Midnight at the Oasis

Firstly, I must tell you, Dave, that I have no comment to make about you know what.
Secondly, to my beaux in Brighton, the secret to attracting men seductively in the dance hall is to lounge against the wall, moving gently to the music and then whip out an Exchange and Mart and start talking about twin carbs and two in one oil. I find it works for me. Not!
And thirdly, to Mr. Engstrom in Swedenland: It is not polite to talk about horse wee as horse P***. We don’t like that in good old England, and as for your suggestion that I should be plastering the cottage with yoghurt… yoghurt creates moss, as any gardener will tell you, and anyway, the only yoghurt I have tops my blueberries, raspberries and strawberries for breakfast. P’raps you could join us sometime.
Well, today has been one of those scrappy kind of affairs.
B walked the dog, cleaned the kitchen, took the cloth off the kitchen table to expose the lovely blonde wood, threw out all the shoes that didn’t match and then buggered off to Soho to hear a band in Brewer Street.

I drove into London town.
It was hot enough for me to unzip my back window and take the roof down. I can only get the window half open. I have tried rubbing candle wax over the teeth but it still sticks in the middle. I called my garage who informed me that a brand new roof and zip would cost me a thousand pounds. So now I unzip the zip to where it unzips to and carefully lower the lid. The plastic window bends just a little, but not seriously enough for me to be spending my hard earned cash on a scrap of plastic and rainproof roofing material. The trouble with my little car is that when it’s hot the blower throws out warm air so the lid has to come off.
I stopped off for petrol in Earls Court and then had this dreadful old lady presentiment. I must keep my bag near me in case somebody dips their arm over the window and nicks me smalls-change.
So I drove with my bag stuffed under my right arm, my silver bangles jangling and my hair blowing in the warm breeze. For ten minutes I felt like I was in Malibou. That was until I got to Shepherds Bush roundabout. LA, it ain’t.
Got to LBC and had a very short, meaty meeting with Lucy the producer and Chris the Studio Manager. Radio folk are not like television folk (although the ones on GFL were wonderful). They are warm and listen well. They should do as it’s their medium.
On the way home the news broke about the BBC and all its naughty quiz calls. The MT, the top dog from Auntie was interviewed on the 5.00 clock news. My irritation level soared. He hummed, haahed and faltered, made a clear statement then started hesitating again. Trying to explain his mission to explain nearly had me driving into the hard shoulder at Pratts Bottom.
And all this sanctimonious stuff about fake phone calls and bogus letters. I have never met a Fleet Street editor, or television producer, in all my forty years in the business, who hasn’t given a kick start to a topic. I know that economics – making a quick buck – is the name of the game but finally somebody is realising that children who are still wet behind their earpieces cannot, just because they have watched it, make good TV without real work experience. The really good thing that has come out of this nonsense is that young folk will be trained.
When the unions were smashed back in the 80’s the writing was on the wall. Too many stations with too much rubbish and not enough money to go round, churning out programmes commissioned and made by inexperienced todgers who think they know everything because they got a diploma in Onanism from the University of Phucket.
I know award-winning camera operators who are digging up gardens, decorating or mini-cabbing, just to keep food on the table, whilst inexperienced brown tongues are climbing up the greasy pole. Opinionated, me?
Anyway, the radiowallahs and me decided on some ideas for next week and off I went.
I nipped into the flat, picked up the electricity bill and B’s bits then drove home like the clappers to deliver her red platforms so she could strut her stuff in W1.
On the way, at Gypsy Hill, I looked to my right and there, across the road, was my first ever boyfriend carrying a bag of melons. I was stuck in traffic, so he crossed over to me and we talked. I drove and he ran alongside me until I got up enough speed to shake him off. No, he’s lovely. He’s an arty photographer with four sons and a very good sense of humour. I called him at ten and we grumped about age and the cosmic joke.
After dropping the kid off at the station, I arrived home, took off all my clothes – avert those eyes please – and settled down for Corrie.
I’m finding it a bit of a struggle at the minute. The characters are not my type, the writing is not so good any more and the storylines aren’t gripping, but as drugs go, it’s better than trytophan.
Then I fielded calls from Hamburg, Totnes, Brighton, and Penge. I tried to watch Robson Green on ‘3’ and Trevor Eve on ‘1’. Neither of them got a look in as I was making connecting calls like and old stenographer from Maine.
I ate some kind of healthy fruity biscuit whilst on the phone to Crystal Palace and then took Jackson out for his midnight wee. (See Bjorn not p***…. we Brits don’t like that word.)
I am all alone in the country. No light pollution where I am so the sky at night is a reminder of just how insignificant we are.
This morning I received a wonderful email from a writing friend who talked about procrastination. She is setting up a newsletter and writing a book called ‘Procrastinators Anonymous’. We all suffer from it. Some of us wait until it is exactly 1.01 on the last Monday of the month before we start the diet. Or wash the labels of whisky bottles before sitting down to write the first chapter. Or smoke or drink or talk on the telephone or eat or cry or sleep. But my writing role model said we should start each day with morning pages – an old trick created for all by Julia Cameron in her seminal book ‘The Artist’s Way’. It’s a 12 week course in getting you back in touch with who you are. I was given mine, as a 45th birthday present, by Romy Baskerville, who is now older than me and singing in ‘Mary Poppins’ in the West End. Her career revived out of nowhere. She feeds the birds every night and lives in Hastings.
So this morning I took my purple felt tip pen and wrote three sides of A4. The trick is not to read it back, not to make judgements. It can moan. It can list. It can spill the beans, but whatever it does, you don’t read it. Instead, you let it help you start the day.
I enjoyed doing mine this morning.
Can’t remember what I wrote but I know that I felt a lot better than I thought I did. I was surprised at quite how positive I am.
Inside my head I am a curmudgeonly old hag with nothing to live for. When I wrote my bits this morning I felt like a young healthy woman with a fantastic future who was so grateful for all the lovely things in my life, including Mr. Engstrom in Svenska.
I cut my thumb on a sharp knife whilst I was slicing the cucumber for my salad, so watched ‘The Street’ with a three sheets of kitchen towel wrapped around my thumb end. Now the skin keeps catching on everything. I haven’t got a plaster. That’s my job tomorrow – to get some elastoplast..
I’m off to bed now, after yet another exhausting day in this dimension. Who knows? I may sleep, perchance to dream, and end up in Fiji. That would be nice. I could drink their water straight from source as opposed to buying a bottle which would save me at least a day’s fee.
Sleep y’all, and May the 4th be with you. Cusoon