Green Or Mean?

I’m very good at stern letters, me. I write them to big corporate companies all the time – Richard Branson probably has an auto ‘avoid this crazed woman’ command for when my emails come up, I’ve complained about his stinking Virginity so many times.

I like letters. We’ve got a friend who’s just gone to prison and I’m writing to him. Not in a fall-in-love-with-a-conman-and-marry-him-while-he’s-behind-bars sort of way, just in a ha ha, you knob! You’re in prison now, how’s that going? I want him to know we innocent souls on the outside, the ones who don’t ask undercover police officers if they want to party at festivals, are not going to forget about him.

Yes, I like letters. Stern ones are my favourite. When Wightlink messed up my Bestival festival tickets this summer, I wrote them ever such a stern letter. That the issue was probably my fault was neither here nor there – if I have to deal with these billion pound turnover companies, then they have to deal with me. Simple.

Thus, I wrote to South Gloucestershire county council, for they are my council and are supposed to be looking after me and my environment. And I said hey! Council! I want to put my food waste in a brown bin like what my friends in neighbouring council patch Bristol do! I want to separate my rubbish from my food stuffs, so you can feed some pigs somewhere. When will I be allowed this extra notch on my recycling bedpost?

Well, Kim Willis, they kindly replied, we think you’re right. How about we initiate the green waste collection scheme, as of December 2010?

Thank you and goodnight.

I could once again sleep at night. Another stern letter in the bag, another problem solved.

 Now, the brown bin has arrived and I’ve started chucking my tea bags, carrot peel and leftover dinner in there. Alright, less of the leftover dinner. That goes in my belly. But the carrot peel? My goodness gracious me, it takes two weeks for the bin men to collect our green waste, and in two weeks, putrid carrot peel smells begin to infest the entire flat, like a rat has died and maggots with backpacks full of rotten eggs are riding skateboards around our flat.

This is a stern, open letter. Am I missing something? Am I doing it wrong? Surely all the people I know who separate their food waste don’t just live with this smell. Perhaps I ought to invest in some kind of ghostbusters-esque suits and for the second week of the fortnight, we can just sit about in those, breathing through gas masks. Like when they thought ET was a bit of an alien and everyone got all dressed up. It is seriously that bad.

Or, dare I say it, I think the green team might be down a player. I’m not sure I’m cut from strong enough cloth to keep rotting food in my house for a fortnight. I’ll just have to fly a bit less far on my next holiday to make up for it.

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Sexorcism

There’s nothing quite like a holiday to make you want to be a better person back home. Whenever I go away, I use the time away from my computer, my routine, my obsessive compulsion with punctuality and etiquette, to take a deep breath and say, now Kim, how can we improve on this near-perfect personality you’re lugging around?

Having just returned from two weeks in the sun, I’ve got plans. Buy less clothes, save for a house. Spend less time at the computer, go on more walks. I can’t very well get a dog one day if I can’t be bothered to walk when it’s raining.

But most importantly, I decided I want to be a better girlfriend. Gareth doesn’t get his own way much. I come from a long line of bossy people and Gareth has allowed this personality trait room to breathe and, disastrously, grow. I control the kitchen. He may pay for half the food but hell hath no fury like a woman who finds out he helped himself to some cheese I was saving for dinner.

I control the bathroom. I have even taken to using my label maker (yes, I have one) to write ‘Step away from my posh shampoo. It’s Asda own brand for you’ on my shampoo. Poor kid. Either he doesn’t care, or when I’m not looking he gives me my comeuppance by squirting my £20 shampoo on his genitals.

Time away has given me time to think. After three years together, we’ve picked up some bad habits.

Dear Gareth, I wrote, from the bubble above a beach on which I floated, shall we try harder to be better people when I get home?

Gareth was all for it.

‘Let’s stop swearing at each other,’ I said. We had, of late, taken to swearing at each other for no particular reason. I say ‘we’. I say ‘we’ just to make myself feel like I’m not the only one in this relationship who has forgotten how to be polite.

‘That’s not how you cook pasta, you dick!’

‘We’re going to be late, penis head.’

My little potty mouth, churning out blue murder at a rate of one swear word per sentence formed. Not good. Which perhaps explains Gareth’s Big Idea:

‘How about we have a swear box? Every time we swear at each other, £1 in the box.’

I agreed it was a fabulous idea. But wait, there was more.

Gareth also wanted us to reduce our sexorcism.

What is sexorcism, I hear you ask? Well, it’s humping. It’s thrusting your groin enthusiastically, fully clothed, whenever something marginally exciting happens, and not necessarily nor regularly related to sex.

