What's a girl to do?

The Lanark Academy is well and truly riddled with cretins. They are now campaigning for Boris bloody Johnson as rector. We only got rid of Prince Philip a couple of years ago. No, I’m not joking. This is very bad news for my eye-twitching. Started yesterday morning and hasn’t stopped yet, with more news like this I haven’t a hope in hell of recovery. Retired doctor in one of my Scandowegian classes suggests whiskey, however I fear a Christmas pudding style suicide would be too tempting if I even got close to a bottle.

Meanwhile, in the world outside my cell, single mum bashing appears to have come back into vogue, (not sure that it ever really went away but it looks set to be spot on trend for spring.) The government’s latest ruse to improve the lot of lone parents (“lone parents” yeah right, sorry but if you’re a lone dad and not a widower you must have done something pretty florganing awful…but now I’m getting sidetracked…) is to force them into cleaning, caring, routine manual tasks and so forth, i.e. all the stuff they get lumped with routinely, before being ordered to do some more in return for minimum wage- and often a slap on the arse to boot. Even better, they then get to pay for their kids to be packed off to a stranger while they empty someone’s wastepaper basket/bowels. Thus their earnings are cancelled out (Duh! Mr Brown) and the result is double shifts without pay and extra homework on weekends. Not to worry though, Middle England has acquiesced and gone back to the Telegraph crossword, and the unemployment figures suddenly seem a little cheerier. Ah yes the kids, well doesn’t matter if mum’s not around, they’ve always got a playstation and a box of Micro-chips.

What about parent number two? Well he’s most likely to be found cowering under the stone from which he first emerged and clutching a copy of Steve Davies’ The Divorced Dads' Handbook: Practical Help and Reassurance for All Fathers Made Absent by Divorce or Separation, a sizeable chunk of which is devoted to wriggling out of child support payments. Fiddled pension contributions, offshore bank accounts and staying away from overtime for a bit are all options. My favourite comment on this book comes from a zealous reader review on the British amazon site: “Women would learn a lot be reading it too.”

Of course some mothers do manage to get the reluctant father to pay a bit of maintanence, write the odd birthday card, perhaps even take the kids for a few ours of playstation round his place, but they’d better beware the flak they’ll take for it. Beverly Macfarlane for instance, who wanted her fair share of the family assets after 20 odd years of marriage and the unpaid childcare which allowed hubby to create a £131 million fortune selling insurance, 63% of which has been awarded to him in a settlement that he is currently challenging. Judge described him as a man of “extraordinary talent and energy” - I’d love to see him rack up quite so much cash, even half as much, while rushing home to collect the kids from the childminder every night. Tediously, Ms Macfarlane has been branded the Phyllis Dietrichson type.

Now time to make the vital journey from laptop to bed again. Dear God please let me have no more nightmares about typos and red pen that says 69%.

Good Night and Good Luck
Olga Whim Signing Off.

Domestic drama

Naz has a new girlfriend. This equals nightly squeals of Slavic pleasure and the noise of malcoordinated sexual athletics. I get it in surround sound. By day silence is resumed but squalor continues to well up around me. As I slump into position at my desk my bare feet sink into scatterings of nut clusters trapped in fronds of fitted carpet. Staggering away in horror I topple a four foot high pile of newspapers onto a similar sized mound of pesto smeared crockery. Something must be done. An hour later my fears of mould/rat related diseases have been allayed, and the vital journey from bed to laptop and back again (3ft) appears less of a physical endurance test. (The mental and emotional one is a little more difficult to overcome.)

Then Naz returns from whatever he does all day:
Naz: Spring cleaning eh?
Olga: (through gritted teeth and refusing eye contact) Correct.
Naz: So did you do the kitchen too?
Olga: I don’t work in the kitchen.
Naz: (Trying to sound threatening)You wanna consider washing up some time in the next few days?
Olga: I’ll consider it.

There will be no washing up from me Naz. You donated my soap to the German theatre. Petty I know, but so far I’m winning, and there are less than three weeks to go.

In other news: Professor Worm up to his old tricks: more misogyny with my cornflakes; Lanark Academy so stinking rich that the library canteen writes sign regretfully informing clientele that £100 notes are not accepted; and I have now developed a fully fledged crush on Charlie Brooker after his latest rage involving mobile phones. Fury and wit, such a good combination. He is however the spitting image of a certain (committed to being single) acquaintance and is a confirmed bachelor himself.


Good Night and Good Luck.
Olga Whim signing off.

In praise of the would-be millionaire-murderess

Reading the coverage of Carol Anne Hunter’s plot to kill ex partner, Mr Love, one begins to wonder if her prison sentence might have been a little shorter had her plan been a little less well thought out. The “cold, businesslike callousness” with which she organised her plot seems to have been far more offensive than the crime itself. Described by her former colleagues as “superwoman”, and her ex partner as “a career icon”, the implication seems to be, that like so many people, she began to take that tough business attitude home with her. Yet we somehow swallow this behaviour from father’s who treat their wives and children like employees, while customers and useful acquaintances are handled like family. Perhaps if Hunter had been a little more reassuringly hysterical she’d be looking forward to a few less prison suppers.

