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...

Women over 40 - improving like strong cheese.

There was a thing going round on Facebook this week. You know...one of those quotes from someone I’ve never heard of that rang true and everyone I know ticked “Like”. It was about women over forty, but the wisdom had been espoused by a man. Though I agreed with it all, I think it should have come from a shouty woman, who is actually 42 AND HAS FUCKING PMT THAT COULD TAKE OUT HALF OF CENTRAL ASIA.

So, here are the facts, in no particular order, on behalf of women like me. I know there are lots of us out there. And if you don’t agree with us, we don’t give a flying fuck, because they’re OUR facts, not YOUR facts:

1. Most of us have shat children out of our foofs. Don’t mistake this for weakness. We gave life. We are God’s emissaries on earth. 

Think carefully before you say whether it looks big in this or not

2. If we say our arses are fat, it’s because our arses are currently fat. We do not have self esteem issues. We just like wine and crisps and sit on our arses a lot doing clever things. But please note, just because we say it, doesn’t mean you are allowed to agree with us.

3. Many of us work. Some of us have been self-employed for years. We are successful, ruling entire families like benevolent dictators. We are used to being our own bosses, so don’t think we’re hoping you’ll help/participate/let us out in traffic. We are expecting you to do our bidding. Our cars are bigger than yours. Fucking move it!

4. We don’t play mind games because we don’t have to. We ask for the things we want, praise the things we love, drop the shutters fast on people who disappoint us and God help anyone who really gets on our tits. 

5. We don’t need to be told how intelligent or impressive we are, because we have a raft of qualifications that prove how intelligent and impressive we are. That’s not to say that we don’t enjoy being told how intelligent and impressive we are, so SAY IT, MOTHERFUCKER! 

6. We don’t need to be told that we’re attractive. We’re very comfortable in our own skin. But we do enjoy being told. Follow the previous instruction.

Seriously? Fatal Attraction was not a documentary.

7. We have love, energy and enthusiasm in abundance. If you are nice, we will share them with you. See point number four. This does not mean that we are going to eat you/boil bunnies/start crying at 4am, clutching an empty bottle of gin. Although if you are not nice, we might well eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

8. We are human. We have piles and fart and belch after meals. We like to talk about ailments. We don’t care if you find this unpleasant. We like to talk about masturbation and our enjoyment of sex, which should raise the roof if you’re doing your bit properly. We make no apologies when we forget to shave our legs and armpits. We have 1970’s lustrous pant-shrubbery. Deal with it.

If we wanna rock a Brian Blessed on the beach, we will.

9. We’re not domestic drudges. If you’ve been treating us like that, we’re angry now, so get some fucking life insurance.

10. We are not your mother. You already have a mother. Never confuse us with her. 

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...

Karmic Dysentery

Okay, okay. I realise I haven’t blogged since the summer. I’ve suffered guilty guilt at the thought of leaving you without recreational swearing or entertaining facts about piles for months. My excuse is that I was writing a crime thriller and a series of books for small children AND doing a rewrite on a kids’ novel that went exactly nowhere. The stuff that makes money has to come first, right? Those anoraks and big knickers don’t buy themselves.

So what has been on my mind lately? I’ll tell you what...Karma. That stupid fucking idea that if you’re a good person, good things will happen to you, and if you’re a bastard, your bumhole will knit together, causing you to asphyxiate slowly on your own acrid guff. 

The optimist in me thought this might work...

Being a naive knob-cobbler, I have always thought that if I give to charity – hell, I worked for charities for about 20 years – nice things will come my way. I thought my karma account was in the black and I could expect great health, multiple book deals and thin knees to come my way. What did I get instead? Varicose veins, literary obscurity and dysentery. Yeah, you heard me right. Dysentery.

In October, my Father-in-Law, always the keen climber of stairs in the dark, managed to climb the stairs in the dark...and fall headlong back down to the bottom, because he’s a doddery old fart – more Stannah Stair than Fred Astaire. He broke his head. Well, actually, that’s a fib. He broke 3 vertebrae in his neck and painted the walls with the inside of his head but mercifully, the head wound was superficial and the neck will mend. 

Muggins – Karma Queen, here – plus family went trekking down to the fragrant vale of Croydon to visit Stannah Stair in hospital. He was wearing his new traction ensemble, complete with a Tena pad on his head and support stockings. Notwithstanding my sock-envy, I was glad to see him alive. And I was certain I had earned 50 billion karma points for dropping everything to do a 300 mile round trip to show support  (I would have done it, even without the karma points, because I’m not a complete cow). 

Remember, Father-in-law: Stannah Stair, not Fred Astaire!

But no! What happened? We took my Mother-in-Law out for lunch to a local restaurant to cheer her up.  Within a few hours, I felt like I had been poisoned with potassium or polyester or plutonium or whatever it is that old Eastern Bloc spies spike your butties with.  Then I turned into an intestinal jet wash. 

Dysentery, to the unacquainted, is an affliction - the kind suffered by actors in Bridge on the River Kwai and Tenko - whereby everything on the inside apart from your bones makes a very fast getaway through your arse. I survived on diarolyte alone for a full week. I went through my entire range of Primark winceyette pyjamas.

This was my karmic payback for caring. And, as soon as I was up and about again, we all came down with flu. Then my child’s drum teacher got the hump and sacked me off for poor attendance. 

So now, I’ve decided that being a nice person is seriously overrated. I am going to hone my skills at being an obnoxious fat-kneed turd and we’ll see if that doesn’t turn me into an overnight success. I’ll let you know how I get on. In the meantime, I’m off to mug a student for his Children In Need collecting tin...

Warning: belief in Karma can cause terminal disappointment and bad wind.