Gareth’s been complaining for a while that watching me thrust my hips back and forth with a Rik Mayall circa-the-Young-Ones expression on my face is not exactly the aphrodisiac he was hoping for when he signed up. So, we added No Sexorcism to the list.

I got home from Malaysia raring to be a better person.

Day one, and I’m already down £6 in a mixture of blue words and pelvic thrusts. It’s tough, changing your personality.

Plus, it’s raining. So I think I might just stay indoors, not walk my imaginary practice dog and sit at my computer. Punctually. While swearing at Gareth.

God, that feels so good I think I feel a mild thrust coming on.

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Wrinkly Bottom

On the last day of the holiday, Tammi and I practiced our regime for when we are 70 because, yes, we do have it all planned out.

Long will our husbands have left this world for the next, and Tammi and I, childless and rich, will live together, in an eccentric, dilapidated mansion. We will divide our time between alcohol, the kind of drugs we would have taken in our youth if only they’d been invented, watching films and eating the kind of food we’d have been eating in our youth if only we weren’t obsessed with just about squeezing into that size 10 dress.

It’s going to be fantastic. We’ll be urban legends – adults won’t believe the yoofs round our way when they tell them those mad old women who smell of gin are on first name terms with the most dangerous dealer in town. We'll have watched 24, the Wire and Breaking Bad 14,753 times by then. We'll know how to score.

With Dad departing Malaysia a day earlier than us, we were left to run amok for a full 24 hours before our own flight home.

It was a good trial run. Some people are afraid of getting old. Not us. When you’ve got a plan like ours, old age doesn’t seem quite so daunting.

As a dress rehearsal for the last chapter of our lives, we spent the day sunbathing naked. As the sun went down, we gave each other the courtesy of a few items of clothing, then played scrabble while guzzling gin and tonics.

We then headed out for an exquisite dinner at the fanciest restaurant in Lang Kawi (think of the 10th fanciest restaurant you know in England and you’re about there) We didn’t hold back on starters, cocktails or puddings. You don’t have to watch your weight when you are 70. Or on the last day of your holiday.

Gareth always teases me for my ability to remember events by what I had to eat. ‘Remember when we went to Cornwall, and I had the prawns and you had a burger?’ I’ll say. He doesn’t. I do. A lovely marie rose sauce. August 2005. Followed by ice cream.

And so my night with Tammi, practicing our eccentricities for old age, will forever be remembered by the seafood antipasto starter, the barbecued chicken with mango and cashew nut salad. More importantly, the steamed apple, macadamia and butterscotch pudding, and the duo of gingerbread ice cream sandwiches, with chocolate brownie and caramel bananas. And, because Tammi’s memory bank also revolves around food, I know I’m not alone.


If only we could have got hold of some hallucinogenic, possibly anti-arthritic, drugs and scared a few kids, it might as well have been 2050. Only, with slightly less wrinkles.


Close your eyes now if you don't want to see what I project we'll look like in 2050. Gin and Tonic just out of shot...

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Missing In Action

I’ve never really been quite sure when to tell a man who starts talking to me that I have a boyfriend. Because it’s rather presumptuous, isn’t it, to assume that he is talking to you because he wants to undress you. And I am not presumptuous. But I also know that if a man is chatting a woman up, he deserves to know the truth.

So when Dad went missing while we were snorkeling off the coast of a Thai island, a situation arose. Allow me to explain.

He has a little boat, his pride and joy. He’d swum out to where it was anchored, leaving Tammi and I ashore. His parting words were: ‘I’m not a strong swimmer.’ Words we soon rued.

Tammi and I didn’t think any more of it – despite the fact he’s nearly 70 and had we thought about it, we didn’t even know how to go about calling an emergency service, let alone know if this remote island, Ko Lipe, provided rescue for missing westerners.

Time passed and Tam and I began to get hungry. So we looked out to sea, expecting to spot Dad on his way back. The sun was slowly setting, we were losing light. We very much could not see him.

Hmm. No need to panic, I’m sure he’s in that expanse of ocean somewhere. Let’s keep staring at the sea, we agreed. No sign of him.

‘I’m not sure how long we are supposed to wait before panicking,’ Tammi said. One step ahead of her, I already was. I’m not ready to lose my Dad, I still haven’t learned how to change the fuse in a plug and other necessary life lessons he hasn’t got round to teaching me.

‘Excuse me,’ I said to two men who I quickly ascertained might have been watching the water more than we had, seeing as we hadn’t at all. ‘Have you seen an old man around here?’

And so arrived our problem. The two men, early thirties, nice tan, broken English (they were Italian, called Romeo and Casanova, probably) seemed more concerned with where Tammi and I were from than the fact that our Dad might be lost at sea.

