Is this the world's oldest con artist?

What do you do when an 88-year-old lady approaches you at the cinema and asks if you'll pose as her carer so she can use her 'get in free card'?  I knew she was 88  because she told me several times before we'd even reached the till.  I tried to explain that we were seeing different films (she 'Lincoln', me 'Les Miserables'), but she feigned a hearing aid malfunction.  Our cover was blown at the ticket point precisely because of our disparate choices.  I can count on one hand the times I've thwarted authority.  Now here I was in this aged 'Thelma and Louise' scenario wondering if the authorities would be able to tell which of us was 88 and would I be sent to an open prison or, even worse, made to sit through 'Lincoln'. The cinema manager appeared. Clearly, he recognised her immediately as a persistent felon. She waived her walking stick as if challenging him to a duel. She repeated that she was 88-years-old.  He refused permission for the free ticket. What could I do?  I offered to pay for her. The manager's heart strings started pinging and before I could fumble for the £10 in my purse, he overturned his decision and we were through. He tried to make her promise she wouldn't break the rules again, but by now she was already edging along row H in screen 1, minus her carer. 

I wouldn't mind, but ....

.... I've been eating a lot of eggs. I've been told they're healthy and contain good cholesterol. To be honest though, I'm told a lot of things, so it's quite possible I've confused them with satsumas.  But, oh my word, there can be too much of a good thing.  If I feel like this eating them every day, what must the poor chicken feel like laying them everyday?  I'm eating something that poops out of a chicken. I'm battery eating eggs. I suspect it won't be long before I'm locked in my flat with artificially induced daylight (a light bulb) being force fed boiled eggs, fried eggs, poached eggs and scrambled eggs. I wonder if Humpty Dumpty threw himself off that wall as he couldn't look in the mirror any more and see an egg. He couldn't enjoy the funny side - the yolk (boom, boom!).  Eggs are everywhere, in everything - breakfast, lunch, dinner, in boxes of twelve in the supermarket (that's just too many, by the way).  The images on the boxes conjure up images of chickens dancing round the corn fields, keeping in touch with each other on facebook and posting tweets saying they've just laid another one.  And the supermarket shelves are always crowded by over-zealous shoppers checking for cracks. Their little beady eyes and spidery fingers pawing over each individual egg microscopically scanning for the slightest crack.  And if they're not broken to begin with, they certainly are after they've been pawed over by unmanicured nails with a week's worth of cigarette ash eeking out of them.  They're the same people who spend ages inspecting individual onions while I'm trying to reach the broccoli. Then as I reach for the asparagus, they've moved on to individually examining the carrots.  And 10 mins later I'm behind them in the checkout queue and they've got one onion, one carrot and a twelve pack of eggs in their basket. When they get home, they turn on the hob, rustle up a carrot omlette, pickle their onion and get a can of lager out of the fridge.  Actually, come to think of it, that doesn't sound too bad. If you add in a few chips, I'll pop round.

I wouldn't mind, but ....

..... I went to the vintage market at Spitalfields today.  What is it with vintage?  I've been to many stores branded as such and all I've ever discovered is old tat.  Is my old tat now on trend?  The only person I've ever seen who looks good in vintage is a colleague at work, but you could give her a bin liner and she'd turn it into something stylish.  Not everyone is like her, though. Mostly, when I see people wearing a shapeless, heavily patterned, polyester dress, all they're telling me is that they've stolen my elderly aunt's wardrobe and I should call the police.

And what is it with old costume jewellery?  The market was full of it.  Old brooches that were so heavy, you'd be carrying twice your own body weight if you managed to pin them on your lapel.  And old handbags that must once have been stuffed full of dirty linen hankies, half-eaten foxes glacier mints and a china tea cup taken on journeys to the seaside so you could have tea in a proper cup.  And old hats that had been surgically removed with a chisel from hair permed and sprayed so tightly, it was virtually transmuted to rock.  And scarves; the place was full of bins of old scarves.  The remnants, no doubt, of a retired magician who donated his supply of scarves to the old scarves home after they'd made their last appearance from up his sleeve.  Or scarves that had spent their lives keeping out the chill from the necks of church-going ladies at Sunday morning service, the knot tightening every time they made moon eyes at the 'lovely' vicar. And fur coats - loads of them - hanging on rails looking forlorn; everybody a little awkward about overtly admiring them for fear of having a tin of Dulux One Coat Satin tipped over their head. 

