Running Away

So there I was, just a humble not-so young girl who likes cake and needs to run a few miles a week to keep the bits that could go podgy from doing so. Because there’s no way I’m giving up cake.

I needed a gym membership. Now I’ve moved around plenty, I’ve been a member of countless gyms. I should have known an evil, over-priced under-maintained gym from first whiff. But I was conned, duped, fooled into parting with – ouch - £500 a year.

A six foot lesbian showed me round Fitness First, waving to people as we toured. ‘Alright Pete?’ she said, smiling. ‘Going for a drink later?’ What a friendly place! Everyone knows everyone and they drink together! Where’s the dotted line, I thought, I’m not just going to keep in shape, I’m going to go drinking with Pete!

Little did I know Pete was a plant and big fat lesbian had no intention of drinking with him later, or ever.

The assault on my gullibility didn’t stop there. For your benefit, I’ll put in brackets the information she didn’t give me at the time.

‘Over here, we’ve got the steam rooms, sauna and ice room.’ (The steam room has never worked and we have no plans to fix it. The door doesn’t shut on the sauna, letting out vital hot air and aiding our carbon footprint.)

‘Girls changing rooms, plenty of space here.’ (Not at the times you’re planning to come, when there won’t be room to tie your shoelaces.)

‘Showers, free soap and shampoo dispensers.’ (The showers will take turns at being out of order, the soap will run out soon and don’t expect us to fill up the dispensers.)

‘Plenty of running machines. You can plug your headphones in and listen to any of our six channels.’ (You’ll mostly have to queue for the running machines and the volume control doesn’t work so it’s either silence or so deafening you can wave goodbye to hearing. Your membership fee alone would fix the problem, but we'd rather put that towards opening another gym.)

‘I mentioned the six channels. We’ve got Sky Sports, MTV, E4, the History Channel. (We’ll play local news on every channel, on a loop.)

‘Here’s the stretching area. Plenty of gym balls and weights.’ (The number of gym balls available here will slowly decrease, we won’t replace popped ones. Soon you’ll be fighting over the final one, and it won’t be the right size for you.)

I’m thoroughly against an escalator taking you into a gym. Surely the last place you need an escalator is on your way to exercise, but lo, Fitness First has one. (This will mostly be broken. Because we know how weird it feels to walk up a broken escalator. Just somehow different to stairs, isn’t it? Always that risk element that it might start while you’re on it, sending you arse over tit.)

Ignorant to all the information here bracketed, I signed up. And for two years, every exercise routine was endured through gritted teeth. Paula Radcliffe suggests you count to thirty while running, to take your mind off running. I’ve got my own method. I count all the things that annoy me about Fitness First.

Sometimes I left comment cards. They did nothing. Most of the time I gave nothing but a cheery smile to the receptionist, with their fake nails and Americanised training which has them greet me by name: ‘Hello Kimberley, enjoy your workout.’

No! No I will not! You don’t know me, don’t use my name. And I will not enjoy my workout because I’m here under duress. I only exercise so I can eat cake, and I’m only here because your small-print committing me to 18 months minimum was so small I missed it. Now go fix your escalator and leave me in peace.

I’ve never said that to a receptionist. And now my contract is up and I’m leaving. There’s a new gym just opened up around the corner and I’ve got a brand new company to make a silent list about.

You know what? I think all this inner fury has me burning more calories than the happy people all around me. Maybe I shouldn’t leave after all.

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Hippy Burpday

Why isn’t it my birthday every day? I suppose we can’t walk on air every day, because if we did then walking on air would become normal and we’d need something even better to walk on once a year, like helium. Once a year all our friends and family would gather round and make us feel so elevated we’d rise from walking on air to floating on helium.

Helium I don’t need. My voice is squeaky enough today. I just can’t believe the things people do for the people they love. I spend 364 days of the year moaning, insulting people and saying the wrong thing, and one day of the year flabbergasted by the shower of love I receive as I acknowledge the never ending race to the finish. I think there’s something wrong with my friends.

But I’m not going to point it out to them. My boyfriend was up till 2am last night wrapping presents. He even bought his own wrapping paper, after three years of my saying ‘really? You really want me to give you wrapping paper to wrap my presents?’ with a weary shake of my head. And very nice wrapping paper he bought too – I unwrapped carefully so I can keep the paper and reuse it on him.

