Want to be cheered up? Very little of what Marigold says or writes ever makes it to the blog. Some people get emails too. Here’s a selection of the wisdom contained in some of Marigold’s emails. 

This first one was  from one December in Spain.

Side Effects of Brussels Sprout Addiction

Not one sprout to be found in Spanish shops. What is the matter with the Spanish? They do not know how to celebrate Xmas. All they ever eat is gambas and salad. They do not know how to suffer on Christmas afternoon and evening from indulgence overload.

Totally irrational, but very worried and decided to try Spanish version Lidl. Left G at home polishing his balls. Golf balls. Hardly anyone in the shop and not a single sprout to be had. Got waylaid by choc digestives display and a man overtook me and was standing by the ginger beer in the next aisle. As I went past him he did the most enormous noisy fart and scarpered.A young couple came round the corner looking at ME and giggling. I will now be on Internet: Farting Woman in Lidl Sparks Panic, grrh. G said it wouldn’t have happened in Waitrose. I would recognise farty-pants in a line up if he is ever brought to justice.

Gave up and have had sprouts flown in from Harrods.

Got a fab recipe in Nigella’s cookbook. Boil sprouts for 2 days and serve in a mug with turkey dinner as it saves chewing and making gravy. That woman is a saint. Charles Saatchi will miss nibbling her sprouts at Xmas.

We have cut photos of the Queen and the rest of the gang out of magazine, put them round the table and can pretend we are part of their family at Xmas.

Finished having coffee with imaginary friends and just got back from Sunday boot sale. I bought G some second hand pants, just need a boil!!!!

Couple in the paper from Bradford celebrating 85th wedding anniversary. He is 110 and she is 103. Still have sex 3 times a day after a cup of Horlicks and a plate of chips. Hope for us then.

Spoke to an old friend at the car boot. It was very noisy, which made conversation difficult, but even so I thought she was a bit ‘off’ with me. I asked if she’d got any eye liner and she said ‘certainly not.’ Turns out she thought I’d asked if she had a dry vagina! I suggested she get a hearing aid.

I had a vile shock last night. Was having a pee and spied a huge spider, I am not exaggerating it was as big as a hippo. Anyway G put it on toilet paper and took it to the window, but it jumped off en route and has now vanished. My heart thumped for ages and woke up thinking about it. Am sure the shock has given me asthma. Am terrified of even going into bathroom in case it emerges from the sewers and nests in my pubes. Am walking around with fly killer and a brick.

Off to buy new electric toothbrush, as I cleaned G’s and now it doesn’t work. Didn’t know you can’t boil them in bleach!!!!

Just going to read about poisonous spiders in Spain.

 A Difficult day on the Road

Or…

Just Call Me Bridget

Up bright and early, ready for adventures. We stayed with our lovely friends, S and K, last night and were refreshed and ready for the off. G had even booked a hotel for tonight, which is a rare event as both of us prefer wandering aimlessly and only finding a hotel when we get tired.

Things were much simpler when we had camper vans as we took a bed with us, but this is a car trip, so a bit different. G went to great lengths to explain where he had booked the hotel and why. It had to be less than 300 miles from Calais and be easily accessible from the motorway. ‘Would you look up Metz in Route Planner and get suggested directions from Calais,’ he said, staggering off to the car with our suitcase with a broken handle.

Found it almost straight away and made a quick note of the main points. Very pleased with myself, actually, as find anything to do with maps a little stressful. Once, when asked to say roughly how far one city was from another, me navigating as G drove, I studied the enormous road atlas carefully and said, ‘oh, about an inch and a half.’ G was not impressed. At the next services I buried the wretched atlas in a dustbin and denied all knowledge of its whereabouts.

‘ Did you find it?’ G asked on his return.

I studied my notes. ‘Yes. From Calais, it is 1,243 miles and will take twenty-nine and a half hours.’

‘What???’

I guessed he wasn’t impressed. Turns out I was supposed to look up Metz, in France, 280 miles from Calais. I had looked up Minsk, which G tells me is in Belarus. Is it any wonder he calls me Bridget, as in Bridget Jones?