You may be thinking I'm displaying overly negative views on 'vintage'.  Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad, if I hadn't slipped away from the vintage to look in 'Jigsaw'.  The moment I stepped through the doorway, I was told it was a very exciting time in there because the new collection was in.  At first I thought she meant they were collecting for a new lifeboat, but then I realised she meant the clothes.  The shop assistant approached me twice to say that other sizes were available.  I admit I like a dessert, but, reading between the lines of her barely disguised assumption that there wouldn't be anything in my size on display, I deduced it was because my size would take up too much room in the store.  I wanted to tell her that I had bought a course of Power Plates classes, I planned to attend those pilates classes I'd avoided, I was a new recruit to Zumba and was trying hard to give up my morning cheese bagel.  I wanted to assure her that there was hope for me.  I wanted to say that I'd seen collections come and go and to ask her if a group of children in India were busy sewing something in my size from disused parachutes.  But, I didn't.  Why do we let these assistants judge us so openly?  I went back outside to the vintage market and decided to go and have a full English Breakfast.  For Lunch.  Let 'em think what they want.  For me a full English Breakfast is truly and satisfyingly vintage.

I wouldn't mind, but ....

..... while enduring a throat infection instead of a holiday, I was pretty much housebound.  And what do you do when you're housebound and surrounded by books that you've already read?  You watch TV.  Daytime TV.  My remote reached channels it had never reached before.  I lost count of the number of homes on sale in the country; heirlooms sold at auction for less than the bus fare to get there; makeovers of women who stretched the boundaries of photoshop to it's very limit; confessions of men and women who slept with their in-laws (why do they always have spots?).  I clung on through all this until it was time for 'Eggheads' on BBC2.  I absorbed the general knowledge of this joyous programme until I felt I knew the answer to everything.  In fact, if I'd been able to shout through the laryngitis, I'd have exclaimed "stop Eggheads, we have all the information we can cope with".

But, there was one other thing that got me through this period of ill health.  And that was my search for sightings of Pitbull, the rapper.  No music channel escaped my attention.  If he was on, I was watching. Such an intriguing individual.  Never alone, always stuck like glue to a buxom woman and examining her charms with the eyes of one who knows that he's got the sharp suit, the money and the rap to make her skip school for the afternoon.  And his voice, what a sound.  Like a human bassoon.  An orchestra would be proud to find him in their woodwind section.  And his lyrics.  So full of meaning:  "I was playing with her, she was playing with me, next thing you know we were playing with three".  Surely this is a message to teenagers urging them to use contraception to avoid unwanted pregnancies? 

And from his collaboration with Ne-Yo: "Excuse me, but I might drink a little more than I should tonight".  Surely this is a warning to teenagers to go easy on the alcopops or to at least have the manners to apologise first for throwing up over the homeless person sheltering in the HSBC doorway.  Here, I think we have a rapper with a social conscience.  Yes, his videos might be full of ladies who forgot to get dressed before the cameras rolled.  Yes, he may or may not have been involved with drugs.  Yes, he speaks out of only one corner of his mouth, but just imagine what the rest of his mouth must be doing.  Yes, he might clog up your BT Friends and Family allowance with Ricky Martin, Shakira and Gloria Estefan.  Yes, he might be embarrassing to hang out with at a bus-stop gyrating with the twirlies (before 9.30am).  Yes, he's named himself after a dog (he could so easily be called chihuahua).  But, he's been awarded the keys to the city of Miami.  And that's one big set of keys!  And who doesn't enjoy latino rythmns?  Certainly, slumped on the sofa, pumped full of strepsils and just enough energy to press the remote, Pitbull spoke to me and it was better than any lozenge.

I wouldn't mind, but ....

.... why is virtually every music video I watch (purely for cultural balance to my penchant for Monarch of the Glen) full of gyrating women pushing boob tape adhesive to it's limit?  Why do these 3-minute movies constantly depict life as hot and steamy?  The Victoria Line is hot and steamy, but no-one is gyrating in their underwear all 'crazy in love' or 'doin it like a dude'.  If they were, I wouldn't begrudge my annual Oyster Card. 

If we all enjoy watching these videos, why isn't it mirrored in daily life?  Granted, any British city centre on a Saturday is populated by people turned away from an overbooked Easyjet flight to Ibiza.  But, during the day it's all a bit more sedate.  Apart from spitting and dropping sweet wrappers on the floor, it's all fairly tame. How much more interesting would a visit to Sainsbury's be if at the self-checkout the announcement 'unidentified item in the bagging area' greeted a scantily-clad customer singing "Stop talking, stop talking, I don't want to scan anymore, I've left my butter and my peas on the shop floor"?  How much more motivating would a day in the office be if we presented our photocopying dressed in a rubber cat suit flagged on either side by a bevvy of hip wiggling dancers fanning us with foolscap ring-binders?

My shock peaked this evening when I turned over from ITV to one of the music channels.  Having foregone the chance to hear about the individual who had decided to live in sheds at the bottom of his garden, I fell upon "I like the way that you talk dirty, don't wash your mouth out I like it dirty.  You like to please yeah I like that yeah yeah yeah yeah me like it, I like the way that you keep me coming.  That yeah you so good you had me running. Me like the way that he goin' down down down down down". 