I’ve never had a boyfriend as good at buying presents as he is. And he always plays the ‘I don’t know what to get you this year’ card, telling me that he knows I like mugs so he’s bought a few of those… then whipping out far too many thoughtful and excellently sourced gifts to get himself out of any kind of domestic duties for the foreseeable future. What a clever man.

Not enough people use the postal service these days, but my most well bred friends still lick a stamp on special occasions – Hannah has beautiful handwriting so I can see why she’d never just send an email. Hell, if my hand writing was as beautiful as Hannah’s, I’d be writing this by hand.

Cesca had the same strict middle class up bringing I endured, and never a celebration or need for thanks goes by without a card arriving a few days later. She’s so good at cards she’s set the bar pretty high for the rest of society.

Some people shun their birthdays. Not me. I like to celebrate for at least a week. And why the hell not? River Phoenix didn’t make it this far. Nor did Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Cobain. Nobody told those members of Club 27 that 28 is where all the cool kids hang out. They may have been richer, more successful and famous than me but there was one thing they weren’t very good at and that was living. That’s one thing I intend to carry on being very good at for a fair few birthdays yet.

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Page Turner

As part of the overhaul of my social life at the start of the year, I joined two book clubs. One with friends and the other with strangers.

The one with strangers soon became the one with new friends, for they were a lovely group of girls.

And so it was that after six months, the group was well and truly established. While we didn’t really talk about books and most people didn’t read the book of the month, one was still suggested each month, just to keep things ticking over.

At last month’s group, Gemma suggested the Piano Teacher. Fine by me, I like pianos.

Fast forward to the weekend and Gareth, his mum, his dad and I were walking through a quiet village in Cambridgeshire. Denise and I happened upon a cute little church-run book store, with books stacked as high as the ceiling, all costing about 25p.

Denise and I could hardly contain ourselves, stocking up on all sorts of cookbooks and novels. And what should I see in the bargain bucket? None other than the Piano Teacher. Well, if it wasn’t my lucky day… I was used to paying over a fiver on Amazon every month just to try and keep up with my clubs. Now I was parting with just 25p and it was going towards a church roof restoration, probably.

Shoving the book in my hopefully-one-day mother-in-law’s face, I declared: ‘Look, Denise! My new book club book!’ I don’t know if she really had the look of startled dismay on her face that I now, in hindsight, remember her having. I don’t know if she knew then what I know now. All I know is, I’m very embarrassed to have shoved this book under her nose.

‘Well that’s handy,’ Denise smiled, leaving me in my glee at my bargain book.

That evening, I decided to make the effort and at least start the book club book.

It didn’t take me long to realise I was reading no ordinary novel. I was reading adult fiction. I clicked early on, around the time that the piano student got her first spanking from the piano teacher.

Now, let’s not forget the suggestion came from a girl I’d only known a few months – I was puzzled. Was the group getting on so well that we were now going to chuck out our pretence at being an intelligent group of young women who wanted ground breaking works of breath taking fiction, in favour of cheap thrills that make Mills and Boon look like bedtime stories?

I checked her email. Yes, it was the Piano Teacher.

Oh. But hers was set in Hong Kong. Hers was aimed at the intelligent reader, not the thrill seeker. According to Amazon’s summary, hers sounded pretty bloody dreary, post war, poverty stricken glum.

Did I ditch my book and quickly order the correct namesake?

Did I hell.

Engrossed isn’t the word. It took me a matter of days to read and is now making its way around my much amused friends.

I was exhausted by the amount of spanking my poor protagonist received. And yet, I couldn’t put it down. I was up till 1am most nights. It was as if I’d been given the keys to a forbidden castle and had but a few hours to run amok before I was caught out, because I’m pretty sure I’d never have intentionally bought adult fiction.

Whenever I read a passage out to Gareth, he balked at the ridiculousness. And I knew it was ridiculous, but also utterly unputdownable. You can’t say that about post-war Hong Kong.

As I turned the last page, I was greeted with the information that, lest I despair, there were plenty more titles available from the perverted people at Chimera Publishing. Titles that stuck in my mind include ‘Susie Learns the Hard Way’ and ‘Betty Serves the Master.’

I kid you not. I feel like a little piece of me will be missing if I don’t read these titles too, and yet simultaneously know any book that I regret flaunting to my boyfriend’s mother doesn’t really require space in my memory box. It’s akin only to watching awful day time TV. Sometimes you do it, but you don’t admit to it, because you know there are better things to do with your time than watch Jeremy Kyle or read about Lucy getting her scales wrong again.