I was explaining, at length, how it was an easy mistake to make while in the car and so we missed the Eurotunnel exit and had to go almost to Ashford to turn round. Easy after that. Found Metz after a fairly relaxed trip. 283 miles and just under five hours, with one stop to look at a chateau. Culture, see? It turned out to be shut with all the windows boarded up.

We did have a prob. with the tolls. It ate my 50 euro note and didn’t give me any change. A bossy man came and had to open the machine and then gave me back 37 euros in 1 euro coins. Some people are not meant for public service AND he smelled of brandy at 10 o’clock in the morning. Hopefully, German tollsters will be better mannered. I did apologise in sort of French and G said I sounded like someone on medication.

We took some ham sandwiches which were a bit curly in the heat. G munched them down but I am a bit more choosy.

We are just on the hunt for food as we’re both starving. We have got to cross four lanes of traffic to get to a restaurant so will probably be screaming a lot.

An email from our time as Cornish residents, but with no claims to be Cornish.

In Cornwall for a few days. Lovely people, the Cornish  – all right my lovely – and they are good at sea shanties, but hear one and thats enough. The other thing they seem to love are great big steam machines.

We went to the Steam Rally in Truro,, which quite frankly was full of nutters. They seem to love black grease up their crack and clouds of steam bellowing in their face. Then there was the man announcing the prize giving in a language which sounded like a cross between Latvian and Russian. They spent all their time blacking the wheels.

The inside tent was full of wool spinners and model collectors, all elderly. There was one who built and furnished dolls houses, a Meccano fetishist and numerous other nutters. What will happen when these eccentrics die? Can’t imagine. There was a huge fat woman selling fudge and that was obviously what she lived on. She looked rather sticky. Only thing we bought was some very expensive liquorice. We had a day we will never forget.

Just had my nails done. They are the only part of me that I will show to the world naked. Now going to hairdressers for cut and colour. Had a scare last night. My head was itching like mad and thought I had got nits. Turned out to be a mosquito bite. Had visions of being asked to leave hairdressers by a 17 year old and everybody backing off. No doubt will cost a fortune and will no doubt have to wash it and do it again properly as soon as I get back.

Festival time and everybody wearing wellies, despite the heat. In the supermarket a “youth’ was spending 165 quid on booze. Looked about 12. We tutted. How dare they get drunk and enjoy themselves. Hope he bought some condoms and shower gel. Think thats why I have been thinking about nits.

Have loved the olympics. It has made me push the hoover extra quick.

Someone asked me for a recipe the other day, but as I make up almost every dish I cook, was a bit baffled. Told her I had a good recipe for mice in aspic ‘ Take 300 mice, stuff them with cheesey wotsits, cook them for 3 days in stuff ‘ – and also one for Christmas – ostrich stuffed with 20 smaller birds – but she’d put her notepad away by then.

Lockdown Lunacy

G was saying he had been reading that we all wash and shower too often and once a week was plenty, as people are suffering from itchy skin etc. So guessing where this was going, I said ‘well shall we get a tin bath which we can keep outside, boil a kettle of water and share a splash each’. He said ‘yes, Sunday nights like when I were a lad,’ in a very common northern accent.

I pointed out to him he could do what he wanted but we don’t have a caravan in the drive he can sleep in. Anyway it could be construed as a second home.

We need an old shed, as we shall be social distancing for 6 days of the week and he can sleep on a camp bed with a chemical toilet. He said it sounds a lovely idea, but will I be joining him. I said ‘only on Sundays’.

Had a delivery from the veg man, who had been boasting he had got flour. Ordered a packet as he phoned to ask if I wanted any. It said on the invoice when delivered, ‘no flour left so have sent you some crackers.’

I phoned him and asked about promised flour. He said he had only got 20 bags and the first two orders were for 10 each, you have to be quick. I thought no that’s just greedy. No wonder he runs out.

He said ‘bananas are hard to get as they have got a fungus’. We will not be ordering any, put me right off.

We have had an infestation of woodlouse spiders, well to tell you the truth 2 of them on separate nights. Surely anything over 1 is an infestation. I can’t find my I Spy books so no good and had to rely on internet to identify them.

G picked up the spider and said ‘what are they?’ I said they are the only venomous spider in U.K. He quickly dropped it, and put a mug over its body. He then realised I was having him on.

