LOOKING BACKWARDS I (Hangover special)

(This, in the light of the 2012 Pony Club Christmas party, which Bloggiana took very seriously indeed; and which occasionally we like to remember when we are feeling ghastly and don't have an idea in our heads.)

The following day, Bloggiana appeared in the parlour wearing a tangerine-coloured exmoor pony society sari and a large Connemara-themed headscarf that covered most, though not all, of her dark mane and her fur-topped Star Trek fluorescent boots and while it was not exactly written on her face, there was no mistaking the fact that her forehead was tattooed with a large warning sign that said Do Not Speak to Me; addressing me in any shape or form will not end happily.

Bloggiana moved towards the breadbin adopting a kind of miasmic grope mode, something we occasionally refer to as breadbin braille.  Our Dog, who had become gripped by Grassic Gibbons’ unique transcription of Aberdonian dialect – particularly what he liked to refer to as the ‘Stonehaven nuance’ - was practising it out loud to himself in sizeable chunks.  Distracted as he was, the dog inadvertently wandered into the Blog-woman’s path and found himself fairly sharpish arcing in a shaggy sheepdoggish trajectory over the kitchen table and head first into Adolesco who up until that time had been fast asleep in the corner, cunningly disguised as a bag of washing.  This collision – between arcing bearded collie and slumbering youth laundry - lead to a kind of hump noise, Humph, which Bloggiana, her mouth by now rammed full of crumpets, must have interpreted as the sound of 100,000 chain saws going off inside her head because her first reaction was to lock both her hands around her ears and her second was to spray the chickens roosting on the back of the Very Expensive Cooker in a rainbow of crumpet phlegm.

“Cunting christ” she spluttered. 

And then gingerly she removed one hand from one ear in order to pick up her corkscrew which she threw really quite forcefully at a nearby scented candle.

..........to be continued//

LOOKING NORTHWARD I

It's all beginning to settle down at Camp Bloggiana (or Cockrobin Hall, as she likes to call it). I,Piccalilli have declared a moratorium on gasping, grovelling and quaking while Bloggiana seems so distracted by something I later realise is a newly branded tattoo ("Remember Culloden") which is etched across the back of her right hand (dirk-bearing) in a kind of purple that could just be reminiscent of thistles that she quickly drops dropping the f-word and invites me in. Left hand on right, the Bloggic one turns her back on me, stubs her toe on a half-eaten stone which the brown dog has deposited directly on the front door-drinks cupboard trajectory and howls. The howl is guttural. It sounds like the female vocal equivalent of the piebroch and I am almost tempted to record it when Pussy Riot UK Branch swings ahead of me and passes her mother a foaming pint of the Real Mackay. Bloggiana has plopped herself, macplop, into the chair by the fire which she affectionately calls her poste restante. I, Piccalilli seize my chance.

It is now dark outside and in the tiny house she has come to occupy, a nightlight blazes. In the kitchen, an array of unopened pre-Christmas nibbles that seem largely to be haggis flavoured. In the downstairs loo, a roll of dark green and blue checked paper that deposits a curious tartanoid look on the buttock when used firmly. Not a picture frame, not a soft furnishing accessory, not a tea towel is knowingly underbranded, Bonnie Prince Charlie beaming his cheeks out from every biscuit tin.

"Come on. Out with it old bean.What's with the Scots theme?"

Devotees of the Bloggic one may recall that this woman, sitting on her poste restante, shrouded in northern light, is a Woman of Passions. Lavender-coloured comfortwear, the colour purple (in all possible permutations), in-car tree-shaped devices that smell of vanilla custard, vanilla, custard, people who address their dogs and their children in the patronising voice of the congenitally imbecile (you love snacky-wacks, don't you, my doggy-wog), vets, double-speak (particularly of the 3-word corporate nature, Eat, Dream, Sleep/Enjoy, Visit, Discover/Discover, Eat, Drink) - all these, the B-woman Passionately detests. The other thing she has been particularly vocal about over the years is her passionate ambivalence towards her mother-country. For yes, Bloggiana is in fact macBloggic, a daughter of the highland hills. And yes, over the years, she has been rather keen to hide the fact.

"Scots?" I prod.

To give her her due, my old friend, at this point, prevaricates. Pint of Real Mackay in left hand, pint of Scotch in right (dirk-bearing), tartan trews straining over her still slender embonpoint, Bloggiana makes a kind of harrumph noise. It sounds like someone has just put a hairdrier up her poste restante and the air is finally bursting forth through her flaring nostrils. I decipher a word or two. They sail out over the bright-lit atmos of Cockrobin Hall and flutter down before me, timid tiny birds buffeted on the winds of burp.

"Clan history," she 'fesses. "Am putting together a history of Clan MacBlog."

