Double Your Mid-life Crisis with Half a House

Pistorius is what happens when you bang your head hard.

An entire season has passed since I last blogged as part of the creative writing process tour. Why? Well, I’ve been writing all the words (and sustaining a head injury, but that's another story). I wrote and wrote until I had written an entire novel – not crime, this time, but contemporary women’s fiction. It’s got funny bits and sad bits and sexy bits in it...oh, and a three-legged dog called Pistorius, who leaves tagnutty arse trails around the house, like the outlines drawn around dead bodies at crime scenes, but drawn with poo, not chalk. Would you expect any less from The Horrormoanal Woman? My efforts may turn out to be a literary diamond in the rough or equally likely, the obfuscated work-wank of a partially hearing middle-aged woman, suffering from Dead Beryl inhalation and an uncontrollable addiction to mid-afternoon self-nuptials.

Hot laptop? Hot storyline? Really, nobody needs to see THAT face.

Good job I’ll be getting an office to myself very soon, is all I can say...

Speaking of which, I’ve been busy busy busy in Dead Beryl’s house. While my fingers were flying over the keyboard, builders raged on in the background with an angle grinder and disappointing bum cleavages. Yes, I’m finally having my horrid house renovated and extended. You lucky voyeurs can watch my existential meltdown on Channel 4 on Wednesday 8^th October 2014, 8pm, when I will be appearing, together with the other Richeses, on Sarah Beeny’s excellent property show, Double Your House for Half the Money. 

Ever changing hair colour. Ever diminishing weight. Watch my meltdown on Channel 4!

I have no idea what particular bits of our journey will make the final edit, but let’s just say, living on a building site encouraged more disgusting personal habits and emotional trauma than ten years spent welded by dried in body-fluids to a gaming console, while Zombie Shooter 2 flickers like a strobe on the gore-filled screen. 

Building & writing. Warning! Can cause a ripe intimate savoury twang.

I’m looking forward to seeing the building process on the tellybox, but slightly dreading watching myself and hearing my northern nasal noise on prime-time national TV. I just know I’m going to look like a small clown with a gut. Worst of all, will be if they incorporate the shot of me in a helmet, looking like Otto, the bus driver in the Simpsons. Curly hair and safety helmets DO NOT mix. I should add, however, that the process was highly enjoyable and meeting Sarah Beeny was great. She really is as nice as she comes across in her programmes. 

Stay tuned for progress reports on my building and writing endeavours...

Beeny, Brits and sore bits

I started a blog post about the Brits, but then, because lady holes are too close together and I am stressed off my tits, I got a bladder infection. It’s hard to blog when you’re pissing razor blades. It’s hard to do anything when your brain is comprised mainly of mashed potatoes. And mine is... 

I have a project to extend and renovate my house that is already six months behind schedule. My house, in case you missed previous posts, is a shithole, made mainly from brightly coloured sanitary ware and broken 1980’s kitchen in dark oak, where the cupboards smell ominously of fish.

My luxus kitchen, where the best worktop is a box with a chopping board on top.

In my house, an old woman called Beryl was found not alive. In my bedroom, in fact. So now, I call the place Dead Beryl’s house, because it belonged to Beryl and she is dead. Admittedly, she is the best work colleague I’ve ever had (I work from home). Dead Beryl never argues or gives me the finger behind my back or pisses on the toilet seat. Although I suspect her life of muesli abuse has caused the toilets to growl when you flush.

See? Sarah Beeny looks cool in a hard hat. I just look a helmet.

But that’s OK, because I’m going to be extending and renovating the house imminently and the very awesome Sarah Beeny is going to document my nervous breakdown for posterity on her show, “Double Your House for Half the Money.” If only I could underpin my comparatively lacklustre boobies as well as the house foundations. Perhaps The Beeny will have some tips... Men: I said tiPs!
Pay attention!

Behold, the glory of my tower of soup! Eat your heart out, Bernard Black.

I’ve also gone partially deaf because of Dead Beryl and her dust-encrusted curtains, which look like a cross between a magic-eye poster from the early ‘90’s and an old lady’s floral underpant with extra large crusty flowers for the myopic and hygiene-challenged. Plus, I’m still writing and hotly pursuing literary stardom like a stalker with furtive words in my flasher-mac pocket instead of a gun or a schlong. This comes with its own challenges, like realising you’re sick of just being the person who washes the skanky undercrackers and makes nutritious food that only looks a bit like vomit and which everyone just consumes with no real appreciation of the effort that went into any of it. 

So, folks, there’s a storm raging in The Horrormoanal Woman’s head. Some call it a mid-life crisis. I call it an epiphany. 2014 will be a year of metamorphosis for me.  And yes, I’ve started liking the things young people like again. It can’t be long before I try to squeeze my sausage meat legs into hotpants or something similarly embarrassing for my family.

Aw, Katy Perry. You look reet bonny in that uniform.

Anyway, back to the Brits: After years of moaning that any new band to emerge in the last ten years is a bag of arse, I found myself enjoying about 40% of the music at the Brit Awards 2014. I already liked Arctic Monkeys, but this time, unlike when I watched Glastonbury last summer, I liked other things too. For instance, I enjoyed Bastille a bit, and it wasn’t just because I wanted to touch the singer’s head. And I enjoyed that band with the warbly, big-haired bird, Rudy Mental. Don’t get me wrong, I still think Katy Perry missed her opportunity to stack shelves in Asda.  To my jaded old eyes, One Direction looks like a bunch of idiotic little scrotes, gurning and churning out pop with more synthetic composition than orange squash from a pound shop. I still think, when Alex from Arctic Monkeys gave that rambling acceptance speech about rock and roll and sludge and glass ceilings, he sounded like my eight year old off his nuts on blue Smarties. Having said that, he did come up with better pissed-up sound bites than my stock Drunken-Lady-Viking witticisms of: “where’s the bucket?” and “get help”.

When I get drunk, I do this, rather than come up with quotable soundbites. That's why I write and am not a pop star.

But generally, the Brits was great. I actually got sweaty palms in a good way when Grimmy snogged James Corden. Beyoncé looked like a really nice bottle of Gordon’s gin in that sparkly dress.

So, I’m coming round to the idea of new things being okay. Maybe a new me could be okay too, then. Time to ditch the anorak and council estate hair? Maybe...