Am scared of them and sit with my feet off the floor, whilst wearing thick socks. It says they are coming in to breed. They were both lethargic so imagine the act had taken place. Yuk. They are now in next doors garden after flinging them 6ft over the fence.

As a kid I used to keep insects in various jars usually till they died of hunger as I often forgot to feed them. Loved ladybirds, but all I fed them on was grass and the occasional corner of a biscuit. My longest living insect was a wasp. Loved him, but he got crosser by the day. Was difficult to go to sleep with all that buzzing. He lasted a week and I let him go. He was still angry. I was able to observe him with my plastic magnifier. Bet he was thinking ‘If I get out of here’. I think he quite liked me as he didn’t do a U turn and sting me. I fed him on dandelions and honey sandwiches.

Was reading that people were queuing for five hours to get into Ikea. It sounds like something in a horror film. Wonder if they all made for the beds to have a kip.

Why, oh why? When we have been in the past we wonder what all the hype was. G has got an illness called Queuing Allergy Syndrome and it can strike at any time. He gets a cross look on his face if there is more than 2 people in front.

I on the other hand love it. Being a born chatterbox comes in handy and have found the common denominator is moaning about the queue which we have all chosen to join.

Getting back to Ikea we went ages ago to look at The Billy Bookcase. G’s first impressions were not favourable and we were both getting fed up after half an hour. It seemed we couldn’t get out unless we went through the rest of the stuff, round and round departments which we didn’t want to do.

We were trapped.

The glazed expression came over G’s face. He found an assistant and said ‘my wife feels ill, can we get out quickly’ with an expression on his face that suggested the problem was diarrhoea related. This should work he thought, hoping we weren’t taken to First Aid.

‘Follow me,’ she said and off we went through secret doors and were back to the car in minutes by which time I felt much better and G’s contorted expression was gone.

Can imagine the queues now are for cupboards and Billy Bookcases to house toilet rolls and big sacks of flour which will probably have weevils crawling in it by now.

Hope the toilets were open in Ikea otherwise the fake display bathrooms will be smelly and they won’t be selling many.

Wonder if people will be wearing masks forever and we never get to see people’s mouths again. The fashion for plumped up lips will be no more and maybe people will want plump foreheads or ears and a whole new look will be announced. Elastic sales will have gone through the roof and will become the new must have at all times.

G is desperate for a dentist. Do they exist anymore in this far removed from Utopian world? If they do who are they practising on? He has had toothache off and on for a bit. I got very worried when I saw string round the door handle and then realised it was the shed key, or maybe he will just fetch some rusty pliers.

Dentists are supposed to be opening in a week. Presumably we will have to queue in the street in the rain, or if you are not quick enough in the snow in winter. He said he would like it done by Xmas as we do enjoy Thornton’s toffee with a hammer.

The dentists already wore masks, will they now wear two, and two sets of goggles. Will they be able to see? It is all very worrying. We could never understand anything our dentist said before. What if he is double masked and says are you ok and you are not and can’t hear you screaming because he is wearing ear protectors, in case you spit in his ear?

What if the toilet is locked?

What if there are not enough Perspex screens to go round the dental chair? Is he going to poke the drill through a hole? What if he puts the drill up your nose and does not realise?

We are now looking at on line dental remedies. G is no longer moaning about it, just the odd squeak when he eats nuts.

A friend of mine has a very large old door, not a euphemism. There was somebody outside ringing the bell. It was lockdown. What to do. She can always think on her feet, well that’s what she says, and donned her paisley mask – she lives in the Cotswolds – and opened the letterbox, shouting at the top of her voice ‘step back and say what you want, but this door will not be opened.’

It was her husband who had gone to the bins with rubbish and not taken his key. Apparently, he called her something not very nice so she still didn’t let him in.

Am very worried about everybody being allowed to pee in the open. Mr Macron we think has made this suggestion. Can you imagine what Thomas Crapper would think after years of civilisation?

Are they going to start selling huge poo bags, sold like bin bags in different colours and sizes. You would have to say a small adult pack and an extra large for my friend! You know who I mean. Can you imagine them hanging from trees or bins marked ‘Drop your faeces in here’. People could get very muddled. Signs saying ‘No dumping here’ will take on a new meaning. We will all be very confused. I can’t bear to think about it.

