Benny for your thoughts: Bedtime Benny
Last week Benny finally won the bedroom battle. For 30 nights we listened to him wail outside the bedroom and run into the door and we finally thought would it really be so bad to have him in with us? And it’s not! He sleeps at the foot of the bed, only attacking our feet occasionally, and his snores aren’t any louder than MindReader’s (or mine). This was him on Saturday morning after his blissful first night with us. Grateful doesn’t even cover it.
Room shoes
“What’re you doing?!” MindReader says to me, as I sink my teeth into my sandwich behind a display of Body Shop lip balms.
“Eating!” I say, through a homemade mouthful of tuna, mayonnaise and rocket. “Thanks for coming.”
MindReader and I are lucky enough to work a stone’s throw away from one another. We used to meet for lovely lunches, but… well. The Notebook says no.
“In here?”
I begrudingly put my sandwich back in my re-useable bag. I am on a MAJOR budget. And, like everything I do (walking a dog lead every day, caffeine, gluten, glandular fever…), I am not doing it by halves. I wrote down everything I spent last month (in a notebook I bought just for that reason, and was thus the first item in the notebook itself, like some meta-budgeting), and now I write down everything I don’t buy in The Notebook and oh my! Suddenly it is quite easy to save a quite a lot (though I am only a week in to this).
“What’re you doing anyway?” MindReader says. “I thought you weren’t shopping.”
I wave my hand. “I wanted to leave the office and come and write things down that I would’ve bought,” I say, taking my notebook out and writing down a reduced-price coconut body butter. MindReader rolls his eyes, then gives me a kiss on the forehead.
“Let’s go to Muji,” he says, taking my hand with a smile.
I have never really been to Muji. I have been aware of its presence along New Street, but I am usually in Lush fervour by the time I get that far and don’t see anything except a mist of jasmine-scented bathbombs.
“Ooh look,” MindReader says in Muji, showing me a scent diffuser that appears to be releasing dry ice. I sniff it tentatively, then sneeze, while MindReader smiles his lopsided, indulgent smirk at me.
“Oh we need these,” MindReader says, looking at a display of bathroom storage. He picks up a plastic box with teeny little sections, all different sizes and shapes for soaps and cleansers and toners and oh…
“Look at that,” I say, taking it from him.
“And you could have one for your make up, here,” MindReader says, leading me to a set of stackable drawers.
I tilt my head. “This would almost be an investment, wouldn’t it?”
“How would it?”
“Well…” I think for a minute, putting my lawyer mind to the task. “If I could see all my make up I would use it all and therefore spend less,” I say triumphantly.
MindReader shakes his head and I go off to do one of my very favourite things: smelling poncy scented candles in tins.
Mooching around the shop, I see a section of shiny, sparkly glassware. I spy a carafe and pick it up. God I’d love a carafe, I think. I’d rise early, drink a pint of fresh, clear water before even getting out of bed. I’d do yoga and make my own perfume out of rosebuds. Then I’d grind tonka beans in a wooden bowl and “log on” to the internet as opposed to being perpetually online, and I’d have “downtime” in a quiet room with only a yoga mat and a meditation CD, and I’d write self-help books and…
“Billygean?” MindReader says.
“I want this,” I say, thrusting the carafe at him.
“What?!”
“I need it.”
“Notebook says no. Besides,” he says, picking up the over-priced and slightly stunted carafe from me, “it’s ugly.”
I come to my senses. “I am obviously not rational,” I say, “if I want to buy glassware. Do not let me justify anything to you.”
I think MindReader and I see the slippers at the same time. Except, they are not called slippers. They are called Room Shoes (or, slippers for tossers, if you will). But they are beautiful: fawn-coloured little booties with pom-poms and no intrusive rubber sole. Like thick, shaped socks, lined with soft, fluffy white wool.
“Oh MindReader,” I say, fingering one of the booties.
“ROOM SHOES,” he says.
“Oh look.” I put my hand in one of them, and instantly feel safe and warm. I’ll cook hearty stews and wear gingham and sew samplers and the cat will sit on me while I knit jumpers for nieces and nephews and…
“ROOM SHOES.”
We leave. Minus the room shoes.
Benny for your thoughts: Climbing Benny
There is not much Benny likes more than having a forward-facing cuddle with his arms around my neck, and after a while (for he would stay there all day), he decides he isn’t QUITE close enough and starts to climb up my shoulder to sit on my back. Perfectly normal.
Benny for your thoughts: Baking Benny
I was making pretzels courtesy of one of my favourite blogs the other evening, and Benny oversaw the kneading process with the air of an inspector.
