Monday 30 November 2009

The Chocolate Man

On Saturday, for some unknown reason, I was incredibly horny. I wanted to shag everything that moved. Even the things I didn’t find attractive.

For example, in ‘Jamie’s Italian’, Brighton, I accidentally offered to ‘eat’ one of the bartenders. No, this was not outrageous flirting after one too many cosmopolitans; it was a genuine mistake.

Anyway, while we’re on the subject I promised Josie that I would explain my sexual antics with a local bus driver. So here’s the story:

Shortly before I met Bushman I was a Document Controller at a rail company. Yes, it was just as boring as it sounds. So to relieve the boredom, I started a mild flirtation with the man who wheeled round the chocolate trolley at 3pm. He wasn’t really my type, he was too short and a bit of a Mediterranean tart. On the plus side, he had a pert bottom, full lips, a sexy accent and he started giving me free chocolate. One day in the lift (limited room when the trolley was in there too) he launched himself at me and asked me out on a date. The evening ended with him drunkenly sucking my earring in the back of a taxi and begging me to sleep with him. This understandably didn’t turn me on.

Nevertheless, the candy kept flowing and he started showing me where he kept his chocolate (in the chocolate cupboard, no less) and this kind of sealed the deal. One thing led to another until we could no longer keep fumbling in the chocolate cupboard and going up and down in the lift groping one another. Eventually I agreed to sleep with him.

Having been in a relationship for ten years from the age of sixteen (see the Wasted Years), I was new to the casual fling. I knew he slept around and I made it clear to him that he didn’t need to lie to me about anything because I wasn’t in love with him. This made things kind of fun.

He suggested we get a hotel and although I was doing my best to model myself on Kim Cattral in Sex and the City, I was still naïve enough to think that he would actually stay for the whole night. Which is why I wasn’t too concerned when I didn’t get my full quota the first time round. We’ve got all night, I thought. And trust me ladies and gents, if there’s one thing I can do, its get to the top of that mountain.

While I was contemplating how to diplomatically point out that he hadn’t fulfilled his part of the deal, to my surprise he was putting on his boots. It was 3am.

The best part of this story is how he made his graceful exit.

“I need to go to the fish market to buy prawns for my Auntie” he said.

Now that is one fucking unique line to use on a lady.

It’s probably not so unusual for Chocolate Man to bump into someone he has slept with. But for me, there are very few men floating around this planet who have had the good fortune to spend the night with me. So when one of them turns up in my neighbourhood, driving a bus and honking his horn at me, forgive me if I’m a little taken aback.

I’ve been so caught up fulfilling my promises to women (unlike some) I haven’t even had time to tell you about my weekend spa antics. Unfortunately, I need to go to the fish market now to buy some prawns for my Auntie.

So you’ll just have to wait……..

Friday 27 November 2009

Ganja, sex with bus drivers, hotpants and a spa


This morning, on my way into work, I accidentally walked into a cloud of ganja. Stereotypically it was blown into my face by a young, black man loitering outside my workplace. I pictured myself being mauled by the security dogs on the other side of the gate. Luckily there were no dogs. It made me think that I could have inhaled a lot more and got away with it. Accidental inhalation sounds like a really shit excuse but is totally possible.

Last Tuesday morning my fate was much worse. Pasty-faced, bleary-eyed and with dirty, greasy hair and shit clothes I was standing at the cross roads near my house waiting for the green man. This pause gave me time to consider my appearance and hope to god that I didn’t see anyone I knew. Just as this thought was making its way across my mind I heard a bus sound its horn as it passed me by. I caught a glimpse of the driver and thought to myself. Jesus Christ. I’ve had sex with that man. He gawped and gesticulated wildly, most probably howling with laughter at my apparent demise. I was mortified and considered throwing myself under the next vehicle that came along. This should prompt me to tell you all about Chocolate man, but I'll have to save that for another time.