Believe me, the girl’s a fool. After the first punishment, you’d have thought she might have practised.

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ATA

Nobody likes a show-off – that was something I learned from a very early age. Because I was a show-off. And my elder, cooler sibling continuously instructed me to stop. But allow me this one little opportunity to show off my grandmother. I won’t take up too much of your time and I promise not to do any cartwheels.

I’m sure we’d all prefer there were no wars and we lived in peace, but as that was not, is not and will not ever be the case, I’m going to show off about my grandmother, Benedetta Willis, who flew in the second world war.

Of course, women weren’t allowed to fly in the RAF, on the front line. The very mention of the idea had the press declaring that women were out of their minds and should be back preparing supper for their husbands, where they belonged. But a small group of women could not be told. A small group of women joined the ATA, the Air Transport Auxiliary.

Yesterday my sister, mum and I went to meet an historian near White Waltham, the home of the ATA. He’s a very clever man and seemed to know more about our grandma than I did.

As did Mum. My dear old grandma died last year and never have I felt more regret at not absorbing more of her tales than I did yesterday. Mum can share no such regret – she knew everything. I used to spend a lot of time with Grandma, but we mostly played Scrabble or talked about the man she would have married if he hadn’t become a Japanese prisoner of war.

Now I wish I’d grilled her about her war efforts. Because they were many.

Aircraft factories were a prime target for the enemy, and in fact were often bombed, so as soon as the aircraft were ‘flyable’ (i.e, not finished) Grandma was on hand to fly them to maintenance depos elsewhere in the country. There they would be finished and handed over to the RAF pilots to use on the front line. My grandma flew them while they still had buttons missing.

We had a gander at Grandma’s log book. 344 deliveries comprising of 52 tiger moths, 135 spitfires, six mustangs, four barracudas and numerous others. Some she only flew once, and was given a little handbook which she would read while flying, which would explain how to land the craft. If I found myself in charge of a plane and the only way to land it was to read a handbook, you can bet your bottom dollar the ensuing panic attack would be met by nothing but certain peril.

In 1943 Grandma found out she was expecting my father. Hesitant to tell her commanding officer that she was pregnant, she was met with an enthusiastic: ‘Mrs Willis, raising a child is a wonderful thing and no less important to our country than flying planes. You shouldn’t be ashamed to go and start a family.’ Grandma thought it best not to tell her commanding officer that she already had two small children at home.


Grandma was the second of only five women to be given RAF wings and the press soon did a U turn. Women were on the front pages, smiling as they climbed aboard their crafts. ATA women were respected and wore trousers. A feat so bold their tailor stitched their crotch at their knees because he was too embarrassed to measure up their inside leg.

These women paved the way for us to work alongside men at equal pay. It saddens me to walk through Bristol town centre on a Saturday night and see the type of women my Grandma actually paved the way for. I’m pretty sure she didn’t dare have her inside leg measured so that these girls could walk around in their pants.

While we sat with Mr Poad, the historian, and absorbed some of the fascinating facts about Grandma and her compatriots, I couldn’t help thinking that my grandchildren couldn’t really sit in a room with a historian and pour over the incredible facts of my life. Last night I fell asleep during a film. This morning I forgot to put any socks on and have slightly cold toes. Not really country saving stuff is it?

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Spring Clean

If you ever find yourself with £22 to spare and you’re not sure what to do with it, my advice is: get a cleaner.

We ummed and ahhed for months about whether to get one. We quarreled about who’s turn it was to sweep the floor or clean the sink, while other, less pleasant jobs, got ignored altogether.

But committing to giving someone else money to do something we really ought to be doing ourselves just seemed so frivolous. Especially when you consider £22 a fortnight is in the region of £500 a year. When you put it like that, hand me the ruddy broom, I’ll do it myself.

The time had come, however, to give our home some TLC, and it was painfully obvious that Gareth and I were not capable of bestowing any tenderness, love or care on our pigsty. Gone were the days we’d leave our bedroom door open during the day – now the mounting mess that hides behind our closed door is our dirty little secret – I’d die before I let Nicola see it. Poor Nicola. She has to work here, and the closest our stairs have come to being hoovered was the day we bought the hoover and dragged it up the stairs – in it’s box.