And another thing what is R rate? Don’t understand it all but find it worrying when mentioned. It is like getting exam results. G has tried to explain it and all I could think about was we hadn’t got any tea bags.

Usually in important matters G asks me to repeat it all, but he didn’t so I still don’t know what R rate is. 

And another thing. There has been an ice cream van going up and down playing jingles. People have been buying cornets, no doubt touched by a man with no toilet access, handling money and probably coughing. The customers are all wearing masks. How will they eat their ice cream?

G in a weak moment last week suggested we buy a chess set. I said ‘don’t be ridiculous’.

It hasn’t been mentioned again.

Had Scottish bloody Power on regarding a long running saga about tariffs. Like talking to the Krankies.

Don’t want to brag, but we have a letter from our MP on House of Commons paper, also have heard from Ombudsman. Everything was going swimmingly with Scottish Power on phone then I couldn’t say ombudsman. Had to have three goes. G was smirking. Anyway put my best voice on and said our treatment at your hands has left us feeling quite ill. At the time I was eating a bacon butty, so my speech would have sounded as I was dying. I hung up and was feeling better by the minute.

Marigold’s Blockbuster book.

People keep asking G when he’s going to write another book. No chance. Been there, done that. I did like the idea of having lots of different names like when G wrote his books, eight different names, I think and I kept forgetting what to call him. He wrote about a dozen books, or was it ten, sold millions of them, (not actually millions, but a lot as his first book outsold Lee Child), but writing books leaves no time for anything else and we much prefer our life as it is now, poor but happy. Not even poor, but definitely happy. Anyway, G says it’s my turn next.

The very idea of me writing a book, a proper book… I started one once. Here it is. G loved it. He’s very loyal. I thought better write chick-lit as they don’t have to be any good, or not the ones I’ve read anyway. G made most of the punctuation make sense and checked word count and it seems I have written less than one percent of a book. That’s it then. They reckon everyone has a book in them. Well, it seems I have almost one percent of a book in me and this is it. I can retire as a novelist now.

I was going to add a photo as a book cover, but gave up. G found some pics, some of them are of me with celebrities. Hillary Clinton gets Katie Perry, I get Popeye. I know who got the best deal. Just hope Katie Perry didn’t smell as bad as Popeye did. 

There’s no title. Is that important or not? Probably is, but am a trendsetting novelist so no title. Will just have a blank cover and people will buy it because it’s intriguing. Or cheap. Here goes.

Wedding Day.

5.00AM. Bloody hell, rain, rain, rain. Sitting on the toilet, having had first bath of the day and third fag. Must give up, Gordon doesn’t approve. Wish Mum and Dad would get up and tell me the weather will improve.

I’ve only known Gordon for eight months, so don’t know him at all really. I’ve got nervous diarrhoea. What if I fart going down the aisle and it’s a really wet one and soaks through my dress. Start laughing and have to cover face with towel. Tried to sleep, got big bags under eyes, but no good. I’m 22 going on 12; Gordon is 26 going on 45. What am I doing? This is mad.

So, he’s good looking, well fairly good looking, plus he’s the only man who’s ever asked me to marry him. Which must mean something. Mustn’t it? He’s really sensible, which everyone says will be good for me, got a really good job with enough dosh to keep three wives, and as my Mum says, I’ll have to go a long way to find better. So get your head together Rachel, and be happy. Think maybe I’ll have another bath and then maybe clank some dishes around in the kitchen and get people up.

9 o’clock now and the makeup artist has arrived. Her name is Sam. She is blonde and wearing pink leggings, so from a distance she looks nude. My mother has arranged all this carry-on. Do your best, Sam.

Half an hour later, make-up in place, nails painted fuscia, I go into the bathroom to inspect. OMG! I look like a New York transvestite. Sam is doing my mother at the moment and I can’t wash it off till she’s gone. The false eyelashes are the worst, really tacky. What if I can’t take them off and they take root?

‘Rachel,’ mum screeches?’

‘I’m just on the toilet, mum, won’t be a mo’.

“Sam’s gone, dear, isn’t she marvellous? Come out as quick as you can and let me see you.’

