Monday 12 May 2008

Foot-Fetishism and Nonagenarian Neglect

The most magnificent thing that happened today was the purchase of a gorgeous new pair of toweringly-high heels, which have made me a little taller and therefore enhanced my usual delusions of grandeur.



The faux-fur amethyst-coloured throw I have on the bed makes it look like I've taken that photo from a foot-fetishist website, but I can't help that. It's also made me keenly aware of exactly how much I could use a tan. Even Snow White had more colour than me. I think I've spent so long in hibernation that I've started to lose skin pigment, and will eventually end up like those fish that live in the murkiest depths of the ocean and have become entirely transparent. (Now my head is filled with daft images of angler-fish in platforms, maybe I didn't take a long enough break from writing this blog after all!)

Apart from tottering around, learning how to walk at an increased altitude today, it's been an interesting week.

There was a little too much sport on TV this weekend, with football and then golf. Every time I switched on the television they were screening grass - I'm sure people were just watching it grow. I will watch the Pompey game next Saturday, though. I'd be strung up in the town centre if I didn't! There is also the compulsory 'Play Up Pompey' poster in the window, and I might even be persuaded to change the ringtone on my phone to our city's little ditty, for the few days leading up to the game.

The other thing we have had to do is put a bandanna on the dog, with some drops of Olbas Oil on it, because the hay-fever has given her a runny nose as well as sore eyes. She looks stupid - and refused to let me take a photograph to put here - so I have promised to get a Vicks Plug-In, instead of the bandanna.

In other news: I'm sure that the headline in the local paper tomorrow will read: "Local woman Kate Lawrence abandons nonagenarian Gertie in garden until 2am."

I should - at this juncture - tell you that Gertie is a tortoise, who we always bring in at night, but who I forgot on Saturday. I think that if you look on Google Earth, you'll be able to zoom in on me tottering around in the dark with a torch, trying not to look like a burglar. (Though how many burglars get caught wearing gold platforms and carrying a tortoise I don't know. If I caught a burglar like that, then I'd let him have the TV - but only if he let me have a photograph to put in the autobiography one day.)

To write an autobiography I will have to live a bit longer, but this appears less and less likely than I experience near heart-stopping moments of terror such as I have tonight. (I sometimes worry that I will cause this house to collapse, like Frank Spencer did in the last episode of 'Some Mothers Do Have 'Em.' The rest of the terrace will remain standing, but ours will fold in on itself, crumbling and tumbling because of something stupid I have done.) You see, this evening I was accosted by a spider so big it could take over the mortgage. This thing wasn't just large, it was gargantuan. It ran out from under the cooker (nearly dislodging it from the wall as it heaved its bulbous, hairy body under the metal frame,) and I should have just stepped on it, but I can't ever bring myself to kill them so directly. My rule of thumb is pretty much that: 'if I can count their eyes or feel them squish, then I am far too close.' So Instead I tried to hit it with a broom, but I had the kitchen light off so the glare didn't hurt the dogs' eyes - because they're still sore - so I couldn't quite see what I was doing. It didn't help that I was wielding a long-handled broom in a small galley kitchen whilst wearing these new six-inch platform heels - because it meant that I kept overbalancing. Nothing would have encouraged me to remove them though - not with that bloody great monstrous beastie nipping at my ankles. (I mean the spider, not the dog. I think the dog is smaller than that spider is anyway.)

I am not sure where my irrational hatred of spiders came from, but my grandmother dislikes them too, and so I think I picked up a lot of the anxiety from her. Once, a particularly large spider got into the house and she dropped a washing up bowl over it, then piled that two-foot high with books to weigh it down "so the spider wouldn't escape," before my grandfather got home from work and could deal with it. I'm not one of those people who shriek and scream when they see a spider, but I do shudder in a "someone just walked over my grave," sort of a way. Actually it's worse than that - it's a "someone just walked over my grave, had a picnic on it, did a bit of Riverdance and then let their dog pee on the tombstone," sort of shudder.

Now, there's really not any way that a twenty-something in stilettos and a halter-neck top can launch a hysterical attack on a spider with nothing but a sweeping brush, without looking like a parody of that show where they make Nicole Richie work on a farm. The only comfort is knowing that I am not quite as pathetically insect-phobic as former-Royal-Butler-come-Diana-circus-leech Paul Burrell, who made a complete fool of himself with his squeamish-ness on' I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here,' by whining and whimpering.

Because the enormous swine of an arachnid escaped me, I shall spend the next few days tiptoeing around the kitchen very suspiciously; expecting the spider to launch a vicious attack at any moment. It's not easy to make a cup of tea while trying to keep 360-degree lookout. I'll either scald myself or topple over. (I'm still not taking these shoes off yet though.)

Finally... I am aware this will interest few of you, and is a little more personal than the chaotic rambling I usually send out into cyber-space, but:

Archie Lawrence - my grandfather - and the man who taught me that it is better to aspire to be something, than remain apathetically content with anything.

11.5.1936 - 10.8.2006

Donate to the Roy Castle charity for Lung Cancer Research at: http://www.roycastle.org/involved/inv_donate.htm

God that's depressing. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he was in America and the bus he wanted to chuck himself under was on the other side of the road.

No comments:

Signed, Sealed, and (Hopefully) Delivered

This week my thoughts, many of my conversations, and – most contentiously – my   Facebook   timeline, have been consumed by the unfold...