Sunday 23 March 2014

There's always room on my face for you


It is not very often that you ever get to meet someone on the other end of an online forum, or an international blog such as this one.

I have met Britta, and she is pretty (very pretty) much exactly as you would expect her to be, as openly presented on her own blog. She even puts up large self-portraits of herself, so we did not have to carry a copy of The Times under our arms, or wear a pink carnation in our button-holes when arranging to meet.

I imagine it would be the same with John Gray and Chris - he is very open about himself and his lifestyle (I even know what his voice sounds like), and I think I could even recognise one of his chickens if I met it in a bar here in Bath. I'm not sure about Winifred though - they all look like ugly babies to me. He keeps threatening to visit the Georgian showcase city, and I would much rather see him here than be admitted into his care following a car accident in Mid Wales.

I could spot Sarah Toa a mile off, mainly because of that hair, and wouldn't need the confirmation of an Australian accent to be sure who it was. If she tried to fool me by shaving it all off, all I would need to do is ask her to expose her rear end and turn away from me - thanks to that Google Streets photo of her standing on a deserted beach, staring out to sea (coordinates to follow).

Cro I have known for over 40 years anyway, and since I have not seen him for that length of time, I would just mentally whiten his hair and put a few extra pounds on him - not that he isn't good at doing that for himself, according to his foodie blog site.

Weaver would be - I suspect - just how I imagine, but probably a little shorter. I think of her as tall for her age, with hair suspiciously dark for her age as well...

Em Parkinson - I'm not so sure. She is pretty good at keeping herself to herself, which is always a good thing on a blog.

We don't hear much from Caroline Valdez Miller these days, but in every photo she has put up of herself, she is always turning her head at the exact same angle, which - I guess - is the one which shows off her best side to most advantage.

The Hattats are straight out of Brideshead Revisited, but without a world-war to enter into the frame, scuppering the gondola on the Grand Canal and ending up with the death of the Mad Boy in a muddy field in Flanders.

I could go on, but you would only get bored (unless I mentioned you) and with 127 'followers', you definitely would get bored.

One thing I have noticed is that when selecting a photo for an avatar, everyone chooses the most flattering one they can find - with the exception of Britta, who needs no flattery. All those selfies are a bit like pictures submitted to an online dating agency, and I tend to add at least 10 years onto them when deciding if I want a date with the sitter, just to be on the safe side.

My own avatar - which I have used for years on forums, long before this blog - is a doctored school photo of me aged 5, peering through a letterbox with a wistful and vacant smile on my lips. Nobody would ever make any connection between that lovely boy and the twisted monster he has become.

Rachel, though... Rachel is a tough one to crack, and not a little scary.

I know that she is a supporter of Arsenal football club, and that in itself is a little scary. I have no doubt that - unlike me - she would be able to quote the offside rules to the letter and I am just thankful that it is the Gunners she supports, and not Millwall.

There seems to be some paradox (yes, that word again) about her place of residence, and I am beginning to think that her informative years were spent somewhere behind the Iron Curtain before it was drawn to let the European daylight in on Putin. I cannot make out what her avatar photo is of, but it seems to be one of those Soviet shops which would only let you buy one loaf at a time, if booked well in advance.

Nine times out of ten, her comments left on my blog are in the form of some sort of negative criticism, often pointing out grammatical errors or minor impossibilities written with the assumed authority of poetic licence, or - more often - just to make a boring story a little less so.

Don't get me wrong, though, I love these sort of comments so much more than flattery, and I have always looked for a challenge in the women in my life - I have the scars to prove it.

She - unlike many others - doesn't seem to need to be drunk to be curt with me, and for that I have the greatest respect for her. I just wish she would take a breath between sentences, that's all.

85 comments:

  1. Why then are you so shy about showing your face ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't want people like you to recognise me on the street.

      Delete
    2. I might visit The Bell one night and then you'll be flummoxed !

      Delete
    3. No, I will just kick you in the nuts (see below for reasons).

      Delete
    4. Can you lift one old leg that high & remain upright when in your cups then ?

