Back from the dead

I'm not dead. Not really. It's just that I've spent the entire winter doing writery stuff and climbing pyramids and painting and chasing chickens.

I've got the first four books in a historial adventure series for 7+ year olds coming out with HarperCollins Childrens in July 2013. It's awesome. I did have a picture of the cover here and told you the name and everything, but then a friend pointed out I might terrify children who google it, so I took it down. I'm writing under a pseudonym and it seems I have become a man with a cat and a keen interest in Dr. Who. I bet he doesn't do as much ironing as me.

The other thing I did earlier this year, instead of blogging, was move house. I have acquired the home of Dead Beryl, so called, because her name was Beryl and she is now dead. She popped her clogs in what is now my bedroom. I like to think she died in her sleep peacefully and there is nothing malign remaining in the house, apart from a slightly perplexing smell of fish in the kitchen cupboards and a lot of dust that makes me sneeze at least 8 times per day; technically a full orgasm.

Dedicated poo free zone

Beryl's downstairs toilet is so bright, one can only think of sunshine, although the seat is unbearably cold and means I cannot poo there. Her kitchen can only be described as crenelated and brown. Best of all, the honey pine clad ceiling in the bathroom puts me in mind of Finnish porn saunas, so Dead Beryl should be glad that her taste in decor is being celebrated on the internet as a thing of retro glory and erotic inspiration.

Evil chicken. Why the fuck are you in my garden?

One of the things we have recently come across in the new, old Dead Beryl house is a chicken. The chicken appeared one day in the garden, scratching around. I was perplexed because it had a head and feathers and wasn't wrapped in cellophane. I did wave a jar of Patak's curry paste at the stray chicken, but it refused to get out of Dead Beryl's flower beds. Eventually, I resorted to bullying a local child, who is an expert on living-chickens-that-have-never-seen-the-inside-of-an-Asda-chiller-cabinet, into shoving it though a hole in a neighbour's hedge. But the chicken came back. I have still not decided what to do with it, but there are always thai dishes that would do it real justice. Alternatively, I could give it All Bran and then squeeze it, rather like an icing sock, over my borders, as chicken manure is very good for plants.

Finally, despite the fact that I have a fear of heights, life-threatening piles, varicose veins and fat knees, I climbed a pyramid in Mexico. It was very high up and windy. As you can see from this photo, I ended up with hair that made me look rather like a cross between Arthur Scargill and Lady Gaga. This was almost topical, since Thatcher died the following week and had a face that looked like it had been poked, stupid hair and an active dislike of Comb-over King, Arthur Scargill.

Quietly shitting oneself needn't look unstylish. You too can look like a hirsute Scargill with fatter knees.

As I have blogged so infrequently recently, I'm thinking of posting one chapter per fortnight or even per week of a sweary comic novel I started writing some time ago. I guess the novel will most appeal to women really, and since the women's fiction market is pretty dead at the moment, it might be more fun to publish the chapters here than to finish the book and try to get a deal for it. I'm working on other things now, after all. The story is called Not for Profit. It is truly the work of The Horrormoanal Woman and not Marnie Riches, as it is full of filth. If enough people like it, I will finish writing it and give it to someone in AM Heath, my literary agency. Watch this space!

I'm off to try for another poo in the toilet of strong sunshine now...

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.

Wash, dry, repeat...

I’m taking the liberty of composing a blog post today about something that affects us all.  Personal hygiene.  And bottomly stink.  Over the past month, I have suffered all kinds of bum-flavoured intimate guff, none of which was mine.  It’s now time to share...

The most up-to-date vulvular violation happened earlier today, when I met a friend in a cafe in Chorley and used the cafe’s toilet.  I stared down at the toilet seat and there it was, grinning back at me: someone’s secret smile; a labia lithograph, etched on the plastic like sinister photocopied genitals.  Except there was no photocopier involved and the ink was actual fanny batter.  Yes, I’m taking about the beastly phenomenon of a fangita print on the toilet seat.  Eeuw.  To make matters worse, the mean age in the cafe was about 82.

I know you’re weeping with sympathy for me here, but it is not the first time I have experienced this.  My former place of employment specialised in hoopla, goolie and bum prints on the one toilet that was shared by about fifty people.  Not to mention, the occasional turd dressing with a side-order of wee.  

Several questions spring to mind here. 

A: how can people’s eye/arse co-ordination be so bad that they can’t manoeuvre themselves accurately onto a seat that is designed to allow the bottom bits to hover comfortably over a hole, without hitting the seat?  

B: What have the people done to have dangleage so dirty, that they leave a greasy mark? 

C:  How can they stand up and walk away from arse inspired toilet-seat-decoration that is as eyecatching and distinctive and NOTICEABLE as Warhol’s tins of Campbell’s soup? 

See, the Japanese have got it spot on.

Wipe the fucking toilet seat if you can’t be bothered to wash your genitals, people!  And don’t piss all over the seat and leave it!  You’re not a cat and it isn’t a litter tray.

 

For defacating-age adults

Only the other week, on holiday, I visited the swimming pool toilet after a very expensively groomed and bikini clad older woman came out of the cubicle, having dropped her intestines and a guff bomb that would take out Rochdale.  She never warned me.  I nearly choked to death.  Could she not have said in a range of languages, “Give it five minutes.”?  If I were teaching languages in school, this would be one of the first things I would teach children.

My other gripe is personal stink.  If I, sitting next to you, can smell your intimate savoury twang, why can’t you?  Everyone has occasion to go to the toilet and think, fuck, I’m a bit ripe.  Time for a go on the bidet.  Even the girl in Homeland wipes her kebab with a soapy flannel when she has to go to a meeting but hasn’t had time to shower.  That Billingsgate/chocolatey tagnuts smell, people, is a prompt to get out the soap and water BEFORE people sitting near you start to smell you through your jeans.  Same goes for armpits.  Nobody needs to choke on oniony ones.  Get 'em washed.

There is a school of thought that says human intimate smells are natural and full of pheromones and arouse the interest of the opposite sex, even while driving a Fiat Multipla, wearing orange polyester.  But I say, we’ve come further than that.  Let Vivienne Westwood put fanny batter in her perfume.  I don’t need to pay £50 for a bottle of Eau de Boeuf.  And neither should you!

I agree in principle, but men aren't always the culprits.