different. One left home at 18 to join a French convent, was imprisoned by the Germans in WWII, lived in constant fear of arrest in Spain during the Franco era … and the other sailed across the world at 28 to marry the fiance who’d emigrated to NZ three years earlier, and raised four children.

Then you’ve got the setting — on the one hand, thousands of people taking part in the noise and fanfare and spectacle of a massive public sporting event … and on the other, this deeply intimate and poignant reunion taking place in the hush of a convent on the Rue de la Solitude (the “Road of Solitude”).

Part of me is dreading this trip, part of me is excited and another part of me can’t believe it’s real. I do know that once I’m there, I won’t regret it.

Hopefully, the magazine that’s just agreed to buy the story won’t regret it either.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Good old punk poet John Cooper Clarke. The above quote is from his song, I Don’t Wanna Be Nice and it always makes me grin. On the strength of that line alone, JCC briefly became a hero of mine … some time way back in the last century. I love to swear. And if you’ve ever heard JCC’s Evidently Chickentown, you’ll know this is a guy who’s also seriously lovin’ de curse words.

I’m not sure why I like swearing so much. I suspect the reason isn’t too complicated … the shock value, perhaps? Or maybe it’s that as an adult, I can get away with the sort of language that, as a child, would’ve sent my mother grimly rummaging around in a drawer for a wooden spoon.

When I was working in radio, a Media Studies student came to the station for a week’s work experience. After two days of sitting in the cubicle next to mine, she said I swore more than anyone else she’d ever met in her life. I rather liked this. Eventually, my foul mouth wore down my colleagues and one or two of my better efforts were absorbed into the workplace vernacular, like substituting “arseholed” for “drunk”:  I went out on Saturday night and got completely arseholed.

But now I work for myself. I no longer get much opportunity to wow the Great Unwashed with my profanity, so you can imagine how very excited I was indeed to join online knitting community, Ravelry.

Stop smirking.

Ravelry is great. Yes, it is. Not only is it filled with funky fan groups like this and this (enabling Your Correspondent to nurture her inner geek while playing with pointy sticks), you also get to include your very favourite swear word on your profile. You’re invited — nay, encouraged — to do so. Why else would Ravelry’s designers put a blank field next to a label reading, “Fave curse word”?

You can be sure I wasted no time at all in obliging. These Ravellers were my kind of people! I duly typed up my current favourite — fucking mongrel arse-head — and sat back, waiting for all the like-minded cuss-merchants to add me as a friend.

That hasn’t exactly happened. I have just one friend on Ravelry. I think the only reason she added me was because she joined a group I belonged to and automatically clasped every member of it to her bosom. Still, it’s nice to have a “friend”, even if her “Fave curse word” is “pork monkeys” and she’s never contacted me again since and probably never will.

There are times when I wander blithely through Ravelry, hoping I’ll connect with someone — anyone — who’s prepared to bare their all in the “Fave curse word” stakes … but I never have. Most people leave the field blank. Others make weak excuses: they’re trying to give up swearing or they stopped when they had kids (I thought that was when a lot of people took it up in earnest). Then there are the “pork monkeys” brigade; those who use ordinary words (sometimes with exclamation marks) and weakly try to convince us that these are a credible cursing substitute. Here are a few examples I’ve just found: Monkeys! (What’s with the fucking monkeys?) Flangdang; bother; rats; diggity … you get the picture.

It’s a bit disappointing, really. I’m considering starting up a new Ravelry group called “Knitters who think it’s clever to swear”. I want to reach out to them, those special few, those oh-so-lost souls forlornly crying, “Fucking prick!” and “Shithead wanker!” into the void. I will gather them together, offer them sanctuary and then, as one, we’ll brandish our bamboo needles … and really let rip.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Well, we could talk about what Your Correspondent’s been up to since the last post … the three weeks spent on the farm in NZ with the Dreamboat and his parents; the pathetic progress I’m making on my permaculture course; the impending journey to a French convent to re-unite two siblings who haven’t seen each other in sixty years … but I’d rather talk about something else. I want to talk about all the fucking terrible yoga music out there.

Yes, I’ve taken up yoga. Yes, I am aware that taking up yoga, along with taking up tap dancing, are things that Women Of A Certain Age tend to do.

So be it.

The truth is, I like yoga. It makes me less mental. It makes me so less mental that I haven’t really felt mental at all for quite some time now. Maybe I’m cured — how pleasant! But even if I’m not, at least I’m a lot more in control and a lot less fraught and everything’s a lot better for everyone, all round. Thank you, yoga! You’re the tops!

