Like a Virgin.

Removing the TV from my life was harder than I expected. Not because I crave it, but because the people that control the fact 99% of homeowners own a TV make it really, really hard for you to give one up.

In my case, it’s Virgin Media.

I hate Richard Branson, I hate his company and I hate giving them my custom. So I was delighted to call them today and tell them I would no longer require their set top box. I didn’t anticipate the reaction, but what follows is further proof that the people in charge really want us to keep watching TV. Which in fact reminds me of the best quote from my anti-TV book. When TV first became popular, a government official said: ‘Well, we have to think of something to do with them when they’re not at work.’

We’re not lemmings! We’re not robots! Come on people, pick up your TV and throw it out the window! Take up a hobbie, learn a new skill – opps, sorry. Tangent. Smug Moron. But Virgin’s reaction reminded me how sinister the notion of television is and my soap box was gathering dust.

A highlight of any call to Virgin has to be the endless ‘press one’ lists before you finally get through to a real person. In India. Before I’d even got to that stage, an automated voice told me that, peril! Calamity! It looked as thought I hadn’t updated my smart card and I was in danger of losing channels. In danger? That’s a bit of a drastic choice of words.


OH MY GOD, MY BOAT IS SINKING, I’M IN DANGER.
MY HUSBAND IS TRYING TO KILL ME, I’M IN DANGER.
MY TELEVISION IS THREATENING TO CUT ME OFF, I’M IN DANGER.

Ridiculous. I ignored the message, because I was here to cancel my TV anyway. How very dangerous.

‘Option One,’ Virgin begins. ‘To add more channels to your account, press one.’

No, Virgin, I don’t want more channels. I want less. I want zero channels. Which button do I press for zero channels?

The automated voice bangs on. ‘Option Two,’ bla bla bla. Finally, in the dark recesses of the handset, the number no sane person would be waiting to press: ‘Option nine, to make a change to your account, press nine.’

I’m in!

'Hello, I will no longer be using my set top box. Would you like to come and collect it or shall I throw it away?’

‘If you throw it away we’ll charge you £250,’ came the curt reply. Well trained, Branson, well trained.

‘Alright mate, I’m only asking. I’d like to remove my TV package from my account please.’

'Why?'

'TV is evil.'

'What do you mean by that?' he asks, unamused.

I explain and request for someone to pick up the box. He begs me to ‘stash’ it in a cupboard somewhere, because it’s likely I’ll change my mind in a few months.

Complete stranger, telling me it’s likely I’ll change my mind.

‘I won’t.’

'You might.'

'I won't. Can you arrange for someone to pick it up please?'

'Are you sure you don’t want to keep it in a cupboard, just in case?'

'No.'

'Please hold while I put you through to an advisor.'

Brilliant. Isn’t this a marvelous system? I’m having so much fun. I could do this all day, just listen to the Virgin music and get passed from pillar to post, being told what I feel and why I need to keep my TV. I haven’t had this much fun since I called the TV license company and told them to cancel my direct debit.

Yes, I had to call them, because nowhere on their website is there an option for canceling your license. Sinister, no?

When I finally got through to them, I was told that in no uncertain terms, if I was lying about no longer having a TV, I would be fined. And that an officer may call round at any time to check up on me. I would be charged £1000 if I was found to be using my TV.

Crumbs. Thank god I replaced it with losing scratch cards, so the officer won’t have anything to complain about.

However, if he’s bored while he’s inspecting my property and looking for potential televisions I may have hidden in the fridge, perhaps I’ll give him Virgin’s number – always a good way to wile away your afternoon.

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TV Go Home

I have given up TV. I am now one of those annoying people who, when you say: ‘Did you see X Factor on TV last night?’ retort with: ‘No, I don’t have a TV.’ What a moron. I hate people who say that. But that is now me. I am Smug Moron, how do you do.

I had to do it. I didn’t want to have a TV in my life for the rest of my life. It’s too much commitment to an object that doesn’t know what my favourite food is, what my favourite colour is, or what my name is. It’s a one sided relationship and it's over.

My cantankerous decision to part with the box started when I read a book about the evil black hole in the corner and the sadistic advertising that starts infiltrating our minds as babies and carries on until death. Death on the sofa, in front of the TV. It put me right off. So I sold it to a friend for £25.

(£25 I promptly spent on scratch cards. I won £4. Moron strikes again.)

Gareth didn’t really get much of a say in our mutual decision to sell his TV. His TV, that had cost him £400. I read my anti-TV book and declared that we were selling the TV. ‘But I quite like TV,' Gareth protested wearily. One of the things I love about him is that he knows when I’ve got my soap box out and there’s a bee in my bonnet, it’s easier to just go with it. Anything for an easy life, Gareth always tells me. He’s very lenient.

So we sold our TV. Half way through X Factor, which I will miss terribly. I don’t mean half way through the series, half way through an episode. It was terribly inconvenient, but the disappointment at the timing of the sale further confirmed my decision as the right one – if I care that the TV is being taken away half way through X factor then it’s time to take away the TV.

Last night Gareth was in London and it was my first night alone with no TV. Ordinarily, I’d cosy up to a rom com, possibly a Thai green curry, don some comfy pyjamas and enjoy the early evening removal of contact lenses.

Not tonight. With TV removed from the equation, I looked through recipe books and chose a delightful cake to make for my brother’s upcoming birthday. I built a desk and wrote this column. I dyed my hair a sunny shade of red, and, consequently, certain parts of my face. Now, if that’s not a productive evening, I don’t know what is.