      Delete
    5. Well if I can't, there are plenty of others who will do it for me upon my command.

      Delete
    6. Anyway, what do you mean, 'that high'? If I - at 6' 3" cannot hit a small target which can be no more than about 28 inches off the floor if your photo is anything to go by, then things have come to a pretty pass.

      Delete
    7. Kicking him in the nuts?
      Count me in

      Delete
    8. On the count of three, you go for the left and I'll go for the right. Chris can take the middle wicket.

      Delete
  2. I am glad you love me after all, I was beginning to get worried there for a minute. Yes, I once made a film of me spouting the offside rule.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah - vindication! I'm not such a bad judge of character after all. Keep the vitriol flowing.

      Delete
  3. Oh god
    You can tell its effing spring
    Tom stephenson has started to flirt

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't be silly, you old queen. I had the chance of flirting last Summer, and it wasn't with a bulldog.

      Delete
    2. Well it's better than fucking textiles.

      Delete
    3. I spent the best part of my adolescence fucking textiles - don't knock it.

      Delete
    4. And whose calling me an old queen.?
      You lush

      Delete
    5. I see from your last post that you're back on the sauce - weeping in front of the TV and all.

      Delete
    6. You started it. Miss! HE started it!

      Delete
    7. Tom, good sir, you occasionally need a bitch slap, and I am the gal to do it!
      ( keep off my patch Rachel)

      Delete
    8. I feel some mud-wrestling coming on.

      Delete
    9. Dirty sod
      You'll have to pay me

      Delete
    10. I was implicated in this Gray so dont order me out.

      Delete
    11. I will pay you to become the dirty sod, John. Bring your own mud.

      Delete
    12. I don't fancy your chances against Rachel, though. She knows the offside rule, you know.

      Delete
    13. Having said that, Ian didn't do too badly against Rob the other day. Can you cook?

      Delete
    14. No...but I look FABULOUS in taffeta

      Delete
  4. Can anyone point me to Beachy Head?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Head North from France and be prepared for an arduous climb.

      Delete
    2. I'll meet you both on the top and we can all have a picnic.

      Delete
    3. Oh brother...smell the hormones!

      Delete
    4. I'm surprised you can smell anything, living with all those animals.

      Delete
  5. Tess Kincaid has just mentioned the word I hate probably more than all the others in the English language -Insouciance.

    I don't know why I hate it more than poetry itself, but anyone know what I mean?

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am treating this remark with total insouciance.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I suppose it would help if I knew what it meant.

      Delete
    2. Delighted to be of help.

      Insouciance |ɪnˈsuːsɪəns|
      noun [ mass noun ]
      casual lack of concern; indifference: an impression of boyish insouciance.

      Delete
    3. Nobody likes a smart-arse. Like you are the only one to have access to all those dictionaries. (Why is it I have the irresistible urge to kick you in the nuts every time you open your mouth, Heron? Is it just me, or is everyone the same with you?)

      Delete
    4. Your tweed trousers making you itchy again are they ?

      Delete
    5. Talking of itchiness, maybe it's because you live in Ireland that your repartee is not quite up to scratch?

      Delete
    6. All to do with different Nuances.

      Delete
    7. Nuances? I bet you use a hammer as a screwdriver too.

      Delete
  7. I googled tom once. He doesn't look like that avatar. Nice clothes, nice shoes, hungover, I think.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have looked hung-over for the last 20 years. The clothes and shoes are just to distract the attention away from the small amounts of flesh on view. In my defence, that picture was taken in Bicester Village, and I had just woken up from a sleep in a cramped car. ALRIGHT?!

      Delete
    2. Photo reference http://www.thetweedpig.com/2012/04/tweed-pig-pin-up-tom-stephenson.html

      Delete
    3. I just looked it up again. You look good! You're the one who admitted to being hungover in the comment section. Nobody would have known.

      Delete
    4. Yes, we all know that one. I was approached by a beautiful, non-English young woman to be a pin-up for her tweedy blog. How could I refuse?

      She asked me for other details, and we discovered that we both lived in Bath. I have seen her but once again, at a fashionable party for the Great and the Good here, but not since.