But back to the music. I was looking to download some so that I could have some variety when I practised (which hasn’t exactly happened with any great regularity yet, but ya never know). I found a couple of albums that had the right kind of eastern-y, yoga-y vibe. But then my eyes — oh unfortunate orbs! — fell upon this. Yes, folks, it’s Yoga To Rick Springfield! Well, fuck me dead!

As if assaulting our sensibilities with Jessie’s Girl way back when wasn’t bad enough, now the song’s back to potentially menace a whole new captive audience of poor innocents wobbling through their Lord of the Dance pose.

But wait! There’s more! How could I possibly not mention Yoga To The Killers? Or Yoga To Coldplay or John Mayer or Grease (fucking Grease! What are these people on?) or … wait for it … Radiohead? What the hell am I doing here? wails some poor individual as they struggle not to fall and break their neck in a Crane pose. I don’t belong here …

There are others but I don’t want to spoil the fun for you of finding them yourself. Go on — head over to iTunes or Amazon and prepare to be quite delighted.

I thought yoga was meant to be uplifting. I thought it was supposed to help people become centred and kind of enlightened. Then again, I’m getting on a bit. I might have missed something. Maybe those strangulated hernias acquired from maintaining a Firefly pose don’t hurt so much when You’re The One That I Want is tinkling away in the background.

I’ve saved the worst — or best, depending on how you look at it — til last. Even if you haven’t clicked on any of the other links, click on this one and know the true meaning of “ghastly”. Words almost fail me at its awfulness. Note the demented goblins on the cover. Presumably, this image is supposed to encourage parents to buy the double CD (containing no less than 72 tracks — what a bargain!) for their own kids. But these ones don’t look chilled and centred and yoga-fied. They look as though they’ve been locked for three days in a vat filled with cocaine.

If that cover isn’t enough to convince you that Ultimate Evil does indeed exist and it’s trying to destroy us all through the medium of putrid yoga music, listen to the Track 2 sample … and then tell me there is no Satan. If you’re powerless to stop the forces of darkness from bitch-slapping you a little more, listen to the sample for Track 22. Heaven help you and heaven help any poor kids whose parents foisted that on them for their birthday.

And if you’re thinking of taking up yoga … well, go for it. Just be sure to inspect the instructor’s music collection before signing on any dotted lines. Otherwise, you could be consigning yourself to a very particular sort of hell — where you’re forced to spend eternity in Corpse Pose, with Summer Nights playing on a perpetual loop.

Popularity: 26% [?]

 By the time Gand-Agent makes his call, at least one of our intrepid pair is well on the way to Shit-Faced Land. The tango music has sobbed itself into an all-time lugubrious low … the David Wenham look-alike barman has been told the full story … even the middle-aged dancers look sombre … and then Faithful Ham’s phone rings. She doesn’t trust herself to hold it together during the call (and she can’t hear anything over the music anyway), so she goes outside.

Gand-Agent: Hi, I promised you I’d ring as soon as possible because I know you really want to know the outcome of your offer on the property and I don’t like to keep people in suspense, blah, blah, blah …
Faithful Ham: (thinks) God! Will you just get the fuck on with it?
Gand-Agent: What’s that noise in the background?
Faithful Ham: It’s tango music. We ran away to Argentina. Waiting makes us restless.
Gand-Agent: Really? I’ve always wanted to travel around South America but it certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with all those extremely gorgeous women wearing teeny little skirts, blah, blah, etc …
Faithful Ham: Yeah, so anyway …
Gand-Agent: … blah, blah, congratulations, your bid was successful, blah, blah …
Faithful Ham: (nearly puts fist through window while banging on it to get Frodoboat’s attention, displaces three neck vertebrae due to violence of nodding, then bursts into tears — again.)
Gand-Agent: … blah, blah, papers to sign in the morning so I’ll meet you at the airport when you’re seeing off Frodoboat.
Faithful Ham: (runs back inside and is picked up and whirled around by Frodoboat while David Wenham look-alike barman beams on benevolently.)

The following morning, Frodoboat and Faithful Ham (nursing her throbbing, hung-over head) meet Gand-Agent at the airport.
Gand-Agent: I couldn’t really mention this last night but now that everything’s signed, I thought you should know — the orc rang and made an offer on the property.
Faithful Ham and Frodoboat: (exchange a look that is 38.573% sardonic and 61.427% smug)

It’s right at this moment that a flight arrival is announced. It’s the plane that Frodoboat is due to fly back out on. The luggage is off-loaded … and sure enough, Frodoboat’s missing bag is among it. One of the airport staff takes the bag off the trolley, affixes a new label, and puts it back on.