Feeling safe, start to wash the gunge off my face. Have to soften the cruddy eyelashes with loads of hot water. My eyes are going to look as if I’ve got hay-fever, bloody stupid Sam. Perhaps when I get them off, I’ll stick them on the end of my nipples and give Gordon a fright. At last they fall off and I have to poke them down the sink, as they just lie there like hairy caterpillars. I reach for my own make-up and bung on a bit of mascara and some pale pink lippy, really minimalist after all that other stuff.

Sneaking out of the bathroom, I bump into mum on the landing. I want to scream, this is what my mother will look when she’s dead. Standing there is her Victorian nighty, her face embalmed.

‘Darling,’ she says, ‘you look lovely. It pays to have an expert to do these things. That Sam really knows what she’s doing.’

‘Mum’, I lie, ‘you look gorgeous’.

All the way to the church dad whistles ‘get me to the church on time’. My nerves are frayed, and if he doesn’t stop I’ll’..

Suddenly, the car skids onto the pavement bumping over something.

‘What the hell was that?’

‘Oh nothing,’ the driver says calmly, ‘I just ran over a cat.’

I’m well away now, screaming for him to stop and check if it is dead, or just horribly injured. This is such a bad omen. The car stops and then backs up. There is a bit of blood but no cat. I start hunting in the bushes and a crowd gathers. They see me in my wedding dress and probably imagine it’s some ritualistic thing where I’m offering my blood to Christ.

Finally, off we go again. By now I am on the verge of a panic attack. I have all the symptoms and worse. All I can think about is the cat. Perhaps when today is over I’ll put an advert in the paper ‘was your cat run over on ‘.did it survive?’ but, what if someone replies saying it got back home, crawled into the kitchen, horribly mutilated, and breathed its last breath. Maybe I won’t bother. They might even say it crawled in on its one remaining leg, looked up with its one remaining eye, opened its crushed jaw and died. Definitely won’t bother.

We arrive at the church 15 minutes late, dad moaning that his suit is uncomfortable and his shoes hurt. I tell him that if he was wearing my suspender belt, he would really have something to moan about. Into the church now, everybody looking sort of pink or blue. My two little bridesmaids loving it to bits. What’s aunty Doris got on her head? Surely not the squashed cat. There’s Gordon, bless him, very smart with a pale grey cravat. All I hear as I go down the aisle is ‘doesn’t she look lovely?’ Well, yes I think I do, just the right amount of shoulder on show, not at all tarty, even regal. Lucky Gordon. Anyway, I didn’t fart or fill my pants, so everything was perfect.

Not our business

We were sitting in a cafe in sunny Spain, minding our own business, when it all kicked off. The man at the next table started shouting abuse at the waitress who’d mixed up his order. She’d mixed up our order too – let’s face it she was hopeless – but we just made a joke of it. The poor girl started crying and ran out.

Mister Angry was very red in the face, but as it was only 9.30 in the morning, too much beer couldn’t be blamed. Oh, I don’t know, looking at him. He was very big, shaved head, tattoos, you know the type, and I grabbed G very firmly.

‘Stay out of it,’ I hissed. He was glaring at the angry man, but nodded and sat back in his chair.

‘Not our business,’ he said. It’s taken many years to get G to the stage where he no longer feels he has to right all wrongs. So, not our business.

‘Exactly.’

The cafe owner came out with the waitress trailing behind. He didn’t ask what the problem was, just said, very quietly, ‘Don’t ever speak to my staff like that. Please leave. Now.’ He had a strange accent, but spoke very softly.

I was undecided whether to clap or ring for an ambulance. The cafe owner was about half the size of Mister Angry, quite thin and wearing long shorts with his skinny legs showing. He put his face right next to the angry giant and said ‘Why are you still here? Are you deaf?’

The big man glared at him, but he stopped shouting, picked up a carrier bag and walked away. Every single person sitting outside the cafe clapped. The owner bowed to us all and went back into the kitchen.

When the waitress came to us to clear away I asked about the owner. Was he her dad?

‘He’s not my dad,’ she said, ‘but he sometimes acts like he thinks he is. I told him it was my fault. I got the orders mixed up, but he said that didn’t matter, that man had been very rude. He hates rude people.’

‘I was so pleased it didn’t turn nasty,’ I said and the girl laughed.

