My Life

I suppose my idea came from reading Michael McIntyre’s autobiography and yes I will always question my spelling of Michael; is it the a before the e? Yes, yes it’s definitely, no wait, maybe it’s the e before... This happens at work, when the customers watch you write their names down, it would appear that all intelligence vacates my brain and I end up with hieroglyphics instead of simple spellings of Anne or Peter. It must be the pressure from their glare of ‘you must get it right’ beaming through and dissolving all of my brain cells; apart from obviously the few that tell me how to pick up a pen and find some paper, although that sometimes wavers with the scary customers. I am incredibly guilty of this myself though. I like to test people to see if they can spell my name right and use their sixth sense to tell my mother is one of the creative types who felt the need to add an extra n onto the end of my brother’s name but not as far as to name her children rainbow and apple. (I still thank her to this day) then I often feel the right to get slightly cross with them when the stupid moment occurs and I find myself spelling it out not using the army alphabet as most normal people do. It will come to the n in my second name and I get distracted and end up saying something along the lines of knickers, an unmistakable sigh or muffled giggle as they let their colleagues listen in. I also feel a little ashamed that I never manage to fully vent out the anger I say I have on face book after a polite conversation with orange or the tech guys not sorting the initial problem but they somehow manage to talk me into either buying something else or that its actually my fault. The end result being that I’m more cross than when I started out and the problem is worse. This influx of bad language is down to my brother with the double n, this is my blood brother, the one I got lumbered with for all of my childhood. I also seem to be getting away with new attachments or pictures on my body; first it was my lip piercing and when mum asked what it was I proceeded to try and hide it behind the cat and mumble that it was a spot I was rather self-conscious about and debated whether running off in a teenage strop to make her feel bad when in theory I fully expected her to do so. Her solution was did I want her to squeeze it? Nothing more was discussed until my tattoo appeared. I had been managing to hide this very well and it did help that it was winter and many clothes were needed to sustain good health but nonetheless I managed to get up off the sofa with my top exposing my swallow tattoo. From two very tired people I had never seen them react so fast, first it was David who nearly wobbled off his chair he moved his head so fast with the usual ‘what is that?’ loud enough to wake mum from her sofa doze who immediately cottoned on to the fact that it was not a crayolor masterpiece that could be washed off but I think she was still a little doubtful for her question was ‘is that a tattoo?’ (I did at this instance question her intelligence and thought maybe it was her stab at comedy and she didn’t realise that the ‘stating the obvious joke’ was only funny when I did it.) My thought was to deny it, I mean how could she prove it unless she scratched my skin with a brillo pad to wash it off and then find out that it was in fact real and her favourite child had managed to do wrong and that meant the world was over. (This is a slight dramatisation; she would never have used a brillo pad as it would have hurt me...)Another incident occurred when mum had been helping to empty my late uncle’s house. She had picked up some chairs with not the most desirable pattern and there was fringing. She had planned to recover the chairs and take them to a boot fair with the other items but it was a nice evening and so she and David took them out onto the patio and had dinner. At this time I had left to meet my cousin and when I returned I fully expected them to be in bed but no they were still on the patio in the chairs. It was very dark by this time and I was asked to get them blankets as it was cold. They had their feet up on poufs that mum had made with little wheels on. I was asked if I would like to grab the spare chair from the hall but I decided against it and settled for one of the garden chairs instead. We sat and watched the stars in our ‘prams’ and every time a car went down the road David would shout out ‘look at that shooting star’ (sometimes I worry) and our evening was accompanied by the ‘pervy frog’ that liked to sit on the pond pump as it vibrates and croak.