Benny for your thoughts – Bathtime Benny
I will be uploading some Benny pictures, always with the above “Benny for your thoughts”. They will be clickable links rather than displaying on my normal homepage. Hope you enjoy!
Today’s Benny:
On canapés
“So do you want to come and help feed her?” DoctorSister says to me, standing up and carrying EarlyNiece into the kitchen. EarlyNiece’s her chubby little legs kicking away as she walks.
“Ooh, yes, quickly,” I say, following. I am at DoctorSister’s briefly, after a day at work and before a work night out in Nottingham, to apply lipstick, take my tights off and change into a dress. “What is she having?”
DoctorSister settles EarlyNiece into her high chair and gets a small pot of orange gloop out of the fridge. “Sweet potato and swede purée.”
“Yum,” I say, looking at it.
DoctorSister hands me a blue plastic spoon, which EarlyNiece reaches out and grabs. “Aahh!” I say.
“So you just load some onto the front of the spoon and when she opens her mouth tilt it and try to empty it into her mouth using her gums,” DoctorSister says, hovering by my elbow as I scoop up a spoonful.
“This is quite technical,” I say, as I spoon it into EarlyNiece’s mouth. The puree ends up all over her chin, bib, neck and hands. And to be fair, this would happen to me, too, if I was eating with a spoon the size of my open mouth.
“It smells lovely though,” I say, putting the spoon down and dipping my finger into the gloop and licking it. “My God,” I say. “This is lovely. It’s so sweet, so much nicer than normal sweet potatoes. I might start puréeing!”
DoctorSister smiles broadly as I babble. “It has my breast milk in it, too,” she says.
Depaysement
This blog entry is a competition entry for the lovely Tots100/Alfresco competition, in which I write about my best ever holiday.
—
We never would have gone to Bordeaux, but, people were getting married and we were going to be there, if possible. I’d picked out a pink, floaty dress and MindReader had decided not to match his tie to it this time, much to my chagrin.
The Illness reared its head, of course. “I am not well enough to travel,” I said, dramatically, holding my hands up in the airport, tiredness washing over me as I did so.
“I know,” MindReader said, holding my gaze. “We’ll just get on the plane. Next steps, next steps.”
We spent an obscene amount on an airport lunch and I slept on the plane and, stepping out into the sun, I was overcome by that feeling I get only once a year. The French even have a word for it: depaysement, which translates to ‘the feeling one gets when one is not in one’s home country.”
And, on that holiday, almost six happy months ago, depaysement describes exactly how I felt, and how things changed.
We lounged on sunbeds, books with curled corners discarded as we felt only the sun on our bodies. We went, giggling, in search of the sea which we could hear over the sanddunes but not see. We lazed about on windy patios, drinking crisp white wine and looking out onto satisfyingly symmetrical vineyards. We went for pizza at midnight in Andernos de Bains, our fingers oily and smelling of garlic as we walked home, hand-in-hand. We went house-hunting, looking idly at prices and imagining a life where we breakfasted on brie out on the decking. I wore things I would never wear in England; mad hats and playsuits and jazzy flip flops. We toasted ourselves, my health (cautiously), each other, the happiness we made, over drinks that looked like liquid velvet in the candlelight.
And I wasn’t really very well – no, not then – but the illness seemed less relevant somehow.
We landed in Birmingham on a blustery August afternoon. “Holiday is over,” I said. “Back to worrying.”
“Not at all,” MindReader said, dropping a kiss on my forehead. “New you.”
And he was right.
Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got til you’re orange
“Don’t take the piss,” I say, standing in our hall with my coat wrapped tightly around me.
“Oh, I can’t promise that,” MindReader says, leaning down to stroke Benny who, since I have been out for ten whole minutes, would very much like to be picked up.
“Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath and removing my coat.
“Billygean!” MindReader says, aghast.
“Wait wait wait, there is a bit of an explanation,” I say.
“But – your arms… and your neck! My god!”
“Wait – no – some of it is a guide colour,” I say. “So it goes on darkly so you can see where you’ve put it… and then it washes off. I hope.”
“But…” MindReader says, reaching out and gently moving my chin to the side. “You’ve got white patches too.”
“I know,” I say, hanging my coat up and standing awkwardly in the hall. “I have to wear that cream dress tomorrow and I look so weird in it with no tan.”
“I thought it was fancy dress?” MindReader says.
I wave a hand. “It was, and then we couldn’t be bothered.”
“Well,” MindReader says, his mouth twitching. “It is now. You can go as an oompa loompa.” He mimes texting a colleague of mine. “Colleague,” he says. “We’re now going as oompa loompas.”