The plan is to now become ridiculously intelligent from all the books I’ll read and as cultured as milk from all the cultural nights out I’ll enjoy.

Although, there’s always i-player.

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Lemon Curd.

I like lemon curd now.

I know, I know. Hold the front page, stop the clocks, call off the search.

But it’s true! I do! And I didn’t! I mean, I really didn’t. My mum will attest to at least 14 occasions where I’ve been near lemon curd and balked at the idea, screwed my face up into a ball of disgust and banged on about how putrid the very notion of a curd of lemons is.

And then one morning, just days ago, I woke up and I needed it. I needed the curd. Just like that.

I don’t think I’m pregnant. I’m not sure lemon curd is the kind of thing pregnant people crave anyway. Don’t they just crave lumps of coal? Lemon curd is about as far away from a lump of coal as you can get, in colour and consistency. And taste. Mmm, lemon curd.

(Is the word 'curd' beginning to sound warped to you, too? Good.)

Anyway, no coal for me thanks, I’m on a lemon curd diet. Soon after the wondrous morning of curd-wakening, I was in the jam aisle at Asda looking for something I’d never cared for before. I bought their finest and smothered it on toast.

D-licious!

My craving was satisfied. Then I started to worry. How many other people were there like me who hadn’t been buying lemon curd? Cursed with such a terribly unflattering name, production is probably dying off at the same speed as old people.

It dawned on me there were all kinds of food old people love that I don’t buy. I used to eat Jamaican ginger cake with my Grandma. Is that still in production? I haven’t bought one in years. I can just see the Jamaicans now, barely two pennies to rub together, hoping just one more granny buys their cake before popping off.

Never fear, Jamaicans! You’ve come to my attention! I think I can single-handedly rescue lemon curd and Jamaican ginger cake from production abyss. I can buy it in bulk. I can give it to friends. I can stand next to the jam and send out subliminal messages to young people picking up Marmite.

'Oo! Lemon curd! That's just what I fancy!' I'll say, and they'll suddenly realise Marmite is so last season. Curd is where it's at.

Crumbs. I’ve taken on a big responsibility. I'm like the new Spiderman of Aisle 12, spreads and preserves.

I better go, Asda’s open and those globules of lemony sugar aren’t going to sell themselves.

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Baby Blues

With the tent successfully erected as the sun set over the magnificent Gower, waves crashing against a not too distant shore, we cracked open a chilled cider. Footloose and child free.

Players in this weekend being Gareth and myself, my sister Tammi and her fella, Colin. We like hanging around with other childless couples who don’t want children. It means we can spend our time commenting on the things we’re enjoying now but couldn’t if we had dirty little pesky children running around demanding our every second of attention.

Tammi and Colin have pretty much decided child-rearing isn’t for them. This spurred Gareth and I on. Hurray! Other people who’d favour freedom and finance over poo and sick! We were in good company.

We spent the weekend lazily meandering between our campsite, the local pub and an exquisitely beautiful beach, where we downed shots of rum before hitting the sea to bodyboard. We went quad biking, and got up when we bloody well felt like it. All to the chorus of the strained parents and whining children in our campsite arguing over muddy shoes and fizzy drinks.

In the pub, Tammi got stroking a dog and soon the owners were chatting away. They happened to mention to our slightly sozzled crew that the dog was a child substitute – this couple had forgone children for a life on the open road. Naturally, we pounced on them.

‘We don’t want children either!’ I exclaimed. ‘How did it work for you?’

The next few hours were spent listening to their tales. ‘Prepare to lose friends,’ they warned. ‘And people will presume you’re infertile.’

But we were not deterred. This couple were us, just 15 years later. They were in good shape, hadn’t lost their physique to the emotional and physical drains and strains of parenthood. They were cheerful and not, as I’d feared, weird.

‘Did you know that if you have a baby, it renders everything else you could possibly do to reduce your carbon footprint, completely obsolete?’ I said, keen to impress our new friends.

They did mention that we might experience the odd pang of regret once in a while, in the years after the body can no longer provide, but the mind still wonders. But by then, I wasn’t listening. They’d said everything I wanted to hear. Negatives I wasn’t looking for.

Fuelled in confidence that if they could do it, we would to, we left them to their beer and headed inside for an intense game of poker, the mentioning of which serves only for me to gloat of my winning.

The following morning, Colin bought the Observer.

‘The happiness years: Once the kids have grown up and left’ said the well-timed headline.

There followed a report on how couples could expect to be £600 per month better off, endure less arguments, more hobbies and activities, less stress and more happiness. And, what’s more, they’ll feel ten years younger.

‘You’ll relight the fire, for life in general and each other,’ it declared.

Well, we’ll just cut out the middle man! Genius! Our £600 a month of happiness starts right now!

Smug in our self righteous decision to remain barren, rich and lonely, we headed home.

Home, to the news that one of my very best friends is up the duff.

I squealed in delight when she told me. A baby! A little tiny cute baby, for me to buy miniature Nike Air Max’s for! And a baby gro! And a bib that says: ‘I’m cute!’

My mind waivers. I’ll see how my friend gets on. If she positively glows from the whole experience, maybe I’ll declare my womb available for rent.

But if that baby so much as throws up on me, then it’s goodbye parenthood, hello yacht in the Caribbean, £600 a month for life and a ten year reduction in age.

Baby, it’s all down to you.

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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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