"Go on," I say, intrigued. For I, Piccalilli am all ears.

NOT REALLY MOVING FORWARDS AT ALL (Black Friday special)(Normally I,P posts on Tuesdays)

“So...”

I, Piccalilli have been brave. I have come back after six long years to find Bloggiana. I have come to her new seat in the boondocks and I have knocked on the door and gone inside. And now I have uttered a word.

My "So..." drops into the atmos like a stink bomb. Bloggiana in proto Scots mode, her hand wrapped around a ‘Kith & Kin’ map, her lips sprinkled with what must surely be shortbread residue, glares at me. For a moment, I have the feeling I am dressed as a Rangers cheerleader and I have just walked slap bang into a Celtic supporter, on Sauchiehall Street, at closing time. At this point my knees in their wobble are joined by my pelvic floor in its. I make an involuntary downward movement.

“Where’ve the fuck you been, Piccalilli?”

Affection. I wonder if that is what I am hearing. I, Piccalilli go to smile back. I, Piccalilli go to unleash an answer to that question that will cover the past six years in a nanobyte, the rollercoaster of these missing days and months that has been my UCP (unique chutney privilege). I flash before my eyes the selfies I have taken up and down the chutney high road, me and my Hot Banana – in Bruges, in Brussels, in Strasbourg. How can I condense into a single jamjar of a sentence the sheer joy of the Euro gravy train, condense it here and now so that in one neat swoop, I can dispense with the hiatus in our friendship and make it seem as though I have Never Been Away? Hazily I gaze round Bloggiana’s (very small)(and jolly bright) front room looking for someone who might abet me, utter soothing homecoming moues, unlock all those jubilant sauce-based memories that are lurking just behind my teeth so that I can explain, to my one and only alter ego, explain just what it is to be an Exalted Euro Chutnista. And I am just on the verge of taking command, of rallying pelvic floor and pickle memories in a oner when the door bursts open and in storms Pussy-Riot-UK-Branch.

“Teener!”

I gasp. Last time I saw Teener, she was very small, in fact so small that the only way you could really tell she was in the room was the boom boom that rattled out of her headphones and made some part of your lower leg throb.

“Teener!”

I, Piccalilli feel a tear welling and I am about to go and hug the girl when I realise that she is not small any more, she is above eye level and that out of either side of the Carthorse of the Year apron she is sporting, her naked breasts are swaying in time to the rhythm that is emitting via a la-la-la-la-la from her parted lips.

“Teener!”

Cacophony breaks out. Barely have I had a chance to take in the metamorphosis of Bloggiana's daughter than I am blown to the back of the room by an influx of Pussy Riot’s 25 closest friends. That involuntary downward movement that I tried before suddenly becomes voluntary and I plop, as yet knowingly undervaped, onto the carpet. Floored.

MOVING FORWARDS I

It has been six years. I Piccalilli have not seen my friend Bloggiana for six years. It is a long story and one I shall tell in due course but right now I am not thinking about the long story because I am standing on the doorstep of the smallest house this side of the Maginot line wondering what on earth I am going to say to the old girl once she opens the door and sees her one-time beetroot-chopping, parsnip-pickling, garlic-touting chutney-holic alter ego finally trit-trotting home to roost after six whole years.

I knock on the door. I knock quietly because part of me is afraid of what Bloggiana might say when she sees me. I am too nervous to see the contradiction in my approach so I knock again quietly and after a few more minutes, again.

"Who the fuck is tweedling like a fucking hopfoot on my godforsaken knocker?"

This is the kind of response I was dreading and my knees wobble.

"Christ in hell's sake, why can't a body knock like they want to come in, God tell me?" and with that, the door makes a kind of ripping noise and I find myself face to face with my old mucker.

"Piccalilli! Well fuck me".

And then she closes the door again and obviously - I tell myself, obviously - 'forgets' to let me through so I am stranded where I began on the tiny threshold not looking at her face but at her knocker.

***

It has been six years and I have been round the world and back. Me and my Hot Banana. We have trodden the chutney boards like two little mischief chilli peppers stowed away on the goodship Taste of Europe. We have been garlanded. Feted. My Hot Banana has been sipped and supped and prodded and sampled by chutney lovers the length and breadth of the Euroglobe. I have been a star. I myself have tasted the onion marmalade of stardom. I, Piccalilli. It has been a whirlwind.