I cannot help giggling a little bit. “I couldn’t find my usual… So I used this stuff that goes streaky. Dunno why.”
“Where did you get it?”
“From one of my blog readers,” I say.
“Who?”
“Um, Kittyb2113…” I say, as MindReader rolls his eyes. “It was a gift!”
“Oh Billygean,” MindReader says, tracing the brown tidemark that divides my orange neck from my white face. “What’re you going to do?”
“Fill in the white bits on my second application,” I say.
“I don’t think you should put more on. It’ll get worse!”
“Browner. It’ll get browner.”
“Right. And then?”
“Well. Look mental, probably. And smell a bit funny.”
“And smell a bit funny,” MindReader says.
—
PS. This is my painting, by popular demand (8 emails. Um!). You’re WELCOME.
The jokes about the colour of the ‘sunset’ and the colour of my neck, they write themselves.
On my future Turner Prize
“Ah, like the Emperor’s Underwear,” I say to MindReader, as we sort through a box of my things that has come from MadFather’s. They come periodically, do these boxes; 26 years of memories moving out slowly, year by year.
“The Emperor’s what?”
“The Emperor’s Underwear.”
“Er, I think it’s The Emperor’s New Clothes,” MindReader says.
“No because he believed it was underwear. But he wasn’t wearing any! Is well known mythology thing.”
MindReader pulls out some of my old paints. “A mythological story about a man who doesn’t wear pants?”
I sniff. “All mythology is weird. Like that Medusa lady with the hair snakes.”
“The Emporer’s New Clothes isn’t mythology anyway,” MindReader says, holding up a painting I did.
“Oh my God,” I say. “Do you remember when I bought those paints?”
It was autumn 2009. I was looking for a sedentary, fulfilling task to undertake. I went to Hobbycraft, spent £40, and decided I would be An Artist. I would wear white linen trousers, eat organic apples, burn patchouli incense and paint sunsets in MindReader’s shirts.
It didn’t exactly go to plan.
“Ha, yes,” MindReader says, holding up my ‘sunset’.
It is a piece of A4 canvas, the bottom three quarters of which are painted a crude orange and the top quarter of which is painted bright blue. There has been a vague attempt to merge the two colours, and the point at which they meet is painted a sloppy, messy brown. “It’s beautiful,” MindReader says with a laugh.
“What kind of artist would you say I was?” I smile as we regard the sunset.
“Definitely surrealist,” MindReader says.
Friday nights with my fellas
“Why did you need a notebook anyway?” MindReader says to me, reclining in our squashy sofa and sipping his cup of coffee.
“It’s my new budgeting plan,” I say.
“Ah. Are you in trouble again?”
“No,” I say. “I just got a bank charge in December and it came out yesterday and sent me over my overdraft again so I will get another bank charge for January…”
“Billygean…” MindReader says. “If you need money just say.”
(Indeed, Internetz, controversially, it seems, MindReader and I pay for all joint things [rent, food, bills, petrol, meals out, cat litter, oh the cat litter, etc] out of our joint account but keep our residual money separate. So he cannot tell me not to buy bath bombs and I can’t tell him not to… well, okay, just the bath bombs thing then).
“I was too scared to check!” I say.
“And the notebook…?”
“Well,” I say, as we hear Benny rustling around on the floor behind us. “I am going to save for us! So we can buy a car! Or a house! I looked at my bank after I got the nasty charge letters, and I reckon I spend about £100 a month on being… unprepared.”
“What?”
“Like I will spend £5 on lunch as I forget to make it, and then £10 on dinner stuff if you go out or I’ll buy a bag of crisps for 70p when you can get 5 for £1 in the Supermarket… And then I always buy other things like those tea towels I bought. Though they are lovey. So I am going to write down all the impulse buys I wanted to make but didn’t and see how much I’ve saved! And this way I’ll have extra money, so I won’t even have to stop buying clothes. Or saving what I already save. Sometimes. It’s perfect!”
“Right,” MindReader says. “So you can’t have takeaway tonight?”
“No. The Notebook says no.”
“Not even if I pay?”
“Well… maybe.”
“And you’re really going to save it?”
“Oh no.” I say. “I meant to tell you… I’m going on holiday with my friend during the Olympics as I can’t handle you watching it all the time. Like the World Cup. I can’t do that again.”
“Wait – not a car then – a hol-”
Just then, Benny launches himself onto the bookcase, where he teeters for a while, then launches himself down onto us, ginger paws flying everywhere.
And my crap-with-money bombshell is ignored. For now.