Now a question for you all: when should a woman give up her hotpants? I was pondering on this yesterday while buying some woolly tights in a department store. I overheard one member of staff say to the other, as she put down the phone to a customer,

“Jesus. She’s 28 and she wants a pair of hotpants so that she can go out and bag a man!”

I almost said something, because, let’s face it, there are so many things one could say about that statement! I’ll leave that one with you…..

Thankfully, I’m off to a cheap and cheerful spa tomorrow for some relaxation with Cupcake and a very pregnant Victoria Sponge. So please forgive me if I leave you now to go and pack my bag which I believe still has stuff in it from my Manchester trip because yes, I really am that shit.


VK2CS36SZN8X

Saturday 21 November 2009

Wha’ Gwan? Yeah Blaaad.

This post was inspired by Potty Mummy's notes on Hackney Patois.

Wha Gwaan, people?

A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, didn’t have a clue that when her daughter talked about “blazing it” the other day, that it meant that her daughter had been smoking weed. My friend is no wallflower. It’s fair to say she’s partied hard and experienced life. She’s a cool Mum, but even cool mums find it hard to keep up with the way young people speak.

My working life has meant that I’ve learned a lot of slang. Add to that my knowledge of Patois and I can just about keep up with street talk. I don’t necessarily want everyone I work with to know why I understand Patois, so I lie to them.

For example, a few weeks back, when a girl claimed she was going to 'shank' someone (i.e she was going to stab someone) I was able to challenge her, much to her open-mouthed surprise. When questions were asked as to how I'd understood her, I just said:

"I studied Patois at university." I was lying through my teeth.

The girl and her friends tested me and after some further blagging on my part, they bought it.

Then they kept egging me on.

“Can you talk it? Can you talk it? Go on let us hear it… Go on…. Go on!”

I turned round and said to them in my poshest voice.

“I think you’ll find that’s GWAAAAN!”

…….ending on a gravelly Jamaican tone, my impression had them falling about laughing. This was probably because after being with a Jamaican for nearly six years, I can do a pretty accurate impression, which is totally at odds with the posh, middle-class, twat with zero credibility that they think I am.

One point to Miss, then.

On a more serious note, it’s my biggest fear that my son will trade on his Jamaican roots and become a ‘Jafaican’. I cannot bear affected Jamaican accents. Most young people who use Hackney Patois don't even realise half of the things they are saying.

It’s hilarious though because on my last trip to Jamaica I just started talking Anglo-Patois (not to be confused with Hackney Patois!) out of a frustrated desire to be understood. It was instinctive. It was also strangely appreciated by Bushman’s brother, who giggled when he realised why we were communicating so much better. I think there’s just a time and a place for it......... Jamaica, to be precise.

Perhaps you can understand why I might be tempted by the posh nursery? I seriously had an 19 year old woman in my class the other day who thought that 'Ethiopian' was just a word for skinny, black people. When faced with this kind of educational vacuum on a daily basis and people threatening to 'shank' one other, you can see why sometimes I have this desire to wrap my son up in cotton wool and put him in the posh drawer. Then
, at other times I am tempted to shut his fingers in the door or throw him in the swimming pool so that he learns to swim.

So, searching for this perfect balance in my parenting, I might send my son to two different nurseries for one day a week each. I’m now on the look out for somewhere tough, rough and ready. Wish me luck, yeah blaaaad.

Friday 20 November 2009

Very Healthy Eyes

Or at least I did have until I walked into Moorfields Eye Hospital on Tuesday night.

“Married or single?” says the receptionist.

“Neither” I say, when really what I want to say is,

“What the hell has that got to do with my eyes?”

I knew that there was possibly nothing wrong with my eyes. I can tell you the number of a bus from about 400 yards. But I kept getting intermittent blurry vision (no, not from drink) and the doctor suggested I go to Moorfields Eye Hospital with a letter. I had so much other stuff going on that I honestly didn’t get the chance to go until this week (three weeks’ later) by which time it had sort of disappeared.