      Delete
    5. and to think I used to be afraid of Tom

      Delete
    6. Did you? I am amazed. Heron's the only one with anything to fear, should he ever wander stupidly into my manor.

      Delete
    7. I was - but that photo helped me get over it

      Delete
    8. P.S. Susie - Yes, now I remember, the reason I slept in the car is because of a hangover which was hard-won at Eynsham Hall the previous evening. Great place.

      Delete
    9. Somebody said you were dashing.

      Delete
    10. Right. No flattery. You looked like shit, Tom.

      Delete
    11. When I said I didn't want to be flattered, I didn't mean I wanted to be verbally abused instead. Even us bastards have feelings, you know.

      Delete
  8. I don't like most photos of myself, and i am not photogenic, so i don't bother putting pictures of myself on my blog.

    I've been busy with work and find when i go to say something on my blog, nothing but drek appears.
    sigh.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If it's any consolation Megan, I don't like how I look these days either. But - as some Greek philosopher once said, 'Everyone has the face they deserve by the time they are 40',

      Botox would only make me look more weird, as it does everyone else.

      If only I hadn't drunk all that booze smoked all those fags and fucked textiles, I may not have developed the bags under the eyes, but - when all said and done - FUCK THE LOT OF YOU!!!!! (joke, btw).

      Delete
  9. I hate how I look these days and wish I'd appreciated they way I looked when I was younger. When I first started blogging, I had a picture of myself at the top but replaced it with the sledging one. I think that original picture is still attached to my Etsy account and I don't mind it; it was taken by me in a yellowing slightly crazed mirror, therefor affording a more flattering view. I avoid mirrors these days and am definitely not photogenic. I should try and dig out a childhood one like you - I was pretty in those days....sigh. At least my name is real, which is a rare thing it seems......Rusty Duck tells me yours is not......

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No, but it has become more real than my real one over the years. Sometimes I even think of it as real myself.

      Delete
  10. 53 comments and 1 new follower. I will have to talk about you more often.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think that one new follower is me - I had followed you, got scared with the Greer thing, and came back again.

      Delete
    2. Yes, it is Carol. Greer scared me too in the 1970s, but now she can lie on her back as much as she likes and I don't care! (manic laughter). So, it was you who left, when I lost number 125 - so who really is 127?

      Delete
    3. Hmmm, dunno. Someone is hiding.

      Delete
    4. About 100 are hiding, but I KNOW WHO THEY ARE! (more manic laughter).

      Delete
  11. To fuck a textile is not what I meant. New para. Space.
    My name really is Rachel

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmm. I am beginning to get another angle on you which I had not bargained for. I'm worried again.

      How about curtains?

      Delete
  12. 69 comments. Fancy. A record for me (even though half are my own) but all in a day's work for someone like John the Animal Hoarder.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Ok, I'm rounding this post up to exactly 70 comments with this one, and going to bed. Due to a clerical error, my monthly outgoings have just exceeded the £600 mark, so I have a notion that I will go into work early from now until I have paid off the £25000 they tell me I owe them.

    I ask myself, was that holiday 15 years ago really worth it? Were the last 2 Christmases that I lavished on my nearest and dearest worth it?

    Of course they were - only a Nigerian would deny me these simple pleasures. Nighty-night, and thanks for a great day.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I can hear the sound of applause.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's just H.I. slipping over on the marble bathroom floor.

      Delete
  15. I laughed nearly as much as I did playing the cunt game.

    ReplyDelete
  16. With my new work regime (i.e. - try not to starve to death) I don't have the time for a post today, but I see I have gathered a few more comments as I slept last night. Don't you people have anything better to do?

    ReplyDelete
  17. I went to bed early last night and missed all the fun. What the hell happened and what the hell is meant by F'ing textiles... I am lost should I just give up...

    I cant think of an insult so I will go away. something will come to me later and then I will look like a tw@t if I post it. so I wont bother... lol

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A 'twatat'? You have to keep up, Sol. Never mind just 'being'. I can't explain it all if you go to sleep half way through the party, now can I?

      Delete