It would be nice to say that from then on, our victorious couple lived happily ever after.

And so they did … apart from the tiny matter of four hours spent by Faithful Ham in a lawyer’s office later that day because of a misunderstanding (the lawyer’s) over an easement on the property, the subsequent withdrawal and then reinstatement of the offer … not to mention some interesting discussions with Mrs Vend-Or concerning the property’s chattels. But hey, every good story has its Gollums and Shelobs … this one was never going to be any different.

P.S. Hey, it’s 2010. When the hell did that happen?

Popularity: 40% [?]

Faithful Ham doesn’t make it to breakfast the next morning. After being scolded by the innkeeper for not showing, she mutters something feeble about (overwhelming) fatigue and drinking (hardly any) wine at (great) altitude. He does little to mask his scepticism.

Before driving back to Nelson, Frodoboat and Hamwise visit the Enchanted Land once more. They’re standing at the gate, filming their surroundings, when a strange chariot covered in symbols pulls up. The driver is an orc.

Orc: Are you the owners?
Faithful Ham: Not yet.

There is a silent passenger in the chariot. He is not an orc. He is merely dull and stupid.

Orc: Not many properties with this amount of land left. What would you do with it?
Faithful Ham: Set it up along permaculture lines … regenerate more native bush … maybe put a B&B on it.
Orc: Well, I build eco-homes. Carve it up and I’ll build all the houses for you. That house there doesn’t look like much. Tear it down, carve up the land, put an eco-village on it … you’d make a fortune. (He uses the phrase ‘carve it up’ twice more in the conversation.)
Faithful Ham: Wow. Your obvious deep love and respect for the land is very touching. Am I going to have to fight you for this place?
Orc: Oh no … my money’s all tied up in properties I’m building in town. I wouldn’t be able to afford it.
(He eventually departs, for which relief Frodoboat and Faithful Ham sacrifice 17 goats, someone’s pet lamb and a crow that got in the way)
Faithful Ham: Babe, if you’re sure about buying this property, we need to ring Gand-Agent right now and make an offer. I don’t trust that guy.

The phone call is made on the shores of Lake Rotoiti, while eating pies. Gand-Agent instructs the pair to meet him in his tower later in the afternoon. When they arrive …

Gand-Agent: Someone else flew in from Hamilton this morning and I’ve taken them to see the property. They’ve already made an offer. I can’t tell you the amount, obviously, but I’ve told them I’ll be presenting yours to Vend-or first. You need to understand that if your offer is unsuccessful, you probably won’t have any come-back.
Frodoboat and Faithful Ham: (shattered)

They put in their very best offer. They’re not optimistic. Gand-Agent doesn’t seem very optimistic either. He tells them he’ll ring them back that evening with Vend-or’s decision. Utterly dejected, they leave Gand-Agent’s tower and look for somewhere to eat.

Faithful Ham: There’s a restaurant in town called Plan B. Let’s go there because I have a feeling we’re going to need one.

The restaurant is shut. It’s a miserable, rainy Sunday night. They start hunting for somewhere, anywhere that’s open. Eventually, they find a nicely refurbished pub with a restaurant. The place is called The Verdict*.

They enter to the strains of mournful violins. The local tango club has booked out the restaurant for its weekly get-together. Beautifully-dressed middle-aged people wander in and out, managing to look simultaneously self-conscious and self-important. An apologetic barman who looks a little like David Wenham (happy, Lizz?) informs us we’ll have to sit in the bar and slum it with the rest of the non-tango personnel.

A few drinks later, the snivelling begins …

Frodoboat: (eyes welling but in a manly way) I should’ve offered more …
Faithful Ham: (blubbering openly) I can’t believe we came all this way, just to lose it at the end …
Frodoboat: We don’t know that yet … we have to keep hoping … but I don’t know if I have the strength … (hangs head over beer)
Faithful Ham: Come on, dear Mr Frodoboat. Snap out of it. I can’t carry this burden of worry for you … and I can’t carry you either, you fat bastard.
Frodoboat: (to the David Wenham look-alike barman) What the fuck are you looking at?
Barman: (whimpers)

To be continued …

* I swear I’m not making this up.

Popularity: 72% [?]