The nurse administered a local anaesthetic and soon after, my eyes felt drunk. It was quite an intriguing sensation. Even so, I still refused to let the woman test my eye pressure by putting some machine on my eyeball. No way, lady! She rolled her eyes at me as if I was a child refusing cough mixture and sent me to the doctor as if I was being sent to the headmaster.

Some dilating drops later, and after being told I had very healthy eyes by a doctor I thought might be faintly attractive, (although I was by now blinded by the effect of the drops), I stumbled out of the hospital onto a bus hoping it would take me home. Yet again I was out on the street looking like a lunatic, only this time my pupils were the size of two pence pieces and I looked like I had just swallowed a big bag of Ecstasy. I went home and went straight to bed.

Thankfully, by the time I visited a potential nursery for my son on Thursday, I had lost the ‘been-up all-night-on-drugs’ look and my eyesight was back to normal. This was useful as I was hoping to make a good impression.

This nursery is billed as the best in the area. There is even a waiting list to view the nursery and the actual waiting list for a place is a year or more. The fees are around £60 a day. I can’t really remember what possessed me to book this appointment. I think I was close to returning to work and feeling panicked.

As one might expect, the nursery was very impressive. I'm sparing you the details here, but trust me, it is all singing and all dancing with a fancy website to boot. The three to five year olds even have an optional French class once a week, for fucks sake. All the children looked incredibly happy, incredibly tidy and incredibly........

.........white.

Now, I’m asking myself, do I really want my child to go to the ‘best nursery in the area’? Do I want my son to be cosseted and pampered and get invited to tea at Seymour and Jocasta’s house? Does he really need to learn French at three?

Truly, I have no idea which way this will go. Part of me wants to give my son the very best I can and part of me thinks that maybe somewhere rough, ready and a bit more like the real world would be truly giving my son the best start in life.

P.S Many thanks to the lovely ‘Muddy No Sugar’, who has sent me 'The Honest Scrap Award'. I’m a bit rubbish with these things. Please forgive me for not posting 10 true things about myself.

Monday 16 November 2009

Conversation with my young, hot, Swedish neighbour

This conversation took place over the intercom. The purple bits are the voices in my head.

I press the buzzer.

Them: Err… Hello?

Me: Hi could you turn the music down please?

Them: (reluctant) Ummm… OK....well..... we will turn it down but…

Me: There’s a but? My son had a testicle removed yesterday am I going to have to emotionally blackmail you with that?

Them: but……. I’m having a birthday party.

Me: But you had a birthday party two weeks ago.

I remember it clearly, I didn’t sleep until 6am and I had mixed emotions of being both pissed off and insanely jealous. Like when you listen to your neighbours having sex and you’ve been sex starved for weeks. Yeah, it was like that. Which is why I didn’t complain.

Them: Yeah, there’s two people live here.

Me: OK. But it is 4am.

Them: I know.

Me: (sweetly) If you had told me that you were having a party I could have gone away for the night. I really don’t want to spoil your fun but it's late and I have a baby down here.

A fucking baby. I know you're way too young and hot to understand the implications of a baby, but one day, chances are, you will be the bed-head neighbour from downstairs with saggy boobs, in her pyjama bottoms, complaining that the music is too loud. Trust me, your day will come. And another thing really bugging me is that I actually really like your music. On a night gone by that so would have been me. Hot Bitch.

But if you could turn it down a little bit I would be really grateful.

Them: OK.

The following day I received this:



Ok. So I was totally won over by the Hello Kitty notelet.

Thursday 12 November 2009

Alcohol in hospitals - please!

Today my son had an orchiectomy. This isn’t really very funny but I’m going to try really hard to make it funny because while you may think this is really distasteful, I find that dark humour for dark days really works for me.