‘He went out to his boat ages ago, have you seen him?’ I asked.

‘What a beautiful accent,’ they replied. ‘Can we take pictures?’

Hardly the time, is it, for pictures, what with our father having just been eaten by a shark. I half expected his hat to wash up at our feet as we posed.

‘Better not let my boyfriend see,’ Tammi joked as the men circled her like charming, pizza-making vultures.

And so, politely and without alarm, the information they had been looking for had been provided. They turned their attention to helping us find Dad, who soon after, rose from the sea.

‘I suppose these two girls have told you they are my daughters,’ Dad said, unaware of our mild state of panic. Hard to take a man seriously who is wearing the same speedos he was wearing in 1983. Not just the same brand, the very same pair.

As we said thank you and goodbye to the courteous inamoratos and walked, father in tact, to dinner, I told Tammi of my troubles. ‘I’m never sure how to work it into conversation that I have a boyfriend,’ I told her.

Whenever I’m confronted with a situation like that, I think of my friend Laurence. He’s a real jack-the-lad, chatting up women left, right and centre. He must have slept with half of London already. And once, he told me, he spent a good few hours chatting up a pretty young filly. He bought her drinks, they laughed, a veritable flirt ensued.

And then, at the end of the night, she let slip she had a boyfriend.

Rather than make a quiet exit, fuelled by liquor, Laurence gave her what for.

‘I just spent two hours chatting you up! If you’ve got a boyfriend, do a man a favour and let him know!’ Laurence fumed.

I‘d always been on Laurence’s side. How dare that girl allow drinks to be bought and time to be spent, knowing full well she wasn’t going to smooch our Laurence. Tut tut, young lady, you’re letting the side down.

‘Unless,’ Tammi said.

Unless?

‘Unless she didn’t have a boyfriend, she just sobered up.’

It was a good point and not entirely unlikely, picturing the night draw to a close and Laurence, who has a very hairy back, moving in for the kill. Suddenly I had hopped over the fence, onto the girl’s side.

Having a boyfriend, or pretending to, is a bloody good way to get lurid, persistent men to back off. It’s just a trump card you really ought to play a little earlier in the game.

ENDS

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Some thinkle peep.

What I like about airports is the internationally accepted protocol to start drinking at 7am while waiting to board your plane, followed by a few more drinks at 50,000ft. Because it’s not really 7am, even if you’re in your own time zone. It’s airport time. International time. It’s time to drink. The bars are open, welcoming you to raise a glass to your holiday. Who cares that usually at this time, you’d be brushing your teeth, bleary eyed and scruffy haired? Not I.

And so, Tammi and I partook. That's us there, partaking. It would have been against the rules of the airport not to have a glass of champagne with our early morning croissant.

We then wandered the airport buying things we wouldn’t have bought were it not for the bubbles of lubrication flowing through our bloodstream. I spent £30 on biscuits. Pretty sure the champagne told me £30 worth of biscuits were a much better thing to have about my person than money.

I’ve become somewhat accustomed to lonesome traveling. Over the years, I’ve usually been en-route to meet my dad somewhere, wherever his travels have taken him, wherever he can wangle a plus-one out of whoever is paying him to be important that month. I haven’t asked questions. I’ve just said yes father, of course I will accompany you to New Zealand, Australia, Spain, wherever.

Thanks to whatever it is Dad does for a living, I’ve dined with royalty, had a 12 course dinner hosted by Louis Vuitton, driven a BMW and stolen a Prada pashmina. But the getting there, I have done alone and without fuss. Woe is me.

When I travel alone, I don’t partake in all this drinking tomfoolery. I just find a quiet corner, read my book and hope no children sit anywhere near me in the airport, at the gate, while boarding or on the plane.

But with my sister by my side, headed for Malaysia for two weeks, the champagne breakfast was just the start. Up in the air, we washed down a bloody mary with a glass of red wine. Light of head and thin of blood , we settled down to watch five films back to back while shifting uncomfortably in the tiny chairs. So, rather like I do alone then, but just sort of more fun, on account of the drinking.

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Stand up Sit down

I am a professional stand up comedian sit down fan. I go to them all. Where as my cooler compatriots might prefer to go to a musical gig and stand up while getting elbowed by ravers and cider splashed down their legs, while noisy music is pumped into their fragile little ears, I’m happier sitting in a chair in a room full of other people sitting in chairs while a professional funny man (not woman, women aren’t funny. Except me.) makes me laugh for a few hours.

15 minutes of laughter is 40 calories burned, I’ll have you know, so I see it as a form of compulsory exercise. A gin and tonic is 44 calories. If I drink two gin and tonics while watching a two hour show, I’m basically in negative equity. So, yeah. It’s my favourite past time and autumn is the season when all the modern day jesters get their skates on and tour the country, so that we all buy each other their DVD’s for Christmas.