At first I thought it was an advert for Listerine mouthwash (they've missed a trick there).  But it was, in fact, Nicole Scherzinger's new single 'Right There'.  The video reminded me of a gyrating snake trying trying to wriggle through the eye of a needle without the aid of Vaseline. What would the great Alan Titchmarsh say? His experiment in metaphors resulted in "he became more entangled in the lissom limbs of this human boa constrictor".  I think that won an award of some sort.

Anyway, we have the Oxford English Dictionary at our disposal, so surely we can come up with something better than 'Yeah'?  We have cities full of clothes shop, so surely we can find something that fits us.  Someone invented underwear, so let's leave the adhesive on the wallpaper where it belongs. Give our boobs a rest! Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.

I wouldn't mind, but ....

.... whenever someone says to me that 'so and so' celebrity is gorgeous and I google their image to basque in their handsomeness, I'm always disappointed.  Most recent cases are Michael Fassbender (actor) and Feliciano Lopez (tennis player).  To counter this, I urge you all to google Yotam Ottolenghi (chef).  He's awesomly attractive and his cook books are lip-lickingly enticing. 

I often walk along Upper Street in Islington and look across the road to the Ottolenghi restaurant, adorned with queues of attractive Islingtonians (there are no ugly people in that part of London, unless the 73 bus breaks down en route from Finsbury Park).  As I gaze across, I wish I could overcome my lethargy for queueing or my past-its-sell-by date looks (all downhill after my first birthday) and infiltrate the North London glitterati as it gorges on its Caramelised Endive with Serrano Ham or Camargue Red Quinoa with Orange and Pistachios, all rounded off with a  Brioche Galette (sounds so much nicer than 'flan'). 

No-one entering or exiting is overweight, dressed in BHS, wearing Clarks shoes or dangling an ASDA carrier bag.  This is somewhere I would have to change my entire lifestyle in order to breath in its world of dried limes, mograbiah (big couscous) and abundance of fresh herbs.  Every time I open my store cupboard and see the chaotic arrangement of Scwartz herb jars - many fatally past their best before dates - I know that to the great Yotam I would be a Jif lemon to his unwaxed, fresh, juicy lemon begging to be squeezed from the wicker basket display in Waitrose.  He also has a degree in Philosophy.  Imagine the luscious conversations we could have on the merits of introducing quinoa to the masses and whether they will subsequently rise up and demand more rocket and horseradish sauce to dip their chips in.

Today, I'm cooking a recipe from his first book - marinated rack of lamb with coriander and honey.  I had to make the marinade last night and let the lamb soak in all the yumminess overnight.  Chillies, ginger, garlic, coriander, mint, honey, soy sauce and more - it's got it all.  And if that's not enough, the cookbook is littered with pictures of the great man himself.  Awesome.

This is also one of those situations where I wish I was a man.  He's gay.

I wouldn't mind, but ....

.... I'm acutely aware that I have a habit of repeating myself.  In fact, I sometimes triple myself.  But just as a leopard never changes its spots, Junebug is unlikely to tell a story only once.  Coming to this realisation, I pondered my portfolio of stories that I tell again and again, many of which I manage to work into a conversation in the first 30 minutes of meeting a new, unsuspecting individual.  I doubt I'm the only one for whom this rings true.  I've been on the receiving end of many a tale that I've heard before, but my strict upbringing forbids me from saying, "whatever" and showing them the hand.  Instead I listen avidly as the repetitive raconteur uses me for therapy, instead of tucking into a family size packet of kettle crisps. 

To rid myself of this habit, I set about identifying my top three staple stories - my own version of Shakespeare's complete works, you might say. 

They begin with the time I was made to stand in the dustbin during my first chemistry lesson on the assumption that I was rubbish.  Heaven knows if Einstein ever spent 45 mins in a classroom dustbin, but for me it didn't light the bunsen burner within.  At least in those days the incident wasn't complicated further by recycling.  If it was, I might still be there deciding which bin I belonged in.

My second staple story harks back to a job many years ago when my boss phoned me at work to say he/she was on their way into the office and could I please carry out my bodily functions before they arrived.  Needless to say, I made sure I was in the loo when they got to work.  No one dictates my restroom schedule.  In that job, my tights were also a barometer for the emotions of said boss and colleagues would enquire after the condition of my nylons each morning before he/she arrived. If they were laddered, even our restroom schedule would pale into insignificance to the administrative thunderstorm that ensued from refilling the stapler. 

My third story is the time I told someone that Birds Eye Walls was an archaeological site along Hadrian's Wall, when in fact it referred to an ice cream incident.  I fear this exposed my lack of archaeological knowledge and curtailed my career in the conservation world.  I suspect if Hadrian's Wall sheltered a Roman version of the dustbin, I would again have been confined to that artefact.

Anyway, these meagre stories are now consigned to history themselves and I will attempt originality in new encounters from hereon in.  I anticipate a very quiet Junebug from now on.