When I found out about what this operation might entail, everybody assured me that this didn’t mean that my son wouldn’t be able to father children. This stunned me. In my mind I was wincing at the very idea of them even scratching his utterly perfect, creamy, caramel skin. Jesus Christ people, I have only just got my head around being a mother never mind a bloody grandmother. Anyway……

Today I was reminded why they really should have alcohol in hospitals. I mean, they have a fucking Burger King in Southampton hospital for god’s sake, what kind of mixed message is that? Plus, you should see the amount of doctors and nurses smoking cigarettes around the corner from the hospital. Yeah, I saw you.

Talking of which:

“Is there a smoker in your house?” says the anaesthetist, his pen poised over the clipboard. The joker in me is tempted to say “Weed or tobacco? Tick both anyway.”

Does the occasional something to smoke, after one too many, count?

Not that I asked him that. I just replied “No”, albeit defensively.

Anyway, back to the point. They really should have alcohol readily available in hospitals, preferably next to the watercooler. It’s not like I’m an alcoholic or anything but they didn’t use copious amounts of brandy for no reason, when amputating legs in the old days, with nothing else for pain relief but a bit between your teeth. They used it because it works. There’s at least one occasion I can think of where I have been so drunk you could have probably amputated my leg and I wouldn’t have noticed until the following morning when I realise that the reason I can’t get my other stiletto on is because I actually have a foot missing.

So, I was pondering on this today whilst pacing up and down with at least three other mothers waiting for my son to come out of surgery. It was agonising.

“God!” I kept saying to myself, “if only I could have a double brandy I might be able to get this shit into perspective!”

I thought that all the other mothers looked like they could do with a drink too – even the Muslim lady in the headscarf looked like she wouldn’t have said no if the nurses has brought round a tray of little NHS shot glasses .

Then I remembered this.

How many sanitiser pumps would I have to stick my head under before I got the desired effect, I wondered, scanning the room and doing a quick count?

The other time I really, and when I say REALLY, I mean REALLY, needed a drink was straight after childbirth. My parents arrived at 8.30 am I was sat in an armchair holding something I had just expelled, totally freaked out, feeling like I had just been rescued from a car crash. My father starts bandying a video camera around and I’m shouting “Not my face! Just video the baby. I don’t want any images of me looking sweaty and red-faced and I've got bad hair!!”

A few days later my father called me and told me that he had been watching the footage from the hospital. He also said that in the background while my mother is holding the baby I can be heard saying (with vigour)

“You know what I need right now? A really good……..hard………..(pause for comic effect, will she say cock? fuck?)

...........................DRINK!”

Thankfully, I have my drink now. It's a large glass of luscious red. Bushman deals with a crisis by cooking and eating copious amounts of food and then sleeping. I cope by drinking and these days blogging.

All is peaceful in my household. Things could be a damn sight worse and we're doing just fine. Lucky, fabulous and imperfect.

Monday 9 November 2009

Dirty Weekend (mostly in pictures)

One disconnected fringe



One pair of best pants




One pair of Kurt Geiger's





One bottle of Cava chilling in the sink (cheap hotel, well actually not that cheap, but no fridge)




Just before my departure I stood in front of Bushman wearing a silk dress, my Russell & Bromley boots, my vintage Astrakhan, my new 'do' with a full face of make up and I was even wearing perfume. With utter delight I said to him, "Look at me! I'm a real person!"

He had absolutely no idea what I meant. (as usual)

Things didn't get off to a great start as Cupcake and I found an inconsiderate, twentysomething, in designer sunglasses with her huge suitcase sitting in our seats. Anyway, all's well that ends well and two (small) bottles of wine later we were in this kind of mood as the train reached Manchester, Picadilly.

It was lovely weather when we left London.


It was shit weather when we got to Manchester.


Undeterred, we sauntered throught the fine rain to our hotel: the luxurious Premier Inn (Cupcake is obsessed with Premier Inns and feels so at home in them that we had been in the room no less than thirty seconds when she was in her pyjama bottoms, toiletries unpacked and squishing pillows at me saying "Go on, feel that, go on.")