***

The door is ripped open again. Considering there is nothing between the door-frame and Bloggiana's ample bosom but air, it is hard to understand how this is achieved but rippage of air undoubtedly takes place. Bloggiana glares at me. She is wearing spectacles. This is new. She is wearing a hard hat. This is normal. She has a wreath of smoke about her person and quite a lot of dirt under her fingernails and her lips are shaped ready for the inevitable f-word that will form sooner or later on my advancing into the room. All this is normal. I stand my ground. (Wobbling knees). To buy time, I look Bloggiana up and down. Note the lack of britches. Note the use instead of tartan trews. Note the fact that atop her hard hat, there is not a glo-brite solar-powered eezee-torch (Bloggiana being famed for her lack of perceptiveness when it comes to buying gadgets) but a glorious trinity of eagle-feathers. Note the distinctive whiff of Scotch which blows over me, through that very air that has just been ripped by the door, blowing with the intensity and fervour of the farts that my sous-chef lets out when he bends down to pick up a raisin having been on sampling duties. Note the sounds that too are ripping the air in the way that only a set of badly played bag-pipes can. Think crikey and grope inside my pocket for something to vape.

to be continued./.

BUCKING UP

Come down the stairs this morning with a jeroboam sized hangover to find Bloggiana knees down on the parlour floor. She has straw woven into her hair, almost as though she is trying to make her name as the first woman ever to create dreadlocks out of once-used horse bedding and her eye-liner has run - again - today forming a Cath Kidstonesque floral imprint on the muck-spattered patina of her cheeks.

"Everything all right, old girl?" I venture.

You would think by now that I Piccalilli would know better than to ask after Bloggiana's health at such a juncture. After all, she was there with me yesterday evening when we shared that jeroboam. And she was there with me too when we shared the second. She was there as we played tiddlywinks (a homespun version involving a large dog bowl, a packet of matzo crackers and the pooled resources of Bloggiana's children's baby-teeth collection). And she it was who, having unfortunately swallowed all the teeth (small question of mistaken identity in the matzo department), suggested we formulate a purgative using most of the rest of our bottle of Poire Wiliam and ever so slight a dash of value bleach.

But it seems there are some things one never learns.

"Bloggiana, old girl, you ok?"

Before I am treated to the Pony Club Commissioner's full response, two things happen. The postman rings. Twice. And the telephone chimes in for good measure. Luckily Arky has just arrived - a vision in moire silk, high-heeled wellingtons and non-hangover freshness. Arky it is who answers the telephone while I Piccalilli take a view and realise that really, the only person left likely to answer the door is me (Our Dog having a somewhat dodgy track record vis-a-vis our door-latch). So I stumble through to the porch hoping that my head will remain atop my shoulders for the journey and through the fog that lies between me, the open door and the postie, find myself reaching out and grasping hold of several brown envelopes, most of them bulgey, some of them gooey.

Arky puts the phone down, I re-enter the parlour, Arky relays the details of the telecon, I put down the packages, Adolesco slopes into the room murmuring something about laundry, Our Dog in pure Gaelic farts, MarkU arrives with a file marked festival budgets - and Bloggiana just explodes. Quite literally. I mean like spontaneously. Call it combustion. Call it a world-class hangover induced jeroboam and dreadlock pate. It doesn't matter what you call it but all I can say is that Bloggiana, in her hour of pain, is a spectacle.

"All right?" she says. "All right? Hell kind of idiot moron do you take me for, Piccalilli? All right? Last night, I consumed five litres of vino rosso, half a litre of peroxide, some toxic perry and several mouthfuls of bicuspids. This morning I come down to find two hundred enquiries in my inbox marked Chutney Festival, Arky tells me I have been selected to address a South Korean conference on Kim Chee, my son reminds me he's going back to school, MarkU comes and says something perfectly sensible about money, you pop a pallet load of Chutney Award entries on the table, the dog reminds us all that he doesn't need feeding and you ask me if I'm all right."

"Answer is, Piccalilli, course I'm fucking all right. Matter of fact, never fucking better. Now find me the yellow pages, there's a duck - and open it if you would at the page marked Sauce."

WAKING UP

It’s been quite some time now. Two years maybe. Aside from proving beyond all doubt that she has the Constitution of an Ox when it comes to wine, cigarettes, late nights and falling over, and the Mind of a Small Lentil when it comes to things like saving money, getting jobs and not speeding, Bloggiana has been keeping her head down and the One World, One Chutney world has been really rather quiet.

But suddenly today, in our parlour, the Bloggic one has a ghastly rush of blood to the head.

"Festival!"

I Piccalilli am sitting on an open sack of flaked maize next to the Very Expensive Cooker making bunting out of old pages from the Radio Times when the air – a trifle muggy with chicken guano fumes – is rent asunder by this unheralded blurting of the f-word.

"Festival!"