‘I almost wish that man hadn’t walked away,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t stand a chance.’

I must have looked a bit doubtful as the waitress laughed again and walked away. When she came back she was carrying a framed photograph.

‘Look,’ she said.

The photo showed a much younger man, but still very obviously the cafe owner, wearing only a pair of khaki shorts. His arms and chest were covered in tattoos, every muscle was defined, he looked very, very fit and there were several gold medals hanging around his neck.

‘That was just after he left the army,’ the waitress explained. ‘He was national champion in Belarus for almost ten years and won many medals. If you look into his eyes when he is angry you would know why that man decided to walk away.’

She walked back into the cafe, then came back, said, ‘Nobody ever turns up late for their shift here,’ and walked away again, still laughing. It’s true what they say, the little ones are the scary ones.

On the Road

Seem to have been packing the car for ages ready for the off. I said to G I know space is limited but this is ridiculous. He replied in a rather sarcastic manner that we could always send everything in a shipping container and seemed to find this very funny. Anyway, have got round it by sneaking things in when he is not looking. Got a bit worried when he said he was going to empty it again and re-pack. Luckily, that never happened.

The journey to Peniscola was brill. Hotel, which included breakfast and evening meal was a bargain. The evening meal was a fab buffet and I got so excited I ran in. There was no need to really as we were the first in at 8 o’clock. The Spanish don’t eat till 10 o’clock. Filled our faces nicely and didn’t over indulge.

Journey to Begur was a different matter, rain, rain, rain. We went through a toll booth and I dropped the change and got beeped at by the man behind. Very stressed at this point so went to sleep.

The sat nav didn’t recognise the hotel in Begur, so we blundered round and passed the same tramp three times, in fact he waved at us.Then the hotel was there suddenly in front of us. I ran down in the rain and a cleaner let me in and shouted ‘Mercedes, No Inglese.’

I said we haven’t got a Mercedes, but she was telling me her name and saying she didn’t speak English. I told her my name, in Spanish and said I spoke a little Spanish. She told me, again, she didn’t speak English which was a bit much as I thought I had been speaking Spanish. G turned up from parking the car and Mercedes understood every word he said.

Very annoying!

Hotel just lovely, very old with stone walls and domed ceilings and a lovely bedroom. Shame we can’t explore the town, but hopefully tomorrow I can spend what’s left of the change I haven’t dropped at toll booths.

No evening meal here, so banana sandwiches with squashed bread. We will survive.

This final one started life as an email to a friend and, coincidentally, I had already started to write about the same subject for a possible blog post, which never materialised. Here’s both snippets of wisdom, both the subject matter and the content can be described as ‘rubbish.’ Here’s Marigold’s email to a friend who takes every word of these messages at face value, which makes the replies a joy to read. 

Just read there are waiting lists of three years before you can see an NHS dentist. Well whoopee doo. Do we assume they are too busy doing privates?

I once had a sort-of boyfriend when I was about 13 whose family were Polish. The first time I met his father he was bloodied after coming out of his shed, saying he had just removed a troublesome back tooth with pliers, then proceeded to eat his dinner. I noticed the boyfriend’s mother had several teeth missing and assumed their pain threshold must have been off the scale. At the slightest sign of toothache bet you’d be dragged off to the shed.

The boyfriend relationship didn’t last!

I wonder if every health problem would have been fixed in the shed. If the dad is still alive he could set up as Mr Pull and Go. I remember eating a lot of cabbage, which they grew in the garden.

Wonder if in the future if you have a bad rash you ring up the doctors and they say can you phone back in two years?

We need a shed to store our spare stuff. G has lots of very old tools which he insists are as good as new, plus things bought for his birthdays and Xmas by people who don’t know him very well, as a change from socks and liquorice. The worst thing he ever received was a miniature set of gardening tools for window boxes. We have never owned a window box but the minuscule tools could come in handy if we need a DIY brain operation or knee replacement.

G seemed more excited than I have seen him in months. He shouted ‘the tips open’. The poor car was groaning under the weight of lockdown sortings, with nowhere to dispose of it. Off we go early to miss the queues. There were already about 20 cars outside.

‘Shall we go home now?’ was all I could think of.

‘No’ came the reply.