Hunter’s desire to murder her ex partner came after his decision to disinherit her and their children from the £600,000 Bedfordshire mansion, Lionsfield House, in which she owned a 40% stake and had paid the entire £80,000 cash deposit for. According his new will, the house would now go to Mr Love’s new wife, a childhood sweetheart he contacted on the internet after feeling “lonely and isolated” due to Hunter’s frequent business trips.

Another view would be that Mr Love couldn’t cope with his wife’s financial success, was failing in his own career- peddling his lectures like a travelling salesman, but yet had grown accustomed to the luxuries his wife’s hard work had afforded him. Childhood sweetheart kept stum and didn’t answer back and he married her after little more than a year, a public commitment he didn’t consider during the 22 years he spent with his sugar mummy. ‘Lonely and isolated’ or otherwise, Love deserved a good deal of what he got from Ms Hunter, except her house that is.

Back in the courtroom, Hunter has been sentenced to eight years. The judge appears to have watched a little too much film noir, branding Hunter ‘manipulative’ using her ‘infatuated’ new partner, Mr Lee, in order to ‘achieve her evil aims.’ So the plot thickens, first she’s the ice-queen tycoon who froze out her long term partner and couldn’t keep a man because she was devoted to her job, now she’s the smouldering femme fatale who all the boys go crazy for: Mr Lee himself has admits to being an “old fool, blinded by love.” You can just see the Judge nodding slowly relieved that Lee has remembered his lines, then reiterating, “You had taken leave of your senses, you were deeply infatuated.” (Loony Tom Cruise to play this part in the movie version.)

Lee’s involvement was of course the (bungled) hiring of a hit man to murder/maim Mr and Mrs Love. Lee was a financial adviser with Rothschilds, and only became interested in the plot after realising that the way things were going he would never get a slice of that Bedfordshire mansion and something had to be done about it. Lee received a sentence half the length of Hunter’s.

The sentences come at the same time as new reports suggesting that women who choose to have children face more discrimination at work than any other section of society.(Like we didn't already know.) Hunter was one of the few that successfully managed the juggling act: two children, whining partner and a £150,000 a year job running a large company. I’d bet my bottom dollar that she was the one slipping away from a meeting if one of the kids got sick to boot. No wonder she reached breaking point when her partner, who’d enjoyed the fruits of her labour for more than two decades and never made a public commitment to her, repaid her by STEALING from her and their children; a truly callous act of revenge in response the humiliation he suffered as a result of his inadequacy in contrast to Hunter’s competence.

Hunter does have something to look forward too though. Going down to the women’s prison canteen to collect her porridge, she’ll be universally hailed as a heroine by her new housemates.

Procrastination

Another day, another bus-load of underprivileged kids at the academy:
Billy: Is it really true that you don’t have to do maths at university?
Olga: Yah, das is true.
They regard me with deep, deep suspicion.

I awoke this morning with an internet hangover: sore eyes, pounding head, and strange memories of an old schoolmate starring in a u-tube horror movie. There must be better ways to deal with insomnia than cackling at online photos of adversaries from yesteryear.

Frazzled by my nocturnal existence in cyberspace and ricocheting from one bureaucracy to another, the highlight of one woman’s day was gloatingly informing me that my latest guilty e-bay parcel has now been packed off to the arsehole of the universe. No wonder they speak to you through bullet proof glass.

Having slotted some community do-gooding and dictionary flicking into a hectic schedule of tax evasion and handbag evaluation I finally collapsed in a pathetic heap clutching glossy tales of ‘Victoria’s LA drama’ and a breezeblock of SCOTTISH shortbread.

And then I hear a little voice in my ear, “Men are the new women” says Richard, cue eyes to the heavens and near spontaneous combustion from Judy, (and proof of universal consciousness as unemployed Britain is momentarily paralysed by mass fantasy involving their telly and an axe.)

Tawdry debate follows, Richard makes sure the nation is aware that he’s cooking Judy’s dinner tonight (can’t help seeing images of that genius kid’s raw pigeon and Ms. Finnigan nodding in approval as she swallows it down to avoid a tantrum from hubby).

And then he says, “We men, we’re not quite sure what we’re for any more.” And if you listen very, very carefully, you can hear the muffled sound of several million women choking in horror as they find themselves in agreement with him.



Good Night and Good Luck
Olga Whim Signing Off.

Lapp Dancing

Woman with clipboard: Hello Miss!
Olga Whim: Are you selling me something?
Woman with clipboard: No. Stress test...
Olga Whim: You’re a Scientologist.
Woman with clipboard: No, yes…Stress test?
Olga Whim: You’re all mad.
Woman with clipboard: Ok.

[…]


Girl with flyer: Comedy?
Olga: No.
Girl with flyer: You don’t want to laugh?
Olga: No
Girl with flyer: You hear that, doesn’t want to laugh- Never!
Olga: That’s right.