Anyhow, the Cava went in the chiller (see above), the facepacks came out and we set about reminding ourselves what it used to be like in the old days.....




Strangely enough this weekend seemed entirely dominated by sausage.


Chorizo to be precise.

As anybody who knows me can vouch, I am a fan of big, dirty sausages. So when we decided to dine on tapas we both knew that chorizo had to be on the menu. We gorged ourselves on it....and sadly spent the rest of the weekend digesting it.


We digested it in Canal Street where we were so bloated and uncomfortable that we missed two great photo opportunities - a cavegirl hen night and a drag queen who called me a 'bitch' because I wearing this fabulous vintage 80's number.....



Thank-god it was a baggy top....


Then after a conversation with some students who told us 'Your kind of people are in the Northern Quarter' (was that a compliment or not? I don't know....) and still digesting our chorizo, that's where we headed. It was at this point that we had this utterly appropriate photo opportunity.



We partied in the Northern Quarter until 2am, went back to our luxurious quarters, had a nightcap in the bar and went to bed. We were almost as excited about the unbroken night's sleep as we had been about the possibility of endless alcohol and frivolity.


Which is possibly why neither of us slept.......


The pressure was too great. All we managed was a coked-up limbo somewhere between sleep and wakefulness whilst Coca Cola coursed through our veins. (if there's one thing I hate it's the ratio of coke to rum in bars!!!!)

The following day we went window shopping. We were suprisingly perky and glowing.


In some ways Manchester really impressed us with their progressive and efficient ideas....


........ even London doesn't have these - not that I'm aware of anyway.


Walking around town on Sunday afternoon, an old man approached us and asked us...

"What do you give the man who has everything for Christmas?"

My instinct was to respond "A blow job?".

There was pause whilst I wondered if I could actually say what I was thinking, however; the gentleman filled the silence by thrusting a leaflet under my nose and saying:

"A leaflet about Jesus!"

I really think these people should wear badges, otherwise they risk people saying "Blow job" at them. Honestly, it's for their own protection.


As the day drew to a close we needed perking up .......





That's more like it, cocktails at Harvey Nicks....ah, the highs.......

...and then the lows...

White wine spritzers in plastic glasses at Manchester Picadilly shortly before departing, followed by dinner.....



Followed by the most expensive pick and mix in the universe...

£3.06 for this trifling amount of crap


You have to admit it, we are just pure fucking class.

Sadly, we were not sponsored by Premier Inn, Virgin Trains, Manchester Tourist Board, Harvey Nichols, West Country Pasty Shop or Captain Morgan. We were also not involved in any deal to promote 'National Sausage Week'. If any of these organisations would like to contact us about sponsorship we would happily do it all again. We would not however be prepared to sign up to any deal involving pick and mix as frankly all you get is a bag of shit.

Friday 6 November 2009

Disconnected, disenchanted and off up north

This weekend, I’m packing my Kurt Geiger’s, my best pants and a bottle of Cava like the classy bitch I am, because for one night only Cupcake and I are off to Manchester.

I’m sporting my new disconnected fringe; cut and coloured by a rotund homosexual with blue-tinged hair, lotus flowers tattooed up his arms and what appeared to be a diamante embedded in the skin behind his ear. As soon as I laid eyes on my hairdresser-to-be I knew it was going to be radical and I knew it was going cost me. I was right on both counts. On the up side I have a slightly edgy ‘do’ which definitely doesn’t say ‘sensible mother’.

Who knows what may become of me in the next 48 hours? I suppose one of my previous posts 'Things I might be doing on a Saturday Night if I wasn't mother' might provide some useful clues. 'Ankle-panties' here I come. (thanks freckletree!)

My dear readers must be so bored of me banging on about how much I hate my job that I scarcely want to mention it. This is my space for being cheeky, chirpy and sarky and I try to avoid, at all costs, being serious on my blog. My job shows me just how much misery there is in the world, so, I don't really want to be down in my down time, if you know what I mean. But for those of you still reading, still wondering, still caring; just for the record here it is........................

