Smooth Requests

How times have changed.
In Hansons, a tea shop cum sweet shop, in Boreham Wood high street, Sundays was a trip to the back room for an ice-cream soda.
Delicius home made ice-cream; the Sunday papers waiting to be read, the smell of vanilla and the innocent soundtrack of 60’s conversation.
Should teenagers wear winkle pickers or not?
Is Elvis better than Cliff?
Does hour lacquer enhance your beehive?

Now a Sunday at the Deer Park is between a roast and a smoothie.
All of a sudden smoothies are de rigour.
Green ones, red ones, orange and purple. The smooth drinks of choice. I’m not complaining, well I am, since I’m on a restricted liquid diet, unless the glass is small, a smoothie compromises my health so I end up with a tea-cup of Early Grey tea.

When I get my two words from Bonnie I go with whatever my first thought is.
‘Smooth’ sent me to Hansons’ and ‘Requests’ cast me back to 1982.

Celerities, either ‘A’ list, or in my case ‘Y’ fronted, regularly received requests from the viewers.
Annie Diamond sent off photographs and the occasional item of clothing. Me on the other hand had a geezer, called Al who wanted me to reply to his letters.
He wrote lots before moving on to poetry.
Lined paper with his handwriting in blue biro, often in capital letters, the correspondence came in regularly and I dutifully responded.
Our postal activity went on for years.
And then the Daily Mirror did a centre page spread on me and the old git.
The papers photographer took a series of fanatastic pictures.
I have two in my bedroom. Four in the baby room, and two on the picture wall going up the stairs.
I look young with long shiny hair cuddling the ‘oosbind who has his arms folded and looks every bit the thespian.
Nearly half a century later we are there, captured in black and white, in all our glory.
The article talked bout how we met, how the Northener was married, how he had two children, how we started life after a trip to Sweden, how I became a step-mother to his delightful kids and how after just five months we set about a life together. Although to be fair if I’d have known that we would be together for 50 years it would have freaked the living daylights out of me.

The article came out. Several people read it including Al.
On the following Tuesday, when I arrived to do me bit to camera, the post room gave me a cardboard box.
A big box.
Inside were all the letters and poems Al had written, and all my responses.
Bloody loads of them.
There was one hand-written piece of paper on top of the pile.
One piece of paper, with one word written in big red letters.
I had to go to the Bible to find out why Al had written.
JEZEBEL
I had deeply offended my number one fan.

‘Jezebel became a cultural symbol associated with false prophets, manipulative women, and promiscuity. In Christian traditions, she was seen as leading others into idolatry and sin, and her image influenced medieval and modern perceptions of powerful or nonconforming women.’

After years of being Al’s perfect woman I had plummeted from grace with a mighty thud.

All these years later, with the use of celebrity, social media and fucking influencers, I wonder about the effect on our mental health from the arseholes who are now our brand ambassadors.
Advertisers now think nothing of giving us poop and wee, of close ups of sanitary products with blue liquid instead of red, and find it funny to assault our senses.
Now nobody thinks anything of washing dirty linen in public.
Nothing is private anymore. Nothing is sacred.
Of course I’m a proponent of honesty and for sweeping the dust out from under the carpet, but somewhere down the line we’ve forgotten any sort of delicacy.

‘In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking but now, God knows, anything goes.’
It takes a song from 1934 to remind us that we are on a slippery slope.

I offended Al, there’s something almost wholesome about it. Now no fucker appears to offend anybody?
You can have Porn with breakfast and Trump for tea.
You can have actresses baring their nipples on the red carpet and naked sex scenes in just about everything.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a soft porn moment on Gardeners World.
We have pricks influencing boys to be men and big breasted influencers encouraging fish lips and plastic surgery.
I am out of my depth now, as an old woman, it feels like we are careening down a slippery slope and when we hit the bottom…..well what happens?
Who exactly is holding the reins?
Invisible forces are destabilising the very core of our democracies.
The Labour Party no longer represents labour.
The Tory party under Kemi, is empty and flaccid.
The Lib Dems are giggling all the way to the polls behind Sir Ed Davey’s antics.
The Greens are trying.
Whist Reform is galloping away with a dumbed down working class who believe Farages’ upper crust drivel.
Where are the orators?
Where are the rhetoricians?
Where are the inspirational speech makers?
Good old Charlie the third brought some wit and gumption to his speech in the White House.
But I’m calling for the youth to find their voice.
To step up and expose the emperors nakedness.
I haven’t got the wherewithal to get out there and shout, at the moment, and to be honest you have to be a brave little bunny to speak the truth.
But all is not lost.
In the end the corrupt will destroy themselves from within and I, for one, shall raise a glass of 21st century ice-cream soda with genetically modified vanilla and adulterated ice-cream, and roar,
‘Fuck off Nigel, up yours Donald’
As I toast their demise.