Monday, June 09, 2008

Tea and sympathy

I went round to my little old lady friend for tea. I told her and the neighbour who was with her about the shock I felt at my former colleague's suicide. Well, they had their own death toll harvested over the years - the woman who walked up from the village to a particularly pretty, stone bridge across the railway line, cut down a grassy path to the track and threw herself infront of a train, and the young girl who did the same. Two men who shot themselves - one of them "cleaning the gun" and the other with money troubles. A lost soul who tied a plastic bag over his head, and another who walked into a pond. I felt like saying: "I'll have another shortbread, but enough with the dead already."

I might not mention the rural death toll to Northumberland Tourism who are backing my book. They are planning a downloadable map with excerpts which highlight tourist atractions such as Bamburgh Castle or Alnwick Garden. Disturbingly, the map will also include photographs of me. This cyber-map on a proposed "micro-site", required a day trailing round with a photographer and a nice woman from Northumberland Tourism looking for sunshine. Obviously, there was lots - Northumberland and sunshine are synonymous and we certainly did not abandon the shoot several hours early because of the sea fret that came in from the North Sea, nor did we delay the second day of the shoot for a week. Certainly not. (At least though, the photographer did not tell me to "relax your forehead" like the make-up girl did when I had my photograph taken for Marie Claire a few weeks ago when I had to tell her: "My forehead is relaxed.") All in all though, I do not think I was looking at my best what with the corrugated forehead, the extra weight I am carrying at the moment (I so wish I had thought of a gastric band) and "the nit situation". (When my daughter came home from nursery with nits and lovingly shared them with me, I had to abandon plans for the pre-shoot cut and blow-dry.)If tourism goes through the floor in the next year or two, I am moving to Kansas.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Haven't you got rid of those nits yet? Get yourself a good nit comb!

CJ xx

Laura Jane Williams said...

No pressure on you or anything then!

Stinking Billy said...

Ah, such is the price of fame, wifey, or so they say.Then, there are bound to be a few important people at your Book Launch next month, me, for a start! ;-)

Hadriana's Treasures said...

Gastric Band? It's enough to drive me to...shortbr...Oops! I've just put my foot in it again?

Expat mum said...

I'm glad to see you using the term "sea fret". When I first moved south and mentioned it, most of my friends found it very amusing, couldn't imagine it or thought I was making it up. But it's not really your commom-or-garden fog and deserves such a name. Haven't really seen it anywhere else either.

Single Mother on the Verge said...

Sorry to hear about your former colleague. Older people always have more dead friends. You need to find some young twenty somethings with little experience of tragedy for tea and sympathy.

As for the nits, you could always leave them and see if they grow as big as beetles? Then have nit racing competitions? Strangely acupuncture works for nits. How exactly? how?

softinthehead said...

Your post brightened my day - does that tell you what kind of day I am having? :)

Troy's Trophies said...

It is Northumberland and sea frets that are synonymous. The expression for Northumberland and sunshine is an oxymoron.

By the way - we always used the expression "sea fret" when the mist came in on the Yorkshire coast. Two miles inland there would be bright sunshine but it was misty and damp on the coast.

Gone said...

Looks like my timing is perfect. I'm off to serach for Deli's for sale in Kansas.

Sarah said...

My eldest was a nit magnet for her first 5 years in school.
I'm glad you've blogged yours. i knew mothers who would rather die than admit to nits.
They didn't like my son, strangely enough.
I took great pleasure in squishing them on the side of the bath. Never got the hang of combing myself out, properly, though and resorted to chemical warfare.
If you want a hand, give me a shout. I could have done with a mate with a nit comb, once in a while.

Swearing Mother said...

Nits and no hair-do, eh? Just the very thing prior to a photo-shoot. No wonder you couldn't relax your forehead.

The Draughtsman said...

I was sitting on a beach near Paphos in Cyprus last month. The wind was blowing in from Crete and bring in a sea fret with it. Even a Mediterranean sea fret can be as chilling as a North Sea one. I mentioned the term "sea fret2 to the guy with me. He knew what I meant.
But then he WAS an ex-pat Geordie.

DogLover said...

"Sea fret"? Oh, you mean a harr.

cheshire wife said...

Why Kansas?

x said...

last time i was in Britain i bought a newspaper and then tucked it away under old magazines. Today i found it again and that is where i saw you. Your forehead looks perfectly relaxed. I'm glad I found your website.

Anonymous said...

I have seen a lot of photoes of Alnwick castle and am convinced it is only a model like Camelot in Monty Python... Still I shall find out next month when I visit ...*ho ho ho* I expect you are looking forward to that...

BRANXTON CALLING said...

Glad to see that doglover has already pointed it out - in Northumberland, the 'sea fret' is called a haar

Iota said...

I wouldn't if I were you...