I work in a womens' prison. I am not a prison officer. In my humble opinion, prisons are backward-thinking, inhuman, degrading and pointless institutions which cost tax payers ludicrous amounts of money. They are the cold, rat infested homes of men and women locked in cycles of poverty, addiction, abuse and despair. Those that need to be punished are not punished adequately, those that need to be rehabilitated and educated are not done so adequately and those that need to be cared for, supported and encouraged are not done so adequately. It is shameful and I don't want to be a part of it anymore. I don't even care if I get fired for saying this.

My trials and tribulations at work have been so gross of late that I would willingly take almost any other job on the planet right now.

Please e-mail me here at troutiesblog at hotmail dot co dot uk with any job offers. Sleazy, cheesy, queasy, or easy, I’ll consider them all.

I try to keep politics, sadness and seriousness out of my blog. I’m sorry that I have failed today. If you have been affected by anything in this post then you might be even further disturbed if you went to these links.


If I were you I'd just give those a miss and wait until I come back with tales of grit, wit, drunkeness and debauchery. Much more my style.

Monday 2 November 2009

Somebody Stole My Baby!

(or how freecycle made me look like a lunatic)

Freecycle is a wonderful thing. It means that lovely middle class people like me can get shit for free from other lovely middle class people. Everyone feels great about it. One person gets rid of that shit that’s been clogging up their under-stairs cupboard and people who need shit get what they want without handing over a penny. When the transaction is complete everyone has that lovely warm feeling like they’re really good planet-saving, morally superior, human beings.

Today I was a receiver, not a giver. I went to collect a buggy from a lady who lived in the posh part of a shitty district. She handed over the goods, gave me a quick demonstration and I was soon on my way. Naturally the easiest thing to do was to push the thing…..yep, that’s right, push an empty buggy around the streets of London looking like a nutcase.

There were sniggers as I walked passed the pub, worried sideways glances from passers-by and customers peering from shop doorways, nudging one another. Fully realising how ridiculous I looked I began to laugh at myself. Now I was looking properly mentally disturbed. Had I been smelling of urine, with a variety of plastic bags stuffed inside more plastic bags, nobody would have batted an eyelid of course; but a ‘normal’ looking woman pushing an empty buggy, laughing to herself, really seemed to freak people out. Perhaps they thought that I was trundling along, unaware that my baby had been stolen or worse still that I was out to steal someone else’s baby.

It crossed my mind that I could run into a shop and shout ‘Help! Somebody stole my baby!’ But I wasn’t really sure where things would go from there. Maybe I could start a national campaign in the style of Karen Matthews, enabling me to make a shed load of cash off the back of the grief of strangers? Or, setting my sights a little lower, could I get a free kebab out of this, I thought as I approached a take away? The waiter opened the door ‘What happened to your baby?’ he said laughing. I totally had to stop myself from claiming my baby had been stolen. I think part of me just wanted to seem normal to the outside world.

My last challenge was the bus ride home. I got on with the buggy still erect and even parked it in the buggy area whilst everyone stared intently. I was a woman with an empty buggy and a kebab hanging off the back. What else could I do but grin inanely? A little girl fixed her big, black eyes on me before worriedly shouting ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ Her give-a-shit mother shouted back ‘Shut up Alesha!’

Then came the most embarrassing moment: onto the bus came a real life Mum with a buggy and a real child. There was no way I would win the buggy-off without a fucking child in the buggy!!! I knew I was going to have to accept defeat and fold mine down. When she saw that I was childless and smelt my kebab she looked at me as if to say ‘What the fuck do you think you are doing, crazy bitch?’

The moral of this story is: If you must gad about town with an empty buggy and a kebab, make sure as hell that you stink of piss and have wild hair and have a lot of stuffed plastic bags within plastic bags, cause you ain’t getting’ away with shit otherwise.