Jeni Barnett

Ok. Ok.
I have been up and down to London.
In and out of pain.
Under the thumb.
Round the houses.
Past my best.
And over the moon.

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Well dear readers,
As agony aunt to the less than famous, the indiscreet and the truly damaged, let me draw your attention to young Phils queary.
Living in Thailand, as he does, and enduring Siam Suzie, which he does, Philip wanted to know why, after an exhaustive shopping trip, we ladies always end up buying our men ties for Christmas.
It’s quite simple Phil, there is always the feint possibility that you will tie the tie just a little too tightly around your necks which means our job is half done.
Oh! no it isn’t…………
In my capacity as agony aunt to the follically challenged, fiscally unaware and non gender specific enquiries, I will now turn my attention to Kerri, David and Michael.
I know that as an agony aunt I really shouldn’t get invovled with my subjects but sometimes it is hard to remain objective.
So with that in mind
I FECKIN’ LOVE YOU DAVID, MICHAEL, KERRI, CHRISSIE, And the rest of you, you all know who you are.
Now that I have got that off my chest let me explain my absence.

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I’ve kept a diary ever since 1981.
Each year Jim would buy me a big full-page, A4, lined jobbie, which I would fill religiously with waffle.
A different colour each year, so I have a library of red, blue, black, and so on.
The journal kept me sane.
Family issues were laboured over.
Work troubles were all recorded.
The good, the bad and the unpublishable were all written down and I had a special pen for the job.
My Conway Stewart with its wonderful soft nib, was swapped for a pink, plastic ‘Woolies’ fountain-pen back in 1958.
Gillian Quick, the bane of my life at Cowley Hill Junior School, got the bum deal.
I’ve always wondered whether Mr.and Mrs.Quick knew of their daughters rash trade.
I still use mine, although the plunger doesn’t work so I have to dip it into a bottle of ink.
One of my duvets is stained with a massive green blob where a bottle of ‘Mont Blanc’ tinte tipped off my bedside table.
I have cried into my diaries, written funny poems, stuck paper clippings, jammed in photgraphs and flowers, but always I have written as if somebody else, other than myself, was reading it.
Then one year Jim bought me a five year diary from Camden Lock.

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Sometimes the only thing to do is go with it.
So I filled a bucket with hot water and floor cleaner and scrubbed the kitchen floor.
Why I felt like ironing is beyond me, but I did.
I then gathered up all the stray bits of washing.
The house is now grime free.
I then found myself vacuuming, in the buff, well the demons had got me. I was too hot to wear anything, and no I don’t look anything like Ms. Griffiths in ‘Working Woman’.
Dom, was raking leaves and snipping hydrangeas. I feared he may walk past the kitchen window with his wheelbarrow so every time I went down stairs I draped myself in a quilt that was made for BB when she was born.
The thing is ripped and all the stuffing is coming out of it, I can’t get rid of it, throwing away twenty years of memories.
But it’s just the right size to do one turn round my body and it stays up for about 20 paces.
I did our bedroom, smiling as I went back and forth with the Dyson. Then one unwealdy move and I’d sucked up the belt from Jim’s blue-polkadot-silk, dressing gown. I must remember to tell him.

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