Jeni Barnett

Today Jackson was 13 years of age. Jim and I sang him Happy Birthday.
He ‘herrumphed’ a thank you, a kind of breathy neigh. I called up B, she shouted out Happy Birthday – he barked his thanks. I called Zoe, who sung Happy Birthday down the line from Brighton, Jackson barked his approval. I called up my mother who, very excitedly, sung a jolly Happy Birthday accompanying herself on her organ in Hertfordshire, Jackson was thrilled and sung along. I called up Hanna who sung Happy Birthday with Giles, our continuing son-in-law, but by this time Jackson had had enough, he abjectly refused to respond. No amount of coaxing from me would make him talk – ewuff was ewuff.
So we walked up the hill very slowly, the old boy in command, when we arrived home I gave him a dog chew, the 91 year old flopped down on his bed and went to sleep.
The perfect day.

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What a funny time this is.
The BBC slashing so many jobs.
Perer Fincham resigning.
ITV being accused of fraud.
Im working in an industry which is tearing itself apart.
Fewer and fewer people are able to find work, more and more of my kind are finding it impossible to make ends meet.
Names that wouldn’t be seen dead on a soap are being written into Corrie to keep a roof over their heads. Not that I have anything against Corrie, I don’t I love it, but back in the day working a Soap spelt the end of a serious career.
Acting chums are working for peanuts.
Out of work producers are selling perfume and renowned creatives are on permanent gardening leave.
It aint ‘alf ‘ard to remain positive

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‘The Frieze Art Fair’ in Regents Park, was full of arty collectors, rich gallery owners, Richard E Grant and poseurs. Some of the work was good; I particulalry liked Evan Penny’s bald man and Pam Ferris lookalike.
They hung on the wall, as big as a Fresian Cow. The detail of their skin and hair, eyes and lips was uncanny.
But, there was too much art, too much noise, too much competition. If this is the way we sell our young artists I fear for their creativity. There was no time for reflection, it felt like a cattle market.
One young Russian was drawing lines on a laughing monkey with a silver pen. He had flown in from the Mother Country and was completing his piece de resistance before our very eyes – a sort of Slavic Rolf Harris.

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We have a shed in our garden, it’s called ‘Le Shed’. One half is my writing shrine the other is where music gets written. Jim has a shed, it’s called ‘His Shed’. We have another shed in the garden full of cobwebs, gardening tools and mouse nibbled seed packets, it’s not called anything.
I bought a book, sometime back, about men and their sheds and gave it to Jim as a gift. All the photos were of men proudly showing off their sheds.
Interesting that men like to have a little hidey hole they can hide in. We women make do and mend! (“That’s b****x!” says the old man, “women have houses.”)
Jim is no exception. His hidey hole smells of wood and french polish. It’s jam-packed with boys bumph, peanuts for the birds, somebody elses drum kit, a television that takes obsolete vhs tapes, an old vacuum cleaner and a desk with picture restoring equipment scattered over it. Jim can do anything as long as he has a bit of this, a scrap of that and some wood glue.
The reason I mention this is because of Paolo Proto the producer of ‘Food Poker’. Half way between our final voice over session for the final show Paolo excused himself to take a very important call.

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Dear Colin, me YAK?! I’ve never yakked in my life – talked the hind legs off a donkey, now that’s different.
And dear Janey B, if it ain’t the foxes running amok it’s the geese that are giving you goose flesh. What swine they are, okay, what web-footed migratory birds they are. Have you thought of abandoning the rural idyll and setting up home in the grimy smoke stacks of Attercliff?
No? I thought not.
I’m sleepy and it’s only 15.00 hours.
The rain is teeming down, the heating is on, my Thai lunch is lying heavily on my conscience, not to mention my waistband, and Jim has just left for the country.
His term of duty at the Globe is at an end, I complete Food Poker tomorrow, and with the trust that all free-lance performers have in the God of Luvviedom, I await whatever the Universe sends to me.
I’m sleepy because the clouds have dampened all sound, I can’t hear the sirens, seagulls or scooters so after the curtain man has been, which he’s threatened to do since January, I am going to put my feet up, finish my book, and maybe catch a few zzzz’s.

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Dear Anne, you are absolutely right. The Great Storm was 20 years ago. I should know that because the kid is now 20. I should also know that because I am twenty years older, over the hill and away with the fairies. Of course it was 20 years ago because 1987 is exactly 20 years ago from now.
I wrote ‘ten’ not ‘twenty’ because I had a senior moment tinged with a blonde highlight.
Thank you for putting me right.
Janey, I know foxes can be lethal BUT I have a bit of a problem with a pack of baying toffs jumping over hedges, blowing their horns and holding up their prey not unlike happy slapping thugs. I welcome all your comments on the blog, a short sharp debate never hurt anybody.
Thank you all for commenting. I love reading your thoughts.
This morning the mist hung over the hedges and the sun was fighting to get through when Jim and I left for town. I was in a black mood. It was nerves about the radio programme.

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I can hear the fireworks from Rotherfield Carnival.
You can see the purple, red orange and white sparkles way up in the sky.
Back in the Great Storm of 1987 the spire of Rotherfield Church went through the roof.
You can see it from my attic window, although on that fateful night ten years ago you couldn’t.
So many trees came down our normal walk was impossibly impassable.
Monkey Puzzle trees went down on the road to TWells. It took over an hour to do a normal 5 minute journey.
Our little cottage shook from side to side, although B, who was ten months old, slept through it all. Jim nearly slept through it until I wakened him.
Dinah, our beautiful cat of the time, had panicked and was running rings round her tail, she was completely terrified I tried to open the window to let her out when Jim said in a voice, reminiscent of Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining’
‘Nooooooooooooo.’ it had a haunting resemblence to ‘Heeeeeere’s Johhny’ in a somnabulent kind of way, the gale was so strong the window wouldn’t open anyway.
We lost tiles and bits of chimney pot but that was it. A massive oak went down in the bottom field, blown out of the ground, it looked like it had been weeded, pulled up by its roots.
That was exactly ten years ago now the spire is back and the little village is celebrating its carnival.
How time flies.

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