Being a conscientious eco-warrior, I opted to find us a green, eco-friendly cleaning service, which no doubt costs more – I didn’t do enough research to find out but I’ll wager that’s a truth. I don’t care. I’ll pay a few extra pounds for the planet.

But it has taken us months to justify parting with the money. We’re not exactly rich. I’m a journalist for goodness sake. A career which, when I gleefully told my dad I wanted to follow, he pointed out was ‘no way to make a living – but it beats having a real job.’

He’s got a point. I love my work, but it doesn’t exactly lend itself to so flippant a goodbye to my money as to have someone else clean my bog.

But oh. How I’ve come around. Justina, my new best friend, the love of my life, arrived today. She’s been in England three weeks and this was her first job. I want her to move in. She was here for two hours and I feel as if I’m walking around a different flat.

The floor is shiny. The dust has gone. She even cleaned under the Forgotten Corner where we store the Forgotten Bikes and the Forgotten Table Tennis Table.

Oh, Justina, I love you. Please come again. You’re worth every penny. And who can put a price on not arguing about who’s turn it is to clean the hob? Gareth and I know who’s turn it is. It’s Justina’s turn.

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Trick or Treat

All that childhood competitive card playing has finally paid off.

That's right, while you were watching the Goonies or playing Tetris, I was learning the art of how to win at all and any card game ever invented. We Willis's like cards.

In Lockerbie to visit Gareth's gran, Faith, we accompanied her to the local village hall for her weekly Progressive Whist night. Gareth had forewarned her I liked cards and she'd jumped at the chance to take us along.

I was a little nervous beforehand. I may have been playing cards since I was knee high to a grasshopper, but my father, my teacher, had a habit of 'improving' games by adding Willis Rules. Thus I've never really been sure if I know how to play the same games as the rest of the world, or just Dad's ones.

I needn't have worried. A few games in I realised I was capable of giving these kind and welcoming old folk a run for their money - and I mean that literally - it was £2 a head to play.

Progressive Whist is a game for four, and you play opposite your partner. To my right was Jean, a woman pushing 100 with one white, and therefore blind, eye. The opportunity arose to either let her win, or cruelly beat her. Jean played a trump. It was my turn. I had an even better trump, or an average card. One way, I'd win the hand, the other, she would.

Obviously I took no prisoners. This wasn't a charity night. Jean was going down and taking all the other pensioners with her. As I thwarted her trump card with an even better one, I received a nod of approval from my partner - beating the blind was clearly encouraged here.

Later, I played my best round of the night with Jean's older, more doddery brother, Jock. He was my kind of guy - if I'd been 50 years older Gareth would have been fighting him off with a walking stick.

Jock helped me on my way to becoming the second highest female scorer and thus, proudly I won a prize of £1. I went to thank Jock for his part in my success and he - and this was where my night was complete - gave me a Worther's Original.

I was over the moon. Until:

'Haven't you been here before?' Jock asked.

I assured him it was my first time.

'Oh. Then you look just like my favourite glamour model,' he declared.

Oh Jock. It was going so well...

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Tweet Tweet

Twitter. What’s it all about, yo? I don’t get it. Not one iota. But I’ve now joined it, in the hopes that I can make some money from it. But before I can make money, I need to have followers. How do I get followers?

I decided the way to get followers was to be funny. I can do funny.

So I’ve set myself a task: a two line, silly poem a day, to lure people in. Started well yesterday, talked about frocks and running amok. (see, brilliant, isn’t it.)

My followers were 12. I was smug.

Then they went up to 13. Holy cow! Must write more witty two liners!

Today’s poem was about Demi Moore, who I began to follow as she’s always in the press banging on about Twitter, and I liked her in Indecent Proposal.

What an annoying person she is. She tweets 14,000 times a day. And not funny, witty tweets. Really annoying ones. The kind that make me realise I do not want to be friends with Demi Moore – the kind that, if I did know her, she’d be one of those annoying people I try to avoid, because they say ‘lol’.

Soon after signing up to be her follower, I stopped. Then my body count went back from 13 to 12, and I realised that 12 wasn’t the number of people following me, it was the number of people I was following. The number of people following me, I found on closer inspection, was 0. Zero. Nada.

How am I going to make money out of this wretched thing if people would rather hear about Demi Moore’s wondering which charity to donate to this month, than my funny two liners? The world has gone mad, I tell you.

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