My mother will be turning in her grave. One roll for Shitnak, one roll for Farrago and a double axel for Stoma – the derisable name given to Keir by my friend who is about to vote Reform. I told her not to vote for the far right, thus splitting the Tory vote but, to put her cross on the Greens, to which she replied ‘That Lesbian?!?’
This election is truly the sale of the century.
We all want change but people are confused and embittered.
Everybody wants a reset but unless you are a true blue Tory with enough land to hang a massive poster with ‘VOTE CONSERVATIVE’ on your Leylandii, then decision making is proving to be difficult. The Great British Isles needs a refresh, rethink, reboot.
My mother would not approve of a wasted vote, of abstentions, or tactical voting.
She was a Marxist who did the Telegraph crossword, she was an intelligent teacher librarian who got sacked by Thatcher because, after thirty years of teaching, didn’t have the proper qualifications. My father, being the Stalinist he was, gave her about as much sympathy as Reece Mogg gives the Somalian refugees.
My Reform friend thinks I’m angry and at 75 should give up the fight, lie back on a lounger with a Gin and some nibbles and watch reruns of ‘Yes Minister’. My mother fought the establishment until she was 90 when she finally gave in to the meowing children she could hear beyond the veil.
The Yiddish phrase, ‘hock mir nicht kein chinik,or tscheynik‘ literally means don’t bang my tea kettle. Some say that chinik is a teacup and the phrase refers to those who stir their tea in an irritating manner. Figuratively it came to mean don’t get on my nerves or stop giving me a headache. It was used a lot in my family. Getting on each others nerves was de rigeur. In out irreligious home the phrase was translated as don’t throw me over the water like a teapot. When my mother died I had a chocolate teapot made by top chocolatier Paul Young. It was sweet and patterned, smelt delicious and the perfect shape for some of my mothers ashes, the rest of her remains were scattered on the roses at the end of the garden.
Me, the old git and two daughters drove to Brighton, where my mother spent the last 9 months of her life. We sprinkled her, like tealeaves, into the teapot, climbed the metal stairs behind the funfair rides, and shouting into the wind the four of us chanted ‘Hock mir nicht kein chinik’. to a grey, cold English Channel. It was a lonely end to my mother, as we threw the chocolate pot into the briny. My mother couldn’t swim on account of my Auntie Esther having difficulty back in 1932, so I felt guilty as the sweet urn landed with a lonely plop and sunk down to Davy Jones’ locker, but not before a gust of wind blew all her ashes back into the dawters mouth.
‘I’ve just eaten Nanny’ said the dawter.
‘Now’t wrong with a bit of smoked ash’ said her father.