Skip to main content

Dressed to Distress

In four sweaters, long johns under tracksuit bottoms and my dressing gown, I've been writing my new book since 6am.

Now I'm about to start ringing speakers' agencies to try and get myself on their books for My Tutu Went AWOL - the Book Talk that Morphed. 

So, I've showered, shaved and dressed smart-casual. 

Oops, nearly missed that I'd left my slipper socks on. 

Brogues, better, I think. 


All of which reminds me of a classic occasion when my mother turned up at my father's day job. 


When Terry 'the Bargoed Yodeller' Edwards (my father) needed some extra income (very often) he worked on the Battersea bins as plain 'Tel'. Clarence was his supervisor. 

One summer when Tex ‘Jessie’ Jameson booked Terry for a fortnight singing at the El Paso in St. Austell, Terry paid the however much it was back then for the doctor to sign him off sick.  


'Are you Clarence Pugh, the chief shit-shoveller?’ my mother was wearing her old WRAF uniform, with her hair slicked and side parted.

Dressed to distress.

And she had Terry's giros in her hand. 

She advised Clarence to sit up straight behind that desk unless he was meaning to court slipped discs? 
 
And had he seen the main entrance recently? Someone could do with a chucking round of a duster and mop.  The dust off the swing doors reminded her of the sandstorms when she was posted to Egypt.  

Furthermore, Clarence, now, we must leave two-and-a-half inches of curtain fabric showing on either side, not have them the curtains drawn right back to the point of a completely nude window - that was common! 

Now - Terry’s sick giros. Clarence must have them straight back. Terry hadn’t been off sick. He’d been moonlighting, yodelling.  

Oh, Clarence, now, really, she had seen more convincing innocent acting from Joan Collins. No giros for Terry - but how about a thought in the direction of offering his wife a cup of tea? Come all the way from Lambeth Bridge on the forty-four bus, she had, parched.  

Tear up those giros while she watched, there’s good, now, Clarence.  

Oh, and a plate for the biscuits next time – even, heaven forfend, a doily. 


NB - I've taken it to more mad extremes than did my mother, as I've dressed to impress just to use my phone. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Me Featuring in The Sunday Times, Nicely...

  This happened. The editor thinks it's a book of dog sitter stories waiting to happen. I am scribbling away at same...  I first house-sat by accident. I was originally at Haven House, Lembton, as a live-in safety net for Lady Olive Simmonds, a seventy-nine year-old Bostonian with a lilac afro, a Temazepam habit and leg ulcers. Haven House was by the sea. Eighteenth century, elegant, comfortable.  But there was Olive... Always in pain; either drunk, hungover or both; barely educated. She had married a man who was knighted, and believed this gave her a licence to be a twat. According to Olive, her fellow Lembtonians were all dull academics - this group having reading ages older than hers, which was thirteen - or failed schizophrenics. She had serious monophobia, with staff working (unnecessarily) every day apart from weekends. At weekends, first thing, anxious, she would ring round the Lembtonians that were still speaking to her - six in number - inviting them for coffee, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Marine Says I Must Re-queer...

                                                                 Being camp in Camp Basra... Stacks, ex-Royal Marines Commando, recently watched my Tutu Went AWOL! show on Zoom. He had notes. I was shifting from foot to foot, he said, and gesturing too much. 'And you must put back the stuff about the Brigadier and your fellow comedian being homophobic...' The Brigadier had been sneering about my act, saying it would be more suited to Butlins. But, more importantly, he believed I was an 'inappropriate influence on 42 Commando'.  Stacks, deadpan, commented, 'Sir, before Iestyn started hanging out with us, sir, it had never occurred to him to play Tiddlywinks with anything other than his thumb, sir.'  My fellow comedian, who I'll call Mark, because that's his name, asked Reg, Garrison Sergeant Major, in front of ...
Post a Comment
Read more

I Love the Library

                            Therese, soprano, never uses a library. ‘Oh, no, Iestyn. Unlike you, I pride myself on always buying my books.’ I agree with Helene Hanff, who said that buying a book you haven’t read is like buying a dress without trying it on. ‘How do you know the dress will fit, Therese?’ I asked. ‘I always know what’s going to fit me, book-wisely speaking. I tune into asking the universe what it needs me to read for the greater good, go into the bookshop and find that I’m drawn to a department, then a section of carpet, then the particular shelf and there will book the book, in a sort of outline of almost light picked out from the others around it.’ ‘But there are billions of books out there, Therese, in umpteen shops, divided into squillions of bits of carpet and…’ She was giving me her look: a nurse at my hospital bed telling me the prognosis was far from ideal. ‘Yes, but with me it’s narrowed down q...
1 comment
Read more