Bloggiana is across the room from me. She has her feet up on the desk (one made from an old Handy Pony obstacle) and she is leaning back in her Sweeny Todd lounge-facility smoking silky butts two to the minute. Every now and again, as her mind roams restlessly over her recent past, the Pony Club Commissioner sighs. Sometimes her sigh pertains to the recent loss of her driving licence; or to the sheer bloody audacity of her latest vet's bill; sometimes she just wails out loud because someone somewhere has mentioned something about profits in the pantyhose department of Marks & Spencer being slightly down and we all know, as Bloggiana trumpets loudly, that there is only one thing that can mean and that is ”that the Entire Western World is Doomed.” Then suddenly out of a clear blue sky, Bloggiana drops her bombshell.

"Nothing for it," she wheezes. “Nothing bloody well for it.”

"Going to have to run a ruddy festival."

The funny thing is, Bloggiana mentions the word in one breath and in the next, she is on the telephone to her old fashionista contact Arky. It is as though the Bloggic one is undergoing some kind of epiphany.

“Arky? That you? Hell do you make of the idea of running a festival?”

And it would appear that Arky is nothing short of delighted at the idea. I snip out around a profile photo of Tony Blackburn and the telephone is practically on fire. I hear a stream of words bubbling on the air – words like chutney, words like Nepalese banquet and pumpkin-rolling and korean pickles and MCAs. Bloggiana listens for a moment while she receives some feedback from the other end of the telephone and now she is talking about food stalls and bric a brac and pop-up restaurants and, if you please, a tomato-trebuchet.

When we woke up this morning, Adolesco, Teener, Our Dog and I were thinking of going for a wee walk. Along the canal, we thought. Maybe take in a weed or two. Maybe spot a moorhen. Now it is the afternoon and everything has changed.

Bloggiana has reawakened.

One World, One Chutney has taken on a new form.

And before Adolesco can grow another chin-hair, before Teener can utter the word Skype, before the chickens can hatch out another mid-kitchen egg and Our Dog can utter one more stanza of Robert Louis Stevenson, there we are all of us signed up to the committee of the latest biggest event to hit Peeblesshire, the forthcoming ONE WORLD, ONE CHUTNEY – an international festival of food, words and lots of sauce. Coming to Neidpath Castle this October – 22/23, 2011.

Seems like our two-year hibernation is truly over.

PIPING UP

Bloggiana's old friend Bored has just rolled into town from Istanbul where he has been hiding since he dressed up as Her Royal Majesty during the Trooping The Colour Ceremony back in 1982 and waltzed down HorseGuards Parade in the arms of a blow-up Santa.

Back then, Bloggiana and Bored shared many adventures together and even today Bored's arrest-moment, when Bloggiana - dressed as a horse - tried to save him and Bored - in full garter robes - tried to be saved and they both - as they were being carted off to prison - burst into a spontaneous a capella version of Singing in the Reindeer, can reduce them to hopeless dribbly hysterics.

So the fact of Bored's arrival should cause Bloggiana's tired old heart to sing. She should be dropping everything, buying in bulk quantities of PG and cigs, ironing her feather boas, putting on her best chat hat and chatting. She should be getting out her favourite Cleveland Bay outfit, donning her mane and tail, practising her neigh, pawing the ground and reliving old times as surely they deserve to be relived.

But instead of all that, Bloggiana is so distracted that she barely notices Bored's presence.

Fancy a drive round and we can go and bark at the locals? ventures the Ottoman one, whose impersonation of a Jack Russell is one of his favourite turns.

Hmm, comes the reply.

Or how about we dig around in your dressing up cupboard? You can be Sonny and I'll be Cher. Or you can be a lamb and I'll be little Bo Peep.

Bloggiana barely lifts her head out of her elbows.

Happily Bored is not one to be put off and he goes to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea, contentedly growling to himself as he does so. Beside the kettle, it so happens there is an opened letter and on the paper are some instructions and Bored reads them and bursts into peals of untrammelled Cappodochian laughter.

Bloggiboots, he exclaims. What's all this about you entering the Winston Churchill Tribute Evening Championships? Darling, how absolutely thrilling!

A problem shared is a problem halved, they say. Bloggiana hears Bored giggling over the idea of her getting in touch with her inner Winston. She hears Cappodochian shepherds dancing in the mountains to the tune of her old friend's mirth. She sees Cappodochian lambs veritably skipping to their masters' dance. And instead of plunging her head deeper into her chest, she perks up.

You really think so? she asks, clearing her throat so that her contralto tunes down to baritone. You really think the thing's a good idea?

Bored lets out another peal of giggles. Darling, course I do. Best idea I heard of since Kellogg invented the Pop-Tart. Now come on darling, time we got down to the nitty-gritty. Time for instantaneous plannobrations.

At which the bottle of Arak, the bottle of suspect foreign import brandy, two beakers and a serving spoon are placed upon the table. And Bored and Bloggiana settle down to the important business of discussing Winston Churchill Tribute Evening tactics.