The best way to deal with this scenario is to let them catch your eye, indulge the conspiratorial smile, allow them to make the approach, and when they’re just close enough, whisper, “Don’t even think about it.” Menacingly.

[…]

I did laugh again however, against my will. The following transcript is translated from Scandowegian.

Gertrude: Yes Olga, I think you have a point- the emergence of previously non-existent sexual swearwords being used against girls in school playgrounds across Ikea is certainly an indicator of the increasing sexualisation of children.

Olga: And then there’s the Pratz dolls, not to mention the, how do you say, “pole-dancing kits” being sold to kids as part of the weekly shop.

Gertrude: What is “pole-dancing”

Olga: Um…well, you know, (raised eyebrows, asymmetric smile) when a woman sort of dances round a pole…

Gertrude: What?

Olga: She takes her clothes off, or she doesn’t wear clothes, and the mens, they pay money, (absurd gesticulation).

Gertrude: What is the pole?

Olga: Like a….stave? For the mens.

Pause.

Gertrude: Oh….you mean like a, a porn-club?

Olga: (Desperately swallowing an avalanche of laughter) Yes.

Gertrude: And the children?

Olga: They are selling the poles to children- at the supermarket! Don’t look at me like that! It’s true, they say it’s for training- I mean exercise, for the childrens.

Class bell rings, Gertrude looks relieved.

Gertrude: Well, see you all next week.

Previously silent male classmates: Cheers, bye.

Olga: Google it, google “children’s pole dancing.” …God NO! No don’t do that, VERY bad pictures.

END.

Natives

Natives

Today I abandoned my usual duties in order to act as ambassador for the Lanark Academy. This is an annual event whereby a bunch of native children are bussed in and offered elk sausage in the hope that some of the future inmates will be neither royalty nor the offspring of millionaires, ahem.

I gleefully begin the session with a power point presentation of Scandoweigan celebrities. Within minutes a furious row breaks out as to whether Henrik Larsson really has joined Man U. Attempting to return to scholarly activities, I try a little Scandoweigan on them. It’s not long before I come across a language barrier that I hadn’t quite bargained for. The wee dears are calling things for me to translate, trouble is, I don’t get a word of it. “‘Jit’ you say?” comes my shrill voice, “JIT” the small boy repeats. I feel my neck redden and turn to the sniggering teacher for interpreting, “Jet! He’s saying ‘jet’” she sighs. Momentarily I’m still confused, “Oh you want to say ‘AIROPLANE,’ that’s easy ‘flyggplan,’ you know, like, FLY-PLANE” The class roar with laughter and my cheeks burn as I catch sight of my arms in my peripheral vision. They are flapping.

We try to continue, and when think I can’t be more humiliated, the teacher resorts to speaking French to me in the hope that we may develop a little more mutual comprehension. I realise that for four years I’ve been living in the Scottish equivalent of the green zone, beavering away at obscure Nordic tongues, and after all this time I can barely conduct a conversation with the locals, with whom I allegedly share a mother tongue. Shameful.

All’s well that ends well however, and a round of elderflower cordial appears to be popular, as does Scandoweigan once the lads and lassies discover that the word for ‘sport’ is ‘sport’, ‘rugby,’ is ‘rugby,’ ‘football,’ is ‘fotboll,’ and ‘cricket’ is ‘cricket.’

“This university lark’s a right skive!”

So this is what we've come to....

Spring is here, al fresco fag breaks are becoming less chilly by the day, and there’s been a flurry of activity among the inmates here at the Lanark Academy. Yes it’s that time of year again, the student union elections are upon us. They set up shop outside the university library (the wet dream of some 1960’s wank -stain with a slab fetish, you know the type, they write for all the standard undergrad bibles referring to concrete as ‘sensual’). The few of us that actually use the building for a long forgotten art called ‘research’ are subject to a tirade of abuse as we try to gain access without buying a stale SCOTTISH biscuit in support of some under-developed ginger teenager campaigning under the motto “PINTS NOT POLITICS.” The truly worrying thing is that this bloke will be earning six figure sums working for some Hagueite in a few years.

Just when I think I’ve escaped to the safety of my lair (10ft by 10ft, laptop, newspapers, library books, tobacco, bed, 60 outfits, 12 pairs of shoes, selection of postcards; nothing superfluous) I realise this mockery of a fashionable, if slightly archaic, political system, has now seeped into my home. It invades in the form of zee German’s rasping voice discussing campaign strategy with one of his Teutonic floosies on the telephone.

After managing to be something approaching nice for a whole week I can’t quite manage any more. Naz has I think begun to sense the combination of fury and hysteria that radiates from my every pore, and so responds in the usual way, by acting like I’m his mother. He lists his achievements, tells me when he’ll be home, shifts nervously and reeks of the desire for approval. If this carries on I may have to break the news that I’m not his real mum.

Good night and good luck.
Olga Whim signing off.