“Can I have a lolly and a 69 please?”

Your embarrassing stories please. There’s an absolute corker at the bottom that will have you weeping. But to start with here’s this one:

I once recorded a rather rude message onto my Ex’s pda and set it as his morning alarm call.
That isn’t embarrassing in itself.
What is embarrassing, is it going off in a packed school assembly when you are a teacher as he’s left his phone in your handbag.

Here’s another short one:

After working a double shift at my part time care home job when I was at university, I came home exhausted. Got myself a into the bath for a long soak before having to head into Uni that afternoon for back to back lectures. I was really enjoying relaxing, eating chocolate buttons, eye gel mask on. When I took the mask off I could see the window cleaner at the window, he’d had a full eyeful! I was mortified.

Ten minutes later, he’d finished and… he knocked at the door to be paid

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When no one locked their doors on my street

This is a history of my street, from 1931-2011. It’s a firsthand account. So it’s not written by me. Guess that makes it a guest post.

One of my neighbours, Pam, wrote it to share with the rest of us on the street. I typed it up and printed off copies to hand out at our recent royal wedding street party (here, here and here).

I’ve slightly edited it for this blog. And I’ll give you a little context too.

The street is on the edge of a village in the south of England. Population less than five thousand people. Used to be mainly farm workers. Now a lot of people commute to the nearest city.

Pam was born on the street and has lived here most of her life.  She has some good tales. One of them features an odd woman in a beret. (Apologies. In the previous post I promised you a flat cap. Turns out it’s a beret.)

So here’s Pam’s story.

I was born at no.22, lived there for a year, then moved to no.18 for a year, then to no.17 for the next thirty years, until my husband and I bought an allotment and orchard from the owners at no.19 and built our own bungalow no.21.

Many of the houses were built in the late 1920s and 1930s by two local builders. They were mostly rented. It was only after World War II that people began to buy homes outright. Most houses have altered almost out of recognition with rooms added up and out.

I do not know if our home came with gas at first, but I do remember the excitement of just touching a switch and the light coming on when electricity was installed. Before then, one had a bracket with two gas mantles which had a chain to operate the gas flow. One then lit the mantles carefully with a match. That was only downstairs. Electricity came to the street around 1937 I think. Before then we went to bed by candlelight.

Everyone had a flower garden, a vegetable patch and a few greenhouses – fruit trees and bushes and strawberries. Everyone in those days grew most of their vegetables and shared them with neighbours.

A few chickens at the bottom of the garden and rabbits in hutches provided extra meat – especially during the war years and eggs were precious. During the war we had a retriever who when told to “catch a rabbit” over the fields, did just that and made the meat ration go further. The large oak tree (now listed) at the rear of no.17 was home to a family of red squirrels until the grey squirrels moved in.

1. It's not a woman in a beret. 2. It's the wrong type of rabbit. 3. It's a pipe not a cigarette. 4. Who cares.

Also to the rear of no.17 in the corner of the field was a reclusive lady who

Sexy funny art

If it makes you jump, is it art?

If it keeps you laughing, is it art? If it’s a massive cast iron construction with a sign warning: Fragile, do not touch – Is it art? If it’s heaps of concrete squeezed out onto pallets… Well, it’s definitely Anish Kapoor anyway.

The Kapoor exhibition is currently on at London’s Royal Academy of the Arts till December 11th. It’s hilarious. You should go.

It’s mainly sculpture, but not as you know it. I was laughing at it most of the time. But with delight.You have the hall of mirrors reflecting light and sound. (Vertigo & others.)What distinguishes it from a fairground attraction? The posh hall. Nothing else. Choose your mirror to see yourself stretched, squashed or inverted. I saw a couple walk through the room. He was a walking Giacometti. She was round and teeny. That was without the mirrors. I kept a straight face then. The rest of the time I was laughing.

And there’s the cannon, which every 40 minutes fires a cylinder of red wax.  (Shooting into the Corner) Before each firing time a crowd squeezes close to watch. The cannon is loaded. Gas pressure builds up with a low hiss. On edge, we await the trigger. There’s a bang – the crowd jumps – the projectile leaves the barrel of the gun with a squiff, flies across the room and lands in the morass of previously fired red wax with a dull thud. Apparently it travel at 80km/h. Sometimes it hits the opposite wall. Usually it falls short. Oi! Kapoor! You’re making a mess of the place.

There’s a lot of sprinkled powder round and coating objects, black, yellow, pink and three colours red – cadmium red, alizarin crimson and blood red. Hindu Holi style. (1000 Names)

Slug - Anish Kapoor

If you’re a builder, don’t miss the room of wooden pallets piled high with concrete squeezings. They look like giant sand worm castes. (Greyman cries, Shaman Dies, Billowing Smoke, Beauty Evoked)

So leave the rough old twisting piles of grey concrete behind. Suddenly you’re confronted with huge orifices, glistening, shiny, red, intriguing, inviting. Don’t try to climb in, you’ll get told off. They’re combined with hidden chambers (Hive) or serpentine tubes resembling some intestinal tuba (Slug).

Svayambh - Anish Kapoor

What does it all mean? The biggest exhibit is a forty-ton red block of wax, paint and vaseline.  (Svayambh – Sanskrit for “born by itself” or “self-generated”.) It’s kind of train shaped. It travels almost too slow to perceive movement along tracks, through rooms, squeezing through archways, shedding and scraping off gloopy waxy lumps as it goes.

When shown in Berlin, it was associated with the Holocaust – cattle trucks to Auschwitz etc. In London it’s apparently associated with the network of railway tunnels under the city. And no doubt something plausible will be made up for the next place it’s shown.

So, all a load of nonsense. And the artist seems to agree. He says: “It’s not my role to be expressive. I’ve got nothing to say, I don’t have any message to give anyone.”

But I do. And the message is this. Don’t miss this life-affirming enjoyment.