‘Nearly there’ I was told after about an hour. It wasn’t pleasant in the car as some of the stuff in the back quite frankly stunk. We had had mice in the outhouse so maybe that was the reason.

As we came within sight of the barrier there was a huge notice saying even car numbers only today. We checked our number plate and of course we are not an even number plate. G said we will just carry on, act thick and see what happens.

As we are about to go in Mr Muscleman, show me your tattoos tip man ran at us with a huge brush and told us to come back tomorrow. We hung our heads in shame. Off we went to try another day. The car will smell worse by tomorrow as the sun is shining.

Somebody had fly tipped down one of the lanes. It was all over the path and mainly consisted of takeaway food containers, old toys and clothes. We saw the farmer on the way back who said ‘I got them’. He said he had found a letter which he was brandishing in front of us. It had a bit of tomato sauce on it. Hope it was tomato sauce. The letter was addressed ‘to whom it may concern’. He said ‘I will get them, whoever they are’.

Talking of tips, or should I say Environmental Re-cycling Get in the Queue Centres, our favourite was one many years ago that the ‘minder’ used to put to one side anything saleable and stick it in a special shed. Anything you wanted was always a couple of quid. For us it was the best part of the week. We have still got a book cupboard we got from there. It was already shabby chic, so has stood the test of time. We also got a couple of mattresses, not badly stained, joke, joke, joke.

The man in charge of the shed was called Reg and he used to sit on an armchair shouting out prices. He was very knowledgable about rubbish and where it should go. His sales pitches were very fair. I once heard him saying to one woman ‘You don’t want that, it stinks’. Am sure she was very grateful when he imparted his opinion.

Sometimes his dog was with him, a very old mongrel called Mickey. It shared the armchair and a blanket on a cold day. I once took Reg a slice of homemade cake. He said ‘thanks but I am diabetic’ and gave it to the dog. We never saw Mickey again after that. It wasn’t a chocolate cake by the way.

They must have made quite a good living out of the shed. Anyway about a year down the line it was all locked up as new regulations came in and Reg was no more. Would like to think he made a pretty penny and is happy somewhere surrounded by his finds, hopefully not stinky ones.

G now. Same subject. This was intended to be included in the blog at some stage, but never got there.

G Says…

For some people, the biggest symbol of hope as lockdown eased wasn’t the reopening of schools or pubs, not even the much delayed opportunity to meet and greet, after a fashion, estranged friends and relatives, it was a distinctly more prosaic sign that normal life may soon be restored – the reopening of ‘The Tip.’

The tip, the dump, the household waste recycling centre – actually only the local Council ever calls it that – the place where we are once again allowed to dump the unwanted detritus of our lives being available once more was a great landmark. When the tip reopened after lockdown, the queue of cars waiting their opportunity to get in was vast. I hate queuing for anything – life’s too short to queue – but even I make an exception for the tip, my favourite example of municipal infrastructure.

Of course, even the tip isn’t what it used to be. Rummaging is not only discouraged, it’s actually forbidden. In the good old days I frequently returned from the tip with more than I’d set out with. The municipal tip of St Varent in the Loire Valley, the nearest ‘facility’ to the first house we renovated in France was a treasure trove. We used to arrive with an overloaded car and trailer and after emptying everything out set off for home again with a full load of ‘treasure,’ mostly stuff we didn’t even realise we desperately needed until we saw it languishing there, unwanted, unloved and obviously in urgent need of a new home.

Tips, Council run Dumps, didn’t really exist to the extent that they do now until comparatively recently. You don’t have to go back too far back in time to discover an era when most households contained far less possessions and the concept of built in obsolescence was unheard of. Household objects were valued, repaired when a fault developed and went on to second, third and fourth lives. A kettle or a toaster is now both cheap and disposable You can buy a kettle for £5 in Tesco – we own one of them – it will probably last for a year or two and it is then not economically repairable. Off to the tip it will go.

During the ten months we lived in Morocco we realised the concept of the tip didn’t exist there. Recycling was a way of life. Nothing was ever thrown away, even the most humble objects had appeal to someone. Everything we regard as junk was treasured and given a new lease of life. Old car tyres, threadbare carpets, plastic bottles, we saw people make footwear out of all those.