But imagine the catastrophe I face: my favourite hobby has been cursed. It’s a pandemic, it’s a tragedy and it’s a waste of money. I fall asleep.

Yes, that’s right, I fall asleep. No matter how much I love the man on stage, and I’m a fan of many, I can’t seem to keep my eyes open until the end.

It starts off well. I’m all ears, laughing and chortling my way through their observations and mannerisms. But as the night wears on, tiredness creeps over me and my eyes get heavy. I nod off. Then, because my stupid little brain knows it is not in bed, I am suddenly awake, my head jerked upright, a jolt running through me. I look like a tool.

Lee Evans. Fell asleep. Dylan Moran. Fell asleep. Russell Kane - legend. Fell asleep. Mickey Flanagan – very, very nearly fell asleep and had to keep pinching myself and fidgeting to fight it. Al Murray. Fell asleep.

So I started changing the formula, in the hopes it was something I was doing wrong and could change. I thought perhaps it was the wine, so I switched wine for gin. Still fell asleep. I thought maybe it was because comedy rooms get very hot and stuffy. So I wore less clothes. Still fell asleep. I thought it could be because I was sitting too far from the front, the squinting tired my brain and sent me to sleep. So I ensured front row seats. Still fell asleep, this time to the detriment of the confidence of the man on stage. Nothing like a front row snooze to give him the message he’s not funny.

A bad workman blames his tools. My tools – the wine, the clothing, the seating arrangements, are just fine where they are. What I needed was better entertainment and last night I found my trump card.

For, last night we saw the travesty-he’s-not-more-famous-but-he-will-be-soon Alun Cochrane. I drank wine. I got quite hot. I stayed awake.

Take your Perrier award. Take your ‘as seen on Michael McIntyre’s comedy roadshow’. Take your DVD released just in time for Christmas, because a real test of your comedy mettle is whether or not Kim Willis, avid fan and comedy enthusiast, can get to the end in tact. Alun, if you could let your cohorts know your secret, then I won’t be spending £20 for a snooze next time I sit down at a stand up.

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Facebook

Facebook is in dire need, if you ask opinionated me, of some structure, some ground rules, some god damn etiquette.

It’s driving me doolally. Sure, it is a great means to stay connected to your friends (your actual friends, not people you didn’t even like when you were six) in a glossy, aren’t-we-all-beautiful-now sort of way that plain old photo-less email never really achieved.

It is also a good way to skim through other people’s holiday pictures at leisure, without them heaving an album the size of a car out at a dinner party and forcing you to look at mind numbingly boring pictures of distant aunts you don’t know and boring buildings you’ll never see, while feigning interest for their benefit.

Remember the days? ‘Here’s Pete in front of the Taj Mahal,’ they said, pointing to a picture of Pete in front of the Taj Mahal. Good, I see it. I’m bored.

These days there is no need to give the holiday maker / bride / new mum your thoughts on every one of their oft fuzzy and out of focus collection of memories. Facebook whets the nosy appetite at speed. Click click click and the album’s done.

For the first time in history, we have a forum where 60 year olds are mixing with 16 year olds. 158 million people have a facebook account. Apparently that’s one in 14 people on Earth. Crazy. It has grown with such speed that no one had a chance to set the protocol. Do we tag our boss in the Christmas party pics? Do we LOL at our granny’s friend request? LOL makes me want to slit my wrists. Our beautiful English language is slipping through the adolescent sieve of abbreviations and acronyms.

Today's gripe is with Facebook attention seeking. Namely, status updates of this ilk:

Jane is having a bad day :(

God I hate emoticons. And if you’re having a bad day, get off Facebook and make it better, don’t fish for compliments and reassurance.

Jane knows who her friends are.

Do you? If you’ve fallen out with someone, why not just remove the perpetrator from your friendship list instead of making a song and dance about it? After all it is called a friendship list, not a not friendship list. Remove. Get on with day.

Jane misses her ickle bickle boyf and can’t wait to cuddle him and snuggle and kiss and -

Excuse me while I vomit all over my keyboard.

Jane needs a holiday.

Do it Jane. I hear Afghanistan is lovely at this time of year.

Status updates have become a vehicle for nonsensical whining, self promotion, cheesy emoticons, claptrap and poppycock. That’s right, I’ve got a thesaurus and I’m not afraid to use it. The irony of the fact this blog is a convoluted, protracted status update is not lost on me. I'm LMAO.

Jane is no longer listed as in a relationship.

Oh no! What happened to your ickle bickle little fella? Oh, there he is. Running for the hills.

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