A friend of ours back in England regards anything placed in the rubbish bin as a personal declaration of failure. Avid recycler or plain old hoarder, it’s a fine distinction. His wife claims he only visits the tip to ‘collect’ and has a Loyalty Card there. Today, we finally got to the entrance after sitting in a long line of cars for what seemed like entire days.

There was one more hurdle to be overcome in the shape of a villainous looking creature wearing an oversized fluorescent jacket over a string vest who held up an imperious hand as instruction for us to stop and made a ‘wind the window down’ gesture –  universal sign language for an action that died out thirty years ago. He thrust his entire face inside our car barking, ‘wotcha got then?’ I gave a brief description of our soon to be discarded treasures and received vastly detailed orders relating to at least ten different areas of the yard where I would find the appropriate skips.

‘Did you get any of that?’ Marigold asked as we drove into the yard. ‘I was too busy discovering what he had for breakfast,’ I replied, having suffered the multiple stains and aromas associated with our interrogator’s sudden appearance in very close contact to my face. No social distancing here. The skips were labelled in a rudimentary fashion: cardboard sheets tied to the guard rails on which descriptions of the desired contents had been written. ‘Metal, wood, garden waste’ and my personal favourites, ‘house stuff not for recycling’ and ‘TRADE WASTE, SEE JIM.’ I loved the terminology (house stuff), but ‘JIM’ failed to make an appearance.

I threw a recalcitrant printer, the cause of untold stress over the entire period of my ownership, into the skip with as much force as I could muster. It had demanded fresh ink cartridges after minuscule amounts of printing, refused to work at all on numerous occasions and yet never failed to irretrievably imprison any sheet of A4 paper that I had placed in the paper tray. Is it just me or do other people own baleful printers with a mind of their own? Judging by the number of them in the skip already, I suspect I am not the only sufferer.

Marigold showed little interest in removing our own rubbish, her attention captured by what other people were throwing away. A leather three piece suite, scruffy but splendid, for example.

‘Look at that, there’s nothing wrong with it,’ she said.

‘Do you want it then?’

‘No, but it’s too good to throw away.’ There’s the problem. One person’s tat is another person’s treasure. Almost everything we saw being dumped retained value in some form. Apart from printers, obviously.

The rubbish, we, as a society, throw away today may spark unparalleled joy a few centuries hence as artificially intelligent robots unearth the remnants of our 21st Century civilisation. The Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Bronze Age all long gone, we are living in the Plastic Age. Will they imagine Lego was a primitive form of currency?

Those robots of the future would certainly struggle to understand the speech patterns of the couple next to us at the ‘house stuff, not for recycling’ skip. Marigold nudged me in the ribs ferociously at one point. Her elbows should carry a Government Health Warning. The couple, dressed for the privations of winter despite the sun beating down on our heads, weren’t interested in talking to us. Their non-stop ranting was aimed only at each other. Fortunately.

Verbal insults can be considered a crime these days. The era of ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ belongs to a different age..

The monumental effort of conveying appropriate insults had long since passed. Anything would do now as long as it hit home. Each item removed from their van was a metaphorical stick to beat the other party.

‘Thirty quid I paid for that and you used it once,’ the man snorted, flinging a carton bearing the words ‘fondue’ on the side into the skip.

No surprise there, I thought.

‘Reclining chair gone? How will you cope now, Cyril?’ The woman responded, obviously determined to heave a presumably heavy chair out of the van on her own. Not that her doleful companion showed any sign of offering to assist.

‘I’d rather spend a day standing on my head, on my own, than live another thirty years in my armchair next to you and your big gob,’ he bellowed.

An interesting variation on Mussolini’s quotation in 1930s Italy: “Better one day as a lion than a hundred days as a sheep.”

I always assumed El Duce appropriated his slogan from elsewhere, the only point of similarity that springs to mind being a biblical offering: ‘Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere’ from Psalm 84.

(Yes, I looked up the precise wording; woe betide the blogger who misquotes a biblical reference).

John Goti amended the Mussolini quotation to ‘It’s better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a lamb,’ as did Donald Trump.

Interesting; a Facist Dictator, the notorious head of the Gambino crime family in 1980s New York and Donald Trump – all with the same philosophy. There’s a faint suggestion of a common personality theme there.